BOOK XVI

I.

In proportion as power snatched from the hands of the king by the

Assembly disappeared, it passed into the commune of Paris. The

municipality, that first element of nations which are forming

themselves, is also the last asylum of authority when they are crumbling

to pieces. Before it falls quite to the people, power pauses for a

moment in the council-chamber of the magistrates of the city. The Hôtel

de Ville had become the Tuileries of the people; after La Fayette and

Bailly, Pétion reigned there: this man was the king of Paris. The

populace (which has always the instinct of position) called him _King

Pétion_. He had purchased his popularity, first by his private virtues,

which the people almost always confound with public virtues, and

subsequently by his democratic speeches in the Constituent Assembly. The

skilful balance which he preserved at the Jacobins between the

Girondists and Robespierre had rendered him respectable and important.

Friend of Roland, Robespierre, Danton, and Brissot, at the same time

suspected of too close connection with Madame de Genlis and the Duc

d'Orleans' party, he still always covered himself with the mantle of

proper devotion to order and a superstitious reverence for the

constitution. He had thus all the apparent titles to the esteem of

honest men and the respect of factions; but the greatest of all was in

his mediocrity. Mediocrity, it must be confessed, is almost always the

brand of these idols of the people: either that the mob, mediocre

itself, has only a taste for what resembles it; or that jealous

contemporaries can never elevate themselves sufficiently high towards

great characters and great virtues; or that Providence, which

distributes gifts and faculties in proportion, will not allow that one

man should unite in himself, amidst a free people, these three

irresistible powers, virtue, genius, and popularity; or rather, that the

constant favour of the multitude is a thing of such a nature that its

price is beyond its worth in the eyes of really virtuous men, and that

it is necessary to stoop too low to pick it up, and become too weak to

retain it. Pétion was only king of the people on condition of being

complaisant to its excesses. His functions as mayor of Paris, in a time

of trouble, placed him constantly between the king, the Assembly, and

the revolts. He bearded the king, flattered the Assembly, and pardoned

crime. Inviolable as the capital which he personified in his position of

first magistrate of the commune, his unseen dictatorship had no other

title than his inviolability, and he used it with respectful boldness

towards the king, bowed before the Assembly, and knelt to the

malcontents. To his official reproaches to the rioters, he always added

an excuse for crime, a smile for the culprits, encouragement to the

misled citizens. The people loved him as anarchy loves weakness; it knew

it could do as it pleased with him. As mayor, he had the law in his

hand; as a man, he had indulgence on his lips and connivance in his

heart: he was just the magistrate required in times of the _coups

d'état_ of the faubourgs.

Pétion allowed them to make all their preparations without appearing to

see them, and legalised them whenever they were completed.

II.

His early connection with Brissot had drawn him towards Madame Roland.

The ministry of Roland, Clavière, and Servan obeyed him more than even

the king, he was present at all their consultations, and although their

fall did not involve him, it wrested the executive power from his grasp.

The expelled Girondists had no need to infuse their thirst of vengeance

into the mind of Pétion. Unable any longer to conspire legally against

the king, with his ministers, he yet could conspire with the factions

against the Tuileries. The national guards, the people, the Jacobins,

the faubourgs, the whole city, were in his hands; thus he could give

sedition to the Girondists to aid this party to regain the ministry; and

he gave it them with all the hazards--all the crimes that sedition

carries with it. Amongst these hazards was the assassination of the king

and his family: this event was beforehand accepted by those who provoked

the assembly of the populace, and their invasion of the king's palace.

Girondists, Orleanists, Republicans, Anarchists, none of these parties

perhaps actually meditated this crime, but they looked upon it as an

eventuality of their fortune. Pétion, who doubtless did not desire it,

at least risked it; and if his intention was innocent, his temerity was

a murder. What distance was there between the steel of twenty thousand

pikes and the heart of Louis XVI.? Pétion did not betray the lives of

the king, the queen, and the children, but he placed them at stake. The

constitutional guard of the king had been ignominiously disbanded by the

Girondists; the Duc de Brissac, its commander, was sent to the high

court of Orleans, for imaginary conspiracies,--his only conspiracy was

his honour; and he had sworn to die bravely in defence of his master and

his friend. He could have escaped, but though even the king advised him

to fly, he refused. "If I fly," replied he, to the king's entreaties,

"it will be said that I am guilty, and that you are my accomplice; my

flight will accuse you: I prefer to die." He left Paris for the national

court of Orleans: he was not tried, but massacred at Versailles, on the

6th of September, and his head with its white hairs was planted on one

of the palisades of the palace gates, as if in atrocious mockery of

that chivalrous honour that even in death guarded the gate of the

residence of his king.

III.

The first insurrections of the Revolution were the spontaneous impulses

of the people: on one side was the king, the court and the nobility; on

the other the nation. These two parties clashed by the mere impulse of

conflicting ideas and interests. A word--a gesture--a chance--the

assembling a body of troops--a day's scarcity--the vehement address of

an orator in the Palais Royal, sufficed to excite the populace to

revolt, or to march on Versailles. The spirit of sedition was confounded

with the spirit of the Revolution. Every one was factious--every one was

a soldier--every one was a leader. Public passion gave the signal, and

chance commanded.

Since the Revolution was accomplished, and the constitution had imposed

on each party legal order, it was different. The insurrections of the

people were no longer agitations, but plans. The organised factions had

their partisans--their clubs--their assemblies--their army and their

pass-word. Amongst the citizens, anarchy had disciplined itself, and its

disorder was only external, for a secret influence animated and directed

it unknown even to itself. In the same manner as an army possesses

chiefs on whose intelligence and courage they rely; so the _quartiers_

and sections of Paris had leaders whose orders they obeyed. Secondary

popularities, already rooted in the city and faubourgs, had been founded

behind those mighty national popularities of Mirabeau, La Fayette, and

Bailly. The people felt confidence in such a name, reliance in such an

arm, favour for such a face; and when these men showed themselves,

spoke, or moved, the multitude followed them without even knowing

whither the current of the crowd would lead; it was sufficient for the

chiefs to indicate a spot on which to assemble, to spread abroad a panic

terror, infuse a sudden rage, or indicate a purpose, to cause the blind

masses of the people to assemble on the appointed spot ready for

action.

IV.

The spot chosen was most frequently the site of the Bastille, the Mons

Aventinus of the people, the national camp, where the place and the

stones reminded them of their servitude and their strength. Of all the

men who governed the agitators of the faubourgs, Danton was the most

redoubtable. Camille Desmoulins, equally bold to plan, possessed less

courage to execute. Nature, which had given this young man the

restlessness of the leaders of the mob, had denied him the exterior and

the power of voice necessary to captivate them; for the people do not

comprehend intellectual force. A colossal stature and a sonorous voice

are two indispensable requisites for the favourites of the people:

Camille Desmoulins was small, thin, and had but a feeble voice, that

seemed to "pipe and whistle in the wind" after the tones of Danton, who

possessed the roar of the populace.

Pétion enjoyed the highest esteem of the anarchists, but his official

legality excused him from openly fomenting the disorder, which it was

sufficient that he desired. Nothing could be done without him, and he

was an accomplice. After them came Santerre, the commander of the

battalion of the faubourg St. Antoine. Santerre, son of a Flemish

brewer, and himself a brewer, was one of those men that the people

respect because they are of themselves, and whose large fortune is

forgiven them on account of their familiarity. Well known to the

workmen, of whom he employed great numbers in his brewery; and

by the populace, who on Sundays frequented his wine and beer

establishments--Santerre distributed large sums of money, as well as

quantities of provisions, to the poor; and, at a moment of famine, had

distributed three hundred thousand francs' worth of bread (12,000_l_.).

He purchased his popularity by his beneficence; he had conquered it, by

his courage, at the storming of the Bastille; and he increased it by his

presence at every popular tumult. He was of the race of those Belgian

brewers who intoxicated the people of Ghent to rouse them to revolt.

The butcher, Legendre, was to Danton what Danton was to Mirabeau, a step

lower in the abyss of sedition. Legendre had been a sailor during ten

years of his life, and had the rough and brutal manners of his two

callings, a savage look, his arms covered with blood, his language

merciless, yet his heart naturally good. Involved since '89 in all the

Revolutionary movements, the waves of this agitation had elevated him to

a certain degree of authority. He had founded, under Danton, the

Cordeliers club, the club of _coups de main_, as the Jacobins was the

club of radical theories; and he convulsed it to its very centre, by his

eloquence untaught and unpolished. He compared himself to the peasant of

the Danube. Always more ready to strike than to speak, Legendre's

gesture crushed before he spoke. He was the mace of Danton. Huguenin,

one of those men who roll from profession to profession, on the

acclivity of troublous times, without the power to arrest his course; an

advocate expelled from the body to which he belonged; then a soldier,

and a clerk at the barrière; always disliked, aspiring for power to

recover his fortune, and suspected of pillage. Alexandre, the commandant

of the battalion of the Gobelins, the hero of the faubourg, the friend

of Legendre. Marat, a living conspiracy, who had quitted his

subterranean abode in the night; a living martyr of demagogism,

revelling in excitement, carrying his hatred of society to madness,

exulting in it, and voluntarily playing the part of the fool of the

people as so many others had played at the courts the part of the king's

fool. Dubois Crancé, a brave and educated soldier. Brune, a sabre, at

the service of all conspiracies. Mormoro, a printer, intoxicated with

philosophy. Dubuisson, an obscure writer, whom the hisses of the theatre

had forced to take refuge in intrigue. Fabre d'Eglantine, a comic poet,

ambitious of another field for his powers. Chabot, a capuchin monk,

embittered by the cloister, and eager to avenge himself on the

superstition which had imprisoned him. Lareynie, a soldier-priest.

Gonchon, Duquesnois, friends of Robespierre. Carra, a Girondist

journalist. An Italian, named Rotondo. Henriot, Sillery, Louvet, Laclos,

and Barbaroux, the emissary of Roland and Brissot, were the principal

instigators of the _émeute_ of the 20th of June.

V.

All these men met in an isolated house at Charenton, to concert in the

stillness and secrecy of the night on the pretext, the plan, and the

hour of the insurrection. The passions of these men were different, but

their impatience was the same; some wished to terrify, others to strike,

but all wished to act; when once the people were let loose, they would

stop where destiny willed. There were no scruples at a meeting at which

Danton presided; speeches were superfluous where but one feeling

prevailed; propositions were sufficient, and a look was enough to convey

all their meaning. A pressure of the hand, a glance, a significant

gesture, are the eloquence of men of action. In a few words, Danton

dictated the purpose, Santerre the means, Marat the atrocious energy,

Camilla Desmoulins the cynical gaiety of the projected movement, and all

decided on the resolution of urging the people to this act. A

revolutionary map of Paris was laid on the table, and on it Danton

traced the sources, the tributary streams, the course, and the

meeting-place of these gatherings of the people.

The Place de la Bastille, an immense square into which opened, like the

mouths of so many rivers, the numerous streets of the faubourg St.

Antoine, which joins, by the quartier de l'Arsenale and a bridge, the

faubourg St. Marceau, and which, by the boulevard, opened before the

ancient fortress, has a large opening to the centre of the city and the

Tuileries, was the rendezvous assigned, and the place whence the columns

were to depart. They were to be divided into three bodies, and a

petition to present to the king and the Assembly against the _veto_ to

the decree against the priests and the camp of 20,000 men, was the

ostensible purpose of the movement; the recall of the patriot ministers,

Roland, Servan, and Clavière, the countersign; and the terror of the

people, disseminated in Paris and the château of the Tuileries the

effect of this day. Paris expected this visit of the faubourgs, for five

hundred persons had dined together the previous day on the Champs

Elysées.

The chief of the _fédérés_ of Marseilles and the agitators of the

central quarters had fraternised there with the Girondists. The actor

Dugazon had sung verses, denunciatory of the inhabitants of the Château;

and at his window in the Tuileries the king had heard the applause and

these menacing strains, that reached even to his palace. As for the

order of the march, the grotesque emblems, the strange weapons, the

hideous costumes, the horrible banners and the obscene language,

destined to signal the apparition of this army of the faubourgs in the

streets of the capital, the conspirators prescribed nothing, for

disorder and horror formed a part of the programme, and they left all to

the disordered imagination of the populace, and to that rivalry of

cynicism which invariably takes place in such masses of men. Danton

relied on this fact.

VI.

Although the presence of Panis and Sergent, two members of the

municipality, gave a tacit sanction to the plan, the leaders undertook

to recruit the sedition in silence, by small groups during the night,

and to collect the fiercest _rassemblements_ of the quartier Saint

Marceau and the Jardin des Plantes, on the bank of the Arsenale, by

means of a ferry, then the only means of communication between the two

faubourgs. Lareynie was to arouse the faubourg St. Jacques and the market

of the place Maubert, where the women of the lower classes came daily to

make their household purchases. To sell and to buy is the life of the

lower orders, and money and famine are their two leading passions. They

are always ready for tumult in those places where these two passions

concentrate, and no where is sedition more readily excited, or in

greater masses of people.

The dyer Malard, the shoemaker Isambert, the tanner Gibon, rich and

influential artizans, were to pour from the sombre and foetid streets

of the faubourg Saint Marceau their indigent population, who but rarely

show themselves in the principal quartiers. Alexandre, the military

tribune of this quarter of Paris, in which he commanded a battalion, was

to place himself at its head on the place, before daybreak, to

concentrate the people, and then give them the impulse that should lead

them to the quays and the Tuileries. Varlet, Gonchon, Ronsin, and Siret,

the lieutenants of Santerre, who had been employed in this system of

tactics since the first agitations of '89, were charged with the

execution of similar manoeuvres in the faubourg St. Antoine. The

streets of this quarter, full of manufactories and wine and beer shops,

the abiding place of misery, toil, and sedition, which extend from the

Bastille to la Roquette and Charenton, contained in themselves alone an

army that could invade Paris.

VII.

This army had known its leaders for four years. They posted themselves

at the openings of the principal streets, at the hour when the workmen

leave the _ateliers_; they procured a chair and table from the nearest

and best _cabaret_, and mounting on these wine-stained tribunes, they

called by name some of the passers by, who grouped round them; these

stopped others, the street was blocked up by them, and this crowd was

increased by all the men, women, and children, attracted by the noise.

The orator addressed this motley assemblage, whilst wine or beer were

gratuitously handed round. The cessation of work, the scarcity of money,

the dearth of food, the manoeuvres of the aristocrats to starve Paris,

the treacheries of the king, the orgies of the queen, the necessity of

the nation's defeating the plots of an Austrian court, were the usual

themes of their addresses. When once the agitation rose to fever heat,

the cry of "_Marchons_" was heard, and the mob set itself in motion down

every street. A few hours afterwards masses of workmen from the

quartiers Popincourt, Quinze-Vingts de la Grève, Port au Blé, and the

Marché St. Jean, poured from the rues du Faubourg St. Antoine, and

covered the Place de la Bastille. There the tumult of the meeting of all

these tributaries of sedition for a moment stayed the progress of this

living torrent; but the impulse soon carried them on, and the columns

instinctively divided themselves, and plunged into the vast outlets and

main streets of Paris. Some took the line of the boulevards, others

marched along the quays to the Pont Neuf, there encountered the column

of the Place Maubert, and poured, in constantly increasing masses, on

the Palais Royal, and the gardens of the Tuileries.

Such were the plans ordered on the night of the 19th of June, to be

executed by the agitators in the different quartiers, and who separated

with a rallying word, which gave the movement of the morrow the

excitement and uncertainty of hope, and which, without commanding the

consummation of crime, yet authorised the last excesses, "_To make an

end of the Château_."

VIII.

Such was the meeting of Charenton, such were the unseen actors who were

to set in motion a million of citizens. Did Laclos and Sillery, who were

about to seek a throne for the Duc d'Orleans their master, in the

faubourgs, distribute his gold there? It has been asserted and believed,

but never proved, and yet their presence at this meeting is suspicious.

History has the right of suspecting without evidence, but never of

accusing without proof. The assassination of the king would give the

crown, the next day, to the Duc d'Orleans; Louis XVI. might be

assassinated by the weapon of some drunken man--he was not. This is the

only justification of the Orleans' faction. Some of these men were

disaffected, like Marat and Hébert; others, like Barbaroux, Sillery,

Laclos, and Carra, were impatient malcontents; and others, like

Santerre, were but citizens, whose love of liberty became fanaticism.

The conspirators concerted together, and disciplined and organised the

city. Individual and distorted passions kindled the mighty and virtuous

love of the people for the triumph of democracy. It is thus that in a

conflagration the most tainted substances oft light the fire; the

combustible matter is foul, but the flames pure; the flame of the

Revolution was liberty; the factious might dim, they could not stain,

its brightness.

Whilst the conspirators of Charenton distributed their _rôles_ and

recruited their forces, the king trembled for his wife and children at

the Tuileries. "Who knows," said he, to M. de Malesherbes, with a

melancholy smile, "whether I shall behold the sun set to-morrow?"

Pétion, by ordering the municipal forces and the national guards under

his orders to resist, could have entirely put down the sedition. The

directory of the department presided over by the unfortunate Duc de la

Rochefoucauld, summoned Pétion in the most energetic terms to perform

his duty. Pétion smiled, took all on himself, and justified the legality

of the proposed meetings and the petitions presented _en masse_ to the

Assembly.

Vergniaud in the tribune repelled the alarm felt by the

constitutionalists, as calumnies against the innocence of the people.

Condorcet laughed at the disquietude manifested by the ministers, and

the demands for armed force they addressed to the Assembly. "Is it not

amusing," said he, addressing his colleagues, "to see the executive

power demanding the means of action from the legislators? let them save

themselves, it is their trade." Thus derision was united to the plots

against the unfortunate monarch; the legislators derided the power their

hands had disarmed, and applauded the factious.

IX.

It was under these auspices that the 20th of June dawned. A second

council, more secret and less numerous than the former, had assembled

the men destined to put these designs into execution, and they only

separated at midnight. Each of them went to his post, awoke his most

trusty followers, and stationed them in small groups, to stop and

assemble together the workmen, as they quitted their homes. Santerre

answered for the neutrality of the national guard. "Do not fear," said

he; "Pétion will be there." Pétion in reality had on the previous

evening ordered the battalions of the national guard to get under arms,

not to oppose the columns of the people, but to fraternise with the

petitioners and swell the cortège of sedition. This equivocal measure at

once saved the responsibility of Pétion to the department, and his

complicity before the assembled people; to the one he said I watch; to

the other, I march with you.

At daybreak the battalions were assembled, and their arms piled on all

the _grandes places_. Santerre harangued his on the Place de la

Bastille, whilst around him flocked an immense throng, agitated,

impatient, ready to rush upon the city at his signal. Uniforms and rags

were blended, and detachments of invalides, gendarmes, national guards,

and volunteers, received the orders of Santerre, and repeated them to

the crowd. An instinctive discipline prevailed amidst this disorder, and

the half military half civil appearance of this camp of the people gave

the Assembly rather the character of a warlike expedition than an

_émeute_. This throng recognised leaders, manoeuvred at their command,

followed their flags, obeyed their voice, and even controlled their

impatience to await reinforcements and give detached bodies the

appearance of a simultaneous movement. Santerre on horseback, surrounded

by a staff of men of the faubourgs, issued his orders, fraternised with

the citizens and insurgents, recommended the people to remain silent and

dignified, and slowly formed the columns, ready for the signal to march.

X.

At eleven o'clock the people set out for the quartier of the Tuileries.

The number of men who left the Place de la Bastille was estimated at

twenty thousand; they were divided into three bodies, the first composed

of the battalions of the faubourg, armed with sabres and bayonets,

obeyed Santerre; the second, composed of the lowest rabble, without arms

or only armed with pikes and sticks, was under the orders of the

demagogue Saint-Huruge; the third, a confused mass of squalid men,

women, and children, followed, in a disorderly march, a young and

beautiful woman in male attire, a sabre in her hand, a musket on her

shoulder, and seated on a cannon drawn by a number of workmen. This was

Théroigne de Méricourt.

Santerre was well known: he was the king of the faubourgs. Saint-Huruge

had been, since '89, the great agitator of the Palais Royal.

The Marquis de Saint-Huruge, born at Mâcon of a rich and noble family,

was one of those men of tumult and disturbances who seem to personify

the masses. Gifted by nature with a towering stature and a martial

figure, his voice thundered above the roars of the crowd. He had his

agitations, his fury, his moments of repentance, and sometimes even of

cowardice; his heart was not cruel, but his brain was disturbed. Too

aristocratic to be envious, too rich to be a spoliator, too frivolous to

be a fanatic by principle, the Revolution turned his brain in the same

manner as a rapidly flowing river carries with it the eye that in vain

strives to gaze fixedly on it. His life seemed that of a maniac; he

loved the Revolution when in motion because it was akin to madness. When

yet very young he had sullied his name, ruined his fortune, and

forfeited his honours by debauchery, women, and gaming. At the Palais

Royal and the neighbouring quartiers, the scene of every disorder, he

possessed the infamous celebrity of scandal and shame. All the world had

heard of him; his family had procured his incarceration in the Bastille,

from which the 14th of July had freed him. He had sworn to be avenged,

and he kept his oath; a voluntary and indefatigable accomplice of every

faction, he had offered his unpaid services to the Duc d'Orleans,

Mirabeau, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, the Girondists, and Robespierre:

always an adherent of the party who went the greatest lengths; always a

leader of those _émeutes_ that promised the most havoc and ruin. Awake

before daybreak, present at every club, he hastened at the slightest

noise to swell the crowd; at the smallest tumult to stir men up to more

violence. He himself was consumed by the common passion, ere he

comprehended its nature; and his voice, his gestures, the expression of

his features communicated it to others. He vociferated tales of terror;

he disseminated the fever; he electrified the wavering masses; he urged

on the current; he was in himself a sedition.

XI.

After Saint Huruge, marched Théroigne de Méricourt. Théroigne, or

Lambertine de Méricourt, who commanded the third corps of the army of

the faubourgs, was known among the people by the name of _La Belle

Liégoise_. The French Revolution had drawn her to Paris, as the

whirlwind attracts things of no weight. She was the impure Joan of Arc

of the public streets. Outraged love had plunged her into disorder, and

the vice, at which she herself blushed, only made her thirst for

vengeance. In destroying the aristocrats she fancied she purified her

honour, and washed out her shame in blood.

She was born at the village of Méricourt, near Liège, of a family of

wealthy farmers, and had received a finished education. At the age of

seventeen her singular loveliness had attracted the attention of a young

_seigneur_, whose chateau was close to her residence. Beloved, seduced,

and deserted, she had fled from her father's roof and taken refuge in

England, from whence, after a residence of some months, she proceeded to

France. Introduced to Mirabeau, she knew through him Siéyès, Joseph

Chénier, Danton, Ronsin, Brissot, and Camille Desmoulins. Romme, a

mystical republican, infused into her mind the German spirit of

illumination. Youth, love, revenge, and the contact with this furnace of

a revolution, had turned her head, and she lived in the intoxication of

passions, ideas, and pleasures. Connected at first with the great

innovators of '89, she had passed from their arms into those of rich

voluptuaries, who purchased her charms dearly. Courtezan of opulence,

she became the voluntary prostitute of the people; and like her

celebrated prototypes of Egypt or of Rome, she lavished upon liberty the

wealth she derived from vice.

On the first assemblage of the people she appeared in the streets, and

devoted her beauty to serve as an ensign to the people. Dressed in a

riding habit of the colour of blood, a plume of feathers in her hat, a

sabre at her side, and two pistols in her belt, she hastened to join

every insurrection. She was the first of those who burst open the gates

of the Invalides and took the cannon from thence. She was also one of

the first to attack the Bastille; and a sabre d'homme was voted her on

the breach by the victors. On the days of October, she had led the women

of Paris to Versailles, on horseback, by the side of the ferocious

Jourdan, called "_the man with the long beard_." She had brought back

the king to Paris: she had followed, without emotion, the heads of the

gardes du corps, stuck on pikes as trophies. Her language, although

marked by a foreign accent, had yet the eloquence of tumult. She

elevated her voice amidst the stormy meetings of the clubs, and from the

galleries blamed their conduct. Sometimes she spoke at the Cordeliers.

Camille Desmoulins mentions the enthusiasm which her harangues created.

"Her similes," says he, "were drawn from the Bible and Pindar,--it was

the eloquence of a Judith." She proposed to build the palace of the

representative body on the site of the Bastille. "To found and embellish

this edifice," said she, "let us strip ourselves of our ornaments, our

gold, our jewels. I will be the first to set the example." And with

these words she tore off her ornaments in the tribune. Her ascendency

during the _émeutes_ was so great, that with a single sign she condemned

or acquitted a victim; and the royalists trembled to meet her.

During this period, by one of those chances that appear like the

premeditated vengeances of destiny, she recognised in Paris the young

Belgian gentleman who had seduced and abandoned her. Her look told him

how great was his danger, and he sought to avert it by imploring her

pardon. "My pardon," said she; "at what price can you purchase it? My

innocence gone--my family lost to me--my brothers and sisters pursued in

their own country by the jeers and sarcasms of their kindred; the

malediction of my father--my exile from my native land--my enrolment

amongst the infamous caste of courtezans; the blood with which my days

have been and will be stained; that imperishable curse attached to my

name, instead of that immortality of virtue which you have taught me to

doubt. It is for this that you would purchase my forgiveness. Do you

know any price on earth capable of purchasing it?" The young man made no

reply. Théroigne had not the generosity to forgive him, and he perished

in the massacres of September. In proportion as the Revolution became

more bloody, she plunged deeper into it. She could no longer exist,

without the feverish excitement of public emotion. However, her early

leaning to the Girondist party again displayed itself, and she also

wished to stay the progress of the Revolution. But there were women

whose power was superior even to her own. These women, called the

_furies_ of the guillotine, stripped the belle Liégoise of her attire,

and publicly flogged her on the terrace of the Tuileries, on the 31st of

May. This punishment, more terrible than death, turned her brain, and

she was conveyed to a mad-house, where she lived twenty years, which

were but one long paroxysm of fury. Shameless and blood-thirsty in her

delirium, she refused to wear any garments, as a souvenir of the outrage

she had undergone. She dragged herself, only covered by her long white

hair, along the flags of her cell, or clung with her wasted hands to the

bars of the window, from whence she addressed an imaginary people, and

demanded the blood of Suleau.

XII.

After Théroigne de Méricourt came other demagogues, less widely known,

but already celebrated in their own quartiers, such as Rossignol, the

working goldsmith; Brièrre, a wine-seller; Gonor, the conqueror of the

Bastille; Jourdan, surnamed _Coupe-tête_; the famous Polish Jacobin,

Lozouski, afterwards buried by the people at the Carrousel; and Henriot,

afterwards the confidential general of the convention. As the columns

penetrated into Paris, they were swelled by new groups, that poured

forth from the crowded streets that open on the boulevards and the

quays. At each influx of these new recruits, a shout of joy burst from

the columns, the military bands struck up the air of the _Ça Ira_, the

Marseillaise of assassins, whilst the insurgents sang the chorus, and

brandished their arms threateningly at the windows of those suspected of

being aristocrates.

These weapons did not resemble the arms of regular troops, which excite

at once terror and admiration; they were strange and uncouth arms,

caught up by the people in the first impulse of fury or defence.[24]

Pikes, lances, spits, cutlasses, carpenters' axes, masons' hammers,

shoemakers' knives, paviours' levers, saws, wedges, mattocks, crow-bars,

the commonest household utensils of the poor, and the rusty iron exposed

for sale on the quays, were alike seized upon by the people; and these

different weapons, rusted, black, hideous, each of which presented a

different manner of inflicting a wound, seemed to increase the horror of

death by displaying it in a thousand terrible and unwonted forms. The

mixture of all sexes, ages, and conditions; the confusion of costumes

and rags beside uniforms, old men beside young; even children, some

carried in their mothers' arms, others holding their father's hand or

his garments; common prostitutes, their silken dresses soiled and torn,

indecency on their brow, and insult on their lips, hundreds of women of

the lowest description, and from the dregs of the people, recruited to

swell the cortège, and excite commiseration from the garrets of the

faubourgs, clothed in tattered finery, pale, emaciated, their eyes

hollow, and their cheeks sunken from misery, the personifications of

want, in fact the people, in all the disorder, the confusion, the

exposure of a city suddenly summoned from its houses, its workshops, its

garrets, its scenes and haunts of debauch and infamy; such was the

aspect of intimidation which the conspirators wished to give to this

scene.

Here and there flags waved above the heads of the multitude. On one was

written _Sanction or death_; on another, _The recall of the patriot

ministers_; on the third, _Tremble tyrant, thine hour is come_. A man,

his arms bared to the shoulders, bore a gibbet, from which hung the

effigy of a crowned female, with the inscription, _Beware the lantern_.

Farther on a group of hags raised a _guillotine_, with a card bearing

the words, _National Justice on tyrants; death for Veto and his wife_.

Amidst all this apparent disorder, a secret system of order was visible.

Men in rags, yet whose white hands and shirts of the finest linen

pointed them out as of superior rank, wore hats, on which signs of

recognition were drawn with white chalk; the crowd regulated their march

by them, and followed wherever they went.

The principal body thus marched by the Rue Saint Antoine, and the dark

and central avenues of Paris, to the Rue Saint Honoré, the population of

these quartiers swelling its numbers at each instant. The more this

living torrent increased the more furious it became. Now a band of

butchers joined it, each bearing a pike, on which was stuck the bleeding

heart of a calf, with the words, _Coeur d'aristocrate_. Next came a

band of Chiffoniers dressed in rags, and displaying a lance, from which

floated a tattered garment, with the inscription, _Tremble tyrants, here

are the sans culottes_. The insult which the aristocracy had cast at

poverty, now, when adopted by the people, became the weapon of the

nation against the rich.

This army defiled during three hours along the Rue Saint Honoré.

Sometimes a terrible silence, only broken by the sound of thousands of

feet on the pavement, oppressed the imagination, as the sign of

concentrated rage of this multitude; then solitary voices, insulting

speeches, and atrocious sarcasms, were mingled with the laughter of the

crowd; then sudden and confused murmurs burst from this human sea, and

rising to the roofs of the houses, left only the last syllables of

their prolonged acclamations audible: _Long live the nation! Long live

the sans culottes! Down with the veto!_ This tumult reached the salle du

Manège, where the Legislative Assembly was then sitting. The head of the

cortège stopped at the doors, the columns inundated the court of the

Feuillants, the court of the Manège, and all the openings of the salle.

These courts, these avenues, these passages, which then masked the

terrace of the garden, occupied the space which now extends between the

garden of the Tuileries and the Rue Saint Honoré--that central artery of

Paris. It was mid-day.

XIII.

Roederer, the procureur syndic of the directory of the department, a

post which in '92 corresponded with that of prefect de Paris, was at

this moment at the bar of the Assembly. Roederer, a partisan of the

constitution, of the school of Mirabeau and Talleyrand, was a courageous

enemy of anarchy. He found in the constitution the point of

reconciliation between his fidelity to the people and his loyalty to the

king; and he sought to defend this constitution with every weapon of the

law which sedition had not broken in his grasp. "Armed mobs threaten to

violate the constitution, the Chamber of Representatives, and the

dwelling of the king," said Roederer at the bar; "the reports of the

night are alarming; the minister of the interior calls on us to march

troops immediately to defend the château. The law forbids armed

assemblies, and yet they advance--they demand admittance; but if you

yourselves set an example by suffering them to enter, what will become

of the force of the law in our hands? your indulgence will destroy all

public force in the hands of the magistrates. We demand to be charged

with the fulfilment of all our duties: let the responsibility also be

ours, and let nothing diminish the obligation we are under of dying to

preserve and defend public tranquillity." These words, worthy the

chancellor L'Hôpital, or Mathieu Molé, were coldly listened to by the

Assembly, and saluted by ironical laughter from the tribunes. Vergniaud

affected to bow to them, and weakened their effect. "Yes, doubtless,"

said this orator, destined to be torn from the tribune, a year later, by

an armed mob,--"Doubtless, we should have done better never to have

received armed men, for if to-day patriotism brings good citizens

hither, aristocracy may to-morrow bring its janissaries. But the error

we have committed authorises that of the people. The Assembly, formed up

to the present time, appears sanctioned by the silence of the law. It is

true that the magistrates demand force to put them down: but what should

you do in such circumstances? I think that it would be an excess of

severity to be inflexible to a fault, the origin of which is in your

decrees: it would be an insult to the citizens to imagine they had any

evil designs. It is said that this Assembly wishes to present an address

at the château: I do not believe that the citizens who compose it will

demand to be presented with arms in their hands to the king: I think

that they will obey the laws, and that they will go unarmed, and like

simple petitioners. I demand that these citizens be instantly permitted,

to defile before us." Dumolard and Raymond, indignant at the perfidy or

the cowardice of these words, energetically opposed this weakness or

complicity of the Assembly. "The best homage to pay the people of

Paris," cried Raymond, "is to make them obey their own laws. I demand

that before these citizens are introduced they lay down their arms."

"Why," returned Guadet, "do you talk of disobedience to the law, when

you have so often disobeyed it yourself? you would commit a revolting

injustice; you would resemble that Roman emperor who, in order to find

more guilty persons, caused the laws to be written in letters so obscure

that no one could read them."

The deputation of the insurgents entered at these last words, amidst the

bursts of applause and the indignant murmurs of the Assembly.

XIV.

The orator of the deputation, Huguenin, read the petition concerted at

Charenton. He declared that the city had risen ready to employ every

means of avenging the majesty of the people, whilst he deplored the

necessity of staining their hands with the blood of the conspirators.

"But," said he, with apparent resignation, "the hour has come; blood

must be shed. The men of the 14th of July are not asleep, they only

appeared to be; their awakening is terrible: speak, and we will act. The

people is there to judge its enemies: let them choose between Coblentz

and ourselves; let them purge the land of their enemies--the tyrants;

you know them. The king is not with you: we need no other proof of it

than the dismissal of the patriot ministers and the inaction of the

armies. Is not the head of the people worth that of kings? Must the

blood of patriots flow with impunity to satisfy the pride and ambition

of the perfidious château of the Tuileries? If the king does not act,

suspend him from his functions: one man cannot fetter the will of

twenty-five millions of men. If through respect we suffer him to retain

the throne, it is on condition that he observe the constitution. If he

depart from this he is no longer anything. And the high court of

Orleans," continued Huguenin, "what is that doing?--where are the heads

of those it should have doomed to death?" These sinister expressions

threw the constitutionalists into alarm, and caused the Girondists to

smile. The president, however, replied with a firmness which was not

sustained by the attitude of his colleagues. It was decided that the

people of the faubourgs should be allowed to defile before them under

arms.

XV.

Immediately after this decree was voted, the doors, besieged by the

multitude opened, and admitted thirty thousand petitioners. During this

long procession the band played the demagogical airs of the _Carmagnole_

and the _Ça Ira_, those _pas de charge_ of revolts. Females, armed with

sabres, brandished them at the tribunes, who loudly applauded, and

danced before a table of stone, on which were engraved the rights of

man, like the Israelites before the Ark. The same flags and the same

obscene inscriptions visible in the streets, disgraced the temple of the

law. The tattered garments, hanging from their lances, the guillotine,

and the _potence_, with the effigy of the queen suspended from it,

traversed the Assembly with impunity. Some of the deputies applauded,

others turned away their heads or hid their faces in their hands; some

more courageous, forced the wretch who bore the _coeur saignant_,

partly by entreaties, partly by threats, to retire with his emblem of

assassination. Part of the people regarded with a respectful eye the

salle they profaned; others addressed the representatives as they

passed, and seemed to exult in their degradation. The rattling of the

strange weapons of the crowd, the clatter of their nailed shoes and

sabots on the pavement, the shrill shouts of the women, the voices of

the children, the cries of _Vive la nation_, patriotic songs, and the

sound of instruments, deafened the ear, whilst to the eye, these rags

contrasted strangely with the marbles, the statues, and the decorations

of the salle. The miasmas of this horde set in motion tainted the air,

and stifled respiration. Three hours elapsed ere all the troop had

defiled. The president hastened to adjourn the sitting, in the

expectation of approaching excesses.

XVI.

But an imposing force was drawn up in the courts of the Tuileries and

the garden, to defend the dwelling of the king against the invasion of

the people. Three regiments of the line, two squadrons of gendarmes,

several battalions of the national guard, and several pieces of cannon,

composed the means of resistance; but the troops, undecided, and acted

upon by sedition, were but an appearance of force. The cries of _Vive la

nation_, the friendly gestures of the insurgents, the appearance of the

women extending their arms towards the soldiers through the palisades,

and the presence of the municipal officers, who displayed a disdainful

neutrality towards the king, shook the feeling of resistance amongst the

troops, who beheld on either side the uniform of the national guard; and

between the population of Paris, in whose sentiments they participated,

and the château, which was represented to them as full of treason, they

no longer knew which it was their duty to obey. In vain did M.

Roederer, a firm organ of the constitution, and the superior officers

of the national guard, such as MM. Acloque and De Romainvilliers,

present the text of the law, ordering them to repel force by force. The

Assembly set the example of complicity; and the mayor, Pétion, by his

absence avoided responsibility. The king took refuge in his

inviolability; and the troops, abandoned to themselves, could not fail

to yield to threats or seduction.

In the interior of the palace, two hundred gentlemen, at the head of

whom was the old marshal De Mouchy, had hastened together at the first

news of the king's danger. They were rather the voluntary victims of

ancient French honour, than useful defenders of the monarchy. Fearing to

excite the jealousy of the national guard and the troops, these

gentlemen concealed themselves in the remote apartments of the palace,

ready rather to die than to combat: they wore no uniform, and their arms

were concealed under their coats--hence the name by which they were

pointed out to the people of _Chevaliers du poignard_. Arriving secretly

from their provinces to offer their services to the king unknown to each

other; and only furnished with a card of entrance to the palace, they

hastened thither whenever there was danger. They should have been ten

thousand, and were but two hundred--the last reserve of fidelity; but

they did their duty without counting their number, and avenged the

French nobility for the faults and the desertion of the emigration.

XVII.

The mob, on quitting the Assembly, had marched in close columns to the

Carrousel. Santerre and Alexandre, at the head of their battalions,

directed the movement. A compact mass of the insurgents, followed by the

Rue St. Honoré. The other branches of the populace, cut off from the

main body, thronged the courts of the Manège and the Feuillants, and

tried to make room for themselves by issuing violently by one of the

avenues which communicated with the garden from these courts. A

battalion of the national guard defended the approach to this iron gate.

The weakness or complaisance of a municipal officer freed the passage,

and the battalion fell back, and took up its ground beneath the windows

of the Château. The crowd traversed the garden in an oblique direction,

and passing before the battalions, saluted them with cries of _Vive la

nation!_ bidding them take their bayonets from their muskets. The

bayonets were removed, and the mob then passed out by the entrance of

the Port Royal, and fell back upon the gates of the Carrousel, which

shut off this place from the Seine. The guards at these wickets again

gave way, to allow a certain number of the malcontents to enter, and

then shut the doors. These men, excited by their march, songs, the

acclamations of the Assembly, and by intoxication, rushed with furious

clamours into the court-yards of the Château. They ran to the principal

doors, pressed upon the soldiers on guard, called their comrades without

to come to them, and forced the hinges of the royal entrance gate. The

municipal officer, Panis, gave orders that it should be opened. The

Carrousel was forced, and the mob seemed for a moment to hesitate before

the cannon pointed against them, and some squadrons of _gendarmerie_,

drawn up in a line of battle. Saint Prix, who commanded the artillery,

separated from his guns by a movement of the crowd, sent to the second

in command an order to let them fall back in the door of the Château. He

refused to obey: "_The Carrousel is forced_," he said in a loud voice,

"_and so must be the Château. Here, artillery men, here is the enemy!_"

And he pointed to the king's windows, turned his guns, and levelled them

at the palace. The troops following this desertion of the artillery,

remained in line, but took the powder from the pans of their muskets in

sight of the people, in sign of fraternity, and allowed a free passage

to the malcontents.

At this movement of the soldiers, the commandant of the national guard,

who witnessed it, called from the court to the grenadiers, whom he saw

at the windows of the _Salle des Gardes_, to take their arms, and defend

the staircase. The grenadiers, instead of obeying, left the palace by

the gallery leading to the garden.

Santerre, Théroigne, and Saint-Huruge hastened by the gate of the

palace. The boldest and stoutest of the men in the mob went under the

vault which leads from the Carrousel to the garden, dashed the

artillerymen on one side, and seizing one of the guns, unlimbered it,

and carried it in their arms to the _Salle des Gardes_, on the top of

the grand staircase. The crowd, emboldened by this feat of strength and

audacity, poured into the apartment and spread like a torrent throughout

the staircase and corridors of the Château. All the doors were burst in,

or fell beneath the shoulders and axes of the multitude. They shouted

loudly for the king; only one door separated them, and this door was

already yielding beneath the efforts of levers and blows of pikes from

the assailants.

XVIII.

The king, relying on Pétion's promises, and the number of troops with

which the palace was surrounded, had seen the assemblage of the mob

without uneasiness.

The assault suddenly made on his abode had surprised him in complete

security. Retired with the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his children to

the interior apartments on the side of the garden, he had heard the

distant thunder of the crowd without expecting that it was so soon to

burst on him. The voices of his frightened servants, flying in all

directions, the noise of doors burst open and falling on the floors, the

shouts of the people as they approached, threw alarm suddenly amongst

the family party, which had met in the king's bed-chamber. The prince,

confiding, by his look, his wife, sister, and children to the officers

and women of the household who surrounded them, went alone to the _Salle

du Conseil_. He there found the faithful Marshal de Mouchy, who did not

hesitate to offer the last days of his long life to his master; M.

d'Hervilly, the commandant of the Constitutional Horse Guard, disbanded

a few days previously; the governor Acloque, commandant of the battalion

of the faubourg St. Marceau, at first a moderate republican, then,

overcome by the private virtues of Louis XVI., was his friend, and ready

to die for him; three brave grenadiers of the battalion of the faubourg

St. Martin, Lecrosnier, Bridau, and Gossé, who alone remained at their

post of the interior on the general defection, and ready to protect the

king with their bayonets, men of the people, strangers at court, rallied

round him by the sole sentiment of duty and affection, only defending

the man in the king.

At the moment the king entered this apartment, the doors of the adjacent

room, called the _Salle des Nobles_, were dashed in by the blows of the

assailants. The king rushed forward to meet the danger. The door-panels

fell at his feet, lance heads, iron-shod sticks, spikes were thrust

through the opening. Cries of fury, oaths, imprecations accompanied the

blows of the axe. The king, in a firm voice, ordered two devoted _valets

de chambre_, who accompanied him, Hue, and de Marchais, to open the

doors. "What have I to fear in the midst of my people?" said the prince,

boldly advancing towards the assailants.

These words, his advancing step, the serenity of his brow, the respect

of so many ages for the sacred person of the king, suspended the

impetuosity of the ringleaders, and they appeared to hesitate in

crossing the threshold they had burst open. During this doubtful moment,

the Marshal de Mouchy, Acloque, the three grenadiers and two servants,

made the king retreat a few paces, and then placed themselves between

him and the populace. The grenadiers presented their bayonets, and for a

moment kept the crowd at bay. But the increasing mob pushed forward the

first ranks. The first who pressed in was a man in rags, with naked

arms, haggard eyes, and foaming at the mouth. "Where is the _veto_?" he

said, thrusting in the direction of the king's breast a long stick with

an iron dart at the end. One of the grenadiers pressed down this stick

with his bayonet, and thrust aside the arm of this infuriated creature.

The brigand fell at the feet of the citizen, and this act of energy

imposed on his companions, and they trampled upon the man as he lay.

Pikes, hatchets, and knives were lowered or withdrawn. The majesty of

royalty resumed its empire for a moment, and this mob restrained itself

at a certain distance from the king, in an attitude rather of brutal

curiosity than of ferocity.

XIX.

Several officers of the National Guard, roused by the report of the

king's danger, had hastened to join the brave grenadiers, and made a

space round Louis XVI. The king, who had but one thought, which was to

keep the people away from the apartment in which he had left the queen,

ordered the door of the _Salle de Conseil_ to be closed behind him. He

was followed by the multitude into the salon of the _OEil de Boeuf_,

under pretence that this apartment, from its extent, would allow a

greater quantity of citizens to see and speak with him. He reached the

room surrounded by a vast and turbulent crowd, and was happy at finding

that only himself was exposed to blows from weapons of all kinds, which

thousands of hands brandished over his head; but as he turned his head

he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, who extended her arms, and was

anxious to rush towards him.

She had escaped from the women who retained the queen and children in

the bed-chamber. She adored her brother, and wished to die with him.

Young, excessively beautiful, and deeply respected at court, for the

piety of her life and her passionate devotion to the king, she had

renounced all love from her intense affection for her family. Her

dishevelled hair, her eyes swimming with tears, her arms extended

towards the king, gave to her a despairing and sublime expression. "It

is the queen!" exclaimed several women of the faubourgs. This name, at

such a moment, was a sentence of death. Some miscreants rushed towards

the king's sister with uplifted arms, and were about to strike her, when

the officers of the palace undeceived them. The venerated name of Madame

Elizabeth made them drop their arms. "Ah! what are you doing?" exclaimed

the princess sorrowfully; "let them suppose I am the queen; dying in her

place, I might perhaps have saved her." At these words an irresistible

movement of the crowd thrust Madame Elizabeth violently from her

brother, and drove her into the opening of one of the windows of the

_salle_, where the crowd which hemmed her in still contemplated her with

respect.

XX.

The king was in a deep recess of the centre window; Acloque, Vaunot,

d'Hervilly, twenty volunteers and national guards, made him a rampart

with their bodies. Some of the officers drew their swords. "Put your

swords into their scabbards," said the king, calmly, "this multitude is

more excited than guilty." He got upon a bench in the window, the

grenadiers mounted beside him, the others in front of him; they thrust

aside, parried, and lowered the sticks, scythes, and pikes lifted above

the heads of the people. Ferocious vociferations now rose confusedly

from this irritated mass. "_Down with the veto!--the camp of Paris! give

us back our patriotic ministers! where is the Austrian woman?_" Some

ringleaders advanced from the ranks every moment to utter louder

threats and menaces of death to the king. Unable to reach him through

the hedge of bayonets crossed in front of him, they waved beneath his

eyes and over his head hideous flags, with sinister inscriptions, ragged

breeches, the guillotine, the bleeding heart, the gibbet. One of them

tried perpetually to reach the king with his lance in his hand; it was

the same cut-throat who, two years before, had washed with his own hands

in a pail of water the heads of Berthier and Foulon, and, carrying them

by the hair to the Quai de la Ferraille, had thrown them amongst the

people for symbols of carnage, and incentives to fresh murders.

A fair young man, elegantly dressed, with menacing gesture continually

attacked the grenadiers, and cut his fingers with their bayonets in

order to move them aside and make a clear passage. "Sire--Sire!" he

shouted, "I summon you in the name of one hundred thousand souls who

surround me, to sanction the decree against the priests: that is death!"

Other persons in the crowd, although armed with drawn swords, pistols,

and pikes, made no violent gestures, and warded off every attempt on the

life of the king. There were even seen expressions of respect and grief

in the countenances of a great many. In this review of the Revolution,

the people displayed themselves as very terrible, but did not identify

themselves with assassins. A certain order began to establish itself in

the staircases and apartments: the crowd, pressed by the crowd, after

having seen the king, and uttered threats against him, wandered into

other apartments, and went triumphantly over this _palace of despotism_.

Legendre the butcher drove before him, in order to find room, these

hordes of women and children accustomed to tremble at his voice. He made

signs that he desired to speak, and silence being established, the

national guard separated a little in order to allow him to address the

king. "Monsieur!" he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder: the king, at this

word, which was a degradation, made a movement of offended dignity;

"yes, Sir," continued Legendre, with more emphasis on the word, "listen

to us; you were made to listen to us! you are a traitor! you have

deceived us always--you deceive us again; but beware! the measure is

heaped up. The people are weary of being your plaything and your

victim." Legendre, after these threatening words, read a petition in

language as imperious, in which he demanded, in the name of the people,

the restitution of the Girondist ministers and the immediate sanction of

their decrees. The king replied with intrepid dignity, "I will do what

the constitution orders me to do."

XXI.

Scarcely had one sea of people gone away, than another succeeded. At

each new invasion of the mob, the strength of the king and the small

number of his defenders was exhausted in the renewed struggles with a

crowd which never wearied. The doors no longer sufficed to the impatient

curiosity of these thousands of men assembled in this pillory of

royalty; they entered by the roof, the windows, and the high balconies

which open on to the terraces. Their climbing up amused the multitude of

spectators crowded in the gardens. The clapping of hands, the cheers of

laughter of this multitude without encouraged the assailants. Menacing

dialogues in loud tones took place between the malcontents above and the

impatient who were below. "Have they struck him?--is he dead?--throw us

the heads!" they shouted. Members of the Assembly, Girondist

journalists, political characters, Garat, Gorsas, Marat, mingled in this

crowd, and uttered their jokes as to this martyrdom of shame to which

the king was being subjected. There was for a moment a report of his

assassination.

There was no cry of horror thereat among the populace, which raised its

eyes towards the balcony, expecting to see the carcase. Still, in the

very whirlwind of its passion, the multitude appeared to require

reconciliation. One of the multitude handed a _bonnet rouge_ to Louis

XVI. at the end of a pike. "Let him put it on! let him put it on!"

exclaimed the mob, "it is the sign of patriotism, if he puts it on we

will believe in his good faith." The king made a signal to one of his

grenadiers to hand him the _bonnet rouge_, and smiling, he put it on his

head; and then arose shouts of _Vive le Roi!_ The people had crowned its

chief with the symbol of liberty, the cap of democracy replaced the

bandeau of Rheims. The people were conquerors, and felt appeased.

However, fresh orators, mounting on the shoulders of their comrades,

demanded incessantly of the king, sometimes by entreaties, sometimes

with threats, to promise the recall of Roland, and the sanction of the

decrees. Louis XVI., invincible in his constitutional resistance,

eluded, or refused to acquiesce in the injunctions of the malcontents.

"Guardian of the prerogative of the executive power, I will not

surrender to violence," he answered: "this is not the moment for

deliberation, when it is impossible to deliberate freely." "Do not fear,

sire," said a grenadier of the national guard to him. "My friend," was

the king's reply, taking his hand, and placing it on his breast, "place

your hand there, and see if my heart beats quicker than usual." This

action, and the language of unshaken intrepidity, seen and heard in the

crowd, had its effect on the rebels.

A fellow in tatters, holding a bottle in his hand, came towards the

king, and said, "if you love the people, drink to their health!" Those

who surrounded the prince, afraid of poison as much as the poignard,

entreated the king not to drink. Louis XVI., extending his arm, took the

bottle, raised it to his lips, and drank "to the nation!" This

familiarity with the multitude, represented by a beggar, consummated the

king's popularity. Renewed cries of _Vive le Roi!_ burst from all

tongues and reached even the staircases: these cries created

consternation in the terrace of the garden amongst the groups who were

expecting a victim, and thus learnt that his executioners were softened.

XXII.

Whilst the unfortunate prince thus contended alone against a whole

people, the queen, in another apartment, was undergoing the same

outrages and the same torments; more hated than the king, she ran more

risks. Agitated nations require to have their hatreds personified as

well as their love. Marie Antoinette represented in the eyes of the

nation all the corruptions of courts, all the pride of despotism, and

all the infamies of treason. Her beauty, her youthful inclination for

pleasure, tenderness of heart provoked by calumny into excesses, the

blood of the house of Austria, her pride, which she derived from her

nature even more than from her blood, her close connection with the

Comte D'Artois, her intrigues with the emigrants, her presumed

complicity with the coalition, the scandalous or infamous libels

disseminated against her for four years--made this princess the spied

victim of public opinion. The women despised her as a guilty wife, the

patriots detested her as a conspirator, political men feared her as the

counsellor of the king. The name of _Autrichienne_ which the people gave

her, summed up all their alleged wrongs against her. She was the

unpopularity of a throne of which she should have been the grace and

forgiveness.

Marie Antoinette was aware of this hatred of the people to her person.

She knew that her presence beside the king would be a provocation to

assassination. This was the motive that restrained her to remain alone

with her children in the bed-chamber. The king hoped that she was

forgotten, but it was the queen particularly the women of this mob

sought and called for in terms the most offensive for a wife, a woman,

and a queen.

The king was scarcely surrounded by the masses of people in the _OEil

de Boeuf_ than the doors of the sleeping apartment were beset with the

same uproar and violence. But this party was principally composed of

women. Their weaker arms were not so efficient against oaken panels and

stout hinges. They called to their assistance the men who had carried

the piece of ordnance into the _Salle des Gardes_, and they hastened to

them. The queen was standing up, pressing her two children to her bosom,

and listening with mortal anxiety to the vociferations at her door. She

had near her no one but M. de Lajard, minister of war,--alone,

powerless, but devoted; a few ladies of her suite, and the Princesse de

Lamballe, that friend of her happy and unhappy hours. Daughter-in-law of

the Duc de Penthièvre, and sister-in-law of the Duc d'Orleans, the

Princesse de Lamballe had succeeded in the queen's heart to that deep

affection which Marie Antoinette had long entertained for the Comtesse

de Polignac. The friendship of Marie Antoinette was adoration. Chilled

by the coldness of the king, who had the virtues only, and not the

graces of a husband; detested by the people, weary of the throne, she

gave vent in private predilections to the overflow of a heart equally

desirous and void of sentiment. This favouritism was even accused; the

queen was calumniated in her very friendships.

The Princesse de Lamballe, a widow at eighteen, free from any suspicion

of levity, above all ambition and every interest from her rank and

fortune, loved the queen as a friend. The more adverse were the fortunes

of Marie Antoinette, the more did her young favourite desire to share

them with her. It was not greatness, but misfortune, that attracted her.

_Surintendante_ of the household, she lodged in the Tuileries, in an

apartment adjacent to the queen, to share with her her tears and her

dangers. She was sometimes obliged to be absent in order to go to the

Château de Vernon to watch over the old Duc de Penthièvre. The queen,

who foresaw the coming storm, had written to her some days before the

20th of June a touching letter, entreating her not to return. This

letter, found in the hair of the Princesse de Lamballe after her

assassination, and _unknown until now_, discloses the tenderness of the

one and the devotion of the other.

"Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are perfectly

recovered. The good Duc de Penthièvre would be sorry and distressed, and

we must all take care of his advanced age, and respect his virtues. I

have so often told you to take heed of yourself, that if you love me you

must think of yourself; we shall require all our strength in the times

in which we live. Oh do not return, or return as late as possible. Your

heart would be too deeply wounded; you would have too many tears to shed

over my misfortunes, you who love me so tenderly. This race of tigers

which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself if it knew all the

sufferings we undergo. Adieu, my dear Lamballe; I am always thinking of

you, and you know I never change."

Madame Lamballe, contrary to this advice, made all haste to return, and

clung to the queen as though she sought to be struck with the same blow.

By her side were also other courageous women,--the Princesse de Tarente,

Latrémouille, Mesdames de Tourzel, de Mackau, de La Roche-Aymon.

M. de Lajard, a cool soldier, responsible to the king and himself for so

many dear and sacred lives, collected in haste by the secret passages

which communicated with the sleeping chamber and the interior of the

palace, several officers and national guards wandering about in the

tumult. He had the queen's children brought to her, in order that their

presence and appearance, by softening the mob, might serve as a buckler

to their mother. He himself opened the doors. He placed the queen and

her ladies in the depth of the window. They wheeled in front of this the

massive council-table, in order to interpose a barrier between the

weapons of the malcontents and the lives of the royal family. Some

national guards were around the table on each side, and rather in

advance of it. The queen, standing up, held by the hand her daughter,

then fourteen years of age.

A child of noble beauty and precocious maturity, the anxieties of the

family in the midst of whom she had grown up had already reflected their

weight and sorrow in her features. Her blue eyes, her lofty brow,

aquiline nose, light brown hair, floating in long waves down her

shoulders, recalled at the decline of the monarchy those young girls of

the Gauls who graced the throne of the earlier races. The young daughter

pressed closely against her mother's bosom, as though to shield her with

her innocence. Born amidst the early tumults of the Revolution, dragged

to Paris captive amidst the blood of the 6th of October, she only knew

the people by its turbulence and rage. The Dauphin, a child of seven

years old, was seated on the table in front of the queen. His innocent

face, radiant with all the beauty of the Bourbons, expressed more

surprise than fear. He turned to his mother at every moment, raising his

eyes towards her as though to read through her tears whether he should

have confidence or alarm. It was thus that the mob found the queen as it

entered and defiled triumphantly before her. The calming produced by the

firmness and confidence of the king was already perceptible in the faces

of the multitude. The most ferocious of the men were softened in the

presence of weakness--beauty--childhood. A lovely woman, a queen,

humiliated,--a young innocent girl,--a child, smiling at his father's

enemies, could not fail to awaken sensibility even in hatred. The men of

the suburbs moved on silent, and as if ashamed, before this group of

humiliated greatness. Some of them the more cowardly made as they passed

derisive or vulgar gestures, which were a dishonour to the

insurrection. Their indignant accomplices checked them in their

insolence, and made these dastards quit the room as speedily as

possible. Some even addressed looks of sympathy and compassion, others

smiles, and others a few familiar words to the dauphin. Conversations,

half menacing, half respectful, were exchanged between the child and the

throng. "If you love the nation," said a volunteer to the queen, "put

the _bonnet rouge_ on your son's head." The queen took the _bonnet

rouge_ from this man's hands, and placed it herself on the dauphin's

head. The astonished child took these insults as play. The men

applauded, but the women, more implacable towards a woman, never ceased

their invectives. Obscene words, borrowed from the sinks of the

fish-market, for the first time echoed in the vaults of the palace, and

in the ears of these children. Their ignorance in not comprehending

their meaning saved them from this horror. The queen, whilst she blushed

to the eyes, did not allow her offended modesty to lessen her lofty

dignity. It was evident that she blushed for the people, for her

children, and not for herself. A young girl, of pleasing appearance and

respectably attired, came forward and bitterly reviled in coarsest terms

_l'Autrichienne_. The queen, struck by the contrast between the rage of

this young girl and the gentleness of her face, said to her in a kind

tone, "Why do you hate me? Have I ever unknowingly done you any injury

or offence?" "No, not to me," replied the pretty patriot; "but it is you

who cause the misery of the nation." "Poor child!" replied the queen;

"some one has told you so, and deceived you. What interest can I have in

making the people miserable? The wife of the king, mother of the

dauphin, I am a Frenchwoman by all the feelings of my heart as a wife

and mother. I shall never again see my own country. I can only be happy

or unhappy in France. I was happy when you loved me."

This gentle reproach affected the heart of the young girl, and her anger

was effaced in a flood of tears. She asked the queen's pardon, saying,

"I did not know you, but I see that you are good." At this moment

Santerre made his way through the crowd. Easily moved, and sensitive

though coarse, Santerre had roughness, impetuosity, and feelings easily

affected. The faubourgs opened before him and trembled at his voice. He

made an imperious sign for them to leave the apartment, and thrust

these men and women by the shoulders towards the door in front of the

_OEil de Boeuf_. The current advanced by opposite issues of the

palace, and the heat was suffocating. The dauphin's brow reeked with

perspiration beneath the _bonnet rouge_. "Take the cap off the child,"

shouted Santerre; "don't you see he is half stifled." The queen darted a

mother's glance at Santerre, who came towards her, and placing his hand

on the table, he leaned towards Marie Antoinette and said, in an under

tone, "You have some very awkward friends, madame; I know those who

would serve you better!" The queen looked down, and was silent. It was

from this moment that may be dated the secret understanding which she

established with the agitators of the faubourgs. The leading malcontents

received the queen's entreaties with complacency. Their pride was

flattered in raising the woman whom they had degraded. Mirabeau,

Barnave, Danton had in turns sold or offered to sell the influence of

their popularity. Santerre merely offered his compassion.

XXIII.

The Assembly had again resumed its sitting on the news of the invasion

of the Château. A deputation of twenty-four members was sent as a

safeguard for the king. Arriving too late, these deputies wandered in

the crowded court-yard, vestibules, and staircases of the palace.

Although they felt repugnance at the idea of the last crime being

committed on the person of the king, they were not very grievously

afflicted in their hearts at this long-threatened insult to the court.

Their steps were lost in the crowd, their words in the uproar. Vergniaud

himself, from a top step of the grand staircase, vainly appealed to

order, legality, and the constitution. The eloquence, so powerful to

incite the masses, is powerless to check them. From time to time the

royalist deputies, highly indignant, returned to the chamber, and,

mounting the tribune, with their clothes all in disorder, reproached the

Assembly with its indifference. Amongst these more conspicuously,

Vaublanc, Ramond, Becquet, Girardin. Mathieu Dumas, La Fayette's friend,

exclaimed, as he pointed to the windows of the Château, "I am just come

from there; the king is in danger! I have this moment seen him, and can

bear witness to the testimony of my colleagues MM. Isnard and Vergniaud

in their unavailing efforts to restrain the people. Yes, I have seen the

hereditary representative of the nation insulted, menaced, degraded! I

have seen the _bonnet rouge_ on his head. You are responsible for this

to posterity!" They replied to him by ironical laughter and uproarious

shouts. "Would you imply that the _bonnet_ of patriots is a disgraceful

mark for a king's brow?" said the Girondist, Lasource; "will it not be

believed that we are uneasy as to the king's safety? Let us not insult

the people by lending it sentiments which it does not possess. The

people do not menace either the person of Louis XVI. or the prince

royal. They will not commit excess or violence. Let us adopt measures of

mildness and conciliation." This was the perfidious lulling of Pétion,

and the Assembly was put to sleep by such language.

XXIV.

Pétion himself could not for any length of time feign ignorance of the

gathering of 40,000 persons in Paris since the morning, and the entry of

this armed mob into the Assembly and the Maison of the Tuileries. His

prolonged absence recalled to mind the sleep of La Fayette on the 6th of

October; but the one was an accomplice, and the other innocent. Night

approached, and might conceal in its shades the disorders and attempts

which would go even beyond the views of the Girondists. Pétion appeared

in the court-yard, amidst shouts of _Vive Pétion!_ They carried him in

their arms to the lowest steps of the staircase, and he entered the

apartment where for three hours Louis XVI. had been undergoing these

outrages. "I have only just learned the situation of your majesty," said

Pétion. "That is very astonishing," replied the king, in a tone of deep

indignation, "for it is a long time that it has lasted."

Pétion, mounted on a chair, then made several addresses to the mob,

without inducing it to move in the least. At length, being put on the

shoulders of four grenadiers, he said, "Citizens, male and female, you

have used with moderation and dignity your right of petition; you will

finish this day as you began it. Hitherto your conduct has been in

conformity with the law, and now in the name of the law I call upon you

to follow my example and to retire."

The crowd obeyed Pétion, and moved off slowly through the long avenue of

apartments of the chateau. Scarcely had the mass begun to grow

perceptibly less, than the king, released by the grenadiers from the

recess in which he had been imprisoned, went to his sister, who threw

herself into his arms: he went out of the apartment with her by a side

door, and hastened to join the queen in her apartment. Marie Antoinette,

sustained until then by her pride against showing her tears, gave way to

the excess of her tenderness and emotion on again beholding the king.

She threw herself at his feet, and clasping his knees, sobbed bitterly

but not loudly. Madame Elizabeth and the children, locked in each

other's arms, and all embraced by the king, who wept over them, rejoiced

at finding each other as if after a shipwreck, and their mute joy was

raised to heaven with astonishment and gratitude for their safety. The

faithful national guard, the generals attached to the king, Marshal de

Mouchy, M. d'Aubier, Acloque, congratulated the king on the courage and

presence of mind he had displayed. They mutually related the perils

which they had escaped, the infamous remarks, gestures, looks, arms,

costumes, and sudden repentance of this multitude. The king at this

moment having accidently passed a mirror, saw on his head the _bonnet

rouge_, which had not been taken off; he turned very red, and threw it

at his feet, then casting himself into an arm-chair, he raised his

handkerchief to his eyes, and looking at the queen, exclaimed, "Ah,

madame! why did I take you from your country to associate you with the

ignominy of such a day?"

XXV.

It was eight o'clock in the evening. The agony of the royal family had

lasted for five hours. The national guard of the neighbouring quarters,

assembling by themselves, arrived singly, in order to lend their aid to

the constitution. There were still heard from the king's apartment

tumultuous footsteps, and the sinister cries of the columns of people,

who were slowly filing off by the courts and garden. The constitutional

deputies ran about in indignation, uttering imprecations against Pétion

and the Gironde. A deputation of the Assembly went over the château in

order to take cognisance of the violence and disorder resulting from

this visitation of the faubourgs. The queen pointed out to them the

forced locks, the bursten hinges, the bludgeons, pike irons, panels, and

the piece of cannon loaded with small shot, placed on the threshold of

the apartments. The disorder of the attire of the king, his sister, the

children, the _bonnets rouges_, the cockades forcibly placed on their

heads; the dishevelled hair of the queen, her pale features, the

tremulousness of her lips, her eyes streaming with tears, were tokens

more evident than these spoils left by the people on the battle ground

of sedition. This spectacle moistened the eyes, and excited the

indignation, even of the deputies most hostile to the court. The queen

saw this: "You weep, sir?" she said to Merlin. "Yes, madame," replied

the stoic deputy; "I weep over the misfortunes of the woman, the wife,

and the mother; but my sympathy goes no further. I hate kings and

queens!"

Such was the day of the 20th of June. The people displayed discipline in

disorder, and forbearance in violence: the king, heroic intrepidity in

his resignation; and some of the Girondists, a cold brutality which

gives to ambition the mask of patriotism.

XXVI.

Every thing was preparing in the departments to send to Paris the 20,000

troops ordered by the Assembly. The Marseillais, summoned by Barbaroux

at the instigation of Madame Roland, were approaching the capital. It

was the fire of the soul in the south coming to rekindle the

revolutionary hearth, which, as the Girondists believed, was failing in

Paris. This body of twelve or fifteen hundred men was composed of

Genoese, Ligurians, Corsicans, Piedmontese, banished from their country

and recruited suddenly on the shores of the Mediterranean; the majority

sailors or soldiers accustomed to warfare, and some bandits, hardened in

crime. They were commanded by young men of Marseilles, friends of

Barbaroux and Isnard. Rendered fanatic by the climate and the eloquence

of the provincial clubs, they came on amidst the applauses of the

population of central France, received, fêted, overcome by enthusiasm

and wine at the patriotic banquets which hailed them in constant

succession on their way. The pretext of their march was to fraternise,

at the federation of the 14th of July[25], with the other _fédérés_ of

the kingdom. The secret motive was to intimidate the Parisian national

guard, to revive the energy of the faubourgs, and to be the vanguard of

that camp of 20,000 men which the Girondists had made the Assembly vote,

in order at the same time to control the Feuillants, the Jacobins, the

king, and the Assembly itself, with an army from the departments wholly

composed of their creatures. The sea of people was violently agitated on

their approach. The national guard, the _fédérés_, the popular

societies, children, women, all that portion of the population which

lives on excitement of the streets, and runs after public spectacles,

flew to meet the Marseillais. Their bronzed faces, martial appearance,

eyes of fire, uniforms covered with the dust of their journey, their

Phrygian head-dress, their strange weapons, the guns they dragged after

them, the green branches which shaded their _bonnets rouges_, their

strange language mingled with oaths, and accentuated by savage gestures,

all struck the imagination of the multitude with great force. The

revolutionary idea appeared to have assumed the guise of a mortal, and

to be marching under the aspect of this horde, to the assault of the

last remnant of royalty. They entered the cities and villages beneath

triumphal arches. They sang terrible songs as they progressed. Couplets,

alternated by the regular noise of their feet on the road, and by the

sound of drums, resembled chorusses of the country and war, answering at

intervals to the clash of arms and weapons of death in a march to

combat. This song is graven on the soul of France.

XXVII.

THE MARSEILLAISE.

I.

Allons, enfants de la Patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

Contre nous, de la tyrannie

L'étendart sanglant est levé.

Entendez-vous dans ces campagnes

Mugir ces féroces soldats!

Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras

Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes!--

Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons!

Marchons! qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!

II.

Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,

De traîtres, de rois conjurés?

Pour qui ces ignobles entraves

Ces fers dès longtemps preparés?

Français, pour nous ah! quel outrage,

Quels transports il doit exciter!

C'est nous qu'on ose méditer

De rendre à l'antique esclavage;

Aux armes, &c.

III.

Quoi! des cohortes étrangères

Feraient la loi dans nos foyers?

Quoi! ces phalanges mercenaires

Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers?

Grand Dieu! par des mains enchainées,

Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient;

De vils despotes deviendraient

Les maîtres de nos destineés!

Aux armes, &c.

IV.

Tremblez, tyrans! et vous, perfides,

L'opprobre de tous les partis!

Tremblez, vos projets parricides

Vont enfin recevoir leur prix!

Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:

S'ils tombent nos jeunes héros,

La terre en produit les nouveaux,

Contre vous tout prêts à se battre.

Aux armes, &c.

V.

Français, en guerriers magnanimes,

Portez ou retenez vos coups;

Epargnez ces tristes victimes

A regret s'armant contre nous.

Mais ces despotes sanguinaires,

Mais les complices de Bouillé,

Tous ces tigres sans pitié

Déchirent le sein de leur mère.

Aux armes, &c.

VI.

Amour sacré de la patrie,

Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!

Liberté, liberté chérie,

Combats avec tes défenseurs!

Sous nos drapeaux que la Victoire

Accoure à tes mâles accents;

Que tes ennemis expirants

Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!

Aux armes, &c.

VERSE SUNG BY CHILDREN.

Nous entrerons dans la carrière,

Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus;

Nous y trouverons leur poussière,

Et la trace de leurs vertus!

Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre

Que de partager leur cercueil,

Nous aurons le sublime orgueil

De les venger ou de les suivre!

Aux armes, &c.[26]

XXVIII.

These words were sung in notes alternately flat and sharp, which seemed

to come from the breast with sullen mutterings of national anger, and

then with the joy of victory. They had something as solemn as death, but

as serene as the undying confidence of patriotism. It seemed a recovered

echo of Thermopylæ--it was heroism sung.

There was heard the regular footfall of thousands of men walking

together to defend the frontiers over the resounding soil of their

country, the plaintive notes of women, the wailing of children, the

neighing of horses, the hissing of flames as they devoured palaces and

huts; then gloomy strokes of vengeance, striking again and again with

the hatchet, and immolating the enemies of the people, and the profaners

of the soil. The notes of this air rustled like a flag dipped in gore,

still reeking in the battle plain. It made one tremble--but it was the

shudder of intrepidity which passed over the heart, and gave an

impulse--redoubled strength--veiled death. It was the "fire-water" of

the Revolution, which instilled into the senses and the soul of the

people the intoxication of battle. There are times when all people find

thus gushing into their national mind accents which no man hath written

down, and which all the world feels. All the senses desire to present

their tribute to patriotism, and eventually to encourage each other. The

foot advances--gesture animates--the voice intoxicates the ear--the ear

shakes the heart. The whole heart is inspired like an instrument of

enthusiasm. Art becomes divine; dancing, heroic; music, martial; poetry,

popular. The hymn which was at that moment in all mouths will never

perish. It is not profaned on common occasions. Like those sacred

banners suspended from the roofs of holy edifices, and which are only

allowed to leave them on certain days, we keep the national song as an

extreme arm for the great necessities of the country. Ours was

illustrated by circumstances, whence issued a peculiar character, which

made it at the same time more solemn and more sinister: glory and crime,

victory and death, seemed intertwined in its chorus. It was the song of

patriotism, but it was also the imprecation of rage. It conducted our

soldiers to the frontier, but it also accompanied our victims to the

scaffold. The same blade defends the heart of the country in the hand of

the soldier, and sacrifices victims in the hand of the executioner.

XXIX.

The _Marseillaise_ preserves notes of the song of glory and the shriek

of death: glorious as the one, funereal like the other, it assures the

country, whilst it makes the citizen turn pale. This is its history.

There was then a young officer of artillery in garrison at Strasbourg,

named Rouget de Lisle. He was born at Lons-le-Saunier, in the _Jura_,

that country of reverie and energy, as mountainous countries always

are. This young man loved war like a soldier--the Revolution like a

thinker. He charmed with his verses and music the slow dull garrison

life. Much in request from his twofold talent as musician and poet, he

visited the house of Dietrick, an Alsatian patriot (_maire of

Strasbourg_), on intimate terms. Dietrick's wife and young daughters

shared in his patriotic feelings, for the Revolution was advancing

towards the frontiers, just as the affections of the body always

commence at the extremities. They were very partial to the young

officer, and inspired his heart, his poetry, and his music. They

executed the first of his ideas hardly developed, confidantes of the

earliest flights of his genius.

It was in the winter of 1792, and there was a scarcity in Strasbourg.

The house of Dietrick was poor, and the table humble; but there was

always a welcome for Rouget de Lisle. This young officer was there from

morning to night, like a son or brother of the family. One day, when

there was only some coarse bread and slices of ham on the table,

Dietrick, looking with calm sadness at De Lisle, said to him, "Plenty is

not seen at our feasts; but what matter if enthusiasm is not wanting at

our civic fêtes, and courage in our soldiers' hearts. I have still a

bottle of wine left in my cellar. Bring it," he added, addressing one of

his daughters, "and we will drink to liberty and our country. Strasbourg

is shortly to have a patriotic ceremony, and De Lisle must be inspired

by these last drops to produce one of those hymns which convey to the

soul of the people the enthusiasm which suggested it." The young girls

applauded, fetched the wine, filled the glasses of their old father and

the young officer until the wine was exhausted. It was midnight, and

very cold. De Lisle was a dreamer; his heart was moved, his head heated.

The cold seized on him, and he went staggering to his lonely chamber,

endeavouring, by degrees, to find inspiration in the palpitations of his

citizen heart; and on his small clavicord, now composing the air before

the words, and now the words before the air, combined them so intimately

in his mind, that he could never tell which was first produced, the air

or the words, so impossible did he find it to separate the poetry from

the music, and the feeling from the impression. He sung every

thing--wrote nothing.

XXX.

Overcome by this divine inspiration, his head fell sleeping on his

instrument, and he did not awake until daylight. The song of the over

night returned to his memory with difficulty, like the recollections of

a dream. He wrote it down, and then ran to Dietrick. He found him in his

garden. His wife and daughters had not yet risen. Dietrick aroused them,

called together some friends as fond as himself of music, and capable of

executing De Lisle's composition. Dietrick's eldest daughter accompanied

them, Rouget sang. At the first verse all countenances turned pale, at

the second tears flowed, at the last enthusiasm burst forth. The hymn of

the country was found. Alas! it was also destined to be the hymn of

terror. The unfortunate Dietrick went a few months afterwards to the

scaffold to the sound of the notes produced at his own fireside, from

the heart of his friend, and the voices of his daughters.

The new song, executed some days afterwards at Strasbourg, flew from

city to city, in every public orchestra. Marseilles adopted it to be

sung at the opening and the close of the sittings of its clubs. The

Marseillais spread it all over France, by singing it every where on

their way. Whence the name of _Marseillaise_. De Lisle's old mother, a

royalist and religious, alarmed at the effect of her son's voice, wrote

to him: "What is this revolutionary hymn, sung by bands of brigands, who

are traversing France, and with which our name is mingled?" De Lisle

himself, proscribed as a royalist, heard it and shuddered, as it sounded

on his ears, whilst escaping by some of the wild passes of the Alps.

"What do they call that hymn?" he inquired of his guide. "The

_Marseillaise_," replied the peasant. It was thus he learnt the name of

his own work. The arm turned against the hand that forged it. The

Revolution, insane, no longer recognised its own voice!

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See an elegant exposition of this idea in Schlegel's Dramatic

Literature (Standard Library Edition, page 67.).

[2] La Fayette rode a favourite white horse on public occasions during

this period.--H. T. R.

[3] "Infamous and contented."--_Junius_.

[4] "Père Duchesne" was one of the most virulent, gross, and

blood-thirsty productions of the Revolution. It was edited by Manuel and

Hébert. Its success and profit were so great, that it had many

imitators. It was rather a pamphlet than a newspaper, the price fifty

sous a month--H. T. R.

[5] It has been generally understood that Voltaire was born at Châtenay,

_near_ Paris, in February, 1694.--H. T. R.

[6] Voltaire's residence in Switzerland, where he lived nearly twenty

years.--H. T. R.

[7] Qu. Middlesex in 1769?--H. T. R.

[8] This appellation is given to a period of French history extending

from 1643 to 1655. By some it is styled an attempt to establish a

balanced constitution in the state,--by others, the last essay of

expiring feudality. The _frondeur_ leaders were the Duc de Beaufort,

Cardinal de Retz, Prince de Conti, Duc de Bouillon, Mareschaux Turenne

and de la Motte. On the side of their opponents, called _Mazarins_, were

the Cardinal Mazarin himself, the Prince de Condé, Maréchal de Grammont,

and the Duc de Chatillon, while the Duc d'Orleans, a vacillating man,

wavered between the two parties. The successes of the rival powers were

alternate for a long time; eventually the _frondeurs_ were defeated, and

De Retz escaping into Lorraine, Mazarin returned to Paris triumphant in

February 1653.--H. T. R.

[9] If M. de Lamartine would convey the idea that Burke was a partisan

of the French Revolution, we must combat the assertion by a reference to

dates. Talleyrand was ambassador in England in 1792. In October 1791,

Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" appeared, to which Tom

Paine's "Rights of Man" was one of the replies, and Sir James

Mackintosh's "Vindiciæ" another; and previously, in 1789 and 1790, Burke

had condemned the tendencies of the Revolution, and the conduct of the

Revolutionists.--H. T. R.

[10]

-------- immedicabile vulnus

Ense recidendum, ne pars sincera trahatur.

[11] Co-editor with Hébert of the disgusting "Père Duchesne."--H. T. R.

[12] "Dux fæmina facti."--VIRG.

[13] This extract has been given before at p. 247.--_Translator._

[14] Foulon was a contractor, who, odious to the populace, was compelled

to fly from Paris, but being discovered, was brought back, and

eventually murdered by the mob in July 1789. Berthier was his

son-in-law, and also incurring the displeasure of the people, was a few

days later stabbed by a hundred bayonets whilst on his way to

prison.--H. T. R.

[15] See Michelet's History of the French Revolution, vol. i.

p.154.--_Standard Library._

[16]

"Hail mighty triumph!--enter these our walls!

Restore those soldiers, heroes of the day

When fell Désilles, pierced by their murderous balls,

And blood of citizens bedew'd the clay!"

[17] In Michelet's _History of the French Revolution_, publishing

contemporaneously with this work, the author acquits the Duc d'Orleans

of any participation in the riots and bloodshed at Versailles, on the

4th and 5th of October; but says, page 280., "Depositions prove that he

was seen every where between Paris and Versailles, but that he did

nothing. Between eight and nine o'clock in the morning of the 6th, so

soon after the massacre that the court of the castle was still stained

with blood, he went and showed himself to the people, with an enormous

cockade in his hat, laughing, and flourishing a switch in his

hand."--_Standard Library._--H. T. R.

[18] This passage is somewhat obscure in the original: "_Dumouriez se

trouva la génie d'une circonstance caché sous l'habit d'un aventurier._"

We trust we have caught its spirit.--H. T. H.

[19] Madame Du Barry was the favourite mistress of Louis XV., and her

brother, as he was called, the Count Jean du Barry, had the king's

patronage, and preyed on the public to a great extent, to supply his low

habits and expensive tastes.--_Translator._

[20] The club of the Feuillants, of which La Fayette was the leading

member, was formed after the 17th July, 1791. It consisted principally

of Royalists, and was soon dissolved.--H. T. R.

[21] The Marseillais trace their origin to a colony of Phocians in the

1st year of the 43d Olympiad, 599 years B.C. It was the

Massilia of the Romans, and called by Cicero the "mistress of Gaul," and

by Pliny, the "mistress of education."--H. T. R.

[22] M. Lamartine does not here refer to André Chénier, an admirable

lyric poet, from whom he has quoted at page 351.; _he_ was a Royalist,

and as such condemned and guillotined in July 1794, in his thirty-second

year. He had a brother, Joseph Chénier, his junior by two years, who was

an enthusiastic republican, and wrote and brought out, from 1785 to

1795, a great many tragedies, viz. _Charles IX._, _Calas_, _Henry

VIII._, _Timoleon_, _Tibère_, &c., and was elected member of the

legislative assemblies from 1792 to 1802. He fell under Napoleon's

displeasure, and he dismissed him from his appointment as

inspector-general of public instruction, in 1803. The consul was

becoming imperial in his aspirations. Joseph Chénier died in 1811,

consistent to the last in his republican notions.--H. T. R.

[23] Editor of the infamous Père Duchesne.--H. T. R.

[24] Furor arma ministrat.--H. T. H.

[25] It was on the 30th July, 1792, that the Marseillais arrived in

Paris.--H. T. R.

[26] M. Lamartine has not in his work given the verses 3, 4, and 5; we

have therefore supplied them, that "The Marseillaise" may be complete.

The Marseillais ruffians entered Paris on the 30th July, 1792, by the

Faubourg Saint-Antoine (the St. Giles's of Paris), and headed by

Santerre, went to the Champs Elysées, (thus traversing the whole city

from south to north,) where a banquet awaited them. Their arrival was

marked by riots and bloodshed--Duhamel was murdered. This celebrated

song was written by Rouget de Lisle, who also composed the air. On the

18th Nivose, an. iv.(8th January, 1795,) an order of the Directory

enjoined that at all theatres and sights the air of the "Marseillaise,"

and those of "Ça Ira,--Veillons au Salut de l'Empire," and "Le Chant du

Depart," should be played. Rouget de Lisle was an officer of engineers

in 1790, and in spite of his republican opinions, incarcerated during

the reign of terror and only saved by the 9th Thermidor. He would

assuredly have been accompanied to the guillotine by his own

song.--H. T. R.

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