I.--Mob recruits in the vicinity
Entry of vagabonds.--The number of paupers.
INDEED it is in the center that the convulsive shocks are strongest.
Nothing is lacking to aggravate the insurrection--neither the liveliest
provocation to stimulate it, nor the most numerous bands to carry it
out. The environs of Paris all furnish recruits for it; nowhere are
there so many miserable wretches, so many of the famished, and so many
rebellious beings. Robberies of grain take place everywhere--at
Orleans, at Cosne, at Rambouillet, at Jouy, at Pont-Saint-Maxence, at
Bray-sur-Seine, at Sens, at Nangis.[1201] Wheat flour is so scarce at
Meudon, that every purchaser is ordered to buy at the same time an equal
quantity of barley. At Viroflay, thirty women, with a rear-guard of men,
stop on the main road vehicles, which they suppose to be loaded with
grain. At Montlhéry stones and clubs disperse seven brigades of the
police. An immense throng of eight thousand persons, women and men,
provided with bags, fall upon the grain exposed for sale. They force the
delivery to them of wheat worth 40 francs at 24 francs, pillaging the
half of it and conveying it off without payment. "The constabulary is
disheartened," writes the sub-delegate; "the determination of the people
is wonderful; I am frightened at what I have seen and heard."--After
the 13th of July, 1788, the day of the hail-storm, despair seized
the peasantry; well disposed as the proprietors may have been, it was
impossible to assist them. "Not a workshop is open;[1202] the noblemen
and the bourgeois, obliged to grant delays in the payment of their
incomes, can give no work." Accordingly, "the famished people are on
the point of risking life for life," and, publicly and boldly, they
seek food wherever it can be found. At Conflans-Saint-Honorine, Eragny,
Neuville, Chenevières, at Cergy, Pontoise, Ile-Adam, Presle, and
Beaumont, men, women, and children, the hole parish, range the country,
set snares, and destroy the burrows. "The rumor is current that the
Government, informed of the damage done by the game to cultivators,
allows its destruction. . . and really the hares ravaged about a fifth
of the crop. At first an arrest is made of nine of these poachers; but
they are released, "taking circumstances into account." Consequently,
for two months, there is a slaughter on the property of the Prince de
Conti and of the Ambassador Mercy d'Argenteau; in default of bread
they eat rabbits.--Along with the abuse of property they are led, by a
natural impulse, to attack property itself. Near Saint-Denis the woods
belonging to the abbey are devastated. "The farmers of the neighborhood
carry away loads of wood, drawn by four and five horses;" the
inhabitants of the villages of Ville-Parisis, Tremblay, Vert-Galant,
Villepinte, sell it publicly, and threaten the wood-rangers with a
beating. On the 15th of June the damage is already estimated at 60,000
livres.--It makes little difference whether the proprietor has been
benevolent, like M. de Talaru,[1203] who had supported the poor on his
estate at Issy the preceding winter. The peasants destroy the dike which
conducts water to his communal mill; condemned by the parliament to
restore it, they declare that not only will they not obey. Should M. de
Talaru try to rebuild it they will return with three hundred armed men,
and tear it away the second time.
For those who are most compromised Paris is the nearest refuge. For the
poorest and most exasperated, the door of nomadic life stands wide
open. Bands rise up around the capital, just as in countries where human
society has not yet been formed, or has ceased to exist. During the
first two weeks of May[1204] near Villejuif a band of five or six
hundred vagabonds strive to force Bicêtre and approach Saint-Cloud. They
arrive from thirty, forty, and sixty leagues off, from Champagne, from
Lorraine, from the whole circuit of country devastated by the hailstorm.
All hover around Paris and are there engulfed as in a sewer, the
unfortunate along with criminals, some to find work, others to beg and
to rove about under the injurious prompting of hunger and the rumors
of the public thoroughfares. During the last days of April,[1205] the
clerks at the tollhouses note the entrance of "a frightful number of
poorly clad men of sinister aspect." During the first days of May a
change in the appearance of the crowd is remarked. There mingle in it
"a number of foreigners, from all countries, most of them in rags, armed
with big sticks, and whose very aspect announces what is to be feared
from them." Already, before this final influx, the public sink is
full to overflowing. Think of the extraordinary and rapid increase of
population in Paris, the multitude of artisans brought there by recent
demolition and constructions. Think of all the craftsmen whom the
stagnation of manufactures, the augmentation of octrois, the rigor of
winter, and the dearness of bread have reduced to extreme distress.
Remember that in 1786 "two hundred thousand persons are counted whose
property, all told, has not the intrinsic worth of fifty crowns."
Remember that, from time immemorial, these have been at war with the
city watchmen. Remember that in 1789 there are twenty thousand poachers
in the capital and that, to provide them with work, it is found
necessary to establish national workshops. Remember "that twelve
thousand are kept uselessly occupied digging on the hill of Montmartre,
and paid twenty sous per day. Remember that the wharves and quays are
covered with them, that the Hôtel-de-Ville is invested by them, and
that, around the palace, they seem to be a reproach to the inactivity of
disarmed justice." Daily they grow bitter and excited around the doors
of the bakeries, where, kept waiting a long time, they are not sure of
obtaining bread. You can imagine the fury and the force with which they
will storm any obstacle to which their attention may be directed.
II. The Press.
Excitement of the press and of opinion.--The people make
their choice.
Such an obstacle has been pointed out to them during the last two years,
it is the Ministry, the Court, the Government, in short the entire
ancient régime. Whoever protests against it in favor of the people is
sure to be followed as far, and perhaps even farther, than he chooses
to lead.--The moment the Parliament of a large city refuses to register
fiscal edicts it finds a riot at its service. On the 7th of June 1788,
at Grenoble, tiles rain down on the heads of the soldiery, and the
military force is powerless. At Rennes, to put down the rebellious city,
an army and after this a permanent camp of four regiments of infantry
and two of cavalry, under the command of a Marshal of France, is
required.[1206]--The following year, when the Parliaments now side
with the privileged class, the disturbances again begin, but this time
against the Parliaments. In February 1789, at Besançon and at Aix, the
magistrates are hooted at, chased in the streets, besieged in the town
hall, and obliged to conceal themselves or take to flight.--If such
is the disposition in the provincial capitals, what must it be in the
capital of the kingdom? For a start, in the month of August, 1788, after
the dismissal of Brienne and Lamoignon, the mob, collected on the Place
Dauphine, constitutes itself judge, burns both ministers in effigy,
disperses the watch, and resists the troops: no sedition, as bloody as
this, had been seen for a century. Two days later, the riot bursts out
a second time; the people are seized with a resolve to go and burn the
residences of the two ministers and that of Dubois, the lieutenant of
police.--Clearly a new ferment has been infused among the ignorant and
brutal masses, and the new ideas are producing their effect. They have
for a long time imperceptibly been filtering downwards from layer
to layer After having gained over the aristocracy, the whole of the
lettered portion of the Third-Estate, the lawyers, the schools, all the
young, they have insinuated themselves drop by drop and by a thousand
fissures into the class which supports itself by the labor of its own
hands. Noblemen, at their toilettes, have scoffed at Christianity, and
affirmed the rights of man before their valets, hairdressers, purveyors,
and all those that are in attendance upon them. Men of letters, lawyers,
and attorneys have repeated, in the bitterest tone, the same diatribes
and the same theories in the coffee-houses and in the restaurants, on
the promenades and in all public places. They have spoken out before
the lower class as if it were not present, and, from all this eloquence
poured out without precaution, some bubbles besprinkle the brain of the
artisan, the publican, the messenger, the shopkeeper, and the soldier.
Hence it is that a year suffices to convert mute discontent into
political passion. From the 5th of July 1787, on the invitation of the
King, who convokes the States-General and demands advice from everybody,
both speech and the press alter in tone.[1207] Instead of general
conversation of a speculative turn there is preaching, with a view
to practical effect, sudden, radical, and close at hand, preaching as
shrill and thrilling as the blast of a trumpet. Revolutionary pamphlets
appear in quick succession: "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers?" by Sieyès;
"Mémoire pour le Peuple Français," by Cerutti; "Considerations sur les
Intérêts des Tiers-Etat," by Rabtau Saint-Etienne; "Ma Pétition," by
Target; "Les Droits des Etats-généraux," by M. d'Entraigues, and, a
little later, "La France libre," par Camille Desmoulins, and others by
hundreds and thousands.[1208] All of which are repeated and amplified
in the electoral assemblies, where new-made citizens come to declaim and
increase their own excitement.[1209] The unanimous, universal and daily
shout rolls along from echo to echo, into barracks and into faubourgs,
into markets, workshops, and garrets. In the month of February, 1789,
Necker avows "that obedience is not to be found anywhere, and that
even the troops are not to be relied on." In the month of May, the
fisherwomen, and next the greengrocers, of the town market halls come to
recommend the interests of the people to the bodies of electors, and to
sing rhymes in honor of the Third-Estate. In the month of June pamphlets
are in all hands; "even lackeys are poring over them at the gates
of hotels." In the month of July, as the King is signing an order, a
patriotic valet becomes alarmed and reads it over his shoulder.--There
is no illusion here; it is not merely the bourgeoisie which ranges
itself against the legal authorities and against the established regime.
It is the entire people as well. The craftsmen, the shopkeepers and
the domestics, workmen of every kind and degree, the mob underneath the
people, the vagabonds, street rovers, and beggars, the whole multitude,
which, bound down by anxiety for its daily bread, had never lifted
its eyes to look at the great social order of which it is the lowest
stratum, and the whole weight of which it bears.
III.--The Réveillon affair.
Suddenly the people stirs, and the superposed scaffolding totters. It
is the movement of a brute nature exasperated by want and maddened
by suspicion.--Have paid hands, which are invisible goaded it on from
beneath? Contemporaries are convinced of this, and it is probably the
case.[1210] But the uproar made around the suffering brute would alone
suffice to make it shy, and explain its arousal.--On the 21st of April
the Electoral Assemblies have begun in Paris; there is one in each
quarter, one for the clergy, one for the nobles, and one for the
Third-Estate. Every day, for almost a month, files of electors are seen
passing along the streets. Those of the first degree continue to meet
after having nominated those of the second: the nation must needs
watch its mandatories and maintain its imprescriptible rights. If this
exercise of their rights has been delegated to them, they still belong
to the nation, and it reserves to itself the privilege of interposing
when it pleases. A pretension of this kind travels fast; immediately
after the Third-Estate of the Assemblies it reaches the Third-Estate
of the streets. Nothing is more natural than the desire to lead one's
leaders: the first time any dissatisfaction occurs, they lay hands on
those who halt and make them march on as directed. On a Saturday,
April 25th,[1211] a rumor is current that Réveillon, an elector
and manufacturer of wall-paper, Rue Saint-Antoine, and Lerat, a
commissioner, have "spoken badly" at the Electoral Assembly of
Sainte-Marguerite. To speak badly means to speak badly of the people.
What has Réveillon said? Nobody knows, but popular imagination with
its terrible powers of invention and precision, readily fabricates or
welcomes a murderous phrase. He said that "a working-man with a wife and
children could live on fifteen sous a day." Such a man is a traitor, and
must be disposed of at once; "all his belongings must be put to fire and
sword." The rumor, it must be noted, is false.[1212] Réveillon pays
his poorest workman twenty-five sous a day, he provides work for three
hundred and fifty, and, in spite of a dull season the previous winter,
he kept all on at the same rate of wages. He himself was once a workman,
and obtained a medal for his inventions, and is benevolent and respected
by all respectable persons.--All this avails nothing; bands of vagabonds
and foreigners, who have just passed through the barriers, do not
look so closely into matters, while the Journeymen, the carters, the
cobblers, the masons, the braziers, and the stone-cutters whom they
go to solicit in their lodgings are just as ignorant as they are. When
irritation has accumulated, it breaks out haphazardly.
Just at this time the clergy of Paris renounce their privileges in way
of imposts,[1213] and the people, taking friends for adversaries, add in
their invectives the name of the clergy to that of Réveillon. During
the whole of the day, and also during the leisure of Sunday, the
fermentation increases; on Monday the 27th, another day of idleness and
drunkenness, the bands begin to move. Certain witnesses encounter one of
these in the Rue Saint-Sévérin, "armed with clubs," and so numerous as
to bar the passage. "Shops and doors are closed on all sides, and the
people cry out, 'There's the revolt!'" The seditious crowd belch out
curses and invectives against the clergy, "and, catching sight of an
abbé, shout 'Priest!'" Another band parades an effigy of Réveillon
decorated with the ribbon of the order of St. Michael, which undergoes
the parody of a sentence and is burnt on the Place de Grève, after which
they threaten his house. Driven back by the guard, they invade that of
a manufacturer of saltpeter, who is his friend, and burn and smash his
effects and furniture.[1214] It is only towards midnight that the crowd
is dispersed and the insurrection is supposed to have ended. On the
following day it begins again with greater violence; for, besides the
ordinary stimulants of misery[1215] and the craving for license, they
have a new stimulant in the idea of a cause to defend, the conviction
that they are fighting "for the Third-Estate." In a cause like this each
one should help himself; and all should help each other. "We should be
lost," one of them exclaimed, "if we did not sustain each other." Strong
in this belief, they sent deputations three times into the Faubourg
Saint-Marceau to obtain recruits, and on their way, with uplifted clubs
they enrol, willingly or unwillingly, all they encounter. Others, at the
gate of Saint-Antoine, arrest people who are returning from the races,
demanding of them if they are for the nobles or for the Third-Estate,
and force women to descend from their vehicles and to cry "Vive le
Tiers-Etat "[1216]. Meanwhile the crowd has increased before Réveillon's
dwelling; the thirty men on guard are unable to resist; the house
is invaded and sacked from top to bottom; the furniture, provisions,
clothing, registers, wagons, even the poultry in the back-yard, all
is cast into blazing bonfires lighted in three different places; five
hundred louis d'or, the ready money, and the silver plate are stolen.
Several roam through the cellars, drink liquor or varnish at haphazard
until they fall down dead drunk or expire in convulsions. Against
this howling horde, a corps of the watch, mounted and on foot, is seen
approaching;[1217] also a hundred cavalry of the "Royal Croats," the
French Guards, and later on the Swiss Guards. "Tiles and chimneys are
rained down on the soldiers," who fire back four files at a time. The
rioters, drunk with brandy and rage, defend themselves desperately
for several hours; more than two hundred are killed, and nearly three
hundred are wounded; they are only put down by cannon, while the mob
keeps active until far into the night.--Towards eight in the evening, in
the rue Vieille-du-Temple, the Paris Guard continue to make charges in
order to protect the doors which the miscreants try to force. Two doors
are forced at half-past eleven o'clock in the Rue Saintonge and in the
Rue de Bretagne, that of a pork-dealer and that of a baker. Even to
this last wave of the outbreak which is subsiding we can distinguish the
elements which have produced the insurrection, and which are about
to produce the Revolution.--Starvation is one of these: in the Rue de
Bretagne the band robbing the baker's shop carries bread off to the
women staying at the corner of the Rue Saintonge.--Brigandage is
another: in the middle of the night M. du Châtelet's spies, gliding
alongside of a ditch, "see a group of ruffians" assembled beyond the
Barrière du Trône, their leader, mounted on a little knoll, urging them
to begin again; and the following days, on the highways, vagabonds are
saying to each other, "We can do no more at Paris, because they are
too sharp on the look-out; let us go to Lyons!" There are, finally, the
patriots: on the evening of the insurrection, between the Pont-au-Change
and the Pont-Marie, the half-naked ragamuffins, besmeared with dirt,
bearing along their hand-barrows, are fully alive to their cause; they
beg alms in a loud tone of voice, and stretch out their hats to the
passers, saying, "Take pity on this poor Third-Estate!"--The starving,
the ruffians, and the patriots, all form one body, and henceforth
misery, crime, and public spirit unite to provide an ever-ready
insurrection for the agitators who desire to raise one.
IV.--The Palais-Royal.
But the agitators are already in permanent session. The Palais-Royal is
an open-air club where, all day and even far into the night, one excites
the other and urges on the crowd to blows. In this enclosure, protected
by the privileges of the House of Orleans, the police dare not enter.
Speech is free, and the public who avail themselves of this freedom seem
purposely chosen to abuse it.--The public and the place are adapted to
each other.[1218] The Palais-Royal, the center of prostitution, of
play, of idleness, and of pamphlets, attracts the whole of that uprooted
population which floats about in a great city, and which, without
occupation or home, lives only for curiosity or for pleasure--the
frequenters of the coffee-houses, the runners for gambling halls,
adventurers, and social outcasts, the runaway children or forlorn
hopefuls of literature, arts, and the bar, attorneys' clerks, students
of the institutions of higher learning, the curious, loungers,
strangers, and the occupants of furnished lodgings, these amounting,
it is said, to forty thousand in Paris. They fill the garden and the
galleries; "one would hardly find here one of what were called the
"Six Bodies,"[1219] a bourgeois settled down and occupied with his
own affairs, a man whom business and family cares render serious and
influential. There is no place here for industrious and orderly bees; it
is the rendezvous of political and literary drones. They flock into it
from every quarter of Paris, and the tumultuous, buzzing swarm covers
the ground like an overturned hive. "Ten thousand people," writes Arthur
Young,[1220] "have been all this day in the Palais-Royal;" the press
is so great that an apple thrown from a balcony on the moving floor of
heads would not reach the ground. The condition of these heads may
be imagined; they are emptier of ballast than any in France, the
most inflated with speculative ideas, the most excitable and the most
excited. In this pell-mell of improvised politicians no one knows who
is speaking; nobody is responsible for what he says. Each is there as
in the theater, unknown among the unknown, requiring sensational
impressions and strong emotions, a prey to the contagion of the passions
around him, borne along in the whirl of sounding phrases, of ready-made
news, growing rumors, and other exaggerations by which fanatics keep
outdoing each other. There are shouting, tears, applause, stamping and
clapping, as at the performance of a tragedy; one or another individual
becomes so inflamed and hoarse that he dies on the spot with fever and
exhaustion. In vain has Arthur Young been accustomed to the tumult of
political liberty; he is dumb-founded at what he sees.[1221] According
to him, the excitement is "incredible. . . . We think sometimes that
Debrett's or Stockdale's shops at London are crowded; but they are mere
deserts compared to Desenne's and some others here, in which one can
scarcely squeeze from the door to the counter. . . . Every hour produces
its pamphlet; 13 came out to-day, 16 yesterday, and 92 last week. 95% of
these productions are in favor of liberty;" and by liberty is meant the
extinction of privileges, numerical sovereignty, the application of
the Contrat-Social, "The Republic", and even more besides, a universal
leveling, permanent anarchy, and even the jacquerie. Camille Desmoulins,
one of the orators, commonly there, announces it and urges it in precise
terms:
"Now that the animal is in the trap, let him be battered to death...
Never will the victors have a richer prey. Forty thousand palaces,
mansions, and châteaux, two-fifth of the property of France, will be
the recompense of valor. Those who pretend to be the conquerors will be
conquered in turn. The nation shall be purged."
Here, in advance, is the program of the Reign of Terror.
Now all this is not only read, but declaimed, amplified, and turned
to practical account. In front of the coffee-houses "those who have
stentorian lungs relieve each other every evening."[1222] "They get
up on a chair or a table, they read the strongest articles on current
affairs, . . . the eagerness with which they are heard, and the thunder
of applause they receive for every sentiment of more than common
hardiness or violence against the present Government, cannot easily
be imagined." "Three days ago a child of four years, well taught and
intelligent, was promenaded around the garden, in broad daylight, at
least twenty times, borne on the shoulders of a street porter, crying
out, 'Verdict of the French people: Polignac exiled one hundred leagues
from Paris; Condé the same; Conti the same; Artois the same; the
Queen,--I dare not write it.'" A hall made of boards in the middle of
the Palais-Royal is always full, especially of young men, who carry
on their deliberations in parliamentary fashion: in the evening the
president invites the spectators to come forward and sign motions
passed during the day, and of which the originals are placed in the Café
Foy.[1223] They count on their fingers the enemies of the country; "and
first two Royal Highnesses (Monsieur and the Count d'Artois), three Most
Serene Highnesses (the Prince de Condé, Duc de Bourbon, and the Prince
de Conti), one favorite (Madame de Polignac), MM. de Vandreuil, de la
Trémoille, du Châtelet, de Villedeuil, de Barentin, de la Galaisière,
Vidaud de la Tour, Berthier, Foulon, and also M. Linguet." Placards are
posted demanding the pillory on the Pont-Neuf for the Abbeé Maury.
One speaker proposes "to burn the house of M. d'Espréménil, his wife,
children and furniture, and himself: this is passed unanimously."--No
opposition is tolerated. One of those present having manifested some
horror at such sanguinary motions, "is seized by the collar, obliged to
kneel down, to make an apology, and to kiss the ground. The punishment
inflicted on children is given to him; he is ducked repeatedly in one of
the fountain-basins, after which they him over to the mob, who roll him
in the mud." On the following day an ecclesiastic is trodden under foot,
and flung from hand to hand. A few days after, on the 22nd of June,
there are two similar events. The sovereign mob exercises all the
functions of sovereign authority, with those of the legislator those of
the judge, and those of the judge with those of the executioner.--Its
idols are sacred; if any one fails to show them respect he is guilty of
lése-majesté, and at once punished. In the first week of July, an abbé
who speaks ill of Necker is flogged; a woman who insults the bust of
Necker is stripped by the fishwomen, and beaten until she is covered
with blood. War is declared against suspicious uniforms. "On the
appearance of a hussar," writes Desmoulins, "they shout, 'There goes
Punch!' and the stone-cutters fling stones at him. Last night two
officers of the hussars, MM. de Sombreuil and de Polignac, came to the
Palais-Royal. . . chairs were flung at them, and they would have been
knocked down if they had not run away. The day before yesterday they
seized a spy of the police and gave him a ducking in the fountain. They
ran him down like a stag, hustled him, pelted him with stones, struck
him with canes, forced one of his eyes out of its socket, and finally,
in spite of his entreaties and cries for mercy, plunged him a second
time in the fountain. His torments lasted from noon until half-past
five o'clock, and he had about ten thousand executioners."--Consider
the effect of such a focal center at a time like this. A new power has
sprung up alongside the legal powers, a legislature of the highways
and public squares, anonymous, irresponsible, without restraint. It
is driven onward by coffeehouse theories, by strong emotions and
the vehemence of mountebanks, while the bare arms which have just
accomplished the work of destruction in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, form
its bodyguard and ministerial cabinet.
V.--Popular mobs become a political force.
Pressure on the Assembly.--Defection of the soldiery.
This is the dictatorship of a mob, and its proceedings, conforming to
its nature, consist in acts of violence, wherever it finds resistance,
it strikes.--The people of Versailles, in the streets and at the
doors of the Assembly, daily "come and insult those whom they call
aristocrats."[1224] On Monday, June 22nd, "d'Espréménil barely escapes
being knocked down; the Abbé Maury. . . owes his escape to the strength
of a curé, who takes him up in his arms and tosses him into the carriage
of the Archbishop of Arles." On the 23rd, "the Archbishop of Paris and
the Keeper of the Seals are hooted, railed at, scoffed at, and derided,
until they almost sink with shame and rage." So formidable is the
tempest of rage with which they are greeted, that Passeret, the King's
secretary, who accompanies the minister, dies of the excitement that
very day. On the 24th, the Bishop of Beauvais is almost knocked down by
a stone striking him on the head. On the 25th, the Archbishop of Paris
is saved only by the speed of his horses, the multitude pursuing him and
pelting him with stones. His mansion is besieged, the windows are all
shattered, and, notwithstanding the intervention of the French Guards,
the peril is so great that he is obliged to promise that he will join
the deputies of the Third-Estate. This is the way in which the rude hand
of the people effects a reunion of the Orders. It bears as heavily on
its own representatives as on its adversaries. "Although our hall was
closed to the public," says Bailly, "there were always more than six
hundred spectators."[1225] These were not respectful and silent, but
active and noisy, mingling with the deputies, raising their hands to
vote in all cases, taking part in the deliberations, by their applause
and hisses: a collateral Assembly which often imposes its own will on
the other. They take note of and put down the names of their opponents,
transmit them to the chair-bearers in attendance at the entrance of
the hall, and from them to the mob waiting for the departure of the
deputies, these names are from now considered as the names of public
enemies.[1226] Lists are made out and printed, and, at the Palais-Royal
in the evening, they become the lists of the proscribed.--It is under
this brutal pressure that many decrees are passed, and, amongst them,
that by which the commons declare themselves the National Assembly
and assume supreme power. The night before, Malouet had proposed to
ascertain, by a preliminary vote, on which side the majority was. In an
instant all those against had gathered around him to the number of three
hundred. "Upon which a mans springs out from the galleries, falls upon
him and takes him by the collar exclaiming, 'Hold your tongue, you false
citizen!'" Malouet is released and the guard comes forward, "but terror
has spread through the hall, threats are uttered against opponents, and
the next day we were only ninety." Moreover, the lists of their names
had been circulated; some of them, deputies from Paris, went to see
Bailly that very evening. One amongst them, "a very honest man and good
patriot," had been told that his house was to be set on fire. Now his
wife had just given birth to a child, and the slightest tumult
before the house would have been fatal. Such arguments are decisive.
Consequently, three days afterwards, at the Tennis-court, but one
deputy, Martin d'Auch, dares to write the word "opposing" after his
name. Insulted by many of colleagues, "at once denounced to the people
who had collected at the entrance of the building, he is obliged to
escape by a side door to avoid being cut to pieces," and, for several
days, to keep away from the meetings.[1227]--Owing to this intervention
of the galleries the radical minority, numbering about thirty,[1228]
lead the majority, and they do not allow them to free themselves.--On
the 28th of May, Malouet, having demanded a secret session to discuss
the conciliatory measures which the King had proposed, the galleries
hoot at him, and a deputy, M. Bourche, addresses him in very plain
terms. "You must know, sir, that we are deliberating here in the
presence of our masters, and that we must account to them for our
opinions." This is the doctrine of the Contrat-Social. Through timidity,
fear of the Court and of the privileged class, through optimism and
faith in human nature, through enthusiasm and the necessity of adhering
to previous actions, the deputies, who are novices, provincial, and
given up to theories, neither dare nor know how to escape from the
tyranny of the prevailing dogma.--Henceforth it becomes the law. All
the Assemblies, the Constituent, the Legislative, the Convention,[1229]
submit to it entirely. The public in the galleries is the admitted
representatives of the people, under the same title, and even under
a higher title, than the deputies. Now, this public is that of the
Palais-Royal, consisting of strangers, idlers, lovers of novelties,
Paris romancers, leaders of the coffee-houses, the future pillars of the
clubs, in short, the wild enthusiasts among the middle-class, just as
the crowd which threatens doors and throws stones is recruited from
among the wild enthusiasts of the lowest class. Thus by an involuntary
selection, the faction which constitutes itself a public power is
composed of nothing but violent minds and violent hands. Spontaneously
and without previous concert dangerous fanatics are joined with
dangerous brutes, and in the increasing discord between the legal
authorities this is the illegal league which is certain to overthrow
all.
When a commanding general sits in council with his staff-officers and
his counselors, and discusses the plan of a campaign, the chief public
interest is that discipline should remain intact, and that intruders,
soldiers, or menials, should not throw the weight of their turbulence
and thoughtlessness into the scales which have to be cautiously
and firmly held by their chiefs. This was the express demand of the
Government;[1230] but the demand was not regarded; and against the
persistent usurpation of the multitude nothing is left to it but the
employment of force. But force itself is slipping from its hands, while
growing disobedience, like a contagion, after having gained the people
is spreading among the troops.--From the 23rd of June,[1231] two
companies of the French Guards refused to do duty. Confined to their
barracks, they on the 27th break out, and henceforth "they are seen
every evening entering the Palais-Royal, marching in double file." They
know the place well; it is the general rendezvous of the abandoned women
whose lovers and parasites they are.[1232] "The patriots all gather
around them, treat them to ice cream and wine, and debauch them in the
face of their officers."--To this, moreover, must be added the fact that
their colonel, M. du Châtelet, has long been odious to them, that he has
fatigued them with forced drills, worried them and diminished the number
of their sergeants; that he suppressed the school for the education of
the children of their musicians; that he uses the stick in punishing the
men, and picks quarrels with them about their appearance, their board,
and their clothing. This regiment is lost to discipline: a secret
society has been formed in it, and the soldiers have pledged themselves
to their ensigns not to act against the National Assembly. Thus the
confederation between them and the Palais-Royal is established.--On the
30th of June, eleven of their leaders, taken off to the Abbaye, write to
claim their assistance. A young man mounts a chair in front of the Café
Foy and reads their letter aloud; a band sets out on the instant, forces
the gate with a sledge-hammer and iron bars, brings back the prisoners
in triumph, gives them a feast in the garden and mounts guard around
them to prevent their being re-taken.--When disorders of this kind go
unpunished, order cannot be maintained; in fact, on the morning of the
14th of July, five out of six battalions had deserted.--As to the other
corps, they are no better and are also seduced. "Yesterday," Desmoulins
writes, "the artillery regiment followed the example of the French
Guards, overpowering the sentinels and coming over to mingle with
the patriots in the Palais-Royal. . .. We see nothing but the rabble
attaching themselves to soldiers whom they chance to encounter. 'Allons,
Vive le Tiers-Etat!' and they lead them off to a tavern to drink the
health of the Commons." Dragoons tell the officers who are marching
them to Versailles: "We obey you, but you may tell the ministers on our
arrival that if we are ordered to use the least violence against our
fellow-citizens, the first shot shall be for you." At the Invalides
twenty men, ordered to remove the cocks and ramrods from the guns stored
in a threatened arsenal, devote six hours to rendering twenty guns
useless; their object is to keep them intact for plunder and for the
arming of the people.
In short, the largest portion of the army has deserted. However kind
a superior officer might be, the fact of his being a superior officer
secures for him the treatment of an enemy. The governor, "M. de
Sombreuil, against whom these people could utter no reproach," will soon
see his artillerists point their guns at his apartment, and will just
escape being hung on the iron-railings by their own hands. Thus the
force which is brought forward to suppress insurrection only serves to
furnish it with recruits. And even worse, for the display of arms
that was relied on to restrain the mob, furnished the instigation to
rebellion.
VI.--July 13th and 14th 1789.
The fatal moment has arrived; it is no longer a government which falls
that it may give way to another; it is all government which ceases to
exist in order to make way for an intermittent despotism, for factions
blindly impelled on by enthusiasm, credulity, misery, and fear.[1233]
Like a tame elephant suddenly become wild again, the mob throws off it
ordinary driver, and the new guides who it tolerates perched on its neck
are there simply for show. In future it will move along as it pleases,
freed from control, and abandoned to its own feelings, instincts, and
appetites.--Apparently, there was no desire to do more than anticipate
its aberrations. The King has forbidden all violence; the commanders
order the troops not to fire;[1234] but the excited and wild animal
takes all precautions for insults; in future, it intends to be its own
conductor, and, to begin, it treads its guides under foot.--On the 12th
of July, near noon,[1235] on the news of the dismissal of Necker, a cry
of rage arises in the Palais-Royal; Camille Desmoulins, mounted on
a table, announces that the Court meditates "a St. Bartholomew of
patriots." The crowd embrace him, adopt the green cockade which he has
proposed, and oblige the dancing-saloons and theaters to close in sign
of mourning: they hurry off to the residence of Curtius, and take the
busts of the Duke of Orleans and of Necker and carry them about in
triumph.--Meanwhile, the dragoons of the Prince de Lambesc, drawn up on
the Place Louis-Quinze, find a barricade of chairs at the entrance
of the Tuileries, and are greeted with a shower of stones and
bottles.[1236] Elsewhere, on the Boulevard, before the Hôtel
Montmorency, some of the French Guards, escaped from their barracks,
fired on a loyal detachment of the "Royal Allemand."--The alarm bell is
sounding on all sides, the shops where arms are sold are pillaged,
and the Hôtel-de-Ville is invaded; fifteen or sixteen well-disposed
electors, who meet there, order the districts to be assembled and
armed.--The new sovereign, the people in arms and in the street, has
declared himself.
The dregs of society at once come to the surface. During the night
between the 12th and 13th of July,[1237] "all the barriers, from the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, besides those of
the Faubourgs Saint-Marcel and Saint-Jacques, are forced and set on
fire." There is no longer an octroi; the city is without a revenue just
at the moment when it is obliged to make the heaviest expenditures; but
this is of no consequence to the mob, which, above all things, wants
to have cheap wine. "Ruffians, armed with pikes and sticks, proceed
in several parties to give up to pillage the houses of those who are
regarded as enemies to the public welfare." "They go from door to door
crying, 'Arms and bread!' During this fearful night, the bourgeoisie
kept themselves shut up, each trembling at home for himself and those
belonging to him." On the following day, the 13th, the capital appears
to be given up to bandits and the lowest of the low. One of the
bands hews down the gate of the Lazarists, destroys the library and
clothes-presses, the pictures, the windows and laboratory, and rushes
to the cellars; where it staves in the casks and gets drunk: twenty-four
hours after this, about thirty of them are found dead and dying, drowned
in wine, men and women, one of these being at the point of childbirth.
In front of the house[1238] the street is full of the wreckage, and of
ruffians who hold in their hands, "some, eatables, others a jug, forcing
the passers-by to drink, and pouring out wine to all comers. Wine
runs down into the gutter, and the scent of it fills the air;" it is a
drinking bout: meanwhile they carry away the grain and flour which the
monks kept on hand according to law, fifty-two loads of it being
taken to the market. Another troop comes to La Force, to deliver those
imprisoned for debt; a third breaks into the Garde Meuble, carrying away
valuable arms and armour. Mobs assemble before the hotel of Madame de
Breteuil and the Palais-Bourbon, which they intend to ransack, in order
to punish their proprietors. M. de Crosne, one of the most liberal and
most respected men of Paris, but, unfortunately for himself a lieutenant
of the police, is pursued, escaping with difficulty, and his hotel is
sacked.--During the night between the 13th and 14th of May, the baker's
shops and the wine shops are pillaged; "men of the vilest class, armed
with guns, pikes, and turnspits, make people open their doors and give
them something to eat and drink, as well as money and arms." Vagrants,
ragged men, several of them "almost naked," and "most of them armed
like savages, and of hideous appearance;" they are "such as one does not
remember to have seen in broad daylight;" many of them are strangers,
come from nobody knows where.[1239] It is stated that there were
50,000 of them, and that they had taken possession of the principal
guard-houses.
During these two days and nights, says Bailly, "Paris ran the risk of
being pillaged, and was only saved from the marauders by the National
Guard." Already, in the open street,[1240] "these creatures tore off
women's shoes and earrings," and the robbers were beginning to have
full sway.--Fortunately the militia organized itself and the principal
inhabitants and gentlemen enrolled themselves; 48,000 men are formed
into battalions and companies; the bourgeoisie buy guns of the vagabonds
for three livres apiece, and sabers or pistols for twelve sous. At last,
some of the offenders are hung on the spot, and others disarmed, and
the insurrection again becomes political. But, whatever its object, it
remains always wild, because it is in the hands of the mob. Dusaulx, its
panegyrist, confesses[1241] that "he thought he was witnessing the total
dissolution of society." There is no leader, no management. The electors
who have converted themselves into the representatives of Paris seem to
command the crowd, but it is the crowd which commands them. One of them,
Legrand, to save the Hôtel-de-Ville, has no other resource but to send
for six barrels of gun-powder, and to declare to the assailants that
he is about to blow everything into the air. The commandant whom they
themselves have chosen, M. de Salles, has twenty bayonets at his breast
during a quarter of an hour, and, more than once, the whole committee is
near being massacred. Let the reader imagine, on the premises where the
discussions are going on, and petitions are being made, "a concourse of
fifteen hundred men pressed by a hundred thousand others who are forcing
an entrance," the wainscoting cracking, the benches upset one over
another, the enclosure of the bureau pushed back against the president's
chair, a tumult such as to bring to mind 'the day of judgment," the
death-shrieks, songs, yells, and "people beside themselves, for the most
part not knowing where they are nor what they want."--Each district
is also a petty center, while the Palais-Royal is the main center.
Propositions, "accusations, and deputations travel to and fro from one
to the other, along with the human torrent which is obstructed or rushes
ahead with no other guide than its own inclination and the chances
of the way. One wave gathers here and another there, their strategy
consisting in pushing and in being pushed. Yet, their entrance is
effected only because they are let in. If they get into the Invalides it
is owing to the connivance of the soldiers.--At the Bastille, firearms
are discharged from ten in the morning to five in the evening against
walls forty feet high and thirty feet thick, and it is by chance that
one of their shots reaches an invalid on the towers. They are treated
the same as children whom one wishes to hurt as little as possible. The
governor, on the first summons to surrender, orders the cannon to be
withdrawn from the embrasures; he makes the garrison swear not to fire
if it is not attacked; he invites the first of the deputations to lunch;
he allows the messenger dispatched from the Hôtel-de-Ville to inspect
the fortress; he receives several discharges without returning them, and
lets the first bridge be carried without firing a shot.[1242] When, at
length, he does fire, it is at the last extremity, to defend the second
bridge, and after having notified the assailants that he is going to do
so. In short, his forbearance and patience are excessive, in conformity
with the humanity of the times. The people, in turn, are infatuated
with the novel sensations of attack and resistance, with the smell of
gunpowder, with the excitement of the contest; all they can think of
doing is to rush against the mass of stone, their expedients being on a
level with their tactics. A brewer fancies that he can set fire to this
block of masonry by pumping over it spikenard and poppy-seed oil mixed
with phosphorus. A young carpenter, who has some archaeological notions,
proposes to construct a catapult. Some of them think that they have
seized the governor's daughter, and want to burn her in order to make
the father surrender. Others set fire to a projecting mass of buildings
filled with straw, and thus close up the passage. "The Bastille was not
taken by main force," says the brave Elie, one of the combatants; "it
surrendered before even it was attacked,"[1243] by capitulation, on
the promise that no harm should be done to anybody. The garrison, being
perfectly secure, had no longer the heart to fire on human beings while
themselves risking nothing,[1244] and, on the other hand, they were
unnerved by the sight of the immense crowd. Eight or nine hundred
men only[1245] were concerned in the attack, most of them workmen or
shopkeepers belonging to the faubourg, tailors, wheelwrights, mercers
and wine-dealers, mixed with the French Guards. The Place de la
Bastille, however, and all the streets in the vicinity, were crowded
with the curious who came to witness the sight; "among them," says
a witness,[1246] "were a number of fashionable women of very good
appearance, who had left their carriages at some distance." To the
hundred and twenty men of the garrison looking down from their parapets
it seemed as though all Paris had come out against them. It is they,
also, who lower the drawbridge an introduce the enemy: everybody has
lost his head, the besieged as well as the besiegers, the latter more
completely because they are intoxicated with the sense of victory.
Scarcely have they entered when they begin the work of destruction, and
the latest arrivals shoot at random those that come earlier; "each
one fires without heeding where or on whom his shot tells." Sudden
omnipotence and the liberty to kill are a wine too strong for human
nature; giddiness is the result; men see red, and their frenzy ends in
ferocity.
For the peculiarity of a popular insurrection is that nobody obeys
anybody; the bad passions are free as well as the generous ones; heroes
are unable to restrain assassins. Elie, who is the first to enter the
fortress, Cholat, Hulin, the brave fellows who are in advance, the
French Guards who are cognizant of the laws of war, try to keep their
word of honor; but the crowd pressing on behind them know not whom to
strike, and they strike at random. They spare the Swiss soldiers who
have fired at them, and who, in their blue smocks, seem to them to
be prisoners; on the other hand, by way of compensation, they fall
furiously on the invalides who opened the gates to them; the man who
prevented the governor from blowing up the fortress has his wrist
severed by the blow of a saber, is twice pierced with a sword and is
hung, and the hand which had saved one of the districts of Paris is
promenaded through the streets in triumph. The officers are dragged
along and five of them are killed, with three soldiers, on the spot, or
on the way. During the long hours of firing, the murderous instinct has
become aroused, and the wish to kill, changed into a fixed idea,
spreads afar among the crowd which has hitherto remained inactive. It is
convinced by its own clamor; a hue and cry is all that it now needs; the
moment one strikes, all want to strike. "Those who had no arms," says
an officer, "threw stones at me;[1247] the women ground their teeth and
shook their fists at me. Two of my men had already been assassinated
behind me. I finally got to within some hundreds of paces of the
Hôtel-de-Ville, amidst a general cry that I should be hung, when a head,
stuck on a pike, was presented to me to look at, while at. the same
moment I was told that it was that of M. de Launay," the governor.--The
latter, on going out, had received the cut of a sword on his right
shoulder; on reaching the Rue Saint-Antoine "everybody pulled his hair
out and struck him." Under the arcade of Saint-Jean he was already
"severely wounded." Around him, some said, "his head ought to be struck
off;" others, "let him be hung;" and others, "he ought to be tied to
a horse's tail." Then, in despair, and wishing to put an end to his
torments, he cried out, "Kill me," and, in struggling, kicked one of the
men who held him in the lower abdomen. On the instant he is pierced with
bayonets, dragged in the gutter, and, striking his corpse, they exclaim,
"He's a scurvy wretch (galeux) and a monster who has betrayed us; the
nation demands his head to exhibit to the public," and the man who
was kicked is asked to cut it off.--This man, an unemployed cook, a
simpleton who "went to the Bastille to see what was going on," thinks
that as it is the general opinion, the act is patriotic, and even
believes that he "deserves a medal for destroying a monster." Taking a
saber which is lent to him, he strikes the bare neck, but the dull
saber not doing its work, he takes a small black-handled knife from his
pocket, and, "as in his capacity of cook he knows how to cut meat," he
finishes the operation successfully. Then, placing the head on the end
of a three-pronged pitchfork, and accompanied by over two hundred
armed men, "not counting the mob," he marches along, and, in the Rue
Saint-Honoré, he has two inscriptions attached to the head, to indicate
without mistake whose head it is.--They grow merry over it: after filing
alongside of the Palais-Royal, the procession arrives at the Pont-Neuf,
where, before the statue of Henry IV., they bow the head three times,
saying, "Salute thy master!"--This is the last joke: it is to be found
in every triumph, and inside the butcher, we find the rogue.
VII.--Murders of Foulon and Berthier.
Meanwhile, at the Palais-Royal, other buffoons, who with the levity of
gossips sport with lives as freely as with words, have drawn u. During
the night between the 13th and 14th of July, a list of proscriptions,
copies of which are hawked about. Care is taken to address one of
them to each of the persons designated, the Comte d'Artois, Marshal
de Broglie, the Prince de Lambesc, Baron de Bezenval, MM. de Breteuil,
Foulon, Berthier, Maury, d'Espréménil, Lefèvre d'Amécourt, and others
besides.[1248] A reward is promised to whoever will bring their heads to
the Café de Caveau. Here are names for the unchained multitude; all
that now is necessary is that some band should encounter a man who is
denounced; he will go as far as the lamppost at the street corner, but
not beyond it.--Throughout the day of the 14th, this improvised tribunal
holds a permanent session, and follows up its decisions with its
actions. M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants and president of
the electors at the Hôtel-de-Ville, having shown himself somewhat
lukewarm,[1249] the Palais-Royal declares him a traitor and sends him
off to be hung. On the way a young man fells him with a pistol-shot,
others fall upon his body, while his head, borne upon a pike, goes to
join that of M. de Launay.--Equally deadly accusations and of equally
speedy execution float in the air and from every direction. "On the
slightest pretext," says an elector, "they denounced to us those whom
they thought opposed to the Revolution, which already signified the same
as enemies of the State. Without any investigation, there was only talk
of the seizure of their persons, the ruin of their homes, and the razing
of their houses. One young man exclaimed: 'Follow me at once, let us
start off at once to Bezenval's!'"--Their brains are so frightened, and
their minds so distrustful, that at every step in the streets "one's
name has to be given, one's profession declared, one's residence, and
one's intentions. . .. One can neither enter nor leave Paris without
being suspected of treason." The Prince de Montbarrey, advocate of the
new ideas, and his wife, are stopped in their carriage at the barrier,
and are on the point of being cut to pieces. A deputy of the nobles, on
his way to the National Assembly, is seized in his cab and conducted to
the Place de Grève; the corpse of M. de Launay is shown to him, and he
is told that he is to be treated in the same fashion.--Every life hangs
by a thread, and, on the following days, when the King had sent away
his troops, dismissed his Ministers, recalled Necker, and granted
everything, the danger remains just as great. The multitude, abandoned
to the revolutionaries and to itself, continues the same bloody antics,
while the municipal chiefs[1250] whom it has elected, Bailly, Mayor of
Paris, and Lafayette, commandant of the National Guard, are obliged to
use cunning, to implore, to throw themselves between the multitude and
the unfortunates whom they wish to destroy.
On the 15th of July, in the night, a woman disguised as a man is
arrested in the court of the Hôtel-de-Ville, and so maltreated that she
faints away; Bailly, in order to save her, is obliged to feign anger
against her and have her sent immediately to prison. From the 14th to
the 22nd of July, Lafayette, at the risk of his life, saves with his
own hand seventeen persons in different quarters.[1251]--On the 22nd of
July, upon the denunciations which multiply around Paris like trains
of gunpowder, two administrators of high rank, M. Foulon, Councillor
of State, and M. Berthier, his son-in-law, are arrested, one near
Fontainebleau, and the other near Compiègne. M. Foulon, a strict
master,[1252] but intelligent and useful, expended sixty thousand francs
the previous winter on his estate in giving employment to the poor. M.
Berthier, an industrious and capable man, had officially surveyed
and valued Ile-de-France, to equalize the taxes, and had reduced the
overcharged quotas first one-eighth and then a quarter. But both of
these gentlemen have arranged the details of the camp against which
Paris has risen; both are publicly proscribed for eight days previously
by the Palais-Royal, and, with a people frightened by disorder,
exasperated by hunger, and stupefied by suspicion, an accused person is
a guilty one.--With regard to Foulon, as with Réveillon, a story is made
up, coined in the same mint, a sort of currency for popular circulation,
and which the people itself manufactures by casting into one tragic
expression the sum of its sufferings and rankling memories:[1253] "He
said that we were worth no more than his horses; and that if we had no
bread we had only to eat grass."--The old man of seventy-four is brought
to Paris, with a truss of hay on his head, a collar of thistles around
his neck, and his mouth stuffed with hay. In vain does the electoral
bureau order his imprisonment that he may be saved; the crowd yells out:
"Sentenced and hung!" and, authoritatively, appoints the judges. In
vain does Lafayette insist and entreat three times that the judgment be
regularly rendered, and that the accused be sent to the Abbaye. A new
wave of people comes up, and one man, "well dressed," cries out: "What
is the need of a sentence for a man who has been condemned for thirty
years?" Foulon is carried off; dragged across the square, and hung
to the lamp post. The cord breaks twice, and twice he falls upon the
pavement. Re-hung with a fresh cord and then cut down, his head is
severed from his body and placed on the end of a pike.[1254] Meanwhile,
Berthier, sent away from Compiègne by the municipality, afraid to
keep him in his prison where he was constantly menaced, arrives in a
cabriolet under escort. The people carry placards around him filled with
opprobrious epithets; in changing horses they threw hard black bread
into the carriage, exclaiming, "There, wretch, see the bread you made us
eat!" On reaching the church of Saint-Merry, a fearful storm of insults
burst forth against him. He is called a monopolist, "although he had
never bought or sold a grain of wheat." In the eyes of the multitude,
who has to explain the evil as caused by some evil-doer, he is the
author of the famine. Conducted to the Abbaye, his escort is dispersed
and he is pushed over to the lamp post. Then, seeing that all is lost,
he snatches a gun from one of his murderers and bravely defends himself.
A soldier of the "Royal Croats" gives him a cut with his saber across
the stomach, and another tears out his heart. As the cook, who had cut
off the head of M. de Launay, happens to be on the spot, they hand him
the heart to carry while the soldiers take the head, and both go to
the Hôtel-de-Ville to show their trophies to M. de Lafayette. On their
return to the Palais-Royal, and while they are seated at table in a
tavern, the people demand these two remains. They throw them out of the
window and finish their supper, whilst the heart is marched about below
in a bouquet of white carnations.--Such are the spectacles which this
garden presents where, a year before, "good society in full dress" came
on leaving the Opera to chat, often until two o'clock in the morning,
under the mild light of the moon, listening now to the violin of
Saint-Georges, and now to the charming voice of Garat.
VIII.--Paris in the hands of the people.
Henceforth it is clear that no one is safe: neither the new militia nor
the new authorities suffice to enforce respect for the law. "They did
not dare," says Bailly,[1255] "oppose the people who, eight days before
this, had taken the Bastille."--In vain, after the last two murders, do
Bailly and Lafayette indignantly threaten to withdraw; they are forced
to remain; their protection, such as it is, is all that is left, and, if
the National Guard is unable to prevent every murder, it prevents some
of them. People live as they can under the constant expectation of fresh
popular violence. "To every impartial man," says Malouet, "the Terror
dates from the 14th of July".--On the 17th, before setting out for
Paris, the King attends communion and makes his will in anticipation
of assassination. From the 16th to the 18th, twenty personages of high
rank, among others most of those on whose heads a price is set by the
Palais-Royal, leave France: The Count d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the
Princes de Condé, de Conti, de Lambesc, de Vaudemont, the Countess
de Polignac, and the Duchesses de Polignac and de Guiche.--The day
following the two murders, M. de Crosne, M. Doumer, M. Sureau, the most
zealous and most valuable members of the committee on subsistence, all
those appointed to make purchases and to take care of the storehouses,
conceal themselves or fly. On the eve of the two murders, the notaries
of Paris, being menaced with a riot, had to advance 45,000 francs which
were promised to the workmen of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; while the
public treasury, almost empty, is drained of 30,000 livres per day to
diminish the cost of bread.--Persons and possessions, great and small,
private individuals and public functionaries, the Government itself,
all is in the hands of the mob. "From this moment," says a deputy,[1256]
"liberty did not exist even in the National Assembly. . . France stood
dumb before thirty factious persons. The Assembly became in their hands
a passive instrument, which they forced to serve them in the execution
of their projects."--They themselves do not lead, although they seem to
lead. The great brute, which has taken the bit in its mouth, holds on to
it, and it's plunging becomes more violent. Not only do both spurs which
maddened it, I mean the desire for innovation and the daily scarcity
of food, continue to prick it on. But also the political hornets which,
increasing by thousands, buzz around its ears. And the license in which
it revels for the first time, joined to the applause lavished upon it,
urges it forward more violently each day. The insurrection is glorified.
Not one of the assassins is sought out. It is against the conspiracy of
Ministers that the Assembly institutes an inquiry. Rewards are bestowed
upon the conquerors of the Bastille; it is declared that they have saved
France. All honors are awarded to the people-to their good sense, their
magnanimity, and their justice. Adoration is paid to this new sovereign:
he is publicly and officially told, in the Assembly and by the press,
that he possesses every virtue, all rights and all powers. If he spills
blood it is inadvertently, on provocation, and always with an infallible
instinct. Moreover, says a deputy, "this blood, was it so pure?" The
greater number of people prefers the theories of their books to the
experience of their eyes; they persist in the idyll, which they have
fashioned for themselves. At the worst their dream, driven out from the
present, takes refuge in the future. To-morrow, when the Constitution is
complete, the people, made happy, will again become wise: let us endure
the storm, which leads us on to so noble a harbor.
Meanwhile, beyond the King, inert and disarmed, beyond the Assembly,
disobeyed or submissive, appears the real monarch, the people--that is
to say, a crowd of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand individuals
gathered together at random, on an impulse, on an alarm, suddenly and
irresistibly made legislators, judges, and executioners. A formidable
power, undefined and destructive, on which no one has any hold, and
which, with its mother, howling and misshapen Liberty, sits at the
threshold of the Revolution like Milton's two specters at the gates of
Hell.
. . . Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,
but ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen. . .
........the other shape,
If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd
For each seem'd either: black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
The monster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.
*****
[Footnote 1201: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M.
Miron, lieutenant de police, April 26th; of M. Joly de Fleury,
procureur-général, May 29th; of MM. Marchais and Berthier, April 18th
and 27th, March 23rd, April 5th, May 5th.--Arthur Young, June 10th
and 29th. "Archives Nationales," H. 1453 Letter of the sub-delegate of
Montlhéry, April 14th.]
[Footnote 1202: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the
sub-delegate Gobert, March 17th; of the officers of police, June
15th:--" On the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of March the inhabitants of
Conflans generally rebelled against the game law in relation to the
rabbit."]
[Footnote 1203: Montjoie, 2nd part, ch. XXI. p.14 (the first week in
June). Montjoie is a party man; but he gives dates and details, and his
testimony, when it is confirmed elsewhere, deserves, to be admitted.]
[Footnote 1204: Montjoie, 1st part, 92-101.--"Archives Nationales,"
H. 1453. Letter of the officer of police of Saint-Denis: "A good many
workmen arrive daily from Lorraine as well as from Champagne," which
increases the prices.]
[Footnote 1205: De Bezenval, "Mémoires," I.353. Cf. "The Ancient
Regime," p.509.--Marmontel, II, 252 and following pages.--De Ferrières,
I. 407.]
[Footnote 1206: Arthur Young, September 1st, 1788]
[Footnote 1207: Barrère, "Mémoires," I. 234.]
[Footnote 1208: See, in the National Library, the long catalogue of
those which have survived.]
[Footnote 1209: Malouet, I. 255. Bailly, I. 43 (May 9th and
19th).--D'Hezecques, "Souvenirs d'un page de Louis XV." 293.--De
Bezenval, I. 368.]
[Footnote 1210: Marmontel, II, 249.--Montjoie, 1st part, p. 92.--De
Bezenval, I. 387: "These spies added that persons were seen exciting the
tumult and were distributing money."]
[Footnote 1211: "Archives Nationales," Y.11441. Interrogatory of the
Abbé Roy, May 5th.--Y.11033, Interrogatory (April 28th and May 4th)
of twenty-three wounded persons brought to the Hôtel-Dieu--These two
documents are of prime importance in presenting the true aspect of the
insurrection; to these must be added the narrative of M. de Bezenval,
who was commandant at this time with M. de Châtelet. Almost all other
narratives are amplified or falsified through party bias.]
[Footnote 1212: De Ferrières, vol. III. note A. (justificatory
explanation by Réveillon).]
[Footnote 1213: Bailly I. 25 (April 26th).]
[Footnote 1214: Hippeau, IV. 377 (Letters of M. Perrot, April 29th).]
[Footnote 1215: Letter to the King by an inhabitant of the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine--"Do not doubt, sire, that our recent misfortunes are due
to the dearness of bread"]
[Footnote 1216: Dampmartin, "Evénements qui se sont passés sous mes
yeux," etc. I. 25: "We turned back and were held up by small bands of
scoundrels, who insolently proposed to us to shout 'Vive Necker! Vive
le Tiers-Etat!'" His two companions were knights of St. Louis, and
their badges seemed an object of "increasing hatred." "The badge excited
coarse mutterings, even on the part of persons who appeared superior to
the agitators."]
[Footnote 1217: Dampmartin, ibid. i. 25: "I was dining this very day at
the Hôtel d'Ecquevilly, in the Rue Saint-Louis." He leaves the house
on foot and witnesses the disturbance. "Fifteen to Sixteen hundred
wretches, the excrement of the nation, degraded by shameful vices,
covered with rags, and gorged with brandy, presented the most disgusting
and revolting spectacle. More than a hundred thousand persons of
both sexes and of all ages and conditions interfered greatly with the
operations of the troops. The firing soon commenced and blood flowed:
two innocent persons were wounded near me."]
[Footnote 1218: De Goncourt, "La Société Française pendant la
Révolution." Thirty-one gambling-houses are counted here, while a
pamphlet of the day is entitled "Pétition des deux mill cent filles du
Palais-Royal."]
[Footnote 1219: Montjoie, 2nd part, 144.--Bailly, II, 130.]
[Footnote 1220: Arthur Young, June 24th, 1789.--Montjoie, 2nd part, 69.]
[Footnote 1221: Arthur Young, June 9th, 24th, and 26th.--"La France
libre," passim, by C. Desmoulins.]
[Footnote 1222: C. Desmoulins, letters to his father, and Arthur Young,
June 9th.]
[Footnote 1223: Montjoie, 2nd part, 69, 77, 124, 144. C. Desmoulins,
letter, of June 24th and the following days.]
[Footnote 1224: Etienne Dumont, "Souvenirs," p.72.--C. Desmoulins,
letter of; June 24th.--Arthur Young, June 25th.--Buchez and Roux, II.
28.]
[Footnote 1225: Bailly, I. 227 and 179.--Monnier, "Recherches sur les
causes," etc. I. 289, 291; II.61;--Malouet, I. 299; II. 10.--"Actes
des Apôtres," V.43. (Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31st,
1790).--Marmontel, I. 28: "The people came even into the Assembly, to
encourage their partisans, to select and indicate their victims, and to
terrify the feeble with the dreadful trial of open balloting."]
[Footnote 1226: Manuscript letters of M. Boullé, deputy, to the
municipal authorities of Pontivy, from May 1st, 1789, to September 4th,
1790 (communicated by M. Rosenzweig, archivist at Vannes). June 16th,
1789: "The crowd gathered around the hall. . . was, during these days,
from 3,000 to 4,000 persons."]
[Footnote 1227: Letters of M. Boullé, June 23rd. "How sublime the
moment, that in which we enthusiastically bind ourselves to the country
by a new oath!. . . . Why should this moment be selected by one of our
number to dishonor himself? His name is now blasted throughout France.
And the unfortunate man has children! Suddenly overwhelmed by public
contempt he leaves, and falls fainting at the door, exclaiming, 'Ah!
this will be my death!' I do not know what has become of him since. What
is strange is, he had not behaved badly up to that time, and he voted
for the Constitution."]
[Footnote 1228: De Ferrières, I. 168.--Malouet, I. 298 (according to
him the faction did not number more than ten members),--idem II.
10.--Dumont, 250.]
[Footnote 1229: "Convention nationale" governed France from 21st
September 1792 until Oct. 26th 1796. We distinguish between three
different assemblies, "la Convention Girondine" 1792-93, "the Mountain,"
1793-94 and "la Thermidorienne," from 1794-1795. (SR).]
[Footnote 1230: Declaration of June 23rd, article 15.]
[Footnote 1231: Montjoie, 2nd part, 118.--C. Desmoulins, letters of June
24th and the following days. A faithful narrative by M. de Sainte-Fère,
formerly an officer in the French Guard, p.9.--De Bezenval,
III, 413.--Buchez and Roux, II. 35.--"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER
(Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie
Plon, Paris 1893..]
[Footnote 1232: Peuchet ("Encyclopédie Méthodique," 1789, quoted by
Parent Duchâtelet): "Almost all of the soldiers of the Guard belong to
that class (the procurers of public women): many, indeed, only enlist in
the corps that they may live at the expense of these unfortunates."]
[Footnote 1233: Gouverneur Morris, "Liberty is now the general cry;
authority is a name and no longer a reality." (Correspondence with
Washington, July 19th.)]
[Footnote 1234: Bailly. I. 302. "The King was very well-disposed; his
measures were intended only to preserve order and the public peace. .
. Du Châtelet was forced by facts to acquit M. de Bezenval of attempts
against the people and the country."--Cf. Marmontel, IV. 183; Mounier,
II, 40.]
[Footnote 1235: Desmoulins, letter of the 16th July. Buchez and Roux,
II. 83.]
[Footnote 1236: Trial of the Prince de Lambesc (Paris, 1790), with the
eighty-three depositions and the discussion of the testimony.--It is the
crowd which began the attack. The troops fired in the air. But one
man, a sieur Chauvel, was wounded slightly by the Prince de Lambesc.
(Testimony of M. Carboire, p.84, and of Captain de Reinack, p. 101.) "M.
le Prince de Lambesc, mounted on a gray horse with a gray saddle without
holsters or pistols, had scarcely entered the garden when a dozen
persons jumped at the mane and bridle of his horse and made every effort
to drag him off. A small man in gray clothes fired at him with a pistol.
. . . The prince tried hard to free himself, and succeeded by making his
horse rear up and by flourishing his sword; without, however, up to this
time, wounding any one. . . . He deposes that he saw the prince strike
a man on the head with the flat of his saber who was trying to close the
turning-bridge, which would have cut off the retreat of his troops The
troops did no more than try to keep off the crowd which assailed them
with stones, and even with firearms, from the top of the terraces."--The
man who tried to close the bridge had seized the prince's horse with one
hand; the wound he received was a scratch about 23 lines long, which was
dressed and cured with a bandage soaked in brandy. All the details of
the affair prove that the patience and humanity of the officer, were
extreme. Nevertheless "on the following day, the 13th, some one posted a
written placard on the crossing Bussy recommending the citizens of Paris
to seize the prince and quarter him at once."--(Deposition of M. Cosson,
p.114.)]
[Footnote 1237: Bailly, I. 3, 6.--Marmontel, IV. 310]
[Footnote 1238: Montjoie, part 3, 86. "I talked with those who guarded
the château of the Tuileries. They did not belong to Paris. . . . A
frightful physiognomy and hideous apparel." Montjoie, not to be trusted
in many places, merits consultation for little facts of which he was an
eye-witness.--Morellet, "Mémoires," I. 374.--Dusaulx, "L'oeuvre des sept
jours," 352.--Revue Historique," March, 1876. Interrogatory of Desnot.
His occupation during the 13th of July (published by Guiffrey).]
[Footnote 1239: Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," I. 531. "Peaceable people
fled at the sight of these groups of strange, frantic vagabonds.
Everybody closed their houses. . .. When I reached home, in the
Saint-Denis quarter, several of these brigands caused great alarm by
firing off guns in the air."]
[Footnote 1240: Dusaulx, 379.]
[Footnote 1241: Dusaulx, 359, 360, 361, 288, 336. "In effect their
entreaties resembled commands, and, more than once, it was impossible to
resist them."]
[Footnote 1242: Dusaulx, 447 (Deposition of the invalides).--"Revue
Rétrospective," IV. 282 (Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two
Swiss Guards).]
[Footnote 1243: Marmontel, IV. 317.]
[Footnote 1244: Dusaulx, 454. "The soldiers replied that they would
accept whatever happened rather than cause the destruction of so great a
number of their fellow-citizens."]
[Footnote 1245: Dusaulx, 447. The number of combatants, maimed, wounded,
dead, and living, is 825.--Marmontel, IV. 320. "To the number of
victors, which has been carried up to 800, people have been added who
were never near the place."]
[Footnote 1246: "Memoires", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc,
1767-1862), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris
1893. Vol. I. p.52. Pasquier was eye-witness. He leaned against the
fence of the Beaumarchais garden and looked on, with mademoiselle
Contat, the actress, at his side, who had left her carriage in the
Place-Royale.--Marat, "L'ami du peuple," No. 530. "When an unheard-of
conjunction of circumstances had caused the fall of the badly defended
walls of the Bastille, under the efforts of a handful of soldiers and
a troop of unfortunate creatures, most of them Germans and almost all
provincials, the Parisians presented themselves the fortress, curiosity
alone having led them there."]
[Footnote 1247: Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two
Swiss.--Narrative of Cholat, wine-dealer, one of the
victors.--Examination of Desnot (who cut off the head of M. de Launay).]
[Footnote 1248: Montjoie, part 3, 85.--Dusaulx, 355, 287, 368.]
[Footnote 1249: Nothing more. No Witness states that he had seen the
pretended note to M. do Launay. According to Dusaulx, he could not have
had either the time or the means to write it.]
[Footnote 1250: Bailly, II. 32, 74, 88, 90, 95, 108, 117, 137, 158, 174.
"I gave orders which were neither obeyed nor listened to. . . . They
gave me to understand that I was not safe." (July 15th.) "In these
sad times one enemy and one calumnious report sufficed to excite the
multitude. All who had formerly held power, all who had annoyed or
restrained the insurrectionists, were sure of being arrested."]
[Footnote 1251: M. de Lafayette, "Mémoires," III. 264. Letter of July
16th, 1789. "I have already saved the lives of six persons whom they
were hanging in different quarters."]
[Footnote 1252: Poujoulat. "Histoire de la Révolution Française," p.100
(with supporting documents). Procès-verbaux of the Provincial Assembly,
lle-de-France (1787), p.127.]
[Footnote 1253: For instance: "He is severe with his peasants."--"He
gives them no bread, and he wants them then to eat grass." "He wants
them to eat grass like horses."--"He has said that they could very well
eat hay, and that they are no better than horses."--The same story is
found in many of the contemporary jacqueries.]
[Footnote 1254: Bailly, II. 108. "The people, less enlightened and as
imperious as despots, recognize no positive signs of good administration
but success."]
[Footnote 1255: Bailly, II, 108, 95.--Malouet, II, 14.]
[Footnote 1256: De Ferrières, I. 168.]