In the meantime these troops, to the number of twenty to thirty
thousand, had arrived and were posted in and between Paris and
Versailles. The bridges and passes were guarded. The King was now
completely in the hands of men the principal among whom had been
noted, through their lives, for the Turkish despotism of their
characters, and who were associated around the King as proper
instruments for what was to be executed. The news of this change began
to be known at Paris about one or two o'clock. In the afternoon a body
of about one hundred German cavalry were advanced, and drawn up in the
Place Louis XV, and about two hundred Swiss posted at a little
distance in their rear. This drew people to the spot, who thus
accidentally found themselves in front of the troops, merely at first
as spectators; but, as their numbers increased, their indignation
rose. They retired a few steps, and posted themselves on and behind
large piles of stones, large and small, collected in that place for a
bridge, which was to be built adjacent to it.
[Footnote 32: From the "Autobiography," now printed in Volume I of the
"Writings of Jefferson," edited by Paul Leicester Ford.]
In this position, happening to be in my carriage on a visit, I passed
through the lane they had formed without interruption. But the moment
after I had passed, the people attacked the cavalry with stones. They
charged, but the advantageous position of the people, and the showers
of stones, obliged the horse to retire, and quit the field altogether,
leaving one of their number on the ground, and the Swiss in the rear
not moving to their aid. This was the signal for universal
insurrection, and this body of cavalry, to avoid being massacred,
retired toward Versailles. The people now armed themselves with such
weapons as they could find in armorers' shops, and private houses, and
with bludgeons; and were roaming all night, through all parts of the
city, without any decided object.
The next day (the 13th) the Assembly prest on the King to send away
the troops, to permit the bourgeoisie of Paris to arm for the
preservation of order in the city, and offered to send a deputation
from their body to tranquillize them; but their propositions were
refused. A committee of magistrates and electors of the city were
appointed by those bodies, to take upon them its government. The
people, now openly joined by the French guards, forced the prison of
St. Lazare, released all the prisoners, and took a great store of
corn, which they carried to the corn-market. Here they got some arms,
and the French guards began to form and train them. The city committee
determined to raise forty-eight thousand bourgeoisie, or rather to
restrain their numbers to forty-eight thousand.
On the 14th, they sent one of their members (Monsieur de Corny) to the
Hotel des Invalides, to ask arms for their Garde Bourgeoisie. He was
followed by, and he found there, a great collection of people. The
Governor of the Invalids came out, and represented the impossibility
of his delivering arms without the orders of those from whom he
received them. De Corny advised the people then to retire, and retired
himself; but the people took possession of the arms. It was remarkable
that not only the Invalids themselves made no opposition, but that a
body of five thousand foreign troops, within four hundred yards, never
stirred. M. De Corny, and five others, were then sent to ask arms of
M. de Launay, Governor of the Bastile. They found a great collection
of people already before the place, and they immediately planted a
flag of truce, which was answered by a like flag hoisted on the
parapet. The deputation prevailed on the people to fall back a little,
advanced themselves to make their demand of the Governor, and in that
instant a discharge from the Bastile killed four persons of those
nearest to the deputies. The deputies retired. I happened to be at the
house of M. de Corny, when he returned to it, and received from him a
narrative of these transactions.
On the retirement of the deputies the people rushed forward, and almost in
an instant were in possession of a fortification of infinite strength,
defended by one hundred men, which in other times had stood several regular
sieges, and had never been taken. How they forced their entrance has never
been explained. They took all the arms, discharged the prisoners, and such
of the garrison as were not killed in the first moment of fury; carried the
Governor and Lieutenant-Governor to the Place de Greve (the place of public
execution), cut off their heads, and sent them through the city, in
triumph, to the Palais royal. About the same instant a treacherous
correspondence having been discovered in M. de Flesseles, Prevot des
Marchands, they seized him in the Hotel de Ville, where he was in the
execution of his office, and cut off his head.
These events, carried imperfectly to Versailles, were the subject of
two successive deputations from the Assembly to the King, to both of
which he gave dry and hard answers; for nobody had as yet been
permitted to inform him, truly and fully, of what had passed at Paris.
But at night the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into the King's
bedchamber, and obliged him to hear a full and animated detail of the
disasters of the day in Paris. He went to bed fearfully imprest. The
decapitation of de Launay worked powerfully through the night on the
whole Aristocratic party; insomuch that in the morning those of the
greatest influence on the Count d'Artois represented to him the
absolute necessity that the King should give up everything to the
Assembly. This according with the dispositions of the King, he went
about eleven o'clock, accompanied only by his brothers, to the
Assembly, and there read to them a speech, in which he asked their
interposition to reestablish order. Altho couched in terms of some
caution, yet the manner in which it was delivered made it evident that
it was meant as a surrender at discretion. He returned to the Chateau
afoot, accompanied by the Assembly.
They sent off a deputation to quiet Paris, at the head of which was
the Marquis de La Fayette, who had, the same morning, been named
Commandant en chef of the Milice Bourgeoise; and Monsieur Bailly,
former President of the States General, was called for as Prevot des
Marchands. The demolition of the Bastile was now ordered and begun. A
body of the Swiss guards, of the regiment of Ventimille, and the city
horse guards joined the people. The alarm at Versailles increased. The
foreign troops were ordered off instantly. Every minister resigned.
The King confirmed Bailly as Prevot des Marchands, wrote to M. Necker,
to recall him, sent his letter open to the Assembly, to be forwarded
by them, and invited them to go with him to Paris the next day, to
satisfy the city of his dispositions; and that night, and the next
morning, the Count d'Artois, and M. de Montesson, a deputy connected
with him, Madame de Polignac, Madame de Guiche, and the Count de
Vaudreuil, favorites of the Queen, the Abbe de Vermont, her confessor,
the Prince of Conde, and the Duke of Bourbon fled.
The King came to Paris, leaving the Queen in consternation for his
return. Omitting the less important figures of the procession, the
King's carriage was in the center; on each side of it the Assembly, in
two ranks afoot; at their head the Marquis de La Fayette, as
Commander-in-chief, on horseback, and Bourgeois guards before and
behind. About sixty thousand citizens, of all forms and conditions,
armed with the conquests of the Bastile and Invalids, as far as they
would go, the rest with pistols, swords, pikes, pruning-hooks,
scythes, etc., lined all the streets through which the procession
passed, and with the crowds of people in the streets, doors, and
windows, saluted them everywhere with the cries of "vive la nation,"
but not a single "vive le roi" was heard. The King stopt at the Hotel
de Ville. There M. Bailly presented, and put into his hat the popular
cockade, and addrest him. The King being unprepared, and unable to
answer, Bailly went to him, gathered from him some scraps of
sentences, and made out an answer, which he delivered to the audience
as from the King. On their return, the popular cries were "vive le Roi
et la nation." He was conducted by a Garde Bourgeoise to his palace at
Versailles, and thus concluded an "amende honorable," as no sovereign
ever made, and no people ever received.
And here, again, was lost another precious occasion of sparing to
France the crimes and cruelties through which she has since passed,
and to Europe, and finally America, the evils which flowed on them
also from this mortal source. The King was now become a passive
machine in the hands of the National Assembly, and had he been left to
himself, he would have willingly acquiesced in whatever they should
devise as best for the nation. A wise constitution would have been
formed, hereditary in his line, himself placed at its head, with
powers so large as to enable him to do all the good of his station,
and so limited as to restrain him from its abuse. This he would have
faithfully administered, and more than this I do not believe he ever
wished. But he had a Queen of absolute sway over his weak mind and
timid virtue, and of a character the reverse of his in all points.
This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke,[33] with
some smartness of fancy, but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of
restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in the
pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires, or perish
in their wreck. Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those
of the Count d'Artois, and others of her _clique_, had been a sensible
item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the
reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible
perverseness, and dauntless spirit, led herself to the guillotine,
drew the King on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and
calamities which will forever stain the pages of modern history.
[Footnote 33: See page 214 of Volume IV of this collection for this
tribute from Burke.]
I have ever believed that had there been no Queen there would have
been no revolution. No force would have been provoked, nor exercised.
The King would have gone hand in hand with the wisdom of his sounder
counselors, who, guided by the increased lights of the age, wished
only, with the same pace, to advance the principles of their social
constitution. The deed which closed the mortal course of these
sovereigns I shall neither approve nor condemn. I am not prepared to
say that the first magistrate of a nation can not commit treason
against his country, or is unamenable to its punishment; nor yet that
where there is no written law, no regulated tribunal, there is not a
law in our hearts, and a power in our hands, given for righteous
employment in maintaining right and redressing wrong. Of those who
judged the King many thought him wilfully criminal; many, that his
existence would keep the nation in perpetual conflict with the horde
of kings who would war against a generation which might come home to
themselves, and that it were better that one should die than all. I
should not have voted with this portion of the Legislature. I should
have shut up the Queen in a convent, putting harm out of her power,
and placed the King in his station, investing him with limited powers,
which, I verily believe, he would have honestly exercised, according
to the measure of his understanding. In this way no void would have
been created, courting the usurpation of a military adventurer, nor
occasion given for those enormities which demoralized the nations of
the world, and destroyed, and are yet to destroy millions and millions
of its inhabitants.