I.--Pressure of the Assembly on the King.
His veto rendered void or eluded.--His ministers insulted
and driven away.--The usurpations of his Girondist
ministry.--He removes them.--Riots being prepared.
Previous to this the tree was so shaken as to be already tottering at
its base.--Reduced as the King's prerogative is, the Jacobins still
continue to contest it, depriving him of even its shadow. At the opening
session they refuse to him the titles of Sire and Majesty; to them he
is not, in the sense of the constitution, a hereditary representative
of the French people, but "a high functionary," that is to say, a mere
employee, fortunate enough to sit in an equally good chair alongside
of the president of the Assembly, whom they style "president of the
nation."[2501] The Assembly, in their eyes, is sole sovereign, "while
the other powers," says Condorcet, "can act legitimately only when
specially authorized by a positive law;[2502] the Assembly may do
anything that is not formally prohibited to it by the law," 'in other
words, interpret the constitution, then change it, take it to pieces,
and do away with it. Consequently, in defiance of the constitution, it
takes upon itself the initiation of war, and, on rare occasions, on
the King using his veto, it sets this aside, or allows it to be set
aside.[2503] In vain he rejects, as he has a legal right to do, the
decrees which sanction the persecution of unsworn ecclesiastics, which
confiscate the property of the émigrés, and which establish a camp
around Paris. At the suggestion of the Jacobin deputies,[2504] the
unsworn ecclesiastics are interned, expelled, or imprisoned by the
municipalities and Directories; the estates and mansions of the
émigrés and of their relatives are abandoned without resistance to the
jacqueries; the camp around Paris is replaced by the summoning of
the Federates to Paris. In short, the monarch's sanction is eluded or
dispensed with.--As to his ministers, "they are merely clerks of the
Legislative Body decked with a royal leash."[2505] In full session they
are maltreated, reviled, grossly insulted, not merely as lackeys of bad
character, but as known criminals. They are interrogated at the bar of
the house, forbidden to leave Paris before their accounts are examined;
their papers are overhauled; their most guarded expressions and most
meritorious acts are held to be criminal; denunciations against them are
provoked; their subordinates are incited to rebel against them;[2506]
committees to watch them and calumniate them are appointed; the
perspective of a scaffold is placed before them in every relation, acts
or threats of accusation being passed against them, as well as against
their agents, on the shallowest pretexts, accompanied with such
miserable quibbling,[2507] and such an evident falsification of facts
and texts that the Assembly, forced by the evidence, twice reverses its
hasty decision, and declares those innocent whom it had condemned the
evening before.[2508] Nothing is of any avail, neither their strict
fulfillment of the law, their submission to the committees of the
Assembly, nor their humble attitude before the Assembly itself; "they
are careful now to treat it politely and avoid the galleys."[2509]--But
this does not suffice. They must become Jacobins; otherwise the high
court of Orleans will be for them as for M. Delessart, the ante-room
to the prison and the guillotine. "Terror and dismay," says Vergniaud,
pointing with his finger to the Tuileries, "have often issued in the
name of despotism in ancient times from that famous palace; let them
to-day go back to it in the name of law."[2510]
Even with a Jacobin Minister, terror and dismay are permanent. Roland,
Clavières, and Servan not only do not shield the King, but they give
him up, and, under their patronage and with their connivance, he is more
victimized, more harassed, and more vilified than ever before. Their
partisans in the Assembly take turns in slandering him, while Isnard
proposes against him a most insolent address.[2511] Shouts of death
are uttered in front of his palace. An abbé or soldier is unmercifully
beaten and dragged into the Tuileries basin. One of the gunners of the
Guard reviles the queen like a fish woman, and exclaims to her, "How
glad I should be to clap your head on the end of my bayonet!"[2512] They
supposed that the King is brought to heel under this double pressure
of the Legislative Body and the street; they rely on his accustomed
docility, or at least, on his proven lethargy; they think that they
have converted him into what Condorcet once demanded, a signature
machine.[2513] Consequently, without notifying him, just as if the
throne were vacant, Servan, on his own authority, proposes to the
Assembly the camp outside Paris.[2514] Roland, for his part, reads
to him at a full meeting of the council an arrogant, pedagogical
remonstrance, scrutinizing his sentiments, informing him of his duties,
calling upon him to accept the new "religion," to sanction the decree
against unsworn ecclesiastics, that is to say, to condemn to beggary,
imprisonment, and transportation[2515] 70,000 priests and nuns guilty of
orthodoxy, and authorize the camp around Paris, which means, to put his
throne, his person, and his family at the mercy of 20,000 madmen, chosen
by the clubs and other assemblages expressly to do him harm;[2516] in
short, to discard at once his conscience and his common sense.--Strange
enough, the royal will this time remains staunch; not only does the King
refuse, but he dismisses his ministers. So much the worse for him, for
sign he must, cost what it will; if he insists on remaining athwart
their path, they will march over him.--Not because he is dangerous, and
thinks of abandoning his legal immobility. Up to the 10th of August,
through a dread of action, and not to kindle a civil war, he rejects
all plans leading to an open rupture. Up to the very last day he resigns
himself even when his personal safety and that of his family is at
stake, to constitutional law and public common sense. Before dismissing
Roland and Servan, he desires to furnish some striking proof of his
pacific intentions by sanctioning the dissolution of his guard and
disarming himself not only for attack but for defense; henceforth he
sits at home and awaits the insurrection with which he is daily menaced;
he resigns himself to everything, except drawing his sword; his attitude
is that of a Christian in the amphitheatre.[2517]--The proposition of
a camp outside Paris, however, draws out a protest from 8,000 Paris
National Guards. Lafayette denounces to the Assembly the usurpations
of the Jacobins; the faction sees that its reign is threatened by this
reawakening and union of the friends of order. A blow must be struck.
This has been in preparation for a month past, and to renew the days of
October 5th and 6th, the materials are not lacking.
II.--The floating and poor population of Paris.
Disposition of the workers.--Effect of poverty and want of
work.--Effect of Jacobin preaching.--The revolutionary
army.--Quality of its recruits--Its first review.--Its
actual effective force.
Paris always has its interloping, floating population. A hundred
thousand of the needy, one-third of these from the departments, "beggars
by race," those whom Rétif de la Bretonne had already seen pass his
door, Rue de Bièvre, on the 13th of July, 1789, on their way to join
their fellows on the suburb of St. Antoine,[2518] along with them "those
frightful raftsmen," pilots and dock-hands, born and brought up in the
forests of the Nièvre and the Yonne, veritable savages accustomed
to wielding the pick and the ax, behaving like cannibals when the
opportunity offers,[2519] and who will be found foremost in the ranks
when the September days come. Alongside these stride their female
companions "barge-women who, embittered by toil, live for the moment
only," and who, three months earlier, pillaged the grocer-shops.[2520]
All this "is a frightful crowd which, every time it stirs, seems to
declare that the last day of the rich and well-to-do has come; tomorrow
it is our turn, to-morrow we shall sleep on eiderdown."--Still more
alarming is the attitude of the steady workmen, especially in the
suburbs. And first of all, if bread is not as expensive as on the 5th of
October, the misery is worse. The production of articles of luxury has
been at a standstill for three years, and the unemployed artisan has
consumed his small savings. Since the ruin of St. Domingo and the
pillaging of grocers' shops colonial products are dear; the carpenter,
the mason, the locksmith, the market-porter, no longer has his early
cup of coffee,[2521] while they grumble every morning at the thought of
their patriotism being rewarded by an increase of deprivation.
But more than all this they are now Jacobins, and after nearly three
years of preaching, the dogma of popular sovereignty has taken deep root
in their empty brains. "In these groups," writes a police commissioner,
"the Constitution is held to be useless and the people alone are the
law. The citizens of Paris on the public square think themselves the
people, populus, what we call the universality of citizens."[2522]--It
is of no use to tell them that, alongside of Paris, there is a France.
Danton has shown them that the capital "is composed of citizens
belonging one way or another to the eighty-three departments; that
is has a better chance than any other place to appreciate ministerial
conduct; that it is the first sentinel of the nation," which makes them
confident of being right.[2523]--It is of no use to tell them that there
are better-informed and more competent authorities than themselves.
Robespierre assures them that "in the matter of genius and
public-spiritedness the people are infallible, whilst every one else
is subject to mistakes,"[2524] and here they are sure of their
capacity.--In their own eyes they are the legitimate, competent
authorities for all France, and, during three years, the sole theme
their courtiers of the press, tribune, and club, vie with each other
in repeating to them, is the expression of the Duc de Villeroy to Louis
XIV. when a child: "Look my master, behold this great kingdom! It is
all for you, it belongs to you, you are its master!"--Undoubtedly,
to swallow and digest such gross irony people must be half-fools or
half-brutes; but it is exactly their capacity for self-deception which
makes them different from the sensible or passive crowd and casts them
into a band whose ascendancy is irresistible. Convinced that a street
mob is entitled to absolute rule and that the nation expresses its
sovereignty through its gatherings, they alone assemble the street mobs,
they alone, by virtue of their conceit and lack of judgment, believe
themselves kings.
Such is the new power which, in the early months of the year 1792,
starts up alongside of the legal powers. It is not foreseen by the
Constitution; nevertheless it exists and declares itself; it is visible
and its recruits can be counted.[2525] On the 29th of April, with the
Assembly consenting, and contrary to the law, three battalions from the
suburb of St. Antoine, about 1500 men,[2526] march in three columns into
the hall, one of which is composed of fusiliers and the other two of
pikemen, "their pikes being from eight to ten feet long," of formidable
aspect and of all sorts, "pikes with laurel leaves, pikes with clover
leaves, pikes à carlet, pikes with turn-spits, pikes with hearts, pikes
with serpents tongues, pikes with forks, pikes with daggers, pikes
with three prongs, pikes with battle-axes, pikes with claws, pikes with
sickles, lance-pikes covered with iron prongs." On the other side of the
Seine three battalions from the suburb of St. Marcel are composed and
armed in the same fashion. This constitutes a kernel of 3,000 more in
other quarters of Paris. Add to these in each of the sixty battalions
of the National guard the gunners, almost all of them blacksmiths,
locksmiths and horse-shoers, also the majority of the gendarmes, old
soldiers discharged for insubordination and naturally inclined to
rioting, in all an army of about 9,000 men, not counting the usual
accompaniment of vagabonds and mere bandits; ignorant and eager, but men
who do their work, well armed, formed into companies, ready to march
and ready to strike. Alongside of the talking authorities we have the
veritable force that acts, for it is the only one which does act. As
formerly the praetorian guard of the Caesars in Rome, or the Turkish
guards of the Caliphs of Baghdad, it is henceforth master of the
capital, and through the capital, of the Nation.
III.--Its leaders.--Their committee.--Methods for arousing the crowd.
As the troops are so are their leaders. Bulls must have drovers to
conduct them, one degree superior to the brute but only one degree,
dressed, talking and acting in accordance with his occupation, without
dislikes or scruples, naturally or willfully hardened, fertile in
jockeying and in the expedients of the slaughterhouse, themselves
belonging to the people or pretending to belong to them. Santerre is
a brewer of the Faubourg St. Antoine, commander of the battalion of"
Enfants Trouvés," tall, stout and ostentatious, with stentorian lungs,
shaking the hand of everybody he meets in the street, and when at home
treating everybody to a drink paid for by the Duke of Orleans. Legendre
is a choleric butcher, who even in the Convention maintains his
butchering traits. There are three or four foreign adventurers,
experienced in all kinds of deadly operations, using the saber or the
bayonet without warning people to get out of the way. Rotonde, the first
one, is an Italian, a teacher of English and professional rioter, who,
convicted of murder and robbery, is to end his days in Piedmont on the
gallows. The second, Lazowski, is a Pole, a former dandy, a
conceited fop, who, with Slave facility, becomes the barest of naked
sans-culottes; former enjoying a sinecure, then suddenly turned out in
the street, and shouting in the clubs against his protectors who he
sees put down; he is elected captain of the gunners of the battalion St.
Marcel, and is to be one of the September slaughterers. His drawing-room
temperament, however, is not rigorous enough for the part he plays in
the streets, and at the end of a year he is to die, consumed by a fever
and by brandy. The third is another chief slaughterer at the September
massacres. Fournier, known as the American, a former planter, who has
brought with him from St. Domingo a contempt for human life; "with
his livid and sinister countenance, his mustache, his triple belt of
pistols, his coarse language, his oaths, he looks like a pirate."
By their side we encounter a little hump-backed lawyer named
Cuirette-Verrières, an unceasing speaker, who, on the 6th of October,
1789, paraded the city on a large white horse and afterwards pleaded for
Marat, which two qualifications with his Punch figure, fully establish
him in the popular imagination; the rugged guys, moreover, who hold
nocturnal meetings at Santerre's needed a writer and he probably met
their requirements.--This secret society can count on other faithfuls.
"Brière, wine-dealer, Nicolas, a sapper in the 'Enfants Trouvés'
battalion, Gonor, claiming to be one of the victors of the
Bastille,"[2527] Rossignol, an old soldier and afterwards a
journeyman-jeweler, who, after presiding at the massacres of La
Force, is to become an improvised general and display his incapacity,
debauchery, and thievery throughout La Vendée. "There are yet more of
them," Huguenin undoubtedly, a ruined ex-lawyer, afterwards carabineer,
then a deserter, next a barrier-clerk, now serving as spokesman for
the Faubourg St. Honoré and finally president of the September commune;
there was also, doubtless, St. Huruge alias Père Adam, the great barker
of the Palais-Royal, a marquis fallen into the gutter, drinking with and
dressing like a common porter, always flourishing an enormous club and
followed by the riffraff.[2528]--These are all the leaders. The Jacobins
of the municipality and of the Assembly confine their support of
the enterprise to conniving at it and to giving it their
encouragement.[2529] It is better for the insurrection to seem
spontaneous. Through caution or shyness the Girondins, Pétion, Manual
and Danton himself, keep in the background----there is not reason for
their coming forward.--The rest, affiliated with the people and lost in
the crowd, are better qualified to fabricate the story which their flock
will like. This tale, adapted to the crowd's intellectual limits, form
and activity, is both simple and somber, such as children like, or
rather a melodrama taken from an alien stage in which the good appear
on one side, and the wicked on the other with an ogre or tyrant in the
center, some infamous traitor who is sure to be unmasked at the end of
the piece and punished according to his deserts, the whole grandiloquent
terms and, as a finale, winding up with a grand chorus. In the raw brain
of an over-excited workman politics find their way only in the shape
of rough-hewn, highly-colored imagery, such as is furnished by the
Marseillaise, the Carmagnole, and the Ça ira. The requisite motto is
adapted to his use; through this misshapen magnifying glass the most
gracious figure appears under a diabolical aspect. Louis XVI. is
represented here "as a monster using his power and treasure to oppose
the regeneration of the French. A new Charles IX., he desires to bring
on France death and desolation. Be gone, cruel man, your crimes must
end! Damiens was less guilty than thou art! He was punished with the
most horrible torture for having tried to rid France of a monster,
while you, attempting twenty-five million times more, are allowed full
immunity![2530] Let us trample under our feet this simulacra of royalty!
Tremble tyrants, Scoevolas are still amongst you!"
All this is pronounced, declaimed or rather shouted, publicly, in full
daylight, under the King's windows, by stump-speakers mounted on chairs,
while similar provocations daily flow from the committee installed in
Santerre's establishment, now in the shape of displays posted in
the faubourgs, now in that of petitions circulated in the clubs and
sections, now through motions which are gotten up "among the groups in
the Tuileries, in the Palais-Royal, in the Place de Grève and especially
on the Place de la Bastille." After the 2nd of June the leaders founded
a new club in the church of the "Enfants Trouvés" that they might have
their special laboratory and thus do their work on the spot.[2531] Like
Plato's demagogues, they understand their business. They have discovered
the cries which make the popular animal take note, what offense offends
him, what charm attracts him, and on what road he should be made to
follow. Once drawn in and under way, he will march blindly on, borne
along by his own involuntary inspiration and crushing with his mass all
that he encounters on his path.
IV.--The 20th of June.
The programme.--The muster.--The procession before the
Assembly.--Irruption into the Château.--The King in the
presence of the people.
The bait has been carefully chosen and is well presented. It takes
the form of a celebration of the anniversary of the oath of the
Tennis-court. A tree of Liberty will be planted on the terrace of the
Feuillants and "petitions relating to circumstances" will be presented
in the Assembly and then to the King. As a precaution, and to impose on
the ill-disposed, the petitioners provide themselves with arms and line
the approaches.[2532]--A popular procession is an attractive thing, and
there are so many workers who do not know what to do with their empty
day! And, again, it is so pleasant to appear in a patriotic opera while
many, and especially women and children, want very much to see
Monsieur and Madame Veto. The people from the surrounding suburbs are
invited,[2533] the homeless prowlers and beggars will certainly join the
party, while the numerous body of Parisian loafers, the loungers that
join every spectacle can be relied on, and the curious who, even in
our time, gather by hundreds along the quays, following a dog that has
chanced to tumble into the river. All this forms a body which, without
thinking, will follow its head.
At five o'clock in the morning on the 20th of June groups are already
formed in the faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marcel, consisting of
National Guards, pikemen, gunners with their cannon, persons armed with
sabers or clubs, and women and children.--A notice, indeed, just posted
on the walls, prohibits any assemblage, and the municipal officers
appear in their scarves and command or entreat the crowd not to break
the law.[2534] But, in a working-class brain, ideas are as tenacious
as they are short-lived. People count on a civic procession and get up
early in the morning to attend to it; the cannon have been hitched up,
the maypole tree is put on wheels and all is ready for the ceremony,
everybody takes a holiday and none are disposed to return home. Besides,
they have only good intentions. They know the law as well as the city
officials; they are "armed solely to have it observed and respected."
Finally, other armed petitioners have already filed along before the
National Assembly, and, as one is as good as another, "the law being
equal for all," others must be admitted as well. In any event they, too,
will ask permission of the National Assembly and they go expressly.
This is the last and the best argument of all, and to prove to the city
officials that they have no desire to engage in a riot, they request
them to join the procession and march along with them.
Meanwhile, time passes. In a crowd irritated by delay, the most
impatient, the rudest, those most inclined to commit violence, always
lead the rest.--At the head-quarters of the Val-de-Grâce[2535] the
pikemen seize the cannon and drag them along; the National Guards
let things take their course; Saint-Prix and Leclerc, the officers in
command, threatened with death, have nothing to do but to yield with a
protest.--There is the same state of things in the Montreuil section;
the resistance of four out of six of the battalion officers merely
served to give full power to the instigator of the insurrection, and
henceforth Santerre becomes the sole leader of the assembled crowd.
About half-past eleven he leaves his brewery, and, followed by cannon,
the flag, and the truck which bears the poplar tree, he places himself
at the head of the procession "consisting of about fifteen hundred
persons including the bystanders."[2536] Like a snowball, however,
the troop grows as it marches along until, on reaching the National
Assembly, Santerre has behind him from seven to eight thousand
persons.[2537] Guadet and Vergniaud move that the petitioners be
introduced; their spokesman, Huguenin, in a bombastic and threatening
address, denounces the ministry, the King, the accused at Orleans, the
deputies of the "Right," demands "blood," and informs the Assembly that
the people "resolute" is ready to take the law in their own hands.[2538]
Then, with drums beating and bands playing, the crowd defiles for
more than an hour through the chamber under the eyes of Santerre and
Saint-Huruge: here and there a few files of the National Guard pass
mingled with the throng and lost in "the moving forest of pikes"; all
the rest is pure rabble, "hideous faces,"[2539] says a deputy, on
which poverty and loose living have left their marks, ragamuffins, men
"without coats," in their shirt-sleeves, armed in all sorts of ways,
with chisels and shoe-knives fastened on sticks, one with a saw on
a pole ten feet long, women and children, some of them brandishing a
saber.[2540] In the middle of this procession, an old pair of breeches
[culottes] borne on a pike with this motto: Vivent les Sans-Culottes!
and, on a pitch-fork, the heart of a calf with this inscription:
Coeur d'aristocrate, both significant emblems of the grim humor the
imaginations of rag-dealers or butchers might come up with for a
political carnival.--This, indeed, it is, they have been drinking and
many are drunk.[2541] A parade is not enough, they want also to amuse
themselves: traversing the hall they sing ça ira and dance in the
intervals. They at the same time show their civism by shouting Vive les
patriotes! A bas le Veto! They fraternise, as they pass along, with the
good deputies of the "Left"; they jeer those of the "Right" and shake
their fists at them; one of these, known by his tall stature, is told
that his business will be settled for him the first opportunity.[2542]
Thus do they flaunt their collaborators to the Assembly, everyone
prepared and willing to act, even against the Assembly itself.--And
yet, with the exception of an iron-railing pushed in by the crowd and an
irruption on to the terrace of the "Feuillants," no act of violence
was committed. The Paris population, except when in a rage, is rather
voluble and curious than ferocious; besides, thus far, no one had
offered any resistance. The crowd is now sated with shouting and
parading; many of them yawn with boredom and weariness;[2543] at four
o'clock they have stood on their legs for ten or twelve hours. The human
stream issuing from the Assembly and emptying itself into the
Carrousel remains stagnant there and seems ready to return to its usual
channels.--This is not what the leaders had intended. Santerre, on
arriving with Saint-Huruge, cries out to his men, "Why didn't you enter
the château? You must go in--that is what we came here for."[2544] A
lieutenant of the Val-de-Grâce gunners shouts: "We have forced open the
Carrousel, we must force open the château too! This is the first time
the Val-de-Grâce gunners march--they are not j.... f.... Come, follow
me, my men, on to the enemy![2545]--"Meanwhile, outside the gate,
some of the municipal officers selected by Pétion amongst the most
revolutionary members of the council, overcome resistance by their
speeches and commands. 'After all," says one of them, named Mouchet,
"the right of petition is sacred."--" Open the gate!" shout Sergent and
Boucher-René, "nobody has a right to shut it. Every citizen has a right
to go through it!"[2546] A gunner raises the latch, the gate opens and
the court fills in the winkling of an eye;[2547] the crowd rushes under
the archway and up the grand stairway with such impetuosity that a
cannon borne along by hand reaches the third room on the first story
before it stops. The doors crack under the blows of axes and, in the
large hall of the Oeil de Boeuf, the multitude find themselves face to
face with the King.
In such circumstances the representatives of public authority, the
directories, the municipalities, the military chiefs, and, on the 6th of
October, the King himself, have all thus far yielded; they have either
yielded or perished. Santerre, certain of the issue, preferred to take
no part in this affair; he prudently holds back, he shies away, and lets
the crowd push him into the council chamber, where the Queen, the young
Dauphin, and the ladies have taken refuge.[2548] There, with his tall,
corpulent figure, he formed a sort of shield to forestall useless and
compromising injuries. In the mean time, in the Oeil de Boeuf, he lets
things take their course; everything will be done in his absence that
ought to be done, and in this he seems to have calculated justly.--On
one side, in a window recess, sits the King on a bench, almost alone,
while in front of him, as a guard, are four or five of the National
Guards; on the other side, in the apartments, is an immense crowd,
hourly increasing according as the rumor of the irruption spreads in the
vicinity, fifteen or twenty thousand persons, a prodigious accumulation,
a pell-mell traversed by eddies, a howling sea of bodies crushing each
other, and of which the simple flux and reflux would flatten against the
walls obstacles ten times as strong, an uproar sufficient to shatter the
window panes, "frightful yells," curses and imprecations, "Down with M.
Veto!" "Let Veto go to the devil!" "Take back the patriot ministers!"
"He shall sign; we won't go away till he does!"[2549]--Foremost among
them all, Legendre, more resolute than Santerre, declares himself the
spokesman and trustee of the powers of the sovereign people: "Sir," says
he to the King, who, he sees, makes a gesture of surprise, "yes, Sir,
listen to us; you are made to listen to what we say! You are a traitor!
You have always deceived us; you deceive us now! But look out, the
measure is full; the people are tired of being played upon!"--" Sire,
Sire," exclaims another fanatic, "I ask you in the name of the hundred
thousand beings around us to recall the patriot ministers... I demand
the sanction of the decree against the priests and the twenty thousand
men. Either the sanction or you shall die!"--But little is wanting for
the threat to be carried out. The first comers are on hand, "presenting
pikes," among them "a brigand," with a rusty sword blade on the end of
a pole, "very sharp," and who points this at the King. Afterwards the
attempt at assassination is many times renewed, obstinately, by three or
four madmen determined to kill, and who make signs of so doing, one,
a shabby, ragged fellow, who keeps up his excitement with "the foulest
propositions," the second one, "a so-called conqueror of the Bastille,"
formerly porte-tête for Foulon and Berthier, and since driven out of
the battalion, the third, a market-porter, who, "for more than an hour,"
armed with a saber, makes a terrible effort to make his way to the
king.[2550]--Nothing is done. The king remains impassible under every
threat. He takes the hand of a grenadier who wishes to encourage him,
and, placing it on his breast, bids him, "See if that is the beating of
a heart agitated by fear."[2551] To Legendre and the zealots who call
upon him to sanction, he replies without the least excitement:
"I have never departed from the Constitution.... I will do what the
Constitution requires me to do.... It is you who break the law."
--And, for nearly three hours, remaining standing, blockaded on his
bench,[2552] he persists in this without showing a sign of weakness
or of anger. This cool deportment at last produces an effect, the
impression it makes on the spectators not being at all that which they
anticipated. It is very clear that the personage before them is not the
monster which has been depicted to them, a somber, imperious tyrant, the
savage, cunning Charles IX. they had hissed on the stage. They see a man
somewhat stout, with placid, benevolent features, whom they would take,
without his blue sash, for an ordinary, peaceable bourgeois.[2553] His
ministers, near by, three or four men in black coats, gentlemen and
respectable employees, are just what they seem to be. In another window
recess stands his sister, Madame Elizabeth, with her sweet and innocent
face. This pretended tyrant is a man like other men; he speaks gently,
he says that the law is on his side, and nobody says the contrary;
perhaps he is less wrong than he is thought to be. If he would only
become a patriot!--A woman in the room brandishes a sword with a cockade
on its point; the King makes a sign and the sword is handed to him,
which he raises and, hurrahing with the crowd, cries out: Vive la
Nation! That is already one good sign. A red cap is shaken in the air at
the end of a pole. Some one offers it to him and he puts it on his head;
applause bursts forth, and shouts of Vive la Nation! Vive la Liberte!
and even vive le Roi!
From this time forth the greatest danger is over. But it is not that the
besiegers abandon the siege. "He did damned well," they exclaim, "to put
the cap on, and if he hadn't we would have seen what would come of it.
And damn it, if he does not sanction the decree against the priests, and
do it right off; we will come back every day. In this way we shall tire
him out and make him afraid of us.--But the day wears on. The heat is
over-powering, the fatigue extreme, the King less deserted and better
protected. Five or six of the deputies, three of the municipal officers,
a few officers of the National Guard, have succeeded in making their way
to him. Pétion himself, mounted on a sofa, harangues the people with
his accustomed flattery.[2554] At the same time Santerre, aware of the
opportunity being lost, assumes the attitude of a liberator, and shouts
in his rough voice: "I answer for the royal family. Let me see to it."
A line of National Guards forms in front of the King, when, slowly and
with difficulty, urged by the mayor, the crowd melts away, and, by eight
o'clock in the evening, it is gone.
*****
[Footnote 2501: Moniteur, X. 39 and following pages (sessions of Oct.
5 and 6, 1791). Speeches by Chabot, Couthon, Lequinio, and
Vergniaud.--Mercure de France, Oct. 15. Speech by Robespierre, May 17,
1790. "The king is not the nation's representative, but its clerk."--Cf.
Ernest Hamel, "Vie de Robespierre."]
[Footnote 2502: Moniteur, XIII. 97 (session of July 6, 1792)]
[Footnote 2503: Buchez et Roux, XIII. 61, Jan.28, 1792. The King in his
usually mild way calls the attention of the Assembly to the usurpation
it is committing. "The form adopted by you is open to important
observations. I shall not extend these to-day; the gravity of the
situation demands that I concern myself much more with maintaining
harmonious sentiments than with continually discussing my rights."]
[Footnote 2504: Sauzay, II. 99. Letter of the deputy Vernerey to the
Directory of Doubs: "The Directory of the department may always act with
the greatest severity against the seditious, and, apart from the article
relating to their pension, follow the track marked out in the decree. If
the executive desires to impede the operations of the Directory.. .
the latter has its recourse in the National Assembly, which in
all probability will afford it a shelter against ministerial
attacks."--Moniteur, XII. 202 (session of April 23). Report of Roland,
Minister of the Interior. Already at this date forty-two departments had
expelled or interned the unsworn ecclesiastics.]
[Footnote 2505: Mercure-de-France, Feb.25.]
[Footnote 2506: Moniteur, X. 440 (session of Nov.22, 1791). A letter to
M. Southon, Director of the Mint at Paris, is read, "complaining of an
arbitrary order, that of the Minister of the Interior, to report himself
at Pau on the 25th of this month, under penalty of dismissal." Isnard
supports the charge: "M. Southon," he says, "is here at work on a very
circumstantial denunciation of the Minister of the Interior (Applause
from the galleries.) If citizens who are zealous enough to make war
on abuses are sent back to their departments we shall never have
denunciations" (The applause is renewed.):--Ibid., X, 504 (session of
Nov. 29). Speech by Isnard: "Our ministers must know that we are not
fully satisfied with the conduct of each of them repeated applause:;
that henceforth they must simply choose between public gratitude and the
vengeance of the law, and that our understanding of the word
responsibility is death." (The applause is renewed.)--The Assembly
orders this speech to be printed and sent into the departments.--Cf.
XII, 73, 138, etc.]
[Footnote 2507: Moniteur, XI. 603. (Session of March 10. Speech by
Brissot, to secure a decree of accusation against M. Delessart, Minister
of Foreign Affairs.) M. Delessart is a "perfidious man," for having
stated in a dispatch that "the Constitution, with the great majority
of the nation, has become a sort of religion which is embraced with
the greatest enthusiasm." Brissot denounces these two expressions as
inadequate and anti-patriotic.-Ibid., XII. 438 (session of May 20).
Speech by Guadet: "Larivière, the juge-de-paix, has convicted himself
of the basest and most atrocious of passions, in having desired to usurp
the power which the Constitution has placed in the hands of the National
Assembly."--I do not believe that Laubardemont himself could have
composed anything equal to these two speeches.--Cf. XII. 462 (session
of May 23). Speech by Brissot and one by Gonsonné on the Austrian
committee. The feebleness and absurdity of their argument is
incredible.]
[Footnote 2508: Affairs of the Minister Duport-Dutertre and of the
Ambassador to Vienna, M. de Noailles.]
[Footnote 2509: Mercure de France, March 10, 1792.]
[Footnote 2510: Moniteur, XI. 607 (session of March 10).]
[Footnote 2511: Moniteur, XII.396 (session of May 15). Isnard's address
is the ground-plan of Roland's famous letter.--Cf. passim, the sessions
of the Assembly during the Girondist ministry, especially those of May
19 and 20, June 5, etc.]
[Footnote 2512: Dumouriez, "Mémoires," book III. ch. VI.]
[Footnote 2513: "Letter of a young mechanician," proposing to make a
constitutional king, which, "by means of a spring, would receive
from the hands of the president of the Assembly a list of ministers
designated by the majority" (1791).]
[Footnote 2514: Servan, who was Girondist minister of war, proposed to
let 20 000 fédérés or provincial National guards establish themselves
outside Paris. (SR).]
[Footnote 2515: You will meet this sinister expression later on when
the Government ceased killing in France but simply sent undesirables and
imaginary or real opponents overseas to death-camps. Transportation was
used by Stalin and Hitler only their extermination took place in their
own countries not overseas. (SR).]
[Footnote 2516: Moniteur, XI. 426 (session of May 19). Speech by
Lasource: "Could not things be so arranged as to have a considerable
force near enough to the capital to terrify and keep inactive the
factions, the intriguers, the traitors who are plotting perfidious plans
in its bosom, simultaneously with the maneuvers of outside enemies?"]
[Footnote 2517: 'Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires." I. 303. Letter of Malouet,
June 29: "The king is calm and perfectly resigned. On the 19th he wrote
to his confessor: "Come, sir; never have I had so much need of your
consolations. I am done with men; I must now turn my eyes to heaven. Sad
events are announced for to-morrow. I shall have courage.' "--"Lettres
de Coray au Protopsalte de Smyrne" (translated by M. de Queux de
Saint-Hilaire,) 145, May 1st: "The court is in peril every moment. Do
not be surprised if I write you some day that his unhappy king and his
wife are assassinated."."]
[Footnote 2518: Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," Vol. XVI.
(analyzed by Lacroix in "Bibliothèque de Rétif de la Bretonne" ).--Rétif
is the man in Paris who lived the most in the streets and had the most
intercourse with the low class.]
[Footnote 2519: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3276. Letter from the
Directory of Clamecy, March 27, and official report of the civil
commissioners, March 31, 1792, on the riot of the raftsmen. Tracu, their
captain, armed with a cudgel ten feet long, compelled peaceful people
to march along with him, threatening to knock them down; he tried to get
the head of Peynier, the clerk of the Paris dealers in wood. "I shall
have a good supper to-night," he exclaimed "(or the head of that bastard
Peynier is a fat one, and I'll stick it in my Pot!")]
[Footnote 2520: Letters of Coray, 126. "This pillaging has lasted three
days, Jan. 22, 23 and 24, and we expect from hour to hour similar riots
still more terrible."]
[Footnote 2521: Mercier (" Tableau de Paris") had already noticed before
the Revolution this habit of the Parisian workman, especially among the
lowest class of workmen.]
[Footnote 2522: Mortimer-Ternaux, 1.346 (letter of June 21, 1792).]
[Footnote 2523: Buchez et Roux, VIII. 25 (session of the National
Assembly, Nov.10, 1790). Petition presented by Danton in the name of the
forty-eight sections of Paris.]
[Footnote 2524: Buchez et Roux, XIV. 268 (May. 1792). Article by
Robespierre against the fête decreed in honor of Simonneau, Mayor of
Etampes, assassinated in a riot: "Simonneau was guilty before he became
a victim."]
[Footnote 2525: How can one forget that great seducer of the masses
Hitler? In his book "Hitler Speaks" page 208 Rauschning reports Hitler
as saying: "It is true that the masses are uncritical, but not in the
way these idiots of Marxists and reactionaries imagine. The masses have
their critical faculties, too, but they function differently from those
of the private individual. The masses are like an animal they obeys
instincts. They do not reach conclusions by reasoning. My success in
initiating the greatest people's movement of all time is due to my never
having done anything in violation of the vital laws and feelings of the
mass. These feelings may be primitive, but they have the resistance and
indestructibility of natural qualities. A once intensely felt experience
in the life of the masses, like ration cards and inflation, will never
again be driven out of their blood. The masses have a simple system
of thinking and feeling, and anything that cannot be fitted into
it disturbs them. It is only because I take their vital laws into
consideration that I can rule them."]
[Footnote 2526: Moniteur, XII. 254.--According to the royal almanac of
1792 the Paris national guard comprises 32,000 men, divided into
sixty battalions, to which must be added the battalions of pikemen,
spontaneously organized and composed, especially of the non-active
citizens.--Cf. in "Les Révolutions de Paris," Prudhomme's Journal, the
engravings which represent this sort of procession.]
[Footnote 2527: Buchez et Roux, XV. 122. Declaration of Lareynie, a
volunteer soldier in the Ile Saint-Louis battalion.--To those which he
names I add Huguenin, because on the 20th of June it was his duty to
read the petition of the rioters; also Saint-Huruge, because he led the
mob with Santerre.--About Rossignol, Cf. Dauban, "La Demagogie à Paris,"
369 (according to the manuscript memoirs of Mercier du Rocher). He
reaches Fontenay Aug.21, 1793, with the representative Bourbotte,
Momoro, commissary-general, three adjutants, Moulins, Hasard, the
ex-priest, Grammont, an ex-actor and several prostitutes. "The prettiest
shared her bed with Bourbotte and Rossignol." They lodge in a mansion to
which seals are affixed. "The seals were broken, and jewelry, dresses,
and female apparel were confiscated for the benefit of the general and
his followers. There was nothing, even down to the crockery, which did
not become the booty of these self-styled republicans"]
[Footnote 2528: Mathon de la Varenne, "Histoire particulière des
événements qui ont eu lieu en juin, juillet, août, et septembre, 1792,"
p. 23. (He knew Saint-Huruge personally.) Saint-Huruge had married an
actress at Lyons in 1778. On returning to Paris he learned through the
police that his wife was a trollop, and he treated her accordingly.
Enraged, she looked up Saint-Huruge's past career, and found two charges
against him, one for the robbery and assassination of an alien merchant,
and the other for infanticide; she obtained his incarceration by a
lettre-de-cachet. He was shut in Charenton from Jan. 14, 1781, to
December, 1784, when he was transferred to another prison and afterwards
exiled to his estates, from which he fled to England. He returned to
France on the outbreak of the Revolution.]
[Footnote 2529: With respect to connivance, Cf. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 132
and the following pages.--Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," I. 300. Letter of
the Abbé de Pradt, June 21, 1795. "The insurrection had been announced
for several days... The evening before, 150 deputies so many Jacobins,
had dined at their great table in the Champs-Elysées, and distributed
presents of wine and food."]
[Footnote 2530: Moniteur, XII. 642 (session of June 12, 1792, narrative
of M. Delfaux, deputy).--The execution of Damiens was witnessed by
Parisians still living, while "Charles IX.," by Marie Chénier, was
at this time the most popular tragedy.--"The French people," says M.
Ferières (I. 35), "went away from its representation eager for vengeance
and tormented with a thirst for blood. At the end of the fourth act a
lugubrious bell announces the moment of the massacre, and the audience,
drawing in its breath sighing and groaning, furiously exclaims silence!
silence! as if fearing that the sound of this death-knell had not
stirred the heart to its very depths."--"Révolutions de Paris," number
for June 23, 1792. "The speakers, under full sail, distributed their
parts amongst themselves," one against the staffs, another against
priests, another against judges, department, and the ministers, and
especially the king. "Some there are, and we agree in this with the
sieur Delfaux, who pass the measure and advise murder through gestures,
eyes, and speech."]
[Footnote 2531: Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 133.--There is the same calculation
and the same work-shop in the faubourg Saints-Marcel (report of
Saint-Prix, commandant of the Val-de-Grâce battalion). "Minds remained
tranquil until a club was opened at the Porte Saint-Marcel; now they
are all excited and divided. This dub, which is in contact with that of
Santerre, urges citizens to go armed to-morrow (June 20) to the National
Assembly and to the king's Palace, notwithstanding the acts of the
constituted authorities."]
[Footnote 2532: Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 136. This program is first
presented to the council-general of the commune by Lazowski and nine
others (June 16). The council-general rejects it and refers to the law.
"The petitioners, on learning this decision, loudly declare that it
shall not prevent them from assembling in arms" (Buchez et Roux, XV.
120, official report by M. Borie).--The bibliography of documents
relating to the 20th of June is given by Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 397 and
following pages. The principal documents are found in Mortimer-Ternaux,
in "L'Histoire Parlementaire" of Buchez et Roux, and in the Revue
Rétrospective.]
[Footnote 2533: "Correspondance de Mirabeau et M. de la Marck," III.
319. Letter of the Count de Montmorin, June 21, 1792. "The Paris bandits
not being sufficient, they have invited in these of the neighboring
villages."]
[Footnote 2534: Reports of the municipal officers Perron (7 o'clock
in the morning), Sergent (8 o'clock), Mouchet, Gujard, and Thomas (9
o'clock).]
[Footnote 2535: Report of Saint Prix, commandant of the Val-de-Grâce
battalion (10 o'clock In the morning).--Report of Alexandre, commanding
the Saint-Marcel battalion. "The whole battalion was by no means ready
to march."--Official report of the Montreuil section. Bonneau, the
commander concludes to march only under protest and to avoid spilling
blood.]
[Footnote 2536: Deposition of Lareyrnie, a volunteer soldier of the Ile
Saint-Louis battalion.]
[Footnote 2537: Deposition of M. Witinghof,
lieutenant-general.--"Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck."
Letter of M. de Montmorin, June 21. "At two o'clock the gathering
amounted to 8,000 or 10,000 persons."]
[Footnote 2538: Moniteur, XII. 717. "What a misfortune for the freemen
who have transferred their powers to you, to find themselves reduced
to the cruel necessity of dipping their hands in the blood of
conspirators!" etc.--The character of the leaders is apparent in their
style. The incompetent copyist who drew up the address did not even know
the meaning of words. "The people so wills it, and its head is of more
account than that of crowned despots. That head is the genealogical tree
of the nation, and before that robust head the feeble reed must bend!"
He has already recited the fable of "The Oak and the Bulrush," and he
knows the names of Demosthenes, Cicero, and Catiline. It seems to be the
composition of a school master turned public letter writer, at a penny a
page.]
[Footnote 2539: Hua, "Mémoires," 134.]
[Footnote 2540: Moniteur, XII. 718.]
[Footnote 2541: "Chronique des cinquante jours," by Roederer,
syndic-attorney of the department.]
[Footnote 2542: Hua, 134.--Bourrienne, "Mémoires," I. 49. (He was with
Bonaparte in a restaurant, rue Saint-Honoré, near the Palais-Royal.) "On
going out we saw a troop coming from the direction of the market, which
Bonaparte estimated at from 5,000 to 6,000 men, all in rags and armed in
the oddest manner, yelling and shouting the grossest provocations, and
turning towards the Tuileries. It was certainly the vilest and most
abject lot that could be found in the faubourgs. 'Let us follow that
rabble,' said Bonaparte to me." They ascend the terrace on the river
bank. "I could not easily describe the surprise and indignation which
these scenes excited in him. He did not like so much weakness and
forbearance. 'Che coglione! he exclaimed in a loud tone. 'How could they
let those rascals in? Four or five hundred of them ought to have been
swept off with cannon, and the rest would still be running!'"]
[Footnote 2543: "Chronique des cinquante jours," by Roederer.--Deposition
of Lareynie.]
[Footnote 2544: Deposition of Lareynie.]
[Footnote 2545: Report of Saint-Prix.]
[Footnote 2546: Report by Mouchet.--Deposition of Lareynie. (The
interference of Sergent and Boucher-Réne is contested, but Raederer
thinks it very probable.)]
[Footnote 2547: M. Pinon, in command of the 5th legion, and M. Vannot,
commanding a battalion, tried to shut the iron gate of the archway, but
are driven back and told: "You want thousands to perish, do you, to
save one man?" This significant expression is heard over and over
again during the Revolution, and it explains the success of the
insurrections.--Alexandre, in command of the Saint-Marcel battalion,
says in his report: "Why make a resistance which can be of no usefulness
to the public, one which may even compromise it a great deal more?..."]
[Footnote 2548: Deposition of Lareynie. The attitude of Santerre is here
clearly defined. At the foot of the staircase in the court he is stopped
by a group of citizens, who threaten "to make him responsible for
any harm done," and tell him: "You alone are the author of this
unconstitutional assemblage; it is you alone who have led away these
worthy people. You are a rascal!"--"The tone of these honest citizens in
addressing the sieur Santerre made him turn pale. But, encouraged by
a glance from the sieur Legendre, he resorted to a hypocritical
subterfuge, and addressing the troop, he said: 'Gentlemen, draw up
a report, officially stating that I refuse to enter the king's
apartments.' The only answer the crowd made, accustomed to divining what
Santerre meant, was to hustle the group of honest citizens out of the
way."]
[Footnote 2549: Depositions of four of the national guard, Lecrosnier,
Gossé, Bidault, and Guiboult.--Reports of Acloque and de Lachesnaye,
commanding officers of the legion.--"Chronique des cinquante jours," by
Roederer.--Ibid. p.65: "I have to state that, during the Convention, the
butcher Legendre declared to Boissy d'Anglas, from whom I had it, that
the plan was to kill the king."--Prudhomme, "Crimes de la Révolution,"
III.43. "The king was to be assassinated. We heard citizens all in rags
say that it was a pity; he looks like a good sort of a bastard."]
[Footnote 2550: Madame Campan, "Mémoires," II. 212. "M. Vannot,
commander of the battalion, had turned aside a weapon aimed at the king.
One of the grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas warded off a blow with
a sword, aimed in the same direction with the same intention."]
[Footnote 2551: Declaration of Lachesnaye, in command of the
legion.--Moniteur, XII. 719 (evening session of June 20). Speech of M.
Alos, an eye-witness. (The king does this twice, using about the same
words, the first time immediately on the irruption of the crowd, and
the second time probably after Vergniaud's harangue.) Declaration of
Lachesnaye, in command of the legion.--Moniteur, XII. 719 (evening
session of June 20). Speech of M. Alos, an eye-witness. (The king does
this twice, using about the same words, the first time immediately
on the irruption of the crowd, and the second time probably after
Vergniaud's harangue.)]
[Footnote 2552: The engraving in the "Révolutions de Paris" represents
him seated, and separated from the crowd by an empty space; that is a
falsehood of the party..]
[Footnote 2553: The queen produces the same impression. Prudhomme, in
his journal, calls her "the Austrian panther," which word well expresses
the idea of her in the faubourgs. A prostitute stops before her and
bestows on her a volley of curses. The reply of the queen is: "Have I
ever done you any wrong?" "No; but it is you who do so much harm to the
nation." "You have been deceived," replies the queen. "I married the
King of France. I am the mother of the dauphin. I am a French woman. I
shall never again see my own country. I shall never be either happy or
miserable anywhere but in France. When you loved me I was happy then."
The prostitute burst into tears. "Ah. Madame, forgive me! I did not know
you. I see that you have been very good." Santerre, however, wishing
to put an end to this emotion, cries out: "The girl is drunk "--(Madame
Campan, II. 214.--Report by Mandat, an officer of the legion.)]
[Footnote 2554: Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 213. "Citizens, you have just
legally made known your will to the hereditary representative of the
nation; you have done this with the dignity, with the majesty of a free
people! There is no doubt that your demands will be reiterated by the
eighty-three departments, while the king cannot refrain from acquiescing
in the manifest will of the people."]