the Horloge, his thoughts recurred {294} to the faithful adherents who
had so uselessly devoted themselves to his defence, and whom he was
leaving at the Tuileries without watchword or direction. "What is
going to become of all those who have stayed up stairs?" said
he.--"Sire," replied Roederer, "it seemed to me that they were all in
colored coats. Those who have swords need only lay them off, follow
you, and go out through the garden."--"That is true," returned Louis
XVI. In the vestibule, a little further on, as he was about to quit
the fatal palace which fate had condemned him never to re-enter, he had
a last moment of scruple and hesitation. He said again: "But after
all, there are not many people on the Carrousel."
"True, Sire," replied Roederer; "but the faubourgs will soon arrive,
and all the sections are armed, and have assembled at the municipality;
besides, there are neither men enough here, nor are they determined
enough to resist the actual gathering on the Carrousel, which has
twelve pieces of artillery."
The die is cast; Louis XVI. abandons the Tuileries. Respect alone
restrains the grief and indignation that move the Swiss soldiers and
the noblemen whose weapons and whose blood have been refused. They
looked down from the windows at the cortege, or better, the funeral
procession of royalty. It was about seven o'clock in the morning. The
escort was drawn up in two lines. The members of the department formed
a circle around the royal family. Roederer walked first. Then came
the King, with {295} Bigot de Sainte-Croix, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, at his side; the Queen followed, giving her left arm to M. du
Bouchage, Minister of Marine, and her right hand to the Dauphin, who
held Madame de Tourzel with the other; then Madame Royale and Madame
Elisabeth, with De Joly, Minister of Justice; the Minister of War,
D'Abancourt, leading the Princess de Lamballe. The Ministers of the
Interior and of Taxes, Champion de Villeneuve and Le Roux de la Ville,
closed the procession. The air was pure and the morning radiant. The
sun lighted up the garden, the marble sculpture, and the sheets of
water. Birds sang under the trees, and nature smiled on this day of
mourning as if it were a festival.
Looking at the populace, Madame Elisabeth said: "All those people have
gone astray; I should like them to be converted; I should not like them
to be punished." Tears stood in the eyes of the little Madame Royale.
The Princess de Lamballe said mournfully: "We shall never return to the
Tuileries!" The Prince de Poix, the Duke de Choiseul, Counts
d'Haussonville, de Viomenil, de Hervilly, and de Pont-l'Abbe, the
Marquis de Briges, Chevalier de Fleurieu, Viscount de Saint-Priest, the
Marquis de Nantouillet, MM. de Fresnes and de Salaignac, the King's
equerries, and Saint-Pardoux, the equerry of Madame Elisabeth, followed
the sad procession. They passed through the grand alley unobstructed
as far as the parterres, then turned to the right, {296} toward the
alley of the chestnut trees. There a halt of some minutes occurred, in
order to give time for warning the Assembly. Louis XVI. looked down at
a heap of dead leaves which had been swept up by the gardeners after a
storm the night before. "There are a good many leaves," said the King;
"they are falling early this year." It was only a few days before that
Manuel had written in a journal that the King would not last until the
falling of the leaves. Perhaps Louis XVI. remembered the prophecy of
the revolutionist; the Dauphin, with the carelessness belonging to his
age, amused himself by kicking about the dead leaves, the leaves that
had fallen as his father's crown was falling at this moment.
Before the royal family could enter the Assembly chamber, it was
necessary that the step the King had taken should be announced to the
deputies. The president of the department undertook this commission.
A deputation of twenty-four members was at once sent to meet Louis XVI.
They found him in the large alley at the foot of the terrace of the
Feuillants, a few steps from the staircase leading up to it, and which
goes as far as the lobby through which one enters the hall occupied by
the National Assembly. "Sire," said the leader of the deputation, "the
Assembly, eager to contribute to your safety, offers to you and your
family an asylum in its midst."
During this time, the terrace and the staircase had become thronged by
a furious crowd. A man {297} carrying a long pole cried out in rage:
"No, no; they shall not enter the Assembly. They are the cause of all
our troubles. This must be ended. Down with them!" Roederer,
standing on the fourth step of the staircase, cried: "Citizens, I
demand silence in the name of the law. You seem disposed to prevent
the King and his family from entering the National Assembly; you are
not justified in opposing it. The King has a place there in virtue of
the Constitution; and though his family has none legally, they have
just been authorized by a decree to go there. Here are the deputies
sent to meet the King; they will attest the existence of this decree."
The deputies confirmed his words. Nevertheless, the crowd still
hesitated to leave the way clear. The man with the pole kept on
brandishing it, and crying: "Down with them! down with them!"
Roederer, going on to the terrace, snatched the pole and flung it into
the garden. The crowd was so compact that in the midst of the squabble
some one stole the Queen's watch and her purse. A man with a sinister
face approached the Dauphin, took him from Marie Antoinette, and lifted
him in his arms. The Queen uttered a cry. "Do not be frightened,"
said the man; "I will do him no harm." Another person said to Louis
XVI.: "Sire, we are honest men; but we are not willing to be betrayed
any longer. Be a good citizen, and don't forget to drive away your
shavelings and your wife." Insults and threats resounded from all
sides. Finally, after an actual struggle, the royal family succeeded
{298} in opening a passage. They made their way with difficulty
through the narrow lobby, choked with people, penetrated the crowd, and
entered the session chamber. It was there that royalty, humiliated and
overcome, was to lie at the point of death under the eyes of its
implacable enemies.
{299}
XXIX.
THE BOX OF THE LOGOGRAPH.
The royal family has just entered the session chamber. It will find
there not an asylum, but the vestibule of the prison and the scaffold.
The man who had taken the Dauphin from the Queen's arms at the door of
the Assembly set him down on the secretary's desk with an air of
triumph, and the young Prince was greeted with applause. Marie
Antoinette advanced with dignity. According to Vaublanc's expression,
she would not have had a different bearing or a more august serenity on
a day of royal pomp. Louis XVI. took a place near the president. The
Queen, her daughter, Madame Elisabeth, and Madame de Tourzel sat down
on the ministerial benches. As soon as the Dauphin was left to
himself, he sprang towards his mother. A voice cried: "Take him to the
King! The Austrian woman is unworthy of the people's confidence." An
usher attempted to obey this injunction. However, the child began to
cry, people were affected, and he was allowed to remain with the Queen.
At this moment some armed noblemen made their appearance at the
extremity of the hall. "You {300} compromise the King's safety!"
exclaimed some one, and the nobles retired.
Order was restored. Louis XVI. began to speak. "I came here," said
he, "to prevent a great crime, and I think that I could be nowhere more
secure than amidst the representatives of the nation." Alas! the crime
will not be prevented, but only adjourned. Vergniaud occupied the
president's chair. "Sire," he replied, "you may count on the firmness
of the National Assembly. It knows its duties; its members have sworn
to die in defending the rights of the people and the constituted
authorities."
So they still called Louis XVI. Sire; presently they will call him
nothing but Louis Capet. They allow him to take an armchair near the
president; but in a few minutes they will find this place too good for
him. And it is the voice of this very Vergniaud who, a few hours from
now, will pronounce his deposition, and five months later his sentence
of death.
Hardly had the unhappy King sat down when Chabot, the unfrocked
Capuchin, claimed that a clause of the Constitution forbade the
Assembly to deliberate in presence of the sovereign. Under this
pretext his place was changed, and Louis XVI. with all his family was
shut up in the reporters' gallery, sometimes called the box of the
Logograph. This miserable hole, about six feet high by twelve wide,
was on a level with the last ranks of the Assembly, behind the
president's chair and the seats of the {301} secretaries. It was
ordinarily set apart for the editors, or rather for the stenographers
of a great newspaper which reported the proceedings, and which was
called the _Journal logographique_, or the _Logotachygraphe_, usually
abbreviated into the _Logographe_. Louis XVI. seated himself in the
front of the box, Marie Antoinette half-concealed herself in a corner,
where she sought a little shelter against so many humiliations. Her
children and their governess took places on a bench with Madame
Elisabeth and the Princess de Lamballe. Several noblemen, the latest
courtiers of misfortune, stood up behind them.
Roederer, who was at the bar, then made a report in the name of the
municipal department, in which he explained all that had taken place.
He declared that he had said to the soldiers and National Guard
detailed for the defence of the Tuileries: "We do not ask you to shed
the blood of your brethren nor to attack your fellow-citizens; your
cannons are there for your defence, not for an attack; but I require
this defence in the name of the law, in the name of the Constitution.
The law authorizes you, when violence is used against you, to repress
it vigorously.... Once more, you are not to be assailants, but to act
on the defensive only."
Roederer added that the cannoneers, instead of complying with his
urgent exhortations, gave no response save that of unloading their
pieces before him. After having explained how greatly the {302}
defence was disorganized, he thus ended his report: "We felt ourselves
no longer in a position to protect the charge confided to us; this
charge was the King; the King is a man; this man is a father. The
children ask us to assure the existence of the father; the law asks us
to assure the existence of the King of France; humanity asks of us the
existence of the man. No longer able to defend this charge, no other
idea presented itself than that of entreating the King to come with his
family to the National Assembly.... We have nothing to add to what I
have just said, except that, our force being paralyzed, and no longer
in existence, we can have none but that which it shall please the
National Assembly to communicate. We are ready to die in the execution
of the orders it may give us. We ask, while awaiting them, to remain
near it, being useless everywhere else." The Assembly, not then
suspecting that it would so soon depose Louis XVI., applauded without
contradiction from the galleries. The president said to Roederer: "The
Assembly has listened to your account with the greatest interest; it
invites you to be present at the session."
The advice given by Roederer to the King has been greatly blamed. The
event has seriously influenced the judgment since passed upon it. If
Louis XVI. had received the support he had a right to count on from the
representatives, things would have appeared in quite another light.
Count de Vaublanc, in his Memoirs, has rendered full justice {303} to
the loyal intentions of the municipal attorney. "The advice he gave
has been accounted a crime," says M. de Vaublanc; "I think it is an
unjust reproach. Until then he had done all that lay in his power to
contribute to the defence of the palace. He must have seen clearly
that as the King would not defend himself, he could no longer be
defended. If the rebels had been attacked, neither M. Roederer nor any
one else would have proposed going to the Assembly; but since they were
on the defensive, and without any recognized leader, the magistrate
might doubtless have been struck with a single thought: The King and
his family are about to be massacred. The King put an end to all
irresolution in saying these words: 'There is nothing more to do here.'"
At first, Louis XVI. seemed not to repent of the step he had been
obliged to take. Even in that wretched hole, the Logograph box, his
face at first was calm and even confident. As the shouting had
increased outside, Vergniaud ordered the removal of the iron grating
separating this box from the hall, so that in case the populace made an
irruption into the lobbies, the King could take refuge in the midst of
the deputies. In default of workmen and tools, the deputies nearest at
hand, the Duke de Choiseul, Prince de Poix, and the ministers,
undertook to tear away the grating, and Louis XVI. himself, accustomed
to the rough work of a locksmith, joined his efforts to theirs. The
fastenings having been broken in this manner, the unfortunate sovereign
seemed not {304} to doubt the sentiments of the National Assembly. He
pointed out the most remarkable deputies to the Dauphin, chatted with
several among them, and looked on at the session like a mere spectator
in a box at the theatre.
The royal family had been nearly two hours at the Assembly when all of
a sudden a frightful discharge of musketry and artillery was heard.
The deputies of the left grew pale with fear and anger, thinking
themselves betrayed. Casting glances of uneasiness and wrath at the
feeble monarch, they accused him of having ordered a massacre, and said
that all was lost. An officer of the National Guard rushed in, crying:
"We are pursued, we are overpowered!" The galleries, affrighted,
imagined that the Swiss would arrive at any moment. Excitement was at
its height. Sinister, imposing, dreadful moment! Solemn hour, when
the monarchy, amidst a frightful tempest, was like a venerable oak
which lightning has just stricken; when terror, wrath, and pity
disputed the possession of men's souls, and when the King, already
captive, was present like Charles V. at his own funeral. Marie
Antoinette had started. At the sound of the cannon her cheeks kindled
and her eyes blazed. A vague hope animated her. Perhaps, she said
within herself, the monarchy is at last to be avenged; perhaps the
Swiss are about to give the insurrection a lesson it will remember;
perhaps Louis XVI. will re-enter in triumph the palace of his
forefathers. The daughter of Caesars prayed God in silence, and
supplicated {305} Him to grant victory to the defenders of the throne.
Chimeras! vain hopes! Louis XVI. has no longer but one idea: to cast
off all responsibility for events. He mustered up, so to say, the
little authority he had yet remaining, to write hastily, in pencil, the
last order he was to sign: the order to stop firing. He flattered
himself that the prohibition to shoot would justify him completely in
the sight of the National Assembly, and induce them to treat him with
more consideration. But he asked himself anxiously who would be bold
enough to carry his order as far as the palace. Would not so perilous
a mission intimidate even the most heroic? M. d'Hervilly, who was at
this moment in the box of the Logograph, offered himself. As the King
and Queen at first refused his offer, and pointed out all the dangers
of such an errand: "I beg Their Majesties," cried he, "not to think of
my danger; my duty is to brave everything in their service; my place is
in the midst of the firing, and if I were afraid of it I should be
unworthy of my uniform." These words determined Louis XVI. to give M.
d'Hervilly the order signed by his own hand; the valiant nobleman,
bearing this order which was to have such disastrous consequences for
the defenders of the palace, went hastily out of the Assembly hall and
made his way to the Tuileries through a rain of balls and canister.
{306}
XXX.
THE COMBAT.
What had taken place at the Tuileries after the departure of the royal
family for the Assembly? At the very moment when they abandoned this
palace which they were never to see again, the Marseillais, the
vanguard of the insurrection, were pounding at the gate of the
principal courtyard, furious because it was not opened. A few minutes
later, the column of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, after passing through
the rue Saint-Honore, debouched on the Carrousel. It was under command
of the Pole, Lazouski, and Westermann, who directed it toward the gate
of the Royal Court. As the Marseillais had not yet succeeded in
forcing this, Westermann had it broken open. The cannoneers, whose
business it was to defend the palace, at once declared on the side of
the riot and turned their pieces against the Tuileries. With the
exception of the domestics there were now in the palace only the seven
hundred and fifty Swiss, about a hundred National Guards, and a few
nobles. The sole instructions the Swiss received came from old Marshal
de Mailly: "Do not let yourselves be taken." Louis XVI. had said
absolutely nothing on going {307} away, and his departure discouraged
his most faithful adherents. Add to this that the Swiss had not enough
cartridges. What was to be the fate of this fine regiment, this _corps
d'elite_, which everywhere and always had set the example of discipline
and military honor; which ever since the Revolution began had haughtily
repulsed every attempt to tamper with it; and whose red uniforms alone
struck terror into the populace? These brave soldiers guarded
respectfully the traditions of their ancestors who, at the famous
retreat of Meaux, had saved Charles IX. "But for my good friends the
Swiss," said that prince, "my life and liberty would have been in a bad
way." What the Swiss of the sixteenth century had done for one King of
France, the Swiss of the eighteenth century would have done for his
successor. They would have saved Louis XVI. if he would have let
himself be saved.
A major-general who had remained at the Tuileries, judging that it was
impossible to defend the courts with so few soldiers, cried:
"Gentlemen, retire to the palace!" "They had to leave six cannon in
the power of the enemy and to abandon the courts. It should have been
foreseen that it would be necessary to retake these under penalty of
being burned in the palace; the common soldiers said so loudly.
Meanwhile they obeyed, and were disposed as well as time and the
localities permitted. The stairs and windows were lined with
soldiers." (Account of Colonel Pfyffer d'Altishoffen, published at
Lucerne in 1819.)
{308}
One post occupied the chapel, and another the vestibule and grand
staircase. There were Swiss also at the windows looking into the
courts. "Down with the Swiss!" cried the Marseillais. "Down! down!
Surrender!" However, the struggle had not yet begun. Nearly fifteen
minutes elapsed between the invasion of the Royal Court and the first
shot. The Marseillais brandished their pikes and guns, but they were
not confident, for at first they dared not cross the court more than
half-way. The Swiss and National Guards who were at the windows made
gestures to induce the populace to quiet down and go away. The throng
of insurgents grew greater every minute. They had just got their
cannon into battery against the Tuileries. What the Swiss specially
intended was to defend the grand staircase, so as to prevent the
apartments on the first floor from being invaded. This staircase,
afterwards destroyed, was in the middle of the vestibule of the Horloge
Pavilion. The chapel, whose site was afterwards changed, was on the
level of the first landing; and from this landing, two symmetrical
flights, at right angles with the first, led to the Hall of the Hundred
Swiss (the future Hall of the Marshals). Westermann, bolder than the
other insurgents, had advanced as far as the vestibule with several
Marseillais. He began to parley with the soldiers, trying to set them
against their officers and induce them to lay down their arms.
Sergeant Blazer answered Westermann: "We are Swiss, and the Swiss only
lay down their weapons with their lives."
{309}
The officers caused a barricade of pieces of wood to be raised on the
first landing at the head of the stairs, to prevent new deputations
from coming to demoralize their men. The Marseillais attempted to take
it by main force. Some of them were armed with halberds terminating in
hooks. These they thrust below the barricade, trying to catch the men
defending it. They seized an adjutant in this way and disarmed him.
At the foot of the stairs "they seized the first Swiss sentry and
afterwards five others. They laid hold of them with hooked pikes which
they thrust into their coats and drew them forwards, disarming them at
once of their sabres, guns, and cartridge-boxes, amidst shouts of
laughter. Encouraged by the success of this forlorn hope, the whole
crowd pressed towards the foot of the stairs and there massacred the
five Swiss already taken and disarmed." (M. Peltier's Relation.) Then
a pistol-shot was heard. From which side did it come? Was it the
Marseillais who provoked the combat? Was it the Swiss who sought to
avenge their comrades, the sentries? Whoever it was, this pistol-shot
was the signal for the fight, which began about half-past ten in the
morning.
At first the Swiss had the advantage. Every shot they fired from the
windows told. Among the people crowding the courtyards were many who
had not come to fight, but through mere curiosity. Pale with fright,
they fled toward the Carrousel through the gate of the Royal Court,
which was strewn in an {310} instant with guns, pikes, and
cartridge-boxes. Some of the insurgents fell flat on their faces and
counterfeited death, rising occasionally and gliding along the walls to
gain the sentry-boxes of the mounted sentinels as best they could.
Even the majority of the cannoneers deserted their pieces and ran like
the rest. The courts were cleared in an instant. Two Swiss officers,
MM. de Durler and de Pfyffer, instantly made a sortie at the head of
one hundred and twenty soldiers, took four cannon, and found themselves
once more masters of the door of the Royal Court. A detachment of
sixty soldiers formed themselves into a hollow square before this door
and kept up a rolling fire on the rioters remaining on the Carrousel
until the place was completely swept. At the same time, on the side of
the garden, another detachment of Swiss, under Count de Salis, seized
three cannon and brought them to the palace gate. Napoleon, who
witnessed the combat from a distance, says: "The Swiss handled their
artillery with vigor; in ten minutes the Marseillais were chased as far
as the rue de l'Echelle, and never came back until the Swiss were
withdrawn by the King's order."