through the fusillade of grape. They wanted to show him the
dispositions they had just made on the garden side. "There is no
question of that," said he; "you must go to the Assembly; it is the
King's order." The unfortunate soldiers flattered themselves that they
might still {311} be of use. "Yes, brave Swiss," cried Baron de
Viomesnil, "go and find the King. Your ancestors did so more than
once." In spite of their chagrin at abandoning the field of which they
they had just become masters, they obeyed. Their only thought was to
repair to that Assembly where a last humiliation awaited them. The
officers had the drums beat the call to arms, and, in spite of the rain
of balls from every side, they succeeded in marshalling the soldiers as
if for a dress parade in front of the palace, opposite the garden. The
signal for departure was given. An unforeseen peril was reserved for
these heroes. The battalions of the National Guard, stationed at the
door of the Pont Royal, at that of the Manege court, and the beginning
of the terrace of the Feuillants, had stood still, with their weapons
grounded, since the affray began. But hardly had the Swiss entered the
grand alley than these battalions, neutral until now, detailed a number
of individuals who hid behind the trees, and fired, with their muzzles
almost touching the troops. On reaching the middle of the alley, the
Swiss, who hardly deigned to return this fire, divided into two
columns. The first, turning to the right under the trees, went towards
the staircase leading to the Assembly from the terrace of the
Feuillants. The second, which followed at a short distance and acted
as a rearguard, went on as far as the Place Louis XV., where it found
the mounted gendarmes. If this body of cavalry had done its duty, it
would have united with the {312} Swiss. But, far from that, it
declared for the insurrection, and sabred them. It is said that the
officers and soldiers killed in this retreat across the garden were
interred at the foot of the famous chestnut whose exceptional
forwardness has earned the surname of the tree of March 20. Thus the
Bonapartist tree of popular tradition owes its astonishing strength of
vegetation solely to the human compost furnished by the corpses of the
last defenders of royalty.
The first column, that which was on its way to the Assembly, presented
itself resolutely in front of the terrace of the Feuillants, which was
full of people. These took flight, and the Swiss entered the corridors
of the Assembly. Carried away by his zeal, one of their officers,
Baron de Salis, entered the hall with his naked sword in his hand. The
left uttered a cry of affright. A deputy went out to order the
commander, Baron de Durler, to make his troop lay down their arms. M.
de Durler, having refused, he was conducted to the King. "Sire," said
he, with sorrowful indignation, "they want me to lay down arms." Louis
XVI. responded: "Put them in the hands of the National Guard; I am not
willing that brave men like you should perish." To surrender arms!
Did Louis XVI. fully comprehend that for soldiers like these such an
outrage was a hundred times worse than death? The King's words were
like a thunderbolt to them. They wept with rage. "But," said they,
"even if we have no more cartridges, we can still defend ourselves with
our {313} bayonets!" Such devotion, such courage, such discipline,
such heroism to end like this! And yet the unfortunate Swiss, though
grieved to the heart, resigned themselves to the last sacrifice their
master required from their fidelity, laid down their arms, and were
imprisoned in the ancient church of the Feuillants, to the number of
about two hundred and fifty. It was all that remained of this
magnificent regiment. The others had been killed in the garden or had
their throats cut in the palace, and the greater part of the survivors
were to be assassinated in the massacres of September.
"Thus ended the French King's regiment of Swiss Guards, like one of
those sturdy oaks whose prolonged existence has affronted so many
storms, and which nothing but an earthquake can uproot. It fell the
very day on which the ancient French monarchy also fell. It counted
more than a century and a half of faithful services rendered to France.
To destroy this worthy corps a combination of unfortunate events had
been required; it had been necessary to deprive the Swiss of their
artillery, their ammunition, their staff, and the presence of the King;
to enfeeble them five days before the combat by sending away a
detachment of three hundred men; to forbid the two hundred men who
accompanied the King to the Assembly to fire a shot; to render useless
the wise dispositions of MM. de Maillardoz and de Bachmann by an
ill-advised order at the moment of the attack; and to have M.
d'Hervilly come at {314} the moment of victory to divide and enfeeble
the defence." (Relation of Colonel Pfyffer d'Altishoffen.)
The Swiss republic has honored the memory of these sons who died for a
king. At the entrance of Lucerne, in the side of a rock, a grotto has
been hollowed out, in which may be seen a colossal stone lion, the work
of Thorwaldsen, the famous Danish sculptor. This lion, struck by a
lance, and lying down to die, holds tight within his claws the royal
escutcheon upon a shield adorned with fleurs-de-lis. Underneath the
lion are engraved the names of the Swiss officers and soldiers who died
between August 10 and September 2, 1792. Above it may be read this
inscription cut in the rock:--
HELVETIORUM FIDEI AC VIRTUTI.
_To the fidelity and courage of the Swiss._
Louis XVI. had to repent his weakness bitterly. The wretched monarch
had at last reached the bottom of the abyss where the slippery descent
of concessions ends, and for having been willing to spare the blood of
a few criminals, he was to see that of his most loyal and faithful
adherents shed in torrents. It is said that Napoleon, who witnessed
the combat from a distance, cried several times, in speaking of Louis
XVI.: "What, then, wretched man! Have you no cannon to sweep out this
rabble?" Behind the people of the 10th of August, the man of Brumaire
already appeared as a conqueror.
{315}
Work away, then, insurgents! This unknown young man, this
"straight-haired Corsican," hidden in the crowd, will be the master of
you all! He will crush the Revolution, he will made himself
all-powerful in that palace of the Tuileries where the riot is lording
it at this moment! And after him, the brother of the King whom you
insult to-day and will kill to-morrow, the Count de Provence, that
_emigre_ who is the object of your hatred, will triumphantly enter the
palace of his forefathers. And each of them in his turn, the Corsican
gentleman and the brother of Louis XVI., will be received with the same
transports in that fatal palace which is now red with the blood of the
Swiss! How surprised these people would be if they could foresee what
the future has in store for them! Among these frenzied demagogues,
these ultra-revolutionists, these dishevelled Marseillais with lips
blackened by powder, and jackets all blood, how many will be the
fanatical admirers and soldiers of a Caesar!
{316}
XXXI.
THE RESULTS OF THE COMBAT.
The results of the combat were, at the Assembly, the decree of
suspension, or, rather, the decree of deposition; at the Tuileries,
devastation, massacre, and conflagration. From the moment when he
ordered his last defenders to lay down their arms, Louis XVI. was but
the phantom of a king.
While the fight was going on, Robespierre had remained in hiding; Marat
had not quitted the bottom of a cellar. Even Danton, the man of
"audacity," did not show himself until after the last shot had been
fired. But now that fate had declared for the Revolution, those who
were trembling and hesitating a moment since, were those who talked the
loudest. Louis XVI., who had been dreaded a few minutes ago, was
insulted and jeered at. The National Assembly, royalist in the
morning, became the accomplice of the republicans during the day. It
perceived, moreover, that the 10th of August was aimed at it not less
than at the throne, and that its own downfall would be contemporaneous
with that of royalty.
Huguenin, the president of the new Commune, came boldly to the bar, and
said to the deputies: {317} "The people is your sovereign as well as
ours!" Another individual, likewise at the bar, exclaimed in a
menacing tone: "For a long time the people has asked you to pronounce
the deposition, and you have not even yet pronounced the suspension!
Know that the Tuileries is on fire, and that we shall not extinguish it
until the vengeance of the people has been satisfied!" Vergniaud, who
in the morning had promised the King the support of the Assembly, no
longer even attempted to stem the revolutionary tide. He came down
from the president's chair, and went to a desk to write the decree
which should give a legislative form to the will of the insurrection.
In virtue of this decree, which Vergniaud read from the tribune, and
which was unanimously adopted, the royal power was suspended and a
National Convention convoked. In reality this was a veritable
deposition, and yet the Assembly still hesitated to give the last shock
which should uproot the royal tree that had sheltered beneath its
branches so many faithful generations. It declared that in default of
a civil list, a salary should be granted to the King during his
suspension; that Louis XVI. and his family should have a palace, the
Luxembourg, for a residence, and that he should be appointed governor
of the Prince-royal.
Concerning this, Madame de Stael has remarked in her _Considerations
sur les principaux evenements de la Revolution francaise_: "Ambition
for power mingled with the enthusiasm of principles in the republicans
{318} of 1792, and several among them offered to maintain royalty if
all the ministerial places were given to their friends.... The throne
they attacked served to shelter them, and it was not until after they
had triumphed that they found themselves exposed before the people."
What the Girondins wanted was merely a change in the ministry; it was
not a revolution. Vergniaud felt that he had been distanced. When he
read the act of deposition, his voice was sad, his attitude dejected,
and his action feeble. Did he foresee that the King and himself would
die at the same place, on the same scaffold, and only nine months apart?
Louis XVI. listened to the invectives launched against him, and to the
decree depriving him of royal power, without a change of color. At the
very moment when the vote was taken, he bent towards Deputy Coustard,
who sat beside the box of the _Logographe_, and said with the greatest
tranquillity: "What you are doing there is not very constitutional."
Impassive, and speaking of himself as of a king who had lived a
thousand years before, he leaned his elbows on the front of the box,
and looked on, like a disinterested spectator, at the lugubrious
spectacle that was unrolled before him.
Marie Antoinette, on the contrary, was shuddering. So long as the
combat lasted, a secret hope had thrilled her. But when she saw them
bringing to the Assembly and laying on the table the jewel-cases,
trinkets, and portfolios which the insurgents had just {319} taken from
her bedroom at the Tuileries; when she heard the victorious cries of
the rioters; when Vergniaud's voice sounded in her ears like a funeral
knell--she could hardly contain her grief and indignation. For one
instant she closed her eyes. But presently she haughtily raised her
head.
The tide was rising, rising incessantly. Petitioners demanded
sometimes the deposition, and sometimes the death, of the King. This
dialogue was overheard between the painter David and Merlin de
Thionville, who were talking together about Louis XVI.: "Would you
believe it? Just now he asked me, as I was passing his box, if I would
soon have his portrait finished."--"Bah! and what did you say?"--"That
I would never paint the portrait of a tyrant again until I should have
his head in my hat."--"Admirable! I don't know a more sublime answer,
even in antiquity."
The demands of the Revolution grew greater from minute to minute. In
the decree of deposition which had been voted on Vergniaud's
proposition, it was stipulated that the ministers should continue to
exercise their functions. A few instants later, Brissot caused it to
be decreed that they had lost the nation's confidence. A new ministry
was nominated during the session. The three ministers dismissed before
June 20--Roland, Claviere, and Servan--were reinstalled by acclamation
in the ministries of the Interior, of Finances, and of War. The other
ministers were chosen by ballot: Danton was nominated to that {320} of
Justice by 282 votes, Monge to the Marine by 150, and Lebrun-Tondu to
Foreign Affairs by 100. This ballot established the fact that out of
the 749 members composing the Assembly, but 284 were present. Two days
before, 680 had voted on the question concerning Lafayette, and now, at
the moment of the final crisis, not more than 284 could be found! All
the others had disappeared, through fear or through disgust. The
Revolution was accomplished by an Assembly thus reduced, and a Commune
whose members had appointed themselves. Marie Antoinette, in her pride
as Queen, was unable to conceive that there could be anything serious
in such a government. When Lebrun-Tondu's appointment was announced,
she leaned towards Bigot de Sainte-Croix, and said in his ear: "I hope
you will none the less believe yourself Minister of Foreign Affairs."
The unfortunate royal family were still prisoners in the narrow box of
the _Logographe_. The heat there was horrible: the sun scorched the
white walls of this furnace where the captives listened, as in a place
of torture, to the most ignoble insults and the most sanguinary threats.
At seven o'clock in the evening, Count Francois de la Rochefoucauld
succeeded in approaching the box of the _Logographe_. He thus
describes its aspect at this hour: "I approached the King's box; it was
unguarded except by some wretches who were drunk and paid no attention
to me, so that I half-opened the door. I saw the King with a fatigued
and {321} downcast face; he was sitting on the front of the box, coldly
observing through his lorgnette the scoundrels who were talking,
sometimes one after another, and sometimes all together. Near him was
the Queen, whose tears and perspiration had completely drenched her
fichu and her handkerchief. The Dauphin was asleep on her lap, and
resting partly also on that of Madame de Tourzel. Mesdames Elisabeth,
de Lamballe, and Madame the King's daughter were at the back of the
box. I offered my services to the King, who replied that it would be
too dangerous to try to see him again, and added that he was going to
the Luxembourg that evening. The Queen asked me for a handkerchief; I
had none; mine had served to bind up the wounds of the Viscount de
Maille, whom I had rescued from some pikemen. I went out to look for a
handkerchief, and borrowed one from the keeper of the refreshment-room;
but as I was taking it to the Queen, the sentinels were relieved, and I
found it impossible to approach the box."
We have just seen what occurred at the Assembly after the close of the
combat. Cast now a glance at the Tuileries. What horrible scenes,
what cries of grief, how many wounded, dead, and dying, what streams of
blood! What had become of those Swiss who, either in consequence of
their wounds, or through some other motive, had been obliged to remain
at the palace? Eighty of them had defended the grand staircase like
heroes, against an immense crowd, and died after prodigies of valor.
Seventeen {322} Swiss who were posted in the chapel, and who had not
fired a shot since the fight began, hoped to save their lives by laying
down their arms. It was a mistake. They had their throats cut like
the others. Two ushers of the King's chamber, MM. Pallas and de
Marchais, sword in hand, and hats pulled down over their eyes, said:
"We don't want to live any longer; this is our post; we ought to die
here!" and they were killed at the door of their master's chamber.
M. Dieu died in the same way on the threshold of the Queen's bedroom.
A certain number of nobles who had not followed the King to the
Assembly succeeded in escaping the blows of the assassins. Passing
through the suite of large apartments towards the Louvre Gallery, they
rejoined there some soldiers detailed to guard an opening contrived in
the flooring, so as to prevent the assailants from entering by that
way. They crossed this opening on boards, and reached the extremity of
the gallery unhindered; then, going down the staircase of Catharine de
Medici, they managed to gain the streets near the Louvre. These may
have been saved. But woe to all men, no matter what their conditions,
who remained in the Tuileries! Domestic servants, ushers, laborers,
every soul was put to death. They killed even the dying, even the
surgeons who were caring for the wounded. It is Barbaroux himself who
describes the murderers as "cowardly fugitives during the action,
assassins after the victory, butchers {323} of dead bodies which they
stabbed with their swords so as to give themselves the honors of the
combat. In the apartments, on roofs, and in cellars, they massacred
the Swiss, armed or disarmed, the chevaliers, soldiers, and all who
peopled the chateau.... Our devotion was of no avail," says Barbaroux
again; "we were speaking to men who no longer recognized us."
And the women, what was their fate? When the firing began, the Queen's
ladies and the Princesses descended to Marie Antoinette's apartments on
the ground-floor. They closed the shutters, hoping to incur less
danger, and lighted a candle so as not to be in total darkness. Then
Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel exclaimed: "Let us light all the
candles in the chandelier, the sconces, and the torches; if the
brigands force open the door, the astonishment so many lights will
cause them may delay the first blow and give us time to speak." The
ladies set to work. When the invaders broke in, sabre in hand, the
numberless lights, which were repeated also in the mirrors, made such a
contrast with the daylight they had just left, that for a moment they
remained stupefied. And yet, the Princess de Tarente, Madame de La
Roche-Aymon, Mademoiselle de Tourzel, Madame de Ginestons, and all the
other ladies were about to perish when a man with a long beard made his
appearance, crying to the assassins in Petion's name: "Spare the women;
do not dishonor the nation."
{324}
Madame Campan had attempted to go up a stairway in pursuit of her
sister. The murderers followed her. She already felt a terrible hand
against her back, trying to seize her by her clothes, when some one
cried from the foot of the stairs: "What are you doing up
there?"--"Hey!" said the murderer, in a tone that did not soon leave
the trembling woman's ears. The other voice replied: "We don't kill
women." The Revolution goes fast; it will kill them next year. Madame
Campan was on her knees. Her executioner let go his hold. "Get up,
hussy," he said to her, "the nation spares you!" In going back she
walked over corpses; she recognized that of the old Viscount de Broves.
The Queen had sent word to him and to another old man as the last night
began, that she desired them to go home. He had replied: "We have been
only too obedient to the King's orders in all circumstances when it was
necessary to expose our lives to save him; this time we will not obey,
and will simply preserve the memory of the Queen's kindness."
What a sight the Tuileries presented! People walked on nothing but
dead bodies. A comic actor drank a glass of blood, the blood of a
Swiss; one might have thought himself at a feast of Atreus. The
furniture was broken, the secretaries forced open, the mirrors smashed
to pieces. Prudhomme, the journalist of the _Revolutions de Paris_,
thinks that "Medicis-Antoinette has too long studied in them {325} the
hypocritical look she wears in public." What a sinister carnival!
Drunken women and prostitutes put on the Queen's dresses and sprawl on
her bed. Through the cellar gratings one can see a thousand hands
groping in the sand, and drawing forth bottles of wine. Everywhere
people are laughing, drinking, killing. The royal wine runs in
streams. Torrents of wine, torrents of blood. The apartments, the
staircase, the vestibule, are crimson pools. Disfigured corpses,
pictures thrust through with pikes, musicians' stands thrown on the
altar, the organ dismounted, broken,--that is how the chapel looks.
But to rob and murder is not enough: they will kindle a conflagration.
It devours the stables of the mounted guards, all the buildings in the
courts, the house of the governor of the palace: eighteen hundred yards
of barracks, huts, and houses. Already the fire is gaining on the
Pavilion of Marsan and the Pavilion of Flora. The flames are perceived
at the Assembly. A deputy asks to have the firemen sent to fight this
fire which threatens the whole quarter Saint-Honore. Somebody remarks
that this is the Commune's business. But the Commune, to use a phrase
then in vogue, thinks it has something else to do besides preventing
the destruction of the tyrant's palace. It turns a deaf ear. The
messenger returns to the Assembly. It is remarked that the flames are
doing terrible damage. The president decides to send orders to the
firemen. But the firemen return, saying: "We can do nothing. They
{326} are firing on us. They want to throw us into the fire." What is
to be done? The president bethinks himself of a "patriot" architect,
Citizen Palloy, who generally makes his appearance whenever there are
"patriotic" demolitions to be accomplished. It is he whom they send to
the palace, and who succeeds in getting the flames extinguished. The
Tuileries are not burned up this time. The work of the incendiaries of
1792 was only to be finished by the petroleurs of 1871.
Night was come. A great number of the Parisian population were
groaning, but the revolutionists triumphed with joy. Curiosity to see
the morning battle-field, urged the indolent, who had stayed at home
all day, towards the quays, the Champs-Elysees, and the Tuileries.
They looked at the trees under which the Swiss had fallen, at the
windows of the apartments where the massacres had taken place, at the
ravages made by the hardly extinguished fire. The buildings in the
three courts: Court of the Princes, Court Royal, Court of the Swiss,
had been completely consumed. Thenceforward these three courts formed
only one, separated from the Carrousel by a board partition which
remained until 1800, and was replaced by a grating finished on the very
day when the First Consul came to install himself at the Tuileries.
The inscription which was placed above the wooden partition: "On August
10 royalty was abolished; it will never rise again," disappeared even
before the proclamation of the Empire.
{327}
Squads of laborers gathered up the dead bodies and threw them into
tumbrels. At midnight an immense pile was erected on the Carrousel
with timbers and furniture from the palace. There the corpses of the
victims that had strewed the courts, the vestibule, and the apartments
were heaped up, and set on fire.
The National Guard had disappeared; it figured with the King and the
Assembly itself, among the vanquished of the day. Instead of its
bayonets and uniforms one saw nothing in the stations and patrols that
divided Paris but pikes and tatters. "Some one came to tell me,"
relates Madame de Stael, "that all of my friends who had been on guard
outside the palace, had been seized and massacred. I went out at once
to learn the news; the coachman who drove me was stopped at the bridge
by men who silently made signs that they were murdering on the other
side. After two hours of useless efforts to pass I learned that all
those in whom I was interested were still living, but that most of them
had been obliged to hide in order to escape the proscription with which
they were threatened. When I went to see them in the evening, on foot,
and in the mean houses where they had been able to find shelter, I
found armed men lying before the doors, stupid with drink, and only
half waking to utter execrable curses. Several women of the people
were in the same state, and their vociferations were more odious still.
Whenever a patrol intended to maintain order made its appearance, {328}
honest people fled out of its way; for what they called maintaining
order was to contribute to the triumph of assassins and rid them of all
hindrances."
At last the city was going to rest a while after so much emotion! It
was three o'clock in the morning. The Assembly, which had been in
session for twenty-four hours, adjourned. Only a few members remained
in the hall to maintain the permanence proclaimed at the beginning of
the crisis. The inspectors of the hall came for Louis XVI. and his
family, to conduct them, not to the Luxembourg, but to the upper story
of the convent of the Feuillants, above the corridor where the offices
and committees of the Assembly had been established. It was there, in
the cells of the monks, that the royal family were to pass the night.
Then all was silent once more. Royalty was dying!
{329}
XXXII.
THE ROYAL-FAMILY IN THE CONVENT OF THE FEUILLANTS.