STORMING THE BASTILLE.
The Assembly petitions the King.--Resolves of the
Assembly.--Narrative of M. Dumont.--Scenes in Paris.--The People
organize for Self-defense.--The new Cockade.--The Abbé Lefebvre
d'Ormesson.--Treachery of the Mayor, Flesselles.--Character of De
Launey, Governor of the Bastille.--Sacking the Invalides.--The
Bastille Assailed.--Assassination of De Launey and of Flesselles.
It will be remembered that in the election of deputies to the
States-General Paris had been divided into sixty sections, each of
which chose two electors. These hundred and twenty electors, composed
of the most wealthy and influential citizens of Paris, immediately met
and passed the night deliberating respecting the anarchy into which the
city was so suddenly plunged. There were two foes whom the city had
now equally to dread--the court and the mob; the princes, bishops, and
nobles of the realm, with the armies and the resources of the kingdom,
on the one hand, and the starving multitude, infuriated by misery and
brutalized by ages of misrule, on the other. These were the two foes
against which the Revolution ever had to struggle. The mob triumphed
in the Reign of Terror. _Napoleon_ rescued the Revolution from their
bloody hands. The princes, with the aid of all the despotisms of
Europe, triumphed at Waterloo, and the Revolution was crushed _for a
time_.
Early on Monday morning, July 12th, the electors sent a deputation to
the National Assembly at Versailles soliciting the establishment of a
citizens' guard for the preservation of order. They gave a true and of
course a terrible description of the tumult prevailing in the city.[152]
The Assembly immediately sent a committee of twenty-four members to the
king, entreating him to withdraw the foreign troops from the capital.
But the queen and the court had now obtained such an ascendency over
the feeble-minded king that he was constrained to send a reply that he
should make no change whatever in his measures, and that the Assembly
could accomplish no useful purpose by interfering with matters in the
metropolis.
This was the day on which it was supposed armed bands were to march
to disperse the Assembly. It was publicly stated at Versailles that
a parliament composed of the nobles was to be suddenly organized at
Versailles, that all the deputies of the Third Estate were to be tried
for treason, that those members of the clergy and of the nobility
who had declared in their favor were to be consigned to perpetual
imprisonment, and that those who had been particularly active in the
cause of popular liberty were to be sent to the scaffold.[153]
In preparation for this event, the day before (Sunday, 12th), the
new ministry, bitterly hostile to the popular cause, had taken their
seats in the king's cabinet; Necker, a fugitive, was hastening into
the Netherlands; fifty thousand troops under Marshal Broglie, the most
determined advocate of aristocratic privilege, crowded the environs of
Paris and Versailles; and the troops on the 12th had been ordered to
those movements which were preliminary to the great event.[154]
Under such perilous circumstances the Assembly, with a heroism which
was truly sublime, determined, if they must perish, to perish in the
discharge of duty. No impartial man can read the record of these
days without paying the tribute of admiration to those men who thus
periled liberty and life in the cause of popular rights. "I have
studied history extensively," says De Tocqueville, "and I venture to
affirm that I know of no other revolution at whose outset so many men
were imbued with a patriotism as sincere, as disinterested, as truly
great."[155]
When the Assembly received the answer of the king refusing to withdraw
the troops, the only response it could make was in the passing of
resolutions. Unintimidated by menaces which might well appal the
stoutest heart, they resolved,
1. That M. Necker carried with him the regrets of the nation.
2. That it was the duty of the king immediately to remove the foreign
troops.
3. That the king's advisers, _of whatever rank_, were responsible for
present disorders.
4. That to declare the nation bankrupt was infamous.[156]
These were bold resolves. The third, it was well understood, referred
to the queen and to the two brothers of the king. The fourth branded
with infamy the measure which the court had already adopted in
virtually proclaiming bankruptcy and in making payments only in
paper.[157] After passing these resolutions the members of the Assembly
were in such peril that they deemed it best to keep together for mutual
protection. They voted their session permanent, and for seventy-two
hours, day and night, continued in their seats, one half deliberating
while the other half slept upon their benches. La Fayette, who was
one of the most resolute of this Spartan band, relieved the venerable
president in the labors of the chair.[158]
During the whole of Monday, even the king knew not what was passing
in Paris; and the Assembly, all communication being cut off between
Versailles and the metropolis, were in a state of most painful
suspense. Every moment they dreaded receiving the news that the city
was attacked, and the clangor of martial bands and arms around them led
them momentarily to expect the entrance of a military force for their
arrest. During the night of the 13th but little business was done, and
the wearied members remained talking in groups or dozing in their seats.
Tuesday morning, July 14th, dawned--ever-memorable day. The Assembly,
in the most perplexing anxiety, resumed its labors of preparing a
constitution. During the whole day no definite tidings could be
received from the city, and yet the booming of cannon was heard
proclaiming serious and sanguinary trouble. M. Dumont, who wrote under
the _nom de plume_ of Groenvelt,[159] thus describes the scene of which
he was an eye-witness:
"But it was in the evening (of July 14th) that the spectacle exhibited
by the Assembly was truly sublime. I shall not attempt to describe
the various emotions of joy, grief, and terror which at different
moments agitated those who were merely spectators and strangers in the
Assembly. But the expression is improper; we were none of us strangers.
For myself, I felt as a Frenchman, because I felt as a man. Nothing
could be more distracting than our uncertainty concerning the state
of Paris, from whence no person was suffered to stir. The Viscount de
Noailles[160] after repeated interruptions had contrived at last to get
away; but the intelligence which he brought served only to quicken our
impatience and increase our alarms.
"He knew that a multitude of people in search of arms had forced their
way into the Hospital for Military Invalids; that the Bastille was
besieged; that there had been already much bloodshed; that the troops
encamped in the Field of Mars were expected every moment to march
to the relief of that fortress, which could not be effected without
deluging all Paris in blood.
"At this dreadful news the Assembly was penetrated with horror.
A number of the members started from their seats by a kind of
involuntary impulse, as if determined to hasten to the defense of their
fellow-citizens. Others were for immediately bursting into the king's
presence to remonstrate with him on what had happened; to say to him
'Behold the fruits of your counsels; hear the cries of your victims;
see the destruction which is about to overwhelm your capital; say, are
you the king or the murderer of your people?'
"But these tumultuous emotions gave place to the more temperate measure
of sending a numerous deputation to the king, to represent to him the
calamities which threatened Paris, and again to conjure him to remove
the army. A long time elapsed, and the deputation did not return.
No one could account for the delay. In the mean time there came a
message that two deputies from the body of electors at Paris desired
admittance. They were instantly ordered in. Not a breath was heard;
every ear was attentive: every eye was strained; every mind was upon
the rack. From some unaccountable mistake it was some time before they
entered. Never was impatience wrought up to a higher pitch. At last
they appeared at the bar."[161]
But let us leave the Assembly listening at midnight of the 14th to
the narrative of the deputies from Paris, while we enter the city
to witness the transactions there. At three o'clock Monday morning
tumultuous masses of men were filling the streets. The barriers,
at which a tax had been levied upon all articles of food and other
merchandise which entered the city, had been seized, set on fire, and
were now blazing. It was expected every moment that the troops would
enter to sweep the streets with grapeshot; and from every steeple the
tocsin was pealing, summoning the people to arms. Thousands of those
who thronged the city, houseless wanderers, were haggard and wan with
famine, and knew not where to get a mouthful of bread.
There was a rumor that in the convents of the Lazarites a vast amount
of wheat was hoarded up. Resistless, like an inundation, the hungry
multitude poured in at the doors and filled the convent from attic to
cellar. They found vast quantities of wine in the vaults and more than
fifty cart-loads of wheat. They drank the wine freely, fed themselves,
and sent the wheat to the market to be distributed. But they would
allow no _stealing_. One wretch who was detected as a thief was
immediately hung by the populace![162]
They then ransacked the city in pursuit of arms. Every sword, musket,
and pistol from private residences was brought forward. The shops of
the gunsmiths furnished a small supply. The royal arsenal, containing
mainly curiosities and suits of ancient armor, was ransacked, and,
while all the costly objects of interest were left untouched, every
available weapon was taken away. The prison of La Force was filled
with debtors. The populace broke down the doors and liberated these
unfortunate men, incarcerated for no crime. The prison of the Chatelet
was filled with convicts. These felons, hearing of the tumult and of
the release of the prisoners of La Force, rose upon their keepers and
endeavored to batter down their doors. The same populace, called upon
by the keepers of the Chatelet, entered the court-yard of the prison,
and, with pike and bayonet, drove the convicts back again to their
cells.
[Illustration: SACKING THE ROYAL ARSENAL.]
Crowds were assembled around the Hôtel de Ville, where the electors
had met, demanding arms and the immediate establishment of a citizen's
guard. But the electors moved with great caution. They did not feel
authorized to establish the guard without the approval of the Assembly;
and the Assembly had not ventured to adopt the measure without the
consent of the king.
The excitement at last became so intense, and the importunity so
pressing, that the electors referred the people to the mayor of the
city. Flesselles, the mayor, was an officer of the crown, but he
immediately obeyed the summons of the people, and came to the Hôtel de
Ville. Here he feigned to be entirely on their side, declared that he
was their father, and that he would preside over their meetings only by
the election of the people. This announcement was received with a burst
of enthusiasm. It was immediately decided that a citizen's guard should
be established.
Paris then contained nearly a million of inhabitants, and almost every
able-bodied man was eager to mount guard for the protection of the
city. There was no want of men, but as yet there was no efficient
organization, and there were no arms. The electors were very anxious
to avoid insurrection, and at first wished only for a guard simply
strong enough to protect the city. They therefore decreed that each
of the sixty districts should elect and arm two hundred of its most
respectable citizens. These twelve thousand men would constitute a
very admirable police, but a very poor army. Matters, however, were so
rapidly approaching a crisis, and the peril so fast increasing, that
on the afternoon of the same day it was decided that this citizen's
guard should consist of forty-eight thousand men, and that the colors
of the cockade should be blue and red. La Fayette proposed that they
should add white, the old color of France, saying, "I thus give you a
cockade which will go round the world."
The electors then appointed a committee to watch day and night over
the safety of the city. Thus a new and independent government, with
its strong army of defense, entirely detached from the throne, was
established in a day. It was the sudden growth of uncontrollable
events, which no human wisdom had planned. "But to whom," said the
mayor, Flesselles, "shall the oath of fidelity be taken?" "To the
Assembly of the citizens," an elector promptly replied.
Every thinking man saw clearly that matters were approaching a fearful
crisis. Marshal Broglie, proud and self-confident, was at Versailles
in constant conference with the court, and having at his command
fifty thousand men, abundantly armed and equipped, all of whom could
in a few hours be concentrated in the streets of Paris. Bensenval
had assembled his force of several thousand Swiss and German troops,
cavalry and artillery, in the Field of Mars. The enormous fortress of
the Bastille, with its walls forty feet thick at its base and ten at
the top, rising with its gloomy towers one hundred and twenty feet in
the air, with cannon, charged with grapeshot, already run out at every
embrasure to sweep the streets, commanded the city. It was garrisoned
by about eighty French soldiers; but, as it was feared that they
could not be wholly relied upon, forty Swiss troops were thrown in
as a re-enforcement who would be as blindly obedient as the muskets
they shouldered. Every moment rumors were reaching the city that
Marshal Broglie was approaching with all his troops. Still no arms or
ammunition could be obtained.
In this state of things a report was brought that a large quantity
of powder had been embarked in a boat from the Hôtel des Invalides,
and was floating down the Seine to be conveyed to Versailles. The
people immediately ran to the Electors, and obtained an order to have
the powder seized and brought to the hotel. It was promptly done. A
heroic clergyman, the Abbé Lefebvre, who had great influence over the
populace, assumed the perilous task of guarding the powder in one of
the lower rooms of the Hôtel de Ville and distributing it among the
people. For forty-eight hours this brave man guarded his dangerous
treasure in the midst of fire-arms and the surging of the multitude. A
drunken man at one time staggered in smoking amid the casks.[163]
Guns only were wanting now. It was well known that there were large
stores of them somewhere in the city, but no one knew where to find
them.
The mayor, Flesselles, who the people now began to suspect was deluding
them merely to gain time for the royal troops to enter the city, being
urged to point out the dépôt, said that the manufactory at Charleville
had promised to send him thirty thousand guns, and that twelve
thousand he was momentarily expecting. Soon a large number of boxes
were brought, marked "guns." The mayor ordered them to be stored in the
magazine till he should have time to distribute them. But the impatient
people so urged the electors that they broke open the boxes and found
them filled with rubbish. Was the mayor deceiving them? many anxiously
inquired. Flesselles, much embarrassed, sent the people to two
monasteries where he said guns were concealed; but the friars promptly
threw open the doors, and no arms were to be found.
It soon became evident that Flesselles was trifling with the people,
hoping to keep them unarmed until the troops should arrive to crush
them mercilessly. He was well known as a dissolute man, hostile to
popular liberty, and was undoubtedly a traitor, and a spy at the Hôtel
de Ville, acting in communication with the court.[164]
The electors now ordered thirty thousand pikes to be manufactured.
Every smith was immediately employed, every forge was glowing, and for
thirty-six hours, day and night, without intermission, the anvils rang
till the pikes were finished. All this day of Monday the people thought
only of defending themselves, but night again came, another night of
terror, tumult, and sleeplessness.
The Bastille was the great terror of Paris. While that remained in
the hands of their enemies, with its impregnable walls and heavy guns
commanding the city, there was no safety. As by an instinct, during
the night of the 13th, the Parisians decided that the Bastille must be
taken. With that fortress in their hands they could defend themselves
and repel their foes. But how could the Bastille be taken? It was
apparently as unassailable as Gibraltar's rock. Nothing could be more
preposterous than the thought of storming the Bastille. "The idea,"
says Michelet, "was by no means reasonable. It was an act of faith."
The Bastille stood in the very heart of the Faubourg St. Antoine,
enormous, massive, and blackened with age, the gloomy emblem of royal
prerogative, exciting by its mysterious power and menace the terror
and the execration of every one who passed beneath the shadow of its
towers. Even the sports of childhood dare not approach the empoisoned
atmosphere with which it seemed to be enveloped.
M. de Launey was governor of the fortress, He was no soldier, but a
mean, mercenary man, despised by the Parisians. He contrived to draw
from the establishment, by every species of cruelty and extortion, an
income of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. He reduced the amount
of fire-wood to which the shivering inmates were entitled; made a
great profit on the wretched wine which he furnished to those who were
able to buy, and even let out the little garden within the inclosure,
thus depriving those prisoners who were not in dungeon confinement of
the privilege of a walk there, which they had a right to claim. De
Launey was not merely detested as Governor of the Bastille, but he was
personally execrated as a greedy, sordid, merciless man. Linguet's
Memoirs of the Bastille had rendered De Launey's name infamous
throughout Europe. Such men are usually cowards. De Launey was both
spiritless and imbecile. Had he not been both, the Bastille could not
have been taken.[165]
Still the people had no guns. It was ascertained that there was a
large supply at the Hôtel des Invalides, but how could they be taken
without any weapons of attack? Sombrueil, the governor, was a firm and
fearless man, and, in addition to his ordinary force, amply sufficient
for defense, he had recently obtained a strong detachment of artillery
and several additional cannon, showing that he was ready to do battle.
Within fifteen minutes march of the Invalides, Bensenval was encamped
with several thousand Swiss and German troops in the highest state
of discipline, and provided with all the most formidable implements
of war. Every moment rumors passed through the streets that the
troops from Versailles were on the march, headed by officers who were
breathing threatenings and slaughter.
With electric speed the rumor passed through the streets that there
was a large quantity of arms stored in the magazine of the Hôtel of
the Invalides. Before nine o'clock in the morning of the 14th, thirty
thousand men were before the Invalides; some with pikes, pistols, or
muskets, but most of them unarmed. The curate of St. Etienne led his
parishioners in this conflict for freedom. As this intrepid man marched
at the head of his flock he said to them, "My children, let us not
forget that all men are brothers." The bells of alarm ringing from the
steeples seemed to invest the movement with a religious character.
Those sublime voices, accustomed to summon the multitude to prayer, now
with their loudest utterance called them to the defense of their civil
and religious rights.[166]
Sombrueil perceived at once that the populace could only be repelled
by enormous massacre, and that probably even that, in the phrensied
state of the public mind, would be ineffectual. He dared not assume
the responsibility of firing without an order from the king, and he
could get no answer to the messages he sent to Versailles. Though his
cannon charged with grapeshot could have swept down thousands, he did
not venture to give the fatal command to fire. The citizens, with a
simultaneous rush in all directions, leaped the trenches, clambered
over the low wall--for the hotel was not a fortress--and, like a
resistless inundation, filled the vast building. They found in the
armory thirty thousand muskets. Seizing these and six pieces of cannon
they rushed, as by a common instinct, toward the Bastille to assail
with these feeble means one of the strongest fortresses in the world--a
fortress which an army under the great Condé had in vain besieged for
three and twenty days![167]
De Launey, from the summit of his towers, had for many hours heard the
roar of the insurgent city. As he now saw the black mass of countless
thousands approaching, he turned pale and trembled. All the cannon,
loaded with grapeshot, were thrust out of the port-holes, and several
cart-loads of paving-stones, cannon-balls, and old iron had been
conveyed to the tops of the towers to be thrown down to crush the
assailants. Twelve large rampart guns, charged heavily with grape,
guarded the only entrance. These were manned by thirty-two Swiss
soldiers who would have no scruples in firing upon Frenchmen. The
eighty-two French soldiers who composed the remainder of the garrison
were placed upon the towers, and at distant posts, where they could act
efficiently without being brought so immediately into conflict with the
attacking party.
A man of very fearless and determined character, M. Thuriot, was
sent by the electors at the Hôtel de Ville to summon the Bastille
to surrender. The draw-bridge was lowered, and he was admitted. The
governor received him at the head of his staff.
"I summon you," said Thuriot, "in the name of the people, in the name
of honor, and of our native land."
The governor, who was every moment expecting the arrival of troops to
disperse the crowd, refused to surrender the fortress, but replied that
he was ready to give his oath that he would not fire upon the people,
if they did not fire upon him. After a long and exciting interview,
Thuriot came forth to those at the Hôtel de Ville who had sent him.
He had hardly emerged from the massive portals, and crossed the
draw-bridge of the moat, which was immediately raised behind him, ere
the people commenced the attack. A scene of confusion and uproar ensued
which can not be described. A hundred thousand men, filling all the
streets and alleys which opened upon the Bastille, crowding all the
windows and house-tops of the adjacent buildings, kept up an incessant
firing, harmlessly flattening their bullets against walls of stone
forty feet thick and one hundred feet high.[168]
The French soldiers within the garrison were reluctant to fire upon
their relatives and friends. But the Swiss, obedient to authority,
opened a deadly fire of bullets and grapeshot upon the crowd. While
the battle was raging an intercepted letter was brought to the Hôtel
de Ville, in which Bensenval, commandant of the troops in the Field of
Mars, exhorted De Launey to remain firm, assuring him that he would
soon come with succor.[169] But, fortunately for the people, even these
foreign troops refused to march for the protection of the Bastille.
The French Guards now broke from their barracks, and, led by their
subaltern officers, came with two pieces of artillery in formidable
array to join the people. They were received with thunders of applause
which drowned even the roar of the battle. Energetically they opened
their batteries upon the fortress, but their balls rebounded harmless
from the impregnable rock.
Apparently the whole of Paris, with one united will, was combined
against the great bulwark of tyranny.[170] Men, women, and boys were
mingled in the fight. Priests, nobles, wealthy citizens, and the
ragged and emaciate victims of famine were pressing in the phrensied
assault side by side.[171] The French soldiers were now anxious to
surrender, but the Swiss, sheltered from all chance of harm, shot down
with deliberate and unerring aim whomsoever they would. Four hours
of the battle had now passed, and though but one man had been hurt
within the fortress, a hundred and seventy-one of the citizens had
been either killed or wounded. The French soldiers now raised a flag
of truce upon the towers, while the Swiss continued firing below. This
movement plunged De Launey into despair. One hundred thousand men
were beleaguering his fortress. The king sent no troops to his aid;
and three fourths of his garrison had abandoned him and were already
opening communications with his assailants. He knew that the people
could never pardon him for the blood of their fathers and brothers with
which he had crimsoned their streets--that death was his inevitable
doom. In a state almost of delirium he seized a match from a cannon and
rushed toward the magazine, determined to blow up the citadel. There
were a hundred and thirty-five barrels of gunpowder in the vaults.
The explosion would have thrown the Bastille into the air, buried one
hundred thousand people beneath its ruins, and have demolished one
third of Paris.[172] Two subaltern officers crossed their bayonets
before him and prevented the accomplishment of this horrible design.
Some wretches seized upon a young lady whom they believed to be the
governor's daughter, and wished, by the threat of burning her within
view of her father upon the towers, to compel him to surrender. But the
citizens promptly rescued her from their hands and conveyed her to a
place of safety. It was now five o'clock, and the assault had commenced
at twelve o'clock at noon. The French soldiers within made white flags
of napkins, attached them to bayonets, and waved them from the walls.
Gradually the flags of truce were seen through the smoke; the firing
ceased, and the cry resounded through the crowd and was echoed along
the streets of Paris, "The Bastille surrenders." This fortress, which
Louis XIV. and Turenne had pronounced impregnable, surrendered not to
the arms of its assailants, for they had produced no impression upon
it. It was conquered by that public opinion which pervaded Paris and
which vanquished its garrison.[173]
The massive portals were thrown open, and the vast multitude, a living
deluge, plunging headlong, rushed in. They clambered the towers,
penetrated the cells, and descended into the dungeons and oubliettes.
Appalled they gazed upon the instruments of torture with which former
victims of oppression had been torn and broken. Excited as they were by
the strife, and exasperated by the shedding of blood, but one man in
the fortress, a Swiss soldier, fell a victim to their rage.
The victorious people now set out in a tumultuous procession to convey
their prisoners, the governor and the soldiers, to the Hôtel de Ville.
Those of the populace whose relatives had perished in the strife were
roused to fury, and called loudly for the blood of De Launey. Two very
powerful men placed themselves on each side of him for his protection.
But the clamor increased, the pressure became more resistless, and
just as they were entering the Place de Grève the protectors of the
governor were overpowered--he was struck down, his head severed by a
sabre stroke, and raised a bloody and ghastly trophy into the air upon
a pike.
In the midst of the great commotion two of the Swiss soldiers of
the Bastille, whom the populace supposed to have been active in the
cannonade, were seized, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts to
save them, and hung to a lamp-post. A rumor passed through the crowd
that a letter had been found from the mayor, Flesselles, who was
already strongly suspected of treachery, directed to De Launey, in
which he said,
"I am amusing the Parisians with cockades and promises. Hold out till
the evening and you shall be relieved."[174]
Loud murmurs rose from the crowd which filled and surrounded the
hall. Some one proposed that Flesselles should be taken to the Palais
Royal to be tried by the people. The clamor was increasing and his
peril imminent. Pallid with fear he descended from the platform, and,
accompanied by a vast throng, set out for the Palais Royal. At the
turning of the first street an unknown man approached, and with a
pistol shot him dead. Infuriate wretches immediately cut off his head,
and it was borne upon a pike in savage triumph through the streets.
The French Guards, with the great body of the people, did what they
could to repress these bloody acts. The French and Swiss soldiers took
the oath of fidelity to the nation, and under the protection of the
French Guard were marched to places of safety where they were supplied
with lodgings and food. Thus terminated this eventful day. The fall of
the Bastille broke the right arm of the monarchy, paralyzed its nerves
of action, and struck it a death blow. The monarch of France, from his
palace at Versailles, heard the distant thunders of the cannonade, and
yet inscribed upon his puerile journal "_Nothing!_"[175]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 152: "Thus Paris, without courts of justice, without
police, without a guard, at the mercy of one hundred thousand men
who were wandering idly in the middle of the night, and for the most
part wanting bread, believed itself on the point of being besieged
from without and pillaged from within; believed that twenty-five
thousand soldiers were posted around to blockade it and cut off all
supplies of provisions, and that it would be a prey to a starving
populace."--_Memoirs of Marmontel._]
[Footnote 153: Hist. Phil. de la Rev. Fr., par Ant. Fantin Desodoards,
t. i., p. 148.]
[Footnote 154: Professor William Smyth, in his very able and candid
lectures, delivered at the University of Cambridge, England, though his
sympathies are with the court in this conflict, writes:
"On the whole, it appears to me that there can be no doubt that a
great design had been formed by the court for the dissolution of the
National Assembly and the assertion of the power of the crown. That
military force was to have been produced, and according to the measure
of its success would, in all probability, have been the depression
of the spirit of liberty, even of national liberty, then existing in
France. Less than this can not well be supposed; much more may be
believed."--_Lectures on the French Revolution_, vol. i., p. 251.]
[Footnote 155: The Old Régime and the Revolution, by M. de Tocqueville,
p. 190.]
[Footnote 156: Michelet, vol. i., p. 136.]
[Footnote 157: "They were going to make payments with a paper money,
without any other guarantee than the signature of an insolvent
king."--_Michelet_, vol. i., p. 137.]
[Footnote 158: "A list of the proscribed had been drawn up in the
committee of the queen. Sixty-nine deputies, at the head of whom
were placed Mirabeau, Sièyes, and Bailly, were to be imprisoned
in the citadel of Metz, and from thence led to the scaffold, as
guilty of rebellion. The signal agreed upon for this St. Bartholomew
of the representatives of the people was the change of the
ministry."--_Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros_, p. 15.]
[Footnote 159: Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol.
i., p. 241.]
[Footnote 160: Louis, Viscount of Noailles, was a deputy of the nobles.
With La Fayette, Rochefoucault, and others he warmly espoused the cause
of popular liberty. He voted in favor of uniting with the National
Assembly, and was the first to exhort the clergy and the nobility to
renounce their privileges, as injurious to the common weal. When the
Revolution sank degraded into the hands of low and worthless men, he
retired from the public service; but when Napoleon came to the rescue,
he again entered the army, and was subsequently killed in a battle with
the English.--_Enc. Am., Art. Noailles._]
[Footnote 161: "The better part of the Assembly," writes Ferrières,
"strangers to all the intrigues which might be going forward, was
filled with alarm at the sad reports that were circulating, and
terrified at the designs of the court, which they were assured went to
the seizing of Paris, the dissolution of the Assembly, and the massacre
of the citizens. In the mean time the partisans of the court concealed
their joy under an appearance of indifference. They came to the
sittings to see what turns the deliberations would take, to enjoy their
triumph, and the humiliation of the Assembly. The Assembly they looked
upon as annihilated."]
[Footnote 162: Michelet, vol. i., p. 38; Geo. Long, Esq., vol. i., p.
28.]
[Footnote 163: "This heroic man was the Abbé Lefebvre d'Ormesson.
No man rendered a greater service to the Revolution and the city of
Paris."--_Michelet_, vol. i., p. 140.
"A patriot, in liquor, insisted on sitting to smoke on the edge of
one of the powder-barrels. There smoked he, independent of the world,
till the Abbé purchased his pipe for three francs, and pitched it
far."--_Carlyle_, vol. i., p. 191.]
[Footnote 164: Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Revolution Française, vol.
ii., p. 365.]
[Footnote 165: Michelet, vol. i., p. 156.]
[Footnote 166: Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 16.]
[Footnote 167: M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 66.]
[Footnote 168: "Its walls, ten feet thick at the top of its towers,
and thirty or forty at the base, might long laugh at cannon-balls. Its
batteries, firing down upon Paris, could in the mean time demolish the
whole of the Marais and the Faubourg St. Antoine. Its towers pierced
with windows and loop-holes, protected by double and triple gratings,
enabled the garrison in full security to make a dreadful carnage of its
assailants."--_Michelet_, vol. i., p. 143.]
[Footnote 169: Thiers, vol. i., p. 69.]
[Footnote 170: "Old men," says Michelet, "who have had the happiness
and the misery to see all that has happened in this unprecedented half
century, declared that the grand and national achievements of the
Republic and the Empire had, nevertheless, a partial non-unanimous
character. But that the 14th of July alone was the day of the whole
people."--_Michelet_, vol. i., p. 144.]
[Footnote 171: Histoire Des Montagnards par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 17.]
[Footnote 172: Michelet, vol. i., p. 156.]
[Footnote 173: "Properly speaking the Bastille was not taken, it
surrendered. Troubled by a bad conscience, it went mad, and lost all
presence of mind."--_Michelet_, vol. i., p. 156.]