ON Thursday, the 9th of August, the legislative body completed the
general discontent of the people, (which had been raised the preceding
day, by the discharge of every accusation against _la Fayette_) by
appearing to protract the question relative to the king's _déchéance_
(forfeiture) at a time when there was not a moment to lose, and by not
holding any assembly in the evening.
The fermentation increased every minute, in a very alarming manner. The
mayor himself had declared to the representatives of the nation, that he
could not answer for the tranquillity of the city after midnight. Every
body knew that the people intended at that hour to ring the alarm-bell;
and to go to the _château_ of the _Tuileries_, as it was suspected that
the Royal Family intended to escape to Rouen, and it is said many trunks
were found, packed up and ready for taking away, and that many carriages
were seen that afternoon in the court-yard of the _Tuileries_.
At eight in the evening the _generale_,(a sort of beat of drum) was
heard in all the sections, the _tocsin_ was likewise rung, (an alarm, by
pulling the bells of the churches, so as to cause the clappers to give
redoubled strokes in very quick time. Some bells were struck with large
hammers.)
All the shops were shut, and also most of the great gates of the hotels;
lights were placed in almost every window, and few of the inhabitants
retired to their repose: the night passed however without any other
disturbance; many of the members of the National Assembly were sitting
soon after midnight, and the others were expected. _Mr. Petion_, the
mayor, had been sent for by the king, and was then in the _château_; the
number of members necessary to form a sitting, being completed, the
_tribunes_ (galleries) demanded and obtained a decree to oblige the
_château_ to release its prey, the mayor; he soon after appeared at the
bar, and from thence went to the _commune_ (mansion-house.)
It was now about six o'clock on Friday morning (10th) the people of the
_fauxbourgs_ (suburbs) especially of _St. Antoine_ and _St. Marcel_,
which are parted by the river, assembled together on the _Place de la
Bastille_, and the crowd was so great that twenty-five persons were
squeezed to death.[22] At seven the streets were filled with-armed
citizens, that is to say, with _federates_ (select persons sent from the
provinces to assist at the _Federation_, or confederacy held last July
14) from _Marseille_, from _Bretagne_, with national guards, and
Parisian _sans-culottes_, (_without breeches_, these people have
_breeches_, but this is the name which has been given to the mob.) The
arms consisted of guns, with or without bayonets, pistols, sabres,
swords, pikes, knives, scythes, saws, iron crows, wooden billets, in
short of every thing that could be used offensively.
[Note 22: According to the _Journal de la seconde legislature_,
_seance de la nuit_ II _Août_.]
A party of these met a false patrol of twenty-two men, who, of course,
did not know the watch-word. These were instantaneously put to death,
their heads cut off and carried about the streets on pikes (_on promena
leurs têtes sur des piques._) This happened in _la Place Vendôme_; their
bodies were still lying there the next day. Another false patrol,
consisting of between two and three hundred men, with cannon, wandered
all night in the neighbourhood of the _theatre français_: it is said
they were to join a detachment from the battalion of Henri IV. on the
_Pont-neuf_, to cut the throats of _Petion_ and the _Marseillois_, who
were encamped on the _Pont St. Michel_ (the next bridge to the
_Pont-neuf_) which caused the then acting parish assemblies to order an
honorary guard of 400 citizens, who were to be answerable for the
liberty and the life of that magistrate, then in the council-chamber.
_Mandat_, commander-general of the National Guard, had affronted _M.
Petion_, when he came from the _château_ of the _Tuileries_, to go to
the National Assembly; he was arrested and sent to prison immediately.
The insurrection now became general; the _Place du Carrousel_ (square of
the _Carousals_, a square in the _Tuileries_, so called from the
magnificent festival which Lewis XIV. in 1662, there gave to the queen
and the queen-mother) was already filled; the king had not been in bed;
all the night had probably been spent in combining a plan of defence, if
attacked, or rather of retreat; soon after seven the king, the queen,
their two children (the dauphin, seven years old, and his sister
fourteen) Princess Elizabeth, (the queen's sister, about 50 years old)
and the Princess _de Lamballe_, crossed the garden of the _Tuileries_,
which was still shut, escorted by the National Guard, and by all the
Swiss, and took refuge in the National Assembly, when the Swiss
returned to their posts in the _château_.
The alarm-bells, which were incessantly ringing, the accounts of the
carrying heads upon pikes, and of the march of almost all Paris in arms;
the presence of the king, throwing himself, as it were, on the mercy of
the legislative body; the fierce and determinate looks of the
_galleries_; all these things together had such an effect on the
National Assembly, that it immediately decreed the suspension of Lewis
XVI. which decree was received with universal applause and clapping.
At this moment a wounded man rushed into the Assembly, crying, "We are
betrayed, to arms, to arms, the Swiss are firing on the citizens; they
have already killed a hundred Marseillois."
This was about nine o'clock. The democrats, that is to say, the armed
citizens, as beforementioned, had dragged several pieces of cannon, six
and four pounders, into the _carousel_ square, and were assembled
there, on the _quais_, the bridges, and neighbouring streets, in immense
numbers, all armed; they knew the king was gone to the National
Assembly, and came to insist on his _déchéance_ (forfeiture) or
resignation of the throne. All the Swiss (six or seven hundred) came out
to them, and permitted them to enter into the court-yard of the
Tuileries, to the number of ten thousand, themselves standing in the
middle, and when they were peaceably smoking their pipes and drinking
their wine, the Swiss turned back to back, and fired a volley on them,
by which about two hundred were killed;[23] the women and children ran
immediately into the river, up to their necks, many jumping from the
parapets and from the bridges, many were drowned, and many were shot in
the water, and on the balustrades of the _Pont-royal_, from the windows
of the gallery of the _Louvre_.
[Note 23: This is asserted on the authority of all the French
newspapers, and of several eye-witnesses. It will never be possible to
know the exact truth, for the people here said to be the aggressors are
all slain.--These Swiss had trusted that they would have been backed by
the National Guard, who, on the contrary, took the part of the people,
and fired on the Swiss (who ran into the château as soon as they had
discharged their pieces) by which several were killed.]
The populace now became, as it were, mad, they seized on five cannon
they found in the court yard, and turned them against the château; they
planted some more cannon on the _Pont-royal_ and in the garden,
twenty-two pieces in all, and attacked the château on three sides at
once. The Swiss continued their fire, and it is said they fired seven
times to the people's once; the Swiss had 36 rounds of powder, whereas
the people had hardly three or four. Expresses were sent several miles
to the powder-mills, for more ammunition, even as far as _Essonne_,
about twenty miles off, on the road to _Fontainebleau_. The people
contrived however to discharge their twenty-two cannon nine or ten
times.[24] From nine to twelve the firing was incessant; many waggons
and carts were constantly employed in carrying away the dead to a large
excavation, formerly a stone quarry, at the back of the new church _de
la Madeleine de la ville l'Eveque_ (part of the _Fauxbourg St. Honoré_,
thus called.)
[Note 24: The balls did no other damage to the palace than breaking
the windows, and leaving impressions in the stones, perhaps an inch in
depth.]
Soon after noon the Swiss had exhausted all their powder, which the
populace perceiving, they stormed the _château_, broke open the doors,
and put every person they found to the sword, tumbling the bodies out of
the windows into the garden, to the amount, it is supposed, of about two
thousand, having lost four thousand on their own side. Among the slain
in the _château_, were, it is asserted, about two hundred noblemen and
three bishops: all the furniture was destroyed, the looking-glasses
broken, in short, nothing left but the bare walls.
Sixty of the Swiss endeavoured to escape through the gardens, but the
horse (_gendarmerie nationale_) rode round by the street of _St.
Honoré_, and met them full butt at the end of the gardens; the Swiss
fired, killed five or six and twenty horses and about thirty men, and
were then immediately cut to pieces; the people likewise put the Swiss
porters at the _pont-tournant_ (turning bridge) to death, as well as all
they could find in the gardens and elsewhere: they then set fire to all
the _casernes_ (barracks) in the _carousel_, and afterwards got at the
wine in the cellars of the château, all of which was immediately drank;
many citizens were continually bringing into the National Assembly
jewels, gold, louis d'ors, plate, and papers, and many thieves were, as
soon as discovered, instantly taken to lamp irons and hanged by the
ropes which suspend the lamps. This timely severity, it is supposed,
saved Paris from an universal pillage. Fifty or sixty Swiss were hurried
by the populace to the _Place de Grêve_, and there cut to pieces.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon every thing was tolerably quiet,
and I ventured out for the first time that day.[25]
[Note 25: The whole of the foregoing account is taken from verbal
information, and from all the French papers that could be procured.]
The _quais_, the bridges, the gardens, and the immediate scene of battle
were covered with bodies, dead, dying, and drunk; many wounded and drunk
died in the night; the streets were filled with carts, carrying away the
dead, with litters taking the wounded to hospitals; with women and
children crying for the loss of their relations, with men, women, and
children walking among and striding over the dead bodies, in silence,
and with apparent unconcern; with troops of the _sans-culottes_ running
about, covered with blood, and carrying, at the end of their bayonets,
rags of the clothes which they had torn from the bodies of the dead
Swiss, who were left stark naked in the gardens.[26]
[Note 26: Although I was not an eye-witness, I was however an
ear-witness of the engagement, being only half a mile distant from it.]
One of these _sans-culottes_ was bragging that he had killed eight Swiss
with his own hand. Another was observed lying wounded, all over blood,
asleep or drunk, with a gun, pistols, a sabre, and a hatchet by him.
The courage and ferocity of the women was this day very conspicuous; the
first person that entered the _Tuileries_, after the firing ceased, was
a woman, named _Teroigne_, she had been very active in the riots at
_Brussels_, a few years ago; she afterwards was in prison a twelvemonth
at _Vienna_, and when she was released, after the death of the Emperor,
went to _Geneva_, which city she was soon obliged to leave; she then
came to _Paris_, and headed the _Marseillois_; she began by cleaving the
head of a Swiss, who solicited her protection, and who was
instantaneously cut in pieces by her followers. She is agreeable in her
person, which is small, and is about twenty-eight years of age.
Many men, and also many women, as well of the order of _Poissardes_
(which are a class almost of the same species and rank with our
fishwomen, and who are easily distinguished by their red cotton bibs and
aprons) as others, ran about the gardens, ripping open the bellies, and
dashing out the brains of several of the naked dead Swiss.[27]
[Note 27: At the taking of the Bastille, on the day of which only
eighty-three persons were killed on the spot, though fifteen died
afterwards of their wounds, these _Poissardes_ were likewise foremost in
bravery and in cruelty, so much, that the Parisians themselves ran away
from them as soon as they saw them at a distance. They are armed, some
with sabres and others with pikes.]
At six in the evening I saw a troop of national guards and
_sans-culottes_ kill a Swiss who was running away, by cleaving his skull
with a dozen sabres at once, on the _Pont-royal_, and then cast him into
the river, in less time than it takes to read this, and afterwards walk
quietly on.
The shops were shut all this day, and also the theatres; no coaches were
about the streets, at least not near the place of carnage; the houses
were lighted up, and patroles paraded the streets all night. Not a
single house was pillaged.
The barracks were still in flames, as well as the houses of the Swiss
porters at the end of the gardens; these last gave light to five or six
waggons which were employed all night in carrying away the dead
carcases.