_Plan of the Democrats to bring the King and Assembly to
Paris--Banquet of the Garde du Corps--Riot at Paris--A
formidable Mob of Women assemble to march to Versailles--The
National Guard refuse to act against the Insurgents, and demand
also to be led to Versailles--The Female Mob arrive--Their
behaviour to the Assembly--To the King--Alarming Disorders at
Night--La Fayette arrives with the National Guard--Mob force the
Palace--Murder the Body Guards--The Queen's safety
endangered--Fayette's arrival with his Force restores
Order--Royal Family obliged to go to reside at Paris--The
Procession--This Step agreeable to the Views of the
Constitutionalists, Republicans, and Anarchists--Duke of Orleans
sent to England._
We have mentioned the various restrictions upon the royal authority,
which had been successively sanctioned by the National Assembly. But the
various factions, all of which tended to democracy, were determined upon
manœuvres for abating the royal authority, more actively powerful
than those which the Assembly dared yet to venture upon. For this
purpose, all those who desired to carry the Revolution to extremity,
became desirous to bring the sittings of the National Assembly and the
residence of the King within the precincts of Paris, and to place them
under the influence of that popular frenzy which they had so many ways
of exciting, and which might exercise the authority of terror over the
body of representatives, fill their galleries with a wild and tumultuous
band of partisans, surround their gates with an infuriated populace, and
thus dictate the issue of each deliberation. What fate was reserved for
the King, after incidents will sufficiently show. To effect an object so
important, the Republican party strained every effort, and succeeded in
raising the popular ferment to the highest pitch.
Their first efforts were unsuccessful. A deputation, formidable from
their numbers and clamorous violence, was about to sally from Paris to
petition, as they called it, for the removal of the royal family and
National Assembly to Paris, but was dispersed by the address of La
Fayette and Bailli. Nevertheless it seemed decreed that the Republicans
should carry their favourite measures, less through their own proper
strength, great as that was, than by the advantage afforded by the
blunders of the Royalists. An imprudence--it seems to deserve no harsher
name--which occurred within the precincts of the royal palace at
Versailles, gave the demagogues an opportunity, sooner probably than
they expected, of carrying their point by a repetition of the violences
which had already occurred.
The town of Versailles owed its splendour and wealth entirely to its
being the royal residence, yet abounded with a population singularly
ill-disposed towards the King and royal family. The national guard of
the place, amounting to some thousands, were animated by the same
feelings. There were only about four hundred gardes du corps, or
life-guards, upon whom reliance could be placed for the defence of the
royal family, in case of any popular tumult either in Versailles itself,
or directed thither from Paris. These troops consisted of gentlemen of
trust and confidence, but their numbers were few in proportion to the
extent of the palace, and their very quality rendered them obnoxious to
the people as armed aristocrats.
About two-thirds of their number, to avoid suspicion and gain
confidence, had been removed to Rambouillets. In these circumstances,
the grenadiers of the French guards, so lately in arms, against the
royal authority, with an inconsistency not unnatural to men of their
profession, took it into their heads to become zealous for the recovery
of the posts which they had formerly occupied around the King's person,
and threatened openly to march to Versailles, to take possession of the
routine of duty at the palace, a privilege which they considered as
their due, notwithstanding that they had deserted their posts against
the King's command, and were now about to resume them contrary to his
consent. The regiment of Flanders was brought up to Versailles, to
prevent a movement fraught with so much danger to the royal family. The
presence of this corps had been required by the municipality, and the
measure had been acquiesced in by the Assembly, though not without some
expressive indications of suspicion.
[Sidenote: BANQUET AT VERSAILLES.]
The regiment of Flanders arrived accordingly, and the gardes du corps,
according to a custom universal in the French garrisons, invited the
officers to an entertainment, at which the officers of the Swiss guards,
and those of the national guard of Versailles were also guests. [Oct.
1.] This ill-omened feast was given in the opera hall of the palace,
almost within hearing of the sovereigns; the healths of the royal family
were drunk with the enthusiasm naturally inspired by the situation. The
King and Queen imprudently agreed to visit the scene of festivity,
carrying with them the Dauphin. Their presence raised the spirits of the
company, already excited by wine and music, to the highest pitch;
royalist tunes were played, the white cockade, distributed by the
ladies who attended the Queen, was mounted with enthusiasm, and it is
said that of the nation was trodden under foot.[95]
If we consider the cause of this wild scene, it seems natural enough
that the Queen, timid as a woman, anxious as a wife and a mother, might,
in order to propitiate the favour of men who were summoned expressly to
be the guard of the royal family, incautiously have recourse to imitate,
in a slight degree, and towards one regiment, the arts of conciliation,
which in a much grosser shape had been used by the popular party to
shake the fidelity of the whole army. But it is impossible to conceive
that the King, or ministers, could have hoped, by the transitory and
drunken flash of enthusiasm elicited from a few hundred men during a
carousal, to commence the counter-revolution, which they dared not
attempt when they had at their command thirty thousand troops, under an
experienced general.
But as no false step among the Royalists remained unimproved by their
adversaries, the military feast of Versailles was presented to the
people of Paris under a light very different from that in which it must
be viewed by posterity. The Jacobins were the first to sound the alarm
through all their clubs and societies, and the hundreds of hundreds of
popular orators whom they had at their command, excited the citizens by
descriptions of the most dreadful plots, fraught with massacres and
proscriptions. Every effort had already been used to heat the popular
mind against the King and Queen, whom, in allusion to the obnoxious
power granted to them by the law, they had of late learned to curse and
insult, under the names of Monsieur and Madame Veto. The King had
recently delayed yielding his sanction to the declarations of the Rights
of Man, until the constitution was complete. This had been severely
censured by the Assembly, who spoke of sending a deputation to extort
his consent to these declarations, before presenting him with the
practical results which they intended to bottom on them. A dreadful
scarcity, amounting nearly to a famine, rendered the populace even more
accessible than usual to desperate counsels. The feasts, amid which the
aristocrats were represented as devising their plots, seemed an insult
on the public misery. When the minds of the lower orders were thus
prejudiced, it was no difficult matter to produce an insurrection.
[Sidenote: INSURRECTION IN PARIS.]
That of the 5th October, 1789, was of a singular description, the
insurgents being chiefly of the female sex. The market-women, "Dames de
la Halle," as they are called, half unsexed by the masculine nature of
their employments, and entirely so by the ferocity of their manners, had
figured early in the Revolution. With these were allied and associated
most of the worthless and barbarous of their own sex, such disgraceful
specimens of humanity as serve but to show in what a degraded state it
may be found to exist. Females of this description began to assemble
early in the morning, in large groups, with the cries for "bread," which
so easily rouse a starving metropolis. There were amongst them many men
disguised as women, and they compelled all the females they met to go
along with them. They marched to the Hôtel de Ville, broke boldly
through several squadrons of the national guard, who were drawn up in
front of that building for its defence, and were with difficulty
dissuaded from burning the records it contained. They next seized a
magazine of arms, with three or four pieces of cannon, and were joined
by a miscellaneous rabble, armed with pikes, scythes, and similar
instruments, who called themselves the conquerors of the Bastile. The
still increasing multitude re-echoed the cry of "Bread, bread!--to
Versailles! to Versailles!"[96]
The national guard were now called out in force, but speedily showed
their officers that they too were infected with the humour of the times,
and as much indisposed to subordination as the mob, to disperse which
they were summoned. La Fayette put himself at their head, not to give
his own, but to receive their orders. They refused to act against women,
who, they said, were starving, and in their turn demanded to be led to
Versailles, "to dethrone,"--such was their language,--"the King, who was
a driveller, and place the crown on the head of his son." La Fayette
hesitated, implored, explained; but he had as yet to learn the situation
of a revolutionary general. "Is it not strange," said one of his
soldiers, who seemed quite to understand the military relation of
officer and private on such an occasion, "is it not strange that La
Fayette pretends to command the people, when it is his part to receive
orders from them?"
Soon afterwards an order arrived from the Assembly of the Commune of
Paris, enjoining the commandant's march, upon his own report that it was
impossible to withstand the will of the people. He marched accordingly
in good order, and at the head of a large force of the national guard,
about four or five hours after the departure of the mob, who, while he
waited in a state of indecision, were already far on their way to
Versailles.
It does not appear that the King, or his ministers, had any information
of these hostile movements. Assuredly, there could not have been a
royalist in Paris willing to hazard a horse or a groom to carry such
intelligence where the knowledge of it must have been so important. The
leading members of the Assembly, at Versailles, were better informed.
"These gentlemen," said Barbantanne, looking at the part of the hall
where the Nobles and Clergy usually sat, "wish more light--they shall
have lanterns,[97] they may rely upon it." Mirabeau went behind the
chair of Mounier, the president. "Paris is marching upon us," he
said.--"I know not what you mean," said Mounier.--"Believe me or not,
all Paris is marching upon us--dissolve the sitting."--"I never hurry
the deliberations," said Mounier.--"Then feign illness," said
Mirabeau,--"go to the palace, tell them what I say, and give me for
authority. But there is not a minute to lose--Paris marches upon
us."--"So much the better," answered Mounier, "we shall be a republic
the sooner."[98]
Shortly after this singular dialogue, occasioned probably by a sudden
movement, in which Mirabeau showed the aristocratic feelings from which
he never could shake himself free, the female battalion, together with
their masculine allies, continued their march uninterruptedly, and
entered Versailles in the afternoon, singing patriotic airs,
intermingled with blasphemous obscenities, and the most furious threats
against the Queen. Their first visit was to the National Assembly, where
the beating of drums, shouts, shrieks, and a hundred confused sounds,
interrupted the deliberations. A man called Mailliard, brandishing a
sword in his hand, and supported by a woman holding a long pole, to
which was attached a tambour de basque, commenced a harangue in the name
of the sovereign people. He announced that they wanted bread; that they
were convinced the ministers were traitors; that the arm of the people
was uplifted, and about to strike;--with much to the same purpose, in
the exaggerated eloquence of the period.[99] The same sentiments were
echoed by his followers, mingled with the bitterest threats, against the
Queen in particular, that fury could contrive, expressed in language of
the most energetic brutality.
The Amazons then crowded into the Assembly, mixed themselves with the
members, occupied the seat of the president, of the secretaries,
produced or procured victuals and wine, drank, sung, swore, scolded,
screamed,--abused some of the members, and loaded others with their
loathsome caresses.[100]
A deputation of these mad women was at length sent to St. Priest, the
minister, a determined Royalist, who received them sternly, and replied,
to their demand of bread, "When you had but one king, you never wanted
bread--you have now twelve hundred--go ask it of them." They were
introduced to the King, however, and were so much struck with the kind
interest which he took in the state of Paris, that their hearts relented
in his favour, and the deputies returned to their constituents, shouting
"Vive le Roi!"[101]
[Sidenote: MOB SURROUND THE PALACE.]
Had the tempest depended on the mere popular breeze, it might now have
been lulled to sleep; but there was a secret ground-swell, a heaving
upwards of the bottom of the abyss, which could not be conjured down by
the awakened feelings or convinced understandings of the deputation. A
cry was raised that the deputies had been bribed to represent the King
favourably; and, in this humour of suspicion, the army of Amazons
stripped their garters, for the purpose of strangling their own
delegates. They had by this time ascertained, that neither the national
guard of Versailles, nor the regiment of Flanders, whose transitory
loyalty had passed away with the fumes of the wine of the banquet, would
oppose them by force, and that they had only to deal with the gardes du
corps, who dared not to act with vigour, lest they should provoke a
general attack on the palace, while the most complete distraction and
indecision reigned within its precincts. Bold in consequence, the female
mob seized on the exterior avenues of the palace, and threatened
destruction to all within.
The attendants of the King saw it necessary to take measures for the
safety of his person, but they were marked by indecision and confusion.
A force was hastily gathered of two or three hundred gentlemen, who, it
was proposed, should mount the horses of the royal stud, and escort the
King to Rambouillet, out of this scene of confusion.[102] The gardes du
corps, with such assistance, might certainly have forced their way
through a mob or the tumultuary description which surrounded them; and
the escape of the King from Versailles, under circumstances so critical,
might have had a great effect in changing the current of popular
feeling. But those opinions prevailed, which recommended that he should
abide the arrival of La Fayette with the civic force of Paris.
It was now night, and the armed rabble of both sexes showed no intention
of departing or breaking up. On the contrary, they bivouacked after
their own manner upon the parade, where the soldiers usually mustered.
There they kindled large fires, ate, drank, sang, caroused, and
occasionally discharged their firearms. Scuffles arose from time to
time, and one or two of the gardes du corps had been killed and wounded
in the quarrel, which the rioters had endeavoured to fasten on them;
besides which, this devoted corps had sustained a volley from their late
guests, the national guard of Versailles. The horse of a garde du corps,
which fell into the hands of these female demons, was killed, torn in
pieces, and eaten half raw and half roasted.[103] Every thing seemed
tending to a general engagement, when late at night the drums announced
the approach of La Fayette at the head of his civic army, which moved
slowly but in good order.
The presence of this great force seemed to restore a portion of
tranquillity, though no one appeared to know with certainty how it was
likely to act. La Fayette had an audience of the King, explained the
means he had adopted for the security of the palace, recommended to the
inhabitants to go to rest, and unhappily set the example by retiring
himself.[104] Before doing so, however, he also visited the Assembly,
pledged himself for the safety of the royal family and the tranquillity
of the night, and with some difficulty, prevailed on the President
Mounier to adjourn the sitting, which had been voted permanent. He thus
took upon himself the responsibility for the quiet of the night. We are
loth to bring into question the worth, honour, and fidelity of La
Fayette; and we can therefore only lament, that weariness should have so
far overcome him at an important crisis, and that he should have trusted
to others the execution of those precautions, which were most grossly
neglected.
A band of the rioters found means to penetrate into the palace about
three in the morning, through a gate which was left unlocked and
unguarded. They rushed to the Queen's apartment, and bore down the few
gardes du corps who hastened to her defence. The sentinel knocked at the
door of her bedchamber, called to her to escape, and then gallantly
exposed himself to the fury of the murderers. His single opposition was
almost instantly overcome, and he himself left for dead. Over his
bleeding body they forced their way into the Queen's apartment; but
their victim, reserved for farther and worse woes, had escaped by a
secret passage into the chamber of the King, while the assassins,
bursting in, stabbed the bed she had just left with pikes and
swords.[105]
[Sidenote: MURDER OF THE BODY GUARDS.]
The gardes du corps assembled in the ante-chamber called the bull's eye,
and endeavoured there to defend themselves; but several, unable to gain
this place of refuge, were dragged down into the courtyard, where a
wretch, distinguished by a long beard, a broad bloody axe, and a species
of armour which he wore on his person, had taken on himself, by taste
and choice, the office of executioner. The strangeness of the villain's
costume, the sanguinary relish with which he discharged his office, and
the hoarse roar with which, from time to time, he demanded new victims,
made him resemble some demon whom hell had vomited forth, to augment the
wickedness and horror of the scene.[106]
Two of the gardes du corps were already beheaded, and the Man with the
Beard was clamorous to do his office upon the others who had been taken,
when La Fayette, roused from his repose, arrived at the head of a body
of grenadiers of the old French guards, who had been lately incorporated
with the civic guard, and were probably the most efficient part of his
force. He did not think of avenging the unfortunate gentlemen, who lay
murdered before his eyes for the discharge of their military duty, but
he entreated his soldiers to save him the dishonour of breaking his
word, which he had pledged to the King, that he would protect the gardes
du corps. It is probable he attempted no more than was in his power, and
so far acted wisely, if not generously.
To redeem M. de la Fayette's pledge, the grenadiers did, what they ought
to have done in the name of the King, the law, the nation, and insulted
humanity,--they cleared, and with perfect ease, the court of the palace
from these bands of murderous bacchantes, and their male associates. The
instinct of ancient feelings, was, in some degree, awakened in the
grenadiers. They experienced a sudden sensation of compassion and
kindness for the gardes du corps, whose duty on the royal person they
had in former times shared. There arose a cry among them,--"Let us save
the gardes du corps, who saved us at Fontenoy." They took them under
their protection, exchanged their caps with them in sign of friendship
and fraternity, and a tumult, which had something of the character of
joy, succeeded to that which had announced nothing but blood and
death.[107]
The outside of the palace was still besieged by the infuriated mob, who
demanded, with hideous cries, and exclamations the most barbarous and
obscene, to see "the Austrian," as they called the Queen. The
unfortunate princess appeared on the balcony[108] with one of her
children in each hand. A voice from the crowd called out, "No children,"
as if on purpose to deprive the mother of that appeal to humanity which
might move the hardest heart. Marie Antoinette, with a force of mind
worthy of Maria Theresa, her mother, pushed her children back into the
room, and, turning her face to the tumultuous multitude, which tossed
and roared beneath, brandishing their pikes and guns with the wildest
attitudes of rage, the reviled, persecuted, and denounced Queen stood
before them, her arms folded on her bosom, with a noble air of
courageous resignation.[109] The secret reason of this summons--the real
cause of repelling the children--could only be to afford a chance of
some desperate hand among the crowd executing the threats which
resounded on all sides. Accordingly, a gun was actually levelled, but
one of the bystanders struck it down; for the passions of the mob had
taken an opposite turn, and, astonished at Marie Antoinette's noble
presence, and graceful firmness of demeanour, there arose, almost in
spite of themselves, a general shout of "Vive la Reine!"[110]
But if the insurgents, or rather those who prompted them, missed their
first point, they did not also lose their second. A cry arose, "To
Paris!" at first uttered by a solitary voice, but gathering strength,
until the whole multitude shouted, "To Paris--to Paris!"[111] The cry of
these blood-thirsty bacchanals, such as they had that night shown
themselves, was, it seems, considered as the voice of the people, and as
such, La Fayette neither remonstrated himself, nor permitted the King to
interpose a moment's delay in yielding obedience to it; nor was any
measure taken to put some appearance even of decency on the journey, or
to disguise its real character, of a triumphant procession of the
sovereign people, after a complete victory over their nominal monarch.
[Sidenote: PROCESSION TO PARIS.]
The carriages of the royal family were placed in the middle of an
immeasurable column, consisting partly of La Fayette's soldiers, partly
of the revolutionary rabble, whose march had preceded his, amounting to
several thousand men and women of the lowest and most desperate
description, intermingling in groups amongst the bands of French guards
and civic soldiers, whose discipline could not enable them to preserve
even a semblance of order. Thus they rushed along, howling their songs
of triumph. The harbingers of the march bore the two bloody heads of
the murdered gardes du corps, paraded on pikes, at the head of the
column, as the emblems of their prowess and success.[112] The rest of
this body, worn down by fatigue, most of them despoiled of their arms,
and many without hats, anxious for the fate of the royal family, and
harassed with apprehensions for themselves, were dragged like captives
in the midst of the mob, while the drunken females around them bore
aloft in triumph their arms, their belts, and their hats. These
wretches, stained with the blood in which they had bathed themselves,
were now singing songs, of which the burden bore--"We bring you the
baker, his wife, and the little apprentice!"[113] as if the presence of
the unhappy royal family, with the little power they now possessed, had
been in itself a charm against scarcity. Some of these Amazons rode upon
the cannon, which made a formidable part of the procession. Many of them
were mounted on the horses of the gardes du corps, some in masculine
fashion, others _en croupe_. All the muskets and pikes which attended
this immense cavalcade, were garnished, as if in triumph, with oak
boughs, and the women carried long poplar branches in their hands, which
gave the column, so grotesquely composed in every respect, the
appearance of a moving grove.[114] Scarcely a circumstance was omitted
which could render this entrance into the capital more insulting to the
King's feelings--more degrading to the royal dignity.
After six hours of dishonour and agony, the unfortunate Louis was
brought to the Hôtel de Ville, where Bailli, then mayor,[115]
complimented him upon the "beau jour," the "splendid day," which
restored the monarch of France to his capital; assured him that order,
peace, and all the gentler virtues, were about to revive in the country
under his royal eye, and that the King would henceforth become powerful
through the people, the people happy through the King; and, "what was
truest of all," that as Henry IV. had entered Paris by means of
reconquering his people, Louis XVI. had done so, because his people had
reconquered their King.[116] His wounds salved with this lip-comfort,
the unhappy and degraded prince was at length permitted to retire to the
palace of the Tuileries, which, long uninhabited, and almost
unfurnished, yawned upon him like the tomb where alone he at length
found repose.[117]
The events of the 14th July, 1789, when the Bastile was taken, formed
the first great stride of the Revolution, actively considered. Those of
the 5th and 6th of October, in the same year, which we have detailed at
length, as peculiarly characteristic of the features which it assumed,
made the second grand phasis. The first had rendered the inhabitants of
the metropolis altogether independent of their sovereign, and indeed of
any government but that which they chose to submit to; the second
deprived the King of that small appearance of freedom which he had
hitherto exercised, and fixed his dwelling in the midst of his
metropolis, independent and self-regulated as we have described it. "It
is wonderful," said Louis, "that with such love of liberty on all sides,
I am the only person that is deemed totally unworthy of enjoying it."
Indeed, after the march from Versailles, the King could only be
considered as the signet of royal authority, used for attesting public
acts at the pleasure of those in whose custody he was detained, but
without the exercise of any free-will on his own part.
All the various parties found their account, less or more, in this state
of the royal person, excepting the pure Royalists, whose effective power
was little, and their comparative numbers few. There remained, indeed,
attached to the person and cause of Louis, a party of those members,
who, being friends to freedom, were no less so to regulated monarchy,
and who desired to fix the throne on a firm and determined basis. But
their numbers were daily thinned, and their spirits were broken. The
excellent Mounier, and the eloquent Lally Tolendal, emigrated after the
9th October, unable to endure the repetition of such scenes as were then
exhibited. The indignant adieus of the latter to the National Assembly,
were thus forcibly expressed:--
"It is impossible for me, even my physical strength alone considered, to
discharge my functions amid the scenes we have witnessed. Those heads
borne in trophy; that Queen half assassinated; that King dragged into
Paris by troops of robbers and assassins; the 'splendid day' of M.
Bailli; the jests of Barnave, when blood was floating around us; Mounier
escaping, as if by miracle, from a thousand assassins; these are the
causes of my oath never again to enter that den of cannibals. A man may
endure a single death; he may brave it more than once, when the loss of
life can be useful--but no power under Heaven shall induce me to suffer
a thousand tortures every passing minute--while I am witnessing the
progress of cruelty, the triumph of guilt, which I must witness without
interrupting it. They may proscribe my person, they may confiscate my
fortune; I will labour the earth for my bread, and I will see them no
more."[118]
The other parties into which the state was divided, saw the events of
the 5th October with other feelings, and if they did not forward, at
least found their account in them.
[Sidenote: VIEWS OF THE CONSTITUTIONALISTS.]
The Constitutional party, or those who desired a democratical government
with a king at its head, had reason to hope that Louis, being in Paris,
must remain at their absolute disposal, separated from those who might
advise counter-revolutionary steps, and guarded only by national troops,
embodied in the name, and through the powers, of the Revolution. Every
day, indeed, rendered Louis more dependent on La Fayette and his
friends, as the only force which remained to preserve order; for he soon
found it a necessary, though a cruel measure, to disband his faithful
gardes du corps, and that perhaps as much with a view to their safety as
to his own.
The Constitutional party seemed strong both in numbers and reputation.
La Fayette was commandant of the national guards, and they looked up to
him with that homage and veneration with which young troops, and
especially of this description, regard a leader of experience and
bravery, who, in accepting the command, seems to share his laurels with
the citizen-soldier, who has won none of his own. Bailli was Mayor of
Paris, and, in the height of a popularity not undeserved, was so well
established in the minds of the better class of citizens, that, in any
other times than those in which he lived, he might safely have despised
the suffrages of the rabble, always to be bought, either by largesses or
flattery. The Constitutionalists had also a strong majority in the
Assembly, where the Republicans dared not yet throw off the mask, and
the Assembly, following the person of the King, came also to establish
its sittings in their stronghold, the metropolis.[119] They seemed,
therefore, to assume the ascendency in the first instance, after the 5th
and 6th of October, and to reap all the first fruits of the victory then
achieved, though by their connivance rather than their active
co-operation.
It is wonderful, that, meaning still to assign to the regal dignity a
high constitutional situation, La Fayette should not have exerted
himself to preserve its dignity undegraded, and to save the honour, as
he certainly saved the lives, of the royal family. Three reasons might
prevent his doing what, as a gentleman and a soldier, he must otherwise
at least have attempted. First, although he boasted highly of his
influence with the national guard of Paris, it may be doubted whether
all his popularity would have borne him through, in any endeavour to
deprive the good people of that city of such a treat as the Joyous Entry
of the 6th of October, or whether the civic power would, even for the
immediate defence of the King's person, have used actual force against
the band of Amazons who directed that memorable procession. Secondly, La
Fayette might fear the revival of the fallen colossus of despotism, more
than the rising spirit of anarchy, and thus be induced to suppose that a
conquest in the King's cause over a popular insurrection, might be too
active a cordial to the drooping spirits of the Royalists. And lastly,
the revolutionary general, as a politician, might not be unwilling that
the King and his consort should experience in their own persons, such a
specimen of popular power, as might intimidate them from further
opposition to the popular will, and incline Louis to assume
unresistingly his diminished rank in the new constitution.
The Republican party, with better reason than the Constitutionalists,
exulted in the King's change of residence. It relieved them as well as
Fayette's party from all apprehension of Louis raising his standard in
the provinces, and taking the field on his own account, like Charles of
England in similar circumstances. Then they already foresaw, that
whenever the Constitutionalists should identify themselves with the
crown, whom all parties had hitherto laboured to represent as the common
enemy, they would become proportionally unpopular with the people at
large, and lose possession of the superior power as a necessary
consequence. Aristocrats, the only class which was sincerely united to
the King's person, would, they might safely predict, dread and distrust
the Constitutionalists, while with the Democrats, so very much the more
numerous party, the King's name, instead of "a tower of strength," as
the poet has termed it,[120] must be a stumbling-block and a rock of
offence. They foresaw, finally, either that the King must remain the
mere passive tool of the Constitutionalists, acting unresistingly under
their order,--in which case the office would be soon regarded as an idle
and expensive bauble, without any force or dignity of free-will, and fit
only to be flung aside as an unnecessary incumbrance on the republican
forms,--or, in the event of the King attempting, either by force or
escape, to throw off the yoke of the Constitutionalists, he would
equally furnish arms to the pure Democrats against his person and
office, as the source of danger to the popular cause. Some of the
Republican chiefs had probably expected a more sudden termination to the
reign of Louis from an insurrection so threatening; at least these
leaders had been the first to hail and to encourage the female
insurgents, on their arrival at Versailles.[121] But though the issue of
that insurrection may have fallen short of their hopes, it could not but
be highly acceptable to them so far as it went.
[Sidenote: ORLEANS SENT TO ENGLAND.]
The party of Orleans had hitherto wrapt in its dusky folds many of those
names which were afterwards destined to hold dreadful rank in the
Revolutionary history. The prince whose name they adopted is supposed to
have been animated partly by a strong and embittered spirit of personal
hatred against the Queen, and partly, as we have already said, by an
ambitious desire to supplant his kinsman. He placed, according to
general report, his treasures, and all which his credit could add to
them, at the disposal of men, abounding in those energetic talents which
carry their owners forward in times of public confusion, but devoid
alike of fortune, character, and principle; who undertook to serve their
patron by enlisting in his cause the obscure and subordinate agents, by
whom mobs were levied, and assassins subsidized. It is said, that the
days of the 5th and 6th of October were organized by the secret agents
of Orleans, and for his advantage; that had the enterprise succeeded,
the King would have been deposed, and the Duke of Orleans proclaimed
Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, while his revenge would probably have
been satiated with the Queen's assassination. He is stated to have
skulked in disguise about the outskirts of the scene when the tumult was
at the highest, but never to have had courage to present himself boldly
to the people, either to create a sensation by surprise, or to avail
himself of that which his satellites had already excited in his
favour.[122] His resolution having thus failed him at the point where it
was most necessary, and the tumult having ended without any thing taking
place in his favour, the Duke of Orleans was made a scape-goat, and the
only one, to atone for the whole insurrection. Under the title of an
embassy to England, he was honourably exiled from his native country.
[Oct. 14.] Mirabeau spoke of him in terms of the utmost contumely, as
being base-minded as a lackey, and totally unworthy the trouble which
had been taken on his account. His other adherents gradually and
successively dropped away, in proportion as the wealth, credit, and
character of this besotted prince rendered him incapable of maintaining
his gratuities; and they sailed henceforth under their own flag, in the
storms he had fitted them to navigate. These were men who had resolved
to use the revolutionary axe for cutting out their own private fortunes,
and, little interesting themselves about the political principles which
divided the other parties of the state, they kept firm hold of all the
subordinate machinery despised by the others in the abstraction of
metaphysical speculation, but which gave them the exclusive command of
the physical force of the mob of Paris--Paris, the metropolis of France,
and the prison-house of her monarch.
FOOTNOTES:
[95] Mignet, tom. i., p. 89; Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 185.
[96] Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 236; Thiers, tom. i., p. 135.
[97] In the beginning of the Revolution, when the mob executed their
pleasure on the individuals against whom their suspicions were directed,
the lamp-irons served for gibbets, and the lines by which the lamps, or
lanterns, were disposed across the street, were ready halters. Hence the
cry of "Les Aristocrates à la lanterne." The answer of the Abbé Maury is
well known. "Eh! mes amis, et quand vous m'auriez mis à la lanterne, est
ce que vous verriez plus clair?"--_Biog. Univ._--S.
[98] Mounier must be supposed to speak ironically, and in allusion, not
to his own opinions, but to Mirabeau's revolutionary tenets. Another
account of this singular conversation states his answer to have been,
"All the better. If the mob kill all of us--remark, I say _all_ of us,
it will be the better for the country."--S.--THIERS, tom. i., p. 138.
[99] Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 257.
[100] "In the gallery a crowd of fish women were assembled under the
guidance of one virago with stentorian lungs, who called to the deputies
familiarly by name, and insisted that their favourite Mirabeau should
speak."--DUMONT, p. 181.
[101] Mignet, tom. i., p. 92.
[102] This was proposed by that Marquis de Favras, whose death upon the
gallows, [Feb. 19, 1790,] for a Royalist plot, gave afterwards such
exquisite delight to the citizens of Paris. Being the first man of
quality whom they had seen hanged, (that punishment having been hitherto
reserved for plebeians,) they encored the performance, and would fain
have hung him up a second time. The same unfortunate gentleman had
previously proposed to secure the bridge at Sevres with a body of
cavalry, which would have prevented the women from advancing to
Versailles. The Queen signed an order for the horses with this
remarkable clause:--"To be used if the King's safety is endangered, but
in no danger which affects me only."--S.--"The secret of this intrigue
never was known; but I have no doubt Favras was one of those men who,
when employed as instruments, are led by vanity much further than their
principals intend."--DUMONT, p. 174.
[103] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 217.
[104] Rivarol, p. 300; Mignet, tom. i., p. 93.
[105] One of the most accredited calumnies against the unfortunate Marie
Antoinette pretends, that she was on this occasion surprised in the arms
of a paramour. Buonaparte is said to have mentioned this as a fact, upon
the authority of Madame Campan. [O'MEARA'S _Napoleon in Exile_, vol.
ii., p. 172.] We have now Madame Campan's own account, [Memoirs, vol.
ii. p. 78.] describing the conduct of the Queen on this dreadful
occasion as that of a heroine, and totally excluding the possibility of
the pretended anecdote. But let it be farther considered, under what
circumstances the Queen was placed--at two in the morning, retired to a
privacy liable to be interrupted (as it was) not only by the irruption
of the furious banditti who surrounded the palace, demanding her life,
but by the entrance of the King, or of others, in whom circumstances
might have rendered the intrusion duty; and let it then be judged,
whether the dangers of the moment, and the risk of discovery, would not
have prevented Messalina herself from choosing such a time for an
assignation.--S.
[106] The miscreant's real name was Jourdan, afterwards called
_Coupe-Tête_, distinguished in the massacres of Avignon. He gained his
bread by sitting as an academy-model to painters, and for that reason
cultivated his long beard. In the depositions before the Chatelet, he is
called _L'Homme à la barbe_--an epithet which might distinguish the ogre
or goblin of some ancient legend.--S.
[107] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 238.
[108] Thiers, tom. i., p. 182; Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 241.
[109] Rivarol, p. 312; Campan, vol. ii., p. 81.
[110] Mémoires de Weber, vol. ii., p. 457.--S.
[111] "The Queen, on returning from the balcony, approached my mother,
and said to her, with stifled sobs, 'They are going to force the King
and me to Paris, with the heads of our body-guards carried before us, on
the point of their pikes.' Her prediction was accomplished."--M. DE
STAËL, vol. i., p. 344.
[112] It has been said that they were borne immediately before the royal
carriage; but this is an exaggeration where exaggeration is unnecessary.
These bloody trophies preceded the royal family a great way on the march
to Paris.--S.
[113] "Nous ne manquerons plus de pain; nous amenons le boulanger, la
boulangère, et le petit mitron!"--PRUDHOMME, tom. i., p. 244.
[114] Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 243.
[115] "The King said to the mayor, 'I come with pleasure to my good city
of Paris;' the Queen added, 'and with confidence.' The expression was
happy, but the event, alas! did not justify it."--M. DE STAËL, vol. i.,
p. 344.
[116] The Mayor of Paris, although such language must have sounded like
the most bitter irony, had no choice of words on the 6th October, 1789.
But if he seriously termed that "a glorious day," what could Bailli
complain of the studied insults and cruelties which he himself
sustained, when, in Oct. 1792, the same banditti of Paris, who forced
the King from Versailles, dragged himself to death, with every
circumstance of refined cruelty and protracted insult?--S.--It was not
on the 6th October, but the 17th July, three days after the capture of
the Bastile, that Bailli, on presenting Louis with the keys of Paris,
made use of this expression.--See Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 203.
[117] "As the arrival of the royal family was unexpected, very few
apartments were in a habitable state, and the Queen had been obliged to
get tent-beds put up for her children in the very room where she
received us; she apologized for it, and added, 'You know that I did not
expect to come here.' Her physiognomy was beautiful, but irritated; it
was not to be forgotten after having been seen."--M. DE STAËL, vol. i.,
p. 345.
[118] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 265.
[119] "On being informed of the King's determination to quit Versailles
for Paris, the Assembly hastily passed a resolution, that it was
inseparable from the King, and would accompany him to the
capital."--THIERS, tom. i., p. 182.
[120] See Richard the Third, act v., sc. iii.
[121] Barnave, as well as Mirabeau, the Republican as well as the
Orleanist, was heard to exclaim, "Courage, brave Parisians--liberty for
ever--fear nothing--we are for you!"--See _Mémoires de Ferrieres_, li.,
iv.--S.
[122] See the proceedings before the Chatelet.--S.--See also Thiers,
tom. i., p. 184; Lacretelle, tom. vii.; and M. de Staël, vol. i., p.
350.