THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY.
In the remarkable book entitled _Paris during the Revolution_, M.
Adolphe Schmidt writes: "All the purely revolutionary events, the events
of the Fourteenth of July, of October 5 and 6, 1789, were the work of an
obscure minority of reckless and violent revolutionists. If they
succeeded, it was only because the great majority of the citizens
avoided the scene of operations or were mere passive spectators there,
attracted by curiosity, and giving in appearance an enhanced importance
to the movement." Further on he says: "After the fall of the
Gironde,[52] Dutard expressed himself in these terms: 'If, out of 50,000
Moderates, you succeed in collecting a compact body of no more than
3000, I shall be much astonished; and if out of these 3000 there are to
be found only 500 who are agreed, and courageous enough to express their
opinion, I shall be still more astonished. And these, in truth, must
expect to be Septembrised.'[53] 'Twelve maniacs, with their blood well
up, at the head of the Sansculotte section,' writes Dutard in another
report, 'would put to flight the other forty-seven sections of Paris.'
Mercier, after the fall of the Gironde, thus expresses himself in regard
to the reign of Terror: 'Sixty brigands deluged France with blood:
500,000 men within our walls were witnesses of their atrocities, and
were not brave enough to oppose them.'"
To enable the reader to understand the extraordinary and improbable
event which is the subject of this chapter, it would be necessary to
begin by explaining the circumstances and describing the material and
moral state of things in which it happened; and that, unhappily, would
occupy much space. Let us take the two principal facts, see what they
led to, and then come to the events of the Fourteenth of July.
For its task of governing France, the royal power had in its hands no
administrative instrument, or, at any rate, administrative instruments
of a very rudimentary character. It ruled through tradition and
sentiment. The royal power had been created by the affection and
devotion of the nation, and in this devotion and affection lay its whole
strength.
What, actually and practically, were the means of government in the
hands of the king? "Get rid of _lettres de cachet_," observed
Malesherbes, "and you deprive the king of all his authority, for the
_lettre de cachet_ is the only means he possesses of enforcing his will
in the kingdom." Now, for several years past, the royal power had
practically renounced _lettres de cachet_. On the other hand, during the
course of the eighteenth century, the sentiments of affection and
devotion of which we have spoken had become enfeebled, or at least had
changed their character. So it was that on the eve of the Revolution the
royal power, which stood in France for the entire administration, had,
if the expression may be allowed, melted into thin air.
Below the royal power, the lords in the country, the upper ten in the
towns, constituted the second degree in the government. The same remarks
apply here also. And unhappily it is certain that, over the greater part
of France, the territorial lords had forgotten the duties which their
privileges and their station imposed. The old attachment of the
labouring classes to them had almost everywhere disappeared, and in many
particulars had given place to feelings of hostility.
Thus on the eve of '89 the whole fabric of the state had no longer any
real existence: at the first shock it was bound to crumble into dust.
And as, behind the fragile outer wall, there was no solid structure--no
administrative machine, with its numerous, diverse, and nicely-balanced
parts, like that which in our time acts as a buffer against the shocks
of political crises,--the first blow aimed at the royal power was bound
to plunge the whole country into a state of disorganization and
disorder from which the tyranny of the Terror, brutal, blood-stained,
overwhelming as it was, alone could rescue it.
Such is the first of the two facts we desire to make clear. We come now
to the second. Ever since the year 1780, France had been almost
continually in a state of famine. The rapidity and the abundance of the
international exchanges which in our days supply us constantly from the
remotest corners of the world with the necessaries of life, prevent our
knowing anything of those terrible crises which in former days swept
over the nations. "The dearth," writes Taine, "permanent, prolonged,
having already lasted ten years, and aggravated by the very outbreaks
which it provoked, went on adding fuel to all the passions of men till
they reached a blaze of madness." "The nearer we come to the Fourteenth
of July," says an eye witness, "the greater the famine becomes." "In
consequence of the bad harvest," writes Schmidt, "the price of bread had
been steadily rising from the opening of the year 1789. This state of
things was utilized by the agitators who aimed at driving the people
into excesses: these excesses in turn paralyzed trade. Business ceased,
and numbers of workers found themselves without bread."
A few words should properly be said in regard to brigandage under the
_ancien régime_. The progress of manners and especially the development
of executive government have caused it utterly to disappear. The
reader's imagination will supply all we have not space to say. He will
recollect the lengths of daring to which a man like Cartouche[54] could
go, and recall what the forest of Bondy[55] was at the gates of Paris.
So grew up towards the end of the _ancien régime_ what Taine has so
happily called a spontaneous anarchy. In the four months preceding the
capture of the Bastille, one can count more than three hundred riots in
France. At Nantes, on January 9, 1789, the town hall was invaded, and
the bakers' shops pillaged. All this took place to the cries of "Vive le
roi!" At Bray-sur-Seine, on May 1, peasants armed with knives and clubs
forced the farmers to lower the price of corn. At Rouen, on May 28, the
corn in the market place was plundered. In Picardy, a discharged
carabineer put himself at the head of an armed band which attacked the
villages and carried off the corn. On all sides houses were looted from
roof to cellar. At Aupt, M. de Montferrat, defending himself, was "cut
into little pieces." At La Seyne, the mob brought a coffin in front of
the house of one of the principal burgesses; he was told to prepare for
death, and they would do him the honour to bury him. He escaped, and his
house was sacked. We cull these facts haphazard from among hundreds of
others.
The immediate neighbourhood of Paris was plunged in terror. The batches
of letters, still unpublished, preserved in the National Archives throw
the most vivid light on this point. Bands of armed vagabonds scoured the
country districts, pillaging the villages and plundering the crops.
These were the "Brigands," a term which constantly recurs in the
documents, and more and more frequently as we approach the 14th of July.
These armed bands numbered three, four, five hundred men. At Cosne, at
Orleans, at Rambouillet, it was the same story of raids on the corn. In
different localities of the environs of Paris, the people organized
themselves on a military basis. Armed burghers patrolled the streets
against the "brigands." From all sides the people rained on the king
demands for troops to protect them. Towns like Versailles, in dread of
an invasion by these ruffians, implored the king for protection: the
letters of the municipal council preserved in the National Archives are
in the highest degree instructive.
At this moment there had collected in the outskirts of Paris those
troops whose presence was in the sequel so skilfully turned to account
by the orators of the Palais-Royal. True, the presence of the troops
made them uneasy. So far were the soldiers from having designs against
the Parisians that in the secret correspondence of Villedeuil we find
the court constantly urging that they should be reserved for the
safeguarding of the adjoining districts, which were every day exposed to
attack, and for the safe conduct of the convoys of corn coming up to
Versailles and Paris. Bands mustered around the capital. In the first
weeks of May, near Villejuif, a troop of from five to six hundred
ruffians met intending to storm Bicêtre and march on Saint-Cloud. They
came from distances of thirty, forty, and fifty leagues, and the whole
mass surged around Paris and was swallowed up there as into a sewer.
During the last days of April the shopmen saw streaming through the
barriers "a terrific number of men, ill clad and of sinister aspect." By
the first days of May, it was noticed that the appearance of the mob had
altogether changed. There was now mingled with it "a number of strangers
from all the country parts, most of them in rags, and armed with huge
clubs, the mere aspect of them showing what was to be feared." In the
words of a contemporary, "one met such physiognomies as one never
remembered having seen in the light of day." To provide occupation for a
part of these ill-favoured unemployed, whose presence everybody felt to
be disquieting, workshops were constructed at Montmartre, where from
seventeen to eighteen thousand men were employed on improvised tasks at
twenty sous a day.
Meanwhile the electors chosen to nominate deputies to the National
Assembly had been collecting. On April 22, 1789, Thiroux de Crosne, the
lieutenant of police, speaking of the tranquillity with which the
elections were being carried on, added: "But I constantly have my eye on
the bakers."
On April 23, de Crosne referred to the irritation which was showing
itself among certain groups of workmen in the Suburb Saint-Antoine
against two manufacturers, Dominique Henriot, the saltpetre-maker, and
Réveillon, the manufacturer of wall-papers. Henriot was known, not only
for his intelligence, but for his kindliness; in years of distress he
had sacrificed a portion of his fortune for the support of the workmen;
as to Réveillon, he was at this date one of the most remarkable
representatives of Parisian industry. A simple workman to begin with, he
was in 1789 paying 200,000 livres a year in salaries to 300 workers;
shortly before, he had carried off the prize founded by Necker for the
encouragement of useful arts. Henriot and Réveillon were said to have
made offensive remarks against the workmen in the course of the recent
electoral assemblies. They both denied, however, having uttered the
remarks attributed to them, and there is every reason to believe that
their denials were genuine.
During the night of April 27 and the next day, howling mobs attacked the
establishments of Henriot and Réveillon, which were thoroughly
plundered. Commissary Gueullette, in his report of May 3, notes that a
wild and systematic devastation was perpetrated. Only the walls were
left standing. What was not stolen was smashed into atoms. The
"brigands"--the expression used by the Commissary--threw a part of the
plant out of the windows into the street, where the mob made bonfires of
it. Part of the crowd were drunk; nevertheless they flung themselves
into the cellars, and the casks were stove in. When casks and bottles
were empty, the rioters attacked the flasks containing colouring
matter; this they absorbed in vast quantities, and reeled about with
fearful contortions, poisoned. When these cellars were entered next day,
they presented a horrible spectacle, for the wretches had come to
quarrelling and cutting each other's throats. "The people got on to the
roofs," writes Thiroux de Crosne, "whence they rained down upon the
troops a perfect hailstorm of tiles, stones, &c.; they even set rolling
down fragments of chimneys and bits of timber; and although they were
fired upon several times and some persons were killed, it was quite
impossible to master them."
The riot was not quelled by the troops until 10 o'clock that night; more
than a hundred persons were left dead in the street. M. Alexandre Tuetey
has devoted some remarkable pages to Réveillon's affair; he has
carefully studied the interrogatories of rioters who were arrested. The
majority, he says, had been drunk all day. Réveillon, as is well known,
only found safety by taking refuge in the Bastille. He was the only
prisoner whom the Bastille received throughout the year 1789.
In the night following these bacchanalian orgies, the agents of the
Marquis du Châtelet, colonel of the Gardes Françaises, having crept
along one of the moats, "saw a crowd of brigands" collected on the
further side of the Trône gate. Their leader was mounted on a table,
haranguing them.
We come upon them again in the report of Commissary Vauglenne, quoted by
M. Alexandre Tuetey. "On April 29, Vauglenne took the depositions of
bakers, confectioners, and pork butchers of the Marais, who had been
robbed by veritable bands of highwaymen, who proceed by burglary and
violence; they may possibly be starving men, but they look and act
uncommonly like gentlemen of the road."
Meanwhile, in the garden of the Palais-Royal, Camille Desmoulins was
haranguing groups of the unemployed and ravenous outcasts, who were
pressing round him with wide glaring eyes. Desmoulins vociferates: "The
beast is in the trap; now to finish him!... Never a richer prey has ever
been offered to conquerors! Forty thousand palaces, mansions, châteaux,
two-fifths of the wealth of France will be the prize of valour. Those
who have set up as our masters will be mastered in their turn, the
nation will be purged!" It is easy to understand that in Paris the alarm
had become as acute as in the country; everyone was in terror of the
"brigands." On June 25 it was decided to form a citizen militia for the
protection of property. "The notoriety of these disorders," we read in
the minutes of the electors, "and the excesses committed by several mobs
have decided the general assembly to re-establish without delay the
militia of Paris." But a certain time was necessary for the organization
of this civil guard. On June 30, the doors of the Abbaye, where some
Gardes Françaises had been locked up, some for desertion, others for
theft, were broken in by blows from hatchets and hammers. The prisoners
were led in triumph to the Palais-Royal, where they were fêted in the
garden. The extent of the disorders was already so great that the
government, powerless to repress them, had perforce to grant a general
pardon. From that day there was no longer any need to capture the
Bastille, the _ancien régime_ was lost.
The disturbances at the Palais-Royal, the rendezvous of idlers, light
women, and hot-headed fools, were becoming ever more violent. They began
to talk of setting fire to the place. If some honest citizen plucked up
courage to protest he was publicly whipped, thrown into the ponds, and
rolled in the mud.
On July 11, Necker was dismissed from the ministry and replaced by
Breteuil. At this time Necker was very popular; Breteuil was not, though
he ought to have been, particularly in the eyes of supporters of a
revolutionary movement. Of all the ministers of the _ancien régime_, and
of all the men of his time, Breteuil was the one who had done most for
the suppression of _lettres de cachet_ and of state prisons. It was he
who had closed Vincennes and the Châtimoine tower of Caen, who had got
the demolition of the Bastille decided on, who had set Latude at
liberty, and how many other prisoners! who had drawn up and made
respected, even in the remotest parts of the kingdom, those admirable
circulars which will immortalize his name, by which he ordered the
immediate liberation of all prisoners whose detention was not absolutely
justified, and laid down such rigorous formalities for the future, that
the arbitrary character of _lettres de cachet_ may be said to have been
destroyed by them. Nevertheless the orators of the Palais-Royal
succeeded in persuading many people that the advent of Breteuil to the
ministry presaged a "St. Bartholomew of patriots." The agitation became
so vehement, the calumnies against the court and the government were
repeated with so much violence, that the court, in order to avoid the
slightest risk of the outbreak of a "St. Bartholomew," ordered all the
troops to be withdrawn and Paris to be left to itself.
Meanwhile, Camille Desmoulins was continuing to thunder forth: "I have
just sounded the people. My rage against the despots was turned to
despair. I did not see the crowds, although keenly moved and dismayed,
strongly enough disposed to insurrection.... I was rather lifted on to
the table than mounted there myself. Scarcely was I there than I saw
myself surrounded by an immense throng. Here is my short address, which
I shall never forget: 'Citizens! there is not a moment to lose. I come
from Versailles; M. Necker is dismissed; this dismissal is the alarm
bell of a St. Bartholomew of patriots; this evening all the Swiss and
German battalions will march from the Champ de Mars to cut our throats.
Only one resource remains to us: we must fly to arms!'"
The Parisians were in an abject state of fright, but it was not the
Swiss and German battalions which terrified them. The author of the
_Memorable Fortnight_, devoted heart and soul as he was to the
revolutionary movement, acknowledges that during the days from the 12th
to the 14th of July, all respectable people shut themselves up in their
houses. And while the troops and decent people were retiring, the dregs
were coming to the surface. During the night of July 12, the majority of
the toll gates, where the town dues were collected, were broken open,
plundered, and set on fire. "Brigands," armed with pikes and clubs,
scoured the streets, threatening the houses in which the trembling and
agitated citizens had shut themselves. Next day, July 13, the shops of
the bakers and wine merchants were rifled. "Girls snatched the earrings
from women who went by; if the ring resisted, the ear was torn in two."
"The house of the lieutenant of police was ransacked, and Thiroux de
Crosne had the utmost difficulty in escaping from the bands armed with
clubs and torches. Another troop, with murderous cries, arrived at the
Force, where prisoners for debt were confined: the prisoners were set
free. The Garde-Meuble was ransacked. One gang broke in with their axes
the door of the Lazarists, smashed the library, the cupboards, the
pictures, the windows, the physical laboratory, dived into the cellar,
stove in the wine-casks and got gloriously drunk. Twenty-four hours
afterwards some thirty dead and dying were found there, men and women,
one of the latter on the point of childbirth. In front of the house the
street was full of débris and of brigands, who held in their hands, some
eatables, others a pitcher, forcing wayfarers to drink and filling for
all and sundry. Wine flowed in torrents." Some had possessed themselves
of ecclesiastical robes, which they put on, and in this attire yelled
and gesticulated down the street. In the minute books of the electors we
read at this date: "On information given to the committee that the
brigands who had been dispersed showed some disposition to reassemble
for the purpose of attacking and pillaging the Royal Treasury and the
Bank, the committee ordered these two establishments to be guarded." On
the same day, they luckily succeeded in disarming more than a hundred
and fifty of these roisterers, who, drunk with wine and brandy, had
fallen asleep inside the Hôtel de Ville. Meanwhile the outskirts of
Paris were no safer than the city itself, and from the top of the towers
of the Bastille they could see the conflagrations which were started in
various quarters.
The organization of the citizen militia against these disorders was
becoming urgent. When evening came, the majority of the districts set
actively to work. Twelve hundred good citizens mustered in the Petit
Saint-Antoine district. It was a motley crew: tradesmen and artisans,
magistrates and doctors, writers and scholars, cheek by jowl with
navvies and carpenters. The future minister of Louis XVI., Champion de
Villeneuve, filled the post of secretary. The twelve hundred citizens,
as we read in the minutes, "compelled to unite by the too well founded
alarm inspired in all the citizens by the danger which seems to threaten
them each individually, and by the imminent necessity of taking prompt
measures to avert its effects, considering that a number of
individuals, terrified perhaps by the rumours which doubtless
evil-disposed persons have disseminated, are traversing, armed and in
disorder, all the streets of the capital, and that the ordinary town
guard either mingles with them or remains a passive spectator of the
disorder it cannot arrest; considering also that the prison of the Force
has been burst into and opened for the prisoners, and that it is
threatened to force open in the same way the prisons which confine
vagabonds, vagrants, and convicts ... in consequence, the assembled
citizens decide to organize themselves into a citizen militia. Every man
will carry while on duty whatever arms he can procure, save and except
pistols, which are forbidden as dangerous weapons.... There will always
be two patrols on duty at a time, and two others will remain at the
place fixed for headquarters." Most of the other districts imitated the
proceedings of the Petit-Saint-Antoine. They sent delegates to the Hôtel
des Invalides to ask for arms. The delegates were received by Besenval,
who would have been glad to grant them what they requested; but he must
have proper instructions. He writes in his _Memoirs_ that the delegates
were in a great state of fright, saying that the "brigands" were
threatening to burn and pillage their houses. The author of the
_Memorable Fortnight_ dwells on the point that the militia of Paris was
formed in self-defence against the excesses of the brigands. Speaking of
the minute book of the Petit-Saint-Antoine district, an excellent
authority, M. Charavay, writes: "The burgesses of Paris, less alarmed
at the plans of the court than at the men to whom the name of _brigands_
had already been given, organized themselves into a militia to resist
them: that was their only aim. The movement which on the next day swept
away the Bastille might perhaps have been repressed by the National
Guard if its organization had had greater stability." The fact could not
have been better put.
The Hôtel de Ville was attacked, and one of the electors, Legrand, only
cleared it of the hordes who were filling it with their infernal uproar
by ordering six barrels of powder to be brought up, and threatening to
blow the place up if they did not retire.
During the night of July 13, the shops of the bakers and wine-sellers
were pillaged. The excellent Abbé Morellet, one of the Encyclopædists,
who, as we have seen, was locked up in the Bastille under Louis XV.,
writes: "I spent a great part of the night of the 13th at my windows,
watching the scum of the population armed with muskets, pikes, and
skewers, as they forced open the doors of the houses and got themselves
food and drink, money and arms." Mathieu Dumas also describes in his
_Souvenirs_ these ragged vagabonds, several almost naked, and with
horrible faces. During these two days and nights, writes Bailly, Paris
ran great risk of pillage, and was only saved by the National Guard.
The proceedings of these bandits and the work of the National Guard are
described in a curious letter from an English doctor, named Rigby, to
his wife. "It was necessary not only to give arms to those one could
rely on, but to disarm those of whom little protection could be expected
and who might become a cause of disorder and harm. This required a good
deal of skill. Early in the afternoon we began to catch a glimpse here
and there among the swarms of people, where we saw signs of an
irritation which might soon develop into excesses, of a man of decent
appearance, carrying a musket with a soldierly air. These slowly but
surely increased in number; their intention was evidently to pacify and
at the same time to disarm the irregular bands. They had for the most
part accomplished their task before nightfall. Then the citizens who had
been officially armed occupied the streets almost exclusively: they were
divided into several sections, some mounting guard at certain points,
others patrolling the streets, all under the leadership of captains.
When night came, only very few of those who had armed themselves the
evening before could be seen. Some, however, had refused to give up
their arms, and during the night it was seen how well founded had been
the fears they had inspired, for they started to pillage. But it was too
late to do so with impunity. The looters were discovered and seized, and
we learnt next morning that several of these wretches, taken redhanded,
had been executed." Indeed, the repressive measures of the citizens were
not wanting in energy. Here and there brigands were strung up to the
lamp-posts, and then despatched, as they hung there, with musket shots.
The author of the _Authentic History_, who left the best of the
contemporary accounts of the taking of the Bastille which we possess,
says rightly enough: "The riot began on the evening of July 12." There
was thus a combination of disorders and "brigandage" in which the
capture of the Bastille, though it stands out more prominently than the
other events, was only a part, and cannot be considered by itself.
The morning of the Fourteenth dawned bright and sunny. A great part of
the population had remained up all night, and daylight found them still
harassed with anxiety and alarm. To have arms was the desire of all; the
citizens and supporters of order, so as to protect themselves; the
brigands, a part of whom had been disarmed, in order to procure or
recover the means of assault and pillage. There was a rush to the
Invalides, where the magazines of effective arms were. This was the
first violent action of the day. The mob carried off 28,000 muskets and
twenty-four cannon. And as it was known that other munitions of war were
deposited in the Bastille, the cry of "To the Invalides!" was succeeded
by the cry "To the Bastille!"
We must carefully distinguish between the two elements of which the
throng flocking to the Bastille was composed. On the one hand, a horde
of nameless vagabonds, those whom the contemporary documents invariably
style the "brigands"; and, on the other hand, the respectable
citizens--these certainly formed the minority--who desired arms for the
equipment of the civil guard. The sole motive impelling this band to
the Bastille was the wish to procure arms. On this point all documents
of any value and all the historians who have studied the matter closely
are in agreement. There was no question of liberty or of tyranny, of
setting free the prisoners or of protesting against the royal authority.
The capture of the Bastille was effected amid cries of "Vive le roi!"
just as, for several months past in the provinces, the granaries had
been plundered.
About 8 o'clock in the morning, the electors at the Hôtel de Ville
received some inhabitants of the Suburb Saint-Antoine who came to
complain that the district was threatened by the cannon trained on it
from the towers of the Bastille. These cannon were used for firing
salutes on occasions of public rejoicing, and were so placed that they
could do no harm whatever to the adjacent districts. But the electors
sent some of their number to the Bastille, where the governor, de
Launey, received the deputation with the greatest affability, kept them
to lunch, and at their request withdrew the cannon from the embrasures.
To this deputation there succeeded another, which, however, was quite
unofficial, consisting of three persons, with the advocate Thuriot de la
Rosière at the head. They were admitted as their predecessors had been.
Thuriot was the eloquent spokesman, "in the name of the nation and the
fatherland." He delivered an ultimatum to the governor and harangued the
garrison, consisting of 95 Invalides and 30 Swiss soldiers. Some
thousand men were thronging round the Bastille, vociferating wildly. The
garrison swore not to fire unless they were attacked. De Launey said
that without orders he could do no more than withdraw the cannon from
the embrasures, but he went so far as to block up these embrasures with
planks. Then Thuriot took his leave and returned to the Hôtel de Ville,
the crowd meanwhile becoming more and more threatening.
[Illustration: THE CAPTURE OF THE BASTILLE.
_From an anonymous contemporary painting now in the Hôtel Carnavalet._]
"The entrance to the first courtyard, that of the barracks, was open,"
says M. Fernand Bournon in his admirable account of the events of this
day; "but de Launey had ordered the garrison to retire within the
enclosure, and to raise the outer drawbridge by which the court of the
governor was reached, and which in the ordinary way used to be lowered
during the day. Two daring fellows dashed forward and scaled the roof of
the guard-house, one of them a soldier named Louis Tournay: the name of
the other is unknown. They shattered the chains of the drawbridge with
their axes, and it fell."
It has been said in a recent work, in which defects of judgment and
criticism are scarcely masked by a cumbrous parade of erudition, that
Tournay and his companion performed their feat under the fire of the
garrison. At this moment the garrison did not fire a single shot,
contenting themselves with urging the besiegers to retire. "While M. de
Launey and his officers contented themselves with threats, these two
vigorous champions succeeded in breaking in the doors and in lowering
the outer drawbridge; then the horde of brigands advanced in a body and
dashed towards the second bridge, which they wished to capture, firing
at the troops as they ran. It was then for the first time that M. de
Launey, perceiving his error in allowing the operations at the first
bridge to be managed so quietly, ordered the soldiers to fire, which
caused a disorderly stampede on the part of the rabble, which was more
brutal than brave; and it is at this point that the calumnies against
the governor begin. Transposing the order of events, it has been
asserted that he had sent out a message of peace, that the people had
advanced in reliance on his word, and that many citizens were
massacred." This alleged treachery of de Launey, immediately hawked
about Paris, was one of the events of the day. It is contradicted not
only by all the accounts of the besieged, but by the besiegers
themselves, and is now rejected by all historians.
A wine-seller named Cholat, aided by one Baron, nicknamed La Giroflée,
had brought into position a piece of ordnance in the long walk of the
arsenal. They fired, but the gun's recoil somewhat seriously wounded the
two artillerymen, and they were its only victims. As these means were
insufficient to overturn the Bastille, the besiegers set about devising
others. A pretty young girl named Mdlle. de Monsigny, daughter of the
captain of the company of Invalides at the Bastille, had been
encountered in the barrack yard. Some madmen imagined that she was
Mdlle. de Launey. They dragged her to the edge of the moat, and gave the
garrison to understand by their gestures that they were going to burn
her alive if the place was not surrendered. They had thrown the unhappy
child, who had fainted, upon a mattress, to which they had already set
light. M. de Monsigny saw the hideous spectacle from a window of the
towers, and, desperately rushing down to save his child, he was killed
by two shots. These were tricks in the siege of strongholds of which
Duguesclin would never have dreamed. A soldier named Aubin Bonnemère
courageously interposed and succeeded in saving the girl.
A detachment of Gardes Françaises, coming up with two pieces of
artillery which the Hôtel de Ville had allowed to be removed, gave a
more serious aspect to the siege. But the name of Gardes Françaises must
not give rise to misapprehension: the soldiers of the regular army under
the _ancien régime_ must not be compared with those of the present day.
The regiment of Gardes Françaises in particular had fallen into a
profound state of disorganization and degradation. The privates were
permitted to follow a trade in the city, by this means augmenting their
pay. It is certain that in the majority of cases the trade they followed
was that of the bully. "Almost all the soldiers in the Guards belong to
this class," we read in the _Encyclopédie méthodique_, "and many men
indeed only enlist in the corps in order to live on the earnings of
these unfortunates." The numerous documents relating to the Gardes
Françaises preserved in the archives of the Bastille give the most
precise confirmation to this statement. We see, for example, that the
relatives of the engraver Nicolas de Larmessin requested a _lettre de
cachet_ ordering their son to be locked up in jail, where they would pay
for his keep, "because he had threatened to enlist in the Gardes
Françaises."
From the fifteen cannon placed on the towers, not a single shot was
fired during the siege. Within the château, three guns loaded with grape
defended the inner drawbridge; the governor had only one of them fired,
and that only once. Not wishing to massacre the mob, de Launey
determined to blow up the Bastille and find his grave among the ruins.
The Invalides Ferrand and Béquart flung themselves upon him to prevent
him from carrying out his intention. "The Bastille was not captured by
main force," says Elie, whose testimony cannot be suspected of
partiality in favour of the defenders; "it surrendered before it was
attacked, on my giving my word of honour as a French officer that all
should escape unscathed if they submitted."
We know how this promise was kept, in spite of the heroic efforts of
Elie and Hulin, to whom posterity owes enthusiastic homage. Is the mob
to be reproached for these atrocious crimes? It was a savage horde, the
scum of the population. De Launey, whose confidence and kindness had
never faltered, was massacred with every circumstance of horror. "The
Abbé Lefèvre," says Dusaulx, "was an involuntary witness of his last
moments: 'I saw him fall,' he told me, 'without being able to help him;
he defended himself like a lion, and if only ten men had behaved as he
did at the Bastille, it would not have been taken.'" His murderers
slowly severed his head from his trunk with a penknife. The operation
was performed by a cook's apprentice named Desnot, "who knew, as he
afterwards proudly said, how to manage a joint." The deposition of this
brute should be read. It has been published by M. Guiffrey in the _Revue
historique_. To give himself courage, Desnot had gulped down brandy
mixed with gunpowder, and he added that what he had done was done in the
hope of obtaining a medal.
"We learnt by-and-by," continues Dusaulx, "of the death of M. de
Losme-Salbray, which all good men deplored." De Losme had been the good
angel of the prisoners during his term of office as major of the
Bastille: there are touching details showing to what lengths he carried
his kindliness and delicacy of feeling. At the moment when the mob was
hacking at him, there happened to pass the Marquis de Pelleport, who had
been imprisoned in the Bastille for several years; he sprang forward to
save him: "Stop!" he cried, "you are killing the best of men." But he
fell badly wounded, as also did the Chevalier de Jean, who had joined
him in the attempt to rescue the unfortunate man from the hands of the
mob. The adjutant Miray, Person the lieutenant of the Invalides, and
Dumont, one of the Invalides, were massacred. Miray was led to the
Grève, where the mob had resolved to execute him. Struck with fists and
clubs, stabbed with knives, he crawled along in his death agony. He
expired, "done to death with pin-pricks," before arriving at the place
of execution. The Invalides Asselin and Béquart were hanged. It was
Béquart who had prevented de Launey from blowing up the Bastille. "He
was gashed with two sword-strokes," we read in the _Moniteur_, "and a
sabre cut had lopped off his wrist. They carried the hand in triumph
through the streets of the city--the very hand to which so many citizens
owed their safety." "After I had passed the arcade of the Hôtel de
Ville," says Restif de la Bretonne, who has left so curious a page about
the 14th of July, "I came upon some cannibals: one--I saw him with my
own eyes--brought home to me the meaning of a horrible word heard so
often since: he was carrying at the end of a _taille-cime_[56] the
bleeding entrails of a victim of the mob's fury, and this horrible
top-knot caused no one to turn a hair. Farther on I met the captured
Invalides and Swiss: from young and pretty lips--I shudder at it
still--came screams of 'Hang them! Hang them!'"
Further, they massacred Flesselles, the provost of the guilds, accused
of a treacherous action as imaginary as that of de Launey. They cut the
throat of Foulon, an old man of seventy-four years, who, as Taine tells
us, had spent during the preceding winter 60,000 francs in order to
provide the poor with work. They assassinated Berthier, one of the
distinguished men of the time. Foulon's head was cut off; they tore
Berthier's heart from his body to carry it in procession through
Paris--charming touch!--in a bouquet of white carnations. For the fun
was growing fast and furious. De Launey's head was borne on a pike to
the Palais Royal, then to the new bridge, where it was made to do
obeisance three times to the statue of Henri IV., with the words,
"Salute thy master!" At the Palais Royal, two of the conquerors had
merrily set themselves down at a dining-table in an entresol. As we
garnish our tables with flowers, so these men had placed on the table a
trunkless head and gory entrails; but as the crowd below cried out for
them, they shot them gaily out of the window.
Those who had remained in front of the Bastille had dashed on in quest
of booty. As at the pillage of the warehouses of Réveillon and Henriot,
and of the convent of the Lazarists, the first impulse of the conquerors
was to bound forward to the cellar. "This rabble," writes the author of
the _Authentic History_, "were so blind drunk that they made in one body
for the quarters of the staff, breaking the furniture, doors, and
windows. All this time their comrades, taking the pillagers for some of
the garrison, were firing on them."
No one gave a thought to the prisoners, but the keys were secured and
carried in triumph through Paris. The doors of the rooms in which the
prisoners were kept had to be broken in. The wretched men, terrified by
the uproar, were more dead than alive. These victims of arbitrary power
were exactly seven in number. Four were forgers, Béchade, Laroche, La
Corrège, and Pujade; these individuals had forged bills of exchange, to
the loss of two Parisian bankers: while their case was being dealt with
in regular course at the Châtelet, they were lodged in the Bastille,
where they consulted every day with their counsel. Then there was the
young Comte de Solages, who was guilty of monstrous crimes meriting
death; he was kept in the Bastille out of regard for his family, who
defrayed his expenses. Finally there were two lunatics, Tavernier and de
Whyte. We know what immense progress has been made during the past
century in the methods of treating lunatics. In those days they locked
them up. Tavernier and de Whyte were before long transferred to
Charenton, where assuredly they were not so well treated as they had
been at the Bastille.
Such were the seven martyrs who were led in triumphant procession
through the streets, amid the shouts of a deeply moved people.
Of the besiegers, ninety-eight dead were counted, some of whom had met
their death through the assailants' firing on one another. Several had
been killed by falling into the moat. Of this total, only nineteen were
married, and only five had children. These are details of some interest.
There was no thought of burying either the conquerors or the conquered.
At midnight on Wednesday the 15th, the presence of the corpses of the
officers of the Bastille, still lying in the Place de Grève, was
notified to the commissaries of the Châtelet. In his admirable work M.
Furnand Bournon has published the ghastly report that was drawn up on
that night. It is a fitting crown to the work of the great day: "We, the
undersigned commissaries, duly noted down the declaration of the said
Sieur Houdan, and having then gone down into the courtyard of the
Châtelet (whither the corpses had just been carried), we found there
seven corpses of the male sex, the first without a head, clothed in a
coat, vest, breeches, and black silk stockings, with a fine shirt, but
no shoes; the second also without a head, clothed in a vest of red
stuff, breeches of nankeen with regimental buttons, blue silk stockings
with a small black pattern worked in; the third also headless, clothed
in a shirt, breeches, and white cotton stockings; the fourth also
headless, clothed in a blood-stained shirt, breeches, and black
stockings; the fifth clad in a shirt, blue breeches, and white gaiters,
with brown hair, apparently about forty years old, and having part of
his forearm cut off and severe bruises on his throat; the sixth clothed
in breeches and white gaiters, with severe bruises on his throat; and
the seventh, clothed in a shirt, breeches, and black silk stockings,
disfigured beyond recognition."
Meanwhile the majority of the victors, the first moments of intoxication
having passed, were hiding themselves like men who had committed a
crime. The disorder in the city was extreme. "The commissioners of the
districts," writes the Sicilian ambassador, "seeing the peril in which
the inhabitants were placed before this enormous number of armed men,
including brigands and men let out of prison on the previous days,
formed patrols of the National Guard. They proclaimed martial law, or
rather, they issued one solitary law declaring that whoever robbed or
set fire to a house would be hanged. Indeed, not a day passed without
five and even as many as ten persons suffering this penalty. To this
salutary expedient we owe our lives and the safety of our houses."
More than one conqueror of the Bastille was hanged in this way, which
was a great pity, for two days later his glorious brow might have been
crowned with laurels and flowers!
It has been said that the Bastille was captured by the people of Paris.
But the number of the besiegers amounted to no more than a thousand,
among whom, as Marat has already brought to our notice, there were many
provincials and foreigners. As to the Parisians, they had come in great
numbers, as they always do, to see what was going on. We have this too
on the testimony of Marat. "I was present at the taking of the
Bastille," writes the Chancellor de Pasquier also: "what has been called
the 'fight' was not serious, and of resistance there was absolutely
none. A few musket shots were fired to which there was no reply, and
four or five cannon shots. We know the results of this boasted victory,
which has brought a shower of compliments upon the heads of the
so-called conquerors: the truth is that this great fight did not give a
moment's uneasiness to the numerous spectators who had hurried up to see
the result. Among them there was many a pretty woman; they had left
their carriages at a distance in order to approach more easily. I was
leaning on the end of the barrier which closed in the garden skirting
Beaumarchais' garden in the direction of the Place de la Bastille. By my
side was Mdlle. Contat, of the Comédie Française: we stayed to the end,
and I gave her my arm to her carriage. As pretty as any woman could be,
Mdlle. Contat added to the graces of her person an intelligence of the
most brilliant order."
By next day there was quite another story. The Bastille had been
"stormed" in a formidable and heroic assault lasting a quarter of an
hour. The guns of the assailants had made a breach in its walls. These,
it is true, were still standing intact; but that did not signify, the
guns had made a breach, unquestionably! The seven prisoners who had been
set free had been a disappointment, for the best will in the world could
not make them anything but scoundrels and lunatics; some one invented an
eighth, the celebrated Comte de Lorges, the white-headed hero and
martyr. This Comte de Lorges had no existence; but that fact also is
nothing to the purpose: he makes an admirable and touching story. There
was talk of instruments of torture that had been discovered: "an iron
corslet, invented to hold a man fast by all his joints, and fix him in
eternal immobility:" it was really a piece of knightly armour dating
from the middle ages, taken from the magazine of obsolete arms which was
kept at the Bastille. Some one discovered also a machine "not less
destructive, which was brought to the light of day, but no one could
guess its name or its special use"; it was a secret printing-press
seized in the house of one François Lenormand in 1786. Finally, while
digging in the bastion, some one came upon the bones of Protestants who
had once been buried there, the prejudices of the time not allowing
their remains to be laid in the consecrated ground of the cemetery: the
vision of secret executions in the deepest dungeons of the Bastille was
conjured up in the mind of the discoverers, and Mirabeau sent these
terrible words echoing through France: "The ministers were lacking in
foresight, they forgot to eat the bones!"
The compilation of the roll of the conquerors of the Bastille was a
laborious work. A great number of those who had been in the thick of the
fray did not care to make themselves known: they did not know but that
their laurel-crowned heads might be stuck aloft! It is true that these
bashful heroes were speedily replaced by a host of fine fellows
who--from the moment when it was admitted that the conquerors were
heroes, deserving of honours, pensions, and medals--were fully persuaded
that they had sprung to the assault, and in the very first rank. The
final list contained 863 names.
Victor Fournel in a charming book has sung the epic, at once ludicrous
and lachrymose, of the men of the 14th of July. The book, which ought to
be read, gives a host of delightful episodes it is impossible to
abridge. In the sequel these founders of liberty did not shine either
through the services they rendered to the Republic, or through their
fidelity to the immortal principles. The Hulins--Hulin, however, had
done nobly in trying to save de Launey--the Palloys, the Fourniers, the
Latudes, and how many others! were the most servile lackeys of the
Empire, and those of them who survived were the most assiduous servants
of the Restoration. Under the Empire, the conquerors of the Bastille
tried to secure the Legion of Honour for the whole crew. They went about
soliciting pensions even up to 1830, and at that date, after forty-three
years, there were still 401 conquerors living. In 1848 the conquerors
made another appearance. There was still mention of pensions for the
conquerors of the Bastille in the budget of 1874--let us save the
ladder, the ladder of Latude!
This is the amusing side of their story. But there is a painful side
too: their rivalries with the Gardes Françaises, who charged them with
filching the glory from them, and with the "volunteers of the Bastille."
The heroes were acquainted with calumny and opprobrium. There were, too,
deadly dissensions among their own body. There were the true conquerors,
and others who, while they were true conquerors, were nevertheless not
true: there were always "traitors" among the conquerors, as well as
"patriots." On July 1, 1790, two of the conquerors were found beaten to
death near Beaumarchais' garden, in front of the theatre of their
exploits. Next day there was a violent quarrel between four conquerors
and some soldiers. In December two others were assassinated near the
Champs de Mars. Early in 1791 two were wounded, and a third was
discovered with his neck in a noose, in a ditch near the military
school. Such were the nocturnal doings on the barriers.
It remains to explain this amazing veering round of opinion, this
legend, of all things the least likely, which transformed into great men
the "brigands" of April, June, and July, 1789.
The first reason is explained in the following excellent passage from
_Rabagas_[57]:--
_Carle._--But how then do you distinguish a riot from a revolution?
_Boubard._--A riot is when the mob is defeated ... they are all
curs. A revolution is when the mob is the stronger: they are all
heroes!
During the night of July 14, the Duke de la Rochefoucauld woke Louis
XVI. to announce to him the capture of the Bastille. "It's a revolt
then," said the king. "Sire," replied the duke, "it is a revolution."
The day on which the royal power, in its feebleness and irresolution,
abandoned Paris to the mob, was the day of its abdication. The Parisians
attempted to organize themselves into a citizen militia in order to
shoot down the brigands. The movement on the Bastille was a stroke of
genius on the part of the latter--instinctive, no doubt, but for all
that a stroke of genius. The people now recognized its masters, and with
its usual facility it hailed the new régime with adulation. "From that
moment," said a deputy, "there was an end of liberty, even in the
Assembly; France was dumb before thirty factionaries."
What rendered the national enthusiasm for the conquerors more easy was
precisely all those legends to which credence was given, in all
sincerity, by the most intelligent people in France--the legends on the
horrors of the Bastille and the cruelties of arbitrary power. For fifty
years they had been disseminated throughout the kingdom, and had taken
firm root. The pamphlets of Linguet and Mirabeau, the recent stupendous
success of the _Memoirs of Latude_, had given these stories renewed
strength and vigour. Compelled to bow before the triumphant mob, people
preferred to regard themselves--so they silenced their conscience--as
hailing a deliverer. There was some sincerity in this movement of
opinion, too. The same districts which on July 13 took arms against the
brigands could exclaim, after the crisis had passed: "The districts
applaud the capture of a fortress which, regarded hitherto as the seat
of despotism, dishonoured the French name under a popular king."
In his edition of the _Memoirs of Barras_, M. George Duruy has well
explained the transformation of opinion. "In the _Memoirs_, the capture
of the Bastille is merely the object of a brief and casual mention.
Barras only retained and transmits to us one single detail. He saw
leaving the dungeons the 'victims of arbitrary power, saved at last from
rack and torture and from living tombs.' Such a dearth of information is
the more likely to surprise us in that Barras was not only a spectator
of the event, but composed, in that same year 1789, an account of it
which has now been discovered. Now his narrative of 1789 is as
interesting as the passage in the _Memoirs_ is insignificant. The
impression left by these pages, written while the events were vividly
pictured in his mind, is, we are bound to say, that the famous capture
of the Bastille was after all only a horrible and sanguinary saturnalia.
There is no word of heroism in this first narrative: nothing about
'victims of arbitrary power' snatched from 'torture and living tombs';
but on the other hand, veritable deeds of cannibalism perpetrated by the
victors. That is what Barras saw, and what he recorded on those pages
where, at that period of his life, he noted down day by day the events
of which he was a witness. Thirty years slip by. Barras has sat on the
benches of the 'Montagne.'[58] He has remained an inflexible
revolutionist. He gathers his notes together in view of _Memoirs_ he
intends to publish. At this time, the revolutionist version of the
capture of the Bastille is officially established. It is henceforth
accepted that the Bastille fell before an impulse of heroism on the part
of the people of Paris, and that its fall brought to light horrible
mysteries of iniquity. This legend, which has so profoundly distorted
the event, was contemporary with the event itself, a spontaneous fruit
of the popular imagination. And Barras, having to speak of the capture
in his _Memoirs_, discovers his old narrative among his papers, and
reads it, I imagine, with a sort of stupefaction. What! the capture of
the Bastille was no more than that!--and he resolutely casts it aside."
In the provinces, the outbreak had a violent counterpart. "There
instantly arose," writes Victor Fournel, "a strange, extraordinary,
grotesque panic, which swept through the greater part of France like a
hurricane of madness, and which many of us have heard our grand-fathers
tell stories about under the name of the 'day of the brigands' or 'the
day of the fear.' It broke out everywhere in the second fortnight of
July, 1789. Suddenly, one knew not whence, an awful rumour burst upon
the town or village: the brigands are here, at our very gates: they are
advancing in troops of fifteen or twenty thousand, burning the standing
crops, ravaging everything! Dust-stained couriers appear, spreading the
terrible news. An unknown horseman goes through at the gallop, with
haggard cheeks and dishevelled hair: 'Up, to arms, they are here!' Some
natives rush up: it is only too true: they have seen them, the bandits
are no more than a league or two away! The alarm bell booms out, the
people fly to arms, line up in battle order, start off to reconnoitre.
In the end, nothing happens, but their terrors revive. The brigands have
only turned aside: every man must remain under arms." In the frontier
provinces, there were rumours of foreign enemies. The Bretons and
Normans shook in fear of an English descent: in Champagne and Lorraine
a German invasion was feared.
Along with these scenes of panic must be placed the deeds of violence,
the assassinations, plunderings, burnings, which suddenly desolated the
whole of France. In a book which sheds a flood of light on these facts,
Gustave Bord gives a thrilling picture of them. The châteaux were
invaded, and the owner, if they could lay hands on him, was roasted on
the soles of his feet. At Versailles the mob threw themselves on the
hangman as he was about to execute a parricide, and the criminal was set
free: the state of terror in which the town was plunged is depicted in
the journals of the municipal assembly. On July 23, the governor of
Champagne sends word that the rising is general in his district. At
Rennes, at Nantes, at Saint-Malo, at Angers, at Caen, at Bordeaux, at
Strasburg, at Metz, the mob engaged in miniature captures of the
Bastille more or less accompanied with pillage and assassination. Armed
bands went about cutting down the woods, breaking down the dikes,
fishing in the ponds.[59] The disorganization was complete.
Nothing could more clearly show the character of the government under
the _ancien régime:_ it was wholly dependent on traditions. Nowhere was
there a concrete organization to secure the maintenance of order and
the enforcement of the king's decrees. France was a federation of
innumerable republics, held together by a single bond, the sentiment of
loyalty every citizen felt towards the crown. One puff of wind sent the
crown flying, and then disorder and panic bewilderment dominated the
whole nation. The door was open to all excesses, and the means of
checking them miserably failed. Under the _ancien régime_, devotion to
the king was the whole government, the whole administration, the whole
life of the state. And thus arose the necessity for the domination of
the Terror, and the legislative work of Napoleon.
THE END.
INDEX
Allègre, Latude's fellow prisoner, 154, 185-192, 217.
Ameilhon, city librarian, 55.
Argenson, D', 60, 72, 95, 175, 182.
Arsenal library, 55, 56.
Atrocities of the mob, 258-266.
Avedick, Armenian patriarch, 133.
Barras, 272.
Bastille, its situation, 47;
appearance, 48;
repute, 49, 50;
archives, 50-56;
origin, 57;
site, 58;
construction, 59, 60;
additions to, 61;
appearance in later days, 61, 62;
early uses, 63;
becomes state prison, 63, 64;
prisoners, 65;
its administration, 66;
gradual transformation, 67;
character of prisoners, 68, 69;
secretary, 70;
office of lieutenant of police, 71;
his duties, 71, 72;
becomes like modern prisons, 77, 78;
abolition of torture, 78;
duration of prisoners' detention, 80;
expenses, 81;
plans for altering, 81-83;
a _prison de luxe_, 85;
treatment of prisoners, 86;
the rooms, 87;
manner of prisoners' entrance, 88, 89;
cells, 92, 93;
tower rooms, 93, 94;
furniture, 95, 96;
examination of prisoners, 96, 97;
indemnified if innocent, 98, 99;
allowed companions, 100, 101;
prison fare, 102-107;
clothes, 107, 108;
books, 108, 109;
exercise, 109;
diversions, 109, 110;
funerals, 110, 111;
liberation, 111, 112;
the Iron Mask, 114-146;
men of letters, 147-165;
capture, 238-272.
Berryer, 175, 176, 178, 184, 188, 189, 193.
Besmaus, de, 70.
Binguet, 171, 179.
Bread riots, 242, 243.
Breteuil, 78, 248.
Brigands, 241, 245, 250.
Burgaud, 135.
Campan, Madame de, 144, 145.
Carutti's theory of Iron Mask, 134.
Cellamare conspiracy, 72, 73.
Character of French government and society, 239-241.
Chevalier, major, 49, 51, 120, 121, 187, 189, 194.
Citizen militia, 251-253.
Clothes of prisoners, 107, 108.
Crosne, de, lieutenant of police, 244-246.
D'Aubrespy, Jeanneton, 169, 201.
Dauger suggested as Iron Mask, 135.
Desmoulins, 247, 249.
Diderot, 165.
Diversions of prisoners, 109, 110.
Du Junca's journal, 69, 89, 90, 114-116, 122.
Dusaulx, 51.
Encyclopædia, 80.
Estrades, Abbé d', 138-142.
Food of prisoners, 102-107.
Funerals, 110.
Games of prisoners, 101, 102.
Gleichen, baron, 130.
Griffet, Father, 120.
Heiss, Baron, first to suggest true solution of Iron Mask, 136.
Henriot, 245.
Houdon, sculptor, 82.
July 14th, 255-276.
Jung's theory of Iron Mask, 134.
Kingston, Duchess of, 225, 227.
La Beaumelle, 152-155.
Lagrange-Chancel, 132.
La Reynie, 71.
Latude, 168-237.
Launay, Mdlle. de, _see_ Staal, Madame de.
Launey, de, governor, 256, 258, 260.
Lauzun, 91.
Legros, Madame de, 223-226, 232, 233.
Lenoir, lieutenant of police, 186.
_Lettres de cachet_, 240.
Lieutenancy of police created, 97.
Linguet, 163-165.
Loiseleur's theory of Iron Mask, 134.
Loquin's theory of Iron Mask, 133.
Losme, de, 261.
Louis XIV. and Iron Mask, 137-140.
Louis XV. and Iron Mask, 144.
Louis XVI. and Iron Mask, 144.
Louvois, 70, 141.
Maisonrouge, king's lieutenant, 73-76.
Malesherbes, 78, 156, 216.
Man in the Iron Mask, documents, 114-125;
legends, 125-136;
true solution, 136-146.
Marmontel, 158-163.
Mattioli, the Iron Mask, 136-146.
Maurepas, 144, 173-175.
Mirabeau, 166, 167.
Morellet, 155-158, 253.
Moyria, de, 218-220.
Necker, 248.
Palatine, Madame, 125.
Palteau, M. de, 118, 119.
Papon's theory of Iron Mask, 127.
Parlement, 76, 77.
Pensions to prisoners, 98, 99.
Pompadour, Madame de, 173, 206.
Pontchartrain, 69.
Puget, king's lieutenant, 83.
Quesnay, Dr., 175, 177, 178.
Ravaisson, librarian, 54, 55, 134.
Register of St. Paul's church, 117, 142, 143.
Regnier's lines, 59.
Renneville's meals, 103, 104.
Réveillon, 245, 246.
Ricarville, companion of the Iron Mask, 123, 124.
Richelieu, Cardinal, 63-66.
Richelieu, Duke de, 76, 129, 130.
Rigby, Dr., 253, 254.
Risings in the provinces, 273.
Rochebrune, commissary, 195.
Rohan, Cardinal de, 222.
Sade, Marquis de, 95.
Saint-Mars, governor, 87, 115-119, 127, 142.
Saint-Marc, detective, 169, 176, 180, 183, 192.
Sartine, de, 49, 202, 203, 207, 210, 215.
Sauvé, Madame de, her dress, 108.
Solages, de, 84.
Staal, Madame de, 73-76, 94, 95, 102.
Taulès, de, 132.
Tavernier, 106.
Theories on Iron Mask, 125-136.
Thuriot de la Rosière, 256.
Tirmont, companion of Iron Mask, 123, 124.
Vieux-Maisons, Madame de, 128.
Villette, Marquis de, 224.
Vinache's library, 109.
Vincennes, 165-167, 180.
Voltaire, 99, 126, 128, 129, 148-152.
LONDON:
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD.
ST. JOHN'S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, E.C.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The castle of Tours, 147 miles south-west of Paris, which Louis XI.
made his favourite residence. See Scott's _Quentin Durward_.--T.
[2] Jean Balue (1471-1491), chaplain to Louis XI. For traitorously
divulging the king's schemes to his enemy, the Duke of Burgundy, he was
for eleven years shut up in the castle of Loches, in an iron-bound
wooden cage.--T.
[3] A French author (1624-1693) who was involved in the fall of Louis
XIV.'s dishonest finance minister, Fouquet, in 1661, and was imprisoned
for five years in the Bastille, amusing himself with reading the Fathers
of the Church and taming a spider. See Kitchin's _History of France_,
iii. 155-157.--T.
[4] Antoine de Caumont, duc de Lauzun (1633-1723), a courtier of Louis
XIV., whose favours to the Duke made Louvois, the minister, his bitter
enemy. He was twice imprisoned in the Bastille, the second time at the
instance of Madame de Montespan. He commanded the French auxiliaries of
James II. in Ireland. See Macaulay's _History_, Chaps. IX., XII.,
XV.--T.
[5] A game played with a sort of box, in the top of which are cut holes
of equal size, and with metal discs or balls, the object being to pitch
the balls into the holes from a distance. A similar game may be seen at
any English country fair.--T.
[6] The famous president of the Cour des Aides and Minister of the
Interior, renowned for his consistent support of the people against
oppression. He was banished in 1771 for remonstrating against the abuses
of law; but returning to Paris to oppose the execution of Louis XVI., he
was guillotined in 1794.--T.
[7] Antonio del Giudice, prince de Cellamare (1657-1733), the Spanish
ambassador, was the instigator of a plot against the Regent in 1718. See
Kitchin, _ib._ iii. 474.--T.
[8] The Hôtel des Invalides, residence of pensioned soldiers, &c. still
a well-known building of Paris.--T.
[9] A château, four miles east of Paris, notable as the place where St.
Louis, the royal lawgiver of France, dispensed justice. The _donjon_
still exists, serving now as a soldier's barracks.--T.
[10] One of the first prisons on the system of solitary confinement in
cells erected in Paris. It dates from 1850.--T.
[11] The Abbé de Buquoy (1653-1740) owed his imprisonment originally to
having been found in company with dealers in contraband salt when the
_gabelle_, or salt-tax, compelled the French people to buy salt, whether
they wanted it or not, at a price _two thousand times_ its true value.
He was a man of very eccentric views, one of which was that woman was
man's chief evil, and that was why, when the patriarch Job was stripped
of children, flocks, herds, &c., his wife was left to him!--T.
[12] The madhouse, eight miles east of Paris.--T.
[13] A château originally outside Paris, now included in the city
itself, once used as a hospital and jail, now a hospital for aged and
indigent poor and for lunatics. The first experiments with the
guillotine were tried there.--T.
[14] See _infra_, p. 83.
[15] The title rôle in a comedy by Henri Mounier, entitled _Grandeur et
décadence de M. Joseph Prudhomme_ (1852). He is a writing-master, very
vain, given (like Mr. Micawber) to tall talk and long-winded periods. He
has become typical of "much cry and little wool." As an officer of the
National Guard he says, "This sabre constitutes the finest day in my
life! I accept it, and if ever I find myself at the head of your
phalanxes, I shall know how to use it in defence of our
institutions--and, if need arise, to fight for them!"--T.
[16] In the early days of the Revolution, Paris was divided into
sections or wards, and as the _pike_ had played a great part in the
recent disturbances, one of the wards was known as the "Pike"
section.--T.
[17] A disciple of the Marquis de Sade (see p. 35), a notorious
debauchee, whose book _Justine_ was a disgusting mixture of brutality
and obscenity.--T.
[18] The pseudonym of Beffroy de Reigny (1757-1811), author of farces,
and of a _Précis historique de la prise de la Bastille_.--T.
[19] The name given to the constitutional struggles of the nobles and
the Parlement of Paris against Mazarin and the royal power (1648-1654).
The name is derived from _fronde_, a sling. A wit of the Parlement, one
Bachaumont, "told the lawyers of that august body that they were like
schoolboys playing in the town ditches with their slings, who run away
directly the watchman appears, and begin again when his back is turned."
See Kitchin, iii. pp. 102-128.--T.
[20] See _Monte-Cristo_.--T.
[21] Delivered to the French Association for the Advancement of Science
in 1893.
[22] The battle fought on August 10, 1557, in which Egmont with a
combined force of Spaniards, Flemish, and English (sent by Queen Mary)
routed Constable Montmorency and the finest chivalry of France. It was
in commemoration of this victory that Philip II. built the palace of the
Escurial, shaped like a gridiron because the battle was fought on St.
Lawrence's day.--T.
[23] The following unpublished letter from Pontchartrain to Bernaville,
intimating his probable nomination as governor of the Bastille, shows
exactly what Louis XIV.'s government demanded of the head of the great
state prison:-
"Versailles, September 28, 1707.
"I have received your letter of yesterday. I can only repeat what I
have already written: to pay constant attention to what goes on in
the Bastille; to neglect none of the duties of a good governor; to
maintain order and discipline among the soldiers of the garrison,
seeing that they keep watch with all the necessary exactitude, and
that their wages are regularly paid; to take care that the
prisoners are well fed and treated with kindness, preventing them,
however, from having any communication with people outside and from
writing letters; finally, to be yourself especially prompt in
informing me of anything particular that may happen at the
Bastille. You will understand that in following such a line of
action you cannot but please the king, and perhaps induce him to
grant you the post of governor; on my part, you may count on my
neglecting no means of representing your services to His Majesty in
the proper light.
"I am, &c.,
"PONTCHARTRAIN."
[24] The appellation of the eldest brother of the reigning king.--T.
[25] Under the _ancien régime_, there being no Minister of the Interior
(Home Secretary), each of the ministers (the War Minister, Minister for
Foreign Affairs, &c.) had a part of France under his charge. The
Minister of Paris was usually what we should call the Lord
Chamberlain.--T.
[26] The court which up to the time of the Revolution was the seat of
justice, presided over by the Provost of Paris. It held its sittings in
the castle known as the Châtelet.--T.
[27] A judicial, not a legislative body. It was constantly in antagonism
to the king.--T.
[28] The famous Encyclopædia edited by D'Alembert and Diderot. It
occupied twenty years of the life of the latter, and went through many
vicissitudes; its free criticism of existing institutions provoking the
enmity of the government. Voltaire was one of its largest
contributors.--T.
[29] This raised Linguet's indignation. "The consideration of this
enormous expense has given to some ministers, among others to M. Necker,
a notion of reform; if this should come to anything, it would be very
disgraceful to spring from no other cause. 'Suppress the Bastille out of
economy!' said on this subject, a few days ago, one of the youngest and
most eloquent orators of England."
[30] The Hôtel Carnavalet, museum in Paris, where a large number of
documents and books are preserved relating to the history of the
city.--T.
[31] It may be noted that the different escapes contributed to the
gradual tightening of the rules of the Bastille. After the escape of the
Comte de Bucquoy, such ornaments as the prisoners could attach cords to
were at once removed, and knives were taken from them; after the escape
of Allègre and Latude, bars of iron were placed in the chimneys, and so
forth.
[32] The second of the four principal officers of the Bastille. The
officers were: (1) the governor; (2) the king's lieutenant; (3) the
major; (4) the adjutant. There was also a doctor, a surgeon, a
confessor, &c. The garrison consisted of Invalides.--T.
[33] The most surprising instance is that of an Englishman, who returned
spontaneously from England to become a prisoner in the Bastille. "On
Thursday, May 22, 1693, at nightfall, M. de Jones, an Englishman,
returned from England, having come back to prison for reasons concerning
the king's service. He was located outside the château, in a little room
where M. de Besmaus keeps his library, above his office, and he is not
to appear for some days for his examination, and is to be taken great
care of."--Du Junca's Journal.
[34] This was not the Lauzun already mentioned, but his nephew, Armand
Louis de Gontaut, duke de Biron (1747-1793), who was notorious
throughout Europe for his gallantries.--T.
[35] An official of the royal council, whose function originally was to
examine and report on petitions to the king. He became a sort of
superior magistrate's clerk.--T.
[36] "1751, March 2. I have received a letter from Dr. Duval (secretary
to the lieutenant of police), in which he tells me that M. Berryer
(lieutenant of police) is struck with the cost of the clothes supplied
to the prisoners for some time past; but, as you know, I only supply
things when ordered by M. Berryer, and I try to supply good clothes, so
that they may last and give the prisoners satisfaction."--Letter from
Rochebrune, commissary to the Bastille, to Major Chevalier.
[37] These extracts are translated literally, in order to preserve the
clumsy constructions of the unlettered official.--T.
[38] Step-sister of Louis XIV. The following extracts from her
correspondence show how, even in circles that might have been expected
to be well informed, the legend had already seized on people's
imaginations:--
"Marly, October 10, 1711. A man remained long years in the Bastille, and
has died there, masked. At his side he had two musketeers ready to kill
him if he took off his mask. He ate and slept masked. No doubt there was
some reason for this, for otherwise he was well treated and lodged, and
given everything he wished for. He went to communion masked; he was very
devout and read continually. No one has ever been able to learn who he
was."
"Versailles, October 22, 1711. I have just learnt who the masked man
was, who died in the Bastille. His wearing a mask was not due to
cruelty. He was an English lord who had been mixed up in the affair of
the Duke of Berwick (natural son of James II.) against King William. He
died there so that the king might never know what became of him."
[39] The insurgents who rose for the king against the Revolutionists in
Brittany: see Balzac's famous novel. The movement smouldered for a great
many years.--T.
[40] The Gregorian calendar was abolished by the National Convention in
1793, who decreed that September 22, 1792, should be regarded as the
first day of a new era. The year was divided into twelve months, with
names derived from natural phenomena. Nivose (snowy) was the fourth of
these months. Thus, the period mentioned in the text includes from
December 21, 1800, to January 19, 1801.--T.
[41] Since M. Funck-Brentano's book was published, his conclusions have
been corroborated by Vicomte Maurice Boutry in a study published in the
_Revue des Etudes historiques_ (1899, p. 172). The Vicomte furnishes an
additional proof. He says that the Duchess de Créquy, in the third book
of her _Souvenirs_, gives a _résumé_ of a conversation on the Iron Mask
between Marshal de Noailles, the Duchess de Luynes, and others, and
adds: "The most considerable and best informed persons of my time always
thought that the famous story had no other foundation than the capture
and captivity of the Piedmontese Mattioli."--T.
[42] "I have seen these ills, and I am not twenty yet."
[43] These verses were, of course, in Latin.--T.
[44] Palissot was a dramatist and critic who in his comedy _Les
Philosophes_ had bitterly attacked Rousseau, Diderot, and the
Encyclopædists generally.--T.
[45] The old prison of Paris. It was the debtors' prison, famous also
for the number of actors who were imprisoned there under the _ancien
régime_. It was demolished in 1780.--T.
[46] "Not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy name give glory!
"Know our heart and search out our ways."
[47] "The victory is won!"--T.
[48] Charenton was under the direction of a religious order known as the
_Frères de la Charité_, who undertook the care of sick and weak-minded
poor.--T.
[49] This was Elizabeth Chudleigh (1720-1788), the notorious beauty who
privately married the Hon. Augustus Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol,
separated from him after three years, and became the mistress of the
second Duke of Kingston, whom she bigamously married. After his death
she was tried by the House of Lords for bigamy, and fled to France to
escape punishment. Her gallantries and eccentricities were the talk of
Europe.--T.
[50] Instructed by his misfortunes and his captivity how to vanquish the
efforts and the rage of tyrants, he taught the French how true courage
can win liberty.
[51] Jocrisse is the stock French type of the booby, and as such is a
character in many comedies. He breaks a plate, for instance; his master
asks him how he managed to be so clumsy, and he instantly smashes
another, saying, "_Just like that!_" His master asks him to be sure and
wake him early in the morning; Jocrisse answers: "Right, sir, depend on
me; _but of course you'll ring_!"--T.
[52] The Girondists (so called from Gironde, a district of Bordeaux)
were the more sober republican party in the Assembly, who were forced by
circumstances to join the Jacobins against Louis XVI. With their fall
from power in the early summer of 1792 the last hope of the monarchy
disappeared.--T.
[53] Referring to the horrible massacres of September, 1792, when about
1400 victims perished.--T.
[54] The French Dick Turpin. Of good education, he formed when quite a
youth a band of robbers, and became the terror of France. Like Turpin,
he is the subject of dramas and stories.--T.
[55] A forest near Paris, on the line to Avricourt. It was a famous
haunt of brigands. There is a well-known story of a dog which attacked
and killed the murderer of its master there.--T.
[56] Literally "cut-top": we have no equivalent in English.--T.
[57] A five-act comedy by Victorien Sardou.
[58] The nickname given to the Jacobins, the extreme revolutionists, who
sat on the highest seats on the left in the National Assembly.--T.
[59] Which were the strict preserves of the aristocrats: to fish in them
was as great a crime as to shoot a landlord's rabbit was, a few years
ago, in England.--T.
End of Project Gutenberg's Legends of the Bastille, by Frantz Funck-Brentano