THE FIRST MASSACRE.
Mandat had hardly been slain, before the Commune nominated Santerre
as commanding general in his stead, and he ordered the drums to beat
in all the town and the bells to be rung harder than ever in all the
steeples. He sent out patrols to scour the ways, and particularly to
scout around the Assembly.
Some twenty prowlers were made prisoners, of whom half escaped before
morning, leaving eleven in the Feuillants' guard-house. In their midst
was a dandified young gentleman in the National Guard uniform, the
newness of which, the superiority of his weapons, and the elegance of
his style, made them suspect he was an aristocrat. He was quite calm.
He said that he went to the palace on an order, which he showed the
examining committee of the Feuillants' ward. It ran:
"The National Guard, bearer of this paper, will go to the palace
to learn what the state of affairs is, and return to report to the
Attorney-and-Syndic-General of the Department.
(Signed) "BOIRIE,
"LEROULX,
"Municipal Officers."
The order was plain enough, but it was thought that the signatures were
forged, and it was sent to the City Hall by a messenger to have them
verified.
This last arrest had brought a large crowd around the place, and some
such voices as are always to be heard at popular gatherings yelled for
the prisoner's death.
An official saw that this desire must not spread, and was making a
speech, to which the mob was yielding, when the messenger came back
from the Hall to say the order was genuine, and they ought to set at
liberty the prisoner named Suleau.
At this name, a woman in the mob raised her head and uttered a scream
of rage.
"Suleau?" she cried. "Suleau, the editor of the 'Acts of the Apostles'
newspaper, one of the slayers of Liege independence? Let me at this
Suleau! I call for the death of Suleau!"
The crowd parted to let this little, wiry woman go through. She wore
a riding-habit of the national colors, and was carrying a sword in a
cross-belt. She went up to the city official and forced him to give her
the place on the stand. Her head was barely above the concourse, before
they all roared:
"Bravo, Theroigne!"
Indeed, Theroigne was a most popular woman, so that Suleau had made
a hit when he said she was the bride of Citizen Populus, as well as
referring to her free-and-easy morals.
Besides, he had published at Brussels the "Alarm for Kings," and thus
helped the Belgian outbreak, and to replace under the Austrian cane and
the priestly miter a noble people wishing to be free and join France.
At this very epoch Theroigne was writing her memoirs, and had read the
part about her arrest there to the Jacobin Club.
She claimed the death of the ten other prisoners along with Suleau.
Through the door he heard her ringing voice, amid applause. He called
the captain of the guard to him, and asked to be turned loose to the
mob, that by his sacrifice he might save his fellow-prisoners. They did
not believe he meant it. They refused to open the door to him, and he
tried to jump out of the window, but they pulled him back. They did not
think that they would be handed over to the slaughterers in cold blood;
they were mistaken.
Intimidated by the yells, Chairman Bonjour yielded to Theroigne's
demand, and bid the National Guardsman stand aloof from resisting the
popular will. They stepped aside, and the door was left free. The mob
burst into the jail and grabbed the first prisoner to hand.
It was a priest, Bonyon, a playwright noted for his failures and his
epigrams. He was a large-built man, and fought desperately with the
butchers, who tore him from the arms of the commissioner who tried to
save him; though he had no weapon but his naked fists, he laid out two
or three of the ruffians. A bayonet pinned him to the wall, so that he
expired without being able to hit with his last blows.
Two of the prisoners managed to escape in the scuffle.
The next to the priest was an old Royal Guardsman, whose defense was
not less vigorous; his death was but the more cruel. A third was cut to
pieces before Suleau's turn came.
"There is your Suleau," said a woman to Theroigne.
She did not know him by sight; she thought he was a priest, and scoffed
at him as the Abbe Suleau. Like a wild cat, she sprung at his throat.
He was young, brave, and lusty; with a fist blow he sent her ten paces
off, shook off the men who had seized him, and wrenching a saber from a
hand, felled a couple of the assassins.
Then commenced a horrible conflict. Gaining ground toward the door,
Suleau cut himself three times free; but he was obliged to turn round
to get the cursed door open, and in that instant twenty blades ran
through his body. He fell at the feet of Theroigne, who had the cruel
joy of inflicting his last wound.
Another escaped, another stoutly resisted, but the rest were butchered
like sheep. All the bodies were dragged to Vendome Place, where their
heads were struck off and set on poles for a march through the town.
Thus, before the action, blood was spilled in two places; on the City
Hall steps and in Feuillants' yard. We shall presently see it flow in
the Tuileries; the brook after the rain-drops, the river after the
brook.
While this massacre was being perpetrated, about nine A. M.,
some eleven thousand National Guards, gathered by the alarm-bell of
Barbaroux and the drum-beat of Santerre, marched down the St. Antoine
ward and came out on the Strand. They wanted the order to assail the
Tuileries.
Made to wait for an hour, two stories beguiled them: either concessions
were hoped from the court, or the St. Marceau ward was not ready, and
they could not fall on without them.
A thousand pikemen waxed restless; as ever, the worst armed wanted to
begin the fray. They broke through the ranks of the Guard, saying that
they were going to do without them and take the palace.
Some of the Marseilles Federals and a few French Guards--of the same
regiments which had stormed the Bastile three years before--took the
lead and were acclaimed as chiefs. These were the vanguard of the
insurrection.
In the meanwhile, the aid who had seen Mandat murdered had raced back
to the Tuileries; but it was not till after the king and the queen had
returned from the fiasco of a review that he announced the ghastly news.
The sound of a disturbance mounted to the first floor and entered by
the open windows.
The City and the National Guards and the artillerists--the patriots, in
short--had taunted the grenadiers with being the king's tools, saying
that they were bought up by the court; and as they were ignorant of
their commander's murder by the mob, a grenadier shouted:
"It looks as though that shuffler Mandat had sent few aristocrats here."
Mandat's eldest son was in the Guards' ranks--we know where the other
boy was, uselessly trying to defend his father on the City Hall steps.
At this insult to his absent sire, the young man sprung out of the
line with his sword flourished. Three or four gunners rushed to meet
him. Weber, the queen's attendant, was among the St. Roch district
grenadiers, dressed as a National Guardsman. He flew to the young man's
help. The clash of steel was heard as the quarrel spread between the
two parties.
Drawn to the window by the noise, the queen perceived her
foster-brother, and she sent the king's valet to bring him to her.
Weber came up and told what was happening, whereupon she acquainted him
with the death of Mandat.
The uproar went on beneath the windows.
"The cannoniers are leaving their pieces," said Weber, looking out;
"they have no spikes, but they have driven balls home without powder,
so that they are rendered useless!"
"What do you think of all this?"
"I think your majesty had better consult Syndic Roederer, who seems the
most honest man in the palace."
Roederer was brought before the queen in her private apartment as the
clock struck nine.