THE BLOOD-STAINS.
For a space, the Swiss might believe that they had dealt with an army
and wiped it off the earth. They had slain nearly four hundred men in
the royal yard, and almost two hundred in the Carrousel; seven guns
were the spoils.
As far as they could see, no foes were in sight.
One small isolated battery, planted on the terrace of a house facing
the Swiss guard-house, continued its fire without their being able to
silence it. As they believed they had suppressed the insurrection, they
were taking measures to finish with this battery at any cost, when they
heard on the water-side the rolling of drums and the much more awful
rolling of artillery over the stones.
This was the army which the king was watching through his spy-glass
from the Louvre gallery.
At the same time the rumor spread that the king had quitted the palace
and had taken refuge in the House of Representatives.
It is hard to tell the effect produced by this news, even on the most
firm adherents.
The monarch, who had promised to die at his royal post, deserting
it and passing over to the enemy, or at least surrendering without
striking a blow!
Thereupon the National Guards regarded themselves as released from
their oath, and almost all withdrew.
Several noblemen followed them, thinking it foolish to die for a cause
which acknowledged itself lost.
Alone the Swiss remained, somber and silent, the slaves of discipline.
From the top of the Flora terrace and the Louvre gallery windows, could
be seen coming those heroic working-men whom no army had ever resisted,
and who had in one day brought low the Bastile, though it had been
taking root during four centuries.
These assailants had their plan; believing the king in his castle, they
sought to encompass him so as to take him in it.
The column on the left bank had orders to get in by the river gates;
that coming down St. Honore Street to break in the Feuillants' gates,
while the column on the right bank were to attack in front, led by
Westerman, with Santerre and Billet under his orders.
The last suddenly poured in by all the small entrances on the
Carrousel, singing the "It shall go on."
The Marseilles men were in the lead, dragging in their midst two
four-pounders loaded with grape-shot.
About two hundred Swiss were ranged in order of battle on Carrousel
Square.
Straight to them marched the insurgents, and as the Swiss leveled their
muskets, they opened their ranks and fired the pieces.
The soldiers discharged their guns, but they immediately fell back to
the palace, leaving some thirty dead and wounded on the pavement.
Thereupon, the rebels, headed by the Breton and Marseilles Federals,
rushed on the Tuileries, capturing the two yards--the royal, in the
center, where there were so many dead, and the princes', near the river
and the Flora restaurant.
Billet had wished to fight where Pitou fell, with a hope that he might
be only wounded, so that he might do him the good turn he owed for
picking him up on the parade-ground.
So he was one of the first to enter the center court. Such was the reek
of blood that one might believe one was in the shambles; it rose from
the heap of corpses, visible as a smoke in some places.
This sight and stench exasperated the attackers, who hurled themselves
on the palace.
Besides, they could not have hung back had they wished, for they were
shoved ahead by the masses incessantly spouted forth by the narrow
doors of the Carrousel.
But we hasten to say that, though the front of the pile resembled a
frame of fire-works in a display, none had the idea of flight.
Nevertheless, once inside the central yard, the insurgents, like those
in whose gore they slipped, were caught between two fires: that from
the clock entrance and from the double row of barracks.
The first thing to do was stop the latter.
The Marseillais threw themselves at the buildings like mad dogs on a
brasier, but they could not demolish a wall with hands; they called for
picks and crows.
Billet asked for torpedoes. Westerman knew that his lieutenant had
the right idea, and he had petards made. At the risk of having these
cannon-cartridges fired in their hands, the Marseilles men carried
them with the matches lighted and flung them into the apertures. The
woodwork was soon set aflame by these grenades, and the defenders were
obliged to take refuge under the stairs.
Here the fighting went on with steel to steel and shot for shot.
Suddenly Billet felt hands from behind seize him, and he wheeled round,
thinking he had an enemy to grapple: but he uttered a cry of delight.
It was Pitou; but he was pretty hard to identify, for he was smothered
in blood from head to foot; but he was safe and sound and without a
single wound.
When he saw the Swiss muskets leveled, he had called out for all to
drop flat, and he had set the example.
But his followers had not time to act like him. Like a monstrous
scythe, the fusillade had swept along at breast-high, and laid two
thirds of the human field, another volley bending and breaking the
remainder.
Pitou was literally buried beneath the swathe, and bathed by the warm
and nauseating stream. Despite the profoundly disagreeable feeling,
Pitou resolved not to make any move, while bathed in the blood of the
bodies stifling him, and to wait for a favorable time to show tokens of
life.
He had to wait for over an hour, and every minute seemed an hour. But
he judged he had the right cue when he heard his side's shouts of
victory, and Billet's voice, among the many, calling him.
Thereupon, like the Titan under the mountain, he shook off the mound
of carcasses covering him, and ran to press Billet to his heart, on
recognizing him, without thinking that he might soil his clothes,
whichever way he took him.
A Swiss volley, which sent a dozen men to the ground, recalled them to
the gravity of the situation.
Two thousand yards of buildings were burning on the sides of the
central court. It was sultry weather, without the least breath;
like a dome of lead the smoke of the fire and powder pressed on the
combatants; the smoke filled up the palace entrances. Each window
flamed, but the front was sheeted in smoke; no one could tell who
delivered death or who received it.
Pitou and Billet, with the Marseillais at the fore, pushed through the
vapor into the vestibule. Here they met a wall of bayonets--the Swiss.
The Swiss commenced their retreat, a heroic one, leaving a rank of dead
on each step, and the battalion most slowly retiring.
Forty-eight dead were counted that evening on those stairs.
Suddenly the cry rang through the rooms and corridors:
"Order of the king--the Swiss will cease firing."
It was two in the afternoon.
The following had happened in the House to lead to the order proclaimed
in the Tuileries; one with the double advantage of lessening the
assailants' exasperation and covering the vanquished with honor.
As the doors were closing behind the queen, but still while she could
catch a glimpse of the bars, bayonets, and pikes menacing Charny, she
had screamed and held her hands out toward the opening; but dragged
away by her companions, at the same time by her maternal instinct, she
had to enter the Assembly Hall.
There she had the great relief afforded her of seeing her son seated on
the speaker's desk; the man who had carried him there waved his red cap
triumphantly over the boy's head and shouted gladly:
"I have saved the son of my master--long live the dauphin!"
But a sudden revulsion of feeling made Marie Antoinette recur to Charny.
"Gentlemen," she said, "one of my bravest officers, most devoted of
followers, has been left outside the door, in danger of death. I beg
succor for him."
Five or six members sprung away at the appeal.
The king, the queen, and the rest of the royal family, with their
attendants, proceeded to the seats intended for the cabinet officers,
and took places there.
The Assembly received them standing, not from etiquette, but the
respect misfortune compelled.
Before sitting down, the king held up his hand to intimate that he
wished to speak.
"I came here to prevent a great crime," he said, in the silence; "I
thought I could not be in safety anywhere else."
"Sire," returned Vergniaud, who presided, "you may rely on the firmness
of the National Assembly; its members are sworn to die in defending the
people's rights and the constitutional authorities."
As the king was taking his seat, a frightful musketry discharge
resounded at the doors. It was the National Guards firing, intermingled
with the insurgents, from the Feuillants' terrace, on the Swiss
officers and soldiers forming the royal escort.
An officer of the National Guard, probably out of his senses, ran in in
alarm, and only stopped by the bar, cried: "The Swiss--the Swiss are
coming--they have forced past us!"
For an instant the House believed that the Swiss had overcome the
outbreak and were coming to recover their master; for at the time Louis
XVI. was much more the king to the Swiss than to any others.
With one spontaneous movement the House rose, all of a mind, and the
representatives, spectators, officials, and guards, raising their
hands, shouted, "Come what may, we vow to live and die free men!"
In such an oath the royals could take no part, so they remained seated,
as the shout passed like a whirlwind over their heads from three
thousand mouths. The error did not last long, but it was sublime.
In another quarter of an hour the cry was: "The palace is overrun--the
insurgents are coming here to take the king!"
Thereupon the same men who had sworn to die free in their hatred of
royalty, rose with the same spontaneity to swear they would defend the
king to the death. The Swiss captain, Durler, was summoned outside to
lay down his arms.
"I serve the king and not the House," he said. "Where is the royal
order?"
They brought him into the Assembly by force; he was black with powder
and red with blood.
"Sire," he said, "they want me to lay down arms. Is it the king's
order?"
"Yes," said Louis; "hand your weapons to the National Guard. I do not
want such brave men to perish."
Durler lowered his head with a sigh, but he insisted on a written
order. The king scribbled on a paper: "The king orders the Swiss to lay
down their arms and return into barracks."
This was what voices were crying throughout the Tuileries, on the
stairs, and in the rooms and halls. As this order restored some quiet
to the House, the speaker rang his bell and called for the debating to
be resumed.
A member rose and pointed out that an article of the Constitution
forbade debates in the king's presence.
"Quite so," said the king; "but where are you going to put us?"
"Sire," said the speaker, "we can give you the room and box of the
'Logographe,' which is vacant owing to the sheet having ceased to
appear."
The ushers hastened to show the party where to go, and they had to
retrace some of the path they had used to enter.
"What is this on the floor?" asked the queen. "It looks like blood!"
The servants said nothing; for while the spots might be blood, they
were ignorant where they came from.
Strange to say, the stains grew larger and nearer together as they
approached the box. To spare her the sight, the king quickened the
pace, and opening the box door himself, he bid her enter.
The queen sprung forward; but even as she set foot on the sill, she
uttered a scream of horror and drew back, with her hands covering her
eyes. The presence of the blood-spots was explained, for a dead body
had been placed in the room.
It was her almost stepping upon this which had caused her to leap back.
"Bless us," said the king, "it is poor Count Charny's body!" in the
same tone as he had said to the gory relic on the pike, "This is poor
Mandat's head."
Indeed, the deputies had snatched the body from the cutthroats, and
ordered it to be taken into the empty room, without the least idea
that the royal family would be consigned to this room in the next ten
minutes. It was now carried out and the guests installed. They talked
of cleaning up, but the queen shook her head in opposition, and was the
first to take a place over the blood-stains. No one noticed that she
burst her shoe-laces and dabbled her foot in the red, still warm blood.
"Oh, Charny, Charny!" she murmured; "why does not my life-blood ooze
out here to the last drop to mingle with yours unto all eternity?"
Three P. M. struck.
The last of her Life Guards was no more, for in and about her palace
nearly a thousand nobles and Swiss had fallen.