THE SACK OF THE TUILERIES.
Scarcely had the carriages conveying the Royal family disappeared on
their flight toward St. Cloud, when the whole mass of the populace
poured as with one simultaneous purpose into the deserted palace. The
Palais Bourbon had already been sacked; a like fate might be supposed to
await the Tuileries; but the Tuileries belonged to France, not to the
House of Orleans, and a certain respect was observed for everything but
the insignia of Royalty. For these was shown no regard. The throne
itself of the state reception-room--that throne on which sat Louis
Philippe for the first time, as King of the French, ere the Tuileries
became his throne--was torn from its base, and, having been hurled first
in derision from the windows into the court, was borne in mock triumph
on the shoulders of men, who shouted that now the throne was indeed
supported by the people, to the Place de la Bastille, and there
consumed to ashes. In the courtyard, in the Rue de Rivoli and on the
quays, huge fires roared, fanned into fury by a hurricane of wind, and
fed by richly carved furniture, gilded chairs, canopies, pianos, sofas,
beds, costly paintings, splendid works of art and the Royal carriages
glittering with gold. The magnificent tapestries of the Gobelins were
borne as streamers, in frantic fury, along the boulevards; mischievous
gamins were frolicking about in the long scarlet robes worn upon Court
occasions, which they had filched from the Royal wardrobe; the
escritoire of the King, the key having been found in a tea-cup, was
ransacked, and private letters, books and the garments of ladies were
strewn about the court and gardens of the Tuileries. The cellars of the
palace were soon filled with the insurgents; but they declared the wine
bad, as it never remained long enough in the cellars of kings to get
good! Destruction, not pillage, seemed the order of the hour, and to
guard against robbery the people took upon themselves the arrest and
punishment of offenders. The walls bore the menace, "Robbers shall die!"
In several instances the threat was carried into immediate execution,
and bodies, suffered to lie on the spot upon which they had been cut
down, bore on their breasts the label "Thief!" in terrible warning.
Sentinels also stood at the gates, and no one was allowed to leave the
palace without rigorous search.
In the apartments of the Duchess of Orleans, the table was found spread
for the dinner of herself and her children; upon the table were the
little silver cups, forks and spoons of the young Princes, and on the
floor were scattered their costly toys. The latter were gathered
carefully up by a workman in a blouse, and as carefully concealed in a
corner. The former, together with all jewels and other valuables found
in the apartments of the Duchess, were deposited in a bathing-tub, on
which a workman seated himself as guard and suffered no one to approach
until the aforesaid valuables could be conveyed by a detachment of the
Polytechnic School to the Government treasury. The story runs that, on
the night succeeding the sack of the Tuileries, the conquerors chose a
king and queen, and that, in the palace hall, was spread a banquet
composed of the viands found in the Royal kitchen and the wines found in
the Royal cellars. The queen, who was a soubrette more noticeable for
beauty than for cleanliness of person, garbed in Royal robes which she
well became, and with a coronet upon her stately brow, was seated in a
chair of state and received the most extravagant homage from her willing
subjects, while groups of gamins, in the long crimson liveries of the
Royal household, boisterously frolicked before the sans culotte court
amid roars of merriment.