VII.

This army had known its leaders for four years. They posted themselves at the openings of the principal streets, at the hour when the workmen leave the ateliers; they procured a chair and table from the nearest and best cabaret, and mounting on these wine-stained tribunes, they called by name some of the passers by, who grouped round them; these stopped others, the street was blocked up by them, and this crowd was increased by all the men, women, and children, attracted by the noise. The orator addressed this motley assemblage, whilst wine or beer were gratuitously handed round. The cessation of work, the scarcity of money, the dearth of food, the manoeuvres of the aristocrats to starve Paris, the treacheries of the king, the orgies of the queen, the necessity of the nation's defeating the plots of an Austrian court, were the usual themes of their addresses. When once the agitation rose to fever heat, the cry of "Marchons" was heard, and the mob set itself in motion down every street. A few hours afterwards masses of workmen from the quartiers Popincourt, Quinze-Vingts de la Greve, Port au Ble, and the Marche St. Jean, poured from the rues du Faubourg St. Antoine, and covered the Place de la Bastille. There the tumult of the meeting of all these tributaries of sedition for a moment stayed the progress of this living torrent; but the impulse soon carried them on, and the columns instinctively divided themselves, and plunged into the vast outlets and main streets of Paris. Some took the line of the boulevards, others marched along the quays to the Pont Neuf, there encountered the column of the Place Maubert, and poured, in constantly increasing masses, on the Palais Royal, and the gardens of the Tuileries.

Such were the plans ordered on the night of the 19th of June, to be executed by the agitators in the different quartiers, and who separated with a rallying word, which gave the movement of the morrow the excitement and uncertainty of hope, and which, without commanding the consummation of crime, yet authorised the last excesses, "To make an end of the Chateau."

VIII.

Such was the meeting of Charenton, such were the unseen actors who were to set in motion a million of citizens. Did Laclos and Sillery, who were about to seek a throne for the Duc d'Orleans their master, in the faubourgs, distribute his gold there? It has been asserted and believed, but never proved, and yet their presence at this meeting is suspicious. History has the right of suspecting without evidence, but never of accusing without proof. The assassination of the king would give the crown, the next day, to the Duc d'Orleans; Louis XVI. might be assassinated by the weapon of some drunken man—he was not. This is the only justification of the Orleans' faction. Some of these men were disaffected, like Marat and Hebert; others, like Barbaroux, Sillery, Laclos, and Carra, were impatient malcontents; and others, like Santerre, were but citizens, whose love of liberty became fanaticism. The conspirators concerted together, and disciplined and organised the city. Individual and distorted passions kindled the mighty and virtuous love of the people for the triumph of democracy. It is thus that in a conflagration the most tainted substances oft light the fire; the combustible matter is foul, but the flames pure; the flame of the Revolution was liberty; the factious might dim, they could not stain, its brightness.

Whilst the conspirators of Charenton distributed their roles and recruited their forces, the king trembled for his wife and children at the Tuileries. "Who knows," said he, to M. de Malesherbes, with a melancholy smile, "whether I shall behold the sun set to-morrow?"

Petion, by ordering the municipal forces and the national guards under his orders to resist, could have entirely put down the sedition. The directory of the department presided over by the unfortunate Duc de la Rochefoucauld, summoned Petion in the most energetic terms to perform his duty. Petion smiled, took all on himself, and justified the legality of the proposed meetings and the petitions presented en masse to the Assembly.

Vergniaud in the tribune repelled the alarm felt by the constitutionalists, as calumnies against the innocence of the people. Condorcet laughed at the disquietude manifested by the ministers, and the demands for armed force they addressed to the Assembly. "Is it not amusing," said he, addressing his colleagues, "to see the executive power demanding the means of action from the legislators? let them save themselves, it is their trade." Thus derision was united to the plots against the unfortunate monarch; the legislators derided the power their hands had disarmed, and applauded the factious.

IX.

It was under these auspices that the 20th of June dawned. A second council, more secret and less numerous than the former, had assembled the men destined to put these designs into execution, and they only separated at midnight. Each of them went to his post, awoke his most trusty followers, and stationed them in small groups, to stop and assemble together the workmen, as they quitted their homes. Santerre answered for the neutrality of the national guard. "Do not fear," said he; "Petion will be there." Petion in reality had on the previous evening ordered the battalions of the national guard to get under arms, not to oppose the columns of the people, but to fraternise with the petitioners and swell the cortege of sedition. This equivocal measure at once saved the responsibility of Petion to the department, and his complicity before the assembled people; to the one he said I watch; to the other, I march with you.

At daybreak the battalions were assembled, and their arms piled on all the grandes places. Santerre harangued his on the Place de la Bastille, whilst around him flocked an immense throng, agitated, impatient, ready to rush upon the city at his signal. Uniforms and rags were blended, and detachments of invalides, gendarmes, national guards, and volunteers, received the orders of Santerre, and repeated them to the crowd. An instinctive discipline prevailed amidst this disorder, and the half military half civil appearance of this camp of the people gave the Assembly rather the character of a warlike expedition than an emeute. This throng recognised leaders, manoeuvred at their command, followed their flags, obeyed their voice, and even controlled their impatience to await reinforcements and give detached bodies the appearance of a simultaneous movement. Santerre on horseback, surrounded by a staff of men of the faubourgs, issued his orders, fraternised with the citizens and insurgents, recommended the people to remain silent and dignified, and slowly formed the columns, ready for the signal to march.

X.

At eleven o'clock the people set out for the quartier of the Tuileries. The number of men who left the Place de la Bastille was estimated at twenty thousand; they were divided into three bodies, the first composed of the battalions of the faubourg, armed with sabres and bayonets, obeyed Santerre; the second, composed of the lowest rabble, without arms or only armed with pikes and sticks, was under the orders of the demagogue Saint-Huruge; the third, a confused mass of squalid men, women, and children, followed, in a disorderly march, a young and beautiful woman in male attire, a sabre in her hand, a musket on her shoulder, and seated on a cannon drawn by a number of workmen. This was Theroigne de Mericourt.

Santerre was well known: he was the king of the faubourgs. Saint-Huruge had been, since '89, the great agitator of the Palais Royal.

The Marquis de Saint-Huruge, born at Macon of a rich and noble family, was one of those men of tumult and disturbances who seem to personify the masses. Gifted by nature with a towering stature and a martial figure, his voice thundered above the roars of the crowd. He had his agitations, his fury, his moments of repentance, and sometimes even of cowardice; his heart was not cruel, but his brain was disturbed. Too aristocratic to be envious, too rich to be a spoliator, too frivolous to be a fanatic by principle, the Revolution turned his brain in the same manner as a rapidly flowing river carries with it the eye that in vain strives to gaze fixedly on it. His life seemed that of a maniac; he loved the Revolution when in motion because it was akin to madness. When yet very young he had sullied his name, ruined his fortune, and forfeited his honours by debauchery, women, and gaming. At the Palais Royal and the neighbouring quartiers, the scene of every disorder, he possessed the infamous celebrity of scandal and shame. All the world had heard of him; his family had procured his incarceration in the Bastille, from which the 14th of July had freed him. He had sworn to be avenged, and he kept his oath; a voluntary and indefatigable accomplice of every faction, he had offered his unpaid services to the Duc d'Orleans, Mirabeau, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, the Girondists, and Robespierre: always an adherent of the party who went the greatest lengths; always a leader of those emeutes that promised the most havoc and ruin. Awake before daybreak, present at every club, he hastened at the slightest noise to swell the crowd; at the smallest tumult to stir men up to more violence. He himself was consumed by the common passion, ere he comprehended its nature; and his voice, his gestures, the expression of his features communicated it to others. He vociferated tales of terror; he disseminated the fever; he electrified the wavering masses; he urged on the current; he was in himself a sedition.

XI.

After Saint Huruge, marched Theroigne de Mericourt. Theroigne, or Lambertine de Mericourt, who commanded the third corps of the army of the faubourgs, was known among the people by the name of La Belle Liegoise. The French Revolution had drawn her to Paris, as the whirlwind attracts things of no weight. She was the impure Joan of Arc of the public streets. Outraged love had plunged her into disorder, and the vice, at which she herself blushed, only made her thirst for vengeance. In destroying the aristocrats she fancied she purified her honour, and washed out her shame in blood.

She was born at the village of Mericourt, near Liege, of a family of wealthy farmers, and had received a finished education. At the age of seventeen her singular loveliness had attracted the attention of a young seigneur, whose chateau was close to her residence. Beloved, seduced, and deserted, she had fled from her father's roof and taken refuge in England, from whence, after a residence of some months, she proceeded to France. Introduced to Mirabeau, she knew through him Sieyes, Joseph Chenier, Danton, Ronsin, Brissot, and Camille Desmoulins. Romme, a mystical republican, infused into her mind the German spirit of illumination. Youth, love, revenge, and the contact with this furnace of a revolution, had turned her head, and she lived in the intoxication of passions, ideas, and pleasures. Connected at first with the great innovators of '89, she had passed from their arms into those of rich voluptuaries, who purchased her charms dearly. Courtezan of opulence, she became the voluntary prostitute of the people; and like her celebrated prototypes of Egypt or of Rome, she lavished upon liberty the wealth she derived from vice.

On the first assemblage of the people she appeared in the streets, and devoted her beauty to serve as an ensign to the people. Dressed in a riding habit of the colour of blood, a plume of feathers in her hat, a sabre at her side, and two pistols in her belt, she hastened to join every insurrection. She was the first of those who burst open the gates of the Invalides and took the cannon from thence. She was also one of the first to attack the Bastille; and a sabre d'homme was voted her on the breach by the victors. On the days of October, she had led the women of Paris to Versailles, on horseback, by the side of the ferocious Jourdan, called "the man with the long beard." She had brought back the king to Paris: she had followed, without emotion, the heads of the gardes du corps, stuck on pikes as trophies. Her language, although marked by a foreign accent, had yet the eloquence of tumult. She elevated her voice amidst the stormy meetings of the clubs, and from the galleries blamed their conduct. Sometimes she spoke at the Cordeliers. Camille Desmoulins mentions the enthusiasm which her harangues created. "Her similes," says he, "were drawn from the Bible and Pindar,—it was the eloquence of a Judith." She proposed to build the palace of the representative body on the site of the Bastille. "To found and embellish this edifice," said she, "let us strip ourselves of our ornaments, our gold, our jewels. I will be the first to set the example." And with these words she tore off her ornaments in the tribune. Her ascendency during the emeutes was so great, that with a single sign she condemned or acquitted a victim; and the royalists trembled to meet her.

During this period, by one of those chances that appear like the premeditated vengeances of destiny, she recognised in Paris the young Belgian gentleman who had seduced and abandoned her. Her look told him how great was his danger, and he sought to avert it by imploring her pardon. "My pardon," said she; "at what price can you purchase it? My innocence gone—my family lost to me—my brothers and sisters pursued in their own country by the jeers and sarcasms of their kindred; the malediction of my father—my exile from my native land—my enrolment amongst the infamous caste of courtezans; the blood with which my days have been and will be stained; that imperishable curse attached to my name, instead of that immortality of virtue which you have taught me to doubt. It is for this that you would purchase my forgiveness. Do you know any price on earth capable of purchasing it?" The young man made no reply. Theroigne had not the generosity to forgive him, and he perished in the massacres of September. In proportion as the Revolution became more bloody, she plunged deeper into it. She could no longer exist, without the feverish excitement of public emotion. However, her early leaning to the Girondist party again displayed itself, and she also wished to stay the progress of the Revolution. But there were women whose power was superior even to her own. These women, called the furies of the guillotine, stripped the belle Liegoise of her attire, and publicly flogged her on the terrace of the Tuileries, on the 31st of May. This punishment, more terrible than death, turned her brain, and she was conveyed to a mad-house, where she lived twenty years, which were but one long paroxysm of fury. Shameless and blood-thirsty in her delirium, she refused to wear any garments, as a souvenir of the outrage she had undergone. She dragged herself, only covered by her long white hair, along the flags of her cell, or clung with her wasted hands to the bars of the window, from whence she addressed an imaginary people, and demanded the blood of Suleau.

XII.

After Theroigne de Mericourt came other demagogues, less widely known, but already celebrated in their own quartiers, such as Rossignol, the working goldsmith; Brierre, a wine-seller; Gonor, the conqueror of the Bastille; Jourdan, surnamed Coupe-tete; the famous Polish Jacobin, Lozouski, afterwards buried by the people at the Carrousel; and Henriot, afterwards the confidential general of the convention. As the columns penetrated into Paris, they were swelled by new groups, that poured forth from the crowded streets that open on the boulevards and the quays. At each influx of these new recruits, a shout of joy burst from the columns, the military bands struck up the air of the Ca Ira, the Marseillaise of assassins, whilst the insurgents sang the chorus, and brandished their arms threateningly at the windows of those suspected of being aristocrates.

These weapons did not resemble the arms of regular troops, which excite at once terror and admiration; they were strange and uncouth arms, caught up by the people in the first impulse of fury or defence.[24] Pikes, lances, spits, cutlasses, carpenters' axes, masons' hammers, shoemakers' knives, paviours' levers, saws, wedges, mattocks, crow-bars, the commonest household utensils of the poor, and the rusty iron exposed for sale on the quays, were alike seized upon by the people; and these different weapons, rusted, black, hideous, each of which presented a different manner of inflicting a wound, seemed to increase the horror of death by displaying it in a thousand terrible and unwonted forms. The mixture of all sexes, ages, and conditions; the confusion of costumes and rags beside uniforms, old men beside young; even children, some carried in their mothers' arms, others holding their father's hand or his garments; common prostitutes, their silken dresses soiled and torn, indecency on their brow, and insult on their lips, hundreds of women of the lowest description, and from the dregs of the people, recruited to swell the cortege, and excite commiseration from the garrets of the faubourgs, clothed in tattered finery, pale, emaciated, their eyes hollow, and their cheeks sunken from misery, the personifications of want, in fact the people, in all the disorder, the confusion, the exposure of a city suddenly summoned from its houses, its workshops, its garrets, its scenes and haunts of debauch and infamy; such was the aspect of intimidation which the conspirators wished to give to this scene.

Here and there flags waved above the heads of the multitude. On one was written Sanction or death; on another, The recall of the patriot ministers; on the third, Tremble tyrant, thine hour is come. A man, his arms bared to the shoulders, bore a gibbet, from which hung the effigy of a crowned female, with the inscription, Beware the lantern. Farther on a group of hags raised a guillotine, with a card bearing the words, National Justice on tyrants; death for Veto and his wife. Amidst all this apparent disorder, a secret system of order was visible. Men in rags, yet whose white hands and shirts of the finest linen pointed them out as of superior rank, wore hats, on which signs of recognition were drawn with white chalk; the crowd regulated their march by them, and followed wherever they went.

The principal body thus marched by the Rue Saint Antoine, and the dark and central avenues of Paris, to the Rue Saint Honore, the population of these quartiers swelling its numbers at each instant. The more this living torrent increased the more furious it became. Now a band of butchers joined it, each bearing a pike, on which was stuck the bleeding heart of a calf, with the words, Coeur d'aristocrate. Next came a band of Chiffoniers dressed in rags, and displaying a lance, from which floated a tattered garment, with the inscription, Tremble tyrants, here are the sans culottes. The insult which the aristocracy had cast at poverty, now, when adopted by the people, became the weapon of the nation against the rich.

This army defiled during three hours along the Rue Saint Honore. Sometimes a terrible silence, only broken by the sound of thousands of feet on the pavement, oppressed the imagination, as the sign of concentrated rage of this multitude; then solitary voices, insulting speeches, and atrocious sarcasms, were mingled with the laughter of the crowd; then sudden and confused murmurs burst from this human sea, and rising to the roofs of the houses, left only the last syllables of their prolonged acclamations audible: Long live the nation! Long live the sans culottes! Down with the veto! This tumult reached the salle du Manege, where the Legislative Assembly was then sitting. The head of the cortege stopped at the doors, the columns inundated the court of the Feuillants, the court of the Manege, and all the openings of the salle. These courts, these avenues, these passages, which then masked the terrace of the garden, occupied the space which now extends between the garden of the Tuileries and the Rue Saint Honore—that central artery of Paris. It was mid-day.

XIII.

Roederer, the procureur syndic of the directory of the department, a post which in '92 corresponded with that of prefect de Paris, was at this moment at the bar of the Assembly. Roederer, a partisan of the constitution, of the school of Mirabeau and Talleyrand, was a courageous enemy of anarchy. He found in the constitution the point of reconciliation between his fidelity to the people and his loyalty to the king; and he sought to defend this constitution with every weapon of the law which sedition had not broken in his grasp. "Armed mobs threaten to violate the constitution, the Chamber of Representatives, and the dwelling of the king," said Roederer at the bar; "the reports of the night are alarming; the minister of the interior calls on us to march troops immediately to defend the chateau. The law forbids armed assemblies, and yet they advance—they demand admittance; but if you yourselves set an example by suffering them to enter, what will become of the force of the law in our hands? your indulgence will destroy all public force in the hands of the magistrates. We demand to be charged with the fulfilment of all our duties: let the responsibility also be ours, and let nothing diminish the obligation we are under of dying to preserve and defend public tranquillity." These words, worthy the chancellor L'Hopital, or Mathieu Mole, were coldly listened to by the Assembly, and saluted by ironical laughter from the tribunes. Vergniaud affected to bow to them, and weakened their effect. "Yes, doubtless," said this orator, destined to be torn from the tribune, a year later, by an armed mob,—"Doubtless, we should have done better never to have received armed men, for if to-day patriotism brings good citizens hither, aristocracy may to-morrow bring its janissaries. But the error we have committed authorises that of the people. The Assembly, formed up to the present time, appears sanctioned by the silence of the law. It is true that the magistrates demand force to put them down: but what should you do in such circumstances? I think that it would be an excess of severity to be inflexible to a fault, the origin of which is in your decrees: it would be an insult to the citizens to imagine they had any evil designs. It is said that this Assembly wishes to present an address at the chateau: I do not believe that the citizens who compose it will demand to be presented with arms in their hands to the king: I think that they will obey the laws, and that they will go unarmed, and like simple petitioners. I demand that these citizens be instantly permitted, to defile before us." Dumolard and Raymond, indignant at the perfidy or the cowardice of these words, energetically opposed this weakness or complicity of the Assembly. "The best homage to pay the people of Paris," cried Raymond, "is to make them obey their own laws. I demand that before these citizens are introduced they lay down their arms." "Why," returned Guadet, "do you talk of disobedience to the law, when you have so often disobeyed it yourself? you would commit a revolting injustice; you would resemble that Roman emperor who, in order to find more guilty persons, caused the laws to be written in letters so obscure that no one could read them."

The deputation of the insurgents entered at these last words, amidst the bursts of applause and the indignant murmurs of the Assembly.

XIV.

The orator of the deputation, Huguenin, read the petition concerted at Charenton. He declared that the city had risen ready to employ every means of avenging the majesty of the people, whilst he deplored the necessity of staining their hands with the blood of the conspirators. "But," said he, with apparent resignation, "the hour has come; blood must be shed. The men of the 14th of July are not asleep, they only appeared to be; their awakening is terrible: speak, and we will act. The people is there to judge its enemies: let them choose between Coblentz and ourselves; let them purge the land of their enemies—the tyrants; you know them. The king is not with you: we need no other proof of it than the dismissal of the patriot ministers and the inaction of the armies. Is not the head of the people worth that of kings? Must the blood of patriots flow with impunity to satisfy the pride and ambition of the perfidious chateau of the Tuileries? If the king does not act, suspend him from his functions: one man cannot fetter the will of twenty-five millions of men. If through respect we suffer him to retain the throne, it is on condition that he observe the constitution. If he depart from this he is no longer anything. And the high court of Orleans," continued Huguenin, "what is that doing?—where are the heads of those it should have doomed to death?" These sinister expressions threw the constitutionalists into alarm, and caused the Girondists to smile. The president, however, replied with a firmness which was not sustained by the attitude of his colleagues. It was decided that the people of the faubourgs should be allowed to defile before them under arms.

XV.

Immediately after this decree was voted, the doors, besieged by the multitude opened, and admitted thirty thousand petitioners. During this long procession the band played the demagogical airs of the Carmagnole and the Ca Ira, those pas de charge of revolts. Females, armed with sabres, brandished them at the tribunes, who loudly applauded, and danced before a table of stone, on which were engraved the rights of man, like the Israelites before the Ark. The same flags and the same obscene inscriptions visible in the streets, disgraced the temple of the law. The tattered garments, hanging from their lances, the guillotine, and the potence, with the effigy of the queen suspended from it, traversed the Assembly with impunity. Some of the deputies applauded, others turned away their heads or hid their faces in their hands; some more courageous, forced the wretch who bore the coeur saignant, partly by entreaties, partly by threats, to retire with his emblem of assassination. Part of the people regarded with a respectful eye the salle they profaned; others addressed the representatives as they passed, and seemed to exult in their degradation. The rattling of the strange weapons of the crowd, the clatter of their nailed shoes and sabots on the pavement, the shrill shouts of the women, the voices of the children, the cries of Vive la nation, patriotic songs, and the sound of instruments, deafened the ear, whilst to the eye, these rags contrasted strangely with the marbles, the statues, and the decorations of the salle. The miasmas of this horde set in motion tainted the air, and stifled respiration. Three hours elapsed ere all the troop had defiled. The president hastened to adjourn the sitting, in the expectation of approaching excesses.

XVI.

But an imposing force was drawn up in the courts of the Tuileries and the garden, to defend the dwelling of the king against the invasion of the people. Three regiments of the line, two squadrons of gendarmes, several battalions of the national guard, and several pieces of cannon, composed the means of resistance; but the troops, undecided, and acted upon by sedition, were but an appearance of force. The cries of Vive la nation, the friendly gestures of the insurgents, the appearance of the women extending their arms towards the soldiers through the palisades, and the presence of the municipal officers, who displayed a disdainful neutrality towards the king, shook the feeling of resistance amongst the troops, who beheld on either side the uniform of the national guard; and between the population of Paris, in whose sentiments they participated, and the chateau, which was represented to them as full of treason, they no longer knew which it was their duty to obey. In vain did M. Roederer, a firm organ of the constitution, and the superior officers of the national guard, such as MM. Acloque and De Romainvilliers, present the text of the law, ordering them to repel force by force. The Assembly set the example of complicity; and the mayor, Petion, by his absence avoided responsibility. The king took refuge in his inviolability; and the troops, abandoned to themselves, could not fail to yield to threats or seduction.

In the interior of the palace, two hundred gentlemen, at the head of whom was the old marshal De Mouchy, had hastened together at the first news of the king's danger. They were rather the voluntary victims of ancient French honour, than useful defenders of the monarchy. Fearing to excite the jealousy of the national guard and the troops, these gentlemen concealed themselves in the remote apartments of the palace, ready rather to die than to combat: they wore no uniform, and their arms were concealed under their coats—hence the name by which they were pointed out to the people of Chevaliers du poignard. Arriving secretly from their provinces to offer their services to the king unknown to each other; and only furnished with a card of entrance to the palace, they hastened thither whenever there was danger. They should have been ten thousand, and were but two hundred—the last reserve of fidelity; but they did their duty without counting their number, and avenged the French nobility for the faults and the desertion of the emigration.

XVII.

The mob, on quitting the Assembly, had marched in close columns to the Carrousel. Santerre and Alexandre, at the head of their battalions, directed the movement. A compact mass of the insurgents, followed by the Rue St. Honore. The other branches of the populace, cut off from the main body, thronged the courts of the Manege and the Feuillants, and tried to make room for themselves by issuing violently by one of the avenues which communicated with the garden from these courts. A battalion of the national guard defended the approach to this iron gate. The weakness or complaisance of a municipal officer freed the passage, and the battalion fell back, and took up its ground beneath the windows of the Chateau. The crowd traversed the garden in an oblique direction, and passing before the battalions, saluted them with cries of Vive la nation! bidding them take their bayonets from their muskets. The bayonets were removed, and the mob then passed out by the entrance of the Port Royal, and fell back upon the gates of the Carrousel, which shut off this place from the Seine. The guards at these wickets again gave way, to allow a certain number of the malcontents to enter, and then shut the doors. These men, excited by their march, songs, the acclamations of the Assembly, and by intoxication, rushed with furious clamours into the court-yards of the Chateau. They ran to the principal doors, pressed upon the soldiers on guard, called their comrades without to come to them, and forced the hinges of the royal entrance gate. The municipal officer, Panis, gave orders that it should be opened. The Carrousel was forced, and the mob seemed for a moment to hesitate before the cannon pointed against them, and some squadrons of gendarmerie, drawn up in a line of battle. Saint Prix, who commanded the artillery, separated from his guns by a movement of the crowd, sent to the second in command an order to let them fall back in the door of the Chateau. He refused to obey: "The Carrousel is forced," he said in a loud voice, "and so must be the Chateau. Here, artillery men, here is the enemy!" And he pointed to the king's windows, turned his guns, and levelled them at the palace. The troops following this desertion of the artillery, remained in line, but took the powder from the pans of their muskets in sight of the people, in sign of fraternity, and allowed a free passage to the malcontents.

At this movement of the soldiers, the commandant of the national guard, who witnessed it, called from the court to the grenadiers, whom he saw at the windows of the Salle des Gardes, to take their arms, and defend the staircase. The grenadiers, instead of obeying, left the palace by the gallery leading to the garden.

Santerre, Theroigne, and Saint-Huruge hastened by the gate of the palace. The boldest and stoutest of the men in the mob went under the vault which leads from the Carrousel to the garden, dashed the artillerymen on one side, and seizing one of the guns, unlimbered it, and carried it in their arms to the Salle des Gardes, on the top of the grand staircase. The crowd, emboldened by this feat of strength and audacity, poured into the apartment and spread like a torrent throughout the staircase and corridors of the Chateau. All the doors were burst in, or fell beneath the shoulders and axes of the multitude. They shouted loudly for the king; only one door separated them, and this door was already yielding beneath the efforts of levers and blows of pikes from the assailants.

XVIII.

The king, relying on Petion's promises, and the number of troops with which the palace was surrounded, had seen the assemblage of the mob without uneasiness.

The assault suddenly made on his abode had surprised him in complete security. Retired with the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his children to the interior apartments on the side of the garden, he had heard the distant thunder of the crowd without expecting that it was so soon to burst on him. The voices of his frightened servants, flying in all directions, the noise of doors burst open and falling on the floors, the shouts of the people as they approached, threw alarm suddenly amongst the family party, which had met in the king's bed-chamber. The prince, confiding, by his look, his wife, sister, and children to the officers and women of the household who surrounded them, went alone to the Salle du Conseil. He there found the faithful Marshal de Mouchy, who did not hesitate to offer the last days of his long life to his master; M. d'Hervilly, the commandant of the Constitutional Horse Guard, disbanded a few days previously; the governor Acloque, commandant of the battalion of the faubourg St. Marceau, at first a moderate republican, then, overcome by the private virtues of Louis XVI., was his friend, and ready to die for him; three brave grenadiers of the battalion of the faubourg St. Martin, Lecrosnier, Bridau, and Gosse, who alone remained at their post of the interior on the general defection, and ready to protect the king with their bayonets, men of the people, strangers at court, rallied round him by the sole sentiment of duty and affection, only defending the man in the king.

At the moment the king entered this apartment, the doors of the adjacent room, called the Salle des Nobles, were dashed in by the blows of the assailants. The king rushed forward to meet the danger. The door-panels fell at his feet, lance heads, iron-shod sticks, spikes were thrust through the opening. Cries of fury, oaths, imprecations accompanied the blows of the axe. The king, in a firm voice, ordered two devoted valets de chambre, who accompanied him, Hue, and de Marchais, to open the doors. "What have I to fear in the midst of my people?" said the prince, boldly advancing towards the assailants.

These words, his advancing step, the serenity of his brow, the respect of so many ages for the sacred person of the king, suspended the impetuosity of the ringleaders, and they appeared to hesitate in crossing the threshold they had burst open. During this doubtful moment, the Marshal de Mouchy, Acloque, the three grenadiers and two servants, made the king retreat a few paces, and then placed themselves between him and the populace. The grenadiers presented their bayonets, and for a moment kept the crowd at bay. But the increasing mob pushed forward the first ranks. The first who pressed in was a man in rags, with naked arms, haggard eyes, and foaming at the mouth. "Where is the veto?" he said, thrusting in the direction of the king's breast a long stick with an iron dart at the end. One of the grenadiers pressed down this stick with his bayonet, and thrust aside the arm of this infuriated creature. The brigand fell at the feet of the citizen, and this act of energy imposed on his companions, and they trampled upon the man as he lay. Pikes, hatchets, and knives were lowered or withdrawn. The majesty of royalty resumed its empire for a moment, and this mob restrained itself at a certain distance from the king, in an attitude rather of brutal curiosity than of ferocity.

XIX.

Several officers of the National Guard, roused by the report of the king's danger, had hastened to join the brave grenadiers, and made a space round Louis XVI. The king, who had but one thought, which was to keep the people away from the apartment in which he had left the queen, ordered the door of the Salle de Conseil to be closed behind him. He was followed by the multitude into the salon of the OEil de Boeuf, under pretence that this apartment, from its extent, would allow a greater quantity of citizens to see and speak with him. He reached the room surrounded by a vast and turbulent crowd, and was happy at finding that only himself was exposed to blows from weapons of all kinds, which thousands of hands brandished over his head; but as he turned his head he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, who extended her arms, and was anxious to rush towards him.

She had escaped from the women who retained the queen and children in the bed-chamber. She adored her brother, and wished to die with him. Young, excessively beautiful, and deeply respected at court, for the piety of her life and her passionate devotion to the king, she had renounced all love from her intense affection for her family. Her dishevelled hair, her eyes swimming with tears, her arms extended towards the king, gave to her a despairing and sublime expression. "It is the queen!" exclaimed several women of the faubourgs. This name, at such a moment, was a sentence of death. Some miscreants rushed towards the king's sister with uplifted arms, and were about to strike her, when the officers of the palace undeceived them. The venerated name of Madame Elizabeth made them drop their arms. "Ah! what are you doing?" exclaimed the princess sorrowfully; "let them suppose I am the queen; dying in her place, I might perhaps have saved her." At these words an irresistible movement of the crowd thrust Madame Elizabeth violently from her brother, and drove her into the opening of one of the windows of the salle, where the crowd which hemmed her in still contemplated her with respect.

XX.

The king was in a deep recess of the centre window; Acloque, Vaunot, d'Hervilly, twenty volunteers and national guards, made him a rampart with their bodies. Some of the officers drew their swords. "Put your swords into their scabbards," said the king, calmly, "this multitude is more excited than guilty." He got upon a bench in the window, the grenadiers mounted beside him, the others in front of him; they thrust aside, parried, and lowered the sticks, scythes, and pikes lifted above the heads of the people. Ferocious vociferations now rose confusedly from this irritated mass. "Down with the veto!—the camp of Paris! give us back our patriotic ministers! where is the Austrian woman?" Some ringleaders advanced from the ranks every moment to utter louder threats and menaces of death to the king. Unable to reach him through the hedge of bayonets crossed in front of him, they waved beneath his eyes and over his head hideous flags, with sinister inscriptions, ragged breeches, the guillotine, the bleeding heart, the gibbet. One of them tried perpetually to reach the king with his lance in his hand; it was the same cut-throat who, two years before, had washed with his own hands in a pail of water the heads of Berthier and Foulon, and, carrying them by the hair to the Quai de la Ferraille, had thrown them amongst the people for symbols of carnage, and incentives to fresh murders.

A fair young man, elegantly dressed, with menacing gesture continually attacked the grenadiers, and cut his fingers with their bayonets in order to move them aside and make a clear passage. "Sire—Sire!" he shouted, "I summon you in the name of one hundred thousand souls who surround me, to sanction the decree against the priests: that is death!" Other persons in the crowd, although armed with drawn swords, pistols, and pikes, made no violent gestures, and warded off every attempt on the life of the king. There were even seen expressions of respect and grief in the countenances of a great many. In this review of the Revolution, the people displayed themselves as very terrible, but did not identify themselves with assassins. A certain order began to establish itself in the staircases and apartments: the crowd, pressed by the crowd, after having seen the king, and uttered threats against him, wandered into other apartments, and went triumphantly over this palace of despotism.

Legendre the butcher drove before him, in order to find room, these hordes of women and children accustomed to tremble at his voice. He made signs that he desired to speak, and silence being established, the national guard separated a little in order to allow him to address the king. "Monsieur!" he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder: the king, at this word, which was a degradation, made a movement of offended dignity; "yes, Sir," continued Legendre, with more emphasis on the word, "listen to us; you were made to listen to us! you are a traitor! you have deceived us always—you deceive us again; but beware! the measure is heaped up. The people are weary of being your plaything and your victim." Legendre, after these threatening words, read a petition in language as imperious, in which he demanded, in the name of the people, the restitution of the Girondist ministers and the immediate sanction of their decrees. The king replied with intrepid dignity, "I will do what the constitution orders me to do."

XXI.

Scarcely had one sea of people gone away, than another succeeded. At each new invasion of the mob, the strength of the king and the small number of his defenders was exhausted in the renewed struggles with a crowd which never wearied. The doors no longer sufficed to the impatient curiosity of these thousands of men assembled in this pillory of royalty; they entered by the roof, the windows, and the high balconies which open on to the terraces. Their climbing up amused the multitude of spectators crowded in the gardens. The clapping of hands, the cheers of laughter of this multitude without encouraged the assailants. Menacing dialogues in loud tones took place between the malcontents above and the impatient who were below. "Have they struck him?—is he dead?—throw us the heads!" they shouted. Members of the Assembly, Girondist journalists, political characters, Garat, Gorsas, Marat, mingled in this crowd, and uttered their jokes as to this martyrdom of shame to which the king was being subjected. There was for a moment a report of his assassination.

There was no cry of horror thereat among the populace, which raised its eyes towards the balcony, expecting to see the carcase. Still, in the very whirlwind of its passion, the multitude appeared to require reconciliation. One of the multitude handed a bonnet rouge to Louis XVI. at the end of a pike. "Let him put it on! let him put it on!" exclaimed the mob, "it is the sign of patriotism, if he puts it on we will believe in his good faith." The king made a signal to one of his grenadiers to hand him the bonnet rouge, and smiling, he put it on his head; and then arose shouts of Vive le Roi! The people had crowned its chief with the symbol of liberty, the cap of democracy replaced the bandeau of Rheims. The people were conquerors, and felt appeased.

However, fresh orators, mounting on the shoulders of their comrades, demanded incessantly of the king, sometimes by entreaties, sometimes with threats, to promise the recall of Roland, and the sanction of the decrees. Louis XVI., invincible in his constitutional resistance, eluded, or refused to acquiesce in the injunctions of the malcontents. "Guardian of the prerogative of the executive power, I will not surrender to violence," he answered: "this is not the moment for deliberation, when it is impossible to deliberate freely." "Do not fear, sire," said a grenadier of the national guard to him. "My friend," was the king's reply, taking his hand, and placing it on his breast, "place your hand there, and see if my heart beats quicker than usual." This action, and the language of unshaken intrepidity, seen and heard in the crowd, had its effect on the rebels.

A fellow in tatters, holding a bottle in his hand, came towards the king, and said, "if you love the people, drink to their health!" Those who surrounded the prince, afraid of poison as much as the poignard, entreated the king not to drink. Louis XVI., extending his arm, took the bottle, raised it to his lips, and drank "to the nation!" This familiarity with the multitude, represented by a beggar, consummated the king's popularity. Renewed cries of Vive le Roi! burst from all tongues and reached even the staircases: these cries created consternation in the terrace of the garden amongst the groups who were expecting a victim, and thus learnt that his executioners were softened.

XXII.

Whilst the unfortunate prince thus contended alone against a whole people, the queen, in another apartment, was undergoing the same outrages and the same torments; more hated than the king, she ran more risks. Agitated nations require to have their hatreds personified as well as their love. Marie Antoinette represented in the eyes of the nation all the corruptions of courts, all the pride of despotism, and all the infamies of treason. Her beauty, her youthful inclination for pleasure, tenderness of heart provoked by calumny into excesses, the blood of the house of Austria, her pride, which she derived from her nature even more than from her blood, her close connection with the Comte D'Artois, her intrigues with the emigrants, her presumed complicity with the coalition, the scandalous or infamous libels disseminated against her for four years—made this princess the spied victim of public opinion. The women despised her as a guilty wife, the patriots detested her as a conspirator, political men feared her as the counsellor of the king. The name of Autrichienne which the people gave her, summed up all their alleged wrongs against her. She was the unpopularity of a throne of which she should have been the grace and forgiveness.

Marie Antoinette was aware of this hatred of the people to her person. She knew that her presence beside the king would be a provocation to assassination. This was the motive that restrained her to remain alone with her children in the bed-chamber. The king hoped that she was forgotten, but it was the queen particularly the women of this mob sought and called for in terms the most offensive for a wife, a woman, and a queen.

The king was scarcely surrounded by the masses of people in the OEil de Boeuf than the doors of the sleeping apartment were beset with the same uproar and violence. But this party was principally composed of women. Their weaker arms were not so efficient against oaken panels and stout hinges. They called to their assistance the men who had carried the piece of ordnance into the Salle des Gardes, and they hastened to them. The queen was standing up, pressing her two children to her bosom, and listening with mortal anxiety to the vociferations at her door. She had near her no one but M. de Lajard, minister of war,—alone, powerless, but devoted; a few ladies of her suite, and the Princesse de Lamballe, that friend of her happy and unhappy hours. Daughter-in-law of the Duc de Penthievre, and sister-in-law of the Duc d'Orleans, the Princesse de Lamballe had succeeded in the queen's heart to that deep affection which Marie Antoinette had long entertained for the Comtesse de Polignac. The friendship of Marie Antoinette was adoration. Chilled by the coldness of the king, who had the virtues only, and not the graces of a husband; detested by the people, weary of the throne, she gave vent in private predilections to the overflow of a heart equally desirous and void of sentiment. This favouritism was even accused; the queen was calumniated in her very friendships.

The Princesse de Lamballe, a widow at eighteen, free from any suspicion of levity, above all ambition and every interest from her rank and fortune, loved the queen as a friend. The more adverse were the fortunes of Marie Antoinette, the more did her young favourite desire to share them with her. It was not greatness, but misfortune, that attracted her. Surintendante of the household, she lodged in the Tuileries, in an apartment adjacent to the queen, to share with her her tears and her dangers. She was sometimes obliged to be absent in order to go to the Chateau de Vernon to watch over the old Duc de Penthievre. The queen, who foresaw the coming storm, had written to her some days before the 20th of June a touching letter, entreating her not to return. This letter, found in the hair of the Princesse de Lamballe after her assassination, and unknown until now, discloses the tenderness of the one and the devotion of the other.

"Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are perfectly recovered. The good Duc de Penthievre would be sorry and distressed, and we must all take care of his advanced age, and respect his virtues. I have so often told you to take heed of yourself, that if you love me you must think of yourself; we shall require all our strength in the times in which we live. Oh do not return, or return as late as possible. Your heart would be too deeply wounded; you would have too many tears to shed over my misfortunes, you who love me so tenderly. This race of tigers which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself if it knew all the sufferings we undergo. Adieu, my dear Lamballe; I am always thinking of you, and you know I never change."

Madame Lamballe, contrary to this advice, made all haste to return, and clung to the queen as though she sought to be struck with the same blow. By her side were also other courageous women,—the Princesse de Tarente, Latremouille, Mesdames de Tourzel, de Mackau, de La Roche-Aymon.

M. de Lajard, a cool soldier, responsible to the king and himself for so many dear and sacred lives, collected in haste by the secret passages which communicated with the sleeping chamber and the interior of the palace, several officers and national guards wandering about in the tumult. He had the queen's children brought to her, in order that their presence and appearance, by softening the mob, might serve as a buckler to their mother. He himself opened the doors. He placed the queen and her ladies in the depth of the window. They wheeled in front of this the massive council-table, in order to interpose a barrier between the weapons of the malcontents and the lives of the royal family. Some national guards were around the table on each side, and rather in advance of it. The queen, standing up, held by the hand her daughter, then fourteen years of age.

A child of noble beauty and precocious maturity, the anxieties of the family in the midst of whom she had grown up had already reflected their weight and sorrow in her features. Her blue eyes, her lofty brow, aquiline nose, light brown hair, floating in long waves down her shoulders, recalled at the decline of the monarchy those young girls of the Gauls who graced the throne of the earlier races. The young daughter pressed closely against her mother's bosom, as though to shield her with her innocence. Born amidst the early tumults of the Revolution, dragged to Paris captive amidst the blood of the 6th of October, she only knew the people by its turbulence and rage. The Dauphin, a child of seven years old, was seated on the table in front of the queen. His innocent face, radiant with all the beauty of the Bourbons, expressed more surprise than fear. He turned to his mother at every moment, raising his eyes towards her as though to read through her tears whether he should have confidence or alarm. It was thus that the mob found the queen as it entered and defiled triumphantly before her. The calming produced by the firmness and confidence of the king was already perceptible in the faces of the multitude. The most ferocious of the men were softened in the presence of weakness—beauty—childhood. A lovely woman, a queen, humiliated,—a young innocent girl,—a child, smiling at his father's enemies, could not fail to awaken sensibility even in hatred. The men of the suburbs moved on silent, and as if ashamed, before this group of humiliated greatness. Some of them the more cowardly made as they passed derisive or vulgar gestures, which were a dishonour to the insurrection. Their indignant accomplices checked them in their insolence, and made these dastards quit the room as speedily as possible. Some even addressed looks of sympathy and compassion, others smiles, and others a few familiar words to the dauphin. Conversations, half menacing, half respectful, were exchanged between the child and the throng. "If you love the nation," said a volunteer to the queen, "put the bonnet rouge on your son's head." The queen took the bonnet rouge from this man's hands, and placed it herself on the dauphin's head. The astonished child took these insults as play. The men applauded, but the women, more implacable towards a woman, never ceased their invectives. Obscene words, borrowed from the sinks of the fish-market, for the first time echoed in the vaults of the palace, and in the ears of these children. Their ignorance in not comprehending their meaning saved them from this horror. The queen, whilst she blushed to the eyes, did not allow her offended modesty to lessen her lofty dignity. It was evident that she blushed for the people, for her children, and not for herself. A young girl, of pleasing appearance and respectably attired, came forward and bitterly reviled in coarsest terms l'Autrichienne. The queen, struck by the contrast between the rage of this young girl and the gentleness of her face, said to her in a kind tone, "Why do you hate me? Have I ever unknowingly done you any injury or offence?" "No, not to me," replied the pretty patriot; "but it is you who cause the misery of the nation." "Poor child!" replied the queen; "some one has told you so, and deceived you. What interest can I have in making the people miserable? The wife of the king, mother of the dauphin, I am a Frenchwoman by all the feelings of my heart as a wife and mother. I shall never again see my own country. I can only be happy or unhappy in France. I was happy when you loved me."

This gentle reproach affected the heart of the young girl, and her anger was effaced in a flood of tears. She asked the queen's pardon, saying, "I did not know you, but I see that you are good." At this moment Santerre made his way through the crowd. Easily moved, and sensitive though coarse, Santerre had roughness, impetuosity, and feelings easily affected. The faubourgs opened before him and trembled at his voice. He made an imperious sign for them to leave the apartment, and thrust these men and women by the shoulders towards the door in front of the OEil de Boeuf. The current advanced by opposite issues of the palace, and the heat was suffocating. The dauphin's brow reeked with perspiration beneath the bonnet rouge. "Take the cap off the child," shouted Santerre; "don't you see he is half stifled." The queen darted a mother's glance at Santerre, who came towards her, and placing his hand on the table, he leaned towards Marie Antoinette and said, in an under tone, "You have some very awkward friends, madame; I know those who would serve you better!" The queen looked down, and was silent. It was from this moment that may be dated the secret understanding which she established with the agitators of the faubourgs. The leading malcontents received the queen's entreaties with complacency. Their pride was flattered in raising the woman whom they had degraded. Mirabeau, Barnave, Danton had in turns sold or offered to sell the influence of their popularity. Santerre merely offered his compassion.

XXIII.

The Assembly had again resumed its sitting on the news of the invasion of the Chateau. A deputation of twenty-four members was sent as a safeguard for the king. Arriving too late, these deputies wandered in the crowded court-yard, vestibules, and staircases of the palace. Although they felt repugnance at the idea of the last crime being committed on the person of the king, they were not very grievously afflicted in their hearts at this long-threatened insult to the court. Their steps were lost in the crowd, their words in the uproar. Vergniaud himself, from a top step of the grand staircase, vainly appealed to order, legality, and the constitution. The eloquence, so powerful to incite the masses, is powerless to check them. From time to time the royalist deputies, highly indignant, returned to the chamber, and, mounting the tribune, with their clothes all in disorder, reproached the Assembly with its indifference. Amongst these more conspicuously, Vaublanc, Ramond, Becquet, Girardin. Mathieu Dumas, La Fayette's friend, exclaimed, as he pointed to the windows of the Chateau, "I am just come from there; the king is in danger! I have this moment seen him, and can bear witness to the testimony of my colleagues MM. Isnard and Vergniaud in their unavailing efforts to restrain the people. Yes, I have seen the hereditary representative of the nation insulted, menaced, degraded! I have seen the bonnet rouge on his head. You are responsible for this to posterity!" They replied to him by ironical laughter and uproarious shouts. "Would you imply that the bonnet of patriots is a disgraceful mark for a king's brow?" said the Girondist, Lasource; "will it not be believed that we are uneasy as to the king's safety? Let us not insult the people by lending it sentiments which it does not possess. The people do not menace either the person of Louis XVI. or the prince royal. They will not commit excess or violence. Let us adopt measures of mildness and conciliation." This was the perfidious lulling of Petion, and the Assembly was put to sleep by such language.

XXIV.

Petion himself could not for any length of time feign ignorance of the gathering of 40,000 persons in Paris since the morning, and the entry of this armed mob into the Assembly and the Maison of the Tuileries. His prolonged absence recalled to mind the sleep of La Fayette on the 6th of October; but the one was an accomplice, and the other innocent. Night approached, and might conceal in its shades the disorders and attempts which would go even beyond the views of the Girondists. Petion appeared in the court-yard, amidst shouts of Vive Petion! They carried him in their arms to the lowest steps of the staircase, and he entered the apartment where for three hours Louis XVI. had been undergoing these outrages. "I have only just learned the situation of your majesty," said Petion. "That is very astonishing," replied the king, in a tone of deep indignation, "for it is a long time that it has lasted."

Petion, mounted on a chair, then made several addresses to the mob, without inducing it to move in the least. At length, being put on the shoulders of four grenadiers, he said, "Citizens, male and female, you have used with moderation and dignity your right of petition; you will finish this day as you began it. Hitherto your conduct has been in conformity with the law, and now in the name of the law I call upon you to follow my example and to retire."

The crowd obeyed Petion, and moved off slowly through the long avenue of apartments of the chateau. Scarcely had the mass begun to grow perceptibly less, than the king, released by the grenadiers from the recess in which he had been imprisoned, went to his sister, who threw herself into his arms: he went out of the apartment with her by a side door, and hastened to join the queen in her apartment. Marie Antoinette, sustained until then by her pride against showing her tears, gave way to the excess of her tenderness and emotion on again beholding the king. She threw herself at his feet, and clasping his knees, sobbed bitterly but not loudly. Madame Elizabeth and the children, locked in each other's arms, and all embraced by the king, who wept over them, rejoiced at finding each other as if after a shipwreck, and their mute joy was raised to heaven with astonishment and gratitude for their safety. The faithful national guard, the generals attached to the king, Marshal de Mouchy, M. d'Aubier, Acloque, congratulated the king on the courage and presence of mind he had displayed. They mutually related the perils which they had escaped, the infamous remarks, gestures, looks, arms, costumes, and sudden repentance of this multitude. The king at this moment having accidently passed a mirror, saw on his head the bonnet rouge, which had not been taken off; he turned very red, and threw it at his feet, then casting himself into an arm-chair, he raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and looking at the queen, exclaimed, "Ah, madame! why did I take you from your country to associate you with the ignominy of such a day?"

XXV.

It was eight o'clock in the evening. The agony of the royal family had lasted for five hours. The national guard of the neighbouring quarters, assembling by themselves, arrived singly, in order to lend their aid to the constitution. There were still heard from the king's apartment tumultuous footsteps, and the sinister cries of the columns of people, who were slowly filing off by the courts and garden. The constitutional deputies ran about in indignation, uttering imprecations against Petion and the Gironde. A deputation of the Assembly went over the chateau in order to take cognisance of the violence and disorder resulting from this visitation of the faubourgs. The queen pointed out to them the forced locks, the bursten hinges, the bludgeons, pike irons, panels, and the piece of cannon loaded with small shot, placed on the threshold of the apartments. The disorder of the attire of the king, his sister, the children, the bonnets rouges, the cockades forcibly placed on their heads; the dishevelled hair of the queen, her pale features, the tremulousness of her lips, her eyes streaming with tears, were tokens more evident than these spoils left by the people on the battle ground of sedition. This spectacle moistened the eyes, and excited the indignation, even of the deputies most hostile to the court. The queen saw this: "You weep, sir?" she said to Merlin. "Yes, madame," replied the stoic deputy; "I weep over the misfortunes of the woman, the wife, and the mother; but my sympathy goes no further. I hate kings and queens!"

Such was the day of the 20th of June. The people displayed discipline in disorder, and forbearance in violence: the king, heroic intrepidity in his resignation; and some of the Girondists, a cold brutality which gives to ambition the mask of patriotism.

XXVI.

Every thing was preparing in the departments to send to Paris the 20,000 troops ordered by the Assembly. The Marseillais, summoned by Barbaroux at the instigation of Madame Roland, were approaching the capital. It was the fire of the soul in the south coming to rekindle the revolutionary hearth, which, as the Girondists believed, was failing in Paris. This body of twelve or fifteen hundred men was composed of Genoese, Ligurians, Corsicans, Piedmontese, banished from their country and recruited suddenly on the shores of the Mediterranean; the majority sailors or soldiers accustomed to warfare, and some bandits, hardened in crime. They were commanded by young men of Marseilles, friends of Barbaroux and Isnard. Rendered fanatic by the climate and the eloquence of the provincial clubs, they came on amidst the applauses of the population of central France, received, feted, overcome by enthusiasm and wine at the patriotic banquets which hailed them in constant succession on their way. The pretext of their march was to fraternise, at the federation of the 14th of July[25], with the other federes of the kingdom. The secret motive was to intimidate the Parisian national guard, to revive the energy of the faubourgs, and to be the vanguard of that camp of 20,000 men which the Girondists had made the Assembly vote, in order at the same time to control the Feuillants, the Jacobins, the king, and the Assembly itself, with an army from the departments wholly composed of their creatures. The sea of people was violently agitated on their approach. The national guard, the federes, the popular societies, children, women, all that portion of the population which lives on excitement of the streets, and runs after public spectacles, flew to meet the Marseillais. Their bronzed faces, martial appearance, eyes of fire, uniforms covered with the dust of their journey, their Phrygian head-dress, their strange weapons, the guns they dragged after them, the green branches which shaded their bonnets rouges, their strange language mingled with oaths, and accentuated by savage gestures, all struck the imagination of the multitude with great force. The revolutionary idea appeared to have assumed the guise of a mortal, and to be marching under the aspect of this horde, to the assault of the last remnant of royalty. They entered the cities and villages beneath triumphal arches. They sang terrible songs as they progressed. Couplets, alternated by the regular noise of their feet on the road, and by the sound of drums, resembled chorusses of the country and war, answering at intervals to the clash of arms and weapons of death in a march to combat. This song is graven on the soul of France.



XXVII.

THE MARSEILLAISE.

I.

Allons, enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive! Contre nous, de la tyrannie L'etendart sanglant est leve. Entendez-vous dans ces campagnes Mugir ces feroces soldats! Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes!— Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! Marchons! qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!

II.

Que veut cette horde d'esclaves, De traitres, de rois conjures? Pour qui ces ignobles entraves Ces fers des longtemps prepares? Francais, pour nous ah! quel outrage, Quels transports il doit exciter! C'est nous qu'on ose mediter De rendre a l'antique esclavage; Aux armes, &c.

III.

Quoi! des cohortes etrangeres Feraient la loi dans nos foyers? Quoi! ces phalanges mercenaires Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers? Grand Dieu! par des mains enchainees, Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient; De vils despotes deviendraient Les maitres de nos destinees! Aux armes, &c.

IV.

Tremblez, tyrans! et vous, perfides, L'opprobre de tous les partis! Tremblez, vos projets parricides Vont enfin recevoir leur prix! Tout est soldat pour vous combattre: S'ils tombent nos jeunes heros, La terre en produit les nouveaux, Contre vous tout prets a se battre. Aux armes, &c.

V.

Francais, en guerriers magnanimes, Portez ou retenez vos coups; Epargnez ces tristes victimes A regret s'armant contre nous. Mais ces despotes sanguinaires, Mais les complices de Bouille, Tous ces tigres sans pitie Dechirent le sein de leur mere. Aux armes, &c.

VI.

Amour sacre de la patrie, Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs! Liberte, liberte cherie, Combats avec tes defenseurs! Sous nos drapeaux que la Victoire Accoure a tes males accents; Que tes ennemis expirants Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire! Aux armes, &c.

VERSE SUNG BY CHILDREN.

Nous entrerons dans la carriere, Quand nos aines n'y seront plus; Nous y trouverons leur poussiere, Et la trace de leurs vertus! Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre Que de partager leur cercueil, Nous aurons le sublime orgueil De les venger ou de les suivre! Aux armes, &c.[26]

XXVIII.

These words were sung in notes alternately flat and sharp, which seemed to come from the breast with sullen mutterings of national anger, and then with the joy of victory. They had something as solemn as death, but as serene as the undying confidence of patriotism. It seemed a recovered echo of Thermopylae—it was heroism sung.

There was heard the regular footfall of thousands of men walking together to defend the frontiers over the resounding soil of their country, the plaintive notes of women, the wailing of children, the neighing of horses, the hissing of flames as they devoured palaces and huts; then gloomy strokes of vengeance, striking again and again with the hatchet, and immolating the enemies of the people, and the profaners of the soil. The notes of this air rustled like a flag dipped in gore, still reeking in the battle plain. It made one tremble—but it was the shudder of intrepidity which passed over the heart, and gave an impulse—redoubled strength—veiled death. It was the "fire-water" of the Revolution, which instilled into the senses and the soul of the people the intoxication of battle. There are times when all people find thus gushing into their national mind accents which no man hath written down, and which all the world feels. All the senses desire to present their tribute to patriotism, and eventually to encourage each other. The foot advances—gesture animates—the voice intoxicates the ear—the ear shakes the heart. The whole heart is inspired like an instrument of enthusiasm. Art becomes divine; dancing, heroic; music, martial; poetry, popular. The hymn which was at that moment in all mouths will never perish. It is not profaned on common occasions. Like those sacred banners suspended from the roofs of holy edifices, and which are only allowed to leave them on certain days, we keep the national song as an extreme arm for the great necessities of the country. Ours was illustrated by circumstances, whence issued a peculiar character, which made it at the same time more solemn and more sinister: glory and crime, victory and death, seemed intertwined in its chorus. It was the song of patriotism, but it was also the imprecation of rage. It conducted our soldiers to the frontier, but it also accompanied our victims to the scaffold. The same blade defends the heart of the country in the hand of the soldier, and sacrifices victims in the hand of the executioner.

XXIX.

The Marseillaise preserves notes of the song of glory and the shriek of death: glorious as the one, funereal like the other, it assures the country, whilst it makes the citizen turn pale. This is its history.

There was then a young officer of artillery in garrison at Strasbourg, named Rouget de Lisle. He was born at Lons-le-Saunier, in the Jura, that country of reverie and energy, as mountainous countries always are. This young man loved war like a soldier—the Revolution like a thinker. He charmed with his verses and music the slow dull garrison life. Much in request from his twofold talent as musician and poet, he visited the house of Dietrick, an Alsatian patriot (maire of Strasbourg), on intimate terms. Dietrick's wife and young daughters shared in his patriotic feelings, for the Revolution was advancing towards the frontiers, just as the affections of the body always commence at the extremities. They were very partial to the young officer, and inspired his heart, his poetry, and his music. They executed the first of his ideas hardly developed, confidantes of the earliest flights of his genius.

It was in the winter of 1792, and there was a scarcity in Strasbourg. The house of Dietrick was poor, and the table humble; but there was always a welcome for Rouget de Lisle. This young officer was there from morning to night, like a son or brother of the family. One day, when there was only some coarse bread and slices of ham on the table, Dietrick, looking with calm sadness at De Lisle, said to him, "Plenty is not seen at our feasts; but what matter if enthusiasm is not wanting at our civic fetes, and courage in our soldiers' hearts. I have still a bottle of wine left in my cellar. Bring it," he added, addressing one of his daughters, "and we will drink to liberty and our country. Strasbourg is shortly to have a patriotic ceremony, and De Lisle must be inspired by these last drops to produce one of those hymns which convey to the soul of the people the enthusiasm which suggested it." The young girls applauded, fetched the wine, filled the glasses of their old father and the young officer until the wine was exhausted. It was midnight, and very cold. De Lisle was a dreamer; his heart was moved, his head heated. The cold seized on him, and he went staggering to his lonely chamber, endeavouring, by degrees, to find inspiration in the palpitations of his citizen heart; and on his small clavicord, now composing the air before the words, and now the words before the air, combined them so intimately in his mind, that he could never tell which was first produced, the air or the words, so impossible did he find it to separate the poetry from the music, and the feeling from the impression. He sung every thing—wrote nothing.

XXX.

Overcome by this divine inspiration, his head fell sleeping on his instrument, and he did not awake until daylight. The song of the over night returned to his memory with difficulty, like the recollections of a dream. He wrote it down, and then ran to Dietrick. He found him in his garden. His wife and daughters had not yet risen. Dietrick aroused them, called together some friends as fond as himself of music, and capable of executing De Lisle's composition. Dietrick's eldest daughter accompanied them, Rouget sang. At the first verse all countenances turned pale, at the second tears flowed, at the last enthusiasm burst forth. The hymn of the country was found. Alas! it was also destined to be the hymn of terror. The unfortunate Dietrick went a few months afterwards to the scaffold to the sound of the notes produced at his own fireside, from the heart of his friend, and the voices of his daughters.

The new song, executed some days afterwards at Strasbourg, flew from city to city, in every public orchestra. Marseilles adopted it to be sung at the opening and the close of the sittings of its clubs. The Marseillais spread it all over France, by singing it every where on their way. Whence the name of Marseillaise. De Lisle's old mother, a royalist and religious, alarmed at the effect of her son's voice, wrote to him: "What is this revolutionary hymn, sung by bands of brigands, who are traversing France, and with which our name is mingled?" De Lisle himself, proscribed as a royalist, heard it and shuddered, as it sounded on his ears, whilst escaping by some of the wild passes of the Alps. "What do they call that hymn?" he inquired of his guide. "The Marseillaise," replied the peasant. It was thus he learnt the name of his own work. The arm turned against the hand that forged it. The Revolution, insane, no longer recognised its own voice!

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.



FOOTNOTES:

[1] See an elegant exposition of this idea in Schlegel's Dramatic Literature (Standard Library Edition, page 67.).

[2] La Fayette rode a favourite white horse on public occasions during this period.—H. T. R.

[3] "Infamous and contented."—Junius.

[4] "Pere Duchesne" was one of the most virulent, gross, and blood-thirsty productions of the Revolution. It was edited by Manuel and Hebert. Its success and profit were so great, that it had many imitators. It was rather a pamphlet than a newspaper, the price fifty sous a month—H. T. R.

[5] It has been generally understood that Voltaire was born at Chatenay, near Paris, in February, 1694.—H. T. R.

[6] Voltaire's residence in Switzerland, where he lived nearly twenty years.—H. T. R.

[7] Qu. Middlesex in 1769?—H. T. R.

[8] This appellation is given to a period of French history extending from 1643 to 1655. By some it is styled an attempt to establish a balanced constitution in the state,—by others, the last essay of expiring feudality. The frondeur leaders were the Duc de Beaufort, Cardinal de Retz, Prince de Conti, Duc de Bouillon, Mareschaux Turenne and de la Motte. On the side of their opponents, called Mazarins, were the Cardinal Mazarin himself, the Prince de Conde, Marechal de Grammont, and the Duc de Chatillon, while the Duc d'Orleans, a vacillating man, wavered between the two parties. The successes of the rival powers were alternate for a long time; eventually the frondeurs were defeated, and De Retz escaping into Lorraine, Mazarin returned to Paris triumphant in February 1653.—H. T. R.

[9] If M. de Lamartine would convey the idea that Burke was a partisan of the French Revolution, we must combat the assertion by a reference to dates. Talleyrand was ambassador in England in 1792. In October 1791, Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" appeared, to which Tom Paine's "Rights of Man" was one of the replies, and Sir James Mackintosh's "Vindiciae" another; and previously, in 1789 and 1790, Burke had condemned the tendencies of the Revolution, and the conduct of the Revolutionists.—H. T. R.

[10]

———— immedicabile vulnus Ense recidendum, ne pars sincera trahatur.

[11] Co-editor with Hebert of the disgusting "Pere Duchesne."—H. T. R.

[12] "Dux faemina facti."—VIRG.

[13] This extract has been given before at p. 247.—Translator.

[14] Foulon was a contractor, who, odious to the populace, was compelled to fly from Paris, but being discovered, was brought back, and eventually murdered by the mob in July 1789. Berthier was his son-in-law, and also incurring the displeasure of the people, was a few days later stabbed by a hundred bayonets whilst on his way to prison.—H. T. R.

[15] See Michelet's History of the French Revolution, vol. i. p.154.—Standard Library.

[16]

"Hail mighty triumph!—enter these our walls! Restore those soldiers, heroes of the day When fell Desilles, pierced by their murderous balls, And blood of citizens bedew'd the clay!"

[17] In Michelet's History of the French Revolution, publishing contemporaneously with this work, the author acquits the Duc d'Orleans of any participation in the riots and bloodshed at Versailles, on the 4th and 5th of October; but says, page 280., "Depositions prove that he was seen every where between Paris and Versailles, but that he did nothing. Between eight and nine o'clock in the morning of the 6th, so soon after the massacre that the court of the castle was still stained with blood, he went and showed himself to the people, with an enormous cockade in his hat, laughing, and flourishing a switch in his hand."—Standard Library.—H. T. R.

[18] This passage is somewhat obscure in the original: "Dumouriez se trouva la genie d'une circonstance cache sous l'habit d'un aventurier." We trust we have caught its spirit.—H. T. H.

[19] Madame Du Barry was the favourite mistress of Louis XV., and her brother, as he was called, the Count Jean du Barry, had the king's patronage, and preyed on the public to a great extent, to supply his low habits and expensive tastes.—Translator.

[20] The club of the Feuillants, of which La Fayette was the leading member, was formed after the 17th July, 1791. It consisted principally of Royalists, and was soon dissolved.—H. T. R.

[21] The Marseillais trace their origin to a colony of Phocians in the 1st year of the 43d Olympiad, 599 years B.C. It was the Massilia of the Romans, and called by Cicero the "mistress of Gaul," and by Pliny, the "mistress of education."—H. T. R.

[22] M. Lamartine does not here refer to Andre Chenier, an admirable lyric poet, from whom he has quoted at page 351.; he was a Royalist, and as such condemned and guillotined in July 1794, in his thirty-second year. He had a brother, Joseph Chenier, his junior by two years, who was an enthusiastic republican, and wrote and brought out, from 1785 to 1795, a great many tragedies, viz. Charles IX., Calas, Henry VIII., Timoleon, Tibere, &c., and was elected member of the legislative assemblies from 1792 to 1802. He fell under Napoleon's displeasure, and he dismissed him from his appointment as inspector-general of public instruction, in 1803. The consul was becoming imperial in his aspirations. Joseph Chenier died in 1811, consistent to the last in his republican notions.—H. T. R.

[23] Editor of the infamous Pere Duchesne.—H. T. R.

[24] Furor arma ministrat.—H. T. H.

[25] It was on the 30th July, 1792, that the Marseillais arrived in Paris.—H. T. R.

[26] M. Lamartine has not in his work given the verses 3, 4, and 5; we have therefore supplied them, that "The Marseillaise" may be complete. The Marseillais ruffians entered Paris on the 30th July, 1792, by the Faubourg Saint-Antoine (the St. Giles's of Paris), and headed by Santerre, went to the Champs Elysees, (thus traversing the whole city from south to north,) where a banquet awaited them. Their arrival was marked by riots and bloodshed—Duhamel was murdered. This celebrated song was written by Rouget de Lisle, who also composed the air. On the 18th Nivose, an. iv.(8th January, 1795,) an order of the Directory enjoined that at all theatres and sights the air of the "Marseillaise," and those of "Ca Ira,—Veillons au Salut de l'Empire," and "Le Chant du Depart," should be played. Rouget de Lisle was an officer of engineers in 1790, and in spite of his republican opinions, incarcerated during the reign of terror and only saved by the 9th Thermidor. He would assuredly have been accompanied to the guillotine by his own song.—H. T. R.

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE, LONDON

THE END