Chapter 2: 5.xii

Procession of the Black Breeches.

But is there a thinking man in France who, in these
circumstances, can persuade himself that the Constitution will
march? Brunswick is stirring; _he_, in few days now, will march.
Shall France sit still, wrapped in dead cerements and
grave-clothes, its right hand glued to its left, till the
Brunswick Saint-Bartholomew arrive; till France be as Poland, and
its Rights of Man become a Prussian Gibbet?

Verily, it is a moment frightful for all men. National Death; or
else some preternatural convulsive outburst of National
Life;—that same, _dæmonic_ outburst! Patriots whose audacity has
limits had, in truth, better retire like Barnave; court private
felicity at Grenoble. Patriots, whose audacity has no limits must
sink down into the obscure; and, daring and defying all things,
seek salvation in stratagem, in Plot of Insurrection. Roland and
young Barbaroux have spread out the Map of France before them,
Barbaroux says “with tears:” they consider what Rivers, what
Mountain ranges are in it: they will retire behind this
Loire-stream, defend these Auvergne stone-labyrinths; save some
little sacred Territory of the Free; die at least in their last
ditch. Lafayette indites his emphatic Letter to the Legislative
against Jacobinism;[470] which emphatic Letter will not heal the
unhealable.

Forward, ye Patriots whose audacity has no limits; it is you now
that must either do or die! The sections of Paris sit in deep
counsel; send out Deputation after Deputation to the Salle de
Manége, to petition and denounce. Great is their ire against
tyrannous _Veto, Austrian Committee_, and the combined Cimmerian
Kings. What boots it? Legislative listens to the “tocsin in our
hearts;” grants us honours of the sitting, sees us defile with
jingle and fanfaronade; but the Camp of Twenty Thousand, the
Priest-Decree, be-vetoed by Majesty, are become impossible for
Legislative. Fiery Isnard says, ‘We will have Equality, should we
descend for it to the tomb.’ Vergniaud utters, hypothetically,
his stern Ezekiel-visions of the fate of Anti-national Kings. But
the question is: Will hypothetic prophecies, will jingle and
fanfaronade demolish the _Veto;_ or will the Veto, secure in its
Tuileries Château, remain undemolishable by these? Barbaroux,
dashing away his tears, writes to the Marseilles Municipality,
that they must send him “Six hundred men who know how to die,
_qui savent mourir_.”[471] No wet-eyed message this, but a
fire-eyed one;—which will be obeyed!

Meanwhile the Twentieth of June is nigh, anniversary of that
world-famous Oath of the Tennis-Court: on which day, it is said,
certain citizens have in view to plant a _Mai_ or Tree of
Liberty, in the Tuileries Terrace of the Feuillants; perhaps also
to petition the Legislative and Hereditary Representative about
these Vetos;—with such demonstration, jingle and evolution, as
may seem profitable and practicable. Sections have gone singly,
and jingled and evolved: but if they all went, or great part of
them, and there, planting their _Mai_ in these alarming
circumstances, sounded the tocsin in their hearts?

Among King’s Friends there can be but one opinion as to such a
step: among Nation’s Friends there may be two. On the one hand,
might it not by possibility scare away these unblessed Vetos?
Private Patriots and even Legislative Deputies may have each his
own opinion, or own no-opinion: but the hardest task falls
evidently on Mayor Pétion and the Municipals, at once Patriots
and Guardians of the public Tranquillity. Hushing the matter down
with the one hand; tickling it up with the other! Mayor Pétion
and Municipality may lean this way; Department-Directory with
Procureur-Syndic Rœderer having a Feuillant tendency, may lean
that. On the whole, each man must act according to his one
opinion or to his two opinions; and all manner of influences,
official representations cross one another in the foolishest way.
Perhaps after all, the Project, desirable and yet not desirable,
will dissipate itself, being run athwart by so many complexities;
and coming to nothing?

Not so: on the Twentieth morning of June, a large Tree of
Liberty, Lombardy Poplar by kind, lies visibly tied on its car,
in the Suburb-Antoine. Suburb Saint-Marceau too, in the uttermost
South-East, and all that remote Oriental region, Pikemen and
Pikewomen, National Guards, and the unarmed curious are
gathering,—with the peaceablest intentions in the world. A
tricolor Municipal arrives; speaks. Tush, it is all peaceable, we
tell thee, in the way of Law: are not Petitions allowable, and
the Patriotism of _Mais?_ The tricolor Municipal returns without
effect: your Sansculottic rills continue flowing, combining into
brooks: towards noontide, led by tall Santerre in blue uniform,
by tall Saint-Huruge in white hat, it moves Westward, a
respectable river, or complication of still-swelling rivers.

What Processions have we not seen: _Corpus-Christi_ and Legendre
waiting in Gig; Bones of Voltaire with bullock-chariots, and
goadsmen in Roman Costume; Feasts of Château-Vieux and Simonneau;
Gouvion Funerals, Rousseau Sham-Funerals, and the Baptism of
Pétion-National-Pike! Nevertheless this Procession has a
character of its own. Tricolor ribands streaming aloft from
pike-heads; ironshod batons; and emblems not a few; among which,
see specially these two, of the tragic and the untragic sort: a
Bull’s Heart transfixed with iron, bearing this epigraph, “_Cœur
d’Aristocrate_, Aristocrat’s Heart;” and, more striking still,
properly the standard of the host, a pair of old Black Breeches
(silk, they say), extended on cross-staff high overhead, with
these memorable words: “_Tremblez tyrans, voilà les
Sansculottes_, Tremble tyrants, here are the
Sans-indispensables!” Also, the Procession trails two cannons.

Scarfed tricolor Municipals do now again meet it, in the Quai
Saint-Bernard; and plead earnestly, having called halt.
Peaceable, ye virtuous tricolor Municipals, peaceable are we as
the sucking dove. Behold our Tennis-Court _Mai_. Petition is
legal; and as for arms, did not an august Legislative receive the
so-called Eight Thousand in arms, Feuillants though they were?
Our Pikes, are they not of National iron? Law is our father and
mother, whom we will not dishonour; but Patriotism is our own
soul. Peaceable, ye virtuous Municipals;—and on the whole,
limited as to time! Stop we cannot; march ye with us.—The Black
Breeches agitate themselves, impatient; the cannon-wheels
grumble: the many-footed Host tramps on.

How it reached the Salle de Manége, like an ever-waxing river;
got admittance, after debate; read its Address; and defiled,
dancing and _ça-ira_-ing, led by tall sonorous Santerre and tall
sonorous Saint-Huruge: how it flowed, not now a waxing river but
a shut Caspian lake, round all Precincts of the Tuileries; the
front Patriot squeezed by the rearward, against barred iron
Grates, like to have the life squeezed out of him, and looking
too into the dread throat of cannon, for National Battalions
stand ranked within: how tricolor Municipals ran assiduous, and
Royalists with Tickets of Entry; and both Majesties sat in the
interior surrounded by men in black: all this the human mind
shall fancy for itself, or read in old Newspapers, and Syndic
Rœderer’s _Chronicle of Fifty Days_.[472]

Our _Mai_ is planted; if not in the Feuillants Terrace, whither
is no ingate, then in the Garden of the Capuchins, as near as we
could get. National Assembly has adjourned till the Evening
Session: perhaps this shut lake, finding no ingate, will retire
to its sources again; and disappear in peace? Alas, not yet:
rearward still presses on; rearward knows little what pressure is
in the front. One would wish at all events, were it possible, to
have a word with his Majesty first!

The shadows fall longer, eastward; it is four o’clock: will his
Majesty not come out? Hardly he! In that case, Commandant
Santerre, Cattle-butcher Legendre, Patriot Huguenin with the
tocsin in his heart; they, and others of authority, will enter
_in_. Petition and request to wearied uncertain National Guard;
louder and louder petition; backed by the rattle of our two
cannons! The reluctant Grate opens: endless Sansculottic
multitudes flood the stairs; knock at the wooden guardian of your
privacy. Knocks, in such case, grow strokes, grow smashings: the
wooden guardian flies in shivers. And now ensues a Scene over
which the world has long wailed; and not unjustly; for a sorrier
spectacle, of Incongruity fronting Incongruity, and as it were
recognising themselves incongruous, and staring stupidly in each
other’s face, the world seldom saw.

King Louis, his door being beaten on, opens it; stands with free
bosom; asking, ‘What do you want?’ The Sansculottic flood recoils
awestruck; returns however, the rear pressing on the front, with
cries of ‘Veto! Patriot Ministers! Remove Veto!’—which things,
Louis valiantly answers, this is not the time to do, nor this the
way to ask him to do. Honour what virtue is in a man. Louis does
not want courage; he has even the higher kind called
moral-courage, though only the passive half of that. His few
National Grenadiers shuffle back with him, into the embrasure of
a window: there he stands, with unimpeachable passivity, amid the
shouldering and the braying; a spectacle to men. They hand him a
Red Cap of Liberty; he sets it quietly on his head, forgets it
there. He complains of thirst; half-drunk Rascality offers him a
bottle, he drinks of it. ‘Sire, do not fear,’ says one of his
Grenadiers. ‘Fear?’ answers Louis: ‘feel then,’ putting the man’s
hand on his heart. So stands Majesty in Red woollen Cap; black
Sansculottism weltering round him, far and wide, aimless, with
in-articulate dissonance, with cries of ‘Veto! Patriot
Ministers!’

For the space of three hours or more! The National Assembly is
adjourned; tricolor Municipals avail almost nothing: Mayor Pétion
tarries absent; Authority is none. The Queen with her Children
and Sister Elizabeth, in tears and terror not for themselves
only, are sitting behind barricaded tables and Grenadiers in an
inner room. The Men in Black have all wisely disappeared. Blind
lake of Sansculottism welters stagnant through the King’s
Château, for the space of three hours.

Nevertheless all things do end. Vergniaud arrives with
Legislative Deputation, the Evening Session having now opened.
Mayor Pétion has arrived; is haranguing, “lifted on the shoulders
of two Grenadiers.” In this uneasy attitude and in others, at
various places without and within, Mayor Pétion harangues; many
men harangue: finally Commandant Santerre defiles; passes out,
with his Sansculottism, by the opposite side of the Château.
Passing through the room where the Queen, with an air of dignity
and sorrowful resignation, sat among the tables and Grenadiers, a
woman offers her too a Red Cap; she holds it in her hand, even
puts it on the little Prince Royal. ‘Madame,’ said Santerre,
‘this People loves you more than you think.’[473]—About eight
o’clock the Royal Family fall into each other’s arms amid
“torrents of tears.” Unhappy Family! Who would not weep for it,
were there not a whole world to be wept for?

Thus has the Age of Chivalry gone, and that of Hunger come. Thus
does all-needing Sansculottism look in the face of its _Roi_,
Regulator, King or Ableman; and find that _he_ has nothing to
give it. Thus do the two Parties, brought face to face after long
centuries, stare stupidly at one another, _This, verily, am I;
but, Good Heaven, is that Thou?_—and depart, not knowing what to
make of it. And yet, Incongruities having recognised themselves
to be incongruous, something must be made of it. The Fates know
what.

This is the world-famous Twentieth of June, more worthy to be
called the _Procession of the Black Breeches_. With which, what
we had to say of this First French biennial Parliament, and its
products and activities, may perhaps fitly enough terminate.