Chapter II: Paris Up to the 14th of July (2)

Meanwhile, at the Palais-Royal, other buffoons, who with the levity of gossips sport with lives as freely as with words, have drawn u. During the night between the 13th and 14th of July, a list of proscriptions, copies of which are hawked about. Care is taken to address one of them to each of the persons designated, the Comte d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the Prince de Lambesc, Baron de Bezenval, MM. de Breteuil, Foulon, Berthier, Maury, d'Espréménil, Lefèvre d'Amécourt, and others besides.[1248] A reward is promised to whoever will bring their heads to the Café de Caveau. Here are names for the unchained multitude; all that now is necessary is that some band should encounter a man who is denounced; he will go as far as the lamppost at the street corner, but not beyond it.--Throughout the day of the 14th, this improvised tribunal holds a permanent session, and follows up its decisions with its actions. M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants and president of the electors at the Hôtel-de-Ville, having shown himself somewhat lukewarm,[1249] the Palais-Royal declares him a traitor and sends him off to be hung. On the way a young man fells him with a pistol-shot, others fall upon his body, while his head, borne upon a pike, goes to join that of M. de Launay.--Equally deadly accusations and of equally speedy execution float in the air and from every direction. "On the slightest pretext," says an elector, "they denounced to us those whom they thought opposed to the Revolution, which already signified the same as enemies of the State. Without any investigation, there was only talk of the seizure of their persons, the ruin of their homes, and the razing of their houses. One young man exclaimed: 'Follow me at once, let us start off at once to Bezenval's!'"--Their brains are so frightened, and their minds so distrustful, that at every step in the streets "one's name has to be given, one's profession declared, one's residence, and one's intentions. . .. One can neither enter nor leave Paris without being suspected of treason." The Prince de Montbarrey, advocate of the new ideas, and his wife, are stopped in their carriage at the barrier, and are on the point of being cut to pieces. A deputy of the nobles, on his way to the National Assembly, is seized in his cab and conducted to the Place de Grève; the corpse of M. de Launay is shown to him, and he is told that he is to be treated in the same fashion.--Every life hangs by a thread, and, on the following days, when the King had sent away his troops, dismissed his Ministers, recalled Necker, and granted everything, the danger remains just as great. The multitude, abandoned to the revolutionaries and to itself, continues the same bloody antics, while the municipal chiefs[1250] whom it has elected, Bailly, Mayor of Paris, and Lafayette, commandant of the National Guard, are obliged to use cunning, to implore, to throw themselves between the multitude and the unfortunates whom they wish to destroy.

On the 15th of July, in the night, a woman disguised as a man is arrested in the court of the Hôtel-de-Ville, and so maltreated that she faints away; Bailly, in order to save her, is obliged to feign anger against her and have her sent immediately to prison. From the 14th to the 22nd of July, Lafayette, at the risk of his life, saves with his own hand seventeen persons in different quarters.[1251]--On the 22nd of July, upon the denunciations which multiply around Paris like trains of gunpowder, two administrators of high rank, M. Foulon, Councillor of State, and M. Berthier, his son-in-law, are arrested, one near Fontainebleau, and the other near Compiègne. M. Foulon, a strict master,[1252] but intelligent and useful, expended sixty thousand francs the previous winter on his estate in giving employment to the poor. M. Berthier, an industrious and capable man, had officially surveyed and valued Ile-de-France, to equalize the taxes, and had reduced the overcharged quotas first one-eighth and then a quarter. But both of these gentlemen have arranged the details of the camp against which Paris has risen; both are publicly proscribed for eight days previously by the Palais-Royal, and, with a people frightened by disorder, exasperated by hunger, and stupefied by suspicion, an accused person is a guilty one.--With regard to Foulon, as with Réveillon, a story is made up, coined in the same mint, a sort of currency for popular circulation, and which the people itself manufactures by casting into one tragic expression the sum of its sufferings and rankling memories:[1253] "He said that we were worth no more than his horses; and that if we had no bread we had only to eat grass."--The old man of seventy-four is brought to Paris, with a truss of hay on his head, a collar of thistles around his neck, and his mouth stuffed with hay. In vain does the electoral bureau order his imprisonment that he may be saved; the crowd yells out: "Sentenced and hung!" and, authoritatively, appoints the judges. In vain does Lafayette insist and entreat three times that the judgment be regularly rendered, and that the accused be sent to the Abbaye. A new wave of people comes up, and one man, "well dressed," cries out: "What is the need of a sentence for a man who has been condemned for thirty years?" Foulon is carried off; dragged across the square, and hung to the lamp post. The cord breaks twice, and twice he falls upon the pavement. Re-hung with a fresh cord and then cut down, his head is severed from his body and placed on the end of a pike.[1254] Meanwhile, Berthier, sent away from Compiègne by the municipality, afraid to keep him in his prison where he was constantly menaced, arrives in a cabriolet under escort. The people carry placards around him filled with opprobrious epithets; in changing horses they threw hard black bread into the carriage, exclaiming, "There, wretch, see the bread you made us eat!" On reaching the church of Saint-Merry, a fearful storm of insults burst forth against him. He is called a monopolist, "although he had never bought or sold a grain of wheat." In the eyes of the multitude, who has to explain the evil as caused by some evil-doer, he is the author of the famine. Conducted to the Abbaye, his escort is dispersed and he is pushed over to the lamp post. Then, seeing that all is lost, he snatches a gun from one of his murderers and bravely defends himself. A soldier of the "Royal Croats" gives him a cut with his saber across the stomach, and another tears out his heart. As the cook, who had cut off the head of M. de Launay, happens to be on the spot, they hand him the heart to carry while the soldiers take the head, and both go to the Hôtel-de-Ville to show their trophies to M. de Lafayette. On their return to the Palais-Royal, and while they are seated at table in a tavern, the people demand these two remains. They throw them out of the window and finish their supper, whilst the heart is marched about below in a bouquet of white carnations.--Such are the spectacles which this garden presents where, a year before, "good society in full dress" came on leaving the Opera to chat, often until two o'clock in the morning, under the mild light of the moon, listening now to the violin of Saint-Georges, and now to the charming voice of Garat.

VIII.--Paris in the hands of the people.

Henceforth it is clear that no one is safe: neither the new militia nor the new authorities suffice to enforce respect for the law. "They did not dare," says Bailly,[1255] "oppose the people who, eight days before this, had taken the Bastille."--In vain, after the last two murders, do Bailly and Lafayette indignantly threaten to withdraw; they are forced to remain; their protection, such as it is, is all that is left, and, if the National Guard is unable to prevent every murder, it prevents some of them. People live as they can under the constant expectation of fresh popular violence. "To every impartial man," says Malouet, "the Terror dates from the 14th of July".--On the 17th, before setting out for Paris, the King attends communion and makes his will in anticipation of assassination. From the 16th to the 18th, twenty personages of high rank, among others most of those on whose heads a price is set by the Palais-Royal, leave France: The Count d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the Princes de Condé, de Conti, de Lambesc, de Vaudemont, the Countess de Polignac, and the Duchesses de Polignac and de Guiche.--The day following the two murders, M. de Crosne, M. Doumer, M. Sureau, the most zealous and most valuable members of the committee on subsistence, all those appointed to make purchases and to take care of the storehouses, conceal themselves or fly. On the eve of the two murders, the notaries of Paris, being menaced with a riot, had to advance 45,000 francs which were promised to the workmen of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; while the public treasury, almost empty, is drained of 30,000 livres per day to diminish the cost of bread.--Persons and possessions, great and small, private individuals and public functionaries, the Government itself, all is in the hands of the mob. "From this moment," says a deputy,[1256] "liberty did not exist even in the National Assembly. . . France stood dumb before thirty factious persons. The Assembly became in their hands a passive instrument, which they forced to serve them in the execution of their projects."--They themselves do not lead, although they seem to lead. The great brute, which has taken the bit in its mouth, holds on to it, and it's plunging becomes more violent. Not only do both spurs which maddened it, I mean the desire for innovation and the daily scarcity of food, continue to prick it on. But also the political hornets which, increasing by thousands, buzz around its ears. And the license in which it revels for the first time, joined to the applause lavished upon it, urges it forward more violently each day. The insurrection is glorified. Not one of the assassins is sought out. It is against the conspiracy of Ministers that the Assembly institutes an inquiry. Rewards are bestowed upon the conquerors of the Bastille; it is declared that they have saved France. All honors are awarded to the people-to their good sense, their magnanimity, and their justice. Adoration is paid to this new sovereign: he is publicly and officially told, in the Assembly and by the press, that he possesses every virtue, all rights and all powers. If he spills blood it is inadvertently, on provocation, and always with an infallible instinct. Moreover, says a deputy, "this blood, was it so pure?" The greater number of people prefers the theories of their books to the experience of their eyes; they persist in the idyll, which they have fashioned for themselves. At the worst their dream, driven out from the present, takes refuge in the future. To-morrow, when the Constitution is complete, the people, made happy, will again become wise: let us endure the storm, which leads us on to so noble a harbor.

Meanwhile, beyond the King, inert and disarmed, beyond the Assembly, disobeyed or submissive, appears the real monarch, the people--that is to say, a crowd of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand individuals gathered together at random, on an impulse, on an alarm, suddenly and irresistibly made legislators, judges, and executioners. A formidable power, undefined and destructive, on which no one has any hold, and which, with its mother, howling and misshapen Liberty, sits at the threshold of the Revolution like Milton's two specters at the gates of Hell.

. . . Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,
but ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen. . .
........the other shape,
If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd
For each seem'd either: black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

The monster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.

*****

[Footnote 1201: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M. Miron, lieutenant de police, April 26th; of M. Joly de Fleury, procureur-général, May 29th; of MM. Marchais and Berthier, April 18th and 27th, March 23rd, April 5th, May 5th.--Arthur Young, June 10th and 29th. "Archives Nationales," H. 1453 Letter of the sub-delegate of Montlhéry, April 14th.]

[Footnote 1202: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the sub-delegate Gobert, March 17th; of the officers of police, June 15th:--" On the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of March the inhabitants of Conflans generally rebelled against the game law in relation to the rabbit."]

[Footnote 1203: Montjoie, 2nd part, ch. XXI. p.14 (the first week in June). Montjoie is a party man; but he gives dates and details, and his testimony, when it is confirmed elsewhere, deserves, to be admitted.]

[Footnote 1204: Montjoie, 1st part, 92-101.--"Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the officer of police of Saint-Denis: "A good many workmen arrive daily from Lorraine as well as from Champagne," which increases the prices.]

[Footnote 1205: De Bezenval, "Mémoires," I.353. Cf. "The Ancient Regime," p.509.--Marmontel, II, 252 and following pages.--De Ferrières, I. 407.]

[Footnote 1206: Arthur Young, September 1st, 1788]

[Footnote 1207: Barrère, "Mémoires," I. 234.]

[Footnote 1208: See, in the National Library, the long catalogue of those which have survived.]

[Footnote 1209: Malouet, I. 255. Bailly, I. 43 (May 9th and 19th).--D'Hezecques, "Souvenirs d'un page de Louis XV." 293.--De Bezenval, I. 368.]

[Footnote 1210: Marmontel, II, 249.--Montjoie, 1st part, p. 92.--De Bezenval, I. 387: "These spies added that persons were seen exciting the tumult and were distributing money."]

[Footnote 1211: "Archives Nationales," Y.11441. Interrogatory of the Abbé Roy, May 5th.--Y.11033, Interrogatory (April 28th and May 4th) of twenty-three wounded persons brought to the Hôtel-Dieu--These two documents are of prime importance in presenting the true aspect of the insurrection; to these must be added the narrative of M. de Bezenval, who was commandant at this time with M. de Châtelet. Almost all other narratives are amplified or falsified through party bias.]

[Footnote 1212: De Ferrières, vol. III. note A. (justificatory explanation by Réveillon).]

[Footnote 1213: Bailly I. 25 (April 26th).]

[Footnote 1214: Hippeau, IV. 377 (Letters of M. Perrot, April 29th).]

[Footnote 1215: Letter to the King by an inhabitant of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine--"Do not doubt, sire, that our recent misfortunes are due to the dearness of bread"]

[Footnote 1216: Dampmartin, "Evénements qui se sont passés sous mes yeux," etc. I. 25: "We turned back and were held up by small bands of scoundrels, who insolently proposed to us to shout 'Vive Necker! Vive le Tiers-Etat!'" His two companions were knights of St. Louis, and their badges seemed an object of "increasing hatred." "The badge excited coarse mutterings, even on the part of persons who appeared superior to the agitators."]

[Footnote 1217: Dampmartin, ibid. i. 25: "I was dining this very day at the Hôtel d'Ecquevilly, in the Rue Saint-Louis." He leaves the house on foot and witnesses the disturbance. "Fifteen to Sixteen hundred wretches, the excrement of the nation, degraded by shameful vices, covered with rags, and gorged with brandy, presented the most disgusting and revolting spectacle. More than a hundred thousand persons of both sexes and of all ages and conditions interfered greatly with the operations of the troops. The firing soon commenced and blood flowed: two innocent persons were wounded near me."]

[Footnote 1218: De Goncourt, "La Société Française pendant la Révolution." Thirty-one gambling-houses are counted here, while a pamphlet of the day is entitled "Pétition des deux mill cent filles du Palais-Royal."]

[Footnote 1219: Montjoie, 2nd part, 144.--Bailly, II, 130.]

[Footnote 1220: Arthur Young, June 24th, 1789.--Montjoie, 2nd part, 69.]

[Footnote 1221: Arthur Young, June 9th, 24th, and 26th.--"La France libre," passim, by C. Desmoulins.]

[Footnote 1222: C. Desmoulins, letters to his father, and Arthur Young, June 9th.]

[Footnote 1223: Montjoie, 2nd part, 69, 77, 124, 144. C. Desmoulins, letter, of June 24th and the following days.]

[Footnote 1224: Etienne Dumont, "Souvenirs," p.72.--C. Desmoulins, letter of; June 24th.--Arthur Young, June 25th.--Buchez and Roux, II. 28.]

[Footnote 1225: Bailly, I. 227 and 179.--Monnier, "Recherches sur les causes," etc. I. 289, 291; II.61;--Malouet, I. 299; II. 10.--"Actes des Apôtres," V.43. (Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31st, 1790).--Marmontel, I. 28: "The people came even into the Assembly, to encourage their partisans, to select and indicate their victims, and to terrify the feeble with the dreadful trial of open balloting."]

[Footnote 1226: Manuscript letters of M. Boullé, deputy, to the municipal authorities of Pontivy, from May 1st, 1789, to September 4th, 1790 (communicated by M. Rosenzweig, archivist at Vannes). June 16th, 1789: "The crowd gathered around the hall. . . was, during these days, from 3,000 to 4,000 persons."]

[Footnote 1227: Letters of M. Boullé, June 23rd. "How sublime the moment, that in which we enthusiastically bind ourselves to the country by a new oath!. . . . Why should this moment be selected by one of our number to dishonor himself? His name is now blasted throughout France. And the unfortunate man has children! Suddenly overwhelmed by public contempt he leaves, and falls fainting at the door, exclaiming, 'Ah! this will be my death!' I do not know what has become of him since. What is strange is, he had not behaved badly up to that time, and he voted for the Constitution."]

[Footnote 1228: De Ferrières, I. 168.--Malouet, I. 298 (according to him the faction did not number more than ten members),--idem II. 10.--Dumont, 250.]

[Footnote 1229: "Convention nationale" governed France from 21st September 1792 until Oct. 26th 1796. We distinguish between three different assemblies, "la Convention Girondine" 1792-93, "the Mountain," 1793-94 and "la Thermidorienne," from 1794-1795. (SR).]

[Footnote 1230: Declaration of June 23rd, article 15.]

[Footnote 1231: Montjoie, 2nd part, 118.--C. Desmoulins, letters of June 24th and the following days. A faithful narrative by M. de Sainte-Fère, formerly an officer in the French Guard, p.9.--De Bezenval, III, 413.--Buchez and Roux, II. 35.--"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893..]

[Footnote 1232: Peuchet ("Encyclopédie Méthodique," 1789, quoted by Parent Duchâtelet): "Almost all of the soldiers of the Guard belong to that class (the procurers of public women): many, indeed, only enlist in the corps that they may live at the expense of these unfortunates."]

[Footnote 1233: Gouverneur Morris, "Liberty is now the general cry; authority is a name and no longer a reality." (Correspondence with Washington, July 19th.)]

[Footnote 1234: Bailly. I. 302. "The King was very well-disposed; his measures were intended only to preserve order and the public peace. . . Du Châtelet was forced by facts to acquit M. de Bezenval of attempts against the people and the country."--Cf. Marmontel, IV. 183; Mounier, II, 40.]

[Footnote 1235: Desmoulins, letter of the 16th July. Buchez and Roux, II. 83.]

[Footnote 1236: Trial of the Prince de Lambesc (Paris, 1790), with the eighty-three depositions and the discussion of the testimony.--It is the crowd which began the attack. The troops fired in the air. But one man, a sieur Chauvel, was wounded slightly by the Prince de Lambesc. (Testimony of M. Carboire, p.84, and of Captain de Reinack, p. 101.) "M. le Prince de Lambesc, mounted on a gray horse with a gray saddle without holsters or pistols, had scarcely entered the garden when a dozen persons jumped at the mane and bridle of his horse and made every effort to drag him off. A small man in gray clothes fired at him with a pistol. . . . The prince tried hard to free himself, and succeeded by making his horse rear up and by flourishing his sword; without, however, up to this time, wounding any one. . . . He deposes that he saw the prince strike a man on the head with the flat of his saber who was trying to close the turning-bridge, which would have cut off the retreat of his troops The troops did no more than try to keep off the crowd which assailed them with stones, and even with firearms, from the top of the terraces."--The man who tried to close the bridge had seized the prince's horse with one hand; the wound he received was a scratch about 23 lines long, which was dressed and cured with a bandage soaked in brandy. All the details of the affair prove that the patience and humanity of the officer, were extreme. Nevertheless "on the following day, the 13th, some one posted a written placard on the crossing Bussy recommending the citizens of Paris to seize the prince and quarter him at once."--(Deposition of M. Cosson, p.114.)]

[Footnote 1237: Bailly, I. 3, 6.--Marmontel, IV. 310]

[Footnote 1238: Montjoie, part 3, 86. "I talked with those who guarded the château of the Tuileries. They did not belong to Paris. . . . A frightful physiognomy and hideous apparel." Montjoie, not to be trusted in many places, merits consultation for little facts of which he was an eye-witness.--Morellet, "Mémoires," I. 374.--Dusaulx, "L'oeuvre des sept jours," 352.--Revue Historique," March, 1876. Interrogatory of Desnot. His occupation during the 13th of July (published by Guiffrey).]

[Footnote 1239: Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," I. 531. "Peaceable people fled at the sight of these groups of strange, frantic vagabonds. Everybody closed their houses. . .. When I reached home, in the Saint-Denis quarter, several of these brigands caused great alarm by firing off guns in the air."]

[Footnote 1240: Dusaulx, 379.]

[Footnote 1241: Dusaulx, 359, 360, 361, 288, 336. "In effect their entreaties resembled commands, and, more than once, it was impossible to resist them."]

[Footnote 1242: Dusaulx, 447 (Deposition of the invalides).--"Revue Rétrospective," IV. 282 (Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two Swiss Guards).]

[Footnote 1243: Marmontel, IV. 317.]

[Footnote 1244: Dusaulx, 454. "The soldiers replied that they would accept whatever happened rather than cause the destruction of so great a number of their fellow-citizens."]

[Footnote 1245: Dusaulx, 447. The number of combatants, maimed, wounded, dead, and living, is 825.--Marmontel, IV. 320. "To the number of victors, which has been carried up to 800, people have been added who were never near the place."]

[Footnote 1246: "Memoires", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc, 1767-1862), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p.52. Pasquier was eye-witness. He leaned against the fence of the Beaumarchais garden and looked on, with mademoiselle Contat, the actress, at his side, who had left her carriage in the Place-Royale.--Marat, "L'ami du peuple," No. 530. "When an unheard-of conjunction of circumstances had caused the fall of the badly defended walls of the Bastille, under the efforts of a handful of soldiers and a troop of unfortunate creatures, most of them Germans and almost all provincials, the Parisians presented themselves the fortress, curiosity alone having led them there."]

[Footnote 1247: Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two Swiss.--Narrative of Cholat, wine-dealer, one of the victors.--Examination of Desnot (who cut off the head of M. de Launay).]

[Footnote 1248: Montjoie, part 3, 85.--Dusaulx, 355, 287, 368.]

[Footnote 1249: Nothing more. No Witness states that he had seen the pretended note to M. do Launay. According to Dusaulx, he could not have had either the time or the means to write it.]

[Footnote 1250: Bailly, II. 32, 74, 88, 90, 95, 108, 117, 137, 158, 174. "I gave orders which were neither obeyed nor listened to. . . . They gave me to understand that I was not safe." (July 15th.) "In these sad times one enemy and one calumnious report sufficed to excite the multitude. All who had formerly held power, all who had annoyed or restrained the insurrectionists, were sure of being arrested."]

[Footnote 1251: M. de Lafayette, "Mémoires," III. 264. Letter of July 16th, 1789. "I have already saved the lives of six persons whom they were hanging in different quarters."]

[Footnote 1252: Poujoulat. "Histoire de la Révolution Française," p.100 (with supporting documents). Procès-verbaux of the Provincial Assembly, lle-de-France (1787), p.127.]

[Footnote 1253: For instance: "He is severe with his peasants."--"He gives them no bread, and he wants them then to eat grass." "He wants them to eat grass like horses."--"He has said that they could very well eat hay, and that they are no better than horses."--The same story is found in many of the contemporary jacqueries.]

[Footnote 1254: Bailly, II. 108. "The people, less enlightened and as imperious as despots, recognize no positive signs of good administration but success."]

[Footnote 1255: Bailly, II, 108, 95.--Malouet, II, 14.]

[Footnote 1256: De Ferrières, I. 168.]