History of the Girondists Part 35

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 mult.i.tude 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 ma.s.s. "_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 pa.s.sage. "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 a.s.sa.s.sins. 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 pet.i.tion in language as imperious, in which he demanded, in the name of the people, the rest.i.tution of the Girondist ministers and the immediate sanction of their decrees. The king replied with intrepid dignity, "I will do what the const.i.tution 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 a.s.sembled 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 mult.i.tude of spectators crowded in the gardens. The clapping of hands, the cheers of laughter of this mult.i.tude without encouraged the a.s.sailants. 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 a.s.sembly, 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 a.s.sa.s.sination.

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 pa.s.sion, the mult.i.tude appeared to require reconciliation. One of the mult.i.tude 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 const.i.tutional 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 mult.i.tude, 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 a.s.sa.s.sination. 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 ma.s.ses 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 princ.i.p.ally composed of women. Their weaker arms were not so efficient against oaken panels and stout hinges. They called to their a.s.sistance 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 a.s.sa.s.sination, 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 pa.s.sages 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 ma.s.sive 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 n.o.ble 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 mult.i.tude. 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.sion, 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 coa.r.s.est 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 compa.s.sion.

XXIII.

The a.s.sembly 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 const.i.tution. The eloquence, so powerful to incite the ma.s.ses, 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly 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 pet.i.tion; 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 ma.s.s 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 grat.i.tude 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 mult.i.tude. The king at this moment having accidently pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociate 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, a.s.sembling by themselves, arrived singly, in order to lend their aid to the const.i.tution. 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 const.i.tutional deputies ran about in indignation, uttering imprecations against Petion and the Gironde. A deputation of the a.s.sembly 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 c.o.c.kades 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 a.s.sembly. The Ma.r.s.eillais, 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 sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean; the majority sailors or soldiers accustomed to warfare, and some bandits, hardened in crime. They were commanded by young men of Ma.r.s.eilles, 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 a.s.sembly vote, in order at the same time to control the Feuillants, the Jacobins, the king, and the a.s.sembly 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 Ma.r.s.eillais. 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 mult.i.tude with great force. The revolutionary idea appeared to have a.s.sumed the guise of a mortal, and to be marching under the aspect of this horde, to the a.s.sault 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 Ma.r.s.eILLAISE.

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 ign.o.bles 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.