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THE    FRENCH    REVOLUTION 


X 


THE 

FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

A   STUDY   IN   DEMOCRACY 


BY 

NESTA    H.    WEBSTER 

(MRS.   ARTHUR    WEBSTER) 

AUTHOR  OF  "  THE  CHEVALIER  DE  BOUFFLERS  " 


*'  La  revolution  populaire  etait  la  surface  d'un  volcan 
de  conjurations  etrangeres." — Saint  Just. 


»o$>.>.\ 


w 


LONDON 

CONSTABLE  AND  COMPANY  Ltd. 

1920 


First  published  1919 

Second  Edition  1919 

Reprinted  1920 


PREFACE 

Astrologers  tell  us  that  the  history  of  the  world  moves  in 
cycles  ;  that  from  time  to  time  the  same  forces  arise  producing 
eras  that  strangely  resemble  one  another.  Between  these  eras 
a  close  affinity  exists,  and  so  it  is  that  we,  in  looking  back  to 
the  past  from  the  world  crisis  of  to-day,  reaUze  that  periods 
which  in  times  of  peace  have  soothed  or  thrilled  us  have  now 
lost  their  meaning,  that  the  principles  which  inspired  them 
have  no  place  in  our  philosophy.  The  Renaissance  is  dead ; 
the  Reformation  is  dead ;  even  the  great  wars  of  bygone  days 
seem  dwarfed  by  the  immensity  of  the  recent  conflict.  But 
whilst  the  roar  of  battle  dies  down  another  sound  is  heard — the 
angry  murmur  that  arose  in  1789  and  that,  though  momentarily 
hushed,  has  never  lost  its  force.  Once  more  we  are  in  the  cycle 
of  revolution. 

The  French  Revolution  is  no  dead  event ;  in  turning  over 
the  contemporary  records  of  those  tremendous  days  we  feel 
that  we  are  touching  live  things ;  from  the  yellowed  pages  voices 
call  to  us,  voices  that  still  vibrate  with  the  passions  that  stirred 
them  more  than  a  century  ago — here  the  desperate  appeal  for 
Uberty  and  justice,  there  the  trumpet  -  call  of  "  King  and 
Country  "  ;  now  the  story  told  with  tears  of  death  faced  gloriously, 
now  a  maddened  scream  of  rage  against  a  fellow-man.  When 
in  all  the  history  of  the  world  until  the  present  day  has  human 
nature  shown  itself  so  terrible  and  so  subUme  ?  And  is  not  the 
fascination  that  amazing  epoch  has  ever  since  exercised  over  the 
minds  of  men  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  problems  it  held  are 
still  unsolved,  that  the  same  movements  which  originated  with 
it  are  still  at  work  amongst  us  ?  "  What  we  learn  to-day  from 
the  study  of  the  Great  Revolution,"  the  anarchist  Prince 
Kropotkin  wrote  in  1908,  "  is  that  it  was  the  source  and  origin 
of  all  the  present  communist,  anarchist,  and  socialist  conceptions/' 


vi  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Indeed  Kropotkin  goes  so  far  as  to  declare  that  "  up  till  now, 
modern  socialism  has  added  absolutely  nothing  to  the  ideas  that 
were  circulating  among  the  French  people  between  1789  and 
1794,  and  which  it  was  tried  to  put  into  practice  in  the  year  11. 
of  the  RepubUc  {i.e.  in  the  Reign  of  Terror).  Modem  socialism 
has  only  systematised  those  ideas  and  found  arguments  in  their 
favour,"  etc.  Now  since  the  French  Revolution  still  remains 
the  one  and  only  occasion  in  the  history  of  the  world  when  those 
theories  were  put  into  practice  on  a  large  scale,  and  carried  out  to 
their  logical  conclusion — for  the  experiment  in  Russia  is  as  yet 
unfinished — it  is  surely  worth  while  to  know  the  true  facts  about 
that  first  upheaval.  So  far,  in  England,  the  truth  is  not  known ; 
we  have  not  even  been  told  what  really  happened.  "As  to  a 
real  history  of  the  French  Revolution,"  Lord  Cromer  wrote 
to  me  a  few  months  before  his  death,  "  no  such  thing  exists  in 
the  English  language,  for  Carlyle,  besides  being  often  very 
inaccurate  and  prejudiced,  produced  merely  a  philosophical 
rhapsody.  It  is  well  worth  reading,  but  it  is  not  history."  Yet 
it  is  undoubtedly  on  Carlyle's  rhapsody  that  our  national  con- 
ceptions of  the  Revolution  are  founded ;  the  great  masterpiece 
of  Dickens  was  built  up  on  this  mythological  basis,  whilst  the 
old  histories  of  Alison  and  Morse  Stephens,  and  even  the  illumin- 
ating Essays  of  Croker,  lack  the  power  to  rouse  the  popular 
imagination.!  Thus  the  legend  created  by  Carlyle  has  never 
been  dispelled. 

During  the  last  few  years  the  French  Revolution  has  become 
less  a  subject  for  historical  research  than  the  theme  of  the 
popular  joumaUst  who  sees  in  that  lurid  period  material  to 
be  written  up  with  profit.  This  being  so,  accuracy  plays  no 
part  in  his  scheme.     For  the  art  of  successful  journalism  is  not 

^  *  No  English  writer  was  better  acquainted  with  the  dessous  des  cartes 

of  the  French  Revolution  than  John  Wilson  Croker,  Bom  in  1780,  he 
talked  with  people  who  had  taken  part  in  the  movement,  and  spent  many 
years  in  forming  and  studying  the  magnificent  collections  of  revolutionary 
pamphlets  that  he  afterwards  sold  to  the  British  Museum.  In  18 16  the 
pubUsher,  John  Murray,  offered  him  the  sum  of  2500  guineas  to  write  the 
complete  history  of  the  Revolution,  but  Croker  never  found  time  to  do 
this,  and  his  Essays,  reprinted  from  the  Quarterly  Review,  are  all  that  he 
has  left  us  of  his  stores  of  knowledge.  These,  though  too  controversial  to 
appeal  to  the  general  public,  throw  more  light  on  the  hidden  causes  of  the 
revolutionary  movement  than  any  book  in  the  English  language. 


PREFACE  vii 

to  illuminate  the  public  mind  but  to  reflect  it,  to  tell  it  in  even 
stronger  terms  what  it  thinks  already,  and  therefore  to  confirm 
rather  than  to  dispel  popular  delusions. 

But  if  the  Revolution  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  supreme 
experiment  in  democracy,  if  its  principles  are  to  be  held  up 
for  our  admiration  and  its  methods  advocated  as  an  example 
to  our  own  people,  is  it  not  time  that  some  effort  were  made 
to  counteract  that  "  conspiracy  of  history  "  that  in  France  also, 
as  M.  Gustave  Bord  points  out,  has  hitherto  concealed  the  real 
facts  concerning  it  ?  Shall  we  not  at  last  cease  from  rhapsody 
and  consider  the  matter  calmly  and  scientifically  in  its  effects 
on  the  people  ?  This,  after  aU,  is  the  main  issue — how  was  the 
experiment  a  success  from  the  people's  point  of  view  ?  Strangely 
enough,  though  it  was  in  their  cause  that  the  Revolution  was 
ostensibly  made,  the  people  are  precisely  the  portion  of  the 
nation  that  by  RoyaHst  and  Revolutionary  writers  aUke  have 
been  most  persistently  overlooked  —  the  RoyaUsts  occupjdng 
themselves  mainly  with  the  trials  of  the  monarchy  and  aristo- 
cracy, the  Revolutionaries  losing  themselves  in  panegyrics  on 
the  popular  leaders.  Thus  Michelet  was  a  Dantoniste,  Louis 
Blanc  a  Robespierriste ;  Lamartine  was  a  Girondiste ;  Thiers  and 
Mignet  were  Orleanistes,  not  only  as  historians  but  as  poUticians, 
for  their  exoneration  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  was  only  a  part  of  their 
policy  for  placing  his  son  Louis  Philippe  on  the  throne  of  France, — 
and  consequently  to  all  these  men  the  people  were  a  matter  only 
of  secondary  importance.  So  far  no  one  has  written  the  history  of 
the  movement  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  people  themselves. 

In  studjdng  the  Revolution  as  an  experiment  in  democracy, 
we  must  clear  our  minds  of  all  predilections  for  certain  individuals. 
Just  as  the  author  of  a  treatise  on  the  discovery  of  tuberculin 
or  on  the  antidote  to  hydrophobia  devotes  no  space  to  recording 
the  sufferings  of  the  unhappy  guinea-pigs  and  rabbits  sacrificed 
in  the  cause  of  science,  or  in  dilating  on  the  virtuous  private  life 
of  Koch  or  Pasteur,  but  concerns  himself  solely  with  the  exact 
process  adopted  and  the  symptoms  exhibited  by  the  subjects 
with  a  view  to  proving  or  disproving  the  ef&cacy  of  the  serums 
employed,  so,  if  we  would  examine  the  Revolution  as  a  scientific 
experiment.  King,  noblesse,  and  revolutionary  leaders  alike  must 
be  considered  only  in  their  relation  to  the  cause  of  democracy  ; 
we  must  concern  ourselves  with  the  people  only,  with  the  ills 


VIU 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


from  which  they  suffered,  with  the  means  employed  for  their 
reUef ,  with  the  part  they  themselves  played  in  the  great  movement, 
and  finaUy  the  results  that  were  achieved.  By  this  means  alone 
we  shall  do  justice  to  that  brave  and  brilliant  people  by  whose 
side  we  have  fought  to-day ;  we  shall  come  to  understand  that 
they  were  not  the  bUnd  unreasoning  herd  portrayed  by  Taine, 
the  enraged  "  hyenas  "  of  Horace  Walpole,  nor  yet,  as  revolu- 
tionary writers  would  have  us  beUeve,  a  nation  of  slaves  brought 
by  long  years  of  oppression  to  a  pitch  of  exasperation  that  found 
a  vent  in  the  crimes  and  horrors  of  the  Revolution. 

It  is  on  this  last  theory  that  popular  opinion  in  England  on 
the  Revolution  is  founded,  and  that  might,  I  think,  be  epitomized 
thus  :  "  The  French  Revolution  was  in  itself  a  purely  beneficial 
movement,  inspired  by  the  desire  for  Uberty  and  justice  :  un- 
happily it  went  too  far  and  produced  excesses  which,  though 
deplorable,  were  nevertheless  the  unavoidable  accompaniment 
to  the  regeneration  of  the  country."  Now  this  statement  is 
as  illogical  as  it  is  unjust ;  how  could  a  movement  that  was 
purely  beneficial  "  go  too  f ar  "  ?  How  could  the  desire  of  the 
people  for  Uberty  and  justice  be  carried  to  excess  and  produce 
cruelty  and  bloodshed  such  as  the  civilized  world  had  never 
seen  before  ?  If  this  were  true,  then  the  only  opinion  at  which 
a  thinking  human  being  could  arrive  would  be  that  the  French 
Revolution  was  the  reductio  ad  dbsurdum  of  the  proposition 
of  democracy,  a  proposition  that,  once  worked  out  to  its  tragic 
and  grotesque  conclusion,  should  have  proved  for  all  time  that 
to  give  power  into  the  hands  of  the  people  is  to  create  a  tyranny 
more  terrible  than  any  despotism  can  produce.  But  it  was  not 
so ;  it  was  not  the  desire  of  the  people  for  liberty  and  justice 
that  produced  these  horrors ;  it  was  not  the  movement  for  reform 
that  "  went  too  far  "  ;  the  crimes  and  excesses  of  the  Revolution 
sprang  from  totally  distinct  and  extraneous  causes  that  must 
be  understood  if  justice  is  to  be  done  to  the  people  of  France. 
It  is  by  the  revolutionary  writers  that  the  people  have  been 
most  maUgned,  for  since,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  these  writers 
were  not  the  advocates  of  the  people  but  of  certain  revolutionary 
leaders,  their  method  is  to  absolve  their  heroes  from  all  blame  and 
heap  the  whole  responsibihty  upon  the  people.  For  this  purpose 
a  legend  has  been  woven  around  all  the  great  outbreaks  of  the 
Revolution  and  the  r61e  of  the  people  persistently  misrepresented. 


PREFACE  ix 

Now  if  we  study  carefully  the  course  of  the  revolutionary 
movement  we  shall  find  that  the  role  of  the  people  is  in  the 
main  passive  ;  only  on  these  great  days  of  tumult  do  they  play 
an  active  part.  Between  these  outbreaks  the  fire  of  revolution 
smoulders,  at  moments  almost  flickers  out,  then  suddenly  for 
no  apparent  reason  bursts  again  into  flame,  and  it  is  only  by 
long  and  patient  search  amongst  contemporary  documents  that 
we  can  begin  to  understand  the  causes  of  these  conflagrations. 
*'  The  popular  Revolution, *'  said  St.  Just,  "  was  the  surface  of 
a  volcano  of  extraneous  conspiracies/'  and  consequently  the 
actions  of  the  people  seen  from  the  surface  only  can  never  be 
understood.  Thus  the  story  of  the  Revolution,  as  it  is  usually 
told  us,  with  its  pointless  crimes,  its  unreasoning  violence,  and 
its  hideous  waste  of  life,  is  simply  unintelligible — "  a  tale  told 
by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury  and  signifying  nothing." 

If,  then,  we  would  discover  the  truth  about  these  great  revolu- 
tionary outbreaks,  we  must  dig  down  far  below  the  surface, 
we  must  trace  the  connection  between  the  mine  and  the  ex- 
plosion, between  the  actions  of  the  people  and  the  causes  that 
provoked  them.^  For,  as  Mr.  Croker  truly  observed,  "  It  is 
doubtless  a  very  remarkable — ^though  hitherto  very  little  re- 
marked— feature  of  the  whole  Revolution,  that  not  one,  not  a 
single  one,  of  the  tumults  which  now  had  its  successive  stages, 
from  the  Affaire  Reveillon  to  the  September  massacres,  had  any 
real  connection  with  the  pretext  under  which  it  was  executed." 
These  great  moments  of  crisis,  five  in  number,  are  Uke  the  five 
acts  of  a  tremendous  drama  ;  through  them  all  we  see  the  same 
methods  at  work,  the  same  actors  under  different  disguises,  the 
same  tangled  threads  of  intrigue  leading  up  to  the  tremendous 
cataclysm  of  the  Terror.    The  Siege  of  the  Bastille — the  March  on 

^  Lord  Acton  in  his  Essays  on  the  French  Revolution  apparently  caught 
a  stray  gUmmer  of  this  truth  when  he  wrote  these  words  :  "  The  appaUing 
thing  in  the  French  Revolution  is  not  the  tumult  but  the  design.  Through 
all  the  fire  and  smoke  we  perceive  the  evidence  of  calculating  organization. 
The  managers  remain  studiously  concealed  and  masked  ;  but  there  is  no 
doubt  about  their  presence  from  the  first.  They  had  been  active  in  the 
riots  of  Paris,  and  they  were  again  active  in  the  provincial  risings."  Having 
delivered  himself,  however,  of  this  profound  reflection.  Lord  Acton  seems 
to  have  lost  it  from  sight,  for  he  proceeds  to  describe  all  the  tumults  of 
the  Revolution  without  any  further  reference  to  organization  or  design — 
his  chief  concern  being  to  absolve  all  the  leaders  from  complicity. 


X  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Versailles — ^the  two  Invasions  of  the  Tuileries — the  Massacres  of 
September — and  finally  the  Reign  of  Terror — these  form  the 
history  of  the  French  people  throughout  the  Revolution.  The 
object  of  this  book  is,  therefore,  to  relate  as  accurately  as  con- 
flicting evidence  permits  the  true  facts  about  each  great  crisis,  to 
explain  the  motives  that  inspired  the  crowds,  the  means  employed 
to  rouse  their  passions,  and  thereby  to  throw  a  truer  Ught  on  the 
rdle  of  the  people,  and  ultimately  on  the  Revolution  as  the  great 
experiment  in  democracy. 


AUTHORITIES    CONSULTED 

An  immense  advantage  offered  to  the  historian  by  the  modem 
and  popular  way  of  writing  history  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  is 
able  to  dispense  with  any  reference  to  the  authorities  he  has 
consulted.  Both  pubUc  and  critics  object  to  notes  and  quota- 
tions which  interrupt  the  flow  of  the  narrative  ;  therefore  notes 
and  quotation  marks  have  gone  out  of  fashion.  This  convenient 
plan  not  only  facilitates  enormously  the  author's  task,  since  it 
enables  him  to  write  down  anything  that  comes  into  his  head 
without  troubling  to  remember  where  he  read  it,  but  also  pro- 
vides the  unscrupulous  historian  with  unlimited  scope  for  mis- 
representation, for  by  pandering  to  this  popular  prejudice  he  is 
able  to  propound  theories  absolutely  at  variance  with  fact,  to 
attribute  to  historical  personages  sentiments  they  never  enter- 
tained, and  even  words  they  never  uttered,  and  so  to  present  a 
period  in  precisely  the  colours  that  best  suit  his  purpose. 

In  this  book,  however,  at  the  risk  of  giving  to  its  pages  a 
ponderous  appearance,  I  have  reverted  to  the  old-fashioned 
system  of  notes,  since  my  object  is  not  to  weave  fanciful  word- 
pictures  around  the  great  scenes  of  the  Revolution,  but  to  tell 
as  simply  and  clearly  as  possible  what  really  happened.  Now 
since  the  whole  story  of  these  great  revolutionary  days  is  a  series 
of  disputed  points,  no  book  on  the  subject  is  of  the  slightest 
historical  value  that  does  not  give  chapter  and  verse  for  every 
controversial  statement.  Further,  it  is  essential  to  indicate  the 
poUtical  faction  to  which  the  authorities  quoted  belonged,  and 
also  the  value  of  their  evidence.  For  to  condemn  an  individual 
or  a  party  on  the  word  of  their  enemies,  or  to  absolve  them  on 
the  testimony  of  their  accomplices,  is  as  absurd  as  if  one  were 
to  accept  evidence  at  a  trial  without  inquiring  into  the  identities 
of  the  witnesses.  Criminology  plays  no  small  part  in  under- 
standing the  true  causes  of  the  revolutionary  outbreaks,  and  for 
this  purpose  contemporaries  alone  must  be  consulted,  and  the 
identity  of  these  contemporaries  must  be  clearly  defined.  The 
following  resume  will  show  the  political  standpoint  of  the  authori- 
ties quoted  most  frequently  throughout  the  course  of  this  book, 
whilst  the  poUcy  of  those  referred  to  on  particular  events  will  be 
given  in  the  context : — 


xii  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


CONTEMPORARY  AUTHORITIES  (REVOLUTIONARY) 

1 .  Histoire  de  la  Rivolution  par  Deux  A  mis  de  la  Liherti,  in  nineteen 
volumes. — The  first  six  volumes,  violently  revolutionary  in  tone 
and  filled  with  grotesque  fables  current  at  the  time,  have  been  attri- 
buted to  the  bookseller  ClaveUn,  and  to  Kerverseau,  but  this  surmise 
rests  on  no  evidence  whatever  (see  Bibliographie  de  la  Revolution,  by 
Maurice  Toumeux,  i.  3).  Montjoie  stated  that  the  work  was  dictated 
and  paid  for  by  the  Due  d'Orleans  {Conjuration  de  d'Orleans,  ii.  97), 
and  it  is  no  doubt  strongly  Orleaniste  in  its  point  of  view.  After 
the  sixth  volume,  however,  it  makes  a  complete  volte-face  and 
becomes  moderate,  even  Royahst  in  opinion,  and  at  the  same  time  less 
interesting.  As  an  anonymous  pubUcation  the  history  of  the  Deux 
Amis  carries  none  of  the  weight  that  attaches  to  signed  work,  but 
since  it  was  on  the  early  part  of  the  series  that  Carlyle  mainly  based 
his  account  of  the  first  stages  of  the  Revolution,  and  also  his  accusa- 
tions against  the  Old  Regime,  it  should  be  read  if  one  would  reaUze 
how  flimsy  was  the  evidence  that  Carlyle  bUndly  accepted  as  the 
truth. 

2.  The  Moniteur,  a  journal  edited  by  Panckoucke,  first  made  its 
appearance  on  November  24,  1789.  The  numbers  relating  to  events 
anterior  to  this  date  were  written  up  afterwards,  and  the  accounts 
of  the  great  revolutionary  tumults  in  July  1 789  are  copied  verbatim 
from  the  Deux  Amis.  Its  poUcy  throughout  the  Revolution  is 
always  that  of  the  dominating  party — at  first  Orl6aniste,  then 
Girondiste,  and  finally  Montagnard. 

3.  Prudhomme.  —  The  paper  known  as  RSvolutions  de  Paris, 
pubUshed  weekly  throughout  the  whole  course  of  the  Revolution  by 
this  indefatigable  joumaUst,  is  the  most  genuinely  democratic  record 
of  the  period,  since  it  attaches  itself  to  no  poUtical  party,  but  identifies 
itself  with  the  revolutionary  element  amongst  the  people  and 
supports  the  demagogues  only  as  representative  of  the  popular  cause. 
Later  on,  however,  Prudhomme  reahzed  that  he  had  been  duped 
by  these  men,  and  in  his  Histoire  impartiale  des  Crimes  et  des  Erreurs 
de  la  Revolution  Frangaise,  pubhshed  in  1797,  completely  gave  away 
his  former  associates  and  showed  up  the  intrigues  of  the  Revolution 
more  thoroughly  than  any  Royalist  has  done.  The  former  work 
—  Les  Revolutions  de  Paris  —  is  freely  quoted  by  revolutionary 
writers ;  on  the  second — Crimes  de  la  Revolution — they  are  strangely 
silent. 

4.  The  Histoire  Parlementaire,  by  Buchez  et  Roux,  contains 
reports  of  the  debates  that  took  place  in  the  Assembly  (mainly 
abbreviated  from  the  Moniteur),  and  also  in  the  Jacobin  Club, 
besides  reprints  of  various  contemporary  pamphlets,  etc.  But  the 
opinion  of  the  authors,  strongly  biassed  in  favour  of  the  revolution- 
ary leaders  rather  than  of  the  people,  should  be  accepted  with 
caution. 


AUTHORITIES  CONSULTED  xiii 


CONTEMPORARY  AUTHORITIES   (ROYALIST) 

1.  Montjoie. — F61ix  Christophe  Louis  Ventre  de  la  Touloubre 
(i 756-1816),  known  as  Galart  de  Montjoie  (or  Montjoye),  was  the 
author  of  an  Histoire  de  la  Revolution  de  France  et  de  I'Assemblee 
Nationale  which  appeared  in  the  RoyaUst  journal  L'Ami  du  Roi, 
of  a  history  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,  Histoire  de  la  Conjuration 
de  Louis  Philippe  Joseph  d' Orleans  (1796),  and  of  an  inferior  work, 
L' Histoire  de  la  Conjuration  de  Maximilien  Robespierre.  Montjoie 
as  an  eye-witness  of  the  earher  revolutionary  tumults  is  extremely 
interesting,  but  owing  to  his  violent  animosity  towards  the  Orleanistes 
his  accusations  against  them  should  not  be  accepted  unless  confirmed 
by  other  contemporary  evidence.  In  most  instances,  however,  this 
is  forthcoming.  Both  by  Taine  and  by  Jules  Flammermont,  a 
strongly  revolutionary  writer,  Montjoie  is  regarded  as  an  important 
authority  on  the  period.^ 

2.  Beauheu.  —  Claude  Fran9ois  Beaulieu  (1754- 1827)  edited 
several  papers  during  the  Revolution,  and,  according  to  Dauban, 
was  the  author  of  the  Diurnal,  of  which  Dauban  reprinted  a 
large  part  in  La  Demagogie  d  Paris  en  1793.  But  this  is  not 
conclusively  proved.  In  1803  Beaulieu  published  his  history  of 
the  French  Revolution  in  six  volumes,  entitled  Essais  historiques 
sur  les  Causes  et  les  Effets  de  la  Revolution  de  France.  This  is  un- 
doubtedly the  best  contemporary  work  on  the  subject,  and  is  quoted 
by  historians  of  every  party.  Although  a  Royalist,  Beaulieu 
displays  the  greatest  impartiality ;  he  advances  nothing  without 
proof.  Personally  acquainted  with  most  of  the  leading  Revolu- 
tionaries, he  speaks  of  what  he  himself  saw  and  heard,  and  never 
allows  himself,  hke  Montjoie,  to  be  carried  away  by  his  feelings. 
Beaulieu  was  arrested  on  the  29th  of  October  1793,  and  imprisoned 
first  at  the  Conciergerie,  then  at  the  Luxembourg,  from  which  he 

1  "  Montjoie  is  a  party  man,  but  he  dates  and  specifies,  and  his  evidence, 
when  elsewhere  confirmed,  deserves  to  be  admitted  "  (Taine,  La  Revolu- 
tion, iii.  37).  M.  Flammermont  draws  an  interesting  comparison  between 
Montjoie  and  the  Deux  Amis  de  la  Liberti,  pointing  out  that  the  latter  is 
in  reality  a  patchwork  of  current  rumours,  the  authors  "have  no  settled 
system,  they  have  not  criticized  each  of  the  sources  of  which  they  have 
made  use  ;  on  every  point  they  content  themselves  with  choosing  the 
version  which  seems  to  them  most  likely,  thereby  arriving  at  the  strangest 
contradictions.  .  .  .  En  risume,  this  considerable  work  has  no  original 
value,  at  any  rate  for  the  narrative  of  the  14th  of  July.  In  Galart  de 
Montjoye  we  meet  at  last  a  man  who  has  the  courage  of  his  opinions,  and 
who  signs  his  work,  which  was  not  without  danger  at  the  period  when  he 
published  it.  Indeed,  he  loudly  proclaims  he  is  a  RoyaHst,  and  takes  up 
his  stand  as  a  declared  adversary  of  the  Revolution,  but  at  the  same  time 
he  is  nearly  always  moderate  in  his  language,  and  he  takes  pains  to  support 
his  opinions  and  his  judgements  by  the  most  authoritative  testimony  " 
{La  JournSe  du  14  Juillet,  p.  cxxxvii).  See  also  the  opinion  of  the  English 
contemporary,  John  Adolphus,  Biographical  Memoirs  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, ii.  205. 


xiv         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

was  released  after  the  fall  of  Robespierre.  Between  1813  and  1827 
he  collaborated  with  Michaud  in  compihng  the  great  Biographie 
Universelle,  for  which  he  wrote  articles  on  several  of  the  Revolu- 
tionaries he  had  known. 

3.  Ferridres. — The  Memoires  of  the  Marquis  de  Ferrieres,  though 
more  frequently  quoted  by  English  writers  than  the  Essais  de 
Beaulieu,  are  of  far  less  original  value,  as  they  are  largely  composed 
of  quotations  from  the  writings  of  other  contemporaries.  Ferrieres 
was  a  disaffected  noble,  and,  although  a  Royalist,  does  not  err  on  the 
side  of  over-indulgence  for  the  Court,  but  as  an  ardent  anti-Orleaniste 
throws  an  interesting  hght  on  the  intrigue  at  work  behind  the  earUer 
revolutionary  movement. 

The  above  are  the  authorities  mainly  consulted  for  the 
purpose  of  this  book ;  the  evidence  of  historians  is  only  quoted 
in  the  case  of  those  who  had  access  to  the  archives  of  France  or 
other  contemporary  documents  not  to  be  found  in  this  country. 
In  this  respect  Taine,  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  Mortimer  Temaux, 
Edmond  Bire,  Gustave  Bord,  Chassin,  Dauban,  Wallon,  Cam- 
pardon,  and  Adolphe  Schmidt  are  particularly  valuable.  The 
opinion  of  M.  Louis  Madehn  is  also  occasionally  referred  to  as 
being  founded  on  the  most  recent  researches,  and  as  representing 
the  last  word  in  modem  French  thought  on  the  vexed  questions 
of  the  Revolution. 


CONTENTS 


Preface 

PAGE 
V 

Authorities  consulted 

xi 

Prologue 

I 

The  Siege  of  the  Bastille 

11 

The  March  on  Versailles 

109 

The  Invasion  of  the  Tuileries 

173 

The  Siege  of  the  Tuileries 

243 

The  Massacres  of  September 

287 

The  Reign  of  Terror 

353 

Epilogue 

.       483 

Appendix 

499 

Index 

.        507 

PLANS 

The  Bastille 

The  Chateau  of  Versailles 

The  Tuileries 


To  face     76 

154 
224 


PROLOGUE 


B 


PROLOGUE 


Before  attempting  to  describe  the  outbreaks  of  the  Revolution, 
it  is  necessary  to  indicate  as  briefly  as  possible  the  ills  from  which 
the  people  were  suffering,  the  reforms  that  they  demanded,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  influences  at  work  amongst  them  which 
diverted  the  movement  for  reform  into  the  chajinel  of  revolution. 


THE  PEOPLE  BEFORE  THE  REVOLUTION 

Nearly  every  author  in  embarking  on  the  story  of  the  Revolu- 
tion has  considered  it  de  rigueur  to  enlarge  on  the  progress  of 
philosophy  that  heralded  the  movement.  The  oppressions  that 
had  prevailed  during  the  reigns  of  Louis  XIV.  and  Louis  XV. 
had,  we  are  told,  been  endured  in  a  spirit  of  dumb  resignation 
until  the  teaching  of  Rousseau,  Diderot,  and  other  social  reformers 
proclaimed  to  the  nation  that  they  need  be  endured  no  longer. 
If  we  regard  the  Revolution  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  people, 
this  time-honoured  preamble  may,  however,  be  dispensed  with. 
Doubtless  the  philosophers  played  an  important  part  in  preparing 
the  Revolution,  but  their  direct  influence  was  confined  to  the 
aristocracy  and  the  educated  bourgeoisie  ;  to  the  peasant  tilling 
the  soil,  the  Encyclopedia  and  the  Contrat  Social  were  of  less 
pressing  interest  than  the  condition  of  his  crop  and  the  profit  of 
his  labour.  How  the  abuses  of  the  Old  Regime  affected  him  in 
this  tangible  respect  we  can  read  in  Arthur  Young's  Travels,  in 
Albert  Babeau's  Le  Village  sous  VAncien  Regime,  or  in  the  works 
of  Taine,  where  all  the  injustices  of  tallies,  capitaineries,  corvees, 
gabelles,  etc.,  are  set  forth  categorically,  and  are  too  weU  known 
to  be  enumerated  here.  Sufiice  it  to  say,  these  oppressions  were 
many  and  grievous,  but  they  sprang  less  from  intentional  tyranny 
than  from  an  obsolete  system  that  demanded  readjustment. 
Thus  certain  customs  that  originated  in  benevolence  had,  through 
the  progress  of  civiUzation,  become  oppressive — the  liberty  to 
grind  at  the  seigneur's  mill  had  become  the  obligation  to  grind 
at  the  seigneur's  mill,  whilst  many  feudal  exactions  and  personal 
services  were  merely  relics  of  the  days  when  rent  was  paid  in 

3 


4  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

kind  or  in  labour.  It  is  evident,  moreover,  that  many  of  these 
feudal  oppressions  that  look  so  terrible  on  paper  had  fallen  into 
disuse ;  thus,  although  the  parchments  enumerating  the  sei- 
gneurial  rights  were  still  in  existence,  "the  power  of  the  seigneurs 
over  the  persons  of  their  vassals  only  existed  in  romances  "  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution.^  In  every  ancient  civilization 
strange  archaic  laws  might  be  discovered— does  not  our  own  legal 
code  enact  that  a  man  may  beat  his  wife  with  any  weapon  no 
thicker  than  his  thumb  ?  but  so  far  the  women  of  England  have 
not  found  it  necessary  to  rise  in  revolt  against  this  extraordinary 
stipulation. 

For  the  peasant  of  France  the  most  real  grievances  were  un- 
doubtedly the  inequaUty  of  taxation  and  the  "  capitaineries  "  or 
game-laws,  monstrous  injustices  that  crippled  his  energies  and 
often  made  his  labour  vain.  Yet  were  the  peasants  of  old  France 
the  wretched,  down-trodden  beings  that  certain  historians  have 
described  them?  The  strange  thing  is  that  no  contemporary 
evidence  corroborates  this  theory;  in  none  of  the  letters  or 
memoirs  written  before  the  Revolution,  even  by  such  advanced 
thinkers  as  Rousseau  and  Madame  Roland,  do  we  encounter  the 
starving  scarecrows  of  the  villages  or  the  ragged  spectres  of  the 
Faubourg  Saint-Antoine  portrayed  by  Dickens ;  on  the  contrary, 
gaiety  seems  to  have  been  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  the 
people.  The  dancing  peasants  of  Watteau  and  Lancret  were  no 
figments  of  an  artist's  brain,  but  very  charming  reahties  described 
by  every  traveller.  Arthur  Young,  who  has  been  persistently 
represented  as  the  great  opponent  of  the  Ancien  Regime,  records 
few  actual  instances  of  misery  or  oppression,  and,  as  we  shall  see. 
Young  was  later  on  led  to  reconstruct  his  views  on  the  old  govern- 
ment of  France  in  a  pamphlet  which  has  been  carefully  ignored 
by  writers  who  quote  his  earUer  work  in  support  of  their  theories. 

But  the  most  remarkable  evidence  on  peasant  life  before  the 
Revolution  is  to  be  found  in  the  letters  of  Dr.  Rigby,  who  travelled 
in  France  during  the  summer  of  1789.  This  curious  book, 
pubHshed  for  the  first  time  in  1880,  aroused  less  attention  in 
England  than  in  France,  where  it  was  regarded  as  an  important 
contribution  to  the  history  of  the  period.2    The  accounts  if 

*  Mimoires  du  Chancelier  Pasquier,  p.  46. 

2  See,  for  example,  the  opinion  of  the  pro-revolutionary  writer  M  Tules 
Flammermont  in  his  Journie  du  14  Juillet :  "  Another  witness  of  this  sur- 
prising revolution  (the  revolution  of  July  1789)  is  Dr.  Rigby,  whom  the 
chances  of  travel  brought  to  France  and  kept  in  Paris  during  these  glorious 
S!'    .   '!  ^^^^""^  *°  ^'^  "^^^  ^^^°^  valuable  evidence  of  which  neither  the 

authenticity  nor  the  impartiality  can  be  disputed He  was  a  practical 

agriculturist  and  at  the  same  time  a  man  of  science,  and  his  letters,  though 
?!!^^^V^  optimistic,   make  the  counterpart  to  the  criticisms  of 

Arthur  Young,  who  saw  the  dark  side  of  everything  " 


PROLOGUE  5 

contains  are  so  subversive  of  the  accepted  theories  on  peasant 
misery  current  in  this  country,  and  have  been  so  little  quoted, 
that  a  few  extracts  must  be  given  here. 

Between  Calais  and  Lille  "  the  most  striking  character  of 
the  country  "  through  which  Dr.  Rigby  passed  was  its  extra- 
ordinary fertility  :  "  We  went  through  an  extent  of  seventy  miles, 
and  I  will  venture  to  say  there  was  not  a  single  acre  but  what  was 
in  a  state  of  the  highest  cultivation.  The  crops  are  beyond  any 
conception  I  could  have  had  of  them — thousands  and  ten  thou- 
sands of  acres  of  wheat  superior  to  any  which  can  be  produced 
in  England.  .  .  . 

"  The  general  appearance  of  the  people  is  different  to  what 
I  expected ;  they  are  strong  and  well-made.  We  saw  many 
agreeable  scenes  as  we  passed  along  in  the  evening  before  we  came 
to  Lisle  :  little  parties  sitting  at  their  doors,  some  of  the  men 
smoking,  some  playing  at  cards  in  the  open  air,  and  others 
spinning  cotton.  Everything  we  see  bears  the  marks  of  industry, 
and  all  the  people  look  happy.  We  have  indeed  seen  few  signs  of 
opulence  in  individuals,  for  we  do  not  see  so  many  gentlemen's 
seats  as  in  England,  but  then  we  have  seen  few  of  the  lower  classes 
in  rags,  idleness,  and  misery.  What  strange  prejudices  we  are 
apt  to  take  regarding  foreigners  !  .  .  . 

"  What  strikes  me  most  in  what  I  have  seen  is  the  wonderful 
difference  between  this  country  and  England  .  .  .  the  difference 
seems  to  be  in  favour  of  the  former  ;  if  they  are  not  happy,  they 
look  at  least  very  Hke  it.  .  .  ."  Throughout  the  whole  course  of 
his  journey  across  France  Dr.  Rigby  continues  in  the  same  strain 
of  admiration — an  admiration  that  we  might  attribute  to  lack 
of  discernment  were  it  not  that  it  ceases  abruptly  on  his  entry 
into  Germany.  Here  he  finds  "  a  country  to  which  Nature  has 
been  equally  kind  as  to  France,  for  it  has  a  fertile  soil,  but  as 
yet  the  inhabitants  hve  under  an  oppressive  government."  At 
Cologne  he  finds  that  "  tyranny  and  oppression  have  taken  up 
their  abode.  .  .  .  There  was  a  gloom  and  an  appearance  of  disease 
in  almost  every  man's  face  we  saw  ;  their  persons  also  look  filthy. 
The  state  of  wretchedness  in  which  they  live  seems  to  deprive 
them  of  every  power  of  exertion  .  .  .  the  whole  country  is  divided 
between  the  Archbishop  and  the  King  of  Prussia  .  .  .  the  land  is 
uncultivated  and  depopulated.  How  every  country  and  every 
people  we  have  seen  since  we  left  France  sink  in  comparison  with 
that  animated  country  I  "  It  is  evident  that,  however  rose-coloured 
was  Dr.  Rigby's  view  of  France,  the  French  people  had  certainly 
not  reached  that  pitch  of  "  exasperation  "  that  according  to 
certain  historians  would  account  for  the  excesses  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. Lady  Eastlake,  Dr.  Rigby's  daughter,  who  edited  these 
letters  from  France,  fearing  apparently  that  her  father  will  be 


6  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

accredited  with  telling  travellers'  tales,  attempts  in  the  preface 
to  explain  his  remarks  by  quoting  the  observation  of  De  Tocque- 
ville  :  "  One  must  not  be  deceived  by  the  gaiety  the  Frenchnian 
displays  in  his  greatest  troubles,  it  only  proves  that,  believing 
his  unhappy  fate  to  be  inevitable,  he  tries  to  distract  himself  by 
not  thinking  about  it — ^it  is  not  that  he  does  not  feel  it."  This 
might  possibly  describe  the  attitude  of  the  French  people  towards 
their  government  during  the  centuries  that  preceded  the  Revolu- 
tion, when,  convinced  of  their  impotence  to  revolt,  they  resigned 
themselves  to  oppression  ;  but  at  the  period  Dr.  Rigby  describes 
the  work  of  reform  had  long  since  begun  and  they  had  therefore 
no  cause  for  hopelessness  or  despair.  Louis  XVI.  had  not  waited 
for  the  gathering  of  the  revolutionary  storm  in  order  to  redress 
the  evils  from  which  the  people  suffered ;  in  the  very  first  year 
of  his  reign  he  had  embarked  on  the  work  of  reform  with 
the  co-operation  of  Turgot  and  Malesherbes.  In  1775  he  had 
attempted  to  introduce  the  free  circulation  of  grain — thereby  en- 
raging the  monopoUzers  who  in  revenge  stirred  up  the  "  Guerre 
de  Farines  " ;  in  1776  he  had  proposed  the  suppression  of  the 
corv6e  which  the  opposition  of  the  Parlements  prevented;  ^ 
in  1779  he  had  abolished  all  forms  of  servitude  in  his  domains, 
inviting  "  all  seigneurs  of  fiefs  and  communities  to  follow  his 
example  " ;  in  1780  he  had  abolished  torture ;  in  1784  he  had 
accorded  hberty  of  conscience  to  the  Protestants ;  in  1787  he  had 
proposed  the  equaUty  of  territorial  taxation,  the  suppression  of 
the  gabelle  or  salt  tax,  and  again  urged  the  aboUtion  of  the 
corvee  and  the  free  circulation  of  grain ;  in  1787  and  1788  he 
had  proposed  reforms  in  the  administration  of  justice,  the  equal 
admission  of  citizens  of  every  rank  to  all  forms  of  emplo5nTient, 
the  aboUtion  of  lettres  de  cachet,  and  greater  liberty  of  the 
press.  Meanwhile  he  had  continued  to  reduce  the  expenses  of 
his  household  and  had  reformed  the  prisons  and  hospitals. 
Finally  on  August  8,  1788,  he  had  announced  the  assembling  of 
the  States-General,  at  which  he  accorded  double  representation 
to  the  Tiers  l^tats. 

In  this  spring  of  1789  the  French  people  had  therefore  every 
reason  to  feel  hopeful  of  the  future  and  to  believe  that  now  at 
last  all  their  wrongs  would  be  redressed.  Had  not  the  King  sent 
out  a  proclamation  to  the  whole  nation  saying,  "  His  Majesty 
has  desired  that  in  the  extremities  of  his  kingdom  and  in  the 

*  The  Parlements,  which  played  an  active  part  in  the  revolutionary 
movement,  had  proved  continually  obstructive  to  the  King's  schemes  of 
reform,  and  it  was  they,  as  well  as  the  monopohzers,  who  had  opposed  the 
free  circulation  of  grain.  "  It  must  appear  strange,"  wrote  Arthur  Young, 
"ma  government  so  despotic  in  some  respects  as  that  of  France,  to  see  the 
parUaments  in  every  part  of  the  kingdom  making  laws  without  the  King's 
consent,  and  even  in  defiance  of  his  authority  "  {Travels  in  France  p  321). 


PROLOGUE  7 

obscurest  dwellings  every  man  shall  rest  assured  that  his  wishes 
and  requests  shall  be  heard  "  ? 

"  All  over  the  country/'  says  Taine,  "  the  people  are  to 
meet  together  to  discuss  abuses.  .  .  .  These  confabulations  are 
authorized,  provoked  from  above.  In  the  early  days  of  1788 
the  provincial  assemblies  demand  from  the  syndicate  and  from 
the  inhabitants  of  each  parish  that  a  local  enquiry  shall  be  held  ; 
they  wish  to  know  the  details  of  their  grievances,  what  part  of 
the  revenue  each  tax  removes,  what  the  cultivator  pays  and 
suffers.  ...  All  these  figures  are  printed  .  .  .  artisans  and 
countrymen  discuss  them  on  Sunday  after  mass  or  in  the  evening 
in  the  great  room  at  the  inn.  ..." 

The  King  has  been  bitterly  reproached  by  Royahsts  for  thus 
taking  the  people  into  his  confidence  over  schemes  of  reform ; 
such  changes  in  the  government  as  were  needed,  they  remark, 
should  have  been  effected  by  the  royal  authority  unaided  by 
popular  opinion.  But  the  King  doubtless  argued  that  no  one 
knows  better  than  the  wearer  where  the  shoe  pinches ;  and  since 
his  great  desire  was  to  alleviate  the  sufferings  of  his  people,  it 
seemed  to  his  simple  mind  that  the  best  way  to  do  this  was  to 
ask  them  for  a  hst  of  their  grievances  before  attempting  to  redress 
them.  Behevers  in  despotism  may  deplore  the  error  in  judge- 
ment, but  the  people  of  France  did  not  mistake  the  good  in- 
tentions of  the  King,  for  in  the  cahiers  de  doleances  or  Usts  of 
grievances  that  arrived  from  all  parts  of  the  country  in  response 
to  this  appeal  the  people  were  unanimous  in  their  respect  and 
loyalty  to  Louis  XVI. 

What,  then,  did  the  cahiers  demand  ?  What  were  the  true 
desires  of  the  people  in  the  matter  of  government  ?  This  all- 
important  point  has  been  too  often  overlooked  in  histories  of  the 
Revolution  ;  yet  it  must  be  clearly  understood  if  we  would  realize 
how  far  the  Revolution  as  it  took  place  was  the  result  of  the 
people's  will.  Now  the  summarizing  of  the  cahiers  by  the 
National  Assembly  ^  revealed  that  the  following  principles  of 
government  were  laid  down  by  the  nation  : 

I.  The  French  government  is  monarchic. 
II.  The  person  of  the  King  is  inviolable  and  sacred. 

III.  His  crown  is  hereditary  from  male  to  male. 

On  these  three  points  the  cahiers  were  unanimous,  and  the  great 
majority  were  agreed  on  the  following  : 

IV.  The  King  is  the  depositary  of  the  executive  power. 
V.  The  agents  of  authority  are  responsible. 

VI.  The  royal  sanction  is  necessary  for  the  promulgation  of 
the  laws. 

^  Moniteur,  i.  215. 


8  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

VII.  The  nation  makes  the  laws  with  the  royal  sanction. 
VIII.  The  consent  of  the  nation  is  necessary  for  loans  and  taxes. 
IX.  Taxes  can  only  be  imposed  from  one  meeting  of  the  States- 
General  to  another. 
X.  Property  is  sacred. 
XL  Individual  Uberty  is  sacred. 

In  the  matter  of  reforms  the  cahiers  asked  first  and  foremost 
for  the  equahty  of  taxation,  for  the  abolition  of  that  monstrous 
privilege  by  which  the  wealthier  classes  of  the  community  were 
enabled  to  avoid  contributing  their  rightful  share  towards  the  ex- 
penses of  the  State  ;  they  asked  for  the  free  admission  of  citizens 
of  all  ranks  to  civil  and  mihtary  employment,  for  revision  of  the 
civil  and  criminal  code,  for  the  substitution  of  money  payments 
in  the  place  of  feudal  and  seigneurial  dues,  for  the  abolition 
of  gabeUes,  corvees,  franc-fief,  and  arbitrary  imprisonment. 

In  all  these  demands  we  shaU  find  no  element  of  sedition  or 
of  disaffection  towards  the  monarchy,  but  the  response  of  a  loyal 
and  spirited  people  to  the  King's  proposals  for  reform.  Such 
animosity  as  they  displayed  was  directed  against  the  "  privileged 
orders,"  and,  as  we  shall  see,  this  sentiment  was  not  whoUy 
spontaneous.  Hua,  a  member  of  the  Legislative  Assembly,  has 
well  described  the  attitude  of  the  people  in  pages  that  may  be 
summarized  thus : 

The  Ancien  Regime  had  very  real  abuses,  there  was  every 
reason  to  attack  it.  The  clergy  and  noblesse  had  lost  their  power 
and  their  raison  d'etre ;  they  were  obUged  to  let  the  Third  Estate 
come  into  its  own  by  giving  up  their  privileges.  Nothing  could 
have  stopped  this  or  ought  to  have  stopped  it.  "It  has  been  said 
that  the  Revolution  was  made  in  pubUc  opinion  before  it  was 
reaUzed  by  events  ;  this  is  true,  but  one  must  add  that  it  was  not 
the  Revolution  such  as  we  saw  it  .  .  .  it  was  not  by  the  people  that 
the  Revolution  was  made  in  France."  And  in  confirmation  of 
this  statement,  with  which,  as  I  shall  show,  contemporaries  of  all 
parties  agree,  Hua  points  out  that  "  the  voice  of  the  nation  cried 
out  for  reform,  for  changes  in  the  government,  but  all  proclaimed 
respect  for  reUgion,  loyalty  to  the  King,  and  desire  for  law  and 
order."  ^ 

What,  then,  was  needed  to  kindle  the  flame  of  revolution  ? 

To  understand  this  we  must  examine  the  intrigues  at  work 
amongst  the  people  ;  these  and  these  alone  explain  the  gigantic 
misunderstanding  that  arose  between  the  King  and  his  subjects, 
and  that  plunged  the  country  on  the  brink  of  regeneration  into 
the  black  abyss  of  anarchy. 

1  M^moires  de  Hua,  dipuU  a  I'AssemhUe  Ugislaiive,  published  by  his 
grandson  Fran9ois  Saint  Maur  in  1871. 


PROLOGUE  9 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  the  principal  intrigue,  and 
the  one  that  paved  the  way  for  all  the  rest,  was  undoubtedly 

THE  ORLfiANISTE  CONSPIRACY 

Louis  Philippe  Joseph,  fifth  Due  d'Orleans  in  direct  descent 
from  the  brother  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  therefore  fourth  cousin 
once  removed  to  Louis  XVI.,  came  into  the  world  with  a  heredity 
tainted  from  various  sources.  His  great-grandfather  Philippe, 
Regent  of  France  during  the  minority  of  Louis  XV.,  had  married 
the  daughter  of  Louis  XIV.  and  Madame  de  Montespan.  More 
German  than  French — for  his  mother  was  the  Princess  Elizabeth 
of  the  Palatinate,  whose  memoirs  are  perhaps  the  most  nauseous 
reading  of  the  period — ^the  Regent  had  introduced  into  the  gay 
gallantry  of  France  the  bestial  forms  of  vice  that  prevailed 
in  those  days  at  the  courts  of  Germany.  Amongst  the  most 
dissolute  frequenters  of  the  Palais  Royal  during  the  Regency  was 
Louis  Armand,  Prince  de  Conti,  a  moral  maniac  of  the  Sadie 
variety,  and  it  was  his  daughter  who,  married  to  the  fourth  Due 
d'Orleans,  became  the  mother  of  Louis  PhiHppe  Joseph,  later  to 
be  known  as  Philippe  jfigaUte.  Of  such  elements  was  the  man 
composed — ^if  indeed  he  was  the  son  of  the  duke  and  not — as  the 
people  of  Paris  beheved,  and  as  he  himself  afterwards  declared 
to  the  Commune — of  the  duchess's  coachman. 

In  appearance,  certain  contemporaries  assure  us,  Philippe 
was  not  unattractive,  since  he  had  blue  eyes,  good  teeth,  and  a 
fine  white  skin ;  but  when  they  proceed  to  relate  that  his  face  was 
bloated  and  adorned  with  collections  of  red  pimples,  whilst  his 
portraits  show  him  to  us  with  a  large  fleshy  nose,  thick  Hps, 
and  a  massive  neck  and  chin,  we  find  it  difficult  to  understand 
the  charm  he  exercised  over  his  intimes.  Yet  so  fervent  was  their 
admiration  that  when  Philippe  in  time  grew  bald  his  boon 
companions  loyally  shaved  off  their  front  hair  in  compliment. 
The  Anglomania  which  had  increased  his  popularity  amongst  the 
young  bloods  of  the  day  disgusted  Louis  XVI.,  since  it  consisted 
in  no  appreciation  for  the  better  qualities  of  the  EngUsh,  but  in 
adopting  all  their  worst  habits — ^the  betting,  gambling,  and  heavy 
drinking  that  prevailed  in  England  at  that  date.  As  the  leader 
of  this  imported  fashion,  the  Due  d'Orleans  affected  English 
dress  of  the  sporting  kind,  appearing  habitually  in  a  cloth  frock 
coat,  buckskin  breeches,  and  top  boots  ;  thus  attired  he  rode  to 
race-meetings,  or  drove  about  the  town  in  his  English  "  whisky." 
His  two  ruUng  passions,  says  the  Due  de  Cars,  were  money,  and 
after  money  debauchery.  Entirely  indifferent  to  public  opinion 
he  flaunted  his  vices  in  the  eyes  of  all  Paris ;  arm-in-arm  with 
the  Marquis  de  SiUery  he  might  be  seen  on  the  steps  of  the 


lo  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Coliseum  in  the  Champs  filysees,  insolently  accosting  women  who 
had  the  misfortune  to  meet  his  eye ;  at  Longchamps  he  would 
gaUop  ostentatiously  beside  the  carriage  of  some  notorious  demi- 
mondaine,  whilst  at  the  Palais  Royal  his  entourage  was  composed 
of  the  most  worthless  men  and  women  of  the  day.  The  evil 
reputation  borne  by  society  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  is 
attributable  more  to  the  Due  d'Orleans  and  his  set  than  to  any 
other  cause,  whilst  as  a  climax  of  hypocrisy  the  severest  strictures 
on  the  morals  of  society  emanated  from  the  pens  of  the  very  men 
and  women  who  outraged  them — Laclos,  Chamfort,  and  Madame 
de  GenHs.  By  the  side  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  and  his  boon  com- 
panions the  follies  of  the  Comte  d'Artois  and  the  Polignacs  fade 
into  insignificance,  and  the  games  of  "  descamptivos,"  so  luridly 
described  by  Orleaniste  writers  as  the  favourite  diversion  at 
Versailles,  seem  innocuous  indeed  compared  with  the  ducal  pas- 
time of  "  collecting  girls  from  the  lowest  quarters  of  Paris,  and 
thrusting  them  nude  and  inebriated  into  the  park  of  Monceaux." 

Yet  this  was  the  prince  who,  we  are  asked  to  beHeve,  became 
the  idol  of  the  Paris  populace.  It  is  only  one  of  the  many 
calumnies  directed  against  the  people  by  so-called  democratic 
writers.  The  instincts  of  the  people  are  not  naturally  perverse  ; 
they  do  not  admire  a  bad  master,  a  faithless  husband,  a  man  of 
corrupt  and  vicious  tastes.  We  have  only  to  consult  the  records 
written  before  the  Revolution  to  find  that  the  people  of  Paris 
loathed  and  despised  the  Due  d'Orleans.  The  duke  returned 
their  aversion  with  contempt ;  to  the  future  bearer  of  the  name 
"  figalite  "  the  people  were  indeed  less  than  the  dust.  In  order 
to  keep  up  the  "  aristocratic  "  character  of  his  garden  at  the 
Palais  Royal,  he  had  issued  an  order  that  no  admittance  was  to 
be  granted  to  "  soldiers,  men  in  Hvery,  people  in  caps  and  shirts, 
to  dogs  or  workmen."  ^ 

"  The  Due  d'Orleans,"  a  chronicler  writes  on  April  5,  1787, 
*'  allowed  himself  to  be  so  carried  away  by  the  ardour  of  the  chase 
that  he  followed  the  quarry  he  was  hunting,  with  his  train, 
through  the  Faubourg  Montmartre,  the  Place  Vendome,  and  the 
Rue  Saint-Honore,  as  far  as  the  Place  Louis  XV.,  not  without 
having  overturned  and  wounded  several  people."  Thereupon 
the  Parisians  composed  satirical  verses  on  the  duke,  ending  with 
these  lines : 

.  .  .  au  sein  de  Paris,  un  grand,  noble  de  race, 

Sans  respect  pour  les  droits  des  gens, 

^crase  quelques  habitants 

Pour  goiiter  en  plein  jour  le  plaisir  de  la  chasse.* 


*  Journal  d'un  ttudiant^  edited  by  M.  Gaston  Maugras,  p.  9. 
»  Correspondance  Secrite  sur  Louis  XVI  et  Marie  Antoinette,  edited  by 
M.  de  Lescure,  p.  126, 


PROLOGUE  II 

It  was  certainly  no  easy  task  for  the  party  who  wished  to 
substitute  the  Due  d' Orleans  for  Louis  XVI.  on  the  throne  of 
France  to  persuade  the  people  that  the  man  who  treated  them 
with  so  much  insolence  had  now  become  the  champion  of  their  ^ 
liberties.  M.  ]Smile  Dard  in  his  interesting  book,  Le  General  i/ 
Choderlos  de  Laclos,  declares  that  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy 
originated  with  Brissot  as  early  as  1787,  and  that  in  this  year  he 
sketched  out,  in  a  letter  to  Ducrest,  the  brother  of  Madame  de 
Genlis,  his  plan  for  inaugurating  a  second  Fronde  with  the  Due 
d'Orleans  at  its  head.  "  His  cause  must  be  identified  with  that 
of  the  people."  If  in  the  beginning  the  duke  were  to  distinguish 
himself  by  "  striking  acts  of  benevolence  and  patriotism,"  he 
would  soon  become  "  the  idol  of  the  people."  "  Let  him  then 
embrace  the  doctrines  in  vogue,  disseminate  them  in  writing,  and 
gain  the  leaders  to  his  side." 

Whether  this  scheme  was  adopted  on  the  advice  of  Brissot 
or  not,  it  was  precisely  the  one  pursued  by  the  duke  and  his 
supporters.  From  the  moment  the  States-General  met,  says 
a  democratic  pamphlet  of  the  day,  "  the  seigneur  who  was  the 
hardest  towards  his  vassals,  the  most  exacting  and  the  most 
severe,  especially  in  the  matter  of  pecuniary  rights,  made  a  show 
of  moderation,  generosity,  and  even  lavishness."  ^  It  is  a 
common  ruse  of  Orleaniste  writers  to  represent  the  duke  as  an 
amiable,  weak,  and  irresponsible  puppet,  incapable  of  serious 
designs.  This  was  precisely  the  impression  he  intended  to  create  ; 
an  affectation  of  irresponsibiUty  is  a  time-honoured  ruse  of  con- 
spirators. At  the  same  time  it  is  probable  that,  left  to  himself, 
the  Due  d'Orleans  would  have  had  neither  the  wit  nor  the  energy 
to  form  a  conspiracy  ;  the  genius  of  Laclos  was  needed  to  devise 
and  organize  a  vast  and  formidable  intrigue. 

Choderlos  de  Laclos  belonged  to  a  poor  and  recently  ennobled 
family  of  Spanish  origin,  and  in  1788,  at  the  age  of  forty-seven, 
after  leaving  the  army,  he  was  introduced  to  the  Palais  Royal 
by  the  Vicomte  de  Segur,  who  obtained  for  him  the  post  of 
secretaire  des  commandements  to  the  Due  d'Orleans.  Laclos 
had  already  made  a  name  for  himself  as  the  author  of  the  scan- 
dalous Liaisons  Dangereuses,  a  novel  describing  in  the  form  of 
letters  from  country-houses  the  depraved  morals  of  society. 
"  A  monster  of  immorality "  himself,  he  revelled  in  depicting 
the  baser  sides  of  human  nature — "  according  to  him,  good 
people,  if  any  such  existed,  would  be  simply  lambs  amongst  a 
herd  of  tigers,  and  he  holds  it  better  to  be  a  tiger,  since  it  is 
better  to  devour  than  to  be  devoured."  ^ 

1  "  Grand  Triomphe  de  M.  le  Due  d'Orleans,  ou  Examen  Impartial  de 
Conduite,"  p.  5,  August  23,  1790. 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  i.  213. 


12  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

To  the  cynical  niind  of  Laclos  there  was  something  infinitely 
diverting  in  the  idea  of  placing  the  dissolute  duke  at  the  head 
of  the  kingdom,  and  the  very  weakness  and  want  of  energy  that 
characterized  his  royal  protege  offered  all  the  wider  a  field  to 
Laclos's  own  ambition. 

In  order  to  inspire  the  duke  with  the  will  to  collaborate  in 
this  scheme  Laclos  well  knew,  moreover,  the  vulnerable  side  from 
which  to  approach  him.  Place  and  power  had  little  attraction 
for  PhiUppe  d' Orleans ;  as  king  he  would  have  access  to  no  more 
money  and  to  less  pleasure  than  fell  to  his  share  as  "  first  prince 
of  the  blood."  "  The  Due  d' Orleans,"  a  wit  had  once  remarked, 
"  would  always  be  afraid  to  belong  to  any  party  where  he  would 
not  have  the  chorus-girls  of  the  opera  on  his  side."  But  if  in- 
capable of  great  ambitions,  the  duke  possessed  one  characteristic 
that  lent  not  merely  energy  but  fire  to  his  otherwise  sluggish 
nature — this  was  the  spirit  of  revenge.  If  he  could  not  devise, 
if  he  could  not  scheme,  if  he  could  not  strive  to  achieve  some 
settled  purpose,  he  could  hate.  He  was  immeasurably  and 
unrelentingly  vindictive.  To  revenge  himself  on  any  one  who 
had  piqued  his  vanity  or  thwarted  his  designs,  he  would  stick  at 
nothing,  he  would  know  no  pity.  And  now  for  years  all  the 
bitter  rancour  of  which  he  was  capable  had  been  growing  in 
intensity  towards  one  woman  who  had  humihated  him — the 
Queen  of  France. 

In  a  lesser  degree  he  hated  the  King  also  :  had  not  Louis  XVI. 
refused  to  make  him  grand  admiral  of  the  fleet,  in  consequence 
of  his  conduct  at  the  battle  of  Ouessant  ?  But  it  was  Marie 
Antoinette  who  had  withheld  her  consent  to  the  marriage  of  his 
daughter  with  the  Due  d'Angouleme,  it  was  to  her  he  owed  his 
banishment  from  the  Court,  and  it  was  her  rejection  of  his  in- 
famous love-making  that  still  rankled  in  his  mind. 

The  Due  d' Orleans  was  not  the  only  member  of  the  Palais 
Royal  set  who  had  suffered  a  Uke  rebuff.  "  The  Queen,"  says 
M.  fimile  Dard,  "  was  proud  and  coquette ;  she  held  back  with 
disdain  those  that  her  charm  attracted.  The  spite  of  men  was 
directed  against  her  as  cruelly  as  the  jealousy  of  women.  Under 
a  chaste  king  many  courtiers  had  hoped  that  the  reign  of  lovers 
would  succeed  to  that  of  mistresses.  What  a  prospect  for  the 
ambitions  of  the  Court  !  What  glory  and  profit  for  roues  like 
Tilly,  Biron,  Bezenval,  Segur,  to  record  amongst  their  successful 
ventures  the  Queen  of  France  !  In  how  many  calumnies  did 
self-interest  and  vanity  find  their  vent  !  "  Biron,  we  know  from 
his  insufferable  memoirs,  had  actually  made  overtures  to  the 
Queen,  and  we  may  safely  accept  the  version  of  this  incident 
given  by  Madame  Campan,  who  states  that  the  interview  ended 
after  a  few  moments  with  the  words  pronounced  in  indignant 


PROLOGUE  13 

tones  by  Marie  Antoinette,  "  Sortez,  monsieur  !  "  and  the  hasty 
exit  of  Biron  from  her  presence. 

The  advances  of  the  Vicomte  de  Noailles  met  with  no  better 
success,^  and  both  these  sedudeurs  became  the  bitterest  enemies 
of  the  Queen. 

On  such  resentments  was  the  animosity  of  the  Palais  Royal 
roues  for  the  Court  founded.  At  the  duke's  country-house  of 
Monceaux  all  these  malcontents  collected,  and  it  was  here, 
amidst  the  cUnking  of  champagne  glasses,  that  the  foulest  libels, 
the  most  obscene  verses  on  the  Queen,  were  uttered  and  after- 
wards circulated  through  the  underworld  of  Paris. 

The  exile  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  in  1787  provided  his  party 
with  a  fresh  cause  de  guerre.  At  the  Seance  Royale  the  King  had 
announced  two  fresh  taxes — the  timbre  and  the  subvention 
territoriale — ^to  be  imposed  on  the  "  privileged  classes  " ;  where- 
upon the  duke  at  the  instigation  of  Ducrest  rose  and  declared 
the  royal  decree  to  be  "  illegal."  "  Do  not  imagine,"  he  said 
afterwards  to  Brissot,  "  that  if  I  made  this  stand  against  the  King 
it  was  in  order  to  serve  a  people  I  despise,  or  a  body  of  which  I 
make  no  account  (the  Parlement),  but  that  I  was  indignant  at  a 
man  treating  me  with  so  much  insolence."  ^  The  insolence,  how- 
ever, seems  to  have  been  entirely  on  the  side  of  the  duke.  Louis 
XVI.  on  his  return  to  Versailles  remarked  that  it  was  not  the 
declaration  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  that  had  offended  him,  but  the 
threatening  tone  in  which  the  words  were  pronounced,  and  the 
way  he  had  looked  at  him  as  he  spoke.^  On  the  advice  of  the 
Queen  he  accordingly  exiled  the  duke,  stipulating  that  he  should 
not  go  as  he  wished — for  reasons  we  shall  see  later — ^to  England, 
but  to  his  property  at  Villers-Cotterets. 

This  edict  admirably  served  the  interests  of  the  Orleanistes, 
since  the  duke  was  now  able  to  pose  as  the  victim  of  despotism, 
and  it  did  much  to  inflame  his  fury  against  the  King  and  Queen. 
When  two  years  later  he  was  elected  deputy  in  the  States-General, 
he  C5niically  declared  :  "I  laugh  at  the  States-General,  but  I 
wished  to  belong  to  them  if  only  for  the  moment  when  individual 
Uberty  should  be  discussed  in  order  to  vote  for  a  law  that  will 
enable  me  to  go  where  I  like,  so  that  when  I  want  to  start  for 
London,  Rome,  or  Pekin,  I  shall  not  be  sent  to  Villers-Cotterets. 
I  laugh  at  all  the  rest."  ^ 

Such  were  the  motives  that  inspired  the  "  democracy  "  of 
the  Palais  Royal  party.  Directed  by  the  genius  of  Laclos,  and 
financed  by  the  millions  of  the  Due  d'Orleans,  the  vast  organiza- 

^  Mdmoires  du  Comte  de  Tilly,  ii.  no. 

*  Le  Giniral  Choderlos  de  Laclos,  by  fimile  Dard,  p.  153. 
'  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  i.  93. 

*  Les  Fils  de  Philippe  '^galiU  pendant  la  Terreur,  by  G.  Lenotre,  p.  12. 


14  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

tion  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  took  form  and  grew,  until  by 
the  spring  of  1789  the  plan  of  campaign  was  complete.  Orleaniste 
propaganda  were  circulated  all  over  France  in  preparation  for 
the  States-General ;  models  of  cahiers  drafted  by  Sieyes  and 
Laclos  were  distributed  to  different  constituencies,  and  it  was 
undoubtedly  by  this  means  that  the  people's  animosity  towards 
the  noblesse  was  largely  engineered,  for  in  the  upholders  of  the 
Old  Regime  the  Orleanistes  saw  the  most  serious  obstacle  to 
their  schemes. 

But  the  crowning  triumph  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  was 
the  acquisition  of  Mirabeau.  This  amazing  man,  whose  striking 
personaUty  and  thunderous  oratory  must  have  ensured  the 
success  of  any  party  to  which  he  attached  himself,  was  lost  to 
the  royal  cause  mainly  by  the  ineptness  of  the  King's  ministers. 
It  is  almost  certain  that  at  this  crisis  Mirabeau  needed  only  the 
sUghtest  encouragement  to  throw  himself  into  the  movement  for 
reform  by  peaceful  methods,  and  in  this  he  rightly  saw  that  the 
King  was  the  real  leader.  Such  rancour  as  he  entertained  against 
the  Old  Regime  was  directed  against  the  noblesse  who  had  shunned 
him  on  account  of  his  irregularities  ;  the  royal  authority  he  was 
prepared  to  defend.  He  alone  of  all  the  men  who  should  have 
advised  the  King  on  the  assembling  of  the  States-General  fore- 
saw the  disasters  impending  from  the  unpreparedness  of  the 
Government,  and  in  a  letter  addressed  to  the  King's  minister 
Montmorin  in  December  1788  he  implored  him  to  be  advised 
in  time. 

Alas,  for  the  eternal  weakness  of  Conservatism,  the  fatal 
unresponsiveness  that  has  driven  many  a  would-be  aUy  into  the 
enemy's  camp  !  To  Montmorin,  Mirabeau  with  his  discreditable 
past  and  his  unscrupulous  business  transactions  was  a  man  to 
distrust,  and  therefore  to  be  rejected.  He  failed  to  reaUze  the 
truth  of  Gouvemeur  Morris's  aphorism — a  maxim  that  should 
surely  be  laid  to  heart  by  every  one  concerned  in  government : 
"  There  are  in  the  world  men  who  are  to  he  employed,  not  trusted." 

Mirabeau  was  decidedly  not  to  be  trusted.  "  I  was  bom  to 
be  an  adventurer !  "  he  once  said  gaily  to  Dumont  and  Duroverai. 
But  was  that  a  reason  not  to  employ  him  ?  Were  not  some  of  the 
greatest  men  who  ever  Uved  adventurers  ?  Was  not  France  saved 
ten  years  later  by  the  great  adventurer  from  Corsica  ?  Yet  with 
this  term  Conservatism  too  often  brands  the  man  whose  dynamic 
force  is  needed  to  counteract  its  own  inertia.  The  letter  of 
Mirabeau  was  ignored,  his  memoir e  never  reached  the  King,  and  all 
the  disasters  he  had  foreseen  came  to  pass.  So  the  man  who 
might  have  saved  the  monarchy,  smarting  at  this  rebuff,  threw 
himself  into  the  opposite  camp,  and  devoted  all  his  force,  his 
eloquence,  and  his  vast  energy  to  overthrowing  the  Government 


PROLOGUE  15 

that  had  repulsed  him.  At  the  very  moment  that  Montmorin 
refused  his  services,  the  Orleanistes  were  making  every  effort  to 
secure  him.  It  is  evident  that  from  the  first  the  Due  d'Orleans 
inspired  him  with  no  sympathy,  but  he  needed  a  field  for  his 
talents,  he  needed  a  goal  for  his  ambitions,  and  alas,  he  needed 
also  the  wherewithal  to  satisfy  his  taste  for  luxury  and  pleasure  ! 
Convinced  that  for  the  present  he  could  hope  for  nothing  from  the 
Court,  Mirabeau  therefore  allowed  himself  against  his  inclination 
to  be  drawn  into  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy.^ 

With  the  annexation  of  Mirabeau  the  success  of  the  conspiracy 
seemed  assured.  The  duke  and  a  number  of  his  supporters — 
the  Due  de  Biron,  the  Marquis  de  Sillery  (husband  of  the  famous 
Madame  de  GenUs),  the  Baron  de  Menou,  the  Vicomte  de 
Noailles,  and  the  De  Lameths — ^had  succeeded  in  securing  election 
to  the  States-General,  and  with  Mirabeau  at  their  head  consti- 
tuted a  formidable  faction.  At  Mont  rouge,  a  little  house  near 
Paris  belonging  to  the  Due  de  Biron,  the  conspirators  met  by 
night  and  discussed  their  schemes,  but  "  of  those  nocturnal 
confabulations,"  remarks  M.  Dard,  "  nothing  transpired  either 
for  contemporaries  or  for  posterity." 

The  amazing  thoroughness  with  which  the  intrigue  was  carried 
out  has  never  been  surpassed  except  by  the  pan-German  plot  of 
our  day.  At  the  Palais  Royal,  Laclos,  "  like  a  spider  in  his  web," 
wove  the  almost  invisible  network  of  intrigue  that  soon  covered 
France,  and  stretched  out  into  other  countries — England,  Holland, 

^  That  Mirabeau  was  definitely  working  in  the  interests  of  the  Due 
d'Orleans  throughout  the  summer  of  1789  is  perfectly  obvious  from  the 
evidence  of  all  contemporaries,  even  those  who  were  his  friends,  such  as 
Dumont  and  La  Marck,  the  latter  only  attempting — very  unconvincingly — 
to  prove  that  Mirabeau  was  not  paid  by  the  duke.  Weber,  however, 
declares  that  Mirabeau  and  the  Due  d'Orl6ans  "  troubled  so  little  to  conceal 
their  connection  that  notes  signed  by  the  Due  d'Orleans  in  favour  of  Mira- 
beau were  seen  publicly  negotiated  on  the  Paris  Bourse  "  {Mimoires  de 
Weber,  ii.  17).  Perhaps  the  best  summary  of  Mirabeau's  poHcy  at  this 
date  is  that  given  by  Mounier  :  "I  have  seen  him  pass  from  the  nocturnal 
committees  held  by  the  friends  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  to  those  of  the  enthusi- 
astic repubUcans,  and  from  these  secret  conferences  to  the  cabinets  of  the 
King's  ministers  ;  but  if  from  the  first  months  (of  the  Revolution)  the 
ministers  had  consented  to  work  with  him  he  would  have  preferred  to 
uphold  the  royal  authority  rather  than  to  ally  himself  with  men  he  de- 
spised. His  principles  must  not  be  judged  by  the  numerous  contradictions 
in  his  speeches  and  writings,  where  he  said  less  what  he  thought  than  what 
happened  to  suit  his  interests  under  such  and  such  circumstances.  He 
often  communicated  his  real  opinions  to  me,  and  I  have  never  known  a 
man  of  more  enlightened  intellect,  of  more  judicious  political  doctrines, 
of  more  venal  character,  and  of  a  more  corrupt  heart"  {De  V Influence  ^ 
attribui  aux  Philosophes,  Franc  Masons  et  Illuminis,  p.  100).  This  passage 
gives  the  key  to  the  whole  of  Mirabeau's  conduct  during  the  early  stages  of 
the  Revolution.  On  the  nocturnal  meetings  between  Mirabeau  and  the 
Duq  d'Orl6ans  see  also  Carat's  Conspiration  de  d'OrUans. 


i6  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Germany.  In  Paris  he  had  enlisted  the  services  of  various 
unscrupulous  agitators  who  stirred  up  the  Faubourgs  of  Saint- 
Antoine  and  Saint-Marceau  ;  pamphleteers  in  the  pay  of  the  duke 
loaded  the  bookstalls  with  seditious  pamphlets;  at  the  street 
comers  and  in  the  garden  of  the  Palais  Royal  mob  orators 
inflamed  the  minds  of  the  people,  and  in  the  palace  of  Versailles 
the  spies  of  Orleans  hovered  round  the  Queen,  gained  access  to  her 
correspondence,  and  sent  copies  of  her  letters  to  the  councils  of 
Montrouge.^ 

It  is  probable,  however,  that  all  these  schemes  would  have 
proved  unavailing  to  produce  a  revolution  had  not  the  country 
at  this  crisis  been  faced  with  famine.  Hua,  looking  back  on  the 
beginnings  of  the  Revolution,  was  convinced  that  but  for  the 
threatened  famine  the  people  would  have  remained  indefinitely 
submissive  to  the  Old  Regime.  "  Everywhere  they  know  how  to 
endure,  to  expect  from  time  improvements  that  often  do  not 
come,  but  for  which  they  continue  to  hope.  They  know  only 
present  evils,  and  of  these  famine  alone  is  intolerable  to  them. 
Struck  by  this  terrible  scourge,  it  is  not  a  change  in  the  State 
that  they  demand,  it  is  bread.  So  the  French  people  would  long 
have  endured  their  accustomed  burdens,  they  would  have  con- 
tinued to  pay  taxes,  tithes,  to  carry  out  feudal  duties,  to  bend 
beneath  the  corvee  and  the  other  miseries  of  vassaldom.  I  find 
the  proof  of  their  patience  in  the  means  employed  to  make  them 
lose  it."  2  It  was  here  the  conspirators  saw  their  greatest 
opportunity.  "  Bread,"  says  Hua,  "  was  the  potent  lever  by 
wluch  the  people  were  roused  to  action.  What  Ues,  what  fables 
were  thrown  to  pubhc  creduHty  !  "  It  is  evident  from  all  accounts 
that  the  famine  was  more  fabulous  than  real.  The  people  were 
not  starving,  but  haunted  by  the  fear  of  starvation.  And  to  this 
fear  was  added  exasperation,  owing  to  the  conviction  that  no  real 
scarcity  of  grain  existed.  It  was  true  that  a  fearful  hailstorm  in 
July  of  the  previous  year  had  destroyed  many  of  the  crops  round 
Paris,  but  had  not  the  minister  Necker  declared  that,  in  spite  of 
this  disaster,  "  the  stores  of  grain  in  the  country  were  more  than 
sufficient  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  nation  until  the  next 
harvest  "  ?  The  want  of  bread  in  itself  is  bad  enough,  but  to 
believe  that  bread  is  being  wilfully  withheld  from  one  is  enough 
to  stir  the  meekest  to  revolt.  This  was  the  "  lever  "  employed 
by  the  conspirators.  When  the  peasants  of  France  creeping  to 
their  doors  saw  wagons  laden  with  wheat  winding  their  way 
through  the  village  street,  voices  were  not  lacking  to  whisper, 
"  There  is  com  in  plenty,  but  it  is  not  for  you  ;  it  is  to  be  stored 
for  the  Court,  the  aristocrats,  the  rich,  who  will  feast  in  plenty 

*  Histoire  de  la  Revolution,  by  Louis  Blanc,  ii.  331 ;  Essais  de  Beaulieu, 
i.  302.  2  M&moires  de  Hua,  p.  53. 


PROLOGUE  17 

while  you  go  hungry."  And  forthwith  the  maddened  people 
would  hurl  themselves  on  to  the  sacks  of  com  and  fling  them 
into  the  nearest  river. ^  The  fact  that  in  many  cases  the  corn 
was  destroyed  and  not  appropriated  by  the  people  proves  that 
hunger  was  less  the  incentive  to  revolt  than  rage  at  the  monopo- 
lizers ;  and  if  the  name  of  a  supposed  monopoHzer  were  but 
whispered  likewise,  the  unfortunate  man  fell  a  victim  to  the  same 
fate  as  the  sacks  of  com.  It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  defend 
such  excesses,  yet  if  during  a  time  of  scarcity  there  were  really 
profiteers  enriching  themselves  at  the  expense  of  the  people,  the 
fury  of  the  peasants  is  certainly  justified.  Their  guilt  must 
therefore  be  measured  by  the  facts  on  which  their  suspicions 
were  founded. 

Was  the  scarcity  of  grain,  then,  imaginary  or  real  ?  Un- 
doubtedly it  was  not  to  be  entirely  accounted  for  by  the  failure 
of  the  crops.  On  this  point  contemporaries  of  all  parties  agree. 
But  the  question  of  monopolizers  is  one  on  which  pro-revolu- 
tionary historians  are  strangely  silent,  since  for  their  purpose — 
the  glorification  of  the  revolutionary  leaders — ^it  does  not  bear 
examination.  The  truth  is  probably  that  the  monopolizers 
were  in  league  with  the  very  men  who  were  stirring  up  popular 
fury  against  monopoly — ^the  leaders  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy. 
Montjoie  asserts  that  agents  employed  by  the  Due  d' Orleans 
deliberately  bought  up  the  grain,  and  either  sent  it  out  of  the 
country  or  concealed  it  in  order  to  drive  the  people  to  revolt,  and 
in  this  accusation  he  is  supported  by  innumerable  contemporaries, 
including  the  democrat  Fantin  -  Desodoards,  Mounier,  whose 
integrity  is  not  to  be  doubted,  the  Liberal  Malouet,  Ferrieres, 
and  Madame  de  la  Tour  du  Pin. 

BeauUeu,  however,  one  of  the  most  reliable  of  contemporaries, 
considers  that  the  Orleanistes  would  have  been  unable  to  create 
a  famine  by  these  means,  but  that  they  accompHshed  their 
purpose  by  stirring  up  public  feeHng  on  the  subject  of  monopo- 
lizers, thereby  inducing  the  people  to  pillage  the  grain.  The 
farmers  and  corn  merchants,  therefore,  fearing  that  their  suppUes 
would  be  destroyed  in  transit,  were  afraid  to  release  them.  By 
this  means  a  fictitious  famine  was  created.^ 

M.  Gustave  Bord,  whose  researches  into  the  question  of  the 
famine  are  perhaps  the  most  complete  of  any  French  historian's, 
beUeves  that  the  farmers  and  bakers  were  not  altogether  guilt- 
less, but  that  many  had  an  interest  in  producing  a  scarcity  in 

1  Letter  of  Lord  Dorset,  March  19,  1789,  in  Dispatches  from  Paris, 
ii.  175. 

2  This  was  also  the  opinion  of  Arthur  Young,  who  likewise  believed  that 
the  revolutionary  leaders  had  an  interest  in  keeping  up  the  price  of  corn. 
See  Travels  in  France  (edited  by  Miss  Betham  Edwards),  p.  154. 

C 


.y 


i8  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

order  to  raise  the  price  of  bread  :  "  It  is  they  who  were  the  real 
authors  of  the  scarcity,  and  the  Old  Regime  hunted  them  down 
without  mercy.  In  their  r61e  of  exploiters  of  the  people  they  were 
the  natural  aUies  of  the  revolutionaries,  who  upheld  them  in 
their  calumnies.  It  was  they  who  triumphed  in  1789,  and  who 
succeeded  in  deluding  history  by  throwing  the  responsibility  on 
their  enemies." 

Yet  against  these  enemies,  that  is  to  say  *'  the  Court,"  the 
noblesse,  the  clergy,  and  the  King's  ministers,  not  a  shred  of 
evidence  was  ever  produced.  The  ridiculous  legend  of  the 
"  Facte  de  Famine,"  by  which  certain  revolutionary  writers  have 
sought  to  prove  that  Louis  XV.  speculated  in  gram,i  has  no 
bearing  on  the  question,  since  at  this  date  Louis  XV.  had  been 
dead  for  fifteen  years,  and  against  Louis  XVI.  not  even  the  most 
rabid  of  revolutionary  writers  has  ventured  to  raise  such  an 
accusation.  On  the  contrary,  the  King,  the  noblesse,  and  the 
clergy  ^  contributed  immense  sums  towards  the  reUef  of  the  famine, 
and  the  King's  ministers,  headed  by  Necker,  were  incessantly 
occupied  with  the  problem  of  ensuring  "com  suppUes,  and  in 
thwarting  the  designs  of  speculators. 

All  through  the  terrible  winter  of  1788-1789  the  intendant 
of  Paris,  Berthier  de  Sauvigny,  travelled  about  the  country 
interviewing  farmers  to  find  out  how  much  grain  they  had  in 
reserve,  how  much  they  required,  and  what  surplus  they  could  put 
on  the  market ;  when,  however,  in  the  spring,  a  shortage  occurred, 
and  Berthier  applied  to  these  men  for  the  grain  they  had  promised 
him,  they  immediately  put  up  the  price  to  a  prohibitive  figure, 
and  Montjoie  declares  that  this  price  was  paid  by  agents  of  the 

^  On  this  point  see  the  articles  on  the  "  Facte  de  Famine  "  by  M. 
Gustave  Bord,  M.  L6on  Biollay,and  M.  Edmond  Bir6,  which  all  demonstrate 
that  even  Louis  XV.  was  innocent  of  this  crime,  and  that  the  "  bleds  du 
roi  "  consisted  in  a  benevolent  scheme  for  keeping  down  the  price  of  grain 
by  storing  supplies,  and  releasing  them  in  a  time  of  scarcity  at  a  lower 
price  than  that  demanded  by  the  corn  merchants  and  farmers. 

2  On  the  immense  liberality  of  the  noblesse  and  clergy  see  Montjoie, 

i/^Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  i.  202  ;  Taine,  La  Revolution,  i.  5.  "  The  poor  and 
needy,"  says  the  English  contemporary  Play  fair,  "  whom  shame  prevented 
from  seeking  aid,  were  themselves  sought  after,  and  reUef  was  forced  upon 
the  poor  starving  family  in  their  cold  and  hungry  retreat  by  those  same 
clergymen  and  nobility  who  soon  after  were  driven  from  their  own  abodes. 
.  .  .  These  acts  of  charity  were  not  the  acts  of  a  few,  they  were  general, 
and  were  done  without  ostentation  or  show,  as  such  actions  always  ought 
to  be."  The  Due  d'Orleans  loudly  proclaimed  his  charities  in  the  press,  but 
these,  says  Montjoie,  existed  principally  on  paper,  at  any  rate  they  did  not 
prevent  him  from  investing,  at  this  crisis,  in  a  gorgeous  new  set  of  plate 
which  his  friends — and  presumably  not  the  hungry  multitude — were 
/invited  to  the  Palais  Royal  to  admire  {Mimoires  of  Madame  de  la  Tour 

^  du  Pin,  i.  164).    The  Archbishop  of  Paris  at  the  same  moment  sold  all  his 
plate  to  feed  the  poor. 


PROLOGUE  19 

Due  d'Orleans :  "  They  did  not  bargain,  they  gave  what  was 
asked.  The  farmers  and  monopolizers  alone  profited  by  this 
manoeuvre  ;  the  artisan,  the  labourer,  the  poor  man  could  not 
afford  the  price  that  the  monopolizers  offered,  and  it  was  onlyby 
outbidding  them  that  the  Government  succeeded  in  wresting 
from  these  vampires  a  portion  of  their  spoil." 

Whether,  then,  the  Orleanistes  achieved  their  purpose  by  actu- 
ally cornering  suppUes,  or  by  terrorizing  the  farmers  into  holding 
them  up,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  famine  of  1789  was 
deliberately  engineered  by  the  agents  of  the  duke,  and  that  by  this 
means  the  people  were  driven  to  the  pitch  of  desperation  necessary 
to  produce  the  Revolution, 

The  Orleanistes,  however,  did  not  constitute  the  only 
revolutionary  element  in  the  country  ;  a  second  intrigue  was  at 
work  amongst  the  people,  that  of 


THE  SUBVERSIVES 

These  men  desired  no  change  of  dynasty  or  in  the  govern- 
ment ;  their  aim  was  purely  destructive.  Three  years  later,  when 
the  monarchy  was  abolished,  many  of  the  revolutionary  leaders 
declared  that  they  had  all  along  been  Republicans  at  heart,  but 
if  we  examine  their  earlier  writings  we  shall  find  that  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Revolution  none  of  them  had  formulated  any 
such  political  creed.  "  There  were  not  ten  of  us  Republicans  in 
1789,"  Camille  DesmouHns  wrote  afterwards,  and  since  Camille 
at  this  date  was  one  of  the  Due  d'Orleans'  most  enthusiastic 
admirers,  the  number  may  be  reduced  at  least  by  one.  With  the 
exception  perhaps  of  Lafayette,  whose  experiences  in  the 
American  War  of  Independence  inspired  him  with  Republican 
sympathies,  those  of  the  earlier  revolutionaries  who  were  not 
Orleanistes  had  no  definite  theories  of  reconstruction — ^their  aim 
was  merely  to  clear  the  ground  of  all  existing  conditions.  '*  AH 
memories  of  history,"  said  Barrere^  "  all  prejudices  resulting 
from  community  of  interest  anH^  of  origin,  all  must  be  renewed 
in  France  ;  we  wish  only  to  date  from  to-day."  "  To  make  the 
people  happy,"  said  Rabaud  de  Saint-!£tienne,  "  their  ideas 
must  be  reconstructed,  laws  must  be  changed,  morals  must  be 
changed,  men  must  be  changed,  things  must  be  changed,  every- 
thing, yes,  everything  must  be  destroyed,  since  everything  must  be 
re-made."  ^ 

^  Rabaud  lived  to  see  these  theories  carried  into  effect  and  to  realize 
too  late  their  disastrous  folly.  "  France,"  he  wrote  only  a  short  time  later, 
"  might  have  been  likened  to  an  immense  chaos ;  power  was  suspended, 
authority  disowned,  and  the  wrecks  of  the  feudal  system  were  added  to 
the  vast  ruins."     He  repented  still  more  bitterly  when,  in  the  reign  of 


20  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

These  subversive  theories  emanated  from  certain  secret 
societies  of  which  an  EngUsh  writer  calling  himself  John  Robison 
described  the  aims  in  the  title  of  his  book,  Proofs  of  a  Conspiracy 

L/^ against  all  the  Religions  and  Governments  of  Europe  carried  on  in 
the  Secret  Meetings  of  the  Free-Masons,  Illuminati,  and  Reading 
Societies.  Robison,  who  was  himself  a  genuine  Freemason,  made 
a  tour  of  the  Continental  lodges,  where  he  found  that  a  new  and 
spurious  form  of  masonry  had  sprung  into  existence.  Both  in 
France  and  Germany  "  the  lodges  had  become  the  haunts  of  many 
projectors  and  fanatics,  both  in  science,  in  reUgion,  and  in  politics, 
who  had  availed  themselves  of  the  secrecy  and  freedom  of  speech 
maintained  in  these  meetings.  ...  In  their  hands  Freemasonry 
became  a  thing  totally  unHke,  and  almost  in  direct  opposition  to, 
the  system  imported  from  England,  where  the  rule  was  observed 
that  nothing  touching  reUgion  or  government  shall  ever  be 
spoken  of  in  the  lodges.  .  .  ."  The  Association,  in  fact,  was  "  all 
a  cheat,  and  the  leaders  .  .  .  disbelieved  every  word  that  they 
uttered  and  every  doctrine  that  they  taught  .  .  .  their  real 
intention  was  to  abolish  all  religion,  overturn  every  government, 
and  make  the  world  a  general  plunder  and  wreck.*' 

A  further  development  of  German  Freemasonry  was  the  Order 
of  the  Illuminati  founded  in  1776  by  Dr.  Adam  Weishaupt,  a 
professor  of  the  University  of  Ingoldstadt  in  Bavaria.  Weis- 
haupt, who  had  been  educated  by  the  Jesuits,  succeeded  in  per- 
suading two  other  ex- Jesuits  to  join  him  in  organizing  the  new 
Order,  and  it  was  no  doubt  this  circumstance  that  gave  rise  to 
the  behef  entertained  by  certain  contemporaries  that  the  Jesuits 
were  the  secret  directors  of  the  sect.     The  truth  is  more  probably 

^,  that,  as  both  Mirabeau  and  the  Marquis  de  Luchet,  in  their 
pamphlets  on  theTlluminati,  asserted,  Illuminism  was  founded  on 
the  regime  of  the  Jesuits,  although  their  religious  doctrines  were 
diametrically  opposed.^  Weishaupt,  whom  M.  Louis  Blanc  de- 
scribed as  "  one  of  the  deepest  conspirators  that  ever  existed,"  had 
adopted  the  name  of  Spartacus — ^the  leader  of  an  insurrection  of 
slaves  in  ancient  Rome — and  he  aimed  at  nothing  less  than 
world  revolution.'^  Thus  the  Order  of  the  Illuminati  "  abjured 
Christianity,  advocated  sensual  pleasures,  beUeved  in  annihilation, 
and  called  patriotism  and  loyalty  narrow-minded  prejudices 
incompatible  with  universal  benevolence";  further,  "they  ac- 
counted all  princes  usurpers  and  tyrants,  and  all  privileged  orders 


anarchy  that  followed,  he  was  led  to  the  scaffold.     His  wife  killed  herself 
in  despair. 
r/     1  Confirmed    by   the    Abbe    Barruel,    Mimoires    sur  le   Jacobinisme, 
ill.  II. 

*  Ibid.  p.  25 ;  Histoire  de  la  Revolution,  by  Louis  Blanc,  ii.  84,  85. 


PROLOGUE  21 

as  their  abettors ;  they  meant  to  aboUsh  the  laws  which  pro- ; 
tected  property  accumulated  by  long-continued  and  successful 
industry ;  and  to  prevent  for  the  future  any  such  accumulation, 
they  intended  to  estabhsh  universal  liberty  and  equaUty,  the 
imprescriptible   rights  of  man,  and  as  preparation  for  all  this 
they  intended  to  root  out  all  rehgion  and  ordinary  morality,  | 
and  even  to  break  the  bonds  of  domestic  hfe,  by  destroying' 
the  veneration  for  marriage-vows,  and  by  taking  the  education 
of  children  out  of  the  hands  of  the  parents."  ^ 

These  were  precisely  the  principles  followed  by  the  Subver- 
sives of  France  in  1793  and  1794,  and  the  method  by  which  this  pro- 
ject  was  carried  out  is  directly  traceable  to  Weishaupt's  influence. 
Amongst  the  Illuminati,  says  Robison,  "  nothing  was  so  fre- 
quently discoursed  of  as  the  propriety  of  employing,  for  a  good 
purpose,  the  means  which  the  wicked  employed  for  evil  purposes  ; 
and  it  was  taught  that  the  preponderancy  of  good  in  the  ultimate 
result  consecrated  every  means  employed,  and  that  wisdom  and 
virtue  consisted  in  properly  determining  this  balance.  This 
appeared  big  with  danger,  because  it  seemed  evident  that  nothing 
would  be  scrupled  at,  if  it  could  be  made  appear  that  the  Order 
would  derive  advantage  from  it,  because  the  great  object  of  the 
Order  was  held  superior  to  every  consideration."  2 

It  is  this  doctrine  that  provides  the  key  to  the  whole  poUcy 
of  the  leading  revolutionaries  of  France,  and  that,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  brought  about  the  Reign  of  Terror. 

Quintin  Craufurd.  the  friend  of  Marie  Antoinette,  writing  to 
Pitt  in  1794,  remarked :  "  There  is  a  great  resemblance  between 
the  maxims,  as  far  as  they  are  known,  of  the  Illumines  and  the 
early  Jacobins,  and  I  am  persuaded  that  the  seeds  of  many  of 
those  extravagant  but  diaboUcal  doctrines  that  spread  with 
such  unparalleled  luxuriance  in  the  hotbeds  of  France  were 
carried  from  Germany."  ^  The  lodges  of  the  German  Freemasons 
and  Illuminati  were  thus  the  source  whence  emanated  all  those 
anarchic  schemes  that  culminated  in  the  Terror,  and  it  was  at  a 
great  meeting  of  the  Freemasons  in  Frankfurt-am-Main,  three 
years  before  the  French  Revolution  began,  that  the  deaths  of 
Louis  XVI.  and  Gustavus  III.  of  Sweden  were  first  planned.* 

The  Orleanist  leaders,  quick  to  see  the  opportunity  for  ad- 

^  Robison's  Proofs  of  a  Conspiracy,  pp.  107  and  375. 

2  Ibid.  p.  107. 

^  Craufurd  here  uses  the  word  "  Germany  "  as  it  was  employed  at 
that  date,  i.e.  as  a  name  covering  Austria  as  well  as  Prussia  and  the  other 
independent  German  states.  Yet  it  was  not  in  Austria,  but  in  such 
towns  as  Berlin,  Frankfurt,  Mainz,  Gottingen,  Brunswick,  Gotha,  Breslau, 
etc.,  that  lUuminism  flourished  most  vigorously. 

*  See  the  evidence  of  two  French  Freemasons  present  at  this  meeting 
published  by  Charles  d'Hericault,  La  Revolution,  p.  104.   i^' 


22  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

vancing  their  own  interests,  joined  the  Freemasons,  and  the  Due 
d' Orleans  succeeded  in  getting  himself  elected  Grand  Master  of 
the  Order  in  France.  A  Uttle  later  Mirabeau  went  to  Berlin,  and 
whilst  in  Prussia  attracted  the  attention  of  "  Spartacus  "  and 
his  colleague  "  Philo,"  ahas  the  Baron  Knigge  of  Frankfurt-am- 
Main,  who  through  the  influence  of  Mauvillon,  a  disciple  of 
Philo's,  persuaded  him  to  become  an  Illuminatus.  On  his  return 
to  Paris  Mirabeau,  together  with  Talleyrand  and  the  Due  de 
Lauzun,  inaugurated  a  lodge  of  the  Order,  but  none  of  the  three 
being  as  yet  adepts  they  were  obUged  to  apply  to  headquarters 
for  aid.  Accordingly  two  Germans  were  sent  to  initiate  them 
further  in  the  doctrines  of  the  sect.  Before  long  the  Club  Breton, 
the  first  revolutionary  club,  later  to  be  known  as  the  Club  des 
Jacobins,  became  the  centre  of  Illuminism  and  Freemasonry,  for 
all  its  members  were  also  members  of  the  two  secret  societies. 
But  though  the  leading  Orleanistes  were  all  Freemasons,  all  Free- 
masons were  not  Orleanistes ;  some  were  pure  Subversives,  and  M. 
Gustave  Bord  is  no  doubt  right  in  stating  that  the  duke  was  only 
the  visible  head  of  the  sect  whose  members  used  him  as  a  cover 
to  their  designs,  whilst  he  and  his  supporters  used  them  with 
the  same  object.  Thus  Chamfort,  though  a  member  of  the 
Orleaniste  conspiracy,  was  at  heart  a  Subversive,  as  an  illuminat- 
ing conversation  he  once  held  with  Marmontel  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Revolution  testifies.  Chamfort  having  remarked  that  it 
would  not  be  a  bad  thing  to  level  all  ranks  and  abolish  the 
existing  order  of  things,  Marmontel  replied  : 

"  Equahty  has  always  been  the  chimera  of  republics 
and  the  bait  that  ambition  offers  to  vanity.  But  this 
leveUing  down  is  all  the  more  impossible  in  a  vast  monarchy, 
and  in  attempting  to  abolish  everything  it  seems  to  me  that 
we  should  go  further  than  the  nation  expects,  and  further 
than  it  wishes." 

*'  True,"  said  Chamfort,  "  but  does  the  nation  know  what  it 
wishes  ?  One  can  make  it  wish,  and  one  can  make  it  say  what  it 
has  never  thought  .  .  .  the  nation  is  a  great  herd  that  only 
thinks  of  browsing,  and  with  good  sheepdogs  the  shepherds  can 
lead  it  as  they  please."  He  went  on  to  explain  that  one  must 
help  the  people  according  to  one's  own  lights,  not  according  to 
theirs,  and  spoke  cheerfully  of  a  Revolution  that  would  make 
a  clean  sweep  of  the  Old  Regime,  a  scheme  he  thought  by  no 
means  impossible  to  carry  out,  for  though  it  might  be  difficult 
to  move  the  industrious  citizens,  there  was  always  the  class 
that  has  nothing  to  lose  and  everything  to  gain  which  could 
be  stirred  up  by  rumours  of  massacre,  famine,  and  so  forth. 
The  Due  d'Orleans,  he  ended  by  remarking,  must  be  made  use  of 
for  this  purpose.    When  to  this  Marmontel  suggested  that  the 


PROLOGUE  23 

duke  had  hardly  the  makings  of  a  leader,  Chamfort  replied 
imperturbably : 

"  You  are  right,  and  Mirabeau,  who  knows  him  well,  says  it 
would  be  building  on  mud  to  count  on  him,  but  he  has  identified 
himself  with  the  popular  cause,  he  bears  an  imposing  name,  he 
has  miUions  to  distribute,  he  hates  the  King,  he  hates  the  Queen 
still  more." 

Such,  then,  were  the  "  democratic  "  principles  of  the  Sub- 
versives, and  the  methods  described  by  Chamfort  were,  as  we 
shall  see,  precisely  those  employed  to  work  up  the  people.    The  ^ 
first  item  on  their  programme  was  the  systematic  dissemination  [ 
of  class  hatred  and  the  promise  of  unUmited  booty. 

"  Name  me  as  your  representative  at  the  States-General,'* 
said  Robespierre  in  his  electioneering  speeches,  "  and  you  will 
be  for  ever  exempt  from  those  burdens  which  have  so  far  been 
required  of  you  on  the  pretext  of  the  needs  of  the  State.  .  .  . 
This  will  not  be  the  only  benefit  you  will  enjoy  if  I  succeed  in 
becoming  one  of  your  representatives ;  too  long  have  the  rich 
been  the  sole  possessors  of  happiness.  It  is  time  that  their 
possessions  should  pass  into  other  hands.  The  castles  wiU  be 
overthrown  and  all  the  lands  belonging  to  them  will  be  distributed 
amongst  you  in  equal  portions."  To  the  agricultural  labourers 
he  promised  the  fields  they  cultivated,  to  the  retainers  of  the 
nobles  he  offered  freedom  from  all  duties.  "  Everything  will 
be  changed,  for  masters  will  become  servants,  and  you  will  be 
served  in  your  turn."  ^ 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  from  the  outset  "  equahty," 
the  great  watchword  of  the  Revolution,  had  no  place  in  the  minds 
of  the  Subversives ;  conditions  were  simply  to  be  reversed, 
wealth  was  to  change  hands,  a  process  that  was  to  be  never- 
ending,  since  that  which  was  at  the  top  was  to  be  perpetually 
thrust  to  the  bottom,  and  that  which  was  at  the  bottom  raised 
to  the  top. 

Towards  religion  the  Subversives  displayed  the  same  attitude 
as  towards  government ;  their  animosity  was  not  directed  against 
the  Church  of  Rome  more  than  against  Protestantism ;  it  was 
religion  in  itself  they  detested,  and  that  they  set  out  to  destroy. 
When  we  study  the  manner  in  which  they  carried  out  their  design, 
when  we  read  of  the  frightful  profanity  that  was  inaugurated 
during  the  Terror,  the  desecration  of  the  churches,  the  blasphemies 
against  Christ  and  the  Holy  Virgin,  and  the  worship  of  Marat,  it 
is  almost  impossible  to  disbeUeve  in  demoniacal  possession,  to 
doubt  that  these  men,  inflamed  with  hatred  against  ail  spiritual 
influences  working  for  good  in  the  world,  became  indeed  the 

*  Montjoie,  Histoire  de  la  Conjuration  de  Maximilien  Robespierre,  pp.    y 
36,  37- 


24  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

vehicles  for  those  other  spirits,  the  powers  of  darkness,  whose 
cause  they  had  made  their  own.  And  in  their  hideous  deaths, 
for  nearly  every  one  perished  on  the  scaffold,  were  they  not, 
perhaps,  hke  the  Gadarene  swine,  victims  of  the  demons  that 
drove  them  to  destruction  ? 

PRUSSIA 

Whilst  the  Illuminati  of  Germany  strove  to  plunge  France 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  world  into  anarchy,  the  Government  of 
Prussia  was  engaged  on  another  intrigue  against  the  French 
monarchy.  Optimists  who  believe  that  the  desire  of  modem 
Germany  to  dominate  the  world  was  a  form  of  temporary  insanity 
which  originated  with  Nietzsche  and  Bemhardi,  and  may  ter- 
minate in  a  return  to  the  "  peaceful  philosophy  "  of  what  they 
fondly  describe  as  "  old  Germany,"  would  do  well  to  study  the 
policy  of  that  idol  of  the  German  people — Frederick  the  Great. 

No  event  had  so  seriously  disturbed  the  serenity  of  Frederick 
as  the  marriage  of  the  Dauphin  to  Marie  Antoinette  in  1770,  since 
by  this  union  of  the  royal  families  of  France  and  Austria  the 
alliance  between  the  two  countries — ^both  the  hated  rivals  of 
Prussia — ^was  definitely  sealed.  It  must  be  remembered  that  in 
the  eighteenth  century  France  was  the  richest  and  most  thickly 
populated  country  on  the  Continent,  whilst  the  Court  of  Versailles 
far  eclipsed  in  splendour  that  of  any  other  kingdom,  and  in  the 
mind  of  Frederick  the  memory  of  the  "  Roi  Soleil  "  lingered  as 
a  constant  source  of  irritation.  Austria,  on  the  other  hand,  as 
the  head  of  the  German  Empire,  enjoyed  a  power  and  prestige 
that  reduced  the  little  kingdom  of  Prussia  to  comparatively 
small  importance.  Meanwhile  the  Rhine  provinces,  more  French 
than  German  in  their  sympathies,  showed  no  anxiety  to  unite 
with  Prussia,  thereby  forming  the  Germanic  Confederation  that 
was  the  dream  of  Frederick.  To  break  the  alliance  between 
France  and  Austria  became  therefore  the  great  ambition  of  his 
life,  and  the  one  on  which  he  concentrated  all  his  energies. 

In  Von  der  Goltz,  his  ambassador,  who  arrived  at  the  Court 
of  Louis  XV.  in  1772,  Frederick  hoped  to  find  an  instrument  to 
carry  out  his  design,  which  was  not  to  consist  in  open  warfare 
but  in  a  system  of  political  mischief-making  that  would  sow 
discord  between  the  Courts  of  Versailles  and  Vienna.  At  the 
same  time  Von  der  Goltz  was  to  act  as  a  spy  by  getting  information 
out  of  Maurepas  and  sending  it  to  the  King  of  Prussia.  In  this 
the  ambassador  at  first  proved  successful,  for  the  frivolous 
Maurepas  loved  to  be  amused  and  Von  der  Goltz  possessed  a 
merry  wit,  but  the  reports  he  forwarded  to  Berlin  were  far  from 
satisfying  to  his  Prussian  Majesty.    The  correspondence  that 


PROLOGUE  25 

took  place  between  Frederick  and  the  luckless  ambassador,  whom 
he  treated  with  brutal  sarcasm,  is  a  revelation  in  Prussian 
diplomacy.^  Frederick,  it  appears,  was  in  the  habit  of  confiding 
sums  of  money  to  his  representatives  at  the  various  courts  of 
Europe  which  were  to  be  employed  in  bribery  and  corruption. 
Meanwhile  their  own  personal  expenses  were  but  meagrely 
defrayed.  Accordingly  Von  der  Goltz  on  arriving  in  France  was 
obliged  to  borrow  money  from  Necker  to  pay  the  rent  of  his  house, 
which  he  eventually  opened  as  a'gambling-saloon  in  order  to  meet 
his  creditors.  Appeals  to  Frederick  for  financial  assistance  met 
only  with  indignant  replies  :  "  You  are  a  spendthrift !  .  .  .  Did 
you  not  fritter  away  at  the  Court  of  Petersbourg  thousands  of 
ecus  which  I  entrusted  to  you  for  corruptions  ?  "  In  France 
Frederick  is  convinced  that  Von  der  Goltz  is  simply  amusing 
himself  instead  of  obtaining  information  on  affairs  of  state. 
"  You  drive  my  patience  to  its  Hmit,"  he  writes  on  December  21, 
1780,  **  by  the  clumsy  way  in  which  you  fill  your  post.  .  .  .  One 
might  excuse  it  in  a  student  who  had  just  left  the  University,  but 
it  is  unpardonable  in  a  man  of  your  age  who  has  been  so  long 
employed  in  affairs  of  state.  So  if  you  do  not  bestir  yourself 
and  bring  more  reflection  to  bear  on  them,  I  shall  be  obliged  to 
find  you  a  successor  in  whatever  comer  of  Europe  I  have  to  look 
for  him.'^ 

To  these  reproaches  Von  der  Goltz  replies  with  the  utmost 
meekness,  even  when  Frederick  goes  so  far  as  to  accuse  him  of  being 
occupied  with  some  "  grosse  Margot  "  instead  of  attending  to  his 
affairs— this  suspicion,  he  makes  answer,  is  unfounded,  since 
neither  his  health  nor  his  finances  permit  of  such  diversions. 

The  point  on  which  this  extraordinary  correspondence  turns 
is  of  course  the  Queen.  As  long  as  Marie  Antoinette  retains  her 
popularity  Frederick  realizes  that  there  is  Httle  hope  for  the 
success  of  Prussian  intrigue.  This  point  needs  emphasizing,  owing 
to  the  curious  confusion  of  thought  that  exists  on  the  Queen's 
policy.  No  reproach  has  been  more  often  repeated  against  Marie 
Antoinette  than  that  of  sympathizing  with  Austria  ;  undoubtedly 
she  sympathized  with  Austria  and  wished  to  cement  the  aUiance 
between  the  country  of  her  birth  and  that  of  her  adoption.  This 
was  only  natural,  but  the  point  so  continually  overlooked  is  that 
sympathy  with  Austria  at  this  date  was  precisely  the  opposite  of 
sympathy  with  Prussia,  and  this  alliance  that  the  Queen  was  so 
anxious  to  maintain  was  the  greatest  safeguard  France  possessed 

1  The  correspondence  from  which  all  the  following  extracts  are  taken 
is  to  be  found  in  a  work  entitled  Rapport  sur  les  Correspondances  des  Agents 
Diplomatiques  strangers  en  France  avant  la  Revolution  conservSes  dans  les 
Archives  de  Berlin,  Dresde,  Gendve,  Turin  .  .  .  Gines  .  .  .  Londres,  etc, 
by  Jules  Flammermont  (Paris,  Imprimerie  Nationale,  1896). 


u/' 


26  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

against  Prussian  aggression.  The  cry  of  " l' Autrichienne I "  raised 
against  Marie  Antoinette  throughout  the  Revolution  probably  origin- 
ated therefore  in  Prussia,  and  was  foolishly  taken  up  by  the  French 
people  with  fatal  bUndness  to  their  real  interests. 

No  one  rejoiced  more  heartily  than  Frederick  the  Great  at 
the  estrangement  that  existed  between  Louis  XVI.  and  Marie 
Antoinette  during  the  first  seven  years  of  their  marriage,  and  in 
1776  we  find  him  writing  to  confide  to  Von  der  Goltz  his  fears  that 
the  impending  visit  of  the  Emperor  Joseph  II.  to  the  Court  of 
France  may  bring  about  a  closer  relationship  between  the  husband 
and  wife.  In  a  letter  dated  December  26,  1776,  Frederick  points 
out  to  his  ambassador  that  the  best  way  to  counteract  the 
Emperor's  influence  wiU  be  for  Von  der  Goltz  to  repeat  to  the 
royal  family  of  France  remarks  the  Emperor  is  supposed  to  have 
made  about  them  :  "It  wiU  be  a  good  thing  if  you  can  manage 
hy  means  of  subterranean  insinuations  to  increase  the  dissension 
between  the  two  Courts.  With  this  object  the  ambitious  views  of 
his  Imperial  Majesty  on  Italy,  Bavaria,  Silesia,  Alsace,  and  even 
Moldavia  will  open  a  vast  field  to  your  pohtical  career,  and  if  to  these 
you  add  the  sarcasms  that  prince  permitted  himself  on  the  sub- 
ject of  his  brothers-in-law  when  he  said:  'I  have  three  brothers- 
in-law  ;  the  one  at  Versailles  is  an  imbecile,  the  one  at  Naples  is 
a  lunatic,  and  the  one  at  Parma  is  a  fool,'  it  cannot  fail  to  make 
an  impression  and  to  prejudice  the  Court  at  which  you  are  against 
him  in  such  a  way  that  aU  further  understanding  will  be  extremely 
difficult  if  not  impossible.  But  this,"  Frederick  adds,  "  must  be 
done  cleverly  " — a  feat  of  which  Von  der  Goltz  was  apparently 
incapable,  for  the  Emperor's  visit  resulted  in  the  reconciUation 
Frederick  was  so  anxious  to  avoid,  and  the  birth  of  a  princess 
to  the  royal  family  of  France  destroyed  his  hopes  for  the  future. 

A  further  check  to  Prussian  intrigue  occurred  in  the  dismissal 
of  Maurepas,  for  his  successor  Vergennes  had  no  confidence  in 
Von  der  Goltz,  and  refused  to  discuss  anything  with  him.  Accord- 
ingly in  1784  another  ambassador  was  sent  to  France  in  the  person 
of  Frederick's  brother.  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia,  who  was  in- 
structed to  effect  an  aUiance  between  the  Courts  of  Versailles  and 
Berlin.  "  The  Prince,"  remarks  M.  de  Croze  Lemercier,  "  came 
amongst  us  as  a  good  Prussian  ...  he  was  charged  by  his  brother 
Frederick  the  Great  to  embroil  us  with  Austria — ^which  he  nearly 
succeeded  in  doing — and  he  only  flattered  our  national  vanity 
in  order  the  better  to  exploit  it.  .  .  .  Hatred  of  Austria  was  then 
the  fashion  (in  France),  and  pubUc  opinion  was  so  bhnd  as  not  to 
see  that  we  had  enemies  still  more  dangerous.  The  Prince  became 
popular  for  the  same  reason  that  made  the  unfortunate  Marie 
Antoinette  hated." 

Prince  Henry  certainly  succeeded  in  exciting  some  degree  of 


PROLOGUE  .        27 

sympathy  with  Prussia  at  the  Court  of  France,  but  the  Queen, 
as  before,  remained  the  insuperable  obstacle.  When,  three  years 
later,  yet  another  envoy,  the  Baron  von  Alvensleben,  was  des- 
patched by  Frederick  to  report  on  the  state  of  feeling  at  Versailles 
he  found  the  Queen  still  irreconcilable. 

"  The  hatred  of  the  Queen  for  everything  that  hears  the  name  of 
Prussian,"  he  wrote  to  Frederick,  "is  so  indisputable,  that  I 
have,  so  to  speak,  the  proofs  under  my  hand." 

This,  then,  was  one  of  the  great  crimes  of  the  unhappy  Queen —  ) 
that  she  was  anti-Prussian.     Those  amongst  the  French  who  still  , 
revile  her  memory  would  do  well  to  remember  that  she  was  the 
first  and  greatest  obstacle  to  those  dreams  of  European  domina- 
tion that,  originating  with  Frederick  the  Great,  culminated  in  , 
the  aggression  of  1870  and  1914. 

Marie  Antoinette  paid  heavily  for  her  aversion  to  Prussia. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that  certain  of  the  libels  and 
seditious  pamphlets  published  against  her  before  and  during 
the  Revolution  were  circulated  by  Von  der  Goltz  at  the  instigation 
of  the  King  of  Prussia.  In  the  course  of  this  book  we  shall  see 
the  further  methods  employed  by  Prussia  to  undermine  the 
monarchy  of  France  and  to  overthrow  the  balance  of  power  in 
Europe  by  breaking  the  alliance  between  the  two  rivals  to  her 
supremacy. 

There  was  thus  a  double  strain  of  German  influence  at  work 
behind  the  French  Revolution — ^the  poUtical  and  the  philo- 
sophical. The  first,  inspired  by  Frederick  the  Great  and  carried 
out  by  Von  der  Goltz ;  the  second,  inspired  by  Weishaupt  and 
conducted  by  Anacharsis  Clootz,  the  Prussian  sent  to  France  for 
the  purpose. 

ENGLAND 

In  the  minds  of  certain  contemporaries  no  doubt  exists  that 
yet  another  intrigue  at  work  behind  the  revolutionary  movement 
was  that  sinister  influence — "  the  gold  of  Pitt."  England,  they 
declare,  resentful  of  the  help  given  by  France  to  the  American 
insurgents,  took  advantage  of  the  disturbed  state  of  the  country 
to  wreak  her  vengeance  on  the  French  Government  by  encourag- 
ing and  actually  financing  sedition.  Montmorin  told  Gouvemeur 
Morris  that  he  "  had  indisputable  evidence  of  the  intrigues  of 
Britain  and  Prussia  that  they  gave  money  to  the  Prince  de  Conde 
and  the  Due  d'Orleans."  Bezenval,  describing  the  riots  of  July 
1789,  speaks  of  the  brigands  employed  by  the  Due  d'Orleans  and 
by  England.  According  to  Madame  Campan,  Marie  Antoinette 
herself  shared  the  conviction  of  England's  complicity,  and  re- 
garded Pitt  as  the  leader  of  the  intrigue.     "  Do  not  go  to  Paris 


28  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

to-day,"  she  is  said  to  have  remarked,  "  the  English  have  been 
distributing  money  there  !  "  or  again  :  "  I  cannot  hear  the  name 
of  Pitt  without  feeUng  cold  shivers  down  my  back  !  " 

What  was  the  explanation  of  these  rumours  ?  Was  the 
Government  of  England  really  animated  by  a  spirit  of  revenge  ? 
It  is  certainly  probable  that  the  intervention  of  France  on  behalf 
of  America  appeared  to  Pitt  as  hostile  an  act  as  the  sending  of 
the  Kruger  telegram  appeared  to  our  Government  of  1896,  yet 
it  must  be  remembered  that  Louis  XVI.  had  entered  reluctantly 
into  the  war,  whilst  the  leaders  of  the  expedition  to  America — 
Lafayette,  Lauzun,  De  Segur,  and  others — ^were  later  on  partisans 
of  the  Revolution.  If,  therefore,  Pitt  desired  revenge  is  it  likely 
that  he  would  have  sought  to  obtain  it  by  joining  forces  with  the 
very  men  who  had  taken  part  against  him  ? 

At  the  same  time  it  is  undeniable  that  a  serious  rivalry  existed 
between  France  and  England.  As  the  two  principal  monarchies 
of  Europe  this  was  inevitable,  nor  in  the  past  had  it  proved  wholly 
disastrous.  The  perpetually  recurring  wars  between  the  two 
rival  powers  had  been  conducted  with  gallantry  and  generosity 
on  both  sides,  and  had  left  little  bitterness  in  the  mind  of  either 
nation.  But  the  reign  of  Louis  XVI.  introduced  a  more  formid- 
able menace  to  the  power  of  England.  For  the  first  time  in  her 
history  she  saw  her  most  cherished  possession,  the  dominion  of 
the  seas,  seriously  threatened.  Louis  XVI.  was  an  enthusiast  for 
the  navy  ;  on  the  subject  of  shipbuilding  he  displayed  surprising 
knowledge,  and  his  visit  to  the  port  of  Cherbourg — the  con- 
struction of  which  was  the  greatest  triumph  of  his  reign — ^brought 
him  a  popularity  he  had  never  before  enjoyed.  Across  the  sea 
England  watched  and  wondered.  As  a  seafaring  nation  it  was 
perhaps  the  most  anxious  moment  in  her  existence.  In  the 
correspondence  of  EngUsh  diplomatists  at  this  date  we  find  a 
vague  fear  piercing,  and  with  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  an 
undeniable  breath  of  relief.  "It  is  certainly  possible,"  writes 
Lord  Dorset  from  Paris  in  September  1789,  "  that  from  this 
chaos  some  creation  may  result,  but  I  am  satisfied  that  it  must 
be  long  before  France  returns  to  any  state  of  existence  which  can 
make  her  a  subject  of  uneasiness  to  other  nations."  EarUer  in 
the  year  Hailes  had  expressed  the  same  conviction. 

Yet  to  show  a  certain  degree  of  complacency  at  the  spectacle 
of  a  foreign  power  that  had  threatened  aggression  weakening 
itself  with  internal  dissensions  is  surely  not  to  imply  that  one 
has  deliberately  set  out  to  organize  these  dissensions.  George 
III.  throughout  showed  himself  resolutely  opposed  to  the  Revolu- 
tion, and  Pitt,  who  consistently  supported  the  King,  could  have 
had  no  conceivable  object  in  furthering  a  movement  that  shook 
all  the  thrones  of  Europe.     Far  from  sympathizing  with  the 


PROLOGUE  29 

revolutionary  leaders  Pitt  invariably  displayed  a  marked  aver- 
sion to  the  Orleanistes,  whilst  the  Jacobins  who  were  avowedly 
"  the  natural  enemies  of  England  "  were  the  last  people  with 
whom  he  would  be  likely  to  ally  himself.  The  hatred  expressed 
for  Pitt  by  both  these  parties  of  revolutionaries  is  again  surely 
proof  of  his  non-compUcity — if  Pitt  was  helping  to  finance  them, 
why  should  they  regard  him  as  their  enemy  ?  Why  should 
"  Tor  de  Pitt  "  be  mentioned  by  Jacobin  writers  with  the  same 
indignation  as  by  Royalists  ?  When,  therefore,  we  find  Pitt 
suspected  by  Royalists  of  abetting  the  Revolution  and  accused 
by  Revolutionaries  of  aiding  the  Royalists,^  we  may  surely  con- 
clude that  his  attitude  was,  as  he  professed,  one  of  strict  neutrality. 
Moreover,  as  Madame  de  Stael  points  out,  how  could  Pitt  dispose 
of  the  vast  sums  of  money  he  was  said  to  have  scattered  among 
the  rioters  without  accounting  for  them  to  Parliament  ?  Necker, 
she  says,  made  minute  investigations  during  his  ministry,  but 
"  was  never  able  to  discover  the  faintest  trace  of  compUcity 
between  the  popular  party  and  the  EngUsh  Government, '*  ^  and 
M.  Granier  de  Cassagnac  adds  that  "  historical  documents  have 
since  then  confirmed  this  conviction  of  Necker's,  for  the  official 
accounts  of  the  finances  of  the  emigration  at  the  BibUotheque 
Nationale  prove  that  of  all  governments  of  Europe  the  English 
Government  is  the  only  one  that  never  contributed  any  sum  of 
money  towards  the  divers  enterprises  of  different  parties  during 
the  French  Revolution."  ^ 

Even  Sorel,  who  misses  no  opportunity  of  denouncing  the 
aggressive  poUcy  of  England,  is  obliged  to  admit  the  integrity  of 
Pitt: 

"  The  ministry,  that  is  to  say  William  Pitt,  was  perfectly 
pacific.  The  Revolution  ridded  him  for  a  time  of  a  formidable 
rival ;  it  assured  him  of  the  peace  he  needed  for  his  financial 
reforms,  and  surrendered  to  England  all  the  benefits  of  which  the 
crisis  in  public  affairs  deprived  French  industry  and  commerce. 
In  every  market,  as  in  every  chancellery,  England  was  free  to 
substitute  herself  for  France.  Pitt  would  have  been  careful  not 
to  obstruct  the  development  of  a  revolution  so  advantageous  to 
his  designs.  He  also  held  that  a  king  of  France  deprived  of  his 
prestige,  with  his  rights  limited  and  his  power  contested,  would 
marvellously  answer  the  convenience  of  England.  But  he  was 
not  one  of  those  greedy  politicians  blinded  by  jealousy,  whose 
covetousness  leads  them  to  take  a  brutal  advantage  of  fortune. 

^  See,  for  example,  the  5th  number  of  the  Vieux  Cordelier,  in  which 
Camille  Desmoulins  accuses  Pitt  of  being  in  league  with  Calonne,  Malouet; 
and  Luchesini  to  create  a  "  counter-revolution." 

2  Considerations  sur  la  RSvolution  Franpaise,  i.  329,  331. 

*  Histoire  des  Causes  de  la  RSvoluiion  Frangaise,  i.  59. 


30  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Certain  of  these,  and  notably  his  allies  in  Berlin,  marvelled  at  his 
not  seizing  this  occasion  to  throw  himself  on  France,  to  crush  her 
and  take  over  her  colonies.  He  was  careful  to  refrain  from  this. 
The  natural  elevation  of  his  soul  restrained  him  as  much  as  the 
foresight  of  his  mind.  Such  perfidy  was  repugnant  to  him,  and 
he  held  it  to  be  dangerous."  ^ 

This  testimony  of  a  hostile  critic,  and  at  the  same  time  of  the 
historian  most  versed  in  the  poHtics  of  the  eighteenth  century,  is 
surely  convincing.  If,  in  the  opinion  of  Sorel,  Pitt  was  above 
taking  advantage  of  the  Revolution  to  declare  open  war  on  France, 
is  it  conceivable  that  he  would  have  descended  to  the  ignoble 
policy  of  financing  sedition,  to  the  brutal  expedient  of  scattering 
gold  amongst  an  enraged  mob  ?  The  thing  is  unthinkable,  and 
it  is  time  that  this  gross  calumny  on  our  Government  should 
be  finally  demohshed.  Suleau,  the  RoyaUst  pamphleteer,  knew 
better  than  many  of  his  contemporaries  when  he  wrote  these 
noble  words : 

"  The  EngUsh  people  have  not  degenerated  from  the  magna- 
nimity of  their  ancestors,  and  here  wise  poUcy  is  aUied  to  gener- 
osity, for  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  prove  that  the  splendour  of 
France  will  always  be  the  surest  guarantee  for  the  prosperity  of 
Great  Britain." 

England,  then,  far  from  abetting  the  Revolution,  regarded  it 
with  undisguised  aversion.  Such  hberal-minded  men  as  Words- 
worth and  Arthur  Young,  who  at  first  hailed  it  as  the  dawn 
of  Hberty,  lived  to  recognize  their  error.  "  In  England,"  says 
Cardonne,  "  the  majority  of  the  people,  including  almost  all 
those  who  belonged  to  the  Government,  the  rich  and  noble 
owners  of  property,  had  conceived  such  a  horror  for  the  principles 
and  acts  of  the  French  revolutionaries,  and  such  a  dread  of  seeing 
them  adopted  in  their  country,  that  they  were  anxious  to  break 
off  all  commerce  between  the  two  nations."  As  we  shaU  see  in 
the  course  of  this  book,  the  "  people  "  of  England  shared  the 
opinion  of  their  rulers. 

What,  then,  is  the  explanation  of  the  beUef  in  English  co- 
operation with  the  revolutionary  movement  ?  Of  the  EngUsh 
guineas  found  on  the  rioters  ?  Of  EngHshmen  mingling  in  the 
mobs  of  Paris  during  popular  agitations  ?  Of  the  seditious 
pamphlets  printed  in  London  ?  Of  the  traffic  in  letters,  messages, 
and  money  maintained  between  England  and  the  revolutionary 
leaders  ?  Many  of  these  leaders,  moreover,  were  constantly  in 
England,  both  before  and  during  the  Revolution  ;  Marat  Uved 
for  years  in  Soho,  whilst  Danton,  Brissot,  Petion,  St.  Huruge, 
Theroigne  de  Mericourt,  and  the  rufiian  Rotondo  were  all  habitu6s 
of  London.  These  facts  admit  of  no  denial ;  to  suppose,  how- 
*  L* Europe  et  la  Revolution  Frangaise,  ii.  29. 


PROLOGUE  31 

ever,  any  complicity  on  the  part  of  the  English  Government  is 
illogical  and  absurd.  The  explanation  seems  to  me  to  he  in  a 
perfectly  different  direction. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  Due  d'Orleans'  predilection 
for  visits  to  London — a  predilection  that  is  not  to  be  altogether 
accounted  for  by  the  "  anglomanie  "  he  professed.  "  M. 
d'Orleans,"  a  contemporary  shrewdly  remarks,  "  often  went  to 
England.  .  .  .  M.  d'Orleans  was  very  fond  of  England,  though 
not  of  the  English.  The  wisdom  of  their  laws  mattered  very 
little  to  him,  but  the  hberty  of  London  mattered  to  him  a  great 
deal.  This  apparent  love  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  for  the  EngHsh 
was  in  the  end  the  cause  of  all  the  calumnies  against  England 
with  which  the  leaders  of  the  different  factions  influenced  pubUc 
creduUty,  so  as  to  throw  on  the  pohcy  of  that  nation  the  excesses 
of  which  they  alone  were  guilty."  ^ 

Here,  then,  is  the  key  to  a  great  part  of  the  mystery ;  the  theory 
of  "  I'or  de  Pitt  "  was  a  fable  circulated  by  the  duke  himself  to 
shield  his  own  manoeuvres,  and  such  was  the  skill  with  which  it 
was  disseminated  that  it  was  believed  even  by  the  Queen,  who,  as 
we  know,  never  fully  reaUzed  the  complicity  of  the  duke  with  the 
revolutionary  outbreaks. 

For  ten  years  before  his  death,  that  is  to  say  from  1783 
onwards,  the  Due  d'Orleans  continually  deposited  sums  of  money 
in  London  banks,  and  these  sums,  estimated  at  between  ten  to 
twelve  miUions  of  francs,  were  not  exhausted  in  1794.^  Now 
since  countless  witnesses  testify  that  the  revolutionary  mobs 
were  financed  by  the  duke,  it  is  surely  more  than  probable 
that  many  of  the  guineas  found  on  rioters  were  the  Due 
d'Orleans'  money,^  which  with  diabohcal  cunning  he  drew  out  in 
English  coin,  and  had  sent  over  to  France  in  order  to  throw 
suspicion  on  the  English.  This  may  to  a  large  extent  account 
for  the  sums  distributed,  but  it  does  not  entirely  dispose  of  the 
belief  in  EngUsh  co-operation.  A  further  light  is  thrown  on  the 
matter  by  the  following  passage  of  Montjoie  : 

"  During  his  visits  to  London  the  Due  d'Orleans  personally, 
and  by  means  of  his  agents  in  Holland,  made  fresh  loans  of 
money  in  England.  ...  He  attached  to  his  interests  .  .  .  Milord 
Stanhope  and  Dr.  Price.  These  two  men  were  the  most  important 
members  of  a  society  calling  itself  '  The  Revolution  Society.' 
.  .  .  D'Orleans  also  knew  how  to  interest  all  that  party  known 
as  the  *  Opposition  '  in  his  cause.     Fox,  one  of  the  oracles  of 

^  Histoire  des  Factions  de  la  Revolution  Franfaise,  by  Joseph  Lavall6e, 
i.  25  (1816). 

*  See  letters  from  General  Montesquiou  and  the  Due  de  Chartres  pub-       / 
lished  at  the  end  of  the  MSmoires  de  Mallet  du  Pan,  edited  by  A.  Sayous,  l/^ 
p.  455.  *  Fantin  Desodoards,  Histoire  Philosophique,  ii.  436. 


32  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

this  party,  was  throughout  attached  to  d*0rl6ans,  and  still  is 
to  his  family  (1797)  ;  he  is  the  declared  protector  of  all  the 
Frenchmen  who  belong  to  the  faction  of  this  prince." 

Is  it  not  possible,  then,  that  the  duke,  fearing  that  even  his 
vast  fortune  might  prove  inadequate  to  the  demands  made  on  it 
during  the  course  of  nearly  five  years,  for  financing  insurrection, 
may  have  supplemented  it  by  sums  raised  amongst  his  friends  in 
England  ?  In  this  case  EngUsh  gold  did  play  a  part  in  the 
revolutionary  movement,  but  it  was  provided  not  hy  the  Govern- 
ment, hut  hy  its  opponents.  The  Opposition  party  in  London 
formed  an  exact  counterpart  to  the  duke's  party  in  Paris  ;  headed 
by  the  Prince  of  Wales,  the  roues  of  Carlton  House  formed  a 
Fronde  against  George  III.,  such  as  the  roues  of  the  Palais 
Royal  formed  against  Louis  XVI.  In  the  House  of  Commons 
Fox,  the  so-caUed  "  friend  of  the  people,"  demanded  that  the 
enormous  debts  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  should  be  defrayed  by 
the  nation.  Thus  in  both  countries  it  was  the  "  democratic  " 
party,  the  revolutionaries  of  France  and  the  Whigs  of  England, 
who  supported  the  follies  and  extravagances  of  these  two 
dissolute  princes,  whilst  in  both  countries  the  cause  of  order  and 
morality  was  represented  by  the  sovereign  whom  the  democrats 
wished  to  dethrone.  George  HI.,  like  Louis  XVL,  was  intensely 
respectable ;  the  Due  d'Orleans  was  therefore  even  less  to  his 
taste  than  his  own  prodigal  son,  and  he  rightly  discerned  the  de- 
moralizing influence  that  the  duke  exercised  over  him.  "  George, 
the  Prince  of  Wales,"  says  Ducoin,  "  had  done  the  honours  of  the 
brothels  and  gambling-houses  of  the  old  city,  and  in  Paris  the 
Due  d'Orleans  had  returned  the  hospitaUty  shown  him  by  the 
Prince  of  Wales  in  the  suppers  and  orgies  of  London.  Like 
Philippe,  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  adopted  the  Revolution,  and 
hailed  the  dawn  of  a  new  era."  This  era  was  apparently  to 
consist  in  placing  George  III.  under  restraint  and  proclaiming 
the  Prince  of  Wales  Regent,  a  scheme  in  which  the  Prince's  boon 
companions.  Fox,  Sheridan,  and  others,  heartily  concurred. 
Meanwhile  the  same  process  was  to  take  place  in  France,  the 
regency  in  both  countries  being  merely  the  preliminary  to  a 
change  of  sovereigns.  With  these  two  merry  monarchs,  George 
IV.  and  PhiUppe  VII.,  on  the  thrones  of  England  and  France,  an 
era  of  liberty  seemed  assured  for  the  hons  vivants  of  Carlton 
House  and  the  Palais  Royal,  who  found  themselves  perpetually 
hampered  by  the  exercise  of  the  royal  authority. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  not  surprising  that  Louis  XVL 
found  it  necessary  to  prohibit  the  Due  d'Orleans  from  visiting 
England  too  frequently.  In  the  Correspondance  Secrete  we  find 
on  April  9,  1788,  the  following  significant  entry  : 

"It  is  confirmed  that  one  of  the  conditions  that  the  Due 


PROLOGUE  33 

d'Orleans'  exile  should  be  cancelled  is  that  this  prince  should 
make  a  long  journey  to  anywhere  except  England.  To  the  well- 
founded  reasons  the  King  may  have  for  preventing  him  from 
breathing  British  air  there  is,  they  say,  to  be  added  the  entreaty 
of  George  III.,  who,  wishing  to  maintain  the  footsteps  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  on  the  paths  of  order  and  moraUty,  has  begged 
his  most  Christian  Majesty  not  to  allow  his  friends  from  Paris  to 
approach  him." 

This,  then,  was  the  reason  why  Louis  XVI.  stipulated  that  the 
duke  should  not  spend  the  term  of  his  exile  in  England,  a  stipula- 
tion that,  as  we  have  seen,  contributed  more  than  any  other  cause 
to  the  duke's  animosity  towards  the  Court  of  France. 

The  prohibition  to  visit  England  was,  of  course,  a  serious 
obstacle  to  the  designs  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  and^hoderloa.  de 
Laclos.  These  journeys,  made  ostensibly  for  pleasure,  held  a 
cleeper  purpose.  Whilst  the  wine  flowed  freely,  and  George  and 
Philippe  basked  in  the  smiles  of  their  various  enchantresses,  who 
could  suppose  that  plots  of  a  serious  nature  were  in  progress,  and 
that  anything  more  important  than  the  pleasure  of  the  hour 
occupied  the  brains  of  the  revellers  ? 

In  England,  as  in  France,  however,  the  conspirators  were 
divided  in  their  aims.  Not  all  the  English  revolutionaries 
belonged  to  the  Prince  of  Wales's  party ;  many,  like  their  French 
counterparts,  desired  no  change  of  sovereign  but  simple  anarchy. 
Throughout  the  history  of  our  country  subversive  spirits  have 
from  time  to  time  arisen  to  advocate  "  equahty  "  and  the  levelling 
of  all  ranks  to  an  indifferent  public.  **  Pride,"  said  the  Prince 
de  Ligne,  "  disdains  revolutions  ;  vanity  produces  them."  The 
British  people,  far  more  proud  than  vain,  have  always  responded 
with  lukewarm  interest  to  the  instigators  of  class  hatred ;  per- 
fectly satisfied  with  their  own  position  in  the  social  scheme  they 
care  not  who  considers  himself  their  superior.  Liberty  they 
demand  as  a  right ;  equality  they  wisely  recognize  as  impossible, 
and  dismiss  from  their  calculations.  But  in  England,  as  in  France, 
a  minority  has  always  existed,  totally  distinct  from  the  people, 
whose  vanity  is  greater  than  its  pride.  To  them  obscurity  is  far 
more  intolerable  than  oppression.  Usually  members  of  the 
middle  class  employed  in  sedentary  occupations  and  deprived 
of  the  mental  balance  that  manual  labour  brings,  or  occasionally 
of  an  aristocracy  that  has  failed  to  show  them  the  appreciation 
they  desire,  they  seek  to  avenge  their  own  wrongs  rather  than  to 
redress  those  of  the  people.  Like  the  Subversives  of  France  they 
have  seldom  any  definite  plans  of  reconstruction — their  aim  is 
only  to  destroy.  Of  such  elements  were  the  "  Revolution 
Societies  "  of  England  in  1789  composed.  ^Dr.  Robinet,  who  has 
described  them  admiringly  in  his  Danton  Emigre,  under  the  title 


34  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

of  *'  The  English  Jacobins,"  has  given  us  illuminating  details  of 
their  conduct  during  the  course  of  the  Revolution.  Like  nearly 
every  French  revolutionary,  Dr.  Robinet  detests  England,  and  his 
comments  on  the  attitude  of  the  British  people  towards  the 
Revolution  are  very  bitter — there  were  in  England,  he  says,  "  only 
a  respectable  minority,  a  numerous  elite,"  who  sympathized  with 
the  movement.  This  "  respectable  minority  "  consisted  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  and  his  boon  companions,  and  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary Societies  headed  by  the  renegade  Lord  Stanhope,  by 
Dr.  Price,  Dr.  Priestley,  and  the  drunkard  Thomas  Paine.  The 
natural  allies  of  their  country's  bitterest  enemies,  the  Jacobins 
of  France,  we  shall  find  them  throughout  the  Revolution,  not 
merely  abetting  the  excesses  committed  abroad,  but  seeking  to 
create  a  kindred  movement  at  home.  It  was  they,  as  I  shall  show, 
who  subscribed  towards  the  Revolution  ;  it  was  they  who  frater- 
nized with  the  revolutionary  agitators  on  their  visits  to  London  ; 
it  was  they  who  committed  the  crimes  that  certain  writers  have 
falsely  attributed  to  our  Government. 

The  complicity  of  these  EngUsh  Subversives  with  the  revolu- 
tionaries of  France  is  a  fact  we  should  do  well  to  reaUze,  both  in 
justice  to  the  French  nation  and  also  with  a  view  to  understanding 
the  potentiaHties  of  our  own.  The  smug  beUef  that  none  amongst 
our  fellow-countrymen  would  have  been  capable  of  the  atrocities 
committed  in  France  is  shattered  at  a  blow  when  we  read  the 
comments  of  Enghsh  revolutionaries  on  these  deeds  of  horror — 
deeds  not  to  be  attributed  as  we  are  accustomed  to  attribute 
them  to  the  excitability  of  the  Latin  temperament,  but  to 
poUtical  passions,  of  all  passions  the  most  terrible  and  relentless 
which  men  of  our  own  race  displayed  at  the  same  period  without 
the  same  provocation.  In  the  course  of  this  book  we  shall  see 
that  the  crimes  committed  by  the  lowest  of  the  Paris  rabble,  and 
execrated  by  the  honest  democrats  of  France,  were  applauded  by 
educated  men  and  women  in  our  country,  and  if  England  was  not 
plunged  in  the  horrors  of  anarchy  it  was  not  because  she  did  not 
hold  within  her  forces  capable  of  producing  them. 

These,  then,  were  the  four  great  intrigues  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion.   Their  aims  may  be  briefly  recapitulated  thus  : 

I.  The  intrigue  of  the  Orleanistes  to  change  the  dynasty  of 

France. 
II.  The  intrigue  of  the  Subversives  to  destroy  aU  religion  and 

all  government. 
III.  The  intrigue  of  Prussia  to  break  the  Franco-Austrian  aUiance. 
IV.  The  intrigue  of  the  English  revolutionaries  to  overthrow 
the  governments  both  of  France  and  England. 


PROLOGUE  35 

To  these  four  organized  intrigues  must  be  added  the  in- 
numerable people  of  all  classes,  belonging  to  no  particular  party, 
but  with  private  grievances  of  their  own,  and  all  ready  to  throw 
themselves  into  any  subversive  movement — Madame  de  la 
Motte,  who  raged  at  her  punishment  in  the  affair  of  the  necklace, 
and  to  whom  many  of  the  Ubellous  pamphlets  against  the  Queen 
are  due  ;  courtiers  who  had  failed  to  secure  the  favours  they 
solicited ;  women  who  had  been  refused  admittance  to  the  Court, 
or  Hke  Madame  Roland,  felt  humiliated  by  its  magnificence 
— all  those  people  who,  either  by  the  misfortune  of  their  cir- 
cumstances or  by  a  natural  biUousness  of  temperament,  resented 
prosperity  in  others,  and  below  them  all  that  underworld  of  vice 
and  misery  that  in  every  old  civiUzation  sinks  to  the  bottom 
like  the  dregs  in  an  old  wine,  and  that  any  violent  convulsion 
brings  to  the  surface  with  terrible  effect.  All  through  the  Revolu- 
tion we  shall  see  these  heterogeneous  rebels,  inflamed  with 
their  own  burning  thirst  for  vengeance,  mingling  with  the  great 
conspiracies,  and  the  great  conspiracies  in  their  turn  joining 
forces  with  each  other ;  we  shall  see  the  agitators  of  the  Palais 
Royal  fraternizing  with  the  emissaries  of  Prussia,  Madame  de  la 
Motte  circulating  Hbels  through  the  agents  of  the  Due  d'Orleans, 
and  English  revolutionaries  corresponding  with  the  cut-throats  of 
September.  All  this  confused  and  turbulent  movement,  formed 
of  such  conflicting  units,  running  concurrently  with  the  genuine 
movement  for  reform,  succeeded  so  skilfully  in  blending  with  it 
as  to  deceive  not  only  contemporaries,  but  the  greater  part  of 
posterity.  "  They  had,"  says  Malouet,  "  the  art  and  the  wisdom  to 
appear  in  a  mass,  marching  under  one  banner,  the  banner  of 
liberty,  which  floated  over  the  heads  of  men  whose  secret  aims 
were  widely  divergent,  thus  presenting  a  united  front  to  the 
world."  So,  though  all  the  revolutionary  elements  put  together 
formed  but  a  small  minority  in  the  State,  they  were  able,  by  means 
of  this  union,  to  hold  their  own  against  the  immense  but  disunited 
majority  that  composed  the  Old  Regime— a  king  at  variance  with 
his  Court,  a  noblesse  divided  against  itself,  and  a  people  who 
for  want  of  leaders  in  their  own  ranks  allowed  themselves  to 
be  swayed  by  every  breath  of  opinion.  Before  this  rising  tide 
of  insurrection  the  Government  erected  no  barriers,  to  the 
superb  organization  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  provided  no 
counter-organization,  and  to  seditious  doctrines  rephed  with  no 
corrective  propaganda.  "  Will  posterity  beheve,"  cried  Arthur 
Young,  as  he  watched  the  engineering  of  the  Revolution,  "  that 
while  the  press  has  swarmed  with  inflammatory  productions, 
that  tend  to  prove  the  blessings  of  theoretical  confusion  and 
speculative  licentiousness,  not  one  writer  of  talent  has  been 
employed  to  refute  and  confound  the  fashionable  doctrines, 


36  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

nor  the  least   care  taken   to   disseminate   works  of    another 
complexion  ?  " 

Playfair,  another  EngUsh  contemporary,  was  amazed  by  the 
incredible  inertia  of  the  ruling  classes  :  "  In  this  state  of  things, 
did  the  proprietors  pay  a  single  man  of  merit  to  plead  their 
cause  ?  No.  If  by  chance  a  man  of  merit  refuted  their  enemies, 
did  they  make  a  small  sacrifice  to  give  pubUcity  to  his  work  ? 
No.  He  who  pleaded  the  cause  of  murder  and  plunder  saw  his 
work  distributed  by  thousands  and  hundreds  of  thousands,  and 
himself  enriched  ;  while  he  who  endeavoured  to  support  the  cause 
of  law,  of  order,  and  of  the  proprietor,  had  his  bookseller  to  pay 
and  saw  his  labours  converted  into  waste  paper."  ^ 

So  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  all  dynamic  force,  all 
fire  and  energy,  were  to  be  found  on  the  side  of  demoUtion, 
whilst  the  Old  Regime,  resolutely  bUnd  to  the  coming  danger, 
allowed  itself  to  be  destroyed  without  striking  a  blow  in  self- 
defence. 

^  Playf air's  History  of  Jacobinism,  p.  io8. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE   BASTILLE 


37 


THE   SIEGE    OF   THE    BASTILLE 

THE  AFFAIRE  R]£VEILLON 

The  spring  of  1789  found  the  citizens  of  Paris  divided  between 
two  great  emotions,  hope  and  fear — hope  verging  on  ecstasy 
at  the  prospect  of  the  States-General  that  were  to  regenerate  the 
kingdom,  fear  amounting  to  panic  at  the  threatened  famine  and 
the  presence  of  mysterious  strangers  in  their  midst. 

The  immense  charities  of  the  King,  noblesse,  and  clergy  had 
had  the  effect  of  attracting  crowds  of  hungry  peasants  to  Paris, 
where  they  were  employed  at  the  King's  expense  in  working  at  the 
Butte  Montmartre,  and  soon  fell  a  prey  to  the  Orleaniste  leaders, 
who  enhsted  many  of  them  in  their  service  for  the  purposes  of 
insurrection.  But  even  this  formidable  addition  to  the  under- 
world of  Paris  formed  but  a  small  minority  amongst  the  law- 
abiding  of  the  population,  and  a  further  measure  was  devised  by 
the  leaders.  Towards  the  end  of  April  the  peaceful  citizens  saw 
with  bewilderment  bands  of  ragged  men  of  horrible  appearance, 
armed  with  thick  knotted  sticks,  flocking  through  the  barriers  into 
the  city.  This  sinister  contingent  is  not,  as  certain  historians 
would  have  us  beUeve,  to  be  confounded  with  the  former  crowds 
of  peasants — "  they  were  neither  workmen  nor  peasants,"  says 
Madame  Vigee  le  Brun,  "  they  seemed  to  belong  to  no  class  unless 
that  of  bandits,  so  terrifying  were  their  faces,"  and  Montjoie  adds 
that  this  aspect  was  intentional — "  they  had  been  instructed 
to  disfigure  their  faces  in  a  manner  so  hideous  that  they  were 
objects  of  horror  to  all  the  Parisians."  Other  contemporaries, 
whose  accounts  exactly  coincide  with  the  foregoing,  add  that 
these  men  were  "  foreigners  " — "  they  spoke  a  strange  tongue  "  ; 
Bouille  states  that  "  they  were  bandits  from  the  South  of  France 
and  Italy,"  whilst  Marmontel  describes  them  as  "  Marseillais  .  .  . 
men  of  rapine  and  carnage,  thirsting  for  blood  and  booty,  who, 
minghng  with  the  people,  inspired  them  with  their  own  ferocity." 

The  Marseillais  were  therefore  not  called  in  for  the  first  time 
in  1792,  as  is  generally  supposed,  and  their  aid  was  evidently 
evoked  at  the  later  date  in  consequence  of  their  successes  at  the 

39 


40  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

beginning  of  the  Revolution.  That  brigands  from  the  South 
were  dehberately  enticed  to  Paris  in  1789,  employed  and  paid 
by  the  revolutionary  leaders,  is  a  fact  confirmed  by  authorities 
too  numerous  to  quote  at  length ;  and  the  further  fact  that  the 
conspirators  felt  such  a  measure  to  be  necessary  is  of  immense 
significance,  for  it  shows  that  in  their  eyes  the  people  of  Paris  were 
not  to  he  depended  on  to  carry  out  a  revolution.  In  other  words, 
the  importation  of  the  contingent  of  hired  brigands  conclusively 
refutes  the  theory  that  the  Revolution  was  an  irrepressible  rising 
of  the  people  ;  it  proves  that,  on  the  contrary,  the  movement  was 
dehberately  and  laboriously  engineered.  No  one  understood 
human  nature  better  than  such  men  as  Laclos,  Chamfort,  and  the 
other  leaders  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,  and  they  doubtless 
realized  that  in  the  past  the  irresponsible,  pleasure-loving  people 
of  Paris  had  shown  Uttle  initiative  in  the  matter  of  bloodshed, 
but  had  needed  always  to  be  given  the  lead  before  they  entered 
into  the  spirit  of  the  thing  and  played  at  killing.  Thus  at  the 
Massacre  of  Saint-Bartholomew  had  not  the  lead  been  given  by 
the  German  Behme  and  the  ItaHan  Catherine  de  Medicis  before 
the  people  of  the  city  joined  in  the  hue  and  cry  after  the  flying 
Huguenots  ?  Pitiless  as  they  could  be  at  moments,  they  were 
prone  to  sudden  revulsions  of  feehng  that  in  an  instant  trans- 
formed their  victims  into  objects  of  admiration  ;  they  lacked  the 
hot  blood  of  the  South  that  revels  in  cruelty  and  does  not  tire 
of  the  spectacle.  Just  as  the  Anarchists  of  our  own  day  have 
always  reaUzed  that  it  is  amongst  the  descendants  of  the  Roman 
populace  who  gathered  in  the  Coliseum  to  watch  the  brutal 
sports  of  the  arena  that  they  must  seek  the  assassin  they  needed 
to  track  down  their  royal  victim,  so  the  conspirators  of  1789 
knew  that  it  was  to  the  South  that  they  must  look  for  that  sombre 
ferocity  which  the  Ught-hearted  Parisians  lacked,  and  in  the 
sun-baked  regions  of  Italy  and  Provence,  where  a  dagger-thrust 
is  still  but  the  everyday  ending  to  a  quarrel,  they  found  the 
terrible  instruments  that  they  required. 

Thus  side  by  side  the  work  of  reformation  and  the  work  of 
revolution  had  gone  forward,  smd  whilst  the  deputies  of  the 
people  were  assembling  the  leaders  of  insurrection  were  Hkewise 
mustering  their  forces.  It  was  a  race  between  the  two — who 
was  to  be  first  in  the  field  ?  those  who  desired  to  build  up  or 
those  who  sought  only  to  destroy  ?  Revolution  won  the  day, 
and  on  the  27th  of  April  the  first  outbreak  occurred  in  Paris. 

The  victim  of  this  extraordinary  riot  was  a  certain  wall- 
paper manufacturer  of  the  Faubourg  Saint  -  Antoine  named 
Reveillon,  who  had  recently  been  chosen  elector  for  the  Tiers 
£tat  in  opposition  to  the  Orleaniste  candidate.  According  to 
certain  historians  "  the  rumour  went  round  "  that  Reveillon  had 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        41 

spoken  slightingly  of  working-men  at  the  electoral  assembly, 
but  Montjoie  states  that  this  accusation  was  definitely  proclaimed 
through  the  streets  by  a  horde  of  the  brigands  dragging  with 
them  an  effigy  of  Reveillon,  and  calling  out  to  the  people 
that  he  had  said  a  workman  could  live  quite  well  on  fifteen 
sous  a  day. 

This  device  of  inventing  a  phrase  and  placing  it  in  the  mouth 
of  any  one  they  wished  to  offer  up  to  popular  fury  was  regularly 
adopted  by  the  agitators  in  all  the  earlier  riots  of  the  Revolution, 
and  often  succeeded  in  completely  deceiving  the  people.  In  the 
case  of  Reveillon,  however,  the  calumny  was  palpably  absurd ; 
the  paper-maker  was  well  known  and  respected  in  the  Faubourg  ; 
he  himself  had  started  hfe  as  a  working-man,  and  when  he  had 
made  his  fortune  resolved  that  his  employes  should  never  know 
the  hardships  he  had  endured.  Not  one  of  his  workmen  was 
paid  less  than  twenty-five  sous  a  day,  and  during  the  recent  severe 
winter  he  had  kept  them  all  on  at  full  pay  although  unable  to 
give  them  work.  The  inhabitants  of  the  Faubourg  knew  better, 
therefore,  than  to  believe  the  calumny  against  their  benefactor, 
and  refused  to  riot.  The  agitators  and  their  allies  the  brigands 
were  consequently  obliged  to  resort  to  force  in  order  to  raise  a 
mob.  Montjoie,  who  was  an  eye-witness  of  the  whole  affair,  and 
whose  account  is  confirmed  in  nearly  every  point  by  other  reliable 
contemporaries,  states  that  *'  these  ruffians  went  into  the  factories 
and  workshops  and  compelled  the  workmen  to  follow  them.  This 
method  of  swelling  a  mob  of  insurrection  . . .  was  adopted  through- 
out the  whole  revolution.  To  begin  with,  about  fifty  rioters,  men 
or  women,  surround  the  first  person  they  meet  on  their  way,  two 
of  the  rioters  hold  him  tightly  under  the  arms  and  carry  him  off 
against  his  will  ...  by  this  means,  when  the  troop  has  arrived 
on  the  battle-field,  its  numbers  alarm  those  against  whom  it  is 
directed.  On  this  occasion  the  horde  of  brigands  was  increased 
by  all  the  workmen  they  had  enrolled  against  their  wills."  ^ 

By  this  laborious  method  a  disorderly  mob  was  collected 
who  marched  to  Reveillon's  house  in  the  Rue  de  Montreuil, 
which,  on  arrival,  they  found  to  be  surrounded  by  a  cordon  of 
troops.  The  street  being  thus  rendered  impassable  the  crowd 
was  held  up,  but  at  this  opportune  moment  the  Due  d'Orleans 
happenedio  drive  past  on  his  way  to  the  race-meeting  at  Vincennes, 
where  his  horses  were  running  against  those  of  the  Comte  d'Artois. 

^  Bezenval,  who  was  in  command  of  the  Swiss  Guards,  exactly  corro- 
borates this  statement :  "  All  the  spies  of  the  police  agreed  in  saying  that 
the  insurrection  was  caused  by  strange  men  who,  in  order  to  increase  their 
numbers,  took  by  force  those  they  met  on  their  way ;  they  had  even  sent 
three  times  to  the  Faubourg  Saint-Marceau  to  raise  recruits  without  being 
able,  to  persuade  any  one  to  join  them.  These  spies  added  that  they  saw 
men  inciting  the  tumult  and  even  distributing  money." 


42  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

He  stopped  his  carriage,  got  down,  spoke  a  few  words  to  the 
rioters,  and  then  drove  on  again.  The  duke  afterwards  admitted 
his  appearance  on  the  scene,  but  explained  it  by  saying  that  his 
intention  was  merely  to  soothe  the  people,  and  that  the  words 
he  had  spoken  were  "  Allons,  mes  enfants,  de  la  paix  :  nous 
touchons  au  bonheur."  The  exhortation  did  not,  however,  have 
the  effect  of  dispersing  the  mob,  which  continued  to  besiege  the 
house  of  Reveillon  until  the  evening,  when  the  Duchesse  d'Orleans 
in  returning  from  Vincennes  passed  by  the  Rue  de  Montreuil, 
which  was  still  barricaded  by  the  troops.  Out  of  respect  for  the 
duchess — ^whom  no  one  associated  with  her  husband's  intrigues — 
the  soldiers  immediately  opened  a  way  for  her,  and  thereupon  the 
mob,  seeing  their  opportunity,  burst  through  the  same  passage 
and  fell  upon  the  house  of  Reveillon,  which  they  proceeded  to 
pillage  and  destroy. 

Three  more  regiments  were  now  sent  to  the  scene  of  action, 
and  the  officers  called  upon  the  invaders  to  retire.  The  order 
was  repeated  three  times  without  effect,  the  rioters  replying  only 
with  a  hail  of  stones  and  tiles  that  they  hurled  from  the  housetop 
on  the  soldiers,  killing  several.  Then  by  way  of  warning  a  few 
shots  were  fired  into  the  air  by  the  troops,  and  this  time  the  mob 
retaliated  with  still  more  formidable  missiles  in  the  shape  of  roof- 
beams  and  immense  blocks  of  stone  torn  from  the  invaded 
building.  So  at  last  the  soldiers,  finding  pacific  methods  of  no 
avail,  opened  fire  on  the  housetop,  carrying  death  and  destruc- 
tion into  the  ranks  of  the  rioters — "  the  unhappy  creatures  fell 
from  the  roofs,  the  walls  dripped  with  blood,  the  pavement  was 
covered  with  mutilated  limbs."  The  survivors  took  refuge  inside 
the  house  and  prepared  to  carry  on  the  siege,  but  the  troops 
entered  with  fixed  bayonets,  and  by  dint  of  hand-to-hand  fighting 
succeeded  finally  in  clearing  the  premises  and  ending  the  riot. 

Montjoie  afterwards  visited  the  wounded  and  questioned 
them  on  the  motives  that  had  inspired  their  actions  :  "  Unhappy 
one,  what  were  you  doing  there  ?  "  And  one  and  all  made  the 
same  reply,  "  What  was  I  doing  there  ?  I  went,  like  you,  Uke 
every  one  else,  just  to  see."  But  one  poor  wretch  dying  in  agony 
exclaimed,  "  Mon  Dieu,  mon  Dieu,  must  one  be  treated  in  this  way 
for  twelve  miserable  francs  ?  "  He  had,  in  fact,  exactly  twelve 
francs  in  his  pocket,  and  the  same  sum  was  found  on  many  of 
the  other  rioters.^ 

Meanwhile  Reveillon  himself  had  succeeded  in  escaping  during 
the  tumult  and  fled  for  refuge  to  the  Bastille,  where  he  remained 
under  the  protection  of  the  governor,  De  Launay,  until  he  could 
venture  out  again  in  safety.  Compensation  was  made  him  by 
the  King  for  his  ruined  industry. 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  i.  275. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE       43 

Such  was  the  Affaire  Reveillon  which  historians  are  fond  of 
describing  as  mysterious  and  inexpHcable.  Yet  contemporaries 
of  all  parties  admit  that  it  was  engineered  by  agitators  ;  the  only 
question  on  which  they  differ  is,  "  By  whom  were  these  agitators 
employed  ?  "  The  revolutionaries  according  to  their  usual 
custom  reply,  *'The  Court."  The  Court  and  aristocracy,  they 
solemnly  assure  us,  dehberately  provoked  the  riot  in  order  to  find 
an  excuse  for  firing  on  the  people  !  Later  on  we  shall  find  the 
aristocrats  accused  of  burning  down  their  chateaux  for  the  same 
purpose.  The  suggestion  is  too  ludicrous  to  be  taken  seriously. 
Why  should  the  Court  wish  to  provoke  a  riot  against  itself  ? 
Why  should  a  mob  raised  by  aristocrats  reproach  Reveillon  with 
being  a  friend  of  aristocrats  ?  Why  should  the  Court  incite 
popular  fury  against  a  law-abiding  citizen  and  a  loyal  subject  of 
the  King  ?  Above  all,  if  the  Court  wished  for  an  excuse  to  use  force 
against  the  people,  why  did  they  not  hasten  to  use  it  ?  Why  was 
every  concihatory  method  resorted  to  before  force  was  employed  ? 

That  the  Affaire  Reveillon  was  the  work  of  the  Orleaniste 
conspiracy  no  one  who  brings  an  impartial  mind  to  bear  on 
contemporary  evidence  can  possibly  doubt ;  the  presence  of  the 
duke,  and  it  is  said  also  of  Laclos,  amongst  the  crowd,  the  fact 
that  the  riot  was  carried  on  to  the  cry  of  "  Vive  le  due  d' Orleans ! " 
and  even  "  Vive  notre  roi  d'Orleans  !  "  ^  is  surely  proof  enough 
of  the  influences  at  work.  JTalleyrand— who  well  knew  the 
intricacies  of  the  Orleaniste  intrigue — definitely  stated  that  it 
was  organized  by  Laclos,  whilst  Chamfort,  himself  a  member  of 
the  conspiracy,  admitted  to  Marmontel  that  the  movement  was 
financed  by  the  duke.  "  Money,"  he  said,  "  and  the  hope  of 
plunder  are  aU-powerful  with  the  people.  We  have  just  made 
the  experiment  in  the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine,  and  you  would 
not  believe  how  Uttle  it  cost  the  Due  d'Orleans  to  get  them  to 
sack  the  manufactory  of  the  honest  Reveillon,  who  amidst  these 
same  people  was  the  means  of  livelihood  for  a  hundred  families. 
Mirabeau  cheerfully  asserts  that  with  lOO  louis  one  can  make 
quite  a  good  riot."  ^ 

What  was  the  Orleanistes'  object  in  singUng  out  Reveillon 

1  See,  for  example,  the  letter  from  the  English  ambassador  in  Paris,  the 
Duke  of  Dorset,  to  the  Duke  of  Leeds,  April  30,  1789  :  "  The  Due  d'Orleans 
has  experienced  repeated  marks  of  popular  favour  lately,  and  particularly 
on  Tuesday  last.  As  he  was  returning  through  the  Faubourg  Saint- 
Antoine  the  people  frequently  called  out  '  Vive  la  maison  d'Orleans  !  '  " 
Madame  de  la  Tour  du  Pin,  who  drove  through  the  Faubourg  during  the 
riot  with  some  of  the  Palais  Royal  party,  relates  that  "  the  sight  of  the 
livery  of  Orleans  .  .  .  stirred  the  enthusiasm  of  this  riff-raff.  They 
stopped  us  a  moment  calUng  out,  '  Long  live  our  father,  long  live  our 
King  Orleans  1'  "  [Journal  d'une  Femme  de  Cinquante  Ans,  i.  177). 

*  M&moires  de  Marmontel,  iv.  82. 


44  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

as  a  victim  ?  The  defeat  of  their  own  candidate  at  the 
elections  was  certainly  disconcerting  to  their  projects,  but  it 
is  evident  that  there  was  a  still  more  definite  reason  for  their 
animosity.  The  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine,  where  Reveillon's 
manufactory  was  situated,  had  an  entirely  working-class  popula- 
tion, whilst  the  Faubourg  Saint -Marceau  was  the  centre  of 
destitution.  These  two  poor  and  populous  quarters  of  the  city 
were  the  strongholds  of  the  agitators  ;  popular  movements  never 
originated  there,  but  were  devised  at  Montrouge  or  the  Club 
Breton,  worked  up  at  the  Palais  Royal,  whence  they  spread  to 
the  Faubourgs  and  produced  the  desired  explosion.  By  this 
means  the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine  became  simply  the  echo  of 
the  Palais  Royal.  But  an  influential  agent  was  needed  in  the 
district,  and  Montjoie  asserts  that  Reveillon  was  therefore 
approached  by  the  Orleanistes  with  the  view  of  enticing  him  into 
the  conspiracy.  These  overtures  were  met,  however,  with  an 
indignant  refusal  by  the  honest  paper-maker,  and  the  post  was 
offered  to  the  rough  and  brutal  brewer  Santerre,  who  accepted 
it  with  alacrity.  From  this  moment  "  General  Mousseux  " — as 
Santerre  was  nicknamed  by  the  people  on  account  of  the  frothy 
beer  he  manufactured — became  an  intime  of  the  Due  d' Orleans, 
driving  about  Paris  with  him  in  his  cabriolet,  dining  with  him  at 
cabarets,^  and  whilst  referring  to  the  people  as  "  vile  brigands  and 
rascally  rabble,"  ^  scattering  amongst  them  the  gold  with  which 
the  duke  provided  him.  It  is  easy,  therefore,  to  understand  that 
Reveillon  with  his  three  to  four  hundred  well-paid  and  contented 
workmen,  in  the  very  quarter  where  the  agitators  were  exerting 
every  effort  to  sow  discontent,  proved  highly  obnoxious  to  the 
conspirators,  and  the  destruction  of  the  paper  factory  was  hardly 
less  necessary  to  their  designs  than  the  destruction  of  that  other 
building  in  the  same  district — the  chateau  of  the  Bastille.  The 
factory  and  the  fortress  must  therefore  both  be  destroyed  before 
the  agitators  could  depend  on  the  Faubourg  to  carry  out  their 
designs  unchecked. 

The  Affaire  Reveillon  thus  served  a  double  purpose,  for  it  had 
not  only  cleared  the  ground  of  one  obstacle,  but  it  had  prepared 
the  way  for  the  removal  of  the  other ;  it  was,  in  fact,  an  admirable 
rehearsal  for  the  attack  on  the  Bastille,  it  had  enabled  the  con- 
spirators to  test  the  efficacy  of  their  methods  for  assembling  a 
mob,  and  if  it  had  ended  in  defeat  they  reaUzed  that  they  had 
but  to  overcome  the  loyalty  of  the  troops  in  order  to  ensure  the 
success  of  the  further  venture.  As  this  book  will  show,  every  one 
of  the  great  popular  tumults  of  the  Revolution  was  preceded  by 

^  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  i.  210,  211,  confirmed  by  Maton  de 
la  Varenne,  Histoire  Particuliire,  etc. 

*  MSmoires  de  Sinart,  edit,  de  Lescure,  p.  27. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        45 

some  such  abortive  rising— the  14th  of  July  by  the  27th  of  April, 
the  6th  of  October  by  the  30th  of  August,  and  the  loth  of  August 
1792  by  the  20th  of  June.  On  each  of  these  occasions  the  agitators, 
finding  it  impossible  to  rouse  the  people  to  the  required  pitch  of 
violence,  were  obliged  to  cast  about  for  fresh  methods  to  achieve 
their  ends. 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  any  account  of  the  Siege  of 
the  Bastille  must  begin  with  its  prelude  in  the  Affaire  R6veillon. 
From  this  moment  the  conspirators  never  relaxed  their  efforts 
to  corrupt  the  troops  and  to  undermine  the  royal  authority. 
In  order  to  understand  how  they  accompHshed  their  purpose 
we  must  follow  their  movements  not  only  in  the  city  of  Paris  but 
in  the  States-General  that  met  at  Versailles  on  the  5th  of  May, 
a  week  after  the  Affaire  Reveillon. 


THE  WORK  OF  REFORM 

It  is  a  common  device  of  pro-revolutionary  writers  to  repre- 
sent the  National  Assembly  (into  which  the  States-General 
were  transformed  on  June  17)  as  divided  into  two  opposing 
camps  formed  by  revolutionary  leaders  who  desired  reforms 
and  by  reactionaries  who  opposed  them.  According  to  this 
theory  the  delay  in  framing  the  Constitution  was  caused  merely 
by  the  recalcitrance  of  the  noblesse  and  clergy  in  relinquishing 
their  privileges.  But  if  we  study  the  reports  of  the  debates  that 
took  place  in  the  Assembly  we  shall  find  that  the  real  obstruc- 
tionists were  the  revolutionary  deputies.  For  in  the  Assembly, 
as  in  the  city  of  Paris,  two  of  the  great  conspiracies  had  their 
representatives — the  OrUanistes  led  by  Mirabeau  and  including 
Bamave  and  the  two  Lameths,  also  the  duke  himself  and  his  boon 
companions  the  Due  de  Biron  and  the  Marquis  de  Sillery,  and  the 
Subversives  who  consisted  in  a  herd  of  quarrelsome  nonentities, 
of  which  Robespierre  was  the  typical  representative.^  These  two 
revolutionary  factions,  far  from  representing  democracy,  were 
concerned  solely  in  furthering  their  own  designs.  For  since  not 
a  single  cahier  had  expressed  dissatisfaction  either  with  the 
reigning  dynasty  or  with  the  monarchy,  the  faction  that  wished 
to  replace  Louis  XVI.  by  the  Due  d'Orleans  and  the  faction  that 
wished  to  destroy  the  monarchy  were  both  equally  opposed  to 
the  people's  wishes.    The  election  of  these  members  as  repre- 

^  Gouverneur  Morris  well  described  this  faction  under  the  name  of  the 
"  Enrages  "  :  "  These  are  the  most  numerous,  and  are  of  that  class  which 
in  America  is  known  by  the  name  of  pettifogging  lawyers,  together  with  a 
host  of  curates  and  many  of  those  who,  in  all  revolutions,  throng  to  the 
standard  of  change  because  they  are  not  well"  [sic]  {Diary  and  Letters 
of  Gouverneur  Morris,  i.  277). 


46  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

sentatives  of  the  people  had  therefore  been  secured  on  false 
pretences,  and  their  attitude  from  the  outset  was  necessarily  one 
of  dupUcity  and  imposture.  Unable  to  avow  their  real  policy 
lest  they  should  be  (isowned  by  their  constituents,  they  adopted 
a  method  which  effectually  delayed  the  work  of  reform — ^that  of 
diverting  attention  from  the  real  issues  at  stake  by  perpetual 
quibbles  over  matters  of  no  importance. 

It  was  against  these  revolutionary  obstructionists  far  more 
than  against  the  reactionary  portion  of  the  noblesse  that  the  true 
reformers  had  to  contend.  Now  the  party  which  advocated 
true  reform  was  represented  by  several  very  able  and  enlightened 
men — Jean  Joseph  Mounier,  a  magistrate  from  Dauphine,  noted 
for  his  integrity  and  love  of  justice,  Pierre  Victor  Malouet,  the 
Comte  de  Virieu,  the  Comte  de  Lally  Tollendal,  and  the  Comte 
de  Clermont  Tonnerre.  This  party,  known  as  that  of  the  "  Royalist 
democrats  "  and  later  as  the  "  Constitutionals,"  represented  in 
reaUty  the  cause  of  true  democracy,  and  their  royalism  resulted 
solely  from  the  fact  that  in  the  person  of  Louis  XVI.  they  saw, 
as  did  the  people,  the  surest  guarantee  of  liberty  and  justice. 
"  The  majority  of  the  people,"  says  Bouille,  "  were  attached  to 
this  party,  as  also  all  the  municipalities  of  the  kingdom  and  the 
Gardes  Nationales.  The  plan  of  the  leaders  was  to  establish 
a  democratic  monarchy  that  they  called  '  a  royal  democracy.'  " 
If  we  refer  again  to  the  cahiers  we  shaU  find  that  this  policy 
was  exactly  in  accord  with  the  unanimous  desires  of  the  nation, 
and  we  shall  then  recognize  the  fundamental  error  of  regarding 
the  Revolution  as  the  movement  for  reform  carried  to  excess. 
Reform  and  revolution  were  two  totally  distinct  movements,  and  not 
only  distinct  but  directly  opposed  to  each  other. 

Since,  in  all  assemblies,  those  who  make  the  most  noise  are 
those  that  most  readily  obtain  a  hearing,  the  Tiers  £tat  allowed 
itself  to  be  dominated  by  the  two  contentious  factions,  and  the 
voice  of  reform  was  drowned  by  floods  of  futile  verbiage.  So, 
although  revolutionary  writers  depict  the  people  of  France  at 
this  crisis  as  on  the  verge  of  starvation  and  "  groaning  mider 
oppressions,"  we  have  only  to  consult  the  Moniteur  to  find  that 
during  the  first  four  weeks  after  the  opening  of  the  States-General 
not  one  word  was  spoken  in  the  hall  of  the  Tiers  Etat  on  the  subject 
of  the  famine  or  the  sufferings  of  the  people.  When  at  last  after 
a  month  it  was  suggested,  not  by  the  Tiers  ttat  but  by  the  clergy, 
that  the  Assembly  should  turn  its  attention  to  the  question  of 
the  people's  bread,  the  proposal  was  received  with  a  howl  of 
execration  by  the  revolutionary  factions.  "  It  was  just  like  the 
clergy  !  "  to  try  by  these  means  to  divert  attention  from  the  union 
of  the  orders  !  "  The  clergy  should  be  denounced  as  seditious  !  " 
Robespierre  in  a  violent  diatribe  demanded  why  the  clergy,  if 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        47 

they  were  so  concerned  for  the  people's  welfare,  did  not  sell  all 
they  possessed  to  supply  their  needs. ^  The  speech  was  as  sense- 
less as  it  was  unjust ;  the  HberaUty  of  the  clergy  in  the  matter  of 
relieving  distress  had  been  unbounded,  and,  as  everybody  knew, 
the  famine  was  not  caused  by  lack  of  funds  but  by  the  difficulty 
of  obtaining  and  circulating  grain.  But  this  was  the  point  of  all 
others  on  which  the  revolutionary  factions  were  the  most  anxious 
to  avoid  inquiry,  and  their  complicity  with  the  monopolizers  is 
evident  from  the  debates  that  took  place  on  the  subject  of 
monopoly.  Now,  if  ever,  was  their  opportunity  for  publicly 
denouncing  the  "  aristocrats "  they  accused  of  cornering  the 
grain,  but  far  from  substantiating  these  charges  their  poHcy 
was  invariably  to  suppress  all  discussion  of  the  question.  Thus, 
as  M.  Louis  Blanc  in  a  rare  fit  of  candour  admits,  "  the  sacred 
question  of  feeding  the  people  was  lost  to  sight,"  and  "  the 
Assembly  in  a  way  passed  over  social  misery  and  the  hunger  of 
the  people  to  other  subjects."  These  subjects  were,  of  course, 
inevitably  party  quarrels  in  general,  and  the  *'  Union  of  the 
Orders  "  in  particular. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  vexed  question  of  a  single 
chamber  ;  much  was  to  be  said  for  it,  much  against  it.  The  true 
democrats  of  the  Assembly  undoubtedly  desired  it  on  the  ground 
that  no  reforms  could  be  effected  if  the  noblesse  and  clergy  were 
enabled  to  obstruct  them.  Arthur  Young  considered  this  un- 
reasonable. "  Among  such  men,  the  common  idea  is  that 
anything  tending  towards  a  separate  order,  Uke  our  House  of 
Lords,  is  absolutely  inconsistent  with  liberty  ;  all  which  seems 
perfectly  wild  and  unfounded." 

Whether  the  union  of  the  three  orders  was  advisable  or  not, 
one  thing  is  certain — ^that  the  revolutionary  factions  did  every- 
thing in  their  power  to  prevent  it  taking  place  by  their  aggressive 
attitude  towards  the  nobihty  and  clergy.  But  the  great  objec- 
tion to  the  union  of  the  three  orders  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  Tiers 
£tat  insisted  on  admitting  strangers  indiscriminately  to  their 
debates,  with  the  result  that  the  most  frightful  confusion  pre- 
vailed, and  that  the  deputies,  instead  of  expressing  their  real 
convictions,  were  tempted  to  talk  to  the  galleries  in  order  to  win 
popularity.  "  Learn,  sir,"  said  the  deputy  Bouche  to  Malouet 
in  a  speech  on  May  28,  "that  we  are  debating  here  in  the 
presence  of  our  masters  !  " 

The  revolutionary  leaders  took  care  to  ensure  support  from 
the  galleries,  and  a  great  part  of  the  audience  was  their  own 
claque,  composed  of  Paris  idlers  and  ruffians  in  their  pay, 
whom  they  sent  for  to  intimidate  their  adversaries,  and  who, 
before  long,  not  content  with  applauding  sedition,  expressed 
^  Souvenirs  sur  Mirabeau,  by  litienne  Dumont,  p.  44. 


48  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

their  disapproval  by  boos  and  hisses.  What  assembly,  however 
democratic,  could  continue  to  debate  under  such  conditions  ?  ^ 

So  great  was  the  confusion  into  which  the  revolutionary 
factions  succeeded  in  throwing  the  Assembly  that  Louis  XVI. 
finally  resolved  to  intervene,  and  announced  his  intention  of 
holding  a  Seance  Royale.  For  this  purpose  it  was  necessary 
to  make  use  of  the  hall  of  the  Tiers  fitat,  the  "  Salle  des  Menus 
Plaisirs,"  which,  being  the  largest  of  the  three,  was  the  only  one 
capable  of  containing  the  deputies  of  all  three  orders,  and  had 
therefore  been  used  for  the  meeting  of  the  States-General.  Ac- 
cordingly the  Tiers  were  informed  that  the  hall  must  be  closed 
to  debates  for  two  days  only^  and  in  order  to  avert  ill-feeling  the 
halls  of  the  noblesse  and  clergy  were  closed  likewise.  The 
announcement  was  received  without  a  murmur  by  the  "  privileged 
orders,"  but  the  Tiers,  furious  at  the  royal  edict,  repaired  to  the 
**  tennis  court  "  close  by  and  held  an  indignation  meeting,  where, 
at  the  instigation  of  Mounier — ^who  afterwards  bitterly  repented 
his  action — ^they  swore  not  to  separate  until  they  had  framed  the 
Constitution. 

Regardless  of  this  act  of  open  insubordination  Louis  XVI. 
appeared  at  the  Seance  Royale  on  June  23  ^  and  announced 
his  intentions  to  the  Assembly.  In  dignified  yet  touching  words 
he  besought  the  representatives  of  the  people  to  carry  on  the 
work  of  reform  he  had  inaugurated  ;  he  reminded  them  that  the 

^  See  the  evidence  of  Arthur  Young,  an  eye-witness  of  these  scenes  : 
"  The  spectators  in  the  galleries  are  allowed  to  interfere  in  the  debates 
by  clapping  their  hands,  and  other  noisy  expressions  of  approbation  :  this 
is  grossly  indecent ;  for  if  they  are  permitted  to  express  approbation,  they 
are,  by  parity  of  reason,  allowed  expressions  of  dissent,  and  they  may 
hiss  as  well  as  clap,  which  it  is  said  they  have  sometimes  done  :  this  would 
be  to  overrule  the  debate  and  influence  the  deliberations.  Another  cir- 
cumstance is  the  want  of  order  among  themselves  ;  more  than  once  to-day 
.there  were  more  than  a  hundred  members  on  their  legs  at  a  time,"  etc. 
\/^  {Travels  in  France,  p.  165).  Lord  Dorset  in  a  letter  to  the  Duke  of  Leeds 
on  June  4,  1789,  confirms  this  description:  "  I  am  told  that  the  most 
extravagant  and  disrespectful  language  against  Government  has  been  held, 
and  that  upon  all  such  occasions  the  greatest  approbation  is  expressed  by 
the  audience,  by  clapping  of  hands  and  other  demonstrations  of  satisfac- 
tion :  in  short,  the  encouragement  is  such  as  to  have  led  some  of  the  speakers 
on  to  say  things  little  short  of  treason.  The  NobiUty,  as  may  be  supposed, 
are  roughly  treated  in  these  debates,  and  their  conduct  does  not  escape 
being  represented  in  the  most  odious  light  possible.  The  Clergy  and 
Nobihty  hold  their  meetings  in  separate  chambers,  and  neither  of  them 
admit  strangers  to  be  present  at  their  dehberations "  {Dispatches  from 
Paris,  ii.  207). 

'  The  Stance  Royale  was  announced  for  Monday,  June  22,  and  the  hall 
was  closed  on  Saturday  the  20th.  As  the  Assembly  did  not  sit  on  Sundays, 
this  meant  the  Seance  of  Saturday  only  would  be  missed. 

*  At  the  request  of  Necker  the  Stance  Royale  was  afterwards  post- 
poned till  Tuesday  the  23rd. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        49 

States-General  had  been  assembled  for  nearly  two  months,  yet  had 
not  been  able  to  agree  on  the  preliminaries  of  their  work ;  he 
appealed  to  their  love  for  their  country,  to  their  traditions  as 
Frenchmen,  to  cease  from  dissensions  and  work  together  for  the 
common  good.  "  I  owe  it  to  myself  to  put  an  end  to  these 
disastrous  differences ;  it  is  with  this  resolution  that  I  have 
gathered  you  around  me  as  the  father  of  all  my  subjects,  as  the 
defender  of  the  laws  of  my  kingdom." 

Since  it  was  essential,  without  further  delay,  to  meet  the 
demands  of  the  people,  the  King  proceeded  to  enumerate  the 
reforms  that,  acting  on  the  royal  prerogative,  he  proposed  to 
introduce.  These  were,  above  all,  the  equaUty  of  taxation  and 
abolition  of  the  pecuniary  privileges  of  the  noblesse  and  clergy ; 
further,  the  total  abolition  of  the  taille,  of  corvees,  francs- 
fiefs,  lettres  de  cachet,  mainmorte,  and  personal  charges, 
greater  liberty  of  the  press,  the  mitigation  or  even  the  abolition 
of  the  gabelle,  and  the  restriction  of  capitaineries  or  game- 
laws. 

Thus  of  his  own  accord  the  King  had  redressed  the  principal 
grievances  of  the  Old  Regime ;  he  refused,  however,  to  abolish 
all  the  feudal  rights  of  the  noblesse  and  clergy,  which  he  held 
not  to  be  his  to  do  away  with.  This  sacrifice  was  therefore  left 
to  the  two  orders  to  make  themselves,  and  they  made  it  voluntarily 
six  weeks  later.  The  King's  speech  ended  with  these  significant 
words  : 

"  You  have  heard,  messieurs,  the  result  of  my  inclinations 
and  my  views  .  .  .  and  if  by  a  fataUty  far  from  my  thoughts 
you  abandon  me  in  so  great  an  enterprise,  alone  I  will  accomplish 
the  welfare  of  my  people,  alone  I  shall  consider  myself  as  their 
true  representative  ;  and  knowing  your  cahiers,  knowing  the 
perfect  accord  that  exists  between  the  general  wishes  of  the  nation 
and  my  benevolent  intentions  ...  I  shall  walk  towards  the 
goal  with  all  the  courage  and  firmness  that  it  inspires  in  me." 

What  could  this  mean  ?  One  thing  only.  Those  two 
ominous  phrases  had  made  the  King's  intentions  clear — "  alone 
I  will  accompUsh  the  welfare  of  my  people,  alone  I  shall  consider 
myself  as  their  true  representative."  In  other  words,  the  King 
intimated  that  if  the  Tiers  Etat  did  not  cease  its  quarrels  and 
"get  to  business,"  he  would  dissolve  the  States-General  and  carry 
out  the  work  of  reform  himself. 

What  wonder  that  the  King's  discourse  was  received  in 
gloomy  silence  by  the  Tiers  ?  What  wonder  that  the  factions 
trembled  in  their  seats  ?  What  wonder  that  Orl6anistes  and 
Subversives  alike  feared  for  those  fortunes  they  had  hoped  to 
build  on  pubUc  confusion  ?  What  wonder  that  Mirabeau,  seeing 
the  ministry  he  coveted  vanishing  into  space,  rose  in  wrath  to 

E 


50  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

utter  his  famous  "  apostrophe  "  ?  The  King  had  left  the  hall, 
and  De  Br6z6,  the  master  of  ceremonies,  declared  the  sitting 
ended,  when  Mirabeau,  who  exactly  a  week  before  in  supporting 
the  royal  veto  had  stated,  "  I  could  imagine  nothing  more 
terrible  than  the  sovereign  aristocracy  of  600  persons  who 
to-morrow  might  declare  themselves  immovable,"  now  insolently 
defied  the  King's  order  with  the  words,  "  We  will  only  leave 
our  places  by  the  force  of  the  bayonet !  " 

So  ended  this  sitting  that  tnight  have  laid  the  foundations 
of  French  liberty  for  ever.  The  thing  that  the  revolutionary 
factions  dreaded  more  than  any  other  threatened  to  occur — the 
regeneration  of  the  kingdom  was  to  be  accomplished  peacefully 
and  the  monarchy  established  on  a  free  and  constitutional  basis. 
If  any  further  proof  were  needed  that  the  work  of  the  revolu- 
tionary factions  was  actively  opposed  to  the  work  of  reform,  it 
is  to  be  found  in  this  one  undeniable  fact  that,  throughout  the 
whole  Revolution  until  the  fall  of  the  monarchy,  every  concession 
made  by  the  King  to  the  desires  of  the  people,  every  step  in  the  work 
of  the  reform,  was  the  signal  for  a  fresh  outbreak  of  revolutionary 
fury. 

Accordingly  the  immense  reforms  of  the  Seance  Royale,  far 
from  bringing  a  peaceful  settlement  of  the  crisis,  were  followed 
by  renewed  scenes  of  violence.  Two  days  later  the  Archbishop 
of  Paris,  beloved  by  all  the  true  people  for  his  benevolence  and 
the  uprightness  of  his  Ufe,  was  attacked  by  a  band  of  hired 
rioters  as  he  was  leaving  the  Assembly,  and  only  escaped  with 
his  hfe  owing  to  the  speed  of  his  horses  and  the  courage  and 
presence  of  mind  of  his  coachman. 

The  fact  that  four  days  after  the  Seance  Royale  the  noblesse 
and  clergy,  in  obedience  to  the  King's  command,  settled  the 
burning  question  of  a  single  chamber  by  joining  the  Tiers  fitat, 
did  nothing  to  allay  the  fermentation  the  revolutionaries  had 
succeeded  in  creating.  If,  as  the  Tiers  ]£tat  had  declared,  the 
refusal  of  the  noblesse  to  concede  this  point  had  been  the  only 
obstacle  to  the  work  of  reform,  why  did  this  work  not  proceed 
now  that  the  obstacle  had  been  removed  ?  On  the  contrary, 
the  Tiers,  once  they  had  the  noblesse  and  clergy  at  their  mercy, 
showed  themselves  more  aggressive  than  ever  and  in  no  way 
disposed  to  discuss  peaceably  the  regeneration  of  the  kingdom. 
True,  a  "  committee  of  subsistences  "  was  formed  for  dealing 
with  the  question  of  the  famine,  but  as  it  consisted  almost  entirely 
of  Orleanistes,  including  the  Due  d' Orleans  himself,  nothing  was 
done  to  relieve  the  distress  of  the  people,  and  the  famine  con- 
tinued its  ravages. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE   BASTILLE        51 


THE  HOTBED   OF  REVOLUTION 

Whilst  these  scenes  were  taking  place  at  Versailles  the 
agitators  of  Paris,  in  close  touch  with  the  revolutionary  factions 
of  the  Assembly,  had  been  busy  stirring  up  insurrection.  Night 
and  day  the  dusty  garden  of  the  Palais  Royal  was  filled  to  over- 
flowing ;  no  longer  merely  a  haunt  of  vice,  it  had  now  become 
a  poUtical  arena — a  sort  of  Trafalgar  Square  and  Burhngton 
Arcade  combined — where  every  device  was  employed  to  play 
upon  the  passions  of  men — ^women,  wine,  the  lust  of  gold,  envy, 
hatred,  and  revenge.  At  the  little  tables  outside  the  cafes 
idlers  gathered  in  heated  debate  ;  under  the  long  arcades,  where 
the  marchands  de  frivoliUs  displayed  their  wares,  painted  women 
of  the  town  walked  arm-in-arm  attracting  with  bold  glances 
the  soldiers  who  passed  by ;  in  the  gambling  hells  the  rattle  of 
the  dice  and  the  clink  of  coin  continued  far  into  the  night,  and 
under  the  trees  cheap- jack  politicians  with  rolling  eyes  and 
furious  gestures  stirred  the  people  to  violence.  With  these 
mob  orators  noise  was  of  the  first  importance,  and  working  them- 
selves up  into  convulsions  of  revolutionary  frenzy  they  shrieked 
invectives  against  the  aristocrats  and  the  Court,  or  yelled  foul 
blasphemies  on  God  and  religion. 

Most  violent  of  all  was  the  Marquis  de  St.  Huruge,  an  ex- 
convict,  whose  stentorian  voice  seemed  indefatigable ;  above 
the  heads  of  the  crowd  his  white  hat  could  be  seen  afar,  a  rally- 
ing point  for  disorder,  whilst  with  an  immense  cudgel,  manipu- 
lated like  a  conductor's  baton,  he  roused  or  soothed  the  passions 
of  his  auditors.  Philippe  d'Orleans,  looking  down  on  this  scene 
from  his  windows  at  the  end  of  the  long  square,  had  reason  to 
congratulate  himself  on  the  vast  machinery  that  the  genius  of 
Choderlos  de  Laclos  had  set  in  motion.  Recently  a  number  of 
new  recruits  had  been  added  to  the  conspiracy,  of  which  the 
most  important  was  a  young  journalist  from  Guise,  Camille 
DesmouUns — discovered  by  Mirabeau — who  tempted  the  greed 
of  the  populace  with  promises  of  booty  to  be  wrested  from  the 
nobility  and  clergy : 

"  The  brute  is  in  the  trap,  then  kill  it !  .  .  .  Never  was 
richer  prey  offered  to  the  conqueror !  Forty  thousand  palaces, 
hotels,  and  chateaux,  two-fifths  of  the  wealth  of  France,  will  be 
the  price  of  valour !  "  ^ 

The  services  of  several  new  agitators  had  also  been  enlisted 
— the  comedian  Grammont,  a  man  of  extraordinary  ferocity, 
with,  as  we  shall  see  later,  a  literal  "  taste  for  blood  "  ;  a  convict 
from  San  Domingo  known  as  Foumier  I'Am^ricain,  Stanislas 

^  La  France  Libre. 


52  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Maillard,  a  future  director  of  the  September  massacres,  and  one 
woman  whose  wit  and  daring  was  to  prove  an  immense  acquisi- 
tion to  the  cause.^ 

Anne  Terwagne  of  Marcourt  was  a  Belgian  demi-mondaine 
and  an  old  friend  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  when  the  Revolution 
broke  out.  Several  years  before  she  had  been  introduced  to 
him  in  London  by  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  it  was  to  the  duke 
she  owed  her  rise  to  fortune,  for  on  her  return  to  Paris  she  became 
a  briUiant  courtesan  with  jewels,  carriages,  and  horses,  and 
under  the  name  of  "  Comtesse  de  Campinados  "  travelled  about 
the  Continent  with  various  rich  protectors.^  The  "  Comtesse  " 
was  in  Rome  when  the  States-General  met,  but  the  gathering 
of  the  revolutionary  storm  brought  her  hurriedly  back  to  Paris, 
where,  adopting  "  Theroigne  de  Mericourt  "  as  her  nom  de  guerre, 
she  threw  herself  into  the  cause  of  her  old  benefactor,  the  Due 
d'Orleans.  Theroigne  was  far  from  resembUng  the  "  unfortunate 
female  "  burning  to  avenge  her  wrongs  on  a  corrupt  society, 
who  masqueraded  under  her  name  through  the  pages  of  Carlyle, 
for  it  was  with  the  most  corrupt  portion  of  society  that  she  now 
identified  herself.  Small  and  fragile,  with  brilliant  black  eyes, 
an  impertinent  retrousse  nose,  and  "  a  waist  that  a  man  could 
encircle  with  his  ten  fingers,"  Theroigne  at  her  salon  in  the 
Rue  de  Bouloi  reigned  as  a  queen  of  the  demi-monde,  assembling 
around  her  the  leaders  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,  of  which 
the  Abb6  Sieyes  was  her  particular  idol. 

The  role  played  by  courtesans  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
Revolution  has  never  been  properly  estimated  by  historians ; 
but  for  the  co-operation  of  these  women,  from  Theroigne  de 
Mericourt  down  to  the  humblest  fille  de  joie,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  the  great  scheme  of  the  Orleanistes — the  defection  of 
the  army — could  ever  have  been  reaUzed.  The  French  Guards, 
the  gayest  and  most  essentially  Parisian  regiment  in  the  army, 
were  habitual  frequenters  of  the  Palais  Royal,  and  thus  became 
the  aUies  of  the  courtesans  who  lodged  in  the  surrounding  houses 
and  haunted  the  arcades ;  in  some  cases  the  soldiers  played 
the  part  of  souteneurs,  sharing  the  incomes  of  the  Jllles  de 
joie,  and  these  incomes  being  now  largely  increased  by  the 
bounty  of  the  duke,  both  reaped  the  golden  harvest  sown  by 
the  conspirators.  By  this  means  the  French  Guards,  who  had 
stood  firm  at  the  Affaire  Reveillon,  were  gradually  turned  from 
their  allegiance.  Towards  the  end  of  June,  the  regiment  having 
been  confined  to  barracks  for  insubordination,  three  hundred 
broke  loose  and  paraded  the  streets  of  Paris,  finally  presenting 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  i.  221  ;  Philippe  d'OrUans  ^galiU, 
by  Auguste  Ducoin,  p.  50. 

*  Thiroigne  de  AUricourt,  by  Marcellin  Pellet,  p,  10. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        53 

t  hemselves  at  the  Palais  Royal,  where  they  received  a  rapturous 
reception  from  the  courtesans  and  were  regaled  with  wine  and 
good  cheer. 

This  open  revolt  at  last  spurred  the  authorities  to  action 
and  eleven  of  the  ringleaders  were  imprisoned  in  the  Abbaye. 
Immediately  a  yell  of  indignation  went  up  from  the  Palais  Royal, 
and  an  army  of  brigands,  led  by  Jourdan,  with  Maillard  as  his 
aide-de-camp  and  Theroigne  de  Mericourt  as  Amazon,  set  forth 
to  deliver  the  "  victims  of  despotism."  With  clubs  and  hatchets 
the  doors  of  the  Abbaye  were  broken  down,  and  all  the  prisoners — 
not  only  the  deserters  but  a  number  of  criminals — ^were  let  loose 
in  the  streets.  Once  more  the  Palais  Royal  received  the  rebels, 
a  magnificent  supper  was  spread,  whilst  bonfires  and  fireworks 
turned  night  into  day.  Yet  even  after  this  outbreak  the  King 
was  persuaded  to  pardon  the  insurgents.  It  is  the  custom  of 
historians,  whether  Royahst  or  Revolutionary,  to  accuse  Louis 
XVI.  of  weakness.  This  charge,  brought  by  those  who  believe 
that  a  king  should  be  the  ruler  and  not  the  servant  of  his  people, 
is  certainly  consistent,  but  for  believers  in  the  sovereignty  of 
the  people  to  accuse  Louis  XVI.  of  weakness  is  both  unjust 
and  illogical.  Louis  XVI.  carried  out  the  principles  of  democracy 
to  their  utmost  conclusion ;  he  believed  that  he  existed  for  his 
people,  not  his  people  for  him.  "  Despotism,"  says  the  demo- 
cratic Bailly,  "  had  no  place  in  the  King's  character ;  he  never 
desired  anything  but  the  happiness  of  his  people ;  this  was  the 
only  means  that  could  be  employed  to  influence  him — a  less 
kind-hearted  king,  cleverer  ministers,  and  there  would  have 
been  no  revolution."  As  long,  therefore,  as  the  mob  orators 
inveighed  against  the  Court,  and  the  agitators  incited  the  people 
to  rise  against  his  own  authority,  the  King  refused  to  put  down 
sedition  by  force ;  only  when  the  people  turned  on  each  other 
he  held  it  his  duty  to  save  them  from  themselves.  When  at 
last  the  scenes  of  violence  taking  place  at  the  Palais  Royal  had 
reached  such  a  pitch  that  no  law-abiding  citizen  could  venture 
inside  the  garden,  the  King  was  placed  in  the  frightful  dilemma 
of  having  to  decide  whether  to  bring  out  troops  to  restore  order, 
and,  as  at  every  crisis  in  the  Revolution,  he  found  himself  torn 
between  conflicting  counsels.  On  the  one  hand  the  so-called  demo- 
crats of  the  Assembly  represented  the  iniquity  of  opposing  the 
"  sovereign  will  of  the  people,"  on  the  other  hand  the  noblesse 
and  clergy  protested  that  it  was  "  a  cruel  derision  thus  to  con- 
found the  people  it  was  necessary  to  restrain  with  those  it  was 
necessary  to  protect,"  and  therefore  urged  the  King  to  order  out 
troops  for  the  defence  of  the  town.  So  great,  indeed,  was  the 
alarm  of  the  citizens  that  by  the  end  of  June  the  commons  of 
Paris  began  to  inaugurate  a  garde  bourgeoise  for  protection  against 


54  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  brigands.  Since  the  assembHng  of  the  troops  round  Paris 
has  been  habitually  accepted  as  the  principal  reason  for  the 
Revolution  of  July,  this  point  is  important  to  remember. 

The  King  finally  decided  to  employ  the  army  for  the  defence 
of  the  town ;  and  as  it  was  essential  to  guard  against  further 
defection,  two  regiments  of  Swiss  and  German  auxiliaries  were 
included,  partly  because  these  men  were  especially  amenable 
to  discipline,  but  mainly  because  their  ignorance  of  the  French 
language  rendered  them  less  liable  to  corruption  by  the  agents 
of  the  Palais  Royal.^  The  circumstance  of  their  nationality, 
however,  afforded  a  fresh  pretext  for  stirring  up  the  crowd — 
"  foreign  legions  to  be  employed  against  the  nation  I  "  Yet 
the  revolutionaries  did  not  hesitate  to  welcome  these  foreigners 
into  their  own  ranks  when  by  their  usual  methods  of  women, 
wine,  and  money  they  succeeded  in  seducing  them  from  their 
allegiance  to  the  King.  A  German  hussar  mounted  in  the 
ranks  for  the  defence  of  French  citizens  was  a  "  foreign  mer- 
cenary "  ;  the  same  hussar  drinking  with  the  courtesans  of 
the  Palais  Royal  to  the  downfall  of  the  French  monarchy  was 
a  man  and  a  brother.  This  throughout  the  Revolution,  as  we 
shall  see,  was  the  "  patriotism  "  of  the  leaders. 

The  presence  of  any  loyal  troops,  whether  foreign  or  other- 
wise, was  naturally  calculated  to  thwart  the  designs  of  the 
conspirators,  for,  apart  from  the  opposition  they  offered  to  in- 
surrection, the  troops  acted  as  a  guard  to  the  convoys  of  grain 
intended  for  the  capital.  The  Marechal  de  BrogUe,  the  Baron 
de  Bezenval,  and  the  Prince  de  Lambesc  had  proved  untiring 
in  their  efforts  to  protect  the  wagons  of  com  from  the  on- 
slaughts of  the  brigands  that  lay  in  wait  round  Paris,  and  for 
this  reason  had  become  odious  to  the  agitators. ^ 

The  mob  orators  of  the  Palais  Royal  therefore  set  to  work  to 
stir  up  a  fresh  panic.  "  Vast  hordes  of  foreign  soldiers  were  to 
be  marched  against  the  capital  to  massacre  the  citizens — ^the 
Palais  Royal  would  be  given  over  to  pillage — ^the  city  was  to  be 
bombarded  with  red-hot  cannon-balls  and  everything  put  to 
fire  and  sword.  Meanwhile  at  Versailles  the  National  Assembly 
was  to  be  blown  up  by  mines  laid  beneath  the  floor."  This 
wild  farrago  of  nonsense  was  believed  not  only  by  the  ignorant 
populace  of  Paris,  but  was  seriously  repeated  by  the  deputies 
themselves.  Mirabeau  at  the  Assembly,  working  on  their  alarms, 
exerted  all  his  energy  to  fan  the  flame  of  insurrection  : 

"  When  troops  advance  from  all  sides,  when  camps  are  formed 

1  Marmontel,  iv.  137;  Dispatches  from  Paris,  letter  from  Lord  Dorset, 
dated  July  9,  1789. 

"  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  19;  Mdmoires  de  BSzenval, 
ii.  396. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        55 

around  us,  when  the  capital  is  besieged,  we  ask  ourselves  with 
astonishment,  *  Does  the  King  doubt  the  fideUty  of  his  people  ? 
What  means  this  threatening  display  ?  Where  are  the  enemies 
of  the  King  and  State  that  must  be  subdued  ?  Where  are  the 
plotters  that  must  be  restrained  ?  '  " 

This  whilst  the  Palais  Royal  was  a  hotbed  of  sedition,  when 
"  almost  every  day  produced  some  act  of  violence,"  ^  when  the 
citizens  of  Paris  themselves  were  arming  for  purposes  of  self- 
protection  ! 

The  tirade  was  a  masterpiece  of  hypocrisy  and  cunning ;  no 
one  knew  better  than  Mirabeau  the  necessity  for  maintaining 
order,  no  one  reahzed  more  keenly  the  horrors  of  anarchy,  and 
no  one  was  less  truly  democratic. 

The  King's  reply  to  the  demands  of  the  deputies  for  the  with- 
drawal of  the  troops  was  brief  and  to  the  point : 

"  No  one  is  ignorant  of  the  disorders  and  scandalous  scenes 
that  have  taken  place  repeatedly  in  Paris  and  Versailles  under 
my  eyes  and  those  of  the  States-General.  It  is  necessary  that 
I  should  employ  all  the  means  within  my  power  to  restore  and 
maintain  order  in  the  capital  and  its  surroundings.  It  is  one 
of  my  principal  duties  to  guard  public  safety.  These  are  the 
motives  that  led  me  to  assemble  troops  round  Paris,  and  you  can 
assure  the  States-General  that  they  are  intended  only  to  repress 
or  rather  to  avert  such-Uke  disorders,  to  enforce  the  law,  even 
to  assure  and  protect  the  Uberty  that  should  reign  in  your  de- 
liberations. .  .  .  Only  evilly-disposed  persons  could  mislead  my 
people  as  to  the  true  motives  for  the  precautionary  measures 
I  have  taken.  I  have  invariably  sought  to  do  all  that  I  could 
to  contribute  to  their  happiness,  and  I  have  always  had  reason 
to  beUeve  in  their  love  and  loyalty." 

That  the  King  was  absolutely  sincere  in  making  these  assur- 
ances was  afterwards  proved  by  the  trial  of  Bezenval,  the  com- 
mander of  the  Swiss  Guard.  In  January  1790  the  Commune 
of  Paris,  at  the  instigation  of  the  Orleanistes,  arraigned  Bezenval 
before  the  tribunal  of  the  Chatelet  for  "  having  entered  into  a 
conspiracy  formed  against  the  hberty  of  the  French  people,  of 
the  National  Assembly,  and  particularly  of  the  city  of  Paris  " 
in  the  preceding  July.  No  proof  whatever  of  a  conspiracy  was 
forthcoming ;  on  the  contrary,  it  was  proved  by  documentary 
evidence  that  the  intentions  of  the  Ministry  and  of  M.  de  Bezenval 
"  were  the  most  pacific  and  paternal "  ;  the  letters  produced 
"  manifested  the  plan  of  this  officer  for  guarding  the  provision- 
mpnt  of  Paris,  for  which  purpose  the  troops  were  assembled,  and 
that,  far  from  any  design  to  destroy  the  citizens,  they  had  been 
assembled  to  protect  them."  They  were  necessary  also  "  to 
^  Dispatches  from  Paris,  ii.  237,  letter  from  Lord  Dorset. 


56  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

repress  the  brigands  who  had  akeady  caused  disorders  in  Paris 
and  who  might  be  plotting  further  disorders."  These  facts 
having  been  proved  Bezenval  was  acquitted,  and,  in  spite  of  the 
protests  of  Marat,  the  Moniteur  itself  recognized  the  justice  of 
the  decision  :  "  The  information  taken  was  immense,  but  nothing 
criminal  was  discovered  against  the  defendant  and  he  was 
acquitted.  It  would  be  necessary  to  have  very  strong  proofs 
to  suspect  a  perfidious  collusion  between  a  respected  municipaUty 
and  an  esteemed  tribunal  only  for  the  purpose  of  deceiving  the 
populace  concerning  pretended  offences  of  which  the  most  minute 
investigation  has  been  unable  to  prove  the  reality."  ^  That  the 
troops  were  therefore  intended  for  no  aggressive  purpose  is 
certain,  and  the  necessity  for  assembUng  them  is  now  recognized 
by  enUghtened  French  historians.^ 

The  King's  speech  had  the  effect  of  allaying  pubUc  anxiety, 
and  Mirabeau  thereupon  set  immediately  to  work  on  a  new 
address  that  would  stir  up  fresh  discontent.^ 

To  Louis  XVI.  the  situation  now  became  completely  be- 
wildering. Content  to  do  his  duty  according  to  his  Hghts,  he 
could  not  understand  why  his  actions  were  perpetually  miscon- 
strued by  the  people,  he  could  not  guess  the  existence  of  the 
influences  brought  to  bear  on  their  minds  by  the  agitators  who 
made  it  their  business  to  avert  popular  satisfaction  at  every 
concession  to  the  people's  desires. 

Why  did  none  of  the  RoyaUst  democrats  in  the  Assembly 
enhghten  the  King  on  the  true  state  of  affairs  ?  That  they 
knew  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  is  certain,  for  they  afterwards 
described  the  efforts  made  by  the  duke's  supporters  to  secure 
their  co-operation — overtures  that  were  all  indignantly  repulsed. 
Mounier  and  Bergasse  were  approached  by  Mirabeau,*  Virieu 
by  Sillery,^  and  both  conspirators  met  with  almost  identically 
the  same  reply :  "  Understand,  monsieur,  that  if  any  one  here 
were  to  dare  to  call  M.  le  due  d'Orleans  to  the  throne  in  the  place 
of  the  King,  I  would  stab  him  with  my  own  hand  !  "  Lafayette, 
whose  first  enthusiasm  for  the  Revolution  had  raised  hopes  in 
the  minds  of  the  conspirators,  proved  no  less  intractable,  for  if  he 
cared  Uttle  for  the  King  he  detested  Orleans,  and  to  the  sugges- 
tion that  a  price  having  been  set  on  his  head  and  on  that  of  the 
duke  by  the  Court  he  would  do  well  to  join  forces  with  him, 

^  Moniteur  for  Jan.  4,  Feb.  4,  and  March  3,  1790. 

*  For  example,  La  Rivolution,  by  M.  Louis  Madelin,  p.  62,  "  It  will  be 
understood  that  under  these  circumstances  the  ministry  advanced  troops 
on  Paris.  The  least  reactionary  government  would  have  been  forced  to 
do  this." 

^  Appel  au  Tribunal  de  V Opinion  Puhlique,  par  Mounier,  1790. 

*  Ibid. 

*  Le  Roman  d'un  Royaliste,  par  Costa  de  Beauregard. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        57 

Lafayette  coldly  replied  that  "  the  Due  d' Orleans  was  nothing  to 
him,  and  that  it  was  needless  to  form  a  party  when  one  was 
with  the  whole  nation."  ^ 

But  instead  of  merely  rejecting  these  advances,  why  did  not 
these  men  use  their  immense  influence  to  quell  the  intrigue  ? 
We  cannot  believe  that  they  lacked  courage,  since  later  on  they 
faced  the  full  tide  of  revolution  to  support  the  tottering  monarchy; 
why  then  did  they  wait  until  it  was  too  late  ?  The  only  explana- 
tion seems  to  be  that  at  this  crisis  they  believed  the  Orleaniste 
conspiracy  to  be  incidental  to  the  Revolution ;  they  recognized 
its  existence  but  failed  to  realize  its  extent,  and  feared  that  in 
crushing  it  they  might  arrest  the  whole  revolutionary  movement 
which  they  still  held  to  be  necessary  to  the  regeneration  of  the 
kingdom.  In  a  word,  they  were  visionaries,  and  at  times  of 
national  crisis  visionaries  are  of  all  men  the  most  dangerous ; 
intent  on  the  pursuit  of  unattainable  ideals  they  shut  their  eyes 
to  realities,  and  instead  of  facing  danger  prefer  to  ignore  it. 

Most  culpable  of  all  was  Necker — Necker  whom  both  the 
King  and  Queen  had  trusted  to  steer  the  ship  of  state  to  safety. 
From  the  beginning  his  only  consideration  had  been  popularity, 
his  only  poUcy  to  temporize.  His  method  of  deaUng  with  the 
financial  crisis  had  consisted  in  raising  perpetual  loans ;  in  the 
matter  of  the  famine  Arthur  Young  declared  that  "  his  edicts 
had  operated  more  to  raise  the  price  of  com  than  aU  other  causes 
together,"  and  though  having  made  this  initial  mistake  he 
apparently  did  his  best  to  repair  it  by  untiring  efforts  to  feed  the 
people,  he  shrank  from  taking  the  most  effectual  step  towards 
this  end — ^that  of  exposing  the  monopolizers. 

The  attitude  of  Necker  admits  only  of  two  explanations — 
either  he  was  in  league  with  the  Orleanistes  or  he  was  afraid  of 
them.  In  either  case  his  conduct  was  contemptible,  as  con- 
temporaries of  all  parties  agree.  It  is  a  strange  fact  that,  although 
Necker  is  the  only  demagogue  of  the  period  who  has  never  found 
a  panegyrist — except  in  his  own  daughter,  Mme.  de  Stael — 
it  was  the  King's  discovery  of  his  incapacity,  which  all  the  world 
now  acknowledges,  that  has  been  accepted  as  an  adequate  pretext 
for  the  Revolution  of  July. 

By  the  beginning  of  this  month  Louis  XVI.  finally  realized 
that  Necker  must  go  and  a  strong  ministry  be  formed  if  the 
impending  crisis  was  to  be  averted.  Accordingly  he  dismissed 
his  ministers  and  nominated  in  their  place  De  Breteuil,  De  BrogUe, 
La  Galaiziere,  and  Foullon. 

Joseph  Frangois  Foullon  was  an  old  commissary  of  '74  who 
had  grown  grey  in  the  service  of  the  army.  His  large  fortune, 
attributed  by  the  revolutionary  leaders  to  speculation  or  monopoly 
*  Mimoires  de  Lafayette,  ii.  53. 


58  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

in  grain,  resulted  from  the  emoluments  of  his  office  and  from  his 
marriage  with  a  Dutch  heiress.^  It  is  evident  that  Foullon  was 
unpopular  with  the  people,  yet  no  proof  is  forthcoming  that  he 
had  ever  treated  them  with  harshness  ;  on  the  contrary,  during 
the  preceding  winter  he  had  spent  no  less  than  60,000  francs  in 
providing  work  for  the  peasants  of  his  province,  "  not  wishing 
to  humiUate  them  by  charity."  ^  A  stem  man,  however,  and  a 
beUever  in  discipHne,  Foullon  came  forward  at  this  juncture 
to  offer  the  King  his  advice  on  the  situation  in  the  form  of  two 
alternative  schemes  by  which  he  beheved  the  Revolution  might 
be  averted.  In  the  first  he  expressed  himself  plainly  on  the 
Orleaniste  conspiracy ;  he  advised  that  the  duke  and  his  accom- 
plices amongst  the  deputies  of  the  Assembly  should  be  arrested, 
and  that  the  King  should  not  be  parted  from  his  army  till  order 
was  re-estabUshed ;  in  the  second  he  suggested  that  the  King 
should  identify  himself  with  the  Revolution  before  its  final 
explosion,  that  he  should  go  to  the  Assembly,  demand  the  cahiers 
himself,  and  then  make  the  greatest  sacrifices  in  order  to  satisfy 
the  true  desires  of  the  people  before  the  sedition-mongers  could 
turn  them  to  the  advantage  of  their  criminal  designs.^ 

This  proposal  of  the  new  minister  throws  an  important  Hght 
on  the  RevQlu+ion  of  July,  for  according  to  Madame  Campan 
it  reached  ^e  ears  of  the  Orleanistes  by  means  of  the  Comte 
Louis  rie  Naibonne  and  Madame  de  Stael,  and  naturally  explains 
their  fury  at  the  change  of  ministry  and  also  their  animosity  to 
Foullon.  Whichever  of  the  two  schemes  were  followed  their 
doom  was  equally  certain,  since  a  peaceful  settlement  of  the  crisis 
would  have  proved  no  less  fatal  to  their  designs  than  the  more 
rigorous  measure  of  their  own  arrest. 

^  Biographie  Michaud,  article  on  Foullon;  Histoire  de  la  Revolution 
Frangaise,  by  Poujoulat,  p.  121,  quoting  contemporary  documents. 

«  Ihid. 

'  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  242  ;  Histoire  du  Eigne  de  Louis  XVI, 
by  Joseph  Droz,  p.  311.  This  story  of  Mme.  Campan's  is  confirmed  by  a 
contemporary  manuscript  in  the  possession  of  Berthier's  descendants.  See 
La  Conspiration  Rdvolutionnaire  de  lySg,  by  Gustave  Bord,  p.  195.  D'Espre- 
mesnil  had  already  given  the  King  the  same  advice  a  few  weeks  earlier,  for 
just  after  the  "  Serment  du  Jeu  de  Paume  "  he  had  requested  an  audience 
with  the  King,  and  urged  him  not  only  to  arrest  but  to  hang  the  Due 
d'Orleans  and  his  accomplices,  to  dissolve  the  Assembly,  and  to  follow  out 
his  plan  of  himself  granting  to  the  people  the  reforms  they  asked  for  in  the 
cahiers  {Mimoires  Secrets  d'Allonville,  ii.  155).  Strangely  enough  the 
Duke's  mistress,  Mrs.  Elliott,  was  of  the  same  opinion  with  regard  to  the 
treatment  that  should  have  been  meted  out  to  the  royal  conspirator : 
"  Had  he  (the  King),  when  the  nobles  went  over  to  the  Tiers  ^d^tat,  caused 
the  unfortunate  Duke  of  Orleans,  and  about  twenty  others,  to  be  arrested 
and  executed,  Europe  would  have  been  saved  from  the  calamities  it  has 
since  suffered  ;  and  I  should  now  dare  to  regret  my  poor  friend  the  Duke  " 
{Journal  of  Mrs.  Elliott,  p.  57). 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        59 

It  is  evident  that  they  were  aware  of  Necker's  impending 
dismissal  several  days  before  it  actually  took  place,  and  im- 
mediately in  the  midnight  council  of  Montrouge  a  scheme  of 
insurrection  was  planned.  The  advance  of  the  troops  and  the 
departure  of  Necker  were  to  be  made  the  pretexts  for  stirring 
up  the  people ;  with  that  superb  capacity  for  eating  their  own 
words  which  is  the  true  art  of  demagogy,  Necker,  whom  they 
had  hitherto  overwhelmed  with  their  sarcasms  and  openly  accused 
of  monopohzing  the  grain,  was  to  be  represented  to  the  people 
as  their  one  hope  of  salvation,  and  in  the  panic  that  would  follow 
on  his  dismissal  the  people — "  that  fooUsh  herd  "  that,  as  Cham- 
fort  said,  "  good  shepherds  could  drive  as  they  pleased  '' — ^were 
to  be  worked  up  to  revolt.  Then  the  Due  d'Orleans,  profiting 
by  the  general  confusion,  was  to  be  made  lieutenant-general  of 
the  kingdom,  if  not  raised  at  once  to  the  throne.  "  It  only 
depended  on  himself,"  said  Mirabeau,  who  admitted  the  whole 
scheme  later  to  Virieu  ;  "his  part  had  been  arranged  for  him  {on 
lui  avail  fait  son  theme)  ;  the  words  he  had  to  use  had  been 
prepared."  ^ 

Mirabeau  rose  triumphantly  to  the  occasion.  Hitherto  he 
had  frankly  disparaged  Necker,  referring  to  him  as  "  the  Genevese 
penny-snatcher  "  ^  (le  grippe-sou  genevois)  or  "ihe  clock  that 
always  loses,"  and  on  the  eve  of  his  dismissal  hld^ already  pre- 
pared a  speech  for  the  Assembly  accusing  him  of  corf^Hcity  with 
the  famine.  But  now  that  Necker's  dismissal  was  to  be  made  a 
pretext  for  insurrection,  Mirabeau,  Uke  the  gigantic  humbug 
that  he  was,  declared  that  "  we  can  only  regard  with  terror  the 
abyss  of  misfortune  into  which  the  country  will  be  dragged  now 
that  the  exile  of  M.  Necker,  so  long  desired  by  our  enemies,  has 
been  accompUshed."  ^ 

Already  on  the  gth  of  July  the  agitators  of  the  Palais  Royal 
had  begun  to  alarm  the  people  concerning  the  fate  destined  for 
their  idol.  "  Listen  to  me,  citizens  !  "  cried  a  mob  orator  who 
had  succeeded  in  collecting  a  crowd  around  him ;  "we  have 
assembled  here  in  order  to  declare  to  you  that  we  shall  regard 
as  a  traitor  to  the  country  any  one  who  shall  make  an  attempt 
not  only  on  the  life  but  on  the  ministerial  office  of  M.  Necker, 
whom  we  intend  to  make  permanent  minister  of  the  nation, 
and  since  our  King,  though  good  and  confiding,  is  incapable  of 
governing  his  kingdom,  we  nominate  M.  le  due  d'Orleans  lieu- 
tenant-general of  the  kingdom  !  "  * 

^  ProcMure  du  Chdielet,  deposition  du  comte  de  Virieu. 

*  Souvenirs  sur  Mirabeau,  by  fitienne  Dumont,  p.  208. 

'  "  Courrier  de  Provence,  lettre  19,"  MSmoires  de  Bailly,  i   332. 

*  Montjoie,  Histoire  de  la  Rivolution  de  France,  chap.  xli. ;  evidence  of 
M.  P6rin,  Procidure  du  Chdielet,  ii.  113. 


6o  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

The  proposition  does  not  seem  to  have  been  received  with 
great  enthusiasm,  and  the  agitators  merely  succeeded  in  produc- 
ing in  the  people  a  state  of  mind  aptly  described  by  M.  Louis 
MadeUn  as  a  crise  de  nerfs.  Already  they  had  sufficient  causes 
for  alarm — the  growing  fear  of  famine,  the  brigands  that  sur- 
rounded them,  the  assurances  of  the  Palais  Royal  orators  that 
the  King's  troops  were  closing  in  on  them  for  the  purpose  of 
massacre,  and  now,  following  on  all  these  terrors,  came  the  fresh 
alarm  that  Necker  was  to  be  dismissed,  and  the  country  involved 
in  bankruptcy  and  ruin.  What  wonder  that  the  unhappy  people 
were  thrown  into  a  condition  bordering  on  hysteria  ? 

THE  12TH   OF  JULY 

The  state  of  the  weather  further  added  to  the  excitement  of 
the  Parisians,  for  the  cold  spring  had  been  followed  in  July  by  a 
burst  of  almost  tropical  heat,  a  circumstance  that  seems  always 
to  have  reacted  on  the  minds  of  the  populace,  since  nearly  every 
great  day  of  tumult  during  the  Revolution  in  Paris  was  unusually 
hot.  Sunday  morning,  the  12th  of  July,  the  day  after  Necker's 
departure,  was  torrid  ;  the  sun  poured  down  from  a  cloudless 
sky  on  to  the  crowds  that  from  an  early  hour  had  filled  the 
garden  of  the  Palais  Royal.  Already  at  nine  o'clock  a  vague 
rumour  had  reached  the  city  that  the  worst  had  happened,  that 
Necker  was  dismissed,  and  as  the  panic  news  passed  from  mouth 
to  mouth  the  terrified  citizens  hurried  to  the  Palais  Royal  to 
ascertain  the  truth.  By  midday  the  garden  was  so  packed 
from  end  to  end  that  no  more  standing  room  was  available, 
and  people  climbed  on  to  the  trees  until  the  branches  bowed 
beneath  their  weight ;  even  the  mob  orators,  after  vainly  attempt- 
ing to  pile  up  chairs  and  tables  for  their  platforms,  were  reduced 
to  hanging  from  the  boughs  of  the  Ume-trees  whilst  they  harangued 
the  crowd.  "  This  agitation,"  says  Montjoie,  who  looked  on 
at  the  scene,  "  was  terrifying.  One  must  have  seen  it  to  be  able 
to  form  any  idea  of  it."  At  every  moment  a  fresh  rumour  was 
circulated,  adding  to  the  general  consternation  ;  now  a  messenger, 
wild-eyed,  rushing  into  the  square  and  crying  out  that  he  had 
just  arrived  from  Versailles  where  the  deputies  were  being 
massacred ;  now  a  panic-monger  announcing  that  the  Due 
d'Orleans  was  exiled — thrown  into  the  Bastille — condemned 
to  death ;  now  warnings  shrieked  to  the  terrified  people  that 
the  troops  were  marching  on  the  city  to  put  everything  to  fire 
and  sword.  The  seething  multitude  that  filled  the  garden  and 
arcades  was  hke  a  sea  lashed  by  a  hurricane  ;  at  each  new  alarm 
a  long  deep  moan  arose  from  thousands  of  throats,  a  moan  that 
now  grew  into  a  muffled  roar  of  fury,  now  died  away  into  the 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        6i 

silence  of  consternation.  Then  suddenly  rumour  gave  way  to 
certainty.  A  fresh  messenger  from  Versailles  announced  the 
terrible  news  —  Necker  was  dismissed,  had  already  taken  his 
departure,  the  country's  doom  was  sealed  ;  and  at  this  confirma- 
tion of  their  fears  the  maddened  people  turned  on  the  bearer 
of  ill-tidings  and  were  with  difficulty  prevented  from  drowning 
him  in  one  of  the  fountains  of  the  garden. 

It  was  now  twelve  o'clock  and  the  sun  had  reached  the 
meridian,  beating  down  on  the  dense  mass  of  heads  and  on  the 
burning  glass  of  the  Palais  Royal.  Suddenly  a  strange  thing 
happened.  The  glass  mirror  reflected  the  sun's  rays  on  to  the 
cannon  of  the  palace  and,  setting  light  to  the  charge,  fired  it 
with  a  terrifying  report,  and  so  "  the  sun  himself  gave  the  first 
signal  for  the  Revolution."  ^ 

The  effect  of  this  circumstance  on  the  minds  of  the  people 
was  indescribable.  The  wildest  scene  of  confusion  began. 
Men  haggard  with  fear,  women  pale  and  tearful  rushed  hither 
and  thither  ;  the  streets  were  filled  with  bands  of  citizens,  silent 
and  distraught,  hurrying  Hke  frightened  sheep  they  knew  not 
whither.  Unhappy  people  driven  desperately  to  and  fro  by 
the  men  who  had  made  themselves  their  shepherds  ! 

Yet  the  shepherds  did  not  find  their  work  too  easy ;  even 
sheep  refuse  at  moments  to  be  driven  in  the  right  direction,  and 
still  the  people,  for  all  their  panic,  showed  no  inclination  to  carry 
out  the  designs  of  the  agitators  and  begin  the  revolution  in  earnest. 
Camille  Desmoulins  afterwards  described  his  desperate  efforts 
that  afternoon  to  stir  the  people  up  to  violence  ;  some,  indeed, 
were  so  misguided  as  to  cry,  "  Vive  le  Roi  \  "  *'  In  vain  I  tried 
to  inflame  their  minds,"  says  Camille ;  "no  one  would  take  up 
arms  !  " 

It  was  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  when  at  last  Camille, 
coming  out  of  the  Cafe  de  Foy  where  the  Orleaniste  leaders 
forgathered,  encountered  several  young  men  walking  arm-in- 
arm and  shouting,  "  Aux  armes  !  Aux  armes  !  "  Immedi- 
ately he  saw  his  opportunity  and  joined  them  ;  in  an  instant 
he  was  hoisted  up  on  to  a  table  in  front  of  the  cafe,  from  which 
position  he  afterwards  related  that  he  deUvered  an  eloquent 
harangue : 

"  Citizens,  you  know  that  the  nation  had  asked  for  Necker 
to  be  retained,  for  a  monument  to  be  raised  to  him,  and  he  has 
been  driven  away  !  Could  you  be  more  insolently  defied  ? 
After  this  stroke  they  will  dare  anything,  and  for  to-night  they 
are  meditating,  have  perhaps  arranged,  a  Saint-Barthelemy  of 
pati;iots  !  To  arms  !  To  arms  !  Let  us  take  green  cockades, 
the  colour  of  hope  !  "  He  waved  a  green  ribbon,  fastened  it  in 
*  Montjoie,  Histoire  de  la  Rivolution  de  France,  chap.  xl. 


62  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

his  hat,  and  instantly  the  crowd,  tearing  down  leaves  from  the 
trees  above  their  heads,  adorned  themselves  with  the  same 
emblem.  Then,  striking  an  attitude,  Camille  pointed  a  quivering 
finger  at  the  crowd,  pretending  to  see  amongst  them  the  agents 
of  the  police.  "  The  infamous  police  are  here  !  Let  them  look 
at  me  I  Let  them  observe  me  !  Yes,  it  is  I  who  call  my  brothers 
to  Hberty  I  "  He  raised  a  pistol  in  the  air.  "  At  least  they 
shall  not  take  me  alive,  and  I  shall  know  how  to  die  gloriously ; 
only  one  misfortune  can  befall  me — that  of  seeing  France  become 
again  enslaved  !  " 

Such  is  Camille's  version  of  his  tirade,  but  it  seems  probable 
that  much  of  it  was  inspired  by  esprit  d'escalier  and  never  found 
utterance,  for  none  of  his  auditors  record  it  in  these  words. 
Montjoie,  in  fact,  declares  that  Camille's  performance  consisted 
merely  in  standing  on  the  table  waving  a  pistol  and  calling  out 
"  Aux  armes  !  "  making  horrible  grimaces  the  while  to  over- 
come his  stutter. 

At  any  rate  his  efforts  were  rewarded,  for  he  was  hauled  down 
from  the  table  and  carried  in  triumph  on  the  shoulders  of  the 
crowd,  who  now  at  last  responded  to  the  cry  of  insurrection, 
and  arming  tjbiemselves  with  sticks,  hatchets,  and  pistols  poured 
into  the  streets  thirsting  to  do  battle  with  the  menacing  legions 
— ^the  legions  that  meanwhile  remained  peacefully  encamped 
in  the  Champ  de  Mars. 

This  was  undoubtedly  the  great  moment  to  which  the 
Orleaniste  conspiracy  had  been  leading  up.  The  people's  minds 
had  been  prepared  by  the  alarms  concerning  the  fate  of  the 
duke,  and  were  therefore  more  than  usually  disposed  in  his 
favour  as  the  victim  of  despotism.  If  he  had  now  come  forward 
and  shown  himself  to  the  frenzied  crowd  it  seems  probable  that 
he  could  have  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  the  movement. 
But  at  this  crucial  moment  the  duke  was  not  forthcoming,  for 
he  had  gone  off  at  eleven  o'clock  that  morning  with  his  mistress, 
Mrs.  Elliott,  to  spend  the  day  at  his  chateau  of  Raincy,  and  did 
not  reappear  until  the  evening.  Was  his  absence  arranged  by 
the  conspirators  to  give  colour  to  their  stories  of  his  exile  or 
imprisonment  ?  Or  did  he  disappoint  his  supporters  by  refusing 
to  be  present  ?  We  know  that  the  pusillanimity  of  the  duke 
at  every  crisis  made  him  the  despair  of  his  party,  and  that  this 
fear,  moreover,  was  founded  on  a  very  real  danger — that  of 
assassination.  When  he  fainted  in  the  Assembly  that  summer 
day  only  a  few  weeks  earUer,  and  his  coat  was  unfastened  to 
give  him  air,  had  it  not  been  discovered  that  he  wore  beneath  it 
no  less  than  four  waistcoats,  including  one  of  leather,  to  protect 
him  from  a  dagger-thrust  ?  ^  It  is  possible,  therefore,  that  at 
*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  i.  296;   Mimoires  de  FerrUres,  i.  52. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        63 

the  last  moment  his  courage  failed  him  ;  but  at  any  rate  hi^ 
absence  was  foreseen  by  the  conspirators,  for  the  duke  himself 
being  unavailable  they  led  the  crowd  to  the  waxwork  show  of 
M.  Curtius  in  the  Boulevard  du  Temple,  where — by  mere  coin- 
cidence, Orleaniste  historians  would  have  us  believe — the  busts 
of  the  Due  d' Orleans  and  Necker  lay  ready  to  hand. 

Camille  Desmoulins'  subsequent  remarks  on  this  incident 
show  that  he  certainly  did  not  beUeve  in  the  theory  of  coincidence, 
but  recognized  very  clearly  the  design  of  the  faction— from 
which,  like  every  other  Orleaniste,  he  became  anxious  to  dis- 
associate himself.  "  Will  any  one  make  me  believe,"  he  wrote 
four  years  later,  "  that  when  I  mounted  a  table  on  the  12th  of 
July  and  called  the  people  to  hberty,  it  was  my  eloquence  that 
produced  that  great  movement  half  an  hour  later,  and  that  made 
the  two  busts  of  Orleans  and  Necker  spring  from  the  ground  ?  "  ^ 
The  procession  with  the  two  effigies  had  therefore  been  pre- 
meditated, and  Mirabeau,  hardly  less  an  enfant  terrible  than 
Camille  in  giving  away  the  secrets  of  his  party,  confirms  this 
statement.  Referring  to  the  12th  of  July  in  his  answer  to  the 
Procedure  du  Chdtelet,  he  attempted  to  prove  the  duke's  innocence 
on  this  day  by  remarking,  "  When  his  bust  was  paraded  he 
hid  himself."  ^  Then  the  duke  knew  that  his  bust  was  to  be 
paraded  ?  Otherwise  where  was  the  virtue  of  his  disappearance 
from  the  scene  four  hours  earlier  ?  Again,  why  should  he  hide 
himself  ?  Why  not,  if  he  was  innocent,  have  come  forward 
boldly  and  denied  all  complicity  with  the  movement  ?  Thus 
from  Orleaniste  evidence  alone  it  is  obvious  that  the  incident 
of  the  two  busts  was  a  ruse  devised  by  the  conspirators,  with 
the  idea  of  putting  popular  feeling  to  the  test ;  it  had  been 
resolved  to  try  the  people  with  the  duke's  effigy,  and  if,  as  seemed 
not  unlikely,  it  met  with  a  hostile  reception,  nothing  but  wax 
would  suffer  ;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  received  with  acclama- 
tions, the  duke  was  to  be  recalled  from  his  retreat  and  placed 
at  the  head  of  the  movement.  The  effigy  of  Necker  was,  of 
course,  merely  a  cover  to  the  real  design — "  to  parade  only 
one,"  remarks  Prudhomme  shrewdly,  "  would  have  been 
clumsy."  ^  Accordingly  the  two  busts,  wreathed  in  black 
crepe  and  crowned,  were  carried  in  procession  through  the  streets 
whilst  Orleaniste  agents,  posted  in  the  crowd,  cried  out,  "  Hats 
off !  The  country  is  in  danger ;  here  are  its  restorers.  Vive 
D'Orleans ! "  Then,  as  the  people  failed  to  take  up  the  cry, 
the  agitators  went  amongst  them  repeating,  "  Call  out  '  Vive 

^  Fragment  de  VHistoire  Secrdte,  p.  8,  April  1793. 

2  Moniieur,  ii.  33. 

*  Crimes  de  la  Rivoluiion,  by  Prudhomme,  iii.  iii. 


64  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

D' Orleans  \'  "  For  answer  some  asked  wonderingly,  "  What 
does  all  this  mean  ?  "  and  the  agitators  repUed,  "  Why,  don't 
you  understand  that  Monsieur  le  due  d' Orleans  is  to  be  pro- 
claimed king  and  M.  Necker  his  prime  minister  ?  Come,  cry 
with  us  'Vive  D '  Orleans  l'"^  Even  at  the  Palais  Royal  the 
busts  met  with  a  no  more  enthusiastic  reception.  On  arrival 
in  the  garden  one  of  the  men  bearing  the  efi&gies,  pointing  them 
out  to  the  people,  caUed  aloud,  "  Is  it  not  true  that  you  want 
this  prince  for  your  king,  and  this  good  man  for  his  minister  ?  " 
But  only  a  few  voices  answered,  "  We  wish  it !  "  ^ 

After  this  discouraging  response  the  procession  made  its 
way  by  the  Boulevards  to  the  Place  Louis  XV.,  where  it  en- 
countered a  regiment  of  the  Royal  Allemands  under  the  Prince 
de  Lambesc,  who  rode  up  with  drawn  sword  and  scattered  the 
rioters.  During  the  fray  the  bust  of  Orleans  feU  into  the  gutter  ; 
a  linen-draper's  assistant,  Pepin  by  name,  rushed  to  its  rescue, 
and  in  his  attempt  to  pick  up  the  mutilated  ef&gy  was  wounded 
in  the  leg  and  fell  bleeding  to  the  ground.^  Raised  in  the  arms 
of  sympathizers,  Pepin  was  carried  off  to  the  Palais  Royal  to 
exhibit  his  wounds  ;  he  was  not,  however,  too  seriously  wounded 
to  harangue  the  multitude.  Dr.  Rigby,  an  eyewitness  of  the 
scene,  describes  "  the  whole  mass  agitated  afresh  by  the  appear- 
ance of  a  man  with  a  green  coat  whose  countenance  and  manner 
bespoke  the  utmost  consternation.  '  To  arms,  citizens,'  he 
cried,  '  the  Dragoons  have  fired  on  the  people,  and  I  myself 
have  received  a  wound,'  pointing  to  his  leg.  This  acted  like 
an  electric  shock." 

Meanwhile  the  Prince  de  Lambesc  and  his  troops  made 
their  way  towards  the  Tmleries  across  the  great  Place  Louis  XV, 
which  at  this  hour  was  filled  with  hohday-makers  returning  from 
their  Sunday  afternoon  festivities  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  and 
the  neighbouring  villages ;  through  this  crowd  the  troops  ad- 
vanced at  foot  pace,  gently  pushing  aside  those  who  obstructed 
their  passage,  but  the  people,  infuriated  by  the  sight  of  the 
soldiers,  greeted  them  with  a  hail  of  stones.  Gouvemeur  Morris, 
who  at  this  moment  arrived  upon  the  scene,  thus  describes  the 
incident :  "  The  people  take  post  among  the  stones  which  lie 
scattered  about  the  whole  place,  being  then  hewn  for  the  bridge 
now  building.  The  officer  at  the  head  of  the  party  (a  body  of 
cavalry  with  their  sabres  drawn)  is  saluted  by  a  stone,  and 

^  Crimes  de  la  Rivolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iii.  112. 

*  MSm.  de  FerrUres,  and  statement  by  Clermont  Tonnerre  at  the  Pro- 
cMure  du  Chdtelet.     See  also  Souvenirs  de  Mme.  VigSe  le  Brun,  p.  129. 

'  Montjoie,  ii.  48,  confirmed  by  Pepin  himself,  witness  cxxiv.  at  the 
Procidure  du  Chdtelet.  According  to  these  two  witnesses  this  encounter 
took  place  in  the  Place  Louis  XV.  ;  according  to  Bailly  (i.  327)  and  to 
Flammermont,  La  Journ&e  du  14  Juillet  (clxxvii.),  in  the  Place  Vendome. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        65 

immediately  turns  his  horse  in  a  menacing  manner  towards  the 
assailant.  But  his  adversaries  are  posted  in  ground  where  the 
cavalry  cannot  act.  He  pursues  his  route,  and  the  pace  is  soon 
increased  to  a  gallop,  amid  a  shower  of  stones.  One  of  the 
soldiers  is  either  knocked  from  his  horse,  or  the  horse  falls  under 
him.  He  is  taken  prisoner  and  at  first  ill-treated.  They  fired 
several  pistols,  but  without  effect ;  probably  they  were  not  even 
charged  with  ball.  A  party  of  the  Swiss  Guard  are  posted  in 
the  Champs  filysees  with  cannon." 

The  Prince  de  Lambesc,  having  thus  reached  the  entrance  of 
the  Tuileries,  crossed  the  swing  bridge  into  the  garden  with  his 
troops,  but  was  again  immediately  assailed  by  a  hail  of  stones, 
chairs,  and  bottles  that  the  crowd,  assembled  on  the  terraces  at 
each  side  of  the  bridge,  flung  down  on  the  regiment.^  In  spite 
of  these  outrages  the  soldiers  still  refrained  from  retaliating,  and 
in  order  to  avoid  bloodshed  the  prince  ordered  the  troops  to 
evacuate  the  garden,  whereupon  the  crowd  rushed  forward  and 
attempted  to  cut  off  their  retreat  by  closing  the  swing  bridge. 
One  old  man,  a  schoolmaster  named  Chauvet,  in  the  act  of  per- 
forming this  manoeuvre,  was  sUghtly  injured  by  the  Prince  de 
Lambesc,  who  struck  him  with  the  flat  of  his  sword,  causing  a 
wound  that  was  speedily  healed  by  means  of  a  brandy  compress.^ 

Such  was  "  the  brutal  charge  "  of  the  "  ferocious  Prince  de 
Lambesc,"  retailed  with  so  much  virtuous  indignation  by  re- 
volutionary writers.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  evidence 
of  eye-witnesses,  of  Gouvemeur  Morris,  of  Montjoie,  and  of  those 
who  appeared  later  at  the  trial  of  the  Prince,  with  the  version 
circulated  that  night  in  Paris  by  the  leaders  of  the  agitation. 
Dr.  Rigby,  who  unfortunately  was  not  present,  thus  records 
the  account  given  him  by  Jefferson  : 

"  About  seven  in  the  evening  Prince  de  Lambesc,  who 
commanded  a  regiment  of  German  Dragoons,  entered  the 
Tuileries  . . .  and  made  its  gay  crowds  of  citizens  the  objects  of  his 
attack,  enforced  his  commands  by  a  sudden  discharge  of  musketry. 
The  terrified  multitude  fled  in  all  directions,  and  the  middle  of 
the  square  was  suddenly  cleared  of  all  but  a  feeble  old  man, 
whose  infirmities  denied  him  the  power  of  running.  Against 
this  single  defenceless  individual  the  cowardly  Prince  hfted 
up  his  arm,  and  either  desperately  wounded  or  killed  him  with 
one  stroke  of  his  sabre." 

This  story — every  word  of  which  was  afterwards  disproved, 
and  is  now  believed  by  no  responsible  historian  ^ — ^was  loudly 

*  Deux  Amis,  i.  276.  Even  this  authority  admits  that  the  people  were 
the  aggressors, 

^  Taine,  La  Rivolution,  i.  62. 

^  "  The  sanguinary  Lambesc  and  his  blindly  ferocious  troop  were 
singularly  debonair;    ten  accounts  testify  to  it.     Although  they  were 

F 


66  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

proclaimed  at  the  Palais  Royal,  and  the  alarm  was  followed  by 
messengers  rushing  into  the  square  frantically  declaring  that 
citizens  were  being  massacred  in  the  garden  of  the  Tuileries, 
and  dragoons  with  drawn  swords  were  crushing  women  and 
children  beneath  their  horses'  feet.  These  fearful  tidings  had 
the  effect  that  for  seven  hours  the  mob  orators  had  striven  in 
vain  to  produce,  of  arming  the  mob. 

"  From  this  moment,"  says  Dr.  Rigby,  "  nothing  could 
restrain  the  fury  of  the  people  ;  they  burst  forth  into  the  streets 
calling  '  Aux  armes  !  Aux  armes  !  '  Every  house  Hkely  to  aiford 
any  was  immediately  entered.  The  gunsmiths'  shops  were 
ransacked,  and  in  a  very  short  time  the  principal  streets  were 
filled  with  a  tumultuous  populace,  armed  variously  with  guns, 
swords,  pikes,  spits,  and  every  instrument  of  offence  and  defence." 
This  disorderly  band,  joined  by  numbers  of  deserters  from 
the  Gardes  Frangaises,  now  marched  on  the  King's  troops  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  the  Place  Louis  XV.  Let  us  consult  the 
revolutionary  account  of  the  day  to  discover  the  manner  in  which 
these  bloodthirsty  soldiers  received  the  onslaught. 

"  Assembled  in  force  near  the  depot  on  the  old  boulevard," 
say  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty,  "  they  (the  armed  mob)  advance 
in  good  order,  attack  a  detachment  of  the  Royal  Allemand,  and 
at  the  first  discharge  cause  three  horsemen  to  bite  the  dust. 
These,  although  assailed,  endure  the  fire  of  their  adversaries  without 
replying,  and  double  back  on  the  Place  Louis  XV,  where  was 
the  main  body  of  their  regiment."  ^ 

This,  then,  was  the  conduct  of  the  troops  accused  by  the 
revolutionary  leaders  of  carrying  out  a  "  massacre  of  Saint-Bar- 
th61emy  "  amongst  the  citizens  !  What  further  proof  is  needed 
of  the  King's  sincerity  in  assuring  the  people  that  these  forces 
had  been  summoned  merely  to  protect  them  ?  Nothing  could 
exceed  the  heroic  forbearance  of  these  much-tried  men,  and  those 
historians  who  would  have  us  beHeve  that  their  attitude  was 
owing  to  the  fact  that  they  sjmfipathized  with  the  people  and 
therefore  could  not  be  induced  to  use  their  arms  against  them, 
calumniate  not  only  the  officers  in  command,  but  the  people 
themselves.     Is  it   conceivable   that   the  people   could   be   so 

stoned  by  the  people  in  ambush  behind  the  stone-heaps  they  contenten 
themselves  with  advancing  without  charging.  .  .  .  That  only  one  old  mad 
was  knocked  over  and  that  so  much  was  made  of  this  in  the  popular  camp 
indicates  better  than  all  the  contemporary  accounts  how  mild  was  the 
'  repression  '  "  (MadeHn,  p.  63) .  "It  was  the  crowd  that  began  the  attack ; 
the  troops  fired  into  the  air.  .  .  .  All  the  details  of  the  affair  prove  that 
the  patience  and  the  humanity  of  the  officers  was  extreme  "  (Taine,  La 
Rdvolution,  i.  62) .  See  also  La  JournSe  du  14  Juillet,  by  Jules  Flammermont, 
p.  clxxviii. 

1  Deux  Amis  de  la  LiherU,  i.  117 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        67 

cowardly  as  to  insult  and  attack  men  they  knew  to  be  their 
friends  ?  All  contemporary  evidence  points  to  the  one  con- 
clusion— the  men  were  acting  under  orders  from  their  officers, 
and  the  officers,  in  their  turn,  were  obeying  the  King's  command 
— at  all  costs  to  avoid  bloodshed.  The  order  given  to  Bezenval, 
and  produced  later  at  his  trial,  is  proof  positive  of  this  assertion  : 
"  Give  the  most  precise  and  moderate  orders  to  the  officers  in 
command  of  the  detachment  you  employ  that  they  shall  act  only 
as  protectors,  and  shall  have  the  greatest  care  to  avoid  com- 
promising themselves  or  engaging  in  any  combat  with  the  people 
unless  they  show  themselves  inclined  to  cause  fires  or  commit 
excesses  or  pillage  that  would  endanger  the  safety  of  citizens."  ^ 
It  was  a  frightful  position  for  the  men  in  command,  and 
Bezenval,  in  deciding  to  withdraw  the  troops  to  the  Champ  de 
Mars,  was  evidently  only  doing  what  he  conceived  to  be  his  duty. 
Royalists  who  reproached  him  for  not  adopting  stronger  measures, 
and  revolutionaries  who  laughed  at  his  retreat,  were  ahke  in- 
capable of  appreciating  his  dilemma.  "  If  I  had  marched  the 
troops  into  Paris,"  he  wrote  afterwards,  "  I  should  have  started 
civil  war  on  one  side  or  the  other ;  precious  blood  would  have 
been  shed  without  any  useful  result.  ..."  True,  but  how  much 
innocent  blood  might  have  been  spared  that  flowed  hereafter  ? 
Civil  war  with  all  its  horrors  cannot  equal  the  horror  of  leaving 
the  mob  to  execute  its  own  vengeances  unrestrained,  for  a  rioting 
mob,  like  a  woman  in  hysterics,  needs  firmness  to  bring  it  to  its 
senses  ;  too  great  solicitude  but  weakens  its  power  of  self-control, 
and  leaves  it  a  prey  to  frightful  convulsions  even  more  dangerous 
to  itself  than  to  those  against  whom  its  fury  is  directed.  Paris, 
which  through  that  feverish  Sunday  had  worked  itself  up  into  a 
nervous  crisis  that  nothing  but  iron  discipline  could  have  allayed, 
was  now,  through  the  mistaken  humanity  of  those  in  command, 
left  unprotected,  and  at  the  withdrawal  of  all  lawful  authority  J 
rapidly  passed  into  a  state  of  frenzied  panic.  To  all  law-abiding  /' 
citizens,  the  night  that  followed  was  a  night  of  terror,  for,  at  the ' 
signal  of  insurrection,  the  hordes  of  brigands,  that  since  the 
Affaire  Reveillon  had  been  kept  in  reserve  by  the  leaders  to 
create  fresh  scenes  of  violence,^  came  forth  armed  with  sticks 
and  pikes  and  paraded  the  streets,  pillaging  the  armourers' 
shops,  and  threatening  to  bum  down  the  houses  of  the  aristocrats. 
The  Quinzaine  Memorable  puts  the  number  of  these  profes- 
sional bandits  at  20,000,  Droz  at  no  less  than  40,000,  and  when 
we  remember  the  terror  created  in  the  provinces  of  France 
only  a  few  years  ago  by  half-a-dozen  motor  bandits — Bonnard 
an4  his  gang — it  is  easy  to  imagine  the  horror  and  confusion 

^  Order  given  to  B6zenval  on  July  12,  1789.     See  the  Monitettr,  iii.  33. 
^  Bailly,  i.  337. 


68  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

inspired  by  thousands  of  such  ruffians  suddenly  let  loose  and 
armed  in  the  streets  of  an  undefended  city.^ 

To  these  hired  bands  were  added  all  the  dregs  of  the  Faubourgs 
— drunkards,  wastrels,  degenerates,  prototypes  of  the  modern 
Apache,  whose  native  love  of  violence  needed  no  incentive  ; 
prostitutes  who  tore  the  ear-rings  from  the  ears  of  passers-by, 
"  and  if  the  rings  resisted,  tore  the  ears  "  ;  smugglers  who  saw 
their  chance  of  booty  and  led  the  crowd  to  bum  down  the  barriers 
and  defraud  the  customs.^  Where  in  all  this  pandemonium 
were  "  the  people  "  to  be  found  ?  No  good  citizens  were  abroad 
that  hot  and  terrible  night,  the  true  "  people,"  the  peaceful 
bourgeois,  the  quiet  and  laborious  working  men  and  women  of 
Paris,  hid  themselves  in  their  humble  dweUings  no  less  fearfully 
than  the  aristocrats  in  their  hotels  of  the  Faubourg  Saint-Honore, 
whilst  all  the  while  the  tocsin  sounded  drearily  and  the  cry  of 
the  rioters,  "  Des  armes  et  du  pain  !  "  rang  out  in  the  darkness. 
"  During  that  disastrous  night,"  say  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty, 
"  sleep  descended  only  on  the  eyes  of  children  ;  they  alone  reposed 
in  peace  whilst  their  distracted  parents  watched  over  their 
cots." 

THE   13TH   OF  JULY 

Morning  dawned  on  a  demented  city ;  wild  bands  still  paraded 
the  streets,  and  were  only  prevented  by  good  citizens,  who 
mingled  with  them,  from  committing  horrible  excesses.  One 
horde,  however,  succeeded  in  breaking  into  the  convent  of  Saint- 
Lazare,  "  the  asylum  of  religion  and  humanity,"  where,  disre- 
garding the  entreaties  of  a  white-haired  priest  who  threw  himself 
on  his  knees  and  begged  them  to  spare  the  sacred  precincts,  they 
proceeded  to  pillage  and  destroy  the  library,  laboratory,  and 
pictures,  and  finally  descending  to  the  cellars  broke  open  the 
casks  of  wine,  gorging  themselves  with  the  contents.  Next  day 
no  less  than  thirty  unfortunate  wretches,  both  men  and  women, 
were  carried  dead  or  dying  from  the  scene. 

The  news  of  this  senseless  outrage  burst  on  Paris  "  like  a 
clap  of  thunder  "  ;  terrified  tradesmen  shut  their  shops,  and  good 
citizens  once  more  barricaded  themselves  behind  closed  shutters. 
"  To  the  cries  of  fear,"  say  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty,  "  are 
added  the  tumultuous  cries  of  several  lawless  bands,  bold-eyed, 
and  ready  to  dare  and  do  anything,  who  rove  through  the  streets 
and  pubUc  places,  and  in  whose  hands  the  weapons  they  carry 

1  Note  that  even  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty  admit  these  to  have  been 
"  hired  brigands  "  {Deux  Amis,  i.  283),  though  they  carefully  refrain  from 
mentioning  who  hired  them.  Are  we  to  beUeve  again  this  time  that  it  was 
the  Court  ? 

*  Histoire  du  Regne  de  Louis  XVI,  by  Joseph  Droz,  p.  292. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        69 

seem  even  more  dangerous  than  those  of  the  enemies  (i.e.  the 
King's  troops !).  The  moment  was  the  more  perilous  since  all 
the  springs  of  pubhc  administration  were  broken,  and  Paris 
seemed  abandoned  to  the  mercy  of  whoever  chose  to  make  him- 
self master."  ^  On  the  13th  of  July  the  worst  fears  of  the  people 
were  thus  not  caused  by  the  King's  troops  but  by  the  brigands, 
and  further,  the  removal  of  all  lawful  authority  added  immensely 
to  the  panic. 

When  at  ten  o'clock  of  this  dreadful  morning  the  tocsin  of  the 
Hotel  de  Ville  rang  out  again  it  was,  therefore,  in  no  sense  a 
signal  of  revolution,  but  a  summons  to  all  good  citizens  to  take 
up  arms  in  defence  of  their  lives,  their  wives  and  children,  and 
their  property.^  In  this  moment  of  real  and  immediate  peril 
the  imaginary  menace  of  the  King's  troops  was  forgotten,  and 
men  of  all  classes,  rich  men,  nobles,  bourgeois  and  working-men 
aUke,  hastened  to  the  Hotel  de  ViUe  to  demand  arms  for  their 
defence.  Inevitably,  however,  a  number  of  brigands  and 
emissaries  of  the  Palais  Royal,  who  already  that  morning  had 
burst  into  the  Hotel  de  ViUe  and  carried  ofi  by  force  360  guns, 
now  mingled  with  the  law-abiding  citizens,  and  threw  the 
authorities  into  a  frightful  predicament.  They  wished  to  arm 
the  milice  bourgeoise,  yet  not  to  reinforce  the  brigands.  Bezenval, 
appealed  to  later  in  the  day,  flatly  refused,  declaring  he  could 
give  up  no  arms  without  an  order  from  the  King  ;  ^  Flesselles,  the 
provost-marshal,  adopted  less  courageous  tactics  and  attempted 
to  put  the  people  off  with  fair  words,  temporizing  as  a  father 

^  Deux  Amis  de  la  LiherU,  i.  284. 

*  M.  Louis  Madelin  has  emphatically  refuted  the  error  perpetuated  by 
historians  on  this  point.  The  milice  bourgeoise,  he  explains,  had  been 
formed  "  not  at  all — as  a  hundred  years  ago  so  many  historians  and  a  crowd 
of  their  readers  believed — against  the  Court  but  against  the  brigands.  .  .  ." 
Thus  since  the  25th  of  June  the  Hotel  de  Ville  had  been  preparing  for  the 
coming  danger,  and  the  message  carried  by  its  beU  must  not  be  misinterpreted. 
"  This  bell  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  had  until  the  last  few  years  a  very  definite 
significance  for  the  historians  of  the  Revolution — it  called  the  great  city 
against  the  Government  of  Versailles.  The  more  recent  researches,  and 
those  least  to  be  suspected  of  retrospective  anti-revolutionism,  convey  to 
us  a  different  sound.  The  city  called  for  help,  desperately,  because  in  the 
night  the  bandits,  that  for  three  weeks  had  been  dreaded,  were  invading  it, 
pillaging  the  shops,  robbing  the  passers-by.  Far  from  wishing  to  destroy 
the  Bastille,  the  bourgeois  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville — Liberals  of  yesterday — 
would  rather  have  built  twenty  more  to  enclose  the  beasts  of  prey  that 
infested  the  disorganized  city"  (Madelin,  pp.  62,  64).  Yet  even  "  recent 
researches  "  were  not  needed  to  prove  this  fact,  since  the  oldest  authority  of 
all,  the  Deux  Amis,  had  clearly  stated  it. 

^  Bezenval  suspected  the  good  faith  of  certain  of  these  deputies : 
"Although  the  orators  of  these  deputies  had  prepared  their  speeches  skil- 
fully, it  was  easy  to  see  they  had  been  prompted,  and  that  they  were 
asking  for  arms  for  the  purpose  of  attacking  us  rather  than  to  defend 
themselves"  {M^moires  de  Bizenval,  ii.  369). 


70  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

might  do  with  a  sick  and  fretful  child  that  asked  for  a  razor  as 
a  plaything  :  "  My  friends,  I  am  your  father,  you  will  be  satisfied," 
he  told  the  frenzied  multitude,  and  sent  them  in  all  directions 
to  seek  arms  where  none  were  to  be  found.  For  this  he  has  been 
bitterly  condemned  by  historians,  yet  what  was  the  unfortunate 
Flesselles  to  do  ?  An  officer  in  charge  of  an  arsenal  suddenly 
confronted  with  a  heterogeneous  crowd  of  civilians  clamouring 
for  firearms,  and  threatened  with  death  if  he  gives  a  direct 
refusal,  must  possess  a  very  ready  wit  if  he  can  hold  his  own 
diplomatically.  Yet  so  far  was  Flesselles  from  wishing  to  thwart 
the  good  citizens  of  the  milice  bourgeoise,  that  he  sent  to  Versailles 
for  an  order  authorizing  their  equipment. 

Versailles  meanwhile  was  ill-informed  of  the  progress  of 
events  in  Paris.  The  Assembly,  persisting  in  its  assertion  that 
the  tumult  was  caused  solely  by  the  presence  of  the  troops, 
continued  to  send  deputations  to  the  King  demanding  their 
removal  from  the  environs  of  Paris,  whilst  the  King,  seeing  in 
the  troubles  of  the  capital  only  the  work  of  the  brigands,^  held 
this  to  be  no  moment  for  the  withdrawal  of  armed  force,  and 
repeated  his  former  statement  that  the  troops  were  necessary 
for  the  defence  of  the  citizens.  Whilst  heartily  approving  the 
formation  of  the  milice  bourgeoise,^  he  did  not  consider  this 
body  of  armed  civiUans  sufficient  to  cope  with  the  situation 
unsupported  by  regular  troops,  and  therefore  insisted  on  keeping 
the  troops  within  reach  of  the  city  ready  to  come  to  the  rescue 
if  required.  At  the  same  time  he  repUed  to  Flesselles'  message 
with  an  order  authorizing  the  organization  and  equipment  of 
12,000  men  for  the  milice  bourgeoise,  and  naming  the  officers 
he  desired  to  conunand  these  patriotic  legions.  "  What  amazes 
us,"  remarks  M.  Louis  Madelin,  "  is  that  this  correspondence 
between  Flesselles  and  the  Court  should  have  appeared  next 
day,  even  to  calm  minds,  as  '  an  unfortunate  connivance  sufficient 
to  justify  the  massacre  of  the  magistrate  by  the  people.'  "  ^ 

Before  the  King's  reply  to  Flesselles  had  reached  the  capital, 
however,  the  citizens  had  already  formed  the  milice  bourgeoise, 
and  instead  of  12,000  men  enrolled  40,000,  which  they  later 
increased  to  48,000.  These  patriotic  civiUans  at  first  showed 
themselves  perfectly  capable  of  maintaining  order.  All  con- 
temporaries, whether  RoyaHst  or  revolutionary,  speak  of  the 
admirable  way  in  which  the  milice  bourgeoise  dealt  with  the 
situation.  "The  magistrates  assembled  at  the  Hotel  de  Ville, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  the  several  districts,"  writes  Dr.  Rigby, 
"  were  called  together  in  the  churches  to  deUberate  upon  the 
measures  proper  to  be  taken.  ...  It  was  resolved  that  a  certain 

*  Bailly,  i.  340.  2  /jj'^   ^67  ;    Rivarol,  p.  45. 

'  Madelin,  p.  65. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        71 

number  of  the  more  respectable  inhabitants  should  be  enrolled 
and  inamediately  take  arms,  that  the  magistrates  should  sit 
permanently  at  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  and  that  committees,  also 
permanent,  should  be  formed  in  every  district  of  Paris  to  convey 
intelligence  to  the  magistrates  and  receive  instructions  from 
them.  This  important  and  most  necessary  resolution  was 
executed  with  wonderful  promptitude  and  unexampled  good 
management." 

By  the  evening  of  the  13th  order  was,  therefore,  once  more 
restored  throughout  the  greater  part  of  the  city,  but  unfortun- 
ately the  ringleaders  were  as  usual  left  unimpeded  to  continue 
the  work  of  insurrection.  A  few  obscure  wretches,  mere  tools 
of  the  conspirators,  were  hanged,  having  been  handed  over  to 
justice  by  the  men  who  had  set  them  in  motion,  and  who  now 
proceeded  to  work  up  a  fresh  agitation  at  the  Palais  Royal  and 
other  revolutionary  centres  of  the  city.  Once  more  the  menace 
of  the  troops  served  as  a  pretext  for  inflaming  the  minds  of  the 
people,  and  the  fact  that  throughout  the  day  these  same  troops 
had  remained  completely  inactive,  had  allowed  the  citizens  to 
arm  without  resistance  and  were  even  now  preparing  to  with- 
draw from  the  neighbourhood  of  Paris,  did  not  prevent  this 
absurd  alarm  from  gaining  ground. 

Amongst  the  most  energetic  of  the  panic-mongers  on  this 
day  was  a  new  recruit  to  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,  a  young 
lawyer  of  pecuUarly  frightful  appearance  named  Georges  Jacques 
Danton,  whose  eloquence  consisted  in  a  form  of  noisy  badinage 
that  rendered  him  immensely  popular  at  street  comers.  His 
massive  head  and  somewhat  Kalmuck  features  lent  themselves 
singularly  well  to  the  violence  of  his  oratory,  as,  now  chaffing, 
now  thundering,  he  kept  his  audience  in  good  humour — that 
pleasure-loving  Parisian  audience  that  he,  essentially  the  man 
of  pleasure,  understood  so  well. 

Another  lawyer,  Lavaux,  entering  the  convent  of  the  Cor- 
deliers, the  centre  of  one  of  the  new  districts  of  Paris,  found 
a  mob  orator  in  frenzied  tones  calhng  the  citizens  to  arms  in 
order  to  resist  an  army  of  30,000  men  who  were  preparing  to 
march  on  Paris  and  massacre  the  inhabitants.  Lavaux  was 
surprised  to  recognize  in  this  panic-monger  his  old  colleague, 
Danton,  and,  never  doubting  his  sincerity,  took  advantage  of 
the  orator  pausing  for  breath  to  assure  him  that  these  fears 
were  unfounded — he  himself,  Lavaux,  had  just  returned  from 
Versailles,  where  all  was  quiet.  "  You  do  not  understand," 
Danton  answered;  "the  sovereign  people  have  risen  against 
despotism.  Be  one  of  us.  The  throne  is  overturned  and  your 
employment  is  gone.    Think  it  well  over."  ^ 

^  Danton,  by  Louis  Madelin,  p.  19. 


72  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

There  was  in  Danton  a  certain  frankness  that  disarmed 
criticisna  ;  he  made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  in  the  Revolution 
he  saw  less  the  fulfilment  of  any  political  aspirations  than  the 
opportunity  for  pleasure  and  profit.^  "  Young  man,"  he  said 
later  on  at  the  CordeUers  to  Royer  Collard,  "  come  and  bellow 
with  us  ;  when  you  have  made  your  fortune  you  can  then  follow 
whichever  party  suits  you  best."  ^ 

That  Danton  was  definitely  financed  by  the  Due  d' Orleans 
was  not  only  the  behef  of  his  poUtical  adversaries  but  the  general 
opinion  of  Paris.  When  in  August  1790  he  sought  election  as 
a  "  notable  "  of  the  Constitutional  Conamune  of  Paris,  he  was 
reported  to  be  "  a  paid  and  perfidious  agent  of  the  Due  d' Orleans," 
and  rejected  for  his  venahty  by  forty-two  out  of  forty-eight 
sections  of  Paris.^  Even  M.  Louis  Madelin,  who  admires  Danton, 
is  unable  to  clear  him  from  this  charge  :  "  The  most  generally 
received  opinion  was  that  the  Due  d' Orleans  supported  Danton. 
If  we  admit  that  he  was  paid,  it  is  there,  I  think,  that  we  must 
seek  the  principal  payer."  And  he  adds  this  sentence  that  in 
a  word  sums  up  Danton's  poHtical  creed  :  "  Danton  was  all  his 
life  an  Orleaniste."  ^  After  such  an  admission  it  is  idle  to 
accredit  Danton  with  either  patriotism  or  disinterestedness ; 
that  any  man  who  loved  his  country  could  sincerely  beUeve 
he  was  working  for  its  good  in  attempting  to  replace  the  honest 
and  benevolent  Louis  XVL  by  the  corrupt  and  despotic  Due 
d'Orleans  is  inconceivable.  The  popular  conception  of  Danton 
as  a  patriot  burning  with  zeal  for  hberty  and  the  RepubUc  is 
therefore  based  on  a  fallacy ;  Danton  was  neither  a  democrat 
nor  a  RepubUcan,  but  a  paid  agitator  of  the  party  who  would 
have  instituted  a  far  worse  despotism  than  France  had  ever 
before  endured. 

Already  on  this  13th  of  July  a  triumph  had  been  secured 
by  the  conspirators ;  the  green  cockade  was  discarded  as  repre- 
senting the  colours  of  the  Comte  d'Artois,  and  red,  white,  and 
blue,  the  livery  of  the  Due  d'Orleans,  substituted  as  the  emblem 
of  hberty.  The  fact  that  these  were  also  the  colours  of  the  town 
of  Paris  was  a  fortunate  coincidence  that  served  to  veil  the 
manoeuvre.^ 

^  See,  amongst  many  contemporary  testimonies,  the  article  on  Danton 
by  Beaulieu  in  the  Biographie  Michaud  :  "  This  man  had  not,  Uke  many 
others,  embraced  the  Revolution  as  a  philosophical  speculation  ;  his  views 
were  less  elevated.  More  attached  to  sensual  pleasures,  he  belonged  to 
that  class  of  intriguers  who  lend  themselves  to  great  upheavals  in  order  to 
make  their  fortunes  ;  sometimes  indeed  he  made  no  mystery  of  his  projects 
in  this  respect,"  ^  Essais  de  Beaulieu,  iii.  192. 

'  Etudes  et  Lemons  sur  la  RivoluHon  Frangaise,  by  Aulard,  iv.  134. 

*  Danton,  by  Louis  Madehn,  p   48. 

^  Historians  of  all  parties  have  endeavoured  to  deny  this  Orleaniste 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE         73 

Throughout  the  night  that  followed  the  leaders  of  the  con- 
spiracy were  at  work  organizing  the  insurrection  of  the  morrow. 
A  plan  of  attack  on  the  Bastille  had  already  been  drawn  up,^ 
it  only  remained  now  to  set  the  people  in  motion.  This  was  to 
be  effected  by  circulating  the  news  early  in  the  morning  that 
the  troops  were  advancing  on  the  city  and  that  the  citizens  were 
to  be  bombarded  from  within  by  the  cannons  of  the  Bastille. 
The  members  of  the  "  committee  of  electors  "  at  the  Hotel  de 
Ville  were  now  denounced  as  traitors  to  the  country,^  and  the 
death  of  Flesselles  was  ordained.^  A  further  list  of  proscriptions 
included  the  Comte  d'Artois,  the  Prince  de  Conde,  the  Marechal 
de  Broglie,  the  Prince  de  Lambesc,  the  Baron  de  Bezenval, 
Foullon  and  Berthier,*  and  the  people  were  to  be  made  to  carry 
out  these  vengeances  of  the  demagogues  by  the  same  means 
that  had  been  employed  in  the  case  of  Reveillon,  that  is  to  say, 
by  affixing  to  each  victim  a  calumny  calculated  to  rouse  the 
fury  of  the  mob.  Thus  BrogHe,  Bezenval,  and  Lambesc,  whose 
real  crime  in  the  eyes  of  the  demagogues  was  to  have  ensured 
the  safe  transit  of  supphes  into  Paris,  were  to  be  accused  of 
plotting  with  "  the  Court  "  to  massacre  the  citizens ;  Foullon, 
for  whose  condemnation  we  have  already  seen  the  reason,  was 

origin  of  the  tricolore,  but  contemporary  evidence  is  strongly  in  favour 
of  these  colours  being  chosen  as  those  of  the  duke.  Thus  Ferri^res  {Mem.  i. 
119)  :  "  The  revolutionaries  adopted  the  cockade  made  of  white,  blue  and 
red,  it  was  the  Uvery  of  the  due  d'Orl6ans."  Beaulieu  {Essais,  i.  522)  : 
"  Blue,  red  and  white,  which  are  said  to  be  the  colours  of  the  town  of  Paris, 
but  belong  just  as  much  to  the  due  d' Orleans."  Lord  Dorset  {Dispatches 
from  Paris,  ii.  243)  :  "  Red  and  white  in  honour  of  the  due  d'Orleans." 
Lafayette  {Mem.  iii.  66)  speaks  of  "  the  strange  coincidence  that  the 
colours  of  the  town  should  happen  also  to  be  those  of  the  duke."  Most 
convincing  of  all  is  the  statement  of  Mrs.  Elliott,  the  duke's  mistress,  whose 
sole  aim  was  to  exonerate  the  duke  of  all  complicity  in  the  revolutionary 
movement  {Journal,  p.  33)  :  "  The  mob  obliged  everybody  to  wear  a 
green  cockade  for  two  days,  but  afterwards  they  took  red,  white  and  blue, 
the  Orleans  livery."  Moreover,  Camille  Desmoulins  later  on  admitted  the 
same  :  "  When  patriots  needed  a  rallying  sign,  could  they  have  done 
better  than  to  choose  the  colours  of  the  one  who  first  called  us  to  liberty  ?  " 
{Revolutions  de  France  et  de  Brabant,  iv.  439). 

^  This  important  point,  which  entirely  refutes  the  idea  of  the  march  on 
the  Bastille  as  a  spontaneous  movement  of  the  people,  is  admitted  even  by 
revolutionary  authorities,  by  Deux  Amis,  i.  313,  note  :  "It  is  certain  that 
the  taking  of  the  BastiUe  was  planned,  and  that  the  day  before  plans  of 
attack  had  been  drawn  up."  Also  Dussaulx,  De  V Insurrection  parisienne  et 
de  la  Prise  de  la  Bastille,  p.  44  :  "  The  taking  of  the  Bastille  had  been 
planned.  M.  le  Marquis  de  la  Salle  certified  to  me  that  the  day  before  he 
had  received  for  this  purpose  a  plan  of  attack." 

2  Marmontel,  iv.  180;  Dussaulx,  p.  206  (edition  Monin). 

^  Marmontel,  iv.  199  ;    Bailly,  i.  381,  382 

*  Histoire  du  Regne  de  Louis  XVI,  by  Joseph  Droz,  p.  293  ;  Histoire  de 
la  Revolution,  by  Montjoie. 


74  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

to  be  declared  to  have  said  that  "  if  the  people  had  no  bread, 
they  could  eat  hay  "  ;  his  son-in-law,  Berthier,  whose  untiring 
energy  in  combating  the  famine  had  seriously  obstructed  the 
designs  of  the  conspirators,  was  to  be  denounced  to  the  people 
as  "  a  monopoUzer  of  grain,"  and  in  the  case  of  Flesselles,  whose 
sole  crime  was  loyalty  to  the  King,  a  forged  note  was  prepared  in 
order  to  inflame  the  minds  of  the  populace.  For  the  murder  of 
the  Comte  d' Artois  no  pretext  was  needed ;  the  principal,  perhaps 
the  only  truly  reactionary  member  of  the  Royal  family,  he  was 
already  too  unpopular  to  require  calumniating,  and  a  placard  offer- 
ing a  reward  for  his  head  was  boldly  affixed  at  the  street  corners.^ 
It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  the  motives  that  inspired  the 
demagogues  were  totally  different  from  those  acted  on  by  the 
people,  and  this  fact  explains  the  confused  and  frequently 
abortive  nature  of  the  succeeding  revolutionary  tumults.  The 
leaders  had  planned  that  the  mob  should  do  one  thing,  and  the 
mob,  not  being  in  the  secret,  did  another,  hence  the  apparently 
inexplicable  and  pointless  crimes  that  took  place.  Amongst 
these,  we  shall  see,  was  the  massacre  of  the  garrison  at  the 
Bastille,  which  had  not  been  ordained  by  the  Palais  Royal. 


THE   14TH   OF  JULY 

Whilst  the  panic  concerning  the  approach  of  the  troops  was 
thus  being  prepared,  how  were  these  bloodthirsty  legions  engaged? 
Bezenval,  having  waited  in  vain  for  orders  throughout  the  whole 
day  of  the  13th,  decided  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  the 
14th  to  retreat  to  the  Champ  de  Mars  and  the  ficole  Mihtaire 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Seine  ;  and  thus  at  the  very  moment  that 
the  alarm  of  their  advance  on  the  city  was  trumpeted  to  the 
terrified  population,  the  troops  were  actually  moving  away  to 
the  distance.  This  circumstance  might  have  been  expected 
to  refute  the  false  alarm  in  circulation,  but  the  agitators  were 
clever  enough  to  turn  it  to  their  own  advantage.  The  troops 
were  on  the  move,  they  told  the  people,  and  though  they  might 
appear  to  be  retreating,  this  manoeuvre  was  only  a  question  of 
reculer  pour  mieux  sauter — it  was  evident  that  De  Broghe  intended 
to  unite  these  troops  with  superior  forces  in  order  to  make  an 
overwhelming  advance  on  the  capital,  and  reduce  it  to  ashes. 
Such  was  the  amazing  creduUty  of  the  Parisians  that  this  ludicrous 
story  was  universally  believed  and  once  more  threw  the  city 
into  a  state  of  frenzied  panic.  The  citizens,  who  yesterday  had 
flown  to  arms  against  the  brigands,  now  prepared  themselves  to 
do  battle  with  the  bloodthirsty  troops  of  the  King.^ 

^  Essais  de  Beaulieu,  i.  522. 

^  Montjoie,  Histoire  de  la  Revolution,  p.  87  ;    Marmontel,  iv.  182.     See 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        75 

The  terror  and  confusion  that  prevailed  throughout  the  city 
was  indescribable  ;  from  seven  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  the 
14th  false  alarms  succeeded  each  other  without  intermission — 
the  Royal  Allemand  had  already  encamped  at  the  Barriere 
du  Tr6ne,  other  regiments  had  actually  entered  the  Faubourg 
Saint- Antoine,  cannons  had  been  placed  across  the  streets,  whilst 
those  on  the  ramparts  of  the  Bastille  were  pointing  at  the  city. 
"  At  the  Palais  Royal  the  most  violent  motions  followed  each 
other  with  terrifying  rapidity;  the  most  vehement  orators, 
mounted  on  tables,  inflamed  the  imagination  of  the  audience 
that  crowded  around  them,  and  spread  itself  about  the  city  Uke 
the  burning  lava  of  a  volcano  ;  inside  the  houses  were  seen  the 
distress  of  husbands  and  wives,  the  grief  of  mothers,  the  tears 
of  children ;  and  in  the  midst  of  this  universal  confusion  the 
tocsin  sounded  without  interruption  at  the  cathedral,  at  the 
palace  (the  Palais  de  Justice)  and  in  all  the  parishes,  drums  beat 
the  '  generale '  in  every  quarter,  false  alarms  were  repeated, 
and  the  cry  of  '  To  arms  !  To  arms  !  '  The  machinery  of 
war  and  desolation,  convulsive  movements,  and  the  sombre 
courage  of  despair — ^such  is  the  horrible  picture  that  Paris 
presented  on  the  14th  July." 

One  might  suppose  tlus  lurid  description  to  emanate  from 
the  pen  of  an  incorrigible  reactionary,  unable  to  see  in  the  tumult 
of  the  capital  the  subUme  spectacle  of  a  nation  rising  as  one  man 
to  oppose  tyranny,  and  representing  as  agitators  those  noble 
orators  who  called  the  citizens  to  arms.  Not  at  all.  This 
account  is  given  by  no  other  than  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty 
themselves,  who  thus  ingenuously  disclose  the  methods  used 
by  the  revolutionaries  to  create  a  panic.  For  all  this  terror 
and  confusion,  these  tears  and  cries  and  "  movements  of  despair," 
there  was  no  cause  whatever ;  the  troops  at  the  Champ  de  Mars 
remained  completely  inactive,  the  Bastille  was  utterly  unpre- 
pared for  defence,  still  less  for  aggression,  and  the  only  soldiers 
in  the  Faubourg  Saint- Antoine  were  the  increasing  numbers  of 
deserters  from  the  army,  whilst  the  one  real  danger — the  brigands 
— had  been  disarmed  and  subdued  by  the  milice  bourgeoise. 
Thus  the  whole  agitation  was  the  work  of  the  revolutionary 
leaders  who,  in  order  to  accomphsh  their  designs,  did  not  scruple 
to  strike  terror  and  dismay  into  the  hearts  of  the  people.     What, 

also  Deux  Amis  de  la  Liberti,  ii.  297  :  "  The  regiments  encamped  in  the 
Champs  filys6es  had  retired  during  the  darkness,  but  their  real  motive  and 
the  place  of  their  retreat  was  unknown.  An  attack  was  expected  every 
moment ;  nothing  was  talked  of  but  the  troops  that  were  to  come  and  make 
an  assault  on  the  capital."  Historians  have  almost  invariably  misrepre- 
sented this  point,  confounding  the  panic  caused  by  the  brigands  on  the 
13th  with  that  caused  by  the  troops  on  the  14th. 


76  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

indeed,  were  the  "  tears  of  mothers  "  or  the  "  cries  of  children  " 
to  C3niics  such  as  Laclos  and  Chamfort,  to  the  members  of  the 
councils  of  Montrouge  and  of  Passy,  and  the  agitators  of  the 
Palais  Royal,  to  Danton,  Camille  Desmoulins,  Santerre,  and  St. 
Huruge  ?  The  "  people  "  existed  to  serve  their  purpose,  not 
to  inspire  their  pity. 

But  how  was  an  unarmed  multitude  to  carry  out  the  attack 
on  the  Bastille  ?  The  disarming  of  the  brigands  by  the  patriotic 
citizens  the  day  before  had  deprived  the  revolutionary  leaders 
of  their  most  valuable  instruments,  and,  in  order  to  re-arm  these 
ragged  legions,  it  was  necessary  to  drive  the  population  once 
more  to  raid  the  armouries.  This  was  speedily  effected,  and  in 
the  course  of  the  morning  thirty  to  forty  thousand  people  of  all 
sorts  and  conditions,  with  Theroigne  de  Mericourt  in  their  midst, 
invaded  the  arsenal  of  the  Invalides  and  seized  every  weapon 
they  could  find,  whilst  the  troops  in  the  neighbouring  Champs 
de  Mars — obedient  to  the  order  not  to  shed  the  blood  of  the 
citizens — oifered  no  resistance.  "  Famished  tigers,"  say  the 
Two  Friends  of  Liberty,  "  fall  less  rapidly  upon  their  prey." 
In  the  struggle  several  were  suffocated,  others  killed  in  their 
furious  endeavours  to  wrest  the  weapons  from  each  other.  Such 
were  the  citizens  to  whom  Flesselles  was  denounced  as  a  traitor 
for  not  deUvering  arms. 

But  now  the  moment  had  arrived  to  turn  the  attention  of 
the  people  in  the  direction  of  the  Bastille,  for  so  far  the  alarm 
of  the  pointing  cannons  had  created  no  popular  determination 
to  attack  the  state  prison.  A  further  incentive  must  therefore 
be  provided  in  order  to  produce  the  effect  desired  by  the  leaders 
of  a  spontaneous  movement  of  the  people  to  overthrow  the 
monument  of  despotism.  For  this  purpose  a  fresh  rumour  was 
circulated  by  a  bandit  posted  in  the  crowd  collected  in  the  Place 
de  Greve  around  the  Hotel  de  Ville — the  arms  the  people  sought 
had  been  conveyed  to  the  Bastille,  it  was  there  that  they  must 
go  to  find  them.  And  at  this  news  a  roar  arose  from  the  excited 
crowd,  and  from  thousands  of  throats  the  cry  went  up,  "  Let  us 
go  to  the  Bastille  !  " 


What  was  the  Bastille,  that  monument  of  despotism,  at 
whose  destruction  lovers  of  hberty  all  over  the  world  rejoiced  ? 
A  grey  stone  fortress  with  eight  pointed  towers,  surrounded  b  y 
a  dry  moat  and  separated  by  two  drawbridges  from  a  gateway 
opening  into  the  Rue  Saint-Ant oine.  Over  the  poor  and  populous 
Faubourg  it  loomed  forbiddingly,  a  mysterious  rehc  of  the  past, 
holding  within  its  wall  many  ancient  secrets.     Yet  was  it  the 


Emery  Walker  Ltd.  s 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        ^^ 

place  of  horror  it  has  been  represented  ?  In  order  to  realize  how 
far  its  evil  reputation  was  merited  in  its  day  we  must  compare  it 
with  other  prisons  of  the  period.  Now  if  we  consult  the  report  of 
the  philanthropic  John  Howard  on  the  State  of  the  Prisons  all  over 
Europe,  pubUshed  in  1792,  we  shall  find  that  the  prisons  of  France 
in  the  reign  of  Louis  XVI.  compared  very  favourably  with  those 
of  other  countries.  In  England,  Howard  tells  us  he  saw  prisoners 
during  the  years  1774,  1775,  and  1776  "  pining  under  diseases, 
expiring  on  the  floors  in  loathsome  cells,  of  pestilential  fevers," 
half  starved  and  in  rags ;  in  some  gaols  they  occupied  "  sub- 
terranean dungeons,  of  which  the  floor  was  very  damp,  with 
sometimes  an  inch  or  two  of  water."  Even  women  were  loaded 
with  heavy  irons.  Many  of  these  unhappy  creatures  were, 
moreover,  innocent,  being  detained  in  prison  a  year  before  trial. 
When  Elizabeth  Fry  visited  Newgate  over  thirty  years  later, 
matters  had  not  improved  very  appreciably.  AU  this,  however, 
was  due  less  to  deliberate  cruelty  than  to  the  carelessness  that 
characterized  our  forefathers,  and  is  not  to  be  compared  with  the 
deUberate  brutality  exercised  in  German  prisons.  Howard,  on 
visiting  Germany,  was  taken  down  into  "  a  black  torture  chamber 
round  which  hung  various  instruments  of  torture,  some  stained 
with  blood.  When  the  criminals  suffer  the  candles  are  lighted, 
for  the  windows  are  shut  close,  to  prevent  their  cries  being  heard 
abroad." 

In  France,  Howard  found  active  reforms  being  carried  out 
in  the  prison  system.  "  The  King's  declaration  .  .  .  dated  the 
30th  of  August  1780,  contains  some  of  the  most  humane  and 
enlightened  sentiments  respecting  the  conduct  of  prisons.  It 
mentions  the  construction  of  airy  and  spacious  infirmaries  for 
the  sick  .  .  .  a  total  abolition  of  underground  dungeons."  Howard 
had,  unfortunately,  not  provided  himself  with  a  permit  to  visit  the 
Bastille,  and  so  was  unable  to  gain  admission,^  yet  in  one  sentence 
he  sums  up  the  feeHng  that  the  state  prison  inspired  in  the  minds 
of  contemporaries  :  "  In  this  castle  all  is  mystery,  trick,  artifice, 
snare,  and  treachery." 

Imagine  an  old  house  where,  at  the  end  of  a  long  passage,  a 
black  door  was  to  be  found,  locked  and  bolted,  through  which 
one  might  not  pass,  leading  into  a  room  that  held  a  secret 
of  some  strange  and  terrible  kind,  known  only  to  the  owner 
of  the  house ;  then  picture  the  wild  imaginings  to  which 
the  mystery  would  give  rise,  the  children  hurrying  past  with 

^  Visitors  were  admitted  on  a  permit  to  the  Bastille.  "  M.  Howard 
could,  therefore,  have  obtained  admittance  like  any  one  else — he  had  taken 
no  steps  to  obtain  permission  to  enter  and  was  sent  away,  so  he  was  only 
able  to  speak  of  the  facts  he  had  collected  on  the  subject "  {Bastille 
divoiUe,  2*«™s  Livraison  (1789),  p.  13). 


78  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

bated  breath,  the  servants  whispering  their  suspicions  to  the 
village,  conjuring  up  monstrous  theories  of  what  was  to  be 
found  there. 

Thus  the  Bastille  at  the  end  of  the  Rue  Saint-Antoine,  with 
its  grim  portals  and  its  eight  grey  towers,  provided  a  perpetual 
matter  of  speculation  to  imaginative  minds ;  and  if  at  times  the 
preposterously  thick  doors  with  their  gigantic  locks  opened  to 
admit  the  curious,  they  suspected  that  much  was  still  concealed 
from  them.  Down  below  those  stone  floors,  hidden  from  the 
Ught  of  day,  were  there  not  subterranean  dungeons,  "  the  resort 
of  toads,  of  Uzards,  of  monstrous  rats  and  spiders,"  where  the 
victims  of  despotism  "  pined  in  darkness  and  soHtude  "  until  the 
mind  gave  way,  so  that  when  at  last  deUverance  came,  the 
prisoner  had  passed  beyond  all  human  aid  ?  Worse  still,  were 
there  not  dreadful  torture-chambers,  iron  cages  eight  feet  long, 
in  which  unhappy  captives  were  confined,  and,  beneath  the 
masonry  of  those  stone  walls,  the  mouldering  skeletons  of  men 
done  to  death  secretly  at  dead  of  night  ?  Most  gruesome  of  all 
was  the  story  of  the  chambre  des  oubliettes,  a  room  of  outwardly 
smiUng  aspect,  scented  with  flowers,  and  Ut  by  fifty  candles. 
Here  the  unsuspecting  prisoner  was  led  before  the  governor  and 
promised  his  liberty.  But  the  human  monster  who  presided 
over  the  destinies  of  the  captives  waited  only  to  see  the  rapture 
of  his  victim  before  giving  a  signal  at  which  the  floor  opened,  and 
the  wretched  man  fell  upon  a  wheel  of  knives  and  was  torn  to 
pieces.^ 

Such  is  the  legend  of  the  Bastille,  perpetuated  by  Louis  Blanc 
and  Michelet,  and  in  our  country  by  Carlyle  and  Dickens,  but 
which  rests  on  no  shadow  of  a  foundation.  It  should  be  noted 
that  it  was  not  amongst  the  people  that  the  legend  arose  ;  "  the 
people,"  says  Mercier,  "  dread  the  Chatelet  more  than  the 
Bastille;  they  are  not  afraid  of  the  latter  because  it  does  not 
concern  them,  consequently  they  hardly  pity  those  imprisoned 
there."  Such  awe  as  it  inspired  in  them,  such  curiosity  as  it 
aroused  in  their  minds,  had  therefore  been  instilled  in  them  by 
the  men  whose  wealth  or  talents  or  importance  entitled  them  to 
lettres  de  cachet — the  tickets  of  admission  to  the  Bastille.  The 
State  Prison,  known  ironically  to  contemporaries  as  the  "  Hotel 
des  Gens  de  Lettres,"  was  almost  exclusively  reserved  for  people 
suspected  of  designs  against  the  State,  for  conspirators,  forgers, 
writers  of  obscene  books  or  seditious  pamphlets  whose  Hvely 
imaginations  threw  a  lurid  light  over  their  experiences.  Of 
these,  the  most  vehement  in  their  denunciations  were  Latude 
and  Linguet,  both,  as  M.  Funck  Brentano  and  M.  Edmond  Bir6 
have  proved,  unscrupulous  liars  whose  testimony  is  refuted  not 

^  Deux  Amis,  i.  375. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE         79 

merely  by  the  statements  of  other  prisoners,  but  by  the  still 
existing  archives  of  the  Bastille. 

Researches  also  made  by  M.  Alfred  Begis,  M.  Victorien  Sardou, 
M.  Victor  Foumel,  M.  Ravaisson,  and  M.  Gustave  Bord  have 
unanimously  revealed  the  fact  that  under  Louis  XVI.  the  Bastille, 
though  dreadful  merely  as  a  place  of  captivity,  bore  no  re- 
semblance to  its  legendary  counterpart.  The  damp,  dark 
dungeons  had  fallen  into  complete  disuse  ;  since  the  first  ministry 
of  Necker  in  1776,  no  one  had  ever  been  imprisoned  there.  All 
the  rooms  were  provided  with  windows,  and  either  stoves  or 
fireplaces,  good  beds,  and  furniture,  whilst  the  prisoners  were 
allowed  to  occupy  themselves  in  various  ways — ^with  books, 
music,  drawing,  and  so  on — and  in  certain  cases  to  meet  in  each 
other's  rooms  for  games.  The  food  was  excellent  and  plentiful ; 
many  of  the  menus  recorded  by  prisoners  would  tantalize  the 
palate  of  an  epicure,  and  this  was  so  even  under  Louis  XV.,  when 
De  Renneville,  in  a  pamphlet  written  after  his  release  with  the 
object  of  denouncing  the  Bastille,  admitted  that  "  certain 
people  had  themselves  imprisoned  there  in  order  to  enjoy  good 
cheer  without  expense."  ^ 

Yet,  for  all  these  amenities,  the  abolition  of  the  Bastille  as 
a  place  of  arbitrary  imprisonment  was  undoubtedly  desired  by  the 
nation,  and  had  been  demanded  by  the  cahiers  of  the  noblesse 
as  well  as  of  the  Tiers  ]£tats.  The  request  was  made,  moreover, 
in  no  spirit  of  sedition  ;  the  King  was  confidently  appealed  to, 
in  virtue  of  his  well-known  humanity,  to  demolish  this  relic  of 
bygone  tyranny. 

As  early  as  1784  the  architect  Corbet  had  published  the  Plan 
of  a  Public  Square  to  the  Glory  of  Louis  XVI.  on  the  Site 
of  the  Bastille,  and  this  scheme  was  being  openly  discussed  in 
1789.  Moreover,  in  the  Seance  Royale  on  June  23,  Louis  XVI. 
had  again  proposed  the  abolition  of  lettres  de  cachet,  thereby, 
as  M.  Bire  points  out,  sounding  the  knell  of  the  Bastille. 

The  destruction  of  the  Bastille  by  force  was  therefore  needless 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  nation  as  a  whole,  but  necessary 
to  the  designs  of  the  revolutionary  leaders,  firstly,  because  it 
deprived  the  King  of  the  glory  of  destroying  it ;  secondly,  because 
it  served  as  a  pretext  for  an  insurrection ;  thirdly,  because  it 
exercised  a  restraining  influence  over  the  Faubourg  Sain t-Antoine ; 
and  fourthly,  because  its  continued  existence  was  a  menace  to 
their  personal  security.  The  State  Prison  must  be  demoHshed 
instantly  if  they  were  to  make  sure  of  not  expiating  their  crimes 
within  its  precincts. 

This  was  the  task  the  people  were  to  be  worked  up  to  by  terror 
to  perform.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  no  intention  of  this 
^  De  V Inquisition  FranQaise  ou  Histoire  de  la  Bastille,  1724.  ^^y 


8o  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

kind  existed  in  their  minds  when  the  march  on  the  Bastille  began. ^ 
On  this  point  all  reliable  contemporaries  are  agreed — the  idea  of 
"  the  people  "  rising  as  one  man  to  overthrow  the  "  monument  of 
despotism  "  is  a  fiction  ;  the  greater  proportion  of  the  crowd  that 
marched  on  the  Bastille  were  animated  hy  one  motive  only — that  of 
procuring  arms  for  their  protection?  "  It  was  not,"  says  M. 
Funck  Brentano,  "  a  question  of  liberty  or  of  tyranny,  of  deliver- 
ing prisoners  or  of  protesting  against  authority.  The  taking  of  the 
Bastille  was  carried  on  to  the  cries  of  *  Vive  le  Roi !  '  '  March,' 
said  the  women  to  their  men,  *  it  is  for  the  King  and  country  ! '  "  ^ 


Whilst  the  honest  citizens,  animated  by  no  sanguinary  in- 
tentions, thus  prepared  to  march  on  the  Bastille,  what  was  the 
disposition  of  the  Governor,  De  Launay  ?  It  is  amusing  to 
compare  the  fiction  circulated  amongst  the  populace  with  the 
reaUty  recorded  by  the  colleagues  of  De  Launay.  "  Despotism," 
say  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty,  "  threatened  us  from  the  ram- 
parts of  the  Bastille.  De  Launay,  worthy  minister  of  its  ven- 
geance, was  entrusted  with  the  care  of  its  fearful  dungeons, 
shuddering  at  the  very  name  of  liberty,  trembling  lest,  with  the 
tears  of  his  victims,  the  gold  that  was  the  object  of  his  desires, 
the  price  of  their  torments  and  of  his  brutality,  should  cease  : 
the  cowardly  and  avaricious  satellite  of  tyranny  had  long  been 
surrounding  himself  with  arms  and  cannons.  Since  the  insurrec- 
tion of  the  Faubourg  Saint- Antoine  (the  Affaire  ReveiUon)  he 
had  been  unceasingly  engaged  in  preparations  for  defence.  .  .  ."  * 

The  truth  was  that  De  Launay  had  reduced  the  other  officers 
to  desperation  by  his  unpreparedness.  In  vain  Bezenval  had 
warned  him  that  the  castle  was  unfit  to  resist  the  attack ;  in  vain 
De  Flue,  the  captain  of  the  Swiss  contingent,  sent  to  reinforce 
the  garrison  on  July  7,  urged  him  to  take  measures  of  defence. 
"  From  the  day  of  my  arrival,"  says  De  Flue,  "  I  learnt  to  know 
this  man  ;  by  the  meaningless  preparations  he  made  for  the 
defence  of  his  post,  and  by  his  continual  anxiety  and  irresolution, 
I  saw  clearly  that  we  should  be  ill  commanded  if  we  were  attacked. 
He  was  so  overcome  with  terror  that  at  night  he  took  for  enemies 

^  "  This  resolution  (to  attack  the  Bastille)  appeared  sudden  and  un- 
expected amongst  the  people,  but  it  was  premeditated  in  the  councils  of 
the  Revolutionary  leaders"  (Marmontel,  iv.  187). 

"  There  is  every  reason  to  conclude,  by  the  false  reports  and  alarms 
that  were  circulated  everywhere,  that  it  was  desired  to  keep  up,  to  increase 
the  agitation,  and  lead  to  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  "  (Bailly,  i.  375). 

2  "  They  went  to  the  Bastille,  but  only  to  get  arms  and  munitions" 
(Dussaulx,  p.  211,  edition  Monin). 

3  Precis  exacte  du  Cousin  Jacques. 
*  Deux  Amis,  i.  306. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        8i 

the  shadows  of  trees  and  other  surrounding  objects.  .  .  ."  ^  Even 
M.  Flammermont  is  obliged  to  admit  the  pacific  intentions  of  the 
Governor  :  "  One  sees  that  De  Flue  cannot  understand  the 
weakness  of  poor  De  Launay.  For  him,  a  soldier  by  profession 
and  a  foreigner,  the  besiegers  are  simply  enemies — '  Feinde  ' — 
this  is  the  word  he  constantly  applies  to  them ;  whilst  the  Governor 
no  doubt  saw  in  them  citizens  whose  blood  he  feared  to  shed  even  in 
the  defence  of  the  fortress  confided  to  his  care."  ^ 

This  tribute  from  a  writer  whose  sole  object  is  to  glorify  the 
besiegers  of  the  Bastille  effectually  disposes  of  the  theory  of  De 
Launay  as  the  instrument  of  despotism.  In  fact,  as  all  evidence 
proves,  he  did  everything  in  his  power  to  settle  matters  by  peace- 
ful arbitration.  When  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  the  14th 
a  deputation  of  three  citizens  arrived  at  the  Bastille  to  complain 
that  "the  cannons  on  the  ramparts  were  pointing  in  the  direction  of 
the  Faubourg  Saint- Antoine  " — a  position  they  had  always  occu- 
pied ^ — De  Launay  received  them  with  his  customary  urbanity 
and  invited  them  to  breakfast  with  him.  The  cannons,  he  assured 
them,  should  be  drawn  back  in  their  embrasures ;  the  embrasures 
themselves  should  be  boarded  over  to  soothe  the  alarms  of  the 
people.  No  injury  whatever  should  be  done  to  the  Faubourg 
Saint- Antoine,  and  in  return  he  hoped  that  the  inhabitants  would 
refrain  from  aggression. 

The  deputies  lingered  so  long  at  De  Launay's  hospitable  board 
that  the  crowd  of  citizens  who  had  followed  them,  and  were 
waiting  meanwhile  in  the  outer  court,  began  to  grow  impatient. 
The  sight  of  the  cannons  being  drawn  back  in  their  embrasures 
added  further  to  their  excitement,  and  it  was  immediately 
concluded  that  this  movement  had  been  made  for  the  purpose 
of  charging  the  guns  with  balls. 

De  Launay  and  the  three  deputies  were  still  at  breakfast 
when  a  second  deputation  arrived  from  the  district  surrounding 
the  Bastille,  headed  by  M.  Thuriot  de  la  Rozidre,  and  again 
followed  by  a  crowd.  He^  la  Roztfere  was  admitted  to  the 
Governor's  apartments  opposite  the  entrance  to  the  courtyard 
of  the  prison,  and  as  soon  as  the  three  former  deputies  had 
departed  he  addressed  De  Launay  in  these  words  : 

"  I  come,  sir,  in  the  name  of  the  nation  and  of  the  country  to 
represent  to  you  that  the  cannons  placed  on  the  towers  of  the 
Bastille  are  a  cause  of  great  anxiety  and  spread  alarm  throughout 

^  La  JournSe  du  14  Juillet,  by  Jules  Flammermont,  p.  Ixviii. 

2  Ibid.  p.  Ixix. 

'  "If  cannons  were  perceived  on  the  battlements  it  was  because  they 
wer^e  habitually  used  for  firing  salutes  on  fete-days  :  since  the  far-off  Fronde 
no  balls  had  been  fired  from  them.  The  Faubourg  saw  them  every  morn- 
ing, but  such  was  the  popular  excitement  that  this  morning  they  seemed  to 
assume  a  threatening  aspect"  (Madelin,  p.  66). 

G 


82  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Paris.  I  beg  you  to  have  them  taken  down,  and  I  hope  you 
will  acquiesce  with  the  demand  I  have  been  ordered  to  make  to 
you."  De  Launay  may  not  have  been  Hon-hearted,  but  to  this 
proposition  he  had  the  courage  to  reply :  "  That  is  not  in  my 
power ;  these  cannons  have  been  on  the  towers  from  time  im- 
memorial and  I  cannot  take  them  down  without  an  order  from 
the  King.  Already  informed  of  the  alarm  they  cause  in  Paris 
but  unable  to  be  taken  off  their  mountings,  I  have  had  them 
drawn  back  from  their  embrasures." 

No  governor  of  a  fortress  could  possibly  make  a  more  pacific 
reply,  but  it  did  not  satisfy  De  la  Roziere,  who  now  requested 
De  Launay  to  admit  him  to  the  prison.  To  this  the  Governor 
at  first  demurred,  but  finally  allowed  himself  to  be  over-per- 
suaded by  Major  de  Losme,  the  most  humane  and  broad-minded 
of  all  the  officers  at  the  Bastille,  known  as  the  "  Consoler  of  the 
Prisoners,"  and  the  very  antithesis  of  the  despotic  De  Flue. 

The  Governor  having  led  De  la  Roziere  over  the  smaller  draw- 
bridge into  the  courtyard  of  the  Bastille,  they  found  the  Swiss 
Guard,  some  of  the  Invahdes,  and  all  the  officers  assembled  there, 
whereupon  De  la  Roziere  proceeded  to  appeal  to  them  "  in  the 
name  of  honour,  of  the  nation,  and  of  their  country,  to  change 
the  direction  of  the  cannons  and  to  surrender." 

It  is  difiicult  here  to  recognize  the  "  ferocious  De  Launay 
shuddering  at  the  very  name  of  hberty  "  :  for  at  this  open  defiance 
of  his  authority  he  joined  De  la  Roziere  in  making  the  soldiers 
swear  that  they  would  not  fire  or  make  use  of  their  arms  unless 
they  were  attacked.^ 

De  la  Roziere,  however,  not  content  with  this  assurance, 
insisted  on  wasting  more  time  by  going  up  to  inspect  the  battle- 
ments, whilst  the  people  outside  grew  more  and  more  impatient 
and  excited.  De  Launay,  who  had  accompanied  him,  now 
looked  forth  from  the  heights  of  the  Bastille  and  saw  for  the 
first  time  the  large  and  threatening  multitude  that  completely 
blocked  the  end  of  the  Rue  Saint-Antoine  and  was  beginning  to 
penetrate  into  the  outer  courtyard  of  the  prison.  At  this  sight, 
it  is  said,  the  Governor  grew  pale  ;  the  thing  he  had  long  dreaded 
had  come  to  pass  :  the  people  were  marching  on  the  Bastille. 
Was  it  cowardice  that  whitened  the  cheek  of  the  unfortunate 
Governor  ?  It  seems  unHkely  ;  De  Launay  was  provided  with 
formidable  measures  of  defence — "  fifteen  cannons  bordered  the 
towers,  and  three  field-pieces  were  placed  in  the  great  courtyard 
opposite  the  entrance  gate  presenting  a  certain  death  to  those 
bold  enough   to  attack   it.      Ammunition,  moreover,  was  not 

^  "  On  the  provocation  of  the  Governor  himself  the  officers  and  soldiers 
swore  that  they  would  not  fire  and  would  not  make  use  of  their  arms 
unless  they  were  attacked  "  [Bastille  divoilie,  ii.  91). 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        83 

wanting.  ..."  Why,  then,  should  the  Governor  tremble  ? 
Could  he  not,  with  a  few  volleys  from  his  guns,  sweep  both  street 
and  courtyard  clear  of  the  encroaching  multitude  ?  This  was, 
however,  precisely  the  course  he  feared  to  take,  so  he  found 
himself  in  the  dilemma  that  faced  all  upholders  of  the  royal 
authority  throughout  the  Revolution — the  necessity  for  repress- 
ing violence,  coupled  with  a  dread  of  shedding  the  blood  of  the 
people.  The  power  was  all  in  their  hands,  but  they  feared  to 
use  it,  and  this  fear — the  outcome  of  the  philosophy  of  the  age, 
increased  by  a  knowledge  of  the  King's  humanity — paralysed 
the  arm  of  law  and  order,  and  gave  to  the  revolutionaries  an 
immense  advantage.  This,  then,  was  the  fear  that  caused  De 
Launay  to  grow  pale,  and  that,  according  to  De  Flue,  would  have 
made  him  surrender  the  castle  had  not  De  Flue  and  the  other 
officers  represented  to  him  that  he  could  not  thus  betray  his 
trust  to  his  royal  master.^ 

When  at  last  De  la  Roziere  left  the  castle  it  was  too  late  to 
stem  the  rising  tide,  and  a  short  half-hour  later  the  armed  crowd 
arrived  on  the  scene.  This  crowd  that  we  have  already  seen 
setting  forth  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  arms  had  now,  how- 
ever, been  reinforced  by  other  elements,  which  it  is  important 
to  distinguish  if  we  would  attempt  to  understand  the  chaotic 
movement  that  followed. 

First  of  all,  then,  there  were  the  honest  citizens  who  desired 
arms  for  their  defence ;  secondly,  the  revolutionary  leaders,  the 
ferocious  Maillard,  Theroigne  de  M6ricourt,  and  Jourdan,  later 
to  be  known  as  "  Coupe-tete,"  all  determined  to  accept  no  pacific 
measures  but  to  destroy  the  castle  ;  thirdly,  the  motley  crew 
of  "  brigands  "  not  in  the  secret  of  the  leaders,  thirsting  for 
violence,  consisting  not  only  of  the  aforesaid  Marseillais  and 
Italians,  but  also,  according  to  Marat,  of  large  numbers  of  Germans,^ 
presumably  deserters  from  the  royal  troops  ;  fourthly  and  lastly, 
the  crowds  of  merely  curious  who  longed  to  explore  the  inner- 
most recesses  of  the  Bastille,  to  see  for  themselves  the  ghastly 
torture-chamber,  the  iron  cages  and  the  oubUettes,  and  bring  to 
Hght  the  many  nameless  and  unhappy  prisoners  Hngering  for- 
gotten in  dark  dungeons  down  below. 

This  tumultuous  and  heterogeneous  mob,  armed  with  guns, 
sabres,  and  hatchets,  now  surged  into  the  outer  courtyard  (the 
Cour  de  I'Avancee)  shouting,  "  We  want  the  Bastille  !  Down 
with  the  troops  !  " 

^  La  JournSe  du  14  Juillet,  p.  cxcviii. 

^  "  The  Bastille,  ill  defended,  was  taken  by  a  few  soldiers  and  a  troop 
of  wretches,  mostly  Germans  and  also  provincials.  The  Parisians — those 
eternal  idlers  {ces  kernels  badauds) — appeared  at  the  fortress,  but  curiosity 
alone  brought  them  there  to  visit  the  dark  dungeons  of  which  the  mere 
idea  froze  them  with  terror"  (Marat,  Ami  du  Peuple,  No.  530). 


84  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

The  besiegers  were,  however,  confronted  by  the  raised  draw- 
bridge known  as  the  Pont  de  I'Avancee  opening  into  the  Cour 
du  Gouvernement,  and  beyond  that  by  the  second  drawbridge 
leading  into  the  castle  itself.  Two  men,  Toumay  and  Bonne- 
mere,^  thereupon  climbed  to  the  roof  of  the  shop  of  M.  Riquet, 
a  perfumer,  and  by  this  means  reached  the  wall  surrounding 
the  moat  of  the  Bastille.  Sitting  astride  on  the  top  they  managed 
to  work  themselves  along  to  the  Corps  des  Gardes  by  the  side 
of  the  drawbridge,  and  the  amazing  point  is  that  the  garrison 
allowed  them  to  do  this  without  firing  a  shot,  contenting  them- 
selves merely  with  shouting  warnings  from  the  battlements,^ 
and  this  conciliatory  attitude  was  maintained  even  when  the 
two  men  proceeded  to  cut  through  the  chains  of  the  drawbridge 
"  de  I'Avancee,"  which  fell  with  a  terrific  crash,  kilHng  one  man 
in  the  crowd  and  wounding  another.  Instantly  the  whole  mob 
rushed  forward  into  the  Cour  du  Gouvernement,  and  now  for 
the  first  time  the  garrison,  anxious  to  prevent  their  attacking 
the  second  drawbridge,  opened  a  fire  of  musketry,  scattering 
the  people  in  all  directions,  and  finally  driving  them  back  into 
the  outer  courtyard.  This  was  the  incident  which  gave  rise 
to  the  legend  that  De  Launay,  having  let  down  the  drawbridge 
and  enticed  the  people  into  the  Cour  du  Gouvernement,  treacher- 
ously opened  fire  on  them. 

Around  this  treachery — the  first  of  the  two  with  which  De 
Launay  was  accused  during  the  siege  of  the  Bastille — contro- 
versy raged  for  over  a  century,  but  responsible  French  historians 
are  now  agreed  that  the  incident  occurred  as  it  is  here  described.^ 

The  most  convincing  proof  in  favour  of  De  Launay  lies 
perhaps  in  the  inexpediency  of  such  a  manoeuvre.  If  he  would 
not  make  use  of  the  legitimate  means  of  defence  at  his  disposal, 
why  should  he  resort  to  treachery  and  thereby  needlessly  enrage 
the  people  ?  Had  he  wished  to  carry  death  and  destruction 
into  their  ranks  he  had  only  to  fire  any  of  his  fifteen  cannons 
from  the  ramparts.  There  was  no  necessity  to  entice  them 
within  range  of  musketry  fire. 

*  Bastille  divoiUe,  ii.  92  ;  Deux  Amis,  i.  317.  The  citizens  of  the  Fau- 
bourg Saint-Antoine  gave  their  names  as  Davanne  and  Demain,  but  M. 
Flammermont  (p.  ccv,  note)  and  M.  Victor  Fournel,  Les  Hommes  du  14 
Juillet,  p.  216,  accept  the  former  statement. 

*  Even  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty  admit  this  :  "  Two  men  .  .  .  get  up 
on  to  the  roof  of  the  guard-house  in  spite  of  the  cries  and  threats  of  the 
garrison  of  the  fortress."  See  also  Bastille  devoilie,  ii.  93  ;  Marmontel,  iv. 
191.  M,  Flammermont's  assertion  that  they  acted  under  the  fire  of  the 
garrison  is  therefore  contrary  not  only  to  evidence,  but  to  probabihty,  for, 
considering  the  slow  rate  at  which  they  must  have  progressed,  they  would 
have  proved  an  easy  target  had  the  garrison  chosen  to  fire, 

'  "  This  pretended  treachery  of  De  Launay,  which  was  immediately 
noised  all  over  Paris  ...  is  disproved  not  only  by  the  accounts  of  the 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        85 

It  is  easy,  however,  to  understand  the  misunderstanding 
that  gave  rise  to  the  story  of  De  Launay's  treachery.  The  rear- 
guard of  the  crowd,  seeing  the  fall  of  the  drawbridge,  the  onrush 
of  the  people  in  the  front,  and  then  the  fire  directed  on  them 
from  the  battlements,  could  not  know  by  what  means  the  draw- 
bridge had  been  let  down,  and  immediately  concluded  that  the 
order  had  been  given  by  De  Launay  so  as  to  lure  the  people  on 
to  their  destruction.  The  cry  of  treachery  having  once  been 
uttered,  the  agitators,  mingling  in  the  crowd,  saw  their  oppor- 
tunity to  fan  the  flame  of  popular  fury,  and  messengers  were 
despatched  all  over  Paris  to  circulate  the  news  of  De  Launay's 
hideous  perfidy.  At  the  H6tel  de  Ville  it  raised  a  storm  of 
indignation,  and  a  further  deputation  was  sent  to  the  Bastille 
to  inquire  of  M.  de  Launay  whether  he  "  would  be  disposed  to 
receive  into  the  chateau  the  troops  of  the  Parisian  miUtia,  who 
would  guard  it  with  the  troops  already  stationed  there  and  who 
would  be  under  the  orders  of  the  town."  But  when  the  deputa- 
tion arrived,  the  fusillade  going  on  between  the  garrison  and 
the  besiegers  made  it  impossible  to  communicate  with  the 
Governor,  and  in  the  frightful  uproar  that  now  prevailed  the 
white  handkerchiefs  waved  by  the  deputies  in  sign  of  truce 
passed  unperceived.  A  second  deputation,  armed  this  time  with 
a  flag  and  drum,  succeeded,  however,  in  attracting  the  attention 
of  the  Governor  and  officers  on  the  battlements,  who  repUed  by 
inviting  the  deputies  to  come  forward,  but  to  persuade  the 
crowd  to  keep  back.  At  the  same  moment  a  subordinate  officer 
on  the  ramparts,  to  prove  the  good  faith  of  the  garrison,  reversed 
his  gun  in  sign  of  peace,  and  this  example  was  followed  by  his 
comrades,  who  called  out  loudly  to  the  crowd,  "  Have  no  fear, 
we  will  not  fire,  stay  where  you  are.  Bring  forward  your  flag 
and  your  deputies.  The  Governor  will  come  down  and  speak 
to  you." 

But  here  another  misunderstanding  occurred  which  gave 
rise  to  the  story  of  a  second  treachery  on  the  part  of  De  Launay, 

besieged  but  of  the  besiegers  themselves,  and  is  rejected  to-day  by  all 
historians"  (Funck  Brentano,  L&gendes  et  Archives  de  la  Bastille,  p.  256). 
M.  Flammermont  admits  with  regard  to  this  accusation  :  "  All  that  is 
false."  Even  M,  Louis  Blanc  with  a  rare  impulse  of  fairness  absolves  De 
Launay  from  this  charge  :  "  Such  was  the  confusion  that  the  greater 
number  (of  the  crowd)  were  not  aware  under  what  intrepid  effort  the  chains 
of  the  first  bridge  had  been  broken  ;  they  believed  that  the  Governor  him- 
self had  given  the  order  to  let  it  down  in  order  to  entice  the  multitude  and 
more  easily  to  make  carnage  amongst  them,  .  .  .  De  Launay  was  capable 
of  having  given  the  order  to  fire  but  not  of  having  committed  the  perfidious 
atrocity  imputed  to  him,  and  justice  demands  that  his  memory  should  be 
o|ienly  cleared  of  it "  {Histoire  de  la  RSvolution,  ii.  381).  In  spite  of  all  this 
evidence  the  story  of  De  Launay's  treachery  is  persistently  repeated  by 
nearly  every  English  writer. 


86  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

for  just  as  the  deputies  were  about  to  advance,  a  man  in  the 
crowd — obviously  an  agitator  posted  there  to  prevent  arbitra- 
tion— started  a  fresh  alarm  that  one  of  the  cannons  was  pointing 
at  the  people,  and  inomediately  every  one  took  up  the  cry  and 
urged  the  deputies  not  to  trust  the  "  perfidious  promises  "  of 
the  garrison.^  The  deputies  thereupon  retreated  into  the  Cour 
de  rOrme  and  remained  standing  there  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
disregarding  the  shouts  of  the  garrison  urging  them  to  advance. 
De  Launay,  now  convinced  that  the  signals  of  peace  were  merely 
a  ruse  to  obtain  admittance  to  the  castle  by  treachery,  remarked 
to  his  ofi&cers :  "  You  must  perceive,  messieurs,  that  these 
deputies  and  this  flag  cannot  belong  to  the  town ;  the  flag  is 
certainly  one  that  the  people  have  seized  and  which  they  are 
using  to  surprise  us.  If  they  were  really  deputies  they  would 
not  have  hesitated,  considering  the  promise  you  made  them, 
to  come  and  declare  to  me  the  intentions  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  !  "  ^ 

Then,  since  the  crowd  continued  to  fire  at  the  garrison,  the 
garrison  once  more  returned  their  fire,  and  the  battle  continued 
with  redoubled  violence.  The  story  of  this  second  treachery 
of  De  Launay  was  again  circulated  through  Paris — the  Governor, 
it  was  said,  had  repHed  to  the  flag  of  truce  with  signs  of  peace 
and,  the  deputies  having  confidingly  advanced,  the  garrison 
had  discharged  a  volley  of  musketry,  kiUing  several  people  at 
their  side.  Around  this  point  again  controversy  has  raged, 
but  all  rehable  evidence  proves  that  the  second  accusation  of 
treachery  was  as  unfounded  as  the  first,^  for  on  two  points  all 
accounts  agree — the  deputies  did  not  advance  and  the  crowd 
continued  without  interruption  to  fire  on  the  garrison. 

Moreover,  to  this  second  charge  of  treachery,  as  to  the  first, 

*  Deux  Amis,  i,  325. 

'  "R6cit  des  Assi6g6s,"  Deux  Amis,  i.  321  ;   Bastille  dSvoilie,  ii.  97. 

'  The  legend  was  repeated  at  the  time  by  a  great  number  of  writers, 
including  even  Lord  Dorset,  who  was  not  present  at  the  siege,  and  whose 
account  is  inaccurate  in  nearly  every  point.  It  is  refuted,  however,  not 
only  by  Montjoie,  BeauHeu,  and  Marmontel,  but  by  the  principal  revolu- 
tionary authorities — Bastille  ddvoiUe  (ii.  99)  ;  Dussaubc,  p.  219  (edition 
Monin) :  "  In  order  to  have  the  right  on  all  these  points,  to  accuse  the 
Governor  and  his  garrison  of  perfidy  one  would  have  to  be  very  certain 
that  they  saw  and  recognized  the  signals  of  the  deputies,  and  if  they  did 
indeed  perceive  them  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  was  impossible  for  them 
to  cease  action  whilst  the  fire  of  the  besiegers  continued,  and  whilst  they 
were  being  shot  at  not  only  from  the  foot  of  the  fortress  but  from  the  tops 
of  the  neighbouring  houses."  BeauUeu  explains  the  situation  by  stating 
that  a  part  of  the  garrison — that  is  to  say  the  Invalides — were  on  the  side 
of  the  people,  and  that  it  was  they  who  signed  to  them  to  advance,  whilst 
the  rest — the  Swiss — ^were  for  holding  out,  and  it  was  they  who  fired. 
This  is  the  view  taken  by  Louis  Blanc  (ii.  385),  who  also  in  this  instance 
denies  De  Launay's  treachery.  "  No  historian  any  longer  admits  this 
legend,"  says  M.  Louis  Madelin. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        87 

the  same  line  of  reasoning  may  be  applied — what  object  could 
De  Launay  possibly  have  for  needlessly  infuriating  the  people, 
though  still  at  this  stage  of  the  siege  he  refused  to  open  fire  on 
them  from  the  cannons  ?  Further,  why  should  he  fire  on  a 
deputation  when  we  know  from  the  evidence  of  his  officers 
that  he  would  have  seized  any  opportunity  to  capitulate,  and 
that  it  was  mainly  at  the  instance  of  the  Swiss  De  Flue  that  he 
continued  the  siege  ?  ^  Obviously,  as  BeauUeu  remarks,  "  there 
was  no  treachery,  but  only  a  frightful  confusion." 

At  the  Hotel  de  Ville  the  news  of  De  Launay's  latest  perfidy 
roused  a  fresh  storm  of  indignation,  and  the  wildest  rumours 
were  circulated  amongst  the  crowd  assembled  in  the  Place  de 
Greve.  Now,  amongst  the  groups  of  citizens  angrily  discussing 
the  situation,  there  moved  a  tall  young  man,  who  hstened 
eagerly  to  all  that  was  said,  and  at  last  entering  into  the  conver- 
sation heard  of  the  "  massacre  of  citizens  "  that  was  taking  place 
at  the  Bastille.  This  young  man  was  Pierre  HuUn,  the  manager 
of  a  laundry  on  the  outskirts  of  Paris ;  he  had  come  into  Paris 
early  that  morning  on  business,  and,  finding  a  crowd  assembled 
in  the  Place  de  Greve,  he  joined  it  at  the  precise  moment  that 
the  news  of  De  Launay's  second  treachery  had  set  all  minds 
aflame.  Huhn,  who  was  a  brave  man,  unconnected  with  any 
intrigue,  shared  the  general  indignation,  and  seeing  that  his 
handsome  countenance  and  commanding  appearance  had 
evidently  found  favour  with  the  multitude,  he  turned  and 
addressed  them  in  these  spirited  words  : 

"  My  friends,  are  you  citizens  ?  Let  us  march  on  the  Bastille  ! 
Our  friends,  oar  brothers,  are  being  massacred.  I  will  expose 
you  to  no  chances,  but  if  there  are  risks  to  run,  I  will  be  the  first 
to  run  them,  and  I  swear  to  you  on  my  honour  that  I  will  bring 
you  back  victorious  or  you  will  bring  me  back  dead  \  "  ^ 

The  people,  taking  this  courageous  and  eloquent  young  man 
to  be  at  least  an  officer,  immediately  ralhed  around  him,  and 
the  whole  Place  de  Greve  resounded  with  the  cry,  "  You  shall 
be  our  commander  !  " 

Hulin  accepted  and  found  himself  at  the  head  of  an  army 
by  no  means  contemptible ;  here  were  grenadiers  of  Ruffeville, 
fusiliers  of  the  company  of  Lubersac,  a  host  of  bourgeois,  and 
three  cannons,  and  these  on  their  way  to  the  Bastille  were 
reinforced  by  several  InvaUdes  and  two  more  cannons. 

In  this  second  start  for  the  Bastille  there  was  undeniably  a 
strong  element  of  heroism ;  these  men  setting  forth,  burning 
with  indignation  at  a  supposed  outrage  on  their  fellow-citizens, 

'  ^  Bastille  dSvoilSe,  ii.  127,  128.     See  also  account  by  De  Flue  in  Revue 
Retrospective. 

*  Montjoie,  Hist,  de  la  Rivolution,  xlv.  no  ;  Deux  Amis,  i.  327. 


88  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

are  in  no  way  to  be  confounded  with  the  brigands  who  had 
preceded  them.  To  attack  the  fortress,  which  at  this  moment 
they  honestly  regarded  as  the  stronghold  of  tyranny,  belching 
forth  fire  and  smoke  on  all  those  who  attempted  to  approach  it, 
was  indeed  a  brave  adventure  that  required  no  httle  personal 
courage  and  self-sacrifice.  The  fact  that  all  the  commotion 
was  based  on  a  misunderstanding  does  not  detract  from  the 
gallantry  of  the  enterprise.  The  incident  is  all  the  more  remark- 
able in  that  it  was  the  one  and  only  occasion  in  the  history  of  the 
Revolution  when  a  crowd  was  led  by  a  true  man  of  the  people,  and 
not  by  the  professional  agitators  or  their  tools.  HuHn  was  a 
noble  and  disinterested  man,  and,  as  we  shall  see,  proved  himself 
worthy  of  the  confidence  the  people  had  placed  in  him. 

This  formidable  contingent  with  their  five  cannons,  Hulin 
marching  at  the  head  of  the  bourgeois,  sergeants  leading  the 
Gardes  Fran9aises,  arrived  at  the  Bastille  by  way  of  the  Arsenal 
to  find  a  scene  of  indescribable  confusion.  The  crowd,  infuriated 
by  De  Launay's  supposed  treachery,  had  bethought  themselves 
of  a  plan  for  burning  down  his  house  by  wheeUng  wagon-loads 
of  straw  into  the  Cour  du  Gouvemement  and  setting  light  to 
them.  The  brigands  in  the  crowd,  not  content  with  inanimate 
objects  on  which  to  vent  their  fury,  seized  on  a  pretty  girl. 
Mile,  de  Monsigny,  the  daughter  of  a  captam  of  the  InvaUdes, 
whom  they  took  to  be  the  daughter  of  De  Launay,  and  by  signs 
intimated  to  the  garrison  that  they  would  bum  her  aHve  if  the 
castle  were  not  surrendered.  The  girl,  who  was  Uttle  more  than 
a  child,  fainted  with  terror,  and  was  dragged  unconscious  on  to 
a  heap  of  straw.  M.  de  Monsigny,  seeing  this  from  the  towers 
of  the  castle,  rushed  to  his  daughter's  rescue,  but  was  knocked 
down  by  two  shots  from  the  besiegers,  and  the  horrible  crime 
was  only  averted  by  the  bravery  of  Aubin  Bonnemere — he  who 
i^ad  cut  the  chains  of  the  drawbridge — and  who  now  succeeded 
in  carrjdng  the  girl  away  to  a  place  of  safety. 

It  is  difficult  to  reconstruct  the  exact  order  of  events  at  this 
point  of  the  siege,  but  it  would  seem  that  the  arrival  of  HuUn 
and  the  army  with  cannons  coincided  with  the  setting  Hght  to  the 
wagon-loads  of  straw,  and  that  at  this  moment  the  first  and  only 
charge  was  fired  from  one  of  the  cannons  of  the  Bastille.  Accord- 
ing to  Montjoie  the  discharge  was  made  when  the  garrison 
perceived  the  cannons  of  the  besiegers  arri\dng  on  the  scene ; 
according  to  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty  it  followed  on  the 
attempt  to  set  fire  to  the  Governor's  house ;  but  on  one  point  all 
authorities  are  agreed — the  Bastille  had  fifteen  cannons,  and  during 
the  whole  siege  one  was  fired  once}    No  further  proof  is  needed  of 

^  Bastille  divoiUe,  ii.  loi  note,  121;  Deux  Amis,  i.  326;  Montjoie, 
Histoire  de  la  Revolution  de  France,  xlv.  112 ;  Mannontel,  iv.  193. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        89 

De  Launay's  humanity :  had  he  chosen  to  make  use  of  the  means 
within  his  power,  even  the  authors  of  the  Bastille  devoilee 
are  obhged  to  admit,  he  could  have  swept  the  courtyard  clear 
of  assailants  :  "If  the  platform  of  the  great  bridge  had  been 
lowered,  and  the  three  cannons  charged  with  grape-shot  in  the 
courtyard  had  been  fired,  what  carnage  would  not  have  been 
made  ?  "  ^  But  now  the  artillery  of  the  besiegers  being  brought 
into  play,  the  confusion  reached  its  height :  the  roar  of  the 
cannons  and  the  rattle  of  musketry  mingled  with  the  howls  of 
the  mob,  whilst  the  smoke  of  the  burning  wagon-loads  of  straw 
bUnded  and  nearly  suffocated  the  besiegers.  A  brave  soldier, 
:^Ue,  of  the  Queen's  Infantry,  assisted  by  a  "  muscular  and  in- 
trepid linen-draper,  Reole,"  at  the  risk  of  their  lives  dashed 
into  the  flames  and  removed  the  wagons,  thereby  clearing  the 
atmosphere,  but  in  no  way  quieting  the  pandemonium.  On 
all  sides  men  were  falling  dead  and  dying  to  the  ground,  but 
most  of  these  casualties  were  caused,  not  by  the  fire  of  the 
Bastille,  but  by  the  crowd  itself  who,  not  knowing  how  to  load 
the  cannon,  were  killed  by  the  recoil  or  were  fired  on  by  each 
other.  Hulin  had  succeeded,  however,  in  destroying  by  gun- 
fire the  chains  of  the  drawbridge  de  I'Avancee,  whereupon  the 
whole  mob  pressed  forward  once  more  into  the  Cour  du  Gouverne- 
ment,  and  two  cannons  were  mounted  opposite  the  second  draw- 
bridge leading  into  the  Bastille  itself. 

This  movement  seems  to  have  entirely  deranged  De  Launay  ; 
obliged  to  choose,  and  choose  immediately,  between  the  shame 
of  surrender  and  the  wholesale  massacre  of  the  people  by  cannon 
fire,  he  was  indeed  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea,  and  it 
is  said  that,  unable  to  decide  on  either  course,  he  now  resolved 
on  the  desperate  measure  of  setting  light  to  the  powder  magazine 
and  blowing  up  the  castle.  But  two  InvaHdes,  Becquard  and 
Ferrand,  restrained  his  hand,  thereby  saving  both  besiegers  and 
besieged  from  total  destruction. 

One  thing  is  certain,  the  garrison  made  almost  no  defence. 
"  I  was  present  at  the  siege  of  the  BastiUe,"  says  the  Chancelier 
Pasquier,  "  and  the  so-caUed  combat  was  not  serious ;  the  resist- 
ance shown  was  practically  nil.  ...  A  few  shots  from  guns 
were  fired  (by  the  besiegers)  to  which  no  reply  was  made,  then 
four  or  five  cannon  shots.  .  .  .  What  I  did  see  perfectly  was 
the  action  of  the  soldiers,  Invalides  and  others,  ranged  on  the 
platform  of  the  high  tower,  raising  the  butts  of  their  rifles  in 
the  air,  and  expressing  by  every  means  used  under  such  cir- 
cumstances the  wish  to  surrender."  ^ 

'^  Bastille  divoilSe,  ii.  126  ;   Montjoie,  ibid.  xlv.  112. 
*  See  also  Bastille  divoilie,  ii.  121 :  "  The  garrison,  so  to  speak,  made  no  re- 
sistance." Georget,  one  of  the  besieging  gunners,  expressed  the  same  opinion. 


90  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

It  is  evident,  as  Beaulieu  says,  that  the  garrison  were  divided, 
the  Swiss,  with  De  Flue  at  their  head,  urging  the  Governor  to 
continue  the  siege,  and  the  InvaUdes,  whose  sympathies  were 
with  the  people,  begging  him  to  capitulate.^  At  last  De  Launay, 
yielding  to  the  entreaties  of  the  latter,  ordered  two  of  his  men  to 
go  up  to  the  battlements  with  a  drum  and  a  white  flag  of  truce. 
No  flag  was  forthcoming,  but  the  Governor's  handkerchief  was 
hoisted  on  a  staff,  and  with  this  banner  the  men  paraded  the 
towers  of  the  prison  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  The  people, 
however,  continued  to  fire,  and  repUed  to  the  overtures  of  the 
garrison  with  cries  of  "  Down  with  the  bridges  !  No  capitula- 
tion !  " 

De  Launay  then  retired  to  the  Salle  de  Conseil  and  wrote  a 
desperate  message  to  the  besiegers  :  "  We  have  twenty  thousand 
weight  of  powder ;  we  shall  blow  up  the  garrison  and  the  whole 
district  if  you  do  not  accept  the  capitulation." 

In  vain  De  Flue  represented  to  De  Launay  that  this  terrible 
expedient  was  wholly  needless,  that  the  gates  of  the  fortress 
were  still  intact,  that  means  of  defence  were  not  lacking,  that 
the  garrison  had  suffered  the  loss  of  only  one  man  killed  and 
two  wounded — ^the  note  was  handed  to  a  Swiss,  who  passed  it 
through  a  hole  in  the  raised  drawbridge  to  the  crowd  beyond. 
The  besiegers  gathered  on  the  stone  bridge  at  the  other  side  of 
the  moat  were  at  first  unable  to  reach  it,  but  a  plank  was  fetched, 
a  man  in  the  crowd  came  forward,  walked  along  it,  fell  into  the 
moat  and  was  killed  instantly.  A  second  man  followed — accord- 
ing to  one  report  £lie,  according  to  another  Maillard — and  this 
time  the  sUp  of  paper  was  safely  conveyed  to  the  people.  At 
the  words,  read  aloud  by  £Ue,  a  confused  cry  arose,  "Down 
with  the  bridges  !  "  but  whilst  some  added,  "  No  harm  shall 
be  done  you,"  others  continued  to  shout,  "  No  capitulation  !  " 
But  ]£lie  answered  loudly,  "  On  the  word  of  an  officer  no  one 
shall  be  injured ;  we  accept  your  capitulation ;  let  down  your 
bridges  !  " 

On  the  strength  of  this  promise  De  Launay  gave  up  the  key 
of  the  smaller  drawbridge,  the  bridge  was  let  down,  and  the 
leaders  of  the  people — ^Elie,  Hulin,  Toumay,  Maillard,  Reole, 
Ame,  and  Humbert — entered  the  castle.  The  next  moment  an 
unknown  hand  inside  the  courtyard  of  the  prison  lowered  the 
great  drawbridge,  and  instantly  the  immense  crowd  poured 
on  to  it  and  with  a  mighty  rush  surged  forward  into  the 
Bastille.  Whose  was  the  hand  that  did  the  deed  ?  No  one 
to  this  day  knows  for  certain.     De  Launay  had  not  intended 

^  "  The  Swiss  exhorted  the  Governor  to  resist,  but  the  stafif  and  the 
non-commissioned  officers  strongly  urged  him  to  surrender  the  fortress  " 
{Deux  Amis,  ii.  333). 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        91 

admitting  the  crowd  before  parleying  with  the  leaders,  and 
it  seems  probable  that  the  bridge  was  treacherously  lowered 
by  certain  of  the  Invalides  who  were  in  collusion  with  the 
people.^ 

If  so,  they  paid  dearly  for  their  cowardice ;  for  the  mob, 
according  to  the  habit  of  mobs,  did  not  pause  to  discriminate, 
but  fell  upon  the  Invalides  with  fury,  leaving  the  Swiss  to  escape 
unharmed. 

Meanwhile  £he  and  his  comrades  approached  the  Governor, 
who  was  standing  with  his  staff  in  the  great  courtyard  dressed 
in  a  grey  coat,  with  a  poppy-coloured  ribbon  in  his  buttonhole, 
and  holding  in  his  hand  a  gold-headed  sword-stick.  According 
to  certain  accounts  Maillard,  or  a  man  named  Degain,  there- 
upon seized  him,  crying  out,  "  You  are  the  Governor  of  the 
BastUle."  Legris  addressed  him  brutally. ^  Marmontel  shows 
a  nobler  picture  of  this  dramatic  moment : 

"  £Ue  entered  with  his  companions,  all  brave  men  and 
thoroughly  determined  to  keep  their  word.  Seeing  this  the 
Governor  came  up  to  him,  embraced  him,  and  presented  him 
with  his  sword  and  the  keys  of  the  BastiUe."  "  I  refused  his 
sword,"  £lie  told  Marmontel,  "  I  only  accepted  the  keys." 
fine's  companions  greeted  the  staff  and  officers  of  the  castle 
with  the  same  cordiaUty,  swearing  to  act  as  their  guard  and 
their  defence.^  HuUn,  too,  kissed  the  unfortunate  Governor, 
promising  to  save  his  Ufe,  and  De  Launay  returning  the  embrace, 
pressed  the  hand  of  HuUn,  saying,  "  I  trust  to  you,  brave  man, 
and  I  am  your  prisoner." 

But  though  these  pioneers  showed  themselves  magnanimous, 
"  those  that  followed  them  breathed  only  carnage  and  vengeance," 
for  at  the  fall  of  the  great  drawbridge  it  was  the  brigands  armed 
with  forks  and  hatchets  who  first  penetrated  into  the  castle, 
leaving  the  soldiers  who  had  carried  on  the  siege  at  the  other 
side  of  the  moat.  This  horrible  crowd  gathered  so  threateningly 
around  the  Governor  that  filie,  HuUn,  and  Ame  resolved  to 
lead  him  out  of  the  castle  to  the  H6tel  de  ViUe.  At  the  risk  of 
their  lives  the  little  procession  started  out,  fihe  carrying  the 

^  "  An  Invalide  came  to  open  the  door  situated  behind  the  drawbridge 
and  asked  what  they  wanted.  '  That  the  Bastille  should  be  surrendered/ 
they  rephed.  Then  he  let  them  in"  {Deux  Amis,  i.  337).  "  I  was  very 
much  surprised  ...  to  see  four  Invalides  approach  the  door,  open  them, 
and  let  down  the  bridges"  {Relation  de  de  Flue,  Flammermont,  ccxxxv.). 

*  "  R6cit  de  Pitra,"  La  Journ^e  du  14  Juillet,  p.  48  ;  Montjoie,  Hist,  de 
la  Revolution,  xlv.  115. 

*  Marmontel,  iv.  194.  "  The  ones  who  entered  first  approach  the  van- 
quished with  humanity,  throw  their  arms  round  the  necks  of  the  staff 
officers  as  a  sign  of  peace  and  reconciUation,  and  take  possession  of  the 
fortress  as  surrendered  by  capitulation"  {Deux  Amis,  i.  338). 


92  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

capitulation  on  the  point  of  his  sword,  Hulin  and  Arne  following 
with  De  Launay  held  between  them. 

Thus  began  the  terrible  journey  to  the  Place  de  Greve  ;  fight- 
ing every  inch  of  the  way,  the  two  heroic  men  led  their  prisoner, 
receiving  on  their  heads  and  shoulders  the  blows  of  the  multitude. 
All  through  the  seething  Rue  Saint- Antoine  HuUn  never  left  the 
arm  of  De  Launay ;  struck  at,  fired  at,  insulted,  he  struggled  for- 
ward ;  once,  fearing  that  the  bare  head  of  the  Governor  exposed 
him  to  danger,  Hulin  quickly  covered  it  with  his  own  hat,  but 
the  next  instant  nearly  fell  himself  a  victim  to  the  fury  of  the 
populace.  Three  times  the  people  tore  De  Launay  from  his  arms, 
and  three  times  Hulin  wrenched  him  from  their  clutches  with 
torn  garments  and  blood  streaming  from  his  face.  De  Launay, 
wounded  from  head  to  foot,  pale  but  resolute,  "  with  head  held 
high  and  a  still  proud  eye,"  made  no  complaint,  uttered  not  a 
single  murmur,  only  when  the  crowd  had  again  hurled  themselves 
upon  him,  and  Hulin  once  more  dashing  into  the  fray  had  caught 
him  in  his  arms  and  borne  him  from  their  midst,  the  old  man 
pressed  him  to  his  heart  and  cried,  "  You  are  my  saviour.  Only 
a  little  more  strength  and  courage.  .  .  .  Stay  with  me  as  far  as 
the  H6tel  de  Ville."  And  turning  to  ;£lie  he  exclaimed,  "  Is 
this  the  safety  you  promised  me  ?     Ah,  sir,  do  not  leave  me." 

But  Hulin's  strength  was  now  rapidly  failing  him.  The 
interminable  journey  was  almost  ended ;  they  had  reached  the 
Arcade  de  St.  Jean — only  forty  steps  onward  to  the  Hotel  de  Ville 
and  safety.  But  even  as  they  entered  the  Place  de  Greve  a 
furious  horde  of  brigands  bore  down  on  the  procession,  and  once 
more  De  Launay  was  torn  from  the  arms  of  his  protectors,  whilst 
this  time  HuUn,  utterly  exhausted,  sank  upon  a  heap  of  stones — 
or,  according  to  another  account,  was  dragged  there  by  the  hair 

/^nd  flung  down  senseless.  When  again  he  opened  his  eyes  it 
was  to  see  the  head  of  De  Launay  raised  on  a  pike  amidst  the 
savage  cries  of  his  murderers. 

**  I  have  seen  the  Sieur  Hulin  more  than  a  year  afterwards," 
writes  Montjoie,  "  grow  pale  with  horror  and  shed  torrents  of 
tears  as  he  recalled  that  bloody  sight.  *  The  last  words  of 
the  Marquis  de  Launay  will  always  echo  in  my  heart,'  he  said ; 
'  night  and  day  I  see  him,  overwhelmed  with  insults,  covered 
with  blood,  and  gently  addressing  his  murderers  with  these 
words,  "  Ah,  my  friends,  kill  me,  kill  me  on  the  spot !  For 
pity's  sake  do  not  let  me  linger  \"  '  " 

Ghastly  as  was  the  massacre  of  De  Launay,  it  was  followed 
by  crimes  even  more  glaringly  unjust.  The  Swiss  who,  as  we 
have  seen,  during  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  were  the  keenest  to 
continue  the  defence,  and  to  whom  most  of  the  firing  was  due, 
one  and  all  escaped  without  injury,  but  to  the  Invalides,  who 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        93 

had  sympathized  with  the  besiegers,  the  crowd  showed  no  pity- 
Three  were  immediately  put  to  death,  and  amongst  these  was 
Becquard,  who  had  restrained  De  Launay  from  blowing  up  the 
castle.  The  hand  that  had  thus  saved  the  lives  of  countless 
citizens  was  cut  off  and  paraded  through  the  streets,  then 
Becquard  himself  was  hoisted  to  the  fatal  lantern.  Three 
officers  also  perished,  and  to  make  the  senseless  violence  of  the 
day  complete,  De  Flue,  who  throughout  the  siege  had  urged  the 
Governor  to  greater  severity,  was  allowed  to  escape,  whilst  the 
merciful  De  Losme  was  barbarously  butchered. 

Two  former  Bastille  prisoners,  the  Marquis  de  Pelleport  and 
the  ChevaHer  de  Jean,^  entered  the  Place  de  Greve  at  the  moment 
of  De  Launay's  death.  Pelleport,  seeing  that  the  same  fate  would 
befall  De  Losme,  who  during  his  captivity  had  always  been  his 
friend,  rushed  forward  and  threw  his  arms  around  him. 

"  Wait !  "  he  cried  to  the  mob,  "  you  are  going  to  sacrifice 
the  best  man  in  the  world  !  I  was  five  years  in  the  Bastille,  and 
he  was  my  consoler,  my  friend,  my  father  !  '* 

At  this  De  Losme  raised  his  eyes  and  said  gently,  "  Young 
man,  what  are  you  doing  ?  Go  back,  you  will  only  sacrifice 
yourself  without  saving  me." 

But  Pelleport  still  clung  to  De  Losme,  and  since  he  was  un- 
armed, attempted  with  his  hands  to  keep  off  the  raging  multitude. 

"  I  will  defend  him  against  you  all !  "  he  cried ;  "  yes,  yes, 
against  you  all  I  " 

Thereupon  a  brigand  in  the  crowd  dealt  Pelleport  a  blow 
with  an  axe  that  cut  into  his  neck,  and  raising  the  weapon  was 
about  to  strike  again  when  De  Jean  flung  himself  upon  him  and 
threw  him  to  the  ground.  But  De  Jean  in  his  turn  was  assailed 
on  all  sides,  struck  with  sabres,  pierced  with  bayonets,  until  at 
last  he  fell  fainting  on  the  steps  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville.  Then 
De  Losme  was  massacred,  and  his  head  was  raised  on  a  pike  and 
carried  in  procession  with  De  Launay's. 

The  remaining  InvaUdes  were  led  through  Paris  amidst  the 
execrations  of  the  crowd  :  twenty-two  of  these  unfortunate  old 
men  and  several  Swiss  children  in  the  service  of  the  Bastille 
were  brought  to  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  where  on  their  arrival  a 
revolutionary  elector  ^  brutally  addressed  them  with  these 
words  :  "  You  fired  on  your  feUow -citizens,  you  deserve  to  be 
hanged,  and  you  will  be  on  the  spot."  Instantly  a  chorus  of 
voices  took  up  the  cry  :  "  Give  them  up  to  us  that  we  may  hang 
them  !  "  But  the  Gardes  Frangaises,  with  ]£He  at  their  head, 
interposed,  throwing  themselves  courageously  between  the 
InvaUdes  and  their  assailants. 

^  Charles  de  Jean  de  Manville,  half-brother  to  the  Comtesse  de  Sabran, 
a  mauvais  sujet  who  had  been  imprisoned  in  the  Bastille  for  forging  a  will. 

*  Bastille  d^voiUe,  ii.  no  ;  Hist,  de  la  RSvolution,  par  Montjoie. 


94  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

"  I  shall  never  forget  that  terrible  moment,"  wrote  Pitra  ; 
"  the  crowd  hurling  itself  upon  the  prisoners,  the  Swiss  on  their 
knees,  the  Invalides  clasping  the  feet  of  filie,  who,  standing  on 
a  table  crowned  with  laurels,  vainly  strove  to  make  his  voice 
heard  above  the  tumult,  whilst  the  Gardes  Frangaises  surrounded 
them,  making  a  rampart  of  their  bodies  and  tearing  them  from 
the  hands  of  those  who  would  have  dragged  them  away." 

So,  says  Montjoie,  "  men  of  no  education,  soldiers  and  rebels, 
gave  a  lesson  in  justice  and  humanity  to  the  barbarous  elector." 

But  this  mobile  crowd,  stirred  by  a  word  to  violence,  was  also 
by  a  word  moved  to  pity.  Suddenly  one  of  the  Gardes  Fran9aises 
cried  aloud,  "  We  ask  for  the  lives  of  our  old  comrades  as  the 
price  of  the  BastiQe  and  of  the  services  we  have  rendered !  " 
filie  in  a  broken  voice,  with  trembling  Ups,  joined  his  entreaties  to 
theirs,  "  I  ask  for  mercy  to  be  shown  to  my  companions  as  the 
prize  of  our  deeds  "  ;  and  pointing  to  the  silver  plate  belonging  to 
De  Laimay  which  had  been  offered  to  him  he  added,  "  I  want 
none  of  this  silver  ;  I  want  no  honours.  Mercy,  mercy  for  these 
children,"  he  turned  to  the  httle  Swiss  standing  by  him  ;  "  mercy, 
mercy  for  these  old  men,"  he  added,  taking  the  hands  of  the 
trembling  Invalides,  "  for  they  have  only  done  their  duty." 

"  £lie,"  says  Dussaulx,  "  reigned  supreme,  as  he  continued  to 
calm  the  minds  of  the  people.  His  disordered  hair,  his  streaming 
brow,  his  dented  sword  held  proudly,  his  torn  and  crumpled 
clothing,  served  to  heighten  and  to  sanctify  the  dignity  of  his 
appearance,  and  gave  him  a  martial  air  that  carried  us  back  to 
heroic  times.  All  eyes  were  fixed  on  him.  ...  I  seem  still  to  hear 
him  speaking :  '  Citizens,  above  all,  beware  of  staining  with 
blood  the  laurels  you  have  bound  about  my  head — otherwise 
take  back  your  palms  and  crowns  !  '  " 

At  these  noble  words  a  sudden  silence  fell  on  the  tumultuous 
crowd,  then  a  few  voices  murmured  "  Mercy !  "  and  the  next 
moment  a  mighty  shout  went  up  from  every  mouth.  "  Mercy, 
yes,  mercy,  mercy  for  all  I  "  and  the  great  hall  re-echoed  the  cry 
of  pardon. 

So  at  last  the  Invalides  and  little  Swiss  were  led  out  by  the 
same  crowd  that  had  clamoured  for  their  blood,  and  feted  amidst 
general  rejoicing. 

"  Thus  ended  this  great  scene  of  fury,  of  vengeance,  of  vic- 
tory, of  joy,  of  atrocities,  but  where  there  gleamed  a  few  rays 
of  humanity."  ^ 

More  than  a  few  rays  !  On  this  terrible  14th  of  July  great 
deeds  were  done,  deeds  of  glorious  valour  and  self-sacrifice. 
Against  the  murky  background  of  brutality  and  horror  the  names 
of  fihe,  Hulin,  Ame,  Bonnemere  stand  out  in  shining  letters,  and 

1  Bailly,  i.  385. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        95 

the  fact  that  these  men  took  no  part  in  the  subsequent  excesses 
of  the  Revolution  shows  that  they  were  not  the  tools  of  agitators 
but  honest  men  acting  on  their  own  initiative  and,  as  such,  truly 
representative  of  the  people.  For  patriots  hke  these  the  revolu- 
tionary leaders  had  no  use  ;  the  instruments  they  needed  were  of 
a  different  stamp.  Jourdan,  Maillard,  Theroigne,  Desnot,  the 
"  cook  out  of  place  "  who  had  cut  off  the  head  of  De  Launay,  all 
these  will  reappear  again  and  again  in  the  great  scenes  of  the 
Revolution,  but  of  £)He  we  shall  hear  no  more. 

What  share  must  we  attribute  to  the  people  in  the  crimes 
of  this  day  ?  Out  of  the  800,000  inhabitants  of  Paris  only 
approximately  1000  took  any  part  in  the  siege  of  the  Bastille,^  ^^ 
and  we  have  already  seen  the  elements  of  which  this  1000 
were  composed.  That  the  mob  by  whom  the  atrocities  were 
committed  consisted  mainly  of  the  brigands,  the  evidence  of 
Dussaulx  further  testifies  : 

"  They  were  men,"  he  says,  "  armed  like  savages.  And  what 
sort  of  men  ?  Of  the  sort  that  one  could  not  remember  ever  having 
met  in  broad  dayhght.  Where  did  they  come  from  ?  Who  had 
drawn  them  from  their  gloomy  lairs  ?  "  And  again  :  "  They  did 
not  belong  to  the  nation,  these  brigands  that  were  seen  fiUing 
the  Hotel  de  Ville,  some  nearly  naked,  others  strangely  clothed 
in  garments  of  divers  colours,  beside  themselves  with  rage, 
most  of  them  not  knowing  what  they  wanted,  demanding  the 
death  of  the  victims  pointed  out  to  them,  and  demanding  it  in 
tones  that  more  than  once  it  was  impossible  to  resist."     Further, 

that  they  were  actually  hired  for  their  task  is  evident.     Mme. 

Vigee  le  Brun  records  that  on  the  morning  of  this  day  she  over- 
heard two  men  talking  ;  one  said  to  the  other,  "  Do  you  want 
to  earn  10  francs  ?  Come  and  make  a  row  with  us.  You  have 
only  got  to  cry,  '  Down  with  this  one  I  down  with  that  one.' 
Ten  francs  are  worth  earning."  The  other  answered,  "  But  shall 
we  receive  no  blows  ?  "  "  Go  to  !  "  said  the  first  man,  "  it  is  we 
who  are  to  deal  the  blows  !  " 

Dussaulx  confirms  this  statement  in  referring  to  the  lanterne, 
"  where  butchers  paid  by  real  assassins  committed  atrocities 
worthy  of  cannibals." 

But  tools  when  they  happen  to  be  human  are  sometimes 
difiicult  to  manipulate.  In  massacring  the  garrison  of  the 
Bastille  it  is  evident  that  the  brigands  exceeded  their  orders, 

^  So  little  commotion  did  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  cause  in  Paris  that 
Dr.  Rigby,  unaware  that  anything  unusual  was  going  on,  went  off  early  in 
the  afternoon  to  visit  the  gardens  of  Monceaux.  "  I  doubt  not  that  it 
(the  attack  on  the  Bastille)  had  begun  a  considerable  time  and  even  been 
completed  before  it  was  known  to  many  thousands  of  the  inhabitants  as 
well  as  to  ourselves." 


96  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

for  neither  De  Launay  nor  the  Invahdes  had  been  proscribed 
in  the  councils  of  the  revolutionary  leaders.^  The  murder  of 
Flesselles,  the  provost-marshal,  had,  however,  as  we  have  seen, 
been  ordained  during  the  preceding  night.  The  forged  note 
was  prepared  and  handed  round  amongst  the  populace ;  it 
purported  to  be  a  message  from  Flesselles  to  De  Launay  and 
contained  these  words  :  "I  am  keeping  the  Parisians  amused 
with  promises  and  cockades ;  hold  out  till  the  evening  and  you 
will  be  reinforced."  This  note,  of  which  only  a  copy  was  pro- 
duced, and  the  original,  though  sought  for  during  six  months, 
could  never  be  discovered,  is  admitted  by  Dussaulx,  Bailly,  and 
Pitra  to  have  been  merely  the  faked-up  pretext  given  to  the 
people  by  those  who  desired  the  death  of  Flesselles.  But  on  this 
occasion  "  the  people  "  proved  recalcitrant,  and  Flesselles  was 
allowed  to  pass  unharmed  out  of  the  H6tel  de  Ville.  Then  a 
hired  assassin,  "  not  a  man  of  the  people,"  says  Montjoie,  but 
a  well-to-do  jeweller  named  Moraire,  approached  him  as  he  came 
down  the  steps  and  fired  a  revolver  into  his  ear.  Flesselles  fell 
dead,  and  the  crowd,  once  more  carried  away  by  the  sight  of  blood, 
cut  off  his  head  and  bore  it  on  a  pike  with  De  Launay's  to  the 
Palais  Royal.  Thus  perished  the  first  victim  on  the  Ust  of 
proscriptions  drawn  up  by  the  Palais  Royal ;  the  only  other 
in  Paris  at  the  time  was  the  Prince  de  Lambesc,  but  though 
attacked  by  the  mob,  his  carriage  seized  and  burnt,  he  was  able 
to  make  good  his  escape.  At  the  King's  command  the  Comte 
d'Artois,  De  Breteuil,  and  De  BrogUe  left  Versailles  and  succeeded 
in  reaching  the  frontier  unmolested,  thus  avoiding  the  fate 
designed  for  them  by  the  conspirators,  but  the  Prince  de  Conde 
on  his  journey  from  Chantilly  encountered  at  Crepy-en-Valois — 
the  constituency  of  the  Due  d' Orleans — emissaries  sent  by  the 
duke  to  stir  up  the  peasants,  and  narrowly  escaped  drowning  in 
the  Oise. 

Foullon,  though  warned  of  the  conspirators*  intentions  re- 
garding him,  was  at  his  chateau  of  Morangis  and  refused  to  fly. 
To  the  suppUcations  of  his  daughter-in-law  he  only  answered : 
"  My  daughter,  you  are  aware  of  all  the  infamies  circulated  about 
me  ;  if  I  leave  I  shall  seem  to  justify  my  condemnation.  My 
life  is  pure,  I  wish  it  to  be  examined,  and  to  leave  my  children 
an  untarnished  name."  He  consented,  however,  to  go  to  the 
chateau  of  his  friend  M.  de  Sartines  at  Viry,  and  on  the  morning 
of  the  22nd  of  July  he  started  forth  on  foot.  M.  de  Sartines  was 
out  when  he  arrived,  and  Foullon  awaited  his  return  in  the 
garden,  when  suddenly  a  horde  of  ruffians,  led  by  one  Grappe, 

^  Malouet,  i.  325  ;  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  87.  On  this 
point  Montjoie  shows  great  fairness,  for  he  does  not  attribute  to  the 
Orleanistes  crimes  that  were  not  of  their  devising.  It  is  evident  that 
he  had  definite  grounds  for  his  accusations. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        97 

burst  in  upon  him.  His  whereabouts  had  been  discovered  by 
the  treachery  of  a  servant  of  Sartines' — ^not,  as  certain  writers 
have  stated,  his  own  servant,  who  remained  with  him  and  en- 
deavoured to  protect  him  from  his  murderers. 

Then  the  unfortunate  old  man  of  seventy-four  was  led  to 
Paris,  and  in  ghastly  mockery  the  ruffians  proceeded  to  mimic 
the  sufferings  of  our  Lord,  crowning  Foullon  with  thorns  and, 
when  on  the  long  road  to  Paris  he  complained  of  thirst,  giving 
him  vinegar  to  drink. 

At  the  Hotel  de  Ville  Lafayette  vainly  attempted  to  save 
him  from  the  fury  of  the  populace.  "  But  this  agitation,*'  says 
Bailly,  now  the  mayor  of  Paris, "  was  not  natural  and  spontaneous. 
In  the  square,  and  even  in  the  hall,  people  of  decent  appearance 
were  seen  mingUng  in  the  crowd  and  exciting  them  to  severity. 
One  well-dressed  man,  addressing  the  bench,  cried  out  angrily, 
'  What  need  is  there  to  judge  a  man  who  has  been  judged  for 
thirty  years  ?  '  "  The  lying  phrase  attributed  to  Foullon,  "  If 
the  people  have  no  bread  let  them  eat  hay,"  was  successfully 
circulated,  and  at  last  the  infuriated  mob  stuffed  his  mouth  with 
hay  and  hung  him  to  the  lantern.^ 

Meanwhile  Foullon 's  son-in-law,  Berthier,  was  arrested  at 
Compi^gne,  in  the  midst  of  his  efforts  to  assure  the  provisioning 
of  Paris.  It  was  said,  to  inflame  the  passions  of  the  crowd,  that 
he  had  ordered  the  com  to  be  cut  green  so  as  to  starve  the  people. 
The  truth  was  that  letters  had  reached  him  from  all  sides  de- 
scribing the  urgent  demand  for  grain,  and  Necker  himself  had 
written  on  the  14th  of  July  ordering  him  to  cut  20,000  septiers 
of  rye  before  the  harvest  in  order  to  supply  the  present  need,^ 
but  Berthier  had  refused  to  comply,  preferring  to  ensure  the 
circulation  of  grain  already  stored,  and  by  means  of  untiring 
activity  he  succeeded  in  providing  the  necessary  supplies.  This, 
of  course,  the  revolutionaries  could  not  forgive  him,  and  Berthier 
was  driven  to  Paris  amidst  the  execrations  of  the  populace.  As 
he  entered  the  capital,  followed  by  a  mob  of  armed  brigands,  the 
head  of  his  father-in-law  was  thrust  through  his  carriage-window 
on  the  end  of  a  pike.  Faint  with  hunger  and  sick  with  horror 
he  reached  the  H6tel  de  Ville,  but  before  the  lantern  could  be 
lowered  a  mutineer  of  the  Royal  Cravatte  plunged  his  sabre  into 
his  body.    Thereupon  "  a  monster  of  ferocity,  a  cannibal,"  tore 

*  Von  Sybel,  in  his  History  of  the  French  Revolution,  i.  81  (Eng.  trans.), 
says  of  the  death  of  Foullon  :  "  This  crime  was  not  the  result  of  an  out- 
break of  popular  fury,  it  had  cost  the  revolutionary  leaders  large  sums  of 
money,  for  which  thousands  of  assassins  were  to  be  had.  In  Mirabeau's 
correspondence  the  following  statement  occurs  :  '  Foullon's  death  cost 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  francs,  the  murder  of  the  baker  Fran9ois  only  a 
few  thousands.' " 

*  La  Prise  de  la  Bastille,  by  Gustave  Bord,  p.  33. 

H 


98  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

out  his  heart,  and  Desnot,  the  "  cook  out  of  place  "  who  had  cut 
off  the  head  of  De  Launay  and  again  "  happened  "  to  be  on  the 
spot,  carried  it  to  the  Palais  Royal.^  This  ghastly  trophy, 
together  with  the  victim's  head,  was  placed  in  the  middle  of  the 
supper-table  around  which  the  brigands  feasted. 

Such  were  the  consequences  of  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  so 
vaunted  by  panegyrists  of  the  Revolution.  Well  may  M. 
MadeHn  exclaim  :  "A  new  era  was  bom  of  a  prodigious  he. 
Liberty  bore  a  stain  from  its  birth,  and  the  paradox  once  created 
can  never  be  dispelled." 

And  what  of  the  Bastille,  that  haunt  of  despotism,  whose 
destruction  was  to  atone  for  these  atrocities  ?  Alas  for  the 
deception  of  the  people,  their  investigation  of  the  hated  fortress 
revealed  nothing  remotely  resembling  the  visions  presented  to 
their  imaginations — no  skeletons  or  corpses  were  to  be  found, 
no  captives  in  chains,  no  oubUettes,  no  torture  -  chambers.^ 
True,  an  "  iron  corselet  "  was  discovered,  "  invented  to  restrict 
a  man  in  all  his  joints  and  to  fix  him  in  perpetual  immobihty," 
but  this  was  proved  to  be  an  ordinary  suit  of  armour  ;  a  destruc- 
tive machine,  "  of  which  one  could  not  guess  the  use,"  turned 
out  to  be  a  printing-press  confiscated  by  the  pohce ;  whilst  a 
collection  of  human  bones  that  seemed  to  offer  a  sinister  signifi- 
cance was  traced  to  the  anatomical  collection  of  the  surgery. 

The  prisoners  proved  equally  disappointing.  Seven  only 
were  found  —  four  forgers,  Bechade,  Lacaurdge,  Pujade,  and 
Laroche ;  two  lunatics,  Tavemier  and  De  Whyte,  who  were  mad 
before  they  were  imprisoned,  and  the  Comte  de  Solages,  incar- 
cerated for  "  monstrous  crimes  "  at  the  request  of  his  family. 
The  first  four  disappeared  into  Paris.  The  remaining  three 
were  paraded  through  the  streets  and  exhibited  daily  as  a  show 
to  an  interested  populace.  Finally,  the  Comte  de  Solages  was 
sent  back  to  his  inappreciative  relations,  whilst  a  kind-hearted 
wig-maker  attempted  keeping  Tavemier  as  a  pet,  but  was  obUged 
to  return  him  hastily  to  the  Comite,  who  despatched  him  with 
De  Whyte  to  the  lunatic  asylum  at  Charenton. 

The  Revolution  showed  itself  less  indulgent  to  Bastille 
prisoners  than  the  Old  Regime.  The  romantic  conception  of 
Dickens  in  the  Tale  of  Two  Cities,  wherein  a  former  victim  of 

^  Note  that  even  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty  admit  that  the  death  of 
Berthier  was  engineered :  "  It  seems  that  the  people,  without  knowing  it, 
were  the  blind  instruments  of  the  vengeance  of  the  intendant's  private 
enemies  or  of  the  cruel  prudence  of  his  accomphces.  Electors  noticed  from 
the  windows  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  several  people  scattered  about  the  square 
who  seemed  to  be  the  leading  spirits  of  the  different  groups  and  to  direct 
their  movements"  {Deux  Amis,  ii.  73). 

*  Bastille  divoiUe,  ii.  21,  39,  82. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE        99 

despotism  is  made  to  remark  that  "  as  a  Bastille  prisoner  not 
a  soul  would  harm  a  hair  of  his  head,"  is  entirely  refuted  by 
history.  Two,  as  we  have  already  seen,  were  nearly  massacred 
in  their  attempts  to  save  De  Losme,  and  subsequently  no  less 
than  ten  Bastille  prisoners  perished  at  the  hands  of  the  revolu- 
tionaries— eight  were  guillotined  and  two  were  shot.  Of  these — 
greatest  irony  of  all — ^was  Linguet,  the  man  whose  revelations 
had  contributed  more  than  any  other  evidence  to  inflame  public 
feeling  on  the  subject  of  the  Bastille.  Linguet  did  his  best  to 
atone  for  the  calumnies  he  had  circulated,  for  in  December  1792 
he  wrote  to  Louis  XVI.  begging  to  be  allowed  the  honour  of  de- 
fending him.  Eighteen  months  later,  in  one  of  the  many  horrible 
prisons  of  the  Terror  where  he  awaited  his  summons  to  the 
guillotine,  Linguet  had  leisure  to  meditate  on  the  amenities  of 
the  Bastille. 

THE  KING'S  VISIT  TO  PARIS 

It  was  through  the  medium  of  the  Palais  Royal  that  the  news 
of  the  taking  of  the  Bastille  reached  Versailles,  for  the  King's 
messengers  were  waylaid  by  revolutionary  emissaries,  whilst 
the  Vicomte  de  Noailles  and  other  Orleanistes  were  deputed  to 
announce  the  events  of  the  day  to  the  Assembly.  Needless  to 
say,  these  events  were  ingeniously  distorted  to  suit  the  purpose 
of  the  intrigue — ^the  Bastille  had  been  taken  by  force,  De  Launay 
had  fired  on  the  deputation  of  citizens  and  met  with  the  just 
reward  of  his  treachery  at  the  hands  of  "  the  people."  The 
presence  of  the  troops  was,  of  course,  still  represented  as  the 
only  reason  for  these  disorders. 

The  King,  informed  of  the  desperate  state  of  affairs,  replied 
to  the  Assembly  :  "  You  rend  my  heart  more  and  more  by  the 
account  you  give  me  of  the  troubles  of  Paris.  It  is  not  possible 
to  believe  that  the  orders  given  to  the  troops  can  be  the  cause." 
They  were  most  certainly  not  the  cause,  and  the  removal  of  the 
troops  was  followed  a  week  later,  as  we  have  seen,  by  disorders 
still  more  frightful  in  the  massacres  of  Foullon  and  of  Berthier. 
But  the  King,  assured  by  succeeding  deputations  that  no  other 
measure  would  restore  peace  to  the  capital,  torn  between  his 
own  convictions  and  the  entreaties  of  the  deputies,  finally  re- 
solved to  appeal  to  the  better  feelings  of  the  Assembly.  Accom- 
panied by  his  two  brothers  he  appeared  in  the  great  hall, 
and  in  the  simple  human  language  pecuUar  to  him,  that  con- 
trasts so  strangely  with  the  redundant  periods  of  the  day,  he 
implored  their  aid  in  dealing  with  the  crisis  : 

,  "  Messieurs,  I  have  assembled  you  to  consult  on  the  most 
important  affairs  of  state,  of  which  none  is  more  urgent,  none 
touches  my  heart  more  deeply,  than  the  frightful  disorder  that 


loo         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

reigns  in  the  capital.  The  head  of  the  nation  comes  with  con- 
fidence into  the  midst  of  its  representatives  to  tell  them  of  his 
grief,  to  ask  them  to  find  means  for  restoring  calm  and  order.'* 
Then,  referring  to  the  hideous  calumnies  circulated  on  his  inten- 
tions— ^notably  the  monstrous  fable  that  he  had  ordered  the 
hall  of  the  Assembly  to  be  mined  in  order  to  blow  up  the  deputies 
— ^he  added,  with  a  pathos  and  dignity  that  won  for  him  the 
sympathy  of  almost  the  whole  Assembly  : 

"  I  know  that  people  have  aroused  unjust  suspicions  in  your 
minds ;  I  know  that  they  have  dared  to  say  that  your  persons 
were  not  in  safety.  Is  it  necessary  to  reassure  you  concerning 
such  criminal  rumours,  refuted  beforehand  by  your  knowledge 
of  my  character  ?  Well,  then,  it  is  I,  who  am  one  with  my  nation, 
it  is  I  who  trust  in  you  !  Help  me  in  these  circumstances  to 
assure  the  salvation  of  the  State  ;  I  await  this  from  the  National 
Assembly,  from  the  zeal  of  the  representatives  of  my  people.  ..." 

Then,  since  he  was  persuaded  the  milice  bourgeoise  were 
competent  to  maintain  "  order  "  in  the  capital,  he  ended  by 
announcing  that  he  had  ordered  the  troops  to  retire  from  Paris 
to  Versailles. 

In  the  wild  enthusiasm  that  followed  this  speech  of  the 
King  the  voice  of  the  revolutionary  factions  was  for  once  stifled, 
and  Louis  XVI.  was  escorted  back  to  the  Palace  amidst  the 
acclamations  of  deputies  and  people.  Cries  of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  " 
resounded  on  every  side,  and  so  immense  a  crowd  assembled 
that  the  King  took  an  hour  and  a  half  to  cover  the  short 
distance  between  the  Salle  des  Menus  and  the  Chateau.  The 
unfortunate  monarch,  pressed  upon  from  every  side,  saluted 
unresistingly  on  both  cheeks  by  a  woman  of  the  people,  grilled 
by  the  rays  of  the  July  sun,  suffered  almost  as  much  by  the 
warmth  of  his  subjects'  affection  as  two  days  later  he  was  to 
suffer  by  their  coldness,  and  he  reached  at  last  the  marble  stair- 
case nearly  suffocated  and  streaming  with  perspiration. 

Meanwhile  the  Queen,  holding  the  Dauphin  in  her  arms 
and  Httle  Madame  Royale  by  the  hand,  came  out  on  to  the 
balcony — ^that  same  balcony  from  which  less  than  three  months 
later  she  was  to  face  a  very  different  crowd.  The  children  of  the 
Comte  d'Artois  came  to  kiss  her  hand ;  the  Queen  stooped  to 
embrace  them,  holding  the  Dauphin  towards  them.  The  Uttle 
boys  pressed  him  to  their  hearts,  and  Madame  Royale,  sHpping 
her  head  under  her  mother's  arm,  joined  in  the  caresses.  The 
King  arrived  at  this  moment  and  appeared  on  the  balcony  amidst 
the  cheers  and  benedictions  of  his  people. 

In  Paris,  hkewise,  the  people  longed  for  peace.  When  on 
the  same  day  eighty-four  deputies  went  to  the  capital  to  read 
aloud  the  King's  discourse,  and  to  announce  the  dismissal  of  the 


I 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE       loi 

troops,  they  were  received  with  acclamations,  and  from  thousands 
of  throats  arose  the  cry,  "  Vive  le  Roi !  Vive  la  Nation  !  "  The 
whole  city  was  in  an  ecstasy  of  happiness.  Lally,  the  tender- 
hearted Lally,  took  advantage  of  the  restored  good-humour  of 
the  people  to  address  them  at  the  Hotel  de  Ville  and  entreat 
them  to  put  an  end  to  disorder  : 

"  Messieurs,  we  have  come  to  bring  you  peace  from  the 
King  and  the  National  Assembly.  (Cries  of  Peace  !  Peace  !) 
You  are  generous ;  you  are  Frenchmen ;  you  love  your  wives, 
your  children,  your  country.  (Yes  !  Yes  !)  There  are  no  more 
bad  citizens.  Everything  is  calm,  everything  is  peaceful  .  .  . 
there  will  be  no  more  proscriptions,  wiQ  there  ?  "  And  with 
one  voice  the  people  answered,  "  Yes,  yes,  peace ;  no  more 
proscriptions !  " 

Then  the  Archbishop  of  Paris  (Monseigneur  de  Juigne)  spoke 
with  fatherly  compassion  of  the  misfortunes  of  the  capital,  after 
which  he  led  the  people  amidst  thunderous  applause  to  sing  a 
Te  Deum  of  thanksgiving  at  Notre  Dame. 

Alas,  the  people  were  not  allowed  to  enjoy  for  long  this 
restored  harmony  1  Such  was  the  amazing  ingenuity  of  the 
agitators  and  the  credulity  of  the  Parisians  that  in  the  space 
of  a  few  hours  the  city  was  thrown  into  a  fresh  panic — "  The 
troops  are  not  being  sent  away — ^fiour  intended  for  Paris  is 
being  held  up — soldiers  are  tearing  the  national  cockade  off 
passers-by  and  stuffing  their  guns  with  them — ^the  city  has  only 
three  days'  suppUes."  The  workmen  engaged  in  demohshing 
the  BastUle  were  told  that  their  bread  and  wine  were  poisoned.^ 

Then,  when  the  fury  of  the  populace  was  once  more  thoroughly 
aroused,  deputations  of  fishwives  were  sent  by  the  leaders  of 
the  conspiracy  to  demand  that  the  King  should  come  to  Paris. 
It  was  the  first  of  the  series  of  attempts  made  by  the  revolutionaries 
to  have  the  King  assassinated  by  the  people.  They  dared  not  do 
the  deed  themselves,  for  they  knew  the  frightful  punishment 
attaching  to  regicide ;  they  knew,  moreover,  the  furious  indigna- 
tion so  foul  a  crime  would  arouse  in  the  minds  of  the  people 
in  general  to  whom  the  King  was  still  almost  a  sacred  being. 
But  if  the  populace  could  be  sufficiently  inflamed,  and  at  the 
psychological  moment  the  King  were  brought  amongst  them, 
might  not  some  brigand  lurking  in  the  crowd,  some  obscure 
fanatic,  give  way  to  a  sudden  impulse  and  pull  the  trigger  of  his 
rusty  flint-lock  ?     The  thing  was  not  impossible.^ 

^  "  Paris  again  worked  on  by  its  perfidious  agitators  "  (Marmontel,  iv. 
214).  See  also  Ferri^res,  i.  1 54  ;  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  73  ; 
Deux  Amis,  ii.  32. 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  77  ;  Souvenirs  d'un  Page  (le 
Comte  d'Hezecques),  p.  300. 


I02         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

The  Queen,  who  foresaw  the  same  possibilities,  threw  herself 
in  vain  at  the  King's  feet  and  implored  him  not  to  expose  himself 
to  the  threatening  populace.  But  the  King,  convinced  "  that  if 
each  citizen  owes  to  his  sovereign  the  sacrifice  of  his  life,  the 
sovereign  equally  owes  to  his  country  the  sacrifice  of  his,  turned 
a  deaf  ear  to  all  forebodings,  trusted  to  his  people  and  the  good 
genius  of  France,  and  in  spite  of  the  Queen's  entreaties  showed 
himself  firm  and  unshakable.  *  I  have  promised,'  he  said ;  '  my 
intentions  are  pure ;  I  trust  in  this.  The  people  must  know  that 
I  love  them,  and,  anyhow,  they  can  do  as  they  like  with  me.'  "^ 

"  Louis  XVI.,"  says  De  Lescure,  "  was  neither  a  superior 
intellect  nor  an  energetic  will,  he  was  an  incorruptible  conscience," 
and  these  words  give  the  clue  to  all  his  oscillations,  for  conscience 
is  necessarily  a  more  uncertain  guide  than  policy  or  self-interest. 
As  long  as  he  felt  convinced  a  certain  course  was  right  he  followed 
it  without  a  thought  for  his  personal  safety  or  advantage — the 
trouble  was  that  he  could  not  always  decide  which  course  was 
right,  and  allowed  himself  to  be  swayed  by  conflicting  counsels. 
On  this  occasion  he  did  not  hesitate — the  people  wished  him  to 
go  to  Paris;  he  would  go,  and  his  conscience  being  at  rest  he 
could  meet  any  fate  with  tranquillity. 

At  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  July  17  the  King,  escorted 
by  the  deputies  of  the  Assembly  and  the  milice  bourgeoise,  set 
forth  for  Paris.  His  guards  were  taken  from  him,  and  in  their 
place  marched  200,000  men  armed  with  scythes  and  pickaxes, 
with  guns  and  lances,  dragging  cannons  behind  them,  and  women 
dancing  like  Bacchantes,  waving  branches  of  leaves  tied  with 
ribbons.  In  order  not  to  tire  the  people  the  King  had  ordered 
the  procession  to  move  at  foot's-pace,  and  it  was  four  o'clock  by 
the  time  it  reached  Paris.^  In  the  midst  of  this  threatening 
escort  Louis  XVI.  sat  pale  and  anxious,  and  on  entering  the 
city  he  leant  forward,  casting  his  eyes  wonderingly  over  the 
assembled  multitude  that  received  him  in  an  ominous  silence, 
for  the  people  had  been  forbidden  to  cheer  him.  So  potent 
was  the  spell  exercised  over  the  popular  mind  by  the  leaders 
of  the  Revolution  that  not  a  soul  dared  to  utter  the  cry 
of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  and  brigands  posted  in  the  crowd  silenced 
the  least  murmur  of  applause.^  Thus,  dragged  Uke  a  captive 
through  the  streets  of  the  city,  the  King  was  obliged  to  endure 
this  terrible  humiUation  for  which  no  cause  whatever  existed; 
he  had  done  absolutely  nothing  to  forfeit  the  popularity  which 
only  two  days  earlier  he  had  enjoyed.  The  good  Archbishop  of 
Paris  fared  still  worse  at  the  hands  of  the  populace,  for  alone 
of  all  the  procession  he  was  hissed  by  those  he  had  ruined 

^  Deux  Amis,  ii.  42  ;   Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OvUans,  ii.  77. 
*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  ii.  81.  "  Marmontel,  iv.  214. 


I 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE      103 

himself  to  feed.  Sitting  in  his  carriage,  his  eyes  downcast, 
striving  to  overcome  the  agitation  of  his  mind,  his  thoughts 
must  have  indeed  been  bitter. 

As  the  procession  passed  through  the  Place  Louis  XV  the 
possibiUty  that  both  the  Queen  and  the  revolutionary  leaders 
had  foreseen  was  realized — a  hand  in  the  crowd  pulled  the  trigger 
of  a  gun,  and  the  shot  missing  the  King  killed  a  poor  woman  at 
the  back  of  the  royal  carriage.^  The  incident  was  hushed  up, 
and  even  the  King  was  unaware  it  had  occurred.  Thus,  saved 
by  the  mysterious  power  which  protected  him  every  time  that 
he  was  brought  face  to  face  with  the  people,  the  King  reached 
the  Hotel  de  Ville. 

Under  an  archway  of  pikes  and  naked  swords  he  passed  to 
the  throne  prepared  for  him.  BaiUy  presented  him  with  the 
tricolour  cockade,  and  the  King  accepting  it  as  that  which  it 
professed  to  be — the  cockade  of  Paris — placed  it  in  his  hat. 
Then  suddenly  it  seemed  that  the  spell  was  broken,  and  cries 
of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  broke  out  on  aU  sides.  Once  more  Lally 
passionately  appealed  to  the  people's  loyalty  : 

"  Well,  citizens,  are  you  satisfied  ?  Here  is  the  King  for 
whom  you  called  aloud,  and  whose  name  alone  excited  your 
transports  when  two  days  ago  we  uttered  it  in  your  midst. 
Rejoice,  then,  in  his  presence  and  his  benefits."  After  reminding 
the  people  of  all  the  King  had  done  for  the  cause  of  Liberty  he 
turned  to  assure  the  King  of  the  people's  love :  "  There  is  not 
a  man  here  who  is  not  ready  to  shed  for  you  the  last  drop  of  his 
blood.  No,  Sire,  this  generation  of  Frenchmen  will  not  go  back 
on  fourteen  centuries  of  fidelity.  We  will  all  perish,  if  necessary, 
to  defend  the  throne  that  is  as  sacred  to  us  as  to  yourself.  Perish 
those  enemies  who  would  sow  discord  between  the  nation  and 
its  chief  !  King,  subjects,  citizens,  let  us  join  our  hearts,  our 
wishes,  our  efforts,  and  display  to  the  eyes  of  the  universe  the 
magnificent  spectacle  of  one  of  its  finest  nations,  free,  happy, 
triumphant,  under  a  just,  cherished,  and  revered  King,  who, 
owing  nothing  to  force,  will  owe  everything  to  his  virtues  and 
his  love." 

Again  and  again  Lally  was  interrupted  by  tumultuous 
applause,  and  the  King,  overwhelmed  by  this  sudden  revulsion 
of  popular  feeUng,  could  only  murmur  brokenly  in  reply,  '*  My 
people  can  always  count  on  my  love." 

His  departure  for  Versailles  was  as  triumphant  as  his  arrival 
had  been  humiUating.  When  he  entered  his  carriage  with  the 
tricolour  cockade  in  his  hat  an  immense  crowd  gathered  round 
l^m,  crying,  "  Long  Hve  our  good  King,  our  friend,  our  father  !  " 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  82  ;  Essais  de  Beaulieu,  i.  ; 
Bailly,  ii.  61. 


I04         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

It  was  eleven  o'elock  before  he  reached  the  Chateau.  On  the 
marble  staircase  the  Queen,  with  the  Dauphin  in  her  arms,  was 
waiting  for  him  in  an  agony  of  suspense,  and  at  the  sight  of  the 
husband  she  had  not  dared  to  hope  ever  to  see  again  Marie 
Antoinette  fell  weeping  on  his  neck.  But  when  she  raised  her 
eyes  and  saw  that  sinister  badge — the  enemy's  colours  in  his  hat 
— her  heart  sank  ;  from  that  moment  she  felt  that  all  was  lost. 

But  the  King  was  happy,  not  because  his  life  had  been  spared, 
but  because  he  believed  that  he  had  regained  the  love  of  his 
people. 

RESULTS  OF  THE  JULY   REVOLUTION 

So  ended  the  Revolution  of  July,  and  what  had  it  brought  to 
the  people  ?  To  the  immense  majority,  unaffected  as  we  have 
seen  by  lettres  de  cachet,  the  destruction  of  the  Bastille  meant 
no  more  than  the  destruction  of  the  Tower  of  London  would 
mean  to-day  to  the  inhabitants  of  Whitechapel.  Indeed,  certain 
amongst  them  shrewdly  recognized  that  in  attacking  it  they  were 
fighting  for  a  cause  that  was  not  their  own.  The  Abb6  Rudemare, 
walking  amongst  the  ruins  of  the  BastiUe  the  day  after  the  siege, 
came  upon  a  workman  engaged  in  the  task  of  demolition  who 
brusquely  accosted  him  with  the  words  :  "  Mon  chevaHer,  vous 
ne  direz  pas  que  c'est  pour  nous  que  nous  travaillons  ;  c'est  bien 
pour  vous,  car  nous  autres,  nous  ne  tations  pas  de  la  Bastille  : 
on  nous  f  .  .  .  k  Bicetre.  N'y  a-t-il  rien  pour  boire  a  votre 
sant6  ?  "  1 

The  people  had  indeed  admirably  served  the  design  of  the 
conspirators,  taking  on  themselves  aU  the  risks  and  facing  all  the 
dangers  of  revolt,  whilst  the  men  who  had  worked  them  up  to 
violence  remained  discreetly  in  the  background  Now,  in  all 
the  great  outbreaks  of  the  Revolution  we  shall  find  that  the 
mechanism  was  threefold,  consisting  of,  firstly,  the  Instigators  ; 
secondly,  the  Agitators,  and  thirdly,  the  Instruments;  and  of 
these  three  classes  only  the  last  two  incurred  any  danger.  Thus 
at  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  the  mob  and  its  leaders  alone  took 
part  in  the  battle,  whilst  the  Instigators  prudently  effaced 
themselves.  For  the  role  of  the  Instigators  was  not  to  lead 
insurrection  but  only  to  provoke  it,  and  having  laid  the  mine 
to  retreat  into  safety  the  moment  it  produced  the  desired  ex- 
plosion. So  throughout  the  whole  course  of  the  Revolution  we 
shaU  never  find  Danton  figuring  in  the  tumults  he  had  helped  to 
prepare  ;    he  was,  therefore,  not  present  at  the  siege  of  the 

*  "  Journal  d'un  pretre  parisien,  1 789-1792,"  published  in  Documents 
pour  servir  d  I'histoire  de  la  Revolution  de  France,  by  Charles  d'H6ricault  and 
Gustave  Bord,  i.  165. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE      105 

Bastille,  but  he  visited  it  next  day  when  all  danger  was  over ;  ^ 
St.  Huruge  also  kept  away,  but  he  was  at  Versailles  the  day  after 
shaking  his  fist  at  the  Queen's  windows  and  uttering  furious 
invectives  against  the  royal  family  ;  ^  Santerre  contented  himself 
with  sending  his  dray-horses  to  represent  him  in  the  fray ;  ^  whilst 
Camille  DesmouHns,  the  hero  of  the  12th  of  July,  who  first  called 
the  people  to  arms,  was  careful  to  postpone  his  arrival  on  the 
scene  until  after  the  capitulation. 

The  women  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  proved  more  courage- 
ous :  Theroigne  was  in  the  thick  of  the  fight  and  received  a  sword 
of  honour  from  the  leaders ;  Mme.  de  GenUs  watched  the  siege 
from  the  windows  of  Beaumarchais'  house,  opposite  the  gate  of 
the  Bastille,  with  the  Dues  de  Chartres  and  Montpensier — the 
sons  of  the  Due  d' Orleans — at  her  side. 

The  duke  himself  behaved  with  his  usual  pusillanimity  ; 
instead  of  going  to  the  King  and  boldly  requesting  to  be  made 
Ueutenant  -  general  of  the  kingdom,  as  the  conspirators  had 
planned,  he  presented  himself  timorously  at  Versailles  and  asked 
permission  to  go  to  England  "  in  the  event  of  affairs  becoming 
more  distressing  than  they  were  at  present."  The  King  looked 
at  him  coldly,  shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  made  no  reply. 

But  though  the  Orleanistes  had  failed  to  bring  off  their  great 
coup  of  putting  the  Due  d'Orleans  at  the  head  of  affairs,  they  had 
nevertheless  accompUshed  a  great  deal.  The  destruction  of  the 
Bastille  by  force  and  not  by  the  King's  decree  had  proved  a 
powerful  blow  to  the  royal  authority,  but  the  most  important 
result  of  the  outbreak  from  the  point  of  view  of  both  the  revolu- 
tionary factions  was  the  effect  produced  on  the  pubhc  mind. 
The  people  before  the  Revolution  of  July,  says  Marmontel,  "  were 
not  suf&ciently  accustomed  to  crime,  and  in  order  to  inure  them 
to  it  they  must  be  practised  in  it."  The  Parisians,  always  eager 
for  spectacles  and  enchanted  by  novelty  of  any  kind,  had  now 
been  initiated  into  a  new  form  of  entertainment — the  fashion  of 
carrjdng  heads  on  pikes  and  of  hoisting  victims  to  the  lantern ; 
and  though  it  would  be  unjust  to  accuse  the  mass  of  the  true 
people — ^the  law-abiding  and  industrious  citizens — of  sympathy 
with  these  atrocities,  it  is  undeniable  that  from  this  date  the 
populace  of  Paris — ^the  idlers,  wastrels,  and  drunken  inhabitants 
of  the  city — acquired  a  taste  for  bloodshed  that  made  them  the 
ready  tools  of  their  criminal  leaders.  So,  although,  as  we  shall 
see,  the  crimes  that  followed  were  invariably  instigated,  if  not 
performed,  by  professional  revolutionaries,  we  shall  find  hence- 
forth a  steady  deterioration  in  the  mind  of  the  populace,  and 
even  in  the  mass  of  the  true  people  a  growing  indifference  to 

*  Danton,  by  Louis  Madelin.  '  Mdmoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  235. 

^  Le  Marquis  de  Saint-Huruge,  par  Henri  Furgeot,  p.  202. 


io6         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

bloodshed  and  submission  to  violence,  that  five  years  later  made 
the  Reign  of  Terror  possible.  Thus  the  Revolution  of  July, 
whilst  serving  the  cause  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,  had  hkewise 
paved  the  way  for  Anarchy. 

In  England  the  news  of  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  was  received 
with  mingled  feeHngs.  All  true  lovers  of  humanity  rejoiced  at 
an  event  that  at  the  time  they  beUeved  to  herald  the  dawn  of 
Uberty,  though  many  EngUshmen,  like  Arthur  Young  ^  and 
Wordsworth,  lived  to  reaUze  their  error.  Burke,  more  far-seeing, 
wondered  whether  to  blame  or  applaud  ;  thrilled  by  the  struggle 
for  freedom  he  shuddered  nevertheless  at  the  outbreak  of 
"  Parisian  ferocity,"  and  dreaded  its  recurrence  in  the  future. 
But  to  the  Whigs  and  the  revolutionaries  of  England  this  triumph 
of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  was  a  matter  for  the  heartiest  con- 
gratulation. "  How  much  the  greatest  event  it  is  that  ever 
happened  in  the  world  and  how  much  the  best !  "  wrote  Fox 
to  Fitzpatrick.  To  the  Due  d'Orleans,  whose  despicable  conduct 
had  sickened  even  his  supporters  in  France,  Fox  thought  fit  to 
send  his  warm  comphments :  "  Tell  him  and  Lauzun  (the  Due 
de  Biron)  that  aU  my  prepossessions  against  French  connections 
for  this  country  will  be  altered  if  this  Revolution  has  the  con- 
sequences I  expect."  The  anniversary  of  the  "  fall "  of  the 
Bastille  was  celebrated  the  following  year  by  the  Revolution 
Society  at  the  tavern  of  "  The  Crown  and  Anchor,"  where  more 
^han  600  members,  presided  over  by  Lord  Stanhope,  drank  to 
^  the  Uberty  of  the  world,  and  Dr.  Price  dernanded  the  inauguration 
of  a  "  league  of  peace." 

But  whilst  the  Subversives  of  this  country  gave  way  to 


/, 


^  It  is  perhaps  not  generally  known  that  Arthur  Young,  who  has  been 
falsely  quoted  as  the  panegyrist  of  the  French  Revolution  on  account  of  his 
earlier  works,  Travels  in  France,  1789,  and  On  the  Revolution  in  France, 
1792,  entirely  recanted  from  his  former  opinions,  and  in  1793  wrote  a 
denunciation  of  the  Revolution  no  less  vehement  than  that  of  Burke. 
This  pamphlet,  entitled  The  Example  of  France,  a  Warning  to  Britain,  has 
been  very  carefully  ignored  by  democratic  writers  in  this  country.  Lord 
Morley,  in  his  essay  on  Burke  (EngUsh  Men  of  Letters,  p.  162),  accounts  for 
it  by  describing  Young  as  becoming  "  panic-stricken."  There  is,  however, 
I  believe,  a  simple  explanation  of  Young's  complete  volte-face  on  the  subject 
of  the  Revolution.  His  earher  work  was  written  in  France  under  the 
influence  of  the  set  in  French  society  that  he  frequented,  and  this  set  we 
shall  find  on  examination  to  have  been  entirely  Orl6aniste — ^hence  his 
exaggerated  strictures  on  the  Old  Regime.  With  the  best  portion  of  the 
"  noblesse,"  and  even  with  the  "  royalist  democrats,"  he  was  unacquainted, 
and  the  disgust  he  expresses  at  the  cynical  behaviour  of  certain  nobles 
at  a  dinner-party  he  attended  is  readily  explained  by  the  fact  that  the 
party  consisted  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  and  his  supporters  (see  entry  for 
June  22,  1789),  It  was  from  these  sources,  therefore,  that  Young  gleaned 
his  earlier  opinions  on  the  state  of  France,  and  which  a  fuller  knowledge 
of  facts  and  not  "  panic  "  led  him  to  relinquish. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  BASTILLE      107 

rejoicing,  the  Government  of  England  resolutely  refrained  from 
any  expressions  of  satisfaction  at  the  blow  to  the  monarchy  of 
France  ;  out  of  respect  to  Louis  XVI.  the  playhouses  of  London ~^ 
were  prohibited  from  representing  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  on  , 
the  stage. 

The  conduct  of  England  provided,  indeed,  a  marked  contrast 
to  that  of  Prussia.  "  All  the  symptoms  of  anarchy  in  France," 
writes  Sorel,  "  all  the  signs  of  discredit  in  the  French  state,  are 
seized  upon  abroad  eagerly  by  the  Prussian  agents  and  com- 
mented on  in  Berlin  with  acrimonious  satisfaction.  Hertzberg, 
whilst  priding  himself  on  his  '  enlightened  views,'  shows  himself 
on  this  occasion  as  good  a  Prussian  as  the  favourites  of  his 
master.  This  is  because  the  crisis  serves  his  intrigues  and  he 
hopes  to  profit  by  it.  *  The  prestige  of  royalty  is  annihilated  in 
France,'  he  writes  to  the  King  on  the  5th  of  July ;  '  the  troops 
have  refused  to  serve.  Louis  has  declared  the  Seance  Roy  ale 
null  and  void ;  ^  this  is  a  scene  after  the  manner  of  Charles  I.  Here 
is  a  situation  of  which  the  governments  should  take  advantage.'  " 
That  the  English  Government  should  not  seize  this  opportunity 
to  attack  the  rival  to  her  naval  supremacy  is  inconceivable  to  the 
mind  of  the  good  Prussian.  "  The  14th  of  July  overwhelms 
him  (Hertzberg)  with  joy.  ...  He  hails  it  after  his  fashion  as 
a  day  of  deUverance.  *  This  is  the  good  moment,'  declares  Hertz- 
berg ;  *  the  French  monarchy  is  overthrown,  the  Austrian  alliance 
is  annihilated,  this  is  the  good  moment,  and  also  the  last  oppor- 
tunity presented  to  your  Majesty  to  give  to  his  monarchy  the 
highest  degree  of  stability.'  "  ^ 

Von  der  Goltz,  still  faithful  to  the  precepts  of  his  former 
master,  showed  himself  as  enthusiastic  as  Hertzberg;  he,  too, 
sees  in  the  14th  of  July  the  final  defeat  of  the  Queen  he  had  so 
long  sought  to  defame  in  the  eyes  of  the  French  nation,  and  is 
equally  unable  to  understand  the  attitude  of  the  British  am- 
bassador. Lord  Dorset,  who  allows  his  personal  feelings  of 
gratitude  and  affection  for  the  royal  family  of  France  to  override 
the  satisfaction  he  might  be  expected  to  experience  at  the  unique 
opportunity  offered  to  his  country.  The  Comte  de  Salmour, 
minister  for  Saxony,  had  filled  his  post  more  ably.  **  The  Saxon 
Minister,"  Von  Goltz  writes  to  the  King  of  Prussia  on  July 
24,  "  though  principally  frequenting  the  society  of  the  Queen, 
on  account  of  his  uncle,  the  Baron  de  Bezenval,  nevertheless, 
I  must  do  him  the  justice  to  admit,  continues  to  behave  very 
well  to  me  {i.e.  assists  Von  der  Goltz  in  his  schemes  against  the 
Court  ?).  The  ambassador  for  England,  owing  to  his  personal 
attachment  to  the  Queen  and  the  Comte  d'Artois,  is  as  distressed 

^  This  was,  of  course,  absolutely  untrue. 
*  V Europe  et  la  Revolution  Frangaise,  ii.  25. 


io8         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

by  all  that  has  happened  as  if  the  blow  had  fallen  on  the  King, 
his  master.  In  truth  it  must  go  to  his  heart,  but  would  it  not 
be  well  if  he  distinguished  better  between  his  personal  affections 
and  the  interests  of  his  post  ?  "  ^  Frederick  WilUam,  delighted 
at  the  zeal  of  his  ambassador,  thereupon  wrote  to  order  Von  der 
Goltz  to  get  into  touch  with  the  revolutionary  leaders  in  the 
National  Assembly  and  to  continue  his  campaign  against  the 
Queen.  Von  der  Goltz,  obedient  to  these  commands,  stirred  up 
further  hatred  for  Marie  Antoinette,  "  intrigued  against  the 
Court  of  Vienna,  and  thanks  to  his  equivocal  relations  with  the 
revolutionaries  paralysed  the  measures  of  the  French  ministry."  ^ 
By  the  Prussians,  therefore,  the  fall  of  the  Bastille  is  regarded  as  the 
triumph  of  Prussia  over  Austria.  The  Government  of  Berlin, 
says  Sorel,  **  sees  that  which  it  dared  not  hope  for  by  the  happiest 
fortune,  that  which  all  the  diplomacy  of  Frederick  had  so  often 
vainly  attempted  to  secure — the  Austrian  aUiance  dissolved,  the 
credit  of  the  Queen  lost  for  ever ;  influence  acquired  by  the 
partisans  of  Prussia,  and  in  consequence  all  avenues  opened  to 
Prussian  ambition.''  ^ 

^  Flammermont,  La  JourtUe  du  14  Juillet,  and  Rapport  sur  les  Corres- 
pondances  des  Agents  Diplomatiques,  etc.,  p.  128. 

'  Sorel,  L' Europe  et  la  Revolution  Frangaise,  ii.  69  ;  Flammennont, 
Rapport  sur  les  Correspondances  des  Agents  Diplomatiques.  etc.,  p.  127. 

'  Sorel,  L'Europe  et  la  Revolution  Fran^aise,  ii.  25. 


THE   MARCH   ON  VERSAILLES 


109 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES 


DISORDERS  IN  THE  PROVINCES 

The  desire  of  the  people  for  peace  and  for  a  return  to  law  and 
order  after  the  King's  visit  to  Paris  on  the  17th  of  July  neces- 
sitated strenuous  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  revolutionary  leaders 
to  fan  up  anew  the  flame  of  insurrection.  Often  the  task  seemed 
almost  hopeless,  and  Camille  Desmoulins — ^now  embarking  on 
his  sanguinary  Discours  de  la  Lanterne,  in  which  the  Parisians 
were  incited  to  hang  further  victims — afterwards  described  to 
the  Assembly  the  immense  difficulty  the  agitators  encountered 
in  overcoming  the  disinclination  of  the  people  to  continue  the 
Revolution.  **  I  reduce  to  three/'  wrote  Buzot  later,  "  the 
methods  employed  by  the  masters  of  France  to  lead  this  nation 
to  the  point  she  has  now  reached — calumny,  corruption,  and 
terror,"  ^  and  though  in  these  words  Buzot  alluded  to  the  men 
who  afterwards  became  his  enemies,  the  Terrorists,  they  might 
still  more  aptly  be  apphed  to  his  former  colleagues,  the  members 
of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy.^ 

Calumny  directed  against  the  victims,  corruption  of  the 
instruments,  and  terror  created  in  the  minds  of  the  people — 
such  is  the  history  of  the  three  months  that  led  up  to  the  march 
on  Versailles. 

Of  these  three  methods  terror  proved  the  most  potent ;  in 
order  to  rouse  the  people  one  must  begin  by  frightening  them. 
It  was  Adrien  Duport,^  one  of  the  most  inventive  members  of 
the  Club  Breton,  who  devised  the  project  known  to  contemporaries 
as  "  the  Great  Fear,"  a  scheme  which  consisted  in  sending 
messengers  to  all  the  towns  and  villages  of  France  to  announce 
the  approach  of  imaginary  brigands,  Austrians  or  EngHsh,  who 
were  arriving  to  massacre  the  citizens. 

On  the  same  day,  the  28th  of  July,  and  almost  at  the  same 
hour,  this  diabolical  manoeuvre  was  repeated  all  over  France  ;     v 

^  Memoirs  of  Buzot,  p.  61. 

*  It  is  probable  that  Buzot  was  never  an  Orl6aniste  but,  like  Robespierre, 
he  worked  with  them  at  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution. 
'  Essais  de  Beaulieu,  i.  506. 

Ill 


112         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

everjwhere  the  panic-stricken  peasants  flew  to  arms,  and  thus 
the  great  aim  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  was  reaUzed — ^the 
arming  of  the  entire  population  against  law  and  order.^ 

By  this  means  anarchy  was  complete  throughout  the  kingdom, 
and  the  crimes  of  July  14  and  22  in  Paris  were  followed  in  the 
provinces  by  atrocities  too  revolting  to  describe.  This  Reign 
of  Terror,  organized  by  the  Orleanistes,  was,  in  fact,  even  more 
frightful  than  the  Terror  of  Robespierre  four  years  later ;  the 
victims  were  arraigned  before  no  Revolutionary  Tribunal, 
received  no  warning  of  their  fate,  but  suddenly  found  themselves 
the  centre  of  a  raging  mob,  accused  of  crimes  they  had  never 
committed,  reproached  for  words  they  had  never  uttered,  and 
put  finally  to  a  death  even  more  horrible  than  the  guillotine. 

In  no  case,  however,  do  we  find  these  outrages  to  be  the 
spontaneous  work  of  the  people ;  the  conception  of  down- 
trodden peasants  rising  incontrollably  to  overthrow  their  op- 
l/"^  pressors,  as  in  the  earlier  jacqueries,  is  entirely  mythical,  and 
exists  in  the  minds  of  no  contemporaries.  Such  violence  as  the 
people  committed  was  invariably  instigated  by  revolutionary 
emissaries  who  persuaded  them  to  act  under  a  misapprehension, 
and  methods  of  diabolical  ingenuity  were  employed  to  overcome 
their  reluctance.  Thus,  for  example,  the  agitators,  taking 
advantage  of  the  King's  benevolent  proclamations  in  favour  of 
reform,  succeeded  in  making  the  peasants  believe  that  Louis 
XVI.  wished  to  take  part  with  them  against  the  noblesse,  and 
to  invoke  their  aid  in  demoUshing  the  Old  Regime.  Messengers 
were  sent  into  the  towns  and  villages  bearing  placards  or  proclaim- 
ing by  word  of  mouth :  "  The  King  orders  all  chateaux  to  be 
burnt  down ;  he  only  wishes  to  keep  his  own  !  "  and  such  was 
the  amazing  creduUty  of  the  country  people  that  they  set  forth 
to  burn  and  destroy,  beUeving  in  all  good  faith  that  they  were 
carrying  out  the  orders  of  "  not'  bon  roi."  ^ 

When,  however,  the  people  proved  recalcitrant,  the  revolu- 
tionaries were  obUged  to  resort  to  force ;  in  Dauphine  in  Bur- 
gundy, in  Franche  Comte,  real  bands  of  brigands  were  employed 
to  stir  up  the  villagers,  who  in  some  cases  offered  a  spirited 
resistance.  "  This  troop  of  maniacs  went  into  all  the  villages, 
rang  the  bells  to  collect  the  inhabitants,  and  forced  them  with 
a  pistol  at  their  throats  to  join  in  their  brigandage.  .  .  .  This 

^  Moniteur,  i.  324  ;  Beaulieu,  i.  506  ;  Appel  au  Tribunal  de  V Opinion 
Publique,  by  Mounier ;  Mimoires  de  Frdnilly,  p.  121.  See  the  very  curious 
account  of  the  scene  that  took  place  at  Forges  in  Normandy  given  by 
Mme.  de  la  Tour  du  Pin,  Journal  d'une  Femme  de  Cinquante  Ans,  i.  191, 
Note  that  the  manoeuvre  was  admitted  and  approved  by  Louis  Blanc,  La 
RivoluHon,  i.  337. 

2  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d' Orleans,  ii.  105  ;  Deux  Amis,  ii.  255  ; 
Moniteur,  i.  324  ;  Essais  de  Beaulieu,  ii.  16. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       113 

army  of  bandits  threw  the  whole  of  Burgundy  into  consternation, 
where  the  bravest  inhabitants  of  the  towns  and  country  places 
united  all  their  efforts  and  advanced  against  these  common 
enemies  of  the  human  race,  who  breathed  only  murder  and 
pillage."  ^  At  Cluny  the  peasants,  led  by  the  monks  to  whom 
they  were  devoted,  received  the  brigands  with  guns  and  cannon- 
fire  and  with  stones  flung  from  the  windows.  "  They  did  not 
allow  a  single  brigand  to  escape,  they  were  all  killed  or  led  away 
as  prisoners  to  the  royal  prison.  They  were  found  in  possession 
of  printed  forms  :  '  By  order  of  the  King.'  This  document 
gave  instructions  to  bum  down  the  abbeys  and  chateaux  because 
the  seigneurs  and  the  abbots  were  monopoUzers  of  grain  and 
poisoners  of  the  wells,  and  intended  to  reduce  the  people  and 
the  subjects  of  the  King  to  the  lowest  pitch  of  misery."  ^ 

At  St.  Germain  the  brigands  unfortunately  won  the  day, 
and  the  inhabitants  sent  a  deputation  to  the  Assembly  protest- 
ing against  the  murder  of  their  mayor,  Sauvage,  guiltless  of  any 
offence,  the  victim  of  "  a  crowd  of  strangers  who  had  thrown 
themselves  upon  the  town  "  and  torn  the  unhappy  man  from 
the  hands  of  his  fellow-citizens.^  The  mayor  of  St.  Denis, 
Chatel,  met  with  a  still  more  terrible  fate.  Throughout  the 
preceding  winter  he  had  been  seen  "  always  surrounded  by  the 
unfortunate,  to  whom  he  gave  free  orders  for  bread  and  meat 
and  wood  ...  so  that  the  inhabitants  of  St.  Denis  called  him 
'  the  father  and  the  saviour  of  the  poor  people.'  "  But  suddenly 
Chatel  found  himself  accused  by  messengers  from  Paris  of 
monopoUzing  grain,  and  was  put  to  a  lingering  death  of  which 
the  details  are  so  unspeakably  revolting  that  it  is  impossible  to 
describe  them.*  Huez,  the  mayor  of  Troyes,  another  "  bene- 
factor of  the  poor,"  was  also  butchered  in  much  the  same  manner. 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  the  aristocrats  and  clergy 
were  not  the  only  victims  pointed  out  for  vengeance  to  the 
people  :  the  law-abiding  bourgeois,  the  benevolent  citizen,  what- 
ever his  rank,  was  equally  abhorrent  to  the  revolutionary  leaders  ; 
the  houses  of  peasants  who  would  not  join  in  excesses  were 
burnt  Ukewise.^  It  was  not  a  case  of  "  misdirected  popular 
fury,"  but  of  a  definite  system  pursued  by  the  agitators  which 

*  Deux  Amis,  ii.  257. 

2  Letires  d'Aristocrates,  published  by  Pierre  de  Vassi^re,  p.  256;  Deux 
Amis,  ii.  258. 

'  Deux  Amis,  ii.  93  ;  "  Report  of  Deputation  from  St.  Germain  to  the 
National  Assembly,"  Moniteur,  i.  184. 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration,  ii.  91  ;   Deux  Amis,  ii.  172. 

*  In  Ma^onnais,  not  far  from  Vesoul,  banditti  to  the  number  of  6000, 
coUepted  together,  set  fire  to  the  houses  of  those  peasants  who  would  not 
join  them,  and  cut  down  230  of  them  {Report  to  the  National  Assembly, 
March  22,  1791). 


/ 


114         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

consisted  in  exterminating  every  one  who  encouraged  content- 
ment with  the  Old  Regime.  Three  years  later  the  minister, 
Roland,  gave  the  clue  to  this  design  when  he  stated  that  "  in 
1789  the  misguided  people  allowed  themselves  to  be  worked 
up  into  fury  and  to  immolate  the  men  who  were  occupied  in 
feeding  them."  ^  The  massacre  of  these  good  citizens  is  there- 
fore to  be  explained  in  the  same  way  as  the  attacks  on  Reveillon 
and  Berthier. 

So  obvious  was  it,  indeed,  to  all  contemporaries  that  these 
outrages  were  contrary  to  the  interests  of  the  people,  that  revolu- 
tionary writers  can  only  explain  them  by  the  theory  that  they 
were  instigated  by  the  "  enemies  of  the  Revolution,"  that  is 
to  say,  by  the  aristocrats  themselves,  who,  in  order  to  bring  the 
cause  of  "  Uberty  "  into  disrepute,  stirred  the  people  up  to  vio- 
lence, and  for  this  purpose  had  their  own  chateaux  burnt  down  !  ^ 
But  if  the  object  of  the  aristocrats  in  persuading  the  people 
to  bum  down  their  chateaux  appears  incomprehensible,  the 
object  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  in  doing  so  is  very  obvious, 
for  by  this  means  not  only  were  the  nobles  driven  out  of  the 
country,  but  in  the  process  of  destruction  the  seigneurial  granaries 
were  frequently  burnt  down  hkewise,  fields  of  standing  com 
were  trampled  under  foot,  and  consequently  the  famine  was 
seriously  aggravated.^ 

The  manner  in  which  the  news  of  all  such  excesses  was 
received  at  the  National  Assembly  proves  only  too  clearly  the 
collusion  between  the  revolutionary  deputies  and  the  agitators 
of  the  provinces.  No  historian  has  revealed  this  more  clearly 
than  Taine,  and  his  strange  inconsequence  in  heading  his  chapter 
on  the  disorders  in  the  provinces  as  "  spontaneous  anarchy  " 
has  been  commented  on  by  several  modern  French  historians.* 

*'  Thus,"  writes  Taine  himself,  "  is  rural '  jacquerie  '  prepared, 

*  Le  Ministre  de  I'lnUrieur  aux  Corps  Administratifs,  September  i, 
1792. 

*  See,  for  example,  Deux  Amis  de  la  LihertS,  ii.  90  and  following  pages, 
where  all  the  excesses  described  by  Montjoie  are  related  in  almost  identical 
language,  but  the  recital  ends  with  the  words  :  "  Such  was  the  march  of 
aristocracy  !  "  Let  any  one  who  can  make  sense  out  of  the  following 
passage :  "  The  enemies  of  the  Revolution,  profiting  by  the  general  dis- 
position to  creduHty,  strove  to  fatigue  the  people  by  alarms  spread  for  the 
purpose  in  order  afterwards  to  lull  them  into  a  false  security  :  their  plan 
was  to  drive  them  to  excesses  so  as  to  bring  them  through  licence  under  the 
yoke  of  despotism."  Since  few  reprisals  were  ever  taken,  however,  it  is 
difficult  to  follow  this  Une  of  reasoning. 

^  MonUeur,  i.  324 ;   Fantin  Desodoards,  p.  196  :  "  Hordes  of  brigands 
paid  by  the  Due  d'Orleans  devastated  rural  property  without  distinguishing 
to  which  party  the  proprietors  belonged ;   the  granaries  disappeared  with 
he  grain  they  contained." 

*  La  Conspiration  rSvolutionnaire  de  lySg,  by  Gustave  Bord,  p.  62  ; 
Chassin,  i.  109  ;  La  Revolution,  by  Louis  Madelin,  p.  74. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       115 

and  the  fanatics  who  fanned  up  the  flame  in  Paris  fan  it  up  like- 
wise in  the  provinces.  '  You  wish  to  know  the  authors  of  the 
troubles/  writes  a  man  of  good  sense  to  the  Committee  of  Inquiry  ; 
*  you  will  find  them  amongst  the  deputies  of  the  Tiers,  and 
particularly  amongst  those  who  are  attorneys  or  lawyers.  They 
write  incendiary  letters  to  their  constituents,  these  letters  are 
received  by  the  municipalities  which  are  likewise  composed  of 
attorneys  and  lawyers  .  .  .  they  are  read  aloud  in  the  principal 
square,  and  copies  are  sent  into  all  the  villages.'  "  ^ 

"  I  will  tell  my  century,  I  will  tell  posterity,"  cries  Ferrieres, 
'*  that  the  National  Assembly  authorized  these  murders  and 
these  burnings  \"  ^ 

In  vain  the  true  democrats  in  the  Assembly — Mounier, 
Malouet,  Lally  Tollendal,  Virieu,  and  Bouffiers — rose  to  protest 
against  outrages  on  humanity  and  civilization  committed  in  the 
name  of  Uberty ;  the  members  of  the  revolutionary  factions  in 
every  case  defended  these  excesses. 

On  July  20  Lally,  in  harrowing  terms,  described  the  horrors 
that  were  taking  place  in  Normandy,  Brittany,  and  Burgundy, 
and  ended  with  the  words  :  *'  A  citizen  king  forces  us  to  accept 
our  liberty,  and  I  do  not  know  why  we  should  wrest  it  from  him 
as  from  a  tyrant.  If  I  insist  on  the  motion  I  have  put  forward, 
it  is  that  love  of  my  country  impels  me,  it  is  that  I  accede  to  the 
impulse  of  my  conscience ;  and  if  blood  must  flow,  at  least  I 
wash  my  hands  of  that  which  will  be  shed."  ^ 

The  speech  was  received  with  cries  of  fury  from  all  parts  of 
the  Assembly,  though  the  side  of  the  nobles  ventured  to  applaud. 

The  murder  of  Foullon  and  Berthier  had  filled  Lally  with 
burning  indignation.  On  the  morning  of  the  22nd  of  July,  he 
told  the  Assembly,  the  son  of  Berthier,  pale  and  disfigured,  had 
entered  his  room  crjdng  out,  "  Monsieur,  you  spent  fifteen  years 
defending  the  memory  of  your  father ;  save  the  life  of  mine 
and  let  him  be  given  judges  !  "  But  Lally  appealed  in  vain  to 
the  humanity  of  the  Assembly.  Bamave,  rising  furiously, 
exclaimed  with  a  violent  gesture,  "  Is  this  blood  then  so  pure 
that  one  need  fear  to  shed  it  ?  "  * 

^  Arthur  Young  was  present  when  one  of  these  letters  was  received  in 
the  provinces.  "  The  news  at  the  table  d'hote  at  Colmar  curious,  that  the 
Queen  had  a  plot,  nearly  on  the  point  of  execution,  to  blow  up  the  National 
Assembly  by  a  mine,  and  to  march  the  army  instantly  to  massacre  all 
Paris.  .  .  .  \  deputy  had  written  it ;  they  had  seen  the  letter.  .  .  .  Thus  it 
is  in  revolutions,  one  rascal  writes  and  a  hundred  thousand  fools  believe  " 
{Travels,  date  of  July  24,  1789). 

2  Ferrieres,  i.  161.  »  Moniteur,  i.  183. 

*  Article  on  Lally  Tollendal  in  Biographie  Michaud ;  also  Second  Letter 
of  Lally  Tollendal  to  his  Constituents.  This  speech  of  Lally's  and  the 
exclamation  of  Bamave,  though  recorded  by  countless  contemporaries,  are 
suppressed  in  the  Moniteur' s  account  of  the  debate  that  took  place  on 
July  23. 


ii6         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Mirabeau  went  further.  "  The  nation,"  he  declared,  "  must 
have  victims  I  "  In  a  letter  to  his  constituents  he  had  openly 
defended  the  crimes  attending  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  :  "  The 
people  must  be  essentially  kind-hearted  since  so  little  blood  has 
been  shed.  .  .  .  The  anger  of  the  people  !  ah  !  if  the  anger  of 
the  people  is  terrible,  the  cold-bloodedness  of  despotism  is 
atrocious ;  its  systematic  cruelties  create  more  wretchedness 
in  a  day  than  popular  insurrections  create  victims  in  the  course 
of  years."  ^ 

The  unhappy  people  of  France  had  yet  to  learn  that  demagogy 
can  be  systematic  too ;  that  demagogy,  moreover,  can  become 
more  potent  than  despotism,  because  it  does  not  merely  bring 
external  force  to  bear  upon  the  people,  but  like  a  skilful  jiu- 
jitsu  wrestler  turns  the  people's  own  power  against  themselves. 
This  was  the  whole  secret  of  the  early  revolutionary  movement : 
the  people,  by  calumny,  corruption,  and  terror,  were  made  to 
work  out  their  own  destruction,  to  kill  their  best  friends,  and 
to  strike  down  the  hands  that  fed  them. 

THE  WORK  OF  REFORM 

In  Paris,  as  in  the  provinces,  a  great  fear  held  all  hearts  in 
its  grip.  "  The  anarchy  is  most  compleat,"  wrote  Lord  Auckland 
on  August  27 ;  "  the  people  have  renounced  every  idea  and 
principle  of  subordination  .  .  .  even  the  industry  of  the  labouring 
class  is  interrupted  and  suspended  ...  in  short,  it  is  sufficient 
to  walk  into  the  streets  and  to  look  at  the  faces  of  those  who 
pass  to  see  that  there  is  a  general  impression  of  Calamity  and 
Terror."  ^ 

*'  The  National  Assembly,"  Fersen  wrote  a  week  later, 
"  trembles  before  Paris,  and  Paris  trembles  before  40,000  to 
50,000  bandits  and  vagabonds  encamped  at  Montmartre  and  in 
the  Palais  Royal."  ^ 

In  the  midst  of  these  alarms  the  Royalist  Democrats  of  the 
Assembly  struggled  bravely  on  with  the  work  of  reform.  Already 
the  foundations  of  the  Constitution  had  been  laid  at  the  Seance 
Royale  of  the  23rd  of  June ;  it  only  remained  for  the  nobility 
and  clergy  to  complete  the  scheme  the  King  had  inaugurated  by 
surrendering  their  seigneurial  rights. 

Now  "  the  people  "  of  France  are  by  nature  retentive  of 
their  possessions,  and  were  therefore  not  disposed  to  believe  that 
any  class  enjoying  privileges  would  voluntarily  renounce  them. 

1  Eighteenth  Letter  of  Mirabeau  to  his  Constituents.  See  Moniteur, 
i.  191,  note  2. 

2  Letter  of  Lord  Auckland  to  Pitt.  Auckland  MSS. 
'  Le  Comte  de  Fersen  et  la  Cour  de  France,  1.  xlix. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       117 

The  great  scheme  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  from  the  beginning 
of  the  Revolution  had  been  to  play  on  this  conviction.^  In  the 
cahiers  drafted  by  Laclos  and  Sieyes  the  "  privileged  classes  " 
were  persistently  represented  as  opposed  to  reform,  and  later  the 
disorders  in  the  provinces  were  instigated  by  the  same  propaganda. 

The  moment  had  now  come  to  bring  off  the  great  coup  of  the 
revolutionaries  and  show  the  nobiUty  and  the  clergy  to  the 
people  as  their  declared  enemies.  This  was  to  consist  in  proposing 
to  the  Assembly  to  abohsh  at  a  sweep  the  entire  feudal  system. 
The  privileged  orders  would  be  sure  to  protest,  and  a  further 
triumph  would  thus  be  provided  for  the  Orleaniste  cause.  What 
a  signal  for  fresh  insurrections  in  the  provinces  if  it  could  be 
proclaimed  to  the  people  that  the  nobles  and  clergy  had  formally 
refused  to  relinquish  their  privileges  !  On  the  other  hand,  if 
the  "  privileged  orders  "  capitulated  the  Orleanistes  would  still 
score  a  victory,  for,  as  I  have  shown,  the  weakening  of  the 
noblesse  was  an  essential  part  of  their  scheme  for  making  the 
Due  d'Orleans  a  monarch  ^  la  Louis  XIV.  "  Thus,"  says 
Montjoie,  "  d'Orleans  on  coming  to  reign  would  find  no  longer 
those  provincial  states,  those  sovereign  courts,  that  clergy,  that 
noblesse  .  .  .  which  formed  a  tribunate  between  the  King  and 
his  subjects  .  .  .  there  would  be  in  France  only  one  master  and  a 
people  without  protectors."  ^ 

Even  the  RepubUcan  Gouvemeur  Morris  clearly  recognized 
this  danger  when  he  urged  Lafayette  "  to  preserve  if  possible 
some  constitutional  authority  to  the  body  of  the  nobles  as  the 
only  means  of  preserving  any  liberty  for  the  people." 

The  Orleanistes,  of  course,  had  no  intention  of  giving  liberty 
to  the  people,  and  so  the  destruction  of  both  nobihty  and  clergy 
was  necessary  to  their  designs.  Accordingly,  at  a  meeting  of 
the  Club  Breton,^  it  was  decided  that  the  Vicomte  de  Noailles, 
a  penniless  member  of  the  nobility  and  an  ardent  supporter  of 
the  Due  d'Orleans,  should  propose  to  the  Assembly  the  complete 
aboUtion  of  seigneurial  rights. 

The  plan  was  carried  out  on  the  evening  of  the  4th  of  August, 
but  to  their  eternal  honour  the  nobiUty  and  clergy  of  France  rose 
as  one  man  to  renounce  all  their  ancient  privileges — seigneurial 

*  Mimoires  de  I'Abbi  Morellet,  i.  335. 

'  On  this  point  the  opinion  of  Montjoie  is  confirmed  by  no  other  than 
Robespierre  himself,  for  in  his  illuminating  Rapport  on  the  Orl6aniste  con- 
spiracy, deUvered  four  years  later  through  the  mouth  of  St.  Just,  we  find 
this  passage  :  "  They  (the  Orleanistes)  made  war  on  the  noblesse,  the  guilty 
friends  of  the  Bourbons,  in  order  to  pave  the  way  for  d'Orlians.  One  sees  at 
each  step  the  efforts  of  this  party  to  ruin  the  Court  and  to  preserve  the 
moparchy." 

'  Montjoie,  Conjuration,  ii.  120 ;  Histoire  de  I'AssemhUe  Constituante,  by 
Alexandre  de  Lameth,  i.  96. 


ii8         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

justice,  dimes,  the  rights  of  the  chase,  and  all  those  feudal 
dues  the  loss  of  which  reduced  many  landed  proprietors  to 
beggary. 

At  the  end  of  the  sitting  Lally  ToUendal  rose  to  remind  the 
Assembly  that  it  was  the  King  who  had  first  set  them  the  example 
of  self-sacrifice  by  the  surrender  of  his  rights,  and  to  propose  that 
"  Louis  XVI.  should  now  be  proclaimed  the  Restorer  of  French 
liberty."  ^  This  time  the  eloquence  of  Lally  carried  all  before 
him  ;  the  proposal  was  instantly  taken  up  by  both  deputies  and 
people ;  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the  hall  of  the  Assembly  rang 
with  shouts  of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  Vive  Louis  XVI,  restaurateur 
de  la  hberte  fran9aise  !  " 

The  decision  was  conveyed  to  the  King  in  an  address  from  the 
Assembly,  and  Louis  XVI.,  in  accepting  the  title  of  honour  con- 
ferred on  him,  declared  his  sympathy  with  the  new  reforms  : 
"  Your  wisdom  and  your  intentions  inspire  me  with  the  greatest 
confidence  in  the  result  of  your  deUberations.  Let  us  go  and 
pray  Heaven  to  guide  us,  and  render  thanks  to  Him  for  the 
generous  feelings  that  prevail  in  the  Assembly."  ^  The  last 
obstacle  to  the  work  of  reform  had  now  been  removed,  and 
nothing  remained  but  to  frame  the  Constitution  in  accordance 
with  the  wishes  of  the  King,  nobles,  clergy,  and  people. 

On  July  27  the  RoyaUst  Democrat,  Clermont  Tonnerre,  had 
presented  to  the  Assembly  the  "  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of 
Man,"  ^  and  by  this  charter  and  the  resumes  of  the  cahiers 
the  wording  of  the  Constitution  was  to  be  framed.  Now,  on 
August  27,  Mounier,  in  the  name  of  the  Committee  of  the  Consti- 
tution, came  forward  with  an  improved  plan  by  the  Archbishop 
of  Bordeaux.*  It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  the  Royahst  Demo- 
crats were  again  the  leaders  of  reform  and  rightly  earned  the  name 
they  bore  later  of  "  the  Constitutionals,"  whilst  on  the  other 
hand  we  have  only  to  consult  the  Moniteur  to  find  that  in  the 
debates  that  took  place  on  the  subject  of  the  Constitution  the 
revolutionary  leaders  in  the  Assembly  were  conspicuous  by  their 
silence.  The  thunderous  eloquence  of  Mirabeau,  the  biting 
irony  of  Robespierre,  so  potent  to  destroy,  ceased  directiy  the 
work  of  reconstruction  began.  True,  the  Abbe  Sieyes,  that 
"  dark  horse  "  of  the  Assembly — ^now  Royahst,  now  RepubUcan, 
and  all  the  while  the  intime  of  the  Orleanistes — had  taken  part 
in  framing  the  Constitution,  but  when  it  came  to  renouncing 
his  own  privileges  Sieyes  showed  the  worth  of  his  Liberalism  and 
openly  opposed  the  abohtion  of  the  dimes,^  whilst  the  Arch- 

^  Moniteur,  i.  287  ;  Bailly,  ii.  217  ;  article  on  Lally  Tollendal  in 
Biographie  Michaud. 

*  Moniteur,  i.  335.  ^  Ibid.  i.  216.  *  Ibid.  i.  390. 

*  Ibid.  i.  328  ;  Mimoires  de  Rivarol,  p.  147. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       119 

bishop  of  Paris,  hissed  by  the  mob  as  an  aristocrat,  came  forward 
at  the  head  of  the  clergy  to  renounce  them.^  The  history  of  the 
Revolution  is  full  of  these  Uttle  ironies. 

It  now  became  evident  to  the  revolutionary  leaders  that  the 
tide  was  turning  irresistibly  against  them  ;  during  the  discussion 
on  the  Constitution  the  existence  neither  of  the  monarchy  nor 
of  the  reigning  dynasty  had  been  brought  into  dispute — for,  so 
far,  no  one  dared  to  differ  from  the  unanimous  demands  of  the 
cahiers — and  it  was  plain  that  not  only  the  monarchists  but  Louis 
Seizistes  were  leading  the  House.  "  Louis  XVL,"  a  deputy 
had  declared,  "  is  no  longer  on  the  throne  by  accident  of  birth  ; 
he  is  there  by  the  choice  of  the  nation."  ^ 

To  both  Orleanistes  and  Subversives  the  future,  therefore, 
looked  ver}^  black  indeed ;  at  this  rate  France  would  be  re- 
generated without  further  convulsions,  and  both  monarchy  and 
reigning  dynasty  estabhshed  more  firmly  than  ever.  From  the 
Orleaniste  point  of  view  the  Constitution  would  inevitably  prove 
disastrous,  for  either  it  would  stop  the  Revolution  altogether, 
or,  if  they  were  able  to  continue  it  and  bring  about  the  desired 
change  of  dynasty,  the  Due  d'Orleans  would  have  to  content 
himself  with  becoming  a  Constitutional  monarch — a.  position 
it  would  not  amuse  him  in  the  least  to  occupy.  Some  pretext 
must  therefore  be  found  immediately  for  creating  fresh  dissen- 
sions. This  was  provided  by  the  debate  on  the  "  royal  sanction  " 
which  began  on  August  29  and  turned  on  the  questions  :  "  Should 
the  King  be  allowed  to  retain  the  right  of  the  *  Veto  '  ?  If  so, 
should  the  '  Veto  '  be  *  absolute  '  or  '  suspensive  ' — ^in  other 
words,  should  the  King  be  able  absolutely  to  'veto'  the  pro- 
mulgation of  a  law  or  merely  to  suspend  its  promulgation  until 
a  later  date  ?  " 

Undoubtedly  the  Royal  Veto  was  a  reUc  of  autocracy,  and  as 
such  might  reasonably  be  condemned  by  independent  democratic 
thinkers,  but,  as  several  deputies  immediately  pointed  out,  the 
question  was  one  on  which  the  Assembly  had  no  power  to  de- 
hberate,  since  "  the  royal  sanction  had  been  demanded  by  the 
people  in  the  cahiers."  * 

"  The  law  was  made  by  the  nation,"  said  D'Espremenil, 
"  we  have  only  to  declare  it."  * 

Thus  spoke  the  spirit  of  pure  democracy. 

The  RoyaUst  Democrats,  true  to  their  cahiers  as  to  their 
King,  therefore  unanimously  supported  the  royal  sanction.  *'  I 
regard  the  royal  sanction,"  declared  LaUy  Tollendal,  "  as  one 
of  the  first  ramparts  of  national  hberty."  ^    "I  would  defend 

*  Moniteur,  i.  331  ;   Rivarol,  p.  146.  *  Moniieur,  i.  391. 
»  See  Articles  VI.  and  VII.  quoted  on  pp.  7  and  8. 

*  Moniteur,  i.  397.  *  Ibid.  i.  419. 


I20        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

it,"  he  said  again,  "  to  my  last  breath,  less  for  the  King  than  for 
the  people."  ^ 

Here,  then,  was  the  pretext  needed  by  the  revolutionary 
leaders  for  once  more  stirring  up  insurrection,  and  agitators  were 
sent  into  the  clubs  and  caf6s  of  Paris  to  tell  the  citizens  that 
"  traitors  in  the  Assembly  had  voted  for  the  absolute  Veto  of 
the  King,  who  would  now  revoke  all  the  decrees  of  August  the  4th 
and  France  would  be  again  enslaved."  ^ 

They  were  careful,  however,  not  to  mention  to  the  people 
that  several  of  the  Orleaniste  deputies,  including  Mirabeau 
himself — acting  presumably  in  the  interests  of  the  duke — had 
voted  for  the  absolute  Veto.^  The  Royalist  Democrats  alone, 
and  not  the  Royalists  who  opposed  reform,  were  represented  to 
the  people  as  their  enemies.  Playfair  is  one  of  the  few  EngUsh 
contemporaries  who  have  commented  on  this  significant  fact : 
"  Perhaps  the  thing  that  may  the  most  convince  impartial  men 
of  the  existence  of  a  criminal  plot  is,  that  the  moderate  party  of 
the  reformers  in  the  Assembly,  that  is  those  who  were  royalists, 
but  had  obtained  popular  favour  by  their  eloquence  and  love  of 
liberty,  were  those  whom  the  party  in  power,  the  Lameths, 
Bamave,  Mirabeau,  etc.,  turned  against  with  the  greatest  fury. 
Mounier,  the  Count  de  Lally  ToUendal,  and  upwards  of  forty 
more  of  the  moderate  party,  received  anonymous  letters  threaten- 
ing their  hves.  .  .  .  This  would  seem  to  be  proof  that  the  reigning 
party  were  more  afraid  of  the  men  who  were  attached  to  Uberty 
than  of  the  pure  royaUsts,  as  the  personal  characters  of  the  former 
left  no  hopes  of  leading  them  over  to  the  violent  measures  in 
view."  * 

So  again  we  find  the  revolutionary  movement  diametrically 
opposed  to  the  work  of  reform.  Let  any  one  who  challenges  this 
statement  explain  the  following  circumstance  :  the  plan  of  the 
Constitution  founded  on  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man-^ 
universally  agreed  to  be  the  purest  expression  of  democracy — was 
given  to  the  Assembly  by  the  RoyaUst  Democrats  on  August  28, 
and  two  days  later  a  price  was  set  on  the  heads  of  all  these 
men  by  the  revolutionaries  at  the  Palais  Royal.^    Mounier,  who 

^  Moniteur,  i.  399. 

^  Deux  Amis,  ii.  361  ;  Mimoires  de  Bailly,  ii.  327  ;  Ferridres,  i.  222. 

'  According  to  the  Mimoires  de  La  Fayette,  Mirabeau  had  voted  for  the 
absolute  Veto  on  the  advice  of  Clavi^re,  the  future  Girondin  :  "  '  You  see 
that  bald  head,'  he  said,  pointing  out  Clavi^re  to  several  deputies  who 
spoke  to  him  in  favour  of  the  Suspensive  Veto,  '  I  do  nothing  without 
consulting  it.'  And  the  bald  head,  RepubUcan  in  Geneva  on  the  loth  of 
August  (1792),  had  declared  for  the  absolute  Veto  "  {Mimoires  de  La 
Fayette,  iii.  311). 

*  Playfair's  History  oj  Jacobinism,  p.  244. 

*  Article  on  Mounier  in  Biographic  Michaud  by  Lally  Tollendal. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       121 

from  the  first  had  shown  himself  the  most  intrepid  champion  of 
Uberty — Mounier  who  in  an  excess  of  democratic  zeal  had  proposed 
the  Oath  of  the  Tennis  Court,  and  to  whom  more  than  to  any 
one  the  principles  of  the  Constitution  were  due — ^was  now  held 
up  to  popular  execration,  and  from  this  moment  his  life  was 
perpetually  threatened.^  Could  there  be  any  explanation  but 
the  one  offered  by  Mounier  himself — ^that  the  whole  agitation 
was  a  plot  to  prevent  the  framing  of  the  Constitution  ?  ^ 

FIRST  ATTEMPT  TO  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES 

By  the  usual  methods  of  calumny  and  terror  the  mind  of  the 
populace  was  once  more  stirred  up,  and  a  panic  on  the  subject 
of  the  Veto  spread  through  Paris.  The  fact  that  to  many  of  the 
people  the  Latin  word  conveyed  no  meaning  whatever  greatly 
facilitated  the  work  of  the  agitators.  "  Do  you  know  what  the 
Veto  is  ?  "  they  cried  out  at  the  street  corners.  "  Listen,  then. 
You  go  home  and  your  wife  has  prepared  your  dinner,  then  the 
King  says  '  Veto  !  '  and  you  get  nothing  to  eat  !  "  ^ 

The  "  suspensive  Veto,"  a  peasant  told  Bertrand  de  Molle- 
ville,  was  the  right  of  the  King  to  suspend,  i.e.  to  hang,  any  one  he 
pleased.  Some  people,  indeed,  believed  the  Veto  to  be  alive  : 
"  What  is  he,  this  Veto  ?   What  has  he  done,  this  brigand  Veto  ?  "  * 

By  the  evening  of  Sunday,  August  30,  the  garden  of  the 
Palais  Royal  had  become  once  more  a  raging  sea ;  so  immense 
was  the  crowd  that  it  overflowed  into  the  surrounding  houses ; 
the  windows  and  the  very  roofs  were  packed  with  people.  Sud- 
denly from  a  window  of  the  Cafe  de  Foy  there  shot  forth  the; 
shoulders  and  shaggy  black  head  of  Camille  DesmouHns,  who 
shouted  excitedly  to  the  assembled  multitude  : 

"  Messieurs,  I  have  just  received  a  letter  from  Versailles 
telling  me  that  the  Ufe  of  the  Comte  de  Mirabeau  is  no  longer 
safe,  and  it  is  for  the  defence  of  our  Uberty  that  he  is  exposed 
to  danger  !  "  ^ 

The  panic  news  was  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth — "  Mirabeau 
has  paid  with  his  hfe-blood  his  attachment  to  the  cause  of  the 

^  "  M.  Mounier,  one  of  the  principal  a,iithors  of  the  Revolution  and  one 
of  the  first  leaders  of  the  patriotic  party,  Ifecame  suddenly  the  object  of  the 
people's  hatred  and  of  the  favour  of  aristocracy  !  "  {Deux  Amis,  iii.  i66). 
For  "  people  "  as  usual  read  "  revolutionaries  "  1 

*  Mounier  to  the  Assembly,  August  31  :  "  It  is  evident  that  perverse 
men  desire  to  build  up  their  fortunes  on  the  ruins  of  the  country.  You  see 
the  plan  to  prevent  the  Constitution  from  being  formed  and  developed  " 
{Moniteur,  i.  400). 

^  '  La  Revolution,  by  Louis  Madelin,  p.  87. 

*  Article  on  St.  Huruge  in  the  Revue  de  la  Revolution,  published  by 
Gustave  Bord,  vol.  vi.  p.  251. 

*  Procedure  du  Chdtelet,  evidence  of  Dwall,  witness  cccxvii. 


122        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

people " — "  Mirabeau  has  been  stabbed  to  the  heart — no, 
poisoned  " — a  letter  from  Mirabeau  himself  warned  the  people 
that  the  country  was  in  danger,  that  fourteen  men  had  betrayed 
their  cause.^ 

These  tidings  drove  the  crowd  into  a  frenzy  of  alarm,  and 
thus  the  ridiculous  situation  was  created  of  a  vast  multitude 
inveighing  against  the  Veto  and  at  the  same  time  stricken 
with  panic  for  the  safety  of  its  chief  supporter — Mirabeau  ! 
"  The  people,"  remarks  Bailly,  "  did  not  as  yet  know  their 
lesson."  2 

It  was  now  that  the  Orleanistes  saw  their  opportunity  for 
launching  their  great  scheme  of  a  march  on  Versailles.  If  the 
King  persisted  in  retaining  his  popularity  with  the  people  by 
giving  into  their  demands  and  continuing  to  favour  reforms,  it 
was  idle  to  hope  that  the  people  would  rise  against  him.  The 
remoteness  of  Versailles  from  the  centre  of  agitation  added 
greatly  to  the  glamour  that  surrounded  the  person  of  the  King  ; 
shut  in  behind  the  gilded  barriers  and  the  dim  red  waUs  of  the 
great  chateau  of  the  Roi  Soleil,  Louis  XVI.  still  retained  to  some 
degree  the  character  of  a  sacred  being,  whose  infrequent  appear- 
ance in  pubUc  inspired  the  great  mass  of  the  people  with  wondering 
awe.  But  if  Louis  XVI.  could  be  brought  to  Paris  to  become 
the  object  of  everyday  contemplation  by  the  multitude,  the  halo 
might  be  expected  to  faU  from  his  head.  At  the  palace  of  the 
Tuileries,  close  to  the  Palais  Royal,  the  revolutionary  leaders 
would  have  him  in  their  power,^  and  the  populace  they  held  at 
their  command  could  be  trained  to  degrade  the  Royal  Family  in 
the  eyes  of  the  still  loyal  people. 

Accordingly  it  was  announced  at  the  Palais  Royal  that  in 
order  to  save  the  country  from  the  horrors  of  the  Veto,  and  to 
ensure  the  safety  of  Mirabeau,  a  deputation  must  be  sent  to  the 
Assembly  to  insist  that  the  King  and  the  Dauphin  should  be 
brought  to  Paris.  Camille  DesmouHns  shrieked  that  the  Queen 
must  be  imprisoned  at  St.  Cyr  and  that  the  deputation  should 
consist  of  15,000  armed  men.  At  the  same  time  threatening 
messages  were  despatched  to  the  President  of  the  Assembly, 
the  bishop  of  Langres ;  one  signed  by  St.  Huruge  ran  thus  : 
"  The  Patriotic  Assembly  of  the  Palais  Royal  have  the  honour 
to  inform  you  that  if  that  portion  of  the  aristocracy,  composed 
of  a  party  in  the  clergy,  a  party  in  the  noblesse,  and  120  members 
of  the  Commons,  ignorant  and  corrupt,  continue  to  disturb 
harmony  and  to  demand  the  '  absolute  sanction,'  15,000  men 
are  ready  to  hght  up  their  houses  and  chateaux,  and  yours  in 

^  Fenidres,  i.  220  ;   Deux  Amis,  ii.  360. 

2  Mimoires  de  Bailly,  ii.  327. 

*  Appel  au  Tribunal  de  I'Opinion  publique,  by  Mounier,  p.  65. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       123 

particular.  Monsieur,  and  to  inflict  on  the  deputies  who  betray 
their  country  the  fate  of  Foullon  and  of  Berthier."  ^ 

The  authorship  of  these  two  murders  was  thus  clearly  revealed. 

But  the  number  of  insurgents  promised  by  the  leaders  was 
not  forthcoming,  and  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening  St.  Huruge, 
armed  with  the  petition,  set  forth  at  the  head  of  only  1500  un- 
armed men  for  Versailles.  The  aspect  of  their  leader  was  terrible 
enough  to  inspire  his  followers  with  courage — a  massive  figure 
surmounted  by  a  huge  red  face,  eyes  of  extraordinary  audacity 
flaming  forth  from  under  a  thick  black  wig,  St.  Huruge  appeared 
the  very  incarnation  of  the  revolutionary  spirit.^ 

But  the  daring  of  St.  Huruge,  Uke  the  daring  of  Danton,  was 
more  apparent  than  real ;  the  first  sight  of  danger  reduced  him 
to  the  utmost  meekness.^  On  this  occasion  danger  of  a  very 
formidable  kind  confronted  him — Lafayette,  the  great  opponent 
of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,  was  ready  for  him.  The  proces- 
sion having  marched  boldly  down  the  Rue  Saint-Honor6  found 
their  passage  blocked  by  the  National  Guard,  of  which  Lafayette 
was  the  conmiander,  and  being  turned  back  they  proceeded  to 
march  to  the  H6tel  de  Ville,  where  Bailly  and  Lafayette  himself 
were  waiting  to  receive  them.  The  popular  general  had  little 
difficulty  in  reducing  St.  Huruge  to  submission  ;  perfectly  docile 
and  even  "  contented  "  he  consented  to  retire  from  the  scene, 
but  for  greater  safety  Lafayette  imprisoned  him  in  the  Chatelet. 

So  ended  this  first  attempt  to  march  on  Versailles.  But 
the  project  was  not  abandoned.  On  the  contrary,  from  this 
moment  it  was  perpetually  discussed,  and  a  fresh  pretext  was 
sought  for  stirring  up  the  people. 

EVENTS  AT  VERSAILLES 

When  on  the  i8th  of  September  the  King  made  his  reply  to 
the  demands  of  the  Assembly  requesting  him  to  sanction  the 
reforms  of  the  4th  of  August,  it  became  evident  that  no  opposi- 
tion could  be  hoped  for  from  the  royal  authority.  The  King's 
reply  was  both  reasonable  and  S5^mpathetic  ;  in  a  long  and 
detailed  analysis  he  discussed  each  reform  in  turn,  pointing  out 
that  certain  articles  were  only  the  text  for  laws  that  the  Assembly 
must  frame.    He  ended  with  the  words  :   "  Therefore  I  approve 

^  Mimoires  de  Bailly,  iii.  392. 

*  Esquisses  historiques  de  la  Rivolution  Franfaise,  by  Dulaure,  p.  286. 

'  A  contemporary  records  that  St.  Huruge  having  been  once  reproached 
for  allowing  himself  to  be  flogged  without  retaliating,  he  replied,  "  I  never 
interfere  with  what  goes  on  behind  my  back"  {L'Ami  des  Lois,  ly 
pluviose,  An  VIII).  See  article  on  St.  Huruge  in  the  Revue  de  la  Revolution 
edited  by  Gustave  Bord,  vol.  vi. 


124        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  greater  number  of  these  articles,  and  I  will  sanction  them 
when  they  have  been  drawn  up  into  laws." 

This  concihatory  reply  left  the  revolutionary  leaders  no 
further  ground  for  agitation,  and  they  contented  themselves 
with  insolently  remarking  that  the  King  had  not  been  asked  to 
"sanction"  the  decrees  of  the  Assembly  but  only  to  "promulgate  " 
them.  Floods  of  rhetoric  were  then  expended  on  the  precise 
significance  of  the  two  words.  But  as  the  King  sensibly  observed, 
how  was  it  possible  to  "  promulgate  "  laws  that  had  not  yet 
been  framed  ?  However,  in  order  to  pacify  the  contentious 
deputies,  he  finally  yielded  to  their  demands,  and  two  days  later, 
on  August  28,  accorded  his  "  acceptation  pure  and  simple  "  to  the 
decrees  of  August  4.^ 

The  Assembly  then  proceeded  to  discuss  the  embarrassment 
in  the  finances.  But  here  again  the  King  showed  his  desire  to 
relieve  the  situation  by  coming  forward  to  offer  all  his  silver 
plate  to  the  nation,  whilst  at  the  same  time  the  Queen  sent  60,000 
livres'  worth  to  the  Mint.  The  proposition  met  with  immediate 
remonstrance  from  the  Assembly,  but  the  King  persisted  in  his 
resolution.2 

This  was  the  moment  chosen  by  Mirabeau  for  a  tirade  against 
"  the  rich  "— "  the  frightful  gulf  of  bankruptcy  must  be  fiUed," 
he  declared  to  the  Assembly.  "  Well,  then,  here  is  the  hst  of 
French  proprietors.  Choose  amongst  the  richest  so  as  to  sacri- 
fice the  fewest  citizens.  .  .  .  Strike  I  Immolate  without  pity 
those  wretched  victims  ;  precipitate  them  into  the  abyss ;  it  will 
close  again !  .  .  .  You  shrink  with  horror  ?  Inconsistent  men ! 
Pusillanimous  men  !  "  ^ 

The  speech  was  received  with  "  almost  convulsive  applause  " 
by  the  Assembly. 

Yet  how  was  Mirabeau  himself  carrying  out  the  principle  of 
austere  self-sacrifice  ?  Camille  Desmoulins  will  teU  us.  On  the 
29th  of  September — exactly  three  days  after  Mirabeau's  tirade — 
Camille  wrote  these  words  :  "  I  have  been  for  a  week  at  Versailles 
with  Mirabeau.  We  have  become  great  friends ;  at  least  he 
calls  me  his  dear  friend.  At  every  moment  he  takes  me  by  the 
hands,  he  thumps  me,  then  he  goes  off  to  the  Assembly,  resumes 

^  The  King  is  frequently  stated  to  have  refused  this  sanction  until 
October  5,  but  contemporaries  of  all  parties  are  explicit  on  this  point. 
See  Deux  Amis,  iii.  29  ;  MSmoires  de  Bailly,  ii.  379  ;  Maraiontel,  iv.  238  ; 
Histoire  de  I'AssemhUe  Constituante,  by  Alexandre  de  Lameth,  i.  142. 

2  Moniteur,  i.  496  ;  Bailly,  ii.  389.  On  the  question  of  the  King's 
"  rigid  economy  "  with  regard  to  his  personal  expenses  see  the  address  from 
the  National  Assembly  on  January  5,  1790  {Moniteur,  iii.  52). 

^  Moniteur,  i.  519.  M0I6,  the  actor,  who  was  present  on  this  occasion, 
delighted  Mirabeau  by  telling  him  he  had  missed  his  vocation — he  should 
have  gone  on  the  stage  !  {Souvenirs  d'iltienne  Dumont,  p.  133). 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       125 

his  dignity  as  he  enters  the  hall  and  works  wonders,  after  which 
he  comes  back  to  dine  with  excellent  company  and  sometimes 
with  his  mistress,  and  we  drink  excellent  wine.  I  feel  that  his 
too  delicate  fare  and  overloaded  table  corrupt  me.  His  claret  and 
his  maraschino  have  a  virtue  that  I  vainly  seek  to  ignore,  and 
1  have  all  the  difficulty  in  the  world  in  resuming  my  republican  ^ 
austerity  and  in  detesting  the  aristocrats  whose  crime  is  to 
give  these  excellent  dinners.  I  prepare  motions,  and  Mirabeau 
calls  that  initiating  me  into  great  affairs.  It  seems  to  me  that 
I  ought  to  think  myself  happy  when  I  remember  my  position 
at  Guise.  .  .  ."     Oh,  people,  these  are  your  defenders  ! 

It  is  said  that  only  a  few  weeks  before,  Mirabeau,  looking 
out  of  the  window  and  seeing  a  crowd  of  poor  people  fighting 
at  a  baker's  shop  for  bread,  uttered  the  cynical  remark,  "  That 
canaille  there  well  deserves  to  have  us  for  legislators  !  "  Like 
Danton  he  at  least  was  frank,  and  no  one  would  have  been  more 
amused  than  Mirabeau  himself  at  the  efforts  of  his  biographers 
to  represent  him  as  a  lofty  ideaUst  and  lover  of  the  people. 

What  was  the  truth  about  Mirabeau  at  this  juncture  when 
the  march  on  Versailles  was  being  planned  in  the  councils  of  the 
Orleaniste  leaders  ?  Was  he  amongst  them  ?  His  panegyrists 
have  vainly  endeavoured  to  absolve  him  from  complicity,  but 
contemporaries,  even  those  who  were  his  friends,  are  obliged  to 
admit  that  he  knew  what  was  to  take  place  even  if  he  did  not 
help  to  prepare  the  movement. 

"  I  am  inclined  to  think,"  says  Dumont,  "  that  Mirabeau  was 
in  the  secret  of  the  events  of  the  5th  and  6th  of  October.  .  .  . 
What  I  believe  is,  taking  everything  into  consideration,  suppos- 
ing that  the  insurrection  of  Versailles  was  led  by  the  agents  of 
the  Due  d'Orleans,  that  Laclos  was  too  clever  to  confide  every- 
thing to  the  indiscretion  of  Mirabeau,  but  that  he  had  made  sure 
of  him  conditionally.  ...  It  is  impossible  not  to  believe  in 
some  liaison  between  them."  ^  This  from  the  intime  of  Mirabeau 
is  conclusive.  Camille  Desmoulins,  who  at  this  date  "  idolized  " 
Mirabeau,  also  gave  away  his  friend  later  on  :  "  Will  any  one 
make  me  beheve  that  when  I  stayed  at  Versailles  with  Mirabeau 
immediately  before  the  6th  of  October  ...  I  saw  nothing  of 

*  The  use  of  the  word  "  republican  "  by  Desmoulins  at  this  date  may 
seem  to  contradict  the  statement  that  he  was  an  Orleaniste,  but  the  word 
was  frequently  used  during  the  earlier  stages  of  the  Revolution  to  signify 
simply  "  public-spirited  "  (see,  for  example,  the  remark  of  Mounier  to 
Mirabeau  on  p.  140).  On  the  other  hand,  Montjoie  may  be  right  in  saying 
that  at  this  moment  Camille  Desmoulins  had  temporarily  gone  over  to 
Lafayette  and  Republicanism  {Conjuration  de  d'Orleans,  ii.  153).  This 
would  explain  the  disagreement  that  seems  to  have  taken  place  between 
l^esmoulins  and  Mirabeau  at  the  end  of  this  visit  to  Versailles. 

2  Souvenirs  sur  Mirabeau,  p.  121. 


126         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  precursory  movements  of  the  5th  and  6th  ?  Will  any  one 
make  me  believe  that  when  I  went  to  Mirabeau  at  the  moment 
that  he  heard  the  Due  d'Orleans  had  started  for  London,  his 
anger  at  seeing  himself  abandoned,  his  imprecations  .  .  .  made 
me  conjecture  nothing  ?  "  ^ 

The  plan  of  the  conspirators  was  undoubtedly  either  to 
persuade  the  mob  to  march  on  Versailles  and  murder  the  King 
and  Queen,  or  more  probably  to  murder  the  Queen  only  and 
bring  the  King  to  Paris.  Of  all  this  Mirabeau  was  evidently 
well  aware — even  if  he  was  not  one  of  the  authors  of  the  scheme 
— and  it  would  seem  that  at  moments  the  dreadful  secret  preyed 
on  his  mind.  Perhaps  amidst  the  mire  of  his  hfe  some  hereditary 
traditions  of  honour,  some  instincts  of  chivalry,  had  survived 
which  made  him  shrink  from  the  brutal  crime  of  which  a  noble 
and  beautiful  woman  was  to  be  the  chief  victim,  and  at  these 
moments  he  was  almost  tempted  to  abandon  the  sordid  intrigue 
into  which  he  had  been  drawn  and  throw  himself  into  the  worthier 
cause  of  defending  his  King  against  the  designs  of  a  usurper. 
Yet  if  he  did  so,  what  reception  would  he  meet  with  from  the 
Court  ?  The  King  and  Queen,  he  well  knew,  regarded  him  with 
aversion.  Was  it  not  possible,  therefore,  that  by  deserting  the 
conspiracy  he  might  simply  become  the  enemy  of  Orleans  and 
gain  no  favour  with  the  King  ?  Thus  haunted  with  the  horror 
of  the  thing  he  wished  the  King  would  find  out  for  himself  the 
tragedy  that  was  impending.  Often  at  this  time  Mirabeau,  in 
speaking  of  the  Court  to  his  friend  La  Marck,  would  ask  un- 
controllably, "What  are  these  people  thinking  of?  Do  they 
not  see  the  abyss  that  is  opening  under  their  feet  ?  *'  Once  in 
a  violent  outbreak  of  exasperation  he  cried  out,  "  All  is  lost ; 
the  King  and  Queen  will  perish — you  will  see  it — and  the  populace 
will  batter  their  corpses."  And  then,  seeing  the  horror  on  the 
face  of  La  Marck,  he  repeated,  "  Yes,  yes,  their  corpses  will  be 
battered — you  do  not  understand  sufi&ciently  the  danger  of 
their  position ;  it  ought  to  be  made  known  to  them." 

But  it  had  been  made  known  to  them,  and  by  Lafayette  him- 
self in  a  letter  to  the  Comte  de  St.  Priest  dated  September  17. 
On  the  23rd,  therefore,  the  King  warned  the  Assembly  of 
"  the  threats  of  ill-disposed  persons  to  march  out  of  Paris  with 
arms,"  and  of  the  measures  he  had  taken  for  the  protection  of 
the  deputies.  The  Assembly,  however,  was  already  aware  of  the 
intention.  "  I  repeat  without  fear  of  contradiction,"  says  Mounier, 
'*  that  every  day  the  ministers  received  the  most  alarming  infor- 
mation on  this  subject,  and  the  King's  Guards  were  several  times 
obliged  to  spend  the  night  in  readiness  to  mount  their  horses."  ^ 

1  Fragment  de  I'Histoire  secrHe  de  la  Revolution,  1793. 
*  Appel  au  Tribunal  de  I'Opinion  publique,  p.  67. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       127 

If  under  these  circumstances  a  plan  was  formed  by  certain 
Royalists  to  convey  the  Royal  Family  to  Metz  or  to  some  other 
place  of  safety,  is  it  altogether  surprising  ?  That  any  such 
project  existed  has  never  yet  been  proved — the  only  evidence 
brought  forward  by  the  revolutionary  writers  being  the  rough 
copy  of  a  letter  from  the  Comte  d'Estaing  to  the  Queen  ^  which 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  conspirators — but  even  if  the  supposi- 
tion were  correct,  what  perfidy  would  this  imply  on  the  part  of 
the  Royalists  ?  Why,  if  the  Hves  of  the  King  and  Queen  were 
daily  threatened,  should  not  their  loyal  supporters  attempt  to 
rescue  them  from  their  assassins  ?  The  scheme  involved  no 
design  on  the  Hberties  of  the  nation,  and  the  flight  of  the  Royal 
Family  to  Metz  would  have  been  undertaken,  Uke  the  flight  to 
Varennes  two  years  later,  simply  in  self-defence.  At  any  rate, 
one  undeniable  fact  remains — the  plan  was  not  attempted,  the 
King  and  Queen  of  their  own  free  will  decided  to  stay  at  Versailles 
and  face  the  danger. 

THE  BANQUET  OF  THE  BODYGUARD 

The  municipality  of  Versailles,  alarmed  no  less  for  the  safety 
of  the  town  than  of  the  Royal  Family,  now  decided,  on  the  advice 
of  the  Comte  d'Estaing,  conMnander  of  the  National  Guard  of 
Versailles,  to  request  the  King  to  summon  another  regiment  as 
a  reinforcement  of  the  bodyguard,  the  Swiss  dragoons  and 
milice  bourgeoise  that  at  present  constituted  the  garrison, 
and  were  held  to  be  inadequate  "  to  resist  the  attack  of  2000 
armed  men."  ^  Accordingly  the  "  Regiment  de  Flandre  "  was 
ordered  to  Versailles  and  arrived  on  September  23.  Immediately 
the  conspirators  set  to  work  to  corrupt  the  newly  arrived  troops, 
and  women  of  the  town  were  sent  to  distribute  money,  food,  and 
wine  amongst  the  soldiers,^  and  to  exact  from  them  the  promise 
not  to  defend  the  King  in  case  of  insurrection.  "  One  would  not 
have  supposed,"  writes  a  revolutionary  chronicler  of  the  day, 
*'  that  it  is  to  the  vilest  class  of  our  prostitutes  that  we  owe  the 
happy  event  that  brought  the  King  to  Paris  and  the  consolation 
that  the  day  of  October  the  5th  was  not  more  murderous.  . . .  The 
leaders  of  the  people  .  .  .  sent  to  Versailles  ...  in  bands  and 
by  different  routes  three  hundred  of  the  prettiest  street-walkers 
of  the  Palais  Royal  with  money,  instructions,  and  the  promise 
of  being  disembowelled  by  the  people  if  they  did  not  carry  out 

^  Deux  Amis,  iii.  loi  ;   Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  167. 

*  Deux  Amis,  iii.  112  ;   Bailly,  ii.  281  ;   Rivarol,  p.  256. 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  ded'OrUans,  ii.  172  ;  Ferri^res,  ii.  273  ;  evidence 
of  felizabeth  Pannier,  wife  of  a  restaurant  keeper  at  Versailles,  witness  xx. 
in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 


128         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

their  mission  faithfully.  It  was  these  female  deputies  who, 
amidst  the  pleasures  of  love,  obtained  from  the  soldiers  the 
patriotic  oath  which  rendered  their  arms  powerless  before  their 
fellow-citizens."  ^ 

By  the  same  means  which  had  been  employed  to  seduce  the 
Gardes  Frangaises  before  the  siege  of  the  Bastille,  the  men  of 
the  Regiment  de  Flandre  were  now  turned  from  their  aUegiance 
to  the  King,  and  as  a  sign  of  defection  adopted  the  tricolour 
cockade.^ 

The  loyal  troops  of  the  King  saw  all  this  with  growing  alarm, 
and  resolved  to  bring  the  Flemish  regiment  back  to  its  allegiance. 
Now  it  was  a  time-honoured  custom  for  the  King's  bodyguard 
to  entertain  at  supper  any  newly  arrived  regiment ;  accordingly 
the  officers  of  the  Regiment  de  Flandre  were  invited  to  a  banquet 
at  which  a  number  of  the  Swiss  Guards,  the  milice  bourgeoise, 
and  others  were  also  present.  The  theatre  of  the  Chateau,  lent 
by  the  King  for  the  occasion,  was  brilliantly  decorated,  and  lit 
by  hundreds  of  candles ;  around  a  huge  horse-shoe  table  the 
officers  of  the  bodyguard  and  the  officers  of  the  Flemish  regiment 
were  seated  alternately,  and  the  bands  of  the  two  regiments 
played  throughout  the  feast.  Were  the  faithful  soldiers  of  the 
King  to  blame  if  they  took  this  opportunity  to  revive  the  waning 
loyalty  of  their  comrades  ?  Were  they  to  be  reproached  with 
treachery  to  the  nation  if  under  their  influence  the  men  of  the 
Flemish  regiment  broke  out  into  cries  of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  " 

When  at  this  juncture  the  Royal  Family  entered  the  hall, 
the  Queen  leading  Madame  Royale  by  the  hand,  an  officer  of 
the  bodyguard  carrying  the  Dauphin  in  his  arms,  enthusiasm 
knew  no  bounds,  and  a  storm  of  acclamation  burst  forth  un- 
restrained. 

To  the  minds  of  Frenchmen  there  was  something  intensely 
tragic  in  the  sudden  apparition  of  the  little  group  over  whose 
heads  so  terrible  a  storm  was  gathering,  and  at  the  sight  of  the 
Queen — a  beautiful  woman,  a  wife,  a  mother,  whose  Ufe  they 
knew  was  daily  threatened — all  the  ancient  chivalry  of  France 
awoke  in  them,  and  to  a  man  they  resolved  to  defend  her.  The 
last  touch  of  pathos  was  given  by  the  band  of  the  Regiment 
de  Flandre  with  the  air  from  "  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  "  : 

O  !  Richard  !   o  mon  Roi !   Tunivers  t'abandonne  I 

The  selection  was  painfully  apt ;  all  the  world  was  deserting 
the  unhappy  King,  and  with  the  passionate  loyalty  of  their  race 
the  gallant  bodyguard  at  this  supreme  moment  mustered  around 
him.     Men  of  both  regiments  sprang  on  to  their  chairs,  waved 

^  Correspondance  secrdte,  i.  414. 
*  Faits  relatifs  d  la  dernUre  insurrection,  i)y  Mounier. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       129 

their  glasses  aloft,  and  shouted  themselves  hoarse  with  cries  of 
**  Vive  le  Roi !   Vive  la  Reine  !   Vive  le  Dauphin  !  " 

The  scene  was  afterwards  described  by  the  revolutionaries 
as  a  "  drunken  orgy  "  ;  it  is  possible  that  both  wine  and  music 
had  gone  to  the  heads  of  the  revellers — ^is  the  fact  altogether 
unprecedented  in  the  annals  of  regimental  dinners  ? — but  the 
fact  impUes  no  criminal  intention  towards  the  nation. 

The  occasion  provided,  however,  the  pretext  for  which  the 
conspirators  were  waiting,  and  the  story  was  immediately  circu- 
lated in  Versailles  and  carried  to  the  Palais  Royal — it  is  said  by 
the  Due  d' Orleans  himself  ^ — that  the  officers  of  the  bodyguard 
had  refused  to  drink  the  health  of  the  nation  and  had  trampled 
under  foot  the  "  national  cockade."  The  accusation,  emphatic- 
ally denied  by  eye-witnesses  of  the  scene, ^  rested  on  the  evidence 
of  one  man  alone,  a  certain  Laurent  Lecointre,  cloth-seller  and 
officer  in  the  milice  bourgeoise  of  Versailles,  who  was  filled  with 
rancour  against  the  bodyguard  because  he  had  not  been  invited 
to  the  banquet,^  and  who  was  therefore  not  present. 

The  exact  truth  about  the  "  toast  of  the  nation  "  is  impossible 
to  discover,  but  from  the  evidence  of  the  most  reliable  witnesses 
it  appears  that  the  health  of  the  nation  was  not  drunk  because 
the  toast  was  not  a  customary  one,  and  so  was  not  proposed  on 
this  or  any  former  occasion.*    It  was,  therefore,  not  refused. 

As  to  the  incidents  of  the  cockades,  the  officers  of  the  body- 
guard could  not  have  torn  off  the  national  cockades  and  trampled 
on  them,  for  the  simple  reason  that  they  had  not  adopted  them 
but  were  still  wearing  the  white  cockade.^  At  the  same  time  it 
seems  that  white  cockades  were  distributed  by  the  ladies  of  the 
Court  to  the  Regiment  de  Flandre,  and  that  voices  were  heard 
to  exclaim,  "  Long  live  the  white  cockade,  it  is  the  right  one  !  " 

But  when  we  remember  that  the  tricolour  represented  the 
colours  of  the  Due  d' Orleans,  that  it  had  become  in  reality  not  the 
"  national "  but  the  "  revolutionary  cockade,"  and  was  regarded 
amongst  soldiers  as  the  badge  of  desertion,^  was  it  unnatural 
that  those  who  desired  the  King's  cause  to  triumph  over  the 
designs  of  a  usurper  should  have  attempted  to  replace  it  by  the 
royal  emblem  ?    If  so,  as  Mounier  points  out,  "  Where  was  the 

*  Evidence  of  De  Pelletier  and  of  De  Grandmaison  in  Procedure  du 
Chdtelet. 

'  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  248  ;  speech  of  the  Marquis  de  Bonnay 
to  the  Assembly  on  October  i,  1790,  in  Moniteur  for  this  date  ;  evidence  of 
La  Brousse  de  Belleville,  witness  xxii.  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet,  etc. 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  173  ;  Appel  au  Tribunal,  by 
Mounier,  p.  iii. 

*  Ferrieres,  i.  275. 

*  Ihid.  i.  260  ;   Deux  Amis,  iii.  128 

*  Fails  relatifs  d,  la  derniere  Insurrection,  by  Mounier,  p.  9. 

K 


I30        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

crime  ?  What  law  obliged  one  at  Versailles  to  wear  the  cockade 
of  Paris  ?  Why  should  one  not  have  been  allowed  to  prefer  the 
colour  that  from  all  time  had  been  that  of  our  flag  ?  Why,  on 
a  day  that  the  Royal  Family  was  threatened,  should  not  all 
courageous  men  have  rallied  round  this  sign  of  fidelity  ?  "  ^ 

A  strange  incident  followed  the  banquet.  A  chasseur  of  the 
Trois  fiveches  was  found  by  Miomandre,  an  officer  of  the  Royal 
Turenne,  sunk  in  despair,  with  his  forehead  resting  on  the  hilt 
of  his  sword.  When  asked  what  was  his  trouble  he  broke  out 
into  sobs  and  disjointed  sentences  in  which  the  following  words 
alone  were  audible  :  "  That  fine  household  of  the  King  ...  I  am 
a  great  fool .  .  .  The  monsters,  what  do  they  demand  ?  .  ,  .  those 
rascals  of  a  commander  and  D' Orleans  !  "  Then  falling  on  his 
sword  he  attempted  to  take  his  life.  At  this  moment  several 
of  his  comrades  appeared  on  the  scene,  and  hearing  what  had 
occurred  one  of  them  exclaimed,  "  He  is  a  good-for-nothing — 
we  must  get  rid  of  him  !  "  Thereupon  they  kicked  the  wretched 
man  to  death  "  as  one  would  crush  an  insect."  ^ 

It  will  be  seen,  then,  how  frightful  were  the  consequences  to 
any  one  who  attempted  to  betray  the  designs  of  the  conspirators, 
how  potent  was  the  Orleaniste  "  terror  "  that  during  the  first 
stages  of  the  Revolution  held  sway  over  the  minds  of  men  and 
sealed  the  lips  of  those  who  would  have  revealed  the  truth  con- 
cerning the  preparations  for  the  insurrection  of  October  5. 

PRELIMINARIES  OF  THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES 

The  story  of  the  Guards'  "  orgy  "  had  served  the  purpose  of 
rendering  this  loyal  regiment  odious  to  the  people,  but  a  further 
obstacle  must  be  removed  from  their  path  if  the  conspirators 
were  to  succeed  in  their  scheme  of  bringing  the  King  to  Paris. 
"  It  was  necessary,"  says  Mounier,  "  in  order  to  execute  their 
plan,  to  get  rid  of  the  King's  guards  and  of  all  those  who  would 
have  defended  his  liberty.  They  feared  the  courage  of  the  Queen, 
and  so  she  must  be  given  over  to  the  fury  of  the  people."  ^  Louis 
XVI.,  surrounded  by  his  feeble  and  purblind  ministers,  was  not 
to  be  feared ;  they  had  but  to  assure  him  that  the  people  wished 
him  to  go  to  Paris  and  to  Paris  he  would  go.  But  the  Queen 
would  see  the  plot  and  offer  resistance.  "  The  King,"  said 
Mirabeau  a  year  later,  "  has  only  one  man  with  him — ^that  is 
his  wife."  * 

So  by  every  species  of  calumny,  by  the  circulation  of  the 

^  Appel  au  Tribunal,  by  Mounier,  p.  91. 
2  Deux  Amis,  iii.  134  ;   Ferri^res,  i.  279. 
'  Appel  au  Tribunal,  p.  65. 
*  Correspondance  entre  Mirabeau  et  La  March,  p.  107. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       131 

foulest  libels,  by  every  method  the  "  infernal  genius"  of  Laclos 
could  devise,^  popular  rage  was  stirred  up  against  the  Queen  at 
the  Palais  Royal  and  in  the  Faubourgs  of  Paris.  "  The  Queen 
was  at  the  head  of  a  counter-revolution — the  Queen  was  the  sole 
cause  of  the  disorder  in  the  finances — the  Queen  had  said  that 
the  happiest  day  of  her  life  would  be  when  she  could  wash  her 
hands  in  the  blood  of  the  French,"  that  she  "  would  not  mind 
being  shut  up  in  Paris,  provided  the  walls  of  her  prison  were 
made  of  the  bones  of  Frenchmen."  ^  But  the  accusation  that 
stirred  most  deeply  the  passions  of  the  people  was  that  the  Queen 
was  responsible  for  the  scarcity  of  bread.  For,  in  spite  of  a 
magnificent  harvest  only  six  weeks  earlier,  the  supplies  of  grain 
were  again  declared  to  be  insufficient,  the  bakers'  shops  were 
besieged,  working-men  waited  all  day  to  obtain  a  4  lb.  loaf  and 
returned  empty-handed  to  their  starving  families. 

Hunger  is  apt  to  render  one  light-headed ;  under  its  dizzying 
spell  many  things  seem  possible  that  with  a  well-nourished  brain 
one  would  recognize  as  absurd,  and  so  the  half-famished  dwellers 
in  the  Faubourgs  readily  accepted  the  assurance  that  the  King, 
the  Queen,  and  the  "  aristocrats  "  were  at  the  bottom  of  the 
trouble.  Gouvemeur  Morris  thus  describes  an  orator  haranguing 
the  people  :  "  The  substance  of  his  discourse  was  :  '  Messieurs, 
we  are  in  want  of  bread,  and  this  is  the  reason — ^it  is  only  three 
days  since  the  King  has  had  the  suspensive  Veto,  and  already 
the  aristocrats  have  bought  suspensions  and  sent  the  grain  out 
of  the  kingdom.'  To  this  sensible  and  profound  discourse  his 
audience  gave  a  hearty  assent.  '  Ma  foi  !  he  is  right.  It  is  only 
that  !  '     Oh,  rare  !     These  are  the  modem  Athenians  !  " 

But  were  these  poor  people  altogether  to  blame  for  their 
creduHty  ?  Many  of  them  could  neither  read  nor  write.  How 
were  they  to  know  that  neither  Court  nor  aristocrats  had  anything 
whatever  to  do  with  the  circulation  of  grain  at  this  crisis,  since 
the  whole  question  had  been  placed  under  the  control  of  the 
"  Committee  of  Subsistences,"  headed  by  the  popular  mayor, 
Bailly,  who,  helpless  as  ever  before  the  manoeuvres  of  the 
Orleanistes,  vainly  endeavoured  to  thwart  the  monopolizers  ?  ^ 

The  truth  is  that  this  famine,  like  the  one  that  had  threatened 
earlier  in  the  year,  was  fictitious  ;  the  want  of  bread,  as  con- 
temporaries of  all  parties  agree,  did  not  really  exist,  but  was 
artificially  produced  in  order  to  inflame  the  minds  of  the  people 

^  "  I  know  that  several  of  the  libels  published  then  (before  the  5th  of 
October)  were  paid  for  by  the  agents  of  the  Due  d'Orl6ans  "  {Mimoires  de 
Malouet,  i.  344).     Others  were  undoubtedly  paid  for  by  Von  der  Goltz. 

*  hettve  d'un  FranQais  sur  les  moyens  qui  ont  opiri  la  Revolution,  pp.  11, 
12,  and  31. 

*  La  Conspiration  r&volutionnaire  de  ijSg,  by  Gustave  Bord,  p.  211. 


132         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

against  the  Court  and  Government.^  This  point,  habitually  over- 
looked by  historians,  gives  the  key  to  the  whole  movement  of 
October  5. 

Moreover,  that  this  artificial  famine  was  again  the  work  of  the 
Orleaniste  conspiracy  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever,  for  apart 
from  the  statements  of  Montjoie,  Rivarol,  the  Comte  d'Hezecques, 
and  Mounier,  which  all  exactly  agree,  we  have  that  of  Bailly 
himself,  and  no  one  was  in  a  better  position  than  the  mayor  to 
judge  of  the  real  state  of  affairs,  nor  was  any  man  less  likely  to 
defend  the  Court  against  the  accusation  of  a  plot  if  any  such  had 
existed.  Who  were  the  authors  of  the  plot  Bailly,  however, 
indicates  very  clearly  :  "  The  parties  who  sought  to  bring  about 
an  insurrection,  well  reaUzing  that  there  was  no  finer  opportunity 
than  the  want  of  suppUes,  made  every  effort  to  make  an  unequal 
^division  either  by  pillaging  our  convoys  without  (the  city)  or 
^  taking  them  by  force  from  the  bakers  within,  or  else  by  cornering 
the  bread  so  that  one  should  have  too  much  and  the  other  go 
without,  or  in  purposely  placing  amongst  the  crowd  assembled 
at  the  bakers'  doors  strong  men  who  could  ill-treat  and  injure 
the  weak  so  as  to  make  the  people  complain.  When  I  passed 
in  front  of  one  of  these  shops  and  saw  this  crowd,  my  heart  was 
torn,  and  I  can  still  hardly  see  a  baker's  shop  without  emotion."  ^ 
A  further  method  employed  by  the  agitators  was  to  tell  the 
people  that  the  flour  was  bad,  and  as  much  of  that  which  was  now 
on  the  markets  came  from  abroad,  and  differed  in  colour  and 
flavour  from  the  home-grown  variety,  this  story  was  readily 
beheved,  and  the  people  were  persuaded  to  rip  up  the  sacks, 
dispersing  the  contents.  No  less  than  2000  sackfuls  were  thrown 
into  the  Seine.^  These  diaboUcal  methods  had  the  desired  effect 
of  denuding  the  markets  and  driving  the  poor  of  Paris  to 
desperation. 

*  See,  amongst  the  assertions  of  innumerable  contemporaries,  that  of 
Mounier,  Appel  au  Tribunal,  p.  74  :  "  At  the  time  of  October  the  5th, 
means  were  adopted  that  had  been  tried  several  times  before,  that  oif 
creating  a  famine  and  then  accusing  those  who  were  called  aristocrats  so 
as  to  give  the  impression  that  abundance  was  at  the  disposal  of  a  prince 
without  power,  and  thus  to  associate  the  feeling  of  vengeance  with  the 
feeling  of  want."  Mounier  goes  on  to  point  out  that  Brissot  himself  was 
obliged  to  admit  that  before  the  insurrection  of  October  5  "  there  had 
existed  for  some  days  that  apparent  famine  of  which  we  spoke  before. 
This  famine  did  not  really  exist."  Brissot  then  proceeded  to  accuse  "  the 
aristocrats,"  but  as  Mounier  observed  :  "  We  will  not  seek  to  show  how 
absurd  it  was  to  accuse  of  these  manoeuvres  those  who  were  to  be  the 
victims  of  them,  whilst  it  would  have  been  much  more  correct  to  conclude 
that  since  the  aristocrats  of  Versailles  were  the  objects  of  the  people's 
hatred,  that  hatred  was  excited  by  the  partisans  of  the  democracy.  It 
is  at  any  rate  true  that  M.  Brissot  admitted  the  famine  was  fictitious 
and  consequently  that  a  plot  existed." 

2  Bailly,  ii,  406.  ^  Ibid.  ii.  359. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       133 

Meanwhile  the  agitators  were  hard  at  work.  In  the  Faubourg 
Saint-Antoine,  Santerre  and  the  orator  Gonchon,  whose  red  and 
blotchy  countenance  rivalled  in  hideosity  that  of  Danton  or  of 
St.  Huruge,  stirred  up  insurrection.^  At  the  Palais  Royal,  on 
Sunday,  October  4,  "  Danton  roared  his  denunciations,"  and 
"  Marat  made  as  much  noise  as  the  four  trumpets  on  the  Day 
of  Judgment."  It  was  now  that  the  morrow's  march  on  Versailles 
was  publicly  announced  on  the  pretext  of  "  the  scarcity  of  bread, 
the  desire  of  avenging  the  national  cockade,  and  of  bringing  the 
King  to  Paris."  2 

By  these  means  the  movement,  Uke  the  one  that  had 
preceded  the  siege  of  the  Bastille,  was  made  to  appear  spon- 
taneous—  an  uncontrollable  rising  of  the  people  that  the 
leaders  were  powerless  to  subdue.  But  at  the  Due  d'Orleans' 
house  in  Passy  ^  the  march  had  already  been  planned,  and  the 
elements  of  which  the  mob  was  to  be  composed  arranged  by 
the  conspirators. 

"  If  an  insurrection  were  possible,"  Mirabeau  had  said,  "  it 
would  only  be  in  the  event  of  women  mingUng  in  the  movement 
and  taking  the  lead."  *  Did  the  idea  of  a  "  hunger  march  of 
women  "  originate  with  Mirabeau  ?  Or  had  he  merely  in  one 
of  his  frequent  moments  of  indiscretion  given  away  the  secret 
of  his  party  ?  The  truth  will  never  be  known,  yet  one  thing 
is  certain  —  the  plan  did  not  originate  with  the  women,  but 
was  adopted  for  an  excellent  reason  by  the  organizers  of  the 
expedition. 

Now,  the  leaders  of  the  revolutionary  mobs  were  never  fond 
of  facing  artillery  or  troops  of  whose  defection  they  had  not 
previously  assured  themselves,  and  at  Versailles  they  weU  knew 
that  not  only  the  King's  faithful  bodyguard  awaited  them,  but 
also  certain  cannons  which  pointed  threateningly  at  the  Avenue 
de  Paris,  by  which  the  procession  must  approach  the  Chateau. 
If,  however,  a  contingent  of  women  could  be  induced  to  march 
first  and  form  a  screen  between  them  and  the  troops,  the  rest  of 
the  army  could  safely  advance  with  their  artillery.^  The  plan 
was  well  thought  out,  and  the  conspirators  entertained  no  doubt 
that  the  women  of  Paris  could  be  incited  by  the  pangs  of  hunger 
to  co-operate.    Accordingly  suppUes  were  now  entirely  cut  off, 

^  Gonchon  received  the  sum  of  30,000  to  40,000  francs  for  each  insurrec- 
tion he  succeeded  in  exciting  {Memoirs  of  the  Comtesse  de  Bohm,  p.  196, 
edited  by  De  Lescure). 

2  Appel  au  Tribunal,  by  Mounier,  p.  123. 

'  Histoire  de  la  Revolution  de  France,  by  Fantin  Desodoards,  1.  340. 

*  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iii.  161. 

^  Appel  au  Tribunal,  p.  123  :  "  Those  who  directed  it  (the  insurrection) 
had  judged  it  expedient  to  make  it  begin  with  women,  so  that  the  soldiers 
would  be  less  likely  to  use  force." 


134        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

and  when  the  wet  and  windy  morning  of  Monday  the  5th  of 
October  dawned,  the  Faubourgs  of  Saint-Antoine  and  Saint- 
Marceau  found  themselves  absolutely  without  bread. 


THE  5TH  OF  OCTOBER 

This  was  the  signal  for  the  insurrection  to  begin,  and  as 
early  as  six  o'clock  bands  of  rioters,  led  by  harridans  of  ferocious 
aspect,  started  out  to  collect  recruits.  Now,  according  to  the 
history  books  that  enUghtened  our  youth,  the  women  thus 
assembled  and  induced  to  march  on  Versailles  were  principally 
fishwives,  ragged  and  dishevelled  furies,  endowed,  Hke  their 
counterparts  in  our  own  old  Billingsgate,  with  a  pecuUar  talent 
for  invective.  Rivarol,  however,  in  a  passage  which  we  shall 
find  later  on  confirmed  by  unquestionable  evidence,  shatters 
this  time-honoured  legend.  "  The  women  who  went  from  Paris 
to  Versailles  are  always  designated  by  the  name  of  poissardes. 
This  is  unfortunate  for  those  who  sell  fish  and  fruit  in  the  streets 
and  markets ;  truth  compels  one  to  say  that,  far  from  joining 
forces  with  the  sham  poissardes  who  came  to  recruit  them,  they 
asked  at  the  guard-house  at  the  point  of  Saint-Eustache  for  help 
in  driving  them  back."  ^  Why,  indeed,  should  the  poissardes 
wish  to  march  on  Versailles  ?  In  the  past  the  King  and  Queen 
had  no  more  loyal  subjects  than  the  women  whom  the  Old  Regime 
courteously  designated  "  the  Ladies  of  the  Market."  Was  it 
not  their  privilege  to  present  themselves  before  their  Majesties 
and  express  in  prose  or  verse  their  congratulations  or  condolences 
on  every  event  of  importance  ?  Moreover,  the  gala  dress  of 
black  silk  and  diamonds  they  wore  on  these  occasions  ^  pro- 
claimed them  to  be  no  wretched  victims  of  want  and  misery, 
such  as  we  have  seen  depicted  riding  on  the  cannons  to  Versailles, 
but  prosperous  "  citizenesses  "  who  took  a  truly  Parisian  pride 
in  their  appearance.  What  wonder,  then,  that  the  "  Ladies  of 
the  Market "  indignantly  refused  to  join  the  motley  crowd 
that  had  collected  on  the  Place  de  Greve  for  the  purposes  of 
insurrection  ? 

Indeed,  it  was  obvious  to  aU  onlookers  that  this  crowd  was 
not  what  it  pretended  to  be — a  gathering  of  hungry  women 
driven  by  desperation  to  revolt.  "  The  first  women  who  pre- 
sented themselves  at  the  Hotel  de  ViUe  were  powdered,  coiffees, 
and  dressed  in  white,  with  an  air  of  gaiety,  and  gave  evidence 
of  no  evil  intentions  ;  gradually  their  numbers  increased ;  some 
rang  the  tocsin,  others  laughed,  sang,  and  danced  in  the  court- 

^  MSmoires  de  Rivarol^  p.  263. 
'  Mdmoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  167, 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       135 

yard,"  ^  which  proves,  as  Mounier  says,  "  that  amongst  these 
women  a  large  number  were  not  suffering  from  want,  but  were 
only  sent  to  stir  up  the  others."  ^ 

Moreover,  the  aspect  of  certain  of  the  harridans  and  so-called 
poissardes  who  led  the  movement  struck  observers  as  pecuUar, 
for  it  was  noticed  that  beneath  ragged  skirts  there  peeped  forth 
trousers,  that  shaven  chins  appeared  above  muslin  fichus,  and 
that  large  heavily-shod  feet  presented  an  odd  contrast  to  rouged 
and  powdered  faces.  In  a  word,  it  became  apparent  that  a 
number  of  these  "  hungry  women  "  were  not  women  at  all  but 
men  in  women's  clothes,^  and  it  was  said  that  amongst  them  were 
recognized  several  of  the  Orleaniste  leaders — Laclos,  Chamfort, 
Latouche,  Sillery,  Bamave,  and  one  of  the  Lameths  * — whilst  one 
"  monstrously  fat  "  poissarde  was  declared  by  the  people  to  be 
the  Due  d'Aiguillon.^  According  to  certain  contemporaries  these 
gentlemen — notably  Laclos  and  Chamfort — were  accompanied 
by  their  mistresses,  and  Taine  adds  that  their  number  was  swelled 
by  a  quantity  of  deserters  from  the  Gardes  Frangaises  with  the 
women  of  the  Palais  Royal,  to  whom  they  acted  as  souteneurs, 
and  from  whom  they  may  have  borrowed  their  disguises.^ 

These,  then,  were  the  elements  that  formed  the  nucleus  of 
the  expedition,  and  it  will  therefore  be  understood  why  the  first 
contingent  of  women  presented  so  gay  and  prosperous  an  appear- 
ance. But  in  order  to  give  a  popular  air  to  the  rising  it  was 
necessary  to  secure  the  co-operation  of  as  many  "  women  of  the 
people  "  as  could  be  induced  to  join  the  procession,  accordingly 
shops,  workrooms,  and  private  houses  were  entered,  and  cooks, 
seamstresses,  mothers  of  famUies  were  bribed  or  forced  to  follow 
— threatened  with  violence  if  they  refused.  A  washerwoman 
on  the  Seine  described  to  the  ChevaUer  d'Estrees  the  efforts 
made  to  enhst  working- women  in  the  movement.  "  What !  " 
the  Chevalier  had  said  ironically  to  this  woman  on  the  5th  of 
October,  "  you  are  not  at  Versailles  ?  "  to  which  the  washer- 
woman indignantly  replied,  "  Monsieur  le  ChevaHer,  you  are 
mistaken,  like  every  one  else,  in  imagining  that  it  is  laundresses 

^  Evidence  of  M.  de  Blois,  member  of  the  Commune,  witness  xxxv. 
in  the  Procidure  du  Chdtelet. 

2  Appel  au  Tribunal,  p.  124. 

'  On  the  men  in  women's  clothes  see  Appel  au  Tribunal,  by  Mounier, 
p.  124,  and  the  testimony  of  eye-witnesses  vii.,  ix.,  x.,  xxxiii.,  xxxiv., 
XXXV.,  XLiv.,  Lix.,  xcviii.,  cx.,  cxLvi.,  CLXV.,  ccxxxvii.,  cccxvi.,  and 
many  others  in  the  Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 

*  Mimoires  concernant  Marie  Antoinette,  by  Joseph  Weber,  ii.  210; 
Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  245  ;  evidence  of  the  Chevalier  de 
La  Serre,  witness  ccxxvi.  in  Procidure  du  Chdtelet. 

'   ^  Evidence  of  La  Serre  and  St.  Martin  (officer  in  the  Regiment  de 
Flandre),  witness  xcviii.  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 

*  Taine,  La  Revolution,  i.  153. 


136        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

and  other  women  of  the  same  kind  who  have  gone  to  Versailles. 
Some  one  certainly  came  to  my  boat  and  made  the  proposal  to 
myself  and  my  companions,  and  it  was  a  woman  who  offered  us 
six  and  twelve  francs,  but  that  woman  is  no  more  a  woman  than 
you  are ;  I  recognized  her  distinctly  as  a  seigneur  Uving  at  the 
Palais  Royal  or  near  it,  whose  valet  I  wash  for."  ^ 

But  if  the  honest  and  industrious  women  of  the  people  showed 
themselves  unwiUing,  there  lurked  nevertheless  a  terrible  element 
of  violence  in  the  underworld  of  Paris  that  even  another  century 
of  civihzation  has  never  robbed  of  its  ferocity,  and  that  once  its 
passions  are  aroused  knows  neither  reason  nor  pity.  From  this 
underworld  there  now  poured  forth  bands  of  wastrels  and 
degenerates,  drink-sodden  women  clutching  broomsticks,  above 
aU,  street-walkers  inflamed  with  the  easily-roused  passions  of 
their  kind,  reckless,  abandoned,  shrieking  foul  invectives — all 
these  assembled  on  the  Place  de  Greve  and  proceeded  to  attack 
the  Hotel  de  Ville.  With  a  hail  of  stones  they  drove  back  the 
mounted  guards  defending  the  entrance,  and  battering  down  the 
doors  swarmed  into  the  building,  pillaged  the  armoury,  carried  off 
two  cannons,  eight  hundred  guns,  as  well  as  munitions  and  silver, 
attempted  to  hang  a  luckless  priest  they  discovered  in  the  belfry, 
shouting  the  while,  "  The  men  have  no  courage,  they  dare  not 
take  revenge  !  We  will  act  for  them  !  The  representatives  of 
the  Conmiune  are  traitors  and  bad  citizens,  they  deserve  death, 
M.  Bailly  cind  Lafayette  first  of  all — they  must  be  hanged  to 
the  lantern." 

These  imprecations  again  show  very  clearly  the  influences 
at  work  amongst  the  crowd,  for  both  Bailly  and  Lafayette 
were  the  idols  of  the  people,  but  had  rendered  themselves  odious 
to  the  agitators — Bailly  by  his  indefatigable  efforts  to  provide 
the  capital  with  bread,  and  Lafayette  by  his  steady  opposition 
to  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy.  So  once  again  we  see  the  power 
of  the  mob  turned  against  the  people. 

Meanwhile  the  men  who  had  carried  out  the  attack  on 
the  Bastille — known  as  the  volontaires  de  la  Bastille — were  sum- 
moned and  now  arrived  on  the  Place  de  Greve  led  by  Maillard, 
who  seized  a  drum,  beat  a  roU-call,  and  invited  the  women  to 
foUow  him  to  Versailles.  This  heterogeneous  army  of  women, 
of  men  in  women's  clothes,  and  brigands  from  the  Faubourgs, 
armed  with  pistols,  scythes,  pikes,  and  muskets,  mustered  in  the 
Champs  filysees,  and  at  one  o'clock  set  forth  for  Versailles  with 
Maillard  at  their  head.  As  usual,  the  organizers  of  the  movement 
had  been  careful  to  expose  themselves  to  no  danger,  those  who 
joined  in  the  procession  prudently  sheltering  themselves  behind 

1  Evidence  of  St.  Firmin,  bourgeois  de  Paris,  witness  xlv.  in  Procedure 
du  Chdtelei. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       137 

petticoats  from  the  possible  fire  of  the  King's  troops,  whilst 
the  men  whose  eloquence  had  stirred  up  popular  agitation — 
Danton,  Marat,  Santerre,  Camille  DesmouHns,  Gonchon — took 
no  part  in  the  day's  proceedings,  but  kept  away  altogether  from 
the  scene  of  action.^  The  only  prominent  Orleanistes  who 
ventured  forth  on  this  occasion  without  the  safeguard  of  an 
incognito  were  Maillard,  the  "  Generahssimo  of  the  Brigands," 
and  Theroigne  de  Mericourt,  who  now  appeared  on  a  black  horse, 
dressed  in  a  scarlet  riding-habit  and  black  hat,  and  escorted  by 
a  jockey  in  the  same  colours,  which  were  the  racing  colours  of 
the  Due  d' Orleans. 2 

Again,  as  at  the  siege  of  the  Bastille,  it  was  mainly  on  a  few 
obscure  ruffians  that  the  conspirators  depended  for  the  execution 
of  their  designs — Desnot,  the  "  cook  out  of  place,"  who  had  joined 
in  the  murder  of  De  Launay  and  of  Foullon,  and  Mathieu  Jourdan, 
alias  Jouve,  in  turn  butcher,  blacksmith,  smuggler,  and  artist's 
model — "  the  man  with  the  long  beard  "  of  whom  eye-witnesses 
speak  shudderingly,  and  who  on  this  famous  day  was  to  earn  the 
name  of  "  Coupe-Tete." 

So  in  the  wind  and  rain  the  ten-mile  march  to  Versailles 
began,  and  if  in  this  setting  out  we  can  detect  no  element  of 
heroism  as  in  the  start  for  the  Bastille,  there  is  yet  a  poignant 
note  of  pathos  to  be  found  amongst  the  working-women  dragged 
from  their  peaceful  labours  and  forced  to  embark  on  the  hazard- 
ous enterprise  of  which  they  could  not  dimly  understand  the 
purpose.  Several  of  these  women — poor  patient  tools  of  the 
conspirators — afterwards  described  the  methods  employed  to 
goad  them  onwards  as,  shivering  in  the  cold  drizzle,  they 
started  on  the  weary  journey.  The  imprecations  of  the  sham 
poissardes  against  the  Royal  Family  increased  their  disenchant- 
ment. "  Yes,  yes  !  "  cried  one  of  the  furies,  a  notorious  demi- 
mondaine,  armed  with  a  sword,  "  we  are  going  to  Versailles  to 
bring  back  the  Queen's  head  on  the  point  of  a  sword."  But 
the  other  women  silenced  her.^ 

Many  of  the  crowd  were  bribed ;  barefooted  women  drew 
from  their  pockets  six-ecu  pieces  wrapped  in  paper,  ragged  men 
tossed  gold  and  silver  coins  in  the  air,  and  the  hope  of  further 
gain  still  drove  them  onwards.^    Others  trudged  patiently,  lured 

1  St.  Huruge  was  still  safely  lodged  in  the  Chatelet,  so  his  courage  could 
not  be  put  to  the  test. 

2  Evidence  of  Jeanne  Martin,  a  sick-nurse  forced  to  march  "  with 
threats  of  violence,"  witness  lxxxii.,  and  De  Villelongue,  witness  lxxix.  in 
Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 

3  Evidence  of  Jeanne  Martin  and  of  Madeleine  Glain,  charwoman, 
witness  Lxxxiii,  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 

*  Evidence  of  witnesses  x.,  lvi.,  lxxxii.,  cxcix.,  cclxxii.,  and 
cccLXXxvii.  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 


138         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

by  the  promise  of  bread  which  the  good  King  was  to  give  them, 
and,  indeed,  amongst  the  marching  multitude  food  was  sorely 
needed.  By  the  time  they  reached  Sevres  the  pangs  of  hunger 
had  become  acute,  and  the  terrified  inhabitants  having  closed 
their  shops  and  barricaded  themselves  behind  doors  and  windows, 
the  women  flung  themselves  upon  the  restaurants,  battered  down 
the  shutters,  and  after  feasting  on  all  the  food  and  wine  that 
lay  at  hand  proceeded  to  Versailles,  which  they  entered  about 
four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  shouting  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  tumultu- 
ously  as  they  marched.^ 

Whilst  these  scenes  had  been  taking  place  in  Paris  the  calm 
of  Versailles  continued  undisturbed.  Every  one  knows  that 
the  King  went  hunting,  for  no  historian  has  forgotten  to  mention 
the  fact,  but  few,  if  any,  have  remembered  to  add  that  he  knew 
nothing  whatever  about  the  tumult  in  Paris.^  It  was  certainly 
known  to  many  deputies  of  the  Assembly,  but  no  one  seems  to 
have  thought  it  necessary  to  inform  the  King,  and  he  was  allowed 
to  start  for  Meudon  serenely  unconscious  of  the  coming  danger. 
Moreover,  such  was  the  detachment  of  "  the  representatives  of 
the  people  "  from  the  troubles  of  the  capital  that,  whilst  the 
revolutionary  mob  was  mustering,  they  continued  tranquilly 
discussing  the  new  criminal  code. 

Mirabeau  afterwards  admitted  that  he  was  warned  in  the 
morning  of  "  the  increasing  agitation  of  the  people,"  and  "  the 
nature  of  things  "  told  him  that  Paris  was  marching  on  Versailles, 
yet  he  had  spent  the  afternoon  with  La  Marck  studying  maps 
of  Brabant.^  This  confession,  intended  to  prove  his  non-com- 
plicity with  the  movement,  certainly  testified  to  the  amount  of 
sympathy  he  entertained  for  the  people.  The  King's  apparent 
unconcern  is  therefore  less  singular  than  it  has  been  made  to 
appear.  But  though  the  Assembly  had  omitted  to  tell  the 
King  of  the  disturbances  in  Paris,  they  had  not  forgotten  to 
reiterate  their  demand  for  his  sanction  to  the  first  principles  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man.  Before 
starting  for  the  hunt  Louis  XVL  sent  his  reply  to  this  request.^ 

The  principles  of  the  Constitution  he  frankly  admitted  did 
not  "  present  indiscriminately  to  his  mind  the  idea  of  perfection," 
and  could  only  be  judged  on  their  completion.  "  If,  however,"  he 
added,  "  they  will  fulfil  the  wishes  of  my  people  and  cissure  the 
tranquillity  of  the  kingdom,  I  accord,  in  conformity  to  your 
wishes,  my  consent  to  these  articles,  but  on  the  express  condition, 

1  Evidence  of  Maillard,  witness  lxxxi.  in  ProcSdure  du  Chdtelet ;  Deux 
Amis,  iii.  178. 

2  No  messengers  were  able  to  reach  the  King,  as  they  were  all  stopped 
by  the  mob  of  women  on  the  road  from  Paris  {Deux  Amis,  iii.  177). 

'  Moniteur,  vi.  31.  *  Ibid.  ii.  8. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       139 

from  which  I  shall  never  depart,  that  in  accordance  with  the 
result  of  your  deliberations  the  executive  power  shall  reside 
wholly  with  the  monarch  (ait  son  entier  effet  entre  les  mains  du 
monarque)."  In  other  words,  the  King  stipulated  that  he  should 
not  he  called  upon  to  renounce  the  power  accorded  him  by  the 
Constitution  itself.^ 

The  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  he  confessed  that  he 
found  difficult  to  understand — doubtless  it  contained  excellent 
maxims,  but  could  only  be  "  justly  appreciated  when  its  real 
meaning  had  been  defined  by  the  laws  to  which  it  must  serve 
as  the  basis." 

Louis  XVI.  was  a  disciple  not  of  Rousseau  but  of  F^nelon ; 
the  tangible  needs  of  the  people  he  could  comprehend,  but  vague 
theorizing  on  equality  and  universal  happiness  simply  bewildered 
him. 

The  King's  reply  provoked  a  fresh  outburst  of  fury  from  the 
revolutionary  factions  in  the  Assembly.  Robespierre  declared 
it  to  be  destructive  of  the  Constitution,  "  contrary  to  the  rights 
of  the  nation  "  ;  Petion,  taking  advantage  of  the  ensuing  tumult, 
arose  to  denounce  the  banquet  of  the  bodyguard.  Cries  broke  out 
on  all  sides — "  Orgies — threats — the  patriotic  cockade  trampled 
underfoot."  ^  Xhe  Orleanistes,  Sillery,  Mirabeau,  the  Lameths, 
called  out  in  furious  tones,  **  The  nation  must  have  victims  !  "  ^ 
The  Comte  de  Barbantane,  seated  in  a  tribune  with  Madame 
de  Genhs  and  the  two  sons  of  the  Due  d' Orleans — the  Due  de 
Chartres  and  the  Due  de  Montpensier — cried  threateningly,  "  It 
is  evident  that  these  gentlemen  want  more  lanterns ;  well,  they 
shall  have  them  !  "  and  the  voice  of  the  Due  de  Chartres  was  heard 
to  add,  "  Yes,  yes,  messieurs,  we  must  have  more  lanterns  !  " 

At  this  the  Marquis  de  Raigecourt  and  the  Marquis  de  Beau- 
hamais  rose  indignantly  exclaiming,  "  It  is  abominable  that  any 
one  should  dare  to  express  such  sentiments  here  \  "  ^ 

Monsieur  de  Monspey  demanded  that  Petion  should  sub- 
stantiate his  charges  against  the  bodyguard,  but  Mirabeau 
interposed.  "  Let  the  Assembly  declare  that  in  France  every 
one  except  the  King  is  inviolable,  and  I  will  make  the  denuncia- 
tion myself  !  "  and  turning  to  the  deputies  around  him  he  added 

*  Principles  of  the  Constitution,  article  iii.  :  "  The  supreme  executive 
power  resides  exclusively  with  the  King  {riside  exclusivement  dans  les 
mains  du  roi  "  {Moniteur,  i.  390). 

^  Ferri^res,  i.  295. 

'  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  204. 

*  This  scene  is,  of  course,  not  recorded  in  the  Moniteur.  It  was  related 
by  the  Marquis  de  Digoine  du  Palais,  witness  clxviii,,  and  the  Marquis 
de^  Raigecourt,  witness  cciv.,  in  the  ProcSdure  du  Chdtelet,  and  confirmed 
by  other  witnesses  present,  including  Mounier,  president  of  the  Assembly, 
in  his  Appel  au  Tribunal,  p.  233. 


140        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

these  terrible  words  :  "I  will  denounce  the  Queen  and  the  Due 
de  Guiche  !  " 

Again  a  voice  was  heard  from  the  tribune  occupied  by 
Madame  de  GenUs  and  the  sons  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  :  "  What ! 
the  Queen  ?  "  And  another  voice  in  the  same  tribune  replied, 
*'  The  Queen  as  much  as  any  one  else  if  she  is  guilty  !  "  ^ 

Whether  Mounier  heard  these  words  or  not  it  is  evident  that, 
hke  all  other  witnesses  of  the  scene,  he  reaUzed  that  Mirabeau's 
declaration  to  the  Assembly  was  directed  against  the  Queen, ^ 
and  might  prove  the  signal  for  her  assassination  by  the  occupants 
of  the  gallery  if  the  denunciation  were  proceeded  with  ;  accord- 
ingly he  closed  the  discussion. 

Mounier  at  this  crisis  had  no  further  doubts  as  to  Mirabeau's 
compUcity  with  the  criminal  plot  against  the  Royal  Family. 
During  the  scene  that  had  just  taken  place  Mirabeau  had  left 
his  seat,  and  going  round  to  the  President's  chair  had  whispered 
to  Mounier  under  cover  of  the  tumult  : 

"  Monsieur  le  President,  40,000  men  are  arriving  from  Paris  ; 
hurry  the  discussion,  close  the  sitting — be  taken  ill — ^say  you 
are  going  to  the  King  !  " 

"  And  why.  Monsieur  ?  " 

"  Here  is  a  letter,  M.  le  President,  announcing  the  arrival 
of  40,000  men  from  Paris."  ^ 

"  All  the  more  reason,"  answered  Mounier,  "  for  the  Assembly 
to  remain  at  its  post." 

"  But,  Monsieur  le  President,  you  will  be  kiUed  !  " 

*'  So  much  the  better,"  Mounier  said  with  bitter  irony,  "  if 
they  kill  us  all,  but  all,  you  understand,  without  exception  ; 
pubUc  affairs  will  go  the  better  {les  affaires  de  la  republique 
en  iront  mieux)."  ^ 

"  Monsieur  le  President,  the  phrase  is  neat  [le  mot  est  joli)  !  " 

But  whilst  this  dialogue  was  taking  place  the  advance  guard 
of  "  women  "  from  Paris  had  marched  down  the  Avenue  de 
Paris  that  faces  the  Chateau  of  Versailles,  and  were  now  collected 
at  the  door  of  the  Assembly  clamouring  for  admittance.    Marllard, 

1  Evidence  of  the  Marquis  de  Digoine  du  Palais  in  Procedure  du 
Chdtelet ;  Ferrieres,  i.  299. 

2  Faits  relatifs  d  la  derniere  Insurrection,  by  Mounier. 

3  Note  that  Mirabeau  afterwards  stated  that  he  only  guessed  "  by  the 
nature  of  things  "  that  Paris  was  marching  on  Versailles.     See  Moniieur. 

*  Appel  au  Tribunal,  p.  302.  Mirabeau,  in  recounting  this  scene 
{Moniieur,  vi.  31),  described  Mounier  as  saying,  "  So  much  the  better,  we 
shall  be  ail  the  sooner  a  republic  !  "  This  was  probably  intended  to  dis- 
credit Mounier  in  the  eyes  of  the  Royahsts,  but  it  is  obvious  that  Mounier, 
who  never  concealed  his  allegiance  to  the  monarchy,  could  not  have  said 
this,  and  that  he  used  the  word  republique  in  the  sense  of  res-publica 
— the  public  good — in  which  it  was  frequently  employed  at  this  period  by 
Royalists  as  well  as  revolutionaries. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       141 

in  a  shabby  black  coat  with  a  naked  sword  in  his  hand,  at  the 
head  of  twenty  women,  was  permitted  to  enter,  and  at  once 
began  in  furious  tones  to  denounce  the  "  monopohzers  of  grain  "  : 
"  The  aristocrats  wish  to  make  us  die  of  hunger ;  to-day  they 
have  sent  a  miller  a  note  of  two  hundred  Uvres  telling  him  not 
to  grind." 

"  Name  them  !  Name  them  !  "  cried  the  Royalists  of  the 
Assembly. 

But  before  this  direct  appeal  both  revolutionary  deputies 
and  delegates  of  the  people  were  dumb.  At  last  Maillard,  or 
according  to  other  accounts  the  women,  answered,  "It  is  the 
Archbishop  of  Paris  !  "  ^ 

At  this  monstrous  calumny  even  the  Assembly  rose  in- 
dignantly, and  with  one  voice  declared,  "  The  Archbishop  of 
Paris  is  incapable  of  such  an  atrocity  !  "  ^ 

Maillard,  once  more  urged  by  Mounier  to  substantiate  his 
charges,  could  only  murmur  with  an  air  of  embarrassment 
that  "  a  lady  he  had  met  in  a  carriage  on  the  road  to  Versailles  " 
had  assured  him  of  the  fact. 

To  this,  then,  were  the  accusations  of  the  revolutionary  leaders 
against  the  "  aristocrats  "  of  monopolizing  grain  reduced  ! 

In  order  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  women,  the  Assembly 
finally  decided  to  send  several  of  their  number  as  a  deputation 
to  the  King,  who  had  now  returned  from  the  hunt. 

Not  until  several  bands  of  women  and  brigands  (who  had 
marched  ahead  of  the  revolutionary  mob)  were  actually  in 
Versailles  had  Louis  XVI.  been  informed  of  the  insurrection. 
De  Cubieres,  an  equerry,  rode  out  to  Meudon  with  a  note  from 
the  Comte  de  St.  Priest;  the  King  read  it,  and  turning  to  his 
gentlemen  said,  "  Messieurs,  Monsieur  de  St.  Priest  writes  that 
the  women  of  Paris  are  coming  to  ask  me  for  bread."  His  eyes 
filled  with  tears.  "  Alas  !  if  I  had  any  I  should  not  wait  for 
them  to  come  and  ask  me  for  it.  Let  us  go  and  speak  to 
them." 

Nothing  was  further  from  his  mind  than  the  idea  of  a  hostile 
demonstration  ;  it  was  to  him,  the  father  of  his  people,  these 
"  hungry  women  "  had  turned  in  their  distress,  and  his  only 
concern  was  to  help  them. 

A  stranger  present,  M.  de  la  Deveze,  seeing  his  emotion, 
mistook  it  for  fear.  "  Sire,  I  beg  your  Majesty  not  to  be 
afraid." 

"  Afraid,  Monsieur  ?  "  the  King  answered  proudly.  "  I  have 
never  been  afraid  in  my  life  !  "  and  mounting  his  horse  he  rode 
off  to  the  Chateau  at  a  gallop.    The  Comte  de  Luxembourg 

^  De  Juign6,  to  whose  benevolence  I  have  already  referred. 
2  Deux  Amis,  iii.  183. 


142         THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

was  waiting  for  him  and  asked  for  orders  to  be  given  to  the 
bodyguard. 

"  Orders  ?  "  said  the  King  with  a  laugh.  "  Orders  of  war 
against  women  ?  You  must  be  joking,  Monsieur  de  Luxem- 
bourg !  " 

The  ruse  of  the  Orl6anistes  had  succeeded,  and  by  the  advance 
guard  of  so-called  women  the  King's  defenders  were  disarmed. 

From  the  windows  of  the  Chambre  de  Conseil  Louis  XVI. 
looked  out  on  the  armed  mob  advancing  through  the  wind  and 
rain  along  the  Avenue  de  Paris  towards  the  Chateau  ;  before 
long  the  Place  des  Armes  had  become  a  sea  of  pikes  and  muskets. 
Amidst  this  raging  multitude  Mounier,  at  the  head  of  his  deputa- 
tion, was  advancing  on  foot  through  the  mud,  and  during  the 
quarter  of  an  hour  of  waiting  for  admittance  at  the  grille  of  the 
Chateau  was  obHged  to  endure  the  insults  of  the  mob,  who  cried 
out  that  "  the  deputies  of  the  Assembly  with  their  i8  francs  a 
day  enjoyed  good  cheer,  whilst  they  allowed  the  poor  to  die  of 
hunger  "  ;  that  "  when  they  had  only  one  King  they  had  bread, 
but  since  they  had  1200  they  perished  in  misery."  ^ 

The  deputation,  consisting  of  six  deputies  with  six  women 
clinging  to  their  arms,  was  increased  by  six  more  women  before 
their  admission  to  the  Salle  de  Conseil.  Louis  XVI.  received 
them  with  his  customary  benevolence. 

"  Sire,"  said  Louison  Chabry,  a  pretty  flower-seller  of  seven- 
teen from  the  Palais  Royal,  "  we  want  bread." 

"  You  know  my  heart,"  answered  the  King ;  "  I  will  order  all 
the  bread  in  Versailles  to  be  collected  and  given  to  you." 

Whereat  Louison,  overcome  by  the  King's  goodness,  fell 
fainting  to  the  ground.  SmelUng  salts  were  brought ;  Louison 
revived  and  begged  to  be  allowed  to  kiss  the  King's  hand. 

"  She  deserves  better  than  that !  "  said  Louis  XVL,  embracing 
her. 

Louison  departed  with  the  other  women,  enchanted  by  their 
visit,  crying  out,  "  Long  Uve  the  King  !  Long  Uve  our  good 
King  !     Now  we  shall  have  bread  !  " 

But  one  of  their  number  still  displayed  resentment.  The 
ChevaUer  de  la  Serre  attempted  to  reason  with  her,  pointing 

^  These  words,  uttered  by  the  people  themselves  and  heard  by  a  member 
of  the  deputation,  Alexandre  de  Lameth  (see  his  Histoire  de  I'Assemblie 
Constituante,  i.  150),  were  afterwards  attributed  by  Mirabeau  to  St.  Priest 
in  the  Assembly  {Moniieur,  ii.  36),  evidently  as  a  revenge  on  St.  Priest  for 
having  explained  to  the  women  that  the  Commune  of  Paris  and  not  the 
King  was  responsible  for  the  provisioning  of  the  capital  (see  St,  Priest's 
letter  to  the  National  Assembly  in  Mimoires  de  Bailly,  iii.  422).  But  if, 
as  several  contemporaries  state,  Mirabeau  himself  was  amongst  the  crowd 
outside  the  grille  of  the  Chateau  when  these  words  were  uttered,  it  is  evident 
where  he  really  heard  them. 


I 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       143 

out  that  they  had  to  do  with  a  good  King,  a  good  father,  that 
their  condition  greatly  distressed  him  ;  but  the  woman  repHed, 
"  Our  father  is  the  Due  d' Orleans  !  " 

Her  companions  interrupted  her  by  repeating,  "  Vive  le 
Roi !  " 

"  Non,  f .  .  .  .,"  she  retorted,  "  it  is  '  Vive  le  Due  d'Orl^ans ! ' "  ^ 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  certain  of  the  women  had  been 
primed  by  the  Orleanistes,  but  the  greater  proportion  were,  as 
Ferri^res  says,  **  acting  in  all  good  faith  :  they  did  not  know 
the  plans  of  the  conspirators.  Dragged  by  force  to  Versailles, 
hearing  it  incessantly  repeated  that  the  people  were  dying  of 
hunger,  and  that  the  only  way  to  stop  the  famine  was  by  appeal- 
ing to  the  King  and  the  National  Assembly,  they  thought  they 
had  achieved  the  object  of  their  journey  by  obtaining  a  decree 
of  the  Assembly  and  getting  it  sanctioned  by  the  King."  ^ 
What,  then,  was  their  dismay  when  they  returned  triumphantly 
to  the  waiting  multitude  with  the  King's  promise  to  find  them- 
selves received  by  howls  of  execration  :  "  They  are  cheats,  they 
have  been  given  money  !  They  have  received  no  written  order, 
they  must  be  hanged  !  "  A  fury  in  the  crowd,  tearing  off  her 
garter,  dragged  one  of  the  women  towards  a  lamp-post,  and 
would  have  hanged  her  there  had  not  an  officer  of  the  body- 
guard rushed  to  her  rescue  and  brought  her  with  the  rest  of  the 
deputation  into  safety,  inside  the  Cour  Royale.  These  women 
then  begged  to  be  allowed  to  return  to  the  King  and  ask  for  his 
order  in  writing,  and  the  request  having  been  granted  they 
reappeared  once  more  waving  the  royal  signature  aloft.  Their 
accounts  of  the  King's  goodness  had  the  effect  of  temporarily 
calming  the  excitement  of  the  crowd  ;  cries  of  *'  Vive  le  Roi !  " 
went  up  on  all  sides ;  for  the  moment  the  King's  defenders  thought 
the  situation  saved. 

The  women  who  had  formed  the  deputation,  now  realizing 
that  they  had  been  the  dupes  of  the  conspirators,  insisted  on 
returning  to  Paris  in  order  to  tell  the  Commune  of  their  reception 
at  Versailles,  and  Louis  XVI.,  informed  of  their  intention,  ordered 
royal  carriages  to  be  provided  for  the  journey.  Lest,  however, 
too  glowing  an  account  of  the  King's  benevolence  should  be 
conveyed  to  Paris,  Maillard  was  deputed  by  the  leaders  of  the 
insurrection  to  accompany  the  women  and  counteract  their 
influence. 

In  all  probability,  if  the  tumult  had  been,  as  it  is  habitually 
represented,  the  spontaneous  rising  of  a  hungry  multitude 
driven  by  want  to  beg  the  King  for  bread,  the  matter  would 

^'  Evidence  of  the  Chevalier  de  la  Serre,  witness  ccxxvi.  in  Procidure 
du  Chdtelet. 

'  Ferrieres,  i.  308. 


144        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

•have  ended  there,  and  the  people  having  accomplished  their 
purpose  would  have  returned  peacefully  to  their  homes.  But 
the  conspirators  had  determined  otherwise. 

Immediately  on  the  arrival  of  the  armed  mob  every  effort 
had  been  made  to  provoke  a  quarrel  with  the  bodyguard,  but 
these  gallant  men,  true  to  their  orders  not  to  use  force  against 
the  people,  endured  insults  and  threats  without  replying.  When 
at  last  a  man  of  the  Paris  miUtia  attempted,  sword  in  hand,  to 
break  through  the  regiment,  the  Marquis  de  Savonnieres,  followed 
by  three  other  officers,  pursued  the  insurgent  and  struck  him 
with  the  fiat  of  his  sword,  but  a  shot  fired  by  Charpentier  of  the 
Versailles  militia  broke  the  arm  of  Savonnieres  and  inflicted 
injuries  from  which  he  died  some  weeks  later. 

This  affray  provided  the  signal  for  battle ;  on  all  sides  the 
cry  went  up  that  the  Guards  were  charging  the  people ;  the 
militia  hastily  advanced  their  cannons  in  the  Avenue  de  Paris 
towards  the  grille  of  the  Chateau,  and  the  mob,  closing  around 
the  bodyguard,  attacked  them  with  pikes  and  stones  and  fired 
into  their  ranks,  fortunately  with  so  Uttle  certainty  of  aim  that 
the  men  escaped  with  slight  injuries.  Still  the  bodyguard 
refrained  from  retaliation,  and  Lecointre — he  who  had  denounced 
their  "  orgy  "  four  days  earlier — seeing  this,  and  fearing  that  no 
pretext  would  be  provided  for  further  violence,  rushed  forward 
and  overwhelmed  them  with  reproaches.^  It  was  at  this  crisis 
that  the  King,  informed  of  the  cries  of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  and  the 
momentary  cessation  of  hostiUties  produced  by  the  deputation 
of  women,  and  concluding  that  peace  was  now  restored,  sent  his 
fatal  message  to  the  bodyguard  to  retire.  The  miUtia  of  Ver- 
sailles, taking  advantage  of  the  movement,  immediately  opened 
a  volley  of  musketry  fire  on  the  retreating  troops,  whilst  brigands 
armed  with  guns  and  pikes  pursued  them  with  shots  and  blows. 
It  was  said  afterwards  by  the  Orl6anistes  that  the  bodyguard 
now  returned  the  fire  of  the  insurgents  and  treated  the  people 
with  harshness,  thrusting  them  aside  with  their  sabres,  but  of 
these  acts  only  two  eye-witnesses  could  be  produced,  the 
Orleaniste,  De  Liancourt,^  and  again  Lecointre,^  the  inveterate 
enemy  of  the  bodyguard  who  was  brought  forward  at  every  turn 
by  the  conspirators  to  prove  their  charges  against  the  King's 
defenders.  On  the  other  hand,  rehable  contemporaries  speak 
only  of  the  patience  and  forbearance  of  these  gallant  men  who, 
in  obedience  to  orders,  refrained  from  using  the  weapons  at  their 

^  Appel  au  Tribunal,  by  Mounier,  p.  145.  Evidence  of  La  Brosse  de 
Belville,  witness  xxii.  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet.  Miomandre  de  Sainte 
Marie,  garde  du  corps,  witness  xviii.,  also  stated  that  it  was  Lecointre 
who  stirred  up  the  crowd  against  the  bodyguard. 

2  Appel  au  Tribunal,  by  Mounier,  p.  155.  "  Ibid.  p.  148. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       145 

command.^  So  once  again  the  arm  of  law  and  order  was 
paralysed,  and  the  people  who  should  have  been  protected  were 
left  to  become  the  victims  of  the  conspirators. 

Whilst  these  scenes  were  taking  place  in  the  Place  d'Armes, 
Mounier,  imagining  that  reforms  in  the  government  would  satisfy 
the  multitude  who  were  calling  out  for  bread,  continued  to  im- 
portune the  King  for  his  sanction  to  the  principles  of  the  Con- 
stitution and  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man.  Louis  XVI., 
whose  sound  common  sense  showed  him  the  absurdity  of  accord- 
ing the  royal  sanction  to  philosophical  axioms,  repeated  his 
opinion  that  at  this  stage  his  acceptance  would  be  premature, 
but,  on  the  assurance  of  Mounier  that  nothing  else  would  allay 
the  tumult,  finally  appended  his  signature  to  the  words :  "I 
accept  purely  and  simply  the  articles  of  the  Constitution  and 
the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man."  Then,  confident  that 
he  had  done  all  that  lay  within  his  power  to  restore  public  tran- 
quillity, he  awaited  events  with  calmness.  In  response  to  the 
entreaties  of  the  Comte  d'Estaing  that  measures  should  be  taken 
for  the  defence  of  the  Chateau,  he  wrote  at  seven  o'clock  on  this 
terrible  evening,  after  the  departure  of  Mounier  and  his  fellow- 
deputies,  these  astounding  words  : 

*'  You  wish,  my  cousin,  that  I  should  express  my  opinion  on 
the  critical  circumstances  in  which  I  find  myself,  and  that  I 
should  take  a  violent  course,  that  I  should  make  use  of  legitimate 
means  of  defence,  or  that  I  should  leave  Versailles.  Whatever 
may  be  the  audacity  of  my  enemies  they  will  not  succeed  ;  the 
Frenchman  is  incapable  of  regicide.  ...  I  dare  to  believe  that  this 
danger  is  not  as  urgent  as  my  friends  are  persuaded.  Flight 
would  be  my  total  undoing  and  civil  war  the  disastrous  result. 
. .  .  Let  us  act  with  prudence.  ...  If  I  succumb  at  least  I  shall  have 
no  cause  to  reproach  myself.  I  have  just  seen  several  members 
of  the  Assembly  and  I  am  satisfied.  .  .  .  God  grant  that  public 
tranquillity  may  be  restored — ^but  no  aggression,  no  action  that 
could  let  it  be  beUeved  that  I  think  of  avenging  or  even  of 
defending  myself." 

Meanwhile  Mounier,  returning  triumphantly  to  the  Assembly 
with  the  royal  sanction,  found  the  wildest  scene  of  confusion 
taking  place.    A  mob  of  women,^  of  brigands,  and  of  men  in 

1  Appel  au  Tribunal,  p.  148.  Alexis  Chauchard,  captain  of  infantry, 
witness  ci.  in  Procidure  du  Chdtelet,  stated  that  "  the  King's  guards  behaved 
in  this  affair  with  the  greatest  circumspection  ;  that  he  saw  the  people 
throw  mud  and  stones  at  them  and  vomit  imprecations  against  them 
without  their  making  any  attempt  to  repulse  this  attack." 

2  It  should  be  noted  that  eye-witnesses,  unlike  historians,  do  not 
describe  the  women  who  created  this  uproar  in  the  Assembly  as  pois- 
sairdes  but  as  "  light  women,"  some  even  of  a  class  too  superior  to  be 
regarded  as  "  kept  women  "  (see  evidence  of  the  Vicomte  de  Mirabeau, 

L 


146        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

women's  clothes,  had  invaded  the  hall  and  taken  possession  of 
the  seats  of  the  deputies,  where  they  regaled  themselves  with 
ham  sandwiches,  pies,  and  wine  brought  in  from  a  neighbouring 
restaurant.  The  brigands,  ragged  and  of  ferocious  aspect, 
adopted  a  threatening  attitude,  but  th&  filles  dejoie  were  enjoying 
themselves  immensely.  It  was  a  situation  that  appealed  irre- 
sistibly to  their  mocking  humour ;  true  gamines  of  Paris,  they 
found  it  exquisitely  funny  to  chafl[  these  solemn  legislators  and 
dance  on  the  platform  of  the  President,  to  overwhelm  the  un- 
happy bishop  of  Langres — occupjdng  the  President's  chair  in  the 
absence  of  Mounier — with  obscene  pleasantries.  "  Now  you 
must  kiss  us,  calotin  !  "  And  the  bishop,  amidst  screams  of 
laughter,  was  obliged,  sighing  deeply,  to  submit  to  their  vinous 
embraces. 

Mounier,  arriving  in  the  midst  of  this  pandemonium  with 
his  precious  document,  fondly  imagined  that  the  announcement 
of  the  "  royal  sanction  "  would  act  as  oil  upon  the  troubled 
waters,  and  profiting  by  a  lull  in  the  tumult  read  the  King's 
message  aloud.  But  to  the  women  of  Paris,  as  to  the  King 
himself,  these  vague  formulas  conveyed  but  httle  meaning,  and 
Moimier's  announcement  was  greeted  by  the  himgry  elements 
amongst  them  with  the  cry,  "  Will  that  give  bread  to  the  poor 
people  of  Paris  ?  " 

The  President,  realizing  the  impossibility  of  continuing  the 
debate — ^most  of  the  deputies  indeed  had  already  left  the  hall — 
broke  up  the  Assembly.  But  the  women  had  no  intention  of 
being  done  out  of  their  evening's  entertainment,  and  imperiously 
demanded  the  return  of  the  deputies.  The  President's  bell  was 
rung,  members  were  fetched  from  their  beds,  the  Assembly  re- 
sumed its  sitting.  Once  again  the  message  containing  the  royal 
sanction  was  read  aloud,  only  to  be  met  with  the  same  cry  of 
"  Bread  !   Give  us  bread  !  " 

Nothing  is  more  amazing  in  the  history  of  the  Revolution 
than  the  total  inabiUty  of  the  "  representatives  of  the  people  " 
to  understand  the  people's  mind.  The  King,  appealed  to  by  the 
hungry  women,  could  readily  enter  into  their  sufferings,  but  the 
Assembly,  in  response  to  their  cries  for  bread,  offered  them — 
the  foundation-stone  of  the  Constitution.  For  at  this  supreme 
moment  these  so-caUed  democrats,  actually  surrounded  by  the 

witness  cxlvi.  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet),  whilst  nearly  all  state  that  a  great 
many  men  disguised  as  women  were  seen  amongst  them.  No  doubt  there 
were  a  certain  number  of  "  women  of  the  people  "  who  had  been  forced  to 
march  to  Versailles  amongst  those  calling  out  for  bread,  but  the  "  indecent 
scenes  "  described  were  evidently  produced  by  the  Orleaniste  conspirators 
and  the  women  they  had  brought  with  them.  It  was  mainly  the  leaders  of 
the  expedition  who  crowded  into  the  Assembly  ;  most  of  the  poor  creatures 
from  the  Faubourgs  were  left  outside  in  the  rain. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       147 

clamouring  multitude,  calmly  resumed  their  discussion  on  the 
criminal  code. 

It  is  hardly  surprising  that  at  this  the  indignation  of  the 
women  broke  out  afresh,  and  the  Assembly  was  peremptorily 
ordered  to  discuss  the  question  of  food-supply.  The  voice  of  a 
deputy  addressing  the  House  was  drowned  by  shouts  of  "  Bread  ! 
bread  !  not  so  many  long  speeches  !  "  and  "  Shut  up  that  babbler. 
It  doesn't  matter  about  all  that — it  is  bread  that  matters  !  " 
Some  of  the  women  clamoured  for  Mirabeau,  whose  grotesque 
appearance  amused  them  :  "  Where  is  our  Comte  de  Mirabeau 
— our  Uttle  mother  Mirabeau  ?  "  A  man  in  the  tribune  next 
to  the  President  exclaimed  loudly  that  the  deputies  should 
concern  themselves  with  the  people. 

At  this  Mirabeau,  who  had  no  intention  of  allowing  the 
canaille  to  command,  arose  and  thundered,  "  I  should  Uke  to 
know  by  what  right  any  one  should  dictate  to  us  the  course  of 
our  debates  ?  Let  the  tribunes  remember  the  respect  they  owe 
to  the  National  Assembly  I  " 

The  women,  enchanted  at  this  display  of  authority,  noisily 
clapped  their  hands  and  cried  "  Bravo  !  " 

Whilst  this  tumult  raged  in  the  Assembly  scenes  far  more 
terrible  were  taking  place  outside  on  the  Place  d'Armes,  The 
wild  autumn  day  had  faded  into  a  wet  and  cheerless  night,  and 
the  immense  multitude,  unable  to  find  shelter,  gathered  round 
huge  fires  they  had  Ut  at  intervals  about  the  square,  and  at  one 
of  which  a  horse  of  the  bodyguard,  massacred  in  the  fray,  was 
being  cooked  and  eaten.  On  such  a  scene  of  misery  and  squalor 
did  the  great  Chateau  of  the  Roi  Soleil  look  down  that  dreadful 
evening  I  The  women,  wet  to  the  skin,  caked  with  mud  after 
the  long  march  from  Paris,  wandered  round  the  courtyards 
sobbing  pitifully,  crying  out  that  "  they  had  been  forced  to  march 
and  did  not  know  what  they  had  come  for  "  ;  ^  others,  savage  with 
hunger  and  fatigue,  danced  round  the  bonfires  shrieking  furious 
imprecations  against  the  Queen,  Lafayette,  Mounier,  the  Abb6 
Maury,  the  Archbishop  of  Paris.  "  Marie  Antoinette  has  danced 
for  her  pleasure,  now  she  shall  dance  for  ours  !  "  "  Yes,  let  the 
jade  skip,  we  will  throw  her  head  from  the  windows  !  We  will 
have  the  drunkard  for  our  king  no  longer,  it  is  the  Due  d' Orleans 
that  we  must  have  for  king  !  " 

Thus  the  furies  of  the  under-world,  revolting  enough  in  truth, 
but  surely  less  revolting  than  the  Due  d' Orleans,  skulking  through 
the  crowd  in  the  Avenue  de  Paris,  "  endeavouring  to  escape 
detection  but  unable  to  flee  from  his  conscience,"  ^  less  revolting 

*  .Mimoires  de  Madame  de  la  Tour  du  Pin,  i,  "222, 
'  Ferri^res,  i.  313  ;    evidence  of  De  Boisse  of  the  King's  bodyguard, 
witness  ccxiv.  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 


148        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

far  than  the  petticoated  roues  of  the  Palais  Royal,  stirring  up 
a  poor  and  hungry  populace  to  commit  crimes  they  dared  not 
undertake  themselves.  It  was  said  by  many  witnesses,  and  never 
disproved  by  any  conclusive  alibi,  that  all  through  that  fearful 
night,  and  again  the  following  morning,  the  members  of  the  con- 
spiracy were  at  work  distributing  money  and  inciting  the  people 
to  violence ;  that  Mirabeau,  brandishing  a  naked  sword,  was  seen 
in  the  ranks  of  the  Regiment  de  Flandre  exhorting  them  to  de- 
fection ;  ^  that  Theroigne  in  her  scarlet  habit  went  from  group 
to  group  giving  the  names  of  deputies  to  be  massacred,  and  dis- 
tributing money  done  up  in  paper  packets ;  ^  that  fine  gentlemen 
in  embroidered  waistcoats  "  slipped  coins  concealed  in  cockades 
into  the  hands  of  the  women  "  ;  ^  that  Laclos,  Sillery,  Bamave, 
the  Due  d'Aiguillon,  dressed  as  women,  were  again  recognized 
mingUng  with  the  crowd,  fanning  up  the  flame  of  popular  fury 
in  preparation  for  the  massacres  of  the  morrow.* 

Suddenly  at  midnight,  when  the  frenzy  of  the  populace  had 
reached  its  height,  the  roll  of  drums  and  the  red  glare  of  torches 
announced  the  arrival  of  Lafayette  at  the  head  of  the  Gardes 
Frangaises  in  the  Avenue  de  Paris. 

How  did  Lafayette  come  to  be  leading  this  second  army 
of  insurgents  to  Versailles  ?  The  fact  has  provided  Orleaniste 
writers  with  the  pretext  for  shifting  the  blame  of  the  insurrection 
on  to  their  opponent,  and  it  was  precisely  in  order  to  be  able  to 
do  this  that  they  had  contrived  to  impUcate  Lafayette  in  the 
movement.  As  a  matter  of  fact  Lafayette  had  held  out  for 
hours  against  the  entreaties  of  his  men,  who,  prompted  by  the 

^  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  90 ;  Weber,  ii.  207 ;  Fantin 
Desodoards,  i.  213  ;  ProcSdure  du  Chdtelet,  witnesses  xxxvi.,  clvii.,  clxi., 
ccxxvi.  ;    Ferri^res,  i.  307, 

2  ProcSdure  du  Chdtelet,  witnesses  xci.  and  clvi, 

'  Evidence  of  an  eye-witness,  Anne  Marguerite  Andelle,  ccxxxvi.  in 
ProcSdure  du  Chdtelet,  a  linen-worker  dragged  by  force  to  Versailles.  On  the 
money  distributed  amongst  the  soldiers  of  the  Regiment  de  Flandre  and 
amongst  the  people  see  also  witnesses  xlix.,  lvi.,  lxxi.,  lxxxii.,  ex.  and 
cxxvi. 

*  "  All  the  roues  of  the  Palais  Royal,  the  accomplices,  or  rather  the 
instigators  of  the  Due  d'Orleans,  Laclos,  Sillery,  Latouche,  d'Aiguillon, 
d'Oraison,  Mirabeau,  and  several  other  minor  personages,  were  on  foot  all 
night  in  the  midst  of  this  rabble,  whom  they  intoxicated  in  every  manner. 
Public  evidence  subsequently  showed  some  of  them  as  having  adopted  the 
most  ignoble  disguises  so  as  not  to  be  recognized"  (Weber,  ii.  210).  See 
also  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orleans,  ii,  245,  and  evidence  of  the  Chevalier 
de  Lasserre,  witness  ccxxvi.  in  ProcSdure  du  Chdtelet.  Jean  Diot,  cure  and 
deputy  of  the  National  Assembly,  witness  ex.,  described  a  conversation  he 
heard  during  this  night  in  which  a  man  dressed  as  a  woman,  "  tall  and  of 
great  corpulence,"  offered  two  of  the  people  fifty  louis  on  behalf  of  the  Due 
d'Orleans  to  murder  the  Queen  on  the  following  morning. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       149 

Orleanistes,  insisted  on  his  leading  them  to  Versailles.  At  the 
Hotel  de  Ville  that  morning,  whilst  Lafayette  was  occupied  in 
sending  off  despatches  to  warn  Versailles  of  the  approaching 
invasion,  six  grenadiers  had  entered  and  accosted  him  with 
these  words  :  "  General,  we  are  deputed  by  six  companies  of 
grenadiers:  we  do  not  think  you  are  a  traitor,  but  we  think 
that  the  Government  is  betraying  us.  It  is  time  all  this 
ended.  .  .  .  The  people  are  wretched ;  the  source  of  the  evil  is 
at  Versailles ;  we  must  go  to  fetch  the  King  and  bring  him  to 
Paris ;  we  must  exterminate  the  Regiment  de  Flandre  and  the 
bodyguard  who  dare  to  trample  on  the  national  cockade.  If 
the  King  is  too  weak  to  wear  his  crown,  let  him  renounce  it. 
We  will  crown  his  son,  a  council  of  regency  will  be  nominated, 
and  all  will  go  well." 

As  this  was  precisely  the  plan  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy 
Lafayette  immediately  reahzed  that  the  men  were  merely 
repeating  their  lesson,  and,  recognizing  the  trap  laid  for  him,  he 
attempted  to  dissuade  them  from  marching  on  Versailles. 

"  What !  "  he  said,  "  you  mean  then  to  make  war  on  the 
King  and  force  him  to  abandon  us  ?  "  The  use  of  the  final 
pronoun  is  significant;  even  the  RepubHcan  Lafayette  was 
obhged  in  his  more  honest  moments  to  admit  that  Louis  XVI. 
was  on  the  side  of  the  people,  and  the  soldiers,  thus  appealed  to, 
momentarily  forgot  their  lesson  and  readily  concurred  : 

"  General,  indeed  we  should  be  very  sorry,  for  we  love  him 
well,  but  if  he  left  us  we  have  Monsieur  le  Dauphin." 

In  vain  Lafayette  continued  to  remonstrate ;  the  men  once 
more  took  up  the  refrain :  "  The  source  of  the  evil  is  at  Versailles ; 
we  must  go  and  fetch  the  King  and  bring  him  to  Paris ;  all  the 
people  wish  it."  Finally  Lafayette  went  out  on  to  the  Place 
de  Greve  and,  with  Bailly,  attempted  to  address  the  crowd 
collected  there.  But  the  people,  he  had  begun  to  discover,  were 
easier  to  rouse  than  to  pacify,  and  the  spirit  of  insubordination 
he  had  openly  encouraged  at  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution 
was  now  turning  against  himself.  In  vain  he  strove  to  make 
himself  heard;  an  angry  uproar  arose;  one  voice  was  heard 
above  the  others  crying,  "It  is  strange  that  M.  de  Lafayette 
should  wish  to  command  the  people  when  it  is  for  the  people  to 
command  him !  " 

Then  Lafayette,  reluctantly  mounting  his  white  charger, 
placed  himself  at  the  head  of  the  troops,  whose  numbers  were  now 
being  rapidly  increased  by  the  lowest  rabble  of  the  Faubourgs, 
which,  armed  with  pikes  and  pitchforks,  with  cutlasses  and 
hatchets,  poured  into  the  Place  de  Greve  crying  out,  "  Bread  1 
bread  !  To  Versailles  !  " 

At  the  sight  of  this  terrible   army  Lafayette  once  again 


ISO        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

hesitated,  and,  seeing  this,  the  crowd  broke  into  fury;  howls  of 
rage,  threats  of  death  rose  from  a  thousand  throats  ;  for  the  first 
time  Lafayette,  idol  of  the  people,  heard  the  voice  of  the  people 
raised  against  himself.  At  that  he  grew  first  red,  then  pale,  made 
a  movement  as  if  he  would  dismount,  but  a  dozen  hands  gripped 
his  bridle :  "  No,  General,  you  shall  not  escape  us  !  "  While 
he  temporized  a  message  from  the  Commune  was  sUpped  into  his 
hand  ordering  him  to  march.  Lafayette  glanced  at  the  paper, 
grew  paler  still,  then  gathered  up  his  reins,  and  with  a  set  counten- 
ance gave  the  word  of  command  to  march.  "  He  rode  at  the 
head  of  his  troops,"  says  Montjoie,  "  like  a  criminal  led  to 
execution  "  ;  and  that  in  all  probabihty  he  was  going  to  his  death 
Lafayette  well  knew,  but,  bitterer  thought  still,  this  was  to  be 
death  with  dishonour  ! 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  at  midnight,  after  an  eight  hours' 
march,  Lafayette  entered  Versailles.  Calling  a  halt  at  the  turn- 
ing of  the  road  leading  to  the  National  Assembly  he  demanded 
of  his  army  to  take  the  oath  of  fidehty  to  the  nation,  the  law, 
and  the  King ;  then  entering  the  Assembly  filled  with  the  drunken 
crowd  he  made  his  way  through  the  turmoil  to  the  President's 
chair  and  assured  Mounier  that  he  could  answer  for  the  loyalty 
of  his  troops. 

Although  so  exhausted  that  he  was  hardly  able  to  drag  himself 
up  the  staircase,  Lafayette  afterwards  presented  himself  at  the 
Chateau  and  administered  the  same  soothing  assurances.  "  I 
was  without  apprehension,"  he  wrote  later;  "the  people  had 
promised  me  to  remain  quiet." 

But  the  Queen,  who  had  no  confidence  in  the  benevolence  of 
revolutionary  mobs  or  in  generals  who  marched  at  their  heads, 
received  Lafayette  coldly.  She  reaHzed,  as  he  with  his  fooHsh 
optimism  could  not,  the  frightful  danger  that  confronted  them 
that  night.  "  I  know,"  she  said,  "  that  they  have  come  to 
demand  my  head,  but  I  learnt  from  my  mother  not  to  fear  death, 
and  I  can  await  it  with  calmness." 

All  around  her  in  the  Chateau  terror  and  confusion  prevailed ; 
women  ran  hither  and  thither,  peeping  forth  fearfully  from  the 
windows  at  the  dull  glare  beyond  the  railings,  where  by  fire  and 
torchhght  that  raging  sea  of  humanity  tossed  tumultuously, 
listening  with  beating  hearts  to  the  hoarse  murmurs,  broken  now 
and  again  with  savage  howls  and  fiendish  laughter ;  others, 
helpless  and  distracted,  paced  the  great  Galerie  des  Glaces,  the 
scene  of  so  much  splendour,  and  in  all  minds  one  question  arose 
— ^was  this  night  to  be  their  last  ? 

Amidst  these  scenes  Marie  Antoinette  alone  was  calm,  and 
with  undisturbed  serenity  continued  to  rouse  the  fainting  spirits 
of  those  around  her.    When  a  number  of  her  gentlemen  came  to 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       151 

her  door  to  beg  for  permission  to  order  out  the  horses  from  the 
royal  stables  and  mount  them  in  defence  of  the  Royal  Family, 
the  Queen  returned  only  this  reply  :  "I  consent  to  give  you  the 
order  for  which  you  wish  on  the  condition  that  if  the  Ufe  of  the 
King  is  in  danger  you  should  make  immediate  use  of  it,  but  if  I 
alone  am  imperilled  you  will  not  use  it." 

Her  women,  realizing  that  she  was  the  chief  victim  designated 
by  the  conspirators,  threw  themselves  at  her  feet  and  begged  her 
to  escape.  "  No,"  she  answered,  "  never,  never  will  I  abandon 
the  King  or  my  children ;  whatever  fate  awaits  them,  I  will 
share  it." 

Then  dismissing  her  attendants  she  remained  alone,  waiting 
for  death.  At  this  moment  a  note  was  brought  to  her ;  she 
opened  it,  and  read  these  terrible  words  :  "I  warn  her  Majesty 
that  she  will  be  murdered  to-morrow  morning  at  six  o'clock." 
She  knew  then  that  she  had  still  six  hours  of  Ufe,  and,  placing  the 
note  in  her  pocket,  quietly  announced  her  intention  of  retiring 
to  bed.  In  vain  her  gentlemen  begged  to  be  allowed  to  remain 
and  protect  her.  "  No,  Messieurs,"  she  answered  without  a  trace 
of  emotion,  "  take  your  leave,  I  beg  you ;  to-morrow  will  prove 
to  you  that  you  had  need  of  rest  to-night." 

With  these  words  she  left  them  and  slept  an  untroubled  sleep 
until  the  frightful  dawn  of  the  morrow. 

THE  6TH  OF  OCTOBER 

Lafayette,  according  to  current  report  at  this  crisis,  retired 
and  slept  also.  "  II  dormit  contre  son  roi,"  wrote  Rivarol 
bitterly.  But  did  he  really  sleep  ?  The  truth  will  probably 
never  be  known.  Montjoie  says  no ;  Lafayette  himself  said 
that,  worn  out  with  fatigue,  he  went  to  the  Hdtel  de  Noailles  and 
was  about  to  snatch  a  few  hours  of  slumber  when  the  tumult 
of  the  morrow  recalled  him  to  the  Chateau.  But  if  he  did  sleep 
the  fact  must  surely  be  attributed  not  to  treachery  but  un- 
controllable physical  exhaustion,  combined  with  the  conviction 
that  the  Gardes  Fran9aises  were  completely  under  his  control 
and  that  further  disturbance  was  impossible. 

But  the  bodyguard,  more  aUve  to  the  danger,  had  refused 
on  the  assurances  of  Lafayette  to  leave  the  Chateau  unpro- 
tected, and  remained  therefore  throughout  the  night  as  sentries 
before  the  doors  of  the  Royal  Family.  For  greater  safety  the 
Queen's  waiting-women,  Madame  Thibault  and  Madame  Augue, 
seated  themselves  against  the  doors  of  her  bedchamber,  and  by 
this  devotion  saved  her  life. 

'  For  nearly  three  hours  all  was  cahn  :  the  Queen  slept  in  her 
great  bedroom  looking  out  on  to  the  quiet  Orangerie  ;  the  King 


152        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

slept  in  his  facing  the  courtyards  and  the  now  deserted  Place 
d'Armes  ;  the  crowd  slept  Ukewise,  anywhere  and  everywhere — 
in  sheds  and  stables,  on  the  floors  of  outhouses  and  kitchens ; 
eight  or  nine  hundred  spent  the  night  on  the  benches  of  the 
Assembly. 

But  all  night  Luillier  of  the  bodyguard,  commander  of  the 
Scotch  company,  kept  his  watch,  wandering  around  the  Chateau 
and  assuring  himself  that  if  the  tumult  began  again  the  great 
gilded  barriers  would  avail  to  keep  out  the  raging  populace. 
Then  towards  dawn  an  unseen  hand  unlocked  a  gate  in  the 
railing,  and  immediately  a  band  of  women  and  armed  men 
streamed  through  to  the  courtyards  and  the  garden  that  lay 
beneath  the  Queen's  windows  on  the  other  side  of  the  Chateau. 

LuiUier  in  consternation  sought  the  Marquis  d'Aguesseau, 
major  of  the  bodyguard,  and,  encountering  him  at  the  foot  of 
the  great  marble  staircase  leading  to  the  Queen's  apartments, 
said,  "  Monsieur,  the  King  and  Royal  Family  are  lost  if  the 
brigands  now  passing  through  the  courtyards  to  the  terrace 
penetrate  into  the  Chateau.  I  implore  you  to  give  positive 
orders." 

"  Place  two  sentinels  at  each  of  the  gates,"  answered 
D'Aguesseau ;  and  turning  to  the  bodyguard  he  said,  "  Messieurs, 
the  King  orders  and  begs  you  not  to  fire,  to  hit  no  one — in  a 
word,  not  to  defend  yourselves." 

"  Monsieur,"  said  LuiUier,  "  assure  our  unhappy  master  that 
his  orders  will  be  carried  out,  but  we  shall  all  be  assassinated." 

For  sublime  devotion  to  duty,  for  heroic  obedience  to  insane 
commands,  the  conduct  of  the  King's  bodyguard  on  this  6th  of 
October  can  show  no  parallel  in  history  except,  perhaps,  in  the 
charge  of  Balaclava.  Of  all  historians  Montjoie  alone  has  paid 
these  gallant  men  their  due,  and  it  is  from  his  pages  that  we  must 
borrow  the  glorious  story  of  their  stand  against  odds  so  terrible 
and  overwhelming.  Do  not  their  very  names  bring  with  them 
a  breath  of  chivalry  ?  Gueroult  de  Berville,  Gueroult  de  Valmet, 
Miomandre  de  Sainte  Marie,  De  Charmand,  and  De  Varicourt — 
we  seem  to  be  reading  in  some  gold-emblazoned  scroll  that  tells 
of  knightly  deeds  done  by  followers  of  Saint  Louis  around  the 
walls  of  Antioch.  It  has  been  said  that  the  Old  Order  was 
effete,  and  this  might  well  be  so  if  it  were  judged  by  the  faithless 
courtiers  who  at  the  first  hint  of  danger  deserted  King  and 
country ;  but  amongst  these  soldiers  of  the  King  there  was  yet 
stem  stuff  that,  had  it  been  allowed  full  play,  must  have  saved 
the  monarchy.  For  the  last  time  we  see  them,  these  warriors 
of  old  France,  rall3dng  in  a  final  expiring  effort  around  the 
tottering  throne.  Henceforth  the  King  must  look  elsewhere  for 
his  defenders — Swiss  Guards  will  bleed  and  die  for  him,  super- 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       153 

annuated  gentlemen  will  draw  ineffectual  swords  in  his  service, 
women  will  throw  their  fragile  bodies  between  the  King  and 
his  assassins,  but  the  heroic  bodyguard  will  appear  no  more  on 
the  scene — the  long  romance  of  French  chivalry  is  ended. 

It  was  a  quarter  to  six  in  the  grey  dawn  of  the  autumn 
morning  when  the  raging  mob  burst  through  the  side  gate  into 
the  Cour  Royale.  The  sentinels  of  the  Paris  mihtia,  vouched 
for  by  Lafayette,  offered  no  resistance,  and  seeing  this  the 
brigands,  who  at  first  had  trembled  at  finding  themselves  within 
the  royal  precincts,  reahzed  that  they  incurred  no  danger,  and 
"  flung  themselves  Hke  tigers  on  all  the  members  of  the  body- 
guard that  they  encountered."  ^  The  brave  Deshuttes  fell 
pierced  with  a  hundred  wounds ;  his  body  was  dragged  into  the 
Cour  des  Ministres,  where  Jourdan  "  Coupe-Tete  "  cut  off  his 
head,  and  in  a  sudden  access  of  homicidal  fury  smeared  his  face, 
his  arms,  his  long  and  ragged  beard  with  the  blood  of  his  victim. 
And  at  this  horrible  spectacle  the  mob  went  mad  likewise  and, 
bespattering  themselves  in  the  same  manner,  danced  around  the 
mutilated  corpse.  Then  the  cry  went  up,  "  We  must  have 
the  heart  of  the  Queen  !  "  But  already  a  large  portion  of  the 
mob  had  poured  through  the  archway  by  the  Chapel  and  the 
Cour  des  Princes  and  burst  into  the  Chateau. 

The  scene  that  followed  was  horrible ;  even  at  this  distance 
of  time  one's  heart  stands  still  as  one  reads  the  descriptions 
of  contemporaries  who,  with  awful  reahsm,  bring  before  one's 
eyes  the  mad  rush  of  the  crowd  up  the  great  marble  staircase 
of  the  Roi  Soleil  towards  the  Queen's  apartments ;  we  can  see, 
hear,  even  smell  them,  those  tattered  brigands  of  the  Faubourgs, 
those  dishevelled  harridans  and  blaspheming  women  of  the  town, 
mud-stained  and  haggard  with  fatigue  after  the  long  march  from 
Paris  and  the  few  brief  hours  of  sleep  snatched  on  floors  and 
benches,  and  all  mad  for  blood,  all  clutching  cruel  weapons  of 
their  own  devising — knives  tied  to  broomsticks,  scythes  and 
pikes  and  billhooks — and  howhng  as  they  tear  upwards  like  a 
pack  of  wild  beasts  rushing  on  their  prey.  '*  Where  is  that/.  .  .  . 
coquine  ?  We  will  cut  off  her  head ;  we  wiU  tear  out  her  heart ; 
we  will  make  cockades  of  her  entrails,  and  it  will  not  end  there  !  " 
And  amidst  these  hideous  imprecations  again  the  same  refrain  : 
"  Long  Hve  Orleans  !     Long  hve  our  father,  our  king  Orleans  \" 

Was  the  Due  d' Orleans  himself  amongst  the  cannibal  horde 
on  the  marble  staircase  ?  Did  his  hand  point  the  way  to  the 
door  of  the  Queen's  apartments  ?  Many  contemporaries  beheved 
it,  but  to  this  point  we  shall  return  later  and  leave  it  to  the 

*  Evidence  of  M,  de  Sainte-Aulaire,  lieutenant-commander  in  tlie  body- 
guard, witness  clviii.  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 


154        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

reader  to  form  his  own  opinion  of  the  evidence  brought  forward. 
One  thing  is  certain,  the  crowd  never  paused,  never  hesitated  for 
a  moment,  as  people  unfamihar  with  the  interior  of  the  Chateau 
might  be  expected  to  do,  but  made  straight  for  the  hall  of  the 
Queen's  bodyguard  "  as  if  led  by  some  one  who  knew  the  way."  ^ 

There  on  the  threshold  twelve  of  the  guards  were  waiting 
to  receive  them.  Miomandre  de  Sainte-Marie  stepped  boldly 
forward  and  attempted  to  check  the  wild  onrush  of  the  mob  by 
one  despairing  appeal  to  their  vanished  loyalty  : 

"  My  friends,  you  love  your  King,  yet  you  come  to  disquiet 
him  in  his  very  palace  !  " 

For  answer  the  crowd  rushed  upon  Miomandre  and  nearly 
felled  him  to  the  ground,  and  the  guards,  forbidden  to  defend 
themselves,  were  driven  back  into  the  hall  where,  with  a  quick 
movement,  they  succeeded  in  closing  the  doors  in  the  face  of 
their  assailants.  Only  three  rooms  now  between  the  Queen 
and  her  assassins — ^four  folding  doors  to  be  beaten  down  before 
the  savage  horde  could  close  around  her  bed  and  thrust  their 
terrible  weapons  into  her  heart !  The  guards,  to  gain  time, 
barricaded  the  doors  of  their  hall,  but  the  fragile  panels  quickly 
yielded  to  the  blows  of  pikes  and  muskets ;  the  crowd  rushed 
forward  into  the  haU.  Already  De  Varicourt  was  killed  and  his 
head  gone  to  join  Deshuttes'  on  a  pike  outside  in  the  courtyard. 
The  guards  were  driven  back  step  by  step  over  the  parquet  into 
the  Grande  Salle ;  Du  Repaire  was  left  alone  to  guard  the  door 
of  the  Queen's  bodyguard.  The  next  moment  Du  Repaire  was 
overthrown  and  dragged  to  the  head  of  the  staircase  ;  a  man 
with  a  pike  and  another  in  woman's  clothes  ^  seized  him — 
Miomandre  rushed  to  the  rescue  and  saved  the  hfe  of  Du  Repaire 
who,  wresting  a  pike  from  his  assailants,  continued  to  defend 
himself.  Then  Miomandre,  his  face  streaming  with  blood, 
reaUzing  that  nothing  now  could  keep  back  the  raging  mob, 
dashed  to  the  door  of  the  Queen's  antechamber,  opened  it,  and 
cried  out  to  Madame  Augue,  one  of  the  Queen's  women,  "  Madame, 
save  the  Queen,  they  have  come  to  kill  her  !  I  am  here  alone 
against  two  thousand  tigers ;  my  comrades  have  been  forced 
to  leave  their  hall !  " 

There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  leave  the  brave  Miomandre 
to  his  fate.  Madame  Augue  quickly  shut  the  door,  pushed  in 
the  great  bolt,  and  flew  to  the  Queen's  bedside  :  "  Madame,  get 
out  of  bed  !     Do  not  dress  ;  escape  to  the  King  !  " 

The  Queen  sprang  out  of  bed;    her  ladies  threw  a  mantle 

*  Mimoires  de  Madame  de  la  Tour  du  Pin,  i,  227. 

*  "  At  the  moment  that  he  was  thrown  down  he  saw  a  coloured  trouser 
beneath  the  skirt  of  one  of  those  who  attacked  him"  (evidence  of  Du 
Repaire,  witness  ix.  in  Procddure  du  Chdtelet). 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       155 

around  her  shoulders,  a  petticoat  over  her  head,  and  hurried 
her  through  a  side  door  leading  to  the  (Eil  de  Boeuf  by  a  narrow 
passage.  At  the  end  of  this  the  door,  invariably  open,  was,  on 
this  day  of  all  others,  locked.  She  beat  on  the  panels ;  after 
five  agonizing  minutes  a  servant  opened  to  her,  and  she  reached 
the  King's  rooms  in  safety,  crying  out,  "  My  friends,  my  dear 
friends,  save  me  and  my  children  !  " 

So,  owing  to  the  courage  of  the  two  heroic  guards,  the  Queen 
still  Hved — ^the  great  coup  of  the  conspirators  had  failed. 

Meanwhile  around  the  door  of  the  Queen's  guards  the  fight 
continued;  now  at  last  the  guards  made  use  of  weapons — Du 
Repaire  with  the  pike  he  had  captured,  LuiUier  and  Miomandre 
with  their  swords,  defended  their  lives  against  the  horde  of 
assassins.  Miomandre  by  a  blow  from  a  pike  was  thrown  to 
the  ground,  and  an  assassin  standing  over  him  raised  the  butt- 
end  of  his  gun,  bringing  it  crashing  down  on  his  victim's  skull. 
Miomandre,  bathed  in  his  blood,  was  left  for  dead,  but  the  crowd 
having  swept  onwards  through  the  doorway  into  the  Queen's 
apartments,  he  raised  himself,  staggered  to  his  feet,  and  escaped. 

The  next  moment  the  door  of  the  Queen's  bedchamber  was 
beaten  down,  and  the  furious  horde,  amoiigst  them  two  of  the 
men  disguised  as  women,  rushed  forward  to  the  bed  to  find  it 
empty.  It  is  said  by  Montjoie  and  Rivarol  that  in  their  rage  c^ 
they  plunged  their  pikes  into  the  mattress,  slashed  at  the  bed- 
clothes with  their  sabres,  and  then  by  way  of  the  great  Galerie 
des  Glaces  proceeded  to  attack  the  CEil  de  Boeuf ;  according  to 
Madame  Campan  they  did  not  enter  the  Queen's  room,  but  reached 
the  (Eil  de  Bceuf  through  the  hall  of  the  King's  guards.  In 
either  case  their  intention  was  to  break  down  the  doors  of  the 
(Eil  de  Boeuf,  where  a  few  remaining  members  of  the  bodyguard 
were  entrenched,  and  having  massacred  the  King's  last  defenders 
to  f aU  upon  the  Royal  Family,  who  had  taken  refuge  in  the  King's 
bedroom  beyond.  But  this  plan  was  frustrated  by  an  un- 
expected check — a  detachment  of  grenadiers  belonging  to  the  old 
Gardes  Fran9aises  drawn  up  before  the  doors  of  the  (Eil  de  Bceuf. 
What  had  happened  to  bring  about  this  sudden  return  to  loyalty 
in  the  mutineers  who,  at  the  siege  of  the  BastUle,  had  ralUed  to 
the  standard  of  revolt  ?  One  thing  only — Lafayette,  at  last 
aroused  from  his  optimistic  lethargy,  had  risen  to  the  occasion. 
From  the  moment  the  attack  on  the  Chateau  began — that 
attack  which  he  had  persisted  in  beUeving  would  never  take 
place — his  conduct  was  admirable,  and  it  is  unquestionably  to 
Lafayette  that  must  be  accorded  the  eternal  honour  of  saving 
the  Jives  of  the  Royal  Family  on  this  6th  of  October.  At  the  first 
sound  of  the  tumult  he  had  sprung  up,  mounted  his  horse,  and 
summoned  his  grenadiers  to  the  rescue  of  the  King  and  the 


156        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

bodyguard.  "  Grenadiers,"  he  cried,  "  will  you  suffer  brave 
men  to  be  basely  assassinated  ?  .  .  .  Swear  to  me  on  your 
honour  as  grenadiers  that  no  harm  shall  be  done  to  them  !  " 

The  grenadiers  took  the  oath,  and  rallying  around  their  still 
adored  commander  hastened  to  rescue  the  guards  who  had 
fallen  into  the  clutches  of  the  assassins.  They  were  joined 
immediately  by  the  men  of  the  Parisian  miUtia,  and  these,  clasp- 
ing in  their  arms  the  white-haired  brigadiers  of  the  bodyguard, 
cried  out,  "  No,  we  will  not  murder  brave  men  like  you  !  " 

So  again,  as  after  the  siege  of  the  Bastille,  the  mutinous 
soldiers  were  turned  by  a  word  from  revolutionary  fury  to  senti- 
ments of  humanity,  and  it  was  these  men  who  but  yesterday 
had  marched  against  their  King  that  were  drawn  up  in  his 
defence  outside  the  (EH  de  Bceuf. 

Inside  the  room  the  officers  of  the  bodyguard,  who  had  been 
driven  back  from  the  door  of  the  Queen's  apartments,  were 
waiting  to  prevent  the  insurgents  from  reaching  the  Royal  Family 
collected  in  the  King's  bedroom  beyond,  and  the  grenadiers, 
wishing  now  to  effect  a  coaUtion  with  their  former  enemies, 
rattled  at  the  door-handle  to  attract  their  attention,  whilst  at 
the  same  time  keeping  the  mob  at  bay. 

Chevannes,  Vaulabelle,  and  Mondollot  of  the  bodyguard 
cried  through  the  door,  "  Who  knocks  ?  " 

"  Grenadiers  !  " 

Then  Chevannes,  opening  the  door,  courageously  confronted 
the  men  he  took  to  be  his  enemies.  "  Messieurs,"  he  said,  *'  is 
it  a  victim  you  seek  ?  Here  is  one.  I  offer  myself.  I  am  one 
of  the  commanders  of  the  post ;  it  is  to  me  that  belongs  the 
honour  of  dying  the  first  in  defence  of  my  King,  but,  by  God, 
learn  to  respect  that  good  King  !  " 

But  Gondran,  commander  of  the  grenadiers,  held  out  his 
hand  :  "  Far  from  wishing  to  take  your  life,  we  have  come  to 
defend  you  against  your  assassins." 

In  an  instant  grenadiers  and  guards  feU  into  one  another's 
arms,  mingling  tears  of  joy,  calling  each  other  friends  and 
comrades ;  the  guards  consented  to  wear  the  tricolour  cockade, 
and  finally  the  men  of  the  two  regiments  joining  forces  drove 
the  rabble  from  the  Chateau. 

The  tide  had  now  turned  irresistibly  against  the  conspirators. 
Down  below  in  the  Cour  de  Marbre  the  grenadiers  were  still 
fighting  bravely  for  the  lives  of  the  guards,  and  the  King,  seeing 
the  fray  from  the  windows,  rushed  out  on  to  the  balcony  of 
the  great  bedroom  of  Louis  XIV.  and  cried  out  to  the  people 
for  mercy  to  be  shown  to  his  faithful  defenders.  Several  of  the 
guards  in  attendance  followed  after  him,  and  waving  their  hats, 
adorned  with  the  tricolour  cockade,  cried  out,  "  Vive  la  nation !  " 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       157 

The  situation  was  saved  ;  in  a  moment  that  strange  Parisian 
crowd  had  forgotten  their  fury,  and  to  the  shouts  of  "  Vive  la 
nation  !  "  responded  with  cries  of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  " 

Then  the  conspirators  determined  on  one  final  effort  to 
achieve  their  purpose,  and  voices  were  raised  calUng  for  the  Queen 
to  appear  likewise  on  the  balcony. 

All  this  time  Marie  Antoinette  had  remained  in  the  King's 
bedroom  with  her  children,  surrounded  by  her  weeping  women 
and  distracted  courtiers  ;  the  ministers  Luzerne  and  Montmorin 
appeared  incapable  of  action,  whilst  in  a  corner  Necker,  the 
people's  idol,  sat  sobbing  helplessly.  Marie  Antoinette  alone 
was  calm,  rousing  the  courage  of  those  around  her,  quieting 
the  Uttle  Dauphin  who  repeated  plaintively,  "  Maman,  I  am 
hungry."  Only  at  one  moment  her  serenity  failed  her,  as,  looking 
down  from  the  windows,  she  perceived  suddenly  amongst  the 
raging  multitude  the  figure  of  Philippe  d' Orleans  walking  gaily 
arm-in-arm  with  Adrien  Duport,^  and  at  the  sinister  vision  the 
Queen  caught  the  Dauphin  to  her  heart  and,  half  rising  from  her 
seat,  cried  out  in  an  agony  of  terror,  "  They  are  coming  to  kill 
my  son  I  "  Marie  Antoinette  well  knew  that  it  was  not  "  the 
people  "  who  were  most  to  be  feared. 

The  cries  of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  that  had  broken  out  when  the 
King  appeared  on  the  balcony  showed  that  he  at  least  had  not 
lost  his  place  in  their  hearts,  and  when  at  this  moment  word  was 
brought  that  the  Queen  too  must  show  herself  to  the  crowd,  she 
advanced  confidently  towards  the  balcony  holding  the  Dauphin 
and  Madame  Royale  by  the  hand. 

"  She  took  her  children  with  her  for  safety,"  says  a  revolu- 
tionary writer — she  who  would  have  died  a  hundred  deaths  to 
save  them  !  No  more  cruel  calumny  has  ever  been  uttered 
against  Marie  Antoinette.  It  is  easy  to  understand  the  idea  that 
inspired  her  action.  What  mother  worthy  of  the  name  does  not 
beheve  that  the  sight  of  her  offspring  must  melt  the  fiercest  heart  ? 
And  surely  no  stronger  appeal  could  be  made  to  the  women  she 
beheved  to  be  the  same  poissardes  who,  but  a  few  short  years 
earher,  had  presented  themselves  at  this  very  spot  to  hail  the 
birth  of  the  Dauphin  than  to  show  his  younger  brother  to  them 
now  !  Were  not  the  poissardes  mothers  too  ?  Undoubtedly, 
if  the  poissardes  had  composed  the  crowd,  the  result  would  have 
been  just  as  the  Queen  anticipated,  but  the  conspirators  shrewdly 

1  Ferrieres,  i.  327.  See  also  the  evidence  of  the  Marquis  de  Digoine 
du  Palais,  witness  clxviii.  in  Procedure  du  Chdtelet  :  "In  the  same  place 
(the  Cour  de  Marbre)  was  M.  le  Due  d'Orleans  walking  with  M.  Duport 
whom  he  held  under  the  arm,  and  with  whom  he  was  talking  in  a  very 
gay  and  easy  manner."  The  duke  was  also  seen  at  this  hour  by  witnesses 
cxxvii.,  cxxxii.,  cxxxiii.,  cxxxvi.,  cxcv.,  who  described  him  playing  with 
a  light  switch  he  carried  in  his  hand  and  "  laughing  incessantly  " 


158        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

foresaw  this  also,  and  a  man's  voice  in  the  crowd  cried  out 
threateningly,  "  No  children  !  "  At  that  Marie  Antoinette, 
comprehending  that  the  rage  of  the  multitude  had  not  abated, 
handed  the  children  to  Madame  de  Tourzel  and  came  forward 
alone. 

As  she  stood  there  on  the  balcony  in  the  pale  Ught  of  the 
October  morning,  her  hair  disordered,  a  little  yellow-striped 
wrapper  hastily  thrown  over  her  night  attire,^  her  face,  of  which 
the  dazzling  tints  had  once  defied  the  painter's  art,  now  changed 
to  a  stricken  pallor,  Marie  Antoinette  had  never  seemed  so  much 
a  Queen.  Folding  her  hands  on  her  breast  she  raised  her  eyes 
above  the  angry  sea  of  pikes  and  muskets,  filling  the  courtyards 
of  the  Chateau  and  stretching  right  away  across  the  Place  d'Armes 
to  the  Avenue  de  Versailles,  and  looked  to  heaven,  "  like  a 
victim  offering  herself  up  to  death." 

And  at  this  sight  a  hush  fell  over  the  tumultuous  crowd,  a 
breathless  and  tremendous  silence  during  which  the  Queen's  life 
hung  in  the  balance.  But  amongst  all  that  vast  multitude  only 
one  man  was  found  ready  to  carry  out  the  design  of  the  con- 
spirators. This  brigand  raised  his  gun  to  his  shoulder,  took  aim 
at  the  Queen,  but,  according  to  Ferrieres,  dared  not  pull  the 
/  trigger ;  according  to  Weber,  the  weapon  was  angrily  dashed 
^  from  his  hand  by  his  companions.  The  next  moment  the  silence 
was  broken  by  a  wild  outburst  of  applause ;  cries  of  "  Vive  la 
Reine ! ' '  resounded  on  every  side .  Lafayette,  coming  forward  into 
the  balcony,  raised  the  Queen's  hand  to  his  lips  and  kissed  it. 
The  storm  of  acclamation  redoubled ;  the  situation  was  saved. 

So  once  again  the  designs  of  the  Orleanistes  were  frustrated ; 
only  one  hope  remained  to  them — ^if  the  King  and  Queen  were 
to  be  brought  to  Paris  the  people  might  yet  be  worked  up  to  the 
pitch  of  fury  necessary  to  their  assassination.  Accordingly  a 
voice  in  the  crowd  ^  was  heard  calling  out,  '*  The  King  to  Paris  ! 
The  King  to  Paris  !  "  and  instantly  the  cry  was  taken  up  by 
the  multitude.  Hearing  this  the  King  decided  to  consult  the 
Assembly,  and  a  message  was  sent  to  the  hall  requesting  that 
the  deputies  should  come  to  the  Chateau  to  discuss  the  situation. 
"  We  must  not  hesitate,"  repUed  Mounier;  "  let  us  fly  to  the 
King."  But  Mirabeau  had  no  mind  to  expose  his  person  to 
the  tender  mercies  of  the  revolutionary  crowds  whose  benevolence 
he  was  never  tired  of  praising,^  and  immediately  opposed  the 

^  Evidence  of  the  Comte  de  Saint- Aulaire,  witness  clviii.  in  Procidure 
du  Chdtelet. 

*  Ferrieres  says  "  a  few  voices  "  ;  Bertrand  de  Molleville,  "  one  voice 
only." 

'  "  M.  le  Comte  de  Mirabeau  represents  the  danger  of  leaving  the  accus- 
tomed place  for  sittings  "  {Moniteur,  ii.  12). 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       159 

suggestion.  "  It  is  inconsistent  with  the  dignity  of  the  Assembly 
to  go  to  the  King ;  we  cannot  dehberate  in  a  King's  palace." 

"  Our  dignity,"  retorted  Mounier,  "  consists  in  doing  our 
duty,  and  at  this  moment  of  danger  our  sacred  duty  is  to  be 
with  the  King ;  we  shall  reproach  ourselves  eternally  if  we 
neglect  it." 

Then  the  King,  with  the  courage  which  the  deputies  lacked, 
announced  his  intention  of  going  to  the  Assembly  since  the 
Assembly  would  not  go  to  him,  and  thereupon  the  Assembly, 
*'  with  the  sound  of  musketry  fire  all  around,"  settled  down  to  a 
long  discussion  on  the  manner  of  receiving  him.^ 

Whilst  these  inconceivable  delays  were  taking  place  the 
crowd  was  becoming  more  and  more  excited,  and  at  last  the  King, 
despairing  of  the  Assembly's  co-operation,  resolved  to  take  the 
matter  into  his  own  hands  and  accede  to  the  demands  of  the 
people.  Going  out  once  more  on  to  the  balcony  he  accordingly 
addressed  them  in  these  words  : 

"  My  children,  you  wish  that  I  should  follow  you  to  Paris. 
I  consent,  but  on  the  understanding  that  I  shall  not  be  separated 
from  my  wife  and  children,  and  I  ask  for  the  safety  of  my  body- 
guard." 

The  crowd  repUed  with  cries  of  "  Vive  le  Roi  1  Vive  les  gardes 
du  corps  !  "  Guns  were  fired  as  a  sign  of  rejoicing.  But  once 
again  the  agitators  succeeded  in  turning  the  tide  of  popular 
feeling,  and  it  was  in  the  midst  of  a  raging  herd  that  the  Royal 
Family  set  forth  on  the  terrible  seven  hours'  drive  to  Paris.  Around 
the  carriage  the  vilest  of  the  rabble  had  collected,  pressing  against 
it  so  closely  that  it  seemed  to  be  borne  upon  their  shoulders  ; 
sitting  astride  on  cannons  were  the  sham  fishwives,  carrying 
branches  of  poplar  adorned  with  ribbons,  and  women  of  the 
streets,  still  drunk  with  blood  and  wine,  singing  foul  songs 
of  the  gutter,  and  insulting  the  Queen  by  their  gestures  and 
grimaces. 

In  order  to  give  colour  to  the  story  that  the  Court  had  been 
monopolizing  the  grain,  the  Orleanistes  now  released  supplies 
and  brought  up  wagon-loads  of  grain  to  join  in  the  procession. ^ 
The  people,  completely  duped  by  this  manceuvre,  surrounded 
the  wagons,  crying  out  repeatedly,  "  We  are  bringing  you  the 
baker,  the  baker's  wife,  and  the  baker's  boy  {Nous  vous  amenons 
le  boulanger,  la  boulangere  et  le  petit  mitron)." 

In  the  rear  were  the  tragic  remnants  of  the  bodyguard — forty 
to  fifty  shattered  men,  disarmed,  bareheaded,  worn  with  hunger 
and  fatigue,  their  garments  torn  and  blood-stained,  led  prisoner 
by  brigands  armed  with  pikes  and  sabres,  to  meet,  for  all  they 
knew;  with  a  fate  as  hideous  as  their  comrades  Deshuttes  and 
*  Moniteur,  ii.  12.  ^  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  ii.  272. 


i6o        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Varicourt,  whose  heads  had  been  carried  two  hours  earUer  to 
Paris,  and  brought  in  triumph  to  the  Palais  Royal.^ 

As  the  procession  passed  through  Passy  the  Due  d' Orleans, 
who  had  hurried  on  ahead,  was  seen  on  the  terrace  of  his  house 
surrounded  by  his  children,  and  with  them  Madame  de  GenUs, 
frantically  impatient  to  witness  the  humihation  of  the  Queen,  to 
whose  Court  she  had  never  been  able  to  gain  admittance.  At 
the  sight  of  their  vanquished  rivals  joy  unrestrained  broke  out 
on  the  countenances  of  this  ignoble  family.  Mademoiselle 
d'Orleans  gave  way  to  hysterical  laughter.  Some  of  the  brigands 
in  the  crowd,  recognizing  the  duke,  in  spite  of  his  efforts  to  con- 
ceal himself  behind  the  rest  of  the  group,  cried  out,  "  Vive  le 
Due  d'Orleans  !  Vive  notre  pere  d'Orleans  !  "  nor  could  ducal 
frowns  and  gestures  silence  these  incriminating  acclamations.^ 

It  was  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening  when  the  Royal  Family 
reached  the  Hotel  de  Ville  to  be  complimented  by  BaiUy  on  "  the 
beautiful  day  "  that  had  brought  the  King  to  Paris.  Louis  XVI., 
in  a  voice  faint  with  hunger  and  exhaustion,  replied  that  he  came 
"  with  joy  and  with  confidence  into  the  good  city  of  Paris." 
Bailly,  in  repeating  the  King's  words  to  the  people,  omitted  to 
say  "  with  confidence,"  but  the  Queen,  whose  presence  of  mind 
even  at  this  crisis  had  not  deserted  her,  interposed  in  clear  tones  : 
"  You  forget.  Monsieur,  that  the  King  said  '  and  with  confi- 
dence.' "  Whereat  Bailly,  turning  to  the  people,  added,  "  You 
hear,  Messieurs  ?  You  are  more  fortunate  than  if  I  had  said  it 
myself."  At  half -past  nine,  by  the  glare  of  torches,  the  Royal 
Family  entered  the  palace  of  the  Tuileries  that  for  nearly  three 
years  was  to  be  their  prison.  It  is  said  that  the  King  was  radiant, 
his  confidence  in  his  people  once  more  restored,  for  at  this,  as  at 
every  other  crisis  of  the  Revolution,  he  never  lost  sight  of  the  fact 
that  the  people  were  misled  and  to  be  pitied  rather  than  blamed. 

"  There  are  evil  men,"  he  said  next  day  to  the  httle  Dauphin, 
"  who  have  stirred  up  the  people,  and  the  excesses  committed  are 
their  work ;  we  must  not  hear  a  grudge  against  the  people."  In  this 
conviction,  which  to  the  last  day  of  his  life  Louis  XVI.  never 
reUnquished,  is  to  be  found  the  secret  of  that  amazing  spirit  of 
forbearance  which  has  been  attributed  to  his  weakness. 

^  Many  contemporaries,  including  Madame  de  Campan,  say  that  these 
heads  were  carried  in  the  procession,  but  Weber,  the  Deux  Amis,  Bertrand 
de  Molleville,  and  Gouverneur  Morris  distinctly  state  that  they  were  carried 
on  ahead  and  arrived  in  Paris  at  twelve  o'clock,  before  the  procession  had 
started  from  Versailles.  The  Chancelier  Pasquier  saw  them  carried  into 
the  Palais  Royal  {Mimoires,  p.  72). 

2  Montjoie,  ii.  273  ;  Histoire  de  la  Revolution  de  France,  by  the  Vicomte 
F.  de  Conny;  evidence  of  the  Vicomte  de  Mirabeau,  witness  cxlvi.  in 
Procedure  du  Chdtelet. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       i6i 


THE  ROLE  of  the  PEOPLE 

The  point  that  Louis  XVL  failed  to  reahze  was  that  the 
revolutionary  mob  which  marched  on  Versailles  was  not  the 
people  at  all,  but  an  assemblage  composed  of  impostors  both 
male  and  female,  and  of  hired  rabble  from  the  Faubourgs  ;  the 
only  element  that  could  be  described  as  representing  the  people 
being  those  poor  women  forced  against  their  will  to  march. 

So  indignant  were  the  true  women  of  the  people  at  the  mas- 
querade conducted  in  their  name  that,  on  the  morning  after  the 
arrival  of  the  Royal  Family  in  Paris,  a  deputation  of  the  "  Ladies 
of  the  Market  "  presented  themselves  at  the  Commune  of  Paris 
to  repudiate  all  complicity  with  the  movement  by  means  of  the 
following  petition  : 

"  Messieurs,  we  come  to  represent  to  you  that  we  at  the  corn 
market  took  no  part  in  what  happened  yesterday ;  we  disapprove 
of  it  ... ;  we  devote  to  public  justice  women  who  have  no  other 
qualification  than  that  of  light  women  (femmes  du  monde)  and 
prostituted  to  those  who,  like  themselves,  only  wish  to  disturb  the 
peace  and  tranquilHty  of  good  citizens."  ^ 

The  deputation  proceeded  to  declare  that  "  they  disapproved 
of  the  indecent  way  in  which  the  women  had  presented  them- 
selves to  the  King  and  Queen,  and  that,  far  from  having  spoken 
against  Messieurs  Bailly  and  Lafayette,  they  would  defend  them 
to  the  last  drop  of  their  blood."  They  requested  that  the  National 
Guard  should  be  ordered  to  bring  these  women  back  to  order. 
This  Uttle  petition  was  deposited  on  the  table  and  signed  by  the 
members  of  the  deputation,  but  amongst  these  only  three  were 
able  to  write  their  names.^ 

According  to  Rivarol  the  poissardes  also  went  to  the  Tuileries 
on  the  same  morning  and  "  presented  a  petition  to  the  King  and 
Queen  to  demand  justice  for  the  horrible  calumny  which  rendered 
them  accompUces  of  the  violence  committed  the  day  before 
towards  their  Majesties."  ^ 

^  A  confirmation  of  the  statement  made  by  certain  contemporaries  that 
Laclos,  Chamfort,  and  other  leading  Orl6anistes  took  their  mistresses  with 
them. 

'  "  Extrait  du  proems  verbal  des  repr^sentants  de  la  Commune  de 
Paris,"  published  in  the  Histoire  Parlementaire  of  Buchez  et  Roux,  iii.  137. 

^  MSmoires  de  Rivarol,  p.  263.  Madame  Campan  in  her  Mimoires  also 
refers  to  this  visit  of  the  poissardes  to  the  Tuileries,  but,  contrary  to  Rivarol, 
describes  them  as  identical  with  the  women  who  marched  on  Versailles, 
and  declares  that  they  opened  the  interview  with  reproaches  against  the 
Queen,  though  they  ended  by  crying  "  Vive  Marie  Antoinette  !  Vive  notre 
bonne  reine  !  "  But  Madame  Campan's  account  of  the  6th  of  October  is  in- 
correct in  several  points ;  moreover,  we  know  that  her  loyalty  to  the  Queen 

M 


i62         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

In  the  light  of  the  deputation  to  the  Commune  this  statement 
of  RivaroFs  seems  credible  enough ;  if  the  women  protested  to 
the  electors  of  Paris,  why  should  they  not  have  protested  to  the 
King  and  Queen  ?  It  may  be  suggested  that  it  was  the  women 
of  the  corn  market  only  who  went  to  the  Commune,  but  if  so, 
why  did  they  not  say  that  it  was  from  the  women  of  the  fish 
market  that  they  wished  to  disassociate  themselves,  instead  of 
stating  distinctly  that  the  women  who  marched  on  Versailles 
were  of  a  totally  different  class — the  class  of  "  Ught  women  "  that 
the  "  respectable  poor  "  usually  hold  in  abhorrence  ? 

The  whole  of  this  incident  has  been  very  carefully  kept  dark 
by  the  conspiracy  of  history,  for,  of  course,  it  effectually  disposes 
of  the  cherished  revolutionary  legend  that  the  march  on  Versailles 
was  conducted  by  women  of  the  people.  Even  if  we  doubt  the 
veracity  of  Rivarol,  the  petition  to  the  Commune  is  an  absolutely 
unanswerable  refutation  of  this  theory,  and  therefore  no  mention 
has  been  made  of  it  by  any  revolutionary  writer,  either  amongst 
contemporaries  or  amongst  posterity. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  people  the  march  on  Versailles 
proved  naturally  disastrous ;  the  cause  of  Uberty  had  been  dis- 
graced in  the  eyes  of  the  world  and  the  work  of  reform  arrested 
in  full  swing.  Several  of  the  democratic  deputies  reaUzing  this 
left  the  country  in  despair,  and  amongst  this  number  were  two 
of  the  most   ardent  defenders  of  the  people — Mounier  ^  and 


is  more  than  doubtful,  and  since  she  refrained  from  any  reference  to  the 
deputation  to  the  Commune  which  testified  so  strongly  in  the  Queen's 
favour,  she  is  quite  as  likely  to  have  misrepresented  the  truth  about  the 
deputation  to  the  Tuileries.  On  the  loyalty  of  the  "  Dames  de  la  Halle  " 
at  this  moment  see  also  Lettres  d'un  AttacM  de  Ligation,  date  of  October  i6  ; 
Documents  pour  servir  d  I'Histoire  de  la  Rivolution  Frangaise,  by  Charles 
d'H^ricault  and  Gustave  Bord,  2nd  series,  p.  260. 

^  Mounier's  denunciation  of  the  6th  of  October  in  his  Appel  au  Tribunal 
de  V Opinion  publique  contains  one  of  the  most  eloquent  testimonies  to  the 
democracy  of  Louis  XVI.  :  "  Without  doubt  the  nation  had  been  long 
oppressed  by  a  crowd  of  abuses  ;  the  rights  of  citizens  were  not  sufficiently 
protected  against  arbitrary  power.  But  had  these  abuses  begun  under  the 
reign  of  Louis  XVI.  ?  Had  he  done  nothing  to  merit  our  gratitude  ? 
What  prince  ever  lent  a  more  attentive  ear  to  all  those  who  spoke  to  him 
in  favour  of  his  people  ?  .  .  ,  Did  he  dishonour  his  reign  by  sanguinary 
orders,  by  proscriptions  ?  Did  he  steal  property  ?  And  what  an  atrocious 
exaggeration  to  describe  the  mistakes  of  his  Ministers  as  excesses  which 
wore  out  the  patience  of  the  people,  and  to  consider  them  as  sufficient 
reasons  for  dethroning  the  King  !  I  will  not  speak  here  of  all  the  ad- 
vantages we  owe  to  his  benevolence — the  abolition  of  servitude  in  his 
domains,  the  abolition  of  corvies  and  of  torture,  the  establishment  of 
provincial  administration,  the  civil  state  of  the  Protestants  recognized,  the 
liberty  of  the  seas.  Would  he  have  lost  all  his  authority  if  he  had  had  less 
confidence  in  the  love  of  his  people  ?  "  Note  that  all  these  reforms  men- 
tioned by  Mounier  dated  from  before  the  Revolution. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       163 

Lally  Tollendal.  Clermont  Tonnerre  remained  to  be  massacred 
at  his  post,  Virieu  to  perish  on  the  scaffold;  Malouet  alone 
of  the  Royahst  Democrats  survived  the  succeeding  storms  of 
the  Revolution. 

THE  rClE  of  the  ORLfiANISTES 

Even  the  eyes  of  Lafayette  were  now  at  last  opened  to  the 
truth  about  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy.  Hitherto  his  Republican 
fervour  had  prevented  him  from  offering  a  too  determined  opposi- 
tion to  the  revolutionary  movement,  but  if  the  14th  of  July 
had  moderated  his  revolutionary  ardour,  the  6th  of  October,  he 
declared  to  the  Comte  d'Estaing,  had  made  him  a  Royalist.^ 
It  was  all  over  with  hberty,  he  now  saw,  if  the  Orl6anistes  were 
to  prevail,  and  with  a  courage  he  too  seldom  displayed  he 
resolved  to  tell  the  King  the  whole  truth,  and  to  insist  on  the 
exile  or  conviction  of  the  duke.  At  the  same  time  Lafayette 
sought  an  interview  with  the  duke  himself,  of  which  the  following 
account  is  given  in  the  Correspondence  of  Lord  Auckland  : 

"  The  duke  was  at  the  head  of  a  formidable  party,  the  purpose 
of  which  was  to  send  the  King  away,  if  not  worse,  and  to  make 
himself  to  be  named  Regent,  etc.  M.  de  Lafayette  has  worked 
out  this  plot  in  wonderful  silence,  and  once  master  of  every 
proof  he  waited  on  the  duke  last  Saturday  (Oct.  10)  for  the  first 
time,  and  told  him  these  words  on  which  you  may  depend  : 

"  '  Monseigneur,  I  fear  there  will  soon  be  on  the  scaffold  the 
head  of  some  one  of  your  name.' 

"  The  duke  looked  surprised. 

"  '  You  intend,  Monseigneur,  to  have  me  assassinated,  but 
be  sure  that  you  will  be  yourself  an  hour  later.' 

'*  The  duke  swore  on  his  word  of  honour  that  he  was  not 
guilty. 

"  The  other  continued,  saying  : 

"  '  Monseigneur,  I  must  accept  your  word  of  honour,  but 
as  I  have  under  my  hand  the  strongest  proof  of  your  whole 
conduct,  your  Highness  must  leave  France  or  else  I  shall  bring 
you  before  a  tribunal  within  twenty-four  hours.  The  King  has 
descended  several  steps  of  his  throne,  but  I  have  placed  myself 
on  the  last ;  he  will  descend  no  further,  and  in  order  to  reach  him 
you  will  have  to  pass  over  my  body.  You  have  cause  for  com- 
plaint against  the  Queen,  and  so  have  I,  but  this  is  the  moment 
to  forget  all  grievances.' 

}  "  M.  de  Lafayette  swore  to  me  on  the  road  (from  Versailles  to  Paris 
on  Oct.  6)  that  the  atrocities  had  made  a  Royalist  of  him  "  (Letter  from 
the  Comte  d'Estaing  to  the  Queen,  October  7,  1789). 


i64        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

"  The  duke  consented  to  depart.  The  day  after  they  were 
with  the  King,  before  whom  the  marquis  repeated  to  the  duke 
all  he  had  said."  ^ 

But  Louis  XVI.,  always  magnanimous,  refrained  from 
humihating  his  cousin  by  a  pubhc  exposure  of  his  conduct,  and 
contented  himself  with  sending  him  on  a  pretended  mission  to 
England.  According  to  Montjoie  he  hoped  by  this  indulgence 
to  dissuade  the  duke  from  continuing  to  monopoUze  the  grain. 
*'  In  the  situation  where  so  many  misfortunes  and  crimes  have 
placed  me,"  he  said  to  Orleans,  "I  see  only  the  needs  of  the 
people.  My  sole  desire  and  likewise  my  first  duty  is  to  give 
them  back  their  subsistence."  Accordingly  he  agreed  to  forgive 
everything  that  had  taken  place  on  the  condition  that  the 
duke  would  open  his  granaries,  of  which  a  number  were  in 
England,  and  restore  the  com  he  had  concealed.  A  mission  to 
the  EngUsh  Court  was  to  be  the  pretext  for  his  departure.^ 

Whether  Montjoie  is  right  on  the  real  object  of  the  duke's 
journey — and  his  statement  is  confirmed  by  the  revolutionary 
Desodoards  ^ — ^it  is  certain  that  the  mission  of  the  Due  d' Orleans 
to  England  was  not,  as  his  supporters  would  have  us  beUeve, 
an  official  one,  but  a  pretext  either  to  cover  his  restoration  of 
the  grain  or  simply  to  get  him  out  of  the  country.  The  corre- 
spondence of  English  contemporaries  on  this  point  is  conclusive, 
and  shows  that  in  England  likewise  the  Due  d' Orleans  was 
universally  regarded  as  the  author  of  the  atrocities  committed 
on  the  6th  of  October.* 

The  Royalist  Democrats,  amongst  whom  we  may  now  count 
Lafayette,  refused,  however,  to  be  satisfied  with  the  mere  exile 

1  Letter  from  Mr.  Huber  in  Paris  to  Lord  Auckland,  dated  October  15, 
1789.  The  above  conversation  is  given  by  Mr.  Huber  in  French.  His 
account  of  the  incident  is  confirmed  in  the  Memoirs  of  Lafayette. 

*  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  318. 

'  Histoire  Philosophique,  by  Fantin  D6sodoards,  i.  222. 

*  See  besides  the  foregoing  letter  to  Lord  Auckland  those  from  Lord 
Henry  Fitzgerald  in  Paris  to  the  Duke  of  Leeds,  pubUshed  in  Dispatches 
from  Paris,  edited  by  Oscar  Browning.  On  October  29  Fitzgerald  writes  : 
"  In  short,  my  Lord,  the  general  impression  is  that  the  Prince  was  chief 
promoter  of  all  the  disturbances  here,  of  the  expedition  on  Monday  the  5th 
of  this  month  to  Versailles,  that  his  designs  against  the  King  were  of  a  very 
criminal  nature,  that  he  aimed  at  the  Regency  of  the  kingdom  for  himself 
and  proposed  to  bring  his  own  party  into  power.  It  is  supposed  also  that 
M.  de  Lafayette  is  the  person  who  discovered  the  conspiracy  forming,  and 
that,  having  made  it  known  to  the  King,  his  Majesty  in  goodness  of  heart 
employed  him  on  a  pretended  commission  to  England,  as  a  pretext  only, 
and  to  shield  him  by  honourable  exile  from  further  pursuit." 

Again  on  November  6  :  "I  must  assure  your  Grace  that  I  have  every 
reason  to  believe  that  his  commission  to  England  was  a  pretended  one,"  etc. 

See  also  Playfair's  History  of  Jacobinism,  p.  220,  note ;  Biographical 
Memoirs  of  the  French  Revolution,  by  John  Adolphus,  ii.  249  and  following. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       165 

of  the  duke,  and  resolved  to  expose  the  whole  design  of  the 
Orleaniste  conspiracy.  Mounier  Wcis  the  chief  instigator  of  this 
movement.^ 

Accordingly  in  November  the  Chatelet  of  Paris  opened  an  U 
immense  inquiry  into  the  events  of  October  5  and  6.  In 
spite  of  the  threats  of  the  Orleanistes  a  great  number  of  witnesses 
came  forward  to  testify  against  the  infamous  manoeuvres  of 
the  duke  and  his  supporters,  and  these  witnesses  were  not  taken 
only  from  amongst  aristocrats  or  Royahsts,  but  from  amongst 
men  and  women  of  all  classes — soldiers,  hairdressers,  deputies 
of  the  Assembly,  washerwomen,  ladies-in-waiting,  tradesmen, 
and  domestic  servants  jostle  each  other  in  the  570  pages  pubHshed 
by  the  Chatelet,  and  no  one  should  attempt  to  write  a  line  on  y 
October  5  and  6  without  consulting  the  graphic  descriptions 
given  by  these  eye-witnesses  of  the  manner  in  which  the  march 
on  Versailles  was  engineered.^  In  the  hght  of  this  great  mass  of 
evidence  no  impartial  mind  can  possibly  doubt  that  the  whole 
insurrection  was  the  work  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy — ^the 
forcing  of  the  women  to  march,  the  men  in  women's  clothes, 
the  money  distributed  amongst  the  crowd,  the  presence  of  the 
duke  himself  and  of  his  supporters  in  the  thick  of  the  tumult 
always  followed  by  cries  of  '*  Vive  le  bon  due  d'Orleans  !  Vive 
notre  roi  d'Orleans  !  "  AU  these  facts  were  proved  beyond 
dispute. 

That  the  duke  was  indeed  actually  amongst  the  crowd  on 
the  marble  staircase  showing  them  the  way  to  the  Queen's 
apartments  can  hardly  be  doubted,  but  on  this  point  the  reader 
must  be  left  to  form  his  own  opinion  from  the  evidence  given 
in  the  Appendix  of  this  book.^ 

The  Chatelet  having  thus  accumulated  information  from 
every  quarter,  finally  sought  the  testimony  of  the  victim  against 

^  Avant-propos  to  the  Tableau  des  Timoins  .  .  .  dans  la  Procidure  du 
Chdtelet,  1790. 

*  The  whole  of  the  inquiry  is  to  be  found  at  the  British  Museum  under 
the  heading  ProcMure  criminelle  instruiie  au  Chdtelet  de  Paris  sur  la  /y 
dinonciation  des  faits  arrives  d  Versailles  dans  la  journSe  du  6  octobre  ijSg. 
ImprimSe  par  ordre  de  I' A  ssembUe  Nationale.  Museum  press  mark,  491 .  i  .2. 
Readers  should  beware  of  consulting  the  Orleaniste  pubUcation,  Abrdgi  de 
la  Procedure  criminelle  instruite  au  Chdtelet,  etc.,  in  which  the  most  important 
evidence  is  suppressed,  but  the  brochure  entitled  Tableau  des  Timoins  et 
recueil  des  faits  lesplus  intdressants,  etc.,  an  answer  to  the  aforesaid  Abrdgi, 
is  a  genuine  resum6  of  the  inquiry. 

'  Von  Sybel,  the  German  historian,  considers  that  "  the  strongest 
evidence  against  the  Due  d'Orleans  was  furnished  several  years  later  by 
thC/  discovery  of  a  letter  bearing  the  date  of  October  6  in  which  he  directs 
his  banker  not  to  pay  the  sums  agreed  upon :  '  Run  quickly,  my  friend, 
to  the  lj!*^nker  .  .  .  and  tell  him  not  to  deliver  the  sum ;  the  money  has  not  / 
been  gained,  the  brat  still  lives  1*    {le  marmot  vit  encore)."     This  would    / 


i66        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

whom  all  the  worst  outrages  of  October  6  had  been  directed — 
the  Queen  of  France.  But  to  the  inquiries  of  the  commissioners 
who  presented  themselves  at  the  Tuileries  for  the  purpose,  Marie 
Antoinette  made  only  the  reply  :  "I  saw  everything,  I  heard 
everything,  I  have  forgotten  everything  {J'ai  tout  vu,  j'ai  tout 
entendu,  j'ai  tout  oublU)."  ^ 

The  supreme  opportunity  had  been  given  her  to  bring  her 
arch-enemy  to  justice — a  course  that  might  have  saved  the  hves 
of  the  Royal  Family  and  put  an  end  to  the  whole  Revolution, 
but  with  subUme  magnanimity  she  chose  to  reject  it.  Yet  there 
are  still  historians  capable  of  saying  that  Marie  Antoinette 
"  knew  not  to  forgive  "  ! 

But  the  evidence  collected  by  the  Chatelet  was  already  more 
than  sufficient  to  prove  that  the  events  of  October  5  and  6  were 
the  work  of  a  conspiracy.  Even  the  "  Comite  des  Recherches  " 
of  the  municipaUty  of  Paris,  to  whom  the  Chatelet  appUed  for 
information,  though  in  collusion  with  the  Orleanistes — Brissot 
was,  in  fact,  one  of  its  leading  members — admitted  in  its  report 
that  "  the  execrable  crime  which  defiled  the  Chateau  of  Ver- 
sailles in  the  morning  of  Tuesday  the  6th  of  October  had  for 
instruments  bandits  set  in  motion  by  clandestine  manoeuvres 
who  mingled  with  the  citizens,"  but  in  order  to  avert  investiga- 
tion as  to  the  authors  of  these  manoeuvres  the  Comite  refused 
to  extend  its  inquiries  to  anything  that  took  place  before  the 
morning  of  the  6th.  By  this  means,  as  Mounier  points  out,  all 
the  preparations  that  led  up  to  the  march  on  Versailles,  and 
even  the  organization  of  the  march  itself,  were  to  be  kept  dark, 
so  as  to  throw  the  entire  blame  on  a  "  few  obscure  ruffians  " 
/^•■'  whom  the  conspirators  were  quite  ready  to  deUver  over  to  justice.^ 

In  spite  of  these  obstacles  the  Chatelet  had  no  difficulty, 
however,  in  deciding  who  were  the  true  authors  of  the  insurrec- 
tion, and  on  the  5th  of  August  1790  the  magistrates  unanimously^ 
/      convicted  the  Due  d' Orleans  and  Mirabeau  as  deserving  of  arrest.  ~^ 

The  following  day  a  deputation  from  the  Chatelet  presented 
themselves  at  the  Assembly  and  placed  all  the  documentary 
evidence  they  had  collected  on  the  table. 

seem  to  indicate  that  some  one  had  been  bribed  to  murder  the  Dauphin, 
but  the  incident  rests  only  on  the  authority  of  Real,  minister  of  poUce 
under  the  Empire,  who  declared  that  he  had  held  the  note  in  his  hands. 
v/See  Philippe  d'Orlians  &galiti,  by  Auguste  Ducoin,  p.  72. 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  ii.  71  ;  Dispatches  from  Paris, 
ii.  311. 

*  Appel  au  Tribunal,  p.  76.  See  also  Fantin  Desodoards,  p.  283  : 
"  The  Orleanistes  had  no  doubt  that  the  Chatelet  would  regard  this  affair 
from  the  point  of  view  indicated  by  themselves,  and  would  throw  all  the 
odium  on  a  few  obscure  ruffians  who  could  easily  be  represented  as  secret 
agents  of  the  Royalists." 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       167 

Boucher  d'Argis  then  opened  the  debate  with  these  dramatic 
words  : 

"  At  last  we  have  torn  aside  the  veil  from  the  deplorable 
event  now  all  too  celebrated.  They  will  be  known — ^those 
secrets  full  of  horror ;  they  will  be  revealed — ^those  crimes  that 
stained  the  palace  of  our  kings  in  the  morning  of  October 
the  6th  !  " 

But  the  Orleanistes  had  still  far  too  much  power  over  the 
Assembly  to  be  brought  to  justice.  Chabroud,  the  hireling  of 
the  duke,^  was  deputed  to  draw  up  a  report  exonerating  both 
the  delinquents,  and  this  was  followed  by  tirades  from  Mirabeau 
and  the  Due  de  Biron,  which  had  the  usual  effect  of  cowing  the 
Assembly.  To  any  impartial  mind  these  speeches  for  the 
defence  are  hardly  less  convincing  proof  of  the  conspirators' 
guilt  than  the  report  of  the  Chatelet.  Not  a  single  charge  against 
the  defendants  is  effectually  refuted ;  the  feebleness  of  the  argu- 
ments employed  is  equalled  only  by  their  audacity.  The 
"  people  "  whom  these  demagogues  did  not  hesitate  to  stigmatize 
as  *'  ruffians  "  or  as  "  tigers  "  ^  were  alone  to  blame ;  the  only 
conspiracy  was  that  of  the  "  enemies  of  the  Revolution  "  !  In 
other  words,  it  was  the  "  aristocrats  "  who  had  organized  the 
march  on  Versailles  ! 

Mirabeau,  adopting  his  usual  device  of  drownmg  his  lack  of 
reason  or  logic  in  floods  of  meaningless  verbiage,  thundered 
against  the  Chatelet :  **  This  history  is  profoundly  odious.  The 
annals  of  crime  offer  few  examples  of  infamy  at  the  same  time 
so  shameless  and  unskilful."  Several  of  the  most  incriminating 
accusations  he  boldly  admitted,^  but  endeavoured  to  explain 
them  away  by  sophistries  so  futile  that  even  the  Assembly  would 
have  been  forced  to  reject  them  had  not  Mirabeau,  with  superb 
cunning,  hit  on  an  argument  that  terrified  the  Assembly  into 
acquiescence.  "It  is  not  the  6th  of  October,"  he  cried,  "  that 
is  being  brought  to  trial — ^it  is  the  Revolution  !  "    And  at  this 

^  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  84.  Fantin  D6sodoards 
{Histoire  Philosophique,  etc.  i.  286)  says  Chabroud  received  60,000  francs 
from  the  Due  d'Orleans  for  this  report. 

*  "  Perhaps  ruffians  had  mingled  with  the  multitude  and  it  had  become 
their  mobile  instrument.  ...  A  homicidal  band  advances,  in  its  frenzy  it 
respects  nothing.  Soon  there  is  nothing  between  the  tigers  and  Louis 
XVI."  (Speech  of  Chabroud). 

*  For  example.  Dr.  la  Fisse,  witness  lv.  in  the  Procedure  du  Chdtelet, 
had  stated  that  Mirabeau,  on  receiving  a  note  from  the  Due  d'Orl6ans  after 
the  6th  of  October  saying  that  he  was  leaving  for  England,  had  exclaimed 
furiously  to  those  around  him,  "  See  here — read  1  He  is  as  craven  as  a 
lackey,  he  is  a  blackguard  {jeanf outre)  who  does  not  deserve  all  the  trouble 
ta,ken  for  him  1  "  (Compare  this  with  Camille  Desmoulins'  description  of 
Mirabeau's  "  anger  at  seeing  himself  abandoned,"  quoted  on  p.  126  of  this 
book.)  Mirabeau  admitted  having  made  this  remark,  but  explained  he 
only  meant  it  was  "  a  mistake  "  for  the  duke  to  go  to  England  ! 


i68        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  Assembly,  dominated  by  the  two  revolutionary  factions, 
who  well  knew  that  if  the  Revolution  ended  it  was  all  over  with 
them,  hastily  reversed  the  judgement  of  the  Chatelet  and  de- 
clared both  Orleans  and  Mirabeau  innocent.  At  this  monstrous 
decision  of  the  Assembly  a  cry  of  indignation  went  up  from  all 
those  who  loved  justice,  and  who  from  the  beginning  of  the 
Revolution  had  striven  for  the  cause  of  true  Uberty.^ 

Amongst  these  was  Mounier,  who  wrote  from  Switzerland 
his  Appeal  to  the  Tribunal  of  Public  Opinion  denouncing  the 
report  of  Chabroud :  "I  can  conceive  nothing  so  revolting  as 
the  efforts  of  M.  Chabroud  to  justify  the  most  frightful  crimes, 
his  indulgence  towards  the  assassins,  his  hatred  for  the  victims, 
his  outrages  against  the  witnesses  and  against  the  judges  (of 
the  Chatelet),  the  threatening  tone  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  and  the 
Comte  de  Mirabeau,  the  eagerness  with  which  the  conclusions 
of  the  reporter  (Chabroud)  were  hastily  admitted,  without 
examination  and  without  discussion.  Nothing  of  all  this  should 
surprise  me,  yet  it  provoked  in  me  indignation  almost  equal  to 
that  which  I  felt  on  October  5  and  6,  1789.  Perhaps  the  apology 
of  crime  should  inspire  more  horror  than  crime  itself." 

Yet  it  is  this  apology  of  the  crimes  of  October  5  and  6  that 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years  has  triumphed  over  truth  and 
justice ;  by  nearly  all  historians  the  Procedure  du  Chdtelet  and 
the  great  denunciation  of  Mounier  —  whom  up  to  this  point 
they  have  quoted  unceasingly  in  support  of  revolutionary 
doctrines — have  been  persistently  ignored,  and  the  character  of 
the  French  people  has  been  blackened  for  the  better  white- 
washing of  an  Ignoble  prince  and  his  boon  companions.  Such 
is  the  "  democratic  "  method  of  writing  history  ! 

The  truth  is  that  the  march  on  Versailles  was  nothing  but  an 
Orleaniste  rising ;  not  only  must  the  people  be  exonerated  from 
blame,  but  so  must  also  the  other  revolutionary  intrigues.  In 
all  the  preparations  that  took  place  beforehand,  in  all  the 
sideUghts  thrown  by  the  Chatelet  on  the  crimes  committed,  we 
can  find  no  trace  of  either  Anarchist,  EngUsh,  or  Prussian  co- 

^  For  the  opinions  of  English  contemporaries  on  the  absolution  of  the 
Assembly  at  the  instigation  of  "  the  whitewasher  Chabroud,"  see,  for 
example,  Playf air's  History  of  Jacobinism,  p.  220  ;  Robison's  Proofs  of  a 
Conspiracy,  p.  392  ;  and  the  statement  of  Helen  Maria  WiUiams,  a  bitter 
enemy  of  the  King,  in  her  Correspondence  of  Louis  XVI.  i,  235.  Even 
Dumont,  the  friend — and  evidently,  for  a  time,  the  accomphce — of  Mira- 
beau, admitted  the  doubtful  honesty  of  the  Assembly  in  exonerating  him. 
"  The  events  of  October  5  and  6,"  wrote  Dumont,  "  have  been  imputed  to 
the  Due  d'Orleans,  and  the  Chatelet  implicated  Mirabeau  in  the  conspiracy. 
The  National  Assembly  declared  that  there  was  no  case  for  conviction 
against  one  or  the  other.  But  the  absolution  of  the  Assembly  is  not  the 
absolution  of  history,  and  many  veils  yet  remain  to  be  raised  before  these 
events  can  be  pronounced  on"  {Souvenirs  sur  Mirabeau,  p.  117).  !. 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       169 

operation ;  the  leaders  were  men  known  to  be  devoted  solely  to  the 
interests  of  the  Due  d' Orleans,  the  instruments  were  in  his  pay. 
But  if  these  other  intrigues  took  no  actual  part  in  the  move- 
ment, they  accorded  it  their  heartiest  sympathy.  The  out- 
rages of  the  6th  of  October  had  furthered  the  cause  of  anarchy. 
Robespierre  could  still  afford  to  he  low,  biding  his  time,  whilst 
the  Orleanistes  proceeded  with  the  work  of  demoUtion. 

By  the  revolutionaries  of  England  the  events  of  October  5 
and  6  were  hailed  with  fresh  rejoicings.  At  the  meeting-house 
of  the  Old  Jewry  on  November  4,  Dr.  Price  delivered  his  famous 
poUtical  sermon  in  praise  of  the  French  Revolution.  "  What 
an  eventful  period  is  this  !  I  am  thankful  that  I  have  Uved  to 
see  it ;  I  could  almost  say  '  Lord,  now  lettest  thou  thy  servant 
depart  in  peace,  for  mine  eyes  have  seen  thy  salvation  ' — I  have 
lived  to  see  a  diffusion  of  knowledge  which  has  undermined 
superstition  and  error.  ...  I  have  Hved  to  see  thirty  millions 
of  people  indignant  and  resolute,  spuming  at  slavery  and  demand- 
ing hberty  with  an  irresistible  voice.  Their  king  led  in  triumph, 
and  an  arbitrary  monarch  surrendering  himself  to  his  subjects.'* 
After  this  discourse  the  members  of  the  Revolutionary  Society 
of  Great  Britain  adjourned  to  the  London  Tavern  and  passed 
an  address  of  congratulation  on  the  "  glorious  example  of  France," 
which  was  transmitted  by  Lord  Stanhope  to  the  National 
Assembly. 

But  there  was  one  man  in  England  whose  passionate  love  of 
liberty  inspired  him  with  the  eloquence  that  alone  could  counter- 
act these  monstrous  libels  on  a  noble  cause.  Burning  with 
indignation  Edmund  Burke  arose  and  in  his  immortal  Reflections 
opened  the  eyes  of  his  fellow-countrymen  to  the  true  character 
of  the  French  Revolution  and  the  outrages  of  October  6.  "Is 
this  a  triumph  to  be  consecrated  at  altars  ?  to  be  commemor- 
ated with  grateful  thanksgiving  ?  to  be  offered  to  the  divine 
humanity  with  fervent  prayer  and  enthusiastic  ejaculation  ?  .  .  . 
I  shall  never  think  that  a  prince,  the  acts  of  whose  whole  reign 
were  a  series  of  concessions  to  liis  subjects,  who  was  wilhng  to 
relax  his  authority,  to  remit  his  prerogatives,  to  call  his  people 
to  a  share  of  freedom  not  known,  perhaps  not  desired,  by  their 
ancestors  ...  I  shall  be  led  with  great  difficulty  to  think  that 
he  deserves  the  cruel  and  insulting  triumph  of  Paris  and  of  Dr. 
Price.  /  tremble  for  the  cause  of  liberty,  from  such  an  example 
to  kings.  I  tremble  for  the  cause  of  humanity  in  the  unpunished 
outrages  of  the  most  wicked  of  mankind," 

Burke's  stirring  appeal  met  with  a  prodigious  success  and 
carried  all  the  sane  portion  of  the  people  with  him.  Hitherto 
they  had  retained  a  certain  sympathy  with  the  Revolution ;  the 
national  "  sporting  "  instinct  had  responded,  as  we  have  seen. 


I70        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

to  the  enterprise  of  attacking  the  Bastille,  but  this  same  instinct 
recoiled  at  the  cowardly  attempt  to  massacre  the  defenceless 
Royal  Family  in  their  beds.  ' '  After  the  6th  of  October, ' '  says  the 
Republican  Dumont,  "  many  sensible  men  (in  England)  began 
to  think  that  the  French  treated  infamously  a  king  who  had 
done  so  much  for  them."  ^ 

The  effect  of  Burke's  speech  was  undoubtedly  to  save  England 
from  revolution  ;  Dumont  even  goes  so  far  as  to  question  whether 
he  was  not  "  the  saviour  of  Europe."  In  vain  the  EngUsh 
revolutionaries  retorted  with  a  storm  of  seditious  pamphlets; 
their  efforts  were  speedily  transformed  into  waste  paper,  whilst 
Burke's  denunciation  will  Uve  as  long  as  the  EngUsh  tongue  is 
spoken. 

"  Its  merit,'*  wrote  the  contemporary  John  Adolphus,  "  can 
only  be  appreciated  by  the  never-dying  rancour  it  excited  in 
the  minds  of  his  opponents,  a  rancour  which  age,  affliction,  sick- 
ness, and  even  death  could  not  assuage."  ^  It  is  not  assuaged 
yet !  StiU,  after  more  than  a  hundred  years,  the  Radical  press 
does  not  weary  of  reviUng  the  author  of  the  great  Reflections, 
and  owing  to  its  unremitting  efforts  England  has  never  been 
aUowed  to  know  the  debt  she  owes  to  Edmund  Burke.^ 

But  if  England  began  henceforth  to  regard  the  French 
Revolution  with  aversion,  Prussia  continued  to  express  unfeigned 
admiration  for  the  principles  of  French  Uberty.  The  decrees  of 
August  4,  which  deprived  the  German  princes  of  their  estates 
in  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  had  already  embittered  feehng  between 
Austria  and  France,  and  paved  the  way  for  the  dissolution  of 
the  hated  Franco- Austrian  alliance;  and,  although  perhaps 
Prussia  hardly  reahzed  it  at  the  time,  the  first  step  had  been 
taken  towards  the  incorporation  of  these  provinces  with  the 
future  German  Empire.  WeU  might  Hertzberg  and  Von  der 
Goltz  rejoice  at  each  succeeding  stage  of  the  Revolution  !  "A 
King  without  authority,"  wrote  the  Minister  of  Saxony  to  Berlin, 
whilst  the  march  on  Versailles  was  preparing,  "  a  state  without 
money  or  military  power ;  in  a  word,  a  vessel  caught  in  a  storm 
and  of  which  Mirabeau  is  the  only  pilot — what  importance  can 
France  have  henceforth  in  Europe  ?  "  * 

"^  Souvenirs  sur  Mirabeau,  p,  96. 

2  History  of  the  French  Revolution,  by  John  Adolphus,  ii.  298. 

'  So  thoroughly  has  this  propaganda  been  carried  out  that  in  the 
popular  edition  of  the  Reflections,  which  the  good  taste  of  the  British  public 
made  it  necessary  to  pubUsh,  a  preface  has  been  inserted  explaining  that 
Burke  was  ill-informed  on  the  subject  and  urging  the  reader  to  consult  Mr. 
Arthur  Young's  Travels  in  France.  But  the  writer  carefully  refrains  from 
mentioning  Arthur  Young's  later  work,  The  Example  of  France,  which  con- 
firms every  word  uttered  by  Burke  in  rather  stronger  language  I 

*  L'Europe  et  la  Revolution  Franpaise,  by  A.  Sorel,  ii.  26, 


THE  MARCH  ON  VERSAILLES       171 

Prussia  had  indeed  every  reason  to  be  grateful  to  the 
Revolution.  Was  it  a  recognition  of  this  debt  that  inspired 
the  Prussians  to  enter  Versailles  eighty-two  years  later  to  the 
strains  of  the  "  Marseillaise  "  ?  The  6th  of  October  1789  had 
proved  but  the  prelude  to  the  8th  of  January  1871,  and  in  the 
great  gallery  of  the  palace,  stained  with  the  blood  of  the  King's 
bodyguard,  WiUiam  I.  of  Prussia  was  proclaimed  German 
Emperor  amidst  the  acclamations  of  his  conquering  hordes. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES 


173 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES 


COURSE  OF  THE  INTRIGUES   IN   1790  AND   1791 

A  PERIOD  of  nearly  three  years  elapsed  between  the  second  and 
third  great  outbreaks  of  the  Revolution.  During  this  interval 
changes  so  fundamental  took  place  among  the  factions  that  the 
outbreaks  of  1792  must  be  regarded  as  an  entirely  different 
movement — ^in  fact  as  a  new  and  distinct  revolution. 

In  order  to  understand  the  causes  that  produced  this  second 
revolution  it  is  necessary  therefore  to  form  some  idea  of  the  course 
taken  by  the  revolutionary  intrigues  since  the  march  on  Versailles. 

With  the  exile  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  and  his  mentor  Choderlos 
de  Laclos  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  was  temporarily  arrested, 
and  by  the  desertion  of  Mirabeau  in  the  following  spring  lost 
its  principal  dynamic  force.  Mirabeau,  it  was  said,  had  been 
"  bought  "  by  the  Court ;  true,  Mirabeau  received  payment,  but 
this  time  only  for  the  expression  of  his  real  opinions.  He  had 
always  despised  the  Due  d'Orleans,  and  once  the  King's  bounty 
had  freed  him  from  this  ignoble  servitude  he  devoted  all  his 
immense  energy  to  building  up  the  royal  authority  he  had  spent 
the  previous  years  in  overthrowing. 

Louis  XVI.,  who,  as  M.  Sorel  well  expresses  it,  "  saw  only  in 
the  Revolution  a  misunderstanding  between  himself  and  his 
people,  exploited  and  stirred  up  by  a  band  of  sedition-mongers," 
hoped  by  the  capture  of  the  chief  agitator  to  put  an  end  to 
hostiUties. 

On  the  13th  of  July  1790,  before  taking  his  oath  to  maintain 
the  Constitution  on  the  following  day  at  the  Fete  de  la  Federation, 
Louis  XVI.  appeared  at  the  Assembly,  and  deUvered  himself  of 
this  strangely  human  message  to  his  people  : 

"  Tell  your  fellow-citizens  that  I  wish  I  could  speak  to  them 
all  as  I  speak  to  you  here ;  teU  them  again  that  their  King  is 
their  father,  their  brother,  their  friend ;  that  he  can  be  happy 
only  in  their  happiness,  great  with  their  glory,  mighty  through 
their  Hberty,  rich  through  their  prosperity,  that  he  can  suffer  only 
in  their  griefs.    Make  the  words  or  rather  the  feelings  of  my 

175 


176        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

heart  to  be  heard  in  the  humblest  cottages  and  in  the  dwellings 
of  the  unfortunate ;  tell  them  that  if  I  cannot  go  with  you  into 
their  abodes,  I  desire  to  be  there  by  my  affection  and  by  means 
of  laws  that  will  protect  the  weak,  to  watch  with  them,  to  Uve 
for  them,  to  die  if  necessary  for  them.  ..." 

But  the  return  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  two  days  earlier — ^which 
Lafayette  was  either  too  fooUsh  or  too  cowardly  to  oppose — gave 
a  fresh  impetus  to  the  conspirators,  and  insurrection  broke  out 
with  redoubled  fury  at  the  Palais  Royal.  The  professional 
agitators  of  1789 — St.  Huruge,  Grammont,  Foumier  I'Americain 
— ^were  now  reinforced  by  a  gang  of  hired  brigands,  known  as 
the  company  of  the  "  Sabbat,"  raised  by  the  De  Lameths  and 
consisting  mainly  of  ItaUans — ^notably  Rotondo,  Malga,  and 
Cavallanti — ^whom  we  now  find  mingling  in  all  the  revolutionary 
mobs,  and  committing  every  form  of  sanguinary  violence.^  In 
the  summer  of  1790,  soon  after  the  Fete  de  la  Federation,  Rotondo 
was  despatched  to  St.  Cloud  to  murder  the  Queen  whilst  she  was 
walking  in  the  garden,  and  failed  only  because  the  rain  kept  her 
indoors  on  the  day  appointed ;  ^  again  in  the  following  November 
Rotondo  and  Cavallanti  led  a  mob  to  pillage  the  house  of  the  Due 
de  Castries,  who  had  wounded  one  of  the  De  Lameths  in  a  duel. 
At  the  same  time  the  Due  d' Orleans  entered  into  relations  with 
another  intriguer — Madame  de  la  Motte,  famous  in  the  affair  of 
the  necklace,  who  now  returned  to  Paris,  and  occupied  a  magni- 
ficent hotel  in  the  Place  Vendome  provided  for  her  by  the  duke 
in  return  for  fresh  Ubels  on  the  Queen.^ 

MeanwhUe,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  had  sworn  to  maintain 
the  Constitution  and  had  placed  no  obstacles  whatever  in  the 
way  of  the  Assembly,  the  King  was  still  kept  a  prisoner  by 
Lafayette  at  the  TuUeries  in  direct  violation  of  the  principles 
laid  down  by  the  people.* 

It  was  under  these  circumstances  that  Louis  XVI.  decided 
in  desperation  to  appeal  for  intervention  by  foreign  powers.  At 
the  end  of  October  an  envoy  was  despatched  to  the  Marquis  de 
Bouille,  in  command  on  the  frontier,  to  inform  him  that  "  the 
King's  position  under  the  gaolership  of  Lafayette  had  become 
so  intolerable  that  he  contemplated  flight  to  the  frontier  to  one 

^  La  Conspiration  rSvolutionnaire  de  ijSg,  by  Gustave  Bord,  p.  20  ; 
Le  Marquis  de  St.  Huruge,  by  Henri  Furgeot,  pp.  192^  225  ;  Crimes  et 
F or f aits  de  L.  P.  J.  d'Orlians  dScouverts  par  un  citoyen. 

2  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  276. 

^  MSmoires  de  Lafayette,  iii.  157  ;   Correspondance  secrete,  p.  481. 

*  See   the    Risume   of  the   Cahiers,  p.  7,  Article  II.  "  The  person 
the  King  is  inviolable  and  sacred,"  Article  XI.  "  Individual  liberty 
sacred."     Therefore  either  as   King   or  subject  Louis   XVI.   could   nc 
legally  be  kept  a  prisoner,  not  only  without  the  formality  of  a  trial  bi 
without  even  any  reason  being  given  for  his  detention. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES  177 

of  the  places  under  Bouille's  command,  in  order  to  muster  around 
him  all  the  troops  and  also  those  of  his  subjects  who  had  remained 
faithful  to  him,  to  endeavour  to  win  back  the  rest  of  his  people 
who  had  been  misled  by  sedition-mongers,  and  to  seek  support 
in  the  help  of  his  aUies  if  all  other  means  to  re-establish  order 
and  peace  proved  unavailing."  ^ 

Now  since  the  suggestion  contained  in  this  letter  of  an  appeal 
to  the  King's  allies,  the  Austrians,  has  been  made  the  chief  ground 
of  accusation  against  both  Louis  XVI.  and  Marie  Antoinette,  it 
is  important  to  understand  their  real  intentions  on  this  question 
of  the  "  Appel  k  Tfitranger."  No  one  has  explained  the  matter 
more  clearly  than  M.  Louis  MadeUn,  the  historian  who  best 
represents  modem  French  opinion  : 

"  Marie  Antoinette  .  .  .  appears  to  have  thought  of  this  appeal 
to  Europe  towards  the  summer  of  1790.  The  idea  she  entertained 
concerning  it — a  woman's  idea,  perfectly  childish — ^is  still  Uttle 
known  in  general.  She  dreamt  in  no  way  of  a  counter-revolution 
brought  to  Paris  in  the  baggage-wagons  of  the  foreigner,  but  of 
a  simple  manifestation  on  the  frontiers,  by  means  of  which  the 
Court  would  show  that  they  *  disapproved  of  the  way  the  King 
was  treated.'  The  Emperor  would  mass  his  troops,  make  a 
feint  of  advancing,  Louis  XVI.  would  place  himself  at  the  head 
of  the  French  army,  and  Leopold  would  then  retire  before  his 
brother-in-law,  who,  aureoled  by  this  victory,  would  re-enter 
Paris  surrounded  by  the  love  of  an  expectant  people." 

The  plan  was  futile,  however,  for  the  reason  that  the  "friendly  " 
sentiments  of  the  European  sovereigns  to  whom  this  appeal  was 
made  were  outweighed  by  their  political  ambitions.  "  The  cause 
of  kings  !  The  cause  of  dynasties  !  "  cries  M.  MadeUn ;  "  that  will 
be  said  hypocritically  in  1792,  but  the  Revolution  neither  alarms 
nor  scandalizes  Europe  in  1789  and  1790,  it  is  rather  a  cause  for 
rejoicing."  All  the  splendour  of  old  France  that  had  evoked 
the  envy  and  admiration  of  foreign  monarchs  was  centred  not 
only  in  the  Court  but  in  the  Capetian  dynasty,  consequently  the 
sight  of  France,  their  eternal  rival,  bleeding  in  the  dust  from 
self-inflicted  wounds,  seemed  to  these  lesser  powers  no  occasion 
for  knight-errantry.  As  to  the  ties  of  blood  which  have  been 
represented  as  binding  together  the  royal  famiUes  of  Europe  in 
a  confraternity  dangerous  to  the  interests  of  their  subjects,  their 
feebleness  was  never  better  exemplified  than  in  the  French 
Revolution,  for  of  all  the  European  sovereigns  Leopold  II., 
Emperor  of  Austria,  brother  to  the  Queen  of  France,  was  perhaps 
the  least  eager  to  defend  his  sister's  interests  or  even  to  ensure  her 
safety,  whilst  Gustavus  III.  of  Sweden,  bound  by  no  ties  of  kinship, 
alone  displayed  activity  in  responding  to  her  appeal. 

*  M&moires  de  BouilU,  p.  i8i. 


178        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

In  the  case  of  Frederick  William  II.  of  Prussia,  it  was  not 
merely  a  matter  of  passive  acquiescence  in  the  disorders  of  France, 
but,  as  we  have  already  seen,  of  active  co-operation.  The  intrigue 
of  Von  der  Goltz — ^which  we  must  follow  in  the  pages  of  Sorel — 
had  prospered  marvellously  since  the  march  on  Versailles,  for 
he  had  succeeded  in  carrying  out  his  Prussian  Majesty's  in- 
junctions by  forming  a  coaUtion  with  several  of  the  most  in- 
fluential revolutionary  leaders,  notably  the  Orleaniste  Petion. 
In  May  of  1790  Frederick  WiUiam  had  written  to  Von  der  Goltz 
ordering  him  "  to  keep  this  Petion  on  the  alert,  to  express  the 
satisfaction  he  (the  King)  feels  at  his  conduct,  and  to  let  them 
know  in  Berlin  whether  it  would  not  be  expedient  to  give  him 
a  pension."  ^ 

This  letter  was  followed  five  months  later  by  the  despatch  of 
a  fresh  emissary  to  France,  a  certain  Jew  agitator  named  Ephraim, 
who  arrived  in  Paris  on  September  14,  1790,  armed  with  a  letter 
from  the  King  of  Prussia  to  Von  der  Goltz  instructing  him  to  put 
Ephraim  in  touch  with  the  revolutionary  leaders  and  pave  his 
way  for  him : 

"  Goltz  had  been  preparing  it  for  a  long  time.  He  arranged 
for  the  admission  of  the  royal  go-between  with  Lafayette,  with 
Bamave,  with  Lameth ;  he  put  him  in  touch  with  Petion,  Brissot, 
Gensonne,  and  their  friends  (i.e.  with  the  future  Girondins). 
Ephraim  found  them  full  of  animosity  against  Austria  and  full 
of  cordiality  towards  Prussia,  He  showed  himself  still  more 
anti- Austrian  than  any  one  amongst  them,  and  the  cynicism  of 
his  language  with  regard  to  the  Queen  seemed  a  certain  guarantee 
of  the  sincerity  of  his  sympathy  for  France." 

Ephraim  then  tried  to  worm  his  way  into  the  confidence  of 
the  King's  minister,  Montmorin,  but  without  success.  "  *  The 
object  he  put  forward,'  said  Montmorin,  '  is  a  commercial  treaty, 
but  I  have  occasion  to  beheve  that  his  mission  extends  further 
and  that  he  has  been  instructed  to  sound  us  on  a  poUtical  under- 
standing.' .  .  .  Montmorin  had  good  reasons  for  distrusting  aU 
these  Prussian  manoeuvres ;  Ephraim  was  playing  a  very  perfidious 
part  in  Paris.  He  frequented  the  clubs  and  made  himself  noticed 
by  his  democratic  violence.  '  His  object,'  wrote  Montmorin, 
'  is  to  embroil  us  with  the  Emperor  of  Austria,  and  he  thinks  that 
in  stirring  up  the  pubHc  against  the  Queen  he  will  succeed  in  this 
more  easily.  He  goes  in  for  underhand  deahngs  and  tries  to 
work  upon  the  joumahsts.  I  am  almost  certain  that  he  dis- 
tributes money,  and  I  know  that  he  draws  large  sums  from  the 
banker.'  "  ^ 

^  All  the  following  quotations  are  taken  from  L' Europe  et  la  Revolutiox 
FrafiQaise,  by  Albert  Sorel,  vol.  ii.  pp.  69,  157. 

'  It  was  his  refusal  to  form  an  alliance  with  Prussia  at  this  crisis  that 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES  179 

Montmorin's  suspicions  were  perfectly  correct,  for  on  this 
point  we  have  the  evidence  of  contemporaries  belonging  to 
absolutely  opposite  parties.  Thus  the  Comte  de  Fersen,  writing 
to  Gustavus  III.  of  Sweden  on  March  8, 1791,  states  that  Ephraim 
has  been  supplying  money  to  the  agents  of  revolutionary  propa- 
ganda— "  not  long  ago  he  again  received  600,000  louis."  ^  And 
Camille  Desmoulins  threw  further  Hght  on  the  matter  in  1793  by 
this  significant  phrase  :  ''  Is  it  not  a  fact  aptly  brought  forward 
by  PhiUppeaux  that  the  treasurer  of  the  King  of  Prussia,  in  giving 
him  an  account  of  the  expenses  for  last  year,  produces  an  item 
of  six  million  ecus  for  corruptions  in  France  ?  "  ^  In  all  the 
sordid  annals  of  the  Hohenzollems  no  greater  perfidy  has  ever 
been  brought  to  Ught ;  already  they  had  embarked  on  the 
programme  which  in  our  own  day  they  have  pursued  with  un- 
failing success — the  engineering  of  revolution  in  all  those  countries 
they  wish  to  subdue.  Well  might  the  English  Jacobin  Miles 
exclaim  :  "  Of  all  the  sceptred  miscreants  who  have  dishonoured 
royalty  since  you  and  I  have  perambulated  this  earth,  I  know 
of  none  so  base,  so  mean,  so  infamous  as  the  present  King  of 
Prussia.  He  has  authorized  his  agents  throughout  Europe  to 
commit  a  kind  of  general  pillage— to  cajole  and  rob  all  nations." 

For  Miles,  revolutionary  though  he  was,  displayed  no  smaU 
perspicacity  in  seeing  through  the  intrigues  of  certain  so-caUed 
democrats,  and  he  was  not  deceived,  as  are  our  visionaries  of 
to-day,  by  protestations  of  sympathy  with  the  cause  of  hberty 
emanating  from  the  willing  slaves  of  Prussian  despotism. 
*'  Some  of  the  German  courts,"  he  wrote  on  March  12,  1791, 
"  have  emissaries  here — all  apostles  of  liberty — preaching  equal 

formed  the  principal  charge  against  Montmorin  when  he  was  brought  to 
trial  by  the  Girondins  two  years  later.  The  words  in  which  this  accusation 
is  conveyed  afford  clear  evidence  that  the  Girondins  were  acting  in  the 
interests  of  Prussia,  and  throw  a  curious  light  on  their  political  morality  : 
"  It  had  been  assumed,"  runs  the  ojfficial  report  read  aloud  by  the  Girondin, 
Lasource,  that  M.  de  Montmorin  "  had  not  believed  in  the  sincerity  of  the 
advances  made  by  the  Court  of  Berhn.  It  was  not  possible  that  this  Court 
should  not  have  been  of  good  faith,  since  it  (the  Court  of  Berlin  !)  has  been 
so  from  all  time,  and  that  it  can  only  be  the  natural  enemy  of  that  of 
Vienna  .  .  .  M.  de  Montmorin  .  .  .  knew  that  jealousy  and  rivalry  was 
fomenting  more  than  ever  between  these  two  Courts,  since  he  knew  and 
admitted  himself  that  it  was  the  King  of  Prussia  who  had  excited  and  fomented 
by  his  agents  the  insurrection  of  the  Belgians  and  the  LiSgeois  (against  Austria). 
He  therefore  knew  perfectly  the  attitude  of  the  King  of  Prussia,  and  if  he 
refused  to  adopt  his  views  it  was  not  because  he  doubted  his  sincerity,  but 
because  he  did  not  wish  for  an  alliance  with  that  Court.  What  reproaches. 
Messieurs,  has  not  France  to  make  against  this  ex-minister  ?  "  {Moniteur, 
xiii.  591).  Montmorin  was  therefore  to  be  condemned  as  a  traitor  to  France 
because  he  had  refused  to  form  an  alliance  with  a  Court  that  he  knew  to  be 
fomenting  sedition  in  a  rival  State  ! 

^  Le  Comte  de  Fersen  et  la  Cour  de  France,  i.  87. 

*  Fragment  de  VHistoire  secrete  de  la  Rivolution,  p.  44. 


i8o        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

rights  and  assuring  the  giddy  multitude  that  their  example  will  he 
followed  by  the  whole  world.  Prussia  for  intrigue  takes  the  lead. 
She  pays  court  to  each  party  as  appearances  may  seem  to  favour. 
The  Tuileries  she  disregards.  All  her  agents  vociferate  against 
the  house  of  Austria  as  plotting  with  the  Queen  for  the  purpose 
of  destroying  the  Revolution."  ^ 

The  skill  with  which  this  intrigue  was  conducted  shows  that 
the  teachings  of  Frederick  the  Great  had  been  laid  to  heart  by 
I  his  disciples.  Frederick  had  always  beheved  in  the  dissemination 
f  of  democratic  doctrines  abroad  whilst  remaining  a  past  master 
in  the  art  of  counteracting  their  influence  at  home.  The  rulers 
of  the  various  German  states  had  now  more  than  ever  need  to 
exercise  this  talent,  for  the  people  of  Germany  displayed  alarming 
symptoms  of  revolutionary  fever.  The  doctrines  of  the  German 
Illumines  that  had  contributed  so  powerfully  to  the  revolution 
in  France  were  now  making  themselves  felt  in  the  country  that 
gave  them  birth.  Burke,  writing  in  this  very  year  of  1791, 
remarks  :  "A  great  revolution  is  preparing  in  Germany  ;  and  a 
revolution,  in  my  opinion,  hkely  to  be  more  decisive  upon  the 
general  fate  of  nations  than  that  of  France  itself.  ..." 

This  revolution,  which  might  have  proved  the  salvation  of  the 
civilized  world  by  overthrowing  the  despotism  of  the  Hohenzollerns, 
was  averted  by  the  revolution  in  France. 

The  death  of  Mirabeau  in  April  1791  removed  a  formidable 
obstacle  from  the  path  of  Prussia.  The  author  of  The  SecreL^ 
History  of  the  Court  of  Berlin,  who  had  declared  that  "  war  is  the 
national  industry  of  Prussia,"  was  not  the  man  to  be  deceived 
by  the  pacific  protestations  of  Frederick  WiUiam's  emissaries. 
Mirabeau  knew  far  more  than  was  convenient  about  the  intrigues 
of  the  Hohenzollerns,  and  he  detested  Hertzberg.  "  That  old 
fox,"  he  declared  exultingly  to  Dumouriez,  "  had  only  a  short 
time  to  live."  ^ 

Four  days  later  Mirabeau  himself  was  dead.  The  truth  of 
the  verdict,  "  Death  from  natural  causes,"  was  never  proved 
conclusively,  and  the  Orleanistes  were  strongly  suspected  of 
avenging  themselves  by  poison  for  the  defection  of  their  most 
valuable  ally.  But  is  it  altogether  impossible  that  Ephraina] 
may  have  been  concerned  in  the  matter  ?  The  Jew  agitator,  [ 
at  any  rate,  played  an  active  part  in  the  tumult  that  took  placej 
a  fortnight  later  when  the  Orleanistes,  once  more  hoping  t< 
achieve  the  King's  death  at  the  hands  of  the  people,^  drove 

^  The  Correspondence  of  William  Augustus  Miles  on  the  French  Revolu^ 
tion,  i.  256. 
:..■   *  Mimoires  de  Dumouriez. 

*  "  The  object  of  the  plot  was  the  assassination  of  the  King  "  {Choderlos 
'  de  Laclos,  by  :£niile  Dard,  p.  a86). 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   i8i 

mob  to  the  Tuileries  under  the  pretext  of  preventing  the  Royal 
Family  from  going  to  St.  Cloud  for  Easter.  The  same  thing  had 
been  attempted  the  year  before  when  women  were  sent  to  incite 
the  crowd  to  violence,  but  their  efforts  had  proved  unavailing, 
and  the  King  had  set  forth  upon  his  journey  amidst  the  acclama- 
tions of  the  Parisians  and  cries  of  "  Bon  voyage  au  bon  Papa  !  "  ^ 
The  revolutionary  leaders  reaUzed  that  more  potent  instruments 
must  be  employed  if  they  were  to  bring  off  their  coup.  Danton, 
the  principal  organizer  of  the  movement,^  remained  as  usual  in 
the  background,  but  Laclos  disguised  as  a  jockey  and  SiUery  as 
a  lackey  were  recognized  amongst  the  crowd.  Again  the  pro- 
fessional agitators  had  been  summoned — St.  Huruge  and  the 
bloodthirsty  members  of  the  Sabbat ;  "  Malga  gorged  with  gold 
and  wine  "  mingled  with  the  troops,  inciting  them  to  murder ; 
Rotondo  led  the  rabble.^  But  it  was  Scdd  to  be  Ephr^m  who 
had  financed  the  movement  with  the  funds  confided  to  him  by 
his  royal  master.* 

This  outrage  finally  decided  Louis  XVI.  to  carry  out  his  plan 
of  flight  to  the  frontier,  and  on  the  20th  of  June  the  Royal  Family 
set  forth  on  the  fatal  journey  to  Montmedy  that  ended  in  their 
arrest  at  Varennes.  The  Orleanistes  immediately  seized  the 
opportunity  to  fan  up  popular  fury  against  the  King  ;  the  gutter 
press  in  their  pay  poured  forth  pamphlets  describing  Louis  XVI. 
as  legros  cochon,^  a  besotted  drunkard,  "  a  monopoUzer,  a  swindler, 
a  false-coiner,  a  devourer  of  men."  ^  At  the  Jacobin  Club,  Real, 
amidst  furious  abuse  of  the  Kiag,  proposed  that  the  Due  d'Orleans 
should  be  urged  to  accept  the  regency."'  The  duke,  who  at  the 
first  news  of  the  King's  fUght  had  driven  round  Paris  with  a  smile 
on  his  Hps  congratulating  himself  on  his  victory,  now  became 
struck  with  panic,  and  exasperated  his  supporters  by  pubhshing 
a  letter  composed  for  him  by  Madame  de  GenHs  decUning  the 
regency.^  But  Laclos,  energetic  as  ever  in  the  cause  of  his 
royal  "  proteg^,"  drew  up  a  petition  in  collaboration  with 
Brissot,  demanding  the  deposition  of  the  King  and,  in  spite  of 
the  protests  of  Brissot,^    "  his  replacement  by  constitutional 

*  Correspondance  secrite,  p.  450.    ly 

2  Danton  boasted  of  this  at  his  trial :  "It  was  I  who  prevented  the 
journey  to  St.  Cloud."  See  Notes  de  Topino  Lebrun ;  also  Bulletin  du 
Tribunal  rivolutionnaire.  No.  21822,  "Defense  de  Danton." 

'  fimile  Dard,  op.  cit.  ;  Correspondance  secrUe,  523  ;  Lettres  d'AristO' 
crates,  by  Pierre  de  Vaissi^re,  p.  291. 

*  6niile  Dard,  op.  cit. 

*  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  by  Mercier,  i.  192. 

*  Revolutions  de  France  et  de  Brabant,  by  Camille  Desmoulins. 
'''  Siances  des  Jacobins  for  July  3,  1791.  \/ 

"  M&moires  de  Mme.  de  Genlis,  iv.  92. 

*  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  ii.  285  ;  Mimoires  de  Brissot,  iv.  342. 


i82         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

means  " — ^in  other  words,  the  substitution  of  the  Due  d' Orleans 
for  Louis  XVI. 

The  Orleanistes,  however,  had  over-reached  themselves ; 
in  degrading  the  King  they  had  succeeded  in  degrading  the 
monarchy,  and  now /or  the  first  time  the  cry  of  "  No  more  kings !  " 
made  itself  heard,  and  the  proposal  was  made  that  the  phrase 
composed  by  Laclos  should  be  replaced  by  one  demanding  the 
abohtion  of  the  monarchy.^ 

This  suggestion  of  a  RepubHc,  emanating  from  the  Club  of 
the  CordeUers  and  a  section  of  Paris  entirely  under  their  control 
known  as  the  Theatre  Fran9ais,2  met  with  the  support  of  only 
a  few  isolated  revolutionaries,  including  Brissot  and  Condorcet, 
whose  Repubhcan  convictions  were  more  than  doubtful,  and  was 
violently  opposed  by  the  Jacobins,  who  were  mainly  Orleanistes. 
Already  at  a  sitting  of  the  Club,  immediately  after  the  flight  to 
Varennes,  a  member  who  ventured  to  propose  a  RepubHc  had 
been  indignantly  shouted  down,'  and  the  amendment  suggested 
by  the  so-called  "  RepubUcans  "  was  therefore  rejected  by  the 
Jacobins,  and  the  original  proposal  of  Laclos  retained  in  the 
petition  which  was  to  be  presented  at  "  the  altar  of  the  country  " 
erected  on  the  Champ  de  Mars. 

By  means  of  cajolery,  threats,  and  the  dissemination  of  panic 
news,*  some  thousands  of  signatures  were  obtained  in  the  Fau- 
bourgs— ^principally  those  of  women  and  children  ^ — and  early 
in  the  morning  of  the  day  appointed,  July  17,  1791,  a  disorderly 
crowd  assembled  on  the  Champ  de  Mars,  and  after  inaugurating 
the  ceremony  by  the  murder  of  two  unoffending  citizens — an 
old  soldier  and  a  wig-maker,  who  had  taken  refuge  from  the  rays 
of  the  sun  beneath  the  steps  of  the  altar  in  order  to  enjoy  a  frugal 
breakfast  ® — proceeded  to  the  usual  revolutionary  pastime  of 
pelting  the  troops  assembled  by  Lafayette  with  stones.  Where- 
upon Lafayette  and  Bailly,  the  mayor,  with  unwonted  firmness, 
hoisted  the  red  flag  and  proclaimed  martial  law,  but  the  soldiers, 
exasperated  by  the  pistol  shots  that  now  succeeded  to  the  hail 
of  stones,  without  waiting  for  further  orders  fired  on  the  rioters 
and  killed  a  number  of  them.' 

^  Aulard's  Siances  des  Jacobins,  iii.  43.  ^  Buchez  et  Roux,  x.  145. 

'  See  Journal  des  Dehats  de  la  Soci6U  des  Amis  de  la  Constitution,  etc., 
S6ance  of  July  i,  1791.  M.  Varennes  asks  whether  the  throne  shall  be  set 
up  again,  and  whether  a  monarchic  or  republican  government  would  be 
best :  "  Grand  bruit,  brouhahas  "  ;  the  President  calls  the  member  to  order. 
Also  Siance  of  July  8,  1791,  M.  Goupil  in  a  speech  refers  to  "  the  opinions 
that  prevail  in  this  society  in  favour  of  RepubUcanism."  The  greatest 
tumult  arises  at  this  sentence,  and  a  member  reminds  the  speaker  that 
"  all  this  uproar  is  caused  by  your  attributing  to  the  society  sentiments  it 
has  never  entertained.     (Universal  applause.)" 

*  Beaulieu,  ii.  540.  ^  Ibid.  ii.  538.  •  Ibid.  ii.  541. 

'  Lafayette  was  ever  after  blamed  for  this  so-called  "  massacre  "  by 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES  183 

As  in  all  popular  tumults,  the  display  of  force  brought  the 
mob  to  its  senses ;  in  an  instant  the  whole  Champ  de  Mars  was 
swept  clear  of  insurgents,  but,  what  was  more  important,  the 
fusillade  had  the  effect  of  terrifying  the  revolutionary  leaders. 
The  Jacobins,  assembled  in  their  Club,  hastily  escaped  by  doors 
and  windows,  and  ran  for  their  lives  amidst  the  jeers  of  the 
populace.^  Brissot,  Camille  Desmoulins,  and  Fr6ron  "  dis- 
appeared "  ;  ^  Marat  betook  himself  once  more  to  a  cellar ;  ^ 
Robespierre,  trembUng  in  every  limb,  hurriedly  changed  his 
lodgings  ;  *  Danton  fled  to  the  country,  and  thence  to  England  ;  ^ 
whilst  Hebert,  the  terrible  Pere  Duchesne,  who  for  once  had 
ventured  out  into  a  popular  tumult  and  heard  the  bullets  of  the 
soldiery  whisthng  past  his  ears,  never  recovered  from  his  fright : 
"  It  seems,"  says  his  biographer,  M.  d'Estr^e,  "  that  every  time  his 
pamphlets  mention  this  fusillade  .  .  .  they  sweat  anguish ;  and 
this  terror  doubles  his  ferocity."^  At  the  same  time  the  Jew 
Ephraim,  openly  accused  by  RoyaUst  writers  of  financing 
seditious  libels  and  plotting  the  death  of  the  Queen,  was  arrested 
and  imprisoned  for  two  days  in  the  Abbaye,  after  which  he  was 
sent  back  to  Prussia  and  we  hear  of  him  no  more.'' 

The  tumult,  described  henceforth  by  revolutionary  writers 
as  "  the  massacre  of  the  Champ  de  Mars,"  was,  moreover,  not 
the  only  check  received  by  the  Orleaniste  faction  at  this  crisis ; 
a  more  serious  reverse  was  the  defection  of  several  of  the  most 
influential  Orleaniste  leaders.  Bamave,  who  with  Petion  had 
been  sent  to  escort  the  Royal  Family  on  the  terrible  return  journey 
from  Varennes,  had  been  won  over  by  the  sight  of  the  Queen's 

the  revolutionary  leaders  ;  Bailly  paid  for  it  with  his  life.  Yet  it  is  certain 
that  Lafayette  did  everything  in  his  power  to  restrain  the  indignation  of 
the  troops.  See  Beaulieu,  ii.  543,  and  the  evidence  of  Gouverneur  Morris, 
who  was  an  eye-witness  of  the  scene :  "  To  be  paraded  through  the  streets 
through  the  scorching  sun,  and  then  stand  like  hohday  turkeys  to  be 
knocked  down  by  brickbats,  was  a  little  more  than  they  (the  troops)  had 
the  patience  to  bear  ;  so  that  without  waiting  for  orders  they  fired  and 
killed  a  dozen  or  two  of  the  ragged  regiment.  The  rest  ran  off  like  lusty 
fellows,"  etc.  {Diary  and  Letters  of  Gouverneur  Morris,  i.  434).  L 

^  Beaulieu,  ii.  545. 

2  Histoire  des  Girondins,  by  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  i.  330 ;  La  Tribune 
des  Patriotes,  by  Prudhomme  ;  Revolutions  de  France,  by  Camille  Des- 
mouhns.  No.  86  ;    Camille  Desmoulins,  by  fidouard  Fleury,  i.  230. 

'  Camille  Desmoulins,  by  fidouard  Fleury,  i.  227  :  "  The  terror  of 
Marat  seems  to  have  begun  the  day  after  the  flight  (to  Varennes),  when 
he  was  overcome  by  panic  lest  Louis  XVI.  should  return  at  the  head  of  an 
army  and  put  him  '  in  a  hot  oven.'  "     See  L'Ami  du  Peuple,  No.  497. 

*  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  65,  209,  210  and  note.  Robespierre's 
terror  also  began  at  the  flight  to  Varennes  {ibid.  p.  204). 

'^  Danton  Emigre,  by  Dr.  Robinet,  p.  24. 

"  Le  Pere  Duchesne,  by  Paul  d'Estree,  p.  61. 

'  Le  Marquis  de  St.  Huruge,  by  Henry  Furgeot,  p.  233. 


i84        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

courage  and  suffering,  and  henceforth  this  most  truculent  of 
revolutionaries  had  no  thought  but  to  devote  himself  to  the  cause 
of  the  woman  he  admired  and  pitied  so  profoundly.  On  his 
arrival  in  Paris  he  succeeded  in  detaching  a  number  of  other 
members  from  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy ;  amongst  these  were 
Le  Chapelier,  Adrien  Duport,  Alexandre  de  Lameth,  the  Vicomte 
de  Noailles,  Muguet  de  Nantou,  and  the  Due  de  Liancourt. 
This  party  now  joined  itself  to  Bailly  and  Lafayette  in  support 
of  the  King  and  the  Constitution.^ 

The  most  dangerous  agitators  having  thus  been  either  in- 
timidated or  won  over,  the  Revolution  was  once  more  brought 
to  a  standstill — most  contemporaries  indeed  beHeved  that  it 
had  finally  ended. ^ 

The  truth  is  that  by  this  time  the  people  were  heartily  sick 
of  the  Revolution,  which  had  not  only  brought  them  perpetual 
unrest  and  alarms,  but  had  created  the  serious  problem  of  un- 
employment. "  The  ill  effects  of  the  Revolution,"  wrote  Arthur 
Young  in  1792,  "  have  been  felt  more  severely  by  the  manu- 
facturers of  the  kingdom  than  by  any  other  class  of  the  people. 
.  .  .  This  effect,  which  was  absolute  death  by  starving  many 
thousands  of  families,  was  a  result  that,  in  my  opinion,  might 
have  been  avoided.  It  flowed  only  from  carrying  things  to  ex- 
tremities— from  driving  the  nobiUty  out  of  the  kingdom  and 
seizing,  instead  of  regulating,  the  whole  regal  authority." 

For  the  revolutionaries  of  1789,  like  certain  Socialists  of 
to-day,  whose  one  idea  is  to  clear  the  ground  of  all  existing 
conditions,  had  never  paused  to  consider  what  manner  of  social 
edifice  could  be  constructed  on  the  ruins,  and  the  result  of 
destroying,  impoverishing,  or  putting  to  flight  the  wealthy  and 
leisured  classes  had  been  simply  to  dislocate  the  whole  industrial 
system  and  to  ruin  agriculture.  For  this  reason  the  democrats 
of  1789  had  become  the  aristocrats  of  1792,  and  it  was  no  longer 
only  the  nobles  who  cursed  the  Revolution  but  the  farmers, 
the  manufacturers,  and  the  industrious  bourgeois  who  three  years 
earlier  had  hailed  "  the  dawn  of  liberty,"  and  now  found  them- 

^  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  iii.  139 ;  Beaulieu,  ii.  530 ; 
Mimoires  de  Mme.  de  Campan,  p.  294.  Fersen  thought  that  this  party 
only  went  over  to  the  King  out  of  self-interest,  and  neither  he  nor  the 
Queen  trusted  them  {Le  Comte  de  Fersen  et  la  Cour  de  France,  ii.  7,  213). 
Marie  Antoinette  has  been  bitterly  reproached  for  this,  but  when  we 
remember  their  former  record — Barnave's  attitude  to  the  murder  of 
FouUon,  the  raising  of  the  "  Compagnie  du  Sabbat "  by  the  De  Lameths, 
and  the  infamous  part  they  had  all  played  in  the  former  insurrections — it 
is  not  altogether  surprising. 

2  It  should  be  noticed  that  this  reaction  set  in  before  the  King's  final 
acceptance  of  the  Constitution  on  September  13,  179 1.  M.  Louis  Madehn 
{La  Revolution,  p.  187)  says  that  from  August  i  to  October  i  it  was  the 
general  opinion  that  the  Revolution  was  over. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   185 

selves  sharing  the  fate  of  the  class  they  had  been  so  eager  to 
dethrone.^ 

With  the  employers  of  labour  the  workers  suffered  to  an  even 
greater  degree.  All  the  hands  that  had  ministered  to  the  needs 
or  caprices  of  the  rich  were  now  idle — embroiderers,  fan-makers, 
upholsterers,  gilders,  carriage-builders,  bookbinders,  engravers, 
wandered  aimlessly  through  the  streets  of  Paris;  3000  tailors' 
apprentices,  the  same  number  of  shoemakers  and  barbers,  4000 
domestic  servants  collected  in  crowds  to  deliberate  on  the  misery 
of  their  condition. ^ 

To  add  to  their  hardships  the  insurrection,  encouraged  by 
the  revolutionaries  in  San  Domingo,  had  checked  the  import  of 
colonial  supplies,  consequently  "  the  carpenter,  the  locksmith, 
the  mason,  and  the  market  porter  no  longer  have  their  morning 
coffee  and  milk,  and  every  morning  they  grumble  at  the  thought 
that  the  reward  of  their  patriotism  is  an  increase  of  privations."  ^ 

But  whilst  in  the  great  upheaval  many  of  the  people  had  been 
brought  down  to  the  depths  of  misery,  a  few  had  risen  to  the 
height  of  prosperity  and  had  become  the  oppressors  of  the  poor. 
When  in  June  1791  bands  of  working-men  appealed  to  Marat  for 
protection  against  their  employers,  it  was  against  the  masters 
who  had  been  working-men  themselves  that  their  complaints 
were  chiefly  directed,^  and  against  whom  they  could  obtain  no 
redress,  for  the  Assembly  with  all  its  professed  respect  for  the 
'*  sovereignty  of  the  people "  habitually  displayed  complete 
indifference   to   practical   schemes   of   social   reform.^    In   the 

^  "  Doubtless  there  were  French  farmers  who  rejoiced  at  the  spectacle 
of  all  the  great  properties  of  the  kingdom  being  levelled  by  the  nation  ; 
they  did  not,  however,  foresee  that  it  would  be  their  own  turn  next ;  that 
the  principle  of  equality  being  once  abroad,  would  infallibly  level  all 
property  "  (Arthur  Young,  The  Example  of  France,  p.  33). 

'  Taine,  La  Revolution,  iii.  136. 

»  Ibid.  V.  236. 

*  See  this  petition  in  Buchez  et  Roux,  x.  196,  where  the  worst  offenders 
are  specified  by  the  workmen  in  such  terms  as  "  day-labourer  now  enriched 
with  50,000  livres  of  income,"  or  "  who  arrived  in  Paris  in  sabots  and  now 
possess  four  fine  houses." 

•  See,  for  example,  the  laws  passed  on  June  14,  1791,  suppressing 
"coalitions  of  workmen" — i.e.  trades  unions — in  the  following  terms: 
"  Article  ist.  The  annihilation  of  all  kinds  of  corporations  of  citizens 
belonging  to  the  same  state  or  profession  being  one  of  the  fundamental 
bases  of  the  French  constitution,  it  is  forbidden  to  re-estabhsh  them  on 
any  pretext  or  under  any  form  whatsoever."  The  workmen  were  further 
forbidden  to  "  name  presidents,  keep  registers,  make  resolutions,  deliberate 
or  draw  up  regulations  on  their  pretended  common  interests,"  or  to  agree 
on  any  fixed  scale  of  wages.  These  resolutions  were  passed  almost  without 
discussion  and  without  a  word  of  protest  from  Robespierre  or  any  of  the 
other  so-called  democrats  of  the  Assembly  (Buchez  et  Roux,  x.  196)  ;  in 
fact,  they  were  enforced  with  still  greater  severity  later  on  under  the  reign 
of  Robespierre.     See  the  edicts  passed  by  the  Comity  de  Salut  Public  on 


i86        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

matter  of  the  administration  of  justice  throughout  the  country 
the  revolutionary  government  had  shown  itself  equally  incapable, 
and  the  httle  lawyers  now  in  power,  "  proud  of  finding  themselves 
invested  with  the  authority  of  the  old  poUce,  exercised  the  most 
vexatious  tyranny,  pronounced  arbitrary  verdicts,  and  ordered 
citizens  to  be  arrested  and  imprisoned  on  the  feeblest  pretext. 
Men  and  women  were  torn  from  their  beds  on  the  erratic  order 
of  a  president  of  the  district.  .  .  ."  ^ 

In  a  word,  the  condition  of  the  country  had  become  perfectly 
chaotic ;  no  one  could  feel  any  security  either  for  their  persons 
or  their  property,  and  the  universal  desire  was  now  for  a  return 
to  law  and  order.  The  revolutionary  leaders  were  clever  enough 
to  turn  this  popular  unrest  to  their  own  advantage;  all  their 
troubles,  they  told  the  people,  would  end  when  the  King  had 
finally  accepted  the  Constitution,  which  was  now  approaching 
completion,  but  they  were  careful  to  insinuate  that  the  King 
was  entirely  opposed  to  the  principles  it  contained.  This  was, 
of  course,  absolutely  untrue;  Louis  XVI.  had  throughout  con- 
curred with  every  true  reform,  and  had  already  accepted  the 
principles  of  the  Constitution  as  expressed  by  the  cahiers,  but  he 
had  made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  he  did  not  approve  of  the 
superstructure  erected  by  the  Assembly,  which  not  only  deprived 
him  of  the  authority  accorded  to  him  by  the  unanimous  will  of 
the  people,  but  which  he  held  to  be  directly  opposed  to  the 
interests  of  the  people  themselves.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
Constitution,  in  its  finished  form,  was  a  mass  of  contradictions ; 
it  was  neither  democratic  nor  autocratic,  neither  repubhcan 
nor  monarchic,  and  consequently  satisfied  neither  RoyaUsts  nor 
revolutionaries.  "  To  tell  the  truth,"  Camille  Desmoulins 
openly  declared  at  the  Jacobin  Club,  "  there  has  been  such  a 
confusion  of  plans,  and  so  many  people  have  worked  at  it  in 
contrary  directions,  that  it  is  a  veritable  Tower  of  Babel."  ^ 

It  was  this  Tower  of  Babel  that  Louis  XVI.  has  been  bitterly 
reproached  for  criticizing.  But  by  September  1791  the  time 
had  gone  by  for  criticism ;  every  remonstrance,  however  reason- 
able, made  by  the  King  met  only  with  insolence  from  the 
revolutionary  factions  in  the  Assembly,  and  Louis  XVI.  now 
reaUzed  that  he  must  either  accept  the  Constitution  in  its  entirety 
or  provoke  another  revolution.  He  decided,  therefore,  to  accept 
it  unconditionally,  leaving  it  to  the  people  to  find  out  its  imper- 
fections for  themselves.     It  is  this  that  revolutionary  historians 

the  22nd  of  Frimaire,  An  II.,  quoted  by  Aulard,  Etudes  et  Legons  sur  la 
Rivolution  Frangaise,  iv.  51. 

^  Memoires  de  Ferrieres,  iii.  204. 

*  "  Discours  sur  la  Situation  politique  de  la  Nation  du  21  Octobre 
1791,"  Aulard's  Stances  des  Jacobins,  iii.  208. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    187 

describe  as  the  King's  "  duplicity  in  the  matter  of  the  Con- 
stitution " — "  he  was  not  sincere,"  they  write,  "in  his  accept- 
ance." Now  the  precise  attitude  of  the  King  towards  the 
Constitution,  and  also  towards  the  question  of  the  appeal  to 
foreign  powers,  is  explained  in  a  long  and  confidential  letter  that 
he  wrote  to  his  brothers  at  this  date,  of  which  the  most  important 
passages  must  be  quoted  verbatim  : 

"  You  have  no  doubt  been  informed,"  Louis  XVI.  wrote  to 
the  Comte  de  Provence  and  the  Comte  d'Artois,  "  that  I  have 
accepted  the  Constitution,  and  you  know  the  reasons  that  I  gave 
to  the  Assembly,  but  these  must  not  suffice  for  you  ;  I  wish  to 
make  known  to  you  all  my  motives.  The  state  of  France  is  such 
that  she  is  on  the  verge  of  complete  dissolution,  which  will  only 
be  hastened  if  one  wishes  to  bring  violent  remedies  to  bear  on 
the  ills  that  overwhelm  her.  The  party  spirit  that  divides  her 
and  the  destruction  of  all  authority  are  the  causes  of  her  trouble. 
Divisions  must  be  made  to  cease  and  authority  re-estabUshed, 
but  for  this  purpose  only  two  means  are  possible — union  or  force. 
Force  can  only  be  employed  by  foreign  armies,  and  this  means 
having  recourse  to  war.  Can  a  King  allow  himself  to  carry  war 
into  his  own  States  ?  Is  not  the  remedy  worse  than  the  disease  ? 
...  I  have  therefore  concluded  that  this  idea  must  be  abandoned, 
and  that  I  must  try  the  only  other  means  left  me — ^the  union  of 
my  will  with  the  principles  of  the  Constitution.  I  feel  all  the 
difficulties  of  governing  so  great  a  nation.  I  might  say  I  feel 
its  impossibUity,  but  any  obstacle  I  had  placed  in  the  way  would 
have  caused  the  war  I  was  anxious  to  avoid,  and  would  have 
prevented  the  people  from  judging  of  the  Constitution,  because 
they  would  have  seen  nothing  but  my  constant  opposition.  By 
adopting  their  ideas  and  following  them  in  all  good  faith  they 
will  learn  the  cause  of  their  troubles ;  public  opinion  will  change  ; 
and  since  without  this  change  one  can  hope  for  nothing  but 
fresh  convulsions,  I  shall  bring  about  a  better  order  of  things  by 
my  acceptance  than  by  my  refusal.  ...  I  wished  to  let  you  know 
the  motives  for  my  acceptance,  so  that  your  conduct  should  be 
in  accord  with  mine.  Your  attachment  to  me  and  your  wisdom 
should  make  you  renounce  dangerous  ideas  that  I  do  not  adopt. 
...  I  was  just  finishing  this  letter  when  I  received  the  one  you 
sent  me  .  .  .  [the  two  princes  had  written  refusing  to  recognize 
the  King's  acceptance  of  the  Constitution].  You  cannot  believe 
how  much  this  action  has  pained  me.  I  was  already  much 
grieved  at  the  Comte  d'Artois  going  to  the  Conference  of  Pilnitz 
without  my  consent,  but  I  will  not  reproach  you,  my  heart 
cannot  bring  itself  to  do  so.  I  will  only  point  out  to  you  that 
in  acting  independently  of  me,  he  thwarts  my  plans  as  I  disconcert 
his. ...  I  have  already  told  you  that  the  people  endured  all  their 


i88        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

privations  because  they  have  always  been  assured  that  these 
would  end  with  the  Constitution.  It  is  only  two  days  since  it 
was  finished,  and  you  expect  that  already  their  mind  is  changed. 
I  have  the  courage  to  accept  it,  so  as  to  give  the  nation  time  to 
experience  that  happiness  with  which  it  has  been  deluded,  and 
you  wish  me  to  renounce  this  useful  experience  !  Sedition- 
mongers  have  always  prevented  it  from  judging  of  their  work 
by  talking  to  it  incessantly  of  the  obstacles  I  placed  in  the  way 
of  its  execution ;  instead  of  taking  from  them  this  last  resource, 
would  you  serve  their  fury  by  having  me  accused  of  carrying 
war  into  my  kingdom  ?  You  flatter  yourselves  to  outwit  them 
by  declaring  that  you  are  marching  in  spite  of  me,  but  how  can 
one  persuade  them  of  this  when  the  declaration  of  the  Emperor 
and  the  King  of  Prussia  was  occasioned  at  your  request  ?  Will 
it  ever  be  believed  that  my  brothers  do  not  carry  out  my  orders  ? 
Thus  you  will  show  me  to  the  nation  as  accepting  (the  Constitu- 
tion) with  the  one  hand  and  soUciting  foreign  powers  with  the 
other.  What  upright  man  could  respect  such  conduct,  and  do 
you  think  to  help  me  by  depriving  me  of  the  esteem  of  all  right- 
thinking  people  ?  " 

It  is  precisely  this  tortuous  conduct,  so  strongly  deprecated 
by  the  King,  which  has  been  attributed  to  him  by  the  conspiracy 
of  history,  and  represented  to  posterity  as  the  cause  of  the 
second  Revolution.  "  Louis  XVI.,"  we  are  told,  "  accepted  the 
Constitution  without  any  intention  of  maintaining  it,  and  whilst 
at  the  same  time  soUciting  foreign  intervention  by  force  of 
arms.*'  The  truth — ^which  no  revolutionary  writer  has  ever 
been  able  to  disprove — is  that,  in  the  words  of  Bertrand  de 
MoUeville,  from  the  moment  of  his  acceptance  of  the  Constitution 
"  the  King  never  varied  a  single  instant  from  the  resolution  of 
faithfully  executing  the  Constitution  by  every  means  in  his 
power  "  ;  that  far  from  inviting  foreign  aggression  he  wrote  at 
the  same  moment  to  the  Emperor  of  Austria  begging  him  to 
refrain  from  further  intervention,  and  Leopold,  only  too  thankful 
to  abandon  the  campaign,  formally  undertook  to  interfere  no 
further  in  the  affairs  of  France.^ 

All  was  now  peace,  and  the  King's  acceptance  of  the  Con- 
stitution provoked  a  wild  burst  of  popular  enthusiasm. 

Writers  who  represent  the  flight  to  Varennes  as  having 
finally  lost  the  King  the  affection  of  his  people  entirely  disregard 
the  unanimous  evidence  of  contemporaries  that  two  or  three 

^  "  Leopold  had  no  intention  of  entering  upon  hostiliti'^s,  and  found  a 
loophole  by  which  to  escape  from  declaring  war  in  the  acceptance  by 
Louis  XVI.  of  the  completed  Constitution  on  21st  September  1791.  He 
then  solemnly  withdrew  his  pretensions  to  interfere  in  the  internal  affairs 
of  France"  {Revolutionary  Europe,  by  H.  Morse-Stephens,  p.  103). 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   189 

months  after  that  fateful  journey  not  only  the  King  but  the 
Queen  were  more  popular  than  ever.^  When  they  appeared  in 
pubUc  the  people  pursued  them  with  "  Bravos  !  "  At  the  opera 
the  Queen  was  greeted,  particularly  by  the  women,  with  frantic 
enthusiasm  and  cries  of  "  Vive  la  Reine  !  "  In  the  streets  a 
new  popular  refrain  was  heard  : 

Not'  bon  Roi 

A  tout  fait 

Et  not'  bonne  Reine 

Qu'elle  eut  de  la  peine  ! 

Enfin  les  v'la 

Hors  d'embarras  ! 

The  attempt  of  the  deputies  at  the  new  Legislative  Assembly 
to  insult  the  King  by  keeping  on  their  hats  when  he  entered  the 
hall,  and  by  depriving  him  of  his  titles  of  honour,  met  with  violent 
remonstrance  from  the  people.  "  On  Saturday  at  the  comedy," 
writes  a  contemporary,  "  the  people  in  the  crowds  around  the 
door  cried  out,  '  Long  Uve  the  King  and  Queen  !  Give  us  back 
our  noblesse  who  provided  us  with  a  hving,  our  clergy  and  our 
courts  !  '  And  in  the  theatre  they  cried,  '  Vive  Sire,'  and  *  Sa 
Majeste,'  and  a  patriot  who  called  out  '  Vive  la  Nation  '  was 
roughly  handled,  dragged  outside,  and  ducked  in  the  gutter. 
At  the  Assembly  the  deputies  were  grievously  insulted  and  called 
ragamuffins  (va-nu-pieds) ,  and  this  because,  by  a  decree  which 
they  were  forced  to  revoke  the  next  day,  they  had  deprived  the 
King  of  the  name  of  Sire  and  the  title  of  *  Majeste,'  of  the  chair 
of  honour  at  the  Assembly,  and  finally  of  precedence  to  the 
President."  ^ 

The  King,  overjoyed  at  the  renewed  understanding  between 
himself  and  his  people,  wrote  thankfully  :  "  The  end  of  the 
Revolution  has  arrived ;  may  the  nation  resume  its  happy 
character  !  " 

What  need  was  there  for  further  agitations  ?  The  fear  of 
foreign  aggression  had  been  finally  removed,  all  the  demands  of 
the  nation  had  been  satisfied,  and  the  only  cause  for  popular 
discontent  was  not  that  the  Revolution  had  not  gone  far  enough, 
but  that  it  had  gone  too  far. 

1  Prudhomme,  Revolutions  de  Paris,  ix.  570  ;  Journal  d'un  ^tudiant, 
by  Gaston  Maugras,  p.  166;  Madelin,  p.  186;  The  Journal  of  Mary 
Frampton,  letter  from  James  Frampton  dated  October  2,  1791  :  "  You 
cannot  conceive  how  ridiculous  it  is  to  hear  the  amazing  popularity  of  the 
King  at  present."  Also  letter  in  same  volume  from  G.  B.  WoUaston  on 
October  12,  1791. 

*  Letter  from  M.  Fougeret  to  M.  Lecoy  de  la  Marche,  October  10,  1791, 
in  Lettres  d'Aristocrates,  by  Pierre  de  Vaissi^re,  p.  413  ;  Diary  and  Letters 
of  Gouverneur  Morris,  i.  462. 


I90        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Why,  then,  did  a  second  Revolution  occur  ?  For  one  reason 
only — ^that  the  factions  were  resolved  to  overthrow  the  King 
and  Constitution.  Far  more  than  at  the  beginning  of  the  first 
Revolution  were  the  aims  of  the  revolutionaries  opposed  to  those 
of  the  people.  Then  the  nation  had  unanimously  demanded  a 
change  in  the  government,  and  for  a  time  the  work  of  revolution 
and  of  reformation  had  run  concurrently;  now  the  two  were 
diametrically  opposed,  for  the  people  had  no  further  grievance, 
the  existing  order  of  things  had  been  framed  according  to  their 
will,  and  therefore  the  attempt  to  overthrow  it  was  a  deUberate 
and  criminal  conspiracy  against  the  will  and  the  Hberties  of  the 
nation. 

In  order  to  understand  the  manner  in  which  this  conspiracy 
was  carried  on,  it  is  necessary  to  form  some  idea  of  the  elements 
that  composed  the  National  Assembly  at  the  beginning  of  1792. 

Now  when,  on  the  completion  of  the  Constitution  in  September 
1 791,  the  Constituent  Assembly  was  dissolved,  all  its  members — 
that  is  to  say  all  the  men  who  had  framed  the  great  reforms  in 
the  government — ^were,  on  the  proposal  of  Robespierre,  precluded 
from  sitting  in  the  Legislative  Assembly  that  followed.  This 
measure,  which  excluded  Robespierre  himself,  was  less  of  a  self- 
denying  ordinance  than  might  at  first  appear,  for  by  1791  it  was 
no  longer  the  Assembly  that  governed  France  but  the  Jacobin 
Club,  of  which  Robespierre  was  a  leading  member.  This  associa- 
tion, which  started  as  the  Club  Breton  at  Versailles  in  1789,  where, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  partisans  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  forgathered, 
had  moved  to  Paris  after  the  6th  of  October,  and  installed  itself 
in  the  Dominican  convent  in  the  Rue  Saint-Honore,  commonly 
known  as  the  Jacobins,  because  the  principal  convent  of  the  order 
was  in  the  Rue  Saint- Jacques.  It  was  here  that  under  the  name 
of  "  Friends  of  the  Constitution  "  a  revolutionary  centre  was 
inaugurated,  and  before  long  the  Jacobins,  as  they  were  popularly 
known,  had  started  branches  of  the  club  in  the  towns  and  villages 
L'  all  over  France.  By  this  means,  at  a  signal  from  headquarters, 
insurrections  could  be  organized,  or  addresses  purporting  to  come 
from  the  inhabitants  of  country  districts  could  be  drawn  up  and 
sent  to  Paris  by  the  agents  of  the  society. 

Nothing  in  the  history  of  the  Revolution  is  more  surprising 
than  the  skill  with  which  this  system  was  carried  out.  The 
French  as  a  nation  are  notoriously  unmethodical,  and  the  fall  of 
the  Old  Regime  may  be  largely  attributed  to  its  lack  of  organiza- 
tion. Whence,  then,  this  talent  for  organization  displayed  by 
the  revolutionary  leaders  alone  ?  Robison,  in  his  Proofs  of  a 
Conspiracy,  supphes  the  key  to  the  problem.  The  earlier  re- 
volutionary leaders  were,  as  we  have  seen,  the  disciples  of  the 
German  Illumines,  and  it  was  they  who  initiated  them  into  the 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   191 

art  of  forming  political  committees  "  to  carry  through  the  great 
plan  of  a  general  overturning  of  religion  and  government.  .  .  . 
These  committees  arose  from  the  Illuminati  in  Bavaria  .  .  .  and 
these  committees  produced  the  Jacobin  Club."  "  The  chief 
lesson,"  Robison  goes  on  to  observe,  that  the  revolutionary 
leaders  took  from  Germany,  "  was  the  method  of  doing  business, 
of  managing  their  own  correspondence,  and  of  procuring  and 
training  pupils."  These  propaganda  were  very  systematically 
carried  out  amongst  the  people,  and  in  the  confidential  memo- 
randa sent  out  from  headquarters  was  an  "  earnest  exhortation 
to  establish  in  every  quarter  secret  schools  of  political  education, 
and  schools  for  the  public  education  of  the  children  of  the  people, 
under  the  direction  of  well-principled  masters,"  of  masters, 
that  is  to  say,  who  would  inculcate  in  their  pupils  a  contempt 
for  all  religion  and  all  government. 

The  Germans,  as  we  to-day  have  reason  to  know,  are  past 
masters  in  the  art  of  disseminating  lying  propaganda  and  of 
duping  the  uneducated  classes,  and  the  fact  that  the  Jacobins 
of  France  were  their  disciples  explains  the  extraordinary  re- 
semblance between  the  methods  of  the  French  revolutionary 
leaders  and  those  of  the  German  leaders  in  the  recent  war. 
Thus  the  plan  of  committing  atrocities  and  then  attributing 
them  to  one's  enemies,  of  justifying  aggression  by  the  plea  that 
one  was  acting  merely  in  self-defence,  of  announcing  sinister 
designs  on  the  part  of  one's  own  intended  victim,  is  a  form  of 
Jesuitry  pecuUar  to  the  German  mind,  and  this  was  throughout 
the  plan  of  the  French  revolutionaries.  Whenever  they  con- 
templated an  attack  upon  the  King,  an  alarm  was  circulated 
that  the  King  was  meditating  a  massacre  of  the  people ;  the 
unarmed  citizens,  the  unoffending  priests,  the  women  and 
children  who  perished,  were  invariably  "  conspirators  "  harbour- 
ing dark  designs,  and  with  such  skill  were  these  propaganda 
carried  out  as  to  deceive  not  only  ignorant  contemporaries  but 
educated  posterity. 

By  means  of  this  German  system  of  propaganda  the  Assembly 
ceased  to  be  democratic — that  is  to  say,  it  ceased  to  be  the 
expression  of  the  people's  will.  In  1789  the  people  had  chosen 
their  own  representatives  at  the  Constituent  Assembly  ;  in  1791 
the  deputies  of  the  I.egislative  Assembly  were  the  choice  of  the 
Jacobin  Club.  "  This  society,"  says  Dumouriez,  "  extending 
everywhere  its  numerous  affiliations,  made  use  of  the  provincial 
clubs  to  make  itself  master  of  the  elections.  All  the  cranks,  all 
the  seditious  scribblers,  all  the  agitators  were  chosen  to  go  and 
represent  the  nation, '  to  defend  its  interests,'  it  was  said, '  against 
a  perfidious  court.'  Very  few  wise  or  enhghtened  men,  still 
fewer  nobles,  were  chosen,  and  the  National  Assembly,  thus 


192         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

composed,  assembled  armed  with  prejudices  and  hostile  views 
against  the  unfortunate  Louis  and  his  court.  It  began  by 
*  adoring  '  the  Constitution  so  as  to  establish  itself  securely.  .  .  ."^ 

Prudhomme,  a  more  consistent  democrat  than  most  revolu- 
tionary writers,  endorses  this  description  :  "  This  new  body  did 
not  include  the  three  castes  that  existed  in  the  Constituent 
Assembly,  it  was  almost  half  composed  of  lawyers  who  had 
thrown  themselves  into  the  Revolution,  as  we  shall  see,  rather 
for  personal  interests  than  for  love  of  their  country  or  of 
Liberty."  ^  "  These  men  showed  very  Httle  attachment  to  the 
Constitution  they  had  sworn  to  defend  "  ;  amongst  them  all 
Prudhomme  could  only  mention  two  "  who  having  received 
powers  from  their  constituents  for  the  maintenance  of  the  royal 
charter  .  .  .  had  the  courage  " — and  we  might  add  the  honesty — 
"  to  carry  out  their  instructions."  ^ 

Under  these  circumstances  the  King's  situation  was  hopeless 
from  the  outset.  What  could  avail  his  resolution  to  maintain 
the  Constitution  when  all  the  leaders  of  the  new  Assembly,  with 
the  Jacobins  at  their  back,  were  secretly  conspiring  to  overthrow 
both  it  and  him  ?  A  further  complication  lay  in  the  fact  that 
these  leaders  were  all  divided  in  their  aims,  and  the  Jacobin  Club 
itself  was  rent  by  the  disputes  of  opposing  factions. 

THE  FACTIONS   IN   1792 

In  order  to  understand  the  causes  that  led  up  to  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1792,  it  is  important  to  form  some  idea  of  the  poHcy  that 
inspired  each  of  these  factions,  yet  nothing  is  more  difficult, 
since  their  avowed  opinions  not  only  varied  perpetually,  but  in 
no  way  coincided  with  their  secret  aims.  Afterwards,  when  the 
Repubhc  had  become  an  established  fact,  all  the  leading  revolu- 
tionaries declared  they  had  been  Republicans  from  the  beginning, 
but  until  that  date  they  not  only  refrained  from  admitting  to 
such  opinions  but  indignantly  disavowed  them. 

If  these  men  were  not  Republicans,  what,  then,  were  they  ? 
As  far  as  it  is  possible  to  form  any  conclusion  from  their  ambiguous 
and  conflicting  statements,  the  policy  of  these  factions  may  be 
broadly  indicated  as  follows  : 

I.  The  Cordeliers,  who  took  their  name  from  the  church  of  the 
Cordelier  monks  where  they  first  held  their  sittings,  were  led  by 
Danton,  and  included  Marat,  Camille  Desmouhns,  Hebert — the 
Pere  Duchesne — and  the  Prussian  Clootz.  According  to  Beaulieu 
their  sympathies  were  divided  between  Orleanism  and  anarchy.* 
Several  of  these  men,  as  we  have  seen,  had  begun  their  revolu- 

1  M^moires  de  Dumouriez,  ii.  117.        '^  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  iv.  i. 
8  Ihid.  iv.  213.  *  Beaulieu,  iii.  192. 


i 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   193 

tionary  career  as  minor  instruments  of  the  Orl6aniste  conspiracy, 
and  now,  owing  to  the  defection  of  the  duke's  aristocratic  allies, 
they  had  risen  from  the  position  of  mere  mob-orators  to  that  of 
influential  politicians.  Yet  their  allegiance  to  the  Due  d'0rl6ans 
was  evidently  spasmodic  ;  thus  in  1791  we  find  Marat  "  blessing 
Heaven  for  the  gift  of  Louis  XVI.,"  a  little  later  clamouring  for  a 
"  military  dictator,"  then  in  the  following  year  publicly  demand- 
ing 15,000  francs  from  the  Due  d'Orl^ans  for  the  printing  of  his 
pamphlets,  and  all  the  while  crying  out  for  "  heads  "  and  yet 
"more  heads"  with  dreary  reiteration.  Desmoulins,  after  the 
temporary  lapse,  when,  according  to  Bouille,  he  was  bought  over 
to  the  Court  by  Lafayette,^  had  returned  to  the  Orleanistes,  and 
showed  himself  indefatigable  in  writing  furious  abuse  now  of 
Louis  XVL,  now  of  his  enemies  the  Brissotins.  Danton,  less 
sanguinary  than  Marat  and  less  vitrioUc  than  Desmouhns,  was, 
however,  more  venal  than  either.  Essentially  a  man  of  pleasure, 
he  displayed  all  the  bonhomie  of  the  spendthrift  and  voluptuary 
when  his  desires  were  satisfied,  all  the  fury  of  thwarted  passion 
when  lack  of  funds  necessitated  self-denial.  And  at  first  the 
Revolution  had  proved  disappointing.  Reduced  to  living  on  a 
louis  a  week,  allowed  him  by  his  father-in-law — a  prosperous 
limonadier — at  the  beginning  of  1789,  his  activities  as  an  Orleaniste 
agitator  had  brought  him  only  a  comfortable  competence  by  the 
end  of  the  year.^  But  a  comfortable  competence  was  of  no  use 
to  Danton,  and  1791  found  him  once  more  deeply  in  debt. 

At  this  juncture  Louis  XVI.  allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded 
by  his  minister,  Montmorin,  to  negotiate  with  Danton,  in  the 
hope  of  "  moderating  his  anarchic  fury  and  his  guilty  intrigues."  ^ 
Danton  accepted  the  King's  money,  invested  part  of  it  in  a  large 
property  at  Arcis-sur-Aube,*  carried  a  few  useless  motions  in 
the  King's  favour  at  the  Cordeliers,  and  then  returned  to  his  true 
affinity,  the  Due  d'Orleans.  Danton  was  probably  the  most 
sincere  Orleaniste  of  all ;  henceforth  we  shall  find  him  constantly 

^  Mimoires  de  BouilU,  i.  185.  See  also  Mirabeau's  note  {Correspondance 
entre  Mirabeau  et  le  Comte  de  la  Mavck,  ii.  68),  in  which  he  says  of  Des- 
moulins, "  this  man  is  very  accessible  to  money."  Barbaroux  declared  that 
Desmoulins  "  received  indiscriminately  from  aristocrats  and  patriots  alike  " 
for  the  opinions  he  expressed  in  his  journal  {MSmoires  de  Barbaroux,  p.  9). 

*  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  333. 

'  MSmoires  de  Lafayette,  iii.  85.  On  the  venality  of  Danton  and  his 
payment  by  the  Court  contemporary  evidence  is  overwhelming.  See,  for 
example,  Beaulieu,  iii.  10  ;  Bertrand  de  MoUeville,  i.  354  ;  MSmoires  de 
Brissot,  iv.  193  ;  Correspondance  entre  Mirabeau  et  le  Comte  de  la  March, 
iii.  82  ;  also  summing  up  by  Taine,  La  RSvolution,  v.  317,  and  by  Louis 
Blanc,  Histoire  de  la  RSvolution,  x,  409. 

*  Danton,  aware  that  the  acquisition  of  this  property  had  excited  sus- 
picions of  his  integrity,  explained  to  the  Commune  that  it  was  only  an 
obscure  farmhouse  bought  with  the  sum  paid  him  in  compensation  for  his 

O 


194        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

attached  to  the  interests  of  the  duke,  possibly  for  little  or  no 
remuneration;  but  since,  in  the  influential  posts  he  occupied 
successively,  his  hand  was  in  every  till,  he  could  afford  to  dispense 
with  this  tangible  recognition  of  his  services. 

As  for  the  Republicanism  professed  by  the  Cordeliers  on  the 
one  occasion  of  the  petition  at  the  Champ  de  Mars,  we  can  dis- 
cover no  further  trace  of  it  in  their  speeches  and  writings  during 
the  year  that  followed.  On  the  contrary,  three  months  later 
we  find  Camille  Desmoulins  indignantly  protesting  against  the 
imputation  of  Republicanism.  "  Let  no  one  slander  me  again ; 
let  no  one  say  that  I  preach  the  Republic,  and  that  kings  should 
be  done  away  with.  Those  who  recently  called  us  Repubhcans 
and  the  enemies  of  kings,  so  as  to  defame  us  in  the  opinion  of 
imbeciles,  were  not  acting  in  good  faith  ;  they  well  knew  that  we 
are  not  ignorant  enough  to  make  out  liberty  to  consist  in  having 
no  King."  ^ 

Later  we  find  Danton  declaring  to  Lafayette  :  '*  General, 
I  am  more  a  monarchist  than  you  are !  "  and  Marat,  at  the  very 
moment  that  the  RepubUc  is  inaugurated,  passionately  warning 
his  fellow-countrymen  of  the  disasters  that  must  attend  it : 
"  Fifty  years  of  anarchy  await  you,  and  you  will  only  come  out 
of  it  with  a  dictator  !  " 

II.  The  Brissotins,  later  to  be  known  as  the  Girondins — by 
which  name,  to  avoid  confusion,  it  is  simpler  to  refer  to  them — 
were,  like  the  Cordehers,  led  by  a  member  of  the  Orleaniste 
conspiracy.  It  was  with  Brissot,  as  we  have  seen  earUer  in  this 
book,  that  the  idea  of  a  "  second  Fronde,"  with  the  Due  d'0rl6ans 
at  its  head,  had  first  originated,  whilst  Buzot,  Potion,  Servan, 
and  Claviere  had  all  taken  an  active  part  in  the  Revolution  of 
1789.  But  with  the  advent  of  the  deputies  of  the  Gironde — 
Vergniaud,  Guadet,  Gensonne,  Ducos,  and  Fonfrede — at  the 
Legislative  Assembly,  a  new  element  was  introduced  into  the 
faction,  and  a  variety  of  aims  arose  which  all  consisted  not  in  a 
change  of  government  but  only  in  a  change  of  king.  Amongst 
the  candidates  proposed  was  still  the  Due  d'Orleans,  but  other 
members  of  the  faction — notably  Dumouriez — preferred  his  son 

post  as  solicitor  to  the  King's  Council  which  was  now  aboUshed  (Beaulieu, 
iii.  198).  But  M.  Lenotre  reveals  that  the  "  farmhouse  "  was  "  almost  a 
chateau  "  in  a  park  of  approximately  27  acres  (see  Paris  rSvolutionnaire, 
p.  260),  and  the  MSmoires  de  Lafayette  explain  the  transaction  to  which 
Danton  referred  in  these  words  :  "  Danton  had  sold  himself  on  condition 
that  he  should  be  paid  100,000  livres  for  his  post  of  solicitor  to  the  council 
which  since  its  suppression  was  worth  only  10,000  livres.  The  King's 
present  was  therefore  of  90,000  livres.  .  .  .  Danton  was  ready  to  sell 
himself  to  all  parties  "  {MSmoires  de  Lafayette,  iii.  85). 

^  "  Discours  sur  la  Situation  poUtique  de  la  Nation  du  21  Octobre  1791," 
Aulard's  SSances  des  Jacobins,  iii.  206. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES  195 

the  Due  de  Chartres;  others,  again,  suggested  deposing  Louis 
XVI.  and  placing  the  Dauphin  on  the  throne,  with  members  of 
their  own  party  to  exercise  the  power  of  regency.  But  the  most 
outrageous  scheme  of  all  was  one  on  which  the  conspiracy  of 
history  has  remained  discreetly  silent,  for  nothing  is  more  dis- 
creditable to  the  Revolution.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
amongst  the  revolutionary  leaders  approached  by  Frederick 
WiUiam's  emissary,  the  Jew  Ephraim,  were  the  principal  members 
of  this  faction — Brissot,  Petion,  Gensonne,  and  their  friends — 
and  so  successful  were  the  efforts  of  Ephraim  that  a  definitely 
pro -German  party  was  formed  amongst  them,  of  which  the 
policy  was  to  consist  not  merely  in  breaking  the  alliance  between 
France  and  Austria,  but  in  placing  a  prince  of  German  origin  on 
the  throne  of  France. 

This  prince  was  to  be  either  the  Duke  of  York,  son  of  George 
III.  of  England,  or  the  celebrated  Duke  of  Brunswick,  the  future 
signatory  of  the  famous  Manifesto,  who  had  long  been  revered 
by  the  exponents  of  "  democracy  "  in  France. 

That  this  plan  was  seriously  entertained  by  certain  of  the 
Girondins,  and  played  an  important  part  in  the  Revolution  of 
1792,  cannot  be  doubted,  from  the  evidence  of  authorities  so 
divergent  in  their  political  bias  as  Montjoie,  Prudhomme,  CamiUe 
DesmouUns,  and  St.  Just ;  ^  we  shall,  in  fact,  find  reference  to 
it  in  the  works  of  nearly  all  contemporaries — several  of  the 
Girondins  actually  admitted  it  themselves.^ 

The  Duke  of  York  seems  to  have  been  the  candidate  first 
entertained  by  this  party,  and,  as  it  was  further  suggested  to 
marry  him  to  Mile.  d'Orleans,  the  scheme  appealed  particularly 
to  those  Girondins  who  had  retained  a  sympathy  for  the  Orleaniste 
cause.  Brissot,  who  had  married  one  of  MUe.  d'Orleans'  maids, 
was  no  doubt  influenced  by  this  connection  in  favour  of  the 
project.  It  was  apparently  for  the  purpose  of  effecting  this 
change  of  dynasty  that  Petion  was  sent  to  London  in  the  autumn 
of  1791  with  MUe.  d'Orleans  and  her  governess,  Madame  de  Sillery 

1  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d' Orleans,  iii.  204  ;  Prudhomme,  Revolutions 
de  Paris,  xiii.  526.  See  also  Deux  Amis,  viii.  93  ;  Mimoires  de  Barire,  ii. 
45.  The  statements  of  CamiUe  DesmouUns  and  St.  Just  wiU  be  given  later 
in  this  book. 

2  BeauUeu  records  that  early  in  1793,  when  the  Brissotins  began  to 
find  themselves  falling  under  the  power  of  Robespierre,  General  Wimpfen 
came  upon  Petion  and  Buzot,  who  were  engaged  in  conversation.  "  Well," 
he  said  to  them,  "  so  this  Republic  that  you  wish  to  establish  in  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly  is  now  putting  you  in  a  great  fix."  "  I,"  repUed  Buzot, 
"  never  wished  for  a  Republic  in  France ;  its  size  and  the  character  of  its 
inhabitants  are  opposed  to  the  establishment  of  such  a  form  of  govern- 
ment*" "  What  do  you  want,  then  ?  "  "A  change  of  dynasty."  "  But 
whom  would  you  choose  ?  "  "A  prince  of  the  royal  house  of  England." 
{Essais  de  Beaulieu,  v.  192.) 


196        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

(alias  Madame  de  Genlis),  who  had  throughout  played  an  insidious 
part  in  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy.  In  the  Correspondance  secrHe, 
under  the  date  of  November  26,  1791,  we  find  a  significant 
reference  to  this  journey  : 

"...  a  new  plan  hovers  over  Republicanism,  and  has  taken 
birth  in  the  midst  of  the  Jacobins.  It  consists,  in  the  event  of 
the  deposition  of  Louis  XVI.,  in  caUing  to  the  throne  a  son 
of  the  King  of  England,  on  the  condition  that  he  upholds  the 
Revolution  against  those  who  wish  to  destroy  it.  It  seems  that 
this  project  was  the  reason  for  the  journey  that  M.  Petion  made 
to  England,  where  he  concerted  with  the '  Society  of  Friends  of 
the  Revolution  of  1688.'  ^  It  has,  we  are  assured,  been  warmly 
taken  up  by  the  Protestants  and  RepubUcans  of  our  southern 
provinces." 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  in  England  it  was  not,  as  in 
Prussia,  with  the  Government  that  the  revolutionary  intrigues 
were  conducted,  but  with  the  opponents  of  the  Government — 
the  EngUsh  Jacobins.  The  Duke  of  York  himself  does  not  appear 
to  have  been  consulted  in  the  matter,  and,  as  we  shall  see  later, 
the  plot  was  indignantly  denounced  by  George  III.  when  it  came 
to  his  ears.  By  the  beginning  of  1792  this  plan  for  a  change  of 
dynasty  had  matured  sufficiently  for  a  member  of  the  conspiracy 
to  propose  it  publicly  at  a  Seance  of  the  Jacobins.  The  member 
who  acted  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  party  was  a  certain  Jean 
Louis  Carra,  who  had  undergone  two  years'  imprisonment  for 
robbing  a  widow.  One  of  the  most  furious  enemies  of  Louis  XVI., 
Carra  had  long  been  an  ardent  admirer  of  German  royal  person- 
ages, and  in  1783  had  received  from  Frederick  the  Great  the 
present  of  a  gold  and  enamelled  snuff-box  set  with  pearls,  in  recog- 
nition of  "  the  reiterated  proofs  "  he  had  given  his  Prussian 
Majesty  "of  his  attachment."  ^  The  idea  of  a  German  King, 
even  of  the  anglicized  variety,  was  therefore  naturally  pleasing 
to  Carra,  and  on  the  4th  of  January  he  ascended  the  tribune  of 
the  Jacobin  Club  and  definitely  suggested  dethroning  Louis  XVI. 
in  favour  of  the  Duke  of  York.^    The  speech  met  with  a  remon- 

1  See  the  description  given  by  Petion  in  his  discourse  to  the  Jacobin 
Club  on  November  18,  1791,  of  the  "  flattering  reception  "  given  him  by 
the  "  Friends  of  the  Revolution  "  in  England.  Several  members  of  the 
Society  wore  the  tricolour  badge,  a  tricolour  flag  decorated  the  ceiUng  of 
the  hall,  and  the  band  played  the  "  ^a  ira  !  " 

2  Prdcis  de  la  Defense  de  Carra,  p.  17. 

^  This  proposal  is  so  discreditable  to  the  Jacobins  that  it  is  suppressed 
in  the  report  of  their  debates.  The  Journal  des  Dehats  records  the  incident 
in  the  following  words  :  "  M.  Carra  ascends  the  tribune  where  he  deUvers 
a  discourse  on  the  object  of  the  war.  .  .  .  Certain  propositions  which 
do  not  seem  in  accord  with  the  principles  of  the  Constitution  arouse 
the  attention  of  M.  Danton,  and  at  his  motion  the  orator  is  called  to 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    197 

strance  from  Danton,  and  Carra  was  called  to  order,  but  in  a 
manner  that  did  not  deter  him  from  repeating  his  proposal  five 
days  later  in  print.^  Moreover,  in  Danton's  rebuke  we  can 
distinguish  none  of  that  thunderous  eloquence  with  which  he  is 
popularly  supposed  to  have  denounced  the  enemies  of  his  country. 
"  Audacity  and  yet  more  audacity  "  might  be  necessary  in  order 
to  subdue  the  supporters  of  the  French  throne,  but  the  mildest 
tones  of  remonstrance  sufficed  him  when  it  was  merely  a  matter 
of  handing  that  throne  over  bodily  to  the  foreigner.  Possibly 
in  Carra's  suggestion  Danton  saw  more  an  indiscretion  than  a 
flagrant  betrayal  of  his  country,  for  the  truth  is  that  Danton 
himself  did  not  hesitate  to  make  use  of  foreign  intervention  when 
it  could  serve  his  interests,  and  he  was  just  now  engaged  in  an 
intrigue  with  precisely  the  same  party  in  England  as  that  ap- 
proached by  Petion  and  supported  by  Carra.  "  Danton,"  says 
his  panegyrist.  Dr.  Robinet,  "  at  first  had  hopes  of  Germany, 
where  he  counted  on  the  influence  of  the  adversaries  of  the 
Austro-Prussian  aUiance,  but  it  was  the  EngUsh  Opposition  that 
formed  his  most  serious  support."  ^ 

When,  after  the  riot  of  the  Champ  de  Mars,  Danton  fled  to 
England,  he  had  taken  the  opportunity  to  carry  out  a  poUtical 
mission.  The  main  object  of  this  mission  was  to  obtain  the 
neutrality  of  England  in  the  war  that  the  French  revolutionaries 
hoped  to  bring  about  with  Austria,  and  Danton,  who  knew 
England  well,  was  instructed  to  enUst  the  sympathies  of  the 
Whigs.  With  the  help  of  his  old  friend  Thomas  Paine,  and 
of  Christie,  another  English  revolutionary,  Danton  obtained 
interviews  with  Fox,  Sheridan,  and  Lord  Stanhope,  with  whom 
he  succeeded  in  establishing  cordial  relations.^    Danton  having 


order  in  the  name  of  the  Constitution  and  of  the  Society."  M.  Aulard 
suppUes  the  missing  clue  in  his  Sdances  des  Jacobins,  iii.  311.  Moreover 
Carra  admitted  it  later  at  his  trial.     See  Pricis  de  la  Defense  de  Carta, 

p.  13- 

^  Annates  Patriotiques  for  January  9,  1792.  This  journal  of  Carra's, 
one  of  the  most  violent  of  all  the  revolutionary  pubhcations,  exerted  an 
immense  influence  over  the  provinces  of  France.  Wordsworth,  in  Paris 
at  this  date,  thus  described  the  important  part  played  by  Carra  in  the 
Revolution  of  1792  : 

The  land  all  swarmed  with  passion,  like  a  plain 

Devoured  by  locusts, — Carra,  Gorsas, — add 

A  hundred  other  names,  forgotten  now. 

Nor  to  be  heard  of  more  ;   yet,  they  were  powers, 

Like  earthquakes,  shocks  repeated  day  by  day. 

And  felt  through  every  nook  of  town  and  field. 

The  Prelude,  "  Residence  in  France." 

*  Danton  imigri,  by  Dr.  Robinet,  p.  4. 

*  Ibid.  pp.  5,  24. 


198        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

thus  paved  the  way,  Talleyrand — who,  according  to  Dr.  Robinet, 
was  Danton's  political  aUy — went  to  London  in  the  following 
spring  and  offered  to  hand  over  the  Isles  of  France,  of  Bourbon, 
and  of  Tabago  to  England,  and  also  to  demoUsh  the  fortifications 
of  Cherbourg — the  triumph  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XVI. — if  England 
would  form  an  alliance  with  France  and  go  to  war  with  Austria.^ 
Brissot  went  further,  and  suggested  ceding  Calais  and  Dunkirk 
to  England.^  And  these  were  the  men  who  accused  Louis  XVI. 
of  intriguing  with  foreign  powers  to  betray  the  interests  of 
France  ! 

The  missions,  both  of  Danton  and  of  Talleyrand,  met  with 
very  tangible  success,  for  by  the  summer  of  1792  a  brisk 
correspondence  had  been  started  between  the  French  and 
EngUsh  Jacobins;  a  number  of  the  latter  came  over  to  Paris 
— some,  indeed,  actually  became  members  of  the  Club  in  the 
Rue  Saint -Honore  —  and,  what  is  more  important,  EngUsh 
guineas  were  sent  to  finance  sedition.  On  April  26  the  author 
of  the  Correspondance  secrete  writes  complacently :  "A  collec- 
tion has  been  opened  in  England  in  aid  of  our  Revolution; 
one  private  person  alone  has  written  himself  down  for  1500 
louis." 

What  further  proof  is  needed  as  to  the  origin  of  the  "  gold  of 
Pitt  "  ?  For  again  with  superb  cunning  it  was  to  Pitt  these 
corruptions  were  attributed  by  the  revolutionary  factions — to 
Pitt,  who  had  resolutely  refused  to  associate  with  the  Due 
d'Orleans,  who  detested  Danton,^  and  who  received  the  revolu- 
tionary deputation  under  Talleyrand  with  such  undisguised 
aversion  that  ChauveUn  was  reduced  to  the  dignified  expedient  of 
stamping  on  Pitt's  toe  in  revenge.* 

The  poUcy  of  both  the  Cordeliers  and  the  Girondins  was 
therefore  to  dethrone  Louis  XVI.  in  favour  of  an  Orleaniste  or  a 
foreign  monarch.  There  was  no  question  of  a  Republic.  This 
even  the  revolutionaries  themselves  admit;  Brissot  afterwards 
declared  there  were  only  three  genuine  RepubUcans  at  this  date — 
Buzot,  Petion,  and  himself,^  and  we  have  already  seen  in  what 
Petion  and  Buzot 's  "  RepubUcanism  "  consisted.     Petion  put 

*  Diary  and  Letters  of  Gouverneur  Morris,  i.  510,  516.  Talleyrand 
"  received  for  answer  that  England  could  not  take  any  engagement  what- 
ever respecting  the  afiEairs  of  France." 

*  Ibid.  p.  511. 

'  Danton  ]&migrS,  p.  90. 

*  Souvenirs  d'iltienne  Dumont,  p.  302.  "  As  for  Talleyrand,"  Mr. 
Burges  writes  from  London  to  Lord  Auckland  on  May  29,  1792,  "  he  is 
intimate  with  Paine,  Home  Tooke,  Lord  Lansdowne,  and  a  few  more  of 
that  stamp,  and  generally  scouted  by  every  one  else"  {Journal  and 
Correspondence  of  Lord  Auckland,  ii.  410). 

^  Pamphlet  by  Brissot,  A  tons  les  Rdpublicains. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   199 

the  number  at  five  immediately  before  the  loth  of  August.^ 
Perhaps  M.  Bire  is  nearest  the  truth  in  saying  there  were  exactly 
two — the  Englishman  Thomas  Paine  and  the  Prussian  Baron 
Clootz.2 

III.  And  what  of  Robespierre  ?  The  role  of  Robespierre  at 
this  moment  is  of  so  much  importance  that,  although  he  had  not 
yet  formed  a  definite  party  of  his  own,  he  must  be  regarded  as  a 
party  in  himself.  For  it  was  Robespierre  who  from  the  end  of 
1791  proved  the  great  opponent  to  all  plans  of  usurpation. 
Although  at  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  he  had  worked  with 
the  Orleanistes,  it  is  probable  that  he  had  never  entered  into 
their  design  of  placing  the  Due  d'Orleans  on  the  throne ;  his  plan 
was  simply  to  make  use  of  the  revolutionary  machinery  they  had 
constructed  in  order  to  annihilate  the  Old  Regime.^  The  orgies 
of  PhiUppe  and  his  boon  companions  held  no  attractions  for  the 
austere  Maximihen.  "  The  wine  of  Champagne,"  he  said,  "  is 
the  poison  of  Uberty."  It  was  not  without  reason  that  he  earned 
the  title  of  "  Incorruptible  "  ;  for  money  he  had  no  use ;  his 
abnormal  nervous  system  precluded  him  from  all  forms  of 
excess.  No  longer  the  aimless  Subversive  he  had  been  in  1789, 
he  now  above  all  things  desired  power — a  power  that  was  to 
be  accorded  to  him  by  the  people.  For  this  reason  Orleanistes 
and  Girondins  were  ahke  abhorrent  to  him ;  with  Philippe  or 
a  German  prince  on  the  throne  the  people  would  have  no  voice 
whatever — even  the  present  monarch  was  preferable  to  such  a 
government.  Since,  therefore,  he  shrewdly  reahzed  that  at  this 
stage  of  the  Revolution  any  attempt  to  dethrone  Louis  XVI. 
would  inevitably  lead  to  a  government  far  less  democratic  than 
that  of  the  Old  Regime,  he  loudly  proclaimed  himself  in  favour 
of  the  existing  monarchy.  His  speech  at  the  Jacobins  four  days 
before  the  riot  of  the  Champ  de  Mars  was  really  admirable  in  its 
common  sense  and  logic  : 

"  I  have  been  accused,  in  the  midst  of  the  Assembly,  of  being 
a  Repubhcan  ;  they  do  me  too  much  honour,  I  am  not  one.  If 
I  had  been  accused  of  being  a  monarchist  they  would  have  dis- 
honoured me  ;  I  am  not  that  either.     I  would  first  observe  that 

*  Discours  de  Jirdme  Petion  sur  I'accusation  intentie  contre  Maximilien 
Robespierre,  November  1792. 

2  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois  de  Paris,  i.  95. 

*  On  this  point  contemporaries  are  divided  ;  Montjoie  and  Pag^s  both 
represent  Robespierre  as  an  Orl6aniste,  whilst  Beaulieu  {Essais,  ii.  159)  and 
the  Marquis  de  Bouille  {MSmoires,  p.  100)  assert  that  he  merely  pretended 
sympathy  with  the  Orleanistes  in  order  to  further  his  own  designs.  I  have 
adopted  the  latter  theory  because  it  seems  to  me  the  most  convincing  and 
aloi^e  explains  Robespierre's  conduct  at  certain  crises  of  the  Revolution. 
For  it  will  be  noticed  that  whenever  he  could  deal  a  blow  at  the  Orleanistes 
without  injuring  his  own  cause  he  never  failed  to  do  so. 


200        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

for  many  people  the  words  '  republic  '  and  '  monarchy  *  are 
entirely  void  of  meaning.  The  word  republic  signifies  no  form 
of  government  in  particular ;  it  appUes  to  every  government  of 
free  men  who  own  a  country.  Thus  one  can  be  just  as  free  with 
a  monarch  as  with  a  senate.  What  is  the  present  French  con- 
stitution ?  It  is  a  republic  with  a  monarch.  It  is  therefore 
neither  a  monarchy  nor  a  repubUc — ^it  is  both."  ^ 

Eight  months  later,  when  the  Jacobin  Club  had  fallen  under 
the  dominion  of  the  Girondins,  Robespierre  indicated  his  pohcy 
stiU  more  clearly,  disassociating  himself  from  their  schemes  of 
usurpation  : 

"  As  for  me,  I  declare,  and  I  do  so  in  the  name  of  the  Society, 
which  will  not  refute  me,  that  I  prefer  the  individual  which 
chance,  birth,  and  circumstances  have  given  us  for  a  king  to  all 
the  kings  that  they  would  give  us."^ 

This  veiled  reference  was  characteristic  of  Robespierre.  It  is 
not  without  reason  that  so  many  of  those  who  knew  him  describe 
Robespierre  as  a  "  tiger-cat  " — feline  was  his  nature  and  feline 
were  his  methods.  His  plan  was  always  to  make  use  of  one 
faction  to  destroy  another,  and  he  still  had  need  of  the  Girondins 
and  the  Orleanistes  to  destroy  Lafayette,  whom  he  suspected, 
not  without  reason,  of  aspiring  to  the  role  of  Cromwell.  When, 
therefore,  a  courageous  deputy  of  the  Assembly,  Raimond 
Ribes,  denounced  the  attempts  of  the  Orleanistes  to  effect  a 
change  of  dynasty,  and  the  intrigues  of  Talleyrand  and  Brissot 
to  betray  the  interests  of  France  by  ceding  ports  and  colonies  to 
England,^  Robespierre,  who  was  later  on,  by  the  pen  of  Camille 
Desmouhns  and  the  mouth  of  St.  Just,  to  confirm  all  these 
accusations,  joined  with  his  fellow- Jacobins  at  the  Club  in  de- 
claring them  to  be  founded  on  a  fable.  So  with  superb  cunning 
the  tiger-cat  lay  crouching,  watching  with  cold  green  eyes  the 
manoeuvres  of  the  rival  factions.  The  time  had  not  yet  come 
to  spring. 

Such,  then,  was  the  compHcated  situation  that  faced  the 
unfortunate  Louis  XVL  in  the  autumn  of  1791.  As  with  every 
other  concession  he  had  made  to  the  cause  of  hberty  his  accept- 
ance of  the  Constitution  was  followed  by  a  fresh  outbreak  of 
revolutionary  fury,  and  a  month  later  the  terrible  affair  of  the 
Glaciere  d' Avignon  took  place.  On  this  occasion  it  seems  that 
the  people  of  Avignon,  hungry  peasants,  women,  labourers  out 
of  work,  indignant  at  the  plundering  of  the  churches  by  a  horde 
Of  brigands — mostly  foreigners,  led  by  Jourdan  Coupe-Tete — 
rose  spontaneously  against  the  revolutionary  leaders  and  put  one 
of  them  to  death.     In  retahation  Jourdan  and  his  troop,  gorged 

^  Aulard's  Seances  des  Jacobins,  iii.  12,  Seance  du  13  Juillet  1791. 
2  Ibid.  iii.  420,  Seance  du  2  Mars  1792.  ^  Moniteur,  xii.  583. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES  201 

with  fiery  liquors,  turned  on  the  people,  and  a  three  days'  massacre 
began  in  which,  amidst  atrocities  too  horrible  to  record — rape  and 
cannibaUsm  and  drunken  fury  ^ — the  unhappy  victims,  old  men, 
women,  children,  mothers  with  babies  at  their  breasts,  were 
flung,  some  dead  and  some  alive,  into  a  deep  ditch  known  as  the 
"  Glaciere  "  and  covered  over  with  quickUme.^ 

The  Girondins  secured  an  amnesty  for  the  perpetrators  of 
these  deeds  ! 

The  massacre  of  Avignon  was  followed  by  further  bloodshed 
in  the  provinces,  and  by  the  end  of  the  year  it  was  evident  that 
no  hope  remained  of  restoring  order  to  the  kingdom  unless  by 
help  from  the  outside. 

Marie  Antoinette  at  this  juncture  no  doubt  believed  that 
nothing  else  than  open  warfare  could  save  the  situation,  but 
Louis  XVI.  still  shrank  from  violent  measures  and  now  reverted 
to  his  former  idea  of  intervention  by  foreign  powers.  Accord- 
ingly he  wrote  to  the  principal  sovereigns  of  Europe  proposing 
that  they  should  form  "  a  congress  supported  by  an  armed  force 
as  the  best  method  for  arresting  the  factions  and  establishing  a 
more  desirable  order  of  things  in  France."  ^  There  was  no  ques- 
tion of  armed  aggression,  of  hostile  legions  marching  against  the 
French  people,  but  of  invoking  moral  support  to  suppress  dis- 
orders, and  if  this  failed,  of  summoning  friendly  aUies  to  the 
rescue  not  only  of  the  monarchy  but  of  the  people  themselves.  If 
the  King,  then,  appealed  for  support  from  abroad,  it  was  not 
against  the  people  but  against  their  betrayers,  the  men  by  whom 
they  were  being  starved,  oppressed,  imprisoned,  and  massacred. 
Could  even  hostile  armies  have  produced  worse  horrors  than 
those  that  were  already  taking  place  ?  The  King  did  not  wish 
for  war ;  on  the  contrary,  he  did  everything  in  his  power  to 
prevent  it  by  providing  a  peaceful  solution  to  the  crisis.* 

^  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  21. 

2  Ibid.  iv.  2. 

'  It  should  be  noted  that  the  date  of  this  letter  is  uncertain  ;  D'AUon- 
ville  and  Bertrand  de  Molleville  state  emphatically  that  it  was  written  on 
December  3,  1790,  before  the  King's  final  acceptance  of  the  Constitution, 
but  the  Correspondence  of  the  Conite  de  Fersen  tends  to  prove  that  the 
date  was  December  3,  179 J,  that  is  to  say,  nearly  two  months  after  his 
final  acceptance,  during  which  interval  the  Glaciere  d'Avignon  and  other 
atrocities  in  the  provinces  had  occurred.  Beaulieu,  who  also  takes  this 
view,  explains  the  King's  motives  in  writing  it  {Essais,  iii.  133). 

*  See  the  evidence  of  the  King's  minister.  Bigot  de  Sainte-Croix  :  "  From 
the  spring  of  1791  onwards  the  King  prevented  the  execution  of  a  secret 
plan  framed  at  Mantua  for  two  months  later  attacking  France  whose 
armies  were  incomplete  and  whose  frontiers  were  undefended  ;  in  the 
summer  of  the  same  year  he  hindered  the  effects  of  the  Convention  of 
Pilnitz  ;  the  following  autumn  he  concerted  with  the  Emperor  to  restrain 
beyond  the  Rhine  the  designs  and  hostile  preparations  formed  there.     Let 


202        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

When,  in  March  1792,  the  Brissotins  succeeded  in  driving  his 
ministers  from  office,  the  King,  wishing  to  give  his  enemies  no 
further  cause  de  guerre,  resolved  on  the  desperate  measure  of 
forming  a  new  ministry  from  among  the  Jacobins  themselves. 
"  I  had  chosen  for  my  first  agents,"  he  wrote  to  the  Assembly, 
**  men  known  for  their  principles  and  invested  with  the  con- 
fidence of  the  public ;  they  have  left  the  ministry ;  I  have  therefore 
thought  it  my  duty  to  replace  them  by  men  who  have  obtained 
credit  for  their  popular  opinions.  You  have  often  told  me  it 
was  the  only  method  to  make  the  government  work  ;  I  thought 
it  my  duty  to  employ  it  so  as  to  leave  to  malevolence  no  pretext 
for  doubting  my  desire  to  co-operate  with  all  my  might  in  the 
welfare  of  our  country." 

Accordingly  the  King  decided  to  nominate  the  six  Girondin 
ministers  designated  for  him  by  Brissot — the  feeble  and  irascible 
Roland,  the  dour  and  atrabilious  Servan,  the  stock- jobbing 
banker  Claviere,  Dumouriez,  an  Orleaniste  adventurer,  and — by 
an  error  of  Brissot's — ^two  honest  men,  Lacoste  and  Duranton. 

Unfortunately  the  King's  choice  was  not  as  "  popular  "  as  he 
imagined,  for  the  Girondins  were  precisely  the  faction  least  in 
touch  with  "the  people."  It  was  the  middle  classes  —  not 
the  law-abiding  bourgeoisie  but  the  visionaries  of  the  literary 
world,  the  Uttle  lawyers,  the  adorers  of  Rousseau — amongst 
whom  the  Girondins  found  their  following;  for  "the  people" 
they  had  nothing  but  contempt.^ 

No  more  merciless  light  has  ever  been  shed  on  the  "  demo- 
cracy "  of  the  Girondins  than  by  an  habituee  of  Madame  Roland's 
salon,  Sophie  Grandchamp.  After  describing  the  pohtical  dis- 
cussions that  took  place  amongst  the  Rolands  and  their  friends, 
Madame  Grandchamp  goes  on  to  remark  : 

"  I  was  an  interested  witness  of  these  debates,  yet  amidst  all 
this  fine  zeal  I  thought  I  perceived  that  very  few  would  have 
shown  it  if  pubhc  welfare  had  been  the  sole  recompense.     The 

them  give  us  back  our  correspondence  that  it  may  be  pubhshed  ;  it  will 
all  testify  to  the  efforts  of  the  King  to  avert  this  war  which  was  provoked 
and  begun  by  those  who  to-day  dare  to  impute  it  to  him  "  {Histoire  de  la 
Conspiration  du  10  Ao4t,  p.  152).  See  also  Fantin  D&odoards,  op.  cit. 
iv.  48. 

^  For  example,  Buzot  {Mimoires,  pp.  32,  35,  43,  195)  :  "  One  must  have 
the  vices  of  the  people  of  Paris  to  please  them.  .  .  .  The  stupid  people 
of  France.  .  .  .  Souls  of  mud  !  .  .  .  What  a  people  is  that  of  Paris  I 
What  frivolity,  what  inconstancy,  how  contemptible  it  is  I  "  Barbaroux 
{Memoires,  p.  84)  :  "  The  people  do  not  deserve  that  one  should  attach 
oneself  to  them,  for  they  are  essentially  ungrateful ;  the  more  one  defends 
their  rights  the  more  they  take  advantage  of  one."  Madame  Roland 
{Mdmoires,  i.  300)  :  "  Cowardice  characterized  by  selfishness  and  corrup- 
tion of  a  degraded  people  whom  we  hoped  to  be  able  to  regenerate  .  .  .  but 
which  was  too  brutalized  by  its  vices." 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   203 

austere  dress  that  they  adopted  as  the  livery  of  their  party 
seemed  to  me  a  petty  ostentation  for  men  truly  enamoured  of 
liberty,  besides  which  it  contrasted  in  a  ridiculous  way  with  the 
frivolous  tone  and  morals  they  displayed.  I  asked  Roland  what 
good  could  be  expected  of  a  people  who  had  no  respect  for  the 
most  sacred  social  ties.  ...  *  They  will  help  to  overthrow 
despotism,'  repHed  my  friends ;  '  their  private  actions  do  not 
affect  the  truths  they  spread.'  It  was,  however,  these  private 
actions  which  propagated  corruption  and  destroyed  our  hopes. 
Never  was  the  love  of  pleasure,  of  the  table,  of  women,  and  of 
gaming  greater  than  at  the  moment  when  they  wished  to  improve 
us.  They  left  the  precincts  where  the  destinies  of  the  Empire 
were  being  weighed  in  the  balance  to  fly  into  the  arms  of  lust 
and  debauchery.  A  few  pompous  phrases  on  liberty  and  the 
sovereignty  of  the  people  sufficed  to  sanction  or  at  least  to  excuse 
the  most  irregular  conduct.  ..." 

Phrases  !  Always  phrases  !  "La  phrase  les  enivre  \"  re- 
marks M.  Louis  Madelin,  and  nothing  could  better  describe  the 
much-vaunted  eloquence  of  the  Girondins.  They  belonged  to 
that  eternal  class  which  proves  disastrous  to  all  sane  government, 
**  Political  Intellectuals,"  adepts  in  word -weaving,  who  care 
nothing  for  the  consequences  to  which  their  theories  may  lead, 
if  only  those  theories  sound  plausible  in  speech  and  print. 
Thus  Brissot  had  devoted  his  literary  talents  to  writing  philo- 
sophical treatises  in  which  he  justified  theft  ^  and  advocated 
cannibaHsm,2  whilst  the  virtuous  Roland,  famous  for  his  systems 
on  the  subject  of  commerce  and  manufacture,  had  drawn  up  a 
scheme  in  1787  which  he  presented  to  the  Academy  of  Lyons  for 
utilizing  the  bodies  of  the  dead  by  converting  the  fat  into  lamp- 
oil  and  the  bones  into  phosphoric  acid  ^ — a  proposal  which  Lyons, 
unenlightened  by  "  Kultur,"  rejected. 

If,  as  Madame  Roland  indignantly  records,  Louis  XVI.  did  not 
take  his  new  ministers  seriously,  is  it  altogether  surprising  ? 
Their  manners  bewildered  him  no  less  than  their  mentahties. 
Men  of  the  people  he  could  have  understood,  but  these  philo- 

^  "  Our  social  institutions,"  wrote  Brissot,  "  punish  theft — a  virtuous 
action  commanded  by  Nature  herself  "  {Rechetches  philosophiques  sur  le 
Droit  de  ProprUU,  etc.).  As  Brissot  himself  had  been  imprisoned  for  theft 
this  point  of  view  is  not  surprising. 

2  "  Should  men  nourish  themselves  on  their  kind  ?  A  single  word 
decides  this  question,  and  this  word  is  dictated  by  Nature  herself.  All 
beings  have  the  right  to  nourish  themselves  in  any  manner  that  will 
satisfy  their  needs  "  (Bibliothdque  philosophique,  by  Brissot  de  Warville, 

vi.  313)- 

3  Histoire  particuliere  des  Evinements  qui  ont  eu  lieu  en  France  pendant 
les  ,Mois  de  Juin,  Juillet,  d'AovLt,  et  de  Septembre  1792,  by  Maton  de  la 
Varenne ;  Memoires  pour  servir  d,  V Histoire  de  la  Ville  de  Lyon  pendant  la 
Revolution,  by  I'Abbe  Guillon  de  Montleon,  i.  58,  59. 


204        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

sophers,  "  dressed  like  Quakers  in  their  Sunday  best,"  who  talked 
him  down,  interrupted  him  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  quarrelled 
amongst  themselves  and  nearly  came  to  blows  in  his  presence,^ 
were  like  nothing  he  had  ever  come  across  before.  But  Louis 
XVL,  for  all  his  heaviness,  was  not  without  a  certain  slow  sense 
of  humour,  and  we  detect  a  hint  of  this  in  Madame  Roland's  asser- 
tion that  he  treated  his  new  ministers  with  the  greatest  good- 
nature {la  plus  grande  bonhomie),  and  led  the  conversation  away 
from  all  questions  of  pohtical  importance.  "  The  council  was 
soon  nothing  but  a  cafe  where  they  amused  themselves  with 
chatting."  ^ 

During  these  interviews  the  new  ministers  discovered  that 
the  King  was  in  no  way  the  imbecile  he  had  been  represented  by 
his  enemies,  that  he  "  had  a  fme  memory  and  showed  much 
activity,  that  he  was  never  idle  and  read  often.  He  kept  in  mind 
the  various  treaties  made  by  France  with  neighbouring  powers ; 
he  knew  his  history  well ;  he  was  the  best  geographer  in  his 
kingdom.  .  .  .  One  could  not  present  any  subject  to  him  on 
which  he  could  not  express  an  opinion  founded  on  certain 
facts."  3 

By  degrees  in  this  genial  atmosphere  the  ministers  lost  some 
of  their  austerity :  Roland  began  to  boast  of  the  royal  favour 
shown  him  ;  Claviere,  encouraged  by  the  King's  graciousness, 
presented  a  request  for  95,000  livres  to  furnish  his  own  apart- 
ments.'* For  a  time  it  seemed  that  the  King  had  succeeded  in 
disarming  his  opponents.  But  he  had  counted  without  Madame 
Roland — and,  except  perhaps  for  the  Due  d' Orleans,  the  King, 
and  more  particularly  the  Queen,  had  no  bitterer  enemy. 

Madame  Roland's  malevolence  was  of  long  standing. 
Eighteen  years  earUer,  as  Manon  Phhpon,  the  daughter  of  a 
Paris  engraver,  she  had  gone  to  Versailles  with  her  mother  on  the 
invitation  of  an  old  lady  in  the  service  of  the  Court.  During  a 
whole  week  she  had  looked  on  at  the  dinners  of  the  Royal  Family, 
the  Mass,  the  card-playing,  the  presentations.  But  Manon  was 
unimpressed  by  these  ghttering  functions,  and  when,  after  a  few 
days,  Madame  Phlipon  inquired  whether  her  daughter  was  pleased 
with  her  visit,  Manon  bitterly  replied,  "  Yes,  provided  that  it 
soon  comes  to  an  end ;  a  few  more  days  and  I  shall  detest  aU 
these  people  so  heartily  that  I  shall  not  know  what  to  do  with 
my  hatred." 

She  had  never  known  what  to  do  with  her  hatred  ;  all  through 
the  years  that  followed  it  had  remained  pent  up  in  her  heart, 
poisoning  her  youth,  turning  the  joy  of  life  to  gall.  The  remem- 
brance of  those  exalted  beings,  whose  graciousness  towards  her- 

^  Deux  Amis,  vii.  235.  ^  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  238. 

'  Ibid.  p.  233.  *  Revolutions  de  Paris,  by  Prudhomme,  xii.  485. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    205 

self  she  had  interpreted  as  patronage,  became  an  obsession  ; 
further  encounters  with  their  kind  only  increased  her  resentment. 
Yet  she  despised  the  petite  bourgeoisie  amongst  which  Fate  had 
placed  her  as  heartily  as  she  hated  the  class  above  it ;  the  over- 
tures of  obscure  lovers  who  presented  themselves  in  crowds  merely 
humiliated  her.  By  her  marriage  to  dull  old  Roland  de  la  Platiere 
she  saw  some  hope  of  "  rising  to  the  rank  that  became  her."  Yet 
this  too  led  to  nothing  :  her  attempt  to  secure  for  him  "  a  title 
of  nobihty  "  met  with  no  success  ;  country  hfe  bored  her  to 
exasperation.  When  at  last  the  revolutionary  storm  burst  over 
France,  Manon  Roland  hailed  it  with  rapture,  ostensibly  as  the 
dawn  of  liberty,  in  reality  as  a  retribution  on  the  social  system 
which  accorded  her  a  place  of  no  importance.  In  the  terrible 
letter  she  wrote  to  Bosc  immediately  after  the  massacre  of 
Foullon  and  Berthier  all  the  old  hatred  flamed  out,  and  under  its 
influence  this  woman  who  had  fed  on  the  classics  descended  to 
the  language  of  a  bargee  : 

'*  You  are  occupying  yourself,"  she  wrote  on  July  26,  1789, 
"  with  a  municipality,  and  you  allow  heads  to  escape  that  will 
plot  fresh  horrors.  You  are  but  cliildren  ;  your  enthusiasm  is 
a  blaze  of  straw ;  and  if  the  National  Assembly  does  not  formally 
bring  to  trial  two  illustrious  heads,  or  some  generous  Decius  does 
not  strike  them  off,  you  are  all  f .  .  .  ."  ^  The  sentence  ends  with 
the  usual  revolutionary  obscenity. 

When  at  last  in  March  1792  Roland  was  elected  to  the 
Ministry,  Manon  knew  a  moment  of  exaltation  ;  the  transition 
to  the  gorgeous  Hotel  de  Calonne,  which  had  been  given  over  to 
the  Ministry  of  the  Interior,  restored  her  from  a  state  of  "  con- 
suming languor  "  to  sudden  exuberant  vitality.  But  once  again 
disillusionment  awaited  her.  Of  what  avail  were  gilded  salons, 
painted  ceilings,  giant  lackeys  standing  at  each  side  of  the  great 
folding  doors,  to  open  one  or  both  according  to  the  rank  of  the 
arriving  guest  ^ — observe  the  equahty  practised  by  our  austere 
exponents  of  democracy  ! — if  the  Tuileries  ignored  her  ?  Over 
there  in  that  remote  mysterious  Chateau,  standing  aloof  from  the 
noisy  Paris  world  amidst  its  stately  gardens,  there  dwelt  the 
woman  on  whom  Manon  had  resolved  to  wreak  her  vengeance. 
She  knew  what  to  do  with  her  hatred  now,  and  from  this  moment 
she  pursued  her  victim  with  a  malevolence  that  even  at  the  foot 
of  the  scaffold  knew  no  relenting. 

The  failing  of  great  historians  is  to  overlook  the  existence  of 
apparently  unimportant  details,  yet  many  a  world-shaking  event 
can  be  traced  to  trifling  causes.  The  20th  of  June  1792  was 
largely  the  result  of  a  woman's  desire  for  revenge. 

^  Lettres  de  Mme.  Roland  aux  demoiselles  Cannet,  ii.  573. 
2  Souvenirs  de  Sophie  Grandchamp. 


2o6        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

It  was  not  that  Madame  Roland  created  the  elements  of 
revolution — these  lay  already  to  hand — but  that  she  provided  the 
pretexts  for  stirring  up  agitation.  As  Laclos  had  been  "  the  soul 
of  the  Orl6aniste  conspiracy,"  galvanizing  into  activity  the  idle 
roues  of  the  Palais  Royal,  Manon  Roland,  with  untiring  ingenuity, 
goaded  on  the  vain  and  foolish  Girondins,  who,  but  for  influence, 
might  have  rested  content  with  their  accession  to  the  Ministry. 
When  Roland  and  his  colleagues  returned  from  the  councils  at 
the  Tuileries,  and  declared  that  the  King  was  evidently  sincere 
in  his  determination  to  maintain  the  Constitution,  Manon  Roland 
laughed  them  to  scorn.  "  During  three  weeks,"  she  writes, 
"  I  saw  Roland  and  Claviere  enchanted  with  the  King's  attitude, 
dreaming  only  of  a  better  order  of  things,  and  flattering  them- 
selves that  the  Revolution  was  ended.  '  Good  God  !  '  I  said  to 
them,  *  every  time  I  see  you  start  for  the  council  full  of  this  fine 
confidence,  it  always  seems  to  me  that  you  are  ready  to  commit 
some  folly.'  '  I  assure  you,'  Claviere  answered  me,  '  that  the 
King  feels  perfectly  that  his  interest  is  bound  up  with  the  main- 
tenance of  the  laws  which  have  just  been  established ;  he  reasons 
about  them  too  pertinently  for  one  not  to  be  convinced  of  this 
truth.'  '  Ma  foi,'  added  Roland,  '  if  he  is  not  an  honest  man 
he  is  the  greatest  rogue  in  the  kingdom ;  no  one  could  dissemble 
in  that  way.'  And  as  for  me  /  repHed  that  /  could  not  believe 
in  love  of  the  Constitution  on  the  part  of  a  man  nourished  on  the 
prejudices  of  despotism  and  accustomed  to  enjoy  it,  and  whose 
conduct  recently  proved  the  absence  of  genius  and  of  virtue. 
The  flight  to  Varennes  was  my  great  argument."  ^ 

Because,  therefore,  she,  Manon  Roland,  could  not  conceive 
it  possible  that  any  one  possessing  power  or  privileges  should 
be  wilHng  to  renounce  them,  the  King  was  to  be  accused,  without 
any  proof  whatever,  of  wishing  to  violate  the  Constitution.  From 
this  moment  Mme.  Roland  devoted  all  her  energies  to  the  one 
purpose  of  shaking  the  people's  confidence  in  the  King. 

But  this,  at  the  beginning  of  1792,  was  no  easy  matter,  for 
the  pubUc  was  still  convinced  of  the  King's  sincerity,  as  the 
following  significant  passage  from  the  journal  of  a  young  student 
then  in  Paris — an  ardent  admirer  of  the  Girondins — reveals  : 

"  Oh  !  fatal  error  !  traitors  have  succeeded  in  persuading 
this  too  credulous  and  confiding  people  that  a  King  who  from 
his  tenderest  infancy  has  sucked  the  venomous  juice  of  despotism 
has  all  of  a  sudden  been  converted  to  patriotism.  ...  By  degrees 
he  is  making  numerous  partisans,  above  all  he  is  attaching  public 
opinion  to  himself  ...  he  will  succeed  in  invading  national  liberty. 
The  Parisians  themselves  appear  to  wish  to  hasten  this  disastrous 
moment.     Listen  to  them  in  the  groups  at  the  Palais  Royal  and 

*  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Roland^  i.  236. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   207 

in  the  Tuileries ;  they  are  hurrying  towards  inevitable  slavery. 
.  .  .  Who  would  have  thought  that  this  people  would  mistake 
its  true  friends  so  far  as  to  distrust  the  inestimable  Petion,  and 
would  lavish  its  confidence  and  its  applause  on  those  perfidious 
beings  who,  profiting  by  its  blindness  and  its  torpor,  abuse  the 
sacred  words  of  law  and  constitution  in  so  execrable  a  way  as 
to  lead  it  to  the  feet  of  a  king,  to  the  feet  of  a  traitor,  of  a  perjurer, 
a  true  tiger  disguised  as  a  pig.  The  National  Guards,  above  aU, 
have  degenerated  extraordinarily.  .  .  .  They  are  real  shirri  ani- 
mated by  that  esprit  de  corps  so  fatal  to  liberty.  .  .  .  This  is  the 
sad  state  of  affairs  in  Paris,  and  I  see  only  two  great  ills  capable 
of  saving  liberty — war  or  the  flight  of  the  King.  I  will  even  say 
that  I  ardently  desire  one  of  these  terrible  afflictions,  because, 
as  Mirabeau  foretold  us,  our  liberty  can  only  be  ensured  in  so 
far  as  she  has  for  her  bed  mattresses  of  corpses,  and  because,  in 
order  to  ensure  this  liberty,  I  consent,  if  necessary,  to  become  one 
of  these  corpses."  ^ 

Madame  Roland  and  her  friends  saw  this  pacific  disposition 
of  the  people  with  growing  alarm,  and  thereupon  devised  a  scheme 
characteristic  of  their  politicsil  morality.  Large  placards  attack- 
ing the  royal  authority  were  to  be  posted  up  all  over  Paris,  and 
in  order  to  defray  the  expenses  necessary  for  this  purpose  they 
applied  to  their  ally,  Petion,  the  Mayor  of  Paris,  for  a  sum  of 
money  to  be  taken  from  the  fund  he  held  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Paris  police.  Petion  proved  only  too  willing  to  co-operate  ; 
unfortunately  the  police  fund  happened  at  this  moment  to  be 
exhausted.  Accordingly  Dumouriez,  as  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  was  deputed  to  ask  the  King  to  supply  Petion  with  a 
large  sum  for  the  police,  which  was  then  to  be  handed  over  to 
the  Rolands.  Louis  XVL,  approached  on  the  matter,  displayed 
a  certain  perspicacity,  but  decided  to  give  Petion  a  chance  of 
proving  his  good  faith. 

"  Potion  is  my  enemy,"  he  said  to  Dumouriez ;  "  you  will  see 
that  he  will  spend  this  money  on  writings  against  me,  but  if  you 
think  it  will  be  any  use,  give  it  to  him."  ^ 

The  sum  was  made  over  and,  of  course,  employed  as  the  King 
suspected.  "  The  expedient,"  remarks  Madame  Roland,  "  was 
simple,  and  it  was  adopted."^ 

We  marvel  as  we  read  these  words,  not  so  much  at  the  base 
treachery  of  securing  money  on  false  pretences  and,  as  the  King 
himself  expressed  it,  of  '*  asking  him  to  supply  rods  with  which 

^  Journal  d'un  ^tudiant  pendant  la  Rivolution,  edited  by  M.  Gaston 
Maugras,  p.  203. 

«  MSmoires  de  Dumouriez,  ii.  152,  153;  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Roland, 
i.  142. 

»  Ibid.  i.  83. 


2o8        THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

to  scourge  himself,"  but  at  the  complete  lack  of  all  sense  of  honour 
which  made  it  possible  for  Madame  Roland,  quite  unblushingly, 
to  admit  the  scheme  in  her  memoirs.  She  does  not  see  that  the 
manoeuvre  was  in  any  way  discreditable  ;  to  her  mind  it  was 
"  quite  simple." 

But  defamatory  placards  alone  would  not  avail  to  bring  about 
a  revolution ;  some  definite  cause  de  guerre  must  be  provided. 
If  only  the  King  could  be  represented  as  violating  the  Constitution 
or  of  plotting  with  the  enemies  of  France,  it  would  be  easier  to 
arouse  popular  indignation.  But  the  King  displayed  an  irritating 
fidelity  to  the  Constitution — ^indeed  his  habit  of  producing  a 
copy  of  the  charter  from  his  pocket  and  quoting  it  on  every 
possible  occasion  was  beginning  to  get  on  the  nerves  of  his 
ministers — whilst  any  correspondence  he  had  been  carrying  on 
with  Austria  could  not  be  described  as  treasonable,  since  Austria 
still  remained  the  ally  of  France. 

In  order,  therefore,  to  prove  the  King  a  traitor,  not  only  must 
the  aUiance  of  1756  be  broken,  but  war  must  be  brought  about 
between  France  and  Austria.  It  was  necessary,  in  the  words  of 
Brissot  himself,  "  to  find  an  opportunity  for  setting  traps  for  the 
King,  in  order  to  demonstrate  his  bad  faith  and  his  collusion 
with  the  princes  who  had  emigrated."  ^  It  is  well  to  remember 
this  admission  when  reading  the  diatribes  directed  against  Louis 
XVI.  for  inviting  foreign  invasion.  The  war,  which  for  twenty- 
three  years  was  to  impoverish  France  and  decimate  her  popula- 
tion, was  not  declared  by  Austria,  but  was  brought  about  by  the 
Girondins  largely  in  the  interests  of  Prussia  at  a  moment  when 
Austria  appeared  reluctant  to  enter  France.^  At  the  Jacobins 
both  Danton  and  Robespierre  opposed  it,  for  they  shrewdly 
perceived  that  if  the  foreign  powers  needed  an  incentive  to 
march  to  the  rescue  of  the  Royal  Family,  the  declaration  of 
war  was  a  direct  invitation  to  them  to  advance.  But  the  pro- 
Prussian  party  carried  the  day,  and  the  scheme  of  Frederick  the 
Great  was  finally  reaUzed. 

If  further  evidence  were  needed  of  the  manoeuvres  of  Prussia 
it  is  to  be  found  in  the  debates  that  took  place  in  the  Assembly, 
for  we  shall  notice  that,  although  on  February  7  Prussia 
formed  an  alliance  with  Austria,  and  on  March  7  the  Duke 
of  Brunswick  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  alhed  armies, 
it  was  against  Austria  alone  that  the  Girondins  desired  war 
to  be  declared;  in  all  their  speeches  it  was  against  Austria, 
never  against  Prussia,  that  their  invectives  were  directed;  it 
was  the  Hapsburgs,  not  the  Hohenzollems,  who  inspired  their 
fury. 

*  Mimoires  de  Lafayette,  iii.  299  ;  Beaulieu,  iv.  187. 
2  Moniteur,  xii.  183,  184  ;  Deux  Amis,  vii.  156. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   209 

The  Girondins  well  knew  they  had  nothing  to  fear  from 
Prussia  or  from  Brunswick. 

"  The  Duke  Ferdinand,"  writes  Sorel,  *'  had  always  loved 
France  and  professed  to  detest  Austria.  .  .  .  The  revolutionary 
party  professed  a  singular  esteem  for  his  person.  Far  from  seeing 
in  him  '  an  abettor  of  tyrants  '  many  revolutionaries  held  him 
to  be  a  friend  of  enlightened  doctrines  and  a  natural  ally  of 
France.  The  Girondins  respected  him,  Dumouriez  admired 
him.  ..."  1  So  great  was  this  admiration  that  at  the  very 
moment  when  the  duke  was  given  the  supreme  command  the 
Girondins  embarked  on  their  further  scheme  of  placing  him  on 
the  throne  of  France. 

"  I  read  on  March  the  i8th,"  writes  Mallet  du  Pan,  "  a  writing, 
supported  by  good  authority,  in  which  it  is  affirmed  that  the 
plan  of  the  leaders  of  the  Jacobins  is  not  exactly  a  republic  but 
a  change  of  dynasty,  because  they  consider  that  the  King  will 
always  be  attached  to  the  noblesse  and  little  to  the  Constitution. 
G^nsequently  they  have  offered  the  crown  to  the  Duke  of  Brunswick. 
...  By  making  the  duke  and  England  adopt  this  project  they 
flatter  themselves  to  be  able  to  detach  Prussia  from  the  House 
of  Austria,  they  even  offer  him  other  advantages.  The  method 
devised  for  dethroning  the  King  is  to  make  the  National  Assembly 
declare  that  he  has  lost  the  confidence  of  the  nation.  Messieurs 
Condorcet,  Brissot,  and  others  are  only  the  instruments,  the 
agents  of  the  enterprise,  of  which  the  principal  chief  and  author 
is  the  Abbe  Sieyes.  .  .  ."  ^  But  Sorel  is  probably  right  in  con- 
sidering Mallet  du  Pan  had  been  misinformed  on  this  last  point ; 
no  other  evidence  convicts  Sieyes  of  compHcity  with  this  plot, 
of  which  the  chief  author  was  undoubtedly  Carra. 

In  all  the  debates  that  took  place  in  the  Assembly  on  the 
subject  of  the  "  Austrian  Committee,"  which  the  King  and  Queen 
were  accused  of  holding  at  the  Tuileries,  and  of  which  the  Girondins 
attempted  in  vain  to  prove  the  existence,  it  was  always  Carra 
who  inveighed  most  loudly  against  the  perfidy  of  Marie  Antoinette 
and  her  Austrian  allies.  But  it  was  not  until  Brunswick  was 
actually  marching  against  France  that  Carra  showed  his  hand 
by  publicly  proposing  to  give  him  the  crown. 

All  through  the  year  of  1792  the  French  revolutionary  leaders 
admirably  served  the  cause  of  Prussia — ^whether  as  dupes  or  as 
accomplices  it  is  impossible  to  say  with  certainty.  Even  the 
cause  of  the  Orleanistes  was  now  subordinated  to  the  purpose 
of  carrying  out  the  great  scheme  of  Frederick  the  Great — the 
rupture  of  that   alliance  which  barred  the  way  to   Prussian 

^  Lq,  Mission  de  Custine  d  Brunswick,  by  Albert  Sorel ;  Revue  HiS' 
torique,  i.  157. 

*j  MSmoires  de  Mallet  du  Pan,  i.  259. 


2IO        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

aggrandizement.  This,  then,  was  the  policy  of  the  faction  that 
led  all  the  attacks  on  Louis  XVI .  for  intriguing  with  foreign 
powers,  and  that  later  on  had  the  audacity  to  accuse  him  of 
precipitating  France  into  war.  Yet  there  were  tears  in  his  eyes 
when  on  the  20th  of  April  he  formally  announced  the  declaration 
of  war  against  Austria.^ 

The  Queen,  however,  breathed  a  sigh  of  relief.  Anything,  she 
felt,  would  be  better  than  the  present  situation.  The  state  of 
Paris  was  growing  daily  more  alarming.  This  spring  of  1792  a 
new  and  terrible  element  had  made  its  appearance  in  the  city — 
the  band  of  ruffians  who,  from  the  tattered  garments  they  wore 
that  did  duty  as  breeches,  became  known  as  the  Sans-Culottes. 
The  members  of  this  ragged  legion,  mostly  young  boys,  were  of  a 
class  not  peculiar  to  revolutionary  France,  but  corresponded  to 
the  **  hooligans "  of  modem  London,  the  Apaches  of  modem 
Paris,  or  the  Bowery  toughs  of  New  York,  and  it  is  easy  to 
imagine  the  terror  they  inspired  amongst  the  peaceable  citizens 
when  formed  into  a  corps  and  protected,  not  restrained,  by  the 
poUce.  Montjoie  relates  that  at  the  mere  sight  of  two  Sans- 
Culottes  armed  with  pikes,  wearing  the  red  caps  of  galley-slaves 
that  this  spring  of  1792  became  the  badge  of  revolution,  the 
inhabitants  of  a  Paris  street  would  fly  trembling  into  their 
houses  and  barricade  their  doors. ^ 

Every  day  two  to  three  hundred  of  these  Sans-Culottes  in- 
vaded the  gardens  of  the  Tuileries  and  stirred  up  popular  feeling 
against  the  Queen.^ 

"  You  see  me  in  despair,"  she  said  one  day  to  the  King  in  the 
presence  of  Dumouriez.  "  I  dare  not  stand  at  the  window  on 
the  side  of  the  gardens.  Yesterday  evening  to  breathe  the  air  I 
showed  myself  at  the  window  on  the  side  of  the  Court ;  a  canonnier 
apostrophized  me  with  a  coarse  insult,  adding,  '  How  pleased  I 
shall  be  to  see  your  head  on  the  point  of  my  bayonet.'  ...  If  I 
cast  my  eyes  on  that  dreadful  garden  there  is  a  man  standing 
on  a  chair  reading  aloud  horrors  against  us,  there  is  a  soldier 
or  an  abbe  being  dragged  to  the  fountain  and  overwhelmed  with 
blows  and  insults.  .  .  .  What  an  abode  !     What  people  !  " 

'*  The  Queen,"  says  Ferrieres,  "  was  not  exaggerating :  the 
Orl^anistes  and  Girondins  never  ceased  exciting  the  populace 
against  the  King  and  Queen.  ...  A  crowd  of  hired  orators  daily 
declaimed  the  Ubels  composed  by  the  faction.  .  .  .  Louis  XVI. 
was  represented  as  a  Nero,  a  sanguinary  monster  breathing  only 
murder  and  carnage,  wishing  to  bring  foreign  troops  into  France 
and  use  them  to  support  him  in  the  execution  of  his  plans.  .  .  . 

*  Deux  Amis,  vii.  166  ;  Mimoires  tiris  des  Papier s  d'un  Homme  d'l^tat, 
i.  333.  2  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  171. 

•  Correspondance  secrdfe,  p.  600. 


i 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   211 

The  Queen  was  painted  either  under  the  degrading  colours  of  a 
Messalina  given  up  to  the  most  shameful  licentiousness,  or  as  a 
fury  seeking  only  to  bathe  herself  in  the  blood  of  the  French. 
These  slanderous  horrors  were  cried  aloud  in  all  the  streets,  were 
repeated  at  the  tribune  of  the  Jacobins,  at  the  bar  of  the 
Assembly." 

What  wonder  that  Marie  Antoinette  longed  for  her  own 
people  to  come  and  deUver  her  ?  What  wonder  if  she  despaired 
of  the  French  nation  when  this  was  the  portion  of  it  daily 
presented  to  her  sight  ? 

Louis  XVI.  was  even  more  affected  by  the  horror  of  the 
situation,  and  at  last,  Madame  Campan  relates,  *'  fell  into  a  state 
of  depression  which  reached  the  point  of  physical  collapse.  He 
was  ten  days  in  succession  without  uttering  a  word  even  in 
the  midst  of  his  family  .  .  .  the  Queen  drew  him  out  of  this 
disastrous  condition  ...  by  throwing  herself  at  his  feet,  now 
conjuring  up  visions  calculated  to  alarm  him,  now  expressing 
her  love  for  him."  ^  It  was  a  clear  case  of  mental  break-down, 
and  must  be  taken  into  consideration  in  judging  the  King's 
conduct  at  this  crisis.  Undoubtedly  he  vacillated,  at  one  moment 
lending  an  ear  to  the  men  who  would  persuade  him  that  salva- 
tion lay  in  this  or  that  revolutionary  faction,  the  next  convinced 
by  Fersen  or  the  Queen  that  nothing  but  foreign  intervention 
could  avail  to  restore  law  and  order.  So  the  months  of  spring 
went  by  and  June  arrived — ^the  last  June  of  the  monarchy. 


PRELIMINARIES  OF  THE  20TH  OF  JUNE 

The  plan  of  raising  a  mob  to  march  on  the  Tuileries,  one  of 
the  leaders  afterwards  admitted,  was  '*  conceived  and  planned 
in  the  salon  of  Madame  Roland."  It  is  certain  at  any  rate  that, 
as  Mortimer  Temaux  pointed  out,  "  the  day  of  June  the  20th  had 
been  prepared  long  beforehand  by  the  agitators  of  the  Faubourgs ; 
the  date  had  been  settled — it  was  that  of  the  Oath  of  the  Tennis 
Court  ^ — the  rdles  were  distributed,  complicity  agreed  on  and 

^  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  328.  See  also  Correspondance  secrite, 
p.  600,  and  the  Journal  d'un  ^tudiani,  edited  by  M.  Gaston  Maugras, 
p.  248. 

*  Note  the  hypocrisy  of  this  pretext,  since  the  men  who  had  proposed 
the  Oath  of  the  Tennis  Court  were  now  regarded  by  the  revolutionary 
leaders  as  their  bitterest  enemies — Mounier  had  been  driven  from  the 
country,  and  Bailly,  the  object  of  their  perpetual  execrations,  was  to  perish 
at  their  hands  under  circumstances  of  revolting  brutality.  The  truth  is, 
as  Bigot  de  Sainte-Croix  points  out,  that  the  20th  of  June  was  chosen  as 
the  anniversary  of  the  flight  to  Varennes  in  the  hope  of  reviving  the  un- 
popularity which  the  Orl^anistes  had  succeeded  in  arousing  against  the 
King  on  this  day. 


212        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

accepted,  the  issue  alone  was  uncertain  ;  it  depended  on  the 
degree  of  excitement  and  exasperation  to  which  the  masses 
could  be  brought."  The  reasons  given  by  revolutionary  writers 
for  the  invasion  of  the  Tuileries  are,  therefore,  only  the  pretexts 
that  were  given  to  the  people  in  order  to  induce  them  to  carry  out 
the  designs  of  the  leaders.  But,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the 
people  at  this  moment  were  in  no  mood  to  rise.  Even  the  Faubourgs 
of  Saint-Antoine  and  Saint-Marceau  showed  little  tendency  to 
revolt,  although  perpetually  stirred  up  by  Santerre  and  by 
Gonchon. 

Theroigne  de  Mericourt,  no  longer  the  light-hearted///^  de 
joie  who  had  ridden  with  the  mob  to  Versailles,  but  a  haggard 
and  embittered  virago,  was  also  hard  at  work  in  Saint-Antoine, 
where  she  had  organized  revolutionary  clubs  for  women  on 
the  model  of  the  Societe  Fratemelle  that  formed  an  annexe 
to  the  Jacobins  and  served  as  a  training  school  for  the  future 
tricoteuses.  But  Theroigne's  efforts  met  with  violent  remon- 
strance from  the  working-men  of  Saint-Antoine,  who  complained 
to  Santerre  that  the  sweetness  of  their  wives'  tempers  was  not 
increased  by  attendance  at  these  assembhes,  and  the  Jacobins 
were  obHged  to  request  Mile.  Theroigne  "  to  moderate  her 
activities."  ^ 

Nothing,  indeed,  is  more  surprising  than  the  resistance  shown 
by  the  inhabitants  of  the  Faubourgs  to  the  seductions  of  the 
Jacobins — a  fact  of  which  historians  give  no  idea,  but  which  is 
only  revealed  by  a  study  of  contemporary  literature,  especially 
of  the  ultra-revolutionary  variety.  It  is  in  the  pages  of  Prud- 
homme,  in  the  reports  of  the  Seances  des  Jacobins,  that  we  dis- 
cover the  immense  efforts  made  by  the  revolutionaries  and  their 
repeated  failures  to  enlist  the  sympathies  of  the  people.  For 
when  we  consider  the  wretchedness  of  the  people  at  this  crisis, 
and  realize  that  the  arms  of  the  Jacobins  were  always  open  to 
receive  them ;  when  we  remember  that  any  deserter  from  the 
army  who  appealed  to  the  Society  for  sympathy  stood  an  ex- 
cellent chance  of  receiving  a  civic  crown,  that  any  man  or  woman 
who  entered  the  haU  and  uttered  revolutionary  sentiments 
received  an  ovation,  and  in  many  instances  a  sum  of  money,  that 
any  schoolboy  who  recited  a  revolutionary  poem  was  invited  to 
the  honours  of  the  Seance  and  overwhelmed  with  compliments, 
we  can  only  wonder  that  the  Faubourgs  did  not  crowd  en  masse 

*  See  Santerre's  admission  at  a  Seance  of  the  Jacobins  on  April  13, 
1792  :  "  The  men  of  this  Faubourg  (Saint-Antoine)  would  like  better,  on 
coming  in  from  their  work,  to  find  their  homes  in  order  than  to  see  their 
wives  return  from  an  assembly  where  they  do  not  always  gain  a  spirit  of 
sweetness,  and  therefore  they  have  regarded  with  disfavour  these  assemblies 
that  are  repeated  three  times  in  the  week." 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    213 

to  the  club  in  the  Rue  Saint-Honor6.  But  no,  only  here  and  there 
does  a  stray  dweller  of  the  Faubourgs  find  his  way  there,  and  then 
with  what  triumph  and  at  what  length  is  the  incident  recorded 
in  the  journal  of  the  Society  ! 

True,  we  shall  read  often  of  deputations  from  the  "  sections 
of  Paris  "  arriving,  both  at  the  Assembly  and  at  the  Jacobins, 
but  we  do  not  need  the  explanations  of  Montjoie,  of  BeauUeu, 
or  the  Deux  Amis  de  la  Liberie  to  reaUze  that  the  speeches 
crammed  with  classical  allusions  delivered  on  these  occasions 
were  not  the  work  of  the  poor  and  unlettered  inhabitants  of  the 
Faubourgs,  but  of  the  revolutionary  agents  who  distributed  them 
to  orators  so  unlearned  that  they  were  hardly  able  to  read  the 
words  aloud.^  As  to  any  spontaneous  expressions  of  the  people's 
sentiments  these  were  seldom  accorded  a  hearing,  and  at  any  rate 
were  not  recorded  in  the  press,  which  at  this  date  was  almost 
entirely  in  the  pay  of  the  revolutionary  leaders.  Thus  we  read 
of  an  imposing  deputation  from  Saint-Marceau  to  the  National 
Assembly  consisting  of  6000  men  armed  with  pikes  and  forks, 
and  women  with  their  arms  held  threateningly  aloft,  and  children 
carrying  naked  swords,  led  by  "  an  orator  in  rags  who  spoke  Uke 
Cicero  "  in  praise  of  the  Revolution,  but  a  petition  signed  by 
30,000  citizens  which  was  presented  a  few  days  later  to  protest 
against  the  tyranny  of  the  Jacobins  is  not  even  mentioned  in  the 
reports  of  the  debates.^ 

Adolphe  Schmidt,  in  his  studies  of  revolutionary  Paris,  has 
worked  out  by  statistics  that  out  of  all  the  600,000  to  800,000 
inhabitants  of  the  capital  there  were,  in  1792,  not  more  than 
5000  to  6000  real  revolutionaries — a  number  that  diminished  in 
the  following  year  to  nearly  half — and  that  during  the  whole 

^  Deux  Amis  de  la  Liberti,  vii.  242,  viii.  24.  See  also  Montjoie,  Con- 
juration de  d'OfUans,  iii.  189  ;  Essais  de  BeauUeu,  iii.  104.  "  Nothing  was 
more  usual  than  this  kind  of  fraud,"  writes  the  contemporary  Senac 
de  Meillan ;  "  the  sections  and  the  Faubourgs  were  made  to  speak ;  they 
were  set  in  motion  even  without  their  knowledge.  .  .  .  We  saw  one  day 
the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine  arriving,  to  the  number  of  eight  to  nine 
thousand  men.  Well,  this  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine  was  composed  of  about 
fifty  bandits  hardly  known  in  the  district,  who  had  collected  on  their 
route  every  one  they  could  see  in  the  shops  or  workshops,  so  as  to  form  an 
imposing  mass.  These  good  people  were  on  the  Place  Vendome,  very 
much  bored,  not  knowing  what  they  had  come  for,  and  waiting  impatiently 
for  the  leaders  to  give  them  permission  to  retire." 

'  This  petition  is  recorded  in  the  journal  of  Mme.  JuUien,  Journal  d'une 
Bourgeoise,  p.  89  :  "  There  is  a  petition  signed  by  30,000  idlers  {hadauds) 
which  is  to  appear  on  Sunday  at  the  National  Assembly  against  the 
Jacobins."  We  must  not  forget  that  in  revolutionary  language  the  terms 
"  badauds,"  "  brigands,"  or  "  canaille  "  signify  the  law-abiding  members 
of  the  people.  Thus  Prudhomme,  Revolutions  de  Paris,  xii.  526  :  "  The 
horde  of  fanatics  and  counter-revolutionaries  who,  to  the  number  of  more 
than  60,000,  have  taken  refuge  ...  in  the  capital." 


214        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

revolutionary  period  the  anti-revolutionaries  constituted  nine- 
tenths  of  the  population.  In  this  June  of  1792  the  departniental 
administration  placed  in  this  category  of  "  honest  folk  "  and 
"  young  folk  "  "  those  useful  and  hard-working  men  attached 
to  the  State  at  every  point  of  their  existence  and  by  all  the  objects 
of  their  affections— proprietors,  cultivators,  tradesmen,  artisans, 
workmen,  and  all  those  estimable  citizens  whose  activity  and 
economy  contribute  to  the  public  treasury,  and  animate  aU 
the  resources  of  national  prosperity.  All  these  men  profess  a 
boundless  devotion  to  the  Constitution,  and  principaUy  to 
the  sovereignty  of  the  narion,  to  poUtical  equaUty  and  to 
constitutional  monarchy."  "The  Jacobin  Club,"  the  same 
report  declares,  "  is  alone  responsible  for  any  disturbances  m 

the  citv." 

In  order,  therefore,  to  persuade  the  people  of  Paris  to  niarch 
on  the  Tuileries  some  very  powerful  incentive  must  be  provided. 
For  some  months  the  Girondins,  Brissot,  Gensonne,  and  above 
aU  Carra,  had  endeavoured  to  inflame  the  popular  mmd  by  con- 
tmual  declamations  against  the  so-caUed  "Austrian  Committee," 
by  means  of  which  Marie  Antoinette  was  declared  to  be  betraymg 
France  to  the  Emperor  of  Austria,  but  their  efforts  to  prove  the 
existence  of  this  committee  had  ended  in  ignominious  failure. 
To  the  request  for  a  written  statement  of  their  accusations  they 
replied  :  "  What  do  you  wish  us  to  prove  ?  Conspiracies  can- 
not be'  written  down  (Les  conspirations  ne  s'ecrivent  pas)." 
Later  on  at  their  trial,  when  they  asked  Fouquier  Tinville  for 
proofs  of  their  guilt,  Fouquier  quoted  these  words  to  them  and 
sent  them  to  the  guiUotine.^  „  ^     .       r  •.   .  ^ 

The  scare  of  the  "  Austrian  Committee  having  failed  to 
rouse  the  people,  the  Girondins  set  about  devising  further 
"  traps  "  for  the  King.  If  only  Louis  XVI.  were  to  refuse  his 
sanction  to  any  decrees  passed  by  the  Assembly  the  old  cry 
against  the  "  Veto  "  could  be  raised,  and  an  insurrection  might  be 
expected  to  result.  Accordingly  three  iniquitous  decrees  were 
placed  before  the  Assembly.  The  first  enacted  that  all  the  non- 
iuring  priests— that  is  to  say,  those  who  had  not  subscribed  to 
the  civil  constitution  of  the  clergy— should  be  deported;  the, 
second  that  the  King  should  be  deprived  of  his  bodyguard  of 

1  Paris  pendant  la  RivoluHon,  by  Adolphe  Schmidt,  p.  21.  This  repoii 
of  the  Paris  administration  is  quoted  by  Prudhomme,  mvoluHons  de  Pans, 
xii    S2^,  as  an  insulting  "  libel."  ,.     ,      x  ^.^  +v 

^  mmoires  de  Hua,  p.  119.  See  Camille  Desmoulms  reference  to  tl 
incident  in  his  Fragment  de  I'Histoire  secrete,  etc.,  p.  5  :  ^°^^°^^"„^\X 
estabUsh  against  Brissot  and  Gensonne  the  existence  of  an  Anglo-Prussic 
committee  by  means  of  a  number  of  proofs  a  hundred  times  stronger  th^ 
those  by  which  they,  Brissot  and  Gensonne,  proved  the  existence  of  - 
Austrian  committee." 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   215 

1800  men  accorded  to  liim  by  the  Constitution,  but  suspected 
by  the  revolutionaries  of  loyalty  to  his  person,  and  the  third  that 
a  camp  of  20,000  men  should  be  formed  outside  Paris.  Louis  gave 
his  sanction  to  the  second  decree,  but  withheld  it  from  the  first 
and  third.  Now,  since  the  first  decree  was  mainly  instigated  by 
Roland,  and  the  third  was  proposed  by  Servan — Madame  Roland's 
particular  ally  in  the  ministry — it  is  impossible  not  to  recognize 
the  hand  of  Madame  Roland  in  all  this.  The  three  decrees  were, 
of  course,  directly  unconstitutional,  the  last  because,  according 
to  the  terms  of  the  Constitution,  the  King  alone  had  the  authority 
to  propose  any  addition  to  the  standing  army,  and  the  camp  of 
20,000  men  was  proposed  by  Servan  entirely  on  his  own  authority, 
without  reference  to  the  King  or  even  to  the  other  ministers. 
Moreover,  as  the  20,000  men  were  to  consist  of  "  confederates  " 
from  the  provinces,  that  is  to  say,  they  were  to  be  chosen  by  the 
Jacobin  Clubs  all  over  France,  the  plan  met  with  immediate 
remonstrance,  not  only  from  the  King  but  from  sane  men  of  every 
party.  Lafayette  wrote  to  the  King  from  his  camp  at  Maubeuge 
urging  him  to  persist  in  his  refusal  to  sanction  the  decree ;  even 
Robespierre  expressed  his  disapproval. 

The  ministers  themselves  were  violently  divided  on  the 
subject,  Roland,  Servan,  and  Claviere  supporting  the  plan, 
Dumouriez,  Lacoste,  and  Duranton  protesting — Dumouriez, 
indeed,  nearly  came  to  blows  with  Servan  in  the  King's  presence.^ 

But  most  of  all  was  the  proposal  resented  by  the  National 
Guard  of  Paris — a  corps  essentially  representative  of  the  people 
— ^who  sent  a  deputation  to  the  Assembly  to  protest  against  the 
imputation  that  they  were  incompetent  to  defend  the  capital. 
**  Servan,"  Scdd  the  orator  of  this  deputation,  "  had  violated  the 
Constitution,  had  shown  himself  *  the  vile  instrument  of  a  faction 
that  rends  the  kingdom.'  We  citizens  of  Paris,  we  who  were  the 
first  to  conquer  liberty,  we  shall  know  how  to  defend  it  at  all 
times  against  every  kind  of  tyrant ;  we  have  still  the  force  and 
courage  of  the  men  of  the  14th  of  July."  At  this  Vergniaud, 
rising  in  wrath,  declared  that  the  petitioners  were  guilty  of 
"  inconceivable  audacity,"  and  should  be  refused  "  the  honours  of 
the  sitting  " — ^in  other  words,  that  they  should  be  driven  from 
the  hall.  A  further  deputation  of  the  National  Guard,  armed 
with  a  petition  bearing  8000  signatures,  met  with  a  like  reception, 
and  the  Assembly  thereupon  closed  the  debate.^ 

To  this,  then,  had  the  "  sovereignty  of  the  people  "  been 
reduced.  All  through  the  Revolution  we  shall  find  the  same 
method  employed;  the  only  deputations  recognized  as  repre- 
sentative of  the  people  are  those  organized  by  the  revolutionary 
leaders  and  marching  to  the  word  of  command ;    spontaneous 

^  Madelin,  p.  219.  *  Buchez  et  Roux,  xv.  19-30. 


2i6        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

demonstrations  are  invariably  silenced  and  declared  to  be 
*'  seditious." 

The  Jacobin  Club,  dominated  by  the  Girondins,  whose  violence 
during  the  early  part  of  1792  surpassed  even  that  of  the  future 
Terrorists,  had  succeeded  in  estabhshing  a  tyranny  which  roused 
the  indignation  of  all  true  lovers  of  liberty.  At  his  camp  in 
Maubeuge,  Lafayette  received  from  the  administrative  and 
municipal  bodies  all  over  the  country  further  complaints  of  their 
excesses,  and  now  once  again  he  resolved  to  come  to  the  rescue 
of  the  monarchy.  His  letter  to  the  Assembly  on  June  16  is  one 
of  the  few  admirable  incidents  in  his  vacillating  career. 

"  Can  you  deny,"  he  wrote  indignantly,  "  that  a  faction 
— and  to  avoid  vague  denominations,  the  Jacobin  faction — has 
caused  all  the  disorders  ?  It  is  this  faction  that  I  loudly  accuse. 
Organized  like  an  empire  apart  in  its  metropohs  and  its  affihations, 
blindly  directed  by  a  few  ambitious  leaders,  this  sect  forms  a 
distinct  corporation  in  the  midst  of  the  French  people,  of  which 
it  usurps  the  powers  by  subjugating  its  representatives  and  its 
agents.  It  is  there  that  at  pubhc  meetings  attachment  to  the 
law  is  called  '  aristocracy  '  and  its  infringement  '  patriotism  ' ; 
there  the  assassins  of  Desilles  triumph,  the  crimes  of  Jourdan 
find  panegyrists.  ...  It  is  I  who  denounce  this  sect  to  you  .  .  . 
and  how  should  I  delay  any  longer  in  fulfilling  this  duty  when 
each  day  weakens  constituted  authority,  substitutes  the  spirit  of 
party  for  the  will  of  the  people,  when  the  audacity  of  agitators 
imposes  silence  on  peaceful  citizens  and  casts  aside  men  who 
could  be  useful.  .  .  .  May  the  royal  power  remain  intact,  for  it  is 
guaranteed  by  the  Constitution ;  may  it  be  independent,  for  that 
independence  is  one  of  the  mainsprings  of  our  hberty  ;  may  the 
King  be  revered,  for  he  is  invested  with  the  majesty  of  the  nation ; 
may  he  choose  a  ministry  that  wears  the  chains  of  no  party,  and 
if  there  are  conspirators  may  they  perish  beneath  the  power 
of  the  sword. 

"  In  a  word,  may  the  reign  of  the  Clubs  be  destroyed  by  you 
and  give  place  to  the  reign  of  law  .  .  .  their  disorganizing  maxims 
(give  place)  to  the  true  principles  of  hberty,  their  dehrious  fury 
to  the  calm  and  settled  courage  of  a  nation  that  knows  its  rights 
and  defends  them,  may  party  considerations  yield  to  the  real 
interests  of  the  country,  which  at  this  moment  of  danger  should 
unite  aU  those  to  whom  its  subjugation  and  ruin  are  not  a 
matter  of  atrocious  profit  and  infamous  speculation." 

These  courageous  words  of  Lafayette  were  received  with 
a  howl  of  execration  by  the  Girondins.  Vergniaud  rose  angrily 
to  declare  that  "  it  was  aU  over  with  liberty  if  a  general  were 
allowed  to  dictate  laws  "  to  the  Assembly. 

No  less  than  sixty-five  departments  of  France  and  several 


i 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   217 

large  towns  hastened  to  endorse  the  sentiments  of  Lafayette.^ 
But  it  was  useless  indeed  for  any  one  to  oppose  the  Girondins  at 
this  crisis;  the  power  was  all  in  their  hands,  and  Dumouriez, 
reaUzing  this,  dared  not  stand  against  them,  so,  although  he  had 
declared  that  "  those  who  demanded  the  formation  of  a  camp  of 
20,000  men  near  Paris  were  as  much  the  enemies  of  the  country 
as  the  enemies  of  the  King,"  he  ended  by  advising  Louis  XVI. 
to  sanction  the  decree. 

It  was  the  crowning  misfortune  of  the  unhappy  King  at  every 
crisis  of  the  Revolution  to  lack  disinterested  advisers.  Before 
the  siege  of  the  Bastille  Necker  had  not  dared  to  stand  by  him ; 
at  the  march  on  Versailles  all  his  ministers  had  distinguished 
themselves  by  their  ineptitude ;  and  now,  before  the  invasion  of 
the  Tuileries,  Dumouriez  failed  him  ignominiously. 

Long  afterwards  in  his  Memoires  Dumouriez  completely 
justified  the  King's  conduct  in  refusing  his  sanction  to  the  two 
decrees,  but  his  tribute  to  the  integrity  of  Louis  XVI.  only 
places  his  own  perfidy  in  a  blacker  hght.  One  day,  Dumouriez 
relates,  the  King,  taking  him  by  the  hand,  said,  "  in  accents  that 
neither  art  nor  dissimulation  could  have  imitated,  '  God  is  my 
witness  that  I  wish  for  nothing  but  the  happiness  of  France,' 
and  Dumouriez,  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  rephed,  '  Sire,  I  do  not 
doubt  it  ...  if  aU  France  knew  you  as  I  do  edl  our  misfortunes 
would  be  ended !  '  "  Yet,  after  this,  Dumouriez  betrayed  him. 
For  Louis  XVI.  having  refused  to  sanction  the  two  decrees, 
Dumouriez  only  waited  for  the  inevitable  explosion  in  order  to 
resign  his  post  in  the  ministry  £Lnd  return  to  the  army — and  the 
Due  de  Chartres. 

Meanwhile  Madame  Roland  had  seen  her  opportunity  to 
bring  about  the  crisis  for  which  she  had  so  long  been  waiting, 
and  before  the  King  could  announce  his  final  decision  she  had 
devised  a  further  trap  which  this  time  was  to  prove  effectual. 

The  dismissal  of  Necker  had  served  as  a  pretext  for  the 
Revolution  of  July  1789 ;  the  dismissal  of  the  three  "  patriot 
ministers,"  Roland,  Servan,  and  Claviere,  might  be  expected 
to  bring  about  the  Revolution  of  June  1792.  Accordingly  she 
composed  a  letter  ^  which  Roland  was  to  hand  to  the  King  in  the 
council  as  his  own  composition,  but  of  which  the  authorship  was 
only  too  plainly  visible.  Who  but  Madame  Roland,  with  her 
insatiable  greed  for  power,  could  have  basely  taunted  Louis 
XVI.  with  the  loss  of  those  prerogatives  that  he  had  voluntarily 
renounced  ?  "  Your  Majesty  has  enjoyed  the  great  prerogatives 
that  he  beheved  to  belong  to  royalty.  Brought  up  with  the  idea 
of  retaining  them  he  could  not  feel  any  pleasure  at  seeing  them 

^  Memoires  de  Lafayette,  iii.  332. 
*  "  Je  fis  la  fameuse  lettre,"  Memoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  241. 


2i8         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

taken  from  him ;  the  desire  to  have  them  given  back  is  as  natural 
as  the  regret  at  seeing  them  done  away  with."  Then,  dropping 
the  tone  of  contemptuous  condolence,  she  proceeds  to  threaten 
him,  and  all  the  old  ferocity  flashes  out  anew  :  "  Two  important 
decrees  have  been  drawn  up,  both  of  essential  interest  to  the 
pubUc  tranquiUity  and  the  salvation  of  the  State.  The  delay  to 
sanction  them  inspires  distrust ;  if  prolonged  it  will  cause  discon- 
tent ;  and  I  am  forced  to  say  that  in  the  present  agitation  of  all 
minds,  discontent  may  lead  to  anything.  There  is  no  time  to 
draw  back,  it  is  no  longer  even  possible  to  temporize — the 
revolution  is  made  in  the  minds  of  the  people,  it  will  be  finished 
at  the  price  of  blood,  and  will  be  cemented  with  blood,  if  wisdom 
does  not  prevent  misfortune  it  is  possible  to  avoid.  .  .  . 

"  I  know  that  the  austere  language  of  truth  is  rarely  welcomed 
near  the  throne ;  I  know  also  that  it  is  because  it  cannot  make 
itself  heard  there  that  revolutions  become  necessary  .  .  .  and  I 
know  nothing  that  can  prevent  me  from  fulfilling  my  conscious 
duty,"  etc. 

Not  content  with  handing  this  precious  document  to  the 
King,  Roland,  obedient  to  Manon's  instructions,  insisted  on 
reading  it  aloud  to  him,  after  which  he  deUvered  himself  of  a 
violent  tirade  containing  "  the  bitterest  and  most  insulting 
details  "  on  the  conduct  of  the  King,  representing  him  as  a 
"  perjurer,"  reproaching  him  on  the  subject  of  his  confessor 
and  of  his  bodyguard,  on  the  imprudences  of  the  Queen,  and  the 
intrigues  of  the  Court  with  Austria.^  There  was  a  limit  to  the 
patience  even  of  Louis  XVI. ;  and  this  attack  of  Roland's  had 
the  effect  of  bringing  things  to  a  crisis.  On  the  12th  of  June 
the  King  dismissed  Roland,  Servan,  and  Claviere  ;  on  the  19th 
he  finally  placed  his  "  Veto  "  on  the  two  decrees. 

Nothing  could  have  suited  Madame  Roland  better.  For 
once  we  may  beUeve  her  to  be  sincere  when  she  assures  us  that 
she  was  enchanted  at  the  dismissal  of  the  three  ministers,  for, 
if  the  King's  action  added  fuel  to  her  fury,  it  had  provided  the 
final  pretext  for  insurrection.^ 

The  plan  concerted  in  Madame  Roland's  salon  of  collecting 
a  mob  to  march  on  the  Tuileries  was  matured  in  the  councils^ 
of  the   Orleanistes.    At  Charenton,  Danton,  Marat,  Santerre, 

*  MSmoires  de  Dumouriez,  ii.  274. 

*  That  the  rising  of  the  20th  of  June  had  been  planned  long  before  the 
dismissal  of  the  three  ministers  on  the  12th  and  the  King's  final  refusal  to 
sanction  the  two  decrees  on  the  19th,  and  that  these  circumstances  were 
therefore  only  the  pretexts  given  to  the  people  for  marching  on  the  Tuileries, 
is  further  evident  from  the  fact  that  the  plan  of  insurrection  was  known  in 
London  at  least  ten  days  before  it  took  place.  On  June  13  a  member  of] 
the  Jacobin  Club  read  aloud  a  letter  he  had  received  from  London  an-j 
nouncing  a  movement  that  was  to  take  place  between  the  13th  and  th« 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   219 

Camille  Desmoulins^  met  by  night,  as  the  Orleanistes  of  1789 
had  met  at  Montrouge  or  Passy,  for  it  was  they  alone  who  could 
control  the  workings  of  the  great  revolutionary  machine ;  it  was 
they  who  chose  and  paid  the  mob  leaders,  they  who  distributed 
the  roles,  prompted  the  orators,  and  lavished  gold  and  strong 
drink  on  the  obedient  multitude  they  held  at  their  command. 
The  Girondins  could  only  suggest  and  perorate  ;  the  Orleanistes 
knew  how  to  lead  from  words  to  action.  Then  the  conspirators 
set  to  work  to  inflame  the  minds  of  the  people  :  Carra,  Gorsas, 
Brissot,  and  Condorcet  distributed  seditious  pamphlets.  Potion 
and  Manuel  placarded  the  walls  of  the  city  with  fresh  calumnies 
against  the  Royal  Family.^  A  caricature  was  hawked  on  the 
quays  representing  Louis  XVI.  with  his  crown  shpping  from  his 
head,  seated  at  picquet  with  the  Due  d'Orl^ans,  and  exclaiming, 
"  J'ai  ecarte  les  coeurs,  il  a  pour  lui  les  piques,  j'ai  perdu  la 
partie."^  The  pikes  were  literally  those  of  Orleans,  for  Petion 
had  ordered  30,000  to  be  forged  for  arming  the  populace,  and  by 
a  refinement  of  brutahty  the  points  were  so  constructed  as  not 
only  to  wound  but  to  lacerate  horribly  the  flesh  of  the  victims.* 
These,  together  with  50,000  red  caps  of  hberty,  were  distributed 
in  the  Faubourgs.  Meanwhile  Gorsas  paraded  the  streets  crying 
out,  "  My  friends,  we  must  go  to-morrow  to  plant  under  the 
windows  of  fat  Louis  not  the  oak  of  hberty  but  an  aspen  !  "  ^ 

As  usual,  the  people  were  not  admitted  to  the  secrets  of  the 
leaders,  whose  ingenious  method  was  invariably  to  propose  some 
apparently  harmless  demonstration,  and  then  to  stir  the  people 
up  to  commit  excesses.  By  this  means  it  was  always  possible  to 
avoid  responsibihty,  and  to  attribute  the  blame  for  any  violence 
that  took  place  to  the  imcontrollable  passions  of  the  populace. 

20th,  and  in  the  Correspondance  secrdte  for  June  16  we  find  an  entry  to  the 
same  effect  :  "  Letters  from  London  announce  a  great  movement  in  Paris 
for  the  2oth  of  this  month.  It  has  been  noticed  that  the  great  events  of  the 
Revolution  have  always  been  foretold  us  by  the  English."  The  co-operation 
of  the  Enghsh  revolutionaries  is  here  clearly  evident. 

1  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  43.  Montjoie  asserts  that 
Robespierre  was  also  present  at  the  meetings,  but  this  seems  improbable, 
since  the  movement  was  conducted  by  his  enemies  the  Brissotins  and 
Orleanistes.  Moreover,  at  the  Jacobin  Club  he  had  strongly  opposed  the 
plan  of  insurrection.  If  he  was  present  the  fact  is  only  to  be  explained  by 
his  natural  timidity — ^he  may  have  been  afraid  to  stay  away  lest  he  should 
be  accused  of  sympathy  with  the  Court.  But  it  seems  unlikely  that  he 
took  any  active  part  in  the  proceedings. 

2  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  174  ;   Ferrieres,  iii.  105. 

3  A  play  on  the  word  pique,  which  signifies  both  spades  at  cards 
and  pikes. 

*  ^ontjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans.'m  174 ;  Histoire particuli^re,  etc., 
by  Maton  de  la  Varenne. 
6  Ibid. 


220        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

As  on  the  14th  of  July  the  people  had  only  been  told  to  march 
on  the  Bastille  in  order  to  procure  arms  for  their  defence,  and 
on  [the  5th  of  October  to  go  to  Versailles  and  ask  the  King  for 
bread,  so  before  the  20th  of  June  the  programme  officially  put 
before  the  inhabitants  of  Saint-Antoine  and  Saint-Marceau  was  to 
form  a  procession  in  order  to  present  a  petition  to  the  King  and 
Legislative  Assembly,  asking  for  the  sanction  of  the  two  decrees 
and  the  recall  of  the  dismissed  ministers.^  After  this  they  were 
to  proceed  to  the  terrace  of  the  Tuileries  and  plant  a  "  tree  of 
liberty,"  to  conmaemorate  the  anniversary  of  the  Oath  of  the 
Tennis  Court.  Nothing  more  innocent  could  be  imagined,  and 
by  way  of  inducement  to  the  more  peaceable  amongst  the  people 
it  was  suggested  how  pleasant  it  would  be  to  visit  the  inside 
of  the  Tuileries,  and  see  Monsieur  and  Madame  Veto  at  home.^ 
But  in  order  to  ensure  the  co-operation  of  the  populace  more 
potent  methods  were  employed,  and  amongst  these,  as  in  every 
outbreak  of  the  Revolution,  alcohol  played  the  principal  part. 
So  in  the  Faubourgs  throughout  the  19th  of  June  champagne, 
distributed  by  Santerre,  flowed  freely,^  whilst  the  professional 
instigators  of  crime  who  had  figured  in  all  the  former  tumults — 
Gonchon,  St.  Huruge,  Foumier  I'Americain,  and  Rotondo — stirred 
up  insurrection.  In  the  Champs  ]£lysees  a  feast  was  spread 
to  which  the  inhabitants  of  Saint-Antoine  and  Saint-Marceau 
were  bidden ;  in  the  surrounding  cabarets  half  -  naked  Sans- 
Culottes  collected,  incendiary  speeches  were  made,  the  Prussian 
Clootz  as  toast-master  proposed  the  deposition  of  Louis  XVI. ; 
and  although  the  more  prudent  of  the  leaders  affected  to  support 
this  proposition,  the  comedian  Dugazon  was  permitted  to  sing 
verses  provoking  the  people  to  murder  the  King.^ 

Louis  XVI.  well  knew  what  was  taking  place  in  the  city. 
That  day  he  wrote  to  his  confessor,  asking  him  to  come  to  him  : 
**  I  have  never  had  so  great  need  of  your  consolations ;  I  have 
done  with  men,  it  is  towards  Heaven  that  I  turn  my  eyes.  Great 
disasters  are  announced  for  to-morrow ;  I  shall  have  courage.' 
And  as  he  looked  out  that  summer  evening  across  the  great 
gardens  of  the  Tuileries  to  the  sun  sinking  behind  the  Champs 
Elysees,  he  said  to  good  old  Malesherbes  standing  by  him, 
*•  Who  knows  whether  I  shaU  see  the  sun  set  to-morrow  ? 
Then  with  an  untroubled  conscience  he  went  to  rest,  ready  to 
welcome  death  that  would  dehver  him  from  the  hideous  night- 
mare of  hfe.    And  in  hundreds  of  httle  French  homes  that  night 

^  Roederer,  Chronique  des  Cinquante  Jours  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  18. 

2  Mortimer  Ternaux,  Histoire  de  la  Terreur,  i.  141. 

3  Deux  Amis,  viii.  25. 

*  Maton  de  la  Varenne,  op.  cit.;   Ferrieres,  iii.  105  *,   Montjoie,  Ccm-^ 
juration  de  d'Orldans,  iii.  175. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    221 

the  people,  who  still  loved  their  King,  lay  down  likewise  to  rest, 
little  dreaming  of  the  terrible  scenes  of  the  morrow  that  in  the 
l5dng  pages  of  history  were  to  be  set  down  to  their  account. 

THE  20TH  OF  JUNE 

But  whilst  the  people  slept  the  conspirators  were  all  awake  ; 
at  the  house  of  Santerre  the  final  touches  were  added  to  the 
plan  of  insurrection  ;  Chabot,  Bazire,  Merlin,  Lasource  continued 
to  harangue  the  inhabitants  of  the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine,  three 
of  whom,  outraged  by  the  incendiary  speeches  of  tlje  agitators, 
denounced  them  later  on  to  the  Assembly,  declaring  that  Chabot 
had  collected  the  people  in  a  church  of  the  district  and  had 
actually  proposed  the  assassination  of  the  King.^ 

So  the  match  was  set  to  the  mine,  and  the  conspirators 
eagerly  awaited  the  explosion.  But,  contrary  to  their  expecta- 
tions, Saint-Antoine  showed  no  irresistible  desire  to  rise.  At  five 
in  the  morning  of  the  20th  Santerre  had  only  succeeded  in  rais- 
ing a  mob  of  1500  people  ;  ^  according  to  one  account  of  the  day, 
this  number  had  not  been  exceeded  by  eleven  o'clock,  including 
those  who  had  collected  from  curiosity,  and  "  it  was  not  until 
the  sieur  Santerre  had  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  a  detach- 
ment of  invalides  .  .  .,  and  had  incited  during  their  march  all 
onlookers  to  join  them,  that  the  multitude  considerably 
increased.*'  *  Meanwhile  in  Saint-Marceau  a  motley  crowd  of 
men,  women,  and  children  had  assembled,  armed  with  the  pikes 
provided  by  Petion,  who  now  with  consummate  hypocrisy  sent  out 
commissioners  to  make  a  feint  of  dissuading  them  from  bearing 
arms  and  forming  a  procession.  The  people,  well  under  the  con- 
trol of  the  agitators,  of  course  refused  to  go  back  to  their  homes 
whence  they  had  been  summoned  ;  some  indeed  answered  in  all 
good  faith  that  they  had  no  evil  intentions,  and  were  resolved 
to  march.  Finally  the  Faubourgs,  to  which  a  number  of 
deserters  from  the  National  Guard  had  joined  themselves,  set 
forth,  divided  into  three  bands  led  by  Santerre,  St.  Huruge,  and 
Theroigne  de  Mericourt,  and  now  at  last,  as  they  passed  through 
the  streets,  recruits  began  to  pour  in  from  all  sides — coal-heavers, 
porters,  chimney-sweeps — ready  for  the  price  of  a  day's  work* 
and  the  promise  of  free  drinks  to  throw  themselves  into  any 

*  Buchez  et  Roux,  xv.  196.  Chabot  denied  the  accusation,  but  even  if 
he  did  not  make  this  definite  proposition  it  is  certain  that  he  was  in  Saint- 
Antoine  during  the  night  stirring  up  the  people  against  the  King.  See 
Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  iii.  175  ;  Roederer,  p.  19  ;  Ferri^res,  iii. 
106  ;   Prudhomme,  Crimes,  iv.  38. 

*  ORoederer,  p.  22.  «  Buchez  et!Roux,  xv.  117. 

*  See  statement  of  Santerre  on  these  payments  to  working-men  quoted 
in  the  Memoirs  of  the  Comiesse  de  Bohm  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  196. 


222        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

tumult;  but  besides  these,  terrible  freaks  of  humanity,  half 
naked,  half  in  rags,  dregs  not  only  of  the  Paris  underworld  but 
of  foreign  cities,  Italians,  negroes  and  negresses,  brigands  of  the 
South,  bearing  as  well  as  the  usual  revolutionary  weapons — pikes, 
scythes,  pick-axes,  knotted  sticks,  and  rusty  swords  —  horrible 
emblems  of  their  own  devising — filthy  trousers  held  aloft  on  poles, 
the  badge  of  the  Sans-Culottes,  the  bleeding  heart  of  a  calf 
labelled  "  Aristocrat's  heart,"  toy  gibbets,  hangmen's  ropes. 
Eye-witnesses  speak  shudderingly  of  this  procession  ;  nothing  so 
revolting  had  ever  yet  been  seen  in  Paris. 

The  organizers  of  the  movement — ^who  as  usual  remained 
prudently  in  the  background — had  every  reason  to  congratulate 
themselves  on  the  success  of  their  efforts ;  never  before  in  the 
whole  course  of  the  Revolution  had  so  formidable  a  mob  been 
collected :  barely  looo  people  had  marched  on  the  Bastille,  8000 
on  Versailles,  but  now  on  the  20th  of  June  certain  contemporaries 
declare  that  no  less  than  20,000  men,  women,  and  children  took 
part  in  the  movement.^  Arithmetically  they  constituted  only 
about  one-thirtieth  of  the  population  of  the  city;  still  this  number 
was  sufficient  to  give  some  semblance  of  truth  to  the  assertion 
that  "  the  whole  people  "  had  risen  in  the  cause  of  liberty. 

It  was  more  than  sufficient  to  alarm  the  Assembly,  who,  hear- 
ing that  the  vanguard  of  the  army  consisting  of  8000  people  were 
at  the  door  of  the  Assembly  demanding  admittance,  were  called 
upon  instantly  to  decide  whether  the  procession  should  be 
allowed  to  march  through  the  hall  with  their  arms.  "  Since  they 
are  8000,  and  we  are  only  745,"  cried  one  deputy  overcome  with 
panic,  *'  this  is  the  moment  to  close  the  sitting  and  depart  !  " 
Hua,  more  courageous,  declared  that  the  Assembly  should  stand 
its  ground  and  refuse  the  mob  admittance.  "  Who  are  these 
men  calling  themselves  the  people  who  bring  us  a  petition  with 
cannons  and  pikes  ?  Close  the  doors  ;  they  may  break  them 
down  if  they  wish,  but  at  least  the  Assembly  will  not  have 
received  them  and  will  have  maintained  its  dignity  !  " 

But  the  Girondins  —  Vergniaud,  Guadet,  Lasource  —  whose 
collusion  with  the  mob  leaders  was  a  guarantee  for  their  personal 
safety,  arose  indignantly  to  demand  that  "  the  people  "  should 
be  allowed  to  enter  and  place  their  "  sufferings  and  anxieties  " 
before  the  Assembly.  At  this  Jaucourt  aptly  exclaimed,  "  It 
is  evident  that  those  who  brought  them  here  cannot  send  them 
away  again  !  " 

*  On  this  point  contemporaries  are  entirely  disagreed.  Napoleon,  an 
eye-witness  of  the  scene,  put  the  crowd  at  only  6000  ;  Beaulieu  says  8000, 
but  Roederer  says  20,000.  Mr.  Croker  believed  this  to  be  an  intentional 
exaggeration  in  order  "  to  make  the  mob  pass  for  the  people  "  and  to  excuse 
the  terror  of  the  Assembly. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    223 

Other  members  rose  to  speak,  when  suddenly  the  waiting 
crowd,  whose  angry  murmur  had  been  growing  louder,  broke 
down  the  barriers  and  burst  into  the  hall.  A  scene  of  indescrib- 
able confusion  followed ;  cries  of  protest  and  alarm  arose  from  all 
parts  of  the  Assembly ;  members  sprang  on  to  the  benches  and 
vainly  strove  to  make  their  voices  heard  above  the  tumult. 
The  President  hastily  put  on  his  hat  to  signify  that  the  sitting 
was  ended.  Finally  the  advance-guard  of  the  mob  was  driven 
out  again,  and  after  further  discussion  the  Assembly  decided  to 
admit  a  deputation  of  "  the  people."  The  orator  of  the  deputa- 
tion, a  man  named  Sylvestre  Huguenin,  formerly  a  deserter  from 
the  army,  now  an  agent  of  brothels,  was  certainly  not  calculated 
to  inspire  confidence  in  the  pacific  disposition  of  his  followers. 
Tall  and  gaunt,  with  a  bald  forehead,  bloodshot  eyes,  a  dry  and 
withered  skin,  his  aspect  was  no  less  frightful  than  the  tirade 
he  now  deUvered  to  the  Assembly,  of  which  every  word  was  a 
veiled  provocation  to  assassinate  the  King.  "  A  single  man 
shall  not  influence  the  will  of  20,000  men.  If  out  of  considera- 
tion we  maintain  him  in  his  post,  it  is  on  condition  that  he  fills 
it  constitutionally ;  if  he  fails  to  do  this  he  counts  for  nothing 
to  the  French  nation  and  deserves  the  extreme  penalty."  ^  As  an 
address  supposed  to  have  been  framed  by  the  inhabitants  of 
Saint-Antoine  the  thing  was  the  clumsiest  of  frauds,  for  in  this, 
as  in  every  other  bogus  petition  presented  to  the  Assembly,  the 
phraseology  of  the  Jacobin  Club  was  clearly  recognizable.  Thus 
the  working-men  of  Saint-Antoine  were  represented  as  saying : 
"  Imitate  Cicero  and  Demosthenes  and  unveil  before  the  whole 
Senate  the  perfidious  machinations  of  Catilina  1  "  or  again  in 
a  wild  medley  of  metaphor :  "  The  people  will  it  so,  and  their 
head  is  of  as  much  value  as  that  of  crowned  despots.  That 
head  is  the  genealogical  tree  of  the  nation,  sind  beneath  that 
sturdy  oak  the  feeble  reed  must  bend." 

At  each  sanguinary  threat  the  galleries  broke  out  into  tumultu- 
ous applause,  and  it  was  then  decided  to  allow  the  Faubourgs 
to  march  through  the  Assembly.  Immediately  the  wild  horde, 
of  which  a  great  number  were  now  reeling  under  the  influence  of 
drink,  entered  the  hall  led  by  Santerre  and  St.  Huruge  ;  first 
came  seven  or  eight  musicians  playing  the  "  f  a  ira  !  "  and  behind 
them  women  armed  with  sabres  singing  and  dancing  to  the 
strains,  the  men  brandishing  their  ragged  banners  and  ghastly 
trophies  on  the  end  of  poles,  and  all  shrieking  incoherently, 
"  Long  five  the  Sans-Culottes  !  Long  live  the  nation  !  Down 
with  the  Veto  !  " 

"  The  procession,"  says  the  deputy  Hua,  "  lasted  for  three 

^  These  words  in  italics  given  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne  are  suppressed 
by  the  Moniteur  and  Buchez  et  Roux. 


224        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

hours  ;  hideous  countenances  were  there  ;  I  can  still  see  that 
moving  forest  of  pikes,  those  handkerchiefs,  those  rags  that 
served  as  standards.  ..."  Meanwhile  outside  the  hall  an 
immense  congestion  had  taken  place.  In  order  to  understand 
this  we  must  reaUze  the  situation  of  the  hall  occupied  by  the 
Assembly.  This  hall  was  the  royal  Manage,  that  is  to  say,  the 
riding-school  of  the  Tuileries,  and  stood  on  the  spot  where  at 
the  present  day  the  Rue  Castiglione  joins  the  Rue  de  Rivoli.  At 
the  time  of  the  Revolution  neither  of  these  streets  existed,  for  the 
great  gardens  of  the  convents  and  private  houses  of  the  Rue  Saint- 
Honore  stretched  right  up  to  the  line  now  occupied  by  the  Rue 
de  RivoU,  and  were  separated  from  the  Tuileries  only  by  a  long  and 
narrow  courtyard  known  as  the  Cour  du  Manage,  whilst  a  still 
narrower  passage — the  Passage  des  Feuillants — took  the  place 
of  the  Rue  Castiglione  leading  from  the  Rue  Saint-Honore  to 
the  Porte  des  Feuillants  opening  into  the  Tuileries  gardens. 
The  hall  of  the  Assembly  was  entered  by  two  doors,  one  in  the 
Cour  du  Manege,  the  other  in  the  Passage  des  Feuillants,  and  it 
was  at  this  latter  entrance  that  the  mob  had  drawn  up  demanding 
admittance.  During  the  delay  that  ensued  the  rearguard  of  the 
procession  continued  to  pour  into  the  passage  which,  since  the 
Porte  des  Feuillants  was  locked,  formed  a  blind  alley,  and  soon 
became  packed  to  suffocation.  Thereupon  the  crowd,  stifling 
for  want  of  air  and  wearied  with  inaction,  began  to  seek  an  outlet, 
and  whilst  one  party  proceeded  to  break  open  the  Porte  des 
Feuillants  and  swarm  into  the  gardens  of  the  Tuileries,  another 
bethought  themselves  of  the  poplar  tree  they  had  brought  with 
them  on  a  cart  to  represent  the  "  tree  of  liberty." 

Now  the  planting  of  this  tree  was  to  have  formed  the  principal 
ceremony  of  the  day,  and  the  people,  finding  that  their  leaders 
had  failed  to  carry  out  their  programme,  took  the  law  into  their 
own  hands  and,  bursting  into  the  garden  of  the  Capucin  convent 
next  to  the  Assembly,  amused  themselves  by  planting  there  the 
tree  of  liberty.  This  diversion  ended,  the  crowd  began  to  grow 
bored,  and  were  on  the  point  of  dispersing  when  the  roll  of  drums 
and  the  strains  of  the  "  (^a  ira! "  sounding  from  the  hall  of  the 
Assembly  rallied  them  once  more,  and  the  whole  mass  moved 
forward  through  the  doorway. 

This  long  delay  was  undoubtedly  an  error  on  the  part  of  the 
conspirators,  for  it  had  taken  the  first  edge  off  the  people's 
frenzy,  who,  if  they  had  been  marched  straight  on  the  Tuileries, 
might  have  shown  themselves  capable  of  greater  violence.  As  it 
was,  by  the  time  they  had  finished  parading  through  the  hall,  not 
only  had  they  worked  off  a  great  part  of  their  excitement,  but 
also,  no  doubt,  the  effects  of  the  wine  that  had  inspired  their 
hilarious  entry  to  the  Assembly. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES  225 

It  was  nearly  four  o'clock  when  at  last  Santerre,  comprehend- 
ing the  necessity  of  getting  to  the  real  business  of  the  day,  began 
to  herd  his  flock  towards  the  exit,  crying  out  in  stentorian  tones, 
"  Forward !  March !  "  The  supreme  moment  had  arrived. 
The  terrible  crowd  of  ragged  men  and  women,  victims  of  vice  and 
misery,  were  now  to  consummate  the  crime  that  for  three  years 
the  conspirators  had  vainly  striven  to  effect.  Three  times 
already — on  the  17th  of  July  and  the  6th  of  October  1789,  and 
on  the  i8th  of  April  1791 — this  same  rabble  of  Paris  had  been 
driven  forward  against  their  King,  and  on  each  occasion  had 
refrained  from  violence  ;  now  for  the  last  time  the  great  attempt 
was  to  be  made,  and,  to  judge  by  the  ferocious  aspect  they  pre- 
sented, there  seemed  little  doubt  that  amongst  this  savage  horde 
a  murderous  hand  would  not  be  wanting.^ 

Santerre  and  St.  Huruge,  indeed,  were  evidently  so  confident 
that  "  the  people  "  could  be  depended  on  to  carry  out  the  crime 
that,  instead  of  marching  at  their  head  as  they  had  done  in  the 
morning  when  leading  them  to  the  Assembly,  they  prudently  re- 
mained behind  in  the  hall.  There  was  every  reason  to  prefer  this 
safe  retreat,  for  to-day  it  appeared  that  the  military  authorities 
intended  to  oppose  a  very  vigorous  resistance  to  any  invasion  of 
the  Chateau.  Ten  battalions  of  the  National  Guard  were  ranged 
along  the  west  terrace,  two  more  were  stationed  at  the  south  end 
by  the  river,  four  other  battaUons  as  well  as  five  or  six  hundred 
mounted  police  and  twenty  cannons  guarded  the  Cour  Roy  ale. 

So  on  this  occasion  it  was  not  merely  the  prime  authors  of  the 
movement — Brissot,  Danton,  Petion,  Manuel — ^who  according  to 
their  invariable  custom  remained  in  the  background,  but  even  the 
mob  leaders  themselves  who  retreated  into  safety,  leaving  it  to 
the  wretched  instruments  they  had  collected  to  do  the  deed 
and  face  the  consequences.  It  is  remarkable  that  in  aU  the 
accounts  of  the  day  we  find  no  mention  of  any  of  the  usual 
agitators — Rotondo,  Grammont,  Malga,  or  Foumier  TAmericain 
— minghng  with  the  crowd  at  this  stage  of  the  proceed- 
ings ;  even  Theroigne  seems  to  have  vanished,  for  we  hear  no 
more  of  her  after  her  start  for  the  Assembly  at  the  head  of  her 
contingent. 

The  mob,  left  therefore  entirely  to  its  own  devices,  streamed 
along  the  Cour  du  Manege  in  the  direction  of  the  Chateau,  and 
then  paused  as  if  uncertain  whether  to  go  on  to  the  Place  du 

^  Even  Roederer  is  obliged  to  admit  that  this  was  the  idea  of  the 
leaders  :  "  The  lack  of  concerted  action  between  the  people  assembled 
seems  to  leave  room  for  only  one  opinion — that  the  boldest  and  most 
subtle  plotters  of  violence  hoped  that  amongst  so  many  disorderly  people 
a  fanatical  hand  would  be  raised  against  the  monarch  for  whom  it  had  not 
been  thought  necessary  to  designate  or  even  to  seek  out  an  assassin." 
{Chronique  des  Cinquante  Jours  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  38). 

Q 


226        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Carrousel  or  whether  to  break  into  the  garden  of  the  Tuileries 
by  the  gate  on  their  right  known  as  the  "  Porte  du  Dauphin." 
It  was,  apparently,  Mouchet,  a  httle  bandy-legged  municipal 
officer  stationed  at  this  gateway,  who  persuaded  them  to  adopt 
the  latter  course,  and  thereupon  the  whole  crowd  poured  into 
the  garden.  1 

But  still  the  uncomprehending  herd  failed  to  enter  into  the 
designs  of  the  conspirators,  for  they  made  no  attempt  to  invade 
the  Chateau — which  was  most  accessible  from  this  side — but 
proceeded  along  the  terrace  to  the  gate  leading  out  on  to  the  quay, 
and  during  this  march  past  the  troops  their  behaviour  was  so 
peaceable  that  the  King  with  his  family  and  entourage  looking 
down  on  the  procession  from  the  windows,  and  watching  it  file 
through  the  gateway  with  immense  relief,  concluded  the  move- 
ment to  have  ended  :  for  a  moment  it  appeared  that  the  6th  of 
October  was  not  to  be  repeated. 

Once  outside  the  garden  the  crowd  turned  to  the  left,  but 
instead  of  continuing  its  way  along  the  quay  drew  up  outside  the 
gateway  leading  into  the  Carrousel,  where  they  were  met  by  the 
extraordinary  notice,  here  posted  up,  that  only  "  people  armed, 
no  matter  in  what  way,"  were  to  be  admitted.  In  response  to 
this  invitation — issued  evidently  by  municipal  officers  in  collu- 
sion with  the  leaders — the  whole  mob,  armed  and  unarmed, 
poured  into  the  square.  Yet  even  now  the  people  showed  no 
intention  of  invading  the  Chateau,  but  streamed  onwards  to  the 
Rue  Saint-Ni9aise,  apparently  with  the  intention  of  returning 
whence  they  came.  The  fact  is  that  the  day  was  very  hot,  and 
the  people  having  been  on  their  feet  since  dawn  were  growing 
tired  of  the  whole  performance.  The  tree  of  hberty  had  been 
planted,  the  petition  read  aloud  to  the  Assembly,  and  now  they 
were  ready  to  go  home.^ 

But  Santerre  and  St.  Huruge  had  been  informed  of  the  hitch 
in  the  proceedings,  and,  reaHzing  that  if  the  invasion  of  the 
Tuileries  was  to  be  accomphshed  they  must  place  themselves 
once  more  at  the  head  of  the  movement,  they  now  appeared  on  the 
scene.  Santerre,  addressing  his  contingent  from  Saint-Antoine, 
shouted  peremptorily,  "  Why  have  you  not  got  into  the  Chateau  ? 
We  must  get  in  !  it  was  for  that  we  came  here  !  "  ^  And  turning 
to  his  gunners  he  ordered  them  to  follow  him  with  their  cannons,j 

'  It  was  at  this  moment  that  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  coming  out  of] 
a  restaurant  near  the  Palais  Royal  with  Bourrienne,  made  his  memor- 
able exclamation :  "  What  imbeciles,  how  could  they  allow  that  rabble j 
{canaille)  to  enter  ?  They  should  have  swept  away  four  or  five  hundredj 
of  them  with  cannons  and  the  rest  would  still  be  running  !  "  {Mdmoirei 
de  Bourrienne,  i.  49). 

*  Mortimer  Ternaux,  i.  184  ;  Buchez  et  Roux.  xv.  118. 

"  Buchez  et  Roux,  xv.  118. 


THE   INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    227 

declaring  that  if  the  doors  were  closed  to  them  they  must  be 
broken  down  with  cannon-balls.  Then  the  mob,  rallying  at  the 
word  of  command,  surged  en  masse  towards  the  gateway  of  the 
Cour  Roy  ale. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  the  troops  ranged  round  the  gateway 
were  far  more  than  enough  to  resist  the  incursion  of  the  crowd, 
and  although  the  hundred  mounted  poUce  in  the  Carrousel  showed 
a  disinchnation  to  use  force,  the  National  Guard  at  the  first 
onslaught  offered  a  spirited  resistance.  "  We  will  die  rather  than 
let  them  enter !  "  cried  some  ;  and  others  answered,  "  But  we 
have  no  orders  and  no  officers  to  command  us  !  "  And  this  was 
true,  for  RamainviUiers,  their  commander,  remained  absolutely 
inert,  afterwards  giving  as  his  reason  that  having  received 
no  orders  from  the  mayor  he  could  not  take  upon  himself  to  pro- 
claim martial  law ;  but  since  the  mayor  was  Petion,  the  principal 
organizer  of  the  movement,  this  omission  is  hardly  surprising. 

The  truth  is  evidently  that,  as  on  the  12th  and  14th  of  July 
and  on  the  5th  of  October  1789,  the  miUtary  leaders  were 
paralysed  by  their  knowledge  of  what  Mr.  Croker  well  describes 
as  "  the  King's  unfortunate  monomania  that  no  blow  should 
ever  be  struck  in  his  defence."  This  being  so  they  dared  not  offer 
resistance,  uncertain  as  to  the  consequences  if  any  injury  were 
done  to  the  people.  Maintaining,  therefore,  their  attitude  of 
strict  neutrality,  they  allowed  the  mob  to  advance  their  cannons 
and  point  them  against  the  great  gateway  of  the  Cour  Royale. 

By  what  perfidy  was  this  gateway  at  last  opened  ?  It  is 
impossible  to  say  with  certainty,  for  just  as  at  the  siege  of  the 
Bastille  an  unseen  hand  had  let  down  the  last  drawbridge,  and  at 
the  invasion  of  Versailles  another  unseen  hand  unlocked  the  gate 
into  the  Cour  de  Marbre,  so  by  the  same  mysterious  agency  the 
courtyard  of  the  Tuileries  was  thrown  open  to  the  invaders. 
Santerre,  says  Roederer,  had  made  sure  beforehand  of  two 
municipal  officers,  and  these  men,  rightly  calculating  on  the 
authority  inspired  by  their  scarves  of  office,  now  came  forward 
and  in  imperious  tones  demanded  that  the  gates  should  be 
opened.  Whoever  then  obeyed  this  order, ^  the  fact  remains 
that  the  great  bar  fastening  the  gates  was  raised  from  within  and 
instantly  the  crowd  poured  into  the  Cour  Royale. 

Then  at  last  four  officers,  more  courageous  than  their 
comrades — Mandat,  Pinon,  Vanotte,  and  Acloque,  a  brewer 
of  the  Faubourg  Saint -Ant  oine,  rushed  forward  to  close 
the   doorway  leading   to   the   great   staircase  of   the    palace, 

1  Boucher  R6n6,  a  municipal  officer,  in  his  evidence  to  the  police 
says  "  a  gunner  "  ;  La  Reynie,  who  declared  Boucher  R6n6  to  be  one  of 
the  officers  to  give  the  order,  says  "men  of  the  National  Guard." 
Roederer  and  Mortimer  Ternaux  accept  the  latter  statement. 


228        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

summoning  National  Guards,  gunners,  and  policemen  to 
their  aid.  But  it  was  too  late  now  to  command  obedience  ; 
the  gunners,  urged  on  by  Santerre,  were  already  in  open  rebellion 
and  thrust  aside  the  officers  in  command. 

Santerre  was  still  reluctantly  compelled  to  remain  at  the 
head  of  the  mob  and  conduct  operations.  For  even  at  this  crisis 
the  great  mass  of  the  people  continued  to  display  indifference, 
and  seemed,  says  Roederer,  "  to  be  only  misled  or  carried  away, 
or  brought  there  by  curiosity,  and  not  to  understand  that  it  was 
an  outrage  on  the  King  to  violate  his  palace.  Several  were 
yawning  with  fatigue  and  boredom.  It  would  have  been  easy 
to  count  the  men  led  by  violent  passions  and  ferocious  designs."  ^ 

Seeing  this,  a  group  of  law-abiding  citizens,  who  had  collected 
at  the  foot  of  the  staircase,  came  forward  and  angrily  apostro- 
phized Santerre,  threatening  to  make  him  responsible  for  all 
the  harm  that  might  come  from  this  fatal  day,  "  because,"  they 
said  to  him,  "  you  alone  are  the  author  of  this  unconstitutional 
assemblage,  you  alone  have  misled  these  good  people,  and  amongst 
them  all  you  alone  are  a  scoundrel !  "  At  this  Santerre  turned 
pale,  and  exchanging  a  glance  with  his  ally,  the  butcher  Legendre, 
he  turned  to  his  troops  and  uttered  these  hypocritical  words  : 
"  Messieurs,  draw  up  an  official  report  of  my  refusal  to  march  at 
your  head  into  the  King's  apartments  !  "  ^  Then  the  ruffians 
that  composed  the  cowardly  brewer's  following,  understanding 
his  intention,  threw  the  honest  citizens  to  the  ground,  and  like  a 
great  tidal  wave  the  mob,  once  more  lashed  to  fury,  burst  into 
the  Chateau.  So  tremendous  was  the  impetus  of  that  mighty 
onrush  that  a  cannon,  carried  by  the  invaders,  was  borne  upon 
their  shoulders  right  up  the  splendid  staircase,  wreathed  with 
the  emblems  of  Louis  XIV.  and  the  arms  of  Colbert,  into  the 
huge  Salle  des  Cent  Suisses,  and  there  jammed  in  the  doorway, 
momentarily  stemming  the  tide.  But  the  obstacle  was  quickly 
removed  with  hatchet  blows  upon  the  woodwork,  and  the  crowd 
swept  onwards  to  the  OEil  de  Boeuf . 

Now  at  last  they  were  on  the  threshold  of  that  abode  of 
mystery — the  King's  apartments.  Undoubtedly,  amongst  the 
great  proportion  of  the  people,  the  predominating  emotion  at  this 
tremendous  moment  was  curiosity,  tinged  with  superstitious  awe, 
for,  in  the  minds  of  many  of  the  poor  denizens  of  the  Faubourgs, 
royalty  had  not  yet  lost  its  glamour,  in  spite  of  all  the  agitators' 
efforts  to  ridicule  and  degrade  it.  But  that  tumultuous  sea 
nevertheless  held  dangerous  elements,  brains  that  throbbed 
wildly  to  the  tune  of  the  "  (J^a  ira !  "  hands  that  closed  around 
murderous  weapons  in  feverish  anticipation  of  coming  violence, 

^  Roederer,  p.  46. 
2  DSposition  de  La  Reynie,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xv.  118. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    229 

and  in  these  disordered  imaginations  superstition  assumed  a 
terrible  form — it  was  not  Louis  XVL,  the  descendant  of  St.  Louis, 
they  were  now  to  meet  face  to  face,  but  that  sinister  personage 
"  Monsieur  Veto  " — Nero,  MachiaveUi,  and  Charles  IX.  in  one 
— the  sanguinary  monster,  and  his  still  more  guilty  consort,  who 
with  diabolical  cunning  had  lulled  a  confiding  people  into 
security  whilst  planning  a  second  massacre  of  St.  Barthelemy 
— perhaps  on  that  same  Quai  du  Louvre  their  feet  had  traversed 
to  the  Chateau.  Goaded  to  frenzy  by  these  visions,  the  leaders 
of  the  mob  continued  to  beat  on  the  closed  doors,  clamouring 
loudly  for  admittance ;  then,  meeting  with  no  response,  they 
proceeded  to  attack  them  with  their  weapons;  beneath  their 
savage  blows  the  lower  panels  yielded  and  fell  inwards — instantly 
a  cluster  of  pikes  was  thrust  menacingly  through  the  opening. 
Suddenly  from  the  inside  a  voice  cried  out,  "  Open  !  I  have 
nothing  to  fear  from  Frenchmen  !  "  A  Swiss  guard  threw  wide 
the  doors.  The  crowd  surged  forward,  then,  Uke  an  angry  wave 
drawing  back  with  a  roar  of  foam,  halted  in  confusion,  for  before 
them  stood — the  King.  The  sensation  produced  on  the  crowd 
by  this  sudden  apparition,  all  contemporaries  record,  was  one  of 
stupor — they  were  utterly  disconcerted,  for  here  they  saw  before 
them  no  sanguinary  monster  but  a  homely  personage,  none  the 
more  imposing  for  all  his  powdered  hair  and  embroidered  coat,  who 
stood  regarding  them  with  an  expression  of  extreme  benevolence 
obviously  unmixed  with  fear.  Louis  XVI.  was  not  afraid  at  that 
frightful  moment.  When  the  faithful  Acloque  had  rushed  into 
his  room,  where  all  the  Royal  Family  had  collected,  to  announce 
the  incursion  of  the  mob,  the  King  had  instantly  decided  to  go 
forward  to  meet  them,  only  insisting  that  the  Queen,  against 
whom  the  people's  hatred  had  been  principally  directed,  should 
remain  in  safety ;  and  whilst  Marie  Antoinette,  finally  prevented 
by  force  from  following  him,  was  hurried  into  the  bedroom  of 
the  Dauphin,  the  King  passed  cahnly  to  the  OEil  de  Boeuf ,  with 
Madame  Ehzabeth  chnging  to  his  arm,  and  followed  by  those 
of  his  loyal  defenders  who  had  remained  at  his  side.  Two  hours 
earlier  the  King,  foreseeing  the  invasion  of  the  Chateau,  had  sent 
away  nearly  all  his  retainers  lest  their  presence  should  serve  to 
initate  the  populace,  but  several — amongst  them  the  old  Marechal 
de  Mouchy,  that  bizarre  personage  the  Chevalier  de  Rougeville, 
and  brave  young  CanoUes,  a  boy  of  eighteen  who  had  belonged 
to  the  King's  old  bodyguard — had  refused  to  leave  him  ;  others, 
borrowing  pikes  and  ragged  garments  from  some  of  the  insurgents, 
mingled  with  the  mob,  and  thus  disguised  hovered  around  the 
King  for  his  protection.^  Arrived  in  the  OEil  de  Boeuf,  Louis 
XVI.  called  four  grenadiers  of  the  National  Guard  to  his  side, 

*  MSmoires  de  Hua,  p.  136. 


230        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

and  one  of  these,  De  la  Chesnaye,  seeing  that  the  doors  were  about 
to  be  broken  down,  said  to  the  King,  "  Sire,  do  not  be  afraid." 
"  I  am  not  afraid,"  answered  the  King;  "  put  your  hand  on  my 
heart,  it  is  cahn  and  tranquil,"  and  taking  the  hand  of  the 
grenadier  he  pressed  it  to  his  heart,  which  in  truth  beat  no 
faster  in  the  face  of  the  appaUing  danger. 

What  was  the  secret  of  the  King's  intrepidity  ?  Revolution- 
aries, obhged  to  admit  his  amazing  sangfroid  at  this  crisis,  have 
tried  to  explain  it  by  the  natural  phlegm  of  his  character,  but 
in  reaUty  his  courage  throughout  the  Revolution  can  always  be 
traced  to  the  same  cause — the  fact  that,  as  Bertrand  de  Molleville 
observed,  he  was  never  afraid  when  he  was  face  to  face  with  the 
people.  It  was  this  conviction  that  from  the  people  themselves 
he  had  nothing  to  fear  which  had  nerved  him  to  take  that  perilous 
journey  to  Paris  on  the  17th  of  July  1789,  which  had  enabled 
him  to  confront  the  raging  mob  on  the  6th  of  October,  and  which 
now  again  on  the  20th  of  June  inspired  him  with  the  serenity 
that  amazed  all  beholders.  So,  by  the  calm  and  undaunted  aspect 
of  the  King,  the  ragged  horde  was  momentarily  brought  to  bay 
on  the  threshold  of  the  (Eil  de  Boeuf .  But  certain  of  the  brigands, 
having  recovered  from  the  first  shock  of  surprise,  thrust  their  way 
into  the  room,  brandishing  pikes  and  sabres  as  they  called  aloud 
for  the  death  of  the  King.  The  Swiss  Guards  drew  their  swords, 
but  Louis  XVI.  interposed  :  "  Put  back  your  swords  in  their 
scabbards,  I  command  you."  Then  a  man,  armed  with  a 
stick  to  which  a  spear  had  been  aiSixed,  sprang  forward 
crying  out,  "  Where  is  Veto  that  I  may  kill  him  ?  "  Whereat 
young  Canolles  threw  himself  on  the  assassin,  and  forcing  him  to 
his  knees  at  the  King's  feet  obUged  him  to  call  out,  "  Vive 
le  Roi !  "  1 

This  act  of  courage  had  the  effect  of  once  more  stupefying 
the  crowd,  and  the  King's  defenders,  profiting  by  the  pause  that 
ensued,  succeeded  in  leading  him  to  a  seat  in  the  recess  of  a 
window,  forming  there  a  rampart  round  him  with  their  bodies. 
The  heroic  band  included  the  four  grenadiers  of  the  National 
Guard,  the  Marechal  de  Mouchy,  aged  seventy-seven,  the  intrepid 
brewer  Acloque,  and  Stephanie  de  Bourbon-Conti,  the  natural 
daughter  of  the  Prince  de  Conti,  who  had  armed  herself  with  a 
sword  and  sabre,  and  throughout  the  day  never  ceased  defending 
the  King  from  the  onslaughts  of  his  assassins. ^ 

Meanwhile  Madame  EUzabeth  showed  herself  no  less  heroic  ; 
hearing  the  mob  crying  out  for  the  head  of  the  Queen  she  came 
forward  and,  offering  her  breast  to  their  daggers,  said,  "  Here 

^  Histoire  particulUre,  etc.,  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne.     Canolles  was 
guillotined  for  this  action  on  May  23,  1794. 
*  Ibid, 


k 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    231 

is  the  Queen  !  "  Several  of  her  retainers  cried  out,  "  No,  no, 
she  is  not  the  Queen,  she  is  Madame  Ehzabeth  !  " 

"  Ah,  messieurs,"  she  answered,  "  why  undeceive  them  ? 
Were  it  not  better  that  they  shed  my  blood  than  that  of  my 
sister  ?  "  The  murderous  weapons  were  lowered,  and  Madame 
Elizabeth  was  placed  by  her  defenders  in  the  embrasure  of  the 
window  next  to  the  one  occupied  by  the  King. 

For  four  terrible  hours  Louis  XVI.  and  Madame  Elizabeth 
endured  the  threats  and  insults  of  the  crowd.  All  through  the 
hot  June  afternoon  they  breathed  the  fetid  atmosphere  exhaled 
by  the  densely  packed  mass  of  rags  and  nakedness  that  pressed 
around  them ;  they  saw  before  their  eyes  all  that  was  basest  and 
most  degraded  in  human  nature,  the  dregs  of  foreign  countries, 
above  all  brigands  from  the  South,  vomiting  imprecations, 
dangling  before  their  eyes  those  horrible  emblems — the  bleeding 
heart  labelled  "Coeur  d'aristocrate,"  a  miniature  gallows  to  which 
a  female  figure  was  attached  with  the  words  "  For  Antoinette," 
a  guillotine  bearing  the  inscription  "  For  the  tyrant." 

Close  to  the  King's  side  a  group  of  men  had  thrown  themselves 
into  the  gilded  armchairs  of  the  palace,  and  gathered  around  a 
table  covered  with  bottles  of  wine  sat  smoking  and  drinking 
amidst  the  tumult.^  Some  one  passed  a  bottle  to  the  King, 
ordering  him  to  drink  the  health  of  the  nation ;  at  the  same  time 
a  cap  of  liberty  was  thrust  upon  his  head.^  Louis  XVI.  raised 
the  bottle  to  his  lips,  exclaiming,  "  People  of  Paris,  I  drink  to 
your  health  and  to  the  health  of  the  French  nation  !  "  This 
courageous  action,  derided  by  the  revolutionaries,  went  straight 
to  the  hearts  of  the  people,^  who  broke  out  into  applause,  cr5dng, 
"  Vive  la  nation  !  Vive  la  liberte  !  "  and  even  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  If 
only  Louis  XVI.  had  known  how  to  make  the  most  of  this  moment, 
it  is  possible  that  the  invasion  of  his  palace  would  have  turned  into 
an  ovation  in  his  favour  ;  unhappily  his  slow-moving  mind  could 
never  devise  those  happy  phrases  that  exercised  so  great  a  power 
over  the  emotional  Parisians.  To  this  drama-loving  people 
a  King  who  on  occasion  could  "  strike  an  attitude,"  show 
himself  commanding  and  heroic,  must  have  proved  irresistible. 
Louis  XVI.  was  hopelessly  undramatic  ;  his  speech  proceeded 
always  directly  from  his  heart,  never  from  his  imagination ;  he 

^  Mimoires  de  Hua. 

*  According  to  Maton  de  la  Varenne  it  was  Santerre  who  thrust  the 
cap  of  liberty  on  to  the  King's  head  ;  according  to  Beaulieu  it  was  Clement, 
but  other  contemporaries  relate  that  the  King  put  it  on  of  his  own  accord. 
This  seems  improbable,  and  is  contradicted  by  the  King's  statement  to 
Bertrand  de  MoUeville. 

'  "  What  saved  Louis  XVI.  was  his  presence  of  mind  in  putting  on  the 
bonnet  rouge  and  in  drinking  from  a  bottle  offered  him  by  a  real  Sans- 
Culotte  "  {Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  43). 


232        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

could  not  calculate  effects,  declaim  to  order,  play  upon  the 
emotions  of  the  mobile  crowd  as  the  revolutionary  leaders  knew 
so  well  how  to  do,  and  thus  at  this  supreme  moment  he  remained 
inarticulate,  leaving  it  to  his  enemies  to  wrest  his  victory  from 
him.     Legendre  pressed  forward  and  addressed  him  brutally  : 

"  Monsieur,  you  are  there  to  hsten  to  us.  You  are  a  traitor, 
you  have  always  deceived  us,  you  are  deceiving  us  still.  But 
have  a  care,  the  measure  is  overflowing,  and  the  people  are  tired 
of  being  your  plaything."  And  he  read  aloud  a  petition  filled 
with  threats  and  insults,  "  expressing  the  wishes  of  the  people, 
whose  orator  he  declared  himself  to  be."  The  King  answered 
calmly : 

"  I  shall  do  that  which  the  law  and  the  Constitution  order 
me  to  do." 

Whilst  these  scenes  were  taking  place  the  mayor,  Petion, 
arrived,  and  making  his  way  through  the  crowd  addressed  the 
King  in  these  hypocritical  words  : 

"  Sire,  I  have  only  this  instant  heard  of  the  situation  in  which 
you  have  been  placed." 

"  That  is  very  surprising,"  Louis  XVI.  interrupted  brusquely, 
"  since  this  has  been  going  on  for  two  hours." 

"  The  zeal  of  the  mayor  of  Paris,"  Condorcet  afterwards  had 
the  effrontery  to  declare,  "  the  ascendant  that  his  virtues  and  his 
patriotism  exercised  over  the  people,  prevented  all  disorders  "  ; 
as  a  matter  of  fact  his  presence  served  as  a  direct  encouragement 
to  disorder,  for,  since  not  a  word  of  protest  escaped  him  during 
the  whole  course  of  the  afternoon,  the  brigands  quickly  recognized 
in  him  an  ally  and,  protected  by  the  support  his  of&cial  position 
afforded,  proceeded  to  greater  violence.  Forcing  their  way  to  the 
front  of  the  crowd  they  lunged  at  the  King  with  their  weapons, 
which  were  deflected  only  by  the  bayonets  of  the  four  courageous 
grenadiers.  Two  young  men,  Clement  and  Bourgoing,  wearing 
long  caps  on  which  the  words  "  La  Mort  "  were  inscribed  in  large 
letters,  called  out  loudly  for  the  death  of  the  King  and  all  the 
Royal  Family.  Clement,  taking  up  his  stand  beside  the  mayor, 
continued  to  repeat  incessantly  the  parrot  phrases  composed  by 
the  authors  of  the  agitation  :  "  Sire  !  Sire  !  I  demand  in  the 
name  of  the  100,000  souls  around  me  the  recall  of  the  patriot 
ministers  you  have  dismissed  !  I  demand  the  sanction  of  the 
decree  on  the  priests  and  on  the  20,000  men  and  the  fulfilment 
of  the  law,  or  you  will  perish  !  "  Throughout  this  tirade,  accom- 
panied by  furious  gestures,  Petion  uttered  no  remonstrance,  and, 
not  content  with  compHmenting  the  people  on  their  behaviour, 
afterwards  declared  to  the  Assembly  that  "  no  one  had  been 
insulted,  that  no  excess  or  offence  had  been  committed,  and  the 
King  himself  had  no  cause  of  complaint." 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES  233 

On  this  day,  at  any  rate,  Louis  XVI.  showed  himself  not  only 
heroic  but  capable  of  really  amazing  resolution.  To  the  re- 
iterated demand  for  the  sanction  of  the  two  decrees  and  the  recall 
of  the  ministers  he  repUed  immovably,  "  This  is  neither  the 
moment  for  you  to  ask  nor  for  me  to  accord,"  and  in  the  matter 
of  the  decree  on  the  priests  he  added,  "  I  would  rather  renounce 
my  crown  than  submit  to  such  a  tyranny  of  consciences." 

It  was  at  this  crisis  that  a  deputation  arrived  from  the 
Assembly.  The  scene  that  met  their  eyes  was  indescribable  ;  the 
splendid  Salle  de  I'CEil  de  Bceuf  presented  the  appearance  of 
a  tavern — through  the  suffocating  atmosphere,  thick  with  the 
fumes  of  foul  tobacco,  Louis  XVI.  was  seen  seated  in  the  em- 
brasure of  the  window,  the  red  cap  of  liberty  still  perched  upon 
his  powdered  head,  contemplating  his  strange  guests  with  perfect 
tranquilUty. 

When  the  deputies  came  forward  to  inform  him  that  "  the 
Assembly  would  neglect  no  means  for  ensuring  his  Uberty,"  the 
King,  indicating  by  a  gesture  the  carousing  brigands,  the  wine- 
bottles,  the  guns,  the  pikes,  and  sanguinary  emblems  by  which 
he  was  surrounded,  answered  briefly,  "  So  you  see  !  "  Then 
turning  to  a  member  of  the  deputation  he  added  with  a  sudden 
rare  flash  of  humour,  "  You  who  have  travelled  much,  what  do 
you  think  they  would  say  of  us  in  foreign  countries  ?  "  ^ 

Certain  of  the  deputies  venturing  to  repeat  to  the  King  that 
they  had  come  to  ensure  his  safety,  Louis  XVI.  repUed  that  he 
was  in  the  midst  of  the  French  people  and  had  nothing  to  fear.^ 
Again  turning  to  one  of  the  grenadiers  he  placed  the  man's 
hand  on  his  heart,  saying,  "  See  whether  this  is  the  movement 
of  a  heart  agitated  by  fear  !  "  ^ 

The  intrepid  attitude  of  the  King  was  not  without  its  effect 
on  his  assailants,  and  by  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening  it  became 
evident  that  little  hope  remained  of  his  assassination.  Petion, 
therefore  realizing  that  nothing  was  now  to  be  gained  by  further 
agitation,  decided  that  the  moment  had  come  to  pose  as  the 
restorer  of  law  and  order.  Accordingly,  mounting  an  armchair, 
he  addressed  the  crowd  of  pikes  and  rags,  the  bearers  of  toy 
guillotines  and  gibbets,  the  drunken  and  half-naked  brigands 
from  the  South,  in  the  following  words  : 

"People,  you  have  shown  yourselves  worthy  of  yourselves! 
You  have  preserved  all  your  dignity  amidst  acute  alarms.  No 
excess  has  suUied  your  subhme  movements.     Hope  and  beheve 

^  MSmoires  de  Ferriires,  iii.  115. 

*  Evidence  of  the  deputies  Brunck  and  Lejosne,  Moniteur,  xii.  719. 

^  Evidence  of  the  deputy  Alos,  ibid.  The  grenadier,  a  tailor  by  pro- 
fession ^named  Lalanne,  was  guillotined  later  "  for  having  boasted  that 
Capet  had  taken  his  hand  and  held  it  to  his  heart "  (Granier  de  Cassagnac, 
Causes  de  la  Revolution,  iii.  217). 


234        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

that  your  voice  will  at  last  be  heard.  But  night  approaches,  and 
its  shadows  might  favour  the  attempts  of  ill-disposed  persons  to 
glide  into  your  bosom.     People,  withdraw  yourselves  !  "  ^ 

The  mob,  comprehending  that  this  was  really  an  order  to 
disperse,  showed  themselves  only  too  eager  to  comply  and  surged 
towards  the  doors.  But  the  leaders  had  resolved  to  make  a 
further  venture  and,  instead  of  herding  the  people  towards  the 
staircase,  led  them  to  the  Council  Chamber  where  the  Queen  and 
her  children  had  taken  refuge.  Santerre  had  already  preceded 
them  thither.  On  the  arrival  of  the  deputies,  realizing  the 
failure  of  the  movement,  he  had  been  heard  to  mutter  angrily, 
"  Le  coup  est  manque  !  "  ^  But  if  the  King  had  succeeded  in 
overawing  "  that  fooUsh  herd,  the  people,"  the  Queen  might  still 
serve  to  rouse  their  fury,  so  collecting  a  horde  of  brigands  around 
him,  and  followed  by  a  large  portion  of  the  mob,  he  had  set  forth 
in  search  of  this  further  victim. 

Now  on  the  first  incursion  of  the  crowd  into  the  Chateau, 
whilst  the  main  army  attacked  the  (Eil  de  Boeuf ,  a  band  of  furies 
had  broken  into  the  Queen's  apartments  on  the  ground  floor  and 
ransacked  every  comer  in  the  hunt  for  their  prey.     Meanwhile 
Marie  Antoinette,  upstairs  in  the  Dauphin's  bedroom,  vainly 
endeavoured  to  follow  Louis  XVI.  into  the  (Eil  de  Boeuf.     "  Let 
me  pass,"  she  cried  to  the  gentlemen  who  barred  her  way,  "  my 
place  is  with  the  King.     I  wiU  join  him,  or  perish  if  necessary  in 
defending  him."     But  convinced  at  last  that  any  attempt  to 
penetrate  the  sea  of  pikes  that  separated  her  from  Louis  XVL 
must  prove  the  signal  for  bloodshed,  she  allowed  herself  to  be 
drawn  into  the  embrasure  of  the  window  in  the  Salle  de  ConseiL 
It  was  here  that  Santerre  and  his  horde  discovered  her.     Behinc 
the  great  council-table  Marie  Antoinette  sat  surrounded  by  he 
ladies  —  Madame   de  Tourzel,  Madame  de   la   Roche -Aymon, 
Madame  de  Maille,  and  the  heroic  Princesse  de  Tarente,  ready  t< 
shed  the  last  drop  of  her  blood  in  defence  of  the  Queen.     By  th< 
side  of  Marie  Antoinette  stood  little   Madame   Royale  ;    tl 
Dauphin  was  seated  on  the  table  with  his  mother's  arms  aroun< 
him.      In  front  several  rows  of  grenadiers  belonging  to   the 
loyal  battaUon  of  the  "  Filles-Saint-Thomas  "  were  drawn  uj 
Santerre  roughly  ordered  this  bodyguard  to  stand  aside  :  "  Maki 
way  that  the  people  may  see  the  Queen  !  "     Instantly  the  crowd] 
rushed  forward  pouring  forth  imprecations,  but  at  the  sight  of j 
the  grenadiers  paused  uncertainly.     One  woman,  bolder  than  thej 
rest,  flung  a  red  cap  of  liberty  down  on  the  table,  and  in  foulj 
language  ordered  the  Queen  to  place  it  on  the  head  of  the  Dauphin. 

^  Memoires  de  Hua.     The  Moniteur  tones  down  this  discourse. 
2  Dernieres   annies  .   .  .  de  Louis  XVI,  by   Frangois   Hue,   p.  239; 
Fantin  Desodoards,  op.  cit.  ii.  300. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    235 

The  hideous  badge  of  the  galley-slave  was  drawn  over  the  boy's 
fair  curls. 

The  Queen  and  the  brave  women  around  her  endured  their 
terrible  ordeal  without  a  sign  of  weakness.  When  the  main 
body  of  the  ragged  army,  after  evacuating  the  (Eil  de  Boeuf ,  were 
driven  through  the  Chambre  de  Conseil  past  the  council-table, 
Marie  Antoinette  looked  still  unmoved  at  the  ghastly  emblems 
thrust  before  her  eyes — the  gibbet  from  which  her  eifigy  was  sus- 
pended, the  banners  bearing  obscene  legends ;  she  heard  with- 
out a  tremor  the  furious  imprecations  mouthed  at  her  by  the 
dishevelled  furies,  and,  as  on  the  6th  of  October,  ended  by  disarm- 
ing her  assailants.  The  strange  power  that  had  touched  even  the 
corrupt  heart  of  Mirabeau,  that  had  changed  Barnave  from  a 
sanguinary  demagogue  into  a  royahst  ready  to  die  in  her  defence, 
that  later  was  to  win  reluctant  admiration  from  her  gaolers  and 
wring  pity  from  the  tricoteuses  at  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal, 
gradually  made  itself  felt  amongst  the  women  crazed  with  drink 
and  revolutionary  frenzy  who  gazed  at  her  across  the  council- 
table  at  the  Tuileries.  Some  of  the  furies  in  the  crowd,  melted 
to  tenderness  by  the  sight  of  the  Queen — after  all  a  woman  and 
a  mother  hke  themselves,  sheltering  with  her  arm  her  Uttle  son 
who  looked  with  wondering  eyes  at  the  strange  spectacle  before 
him — cried  out  that  they  would  shed  the  last  drop  of  their  blood 
for  the  Queen  and  the  Dauphin.  Another,  better  remembering 
her  lesson,  began  to  pour  forth  fresh  invectives,  whereat  the 
Queen  asked  gently,  "  Have  I  done  you  any  injury  ?  "  "No," 
said  the  woman,  "  but  it  is  you  who  cause  the  unhappiness  of  the 
nation."  "  So  they  have  told  you,"  answered  Marie  Antoinette, 
"  but  you  have  been  deceived.  I  am  the  wife  of  the  King  of 
France,  the  mother  of  the  Dauphin.  I  am  French ;  never  again 
shall  I  see  my  own  country.  I  can  only  be  happy  or  unhappy  in 
France.     I  was  happy  when  you  loved  me." 

Then  the  fury,  bursting  into  tears,  besought  the  Queen's 
pardon,  sobbing  out,  "  It  was  that  I  did  not  know.  I  see  now 
how  good  you  are."  ^ 

At  this  Santerre,  stupefied  at  the  turn  affairs  had  taken, 
exclaimed,  "  What  is  the  matter  with  this  woman  that  she  weeps 
thus  ?     She  must  be  drunk  with  wine."  ^ 

But  a  moment  later  Santerre,  pushing  his  way  through  the 
crowd,  found  himself  face  to  face  with  the  Queen  and  suddenly 
fell  likewise  beneath  her  spell.^  Planting  his  two  fists  on  the 
table  he  roughly  ordered  the  bystanders  to  take  the  red  cap  off 
the  head  of  the  Dauphin,  who  was  stifling  beneath  its  heat ;  then 
turning  to  the  Queen  he  said,  "  Ah,  Madame,  have  no  fear,  I 

^  Memoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  331. 
*  Vie  de  Marie  Antoinette,  by  Montjoie,  p.  323.  ^  n^id. 


236        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

do  not  wish  to  harm  you,  I  would  rather  defend  you  !  "  but 
quickly  repenting  of  his  weakness  he  added  brutally,  "  Re- 
member that  it  is  dangerous  to  deceive  the  people  !  " 

At  these  words  Marie  Antoinette  raised  her  head  and,  looking 
Santerre  imperiously  in  the  eye,  exclaimed  with  indignation, 
"  It  is  not  by  you,  monsieur,  that  I  judge  the  people  !  "  ^ 

Santerre,  utterly  cowed  by  this  reply,  had  no  thought  but 
to  beat  as  hasty  a  retreat  as  possible.  Turning  to  his  brigand 
horde  he  gave  the  order  to  march,  and  pushing  the  rest  of  the 
crowd  brutally  before  him  he  drove  them  like  trembUng  sheep 
from  the  room.^ 

So  in  the  growing  twilight  the  mighty  human  tide  ebbed  from 
the  Chateau  of  the  Tuileries,  leaving  the  great  rooms  "  in  solitude 
and  stupor." 

The  Royal  Family,  once  more  united,  fell  weeping  into  one 
another's  arms.  The  terrible  ordeal  was  at  last  ended.  A  few 
moments  later  several  deputies  arrived  from  the  Assembly ;  one 
turning  to  the  Queen,  standing  amidst  the  wreckage  left  by  the 
invaders — the  broken  furniture,  the  shattered  panels,  the  doors 
torn  from  their  hinges  —  observed  with  unconscious  irony, 
"  Without  excusing  everything,  you  must  admit,  Madame,  that 
the  people  have  shown  themselves  to  be  kind-hearted  ?  " 

"  The  King  and  I,  monsieur,"  answered  Marie  Antoinette, 
"  are  persuaded  of  the  natural  kindness  of  the  people  ;  they  are 
unkind  only  when  they  are  misled."  ^ 

That  the  King  could  have  been  assassinated  on  this  20th  of 
June  if  the  people  had  felt  any  unanimous  desire  for  his  death, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever.  What  could  his  handful  of 
defenders  have  availed  against  the  determined  onslaught  of  a 
mob  numbering  many  thousand  armed  men  ?  If  "  the  people  " 
had  wished  to  kill  lum,  he  must  have  perished  then.  But  on 
this  point  all  contemporaries  are  agreed.  The  great  majority  of 
the  crowd  seemed  throughout  struck  with  stupor,  and  showed  no 
incUnation  to  join  in  the  insults  and  bloodthirsty  threats  of  the 
leaders.* 

Santerre,  driving  his  herd  down  the  staircase  of  the  Chiteai 

*  Vie  de  Marie  Antoinette,  by  Montjoie,  p.  323  ;  Maton  de  la  Vareni 
op.  cit. 

2  Ferrieres,  iii.  119;    Maton  de  la  Varenne,  op.  cit.)   Conjuration 
d'Orlians,  by  Montjoie,  iii.  184. 

'  Derniires  annees  .  .   .  de  Louis  XVI,  by  Fran9ois  Hue,  p.  244. 

*  "  Nothing  of  all  this  could  move  the  crowd.    Divided  between  the  Kii 
and  his  sister  it  remained  motionless.     One  read  in  all  eyes  astonishment 
stupidity,  or  apprehension  "  (Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orleans,  iii.  181 

"  In  truth,  and  we  are  glad  to  say  it,  amongst  all  the  people  who  intrc 
duced  themselves  to  the  apartments  very  few  shared  this  atrocious  attitu( 
It  appears,  according  to  various  reports,  that  the  greater  number  onlj 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   237 

was  heard  to  exclaim  angrily,  "  The  King  was  difficult  to  move 
to-day,  but  we  will  return  to-morrow  and  make  him  evacuate  !  "  ^ 
But  some  poor  creatures,  all  in  rags,  murmured  to  each  other, 
"  It  would  be  a  pity,  somehow,  he  looks  Hke  a  good  sort  of 
fellow  !  "  2 

The  day  after  the  invasion  of  the  Tuileries  a  witness,  who 
appeared  before  a  magistrate  of  Paris,  related  that  he  had 
traversed  the  whole  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine  to  discover  the  dis- 
position of  the  people,  that  in  an  inn  close  to  the  Barriere  du 
Tr6ne  he  had  Ustened  to  several  men  talking,  and  overheard 
these  words  :  **  Yes,  we  might  have  been  able  .  .  .  but  when 
we  saw  .  .  .  it  is  so  imposing  .  .  .  and  then  we  are  Frenchmen 
.  .  .  Sacredieu  !  if  it  had  been  any  one  else  we  could  have  wrung 
his  neck  Uke  a  child's  .  .  .  but  he  comes  and  he  says,  '  Here  I 
am !  Here  I  am  ! '  "  The  witness  added  that  he  had  seen  several 
of  these  men  who  had  been  led  away  by  Santerre,  and  they 
assured  him  that  the  majority  of  the  citizens  of  the  Faubourg 
were  distressed  at  the  action  taken  towards  the  King,  that  it  had 
not  been  their  intention,  and  that  one  could  be  sure  it  would 
never  happen  again,  and  that  there  was  something  behind  all 
this.3 

The  authors  of  the  movement,  however,  knew  no  relenting. 
Madame  Roland,  hearing  of  the  Queen's  sufferings  on  that  dread- 
ful afternoon,  cried  out  incontroUably,  "  Ah  !  how  I  should  have 
loved  to  look  on  at  her  long  humiliation  !  "  * 

But  Manon's  triumph  was  mingled  with  bitter  disappointment. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  both  Girondins  and  Orleanistes  the 
day  had  proved  a  failure ;  it  was  not  merely  to  humiliate  the  Royal 
Family  they  had  planned  the  invasion  of  the  Tuileries,  the  great 
coup  of  the  day,  as  Santerre  said,  had  failed.  The  people,  like 
Balaam's  ass,  had  been  driven  forward  for  the  fourth  time  against 
the  King,  and,  seeing  the  angel  with  the  flaming  sword  before  them 
in  the  pathway,  had  refused  to  move  in  spite  of  blows  and  curses. 
vSo  the  crime  from  which  the  lowest  rabble  of  the  Faubourgs 

showed  the  desire  to  see  the  King  and  Royal  Family  "  {Rapport  fait  au 
Conseil  du  Dipartementpar  MM.  Gamier,  Leveillard  et  Demautort,  Com- 
missaires,  au  Sujet  des  EvSnements  du  20  Juin).  * 

"  The  people,  ashamed  of  finding  themselves  all  at  once  in  the  presence 
of  their  King  and  in  the  midst  of  his  apartments,  seemed  frightened  by 
their  own  temerity,  at  the  sight  of  the  ancient  majesty  of  the  throne  that 
fourteen  centuries  of  respect  had  in  some  way  rendered  sacred  "  (Ferri^res, 
iii.  113). 

*  Evidence  of  soldiers  and  commissioners.  Revue  retrospective,  2**™® 
serie,  tome  i.  pp.  213,  254. 

2  Crimes  de  la  Rivolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  43. 

»  Declarations  de  la  Reynie  et  Fay  el  regues  par  le  Juge  de  Paix  de  la  Section 
du  Roi  de  Sidle. 

*  Lamartine,  Histoire  des  Girondins,  iii.  3. 


238        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

had  shrunk  was  left  to  men  of  education,  to  philosophers,  and 
"  intellectuals  "  to  execute. 

EFFECTS  OF  THE  20TH   OF  JUNE 

The  "  true  people,"  the  great  mass  of  the  citizens  of  Paris, 
had,  of  course,  taken  no  part  in  the  20 th  of  June.  "  For  the 
honour  of  our  country,"  cries  Poujoulat,  "  and  for  the  sake  of 
historical  truth,  it  must  be  known  that  the  crimes  and  ignominies 
of  the  French  Revolution  were  not  the  work  of  the  French 
nation.  .  .  .  The  people  of  Paris  were  not  beneath  the  filthy 
banners  of  Santerre,  St.  Huruge,  and  Theroigne,  they  were  around 
the  Tuileries  on  the  21st  of  June,  raging  against  these  criminal 
attempts,  pitying  the  King  and  Queen,  cursing  Petion,  the 
Gironde,  and  the  Jacobins,  and  signing  their  protestations." 

All  over  France  a  great  storm  of  indignation  arose ;  addresses 
poured  in  from  the  provinces,  denouncing  in  vehement  language 
the  efforts  of  the  factions  to  overthrow  the  King  and  Constitution. 
The  department  of  the  Pas  de  Calais  "  has  learnt  with  horror 
what  took  place  in  the  King's  palace  on  the  20th  of  the  month  "  ; 
Rouen  declares  the  country  to  be  in  danger,  and  demands  justice 
of  the  Assembly  :  "  Punish  the  authors  of  the  offences  committed 
on  the  20th  of  this  month  at  the  Chateau  of  the  Tuileries.  It  is 
a  pubHc  outrage,  it  is  an  attempt  on  the  rights  of  the  French 
people  who  will  not  accept  laws  from  a  few  brigands  in  the  capital ; 
we  ask  you  for  vengeance."  The  department  of  the  Aisne  urges 
the  Assembly  to  suppress  the  Jacobins  and  cease  from  dissensions : 
"  Put  an  end  to  the  scandal  of  your  divisions  .  .  .  put  an  end 
to  the  intolerable  oppression,  the  revolting  tyranny  of  the 
tribunes  (the  galleries  occupied  by  the  claques  of  the  factions). 
The  factions  of  the  capital  have  not  the  right  to  dictate  pubUc 
opinion.  The  opinion  of  Paris  is  only  the  opinion  of  the  83rd 
part  of  the  Empire.  We  demand  vengeance  for  the  execrable 
day  of  June  the  20th,  day  of  imperishable  shame  for  Paris,  of 
mourning  for  all  France."  ^  ,^« 

"  The  20th  of  June,"  Hua  records,  '*  produced  a  salutaxHl 
commotion  in  all  minds.  .  .  .  The  National  Guards,  more  tha^ 
ever  roused,  offered  to  the  King  their  services  and  their  entire 
devotion.  The  inhabitants  of  Paris,  who  were  particularly 
answerable  to  France  for  the  King's  safety  since  he  left  Versailles 
.  .  .  ashamed  of  the  excesses  that  had  just  been  committed 
in  their  name,  demanded  reparation  and  vengeance.  A  petition 
addressed  to  the  Assembly  bore  20,000  signatures  ;  it  was  called 
'  the  petition  of  the  20,000.'  .  .  .  Nearly  all  the  departments  of 
France  set  themselves  to  deUberate,  and  forwarded  unanimous 


*  Moniteur,  xiii.  5. 


I 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES   239 

demands  for  the  punishment  of  the  outrage.  They  offered  to 
send  all  the  forces  that  might  be  needed.  It  was  a  universal 
competition ;  it  seemed  as  if  all  France  had  raised  her  arm  to 
annihilate  the  factions."  ^ 

Needless  to  say,  every  effort  was  made  by  the  Jacobins  to 
suppress  the  reporting  of  these  addresses,  to  silence  the  orators 
who  were  sent  to  read  them  aloud  at  the  Assembly,  to  discredit 
the  authors,  to  prove  the  signatures  fraudulent,  and  also  to  pro- 
vide counterblasts  in  the  form  of  bogus  addresses  approving  the 
events  of  June  20,  and  purporting  to  come  from  the  provinces 
and  from  the  sections  of  Paris.  Thus,  for  example,  on  June  25, 
a  deputation  from  Saint-Antoine,  calling  itself  "  the  men  of  the 
14th  of  July,"  presented  itself  at  the  Assembly,  led  by  the  profes- 
sional orator,  Gonchon,  who  proceeded  to  deliver  a  furious  revolu- 
tionary harangue  beginning  with  these  words  :  "  Legislators,  it 
is  we  fathers  of  families,  it  is  we,  the  conquerors  of  the  Bastille, 
it  is  we  who  are  persecuted,  outraged,  and  calumniated,"  etc. 

But  where  amongst  this  band  of  petitioners  were  the  con- 
querors of  the  Bastille  to  be  found  ?  Where  were  "  the  men  of 
the  14th  of  July  " — ^fiUe,  Hullin,  Tournay,  Bonnemere — ^the  real 
heroes  of  that  day  ?  We  may  look  for  them  in  vain  amongst  the 
ruffianly  followers  of  Gonchon,  but  if  we  go  into  the  gardens  of  the 
Tuileries  we  shall  discover  Hullin  at  that  very  moment  otherwise 
employed.  At  half-past  twelve  of  this  same  day,  a  gendarme 
national  reported  to  the  Jacobin  Club,  he  had  met  the  King  in 
the  Tuileries  followed  by  a  crowd  of  "brigands,"  at  the  head  of 
which  was  M.  Hullin  following  the  King,  and  calhng  out  with 
all  his  might,  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  A  sub-lieutenant  answered  with 
the  cry  of  '^Vive  la  Nation,"  whereat  "  the  brave  HuUin  "  dealt 
him  a  heavy  blow  on  the  head,  and  but  for  the  interposition 
of  the  gendarme  would  have  marched  him  off  to  prison.  ^ 

This,  then,  was  the  attitude  of  the  real  "  men  of  the  14th  of 
July  "  to  the  second  Revolution  ;  not  one  of  their  names  occurs 
in  the  accounts  of  the  outrages  committed  at  the  Tuileries  or 
in  the  revolutionary  deputations,  and  the  only  men  of  the  first 
Revolution  whose  services  the  leaders  were  able  to  enlist  were 
a  couple  of  cut-throats,  one  of  which  named  Soudin  had  dis- 
tinguished himself  by  washing  the  heads  of  Foullon  and  Berthier 
and  deHvering  them  as  trophies  to  the  mob.^ 

As  for  Gonchon  himself,  who  had  now  passed  from  the 
Orleanistes  into  the  pay  of  the  Girondins,  CamiUe  Desmoulins 

^  Mdmoires  de  Hua,  p.  138  ;  Deux  Amis,  viii.  19  ;  Dumont,  Souvenirs 
de  Mirabeau  :  "  The  whole  mass  of  France  was  weary  of  the  excesses  of  the 
Jacobins,  and  the  outrage  of  June  the  20th  had  excited  a  general  indigna- 
tion."    See  also  Taine,  La  Revolution,  v.  259. 

2  Aulard's  Siances  des  Jacobins,  iv.  48. 

'  Buchez  et  Roux,  xv.  165,  237. 


240        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

afterwards  revealed  that  he  had  received  over  2000  francs  from 
Roland  merely  for  reading  the  bogus  petition  to  the  Assembly. ^^ 

By  methods  such  as  these  the  voice  of  the  true  people  w£ 
stifled,  and  the  character  of  the  French  nation  misrepresentec 
to  the  whole  civilized  world.     Nowhere  were  the  outrages  oi 
June  20  more  bitterly  resented  than  in  the  armies  on  the  frontiei 
Lafayette  at   last,  overwhelmed  with  protests  from  his  menj 
decided  to  leave  Liickner  in  command  and  hastened  to  Pe 
Presenting  himself  at  the  bar  of  the  Assembly  he  denouncec 
in  burning  words,  the  efforts  of  the  conspirators  to  overthrow 
the  monarchy  and  Constitution :   "  The  violence  committed  at 
the  Chateau  on  the  20th  of  this  month  has  excited  the  alarm  ol 
all  good  citizens  ;    I  have  received  addresses  from  the  differeni 
corps  of  my  army.     Officers,   non-commissioned  officers,   anc 
men  are  one,  and  herein  express  their  patriotic  hatred  of  tl 
factions  .  .  .  already  many  of  them  wonder  whether  it  is  really 
the  cause  of  liberty  they  are  defending.  ...  I  implore,  in  my  o\ 
name  and  in  that  of  all  honest  men,  that  the  Assembly  shoulc 
take  efficacious  measures  to  make  constituted  authority  respectedjl 
and  to  give  the  army  the  assurance  that  no  attacks  will  be  mac 
on  the  Constitution  from  the  inside,  whilst  they  are  shedding 
their  blood  to  protect  it  from  outside  enemies." 

In  spite  of  the  insults  with  which  the  Girondins  greeted  the 
words,  Lafayette  succeeded  in  maintaining  his  popularity,  anc 
he  was  followed  through  the  streets  by  crowds  shouting,  "  Do^ 
with  the  Jacobins  !  "     But  once  again  "  the  hero  of  the  t\ 
worlds  "  showed  his    lamentable  weakness.     If  at   this  crisi 
he  had  used  his  power  and  finally  closed  down  the  Jacobin  Clul 
the  whole  situation  might  have  been  saved.    The  plan  W2 
proposed  to  him  by  a  deputation  of  National  Guards,  whc 
declared  that  if  he  would  place  himself  at  their  head  and  marchj 
with  two  cannons  to  the  Rue  Saint-Honore,  they  would  undertake! 
to  clear  the  building.     But  Lafayette,  always  halting  between! 
two    opinions — detestation   of   sedition-mongers   on   one   hand] 
and  fear  of  the  ultra- Royalists  on  the  other — refused  to  accede] 
to  the  proposal  of  his  grenadiers.^ 

If,  under  these  circumstances,  the  Queen  decUned  to  avail 
herself  of  his  services,  is  it  altogether  surprising  ?  "It  wouldl 
be  better  to  perish  than  to  be  saved  by  Lafayette,"  she  cried,  | 
when  at  this  juncture  he  came  forward  as  champion  of  the 
monarchy.  What  reason,  indeed,  had  she  to  trust  him  ?  La- 
fayette, who  before  the  siege  of  the  Bastille  had  declared  that 
"  insurrection  was  the  most  sacred  of  duties,"  and  had  then 

^  Fragment  d'Histoire  secrdte  de  la  Rivolution,  by  Camille  Desmoulins, 

p.  55- 

'  Essais  de  Beaulieu,  iii.  396. 


I 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  TUILERIES    241 

denounced  the  tumults  of  July;  who  had  convicted  the  Due 
d' Orleans  of  conspiring  to  usurp  the  throne,  and  had  then 
faciUtated  his  return  to  France;  who  had  subjected  the  King 
and  Queen  to  the  humihations  of  his  intolerable  gaolership,  and 
then  talked  of  the  respect  due  to  the  person  of  the  monarch ; 
who  at  one  moment  declared  himself  the  opponent  of  disorders, 
and  the  next  joined  in  singing  "  fa  ira !  " — what  dependence 
was  to  be  placed  on  such  a  weathercock  ?  Throughout  the  whole 
course  of  the  Revolution  it  was  rather  as  the  enemy  of  the  Due 
d'Orleans  than  as  the  supporter  of  Louis  XVI.  that  he  had  de- 
fended the  throne ;  towards  the  Royal  Family  he  had  displayed 
neither  sympathy  nor  allegiance,  only  when  Orleanism  raised  its 
head  Lafayette's  hand  went  to  his  sword  and  he  became  the 
champion  of  Royalty.  In  this  second  Revolution  he  saw  un- 
doubtedly a  revival  of  the  hated  conspiracy,  but  what  guarantee 
was  there  that,  once  he  had  again  succeeded  in  crushing  it,  he 
would  not  use  his  power  to  tyrannize  over  the  King  ? 

So  Lafayette,  chilled  by  his  reception  at  the  Court,  left  Paris 
and  returned  to  the  frontier,  whilst  the  Orleanistes  triumphantly 
burnt  his  effigy  in  the  Palais  Royal. 

Yet  the  20th  of  June  had  disappointed  the  hopes  of  the 
conspirators,  as  indeed  of  all  the  revolutionary  intrigues  — 
Orleanistes,  Girondins,  Subversives,  Prussians,  EngUsh  Jacobins 
alike  had  met  with  a  severe  reverse.  For  not  only  had  the 
invasion  of  the  Tuileries  shown  the  King  in  his  true  character 
to  the  nation,  but  in  arousing  pubUe  indignation  all  over  France 
had  revealed  the  true  desires  of  the  nation  to  the  world.  So 
the  day  had  ended  not  only  in  a  victory  for  the  King  but  for 
the  people. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES 


343 


THE    SIEGE   OF   THE   TUILERIES 


LA  PATRIE  EN  DANGER 

The  fiasco  of  June  20  and  the  energetic  protests  of  the  nation 
convinced  the  revolutionary  leaders  that  such  flimsy  pretexts  as 
"  the  dismissal  of  the  three  patriot  ministers  "  and  the  King's 
Veto  on  the  two  decrees  would  not  avail  to  bring  about  the 
deposition  of  Louis  XVI.,  and  that  consequently  some  more 
potent  means  must  be  employed  to  rouse  the  people.  Calumny 
and  corruption  had  failed,  but  tenor  might  yet  prove  effectual. 
The  fear  of  foreign  invasion  was  one  that  they  well  knew  could 
always  be  depended  on  to  rouse  the  patriotism  of  the  nation,  so 
when  at  the  beginning  of  July  Prussian  troops  arrived  on  the 
frontier,  an  admirable  pretext  was  provided  for  creating  a  panic 
throughout  the  country  by  the  proclamation  of  "La  Patrie  en 
danger." 

The  country  certainly  was  now  in  danger  of  invasion,  for  the 
outrages  endured  by  the  Royal  Family  on  the  20th  of  June  had  not 
only  incensed  the  King's  brothers  and  the  emigres,  but  had  alarmed 
the  Emperor  of  Austria  and  the  King  of  Prussia.  Frederick 
William  at  last  realized  that  the  revolutionary  propaganda  he 
had  helped  to  disseminate  had  gone  too  far  and  was  endangering 
the  cause  of  monarchy,  consequently  some  feint  must  be  made  of 
marching  to  the  rescue  of  the  Royal  Family  of  France ;  but  that 
he  was  never  disinterested  in  this  intention  cannot  be  doubted 
in  the  Hght  of  after  events.^    True,  the  famous  "  Manifesto  of 

1  Albert  Sorel  has  thus  admirably  explained  the  policy  of  the  King 
of  Prussia  in  marching  to  the  rescue  of  Louis  XVI.  "  Conquests  having 
escaped  him,"  Frederick  William  "  perceived  that  he  had  great  duties  to 
fulfill  towards  the  world,  towards  kings,  towards  Germany.  He  forgot  the 
Hungarians  he  had  stirred  up  ;  the  Belgians  to  whom  he  had  promised  inde- 
pendence ;  the  Turks,  the  Swedes,  and  the  Poles  he  had  goaded  into  war. 
.  .  .  Goltz  provided  the  arguments  necessary  to  convince  .  .  .  Frederick 
William.  This  perfect  Prussian  who  had  been  employing  himself  in  Paris 
...  in  shaking  the  throne,  recognized  that  it  would  be  at  the  same  time 
more  praiseworthy,  more  expedient,  and  more  profitable  to  raise  it  up  again." 
Goltz  further  calculated  that  France  would  have  to  compensate  Austria 
by  giving  up  to  her  Alsace  or  Flanders,  and  Austria  should  then,  in  order  to 
maintain  the  balance  of  power,  give  up  to  Prussia  equivalent  territory  in 
Bohemia  and  Moldavia  [V Europe  et  la  Revolution  Franfaise,  ii.  72). 

245 


246         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Brunswick,"  which  was  proclaimed  in  Paris  on  the  3rd  of  August, 
expressed  the  deepest  concern  for  the  safety  of  the  King  and 
Queen  of  France,  but  merely  had  the  effect  of  greatly  aggravating 
the  danger  of  their  position.  According  to  the  terms  of  this 
proclamation,  the  Emperor  of  Austria  and  the  King  of  Prussia 
announce  that  the  great  interest  nearest  to  their  hearts  is  "  that 
of  ending  the  domestic  anarchy  of  France,  of  arresting  the  attacks 
which  are  directed  against  the  altar  and  the  throne,  of  re-estab- 
lishing the  legitimate  power,  of  giving  back  to  the  King  the 
freedom  and  safety  of  which  he  is  deprived,"  etc.  At  this  point 
the  Manifesto  strikes  a  more  diplomatic  note,  for  it  goes  on 
to  say  :  "  Convinced  as  they  are  that  the  healthy  portion  of  the 
French  people  abhors  the  excesses  of  a  party  that  enslaves  them, 
and  that  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  are  impatiently  awaiting 
the  advent  of  a  rehef  that  will  permit  them  to  declare  themselves 
openly  against  the  odious  schemes  of  their  oppressors,  his  Majesty 
the  Emperor,  and  his  Majesty  the  King  of  Prussia  summon  them 
to  return  at  once  to  the  call  of  reason  and  justice,  of  order  and 
of  peace."  The  first  part  of  this  passage  was  undoubtedly  true ; 
the  vast  majority  of  the  nation  was  impatiently  awaiting  de- 
liverance from  the  intolerable  oppression  of  the  Jacobins,  but  to 
follow  up  this  conciUatory  overture  with  commands  and  threats 
was  to  aHenate  even  that  loyal  portion  of  the  people  who 
would  have  rallied  around  the  standard  of  the  King.  Thus 
although  their  Majesties  are  represented  as  declaring  that  they 
have  "  no  intention  of  interfering  with  the  internal  government 
of  France,"  and  that  "  their  combined  armies  will  protect  all 
towns  and  villages  which  submit  to  the  King  of  France,"  never- 
theless those  inhabitants  who  fire  on  the  troops  "  will  be  punished 
with  all  the  rigour  of  the  laws  of  war  "  ;  further,  that  if  the 
Tuileries  are  again  invaded,  or  the  least  assault  perpetrated 
against  the  Royal  Family,  "  their  Imperial  and  Royal  Majesties 
will  take  an  exemplary  and  never-to-be-forgotten  vengeance 
by  giving  up  the  town  of  Paris  to  miUtary  execution  and 
total  subversion,  and  the  guilty  rebels  to  the  death  they  ha^ 
deserved." 

This  amazingly  injudicious  document,  which  is  frequently 
regarded  as  a  monument  of  Prussian  or  of  royal  arrogance,  WJ 
in  reahty  not  the  work  of  a  foreigner  or  of  a  royal  prince  at 
but  of  a  French  emigre,  the  Marquis  de  Limon,  formerly  financi 
adviser  to  the  Due  d' Orleans,^  and  though  approved  by  tl 
Emperor  and  the  King  of  Prussia,  it  met  with  violent  remoi 
strance  from  the  democratic  Duke  of  Brunswick,  who  at  fii 
refused  to  append  his  signature  to  it,  and  only  compUed  at  h 
in  obedience  to  the  commands  of  the  aforesaid  monarchs. 
^  Le  Comte  de  Fersen  et  ta  Cour  de  France,  ii.  25. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES     247 

According  to  Beaulieu,  De  Limon  consulted  in  the  matter  a 
certain  Heymann,  who  had  served  in  a  regiment  of  the  Due 
d' Orleans  ;  both  these  men  had  formerly  played  an  active  part 
in  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy.^ 

It  is  not,  therefore,  impossible  that  the  famous  Manifesto  was 
inspired  by  Orleaniste  influence,  and  that  the  misguided  Comte 
de  Fersen,  and  through  his  influence  Marie  Antoinette,  in  accord- 
ing it  their  approval  played  into  the  hands  of  their  enemies. 
Fersen,  always  illusioned  as  to  the  good  faith  of  the  King  of 
Prussia,  undoubtedly  imagined  that  the  armies  of  Prussia  could  be 
counted  on  to  save  the  Royal  Family,  and,  realizing  the  cowardice 
of  the  revolutionary  leaders,  he  beUeved  that  the  threat  of 
reprisals  might  be  used  with  advantage  to  intimidate  them.  But 
the  revolutionary  leaders,  better  acquainted  with  the  real  policy 
of  Frederick  William,  were  not  intimidated,  and  in  their  turn 
made  use  of  the  Manifesto  to  alarm  the  French  people. 

The  people  of  France,  though  less  alarmed  than  revolutionary 
writers  would  have  us  suppose,  were,  nevertheless,  indignant  at 
the  truculent  tone  of  the  Manifesto.  "  No  country,"  writes  Dr. 
Moore,  who  arrived  in  Paris  this  August,  "  ever  displayed  a 
nobler  or  more  patriotic  enthusiasm  than  pervades  France  at 
this  moment,  and  which  glows  with  increasing  ardour  since 
the  pubUcation  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick's  Manifesto  and  the 
entrance  of  the  Prussians  into  the  country." 

The  revolutionary  leaders  were  clever  enough  to  exploit  this 
spirit  of  patriotism  to  the  utmost,  but,  as  we  have  seen,  the  atti- 
tude of  certain  men  amongst  them  towards  Brunswick  was  far  from 
antagonistic.  On  the  2ist  of  July,  just  a  week  before  the  pubUca- 
tion of  the  Manifesto,  the  author  of  the  Correspondance  secrete 
writes  :  "  It  is  said  that  it  still  enters  into  the  plans  of  the 
Jacobins  to  come  to  an  understanding  with  the  Duke  of  Bruns- 
wick by  offering  him  the  crown  of  France."  Four  days  later  this 
rumour  was  confirmed  in  the  press,  for  on  July  25,  that  is  to  say 
the  very  day  that  Brunswick  signed  the  Manifesto  prepared  for 
him,  Carra  pubUshed  the  following  passage  in  his  Annates 
Patriotiques  : 

"  Nothing  is  so  foolish  as  to  beUeve,  or  to  wish  to  make  us 
beUeve,  that  the  Prussians  desire  to  destroy  the  Jacobins.  .  .  . 
These  same  Jacobins  ever  since  the  Revolution  have  never  ceased 
to  cry  aloud  for  the  rupture  of  the  treaty  of  1756,  and  for  the 
formation  of  aUiances  with  the  House  of  Brandenbourg  {i.e. 
Hohenzollern)  and  of  Hanover,  whilst  the  gazetteers,  directed  by 
the  Austrian  Committee  of  the  Tuileries,  have  never  ceased 
praising  Austria  and  insulting  the  Courts  of  Berlin  and  La  Haye. 
No,  these  courts  are  not  so  clumsy  as  to  wish  to  destroy  those 
*  Beaulieu,  iv.  172. 


248        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Jacobins  who  have  such  fortunate  ideas  for  changes  of  dynasties, 
and  which,  in  case  of  need,  can  serve  considerably  the  interests  of 
the  Houses  of  Brandenbourg  and  Hanover  against  Austria.  Do 
you  think  the  celebrated  Duke  of  Brunswick  does  not  know  on 
what  to  rely  in  all  this  .  .  .  ?  He  is  the  greatest  warrior  and 
the  greatest  poHtician  in  Europe,  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  ;  he  is 
very  well  educated,  and  very  amiable ;  he  needs  perhaps  only  a 
crown  to  be,  I  will  not  say  the  greatest  king  in  the  world,  but  the 
true  restorer  of  liberty  in  Europe.  If  he  arrives  in  Paris,  I  wager 
that  his  first  step  will  be  to  come  to  the  Jacobins  and  put  on  the 
*  bonnet  rouge.'  " 

It  will  be  urged  that  these  sentiments  were  those  of  only  an 
individual,  or  of  one  faction  in  the  Jacobin  Club,  but  how  are 
we  to  explain  the  fact  that  no  protest  was  raised  by  any  of  the 
other  revolutionary  leaders,  and  that  all  these  so-called  patriots 
remained  on  the  best  of  terms  with  the  man  who  would  have 
handed  over  the  country  to  foreign  despotism  ?  Moreover,  when] 
later  on  a  delegate  was  needed  to  send  to  the  frontier  in  order  to] 
parley  with  the  Prussians,  Carra  was  one  of  the  emissaries  chosen  j 
by  the  leaders.  Not  till  long  after  were  his  treasonable  pro- 
posals brought  up  against  him  by  the  Robespierristes,  and  then] 
only  as  the  means  for  destroying  a  rival  faction.  What  con-^ 
elusion  can  we  draw  from  all  this  but  that  the  Jacobins  had  ani 
understanding  with  Brunswick,  and  that  although  the  plan  of. 
offering  him  the  throne  was  not  entertained  by  all  of  them,  they 
were  all  nevertheless  interested  in  remaining  on  good  terms  j 
with  him  until  they  had  overthrown  the  monarchy  and  finally 
usurped  the  reins  of  power  ? 

The  Manifesto  of  Brunswick,  which  reached  Paris  three  daysj 
after  the  pubhcation  of  Carra's  panegjn-ic  on  its  supposed  author,  | 
merely  served  to  moderate  the  ardour  of  the  pro-German  party] 
for  Brunswick  and  revive  their  enthusiasm  for  a  Hanoverian! 
monarch.  On  August  lo  the  author  of  the  Correspondance] 
secrete  writes  again  : 

"  The  Duke  of  Brunswick  has  fallen  in  the  estimation  of  thej 
Jacobins  since  his  Manifesto  ;  they  think  less  of  offering  him  the\ 
throne.  Their  present  system  is  for  a  RepubHc.  However,  theyf 
are  waiting  to  see  what  form  pubhc  opinion  will  take  in  thisj 
respect  during  the  interregnum.  They  talk  again  of  the  Dukf 
of  York." 

According  to  the  Memoires  de  Barere,  the  supporters  of  thial 
change  of  dynasty  were  now  Brissot,  Petion,  Guadet,  Gensonn6,I 
and  Rabaud  de  St.  Etienne.  "  On  the  17th  of  July,"  a  deputy] 
of  the  Legislative  Assembly  wrote  to  Barere,  "  on  the  staircase  of! 
the  Commission  des  Onze,  at  the  Assembly,  Brissot  said  to  hisj 
associates  of  the  moment :  '  I  will  show  you  this  evening,  in  my] 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      249 

correspondence  with  the  Cabinet  of  St.  James's,  that  it  depends  on 
us  to  amalgamate  our  Constitution  with  that  of  England  by 
making  the  Duke  of  York  a  constitutional  monarch  in  the  place 
of  Louis  XVI.'  "  1 

As  usual,  of  course,  the  English  Government  was  used  as  a 
cover  to  the  design  concerted  with  the  English  revolutionaries. 
Brissot's  lie  is  definitely  refuted  by  the  author  of  the  Correspon- 
dance  secrete,  who  records  that  the  King  of  England,  hearing  of 
this  intrigue,  wrote  to  Louis  XVI.  "  to  warn  him  that  the  Due 
d'Orleans  was  scheming  to  give  the  crown  of  France  to  the  Duke 
of  York  with  the  hand  of  Mile.  d'Orleans."  ^ 

These,  then,  were  the  intrigues  at  work  amongst  the  Jacobins, 
whilst  the  Prussians  and  Austrians  were  assembling  on  the 
frontier.  Of  all  the  revolutionary  legends,  the  legend  of  the 
"  patriotic  fervour  "  displayed  by  the  leaders  is  the  most  absurd 
of  all ;  the  menace  of  foreign  invasion  served  as  a  pretext  for 
stirring  up  the  people,  not  against  the  invaders,  but  against  the 
King  of  France.  Whilst  on  the  nth  of  July  the  citizens  of  Paris, 
in  response  to  the  proclamation  of  "La  Patrie  en  danger,"  were 
pouring  into  the  recruiting  tents  to  offer  themselves  for  the 
defence  of  the  country,  revolutionary  orators,  posted  at  the 
street  comers,  endeavoured  to  check  their  ardour.  "  Unhappy 
ones  !  where  are  you  flying  to  ?  Think  of  the  chiefs  under 
which  you  must  march  against  the  enemy !  Your  principal 
officers  are  nearly  all  nobles  ;  a  Lafayette  will  lead  you  to 
butchery  I  Ah  !  do  you  not  see  that  beneath  the  blinds  at 
the  Tuileries  they  are  smiHng  ferociously  at  your  generous  but 
blind  enthusiasm  ?  "  ^ 

"It  is  only  necessary,"  says  M.  Mortimer  Temaux,  "  to 
glance  through  the  Journal  de  la  Societe  des  Amis  de  la  Constitution 
(i.e.  of  the  Society  of  Jacobins)  to  see  that  at  the  moment  when 
the  National  Assembly  is  devoting  all  its  energies  to  national 
defence,  the  Jacobins  only  speak  of  our  armies  in  order  to  denounce 
the  treachery  of  the  generals,  and  to  excite  the  soldiers  against 
their  officers.  They  are  much  less  occupied  with  the  means  of 
defending  the  frontiers  from  invasion  than  in  overwhelming  the 
monarchy.**  * 

THE  ARRIVAL  OF  THE  MARSEILLAIS 

Amongst  the  mob  orators  the  supporters  of  the  Due  d'Orleans 
were  the  most  active.     "  His  creditors,"  writes  Barbaroux,  "  his 

^  MSmoires  de  Bardre,  ii.  45. 

*  Correspondance  secrete,  p.  614.  date  of  August  10,  1792. 

'  Rdvolutions  de  Paris,  by  Prudhomme,  xiii.  139. 

*  Histoire  de  la  Terreur,  by  Mortimer  Temaux,  ii.  104. 


250        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

hirelings,  his  boon  companions,  Marat  and  his  CordeHers,  all  the 
swindlers,  all  the  men  sunk  in  debt  and  dishonour,  were  seen  at 
work  in  pubhc  places,  urging  the  deposition  (of  the  King),  greedy 
of  gold  and  honours,  under  a  regent  who  would  have  been  their 
accomplice  and  their  tool."  ^ 

In  order  to  give  a  popular  air  to  this  clamour  for  the  over- 
throw of  Louis  XVI.  the  usual  metliod  of  deputations  was 
adopted,  and,  by  way  of  swelling  their  numbers,  men  known  as 
"  confederates,"  from  the  camp  at  Soissons,  were  enhsted  in 
the  service  of  the  Jacobins.  "  These  petitions,"  says  Beaulieu,; 
"  these  incendiary  addresses  which  demanded  the  head  of  La-' 
fayette  and  the  extermination  of  the  King,  were  not  the  work" 
of  these  confederates,  all  these  were  concocted  at  the  privatej 
committee  of  the  Jacobins  ;  they  (the  confederates)  only  readi 
them  aloud  so  that  the  deluded  people  should  believe  that  the^ 
overthrow  of  the  throne  was  desired  by  the  departments."  ^ 

At  the  same  time  a  council,  known  as  the  "  Committee  oi 
Insurrection,"  was  formed,  which  held  most  of  its  sittings  at  a^ 
tavern  in  Charenton  known  as  "  Le  Cadran  Bleu,"  and  included  j 
amongst   its   leading   members   Carra,    Santerre,    the    German  i 
Westermann,  Foumier  TAmericain,  and  the  Pole  Lazowski. 

On  the  evening  of  the  26th  of  July  this  committee  met  at  the  i 
tavern  of  the  "  Soleil  d'Or,"  at  the  entrance  of  the  Faubourg  Saint-' 
Antoine,  for  the  purpose  of  organizing  a  second  march  on  the 
Tuileries.     Every  effort  was  made  to  excite  the  people  ;  placardsj 
were  displayed  ordering  them  to  join  the  march,  and  panic  news] 
was  circulated  to  the  effect  that  Chabot  and  Merlin  had  been^ 
assassinated  by  the  chevaliers  du  poignard,  and  that  the  Chateau ' 
was  arming  itself  against  the  citizens.     But,  although  the  agi-i 
tators  worked  hard  all  night,  the  Faubourg  on  this  occasionj 
absolutely  decHned  to  rise.     In  vain,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  mom-j 
ing,  the  400  or  500  confederates,  whom  the  leaders  had  succeeded! 
in  collecting,  sounded  the  tocsin  and  beat  the  generate  in  Saint- 
Antoine  ;    only  a  few  inhabitants  aimed  with  pikes  and  guns 
responded  to  the  summons,  whilst  Carra,  despatched  to  Saint- 
Marceau  to  find  out  what  had  happened  to  prevent  the  Faubourgj 
arriving  on  the  scene,  found  the  whole  quarter  wrapped  "  in  the 
most  perfect  tranquillity  " — that  is  to  say,  in  slumber. ^ 

Throughout  the  whole  of  this  month  the  people  displayedl 
the  same  apathy  towards  the  revolutionary  movement.  "  I  am] 
convinced,"  writes  a  contemporary  on  the  7th  of  July,  "  that  ourj 

^  Mimoires  de  Barharoux,  p.  44. 

2  Beaulieu,  iii.  409.  Note  the  wording  of  one  of  these  petitions  where 
the  fSdiris  describe  themselves  as  Scaevolas  !   (Buchez  et  Roux,  xvi.  250). 

*  PUces  importantes  pour  VHistoire,  quoted  by  Buchez  et  Roux,  xvi. 
189-192  ;   Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  129. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      251 

sedition-mongers  and  enrages  are  beginning  to  be  afraid,  and  all 
that  they  do  denotes  this.  They  would  like  to  stir  up  the  people 
to  commit  excesses,  but  I  doubt  whether  they  wiU  succeed. 
They  wiU  work  up  the  scoundrels  under  their  orders  whom  they 
pay,  but  in  general,  what  can  be  described  as  '  the  people,' 
the  workmen  and  bourgeoisie,  do  not  think  hke  these  gentlemen. 
They  are  tired,  wearied,  and  worn  out  with  this  wretched  revolu- 
tion, which  produces  nothing  but  evils,  crimes,  disorders,  anarchy, 
and  can  do  no  good.  ...  I  walk  about  and  observe  impartially 
the  groups  that  assemble,  and  I  can  assure  you  that,  except  for  a 
few  fanatics  who  preach  murder  and  regicide,  I  can  see  no  general 
inclination  to  insurrection."  ^ 

To  the  revolutionary  leaders  Ukewise  it  was  now  clearly 
evident  that  the  people  would  never  be  persuaded  to  co-operate 
in  the  dethronement  of  Louis  XVI.  Marat,  indeed,  had  long 
despaired  of  them  altogether ;  the  Parisians,  he  said  to  Bar- 
baroux,  were  but  "  pitiable  revolutionaries  (de  mesquins  revolu- 
tionnaires)  " — "  give  me  200  NeapoUtans  armed  with  daggers, 
and  with  them  I  will  overrun  France  and  make  a  revolution."  ^ 
It  was  a  perception  of  the  same  truth  that  in  the  early  days 
of  the  Revolution  had  led  the  Orleaniste  conspirators  to  send 
for  brigands  from  the  South,  and  later  to  enUst  ItaUans  in 
the  company  of  the  Sabbat.  Marat's  advice  was  not  lost  on 
Barbaroux.  This  young  lawyer  from  Marseilles  had  been  dis- 
covered by  Roland,  and  introduced  to  the  deputies  of  the  Gironde. 
It  was  thus  that  Barbaroux  came  to  play  an  active  part  in  the 
preparations  for  the  loth  of  August,  and  that,  acting  on  the 
suggestion  of  Marat,  he  discussed  with  Monsieur  and  Madame 
Roland  the  advisability  of  appeahng  to  the  South  for  aid.  The 
result  of  these  dehberations,  Barbaroux  relates,  was  a  message 
to  Marseilles  asking  for  "  600  men  who  knew  how  to  die  " — that 
is  to  say,  600  men  who  knew  how  to  kill. 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  the  celebrated  contingent  of  500 
who  arrived  in  Paris  on  the  30th  of  July,  were  only  a  small  pro- 
portion of  the  number  summoned  by  the  Girondins,  for  thousands 
had  already  arrived  in  the  course  of  the  month.  An  honest  deputy 
of  Marseilles  named  Blanc-GiUi,  seeing  these  bloodthirsty  legions 
arriving  in  the  capital,  thereupon  pubHshed  a  letter"  to  the  good 
citizens  of  Paris"  revealing  the  identity  of  the  so-called  Marseillais : 

"  The  town  of  Marseilles,  situated  on  the  Mediterranean  .  .  .," 
wrote  Blanc-Gilli  on  the  5th  of  July,  "  must  be  considered  on 

*  Letter  from  M.  Lefebvre  d'Arcy  to  M.  Vanlerberghe  in  Lettres  d'Aris- 
tocrates,  by  Pierre  de  Vaissiere,  p.  469.  See  also  Ferri^res,  iii.  153  :  "  The 
people  of  Paris,  tired  of  being  continually  tossed  about,  .  .  .  remained  in 
apathetic  repose." 

*  Mimoires  de  Barbaroux,  p.  57.    •  / 


252         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

account  of  its  port  as  the  sink  of  vice  for  a  great  portion  of  the 
globe,  where  all  the  impurities  of  human  nature  forgather.  It 
is  there  that  we  constantly  see  in  fermentation  the  scum  of  crime, 
vomited  by  the  prisons  of  Genoa,  of  Piedmont,  of  Sicily,  in  fact 
of  all  Italy,  of  Spain,  of  the  Archipelago  and  of  Barbary — deplor- 
able fatality  of  our  geographical  position  and  of  our  commercial 
relations.  This  is  the  scourge  of  Marseilles,  and  the  first  cause 
of  the  frenzy  attributed  to  all  its  citizens.  .  .  .  Every  time  that 
the  National  Guards  of  Marseilles  have  set  forth  on  the  march 
outside  its  walls,  the  horde  of  brigands  without  a  country  of 
their  own  has  never  failed  to  throw  itself  in  their  wake,  and 
to  carry  devastation  everywhere  on  their  path.  .  .  .  Several 
thousands  of  these  brigands  have  for  more  than  a  month  been 
arriving  in  Paris  ;  a  very  large  number  is  still  on  the  road.  I 
have  sent  numerous  warnings  to  the  administration."  ^ 

Such,  then,  were  the  foreign  legions  that  the  men  who  accused 
Louis  XVI.  of  appeaUng  for  aid  from  abroad  saw  fit  to  summon 
to  their  own  aid  for  the  massacring  of  their  fellow-citizens.  The 
final  contingent  of  500  that  arrived  in  Paris  on  the  30th  of  July, 
— ^romantically  described  by  historians  as  **  the  brave  band  of 
Marseillais,"  "  children  of  the  South  and  Uberty,"  "  singing  their 
national  hymn, '  the  Marseillaise,'  " — included  the  same  men  who 
had  carried  out  the  horrible  massacre  of  the  Glaciere  d'Avignon,^ 
and  were  to  repeat  like  atrocities  in  Paris  this  September.  As 
to  the  magnificent  melody  they  had  appropriated,  it  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  Marseilles,  but  had  been  composed  three 
months  earlier  at  Strasbourg,  at  the  request  of  the  mayor 
Dietrich,  by  Rouget  de  ITsle,  who  little  dreamt  that  his  "  trumpet 
call  to  arms  against  foreign  cohorts  "  would  become  the  war-cry 
of  an  aUen  cohort  far  more  terrible  than  any  gathered  on  the 
frontier.^    It   seems,   indeed,   that   the   Girondins   themselves, 

^  See  also  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudliomine,  vi.  1 15,  and  M^moires 
de  Hua,  p.  153,  note :  "  This  horde  of  bandits  .  .  .  was  a  collection  of 
foreign  adventurers :  Genoese,  Maltese,  Piedmontais,  Corsicans,  Greeks, 
vagabonds,  having  for  their  principal  leaders  one  named  Fournier  dit 
I'Am^ricain  and  the  Pole  Lazowski."  "  Fifty  Genoese,"  says  Beaulieu, 
"  were  lodged  together  in  the  Rue  Sainte-Marguerite,  Faubourg  Saint- 
Antoine.  Many  others  could  be  cited  ;  the  most  furious  revolutionaries, 
those  who  committed  murders,  were  tc  a  great  extent  foreigners,  and  the 
famous  battalion  from  Marseilles  included  a  great  number  of  them  ;  I 
heard  their  accent,  their  bad  jargon,  and  can  certify  this." 
^  2  Taine,  La  Rivolution,  v.  272 ;  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme, 
iv.  96  ;   Adolphus,  ii.  346. 

3  The  mother  of  Rouget  de  I'lsle  wrote  to  him  at  this  moment  the 
following  words  :  "  What  is  this  revolutionary  hymn  which  is  sung  by  a 
horde  of  brigands  on  their  way  across  France  and  with  which  your  name  is 
associated  ?  "  Rouget  de  I'lsle  was  imprisoned  later  under  the  Terror 
and  the  mayor  Dietrich  was  guillotined.  Thus  did  the  Revolution  reward 
the  authors  of  the  "  Marseillaise." 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      253 

seeing  the  instruments  they  had  summoned  to  their  aid,  were 
overcome  with  panic,  for  it  was  not  by  Roland  or  his  colleagues 
that  the  Marseillais  were  received,  but  by  Santerre,  Danton,  and 
the  other  leaders  of  the  Orleaniste  faction. 

"  It  was  the  30th  of  July,"  writes  Thiebault,  "  that  these 
hideous  confederates,  vomited  by  Marseilles,  arrived  in  Paris. 
...  I  do  not  think  it  would  be  possible  to  imagine  anything 
more  frightful  than  these  500  madmen,  three-quarters  of  them 
drunk,  nearly  all  of  them  in  red  caps  with  bare  arms,  followed  by 
the  dregs  of  the  people,  ceaselessly  reinforced  by  the  overflow  of 
the  Faubourgs  Saint-Antoine  and  Saint-Marceau,  and  fraternizing 
in  tavern  after  tavern  with  bands  as  fearful  as  the  one  they  formed. 
It  was  in  this  manner  that  they  processed  in  *  farandoles  *  through 
the  principal  streets  .  .  .  and  boulevards  ...  to  the  Champs 
filysees,  where  the  orgy  to  which  they  had  been  bidden  by 
Santerre  was  preceded  by  satanic  dances."  ^ 

This  orgy  was  held — evidently  with  intention — close  to  a 
restaurant  where  about  100  grenadiers  of  the  Filles-Saint- 
Thomas — the  most  loyal  of  all  the  King's  Guards — ^were  holding 
a  regimental  dinner.  The  Marseillais,  collecting  a  crowd  of 
women  and  children,  proceeded  to  pelt  the  soldiers  with  mud  and 
stones,  and  ended  by  killing  one  and  wounding  several  others. 
The  Grenadiers  thereupon  took  refuge  in  the  Tuileries,  where 
the  Queen  dressed  their  wounds,  and  this  action  was  immediately 
interpreted  by  the  revolutionaries  as  a  plot  concerted  between 
the  Court  and  the  regiment.''^ 


THE  DEPOSITION  OF  THE   KING  PROPOSED 

In  vain  Louis  XVI.  implored  the  factions  to  unite  in  face  of 
the  peril  with  which  the  Manifesto  of  Brunswick  threatened 
France,  to  assure  them  that  he  was  one  with  his  people  at  this 
moment  of  national  crisis.  "  Personal  dangers,"  he  wrote  to  the 
Assembly,  "  are  nothing  compared  with  pubUc  misfortunes. 
Ah  !  what  are  personal  dangers  for  a  king  from  whom  it  is  desired 
to  take  away  the  love  of  his  people  ?  That  is  the  sore  that 
rankles  in  my  heart.  {Cest  Id  qu'est  la  veritable  plate  de  mon 
cceur.)  One  day  perhaps  the  people  will  know  how  dear  their 
welfare  is  to  me,  how  it  has  always  been  my  only  interest  and  my 
greatest  need.  What  grief  might  be  dispelled  by  the  least  sign 
of  their  returning  to  me  !  " 

The  response  to  this  appeal  was  a  deputation,  headed  by 
P6tion,  from  the  Commune  de  Paris  reiterating  the  demand  for 

^  MSmoires  de  ThUhauU,  i.  296. 
*  Beaulieu,  iii.  428. 


254        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  dethronement  of  the  King,  in  which,  for  want  of  any  better 
grounds  of  accusation,  Louis  XVI.  was  denounced  for  "  his 
sanguinary  projects  against  the  town  of  Paris,"  "  the  aversion 
he  displayed  towards  the  people,"  even  for  his  action  in  the 
matter  of  closing  the  haU  of  the  Assembly  on  the  day  of  the 
*'  Oath  of  the  Tennis  Court  "  three  years  earlier  !  But  Petion 
showed  his  hand  in  one  significant  sentence  :  "  As  it  is  very 
doubtful  that  the  nation  can  have  confidence  in  the  existing 
dynasty,  a  provisional  government  must  be  estabUshed."  The 
words  were  universally  interpreted  to  signify  a  change  from  the 
Bourbons  to  the  House  of  Orleans,  but  they  might  equally  well 
apply  to  the  proposal  for  replacing  Louis  XVL  by  a  German 
monarch. 

Petion's  speech  was  followed  next  day  by  a  resolution 
forwarded  from  the  revolutionary  section  of  Paris,  known  as 
*'  Mauconseil,"  likewise  demanding  the  deposition  of  the  King. 
Forty-seven  out  of  the  forty-eight  sections  of  Paris,  revolutionary 
historians  assure  us,  supported  this  resolution,  and  in  confirmation 
of  their  statement  they  quote  the  journal  of  Carra !  ^  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  an  examination  of  the  registers  of  the  sections 
made  by  M.  Mortimer  Temaux  reveals  the  fact  that  the  proposi- 
tion of  Mauconseil  was  seconded  by  only  fourteen  sections  of 
Paris,  rejected  by  sixteen,  passed  over  in  silence  by  ten,  whilst 
the  reply  of  the  remaining  eight  sections  is  unrecorded.^  Several 
sections,  indeed,  entered  very  energetic  protests  at  the  Assembly, 
denouncing  the  efforts  made  "  to  divide  the  citizens  of  the 
Empire,  to  aHght  civil  war,  and  to  substitute  the  most  horrible 
anarchy  for  the  Constitution.  .  .  ."  ^  The  astonishing  fact  is 
that  the  petition  of  Mauconseil  was  finally  annulled  as  uncon- 
stitutional by  the  Assembly  at  the  proposal  of  Vergniaud,*  who 
only  a  month  earHer  had  deUvered  himself  of  the  most  violent 
diatribe  against  the   King.^    Brissot  likewise   at  this  moment 

*  This  statement  was  made  by  Carra  in  the  Annates  Patriotiques  on  the 
28th  of  July  before  the  appeal  to  the  sections  had  been  made,  and  was 
therefore  a  pure  invention. 

2  Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  441. 

'  Address  from  the  section  of  the  Arsenal  (Buchez  et  Roux,  xvi.  330). 
See  also  the  protests  of  the  sections  of  the  "  Thermes  de  Jullien  "  and 
"Henri  IV."  (Buchez  et  Roux,  xvi.  374). 

Even  the  fourteen  sections  who  nominally  voted  their  support  were  far 
from  representative  of  the  wishes  of  the  districts  in  question,  for,  as  usual, 
every  kind  of  trickery  was  employed.  A  citizen  of  the  section  of  Maucon- 
seil appeared  at  the  Assembly  and  declared  that  "  the  address  of  this 
section  for  the  dethronement  of  the  King  had  been  secured  by  intrigue  and 
that  many  of  the  signatures  were  forged ;  he  was  able  even  to  give  names 
and  addresses  that  had  been  fraudulently  introduced  into  the  petition." 
(Buchez  et  Roux,  xvi.  344). 

*  Buchez  et  Roux,  xvi.  323. 

^  Stance  du  3  Juillet,  Moniteur,  xiii.  32. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      255 

displayed  a  sudden  attachment  to  the  monarchy  and  Constitution, 
for  although  on  the  gth  of  July  he  had  formally  asked  for  the 
deposition  of  the  King,  declaring  that  "  to  strike  down  the  court 
of  Tuileries  was  to  strike  down  all  traitors  at  a  blow,"  ^  he  came 
forward  on  the  25th  of  July  to  denounce  "  that  faction  of  regicides 
who  would  create  a  dictator  and  establish  a  Repubhc."  **  If 
that  pact  of  regicides  exists,"  he  exclaimed,  "  if  men  exist  who 
now  seek  to  establish  the  Republic  on  the  ruins  of  the  Constitution, 
the  sword  of  the  law  should  strike  at  them  ...  as  at  the  counter- 
revolutionaries of  Coblentz."  ^ 

Again,  on  the  following  day,  Brissot  represented  to  the 
Assembly  that,  as  the  King's  collusion  with  the  enemies  of  France 
had  not  been  clearly  proved,  it  would  be  premature  to  depose 
him.  Moreover,  might  not  the  nation  have  something  to  say 
in  the  matter  ? 

Brissot  only  voiced  the  fear  that  lurked  in  the  minds  of  all 
the  revolutionary  leaders  when  he  described  the  possible  con- 
sequences of  overthrowing  the  monarchy  and  Constitution. 
"  Do  you  not  see  from  that  moment  the  gates  of  the  kingdom 
opened  by  the  French  themselves  to  foreigners  ?  Do  you  not 
see  these  Frenchmen  shaking  the  hands  of  these  foreigners,  and 
inviting  them  to  join  with  them  in  re-estabUshing  their  Constitu- 
tion and  maintaining  the  King  on  the  throne  in  spite  of  the 
efforts  of  the  factions  ?  "  ^  Thus,  in  the  opinion  of  one  of  the 
most  prominent  revolutionary  leaders,  it  was  not  only  the  Queen 
and  her  party  who  sighed  for  Brunswick,  hut  many  of  the  French 
people,  who,  before  the  arrival  of  the  Manifesto,  would  have 
welcomed  even  foreign  intervention  in  order  to  he  saved  from  the 
intolerable  tyranny  of  the  Jacobins. 

What  was  the  explanation  of  the  Girondins'  sudden  change 
of  front  at  this  crisis  ?  Simply  that  they  had  perceived  the 
revolutionary  movement  to  be  passing  out  of  their  hands  into 
those  of  the  CordeUers  and  Robespierristes,  and  were  ready  to 
accept  any  measures  that  would  bring  their  own  party  back 
to  power. 

It  would,  indeed,  be  idle  to  seek  a  more  exalted  poUcy  amongst 
any  of  the  revolutionary  factions  at  this  crisis,  for  none  adhered 
consistently  to  any  definite  scheme  of  government. 

"  Amidst  all  this  chaos,  this  general  confusion,"  say  the 
Two  Friends  of  Liberty,  "some  wanted  the  deposition  of  the 
monarch,  others  his  suspension ;  these,  that  he  should  let  himself 
be  ruled  by  them,  those,  that  he  should  give  up  the  crown  to  his 
son ;  that  one  of  them  should  be  regent,  and  that  all  the  offices 
in  the  State  should  be  reserved  for  them.    A  great  number  called 

/^  Moniteur,  xiii.  86.  2  /^^-^^  xiii.  242. 

'  Ibid.  xiii.  279. 


256         THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

the  Due  d'Orleans  to  the  throne,  some  thought  of  a  foreign  prince, 
and  seven  or  eight  people  of  a  repubUc."  ^ 

This  wild  medley  of  plans  explains  the  fact  that  members  of 
each  faction  in  turn  became  alarmed,  and  at  the  last  moment, 
before  the  monarchy  was  overthrown,  secretly  offered  their 
services  to  the  King.  In  the  whirlpool  that  threatened  to  engulf 
them  all  none  knew  who  would  sink  and  who  would  swim,  and 
so,  struck  with  panic,  they  turned  and  clung  to  the  ark  of  the 
Constitution  that  contained  the  King  and  that,  as  they  all  knew, 
was  borne  on  that  mighty  tide — the  will  of  the  people. 
:  It  was  thus  that,  at  the  eleventh  hour,  Brissot,  Vergniaud, 
\  /and  Gensonne,  through  an  intermediary,  the  painter  Boze, 
warned  the  King  of  the  impending  insurrection,  and  undertook 
to  quell  it  if  the  Girondin  ministers  were  recalled  and  the  decrees 
they  had  proposed  sanctioned  by  the  King.^  Louis  XVI.  re- 
jected this  proposal,  and  so  his  "  deposition  was  irrevocably 
decreed  by  those  who  had  just  declared  that  the  salvation  of 
France  lay  in  the  Constitution."  ^ 

Robespierre  also  at  this  juncture  continued  to  defend  the  Con- 
stitution ;  his  colleague,  the  retired  comedian,  Collot  d'Herbois, 
repeated  incessantly  :  "  Ah  !  if  the  King  were  really  a  patriot 
he  would  choose  his  ministers  and  his  agents  among  the  Jacobins." 
But  Louis  XVI.  distrusted  this  faction  hkewise,  and  so  "  these 
men  obtaining  nothing  in  one  direction  turned  to  the  other  and 
proclaimed  themselves  Repubhcans  whilst  becoming  Anarchists."  ^ 

Meanwhile  the  CordeHers,  the  principal  instigators  of  the 
insurrection,  were  prepared  to  go  to  far  greater  extremities  to 
save  the  King,  provided  they  were  sufficiently  compensated  for 
the  enterprise.  "  Marat,"  says  Barbaroux,  "  sent  me,  towards 
the  end  of  July,  a  document  of  several  pages,  which  he  asked  me 
to  have  printed  and  distributed  to  the  Marseillais  at  the  moment 
of  their  arrival.  .  .  .  The  work  seemed  to  me  abominable,  it 
was  a  provocation  to  the  Marseillais  to  fall  upon  the  Legislative 
Assembly.  The  Royal  Family,  it  said,  must  he  safeguarded,  but  the 
Assembly,  evidently  anti-revolutionary,  exterminated."  ^ 

This  statement  of  Barbaroux'  is  confirmed  by  Michaud,  who 
relates  that  only  a  few  days  later — at  the  beginning  of  August — 
another  Cordelier,  Fabre  d']£glantine,  the  friend  and  confidant 
of  Danton,  made  precisely  the  same  proposal  to  M.  Dubouchage, 
the  Minister  of  the  Navy,  with  whom  he  had  obtained  an  interview 

^  Deux  Amis,  viii.  94. 

2  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  213  ;  Mimoires  de  Hua, 
p.  141.  Boze  was  arrested  for  this  by  order  of  Tallien  on  January  3,  1793 
{La  Demagogic  d,  Paris  en  1793,  by  C.  A.  Dauban,  p.  8). 

^  Beaulieu,  iii.  408. 

*  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  212. 

^  Mimoires  de  Barbaroux,  p.  60. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      257 

by  writing  several  times  to  the  King.  Fabre  d'figlantine  pre- 
sented himself  at  the  rendezvous,  and  "  after  great  protestations 
of  interest  and  zeal  for  the  King,  of  esteem  and  admiration  for 
the  true  RoyaUsts,  entered  into  great  details  on  the  plots  that 
were  being  formed  against  the  Chateau  of  the  Tuileries  and  on 
the  dangers  that  surrounded  the  Royal  Family.  In  consequence 
he  proposed  a  plan  which,  he  said,  would  be  infallible,  and  would 
restore  to  Louis  XVI.  his  former  authority.  This  plan  was  to 
bribe  the  gunners  and  the  leaders  of  sedition  of  whom  he  was  sure, 
and  then  to  fall  on  the  Jacobins  and  the  Assembly  in  force,  and 
thus  deliver  France  from  its  greatest  enemies.  For  the  execution 
of  this  plan  he  asked  for  the  sum  of  three  miUions.  M.  Dubou- 
chage  rendered  an  account  of  this  conference  to  the  King,  who 
was  horrified  by  the  violent  measures  proposed.  ..."  Beaulieu 
adds  :  "  Other  propositions  of  this  kind  were  made  to  Louis  XVI. 
and  the  Queen,  at  the  moment  when  they  both  knew  for  certain 
that  the  insurrection  was  about  to  break  forth,  and  by  people  in 
whom  they  could  have  confidence ;  they  rejected  them  with 
horror,  unable  to  endure  the  thought  of  seeing  the  innocent 
sacrificed  with  the  guilty,  and  these  men  whom  they  had  spared 
when  they  could  have  annihilated  them  described  them  as 
*  monsters,  tigers,  and  cannibals.'  "  ^ 

But,  whilst  unwilling  to  accede  to  the  sanguinary  suggestions 
of  the  Cordeliers,  Louis  XVI.,  realizing  that  greed  for  gold  was 
at  the  bottom  of  most  of  their  revolutionary  frenzy,  resolved  once 
again  to  conciliate  them  with  gifts  of  money.  A  week  before 
the  loth  of  August  Danton  received  the  sum  of  50,000  ecus,  and 
the  Court,  convinced  that  this  time  the  great  demagogue 
would  be  true  to  his  bargain,  felt  no  further  apprehension. 
"  Our  minds  are  at  rest,"  said  Madame  EUzabeth,  "  we  can 
count  on  Danton."  But  the  Court  had  miscalculated  on  the 
sum  required.  Danton  pocketed  the  money  and  betrayed 
the  King.2 

The  fact  is  that  the  Court  was  now  too  poor  to  buy  par- 
tisans amongst  the  factions,  who  saw  in  the  impending  upheaval 
far  greater  opportunities  of  enrichment.  "  Alas  !  "  even  the 
revolutionary  Prudhomme  is  obHged  to  admit,  "  how  many 
pretended  RepubUcans  would  have  been  furious  RoyaUsts  if  the 
Court  had  been  inclined  to  win  them  over,  and  had  had  enough 
money  to  pay  them  !  But  it  had  not  enough  for  all  who  asked, 
all  who  aspired.  The  Legislative  Assembly  was  full  of  men  of 
this  kind,  RoyaUsts  or  Republicans,  according  to  the  way  the 
wind  blew,  and  it  must  be  said,  although  to  the  shame  of 
the  Revolution,  that  these  were  the  elements  of  the  loth  of 

^  Beaulieu,  iv.  17. 
*  MSmoires  de  Lafayette,  iii.  85  ;   Mimoires  de  Hua,  p.  149. 

S 


258        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

August,  during  which  the  people  alone  were  disinterested  and  of 
good  faith."  ^ 

That  Danton  was  the  principal  organizer  of  the  loth  of  August 
cannot  be  doubted.  Towards  the  end  of  July  Prudhomme 
relates  that  he  received  a  visit  from  Danton,  Camille  Desmoulins, 
and  Fabre  d']£glantine.  Danton  said,  "  in  the  trivial  language 
habitual  to  him  "  : 

"  We  have  come,  petit  jean-f outre,  to  consult  you  as  an  old 
patriot,  although  you  are  no  longer  up  to  the  mark  ;  but  as  you 
have  often  foreseen  events  and  their  results,  we  want  your  opinion 
on  a  plan  of  insurrection." 

Prudhomme  inquired  in  what  this  plan  consisted. 

"  We  wish  to  overthrow  the  tyrant,"  answered  Danton. 

*'  Which  one  ?  " 

"  The  one  at  the  Tuileries.    This  b of  a  Revolution  has 

brought  nothing  to  patriots." 

"  That  is  to  say,  messieurs,  that  you  wish  to  make  your 
fortunes  in  the  name  of  hberty  and  equaUty.  How  do  you  think 
of  overthrowing  the  monarchy  ?  " 

"  By  assault." 

Prudhomme  urged  the  temerity  of  the  proposal.  "  Your 
plan,"  he  said,  "  is  the  work  of  a  coterie  of  Jacobins  and  Cor- 
deliers. You  do  not  know  the  intentions  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Paris,  or  of  the  majority  of  those  in  the  departments." 

Fabre  d'!£glantine  said,  "  We  have  the  promise  of  a  hundred 
deputies,  Girondins  and  Brissotins  and  agents  in  all  the  popular 
societies  of  France." 

"  You  wish  to  overthrow  the  monarch,"  Prudhomme 
answered.     "  Whom  will  you  put  in  his  place  ?  " 

"  The  Due  d' Orleans,"  blurted  out  that  enfant  terrible, 
Camille  Desmoulins. 

But  Danton  hastily  interposed : 

"  We  will  see  afterwards  what  we  will  do.  In  revolutions  as 
on  the  field  of  battle  one  must  never  look  forward  to  the  morrow. 
I  undertake  to  stir  up  the  canaille  of  the  Faubourgs  Saint- 
Antoine  and  Saint  -  Marceau.  The  Marseillais  will  be  at  their 
head — they  have  not  come  to  Paris  for  plums."  ^ 

But  even  the  canaille  needed  some  incentive  to  rise,  and  just 
now  none  was  forthcoming.  It  was  in  a  mood  of  desperation 
inspired  by  these  reflections  that  the  deputy  Chabot  one  day 
cried  out  incontroUably,  "  If  only  the  Court  would  try  to  murder 
somebody  !  "     An  attempt  on  the  life  of  a  "  patriotic  "  deputy, 

^  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  iv.  216. 

2  Histoire  des  Causes  de  la  Revolution  Fran^aise,  by  Granier  de  Cassa- 
gnac,  iii.  456 ;  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois  de  Paris,  by  Edmond  Bire,  i.  290. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      259 

he  declared  to  Grangeneuve,  would  prove  an  invaluable  pretext 
for  stirring  up  the  people.  Unfortunately  the  Court  displayed 
no  intention  of  carrying  out  this  scheme,  but  Chabot  and  Grange- 
neuve  were  not  to  be  baffled  by  so  trifling  an  obstacle.  In  a  fit 
of  "  patriotic  "  fervour  these  two  Tartarins  thereupon  decided 
to  have  themselves  murdered,  in  order  to  provide  an  accusation 
against  the  Court.  Chabot  undertook  to  engage  assassins  who 
were  to  waylay  and  shoot  them  at  the  street  comer.  But  on  the 
night  appointed  Chabot  seems  to  have  thought  better  of  the 
scheme,  for  neither  he  nor  the  assassins  were  forthcoming,  and 
Grangeneuve,  having  made  his  will  and  waited  about  a  long  while 
to  be  murdered,  returned  home  indignant  to  find  himself  alive.^ 
Thus  deprived  of  any  shadow  of  a  pretext  for  marching  a 
second  time  on  the  Tuileries,  the  leaders  were  obliged  to  invent 
one,  and  in  order  to  persuade  the  people  to  attack  the  Chateau 
it  was  loudly  proclaimed  that  the  Chateau  was  about  to  attack 
the  people — "  15,000  aristocrats  are  ready  to  massacre  all  the 
patriots."  ^  But  in  spite  of  these  alarms  Paris  remained  sunk 
in  lethargy.  Still,  on  the  evening  of  the  9th  of  August,  all  means 
had  failed  to  rouse  the  great  mass  of  the  population.  So  the 
revolutionary  leaders  took  the  law  into  their  own  hands,  and  on 
this  fateful  night  the  terrible  council  of  the  "  Commune,"  known 
as  the  "  Conseil  General  Revolutionnaire  du  10  Aout,"  came  into 
being. 

THE  NIGHT  OF  THE   9TH  OF  AUGUST 

The  agitators  of  the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine  had  at  first  met 
at  the  section  of  the  Quinze  Vingt  in  their  own  district,  but  finding 
their  efforts  to  make  this  the  centre  of  agitation  abortive,  they 
issued  an  appeal  at  eleven  o'clock  in  the  evening  to  the  other 
forty-seven  sections  of  Paris,  asking  them  each  to  send  their 
representatives  to  co-operate  in  the  proposed  insurrection  with 
the  Commune  at  the  Town  Hall. 

A  great  number  of  sections  failed  to  respond  to  this  appeal ; 
some  indeed  protested  energeticaUy  against  the  attempt  to 
disturb  the  peace,  whereupon  the  leaders  had  recourse  to  their 
usual  methods  of  fraud  and  violence.  "  As  soon  as  night  draws 
on,"  says  Beaulieu,  "  the  revolutionaries,  whose  r61es  had  been 
prepared  beforehand,  go  out  into  all  the  sections  {i.e.  the  haUs  of 
the  districts)  which  the  peaceful  bourgeois  had  abandoned,  either 
in  order  to  present  themselves  at  the  guard-house,  or  to  return  to 
their  homes  and  give  themselves  up  to  rest.  The  revolutionaries, 
having  thus  made  themselves  masters  of  the  debates,  declare 

1  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  157  ;  Mimoires  du  Chancelier  Pasquier, 
p.  81. 

*  Ferri^res,  iii.  204  ;  Robespierre,  DSfenseur  de  la  Constitution,  No.  12. 


26o        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

themselves  the  sovereign  people,  usurp  their  rights,  and  decree 
that  all  constituted  authority  is  in  abeyance.  This  resolution 
being  taken  and  communicated  to  each  other,  the  revolutionary 
sections  ring  the  tocsin  in  all  the  churches  of  Paris  ;  this  alarm 
heard  in  the  middle  of  the  night  strikes  terror  into  all  hearts.  .  .  ."^ 

By  methods  such  as  these  even  sections  that  had  protested 
against  the  plan  of  insurrection  were  represented  as  sending 
delegates  to  co-operate  with  the  movement,^  and  so,  although 
twenty  sections  still  remained  unrepresented,^  it  was  possible  to 
declare  that  the  majority  of  the  sections  had  responded  to  the 
appeal. 

In  this  way  the  insurrectional  Commune  was  formed.  Prud- 
homme,  at  that  date  in  the  secret  of  the  leaders,  afterwards 
described  the  process  in  these  illuminating  words  : 

"  On  the  eve  of  the  famous  day  (the  loth  of  August)  the 
confederates,  towards  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening,  assemble  to  the 
number  of  twenty  or  thirty,  and  at  once  on  their  own  initiative 
name  new  members  without  even  collecting  the  wishes  of  the 
majority  of  the  sections.  This  choice  being  made,  the  nominees, 
or  rather  the  conspirators,  arrange  to  meet  at  the  Commune. 
They  present  themselves  armed  with  the  power  to  replace  the 
magistrates  then  sitting.  These  hesitate  a  moment  and  are 
secretly  threatened  ;  they  give  up  their  seats  and  all  go  out  with 
the  exception  of  Petion  and  Manuel,  who  are  retained.  All  this 
was  arranged  in  the  secret  meetings  (conciliabules)  which  had 
been  held  at  the  Palais  Royal  or  the  Rapee,  where  D'Orleans, 
Danton,  Marat,  Petion,  Robespierre,  and  others  were  to  be 
found.  .  .  .  Paris  changed  magistrates  without  knowing  it,  and 
the  insurrection  took  place  .  .  .  without  any  obstacle  ;  one 
would  have  supposed  that  every  one  was  in  accord."  * 

But  with  these  secret  confabulations  the  r61e  of  the  leaders 
ended.    As  usual,  when  the  hour  of  danger  struck,  those  bold 

^  Beaulieu,  iii.  448,  This  manoeuvre  is  described  in  almost  the  same 
words  by  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  189.  See  also  the  Histoire  de 
la  Conspiration  du  10  AoiXt,  by  Bigot  de  Sainte-Croix,  p.  21,  and  the  Revolu- 
tion du  10  AoiXt,  by  Peltier,  i.  73  :  "  The  fatal  hour  strikes,  the  tocsin  makes 
itself  heard,  the  gSn&rale  is  sounded,  300  rebels  assemble  the  sham  sections. 
All  the  citizens  were  with  their  battalions.  At  the  section  of  the  Lombards 
only  eight  people  are  to  be  found  to  name  five  commissioners."  The  re- 
searches of  Mortimer  Ternaux  confirm  these  statements  :  "At  the  Arsenal 
six  people  who  happen  to  be  in  the  hall  of  the  committee  name  three 
amongst  them  to  represent  1400  '  active  citizens  '  {i.e.  citizens  who  had 
the  right  to  vote) .  Things  happen  much  in  the  same  way  at  the  Louvre, 
the  Observatoire,  and  the  Roi  de  Sicile"  {Histoire  de  la  Terreur,  ii.  234). 

2  For  example,  the  sections  of  Montreuil,  the  Roi  de  Sicile,  the  Invalides 
and  Sainte-Genevieve  (Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  427,  431,  434,  437). 

^  Buchez  et  Roux,  xvi.  423  ;   Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  240,  444. 

*  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  73. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      261 

patriots,  Danton,  Marat,  Robespierre,  and  Camille  Desmoulins, 
retired  into  hiding.  On  the  eve  of  this  second  attack  on  the 
Tuileries,  Marat,  overcome  with  panic,  had  implored  Barbaroux 
to  smuggle  him  out  of  Paris  disguised  as  a  jockey,^  and  on  Bar- 
baroux's  refusal  betook  himself  once  more  to  his  cellar,^  a  course 
likewise  adopted  by  Robespierre.^  As  to  Camille  DesmouUns 
and  Danton,  the  journal  of  Madame  DesmouUns  reveals  that  they 
spent  most  of  this  night,  whilst  the  insurrection  was  preparing, 
asleep  at  Danton's  house.  Just  as  the  tocsin  was  about  to  ring, 
Danton,  always  prone  to  slumber,  retreated  into  his  bed,  from 
which  snug  ambush  the  emissaries  of  the  Commune  had  some 
difficulty  in  dislodging  him,  and  even  then  he  was  soon  back 
again,  and  still  sleeping  peacefully  whilst  the  mob  was  marching 
on  the  Tuileries. 

It  was  therefore  again  on  this  occasion  the  professional 
agitators  who  were  left  to  carry  out  the  plans  of  the  leaders,  and 
for  a  time  it  seemed  that  their  efforts  were  to  be  rewarded  with 
no  success,  for  the  Faubourgs  still  showed  themselves  recalcitrant, 
and  as  late  as  2.30  in  the  morning  of  the  loth  news  was  brought 
to  Roederer  at  the  Chateau  that  the  insurrection  would  not  take 
place.  But  at  last,  towards  dawn,  the  revolutionary  army 
began  to  muster.  Santerre  gathered  round  him  the  brigands  of 
the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine  ;  Lazowski  and  Alexandre  enlisted 
a  following  in  Saint-Marceau,  and  Barbaroux  and  Foumier  led 
forth  the  Marseillais. 

Meanwhile  the  Tuileries  was  preparing  its  plans  of  defence. 
The  Marquis  de  Mandat,  commander  of  the  National  Guard, 
warned  of  the  impending  insurrection,  had  sounded  the  call  to 
arms,  and  all  night  his  battahons  streamed  to  the  Chateau,  where 
they  took  up  their  stand  in  the  courtyards  on  the  Carrousel 
and  the  terraces  bordering  the  river  and  the  garden.  These 
battalions,  sixteen  in  all,  made  up  a  total  of  2400  men,  whilst 
in  the  Chateau  itself  were  950  Swiss  and  200  nobles  armed  with 
swords  and  pistols. 

As  on  the  20th  of  June,  the  Chateau  was  therefore  well 
defended ;  moreover,  the  troops  were  this  time  commanded  by 
no  feeble  RamainviUiers,  but  by  a  leader  who  could  be  depended 
on  to  offer  a  vigorous  resistance.  Mandat,  the  revolutionary 
leaders  well  knew,  was  loyal  to  the  King  and,  as  Petion,  com- 
bining the  rdle  of  spy  with  that  of  mayor  of  Paris,  discovered  on 

^  Marat  wrote  three  times  to  Barbaroux  on  this  subject.  "  On  the 
evening  of  the  9th,"  says  Barbaroux,  "  he  informed  me  that  nothing  was 
more  urgent,  and  again  proposed  to  me  that  he  should  disguise  himself  as 
a  jockey  "  {MSmoires  de  Barbaroux,  pp.  61,  62). 

'  Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  241.  See  also  Marat's  placard  issued  from  his 
"  subterranean  retreat  "  {Marat,  by  A.  Bougeart,  ii.  36). 

'  Ferri^res,  iii.  201  ;  Barbaroux,  p.  82  ;  Maton  de  la  Varenne,  p.  228. 


262        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

his  wanderings  round  the  Chateau,  really  had  a  plan  of  campaign. 
Therefore  Mandat  must  be  disposed  of. 

Accordingly,  at  seven  o'clock  in  the  morning,  Mandat  was 
summoned  to  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  and  ordered  to  give  an  account 
of  his  conduct  in  organizing  the  defences  of  the  Chateau.  Mandat 
repHed  that  he  had  acted  on  the  order  of  Petion  to  resist  attack 
by  force.  But  all  explanations  were  useless  ;  Mandat  had  been 
sent  for  to  be  murdered,  not  to  be  judged.  Huguenin,  the 
"  orator  "  of  June  20,  now  President  of  the  Commune,  with  a 
horizontal  gesture  across  his  throat,  said,  "  Let  him  be  led 
away."  Mandat  was  taken  out,  and  half  an  hour  later,  on  his 
way  down  the  steps  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  to  the  prison  of  the 
'^Abbaye,  a  young  man  named  Rossignol,  employed  by  Danton,^ 
approached  and  shot  him  through  the  head.  Needless  to  say, 
this  foul  deed  was  ascribed  by  Petion  to  the  people.^  P6tion 
himself  had  a  personal  reason  for  desiring  the  death  of  Mandat, 
and  undoubtedly  acted  in  collusion  with  Danton,  for  the  order 
to  resist  attack  by  force  had  really  been  given  by  him  to  Mandat 
three  days  earUer  in  writing,  and  it  was  apparently  in  order  to 
abstract  this  compromising  document  from  his  pocket  that 
Mandat  was  assassinated.^  Petion's  precise  object  in  writing 
it  is  not  clearly  evident ;  possibly,  as  Montjoie  suggests,  it  was 
for  the  sake  of  giving  a  pretext  to  the  Marseillais  for  firing  at  the 
troops,  but  it  may  also  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  Petion 
had  received  a  large  sum  of  money  from  the  King  just  before  the 
loth  of  August  to  maintain  order,*  and  for  a  moment  he  may 
have  intended  to  earn  his  payment  honestly.  But  when  he  saw 
that  the  insurrection  was  assuming  formidable  proportions,  he 
was  overcome  with  panic,  and  resolved  to  destroy  the  written 
evidence  of  his  momentary  defection  from  the  revolutionary 
cause.  At  any  rate,  he  now  did  everything  in  his  power  to  assist 
the  movement.  So  although,  as  head  of  the  municipahty,  he 
refused  during  this  night  to  supply  the  forces  at  the  Tuileries 
with  ammunition  for  the  defence  of  the  Chateau,  he  contrived 
that  5000  ball  cartridges  should  be  issued  to  the  Marseillais. 
Petion  had  also  arranged  with  Carra  that  if  the  insurrection  broke 
out  he  should  be  forcibly  prevented  from  opposing  it  by  a 
summons  to  the  Town  Hall,  where  he  was  to  be  detained  during; 
the  attack  on  the  Chateau.    Carra  omitted  to  do  this,  and  Petion 

1  Danton  admitted  this  in  his  trial :  "I  drew  up  the  death-warrant  of| 
Mandat  who  had  been  ordered  to  fire  on  the  people."  See  Notes  de  Topinoi 
Lehrun  sur  le  proems  de  Danton. 

2  RScit  du  10  AoAt  par  Pition,  maire  de  Paris. 

3  Peltier,  RSvolution  du  10  Aout,  i.  83,  84  ;    Montjoie,  Conjuration 
d'OrUans,  iii.  197  ;   Journal  of  Dr.  John  Moore,  i.  151. 

*  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  342  ;  Mimoires  de  Malouet,  ii.  141, 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      263 

spent  a  very  uncomfortable  hour  or  two  waiting  about  in  the 
garden  of  the  Tuileries,  shadowed  by  several  loyal  grenadiers  who 
shrewdly  suspected  his  perfidy.  When  the  expected  summons 
still  failed  to  arrive  he  finally  adopted  the  ingenious  expedient  of 
sending  repeated  orders  to  himself,  and  in  response  to  these  he 
left  his  post  at  2.30,  and  after  presenting  himself  at  the  Assembly 
placed  himself  under  restraint  in  his  own  quarters  at  the  Town 
Hall  with  a  guard  of  400  men  to  prevent  him  returning  to  duty.^ 
So  through  the  basest  treachery  the  Chateau  was  disarmed 
before  its  assailants.  By  the  death  of  Mandat,  as  the  con- 
spirators had  anticipated,  all  the  plans  for  defence  were  dis- 
organized, and  the  forces  assembled  at  the  Tuileries  left  without 
a  leader. 

THE   lOTH   OF   AUGUST 

The  King  and  Queen  well  knew  the  fate  that  in  all  probability 
awaited  them.  Twice  already  since  the  20th  of  June  the  Queen 
had  narrowly  escaped  assassination — once  at  the  Champ  de  Mars 
on  the  14th  of  July,  once  at  midnight  when  the  murderer  was 
arrested  on  the  threshold  of  her  apartment — and  all  through 
these  weeks,  says  Montjoie,  Louis  XVI.  had  slept  in  his  clothes 
ready  to  rise  at  the  first  alarm. 

Now,  as  the  sinister  knell  of  the  tocsin  rang  out  over  the  city, 
the  Queen  sat  weeping  silently  ;  the  King  paced  the  great  rooms 
of  the  Chateau  striving  to  decide  on  the  course  of  action  to  pursue. 
The  troops,  he  knew,  could  offer  a  vigorous  resistance  to  assault, 
but  this  meant  bloodshed,  and  again  the  old  question  that  at 
every  crisis  of  the  Revolution  had  tortured  him  arose  in  his 
mind  :  "  Was  a  king  justified  in  shedding  the  blood  of  his  people 
in  his  own  defence  ?  "  RoyaHsts  said  yes  ;  beUevers  in  the 
"  sovereignty  of  the  people  "  said  no ;  moreover  the  King's  own 
conscience  said  no  Ukewise. 

This  dilemma  produced  in  Louis  XVI.  an  agony  of  irresolu- 
tion that  could  never  have  afflicted  any  of  his  predecessors. 
Henry  IV.,  for  all  his  benevolence,  would  have  buckled  on  his 
sword,  mounted  his  charger,  and  shown  himself  to  his  troops  as 
their  sovereign  chief,  and  undoubtedly,  if  Louis  XVI.  had  done 

^  See  Potion's  own  naive  account  of  this  manoeavre  in  reply  to  Robes- 
pierre's accusation  later  on  that  he  had  not  contributed  to  the  loth  of 
August  :  "  To  reconcile  my  ofS.cial  position  as  mayor  with  my  fixed 
resolution  to  forward  the  movement,  it  had  been  arranged  that  I  should 
be  arrested,  so  as  not  to  be  able  to  oppose  any  legal  authority  to  it ;  but 
in  the  hurry  and  agitation  of  the  moment  this  was  forgotten  .  .  .  Who  do 
you  think  sent  several  times  to  urge  the  execution  of  this  plan  ?  It  was  I, 
yes,  I  myself  ;  because  as  soon  as  I  knew  that  the  movement  was  general, 
far  from  thinking  of  arresting  it  I  was  resolved  to  facilitate  it  "  {Observations 
de  J.  pstion  sur  la  Lettre  de  Robespierre). 


264        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

this,  even  Barbaroux  admits  the  day  would  have  been  won,  for 
"  the  great  majority  of  the  battahons  had  declared  themselves 
for  him." 

It  seems  that  in  the  end  the  King,  yielding  to  the  entreaties 
of  the  RoyaUsts,  decided  that  the  Chateau  should  be  defended  by 
force  of  arms,  but  this,  to  him  a  terrible  decision,  was  reached 
only  by  hours  of  mental  conflict.  When  at  half -past  five  on  the 
morning  of  the  loth  he  came  forth  from  his  apartments  to  inspect 
the  troops,  his  defenders  saw  with  dismay  that  the  sang-froid 
which  had  saved  him  on  the  20th  of  June  was  no  longer  at  his 
command — his  nerve  was  gone. 

This  was  not  the  result  of  cowardice ;  the  hardest  rider,  the 
boldest  airman,  may  find  himself  suddenly,  as  the  result  of  con- 
tinuous exposure  to  danger,  the  victim  of  nerve  failure,  and  Louis 
XVI.,  as  we  know,  was  subject  to  such  attacks  under  the  influence 
of  acute  mental  strain.  From  the  accounts  of  aU  eye-witnesses 
it  is  evident  that  at  this  supreme  moment  the  King  was  suffering 
from  a  return  of  the  malady  that  had  afflicted  him  three  months 
earUer,  and  that  now  deprived  him  of  all  the  energy  he  needed 
wherewith  to  meet  the  crisis.  Above  the  violet  of  his  coat  his 
face  showed  white  as  death,  his  eyes  were  wet  with  tears,  his 
powdered  hair  disordered — "  he  looked,"  says  Madame  Campan, 
"  as  if  he  had  ceased  to  exist." 

The  effect  on  the  troops  was,  of  course,  deplorable.  Up  to 
this  moment  their  enthusiasm  had  remained  at  boiling-point, 
and  as  the  King  passed  on  his  way  "  all  the  vaulted  ceilings  of 
the  palace  rang  to  the  cries  of  '  Vive  le  Roi !  '  '  No,  Sire,'  cried 
the  troops,  *  do  not  fear  a  recurrence  of  the  20th  of  June,  we  will 
wipe  out  that  stain  ;  the  last  drop  of  our  blood  belongs  to  your 
Majesty  !  '  "  1  When  the  King  came  down  into  the  courtyards 
loud  cheers  burst  from  every  company  of  the  National  Guards : 
"  Vive  le  Roi !  Vive  Louis  XVI.  !  Long  Uve  the  King  of  the 
Constitution  !  We  wish  for  him  !  We  wish  for  no  other  !  Let 
him  put  himself  at  our  head  and  we  will  defend  him  to  death  !  "  ^ 

If  only  he  had  put  himself  at  their  head !  If  only  he  could 
have  found  ringing  tones  in  which  to  respond  to  these  acclama- 
tions, have  summoned  smiles  to  his  hps,  and  so  won  all  hearts 
finally  to  his  cause  !  But  it  seems  that  Louis  XVI.,  more  than 
ever  inarticulate  under  the  stress  of  great  emotion,  cast  a  chill 
over  the  spirits  of  the  men,  and  as  the  cries  of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  " 
died  down  voices  were  heard  to  answer  with  "  Vive  la  nation  !  " 

On  the  other  side  of  the  Chateau  the  situation  assumed  a 
more  threatening  aspect,  for  at  the  moment  that  the  King 
entered  the  garden  the  advance-guard  of  the  revolutionary  army, 

1  Histoire  de  la  Conspiration  du  10  Aout,  by  Bigot  de  Sainte-Croix,  p.  40. 
2  Prods  verbal  de  J.  J.  Leroux,  officier  municipal. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      265 

armed  with  pikes,  arrived  on  the  scene  from  the  Faubourg  Saint- 
Marceau,  and  as  they  filed  past  overwhehned  him  with  insults. 
By  some  strange  mismanagement  this  revolutionary  battalion 
was  allowed  to  take  up  its  stand  amongst  the  other  troops  ; 
inevitably  the  spirit  of  insurrection  spread,  and  when  the  King 
returned  to  the  Chateau  along  the  terrace  bordering  the  river, 
angry  cries  were  raised :  "  Down  with  the  King  !  Long  live  the 
Sans-Culottes !  "  and  other  invectives  of  a  grosser  kind — only  a 
dozen  voices  in  all,  yet  loud  enough  to  be  heard  in  the  Chateau.^ 

The  sinister  murmurs  reached  the  ears  of  the  Queen.  M.  Du- 
bouchage  rushing  to  the  window  cried  out  in  horror,  "  Good 
God  !  It  is  the  King  they  are  hooting !  What  the  devil  is  he 
doing  there  ?  Let  us  go  down  and  find  him."  The  Queen  burst 
into  tears.  "  All  is  lost,"  she  said,  when  a  moment  later  the  King 
returned  pale  and  breathless,  "  this  review  has  done  more  harm 
than  good." 

All  indeed  was  lost.  News  had  now  arrived  that  Mandat 
had  been  either  killed  or  arrested,  that  "  all  Paris  "  was  on  foot, 
and  that  the  Faubourgs  had  assembled  and  were  marching  on 
the  Chateau  with  their  cannons.  Then  the  Royalists  who  had 
collected  in  the  palace  knew  that  the  moment  had  come  to  rally 
round  the  King,  and  M.  d'Hervilly,  a  drawn  sword  in  his  hand, 
ordered  the  usher  to  open  the  doors  to  "  the  French  nobihty  !  " 

But  where  were  the  "  15,000  aristocrats  "  the  revolutionaries 
declared  to  be  concealed  in  the  Chateau  ?  Where  were  the  blood- 
thirsty chevaliers  du  poignard  who  were  to  execute  a  new  massacre 
of  St.  Barthelemy  at  the  bidding  of  Antoinette  Medicis  ?  Nothing 
further  from  this  description  could  be  imagined  than  the  strange 
procession  that  now  streamed  into  the  room  led  by  the  old 
Marechal  de  Mailly,  aged  eighty-six,  and  composed  of  two  to 
three  hundred  men  and  boys,  many  with  no  pretensions  to 
"  nobility,"  but  "  ennobled  by  their  devotion  "  to  a  lost  cause.^ 
Few  had  been  able  to  procure  guns,  and  the  greater  number  were 
armed  only  with  swords  or  pistols,  or  with  hastily  improvised 
weapons  they  had  seized  on  their  passage — a  squire  and  page 
had  divided  a  pair  of  fire-tongs  between  them.  Always,  through- 
out the  whole  Revolution,  the  same  unpreparedness,  the  same 
hopeless  lack  of  design  on  the  part  of  the  Old  Order,  and  on  the 
other  side  foresight,  method,  superb  organization  !  Surely  a 
warning  to  all  ages  that  courage  and  devotion  may  prove  un- 
avaihng  before  calculating  cowardice  and  organized  malevolence  ? 
If  bravery  could  have  won  the  day  on  this  loth  of  August  the 
Chateau  must  have  triumphed.  The  Queen,  now  that  the  danger 
was  actually  at  the  gates,  dried  her  tears,  and  resolved  that, 

^  Proems  verbal  de  J.  J.  Leroux,  officier  municipal. 
'  *  Mimoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  348. 


266        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

since  the  King  could  inspire  no  enthusiasm  in  his  defenders,  she 
herself  would  take  up  his  role.  When  some  of  the  National 
Guards  murmured  at  the  intrusion  of  the  "  nobiUty,"  which  they 
regarded  as  a  slur  on  their  own  abihty  to  defend  the  Royal 
Family,  Marie  Antoinette  begged  them  to  be  reconciled.  "  They 
are  our  best  friends,"  she  said;  "  they  will  share  the  dangers  of 
the  National  Guards,  they  will  obey  you,"  and  turning  to  some 
grenadiers  standing  near  she  added  :  "  Messieurs,  remember 
that  all  you  hold  most  dear,  your  wives,  your  children,  your 
property,  depends  on  our  existence ;  our  interest  is  one ;  you 
must  not  have  the  least  distrust  of  these  brave  people,  who  will 
defend  you  to  their  last  breath." 

According  to  BeauUeu,  these  words  had  the  result  of  pro- 
moting a  complete  understanding  between  the  two  parties  of 
the  King's  defenders,  and  all  now  stood  together,  resolved  to 
resist  attack  by  force  of  anns. 

Meanwhile  an  order  to  the  same  effect  was  given  by  the 
attorney-general,  Roederer,^  and  the  municipal  officer,  Leroux,] 
to  the  troops  surrounding  the  Chateau,  but  in  so  half-hearted  a 
manner  as  only  to  increase  the  audacity  of  the  insurgents  ;  the 
gunners  defiantly  rephed  by  unloading  their  cannons,  and  a 
deputation  of  seven  or  eight  citizens  came  forward  to  demand 
the  deposition  of  the  King.  The  two  magistrates  thereupon 
decided  that  resistance  was  useless,  and  that  the  King  must  be 
persuaded  to  leave  the  Chateau  with  his  family,  and  take  refuge 
in  the  hall  of  the  National  Assembly.  Leroux  accordingly  ^ 
returned  to  the  royal  apartments  and  presented  himself  to  the 
King,  who  was  in  his  bedroom  surroimded  by  his  family  and 
several  ministers.  The  danger,  said  Leroux,  was  now  at  its 
height,  the  National  Guards  had  been  corrupted,  and  the  King  and 
Queen,  with  their  children  and  entourage,  would  all  be  massacred 
if  they  remained  at  the  Chateau. 

Marie  Antoinette  had  always  held  that  "  a  king  should  die 
on  his  throne,"  and  cried  out  indignantly  that  she  would  rather 
be  nailed  to  the  walls  of  the  Chateau  than  leave  it ;  but  Louis  XVL, 
ever  anxious  to  avoid  bloodshed,  seemed  not  unwilling  to  consider 
the  proposal.  Seeing  this  the  Queen  seized  his  hand  and,  raising 
it  to  her  eyes,  covered  it  with  tears. ^    Roederer,  arriving  a 

^  Roederer,  whose  Chronique  des  Cinquante  Jours  contains  the  most 
detailed  account  of  June  20  and  August  10,  is  a  far  from  unbiassed  witness, 
for  his  sympathies  are  all  with  the  authors  of  these  days.  Croker  during 
Roederer's  lifetime  frankly  accused  him  of  Orleanism  :  "  M.  Roederer — a 
courtier  of  the  son  of  ;£galit6 — will  not  now  be  ofifended  at  our  saying  that 
we  have  always  considered  him  as  of  the  Orleans  party,  to  which  Brissot 
and  others  of  the  Gironde  originally  belonged.  ..."  (Essays  on  the 
French  Revolution,  p.  211). 

*  Declaration  de  Leroux. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      267 

moment  later,  added  his  entreaties  to  those  of  Leroux,  and  to  the 
repeated  protests  of  the  Queen  repHed,  "  You  wish  then,  Madame, 
to  make  yourself  responsible  for  the  death  of  the  King,  of  your 
own  son,  of  your  daughter,  of  yourself,  and  of  all  those  who 
would  defend  you." 

And  at  the  mention  of  her  children  the  Queen,  touched  in  her 
most  vulnerable  spot,  surrendered. 

The  King  looked  at  her  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  rose  from  his 
seat,  and  said,  "  Allons,  marchons." 

His  family  gathered  round  him. 

"  Monsieur  Roederer,"  said  Madame  EHzabeth,  "  will  you 
answer  for  the  King's  Hfe  ?  *' 

"  Yes,  madame,  on  my  own.'' 

But  when,  a  moment  later,  the  Queen  repeated  the  question, 
"  Will  you  answer  for  the  King's  hfe  and  for  that  of  my  son  ?  " 
Roederer  responded  gloomily,  "  Madame,  we  will  answer  for 
dying  at  your  side,  that  is  all  that  we  can  promise." 

At  Roederer's  earnest  request  none  of  the  Court  was  allowed 
to  escort  the  Royal  Family  to  the  Assembly,  and  the  King, 
obviously  with  the  intention  of  signifying  that  they  were  now 
free  to  depart,  turned  to  his  nobles  with  the  words,  "  Come, 
messieurs,  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  done  here  either  for 
you  or  me." 

But  at  the  foot  of  the  staircase,  overcome  with  misgivings 
for  their  safety,  he  paused,  and  looking  back  at  his  faithful 
defenders  he  said  to  Roederer,  "  But  what  will  become  of  them 
all?  " 

"  Sire,"  answered  Roederer,  "  it  seemed  to  me  that  they  were 
in  coloured  coats  {i.e.  not  in  uniform) ;  those  who  have  swords 
need  only  take  them  off  and  follow  you,  going  out  by  the  garden." 
Yet  after  this  assurance,  and  although  it  was  at  Roederer's  own 
request  that  the  King  left  the  Chateau  and  that  the  nobles  did 
not  escort  him,  Roederer  allowed  it  to  be  said  by  his  friend 
Petion,  without  contradiction,  that  the  King,  "  with  complete 
sang-froid,  left  his  satellites  in  the  Chateau  to  be  butchered."  ^ 

The  Royalists,  it  is  true,  were  indignant  at  his  departure ; 
they  were  all  prepared  to  fight  for  him,  and  beUeved  that  if  he 
had  held  his  ground  and  remorselessly  ordered  the  Swiss  to  fire 
on  the  mob,  the  day  would  have  been  won.    From  the  point 

1  This  lie  was  repeated  by  Danton  with  additions  a  week  later — 
"  whilst  his  oldest  courtiers  shielded  with  their  bodies  the  door  of  his  room 
where  they  believed  him  to  be,  he  (Louis  XVI.)  fled  by  a  back  door  with  his 
family  to  the  National  Assembly  ..."  ("Lettrede  Danton  auxTribunaux," 
August  18,  1792,  published  in  Buchez  et  Roux,  xvii.  294).  Louis  XVI.  and 
his  family,  as  everybody  knew,  left  the  Ch&teau  publicly  by  the  main  stair- 
case whilst  all  the  courtiers  looked  on.  See,  besides  the  above  account  by 
Roedeter,  the  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  350. 


268        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

of  view  of  believers  in  despotism,  the  King  was  guilty  therefore 
of  criminal  weakness,  but  for  the  advocates  of  democracy  to 
blame  him  is  monstrous.  He  left  the  Chateau  solely  to  avoid 
bloodshed. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  attack  on  the  Chateau  had 
not  yet  begun,  and  did  not  begin  until  about  an  hour  after  the 
King  had  left  it,  and  he  not  unnaturally  imagined  that  since  it 
was  against  himself  the  movement  was  directed,  his  departure 
would  remove  all  cause  de  guerre  ;  he  could  not  possibly  foresee 
that  the  revolutionary  leaders  would  be  guilty  of  such  incon- 
ceivable cowardice  as  to  wreak  their  vengeance  on  the  unfortunate 
Swiss  Guards — most  of  them  men  of  the  people  who  were  only 
doing  their  duty  by  remaining  at  their  posts.  According  to 
Montjoie,  the  King,  on  leaving  the  Chateau,  gave  strict  orders 
to  the  Swiss  not  to  fire  on  the  insurgents,  and  to  offer  no  resistance 
whatever  happened,  thereby  depriving  the  Marseillais  of  any 
pretext  for  aggression,  and,  whether  Montjoie  is  right  or  not,  this, 
as  we  shall  see,  was  precisely  the  course  the  Swiss  pursued. 

The  King,  satisfied  therefore  that  no  hostilities  could  now 
take  place,  led  the  way  to  the  Assembly.  The  Queen  followed 
with  Madame  de  Tourzel,  each  holding  a  hand  of  the  Dauphin  ; 
Madame  EUzabeth  with  Madame  Royale,  and  the  Princesse  de 
Lamballe  walked  behind  them  with  one  of  the  ministers.  An 
escort,  formed  of  150  Swiss  and  300  National  Guards,  marched 
in  Une  on  either  side  of  the  Royal  Family. 

In  the  freshness  of  the  glorious  August  morning  the  tragic 
procession  made  its  way,  first  down  the  great  central  alley  of  the 
Tuileries  garden,  with  its  cool  fountains  and  blazing  flower-beds, 
then  to  the  right  under  the  shade  of  the  ancient  chestnut  trees, 
from  which,  in  the  heat  of  this  tropical  summer,  the  leaves  had 
already  begun  to  flutter  down  on  to  the  pathway,  where  the 
gardeners,  unmoved  by  the  fall  of  dynasties,  were  employed  in 
sweeping  them  tidily  into  heaps.  Perhaps  it  was  the  sudden 
recall  to  the  normal  facts  of  life  produced  by  this  circumstance 
that  prompted  the  King's  memorable  remark,  "The  leaves  ar( 
falling  early  this  year." 

But  at  the  Porte  des  Feuillants  grim  reaUties  reasserted  them- 
selves. Outside  the  gateway  a  crowd  of  men  and  women^ 
evidently  animated  by  hostile  intentions,  were  waiting,  and  i 
was  precisely  at  this  moment,  when  the  Royal  Family  most  needed] 
protection,  that  Roederer  elected  to  deprive  them  of  their  milita] 
escort  on  the  ridiculous  pretext  that  the  terrace  of  the  Feuillanti 
was  the  property  of  the  National  Assembly.  Whether,  therefore, 
by  the  official  stupidity  or  the  dehberate  treachery  of  Roederer^ 
the  Royal  Family  was  obliged  to  go  forward  into  the  midst  of 
the  crowd  escorted  only  by  a  few  deputies  of  the  Assembly  whi 


I 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES     269 

now  came  to  meet  them.  Instantly  the  horde  of  ruffians  surged 
forward  howling  execrations.  "  No,  no,  they  shall  not  enter 
the  Assembly,  they  are  the  cause  of  all  our  troubles  !  Down 
with  them  !  Down  !  "  As  usual,  it  was  against  the  Queen  that 
their  fury  was  principally  directed,  and  now,  pressing  closely 
around  her,  they  snatched  her  watch  and  purse,  overwhelming 
her  the  while  with  insults.  A  man  of  enormous  height  and 
"  atrocious  countenance  "  seized  the  Dauphin  from  his  mother, 
but  at  the  Queen's  cry  of  terror  said  reassuringly,  "  Do  not  be 
afraid.  I  will  do  him  no  harm."  And  a  passage  through  the 
crowd  being  at  last  cleared,  he  carried  the  boy  in  his  arms  to 
the  Assembly. 

The  Royal  Family  entered  the  hall.  "  Messieurs,"  said 
Louis  XVI.,  addressing  the  Assembly,  "  I  have  come  here  to 
prevent  a  great  crime,  and  I  think  I  cannot  be  more  in  safety 
than  amongst  you,  messieurs." 

Alas  !  the  King  had  not  prevented  crimes  from  taking  place 
on  that  terrible  day.  The  vengeance  of  the  leaders  was  not 
directed  only  against  the  King  and  Royal  Family ;  other  victims 
had  been  singled  out,  and  nothing  the  unfortunate  Louis  XVI. 
could  have  done  or  said  would  have  availed  to  slake  their  thirst 
for  blood.  Even  as  the  King  uttered  these  words  three  heads 
were  carried  on  pikes  past  the  door  of  the  Assembly. 


As  usual  in  the  revolutionary  outbreaks,  the  mob  collected 
at  the  Porte  des  Feuillants  had  not  come  forward  spontaneously 
to  insult  the  Royal  Family.  The  emissaries  of  the  Due  d'Orl^ans 
were  behind  the  movement.^  It  was  they  who  told  the  people 
that  the  Royal  Family  must  not  be  allowed  to  take  refuge 
with  the  Assembly,  and  it  was  they  who  drove  the  mob  to  carry 
out  the  first  proscriptions  on  the  list  they  had  drawn  up  for 
the  day. 

Of  all  the  enemies  that  the  Due  d'Orleans  had  made  for  him- 
self during  his  revolutionary  career,  none  was  so  violent  or  so 
unrelenting  as  the  joumaUst  Suleau.  Fran9ois  Louis  Suleau /^ 
was  no  aristocrat,  but  the  son  of  a  cloth-maker,  and  he  had 
thrown  himself  into  the  counter-revolutionary  movement  with 
all  the  ardour  usually  to  be  found  only  in  the  opposing  camp. 

"  A  vigorous  mind,  always  giving  vent  to  witty  saUies  and 
bursts  of  boisterous  laughter,  with  an  unbridled  but  infectious 
gaiety  ...  a  Meridional  of  the  North,  loving  danger  for  danger's 
sake  .  .  .  the  joyous  champion  of  lost  causes  .  .  .  mocking  at 
a  revolution,"  ^  Suleau  had  all  the  makings  of  a  rebel,  and  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  Revolution  had  marched  in  the  vanguard  of 

1  Perri^res,  iii.  189.  *  Article  on  Suleau  by  L.  Meister. 


270        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

insurrection.  But  before  long  his  fierce  love  of  justice  drew 
him  over  to  the  cause  of  the  King,  in  whom  he  recognized  the 
one  hope  of  liberty  for  France,  and  in  his  far  from  respectful 
Petit  Mot  a  Louis  XVI.  he  frankly  declared  his  reason  for 
this  allegiance  :  "If  the  good  of  humanity  and  the  salvation  of 
my  country  did  not  happen  to  be  identified  with  the  interests  of 
your  glory,  you  would  find  me  amongst  the  most  intrepid  in 
proving  to  you  that  I  am  a  man  and  a  citizen  before  I  am  your 
subject."  It  was  because  he  hated  fraud  and  imposture,  because 
he  dreaded  the  misfortunes  which  the  usurpation  of  the  throne 
by  the  Due  d'Orleans  would  have  brought  on  France,  that  from 
August  of  1789  he  had  devoted  aU  his  talents,  all  his  wit  and 
untiring  energy,  to  fighting  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy.  Careless 
of  the  consequences,  perpetually  menaced  with  assassination, 
Suleau  had  continued  with  his  pen  to  attack  the  duke — "  he  had 
outraged  him,  threatened  him,  defied  him  in  every  way,  before 
the  tribunals  and  the  justice  of  men,  and  before  the  judgement 
of  God."  1 

Naturally,  Suleau 's  name  had  long  been  on  the  Ust  of  pro- 
scriptions drawn  up  by  the  Orleanistes.  Two  days  before  the 
loth  of  August,  CamiUe  Desmoulins,  his  old  college  friend,  who 
had  remained  attached  to  him  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  were 
now  political  antagonists,  warned  him  that  his  head  was  one  of 
the  first  marked  down  by  the  leaders  of  the  insurrection,  and 
offered  him  a  refuge  in  his  own  house.  Suleau  refused  to  com- 
promise his  friend,  and  went  forward  boldly  to  meet  his  fate — 
the  sacrifice  of  his  life,  he  said,  had  long  since  been  made.  At 
eight  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  the  loth  of  August,  Suleau,  who 
had  spent  the  night  in  the  Tuileries,  came  out  on  to  the  Terrasse 
des  Feuillants  where  the  crowd,  set  in  motion  by  the  Orl6anistes, 
had  assembled.  His  handsome  appearance,  his  fresh  attire  and 
glittering  sword  attracted  attention,  and  he  was  arrested  on  the 
pretext  that  he  formed  part  of  a  false  patrol.  Suleau  proved  his 
innocence  and  was  liberated,  but  the  Orleanistes  had  this  time 
made  sure  of  their  victim.  In  the  Cour  des  Feuillants  Theroigne 
de  Mericourt'was  waiting  for  him — ^Theroigne  at  the  very  height 
of  revolutionary  frenzy.  The  Httle  Belgian  had  a  private  venge- 
ance to  execute  in  attacking  Suleau,  for  the  witty  joumaHst,  in 
his  campaign  against  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,  had  frequently 
made  Theroigne  the  butt  of  his  pleasantries,  and  it  was  not  only 
as  a  partisan  of  the  duke,  but  as  a  woman  outraged  in  her  vanity 
and  even  in  her  prudery — for fille  dejoie  though  she  was,  Theroigne 
could  endure  no  imputations  on  her  "  virtue  " — that  she  longed 
to  plunge  her  dagger  into  the  heart  of  her  persecutor.  Yet  it 
would  be  absurd  to  accept  the  view  of  M.  Louis  Blanc  that 
*  Philippe  d'OrUans  £galiU,  by  Auguste  Ducoin,  p.  170. 


1 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      271 

Theroigne  was  acting  independently  on  this  occasion,  for  it  was 
always  as  an  agent  of  the  Due  d' Orleans  that  she  had  figured  in 
the  revolutionary  movement,  it  was  as  an  Orleaniste  that  she 
had  incurred  the  animosity  of  Robespierre  and  Collot  d'Herbois,^ 
and  since,  as  we  have  seen,  it  was  the  Orleanistes  who  had  planned 
the  death  of  Suleau,  it  was  obviously  at  their  bidding  that  she 
carried  out  the  design.  Her  personal  rancour  merely  lent  a 
sharper  edge  to  her  fury,  which  at  this  crisis  reached  a  pitch 
bordering  on  the  insanity  that  was  later  on  to  become  chronic. 
Theroigne,  on  the  morning  of  this  loth  of  August,  was  nearly  as 
mad  as  the  enraged  hyena  that  afterwards  bore  her  name  in  the 
Salpetriere,  but  this  madness  that  was  to  rob  her  of  all  semblance 
to  a  human  being  gave  her  to-day  a  kind  of  diabolical  beauty 
which  amazed  all  beholders.  Dressed  in  a  blue  riding-habit, 
wearing  on  her  head  a  feathered  hat  a  la  Henri  IV.,  with  a  pair 
of  pistols  and  a  dagger  in  her  belt,  the  Uttle  creature  seemed 
suddenly  to  have  recovered  her  lost  youth,  for  her  face,  haggard 
in  repose,  was  now  Ut  by  an  inward  fire  that  glowed  in  her  dark 
skin,  and  flamed  forth  from  her  eyes  obUterating  the  ravages  of 
ill-spent  years.  Thiebault,  meeting  her  at  this  moment,  took 
her  to  be  only  twenty — ^no  woman,  he  wrote  long  afterwards 
had  ever  made  such  an  impression  on  him  :  "I  say,  with  a  sort 
of  horror,  that  she  was  pretty,  very  pretty,  her  excitement 
enhanced  her  beauty  ...  for  she  was  in  the  throes  of  revolu- 
tionary hysteria  impossible  to  describe." 

Forcing  a  passage  through  the  crowd  in  the  Cour  des  Feuillants 
with  the  cry  of  "  Make  way  !  Make  way  !  "  Theroigne  sprang 
on  to  a  cannon  and  shouted,  "  How  long  will  you  allow  your- 
selves to  be  misled  with  vain  words  ?  "  Pla5dng  on  the  passions 
of  the  mob  she  urged  them  to  violence.  "  Where  is  Suleau — 
the  Abbe  Suleau  ?  "  she  cried,  for  she  had  never  seen  her  enemy 
and  imagined  him  to  be  a  priest. 

Then  Suleau  saw  his  death  had  been  resolved  on,  and,  hoping 
by  the  sacrifice  of  his  Ufe  to  avoid  further  bloodshed,  said  to  the 
National  Guards  around  him,  "I  see  that  to-day  the  peopls 
wish  for  blood ;  perhaps  one  victim  will  suffice,  let  me  go  toward, 
them.  I  will  pay  for  all."  The  Guards  attempted  to  detain 
him,  but  Suleau  rushed  forward  to  face  his  assassins.  For  the 
first  time  these  two  sworn  foes — the  Uttle  virago  mounted  on  the 
cannon,  and  the  young  man  in  all  the  beauty  of  his  strength  and 
fierce  courage — looked  each  other  in  the  eyes.    The  moment  of 

1  See  Siances  des  Jacobins,  date  of  April  23,  1792,  where  "  M.  Collot 
rises  to  congratulate  himself  on  the  fact  that  Mile.  Theroigne  has  withdrawn 
her  friendship  from  him  as  from  M.  Robespierre."  At  this  Mile.  Thdroigne 
flew  at  Collot  with  clenched  fists  and  was  removed  from  the  hall  amidst 
tumult. 


272        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

reckoning  had  come  at  last.  Terrible  in  her  rage,  Theroigne 
sprang  upon  her  victim,  seized  him  by  the  collar,  and,  with  the 
aid  of  the  armed  ruffians  in  her  following,  dragged  him  towards 
the  courtyard.  But  if  Suleau  was  prepared  to  die,  he  went  not 
as  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter  ;  ever  a  fighter,  he  contrived  to  possess 
himself  of  a  sabre  and  fought  his  assailants  like  a  lion.  Three 
other  victims  fell  beside  him — the  gigantic  Abbe  Bouyon  and 
two  officers  of  the  King's  old  bodyguard,  M,  de  Solminiac  and 
M.  du  Vigier,  known  for  his  beauty  as  "  le  beau  Vigier."  At  last 
Suleau,  seeing  that  he  too  must  now  be  overwhelmed,  crossed  his 
arms  and  cried  out  defiantly,  "  Kill  me,  then,  and  see  how  a 
Royalist  can  die  !  "  Instantly  Theroigne  and  her  murderous 
horde  closed  upon  him — Suleau  fell  pierced  with  dagger  thrusts. 
His  Ufeless  body  was  dragged  to  the  Place  Vendome  and  hacked 
to  pieces.  Then  that  noble  head  was  raised  on  a  pike  and  carried 
in  triumph  ^  past  the  door  of  the  Assembly  at  the  moment  the 
Royal  Family  entered  the  hall. 

Whilst  these  scenes  were  taking  place  around  the  Salle 
du  Manege,  confusion  reigned  at  the  Chateau.  The  troops, 
left  by  the  death  of  Mandat  without  a  leader,  could  decide  on 
no  plan  of  campaign  ;  some  were  for  leaving  their  post  and 
retiring  to  barracks,  declaring  that  now  the  Royal  Family  had 
gone  nothing  but  bricks  and  mortar  remained  to  be  defended. 
The  gendarmerie  stationed  on  the  Place  du  Louvre  being  of 
this  opinion  calmly  withdrew  to  the  Palais  Royal,  leaving  the 
approach  to  the  Chateau  open  to  the  enemy. 

But  the  nobles  who  remained  in  the  royal  apartments  were 
for  standing  their  ground ;  only  a  few  of  their  number  had 
followed  the  King,  and  the  rest,  rallying  round  the  Marechal  de 
Mailly,  enthusiastically  concurred  in  his  plan  for  resisting  in- 
vasion to  the  last.  "  Here  are  the  gallants  !  Here  are  the  last 
of  the  nobiUty,"  cried  the  heroic  old  man  as  this  pathetic  legion 
ranged  itself  in  order  of  battle ;  "  the  post  of  a  general  and  of 
his  companions -in -arms  is  at  the  place  where  the  throne  is 
attacked  and  in  peril !  "  And  as  he  went  up  and  down  the 
ranks  he  continued  to  repeat,  *'  Conquer  or  die,  gentlemen, 
conquer  or  die  !  " 

The  first  detachment  of  the  Marseillais  had  now  arrived  on 
the  Carrousel,  but  here  a  delay  occurred  in  the  attack  on  the 
Chateau,  for  the  Faubourgs  failed  to  put  in  an  appearance. 
Once  again  Balaam's  ass  had  refused  to  go  forward.  Santerre 
indeed,  who  was  to  lead  Saint -Ant  oine,  "  the  Faubourg  of  glory," 
to  the  assault,  seemed  at  the  last  moment  overcome  with  panic, 

*  Article  on  Suleau  in  the  Biographie  Michaud;  Beaulieu,  ill.  470; 
Deux  Amis,  viii.  168;  Peltier,  i.  104. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES     273 

and  urged  his  battalions  not  to  march  on  the  Chateau,  where 
he  said  the  Royahsts  were  assembled  in  force.  Thereupon 
Westermann,  holding  his  sword  to  Santerre's  throat,  ordered  him 
to  lead  on  his  men,  and  Santerre  obeyed ;  but  at  the  H6tel  de  Ville 
he  contrived  to  have  himself  elected  commander-in-chief,  and, 
on  the  pretext  that  his  post  should  now  be  at  headquarters, 
absented  himself  from  the  army  and  was  seen  no  more  all  day. 

At  last  the  Faubourgs,  commanded  by  Westermann  and 
Lazowski,  arrived  on  the  field  of  battle  before  the  entrance  to 
the  Chateau.  Such  was  the  attacking  army — a  vanguard  of  Mar- 
seillais  largely  composed  of  Italians,  a  reluctant  rearguard  from 
the  Faubourgs  led  by  a  German  and  a  Pole.^  And  this  was  the 
French  people  rising  as  one  man  to  overthrow  the  monarchy  ! 

At  the  first  onslaught  the  Marseillais  and  the  confederates 
from  Brest,  in  Brittany,  alone  displayed  any  resolution,  and  it 
was  they  who  advanced  towards  the  courtyards  from  which  the 
Swiss  and  National  Guards  had  retreated  into  the  palace,^  and 
beat  on  the  great  gates  of  the  Chateau  demanding  admittance. 
The  royal  concierges  withdrew  the  bolts  and  fled.  A  band  of 
Marseillais  rushed  forward  into  the  arms  of  the  gunners  of  the 
National  Guard,  who,  always  the  disloyal  element  in  this  body, 
immediately  joined  forces  with  the  insurgents,  and  bringing  out 
their  cannons  pointed  them  against  the  Chateau. 

By  this  time  the  mob  of  Paris  had  at  last  begun  to  collect, 
for  the  impunity  with  which  the  revolutionary  battaHons  had 
penetrated  into  the  Carrousel  and  the  courtyards  reassured  the 
most  timorous,  and  streams  of  idlers,  ever  eager  for  a  spectacle, 
hurried  to  the  scene  of  action. 

Only  about  750  Swiss,  a  handful  of  National  Guards,  and 
200  nobles  now  remained  to  defend  the  Chateau.  If  only  the 
Swiss,  therefore,  could  be  suborned  or  vanquished,  further  re- 
sistance would  be  impossible ;  and  the  mob,  seeing  a  number  of 
these  men  looking  down  on  them  from  the  windows,  shouted 
loudly,  "  Down  with  the  Swiss  !     Lay  down  your  arms  !  " 

The  Swiss,  who  entertained  no  hostile  feelings  towards  the 
people,  repUed  with  conciliatory  gestures  by  way  of  persuading 
them   to   desist   from  attack,  and   the    better  to  prove   their 

^  Beaulieu,  iii.  471. 

2  This  order  was  given  directly  the  King  left  the  Chateau  ;  see  account 
of  August  10  given  by  M.  Victor  Constant  de  Rebecqui,  officier  aux  gardes 
suisses  du  Roi,  Auckland  MSS.  in  British  Museum  :  "  The  King  and  his 
family  retire  to  the  Assembly  accompanied  by  a  part  of  the  regiment  and 
our  commanders ;  we  are  all  made  to  retire  into  the  interior  of  the  apart- 
ments and  to  abandon  the  outer  posts  ;  then  the  assailants  break  down 
the  gate  of  the  courtyard  and  enter  at  the  same  moment ;  the  gunners  placed 
there  for  the  defence  of  the  Chateau  abandon  their  cannons,  which  fall  into 
the  hands  of  those  {i.e.  the  gunners)  of  the  Faubourgs." 

T 


274         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

pacific  intentions,  threw  down  packets  of  cartridges  amongst 
them. 

But  the  group  of  Swiss  sentinels  drawn  up  at  the  foot  of  the 
staircase  ^  presented  a  more  formidable  appearance,  and  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  this  gallant  band  held  the  immense  mob  at 
bay  by  their  intrepid  air  and  resolute  countenances.  At  last  a 
dozen  Marseillais,  led  by  Westermann,  ventured  forward  and 
ordered  the  men  to  lay  down  their  arms,  adding,  "We  have 
come  to  fraternize  with  you." 

The  Swiss,  who  understood  Uttle  French,  remained  immov- 
able. Westermann  repeated  the  demand  in  German,  urging 
them  not  to  sacrifice  their  Hves  at  the  bidding  of  their  ofi&cers. 

To  this  the  Sergeant  Blazer  repUed  :  "  We  are  Swiss,  and  the 
Swiss  only  lay  down  their  arms  with  their  Uves.  We  do  not 
consider  we  have  deserved  such  an  insult.  If  the  regiment  is 
not  needed  let  it  be  legally  ordered  to  retire,  but  we  will  not 
leave  our  posts  and  we  will  not  be  disarmed."  ^ 

Thereupon  Westermann  and  his  troops  retreated,  for  it  was 
never  the  revolutionary  way  to  advance  upon  armed  men,  how- 
ever inferior  in  number,  and  none  of  the  "  brave  Marseillais  " 
felt  inchned  to  engage  the  Swiss  in  open  combat.  Some  of  the 
insurgents  happened,  however,  to  be  armed  with  long  pikes 
hooked  at  the  end,  and  these  ruffians  now  ventured  forward  and, 
whilst  remaining  out  of  range  of  the  sentinels'  swords,  contrived 
to  harpoon  five  of  the  unfortunate  men,  dragging  them  at  the 
same  time  towards  them  by  means  of  the  hooks  affixed  in  their 
clothing.^  This  manoeuvre  dehghted  the  mob,  who  gathered 
round  with  shrieks  of  laughter,  whilst  the  five  Swiss  were  dis- 
armed, stripped,  and  finally  massacred  at  the  foot  of  the  stair- 
case.* Suddenly  a  shot  was  fired — by  whom  contemporaries 
are  unable  to  agree  in  stating.  The  revolutionaries,  of  course, 
declared  the  Swiss  were  the  aggressors,  but  D'Ossonville,  an  eye- 
witness, afterwards  an  agent  of  the  Comit6  de  Salut  Public  in 
the  Terror,  who  as  a  revolutionary  could  have  no  object  in 
whitewashing  the  Swiss,  asserts  that  "  several  rebels  having 
dressed  up  in  Swiss  uniform  sUpped  amongst  their  ranks,  fired 
on  the  insurgents,  and  directly  the  first  report  was  heard,  women, 
purposely  stationed  on  the  terrace,  began  to  call  out,  '  Ah  !  the 
rascals  of  Swiss  are  firing  on  our  brothers  the  patriots  !  '  At  the 
same  moment  the  fight  began,  and  became  general.  .  .  .  This 
what  has  rem.ained  unknown  but  what  I  saw  and  observed.    B 


^  Beaulieu,  iii.  474  ;   Deux  Amis,  viii.  180  ;    Peltier,  i.  iii. 

2  Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  314. 

3  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  iii.  195  ;  Peltier,  i.  iii ;  Beaulieu, 
iii.  474. 

*  Deux  Amis,  viii.  180. 


1 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      275 

it  was  necessary  to  say  that  the  King  had  ordered  the  attack 
when  he  had  expressly  forbidden  it."  ^ 

The  question  of  this  discharge  is,  however,  a  matter  of  little 
importance,  for  the  point  is  not  who  fired  the  first  shot,  but  who 
shed  the  first  blood.  It  was  not  the  report  of  a  gun  that  gave  the 
signal  for  battle,  but  the  cowardly  murder  of  the  five  sentinels, 
and  if  the  Swiss  then  fired  they  were  in  no  way  the  aggressors. ^ 

At  any  rate  they  did  fire  now,  and  they  fired  vigorously ;  a 
perfect  hail  of  musketry  swept  the  front  ranks  of  the  assailants, 
whereupon  the  Swiss  on  the  upper  floors,  with  the  nobles  and  the 
National  Guards,  joined  in  the  fusillade,  shooting  down  at  the 
crowd  from  the  balconies,  roofs,  and  windows. 

The  effect  of  this  was  terrific,  for  the  insurgents,  after  respond- 
ing with  a  few  cannon-balls,  so  uncertainly  aimed  as  to  do  Uttle 
damage,  were  suddenly  overcome  with  panic,  and  all  at  once  the 
vast  mass  of  people  that  filled  the  courtyards  and  the  Carrousel 
wavered,  drew  back,  and  finally  stampeded. ^  The  scene  that 
followed  was  indescribable — ^hardy  Bretons,  brave  Marseillais, 
red-capped  Sans-Culottes  armed  with  pikes,  female  "  patriots  " 
dragging  terrified  children  by  the  hand,  all  running  madly  for 
their  lives,  and  even  springing  over  the  parapet  into  the  river ; 
mounted  poUce  tearing  away  at  full  gallop,  crushing  passers-by 
beneath  their  horses'  feet,  and  all  "  pale  as  spectres,"  aU  scream- 
ing as  they  fled,  "  To  arms,  citizens,  to  arms  !   they  slaughter 

^  "  Fragments  des  Memoires  de  d'Ossonville,"  published  in  Documents 
pour  servir  d  I'Histoire  de  la  Revolution  Frangaise,  by  Charles  d'H6ricault  and 
Gustave  Bord,  vol.  ii.  p.  2. 

2  On  the  supposed  treachery  of  the  Swiss  see  also  the  account  given  by 
the  minister  Bigot  de  Sainte-Croix,  Histoire  de  la  Conspiration  du  10  A  otlt, 
p.  58  :  "  When  the  troops  posted  in  the  courtyards  had  heard  for  certain 
of  the  departure  of  their  Majesties  they  looked  at  each  other,  and  whether 
the  King's  words  had  reached  them  or  not,  said  to  one  another,  *  There  is 
nothing  more  to  be  done  here  ;  why  should  we  come  to  blows  ?  Why 
should  we  slaughter  each  other  ?  '  A  deputation  is  sent  to  the  confederates 
to  bring  the  words  of  peace,  and  one  of  their  detachments  comes  back  with 
the  deputation  to  ratify  the  agreement.  The  scoundrels  !  They  are  no 
sooner  in  the  middle  of  the  courtyard  than  they  make  signs  to  their  cohorts 
to  follow  them,  they  advance  amidst  insulting  and  ferocious  laughter,  and 
all  at  once  dashing  forward  to  the  foot  of  the  great  staircase  where  the 
Swiss  are  standing, '  Where  are  the  Swiss  ?  '  they  cry  in  bloodthirsty  tones, 
'  where  are  the  Swiss  ?  '  And  five  of  these  sentinels  have  fallen  beneath 
their  blows.  Then,  yes,  then  the  Swiss  companies  and  the  National  Guards 
feU  on  the  assassins ;  then  they  opposed  force  with  force,  they  fought  for 
their  lives  and  not  for  the  defence  of  a  palace  in  which  the  King  was  no 
longer  ;  but  the  rage  of  the  maniacs  saw  in  the  palace  men  to  massacre 
and  walls  to  destroy.  This,  then,  was  the  treachery  of  the  defenders  of  the 
G^urt,  these  were  the  wishes  of  conciUation  brought  by  the  confederates ; 
this  faith  violated  by  signs  of  friendship  and  these  fraternal  embraces,  .  .  ." 

'  Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  316  ;  Beaulieu,  iii.  475  ;  Ferri^res,  iii.  195. 
"  The  Swiss  and  the  National  Guards  drove  back  the  insurgents  beyond 
the  Rue  Niyaise  "  (D'Ossonville,  op.  cit.). 


276        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


your  parents,  your  brothers,  your  sons !  "  ^    Through  every  exit 
from  the  Carrousel  they  rushed  frantically,  faUing  over  each  othe 
in  the  struggle ;  on  through  the  streets  they  ran,  nor  did  some 
stop  running  until  they  reached  the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine> 
where  they  bolted  themselves  within  their  doors  for  safety.^ 

The  Chateau  had  now  scored  a  complete  victory ;  the  only] 
insurgents  who  remained  to  carry  on  the  siege  took  refuge  behin< 
the  buildings  at  the  other  side  of  the  Carrousel,  from  which  point 
they  continued  to  discharge  their  cannons  spasmodically  at  tl 
palace,  and,  by  way  of  variation,  set  fire  to  the  buildings  surround- 
ing the  courtyard.  The  Swiss,  seeing  that  the  whole  front  of  the 
Chateau  was  now  cleared  of  assailants,  triumphantly  descends 
to  the  courtyards,  and  carried  off  some  of  the  cannons  left  behindj 
by  the  MarseUlais  in  their  flight. 

Why  did  no  one  tell  the  King  the  true  state  of  affairs  ?  Whi 
was  no  man  of  energy  forthcoming  to  point  the  way  back  to 
palace  and  his  throne  reconquered  for  him  by  the  gallant  Swiss  }\ 
But  that  malignant  fate  which  ordained  that  at  every  crisis  ot 
the  Revolution  the  King  should  fall  a  victim  to  treacheroi 
counsels  still  pursued  him,  and  a  lying  message  was  brought  to  the 
Assembly  that  the  Swiss  were  "  massacring  the  people,"  and  als 
that  the  Chateau  was  about  to  be  forced.  Panic-stricken  deputi( 
gathered  around  him,  entreating  him  to  intervene  on  behalf  ol 
his  people.  Louis  XVI.,  who  knew  nothing  beyond  what  he  ws 
told,  which  seemed  to  be  confirmed  by  the  roar  of  battle  and  the 
crashing  of  cannon-balls  on  the  roof  of  the  Assembly,  conclude 
that  his  orders  not  to  fire  on  the  mob  had  been  wantonly  dis 
obeyed,  and  therefore  allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded  to  write 
the  fatal  message  to  the  Swiss,  commanding  them  to  cease  fire 
and  join  him  at  the  hall  of  the  Assembly. 

"  This  order,"  says  BeauHeu,  "  may  be  regarded  as  the  last 
blow  dealt  at  the  monarchy.  I  have  reason  to  beheve,  oni 
account  of  all  I  observed,  that  if  the  King's  defenders  had  made 
the  most  of  their  advantage  the  King  would,  in  the  course  of  the 
day,  have  been  on  his  throne  again.  I  know  that  several  bat^ 
tahons  were  on  the  march  to  defend  the  Chateau,  and  amongst 
them  those  of  the  Champs  filysees  and  the  Pont  Neuf.  If  onl] 
one  of  these  had  arrived  in  time  it  would  have  sufiiced  to  ensure'' 
victory  and  give  courage  to  the  Swiss,  who  till  then  had  acted 
alone,  but  when  these  battaUons  saw  that  all  had  been  abandoned 
they  joined  themselves  to  those  they  had  wished  to  repulse 
against  those  they  intended  to  defend  ;  this  is  what  has  always 
been  seen  and  always  will  be  seen  to  happen  in  all  revolutions." 

1  Revolutions  de  Paris,  by  Prudhomme,  xiii.  234  ;  Journal  of  Dr.  John 
Moore,  i.  41. 

2  Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  316  ;  Deux  Amis,  viii.  182. 


i 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES     277 

This  disastrous  act  which  sealed  the  fate  of  the  monarchy  was 
quickly  noised  abroad,  and  put  fresh  heart  into  the  revolutionary 
legions.  The  Swiss  had  been  forbidden  by  the  King  to  fire  on 
them — therefore  they  might  with  impunity  return  to  the  charge 
and  massacre  the  Swiss  1  ^ 

When,  in  obedience  to  the  King's  order,  two  columns  of  Swiss 
abandoned  their  posts  and  marched  through  the  garden  of  the 
Tuileries,  a  hail  of  musketry  fire  was  directed  on  them  by  in- 
surgents concealed  behind  the  trees.  One  column  succeeded  in 
reaching  the  Assembly  in  safety,  and  these  men,  together  with 
their  comrades  who  had  accompanied  the  King  to  the  Assembly, 
were  deposited  in  the  Church  of  the  FeuUlants  and  survived  the 
massacre.  But  the  other  column,  which  had  marched  on  towards 
the  swing  bridge  leading  to  the  Place  Louis  XV.,  were  pitilessly 
butchered  ;  many  fell  beneath  the  chestnut  trees  of  the  garden ; 
the  rest  having  reached  the  statue  of  Louis  XV.  in  the  centre  of 
the  great  square,  formed  themselves  into  a  phalanx  and  prepared 
for  defence,  but  the  mounted  poUce  charged  them  with  their 
sabres  and  cut  them  down  almost  to  a  man.  Napoleon,  who 
passed  through  the  garden  at  this  moment,  declared  at  the  end 
of  his  life  that  none  of  his  battlefields  had  given  him  the  idea  of 
so  many  corpses  as  the  Tuileries  on  this  August  morning  strewn 
with  the  boches  of  the  Swiss. 

The  entire  garrison,  however,  had  not  evacuated  the  palace ; 
300  to  400  Swiss,  who  had  either  not  heard  or  not  obeyed  the 
order  to  retire, ^  stiU  remained  in  the  King's  apartments,  where  a 
cannon-ball,  bursting  in  amongst  them,  had  killed  or  wounded  a 
great  number.^  These  soldiers,  a  few  nobles  and  ladies  of  the 
Court,  and  about  one  hundred  servants  were,  therefore,  the  sole 
occupants  of  the  Chateau,  which  after  the  King's  order  to  cease 
fire  put  up  no  further  defence.  The  insurgents  behind  the 
Carrousel,  finding  that  their  fire  now  met  with  no  reply,  ventured 
at  last  timorously  forward  across  the  courtyards,  and  finally 
entered  the  hall  of  the  palace,  evacuated  five  minutes  earlier 
by  the  two  columns  of  Swiss.  The  impunity  with  which  this 
manoeuvre  was  executed  reassured  the  crowd  that  lingered  at 
a  distance  ;  stragglers  poured  in  from  all  sides,  and  before 
long  an  immense  tumultuous  mob  burst  into  the  hall  of  the 
Chateau. 

^  "  The  Swiss,"  said  Napoleon,  who  was  an  eye-witness  of  the  affray, 
*'  plied  their  artillery  vigorously ;  the  Marseillais  were  driven  back  as  far 
as  the  Rue  de  I'fichelle  and  only  came  back  when  the  Swiss  had  retired  by 
order  of  the  King."     See  also  Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  325. 

»  Mortimer  Ternaux,  ii.  330. 

'  "  I  was  then  in  the  King's  apartments  with  300  to  400  of  our  men" 
a  cannon-ball  had  thrown  us  into  disorder  and  killed  a  great  number ; 
(evidence  of  M.  Victor  Constant  de  Rebecqui). 


278        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

So  they  had  burst  into  this  same  hall  seven  weeks  earlier ; 
so  they  had  stormed  up  the  great  staircase  breathing  threatenings 
and  slaughter,  only  to  be  brought  to  bay  when  they  reached 
their  goal ;  now,  with  the  ferocious  Marseillais  at  their  head, 
there  was  to  be  no  pause,  no  relenting,  and  hke  a  devastating 
torrent  they  swept  onwards  and  spread  themselves  all  over  the 
palace. 

A  mad  rage  for  destruction  possessed  them ;  everything 
animate  or  inanimate  fell  beneath  the  blows  of  their  pikes  and 
muskets,  furniture  was  flung  from  the  windows,  the  great  mirrors 
in  which  "  Medicis- Antoinette  had  studied  the  hypocritical  airs 
she  showed  in  pubUc  "  ^  flew  into  a  thousand  fragments  ;  treasures 
of  art,  clocks,  pictures,  porcelain,  silver,  jewels,  were  pillaged  or 
destroyed.  All  the  Swiss — the  soldiers  who  had  remained  at 
their  posts,  even  the  wounded  lying  helpless  on  the  floors  and 
the  doctors  bending  over  them  to  dress  their  wounds — ^were  bar- 
barously butchered ;  rivers  of  blood  flowed  over  the  shining 
parquet  of  the  great  apartments.  Everywhere  the  savage  horde 
pursued  their  victims,  the  grey-haired  porters  were  dragged  forth 
from  their  lodges,  fugitives  were  tracked  down  to  the  deepest 
cellars,  up  to  the  remotest  attics,  and  put  to  death.  In  the 
Queen's  bedroom  women  of  the  town  tore  open  the  wardrobes 
and  dressed  themselves  in  the  Queen's  gowns ;  one  throwing  herself 
on  the  bed  cried  out  that  some  one  was  concealed  beneath  the 
bedding,  and  the  mattress  being  torn  off  amidst  drunken  laughter, 
a  trembling  Swiss  was  discovered  and  massacred.  The  scenes 
that  took  place  were  so  unspeakably  hideous  that  one  would 
thankfully  draw  a  veil  over  what  followed,  but  if  we  are  to  under- 
stand the  French  Revolution  as  it  really  was,  if  we  are  to  see  this 
loth  of  August,  so  vaunted  by  revolutionary  writers,  in  its  true 
colours,  we  must  look  facts  in  the  face.  And  in  full  justice  to 
the  people  one  circumstance  must  not  be  forgotten — the  mob  that 
committed  these  atrocities  was  literally  mad  with  drink.  For  in 
that  first  wild  onrush  a  band  of  insurgents  had  found  their  way 
down  to  the  cellars  and  gorged  themselves  with  wine  and 
liqueurs.^  No  less  than  two  hundred,  says  Prudhomme,  died  of 
the  effects.  Then,  whilst  some  remained  lying  in  helpless  stupor 
on  the  cellar  floors,  others  bore  suppHes  to  their  comrades  up 
above — ^the  contents  of  10,000  bottles  were  distributed  amongst 
the  mob  ;  ^  the  garden  and  courtyards  around  the  Chateau 
became  a  sea  of  broken  glass.  The  effect  of  this  indiscriminate 
carousing  on  unaccustomed  liquors  wildly  mingled  was  to  produce 
in  the  people  a  condition  of  complete  dementia,  and  it  is  as 

1  Prudhomme,  Revolutions  de  Paris. 

2  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  209. 

•  Le  Comte  de  Fersen  et  la  Cour  de  France,  ii.  348. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      279 

creatures  deprived  of  all  reasoning  faculty,  of  all  semblance  to 
humanity,  no  more  responsible  for  their  actions  than  Bedlam 
suddenly  turned  loose,  that  we  must  regard  them. 

For  on  this  dreadful  loth  of  August,  alone  amongst  all  the 
great  days  of  the  Revolution  in  Paris,  it  was  by  "  the  people  " 
that  these  atrocities  were  committed.  The  savage  Marseillais 
showed  themselves  less  ferocious.  All  the  ladies  of  the  Court 
were  spared  by  order  of  their  leaders,  the  word  being  given, 
"  We  do  not  kill  women."  ^ 

Fifty  or  sixty  of  the  flying  Swiss  were  also  saved  by  them  ;  ^ 
stranger  still,  the  warUke  old  Marechal  de  Mailly  succeeded  in 
disarming  his  assailants.  "  The  face  of  the  Marechal,"  says 
Soulavie,  "  having  arrested  the  hand  of  a  confederate  who  had 
raised  his  arm  to  kill  him,  this  man  asks  who  he  is,  seizes  him, 
pretends  to  ill-treat  him,  tells  him  to  keep  silence,  pushes  aside 
the  crowd,  and  leads  him  back  safe  and  sound  to  his  house."  ^ 

The  King's  doctor,  Lemonnier,  was  likewise  led  home  in 
triumph.  During  the  invasion  of  the  Chateau  he  had  remained 
quietly  seated  in  his  study  ;  suddenly  "  men  with  blood-stained 
arms  "  battered  on  the  panels  of  the  door.  The  old  man  opened 
to  them.  "  What  are  you  doing  here  ?  "  they  said.  "  You  are 
very  quiet." 

"  I  am  at  my  post." 

"  What  are  you  at  the  Chateau  ?  " 

"  Do  you  not  see  by  my  coat  ?     I  am  the  King's  doctor." 

"  And  are  you  not  afraid  ?  " 

"  Of  what  ?  I  am  unarmed.  Does  one  injure  a  man  wha 
does  no  injury  ?  " 

"  You  are  a  good  fellow.  Listen ;  it  is  not  well  for  you  here ; 
others  less  reasonable  than  us  might  confound  you  with  the  rest. 
You  are  not  safe.     Where  would  you  like  to  be  taken  ?  " 

"  To  the  Palace  of  the  Luxembourg." 

"  Come,  follow  us  and  fear  nothing." 

"  I  have  already  told  you  I  have  no  fear  of  those  to  whom  I 
have  done  no  harm." 

Then  they  led  him  through  the  serried  ranks  of  bayonets  and 
loaded  guns,  crying  out  before  him  as  they  went,  "  Comrades, 
let  this  man  pass.  He  is  the  King's  doctor,  but  he  is  not  afraid  ; 
he  is  a  good  fellow."  * 

^  Beaulieu,  iii.  483  ;   Memoires  de  Mme.  Campan,  p.  351. 

^  Journal  of  Dr.  John  Moore,  i.  60. 

'  Another  contemporary,  the  Comte  d'Aubarede  {Lettres  d' Aristocrates, 
by  Pierre  de  Vaissiere,  p.  538) ,  says  it  was  by  a  poor  artisan  that  the  Marechal 
was  saved.  But  the  revolutionaries  did  not  spare  him  ;  he  was  guillotined 
under  Joseph  Lebon,  at  the  age  of  eighty-seven.  His  last  words  on  the 
scaffold  were  "  Vive  le  Roi  1     I  say  it  as  did  my  ancestors  I  " 

^'Crimes  de  la  Rivolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  70. 


28o        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

It  is  not,  then,  to  the  Marseillais  that  the  greatest  atrocities 
of  the  day  must  be  attributed,  but  to  the  people,  or  rather  to  the 
populace  of  Paris — above  all  to  the  women,  and,  as  in  all  the 
revolutionary  outbreaks,  it  was  "  the  people  "  themselves  who 
fared  worst  at  their  hands. 

To  the  servants  in  particular  the  mob  showed  no  mercy. 
They,  poor  souls,  had  not  thought  of  flying  ;  many,  indeed,  were 
imbued  with  revolutionary  doctrines,^  and,  Uttle  dreaming  that 
the  rage  of  the  populace  would  be  turned  against  themselves, 
remained  calmly  at  their  work,  in  the  midst  of  which  the  drunken 
mob  surprised  them.  The  kitchens,  like  the  gilded  apartments 
up  above,  became  a  shambles ;  every  man  from  the  head  chefs 
to  the  humblest  scuUions  perished — "  the  cooks'  heads  fell  into 
the  saucepans,  where  they  were  preparing  the  viands."  ^ 

"  Oh  !  height  of  barbarism  !  "  cries  Mercier,  "  a  wretched 
undercook,  who  had  not  had  time  to  escape,  was  seized  by  these 
tigers,  thrust  into  a  copper,  and  in  this  state  exposed  to  the 
heat  of  the  furnace.  Then  falling  on  the  provisions  every  one 
seizes  what  he  can  lay  hands  on.  One  carries  off  chickens  on  a 
spit ;  another  a  turbot ;  that  one  a  carp  from  the  Rhine  as  large 
as  himself  .  .  .  monsters  with  human  faces  collected  in  hundreds 
under  the  porch  of  the  Escaher  du  Midi,  and  danced  amidst 
torrents  of  blood  and  wine.  A  murderer  played  the  vioUn 
beside  the  corpses,  and  thieves,  with  their  pockets  full  of  gold, 
hanged  other  thieves  on  the  banisters."  ^  Still  worse  horrors 
took  place  that  cannot  be  written,  nameless  indecencies,  hideous 
debaucheries,  ghastly  mutilations  of  the  dead,*  and  again,  as 
after  the  siege  of  the  Bastille,  cannibal  orgies.  Before  great 
fires,  hastily  kindled  in  the  apartments,  '*  cutlets  of  Swiss  "  were 
grilled  and  eaten ;  ^  the  actor  Grammont — one  of  the  earUest 
hirelings  of  the  Due  d'Orleans,  and  the  last  man  to  insult  the 
Queen  on  her  way  to  the  scaffold — ^in  a  fit  of  revolutionary 
frenzy  drank  down  a  glass  of  blood. ^ 

Outside,  in  the  garden  of  the  Chateau,  ghastly  scenes  met 
the  eye  ;  on  the  Ufeless  bodies  of  the  Swiss  women  perched  Uke 
vultures,  gloating  over  their  victims ;  a  young  girl  of  eighteen 
was  seen  plunging  a  sabre  into  the  corpses.' 

1  Beaulieu,  iii.  482. 

2  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  196  ;  Rivolutions  de  Paris,  by 
Prudhomme,  xiii.  236. 

'  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  210. 

*  Crimes  de  la  RivoluHon,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  69  ;  Montjoie,  Conjura- 
tion de  d'OrUans,  iii.  195 ;  Histoireparticuliire,  etc.,  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne, 

p.  139. 

^  Crimes  de  la  RSvolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  68. 

«  Beaulieu,  iii.  482  ;   Revolution  du  10  Aoht,  by  Peltier. 

'  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  196. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      281 

Needless  to  say,  the  mass  of  the  true  people  took  no  part 
in  these  atrocities.  "  Peaceful  citizens,"  says  Mercier,  "  whom 
curiosity  had  attracted  to  the  Tuileries  to  discover  whether  the 
Chateau  still  existed,  wandered  slowly,  struck  with  gloomy 
stupor,  along  the  terrace  covered  with  broken  bottles.  They 
did  not  weep,  they  seemed  petrified,  dumbfounded ;  they  shrank 
with  horror  at  each  footstep  at  the  odour  and  the  aspect  of  these 
bleeding  corpses.  ..." 

THE  r6LE  of  the  LEADERS 

But  whilst  the  true  people  shuddered,  the  authors  of  the  day 
knew  no  pity.  To  them  the  loth  of  August  was  a  "  glorious  day," 
for  which  each  one  was  now  eager  to  claim  the  responsibility. 
Directly  the  Chateau  had  fallen  and  the  mob  had  proved  victori- 
ous, every  patriot  came  bravely  to  the  fore.  "  Danton,"  says 
Lou  vet,  "  who  had  concealed  himself  during  the  battle,  appeared 
after  the  victory  armed  with  a  huge  sabre,  and  marching  at  the 
head  of  a  battalion  of  Marseillais  as  if  he  had  been  the  hero  of 
the  day." 

The  other  '*  great  revolutionaries  "  had  all  remained  likewise 
in  their  hiding-places  until  the  danger  was  past.  What,  asks 
Prudhonmie,  were  the  leading  Jacobins  doing  during  the  attack 
on  the  Chateau  ?  "  They  knew  everything ;  none  of  them 
appeared  in  arms  at  the  siege  of  the  Tuileries.  Marat,  Robes- 
pierre,^ Danton,  not  one  of  them  dared  to  show  himself.  All 
these  people  invariably  displayed  the  greatest  bravery,  but  only 
in  the  tribune ;  the  tongue  was  their  favourite  weapon.  The 
few  Jacobins  who  came  out  prudently  placed  themselves  at  the 
tail  of  the  bands  of  Marseillais  and  Bretons.  There  is  nothing 
more  cowardly  than  a  revolutionary  from  speculation  !  "  ^ 

But  if  it  was  not  to  the  efforts  of  these  men  that  the  loth  of 
August  owed  its  triumph,  the  excesses  of  the  day  he  at  their  door 
alone.  Is  not  the  instigator  of  a  crime  infinitely  more  criminal 
than  the  wretched  instrument  who  commits  it  ?  And  were  not 
the  orators  and  writers — Marat,  Danton,  Desmoulins,  Brissot, 
Carra,  Madame  Roland — more  truly  the  authors  of  these  ex- 
cesses than  the  crazed  and  drunken  populace  who  put  their 
precepts  into  practice  ?  For  the  cannibals  of  the  Tuileries,  the 
horrible  women  of  the  Paris  Faubourgs  plunging  their  knives 
into  the  bodies  of  their  victims,  had  not  evolved  such  deeds  from 

1  Tallien,  who  took  part  in  the  siege,  later,  in  the  Electoral  Assembly, 
accused  Robespierre  to  his  face  of  having  "  gone  to  earth  for  three  days 
and  three  nights  in  his  cellar  and  of  having  come  out  only  in  order  to 
profit  by  the  turn  of  events  "  (Notes  d' Alexandre,  published  in  the  Revue 
de  la  Rivolution,  by  Gustavc  Bord,  viii.  175). 

^  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  67. 


282         THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

their  own  inner  consciousness ;  for  months  they  had  been  trained 
for  the  part  at  the  Societes  Fratemelles  of  the  Jacobins,  where 
murder  and  violence  were  systematically  preached,  and  every 
means  employed  to  excite  their  passions.  It  will  be  urged  that 
they  themselves  must  have  been  inherently  evil  to  respond 
in  so  atrocious  a  manner  to  the  suggestions  of  their  leaders ; 
the  old  theory  of  "  Parisian  ferocity  "  will  be  brought  forward 
to  explain  the  phenomenon.  But  we  have  only  to  study  the 
memoirs  of  the  period  to  discover  that  it  was  not  the  women 
of  Paris  alone  on  whom  these  doctrines  produced  the  same 
dehumanizing  effect. 

Thus,  for  example,  Thiebault,  himself  an  ardent  democrat, 
relates  that  soon  after  the  loth  of  August  he  dined  with  certain 
Prussian  friends  of  his.  Monsieur  and  Madame  Bitaube,  and 
amongst  the  guests  were  Chamfort,  the  Orleaniste,  and  an  EngUsh 
authoress,  Helen  Maria  Williams.  Chamfort  deUghted  Miss 
Wilhams  with  his  revolutionary  verses,  and  Thiebault  adds  : 
"  The  thing  that  struck  me  most  was  the  political  exaggeration 
of  Miss  Williams,  who  showed  herself  an  enthusiast  for  our 
Revolution,  even  for  its  excesses,  which  in  my  opinion  damned 
it."  Still  more  amazing  was  the  attitude  of  the  two  good 
Germans.  "  That  M.  and  Mme.  Bitaube,"  says  Thiebault,  "  who 
were  both  over  sixty,  who  were  all  that  is  best  on  this  earth, 
who  were  distinguished,  he  for  his  merit,  she  for  her  fine  and  gentle 
wit,  should  have  shown  themselves  more  revolutionary  than  their 
two  guests,  that  they  should  have  become  apologists  of  the  loth 
of  August,  that  astounded  me  !  But  it  is  not  the  only  example 
I  could  quote  of  this  kind  of  aberration."  ^ 

In  order  to  appreciate  the  attitude  of  Miss  Williams  and  her 
worthy  German  friends,  we  must  refer  to  a  description  of  the 
state  of  Paris  at  this  moment  given  by  Mr.  Burges  in  a  letter  to 
Lord  Auckland,  dated  September  4.  "  The  EngUsh  messenger, 
Morley,"  Burges  writes,  "  has  just  returned  from  Paris,  where 
he  relates  that  pestilence  is  now  expected.  It  was  found  easier 
to  kiU  than  to  bury  the  victims  of  the  loth.  Those  who  were 
amused  by  shedding  blood  soon  grew  tired  of  digging  graves ; 
of  course  great  numbers  were  put  out  of  the  way  somewhat 
carelessly,  and  the  cellars  and  other  subterraneous  places  were 
found  convenient  receptacles  for  the  dead  bodies ;  into  these 
immense  numbers  were  thrown,  and  when  they  were  fuU  they 
were  shut  up  in  the  best  way  the  hurry  of  the  operation  would 
permit.  The  natural  consequences  of  intennent  now  began  to 
manifest  themselves  pretty  strongly.  Morley  says  that,  being 
obliged,  the  last  day  or  two  he  continued  in  Paris,  to  run  about 
the  town  a  good  deal  for  his  passports,  he  was  saluted  in  several 
*  Memoir es  de  Thiebault,  i.  313. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      283 

streets  with  such  whiffs  of  putrefaction  as  to  be  obliged  to  cover 
his  face  and  run  off  as  fast  as  he  could."  ^ 

Under  these  circumstances  it  was  not  possible  for  a  moment 
to  forget  the  recent  massacres,  whilst  the  chaotic  state  of  the 
capital  made  it  evident  that  the  atrocities,  which  had  just  taken 
place,  were  but  the  prelude  to  others  still  more  dreadful.  "  Ah  ! 
how  fortunate  you  are  not  to  inhabit  this  town,"  writes  a  Parisian 
to  a  friend  in  the  country  on  August  16.  "  People  who  think 
know  no  rest  night  or  day.  Every  day,  on  rising,  one  hears  of 
the  death  of  neighbours  or  friends.  So  far  these  are  only  rose- 
leaves — the  end  of  the  month  provides  us  with  greater  dangers."  * 

"  You  think,"  write  two  other  contemporaries,  "  that  one  can 
see  these  horrors  without  shuddering  ?  One  would  be  almost 
a  barbarian  !  "  ^ 

Yet  it  is  no  barbarian  but  an  educated  Enghshwoman,  an 
"  intellectual "  and  a  sentimentalist,  that  we  find  dining  out 
amidst  these  ghastly  scenes  and  enthusiastically  applauding 
them.  Let  us  have  done,  then,  with  the  futile  theory  of  "  Parisian 
ferocity  "  by  which  panegyrists  of  the  Revolution  would  explain 
its  crimes  ;  these  crimes  were  not  accidental  to  the  Revolution, 
they  were  not  the  outcome  of  the  Latin  temperament,  but  the 
direct  result  of  those  doctrines  which  produced  in  men  and 
women  of  all  nations,  whether  English,  French,  or  German,  a 
ferocity  that  knew  no  relenting. 

THE  r6lE  of  the  INTRIGUES 

Helen  Maria  Williams  was  not  unique  amongst  her  race,  for 
although  the  great  mass  of  the  EngUsh  people  shuddered  at  the 
atrocities  of  August  10,  and  the  Court  of  St.  James's  withdrew  its 
ambassador  from  Paris,  the  "  EngUsh  Jacobins  "  accorded  their 
whole-hearted  approval  to  their  French  aUies.  We  shall  reserve 
their  congratulatory  letters  and  addresses,  however,  tiU  the  end 
of  the  next  chapter,  for  it  was  not  until  the  massacres  of  September 
that  their  admiration  was  roused  to  its  fullest  pitch. 

Prussia,  needless  to  say,  found  Ukewise  cause  for  rejoicing  in 
the  attack  on  the  Tuileries  and  the  subsequent  imprisonment  of 
the  Royal  Family  in  the  Temple^  "  The  most  splendid  dream 
a  king  can  dream,"  Frederick  the  Great  had  been  known  to  say, 
"is  to  dream  that  he  is  King  of  France."  The  loth  of  August 
had  removed  all  cause  for  envy  from  Frederick's  successor. 

As  to  the  Girondins  and  Orleanistes  who  had  engineered  the 

^  Correspondence  of  Lord  Auckland,  ii.  438. 

2  M.  Rochet  k  Mme.  de  Thomassin  Mandat,  Lettres  d'Aristocrates,  by 
Pierre  de  Vaissi^re,  p.  533. 

'^  MM.  Simon  et  Pierre  N.  4  M.  Lhoste,  ihid.  p.  537. 


284        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

movement,  their  triumph  was  destined  to  be  short-Uved.  True, 
the  throne  was  now  vacant,  and  thus  the  first  step  had  been 
taken  towards  a  change  of  dynasty.  But  the  laying  of  the 
mine  had  proved  unskilful ;  too  much  dynamite  had  been 
employed,  and  the  charge  by  which  they  had  intended  to  blast 
their  way  to  power  had  produced  an  explosion  so  terrific  as  to 
involve  the  whole  existing  order  of  things  in  chaos. 

The  effect  of  the  loth  of  August  was  to  paralyse  France. 
"  The  terror  that  it  spread,"  says  Hua,  "  was  almost  universal. 
In  a  few  places  there  was  an  attempt  at  resistance,  but  nowhere 
could  it  be  organized.  All  action  to  be  powerful  must  emanate 
from  a  centre ;  the  Revolution  proved  a  thousand  times  that 
the  fate  of  the  departments  is  decided  in  Paris :  those  same 
authorities  that  had  protested  so  energetically  against  the  day 
of  June  the  20th  were  silent  before  that  of  August  the  loth."  ^ 

Lafayette  alone  dared  to  raise  his  voice  in  remonstrance ; 
and  as  soon  as  the  news  of  the  events  in  Paris  reached  him  on 
the  frontier,  he  issued  a  proclamation  to  the  army  asking  them, 
"  as  good  citizens  and  brave  soldiers,  to  rally  around  the  Con- 
stitution that  they  had  sworn  to  defend  to  the  death."  But 
although  the  troops  immediately  under  his  orders  "  showed  by 
their  cries  of  indignation  that  they  shared  the  sentiments  of 
their  general,"  ^  and  the  district  of  Sedan  where  he  was  encamped, 
together  with  the  department  of  the  Ardennes,  accorded  him 
their  vigorous  support,  Lafayette's  efforts  proved  unavailing 
owing  to  the  opposition  of  his  fellow-generals — Liickner,  hitherto 
loyal  to  the  King,  prudently  went  over  to  the  stronger  side,  the 
Jacobins  ;  Dumouriez  resumed  his  Orl^aniste  intrigues  ;  Dillon, 
who  at  first  had  seconded  the  protests  of  Lafayette,  grew  panic- 
stricken  and  recanted. 

The  power  of  the  Jacobins  carried  all  before  it.  The  mayor  of 
Sedan  and  the  administrators  of  the  Ardennes  were  arrested ; 
and  on  the  19th  of  August  the  Assembly,  trembling  beneath  the 
dictates  of  the  Commune,  issued  a  writ  against  "  Motier  Lafayette, 
heretofore  general  of  the  army  of  the  North,  convicted  of  the 
crime  of  rebeUion  against  the  law,  of  conspiracy  against  liberty, 
and  of  treachery  to  the  nation." 

Then  Lafayette,  once  the  gaoler  of  his  King,  himself  tasted 
the  pleasures  of  captivity.  Reduced  to  the  same  expedient  as  the 
unfortunate  Louis  XVL — flight  to  the  frontier — he  was  arrested 
by  the  Austrians  and  imprisoiied  in  the  fortress  of  Magdeburg, 
where  he  had  leisure  to  reconsider  his  earUer  dictum  that  "  in- 
surrection is  the  most  sacred  of  duties." 

The  insurrection  of  August  10  appeared,  at  any  rate  to  La- 
fayette, an  immeasurable  disaster  ;  it  was  not,  however,  the  final 
*  Mimoires  de  Hua,  p.  164.  *  Ibid.  p.  165. 


THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  TUILERIES      285 

destruction  of  the  Old  Regime,  but  the  destruction  of  new-found 
liberty  he  deplored. 

"  i  know  well,"  he  wrote  to  the  Due  de  Rochefoucauld  on  the 
25th  of  August,  "  that  they  will  have  talked  about  plots  at  the 
Chateau,  collusion  with  the  enemy,  foUies  of  all  kinds  committed 
by  the  Court ;  I  am  not  its  confidant  nor  its  apologist ;  but  the 
constitutional  act  is  there,  and  it  is  not  the  King  who  has  violated 
it ;  the  Chateau  did  not  go  to  attack  the  Faubourgs,  nor  were  the 
Marseillais  summoned  by  him.  The  preparations  that  have  been 
made  during  the  last  three  weeks  were  denounced  by  the  King. 
It  was  not  he  who  had  women  and  children  massacred,  who  gave 
over  to  execution  all  those  who  were  known  for  their  attachment 
to  the  Constitution,  who  in  one  day  destroyed  the  Hberty  of  the 
press,  of  the  posts,  judgement  by  jury  ...  in  a  word,  everything 
that  assures  the  Uberty  of  men  and  of  nations." 

Lafayette  had  not  overstated  the  case ;  in  the  chaos  that 
followed  on  the  loth  of  August  the  cause  of  liberty  perished 
utterly,  and  the  people,  ostensibly  the  victors  of  the  day,  lost 
everything  they  had  gained  by  the  Revolution. 

At  first  the  rage  for  destruction  that  had  held  the  mob  under 
its  sway  during  the  attack  on  the  Tuileries,  and  that  continued 
throughout  the  weeks  that  followed,  gave  to  the  people  some 
semblance  of  power.  Whilst  overthrowing  the  splendid  statues 
of  the  kings  in  all  the  squares  of  Paris,  the  populace  were  able  to 
imagine  themselves  indeed  the  "  Sovereign  people,"  but  already 
their  new  masters  were  at  work  forging  the  chains  that  were  to 
bind  them  in  a  servitude  such  as  they  had  never  known  before. 

On  the  17th  of  August,  at  the  instigation  of  Robespierre,  the 
"  Tribunal  Criminel,"  precursor  to  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal 
of  the  Terror,  was  inaugurated  by  the  Commune.  Five  days 
later  Dr.  Moore  records  that  "  a  new  kind  of  lettres  de  cachet  are 
being  issued  by  the  Commune  of  Paris  in  great  profusion,"  and 
"  what  makes  this  more  dreadful  is  .  .  .  that  a  man  when 
arrested  and  sent  to  prison  does  not  know  how  long  he  may  be 
confined  before  he  has  an  opportunity  of  proving  his  innocence." 
More  sinister  still  was  the  appearance  on  the  Place  du  Carrousel 
of  that  new  instrument,  the  guillotine — symbol  of  the  new  era 
that  was  to  dawn  on  France.  For  although  revolutionary 
factions  and  populace  alike  rejoiced  at  their  supposed  victory, 
the  loth  of  August  inaugurated  the  reign  of  neither  Orleanistes, 
Girondins,  nor  "  Sovereign  people,"  but  of  one  intrigue  only,  the 
intrigue  that  from  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  had  been  slowly 
gaining  force,  and  that  in  sweeping  away  king,  nobles,  and  clergy 
was  to  destroy  not  only  the  throne  itself,  but  all  government,  all 
religion,  and  estabUsh  in  their  place — ^the  reign  of  Anarchy. 


THE   MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER 


287 


THE   MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER 

With  the  deposition  of  Louis  XVI.  and  the  rise  to  power  of 
the  Commune,  the  revolutionary  movement  entered  on  a  new 
phase.  The  royal  authority  had  been  overthrown,  but  the 
"counter-revolutionaries"  yet  remained  to  be  dealt  with  ; 
thus  it  is  now  less  against  the  unhappy  prisoners  in  the  Temple 
than  against  the  "  gangrened  portion  of  the  nation  "  that  the 
invectives  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  are  henceforth  directed. 
What  is  the  truth  about  this  gangrene  ?  Did  it  exist  ?  In  a 
sense,  yes.  But  to  understand  how  it  came  into  being  we 
must  cast  our  eyes  back  over  the  history  of  the  last  twenty 
years. 

When  Louis  XV.,  looking  around  him  at  the  end  of  his  reign, 
said,  "  Things  will  last  my  time,  but  after  me  the  deluge  !  "  he 
diagnosed  with  remarkable  accuracy  the  disease  that  afflicted 
the  State.  France,  as  she  existed  at  this  date,  could  not  last, 
because  no  state  in  which  one  class  is  oppressed  can  maintain  its 
vigour.  Under  Louis  XV.  the  peasants,  if  less  wretched  than 
is  popularly  supposed — for  feudal  benevolence  did  more  than 
history  tells  us  to  counteract  the  oppression  of  the  Old  Regime — 
were,  nevertheless,  cyphers  in  the  state ;  their  wishes  did  not  count, 
their  voice  was  not  heard,  their  needs  were  not  officially  recognized, 
and  thus,  by  constriction,  they  became  like  a  mortifying  hmb 
spreading  germs  of  death  throughout  the  body. 

Louis  XVI.,  as  we  have  seen,  from  the  first  moment  of  his 
accession,  resolved  to  remedy  this  state  of  affairs,  to  loose  the 
bonds  that  bound  the  people  down,  to  give  the  constricted  limb 
free  play.  It  was  not  too  late  to  do  this,  as  certain  writers  would 
have  us  beheve ;  the  hmb  responded  admirably  to  the  treatment  ; 
never  had  the  people  of  France  displayed  greater  vigour  than  on 
the  eve  of  the  Revolution.  The  body  of  the  State,  as  M.  Dauban 
points  out,  was  at  this  moment  "  anything  but  inert  and 
passive.  Everywhere  thought,  passion,  and  blood  circulate. 
The  almost  unanimous  wish  of  the  cahiers  testifies  to  the  force  of 
cohesion  in  opinion  and  the  power  of  the  pubhc  mind.  .  .  . 
Paris  has  no  greater  share  in  the  spirit  that  animates  it  than 
Marseilles,  Bordeaux,  and  the  other  parts  of  France.     In  the 

289  U 


290  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

three  years  that  follow  what  enthusiasm,  what  ardour,  what 
vitahty  in  the  provinces  !  "  ^ 

But,  at  the  very  moment  that  the  people  were  released  from 
bondage,  the  Revolution  intervened  and  reversed  the  process  by 
seizing  on  two  other  Umbs  of  the  State,  the  nobiUty  and  clergy, 
and  binding  them  down  relentlessly.  It  was  not  even  as  if  the 
revolutionaries  had  said  to  the  "  privileged  orders  "  :  "  You  have 
enjoyed  too  long  exclusively  the  good  things  of  Ufe,  now  you  shall 
share  them  with  your  fellow-men.  Come,  give  up  your  chateaux 
and  your  rolling  acres,  and  till  the  ground  with  the  rest . ' '  Nothing 
of  this  kind  was  suggested,  not  the  faintest  gHmmer  of  SociaHst 
ideals  seems  to  have  illumined  the  minds  of  the  earher  revolu- 
tionary extremists  ;  their  only  idea  was  to  subject  the  hitherto 
privileged  orders  to  a  far  worse  oppression  than  that  from  which 
the  people  had  been  deUvered.  For  if  under  the  Old  Regime 
the  people  had  been  neglected,  ignored,  crushed  by  taxation, 
under  the  revolutionary  regime  the  nobles  and  clergy  were 
actively  ill-treated — ^insulted,  spat  upon,  assaulted,  robbed  of 
all  their  goods,  driven  from  the  country,  or  massacred.  The 
people  had  been  left  to  struggle  for  existence ;  the  nobles  and 
clergy  were  denied  the  very  right  to  Hve. 

They  were  also,  as  a  class,  denied  any  virtues.  No  distinction 
was  drawn  between  the  Liberal  nobles  who  had  marched  in  the 
vanguard  of  reform  and  the  reactionaries  who  mustered  around 
the  Comte  d'Artois,  between  the  courtiers  who  for  purely  selfish 
reasons  clung  to  the  Old  Regime  and  the  provincial  seigneurs 
who  devoted  themselves  to  the  welfare  of  the  peasants  on  their 
estates.^  The  generous  enthusiasm  with  which,  on  the  4th  of 
August,  the  nobles  in  a  body  had  voluntarily  rehnquished  their 
privileges  was  rewarded  by  the  revolutionary  leaders  only  with 
insults  and  abuse.  "  All  RoyaUsts,"  said  Camille  Desmoulins 
at  the  Jacobin  Club,  "  live  on  the  sweat  of  the  people  ;  they  have 
neither  wits  nor  virtue  but  for  intrigue  and  villainy."  ^ 

Under  these  circumstances  what  wonder  that  the  nobles 
became  irreconcilable,  and  that  many  who  had  sympathized 
with  the  Revolution  turned  against  the  whole  movement,  reviled 
the  Constitution,  and  used  all  their  efforts  to  restore  the  Old 
Order  in  its  entirety  ?  "  Damn  hberty,  I  abhor  its  very  name  !  " 
an  indignant  Frenchman  exclaimed  to  Dr.  Moore,  and  the  senti- 
ment was  doubtless  echoed  by  thousands  of  his  f  ellow-countr57men 
who,  embittered  by  persecution,  now  desired  a  return  to  pre- 
revolutionary  conditions.     Nor  was  this  resentment  confined 

*  La  Demagogie  en  1793,  by  A.  Dauban,  p.  ix. 

*  I  have  shown  elsewhere  how  numerous  these  philanthropic  nobl 
were.     See  The  Chevalier  de  Boufflers,  p.  256  and  following. 

5  Stances  des  Jacobins,  date  of  June  17,  1792. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    291 

only  to  the  nobles  and  clergy,  for  since,  as  I  have  shown,  the 
Revolution  had  resulted  in  the  ruin  and  misery  of  great  numbers 
of  the  bourgeois  and  the  people,  discontent  prevailed  in  all  classes. 
Thus,  by  a  process  precisely  identical  with  that  employed  by 
Louis  XV.,  but  applied  to  a  different  portion  of  the  nation,  a 
fresh  centre  of  mortification  was  set  up,  and  the  new  order  became 
as  moribund  as  the  old.  Each  revolutionary  faction  had  worked 
only  for  momentary  popularity,  each  demagogue  in  turn  had 
proceeded  on  the  principle,  "  Things  will  last  my  term  of  power, 
but  after  me  the  deluge,"  and,  in  order  to  prolong  that  spell  of 
power,  had  striven  not  for  the  welfare  of  the  nation  as  a  whole, 
but  to  obtain  the  favour  of  one  portion  only — ^the  mob  of  Paris. 

MARAT 

This,  then,  was  the  situation  that,  after  the  cataclysm  of 
August  10,  confronted  the  Commune,  which  now  held  the  reins  of 
power.  On  one  side  was  a  raging  populace,  intoxicated  with  the 
joy  of  new-found  hberty  to  bum  and  to  destroy,  and,  on  the 
other,  a  great  silent  nation,  amongst  whom,  as  the  protests 
following  on  the  20th  of  June  had  shown,  a  bitter  hatred  of  the 
Revolution  had  arisen.  For  the  silence  that  followed  on  the 
loth  of  August  was  not,  as  the  leaders  weU  knew,  the  silence  of 
assent  but  of  momentary  stupefaction,  from  which  those  of  the 
nobles  and  clergy  who  remained  in  the  country  would  make 
every  effort  to  arouse  the  nation. 

It  was  this  that,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Commune,  made 
the  third  Revolution  necessary — ^the  influence  of  the  anti- 
revolutionaries  could  never  be  counteracted,  therefore  the 
anti-revolutionaries  themselves  must  be  destroyed. 

Marat  had  all  along  understood  this.  Like  Louis  XV.  he 
shrewdly  diagnosed  the  disease  from  which  the  State  was  suffering. 
The  other  revolutionaries  recognized  the  existence  of  the  "  gan- 
grene," but  overlooked  the  fact  that  it  was  of  their  own  maldng. 
Marat  alone  traced  it  to  its  real  cause.  '*  If,"  he  once  said  to 
CamiUe  Desmoulins,  "  the  faults  of  the  Constituent  Assembly 
had  not  created  for  us  irreconcilable  enemies  in  the  old  nobles, 
I  persist  in  beUeving  that  this  great  movement  might  have 
advanced  in  the  world  by  pacific  methods  ;  but  after  the  absurd 
edict  which  keeps  these  enemies  by  force  amongst  us  (i.e.  the 
decrees  against  emigration),  after  the  clumsy  blows  struck  at 
their  pride  by  the  aboUtion  of  titles,  after  violently  extorting  the 
goods  of  the  clergy,  I  maintain  there  is  now  no  way  of  rallying 
them  to  the  Revolution  ...  we  must  give  up  the  Revolution 
or  do  away  with  these  men.  What  I  propose  to  you  is  not  a 
vain  rigour  supported  by  laws.    I  want  an  armed  expedition 


292         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

against  foreigners,  who  have  voluntarily  placed  themselves  out- 
side our  government.  We  are  in  a  state  of  war  with  intractable 
enemies  ;  we  must  destroy  them."  ^ 

In  a  word,  the  only  remedy  for  the  disease  was  amputation. 
Isnard,  the  Girondin,  in  one  terrible  phrase,  had  ten  months 
earUer  proposed  the  operation  :  "  Let  us  cut  off  the  gangrened 
part,  so  as  to  save  the  rest  of  the  body  \"  ^  But  it  was  never 
the  way  of  the  Girondins  to  carry  their  sanguinary  theories  into 
practice  ;  they  only  suggested,  and  then  recoiled  in  horror  when 
their  words  were  interpreted  by  bolder  men  into  action.  Isnard, 
who  had  condensed  in  his  proposal  the  whole  system  of  the 
Terror,  was  later  on  to  devote  all  his  eloquence  to  denouncing 
that  same  system,  when  it  had  passed  from  the  region  of  ideas 
into  a  frightful  reaUty.  The  scheme  of  the  philosopher  Isnard 
was  left  to  the  surgeon  Marat  to  execute. 

Jean  Paul  Marat,  son  of  Jean  Mara,  a  Spaniard,  who  had 
settled  first  in  Sardinia,  then  in  Switzerland,  was  bom  at  Boudry, 
near  Neuchatel,  and  had  spent  many  years  in  England,  where  he 
studied  medicine,  and  practised  for  a  time  in  Church  Street, 
Soho.  In  1777  Marat  went  to  France,  where  he  became  brevet- 
surgeon  to  the  Comte  d'Artois'  bodyguard,  but  the  office  appears 
to  have  proved  unremunerative,  for  he  was  obliged  to  supplement 
his  income  by  compounding  quack  medicines  for  a  few  confiding 
aristocratic  patients.^  During  his  stay  in  London  he  had, 
however,  already  embarked  on  his  revolutionary  career  by  the 
pubUcation  of  a  pamphlet  entitled  The  Chains  of  Slavery,  in 
which,  posing  as  an  EngHshman,  he  endeavoured  to  stir  up  the 
nation  against  the  Government.*  Britain  failed  entirely  to 
respond  to  this  appeal  and  the  pamphlet  was  a  complete  failure, 
but  on  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  in  France  Danton, 
realizing  Marat's  value  as  an  agitator,  took  him  into  his  employ- 
ment.^ Before  long  Marat's  seditious  writings  attracted  the 
attention  of  Lafayette,  who  marched  a  regiment  against  the 
wretched  dwarf,  and  so  terrified  him  that  he  was  obUged  to  retire 
below  ground  into  hiding.  During  the  weeks  that  Marat  spent 
in  the  cellars  of  Paris,  he  had  leisure  to  evolve  further  political 
schemes,  in  which  it  would  be  impossible  to  discover  any  con- 
sistent plan  of  government  >  He  certainly  did  not  advocate  a 
repubUc,  but  either  a  monarchy  under  Louis  XVI.  or  the  Due 
d'Orleans,  or  a  dictatorship  under  a  man  of  the  people  or  himself. 

^  Histoire  des  Montagnards,  by  Esquiros,  p.  206. 

2  Isnard  to  the  Legislative  Assembly,  November  14,  1791. 

'  Histoire  secrete  de  la  Revolution,  by  Fran9ois  Pages  (1797),  ii.  19 
Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  ii.  154  ;    Memoires  de  Monseigneur 
Salamon,  p.  15. 

*  Marat  en  Angleterre,  by  H.  S,  Ashbee. 

*  Biographie  Michaud,  article  on  Danton  by  Beaulieu. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER     293 

The  only  continuous  theme  we  can  find  running  through  all  his 
writings  is  the  aboUtion  of  aU  class  distinctions,  for  which  purpose 
every  resisting  element  in  the  community  must  be  destroyed. 
The  petty  persecutions  of  the  Orleanistes  and  the  Girondins  had 
only  served  to  irritate  the  "  privileged  classes  "  ;  attacks  on 
property  had  ahenated  the  bourgeoisie,  and  nothing  but  whole- 
sale massacre  could  now  reheve  the  situation.  This  idea  became 
an  obsession ;  by  the  end  of  his  sojourn  in  the  cellars  Marat 
undoubtedly  was  mad.  "  Marat,"  said  his  admirer  Panis, 
"  remained  six  weeks  on  one  buttock  in  a  dungeon  "  ;  hence 
Panis  regarded  Marat  as  a  prophet — a  second  St.  Simeon  StyUtes.^ 
It  would  be  nearer  the  truth  to  describe  him  as  a  "  fakir."  The 
banks  of  the  Ganges  teem  with  prophets  of  this  variety,  victims 
of  an  idee  fixe,  who  have  spent  long  years  in  precisely  this 
attitude,  gazing  at  the  tips  of  their  noses  or  repeating  the  sacred 
incantation,  "  Ram  Sit  a  Ram !  "  Like  the  monotonous  chant  of 
the  fakir,  Marat's  cry  for  "  heads  "  was  also  a  confession  of  faith, 
but  it  was  none  the  less  a  symptom  of  insanity — the  result  of 
homicidal  mania.  The  fact  that  at  moments  he  could  reason 
logically  does  not  disprove  this  assertion  ;  lunatics  are  frequently 
sane  to  dulness  on  every  point  except  their  own  particular 
mania. 

In  appearance  Marat  was  not  unHke  the  mahgnant  dwarfs 
one  encounters  in  the  villages  of  his  native  Switzerland.  Under 
five  feet  high,  with  a  monstrous  head,  the  broken  nose  of  the 
degenerate,  a  skin  of  yellowed  parchment,  the  aspect  of  "  the 
Friend  of  the  People  "  was  more  than  hideous,  it  was  super- 
natural. His  portrait  in  the  Camavalet  Museum  is  not  the 
portrait  of  a  human  being  but  of  an  "  elemental,"  a  materializa- 
tion of  pure  evil  emanating  from  the  realms  of  outer  darkness. 
"  Physically,"  says  one  who  knew  him,  "  Marat  had  a  burning 
and  haggard  eye  like  a  hyena  ;  Hke  a  hyena  his  glance  was  always 
anxious  and  in  motion ;  his  movements  were  short,  rapid,  and 
jerky  ;  a  continual  mobiUty  gave  to  his  muscles  and  his  features 
a  convulsive  contraction,  which  even  affected  his  way  of  walking 
— ^he  did  not  walk,  he  hopped.  Such  was  the  individual  called 
Marat."  ^    When  to  this  outward  appearance  are  added  such 

^  Rivolutions  de  Paris,  by  Pnidhomme,  xiii.  522. 

«  Anecdotes,  by  Harmand  de  la  Meuse,  member  of  the  Convention. 
On  the  subject  of  Marat's  appearance  contemporaries  are  curiously  in 
accord  ;  he  seems  to  have  inspired  the  same  horror  in  all  beholders.  Thus, 
for  example,  Garat  describes  him  as  "  a  man  whose  face,  covered  with  a 
bronzed  yellow,  gave  him  the  appearance  of  having  come  out  of  the  bloody 
cavern  of  cannibals  or  from  the  red-hot  soil  of  hell ;  that  by  his  convulsive, 
brusque,  and  jerky  walk  one  recognized  as  an  assassin  who  had  escaped  from 
the  executioner  but  not  from  the  furies,  and  who  wished  to  annihilate  the 
human  race."     Dr.  Moore  exactly  corroborates  Garat :  "  Marat  is  a  little 


294        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

mental  peculiarities  as  "  furious  exaltation,  perpetual  over- 
excitement,  chronic  insomnia,  folie  des  grandeurs,  the  mania  that 
one  is  the  victim  of  persecution,"  ^  it  is  impossible  to  regard  Marat 
as  a  responsible  human  being.  *'  People  feared  to  speak  before 
Marat,"  says  his  panegyrist  Esquiros ;  "  at  the  slightest  contra- 
diction he  showed  signs  of  fury,  and  if  one  persisted  in  one's 
opinion  he  flew  into  a  rage  and  foamed  at  the  mouth." 

But,  apart  from  all  other  evidence,  Marat's  writings  are  clear 
enough  proof  of  his  insanity ;  we  have  only  to  turn  over  the  pages 
of  L'Ami  du  Peuple  or  the  Journal  de  la  RepuUique  Franfaise  to 
realize  that  we  are  Hstening  to  the  ravings  of  a  mind  in  deUrium. 
For  example  : 

"  Never  go  to  the  Assembly  without  having  your  pockets  full 
of  stones  destined  to  throw  at  the  rascals  who  have  the  impudence 
to  preach  maxims.  .  .  ."  ^  "  Citizens,  erect  800  gibbets  in  the 
gardens  of  the  Tuileries,  and  hang  there  all  the  traitors  to  the 
country  ...  at  the  same  time  that  you  construct  a  vast  pile 
in  the  middle  of  the  basin  of  the  fountain  to  roast  the  ministers 
and  their  agents."  ^  "  Citizens,  let  the  fire  of  patriotism  be 
rekindled  in  your  bosoms  and  your  triumph  is  assured  ;  rush  to 
arms  ;  you  know  to-day  which  are  the  real  victims  that  must  be 
immolated  for  your  salvation  ;  let  your  first  blows  fall  on  the 
infamous  general  (Lafayette)  ;  immolate  the  whole  staff  .  .  . 
immolate  the  corrupt  members  of  the  National  Assembly  .  .  . 
cut  the  thumbs  off  the  hands  of  the  former  nobles  who  have 
conspired  against  you ;  split  the  tongues  of  all  the  priests  who 
have  preached  servitude.  ..."  *  "  It  is  not  the  retirement  of 
the  ministers,  it  is  their  heads  we  need.  ..."  etc. 

The  number  of  heads  demanded  by  Marat  increased  steadily 
as  the  Revolution  proceeded  ;  in  July  of  1790  he  asked  only  for 
600  ;  five  months  later  no  less  than  10,000  would  suffice  him ; 
later  the  figures  grew  to  20,000,  to  40,000,  until  by  the  summer 
of  1792  he  explained  to  Barbaroux  that  it  would  be  a  reaUy^ 
"  humane  expedient  "  to  massacre  260,000  men  in  a  day.  "  Un- 
doubtedly," adds  Barbaroux,  "  he  had  a  predilection  for  this 
number,  for  since  then  he  has  always  asked  for  exactly  260,000 
heads  ;  only  rarely  he  went  to  300,000."  ^ 

It  would  be  unnecessary  to  enlarge  on  the  theories  of  saj 

man  of  a  cadaverous  complexion,  and  a  countenance  exceedingly  expressive 
of  his  disposition ;  to  a  painter  of  massacres  Marat's  head  would  be  in- 
valuable. Such  heads  are  rare  in  this  country  (England),  yet  they  are 
sometimes  to  be  met  with  at  the  Old  Bailey  "  {Journal  of  a  Residence  in\ 
France,  i.  455). 

^  Taine,  La  RivoluHon,  vii.  198.  *  L'Ami  du  Peuple,  No.  258. 

3  Ibid.  No.  198.  *  Ibid.  No.  305. 

*  MSmoires  de  Barbaroux,  p.  57;  confirmed  by  Marat  himself  atj 
Convention.     See  Moniteur  for  October  26,  1792. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    295 

obviously  disordered  a  mind,  were  it  not  for  the  immensely 
important  part  played  by  Marat  during  the  last  year  of  his  hfe. 
As  Laclos  had  been  "  the  soul  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,"  and 
therefore  of  the  first  Revolution  ;  as  Madame  Roland  was  '*  the 
soul  of  the  Gironde,"  and  therefore  of  the  second  Revolution ; 
Marat  was,  as  Bougeart  truly  says,  "  the  soul  of  the  Commune," 
and  therefore  of  the  third  Revolution  —  of  the  Massacres  of 
September  and  the  Reign  of  Terror.  For  although  Marat  died 
before  "  the  Great  Terror  "  began,  it  was  he  who  had  inspired  the 
system  that  produced  it ;  it  was  he  who  became  the  evil  genius 
of  Robespierre  and  of  Danton,  who  stimulated  the  destructive 
fury  of  the  Hebertistes,  and  let  loose  the  horde  of  wild  beasts 
that  at  the  end  of  1793  devastated  the  provinces  of  France. 

MARAT  PLANS  THE  MASSACRES 

Directly  after  the  loth  of  August  Marat  began  to  incite  the 
populace  to  massacre  the  Royalists  and  Swiss,  who  had  been 
imprisoned  after  the  siege  of  the  Chateau.  '*  What  folly,"  he 
wrote,  "  to  bring  them  to  trial !  "  And  again  he  launched  into 
the  history  of  imaginary  persecutions  : 

"  How  much  longer  will  you  slumber,  friends  of  the  country, 
whilst  your  ruin  is  being  planned  with  more  fury  than  ever  ? 
Shudder  at  the  fate  that  awaits  you  !  Thirty-seven  amongst 
you,  in  which  number  the  '  Friend  of  the  People  '  (Marat  him- 
self) had  the  honour  to  be  included,  were  destined  to  be  fried  in 
boiling  oil  if  the  monsters  of  the  Tuileries  had  been  the  victors, 
as  certain  valets  of  Antoinette  have  admitted,  and  30,000  citizens 
would  have  been  barbarously  massacred.  Let  us  hope  for  no 
other  fate  if  we  allow  the  victory  to  be  taken  from  us.  .  .  .  Up, 
Frenchmen,  you  who  wish  to  Uve  freely ;  up,  up,  and  may  the 
blood  of  traitors  begin  to  flow.  It  is  the  only  way  to  save  the 
country  !  "  ^ 

But  already  Marat  had  reaHzed  that  the  people  were  not  to 
be  depended  on  to  carry  out  these  schemes,  and  had  consulted 
with  Danton  on  the  best  method  for  '*  clearing  out  the  prisons." 
Two  days  after  Danton  was  made  Minister  of  Justice,  that  is  to 
say  on  the  14th  of  August,  Prudhomme  relates,  Marat  said  to 
Danton,  '*  F outre  !  Would  you  like  to  have  all  the  rascals  who 
are  in  the  prisons  judicially  punished  ?  " 

**  Why  ?  "  Danton  asked  him. 

"  Because  if  you  do  not  despatch  them  as  in  the  Glacidre 
d'Avignon,  those  ruf&ans  will  succeed  in  butchering  us  all ; 
there  is  a  heap  of  nobles  we  must  get  rid  of  as  well  as  priests." 

Danton   answered  him,     "  I    know   quite  well  that  a   St. 

/  L'Ami  du  Peuple,  No.  680,  pp.  7  and  8,  date  of  August  19,  1792. 


296        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Barthelemy  is  necessary,  but  the  means  for  carrying  it  out  seem 
to  be  difficult."  Marat  replied,  "  Leave  it  to  me  ;  on  your  account 
prepare  the  deputies  with  whom  you  are  acquainted :  we  have 
hairy  ruffians  {bougres  a  poll)  in  Paris  who  will  give  us  a  hand.'* 

The  next  day  they  circulated  the  rumour  of  a  great  con- 
spiracy on  the  part  of  the  prisoners  to  massacre  the  patriots. 
Camille  DesmouUns  was  in  the  secret,  as  also  Fabre  d'^^glantine 
and  Robert,  all  three  secretaries  of  Danton.^ 

Danton  was  then  deputed  to  confide  the  plan  to  Robespierre. 
But  Robespierre,  still  at  this  period  opposed  to  violent  measures, 
demurred.  "  You  must  not  trust  absolutely  to  Marat,"  he  said, 
"  he  is  too  hot-headed  (c'est  une  mauvaise  tete)."  It  was  not  the 
first  time  Robespierre  had  objected  to  the  bloodthirsty  schemes 
of  Marat.  Already  a  year  earher  he  had  reproached  Marat  with 
having  destroyed  the  immense  influence  of  his  journal  by  "  dip- 
ping his  pen  in  the  blood  of  the  enemies  of  hberty,  in  talking  of 
ropes  and  daggers."  To  these  remonstrances  Marat  repUed  by 
reiterating  his  demand  for  wholesale  massacres. 

"  Robespierre,"  wrote  Marat  in  his  account  of  the  incident, 
"  listened  to  me  with  consternation  ;  he  grew  pale  and  was  silent 
for  some  time.  This  interview  confirmed  me  in  the  opinion  I 
had  always  entertained  of  him,  namely,  that  he  combined  the 
enUghtened  views  of  a  wise  senator  with  the  integrity  of  a  virtuous 
man  and  the  zeal  of  a  true  patriot,  but  he  lacked  equally  the 
views  and  the  audacity  of  a  statesman."  ^ 

To  Robespierre  the  massacre  in  the  prisons  proposed  by 
Marat  seemed  then  too  audacious,  yet  it  is  impossible  to  concur 
with  his  panegyrists  in  absolving  him  from  all  comphcity. 
Robespierre  knew  of  the  projected  crime,  and  never  offered  any 
serious  opposition ;  according  to  Prudhomme  and  ProussinaUe 
he  was  even  present  at  two  meetings  of  the  leaders  ;  afterwards 
he  justified  all  that  had  taken  place  ;  Robespierre  must  therefore 
be  regarded  as  an  accomphce,  if  not  actually  an  author,  of  the 
massacres.^ 

^  Crimes  de  la  RSvolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  155.  This  conversation 
is  entirely  ignored  by  the  historians  who  have  attempted  to  prove  that 
Marat  was  not  the  author  of  the  massacres  of  September.  But  Prudhomme 
as  the  intime  of  the  Montagnards  could  have  had  no  possible  object  in 
inventing  it,  he  merely,  hke  many  other  of  their  accompHces,  ended  by 
giving  them  away.  Moreover,  all  Prudhomme's  evidence  on  this  period  is 
exactly  confirmed  by  other  authorities.  The  dialogue  is  given  in  the  same 
words  by  ProussinaUe  {Histoire  secrite  du  Tribunal  rSvolutionnaire,  p.  39, 
pubUshed  in  18 15). 

2  Article  by  Marat,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xiv.  188. 

'  This  is  admitted  even  by  M.  Louis  Blanc,  Revolutien,  vii.  193  :  "  Be- 
tween Danton  concurring  in  the  massacres  because  he  approves  them,  and 
Robespierre  not  preventing  them  although  he  deplores  them,  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  declare  that  the  most  culpable  is  Robespierre." 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    297 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  MASSACRES 

The  manner  in  which  the  massacres  in  the  prisons  were 
organized  differed  entirely  from  that  employed  in  the  former 
revolutionary  outbreaks.  In  these,  as  we  have  seen,  the  plan 
had  consisted  in  stirring  up  the  people  to  rise  en  masse  and  fall 
upon  the  victims  designated  by  the  leaders.  This  plan  had 
failed,  and  the  Commune,  led  by  Marat,  reahzed  the  futiHty  of 
depending  on  Balaam's  ass  as  a  mode  of  progression ;  on  the 
20th  of  June  it  had  refused  to  go  forward,  on  the  loth  of  August 
it  had  gone  mad  and  terrified  its  riders.  The  murder  of  cooks 
and  common  soldiers,  the  hideous  scenes  of  cannibaUsm  and 
drunken  fury  that  had  taken  place  at  the  Tuileries,  though 
applauded  by  the  revolutionary  leaders,  served  no  real  purpose, 
and  if  repeated  might  become  dangerous  to  the  leaders  them- 
selves. Marat,  who  had  never  trusted  the  people,  voiced  this 
fear  later  on  when,  in  reply  to  the  accusation  of  his  enemies  that 
he  aspired  to  the  supreme  power,  he  declared  that  "  if  the  whole 
nation  at  once  were  to  place  the  crown  on  my  head  I  should  shake 
it  off,  for  such  is  the  levity,  the  frivoUty,  the  changeableness  of 
the  people  that  I  should  not  be  sure  that,  after  crowning  me  in 
the  morning,  they  would  not  hang  me  in  the  evening."  ^  The 
people  of  Paris — ^those  "  pitiable  revolutionaries  " — ^must  there- 
fore not  be  invited  indiscriminately  to  co-operate,  so  on  this 
occasion  no  army  of  pikes  and  rags  was  summoned  from  the 
Faubourgs,  no  mob  leaders  were  called  out,  no  conciliahules  took 
place  in  the  taverns  of  the  Soleil  d'Or  or  the  Cadran  Bleu.  In  a 
word,  the  old  revolutionary  machine  was  "  scrapped  "  ;  it  had 
served  its  purpose,  and  must  be  superseded  by  a  more  effectual 
system. 

According  to  Prudhomme  the  secret  councils  that  preceded 
the  massacres  of  September  took  place  at  the  "  Comite  de 
Surveillance  "  of  the  Commune,^  and  were  attended  by  Marat, 
Danton,  Manuel,  BiUaud  -  Varenne,  Collot  d'Herbois,  Panis, 
Sergent,  TaUien,  and,  on  the  aforesaid  two  occasions,  MaximiUen 
Robespierre.^  Here  the  whole  scheme  was  mapped  out  with 
diaboUcal  ingenuity.  First  of  all  a  number  of  fresh  prisoners 
were  to  be  incarcerated,  principally  wealthy  people,  for  the 
massacres  were  to  be  not  merely  a  method  of  extermination,  but 
a  highway  robbery  on  a  large  scale.  The  Commune  wanted 
money — for  what  purpose  we  shall  see  later — and  the  systematic 

^  Journal  de  la  Republique,  No.  221. 
*  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  156. 
»  Ibid. ;   Maton  de  la  Varenne,  Histoire  particuliire,  p.  285  ;    Histoire 
secrite,  by  Proussinalle,  pp.  40,  41. 


298  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

pillage  it  had  inaugurated  after  the  loth  of  August,  when  not 
only  the  Tuileries  and  other  royal  chateaux  but  the  houses  of 
many  private  people  had  been  looted  by  their  agents,^  had  not 
yet  brought  in  sufficient  sums. 

But,  besides  the  men  whose  death  was  to  be  effected  merely 
as  the  means  of  acquiring  their  possessions,  a  number  of  victims 
were  designated  for  other  reasons  by  different  members  of  the 
Commune,  and  over  this  question  heated  discussions  arose. 
Robespierre  at  one  of  these  meetings,  fearing  indiscriminate 
slaughter,  had  said,  *'  We  must  bring  only  the  priests  and  nobles 
to  justice."  ^  But  when  Marat  proposed  to  add  certain  members 
of  the  rival  faction — Brissot  and  Roland  ^ — to  the  hst,  it  seems 
that  Robespierre's  scruples  vanished,  and  from  after  events  it  is 
evident  that  the  hope  of  finally  ridding  himself  of  the  hated 
Brissotins  did  more  than  anything  else  to  reconcile  Robespierre 
to  the  idea  of  the  massacres. 

Panton,  however,  showed  himself  magnanimous.  He,  too, 
would  gladly  have  seen  Roland  removed  from  his  path,  for  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior  had  an  inconvenient  habit  of  asking 
the  Minister  of  Justice  to  tender  his  accounts  to  the  Assembly,* 
and  Danton  had  recently  drawn  the  sum  of  100,000  ^cus  from  the 
pubUc  treasury  for  purposes  he  declined  to  reveal,  contenting 
himself  with  the  vague  statement  that  he  had  given  "  20,000 
francs  to  such  an  one,  10,000  to  another,  and  so  on,"  "  for  the 
sake  of  the  Revolution,"  "  on  account  of  their  patriotism,"  etc.^ 
Roland,  who  shrewdly  suspected  that  it  was  his  own  patriotism 
Danton  had  seen  fit  to  reward,  persisted  in  his  demands  for  the 
names  of  the  persons  to  whom  these  sums  had  been  -psdd,  thereby 
profoundly  irritating  Danton.  But  whether  he  retained  some 
sense  of  gratitude  for  Madame  Roland's  soup,  of  which  he  had 
recently  partaken,  or  whether,  through  their  common  intrigue 
with  the  EngUsh  Jacobins,  he  had  some  secret  understanding 
with  the  Brissotins,  Danton  did  not  wish  to  have  them  murdered. 
So  to  the  proposal  that  they  should  be  included  in  the 
massacres  he  answered  firmly,  "  You  know  that  I  do  not 
hesitate  at  crime  when  it  is  necessary,  but  I  disdain  it  when  it 
is  useless."  ^ 

Not  content  with  this  remonstrance,  Danton  went  to  Robes- 
pierre and  interceded  for  Brissot  and  Roland.  Robespierre  said 
coldly,  "  Are  not  these  two  individuals  counter-revolutionaries  ?  " 

^  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  Histoire  des  Girondins,  ii.  9  ;  Memoires  de 
Mme.  Roland,  i.  112. 

2  Crimes  de  la  RSvolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  156. 

^  Ibid.  iv.  158  ;  Proussinalle,  p.  43  ;  Mimoires  de  Hua,  p.  167. 

*  Crimes  de  la  RSvolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  161. 

^  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  ii.  94. 

'  Mimoires  de  Hua,  p.  167. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    299 

Danton  answered,  "  That  is  not  yet  proved ;  besides,  we  can 
always  find  a  good  moment  to  judge  them." 

But  Robespierre  already  had  his  plans  for  bringing  them  to 
justice,  which  he  executed  two  days  later. 

Danton  then  hurried  to  Marat  at  the  Commune. 

**  You  are  a  blackguard,"  he  said  in  the  langUcLge  habitual  to 
them  both,  "  you  will  spoil  everything." 

Marat  repUed,  "  I  answer  for  success  on  my  head ;  if  you 
were  all  ruffians  {des  bougres)  like  me  there  would  be  10,000 
butchered."  ^ 

The  difficulty  of  achieving  a  massacre  on  a  large  scale  became 
the  subject  of  discussion  at  several  meetings  of  the  leaders.  Even 
if  only  2000  prisoners  were  incarcerated,  how  was  so  vast  a  number 
of  human  beings  to  be  disposed  of  ?  "  Marat,"  says  Prudhomme, 
"  proposed  to  set  fire  to  the  prisons,  but  it  was  pointed  out  to  him 
that  the  neighbouring  houses  would  be  endangered  ;  some  one 
else  advised  flooding  them.  Billaud-Varenne  proposed  to  kill 
the  prisoners.  .  .  .  Another  said,  '  You  propose  to  kill,  but 
you  will  not  find  enough  killers.'  Billaud-Varenne  repUed  with 
warmth,  'They  wUl  be  found.'  TaUien,  who  refused  to  take 
part  in  the  discussion,  showed  disgust,  but  had  not  the  courage 
to  oppose  the  project."  ^ 

Billaud,  who,  according  to  most  contemporaries,  showed 
himself  the  most  ferocious  of  all  the  men  who  organized  the 
massacres,  finally  undertook  to  provide  the  necessary  instru- 
ments, and  in  co-operation  with  Maillard — he  who  had  led  the 
women  to  Versailles  on  the  5th  of  October — succeeded  in  forming 
a  band  of  assassins  amongst  the  Marseillais  and  the  revolutionary 
elements  of  Paris,  but,  contrary  to  his  expectations,  this  con- 
tingent proved  insufficient,  and  it  was  found  necessary  to  swell 
its  numbers  by  Uberating  a  quantity  of  thieves  and  murderers 
now  in  the  prisons.^  Yet  even  to  this  criminal  horde  the  leaders 
dared  not  avow  their  true  intentions,  and  a  lurid  tale  of  con- 
spiracies was  invented  by  way  of  inducement  to  them  to  carry 
out  the  dreadful  work.  They  described  to  the  assassins,  says 
Maton  de  la  Varenne,  "  Paris  given  over  to  the  enemy  by  rascals 
whose  leaders  were  in  the  prisons,  where  they  were  still  conspiring  ; 
gibbets  planted  in  all  the  streets  on  which  to  hang  the  friends 
of  the  Revolution,  their  wives  and  children  massacred  beneath 
their  eyes  ;  Capet  insolently  re-ascending  the  throne  and  carry- 
ing out  the  most  horrible  vengeances.     Wine  flowed  in  torrents 

*  Crimes  de  la  Rivoluiion,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  159. 

'  Ibid.  iv.  156  ;  Histoire  particuliere,  etc.,  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne, 
p.  285. 

'  Histoire  secrdie  du  Tribunal  revolutionnaire,  by  Proussinalle,  p.  42. 
(Proussinalle  is  the  pseudonym  of  P.  J.  A.  Roussel.) 


300        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

throughout  and  after  this  infernal  and  slanderous  harangue,  and 
the  hves  of  those  whom  they  called  the  traitors  were  placed  at 
thirty  hvres  independently  of  the  spoils."  ^ 

The  same  fabulous  story  of  conspiracies,  the  same  false  alarms, 
were  now  spread  abroad  amongst  the  people  in  order  to  prepare 
their  minds  for  the  massacres  and  ensure  their  assent.  For, 
though  the  people  were  not  to  be  invited  this  time  to  co-operate, 
the  whole  movement  was  none  the  less  to  be  attributed  to  them. 
In  each  prison  a  mock  tribunal  was  to  be  set  up  at  which  judges 
provided  by  the  Commune,  and  assassins  hired  by  them,  armed 
with  Usts  of  proscription  drawn  up  at  the  secret  councils  of  the 
leaders,  were  to  carry  out  so-called  "  justice  " — ^and  this  was  to 
be  described  by  the  high-sounding  title,  "  The  Tribunal  of  the 
Sovereign  People."  ^  The  massacres  were  then  to  be  represented 
£LS  simply  the  result  of  "irrepressible  popular  effervescence," 
produced  by  sudden  panic  at  the  approach  of  Brunswick  and 
the  discovery  of  collusion  between  the  invading  armies  and  the 
"  conspirators  "  in  the  prisons.  For  this  purpose  a  phrase  was 
invented,  which  was  afterwards  to  be  said  to  have  passed  from 
mouth  to  mouth  amongst  the  terrified  Parisians,  namely,  that 
before  marching  on  the  enemy  they  must  put  all  these  con- 
spirators to  death. ^ 

The  pretext  was  palpably  absurd.  Paris  has  never  been  wont 
to  give  way  to  panic  in  the  face  of  danger  from  the  outside,  and 
it  awaited  the  advancing  legions  of  Brunswick  with  its  habitual 
sang-froid. 

"  Whilst  the  Prussians  were  in  Champagne,"  says  Mercier, 
"  who  would  not  have  thought  that  profound  alarm  existed  in 
all  minds  ?  Not  at  all ;  the  theatres,  the  restaurants,  both  full, 
displayed  only  peaceful  newsmongers.  All  the  vainglorious 
threats  of  our  enemies — we  did  not  hear  ;  of  all  their  murderous 
expectations  we  were  far  from  having  the  least  idea.  The  capital, 
whether  by  its  size  or  by  the  feeling  of  its  strength,  always  beUeved 
itself  unassailable,  sheltered  from  all  reverses  in  battle,  and  cal- 
culated to  overawe  its  enemies.  The  plans  of  defence,  regarded 
as  absolutely  unnecessary,  were  laughed  at,  since  no  one  would 
ever  dare  to  attack  the  great  city.    This  stoicism  was  one  of  the 

^  Histoire  particulidre,  etc.,  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne,  p.  285.  The  rate 
of  salary  was  fixed  by  Billaud-Varenne  (see  Histoire  des  Girondins,  by 
Granier  de  Cassagnac,  ii.  48,  49) . 

*  Histoire  secrdte  du  Tribunal  revolutionnaire,  by  Proussinalle,  p.  41. 

'  "  The  Comite  de  Surveillance  had  undertaken  to  prepare  the  minds 
(of  the  people)  for  this  frightful  idea  (the  massacres  of  September)  ;  it 
circulated  everywhere  this  word  of  command  that  it  counted  on  exploiting 
later  :  '  Before  flying  to  the  frontiers  we  must  make  sure  of  leaving  behind 
us  no  traitors,  no  conspirators '  "  {Histoire  de  la  Terreur,  by  Mortimer 
Ternaux,  iii.  194  ;   cf.  Journal  du  Club  des  Jacobins,  No.  CCLV.). 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    301 

greatest  ramparts  of  liberty  .  .  .  never  were  the  people  seriously 
intimidated,  either  by  the  banquets  of  the  bodyguard,  at  which 
Antoinette  was  described  under  the  name  of  tigress  of  Germany, 
holding  the  Dauphin  in  her  arms  and  inciting  the  most  blood- 
thirsty hostihties,  or  by  the  flight  of  the  King,  which  seemed  to 
dissolve  all  government,  or  by  the  taking  of  Verdun,  or  by  the 
Manifestos  of  all  the  Kings  of  Europe.  It  was  impossible  to  make 
them  feel  terror  of  the  enemy.  .  .  ."  ^ 

And  these  were  the  people  who  were  to  be  represented  as  so 
craven-hearted  that,  in  a  fit  of  bUnd  panic,  they  fell  upon  their 
fellow-countrymen  and  put  them  indiscriminately  to  death  ! 

As  to  the  fear  of  a  "  conspiracy  "  in  the  prisons,  no  such  idea 
ever  entered  into  the  heads  of  the  Parisians.  How  could  people, 
shut  up  behind  bolts  and  bars,  cut  off  from  all  communication 
with  the  outside  world,  conspire  ?  How  could  the  priests, 
against  whom  the  movement  was  principally  directed,  form  an 
effectual  reinforcement  to  the  trained  legions  of  Brunswick  ? 
How  could  unarmed  men,  women,  and  children  take  part  in  a 
massacre  ?  The  idea  was  preposterous,  and  originated  in  the 
minds  not  of  the  people  but  of  the  members  of  the  Commune, 
who  circulated  it  through  Paris  by  means  of  agents  placed  in 
the  crowd  for  the  purpose.  That  a  certain  number  of  citizens 
beheved  it  is  undeniable,  but  to  attribute  to  the  intelligent 
Parisifins  the  authorship  of  such  a  fable,  or  the  cowardice  of  acting 
on  it  by  falling  on  the  prisoners,  is  a  gross  and  hideous  calumny 
which  should  be  finally  refuted. 

DOMICILIARY  VISITS 

On  the  29th  of  August  the  incarceration  of  wealthy  prisoners 
began.  At  one  o'clock  in  the  night  commissioners  from  the 
Commune  were  sent  all  over  the  city  to  carry  out  the  inquisition 
known  as  "  domiciHary  visits,"  which  consisted  in  arresting  aU 
citizens  the  Commune  chose  to  regard  as  "  suspect." 

Peltier  has  vividly  described  the  horror  of  this  beautiful 

*  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  154.  The  English  doctor,  John 
Moore,  noticed  exactly  the  same  thing.  On  the  19th  of  August,  after 
driving  through  the  Champs  ]£lys6es,  he  writes  :  "  All  those  extensive 
fields  were  crowded  with  company  of  one  sort  or  another  ;  an  immense 
number  of  small  booths  was  erected,  where  refreshments  were  sold, 
and  which  resounded  with  music  and  singing.  Pantomimes  and  puppet- 
shows  of  various  kinds  are  here  exhibited,  and  in  some  parts  they  were 
dancing  in  the  open  fields.  '  Are  these  people  as  happy  as  they  seem  ?  ' 
said  I  to  a  Frenchman  who  was  with  me.  '  lis  sont  heureux  comme 
des  dieux.  Monsieur,'  replied  he.  '  Do  you  think  the  Duke  of  Brunswick 
never  enters  their  thoughts  ?  '  said  I.  '  Soyez  sur.  Monsieur,'  resumed 
he,  '  que  Brunswick  est  pr^cisement  I'homme  du  monde  auquel  ils 
penstent  le  moins  '  "  {Journal  of  a  Residence  in  France,  i.  122). 


302        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

summer  night,  whilst  the  silence  of  death  reigned  over  the  once 
briUiant  city.  "  All  the  shops  are  shut ;  every  one  withdraws 
into  his  home  and  trembles  for  his  Ufe  and  property.  .  .  .  Every- 
where people  and  possessions  are  being  hidden,  everywhere  is 
heard  the  intermittent  sound  of  the  padded  hammer  striking 
slow  muffled  blows  to  complete  a  hiding-place.  Roofs,  attics, 
sewers,  chimneys — aU  are  the  same  to  fear  that  takes  no  risks  into 
calculation.  This  man  withdrawn  behind  the  paneUing  that 
has  been  nailed  over  him  seems  to  be  part  of  the  wall,  and  is 
almost  deprived  of  breath  and  life  ;  that  one  stretched  along 
a  strong  wide  beam  in  a  closet  covers  himself  with  aU  the  dust 
the  place  contains  .  .  .  another  suffocates  with  fear  and  heat 
between  two  mattresses,  another  rolled  up  in  a  barrel  loses  all 
sensation  of  Ufe  by  the  tension  of  his  nerves.  Fear  is  greater 
than  pain  ;  they  tremble  but  they  do  not  weep,  their  hearts  are 
withered  up,  their  eyes  are  dull,  their  breasts  contracted.  Women 
surpassed  themselves  on  this  occasion ;  it  was  intrepid  women 
who  hid  the  greater  number  of  the  men."  ^ 

During  the  three  nights  of  August  29  to  31  that  the  domi- 
ciliary visits  lasted  an  enormous  number  of  people  were  arrested 
— according  to  some  accounts  3000,  according  to  others  8000. 
A  certain  proportion  were  released,  the  rest  were  collected  at 
the  Hotel  de  ViUe  to  await  incarceration  in  the  different  prisons. 

Pillage  on  a  large  scale  took  place  during  these  visits,  and, 
in  order  to  make  sure  of  sufficient  booty,  the  priests — ^whose 
houses  no  doubt  offered  small  opportunity  for  looting — ^were  told 
that  they  would  shortly  be  sent  on  a  long  journey,  and  must, 
therefore,  provide  themselves  with  money ;  they  were  advised, 
in  fact,  to  carry  all  their  valuables  on  their  persons.^  By  this 
means  the  victims  of  the  massacres  were  found  in  possession  of 
all  the  gold  watches,  snuff-boxes,  money  and  jewels  that  after- 
wards found  their  way  into  the  hands  of  the  Commune.^ 

The  greater  number  of  priests  thus  arrested  were  accused  of 
no  crime  but  that  of  refusing  to  violate  their  consciences  by  taking 
the  oath  of  fideUty  to  the  civil  constitution  of  the  clergy.  Some, 
however,  seem  to  have  been  the  objects  of  private  vengeances 
on  the  part  of  members  of  the  Commune.  Amongst  these  was  a 
certain  Abbe  Sicard,  who  had  devoted  his  Hfe  to  the  teaching  of 
deaf-mutes.*     On  the  26th  of  August  the  Abbe  was  accordingly 

*  RSvolution  du  10  Aoilt,  ii.  219. 

2  Histoire  particuliire,  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne,  p.  287  ;  Histoire 
secrete  du  Tribunal  rivolutionnaire,  by  Proussinalle,  i.  45  ;  MSmoires  de 
Monseigneur  de  Salamon,  p.  33  ;  Ricit  de  VAbhS  Berthelet,  quoted  by 
M.  de  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  Histoire  des  Girondins,  ii.  285. 

^  La  Demagogie  d  Paris,  by  C.  A.  Dauban,  p.  64. 

*  "  Proems  verbaux  de  la  Commune,"  in  Mdmoires  sur  les  JournSes 
de  Septembre,  p.  272,  note. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    303 

arrested.  A  few  days  later  a  deputation  of  his  pupils  presented 
themselves  at  the  Assembly  with  a  touching  petition  for  his 
release ;  the  Assembly  harshly  rephed  that  no  exception  could 
be  made  in  favour  of  the  Abbe,  and  the  deaf-mutes  were  sent 
away  with  the  empty  consolation  that  "  they  had  been  accorded 
the  honours  of  the  sitting."  ^ 

The  members  of  the  Commune,  however,  were  well  able  to 
make  exceptions  in  the  case  of  people  in  whom  they  were  in- 
terested ;  thus  Danton  secured  the  release  of  a  friend  of  his  who 
was  a  thief,  Camille  Desmoulins  that  of  a  priest  to  whom  he 
was  attached,  and  Fabre  d'figlantine  that  of  his  cook,  whom  he 
had  had  arrested  for  stealing  from  him.^  At  the  same  time 
money  played  its  part,  and  many  aristocrats  obtained  their 
liberty  by  means  of  largesse  judiciously  distributed  amongst  the 
demagogues. 

ALARM  IN  PARIS 

All  was  now  ready ;  it  only  remained  to  give  a  popular  air  to 
the  movement  by  starting  the  proposed  panic  on  the  subject  of 
the  "  conspiracy  in  the  prisons." 

On  the  1st  of  September  a  wretched  wagoner  named  Jean 
JuUien,  who  had  been  condemned  to  ten  years'  hard  labour,  was, 
according  to  the  barbarous  custom  still  preserved  under  the 
Reign  of  Liberty,  publicly  exhibited  on  a  pillory  in  the  Place  de 
Greve.  Thus  exposed  to  the  jeers  of  the  mob  the  man  grew 
frantic,  and  broke  out  into  furious  cries  of  "  Vive  le  Roi !  Vive 
la  Reine  !  Down  with  the  nation  !  "  By  the  order  of  the  Com- 
mune he  was  thereupon  removed  to  the  Conciergerie  to  await 
further  trial,  and  the  people  were  then  informed  that  during  his 
detention  he  had  confessed  his  compHcity  in  an  immense  Royalist 
plot  which  had  ramifications  in  all  the  prisons.^  As  a  matter  of 
fact  JuUien  stated  nothing  of  the  kind,  as  the  register  of  the 
Criminal  Tribunal  afterwards  revealed,*  but  he  was  condemned 
to  death  as  a  conspirator,  and  guillotined  on  the  Place  du 
Carrousel 

"  It  is  not  possible,"  wrote  Dr.  Moore  indignantly,  "  that  the 
Court  could  have  believed  that  this  wagoner  intended  to  excite 
any  sedition  ;  what  he  said  was  a  mere  rash  retort  on  the  mob, 
who  insulted  him  in  his  misery.  If  their  cry  had  been  '  Vive  le 
Roi  et  la  Reine  ! '    his  would  have  been  *  Vive  la  nation  !  ' 

1  Moniteur,  xiii.  587. 

*  Le  veritable  Ami  du  Pettple,  by  Roch  Marcandier  (secretary  of  Camille 
Desmoulins)  ;  Histoire  secrete  du  Tribunal  revolutionnaire,  by  Proussinalle, 
P-  43. 

*  Mortimer  Temaux,  ill.  200. 

*  fbid.  iii.  472. 


304        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  he  was  condemned  to  die  to  please  the 
people."  ^ 

Dr.  Moore,  unacquainted  with  the  undercurrent  of  events, 
misinterpreted  the  incident ;  the  unfortunate  Jean  JuUien  was 
sacrificed  not  to  please  the  people,  but  to  whet  their  appetite 
for  blood  in  preparation  for  the  events  of  the  morrow,  and  also 
to  give  colour  to  the  story  of  the  conspiracy  in  the  prisons. 

The  same  day  pamphlets  were  distributed  announcing — 
"Great  treachery  of  Louis  Capet.  Plot  discovered  for  assassin- 
ating all  good  citizens  during  the  night  of  the  2nd  and  3rd  of 
this  month." 2 

Meanwhile  the  lying  rumour  of  the  fall  of  Verdun  was  pur- 
posely circulated  throughout  Paris,  and  "  nothing,"  remarks 
Madame  Roland,  "  was  forgotten  that  could  inflame  the  imagina- 
tion, magnify  facts,  and  make  the  dangers  seem  greater."  ^ 

But  it  was  not  until  twelve  o'clock  on  the  following  day — 
Sunday,  the  2nd  of  September — ^that  the  imminent  arrival  of 
the  Prussians  was  officially  proclaimed.  "  The  enemy  is  at  the 
gates  of  Paris  ;  Verdun,  which  arrests  his  march,  can  only  hold 
out  for  a  week.  .  .  .  Citizens,  this  very  day,  immediately,  let  all 
friends  of  Uberty  rally  around  its  banner,  let  an  army  of  60,000 
men  be  found  without  delay,  let  us  march  on  the  enemy.  .  .  ."* 

At  the  same  time  the  tocsin  rang,  cannons  were  fired,  the 
generale  was  sounded,  and  from  all  sides  citizens  flew  to  arms. 
Dr.  Moore,  coming  out  of  church,  "  found  people  hurrying  up  and 
down  with  anxious  faces  ;  groups  .  .  .  formed  at  every  comer  : 
one  told  that  a  courier  had  arrived  with  very  bad  news  ;  another 
asserted  that  Verdun  had  been  betrayed  like  Longwy,  and  that 
the  enemy  were  advancing ;  others  shook  their  heads  and  said 
it  was  the  traitors  within  Paris  and  not  the  declared  enemies  on 
the  frontiers  that  were  to  be  feared."  ^ 

But  it  was  not  amongst  the  people  this  last  alarm  arose ;  the 
panic-mongers  were  emissaries  of  the  Commune  sent  out  to  cir- 
culate the  parrot  phrase  composed  by  the  leaders.^  "  Directly 
after  the  proclamation  had  been  issued,"  says  Beaulieu,  "  the 
men  who  have  the  orders  to  begin  the  massacres  cry  out  that,  whilst 
the  friends  of  Uberty  are  grappHng  with  the  soldiers  of  despots, 
their  wives  and  children  will  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  aristocrats, 
and  that  before  starting  they  must  exterminate  these  scoundrels 
more  eager  for  the  blood  of  the  patriots  than  the  Prussians  and 
Austrians  themselves."  "^ 

*  Journal  of  a  Residence  in  France,  i.  294. 
2  Madelin,  p.  255.  '  Memoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  100. 

*  Proces  verbaux  de  la  Commune,  Seance  du  2  Septembre  1792. 

*  Journal  of  a  Residence  in  France,  i.  300. 

*  Fantin  Desodoards,  ii.  240.  '  Beaulieu,  iv.  96. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    305 

A  great  number  of  citizens  listened  with  astonishment  to 
these  suggestions,  asking  themselves  "  why  at  the  least  danger 
people  should  find  pleasure  in  throwing  Paris  into  a  state  of 
alarm,  in  striking  all  its  inhabitants  with  terror,  instead  of 
maintaining  in  their  hearts  that  mascuMne  energy  which  befits 
warriors  and  ensures  victory  in  battle.  Was  this  not,  indeed,  an 
effectual  method  for  undermining  their  courage  ?  But  those 
who  did  not  know  the  secrets  of  the  conspirators  were  soon 
enUghtened  by  their  own  experience."  ^ 

Meanwhile  at  the  Assembly  Danton  was  delivering  his 
famous  speech.  "  It  is  very  gratifying,  Messieurs,  for  the  Minister 
of  Justice  of  a  free  people  to  have  the  task  of  announcing  to  it 
that  the  country  will  be  saved.  .  .  .  You  know  that  Verdun  is 
not  yet  in  the  power  of  our  enemies.  One  part  of  the  people  will 
march  to  the  frontiers  ;  another  will  dig  trenches,  and  the  third 
will  defend  the  interior  of  our  towns  with  pikes.  .  .  .  The  tocsin, 
which  is  about  to  sound,  is  not  a  signal  of  alarm,  it  is  the  charge 
against  the  enemies  of  the  country.  In  order  to  overcome  them. 
Messieurs,  we  need  audacity,  more  audacity,  always  audacity,  and 
France  is  saved  !  " 

These  words,  which  have  sounded  down  the  years  as  the 
trumpet-call  of  patriotism,  must  be  studied  in  their  context  in 
order  to  understand  their  true  significance.  Posterity  that  at  a 
moment  of  national  danger  sighs,  "  Oh  for  a  Danton  !  "  takes 
it  for  granted  that  the  audacity  to  which  the  great  demagogue 
referred  was  to  be  displayed  towards  the  advanciag  Austrians 
and  Prussians.  In  this  case,  why  employ  the  word  audacity  ?  In 
referring  to  soldiers  marching  against  their  country's  enemies,  we 
may  speak  of  them  as  bold  or  courageous,  we  may  describe  them 
as  "  daring  "  for  undertaking  some  novel  or  hazardous  method 
of  attack,  but  we  do  not  call  them  "audacious."  Audacity 
does  not  merely  signify  bravery,  it  impHes  a  certain  degree  of 
effrontery,  of  insolent  contempt  for  public  opinion,  the  mental 
resolution  to  bring  off  a  coup  and  brazen  out  the  consequences. 
It  was  precisely  in  this  sense  that  it  was  appUed  by  Danton,  for 
the  tocsin  to  which  he  referred  was  not  a  summons  to  Frenchmen 
to  march  against  Prussians,  but  the  call  to  Frenchmen  to  fall 
upon  Frenchmen ;  it  was  a  signal  for  the  massacres  of  September.^ 

Danton,  having  uttered  his  famous  apostrophe,  returned 
home,  and  said  to  his  colleagues  who  awaited  him,  "  F outre  !  I 
electrified  them !  Now  we  can  go  forward !  "  which,  says 
ProussinaUe,  meant "  we  can  begin  the  massacres."    "  It  was  then 

^  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  98  ;  Histoire  des  Hommes  de  Proie,  by 
Roch  Marcandier. 

8  "  Every  one  knows  to-day  that  the  cannon  of  alarm  was  on  that  day 
of  blood  to  be  the  signal  of  the  massacre  "  ("  Relation  de  I'Abb^  Sicard," 
Memoires  sur  les  Journees  de  Septemhre,  p.  100). 

X 


3o6 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


twelve  o'clock.  The  men  of  blood  who  were  waiting  this  signal 
went  out  hurriedly  from  the  ministers  ;  soon  the  tocsin  and  the 
cannon  of  alarm  were  heard,  the  assassins  started  for  the  prisons, 
and  the  massacres  began."  ^ 

A  certain  lawyer  named  Grandpr6,  relates  Madame  Roland, 
was  employed  by  Roland  at  this  time  to  visit  the  prisons,  and, 
finding  that  great  alarm  prevailed  there  concerning  the  rumour 
of  a  projected  massacre,  waylaid  Danton  the  same  morning 
as  he  came  out  of  a  meeting  of  council  at  the  Ministry  of  the 
Interior,  and  begged  him  to  ensure  the  safety  of  the  prisoners. 
*'  He  was  interrupted  by  an  exclamation  from  Danton,  shouting 
in  his  bull's  voice,  with  his  eyes  starting  out  of  his  head,  and 
with  a  furious  gesture  :  *  What  do  I  care  about  the  prisoners ! 
Let  them  take  care  of  themselves  !  '  (Je  me  f.  .  .  ^  hien  des ; 
prisonniers  !  qu'ils  deviennent  ce  qu'ils  pourront  /)  "  ^ 

Grandpr6  was  not  the  only  man  to  approach  Danton  on  tl 
fatal  morning.  Prudhomme  the  joumaUst,  seated  in  his  ofiiceJ 
hearing  the  sound  of  the  tocsin  and  the  cannon,  hurried  to  thel 
Ministry  of  Justice,  where  he  found  Danton,  and  said  to  himJ 
"  What  means  this  cannon  of  alarm,  this  tocsin,  and  the  rumourj 
of  the  arrival  of  the  Prussians  in  Paris  ?  " 

"  Keep  calm,  old  friend  of  Uberty,"  answered  Danton,  "it^ 
is  the  tocsin  of  victory." 

"But,"  persisted  Prudhomme,  "theyspeak  of  massacring- 

"  Yes,"  said  Danton,  "  we  were  all  to  have  been  massacred] 
to-night,  beginning  with  the  purest  patriots.  These  rascals  ofi 
aristocrats  who  are  in  the  prisons  had  procured  firearms  an( 
daggers.  At  a  certain  hour  indicated  to-night  the  doors  were  to  be' 
opened  to  them.  They  would  have  scattered  into  all  the  different] 
quarters  to  butcher  the  wives  and  children  of  patriots  who  marchj 
against  the  Prussians."  Prudhomme,  bewildered  by  this  mon- 
strous fable,  inquired  what  means  had  been  taken  to  prevent] 
the  execution  of  the  plot.  "  What  means  ?  "  cried  Danton  ;  "  thej 
irritated  people,  who  were  told  in  time,  mean  to  administer  justice] 
themselves  to  all  the  scoundrels  who  are  in  the  prisons." 

At  this  Prudhomme  declares  he  was  stupefied  with  horror; 
we  may  question  whether  he  ventured,  however,  to  remonstrate 
at  the  time  with  quite  the  courage  he  afterwards  attributed  to 
himself.  When,  a  moment  later,  Camille  Desmoulins  entered,! 
Prudhomme  goes  on  to  relate,  Danton  turned  to  him  with  the] 
words,  "  Prudhomme  has  come  to  ask  what  is  going  to  be  done."! 

"  Yes,"  said  Prudhomme,  "  my  heart  is  rent  by  what  I  have] 
just  heard." 

*  Histoire  secrdte  du  Tribunal  rSvolutionnaire,  by  Proussinalle,  i.  48 
Crimes  de  la  RSvolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  141. 
'  Memoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  31. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    307 

"  Then  you  have  not  told  him,"  Camille  said,  turning  to 
Danton,  "  that  the  innocent  will  not  be  confounded  with  the 
guilty  ?  "  Prudhomme  continued  to  remonstrate,  but  Danton 
answered  firmly,  "  Every  kind  of  moderate  measure  is  useless  ; 
the  anger  of  the  people  is  at  its  height,  it  would  be  actually 
dangerous  to  arrest  it.  When  their  first  anger  is  assuaged  we 
shall  be  able  to  make  them  hsten  to  reason." 

"  But  if,"  Prudhomme  suggested,  *'  the  legislative  body  and 
the  constituted  authorities  were  to  go  all  over  Paris  and  harangue 
the  people  ?  " 

*'  No,  no,"  answered  Camille,  "  that  would  be  too  dangerous, 
for  the  people  in  their  first  anger  might  find  victims  in  the 
persons  of  their  dearest  friends."  ^ 

Prudhomme  went  out  sadly,  and  on  his  way  through  the 
dining-room  perceived  a  pleasant  dinner-party  in  progress — 
Madame  Desmoulins,  Madame  Danton,  and  Fabre  d'figlantine 
were  amongst  the  guests.^  Word  being  brought  at  this  moment 
to  Danton  that  "  all  was  going  well,"  the  Minister  of  Justice 
complacently  took  his  seat  at  the  table.' 

So  at  the  very  moment  that  the  assassins  started  forth  on 
their  terrible  work,  the  authors  of  the  crime  sat  down  to  feast. 


THE  FIRST  MASSACRE  AT  THE  ABBAYE* 

Punctually  at  twelve  o'clock  a  troop  of  Marseillais  and 
Avignonnais  confederates — amongst  whom  were  a  number  of 

*  Crimes  de  la  Rivolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  91.  Prudhomme,  now 
convinced  by  the  reasoning  of  Danton  that  the  massacres  were  really 
a  case  of  irrepressible  popular  fury  at  the  discovery  of  a  gigantic  plot 
against  the  lives  of  the  citizens,  published  a  justification  of  the  move- 
ment in  his  Rivolutions  de  Paris,  No.  165.  It  was  not  till  much  later 
that  he  realized  he  had  been  duped.  "When  in  the  Rivolutions  de 
Paris"  he  wrote  afterwards,  "  we  described  this  day  (the  2nd  of  September) 
as  '  The  Justice  of  the  People,'  we  were  not  only  authorized  by  the  ideas 
we  then  entertained  but  also  by  the  criminal  silence  of  the  legislative  body 
and  of  the  ministers.  It  is,  above  all,  the  crafty  and  atrocious  behaviour  of 
the  Commune  of  Paris  which  caused  us  to  commit  many  involuntary 
errors  "  {Crimes  de  la  Rivolution,  iv.  87).  Revolutionary  historians  freely 
quote  the  former  work,  but  are  of  course  perfectly  silent  about  the  latter. 

*  Ibid.]  also  Histoire  secrite  du  Tribunal  rivolutionnaire,  by  Proussinalle, 
i.  48.  _  '  Ibid. 

*  Authorities  consulted  on  the  first  massacre  at  the  Abbaye  :  Mimoires 
de  I'Abbi  Sicard ;  La  Veriti  ioute  entiire  sur  les  vrais  Acteurs  de  la  Journie  du 
2  Septembre  1792,  by  Felh6m6si.  Felh6m6si  is  an  anagram  of  M6h6e  fils. 
The  author  of  this  pamphlet,  a  bystander,  not  a  prisoner,  was  the  son  of  the 
recorder  M6h6e  and  a  friend  of  Danton  and  Desmoulins  ;  his  object,  there- 
fore, is  not  to  tell  the  truth  on  the  real  authors  of  the  massacres,  for  he 
attributes  all  the  blame  to  Billaud-Varenne,  but  as  an  eye-witness  his 
account  of  events  is  valuable. 


v/to 


308        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

men  who  had  taken  part  in  the  Glaci^re  d' Avignon  ^ — arrived, 
obedient  to  orders  and  singing  the  "  Marseillaise,"  at  the  Hotel 
de  Ville,  to  transfer  the  first  batch  of  prisoners  to  the  Abbaye. 
Twenty-four  priests,  among  which,  in  spite  of  the  appeal  of  the 
deaf-mutes,  the  Abbe  Sicard  was  included,  were  thrust  into 
several  cabs,  and  the  drivers  received  the  order  to  proceed  slowly 
through  the  streets  under  pain  of  being  massacred  on  their  seats 
if  they  disobeyed.     The  confederates,  who  formed  the  escort, 
loudly  informed  the  prisoners  that  they  would  never  reach  the! 
Abbaye,  as  "  the  people  "  to  whom  they  were  to  be  delivered 
intended  to  massacre  them  on  the  way.     In  order  to  faciUtatei 
this  operation  the  doors  of  the  cabs  were  left  open,  and  all] 
efforts  on  the  part  of  the  priests  to  close  them  were  overcome  byj 
the  soldiers,  who,  pointing  at  the  prisoners  with  their  sabres,  cried  | 
out  to  the  disorderly  crowd  following  in  the  wake  of  the  pro-: 
cession,  ''  These  are  your   enemies,   the  accompUces  of  those] 
who  delivered  up  Verdun,  those  who  only  awaited  your  departure 
to  murder  your  wives  and  children.     Here  are  our  pikes  and 
sabres  ;  put  these  monsters  to  death  !  " 

But  if  the  leaders  had  hoped  to  give  a  popular  air  to  the 
proceedings  by  inducing  the  mob  to  begin  the  massacres,  they 
were  disappointed,  for  the  people  around  the  cabs  contented 
emselves  with  shouting  insults,  and  the  Marseillais  were  obliged 
to  make  use  of  their  weapons  themselves.     After  cutting  at  the 
defenceless  priests  with  their  sabres,  one  of  the  soldiers  finally 
mounted  on  the  steps  of  a  carriage  and  plunged  his  sabre  into 
the  heart  of  the  first  victim. ^    His  comrades  quickly  followed 
his  example,  thrusting  at  the  prisoners  through  the  open  door- 
ways, but  the  blows  being  ill-directed  only  a  few  were  mortally 
wounded,  and  it  was  not  until  the  procession  stopped  at  the  doors 
of  the  Abbaye,  where  MaiUard  and  his  hired  assassins  were 
waiting,  that  the  massacres  began  in  earnest.     Out  of  the  twenty- 
four  prisoners,  twenty-one  perished ;    two,  including  the  Abb^. 
Sicard,  succeeded  in  escaping  to  the  neighbouring  "  Committee  j 
of  the  Section,"  and,  throwing  themselves  into  the  arms  of  thej 
commissioners  there   assembled,   cried  out,    "  Save   us !    Save 
us  !  "     Several  of  these  men,  terrified  for  their  own  lives,  roughly] 
repulsed  the  unhappy  priests,  answering,  "  Go   away  !    woul( 
you  have  us  massacred  ?  "  but  one,  recognizing  the  Abbe  Sicard,j 
led  them  into  the  inner  haU,  and  closed  the  door  on  the  mob. 
Here  they  might  have  remained  in  safety  had  not  a  "  fury  "  m\ 
the  crowd,  who  happened  to  be  an  accompUce  of  the  Abb6j 
Sicard's  enemies,  rushed  to  inform  them  of  his  escape.     The  next' 

^  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  96. 
'  Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  225. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER     309 

moment  heavy  blows  sounded  on  the  doors  and  voices  called 
aloud  for  the  two  prisoners. 

The  Abb6  Sicard  felt  that  his  last  hour  had  come.  Handing 
his  watch  to  one  of  the  commissioners  he  said,  "  Give  this  to 
the  first  deaf-mute  who  asks  for  news  of  me." 

The  blows  on  the  door  redoubled.  The  Abbe  Sicard  fell  on 
his  knees,  offered  his  last  prayer,  then,  rising,  embraced  his 
comrade  and  said,  "  Let  us  hold  each  other  close  and  die 
together  ;  the  door  is  about  to  open,  the  murderers  are  there,  we 
have  not  five  minutes  to  five." 

The  next  moment  the  assassins  burst  into  the  room  and 
rushed  upon  the  prisoners.  The  Abbe  Sicard's  companion  fell 
dead  at  his  side  ;  Sicard  himself  saw  a  pike  levelled  at  his  breast, 
when  suddenly  one  of  the  commissioners  of  the  section,  a  clock- 
maker  named  Monnot,  thrust  his  way  through  the  crowd,  and, 
throwing  himself  between  the  assassins  and  their  victim,  bared 
his  breast  to  their  blows,  crying  out,  "  Here  is  the  breast  through 
which  you  must  pass  to  reach  that  one.  He  is  the  Abbe  Sicard, 
one  of  the  men  who  have  rendered  the  greatest  service  to  his 
country,  the  father  of  the  deaf-mutes.  You  must  cross  my 
body  to  get  to  him  !  " 

At  these  words  the  murderous  pike  was  lowered,  and  for  a 
moment  it  seemed  that  the  brave  clockmaker  had  succeeded  in 
disarming  the  assassins.  But  outside  the  hall  the  rest  of  the 
ferocious  band  waited,  howling  hke  wolves  for  their  prey.  Then 
the  good  Abbe,  showing  himself  at  the  window,  obtained  a 
moment  of  silence,  and  spoke  in  these  words  to  the  raving  herd : 

"  My  friends,  here  is  an  innocent  man,  would  you  have  him 
die  without  giving  him  a  hearing  ?  " 

Voices  answered,  "  You  were  with  the  others  we  have  just 
killed.    You  are  guilty  as  they  were  !  " 

"  Listen  to  me  a  moment,  and  if  after  hearing  me  you  decree 
my  death  I  shaU  not  complain.  My  Hf  e  is  in  your  hands.  Learn, 
then,  what  I  do,  who  I  am,  and  then  you  will  decide  my  fate. 
I  am  the  Abbe  Sicard." 

A  murmur  went  round,  "He  is  the  Abb^  Sicard,  the  father 
of  the  deaf-mutes,  we  must  hsten  to  him." 

The  Abbe  continued :  "I  teach  the  deaf-mutes  from  their 
birth,  and,  as  the  number  of  these  unfortunate  ones  is  greater 
amongst  the  poor  than  amongst  the  rich,  I  belong  more  to  you 
than  to  the  rich."  Then  a  voice  cried,  "  The  Abbe  Sicard  must 
be  saved.  He  is  too  valuable  a  man  to  perish.  His  whole  Mfe 
is  employed  in  doing  a  great  work  ;  no,  he  has  not  time  to  be  a 
conspirator." 

Immediately  a  chorus  took  up  the  last  words,  adding,  "  We 
must  save  him  I    We  must  save  him  I  " 


3IO        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Whereupon  the  assassins,  standing  behind  the  Abb6  at  the 
window,  seized  him  in  their  arms,  and  led  him  out  through  the 
ranks  of  their  blood-stained  comrades,  who  fell  on  his  neck, 
embraced  him,  and  begged  to  be  allowed  to  lead  him  home  in 
triumph. 

Nothing  is  stranger  in  aU  the  strange  history  of  the  Revolution 
than  the  evidence  of  latent  ideahsm  that  seems  to  have  lingered 
in  many  ferocious  hearts  :  how  did  it  come  to  pass  that,  amongst 
this  fearful  horde,  men  could  be  found  to  applaud  a  noble  hfe 
and  perceive  its  value  to  the  world,  whilst  themselves  employed 
only  in  crime  and  destruction  ? 

But,  although  the  Abb6  Sicard  had  succeeded  in  disarming 
his  terrible  assassins  by  a  direct  appeal  to  their  better  feeHngs, 
he  was  quite  unable  to  touch  the  hearts  of  the  men  who  had 
ordained  the  crime,  for,  having  refused  to  leave  the  prison 
until  legally  released  by  the  Commune,  he  waited  in  vain  for  this 
order  to  arrive  ;  two  days  later  we  find  him  still  writing  plaintive 
appeals  to  the  Assembly  to  rescue  him  from  the  place  of  horror 
in  which  he  is  confined,  and  where  he  is  perpetually  threatened 
with  a  hideous  death.  The  Assembly  contented  itself  with  pass- 
ing on  the  letter  to  the  Commune.  But  since  it  was  there 
death  had  been  decreed,  the  unfortunate  Abb6  was  left  to 
fate,  and  it  was  not  until  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening  of  the' 
4th  of  September,  by  the  intercession  of  the  deputy  Pastoret 
with  Herault  de  Sechelles,  that  the  Abb6  Sicaxd  obtained. his 
release.^ 

At  five  o'clock  in  the  evening  of  the  2nd,  when  the  carnage] 
was  temporarily  suspended,  Billaud  -  Varenne  arrived   in 
puce-coloured  coat  and  black  wig,  wearing  his  municipal 
as  delegate  of  the  Commune.^    Stepping  over  the  bodies  of  the 
dead  priests,  he  thus  addressed  the  assassins :    *'  Respectabl 
citizens,  you  have  killed  scoundrels  ;  you  have  done  your  dut] 
and  you  will  each  have  twenty-four  Hvres."  ^ 

This  discourse  aroused  afresh  the  fury  of  the  assassins,  anc 
they  began  to  call  aloud  for  further  victims.  Then  Maillan 
known  as  Tape-Dur,  answered  loudly,  "  There  is  nothing  moi 
to  be  done  here  ;  let  us  go  to  the  Cannes  !  "  * 

1  ••  Relation  de  I'Abbe  Sicard,"  also  "  Procds  verbaux  de  la  Commiii 
de  Paris,"  in  Memoires  sur  les  JournSes  de  Septembre,  p.  272 

2  Felhem^si;  Beaulieu,  iv.  119. 
'  Les  Crimes  de  Marat,  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne. 
•  Felhem6si. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER     311 


THE  MASSACRE  AT  THE  CARMES^ 

At  the  Couvent  des  Cannes,  in  the  Rue  de  Vaugirard,  between 
150  and  200  priests  had  been  incarcerated  after  the  loth  of 
August.  For  a  time  they  had  believed  themselves  to  be 
threatened  merely  with  deportation,  but  during  the  two  days 
preceding  the  massacres  a  number  of  sinister  indications  showed 
them  that  they  had  only  a  Uttle  while  to  Uve.  The  patriarch  of  this 
band,  the  venerable  Archbishop  of  Aries,  who,  in  spite  of  his  age 
and  infirmities,  insisted  on  sharing  every  hardship  and  privation 
with  his  companions,  succeeded  in  inspiring  them  all  with  his 
own  heroic  spirit,  and  it  was  thus  that  in  perfect  calm  and 
resignation  they  awaited  their  end.  When  on  this  terrible 
Sunday  afternoon,  the  2nd  of  September,  Joachim  Ceyrat,  the 
principal  organizer  of  this  massacre,  whose  inveterate  hatred  of 
rehgion  filled  him  with  unrelenting  fury  towards  its  ministers, 
ordered  them  all  to  leave  the  church  which  served  as  their  prison 
and  assemble  in  the  garden,  they  well  knew  that  their  last 
moment  had  come.  Yet  it  was  still  with  imdisturbed  serenity 
that  for  half-an-hour  they  paced  the  shady  alleys,  whilst  the 
terrible  band  of  Maillard  came  steadily  nearer. 

Then  suddenly,  at  the  entrance  to  the  convent,  cries  of  rage 
were  heard ;  through  the  bars  was  seen  the  flash  of  sabres,  and 
at  this  the  priests,  retreating  into  a  small  oratory  at  the  far  end  of 
the  garden,  fell  on  their  knees  and  gave  each  other  the  last  blessing. 

The  Abb6  de  Pannonie,  standing  in  the  doorway  of  this 
chapel  with  the  Archbishop  of  Aries,  said,  "  Monseigneur,  I  think 
they  have  come  to  assassinate  us." 

*'  Then,"  said  the  Archbishop,  "  this  is  the  moment  of  our 
sacrifice ;  let  us  resign  ourselves  and  thank  God  we  can  offer 
Him  our  blood  in  so  splendid  a  cause."  And  with  these  words 
he  entered  the  oratory,  and  knelt  in  prayer  before  the  altar. 

Even  as  he  spoke  the  garden  gates  were  broken  down,  and 
a  drunken  band  of  assassins,  armed  with  pistols  and  sabres,  threw 
themselves  with  savage  howls  upon  their  victims.  The  first  to 
perish  was  P^re  Gerault,  who,  absorbed  in  his  breviary,  walked 
up  and  down  beside  the  fountain  in  the  middle  of  the  garden ; 
the  second  was  the  Abbe  Salins,  who  had  hurried  to  the  side  of 
his  fallen  comrade. 

Meanwhile    another  group  of   murderers  made   their  way 

*  Authorities  consulted  on  the  massacre  at  the  Cannes  :  Le  Couvent  des 
Carmes.  by  Alexandre  Sorel ;  Histoire  du  ClergS,  by  the  Abb6  Barruel 
(1794)  ;  La  Revolution  du  lo  AoUt,  vol.  ii.,  by  Peltier ;  also  Granier  de 
Cassagnac  and  Mortimer  Ternaux,  op.  cit.;  article  on  "  Les  Carmes"  in 
Paris^  rivolutionnaire,  by  G.  Lenotre. 


312        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

towards  the  oratory,  calling  out  furiously,  "  Where  is  the 
Archbishop  of  Aries  ?     Where  is  the  Archbishop  of  Aries  ?  " 

The  Archbishop,  hearing  his  name,  rose  from  his  knees  and 
came  towards  the  doorway.  In  vain  his  companions  attempted 
to  hold  him  back.  "  Let  me  pass/'  he  said ;  "  may  my  blood 
appease  them ! " 

Then,  standing  on  the  steps  of  the  chapel,  he  fearlessly  con- 
fronted his  assassins. 

"  It  is  you,  old  scoundrel,  who  are  the  Archbishop  of  Aries  ?  " 
cried  the  leader  of  the  band. 

"  Yes,  messieurs,  it  is  I." 

"  It  was  you  who  had  the  blood  of  patriots  shed  at  Aries  ?  " 

**  Messieurs,  I  have  never  had  the  blood  of  any  one  shed ; 
nor  have  I  ever  injured  any  one  in  my  life." 

"  Well,  then,  I  will  injure  you  !  "  answered  the  murderer, 
striking  the  Archbishop  across  the  forehead  with  a  sabre.  A 
second  assassin  dealt  him  a  fearful  blow  with  a  scimitar,  cleaving 
his  face  almost  in  two. 

The  heroic  old  man  uttered  never  a  murmur,  but,  still  erect 
on  the  steps  of  the  chapel,  raised  his  hands  to  the  streaming 
wound,  then,  at  a  third  blow,  fell  forward  at  the  feet  of  his 
murderers,  and  a  pike  was  thrust  through  his  heart. 

At  this  sight  a  savage  howl  of  triumph  rose  from  all  the 
assassins,  and,  levelling  their  pistols  at  the  kneeling  priests  inside 
the  chapel,  they  began  a  murderous  fusillade  ;  in  a  few  moments 
the  floor  was  strewn  with  the  dead  and  dying. 

Amongst  the  priests  who  had  not  taken  refuge  in  the  oratory 
were  a  certain  number  of  young  men  less  resigned  than  their 
superiors,  and  these,  seeing  the  massacre  in  progress,  attempted 
to  elude  their  murderers. 

Then  in  the  old  garden  a  terrible  man-hunt  began ;  around 
the  trunks  of  trees,  in  and  out  amongst  the  bushes,  the  raging 
horde  pursued  their  victims,  uttering  foul  blasphemies  against 
religion  and  singing  the  bloodthirsty  refrain  : 

Dansons  la  Carmagnole, 
Vive  le  son  1    vive  le  son  1 
Dansons  la  Carmagnole, 
Vive  le  son  du  canon  I 

A  few  of  the  young  priests,  with  extraordinary  agiHty,  succeeded 
in  scaling  the  ten-foot  waU  of  the  garden  into  the  neighbouring^ 
Rue  Cassette,  helping  themselves  upward  by  means  of  the  stom 
figure  of  a  monk  that  stood  close  against  it ;  but  some  of  these,] 
after  reaching  safety,  were  stricken  with  remorse  lest  theii 
escape  should  make  the  fate  of  those  they  had  left  behind  more 
terrible,  and  with  sublime  courage  they  climbed  back  again  into 
the  garden  and  met  their  death. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    313 

Suddenly  in  the  midst  of  the  butchery  a  voice  cried,  "  Halt ! 
This  is  not  the  way  to  go  to  work  !  " 

It  was  Maillard  who,  interposing  between  the  assassins  and  their 
victims,  ordered  those  of  the  priests  who  still  survived  to  be  driven 
into  the  church,  whilst  a  tribuned  was  set  up  for  their  judgement. 

At  the  Cannes  this  so-called  "Tribunal  of  the  Sovereign 
People  "  was  even  more  a  mockery  than  at  the  other  f<risons, 
for  here  none  of  the  populace  were  even  admitted  to  watch  the 
massacre  ;  ^  indeed,  the  "  ladies  of  the  quarter,"  that  is  to  say, 
the  poor  women  from  the  surrounding  streets,  who  had  collected 
outside  the  gate  where  they  could  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  scene 
taking  place  in  the  garden,  loudly  protested  against  the  shooting 
of  the  priests,^  and  it  seems  to  have  been  mainly  for  this  reason 
that  it  was  decided  to  finish  the  massacre  in  a  more  orderly 
manner  out  of  view  of  the  street,  whilst  at  the  same  time  a 
cordon  of  Gendarmes  Nationaux,  stationed  at  the  gates,  pre- 
vented the  people  from  breaking  in  and  interfering  with  the 
assassins.^  A  table  was  then  arranged  in  a  gloomy  cloister  of 
the  convent,  and  here  either  Maillard  or  a  commissioner  named 
Violette  *  seated  himself  with  the  Ust  of  the  prisoners,  drawn  up 
by  Joachim  Ceyrat,  spread  out  before  him.  Needless  to  say,  no 
trial  of  any  kind  took  place,  for  Ceyrat  that  morning  had  pro- 
nounced the  verdict,  "  All  who  are  in  the  Cannes  are  guilty  !  "  * 
A  few  managed  to  find  hiding-places  and  survived  the  massacre ; 
a  few  others  succeeded  in  melting  the  hearts  of  the  assassins ; 
the  rest,  summoned  two  by  two  from  the  church  to  appear  before 
the  tribunal,  rose  from  their  knees  blessing  God  for  the  privilege 
of  shedding  their  blood  in  His  cause,  and  clasping  the  Scriptures 
in  their  hands,  with  eyes  raised  to  Heaven,  went  out  into  the 
corridor  to  meet  their  death.  In  less  than  two  hours  one  hundred 
and  nineteen  victims  had  perished. 

THE   SECOND  MASSACRE  AT  THE  ABB  AYE « 

At  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening,  after  the  massacre  at  the 
Carmes,  Maillard  and  his  band  returned  to  the  Abbaye,  where 

*  "  The  principal  door  of  the  church  opening  into  the  Rue  de  Vaugirard 
remained  closed  during  the  whole  execution.  The  people  did  not  take  the 
least  part  in  it"  (Peltier,  La  Rdvolution  du  lo  AoiHt,  ii.  245). 

*  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  Histoire  des  Girondins,  ii.  292. 

*  Histoire  du  ClergS,  by  I'Abbe  Barruel,  p.  251. 

*  Granier  de  Cassagnac  says  it  was  Violette  ;  Sorel  {Le  Couvent  des 
Carmes,  p.  132)  says  it  was  more  probably  Maillard. 

*  Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  231. 

*  Authorities  consulted  on  the  massacres  at  the  Abbaye  (accounts  of 
prisoners) :  Mon  Agonie  de  trente-huit  Heures,  by  Jourgniac  de  St.  Meard  ; 
MSmoires  de  I'AbbS  Sicard ;  Memoires  inedits  de  I'Internonce  d  Paris 
pendant  la  Revolution,  Monseigneur  de  Salamon  (Plon  Nourrit,  1890)  ; 
Felh6pa6si,  op.  cit. 


314         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

a  number  of  prisoners  still  remained  incarcerated,  for  the  murder 
of  the  contingent  in  cabs  at  the  entrance  had  been  only  the 
prelude  to  a  general  massacre. 

The  Abb6  de  Salamon,  a  young  papal  nuncio,  whose  account 
of  these  September  days  is  perhaps  the  most  thrilling  of  all 
existing  records,  has  described,  with  frightful  minuteness,  the 
agony  of  mind  in  which  he  and  a  company  of  fellow-priests 
passed  that  interminable  Sunday  afternoon.  At  half-past  two, 
when  they  had  just  finished  dining  in  the  long  dark  hall  assigned 
them  as  a  prison,  the  gaoler  noisily  drew  the  bolts,  and  threw 
open  the  door  with  the  words,  "  Be  quick,  the  people  are 
marching  on  the  prisons,  and  have  already  begun  to  massacre 
all  the  prisoners."  It  was,  in  fact,  at  this  very  moment  that  the 
procession  of  cabs  arrived  at  the  Abbaye  and  the  carnage  began. 

At  this  news,  says  the  Abb6  Salamon,  "  there  was  great 
agitation  amongst  us.  Some  cried,  '  What  will  happen  to  us  ?  ' 
Others,  '  Then  we  must  die  !  '  Many  went  to  the  door  to  look 
through  the  key-hole — a  hole  that  did  not  exist,  for  prison  locks 
only  open  from  outside  and  show  no  opening  on  the  interior. 
Others  sprang  up  on  their  heels  as  if  to  look  out  of  the  windows, 
which  were  fourteen  feet  high;  finally,  others  walking  up  and 
down  without  knowing  where  they  were  going  knocked  their 
legs  violently  against  the  seats  and  tables.  .  .  .  We  began  to 
hear  the  cries  of  the  people ;  it  was  like  a  great  distant 
murmur." 

Standing  apart  were  two  young  Minim  brothers — "the  youngest 
one  had  an  angelic  face."  The  Abbe  Salamon,  going  up  to  them, 
spoke  words  of  comfort.  *'  Ah,  mon  Dieu,  monsieur,"  answered 
the  younger,  "  I  do  not  regard  it  as  a  disgrace  to  die  for  reUgion ; 
on  the  contrary,  I  am  afraid  they  may  not  kill  me  because 
I  am  only  a  sub-deacon."  The  Abbe  Salamon,  none  too  devout 
himself,  admits  that  he  blushed  at  these  words,  '*  worthy  of  the 
earliest  martyrs  of  the  Church." 

But  the  hour  for  martyrdom  had  not  yet  arrived  ;  the  band 
of  assassins,  after  murdering  the  priests  at  the  entrance  of  the 
convent,  had  gone  on  to  the  Cannes,  and  for  some  hours  all  w: 
quiet.    The  priests  spent  the  rest  of  the  afternoon  in  prayer  an< 
confession.    Then  suddenly  the  door  was  thrown  open  again, 
and  the  voice  of  the  gaoler  called  out  roughly,  "  The  people  are' 
more  and  more  irritated;   there  are  perhaps  2000  men  in  th 
Abbaye."    And,  indeed,  the  tumult  and  the  howhng  of  the  mo!^ 
could  now  be  heard  distinctly  by  the  prisoners.     The  gaol 
added  brutally,  "  It  is  just  announced  that  all  the  priests  in  th 
Cannes  have  been  massacred."     At  these  words  the  assembled 
company  threw  themselves  with  one  accord  at  the  feet  of  the 
Cure  de  St.  Jean  en  Grdve— a  saintly  old  man  of  eighty,  "  wh< 


1 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    315 

retained  all  the  serenity  of  a  noble  soul  " — and  begged  him  to  give 
them  absolution  w  articulo  mortis. 

After  this  had  been  given  aU  remained  kneeling,  whilst  the 
old  cure  said,  "  We  may  regard  ourselves  as  sick  men  about  to 
die.  ...  I  will  recite  the  prayers  of  the  dying ;  join  with  me 
that  God  may  have  pity  on  us." 

But  at  the  opening  words,  uttered  with  so  great  dignity  by 
the  aged  priest,  "  Depart,  Christian  souls,  from  this  world  in 
the  name  of  God  the  Father  Almighty  .  .  .,"  almost  all  burst  into 
tears.  *'  Some  lay  brothers  loudly  lamented  at  dying  so  young, 
and  gave  way  to  imprecations  against  their  assassins.  The  good 
cure  interrupted  them,  representing  to  them  with  great  gentleness 
that  they  must  generously  pardon,  and  that  perhaps  if  God  were 
pleased  with  their  resignation  He  might  create  means  to  save 
them." 

Such  were  the  men  who  were  represented  as  planning  to 
massacre  the  wives  and  children  of  the  citizens  I 

Meanwhile,  outside  the  gate  of  the  prison  in  the  Rue  Sainte- 
Marguerite,  the  massacre  of  the  prisoners  had  begun.  A  band 
of  assassins,  preceding  that  of  Maillard,  which  was  still  occupied 
at  the  Cannes,  had  besieged  the  gate  clamouring  for  victims,  and 
the  concierge,  fearing  to  resist  them,  had  handed  out  several 
prisoners  committed  to  his  care.  It  was  thus  that,  when  Maillard 
and  his  band  returned  from  the  Cannes,  they  found  the  hideous 
work  already  begun.  This  *  *  band  of  massacrers, ' '  says  Felhem^si, 
"comes  back  covered  with  blood  and  dust;  these  monsters 
are  tired  of  carnage  but  not  sated  with  blood.  They  are  out  of 
breath,  they  ask  for  wine,  for  wine,  or  death.  What  reply  can 
be  made  to  this  irresistible  desire  ?  The  civil  committee  of  the 
section  gives  them  orders  for  24  pints  to  be  drawn  at  a  neigh- 
bouring wine-merchant.  Soon  they  have  drunk,  they  are  in- 
toxicated, and  contemplate  with  satisfaction  the  corpses  strewn 
in  the  courtyard  of  the  Abbaye." 

It  was  then  decided,  in  order  to  give  an  air  of  justice  to  their 
proceedings,  that  again  a  so-called  "  popular  tribunal,"  imder 
MaiUard,  should  be  set  up. 

Maillard,  who  was  himself  a  thief,^  had  brought  with  him 
twelve  swindlers  to  act  as  his  accomplices,  and  these  men, 
mingUng  in  the  crowd  "as  if  by  accident,"  came  forward  "  in 
the  name  of  the  Sovereign  People  "  and  seized  the  registers  of  the 
prison.  At  this ' '  the  turnkeys  tremble,  the  gaoler  and  the  gaoler's 
wife  faint,  the  prison  is  surrounded  by  furious  men,  cries  and 
tumult  increase."  ^  Suddenly  one  of  the  commissioners  of 
the  section  appeared  on  the  scene,  and  standing  on  a  footstool 

*  MSmoires  de  Senart  {edition  de  Lescure),  p.  28. 
2  Felhemesi. 


3i6        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

attempted  to  soothe  the  mob,  whom  he  took  to  be  the  cause  of 
the  uproar :  "  My  comrades,  my  friends,  you  are  good  patriots 
.  .  .  but  you  must  love  justice.  There  is  not  one  of  you  who 
does  not  shudder  at  the  frightful  idea  of  soaking  his  hands  in 
innocent  blood  !  "  Even  this  vile  mob,  collected  by  the  leaders 
to  abet  them  in  their  crimes,  showed  itself  amenable  to  sentiments 
of  humanity  and  justice,  and  cried  out  loudly,  "  Yes !   Yes  !  " 

But  those  who  had  ordained  the  massacres  had  prepared 
against  any  eventuahties  of  this  kind,  and  a  man  in  the  crowd 
was  ready  with  the  prescribed  phrase.  Springing  forward, 
with  blazing  eyes  and  brandishing  a  blood-stained  sword,  he 
interrupted  the  orator  in  these  words  :  "  Say,  then,  monsieur  le 
citoyen,  ...  do  you  wish  to  lull  us  to  sleep  ?  .  .  .  I  am  not  an 
orator,  I  delude  no  one,  and  I  tell  you  that  I  am  the  father  of  a 
family,  that  I  have  a  wife  and  five  children  whom  I  am  willing 
to  leave  here  under  the  protection  of  my  section  in  order  to  go 
and  fight  the  enemy,  but  meanwhile  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
rascals  who  are  in  this  prison,  or  the  others  who  will  open  the 
doors  to  them,  shall  go  and  murder  my  wife  and  children  .  .  . 
so  by  me,  or  by  others,  the  prison  shall  be  purged  of  all  these 
cursed  scoundrels  !  " 

Instantly  the  mob,  rallying  to  the  word  of  command,  shouted, 
**  He  is  right ;  no  mercy  !  "  and  Maillard's  accomphces  called  out 
for  a  tribunal  to  be  formed  by  their  leader  :  "  Monsieur  Maillard  I 
Citizen  Maillard  as  president !  He  is  a  good  man.  Citizen 
MaiUard  !  "  ^ 

In  a  haU  opening  on  the  garden  of  the  convent  the  terrible 
tribunal  was  then  set  up.  At  a  table  covered  with  a  green  cloth, 
on  which  ink,  pens,  and  paper  were  arranged,  Maillard,  in  his 
black  coat  and  powdered  hair,  took  his  place,  with  the  register 
of  the  prison  spread  before  him.  This  register,  preserved  by 
the  "  Prefecture  of  PoHce,"  long  remained  one  of  the  ghastUest 
reUcs  of  the  revolutionary  era  ;  on  the  greasy  pages  great  marks 
of  wine  and  blood  might  be  seen,  and  all  down  the  Ust  of  names 
blood-stained  finger-prints  left  by  the  assassins,  as  they  indicated, 
the  prisoner  concerning  whom  they  asked  for  orders.^ 

Needless  to  say,  the  verdicts  had  been  arranged  beforehand, 
and  it  was  then  agreed  that  instead  of  pronouncing  sentence  of 
death  the  words  "  To  La  Force !  "  should  be  employed.  By  this 
means  the  victims,  imagining  themselves  to  be  acquitted  and 
about  to  be  transferred  to  this  other  prison,  would  go  forward 
without  a  struggle  into  the  arms  of  their  assassins.    The  ruse, 

1  Felliem6si,  op.  cit. 

*  Histoire  des  Girondins,  by  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  ii.  165.  M.  de 
Cassagnac  made  use  of  these  documents  for  his  work,  but  they  were 
destroyed  later  by  the  Commune  in  1871. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER      317 

no  doubt,  served  a  double  purpose,  for  in  cases  where  no  evidence 
was  forthcoming  against  the  prisoner  the  so-called  "judges" 
could  absolve  themselves  of  the  injustice  of  condemning  him,  and 
attribute  his  death  to  the  uncontrollable  passions  of  "  the  people." 

The  first  victims  of  this  mock  tribunal  were  the  Swiss,  who 
had  been  imprisoned  after  the  siege  of  the  Tuileries  on  the  loth 
of  August.  These,  to  the  number  of  forty-three,  were  all  common 
soldiers,  for  their  officers,  with  the  exception  of  M.  de  Reding, 
who  lay  wounded  in  the  chapel  of  the  Abbaye,  had  been  taken 
to  the  Conciergerie.  A  voice,  speaking  through  the  window  of 
the  hall  occupied  by  the  "  tribunal,"  and  declaring  itself  to  be 
"  entrusted  with  the  wish  of  the  people,"  now  exclaimed  loudly, 
"  There  are  Swiss  in  the  prison,  lose  no  time  in  examining  them  ; 
they  are  all  guilty,  not  one  must  escape  !  "  And  the  rabble 
obediently  echoed,  "  That  is  just,  that  is  just,  let  us  begin 
with  them  !  "  The  tribunal  thereupon  pronounced  the  words, 
"  To  La  Force  !  " 

Maillard  then  went  to  the  Swiss  and  ordered  them  to  come 
forth.  "  You  assassinated  the  people  on  the  loth  of  August ; 
to-day  they  demand  justice,  you  must  go  to  La  Force."  The 
unhappy  Swiss,  instantly  understanding  the  significance  of  these 
words,  for  the  howls  of  the  mob  had  reached  them  in  their  prison, 
fell  on  their  knees,  crying  out,  "  Mercy  1  Mercy  !  "  But  Maillard 
was  inexorable.  Two  of  the  assassins  followed,  saying  harshly 
to  the  prisoners,  "  Gome,  come,  make  up  your  minds  !  Let  us 
go  I  "  Then  "  lamentations  and  horrible  groans  "  arose  ;  the 
unhappy  Swiss,  all  huddhng  together  at  the  back  of  the  room, 
clung  to  each  other,  embraced,  gave  way  to  pitiful  despair  at  the 
sight  of  so  hideous  a  death.  A  few  white-haired  old  men, 
*'  whose  looks  resembled  those  of  CoHgny,"  almost  succeeded  in 
disarming  their  murderers.  But  a  relentless  voice  cried,  "  Well, 
which  of  you  is  to  go  out  the  first  ?  "  At  this  a  tall  young 
man  in  a  blue  overcoat,  with  a  noble  countenance  and  martial 
air,  came  forward  fearlessly  :  "I  pass  the  first !  "  he  cried,  *'  I 
will  give  the  example  !  "  Throwing  off  his  hat  he  advanced 
proudly,  "  with  the  apparent  calm  of  concentrated  fury,"  and 
faced  the  raging  crowd.  For  a  moment  the  horde,  stupefied  by 
his  intrepidity,  fell  back ;  a  circle  formed  around  him ;  with 
folded  arms  he  stood  defiant,  then,  realizing  that  death  was 
inevitable,  suddenly  rushed  forward  upon  the  pikes  and  bayonets, 
and  the  next  moment  fell  pierced  with  a  hundred  wounds. 

All  but  one  of  his  unhappy  comrades  shared  the  same  fate ; 
this  sole  survivor,  a  boy  "  of  ingenuous  countenance,"  succeeded 
in  enlisting  the  S5mipathy  of  a  Marseillais,  who  bore  him  forth 
triumphantly  amidst  the  applause  of  the  crowd. 

Four  other  victims  followed,  accused  of  forging  assignats; 


3i8        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

then  Montmorin,  the  former  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  and 
arch-enemy  of  Brissot  and  the  pro-Prussian  party.  Montmorin 
had  been  summoned  before  the  bar  of  the  Assembly  on  the  22nd 
of  August  and  accused  by  the  Girondins  of  having  opposed  an 
alUance  between  France  and  Prussia,  and  of  wishing  to  maintain 
the  Franco-Austrian  alliance,  but  the  Assembly,  not  entirely 
dominated  by  tliis  faction,  had  acquitted  Montmorin,  and  so  his 
death  by  violent  means  was  decreed.  Can  we  doubt  that  Peltier 
was  right  in  sa5dng  that  this  foul  crime  lay  at  the  door  of  Brissot,^ 
and  may  not  the  hand  of  Prussia  also  be  detected  here  ?  Yet 
this  too  was  attributed  to  the  fury  of  "  the  people  "  !  The 
register  of  Maillard  bears  these  words,  beside  the  name  of 
Montmorin :  "  On  the  4th  of  September  ^  1792,  the  Sieur 
Montmorin  has  been  judged  by  the  people  and  executed  on 
the  spot." 

Other  victims  followed  quickly — Thierry  de  VlQe  d'Avray, 
valet  de  chambre  to  the  King,  and  guardian  of  the  Garde  Meuble 
where  the  Crown  jewels  were  kept,  was  condemned  with  the 
words,  "  Like  master,  like  man  1  "  Two  magistrates,  Buob 
and  Bosquillon,  who  had  started  an  inquiry  on  the  events  of  the 
20th  of  June,  the  Comte  de  St.  Marc,  the  Comte  de  Wittgenstein, 
the  solicitor  Seron — accused  of  calumniating  the  nation  because 
he  had  complained  of  being  rudely  awakened  from  his  sleep  on 
the  night  of  his  arrest — ^were  all  put  to  death  with  indescribable 
barbarity. 

Jourgniac  de  St.  M6ard  has  vividly  described  the  agony  of 
mind  in  which  he  and  his  fellow-prisoners  passed  this  terrible 
night  and  the  no  less  terrible  day  that  followed,  for  the  piercing 
screams  of  the  victims  penetrated  to  them  in  their  prison,  and 
none  doubted  that  before  long  their  own  turn  must  come. 

*'  The  principal  thing  with  which  we  occupied  ourselves," 
says  St.  M6ard,  "  was  to  know  what  position  we  should  assume 
in  order  to  receive  death  the  least  painfully  when  we  entered 
the  place  of  massacre.  From  time  to  time  we  sent  one  of  our 
comrades  to  the  window  of  the  tower,  to  tell  us  what  positionj 
those  unfortunate  people  took  up  who  were  then  being  immolate( 
so  as  to  calculate  from  their  report  that  which  it  would  be  b( 
for  us  to  assume.  They  reported  that  those  who  held  out  theii 
hands  suffered  much  longer,  because  the  sabre-cuts  were  stop] 
before  reaching  their  heads — ^there  were  even  some  whose  banc 
and  arms  fell  before  their  bodies — and  that  those  who  held  thei 
behind  their  backs  seemed  to  suffer  much  the  least.  .  .  .  Well,  11 
was  on  these  horrible  details  we  deliberated.  .  .  .  We  calculate( 

*  Peltier,  La  Revolution  du  10  Aout,  ii.  193,  194,  389. 

*  This   was   an   error.     Montmorin   was    massacred    on    the    2nd 
September. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    319 

the  advantages  of  this  last  position,  and  we  advised  each  other 
to  assume  it  when  our  turn  came  to  be  massacred  !  .  .  ." 

It  was  not  until  nearly  midnight  that  the  company  of  priests, 
which  included  the  Abb6  Salamon,  was  led  before  the  terrible 
tribunal. 

"  We  walked,"  says  the  mmcio,  who  certainly  had  not  acquired 
the  resignation  of  his  more  devout  companions,  "  escorted  by  a 
crowd  in  arms,  in  the  midst  of  a  great  number  of  torches,  and 
under  the  rays  of  a  beautiful  moon  that  Ht  up  all  those  vile 
scoundrels."  Arraigned  before  the  green-covered  table  they 
awaited  their  sentence,  whilst  a  quarrel  took  place  amongst  the 
judges.  At  last  Maillard,  by  loudly  ringing  his  bell,  obtained 
silence,  and  one  of  his  assistants  addressed  the  crowd :  "  Here 
are  a  lot  of  rascals  who  are  waiting  for  the  just  punishment  of 
their  crimes.  All  these  people  are  priests ;  they  are  the  sworn 
enemies  of  the  nation,  who  would  not  take  the  oath  .  .  .;  they 
are  all  aristocrats,  we  must  begin  with  them,  certainly  they  are 
the  most  guilty." 

The  form  of  interrogatory  was  confined  to  the  one  question, 
"  Have  you  taken  the  oath  ?  "  The  first  to  answer  it  was  the 
old  Cure  de  St.  Jean  en  Greve,  who,  owning  courageously  that  he 
had  not  taken  it  because  he  regarded  it  as  contrary  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  his  religion,  asked  only  to  be  spared  a  lingering  death  in 
consideration  of  his  great  age  and  infirmity.  Instantly  a  storm 
of  blows  descended  on  the  venerable  head,  and  a  moment  later 
the  Ufeless  body  was  dragged  out  to  the  cries  of  **  Vive  la 
nation  !  "  Nearly  aU  his  companions  shared  the  same  fate  ; 
amongst  the  last  to  fall  were  the  two  Minim  brothers,  over  whom 
a  furious  struggle  took  place,  some  of  the  assassins  wishing  to 
take  them  out  and  kill  them,  others  to  detain  them  in  the  hall. 
"  I  noticed,"  says  Salamon,  "  that  the  under-deacon  who  so 
desired  to  die  opposed  less  resistance  to  those  who  wished  to 
drag  him  out  than  to  those  who  wished  to  save  him.  In  the  end 
the  scoundrels  triumphed,  and  they  were  massacred." 

Such  was  the  nature  of  the  *'  gangrene  "  which  the  re- 
generators of  France  held  it  necessary  to  destroy  !  Of  such 
stuff  was  made  the  clergy  of  the  Old  Regime,  described  to  us  as 
"  vicious  "  and  "  effete,"  whose  fate  was  but  the  just  retribution 
of  their  deeds !  Amongst  the  priests  who  perished  on  these 
September  days  was  not  a  single  one  who  had  been  distinguished 
for  profligacy  or  extravagance  ;  the  great  majority  were  humble, 
saintly  men,  many  white-haired  and  venerable,  whose  lives  had 
been  passed  in  doing  good,  and  who  in  death  displayed  a  heroic 
resignation  never  surpassed  in  the  earliest  days  of  Christendom. 
No,  the  Old  Order  was  not  effete  that  produced  such  men  as  these ! 

The  lay  prisoners,  however,  were  not  all  of  the  stuff  of  which 


320        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

martyrs  are  made.  Some  defended  themselves  vigorously.  Two 
quite  young  men,  who  had  been  recognized  as  members  of  the 
King's  new  bodyguard,  were  dragged  forward  and  denounced  to 
the  mob  as  chevaliers  du  poignard,  who  must  be  punished  on  the 
spot,  whereat  the  mob  replied  with  savage  howls  of  "  Death  ! 
death  !  " 

"  They  were,"  says  the  Abbe  Salamon,  "  two  young  men  of 
superb  figures  and  handsome  countenances  .  .  ." ;  the  crowd 
*'  began  to  overwhelm  them  with  insults  ;  then  one  man,  more 
cowardly  than  the  rest,  gave  the  tallest  one  a  violent  blow  wit 
a  sabre,  to  which  he  replied  only  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulde 
Then  began  a  horrible  struggle  between  these  vile  drinkers 
blood  and  these  two  young  men,  who,  although  unarmedj 
defended  themselves  Uke  lions.  They  threw  many  (of  th 
assailants)  to  the  ground,  and  I  think  if  only  they  had  had 
knife  they  would  have  been  victorious.  At  last  they  fell  on  the 
floor  of  the  hall  all  pierced  with  blows.  They  seemed  in  despair 
at  dying,  and  I  heard  one  crying  out,  '  Must  one  die  at  this  agi 
and  in  this  manner  ?  '  " 

All  through  this  dreadful  night  the  massacres  continued 
the  courtyards  of  the  prison.     The  Abbe  Sicard,  still  detained 
the  hall  of  the  section,  could  hear  the  cries  of  the  victims,  th( 
howls  of  the  murderers,  the  savage  songs  and  dances  taking  pla 
around  the  bodies  of  the  dead.     At  intervals  an  assassin,  wi 
sleeves  rolled  up,  clutching  a  blood-stained  sabre,  would  come 
to  the  section  clamouring  for  more  drink  :   "  Our  good  brothers 
have  been  long  at  work  in  the  courtyard ;   they  are  tired,  their 
lips  are  dry  ;  I  come  to  ask  for  wine  for  them  !  "    And  finally  the 
committee  tremblingly  ordered  them  four  more  flagons.     Then, 
crazed  with  the  fumes  of  alcohol,  the  massacrers  returned  to 
their  hideous  task.     "  One,"  says  the  Abbe  Sicard,  "  complained 
that  these  aristocrats  died  too  quickly,  that  only  the  first  ones 
had  the  pleasure  of  striking,  and  it  was  decided  to  hit  them  only 
with  the  flat  of  the  sword,  and  then  make  them  run  between  t 
rows  of  massacrers,  as  was  formerly  the  practice  with  soldie 
condemned  to  be  scourged.     It  was  also  arranged  that  the; 
should  be  seats  around  this  place  for  the  *  ladies '  and  '  gentl 
men.'  .  .  .  One  can  imagine,"  Sicard  adds  significantly,  "  whai 
ladies  these  were  !  " 

The  council  of  the  Commune  had  taken  care  to  provide  n 
only  the  actors  but  the  audience.  The  women  of  the  districti 
trained  at  the  Societe  Fratemelle,  were  reinforced  during 
the  massacres  of  September  by  a  terrible  brigade  of  female 
malefactors  released  from  the  prisons,  whose  rdle  was  to  applaud 
the  assassinations  and  incite  the  murderers  to  further  violence 
It  was  this  legion  that  afterwards  peopled  the  tribunes  of  t^ 


I 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    321 

Terror,  and  became  known  as  the  tricoteuses  or  "  furies  "  of  the 
guillotine.^ 

Nothing  had  been  left  to  chance  by  the  organizers  of  the 
massacres.  In  the  middle  of  the  night  members  of  the  Commune, 
alarmed  lest  under  the  influence  of  fiery  drinks  and  excitement 
some  of  the  spoils  they  counted  on  might  elude  them,  deputed 
Billaud-Varenne  again  to  harangue  the  massacrers. 

"  My  friends,  my  good  friends,"  cried  Billaud,  standing  on  a 
platform  in  their  midst,  "  the  Commune  sends  me  to  you  to 
represent  to  you  that  you  are  dishonouring  this  beautiful  day. 
They  have  been  told  that  you  are  robbing  these  rascals  of  aristo- 
crats after  executing  justice  on  them.  Leave,  leave  all  the  jewels, 
all  the  money  and  goods  they  have  on  them  for  the  expenses  of 
the  great  act  of  justice  you  are  exercising.  They  will  have  a 
care  to  pay  you  as  was  arranged  with  you.  Be  noble,  great,  and 
generous  like  the  profession  you  follow.  May  everything  in 
this  great  day  be  worthy  of  the  people  whose  sovereignty  is 
entrusted  to  you  !  "  ^ 

And  these  were  the  massacres  that  the  Commune  afterwards 
declared  itself  powerless  to  prevent ! 

Even  to  the  most  ingenuous  observer  it  was  evident  that  the 
atrocities  taking  place  were  not  a  matter  of  misdirected  popular 
fury,  but  the  result  of  a  deep-laid  scheme.  Honest  Dr.  John 
Moore,  a  stranger  to  all  intrigues,  had  been  told  earlier  in  the  day 
that  "  the  people  "  had  broken  into  the  Abbaye  and  were 
massacring  the  prisoners.  But  at  midnight,  as  he  sits  writing 
in  his  hotel,  close  by  the  prison,  a  sudden  flash  of  revelation 
comes  to  him  :  all  at  once  he  understands,  and  with  a  thriU  of 
reaUzation  writes  these  illuminating  words  :  "Is  this  the  work 
of  a  furious  and  deluded  mob  ?  How  come  the  citizens  of  this 
populous  metropoUs  to  remain  passive  spectators  of  so  dreadful 

*  Histoire  secrdte  du  Tribunal  rSvolutionnaire,  by  Proussinalle,  p.  42  ; 
Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iii.  272,  273. 

*  Mimoires  de  I' Abbe  Sicard;  Felh6m6si,  op.  cit.  It  seems,  however, 
that  Billaud  did  not  pay  them  as  arranged,  for  Felh6m6si  relates  that  a 
terrible  uproar  arose  next  day  when  he  reappeared  at  the  prison,  and  he 
was  surrounded  by  a  horde  of  the  assassins  clamouring  for  higher  salaries. 
"  Do  you  think  I  have  earned  only  24  francs  ?  "  a  butcher's  apprentice, 
armed  with  a  club,  said  loudly.  "  I  have  killed  more  than  forty  on  my 
own  account. ' '  This  seems  to  confirm  the  statement  of  Maton  de  la  Varenne 
that  on  engagement  they  were  promised  30  livres,  but  some  were  only  paid 
24  Uvres,  as  the  registers  of  the  Commune  reveal.  The  Abb6  de  Salamon, 
who  saw  them  being  paid  on  the  Wednesday  morning,  September  5,  by  a 
member  of  the  Commune  wearing  his  municipal  scarf,  says  :  "  The  salary 
given  to  those  who  had,  as  they  said,  '  worked  well ' — that  is  to  say, 
massacred  well — was  from  30  to  35  francs.  A  certain  number  obtained 
less.  I  even  saw  one  who  only  obtained  6  francs.  His  work  was  not 
considered  sufficient"  {Memoires  de  Monseigneur  de  Salamon,  p.  122). 


322        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

an  outrage  ?  Is  it  possible  that  this  is  the  accomphshment  of  aj 
plan  concerted  two  or  three  weeks  ago  ;  that  those  arbitral 
arrests  were  ordered  with  this  view ;  that  false  rumours  ol 
treasons  and  intended  insurrections  and  massacres  were  spread^ 
to  exasperate  the  people ;  and  that,  taking  advantage  of  th^j 
rumours  of  bad  news  from  the  frontiers,  orders  have  been  issued 
for  firing  the  cannon  and  sounding  the  tocsin,  to  increase  the; 
alarm,  and  terrify  the  pubUc  into  acquiescence ;  while  a  hand  oj 
chosen  ruffians  were  hired,  to  massacre  those  whom  hatred,  revenge, 
or  fear  had  destined  to  destruction,  but  whom  law  and  justice 
could  not  destroy  ? 

"It  is  now  past  twelve  at  midnight,  and  the  bloody  work 
still  goes  on  !    Almighty  God  !  " 

MASSACRE  AT  LA  FORGE  i 

Not  only  at  the  Abbaye  was  the  bloody  work  in  progress  j ; 
during  the  same  night  the  Chatelet  and  the  Gonciergerie  had  been 
invaded  by  other  bands  of  massacrers.     At  one  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  the  3rd  of  September,  the  massacre  began  at  La  Force. 
It  was  here  that  a  number  of  aristocrats  had  been  incarcerated 
after  the  loth  of  August ;   these  included  M.  de  Rulhieres,  ex- 
commander  of  the  mounted  guard  of  Paris ;  MM.  de  Baudin  and; 
de  la  Ghesnaye,  who  had  remained  in  command  at  the  Tuileries ! 
after  the  murder  of  Mandat ;    several  of  the  Queen's  ladies, 
Madame  and  Mademoiselle  de  Tourzel,  Madame  de  Sainte-Brice, 
the  Princesse  de  LambaUe,  Madame  de  Mackau,  Madame  Bazire, 
and  Madame  de  Navarre ;   also  a  foster-brother  of  the  Queen's . 
named  Weber,  and  Maton  de  la  Varenne,  the  author  of  the 
memoirs  already  quoted.     There  were  also  ten  or  twelve  priests  ; 
the  rest  of  the  prisoners  were  common  malefactors.     Very  fewj 
of  the  aristocrats  perished,  only  about  six  in  aU  ;  these  included! 
De  Rulhieres  and  De  la  Ghesnaye.     Weber  and  Maton  de  la 
Varenne,  though  both  ardent  Royahsts,  were  acquitted,  amidst 
the  frantic  applause  of  the  populace.^    AU  the  Queen's  ladies,, 
with  one  tragic  exception,  were  hkewise  set  at  Hberty  by  the^ 
Gommune  through  the  influence  of  Manuel.     But  there  was  one; 
victim  whom  even  Manuel  was  powerless  to  save.     This  was  the] 
Queen's  friend,  the  iU-fated  Princesse  de  LambaUe. 

"  The  condemnation  of  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe,"  MM. 
Buchez  et  Roux  have  the  infamy  to  write,  "  is  it  not  quite  simply^ 
explained  by  the  particular  hatred  the  people  bore  her  ?  "  ^ 

*  Authorities  consulted  on  massacre  at  La  Force  :  Memoires  de  Weber, 
ii.  265  ;  Ma  Risurrection,  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne  ;  Les  Crimes  de  Marat, 
by  Maton  de  la  Varenne. 

*  Moniteur,  xiii.  603.  •  Buchez  et  Roux,  xvii.  418. 


I 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    323 

No  blacker  calumny  was  ever  uttered  against  either  the  princess 
or  the  people.  "  Amidst  all  our  agitations/'  even  the  revolu- 
tionary Mercier  admits,  "  she  had  played  no  r61e  ;  nothing  could 
render  her  suspect  in  the  eyes  of  the  people,  by  whom  she  was  only 
known  for  innumerable  acts  of  benevolence/'  ^  On  the  estates 
of  her  father-in-law,  the  Due  de  Penthi^vre,  with  whom  she  had 
lived  since  the  early  death  of  her  husband,  she  was  known  as 
"  the  good  angel "  ;  in  the  whole  world  she  had  but  one  im- 
placable enemy,  her  husband's  brother-in-law,  PhiKppe  d'Orleans. 
It  has  been  said  that  the  princess's  dowry  had  excited  the  cupidity 
of  the  duke,  and  that  by  her  death  he  hoped  to  add  it  to  his 
waning  fortune;  whether  this  was  so  or  not  the  duke  had  a 
further  reason  for  resentment,  namely,  that  the  princess,  recogniz- 
ing his  complicity  in  the  march  on  Versailles  on  the  5th  of  October 
1789,  had  refused  from  that  time  onward  to  associate  with  him.^ 
This  was  enough  to  arouse  all  the  bitter  hatred  of  which  PhiHppe 
showed  himself  pecuUarly  capable,  and  under  the  influence  of 
wounded  vanity  he  planned  a  terrible  revenge. 

Manuel,  who  had  hitherto  been  a  partisan  of  the  Due 
d'Orleans,  had,  however,  been  paid  the  sum  of  50,000  ^cus  to 
save  the  princess,  and,  unlike  Danton,  Manuel  displayed  a  certain 
degree  of  integrity  with  regard  to  compacts  of  this  kind.  Accord- 
ingly he  carried  out  his  promise  to  rescue  Madame  and  Mademoi- 
selle de  Tourzel,  for  whom  he  had  received  a  large  ransom,  and 
also  gave  orders  that  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe  should  be  set  at 
liberty.^  But  the  accomplices  of  the  duke  were  too  strong  for 
him.  Once  again  the  services  of  the  bloodthirsty  Rotondo 
had  been  enhsted — Rotondo  who,  after  the  disbanding  of  the 
"  Compagnie  du  Sabbat,"  still  remamed  in  the  pay  of  the 
Orl^aniste  conspiracy,  and  now  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  a 
band  of  ferocious  assassins  specially  hired  to  carry  out  the 
vengeance  of  the  duke.  The  men  that  composed  this  gang  were 
Gonor,  a  wheelwright,  Renier,  known  as  "  le  grand  Nicolas," 
an  agitator  of  the  Palais  Royal  called  Petit  Mamain,  Grison.  and 
Charlat.4 

At  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  September  3  the  Princesse 
de  Lamballe  was  brought  before  the  so-called  "  tribunal "  pre- 
sided over  by  Hebert,^  hereafter  to  become  for  ever  infamous 

^  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  no. 

«  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  iii.  210  ;  Histoire  particuliire 
by  Maton  de  la  Varenne,  p.  395  ;   Peltier,  Revolution  du  10  AoiXt,  ii.  313.  ' 

»  Montjoie.  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  iii.  210;  Histoire  pariiculiire  by 
Maton  de  la  Varenne,  p.  395. 

*  Ibid. ;  also  Beaulieu.  iv.  no  ;  Histoire  des  Girondins,  by  Granier  de 
Cassagnac.  li.  510.  5i5  ;   Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  498. 

»  Histoire  particuliire,  by  Maton  de  la  Varenne  ;  Revolution  du  loAoAt 
by  Peltier,  ii.  305. 


324        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

as  the  author  of  the  atrocious  accusation  against  the  Queen  at 
her  trial.     The  verdict  was,  of  course,  a  foregone  conclusion. 

*'  When  the  princess  had  arrived  before  this  frightful  tribunal,'* 
says  Peltier,  "  the  sight  of  the  blood-stained  weapons,  of  the 
murderers,  whose  faces  and  clothing  were  marked  with  blood, 
caused  her  so  great  a  shock  that  she  fell  into  one  fainting  fit 
after  another."  Then,  as  soon  as  she  had  sufiQciently  recovered 
consciousness,  her  cross-examination  began. 

"  Who  are  you  ?  " 

"  Marie  Louise,  Princess  of  Savoy." 

"  Your  position  ?  " 

"  Superintendent  of  the  Queen's  household." 

'*  Have  you  any  knowledge  of  the  plots  on  the  loth  of 
August  ?  " 

"  I  do  not  know  whether  there  were  any  plots  on  the  loth  of 
August,  but  I  know  that  I  had  no  knowledge  of  them." 

"  Take  the  oath  of  liberty,  of  equaUty,  of  hatred  for  the  King, 
the  Queen,  and  royalty." 

"  I  will  wiUingly  swear  to  the  first,  but  not  to  the  last.  It  is 
not  in  my  heart." 

Some  one  whispered  to  her,  "  Swear — if  you  do  not,  you  are 
dead." 

But  this  heroic  woman,  whose  excessive  nervousness  had 
excited  even  the  kindly  derision  of  her  friends,  now  that  the 
supreme  moment  had  come,  never  faltered  in  her  resolution ; 
over  the  quivering  flesh  the  indomitable  spirit  rose  triumphantly. 
Without  a  word  she  walked  towards  the  wicket,  well  knowing  the 
fate  that  there  awaited  her. 

The  Judge  then  said,  "  Set  Madame  free." 

These  words  were  the  signal  of  death.^ 

Instantly  the  hired  band  of  assassins  closed  around  her. 
The  gate  was  opened.  It  is  said  that  at  the  sight  of  the  corpses 
piled  around  her  she  cried  out  faintly,  "  Fi !  I'horreur !  "  and 
that  two  of  her  murderers,  of  whom  one  was  Gonor,  holding  her 
beneath  the  arms,  forced  her  to  walk  forward,  fainting  at  each 
footstep,  over  the  bodies  of  the  dead. 

But  the  hideous  story  of  her  end  is  already  known  to  every 
one,  and  need  not  be  related  here.  For  the  purpose  of  this  book 
it  is  necessary  only  to  follow  the  intrigue  that  ordained  the  crime, 
and  to  prove  the  non-complicity  of  the  people. 

The  chief  murderer  of  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe  was  thi 
an  Italian — Rotondo.     Of  this  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever, 
for,  besides  the  assertions  of  Montjoie.  we  have  the  evidence 
Maton  de  la  Varenne,  who  was  in  the  prison  of  La  Force  at 

*  Peltier,  Histoire  de  la  Revolution  du  lo  Aout,  ii.  306. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    325 

time,^  and  of  Peltier,  who  was  in  London  when  Rotondo  at  a 
tavern  in  that  city  openly  boasted  of  his  share  in  the  crime. ^ 
Moreover,  when  Rotondo  later  fled  to  Switzerland  he  was 
arrested  by  the  Government  as  "  one  of  the  assassins  of  the 
Princesse  de  Lamballe,"  and  imprisoned  by  the  King  of  Sardinia.^ 

A  further  Ught  is  thrown  upon  the  incident  by  a  curious 
document  that  has  been  preserved  amongst  the  Chatham  papers 
at  the  Record  Ofiice  in  London.  Apparently  Pitt  was  in  the 
habit  of  employing  secret  agents  to  give  him  information  con- 
cerning the  revolutionary  intrigues,  and  from  one  of  these  he 
inquired  about  Rotondo,  whose  boast  in  the  tavern  had  possibly 
reached  his  ears.  To  this  inquiry  his  correspondent  makes  the 
astonishing  reply  that  Rotondo  was  the  husband  of  one  of  the 
Princesse  de  Lamballe's  kitchen-maids,  who  helped  to  dismember 
the  body  of  her  mistress.* 

Now  it  was  said  in  Paris  that  several  of  the  princess's 
footmen,  disguised  as  massacrers,  had  attempted  to  save  her,^ 
but  they  were  recognized  amongst  the  crowd  and  overpowered. 
Who  so  hkely  to  recognize  them  as  their  fellow-servant  ?  And 
since  Rotondo  had  been  for  more  than  two  years  in  the  pay  of 
the  Due  d'Orleans,  is  it  not  possible  that  his  wife — also  perhaps 
an  ItaUan — had  been  introduced  to  the  Hotel  de  Penthievre  as 
an  accompUce  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  ? 

It  is  evident,  moreover,  that  the  gang  had  been  hired  for  this 
crime  alone,  since  none  of  them  were  paid  by  the  Commune,^  nor 
do  they  appear  to  have  taken  any  further  part  in  the  massacres, 
but  as  soon  as  they  had  carried  out  their  sanguinary  mission 
they  marched  off  with  their  trophy,  the  head  of  the  princess, 
to  show  to  their  employer.  By  a  refinement  of  brutality  they 
halted  first  at  a  hairdresser's  for  the  long  fair  curls  to  be  washed 
of  blood-stains  and  freshly  powdered,  then,  led  by  Charlat 
carrjdng  the  head  on  a  pike,  they  went  on  to  display  it  to  the 
two  best  friends  of  the  dead  princess — Gabrielle  de  Beauvau, 
Abbess  of  the  Abbaye  de  Saint-Antoine,  and  Marie  Antoinette 
at  the  Temple.  After  this  the  procession  marched  on  amidst  the 
roll  of  drums  and  the  sound  of  "  (Ja  ira !  "  to  the  Palais  Royal. 

The  Due  d'Orleans  was  just  sitting  down  to  dinner  with  his 
mistress,  Madame  Buffon,  and  several  EngUshmen,  when  the 
savage  howls  of  triumph  that  heralded  this  arrival  attracted  his 
attention.    Walking  to  the  window  he  looked  out  calmly  on  the 

^  Maton  de  la  Varenne,  Histoire  particuliire,  etc.,  p.  395. 

2  Peltier,  Revolution  du  10  Ao4t,  ii.  313. 

3  Vieilles  Maisons  vieux  Papier s,  by  G.  Lenotre,  ii.  153. 

*  See  Appendix,  p.  504. 

^  La  Rivolution  du  10  A  o4t,  by  Peltier,  ii.  380. 

•  See  list  of  assassins  published  by  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  Histoire  des 
GirondinSj  ii.  502. 


326        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

scene,  contemplated  with  a  perfectly  unmoved  countenance  the 
dead,  white  face,  the  fair  curls  fluttering  round  the  pike-head, 
and  without  a  word  returned  to  his  place  at  the  table.  One  of 
the  EngUshmen  present,  overcome  with  horror,  rose  and  left  the 
room ;  the  others  remained  to  feast  with  the  murderer.^  Who 
these  men  were  we  shall  see  later. 

But  once  again  PhiUppe  d'Orleans  had  overreached  himself ; 
the  effect  of  this  atrocious  crime  was  to  aUenate  the  sympathies 
of  at  least  two  of  his  supporters.     "  Manuel,"  says  Montjoie, 
*'  outraged  by  the  assassination  of  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe, 
from  this  moment  declared  w^ar  to  the  death  against  D'Orleans. 
Impulsive  in  his  passions,  knowing  moderation  neither  in  gooc 
nor  evU,  he  was  no  longer  either  a  RepubUcan,  or  a  RoyaHst,  or] 
a  Constitutional,  or  a  Monarchist ;    he  was  nothing  but  anti-j 
Orleaniste.  ...  It  was  not  hatred,  it  was  rage.     The  Abb^ 
Fauchet  was  taken  with  the  same  fury.  ...  He  began  to  com- 
pose a  newspaper  which  was  nothing  but  a  long  tissue  of  insults 
and  imprecations  against  the  party  he  had  finally  abandoned. 
Often  when  re-reading  his  pages  he  would  say,  *  Ah,  but  m] 
God  !  what  must  one  do  to  have  the  honour  of  being  butchere 
by  these  people  ?  '  " 

Several  members  of  the  Convention  later  on  ranged  them- 
selves on  the  side  of  Manuel  and  Fauchet. 

Most  of  the  assassins  of  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe  ended  asj 
miserably  as  their  chief  ;  after  the  gth  of  Thermidor  an  inquii 
was  made  into  the  massacres  of  September,  and  Renier,  le  grand! 
Nicolas,  was  condemned  to  twenty  years  in  irons.  Petit  Mamain] 
to  deportation,  Charlat,  bearer  of  the  princess's  head,  and  guilt] 
of  further  outrages  that  cannot  be  described,  was  put  to  deatl 
by  the  soldiers  of  the  regiment  in  which  he  enUsted,  to  whom  he 
had  boasted  of  his  crime,  whilst  Rotondo,  leader  of  the  gang, 
lived  a  hunted  Hfe  execrated  by  all  his  feUow-men,  and  die 
either  in  prison  or  on  the  gedlows.^ 

THE  VICTIMS  OF  THE  MASSACRES 

It  is  mercifully  unnecessary  to  the  purpose  of  this  book  t< 
describe  the  rest  of  the  massacres,  which  lasted  for  five  days  anc 
nights  in  succession;^  enough  has  already  been  told  to  give 

^Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orleans,  iii.  211;  Beaulieu,  iv.  114; 
Peltier,  ii.  312. 

2  Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  498  ;  article  on  Rotondo  in  Vieilles  Maisons 
vieux  Papier s,  by  G.  Lenotre. 

*  That  is  to  say,  from  Sunday  the  2nd  until  Thursday  the  6th,  or  possiblyj 
till  Friday  the   7th.     Granier  de  Cassagnac,  ii.  419;    Beaulieu,  iv.  115; 
Mimoires  de  Monseigneur  de  Salamon,  p.  121  ;   see  also  Potion's  Letter  tc 
the  Assembly  on  September  7,  Moniteur,  xiii.  644 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    327 

some  faint  idea  of  the  horrors  that  took  place  throughout  that 
week  of  infamous  memory — the  whole  truth  would  be  un- 
bearable to  read,  still  more  to  write.  It  only  now  remains  to 
show  who  were  the  principal  victims. 

The  number  of  aristocrats  who  perished  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
comparatively  infinitesimal ;  several  of  the  most  ardent  Royalists 
succeeded  in  disarming  their  assassins.  At  the  Abbaye,  where 
the  massacre  continued  for  two  days  and  nights  almost  without 
intermission,  the  heroic  Princesse  de  Tarente,  having  refused,  in 
almost  the  same  words  as  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe,  to  betray 
the  Queen,  was  carried  home  in  triumph  by  the  crowd.^ 
Mademoiselle  de  Cazotte,  with  her  arms  around  her  white-haired 
father,  touched  the  hearts  of  the  spectators,  and  the  old  man 
was  set  at  liberty  by  the  populace,^  only  to  fall  a  victim  to  the 
revolutionary  tribunal  three  weeks  later.  Mademoiselle  de 
Sombreuil,  who  really  did  drink  the  glass  of  blood  to  save  her 
father's  Ufe,  also  secured  for  him  a  temporary  reprieve.^ 
Jourgniac  de  St.  M6ard  was  acquitted  after  boldly  admitting 
himself  to  be  "a  frank  Royalist."  The  Abbe  de  Salamon  was 
saved  by  his  housekeeper,  Madame  Blanchet,  a  heroic  old  peasant 
woman  who  had  followed  him  weeping  to  the  door  of  the  Abbaye, 
and  waited  about  there  patiently  for  five  days  without  touching 
soUd  food.  Hearing  at  one  moment  that  her  master  had  been 
massacred,  Blanchet  and  a  friend,  a  woman  of  the  people  as 
robust  and  courageous  as  herself,  made  their  way  into  the  court- 
yard of  the  Abbaye,  resolved  to  know  the  worst.  Then,  weeping 
bitterly  the  while,  the  two  poor  women  turned  over  the  naked 
corpses  one  by  one,  fearing  each  time  to  find  the  face  they 
sought.  When  they  had  thus  examined  about  a  hundred  of  the 
dead,  Madame  Blanchet  cried  out  with  tears  of  joy,  "  He  is 
not  there  !  "  and  from  that  moment  she  importuned  every  one 
she  met  to  obtain  his  release.  These  efforts  meeting  with  no 
success,  Madame  Blanchet  at  last  seized  a  deputy  of  the  Assembly 
by  the  collar  of  his  coat  as  he  made  his  way  through  the  Tuileries 
garden,  and  forced  him  to  intercede  for  the  Abb6  de  Salamon. 
By  this  means  the  faithful  Blanchet  achieved  her  purpose,  and 
her  master  was  given  back  to  her  aUve. 

Whilst  a  number  of  aristocrats  were  thus  saved  from  the 
massacres,  to  "  the  people,"  as  on  the  loth  of  August,  the  revolu- 
tionaries showed  no  mercy.  For  although  the  object  of  the 
massacres  was,  as  we  have  seen,  to  rid  the  State  of  that  gangrened 

1  RivoluHon  du  lo  Aotii,  ii.  285,  by  Peltier. 

2  "  The  people,  touched  by  this  spectacle,  asked  mercy  for  him  and 
obtained  it "  {Mon  Agonie  de  Trente-huit  Heures,  by  Jourgniac  de  St.  Meard) . 

'  This  story  has  been  declared  to  be  a  legend,  but  Granier  de  Cassagnac 
confirms  it  by  documentary  evidence  ;  see  Histoire  des  Girondins,  ii.  223, 
226. 


328        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

limb,  the  nobility  and  clergy,  the  operation  was  very  imperfectly 
carried  out,  whilst  on  the  other  hand  drastic  amputation  was 
exercised  on  "  the  people." 

Thus  at  the  Conciergerie,  where  the  massacre  began  on  the 
night  of  September  2-3,  the  prisoners  were,  with  the  exception 
of  M.  de  Montmorin,  governor  of  Fontainebleau,  and  seven  or 
eight  Swiss  officers,  all  ordinary  criminals  of  the  poorer  classes,^ 
and  of  these  at  least  320  were  massacred  without  even  the 
formality  of  a  trial.^  Thirty-six  who  survived  were  set  at  Hberty 
on  the  condition  they  should  join  themselves  to  the  assassins, 
and  seventy-five  women,  mostly  thieves,  were  enrolled  with  the 
rest  of  the  Uberated  female  deUnquents  to  swell  the  ranks  of 
the  future  tricoteuses.^  Only  one  woman — a  flower-seller  of  the 
Palais  Royal — perished  here  after  the  most  inhuman  tortures.* 

The  Chatelet,  attacked  on  the  same  night,  contained  nothing 
but  men  of  the  people — all  were  thieves;  223  perished  also  without 
a  trial.^ 

Of  these  poor  victims  of  the  cause  of  "  liberty  "  we  have  no 
record ;  in  the  great  whirlpool  of  the  Revolution  they  went  down 
in  one  indistinguishable  mass ;  no  chronicler  was  there  to  describe 
their  last  moments,  no  survivor  wrote  his  memoirs ;  of  several 
hundred,  indeed,  it  is  unrecorded  whether  they  hved  or  died — 
they  simply  disappeared.^  One  trait  of  heroism  stands  out 
from  the  darkness  of  obUvion  :  a  poor  criminal,  who  had  been 
offered  his  Hfe  on  condition  he  should  enrol  himself  amongst 
the  massacrers,  set  himself  to  the  ghastly  work,  struck  one  or 
two  ill-aimed  blows,  then,  overcome  with  horror  at  himself, 
flung  down  the  hatchet,  crying  out,  "  No,  no,  I  cannot !  Better 
be  a  victim  than  a  murderer  !  I  would  rather  be  given  my 
death  by  scoundrels  like  you  than  give  it  to  disarmed  innocents. 
Strike  me  !  "  And  instantly  he  fell  beneath  the  blows  of  his 
assassins. 

On  the  following  day,  the  3rd  of  September,  the  Tour  Saint- 
Bernard  was  attacked ;  here  seventy-five  men  condemned  to 
the  galleys  were  put  to  death,  and  their  bodies  robbed  of  their 
poor  savings.'  But  of  all  the  brutalities  that  took  place  on  these 
September  days,  the  massacre  at  Bicetre  was  the  most  atrocious. 
Bicetre  had  always  been  the  prison  of  "  the  people,"  and,  as  we 
have  seen  earlier  in  this  book,  far  more  dreaded  by  them  than 
the  Bastille.    We  might  then  have  expected  the  breaking  open 

^  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  Histoire  des  Girondins,  ii.  343. 

2  Ibid.  pp.  351-367. 

3  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  112.  *  Ibid.  iv.  113. 
6  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  op.  cit.  pp.  372,  377-389. 

8  Ibid.  p.  352. 

'  Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  272  ;  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  op.  cit.  ii.  83,  468. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    329 

of  this  stronghold  of  despotism  to  end,  as  did  the  "  taking  "  of 
the  Bastille,  with  the  triumphant  Uberation  of  its  victims.  If 
the  Revolution  had  been  made  by  the  people  this  no  doubt  is 
what  would  have  happened,  but  it  was  by  the  revolutionary 
sections  of  Paris,  imder  the  control  of  the  Commune,  that  the 
attack  on  Bicetre  was  organized,  and  by  them  cannons  were 
provided  for  the  purpose.^  "  They  went  to  Bicetre  with  seven 
cannons,"  says  the  lying  report  of  the  Assembly ;  "  the  people 
in  exercising  their  vengeance  thus  showed  their  justice."  ^  What 
form  did  this  justice  take  ?  The  massacre  of  170  poor  people, 
amongst  whom  were  a  number  of  young  boys  of  twelve  years  old 
and  upwards — unfortunate  Uttle  "  street  urchins  "  detained,  in 
many  cases,  at  the  request  of  their  relations,  as  a  punishment 
for  minor  offences.^  In  all  the  annals  of  the  Revolution  there 
is  no  passage  more  heart-rending  than  the  account  of  this  foul 
deed  given  more  than  forty  years  later  by  one  of  the  gaolers  : 

"  They  killed  thirty-three  of  them,  the  unhappy  ones  !  The 
assassins  said  to  us — and  indeed  we  could  see  it  for  ourselves — 
that  these  poor  children  were  far  more  difficult  to  finish  off  than 
grown-up  men.  You  understand  at  that  age  Hfe  holds  hard. 
They  killed  thirty-three  of  them  !  They  made  a  mountain  of 
them,  over  there  in  the  corner  ...  at  your  right.  .  .  .  The 
next  day,  when  we  had  to  bury  them,  it  was  a  sight  to  rend  one's 
soul !  There  was  one  who  looked  as  if  he  were  asleep,  like  an 
angel  of  the  good  God  ;  but  the  others  were  horribly  mutilated."  * 

At  the  Salpetriere,  a  house  of  correction  for  women,  as  Bicetre 
was  for  men,  unspeakable  barbarities  took  place;  thirty-five 
victims  in  all  perished,  and  these  were  not  the  most  unfortunate. 
The  abominations  committed  towards  little  girls  of  ten  to  fifteen 
years  cannot  be  described.^ 

"  If  you  knew  the  frightful  details !  "  Madame  Roland  wrote 
later  of  the  massacre  at  the  Salpetriere,  "  women  brutally 
violated  before  being  torn  to  pieces  by  these  tigers !  .  .  .  You 
know  my  enthusiasm  for  the  Revolution  ;  well,  I  am  ashamed 
of  it ;  it  is  dishonoured  by  villains,  it  has  become  hideous  !  "  ^ 

That  the  "  people  "  were  therefore  the  principal  sufferers 
in  the  massacres  of  September  is  not  a  matter  of  opinion  but  of 
fact.  The  following  table  gives  the  precise  statistics  concerning 
the  class  of  victims  sacrificed  : — 

*  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  op.  cit.  ii.  432. 

2  Procds  verbaux  de  I'Assemhlie  Nationale,  xiv.  219. 

*  Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  294  ;   Granier  de  Cassagnac,  ii.  434. 

*  Barth^lemy  Maurice,  Histoire  politique  et  anecdotique  des  Prisons  de 
la  Seine,  p.  329. 

»  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  118,  119. 

*  Madame  Roland,  Lettres  ii  Bancal  des  Issarts,  pp.  348,  349. 


330  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Analysis  of  Victims  in  the  Massacres  of  September^ 


Name  of  Prison. 

Aristocrats  and 
Officials. 

Priests. 

People. 

Total. 

The  Abbaye  . 

circ.  28 

(including  11 

officers) 

44 

circ.  99 

(including  69 

soldiers) 

circ.  171 

The  Carmes   . 

I 

119 

120 

St.  Firmin      . 

79 

. . 

79 

Chatelet 

223 

223 

Conciergerie  . 

8 

(including  7 

Swiss  officers) 

*  * 

320 

328 

La  Force 

6 

(including  2 

officers) 

3 

160 

169 

Bernardins     . 

73 

73 

Bicetre    . 

170 

170 

Salpetri^re     . 

•• 

•  • 

35 

35 

43 

245 

1080 

1368 

If,  therefore,  we  except  the  sixty-nine  soldiers  who  perished 
as  the  last  defenders  of  Royalty,  we  arrive  at  the  enormous  total 
of  10 1 1  victims  from  amongst  "  the  people  "  who  had  no  connection 
whatever  with  the  political  situation.  Yet  it  was  this  senseless  and 
wholesale  butchery  that  the  revolutionary  leaders  described  as 
"  just  "  and  "  necessary,"  but  that,  when  they  realized  the 
universal  horror  it  inspired,  they  basely  attributed  to  the 
people. 

"  It  was  a  popular  movement,"  Robespierre  afterwards 
declared,  "  and  not,  as  has  been  ridiculously  supposed,  the  partial 
sedition  of  a  few  scoundrels  paid  to  assassinate  their  fellows." 
And  with  revolting  hypocrisy  he  added,  "  We  are  assured  that 
one  innocent  perished — ^they  have  been  pleased  to  exaggerate  the 
number — ^but  even  one  is  far  too  many  without  doubt.  Citizens, 
weep  for  the  cruel  error,  we  have  long  wept  for  it  .  .  .  but  let 
your  grief  have  its  term  Hke  all  human  things !  Let  us  keep  a 
few  tears  for  more  touching  calamities  !  "  ^ 

1  The  totals  of  these  lists  are  taken  from  M.  Mortimer  Ternaux  (Histoire 
de  la  Terreur,  iii.  548)  ;  the  details  from  M.  Granier  de  Cassagnac  {Histoire 
des  Girondins,  vol.  ii.).  The  numbers  given  are  the  lowest  possible; 
according  to  M.  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  370  of  the  people  perished  at  the 
Conciergerie  ;  according  to  Prudhomme,  380.  See  Crimes  de  la  Revolution, 
iv.  86. 

2  Robespierre,  Lettres  d  ses  Commetiants,  No.  4,  pp.  170,  172,  173. 
This  "  one  innocent "  was  not,  needless  to  say,  the  guiltless  Princesse  Je 
Lamballe,  nor  was  he  to  be  found  amongst  the  martyred  priests  or  the  poor 
Httle  boys  at  Bicetre.  The  victim  in  question  was  simply  a  good  citizen 
named  an  elector  the  day  before  by  his  section  (Granier  de  Cassag 
Histoire  des  Girondins,  ii.  66). 


1 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    331 

Marat  likewise  heaped  all  the  blame  on  to  the  people  :  "  The 
disastrous  events  of  the  2nd  and  3rd  of  September  were  entirely 
provoked  by  the  indignation  of  the  people  at  seeing  themselves 
the  slaves  of  all  the  traitors  who  had  caused  their  disasters  and 
misfortunes."  It  was  a  "  perfidious  insinuation  to  attribute  these 
popular  executions  "  to  the  Commune — executions  that,  in  the 
same  breath,  Marat,  with  his  usual  wild  inconsequence,  describes 
as  "  unfortunately  too  necessary."  ^  If  necessary,  why  was  it 
perfidious  to  attribute  them  to  the  Commune  ? 

The  historians  who  have  made  it  their  business  to  whitewash 
Marat,  Danton,  and  Robespierre,  effect  their  purpose  by  the  same 
process  of  blackening  the  people. 

"  We  beUeve  that  the  massacre  at  the  prison  of  the  Abbaye," 
writes  Bougeart,  the  adorer  of  Marat,  "  was  executed  by  the 
people,  by  the  true  people.  .  .  .  Marat  cannot  be  accused  of  it, 
for  he  did  everything  before  and  during  the  event  to  prevent 
such  horrible  atrocities."  ^  Of  all  calumnies  on  the  people 
uttered  by  the  men  who  called  themselves  their  friends,  this 
accusation  of  having  committed  the  massacres  of  September  is 
the  most  infamous  and  the  most  unfounded.  Apart  from  the 
revelations  of  Prudhomme,  to  whom  the  authors  of  the  massacres 
confided  their  designs  in  the  dialogues  already  quoted,^  apart 
from  the  evidence  of  eye-witnesses  who  saw  the  assassins  being 
paid  by  the  emissaries  of  the  Commune,  we  have  documentary 
proof  of  these  facts — the  registers  of  the  Commune  recording  the 
sums  paid  were  preserved  ;  ^  a  number  of  receipts  signed  by  the 
murderers  were  still  in  existence  until  1871.^  The  immense 
researches  of  M.  Granier  de  Cassagnac  and  M.  Mortimer  Temaux 
long  ago  laid  bare  the  whole  plot,  and  no  revolutionary  writer 
has  ever  succeeded  in  disproving  their  assertions.  Yet,  in  spite 
of  all  this  overwhelming  evidence,  we  still  read  in  EngUsh  books 
— not  merely  the  books  of  fanatics,  but  dry  histories  and  manuals 
for  schools — that  the  people  of  Paris,  overcome  by  panic,  marched 
on  the  prisons  and  massacred  the  prisoners  ! 

•  Journal  de  la  RSpublique,  No.  12. 

'  Jean  Paul  Marat,  by  Alfred  Bougeart,  ii.  93.  Hamel,  the  panegyrist 
of  Robespierre,  also  heaps  all  the  blame  on  the  people  {Vie  de  Robespierre, 
i.  410). 

•  See  also  Prudhomme's  definite  statement :  "  The  people  did  not 
kill ;  the  massacrers  were  men  paid  to  do  it  "  {Crimes  de  la  RSvolution, 
iv.  107). 

•  "  Proems  verbaux  de  la  Commune  de  Paris,"  published  in  M&moires 
sur  les  Journies  de  Septembre,  pp.  286,  314  ;  Mortimer  Temaux,  iii.  525-528  ; 
Beaulieu,  iv.  120-123. 

'  A  bundle  of  twenty-four  of  these  receipts  was  preserved  at  the  Pre- 
fecture de  Police  in  Paris  (Mortimer  Temaux,  iii.  525,  527).  M.  Granier 
de  Cassagnac  has  reproduced  two  in  facsimile  {Histoire  des  Girondins, 
ii.  514).     These  also  were  destroyed  by  the  Commune  of  1871. 


332        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


THE  ASSASSINS 

Who  were  the  men  that  the  leaders  succeeded  in  enHsting  for 
the  hideous  task  ?  Very  great  pains  have  been  taken,  Dr.  John 
Moore  wrote  on  the  loth  of  September,  to  urge  the  notion  "  that 
the  assassins  were  no  other  than  a  promiscuous  crowd  of  the 
citizens  of  Paris."  ^  This  was  absolutely  untrue.  The  assassins 
formed  an  organized  band  of  not  more  than  300  men — a  point 
on  which  all  contemporaries  not  in  collusion  with  the  leaders 
agree.^  Nor  is  there  any  mystery  concerning  their  identity, 
for  the  names  and  professions  of  the  greater  number  are  known, 
and  have  been  pubUshed  by  M.  Granier  de  Cassagnac.^  There 
were  then,  in  addition  to  the  Marseillais  and  released  convicts 
who  formed  the  nucleus  of  the  gang,  a  certain  number  of  men 
who  might  be  described  as  citizens  of  Paris,  and,  strangely  enough, 
these  were  not  mostly  rough  brutes  from  the  barges  on  the  Seine 
or  the  hovels  of  Saint-Marceau,  but  boutiquiers  or  small  trades- 
men, bootmakers,  jewellers,  tailors — ^two  of  these  were  Germans — 
some,  indeed,  appear  to  have  been  men  of  education.*  It  is 
this  latter  class  that  seems  to  have  lent  itself  most  wiUingly  to 
the  hideous  work  ;  the  rest  were  persuaded  by  various  methods 
to  co-operate.  The  greater  number  undoubtedly  yielded  merely 
to  the  lust  for  gold,  to  the  promise  of  wine  and  booty  in  addition 
to  their  salary ;  others,  the  more  ignorant  no  doubt,  believed 
the  story  told  them  of  the  plot  hatched  by  the  prisoners  to 
massacre  their  wives  and  children,  and  went  forth  in  all  good 
faith  to  destroy  the  supposed  enemies  of  their  country.  As  to 
the  ferocity  they  displayed  once  they  had  set  themselves  to  the 
task,  it  is  to  be  explained  in  the  same  way  as  the  outrages  com- 
mitted at  the  Tuileries  on  the  loth  of  August,  by  the  effect  of 
fiery  Uquor  working  on  overwrought  brains.  Moreover,  this 
time  it  was  not  merely  alcohol  that  had  been  given  to  them, 
but  something  more  insidious  that  had  been  purposely  introduced 
into  the  drink  with  which  they  were  pUed  incessantly.     Maton 

1  Journal  of  a  Residence  in  France,  i.  374. 

2  "  The  number  of  assassins  did  not  exceed  300  "  (Roch  Marcandierj 
(an  eye-witness),  Histoire  des  Hommes  de  Proie)  ;  Louvet  said  about  200] 
{Accusation  contre  Maximilien  Robespierre,  Seance  de  la  Convention  du  29 1 
Octobre  1792) ;  "  300,"  says  Mercier  {Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  94) ;  M.  GranierJ 
de  Cassagnac  gives  235  as  the  approximate  number  {Histoire  des  Girondit 

ii.  30)- 

3  Histoire  des  Girondins,  ii.  502-516. 
*  "  They  were  not  all  of  the  dregs  of  the  people,"  the  Abb6  Barruell 

says  of  the  massacrers  at  the  Carmes;  "their  accent,  their  speeches  be-! 
trayed  amongst  them  adepts  whom  the  philosophy  of  the  Clubs  and  thej 
schools  of  the  day,  far  more  than  boorish  ignorance,  had  inflamed  against^ 
the  priests"  {Histoire  du  ClergS,  p.  248). 


1 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    333 

de  la  Varenne  says  that  Manuel  had  ordered  gunpowder  to 
be  mixed  with  their  brandy,  so  as  to  keep  them  in  a  state  of 
frenzy  ;  but  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty  declare  that  they  were 
drugged : 

"  It  is  incontestable  that  the  drink  that  had  been  distributed 
to  the  assassins  was  mingled  with  a  particular  drug  that  inspired 
terrible  fury,  and  left  to  those  who  took  it  no  possibility  of  a 
return  to  reason.  We  knew  a  porter  who  for  twenty  years  had 
carried  out  errands  ...  in  the  Rue  des  Noyers.  He  had  always 
enjoyed  the  highest  reputation,  and  every  inhabitant  of  the 
district  blindly  confided  the  most  valuable  parcels  to  him.  .  .  . 
He  was  dragged  off  on  the  3rd  of  September  to  the  Convent  of 
Saint-Firmin,  where  he  was  forced  to  do  the  work  of  executioner. 
We  saw  him  six  days  later  when  we  were  ourselves  proscribed, 
and,  needing  a  man  who  could  be  trusted  to  help  us  move  secretly, 
we  addressed  ourselves  to  him.  He  had  returned  to  his  post ; 
he  was  trembUng  in  every  limb,  foaming  at  the  mouth,  asking 
incessantly  for  wine,  without  ever  slaking  his  thirst  and  without 
falUng  a  victim  to  ordinary  drunkenness.  '  They  gave  me  plenty 
to  drink,'  he  said,  *  but  I  worked  well ;  I  killed  more  than  twenty 
priests  on  my  own  account.'  A  thousand  other  speeches  of  this 
kind  escaped  him,  and  each  sentence  was  interrupted  by  these 
words,  '  I  am  thirsty.'  In  order  that  he  might  not  feel  incUned 
to  slake  his  thirst  with  our  blood,  we  gave  him  as  much  wine  as 
he  wished.  He  died  a  month  later  without  ever  having  slept 
in  the  interval."  ^ 

This  circumstance  explains  the  fact  that  at  moments  the 
assassins  showed  themselves  capable  of  humanity — evidently, 
when  the  first  effects  of  the  drug  had  begun  to  wear  off,  they 
returned  more  or  less  to  a  normal  frame  of  mind.  Thus  the  two 
cut-throats,  who  conducted  the  Chevalier  de  Bertrand  safely 
home,  insisted  on  going  upstairs  with  him  to  contemplate  the 
joy  of  his  family.  The  rescuers  of  Jourgniac  de  St.  Meard — a 
MarseUlais,  a  mason,  and  a  wig-maker — refused  the  reward 
offered  them  with  the  words,  "  We  do  not  do  this  for  money."  ^ 
Later  on  Beauheu  met  these  men  at  the  house  of  St.  Meard. 
"  What  struck  me,"  he  says,  "  was  that  through  all  their  ferocious 
remarks  I  perceived  generous  sentiments,  men  determined  to 
undertake  anything  to  protect  those  whose  cause  they  had 
embraced.  The  greater  number  of  these  maniacs,  dupes  of  the 
Machiavellian  beings  who  set  them  in  motion,  are  dead  or  dying 
in  misery."  ^ 

*  Deux  Amis,  viii.  296. 

•  Mon  Agonie  de  trente-huit  Heures,  by  Jourgniac  de  St.  M^rd. 

"  Beaulieu,  iv.  109. 


334        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

THE  r6lE  of  the  PEOPLE 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  leaders,  the  populace  proved 
disappointing  during  the  massacres  of  September,  for  although 
it  had  not  been  thought  advisable  to  march  the  Faubourgs  en 
masse  on  the  prisons,  it  was  hoped  that  when  the  moment  came  a 
certain  proportion  of  the  Paris  mob  would  join  in  the  kiUing  as 
they  had  done  at  the  massacre  of  St.  Barthelemy.  "  In  spite 
of  all  the  activity  displayed,"  says  Prudhomme,  "  the  30,000 
victims,  designated  by  Danton  himself,  did  not  find  enough 
executioners.  They  (the  leaders)  counted  on  the  people  ;  they 
accredited  them  with  more  ferocity.  They  hoped  that  they 
would  not  remain  idle  spectators  oifive  to  six  thousand  ^  massacres 
executed  before  their  eyes ;  they  supposed  that  they  would 
themselves  strike  en  masse,  and  that,  after  having  emptied  the 
prisons,  they  would  go  into  the  houses  and  repeat  the  same 
scenes,  but  they  could  never  succeed  in  exasperating  the  multitude 
to  this  extent."  ^ 

On  the  contrary,  even  by  the  mob  assembled  around  the 
prisons,  every  single  acquittal  recorded  was  hailed  with  acclama- 
tions, often  with  rapturous  applause — a  prisoner  who  made  a 
dash  for  liberty  was  certain  to  find  the  crowd  opening  out  to 
let  him  through.  The  RoyaUst,  Weber,  could  hardly  extricate 
himself  from  the  embraces  of  the  bystanders,  amongst  whom 
savage-looking  harridans,  concerned  for  his  white  silk  stockings, 
cried  out  reprovingly  to  the  guards  who  led  him,  "  Take  care 
there  !  You  are  making  Monsieur  walk  in  the  gutter !  "  Yet 
that  the  mob,  obedient  to  the  suggestions  of  the  leaders,  excited 
with  drink  and  attacked  by  that  strange  insanity  familiar  to  all 
who  have  studied  "  crowd  psychology,"  did  at  other  moments 
aUow  itself  to  be  carried  away  into  applauding  the  massacres, 
did  indeed  throughout  stand  idly  by  and  utter  only  occasional 
words  of  protest,  is  undeniable.  But  were  these  "  the  people  "  ? 
A  thousand  times  no  !  We  have  already  seen  whence  they  were 
recruited  ;  the  true  men  and  women  of  the  people  remained  far 
from  such  scenes  as  these. 

"  I  will  testify  to  Europe,"  cries  Bigot  de  Sainte-Croix,  "  that 
the  People  of  my  country,  that  those  of  the  capital,  did  not  ordain, 
did  not  desire  these  massacres,  that  the  People  did  not  even  see 
them  committed.  The  People  closed  their  windows,  their  work- 
rooms, their  shops ;  they  took  refuge  in  the  furthest  comers  of 
their  dwellings  so  as  to  shut  their  ears  and  eyes  to  the  uproar, 
and  to  the  sight  of  those  beings,  strangers  to  the  People  and  to 
human  nature,  who,  armed  with  knives,  sabres,  and  clubs,  their 

*  Prudhomme,  like  Peltier,  over-estimated  the  number  of  victims. 
*  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  107. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    335 

faces  and  their  arms  stained  with  blood,  carried  through  the 
streets  heads  and  fragments  of  mutilated  bodies,  and  deafened 
themselves  with  the  ferocious  hymn  (the  'Carmagnole'?)  that  had 
been  dictated  to  them.  Ah  !  Why  should  the  People  again  be 
calumniated  ?  .  .  ."  ^ 

And  Mortimer  Temaux  adds  :  "  Yes,  it  is  lying  to  history, 
it  is  betraying  the  sacred  cause  of  humanity,  it  is  deserting  the 
most  obvious  interests  of  democracy,  to  calumniate  the  people, 
to  take  for  them  a  few  hundred  wretches  .  .  .  going  basely  to 
seek  their  victims  one  by  one  in  the  ceUs  of  the  Abbaye  or  of  La 
Force.  .  .  .  The  people,  the  true  people,  composed  of  honest 
and  industrious  workmen,  warm-hearted  and  patriotic,  of  young 
bourgeois  with  generous  aspirations  and  indomitable  courage, 
did  not  mingle  for  a  moment  with  the  scoundrels  recruited  by 
MaUlard  .  .  .  the  people,  the  true  people,  were  all  at  the  Champ 
de  Mars  or  in  front  of  the  recruiting  platforms,  offering  their 
best  blood  for  the  defence  of  the  country  ;  they  would  have  been 
ashamed  to  shed  that  of  defenceless  victims."  ^ 

But,  it  will  be  urged,  why  did  the  people  of  Paris  not  interfere  ? 
Why,  instead  of  retiring  into  their  houses  and  shutting  their  ears 
and  eyes,  did  they  not  rush  out  into  the  streets  and  arrest  the 
murderers  ?  instead  of  mustering  at  the  Champ  de  Mars, 
march  on  the  prisons  and  deUver  the  victims  ? 

"  All  Paris  let  it  happen  (laissa  faire),"  Madame  Roland 
writes  indignantly ;  "all  Paris  is  accursed  in  my  eyes,  and  I  hope 
no  longer  that  hberty  may  be  estabhshed  amongst  cowards 
insensible  to  the  worst  outrages  that  could  be  committed  against 
Nature  and  humanity,  cold  spectators  of  crimes  that  the  courage 
of  fifty  armed  men  could  easily  have  prevented."  ^ 

Madame  Roland  well  knew  the  true  explanation  of  the  people's 
conduct — ^her  own  behaviour  during  the  massacres  we  shall  refer 
to  later;  she  was  perfectly  aware  that  it  was  the  cowardice  of 
the  authorities,  of  her  friend  Petion,  of  "  the  virtuous  Roland  " 
himself  that  made  it  possible  for  the  Commune  to  carry  out  its 
designs  unhindered,  that  prevented  the  people  from  interfering. 

"  If  the  people,"  says  Prudhomme,  "  did  not  put  a  stop  to 
the  murders  committed  in  their  presence,  it  was  that,  on  seeing 
that  their  representatives,  their  magistrates,  and  the  staff  of  their 
armed  force  made  no  attempt  to  prevent  this  butchery,  they 
could  only  beUeve  that  these  were  acts  of  justice  of  a  new  kind."  * 

Here,  then,  is  the  explanation.  In  the  first  place,  the  people 
of  Paris  were  told — and  in  some  cases  made  to  believe — that  the 

*  Histoire  de  la  Conspiration  du  lo  AoUt,  by  Bigot  de  Sainte-Croix, 
p.  104,  "  Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  185. 

2  Memoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  no. 

*  Criffies  de  la  Revolution,  by  Prudhomme,  iv.  130. 


I 


336        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

massacres  were  a  necessary  act  of  precaution  in  view  of  the 
conspiracy  amongst  the  prisoners  to  massacre  the  citizens; 
secondly,  the  massacres  were  carried  out  officially  under  the 
eyes  of  the  authorities,  presided  over  by  officials  wearing  their 
municipal  scarves,^  and  executed  in  some  instances  by  assassins 
masquerading  in  the  uniform  of  the  National  Guards ;  ^  and 
thirdly,  the  people  were  prevented  by  armed  force  from  interfering. 
We  know  from  the  researches  of  M.  Mortimer  Temaux  and  M. 
Granier  de  Cassagnac  that  Santerre,  the  commander-general, 
was  authorized  to  surround  the  prisons  with  troops  during  the 
massacres,  "  in  order  to  prevent  accidents,"  ^  and  the  nature  of 
these  accidents  is  elsewhere  very  clearly  revealed.  Thus,  as  we 
have  already  seen  at  the  Cannes,  a  cordon  of  police  was  provided 
to  protect  the  assassins  from  the  crowd,  and  Senart  relates  that 
the  same  precaution  was  demanded  at  La  Force  :  "  The  butcher 
Legendre  went  to  find  one  of  the  commanders  of  the  Arsenal, 
and  asked  him  for  two  hundred  armed  men  to  go  to  La  Force 
in  order  to  second  the  murderers  and  protect  them,  because  the 
number  of  prisoners  was  very  great  and  there  were  not  enough 
massacrers  " — a  request  with  which  the  honest  commander 
indignantly  refused  to  comply.*  But  the  fact  that  the  massacrers 
were  given  armed  protection  during  their  hideous  task  received 
additional  confirmation  just  a  hundred  years  later.  In  the 
Intermediaire  des  Chercheurs  et  Curieux  for  April  20,  i892,j 
M.  Alfred  B6gis  related  that  he  had  recently  acquired  a  copy  oj 
a  pamphlet,  by  Garat,  that  had  belonged  to  Sergent,  who,  witl 
Panis,  the  brother-in-law  of  Santerre,  had  been  entrusted  wit 
the  police  and  the  prisons  as  members  of  the  Comite  de  Surveil- 
lance of  the  Commune.  Now  in  this  pamphlet,  which  w£ 
annotated  throughout  by  the  hand  of  Sergent,  Garat  asked  tl 
question  why  the  people  allowed  the  massacres  of  September 
"  How  is  it  that  so  much  blood  flowed  under  other  blades  th£ 
that  of  justice  without  the  legislators,  without  the  magistrate 
of  the  people,  without  the  whole  people  themselves  smnmoning 
the  public  forces  to  the  place  of  these  sanguinary  scenes  ?  '* 

To  this  question  Sergent  made  reply  in  the  margin  :    '*  Th 
massacrers  of  the  Ahhaye  asked  to  he  protected  during  their  dreadfu 
work  by  a  guard  which  was  granted  to  them."    The  mob  of  Pj 
collected  round  the  prisons  had  then  attempted  to  interfere 

1  Beaulieu,  iv.  119  ;   Deux  Amis,  viii.  308. 

2  Evidence  of  eye-witness,  M.  de  la  Roserie,  who  was  present  at  th< 
massacre  at  the  Carmes,  and  stated  that  "  half  the  assassins  employe ' 
there  were,  by  an  infamous  prostitution,  in  the  uniform  of  the  Nations 
Guards"  {Memoires  de  ThUhault,  i.  319). 

3  Extract  from  the  registers  of  the  sections  of  Paris  published  bj 
M.  Mortimer  Temaux,  Histoire  de  la  Terreur,  iii.  480. 

*  Mimoires  de  Senart  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  29. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    337 

since  the  murderers  were  obliged  to  ask  for  protection,  and  this 
was  the  kind  of  "  accident  "  the  armed  forces  were  sent  out  to 
prevent ! 

Undoubtedly  we  must  blame  the  soldiers  for  obeying  this 
monstrous  order,  but  it  should  be  remembered  that  all  the 
normal  elements  in  the  army  were  collected  on  the  frontier,  and 
that  the  only  forces  remaining  in  Paris  were  those  of  which  the 
revolutionary  leaders  had  made  sure — ^the  confederates  from 
Marseilles,  or  Brest,  or  the  camp  at  Soissons.  The  call  to  arms 
had  thus  admirably  served  their  purpose  by  ridding  them  of  all 
those  loyal  and  patriotic  citizens  who  might  have  been  expected 
to  prevent  bloodshed. 

THE  AUTHORS  OF  THE  MASSACRES 

The  truth  is,  then,  that  the  only  men  who  attributed  the 
massacres  of  September  to  the  people  of  Paris  were  the  men 
who  themselves  had  devised  and  ordered  them.  With  con- 
summate hypocrisy  the  Commune  declared  that  it  had  sent 
emissaries  to  the  prisons  to  oppose  disorders,  but  that  they 
could  not  succeed  in  calming  the  people.  Apart,  however,  from 
the  evidence  of  eye-witnesses,  who  unanimously  asserted  that 
the  emissaries  of  the  Commune  incited  the  assassins  to  greater 
violence,  we  have  further  documentary  proof  of  the  Commune's 
guilt  in  the  atrocious  proclamation  pubUcly  sent  out  by  it  on 
the  3rd  of  September  to  the  provinces,  urging  them  to  carry  out 
the  same  butchery  all  over  France,  and  passing  on  to  them  the 
same  word  of  command  that  had  served  in  Paris  as  a  pretext 
for  the  massacres. 

"  The  Commune  of  Paris  hastens  to  inform  its  brothers  in  all 

the  departments  that  a  portion  of  the  ferocious  conspirators 

detained  in  the  prisons  have  been  put  to  death  by  the  people : 

acts  of  justice  which  seemed  to  it  indispensable  in  order  to  restrain 

by  terror  the  legions  of  traitors  concealed  within  its  walls  at  the 

moment  when  it  was  about  to  march  on  the  enemy ;  and  without 

doubt  the  whole  nation,  after  the  long  series  of  treacheries  which 

have  led  it  to  the  edge  of  the  abyss,  will  hasten  to  adopt  this 

measure  so  necessary  to  pubUc  safety,  and  all  the  French  will  cry 

like  the  Parisians,  '  We  will  march  on  the  enemy,  but  we  will 

not  leave  behind  us  brigands  to  murder  our  wives  and  children.' 

"  Signed — Duplain,  Panis,  Sergent,  Lenfant, 

JouRDEUiL,  Marat,  Vami  du  peuple, 

Deforgues,  Duffort,  Cally." 

That  Marat  was  the  principal  author  of  the  proclamation 
cannot  be  doubted,  but  it  was  sent  forth  under  the  countersign 

z 


338        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

of  Danton,  the  Minister  of  Justice.     To  Danton,  then,  attaches^ 
the  greater  blame,  for  Marat  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  respons- 
ible human  being,  whilst  Danton  throughout  the  Revolution^ 
retained  full  possession  of  his  faculties.     "  That  Marat,"  says 
Mortimer  Temaux,  "  the  most  shameless  Uar  and  the  most  daring 
forger  who  ever  existed  (we  make  use  of  the  exact  expressions 
that  MM.  Michelet  and  Louis  Blanc  employ  with  regard  to  this 
man),  that  Marat,  we  say,  should  have  drawn  up  this  frightful] 
circular,  and  on  his  own  authority  should  have  appended  to  itj 
the  signatures  of  his  colleagues,  is  strictly  possible.     But  the  twaj 
men  who  can  never  clear  themselves  of  having  co-operated  ii 
the  propagation  of  this  bloody  work  are  Danton  and  Fabre 
d'figlantine,  the  Minister  of  Justice  and  his  secretary."  ^ 

It  is  doubtful,  indeed,  whether  Danton  wished  to  clear  himself  j 
of  the  responsibiUty  of  the  massacres  of  September,  or  of  the] 
proposal  to  repeat  them  in  the  provinces.  Now  that  the  monarchy] 
was  overthrown,  Danton  knew  that  he  had  nothing  to  fear  inj 
avowing  his  share  in  the  crimes  of  the  Revolution  ;  securely  i 
encamped  on  the  strongest  side  he  was  able  to  win  that  reputation:) 
for  audacity  which  has  aureoled  him  in  the  eyes  of  posterity.^ 

The  massacres  of  September  were,  therefore,  primarily  the] 
work  of  the  Anarchists,  but  they  were  condoned,  if  not  actually] 
assisted,  by  the  other  intrigues,  as  we  shall  now  see. 

r6lE  of  the  ORL:eANISTES 

On  this  point  little  remains  to  be  said,  for  by  September  olj 
1792  the  Orleanistes  had  ceased  to  be  a  distinct  party,  and  had 
become  indistinguishable  from  the  Anarchists.  According  to 
many  contemporaries,  Danton  and  Marat,  in  promoting  anarchy, 
were  working  solely  in  the  interests  of  the  Due  d' Orleans ; 
Montjoie  believes  that  it  was  in  order  to  effect  the  change  o|| 
dynasty  the  massacres  were  devised. 

But  apart  from  these  vague  charges,  there  can  be  no  doubtl 
that  the  Due  d'Orleans  had  some  secret  connection  with  the] 
leaders  ;  of  this  the  murder  of  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe  by  hii 
agents  is  sufficient  proof.     Moreover,  it  was  precisely  at  this] 
moment — on  the  2nd  of  September — ^that  Marat  pubUcly  de- 
manded 15,000  francs  from  the  duke  for  the  printing  of  several ^ 

1  Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  309. 

2  According  to  Louis  Philippe,  Danton  frankly  admitted  his  responsi- 
bility for  the  September  days.  The  future  King,  then  the  Due  de  Chartres, 
related  that  when  on  a  visit  to  Paris  from  the  frontier  he  met  Danton  and] 
ventured  to  blame  the  authors  of  the  massacres.  To  this  remonstrance; 
Danton  replied  :  "It  was  I  who  did  it.  All  the  Parisians  are  jean  foutres. 
It  was  necessary  to  put  a  river  of  blood  between  them  and  the  imigr^s  " 
{U&cit  du  Due  d'Aumale,  quoted  by  Taine,  La  Revolution,  vi.  30). 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    339 

of  his  pamphlets,^  and  apparently  obtained  it,  for  henceforth 
we  shall  find  him  always  favourably  disposed  to  "  the  citizen 
Egahte  "  ^ — the  name  the  Due  d'Orleans  soon  after  assumed 
when  seeking  election  as  deputy  to  the  Convention. 

But  whatever  were  the  ultimate  intentions  of  these  men  who 
devised  the  massacres — and  on  this  point  no  one  can  speak  with 
certainty — their  immediate  purpose  can  be  expressed  in  one 
word  only — anarchy. 

r6le  of  the  GIRONDINS 

The  part  played  by  the  Girondins  in  the  massacres  of 
September  was  merely  one  of  criminal  connivance.  With  the 
exception  of  Petion,  whose  sympathies  were  undoubtedly 
Orleaniste,  no  member  of  this  faction  seems  to  have  taken  an 
active  part  in  the  movement.  Vergniaud,  indeed,  loudly  de- 
nounced the  arbitrary  arrests  that  preceded  the  massacres,  but 
since  by  this  time  the  walls  of  Paris  were  already  placarded  by 
Marat  with  invectives  against  the  deputies  of  the  Gironde,^  this 
was  perhaps  less  an  act  of  courage  than  a  measure  of  self-defence. 
At  any  rate,  from  the  moment  the  massacres  began,  not  one 
member  of  this  faction  attempted  to  interfere. 

On  the  5th  of  September,  whilst  the  third  day  of  the  massacre 
at  La  Force  was  in  progress,  Duhem  afterwards  related,  he  dined 
at  Petion's  house  with  Brissot,  Gensonne,  and  several  other 
deputies.  "  Towards  the  end  of  dinner  the  folding  doors  opened, 
and  I  was  surprised  to  see  two  cut-throats  enter,  their  hands 
dripping  with  blood.  They  came  to  ask  the  orders  of  the  mayor 
concerning  the  eighty  prisoners  who  still  remained  to  be  massacred 
at  La  Force ;  Petion  gave  them  drinks  and  sent  them  away, 
telling  them  to  do  everything  for  the  best."  * 

As  to  Madame  Roland,  who  afterwards  cursed  the  people  of 
Paris  for  their  non-intervention,  how  was  she  employed  ?  On 
the  evening  of  September  2,  she  relates,  when  the  butchery  had 
begun,  "  a  crowd  of  about  200  men,  violently  agitated,"  came  to 
the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  to  ask  for  arms  ;  we  know  from  other 
sources  that  they  were  the  massacrers,^  who,  imagining  Roland 
to  be  one  of  their  employers,  asked  also  for  the  payment  of 
their  salary,  and,  according  to  Felhemesi,  they  received  it.  But 
Felhemesi  as  a  Dantoniste  need  not  be  beUeved.  At  any  rate, 
after  this  frightful  scene,  whilst  the  massacres  were  in  full  swing 

*  Prudhomme,  Revolutions  de  Paris,  xiii.  522. 

*  Beaulieu,  iv.  145.  / 
'  Dr.  Moore,  Journal  of  a  Residence  in  France,  i.  256.  ^ 

*  Procds  des  Vingt-Deux,  evidence  of  Duhem.  According  to  the  Deux 
Amis  de  la  LibertS,  viii,  304,  the  assassins  entered  with  heads  in  their  hands. 

'  MSmoires  de  Sinart  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  34. 


340        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

next  day  at  La  Force,  the  Abbaye,  and  the  Tour  Saint-Bernard, 
Madame  Roland  saw  fit  to  give  a  luncheon-party — or,  as  the  two 
o'clock  meal  in  those  days  was  called,  a  "  dinner  " — ^to  a  number 
of  her  friends  and  acquaintances,  amongst  whom  "  the  events  of 
the  day  formed  the  topic  of  conversation."  One  of  the  guests 
(afterwards  disowned  by  Madame  Roland)  was  the  Prussian 
Baron  Clootz,  whom  we  shall  meet  later  on  as  the  apostle  of 
"  universal  brotherhood,"  and  who  distinguished  himself  during 
the  massacres  of  September  by  inventing  the  word  "  to  septem- 
berize  " — it  was  a  matter  of  regret,  he  afterwards  declared,  that 
they  had  not  "  septemberized  "  enough.^ 

The  same  day,  however,  the  virtuous  Roland  ventured  to 
utter  a  feeble  protest  against  the  continuance  of  the  massacres. 
Beginning  with  a  lengthy  dissertation  on  the  necessity  for  con- 
trolling the  irrepressible  indignation  of  the  people — ^who,  accord- 
ing to  Madame  Roland's  later  writings,  he  well  knew  were  not 
the  authors  of  these  crimes, — amidst  redundant  eulogies  of  his 
own  courage  and  disinterestedness,  Roland  thus  described  the 
massacres  of  September  2  :  "  Yesterday  was  a  day  over  the 
events  of  which  we  should  perhaps  draw  a  veil ;  I  know  that  the 
people,  terrible  in  their  vengeance,  yet  bring  to  it  a  sort  of 
justice,"  but  now  the  moment  had  come  for  "  the  legislators  to 
speak,  for  the  people  to  listen,  and  for  the  reign  of  law  to  be 
re-established."  ^ 

The  fact  is  that  something  had  happened  the  evening  before 
which  made  it  highly  desirable,  from  the  Girondins'  point  of  view, 
that  the  activities  of  the  Commune  should  be  restrained.  Robes- 
pierre had  been  thwarted  by  Danton  in  his  plan  of  including 
Roland  and  Brissot  in  the  Hsts  of  proscriptions  made  out  for  the 
massacrers,  but  he  had  not  abandoned  all  hope  of  his  prey. 
Under  cover  of  the  general  confusion  that  reigned  in  Paris  on 
the  2nd  of  September  the  tiger-cat  had  seized  the  opportunity 
to  spring.  Supported  by  his  ally  Billaud-Varenne,  Robespierre ^ 
presented  himself  at  the  evening  meeting  held  by  the  Council- 
General  of  the  Commune,  and  openly  accused  Brissot  and 
powerful  party  of  conspiring  to  place  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  01 
the  throne  of  France.^  This  accusation  has  been  represente 
by  the  antagonists  of  Robespierre  as  a  mere  fable  invented  b] 
him  to  bring  about  the  downfall  of  Brissot,  but,  as  we  hav< 

1  /.  P.  Brissot  d,  ses  Commettants,  p.  52  ;   Beaulieu,  v.  247. 

2  Buchez  et  Roux,  xvii.  382. 
'  Proems  verhaux  de  la  Commune  de  Paris,  date  of  September  2.     Th« 

precise  words  employed  by  Robespierre  are  not  given  in  this  report,  but 
are  recorded  in  part  by  Peltier  {Revolution  du  10  AoiXt,  ii.  234) ;  it  is  Hamc 
{Vie  de  Robespierre,  i.  415)  who  states  that  Robespierre  used  the  expressic 
"  a  powerful  party."     On  this  accusation  see  also  Beaulieu,  iv.    147. 
Moniteur,  xiii.  617,  620-622  ;  Mortimer  Ternaux,  iii.  205. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    341 

already  seen,  the  intrigue  in  favour  of  Brunswick  was  by  no 
means  fabulous — on  the  contrary,  it  was  a  matter  of  common 
knowledge.  Had  not  Carra  pubUcly  proclaimed  it  six  weeks 
earlier  in  his  journal  ?  And  was  not  Carra  still  the  trusted 
confidant  of  Brissot  and  the  Rolands  ?  Robespierre,  then,  was 
perfectly  just  in  accusing  Brissot ;  two  days  later,  in  private  con- 
versation with  Petion — ^whose  own  intrigues  he  was  apparently 
far  from  suspecting — ^he  repeated  his  conviction  that  Brissot 
was  on  the  side  of  Brunswick.^  That  by  his  timely  denunciation 
he  hoped  to  envelop  the  Brissotins  in  the  massacres  we  cannot 
doubt,  yet  we  must  admit  that  in  this  he  showed  himself  more 
logical  than  the  other  members  of  the  Commune.  For  if  any 
people  were  to  be  put  to  death  on  the  suspicion  of  coUusion  with 
the  Prussians,  should  they  not  be  the  members  of  the  party  stiU 
at  liberty  who  had  definitely  proposed  to  hand  the  country  over 
to  the  head  of  the  invading  armies,  rather  than  a  defenceless 
crowd  of  priests,  unarmed  men,  women,  and  children  safely 
imprisoned  behind  bolts  and  bars  ? 

Brissot 's  reply  to  this  accusation  of  Robespierre  was  char- 
acteristic of  the  ostrich  poUcy  displayed  by  the  Girondins. 

"  Yesterday,  Sunday,"  he  wrote  to  his  fellow-citizens,  "  I 
was  denounced  at  the  Commune  of  Paris,  as  also  a  part  of  the 
deputies  of  the  Gironde,  and  other  men  equally  virtuous.  We 
were  accused  of  wishing  to  give  France  over  to  the  Duke  of 
Brunswick,  and  to  have  received  millions  from  him,  and  to  have 
planned  to  escape  to  England.  I,  the  ertemal  enemy  of  kings, 
who  did  not  wait  till  1789  to  manifest  my  hatred  towards  them  ; 
I  the  partisan  of  a  duke  !  Better  perish  a  thousand  times  than 
acknowledge  such  a  despot !  "  etc.^ 

But  considering  that  before  1789  Brissot  had  violently  de- 
nounced in  print  "  the  abominable  crime  of  attacking  monarchy," 
that  he  had  described  Ravaillac  and  Damiens  as  "  monsters 
vomited  by  hell,"  ^  and  that  only  six  weeks  before  the  massacres 
of  September — on  July  25,  1792 — he  had  declared  that  the  blade 
of  the  law  should  strike  any  one  who  attempted  to  establish  a 
RepubUc ;  considering,  moreover,  that  he  had  never  disassociated 
himself  from  Carra,  the  avowed  partisan  of  Brunswick,  Brissot 's 
defence  was  far  from  convincing. 

The  Brissotins,  then,  constituted  a  very  real  danger  to  the 
country  at  the  moment  when  it  was  threatened  by  foreign 
invasion,  but  we  should  admire  Robespierre's  courage  and  patriot- 
ism in  attacking  them  more  if  he  had  not  waited  so  long  to  shoot 

*  Discours  de  Potion  sur  l' Accusation  intentie  contre  Maximilien  Robes- 
pierre, p.  16. 

"  Moniteur,  xiii.  623. 

»  Les  Moyens  d'adoucir  la  Rigueur  des  Lois  pinales  en  France,  1781. 


342        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

his  bolt.  The  intrigue  with  Prussia  had  been  going  on  for  at 
least  eighteen  months — why  had  he  not  exposed  it  earlier  ?  Why, 
on  the  pubUcation  of  Carra's  preposterous  plea  for  Brunswick, 
did  not  Robespierre  arise  and  denounce  him  as  a  traitor,  or  at 
least  demand  his  expulsion  from  the  ranks  of  "  patriots  "  at  the 
Jacobin  Club  ?  But  no,  Robespierre  had  hitherto  maintained 
complete  silence  with  regard  to  all  three  intrigues — the  Orleanistes, 
English  Jacobins,  and  Prussians — and  had  even,  as  we  have  seen, 
joined  in  ridicuHng  Ribes  for  denouncing  them.  The  explanation 
lies  undoubtedly  in  Robespierre's  natural  timidity  ;  it  was  never 
his  way  to  fight  his  opponents,  but  always  to  remain  quiescent 
until  an  opportunity  offered  for  kiUing  them  outright — ^the  tiger- 
cat  knew  better  than  to  show  his  claws  before  the  moment  came 
to  spring.  The  massacres  of  September  had  appeared  to  be  the 
propitious  moment,  but  Danton  barred  the  way ;  next  time  he 
was  to  say  with  tears,  "  I  cannot  save  them  !  " 

The  Girondins  well  realized  the  danger  that  had  threatened 
them,  and  therefore,  after  condoning  the  massacres,  ended  by 
denouncing  them.  But  if  they  now  deprecated  the  reign  of 
anarchy,  it  was  principally  because  they  saw  the  movement  they 
had  helped  to  produce  turning  against  themselves,  and  the  abyss 
into  which  they  had  precipitated  the  monarchy  yawning  beneath 
their  own  feet. 

THE  ENGLISH  JACOBINS 

The  news  of  the  massacres  of  September  filled  the  sane  portion 
of  the  English  people  with  indignation,  and  alienated  even  those 
who,  misled  by  the  propaganda  of  the  Whigs  and  the  revolu- 
tionary societies  in  England,  still  retained  a  lingering  sympathy 
with  the  supposed  "  struggle  for  Uberty  "  taking  place  across  the 
Channel.  "  The  late  horrors  in  France,"  Mr.  Burges  writes  to 
Lord  Auckland  on  the  2ist  of  September,  "  have  at  least  been 
attended  with  one  good  consequence,  for  they  have  turned  the 
tide  of  general  opinion  here  very  suddenly.  French  principles, 
and  even  Frenchmen,  are  daily  becoming  more  unpopular,  and 
I  think  it  not  impossible  that  in  a  short  time  the  impudence  of 
some  of  these  levellers  will  work  so  much  on  the  tempers  of  our. 
people  as  to  make  England  neither  a  pleasant  nor  a  secure^ 
residence  for  them." 

A  messenger  from  Paris  reported  to  Lord  Auckland  on  the, 
loth  of  September  that  the  details  passed  all  conception.  "It* 
is  impossible  for  me  to  express  the  horror  that  I  still  feel ;  I 
could  not  have  believed  till  now  that  human  nature  was  capable 
of  such  abominations."  Lord  Auckland  himself  is  "  so  affected 
that  he  "  can  hardly  write  of  it  "—all  Gibbon's  history,  though 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    343 

the  bloodiest  book  he  ever  read,  "  does  not  contain  a  story  of 
such  unprovoked  and  wanton  cruelty." 

Lord  Stanhope,  however,  had  nothing  but  pitying  contempt 
for  squeamishness  that  could  recoil  at  such  scenes  as  these. 
"  The  French  Revolution,"  he  wrote  on  September  18,  "  has 
frightened  some  weak  minds,  Mr.  Paine's  works  others.  And  the 
late  events  in  France  have  intimidated  many.  However  despicable 
such  feelings  may  he,  abstractly  considered,  when  they  are  pretty 
general,  they  must  be  treated  with  some  respect."  ^ 

Amongst  weak  minds  we  must  certainly  include  those  of 
almost  the  entire  population,  for  these  "  despicable  feelings  " 
were  more  than  "  pretty  general "  ;  they  were  shared  by  all 
classes  of  the  community.  The  sympathies  of  the  nation  were 
with  the  victims,  not  with  the  authors  of  the  Revolution,  and  the 
unhappy  emigres,  fl5dng  from  the  horrors  of  Paris  to  the  shores 
of  England,  met  with  an  enthusiastic  welcome.  One  must  have 
hved  through  three  years  of  revolution,  says  one  of  these  emigres, 
amidst  Girondins,  Jacobins,  and  others,  to  understand  what  the 
first  glimpse  of  the  EngHsh  conveyed,  the  ecstasy  of  arriving  in 
this  "  isle  of  serenity  "  from  the  regions  of  terror  :  "it  was  the 
gentle  awakening  of  the  soul  that,  long  tormented  by  the  vision 
of  monsters  and  furies,  comes  out  of  this  frightful  dream."  ^ 
Once  again  humanity  and  compassion  became  a  reaUty.  Every 
boatload  of  priests  was  awaited  by  a  sympathetic  crowd  ;  even 
the  sailors,  seeing  in  these  men  the  martyrs  of  reUgion,  fell  on 
their  knees  before  them  on  the  beach  to  ask  their  blessing.^ 
"  I  was  a  witness,"  says  Peltier,  "  of  the  zeal  and  eagerness  with 
which  all  classes  of  society  welcomed  these  unhappy  pastors. 
From  the  throne  to  the  simplest  cabin,  everywhere  was  their 
asylum,  everywhere  was  consolation."  In  London  a  subscrip- 
tion raised  by  Burke,  Wilmot,  Stanley,  and  others  met  with  an 
immense  response  ;  the  poor  Uke  the  rich  brought  their  contribu- 
tions, and  those  who  could  not  give  money  gave  the  work  of 
their  hands ;  potato-sellers  insisted  on  providing  the  priests 
with  their  wares  for  no  remuneration,  seamstresses  offered  their 
services  for  nothing,  artisans  worked  overtime  to  earn  money 
for  them ;  a  day  labourer,  touched  to  tears  by  their  appearance, 
cried  out,  "  I  am  very  poor  but  I  can  work  for  two  ;  give  me 
one  of  these  priests  and  I  will  feed  hirn  !  "  *  It  was,  then,  only 
amongst  an  infinitesimal  minority,  composed  of  such  men  as 
Lord  Stanhope  and  the  middle-class  malcontents  who  formed  the 

*  Life  of  Charles,  third  Earl  of  Stanhope,  by  Ghita  Stanhope  and  G.  P. 
Gooch,  p.  120. 

2  Histoire  du  Clerge,  by  L'Abbe  Barruel,  p.  349. 

'  Histoire  de  la  Revolution  du  10  Aout,  by  Peltier,  ii.  391. 

*  Barruel,  op.  cit.  pp.  353,  354. 


344        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

revolutionary  societies  of  London  and  of  the  manufacturing 
towns  of  the  north,  that  the  Revolution  found  sympathizers. 
By  these  associations  the  massacres  of  September  were  greeted 
with  frenzied  approbation.  On  the  27th  of  September  a  long 
address  of  congratulation  was  forwarded  to  the  Jacobin  Club  of 
Paris  by  the  members  of  the  Constitutional  Society  and  the 
Reformation  Society  of  Manchester,  the  Revolution  Society  of 
Norwich,  the  "  Constitutional  Whigs,"  the  "  Independents  and 
Friends  of  the  People."  A  few  passages  of  this  precious  effusion 
must  be  quoted  :  ^ 

"  Frenchmen,  our  numbers  may  seem  small  compared  to  tb 
rest  of  the  nation,  but  know  that  they  are  steadily  increasing  . 
we  can  tell  you  with  certainty,  free  men  and  friends,  that  educa- 
tion is  making  rapid  progress  amongst  us  .  .  .  that  men  as 
to-day,  '  What  is  Uberty  ?     What  are  our  rights  ?  '     Frenchmen,! 
you  are  free  already,  but  Britons  are  preparing  to  become  so 
Divested  at  last  of  these  cruel  prejudices  industriously  inculcat 
in  our  hearts  by  vile  courtiers,  instead  of  our  natural  enemies^; 
we  see  in  the  French  our  fellow-citizens  of  the  world,  the  childreni 
of  that  universal  Father  who  created  us  to  love  and  help  eac 
other,  not  to  hate  and  murder  one  another  at  the  command  o: 
feeble  or  ambitious  kings  or  corrupt  ministers.     In  seeking  o 
real  enemies  we  find  them  in  the  partisans  of  that  aristocrac; 
which  rends  our  bosoms,  aristocracy  hitherto  the  poison  of 
countries  on  earth ;    you  acted  wisely  in  banishing  it  fro: 
France.  .  .  .  Dear  friends,  you  are  fighting  for  the  happiness  o! 
all  humanity.     Can  there  be  any  loss  to  you,  however  bitter, 
compared  to  the  glorious  and  unprecedented  privilege  of  being 
able  to  say,  '  The  universe  is  free ;   tyrants  and  tyrannies  are 
no  more,  peace  reigns  on  earth,  and  it  is  to  the  French  we 
owe  it.' " 

To  these  advocates  of  universal  brotherhood  it  was  a  matter 
of  poignant  regret  and  bitter  shame  that  the  British  Government 
refused  to  throw  in  its  lot  with  the  organizers  of  the  late  massacr 
in  the  prisons  by  taking  up  arms  in  defence  of  the  French  Revol 
tion.     To  their  profuse  apologies  on  this  subject  the  Fren 
Jacobins,  under  Herault  de  Sechelles,  repHed  :  "  BeUeve,  genero 
EngUshmen,  that  in  preserving  this  demeanour  (of  neutraUt 
you  are  none  the  less  joining  with  us  in  the  work  of  unive 
liberty.     Leave  us  to  make  a  few  more  steps  along  the  cou 
where  you  were  our  precursors,  and  let  us  rejoice  beforehand  i 
a  common  hope  for  the  epoch,  not  far  distant,  when  the  interests 

*  I  have  been  unable  to  find  this  correspondence  in  English.  These 
passages  are  taken  from  the  Histoire  Socialiste  de  la  Revolution,  volume 
La  Convention,  by  Jean  Jaurds,  p.  196  and  following,  and  from  Danton 
imigrS,  by  Dr.  Robinet. 


I 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    345 

of  Europe  and  of  the  human  race  will  invite  both  nations  to  hold 
out  the  hand  of  friendship  to  each  other."  ^  The  hope  was 
echoed  by  the  Society  for  Constitutional  Reform  of  London, 
which  now  wrote  expressing  the  belief  that,  after  the  example 
given  by  the  French,  "  revolutions  would  become  easy,"  and  that 
"  before  long  the  French  would  be  writing  to  congratulate  the 
National  Convention  of  England."  ^ 

The  Jacobins  of  Paris  were  ready  to  promise  more  than  this  ; 
they  intended,  they  declared,  "  to  seal  an  eternal  aUiance  " 
with  their  EngUsh  brothers,  who  had  only  to  let  them  know  that 
their  liberty  was  being  attacked  for  the  "  victorious  phalanxes  " 
of  their  French  allies  to  "  cross  the  Straits  of  Dover  and  fly  to 
their  defence."  ^ 

Thus  was  the  suggestion  calmly  entertained  by  our  exponents 
of  universal  brotherhood  in  1792,  that  the  revolutionary  horde 
of  cut-throats  and  assassins,  who  had  just  carried  out  the 
massacres  of  September,  should  land  on  our  shores  and  produce 
the  same  horrors  in  England  as  had  taken  place  in  France. 

The  anti-patriotism  of  a  section  of  so-called  "  democracy  " 
in  England  has  never  been  better  exempUfied.  To  men  of  this 
mentaUty  it  matters  not  whether  it  is  with  democracy  or  auto- 
cracy abroad  that  they  strike  a  league  of  friendship  ;  the  enemies 
of  their  country  can  always  make  sure  of  their  support.  Until 
the  Germans  of  to-day  England  never  had  bitterer  enemies  than 
the  Jacobins  of  France.  Hatred  of  England,  of  the  English 
character,  of  English  ideas  of  Hberty,  was  one  of  the  first  tenets 
of  their  poUtical  creed.  In  this  they  differed  fundamentally 
from  the  earlier  revolutionaries,  the  men  who  had  framed  the 
Constitution  of  1791,  and  also  from  the  Girondins,  who  no  doubt 
entertained  a  sincere  admiration  for  England ;  the  Jacobins, 
into  whose  hands  the  power  was  now  passing,  were,  with  the 
exception  of  Danton,  the  sworn  foes  not  only  of  the  English 
Government  but  of  EngUsh  "  democracy " ;  they  repeatedly 
declared  that  they  despised  Mr.  Fox  as  much  as  they  hated 
Mr.  Pitt.* 

The  leading  spirit  of  the  anti  -  English  campaign  was 
undoubtedly  Robespierre ;  always  the  opponent  of  Inter- 
nationaUsm — hence  his  ground  of  accusation  later  on  against 
the  Prussian  Clootz — he  never  concealed  his  distrust  of  foreign 
sympathizers  with  the  French  Revolution  ;  four  months  earlier, 
supported  by  Collot  d'Herbois,  he  had  deprecated  the  corre- 
spondence of  the  Jacobins  with  their  brothers  in  Manchester,^ 

^  Date  of  November  7,  1792.  *  Date  of  November  10,  1792. 

3  Date  of  November  28,  1792. 
•  Playf air's  History  of  Jacobinism,  p.  384. 
/  ^  S&ances  des  Jacobins,  date  of  June  4,  1792. 


346        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

and  again  in  September  it  was  he  who  opposed  the  election  of 
Dr.  Priestly  to  the  Convention.^ 

For  the  present,  however,  the  French  Jacobins  were  quite 
ready  to  make  use  of  their  EngUsh  allies  ;  hypocritical  professions 
of  friendship  cost  nothing,  and  met  with  very  substantial  rewards. 
Already  in  April,  as  we  have  seen,  a  subscription  had  been  raised 
in  aid  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  it  seems  probable  that 
further  sums  were  forthcoming  during  the  course  of  the  summer. 
In  August  Dr.  Moore  heard  with  increduUty  of  "  the  great 
number  of  English  guineas  now  in  circulation  in  Paris,"  which, 
as  usual,  were  attributed  to  "  the  Court  of  Great  Britain,"  whose 
object  was  to  excite  sedition  in  France.^  If  these  mysterious 
guineas  were  not,  as  Dr.  Moore  beUeved,  mjrthical,  they  were 
obviously  those  of  Orleans  or  of  the  English  Jacobins.  At  any 
rate,  it  is  to  the  latter  source  that  the  "  EngHsh  gold  "  which 
arrived  in  Paris  three  weeks  later  can,  with  certainty,  be  traced, 
for  the  address  of  congratulation  on  the  massacres  of  September, 
forwarded  by  Lord  Sempill  and  three  other  members  in  the  name 
of  the  London  Constitutional  Society,  was  accompanied  by  a 
present  of  looo  pairs  of  shoes  for  the  army  and  J^iooo  in  money? 
Besides  this  an  immense  quantity  of  arms  was  provided  by  the 
English  Jacobins  from  the  manufactories  of  Birmingham  and 
Sheffield,  for  which  a  further  pubUc  subscription  was  raised  by 
means  of  an  appeal  in  the  newspapers  to  "  all  those  who  favoured 
the  cause  of  liberty  in  France  against  the  infamous  conspiracy 
of  crowned  brigands."  * 

It  is,  moreover,  in  the  late  summer  of  1792  that,  for  the  first 
time,  we  find  EngUshmen  personally  co-operating  in  the  re- 
volutionary movement  in  Paris.  Amongst  these  was  Thomas 
Paine,  who  left  the  shores  of  England  amidst  the  jeers  and  hisses 
of  the  crowd :  "I  beUeve  had  we  remained  much  longer,"  a 
fellow-traveller  remarks,  "they  would  have  pelted  him  with 
stones  from  the  beach."  ^  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  face 
reminded  Madame  Roland  of  "a  blackberry  powdered  with 
flour  " — for  Paine  was  constantly  inebriated — the  exponent  of 
"  The  Rights  of  Man  "  was  received  with  enthusiasm  by  the 
Girondins,  and  through  their  influence  succeeded  in  becoming 
a  member  of  the  Convention. 

Besides  Paine  a  band  of  English  Jacobins  arrived  in  Paris 
the  same  time.     "  Dr.  Priestley,"  Mr.  Burges  writes  to  Lore 

*  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  ii.  300. 
2  Journal  of  a  Residence  in  France,  i.  134, 
'  Arthur  Young,  The  Example  of  France,  Appendix,  p.  3. 

*  Oswald's  Speech  at  the  Jacobin  Club,  September  30,  1792. 

*  J.  Mason  to  J.  B.  Burges,  letter  dated  September  13,  1792  {Fortesc 
Historical  MSS.  ii.  316). 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    347 

Auckland  on  September  4,  "is  also  there,  and  is  looked  upon  as 
the  great  adviser  of  the  present  ministers,  being  consulted  by  > 
them  on  all  occasions.  There  are  also  eight  or  ten  other  English  \/ 
and  Scotch  who  work  with  the  Jacobins,  and  in  great  measure 
conduct  their  present  manoeuvres.  I  understand  these  gentlemen 
at  present  are  employed  in  writing  a  justification  of  democracy 
and  an  invective  against  monarchy  in  the  abstract,  which  is  to 
be  printed  at  Paris,  and  distributed  through  England  and  Ireland. 
The  names  of  some  of  them  are  Watts  and  Wilson  of  Manchester, 
Oswald  a  Scotsman,  Stone  an  EngUshman,  and  Mackintosh  who 
wrote  against  Burke."  ^ 

All  these  men,  then,  were  in  Paris  during  the  massacres  of 
September,  and  not  one  uttered  a  word  of  protest.  Oswald, 
indeed,  in  his  tirades  to  the  Jacobins,  with  whom  he  sought  to 
ingratiate  himself  by  insulting  his  king  and  country,  showed 
himself  more  violent  than  them  aU,  vied  with  Marat  in  his  in- 
vectives against  "  royal  tigers,"  and  rivalled  Hebert  in  his  foul 
accusations  against  the  imprisoned  Queen  of  France.^ 

This  being  so,  are  we  to  regard  it  as  impossible  that  English- 
men were  present  at  the  massacres  in  the  prisons  ?  One  would 
wiUingly  remove  this  stain  from  our  national  character,  but  if 
we  are  to  know  the  exact  truth  about  the  intrigues  of  the  French 
Revolution,  one  cannot  pass  over  the  accusation  in  silence.  The 
evidence  on  which  it  rests  is,  firstly,  that  of  Jourdan,  president 
of  the  Section  des  Quatre  Nations,  who  was  sent  to  the  Abbaye 
during  the  massacre  and  stated  that  he  saw  two  EngUshmen 
plying  the  assassins  with  drink  ;3  and  secondly,  Prudhomme, 
who  says  that  Englishmen  were  seen  at  La  Force  amongst  the 
commanders  of  the  butchery,  and  that  "  these  Englishmen  were 
the  guests  of  the  Due  d'Orleans ;  they  dined  with  him  immediately 
after  the  death  of  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe."  * 

These,  then,  were  the  EngUshmen  dining  at  the  Palais  Royal 
when  the  princess's  head  was  carried  under  the  windows.  The 
only  one  of  the  number  whose  name  is  known  was  a  certain 
Mr.  Lindsay,  who  described  the  scene  with  horror  to  Mr.  Burges 
after  his  return  to  England  two  days  later,  and  whom  it  is 
impossible  to  suspect  of  collusion  with  such  atrocities.  But  the 
contemporary  Playfair  distinctly  states  that  the  guests  of  the 
Due  d'Orleans  at  this  particular  dinner  were  "  EngUsh  demo- 
crats." ^    This  suppHes  the  key  to  the  whole  mystery.     Since 

*  Correspondence  oj  Lord  Auckland,  ii.  438. 

*  Oswald's  Speech  to  the  Jacobins  on  September  30,  1792  (Aulard's 
Stances  des  Jacobins,  iv.  346). 

3  "Declaration  d'Antoine  Gabriel  Aim6  Jourdan,"  in  MSmoires  sur  les 
Journees  de  Septembre,  p.  154. 

*  Criikes  de  la  Rivolution,  iv.  123. 

^  Playfair's  History  of  Jacobinism,  p.  501. 


348        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


« 


we  know  that  the  EngUsh  democrats  then  in  Paris  were  ardently 
in  sympathy  with  all  the  excesses  of  the  Revolution,  that  their 
colleagues  in  England  wrote  letters  of  congratulation,  and  that 
Lx)rd  Stanhope,  one  of  their  most  influential  members,  applauded 
the  massacres,  why  should  they  not  have  personally  encouraged 
the  assassins  ?  From  applauding  at  a  distance  to  assisting  on 
the  spot  is  surely  but  a  step. 

Moreover,  their  presence  at  the  Due  d' Orleans'  dinner  coin- 
cides exactly  with  Montjoie's  assertion  that  certain  Enghsh 
revolutionaries,  notably  Lord  Stanhope,  were  in  league  with  the 
Orleanistes.  We  know  that  precisely  at  this  moment  Lord 
Stanhope  was  in  correspondence  with  Richard  Sayre,  or  Sayer, 
the  EngUsh  agent  in  Paris,  who  had  been  deputed  by  the  revolu- 
tionary societies  of  England  to  supply  arms  to  the  Jacobins  of 
France ;  ^  and  the  exceedingly  compromising  letters  addressed  by 
Sayre  to  Lord  Stanhope — ingenuously  published  by  the  latter's 
admiring  biographers  ^ — show  clearly  that  the  EngUsh  revolution- 
aries in  Paris,  of  whom  Lord  Stanhope  was  the  leading  spirit,  were 
engaged  in  some  guilty  intrigue  with  the  enemies  of  their  country. 

The  massacres  of  September  cannot,  therefore,  be  regarded 
as  solely  the  work  of  the  French ;  they  wereMevised  and  organized 
by  the  Spaniard,  Marat,  in  co-operation  with  Frenchmen,  executed 
by  Frenchmen,  ItaUans,  and  Germans,  applauded  by  the  Prussian 
Clootz,  applauded  and  actively  assisted  by  EngUshmen.  Again, 
as  on  the  loth  of  August,  it  is  therefore  to  the  doctrines  that 
inspired  them,  not  to  the  temperament  of  the  nation  amongst 
which  they  occurred,  that  the  horrors  which  took  place  must  be 
attributed. 

PRUSSIA 

Whilst  Anarchists,  Orleanistes,  Girondins,  and  EngUsh 
Jacobins  were  fighting  for  the  mastery  in  Paris,  Prussia  played 
her  part  in  the  final  ruin  of  the  French  monarchy.  The  cannon- 
ade of  Valmy — it  cannot  be  described  as  a  battle — that  on  the 
20th  of  September  checked  the  advance  of  the  alUed  armies  on 
the  capital,  is  one  of  the  enigmas  of  history  which  will  never 
perhaps  be  entirely  solved.  Pro-revolutionary  historians  have 
endeavoured  to  explain  the  retreat  of  the  best-trained  troops  of 
Europe  before  the  undiscipUned  revolutionary  army  by  the  state 
of  the  weather,  the  muddy  condition  of  the  ground,  by  the  fact 
that  dysentery  had  broken  out  amongst  the  Prussians,  or  merely 
by   the   irresistible   valour   inspired   by  democratic   doctrines. 

*  The  arms  referred  to  by  Oswald  in  his  speech  (Aulard's  Siances  des 
Jacobins,  iv.  346). 

2  Life  of  Charles,  third  Earl  of  Stanhope,  by  Ghita  Stanhope  and  G 
Gooch,  p.  120. 


I 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    349 

These  legends  have  now  been  almost  universally  accepted  as 
fact,  but  in  the  minds  of  well-informed  contemporaries  no  doubt 
exists  that  some  further  explanation  must  be  sought  for  the 
check  to  the  allied  armies  at  Valmy  and  their  subsequent  retreat. 

Thus  Lord  Auckland,  writing  to  Sir  Morton  Eden  from  the 
Hague  on  October  19,  1792,  hazards  the  opinion  that  "  a  com- 
plete victory  (for  the  allies)  might  have  been  on  the  20th  (at 
Valmy),  if  the  royal  personage  who  was  present  had  not  prevented 
the  engagement  for  unknown  reasons."  A  note  adds  that  this 
royal  personage  was  the  King  of  Prussia,  but  Fersen  declares 
that  the  King  of  Prussia  wished  to  attack,  and  that  it  was  only 
the  cowardice  and  indecision  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  that 
prevented  the  engagement.  Thiebault,  then  with  the  army  on 
the  frontier,  takes  the  same  view.  Matilda  Hawkins,  whose 
Memoirs  were  pubUshed  in  1824,  relates  that  her  friend,  the 
Comte  de  Jamac,  who  "  was  with  the  army  at  the  time  of  the 
Duke  of  Brunswick's  unaccountable  retreat  from  Paris,"  told 
her  that  the  Duke  himself  said,  "  Why  I  retreated  will  never  be 
known  to  my  death." 

According  to  prevailing  opinion  at  the  time  the  retreat  after 
Valmy  was  effected  by  negotiation,  and  three  different  theories 
were  advanced  as  to  the  authors  of  these  negotiations.  Firstly, 
then,  Beaulieu  and  Pages  assert  that  Louis  XVL,  assured  by 
Manuel,  Petion,  and  Kersaint  that  the  presence  of  the  allied 
armies  was  the  main  cause  of  irritation  against  him,  allowed  him- 
self to  be  persuaded  to  write  and  ask  the  King  of  Prussia  to 
withdraw,  in  return  for  which  the  three  deputies  promised  him 
his  Ufe.^  Secondly,  the  Mountain,  represented  by  Camille 
Desmoulins,  declared  that  the  retreat  was  brought  about  by  an 
understanding  between  the  Girondins  and  the  Prussians,  and  when 
we  remember  the  eulogies  lavished  by  Carra  on  the  Duke  of 
Brunswick  in  July,  and  find  that  Carra  was  the  man  chosen  by 
Petion  to  go  with  SiQery  on  the  24th  of  September  to  Dumouriez's 
camp  at  La  Lune  and  confer  with  Manstein,  the  representative 
of  the  King  of  Prussia,  this  seems  not  improbable.^  Thirdly, 
D'Allonville,  the  author  of  the  Memoires  secrets,  states  that  it 
was  Danton  who  negotiated  the  "  defeat  "  of  the  Prussians  at 
Valmy  and  their  subsequent  retreat  by  the  simple  method  of 
bribery.  This  was  effected  through  the  agency  of  Dumouriez, 
at  this  moment  Danton's  ally,  to  whom  he  wrote  immediately 
after  Valmy,  instructing  him  to  drive  back  the  Prussians  without 
attempting  to  destroy  them,  since  the  Prussians  "  were  not  the 

1  Beaulieu,  iv.  169  ;   Pag^s,  ii.  45. 

2  Carra  had  also  been  sent  by  Servan  and  Danton  to  "  harangue  the 
Idsoiers  /at  the  camp  of  '  La  Maulde  '  in  August "  (see  Pricis  de  la  DSfense 
de  Carra,  p.  29). 


350        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

natural  enemies  of  France."  ^  The  manner  in  which  Danton 
procured  the  necessary  sums  is  thus  described  by  D'Allonville  : 

"  Billaud  -  Varenne,  who  left  Paris  after  the  massacres  of 
September,  had  reached  the  army  on  the  nth  and  had  opened 
negotiations,  of  which  the  sums  promised,  but  not  yet  paid,  alone 
delayed  the  conclusion.  Two  or  three  millions,  the  fruit  of  the 
pillage  of  the  loth  of  August,  were  all  that  the  Commune  of  Paris 
possessed,  and  it  was  not  enough.  '  Why  do  you  not  rob  the 
Garde-Meuble  {i.e.  the  depository  where  the  Crown  jewels  were 
kept)  ?  '  cries  Panis,  and  this  thing  was  done  on  the  i6th  of 
September  by  the  orders  of  TaUien  and  Danton,  which  produced, 
in  different  species,  a  sum  of  thirty  millions.  The  first  overtures 
had  faciUtated  the  escape  of  Dumouriez  from  the  position  in 
which  he  would  have  been  irrevocably  lost,  others  prevented  him 
from  being  driven  from  his  position  during  the  cannonade  of 
Valmy,  and  from  the  22nd  to  the  23rd  negotiations  were,  as  we 
have  said,  actively  carried  out."  ^ 

This  evidence  is  exactly  confirmed  by  General  Michaud, 
who  was  with  the  armies  at  the  time.  The  deputies  of  the 
Gironde,  Michaud  declares,  were  not  in  the  secret  of  the  negotia- 
tions with  the  Prussians,  and  it  is  to  the  Orleaniste  schemes  of 
Danton  that  these  are  to  be  attributed.  "  It  is  only  with  audacity 
and  yet  more  audacity  that  we  can  save  ourselves,"  said  the 
Minister  of  Justice.  "  Danton  was,  no  doubt,  a  very  audacious 
man,  but  when  he  pronounced  these  words  it  is  certain  that  he 
knew  of  the  secret  negotiation,  since  he  himself  was  directing  it 
with  his  colleague  Lebrun.  .  .  .  Already  he  was  assured  that 
the  Prussians  would  not  get  to  Paris,  he  knew  that  it  was  only 
a  matter  of  satisfying  them,  and  fulfiUing  the  engagements 
entered  into  by  Dumouriez.  .  .  .  Hence  this  resolution  to  remain 
in  the  capital,  to  pillage  the  Garde-Meuble,  to  massacre  the 
prisoners  and  plunder  the  victims.  ...  So  it  might  be  said, 
without  exaggeration,  that  the  horrible  system  of  blood  and 
terror  .  .  .  was  a  consequence  of  what  had  taken  place  in 
Champagne  between  the  Prussians  and  the  leaders  of  the 
Revolution,  who  were  no  other  than  the  leaders  of  the  Orleaniste 
faction."  ^ 

The  theft  of  the  Crown  jewels  was  not  attributed  to  Danton 
by  Royalists  alone.  When  on  the  night  of  the  i6th  to  the  17th 
of  September  the  Garde-Meuble  was  broken  into  and  the  Crown 
jewels  were  removed,  no  one  seriously  beheved  that  the  coup 
could  be  attributed  to  ordinary  burglars,  and  by  Girondins  as  well 

1  D'Allonville,  Memoires  d'un  Homme  d'etat,  i.  401. 

2  D'Allonville,  MSmoires  secrets,  iii.  95. 

3  Biographie  de  Louis  Philippe  d'Orlians,  by  L.  G.  Michaud,  Appendix, 
pp.  16,  17. 


THE  MASSACRES  OF  SEPTEMBER    351 

as  Royalists  it  was  declared  to  be  the  work  of  the  Commune. 
Why,  indeed,  should  it  not  be  so  ?  The  Commune,  as  every 
one  knew,  had  ordered  the  pillage  that  took  place  after  the  loth 
of  August,  and  it  was  again  the  Commune  that  had  taken  posses- 
sion of  the  greater  part  of  the  spoils  wrested  from  the  victims  of 
the  massacres.  When  several  large  burglaries  have  been  effected 
by  the  same  gang  in  the  same  district,  it  is  only  reasonable  to 
attribute  a  further  one  to  the  same  agency.  Madame  Roland 
had  no  hesitation  in  designating  Danton  as  the  chief  burglar  of 
the  Crown  jewels  and  Fabre  d'JSglantine  as  his  assistant,  although, 
as  usual  in  the  case  of  crimes  ordained  by  the  revolutionary 
leaders,  the  obscure  instruments  who  carried  out  the  deed  were 
arrested  and  put  to  death.^ 

At  any  rate,  whatever  were  the  means  employed,  it  is  clear 
that  some  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  upon  the  Prussians  in 
order  to  ensure  their  retreat.  The  unaccountable  part  of  the 
affair  Ues  not  so  much  in  the  fact  that  their  triumphant  advance 
was  checked  by  a  reverse  at  Valmy,  but  that  this  one  reverse 
should  have  turned  the  tide  of  thie  whole  war,  yet  should  not  have 
resulted  in  the  rout  of  the  allied  armies.  For  if  the  revolu- 
tionary troops  were  strong  enough  to  arrest  finally  the  enemy's 
advance,  why  did  they  not  follow  up  their  victory  at  Valmy  with 
greater  vigour  ?  This  problem  was  so  apparent  to  every  one 
at  the  time  that  it  was  admitted  even  by  Desmoulins,  the  ally 
of  Danton,  though,  at  the  instigation  of  Robespierre,  he  cleverly 
turned  it  into  an  accusation  against  the  Girondins. 

"  Is  it  not  inconceivable  to  every  one  and  unheard  of  in 
history,"  wrote  Camille  Desmoulins  in  his  Histoire  des  Brissotins, 
"  as  I  said  to  Dumouriez  himself  when  he  appeared  at  the  Con- 
vention, that  a  general  who  with  17,000  men  had  held  back  an 
army  of  92,000  men— after  Dumouriez,  Ajax  Beumonville,  and 
Kellermann  had  announced  that  the  plains  of  Champagne  would 
be  the  tomb  of  the  King  of  Prussia's  army,  like  that  of  Attila, 
and  that  not  one  man  would  escape— should  not  have  cut  off  the 
retreat  of  this  army  when  it  was  reduced  to  nearly  half  by 
dysentery,  when  its  march  was  impeded  by  nearly  20,000  sick, 
and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  the  victorious  army  had  increased 
to  more  than  100,000  men  !  All  the  soldiers  of  the  vanguard 
of  our  army  will  tell  you  that  when  the  rearguard  of  the  Prussians 
called  a  halt,  we  called  a  halt ;  when  they  went  to  the  right,  we 
marched  to  the  left ;  in  a  word,  Dumouriez  led  back  the  King 
of  Prussia  rather  than  he  pursued  him,  and  there  was  not  a  soldier 
in  the  army  who  was  not  convinced  that  there  had  been  an  arrange- 
ment between  the  Prussians  and  the  Convention  by  the  medium  of 
Dumouriez," 

*  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Roland,  i.  113. 


352 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


Such,  then,  in  the  words  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  them- 
selves, was  the  "  irresistible  elan  of  the  victorious  revolutionary 
army  "  !  Whether,  therefore,  the  retreat  of  the  Prussians  was 
due  to  the  Girondins  or  Orleanistes,  whether  Carra  was  acting 
in  the  interests  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  or  the  Due  d' Orleans, 
whether  Danton  had  an  understanding  with  the  Girondins  and 
afterwards  disowned  them,  or  whether  he  was  carrying  on  an 
intrigue  with  Dumouriez  as  the  agent  of  the  Commune  and  later 
on  betrayed  him,  representing  him  through  Desmouhns  as  the 
accomplice  of  the  Gironde,  it  is  evident  that  something  happened 
at  Valmy  which  has  never  been  explained  to  this  day.  Vahny 
and  its  sequel  remain  an  insoluble  mystery.  Only,  in  the  Hght 
of  our  present  knowledge  of  Prussian  diplomacy,  it  seems  not 
impossible  that  some  profounder  policy  may  have  underlain  the 
action  of  both  Frederick  William  and  the  Duke  of  Brunswick 
than  has  yet  been  attributed  to  them.  At  any  rate,  whether 
I  they  reaUzed  it  at  the  time  or  not,  the  "  defeat  "  of  Valmy  was 
'  a  superb  victory  for  Prussia.  For  to  march  on  to  Paris  at  this 
'  crisis  must  have  been  to  re-establish  the  Bourbons  on  the  throne, 
and  to  leave  the  way  open  to  a  renewal  of  the  Franco- Austrian 
aUiance  ;  by  leaving  France  to  tear  herself  to  pieces  Frederick 
WilUam  worthily  carried  out  the  traditions  of  the  great  Frederick, 
.  and  assured  the  future  supremacy  of  Prussia.  Valmy  had  but 
paved  the  way  for  Sadowa  and  Sedan. 

Goethe,  looking  on  at  the  famous  fusillade,  is  said  to  have 
uttered  these  prophetic  words  :  "  From  this  place  and  from  this 
day  forth  begins  a  new  era  in  the  world's  history,  and  you  can  all 
say  that  you  were  present  at  its  birth." 

A  new  era  in  truth,  an  era  wherein  the  civilization  of  old 
France  should  be  utterly  destroyed  and  the  great  barbaric 
German  Empire  should  rise  upon  the  ruins.  The  Golden  Age 
had  ended  ;  the  Age  of  Blood  and  Iron  was  to  begin. 


I 


THE   REIGN  OF  TERROR 


353  2  A 


THE    REIGN    OF   TERROR 

"  The  2nd  of  September,"  said  Collot  d'Herbois,  "  is  the  great 
article  of  the  Credo  of  our  Uberty."  In  other  words,  _  the 
massacres  in  the  prisons  were  the  prelude  to  the  Reign  of  Terror, 
the  first  manifestation  of  that  organized  system  of  destruction 
which  for  ten  months  held  sway  over  France.  This  is  why,  in 
relating  the  history  of  the  Terror,  it  is  necessary  to  begin  at 
September  1792,  in  order  to  show  the  progressive  stages  which 
led  up  to  the  final  chmax. 

For,  before  this  system  could  be  pursued  with  impunity,  the 
demagogues  were  obliged  to  remove  three  principal  obstacles 
from  their  path;  these  were,  firstly,  the  monarchy,  and  con- 
sequently the  Constitution  of  1791 ;  secondly,  the  King ;  and 
thirdly,  the  Girondins.  It  was  the  struggle  to  effect  this  three- 
fold purpose  that  for  a  year  arrested  the  course  of  the  Terror, 
which  otherwise  must  have  followed  directly  on  the  September 
massacres.  We  shall  now  see  how  one  by  one  these  obstacles 
were  overthrown,  and  how,  in  each  case,  the  schemes  of  the 
demagogues  triumphed  over  the  will  of  the  people. 

THE  PROCLAMATION  OF  THE  REPUBLIC 

The  idea  no  doubt  prevails  in  this  country  that  France  became 
a  RepubUc  because  the  French  nation  was  finally  convinced  of 
the  advantages  offered  by  a  Republican  form  of  government. 
Nothing  is  further  from  the  truth.  France,  as  the  cahiers  had 
shown,  was  soUdly  monarchical,  and  the  protests  following  on 
the  20th  of  June  gave  evidence  that  this  sentiment  still  pre- 
vailed throughout  the  country.  ' '  The  Republicans, ' '  said  Danton 
in  September  1792,  "  are  an  infinitesimal  minority  .  .  .  the  rest 
of  France  is  attached  to  the  monarchy."  ^ 

If,  however,  any  doubt  existed  on  this  point,  if  the  demagogues 
had  any  reason  to  suppose  that  the  opinion  of  the  people  had 
changed  since  the  formation  of  the  cahiers,  the  only  course  in 
accordance  with  the  principles  of  democracy  would  have  been  to 

^  Danton  to  the  Comit6  de  Defense  G6n6rale  (see  Robinet,  Prods 
des  Dantonistes). 

355 


356        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

.  make  a  fresh  appeal  to  the  nation.  For,  however  impossible 
I  it  may  be  to  consult  the  people  on  the  details  of  legislation,  it  is 
1  obviously  a  farce  to  describe  a  State  as  democratic  in  which  the 
1  form  of  government  is  not  the  choice  of  the  nation  as  a  whole. 
The  only  legitimate  method  by  which  the  form  of  government 
can  be  changed  is,  therefore,  a  referendum  to  the  people. 

Nothing  of  this  kind  was  done  in  France.  When,  on  the  2ist 
/  of  September,  the  Convention  that  now  superseded  the  Legislative 
Assembly  held  its  first  sitting,  none  of  the  deputies — amongst 
whom  all  the  leading  revolutionaries,  Girondins,  Dantonistes, 
and  Robespierristes  aUke,  were  included — had  made  any  attempt 
to  discover  the  real  wishes  of  their  constituents  on  the  question 
of  abolishing  the  monarchy,  whilst  in  the  provinces  the  idea  of 
a  RepubUc  had  not  even  been  considered.^ 

At  one  moment  it  seemed  as  if  the  new  Assembly  were  en- 
dowed with  some  appreciation  of  the  principles  of  democracy, 
for  it  began  by  passing  this  admirable  resolution  :  "  The  National 
Convention  declares  that  there  can  be  no  Constitution  unless  it 
is  accepted  by  the  people." 

Yet  after  this,  at  the  very  same  sitting,  it  proceeded  with 
ludicrous  inconsequence  to  discuss  the  fundamental  point  of  the 
Constitution,  the  question  of  a  RepubUc,  without  any  reference 
whatever  to  the  wishes  of  the  people  ! 

It  was  Couthon,  the  ally  of  Robespierre,  who  had  first  pro- 
posed the  aboUtion  of  the  monarchy,  and  the  proposal  was  now 
seconded  by  Collot  d'Herbois  amidst  "  universal  applause." 
True,  one  obscure  member  named  Quinette  rose  to  observe : 
"  It  is  not  we  who  are  the  judges  of  the  monarchy,  it  is  the  people. 
We  have  only  the  mission  to  form  a  definite  government,  and 
the  people  will  choose  between  the  old  one  which  included  the 
monarchy,  and  the  new  one  which  we  shaU  present  to  them." 
But  the  protest  of  Quinette  was  overruled  by  Gregoire,  who 
declared  that  "  no  one  could  ever  propose  to  preserve  in  France 
the  disastrous  race  of  kings.  .  .  .  We  know  too  well  that  all 
dynasties  have  only  been  devouring  races  Hving  on  human 
flesh.  ...  I  ask  that  by  a  solemn  law  you  should  ordain  the 
aboUtion  of  monarchy." 

In  vain  Bazire  interposed  with  the  remonstrance  that  the 
Assembly  should  not  aUow  itself  to  be  carried  away  by  a  "  moment 
of  enthusiasm,"  that  "  the  question  of  aboUshing  the  monarchy 
should  at  least  be  discussed  by  the  Assembly." 

"  What  need  is  there  for  discussion,"  answered  Gregoire, 

^  "  It  was  only  in  Paris  that  the  question  of  the  RepubUc  was  con- 
sidered. ...  In  1792  there  are  no  principles  (of  Republicanism).  They 
can  only  abolish  the  monarchy  by  advocating  the  deposition  (of  the  King) 
They  dare  not  proclaim  the  Republic"  (MadeUn,  p.  266). 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  357 

'*  when  every  one  is  agreed  ?  Kings  are  in  the  moral  order  of 
things  what  monsters  are  in  the  physical  order  ...  the  history 
of  kings  is  the  martyrology  of  nations.  Since  we  are  all  equally 
penetrated  by  this  truth,  what  need  is  there  for  discussion  ?  " 

And,  in  response  to  this  dignified  discourse,  the  Assembly, 
without  further  debate,  passed  the  resolution  :  "  The  National 
Convention  decrees  that  monarchy  is  abolished  in  France."  ^ 

Thus,  in  flagrant  violation  of  the  first  principle  of  democracy, 
rule  by  the  will  of  the  people,^  in  direct  contradiction  to  the 
resolution  passed  by  the  Convention  itself  at  that  same  sitting, 
the  RepubUc  was  proclaimed  by  an  infinitesimal  minority  of 
political  adventurers.  For  if  these  men  who  took  upon  them-  I 
selves  to  overthrow  the  ancient  government  of  France  had  been 
honest  in  their  intentions,  if  they  had  themselves  been  convinced 
of  the  advantages  of  a  RepubUc  over  a  monarchy,  their  action 
might,  to  a  certain  extent,  be  condoned  by  their  enthusiasm. 
But  it  was  not  so.  These  men  were  not  Republican  by  conviction, 
for,  as  we  have  already  seen,  they  were  actuated  by  various 
poUcies  far  removed  from  RepubHcanism.  Still,  at  the  in- 
auguration of  the  Convention,  it  seems  that  the  same  schemes 
for  a  change  of  dynasty  survived ;  the  factions  had  merely  under- 
gone some  slight  modifications.  Now,  although  at  most  stages 
of  the  Revolution  we  find  contemporaries  disagreed  on  the  aims 
of  the  factions,  it  is  curious  to  notice  the  extraordinary  resem- 
blance between  the  explanations  given  by  writers  belonging  to 
completely  different  parties  of  the  motives  that  inspired  the 
proclamation  of  the  RepubUc. 

According  to  such  divergent  authorities  as  Montjoie,  Pag^s, 
Prudhomme,  and  "  The  Two  Friends  of  Liberty,"  Carra  and  his 
party  stiU  incUned  to  the  Duke  of  Brunswick ;  Brissot  and  his 
party  to  the  Duke  of  York ;  SiUery,  Sieyes,  and  Laclos  to  the 
Due  d'Orleans  ;  Dumouriez,  Biron,  and  Valence  to  the  Due  de 
Chartres ;  whilst  Marat  and  Danton,  now  less  disposed  to  support 
the  Due  d'Orleans,  began  to  think  of  their  own  elevation  and 
joined  forces  with  Robespierre,  in  order  to  establish  either  a 

^  Moniteur,  xiv.  8. 

2  A  working-man,  a  tiler  of  Saint-Leu,  named  Gillequint,  himself  a  • 
convincer'  'I  iHiblican,  thus  admirably  summed  up  the  matter  in  an  : 
ad'\  ^^iress  tOo  fellow-citizens  some  months  later :    "  The  Sovereign  {i.e. 

the  peo,i"must  be  free  in  his  opinion.     Are  we  free  to  manifest  ours  ? 

At  t>P6'ii'^g  of  the  sittings  of  the  Convention  ...  a  member  proposed 

x.wolition  of  the  monarchy.  Without  examination,  without  discussion, 
.€  monarchy  was  abolished  by  a  decree.  .  .  .  This  decree  was  not  sanc- 
tioned by  the  people,  and  since  it  is  recognized  that  no  decree  can  be  made 
law  without  the  sanction  of  the  people,  it  should  only  have  been  carried 
out  provisionally."  For  this  expression  of  opinion  Gillequint  was  guillo- 
tined 9n  the  5th  of  Messidor,  An  11.  (Wallon,  Tribunal  rholutionnaire,  , 
iv.  386-388). 


358        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Dictatorship  under  one  of  their  number  or  a  Triumvirate  composed 
of  all  three.  Owing  to  these  conflicting  pohcies,  none  of  which 
could  be  openly  avowed,  every  one  was  obUged  to  profess  Re- 
,  pubUcanism — "  some  voted  for  the  RepubUc  for  fear  Orleans 
I  should  be  King,  others  in  order  not  to  appear  Orleanistes ;  aU 
I  wished  to  acquire  or  maintain  their  popularity."  This  was 
\  what  Robespierre  meant  when  he  said  later  on,  "  The  Republic 
j  slipped  in  furtively  between  the  factions."  ^ 

But  once  the  Repubhc  had  been  proclaimed  and  the  monarchy 
declared  to  be  finally  aboUshed,  it  became  necessary  for  the 
factions  to  reconstruct  their  pohcies,  and  so  three  main  parties 
were  formed  in  the  Convention.  These  became  known  as  the 
Gironde,  the  Plain,  and  the  Mountain. 

The  first  of  these  parties  consisted  of  the  deputies  of  the 
Gironde  who  had  sat  in  the  Legislative  Assembly — ^Vergniaud, 
Guadet,  Gensonne,  Ducos,  and  Fonfrede — and  also  Brissot  with 
his  following,  which  included  Buzot,  Valaz6,  Isnard,  and  Con- 
dorcet.  All  these  were  henceforth  described  collectively  as 
Girondistes  or  Girondins,  and  it  was  they  who,  as  time  went  on, 
came  to  represent  the  truly  Repubhcan  party  in  the  Convention. 
The  Plain  or  Marais  was  composed  of  several  hundred 
nondescript  deputies,  non-committal  in  their  views,  and  afraid 
to  move  boldly  in  any  direction. 

But  the  real  force  of  the  Assembly  lay  in  the  Mountain,  that 
fierce  and  subversive  minority  dominated  by  Danton,  Marat, 
and  Robespierre,  and  including  the  most  violent  members  of  the 
Jacobin  and  Cordeher  Clubs — Camille  Desmouhns,  Billaud- 
Varenne,  Collot  d'Herbois,  Fabre  d'figlantine,  Panis,  Sergent, 
Legendre,  and  also  the  Due  d'Orleans,  who,  by  the  usual  methods 
of  bribes  and  cajolery,  by  dinners  lavished  on  the  new  members 
of  the  Commune,  and,  in  the  opinion  of  many  contemporaries, 
by  the  payment  of  15,000  hvres  to  Marat,  succeeded  in  securing 
election  as  a  deputy  for  Paris.^ 

Inevitably  the  Montagnards  carried  aU  before  them  ;  it  was 
they  and  not  the  pedantic  Girondins  who  understood  the  art  of 

^  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  216 ;  Pag^  -sahiicv  Deux 
Amis,  viii.   326;    Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  •^*^^<'^w^^<^w,  \  ^    ^\-  ♦**'e 

passages,  written  at  about  the  same  date,  1796  and  1797.  '-        «  si 

fully  compared,  and  will  be  found  to  be  almost  identical ;  "^     momC 
that  each  expressed  the  current  opinion  of  the  day.  \onarch 

*  Prudhomme,  Revolutions  de  Paris,  xiii.  522.  It  was  at  this  a 
that  the  Due  d'Orleans  was  said  to  have  declared  to  the  Commune  tu  ,^^^1 
was  not  the  son  of  the  last  Due  d'Orleans  but  of  the  duchess's  coachma 
Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrlSans,  iii.  251  ;  Peltier,  La  Revolution  du  10 
AoUt,  ii.  9;  Playfair's  History  of  Jacobinism,  p.  604;  posthumous  works 
of  Lord  Orford,  Historic  Doubts,  ii.  250 ;  Les  Fils  de  Philippe  tgalite,  by 
G.  Len6tre,  p.  2. 


1 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  359 

rousing  popular  passions.     Hitherto,  as  we  have  seen,  even  the 
mob  of  Paris  had  needed  to  be  systematically  stirred  up  in  order 
to  take  part  in  the  revolutionary  movement,  and  this  is  not  sur- 
prising, for  the  issues  at  stake  were  outside  their  comprehension. 
What  matter  to  them  whether  the  "  patriot  ministers  "  were 
recalled  or  not,  whether  the  King  had  the  right  of  Veto,  whether 
the  non-juring  priests  were  deported,  and  so  forth  ?     As  to  the 
leaders  of  the  Legislative  Assembly,  none  had  appealed  to  their 
mentahties;   the  eloquence  of  Vergniaud  left  them  cold;  the 
speeches  repeated  parrot-hke  by  the  so-caUed  deputations  from 
the  Faubourgs  were  unintelligible  aUke  to  orators  and  audience. 
But  when  Marat,  Danton,  and  Robespierre  assumed  the  reins 
of  power  everything  was  changed.     Marat  spoke  a  language  the 
populace  could  understand ;   instead  of  bewildering  their  minds 
with  poUtical  subtleties  he  simply  ordered  them  to  go  out  and 
bum  and  pillage  and  destroy.     By  this  means  he   appealed 
irresistibly  to  the  craving  for  excitement  which  distinguishes  the 
populace  in  every  city,  particularly  in  Paris,  whilst  his  ostentation 
of  poverty  imposed  for  a  while  on  some  of  the  more  credulous 
amongst  the  people  themselves.     It  has  been  said  that  "  Marat 
loved  the  poor,"  that  from  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  he 
had  Uved  on  the  barest  necessaries  of  hfe.     This  we  now  know  to 
be  untrue  ;   Marat,  though  of  filthy  and  neglected  appearance,  ' 
Uved  in  the  greatest  comfort,  and  was  never  known  to  make  any 
personal  sacrifices  for  the  poor  of   Paris.^    The  vicious,  the 
wastrel,   the  degraded  alone  inspired  his  sympathy ;    honest 
and  law-abiding  men  of  the  people,  especially  those  who  by  their 
industry  had  achieved  some  degree  of  prosperity,  became  the 
objects  of  his  contempt  and  hatred.     "  Give  me  300,000  heads," 
he  said,  "  and  I  wiU  answer  for  the  country  being  saved.  .  .  . 
Begin  by  hanging  at  their  doors  the  bakers,  the  grocers,  and  all 
the  tradesmen."    When  the  people  failed  to  respond  to  these 

1  "  From  the  day  the  Revolution  began,"  says  Kropotkin,  "  Marat 

^  took  to  bread  and  water,  not  figuratively  speaking,  but  in  reality."     No 

^^ authority   is  given  for  this  astonishing  assertion.     The  researches  of  M. 

'  o     '^n^t^e  reveal,  however,  that  at  his  flat  in  the  Rue  des  Cordeliers,  Marat 

J^  -^  vas  waited  on  by  four  women — his  mistress,  his  sister,  the  portress,  and 

'?  ^c  -le  cook.     Why  a  cook  for  bread  and  water  ?     Moreover,  on  the  evening 

^^    f  his  death,  when  during  the  visit  of  Charlotte  Corday,  his  mistress,  Simonne 

^^  fy -vrard,  entered  the  bathroom,  she  removed  from  the  window-sill  two  dishes 

V^  ( jntaining  sweetbreads  and  brains  for  the  evening  meal — ^by  no  means  a 

x?  \eagre  menu  for  the  Friend  of  the  People  at  a  moment  when  hungry 

.rowds  were  drawn  up  outside  his  door  waiting  for  crusts  of  bread  {Paris 

rSvolutionnaire,  by  G.  Lenotre,  p.  219).     This  confirms  the  story  current 

amongst  the  people  later  that,  although  Marat's  frugality  had  been  vaunted, 

his  table  "  was  every  day  splendidly  served  and  never  consisted  of  less 

than  eight  dishes,  ^nd  that  she  who  called  herself  his  wife  was  seen  to  buy 

objects  of  great  luxury,  either  for  his  table  or  for  other  purposes.  .  .  ." 

(Schmidt,  Tableaux  de  Paris,  ii.  167). 


36o        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

suggestions,  Marat  turned  and  rent  them  :  "  Oh  !  babbUng  people, 
if  you  but  knew  how  to  act  !  "  ^  or  again :  "  Eternal  idlers,  with 
what  epithets  would  I  not  overwhelm  you  if,  in  the  transports 
of  my  despair,  I  knew  of  any  more  humihating  than  that  of 
Parisians  \"  ^  In  this  lay  the  difference  between  the  poUcies 
of  Robespierre  and  Marat.  Robespierre  aimed  at  democracy,  not 
in  the  sense  of  government  by  the  people,  but  of  a  State  solely 
composed  of  "  the  people  "  ;  ^  he  would  have  liked  to  turn  the 
whole  world  into  a  vast  working-man's  settlement,  of  which  he 
would  be  the  presiding  genius ;  whilst  Marat  wanted  ochlocracy, 
a  State  dominated  by  that  small  portion  of  the  people  known  as 
the  "  mob,"  making  of  the  world  a  huge  thieves'  kitchen,  in  which 
he  would  play  the  part  of  brigand  chief.  Robespierre,  now 
faUing  more  and  more  under  the  influence  of  Marat,  began  to 
reaUze  the  superiority  of  Marat's  method ;  he  perceived  that 
in  times  of  revolution  it  is  to  the  subversive  minority  that  a 
demagogue  must  look  for  support,  and  that  to  appeal  to  the  reason 
of  the  people  must  ever  prove  less  effectual  than  to  rouse  the 
passions  of  the  mob.  Hitherto  he  had  sought  to  estabUsh  his 
popularity  by  fulsome  adulation  of  the  people's  virtues,*  but 
from  this  time  onward  we  find  him  gradually  abandoning  the 
attitude  of  moderation  he  had  maintained  during  the  preceding 
year,  and  reverting  to  the  subversive  methods  he  had  employed 
at  the  outset  of  the  Revolution.  Inveighing  against  the  rich 
and  great,  appealing  always  to  cupidity  and  envy,  it  was  princi- 
pally amongst  the  women  of  the  Societe  Fratemelle  and  the 
female  convicts  released  during  the  massacres  of  September 
that  he  found  his  following,  and  this  dishevelled  band  that  Danton 
derisively  described  as  the  jupons  gras  of  Robespierre  ^  fiUed  the 
tribunes  of  the  Convention  and  the  Jacobin  Club,  drowning  the 
debates  in  their  clamour. 

Danton,  on  the  other  hand,  never  theorized  about  democracy. 
Too  lazy  to  put  pen  to  paper,  he  is  almost  the  only  revolutionary 
leader  who  owned  no  journal  and  wrote  no  pamphlets ;  his 
speeches,  admirably  suited  to  a  recruiting  platform  wi-:h  their 
sounding  refrains  of  "  Let  us  beat  the  enemy  !  "  "  Let  u^  save 

*  L'Ami  du  Peuple,  No.  68 1. 

2  Ibid.  No.  539. 

3  That  Robespierre  did  not  believe  in  government  by  the  people  has 
been  admirably  explained  by  M.  Louis  Blanc — who  does  not  beheve  in  it 
himself  (see  his  Histoire  de  la  Revolution,  viii.  269). 

*  Thus  :  "In  the  matter  of  genius  and  civism  the  people  are  infalUble, 
whilst  every  one  else  is  subject  to  great  errors"  (Article  de  Robespierre, 
Buchez  et  Roux,  xiv.  268).  "  The  motives  of  the  people  are  always  pure  ; 
they  cannot  do  otherwise  than  love  the  pubUc  good,"  etc.  (Robespierre 
d  ses  Commettants,  ii.  285). 

■  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  v.  124. 


J 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  361 

the  country  !  "  served  merely  to  electrify  the  Assembly,  especially 
the  tribunes,  and  afford  evidence  of  no  definite  or  coherent 
political  creed.  It  is,  therefore,  by  his  sajdngs  that  we  know 
Danton  best — words  flung  out  at  impetuous  moments,  recorded 
by  innumerable  contemporaries,  and  bearing  so  strong  a  family 
resemblance  that  it  is  impossible  not  to  believe  that  some  at  least 
are  authentic.  It  was  thus  that,  like  Mirabeau,  he  frankly 
admitted  his  own  corruptibihty.  "  Danton,"  says  Prudhomme, 
"  was  known  as  a  man  who  displayed  Uttle  delicacy  in  revolution  ; 
that  is  why  he  was  always  surrounded  by  bad  characters  and 
swindlers.  Here  is  a  remark  habitual  to  him  :  '  The  Revolution  j 
should  profit  those  who  make  it,  and  if  the  Kings  enriched  nobles  ^ 
the  Revolution  should  enrich  patriots.'  "  ^  We  shall  find  Danton  a 
giving  vent  to  the  same  sentiments  up  to  the  very  foot  of  the 
scaffold.  Danton's  own  greed  for  gold  led  him  to  believe  that 
the  people  were  to  be  won  by  the  same  means ;  money  he  held 
to  be  the  great  lever  by  which  the  revolutionary  mobs  could  be 
moved  to  action.^ 

The  fact  is,  Danton  was  not  a  politician,  but  simply  a  great 
agitator ;  the  "  people  "  to  whom  he  openly  referred  as  the 
canaille  must  be  made  to  serve  the  purpose  of  the  demagogues, 
and  he  moved  amongst  them  with  no  show  of  "  fraternity  "  like 
Robespierre  or  Marat,  but,  as  Garat  expressed  it,  like  "  a  grand 
seigneur  of  the  Sans-Culotterie,"  scattering  largesse  and  thunder- 
ing words  of  command.  Robespierre's  scheme  of  a  Socialist 
State  held,  therefore,  Httle  attraction  for  Danton,  who  had  no 
desire  to  exchange  his  comfortable  flat  in  Paris  and  his  chateau 
at  Arcis-sur-Aube  for  a  cottage  in  a  working-man's  settlement. 

But,  although  divided  in  their  ultimate  aims — and  also 
secretly  hostile  to  each  other — the  members  of  the  Triumvirate 
that  headed  the  Mountain  were  agreed  in  regarding  a  period  of  1 
anarchy  as  necessary  to  the  realization  of  their  schemes,  and  I 
were  therefore  content  to  work  together  in  order  to  destroy 
existing  conditions.  For  this  purpose  it  was  necessary  to  enHst 
the  aid  of  the  mob — ^that  portion  of  the  people,  mainly  women, 
who,  having  nothing  to  lose  by  general  confusion,  were  ready 
in  return  for  adequate  remuneration  to  stamp  and  shout  for 
each  party  in  tum.^ 

1  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  iv,  162. 

2  "  Danton  during  his  brief  apparition  at  the  '  Comit6  de  Salut  Public  ' 
instituted  that  odious  power  of  gold,  that  frightful  system  of  corruption 
that  bought  speech  or  silence.  .  .  .  '  Get  money  given  you,'  said  Danton 
to  Garat,  '  and  do  not  spare  it ;  the  Republic  will  always  have  enough.' 
,  .  .  To  corrupt  and  to  be  corrupted  was  for  him  the  whole  science  of  our 
morals,  all  the  probity  of  the  century.  .  .  ."  {ibid.  v.  78-80). 

«  "  Applauders  and  murmurers  are  to  be  had  at  all  prices  ;    and  as 


362        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Buzot  has  thus  described  the  aspect  of  the  deputations  and 
audiences  collected  by  Marat  and  Robespierre  at  the  Convention  : 

"  It  seemed  as  if  they  had  sought  in  all  the  slums  of  Paris 
and  of  the  large  cities  for  everything  that  was  filthiest,  most 
hideous,  and  polluted.  Dreadful  earthen  faces,  black  or  copper- 
coloured,  surmounted  by  a  thick  tuft  of  greasy  hair,  with  eyes 
half  sunken  in  their  heads,  they  gave  vent  with  their  fetid  breath 
to  the  coarsest  insults  and  shrill  screams  of  hungry  animals. 
The  tribunes  were  worthy  of  such  legislators  :  men  whose  fright- 
ful appearance  gave  evidence  of  crime  and  wretchedness,  women 
whose  shameless  air  expressed  the  foulest  debauchery.  When  all 
these,  with  hands,  feet,  and  voices,  made  their  horrible  din,  one 
would  have  imagined  oneself  in  an  assembly  of  devils." 

Such  were  the  elements  that  now  usurped  the  power,  taking 
as  their  watchword  the  cry  that  Taine  truly  calls  "  the  resume  of 
the  revolutionary  spirit " :  "  The  will  of  the  people  makes  the  law, 
and  we  are  the  people."  Henceforth  the  Revolution  enters  on 
a  new  phase,  monarchy  and  aristocracy  have  both  retired  from 
the  lists,  and  the  struggle  has  begun  between  democracy  and 
ochlocracy,  between  the  people  and  the  populace.  And  since  the 
demagogues  are  on  the  side  of  the  populace,  inevitably  ochlocracy 
triumphs,  and  everywhere,  in  the  tribunes  of  the  Convention 
and  of  the  Jacobin  Club,  in  the  streets  and  public  places,  Marat's 
rabble,  though  an  infinitesimal  minority,  holds  sway  over  the 
great  mass  of  the  people. 


THE  DEATH  OF  THE  KING 

It  is  significant  that  even  at  this  crisis,  when  the  revolutionary 
leaders  had  at  last  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  following  amongst 
the  populace,  the  attempt  was  not  renewed  to  achieve  the  death 
of  the  King  at  the  hands  of  the  mob.  But  the  new  demagogues 
were  too  expert  crowd  exponents  not  to  realize  the  futility  of 
such  a  project.  Madame  Roland  might  imagine  that  th;^  Fau- 
bourgs of  Paris  could  be  incited  to  regicide  ;  Marat,  Dant-on, 
and  Robespierre  well  knew  that  if  the  King  were  to  die  they 
themselves  must  perform  the  deed.  For  in  this  matter  even 
the  populace  they  had  enUsted  in  their  service  was  not  to  be 
depended  on. 

"  The  people,"  writes  a  contemporary  during  the  King's  trials 
"even  that  portion  of  the  people  who  have  so  often  steepedjj 
themselves  in  blood  during  the  Revolution,  does  not  wish  tc 

females  are  more  noisy  and  to  be  had  cheaper  than  m.  ies,  you  will  obsei 
there  are  generally  more  women  than  men  in  the  tribunes  "  (Dr.  Moore' 
Journal,  i.  211  ;   see  also  Pag^s,  ii.  29). 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  363 

shed  that  of  the  King ;  but  there  is  a  party  to  which  it  is 
necessary,  and  at  this  moment  it  dominates  Paris,  and  even 
the  Convention."  ^ 

Dr.  Moore,  mingUng  at  this  date  with  the  people  of  Paris, 
Ukewise  reaUzed  that  the  ferocity  attributed  to  them  was  con- 
fined to  their  so-called  representatives.  New  fears,  he  writes, 
have  been  expressed  in  the  Convention  of  massacres  taking  place 
in  the  streets,  "  If  there  is  really  any  danger  of  such  an  event, 
the  inhabitants  of  Paris  must  be  the  worst  of  savages,  but  the 
only  people  I  see  of  a  savage  disposition  are  certain  members  of 
the  Convention  and  of  the  Jacobin  Club,  and  a  great  majority 
of  those  who  fill  the  tribunes  at  both  those  assemblies  ;  but  the 
shopkeepers  and  tradespeople  (and  I  take  some  pains  to  be 
acquainted  with  their  way  of  thinking)  seem  to  be  much  the  same 
as  I  have  always  known  them  ;  I  am  persuaded  that  there  is  no 
risk  of  massacres  or  assassinations  but  from  a  set  of  wretches 
who  are  neither  shopkeepers  nor  tradesmen,  but  idle  vagabonds, 
hired  and  excited  for  the  purpose.  When  I  hear  it  asserted  from 
the  tribune  of  the  Convention,  or  of  the  Jacobin  Society,  that 
the  people  are  impatient  for  the  death  of  the  King,  or  inchned  to 
murder  unfortunate  men  while  they  are  conducted  to  prison, 
and  yet  can  perceive  no  disposition  of  that  nature  among  the  citizens, 
I  cannot  help  suspecting  that  those  orators  themselves  are  the 
people  who  are  impatient  for  those  atrocities,  and  that  they  spread 
the  notion  that  this  desire  is  general  among  the  people  on  purpose 
to  render  it  easier  to  commit  them,  and  to  make  them  more 
quietly  submitted  to  after  they  have  been  committed."  ^ 

In  vain  the  Commune  marshalled  deputations  from  the 
revolutionary  "  sections  "  to  the  bar  of  the  Assembly  to  demand 
"  the  death  of  the  tyrant  "  ;  the  people  in  the  streets  and  cafes 
gave  the  He  to  all  such  demonstrations.  Thereupon  Prudhomme, 
still  the  King's  implacable  enemy,  angrily  apostrophized  them  : 
"  Frenchmen,  where  wiU  aU  this  lead  you  ?  .  .  .  every  hour  of 
the  day  takes  away  miUions  of  partisans  from  the  RepubUc  to 
give  them  to  RoyaUsm.  .  .  .  Already  in  your  restaurants  hired 
singers  screech  inane  but  touching  laments  on  the  fate  of  the 
tyrant.  (This  lament  to  the  tune  of  *  Pauvre  Jacques '  begins 
thus  :  '  O  mon  peuple,  que  t'ai-je  fait  ?  '  It  is  being  sold  in 
thousands.  The  hymn  of  the  Marseillais  is  forgotten  for  it.) 
I  have  seen,  yes,  I  have  seen  the  toper  let  fall  a  tear  into  his  wine 
in  favour  of  Louis  Capet.  .  .  .  The  French  Republic  is  already 
three-quarters  royalized."  ^ 

1  M.  de  Bernard  k  sa  Femme,  date  of  December  27,  1792,  in  Letires 
d'Aristocrates,  by  Pierre  de  Vaissi^re,  p.  582. 
^  Moore's  Journal,  ii.  249. 
'  Prudhomme,  Revolutions  de  Paris,  xiv.  52 


364        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

On  the  2nd  of  January  1793  a  Royalist  play  entitled  L'Ami 
des  Lois  was  produced  amidst  a  wild  outburst  of  popular  en- 
thusiasm. The  piece  in  itself  was  dull,  but  the  opportunity  it 
offered  for  applauding  allusions  to  royalty  and  the  person  of  the 
King,  and  for  jeering  at  the  leading  demagogues  travestied  on 
the  stage,  drew  an  immense  audience — the  crowd  struggUng  to 
obtain  admittance  was  numbered  at  30,000  people.  In  vain  the 
Pere  Duchesne  proclaimed  his  Grande  CoUre  against  "  the  mounte- 
banks, heretofore  actors  of  the  King  "  ;  in  vain  the  younger 
Robespierre  denounced  this  "  infamous  piece  "  in  which  they 
had  the  audacity  to  introduce  his  brother  and  "  the  excellent 
citizen  Marat  "  ;  in  vain  Santerre,  surrounded  by  his  staff  and 
later  150  Jacobins,  sword  and  pistol  in  hand,  attempted  to  put 
a  stop  to  the  performance.  The  people  responded  with  deafening 
cries  of  "  L'Ami  des  Lois  !  The  piece  !  The  piece  !  Raise 
the  curtain  !  "  The  voice  of  Santerre  was  drowned  in  shouts  of 
"  Down  with  the  General  Mousseux  !  Down  with  the  2nd  of 
September  !  We  want  the  piece  !  The  piece  or  death  !  "  The 
demagogues  were  obUged  to  submit ;  the  piece  was  played  not 
once  but  again,  four  times  in  aU,  amidst  scenes  of  indescribable 
enthusiasm.^ 

A  still  stranger  scene  took  place  at  Bordeaux,  where  it  was 
not  simply  a  promiscuous  crowd  of  citizens  who  protested  against 
the  designs  of  the  Convention,  but  the  chosen  flock  on  whom  the 
leaders  depended  for  their  following.  By  way  of  propaganda 
the  Jacobin  Society  of  Bordeaux  had  invited  its  members  to  a 
"  patriotic  play  "  called  The  Republic  of  Syracuse,  or  Monarchy 
Abolished.  The  sentiments  this  piece  contained  having  been 
heartily  approved  by  the  leading  members  of  the  Club,  it  was 
hoped  that  the  public  would  receive  it  with  equal  favour.  This 
is,  however,  what  occurred — the  description  must  be  given  in 
the  invnitable  words  of  the  patriot  of  Bordeaux,  whose  letter  was 
read  r    ad  at  the  Jacobin  Club  in  Paris  : 

"  the  day  of  the  performance  all  the  seats  were  filled  at 
a  ve  \rly  hour.  The  curtain  rises  and  the  theatre  represents 
the  of  M.  Veto  ;    he  is  told  of  the  complaints  that  his 

peop"  .e  against  him,   and  of  the  depredations  of  Mme. 

Veto.  J  gets  angry ;  an  insurrection  makes  him  gentler. 
The  people  wish  to  become  free  and  give  themselves  a  constitu- 
tion ;  a  patriot  general  is  placed  at  the  head  of  the  armed  forces ; 
Mme.  Veto  tries  to  seduce  him,  but  in  the  piece  she  does  not 
succeed  as  in  our  Revolution.  ^      The  Constitution  made,  the 

1  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois,  by  Edmond  Bir6,  i.  383. 

*  Lafayette  seduced  by  Marie  Antoinette  ! — Marie  Antoinette  who 
had  cried  out,  "  Better  perish  than  be  saved  by  Lafayette  I  "  There  is 
no  limit  to  the  absurdities  circulated  by  the  Jacobins. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  365 

Constitutional  Monarch  swears  and  swears  again  everything  they 
wish,  but  keeps  nothing ;  at  last  the  people  open  their  eyes  a 
second  time,  they  see  that  this  monarch  is  deceiving  them ; 
they  attack  the  Chateau,  take  M.  and  Mme.  Veto  prisoners,  and 
shut  them  up  in  a  tower.  They  are  brought  to  trial  and  the 
Senate  of  Syracuse  sends  them  both  to  the  guillotine.  Here 
begins  the  fifth  act.  The  guillotine  on  the  stage  excites  a  move- 
ment of  stupor  throughout  the  hall.  Some  said,  '  How  can 
they  represent  such  things  ?  '  Women  fainted.  At  last,  in 
the  midst  of  the  most  absolute  silence,  M.  and  Mme.  Veto  arrive 
at  the  foot  of  the  fatal  instrument.  At  the  moment  they  mount 
the  ladder  a  cry  from  the  people  demands  mercy  for  them,  and 
condemns  them  to  perpetual  imprisonment.  At  the  cry  of 
'  Mercy !  '  the  hall  resounded  with  applause,  so  much  has  public 
opinion  deteriorated  in  that  city.  So  no  longer  there  does  one 
hear  the  generate  beaten  or  the  cry  to  arms ;  fiat  calm  reigns. 
The  patriot  Terrasson  tried  to  speak  at  the  Society  in  favour  of 
Marat,  Robespierre,  Danton,  and  others,  who  are  regarded  as 
sedition-mongers ;  they  would  not  Usten  to  him  .  .  .  the  Society 
passed  the  resolution  that  it  would  suspend  all  correspondence 
with  the  Jacobins  of  Paris,  so  long  as  these  members  remained 
amongst  them."  ^ 

The  Convention  took  a  terrible  revenge  on  Bordeaux  ten 
months  later. 

It  will  be  asked,  "  If  the  people  did  not  wish  for  the  death 
of  the  King,  why  did  they  not  save  him  ?  "  Perhaps  if  they 
had  known  their  power  they  might  have  done  so,  but,  terrorized 
as  they  still  were  by  the  September  massacres,  they  no  doubt 
imagined  the  Commune  to  be  far  more  powerful  than  it  really 
was.  They  could  not  know,  as  we  know  now,  that  the  following 
on  which  the  leaders  depended  for  support  constituted  approxi- 
mately yi-jj  part  of  the  population  of  Paris,^  and  that,  had  the 
remaining  -^^  been  able  to  coalesce,  they  could  have  swept  away 
the  demagogues  almost  without  an  effort.  Convinced  of  their 
own  helplessness,  they  showed  the  same  submission  to  the 
decrees  of  the  Convention  concerning  the  King  as  they  displayed 
when  their  own  hves  were  at  stake  eighteen  months  later.  But, 
above  all,  they  lacked  leaders,  men  of  their  own  class  to  defend 
their  interests  against  those  of  the  middle-class  men  who  com- 
posed the  Convention.  A  few  energetic  working-men,  placing 
themselves  at  the  head  of  the  Faubourgs,  must  have  carried  the 
day,  for  at  this  stage  of  the  Revolution  the  demagogues  would 

1  Aulard's  Siances  des  Jacobins,  iv.  619. 

2  Statement  of  a  government  reporter  in  June  1793  :  "  There  are  not 
3000  jdecided  revolutionaries  in  Paris  "  {Paris  pendant  la  Revolution,  by 
Adolphe  Schmidt,  p.  21), 


366         THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

not  have  dared  to  fire  on  them — the  people  so  far  were  not 
crushed,  they  were  only  paralysed. 

Meanwhile,  had  they  only  realized  it,  the  Convention  lived 
in  terror  of  the  people.  All  through  the  discussions  that  took 
place  on  the  fate  of  the  King  there  runs  a  haunting  fear  lest  a 
popular  movement  should  be  made  in  his  favour.^  It  was  for  this 
reason  that  Chabot  urged  the  necessity  for  avoiding  a  Sunday 
or  Monday  for  bringing  the  King  to  trial,  since  on  those  days  the 
people  were  not  at  work  and  would  be  free  to  assemble. ^  Robes- 
pierre, the  better  to  expedite  matters,  proposed  that  the  Con- 
vention should  pass  sentence  of  death  without  according  Louis 
XVI.  the  formahty  of  a  trial,  whilst  St.  Just  advocated  simple 
murder.  "  Caesar,"  he  said,  "  was  immolated  in  the  open  Senate 
without  any  further  formality  than  twenty-two  dagger  thrusts." 

But  the  Girondins,  either  from  a  desire  to  maintain  a  reputa- 
tion for  justice,  or  because  they  really  wished  to  save  the  King, 
insisted  on  a  trial,  and  the  nth  of  December  was  the  day  fixed 
for  Louis  XVI.  to  appear  at  the  bar  of  the  Convention. 

The  debates  that  took  place  in  the  Convention  must  be  read 
in  order  to  reaUze  the  utter  futility  of  the  charges  brought 
against  the  King,  from  Valaze's  accusation  of  "  monopolizing 
wheat,  coffee,  and  sugar,"  ^  to  the  diatribes  of  Robert — convicted 
later  of  cornering  large  quantities  of  rum  * — ^who  declared  Louis 
XVI.  to  be  "  guilty  of  more  cruelties  than  Nero,"  of  having 
*'  butchered  more  human  beings  than  his  hfe  counted  hours  or 
moments,"  of  "  aspiring  to  the  absurd  privilege  of  bathing  in 
the  blood  of  his  fellow-men."  ^  For  want  of  fresh  pretexts  aU 
the  old  threadbare  grievances  were  revived — the  closing  of  the 
Assembly  on  the  day  of  the  Oath  of  the  Tennis  Court,  the  "  orgy 
of  the  Guards  "  at  Versailles  on  the  ist  of  October  1789,  the 
flight  to  Varennes,  the  "  massacre  of  the  Champ  de  Mars  "  on 
July  17,  1791  (when  the  King  was  a  prisoner  at  the  Tuileries), 
the  refusal  to  sanction  the  camp  of  20,000  men,  and  so  on. 
The  charge  of  conspiring  with  foreign  powers,  that  looms  so 
large  in  the  pages  of  revolutionary  historians,  played  a  com- 
paratively small  part  in  the  trial,  for  no  proofs  whatever  were 
forthcoming.  Great  hopes  had  been  entertained  of  finding 
incriminating  documents  in  the  iron  cupboard  that  Roland  had 

^  "  Those  who  wished  his  death  were  in  constant  dread  of  a  return  of 
humanity  and  affection  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  towards  him,  and 
therefore  were  at  great  pains  to  fill  the  tribunes  with  persons  hired  to  make 
an  outcry  against  him  :  and  they  were  so  apprehensive  on  this  subject  as 
to  suspect  those  very  agents  of  relenting"  (Moore's  Journal,  ii.  528). 

2  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxi.  202. 

•  "Premier  Rapport  de  Valaze,"  November  6,  Moniteur,  xiv.  401. 

*  Essais  de  Beaulieu,  iv.  228. 
6  Ibid. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  367 

discovered  at  the  Tuileries  after  the  loth  of  August,  where  the 
King  had  concealed  his  private  papers,  but  this  find  proved 
disappointing,  for  though  it  offered  to  Roland  the  opportunity 
for  abstracting  documents  that  could  have  served  to  establish 
the  innocence  of  Louis  XVI.^ — and  also  certain  other  documents 
that  might  have  convicted  Roland  and  his  party  of  offering  to 
sell  themselves  to  the  Court  ^ — it  provided  not  a  shred  of  evidence 
that  the  King  had  been  guilty  of  traitorous  intrigues  with  the 
enemies  of  France.^ 

When,  finally,  Louis  XVI.  appeared  at  the  bar  of  the  Con- 
vention, and  the  long  list  of  paltry  charges,  drawn  up  in  the  form 
of  an  indictment,  was  read  aloud  to  him,  he  contented  himself 
with  brief  and  dignified  denials ;  only  when  they  touched  on  his 
most  vulnerable  point,  his  conduct  towards  the  people,  his 
serenity  momentarily  deserted  him.  Thus  at  the  accusation  of 
Bar^re  that  he  had  attempted  to  conspire  by  going  to  the  Fau- 
bourg Saint-Antoine  and  distributing  alms  amongst  the  poor 
workmen  of  the  district,  his  eyes  filled  with  tears  as  he  answered, 
"  Ah  !  monsieur,  I  have  never  known  greater  happiness  than  in 
giving  to  those  who  were  in  need."  *  At  this,  one  of  the  wretched 
women  amongst  Marat's  following  in  the  tribtmes  burst  into 
loud  sobs,  exclaiming,  "  Ah  1  mon  Dieu,  how  he  makes  me 
weep !  "  ^  When,  again,  he  was  accused  of  shedding  the  people's 
blood — ^the  one  reproach  of  all  that  cut  him  to  the  heart — ^his 
voice  vibrated  with  emotion  as  he  replied,  "  No,  monsieur,  no, 
it  was  not  /  who  shed  their  blood."  • 

"  The  King's  appearance  in  the  Convention,"  says  Dr. 
Moore,  "  the  dignified  resignation  of  his  manner,  the  admirable 
promptitude  and  candour  of  his  answers,  made  such  an  evident 
impression  on  some  of  the  audience  in  the  galleries  that  a  deter- 
mined enemy  of  Royalty,  who  had  his  eye  upon  them,  declared 
that  he  was  afraid  of  hearing  the  cry  of  '  Vive  le  Roi ! '  issue 
from  the  tribunes,  and  added  that  if  the  King  had  remained  ten 
minutes  longer  in  their  sight  he  was  convinced  it  would  have 
happened :  for  which  reason  he  was  vehemently  against  his 
being  brought  to  the  bar  a  second  time."  ' 

On  the  proposal  of  Petion  the  King  was  allowed  to  appoint 
advocates  for  his  defence.    No  less  than  a  hundred  at  once 

^  Moore's  Journal,  ii.  614. 
^  MSmoires  de  Lafayette,  iii,  381. 

'  Beaulieu,  iv.  267  ;  Moore's  Journal,  ii.  468  ;  see  also  the  selections 
from  these  papers  published  by  Buchez  et  Roux,  xvii.  259. 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  224  ;   Moore's  Journal,  ii.  512. 

*  tloge  historique  et  fundbre  de  Louis  XVI.,  by  Montjoie,  p.  247. 

*  Beaulieu,  iv.  274;  Lettres  d'Aristocrates,  by  Pierre  4e  Vaissi^re, 
p.  584- 

'  Moore's  Journal,  ii.  529, 


368         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

offered  their  services.^  The  King's  choice  fell  on  his  old  friend 
Malesherbes,  who  at  the  beginning  of  his  reign  had  co-operated 
with  him  in  the  work  of  reform,  on  Deseze,  Tronchet,  and  Target. 
Target,  it  seems,  had  not  volunteered,  and  had  the  cowardice 
to  refuse  the  task.  At  this  the  poissardes  were  so  indignant  that 
they  presented  themselves  at  his  door  with  birch-rods  to  scourge 
him,  and  the  wretched  Target,  warned  of  their  intention,  was 
obUged  to  fly ;  but  to  Tronchet  who  accepted  they  brought 
flowers  and  laurels. ^  They  would  have  crowned,  too,  the  head 
of  brave  old  Malesherbes,  that  venerable  white  head  that,  as 
the  penalty  of  his  devotion,  was  to  fall  later  upon  the  scaffold, 
but  Malesherbes  decHned  the  honour,  and  the  fishwives  had  to 
content  themselves  with  hanging  their  garlands  on  his  gate.^ 

All  these  symptoms  seriously  alarmed  the  revolutionary 
leaders,  and  when  on  the  26th  of  December  the  King  appeared 
at  the  Convention  to  hear  his  defence  read  aloud  by  Deseze, 
immense  precautions  were  taken  to  prevent  the  people  from 
coming  to  his  rescue.  The  whole  route  from  the  Temple  to  the 
Manage  was  lined  with  troops  ;  a  mounted  bodyguard  as  well  as 
one  on  foot  surrounded  his  carriage,  six  cannons  preceded  him 
and  six  followed  behind,  whilst  strong  patrols  paraded  the 
streets.* 

The  assembling  of  this  guard  had  been  no  easy  matter,  for 
the  men  of  the  people  had  absolutely  declined  to  take  part  in 
the  proceedings.  "It  is  said,"  writes  a  contemporary  that 
evening,  "  that  the  Faubourgs  Saint-Antoine  and  Saint-Marceau, 
which  are  the  most  thickly  populated  districts  of  Paris,  refused 
to-day  to  form  the  King's  Guard  whilst  he  was  at  the  Conven- 
tion, saying  that  if  any  harm  is  to  be  done  to  him  they  will  not 
be  accompUces."  ^  It  was  thus  found  necessary  to  form  a  sort 
of  press-gang,  and  officers  were  sent  to  tear  peaceful  citizens 
from  their  beds  and  force  them  to  join  the  escort.^ 

From  the  outset  it  was  evident  that  the  King's  trial  was~5 
to  be  a  mere  travesty  of  justice.  "  I  look  for  judges  !  "  cried 
his  advocate  D6seze,  "  and  I  see  only  accusers  !  "  Even  the 
revolutionary  leaders  themselves  secretly  recognized  the  truth  of 
this  indictment.  The  Convention,  Prudhomme  pointed  out  to 
Danton,  had  not  the  right  to  try  Louis  XVI.  :  "  If  the  Parlia- 
ment of  England  tried  Charles  I.,  it  is  because  it  was  not  a  Con- 
vention ;  the  members  of  the  Conventional  Assembly  cannot  be 

1  Letter  from  M.  Bernard  to  his  wife  in  Lettres  d'Aristocrates,  by  Pierre 
de  Vaissiere,  p.  578. 

2  Moore's  Journal,  ii.  526  ;   Lettres  d'Aristocrates,  pp.  571,  581. 

3  Lettres  d'Aristocrates,  by  Pierre  de  Vaissiere,  p.  581. 
*  Ibid.  p.  577. 
^  Ihid.  p.  580, 
«  Prudhomme,  Revolutions  de  Paris,  xiv.  3,  4. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  369 

at  the  same  time  accusers,  jury,  and  judges."  "  You  are  right," 
answered  Danton,  "  nor  shall  we  judge  Louis  XVI. ;  we  shall 
kill  him."  1 

This  was  the  plan  they  now  proposed  to  put  into  practice, 
and  as  soon  as  the  King  had  retired  Duhem  rose  to  demand 
that  his  condemnation  should  be  discussed  without  further  delay. 
The  evidence  brought  forward  in  his  defence  was  thus  not  even 
to  be  considered. 

At  so  monstrous  an  outrage  on  humanity  and  justice  one  man 
was  found  brave  enough  to  protest — Lanjuinais,  a  Breton, 
member  for  He  et  Vilaine,  whose  courage  and  eloquence  from 
this  moment  until  the  fall  of  the  Gironde  provide  a  striking  con- 
trast to  the  cowardice  and  treachery  of  both  Girondins  and 
Montagnards.  "  You  cannot,"  Lanjuinais  cried  boldly,  "  re- 
main judges,  appliers  of  the  law,  accusers,  juries  for  the  accusa- 
tion, juries  for  the  judgement,  having  all  expressed  your  opinions, 
having  done  so,  some  of  you,  with  a  scandalous  ferocity  !  "  ^ 

The  voice  of  Lanjuinads  was  drowned  in  howls  of  indignation. 
At  last,  after  scenes  of  indescribable  confusion,  the  Convention 
decided  that  the  judgement  of  the  King  should  be  discussed. 
It  seems  that  the  Girondins  now  really  wished  to  save  the  King, 
if  only  to  arrest  the  increasing  despotism  of  the  Mountain ;  but, 
too  cowardly  to  protest  against  his  condemnation,  they  bethought 
themselves  of  a  way  out  of  the  dilemma  by  proposing  an  appeal 
to  the  people  through  the  primary  assembUes.  The  Montagnards, 
who  knew  as  well  as  the  Girondins  that  the  verdict  of  the  people 
would  be  in  favour  of  the  King,  naturally  offered  a  furious 
resistance  to  the  plan.  The  question  was  first  put  to  the  Con- 
vention by  the  Girondin  Salles  on  the  27th  of  December  in  an 
admirable  speech.  "  Either,"  he  said,  "  the  nation  wishes  that 
Louis  should  die  or  it  does  not ;  if  it  wishes  it,  you  all  who  wish 
it  also,  your  expectations  will  not  be  disappointed ;  but  if  it 
does  not  wish  it,  what  right  have  you  to  send  him  to  execution 
contrary  to  the  wish  of  the  nation  ?  " 

This  was,  of  course,  absolutely  unanswerable  from  the  point 
of  view  of  true  democracy,  but  presented  no  difficulty  to  the 
deputies  of  the  Mountain.  Every  tortuous  argument  the  heart 
of  sophist  could  devise  was  brought  forward  during  the  seven 
days  that  the  discussion  lasted,  to  prove  that  an  appeal  to  the 
nation  would  be  in  reality  wwdemocratic — a  betrayal  of  the 
people's  trust.  "  Virtue,"  Robespierre  remarked  sententiously, 
"  was  always  in  a  minority  on  earth."  He  seemed  to  have 
forgotten  he  had  once  said  that  the  people  were  infallible  ;  on 
this  occasion  he  evidently  feared  they  might  prove  '*  subject  to 

*  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  v.  120. 
'  *  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxii.  63  ;   Moniteur,  xiv.  849. 

2  B 


370        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

error."  St.  Just,  paying  an  unconscious  tribute  to  the  liberty 
accorded  to  public  opinion  by  the  Old  Regime,  asked :  "  The 
appeal  to  the  people  .  .  .  would  that  not  be  bringing  back  the 
monarchy  ?  "  Nothing  could  be  truer.  Under  the  monarchy 
the  poorest  of  the  King's  subjects  had  enjoyed  the  right  of 
bringing  him  petitions ;  from  St.  Louis  seated  beneath  his  oak 
to  Louis  XVL  receiving  the  poissardes  at  Versailles,  access  had 
always  been  granted  to  "  the  people."  But  when  deputations 
of  poor  women  gathered  around  the  doors  of  the  Convention  to 
plead  for  the  life  of  Louis  XVL  they  were  turned  away,  after 
waiting  long  hours,  without  a  hearing,^  whilst  deputies  who 
persisted  in  demanding  an  appeal  to  the  people  were  shouted 
down  with  angry  cries  of  "  Death  to  the  traitor  I  "  ^  In  the 
streets  hawkers  shouted,  "  Here  is  the  Ust  of  the  Royalists  and 
aristocrats  who  voted  for  the  appeal  to  the  people  !  "  ' 

For,  as  usual  at  a  moment  of  crisis,  the  revolutionary  leaders 
had  recourse  to  their  great  expedient — terror. 

When  the  King — against  whom  nothing  had  been  proved — 
was  finally  pronounced  "  guilty,"  and  the  appeal  to  the  people 
was  defeated  by  a  majority  of  424  to  283  votes,  the  Mountain 
put  all  the  machinery  of  revolution  in  motion  to  secure  a  final 
verdict  of  death.  Amongst  the  men  employed  for  this  purpose 
the  agents  of  the  Due  d' Orleans  were  the  most  active.  "  The 
Orl6anistes,"  says  Montjoie,  "  clearly  understood  that  the  people 
were  not  for  them  ;  they  kept  the  blade  unceasingly  raised  over 
the  heads  of  the  voters ;  they  surrounded  them  with  assassins." 
The  deputies  of  the  Gironde,  says  Madame  Roland,  were  obUged 
to  go  about  *'  armed  to  the  teeth  "  in  self-defence ;  *  brigands 
brandishing  sticks  and  sabres  pursued  them  as  they  left  the 
Convention,  crying  out,  "  His  Ufe  or  yours  !  "  ^ 

At  eight  o'clock  on  the  evening  of  the  i6th  of  January  the 
debate  began  that  was  to  decide  the  great  question  :  "  What 
penalty  shall  be  inflicted  on  Louis  ?  "  "  It  is  impossible,"  says 
Mercier,  "  to  describe  the  agitation  of  that  long  and  convulsive 
sitting." 

Lehardy  opened  the  proceedings  by  asking  what  majority 
would  be  necessary  for  the  death  sentence  to  be  pronounced. 
Thereupon  Lanjuinais  demanded  that  it  should  consist  in  two- 
thirds  of  the  votes,  in  accordance  with  the  penal  code  framed  by 
the  Constituent  Assembly.     But  Danton,  shrewdly  foreseeing 

^  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois,  by  Edmond  Bir6,  i.  409. 

*  Ibid.  p.  407. 

*  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxiii.  154. 

*  Madelin,  p.  284. 

'  Lacretelle,  Histoire  de  la  Convention  ;  see  also  Memoires  de  Carnot, 
i.  293  :  "  Louis  XVI.  would  have  been  saved  if  the  Convention  had  not 
debated  beneath  daggers." 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  371 

that  this  majority  would  not  be  forthcoming,  proposed  that  the 
Convention  should  pass  a  decree  ordaining  that  a  majority  of 
one  voice  should  be  sufficient — ^in  other  words,  the  law  was  to  be 
altered  to  fit  the  case. 

At  this  Lanjuinais  rose  again  in  wrath :  **  You  say  all  the 
time  that  we  are  a  jury  ;  well,  it  is  the  penal  code  I  invoke,  it  is 
the  form  of  trial  by  jury  for  which  I  ask.  .  .  .  You  have  rejected 
all  the  forms  that  perhaps  justice  and  certainly  humanity  demand, 
the  right  of  challenging  the  jury  and  voting  in  silence.  We 
seem  to  be  deliberating  in  a  free  Convention,  but  it  is  beneath 
the  daggers  and  the  cannons  of  the  factions."  And  he  ended  by 
demanding  that  three-fourths  of  the  votes  should  be  necessary 
for  condemnation  to  death. 

But  the  Convention  without  further  discussion  decreed  that 
a  majority  of  one  vote  should  suffice. 

Then  the  voting  began  and  continued  for  twenty-four  hours 
without  intermission.  One  by  one  the  deputies  arose,  and  through 
the  tense  silence  of  the  hall  the  fatal  word  rang  out  again  and 
again  :  "  Death  !  "  Some  of  the  more  violent — Marat,  Freron, 
Billaud  -  Varenne  —  added  vindictively,  "  within  twenty  -  four 
hours  "  ;  several  even  amongst  the  Girondins  now  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  terrorized  into  voting  for  immediate  death,  others 
pleaded  trembUngly  for  respite.  It  was  reserved  for  Philippe 
d' Orleans  to  give  the  last  touch  of  infamy  to  this  terrible  night. 
When  in  the  semi-darkness  of  the  hall,  illumined  only  by  a  few 
feebly-burning  candles,  the  bloated  face  of  figalite  appeared  in 
the  tribune,  the  Assembly  waited  breathlessly  for  the  words  that 
were  to  fall  from  his  lips  :  "  Solely  occupied  by  my  duty,  con- 
vinced that  all  those  who  have  violated  the  sovereignty  of  the 
people  deserve  death,  /  vote  for  death," 

At  this  cowardly  betrayal  of  his  kinsman  even  the  Convention 
shuddered ;  a  low  murmur  of  indignation  ran  through  the  hall ; 
men  rose  from  their  seats  with  gestures  of  disgust,  crying  out 
incontrollably,  "  Oh  !   horror  !     Oh  !   the  monster  !  "  ^ 

The  miserable  prince  had  shown  his  hand  at  last,  had  given 
the  he  once  and  for  all  to  his  apologists,  who  declared  him  to  be 
the  weak  and  amiable  puppet  of  a  faction  ;  even  in  the  eyes  of 
the  regicides  he  now  became  a  thing  of  loathing,  a  pariah  to  be 
repudiated  by  each  faction  in  turn. 

The  vote  of  the  Due  d'0rl6ans  was  of  paramount  importance 
in  the  final  decision,  for,  according  to  the  ofiicial  report,  when 
the  votes  came  to  be  counted  up  there  were  found  to  be  360  for 
imprisonment,  banishment,  for  death  with  respite  or  conditional 
death,  and  exactly  361  for  immediate  and  unconditional  death ; 

1  Puchez  et  Roux,  xxiii.  i8o  ;  Montjoie,  Conjuration  dfi  d'Orlians, 
iii.  237  ;   Moore,  ii.  577,  580  ;  Deux  Amis,  xii.  16. 


372        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

if  this  were  so,  then  Philippe's  had  been  the  casting  vote,  and  by 
throwing  it  into  the  scale  of  instant  death  he  murdered  the  King 
as  surely  as  if  he  had  stabbed  him  to  the  heart  with  his  own  hand. 
But  so  much  jugglery  went  on  behind  the  scenes,  and  the  votes  of 
many  deputies  were  so  vaguely  worded,  that  it  is  impossible  to 
discover  the  exact  figures.^  According  to  a  prevaiHng  opinion 
at  the  time,  there  was  a  real  majority  of  five  votes  for  immediate 
and  unconditional  death.  "  They  murdered  him,"  Arthur 
Young  wrote  indignantly,  "  by  a  majority  of  five  voices,  though 
their  law  required  three-fourths  at  least  for  declaring  guilt  or  for 
pronouncing  death — and  the  majority  obtained  by  the  menaces 
of  the  assassins  paid  by  iSgaUte.  The  consummation  of  political 
infamy  !  " 

The  Convention  itself  recoiled  in  shame  before  the  crime  it 
was  about  to  perpetrate.  **  The  silence  of  terror,"  says  Beaulieu, 
"  reigned  during  the  deHverance  of  this  disastrous  judgement, 
and  even  long  after  the  President  had  ceased  speaking.  It  seemed 
as  if  the  revolutionaries  were  already  plumbing  the  abyss  they 
had  created  without  being  able  to  discover  its  depth." 

The  same  evening  the  news  was  brought  to  the  King's  counsels 
that  a  majority  of  five  votes  had  been  obtained  in  favour  of  death. 
Thereupon  Louis  XVI.  instantly  demanded  that  an  appeal  should 
be  made  to  the  people,  and  D6seze,  Tronchet,  and  Malesherbes 

^  The  figures  published  by  the  ofi&cial  Procds-Verbal  (see  Buchez  et 
Roux,  xxiii.  206,  and  Mortimer  Ternaux,  v.  462,  not  the  Moniteur  which 
is  incorrect)  are  as  follows  : 

Total  number  of  deputies,  749.  Absent,  28  ;  refused  to  vote,  5.  Total 
number  of  voters,  therefore,  =  721. 

For  imprisonment  or  banish- 
ment ....   286 

For  irons       ....       2 

For  death,  with  sentence  post- 
poned        .         .         .         .46 

For  death,  but  also,  on  the  pro-  For  immediate  death,   without 

posal    of    Mailhe,    for    dis-  discussion  on  postponement  .   361 

cussion  on  postponement     .     26 

360" 

The  conclusion  of  the  President  that  the  majority  was  of  387  to  334 
was  arrived  at  by  adding  the  26  votes  for  death  with  discussion 
on  postponement  to  those  for  immediate  death.  This  is  obviously  in- 
correct, and  M.  Mortimer  Temaux  and  Mr.  Croker  {Essays  on  the  French 
Revolution,  p.  362)  are,  therefore,  right  in  stating  that  there  was  a  majority 
of  one.  Both  Ferriferes  and  Dr,  Moore,  however,  say  that  there  were 
319  votes  for  imprisonment  or  banishment.  Fockedey,  a  member  of  the 
Convention,  says  334,  (See  Documents  pour  servir  d  I'Histoire  de  la  Revolu- 
tion Frangaise,  published  by  Charles  d'Hericault,  ii,  143.)  These  figures 
would  reduce  the  votes  for  death  still  further,  and  result  in  a  majority 
against  death.  Indeed  the  secretary  Manuel  afterwards  declared  this 
was  the  case  {Memoires  Secrets  de  D'Allonville,  iii.  139). 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  373 

came  to  lay  the  request  before  the  Convention.  Malesherbes, 
overwhehned  with  grief,  was  unable  to  utter  more  than  a  few 
broken  sentences,  but  his  colleagues  forcibly  portrayed  the 
iniquity  of  pronouncing  the  death  sentence  contrary  to  the  penal 
code  by  means  of  a  decree  passed  at  this  same  sitting.  Robes- 
pierre rephed  that  the  King's  defenders  had  no  right  to  attack 
"  great  measures  taken  for  pubUc  safety,"  and  demanded  that 
their  appeal  should  be  rejected.  This  proposal  was  adopted  by 
the  Convention. 

The  Girondins,  now  more  than  ever  alarmed  at  the  tyranny 
of  the  Mountain,  ventured  to  remonstrate ;  Guadet  asked  that 
the  objections  of  the  King's  defenders  should  be  considered. 
Buzot  two  days  later  protested  against  condemnation  on  so 
diminutive  a  majority,  and  even  went  so  far  as  to  declare  that  the 
party  which  desired  the  immediate  death  of  the  King  wished  to 
place  the  Due  d' Orleans  on  the  throne.  Thomas  Paine  repre- 
sented the  "  universal  affliction  "  the  execution  of  Louis  XVI. 
would  create  in  America,  where  he  was  regarded  by  the  people  as 
"  their  best  friend,  the  one  who  had  procured  them  their  Uberty." 

In  the  end  the  Girondins  succeeded  in  carr3dng  the  motion 
that  the  question  of  postponing  the  sentence  should  be  put  to 
the  vote.  But  by  this  time  the  whole  Assembly  was  so  cowed 
by  the  menaces  of  Orleans  and  the  Mountain  that  the  sentence 
of  inmiediate  death  was  carried  by  a  majority  of  380  to  310. 
The  President  then  pronounced  sentence  of  death  to  be  executed 
within  twenty-four  hours. 

Malesherbes  has  related  that  when  he  went  to  the  Temple  to 
break  the  news  to  Louis  XVI.  he  found  him  seated  in  the  semi- 
darkness,  his  back  turned  to  the  lamp,  his  elbows  resting  on  a 
little  table,  and  his  face  buried  in  his  hands.  As  the  old  man 
entered  the  King  rose  and,  looking  him  in  the  eyes,  said  solemnly  : 
*'  Monsieur  de  Malesherbes,  for  two  hours  I  have  been  trying  to 
discover  whether  in  the  course  of  my  reign  I  have  deserved  the 
least  reproach  from  my  subjects.  Well,  I  swear  to  you  in  all 
truth  as  a  man  about  to  appear  before  God  that  I  have  always 
wished  for  the  happiness  of  my  people,  that  I  have  never  formed 
a  wish  opposed  to  them." 

"  Ah,  Sire,"  answered  Malesherbes  with  tears,  "  I  stiU  have 
hope  ;  the  people  know  the  purity  of  your  intentions,  they  love 
you  and  they  feel  for  you.  I  found  myself,  on  going  out  from 
the  debate,  surrounded  by  a  number  of  people  who  assured  me 
that  you  would  not  perish,  or  at  least  not  until  they  and  their 
friends  had  perished  themselves.  ..." 

'*  Do  you  know  these  people  ?  "  Louis  XVI.  interposed  hastily ; 
*'  go  back  to  the  Assembly,  try  to  find  some  of  them,  tell  them 
that  I  should  never  forgive  them  if  a  drop  of  blood  were  shed 


374        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

for  me ;  I  refused  to  shed  it  when  it  might  have  saved  me  my 
throne  and  my  hfe  .  .  .  and  I  do  not  repent,  no,  Monsieur,  I 
do  not  repent." 

The  cause  of  this  unrepentance  is  not  far  to  seek.  Louis  XVI. 
realized  that  his  trust  in  the  people  had  not  been  misplaced, 
for  it  was  not  by  the  people  he  had  been  condemned — an  appeal 
to  the  people  must  inevitably  have  saved  him.  He  knew,  no 
doubt,  the  intrigues  that  had  brought  about  the  fatal  sentence. 

To  numberless  contemporaries  it  was  evident  that  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Due  d' Orleans  had  contributed  even  more  than 
that  of  Robespierre  towards  this  end.  According  to  rumours 
current  at  the  time  a  certain  Marquis  de  Lepeletier  St.  Fargeau 
had  intended  to  vote  against  the  King's  death,  and  to  induce 
twenty-five  of  his  fellow  deputies  to  do  the  same,  but  at  the  last 
moment  he  and  his  companions  were  persuaded  by  Orleans  to 
throw  their  weight  into  the  opposite  scale.^  Whether  this  was 
so  or  not,  it  provides  the  oidy  explanation  to  a  mysterious 
incident  that  occurred  the  evening  before  the  King's  execution. 
Lepeletier  was  dining  in  a  restaurant  of  the  Palais  Royal  when 
a  man  with  black  hair,  dressed  in  a  long  grey  overcoat,  entered. 
This  man  was  Paris,  a  member  of  the  King's  old  bodyguard ; 
all  day  he  had  wandered  about  the  city,  sabre  in  hand,  seeking 
the  Due  d'Orleans  in  vain.^  Now  he  had  found  Lepeletier,  and, 
going  up  to  him,  he  accosted  him  thus  :  "  You  voted  for  the 
death  of  the  King  ?  "  *'  Yes,  Monsieur,  I  voted  according  to  my 
conscience.  What  matters  it  to  you  ?  "  But  Paris,  drawing 
out  his  sabre  from  beneath  his  cloak,  cried,  "  Wretch,  then  you 
shall  vote  no  more  !  "  and  he  plunged  his  weapon  into  the  body 
of  Lepeletier. 

So  Uttle  did  the  citizens  who  filled  the  dining-room  resent  the 
crime  that  not  a  murmur  arose,  and  Paris  was  allowed  to  leave 
the  restaurant  unmolested.^ 

Such  manifestations  of  pubUc  feeling  were  naturally  dis- 
quieting to  the  regicides,  and  now  more  than  ever  they  dreaded 
that  a  popular  movement  might  be  made  in  favour  of  the  King. 
On  the  following  day  a  formidable  guard  was  again  summoned 
to  surround  him  on  his  way  to  the  Place  de  la  Revolution. 
"  According  to  two  Marseillais  very  hostile  to  the  King,"  says 
M.  MadeUn,  "  Paris  had  been  Uterally  placed  in  a  state  of  siege." 
Meanwhile  PhiHppe  ]£galLte,  foreseeing  that  Louis  XVL  might 
succeed  in  bringing  the  crowd  to  his  rescue  by  words  spoken 
from  the  scaffold,  took  elaborate  precautions  against  such  an 

*  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orlians,  iii.  232  ;    Pag^s,  ii.  69, 

*  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  175  ;    Dauban,  La  Demagogic  en  1793* 
p.  27. 

»  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois,  by  Edmond  Bir6,  ii.  5. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  375 

eventuality.  " D'Orl^ans,"  says  S6nart,  "  fears  that  he  may  speak 
to  the  people  ;  he  fears  that  the  people  may  deUver  him,  for  the 
head  of  Capet  was  necessary  to  him  at  any  price.  There  were 
various  rendezvous  for  the  Orleans  faction.  It  was  at  one  of  these 
rendezvous  that  Santerre  swore  to  D'Orleans,  glass  in  hand,  that 
he  would  make  use  of  a  sure  method  to  prevent  Capet  from  speak- 
ing, and  thus  was  formed  the  plot  of  the  famous  roll  of  dnrnis 
which  occurred  at  the  death  of  Capet."  ^ 

When  the  wet  and  dreary  morning  of  January  21  dawned, 
the  city  was  wrapped  in  the  silence  of  consternation.  "  All  the 
shops  were  shut ;  silent  patrols,  composed  of  ill-clad  men,  moved 
slowly  about  the  streets,  where  one  met  only  pale,  sad,  and  gloomy 
faces  ;  executioners  and  victims  ahke  seemed  aghast  at  the  cruel 
sacrifice  that  was  to  be  consummated ;  stupor  alone  seemed  to 
inhabit  Paris.  Such  was  the  situation  of  that  famous  city,  once 
so  brilUant  and  the  rendezvous  for  all  pleasures."  ^ 

Mercier,  who  invariably  endeavours  to  throw  on  the  people 
the  blame  for  aU  the  crimes  of  the  Revolution,  has  represented 
Paris  as  presenting  a  normal,  even  a  gay  appearance  on  this 
dreadful  day — a  testimony  eagerly  seized  on  by  revolutionary 
historians,  but  which  is  contradicted  by  innumerable  contem- 
poraries, even  by  Prudhomme.  Fockedey,  a  member  of  the 
Convention,  has  thus  confirmed  the  evidence  of  BeauUeu  : 

"  This  day  was  for  France,  and  above  all  for  Paris,  a  day  of 
bitterness  and  grief,  of  fear  and  mourning :  the  capital  was  in 
anguish.  Almost  all  the  shops  and  houses  were  closed,  whole 
famiUes  were  in  tears.  Consternation  was  seen  on  all  the  faces 
one  met ;  a  great  number  of  the  National  Guards,  on  foot  since 
the  morning,  appeared  themselves  to  be  going  to  execution. 
No,  never  will  the  scenes  I  witnessed  on  that  day  be  effaced  from 
my  memory.  How  many  were  the  tears  I  saw  flow !  What 
imprecations  I  heard  against  the  authors  of  such  a  crime.  .  .  . 
The  Assembly  that  day  was  silent  and  gloomy,  the  voters  for 
regicide  were  pale  and  shattered,  they  seemed  to  have  a  horror 
of  themselves."  ^ 

As  to  the  poor  people  of  Paris,  they  could  hardly  bring 

*  Certain  contemporaries  declared  that  it  was  not  Santerre  who  finally 
ordered  the  roll  of  drums  (see  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'OrUans,  iii.  240), 
but  the  Comte  d'Aya,  a  natural  son  of  Louis  XV.  Beaulieu,  however 
{Essais,  iv.  353),  and  most  reliable  authorities  state  that  it  was  Santerre; 
moreover,  Santerre  admitted  it  himself.  See  "  Relation  du  Municipal 
Goret,"  in  La  CapHviti  et  la  Mort  de  Marie  Antoinette,  by  G.  Lenotre, 
p.  146. 

'  Beaulieu,  iv.  349. 

*  "  Souvenirs  du  Conventionnel  Fockedey,"  pubhshed  in  Documents  pour 
servir  d  I'Histoire  de  la  Rivolution  Frangaise,  by  Charles  d'Hericault,  vol. 
ii.  p.  142.  On  this  point  see  also  the  contemporary  evidence  quoted  by 
Edmond  Eire,  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois,  i.  451. 


376        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

themselves  to  believe  that  so  dreadful  a  deed  could  really  be 
accomphshed.  "  On  the  2ist  of  January,"  writes  the  Comtesse 
de  Bohm,  "  I  saw  upon  the  ramparts  people  of  the  lowest  classes 
weeping,  showing  openly  their  grief  at  the  outrage  that  was  to 
take  place.  *  There  are  too  many  of  them  in  Paris,'  they  said, 
'they  will  prevent  it.'  The  sun  pierced  through  the  clouds, 
shining  on  this  crime.  That  national  sense  of  shame  that  will  be 
transmitted  from  age  to  age,  of  which  the  remorse  will  become  for 
every  Frenchman  a  personal  offence,  weighed  heavily  upon  me." 

But  the  Parisians  made  no  effort  to  prevent  the  crime.  The 
little  band  of  RoyaUsts,  under  the  Baron  de  Batz,  that  dashed 
towards  the  King's  carriage,  crying,  "  Join  with  us,  you  who 
would  save  the  King  !  "  met  with  neither  resentment  nor  response; 
the  immense  multitude  stood  by  stupefied  and  mute,  hypnotized, 
it  would  seem,  by  the  horror  of  the  whole  proceeding,  for  not  a 
cry  broke  from  them  as  the  dark  green  coach  passed  between  their 
ranks  towards  the  great  Place  de  la  Revolution.  Through  the 
windows  the  outline  of  the  King's  face  could  be  dimly  seen  beneath 
the  shadow  of  his  large  hat,  bent  downwards  to  his  breviary  open 
at  the  prayers  for  the  d3dng.  He  was,  perhaps,  the  most  tranquil 
man  in  Paris  on  that  grey  January  morning.  "  God  is  my 
comforter,"  he  had  said  to  his  confessor,  the  Abbe  Edgeworth ; 
"  my  enemies  cannot  take  His  peace  from  me." 

Every  effort  was  made  by  the  revolutionary  journalists  to 
minimize  the  King's  courage  at  the  supreme  moment.  "  Louis," 
Le  Thermometre  du  Jour  declared,  "  had  shown  courage  and 
assurance  only  because  he  did  not  beUeve  the  sentence  would 
reaUy  be  carried  out,  that  to  the  very  moment  of  his  death  he 
had  reckoned  on  being  saved."  When  he  reaUzed,  however,  his 
delusion,  his  serenity  deserted  him,  and  he  "  struggled  with  the 
executioner's  assistants,  by  whom  at  last  he  was  forcibly  tied 
to  the  plank  of  the  guillotine."  It  was  Sanson,  the  executioner 
himself  who  refuted  this  he,  by  coming  forward  boldly  to  testify 
not  only  to  the  King's  courage  but  to  the  cause  that  inspired  it. 

"  Citizen,"  he  wrote  to  the  editor  of  the  Thermometre,  "  a 
short  absence  has  prevented  me  from  replying  sooner  to  your 
article  concerning  Louis  Capet,  but  here  ...  is  the  exact  truth 
concerning  what  passed.  On  aUghting  from  the  carriage  for  the 
execution  he  was  told  that  he  must  take  off  his  coat ;  he  made 
some  difiiculty,  saying  that  he  could  be  executed  as  he  was.  On 
being  assured  that  this  was  impossible  he  himself  helped  to  take 
off  his  coat.  He  then  made  the  same  difi&culty  when  it  came  to 
tying  his  hands,  but  he  offered  them  himself  when  the  person 
who  was  with  him  (the  Abbe  Edgeworth)  had  said  to  him  that  it 
was  a  last  sacrifice.    He  inquired  whether  the  dnmis  would  go 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  m 

on  beating ;  we  answered  that  we  did  not  know,  which  was  the 
truth.  He  ascended  the  scaffold,  and  tried  to  advance  to  the 
front  as  if  he  wished  to  speak,  but  it  was  represented  to  him  that 
the  thing  was  again  impossible ;  then  he  allowed  himself  to  be 
led  to  the  place  where  he  was  tied,  and  where  he  cried  out  loudly, 
'  People,  I  die  innocent ! '  Then  turning  towards  us  he  said  to 
us, '  I  am  innocent  of  all  that  is  imputed  to  me.  I  desire  that  my 
blood  may  seal  the  happiness  of  the  French  people.'  Those, 
citizen,  were  his  last  and  exact  words.  The  kind  of  Uttle  debate 
which  occurred  at  the  foot  of  the  scaffold  turned  on  his  not 
thinking  it  necessary  that  his  coat  should  be  taken  off  and  his 
hands  tied.     He  also  made  the  proposal  to  cut  off  his  own  hair. 

"  And  in  order  to  render  homage  to  truth,  he  bore  all  this 
with  a  sang-froid  and  firmness  which  astonished  us]  all,  and  I 
remain  convinced  that  he  had  derived  this  firmness  from  the  prin 
ciples  of  religion,  of  which  no  one  could  seem  more  persuaded  and 
imbued  than  he.  You  can  be  sure,  citizen,  that  here  is  the  truth 
in  its  fullest  light. — I  have  the  honour  to  be  your  fellow-citizen, 

"  Sanson." 

Not  content  with  maUgning  the  King,  the  revolutionaries  as 
usual  maUgned  the  people.  "  After  the  execution,"  says  Mercier 
again,  "  they  laughed  and  chattered,  they  walked  home  arm-in- 
arm  as  if  returning  from  a  feast,  the  theatres  remained  open  as 
usual  throughout  the  evening."  True,  hideous  scenes  of  mirth 
took  place  on  the  Place  de  la  Revolution ;  joy  shone  out  exult- 
ingly  from  the  face  of  Orleans,  watching  the  execution  from 
his  cabriolet ;  around  the  scaffold  brigands  danced  together, 
shouting  "  Vive  la  Republique  !  "  A  citizen  ascending  the 
guillotine  plunged  his  arm  into. the  blood  of  the  King  and  dashed 
it  in  the  faces  of  the  crowd.  Then  once  again,  Uke  a  tiger  that 
has  tasted  blood,  the  mob  went  mad  and  broke  out  Ukewise  into 
dancing  ;  wild,  blood-bespattered  figures  whirled  round  in  each 
other's  arms ;  all  over  the  great  Place  de  la  Revolution  the  hoarse 
roar  arose,  '*  Vive  la  Republique  !  Vive  la  Libert e  !  Vive 
I'figahte  !  "  i 

But  after  this  one  moment  of  "  crowd  hysteria  "  it  seems 
that  even  the  mob  came  to  its  senses,  and  Paris  once  more  re- 
lapsed into  stupor.  The  people  did  not  go  home  rejoicing;  on 
the  contrary,  says  Lacretelle,  they  "  returned  gloomy  and 
absorbed ;  the  multitude  itself,  whether  from  pity  or  from 
resentment  at  its  curiosity  being  disappointed,  loaded  Santerre 
with  imprecations  for  having  drowned  the  last  words  of  the  King. 
All  through  the  day  that  followed  " — for  the  execution  took 
place  at  half -past  ten  in  the  morning — "  Paris  was  silent,  almost 

*  Diurnal  de  BeauUeu ;   Prudhomme,  Rdvolutions  de  Paris,  xiv.  205. 


378        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

deserted ;  people  shut  themselves  up  with  their  famiUes  to  weep." 
The  women,  Prudhomme  reluctantly  admits,  were  sad,  "  which 
contributed  not  a  little  to  that  gloomy  air  which  Paris  presented 
throughout  this  day."  As  to  the  theatres,  it  is  true  that  they 
were  open  that  evening,  but  also  they  were  empty,  and  the 
managers  found  themselves  obUged  to  return  the  money  paid 
for  seats.^  In  the  streets,  say  the  Two  Friends  of  Liberty, 
"  people  dared  not  look  each  other  in  the  face  .  .  .  the  day 
after  the  execution  they  had  not  recovered  from  this  overwhelming 
dejection." 

Had  France  indeed,  like  Louis  XVL  himself,  some  premonition 
of  the  immense  misfortunes  this  day  was  to  bring  her  ?  "  I  see 
the  people,"  he  had  said  to  Clery  on  the  night  of  his  condemnation, 
"  given  over  to  anarchy,  becoming  the  victim  of  all  the  factions  ; 
I  see  crimes  following  one  upon  another  and  long  dissensions 
rending  France." 

For  the  people  he  grieved,  knowing  well  in  what  hands  he 
was  leaving  them.  Here,  in  the  white  light  of  eternity,  we  see 
him  at  his  best,  his  blunders  atoned  for  by  his  great  sincerity. 
To  the  cause  of  despots  he  had  proved  a  traitor,  to  "  aristocracy 
he  had  shown  scant  sympathy,  but  to  the  people  he  had  beenj 
true.  In  him  they  lost  not  their  best  but  their  only  friend. 
Carlyle  has  written  of  "  the  great  heart  of  Danton  " — ^Danton,;! 
whose  last  words,  like  those  of  nearly  every  one  of  the  demagogues,  | 
were  to  revile  the  people — for  the  great  heart  of  Louis  XVI.  he 
has  nothing  but  contempt.  Yet,  of  all  the  men  who  played  their 
part  in  the  Revolution,  there  was  only  one  who,  realizing  that 
no  hope  for  his  Hfe  remained,  could  say  from  the  depths  of  his] 
heart,  as  he  stood  on  the  threshold  of  the  other  world — ^the 
platform  of  the  guillotine — "  I  desire  that  my  blood  may  seal  the] 
happiness  of  the  French."  That  one  true  patriot,  that  one  man^ 
ready  to  die  for  France  and  for  the  people,  was  the  King. 

ENGLAND  AND  THE  DEATH  OF  THE  KING 

In  England  the  news  of  the  King's  death  was  received  by  all] 
classes  with  horror.  "  I  cannot  describe  to  you,"  Lord  Grenville 
wrote  to  Lord  Auckland  on  the  24th  of  January,  "  the  universal; 
indignation  it  has  excited  here  .  .  .  the  audience  at  one  of  the 
play-houses  stopping  the  play,  and  ordering  the  curtain  to  be 
dropped  as  soon  as  the  news  was  announced  to  them." 

The  Prince  of  Wales,  hearing  of  the  vote  for  death  given  byl 
his  former  boon-companion  Phihppe  d' Orleans,  pulled  down  the 
portrait  of  the  duke — a  masterpiece  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds— 

*  Gorsas  in  the  Courier  des  Departements  for  January  28,  1793.    See 
Journal  d'un  Bourgeois,  by  Edmond  Bire,  i.  453. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  379 

from  the  wall  in  Carlton  House,  and  tore  it  into  shreds  with  his 
own  hands.^ 

But  the  lovers  of  true  Uberty  mourned  the  most  profoundly. 
It  was  because  the  murder  of  Louis  XVI.  was  the  greatest  crime  ever 
committed  against  democracy  that  Arthur  Young,  that  ardent 
democrat,  denounced  it  in  unmeasured  terms  : 

"  This  great  abomination  .  .  .  ought  to  generate  (for  the 
real  feUcity  of  the  human  race)  a  tighter  rein  in  the  jaws  of  that 
monster  .  .  .  the  metaphysical,  philosophical,  atheistical  Jacobin 
RepubUcan,  abhorred  for  ever  for  holding  out  to  aU  the  sovereigns 
of  the  earth  that  the  only  prince  who  ever  voluntarily  placed 
bounds  to  his  own  power  died  for  it  on  the  scaffold,  and 
ruined  his  people  while  he  destroyed  himself.  He  gave  ear  to 
those  who  told  him  of  abuses  ;  he  wished  to  ease  his  people  ;  he 
fought  popularity  ...  he  would  not  shed  the  blood  of  traitors, 
conspirators,  and  rebels.  .  .  .  This  damned  event,  deep  written 
in  the  characters  of  heU,  has  thrown  a  stupor  over  mankind."  ^ 

In  ParUament  Pitt  spoke  of  "  the  murder  of  the  King  "  as 
"  that  dreadful  outrage  against  every  principle  of  rehgion,  of 
justice,  and  of  humanity,  which  has  created  one  general  sentiment 
of  indignation  and  abhorrence  in  every  part  of  this  island,  and 
most  undoubtedly  has  produced  the  same  effect  in  every  civilized 
country  ...  it  is  the  foulest  and  most  atrocious  deed  which  the 
history  of  the  world  has  yet  had  occasion  to  attest." 

And  here,  for  the  honour  of  our  country,  it  is  impossible  to 
pass  over  in  silence  the  accusation  brought  against  Pitt  in  this 
connection  by  an  EngUsh  historian.  "  Information,"  wrote  the 
late  Lord  Acton,  "  was  brought  to  Pitt  from  a  source  that  could 
be  trusted,  that  Danton  would  save  him  (the  King)  for  £40,000. 
When  he  made  up  his  mind  to  give  the  money,  Danton  replied  that 
it  was  too  late.  Pitt  explained  to  the  French  diplomatist,  Maret, 
afterwards  Prime  Minister,  his  motive  for  hesitation.  The 
execution  of  the  King  of  France  would  raise  such  a  storm  in 
England  that  the  Whigs  would  be  submerged."  ^ 

In  other  words,  Pitt  was  willing  for  the  sake  of  party  interests 
to  act  as  murderer  to  Louis  XVI.  And  on  what  does  Lord 
Acton  found  this  monstrous  charge  ?  On  the  assertion  of 
Maret — a  revolutionary  emissary  to  England !  Now,  even  if 
Pitt  had  entertained  so  dastardly  a  plan,  is  it  conceivable  that 
he  would  have  confided  it  to  such  a  man  as  Maret  ?    The  only 

1  Moniteur  for  February  6,  1793. 

*  The  Example  of  France,  Appendix,  p.  10. 

'  Essays  on  the  French  Revolution,  p.  254.  Note  here  the  value  of 
Lord  Acton's  judgement  as  a  historian,  for,  after  admitting  that  Danton 
was  actuated  solely  by  mercenary  motives  in  the  matter  of  the  King's 
peath,  he  afterwards  observes :  "  There  was  not  in  France  a  more  thorough 
patriot  than  Danton,"  ihid.  p.  282. 


38o        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

grain  of  truth  in  the  whole  story  seems  to  be  that  Pitt  did  refuse 
to  bribe  Danton,  but  as  he  was  very  well  aware  of  Danton's 
true  character — ^was  not  Bertrand  de  Molleville  in  London  at  the 
time  and  able  to  enUghten  him  on  the  financial  transactions  he 
had  conducted  on  behalf  of  the  King  with  that  "  thorough 
patriot  "  ? — ^it  is  hardly  surprising  that  Pitt  should  have  hesitated 
to  put  £40,000  into  the  pocket  of  a  man  who  would  in  all 
probabiUty  make  no  return.  The  Revolutionary  Tribunal  was 
probably  much  nearer  the  mark  when  it  declared  that  Pitt  had 
assisted  Malesherbes  financially  in  defending  the  King^ — a 
course  the  great  statesman  may  well  have  held  to  be  more 
reputable  and  at  the  same  time  more  expedient  than  bribing 
Danton. 

If  any  members  of  the  British  ParUament  are  to  be  accused 
of  complicity  in  the  murder  of  Louis  XVL,  it  is  certainly  the 
Whigs  ;  Pitt,  whom  the  revolutionaries  regarded  as  their  arch- 
enemy, would  only  have  increased  their  animosity  towards  the 
King  by  interceding  for  him,  but  Fox,  Sheridan,  Lord  Lansdowne, 
Lord  Lauderdale,  and  Lord  Stanhope  were  all  on  the  best  of 
terms  with  the  members  of  the  Convention,  and  might  surely 
have  exerted  their  influence  to  avert  the  crime.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  Lord  Stanhope — ^who,  we  know,  definitely  refused  to 
intercede  for  Louis  XVL,  giving  as  his  reason  that  "  new  dis- 
coveries of  his  treachery,  perfidy,  and  dupUcity  "  had  just  been 
made  ^ — ^we  may  do  these  men  the  justice  to  beUeve  that  if  they 
refrained  from  intervention  it  was  because,  hke  Pitt,  they  knew 
it  would  be  hopeless. 

A  rupture  between  France  and  England  had  now  become 
inevitable,  for  it  was  evident  that  the  Anarchists  of  Paris,  not 
content  with  devastating  their  own  country,  proposed  to  carry 
out  the  same  process  in  every  other  country  which  they  could 
succeed  in  entering.  On  the  19th  of  November  they  had  issued 
the  following  proclamation  : 

"  The  National  Convention  declares  in  the  name  of 
French  nation  that  she  will  accord  fraternity  and  assistance 
all  peoples  who  wish  to  recover  their  Hberty,  and  charges  t 
Executive  Power  to  give  the  necessary  orders  to  the  gener 
in  order  to  render  assistance  to  these  peoples,  and  to  defend 
citizens  who  have  been  vexed  or  who  might  be  so  for  the  cause 
of  Hberty."  » 

This  decree,  which  the  Convention  ordered  to  be  translated 
into  "  all  languages,"  was  therefore  not  an  appeal  merely  to  the 

^  Trial  of  Malesherbes,  in  Bulletin  de  Tribunal  rivolutionnaire. 
2  The  Life  of  Charles,  third  Earl  of  Stanhope,  by  Ghita  Stanhope 
G.  P.  Gooch,  p.  119. 
*  Moniteur,  xiv.  517. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  381 

peoples  of  the  countries  with  which  France  was  then  at  war,  but 
a  call  to  universal  insurrection.  A  few  weeks  later  the  revolu- 
tionary leaders  explained  their  intentions  towards  the  countries 
they  had  already  entered  in  a  further  proclamation.  On  the 
15th  of  December,  Cambon,  "  in  the  name  of  the  financial, 
military,  and  diplomatic  committees,"  rose  to  define  the  line  of 
conduct  the  generals  of  the  revolutionary  armies  were  to  pursue  : 

"It  is  necessary  that  we  should  declare  ourselves  a  revolu- 
tionary power  in  the  countries  that  we  enter.  .  .  .  Your 
committees  consider  that,  after  expelling  the  tyrants  and  their 
sateUites,  the  generals  on  entering  every  '  Commune '  must 
publish  a  proclamation,  showing  the  people  that  we  bring  them 
happiness,  that  they  must  immediately  suppress  tithes  and 
feudal  rights,  and  all  forms  of  servitude. 

"  But  you  will  have  accomplished  nothing  if  you  confine 
yourselves  only  to  these  destructions.  Aristocracy  governs 
everywhere ;  therefore  all  existing  authorities  must  he  destroyed. 
Nothing  of  the  Old  Regime  must  survive  when  revolutionary 
power  shows  itself."  ^ 

This,  however,  was  not  to  be  effected  by  the  will  of  the 
people  in  the  invaded  countries,  who  indeed  displayed  no  great 
enthusiasm  for  the  benefits  of  French  liberty.  As  in  France, 
deputations  and  declarations,  purporting  to  express  the  wishes 
of  the  people,  were  engineered  by  Jacobin  agents,^  and  in  no 
way  represented  pubUc  opinion.  So,  although  it  was  announced 
that  Belgium  desired  to  embrace  revolutionary  doctrines  and  to 
be  united  to  the  French  Republic,  "  the  immense  majority  of  the 
Belgian  population  remained  attached  to  its  old  beUefs,"  and 
regarded  the  anarchic  schemes  of  the  invaders  with  horror.^ 
In  Germany  the  apostles  of  "  democracy  "  met  with  a  like 
resistance.  Mayence  boldly  protested  ;  at  Frankfort  the  citizens 
refused  to  plant  a  tree  of  liberty  at  the  command  of  Custine.* 

^  Moniteur,  xiv.  762. 

*  Immediately  on  Dumouriez's  arrival  in  the  towns  of  Belgium  Jacobin 
Clubs  were  inaugurated  under  his  auspices  (Mortimer  Ternaux,  Histoire 
de  la  Terreur,  v.  14,  61).  It  seems  that  large  sums  of  money  were  also 
lavished  on  the  inhabitants,  for  later  on,  when  Danton  was  asked  to  account 
for  the  sum  of  100,000  6cus  he  had  spent  on  his  mission  to  Belgium — and 
which  the  Girondins  suspected  him  of  appropriating — Danton  repHed  that 
the  money  had  been  spent  in  "  executing  the  decree  of  December  15  " — 
that  is  to  say,  in  bribing  the  Belgians  to  vote  for  union  with  the  French 
RepubUc  (Stance  of  April  i,  1793;  Mortimer  Ternaux,  op.  cit.  v.  20). 

*  Ibid.  p.  61.  See  also  letter  of  Lord  Auckland  written  from  the  Hague 
to  Lord  Loughborough  on  January  6,  1793  :  "  The  spirit  of  Jacobinism 
makes  no  progress.  In  Italy  and  Germany  it  is  the  abhorrence  even  of  the 
lowest  ranks.  In  Brabant  and  Flanders  the  French  are  now  infinitely 
more  hated   than  the   Austrians "    {Correspondence   of   Lord  Auckland, 

ii.  485). 

*  Mortimer  Ternaux,  v.  19. 


382        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

But  the  revolutionary  leaders  were  not  to  be  baffled  by  these 
obstacles ;  if  the  people  did  not  accept  "  liberty,  equality,  and 
fraternity "  when  offered  them  with  honeyed  words,  these 
inestimable  blessings  must  be  forced  on  them  at  the  point  of 
the  sword. 

It  was  in  consequence  of  this  recalcitrance  that  Cambon  in 
the  same  speech  went  on  to  say :  "  But  you  will  have  accom- 
plished nothing  if  you  do  not  loudly  declare  the  severity  of  your 
principles  against  whosoever  desires  only  a  half-hberty.  You 
wish  that  the  people  against  whom  you  carry  arms  should  be 
free.  If  they  reconcile  themselves  with  the  privileged  castes 
you  must  not  suffer  this  traffic  with  tyrants.  You  must  there- 
fore say  to  the  people  who  wish  to  preserve  the  privileged  castes, 
*  You  are  our  enemies,'  and  then  treat  them  as  such,  since  they 
desire  neither  Uberty  nor  equaUty." 

At  the  end  of  this  speech,  deUvered  amidst  unanimous 
applause,  the  Convention  issued  a  further  decree  to  each  country 
entered  by  their  armies,  declaring  that  "  from  this  moment  the 
French  Repubhc  proclaims  the  suppression  of  all  your  magistrates, 
civil  and  miUtary,  of  all  the  authorities  that  have  governed 
you,  and  proclaims  in  this  country  the  abohtion  of  aU  the  taxes 
you  endure,  under  whatsoever  form  they  exist,"  etc.  In  a  word, 
every  country  entered  by  the  French  was  to  be  thrown  into 
chaos.^ 

Beside  this  proclamation  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
Manifesto  of  Brunswick  appears  almost  benign.  The  Emperor 
of  Austria  and  the  King  of  Prussia  had  definitely  declared  therein 
that  they  had  "no  intention  of  meddhng  with  the  domestic 
government  of  France  "  ;  the  revolutionaries  announced  their 
determination  to  destroy  the  existing  form  of  government 
whether  the  people  desired  it  or  not.  The  Manifesto  of  Bruns- 
wick, moreover,  had  repudiated  all  ideas  of  annexation  ;  the 
revolutionaries  made  no  attempt  to  conceal  the  fact  that  the 
conversion  of  the  invaded  countries  to  "  democratic  "  doctrines 
was  to  be  but  the  prelude  to  incorporation  with  the  French 
RepubUc. 

The  moment  the  retreat  of  the  foreign  armies  began,  after 
Valmy,  the  pretext  of  carrying  on  war  for  the  defence  of  France 
was  abandoned,  and  the  Repubhc  embarked  on  its  career  of 
aggrandizement.  Belgium,  the  Rhine  provinces,  Savoy,  and 
Nice  were  aU  successively  annexed  without  any  pretext  being 
offered  for  these  acts  of  brigandage.  Writers  who  enthuse  over 
the  glorious  successes  of  French  arms  from  the  battle  of  Jemmapes 
onwards  would  do  well  to  ask  themselves  by  what  right  the 
French  Repubhc  pursued  the  invading  armies  beyond  the 
1  Moniteur,  xiv.  762. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  383 

frontier  for  the  purpose  of  annexing  territory  ?  It  will  be 
answered  Louis  XIV.  had  done  the  same.  True,  but  was  not 
the  spirit  of  the  Revolution  until  1792  diametrically  opposed  to 
the  policy  of  Louis  XIV.  ?  Had  not  the  French  democracy 
itself  declared  that  war  was  never  justified  except  in  self-defence  ? 
Only  two  and  a  half  years  earlier — in  May  1790 — at  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly,  a  league  of  perpetual  peace  had  been  decreed 
amidst  immense  enthusiasm.  "  Let  all  nations  be  free  like 
ourselves,"  a  deputy  had  cried,  "  and  there  wiU  be  no  more 
wars  !  "  And  on  the  proposal  of  Robespierre  the  Assembly 
formally  declared  :  "  The  French  nation  renounces  the  idea  of 
undertaking  any  war  with  a  view  of  conquest,  and  will  never 
employ  its  forces  against  the  Uberty  of  any  people."  Yet  it  was 
the  very  men  who  framed  it,  Robespierre  and  his  aUies,  who  now 
repudiated  this  resolution  and  advocated  pure  aggression,  and 
thus  the  League  of  Peace  proved  hut  the  prelude  to  the  greatest  war 
of  conquest  the  civilized  world  had  ever  seen.  Had  not  Mirabeau 
foretold  this  when,  in  response  to  the  enthusiasts  of  1790,  he  had 
declared  "  free  people  to  be  more  eager  for  war,  and  democracies 
more  the  slaves  of  their  passions  than  the  most  absolute 
autocracies  "  ?  ^ 

It  was  not,  then,  as  is  frequently  and  falsely  stated,  that  Pitt 
"  sought  a  pretext  "  for  joining  "  the  coaUtion  of  Kings  "  against 
the  French  RepubUc  ;  it  was  the  wanton  aggression  of  the 
RepubUc  culminating  in  the  seizure  of  the  mouth  of  the  Scheldt 
and  of  Antwerp — that  in  the  hands  of  a  dangerous  enemy  must 
inevitably  prove,  as  Napoleon  perceived,  "  a  pistol  held  at  the 
head  of  England " ;  it  was  the  example  of  inhumanity  and 
injustice  offered  to  Europe  by  the  murder  of  Louis  XVI. ;  above  ' 
all  it  was  the  declaration  of  world  anarchy  published  by  the  Con- ' 
vention,  threatening  not  only  England  but  the  whole  of  civiUza- 
tion,  that  led  Pitt  to  conclude  his  speech  on  the  death  of  Louis 
XVI.  by  proposing  preparations  for  war :  "  There  can  be  no 
consideration  more  deserving  the  attention  of  this  House  than  to 
crush  and  destroy  principles  which  are  so  dangerous  and  destruc- 
tive of  every  blessing  this  country  enjoys  under  its  free  and 
excellent  constitution.  We  owe  our  present  happiness  and 
prosperity,  which  has  never  been  equalled  in  the  annals  of 
mankind,  to  a  mixture  of  monarchical  government.  We  feel 
and  know  we  are  happy  under  that  form  of  government.  We 
consider  it  as  our  first  duty  to  maintain  and  reverence  the  British 
Constitution."  He  went  on  to  present  the  contrast  between 
England  and  "  that  country  (France)  exposed  to  all  the  tremen- 
dous consequences  of  that  ungovernable,  that  intolerable  and 
destroying  spirit,  which  carries  ruin  and  desolation  wherever  it 
^  Albert  Sorel,  L'Europe  et  la  RivoluHon  Frangaise,  ii.  86-89. 


384        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

goes  I  Sirs,  this  infection  can  have  no  existence  in  this  happy 
land,  unless  it  is  imported,  unless  it  is  studiously  and  industriously 
brought  into  this  country." 

Pitt  well  knew  the  efforts  that  were  being  made  to  spread 
this  infection,  the  insidious  influences  that  emanated  from 
ParHament  itself.  England  has  always  had  her  "  lUuminati," 
who,  holding  loyalty  and  patriotism  to  be  "  narrow-minded 
prejudices  incompatible  with  universal  benevolence,"  have  ever 
been  ready  to  plead  the  cause  of  their  country's  enemies 
— whether  these  enemies  masqueraded  under  the  name  of  de- 
mocracy as  in  1793,  or  raUied  round  the  standard  of  autocracy 
as  in  1800.  Now  at  this  most  critical  moment  this  band  of  anti- 
patriots  came  forward  in  defence  of  the  French  Jacobins  ;  Fox, 
Sheridan,  Lord  Lansdowne,  Lord  Lauderdale,  Lord  Stanhope 
poured  forth  floods  of  oratory  to  prove  that  pubhc  opinion  on 
the  revolutionary  leaders  had  been  influenced  by  **  the  absurdities 
of  madmen,  the  monstrous  propositions  of  the  heated  imaginations 
of  individuals  "  ;  ^  to  show  by  tortuous  sophistries  that  black  was 
really  white;  that  if,  indeed,  crimes  had  been  committed,  the 
best  way  to  express  disapproval  would  be  by  shaking  hands  with 
the  criminals.  They  themselves,  honoured  by  the  friendship  of 
such  men  as  Brissot — ^whom  to  their  indignation  Burke  at  this 
same  sitting  described  as  "  the  most  virtuous  of  all  pickpockets  " 
— could  answer  for  the  pacific  disposition  of  the  French  revolu- 
tionaries, their  ardent  desire  to  retain  the  good  opinion  of 
England.  Yet  less  than  three  weeks  earher  Brissot  himself  had 
referred  at  the  Convention  to  "  the  comedy  played  in  the  House 
of  GDmmons  by  the  party  of  the  Opposition "  !  ^  and  it  was 
likewise  Brissot  who,  in  the  following  May,  justified  Pitt  for 
refusing  to  form  an  alliance  with  the  French  Republic.^ 

*  Speech  of  Lord  Lauderdale  {Pari.  Hist.  xxx.  326).  These  words  of 
Lord  Lauderdale  were  a  dehberate  misrepresentation  of  the  truth,  for 
Lord  Lauderdale  was  himself  in  Paris  with  Dr.  Moore  during  the  September 
massacres,  and  Dr.  Moore's  evidence  on  the  atrocities  of  which  they  were 
witnesses  has  been  already  quoted  in  this  book.  See  also  speech  of  Lord 
Lansdowne  {Pari.  Hist.  xxx.  329),  and  Lord  Stanhope's  "  Protest  against 
a  War  with  France  "  {ibid.  p.  336). 

2  "  Rapport  fait  par  Brissot  sur  les  Dispositions  du  Gouvernement 
britannique,"  Bouchez  et  Roux,  xxiii.  81.  See  also  speech  of  Kersaint  on 
January  i,  1793,  referring  to  the  intrigues  of  Fox  in  "  trying  to  profit  by 
circumstances  in  order  to  seize  the  government,"  etc.  (Buchez  et  Roux, 
xxiii.  366). 

*  "  What  has  occasioned  this  last  war  ?  There  are  three  causes  for  it : 
ist.  The  absurd  and  impolitic  decree  of  the  19th  of  November,  which 
very  justly  excited  uneasiness  in  foreign  cabinets.  .  .  2nd,  The  massacres 
of  September.  .  .  .  3rd,  The  death  of  Louis.  ...  It  is  madness  or 
imbecility  itself  to  reckon  upon  a  peace,  or  upon  allies,  while  we  are  without 
a  constitution.  There  is  no  making  an  alliance,  there  is  no  treating  with 
anarchy  "  {J.  P.  Brissot  d  ses  Commettants) . 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  385 

But  any  illusions  concerning  the  conciliatory  sentiments  of 
the  French  revolutionary  leaders  were  abruptly  dispelled  by  a 
declaration  of  war  on  England  issued  by  the  Convention  two 
days  after  this  debate  took  place.  As  long  as  possible  Pitt  had 
striven  to  bring  the  Jacobins  of  France  to  reason ;  even  at  the 
last  moment  he  had  made  a  further  attempt  at  conciUation  by 
agreeing  to  a  conference  between  Lord  Auckland,  the  British 
ambassador  at  the  Hague,  and  Dumouriez,  commander-in-chief 
of  the  French  armies  in  the  Netherlands,^  but  on  the  very  day 
arranged  for  the  conference  to  take  place  the  Convention  pre- 
cipitated matters  by  declaring  war  and  thus  incurred  the  full 
responsibiUty  for  the  twenty-two  years'  conflict  that  followed. 
Yet  even  now  the  English  admirers  of  the  Jacobins  were  for 
conciliation ;  even  when  the  overture  of  Pitt  had  been  thus 
insolently  rejected  they  pleaded  that  England  should  humiliate 
herself  and  sue  for  peace  —  a  peace,  Pitt  declared,  that  would 
be  "  precarious  and  disgraceful.  .  .  .  What  sort  of  a  peace 
must  that  be  in  which  there  is  no  security  ?  Peace  is  desirable 
only  in  so  far  as  it  is  secure."  Wax  with  the  French  Republic 
was  finally  voted  by  270  votes  to  44. 

These,  then,  were  the  causes  that  led  up  to  the  inevitable 
rupture  between  France  and  England.  To  accuse  Pitt  of 
wishing  to  "  destroy  French  liberty  "  is,  therefore,  a  monstrous 
calumny ;  for  in  France  liberty  had  completely  ceased  to  exist. 
Already  the  blade  was  suspended  over  the  heads  of  the  Whigs* 
supposed  aUies,  the  Girondins,  and  the  country  was  rapidly 
passing  under  the  most  frightful  tyranny  the  civilized  world  has 
ever  seen — the  reign  of  Robespierre.  It  was  against  this  atro- 
cious system,  it  was  against  anarchy  and  bloodshed,  against 
cruelty  and  oppression,  that  England  took  up  arms.  So,  by  the 
master  hand  of  Pitt,  the  ship  of  State  was  steered  to  safety,  and 
England,  true  to  her  traditions,  entered  the  lists  in  the  cause  of 
liberty  and  justice. 

THE  FALL  OF  THE  GIRONDE 

The  Girondins  had  little  reahzed  that  in  voting  for  the  death 
of  the  King  they  had  signed  their  own  death-warrant ;  that 
by  lending  themselves  to  this  monstrous  injustice  they  had 
helped  to  frame  the  system  that  was  to  bring  about  their  down- 
fall. If  they  had  only  had  the  courage  of  their  convictions, 
and  persisted  in  their  resolution  that  an  appeal  should  be  made 
to  the  people,  they  would  have  had  public  opinion  almost  unani- 
mously on  their  side,  and  could  have  defied  the  threats  of  the 
Mountain.     Their    contemptible    weakness    not    only    lowered 

^  Speeches  of  Pitt  and  Lord  Grenville  {Pari.  Hist.  xxx.  351,  399). 

2  C 


386        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

them  in  the  eyes  of  the  multitude,  but  increased  the  audacity  of 
their  adversaries. 

Ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  Convention  angry  murmurs 
against  the  Gironde  had  emanated  continually  from  the  Mountain, 
and  as  the  months  went  by  grew  in  volume ;  the  hall  of  the 
Assembly,  always  tumultuous,  became  at  momicnts  a  pande- 
monium. Of  this  historians  give  no  idea,  but  it  must  be  reaUzed 
in  order  to  follow  the  true  course  of  the  revolutionary  movement. 
For  if  we  picture  the  Convention  as  it  is  habitually  represented 
to  us  under  the  guise  of  a  serious  Senate  sitting  in  debate  on 
great  poUtical  questions,  and  led  by  statesmen  of  commanding 
personalities  inspired  with  pure  zeal  for  the  country's  welfare, 
it  is  perfectly  impossible  to  understand  the  nature  of  the  conflict 
that  now  arose,  and  that  culminated  in  the  successive  slaughter 
of  each  faction.  We  must  turn,  therefore,  to  the  accounts  of 
contemporaries  in  order  to  visualize  the  fearful  scenes  of  con- 
fusion that  took  place  in  the  Assembly,  and  the  part  played 
by  the  so-called  "  giants  of  the  Convention."  Even  the  toned- 
down  official  reports  of  the  debates  afford  us  gUmpses  of  the 
strangest  incidents — members  making  simultaneous  rushes  at 
the  Tribune,  frantically  disputing  who  should  have  the  right 
to  speak — "  60  to  80  deputies  advancing  in  a  body  on  the 
President's  desk," — the  President  ringing  his  bell  to  obtain 
silence,  breaking  his  bell  in  desperation,  breaking  three  bells 
in  succession,^  putting  on  his  hat  to  close  the  sitting — deputies 
drawing  swords  or  brandishing  pistols,  threatening  to  blow  out 
their  brains,  to  stab  themselves  to  the  heart — roars  from  Danton, 
Legendre,  David,  of  "  Vile  intriguer  !  Monster  !  Murderer  ! 
Imbecile  !  Pig  !  " — Robespierre  shrieking  above  the  tumult, 
"  KiQ  me  or  let  me  be  heard  !  " — Marat  rushing  about  the  hall 
like  a  maniac,  crying,  "  Let  the  patriots  speak  !  "  turning  to 
the  right  and  shouting,  "  Be  silent,  brigand !  "  to  the  left, 
"  Be  silent,  conspirator !  " — or,  again,  furious  petitioners  arriving 
at  the  bar  of  the  Assembly,  all  talking  at  once,  and  all  at  cross 
purposes — the  tribunes  filled  with  brawlers  and  viragos  hired  by 
the  opposing  factions,  shaking  sticks  and  fists  at  the  deputies, 
spitting  on  their  heads,  howUng  invectives. ^ 

What  was  the  reason  for  these  continued  dissensions  ?  If, 
as  the  Convention  declared,  every  one  wanted  a  Republic, — if, 
as  they  had  asserted  in  the  past,  the  King  was  the  sole  obstacle 
to  the  regeneration  of  France,  why  should  the  overthrow  of 
monarchy  and  King  have  proved  the  signal  for  a  further  out- 

^  Moore,  ii.  297. 

^  Moniteur,  xiv,  80;  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxii.  461-464,  xxiv.  296, 
XXV.  323,  xxvii.  144,  145  ;  Beaulieu,  v.  126 ;  MSmoires  de  Mme.  Roland^ 
ii.  304  ;   Dauban,  La  Demagogie  en  1793,  p.  66. 


J 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  387 

break  of  revolution  more  violent  than  any  that  had  preceded  it  ? 
Why,  as  the  Girondin  Gensonn6  sensibly  inquired,  should  the 
opposing  faction,  that  is  to  say,  the  Mountain,  continue  *'  to 
declaim  against  the  National  Convention  and  provoke  insur- 
rections ?  What  do  they  want  ?  What  is  their  object  ?  What 
strange  despotism  threatens  us  ?  And  what  kind  of  government 
do  they  propose  to  give  to  France?"'^  English  readers,  indoc- 
trinated by  Carlyle,  will  answer :  "  The  Girondins  were  now 
reactionaries ;  they  wished  to  arrest  the  tide  of  progress ;  their 
schemes  of  social  reform  did  not  go  far  enough  to  meet  the  real 
needs  of  the  people."  For,  according  to  Carlyle,  "  all  manner  of 
aristocracies  being  now  aboUshed,"  the  conflict  that  arose  was 
between  "  the  Girondin  formula  of  a  respectable  RepubUc  for 
the  Middle  Classes  "  and  the  "  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity  " 
of  the  Mountain,  by  which  the  **  hunger,  nakedness,  and  night- 
mare oppression  lying  heavy  on  twenty-five  million  hearts  " 
would  be  relieved.  In  these  words  Carlyle  presents  an  imaginary 
situation.^  It  is  probably  true  that  by  1793  the  Girondins  had 
become  genuine  Republicans — henceforth  we  find  no  trace  of 
Orleaniste,  Prussian,  or  English  intrigue  amongst  them;  it  is 
also  true  that  they  desired  an  orderly  Republic,  but  this  was 
to  be  no  more  in  favour  of  the  "  Middle  Classes  "  than  of  the 
great  mass  of  the  people.  The  Mountain,  on  the  other  hand 
— as  represented  by  Marat,  Robespierre  and  St.  Just — ^no 
doubt  dreamt  of  a  SociaHst  State  for  "  the  people "  only, 
but  their  immediate  aim  was  still  anarchy,  by  which  '*  hunger 
and  nakedness  "  must  be  immensely  aggravated.  For  Robes- 
pierre and  Marat  were  surgeons,  not  physicians;  their  only 
remedy  for  all  social  ills  was  amputation  ;  they  did  not  wish 
to  reUeve  present  distress  or  to  put  down  injustice  by  legis- 
lation, but  only  to  annihilate  all  existing  conditions,  and  to 
exterminate  all  classes  of  the  community  except  "  the  people  " 
over  whom  they  hoped  to  rule  supreme. 

It  was  therefore  the  Gironde,  not  the  Mountain,  that  now 
came  to  the  reUef  of  hunger  and  nakedness ;  it  was  Roland  who 
pointed  out  the  real  causes  of  the  famine  and  proposed  measures 
for  preventing  it,^  whilst  Robespierre  contented  himself  with 

1  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxii.  391. 

2  Note  Carlyle's  inconsequence  here,  for  whilst  pouring  sarcasms  on 
"  the  respectably- washed  middle-classes,"  represented  by  the  Girondins, 
it  is  for  Madame  Roland,  the  soul  of  the  Gironde  and  the  embodiment  of 
pretentious  middle-classness,  that  he  reserves  his  deepest  admiration,  whilst 
for  Marat,  the  soul  of  the  Mountain,  and  the  apostle  of  unwashed  Fraternity, 
he  has  nothing  but  loathing  and  contempt.  This  instance  goes  to  show 
that' Carlyle  wrote  mainly  for  effect  regardless  of  truth  or  logic. 

3  See  Roland's  sensible  report  (pubhshed  by  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxi.  199), 
in  which  he  points  out  that  the  price  of  bread  being  lower  in  Paris  than  in 


388        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

vague  theorizings  and  ignored  offers  of  supplies.*  Meanwhile 
Marat  continued  to  urge  the  people  on  to  pillage,  a  method 
which  greatly  aggravated  the  situation  by  terrifying  the  shop- 
keepers and  peasants  into  concealing  provisions.  It  seems, 
indeed,  not  improbable  that  the  Mountain  pursued  the  same 
system  in  1793  as  the  Orleanistes  in  1789 — ^that  of  engineering 
famine  in  order  to  rouse  the  anger  of  the  people  against  their 
poUtical  antagonists.  Thus  a  contemporary  states  that,  "  at  a 
sitting  of  the  Comity  de  Neuf  on  September  2,  1793,  it  was 
decided  by  Jean  Bon  Saint  Andr6,  Drouet,  Cambon,  and 
Robespierre,  that  an  insurrection  must  be  excited  by  means  of 
the  difficulty  of  suppUes — and  that  the  Municipality  should 
direct  accusations  of  monopoly  against  the  party  of  the  Giron- 
dins,  Monarchists,  and  Brissotins."  ^  It  was  this  accusation  of 
monopoly  that  in  the  hands  of  the  Mountain  served  as  a  weapon 
against  each  rival  faction  in  turn. 

Such,  then,  were  the  men  whom  Carlyle  represents  as  the 
protectors  of  the  hungry  and  naked.  The  truth  is  that  the 
people  counted  for  very  little  in  the  great  war  between  the 
Mountain  and  the  Gironde  ;  it  was  not — as  Kropotkin,  following 


the  surrounding  provinces,  buyers  are  attracted  to  the  capital ;  he  pro- 
poses, therefore,  to  raise  the  price  of  bread  in  Paris,  and  to  assist  the  poor 
out  of  the  pubUc  funds  to  meet  the  increased  expense.  Compare  this  with 
Robespierre's  speech  to  the  Convention  of  December  2,  1792  (Buchez  et 
Roux,  xxii.  178),  in  which  he  can  find  nothing  more  practical  to  say  than 
that  "  everything  which  is  indispensable  for  preserving  life  is  common 
property,"  an  axiom  interpreted  by  the  people,  under  the  guidance  of 
Marat,  into  laying  violent  hands  on  all  foodstuffs  that  came  their  way. 
Undoubtedly  there  were  still  monopoHzers  as  there  had  always  been,  and 
the  succeeding  revolutionary  governments  dealt  with  them  less  effectually 
than  the  Old  R6gime,  but  the  methods  of  the  Anarchists  increased  their 
number.  "  The  deamess  of  bread,"  wrote  Brissot  in  1793.  "  is  produced 
by  the  scarcity  of  the  markets  and  the  want  of  the  circulation  of  grain. 
.  .  .  What  stops  this  circulation  ?  The  eternal  declamations  of  the 
anarchists  against  men  of  property,  or  against  merchants,  whom  they 
mark  out  by  the  name  of  monopoHzers  ;  the  eternal  petitions  of  ignorant 
men  who  call  for  a  rate  upon  grain.  The  labouring  man  fears  he  will  be 
plundered  or  have  his  throat  cut,  and  he  leaves  his  ricks  untouched  " 
(/.  P.  Brissot  d,  ses  Commettants). 

1  See  the  Mdmoires  de  Brissot,  note  on  p.  63,  which  mentions  two 
letters  from  American  corn-merchants  vmtten  to  Robespierre  in  October 
and  November  1793  offering  suppHes  of  grain.  To  these  Robespierre  did 
not  reply.  Courtois  in  his  Rapport  says  the  offer  was  refused  {Papier s 
trouvSs  chez  Robespierre,  etc.  i.  21). 

2  Fortescue  Historical  MSS.  ii.  457.  The  Socialist,  Gracchus  Babeuf, 
employed  in  the  Supply  Department  of  the  Commune,  formally  accused 
Robespierre  and  the  Comit6  de  Salut  Public  of  having  organized  a 
Pacte  de  Famine  in  order  to  starve  Paris.  For  this  Babeuf  and  all 
the  employis  in  the  Supply  Department  were  thrown  into  prison  at  the 
Abbaye. 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  389 

in  the  footsteps  of  Carlyle,  falsely  represents — such  questions  as 
feudal  dues,  the  maximum  price  of  bread,  or  communal  lands 
that  formed  the  subjects  for  heated  debates  at  the  Convention  ; 
we  have  only  to  consult  the  Moniteur  to  find  that  the  dis- 
cussions that  took  place  on  these  questions  occupy  a  very  small 
amount  of  space,  and  never  became  the  occasion  for  tumultuous 
scenes.  The  great  accusations  levelled  by  one  faction  at  the 
other  related  in  no  way  to  the  needs  of  the  people,  but  mainly 
to  the  form  of  government  each  wished  to  establish,  the  Gironde 
accusing  the  Mountain  of  wishing  to  establish  a  dictatorship 
under  one  of  the  Triumvirate — Marat,  Danton,  or  Robespierre — 
the  Mountain  declaring  that  the  Gironde  aimed  at  a  Federative 
RepubHc  ;  at  the  same  time  each  hurled  at  the  other  the  reproach 
of  Orleanisme.  Meanwhile  the  personal  animosity  existing  be- 
tween the  members  of  the  two  factions,  which  found  expression 
in  recriminations  of  the  most  puerile  description,  made  all  hope 
of  concihation  vain. 

Whilst  the  poUticians  wrangled,  the  people  bore  their  suffer- 
ings with  admirable  patience.  Now  for  the  first  time  at  the 
bakers'  doors  were  formed  those  long  processions  known  as 
"  queues  "  that  grew  in  length  as  the  year  advanced,  and  were 
to  continue  for  two  years  without  intermission.  Paris  accepted 
the  situation  with  its  usual  insouciance.  "  The  French,  who 
have  always  made  merry  over  ever5rthing,  even  over  their  misery 
and  their  greatest  misfortunes,"  says  BeauUeu,  "  made  merry 
over  these  gatherings  at  the  bakers'  doors,  where  they  seemed 
rather  to  be  asking  for  alms  than  for  goods  of  which  they  paid 
the  price.  ...  I  have  seen  women  spend  whole  nights  at  these 
wretched  doors  for  the  sake  of  having  an  ounce  or  two  of  bad 
bread  which  dogs  would  not  care  for.  Well,  the  Parisians 
laughed  over  these  sad  gatherings ;  they  called  them  queues. 
Since  one  was  in  want  of  ever5rthing  one  went  in  the  queue  for 
ever5rthing — ^in  the  bread  queue,  the  meat  queue,  the  soap  queue, 
the  candle  queue ;  there  was  nothing  for  which  there  was  not  a 
queue."  ^ 

Naturally,  under  these  circumstances,  when  Marat  proposed 
that  the  people  should  take  the  law  into,  their  own  hands  and 
pillage  the  shops,  he  endeared  himself  still  further  to  the  hearts 
of  the  tumultuous  elements  amongst  the  populace.  "  The 
capitalists,  the  stockjobbers,  the  monopoHzers,  the  tradesmen, 
the  ex-nobles,"  he  declared  in  his  Journal  de  la  Republique 
Franfaise,  were  to  blame  for  the  scarcity  of  provisions,  and 
nothing  but  "  the  total  destruction  of  that  cursed  breed  could 
restore  tranquiUity  to  the  State.  .  .  .  Meanwhile  let  the  nation, 
weary  of  these  revolting  disorders,  take  upon  itself  to  purge  the 
^  Beaulieu,  v.  117  ;  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  ii.  92. 


]fir. 


390        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

soil  of  liberty  of  this  criminal  race.  .  .  .  The  pillage  of  a  few  shops 
at  the  doors  of  which  they  hanged  a  few  of  the  monopolizers 
would  soon  put  an  end  to  these  malpractices.  ..." 

The  call  to  plunder  was  received  with  enthusiasm,  and  in 
the  morning  of  the  25th  of  February  a  troop  of  women  marched 
to  the  Seine  and,  after  boarding  the  vessels  that  contained  cargoes 
of  soap,  helped  themselves  Uberally  to  all  they  required  at  a 
price  fixed  by  themselves,  that  is  to  say,  for  almost  nothing. 
Since  no  notice  was  taken  of  these  proceedings,  a  far  larger 
crowd  collected  at  dawn  of  the  following  day  and  set  forth  on 
a  marauding  expedition  to  the  shops.  From  no  less  than  1200 
grocers  the  people  carried  off  everything  on  which  they  could 
lay  their  hands — oil,  sugar,  candles,  coffee,  brandy — at  first 
without  paying,  then,  overcome  with  remorse,  at  the  price  they 
themselves  thought  proper.  In  this  they  displayed  a  greater 
sense  of  morality  than  their  leaders,  who  doubtless  hoped  that 
their  enemies,  the  bourgeois,  would  be  plundered  without  indem- 
ity ;  moreover,  the  crowd  refrained  from  hanging  any  of  the 
tradesmen  at  their  shop  doors  as  Marat  had  proposed.  From 
the  Anarchists'  point  of  view  the  rising  had,  therefore,  proved  a 
failure. 

Marat,  when  denounced  at  the  Convention  for  provoking 
these  disorders,  retorted  in  his  usual  manner  by  calling  his 
accusers  pigs  or  imbeciles  who  should  be  shut  up  in  asylums ;  ^ 
and  he  could  well  afford  to  defy  them,  for  he  had  the  mob  now 
whole-heartedly  at  his  back. 

The  short-sighted  Girondins,  illusioned  by  the  fact  that  the 
majority  of  the  Convention  was  with  them,  under-estimated 
the  force  of  this  coahtion.  They  could  not  realize  that  men 
who  appeared  in  the  eyes  of  all  sane  contemporaries  so  con- 
temptible as  Marat,  so  feebly  vindictive  as  Robespierre,  so 
addicted  to  empty  noise  as  Danton,  could  end  by  carrying 
everything  before  them.  They  overlooked  the  fact  that,  as 
Danton  himself  afterwards  expressed  it,  "  in  times  of  revolution 
authority  remains  with  the  greatest  scoundrels  " — that  is  to  say, 
with  the  most  unscrupulous ;  and  just  as  in  the  past  it  was 
the  Orleanistes  who  had  held  in  their  hands  the  machinery  of 
revolution,  of  which  the  Girondins  had  made  use,  it  was  now 
the  Anarchists  who  alone  knew  how  to  frame  that  new  engine  of 
destruction — the  second  Revolutionary  Tribunal — the  Tribunal 
of  the  Terror.2 

^  Prudhomme,  Crimes,  v.  37. 

2  This  Tribunal  was  at  first  known  ofl&cially  as  the  "  Tribunal  Extra- 
ordinaire," and  not  till  later  as  the  "  Tribunal  Revolutionnaire,"  but 
Beaulieu  says  it  was  habitually  referred  to  in  private  conversation  under 
the  latter  name,  particularly  by  Robespierre  and  his  friends,  soon  after  its 
inauguration  on  March  10,  1793  {Essais  de  Beaulieu,  v.  103). 


^ 


■ 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  391 

The  first  Revolutionary  Tribunal,  created  on  August  17, 
1792,  had  proved  a  failure ;  the  populace  were  not  yet  ripe  for 
wholesale  executions;  the  spectacle  of  the  guillotine  had  dis- 
gusted the  humane  portion  of  the  people,  and  disappointed  the 
sanguinary.  The  massacres  of  September  had  therefore  been 
preferred  as  a  method  of  extermination,  and  on  the  29th  of 
November  1792  the  Tribunal  was  suppressed.  But  now  that 
the  Anarchists  could  make  sure  of  support  from  the  populace, 
and  the  restraining  influence  of  the  Girondins  had  been  reduced 
to  nothing,  Danton  resolved  on  a  further  venture.  This  time 
the  Girondins  were  not  to  be  spared ;  on  the  contrary,  it  was 
they  who  were  to  provide  the  principal  victims  of  the  new 
Tribunal. 

As  usual,  the  responsibility  for  this  measure  was  to  be  laid 
at  the  door  of  "  the  people  "  ;  the  same  calumnies,  the  same 
futile  pretexts  that  had  done  duty  at  the  massacres  of  September 
were  again  employed. 

On  the  8th  of  March  Danton  and  Lacroix,  who  had  returned 
from  a  mission  to  the  army  in  Belgium,  appeared  at  the  Con- 
vention with  an  alarming  report  on  the  miUtary  situation.  The 
troops  had  been  almost  totally  routed;  treachery  on  the  part 
of  their  officers  could  alone  explain  the  state  of  affairs;  the 
remedy  lay  in  raising  fresh  forces,  but  before  marching  on  the 
enemy  the  patriots  must  exterminate  traitors  at  home. 

That,    as    in    September,    no    connection    whatever    existed 
between  so-called  "  traitors  "  in  Paris  and  the  armies  abroad  is 
of  course  obvious,  but  Danton,  Uke  Mirabeau,  excelled  in  render- 
ing the  flimsiest  pretexts  plausible,  and  in  conceaHng  sanguinary 
designs  beneath  a  flood  of  high-sounding  oratory.    The  great 
speeches  of  Danton  that  have  gone  down  to  posterity  as  trumpet- 
calls  to  patriotism  were  mostly  dehvered  at  a  moment  when  he 
was  meditating  some  fresh   plan   for   slaughtering   his  fellow- 
countrymen.     Thus,  just  £LS  "  audacity  and  yet  more  audacity  " 
had  been  the  signal  for  the  massacres  of   September,  another 
famous  phrase  heralded  the  inauguration  of  the  Revolutionary 
Tribunal.      "  What  matters  my  reputation  ?     Let  France  be 
free  and  my  name  for  ever  dishonoured  !      {Que  la  France  soit 
libre  et  que  mon  nom  soit  fletri  d  jamais  ! )."      Stirring  words 
BL    truly  in  the  ears  of  posterity,  less  stirring  in  those  of  contem- 
^L   poraries  to  whom  such  exclamations  had  by  long  use  become 
^B  famiUar.     The  demagogy,  says  Mercier,  had  "  created  for  itself 
^B  a  language  to  deceive  and  seduce  the  multitude.     I  have  heard 
^B  it  shouted  in  my  ear,  *  Let  the  French  perish  as  long  as  Uberty 
^B  triumphs  !  '     I  have  heard  another  cry  out  at  a  section,  '  Yes, 
^B  I  could  take  my  head  by  the  hair,  I  could  cut  it  off  and  give  it 
^Bto  the  despot;   I  could  say  to  him.  Tyrant,  this  is  the  action 

I 


392        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

of  a  free  man  !  *     This  sublimity  of  extravagance  was  composed 
for  the  populace ;  it  was  understood  and  it  succeeded.  .  .  ,"  ^ 

The  famous  exclamation  of  Danton  was  a  phrase  of  this  order, 
and,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  usually  accepted,  meaningless. 
What  connection  can  be  found  between  the  reputation  of  Danton 
and  the  success  of  French  arms  in  Belgium  ?  Why  should  his 
name  be  dishonoured  by  France  becoming  free  ?  But  when  we 
understand  the  real  intention  that  lay  behind  the  words,  we 
find  them  pregnant  with  meaning.  Was  not  Danton's  reputa- 
tion to  be  for  ever  tarnished,  his  name  for  ever  dishonoured,  by 
the  creation  of  that  sanguinary  Tribunal  before  which  he  himself 
was  to  be  summoned  only  a  year  later  ?  was  he  not  to  cry  out 
between  his  prison  bars  in  an  agony  of  remorse :  "It  was  on 
this  day  I  instituted  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal,  but  I  ask 
pardon  for  it  from  God  and  man ;  it  was  not  in  order  that  it 
should  become  the  scourge  of  humanity,  it  was  in  order  to 
prevent  a  renewal  of  the  massacres  of  September  !  "  ? 

Always,  to  the  end,  the  same  calumny  on  the  people  !  The 
people  at  the  time  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  was  inaugurated 
showed  no  symptoms  whatever  of  wishing  to  massacre  anybody 
— had  they  not  refused  to  carry  out  the  sanguinary  suggestions 
of  Marat  only  a  fortnight  earUer  ?  Danton  was  well  aware  of 
this ;  he  well  knew  that  the  thirst  for  blood  existed  not  amongst 
the  people,  but  amongst  the  leaders  of  the  Mountain,  the  members 
of  the  Commune.  Indeed,  with  his  usual  audacity  of  speech,  he 
frankly  acknowledged  his  own  bloodthirsty  intentions.  The 
famous  trumpet-call  loses  something  of  its  splendour  when 
quoted  with  its  less  lofty  sequel :  "  What  matters  my  reputa- 
tion ?  Let  France  be  free  and  my  name  for  ever  dishonoured  ! 
I  have  consented  to  be  called  a  drinker  of  blood  !  Well,  let  us 
drink  the  blood  of  the  enemies  of  humanity  !  " 

Later  in  the  evening,  when  the  Ught  in  the  hall  of  the  Con- 
vention was  growing  dim,  Danton  sprang  again  into  the  tribune, 
and  his  great  voice  rolled  out  through  the  semi-darkness :  "  It 
is  important  to  take  judicial  measures  to  punish  the  counter- 
revolutionaries, since  it  is  on  their  account  that  this  tribunal 
is  to  be  substituted  for  the  supreme  tribunal  of  the  people's 
vengeance.  The  enemies  of  Uberty  lift  audacious  heads  ...  in 
seeing  the  honest  citizen  at  his  fireside,  the  artisan  in  his  work- 
shop, they  have  the  stupidity  to  think  themselves  in  a  majority. 
Well,  snatch  them  yourselves  from  popular  vengeance ;  humanity 
commands  you  !  " 

Suddenly,  whilst  the  thunderous  tones  of  Danton  stiU  quivered 
in  the  air,  another  voice  was  heard ;  one  word,  one  only,  but 
filled  with  terrible  import,  rang  out  through  the  stillness  of  the 
*  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  25. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  393 

spell-bound  assembly  :  "  September  !  "  It  was  again  Lanjuinais, 
the  one  brave  man  who  had  dared  to  defend  the  King  against 
the  injustice  of  the  Convention,  who  now  arose  in  defence  of  the 
people  against  the  calumnies  of  the  great  demagogue.  The 
shaft  had  found  its  mark ;  for  a  moment  Danton  faltered,  became 
confused,  then,  quickly  recovering  himself,  summoned  more 
audacity  to  his  aid,  piled  calumny  on  calumny  : 

"  Since  some  one  has  dared,"  he  shouted,  "  to  recall  those 
bloody  days  over  which  every  good  citizen  has  groaned,  I  will 
say,  I  myself,  that  if  a  tribunal  had  then  existed,  the  people 
who  have  often  been  so  cruelly  reproached  for  those  days  would 
not  have  stained  them  with  blood.  .  .  .  Let  us  profit  by  the 
mistakes  of  our  predecessors  .  ,  .  let  us  he  terrible  to  prevent  the 
people  from  being  terrible  !  " 

Never  was  hypocrisy  more  flagrant.  Who  had  accused  the 
people  of  responsibility  for  the  September  days  but  Danton  and 
his  colleagues  of  the  Commune  ?  By  every  other  party,  by 
Girondins  and  Royalists  alike,  the  people  had  been  absolved 
from  all  complicity;  not  a  single  reproach  had  been  uttered 
against  any  but  the  real  authors  of  the  crime.-^ 

The  brazen  effrontery  of  Danton  won  the  day ;  the  Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal  was  decreed  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  Lanjuinais 
and  the  Girondins,  and  on  the  6th  of  April  held  its  first  sitting 
at  the  Palais  de  Justice.  The  Court  was  composed  of  five 
judges,  ten  jurymen — twelve  had  been  ordained,  but  were  not 
forthcoming — and  the  Public  Accuser,  whose  name  was  to  strike 
a  deeper  terror  into  the  hearts  of  the  Parisians  than  even  that  of 
Robespierre — Fouquier  Tinville. 

On  the  opening  day  of  the  dread  Tribunal,  Fouquier  alone 
seems  to  have  entered  with  zest  into  the  proceedings  ;  the 
populace,  whose  ferocity  it  had  been  declared  impossible  to 
restrain,  behaved  with  lamentable  weakness.  When  the  first 
victim,  a  gentleman  of  Poitou  named  Des  Maulans,  was  sum- 
marily condemned  to  death  for  emigration,  "  the  immense 
majority  of  the  audience,  particularly  the  women,"  says  M. 
Len6tre  in  his  admirable  description  of  the  scene,  "  could  not 
imagine  that  a  man  who  had  done  no  harm  to  any  one  should  be 
condemned  to  death,"  and,  as  the  fatal  sentence  was  repeated 

1  "It  is  universally  known,"  writes  Dr.  Moore,  "that  the  Girondists 
exculpate  the  citizens  of  Paris  from  the  horrid  crimes  of  September  ; 
whereas  Robespierre,  St.  Andr6,  Tallien,  Chabot,  Bazire,  and  all  that 
party,  assert  that  the  massacres  were  committed  by  the  people.  But  as. 
at  the  same  time,  St.  Andr6  always  calls  them  '  le  bon  peuple,'  Marat 
says  '  he  carries  them  in  his  heart,'  and  Robespierre  declares  *  he  would 
willingly  sacrifice  his  life  for  them,'  the  populace  consider  this  faction  as 
their  friends,  and  look  on  Roland  and  the  Girondists  as  their  calumniators  " 
(Moore's  Journal,  ii.  427). 


394        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

by  each  judge  in  turn,  the  crowd  burst  out  into  weeping^ 
"  silently  at  first,  then  with  much  noise,"  and,  their  emotion 
communicating  itself  to  the  judges  and  jury,  the  whole  court 
was  shaken  by  a  storm  of  sobbing,  shoulders  heaved,  handker- 
chiefs were  pressed  to  eyes  and  lips,  men  turned  away  their 
faces  to  hide  their  tears. ^ 

Yet  so  potent  was  the  spell  cast  over  all  minds  by  the  authors 
of  these  tragic  happenings,  so  skilfully  had  they  impressed  upon 
the  multitude  the  necessity  for  "  severity  "  towards  the  "  enemies 
of  the  country,"  that  no  one  seems  to  have  thought  of  stopping 
the  proceedings,  and  all  resigned  themselves  to  what  followed  as 
to  the  inevitable. 

Day  after  day  further  victims  were  sent  to  the  guillotine — 
an  ex-Brigadier-General  named  Blanchelarde ;  Gabriel  de  Guiny, 
a  naval  lieutenant ;  a  young  cabman  called  Mangot,  who  pro- 
claimed himself  a  RoyaUst ;  Bouche,  a  travelling  dentist,  who 
said  that  "  the  Convention  were  brigands  "  (sic)  {la  Convention 
etoit  des  brigand),  and  continued  to  call  out  "  Vive  Louis  XVII.  ! 
au  f.  .  .  .  la  RepubUque  !  "  after  his  condemnation ;  an  aged 
f  soldier  who,  under  the  influence  of  drink,  had  said  that  "  France 
j  was  too  large  for  a  Republic  "  ;  a  poor  old  cook  called  Catherine 
^  Clere,  who  had  cried  out  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  in  the  street  at  mid- 
night, and  had  added  in  the  hearing  of  passers-by  that  "  all  that 
rabble  who  dictated  laws  to  decent  people  should  be  massacred."  ^ 

Truly  a  formidable  band  of  conspirators !  That  it  was  for 
such  as  these  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  had  been  instituted 
no  one  could  seriously  imagine ;  moreover,  the  leaders  of  the 
Mountain  now  showed  their  hand  by  pubUcly  designating  who 
were  the  real  enemies  of  the  country  it  was  necessary  to  destroy. 

At  the  same  moment  that  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  began 
its  sittings,  Camille  Desmoulins  published  his  terrible  indictment 
of  the  Girondins  under  the  title  of  Histoire  des  Brissotins, 
ou  Fragment  de  I'Histoire  secrete  de  la  Revolution  sur  la 
Faction  d' Orleans  et  le  Comite  anglo-prussien  et  les  six  premiers 
Mois  de  la  RepubUque.  Revolutionary  historians,  to  whom  the 
facts  revealed  in  this  pamphlet  are  exceedingly  unpalatable, 
have  endeavoured  to  prove  that  Camille  did  not  intend  to  be 
taken  seriously,  that  he  had  allowed  himself  to  be  carried  away 
by  his  whimsical  imagination,  that  he  was  overcome  with  contri- 
tion when  he  discovered  that  taunts  he  had  merely  launched  in 
sarcasm  served  as  real  grounds  of  accusation  against  his  poUtical 
antagonists.  But  there  is  not  a  shred  of  evidence  to  confirm 
this  convenient  theory. 

Camille  Desmouhns,  original  only  in  his  style,  was  always 


1  Lenotre,  Le  Tribunal  rivolutionnaire,  pp.  84,  85. 
*  Wallon,  Le  Tribunal  rivolutionnaire,  i.  93,  no,  133,  140. 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  395 

the  echo  of  a  stronger  mind.  Once  it  was  Mirabeau  who  had 
served  as  his  inspiration,  now  it  was  Robespierre  and  Danton, 
later  it  was  to  be  Danton  only.  In  this  Histoire  des  Brissotins 
the  influence  of  Robespierre  is  plainly  visible,  and  indeed,  in  his 
speech  against  the  Brissotins  only  a  few  days  later,  Robespierre 
followed  precisely  the  same  line  of  argument  as  his  disciple 
Camille. 

To  suppose  that  these  accusations  were  suggested  to  Robes- 
pierre by  CamiUe's  pamphlet  would  be   absurd;    not  to  the 
feather-headed  Camille  can  we  attribute  the  relentless  logic,  the 
ingenious  chain  of  evidence,  by  which  the  Brissotins  are  convicted 
of  complicity  in  the  past  with  three  of  the  great  revolutionary 
intrigues — ^the  Orleaniste  conspiracy,  the  intrigue  with  Prussia, 
the  intrigue  with  the  Jacobins  of  England.     In  these  illuminating 
pages,  perhaps  the  most  briUiant  Desmoulins  ever  wrote,  the 
workings  of  the  first  two  revolutions  are  mercilessly  unveiled — 
the  Orleaniste  influence  behind  the  so-called  popular  movement  j 
on  the  12th  of  July  1789,  the  collusion  of  Mirabeau  with  the 
Due   d' Orleans   at   the   march    on   Versailles,    the   accusations 
brought  against  the  King  and  Queen  for  holding  "  an  Austrian  j 
committee  "  by  men  who  were  themselves  members  of  an  Anglo-  ) 
Prussian  committee,  the  visits  of  Petion  to  London  in  order  to  ' 
enlist  the  aid  of  his  EngUsh  allies,  the  support  given  to  the 
Brissotins  by  the  Whigs,  the  proposal  of  Carra  to  place  the 
Duke  of  Brunswick  on  the  throne  of  France,  the  persistent 
attempts  to  form  an  alliance  with  Prussia,  the  gold  received  from 
Frederick  William,  the  negotiations  with  the  Prussians  at  the  |   , 
camp  of  La  Lune  that  resulted  in  the  retreat  of  the  invading 
armies  after  Valmy, — no  RoyaUst  has  ever  shown  up  the  Revolu- 
tion so  completely.     What  wonder  that  revolutionary  historians 
prefer  to  dismiss  the  revelations  of  this  enfant  terrible  as  an 
absurdity  ? 

It  was  not  till  much  later  that  Camille  realized  that,  in 

•giving  away  the  secrets  of  the  first  two  Revolutions,  he  had  given 

[away  his  own  share  in  the  Orleaniste  intrigue ;  nor  did  he  dream 

that  a  year  later  Robespierre,  through  the  mouth  of  St.  Just,  k-k 

would  bring  against  Danton   and   himself  precisely  the  same 

accusations   of   Orleanisme  that   he   had  brought   against   the 

[Girondins.     At  present  he  thought  only  of  destroying  the  rival 

If  action.      "  This  work  will  send  them  to   the   guillotine  !      I 

(^will   answer   for  it !  "   he  said  to   Prudhomme,   giving  him   a 

copy  of  the  pamphlet.     "  That  may  be,"  answered  Prudhomme 

calmly ;  "  so  much  the  worse  for  you.    Your  turn  will  come.  .  .  ." 

**  Bah !  "  said  Camille,  "  we  have  the  people  with  us  !  "  ^    He 

had  forgotten,  as  every  demagogue  in  turn  forgot  throughout 

1  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  vi.  272. 


J 


396        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  Revolution,  that,  in  the  words  of  Mirabeau,  "it  is  but  a 
step  from  the  Capitol  to  the  Tarpeian  rock  !  "  To-day  the 
populace  of  Robespierre  was  with  him,  to-morrow  they  would 
be  with  Robespierre  only,  and  he  might  scream  to  them  in  vain 
from  the  tumbril  to  save  him. 

To  Robespierre  the  pamphlet  of  Desmoulins  served  a  double 
purpose,  for  it  helped  to  rid  him  of  both  the  factions  he  detested 
— ^the  Girondins  and  the  Due  d' Orleans,  with  his  few  remaining 
supporters.  With  his  usual  ingenuity  he  used  one  faction  to 
destroy  another,  and  we  cannot  doubt  that  it  was  owing  to  his 
influence  that  the  Girondins  on  the  6th  of  April  succeeded  in 
obtaining  the  banishment  of  PhiHppe  figaUte,  the  Marquis  de 
Sillery,  and  Choderlos  de  Laclos,  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  Marat. 
Three  days  later  the  whole  Orleans  family  were  sent  to  Mar- 
seilles and  imprisoned.  Thus  was  the  principal  bone  of  conten- 
tion removed  from  Paris,  and  Robespierre  could  concentrate  all 
his  energies  on  overthrowing  the  Girondins.  On  the  loth  of  April 
he  boldly  demanded  that  they  should  all  be  summoned  before 
the  Revolutionary  Tribunal ;  at  the  same  time  Marat  pubUshed  an 
address,  inciting  the  people  to  save  the  country  by  getting  rid 
of  "  all  traitors  and  all  conspirators."  The  Girondins  retaliated 
by  accusing  Marat  of  "  provoking  disorders,  and  of  attempting 
Ito  destroy  the  Convention,"  and  so  great  was  the  indignation  of 
'the  great  majority  of  the  Assembly  at  Marat's  incendiary  pro- 
clamation that  they  actually  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  summons 
against  him  to  appear  before  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal. 

But  the  movement  was  doomed  to  failure ;  Marat  had  on 
his  side  all  the  turbulent  elements  of  Paris,  all  the  machinery 
of  insurrection ;  the  jury,  obedient  to  the  dictates  of  Fouquier, 
declared  Marat  innocent,  and  the  "  Friend  of  the  People," 
smothered  in  wreaths  and  roses,  was  borne  triumphantly  from 
the  Palais  de  Justice  on  the  shoulders  of  the  crowd. 

Of  all  the  grotesque  scenes  of  the  Revolution  this  was 
perhaps  the  strangest — ^the  maUgnant  dwarf  wrapped  in  a  ragged 
coat  of  faded  green,  surmounted  by  an  ermine  collar  yellow 
with  age  and  dingy  from  long  contact  with  his  neck,  the  filthy 
handkerchief  that  usually  bound  his  head  for  once  discarded, 
and  in  its  place  a  crown  of  laurels  slipping  down  over  the  black 
and  greasy  hair,  lending  a  still  greener  tint  to  the  sickly  pallor 
of  his  countenance.  And  the  smile  of  Marat — that  was  enough 
to  strike  a  chill  to  the  stoutest  heart !  Dr.  Moore  has  described 
the  sensation  of  horror  that  overcame  him  in  the  Convention 
at  the  sight  of  "  Marat  attempting  pleasantry  "  ;  now  he  must 
have  appeared  more  hideous  still  as,  with  withered  cheeks  creased 
into  smiles,  with  mouth  distended,  he  bent  forward,  holding  out 
his  arms  to  the  people  as  if  to  press  them  to  his  heart. 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  397 

The  devotees  presented  an  appearance  worthy  of  the  idol 
they  carried ;  all  the  jupons  gras  of  Robespierre  were  there, 
nodding  dishevelled  heads  in  response  to  his  greetings,  throwing 
vinous  kisses;  sans -culottes  drunk  with  joy,  cut -throats  of 
September  shouting,  "  Vive  Marat !  Long  Uve  the  friend  of  the 
people  !  "  ^ 

This  time  popular  dementia  had  gone  too  far,  and  the  result 
of  the  "  triumph  of  Marat "  was  to  produce  a  wave  of  reaction. 
When  the  "  Friend  of  the  People  "  presented  himself  at  his 
section  he  met  with  so  hostile  a  reception  that  he  was  obUged 
to  beat  a  hasty  retreat.  Nearly  every  evening  crowds  marched 
through  the  streets  shouting,  "  Down  with  the  Anarchists ! 
Long  Uve  the  nation  !     Long  live  the  law  !  "  ^ 

Good  citizens,  who  had  kept  away  from  their  sections  on 
account  of  the  anarchic  schemes  discussed  there,  now  returned, 
to  throw  their  weight  into  the  scale  of  law  and  order  ;  a  deputa- 
tion from  three  sections  arrived  at  the  Convention  to  denounce 
"  the  brigands  who  have  dared  to  raise  the  standard  of  revolt, 
and  who  under  the  perfidious  mask  of  patriotism  wish  to  kill 
liberty."  ^  The  speech  was  received  with  applause  from  a  large 
majority  of  the  deputies,  and  on  the  proposal  of  Bar^re,  who 
had  not  yet  thrown  in  his  lot  with  the  Mountain,  the  Convention 
decreed  that  an  extraordinary  committee  should  be  formed, 
composed  of  twelve  members,  to  inquire  into  the  measures 
adopted  by  the  Council  of  the  Commune  and  the  sections  of 
Paris,  and  also  into  the  operations  of  the  Comite  de  Salut 
Public  and  its  accessory,  the  Comite  de  Surete  G6nerale.* 

These  two  sanguinary  committees — ^the  great  committees  of 
the  Terror — ^had  only  recently  become  a  power.  The  former, 
which  had  originated  in  1792  as  the  Comite  de  Defense 
G6nerale,  took  the  further  title  "  et  de  Salut  Public  " — under 
which  name  alone  it  was  henceforth  known — on  the  6th  of 
April   1793,   the  same   day  that   the   Revolutionary  Tribunal 

^  Michelet,  quoting  Le  Publiciste  de  la  RSpublique  Frangaise,  says  that 
the  women  of  the  market  were  amongst  the  crowd,  but  this  seems  im- 
probable in  view  of  their  attitude  at  the  King's  trial  three  months  earUer, 
and  on  May  2  the  Government  agent,  Dutard,  reports  to  Garat  that 
their  attitude  towards  the  Revolution  is  still  the  same  :  "It  seems  that 
these  women,  if  they  were  not  afraid  of  the  guillotine  for  themselves, 
would  cry  in  unison,  '  Vive  le  Roi !  '  "  (Schmidt,  ii.  173). 

2  Mortimer  Temaux,  vii.  215. 

'  Ibid.  p.  237. 

*  I  give  the  names  of  these  committees  in  the  original  French,  since 
there  is  no  exact  equivalent  in  Enghsh.  The  Comit6  de  Salut  Public 
is  frequently  referred  to  by  Enghsh  writers  as  the  Committee  of  Pubhc 
Safety,  but  this  is  misleading,  for  "  safety  "  is  the  English  for  sHreU, 
not  for  salut.  The  nearest  equivalent  for  salut  would  be  "  salvation," 
but  this  would  not  be  an  exact  rendering  of  the  French  word. 


y 


398        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

began  its  sittings,  whilst  the  latter,  although  subordinate  to  the 
Comit6  de  Salut  Public,  had  existed  since  1789  as  a  Comite 
d' Information,  assuming  the  name  of  Comite  de  Surete  G6n6rale 
in  May  1792. 

Hitherto  the  Comite  de  Salut  Pubhc  had  included  men  of 
aU  parties  —  Danton,  Sieyes,  Vergniaud,  Guadet,  Gensonne, 
Petion,  and  others — ^but  the  restraint  imposed  on  its  operations 
by  the  Girondins  exasperated  Danton  against  the  faction  he  had 
saved  from  the  massacres  of  September,  and  he  resolved  on  their 
destruction.  Moreover,  since  seven  out  of  the  twelve  members 
elected  to  the  new  Commission  des  Douze  were  Girondins, 
and  the  rest  neutrals,  it  became  evident  that  their  inquiries 
into  the  workings  of  the  two  committees  would  act  as  a  further 
check  on  the  schemes  of  the  Anarchists.  For  six  months  the 
Girondins  had  now  held  up  the  course  of  the  Terror  which,  but 
for  them,  would  doubtless  have  formed  the  sequel  to  the  Sep- 
tember massacres.  Therefore  the  Girondins  must  not  be  simply 
overthrown,  but  put  out  of  existence.  It  was  this  that  in  the  eyes 
of  the  Anarchists  necessitated  the  rising  of  the  31st  of  May. 

That  a  massacre  of  the  whole  faction  was  now  contemplated 
by  the  Commune  cannot  be  doubted.  Dutard,  the  secret  agent 
of  the  minister  Garat,  records  that  "  this  moment  is  terrible, 
and  much  resembles  that  which  preceded  the  2nd  of  September."  ^ 
And  indeed,  on  the  23rd  of  May,  a  further  deputation  from  the 
section  of  La  Fratemite  came  to  the  Convention  to  reveal  the 
fact  that  at  a  meeting  of  the  Council  of  the  Commune,  to  which 
several  of  their  members  had  succeeded  in  gaining  admittance, 
it  had  been  proposed  that  thirty-two  deputies  of  the  Gironde 
should  be  "  made  to  disappear  from  the  face  of  the  globe," 
or  "  Septemberized."  ^  This,  according  to  a  deputy  from  Brittany 
to  whom  the  plan  had  been  confided,  was  to  be  followed  by  a 
further  massacre  of  8000  people.^  Thereupon  the  Commission 
des  Douze  ordered  the  arrest  of  Hebert,  the  deputy  attorney 
of  the  Commune,  and  author  of  the  bloodthirsty  journal,  Le 
Pere  Dtwhesne ;  also  of  his  two  colleagues,  Varlet  and  Dobsent. 
The  same  evening  Hebert  and  Dobsent  were  imprisoned  at  the 
Abbaye. 

The  Commune  retaUated  with  "  a  deputation  from  sixteen 
sections  of  Paris "  demanding  the  release  of  the  oppressed 
patriots ;  meanwhile  the  women  of  the  Societe  Fratemelle 
rushed  through  the  streets  armed  with  red  flags,  urging  the 
people  to  march  on  the  Abbaye  and  deUver  Hebert — an  appeal^ 
to  which  the  people  declined  to  respond. 

The  haU  of  the  Convention  at  the  Tuileries,  which  it  had 


1  Schmidt,  ii.  218.  2  /^^^^  i^  250. 

*  Beaulieu,  v.  120  ;  Letters  of  Helen  Maria  Williams  (1795).  P-  42. 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  399 

occupied  since  the  loth  of  May,  became  again  the  scene  of 
indescribable  confusion;  deputations  poured  in  continuously; 
the  petitioners,  unable  to  find  room  in  the  places  reserved  for 
them,  overflowed  into  the  seats  of  the  deputies,  many  of  whom, 
overcome  with  fatigue,  had  retired  for  the  night.  Then,  amidst 
the  howls  of  the  crowd,  Herault  de  Sechelles  proposed  the 
liberation  of  Hebert  and  his  colleagues,  and  the  suppression  of 
the  Commission  des  Douze.  A  few  deputies,  joined  by  the 
petitioners,  voting  as  if  they  were  the  legal  representatives  whose 
places  they  occupied,  succeeded  in  carrying  the  motion. 

But  the  next  day  the  Convention,  restored  to  its  normal 
conditions,  reinstated  the  Commission  des  Douze  by  a  majority 
of  259  votes. 

"  You  have  decreed  the  counter-revolution,"  cried  Collot 
d'Herbois ;  "I  demand  that  the  Statue  of  Liberty  should  be 
veiled  !  " 

This  decision  of  the  Convention  gave  the  signal  for  battle, 
and  immediately  the  Commune  proceeded  to  put  the  revolu- 
tionary machine  in  motion — ^no  easy  matter,  for  Paris  in  general 
was  singularly  calm,  and  two  days  were  necessary  to  prepare 
the  rising.^ 

This  is  not  the  place  to  describe  in  detail  the  movement 
known  as  "  the  Revolution  of  the  31st  of  May,"  which  was  in 
reaUty  simply  a  duel  between  the  two  opposing  factions,  and 
as  such  belongs  to  the  history  of  the  Convention,  not  to  the 
story  of  the  great  popular  outbreaks  of  the  Revolution.  No 
other  great  day  of  tumult  was  so  completely  artificial.  When 
on  the  morning  of  the  31st  Paris  awoke  to  the  sound  of  the 
tocsin,  armed  forces  summoned  from  the  sections  assembled 
mechanically,  women  gathered  on  their  doorsteps  "  to  see  the 
insurrection  pass,"  but  no  one  knew  what  all  the  stir  was  about. ^ 

Throughout  the  day  the  Convention  was  surrounded  with 
troops,  who,  for  the  most  part,  had  no  idea  why  they  were  there 
and  whom  they  were  protecting.  Meanwhile  deputations  from 
the  sections  streamed  into  the  hall,  some  to  demand  the  sup- 
pression of  the  Commission  des  Douze  and  the  arrest  of  the 
Girondins,  others  to  protest  in  their  favour.  Amongst  the 
latter  was  the  section  of  the  Butte  des  Moulins,  and  in  retaUa- 
tion  for  its  spirited  action  the  Commune  despatched  messengers 
wearing  municipal  scarves  to  Saint-Antoine  and  Saint-Marceau 
to  rouse  the  inhabitants  with  the  news  that  members  of  this 
section  had  formed  a  centre  of  counter-revolution  at  the  Palais 
Royal,  and  were  wearing  the  white  cockade  of  royalty.^    The 

1  Mortimer  Temaux,  vii.  321. 

2  Ibid.  p.  329  ;  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  i.  164. 

*  Dauban,  La  Demagogie  en  1793,  p.  209;  Mortimer  Temaux,  vii.  351. 


400         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

men  of  the  Faubourgs  who  had  been  under  arms  for  some  hours, 
waiting  for  orders,  marched  off  obediently  with  their  cannon, 
and  on  arrival  at  the  Palais  Royal  found  indeed  a  battalion  of 
the  Butte  des  Moulins  encamped  there  with  detachments  from 
other  sections  sent  to  their  support — for  what  purpose  no  one 
seemed  to  know. 

The  folly  of  the  whole  proceeding  now  occurred  to  the  men 
of  the  Faubourgs,  who,  after  placing  their  cannon  in  position 
and  ranging  themselves  in  battle  order,  decided  that  before 
beginning  to  fire  on  their  feUow-citizens  it  would  be  as  well  to 
discover  whether  there  was  any  real  cause  de  guerre  between 
them.  Accordingly  a  deputation  was  sent  to  verify  the  accusa- 
tions of  the  agitators,  and,  as  might  be  expected,  the  whole  alarm 
was  discovered  to  be  needless — -no  white  cockades  were  to  be 
seen,  the  tricolour  was  flaunted  everywhere,  on  hats  and  in 
the  form  of  banners.  Then  amidst  cries  of  "  Long  live  the 
Republic !  "  the  gates  were  thrown  open,  and  the  opposing 
battalions  fell  into  each  others'  arms,  swearing  eternal  friend- 
ship.^ 

This  sort  of  thing  was  always  apt  to  occur  when  the  people 
were  left  to  themselves  to  settle  matters,  and  no  agitators  were 
at  hand  to  stir  them  up  to  violence.  On  this  occasion  Santerre, 
who  excelled  in  the  art  of  exciting  revolutionary  troops,  was 
absent  from  Paris,  and  Hanriot,  who  had  been  illegally  made 
commander-general  by  the  Commune,  was  at  the  head  of  the 
forces  that  surrounded  the  Convention. 

As  an  insurrection,  therefore,  the  31st  of  May  had  proved  a 
failure  just  as  the  Affaire  Reveillon,  the  first  march  on  Ver- 
sailles, and  the  20th  of  June  had  proved  failures  for  want  of 
popular  support.  Always  throughout  the  Revolution  the  same 
abortive  movement  before  each  outbreak,  the  same  miss-fire 
preceding  the  explosion  ! 

At  the  Convention  the  Commune  had  succeeded  in  again 
obtaining  the  suppression  of  the  Commission  des  Douze,  but  had 
been  unable  to  secure  the  arrest  of  the  Girondins.  So  a  further 
insurrection  must  be  attempted,  and  all  the  following  day  was 
occupied  in  preparation.  In  the  evening  Marat  appeared  at  the 
Commune  and,  after  giving  the  order  to  the  Council  to  begin  the 
movement,  proceeded  himself  to  ring  the  tocsin.  The  same 
night  the  Anarchists  struck  their  first  decisive  blow  at  the  party 
of  the  Gironde  by  the  arrest  of  Madame  Roland,  who,  during  the 
V  ji  absence  of  her  husband,  was  seized  by  emissaries  of  the  Commune 
^^  and  led  to  prison  at  the  Abbaye.  The  next  morning,  June  2, 
all  Paris  was  again  under  arms,  the  tocsin  rang  out,  an  armed 
force   of   80,000   men   assembled,   but   amongst   these   80,000, 

*  Mortimer  Teraaux,  vii.  352,  365;  Beaulieu,  v.  132. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  401 

says  the  deputy  Meillan,  "  75,000  did  not  know  why  they  had 
been  made  to  take  up  arms,"  ^  nor,  owing  to  the  skilful  organiza- 
tion of  the  Commune,  was  it  possible  for  them  to  discover. 

For  Hanriot,  well  aware  that  the  honest  citizens  of  Paris 
would  not  co-operate  in  the  real  purpose  of  the  day — ^the  destruc- 
tion of  the  Girondins — had  been  careful  to  place  the  troops 
formed  by  the  sections  at  a  distance  from  the  Chateau,  some 
in  the  Place  Louis  XV.  beyond  the  swing-bridge,  which  was 
closed  between  them  and  the  garden,  others  in  the  Carrousel 
separated  by  a  wooden  barrier  from  the  court  of  the  Tuileries.^ 
Meanwhile  his  picked  force  of  four  to  five  thousand  insurgents — 
including  a  number  of  German  mercenaries  belonging  to  the 
legion  of  Rosenthal  under  orders  to  march  on  La  Vendue,  whose 
total  ignorance  of  the  French  language  rendered  them  docile 
instruments  of  the  Commune^ — formed  a  cordon  immediately 
around  the  Chateau  to  which  all  the  avenues  were  occupied  by 
his  officers  or  agents,  "  who  had  received  orders  to  suffer  no 
communication  between  the  hall  (of  the  Convention)  and  the 
court  or  garden."  *  By  this  means  the  troops  of  the  sections 
were  powerless  to  intervene,  whilst  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
that  had  as  usual  assembled  to  look  on  was  kept  in  complete 
ignorance  of  what  was  passing.^  On  the  part  of  the  people  the 
2nd  of  June  was  thus  the  same  absolutely  blind  movement  as 
the  abortive  rising  that  had  preceded  it  two  days  earlier. 

If  only  the  Girondins  had  stood  their  ground  on  this  critical 
day  it  is  probable  that  the  victory  would  have  remained  with 
them,  but  now  that  their  own  fate  was  at  stake  they  displayed 
the  same  pusillanimity  they  had  shown  at  the  trial  of  the  King. 
Instead  of  bringing  their  eloquence  to  bear  on  the  situation, 
the  leading  members  of  the  Gironde,  including  Brissot  and 
Vergniaud,  dared  not  venture  into  the  Convention,  but  sought 
refuge  at  the  house  of  Meillan  near  by.  Meillan  himself,  and  also 
Barbaroux  and  Isnard,  remained  at  their  post  in  the  Assembly, 
but  it  was  left  to  Lanjuinais,  who  was  not  a  Girondin,  to  act  as 
the  principal  defender  of  the  faction  with  which  during  these 
days  he  associated  himself  as  the  champion  of  Uberty.  In  the 
name  of  the  people  the  courageous  Breton  now  denounced  the 
efforts  of  the  factions  to  create  disorders.  "  You  calumniate 
Paris  !  You  insult  the  people !  "  cried  the  Mountain,  "  No,'* 
answered  Lanjuinais,  "  I  do  not  accuse  Paris ;  Paris  is  good- 
hearted,  Paris  is  oppressed  by  a  few  scoundrels." 

^  Dauban,  La  Demagogie  en  1793,  p.  218. 

2  Ibid.  pp.  214,  218;  Mortimer  Ternaux,  vii.  391;  Letters  of  Helen 
Maricf,  Williams  (1795),  p.  41. 

3  Mortimer  Ternaux,  vii.  379. 

*  Letters  of  Helen  Maria  Williams,  p.  41. 
^  Ibid. ;  Mortimer  Ternaux,  vii.  384. 

2  D 


402        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Legendre  the  butcher,  rushing  upon  Lanjuinais,  attempted 
to  drag  him  from  the  tribune,  but,  quelled  by  the  sang-froid  of 
his  opponent,  retreated  discomfited,  and  only  returned  to  the 
assault  when  reinforced  by  Drouet  of  Varennes  fame,  the  younger 
Robespierre,  and  JulUen.  A  hand-to-hand  struggle  ensued,  and 
Lanjuinais  remained  master  of  the  situation. 

The  craven  Girondins,  hearing  of  this  momentary  victory, 
attempted  to  reach  the  hall  of  the  Convention  and  rally  around 
Lanjuinais,  but  it  was  too  late.  A  fresh  deputation  of  the 
Commune  arrived  on  the  scene  to  demand  their  arrest,  and 
departed  shouting,  "  To  arms  !  Let  us  save  the  country  !  " — 
a  battle-cry  echoed  with  fury  by  the  tribunes. 

Meanwhile  Hanriot's  troops  had  closed  around  the  Chateau 
and  the  mob  had  taken  possession  of  the  halls,  corridors,  and 
staircases ;  the  women  -  followers  of  Marat  and  Robespierre, 
constituting  themselves  doorkeepers,  forcibly  prevented  the 
exit  of  deputies.  At  this  Danton,  who  never  believed  in 
allowing  the  canaille  —  particularly  the  female  canaille  —  to 
take  command  of  the  situation,  grew  indignant,^  and  when 
at  last  the  news  reached  the  Assembly  that  armed  sentinels 
had  been  placed  at  the  doors  of  the  hall,  it  was  on  the  proposal 
of  Danton's  ally,  Lacroix,  that  the  Convention  despatched  an 
usher  to  Hanriot  demanding  that  the  armed  forces  should  be 
withdrawn  from  the  Chateau.     Hanriot   repUed   briefly,  "  Tell 

your  b president  that  he  and  his  Assembly  can  be  d d 

(dis  d  ton  /.  .  .  .  president  que  je  me  f.  .  .  .  de  lui  et  de  son 
Assemblee),  and  that  if  it  does  not  deUver  up  the  Twenty-Two 
to  me  within  an  hour  I  will  blast  it  with  cannon." 

Barere  then   proposed    that   the   Convention  should  make 
a  display  of  independence  by  going  out  to  face  the  army  of 
insurgents,  and  thereupon  the  whole  Assembly,  with  Herault  de 
Sechelles  at   its  head,  descended  the  great  staircase  by  which 
Louis  XVI.  had   left    the  Tuileries  on   the    loth   of  August, 
and  filed  out  into  the  courtyard  where  Hanriot  awaited  them 
at  the  head  of  his  men.    The  half-drunken  commander  again 
demanded  that    **  the   Twenty-Two "    should   be    surrendered. 
Herault  refused,  and   the  deputies   surrounding  him,  inspiret" 
with  sudden  courage,  cried  out,   "  They  want   victims  !     Let] 
them  kill  us  all !  "     Then  Hanriot,  grasping  his  sabre,  tume< " 
to  his  troops  and  shouted,  "  Cannoniers,  to  your  guns !  "    But 
no  one  obeyed  the  order  to  fire.     The  men  remained  immov-; 
able — Herault  and   a  fellow-deputy  who  went  boldly  towards^ 

^  The  role  of  Danton  on  this  occasion  is  difficult  to  explain.     He  ha< 
certainly  co-operated  in  the  movement  to  overthrow  the  Girondins,  yetj 
now  he  seemed  inclined  to  oppose  it.     MeUlan  accounts  for  his  attitude  byj 
saying  he  had  begun  to  fear  the  Municipality. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  403 

them  saw  that  **  their  eyes  and  attitude  gave  evidence  of  no 
evil  design." 

The  truth  is  that  the  multitude  was  opposed  to  the  insur- 
gents; one  of  the  sections  of  Paris  actually  pointed  its  cannon 
on  the  troops  of  Hanriot  at  the  same  moment  that  Hanriot's 
cannon  were  pointed  on  the  members  of  the  Convention.^  It 
was  therefore  once  again  the  people  who  ranged  themselves  on 
the  side  of  law  and  order,  and  Hanriot,  disconcerted  by  their 
attitude,  was  unable  to  carry  out  his  sanguinary  designs. 

The  troops,  drawn  up  in  the  garden  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Chateau,  whither  the  Assembly  now  made  its  way,  seemed 
equally  averse  to  bloodshed,  and  contented  themselves  with 
cr3dng  out,  "  Vive  la  Montague  !  Vive  la  Convention  !  "  and 
from  time  to  time,  "  Vive  Marat !  "  At  this  moment  Marat 
himself,  followed  by  the  crowd  of  Uttle  ragged  boys  that  his 
grotesque  appearance  frequently  attracted,^  appeared  on  the 
scene,  shrieking  imperiously  to  Herault,  "  In  the  name  of  the 
people  I  charge  you  to  return  to  your  post,  which  you  have 
basely  deserted."  And  he  added  significantly,  "  Let  the 
faithful  deputies  return  to  their  posts  !  "  ^  In  other  words,  let 
the  sheep  be  divided  from  the  goats  and  the  members  of  the 
Mountain  retire  into  safety,  whilst  their  opponents  remain 
outside  to  be  butchered.  Herault  and  his  colleagues  had 
evidently  thwarted  the  designs  of  Marat  by  joining  themselves 
to  the  Girondins  who  had  been  singled  out  as  victims,  but  now, 
merged  in  the  crowd  of  deputies,  could  not  be  distinguished  by 
the  insurgents.  Such,  however,  was  the  authority  the  wretched 
dwarf  had  acquired  that,  obedient  to  the  word  of  command, 
the  Montagnards  turned  towards  the  Tuileries,  leaving  the 
Girondins  to  their  fate,  but  the  Girondins,  seeing  the  snare, 
retreated  Hkewise,  and  the  whole  Assembly,  followed  by  Marat, 
re-entered  the  hall  of  the  Convention  and  resumed  the  sitting. 

Couthon,  the  friend  of  Robespierre,  then  proposed  a  decree 
against  the  Twenty-Two  and  the  members  of  the  Commission 
des  Douze,  but  the  parade  round  the  courts  and  garden  of  the 
Tuileries  had  evidently  convinced  the  leaders  that  violent 
measures  would  not  meet  with  popular  support,  for  it  was  no 
longer  the  imprisonment  of  the  Girondins  their  opponents  de- 
manded, but  simply  their  suspension,  after  which  they  were  to 
be  left  in  their  own  houses  under  supervision — a  surprisingly 
mild  conclusion  to  three  days'  insurrection  ! 

The  list  of  the  proscribed  deputies  was  then  read  aloud,  and 
meanwhile  Marat  repeatedly  intervened,  adding  certain  names 
and  ordering  others  to  be  removed  without  even  consulting  the 

^  Rapport  de  Dutard  d  Gar  at,  Schmidt,  ii.  ii. 
2  Beaulieu,  v.  145.  *  Dauban,  La  Demagogie  en  1793,  p.  222. 


404        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


I 


to 
La(U| 


Convention.  "  It  was  then,"  says  Meillan,  "  that  we  understood 
all  the  power  of  Marat " — well  for  them  if  they  had  realized  it 
earlier,  and  stood  together  as  one  man  to  resist  it. 

Now  at  the  eleventh  hour  the  Assembly  made  one  expiring 
effort  to  assert  its  independence ;  several  members  rose  to  declare 
that  "  they  were  not  free,  and  that  they  refused  to  vote  sur- 
rounded by  bayonets  and  cannon  " — a  resolution  in  which  no 
less  than  two-thirds  of  the  Convention  finally  concurred. 

The  Mountain,  not  to  be  beaten,  solved  the  difficulty  by 
simply  voting  without  them,  and  the  majority,  "  thus  becoming 
simple  spectators,  left  the  Montagnards  to  pass  the  decree, 
supported  by  a  great  number  of  strangers  who,  as  on  the  27th 
of  May,  had  placed  themselves  in  the  seats  of  the  legislators 
whose  functions  they  had  usurped."  ^  _ 

So,  by  a  violation  of  law  and  justice  as  flagrant  as  tha^fl 
which  had  brought  about  the  condemnation  of  the  King,  the^ 
Girondins  fell  victims  to  the  Revolution  they  had  helped  to 
prepare.     And  just  as  Louis  XVI.  on  the  eve  of  his  death  hac 
seen  in  one  prophetic  moment  the  future  that  awaited  Francej 
brave  Lanjuinais,  proscribed  with  the  faction  whose  cause 
had  defended,  foretold  the  terrible  era  of  which  this  day  was  to'' 
be  the  prelude  in  his  last  words  from  the  tribune :    "  I  see  civil 
war  kindled  in  my  country,  spreading  its  ravages  everywhere 
and  rending  France.     I  see  the  horrible  monster  of  the  dictator- 
ship advancing  over  piles  of  ruins  and  corpses,  swallowing  you 
each  up  in  turn,  and  overthrowing  the  Republic  I  " 

THE  TERROR  IN  THE  PROVINCES 

Exactly  as  Lanjuinais  had  prophesied,  the  fall  of  the  Girondc 
proved  the  signal  for  civil  war.     AQ  over  France  a  great  wavi 
of  indignation  arose,  and  within  a  few  months  the  whole  counti 
was  in  a  blaze  from  one  end  to  the  other. 

In  La  Vendue,  RoyaUst  and  CathoUc  to  the  core,  the 
had  broken  out  two  months  earUer ;    the  civil  constitution  oi 
the   clergy    and   continued   persecution    of   all   who    remaine 
attached  to  reUgion,  the  massacres  of  September,  and  finally  th< 
execution  of  the  King,  had  each  in  turn  roused  the  people's 
fury,  and  now  100,000  peasants,  armed  with  forks  and  sticks^j 
were  marching  in  defence  of  the  church  and  monarchy,  led  b] 
the  priests  and  few  remaining  nobles  they  had  forcibly  place 
at  their  head.^ 

1  Daiiban,  La  Demagogie  en  lygs,  p.  223. 

*  It  is  customary  for  revolutionary  historians  to  make  out  that  the 
priests  and  nobles  incited  the  Vend^ens  to  revolt ;  this  is  absolutely  untrue 
the  movement  was  entirely  a  peasant  rising — the  nobles  in  certain  cas 
showed  reluctance  to  act  as  leaders.     See  Beaulieu,  vi.  52. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  405 

Lyon  likewise  rose  in  revolt  just  before  the  final  overthrow 
of  the  Gironde.  The  splendid  city  reduced  to  misery  by  the 
Revolution,  its  commerce  ruined,  its  inhabitants  starving  for 
want  of  work,  had  nevertheless  submitted  to  the  Repubhc, 
but  when  an  emissary  of  the  Mountain,  ChaUer,  a  disciple  of 
Marat,  was  sent  to  Lyon  to  propagate  anarchy  and  set  up  a 
revolutionary  tribunal,  the  sections  of  the  town  all  combined 
against  the  Convention,  and  on  the  29th  of  May  a  bloody  battle 
took  place  in  the  streets  between  the  National  Guards  of  Lyon 
and  the  gunners  enlisted  in  the  service  of  the  Mountain,  which 
ended  in  the  arrest  of  Chalier.  Then  came  the  new  of  the  rising 
in  Paris  on  June  2,  and  the  victory  of  the  Mountain-  Thereupon 
Lyon  boldly  declared  that  it  no  longer  recognized  the  Convention, 
and  called  its  citizens  to  arms. 

Meanwhile  Bordeaux  had  risen  in  defence  of  its  liberties, 
for  with  glaring  injustice,  when  its  deputies  the  Girondins  were 
expelled  from  the  Convention,  the  department  had  been  invited 
to  name  no  others  in  their  places.  Bordeaux  was,  therefore, 
now  unrepresented  in  the  Convention,  and  had  every  right  to 
protest — indeed  it  had  protested  for  some  months  before  the 
31st  of  May — against  the  treatment  of  its  representatives  by  their 
adversaries  of  the  Mountain.^  Now  on  the  6th  of  June  the 
Council-General  of  the  city  forwarded  a  threatening  address  to 
the  Convention,  and  summoned  Lyon  and  Dijon  to  combine  in 
the  fight  for  Uberty. 

Throughout  the  south-east  of  France  the  fire  of  revolt 
was  spreading  likewise:  Toulon  opposed  a  vigorous  resistance 
to  the  dictates  of  the  Mountain ;  Marseilles,  once  dominated  by 
the  most  violent  revolutionaries,  had  also  turned  against  it,  and, 
summoning  Lyon,  Normandy,  and  La  Vendee  to  its  aid,  an- 
nounced its  intention  of  marching  on  Paris.  Calvados,  Caen, 
and  Evreux,  in  Normandy,  were  organizing  revolt ;  Dauphine 
and  Franche  -  Comte  were  in  arms  —  altogether  no  less  than 
sixty  departments  had  risen  against  the  tyranny  of  the  Conven- 
tion.^ Such  was  the  attitude  of  the  twenty-five  milUons  of 
France  who,  according  to  Carlyle,  looked  to  the  Mountain  for 
salvation — as  a  matter  of  fact  at  least  three-quarters  of  the 
population  were  violently  opposed  to  it,  and  the  remaining 
quarter  was  mainly  terrorized  into  submission. 

At  the  same  time  the  people  were  by  no  means  whole- 
heartedly on  the  side  of  the  Girondins.  Buzot,  Petion,  Isnard, 
Barbaroux,  and  others  of  the  faction,  who  escaped  from  Paris 
after  their  expulsion  from  the  Convention  and  attempted  to 
rally  the  provinces  around  them,  failed  entirely  in  their  r61e 

*  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxiii.  279. 
*  La  Demagogie  en  J793,  by  C.  A.  Dauban,  p.  239. 


4o6        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

of  popular  leaders.  To  the  ruminating  minds  of  the  peasants 
the  aims  of  one  Republican  faction  were  indistinguishable  from 
another ;  they  were  ready  to  oppose  the  bloodshed  and  anarchy 
advocated  by  the  Mountain,  but  the  ideal  RepubUc  offered  them 
by  the  Girondins  in  no  way  roused  their  enthusiasm.  The 
truth  is  that  France  remained  at  heart  monarchic,  partly  by 
conviction  and  partly  by  habit.  For  in  every  country  the 
characteristic  of  the  true  people  is  hatred  of  innovation,  and 
against  this  prejudice  the  RepubUcans  of  both  factions  con- 
tended in  vain.  The  correspondence  of  revolutionary  emissaries 
to  the  provinces  frequently  breathes  a  spirit  of  despair :  "  The 
labourer  is  estimable,  but  he  is  a  very  bad  patriot  in  general ;  "  ^ 
and  from  Marseilles,  "  In  spite  of  our  efforts  to  republicanize 
the  people  .  .  .  our  trouble  and  fatigue  are  almost  fruitless. 
.  .  .  The  mind  of  the  public  is  still  detestable  amongst  the 
proprietors,  artisans,  and  day-labourers ; "  ^  in  Alsace  "  Re- 
publican sentiments  are  still  in  the  cradle,  fanaticism  is  extreme 
and  unbelievable ;  the  spirit  of  the  inhabitants  is  in  no  way 
revolutionary.  .  .  ."  ^  No  one,  however,  has  described  the  utter 
failure  of  the  Girondins  to  convert  the  people  to  RepubUcanism 
better  than  Buzot  himself  :  "  One  must  not  dissemble ;  the 
majority  of  the  French  people  sighed  after  the  monarchy  and 
the  Constitution  of  1791.  .  .  .  Can  one  beUeve  that  the  events 
of  June  2  (1793),  the  misery,  persecution,  and  assassinations  that 
followed,  made  the  majority  of  France  change  its  opinion  ?  No, 
but  in  the  towns  they  pretend  to  be  *  sans-culotte,'  because 
those  who  are  not  are  guillotined;  in  the  country  places  they 
obey  the  most  unjust  summons  to  serve  (in  the  army),  because 
those  who  do  not  go  are  guillotined.  The  guillotine,  that  is 
the  great  reason  for  everything.  .  .  .  This  people  is  Republican 
by  blows  of  the  guillotine.  But  look  closely  at  things,  penetrate 
into  the  homes  of  famiUes,  sound  all  hearts,  and  if  they  dare 
open  themselves  to  you,  you  will  read  there  hatred  against  the 
government  that  fear  imposes  on  them,  you  will  see  that  all 
their  desires,  all  their  hopes,  tend  towards  the  Constitution  of 
1791."  *  And  again  :  "  The  honest  inhabitants  of  the  country- 
side confound  the  crimes  committed  in  the  Revolution  of  1793 
with  the  Revolution  itself ;  they  abhor  the  RepubUc,  and  those 
who  tyrannize  over  them  in  its  name ;  they  regret  and  sigh  fo; 
the  return  ...  of  a  gentler  and  more  peaceable  regime.  .  .  . 
In  the  towns,  where  fear  has  withered  all  hearts,  where  commerce 

^  Legros,  La  Rivolution  telle  qu'elle  est,  i.  366  (letter  from  Prieur  de  la^ 
Marne  to  the  Comit6  de  Salut  Public) . 

*  Archives  des  Affaires  J^trangdres,  quoted  by  Taine,  La  RSvolutic 
viii.  53. 

»  Ibid.  p.  54. 

*  Aux  Amis  de  la  Viriti,  by  F.  N.  L.  Buzot,  pp.  32-34. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  407 

and  industry  are  for  ever  annihilated,  where  it  is  a  crime  to  live 
in  any  degree  of  comfort  or  to  show  any  decency  in  one's  tastes 
or  manners  .  .  .  every  citizen  ...  in  all  classes  .  .  .  bitterly 
regretted  the  past."  Indeed,  Buzot  himself  is  at  last  forced 
to  arrive  at  this  conclusion  :  "  Amidst  the  abyss  of  evils  into 
which  this  superb  empire  is  precipitated  by  licence  and  misery 
one  is  almost  reduced  to  desiring  the  return  of  ancient  despotism, 
since  it  is  uncertain  whether  the  French  could  now  bear  the 
moderate  regime  of  the  Constitution  of  1791."  ^ 

It  was  thus  in  La  Vendee  alone  that  real  enthusiasm  pre- 
vailed; there  the  people,  inspired  by  passionate  devotion  to 
cherished  traditions,  were  at  one  with  their  seigneurs,  whilst  in 
the  other  provinces  dominated  by  the  Girondins  the  people 
took  up  arms  in  a  cause  that  was  not  their  own.  Ostensibly 
they  were  fighting  for  the  RepubHc,  in  reality  they  craved  for 
the  old  familiar  things  the  RepubHc  had  taken  from  them. 
What  cared  the  peasants  of  France  for  the  promise  of  a  govern- 
ment modelled  on  Athens  or  Sparta  that  was  to  replace  the 
antiquated  monarchy,  for  the  enHghtened  philosophy  that  was 
to  compensate  them  for  the  destruction  of  their  ancient  faith  ? 

The  Girondins  themselves  could  not  fail  to  perceive  the 
failure  of  their  efforts  to  inspire  the  people ;  everywhere  it  was 
the  Royalists  who  secured  the  largest  following.  Even  in 
Republican  centres  RoyaUst  generals  led  out  the  troops — at 
Lyon,  Virieu  and  Precy ;  at  Bordeaux,  De  Puisaye ;  even 
Wimpfen,  beloved  of  tiae  Normans,  though  avowedly  a  Re- 
pubUcan,  was  believed  by  Louvet  to  be  a  RoyaUst  at  heart. 
The  Girondins  at  Caen  in  Normandy — Louvet,  Guadet,  Buzot, 
and  others — ^watched  these  symptoms  with  alarm  and,  rather 
than  combine  with  their  rivals  to  overthrow  the  Mountain, 
diverted  their  energies  to  opposing  the  progress  of  Royalism. 
Thus  amongst  the  leaders  of  the  people  there  was  no  co-ordina- 
tion, and  amongst  the  various  elements  that  made  up  the  popula- 
tion no  unity  of  purpose  that  alone  could  have  ensured  success. 
Owing  to  these  dissensions  the  movement  was  from  the  first 
doomed  to  failure,  and  the  triumph  of  the  Mountain  seemed 
assured. 

It  was  then  that  a  girl  who  lived  at  Caen,  Marie  Charlotte 
Corday,  resolved  to  take  the  law  into  her  own  hands  and  save 
the  country  by  striking  down  the  author  of  all  the  ills  that  were 
desolating  France.  For  to  Charlotte,  as  to  many  inhabitants 
of  provincial  towns,  it  was  Marat  who  appeared  as  the  incarna- 
tion of  the  Terror  that  now  held  France  in  its  grip  ;  Marat  once 
removed,  she  imagined  that  the  other  leaders  of  the  Mountain 
might  return  to  sentiments  of  humanity.  If  Charlotte  had  been 
^  Mimoires  de  Buzot,  p.  19. 


4o8        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

a  Girondin,  as  certain  writers  have  supposed,  she  would  probably 
have  thought  otherwise,  for  to  the  Girondins  Marat  seemed 
merely  a  "  loathsome  reptile,"  far  less  to  be  feared  than 
Robespierre,  whom  they  regarded  as  their  chief  antagonist  of 
the  Mountain.  It  is  therefore  improbable  that  when  Charlotte 
went  to  request  Barbaroux  for  introductions  to  some  of  his 
friends  in  Paris,  she  confided  to  him  the  object  of  her  journey — 
"if,"  as  Lou  vet  said,  "  she  had  consulted  us,  would  it  have  been 
against  Marat  that  we  should  have  directed  her  stroke  ?  " 
Undoubtedly  no — Robespierre  would  have  been  the  victim, 
Barbaroux,  moreover,  could  have  told  her  that  in  slaying  Marat 
she  was  sacrificing  herself  needlessly,  for  Marat  was  already  dying 
of  a  lingering  disease,  and  had,  indeed,  only  a  short  time  to  live. 

This  Charlotte  did  not  know  when  she  set  forth  for  Paris  on 
that  morning  of  July  9,  and  all  the  way  she  pictured  to  herself 
the  execution  of  the  great  deed  as  she  had  planned  it.  The 
letter  to  Duperret,  the  friend  of  Barbaroux,  was  to  procure  her 
admittance  to  the  Convention,  and  there  in  the  midst  of  the 
Assembly,  on  the  summit  of  the  Mountain,  she  meant  to  deal 
the  mortal  blow  that  was  to  rid  the  world  of  Marat. 

It  was  not  until  she  reached  Paris  that  she  heard  that  the 
"  Friend  of  the  People  "  was  too  ill  to  attend  the  Convention. 
For  some  weeks  already  he  had  retired  from  pubUc  Ufe,  and  the 
fearful  irritation  of  his  skin  obliged  him  to  sit  perpetually  in 
a  bath  with  wet  compresses  around  his  head.  The  precise 
nature  of  his  malady  is  not  stated  by  his  biographers,  but 
according  to  the  delegates  from  the  Jacobin  Club  who  were 
sent  to  visit  him  it  was  simply  an  acute  attack  of  "  patriotism." 
The  madness  of  Maratisme  is  nowhere  better  exempUfied  than  in 
the  following  report  published  by  the  Society :  "  We  have  just 
been  to  see  our  brother  Marat.  .  .  .  We  found  him  in  his  bath, 
a  table,  inkstand,  and  newspapers  around  him,  occupying  himse 
unremittingly  with  public  affairs.  It  is  not  a  disease  . 
is  a  great  deal  of  compressed  patriotism  squeezed  into  a  vei 
small  body ;  the  violent  efforts  of  patriotism  exuding  froi 
every  part  are  killing  him."  ^ 

This  was  the  vision  that  confronted  Charlotte  Corday  when^ 
on  the  evening  of  July  13,  she  succeeded,  in  spite  of  the  oppositioi 
of  Marat's  mistress,  Simonne  Evrard,  in  obtaining  admission 
the  fateful  bathroom.  If  she  had  expected  to  see  a  monst< 
she  must  have  found  her  wildest  imaginings  surpassed  now  thi 
she  was  brought  face  to  face  with  the  reahty.  Out  of  the  openii 
of  the  sUpper  bath  appeared  the  withered  neck,  the  misshaj 
shoulders,  the  puny  arms  of  the  People's  Friend,  and  abo^ 
them  that  monstrous  head  swathed  in  its  compresses  of  vinegi 
*  Journal  des  D6bats,  July  16,  1793. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  409 

and  cold  water — truly  an  awful  and  a  hideous  sight.  A  fainter 
heart  than  Charlotte's  must  have  quailed,  a  nerve  of  less  tried 
steel  than  hers  must  have  failed  at  this  tremendous  moment — 
have  kept  her  rooted  to  the  threshold,  or  driven  her  shuddering 
backwards  through  the  door  and  down  the  narrow  staircase, 
out — out — into  the  pure  air  of  Heaven.  But  Charlotte,  wholly 
concentrated  on  her  purpose,  had  risen  above  such  human 
weaknesses,  and  she  went  straight  forward,  calm  as  the  smnmer 
evening  outside  the  window,  and  sat  down  beside  Marat. 

Charlotte  Corday  did  not  kill  Marat  as  Marat  killed  his 
victims,  without  a  trial.  She  gave  him  now,  at  the  last  moment, 
a  chance  to  prove  that  it  was  not  he  who  had  raised  scaffolds 
all  over  France,  that  it  was  not  by  his  orders  that  innocent 
victims  were  led  daily  to  their  death.  So  when  he  asked  for 
news  of  Caen,  she  spoke  of  the  Girondin  deputies  who  had  taken 
refuge  there,  mentioning  them  by  name.  And  at  that  Marat 
croaked  out  with  a  frightful  laugh  : 

"  I  will  have  them  all  guillotined  within  a  week  !  " 

Then  rumour  had  not  lied — Marat  was  indeed  the  sanguinary 
monster  he  had  been  represented  in  the  provinces !  Out  of  his 
own  mouth  he  was  convicted.  Charlotte  hesitated  no  longer, 
and  grasping  her  knife  she  plunged  it  straight  into  his  heart. 
The  deed  was  done ;  henceforth,  as  she  said,  she  was  to  know 
peace. 

The  serenity  she  displayed  at  her  trial  amazed  the  world  no 
less  than  the  courage  that  had  led  her  to  carry  out  her  enter- 
prise. "  Who  had  inspired  you  with  so  much  hatred  against 
Marat  ?  "  the  President  asked  her.  "  I  did  not  need  the  hatred 
of  others,  I  had  enough  of  my  own."  "  In  killing  him  what 
did  you  hope  ?  "  "To  restore  peace  to  my  country."  "  Do 
you  think  you  have  killed  all  the  Marats  ?  "  "  That  one  dead, 
the  others  will  perhaps  be  afraid." 

Never  for  a  moment  does  it  seem  to  have  occurred  to 
Charlotte  that  her  action  could  be  regarded  as  murder.  When 
Fouquier  Tinville  observed  suspiciously,  "  You  must  be  well 
practised  in  this  kind  of  crime,"  she  cried  out  in  horror,  "  The 
monster  !     He  takes  me  for  an  assassin  !  " 

The  truth  is  that  Charlotte  did  not  feel  she  had  killed 
a  human  being,  but  rather  that  she  had  exorcised  an  evil  spirit 
who  had  cast  a  spell  over  the  capital.  "It  is  only  in  Paris," 
she  said  to  her  judges,  "  that  people's  eyes  are  bewitched  on 
account  of  Marat ;  in  the  other  departments  he  is  regarded  as 
a  monster." 

And,  indeed,  the  more  we  study  Marat  the  more  we  feel  a 
sensation  of  unreality  creeping  over  us.  Can  such  a  being 
really  have  existed  outside  the  pages  of  a  medieval  legend  ? 


4IO        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


Robespierre,  Danton,  Billaud,  even  Carrier  we  can  believe  in 
as  physiological  possibilities,  but  Marat  is  a  phenomenon  to  be 
explained  by  no  natural  laws:  the  shuddering  repulsion  he 
inspired  in  all  normal  beholders,  the  unholy  fascination  he 
exercised  over  those  who  fell  beneath  his  power,  the  fearful 
rapidity  with  which  immediately  after  death  that  hideous  body 
crumbled  to  corruption,  yet  around  which  knelt  crowds  of 
worshippers,  blaspheming  Christ  and  crying  out,  "  Oh,  sacred 
heart  of  Marat  !  " — all  these  things  belong  surely  to  the  region 
of  the  supernatural,  and  can  only  be  accounted  for  by  a  beUef 
in  demoniacal  possession.  Exclude  this  hypothesis  and  Marat 
remains  an  insoluble  mystery — unique  in  the  annals  of  mankind. 
At  any  rate,  whether  we  beheve  in  the  powers  of  darkness 
or  not,  the  phase  on  which  the  revolutionary  movement  now 
entered  could  not  have  been  surpassed  in  devilry  if  evil  spirits 
hitherto  caged  in  the  body  of  Marat  had  been  loosed  over  France. 
Until  now  the  atrocities  committed  have  been  traceable  to  per- 
fectly tangible  causes — ^to  Orleaniste  intrigue;  to  the  personal 
ambitions  of  the  leaders;  to  excitement,  delusion,  or  drink  on 
the  part  of  the  populace ;  but  from  the  autumn  of  1793  all 
political  aims  seem  to  be  swallowed  up  in  a  wild  rage  for 
destruction ;  the  scenes  of  horror  taking  place  everywhere 
appear  to  serve  no  definite  purpose,  but,  hke  the  convulsions  of 
a  madman,  to  spring  from  a  mind  in  delirium. 

Yet  if  we  examine  the  movement  closely  we  shall  find  that 

there  was  nevertheless  a  method  in  the  maciiess ;   that  through 

this  frightful  period  of  the  Terror  there  ran  a  system  founded 

on  the  same  political  doctrines  that  had  produced  the  massacres 

of  September.     This  is  what  Collot  d'Herbois  meant  when  he 

J  said  :   "  The  2nd  of  September  is  the  Credo  of  our  hberty  "  ;  in 

I  other  words,  the  massacres  in  the  prisons  formed  simply  the 

j  prelude  to  a  general  scheme  of  destruction.     At  this  earHer  date, 

as  we  have  seen,  the  idea  of  the  leaders  was  to  amputate  the 

gangrened  limb  formed  by  the  aristocracy  and  clergy ;  now  that 

these  two  categories  had  been  practically  destroyed,  the  same 

operation  must  be  carried  out  on  those  other  portions  of  the 

body  to  which  the  gangrene  had  spread. 

First  on  the  list  came,  then,  the  prosperous  bourgeoisie,  the 
*  peculiar  object  of  Marat's  hatred — a  hatred  he  had  communicat 
to  Robespierre  and  Hebert,  who,  after  the  death  of  Marat,  wen 
left  to  carry  on  the  campaign  against  this  obnoxious  cla 
Thus  we  find  Robespierre  writing :  "  Internal  dangers  comi 
from  the  bourgeois  ;  in  order  to  conquer  the  bourgeois  we  mu 
rouse  the  people,  we  must  procure  arms  for  them  and  mate 
them  angry."  ^  Hubert  went  further  :  *'  The  virtue  of  the  hoi; 
*  Papier s  trouvis  chez  Robespierre,  ii.  15. 


J 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  411 

guillotine/'  hie  wrote,  "  will  gradually  deliver  the  Republic  from 
the  rich,  the  bourgeois,  the  spies,  the  fat  farmers,  and  the  worthy 
tradesmen  as  from  the  priests  and  aristocrats.  They  are  all 
devourers  of  men." 

This  campaign  against  commerce  was  again  the  direct 
outcome  of  Illuminism,  for  it  was  Weishaupt  who  had  first 
denounced  the  "  mercantile  tribe  "  as  capable  of  exercising  "  the 
most  formidable  of  despotisms."  ^  Accordingly  war  was  now 
waged  with  particular  ferocity  on  the  manufacturing  towns.  In 
August  the  revolutionary  troops  surrounded  Lyon,  where  the 
authorities,  exasperated  by  the  sanguinary  propaganda  of  Chalier, 
had  ended  by  condemning  this  disciple  of  Marat  to  death.  The 
siege  lasted  until  the  9th  of  October  1793,  when,  reduced  by 
famine,  Lyon  was  obUged  to  surrender,  and  it  was  then 
decided  that  the  magnificent  city,  once  the  pride  of  France, 
must  be  demoUshed.  "  The  name  of  Lyon,"  cried  Barere  at 
the  Convention,  "  must  no  longer  exist,  you  will  call  it  Ville- 
Affranchie."  On  the  ruins  he  proposed  to  erect  a  monument 
bearing  the  words,  "  Lyon  made  war  on  liberty ;  Lyon  is  no 
more."  Thereupon  the  Convention  passed  the  decree  :  "  The  ' 
town  of  Lyon  shall  be  destroyed ;  every  part  of  it  inhabited 
by  the  rich  shall  be  demolished,  only  the  dwellings  of  the  poor 
shall  remain." 

Emissaries  were  then  sent  to  carry  out  the  task  ;  the  paralytic 
Couthon,  borne  on  a  litter  about  the  city,  struck  with  a  silver 
hammer  the  buildings  destined  to  destruction,  saying  as  he  did 
so,  "  In  the  name  of  the  law  I  demohsh  you,"  and  instantly 
masons  set  to  work  upon  the  task.  Meanwhile  orators  incited 
the  working-classes  to  violence  :  "  What  are  you  doing,  pusillani-  , 
mous  workmen,  in  these  industrial  occupations  by  which  opulence 
degrades  you  ?  Come  out  of  this  servitude  and  confront  the 
rich  man  who  oppresses  you  .  .  .  overthrow  his  fortune,  over- 
throw these  edifices,  the  wreckage  belongs  to  you.  It  is  thus 
that  you  will  rise  to  that  sublime  equaUty,  the  basis  of  true 
liberty,  the  vigorous  principle  of  a  warrior  people  to  whom  • 
commerce  and  arts  should  be  unnecessary."  ^ 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  there  was  no  question  of 
readjusting  relations  between  employers  and  employed;  the 
whole  industrial  system  was  simply  to  be  destroyed  whilst  the 
workers  were  left  to  starve  upon  the  ruins. 

Yet  even  when  commerce  had  gone  the  way  of  aristocracy, 
'*  and  pride  of  wealth  no  longer  violated  the  principles  of  '  subUme 
equaUty,'  "  yet  another  centre  of  gangrene  still  remained — 
the  educated  classes.    It  was  here  that   Robespierre  displayed 

^  Histoire  de  la  R&volution,  by  Louis  Blanc,  ii.  91. 
2  Beaulieu,  v.  405. 


412        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

particular  energy.  Men  of  talent  had  always  been  abhorrent  to 
him — hence  his  inveterate  animosity  towards  the  Girondins. 
Unable  himself  to  rise  out  of  the  crowd  of  little  lawyers  amongst 
whom  he  had  made  his  debut  in  Paris,  he  could  not  forgive 
success  achieved  by  eloquence  or  literary  ability.^  To  the 
Incorruptible  wealth  offered  little  or  no  temptation ;  but 
superiority  of  talent  roused  in  him  an  envy  that  bordered  on 
insanity,  and  it  was  mainly  owing  to  his  influence  that  a  cam- 
paign against  intellect,  art,  and  education  was  now  inaugurated. 
"  All  highly  educated  men  were  persecuted,"  said  Fourcroy  later 
to  the  Convention ;  "  it  was  enough  to  have  some  knowledge,  to 
be  a  man  of  letters,  in  order  to  be  arrested  as  an  aristocrat.  .  .  . 

'  Robespierre  .  .  .  with  atrocious  skill,  rent,  calumniated  ...  all 
those  who  had  given  themselves  up  to  great  studies,  all  those  who 
possessed  wide  knowledge  ...  he  felt  that  no  educated  man 
would  ever  bend  the  knee  to  him."  ^ 

This  war  on  education  was  even  carried  out  against  the 

'•treasures  of  science,  art,  and  Uterature.  Manuel  proposed  to 
demolish  the  Porte  Saint-Denis ;  Chaumette  wanted  to  kill  all 
the  rare  animals  in  the  Museum  of  Natural  History ;  Hanriot 
proposed  to  bum  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale,  and  his  suggestion 
was  repeated  at  Marseilles ;  the  other  decemvirs,  taking  up  the 
cry,  added,  "  Yes,  we  will  bum  all  the  libraries,  for  only  the 
history  of  the  Revolution  and  the  laws  will  be  needed."  And 
although  the  great  National  Library  of  Paris  survived,  thousands 
of  books  and  valuable  pictures  all  over  France  were  destroyed  or 
sold  for  next  to  nothing.^ 

Not  only  education  but  poUteness  in  all  forms  was  to  be 

>  destroyed.  By  a  decree  of  the  Commune  on  the  2ist  of  August 
1792  the  titles  of  "  Monsieur "  and  "  Madame "  had  been 
formally  abohshed,  and  the  words  "  Citoyen  "  or  "  Citoyenne  " 
substituted,  and  in  order  to  satisfy  the  exponents  of  equality  it 
had  now  beome  necessary  to  assume  a  rough  and  boorish  manner, 
to  present  an  uncultivated  appearance.  A  refined  countenance, 
hands  that  bore  no  marks  of  manual  labour,  well-bmshed  hair, 
clean  and  decent  garments,  were  regarded  with  suspicion — ^to 
make  sure  of  keeping  one's  head  on  one's  shoulders  it  was 

1  "  Writers  must  be  proscribed  as  the  most  dangerous  enemies  of  the 
people  "  (Note  in  Robespierre's  handwriting,  pubUshed  in  Papiers  irouvis 
chez  Robespierre,  ii.  13).  See  also  Pag^,  ii.  19,  and  Letters  of  Helen  Maria 
Williams  (1794),  p.  115. 

2  Moniteur  for  the  14th  Fructidor,  An  11. ;  also  Rapport  de  GrSgoire 
on  same  date  :  "  Dumas  said  all  clever  men  should  be  guillotined. 
The  system  of  persecution  against  men  of  talents  was  organized.  .  .  .  They 
cried  out  in  tlie  sections,  '  Beware  of  that  man,  for  he  has  written  a 
book  r  " 

*  Taine,  viii.  206 ;   Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  ii.  141 ;    Mimoire  sui 
U  Vandalisme,  by  Gr6goire. 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  413 

advisable  that  it  should  be  unkempt.  Thus,  says  Beaulieu, 
"  those  who  had  been  bom  with  a  gentle  exterior  .  .  .  were 
obUged  to  distort  their  faces,  to  quicken  their  movements,  so 
as  to  look  as  if  they  formed  a  part  of  those  ferocious  bands  that 
had  been  loosed  against  them.  Our  dandies  had  allowed  their 
moustaches  to  grow  long :  they  had  ruffled  their  hair,  soiled 
their  hands,  and  put  on  repulsive  clothes.  Our  philosophers,  our 
men  of  letters,  wore  large  bristUng  caps  from  which  hung  long 
fox-tails  that  floated  on  their  shoulders  ;  some  dragged  great 
wheeled  sabres  along  the  pavement ;  they  were  taken  for 
Tartars.  Paris  was  no  longer  recognizable ;  one  would  have 
said  that  all  the  bandits  of  Europe  had  replaced  its  brilUant 
population."  ^ 

In  a  word,  it  was  now  not  merely  war  on  nobility,  on  wealth, 
on  industry,  on  art,  and  on  intellect ;  it  was  war  on  civilization. 
France  was  to  return  to  a  state  of  savagery.  Insane  as  the  ' 
project  may  seem,  we  must  recognize  it  nevertheless  to  be  the 
logical  outcome  of  the  desire  for  absolute  equality.  But  unfor-  . 
tunately,  when  the  equaUzing  process  reached  this  stage,  an 
unexpected  difficulty  occurred.  The  aristocracy  of  birth  had 
long  since  been  humbled  to  the  dust ;  the  aristocracy  of  wealth 
was  reduced  to  beggary ;  the  aristocracy  of  intellect  concealed 
itself  beneath  a  rude  exterior ;  yet,  after  all,  aristocracy  still  - 
survived  triumphantly,  for  lo  !  it  had  taken  refuge  amongst  the ' 
people.  "  Nowhere,"  says  Taine,  "  are  there  so  many  suspects  ' 
as  amongst  the  people  ;  the  shop,  the  farm,  and  the  workshops 
contain  more  aristocrats  than  the  presbytery  or  the  chateau. 
In  fact,  according  to  the  Jacobins,  the  cultivators  are  nearly  all 
aristocrats ;  all  the  tradesmen  are  essentially  counter-revolu- 
tionary .  .  .  the  butchers  and  bakers  ...  are  of  an  insufferable 
aristocracy."  ^  "  The  women  of  the  market,"  writes  a  govern- 
ment spy,  "  except  a  few  who  are  bribed,  or  whose  husbands 
are  Jacobins,  curse,  swear,  rave,  and  fume ;  but  they  dare  not 
speak  too  loud,  because  they  are  all  afraid  of  the  revolutionary 
committee  and  the  guillotine."  "  This  morning,"  said  a  shop- 
keeper, "  I  had  four  or  five  of  them  here.  They  do  not  wish  to 
be  called  '  citizenesses  '  any  longer.  They  say  they  spit  on  the 
RepubUc."  ^  In  the  provinces  matters  were  still  worse  ;  not  only 
had  reverence  for  reUgion  and  the  King  survived,  but  everywhere 
respect  for  superiority  and  successful  enterprise  prevailed — the 
good  bourgeois  whose  business  had  prospered,  the  worthy  mayor 
renowned  for  his  benevolence,  the  working-man  who  had  "  got 
on  in  the  world,"  all  these  in  the  eyes  of  country-folk  seemed 

*'  Beaulieu,  v.  281.  *  Taine,  viii.  180. 

'  Rapport  de  Dutard  ^  Gar  at  (Minister  of  the  Interior),  June  24,  1793, 
Schmidt,  ii.  87. 


414        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

more  deserving  of  esteem  than  the  drunkard  or  the  wastrel. 
How  was  perfect  equality  to  be  achieved  if  the  people  themselves 
persisted  in  raising  one  man  above  another  ? 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  the  despair  that  seized  on  the  surgeons 
who  had  embarked  on  the  great  scheme  of  eliminating  gangrene 
when  they  discovered  its  existence  in  this  most  vital  point  of  the 
body.  Yet,  nothing  daunted,  they  grasped  their  instruments 
and  set  to  work  once  more  ;  if  "  the  people  "  themselves  were 
gangrened,  then  the  people  too  must  come  under  the  knife — 
the  blade  of  the  guillotine  must  fall  alike  on  the  neck  of  noble, 
priest,  or  peasant. 

So  on  the  5th  of  September  the  word  went  forth  from  the 
Commune  of  Paris :  "  Let  us  make  Terror  the  order  of  the  day !  "  * 
In  order  to  carry  out  this  system  it  was  necessary  to  recon- 
struct the  government.  Already  the  first  Constitution  framed 
on  the  cahiers  had  been  swept  away  and  replaced  by  the 
anarchic  code  known  as  the  *'  Constitution  de  I'An  II."  without 
further  reference  to  the  desires  of  the  people.  But  now  the 
Anarchists  had  recourse  to  a  still  more  arbitrary  measure,  and 
on  the  loth  of  October  the  Convention,  entirely  dominated  by 
the  Mountain,  acceded  to  the  proposal  of  St.  Just  that  a  "  pro- 
visional revolutionary  government  "  should  be  proclaimed,  in 
which  every  department  of  the  State  was  to  be  placed  under 
the  control  of  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public.  The  members  of 
this  committee — which  included  Robespierre,  Couthon,  St.  Just, 
Barere,  BiUaud-Varenne,  Collot  d'Herbois,  Jean  Bon  St. 
Andr6,  Camot,  Prieur  de  la  Mame,  and  Lindet — ^were  thus  to 
be  made  the  absolute  rulers  of  France  ;  to  their  authority  the 
"  executive  power,  the  ministers,  the  generals,  and  the  con- 
stituted bodies  "  were  to  be  subjugated ;  ^  and  since  it  was  by 
the  Incorruptible  that  they  themselves  were  controlled,  the 
reign  of  ^  Robespierre  may  be  said  to  have  begun  from  this 
moment. 

The  Terror  in  the  provinces  was  thus  entirely  the  work  of 
,the  Comite  de  Salut  Public.  Emissaries  were  now  sent  out  by 
V  the  committee  to  the  towns  and  provinces  that  had  risen  against 
the  Mountain,  \^th  instructions  to  show  no  mercy  to  the  "  counter- 
revolutionaries." The  better  to  ensure  a  rigorous  application  of 
the  new  regime  these  men  were  usually  chosen  to  act  in  couples, 
"  one  to  check  the  other  " — in  reaUty  to  goad  each  other  on  to 
violence.  Thus  when  at  Bordeaux,  Tallien,  under  the  influence 
of  the  beautiful  Teresia  Cabarrus,  showed  signs  of  relenting, 
Ysabeau  performed  the  office  of  denunciator ;  ^  at  Lyon,  Collot 
d'Herbois  urged  on  Fouche ;  at  Toulon,  Fr^ron  incited  Barras, 


Buchez  et  Roux,  xxix.  43.  2  /^^^  p   1^2. 

*  Mdmoires  de  Madame  de  la  Tour  du  Pin,  ii.  345. 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  415 

and  so  each  emissary,  terrorized  by  his  colleague,  attempted  to 
outdo  him  in  ferocity. 

The  atrocities  that  took  place  all  over  France  from  October 
1793  onwards  require  volumes  to  be  realized  in  their  full  horror, 
and  can  only  be  briefly  summarized  here. 

At  Bordeaux,  then,  owing  to  the  intervention  of  T^resia, 
only  301  people  fell  victims  to  the  guillotine,  which  took  "  patriotic 
journeys  "  to  that  city ;  starvation  and  terror  were,  therefore, 
the  means  by  which  it  was  finally  reduced  to  submission.  But 
at  Lyon  the  population  was  Uterally  mowed  down  in  hundreds  ; 
carts  filled  with  women,  old  and  young,  pUed  daily  to  the  scaffold. 
But  the  guillotine  proved  too  slow  a  method  of  extermination, 
and  the  method  of  "  fusillades  "  was  then  adopted ;  young 
citizens  tied  together  in  couples  were  driven  to  the  "  Brotteaux  " 
and  blown  into  fragments  by  rifle  and  cannon  fire.  The  Rhone, 
that  received  at  least  2000  corpses,  ran  so  red  with  blood  that 
Ronsin,  the  general  of  the  revolutionary  armies,  informed  the 
CordeUers  in  Paris  of  its  utiUty  in  conveying  a  message  of  warning 
to  the  counter-revolutionaries  all  over  the  South. ^ 

The  South,  however,  needed  no  warning.  Toulon,  crushed 
and  starved  by  the  regime  of  Freron  and  Barras,  had  opened 
its  gates  in  desperation  to  the  EngUsh  on  the  29th  of  August — 
a  "  treachery  "  never  to  be  forgiven  it.  Yet  there  were  certainly 
extenuating  circumstances.  "  It  was  necessary,"  wrote  Isnard, 
who  was  then  at  Toulon,  "  to  yield  either  to  the  Mountain  or 
to  Admiral  Hood.  The  former  brought  us  scaffolds,  the  latter 
promised  to  shatter  them  ;  the  former  gave  us  famine,  the 
latter  offered  us  provisions ;  Fr6ron  brought  us  the  Constitu- 
tion of  1793,  written  by  the  executioner  at  the  dictation  of 
Robespiene,  Hood  promised  to  put  us  under  the  laws  pro- 
mulgated by  the  Constituent  Assembly.  A  few  intriguers 
profited  by  these  circumstances  to  tempt  the  multitude  led 
astray  by  hunger  and  despair;  it  had  the  weakness  to  prefer 
bread  to  death,  the  Constitution  of  1791  to  the  anarchic  code 
of  1793." 

Toulon  paid  heavily  for  its  frailty  when,  on  the  17th  of 
December,  the  town  was  recaptured  by  the  army  of  the  RepubUc. 
Freron,  mounted  on  a  horse,  "  surrounded  by  cannons,  troops, 
and  a  hundred  maniacs,  adorers  of  the  god  Marat,"  ordered 
citizens  selected  at  random  to  be  fined  up  against  the  walls  and 
shot.  "  Freron  gives  the  signal,  the  charge  rings  out  from 
every  side,  the  murder  is  accompUshed.  The  ground  is  drenched 
in  blood,  the  air  resounds  with  cries  of  despair,  the  dying  roll 

^  i*rudhomme.  Crimes,  vi.  49,  50.  Cadillot,  a  correspondent  of 
Robespierre,  placed  the  number  of  executions  at  Lyon  at  6000  (Taine, 
viii.  126). 


4i6        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

back  upon  the  corpses.  Suddenly,  by  order  of  the  tyrant,  a 
voice  cries,  '  Let  those  who  are  not  dead  arise.'  The  wounded 
raise  themselves  in  the  hope  that  help  will  be  brought  to  them,  a 
fresh  discharge  is  made,  and  steel  gathers  those  that  fire  has 
spared."  ^ 

After  this  Freron  complacently  announced  that  800  Toulon- 
nais  had  perished  in  the  fusillade,  whilst  at  the  same  time  200 
heads  fell  by  the  guillotine.  These  methods,  repeated  until  the 
spring  of  1794,  resulted,  according  to  Prudhomme,  in  the  death 
of  no  less  than  14,325  men,  women,  and  children ;  and  whether 
this  figure  is  excessive  or  not  the  fact  remains  that  by  the  9th 
of  Thermidor  the  population  of  Toulon  was  reduced  from  29,000 
to  7000  inhabitants.^ 

All  over  Provence  men  were  hunted  down  Uke  wild  beasts  ; 
the  prophecy  of  the  Scriptures  seemed  now  to  be  fulfilled — "  for 
those  that  were  in  the  cities  fled  into  the  mountains,  crying  to 
the  rocks  to  cover  them,  and  hiding  in  dens  and  caves  of  the 
earth."  g|| 

At  Marseilles  the  death-roll  was  comparatively  light ;  onlj^" 
about  240  victims  had  mounted  the  scaffold  by  January  of 
1794,  and  the  Comite  de  Salut  PubUc  in  Paris  found  it  necessary 
to  issue  a  reprimand  to  the  PubUc  Accuser  of  that  city :  "In 
Paris  .  .  .  the  art  of  guillotining  has  attained  perfection. 
Sanson  and  his  pupils  guillotine  with  so  much  rapidity  .  .  . 
they  expedited  twelve  in  thirteen  minutes.  Send,  then,  the 
executioner  of  Marseilles  to  Paris  in  order  to  take  a  course  of 
guillotining  with  his  colleague  Sanson,  or  we  shall  never  get 
through.  You  must  know  that  we  shall  never  let  you  want 
for  game  for  the  guillotine ;  and  a  great  number  must  be 
despatched."  ^ 

In  the  small  town  of  Orange,  however,  318  victims  were 
disposed  of  in  a  very  short  space  of  time,  whilst  in  the  north 
at  Arras  and  Cambrai,  under  the  reign  of  the  apostate  priest, 
Joseph  Lebon,  between  1500  and  2000  perished.  In  the  pro- 
vince of  Anjou  alone  the  number  of  people  killed  without  a 
trial  has  been  estimated  at  10,000.* 

La  Vendee  as  the  stronghold  of  Royalism,  when  finally 
vanquished  in  October,  could  not  of  course  hope  for  mercy, 
and  the  plan  of  the  Convention,  "  to  transform  this  country 
into  a  desert,"  ^  was  adopted.     "  We  are  able  to  say  to-day," 

^  Description  given  by  Isnard,  who  was  amongst  the  wounded. 
Beaulieu,  v.  449  ;   Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Rivolution,  vi.  157. 

2  Madelin,  p.  335. 

3  Prudhomme,  Crimes,  vi.  128. 
*  Taine,  viii.  131, 

^  Letter  of  the  emissary  Francastel  to  General  Grignon  (Taine, 
viii.  131). 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  417 

wrote  the  Republican  envoys,  *'that  La  Vendee  no  longer 
exists.  A  profound  silence  reigns  at  present  in  the  land  occupied 
by  the  rebels.  One  could  travel  far  in  these  parts  without 
encountering  a  man  or  a  cottage,  for  we  have  left  nothing  behind 
us  but  ashes  and  piles  of  corpses."  ^ 

But  of  all  the  towns  of  France  it  was  at  Nantes  in  Brittany  ( 
that  the  worst  atrocities  were  committed,  in  spite  of  the  fact  i 
that  here  the  bourgeoisie  had  welcomed  the  Revolution  with 
the  greatest  enthusiasm,  "  and,  indeed,  had  actually  taken  up 
arms  against  La  Vendee."  ^  Unhappily,  in  the  organizer  of  the 
campaign  against  Nantes  the  Comit6  de  Salut  Public  had 
found  a  man  after  its  own  heart.  Like  "  his  divinity  Marat," 
Jean  Baptiste  Carrier  embodied  in  his  person  the  whole  principle 
of  the  Terror ;  Uke  Marat,  physically  abnormal  with  his  lean 
misshapen  figure,  his  long  cadaverous  face  and  bloodshot  eyes. 
Carrier  exhibited  perpetually  the  same  convulsive  fury  that  had 
characterized  the  People's  Friend — ^indeed  it  is  probable  that 
he  too  was  the  victim  of  homicidal  mania.  Carrier  thought, 
spoke,  dreamt  incessantly  of  kiUing ;  "I  have  seen  him,"  a  con- 
temporary declared,  "  cutting  candles  in  two  with  his  sabre  as 
if  they  were  the  heads  of  aristocrats."  Even  his  colleagues 
trembled  to  approach  him  for  fear  of  his  "  sudden  angers,  his 
beUo wings  Uke  those  of  a  famished  wild  beast." 

In  order  to  carry  out  the  vengeance  of  this  maniac  upon  the 
unfortunate  city,  three  companies  of  bandits,  selected  for  their 
ferocity,  had  been  recruited.  The  first  of  these,  which  Carrier 
had  named  after  his  idol,  "  the  company  of  Marat,"  consisted 
of  sixty  members  who  had  sworn  on  enrolment  to  carry  out  the 
doctrines  of  the  People's  Friend ;  the  second,  known  as  the  t 
**  American  Hussars,"  was  composed  of  negroes  and  mulattos ; 
the  third,  which  was  called  the  "  Germanic  Legion,"  had  been 
formed  with  German  mercenaries  and  deserters.  Thus,  as  Taine 
observes,  "  it  was  necessary,  in  order  to  find  men  for  the  work, 
to  descend  not  only  to  the  lowest  ruffians  of  France,  but  to  brutes 
of  foreign  race  and  speech.  .  .  ."  ^ 

The  services  of  the  two  last  companies  were  utilized  princi- 
pally for  brutaUty  towards  women  and  children  ;  an  eye-witness 
related  that  on  one  occasion  he  saw  the  corpses  of  no  less  than 
seventy-five  girls  aged  from  16  to  18  who  had  been  shot  down 
by  the  German  legion.  Carrier  entertained  a  pecuUar  hatred  1 
for  children  —  "they  are  whelps,"  he  said,  "they  must  be 
destroyed,"  and  he  gave  orders  that  they  should  be  butchered 

1  Mortimer  Ternaux,  viii.  196. 

2  }.  B.  Carrier,  by  Alfred  Lallie,  p.  57. 

3  Taine,  viii.  no;    Beaulieu,  vi.  92,  93;   Les  Noyades  de  Nantes,  by 
G.  Lenotre. 

2  E 


4i8        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


^ 


,  without  mercy.  The  details  of  these  massacres  far  surpass  in 
*  horror  anything  that  took  place  in  Paris  during  the  height  of 
'  the  Terror ;  there  young  children  at  least  were  spared,  but  at 
I  Nantes  they  perished  miserably  in  hundreds.  The  annals  of 
I  savagery  can  show  nothing  more  revolting — poor  little  peasant 
j  boys  and  girls  thrust  beneath  the  blade  of  the  guillotine,  mutilated 
I  because  they  were  too  small  to  fit  the  fatal  plank ;  500  driven 

Iall  at  once  into  a  field  outside  the  city  and  shot  down,  clubbed 
and  sabred  by  the  assassins  round  whose  knees  they  clung, 
weeping  and  crying  out  for  mercy.^ 

Finally  the  executioner  grew  weary  of  the  slaughter   and 

declared  he  could  go  on  no  longer ;    even  the  fusillades  proved 

too  slow  a  method  of  extermination,  and  it  was  then  that  Carrier 

embarked  on  the  scheme  which  for  all  time  has  rendered  his 

I  name  infamous — the  noyades,   or  wholesale  drownings  in  the 

;  Loire. 

The  first  experiment  was  made  on  about  ninety  old  priests, 
who  were  placed  on  board  a  galUot  in  charge  of  several 
Marats — as  the  members  of  the  Marat  company  were  known — 
and  when  in  mid-stream  those  men,  obedient  to  orders,  burst 
open  the  ports  and  sank  the  barge  to  the  bottom  of  the  river. 
This  delighted  Carrier — "  I  have  never  laughed  so  much,"  he 

declared,  "  as  when  I  saw  the  faces  those  made  as  they 

died."  2    The  incident,  when  reported  to  the  Convention,  met 

with  no  remonstrance  ;    Herault  de  Sechelles,  in  fact,  wrote  to 

Carrier  congratulating  him  on  "  his  energy  and  talent  in  the 

art   of   revolution,"  ^   whilst    Robespierre,    we   know,    heartily 

approved.*    Carrier,  thus  encouraged,  set  to  work  on  a  larger 

scale.     The  cargo-load  of  gangrene  in  the  form  of  clergy  had 

proved  but  the  prelude ;    now  "  the  people  "  were  to  provide 

the  victims.     So  through  those  bitter  December  nights  crowds 

'  of  poor  women,  armed  with  the  little  bundles  of  possessions 

I  that  peasants   in  flight   are   wont   to  carry  with   them,  some 

1  clasping  babies  to  their  breasts,  some  leading  little  children  by 

/the  hand,  were  driven  out  into  the  cold  and  darkness,  they 

\/^  knew  not  whither ;    only  when  they  found  themselves  on  the 

bank  of  the  river  where  the  great  barges  waited  the  hideous 

truth  dawned  on  them.     Then  all  at  once  they  burst  into  tears 

and  lamentations,  crying  out,  "  They  are  going  to  drown  us, 

and  they  will  not  bring  us  to  trial !  "     Many  holding  their  babies 

^  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  vi,  314. 

2  Ibid.  p.  323  ;  Proces  de  Carrier,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxiv.  184. 

3  Beaulieu,  vi.  98. 

*  See  Lalli^,  op.  cit.  p.  230 ;  also  statement  of  Laignelot  to  the  Cc 
vention  that  he  informed  Robespierre  of  the  horrors   taking   place 
Nantes,  to  which  Robespierre  replied  :   "Carrier  is  a  patriot;    this  wa 
necessary  at  Nantes"   [Moniteur  du  3  Frimaire,  An  iii.  vol.  xxii,  580). 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  419 

closer  refused  to  give  them  up  to  strangers,  and  bore  them 
with  them  in  their  arms  down  beneath  the  dark  waters  of  the 
Loire.  These  perhaps  were  wisest,  for  many  of  those  poor 
children,  whom  stronger-minded  mothers  had  placed  in  sym- 
pathetic arms  held  out  to  them,  were  seized  by  Carrier's  agents 
and  herded  into  the  ghastly  Entrepdt,  or  prison  of  the  city, 
to  die  of  cold  and  pestilence. 

The  noyades,  which  Carrier  playfully  described  as  "  bath-  < 
ing-parties,"  offered  a  fresh  field  to  his  inventive  genius,  and  ' 
by  way  of  variety  he  now  devised  the  plan  of  stripping  men 
and  women  to  the  skin,  tying  them  together  in  couples  and 
throwing  them  thus  bound  into  the  Loire.     Carrier  called  this  , 
**  Republican  marriages."  ^ 

Such  was  the  Reign  of  Terror  at  Nantes,  during  which  the 
number  of  victims  that  perished  by  drowning  was  estimated  by 
one  member  of  Carrier's  committee  at  6000,  by  another  at 
9000,  whilst  Prudhomme  estimates  the  number  of  people  killed 
by  drownings,  fusillades,  the  guillotine  and  pestilence,  at  the 
appalling  figure  of  32,000. 

What  must  have  been  the  death-roll  for  all  France  during 
the  Terror  ?  Prudhomme  places  it  at  no  less  than  1,025,711  (in- 
cluding losses  through  civil  war),  Taine  at  nearly  half  a  million 
in  the  eleven  provinces  of  the  West  alone.  But  on  this  point 
it  is  impossible  to  speak  with  any  certainty.  We  only  know 
that  the  massacres  were  wholesale  and,  what  is  more  important, 
indiscriminate.  For  not  only  were  the  victims  of  the  fusillades ' 
and  noyades  almost  exclusively  taken  from  amongst  the  people 
— "  creatures  of  no  account,"  said  GouUin,  one  of  Carrier's 
aides — but  no  attempt  was  made  to  discover  their  political 
opinions.  Some  were  RoyaUsts,  others  Republicans ;  the  greater 
number  probably  held  no  views  on  poUtics  at  all,  but  lived  like 
simple  country  folk,  without  a  thought  beyond  their  daily  needs. 
The  necessity  for  destroying  gangrene  cannot,  therefore,  have 
applied  to  them,  and  we  must  seek  a  further  development  in 
the  scheme  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  to  explain  this  amazing 
paradox — the  massacring  of  the  people  in  the  name  of  democracy. 

THE  SYSTEM  OF  THE  TERROR 

What,  then,  was  the  system  that  produced  this  later  stage  of 
the  Terror  ?  Historians,  weary  of  striving  to  solve  the  problem, 
have  declared  that  there  was  none,  that  the  Terror  happened 

^  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  vi.  335  ;  Beaulieu,  vi.  100  ; 
Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxiv.  149.  And  Kropotkin,  that  arch-calumniator  of 
the  people,  dares  to  attribute  the  noyades  of  Nantes  to  the  Breton 
peasants  !     See  The  Great  French  Revolution,  p.  458. 


420        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

f  inevitably,  or  that  the  Terrorists  were  mad,  or  that  they  killed 
\  for  fear  of  being  killed,  or  that,  as  Thiers  expressed  it,  they  went 
\)n  kiUing  because  of  "  the  deplorable  habit  they  had  contracted," 
Such  answers,  however,  are  all  unconvincing  in  view  of  the 
evident  organization  of  the  Terror  and  the  character  of  the 
men  by  whom  it  was  carried  out.  The  members  of  the  Trium- 
virate— Robespierre,  Couthon,  and  St.  Just — which  had  now 
become  all-powerful,  were  men  not  of  impulse  but  of  cold  calcula- 
tion, and  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  they  struck  out  aim- 
lessly with  no  ultimate  object  in  view.  What,  then,  was  the 
motive  that  inspired  them  ?  Certain  contemporaries,  recog- 
nizing the  indisputable  fact  that  the  movement  had  now  turned 
not  only  against  the  people,  but  against  many  of  the  most  ardent 
Republicans  and  the  earUer  champions  of  Uberty,  advanced  the 
extraordinary  theory  that  Robespierre  was  a  RoyaUst  agent 
employed  by  the  emigrant  princes  to  carry  out  their  vengeances ;  ^ 
and  indeed,  if  the  Old  Regime  had  entertained  a  desire  for 
revenge,  it  could  not  have  satisfied  it  more  effectually  than  by  the 
reign  of  Robespierre.  But  that  Robespierre,  with  his  insatiable 
craving  for  power,  should  have  wished  to  reinstate  the  Bourbons 
is  impossible  to  beUeve.  .  Still  more  absurd  was  the  once  accepted 
theory  that  the  Terror  was  organized  as  a  desperate  measure  of 
defence  against  "  the  coalition  of  kings,"  or  in  order  to  stimulate 
the  ardour  of  the  RepubUcan  armies.^  What  possible  connection 
could  there  be  between  the  massacring  of  peasant  women  in  the 
extreme  west  of  France  and  the  success  of  French  arms  in 
Germany  or  Flanders  ?  What  ardour  was  Ukely  to  be  stimulated 
in  the  soldiers  of  the  RepubHc  when  they  returned  from  the 
field  of  battle  to  find  their  mothers,  wives,  and  children  murdered, 
their  homes  burnt  to  the  ground  ?  Moreover,  when  the  Terror 
broke  out,  the  situation  of  the  armies  was  in  no  way  desperate ; 
i  on  the  contrary,  at  the  very  moment  that  "  terror  was  made 
» the  order  of  the  day  " — ^that  is  to  say,  on  the  4th  of  September^ 
1793  —  Robespierre  at  the  Jacobin  Club  announced  miUtf 
successes  everywhere  :  "  the  armies  of  the  North  .  .  .  of  tl 
Rhine  and  the  Moselle  are  in  a  briUiant  situation."  ^  The 
f — Terror,  then,  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  -ttie  question  oi 

\ national  defence,  but  in  its  later  as  in  its  earUer  stages  was 
measure  of  internal  poUcy. 

""  "  Now,   although  we  may  consult   historians  in  vain  for 
explanation  of  this  policy,  we  have  only  to  study  the  writing 
of  contemporaries  who  were  behind  the  scenes  in  the  Terrc 

1  Deux  Amis,  xii.  411  ;   /.  B,  Carrier,  by  A.  Lalli6,  p.  379. 

2  Professor  Moreton  Macdonald  has  admirably  refuted  this  legend  in] 
The  Cambridge  Modern  History,  viii.  372. 

**  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxix.  25. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  421 

to  discover  a  theory  which,  whether  we  accept  it  or  not, 
provides  the  only  clue  to  the  mystery.  According  to  these 
authorities  a  very  definite  system  was  at  work  in  the  Comit6 
de  Salut  PubHc,  which  organized  the  Terror ;  moreover,  this 
system  was  the  direct  outcome  of  the  poUtical  creed  of  its 
leading  members.  In  order  to  understand  this  we  must 
refer  back  to  the  theories  of  government  propounded  by  the 
organizers  of  the  Terror  during  the  earher  stages  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. Amongst  these  we  find  the  constantly  recurring  belief  in 
the  impossibility  of  transforming  France  into  a  RepubUc.  Thus 
as  late  as  1790  Marat  had  written  : 

"  In  a  large  State  the  form  of  government  must  be  monarchic, 
it  is  the  only  one  that  is  suited  to  France ;  the  extent  of  the 
kingdom,  its  position  and  the  multipUcity  of  its  connections 
necessitate  it,  and  we  ought  to  keep  to  this  for  many  powerful 
reasons,  even  if  the  character  of  its  people  admitted  of  any  other 
choice."  ^ 

There  is  undoubtedly  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  this  theory. 
Whether  the  old  aphorism  was  right  or  not  in  stating  that  "  no 
democracy  can  hold  an  empire,"  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
history  of  the  world  so  far  has  proved  that  democracy  works  most 
harmoniously  on  a  small  scale — as  in  Marat's  native  Switzerland 
— or  in  the  thinly  populated  spaces  of  a  colony.  For  since  the 
essence  of  democracy  is  rule  by  the  wiU  of  the  Sovereign  People, 
that  will  must  be,  as  far  as  possible,  unanimous ;  the  Sovereign 
must  not  be  divided  against  itself  if  the  system  is  not  to  lose 
its  entire  raison  d'etre.  And  obviously,  the  larger  and  more 
varied  the  population  the  more  difi&cult  it  becomes  to  obtain 
unanimity. 

This  conviction  of  the  impossibihty  of  estabhshing  a  demo- 
cratic form  of  government  in  so  large  and  thickly  populated  a 
country  as  France  seems  to  have  prevailed  amongst  the  revolu- 
tionary leaders  of  all  parties ;  hence,  no  doubt,  Robespierre's 
earUer  belief  in  monarchy  and  his  later  desire  for  a  dictatorship.^ 
As  to  the  Girondins,  although  no  definite  evidence  is  forthcoming 
in  support  of  Robespierre's  accusation  that  they  wished  to 
establish  a  federal  RepubUc,  they  undoubtedly  reaUzed  the 
almost  insuperable  difficulty  of  achieving  a  harmonious  demo- 
cracy on  so  large  a  scale  by  means  of  centraUzed  government. 
Thus  Buzot  himself  wrote  :  "If  there  were  a  people  of  gods, 
says  Rousseau,  it  would  govern  itself  democratically.  .  .  . 
As  it  is,  men,  who  are  not  gods,  must  seek  elsewhere  the  best 

^  Plan  de  Constitution,  p.  17. 

2  See  also  Danton's  remark  to  the  Due  de  Chartres,  on  October  1792, 
after  the  foundation  of  the  Republic  :  "  This  country  is  not  made  for  a 
Republic ;  one  day  it  will  cry  '  Vive  le  Roi  ! '"  (M.  de  Barante,  Histoire  de 
la  Convention  Nationale,  ii.  477). 


422         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

form  of  government  to  suit  them."  And  he  went  on  to  ask 
how,  in  a  nation  of  25,000,000,  it  would  be  possible  to  make 
sure  that  the  wishes  expressed  by  suffrage  represented  the  real 
will  of  the  nation. 

But  with  the  proclamation  of  the  Republic  the  situation  of 
which  Marat  had  foreseen  the  danger  had  been  brought  about, 
and  the  whole  country  was  thrown  into  confusion ;  differences 
of  opinion  sprang  up  on  every  side,  and  civil  war  was  the  in- 
evitable result. 

More  than  this,  not  only  had  France  become  a  Republic, 
but,  as  we  have  seen,  the  further  plan  was  evolved  by  Robespierre 
of  transforming  her  into  a  SociaUst  State  throughout  which 
absolute  equality  and  universal  contentment  should  prevail.^ 

Under  the  influence  of  St.  Just  this  plan  had  assumed 
definite  proportions.  The  colony  of  workmen's  dweUings,  which 
might  be  said  figuratively  to  represent  Robespierre's  conception 
of  an  ideal  State,  was  literally  adopted  by  St.  Just  in  the 
"  Institutions  "  he  drew  up  for  the  government  of  France.  The 
new  Republic  was  to  be  founded  on  "  virtue,  if  not  on  terror  "  ;  ^ 
that  is  to  say,  when  terror  became  no  longer  necessary,  "  virtue  " 
was  to  be  made  the  order  of  the  day.  Every  one  was  to  be  sober, 
austere,  incorruptible,  laborious,  and,  above  all,  public-spirited; 
for,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Illuminati,  to  whom  Robes- 
pierre belonged,  the  only  way  to  make  men  happy  was  to  pro- 
duce in  them  a  "just  and  steady  morality" — moraHty,  that 
is  to  say,  as  interpreted  by  the  Illuminati,  which  was  simply 
civism.2 

Now  in  the  opinion  of  St.  Just  nothing  tended  so  much 
both  to  happiness  and  morality  as  the  profession  of  agriculture 
• — "  a  cottage,  a  field,  and  a  plough  "  * — these  were  to  represent 
the  summit  of  every  man's  ambitions.  Accordingly  France  was 
to  be  turned  into  a  vast  agrarian  settlement,  in  which  there  wereil 

^  The  following  explanation  of  the  plan  of  Robespierre  and  St.  Just* 
is  written  on  the  hypothesis  that  these  men  were  sincere — a  point  which' 
is  by  no  means  proved.  It  is  perfectly  possible  that,  as  M.  Aulard  suggests, 
Robespierre  only  professed  Socialist  doctrines  as  a  matter  of  policy — ^in ; 
order  to  bring  himself  into  power.  Nor  must  we  forget  the  letter  found, 
amongst  his  papers  at  his  death  addressed  to  him  by  a  friend  who  urges  1 
him  to  join  him  at  the  place  where  he  has  "  formed  a  sufficient  treasure^ 
to  be  able  to  exist  for  a  long  time,"  and  ending  with  the  words  :  "I  she " 
await  you  with  great  impatience  so  as  to  laugh  with  you  over  the  roU 
you  have  played  in  the  troubles  of  a  nation  as  credulous  as  it  is  eager  for] 
novelty"  [Papiers  trouv&s  chez  Robespierre,  ii.  157)  Whether Robespiei 
was  a  consummate  hypocrite  or  an  honest  fanatic  is,  therefore,  an  open^ 
question — for  the  purpose  of  this  book  I  have  assumed  the  latter. 

2  Dauban,  Paris  en  1794,  p.  463. 

3  Robison's  Proofs  of  a  Conspiracy,  p.  205. 

*  "  Une  charrue,  un  champ,  une  chaumiere  .  .  .  voila  le  bonheur 
{Rapport  de  Si.  Just  sur  les  Factions  de  I' Stranger). 


THE   REIGN  OF  TERROR  423 

to  be  no  rich  and  no  poor,  no  large  properties  and  no  cramped 
dwellings ;  nothing  but  endless  model  cottages  and  small  allot- 
ments tended  by  hard-working  and  virtuous  cultivators.  An 
admirable  arrangement,  no  doubt,  only  unfortunately,  in  order 
to  ensure  its  success,  there  was  to  be  no  personal  liberty  either. 
It  is  doubtful,  indeed,  whether  liberty  and  equaUty  can  exist  ♦ 
together,  for  whilst  liberty  consists  in  allowing  every  man  to 
live  as  he  likes  best,  and  to  do  as  he  will  with  his  own,  equality 
necessitates  a  perpetual  system  of  repression  in  order  to  maintain 
things  at  the  same  dead  level.  For  this  purpose,  according  to* 
St.  Just,  every  department  of  life  must  be  placed  under  State 
control — perhaps  the  most  inexorable  form  of  tyranny  it  is 
possible  to  conceive.  For  to  an  individual  autocrat  some 
appeal  may  be  made,  but  against  the  doors  of  a  system  one  may 
batter  in  vain.  Thus  in  St.  Just's  Republic  every  human  rela- 
tionship was  to  be  regulated  by  the  State.  True,  free  love  was 
to  take  the  place  of  marriage,  but  the  union  thus  contracted 
was  to  be  dissolved  at  the  end  of  seven  years  if  no  children  were 
forthcoming,  whether  the  contracting  parties  desired  to  separate 
or  not.  Parents  were  to  be  forbidden  either  to  strike  or  to 
caress  their  children,  and  the  children  were  to  be  dressed  all 
aUke  in  cotton,  to  live  on  "  roots,  vegetables,  fruit,  with  bread 
and  water,"  and  to  sleep  on  mats  upon  the  floor.  Boys  were 
to  belong  to  their  parents  only  till  the  age  of  five ;  after  that 
they  were  to  become  the  property  of  the  State  until  their  death. 
Every  one  was  to  be  forced  by  law  to  form  friendships,  and  "  to 
declare  publicly  once  a  year  in  the  Temple  who  were  his  friends.'* 
Any  infraction  of  these  laws  was  to  be  punished  by  banishment. 
Thus — 

He  who  strikes  a  child  is  banished. 

If  a  man  commits  a  crime  his  friends  are  banished. 

He    who   says  he  does  not  believe  in  friendship  or  who   has   no 

friends  is  banished. 
He  who  being  drunk  shall  have  said  or  done  evil  is  banished. 
A  man  convicted  of  ingratitude  is  banished  ;  etc.^ 

It  was  an  attempt  to  realize  the  ideal  of  Rousseau — "  If  there 
were  a  people  of  gods  it  would  govern  itself  democratically." 
The  French,  so  far,  were  not  gods,  but  they  were  to  be 
made  so. 

But  could  a  nation  of  25,000,000  be  thus  transformed  ? 
To  the  regenerators  of  France  it  seemed  extremely  doubtful ; 
already  the  country  was  rent  with  dissensions,  and  any  scheme 

^  "  Institutions  "  of  St.  Just,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxv.  275  ;  Dauban. 
Paris  en  1794,  p.  461. 


/ 


424        THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

for  universal  contentment  seemed  impossible  of  attainment. 
Moreover,  the  plan  of  dividing  things  up  into  equal  shares 
presented  an  insuperable  difficulty,  for  it  became  evident  that 
amongst  a  population  of  this  size  there  was  not  enough  money, 
not  enough  property,  not  enough  employment,  not  even  at  this 
moment  enough  bread  to  go  round ;  no  one  would  be  satisfied 
with  his  share,  and  instead  of  universal  contentment,  universal 
dissatisfaction  would  result.  What  was  to  be  done  ?  The 
population  was  too  large  for  the  scheme  of  the  leaders  to  be 
carried  out  successfully,  therefore  either  the  scheme  must  be 
abandoned  or  the  population  must  he  diminished. 

To  this  conclusion  the  surgeons  operating  on  the  State  had 
at  last  been  brought.  In  vain  they  had  amputated  the  gangrened 
Hmb  of  the  nobihty  and  the  clergy,  had  paralysed  the  brain  by 
attacking  the  intellectual  classes,  had  turned  (as  in  ^Esop's 
fable)  upon  the  stomach,  that  is  to  say,  the  industrial  system, 
by  which  the  whole  body  of  the  State  was  fed,  and  denied  it 
sustenance — all  these  means  to  restore  health  to  the  State  had 
failed,  and  they  were  now  reduced  to  a  last  and  desperate 
expedient :  the  size  of  the  whole  body  must  be  reduced.  In 
other  words,  a  plan  of  systematic  depopulation  must  be  carried 
out  all  over  France. 

That  this  idea,  worthy  of  a  mad  Procrustes,  really  existed 
it  is  impossible  to  doubt,  since  it  has  been  revealed  to  us 
by  innumerable  revolutionaries  who  were  behind  the  scenes 
during  the  Terror.  Thus  Courtois,  in  his  report  on  the  papers 
seized  at  Robespierre's  house  after  Thermidor,  wrote  :  "  These 
men,  in  order  to  bring  us  to  the  happiness  of  Sparta,  wished  to 
annihilate  twelve  or  fifteen  millions  of  the  French  people,  and  hoped 
after  this  revolutionary  transfiguration  to  distribute  to  each  one 
a  plough  and  some  land  to  clear,  so  as  to  save  us  from  the  dangers 
of  the  happiness  of  Persepolis." 

Another  intime  of  Robespierre,  the  Marquis  d'Antonelle, 
a  member  of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal,  actually  explained 
the  whole  scheme  in  print  whilst  the  Terror  was  at  its  height. 
BeauUeu,  who  met  him  in  prison,  where  he  was  incarcerated  by 
Robespierre  for  giving  away  the  secret  of  the  leaders,  thus 
describes  the  system  as  revealed  to  him  by  D'Antonelle  :  "  He 
thought,  like  the  greater  number  of  the  revolutionary  clubs, 
that,  in  order  to  institute  the  Republic  on  the  ruins  of  the 
monarchy,  it  was  necessary  to  exterminate  all  those  who  pre- 
ferred the  latter  form  of  government,  and  that  the  former  could 
only  become  democratic  by  the  destruction  of  luxury  and  riches, 
which  form  the  support  of  royalty ;  that  equality  would  never 
be  anything  but  a  chimera  as  long  as  men  did  not  all  enjoy 
approximately  equal  properties  ;   and  finally,  that  such  an  order 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  425 

of  things  could  never  be  established  until  a  third  of  the  population 
had  been  suppressed  ;  this  was  the  general  idea  of  the  fanatics 
of  the  Revolution."  ^ 

About  two  years  later,  that  is  to  say  in  1795,  the  Socialist, 
Gracchus  Babeuf,  employed  at  the  Commune,  gave  a  more 
detailed  account  of  the  scheme  in  his  brochure,  "  Sur  le  Systdme 
de  la  Depopulation,  ou  La  Vie  et  les  Crimes  de  Carrier." 
Of  this  system  Babeuf  declares  that  Robespierre  was  the  prin- 
cipal author  :  "  MaximiHen  and  his  council  had  calculated  that 
a  real  regeneration  of  France  could  only  be  operated  by  means 
of  a  new  distribution  of  territory  and  of  the  men  who  occupied 
it  "  ;  and  he  goes  on  to  show  the  remorseless  logic  by  which 
Robespierre  reached  his  final  conclusion  :  "He  thought  that, 
firstly,  in  the  present  state  of  things  property  had  fallen  into  a 
few  hands,  and  that  the  great  majority  of  the  French  possessed 
nothing ;  secondly,  that  in  allowing  this  state  of  things  to 
continue,  equality  of  rights  would  only  be  a  vain  word  in  spite 
of  which  the  aristocracy  of  owners  of  property  would  always  be 
real,  the  smaller  number  would  always  tyrannize  over  the  great 
mass,  the  majority  would  always  be  the  slave  of  the  minority  .  .  . ; 
thirdly,  that  in  order  to  destroy  this  power  of  the  owners  of 
property,  and  to  take  the  mass  of  citizens  out  of  their  dependence, 
there  was  no  way  but  to  place  all  property  in  the  hands  of  the 
government ;  fourthly,  that  one  could  succeed  without  doubt 
only  by  immolating  the  great  proprietors  .  .  . ;  fifthly,  that, 
besides  this,  depopulation  was  indispensable,  because  the  calcula- 
tion had  been  made  that  the  French  population  was  in  excess  of 
the  resources  of  the  soil  and  of  the  requirements  of  useful  in- 
dustry, that  is  to  say,  that,  with  us,  men  jostled  each  other  too 
much  for  each  to  be  able  to  live  at  ease ;  that  hands  were  too 
numerous  for  the  execution  of  all  works  of  essential  utihty  ,  .  . ; 
sixthly,  finally — and  this  is  the  horrible  conclusion — ^that  since 
the  superabundant  population  could  only  amount  to  so  much 
...  a  portion  of  sans-culottes  must  be  sacrificed,  that  this 
rubbish  could  be  cleared  away  up  to  a  certain  quantity,  and  that 
means  must  be  found  for  doing  it." 

To  this  necessity  Babeuf  attributes  not  only  the  guillotin-  | 
ades,  fusillades,  and  noyades  in  the  provinces,  but  also  the 
engineered  famine  to  which  he  had  drawn  attention  earlier,  L  M 
whilst  the  war,  far  from  providing  a  reason  for  the  Terror,  was 
in  reahty  part  of  the  scheme  of  extermination.  "  What,"  he 
asks,  "  is  this  plan  of  eternal  crusades,  of  repulsing  peace,  of 
universal  conquest,  of  the  conversion  or  subjugation  of  all  kings 
and  aU  peoples,  if  it  is  not  the  hidden  intention  to  prevent  any  one 
coming  back  from  aimongst  that  important  portion  of  the  nation 

*  Beaulieu,  v.  219. 


426         THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 


that  armed  itself  so  generously  in  order  to  chase  the  enemy  from 
French  territory  ?  " 

\  The  evidence  of  Babeuf  is  the  more  valuable  since  he  declares 
himself  to  be  heartily  in  agreement  with  the  Socialistic  schemes 
of  Robespierre  ;  it  is  only  the  means  employed  to  reaUze  them 
that  he  disapproves.  "  On  the  subject  of  extermination,"  he 
naively  concludes,  "  I  am  a  man  of  prejudices  ;  it  is  not  given 
to  every  one  to  rise  to  the  heights  of  Maximilien  Robespierre." 
But  later  on  he  came  to  see  that  Robespierre's  plan  alone  could 
ensure  success,  and  that  if  absolute  equahty  was  to  be  achieved 
the  Terror  must  be  revived.  It  was  for  the  attempt  to  reinstate 
the  regime  of  Robespierre  that  Babeuf  finally  met  his  end. 
However  preposterous  the  expose  of  Babeuf  may  seem,  we  must 
admit  that  it  is  the  only  one  that  explains  the  Terror.  More- 
over, that  this  was  indeed  the  system  on  which  it  was  founded 
does  not  rest  on  the  authority  of  Courtois,  Babeuf,  and  D'An- 

I  tonelle   alone,  the  very  words  "  plan  of  depopulation "  occur 

/  repeatedly  in  the  writings  and  speeches  of  other  contemporaries. 

'  Thus  Prudhomme,  in  describing  the  massacres  of  September, 
explains  the  enormous  proportion  of  "  the  people  "  amongst  the 
victims  as  the  first  evidence  of  this  scheme  :  "  The  plan  of 
butchery  did  not  end  with  the  destruction  of  priests  and  nobles 
.  .  .  but  from  that  date  there  existed  a  plan  of  depopulation 
conceived  by  Marat,  Robespierre  .  .  .,  etc.,  and  this  is  what  the 
method  of  the  Terror  has  proved."  ^ 

Later  on,  at  the  trials  of  Fouquier  Tinville  and  Carrier, 
several  witnesses  referred  to  the  same  scheme :  Grandpre  of 
the  police  declared  that  the  most  powerful  means  employed  by 
Robespierre  was  "  a  vast  system  of  depopulation  "  ;  ^  Ardenne, 
Deputy  PubUc  Accuser,  said  the  plan  was  "  to  clear  out  the 
prisons  in  order  to  depopulate  France,"  ^  and  in  his  summing  up 
to  the  president  and  judges  of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal 
stated  that  "  Robespierre,  St.  Just,  Couthon,  and  others,  had 
expected  to  depopulate  France,  and  above  all  to  make  genius, 
talents,  honour,  and  industry  to  disappear " ;  *  Trinchard, 
member  of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal,  ended  his  evidence  with 
the  words :  "  Such  was  the  system  of  depopulation  organized 
by  the  last  tyrants,  and  in  order  to  make  sure  of  its  execution 
they  employed  the  most  immoral  men  "  ;  ^  indeed,  Carrier  him- 
self admitted  that  "  this  plan  of  destruction  existed."  ^    Carrier, 

*  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  R&voluiion,  iv.  112. 
'  Proems  de  Fouquier  Tinville,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxv.  45. 
'  Ibid.  p.  44.  *  Ibid,  xxxiv.  271.  '  Ibid.  p.  337. 

*  Proems  de  Carrier,  ibid.  p.  208.     For  other  contemporary  referenc 
to  "the  plan  of  depopulation"  see  Pages,  ii.  89;   Deux  Amis,  xii.  238; 
Memoires  de  Senart,  edition  de  Lescure,  p.  84  :   "  this  great  system  q\ 


1 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  427 

Fouquier,  Freron,  Lebon,  and  the  other  monsters  were  therefore 
only  acting  on  orders  from  headquarters  when  they  set  out  to 
decimate  Paris  and  the  provinces,  and  the  terrible  phrase  of 
Carrier,  "  Let  us  make  a  cemetery  of  France  rather  than  not 
regenerate  her  after  our  manner,"  ^  simply  epitomized  the 
philosophy  of  Robespierre  on  which  the  system  of  the  Comite 
de  Salut  PubUc  was  founded. 

It  was  in  the  hall  of  the  committee  at  the  Tuileries  that  the 
great  scheme  of  depopulation  was  discussed,  and  orders  were 
issued  to  the  revolutionary  agents  in  the  different  provinces. 
Prudhomme  has  vividly  described  the  scenes  that  took  place 
nightly  in  the  gorgeous  salon  at  the  end  of  a  long  dark  corridor, 
where,  amidst  mirrors  and  bronzes,  beneath  gilded  ceiUngs  and 
guttering  chandeUers,  the  "  Decemvirs  "  took  their  ease  on  soft 
armchairs  and  luxurious  sofas,  whUst  in  the  background  side- 
boards laden  with  rare  wines  and  deUcate  fare  awaited  them.^ 
Around  the  great  oval  table,  covered  with  a  green  cloth,  the 
members  of  the  committee — BiUaud,  Collot,  Couthon,  Barere — 
gathered  merrily,  "  not  precisely  drunk,  but  spurred  on  by  wine 
and  good  cheer,  heated  by  Uqueurs  "  ;  only  when  the  bilious  face 
of  the  Incorruptible  appeared  amongst  them  a  chiU  feU  over  the 
party,  and  there  was  less  laughter  whilst  districts  were  marked 
out  for  destruction  and  human  heads  were  counted  up  Uke  scores 
at  cards. 

"  It  was  at  these  times,"  says  Prudhomme,  "that  they  gave 
their  secret  orders  to  the  chief  scoundrels  in  their  confidence. 
It  was  there  that  General  Rossignol  went  to  receive  the  plan  for 
setting  La  Vendee  in  a  blaze.  It  was  there  that  Carrier  organized 
the  noyades  of  Nantes.  It  is  there  that  Couthon  said,  laughing, 
before  he  started  for  Lyon,  '  I  have  only  a  head  and  a  body ; 
well,  nevertheless,  it  is  I  who  wiU  give  the  first  blow  of  the  hammer 
to  the  second  town  in  the  empire  of  France,  in  order  to  destroy 
it.'  It  is  there  that  they  organized  the  conspiracies  in  the 
prisons,  and  that  they  drew  up  that  plan  of  depopulation  carried 
out  during  fifteen  months.  A  map  of  France  was  spread  out 
continually  before  the  eyes  of  the  Decemvirs  as  weU  as  a  table 
of  the  population  of  each  Commune ;  there  they  decimated 
towns  and  villages — *  we  must  have  so  many  heads  in  such  and 
such  a  department/  .  .  .  AU  the  calamities  of  France,  all  the 

devastation  and  of  depopulation "  (the  Risumi  du  Proems  de  Fouquier 
Tinville,  by  Cambon  de  Gard)  ;  "  the  fearful  system  of  depopulation  de- 
vised by  the  faction  of  Robespierre  "  {Le  Tribunal  Revolutionnaire,  by 
E.  Campardon,  ii.  297)  ;  also  Paganel,  Essai  Hisioriqice,  ii.  350,  359,  381. 

^  Evidence  of  Lamarie,  Proces  de  Carrier,  Buchez  et  Roux,  p.  204. 

2  Description  confirmed  by  the  contemporary  Phihppe  Morice  in  his 
'  Souvenirs,"  Revue  des  Questions  historiques,  for  October  1892. 


y 


428        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

crimes  of  the  Revolution,  originated  in  the  salon  of  the  Comite 
de  Salut  PubUc."  ^ 

The  precise  proportion  of  the  population  it  would  be  necessary 
to  suppress  formed  the  subject  of  cahn  mathematical  calculation 
I  /  amongst  the  leaders.  According  to  LareveUiere  Lepeaux,  it 
«'  was  Jean  Bon  St.  Andre  who  first  openly  admitted  the  existence 
of  the  scheme,  and  at  the  time  that  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal 
was  instituted — that  is  to  say,  in  the  spring  of  1793 — declared 
in  the  tribune  of  the  Convention  that  "  in  order  to  establish  the 
RepubUc  securely  in  France,  the  population  must  be  reduced 
by  more  than  half."  ^  Beside  this  estimate  D'Antonelle's  pro- 
posal to  reduce  by  one-third  only  seems  comparatively  moderate. 

Other  leading  revolutionaries  considered,  however,  that  far 
more  drastic  measures  were  necessary;  thus  Collot  d'Herbois 
held  that  twelve  to  fifteen  millions  of  the  French  must  be  de- 
stroyed,^ Carrier  declared  that  the  nation  must  be  reduced  to 
six  millions,*  Guffroy  in  his  journal  expressed  the  opinion  that 
only  five  million  people  should  be  allowed  to  survive,^  whilst 
Robespierre  was  reported  to  have  said  that  a  population  of  two 
millions  would  be  more  than  enough.^  Pages  and  Fantin  Deso- 
doards  assert,  however,  that  eight  millions  was  the  figure  generally 
agreed  on  by  the  leaders.' 

The  plan  of  the  Terrorists  was  not,  therefore,  as  is  popularly 
supposed,  to  sacrifice  a  small  minority  for  the  happiness  of  the 
great  majority,  but  to  annihilate  an  immense  proportion  of  the 
nation  in  order  to  ensure  a  contented  residuum. 

Such,  then,  was  the  system  of  the  Terror,  and  however  atrocious 
it  may  appear  we  must  admit  that  it  was  founded  on  a  perfectly 
logical  premise — ^the  conviction  that  the  smaller  the  population 
the  better  for  democracy. 

It  is  not,  therefore,  the  theory  of  the  Terrorists  that  must 
be  regarded  as  monstrous,  but  its  application.  For  to  admit 
that  a  certain  end  may  be  desirable  of  attainment  is  one  thing ; 
to  believe  that  any  means  are  justifiable  in  order  to  attain  it  is 
quite  another  matter.  The  great  criminals  of  history  were  not 
the  people  inspired  by  the  worst  motives,  but  the  people  for 

1  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  v.  1 1 1 . 

*  Mimoires  de  LareveUiere  Lipeaux,  i.  150. 

^  RisumS  du  Procds  de  Fouquier  Tinville,  by  Cambon  de  Gard, 
Substitut  de  I'Accusateur  Public,  in  Le  Tribunal  rSvolutionnaire,  by  E. 
Campardon,  ii.  297. 

*  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  ii.  9. 

^  Le  Rougyff,  No.  8.     ("  Rougyff  "  is  an  anagram  of  Guffroy.) 

*  Letter  to  Robespierre  from  one  who  had  been  his  friend  :  "  What  ? 
reduce  France  to  two  million  men,  and  '  that  is  still  ttoo  many,'  you  said  I  " 
{Papiers  trouvSs  chez  Robespierre,  ii.  153). 

'  Pag^s,  ii.  89;  Fantin  Desodoards,  iv.  131. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  429 

whom  this  distinction  did  not  exist.  Catherine  de  Medici — ^to 
whom  Robespierre  bore  a  striking  resemblance — undoubtedly 
thought  it  would  be  for  the  peace  of  France  if  the  Huguenots 
ceased  to  exist,  and  therefore  planned  the  Massacre  of  St. 
Barthelemy ;  Robespierre  may  have  been  actuated  by  pre- 
cisely the  same  laudable  intention  in  organizing  the  massacres 
of  the  Terror.  In  both  cases  the  attitude  of  mind  that  made 
this  action  possible  can  be  traced  to  the  same  cause — ^the  doctrine 
that  has  produced  all  the  worst  atrocities  in  the  history  of  the 
civilized  world — ^namely,  that  "  the  end  justifies  the  means." 
Whether  it  be  under  a  Torquemada,  a  Medici,  a  Robespierre,  or 
a  Wilhelm  II.,  the  community  or  nation  which  accepts  the  belief 
that  everything  is  justifiable — lying,  duplicity,  treachery,  and!  y 
murder — ^in  order  to  benefit  the  cause  it  has  embraced,  sells  itsl 
soul  to  the  devil.  To  hold  this  doctrine  is  not  only  to  repudiate  ? 
Christianity,  but  to  strike  at  the  very  root  of  aU  morality.  It 
was  therefore  natural  that  the  Terror,  founded  on  this  Uterally 
diabolical  doctrine,  should  now  enter  on  that  hideous  phase  in  its 
work  of  destruction — ^the  desecration  of  the  churches. 

THE  DECHRISTIANIZATION  OF  FRANCE 

The  leaders  of  the  movement  that  was  now  directed  against 
religion  all  over  France  belonged  to  a  faction  of  the  Cordeliers 
Club,  led  by  Hebert.  Hebert  himself,  who  figured  on  the  cover 
of  his  journal,  the  Fhre  Duchesne,  as  a  rugged  stove-merchant 
with  a  large  pipe  in  his  mouth  and  a  heavy  moustache,  was  in 
reaUty  a  dapper  young  man,  clean  shaven,  well  powdered,  and 
sybaritic  in  his  tastes.  The  coarse  language  and  oaths  of  the 
gutter  that  characterized  his  literary  compositions  were  as 
foreign  to  his  nature  as  the  revolutionary  frenzy  he  affected; 
for,  although  it  was  on  Hebert  that  the  mantle  of  Marat  had 
descended  when  the  Ami  du  Peuple  ceased  at  the  death  of 
its  author,  Hebert  had  none  of  Marat's  sombre  ferocity.  On 
the  contrary,  Hebert  was  filled  with  a  riotous  joie  de  vivre. 
During  the  "  great  angers "  he  depicted  in  the  Pdre  Duchesne 
he  was  enjoying  "  the  sweetest  and  most  peaceful  of  lives  " ;  ^ 
his  sanguinary  tirades  against  the  Queen,  the  Girondins,  "la 
Reine  Roland,"  were  penned  beside  the  cradle  of  his  infant 
daughter.  Hebert  was  an  Anarchist  by  temperament  rather 
than  by  poUcy ;  the  prototype  of  the  modem  Apache,  he  would 
gaily  have  set  Paris  in  a  blaze  for  the  excitement  of  seeing  it 
burning.  Revolutions  inevitably  bring  these  sort  of  characters  to 
the  surface — creatures  endowed  with  the  passion  for  destruction 

1  Le  Pere  Duchesne,  by  Paul  d'Estree,  p.  69 :  "  Je  m^ne  la  vie  la  plus 
douce  et  la  plus  paisible  "  (Letter  from  Hebert  written  in  1792). 


430        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

that  human  nature  shares  in  common  with  the  ape,  who  love 
to  bum  and  spoil  and  desecrate  without  any  ulterior  motive. 
It  was  for  this  reason  that  Hebert  ended  by  incurring  the  ani- 
mosity of  Robespierre.  The  Tiger  Cat  only  desired  a  period  of 
anarchy  in  order  to  estabUsh  his  own  domination,  and  naturally 
any  one  who,  like  Hebert,  enjoyed  anarchy  for  anarchy's  sake 
could  not  be  allowed  to  go  on  indefinitely  wrecking  everything  ; 
the  time  must  come  when  it  would  be  necessary  to  suppress 
him.  Already  the  green  eyes  were  watching  him  suspiciously, 
and  it  was  therefore  not  Robespierre  who  in  the  Comite  de 
Salut  Public  supported  the  anti-reUgious  movement  of  the 
Hebertistes,  but  the  contemptible  comedian  Collot  d'Herbois. 
Amongst  the  followers  of  Hebert  were  first  and  foremost 
Chaumette,  once  a  cabin-boy,  now  procurator  of  the  Commune 
and  king  of  the  Paris  rabble  ;  Vincent,  secretary  to  the  Ministry 
of  War,  a  creature  of  such  extraordinary  ferocity  that  in  his 
fits  of  rage  he  was  known  to  devour  raw  the  flesh  of  animals; 
Momoro,  a  printer;  Anacharsis  Clootz,  of  whom  more  anon; 
and  Ronsin,  a  general  in  the  RepubUcan  army  who  excelled  in 
the  raising  of  disorderly  crowds.  Ronsin's  following  inspired 
even  its  leader  with  disgust ;  when  some  one  complained  to  him 
of  the  excesses  it  committed  in  the  streets  and  at  the  theatres, 
the  outrages  on  women,  the  robberies  and  violence  that  marked 
its  passage,  Ronsin  answered  cynically,  "  What  do  you  want  me 
to  do  ?  I  know,  like  you,  that  it  is  a  collection  of  brigands,  but 
I  have  need  of  these  rascals  for  my  revolutionary  army — find 
me  decent  folk  who  are  willing  to  do  the  job  !  "  ^ 

According  to  Prudhomme  the  Hebertistes  were  formerly 
Orleanistes  ;  at  any  rate  their  private  Ufe  was  far  from  consistent 
with  the  principles  of  RepubUcanism  and  equaUty  that  they 
professed.  Whilst  proclaiming  the  necessity  of  Spartan  simplicity 
to  counteract  the  famine  they  led  a  riotous  Epicurean  existence, 
and  freely  indulged  their  tastes  for  rare  vintages  and  fiery 
liquors.^  It  was  thus  largely  under  the  influence  of  drink 
that  they  now  embarked  on  their  scheme  of  dechristianization. 

On  the  night  of  the  6th  to  the  7th  of  November,  Hebert, 
Chaumette,  and  Momoro  went  to  the  "  Constitutional "  bishop 
of  Paris,  Gobel,  and  ordered  him  to  abjure  pubUcly  the  CathoUc 
religion.  "  You  will  do  this,"  they  said  to  him,  "  or  you  are  a 
dead  man."  ^  The  wretched  old  man  threw  himself  at  their 
feet  and  begged  to  be  spared  this  ordeal,  but  the  Hebertistes 
were  inexorable,  and  on  the  following  day  Gobel,  terrorized  into 
submission,  presented  himself  at  the  Convention  and  declared 
that  "  the  will  of  the  Sovereign  People  "  had  now  become  "  his 

*  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  v.  131.  ^  Ibid.  v.  140. 

*  Le  Pere  Duchesne,  by  Paul  d'Estree,  p.  345  ;  Beaulieu,  v.  241. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  431 

supreme  law,"  and  since  the  Sovereign  so  willed  it  there  should 
be  no  other  worship  than  that  of  "  liberty  and  holy  equaUty." 
Accordingly  he  now  deposited  his  cross,  ring,  and  other  insignia 
upon  the  President's  desk,  and  put  on  the  red  cap  of  Hberty. 
Several  of  his  vicars  followed  his  example  amidst  the  enthusiastic 
acclamations  of  the  Assembly. 

This  grotesque  scene  gave  the  signal  for  the  desecration  of 
the  churches  throughout  Paris  and  the  provinces.  At  Notre 
Dame,  stripped  of  its  crucifixes  and  images  of  the  saints,  the 
Feast  of  Reason  took  place  on  the  loth  of  November.  A  temple  \/ 
was  raised  in  the  aisle  on  the  summit  of  a  mountain,  from  which 
shone  forth  the  "  Hght  of  truth,"  and  amidst  the  strains  of  the 
"  Marseillaise  "  and  "  f  a  ira  !  "  the  Goddess  of  Reason,  personified 
by  Mile.  Maillard,  an  opera-singer,  dressed  in  a  blue  mantle  and 
wearing  the  red  cap  of  Uberty,  was  borne  in  procession  and 
solemnly  enthroned  to  the  cries  of  "  Vive  la  Republique  !  Vive 
la  Montague  !  " 

At  the  Church  of  St.  Sulpice,  during  a  ceremony  of  the  same 
kind,  Joachim  Ceyrat,  the  director  of  the  September  massacre 
at  the  Convent  des  Cannes,  ascended  the  pulpit  and  cried  out, 
"  Here  am  I  in  this  pulpit,  from  which  lies  have  so  long  been 
told  to  the  sovereign  people,  making  them  believe  that  there  is 
a  God  who  sees  all  their  actions.  If  this  God  exists,  let  Him 
thunder,  and  may  one  of  His  thunderbolts  crush  me  I  "  Then 
looking  up  to  the  heavens  defiantly,  he  added,  "  He  does  not 
thunder,  so  His  existence  is  a  chimera  !  "  ^ 

Another  enthusiastic  exponent  of  materialism  was  the 
famous  Marquis  de  Sade,  the  moral  maniac  to  whom  we  owe 
the  adjective  "  Sadie."  The  atrocities  this  most  vicious  of  all 
aristocrats  had  committed  towards  poor  women  of  the  people 
in  no  way  precluded  him  from  an  honoured  place  in  the  ranks 
of  "  democracy."  Sade  was  a  follower  of  Marat  and  a  member 
of  the  Section  des  Piques  to  which  Robespierre  belonged.  An 
address  from  this  section  drawn  up  by  Sade  himself  was  now 
presented  to  the  Convention,  demanding  that  in  all  the  churches 
the  cult  of  the  new  divinities.  Reason  and  Virtue,  should  be 
substituted  for  the  worship  of  "  the  Jewish  slave  "  and  "  the 
adulterous  woman,  the  courtesan  of  Galilee."  This  petition  was 
accorded  "  honourable  mention "  by  the  Convention,  which 
ordered  it  to  be  sent  to  the  Committee  of  Public  Instruction. 

But  it  was  Clootz  who  played  the  leading  part  in  the  cam- 
paign against  reUgion.  Anacharsis  Clootz,  a  Prussian  baron, 
distinguished  himself  throughout  the  revolutionary  movement 
by  hjs  plan  of  a  "  Universal  Repubhc "  and  his  hatred  of 
Christianity.  The  apostle  of  "  Intemationahsm  "  as  developed 
*  Journal  des  Lois,  du  14  Prairial,  An  iii. 


432         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

in  the  doctrines  of  the  lUuminati,  he  said  neariy  everything  that 
Intemationahsts  propound  to-day  as  the  last  word  in  modem 
thought.  Briefly,  all  nations  of  the  earth  were  to  be  welded 
into  one  as  members  of  "  the  only  nation  "  {la  nation  unique), 
which,  by  a  play  on  the  word  german,  that  is  to  say,  "  closely 
aUied,"  he  suggested,  with  an  ingenuity  worthy  of  his  race, 
should  be  known  as  "  the  immutable  empire  of  Great  Germany, 
the  Universal  RepubHc."  ^  By  way  of  illustration  he  had 
presented  himself  at  the  Legislative  Assembly,  under  the  title 
of  "  the  orator  of  the  human  race,"  at  the  head  of  a  strange 
procession  composed  of  specimens  from  all  available  races — 
Germans,  Swedes,  Russians,  Poles,  Turks,  and  negroes — whom 
he  had  hired  for  the  occasion,  in  dresses  suited  to  the  part,  but, 
since  he  omitted  to  pay  them  as  arranged,  he  found  his  own 
door  next  day  beset  by  a  furious  crowd,^  which  seemed  somewhat 
^  to  disprove  his  theory  that  "  the  RepubUc  of  the  human  race 
;  will  never  have  any  dispute  with  any  one  since  there  can  be  no 
communication  between  the  planets."  ^ 

In  all  this  Clootz  shows  himself  simply  an  amiable  madman ; 
it  is  only  on  the  subject  of  religion  that  he  grows  violent.  The 
second  title  he  had  bestowed  upon  himself  was  that  of  "  the 
personal  enemy  of  Jesus  Christ."  Christianity  filled  him  with 
an  almost  epileptic  fury.  "  Religion,"  he  wrote,  "  is  a  social 
disease  which  cannot  be  too  quickly  cured.  A  reUgious  man  is 
a  depraved  animal ;  he  resembles  those  beasts  that  are  only 
kept  to  be  shorn  and  roasted  for  the  benefit  of  merchants 
and  butchers."  *  "  The  People,"  he  declared,  "  is  the  Sovereign 
and  the  God  of  the  world ;  France  is  the  centre  of  the  People- 
God  ;  only  fools  can  believe  in  any  other  God,  in  a  Supreme 
;  Being."  ^ 

It  was  in  this  strain  that  Clootz  addressed  the  Convention 
on  the  17th  of  November,  and  he  ended  his  discourse  by  pre- 
senting the  Assembly  with  a  copy  of  a  treatise  he  had  written 
on  the  subject.     The  Convention  thereupon  passed  a  decree  : 

*  Speech  of  Clootz  to  the  Assembly,  September  9,  1792  ;  Moniteur, 
xiii.  660.    See  also  La  RSpublique  Universelle,  by  Anacharsis  Clootz. 

2  Letters  of  Helen  Maria  Williams  (1795),  p.  140. 

'  Speech  of  Anacharsis  Clootz  to  the  Convention,  April  26,  1793. 

*  La  RSpublique  Universelle,  p.  27. 

*  Clootz  has  obtained  at  least  one  panegyrist  amongst  posterity,  and 
at  the  same  time  a  convert  to  his  theories  of  anti-patriotism.  Thus  at 
that  most  tragic  date  in  the  history  of  France — 1871 — a  Frenchman  could 
be  found  to  write  these  words  :  "  Clootz  appears  Hke  the  angel  of  the 
Revolution,  the  seal  on  the  alhance  between  France  and  the  nations.  The 
greatest  figure  of  the  French  Revolution  was  a  German.  Man  of  vast  Utopias 
and  limitless  horizons,  this  apostle  of  universal  fraternity  was  the  first  to 
pass  over  the  Rhine  with  the  olive-branch  of  peace  "  {Les  Hibertistes,  by 
G.  Tridon). 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  433 

"  Anacharsis  Clootz,  deputy  to  the  Convention,  having  paid  homage 
with  one  of  his  works  entitled  The  Certainty  of  the  Proofs  of 
Mahomedanism,  a  work  that  sets  forth  the  nuUity  of  all  religions, 
the  Assembly  accepts  this  homage,  accords  it  honourable  mention, 
and  orders  it  to  be  inserted  in  the  bulletin,  and  to  be  sent  to  all 
the  departments  (of  France)." 

Ever5rwhere  in  Paris  and  the  provinces  a  perfect  orgy  of 
blasphemy  and  desecration  now  began;  BacchanaUan  feasts 
took  place  in  the  churches,  triumphal  cars  carrying  street- 
walkers dressed  in  chasubles,  and  donkeys  laden  with  sacred 
relics,  benitiers,  and  church  ornaments,  passed  through  the  streets  ; 
crucifixes  and  breviaries  were  cast  into  bonfires  amidst  cries  of 
"  Perish  for  ever  the  memory  of  the  priests  !  Perish  for  ever  £  H' 
Christian  superstition !  Long  live  the  sublime  religion  of  •'<] 
Nature  !  "  ^ 

But  it  was  not  by  "  the  people  "  these  revolting  scenes  were  /^. 
enacted ;  the  people  everywhere  bitterly  resented  them.^  The  "=• 
closing  of  the  village  churches  indeed  caused  so  much  indignation 
that  the  Convention  began  to  fear  revolt,  whilst  in  Paris  the 
women  of  the  market  overwhelmed  the  Pire  Duchesne  with 
insults,  and  one  of  the  hawkers  of  this  journal  complained  to 
the  "  Society  of  the  Friends  of  the  Revolution  "  that  he  had 
been  surrounded  by  these  women,  who  covered  him  with  mud, 
and  seemed  disposed  to  strangle  him.^  When  by  order  of 
Chaumette  the  shrine  of  Sainte-Genevieve,  the  patron  saint  of 
Paris,  was  thrown  into  the  flames  on, the  Place  de  Greve,  the 
outrage  infuriated  those  whom  the  atheists  described  as  the 
"  ignorant  and  superstitious  populace."  * 

The  truth  is,  that  the  whole  of  the  anti-Christian  movement  |/ 
was  the  direct  work  of  the  Illuminati.     Anacharsis  Clootz,  says 
Robison,  "  who  was  a  keen  lUuminatus,  came  to  Paris  for  the 
express  purpose   of  forwarding    the  great  work,    and,  by  in- 
triguing in  the  style  of  the  Order,  he  got  himself  made  one  of 
the  Representatives  of  the   Nation.  .  .  ."     At   the  same  time 
another  German  lUuminatus,  Leuchtsenring,  was  also  employed    ^y 
as  secretary  or  clerk  in  one  of  the  bureaux  of  the  Assembly.     The  ^ 
inscription  put  up  by  order  of  the  Government  in  the  cemeteries 
all  over  France,  "  Death  is  an  eternal  sleep,"  had  always  been 
the  most  cherished  maxim  of  the  Illuminati.     There  was  nothing 
that  the   people  abhorred  more  than  this;  to  them   the  beUef 
in   immortality  seemed  the  only  consolation  for   the  miseries 
of   existence.     "  Yesterday,"  a   government   spy  reported,   "  I 
talked  for  an  hour  with  a  Jacobin,  a  lemonade-seller,  who  begins 

'        *  The  Great  French  Revolution,  by  Kropotkin,  p.  523. 
*  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxx.  42,  43.  ^  Ibid.  xxx.  p.  182. 

*  Ibid.  p.  T42  ;  Schmidt,  ii.  63. 

2  F 


434        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

to  feel  the  weight  of  years.  He  preached  to  me  the  doctrine  of 
Christ  .  .  .  and  explained  .  .  .  that  it  was  very  comforting  for 
a  man  of  a  certain  age  to  be  able  to  see  in  the  future  another 
life  awaiting  him.  The  philosopher,  he  added,  had  other  com- 
pensations, but  for  us  poor  folks  .  .  .  !  "  ^  All  such  hopes,  all 
such  beUefs,  were  now  to  be  torn  from  the  people ;  not  content 
with  destroying  the  body,  the  regenerators  of  France  set  out  to 
destroy  the  soul. 

THE  TERROR  IN  PARIS 

The  campaign  against  Christianity  heralded  the  Reign  of 
Terror  in  the  capital.  In  the  same  autumn  of  1793  the  series 
of  executions  began  that  was  to  continue  without  interruption, 
and  in  ever-increasing  numbers,  until  the  9th  of  Thermidor.  In 
order  to  carry  out  the  great  plan  of  depopulation  the  Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal  had  been  reconstructed  at  the  end  of  September 
and  placed  entirely  under  the  control  of  the  Comite  de  Salut 
PubUc  and  its  subordinate,  the  Comite  de  Surete  Generale,  which 
dealt  directly  with  the  police  of  Paris.^  Instead  of  twelve  jury- 
men, sixty  were  now  elected ;  amongst  these  figured  three  tailors, 
five  carpenters,  a  seller  of  sabots,  a  bootmaker,  etc.^ — a  fact  that 
should  be  noted,  since  it  marks  the  first  appearance  of  men 
of  the  people  in  the  Revolutionary  Government.  Hitherto  it 
had  been  by  aristocrats  or  middle-class  men  that  the  attacks  on 
the  aristocracy  and  bourgeoisie  had  been  organized;  now  that 
the  people  were  to  become  the  victims,  it  was  men  of  the  people 
who  were  called  in  to  carry  out  the  work. 

But  the  people  were  not  the  first  to  suffer.  In  Paris  as  in 
the  provinces,  as  indeed  in  all  revolutions,  the  task  of  demoHtion 
began  at  the  top  and  descended  by  gradual  stages  to  the  lower 
strata  of  the  population.  At  the  head  of  the  Ust  of  victims 
condemned  by  the  Tribunal  of  Blood  stands  "  the  widow  Capet." 
Her  trial,  which  began  on  the  14th  of  October,  does  not,  however, 
enter  within  the  scope  of  this  history ;  Marie  Antoinette,  unUk( 
Louis  XVI.,  had  played  no  part  in  the  popular  Revolutioi 
Constantly  depicted  to  the  people  as  a  "  Messalina "  or 
"  Medici,"  whilst  to  her  the  people  were  persistently  represente 
by  the  revolutionaries  as  tigers  thirsting  for  her  blood,  aU  underi 
standing  between  them  had  become  impossible,  and  so  through-^ 
out  the  Revolution  her  attitude  towards  the  people  was  merel] 
passive. 

Yet  in  reality  the  people  did  not  hate  her.     During  thos 
last  terrible  weeks  at  the  Conciergerie,  poor  women  of  the  marke^ 

1  Schmidt,  ii.  10.  *  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxiv.  467. 

3  Le  Tribunal  R4voluiionnaire,  by  G.  Lenotre,  p.  130. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  435 

came  to  the  prison  bringing  her  their  finest  peaches  and  melons, 
and  recognizing  her  gaoler  when  he  came  to  buy  at  their  stalls, 
handed  him  their  best  fruits  and  poultry,  saying  with  tears, 
**  For  our  Queen  !  "  ^ 

Others  displayed  still  more  energy  on  her  behalf.  Who  at 
the  last  moment,  asks  M,  Lenotre,  "  were  the  RoyaUsts  who 
risked  their  lives  to  rescue  the  Queen  ?  A  shoe-black,  a  pastry- 
cook, three  hairdressers,  a  pork-butcher,  several  charwomen, 
two  masons,  an  old-clothes  seller,  a  lemonade-seller,  a  wine- 
merchant,  a  locksmith,  and  a  tobacconist."  Four  of  these 
heroic  people — two  men  and  two  women — ^paid  for  their  devotion 
with  their  heads.^ 

When  at  last  Marie  Antoinette  appeared  before  the  Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal,  broken  and  white-haired,  her  eyes  dimmed 
with  long  weeping,  even  the  tricoteuses  of  Robespierre  were 
stirred  to  pity,  and  it  was  for  this  reason  that  Hebert  devised 
his  infamous  accusation  concerning  the  little  Dauphin.  "  A 
week  after  the  Queen's  trial,"  says  Prudhomme,  "  I  said  to 
that  monster  Hebert,  '  You  must  be  a  great  scoundrel  to  have 
accused  her  of  so  horrible  a  crime  ! '  He  answered,  '  Having 
noticed  from  the  beginning  of  the  trial  that  the  public  seemed  to 
take  an  interest  in  this  woman,  and  for  fear  she  should  escape  us, 
I  at  once  drew  up  my  denunciation  and  passed  it  to  the  President, 
in  order  to  set  the  multitude  against  her  /  '  "  ^ 

But  Hebert  and  his  kind  had  not  succeeded  in  degrading 
the  populace  to  their  own  level.  The  Queen's  immortal  protest 
produced  so  immense  an  effect  on  the  women  of  the  tribunes 
that  for  some  moments  the  proceedings  were  interrupted.* 

This  faux  pas  of  Hebert's  infuriated  Robespierre.  The  day 
after  the  Queen's  trial,  says  Vilate,  "  Barere  had  ordered  a  dinner 
at  Venua's  to  which  he  had  invited  Robespierre,  St.  Just,  and 
me.  .  .  .  Seated  around  the  table  in  a  secret  room  well  closed, 
they  asked  me  for  some  features  of  the  scene  that  took  place 
at  the  trial  of  the  Austrian.  I  did  not  forget  that  of  outraged 
nature  when,  Hebert  accusing  Antoinette  of  obscenities  with  her 
son  of  eleven  years  old,  she  turned  with  dignity  to  the  people : 
'  I  appeal  to  all  mothers  present  and  to  their  consciences  to 
declare  whether  there  is  one  who  does  not  shudder  at  such 
horrors  ! '  Robespierre,  struck  by  this  answer  as  by  an  electric 
shock,  broke  his  plate  with  his  fork  :    *  That  imbecile  Hebert ! 

1  La  Captivite  et  le  Mori  de  Marie  Antoinette,  by  G.  Lenotre,  pp. 
244,  281. 

2  Le  Vrai  Chevalier  de  Maison  Rouge,  by  G.  Lenotre,  p.  97. 

*  Prudhomme,  Histoire  des  Revolutions,  vii.  203  (quoted  by  Granier  de 
Cassagnac,  Causes  de  la  Revolution,  ii.  56). 

*  Le  Tribunal  Revolutionnaire,  by  G.  Lenotre,  p.  141. 


436         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

As  if  it  were  not  enough  that  she  should  be  a  Messalina,  but  he 
must  make  her  out  to  be  an  Agrippina  also,  and  provide  her  at 
her  last  moment  with  this  triumph  of  pubUc  sympathy.'  Every 
one  appeared  stupefied."  ^ 

Indeed,  so  thoroughly  had  popular  feeUng  been  aroused  in 
the  Queen's  favour  that  Hebert  found  it  necessary  to  warn  his 
readers  against  the  women  who  had  planned  to  call  out  for 
mercy  when  she  mounted  the  scaffold.  But,  as  at  the  execution 
of  the  King,  the  revolutionary  leaders  were  prepared  for  any 
attempts  at  rescue ;  30,000  armed  men  Uned  the  streets,  and 
cannons  were  placed  all  along  the  route  between  the  Con- 
ciergerie  and  the  Place  de  la  Revolution.  Beside  the  cart, 
drawn  by  one  gaunt  white  horse,  that  bore  the  Queen  to  her 
death,  rode  Grammont,  the  miserable  comedian  employed  by 
PhiUppe  d' Orleans  in  the  earlier  outbreaks  of  the  Revolution, 
he  who  had  drunk  the  blood  of  the  Swiss  on  the  loth  of  August 
at  the  Tuileries,  and  now  with  revolting  brutahty  cried  out  to 
the  people  as  the  pitiable  procession  approached  the  scaffold, 
**  Voici  rinfame  Antoinette !  Elle  est  f.  .  .  .,  mes  amis !  " 
Phihppe  had  at  last  had  his  revenge.  He  was  to  follow  the 
szime  road  himself  less  than  a  month  later. 

On  the  whole  the  people  showed  themselves  indifferent  to  the 
execution  of  the  Queen,  but  they  were  not  indifferent  to  the  fate  of 
the  rest  of  the  Royal  Family — Louis  XVII.,  his  sister  and  his  aunt, 
Madame  Elizabeth,  who  remained  in  the  Temple.  It  seems  that 
Robespierre  contemplated  killing  them  aU  at  this  crisis,  as  the 
following  significant  passage  in  a  letter  addressed  to  him  by  one 
of  his  friends  testifies.  According  to  Robespierre's  desires,  says 
this  naive  correspondent,  his  agents  have  "  sounded  the  people 
on  the  subject  "  by  means  of  circulating  the  rumour  that  both 
the  Uttle  Capets  had  died.  "  But  we  had  the  grief  to  see  our 
expectations  disappointed  in  this  direction.  No  one  was  taken 
in  by  our  Uttle  ruse ;    every  one  said,  as  if  with  one  accord, 

*  Ah  !  if  those  two  children  there  are  dead,  they  have  been  well 
helped  (to  die).'  And  all  appeared — ^let  us  say  the  word — ^indig- 
nant. Leave  there  then,  beUeve  me,  the  Uttle  Capets  and  their 
aunt ;  even  poUcy  demands  it,  for  if  you  kiUed  the  boy  the 
crowned  brigands  would  instantly  recognize  as  King  of  Fran( 

*  le  gros  Monsieur  de  Ham '   (the  Comte  de  Provence)."  ^    If 
was  thus  reaUy  the  people  who  stood  between  the  poor  childre 
in  the  Temple  and  their  murderers  ! 

After  the  Queen  foUowed  the  Girondins.    On  the  last  day 

*  Causes  secrites  de  la  Revolution,  by  Vilate. 

2  Letter  from  one  who  signs  himself  "  Niveau,"  found  amongst  Rob« 
pierre's  papers  after   his   death   {Papier s  trouvis  chez   Robespierre,   etcj 
i.  263). 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  437 

October,  Brissot,  Vergniaud,  Gensonn6,  Carra,  Isnard,  Ducos, 
and  fourteen  other  members  of  the  faction  were  brought  before 
the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  and  charged  with  all  the  bygone 
intrigues  enumerated  by  Camille  DesmouHns  in  his  Histoire  des 
Brissotins.  By  way  of  emphasizing  the  accusation  of  Orleanism, 
old  Sillery,  the  one-time  boon  companion  of  the  Due  d' Orleans, 
was  added  to  their  number.  Then  to  ensure  their  conviction,  the 
same  infamous  device  was  adopted  as  in  the  case  of  the  King, 
that  of  framing  a  law  to  fit  the  case,  and  on  the  fourth  day  of 
their  trial  the  Convention  passed  the  decree  that  when  a  trial 
had  lasted  three  days  the  jury  should  be  ordered  to  give  their 
verdict  without  Ustening  to  further  evidence.  Thereupon  the 
jury,  obedient  to  the  orders  of  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public, 
unanimously  declared  the  accused  to  be  worthy  of  death,  and 
on  the  31st  of  October  the  "  Twenty-One  "  were  executed  in 
the  Place  de  la  Revolution. 

The  rest  of  the  faction,  with  the  exception  of  Louvet,  perished 
later ;  Condorcet  took  poison ;  Guadet,  Salles,  and  Barbaroux 
were  guillotined  in  Bordeaux  ;  Buzot  and  Petion,  who  attempted 
flight,  were  found  dead,  half  devoured  by  dogs,  in  the  fields  of 
Medoc.  A  week  later  Madame  Roland  followed  the  men  whom  V 
her  thirst  for  vengeance  on  the  Court  had  driven  to  their  doom. 
To  the  end  her  hatred  of  the  Queen  knew  no  abating ;  in  her 
prison  she  heard  of  the  terrible  fate  of  that  "  proud  woman 
who  hated  equaUty  "  without  a  stirring  of  compassion.^  Manon's 
own  conception  of  "  equaUty "  enabled  her  to  confront  the 
scaffold  with  composure.  **  Think,"  she  wrote  to  Bosc,  "  how 
worthless  is  the  canaille  that  feasts  upon  the  spectacle !  "  ^ 
Thus  fortified  by  the  consciousness  of  her  own  superiority, 
which  in  her  case  was  almost  a  reUgion,  she  flung  defiance  at 
the  Revolution,  and  from  the  platform  of  the  guillotine  her 
last  words,  addressed  to  the  new  statue  of  Liberty  before  her, 
were  clearly  heard  by  the  wondering  multitude :  "  O  Liberty, 
how  they  have  fooled  you  !  (0  Liberie,  comme  on  fa  jouee  I)  "^ 
She  forgot  that  she  herself  had  played  no  small  part  in  the 
fooUng. 

Poor  old  Roland,  away  at  Rouen,  hearing  of  the  death  of 
the  wife  who  had  long  since  ceased  to  love  him,  went  out 
into  a  wood  and  stabbed  himself,  thereby  proving  that  he  was 
human  after  all,  but,  Girondin  to  the  last,  he  did  not  forget  to 
leave  upon  his  body  a  note  explaining  that  these  were  the 
remains  of  a  man  who  had  died  as  he  had  lived,  "  virtuous  and 
upright." 

*  Memoires  de  Madame  Roland,  ii.  389.  2  75^-^,  p,  411^ 

^  Letters  of  Helen  Maria  Williams  (1795),  p.  102;  Dauban,  La 
Demagogie  d  Paris  en  1793,  p.  37. 


438        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

So  ended  the  famous  Gironde.  Within  a  month  the  Queen 
and  her  two  bitterest  enemies  all  met  with  the  same  fate  on  the 
same  spot ;  for  two  days  before  the  execution  of  Madame  Roland, 
PhiUppe  figaUte  had  paid  the  penalty  for  his  crimes.  All  the 
way  from  the  Conciergerie  to  the  Place  de  la  Revolution  the 
wretched  prince  was  overwhelmed  with  insults  by  the  populace 
of  whom  he  had  been  represented  as  the  idol :  "  Scoundrel,  it 
is  you  who  are  the  cause  of  all  our  ills  !  "  "It  was  you  who 
had  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe  assassinated  !  "  "  Wretch,  you 
wished  to  be  King,  but  Heaven  is  just,  your  throne  will  be  a 
scaffold !  "  Above  all,  it  was  as  the  murderer  of  Louis  XVI.  the 
crowd  now  taunted  him  :  "  You  voted  for  the  death  of  your 
kinsman  !  "  and  mocking  voices  repeated  the  infamous  words : 
"  I  vote  for  death  !  "  ^  Phihppe  listened  to  all  these  cries  with 
perfect  sang-froid;  to  him  as  to  every  revolutionary,  once  the 
game  was  up,  the  people  were  of  no  account  whatever ;  moreover 
he  had  taken  the  precaution  to  fortify  himself  with  copious 
draughts  of  excellent  champagne  before  leaving  his  prison  ceU, 
and  it  seems  to  have  been  this,  rather  than  the  ministrations 
of  his  confessor,  that  inspired  him  with  courage  to  meet  his 
end.2 

Danton  was  away  at  his  chateau  in  Arcis-sur-Aube  when  the 
death  of  Philippe  figaUte  occurred,  and  on  his  return  to  Paris  at 
the  end  of  November  it  became  evident  that  he  had  undergone 
some  surprising  change.  Was  it  the  soothing  influence  of 
country  life,  or  the  society  of  the  sixteen-year-old  girl  he  had 
married  three  months  after  the  death  of  his  wife,  or  was  it  the 
loss  of  his  patron  the  Due  d'Orleans  that  had  moderated  Danton's 
revolutionary  ardour  ?  Or  had  Danton  begun  to  fear  for  his 
own  safety  ?  Where  Orleans  had  gone,  were  all  those  suspected 
of  Orleanisme  to  follow  ?  These  and  other  theories  have  been 
put  forward  to  account  for  the  sudden  cooling  of  Danton's  revolu- 
tionary ardour.  M.  Madelin  offers  a  fresh  one  by  suggesting 
that  Danton  had  become  the  victim  of  neurasthenia.  Yet  is 
Danton's  change  of  front  reaUy  so  inexpUcable  ?  Why,  aft( 
all,  should  he  have  wished  to  continue  the  Revolution  ?  Every-j 
thing  that  had  inspired  his  diatribes  —  royalty,  aristocracy,] 
Girondisme — had  been  swept  away;  his  career  as  agitator  wj 
done,  and  now  he  was  ready  to  settle  down  comfortably  on  tl 
profits  of  his  labours. 

It  was  thus  that  one  day  in  this  winter  of  1794,  whilst  tl 
cold  and  hungry  people  of  Paris  were  waiting  in  ever-lengtheninj 

1  Montjoie,  Conjuration  de  d'Orleans,  iii.    286  ;    Fortescue   Historic 
MSS.  ii.  462. 

*  Memoires  de  Monseigneur  de  Salamon,  p.  291  ;  Philippe  d'Orleans 
£galiie,  by  Auguste  Ducoin,  p.  294. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  439 

queues  for  the  bread  and  meat  doled  out  to  them  in  miserable 
rations,  Danton,  well  warmed  and  well  fed  after  an  excellent 
dinner  at  one  of  the  best  restaurants  in  Paris,  expressed  his 
attitude  to  the  Revolution  :  "  Well,  at  last  our  turn  has  come 
to  enjoy  Hfe  !  Delicate  food,  exquisite  wines,  stuffs  of  silk  and 
gold,  women  one  dreams  of,  all  this  is  the  prize  of  acquired 
power.  For  us,  then,  for  us,  all  this,  since  we  are  the  strongest. 
After  all,  what  is  the  Revolution  ?  A  battle.  And  shall  it  not 
be  followed  Uke  all  battles  by  the  division  of  spoils  amongst  the 
conquerors  ?  "  ^ 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  hardly  surprising  that  Danton 
should  have  failed  to  enter  enthusiastically  into  that  plan  of 
depopulation  which  led  only  to  the  Spartan  RepubUc  wherein 
all  these  things  would  be  denied  him.  At  any  rate,  Danton  and 
Camille  Desmoulins — ^who  had  now  become  entirely  his  disciple 
— began  to  suggest  tentatively  that  the  Terror  had  gone  far 
enough,  and  that  a  committee  of  clemency  should  be  formed. 

"  You  wish  to  exterminate  all  your  enemies  by  the  guillotine," 
wrote  Camille  on  the  21st  of  December,  "  but  was  there  ever  a 
greater  folly  ?  Can  you  cause  a  single  one  to  perish  on  the 
scaffold  without  making  ten  enemies  for  yourself  amongst  his 
family  or  his  friends  ?  Do  you  think  it  is  these  women,  these 
old  men,  these  dotards,  these  egotists,  these  laggards  of  the 
Revolution  whom  you  imprison  that  are  the  most  dangerous  ? 
Of  your  enemies  only  the  cowards  and  the  sick  have  remained 
amongst  you.  The  brave  and  the  strong  have  emigrated.  They 
have  perished  at  Lyon  or  in  La  Vendee ;  all  the  rest  do  not 
deserve  your  anger."  ^ 

Meanwhile  Danton  expostulated  with  Robespierre  :  "  Let  us 
limit  our  power  to  striking  great  blows  profitable  to  the  Republic. 
For  that  reason  we  must  not  guillotine  Republicans."  ^ 

Robespierre,  intent  on  his  plan  of  depopulation,  thought 
otherwise.  He  knew  that  amongst  so-called  Republicans  there 
was,  as  yet,  no  hope  of  unity,  that  on  one  side  the  Hebertistes 
with  their  passion  for  destruction,  on  the  other  the  Dantonistes 
with  their  schemes  for  self-enrichment,  would  never  allow  him 
to  estabUsh  in  peace  that  model  colony  of  austere  equality  that  // 
was  his  dream.  Therefore  Hebertistes  and  Dantonistes  must 
go,  and  according  to  his  customary  plan  Robespierre  set  out  to 
destroy  one  faction  by  another.  He  had  used  Hebert  to  bring 
about  the  final  doom  of  the  Queen  and  the  Girondins,  now  he 
used  Danton  to  rid  him  of  the  Hebertistes.     In  this  order  of  s 

^  Louis  Blanc,  Histoire  de  la  Revolution,  vii.  96  (anecdote  related  by 
Godfefroy  Cavaignac). 

2  Le  Vieux  Cordelier,  No.  IV. 

'  Prudhomme,  Crimes  de  la  Revolution,  iv.  32. 


440        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

campaign  he  showed  his  profound  wisdom  ;  to  have  reversed 
the  process,  that  is  to  say  to  have  attempted  to  demolish  the 
Dantonistes  with  the  aid  of  Hebert,  might  have  proved  his 
own  undoing,  for  the  people,  drawn  to  Danton  by  his  plea  for 
clemency,  might  have  rallied  round  him,  but  for  Hebert,  since 
his  attacks  on  religion,  the  great  majority  of  the  people  felt 
nothing  but  contempt. 

Robespierre,  therefore,  had  the  people  whole-heartedly  with 
him  when  he  now  denounced  the  atheistic  movement  of  the 
Hebertistes.  "  Atheism,"  he  said  at  the  Convention,  "  is  aristo- 
cratic. The  idea  of  a  great  Being  who  watches  over  oppressed 
innocence  and  punishes  crime  triumphant  is  wholly  popular." 

In  these  words  Robespierre  had  surpassed  himself  as  a 
crowd  exponent — ^if  the  people  wanted  a  God,  well,  he  would 
give  them  one,  and  thereby  establish  his  power  on  an  immutable 
.-foundation.  The  Feast  of  the  Supreme  Being  eight  months 
^  later  formed  the  corollary  to  this  design.  Danton,  quick  to 
see  the  advantage  offered  by  this  attitude,  followed  Robespierre's 
speech  a  few  days  later  with  a  further  denunciation  of  the  "  anti- 
religious  masquerades  "  that  had  recently  taken  place,  and  the 
two  leading  demagogues  thus  joining  forces  had  no  difficulty  in 
crushing  the  wretched  Hebertistes  out  of  existence. 

On  the  2 1st  of  March  1794  Hebert,  Ronsin,  Momoro,  Vincent, 
Clootz,  and  several  foreign  intriguers — Proly,  Desfieux,  Pereyre, 
and  others — ^were  led  before  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  on  a 
charge  of  conspiring  with  foreign  powers,  notably  with  Pitt,  to 
overthrow  the  Republic.  As  far  as  Pitt  was  concerned,  of  course, 
not  a  shred  of  evidence  could  be  produced,  but  certainly,  if  foreign 
powers  had  desired  to  destroy  France,  they  could  not  have  chosen 
more  effective  measures  than  those  adopted  by  this  anarchic 
gang.  Clootz,  as  has  been  already  said,  had  undoubtedly  been 
sent  to  France  in  order  to  create  anarchy,  but  whether  with 
the  collusion  of  the  King  of  Prussia  it  is  impossible  to  know. 
Robespierre,  at  any  rate,  profoundly  distrusted  this  Prussian 
apostle  of  Internationalism.  In  vain  Clootz  had  declared  that 
"  his  heart  was  French  and  his  soul  was  sans-culotte  "  ;  Robespierre 
in  demanding  his  expulsion  from  the  Jacobin  Club  on  the  12th 
of  December  had  observed  drily,  "  Citizens,  will  you  regard  as 
a  patriot  a  foreigner  who  desires  to  be  more  democratic  than 
the  French?  .  .  .  Never  was  he  the  defender  of  the  French 
people,  but  of  the  human  race.  .  .  .  Paris  swarms  with  intriguers, 
with  English  and  Austrians;  they  sit  amongst  you  with  the 
agents  of  Frederick.  .  .  .  Clootz  is  a  Prussian."  ^ 

1  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxx.  338.  Mercier  also  regarded  Clootz  as  the 
agent  of  Prussia  :  "  The  Prussian,  Anacharsis  Clootz,  paved  the  way  for 
Frederick  William  "  {Le  Nouveau  Paris,  ii.  91).     And  Brissot  takes  the 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  441 

The  exponent  of  universal  brotherhood  as  expressed  by  the 
massacres  of  September — for  it  will  be  remembered  that  it  was 
Clootz  who  had  regretted  that  they  had  not  "  Septemberized  " 
enough — had  thus  failed  to  inspire  his  French  brethren  with 
confidence,  and  now,  arraigned  before  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal, 
was  obUged  to  hear  his  system  of  a  Universal  Republic  stig- 
matized as  "  a  profoundly  premeditated  perfidy  which  gave  a 
pretext  for  the  coalition  of  crowned  heads  against  France." 

When  finally  the  eighteen  "  conspirators  "  were  condemned 
to  death  by  the  Tribunal,  Clootz  appealed  in  vain  to  the  "  human 
race  "  against  the  judgement ;  the  human  race  that  filled  the 
tribunes  responded  merely  with  frantic  applause. 

Paris  went  nearly  mad  with  joy  at  the  execution  of  the  (< 
Hebertistes ;  immense  crowds  collected  as  the  criers  went  through  \> 
the  streets  proclaiming  the  verdict ;  the  air  resounded  with  shouts 
of  "  The  Pere  Duchesne  to  the  guillotine  !  "  Even  the  populace, 
whom  Hebert,  in  the  days  when  he  held  it  at  his  command,  had 
described  as  "  the  only  good  and  pure  element  of  the  great 
Parisian  family,"  rejoiced  at  the  downfall  of  its  former  idol. 
Although  by  now  it  had  begun  to  grow  tired  of  the  spectacle  of 
the  guillotine,  it  prepared  on  this  occasion  to  assemble  in  force 
around  the  scaffold.  The  only  fear  was  that  the  Place  de  la 
Revolution  might  not  prove  large  enough  to  hold  so  vast  a  multi- 
tude. Every  window  in  the  Rue  Saint-Honore  was  let  to  see 
the  procession  pass.^ 

In  the  markets,  at  the  street  comers,  people  collected  in 
groups,  saying  to  each  other,  "  It  was  the  rascal  Hebert  and 
his  cUque  who  wished  to  make  us  die  of  hunger ;  with  the 
fall  of  this  infernal  faction  we  shall  see  once  more  peace  and 
abundance."  ^  Hebert's  own  bloodthirsty  phrases  were  passed  '■ 
derisively  from  mouth  to  mouth :  "  He !  He  !  the  stove- 
merchant  is  going  to  put  his  nose  out  of  the  Uttle  window !  " 
"  He  is  going  to  sneeze  into  the  sack  !  "  ^  Some  were  of  opinion 
that  the  guillotine  was  too  gentle  a  mode  of  execution,  and  that  ' 
something  more  lingering  and  painful  should  be  devised  for  such 
scoundrels — conspirators  "  a  thousand  times  more  criminal  than 
Capet  and  his  wife."  ^ 

When  at  last,  at  four  o'clock  on  the  fine  spring  afternoon  of  the 
24th  of  March,  the  tumbrils  bearing  their  eighteen  victims  made 

same  view  :  "  I  accompany  the  name  of  Clootz  with  the  epithet  Prussian, 
not  so  much  to  recall  his  birthplace  as  to  recall  the  fact  that  Clootz  behaves 
here  like  a  good  and  faithful  subject  of  His  Prussian  Majesty,  who,  on  his 
side,  reserves  his  lands  for  him  "  (/.  P.  Brissoi  d  ses  Commettants,  p.  52). 

1  Schmidt,  ii.  163.  2  Ibid.  p.  160. 

'  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois,  by  Edmond  Bire,  iv.  318. 

•  Schmidt,  ii.  158,  163,  174  ;  Dauban,  Paris  en  1794,  p.  252. 


442         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

their  appearance,  so  immense  a  crowd  had  collected  that  the 
procession  was  continually  held  up  on  its  way  to  the  scaffold. 
The  pitiful  spectacle  of  Hebert  sobbing  helplessly,  and  ahnost  in 
a  state  of  collapse,  had  no  power  to  touch  the  hearts  in  which 
more  than  any  one  he  had  helped  to  kill  all  sentiments  of  humanity, 
and  it  was  his  own  refrains  that  now  echoed  in  his  ears  as  the 
cruel  mob  surged  around  him  singing  in  chorus,  and  with  hands 
and  feet  drumming  out  the  measure  : 

Ran  plan,  ran  plan  plan -plan. 
Ran  plan,  ran  plan -plan. 
Tambour,  un  ran  ! 

or  else  with  shrieks  of  ghoulish  laughter  : 

Drelin,  drehn,  drelin  1 
A  la  guillotine  !  ^ 

The  other  Hebertistes  listened  to  all  this  with  disdain  ;  Clootz 
above  all  remained  immovable,  for  if,  as  a  contemporary  relates, 
he  was  "  dying  of  fright,"  it  was  only  "  lest  any  of  his  companions 
should  believe  in  God,  and  he  preached  materiaUsm  to  them  until 
his  last  breath."  ^ 

As  the  tumbrils  entered  the  Place  de  la  Revolution  a  mighty 
roar  arose  from  the  assembled  multitude,  and  thousands  of 
voices  began  to  chant  the  revolutionary  "  Complainte "  of 
"  Rougyff."  One  after  another  the  victims  ascended  the 
scaffold.  Hebert 's  head  was  the  last  to  fall.  As  he  lay  tied 
to  the  plank  the  executioner  playfully  danced  the  blade  of  the 
guillotine  over  the  wretched  man's  neck  before  allowing  it 
finally  to  descend,  and  the  populace,  that  only  a  few  months 
earUer  had  adored  Hebert,  greeted  this  brutal  jest  with  laughter 
'  and  applause. 

J  But  if  on  this  occasion  the  mob  of  Paris  showed  itself 
j  ferocious,  it  was  the  only  execution,  except  that  of  Robespierre, 
I  at  which  such  scenes  took  place.  In  general  it  will  be  noticed 
throughout  the  Revolution  that  the  men  the  people  ended  by 
hating  most  were  those  with  whom  they  had  been  most  intimate, 
and  who  had  promised  them  the  most.  They  Uked  Marat, 
Robespierre,  and  Hebert  as  long  as  these  demagogues  promised 
them  a  millennial  age  and  appeared  to  be,  as  they  professed, 
true  friends  of  the  poor,  living  in  Spartan  simplicity  and  sharing 
their  privations.  But  when  the  people  discovered  they  had  been 
deceived,  when  no  millennium  dawned,  above  all  when  they 
realized  that  their  idols  feasted  whilst  they  themselves  went 


Anacharsis  Clootz,  by  Georges  Aveael,  ii.  147. 
2  Memoires  de  Riouffe,  i.  69. 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  443 

hungry,  they  turned  and  rent  them  with  all  the  fury  of  bUghted 
hope  and  disappointed  love.^ 

For  this  reason  Danton  did  not  end  by  incurring  the  ani- 
mosity of  the  people;  the  "grand  seigneur  of  the  Sans-CuloUerie" 
had  always  kept  aloof  from  the  crowd,  had  never  promised  to 
share  the  good  things  of  life  with  them,  never  pretended  to  be 
one  of  them ;  no  draggled  herd  of  jupons  gras  had  followed  in 
his  wake,  no  adoring  tricoteuses  had  hung  upon  his  lips  in  the 
tribunes  of  the  Convention.  The  people  only  knew  him  now 
from  the  distance  as  a  great  voice  in  the  Assembly,  as  a  great 
hon-vivant  outside  it ;  they  were  well  aware  that  he  lived  prin- 
cipally for  women  and  good  cheer,  and  being  Parisians  rather 
liked  him  for  it. 

The  people,  therefore,  did  not  rejoice  at  the  death  of  the 
Dantonistes  which  took  place  on  the  5th  of  April.  For  now 
that  Danton  had  served  his  purpose  by  helping  to  rid  him  of 
the  "  anarchic  "  gang,  Robespierre  lost  no  time  in  turning  his 
attention  to  the  remaining  faction.  Only  one  week  after  the 
execution  of  the  Hebertistes,  Robespierre  hurled  his  thunderbolt 
at  the  head  of  Danton,  and  he  hurled  it  by  the  hand  of  St.  Just. 
This  was  really  extraordinarily  ingenious,  for,  as  Danton's  past 
connection  with  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  formed  the  chief 
ground  of  accusation  against  him,  Danton  might  well  have 
retaUated,  if  the  charge  had  been  made  by  Robespierre  himself, 
with  the  reminder  that  he,  "  Incorruptible  "  though  he  was, 
had  nevertheless  worked  with  the  conspirators  in  the  early  days 
of  the  Revolution.  Against  St.  Just,  however,  no  such  insinua- 
tions could  be  made.  This  irreproachable  young  man,  who 
moved  through  the  scenes  of  the  Terror  Uke  a  marble  Antinous 
"  with  his  feet  in  blood  and  tears,"  ^  had  only  joined  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  as  a  deputy  of  the  Convention,  and  could  not 
be  suspected  of  compUcity  with  previous  intrigues.  It  was, 
therefore,  to  St.  Just  that  Robespierre  confided  the  materials 
for  a  great  indictment  of  the  Dantonistes  on  precisely  the  same 
lines  as  Camille  Desmoulins'  indictment  of  the  Gifondins  a  year 
earher.  It  is  impossible  to  read  the  pamphlet  of  Camille  con- 
currently with  the  speech  of  St.  Just  and  not  to  recognize  that 
in  both  the  chain  of  reasoning  must  have  been  evolved  by  the 

^  "  The  people  cannot  forgive  Hebert  for  having  deceived  them.  .  .  . 
'  Oh  !  the  hypocrite  !  oh  !  the  scoundrel !  '  they  cried  on  all  sides  " 
(Police  report  of  March  21,  1794  ;  Dauban,  Paris  en  1794,  p.  288).  "  The 
women  said  that  the  more  they  had  loved  the  Pere  Duchesne,  the  more 
horror  they  had  of  him  ...  it  is  to  be  believed  that  the  mass  of  the 
people  will  look  on  quietly  at  the  trial  of  these  men  who  had  obtained 
their  confidence  "  {ibid.  p.  246). 

2  St.  Just's  own  expression,  see  "  Rapport  de  Courtois  "  in  Papiers 
trouvds  chez  Robespierre,  i.  20. 


444         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

same  brain,  though  in  one  it  is  expressed  with  the  sprightly 
verve  of  the  pamphleteer,  in  the  other  with  the  sober  logic  of 
?  the  poUtician.     And  even  more  than  the  Histoire  des  Brissotins  of 
Desmoulins,  the  "  Rapport "  of  St.  Just  provides  the  most  damning 
indictment  of  the  Revolution.^    No  Royahst  has  ever  exposed 
more    remorselessly  the  workings   of    the   great  revolutionary 
intrigues ;    Montjoie  himself  could  not  have  penned  a  clearer 
resume  of  the  Orleaniste  conspiracy  and  its  subsequent  ramifica- 
tions than  is  contained  in  the  following  passages :    "  You  have 
marched/'    St.    Just   said   to   the   Convention,    "  between   the 
faction  of  false  patriots  and  that  of  the  moderates  you  must 
overthrow.     These   factions,    bom   with   the    Revolution,  have 
followed  in  its  course  as  reptiles  foUow  the  course  of  rivers  .  .  . 
the  party  of  Orleans  was  the  first  constituted ;   it  had  branches 
in  aU  the  governments,  and  in  the  three  legislatures  (i.e.  in  the 
Constituent  and  the  Legislative  Assemblies  and  the  Convention). 
This  criminal  party,  lacking  audacity  .  .  .,  always  dissimulating 
and  never  boldly  venturing,  was  carried  away  by  the  energy  of 
the  men  of  good  faith  and  by  the  force  of  the  people's  virtue  ; 
it  followed  always  the  course  of  the  Revolution,  shrouding  itself 
continually  and  never  daring.     This  is  what  made  people  beUeve 
at  the  beginning  that  Orleans  had  no  ambition,  for  in  the  best 
prepared  circumstances  he  lacked  courage  and  resolution.     These 
secret  convulsions  of  the  dissimulating  parties  were  the  cause  of 
public  misfortunes.     The  popular  Revolution  was  the  surface  of 
a  volcano  of  extraneous  conspiracies.    The  Constituent  Assembly, 
a  senate  by  day,  was  by  night  a  collection  of  factions  which 
prepared  the  policy  and  artifices  of  the  morrow.     Affairs  had  a 
double  intention  ;    one  ostensibly  and  gracefully  coloured,  the 
other  secret,  leading  to  hidden  results  contrary  to  the  interests  of 
the  people.    They  made  war  on  the  nobihty,  the  guilty  friend  of 
the  Bourbons,  in  order  to  pave  the  way  to  the  throne  for  Orleans. 
One  sees  at  each  step  the  efforts  of  this  party  to  ruin  the  Court, 
its  enemy,  and  to  preserve  royalty,  but  the  loss  of  one  entailed 
the  other  ;  no  royalty  can  exist  without  a  patriciate.  .  .  . 

"  There  was  a  faction  in  1790  to  place  the  crown  on  the  head 
of  Orleans ;  there  was  one  to  maintain  it  on  the  head  of  the 
Bourbons;  there  was  another  faction  to  place  the  House  of 
Hanover  on  the  throne  of  France.  These  factions  were  over- 
thrown with  royalty  on  the  loth  of  August ;  terror  forced  all 
the  secret  conspiracies  in  favour  of  monarchy  to  dissimulate 
more  profoundly  than   ever.     Then   all  these  factions   took  the 

1  "  Rapport  fait  a  la  Convention  Nationale  .  .  .  sur  la  Conjuration 
ourdie  depuis  plusieurs  Annees  par  des  Factions  criminelles  pour  absorber 
le  Revolution  fran9aise  dans  un  Changement  de  Dynastie  .  .  ."  (Seance 
du  II  Germinal,  An  11.). 


1 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  445 

mask  of  the  Republican  party  ;  Brissot,  Buzot,  and  Dumouriez 
continued  the  faction  of  Orleans  ;  Carra  the  faction  of  Hanover  ; 
Manuel,  Lanjuinais,  and  others  the  party  of  the  Bourbons/' 
Now,  though  the  last  passage  displays  some  inconsistency — for 
it  will  be  remembered  that  during  the  Massacres  of  September 
Robespierre  had  accused  Brissot  of  being  in  league  with  Brunswick 
— the  preceding  statements  concerning  the  factions  will  be  seen 
exactly  to  coincide  with  those  of  Montjoie,  Beaulieu,  Pag^s,  the 
"Deux  Amis  de  la  Liberte,"  and  others  quoted  earUer  in  this  book; 
and  thus,  even  in  the  opinion  of  Robespierre  and  St.  Just,  the 
French  Revolution  was  not,  as  is  generally  supposed,  a  struggle 
between  monarchy  and  republicanism,  or  between  autocracy 
and  democracy,  but  simply  a  ramification  of  conspiracies  by 
various  factions  to  usurp  power  at  the  expense  of  the  people. 

After  this  admirable  preamble  St.  Just  proceeded  to  describe 
the  role  played  by  the  Dantonistes  throughout  the  Revolution — 
he  spoke  of  Danton's  connection  with  Mirabeau,   "  who  was 
meditating  a  change  of  djmasty,  and  realized  the  value  of  his 
audacity  " ;  he  referred  to  Danton's  collusion  with  the  petition 
of  the  Champ  de  Mars  in  1791,  his  nomination  of  Orleans  to 
the  Convention,  his  intrigue  with  Dumouriez  to  ensure  the  safe  jj 
retreat  of  the  Prussian  armies  after  Valmy ;   in  scathing  terms  »' 
he  described  his  "  cowardly  and  constant  abandonment  of  the 
public  cause  "  at  times  of  crisis,  by  invariably  adopting  the  plan 
of  retreat,  notably  on  the  9th  of  August,  when  he  had  betaken 
himself  to  his  bed  whilst  the  revolutionary  army  was  mustering ; 
and  he  ended  by  denouncing  the  love  of  riches  that  distinguished 
the  Dantonistes,  their  "  need  of  pleasures  acquired  at  the  cost  of  ^ 
equality." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  no  one  at  the  time  doubted  Danton's 
venaUty,  nor  did  this  greatly  injure  him  in  the  mind  of  the 
public,  since  few  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  had  shown  them- 
selves proof  against  the  seduction  of  money  ;  Robespierre  would 
not  have  won  the  title  of  "  Incorruptible  "  if  he  had  not  been 
almost  unique  in  this  respect.  Danton  himself  had  hitherto 
made  no  secret  of  his  greed  for  gold,  only  when  charged  with 
it  before  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  did  he  attempt  denial : 
"  I — sold  ?  Men  of  my  stamp  are  not  to  be  bought ;  the  seal 
of  liberty  and  RepubUcan  genius  are  stamped  in  ineffaceable 
characters  on  their  foreheads." 

The  trial  of  the  Dantonistes — Danton,  Desmoulins,  Fabre 
d'figlantine,  Herault  de  Sechelles,  Lacroix,  PhiUppeaux  — 
presented  one  of  the  strangest  scenes  of  all  the  Revolution. 
Danton,  who  had  entered  the  court  "  like  a  furious  bull  plunging 
into  the  arena  with  lowered  horns,"  attempted  to  carry  off  the 
situation  with  a  high  hand,  now  chafi&ng  the  judges  or  throwing 


446        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

bread  pellets  at  their  heads,  now  breaking  out  into  funous 
bellowings,  but  never  refuting  the  accusations  brought  against 
him.i  Again  and  again  the  President  was  obUged  to  call  him 
to  order,  reminding  him  that  his  anger  and  his  coarse  invectives 
were  damaging  his  case.  Outside  the  hall  of  the  Tribunal  an 
immense  crowd  Ustened  breathlessly  whilst  the  thunder  of 
Danton's  voice  rolled  out  through  the  open  windows  across  the 
Seine,  where  further  crowds  had  gathered  ;  and  as  each  resound- 
ing phrase  struck  on  their  ears,  the  people  passed  it  on  till  it 
reached  the  farthest  limits  of  that  vast  multitude. 

Finally  the  Tribunal,  adopting  the  same  illegal  methods  that 
had  been  employed  at  the  trial  of  the  King  and  of  the  Girondins, 
cut  short  the  proceedings  and  pronounced  sentence  of  death. 
Danton's  fury  now  knew  no  bounds ;  transferred  to  his  cell  at 
the  Conciergerie  to  await  execution,  he  continued  to  bellow 
incoherent  phrases  through  his  prison  bars  : 

"  It  was  on  this  day  that  I  instituted  the  Revolutionary 
Tribunal ;  but  I  ask  pardon  from  God  and  men  ;  it  was  not 
that  it  might  become  the  scourge  of  humanity,  it  was  to  prevent 
a  renewal  of  the  massacres  of  September.  .  .  . 

"  I  leave  everything  in  a  fearful  muddle ;  there  is  no  one 
who  understands  government.  .  .  . 

"  They  are  all  my  brothers  Cain.  Brissot  would  have  had 
me  guillotined  like  Robespierre.  .  .  . 

"  I  had  a  spy  who  never  left  me.  .  .  . 

"  The  f.  .  .  .  beasts,  they  will  cry  '  Vive  la  Republique  !  * 
as  they  see  me  pass  !  "  ^ 

In  the  end  Danton  resigned  himself  and  faced  his  end  with 
courage.  A  few  moments  before  starting  for  the  place  of  execu- 
tion he  summed  up  his  philosophy  of  Ufe  in  a  characteristic 
sentence  :  "  What  matter  if  I  die  ?  I  have  well  enjoyed  myself 
in  the  Revolution ;  I  have  spent  well,  caroused  weU,  caressed 
many  women  ;  let  us  sleep !  (Qu'importe  si  je  meurs  ?  J'ai  Hen 
joui  dans  la  Revolution,  j'ai  Men  depense,  bien  ribotte,  bien 
car  esse  des  filles ;  allons  dormir !)  "^  As  the  three  scarlet 
tumbrils  made  their  way  along  the  Rue  Saint-Honore,  serried 
rows  of  spectators  watched  them  pass  in  silence  ;  this  time  they 
did  not  rejoice,  but  neither  did  they  dare  to  express  disapproval. 
Camille  DesmouUns,  the  one-time  "  procurer  of  the  lantern," 
displayed  pitiable  weakness  now  that  his  own  turn  had  come. 
In  his  despair  he  had  so  torn  his  clothes  that  his  body  was  bare 
almost  to  the  waist ;  all  the  way  he  talked  feverishly  to  his 
companions,  laughing  convulsively  the  while  like  one  demented. 

Only  a  year  ago,  in  sending  the  Girondins  to  their  doom, 

*  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxii.  164.  *  Memoires  de  Riouffe,  i.  67. 

•  Mimoires  de  Sinart  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  71. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  447 

Camille  had  said  confidently,  "  We  have  the  people  with  us  !  *'  ^ 
now,  Uke  every  demagogue  in  turn,  he  appealed  vainly  to  the 
people's  pity.  At  one  moment  overcome  with  frenzy,  Camille, 
struggling  madly,  tearing  at  his  clothes,  shrieked  out  to  them, 
"  People,  it  is  your  servants  who  are  being  sacrificed  !  It  is  I 
who  in  1789  called  you  to  arms  !  It  is  I  who  uttered  the  first 
cry  of  Hberty  !     My  crime,  my  only  crime,  is  to  have  shed  tears  !  " 

But  the  mob,  always  cruel  to  those  who  showed  fear, 
responded  only  with  jeers  and  insults.  At  this  Danton,  rolling 
his  enormous  round  head  contemptuously,  said  with  a  derisive 
smile  to  Camille,  "  Be  quiet,  and  leave  alone  that  vile  canaille  !  " 

At  the  last  moment  the  thought  of  his  young  wife,  whom, 
voluptuary  though  he  was,  he  loved  sincerely,  wrung  from 
Danton  one  cry  of  agony,  "  My  beloved,  I  shaU  see  you  no 
more  !  "  Then  pulling  himself  together,  "  Come,  Danton,  no 
weakness  !  "  Turning  to  the  executioner  he  said,  "  Show  my 
head  to  the  people,  it  is  worth  it !  "  And  amidst  cries  of 
**  Vive  la  RepubUque  !  "  that  terrible  head  was  held  aloft. 

The  execution  of  Danton  has  been  frequently  described  as  the 
vengeance  of  Robespierre  on  a  formidable  rival.  Undoubtedly 
Robespierre's  devouring  envy  was  aroused  by  Danton's  power- 
ful oratory,  as  formerly  it  had  been  aroused  by  the  eloquence 
of  the  Girondins.  At  the  same  time  it  must  be  admitted  that 
the  Dantonistes'  philosophy  of  hfe  was  incompatible  with  the 
schemes  of  Robespierre  and  St.  Just.  Long  after  the  death  of 
the  Dantonistes  Fiev6e  relates  that  he  asked  VouUand,  a  member 
of  the  Comity  de  Surety  Generale  and  the  intime  of  Robespierre, 
why  the  destruction  of  this  party  had  been  found  necessary,  to 
which  Voulland  replied  that  as  long  as  the  Orleans  faction 
prevailed,  that  is  to  say,  "  the  deputies  who  mingled  pleasures, 
luxury,  and  cupidity  with  proscriptions,"  it  was  impossible  to 
restore  order.  "  Heaven  knows  what  would  have  become  of 
France  in  their  hands  !  "  As  to  Camille  DesmouHns,  Voulland 
added,  "  who  had  ranged  himself  on  their  side  as  a  dupe  ratner 
than  as  an  accompUce,  could  we  save  him  whilst  attacking 
Danton,  the  most  dangerous  of  all  Orl^anistes,  and  Fabre 
d'figlantine,  even  more  immoral  than  Danton  ?  " 

It  is  not  therefore,  as  certain  historians  would  have  us  believe, 
because  the  Dantonistes  had  become  humane  and  "  moderate  ** 
that  their  fall  was  inevitable,  but  because  they  were  Orl^anistes, 
because  they  were  voluptuaries  and  reactionaries — reactionaries 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word ;  that  is  to  say,  men  who  wished 
to  maintain  the  easy  morals  and  the  inequahties  of  the  Old 
Regime  in  an  aggravated  form.  So  whilst  there  can  be  no 
excuse  for  their  murder — and  their  trial  was  really  nothing  but 
judicial  murder — it  was  obviously  impossible  for  Robespierre 


448         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

to  realize  his  plan  of  an  austere  Republic,  founded  on  absolute 
equality,  as  long  as  they  remained  in  power. 


THE  GREAT  TERROR 

The  question  has  frequently  been  asked  why,  after  the  death 
of  the  Dantonistes,  Robespierre  did  not  immediately  embark  on 
his  schemes  of  reconstruction.  Why  should  the  final  overthrow 
of  his  most  formidable  rivals  have  proved  the  signal  for  a  still 
more  rigorous  application  of  the  Terror  ?  But  when  we  have 
once  grasped  the  theory  on  which  the  Terror  was  founded,  the 
problem  seems  easier  of  solution.  For  in  the  spring  of  1794 
the  process  of  depopulating  Paris  had  only  just  begun,  and  to 
the  triumvirate  it  seemed  more  than  ever  necessary  to  continue 
the  operation  with  unremitting  energy  if  a  harmonious  SociaUst 
State  was  to  result. 

In  order  to  understand  this  necessity  to  its  full  extent  we 
must  reaUze  something  of  the  state  of  Paris  under  the  reign  of 
Robespierre  and  his  aUies. 

The  truth  is,  then,  that  the  populace  whom  these  demagogues 
had  made  all-powerful  had  now  become  their  terror  ;  no  Sultan 
was  ever  watched  more  anxiously  by  trembling  "  wazirs  "  than 
was  the  Sovereign  People  by  its  courtiers  of  1794.  With  a  view 
to  guarding  against  any  ebullitions  of  popular  feeling,  agents  were 
employed  by  them  to  go  about  the  city  and  study  the  moods  of 
the  people — "  Usteners  "  and  "  observers  "  who  stood  beside  the 
groups  at  the  street  comers,  amongst  the  women  in  the  markets 
and  in  the  queues  at  the  shop  doors,  or  who  mingled  with  the 
crowds  watching  the  victims  going  to  the  guillotine.  Everything 
the  observers  noticed ;  everything  the  Usteners  overheard ; 
expressions  of  approval  or  murmurs  of  dissatisfaction  at  the 
existing  regime,  smiles,  frowns,  angry  exclamations,  or  derisive 
laughter — all  these  were  set  down  and  conveyed  verbatim  to 
the  revolutionary  committees  in  detailed  daily  reports.  These 
documents,  which  have  been  pubHshed  both  by  Schmidt  and 
Dauban,  afford  us  the  minutest  insight  into  the  mind  of  Paris 
at  this  moment,  and  at  the  same  time  throw  a  curious  light  on 
the  mentaUty  of  the  demagogues.  The  fact  that  they  should 
have  held  this  intricate  system  of  espionage  to  be  necessary 
shows  how  profoundly  they  distrusted  the  people  they  professed 
to  worship,  and  how  keenly  they  reaUzed  the  insecurity  of  their 
own  position.  Nor  were  such  fears  groundless,  for  the  result  of 
all  these  observations  was  to  reveal  that  beneath  the  apparent 
submission  of  the  people  there  lay  a  deep  undercurrent  of 
discontent.  This  perhaps  was  not  altogether  surprising,  for 
the  famine  was  now  worse  than  ever.     All  over  France  the  in- 


k 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  449 

habitants  of  the  towns  had  been  put  on  rations  of  the  meagrest 
description ;  in  the  country  districts,  where  even  these  were 
not  obtainable,  the  unhappy  peasants  staved  off  the  pangs  of 
hunger  with  grass  and  acorns.^  The  queues  at  the  shop  doors 
had  grown  steadily  longer;  from  three  or  four  o'clock  in  the 
morning  rows  of  starving  men  and  women  stood  in  the  cold 
and  rain,  or,  sinking  from  exhaustion,  lay  in  heaps  upon  the 
pavement.^  The  law  of  the  "  maximum,"  by  which  a  fixed 
price  was  set  on  all  the  necessaries  of  life,  far  from  easing  the 
situation  as  had  been  promised,  immensely  complicated  it.  The 
fishermen  refused  to  put  out  to  sea,  the  millers  concealed  their 
grain  rather  than  sell  it  at  a  loss,  the  shopkeepers  reserved  their 
goods  for  favoured  customers  or  disposed  of  them  secretly  at 
prices  above  the  maximum  to  those  who  could  afford  to  pay. 
The  people,  enraged  by  these  manoeuvres,  and  faithful  to  Marat's 
teachings,  continued  to  waylay  the  peasants  bringing  supplies 
into  the  city,  and  pillaged  the  carts  containing  eggs,  butter,  or 
poultry.  "  Some  paid  ;  the  others  carried  off  the  things  without 
paying.  The  peasants  in  despair  swore  they  would  bring  nothing 
more  to  Paris."  ^ 

Besides  the  want  of  food,  the  want  of  emplo5mient  was  still 
acute ;  bands  of  workmen  gathered  at  the  street  comers  com- 
plaining of  the  times.  "  How  can  you  expect  us  to  work  when 
all  the  rich  people,  whether  patriots  or  not,  are  imprisoned  ?  "  * 
Beggars,  old  men,  women  and  children  besieged  passers-by  for 
alms.  Meanwhile  the  men  who  were  still  employed  perpetually 
demanded  higher  pay ;  the  masons  and  carpenters  put  up  their 
prices  every  ten  days,  threatening  not  to  work  unless  their 
demands  were  acceded  to.  "  Everybody,"  writes  a  govern- 
ment agent,  "  cries  out  against  the  tyranny  of  the  workmen."  ^ 

But  even  when  the  money  they  claimed  had  been  paid  they 
were  not  contented,  for  often  they  could  buy  nothing  with  it. 
What  was  the  good  of  earning  loo  sols  a  day  instead  of  20  sols  ^ 
when  neither  bread  nor  meat,  candles  or  firing  were  to  be  had  ? 
Moreover,  owing  to  the  bankruptcy  of  the  State,  the  assignats 
or  paper  money  they  received  had  only  a  fictitious  value.  "  A 
cab  fare,"  relates  Mercier,  "  cost  600  livres  ;  that  is  to  say,  10 
livres  a  minute.  A  private  person  going  home  in  the  evening 
said  to  the  cabman,  *  How  much  ?  '  '  6000  livres.'  He  pulled 
out  his  pocket-book  and  paid.  Every  one  was  rich  in  imagina- 
tion ;  they  were  unhappy  only  when  they  were  disillusioned."  ' 

1  Speech  by  Tallien  at  the  Convention,  March  12,  1794.  See  also 
Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxii.  423. 

2  Taine,  viii.  255.  '  Dauban,  Paris  en  1794,  pp.  87,  173,  198. 
*  Ibid.  p.  62.  "  Ibid.  p.  149.  «  Ibid.  p.  185. 

'  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  ii.  94. 

2  G 


450        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

The  people  were  perpetually  being  disillusioned.  This 
beautiful  reign  of  equaUty  which  had  been  promised  them  had 
brought  them  nothing  but  misery  ;  yet  they  were  continually 
assured  that  when  a  particular  political  faction  had  been  over- 
thrown all  would  be  well,  and  the  famine  would  miraculously 
disappear.  Once  it  had  been  "  the  Court  and  aristocracy  "  who 
had  monopolized  the  com,  but  Court  and  aristocracy  were  long 
since  swept  away,  and  still  the  grain  was  not  forthcoming  ; 
then  it  was  against  the  Girondins  that  the  same  charge  had  been 
brought,  but  the  Girondins  too  were  gone,  and  still  the  scarcity 
continued  ;  now  the  Hebertistes,  to  whom  it  had  likewise  been 
attributed,  had  followed  the  Girondins,  yet  the  people  were 
hungrier  than  ever. 

Nothing  had  happened  as  they  expected.  Wealth  stilJ 
mocked  at  poverty,  and  those  in  power  still  drank  and  feastec 
whilst  the  struggling  thousands  starved.  For  at  the  butchers' 
shops,  where  the  people  waited  from  early  dawn  for  a  miserable 
scrap  of  meat,  the  best  joints  were  reserved  for  the  members  of 
the  revolutionary  committees  and  their  friends.^  The  restaurants 
too,  where  the  "  representatives  of  the  people "  forgathered, 
were  still  lavishly  suppHed  with  excellent  food,  as  many  as  three 
or  four  meat  courses  being  served  at  one  meal.^  It  is  hardly 
surprising,  then,  if  the  people  grew  indignant  and  cried  out  that, 
whilst  "  fathers  of  families  could  not  put  the  pot  on  the  fire  in 
their  homes  when  their  wives  were  sick,"  and  "  honest  citizens 
were  eating  only  bread  and  potatoes,  the  wealthier  citizens  were 
making  up  parties  for  the  restaurants.  ...  It  is  only  well-off 
people,"  they  said,  "  who  dine  at  restaurants,  and  they  go  there 
to  regale  themselves  with  light  women  whilst  the  poor  sans- 
culottes eat  bread."  ^ 

Exasperated  by  their  sufferings,  the  people  cast  about  for 
remedies  which  varied  according  to  the  temperament  of  the 
malcontents ;  thus,  whilst  some  cried  "  Vive  I'ancien  Regime 
then  we  had  abundance  of  everything !  "  *  others  declared  thai 
things  would  go  no  better  unless  more  victims  were  executed,^ 
and,  nodding  their  heads  in  the  direction  of  the  guillotine,  added, 
"  It  is  only  that  saint  there  who  can  save  us  !  "  ^ 

The  fact  is  that  the  people  of  Paris  were  now  neither  Royj 
nor  Republican,  neither  for  their  present  rulers  or  against  them 
their  faith  in  aU  government  had  been  shaken  to  its  foundations.* 

^  Dauban,  Paris  en  1794,  p.  126.  ^  Ibid.  p.  181. 

3  Ibid.  p.  65.  *  Ibid.  p.  202.  ^  Ibid.  pp.  173,  253^ 

*  "  Everywhere  the  citizens  are  heard  to  say  they  have  no  great  coim' 
fidence  in  those  in  power  after  the  arrest  of  several  of  them.  ..."  {ibic 
p.  269).     "  The  people  appear  to  repent  of  the  ease  with  which  they  gav^ 
their  confidence  to  men  who  have  so  cruelly  deceived  them.    They  wish  no'W 
to  go  to  the  other  extreme,  for  they  will  no  longer  trust  anyone  "  {ibid.-p.  271)^ 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  451 

In  consequence  of  seeing  one  faction  after  another  led  to  the 
guillotine,  they  had  come  to  regard  this  spectacle  as  the  natural 
ending  to  a  poUtical  career  :  "  All  these  rascals  of  deputies  will 
pass  that  way  !  "  they  cried  out  in  the  popular  assembUes.^  A 
government  agent,  adopting  an  admirable  simile,  remarks : 
"  The  mass  of  the  nation  is  a  bear,  and  the  political  parties 
working  it  are  turbulent  monkeys  who  have  cUmbed  up  and  are 
playing  on  its  back."  ^  The  question  for  every  demagogue  was 
thus,  "  Will  the  bear  rise  and  throw  us  off  ?  "  And,  haunted 
by  this  apprehension,  they  played  on  in  fear  and  trembling,  now 
patting  the  great  beast  into  good-humour,  now  terrorizing  it  into 
submission. 

One  thing  was  certain,  the  people  were  not  to  be  depended 
on  to  support  any  faction  or  government  consistently ;  the 
needs  of  the  moment  were  their  only  law.  These  same  women 
who  would  fight  each  other  to  the  death  for  a  few  ounces  of 
butter,^  and  tear  provisions  furiously  from  the  market-carts, 
would  not  raise  a  finger  to  save  their  idols  from  destruction- — 
never  once  attempted  to  drag  a  victim — even  one  of  their  own 
kind — ^from  his  seat  in  the  tumbril  on  the  way  to  the  guillotine. 

How  was  it  possible  to  make  a  "  nation  of  gods  "  out  of  such 
elements  ?  Where  amidst  all  this  sea  of  human  passions  was  the 
"  virtue,"  the  austerity,  the  "  civism  "  necessary  to  the  ideal 
RepubUc  to  be  found  ?  Inevitably,  therefore,  the  people  of 
Paris  must  be  subjected  to  the  same  process  as  the  people  in 
the  provinces  before  the  work  of  reconstruction  could  begin. 
It  was  thus  that  in  April  of  1794  Robespierre  and  his  colleagues, 
now  in  sole  possession  of  the  field,  set  to  work  with  redoubled 
energy  on  their  great  scheme — the  depopulation  of  Paris. 

From  this  moment  the  role  of  the  people  ceased  entirely ; 
except  as  a  hired  and  often  recalcitrant  claque,  even  the  populace 
took  no  part  in  the  scenes  of  bloodshed  that  followed.  Once 
the  people  had  been  the  tools  of  the  demagogues,  carrying  out 
their  vengeances ;  now  the  people's  own  turn  had  come — as  it 
must  come  in  every  revolution  that  does  not  stop  half-way — 
and  they  had  become  the  victims.  No  longer  was  the  force  of 
the  people  turned  against  themselves — demagogy  had  abandoned 

^  Dauban,  Paris  en  1794,  p.  280. 

2  Schmidt,  ii.  30, 

*  Dauban,  Paris  en  1794,  p.  144.  At  this  immense  crisis,  amidst  the 
fearful  bloodshed  of  the  Terror,  nothing  seems  to  have  stirred  the  women 
of  Paris  so  deeply  as  the  question  of  butter — "  butter  of  which  they  make 
a  god  1  "  {ihid.  p.  231).  Thus  the  Comit6  de  Salut  Public  headed  by 
Robespierre,  writing  to  summon  St.  Just  back  to  Paris  on  the  6th  of  Prairial. 
describes  as  one  of  the  chief  dangers  of  the  capital  '*  the  crowds  waiting  for 
butter,  which  are  more  numerous  and  more  turbulent  than  ever  "  {Papier s 
trouvis  chez  Robespierre,  ii.  6). 


452        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

"  jiu-jitsu  "  and  assumed  the  bludgeon.    The  Reign  of  Terror 
was  absolute  despotism. 

*'  One  must  have  seen/'  says  FreniUy,  "  as  I  saw  in  1793 
and  1794,  in  the  country  and  in  the  towns — which  history  will 
never  tell — the  entire  population,   good  and  simple  peasants, 
tradesmen,  artisans  and  owners  of  property,  all  trembUng  beneath 
the  hauteur  of  a  few  lawyers  formed  into  a  Popular  Society. 
Never  did  vassals  submit  more  humbly  to  vexations  ;  never  did 
barons  exercise  them  with  more  arrogance."  ^    The  people  were 
no   longer   merely  paralysed,   but   absolutely   crushed.     Every 
vestige  of  Uberty  accorded  by  the  first  two  Assemblies  under 
Louis   XVI. — personal  Hberty,   Uberty   of  the   press,   reUgious 
liberty,   the   sacredness   of   property — ^were   utterly   destroyed. 
Even  speech  was  no  longer  free — a  word  sufficed  to  send  one  to 
the  scaffold.     "  The  worst  thing  under  the  rule  of  Robespierre," 
!  old  men  used  to  say  long  afterwards,  "  was  that  in  the  morning 
one  could  never  be  sure  of  sleeping  in  one's  bed  that  night."  ^ 
Immediately  after  the  death  of  the   Dantonistes   the  con- 
/demnations  passed  by  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  increased  in 
V    number ;    during  the  preceding  month  of  Ventose  the  guillotine 
had   claimed  only  116  victims;  in  Germinal,  on  the  i6th  day 
of  which   the   Dantonistes    perished,   the    figure   rose   to    155, 
and  in  the  following   month  of  Floreal   to   no  less  than   354. 
These  were  still  taken  principally  from  amongst  the  RoyaUsts, 
aristocrats,  or  bourgeois — on  the  20th  of  April  twenty-five  ParHa- 
mentarians;   on  the  3rd  of  May  the  Grenadiers  des  Filles-St. 
Thomas,  who  had  remained  loyal  to  the  King  at  the  siege  of 
the  Tuileries ;  on  the  8th  of  May  twenty-eight  farmer-generals ; 
on  the  loth  of  May  Madame  EUzabeth  and  a  number  of  aristo- 
crats, both  men  and  women.     It  was  not  until  Robespierre  had 
succeeded  in  obtaining  the  decree  known  as  the  "  Loi  du  22 
Prairial "    (the    loth   of   June)    that   the    great   indiscriminate 
butcheries  began. ^    By  this  infamous  law  victims  summoned 

f^  Dauban  relates  that  sixty  years  later  the  peasants  of  France  had  nOM 
recovered  from  their  fright.  When  M.  Vatel  went  to  make  historical^ 
researches  in  the  provinces,  and  asked  the  old  men  for  their  recollections 
of  the  Terror,  the  whole  country-side  was  immediately  in  a  ferment ;  the 
people  asked  anxiously,  "  Are  they  going  to  re-establish  aU  that  ?  Are  we 
to  go  back  to  the  time  of  the  bad  paper  (the  worthless  assignats)  and  the 
great  fear  ?  "  {La  Demagogie  en  1793.  P-  xii.). 

2  Taine,  La  Revolution,  viii.  203. 

3  Robespierre  seems  to  have  meditated  this  law  for  three  months 
before  it  was  finally  passed.  As  early  as  the  month  of  the  Ventose, 
D'Aubigny  related  at  the  trial  of  Fouquier  Tinville,  he  attended  a  dinner, 
at  which  he  met  Robespierre,  who  complained  of  the  dilatoriness  of  they 
Revolutionary  Tribunal  in  punishing  conspirators.  Sellier  replied  thati 
the  Tribunal  merely  observed  the  forms  necessary  to  the  protection  olj 
the  innocent.     "  Bah  !    bah  !  "  said  Robespierre,  "  that  is  how  you  are' 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  453 

before  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  were  denied  all  rights  of 
defence  ;  no  advocates  were  to  be  allowed,  no  witnesses  called, 
and  the  penalty  imposed  in  all  cases  was  to  be  death. 

The  "  Loi  du  22  Prairial "  was  undoubtedly  Robespierre's  bid 
for  absolute  power.  Two  days  earUer  he  had  presided  at 
the  "  Feast  of  the  Supreme  Being,"  where  he  had  thrown  off 
his  disguise  of  austerity  and  appeared  before  the  people  curled 
and  powdered,  in  his  pale-blue  coat  and  nankin  breeches,  holding 
in  his  hands  an  enormous  bouquet  of  flowers  and  wheat-ears. 
In  order  to  make  his  entry  more  impressive,  he  had  kept  the 
immense  crowd  waiting  for  half -an -hour  before  he  made  his 
appearance,  and  as  a  storm  of  applause  greeted  his  arrival  a 
glow  of  triumph  overspread  the  sallow  countenance  of  the 
Incorruptible.  At  this  moment,  writes  one  who  looked  on, 
"  he  beUeved  himself  to  be  King  and  God."  ^  The  plaudits  of 
the  multitude  mounted  to  his  head  hke  wine,  and  it  was  under  the 
influence  of  this  intoxication  that  he  ventured  on  his  great  coup 
— the  passing  of  the  law  that  was  to  place  in  his  hands  the  power 
of  life  and  death. 

Yet  if  it  is  to  Robespierre  that  the  system  of  the  Terror  in 
Paris  must  be  mainly  attributed,  we  should  be  mistaken  in 
regarding  him  as  the  most  sanguinary  of  the  Terrorists.  On 
the  contrary,  ever5rthing  goes  to  prove  that  Robespierre  and  his 
principal  ally,  St.  Just,  did  not  love  bloodshed  for  its  own  sake  ; 
they  regarded  it  merely  as  a  means  to  an  end — the  estabUsh- 
ment  of  a  harmonious  democracy  on  the  plan  they  had  devised. 
But,  however  exalted  may  have  been  the  ideal  at  which  they 
aimed,  it  was  obviously  impossible  for  them  to  find  ideaUsts 
exclusively  to  co-operate  with  them  or  to  execute  their  scheme, 
and  they  were  therefore  obUged  to  throw  in  their  lot  with  a 
band  of  men  so  atrocious  that  by  comparison  they  themselves 
seem  almost  humane.  These  men  were  to  be  found  amongst 
their  colleagues  in  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public  and  their  instru- 
ments in  the  Comity  de  Surete  G^nerale  and  the  Revolutionary 
Tribunal. 

The  Comite  de  Surete  Generale  had  been  created  in  1789  by 
the  National  Assembly  as  a  "  committee  of  information,"  and 
only  took  its  later  name  on  the  30th  of  May  1792.  Although 
supposed  to  be  subordinate  to  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public,  and 
in  accord  with  it,  the  Comity  de  Surety  Generale  had  in  reaUty 
become  its  rival,  and  each  committee  was  in  turn  divided  into 

with  your  forms  !     Wait,  before  long  the  Committee  will  have  a  law 
passed  that  will  clear  the  way  for  the  Tribunal  and  then  we  shall  see  !  " 
(evidence  of  J.   L.  M.  Villam  d'Aubigny,  ex-Adjoint  au  Ministre  de  la 
Guerre,  etc.,  Procds  de  Fouquier,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxiv.  410). 
^  MSmoires  de  FievSe  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  162. 


454 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


rival  factions.  These  factions,  and  the  mysterious  names  they 
bore,  have  been  described  by  Senart,  and  when  tabulated  in 
the  following  manner  throw  a  strange  light  on  the  workings  of 
the  Terror : 

Comit6  de  Salut  Public 


1 


Robespierre  "I  Les  Gens  de 
Couthon  j-  la  Haute 
St.  Just       J   Main. 


Bar^re  ^  Les  Gens 
Billaud  V  RSvolution- 
Collot   j    naires. 


Carnot^ 

Prieur 

Lindet, 


Les        Gens 
d'Examen 


CoMIT6   de   S^RETfi   G6n6r\LE 


Vadier 
VouUand 
Amar 
Jagot 
Louis     du 
BasRhin 


Les  Gens 

■  d'ExpS- 

dition. 


David  \Les 
Lebas  /  J&couteurs. 


i 


Moise  Bayle 
Lavicomterie 
Elie  Lacoste 
Dubarran 


Les      Gens 

-  de     Con' 

tre-poids. 


By  means  of  this  table  the  really  sanguinary  authors  of  the 
Terror  can  be  seen  at  a  glance  ;  these  were  the  "  Gens  Revolu- 
tionnaires  "  of  the  first  committee,  and  the  "  Gens  d'Expedition  " 
of  the  second.  For  innate  ferocity,  for  real  bloodthirstiness — 
bloodthirstiness  without  any  ultimate  purpose — ^we  must  look, 
not  to  the  triumvirate  formed  by  Robespierre,  Couthon,  and 
St.  Just,  but  to  that  infamous  trio  who  afterwards  overthrew 
them — Barere  de  Vieuzac,  Billaud- Varenne,  and  Collot  d'Her- 
bois.  Was  it  not  Billaud  who  had  presided  at  the  massacres  in 
the  prisons,  and  urged  the  assassins  on  to  violence  ?  Was  it  not 
Collot  who  had  declared  these  same  massacres  of  September 
to  be  the  "  Credo  "  of  Uberty,  and  who,  as  the  ally  of  Chaher, 
had  organized  the  atrocities  that  took  place  at  Lyon  ?  And  it 
was  Barere,  that  miserable  "  chameleon,"  now  Feuillant,  now 
Jacobin,  now  aristocrat,  now  revolutionary,  "  atheist  in  the 
evening,  deist  in  the  morning,"  ^  who  in  one  atrocious  phrase 
epitomized  the  plan  of  depopulation  into  which  no  one  had 
entered  more  heartily  than  he.  One  day,  Vilate  relates,  Barere, 
looking  out  of  a  window  in  the  Tuileries  towards  the  city,  said, 
"  Paris  is  too  large  ;  it  is  to  the  Repubhc,  by  means  of  its 
monstrous  population,  what  a  violent  rush  of  blood  is  to  the 
heart  of  a  man — a  suffocation  that  withers  the  other  organs 
and  leads  to  death."  And  to  Dupin  he  added  :  "Do  you  know, 
Dupin,  that  the  idea  of  Nero,  when  he  set  fire  to  Rome  in  order 
to  have  the  pleasure  of  re-building  it,  was  a  really  revolutionary 
idea  ?  "  ^ 

The  former  phrase  became  current  coin  amongst  the  Terror- 
j  ists ;    it  was  continually  on  their  Ups,  says  Mercier,  and  they 

^    *  Causes  secretes  de  la  Revolution,  by  Vilate  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  224. 

2  Ibid.  p.  262. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  455 

would  observe  that,  in  order  to  counteract  this  unhealthy  rush  of 
blood  to  the  heart,  one  should  have  recourse  to  "  phlebotomy."  ^ 

At  his  pleasure-house  of  Clichy,  Barere  met  twice  a  decade  ^ 
with  his  aUies,  the  "  Gens  d'Expedition  "  of  the  Comite  de 
Surete  G6nerale,  to  plan  fresh  fournees  for  the  guillotine. 

It  was  these  monsters — Vadier,  Voulland,  Amar,  Jagot, 
Louis  du  Bas  Rhin,  names  long  since  forgotten,  yet  in  their 
day  names  of  dread  and  horror — ^who  lent  to  the  Terror  that 
spirit  of  ghoulish  ferocity  that  makes  the  history  of  the  period 
unique  in  the  annals  of  mankind.  This  hideous  band  that 
S6nart  describes  with  fearful  realism  in  his  Memoires  reminds 
one  of  nothing  so  much  as  a  pack  of  jackals  breaking  the  stillness 
of  a  Himalayan  night  with  their  dreary  howling  after  blood. 
Thus  Senart  relates  : 

"  There  had  been  one  evening  a  great  number  of  people 
guillotined  ;  Louis  du  Bas  Rhin  said  : 

"  '  It  is  going  well ;  the  baskets  are  fiUing.' 

*'  *  Then,'  answered  Voulland,  '  let  us  make  a  provision  of 
game.  .  .  .' 

"  Vadier  said  to  Voulland :  *  I  saw  you  on  the  Place  de  la 
Revolution  near  the  guillotine.' 

**  *  I  went  to  laugh  at  the  faces  those  rascals  make  at  the 
window.' 

"  '  Ho  !  '  said  Vadier,  'it  is  a  funny  passage — the  little 
window.  They  give  a  good  sneeze  into  the  sack.  It  amuses  me, 
I  have  taken  quite  a  liking  for  it.     I  often  go  there.' 

"  *  Go  to-morrow,'  resumed  Amar,  '  there  will  be  a  great 
show  ;  I  was  at  the  Tribunal  to-day.' 

"  *  Let  us  go  there,'  said  Vadier. 

"  '  I'll  go  for  certain,'  retorted  Voulland." 

Senart  declares  that  during  this  conversation  he  pinched 
himself  to  make  sure  he  was  not  dreaming  ;  he  felt  as  if  he  were 
between  a  tiger,  a  panther,  and  a  bear. 

Now  it  is  remarkable  that  none  of  Robespierre's  many 
enemies  ever  attributed  to  him  sentiments  of  this  atrocious 
kind,  though  had  they  done  so  they  would  have  been  readily 
believed.  Yet  amongst  all  the  witnesses  who  afterwards  came 
forward  at  the  trial  of  Fouquier  Tinville  to  testify  to  the 
system  of  the  Terror,  and  Robespierre's  share  in  it,  none  asserted 
that  he  had  appeared  to  take  deUght  in  the  sufferings  of  his 
victims  or  that  he  had  even  assisted  at  the  spectacle  of  the 
guillotine.  Indeed,  all  evidence  goes  to  show  that  Robespierre 
took  the  first  opportunity  to  disassociate  himself  from  the  men 

^  Mercier,  Le  Nouveau  Paris,  ii.  132. 

2  Decade  =  10  days,  the  measure  of  time  which  in  the  Revolutionary 
Calendar  was  substituted  for  weeks. 


456        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

he  had  set  in  motion  ;  and  it  was  thus  that  five  days  after  the 
passing  of  the  "  Loi  du  22  Prairial "  he  ceased  to  attend  the 
meetings  of  the  Comit6  de  Salut  PubUc.  But  to  argue  from 
this,  as  Robespierre's  panegyrists  have  done,  that  he  now 
wished  to  arrest  the  course  of  the  Terror  is  quite  another  matter. 
No,  Robespierre  did  not  wish  to  arrest  the  Terror — of  this  there 
can  be  no  possible  doubt.  Was  not  the  law  that  inaugurated 
those  last  terrible  six  weeks  of  his  own  making  ?  And  if  he 
no  longer  took  part  in  the  discussions  of  the  Comit6  de  Salut 
Public,  were  not  the  sanguinary  Commune  and  the  poUce  of 
Paris  entirely  under  his  control  ?  ^  If,  therefore,  Robespierre 
withdrew  from  the  committee,  it  was  either  because  he  dis- 
approved the  manner  in  which  his  more  ferocious  colleagues 
carried  out  the  system  of  the  Terror,  or,  more  probably,  because 
he  had  begun  to  see  in  Billaud,  Collot,  and  Barere  a  faction  that 
threatened  not  only  his  supremacy  but  his  hfe.  After  the 
"  Loi  du  22  Prairial,"  says  Vilate,  "  Robespierre  became  more 
sombre,  his  scowling  air  repelled  every  one,  he  talked  only  of 
assassination,  again  of  assassination,  always  of  assassination. 
He  was  afraid  that  his  shadow  would  assassinate  him." 

Already  he  beUeved  that  an  attempt  had  been  made  to 
murder  him.  In  the  evening  of  the  25th  of  May  Cecile  Renault, 
the  daughter  of  a  small  stationer,  had  entered  the  gloomy  court- 
yard of  the  carpenter's  house  in  the  Rue  Saint -Honor6  and 
asked  to  see  Robespierre.  When  told  that  he  was  out  she  showed 
temper  and,  evidently  disbelieving  the  assertion,  answered  that 
a  public  functionary  should  be  willing  to  receive  all  those  who 
asked  to  see  him.  On  these  words  she  was  led  to  the  Comit6 
de  Surete  Generale,  and,  by  way  of  making  her  condemnation 
absolutely  certain,  observed  that  "  under  the  Old  Regime  when 
one  presented  oneself  to  the  King  one  was  allowed  to  enter  at 
once."  "  Then  would  you  rather  have  a  king  ?  "  they  asked  her, 
and  she  answered  boldly,  "  I  would  shed  all  my  blood  to  have 
one.  .  .  .  That  is  my  opinion  ;  you  are  only  tyrants."  She 
had  gone  to  Robespierre,  she  told  the  Committee,  "  in  order  to 
see  what  a  tyrant  was  Uke." 

They  found  on  her  two  little  penknives,  and  in  a  basket  she 
had  left  at  a  lemonade-seUer's  near-by  a  change  of  linen,  which 
she  explained  she  had  brought  with  her,  as  she  expected  to  be 
sent  to  prison  and  thence  to  the  scaffold. 

Before  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  she  declared  that  she 
had  not  intended  to  kill  Robespierre,  but  persisted  in  expressing 

^  Schmidt,  ii.  208  ;  M^moires  sur  les  Prisons,  i.  237.  "  Robespierre," 
says  Michelet,  "  no  longer  went  to  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public,  but  he  kept 
his  power  of  signature,  he  signed  at  home  ;  a  number  of  orders  signed  by  his 
hand  are  still  in  existence  "  {Histoire  de  la  Revolution  Franfuise,  ix.  196). 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  457 

her  devotion  to  Louis  XVI. :  "I  said  I  wept  for  our  good  King, 
yes,  I  said  it,  and  I  wish  he  were  still  Hving.  Are  you  not  five 
hundred  kings,  and  all  more  insolent  and  more  despotic  than 
the  one  you  kiUed  ?  " 

This,  of  course,  sealed  the  fate  of  Cecile  Renault,  and  since 
on  the  same  day  a  man  named  Amiral  had  really  attempted  to 
shoot  CoUot  d'Herbois,  the  revolutionary  committees  seized  the 
opportunity  to  proclaim  that  a  "  vast  conspiracy  "  had  been 
discovered.  On  the  proposal  of  Louis  du  Bas  Rhin  of  the 
Comity  de  Suret6  G6nerale,  they  further  decided  to  represent 
this  conspiracy  as  originating  in  England.  Once  again  it  was 
Pitt — solemnly  declared  by  the  Convention  ten  months  earUer 
to  be  "  the  enemy  of  the  human  race  " — ^who  had  instigated 
the  papermaker's  daughter  to  assassinate  Robespierre.  This 
ludicrous  fable  offered  Barere  an  occasion  to  pour  forth  furious 
diatribes  against  the  EngUsh  ^ — "  that  treacherous  and  ferocious 
people,  a  slave  at  home,  a  despot  on  the  Continent,  and  a  pirate 
at  sea  "  ;  at  the  same  time  it  afforded  Robespierre  a  pretext  for 
sending  an  enormous  batch  of  victims  to  the  guillotine.  Amongst 
these  were  included,  not  only  Cecile  Renault's  father,  the  paper- 
maker,  her  young  brother,  and  an  aunt  who  had  been  a  nun, 
but  all  kinds  of  men  and  women,  some  belonging  to  the  nobihty, 
some  to  the  people — ^the  heretofore  Prince  of  Rohan-Rochefort,  the 
beautiful  Emilie  de  Sartines,  and  her  mother,  Madame  de  Sainte- 
Amaranthe,  four  administrators  of  poUce,  a  grocer,  a  lemonade- 
seller,  a  concierge,  and  two  domestic  servants — sixty-one  in  all. 

The  most  pathetic  of  these  conspirators  was  a  little  seamstress 
of  seventeen,  known  as  "la  petite  Nicholle,"  too  poor  even  to  afford 
herself  a  bedstead,  and  when  S6nart,  secretary  to  the  Comite  de 
Surety  Generale,  sought  her  in  her  attic  on  the  seventh  floor, 
he  found  her  Ijdng  on  a  straw  mattress  laid  upon  the  boards. 
"  VouUand,"  says  Senart,  "  wished  for  her  death,  because  he 
said  she  took  food  to  the  woman  Grandmaison  " — an  actress 
included  in  the  same  fournee — ** '  and  for  that  reason,'  said  the 
hypocrite  Louis  du  Bas  Rhin,  '  she  will  go  with  her.'  I  was 
assured  of  her  innocence.  .  .  ." 

It  was  also  Louis  du  Bas  Rhin  who  proposed  that,  in  order 
to  make  the  procession  more  imposing,  all  the  victims  should 

*  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  the  Convention  passed  the  decree  that 
all  English  and  Hanoverian  prisoners  should  be  shot.  "  Fortunately," 
says  Taine,  "  the  French  soldiers  feel  the  nobihty  of  their  profession,  and 
on  the  order  to  shoot  the  prisoners  a  brave  sergeant  replies,  '  We  will 
not  shoot  them  ;  send  them  to  the  Convention  ;  if  the  representatives  take 
pleasure  in  killing  a  prisoner,  they  can  kill  him  themselves  and  eat  him 
too,  like  the  savages  they  are.'  This  sergeant,  an  uncultivated  man, 
could  not  rise  to  the  heights  of  the  Comit6  or  of  Barere.  ..."  {La  Revolu- 
tion, vii.  309). 


458        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

be  sent  to  the  scaffold  in  the  scarlet  dress  of  assassms,  "for/' 
*  said  he,  "  small  things  lead  to  great  ones,  appearances  create 
,  illusions,  and  it  is  by  illusions  that  the  people  are  led."  At  this 
Vadier,  fearing  that  his  prey  was  to  be  snatched  from  him  and 
the  whole  affair  to  end  in  a  vain  parade,  cried  out,  "  But  we 
must  have  reality,  we  must  have  blood  !  "  Louis  du  Bas  Rhin 
answered  reassuringly,  "  Poets  represent  the  sage  to  us  as 
sheltered  by  a  wall  of  brass  ;  let  us  raise  a  wall  of  heads  between 
ourselves  and  the  people."  What  despot,  asks  Senart,  had  ever 
said,  "  Raise  a  wall  of  heads  between  myself  and  my  subjects  ?  " 
On  the  day  of  execution  the  jackals  were  there  to  watch  the 
procession  pass,  and  it  was  then  that  Voulland,  turning  to  his 
companions,  uttered  his  famous  bon  mot :  "  Come,  let  us  go 
to  the  high  altar  and  see  the  celebration  of  the  Red  Mass." 
Fouquier,  too,  was  determined  not  to  miss  the  spectacle ;  from 
a  window  in  the  Conciergerie  he  had  watched  the  scarlet-clad 
figures  ascending  the  tumbrils  and,  irritated  by  the  sang-froid  of 
Madame  de  Sainte-Amaranthe,  exclaimed,  "  See  how  brazen 
they  are  I  I  must  go  and  see  them  mount  the  scaffold,  even  if 
I  have  to  miss  my  dinner  !  "  ^ 

The  calm  invariably  displayed  by  the  victims  was  a  source 
of  continual  annoyance  to  the  jackals  of  the  Comite  de  Surete 
Generale  and  their  aUies  in  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal.  One 
evening  as  they  met  at  their  favourite  tavern — Chretien,  on  the 
Place  du  Theatre  Favart — ^to  drink  punch  and  liqueurs,  to 
smoke  and  laugh  over  the  executions,  and  boast  of  the  way 
they  invented  accusations  against  innocent  people,  Renaudin, 
one  of  the  most  ferocious  members  of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal, 
referring  to  a  certain  victim,  remarked,  "  There  was  nothing 
against  him."  "  When  there  is  nothing,"  said  Vilate,  "  one 
invents."  "  As  for  me,"  said  Foucault,  "  I  find  nobles  every- 
where, even  amongst  cobblers."  Prieur  then  observed,  "  There 
is  one  thing  that  puts  me  in  a  temper,  and  that  is  the  courage 
with  which  all  these  counter-revolutionaries  go  to  their  death. 
If  I  were  in  the  place  of  the  PubUc  Accuser,  I  would  have  all 
the  condemned  people  bled  before  their  execution,  so  as  to  break 
down  their  insolent  bearing."  "  Bravo,  my  friend,"  cried  Leroy, 
known  under  the  sobriquet  of  "  Dix  Aout,"  "  I  will  undertake 
to  speak  of  it  to  Fouquier  !  "  ^ 

After  the  great  fournee  of  the  Chemises  Rouges  things 
moved  faster,  yet  still  not  fast  enough  to  satisfy  the  members 
of  the  two  committees,  and  it  was  then  decided  to  have  recourse 
once  more  to  the  old  device  that  had  succeeded  so  admirably  in 

1  Evidence  of  Robert  Wolf,  clerk  of  the  Court  at  the  Revolutionary^ 
Tribunal,  ProUs  de  Fouquier,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxiv.  447. 

2  Histoire  secrite  du  Tribunal  rivolutionnaire,  by  Proussinalle,  ii.  175,  i8x« 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  459 

September  1792,  and  to  announce  that  vast  conspiracies  were 
being  formed  in  all  the  prisons.  The  pretext,  which  seems  to 
have  been  concerted  between  Robespierre  and  Hermann,  president 
of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal,^  was,  however,  this  time  not  so 
plausible,  for  the  successes  of  the  RepubUcan  armies  made  it 
impossible  to  represent  the  prisoners  as  a  danger  to  the  country 
through  collusion  with  invading  legions.^  In  order,  therefore,  to 
give  some  colour  to  the  story,  an  attempt  was  made  by  means 
of  systematic  ill-treatment — ^by  taking  from  them  all  their 
possessions,  feeding  them  abominably,  and  waking  them  up 
repeatedly  in  the  night — ^to  drive  the  prisoners  to  form  some  plan 
of  revolt  which  could  be  called  a  conspiracy.^  But  the  unhappy 
captives  bore  all  their  sufferings  with  complete  resignation ;  not 
the  faintest  shadow  of  a  conspiracy  could  be  detected  in  any 
of  the  prisons.  Yet  in  each  prison  in  turn — Bicetre,  the  Luxem- 
bourg, the  Cannes,  Saint-Lazare,  and  La  Force — ^it  was  announced 
that  a  conspiracy  had  been  formed,  and  on  this  pretext  people 
of  all  kinds,  men  and  women,  deaf,  bUnd,  or  paralysed,  were 
condemned  to  death  en  masse.  Many  of  these  conspirators, 
accused  of  having  conferred  together,  met  for  the  first  time  in 
the  tumbrils  on  the  way  to  execution. 

The  hecatombs  now  became  appaUing.  During  the  last  six 
weeks  before  the  fall  of  Robespierre,  that  is  to  say  between  the 
passing  of  the  "  Loi  du  22  Prairial"  on  June  10  and  July  27, 
the  period  which  constitutes  "  The  Great  Terror,"  no  less  than 
1366  victims  perished,  and  amongst  these  by  far  the  largest 
proportion  was  taken  from  amongst  either  "  the  people  "  or 
the  petite  bourgeoisie.^  "  One  saw  before  this  Tribunal  of 
Blood,"  it  was  said  later  in  the  trial  of  Fouquier  Tinville,  "  labour- 
ing men  who  tilled  the  soil,  whose  rags  hardly  covered  their 
nakedness,  ascending  the  rows  of  seats  (of  the  Tribunal),  and 

1  Evidence  of  Grandpr6,  chief  of  police,  Prods  de  Fouquier,  Buchez 
et  Roux,  xxxiv.  432. 

2  Evidence  of  Sauveboeuf  :  "  Our  victories  no  longer  permitted  of  the 
renewal  of  this  pretext  "   {ibid.  p.  372). 

*  Evidence  of  Sauveboeuf  and  of  R6al,  counsel,  ibid.  pp.  372,  389. 

*  I  have  shown  elsewhere  {The  Chevalier  de  Boufflers,  p.  377)  the 
proportion  of  victims  amongst  the  middle-  or  working-classes  to  have 
been  approximately  21 10  out  of  the  total  of  2800.  Mr.  Croker  places  the 
total  at  2730,  and  calculates  that  of  these  650  were  "  rich  people,"  rather 
over  1000  were  middle-class,  and  1000  working-class.  M.  Louis  Blanc 
{Histoire  de  la  Rivolution,  xi.  155)  accepts  this  statement,  but  endeavours 
to  clear  his  idol  Robespierre  from  guilt  by  saying  that  he  protested  against 
the  massacre  of  poor  people.  This  is  a  pure  invention — Robespierre  never 
once  uttered  such  a  protest.  See  his  speeches  against  "  indulgence  "  on 
June  10,  July  9,  11,  and  14,  and  especially  his  protest  against  showing 
sensibihty  on  July  i  {13th  Messidor)  just  after  the  execution  of  seventy-two 
victims,  nearly  all  working-men  (Michelet,  ix.  196), 


46o        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

being  led  to  the  scaffold  for  having  in  a  moment  of  anger,  or 
perhaps  of  drunkenness,  made  some  observation,  or  for  having, 
through  want  of  education  (!),  opposed  the  removal  of  their 
church  bells."  ^ 

In  order  to  swell  the  numbers  of  the  condemned,  poor  people 
were  dragged  to  Paris  from  all  parts  of  France  and  butchered 
without  any  explanation  being  given  them.^  "  Twenty  women 
of  Poitou,"  writes  an  eye-witness,  "  poor  peasants  mostly,  were 
assassinated  all  together.  I  see  them  still,  those  unhappy 
victims,  lying  out  in  the  courtyard  of  the  Conciergerie,  overcome 
with  fatigue  after  a  long  journey — sleeping  on  the  paving-stones. 
Their  glances,  which  betrayed  no  understanding  of  the  fate  that 
threatened  them,  resembled  those  of  oxen  herded  together  in 
the  market-place,  looking  around  them  fixedly  and  without 
comprehension.  They  were  all  executed  a  few  days  after  their 
arrival.  At  the  moment  of  going  to  death,  some  one  tore  from 
the  breast  of  one  of  these  unfortunate  women  the  child  that  she 
was  nursing.  ...  Oh  !  cries  of  maternal  anguish,  how  piercing 
you  were,  but  you  were  in  vain.  Some  of  the  women  died  in 
the  cart  and  they  guillotined  the  corpses."  ^ 

In  this  case  the  victims  were  condemned  all  in  a  batch, 
without  specific  grounds  of  accusations  being  brought  against 
them  individually ;  where  men  and  women  of  the  people  were 
condemned  singly  some  trumped-up  charge  was  usually  forth- 
coming. The  following  entries  taken  at  random  from  Wallon's 
records  of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  give  an  idea  of  the  pretexts 
on  which  these  poor  creatures  were  done  to  death  : 

1.  Fran^oise  Bridier,  widow  Loreu,  aged  72,  domestic  servant, 
accused  of  having  hidden  12  ells  of  Unen  cloth  required  for  the 
clothing  of  the  volunteers. 

2.  Anne  Th6rese  Raff6,  widow  Coquet,  denounced  by  the 
citizen  Folatre  to  whom  she  had  wished  to  give  a  note  of  50 
livres  which  he  did  not  need. 

3.  Germaine  Quetier,  the  wife  of  Charbonnier,  who  said  that 
she  wanted  a  rouet  (spinning-wheel),  which  she  pronounced  like 
"  roi."  * 

But  it  must  be  admitted  that  some  of  the  victims  brought 
their  fate  on  themselves.  "  Aristocracy "  was  still  rampant 
amongst  certain  classes  of  the  people,  and  nothing  could  persuade 
them  to  keep  sUent.     Thus  Madame  Blanchet,  the  old  servant 

*  Notes  by  the  reporter  of  the  trial  of  Fouquier,  Buchez  et  Roux, 
xxxiv,  487, 

*  Evidence  of  Grandpr6,  ihid.  p.  427. 

»  MSmoires  de  Riouffe,  i.  87  ;  Letters  of  Helen  Maria  Williams  {i795)» 
p.  108.  Helen  Maria  Williams,  who  had  so  rejoiced  over  the  loth  of  August, 
was  now  in  prison,  her  revolutionary  ardour  considerably  cooled. 

*  Wallon,  Histoire  du  Tribunal  rdvoluiionnaire,  iv.  402. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  461 

of  the  Abb6  de  Salamon — she  who  had  turned  over  the  corpses 
in  the  courtyard  of  the  Abbaye  in  her  search  for  her  master 
during  the  massacres  of  September — still  continued  to  speak 
her  mind  very  freely.  Blanchet  was  therefore  imprisoned  at 
the  **  Anglaises,"  where  she  found  herself  amongst  a  number  of 
ci-devants  who  had  sympathized  with  the  Revolution.  One 
of  these  ladies,  the  Duchesse  d'Anville  la  Rochefoucauld, 
taunted  Blanchet,  saying,  "  Citizeness  Blanchet,  you  will  be 
guillotined  Hke  us  I  "  "I  know  that  well,"  Blanchet  answered, 
"  but  there  is  a  difference  between  us.  I  shall  die  for  your 
cause,  which  you  yourself  have  abandoned,  and  you,  yoii  will 
die  for  having  embraced  the  cause  of  the  patriots.  ...  It  will 
be  much  more  degrading  to  perish  thus.  ...  No  one  will  be 
sorry  for  you,  but  for  me  all  honourable  people  who  learn  of 
my  sad  fate  will  weep.  ...  I  have  always  been  an  aristocrat 
myself,  and  you,  you  were  always  the  friend  of  that  contemptible 
Condorcet  about  whom  I  could  tell  you  fine  things  !  "  ^ 

But  it  was  not  only  the  **  respectable  poor  "  Hke  Blanchet 
who  entertained  aristocratic  sentiments.  Some  of  the  disreput- 
able women  of  the  people  were  violently  RoyaUst.  The  Comtesse 
de  Bohm  has  described  a  number  of  these  poor  creatures,  mostly 
street  criers,  who  were  her  fellow-prisoners  at  the  Conciergerie, 
and  "  carried  RoyaUsm  to  excess."  When,  as  frequently  hap- 
pened, they  became  noisily  drunk,  "  their  songs,  their  toasts, 
were  constantly  intermingled  with  cries  of  '  Vive  le  Roi ! '  " 
"  These  resounding  exclamations,"  writes  Madame  de  Bohm, 
"  annoyed  the  gaolers,  who,  unable  to  make  them  keep  silence, 
daily  threatened  and  struck  these  drunken  women.  This  bold, 
free,  and  exalted  way  of  showing  one's  feeUngs,  of  preferring 
death  to  constraint,  indicates  a  certain  greatness  of  soul,  a  savage 
independence  which  contrasted  strangely  with  the  baseness,  the 
coarseness,  and  the  obscene  habits  of  my  neighbours.  ...  I 
sometimes  represented  to  them  the  dangers  they  were  incurring. 
*  Oh  well,  my  girl,  we  shall  be  guillotined !  One  can  only  die 
once  I '  The  turnkeys,  tired  of  these  vociferations,  denounced 
them ;  and  after  being  judged  and  condemned  they  mounted 
the  scaffold,  crying  deafeningly,  '  Vive  le  Roi ! '  " 

The  temptation  to  commit  suicide  by  uttering  this  fatal  cry 
proved  irresistible  to  certain  women  ;  thus  Marie  Corrie,  a  young 
laundress  of  twenty-three,  from  sheer  "  gaiety  of  heart  "  opened 
her  window  and  shouted  loudly,  "  Vive  le  Roi !  "  Before  the 
Revolutionary  Tribunal  she  frankly  admitted  the  offence,  declar- 
ing that  she  would  always  cry  "  Vive  le  Roi  !  "  and  "  Vive 
Louis  XVII.  !  "      The  guillotine  silenced  her  at  last. 

*  MSmoires  de  Monscigneur  de  Salamon,  p.  206.  Blanchet  survived 
the  Terror  and  died  in  her  master's  arms  eleven  years  later. 


462         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

It  seems,  indeed,  that  throughout  this  fearful  period  of  the 
Terror  some  mysterious  spirit  of  exaltation  was  abroad ;  the 
utter  uncertainty  in  which  one  Hved,  the  breathless  suspense 
that  kept  the  nerves  at  concert  pitch,  the  bridging  over  of  the 
chasm  that  divides  Ufe  from  death  effected  by  the  daily  spectacle 
of  those  slow-moving  "  hearses  of  the  living  "  conve3dng  youth 
and  age,  viriUty  and  beauty,  to  the  other  world,  even  the  tropical 
heat  of  the  weather,  all  combined  to  produce  an  abnormal  state 
of  mind  which  drove  people  of  ardent  imaginations  to  throw  their 
lives  recklessly  away. 

But  whatever  the  cause,  the  courage  displayed  by  the  women 
of  all  classes  during  the  Reign  of  Terror  must  eternally  remain 
one  of  the  most  glorious  episodes  in  the  history  of  France. 
Amongst  the  hundreds  that  perished  one  alone,  poor  old  Madame 
du  Barry,  showed  weakness ;  aU  the  rest,  without  exception, 
faced  the  scaffold  with  unfaltering  courage. 

In  the  women  of  the  aristocratic  classes  this  heroism  is  the 
less  surprising,  for  they  were  trained  from  infancy  to  hide 
their  feeUngs  and  to  Uve  up  to  their  traditions.  To  these  bearers 
of  great  names,  dying  for  a  cause  that  was  their  own,  the  Terror 
must  have  appeared  as  a  mighty  drama  in  which  each  one  felt 
herself  called  to  play  her  part  worthily,  knowing  fuU  weU  that 
every  word,  every  smile  or  glance  or  gesture  would  be  noticed 
and  recorded,  her  last  words  handed  down  from  generation  to 
generation,  the  lock  of  hair  she  gave  preserved  as  a  sacred  relic 
amongst  her  descendants. 

But  for  the  women  of  the  people,  where  was  the  incentive  to 
courage  ?  To  these  poor  souls,  suddenly  and  roughly  hurried 
out  of  life  for  no  apparent  reason,  the  Terror  can  have  presented 
nothing  in  the  least  dramatic — merely  a  black  horror  they  could 
not  understand.  The  Revolution,  they  were  told,  was  for  the 
good  of  the  people ;  yet  were  they  not  the  people  ?  Surely  to 
be  butchered  in  the  name  of  democracy  was  a  thousand  times 
more  maddening  than  to  fall  a  victim  to  the  tyranny  of  the  Old 
Regime  !  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated — ^the  people  were  the 
chief  sufferers  in  the  Terror.  Even  in  the  prisons  the  aristocrats 
fared  better  than  they.  For  there,  as  ever3rwhere  else  during 
the  reign  of  equaUty,  money  could  buy  alleviations,  and  the 
wealthier  prisoners  were  able,  by  the  payment  of  four  or  five 
livres  a  day,  to  secure  ceUs  and  pallet-beds,  wretched  enough  in 
truth,  yet  infinitely  to  be  preferred  to  the  dreadful  Souriciere  or 
"  Mouse-Trap  "  of  the  Conciergerie,  where  the  unhappy  members 
of  the  people  were  flung  upon  filthy  straw  to  be  devoured  by 
rats  and  poisoned  with  pestilential  odours.^ 

Why  did  the  people  submit  to  this  regime  ?  How,  in  the 
^  Paris  RSvolutionnaire,  by  G.  Lenotre,  p.  350. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  463 

words  of  Vilate,  are  we  to  understand  "  the  blind  docility  of  the 
most  enUghtened  of  nations  in  allowing  itself  to  be  taken  piece- 
meal and  butchered  en  masse  Hke  a  stupid  herd  led  to  the 
shambles  ?     History  will  ask  this  question." 

The  answer  is  surely  that  the  despotism  of  the  demagogues 
was  organized,  whilst  the  people  were  composed  of  solitary  units 
that  could  not  coalesce.  To  form  an  effectual  opposition  it 
would  have  been  necessary  to  meet  in  consultation,  to  draw  up 
some  plan  of  campaign,  and  any  such  attempts  would  have  been 
instantly  crushed.  The  people,  therefore,  felt  themselves  helpless ; 
no  one  dared  to  break  Une,  to  take  the  first  step,  uncertain 
whether  he  would  get  a  backing  from  his  fellows  or  whether 
those  very  men  who  seemed  most  eager  to  rebel  would  not  at 
the  last  moment  be  stricken  with  panic  and  betray  their  allies. 

Fear,  indeed,  held  all  hearts  in  its  grip.  The  Terrorists  them- 
selves were  terrorized.  They  Uved  in  dread  now  less  of  the  people 
than  of  each  other.  The  revolutionary  committees  were  divided 
against  themselves.  Robespierre  had  his  spies  in  the  Comite  de 
Surete  Generale ;  meanwhile  Vadier  of  this  committee  employed 
an  agent  to  shadow  Robespierre.  From  this  mutual  (fistrust 
and  suspicion  arose  much  of  the  frenzy  that  characterized  the 
Terror;  each  man  and  each  faction  strove  to  outdo  the  other 
— "  to  kill  in  order  not  to  be  killed  "  became  the  plan  of  one 
and  all. 

Meanwhile  the  members  of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  were 
driven  onwards  by  the  same  haunting  terror ;  Fouquier  Tin- 
ville  himself  trembled  perpetually  lest  his  zeal  should  be  deemed 
unsufficing.  This  was  afterwards  clearly  proved  at  his  trial, 
when  all  the  workings  of  the  Terror  were  laid  bare. 

Fouquier,  it  then  transpired,  was  in  the  habit  of  going 
regularly  every  night  during  the  time  that  he  occupied  the  post 
of  Public  Accuser  to  receive  his  orders  first  from  the  Comit6 
de  Salut  PubHc,  then  from  the  Comite  de  Surete  Generale.^  It 
was  then  that  the  fate  of  the  prisoners  was  decided  and  the 
fournie  of  the  morrow  arranged,  after  which  Fouquier,  armed 
with  his  Hsts,  returned  to  the  Conciergerie  at  one  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  or  even  later.  Against  these  decisions  of  the  committees 
there  was  no  appeal :  "Do  you  not  know,"  Fouquier  said  to 
S6nart,  "  that  when  the  Comite  de  Salut  PubHc  has  decided  on 
the  death  of  any  one,  patriot  or  aristocrat,  no  matter,  he  has 
got  to  go  ?  "  2 

That  Fouquier  knew  exactly  the  number  of  the  condemned 

*  Mimoire  written  by  Fouquier  in  his  own  defence,  Buchez  et  Roux, 
xxxiv.'  234. 

'  Evidence  of  Villam  d'Aubigny,  ex- Adjoint  au  Ministre  de  la  Guerre, 
Proems  de  Fouquier,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxiv.  412. 


464        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

before  they  were  brought  to  tried  was  proved  conclusively.     On 
day,  S6nart  related,  he  was  waiting  in  an  ante-chamber  outsid 
Fouquier's  room  at  the  Conciergerie,  when  one  of  the  executioner' 
employes  arrived,  and   Fouquier  at   this  moment  making  his 
appearance  the  man  said  to  him,  "  I  have  come,  citizen,  tc: 
ask  you  how  many  carts  are  wanted."     Fouquier  counting  on 
his     fingers    murmured,     "  Eight  —  ten  —  twelve  —  eighteen  — 
twenty-four — ^thirty — ^there  will  be  thirty  heads  to-day."     Senart 
thereupon  said  to    Fouquier,   "  What  ?    the  trial  has  not  yet 
begun,    and   you   know   beforehand   the   number   of   heads  ?  " 
"  Bah  !   bah  !  "  answered  Fouquier,  "  I  know  what  I  am  about, 
and  besides,  sir,  that  is  none  of  your  business.     I  know  how  to 
silence  the  '  moderates.'  "  ^    And  he  went  off  into  his  ofi&ce 
sapng  suavely,  "  Au  re  voir,  my  fine  gentleman  !  "  ^ 

Fouquier  at  his  trial,  confronted  with  this  incident,  stammered  | 
out  that  the  witness  could  not  be  reUed  on ;  but  whether  S6nart 
is  to  be  absolutely  believed  or  not,  the  undeniable  fact  remains 
that  the  tumbrils  arrived  regularly  in  the  courtyard  of  the 
Conciergerie  every  morning  between  nine  and  ten  o'clock,  before 
the  trial  began,  and  were  found  after  it  had  ended  to  provide 
precisely  the  accommodation  required.^ 

This  detail,  moreover,  corresponds  exactly  with  Fouquier's 
own  repeated  statement  that  he  was  merely  "  a  cog  in  the  wheel 
of  the  revolutionary  machine,"  ^  that  he  was  perpetually 
goaded  on  to  greater  activity  by  the  committees,  threatened 
with  dire  consequences  if  he  failed  to  provide  a  sufiicient  number 
of  heads. 

But  that  Fouquier  was,  as  he  also  declared,  an  unwilling 
instrument  in  the  hands  of  the  committees  it  is  impossible  to 
believe ;  overwhelming  evidence  goes  to  prove  that,  hke  his 
allies  the  jackals  of  the  Comit6  de  Surete  Generale,  Fouquier 
warmed  to  the  work  and,  once  put  on  the  scent,  followed  it  up 
with  all  the  fury  of  a  beast  of  prey.  "  Heads  are  falling  like 
tiles,"  he  said  exultingly  to  Heron,  who  answered  him,  "  Oh, 
things  will  go  still  better — do  not  worry  !  "  ^  Sometimes  during 
the  so-called  trials  Fouquier  would  enUven  the  proceedings  with 
jests;  thus  when  a  woman,  paralysed  even  to  her  tongue,  appeared 
before  the  Tribunal,  he  observed  gaily,  "It  is  not  her  tongue, 
but  her  head  we  need."  ® 

^  At  the  trial  Senart  said  that  Fouquier  added,  "  Do  you  think  I  do 
not  know  the  number  of  those  who  will  be  condemned  ?  " 

2  MSmoires  de  Sinart. 

'  Evidence  of  Grandpre,  Proces  de  Fouquier,  Buchez  et  Roux, 
xxxiv.  427.  i 

*  Ibid.  p.  293.  •  f 

*  Evidence  of  Senart,  iUd.  p.  307,  | 

*  Evidence  of  Retz,  ibid.  p.  135. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  465 

^       Yet  it  seems  that  there  were  moments  when  Fouquier,  like 


n 


Charles  IX.  on  his  death-bed,  was  overcome  with  horror  at  the 
j^  thought  of  the  innocent  blood  he  had  shed.  One  night  as  he 
passed  over  the  Pont  Neuf  with  Senart  he  looked  down  at  the 
Seine  and  cried  incontroUably,  "  Ah,  how  red  it  is !  How 
red  !  "  Then  turning  to  Senart  he  said,  "  I  live  unquietly ; 
I  am  tormented  by  the  shades  of  those  whom  I  have  had 
guillotined — yet  they  had  to  die ;  the  poUtical  system  required 
it."  Senart  took  this  opportunity  to  ask  him  why  he  con- 
demned victims  without  proof  instead  of  making  inquiries,  to 
which  Fouquier  repUed,  "  That  would  be  the  way  to  get  myself 
guillotined."  ^ 

Spurred  on  by  this  fear  Fouquier  redoubled  his  activities. 
Often  after  his  interviews  with  the  committees  he  would  go  into 
the  tap-room  of  the  Conciergerie  to  nerve  himself  for  his  fearful 
task  with  copious  draughts  of  beer.  It  was  then  that  he  confided 
to  his  colleagues  of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  the  instructions 
he  had  received  for  further  fournees  :  "  Things  are  not  going 
fast  enough.  .  .  .  We  must  have  200  to  250  heads  a  decade ; 
the  Government  wishes  it."  *  Then  when  this  figure  had  been 
achieved — exceeded — "  We  are  not  keeping  up  the  pace.  .  .  . 
The  last  decade  was  not  bad,  but  this  one  must  go  to  400  or 
450.  .  .  .  II  faut  que  cela  aille."  ^ 

And  it  went — with  fearful  rapidity.  During  the  month  of 
Messidor  the  number  of  victims  had  risen  to  796 ;  in  the  first 
nine  days  of  Thermidor  alone  it  reached  no  less  than  342.  At 
this  rate  Fouquier's  450  a  decade  would  speedily  be  attained. 
Plans,  indeed,  had  been  made  on  a  far  larger  scale ;  the  size  of  the 
guillotines  was  to  be  increased  so  that  four  heads  could  be 
severed  at  a  blow ;  an  amphitheatre  capable  of  containing  150 
victims  was  to  be  erected  at  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal,  and 
of  this  number  ea,ch.  fournee  for  the  guillotine  was  to  be  composed.* 
Already  an  immense  sangueduct  had  been  constructed  in  the 
Place  Saint-Antoine,  to  which  the  guillotine  had  been  removed 
on  the  2ist  of  Prairial,  in  order  to  carry  away  the  torrents  of 
blood  that  flowed  from  the  scaffold,  and  an  operation  of  the 
same  kind  was  in  progress  at  the  Barriere  du  Tr6ne,  which  had 
now  become  the  place  of  execution.^ 

For   as  a  spectacle  the  guillotine  had   long   since  lost  its 

*  Mimoires  de  SSnart  (edition  de  Lescure),  p.  114. 
2  Evidence  of  Auvray,  usher  to  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal,  of  Bucher 

and   of  Tavernier,   clerks  of  the    court,  Procds  de    Fouquier,  Buchez  et 
Roux,  XXXV.  9,  12,  15. 

'  Evidence    of    Robert   Wolf,    ibid,   xxxiv.   448  ;    of   Tavernier,    ibid. 
XXXV.  '2. 

*  MSmoires  de  Riouffe,  i.  84  ;   Taine,  viii.  133. 
'  Memoires  de  Riouffe,  ii.  196. 

2  H 


466         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

popularity ;  none  but  the  tricoteuses,  the  hired  "  furies  of  the 
guillotine,"  now  applauded  the  executions ;  even  the  populace 
of  Paris  were  sickened  with  the  sight  of  bloodshed.^ 

Directly  after  the  passing  of  the  "  Loi  du  22  Prairial "  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Rue  Saint-Honore  petitioned  for  the  removal 
of  the  guillotine  from  the  Place  de  la  Revolution  near-by,  for 
not  only  had  the  spectacle  of  the  tumbrils  daily  passing  under 
their  windows  become  intolerable  to  the  dwellers  in  this  street, 
but  the  whole  neighbourhood  had  become  infected  with  the 
odour  of  carnage — the  very  oxen  drawing  country-carts  refused 
to  pass  over  the  blood-soaked  soil  of  the  Place  de  la  Revolution. 
Accordingly  the  scaffold  had  been  erected  in  the  Place  Saint- 
Antoine,  but  Saint-Antoine  too  had  complained  of  its  propin- 
quity, and  again  it  was  found  necessary  to  remove  the  instrument 
of  death — decidedly  La  Sainte-Guillotine  had  lost  favour  with 
the  pubUc. 

Sanson,  the  executioner,  himself  was  growing  weary,  and 
declared  that  "  the  immense  and  unremitting  work  "  to  which 
he  and  his  aides  were  subjected  was  enough  "  to  lay  low  the 
most  robust  of  men,"  consequently  he  now  desired  to  end  his 
term  of  service,^ 

At  the  Conciergerie,  too,  the  ofi&cials  were  beginning  to  find 
the  strain  unendurable ;  one  entering  the  office  cried  out  to  his 
comrades,  "It  is  finished,  no  one  is  being  judged  any  longer ; 
we  shall  all  go  the  same  way,  we  are  all  lost !  "  and  a  porter  of 
the  prison,  named  Blanchard,  bursting  into  tears,  declared  that 
he  could  bear  it  no  longer,  that  he  "  was  not  the  sort  to  occupy 
such  a  post,  and  that  it  made  him  ill."  ^ 

Everywhere  throughout  the  city  the  same  sense  of  horror 
prevailed ;  the  Palais  Royal,  once  the  hotbed  of  revolution,  was 
silent  and  deserted — the  courtesans  that  had  filled  its  arcades 
had  retired  into  hiding,  the  taverns  were  empty,  the  booksellers 
displayed  no  pamphlets ;  ^  people  moved  fearfully  about  the 
streets,  afraid  to  speak,  to  smile,  even  to  whisper.  In  a  word, 
Paris  was  once  more  on  the  verge  of  a  crise  de  nerfs. 

^  "  We  must  say  that  for  more  than  six  months  before  the  9th  of 
Thermidor  the  pubUc  no  longer  applauded  condemnations,  but  loudly 
manifested  its  joy  and  satisfaction  at  all  acquittals.  If  furies  of  the 
guillotine,  led  astray,  corrupted  and  paid  by  the  faction  of  the  murderers, 
often  insulted  the  victims  who  walked  to  death  with  the  calm  of  innocence, 
we  must  declare  it  was  never  the  people  of  Paris  ;  this  people  never  asked 
for  blood.  ..."  (Notes  of  reporter  at  trial  of  Fouquier,  Buchez  et  Roux, 
xxxiv.  488).  ^  La  Guillotine,  by  G.  Lenotre,  p.  181. 

3  Le  Tribunal  Rivolutionnaire,  by  G.  Lenotre,  p.  280. 

*  "  Nothing  was  pubUshed.  In  the  enormous  collection  of  revolu- 
tionary pamphlets  we  find  this  interval  (between  the  Fete  du  I'ttre  Supreme 
and  the  fall  of  Robespierre)  almost  a  blank  "  (Croker's  Essays  on  the  French 
Revolution,  p.  404). 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  467 

As  usual,  at  nearly  every  great  crisis  of  the  Revolution,  the 
weather  was  hot  to  suffocation.  From  the  4th  of  Thermidor 
the  temperature  rose  steadily  until  by  the  8th  Paris  had  become 
a  furnace — men  and  animals  dropped  dead  from  the  heat.  So 
physically  and  morally  the  storm  gathered,  then  burst  with  a 
mighty  thunderclap  over  the  affrighted  city  on  that  momentous 
day — the  Neuf  Thermidor. 


LE  NEUF  THERMIDOR 

Ever  since  the  Feast  of  the  Supreme  Being  Robespierre  had 
understood  that  the  time  was  approaching  when  he  must  engage 
in  a  life-and-death  struggle  with  his  rivals  of  the  Comite  de  Salut 
Pubhc,  and  it  was  in  preparation  for  this  contingency  that,  after 
ceasing  to  frequent  the  meetings  of  the  committee,  he  aUied 
himself  more  closely  with  the  Commune  and  the  Jacobin  Glub. 
By  this  means  he  had  succeeded  in  organizing  a  formidable 
opposition,  and  it  seems  probable  that  he  had  planned  a  rising 
for  the  loth  of  Thermidor,  by  which  the  revolutionary  com* 
mittees  were  to  be  overthrown  and  the  triumvirate  of  Robes- 
pierre, Gouthon,  and  St.  Just  left  in  sole  possession  of  the 
field. 

On  the  8th  of  Thermidor  (the  26th  of  July)  Robespierre 
judged  that  the  moment  had  come  to  open  the  campaign  against 
his  enemies.  Ascending  the  tribune  of  the  Convention  he 
embarked  on  a  denunciation  of  the  two  revolutionary  com- 
mittees— the  Comite  de  Siirete  Generale  must  be  purged  and 
subordinated  to  the  Comite  de  Salut  Pubhc  ;  the  latter  committee 
must  likewise  submit  to  purgation,  the  traitors  must  be  punished. 
In  other  words,  both  committees  were  to  be  entirely  subordinated 
to  that  virtuous  and  incorruptible  trio — Robespierre,  Gouthon, 
and  St.  Just.  The  rival  faction,  instantly  taking  up  the  gauntlet, 
retorted  with  accusations  against  the  Incorruptible.  "  One  man 
only,"  cried  Gambon,  "  paralyses  the  will  of  the  Convention — that 
man  is  Robespierre  !  " 

Robespierre,  undismayed,  went  on  after  the  sitting  of  the 
Convention  to  the  Jacobin  Club  and  deUvered  a  further  oration, 
this  time  openly  attacking  Billaud  and  Collot,  who  were  present 
at  the  meeting  and  found  themselves  obUged  to  escape  for  their 
lives  amidst  the  angry  howls  of  the  Jacobins.  Encouraged  by 
this  demonstration  Robespierre  retired  peacefully  to  bed,  whilst 
St.  Just  spent  the  night  at  the  Comite  de  Salut  PubUc,  writing 
out  the  act  of  accusation  which  was  to  be  brought  against  the 
opponents  of  the  triumvirate  on  the  morrow. 

The  9th  of  Thermidor  dawned  sultry  and  lowering — ^no  sun, 
and  a  sky  of  molten  lead.    But  Robespierre  and  St.  Just  appeared 


468         THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

at  the  Convention  dressed  as  for  a  gala — Robespierre  in  the  light- 
blue  coat  which  had  made  its  debut  at  the  Feast  of  the  Supreme 
Being,  St.  Just  in  a  coat  of  chamois  colour  with  an  immense 
and  carefully  arranged  cravat,  white  waistcoat,  and  breeches  of 
delicate  grey.  The  tribunes,  still  Robespierriste,  greeted  these 
apparitions  with  frenzied  applause. 

Then  St.  Just  ascended  the  tribune  to  deliver  his  speech  of 
indictment,  and  once  again  reverted  to  the  surgical  simile  which 
ever  since  the  massacres  of  September  had  haunted  the  imagina- 
tion of  each  revolutionary  leader  in  turn  :  "I  had  been  charged 
to  make  a  report  to  you  on  the  scandalous  deviations  that  for 
some  time  have  tormented  pubUc  opinion,  but  the  remedies  I 
wished  to  propose  to  you  were  powerless  to  heal  the  ills  of  the 
Republic  ;  a  httle  balm  will  not  suffice  for  so  difficult  a  cure,  we 
must  carve  down  to  the  quick  and  cut  off  the  gangrened  Umbs."  ^ 

At  these  words  Tallien  rose  indignantly,  and  rushing  at  the 
tribune  thrust  aside  St.  Just :  "I  demand  that  the  curtain 
be  drawn  aside  !  "  Tallien  was  quickly  followed  by  Billaud- 
Varenne,  crying  out  that  a  plot  had  been  formed  to  murder  the 
Convention  :  "  The  Convention  will  perish  if  it  shows  weakness  !  " 

Then  from  aU  sides  a  tremendous  uproar  arose;  members 
waved  their  hats,  the  audience  shouted,  "  Long  live  the  Con- 
vention I     Long  live  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public  !  " 

Collot,  the  president  on  this  day,  pealed  his  beU  to  restore 
order;  TcdHen  flourished  a  dagger — sent  him,  it  was  said,  by 
T6resia  Cabarrus,  now  in  prison  awaiting  death — and  threatened 
to  pierce  the  heart  of  "  the  new  Cromwell "  if  the  Convention 
did  not  decree  his  arrest ;  Robespierre  dashed  frantically  at  the 
tribune,  but  his  voice  was  drowned  in  cries  of  "  Down  with  the 
tyrant !  " 

Then  one  after  another,  TaUien,  Freron,  Billaud,  Collot, 
Harare,  once  the  servile  accompUces  of  Robespierre,  now  his 
cowardly  assailants,  rose  to  denounce  him  :  he  whom  they  had 
hailed  as  the  "  Incorruptible  "  had  become  "  the  new  CatiUna  "  ; 
with  St.  Just  and  Couthon  he  had  intended  to  establish  a 
triumvirate  after  the  manner  of  Sylla ;  one  accused  Robespierre 
of  befriending  Danton,  another  of  murdering  him.  Meanwhile 
the  wretched  Vadier  interposed  perpetually  with  his  story  of 
Catherine  Theot,  the  crazy  old  woman  who  called  herself  the 
mother  of  God,  and  under  whose  mattress  a  letter  to  Robespierre 
had  been  found  addressing  him  as  the  Messiah. 

Amidst  all  this  wild  medley  of  accusations  Robespierre  and 

1  This  last  phrase,  given  by  Beaulieu  and  by  Fantin  D6sodoards,  which 
alone  explains  the  uproar  created  in  the  Convention,  is  omitted  by  Buchez 
et  Roux,  who  give  the  speech  of  St.  Just  as  it  was  written,  not  as  it  was 
delivered.     The  Moniteur  does  not  report  it  at  all. 


i 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  469 

his  allies  vainly  strove  to  obtain  a  hearing  ;  once  the  thin  voice 
of  the  Incorruptible  raised  itself  above  the  tumult  in  a  despairing 
appeal :  "  For  the  last  time  will  you  let  me  speak,  president  of 
assassins  ?  "  But  the  words  he  would  have  spoken  died  away 
in  his  throat :  "  The  blood  of  Danton  chokes  him  !  "  cried 
Gamier  de  I'Aube.  "  Ah,  then,  it  is  Danton  you  wish  to 
avenge  ?  "  began  Robespierre,  but  again  his  voice  was  drowned 
in  angry  clamour.  An  obscure  member  named  Louchet  called 
out  for  his  arrest,  and  the  proposal  being  put  to  the  vote  was 
unanimously  adopted.  Other  members  followed,  demanding 
the  decree  to  be  extended  to  his  brother,  Augustin  Robespierre, 
to  St.  Just,  Couthon,  and  Lebas,  and  these  demands  again  met 
with  unanimous  approval.  So  at  half-past  five,  as  the  sitting 
ended,  the  police  entered  the  hall  and  led  away  the  five  arrested 
deputies  to  the  prisons  assigned  to  them. 

But  the  Commune,  which  still  remained  faithful  to  Robes- 
pierre, prevented  the  execution  of  this  project ;  word  had  already 
been  sent  out  by  Fleuriot  Lescot,  the  mayor  of  Paris,  to  the 
concierges  of  the  different  prisons  forbidding  them  to  admit  the 
Robespierristes,  who  were  then — again  by  the  order  of  the 
mayor — conveyed  triumphantly  to  the  Hdtel  de  Ville.  Mean- 
while Fleuriot  Lescot  ordered  the  tocsin  to  be  sounded,  and 
summoned  the  Jacobins  to  the  rescue  of  "  the  martyrs.'' 

But  now  that  the  moment  for  action  had  come  Robespierre 
displayed  the  same  fatal  irresolution  that  had  characterized  the 
leaders  of  each  party  in  turn  at  the  moment  of  crisis.  Like 
Louis  XVI.  on  the  loth  of  August,  the  Girondins  on  the  2nd 
of  June,  Danton  on  the  5th  of  April,  Robespierre  could  find  no 
stirring  words  wherewith  to  inspire  his  supporters,  could  decide 
on  no  heroic  course  of  action  that  might  have  rallied  the  hesitating 
multitude  around  him. 

There  were  no  great  men  in  the  Revolution,  contemporaries 
declare ;  amongst  the  many  leaders  of  the  people  was  not  one 
Cromwell,  1  and  when  we  consider  the  end  of  all  these  men  whom 
historians  have  magnified  into  giants,  and  observe  the  total 
inabUity  of  one  and  all  to  play  a  losing  game,  we  are  forced  to 
the  same  conclusion.  Whilst  stUl  on  the  crest  of  the  wave — 
whither  they  had  been  carried  by  circumstances  rather  than  by 
personal  ability — they  could  display  vigour,  audacity,  resolution, 
but  the  moment  the  tide  turned  forcibly  against  them,  they 
allowed  themselves  to  be  engulfed  almost  without  a  struggle. 

^  MSmoires  de  Frdnilly,  p.  i66.  And  Mounier  :  "  Nature  in  giving  us 
for  this  Revolution  so  many  men  with  the  heart  of  Cromwell  did  not 
produce  one  with  his  head  "  {Appel  au  Tribunal  de  I' Opinion  publique, 
p.  291) .  And  Madame  Roland  :  "  France  seemed  exhausted  of  men  ;  it  is  a 
really  surprising  thing  the  dearth  of  them  in  this  Revolution,  there  have 
been  hardly  anything  but  pigmies  "  {Mdmoires,  i.  235). 


470        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

As  late  as  seven  o'clock  on  that  evening  of  the  9th  of  Ther- 
midor  the  day  was  not  lost  for  Robespierre  and  his  adherents — 
Hanriot  that  afternoon  had  triumphantly  escorted  "  a  batch  " 
of  forty-two  to  the  guillotine — ^nearly  all  obscure  and  humble 
members  of  the  petite  bourgeoisie  or  the  people — ruthlessly  cutting 
down  the  crowd  with  his  sabre  when  for  the  first  and  last  time 
they  attempted  to  intervene  and  save  the  victims  ;  ^  and  since  still 
at  the  head  of  his  troops,  the  Commune  had  reason  to  hope  that 
he  would  repeat  his  success  of  the  31st  of  May  by  keeping  the 
H6tel  de  Ville  in  a  state  of  siege.  But  Robespierre,  instead  of 
concerting  with  Hanriot  on  the  measures  to  be  taken,  left  the 
commander  to  his  own  devices,  which,  on  this  fateful  day,  con- 
sisted in  getting  gloriously  drunk  and  galloping  about  Paris 
shouting,  "  Kill  the  poUcemen  !  " 

Hanriot's  wild  career  was  brought  to  an  abrupt  conclusion! 
in  the  Place  de  Palais  Royal,  where  he  fell  from  his  horse  and] 
was  seized  by  the  police,  who  placed  him  under  arrest.  Later! 
in  the  evening,  Coffinhal,  vice-president  of  the  Revolutionary^ 
Tribunal,  came  to  his' rescue  with  200  gunners  and  deUvered  him,j 
but  the  wretched  man  had  now  completely  lost  his  head,  an( 
instead  of  rallying  the  crowd  merely  succeeded  in  terrifying  iti 
by  his  maniacal  aspect  and  behaviour. 

All  this  time  the  Faubourgs  were  waiting  for  orders.     Accus-] 
tomed  throughout  the  Revolution  to  march  only  at  the  word^ 
of  command,  they  were  now  quite  incapable  of  independeni 
action,  and  had  no  idea  whether  they  were  to  support  the  Com- 
mune or  the  Convention.     Sainte-Antoine  at  last  wrote  naively) 
to  the  magistrates  of  the  Commune  explaining  the  dilemma,  and] 
if  Robespierre  or  any  of  his  supporters  had  only  gone  in  person| 
to  rouse  the  district,  they  could  undoubtedly  have  mustered  thej 
men  of  the  Faubourg  around  them.^    Instead  of  this  Robespierre] 
could  do  nothing  but  talk,  leaving  the  field  open  to  his  adver- 
saries, who  thereupon  circulated  a  rumour  in  Saint  -  Marceau 
that  he  was  a  RoyaHst  conspirator,  for  a  seal  with  a  fleur  de  ly$\ 
had  been  found  in  his  possession.^ 

The  Faubourgs,  thus  left  without  a  leader,  abandoned  thej 
Commune  and  went  over  to  the  Convention. 

Meanwhile  the  crowd  collected  on  the  Place  de  Greve  outsidei 
the  Hdtel  de  Ville  showed  no  more  decision  than  the  Faubourgs,  | 
and  only  awaited  events  in  order  to  throw  its  weight  into  the 
scale  on  either  side.     Already,  however,  its  confidence  in  thej 
Commune  had  been  shaken  by  the  deranged  behaviour  of  Hanriot, 

^  Beaulieu,  v.  497  ;  Dauban,  Paris  en  1794,  p.  446.  This  incident! 
provides  further  proof  that  Robespierre  did  not  disapprove  of  the  butchery] 
of  poor  people,  for  Hanriot  was  absolutely  under  his  orders. 

2  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxiv.  58. 

*  Ibid.  pp.  59,  84. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  471 

and  to  this  Paris  populace  that  always  worships  strength  the 
news  that  Robespierre  and  his  party  had  been  outlawed  by  the 
Convention  served  finally  to  ahenate  any  Ungering  sympathy 
it  entertained  for  the  defeated  faction.  When  at  midnight  the 
storm  that  all  day  had  been  gathering  burst  over  the  city  in 
a  torrent  of  rain,  the  crowd,  damped  both  in  mind  and  body, 
took  the  opportunity  to  disperse,  leaving  the  Robespierristes  to 
their  fate. 

It  was  thus  that  Barras,  placed  by  the  Convention  in  command 
of  the  troops,  was  able  to  advance  through  the  deserted  Place 
de  Greve  without  encountering  any  resistance,  and  Leonard 
Bourdon  at  the  head  of  the  armed  poUce  went  forward  into  the 
Hotel  de  Ville  to  re-arrest  the  five  deputies. 

Then  Hanriot,  losing  his  head  completely,  rushed  into  the 
Salle  de  Conseil  where  Robespierre  and  his  party  were  assembled, 
crying  out  that  all  was  lost,  whereupon  Coffinhal  overwhelmed 
him  with  reproaches,  and  finally  seizing  him  round  the  body 
hurled  him  out  of  the  window  into  the  courtyard  below.  There 
a  manure  heap  broke  his  fall,  and  the  besotted  commander 
was  able  to  crawl  into  a  sewer,  where  he  remained  until  the 
following  day. 

Close  on  the  heels  of  Hanriot,  Leonard  Bourdon  and  his 
policemen  entered  the  Salle  de  Conseil,  and  at  this  sight  the 
Robespierristes  gave  way  to  despair.  A  scene  of  wild  confusion 
followed.  Maximihen  Robespierre,  seated  at  a  table  where  he 
had  begun  to  write  out  an  order  summoning  the  Section  des 
Piques  to  his  rescue,  fell  forward  suddenly  shot  through  the  jaw 
— whether  by  his  own  hand  or  by  that  of  the  policeman  Merda, 
who  afterwards  boasted  of  the  deed,  is  uncertain ;  ^  his  brother 
Augustin  cHmbed  out  of  the  window,  and  running  along  an  out- 
side ledge  flung  himself  down  on  to  the  steps  of  the  Hotel  de 
Ville,  where  he  lay,  mutilated  and  bleeding ;  Couthon  dragged 
his  paralysed  Umbs  beneath  a  table,  whence  he  was  dislodged  and 
brutally  flung  down  the  staircase  by  the  commissioners  of  the 
Convention.  St.  Just,  according  to  certain  contemporaries, 
alone  remained  immovable  ;  according  to  others,  he  asked  Lebas 
to  shoot  him,  but  Lebas  responded,  "  Coward  !  I  have  other 
things  to  do  !  "  and  forthwith  blew  out  his  own  brains. 

Early  in  the  morning  of  the  loth  of  Thermidor  a  part  of  this 
human  wreckage  was  gathered  up  and  carried  to  the  Tuileries, 
where  the  Convention  still  remained  sitting :  first  of  all  Maxi- 
mihen Robespierre  borne  on  a  stretcher,  his  eyes  closed,  his 

^  On  this  point  opinions  are  almost  equally  divided.  Merda  (or  M^da) 
declared  he  shot  Robespierre ;  others  present  at  the  scene  declared  that 
they  saw  Robespierre  shoot  himself.  See  the  conflicting  evidence  collected 
by  M.  Bir6  in  the  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois  de  Paris,  v.  387-392. 


472        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

naturally  bilious  countenance  wearing  the  livid  hue  of  death, 
and  so  apparently  Hfeless  that  the  Assembly  refused  to  admit 
"  the  corpse  of  the  tyrant,"  and  the  stretcher-bearers  were 
obhged  to  go  on  to  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public  and  deposit  their 
burden  on  a  table — according  to  Barras,  the  famous  green- 
covered  table  around  which  the  committee  gathered  nightly  to 
draw  up  their  hsts  of  proscriptions. 

Here,  then,  on  the  very  spot  where  he  had  ordained  the 
slaughter  of  countless  human  beings,  Robespierre  lay  himself, 
a  piteous  object  now,  with  his  head  resting  on  a  wooden  box, 
and  the  blood  flowing  from  his  fractured  jaw  over  the  white 
frilled  shirt  and  the  pale-blue  coat.  For  seven  hours,  racked 
with  agony,  the  man  before  whom  all  France  had  trembled 
endured  the  jeers  and  insults  of  the  soldiers  and  poUcemen  he 
had  beHeved  to  be  devoted  to  his  cause.  At  one  moment  a 
working-man  approached  and,  looking  long  and  closely  into  the 
shattered  face  of  the  tyrant,  murmured  in  awe-struck  tones, 
"  Yes,  there  is  a  God  !  "  ^ 

After  a  while  St.  Just,  still  erect  and  impassive,  was  led  in 
with  Dumas,  their  hands  tightly  bound,  and  later  more  stretchers 
arrived  at  the  foot  of  the  staircase  leading  to  the  committee- 
room  on  which  lay  the  mangled  forms  of  Couthon  and  Augustin 
Robespierre. 

At  ten  o'clock,  whilst  the  criers  went  through  the  streets 
calling  out,  "  The  Great  Arrest  of  Catilina  Robespierre  and  his 
accomplices  I  "  the  prisoners  were  all  transferred  to  the  Con- 
ciergerie — *'  the  ante-chamber  of  death."  No  trial  was  to  be 
accorded  them,  for  with  the  downfall  of  each  faction  the  revolu- 
tionary government  took  a  further  step  in  illegality,  and,  the 
Robespierristes  having  been  declared  outlaws,  the  Convention 
held  it  necessary  only  to  bring  them  before  the  Revolutionary 
Tribunal  for  purposes  of  identification,  a  process  that  occupied 
a  bare  half-hour.  The  whole  band,  to  the  number  of  twenty- 
two,  including,  besides  Robespierre  and  his  accompUces,  the 
miserable  cobbler  Simon,  to  whom  the  little  Dauphin  had  been 
confided,  Fleuriot  Lescot,  and  twelve  members  of  the  Commune, 
were  sentenced  to  be  executed  the  same  afternoon  on  the  Place 
de  la  Revolution.  For  on  this  great  day  no  fear  was  enter- 
tained of  wounding  the  susceptibiUties  of  the  dwellers  in  the 
Rue  Saint-Honore  and  the  surrounding  district  by  the  spectacle 
of  the  guillotine,  and  the  Place  de  la  Revolution  alone  could 
accommodate  the  crowds  that  hastened  from  all  quarters  of  Paris 
to  celebrate  the  death  of  the  tyrant. 

When  in  the  late  afternoon  the  four  tumbrils  emerged  from 
the  courtyard  of  the  Conciergerie,  all  Paris  had  turned  out  to 
1  Toulongeon,  iv. ;  Moniteur,  xxi.  385. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  473 

see  them  pass,  and  to  the  wondering  multitude  the  sight  pre 
sented  by  the  men  who  had  so  long  held  them  under  the  sway 
of  the  Terror  seemed  awe-inspiring  evidence  of   "  the  justice 
of  God."  1 

So  had  the  mighty  fallen  !  "Robespierre  the  all-powerful, 
a  crushed  and  broken  thing,  the  Uvid  countenance  swathed  in 
its  bloodstained  bandages,  the  sky-blue  coat  torn  and  discoloured ; 
Couthon  lying  helplessly  on  the  straw  of  the  tumbril  trampled  by 
the  feet  of  his  companions ;  Hanriot,  who  but  yesterday  had 
cleared  the  way  for  the  forty-two  poor  victims,  cutting  down  the 
people  with  his  sabre,  now  a  ghastly  spectacle,  with  one  eye  falling 
from  its  socket,  his  face  bleeding,  his  clothes  tattered  and  covered 
with  filth  from  the  sewer  whence  he  had  been  dragged.  St. 
Just  alone  retained  his  habitual  calm.  The  voluminous  cravat 
was  gone,  leaving  his  neck  bare  for  execution,  but  the  deUcate 
chamois-coloured  coat  still  remained  unspotted,  the  wide  ex- 
panse of  white  waistcoat  still  fresh  and  uncrumpled,  whilst  in 
his  buttonhole  there  glowed  a  red  carnation.  So  with  head 
erect  St.  Just,  that  strange  enigma  of  the  Terror,  passed  to  his 
death,  a  marble  statue  to  the  last. 

As  the  procession  slowly  made  its  way  along  the  Rue  Saint- 
Honore  it  was  not  only  joy  that  greeted  its  progress  but  fury 
— the  long-pent-up  fury  of  a  crushed  and  suffering  people.  The 
tyrant  had  faUen,  but  could  his  downfall  give  them  back  their 
dead  ?  Everywhere  in  that  vast  crowd  were  men  and  women 
who  had  lost  their  all,  in  whose  hearts  was  no  room  for  rejoicing, 
only  for  reviling.  One  such  grief-racked  creature — a  woman — 
sprang  on  to  the  back  of  the  cart  that  held  Robespierre  and, 
cUnging  to  the  bars,  cried  out  in  a  voice  of  agony  : 

"  Monster  vomited  by  HeU,  thy  torment  intoxicates  me 
with  joy  !  I  have  only  one  regret — ^that  thou  hast  not  a  thousand 
Uves  so  that  I  might  enjoy  the  spectacle  of  seeing  them  torn 
from  thee  one  by  one  !  Go,  scoundrel,  go  down  to  the  tomb  with 
the  curses  of  all  wives  and  of  cdl  mothers  !  " 

Thus  amidst  the  maledictions  of  the  people,  whose  servile 
courtier  he  had  been,  MaximiUen  Robespierre  passed  to  his 
death.  Those  amongst  the  crowd  around  the  scaffold  who  de- 
sired to  see  him  suffer — and  they  were  many^ — were  gratified 
by  the  horrible  scene  that  took  place  on  the  platform  of  the 
guillotine  when  the  executioner,  roughly  tearing  off  the  bandage 
that  bound  the  head  of  Robespierre,  loosed  the  fractured  jaw, 
which  fell,  leaving  a  gaping  chasm,  and  wrung  from  the  tortured 

1  Journal  d'un  Bourgeois  de  Paris,  by  Edmond  Eire,  v.  399. 

*  Beaulieu,  v.  502  :  "  The  greater  number  of  those  who  were  present 
at  his  execution  would  have  Uked  to  see  him  suffer  the  tortures  of  Damiens, 
to  whom  he  was  said  to  be  related." 


474        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

victim  a  roar  of  agony  "  like  that  of  a  dying  tiger  which  could 
be  heard  in  the  furthest  extremities  of  the  square." 

As  at  the  death  of  Hubert,  the  brutaUty  of  the  executioner 
deUghted  the  spectators,  and  when  a  moment  later  the  mutilated 
head  was  raised  aloft,  the  vast  multitude  that  filled  the  Place 
de  la  Revolution  and  overflowed  into  the  Tuileries  and  the 
Champs  l^lysees  broke  into  a  perfect  thunder  of  applause  that 
rose  and  fell  and  rose  again,  whUst  men  and  women  fell  into  each 
other's  arms  crying  out,  "  At  last  we  are  free  !  The  t5n'ant  is 
no  more  !  " 

But  this  time  it  was  no  sudden  madness  such  as  had  seized 
a  part  of  the  crowd  gathered  around  the  scaffold  of  the  King, 
and  which  had  been  immediately  succeeded  by  reaction ;  on 
this  loth  of  Thermidor  the  people  really  did  go  home  rejoicing 
with  a  joy  that  throughout  the  days  that  followed  grew  in 
intensity,  transforming  Paris  from  a  place  of  gloom  and  mourn- 
ing into  a  gala  city  of  new-found  deUghts.  Only  to  be  able  to 
walk  abroad  at  Uberty,  to  hold  one's  head  up  in  the  sunshine, 
to  greet  one's  feUow-men,  to  speak  one's  thoughts  aloud — ^what 
strange  and  wondrous  happiness  !  At  the  street  comers,  in  the 
pubUc  squares,  the  theatres,  the  cafes,  long-lost  friends  whom 
terror  had  kept  apart  clasped  each  other's  hands,  embraced 
with  tears  of  joy — ^it  was  a  delirium,  an  ecstasy  of  bUss  I 

Why  had  the  death  of  Robespierre  brought  about  this  mar- 
vellous transformation  ?  Robespierre  and  his  aUies  were,  as 
we  have  seen,  by  no  means  the  sole  authors  of  the  Terror — nor 
indeed  the  most  ferocious.  Bar^re,  BiUaud,  CoUot,  Freron, 
Tallien — henceforth  to  be  known  as  the  Thermidoriens — still 
remained  ;  Fouquier  still  sat  making  up  his  Usts  in  his  tower  at 
the  Conciergerie ;  the  jackals  of  the  Comit6  de  Surete  Generale 
still  prowled  at  large  about  the  city.  Until  the  loth  of  Thermidor 
it  does  not  appear  that  one  of  these  men  had  any  thought  of 
ending  or  even  modifying  the  Terror.  It  was  certainly  not  from 
any  disapproval  of  the  system  they  had  attacked  Robespierre. 
For  amongst  aU  the  accusations  brought  against  him  at  the 
Convention  by  the  Thermidoriens,  not  one  related  even  remotely 
to  the  matter  of  bloodshed ;  on  the  contrary,  he  had  been  re- 
proached for  not  loving  Marat  or  ChaHer,  the  author  of  the 
atrocities  at  Lyon  and  the  object  of  Collot's  ardent  admiration. 

These  facts  have  given  the  panegyrists  of  Robespierre  a 
further  opportunity  to  declare  that  he  wished  to  end  the  Terror, 
and  that  the  Thermidoriens  were  alone  to  blame  for  its  continu- 
ance. But  to  suppose  this  is  to  deny  Robespierre  any  motive 
in  originally  organising  it.  If,  as  we  have  seen,  he  had  embarked 
on  it  with  a  purpose — a  system  of  depopulation  which  was  to 
produce  a  harmonious  democracy — why  should  he  wish  to  arrest 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  475 

it  at  this  stage  ?  The  execution  of  2800  people  could  not  be  said 
to  have  sensibly  diminished  the  population  of  Paris,  nor  could 
the  death-roll  for  all  France — even  if  it  amounted  to  the  figure  of 
1,025,711  given  by  Prudhomme — ^be  considered  as  more  than  a 
step  towards  the  reduction  of  the  French  nation  to  the  eight 
milUons  generally  advocated  by  the  leaders.  There  is,  there- 
fore, every  reason  to  suppose  that  by  the  9th  of  Thermidor 
the  Terror  was  really  only  beginning,  and  that  if  the  division 
had  not  taken  place  on  this  day  between  the  Terrorists  the 
hecatombs  would  have  reached  colossal  proportions. 

With  this  scheme,  however,  the  Thermidoriens  were  heartily 
in  accord.  How,  then,  did  it  come  to  pass  that  the  downfall  of 
the  Robespierristes  resulted  in  the  ending  of  the  Terror  ?  The 
simplest  explanation  seems  to  be  that  the  system  of  the  Terror 
gave  way  under  the  weight  of  pubUc  opinion.  For  to  the  people 
of  Paris,  who  always  identified  each  regime  with  a  personaUty, 
Robespierre  and  the  Terror  were  synon5niious,  and  consequently 
to  their  minds  the  end  of  Robespierre  meant  the  end  of  the 
Terror — hence  their  outburst  of  rejoicing. 

The  Thermidoriens  realizing  this,  and  finding  themselves 
greeted  on  the  morning  of  the  loth  of  Thermidor  by  a  rapturous 
crowd  as  the  deliverers  of  France,  were  quick  to  see  that  their 
best  chance  of  popularity  lay  in  accepting  the  role  assigned  to 
them.  If  the  people  thought  that  in  overthrowing  Robespierre 
they  had  intended  to  overthrow  the  system  of  the  Terror,  well, 
they  would  stop  the  Terror  and  shift  all  the  blame  for  the  past 
from  their  own  shoulders  by  making  Robespierre  the  scape- 
goat of  the  whole  Terrorist  party.  For  the  purpose  that  had 
inspired  the  Robespierristes  to  reduce  the  population  these 
Opportunists  cared  nothing,  and  they  were  ready  to  fall  in 
with  any  regime  provided  only  they  themselves  could  cling  to 
place  and  power. 

The  Thermidorien  reaction  was  thus  not  the  work  of  a 
pohtical  party,  but  a  really  popular  movement  brought  about 
by  the  force  of  the  people's  will,  which,  for  the  first  time  since 
the  beginning  of  the  Revolution,  triumphed  over  the  designs  of 
the  demagogues. 

Although  the  9th  of  Thermidor  had  removed  only  a  portion  of 
the  Terrorists,  the  growing  force  of  public  opinion  rendered  the 
downfall  of  the  remainder  inevitable.  On  the  27th  of  November, 
Carrier,  the  "  depopulator  of  Nantes,"  was  summoned  before  the 
Revolutionary  Tribunal,  where  he  protested  his  innocence  and 
declared  that  he  had  acted  only  from  motives  of  the  purest 
patriotism.  A  more  plausible  line  of  defence  consisted  in  his 
plea  that  his  methods  had  received  the  approval  both  of  the 


476        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Comit6  de  Salut  Public  and  of  the  Convention,^  and  that  no 
reproaches  had  been  addressed  to  him  until  after  the  Terror  had 
ended. ^  The  apologists  of  Robespierre  have  attempted  to  prove 
that  Carrier  was  recalled  from  Nantes  on  account  of  the  atrocities 
he  committed  there ;  the  truth  is  that  he  incurred  the  dis- 
pleasure of  the  Incorruptible,  not  by  his  fearful  cmelty  towards 
the  people,  but  by  his  corrupt  and  vicious  manner  of  Ufe,  and 
also  by  his  threatening  attitude  towards  Robespierre's  protege, 
young  JulUen,  who,  terrified  for  his  own  safety,  wrote  to  the 
Comite  de  Salut  Public  to  complain.  Moreover,  in  the  letter 
from  the  Comite  summoning  him  back  to  Paris  not  the  faintest 
disapproval  was  expressed,  and  Carrier  was  merely  informed — 
amidst  assurances  of  fraternal  good-will — that  his  arduous 
labours  had  entitled  him  to  a  Httle  rest  and  that  another  mission 
would  be  given  him.  It  was,  therefore,  in  no  way  a  chastened 
or  repentant  Carrier  who  returned  to  Paris  on  February  i6, 
1793 — ^that  is  to  say,  more  than  three  months  after  he  had 
inaugurated  the  noyades.  On  his  arrival  he  received  the  compU- 
ments  of  the  Jacobin  Club,  and  met  with  not  a  word  of  re- 
monstrance from  the  Convention,  where  he  resumed  his  place 
as  a  respected  member  and  of  which  he  was  elected  secretary 
three  months  later.  But  to  the  people  Carrier,  like  Robespierre, 
embodied  the  system  of  the  Terror,  and  he  was  condemned  to 
death  amidst  universal  applause.  On  the  i6th  of  December 
1794  an  immense  crowd  once  more  assembled  to  watch  the 
passage  of  the  cart  containing  Carrier  and  two  of  his  accomphces 
— Grandmaison,  a  member  of  the  revolutionary  committee  of 
Nantes,  convicted  of  having  sabred  the  drowning  victims  of  the 
noyades  as  they  struggled  in  the  water,  and  Pinard,  leader  of 
the  negro  legion  that  had  outraged  and  murdered  women  and 
children.  If  the  people  had  expected  a  wild-beast  show  they 
were  not  disappointed,  for  although  Carrier,  fortified  by  the 
conviction  that  he  was  a  martyr  d5dng  for  his  country,  faced 
his  end  with  serenity,  and  Grandmaison  only  sobbed  with  helpless 
rage,  Pinard  presented  a  terrifying  spectacle  as,  with  flaming 
eyes  and  foaming  hps,  he  spat  upon  the  crowd,  or  when  the  jolts 
of  the  tumbril  threw  him  against  Carrier  attempted  to  tear 
him  with  his  teeth,  overwhelming  him  with  invectives  for  the 

^  Campardon,  Le  Tribunal  RSvolutionn aire,  ii.  118;  /.  B.  Carrier,  by 
A.  Lallie,  p.  258,  In  a  memoir  presented  to  the  Comite  de  Salut  Public 
by  Lequinio  (another  emissary  to  the  provinces)  on  the  12th  of  Germinal, 
An  II.,  the  question  is  asked  whether  it  would  be  advantageous  to  continue 
the  plan  of  total  destruction  ;  Carrier,  quoting  this  letter  at  his  trial,  re- 
marked that  it  proved  this  plan  of  destruction  to  have  existed  (Cam- 
pardon,  ii.  122).  As  M.  Lalli6  points  out,  he  was  therefore  only  one  of  the 
agents  ordered  to  execute  it, 

*  Campardon,  ii.  121. 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  477 

fate  he  had  brought  on  them  all.  It  is  said  that  as  Carrier  lay 
strapped  to  the  plank  of  the  guillotine  a  clarionet  struck  up  the 
air  of  the  "  fa  ira !  "  and  at  this  last  insult  the  wretched  man 
raised  his  head  and  darted  a  look  of  fury  at  the  jeering  multi- 
tude. The  musician  continued  to  play  gaily  until  the  blade 
had  fallen. 

On  the  1st  of  May  1795  the  Public  Prosecutor  of  Paris  followed 
the  same  road  to  the  Place  de  Greve.  Fouquier  too  protested 
his  innocence  :  "  I  acted  only  in  accordance  with  the  laws  passed 
by  an  all-powerful  Convention."  If  he,  the  instrument,  was 
brought  to  justice,  should  not  the  authors  of  the  system,  the 
remaining  members  of  the  revolutionary  committees,  be  sum- 
moned before  the  Tribunal  ?  True,  and  the  subsequent  con- 
demnation of  Collot,  Billaud,  and  Barere  to  mere  transportation 
for  Ufe  was  only  one  more  miscarriage  of  justice  in  the  history 
of  the  iniquitous  tribunal. 

The  spirit  that  animated  the  multitude  around  the  tumbrils 
which  bore  Fouquier  and  his  accompUces  to  the  scaffold  was 
less  one  of  **  ferocious  joy,"  says  a  poUce  report,  than  of 
**  curiosity  to  see  extraordinary  monsters " ;  the  truth  is, 
perhaps,  that  Paris  was  now  too  hungry  to  rejoice  uproariously 
at  anything.  But  when  the  carts  approached  the  Place  de 
Greve  there  burst  forth  shouts  of  fury  :  "  Go  and  join  your 
victims,  scoundrel !  "  "  Give  me  back  my  brother,  my  friend, 
my  father,  my  wife,  my  mother,  my  children  !  "  As  at  the 
execution  of  Robespierre,  a  woman,  half  demented  with  grief, 
clung  to  the  bars  of  the  tumbril  cursing  the  murderer  of  her 
husband.  Fouquier,  looking  forth  with  bloodshot  eyes  at  the 
starving  people,  returned  insult  for  insult,  jeered  at  their  misery 
in  incoherent  words  of  which  the  following  only  were  distinguish- 
able :  "  Vile  rabble,  go  and  look  for  bread  I  {Vile  canaille,  va 
chercher  du  pain  !)." 

Fouquier,  reserved  to  the  end  as  the  pi^ce  de  resistance  of  the 
day,  heard  the  blade  descend  fifteen  times  whilst  in  an  agony 
of  terror  he  waited  his  turn  at  the  foot  of  the  scaffold.  As  each 
head  was  held  up  to  the  wondering  gaze  of  the  multitude  a 
mighty  sigh  of  reUef  rose  from  amongst  them  Uke  the  moan  of 
a  troubled  sea,  but  when  that  last  frightful  trophy  was  raised  aloft 
the  people,  struck  with  horror  as  at  a  Gorgon's  head,  were  frozen 
to  sUence. 

RESULTS  OF  THE  TERROR 

The  Terror,  then,  had  ended,  and  what  had  it  done  for  the 
people  ?     It  is  to  Carrier  that  we  owe    the  famous    phrase, 
"France  was  saved  by  the  Terror,"  ^  a  phrase  eagerly  adopted 
1  ProUs  de  Carrier,  Buchez  et  Roux,  xxxiv.  208. 


478        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

by  revolutionary  historians,  and  that  by  force  of  repetition  hi 
almost  come  to  be  beUeved. 

But  from  what  was  France  saved  by  the  Terror  ?  Froi 
hunger  ?  From  misery  ?  From  oppression  ?  Alas,  no, 
these  evils,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  flourished  more  luxuriantly 
during  the  Terror  than  ever  before  it,  increased  steadily  aftei 
it  had  ended.  Throughout  the  lean  years  that  followed  Paris 
was  reduced  to  the  lowest  pitch  of  wretchedness  ;  people  fainted, 
in  the  streets  for  want  of  food,^  or  in  desperation  threw  them-; 
selves  into  the  Seine;  women,  maddened  at  the  sight  of  the 
starving  children,  cried  out  for  death  to  end  their  sufferings ; 
and  when  at  last  bands  of  women  invaded  the  Convention 
they  had  once  invaded  Versailles  clamouring  for  bread,  the] 
were  met  this  time  with  no  tears  of  compassion,  but  were  drive 
out  with  whips.^ 

What  wonder,  then,  that  the  people  "  incessantly  compare 
their  condition  with  that  of  1788,"  ^  that  the  women  said  t( 
each  other  in  the  streets  :  "  We  need  a  good  father  of  a  familj 
to  feed  us  as  we  had  before  ;  how  can  we  love  the  Republic  that 
makes  us  die  of  hunger  ?  "  ^ 

Not  only  did  the  people  suffer  from  ofi&cial  mismanagement 
and  indifference,  but  from  the  lack  of  all  private  effort  to  relieve 
distress — benevolence  had  vanished  with  the  Old  Regime. 
"  Every  day  offers  the  proof  of  a  sad  truth,"  says  the  Repuhlicaii 
Franfais,  "  which  is  that  the  parvenus,  the  new  rich,  have 
harder  hearts  than  those  bom  in  affluence.  The  latter  used  tc 
share  their  superfluity  with  the  poor,  and  nothing  was  commone 
in  this  town  than  to  see  deUcately  bred  women  carrying  soup^i 
money,  and  consolations  into  garrets  and  prisons.  To-day  one 
dies  of  hunger  and  grief  amidst  these  new  millionaires  enriche 
by  our  spoils  ;  one  dies  without  experiencing  a  single  moment 
of  pity." 

It  will  be  urged  that  it  was  from  external  danger  that  the 
Terror  saved  France ;  that  if  the  people  suffered  the  State 
prospered,  the  defences  of  the  country  had  been  made  secure.; 
To  judge  of  the  truth  of  this  statement  let  us  refer  to  the  descrij 


1  Schmidt,  ii.  337. 

2  "  The  6th  of  Germinal  (An  in.)  several  women  asked  for  knives  wii 
which  to  stab  themselves."  The  30th  of  Brumaire  "  a  woman  in  a  frena 
came  to  ask  a  baker  to  kill  her  children  as  she  had  nothing  to  feed  thei 
with"  {ibid.). 

3  On  the  1 2th  of  Germinal,  and  again  on  the  ist  of  Prairial,  An  in#3 
April  I  and  May  20,  1795),  Schmidt,  ii.  308,  327. 

*  Schmidt,  ii.  462. 

^  Ibid.   p.   481.     See   also   p.    298:    "The   public   said  loudly,   '  Wc 
are  going  to  have  a  king  and  we  shall  be  much  happier  ;  we  shall  not  suflFerJ 
so  much.'  " 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  479 

tion  of  the  condition  of  France  at  the  end  of  the  Terror,  given 
by  one  of  the  revolutionaries  themselves — Larevelli^re  Lepeaux, 
a  member  of  the  Directory  : 

"  The  National  Treasury  was  entirely  empty ;  not  a  sou 
remained.  Assignats  were  without  value  .  .  .  public  revenues 
were  nil,  no  plan  of  finance  existed.  .  ,  .  Enfuriated  stock- 
jobbing had  taken  the  place  of  loyal  and  productive  commerce  ; 
it  corrupted  all  classes  of  society  .  .  .  there  was  not  a  sack  of 
com  in  the  granaries  nor  even  a  single  grain  of  wheat.  .  .  . 
Hospitals  were  without  revenues,  without  resources  or  administra- 
tion ;  public  reUef  of  every  kind  was  reduced  almost  to  nothing. 
The  canals  were  ruined,  many  bridges  broken  down,  the  roads 
impassable  .  .  .  communications  of  all  kinds  had  become 
extremely  difficult.  .  .  .  PubUc  instruction,  so  to  speak,  no 
longer  existed.  .  .  .  The  insolent  cjmicism  of  the  leaders  of 
anarchy  had  created  oblivion  to  all  decency  .  .  .  what  was 
the  state  of  the  army  ?  Disorganization  was  complete  .  .  . 
in  a  word,  the  army,  whether  in  the  interior  or  on  the  frontiers, 
was  without  discipline,  without  provisions,  without  pay,  without 
clothing,  without  equipment.  As  a  climax  of  misfortune  these 
beaten  and  discouraged  armies  had  lost  all  the  fruit  of  their 
successes  beyond  the  Rhine.  ...  As  to  the  navy  .  .  .  our 
fleets  were  humiUated,  beaten,  blockaded  in  our  ports,  tormented 
by  insubordination  .  .  .  ruined  by  desertion." 

Such,  then,  was  the  state  to  which  France  was  reduced  by  the 
Terror.  Can  we  doubt  that  if  it  had  continued  she  must  eventu- 
ally have  fallen  a  prey  to  a  stronger  power  ?  And  what  pre- 
vented this  ?  One  thing  only — the  advent  of  the  strong  man 
for  whom  during  ten  long  years  she  had  waited  in  vain  ;  the 
man  who  put  down  with  an  iron  hand  the  tyranny  and  corrup- 
tion of  the  Directory  and  raUied  the  French  around  the  standard 
of  the  Empire.  The  truth  is  then  that  France  was  saved  from 
dismemberment,  not  by  the  Terror,  but  by  Imperialism,  whilst 
she  was  saved  from  internal  ruin  and  disruption,  in  spite  of  the 
Terror,  by  the  indomitable  spirit  of  her  people, 

THE  COURSE  OF  THE  INTRIGUES 

Whilst  France  was  brought  to  the  verge  of  ruin,  and  her 
people  were  dying  of  starvation,  the  great  intrigues  continued 
their  course  with  unabated  ardour.  Orl^anisme,  though  moment- 
arily checked  by  the  execution  of  Philippe  £galit6  and  the 
banishment  of  his  sons,  was  to  see  its  efforts  rewarded  thirty- 
six  years  later ;  Prussia,  rid  of  the  most  formidable  obstacle 
to  her  power — the  Franco-Austrian  alliance — could  afford  to 
bide  her  time  in  spite  of  miUtary  defeats  in  order  to  realize  her 


48o        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

dreams  of  European  domination ;  Anarchy,  which  had  already 
triumphed  under  Marat  and  the  H6bertistes,  had  become  a  force 
that  has  never  since  ceased  to  threaten  the  peace  of  the  world. 
These  consequences  must  be  dealt  with  more  fully  in  a  concluding 
chapter  amongst  the  results  of  the  Revolution  as  a  whole. 

Alone  of  the  four  great  intrigues,  that  of  the  English  Jacobins 
received  a  serious  check  in  the  Reign  of  Terror.  This  was, 
however,  not  owing  to  any  modification  in  the  sentiments  of 
our  revolutionaries ;  the  frightful  period  of  bloodshed  and 
horror  that  had  overtaken  France  served  merely  to  stimulate 
their  ardour  for  revolutionary  doctrines,  and  right  up  to  the  gth 
of  Thermidor  they  never  relaxed  their  efforts  to  bring  about 
the  same  order  of  things  in  our  own  country.  True,  the  out- 
break of  war  between  England  and  France,  followed  by  Pitt's 
timely  introduction  of  the  Traitorous  Correspondence  Act, 
considerably  hampered  their  relations  with  the  French  Jacobins, 
and  open  addresses  of  congratulation  were  rendered  impossible ; 
nevertheless  the  intrigue  between  the  Subversives  in  both 
countries  was  still  clandestinely  carried  on,  and  mutual  support 
was  given  throughout  the  Terror  :  Danton,  by  means  of  his 
connections  in  London,  actively  co-operated  in  the  attempt  to 
overthrow  the  British  monarchy ;  ^  Fox  assured  the  Comite  de 
Salut  PubUc  of  his  sympathy  and  approval, ^  and  later  publicly 
applauded  British  reverses ;  whilst  Lord  Stanhope  continued  to 
maintain  an  affectionate  correspondence  with  Barere,  the  arch- 
enemy of  his  country,^  and  to  applaud  the  atrocities  committed 
in  France.  This  last  flagrant  betrayal  of  the  interests  not  only 
of  the  English  people  but  of  the  human  race  roused  even  the 
indignation  of  men  who  had  formerly  sympathized  with  the 
Revolution,  and  in  April  1794  we  find  WiUiam  Miles,  once  a 
member  of  the  Jacobin  Club  in  Paris,  writing  these  words  of 
remonstrance  to  Lord  Stanhope  : 

"  In  the  name  of  Heaven,  my  Lord,  what  frenzy  is  this  that 
stimulates  you  to  quaUfy  as  improvement  what  has  proved 
fatal  to  milUons  ?  Whichever  way  you  direct  your  attention 
you  find  affluence  and  content,  freedom  and  happiness.  In 
France  every  tree  is  a  gibbet  and  every  other  man  you  meet 
hangman.  Yet  your  Lordship  stands  forth  avowedly  an  admire 
of  crimes  which  desolate  the  earth  and  dishonour  humanity."  * 

But  the  people  of  England  expressed  their  disapproval  in  a 

^  Danton  J&migrS,  by  Dr.  Robinet,  p.  90. 

2  See  remark  of  Vergniaud  to  Mrs.  Elliott  at  the  Comit6  de  Salu' 
Public  :    "  Mr.  Fox  is  our  friend  ...  he  loves  our  revolution,  and 
have  it  here  under  his  own  hand-writing  "  {Journal  of  Mrs.  Elliott,  p.  146] 

'  The  Life  of  Charles,  third  Earl  of  Stanhope,  by  Ghita  Stanhope  a 
G.  P.  Gooch,  p.  134. 

*  Ibid. 


I 


THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR  481 

more  emphatic  manner,  and  on  the  night  of  the  loth  to  the 
nth  of  June,  whilst  London  was  celebrating  Lord  Howe's 
victory  over  the  French,  the  crowd,  enraged  by  Lord  Stanhope's 
revolutionary  sentiments,  set  fire  to  his  house,  and  the  unhappy 
peer  was  obUged  to  escape  for  his  life  over  the  roofs.  The 
same  thing  had  happened  three  years  earlier  at  Birmingham, 
when  the  so-called  Constitutional  Society  of  that  town,  headed 
by  Dr.  Priestley,  had  issued  "  inflammatory  handbills  of  Re- 
publican tendency."  When  on  the  14th  of  July  the  Society 
met  at  a  dinner  to  celebrate  the  fall  of  the  Bastille,  an  angry 
crowd  assembled  and  burnt  down  both  the  meeting-houses  of 
the  sect ;  Dr.  Priestley's  house  was  attacked  and  he  himself 
had  to  fly  from  door  to  door  for  refuge.  The  riots  went  on  for 
three  days,  and  the  magistrates  were  powerless  to  interfere.  It  is, 
therefore,  as  much  of  an  error  to  imagine  that  the  failure  to 
produce  revolution  in  England  was  owing  to  the  uninflammable 
character  of  the  English  as  it  is  to  attribute  its  success  in  France 
to  the  inflammable  character  of  the  French.  It  was  precisely 
because  the  great  majority  of  the  French  people  were  unin- 
flammable,  because  they  passively  submitted  to  the  domination 
of  a  handful  of  demagogues,  that  the  Revolution  was  able  to 
assume  such  frightful  proportions.  And  it  was  because  the 
English  people  beneath  their  apparent  calm  were  in  reality 
highly  inflammable,  were  ready  to  oppose  an  active  and  even 
violent  resistance  to  subversive  doctrines,  that  the  revolutionary 
movement  could  make  no  headway  amongst  them.  Nor  was 
this  the  result  of  servile  submission  to  the  existing  order  of 
things ;  the  people  of  England  were  well  aware  that  great  and 
drastic  reforms  were  needed,  but  because  they  understood  the 
meaning  of  true  liberty  it  was  not  to  Jacobinism  that  they 
looked  for  salvation. 

Thus  England  at  this  supreme  crisis  in  her  history  was 
saved  from  anarchy  and  ruin,  not  only  by  the  statesmanship 
of  Pitt  and  the  eloquence  of  Burke,  but  by  the  sound  common 
sense  of  the  British  people. 


8  I 


EPILOGUE 


483 


EPILOGUE 

In  the  foregoing  chapter  we  have  seen  the  results  of  the  great 
revolutionary  climax,  the  Reign  of  Terror ;  and  although  at  the 
close  of  this  frightful  epoch  the  Revolution  was  not  yet  ended, 
it  is  impossible  within  the  limits  of  this  book  to  follow  it  through- 
out its  final  convulsions.  To  judge  of  the  ultimate  results  of 
the  movement  by  the  state  of  France  in  1795  would,  however, 
be  inconclusive ;  at  this  date,  it  might  reasonably  be  urged,  the 
country  was  still  in  a  transition  stage ;  a  period  of  chaos  was 
bound  to  follow  on  the  great  upheaval  before  matters  could 
readjust  themselves  and  the  beneficial  effects  of  the  Revolution 
become  apparent.  To  this  argument  the  only  reply  is  a  brief 
summary  of  the  succeeding  regimes  in  France  during  the  century 
that  followed ;  it  will  then  be  seen,  not  as  a  matter  of  opinion 
but  of  fact,  how  far  the  new  order  proved  permanently  satisfying 
to  the  nation. 

The  Directory  that  succeeded  to  the  Convention  lasted  four 
years,  from  1795  to  1799,  during  which  period  two  coups  d*etat 
took  place.  The  Directory  was  then  abolished  on  account  of  its 
tyranny,  corruption,  and  mismanagement. 

In  1799  the  Consulate  was  formed,  with  Napoleon  Bonaparte 
as  First  Consul,  but  five  years  later  the  Republic  was  declared 
a  failure  as  "  unequal  to  the  exigencies  of  the  country." 

Accordingly  in  1804  Napoleon  was  made  Emperor,  and  by 
re-establishing  despotism — a  rigorous  system  of  conscription,  the 
abolition  of  the  liberty  of  the  press,  etc. — ^he  succeeded  in  restor- 
ing order.  It  is  needless  to  enumerate  the  disasters  that  followed 
on  this  brief  spell  of  glory — the  retreat  from  Moscow  during  which 
thousands  of  Frenchmen  perished  in  the  snows  of  Russia ;  the 
invasion  of  France  by  Russians,  Austrians,  and  Prussians ;  the 
overthrow  of  Napoleon  for  "  having  violated  the  rights  and 
liberties  of  the  people  and  the  laws  of  the  Constitution." 

Then  France,  sickened  with  anarchy,  republicanism,  and 
imperialism  all  in  turn,  reverted  to  monarchy,  and  in  1814  Louis 
XVIII.  was  called  to  the  throne  only  to  be  driven  away  by 
Napoleon   six   months   later.      Fresh    disasters   followed  —  the 

485 


486         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

defeat  of  Waterloo,  the  second  entry  of  foreign  armies  into  Paris, 
the  payment  of  an  indemnity  of  twenty-eight  millions. 

Once  more  Louis  XVIII.  was  recalled,  and  the  nine  years  of 
"  legitimist "  monarchy  that  followed  was  the  only  government 
since  the  Revolution  that  did  not  come  to  a  violent  end,  but 
ceased  with  the  death  of  the  King  in  1824. 

The  reign  of  Charles  X.,  the  unpopular  Comte  d'Artois,  was 
foredoomed  to  failure,  and  the  Legitimist  d5masty  was  over- 
thrown in  1830  by  a  fresh  rising  of  the  Orleanistes. 

But  now  that  at  last  the  conspiracy  had  achieved  the  purpose 
for  which  forty-one  years  earlier  it  had  plunged  France  into  the 
horrors  of  revolution,  and  the  succession  was  transferred  to  the 
House  of  Orleans,  it  became  apparent  that  Louis  Philippe  firmly 
seated  on  the  throne  of  France  was  a  very  different  person  from  the 
Due  de  Chartres  sitting  in  the  tribune  of  a  revolutionary  assembly 
and  calling  out  for  "  lanterns."  The  liberty  that  the  change  of 
dynasty  was  to  confer  proved,  like  all  the  other  visions  of  hberty 
offered  by  the  Revolution,  only  a  mirage,  and  after  eighteen 
years  of  unrest  Louis  Philippe  was  driven  from  the  throne  he 
had  usurped. 

In  this  third  revolution  of  1848  fresh  scenes  of  bloodshed 
took  place ;  led  by  SociaHsts  the  workmen  of  Paris  broke  out 
into  violent  insurrection,  the  national  workshops  were  suppressed, 
and  finally  a  Second  Republic  was  proclaimed. 

Let  us  leave  it  to  a  Frenchman  who  lived  through  that  time 
to  tell  the  rest  of  the  tragic  story. 

*'  We  see  this  ephemeral  RepubUc,*'  says  M.  Francois  St. 
Maur,  "  perishing  beneath  an  audacious  coup  d'etat ;  France 
hungering  for  rest  and  order,  throwing  herself  at  the  feet  of  a 
representative  of  a  great  name  (Louis  Napoleon)  ;  the  Second 
Empire  estabUshed  and  soon  shattered ;  a  series  of  wars  ending 
with  the  most  terrible  of  all;  Napoleon  III.  conquered  and  a 
prisoner,  and  the  Third  Republic  proclaimed  without  having 
been  asked  or  desired  by  the  nation ;  anarchy,  despotism,  and 
licence  under  the  name  of  Uberty  ...  a  bold  and  incapable 
dictatorship  profiting  by  the  disasters  of  the  country  to  seize  the 
reins  of  power  ...  a  frightful  insurrection  holding  Paris  for 
two  months  under  the  sway  of  the  Terror,  living  and  dying  in 
murder,  pillage,  and  burning ;  the  grossest  instincts  glorified  andj 
triumphant,  the  most  odious  crimes  evading  just  repression,  the^" 
Revolution  always  armed,  right  trampled  under  foot  .  .  .  such  is| 
the  history  of  that  mournful  period."  ^ 

In  spite  of  such  incidents  as  the  Affaire  Boulanger,  the  Affaire: 
Dreyfus,  frequent  strikes  of  workmen,  the  strife  of  factions,  this 
Third  Repubhc,  the  Republic  of  to-day,  has  nevertheless  held 

^  Preface  to  the  Mimoires  de  Hua. 


EPILOGUE  487 

her  own  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  now,  after  gloriously  retrieving 
the  disasters  of  1870,  we  fervently  hope  will  at  last  give  peace 
to  France. 

The  sequel  to  the  great  French  Revolution  was  thus  eighty 
years  of  unrest.  That  this  unrest  was  the  direct  outcome  of  the 
Revolution  it  is  impossible  to  deny.  To  attribute  it  to  the  un- 
stable character  of  the  French  people  is  as  illogical  and  unjust 
as  to  attribute  the  crimes  and  follies  of  the  Revolution  to  their 
passions.  The  French  people  had  not  proved  fickle  or  unstable 
under  their  former  government ;  were  they  not  the  same  people 
who  had  proved  passionately  loyal  to  their  kings  during  fourteen 
centuries  ?  If  after  the  Revolution  they  became  restless  and 
unstable,  it  was  simply  that  the  Revolution  itself  had  produced 
this  change  in  the  national  character.  For  by  that  gigantic 
demolition  France  lost  the  habit  of  stability,  the  power  of  remain- 
ing content  with  any  form  of  government ;  the  spell  exercised 
by  the  monarchy  once  broken  she  lost  faith  in  all  rulers,  and 
through  eight  succeeding  forms  of  government  never  found  one 
to  satisfy  her  permanently.  As  M.  de  Lomenie  has  expressed  it : 
"  The  persistence  of  subversive  Utopias  is  at  the  same  time  the 
cause  and  the  natural  consequence  of  all  those  abortive  strokes 
that  make  up  our  history  since  1789  ;  a  vicious  circle  in  which 
France  turns  and  mentally  exhausts  herself."  ^ 

Yet,  if  the  century  that  followed  had  proved  a  millennial  age 

of  contentment,  if  the  Republic  established  in  1792  had  never 

been  overthrown  but  had  continued  to  this  day  to  satisfy  the 

desires  of  the  French  people,  the  panegyrists  of  the  Revolution 

could  not  have  pronounced  it  a  more  unqualified  success.     For 

in  spite  of  subsequent  upheavals,  they  hasten  to  assure  us,  great 

and  lasting  reforms  were  brought  about  by  the  Revolution — 

reforms  so  immense  as  to  atone  for  all  the  crimes  and  follies  that 

attended  their  birth.     Contrary  to  all  previous  experience  in  the 

history  of  the  world,  this  time,  we  are  asked  to  beUeve,  men  did 

gather  grapes  of  thorns  and  figs  of  thistles,  and  from  the  hatred, 

the  lust,  and  the  corruption  that  marked  the  whole  revolutionary 

period  there  sprang  up  a  harvest  of  love  and  hberty  and  Justice. 

If  this  were  so,  morahty  might  weU  be  proclaimed  a  fraud,  and 

the  divine  ordering  of  the  universe  a  delusion.     Mercifully  it  is 

as  untrue  as  all  the  other  deductions  of  revolutionary  sophists. 

The  immense  reforms  brought  about  during  the  revolutionary 

era  were  not  the  result  of  the  Revolution.     It  was  to  the  King  and 

his  enlightened  advisers,  as  I  have  shown  in  this  book,  that  the 

reforms  in  government  were  primarily  due ;  it  was  the  noblesse 

that  dealt  the  death-blow  to  the  feudal  system ;  it  was  the  Royalist 

Democrats,  abhorred  of  the  revolutionary  leaders,  who  drew  up 

^  La  Comtesse  de  Rochefort,  by  L.  de  Lomenie,  p.  288. 


488  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  and  framed  the  Con- 
stitution. The  work  of  the  Revolution  was  to  destroy  all  these 
reforms — to  abolish  the  liberty  of  the  press,  liberty  of  conscience, 
personal  liberty,  to  replace  the  comparatively  mild  feudalism  of 
the  Old  Regime  by  the  most  frightful  tyranny  the  world  had  ever 
seen,  and  finally  to  annul  the  Constitution  demanded  by  the 
people  in  favour  of  a  Constitution  that  could  never  be  enforced, 
that  lasted  exactly  twenty-six  months,  and  was  followed  by  no 
less  than  six  others  in  the  eighty  years  that  followed. 

Of  all  the  measures  passed  by  revolutionary  legislation  one 
alone  can  be  quoted  with  some  show  of  reason  by  historians  to 
have  resulted  in  permanent  benefit  to  the  people ;  this  was  the 
law  passed  in  1793  conferring  a  greater  proportion  of  the  land  on 
the  peasants  by  the  sale  of  "national  goods" — that  is  to  say, 
property  formerly  owned  by  the  nobility  and  clergy.  Thus 
although,  as  M.  Louis  Madelin  points  out,  *'  the  workman  was 
the  principal  victim  of  the  Revolution,"  ^  the  peasant  proprietor 
profited  by  it.  "  The  peasant  alone,"  writes  a  contemporary, 
"  is  happy  ;  he  alone  has  gained." 

But  how  far  was  this  happiness  a  reality,  or  did  it,  Hke  his 
pre-revolutionary  "  misery,"  exist  largely  on  paper  ?  To  judge 
of  this  we  must  refer  to  the  accounts  of  eye-witnesses  who  record 
their  impressions  after  the  revolutionary  storm  had  subsided. 
Thus,  for  example,  we  may  compare  the  following  passage  in  the 
journal  of  an  EngUshwoman  who  travelled  through  France  in 
1802  with  the  descriptions  given  by  Dr.  Rigby  of  dancing  French 
peasants  quoted  at  the  beginning  of  this  book : 

"  Breteuil,  July  8. — Where  is  the  gaiety  we  have  heard  of 
from  our  infancy  as  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  this 
nation  ?  Where  is  the  original  of  Sterne's  picture  of  a  French 
Sunday  ?  I  have  seen  to-day  no  cessation  from  toil,  no  inter- 
mixture of  devotion,  and  repose,  and  pleasure.  I  have  seen  no 
dance,  I  have  heard  no  song.  But  I  have  seen  the  pale  labourer 
bending  over  the  plentiful  fields,  of  which  he  does  not  seem,  if 
one  may  judge  by  his  looks,  ever  to  have  enjoyed  the  produce ; 
I  have  seen  groups  of  men,  women,  and  children  working  under 
the  influence  of  the  burning  sun  .  .  .  and  others  giving  to  toilj 

*  Not  only  did  the  working-classes  suffer  from  unemployment  and  the 
suppression  of  their  trades  unions,  but  when  employed  they  were  oblige 
to  work  much  harder  than  before,  owing  to  the  fact  that  all  the  feasts  of ij 
the  Church  (Easter,  Christmas,  etc.),  and  all  the  saints  days  which,  with] 
the  day  following  each,  were  holidays  under  the  monarchy  had  now  beei 
done  away  with,  whilst  Sunday  had  been  replaced  by  dicadi  that  occurrec 
once  in  ten  days  instead  of  seven.     See  the  amusing  article  in  the  Monitet 
for  September  9,  1794,  congratulating  the  Revolution  for  putting  an  enc 
to  "  national  idleness  "  by  "  consecrating  to  work  at  least  120  days  "  that 
the  Old  Regime  devoted  to  "  unemployment " — i.e.  to  rest  and  recreation— 
thus  leaving  the  people  only  thirty-six  holidays  in  the  year. 


EPILOGUE  489 

the  hours  destined  to  repose,  even  so  late  as  ten  o'clock  at  night/' 
etc.^  By  dint  of  this  capacity  for  unremitting  labour,  combined 
with  his  inherent  thrift,  the  peasant  of  France  has  contrived  to 
make  a  Uving  out  of  the  soil,  but  certainly  not  under  the  millennial 
conditions  promised  him  by  the  revolutionary  leaders.  A  still 
more  striking  comparison  might  be  made  between  the  accounts 
given  by  Arthur  Young  of  the  peasant's  lot  in  1789  and  that 
of  his  successor  in  agricultural  lore,  Mr.  Rowland  Prothero, 
in  his  Pleasant  Land  of  France,  written  precisely  one  hundred 
years  later.  After  describing  in  detail  the  wretchedness  of  the 
French  peasant's  food  and  dwelUng  which  he  witnessed  during 
a  tour  through  France  in  1889,  Mr.  Prothero  concludes  with 
the  words  :  "  The  position  of  the  peasant  thus  miserably  lodged 
and  poorly  fed  is  said  to  be  precarious  and  perilous.  He  is  a 
proprietor  only  in  name.  The  real  owner  is  the  money-lender, 
and  the  peasant  proprietor  is  a  veritable  serf."  ^ 

If  this,  then,  was  all  that  the  one  purely  revolutionary  reform 
did  for  the  peasant  of  France,  we  may  well  ask  whether  it  was 
worth  the  seas  of  blood  shed  to  effect  it. 

But  whilst  the  benefits  resulting  to  France  from  the  Revolu- 
tion may  be  comprised  in  so  small  a  compass — peasant  pro- 
prietorship on  an  increased  scale — the  evils  of  which  it  was  the 
cause  are  immeasurable. 

"  The  Revolution,"  wrote  Hua,  who  had  lived  all  through  it, 
"  was  terrible  because  it  was  neither  in  the  interests  nor  in  the 
character  of  the  people  ...  it  had  a  milUon  soldiers  killed,  200,000 
to  300,000  citizens  butchered.  ...  I  shall  be  told :  '  You  are 
wrong,  confused  . .  .  one  must  not  place  on  the  score  of  the  Revolu- 
tion all  the  errors,  the  mistakes,  or  even  the  crimes  of  which  it  was 
the  occasion,  not  the  cause. . .  .'  But  what  is  this  idea  of  separat- 
ing the  Revolution  from  the  ills  it  produced  ?  To  what  other  cause 
must  they  be  attributed  ?  It  is  to  it,  to  it  alone,  that  they  are 
due  ;  these  effects  were  not  accidents  but  consequences.  The 
tree  has  borne  its  fruits.  This  is  what  many  people  will  not  see."  ^ 

We  are  told  that  it  was  with  the  Revolution  that  ideas  of 
liberty  originated  in  France.  Nothing  is  further  from  the  truth. 
France  had  a  far  clearer  conception  of  liberty,  even  of  democracy, 
during  the  years  that  preceded  the  Revolution  than  in  those 
that  followed  after,  in  the  days  when  Rousseau  said  that  "  liberty 
would  be  too  dearly  bought  with  the  blood  of  one  French  citizen  " 
than  when  Mirabeau  demanded  that  "Uberty  should  have  for 
her  bed  mattresses  of  corpses,"  or  when  Raynal  declared  that 
"  a  country  could  only  be  regenerated  in  a  bath  of  blood."     No, 

^  The  Remains  of  Mrs.  Richard  Trench,  edited  by  her  son,  the  Dean  of 
Westminster  (1862). 

2  Exactly  confirmed  by  Prince  Kropotkin,  Paroles  d'un  Revolts,  pp. 
325-327  (1882).  *  Mdmoires  de  Hua,  p.  46. 


490         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

it  was  not  ideas  of  liberty  that  the  Revolution  bequeathed  t( 
France,  but  a  legacy  of  bitterness,  of  envy,  and  of  strife. 

I  am  convinced  that  the  day  will  come  when  the  worid,  ei 
lightened  by  the  principles  of  true  democracy,  will  recognise  thai 
the  French  Revolution  was  not  an  advance  towards  democrac] 
but  a  directly  anti-democratic  and  reactionary  movement,  thai 
it  was  not  a  struggle  for  liberty  but  an  attempt  to  strangle  liberti 
at  its  birth  ;  the  leaders  will  then  be  seen  in  their  true  colours 
the  cruellest  enemies  of  the  people,  and  the  people,  no  longei 
condemned  for  their  ferocity,  will  be  pitied  as  the  victims  of  a 
gigantic  conspiracy.     It  was  this  conspiracy,  or  rather  this  com-" 
bination  of  conspiracies,  that  alone  triumphed  in  the  Revolution  ;j 
it  was  the  same  great  intrigues  at  work  amongst  the  people  ii 
1789  that  survived  all  the  storms  that  followed  after  and  that  no^ 
once  again  threaten  the  peace  of  the  world. 

THE  FINAL  TRIUMPH  OF  THE  INTRIGUES 

Of  the  first  great  intrigue  of  the  French  Revolution — th< 
Orleaniste  conspiracy — Uttle  more  remains  to  be  said,  for  althougl 
it  was  the  cause  of  the  Revolution  of  1830,  and  again  made  its( 
felt  as  recently  as  1889  i^  ^^^  Affaire  Boulanger,  it  claims  at 
the  present  day  so  few  supporters  that  it  may  be  described 
dead.  It  is  therefore  with  the  other  three  intrigues,  now  morej 
alive  than  ever,  that  we  need  concern  ourselves. 

That  the  French  Revolution  proved  a  triumphant  succes 
for  Prussia  might  be  proved  in  half-a-dozen  ways — the  severing 
of  the  Franco-Austrian  alHance,  the  alarm  created  amongst  the 
smaller  German  sovereigns  that  caused  them  to  rally  around 
Prussia,  the  overthrow  of  the  Bourbons  who  had  constituted  the 
chief  rivals  to  the  ambitions  of  the  HohenzoUerns  and  the  removal 
of  whom  enabled  Germany  to  place  the  offspring  of  her  ro^ 
houses  on  all  the  thrones  of  Europe,  the  destruction  of  the  Fren( 
Court  which,  as  the  centre  of  art  and  learning,  formed  the  greats 
safeguard  of  civiUsation  and  the  strongest  antidote  to  militarism; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  rise  to  power  of  Napoleon  I.,  who 
the  role  of  an  aggressor  alienated  from  France  the  sympathies 
all  Europe,  the  decline  in  the  population  ^  which  weakened  thi 

*  It  should  be  noted  that  this  decline  in  the  birth-rate  dates  from  tl 
Revolution.     Before  1789  France  was  the  most  thickly  populated  of 
European  countries  ;  since  that  date  the  rate  of  increase  in  the  popula^ 
tions  of  France  and  England  offers  this  striking  contrast : 

1789.  1918. 

France  ....      25,000,000  40,000,000 

England  and  Ireland  .  .      12,000,000  45,000,000 

Thus  England  under  a  monarchy  has  nearly  quadrupled  her  popular 

tion,  whilst  France  under  a  Republic  has  increased  hers  by  only  three-fifths 


EPILOGUE  491 

military  strength  of  France, — these  are  only  a  few  of  the  benefits 
reaped  by  Prussia  from  the  harvest  of  sedition  she  had  sown. 

But  perhaps  the  principal  advantage  that  Prussia  gained  by 
the  Revolution  was  the  propagation  of  those  doctrines  of  social- 
ism and  anti-patriotism  that,  first  circulated  by  the  revolutionaries 
of  France,  have  paralysed  the  resistance  of  Prussia's  enemies. 
Before  1870  it  was  the  SociaUsts  of  France  who  opposed  the  re- 
organisation of  the  army ;  it  was  Michelet,  the  great  panegyrist 
of  the  Revolution,  who,  on  the  very  eve  of  the  Franco-Prussian 
war,  hailed  the  rising  power  of  Germany,  and  in  the  great  war 
that  has  just  ended  it  was  the  Radical  Socialists  of  France  and 
the  corresponding  factions  in  all  the  countries  of  the  aUies  who 
have  displayed  the  least  resentment  of  Prussian  aggression.  Thus 
the  immense  paradox  has  been  created  that  amongst  the  so- 
called  democrats  of  Europe  Prussian  autocracy  has  found  its 
most  valuable  allies. 

From  the  eighteenth  century  onwards  Prussia  has  never 
relinquished  the  poUcy  of  Frederick  the  Great — that  of  encourag- 
ing social  unrest  in  the  countries  she  wishes  to  subdue.  The 
first  experiment  was  made  in  France,  the  second  in  Belgium 
during  the  same  period,  the  third,  at  an  interval  of  a  century  and 
a  quarter — during  which  period  German  philosophers  and  writers 
ceaselessly  disseminated  those  subversive  doctrines  so  rigorously 
suppressed  in  the  land  of  their  birth — ^was  to  have  taken  place 
in  Ireland  during  the  spring  of  19 14.  This  effort  proving  tem- 
porarily abortive  Germany  concentrated  all  her  energies  on 
Russia,  and  by  the  fearful  cataclysm  that  ensued  very  nearly 
succeeded  in  turning  the  tide  of  the  war  irretrievably  against 
the  AUies. 

But  it  would  seem  that  Prussia  had  played  with  fire  too  long, 
that  the  fire  she  had  fanned  so  assiduously  abroad  had  all  the 
while  been  smouldering  within  her  own  borders,  and  now 
threatens  to  envelop  her  in  the  general  conflagration.  If  indeed 
the  present  revolution  in  Germany  is  genuine  and  the  power  of 
the  HohenzoUerns  has  been  finally  overthrown,  it  is  surely  the 
most  amazing  case  of  being  "  hoist  with  one's  own  petard  "  in 
the  history  of  the  world. 

For  side  by  side  with  the  intrigue  of  the  HohenzoUerns  that 
other  intrigue  has  gone  forward — the  scheme  that,  originating 
with  the  lUuminati  of  Bavaria  in  1776,  is  now  being  actively 
carried  out  by  their  successors.  The  plan  of  world  revolution 
devised  by  Weishaupt  has  at  last  been  reaUsed.  Can  we  beUeve 
that  it  is  by  mere  coincidence  that  the  Spartacists  of  Munich  have 
adopted  the  pseudon}^!  of  their  feUow-countryman  and  pre- 
decessor, Spartacus- Weishaupt,  the  inaugurator  of  class  warfare  ? 
Is  it  a  mere  coincidence  that  their  doctrines  are  the  same  as  his  ? 


492         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

We  have  only  to  study  the  course  of  the  revolutionary  move- 
ment in  Europe  during  the  last  130  years  to  reaUse  that  it  has 
been  the  direct  continuation  of  the  scheme  of  the  Illuminati, 
that  the  doctrines  and  the  aims  of  the  sect  have  been  handed 
down  without  a  break  through  the  succeeding  groups  of  revolu- 
tionary Socialists.  Thus,  for  example,  if  we  compare  the  con- 
fession of  faith  issued  by  Bakunin  in  the  name  of  the  Inter- 
national Social  Democratic  Alliance  of  1866  with  the  creed  of  the 
Illuminati  quoted  on  page  20  of  this  book,  they  will  be  found  to 
be  almost  identical : 

"  The  AUiance  professes  atheism  ;  it  aims  at  the  abolition  of 
reUgious  services,  the  replacement  of  belief  by  knowledge  and 
divine  by  human  justice,  the  abolition  of  marriage  as  a  political, 
religious,  and  civic  arrangement.  Before  all  it  aims  at  the 
definite  and  complete  aboUtion  of  all  classes  and  the  political, 
economic,  and  social  equality  of  the  individual  of  either  sex,  the 
abolition  of  inheritance.  All  children  to  be  brought  up  on  a 
uniform  system  so  that  artificial  inequaUties  may  disappear.  .  .  . 
It  aims  directly  at  the  triumph  of  the  cause  of  labour  over  capital. 
It  repudiates  so-called  patriotism  and  the  rivalry  of  nations,  and 
desires  the  universal  association  of  aU  local  associations  by  means 
of  freedom." 

Indeed  Prince  Kropotkin,  one  of  the  leading  spirits  of  the 
"  Internationale,"  admits  that  there  was  "  a  direct  filiation 
between  this  association  and  the  '  Enrages '  of  1793  and  the 
secret  societies  of  1795."  Now,  since  we  know  that  ever  since 
1866,  and  still  at  the  present  day,  it  is  in  secret  societies  and  at 
meetings  of  spurious  Freemasons  ^  that  revolutionary  doctrines 
have  been  propagated,  can  we  doubt  that  these  associations  are 
also  the  direct  continuations  of  the  Illuminati,  and  that  it  is  on 
the  doctrines  of  Weishaupt,  the  inventor  of  "  world  revolution," 
that  the  thing  we  now  call  "  Bolshevism  "  is  founded  ?  Can  we 
doubt,  moreover,  that  many  of  the  terrible  secrets  of  engineering 
popular  tumults  have  been  handed  down  to  these  societies  from 
those  that  organised  the  first  experiments  in  France  ?  The  art 
of  working  on  the  public  mind  by  calumny,  corruption  and  terror, 
the  seduction  of  the  soldiery  by  women  in  the  pay  of  the  agitators, 
the  fabrication  of  pretexts  by  which  the  people  were  made  to 
carry  out  the  designs  of  the  leaders,  the  holding  up  or  destruction 
of  food  supplies  in  order  to  drive  them  by  hunger  to  violence, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  distribution  of  fiery  liquor  to  inflame 
their  passions,  the  hiring  of  foreign  assassins  to  lead  them  on  to 

*  Notably  the  "  Grand  Orient  "  of  France,  an  order  in  no  way  to  be 
confounded  with  British  freemasonry,  by  which  it  was  repudiated  in  1885 
in  consequence  of  its  rejection  of  the  fundamental  doctrine  of  true  masonry 
— a  beUef  in  God,  "  the  Great  Architect  of  the  Universe,"  and  in  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul. 


EPILOGUE  493 

bloodshed, — all  these  diabolical  methods  employed  by  the  Jacobins 
of  France,  indoctrinated  by  the  Illuminati,  have  been  repeated 
in  Russia  with  terrible  effect.  Moreover,  not  only  in  its  secret 
organisation  but  in  its  outward  manifestations  the  Russian 
Revolution  has  obviously  been  inspired  by  the  French — the 
September  massacres  in  the  prisons  of  Petrograd  by  those  in  the 
prisons  of  Paris,  the  drownings  in  the  Black  Sea  by  the  noyades 
de  Nantes,  the  desecration  of  the  Kremlin  by  the  desecration 
of  Notre  Dame;  the  very  phraseology  of  the  leaders  is  the 
same,  the  Bolshevik  tirades  against  the  bourgeoisie  are  copied 
almost  verbatim  from  the  diatribes  of  Robespierre. 

The  danger  that  threatens  civilisation  is  therefore  no  new 
danger  but  dates  from  before  the  French  Revolution.  The 
blaze  kindled  by  Weishaupt  has  never  ceased  to  smoulder  ; 
France  was  only  the  place  of  its  first  conflagration.  The  same 
doctrines  again  put  into  practice  must  inevitably  lead  to  the  same 
result  as  surely  as  the  fusion  of  the  same  gases  must  produce  the 
same  explosion.  For  the  Terror,  as  I  have  shown,  was  not  a  fright- 
ful accident  but  the  logical  consequence  of  attempting  to  establish 
by  force  a  system  of  equality  not  demanded  by  the  nation.  It 
matters  not  how  averse  to  violence  the  leaders  of  such  a  move- 
ment may  be,  or  how  exalted  the  ideals  which  inspire  them,  they 
will  find  themselves  obhged  to  resort  to  violent  methods  in  order 
to  maintain  themselves  in  power,  firstly,  because  by  no  other 
means  can  resistance  be  overcome,  and  secondly,  because  a  period 
of  anarchy  is  unavoidable  for  the  destruction  of  the  existing 
order,  and  this  must  inevitably  rally  round  them  men  who  are  not 
IdeaUsts  at  all  but  simply  criminals  whose  ferocity  they  will 
be  unable  to  control.  "  Whoever  stops  half-way  in  revolution," 
said  St.  Just,  "  digs  his  own  grave."  So  just  as  Robespierre, 
who  in  179 1  had  proposed  the  abolition  of  capital  punishment, 
and  later  still  had  shuddered  at  the  sanguinary  schemes  of  Marat, 
found  himself  obliged  to  adopt  the  system  of  depopulation  and 
to  ally  himself  with  Collot,  Billaud,  Barere,  and  the  Jackals  of 
the  Comite  de  Surete  G^nerale  in  order  to  carry  out  his  scheme 
of  equality  and  to  save  his  own  head  ;  just  as  Babeuf,  who  had 
denounced  the  atrocious  methods  of  Robespierre,  came  to  see 
that  the  triumph  of  Socialism  could  be  ensured  by  no  other 
means ;  just  as  Lenin,  who  has  likewise  been  described  as  an 
IdeaUst,  is  forced  to  permit — ^if  not  to  ordain — wholesale  massacre, 
and  to  associate  himself  with  the  dregs  of  the  Russian  under- 
world in  order  to  make  his  position  and  his  system  secure,  so  in 
any  country  the  attempt  to  establish  Socialism  by  means  of 
revolution  must  inevitably  be  accompanied  by  a  Reign  of  Terror, 
not  merely  for  the  subjugation  of  the  people  as  a  whole,  but  as 
a  means  of  defence  against  rival  revolutionary  factions. 


494         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

For  with  the  sweeping  away  of  the  Old  Order  the  conflict 
will  only  have  begun  and  must  then  enter  on  its  further  phase 
— the  war  between  the  factions  that  from  the  outset  has  divided 
the  forces  of  revolution.  The  quarrel  that  took  place  between 
*'  Spartacus "  and  "  Philo "  was  repeated  in  the  perpetual 
dissensions  between  the  disciples  of  the  Illuminati  throughout 
the  whole  French  Revolution,  and  recurred  again  continually 
between  the  various  revolutionary  groups  during  the  last  century. 
Broadly  speaking  these  groups  have  been  divided  into  two 
opposing  camps — the  State  Socialists  and  the  Anarchists,  that  is 
to  say,  on  the  one  hand  the  faction  which  aims  at  the  supremacy 
of  the  State  and  the  subjugation  of  the  individual,  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  faction  that  would  do  away  with  the  State  and 
proclaim  the  complete  Uberty  of  the  individual — policies  which, 
of  course,  are  diametrically  opposed.  It  was  this  difference  of 
opinion  which  in  its  embryonic  stage  caused  the  feud  between 
the  Robespierristes  and  H^bertistes,  which  broke  out  later 
between  the  revolutionaries  of  1869 — the  State  Socialists,  Karl 
Marx,  Engels,  and  Louis  Blanc,  violently  separating  themselves 
from  the  Anarchists,  Proudhon  and  Bakunin — and  that  finally 
led  to  the  rupture  in  the  "  Internationale."  So  still  to-day  the 
same  feud  rages  in  Russia,  for  it  is  towards  Anarchists  such  as 
Kropotkin  that  the  State  SociaHst  Lenin  has  displayed  the  greatest 
severity.  The  hatred  entertained  by  the  beUevers  in  these  opposing 
creeds  has  throughout  been  even  fiercer  than  that  of  either  party 
for  the  upholders  of  the  Old  Regime ;  the  same  furious  animosity 
that  led  Robespierre  to  ordain  the  death  of  Hebert  flamed  out 
again  in  Proudhon's  denunciations  of  Robespierre,  in  Marx's 
diatribes  against  Proudhon,  in  Bakunin's  detestation  of  Marx. 
In  Marx  it  would  seem  that  not  only  the  policy  but  the  very 
spirit  of  Robespierre  lived  again.  *'  His  vanity,"  wrote  Bakunin, 
"  knew  no  bounds,  a  veritable  Jew's  vanity.  .  .  .  This  vanity, 
already  very  great,  was  considerably  increased  by  the  adulation 
of  his  friends  and  disciples.  Very  personal,  very  jealous,  very 
susceptible  and  very  vindictive,  Uke  Jehovah,  the  God  of  his 
people,  Marx  cannot  suffer  one  to  acknowledge  any  other  God 
but  himself.  .  .  .  Proudhon  .  .  .  became  the  hete  noire  of 
Marx.  To  praise  Proudhon  in  his  presence  was  to  offer  him  a 
mortal  affront  deserving  of  all  the  natural  consequences  of  his 
enmity,  and  these  consequences  are  at  first  hatred,  then  the 
foulest  calumnies.  Marx  has  never  recoiled  before  falsehood, 
however  odious,  however  perfidious  it  might  be."  ^ 

Such,  in  the  opinion  of  one  of  his  most  intimate  associates, 
was  the  prophet  now  held  up  by  the  exponents  of  revolutionary 

^  Michael  Bakunin,  eine  Biographie,  by  Max  Nettlau,  p.  69.  See  also 
L'Anarchia.  by  Ettore  Zoccoli,  pp.  107,  108. 


EPILOGUE  495 

Socialism  to  the  admiration  of  the  English  people,  and  such  is 
the  conflict  on  which  they  are  invited  to  enter  at  the  very  moment 
when  real  and  far-reaching  reforms  are  actually  within  their 
grasp.  Could  they  but  realise  the  true  character  of  the  men  whose 
gospel  is  offered  them  as  their  one  hope  of  salvation,  could  they 
but  study  the  history  of  the  revolutionary  movement  in  Europe, 
the  miserable  quarrels  that  took  place  between  the  leaders, 
the  grotesque  failure  of  every  attempt  to  put  their  theories  into 
practice — ^notably  in  such  experiments  as  *'  the  New  Harmony" 
and  *'the  New  AustraHa"  carried  out  by  Lane  and  Owen — 
it  is  inconceivable  that  they  could  lend  an  ear  to  such  counsels. 
But  all  these  things  are  unknown  to  the  working-classes  in 
our  country — the  true  history  of  revolution  has  very  care- 
fully been  kept  from  them  by  the  propagandists  on  whom 
they  depend  for  instruction,  and  who,  in  no  way  blind  leaders 
of  the  blind  but  guides  endowed  with  the  clearest  powers  of 
vision,  will  lead  them  not  into  a  ditch  but  over  the  brink  of  an 
abyss. 

For  whichever  revolutionary  party  succeeds  in  establishing 
its  domination  over  the  people  it  will  be  all  over  with  democracy, 
since  neither  in  the  plan  of  the  State  Socialists  which  entails 
autocratic  control  of  every  department  of  life — that  is  to  say, 
Prussianism  of  the  most  intolerable  kind — nor  in  the  scheme  of 
the  Anarchists  which  consists  in  the  absence  of  all  control,  and 
must  necessarily  end  in  rule  by  the  strongest,  can  any  element 
of  Uberty  be  found.  The  ideal  of  true  democracy,  rule  by  the 
will  of  the  majority,  must  then  in  either  case  be  finally  abandoned, 
and  the  people  must  submit  to  the  domination  of  bureaucratic 
minorities  or  return  to  a  state  of  savagery. 

Naturally  this  is  not  the  programme  placed  before  the  nation, 
for,  just  as  in  the  French  Revolution,  the  people  are  invited  to 
co-operate  on  some  perfectly  plausible  pretext — the  redressing 
of  their  real  grievances  and  the  improvement  in  the  conditions 
of  labour — but  are  not  admitted  to  the  secrets  of  the  leaders. 
Indeed  it  is  probable  that  those  of  the  extremists  amongst  the 
leaders  who  are  of  British  birth  and  origin  little  realise  whither 
they  themselves  are  being  led.  It  is  on  these  supposed  leaders, 
mainly  middle-class  men  posing  as  representatives  of  labour, 
that  the  makers  of  world  revolution  have  founded  their  hopes. 
The  "  extraordinary  simpUcity  and  want  of  acquaintance  with 
Continental  thought "  which  the  German,  Karl  HiUebrand,  long 
ago  detected  in  the  attitude  of  "  the  rising  Radical  school " 
in  England  towards  the  French  Revolution,^  which  characterised 
the  ^correspondence  of  their  prototypes  the  "  English  Jacobins  " 
with  their  brethren  in  France,  and  that  is  still  to  be  found  in  the 

^  Karl  HiUebrand,  Aus  und  ilber  England,  p.  339. 


496         THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


utterances  of  our  Pacifists  and  Internationalists  to-day,  makes 
them  the  ready  dupes  of  subtler  Continental  minds.     For  it  is 
not  they  but  their  aUies  of  foreign  blood  who  are  the  real  directors 
of  the  movement — Prussian  exponents  of  democracy  who  entertain 
the  secret  hope  of  building  up  their  shattered  miUtary  machine 
once  more  on  the  ruins  of  civilisation,  German  merchants  who  see 
their  chance  to  corner  the  markets  of  the  world  by  paralysing 
industry  in  the  countries  of  their  rivals,  CosmopoUtan  Jewish 
financiers  who  hope  by  the  overthrow  of  the  existing  order  to 
place  all  capital   beneath  their  own  control.  Anarchists  from 
the  east  of  Europe  animated  solely  by  a  passion  for  destruction 
who  have  all  adapted  Weishaupt's  scheme  of  world  revoluti 
to  their  own  particular  purpose.     Of  all  these  conspiracies  it 
might  be  said,  as  Robison  said  of  the  Illuminati :   *'  Their  first 
and  immediate  aim  is  to  get  the  possession  of  riches,  power,  and 
influence,  without  industry  ;  and  to  accompUsh  this  they  want 
to  abolish  Christianity  ;  and  then  dissolute  manners  and  unive: 
profligacy  will  procure  them  the  adherence  of  all  the  wicked,  an< 
enable  them  to  overturn  all  the  civil  governments  of  Europe 
after  which  they  will  think  of  further  conquests,  and  extend  th 
operations   to  the  other  quarters  of   the  globe,  till  they  hav< 
reduced  mankind  to  the  state  of  one  undistinguishable  chaoti< 
mass."     Over  this  helpless  mass  each  conspiracy  hopes  to  esta 
lish  its  ascendancy,  thereby  bringing  the  peoples  of  the  worl 
under  an  iron  tyranny  unequalled  in  the  annals  of  the  human 
race.     With  each  conspiracy,  moreover,  miUtant  atheism  forms 
an  integral  part  of  the  scheme.     Beginning  with  Weishaupt, 
continuing  with  Clootz,  with  Biichner  and  with  Bakunin,  hatred 
of  religion,  above  all  of  Christianity,  has  characterised  all  the 
instigators  of  world  revolution,  since  it  is  essential  to  their  purpose, 
that  the  doctrine  of  hatred  should  be  substituted  for  the  doctrin 
of  love.     We  have  only  to  replace  the  old  word  Jacobinism  by] 
its  modern  equivalent  Bolshevism  in  this  prophetic  wami 
written  by  the  Ahh6  Barruel  in  1797  on  the  "  universal  explosion  * 
devised  by  "  Spartacus- Weishaupt "  to  understand  the  dang 
that  now  threatens  the  whole  ci^alised  world  : 

"  To  whatever  government,  to  whatever  rehgion,  to  whatev 
rank  of  society  you  belong,  if  Jacobinism  wins  the  day,  if  th 
projects  and  oaths  of  the  sect  are  accompUshed,  it  is  all  over  with 
your  religion,  with  your  priesthood,  with  your  government  an' 
your  laws,  with  your  properties  and  your  magistrates.  Yo 
riches,  your  fields,  your  houses,  even  to  your  cottages,  all 
cease  to  be  yours.  You  thought  the  Revolution  ended  in  Frano 
and  the  Revolution  in  France  was  only  the  first  attempt  of  the1 
Jacobins.  In  the  desires  of  a  terrible  and  formidable  sect,  you 
have  only  reached  the  first  stage  of  the  plans  it  has  formed  for? 


rl 


EPILOGUE  497 

that  general  Revolution  which  is  to  overthrow  all  thrones,  all 
altars,  annihilate  all  property,  efface  all  law,  and  end  by  dissolv- 
ing all  society." 

It  rests  with  the  people  to  prevent  the  execution  of  this  pro- 
ject in  our  country.  Can  we  beUeve  that  at  this  hour  they  will 
fail  to  play  their  part  as  the  champions  of  Uberty  ?  Can  we 
beUeve  that  the  working-men  of  England  who  put  down  with  an 
iron  hand  all  attempts  to  establish  Jacobinism  in  their  midst 
throughout  the  French  Revolution,  amongst  whom  Marx  himself 
for  more  than  thirty  years  laboured  in  vain  to  obtain  a  following, 
whom  Kropotkin  left  in  anger  and  disgust  after  his  failure  to 
win  them  over  to  his  schemes  of  anarchy,  will  now  be  persuaded 
by  the  agents  of  Lenin  to  accept  that  which  their  sturdy  fore- 
fathers rejected  and  to  become  the  instruments  of  their  own 
ruin  ?  Is  it  possible  that  the  "  English  Jacobins,"  so  ignomini- 
ously  defeated  in  1793,  will  now  triumph  over  the  good  sense  of 
their  fellow-countrymen  ?  Will  that  "  isle  of  serenity,"  whose 
soil  the  Emigres  fell  on  their  knees  to  kiss  when  flying  from  the 
horrors  of  their  own  unhappy  country,  after  another  century 
and  a  quarter  of  civilisation  become  the  scene  of  kindred  dis- 
orders ?  Shall  we,  the  freest  people  on  earth,  whose  laws  and 
Constitution  have  been  for  countless  generations  the  envy  and 
the  admiration  of  the  world,  now  consent  to  be  taught  liberty 
by  men  nurtured  under  Kaiserdom  and  Tsardom,  or  by  a  race 
without  a  country  of  its  own  on  which  to  experiment  in  govern- 
ment ?  Shall  we,  in  the  words  of  Arthur  Young,  "  imitate  the 
example  of  France,  and  by  tampering  with  that  Constitution  to 
which  we  owe  all  our  prosperity  hazard  so  immense  a  stake  of 
happiness"  ? 


2  K 


f 


APPENDIX 


THE  DUC  D'0RL:^ANS  ON  THE  6TH  OF  OCTOBER 

At  the  Procedure  du  Chatelet  the  following  witnesses  came  forward 
to  testify  to  the  presence  of  the  duke  amongst  the  crowd  during  the 
invasion  of  the  Chateau  on  the  morning  of  October  6 : 

The  Vicomte  de  la  Ch§,tre,  witness  cxxvii.,  and  two  men-servants 
(EudeUne  and  Gueniffey,  witnesses  cxxxiii.  and  cxxxvi.),  who  were 
with  him,  swore  to  having  seen  the  Due  d'Orl^ans  amongst  the 
crowd  in  the  courtyard  of  the  Ch§,teau  in  the  morning  of  the  6th 
whilst  the  Guards  were  being  massacred,  adding  that  the  duke  had 
a  switch  in  his  hand  and  "  never  ceased  laughing." 

De  Guillermy  of  the  bodyguard,  witness  cxLix.,  testified  to  seeing 
the  duke  in  the  crowd  at  the  same  moment. 

The  ChevaUer  de  la  Serre,  witness  ccxxvi.,  brigadier  in  the 
King's  army  and  a  chevalier  de  Saint-Louis,  stated  that  "  at  six  o'clock 
in  the  morning  of  the  6th  he  went  to  the  Chateau  by  the  Place  des 
Armes,  where  he  perceived  a  great  movement  of  the  people  .  .  . 
that  he  then  ran  to  the  Cour  Royale,  there  he  joined  the  people  and 
with  them  ascended  the  great  staircase  (the  EscaUer  de  Marbre), 
that  these  people  were  uttering  imprecations,  sajdng,  '  Our  father 
is  with  us,  let  us  march  1  '  that  he  asked  one  of  these  men  who  was 
this  father  ?  This  man  answered  him,  '  Ah,  Sacredieu,  do  you 
not  know  him  ?  It  is  the  Due  d'Orl^ans  ? '  that  he  asked  this  man, 
'  Where  is  he  ?  Is  he  here  ?  '  The  witness  had  then  reached  the 
first  flight  of  the  great  staircase ;  this  man  answered  him  by  indicat- 
ing with  a  gesture  of  his  arm  that  he  (the  duke)  was  at  the  top  of  the 
staircase.  '  Eh  1  f.  .  .  .,  do  you  not  see  him  ?  He  is  there,  he  is 
there  1  '  Then  the  witness  raising  his  head  and  rising  on  tip-toe 
saw  the  Due  d'OrUans  at  the  head  of  the  people  making  a  gesture  with 
his  arm  to  indicate  the  hall  of  the  Queen's  bodyguard,  and  that  the  Due 
d'Orl^ans  then  turned  to  the  left  to  reach  tiie  King's  apartments." 

The  Marquis  de  Digoine  du  Palais,  witness  clxviii.,  stated  that 
just  after  the  rush  of  the  crowd  up  the  Escalier  de  Marbre  he  went 
down  the  EscaUer  de  Princes  leading  to  the  King's  apartments,  and  at 
the  foot  of  this  staircase  he  met  the  Due  d'Orl^ans. 

Morlet,  witness  ccclxxxiii.,  the  sentinel  on  guard  outside  the 
King's  apartments,  related  that  the  duke  presented  himself  at  this 
door  and  that  he  refused  him  admittance, 

501 


504        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

It  will  be  seen  that  between  these  two  accounts  there  is  no 
resemblance  whatever.  In  the  first  place,  the  Due  d'0rl6ans  says 
nothing  about  breakfasting  with  Mrs.  EUiott  either  on  the  5th  or 
6th  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  distinctly  states  that  he  was  in  his  own 
house,  the  Palais  Royal,  early  in  the  morning  of  both  days.  Mrs. 
EUiott  says  he  breakfasted  with  her  on  the  5  th,  "  when  he  was 
accused  of  being  in  the  Queen's  apartments  disguised  "  ;  but  he 
was  never  accused  of  being  there  on  the  morning  of  the  5th,  for  the 
mob  did  not  start  for  Versailles  till  the  middle  of  the  day ;  and  if 
this  was  a  mere  shp  of  the  pen,  and  Mrs.  EUiott  really  intended  to 
say  the  6th,  this  does  not  tally  either,  for  the  Duke  says  he  left  the 
Palais  Royal  at  eight  o'clock  and  went  straight  to  Versailles,  where 
he  remained  till  the  Assembly  met,  which  was  about  eleven  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  Nor  was  he  ever  accused  of  being  disguised  as  were 
his  foUowers,  and  all  eye-witnesses  were  agreed  in  their  description 
of  his  dress  on  that  morning.  Mrs.  Elliott's  story,  like  several  other 
passages  in  her  journal,  is  evidently  a  tissue  of  inaccuracies,  or  of 
deliberate  mis-statements,  but  the  accusation  against  Lafayette  can 
only  be  attributed  to  Orl^aniste  influence.  No  one  at  the  time 
thought  of  accusing  Lafayette  of  complicity  with  the  events  of 
October  5  and  6 ;  this  charge  was  brought  against  him  only  by  the 
real  authors  of  the  day — the  members  of  the  Orl6aniste  conspiracy.^ 
Yet  it  is  on  this  obviously  trumped  up  story  that  revolutionary 
historians  found  their  exoneration  of  the  duke  I  In  the  absence, 
therefore,  of  any  convincing  aUbi,  and  in  the  face  of  the  overwhelming 
evidence  brought  forward  at  the  Procedure  du  Chatelet,  it  seems 
to  me  impossible  to  doubt  that  the  Due  d'Orl6ans  was  actuaUy  with 
the  crowd  at  VersaiUes  when  they  invaded  the  Ch§,teau  on  the  6th 
of  October.  ^ 


ROTONDO  AND  THE  PRINCESS  DE   LAMBALLE 

The  document  preserved  amongst  the  Chatham  Papers  at  the 
Record  Office  (where  it  has  been  wrongly  dated  in  pencil  1791) 
consists  of  a  series  of  questions  and  answers  in  French  written  by 
two  different  hands,  and  accompanied  by  a  letter  signed  only  L., 
sajdng  that  the  sender  has  the  honour  of  forwarding  the  answers  to 
Mr.  Pitt's  questions.     The  inquiry  concerning  Rotondo  runs  thus : 

{Question)  "  Qui  est  Rotondo  ?  Est-ce  son  nom  de  guerre  ou 
de  famiUe  ?  A-t-on  quelques  notions  sur  ce  qu'il  faisait  avant  la 
Revolution  ?  Depuis  quand  est-il  ici  ?  [i.e.  evidently  in  London]. 
A-t-U  avec  lui  quelque  autre  chef  connu  des  TravaiUeurs  ?  " 

^  See  the  letter  of  Laclos  to  Latouche  quoted  by  Montjoie  {Conjuration^ 
de  d'OrUans,  iii.  72),  in  which  this  phrase  occurs  in  connection  with  thcj 
events  of  October  6  :  "  Remember  above  all  that  it  is  only  by  the  discredit] 
and  degradation  of  M.  de  Lafayette  that  Monseigneur  (the  Due  d'Orl6ans)j 
will  triumph,"  The  democratic  historian  Fantin  D6sodoards  quotes  this)] 
same  letter  {Histoire  Philosophique,  i.  287),  of  which  he  declares  that  he  has.j 
seen  the  original. 


APPENDIX  505 

(Answer)  "  Rotondo  est  un  maitre  italien,  c'est  son  nom  de 
famille  :  il  mourait  de  faim  avant  la  Revolution.  II  est  aniv^  ici 
le  24  ou  le  25  8^'^,  il  a  remplace  Chevy  (?),  que  Ton  a  envoi6  au 
Portugal :  son  assesseur  est  un  nomm6  tillaie  (sic)  an'^"  avocat ; 
beau-frere  de  la  femme  de  Danton.  Rotondo  est  Tami  de  Barba- 
roux,  le  fameux  marseillais  qui  vendait  des  Bas  dans  la  cour  de  I'hotel 
de  Penthidvre  et  mari  d'une  fille  de  cuisine  de  Madame  de  Lamballe 
qui  I'a  eventide  aprds  qu'on  lui  eut  coup6  la  tete." 

This  reveals  a  curious  web  of  revolutionary  intrigue — Rotondo, 
the  friend  of  Barbaroux,  who  first  sent  for  the  Marseillais ;  Barbaroux, 
a  lawyer  by  profession,  selling  stockings  in  the  courtyard  of  the  Due 
de  Penthievre,^  father-in-law  of  the  Princess  de  Lamballe  and  with 
whom  she  lived ;  Rotondo  sent  of&cially  to  London — by  whom  ? 
Evidently  by  the  leaders  of  the  Orldaniste  conspiracy.  Incidentally, 
this  correspondence  provides  further  proof  of  Pitt's  non-comphcity 
with  the  revolutionary  movement ;  if  he  had  encouraged  sedition 
is  it  possible  that  after  three  years  of  revolution  he  would  have 
known  nothing  of  Rotondo,  a  leading  agitator  who  was  frequently 
in  London,  and,  as  we  see,  of&cially  employed  there  ?  The  Travail- 
leurs  referred  to  were  evidently  an  association  for  watching  the 
movements  of  the  revolutionaries  and  reporting  them  to  Pitt. 

^  A  fact  confirmed  by  Peltier,  La  Rivolution  du  10  Aoxit,  i.  121. 


INDEX 


Abbaye,  the  massacre  at,  307,  313- 

322,  330 
Aclocque,  227,  229,  230 
Acton,  Lord,  ix,  379 
Aguesseau,  Marquis  d',  152 
Aiguillon,  Due  d',  135,  148 
Alexandre,  Charles  Alexis,  261 
Alvensleben,  Baron  von,  27 
Amar,  J.  P.,  454,  455 
Amiral,  457 
Angouleme,  Duchesse  d'  (Madame 

Royale),  100,  128,  157,  234,  268 
Anjou,  Terror  in,  416 
Antonelle,  Marquis  d',  424,  426,  428 
Anville  la  Rochefoucauld,  Duchesse 

d',  461 
Aries,  Archbishop  of,  311,  312 
Arras,  Terror  in,  416 
Artois,  Comte  d'  (Charles  X.),  19, 

72,  73,  74,  96,  107,  187,  290,  292, 

486 
Aubigny,    J.    L.    M.    Villam    d', 

452  note 
Auckland,    William    Eden,    Lord, 

1 16,  282,  342,  349,  385 
Augu6,  Mme.,  151,  154 
"  Austrian  Committee,"  209,  214, 

247,  395 
Aya,  Comte  d*,  375  note 

Babeuf,  Gracchus,   388  note,  425, 

426,  493 
Bailly,  Jean  Sylvain,  53,  103,  122, 

131,132,136,149,160,161,182,184 
Bakunin,  Michael,  492,  494,  496 
Barbantane,  Comte  de,  139 
Barbaroux,    Charles    Jean    Marie, 

202  note,  251,  256,  261,  264,  294, 

401,  405,  408,  437 
Bar^re  de  Vieuzac,  Bertrand,  248, 

367,   397,   402,   435,   493;    pro- 

ppses   to   demolish   Lyon,    411  ; 

the  enemy  of  England,  456,  480  ; 

in  Comity  de  Salut  Public,  414, 


427,  454;  in  Terror,  454-457: 
on  Neuf  Thermidor,  474  ;  con- 
demned to  deportation,  477 

Barnave,  Antoine,  45,  115,  120, 
135,  148,  178  ;  goes  over  to  the 
Court,  183 

Barras,  Paul  Jean  Fran9ois  Nicolas, 

414,  415,  471,  472 
Barruel,  Abb6,  345  note 
Barry,  Comtesse  du,  462 
Bastille,     description     of,     76-80 ; 
siege  of,  69,  73,  75,  76,  80-92, 

^55}    156,   220,   222,   227,    280 ; 
siege  celebrated  in  London,  106, 
in    Birmingham,     480;      "Con- 
querors "  of,  239 
Batz,  Baron  de,  376 
Baudin,  M.  de,  322 
Bayle,  Motse,  454 
Ba2,ire,  Alexandre  Dominique,  221, 

393  note 
Bazire,  Mme.,  322,  356 
Beauheu,  C.  F.,  333,  424 
Beauvau,  Gabrielle  de,  325 
Belgium,  invasion  of,  381 
Bergasse,  Nicolas,  56 
Bernardins,  the,  massacre  at,  330 
Berry,  Due  de,  490 
Berthier   de    Sauvigny,    Intendant 

of  Paris,   18,  73  ;    death  of,  97, 

114,  115,  123,  205,  239 
Bertrand,  Chevalier  de,  333 
Bertrand    de    MoUeville,    Antoine 

Fran9oiS;  Marquis  de,  121,   188, 

201,  231,  380 
Beurnonville,  General,  351 
Bezenval,  Pierre  Victor,  Baron  de, 

12,  41,  54-56,  67,  69.  73.  74,  80, 

107 
Bic^tre,  prison  of  the  people,  104  ; 

massacre  at,  328,  330 
Billaud-Varennes,     Jean     Nicolas, 

182,    340,    350,    371,    410,    493 ; 

and    massacres    of     September, 


507 


5o8        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


297,  299,  307  note,  310,  321  ;  in 
Convention,  358  ;  in  Comit6  de 
Salut  Public,  414,  427,  454 ; 
antagonist  of  Robespierre,  456  ; 
on  Neuf  Thermidor,  467,  468, 
474  ;   condemned  to  deportation, 

477 

Biron,  Due  de  (or  Lauzun),  12,  15, 
28 ;  an  Illuminatus,  22 ;  an 
Orl6aniste,  45,  106,  167,  357 

Bitaube,  M.  and  Mme.,  282 

Blanc,  Louis,  494 

Blanc-Gilli,  Mathieu,  251 

Blanchard,  466 

Blanchelarde,     Brigadier  -  General, 

394 

Blanchet,  Mme.,  327,  461 

Bohm,  Comtesse  de,  461 

Bonnemere,  239 

Bordeaux,  Jacobin  Society  of,  364  ; 
rises  against  Convention,  405, 
407  ;   Terror  at,  414,  415 

Bosc,  205,  437 

Bouche,  47 

Bouche,  394 

Boucher  d'Argis,  167 

Boufflers,  Stanislas,   Chevalier  de, 

115 

Bouill6,  Marquis  de,  176,  193 

Boulanger,  Affaire,  490 

Bourbon-Conti,  Stephanie  de,  230 

Bourdon,  Leonard,  471 

Bourgoing,  232 

Bouyon,  Abbe,  272 

Boze,  256  note 

Breteuil,  Baron  de,  57,  96 

Bridier,  Fran9oise,  460 

Brissot,  Jean  Pierre,  30,  183,  202, 
203,  214,  384,  388  ;  his  intrigues, 
II,  178,  195,  200,  208,  209,  248, 
249,  318,  357  ;  accused  of  these 
by  Robespierre,  341,  445 ;  a 
RepubUcan,  181,  182,  195 ;  in 
Legislative  Assembly,  194 ;  a 
Monarchist,  254-256,  341  ;  and 
the  2oth  of  June,  219,  225  ;  and 
the  loth  of  August,  281  ;  and 
the  massacres  of  September,  298, 
339 ;  in  Convention,  358 ;  in 
"  revolution  of  the  31st  of  May," 
401  ;   executed,  437 

Broglie,  Mar6chal  de,  54,  57,  73,  96 

Brunswick,  Charles  William  Ferdi- 
nand, Duke  of,  208,  255 ;  his 
relations  with  revolutionary 
leaders,  195,  209,  340,  341,  357, 
395 ;     advances   on   Paris,    300, 


301  ;   Manifesto  of,  245-248,  253, 

382  ;   at  Valmy.  349.  352 
Buchner,  Ludwig,  496 
Buffon,  Mme.,  325 
Burke,    Edmund,    106,    169,    343, 

384.  481 
Buzot,  Francois  Nicolas  Leonard, 

III,  194,  202  note,  362,  373,  405  ; 

poUcy  of,  195  note,  198,  358,  445  ; 

opinions  on  Republic,  406,  407, 

421  ;   death  of,  437 

Cabarrus,  T6r6sia,  414,  415,  468 

Cambon,  Pierre  Joseph,  381,  382, 
388,  467 

Cambrai,  Terror  at,  416 

Campan,  Mme.,  27,  155,  161,  211 

CanoUes,  229,  230 

Carmagnole,  the,  312 

Carmes,  the  Convent  des,  massacre 
at,  311-313.  330,  336 

Carnot,  Lazare,  414,  454 

Carra,  Jean  Louis,  196,  219,  250, 
262,  281  ;  his  German  intrigues, 
196,  197,  209,  247,  248,  250,  262, 
281,  341,  445  ;  inveighs  against 
Austrian  Committee,  214  ;  exe- 
cuted, 437 

Carrier,  Jean  Baptiste,  410,  425- 
428 ;  at  Nantes,  417-419 ;  re- 
turns to  Paris,  476 ;  executed, 
476,  477 

Castries,  Due  de,  176 

Catherine  de  Medicis,  40,  429 

Cavallanti,  176 

Cazotte,  M.  and  Mile,  de,  327 

Ceyrat,  Joachim,  311,  313,  431 

Chabot,  Fran9ois,  221,  250,  258, 
259,  367.  393  ^ote 

Chabroud,  167,  178 

Chabry,  Louison,  142 

Chalier,    Marie    Joseph,    405,    41XJ 

454.  474 
Chamfort,  Nicolas,  10,  22,  23,  40,J 

43»  76,  135,  161  note,  282 
Champ  de  Mars,  petition  of,   18^ 

194,  445  ;  riot  of,  182,  197,  366 
Champion  de  Cic6,  Archbishop 

Bordeaux,  118 
Charlat,  323,  325,  326 
Charles  I.  of  England,  368 
Charles  IX.,  465 
Charles  X.     Vide  Artois 
Charmand,  152 
Chartres,  Due  de  (Louis  XVIII.)i 

105,  139,  140.  195.  217,  357,  421, 

486 


INDEX 


509 


Chatel,  mayor  of  St.  Denis,  murder 

of,  113 
Chitelet,  the,  prison  of  the  people, 

78  ;   massacre  at,  328,  330 
Ch&telet,  Tribunal  of,  55,  148 
Chaumette,    Pierre    Gaspard,    412, 

430.  433 
Chauvelin,       Bernard       Frangois, 

Marquis  de,  198 
Cherbourg,  28,  198 
Ghesnaye,  M.  de  la,  230,  322 
Chevaliers  du  poignard,  265 
Chevannes,  156 
Clavi^re,    fetienne,    194,    202,    204, 

206,  215,  217,  218 
C16re,  Catherine,  394 
Clermont  Tonnerre,  Comte  de,  46, 

118,  163 
C16ry,  378 
Clootz,    Anacharsis,   27,    192,    199, 

220,  340,  345,  348,  431-433.  440. 

441,    496 ;     "  the   orator  of  the 

human  race,"  432  ;  "  the  personal 

enemy    of    Jesus    Christ,"    432 ; 

executed,  442 
Club  Breton.     Vide  Jacobin  Club 
Cofl&nhal  -  Dubail,   Pierre   Antoine, 

47o»  471 
Collot  d'Herbois,  Jean  Marie,  291, 

297.  345.  355>  356,  399.  410.  430, 
456,  457,  493  ;  in  Convention, 
358  ;  in  Comit6  de  Salut  Public, 
414,  427.  454 ;  at  Lyon,  414 ; 
a  Thermidorien,  467,  468,  474  ; 
condemned  to  deportation,  477 

Comit6  de  Salut  Public,  274,  437, 
451,  456,  467,  468,  472,  480 ; 
inaugurated,  397 ;  interior  of, 
described,  427  ;  members  of,  398, 
414,  454  ;  organizes  Terror,  416, 
417,  421,  427,  428,  453,  463,  476 

Comit6  de  Suret6  G6n6rale,  397, 
398,  434,  447,  453-458,  463.  464. 
467,  474,  493  ;   members  of,  454 

Commune  (the  revolutionary  Com- 
mune of  the  loth  of  August),  259, 
358,  363 ;  organizes  massacres 
of  September,  297,  299-301,  310, 

321,  325.  331.  337.  350,  351 ; 

rises  against  Convention  on  31st 
of  May,  397-402  ;  and  on  Neuf 
Thermidor,  467,  469,  470 

Conciergerie,  the,  massacre  at,  322, 
328,  330 ;  the  Queen  at,  434 ; 
Danton  at,  446 ;  in  Terror,  462, 
465,  466 

Cond6,  Prince  de,  27,  73,  96 


Condorcet,  Marquis  de,  209,  219, 
232.  437.  461 

Constant  de  Rebecqui,  Victor,  277 

Conti.  Louis  Armand,  Prince  de,  9 

Convention  Nationale,  363,  365, 
368.  385 ;  inaugurated,  356 ; 
proclaims  Republic,  356 ;  fac- 
tions in,  357,  358  ;  King  appears 
before,  366,  367  ;  votes  death  of 
King,  371-373  ;  scenes  in,  386  ; 
sitting  of  Neuf  Thermidor,  467- 
469 

Corday,  Charlotte,  359  note ; 
murders  Marat,  407-409 

Cordeliers,  the,  192-194,  198,  250, 
255-258,  358.  415.  429 

Corri6,  Marie,  461 

Courtois,  Edm6  Bonaventure,  424, 
426 

Couthon,  Georges,  356,  403 ;  in 
Comit6  de  Salut  Public,  414,  420, 
426,  454  ;  at  Lyon,  411,  427  ;  on 
Neuf  Thermidor,  467-469,  471  ; 
executed,  472,  473 

Craufurd,  Quintin,  21 

Cubi^res,  De,  141 

Custine,  G6n6ral  de,  381 

Damiens,  341,  473  note 

Danton,  Georges  Jacques,  123,  196 
note,  197,  208,  253,  292,  345,  355, 
395,  398,  410  ;  an  Orl6aniste,  71, 
72,  443,  445,  447  ;  and  siege  of 
the  Bastille,  104  ;  and  march  on 
Versailles,  133,  137 ;  prevents 
journey  to  St.  Cloud,  181  ;  and 
England,  30,  183,  197,  198,  480  ; 
his  venality,  72,  193,  257,  298, 
361,  381  ;  paid  by  the  Court, 
193,  256,  257  ;  his  audacity,  104, 
123 ;  leader  of  the  Cordeliers, 
192 ;  a  Monarchist,  194,  421 
note ;  and  20th  of  June,  218 ; 
and  loth  of  August,  258,  260- 
262,  267  note,  281,  445 ;  and 
massacies    of    September,    295- 

299.  303,  305-307.  323,  331.  334. 
338,  340,  342  ;  and  advance  of 
Prussians,  305,  349-352  ;  in  Con- 
vention, 357-362,  386,  389-391  ; 
his  policy,  361 ;  institutes  Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal,  391-393,  446  ; 
and  "  revolution  of  the  31st  of 
May,"  402 ;  desires  clemency, 
438-440 ;  indicted  by  St.  Just, 
443  ;  trial  of  Dantonistes,  445  ; 
death  of,  446,  447,  452,  468,  469 


5IO        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


Danton,  Mme.,  307 

David,  Jacques  Louis,  386 

Delacroix.     Vide  Lacroix 

Des^ze,  368,  372 

Desfieux,  440 

Deshuttes,  153,  154,  159 

Des  Maulans,  393 

Desmoulins,  Camille,  73,  76,  in, 
179,  186,  290,  291,  358 ;  an 
Orl6aniste,  19,  51,  193  ;  on  12th 
of  July,  61-63  ;  2Lnd  siege  of  the 
Bastille,  105';  on  30th  of  August, 
121,  122  ;  goes  over  to  Lafayette, 
125  note,  193 ;  and  march  on 
Versailles,  124,  125,  137,  167 
note  ;  and  riot  of  Champ  de  Mars, 
183 ;  not  a  Republican,  194 ; 
and  2oth  of  June,  219  ;  and  loth 
of  August,  258,  261,  281  ;  and 
massacres  of  September,  296, 
303,  306,  307  ;  on  Valmy,  349, 
35 1 »  352;  his  Histoire  de  Bris- 
sotins,  200,  239,  394-396,  437, 
443,  444  ;  his  plea  for  clemency, 
439 ;    trial  and  execution,  445- 

447 
Desmoulins,  Mme.,  307 
Desnot,  95,  98,  137 
Devize,  M.  de  la,  141 
Diderot,  Denis,  3 

Dietrich,  mayor  of  Strasbourg,  252 
Dijon,  405 

Dillon,  Arthur,  Comte  de,  284 
Diot,  Jean,  148 
Dorset,  Lord,  28,  48,  107 
Dreux-Brez6,  Marquis  de,  50 
Drouet,  Jean  Baptiste,  388,  402 
Dubarran,  454 
Dubouchage,  Fran9ois  Joseph,  Vi- 

comte,  256,  257,  265 
Ducos,    Jean   Francois,    194,    358, 

437 

Ducrest,  Marquis,  1 1 

Dugazon,  220 

Duhem,  Pierre  Joseph,  339 

Dumas,  Rene-Frangois,  412  note, 
472 

Dumont,  Etienne,  15,  125,  170 

Dumouriez,  Gen6ral,  180,  191,  209, 
210, 215,  217,  385  ;  an  Orl6aniste, 
194,  284,  445 ;  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  202,  207,  215  ; 
and  Valmy,  349-352 

Duperret,  408 

Dupin,  454 

Duport,  Adrien,  11,  157,  184 

Duranton,  Antoine,  202,  215 


Du  Repaire,  154 
Dutard,  398 

Eastlake,  Lady,  5 
Edgeworth,  Abbe,  376 
filie,  89-94,  239 

Elizabeth,  Madame,  229,  230,  231, 
257,   267,   268,   436 ;     executed, 

452 

Elizabeth,  Princess  of  the  Pala- 
tinate, 9 

ElUott,  Grace  Dalrymple,  Mrs.,  58, 
62,  480  note 

Engels,  Friedrich,  494 

England,  and  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, 27-34,  106,  107,  169,  283, 
342,  343,  378-385,  480,  481  {see 
also  under  Pitt) ;  France  declares 
war  on,  385  ;  Revolution  societies 
of,  33,  34,  106,  169,  196 ;  corre- 
spondence with  Jacobin  Club, 
344-346,  481  ;  "  EngUsh  Jaco- 
bins," 34,  196, 198,  219,  241,  283, 
298,  342-348,  395,  480,  481,  495, 

497 
Ephraim,  178,  179,  180,  181,  195 
Espr6mesnil,  Jean  Jacques  d',  58, 

119 
Estaing,  Comte  d*,  127,  163 
Estr^es,  Chevalier  d',  135 
fivrard,  Simonne,  359  note,  408 

Fabre  d'figlantine,  Philippe  Fran- 
9ois,  256-258,  296,  303,  307,  338, 

351,358,445,447 

Famine,  the,  in  1789,  16-19,  46,  47, 
131-134,  159  ;  in  1792,  184,  185  ; 
in  1793,  387-390  ;  in  Terror,  449- 
451  ;   Loi  du  Maximum,  449 

Faubourg  Saint- Antoine,  4,  16,  40, 
44,  79,  212,  220-223,  237,  239, 
250,  252,  253,  258,  259,  261,  272, 
276,  359,  362,  365,  367,  368,  399, 
400,  470 

Faubourg  Saint-Marceau,  16, 41,  44, 
212,  213,  220,  221,  250,  253,  258, 
261,  265,  332,  359,  362,  365,  368, 
399,  400,  470 

Fauchet,  Claude,  Abb6,  326 

Feast  of  Reason,  the,  431 

Feast  of  the  Supreme  Being,  440 

Fersen,  Comte  de,   116,  179,  211, 

247 
Fitzgerald,  Lord  Henry,  164  note 
Flesselles,    Jacques    de,    69^     7; 

murder  of,  96 
Fleuriot  Lescot,  469,  472 


INDEX 


5" 


Flue,  Captain  de,  80,  86,  90 

Fockedey,  Jean  Jacques,  deputy 
of  Convention,  375 

Fonfr^de,  Jean  Baptiste  Boyer-, 
194 

Foucault,  458 

Fouch6,  Joseph,  414 

Foullon,  Joseph  Fran9ois,  becomes 
minister,  57 ;  incurs  animosity 
of  Orl6anistes,  58,  73  ;  death  of, 
96,  97,  115,  123,  205,  239 

Fouquier  Tinville,  Antoine  Quentin, 
214,  393.  396,  409,  426,  427,  455, 
458,  459,  463-465,  474  ;  executed, 

477 
Fourcroy,  Antoine  Fran9ois,  Comte 

de,  412 
Fournier  I'Am^ricain,  52,  176,  220, 

225,  250,  261 
Fox,  Charles  James,  31,  32,   197, 

345,  380,  384,  480 
Frederick  II.  the  Great,  24-27,  180, 

196,  208,  209,  283,  352 
Frederick    William    II.,    King    of 

Prussia,    5,    107,    108,    178-181, 

195,  245-247.  349,  351,  352,  382, 

395,  440,  441  note 
Freemasonry,  20-23,  492 
Fr6ron,  Louis  Marie  Stanislas,  183, 

371,414-416,427,  468 
Fry,  Elizabeth,  77 

Garat,  Dominique  Joseph,  336, 
361,  397,  398 

Genlis,  Comtesse  de,  10,  15,  105, 
139,  140,  160,  181,  196 

Gensonn6,  Armand,  178,  194,  195, 
214,  248,  256,  339,  358,  387,  398, 
437 

George  III.  of  England,  28,  33 

George,  Prince  of  Wales,  32-34,  378 

G6rault,  P^re,  311 

Germany,  5,  21,  24 

Gillequint,  tiler,  357  note 

Girondins,  the,  first  known  as 
"  Brissotins,"  194  ;  in  Legisla- 
tive Assembly  and  Jacobin  Club, 
200,  201,  210,  214,  216,  217,  219, 
293,  343,  345;  policy  of,  198; 
intrigues  with  Prussia,  178,  195, 
209,  318,  340,  349-352,  395; 
with   "  English    Jacobins,"    195- 

197,  346,  396  ;  character  of,  203  ; 
opposed  by  Robespierre,  199 ; 
Brissotin  ministry,  202 ;  bring 
about  war  with  Austria,  208 ; 
and  20th  of  June,  222,  237-241  ; 


summon  Marseillais,  251  ;  defend 
Constitution,  255 ;  make  over- 
tures to  King,  256  ;  and  loth  of 
August,  258,  283,  285  ;  and 
massacres  of  September,  339- 
342 ;  and  Valmy,  349-352 :  in 
Convention,  now  known  as  Giron- 
dins, 358,  381  note,  385,  393,  396  ; 
their  policy,  387  ;  attacked  by 
Mountain,  385,  391,  394,  396, 
398  ;  in  "  revolution  of  the  31st 
of  May,"  399-404  ;  fall  of  the 
Gironde,  404  ;  their  escape  from 
Paris,  405 ;  their  role  in  the 
provinces,  406-408,  415 ;  trial 
and  execution  of  the  "  Twenty- 
one,"  437,  439,  446,  450  ;  end  of 
the  Gironde,  437 
Glaci^re  d' Avignon,  200,  201,  308 
Gobel,   Archbishop   of   Paris,   430, 

431 
Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang,  352 
Goltz,  Baron  von  der,  24-27,  107, 

108,  170,  178,  245  note 
Gonchon,  133,  137,  220,  225,  239 
Gondron,  156 
Gonor,  323 

Gorsas,  Antoine  Joseph,  219 
Goullin,  419 

Grammont,  52,  176,  225,  280,  436 
Grandchamps,  Sophie,  202 
Grandmaison,  of  Nantes,  476 
Grandmaison    (la    femme    Grand- 
maison), 457 
Grandpr6,  306 
Grangeneuve,    Jean    Antoine    La- 

fargue  de,  259 
"  Great  Fear,"  the,  iii 
Gr6goire,      Henri,      constitutional 

bishop   of   Blois,  356 ;    Rapport 

of,  412  note 
Grenville,  Lord,  378 
Grison,  323,  324 
Guadet,  Marguerite  Elie,  194,  222, 

358,  373,  398,  407,  437 
GufEroy,    Armand    Benoit    Joseph, 

428 
Guiny,  Gabriel  de,  394 
Gustavus  III.  of  Sweden,  21,  177, 

179 

Hanriot,  Frangois,  400-403,  412, 
470,471.473 

Hawkins,  Matilda,  349 

Hubert,  Jacques  Ren6  (le  P^re 
Duchesne),  183,  192,  323,  347, 
364,   410;     description   of,   429, 


512 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


430 ;  deputy  attorney  of  the 
Commune,  398,  399  ;  accusation 
against  the  Queen,  435,  436 ; 
trial  and  death  of  Hebertistes, 

439,  441-443,  450,  474,  494 

Henri  IV.,  263 

Henry,  Prince,  of  Prussia,  26 

H6rault  de  Sechelles,  Marie  Jean, 
310,  344,  399,  402,  403,  418,  445 

Hermann,  Martial  Joseph  Armand, 
president  of  Revolutionary  Tri- 
bunal, 459 

H6ron,  Fran9ois,  464 

Hertzberg,  Count  von,  107,  170,  180 

Hervilly,  M.  de,  265 

Heymann,  247 

Hood,  Admiral,  415 

Howard,  John,  77 

Howe,  Richard,  Earl,  victory  over 
the  French,  481 

Hua,  Eustache,  8,  16,  222,  223 

Huez,  mayor  of  Troyes,  113 

Huguenin,  Sylvestre,  223,  262 

Hulin,  Pierre,  87,  90-92,  239 

lUuminati,    20-22,    180,    190,    191, 

411,432,433,491-496 
*'  Internationale,"  the,  492,  494 
Isnard,  Maximin,  292,  401,  405 

Jacobin  Club,  starts  as  Club  Breton, 
22,  44,  III,  190;  debates  at, 
181,  186,  199,  200,  208,  211-216, 
218,  219  note,  239,  271,  290,  360, 
362,  467 ;  correspondence  with 
English  Jacobins,  342-348,  480 ; 
in  provinces,  215,  364,  365  ;  in 
Belgium,  381  note 

Jacobins,  the,  223, 238-240, 246-250, 
256,  257,  342,  363,  413,  469,  481 

Jagot,  Gr6goire  Marie,  454,  455 

Jarnac,  Comte  de,  349 

Jaucourt,  Comte  de,  222 

Jean  Bon  St.  Andr6,  388,  393  note, 
414,  428 

Jemmapes,  battle  of,  382 

Jesuits,  20,  21 

Joseph  II.,  Emperor  of  Austria,  26 

Jourdan,  Antoine  Gabriel  Aim6, 
president  of  section,  347 

Jourdan,  Mathieu,  53,  83,  95,  137, 
153,  200 

Jourgniac  de  St.  M6ard,  318,  327, 

333 
Juign6,  Antoine  Leclerc  de,  Arch- 
bishop of  Paris,  50,  loi,  102,  141, 
147 


JuUien,  Jean,  303,  304 
JulHen,  Marc  Antoine  (de  Drome), 
deputy  of  Convention,  402,  476 

KeUermann,  General,  351 
Kersaint,  Armand  Guy,  Comte  de, 

349 
Knigge,  Baron,  "  Philo,"  an  lUu- 

minatus,  22,  494 
Kropotkin,  Peter,  Prince,  492,  494, 

497 

Laclos,  Choderlos  de,  10,  11  ;  author 
of  Les  Liaisons  Dangereuses,  1 1  ; 
in  England,  33  ;  organizes  the 
Orl6aniste  conspiracy,  12-15,  40, 
51,  76,  117,  175,  206,  295;  at 
Affaire  R6veillon,  43  ;  on  5th  of 
October,  135,  148,  161  note  ;  at 
start  for  St.  Cloud,  181  ;  drafts 
petition  of  Champ  de  Mars,  182  ; 
banished,  396 

Lacoste,  filie,  454 

Lacoste,  Jean  de,  202,  215 

Lacroix  (or  Delacroix),  Jean  Fran- 
9ois,  391,  402,  445 

Lafayette,  Marie  Joseph  Gilbert 
Motier,  Marquis  de,  28,  117,  123, 
125,  176,  178,  194,  249,  250,  292, 
294,  364  note ;  opponent  of 
Orl6anistes,  56,  136,  163,  241  ;  a 
RepubUcan,  19 ;  at  death  of 
Foullon,  97  ;  at  march  on  Ver- 
sailles, 147-151,  153,  158,  161, 
163,  164  ;  a  Royalist,  163,  184, 
193,  216,  217,  240,  284,  285 : 
tyrannizes  over  King,  176 ;  at 
"  massacre  "  of  Champ  de  Mars, 
182,  183 ;  opposed  by  Robes- 
pierre, 200  ;  protests  against  the 
Jacobins,  216,  against  20th  of 
June,  240,  and  against  loth  of 
August,  284  ;  escapes  to  frontier, 
284 

La  Force,  massacre  at,  322-324,  330 

La  Galaiziere,  Marquis  de,  57 

Laignelot,  Joseph  Fran9ois,  418  note 

Lalanne,  233 

Lally-Tollendal,  Trophime  Gerard, 
Comte  de,  46,  loi,  103,  115,  118- 
120,  163 

La  Marck,  Comte  de,  15,  126,  138 

Lamballe,  Marie  de  Savoie  Carl-  \ 
gnan,  Princesse  de,  268  ;  murder  \ 
of,  322-327,  438 

Lambesc,  Prince  de,  54,  64,  73,  96; 
charge  of,  65 


INDEX 


513 


Lameth,  Alexandre  de,  15,  45,  120, 

I35>  I39j  142  note,  176,  184 
Lameth,  Charles  de,    15,   45,    120, 

135,  139,  176 
Lane,  William,  495 
Lanjuinais,  Jean  Denis,  369,  370, 

371,  393,  401,  402,  404 
Lansdowne,      Henry     Petty,      ist 

Marquis  of,  198  note,  380,  384 
Larevelliere  L6peaux,  Louis  Marie 

de,  428,  479 
La  Serre,  Chevalier  de,   135   note, 

142,  148 
Lasource,  Alba-,  179,  221,  222 
Latouche-Tr6ville,  Louis  Ren6  de, 

135,  148 

La  Tour  du  Pin,  Mme.  de,  43 

Latude,  380,  384 

Lauderdale,  Earl  of,  380,  384 

Launay,  Marquis  de,  42,  80-92,  96  ; 
murder  of,  92 

Lauzun,  Due  de.     Vide  Biron 

Lavaux,  71 

La  Vendue,  rises  against  Conven- 
tion, 404-407  ;  Terror  in,  416,  439 

Lavicomterie  de  Saint  -  Sanson, 
Louis  Thomas  Hubert,  454 

Lazowski,  250,  252,  261,  273 

"  League  of  perpetual  peace,"  383 

Lebas,   PhiUppe   Fran9ois    Joseph, 

454,  4^9,  471 
Le  Bon,  Joseph,  279,  416,  427 
Lebrun-Tondu,  Pierre  Marie,  350 
Le  Chapelier,  Isaac  Ren6  Guy,  184 
Lecointre,  Laurent,  129,  144 
Legendre,  Louis,  228,  336,  358,  386, 

402 
Legislative  Assembly,  inaugurated, 
190 ;    elections  for,    191  ;    char- 
acter   of,    192 ;     superseded    by 
Convention,  356 
Lehardy,  Pierre,  370 
Lemonnier,  279 
Lenin,  493,  494,  497 
Leopold  II.,  Emperor  of  Austria, 
177,  188,  201  note,  214,  245,  246, 
382 
Lepeletier    St.    Fargeau,    Marquis 

de,  374 
I^quinio  de  Kerblay,  Joseph  Marie, 

476  note 
Leroux,  266,  267 
Leroy,  "  Dix-Aout,"  458 
Leuchtsenring,  433 
Liancourt,  Due  de,  144,  184 
Limon,  Marquis  de,  246,  247 
Lindet,  Robert,  414,  454 


Lindsay,  Mr,,  347 

Linguet,  Nicolas  Henri,  78,  99 

Losme  -  Salbray,    Antoine    Jerome, 

Major  de,  82 
Louis  XIV.,  3,  9,  383 
Louis  XV.,  3,  18,  79,  289,  291 
Louis  XVI.,  9,  21,  28,  46,  56,  79, 
107,  112,  119,   122-124,  196,  198, 
270,  301,  304,  349,  359,  386,  393, 
402,  404,  434  ;    character  of,  53, 
102  ;    marriage  of,  24,  26  ;    his 
death  planned  by  German  Free- 
masons, 21  ;    his  reforms,  6,  7, 
45,   49,  77,  289,  452  ;    and  the 
famine,  18,   164,  478  ;    and  the 
Due    d'Orleans,     12,     33,     105  ; 
holds   Stance   Royale,   48 ;     dis- 
misses   Necker,    57 ;     and    the 
revolution   of    July,   58,  66,   67, 
69,  70,  83,  99,  100  ;  visits  Paris 
on  17th  of  July,   100-103  ;    pro- 
claimed   "  Restorer    of    French 
liberty,"    118;     and   the   march 
on  Versailles,  126-158,  160-162  ; 
comes  to  Paris,  159  ;    sends  the 
Due  d'Orl6ans  to  England,  164  ; 
his    attitude    to    Revolution    in 
1790,    175 ;     appeals   to   foreign 
powers,    176,    177,    201  ;     starts 
for    St.    Cloud,    181  ;     flight    to 
Varennes,     181  ;     accepts    Con- 
stitution,  186-188  ;    his  opinion 
of   Constitution,    187,    188 ;     re- 
stored popularity  of,   1 89  ;    and 
the  Legislative  Assembly,   192 ; 
and  the  Brissotin  ministry,  202- 
218  ;   and  the  20th  of  June,  220- 
241  ;     deposition  of,   demanded, 
245,    249-256 ;     negotiates    with 
Danton,    257 ;     on   the    loth    of 
August,  261,  263-269,  273,  275- 
277,    285,    469 ;     imprisoned    in 
Temple,  283  ;    people  against  his 
death,    362-366 ;     his    trial    and 
condemnation,      366-373 ;       his 
death,   374-378 ;     news  received 
in  England,  378-380,  383  ;    Pitt 
and  the  death  of  Louis  XVI., 
379,  380 
Louis   XVII.   (the  Dauphin),    100, 
104,  128,  149,  157,  160,  195,  229, 
234,  235,  268,  269,  301,  435,  436, 
461,  472 
Louis  XVIII.  (the  Comte  de  Pro- 
vence), 187,  436,  485,  486 
Louis  du  Bas  Rhin,  454,  455,  457, 
458 

2  L 


514        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


Louvet  de  Couvray,  Jean  Baptiste, 

407,  408,  437 
Luchet,  Marquis  de,  20 
Liickner,  General,  240,  284 
Luillier,  152 

Luxembourg,  Comte  de,  141 
Luzerne,  Cesar  Guillaume,  Due  de 

la,  157 
Lyon,    rises    against    Convention, 

405,  407  ;   siege  and  fall  of,  411  ; 

Terror  at,  411,  427,  439,  454 

Mackau,  Mme.  de,  322 

Mackintosh,  347 

Maillard,  Mile.,  431 

Maillard,  Stanislas,  an  Orleaniste 
agitator,  52 ;  in  revolution  of 
July,  53,  83,  90,  95  ;  at  march 
on  Versailles,  140,  141  ;  in 
massacres  of  September,  299, 
308,  311,  313  315-318,  335 

Maill6,  Mme.  de,  234 

Mailly,  Marechal  de,  265,  272,  279 

Malesherbes,  Lamoignon  de,  6, 
220,  368,  372,  373,  380 

Malga,  176,  181 

Mallet  du  Pan,  Jacques,  209 

Malouet,  Pierre  Victor,  17,  35,  46, 
47,115,  163 

Mandat,  Marquis  de,  227,  261-263, 
265,  272,  322 

Manege,  hall  of  the  Assembly, 
situation  of,  224 

Mangot,  cabman,  394 

Manstein,  General  von,  349 

Manuel,  Louis  Pierre,  an  Orl6aniste, 
219  ;  and  20th  of  June,  219,  225  ; 
and  loth  of  August,  260 ;  in 
massacres  of  September,  297, 
322,  323,  333 ;  turns  against 
Orleans,  326  ;  and  Valmy,  349  ; 
and  death  of  the  King,  372  note  ; 
in  Terror,  412 

Marat,  Jean  Paul,  23,  56,  83,  133, 
137.  183,  185,  192-194,  218,  251, 
256,  260,  291-295,  347,  364,  365, 
367,  386-390,  405,  415,  429,  431, 
474,  493 ;  description  of,  292- 
294 ;  in  England,  30,  292  ;  an 
Orleaniste,  133,  250,  292,  338, 
339,  358,  396;  his  poHtical 
opinions,  294  ;  and  the  loth  of 
August,  261,  281  ;  plans  the 
massacres  of  September,  295- 
299.  331,  337-339,  365,  367;  in 
Convention,  357-362,  386;  his 
plan  of   government,    360,   387 ; 


"  frugaUty  "  of,  359  ;  his  opinion 
of  the  people,  297,  360 ;  his 
behaviour  to  the  people,  359, 
393  note,  442  ;  votes  for  death 
of  King,  371  ;  stirs  people  to 
pillage,  388,  390;  "Triumph" 
of,  396,  397  ;  and  *  revolution 
of  the  31st  of  May,"  400,  402- 
404  ;  inspires  system  of  Terror, 
295,  426  ;  murder  of,  .^07-410 
Maret,  Bernard  Hugues,  379 
Marie  Antoinette,  21,  100,  102-104, 
124,  211,  246,  253,  257,  295,  301, 
347,  429 ;  marriage  of,  24 ; 
hated  by  Due  d'Orleans,  12,  13  ; 
enemy  of  Prussia,  25-27,  107, 
108  ;  at  march  on  Versailles,  126, 
128,  131,  147,  150-160,  166; 
receives  the  "  Ladies  of  the 
Market,"  161;  attempted  murder 
of,  1 76 ;  and  the  appeal  to 
foreign  powers,  177,  201,  247, 
255 ;  restored  popularity  of, 
189  ;  and  the  "  Austrian  Com- 
mittee," 209 ;  hated  by  Mme. 
Roland,  205,  218  ;  on  20th  of 
June,  229,  230,  234-238  ;  on  loth 
of  August,  263,  265-269,  278 ; 
and  the  death  of  the  Princesse 
de  Lamballe,  325  ;  insulted  by 
EngUsh  Jacobin,  347 ;  people 
against  her  death,  at  Bordeaux, 
364,  365,  in  Paris,  435  ;  trial  of, 
434,  435  i  Hebert's  accusation 
against,  435  ;  execution  of,  280, 
436-439 
Marmontel,  Jean  Fran9ois,  22,  39, 

43 
Marseillais,    the,    39 ;     arrival    in 

Paris,  251-253  ;    in  massacres  of 

September,  307,  308,  332 
Marseilles,  rises  against  Convention, 

405,  406  ;  Terror  at,  416 
Marx,  Karl,  494,  497 
Maton  de  la  Varenne,  321  note,  322 
Mauconseil,  section  of,  254 
Maurepas,  Comte  de,  24,  26 
Maury,  Abb6,  147 
Mauvillon,  Jacques,  an  lUuminatus, 

22 
Maximum,  law  of  the,  449 
Meh6e    fils,    Felhem6si,    307     note, 

315,  339 
Meillan,  Arnaud  Jean,  401,  402 
Menou,  Baron  de,  15 
Merda,    or   Meda,    Andre  Charles, 

471 


INDEX 


515 


Merlin  de  Thionville,  Antoine 
Christophe,  221,  250 

Michaud,  General,  350 

Miles,  William  Augustus,  179,  480 

Miomandre  de  Sainte-Marie,  130, 
144  note,  152,  154,  155 

Mirabeau,  Honor6  Gabriel  Riquetti, 
Comtede.  170,  235,  361,  391,  396, 
489  ;  joins  Orl^aniste  conspiracy, 
14,  15 ;  financed  by  Due 
d'Orleans,  15 ;  becomes  an 
Illuminatus,  20,  22  ;  works  for 
Orl6anistes,  43,  45,  51,  54-56, 
59,  63,  116,  118,  121,  122,  395, 
445  ;  upholds  the  Veto,  120 ; 
tirade  against  the  rich,  124 ; 
complicity  in  the  march  on 
Versailles,  125,  126,  133,  138-140, 
142  note,  147,  148,  158,  166-168  ; 
and  the  League  of  Peace,  383  ; 
goes  over  to  the  Court,  175 ; 
death  of,  180 

Momoro,  Antoine  Fran9ois,  430,  440 

MondoUot,  156 

Monnot,  309 

Monsigny,  M.  and  Mile,  de,  88 

Monspey,  M.  de,  139 

Montespan,  Mme.  de,  9 

Montjoie,  Galart  de,  42,  65 

Montmorin,  Comte  de,  14,  27,  157, 

178,  193,  318 
Montmorin,    M.    de,    governor    of 

Fontainebleau,  328 
Montpensier,  Due  de,  105,  139,  140 
Montrouge,  15,  44,  59,  76,  219 
Moore,    Dr.    John,    290,    293   note, 

301  note,  303,  304,  321,  332,  346, 

363,  384  note 
Morris,    Gouverneur,    14,    27,    65, 

117,  131,  183 
Motte,  Mme.  de  la,  35,  176 
Mouchy,  Mar^chal  de,  229,  230 
Mounier,  Jean  Joseph,  15,  17,  46, 

56,  115,  118,  120,  126,  129;   and 

the  march  on  Versailles,  130,  135, 

140,     142,     145-147,    150,     159; 

leaves  France,    162 ;     denounces 

Orl6aniste  conspiracy,  165,   166, 

168 
"Mountain,"  the,   358,   361,   386, 

387 
Muguet  de  Nantou,  Francois  F61ix, 
184 

Nantes,  Terror  in,  417-419 
Napoleon  Bonaparte,  222  note,  226, 
277,  383,  479,  485,  490 


Napoleon  III.,  486 

Narbonne,  Louis,  Comte  de,  58 

Navarre,  Mme.  de,  322 

Necker,    Jacques,    16,    25,    29,    79, 

217;     and    the    grain,    16,    97; 

dismissal  of,  57,  59,  60,  63 
NichoUe  (la  petite  Nicholle),  457 
Noailles,  Vicomte  de,   15  ,99,   117, 

184 

Oath  of  the  Tennis  Court,  48,  211, 
220,  254,  366 

Opposition.      Vide  Whigs 

Oraison,  d',  148 

Orange,  Terror  at,  416 

Orl6aniste  conspiracy,  9-19,  40,  56, 
57.  175.  176.  193.  210,  251,  253, 
293.  295»  323.  325.  410.  479,  490  ; 
devised  by  Brissot  in  1787,  11  ; 
members  of,  15,  45,  51,  52  ; 
organizes  Affaire  R6veillon,  40- 
45  ;  EngUsh  allies,  -31,  348  ;  in 
National  Assembly,  45,  117,  119, 
139  I  opposition  to  reforms,  46, 
117,  119-121;  organizes  revolu- 
tion of  July,  58-64,  71-74,  76,  96, 
104-106  ;  "  Orl^aniste  Terror  " 
in  provinces,  111-114;  excites 
tumult  in  Palais  Royal,  122.  123  ; 
and  march  on  Versailles,  125- 
I33»  137,  142,  143.  149.  158.  159. 
163-168  ;  Orl6anistes  in  crowd, 
135,  148,  153,  157  ;  temporarily 
checked,  175  ;  starts  afresh,  176  ; 
and  death  of  Mirabeau,  180  ;  at 
fldght  to  Varennes,  181,  211  ; 
and  petition  of  Champ  de  Mars, 
181,  182 ;  defection  of  leading 
members,  184  ;  connection  with 
Brissotins,  194-196,  198,  395, 
437 ;  opposed  by  Robespierre, 
199.  342,  447  ;  denounced  by 
Ribes,  200 ;  organizes  20th  of 
June,  218,  219  ;  and  Manifesto 
of  Brunswick,  247 ;  demands 
deposition  of  King,  254  ; 
organizes  loth  of  August,  249, 
258,  269,  283-285 ;  and  mas- 
sacres of  September,  338,  350  ; 
in  Convention,  357,  358  ;  and 
condemnation  of  King,  370  ; 
denounced  by  Camille  Des- 
moulins,  395,  and  by  St.  Just, 
443-445  ;  banishment  of  Orlean- 
istes,    396 ;     execution    of,    437, 

447 
Orl6ans,  Duchesse  d',  42 


5i6        THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


Orleans,  Louis  Philippe  Joseph, 
Due  d',  9,  51,  56,  117,  119,  igo, 
193.  194.  199,  204,  241.  246,  247, 
256,  280,  292,  357,  437,  445  ; 
description  of,  9 ;  exiled  from 
Paris,  13  ;  made  Grand  Master 
of  Freemasons,  22  ;  intrigues  in 
England,  27,  31-33,  249;  at 
Affaire  R6veillon,  41,  43  ;  deputy 
in  Assembly,  45,  51,  56 ;  in 
revolution  of  July,  59,  62,  63,  72, 
96,  105,  106 ;  and  march  on 
Versailles,  129,  133,  137,  147, 
153.  157.  160,  163-169,  395  ; 
sent  to  England,  126,  164,  175, 
198 ;  returns  to  France,  176 ; 
intrigues  with  Mme.  de  la  Motte, 
35,  176  ;  and  20th  of  June,  219  ; 
and  loth  of  August,  258,  260, 
269-270 ;  and  murder  of  the 
Princesse  de  Lamballe,  323-326, 
338,  339,  347.  348  ;  deputy  in 
Convention,  358  ;  takes  the  name 
of  "6gaUte,"  339,  and  declares 
himself  illegitimate,  358  note ; 
and  the  death  of  the  King,  370- 
372,  374.  375,  377.  438  ;  banished 
to  Marseilles,  396 ;  executed, 
438,  479 

Orleans,  Mile,  d',  160,  195,  249 

Orleans,  Philippe,  Due  d'.  Regent 
of  France,  9 

Oswald,  John,  347 

Owen,  Robert^  495 

Facte  de  Famine,  18  ;  in  Terror, 
388  note 

Paine,  Thomas,  34,  197,  198  note, 
199,  343,  346,  373 

Palais  Royal,  9,  10,  15,  35,  66,  147, 
160,  206,  241,  325,  399,  400 ; 
society  at,  10 ;  the  hotbed  of 
revolution,  16,  44,  51-55,  71, 
260  ;  on  i2th  of  July,  61,  66  ; 
on  14th  of  July,  75,  76 ;  on 
30th  of  August,  121,  122 ;  de- 
serted in  Terror,  466 

Panis,  fitienne  Jean,  293,  297,  336, 
337,  350,  358 

Pannonie,  Abb6  de,  311 

Paris,  member  of  bodyguard,  374 

Parlements,  6 

Pasquier,  Chancelier,  89 

Pastoret,  310 

Pelleport,  Marquis  de,  93 

Peltier,  Jean  Gabriel,  325,  343 

Penthievre,  Due  de,  323 


Pereyre,  440 

Potion,  Jerome,  178,  194,  195-198, 
341,  367,  398  ;  in  England,  30  ; 
intrigues  with  English  Jacobins, 
195,  196,  248,  395  ;  mayor  of 
Paris,  207 ;  on  20th  of  June, 
219,  221,  225,  227,  232,  233,  238  ; 
demands  deposition  of  King, 
253,  254  ;  and  loth  of  August, 
260-263,  267  ;  and  massacres  of 
September,  335,  339;  and  Valmy, 
349  ;   death  of,  437 

Petit  Mamain,  323,  326 

Philippeaux,  Pierre,  179,  445 

Pilnitz,  Conference  of,  187,  201 
note 

Pinard,  476 

Pinon,  227 

Pitt,  William,  325,  345,  457,  480, 
481  ;  poUcy  towards  French 
Revolution,  27-29,  480,  481  ; 
"  the  gold  of  Pitt,"  27,  32,  198, 
346  ;  and  the  murder  of  Louis 
XVI.,  379,  380 ;  and  the  de- 
claration of  war  on  England, 
383-385  ;  declared  "  the  enemy 
of  the  human  race,"  457 

Precy,  Louis  Fran9ois  Perrin, 
Comte  de,  407 

Price,  Dr.,  31,  34,  106,  169 

Priestley,  Dr.  Joseph,  34,  346,  481 

Prieur  (de  la  Mame),  Pierre  Louis, 
414 

Prieur-Duvernois,  Claude  Antoine, 
Comte,  known  as  "  Prieur  de  la 
C6te  d'Or,"  454,  458 

Prisons,  conspiracies  in,   300,   301, 

306,  459  ;  in  Terror,  459,  462 
Proly,  440 

Prothero,  Rowland  E.,  489 
Proudhon,  Pierre  Joseph,  494 
Provence,    Comte   de.     Vide    Louis 

XVIII. 
Prudhomme,  Louis,   192,  257,  258, 

260,  261,  278,  295,  296  note,  306, 

307.  363.  368,  395 

Prussia,  intrigue  of,  24-27,  34,  35, 
107,  108,  170,  171,  178-180,  195, 
208,  209,  241,  283,  341,  342,  348- 
352,  395,  440.  479,  490.  491 

Prussians,  advance  on  Paris,  300, 
304  ;  at  Valmy,  348-352 

Puisaye,  Comte  Joseph  de,  407 


Quetier,  Germaine,  460 
"  Queues,"  389 
Quinette,  356 


\ 


INDEX 


517 


Rabaud  de  Saint  -  fitienne,  Jean 
Paul,  19,  248 

Rafif6,  Anne  Th^r^se,  460 

Raigecourt,  Marquis  de,  139 

Ramainvilliers,  M,  de,  227,  261 

Raynal,  Abb6,  489 

Reding,  M.  de,  317 

Renaudin,  458 

Renault,  C6cile,  456,  457 

Renier,  323,  326 

R6ole,  89,  90 

Republic,  the,  opinions  of  leaders 
on,  19,  182,  194,  198,  199,  420- 
424 ;  first  suggested,  182  ;  pro- 
clamation of,  355-358,  386 ;  ag- 
gression of,  381-383;  attitude 
of  people  towards,  404,  406, 
407,  413,  450,  478  ;  Republican 
marriages,  419;  Republic  abol- 
ished, 485 

R6veillon,  Affaire,  39-45,  67,  80, 
114,  400 

Revolutionary  Tribunal,  the,  235, 
428,  452,  453,  456,  458-460,  472, 
475.  477  J  first  instituted  as 
"  Tribunal  Criminel,"  285,  391 ; 
then  as  ''  Tribunal  Extraordi- 
naire," 390-392  ;    first  sitting  of, 

393.  394 
Ribes,  Raimond,  200,  342 
Rigby,  Dr.,  4-6,  64,  66,  70 
Robespierre,    Augustin,    364,    402, 

469,  471,  472 
Robespierre,  Maximilien,  23,  45, 
118,  190,  215,  219  note,  285,  295, 
345.  346.  364.  365.  383.  385.  393, 
397,  402,  408,  415,  442,  493,  494  ; 
in  National  Assembly,  45,  46 ; 
his  pohcy  in  1789,  23,  45,  46  ; 
after  riot  of  Champ  de  Mars,  1 83  ; 
not  a  Repubhcan  in  1791,  199, 
200  ;  enemy  of  Orl6anistes,  117, 
199  ;  opposes  war  with  Austria, 
215  ;  defends  Constitution,  256  ; 
on  loth  of  August,  260,  281  ;  and 
massacres  of  September,  296- 
299,  330,  331,  340;  his  accusa- 
tion against  Brissot,  340-342 ; 
in  Convention,  356-362,  385-390  ; 
his  plan  of  government.  360,  387  ; 
and  death  of  King,  366,  369,  373, 
374  ;  in  Comit6  de  Salut  Public, 
414,  427,  454  ;  his  policy  in 
Terror,    410-412,    418,    420-431, 

439.  451-457.  463.  475  ;  and 
Carrier,  418,  476  ;  and  the  death 
of    the    Queen,    435 ;     and    the 


Royal    Family,    436 ;     and    the 
Girondins,   298,   395,    396 ;    and 
the  Hebertistes,   439,  440 ;    and 
the  Dantonistes,  443,    445-448 ; 
introduces  the  Loi  du  22  Prairial, 
452,  453,  459  ;    on  Neuf  Thermi- 
dor,     467-471  ;      his     execution, 
472-474,  477 
Robison,  John,  20,  190 
Roche- Ay mon,  Mme.  de  la,  234 
Roederer,  Pierre  Louis,  Comte,  261, 

266,  267 
Rohan  Rochefort,  Prince  de,  457 
Roland  de  la  Plati^re,  Jean  Marie, 
114,  240,  251,  253,  341,  387,  393 
note  ;    ministry  of,  202-206  ;    dis- 
missal of,  217,  218  ;    and  Robes- 
pierre,   298 ;     and   massacres   of 
September,   306,   335,   339,   34^  > 
discovers    iron    cupboard,    366 ; 
death  of,  437 
Roland,  Mme.,  4,  35,  215,  251,  295, 
298,  304,  306,  351,  362,  370,  429, 
469 ;      and     Roland's    ministry, 
202-208 ;      "  the     soul     of     the 
Gironde,"    206,    295,    387    note ; 
and  the  20th  of  June,  215,  217, 
218  ;    and  the   loth  of  August, 
281  ;      and     the     massacres     of 
September,    329,    335,    339-34 1  » 
arrest  of,  400  ;  death  of,  437,  438 
Ronsin,  415,  440 
Rossignol,  262 
Rotondo,   30,    176,    181,   220,   225, 

323-325 
Rouget   de   I'Isle,    Claude   Joseph, 

252 
Rougeville,  ChevaUer  de,  229 
Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  3,  4,  421, 

423.  489 
Rudemare,  Abb6,  104 
Rulhi^res,  M.  de,  322 
Russian  Revolution,  491-494 

Sabbat,  Company  of  the,  176,  251, 

323 
Sabran,  Comtesse  de,  93  note 
Sade,  Marquis  de,  431 
St.    Barth61emy,    massacre   of,  40, 

334.  429 
St.  Firmin,  massacre  at,  330,  333 
St.    Huruge,    Marquis    de,    30,  51, 

76,  105,  122,  123,  133,  137  note, 

176,     181,     220-223,    225,    226, 

238 
St.   Jean  en  Greve,  Cur6  de,   314, 

3i5>  319 


5i8 


THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


St.  Just,  Louis  Antoine  de,  117, 
195,  200,  395,  435,  493  ;  and  the 
death  of  the  King,  366,  370 ; 
"  Institutions "  of,  422,  473  ; 
and  the  system  of  the  Terror, 
414,  420,  422,  426,  447  ;  Rap- 
port against  the  Dantonistes, 
443-445  ;  on  the  Neuf  Thermidor, 
467-471  ;   execution  of,  472,  473 

St.  Marc,  Comte  de,  318 

St.  Priest,  Comte  de,  126,  141,  142 
note 

Sainte-Amaranthe,  Mme.  de,  457, 
458 

Sainte-Brice,  Mme.  de,  322 

Salamon,  Abb6  de,  314,  319,  320, 
327.  461 

SaUns,  Abb6,  311 

Salle,  Marquis  de,  73 

Salles,  369,  437 

Salmour,  Comte  de,  107 

Salpetri^re,  the,  massacre  at,  329, 
330 

Samson,  376,  377,  416 

Sans-Culottes,  210,  222,  223,  231 
note,  265,  275 

Santerre,  Antoine  Joseph,  an 
Orl6aniste  agitator,  44,  76,  105, 
133.  137.  400  ;  and  20th  of  June, 
212,  218,  221,  223,  225-228,  231 
note,  234-238 ;  and  loth  of 
August,  250,  253,  261,  272,  273  ; 
in  massacres  of  September,  336  ; 
at  death  of  King,  364,  375,  377 

Sartines,  fimiUe  de,  457 

Sauvage,   mayor   of    St.   Germain, 

113 
Savonni^res,  Marquis  de,  144 
Sayre,  or  Sayer,  Richard,  348 
Stance  Royale,  48 
S6gur,  Vicomte  de,  11,  12,  28 
SeUier,  452  note 
Sempill,  Lord,  346 
S6nart,   Gabriel  J6r6me,   454,   455, 

457.  463-465 
Sergent,     Antoine    Frangois,     297, 

336,  337.  358 
Servan,  Joseph,  194,  215,  217,  218 
Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  32,  197, 

380.  384 
Sicard,  Abb6,  302,  308-310,  320 
Si6yes,  Abbe,  14,  117,  118,  209,  357, 

398 
Sillery,  Marquis  de,  9,  15,  45,  135, 

139.  148,  i8i,  195,  349,  357»  396, 

437 
Simon,  472 


Soci6t6  Fratemelle,  212,  282,  320, 
360 

Solages,  Comte  de,  98 

Solminiac,  M.  de,  272 

Sombreuil,  Mile,  de,  327 

Soudin,  239 

Stael,  Baronne  de,  57,  58 

Stanhope,  Charles,  3rd  Earl  of,  31, 
34,  106,  197,  343,  348,  380,  384, 
480,  481 

Stanley,  343 

States-General,  meeting  of,  6,  39  ; 
transformed  into  National  As- 
sembly, 45 

Stone,  347 

Subversives,  the,  intrigue  of,  19- 
27  ;  in  National  Assembly,  45, 
106,  119,  169,  285,  348,  359-362; 
declaration  of  world  anarchy, 
380-385  ;  in  Convention,  387, 
388,  404 ;  in  Terror,  410-414  ; 
attack  religion,  429-434  ;  led  by 
Hubert,  429,  and  Clootz,  431  ; 
opposed  by  Robespierre,  430, 
439-441  ;  course  of  intrigue,  480, 
491 

Suleau,  Fran9ois  Louis,  269-272 

Talleyrand     de    P6rigord,    Charles 

Maurice  de,  22,  198,  200 
TaUien,    Jean   Lambert,    256   note, 

281  note,  297,  299,  350,  393  note, 

414,  468 
Tarente,  Princesse  de,  234,  327 
Target,  Guy  Jean  Baptiste,  368 
Tavernier,  98 
Terrasson,  365 
Terror,  the,  made  the  order  of  th 

day,  414,  420  ;    system  of,  292, 

355,    410-414,    419-429;     in   the 

provinces,     404-419 ;     in    Paris, 

434-475  ;    the  Great  Terror,  448- 

475  ;   results  of,  477-479 
Theot,  Catherine,  468 
Theroigne  de  Mericourt,  30,  53,  76, 

83,  95.   105.   137.  212,  221,  238, 

270-272 
Thibault,  Mme.,  151 
Thiebault,  271,  282,  349 
Thierry  de  Ville  d'Avray,  318 
Thuriot  de  la  Roziere,  81 
Tilly,  Comte  de,  12 
Tooke,  Home,  198  note 
Toulon,    rises   against   Convention, 

405,  414-416 
Tour   Saint-Bernard,  massacre   at, 

328 


m 


I 


INDEX 


519 


Tournay,  239 

Tourzel,   Mme.   de,    158,   234,   268, 

322,  323 
Tourzel,  Mile,  de,  322,  323 
Trench.  Mrs.  Richard,  488,  489 
Tricolour,  origin  of,  72,  73 
Tricoteuses,  212,  235,  321,  361,  466 
Tronchet,  Fran9ois  Denis,  368,  372 
Tuileries,   the,    Royal    Family   im- 
prisoned in,  160,  176;    scenes  in 
garden  of,  210  ;   invasion  of,  211, 
212,  218-221,  225-241,  246  ;   siege 
of,    250,    259-285  ;     occupied   by 
Convention,  398  ;  in  "  revolution 
of  the    31st  of  May,"  399-404  ; 
occupied    by    Comit6    de    Salut 
PubUc,  427  ;  on  Neuf  Thermidor, 
471-473 ;     invaded    by    hungry 
women,  478 
Turgot,  Anne  Robert  Jacques,  6 

Vadier,  Marc  Guillaume,  454,  455, 

458,  463.  468 
Valaz6,  Dufriche  de,  366 
Valence,  Comte  de,  357 
Valmet,  Gu6roult  de,  152 
Valmy,  battle  of,  348-352,  395.  445 
Vanotte,  227 
Varennes,  flight  to,   181,   188,  211 

note,  366 
Varicourt,  De,  152,  154,  160 
Vaulabelle,  156 

Vergennes,  Charles  Maurice,  26 
Vergniaud,    Pierre,    194,    214,    216, 

222,  254.  256,  339,  359,  398,  401. 

437.  480 
Versailles,  march  on,  137,  138,  140- 

160,  222,  227 


"Veto,"    the,    119-122,    223,    229, 

245 
Vigee  le  Brun,  Mme.,  39,  95 
Vigier,  M.  du,  272 
Vilate,  Joachim,  435,  463 
Vincent,     Fran9ois     Nicolas,     430, 

440 
Violette,  313 
Virieu,    Henri,    Comte   de,    46,    56, 

115,407 
Voulland,    Jean   Henri,    447,    454, 

455.  458 

Watts,  347 

Weber,  Joseph,  322,  334 

Weishaupt,    Dr.    Adam,    "  Sparta- 

cus,"  20-22,  27,  411,  491-496 
Westermann,       Francois      Joseph, 

G6n6ral,  250,  273,  274 
Whigs,  the,  32,  197,  380,  384,  395 
Whyte,  De,  98 
WiUiam  I.  of  Prussia,  171 
William     II.,    German     Emperor, 

429 
Williams,   Helen  Maria,    168   note, 

282,  283 
Wilmot,  John  Eardley-,  343 
Wilson,  347 
Wimpfen,   Louis  F61ix,   Baron  de, 

195.  407 
Wittgenstein,  Comte  de,  318 
Wordsworth,  William,  30,  197 

York,    Frederick    Augustus,    Duke 

of,  195.  196,  248,  249,  357 
Young,  Arthur,  4,  30,  35,  47,  48, 

"5.  379 
Ysabeau,  Claude  Alexandre,  414 


THE  END 


6) 


Printed  in  Great  Britain  by  "R.  Si  R.  Clark,  Limited,  Edinburgh. 


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