Volume Two—Chapter Five.
A Procession.
It was too plain to all now that everything must be yielded to the people, if lives were to be saved. As soon as it was light, Lafayette led into a balcony the commander of the Flanders regiment,—the body-guard,—with a huge tricolor in his hat, instead of the royal white cockade. All the soldiers of the regiment immediately mounted tricolor cockades, and were cheered by the mob. The king appeared on the balcony, with Lafayette, and they cheered him too; but some voices cried that he must go to Paris.
The mob then demanded to see the queen. She asked for her children; and they were brought to her, probably not very willing to face the noisy multitude. She took Louis in her arms, and led his sister by the hand, and stepped out on the balcony, with Lafayette by her side. There was a shout, “No children!” It does not seem clear why the people would not have the children too; but the queen believed that it was intended that some one should shoot her as she stood, and that the children were not to be endangered. She gently pushed them back, and bade them go in, and then stepped forward in the sight of the people, with her hands and eyes raised to heaven. Lafayette took her hand, and, kneeling reverently, kissed it. This act turned the tide of the people’s feelings, and they cheered the queen. It was finely done of Lafayette, both for presence of mind and noble feeling.
Here was the difference between the enraged people and their enlightened leaders. Lafayette was a friend of the people, and an enemy to tyranny: but he had not been ground down by poverty, reared in hunger and brutal ignorance, and taught to hate proud and selfish oppressors with a cruel hatred. Such was the difference between him and this wretched mob, whom we feel more disposed to pity than to blame, so great was their ignorance, and so terrible had been the sufferings of their lives. Lafayette’s eyes were opened by knowledge and reflection, while theirs were closed by passion and prejudice. They believed that all royal rulers were wicked, and the queen the most wicked of all; and that if she were but out of the way, with a few more, all would go right,—bread would be cheap, the nobility less extravagant and oppressive, and the king willing to govern by men of the people’s choice. Lafayette saw that all this was very foolish. He saw that nothing could be worse than the state of France,—the tyranny of the nobility,—the extravagance and frivolity of the court,—and the wretchedness of the people. He was for amending all this; but he knew that these sins and woes were the growth of many centuries, and that no one person, or dozen of persons, was to be blamed as the cause. He probably saw that the queen was as ignorant in one way as the mob in another; and was therefore to be pitied. She had never been taught what millions of people were suffering, and did not know how to frame her conduct so as to spare their irritated and wounded feelings: and therefore she had filled up her youth with shows and pleasures, and from year to year given to her dependents the means of enriching themselves at the expense of the poor, without being in the least aware of the mischief she was doing. It was in the knowledge of all this, in deep sorrow and compassion for both parties in this great quarrel, and with an earnest desire to bring them to bear with each other, that Lafayette kissed the queen’s hand in the balcony. His heart must have beat with hope and gladness when he heard the people immediately shout, “Long live the queen!”
Again the cry was, “The king to Paris!” and still the king was as unwilling as ever to go. He wished to consult the Assembly about it, and sent to ask them to come, and hold their sitting in the palace. While they were deliberating whether to do so, the mob became so peremptory, so noisy, that the king dared no longer hesitate. He did the same thing now that no experience could teach him to avoid, in great affairs or small: he refused as long as possible what the people had set their hearts upon,—then hesitated, and at last had to yield, when it was no longer possible to show any good grace in the action. From his failures a lesson might be taken by all rulers of a nation which has learned to have a will of its own, and to speak it:—a lesson to grant with readiness and a good grace what must be, or ought to be yielded, and to refuse with firmness what ought not to be granted. Louis the Sixteenth never could even get so far as to settle in his own mind what ought, and what ought not to be granted; and unhappily there was no one about him well-qualified to advise. The queen was firm and decided; but she was so deficient in knowledge that she was always as likely to guide him wrong as right. Now, however, there was no longer room for doubt. The king said from the balcony, “My children, you wish that I should follow you to Paris. I consent, on condition that you do not separate me from my wife and children.” He also stipulated that his guards should be well treated; to which the multitude consented.
It was, however, far from their intention that the king should follow them to Paris. They did not mean to lose sight of him, for fear he should slip away. They caused General Lafayette to fix the hour at which the king would go. One o’clock was fixed.
Till one, the royal grooms were preparing the carriages to convey the royal family and suite,—a long train of coaches. The servants in the palace were packing up what they could for so hurried a removal. The royal children did no lessons that day, I should think; for Madame de Tourzel, who was to go with them, must have been in great terror for the whole party. Lafayette was establishing what order he could, riding about, pale and anxious, to arrange what was called the Parisian army. For two nights (and what nights!) he had not closed his eyes. The people meantime searched out some granaries, and loaded carts with the corn, to take with them to Paris.
A more extraordinary procession was perhaps never seen. Royal carriages, and waggons full of corn,—the king’s guards and the ragamuffin crowd; round the king’s carriage a mob of dirty, fierce fish-women and market-women, eating as they walked, and sometimes screaming out close at the coach-door, “We shall not want bread any more. We have got the baker, and the baker’s wife, and the little baker’s boy:”—such was the procession. There was another thing in it which the king and queen saw, but which we must hope the children did not,—the heads of two body-guards who had been killed early in the morning, in the quarrel which led to the attack upon the queen.
The queen sat in her coach, seen by the vast multitude, for five long hours,—calm, dignified, and silent. From one till two the royal carriage had to stand, while the great procession was preparing to move; and it did not enter Paris till dusk,—till six o’clock. It was still raining,—a dull, drizzling rain. Louis could not have liked to hear himself talked about as he was, by the loud dirty women that crowded round the coach; nor to hear them speak to his mother. Some pointed to the corn-waggons, and told her they had got what they wanted, in spite of her. Some said, “Come now, don’t you be a traitor any more, and we will all love you.” There were two hundred thousand people in this procession.
When they reached Paris, the royal family did not go straight home to the Tuileries. There was something to be done first. They had to go to the great city hall, to meet the authorities of Paris. The mayor received them, and welcomed them to the city; and the king replied that he always came with pleasure and confidence among his good people of Paris. In repeating what the king had declared to those assembled, the mayor forgot the word “confidence.” The queen said aloud, “Say confidence;—with pleasure and confidence.”
Then there were many speeches made, during which poor little Louis, tired as he was, had to wait. Called up before five in the morning, and having sat so many hours in the carriage, with guns and pistols incessantly popping off, and yells and shouts from such a concourse of people, he might well be tired: but before they could go home, the king had to show himself in the balcony of the city hall, by torch-light, with a great tricolor cockade in his hat. It was just eleven o’clock before they got to their palace of the Tuileries.
There everything was comfortless,—for there had been no notice of their coming. The apartments had been occupied by the servants of the court, who, turning out in a hurry, left everything in confusion. Probably Louis did not mind this,—glad enough to get to bed at all after such a long and dreary day. This was the 6th of October.