The broad expanse presented a lamentable aspect, for women and children had mostly been shot and cut down.
An aid galloped up to the East-end battalions and ordered them to march on their side and sweep the mob away till they had formed a junction with the other corps. But these workingmen pointed their guns at him and the cavalry running down the fugitives and made them recoil before the patriotic bayonets. All who ran in this direction found protection.
Who gave the order to fire? none will ever know. It remains one of those historical mysteries inexplicable despite the most conscientious investigations. Neither the chivalric Lafayette nor the honest Bailly liked bloodshed, and this stain clung to them to the end. In vain were they congratulated by the Assembly; in vain their press organs called this slaughter a constitutional victory; this triumph was branded like all those days when the slain were given no chance to fight. The people who always fit the cap to the right head, call it "The Massacre of the Champ de Mars."
CHAPTER XXVI.
CAGLIOSTRO'S COUNSEL.
Paris had heard the fusillade and quivered, feeling that she had been wounded and the blood was flowing.
The Queen had sent her confidential valet Weber to the spot to get the latest news. To be just to her and comprehend the hatred she felt for the French, she had not only so suffered during the flight to Varennes, that her hair had turned white, but also after her return.
It was a popular idea, shared in by her own retinue, that she was a witch. A Medea able to go out of window in a flying car.