The dyer Malard, the shoemaker Isambert, the tanner Gibon, rich and influential artizans, were to pour from the sombre and fœtid streets of the faubourg Saint Marceau their indigent population, who but rarely show themselves in the principal quartiers. Alexandre, the military tribune of this quarter of Paris, in which he commanded a battalion, was to place himself at its head on the place, before daybreak, to concentrate the people, and then give them the impulse that should lead them to the quays and the Tuileries. Varlet, Gonchon, Ronsin, and Siret, the lieutenants of Santerre, who had been employed in this system of tactics since the first agitations of '89, were charged with the execution of similar manœuvres in the faubourg St. Antoine. The streets of this quarter, full of manufactories and wine and beer shops, the abiding place of misery, toil, and sedition, which extend from the Bastille to la Roquette and Charenton, contained in themselves alone an army that could invade Paris.
VII.
This army had known its leaders for four years. They posted themselves at the openings of the principal streets, at the hour when the workmen leave the ateliers; they procured a chair and table from the nearest and best cabaret, and mounting on these wine-stained tribunes, they called by name some of the passers by, who grouped round them; these stopped others, the street was blocked up by them, and this crowd was increased by all the men, women, and children, attracted by the noise. The orator addressed this motley assemblage, whilst wine or beer were gratuitously handed round. The cessation of work, the scarcity of money, the dearth of food, the manœuvres of the aristocrats to starve Paris, the treacheries of the king, the orgies of the queen, the necessity of the nation's defeating the plots of an Austrian court, were the usual themes of their addresses. When once the agitation rose to fever heat, the cry of "Marchons" was heard, and the mob set itself in motion down every street. A few hours afterwards masses of workmen from the quartiers Popincourt, Quinze-Vingts de la Grève, Port au Blé, and the Marché St. Jean, poured from the rues du Faubourg St. Antoine, and covered the Place de la Bastille. There the tumult of the meeting of all these tributaries of sedition for a moment stayed the progress of this living torrent; but the impulse soon carried them on, and the columns instinctively divided themselves, and plunged into the vast outlets and main streets of Paris. Some took the line of the boulevards, others marched along the quays to the Pont Neuf, there encountered the column of the Place Maubert, and poured, in constantly increasing masses, on the Palais Royal, and the gardens of the Tuileries.
Such were the plans ordered on the night of the 19th of June, to be executed by the agitators in the different quartiers, and who separated with a rallying word, which gave the movement of the morrow the excitement and uncertainty of hope, and which, without commanding the consummation of crime, yet authorised the last excesses, "To make an end of the Château."
VIII.
Such was the meeting of Charenton, such were the unseen actors who were to set in motion a million of citizens. Did Laclos and Sillery, who were about to seek a throne for the Duc d'Orleans their master, in the faubourgs, distribute his gold there? It has been asserted and believed, but never proved, and yet their presence at this meeting is suspicious. History has the right of suspecting without evidence, but never of accusing without proof. The assassination of the king would give the crown, the next day, to the Duc d'Orleans; Louis XVI. might be assassinated by the weapon of some drunken man—he was not. This is the only justification of the Orleans' faction. Some of these men were disaffected, like Marat and Hébert; others, like Barbaroux, Sillery, Laclos, and Carra, were impatient malcontents; and others, like Santerre, were but citizens, whose love of liberty became fanaticism. The conspirators concerted together, and disciplined and organised the city. Individual and distorted passions kindled the mighty and virtuous love of the people for the triumph of democracy. It is thus that in a conflagration the most tainted substances oft light the fire; the combustible matter is foul, but the flames pure; the flame of the Revolution was liberty; the factious might dim, they could not stain, its brightness.
Whilst the conspirators of Charenton distributed their rôles and recruited their forces, the king trembled for his wife and children at the Tuileries. "Who knows," said he, to M. de Malesherbes, with a melancholy smile, "whether I shall behold the sun set to-morrow?"
Pétion, by ordering the municipal forces and the national guards under his orders to resist, could have entirely put down the sedition. The directory of the department presided over by the unfortunate Duc de la Rochefoucauld, summoned Pétion in the most energetic terms to perform his duty. Pétion smiled, took all on himself, and justified the legality of the proposed meetings and the petitions presented en masse to the Assembly.
Vergniaud in the tribune repelled the alarm felt by the constitutionalists, as calumnies against the innocence of the people. Condorcet laughed at the disquietude manifested by the ministers, and the demands for armed force they addressed to the Assembly. "Is it not amusing," said he, addressing his colleagues, "to see the executive power demanding the means of action from the legislators? let them save themselves, it is their trade." Thus derision was united to the plots against the unfortunate monarch; the legislators derided the power their hands had disarmed, and applauded the factious.