History of the Girondists, Volume I / Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution

by Alphonse de Lamartine

XIV.

The orator of the deputation, Huguenin, read the petition concerted at Charenton. He declared that the city had risen ready to employ every means of avenging the majesty of the people, whilst he deplored the necessity of staining their hands with the blood of the conspirators. "But," said he, with apparent resignation, "the hour has come; blood must be shed. The men of the 14th of July are not asleep, they only appeared to be; their awakening is terrible: speak, and we will act. The people is there to judge its enemies: let them choose between Coblentz and ourselves; let them purge the land of their enemies—the tyrants; you know them. The king is not with you: we need no other proof of it than the dismissal of the patriot ministers and the inaction of the armies. Is not the head of the people worth that of kings? Must the blood of patriots flow with impunity to satisfy the pride and ambition of the perfidious château of the Tuileries? If the king does not act, suspend him from his functions: one man cannot fetter the will of twenty-five millions of men. If through respect we suffer him to retain the throne, it is on condition that he observe the constitution. If he depart from this he is no longer anything. And the high court of Orleans," continued Huguenin, "what is that doing?—where are the heads of those it should have doomed to death?" These sinister expressions threw the constitutionalists into alarm, and caused the Girondists to smile. The president, however, replied with a firmness which was not sustained by the attitude of his colleagues. It was decided that the people of the faubourgs should be allowed to defile before them under arms.

XV.

Immediately after this decree was voted, the doors, besieged by the multitude opened, and admitted thirty thousand petitioners. During this long procession the band played the demagogical airs of the Carmagnole and the Ça Ira, those pas de charge of revolts. Females, armed with sabres, brandished them at the tribunes, who loudly applauded, and danced before a table of stone, on which were engraved the rights of man, like the Israelites before the Ark. The same flags and the same obscene inscriptions visible in the streets, disgraced the temple of the law. The tattered garments, hanging from their lances, the guillotine, and the potence, with the effigy of the queen suspended from it, traversed the Assembly with impunity. Some of the deputies applauded, others turned away their heads or hid their faces in their hands; some more courageous, forced the wretch who bore the cœur saignant, partly by entreaties, partly by threats, to retire with his emblem of assassination. Part of the people regarded with a respectful eye the salle they profaned; others addressed the representatives as they passed, and seemed to exult in their degradation. The rattling of the strange weapons of the crowd, the clatter of their nailed shoes and sabots on the pavement, the shrill shouts of the women, the voices of the children, the cries of Vive la nation, patriotic songs, and the sound of instruments, deafened the ear, whilst to the eye, these rags contrasted strangely with the marbles, the statues, and the decorations of the salle. The miasmas of this horde set in motion tainted the air, and stifled respiration. Three hours elapsed ere all the troop had defiled. The president hastened to adjourn the sitting, in the expectation of approaching excesses.

XVI.

But an imposing force was drawn up in the courts of the Tuileries and the garden, to defend the dwelling of the king against the invasion of the people. Three regiments of the line, two squadrons of gendarmes, several battalions of the national guard, and several pieces of cannon, composed the means of resistance; but the troops, undecided, and acted upon by sedition, were but an appearance of force. The cries of Vive la nation, the friendly gestures of the insurgents, the appearance of the women extending their arms towards the soldiers through the palisades, and the presence of the municipal officers, who displayed a disdainful neutrality towards the king, shook the feeling of resistance amongst the troops, who beheld on either side the uniform of the national guard; and between the population of Paris, in whose sentiments they participated, and the château, which was represented to them as full of treason, they no longer knew which it was their duty to obey. In vain did M. Rœderer, a firm organ of the constitution, and the superior officers of the national guard, such as MM. Acloque and De Romainvilliers, present the text of the law, ordering them to repel force by force. The Assembly set the example of complicity; and the mayor, Pétion, by his absence avoided responsibility. The king took refuge in his inviolability; and the troops, abandoned to themselves, could not fail to yield to threats or seduction.

In the interior of the palace, two hundred gentlemen, at the head of whom was the old marshal De Mouchy, had hastened together at the first news of the king's danger. They were rather the voluntary victims of ancient French honour, than useful defenders of the monarchy. Fearing to excite the jealousy of the national guard and the troops, these gentlemen concealed themselves in the remote apartments of the palace, ready rather to die than to combat: they wore no uniform, and their arms were concealed under their coats—hence the name by which they were pointed out to the people of Chevaliers du poignard. Arriving secretly from their provinces to offer their services to the king unknown to each other; and only furnished with a card of entrance to the palace, they hastened thither whenever there was danger. They should have been ten thousand, and were but two hundred—the last reserve of fidelity; but they did their duty without counting their number, and avenged the French nobility for the faults and the desertion of the emigration.

XVII.

The mob, on quitting the Assembly, had marched in close columns to the Carrousel. Santerre and Alexandre, at the head of their battalions, directed the movement. A compact mass of the insurgents, followed by the Rue St. Honoré. The other branches of the populace, cut off from the main body, thronged the courts of the Manège and the Feuillants, and tried to make room for themselves by issuing violently by one of the avenues which communicated with the garden from these courts. A battalion of the national guard defended the approach to this iron gate. The weakness or complaisance of a municipal officer freed the passage, and the battalion fell back, and took up its ground beneath the windows of the Château. The crowd traversed the garden in an oblique direction, and passing before the battalions, saluted them with cries of Vive la nation! bidding them take their bayonets from their muskets. The bayonets were removed, and the mob then passed out by the entrance of the Port Royal, and fell back upon the gates of the Carrousel, which shut off this place from the Seine. The guards at these wickets again gave way, to allow a certain number of the malcontents to enter, and then shut the doors. These men, excited by their march, songs, the acclamations of the Assembly, and by intoxication, rushed with furious clamours into the court-yards of the Château. They ran to the principal doors, pressed upon the soldiers on guard, called their comrades without to come to them, and forced the hinges of the royal entrance gate. The municipal officer, Panis, gave orders that it should be opened. The Carrousel was forced, and the mob seemed for a moment to hesitate before the cannon pointed against them, and some squadrons of gendarmerie, drawn up in a line of battle. Saint Prix, who commanded the artillery, separated from his guns by a movement of the crowd, sent to the second in command an order to let them fall back in the door of the Château. He refused to obey: "The Carrousel is forced," he said in a loud voice, "and so must be the Château. Here, artillery men, here is the enemy!" And he pointed to the king's windows, turned his guns, and levelled them at the palace. The troops following this desertion of the artillery, remained in line, but took the powder from the pans of their muskets in sight of the people, in sign of fraternity, and allowed a free passage to the malcontents.

At this movement of the soldiers, the commandant of the national guard, who witnessed it, called from the court to the grenadiers, whom he saw at the windows of the Salle des Gardes, to take their arms, and defend the staircase. The grenadiers, instead of obeying, left the palace by the gallery leading to the garden.