Again, one of de Sartines’ friends, the president of the High Court at Lyons, ventured to deride his processes, declaring that they were of no avail, and that anyone, if so disposed, could elude the police. He offered a wager, which de Sartines accepted, that he could come into Paris and conceal himself there for several days without the knowledge of the police. A month later this judge left Lyons secretly, travelled to Paris day and night, and on arrival took up his quarters in a remote part of the city. By noon that day he received a letter, delivered at his address, from de Sartines, who invited him to dinner and claimed payment of the wager.
A great coup was made by this adroit officer, but the interest of the affair attaches rather to the thieves than to the police. It was on the occasion of the marriage of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette in 1770. During the great fêtes in honour of the event an extraordinary tumult arose in the Rue Royale, where it joins the modern Champs Élysées. A gang of desperadoes had cunningly stretched cords across the street under cover of the darkness, and the crowds moving out to the fêtes fell over them in hundreds. The confusion soon grew general, and a frightful catastrophe ensued. Men, women, and children, horses and carriages, were mixed up in an inextricable tangle, and hundreds were trampled to death. Some desperate men tried to hack out a passage with their swords, children were passed from hand to hand over the heads of the
crowd, too often to fall and be swallowed up in the struggling gulf below. No fewer than 2,470 people are said to have perished in this horrible mêlée. It was, of course, a time of harvest for the thieves. Apparently only one of the confraternity suffered from the crush, and on him fifty watches were found and as many chains, gold and silver. Next day de Sartines and his agents made wholesale arrests. Some three or four hundred noted thieves were taken up and sent to the Conciergerie, where they were strictly searched. Large quantities of valuables were secured—watches, bracelets, rings, collars, purses, all kinds of jewels. One robber alone had two thousand francs tied up in his handkerchief.
De Sartines kept a few criminals on hand for the strange purpose of amusing fashionable society. It became the custom to have thieves to perform in drawing-rooms. De Sartines, when asked, would obligingly send to any great mansion a party of adroit pickpockets, who went through all their tricks before a distinguished audience, cutting watch-chains, stealing purses, snuffboxes, and jewellery.
This famous chief of police was the first to use espionage on a large scale, and to employ detectives who were old criminals. When reproached with this questionable practice, de Sartines defended it by asking, “Where should I find honest folk who would agree to do such work?” It was necessary for him to protect these unworthy agents by official safe-conducts, which were worded as follows:—
“In the King’s Name.
His Majesty, having private reasons for allowing —— to conduct his affairs without interruption, accords him safe conduct for six months, and takes him under especial protection for that period. His Majesty orders that he shall be exempt from arrests and executions during that time; all officers and sergeants are forbidden to take action against him, gaolers shall not receive him for debt, under pain of dismissal. If notwithstanding this he should be arrested he must be at once set free, provided always that the safe-conduct does not save him from condemnations pronounced on the King’s behalf.”