A young man had gone that day very early to the altar of his country. This young man wished to copy several inscriptions. All at once he heard a singular noise, and very soon after the worm of a wimble shot up from the planked floor on which he was standing. The youth went and sought the guard, who raised the plank, and found beneath the altar two ill-looking individuals, lying down, and furnished with provisions. One of these men was an invalid with a wooden leg. The guard seized them, and took them to the Gros Caillou, to the section, to the Commissary of Police. On the way, the barrel of water with which these unfortunate men had provided themselves under the altar of their country, was transformed, according to the ordinary course of things, into a barrel of gunpowder. The inhabitants of that quarter of the town collected together; it was on a Sunday. The women especially showed themselves very much irritated when the purpose of the auger-holes was told them, as declared by the invalid. When the two prisoners came out of the hall to be conducted to the Hôtel de Ville, the crowd tore them from the guard, massacred them, and paraded their heads on pikes!
It cannot be too often repeated, that these hideous assassinations, this execution of two old vagabonds by the barbarous and blinded population of the Gros Caillou, evidently had no relation to, no connection with, the events which, in the evening, carried mourning into the Champ de la Fédération.
On the evening of the 17th of July, from five to seven o'clock, had the crowd which was collected around the altar of their country an aspect of turbulence, giving reason to fear a riot, sedition, violence, or any anarchical enterprise?
Relative to this point, we have the written declaration of three councillors, whom the municipality had sent in the morning to the Gros Caillou, on the first intimation of the two assassinations of which I have just spoken. This declaration was presented to Bailly on the day of his condemnation. We read therein, "that the assembled citizens on the Champ de Mars had in no way acted contrary to law; that they only asked for time to sign their petition before they retired; that the crowd had shown all possible respect to the commissaries, and given proofs of submission to the law and its agents." The Municipal Councillors, on their return to the Hôtel de Ville, accompanied by a deputation of twelve of the petitioners, protested strongly against the proclamation of martial law; they declared that if the red flag was unfurled, they would be regarded, and with some appearance of reason, as traitors and faithless men.
Vain efforts; the anger of the councillors, confined since the morning at the Hôtel de Ville, carried the day over the enlightened opinion of those who had been sent scrupulously to study the state of affairs, who had mixed in the crowd, who returned after having reassured it by promises.
I might invoke the testimony of one of my honourable colleagues. Led by the fine weather, and somewhat also by curiosity, towards the Champ de Mars, he was enabled to observe all; and he has assured me that there never was a meeting which showed less turbulence or seditious spirit; that especially the women and children were very numerous. Is it not, besides, perfectly proved now, that on the morning of the 17th July, the Jacobin club, by means of printed placards, disavowed any intention of petitioning; and that the influential men of the Jacobins and of the Cordeliers,—those men whose presence might have given to this concourse the dangerous character of a riot,—not only did not appear there, but had started in the night for the country?
By thus connecting together all the circumstances whence it is proved that martial law was proclaimed and put in practice on the 17th of July without legitimate motives, a most terrible responsibility seems at first sight to be cast on the memory of Bailly. But reassure yourselves, Gentlemen; the events which are now grouped together, and are exhibited to our eyes with complete evidence, were not known on that inauspicious day at the Hôtel de Ville, until they had been distorted by the spirit of party.
In the month of July, 1791, after the king had returned from Varennes, the monarchy and the republic began for the first time to be dangerously opposed to each other; in an instant passion took the place of cool reason in the minds of the respective partisans of the two different forms of government. The terrible formula: We must make an end of it! was in everybody's mouth.
Bailly was surrounded by those passionate politicians who, without the least scruple as to the honesty or legality of the means, are determined to make an end of the adversaries who annoy them, as soon as circumstances seem to promise them victory.
Bailly had still near him some Eschevins long accustomed to regard him as a magistrate for show.