Legends of the Bastille

by Frantz Funck-Brentano

Look at his account of the 13th. He shows you all Paris in revolt against Versailles, and with superb enthusiasm running to arms to try issues with the royal army. It is fine as literature. Historically, it is pure fiction.

The Parisians were assuredly devoted to the “new ideas,” that is, the suppression of the abuses and the privileges specified in the memorials of the States General; in a word, to the reforms longed for by the whole of France. But they had no conception of gaining them without the concurrence of the monarchy, to which they were sincerely attached. That crowd of scared men running to the Hôtel de Ville to demand arms, who are represented by the revolutionary writers as exasperated by the dismissal of Necker and ready to undermine the throne for the sake of that Genevan, were much less alarmed at what was hatching at Versailles than at what was going on in Paris. If they wished for arms, it was for their own security. The dissolution of the National Assembly, which was regarded as certain, was setting all minds in a ferment, and ill-designing people took advantage of the general uneasiness and agitation to drive matters to the worst extremities, creating disorder everywhere. The police had disappeared; the streets were in the hands of the mob. Bands of ruffians—among them those ill-favoured rascals who since the month of May had been flocking, as at a word of command, into Paris from heaven knows where, and who had already been seen at work, pillaging Réveillon’s[14] establishment—roamed in every direction, insulting women, stripping wayfarers, looting the shops, opening the prisons, burning the barriers. On July 13 the electors of Paris resolved on the formation of a citizen militia for the protection of the town, and the scheme was adopted on the same day by every district, with articles of constitution, quoted by M. Funck-Brentano, which specify the intentions of the signatories. It was expressly in self-defence against the “Brigands,” as they were called, that the citizen militia was formed: “To protect the citizens,” ran the minutes of the Petit-Saint-Antoine district, “against the dangers which threaten them each individually.” “In a word,” says M. Victor Fournel, “the dominating sentiment was fear. Up till the 14th of July, the Parisian middle-classes showed far more concern at the manifold excesses committed by the populace after Necker’s dismissal than at the schemes of the court.” And M. Jacques Charavay, who was the first to publish the text of the minutes in question, says not a word too much when he draws from them this conclusion: “The movement which next day swept away the Bastille might possibly have been stifled by the National Guard, if its organization had had greater stability.”

All that was wanting to these good intentions was direction, a man at the helm, and particularly the support of Besenval. But his conduct was amazing! He left Versailles with 35,000 men and an order signed by the king—obtained not without difficulty—authorizing him “to repel force by force.” Now let us see a summary of his military operations:—

On the 13th, towards four o’clock in the afternoon, a skirmish of the German regiment on the Place Vendôme, where it came into collision with the “demonstration”—as we should say to-day—which was displaying busts of Necker and the Duke of Orleans, and dispersed it.

At six o’clock, a march of the same horse soldiers to the swinging-bridge of the Tuileries, where they had five or six chairs thrown at their head; and the massacre, by M. de Lambesc, of the legendary grey-beard who, an hour after, was describing his tragic end at the Palais-Royal!

At nine o’clock, a military promenade of the same regiment along the boulevards. A volley from the Gardes Françaises slew two of their number, and the regiment beat a retreat without returning fire, to the great surprise of M. de Maleissye, officer of the Guards. For, by his own confession, if the cavalry had charged, it would easily have routed the Gardes Françaises “in the state of drunkenness in which they then were.”

And Besenval, terrified at such a resistance, assembled all his troops, shut himself up with them in the Champ de Mars, and did not move another step!

We ask ourselves, “Was he a fool? or was he a traitor?” He was a fool, for he thought he had “three hundred thousand men” in front of him, took every excited person for a rebel, and did not understand that out of every hundred Parisians there were ninety who were relying on him to bring the mutineers to reason.

He had no confidence in his troops, he said.

It was rather for them to have no confidence in him, and to lose heart utterly at such a spectacle of cowardice. But he was slandering them. One solitary regiment showed disloyalty. And if he had only given the Swiss the word to march, their conduct on August 10 gives ample proof that they could have been depended on.