Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

By crossing a wood Drouet and Guillaume succeeded in getting to Varennes a trifle sooner than the royal carriage. Passing, at no great pace, the lumbering vehicle just as it was approaching the town, they at once made for the bridge on the other side of Varennes, which, as old soldiers, they saw the necessity of blocking, for beyond it, on the other side of the river Aire, they had discovered the presence of a detachment of cavalry under the command of a German officer, who, losing his head, took to flight. The energetic Drouet had already waked up the town, and, in particular, the principal officials, such as the Mayor, the {214} Procureur of the Commune, &c. The population answered to Drouet’s call, and soon a small body of armed men was on foot.

The fugitives were bound for the Hôtel du Grand Monarque. At this hotel a tradition is preserved which was communicated to the present writer by the proprietress, Mme. Gauthier, just before the battle of Sedan. Dinner was prepared there for Louis XVI. eight days running; from which it would appear that he was trying to escape from the Tuileries for eight days before he at last succeeded in getting away unobserved. The eighth, like all the preceding dinners cooked for the unfortunate king at the Hôtel du Grand Monarque, was destined to remain uneaten. It was now late at night, and when the royal carriage entered the town, it was surrounded in the darkness by a number of armed men, who asked for passports, and showed by their attitude that they had no intention of allowing the occupants of the vehicle to proceed any further. Emissaries from Varennes had been despatched in all haste to the surrounding villages and nearest towns to call out the national guard. The son of M. de Bouillé had meantime quitted the cavalry outside Varennes, and ridden towards Metz to inform the governor, his father, of the arrival of the fugitives. But when the commandant arrived outside Varennes with an entire regiment of cavalry, the town was occupied by 10,000 infantry, and all the approaches guarded in such a manner that it was impossible for de Bouillé’s regiment to act.

The Procureur, to whose house the royal family had been taken, informed the king in the early morning that he was recognised. A crowd, which had gathered before the house, called for him by name, and when Louis showed himself at the window he understood from the attitude of the mob that though he was saluted here and there with cries of “Vive le Roi!” there was an end to his project of reaching the frontier. At six o’clock couriers arrived from Paris with a decree from the Assembly ordering the king’s arrest; and at eight o’clock on the morning of the 22nd of June, 1791, the royal family started under escort for the capital. They were surrounded at the moment of departure by an immense mob, a portion of which followed them for some distance along the road. At Epernay the commissaries appointed by the Assembly, MM. Pétion and Barnave, were waiting to take the direction of the cortege. On being questioned the king declared that he had never intended to leave the kingdom, and that his object in retiring to Montmédy had been to study the new Constitution at his ease, so that, with a clear conscience, he might be able to accept it. Barnave and Pétion got into the royal carriage as if to prevent all possibility of escape. Louis was treated with all the respect due to a royal captive, but his position was that of a prisoner. Reaching Paris three days after his departure from Varennes, he was received by the people with the greatest coldness. On the walls of the streets through which he passed, these words had been inscribed: “Whoever applauds Louis XVI. will be beaten; whoever insults him will be hanged.” To avoid the popular thoroughfares, the Tuileries was approached by way of the Champs Élysées, and once more Louis took up his abode in the ancient palace of the French kings.

Differences between Louis XVI. and the Assembly, which, from “Constituent” had become “Legislative,” now suddenly occurred; and at the beginning of 1792 the Jacobin Rhul complained from the tribune that the king had treated with disrespect certain commissaries of the Assembly who had waited upon him. On the 25th of July of the same year the king was accused in the Chamber of collecting arms at the Tuileries. National guards, it was said, went in armed and came out unarmed; and it was declared to be unsafe for the National Assembly to have an arsenal of this kind in its immediate neighbourhood. Accordingly, the Assembly decreed that the terrace of the Tuileries gardens must be regarded as its property, and be placed beneath the care of the Assembly’s own police. The king objected, naturally enough, to the gardens of his palace being thus interfered with. “The nation,” said one of the deputies, “lodges the king at the Palace of the Tuileries, but I read nowhere that it has given him the exclusive enjoyment of the gardens.” Some days afterwards the same deputy, Kersaint by name, said from the tribune: “The Assembly having thrown open one of the terraces of the Tuileries gardens, the king, who does not think fit to render the rest of the gardens accessible to the public, has lined the terrace with a hedge of grenadiers.”

Chabot called the garden of the Tuileries “a second Coblentz,” in reference to the German fortified town where the allied sovereigns, who were plotting against the Revolution, had their head-quarters. On the 19th of August a journeyman painter named Bougneux sent word to {215} the Assembly that there had recently been constructed in the Palace of the Tuileries several masked cupboards. Three months afterwards Roland brought to the Convention the papers of the famous iron cupboard. “They were concealed,” he said, “in such a place, in such a manner, that unless the only person in Paris who knew the secret had given information it would have been impossible to discover them. They were behind a panel,” he continued, “let into the wall and closed in by an iron door.” The members of the Mountain, as the extreme party occupying the highest seats in the legislative chamber were called, accused Roland of having opened the metallic cupboard in order to make away with the papers of a compromising character for his friends the Girondists. In revolutionary times a good action may be as compromising as a bad one. Brissot proposed about this time that the meetings of the Convention should be held at the Tuileries. Vergniaud had preferred the Madeleine. “Not,” he said, “in either case, that liberty has need of luxury. Sparta will live as long as Athens in the memory of nations; the tennis court as long as the palaces of Versailles and of the Tuileries. The external architecture of the Madeleine is most imposing. It may be looked upon as a monument worthy of liberty, and of the French nation.” It need scarcely be explained that at the jeu de paume, or tennis court, the first revolutionary meetings were held.

“At the Tuileries,” said Brussonnet, “there is a finer hall; and the greater the questions which the National Assembly will have to treat the greater must be the number of hearers and spectators.” It was at last decreed that the Minister of the Interior should order the preparation at the Tuileries of a suitable hall for the debates of the National Convention; and with that object a sum of 300,000 francs was voted.

On the 4th of September, 1793, Chaumette, in the name of the Paris commune, appeared at the bar of the Convention, then presided over by Robespierre, and spoke as follows: “We demand that all the public gardens be cultivated in a useful manner. We beg you to look for a moment at the immense garden of the Tuileries. The eyes of republicans will rest with more pleasure on this former domain of the crown when it is turned to some good account. Would it not be better to grow plants in view of the hospitals, than to let the grounds be filled with statues, fleurs de lis, and other objects which serve no purpose but to minister to the luxury and the pride of kings?” Dussaulx added with a smile: “I demand that the Champs Élysées be given up at the same time as the gardens of the Tuileries to useful cultivation.” It was at the Tuileries that the Committee of Public Safety held its meetings: that irresponsible body which struck so many and such sanguinary blows at the accomplices, real or imaginary, of invasion from abroad, and of insurrection at home. In the Tuileries gardens took place the festival of the Supreme Being, when proclamation was solemnly made, under the authority of Robespierre, that the French people believed in God and the immortality of the soul. “People of France,” cried Robespierre, between two executions, “let us to-day give ourselves up to the transports of pure unmingled joy. To-morrow we must return to our progress against tyranny and crime.” To Robespierre’s passionate declamation succeeded solemn music, composed by Méhul. Soon afterwards Tallien, inspired to an act of daring by the news that the woman he loved and afterwards married had been condemned to death, denounced Robespierre; and it was at the Tuileries that the Reign of Terror, like so many other reigns, came to an end.

On the 1st of February, 1800, Bonaparte took possession of the Tuileries, with his wife Joséphine. In 1814 he quitted the ancient palace with Marie Louise. The Tuileries was now on the point of being occupied by foreigners. “When I returned to Paris,” writes Mme. de Staël, “Germans, Russians, Cossacks, Baskirs, were to be seen on all sides. Was I in Germany or in Russia? Had Paris been destroyed and something like it raised up with a new population? I was all confusion. In spite of the pain I felt I was grateful to the foreigners for having shaken off our yoke. But to see them in possession of Paris! to see them occupying the Tuileries!”