The people of Paris entertained the gravest distrust of the king and queen. As the crisis was drawing near the queen entreated her husband to leave Versailles for Compiègne or Fontainebleau. She counted, above all things, on the Marquis de Bouillé, who commanded the troops on the eastern frontier, with headquarters at Metz. The Comte d’Estaing, commanding the National Guards at Versailles, was ready not only to aid the escape of the royal family, but, if necessary, to protect their flight; and the municipality of Versailles had empowered him to act freely against any movement made from Paris upon Versailles. It was essential to secure the co-operation of the king’s body-guard and of the Versailles garrison; and with this view the king, queen, and royal family assisted at a grand banquet given on the 1st of October by the king’s body-guard to the Regiment of Flanders in the theatre of the Palace. The population of Paris saw in these marks of goodwill towards the troops proofs of treachery. The excitement led to insurrection, and Versailles was invaded by the Parisian mob. On the 15th of October, at six in the morning, the tocsin was sounded in Paris. The National Guards quickly assembled, and a market-woman collected other market-women around her by beating a big drum. The women were animated less by political ideas than by a determination, by all possible means, to save their children from starvation. They had been told that there would be bread enough in Paris if the king and queen were there. Several volunteers belonging to the band which had played a leading part in taking the Bastille placed themselves at the head of the infuriated women and of the rabble who accompanied them. In the rear marched the conquerors of the Bastille in a body; not, it was said, to co-operate with the women, but, if necessary, to protect them. The municipality of Paris ordered General Lafayette to take measures in view of the threatened conflict; and, calling out the force distinctively known as the “paid battalion”—the former Gardes Françaises—he at the same time concentrated various volunteer battalions at different points. He delayed, however, ordering an advance until four o’clock in the afternoon. He wished, as Mr. Morse Stephens puts it, “to be the saviour of the king, and it would not be sufficiently glorious to forestall the danger.”
The news that a mob was marching on Versailles reached the king while he was hunting. Receiving the intelligence with his usual indifference, he nevertheless went back to the palace, where he found the body-guard, six hundred strong, and the Regiment of Flanders drawn up in order of battle. About two hundred of the National Guards at Versailles had taken up their position at some distance from the troops, but with no intention of assisting them. The women of Paris arrived between three and four o’clock in the afternoon. Some went at once to the palace and demanded food, which was readily given to them. Versailles had been made the meeting-place of the National Assembly, and the first French Parliament (not, of course, to be confounded with the judicial Parliament of Paris) was engaged in a debate when Maillard, representing the conquerors of the Bastille, entered the hall and demanded, on behalf of the women, that the price of bread should be lowered by a formal decree. The Assembly appointed a deputation of its own members to accompany a deputation of the women to the king. The deputations were most graciously received. But this only increased the difficulty; and on returning to their sisters, the women who had waited upon the king were furiously attacked for having condescended to such a step. Towards evening the royal travelling-carriages were seen issuing from the stables; and the cry at once arose that the king must not be allowed to escape. Several of the Versailles National Guards rushed forward and insisted on the carriages being driven back. An hour afterwards the body-guard, which was to have accompanied the king in his flight, retired to their barracks. As they did so they were fired upon by the National Guards of Versailles, and one of their horses was killed. It was immediately roasted and eaten by the Parisian mob.
At last, towards eleven o’clock, Lafayette arrived with the greater part of the National Guards of Paris, the paid battalion, and several guns. He at once sought an interview with the king, and after assuring him of his power and willingness to protect him, called upon him to accept the “Declaration of the Rights of Man.[{347}]” The king complied, and Lafayette, thinking, or pretending to think, that peace had been secured at least for the night, retired to his hotel. About five o’clock the next morning a portion of the mob, after supping on horseflesh and washing down the unaccustomed food with plentiful libations, had got into the gardens of the palace, and, finding a back-door unguarded, forced their way towards the queen’s apartments, killing, as they did so, two of the body-guards who defended the ante-chamber and staircase. Two other body-guards, however, defended her bed-chamber until she had time to escape by a private staircase to the king’s own room. The noise of the fighting brought up the paid battalion of the Paris National Guard, who in a few minutes cleared the palace of its invaders; and at about seven o’clock Lafayette came upon the scene. He persuaded the king, queen, and royal family to appear on the balcony, where they were greeted with shouts, “Le roi à Paris!” and after a brief parley with the king, the popular general announced that the king had accepted unconditionally the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and that he would start that afternoon for the capital. “Maillard,” says Mr. Morse Stephens, “with a body of followers, including men carrying the heads of slaughtered body-guards, started off at once to take the good news to Paris, where he was warmly received by the municipality. At a little past one the royal carriages left Versailles, and late in the evening, escorted by Lafayette on his white horse, the Parisian National Guards and the mob, reached the capital. The royal family first went to the Hôtel de Ville, where they had to listen to an harangue from Bailly, and then went to the Tuileries, which had been so long unoccupied that there were not even sufficient beds to sleep in. Thus ended the memorable days of October 5 and 6, 1789, to the great glory of General Morpheus, as the royalists called him, and to the real destruction of monarchical power in France.”
The Assembly had originally taken up its quarters at Versailles in order to be free from all pressure on the part of the Paris population. It now debated under the eyes of the Parisians, who were able to influence its deliberations in more ways than one. The hall set apart for it at Versailles had presented some material inconveniences. It was so large that the speeches of members were sometimes inaudible; and another disadvantage (which surely might have been prevented) is said to have been that the immense size of the hall allowed strangers to enter, interrupt the debates, and occasionally even vote.
It was only by express order of the king, after he had taken up his residence at the Tuileries, that the National Assembly forsook Versailles for Paris; and it now established itself in the Manège, or Riding School, an oblong building some 240 feet in length by 60 feet in width, situated on the north side of the Tuileries Gardens, just where the Rue de Rivoli now joins the Rue Castiglione. When the necessary alterations had been completed, it was found that the new building was much better adapted for the debates than the immense hall at Versailles. Even at the Manège there was plenty of room; and the Assembly having magnanimously invited “the whole nation” to be present at the debates, the galleries were crowded all day by the people of Paris, and especially by women of all classes, who took the keenest delight in the proceedings, applauding or hissing as they thought fit. Fruit-sellers and newspaper-girls wandered about with discordant cries, so that the galleries resembled in many respects the gallery of a theatre.
The French deputies were not to assemble again at Versailles until after the disasters of 1870 and 1871, when, as during the first months of the Revolution, it was thought desirable to avoid immediate contact with the too-excitable Parisians.
CHAPTER XLVII.
VERSAILLES AND THE SIEGE OF PARIS.
The Advance on Paris—Preparations for the Siege—General Trochu—The Francs-Tireurs—The Siege.