On that same Wednesday evening messengers from Montpellier had reached Marseilles; on Friday they were feasted, and when the banquet was over, one of the Montpellier men, Mireur, with a voice of bronze, rose to sing them a new song. It had come from the frontier, he said; as for the air, he did not know whence it was, but he thought (wrongly) from the opera “Sargines.” He sang it, and the men that gathered outside the open windows to hear upon that summer evening, the guests within, and soon all the city, were swept by the Marseillaise.
The next day the Municipality of Marseilles met, determined upon spontaneous action in company with all the South: they decreed the raising of a volunteer battalion in spite of the Crown; the next, the Sunday, when all were abroad and could read, the walls were placarded with the appeal to join. Monday and Tuesday the names poured in: a committee was chosen to pick only the best in character and health. Its work was at once accomplished; within twenty-four hours five hundred had been so chosen out of the throng of volunteers; within forty-eight they had been enrolled, drilled for hours, and separated by companies under officers of their choice. Three days of rapid organisation and continued drilling followed: the route was traced, a time-table drawn up, the expenses estimated and provided. A section of guns (harnessed to men) with its caisson was drafted; the stores and baggage were concentrated too. Upon Monday, the 2nd of July, at nightfall, a week after the first appeal, through a crowd of all the city that pressed on every side, they marched out by the northern gate of Marseilles singing their song. Next morning, just as the arid eastern hills began to show against the beginnings of the dawn, they entered Aix, and had accomplished the first stage of their advance. “The Executive”—that is, the Crown—had warned every authority to disperse them and all such others, but the wind on Paris was from the South, and they and their song could not be hindered.
Meanwhile, in the German town of Frankfort, there hummed a continually increasing crowd: the Emperor was to be crowned. Here, therefore, were all those who had a business with Austria, and here was, among others, a Swiss Huguenot, Mallet du Pan, upon whom more than upon any other in that town the King of France and the Queen in her extremity depended. He was a journalist, very keen about accounts and probity in small money matters, of the bourgeoisie, sedate and perpetually attempting to understand the French people, now from this side, now from that: they interested him hugely. His work, however, was not to pursue this fascinating study, but to save the persons of the Royal Family which he served: in this task he showed that same discipline and devotion which his compatriots were later to show under arms. He bore as his chief principles, as his last instructions, two orders: one order to keep the farce of the war going, and never to let it be hinted publicly or breathed that there was collusion between those who sent him and the invading Austrian power. The other order was this: to produce a manifesto to be signed from the camp of the invading army, and to strike, as it was hoped, blind terror into the leaders of the National movement: the time had come (so it was imagined at the Tuileries) to threaten the worst and so tame Paris.
He took his journey (but was scrupulous to give an exact account), left his family in Paris, passed through Geneva, his home, and now, by the end of June, was here at Frankfort.
He had chosen his centre well, for upon Frankfort converged all news, and from Frankfort went out all orders: orders to Coblenz whence the armies were to march to the relief of the Tuileries; news from Brussels, which was of the first moment, for here Mercy-d’Argenteau, the expert upon France, was ready every day to advise; here was the danger of attack from France most felt, and here, most central of all, was Fersen.
Fersen heard regularly from Paris, wrote as regularly. Since the death of the King of Sweden his official position had been less, but those whose business it was to discover truth, the diplomats, knew that the last and most intimate thought of the Royal Family was to be reached through that channel alone. Austria and Prussia, Frankfort that is, hardly acted upon his advice as to war (and in his diary he bitterly reproaches them for their neglect), but they sucked his knowledge—and to-day it is through him that we know, somewhat late, the principal truths upon those last few weeks of the French Monarchy.
What did the Court of the Tuileries demand, and what will was behind it in so demanding?
Mallet du Pan was there at Frankfort with no credentials but a sheet of note-paper, and written on the top of it in Louis’ hand two lines of writing unsigned; “The person who shall present this note knows my intentions; entire confidence may be put in what he says.” What instructions had he?
Fersen was stationed at Brussels with an organised letter-service between the Tuileries and himself, written in secret ink, full, confidential and direct. All that he told Mercy or another went to Frankfort. What message was thus continually conveyed?