Such was Marie Antoinette’s one piece of formulated policy—the first in which she had been able to act as clearly as she saw; it was also her last interference in political affairs. It had been lit by her hand, this match that fired the hesitating war; it had run its train through Brussels to Frankfort and back to Coblenz, lingering in no one place for a full day: now it had touched powder. Three days later the Manifesto was spoken of in Chalons; secret copies were in print; the King in Paris had received it.
All Paris knew it, though not yet officially, when upon the evening of Sunday, the 29th of July, the dusty 500 of Marseilles with their guns, crossing the bridge at Charenton, saw the distant towers of Notre Dame above the roofs of Paris and reached their goal.
Let soldiers consider the nature of this exploit, and politicians consider what that civilisation is whose comprehension I have shown throughout these pages to have so vainly fatigued so many Aliens.
The French of Marseilles had trained for but three days. They had left the Mediterranean in the height of a torrid summer; their organisation was self-made, their officers self-chosen, their discipline self-imposed. They had covered 500 miles of route, dragging their cannons, at the rate of precisely eighteen miles a day; they planked across the bridge at this the end of their advance, solidly, in formation, still singing their song, and at the roll-call every name was answered.... Their small numbers have made them appear to some historians insignificant (or a legend), to others a symbol rather of the military power in the populace which was to sack the palace than the attack itself, but they were more; they were, as tradition justly represents them, the framework of the force that decided the critical day of the Revolution, as their song was its soul.
They marched in next morning by the St. Antoine Gate, with their drums and colours before them, the crowds of the suburbs blackening the site on which the Bastille had stood; and half Paris, as it were, going out to meet them. They passed over to the Island, formed at the Mairie where Pétion the Mayor greeted them; re-crossed the river (followed by the crowd) and took their places in the barracks assigned to them, upon a corner of what is now the Boulevard des Italiens; from that evening the struggle between the City and the Monarchy had begun, and the few days’ delay that was to follow was but a manœuvring for position on either side, that of the populace and of the Tuileries.
This last had now for long been steadily arming and was already strong. The King, the executive, held the arsenals, the regular army, and a good half, even, of the autonomous Militia. What was of more importance, the Crown and its advisers could rely not only upon the machinery but upon the devotion of the one well-disciplined corps which had not gone to the front: the Body-Guard. These excellent mercenaries, nearly all Swiss by birth and nearly all ignorant of the French language, were precisely such material, human for courage and mechanical for obedience, as should overcome almost any proportion of civilians—especially such as might be spoilt by playing at soldiers. A recent law passed by the Legislative Assembly forbade their presence in Paris. The “Executive” parried such mere word of the “Legislative” by posting them in suburbs between which and the palace were only woods and fields. When danger was imminent, in the last hours of the truce, they were marched in and occupied the Tuileries, law or no law.
Two objections to the strength of the King’s position against the populace are urged (Napoleon, no mean judge and an eye-witness, thought it the stronger, and his estimate of the King’s forces brings them to about 6000 men); these are, first, that no building can be held in the face of artillery, for the popular force had guns; secondly, that it was but defensive, and that the assault, though repulsed, might return. The first of these is based upon a misconception of the terrain and supply, the second upon a general ignorance of arms.
For the first: there was no position whence artillery, even were it available in time, could be used against the long walls of the palace save by passing through narrow streets easy for infantry to defend, and as a fact the guns were not available to the populace either in sufficient amount or (what is of more importance) with sufficient training and supply. Guns, popularly manned and ill supplied, emplaced in the labyrinth which flanked the palace could be captured (and in fact were captured) by the trained infantry defending it. The short range alone would make certain the destruction of their teams by sharpshooting from the upper windows.
EAST FRONT OF THE TUILERIES, (THE SIDE ATTACKED BY THE MOB)
IN ITS LAST STATE BEFORE THE COMMUNE OF 1871,
AFTER THE CLEARING AWAY OF THE STREETS AND HOUSES IN FRONT OF IT