Vergniaud was in the Chair, and, when the King had spoken his few words to the Parliament, it was Vergniaud who assured him of the protection of the laws. But there was a prejudice too strong in volume, of too recent a date, and too lively in character, to permit of the open presence of royalty at their debates. Royalty must, at least in appearance, withdraw, and Louis and his wife and the children and some few of their attendants consented to enter a little box where the shorthand reporters of a certain Journal had usually their place. It overlooked the hundreds of the Assembly from a little above their level, and was so placed at the south-eastern corner of the great ellipse that the sun, creeping round, was bound to beat upon it through the high-arched southern windows as the day wore on. The grating was removed, they were attempting some repose in that strict lodgment, when the sudden sound which all so tensely awaited broke out beyond the garden trees. The firing had begun. It was a little after nine.
Cabined as they were within the little box, whose outer wall gave upon the gardens of the palace, they could hear, trembling through the stone and noisy through the open windows, on that hot August morning the rattle of the musketry of the defence. The Marseillais had come up in their turn; they had come into the courtyard. They had parleyed with the Swiss. The gentry at the broad windows of the first floor, each group twelve front three deep, had opened fire to stop that parleying. But of what so passed the Parliament and the little party in the reporters’ box knew nothing. They heard but one discharge of cannon, booming dull, and after that a silence. The debate in the hall of the Parliament ceased. It was the moment when the Swiss had rallied and when the defenders of the palace had swept the populace from the Carrousel, and had so thought to have ended the day. There were many in that hall who thought it ended also: mobs are often thus defeated in a few moments. The silence lasted.
Two more discharges of cannon might have been—and were perhaps thought to be in the anxious house and by the much more anxious group that strained their ears in the reporters’ box—the last volley against a flying crowd. It was not so: those cannon were the two pieces of Marseilles leading a return of the mob, and thenceforward, with every moment for a quarter of an hour, for twenty minutes, the fusillade and the roar of approaching thousands swelled like the calculated swell of an orchestra. The Queen heard, where she sat in the corner of the tiny lodge, the whistle of grape, the thud of solid shot against the walls, the crash of glass, and all that increasing roar which told her that the populace had returned like a tide, flooding the courts of the palace and invading its very doors. For some very few moments they heard that struggle maintained.
Then it was that Roederer, rightly or wrongly, a lawyer, not a soldier, determined that the day was lost. In the spirit which had made him, in his capacity as a high official of the Local Government, twice advise the King to retire, and the second time succeed in that advice, in that same spirit he now advised a capitulation. Perhaps he hoped by such a compromise (could it arrive in time) to save the Monarchy. More probably he deemed the Monarchy secure, and thought only by this capitulation to save the House in which the Parliament sat and in which the Crown had taken refuge from direct assault by the mob. At any rate there was written, and presumably in the King’s presence, the hurried word or two which ordered the Guard to cease firing, and that scrap of paper Louis signed.[[29]] It was the last act of the French Monarchy.
[29]. The authenticity of this document which forms the frontispiece of this book is discussed in Appendix A.
This order was conveyed to the upright and soldierly D’Hervilly: it filled him with contempt and anger. He took the paper, pocketed it, forced his way round with difficulty to the further side of the Tuileries, saw that the defence, though now beaten back to the very doors, was still maintained, and, so far from communicating the King’s command, determined, as many a soldier before has done in such a fix, to disobey. He continued to direct the battle.
Though the populace had rushed the doors and in part the river wing of the palace, a furious hand-to-hand fight still raged. The staircase was not yet carried; that wing of the populace which had leapt the gap in the flooring and had boarded the Pavilion de Flore from the Long Gallery had not yet fought its way into the Tuileries. The great body of the insurgents was still massed outside in the square; a steady fire was still maintained upon them from the windows of the palace. It was not until the rooms were at last flooded by the advancing mob and the staircase was held that D’Hervilly faltered. He was turned. The assault had begun to verge upon a massacre. Of one half-company of the popular Militia, all but five had been hit at one door alone in the upper rooms. Before the main door, within a few yards of it, 400 men—if we may trust those who most desired to hide the full numbers—400 men at least lay heaped. Within, the mob was taking its revenge and the sacking had begun before D’Hervilly showed that scrap of paper to the Guard. This second command also the Swiss obeyed, as they had obeyed the first command to die.
INSCRIPTION ON THE BROKEN BUST OF THE DAUPHIN,
A RELIC OF THE SACK OF THE PALACE
They fell back out of the palace in order, this remnant of a high discipline; they passed down the main broad avenue of the gardens steadily: the covering volleys of their retreat came very sharp and clear just outside the windows of the Parliament. Those within heard their steady tramp, until at last that tramp turned to a scuffle; there were crunchings upon the gravel, confused scrambles upon the lawns, choked cries and fugitive running; they had broken by the round pond.