For a few days, in spite of the call for troops which had been heard—and the troops were coming—for a few days more, speech was still formidable, and every phase of the debate ringing through the great shed of the Menus was a further affirmation of the new and violent sovereignty of those usurpers, the Assembly. In twenty-four hours a decision was taken by the Crown.
To the assumption of sovereignty by the Commons the Court replied. There was to be a Royal Session on the Monday following, the King present, and all the division between the orders settled by his final voice—as to the Commons declaration it was ignored.
And meanwhile Speech was silenced. Barentin, Keeper of the Seals, had seen to that. He wrote to the King that it was imperative the Commons should be silenced until the Royal Session was held. He wrote: “Coupez Court.” Have done with the business! A simple way to silence the Commons was found.
It was upon Friday the 19th of June that Barentin had written his letter to the King. Upon the Saturday morning, the 20th, the weather having turned to rain and the streets being deserted, the first stray members of the Commons came up to the door of the Menus to resume their debates. No notice had reached them, nor even their elected Speaker, Bailly, the worthy astronomer. They came with umbrellas dripping above them, the mud splashing their black stockings and black knee-breeches, the rain driving in upon their black Court coats. They tried the door; it was locked, and a sentry came forward. They saw, streaked under the rain, a little scrap of writing nailed to the door. The Hall was “closed by royal order,” and, within, the sound of hammering marked the carpenters at work preparing for Monday’s ceremonial. They wondered: others came; the group grew until at last many hundreds of the Commons stood there without, upon the pavement of the wide-planted avenue. Mirabeau was there and Robespierre was there, Sieyès, Bailly—all the Commons. Up at the end of the way the King’s great palace lay silent and, as it were, empty under the rain. No one crossed its vast open courtyard; its shut streaming windows stared dully at the town. The Commons moved away in a herd, leaving the sentry and his comrade to pace and be drenched, and the little scrap of writing to be washed and blurred on the locked door. As they moved off the noise of hammering within grew fainter till they heard it no more.
That very middle-class sight, a great mob of umbrellas wandering in the streets, was full of will: wandering from one place to another they landed at last in a tennis court which was free, just where a narrow side-street of the southern town makes an elbow. Into that shelter they poured: and over against them, watching all they did from above, from his home just across the lane, was Barentin, Keeper of the Seals. He saw the umbrellas folded at the door, the hundreds pressing in, damply; he saw through the lights of the Court their damp foot-prints on the concrete of the hall—a table brought: Bailly, the president, standing upon it above the throng and reading out the oath that they “would not disperse till they had given the nation a constitution”—then he saw the press of men signing that declaration one by one.
He heard the mob gathering outside and filling the street. Among them at least one witness has left a record of what could be heard through the open doors—how Mirabeau reluctantly signed, pleading popular pressure; how one man only refused to sign, thinking it, what it was, rebellion. He was Martin, of Auch.
It was the summer solstice, a date unlucky to the Bourbons.
The King heard all these things—but there was nothing to be done. Sunday passed, and Monday—the Royal Session was postponed. It was not till Tuesday morning, the 23rd, at ten that the procession formed and that Louis prepared to attend it. It was still raining.
All the pomp that could be gathered had been gathered for that occasion, though the very skies were against it. Four thousand men stood to arms lining that less than half a mile from the palace to the Menus. Hidden in the woods beyond, camped up on Satory and dispersed in the suburbs around, six regiments more were ready. A vast crowd, wholly silent, watched the Court go by. The Queen unbroken (but carrying such recent agony!), Artois vivacious and trim, the Ministers hurried, Louis somewhat bent, fat, suffering.
A man who saw that sight has written that he thought to see some great funeral go by: he was right. Of the two million dead which the Revolution demanded from Moscow to the Tagus, the first was passing in the splendid coach of the kings—I mean, Unquestioned Security. That fixity of political creed and that certitude in social structure, which hitherto no wars had shaken in Europe for century upon century of Christian order, had perished. Men cannot live or breathe without political security, yet for now more than a hundred years Europe has in vain awaited its return.