[10]. It had originally been created to provide a salary for one, Pot, who was further dignified with the title of Rhodes—names curiously English.
Well, then, why was Death not brought in to sweep the Commons? Here were soldiers all around—foreigners, Germans, and Swiss—in number a full division: why was no shot fired? Because, although apparently no force lay opposed to them save the mere will of less than a thousand unarmed debaters, there did in fact lie opposed to them the potential force of Paris. Close on a million souls, say two hundred thousand men, capable of bearing arms, almost homogeneous in opinion, lay twelve miles down the valley, as full of rumour as a hive—at the sound of a musket they might rise and swarm. It was not a calculable thing; Paris might after half-an-hour of scuffle turn into a mere scattered crowd; there might be a fierce resistance, prolonged, bleeding authority to death unless a sufficient force contained Paris also, as the debaters at Versailles were already contained. That force was summoned.
Thirty regiments moved. All the last days of June the great roads sounded with their marching from every neighbouring garrison. The rattle of new guns one morning woke from sleep the unknown Robespierre, who watched them from his window passing interminably under the July dawn; they baited their horses in the stables of the Queen. Of nearly all the troops so gathering one little portion, the half-irregular militia body (militia, but permanently armed) called “the French Guards,” was other than foreign. The “French Guards” might not indeed be reliable; but, as it was thought, they hardly counted. The rest were for the most part German-speaking mercenaries, the solid weapon of the Crown: and still they gathered.
Neck to neck with the advance of that mobilisation the Assembly raced for power; for every brigade appearing you may count a new claim. In the first hours of their revolt, when Dreux Brézé had but just retired, they proclaimed themselves “Inviolable”—that is, in their new sovereignty, they declared an armed offence to that sovereignty to be treason.
The sight of Paris, heaving as for movement on the 24th of June, Wednesday, when the news of the royal session and its sequel came, determined the Duke of Orleans to take a line. He desired to profit by the dissensions. He continually bribed and flattered and supported, by his wealth and through his parasites, the vast and spontaneous surge of opinion, adding perhaps a fraction to its power. He was among the stupidest of the Bourbons, for he thought in his heart he might be King. This null and dissipated fellow led a minority of the Nobles to the Commons and declared their adhesion to the Assembly: that was the Thursday, the 25th—the next day the Court itself, the King, deliberately advised the union of all the orders!
The Court had yielded—for the moment. The Court thought it was better so: the troops were gathering, soon a blow was to be struck, and the less friction the better while it was preparing....
So, as the first week of July went by, everything was preparing: the Electoral College of Paris had met and continued in session, forming spontaneously a local executive for the capital; certain of the French Guard in Paris had sworn to obey the Assembly only, had been imprisoned ... and released by popular force ... and pardoned. The last troops had come in; the Assembly was finally formed. On the day when it named its first Committee to discuss the new Constitution, the Queen and those about the Queen had completed their plan, and the Crown was ready to re-arise and to scatter its enemies.
There was in this crisis a military simplicity as behoved it, for it was a military thing. No intriguing. Necker, the symbol of the new claims, was to go—booted out at a moment’s notice, and over the frontier as well. A man of the Queen’s, a man who had been ambassador at Vienna, a very trusted servant of over fifty years continually with the Monarchy, a man of energy, strong stepping, loud, Breteuil was in one sharp moment to take his place. Old Broglie, brave and renowned, was to grasp the army—and the thing was done: the Assembly gone to smoke: the debating over: silence and ancient right restored. And as for the dependence on opinion and on a parliamentary majority for money!... why, a bold bankruptcy and begin again.
So the Queen saw the sharp issue, now that all the regiments were assembled. A corps of German mercenaries were in the Park, encamped; their officers were cherished in the rooms of the Polignacs: they were a symbol of what was toward. Paris might or might not rise. If it rose, there would be action; if not, none. In either case victory and a prize worth all the miserable cajoling and submission to which the Court had been compelled while the soldiers were still unready. They were ready now. So the Queen.