The King, as this messenger reached him, was noting his bag in a little book. The message of Cubieres was that Paris had marched upon Versailles, that the great avenue road was black with tattered women and with men, seething and turning, and demanding food and blood. He brought no rumours, and he could tell the King nothing of the Queen. The King mounted. All mounted and rode at speed. They turned their mounts westerly again, and rode at speed toward Versailles. And as they rode two feelings dully contended in the mind of Louis: the first was anxiety for his wife; the second annoyance at the sudden interruption of his business; and later, as the bulk of the palace appeared far off through the trees, he was filled with that irritant wonder as to what he should do, what his action should be: the trouble of decision which cursed him whenever he and action came face to face. The wind had fallen, and now the rain poured steadily and drenched them all.
Consider that grey morning in the town also—I mean in the town of Versailles—and how under that same covered sky and those same low shreds of flying cloud the empty streets of Versailles were arming.
Upon the broad deserted avenue before the gates of the National Assembly there were no passers-by; the drip from the brown leaves of the trees, the patter from the eaves of the stately houses, and the gurgling of water in the gutters enforced the silence. Now and then an official or a member in black knee-breeches and thin buckled shoes, delicately stepping from stone to stone, would hurriedly cross over the paving, cloaked and covered by an ample umbrella, as was the habit of those heroes when it rained; but for the rest the streets were empty, the setts shining with wet under the imperfect autumn light. Far off, beside the railing and before the wrought-iron gates of the palace, the troops were beginning to form, for it was already known that the bridge of Sèvres had been left unguarded and that the mob was pouring up the Paris road. The troops came marching from one barrack and another in the various quarters of the town, converging upon this central place, and some, the Swiss, were issuing from the outlets of the palace itself, and some, the Mounted Guard, were filing out of the half-moon of the royal stables, where now the Sappers and the 22nd of Artillery may be found. They formed and formed under the weather. The Body-Guard upon their great horses, deeply mantled and groomed as for parade, lined all the front; behind them the Swiss on foot filled the square of the courtyard; Ragged Flanders, the Ragged Regiment of Flanders, famous in song for its rags as for its amours and its drums,[[14]] stood by companies before them all in the wide public place, where all the roads of Versailles converge and make an approach to the Court and form an open centre for the royal city.
[14]. “Y’avait un grenadier,” &c.
The formation was accomplished, food was served, arms piled. They stood there in rank alone, with no civilians to watch or mock them under the rain, and behind them the great house they were guarding stood empty of Monarchy. And before them the wide avenue from Paris, the Avenue which was the artery of opinion, of energy, and all the national being at that moment, stood empty also, and it rained and rained. The great body of troops, red, yellow and blue in bands, were the only tenants of the scene.
Within the Assembly a debate not over-full of purpose had alternately dragged and raged: it had been known almost from the opening of the sitting that Paris would move. Those premonitions which have led the less scholarly or the more fanatical of historians to see in the Revolution a perpetual pre-arrangement and cabal, those warning things in the air which you find at every stage of the great turmoil (rumours flew before the King all the way to Varennes, and the victory upon the right wing at Wattignies was known in Paris an hour before the final charge), those inexplicable things had come, and immediately upon their heels had come direct news from one messenger after another: how the wine merchants’ shops had been sacked, how the bridge of Sèvres was passed, how the rabble were now but five miles off and breasting the hill. That futility, which the Revolutionary Assemblies suffered less perhaps than other Parliaments, but which is inherent in all discussion, condemned this engine of the new Democracy to discuss on such a day nothing of greater moment than the order of that day, and the order of that day was the King’s letter: for the King had written that he would “accede” to the Decrees (of Rights of Man and to the extinction of the Feudal Dues) but that he would not “sanction” them. And on the verbal discussion between the word “accede” and the word “sanction” legal tomfoolery was fated to batten, while up in the woods of Meudon the King who had written that letter was still shooting peacefully and innocent of guile, and while so many thousands, desperately hungry, were marching up the road, having black Maillard—as who should say murder—for their Captain, and dragging behind them a section of their guns.
From such futility and from such tomfoolery the debate was just saved by the strength of personality alone. Mounier, in the Speaker’s chair, lent energy to them all, though of a despairing kind; and when some one had said to him, “All Paris is marching upon us,” and had foreseen the invasion of the palace and perhaps the ruin of the Crown, he had answered, according to one version, “The better for the Republic,” according to another version, “The sooner shall we have the Republic here.”
At the back of the great oblong colonnaded hall, trim Robespierre, fresh from “The Sign of the Fox” and from his farmer companions, was, in that vibrating and carrying little voice of his, laying down decisions. There should be no compromise; if they compromised now, the Revolution was lost. But he was careful to be strictly in order—he was always careful of that—and the thing on which he advised “no compromise” was not the mob, but the letter of the King.