The nobles were, however, so alarmed by this triumph of the people that emigration received a new impulse. One hundred and fifty of the Royalist deputies of the National Assembly immediately obtained passports and left the kingdom. Some of the nobles repaired to Turin. The Comte d'Artois (Charles X.) took up his residence with his father-in-law, the King of Sardinia. The emigrants, thus scattered through all the courts of Europe, were busy in endeavors to rally the aristocratic courts to crush popular liberty in France. The emigration throughout the country was so extensive that sixty thousand, it was said, went to Switzerland alone.
The king, on the contrary, appeared pleased with the affection of his people. He walked, without guards, through the crowds which thronged the Elysian Fields, and was every where treated with respect. On the 9th of October, three days after his arrival in the city, he sent a letter to the Assembly at Versailles, informing that body that the testimonials of affection and fidelity which he had received from the city of Paris had determined him to fix his ordinary residence there.[234] He accordingly invited the Assembly to transfer its sitting to Paris. Incredible as it may seem, the imbecile king sent for his smith tools, put up his forge, and amused himself with file and hammer tinkering at locks.[235]
The Archbishop of Paris had fled with the emigrants. On the 19th of October the National Assembly left Versailles and held its first sitting in Paris, in a room of the archbishop's palace, from which room it soon removed to the riding-hall of the Tuileries, a much more commodious apartment which had been prepared for its accommodation.[236] As the great object of the Assembly was now to reorganize the government upon the basis of a free constitution, it dropped the name of National Assembly on leaving Versailles, and assumed in Paris the name of Constituent Assembly. Thus the same body in the course of five months was called by three different names. It was first the States-General, from the period of its meeting on the 5th of May until the union of the three orders on the 27th of June. It was then the National Assembly until its removal from Versailles to Paris, on the 19th of October. It then took the name of the Constituent Assembly, and continued in existence for nearly two years, until the 30th of September, 1791, when it expired, and a new body, the Legislative Assembly, commenced its session.
The storm of revolution for a time seemed to lull, and there were but few acts of violence. The people of Paris were still in a state of fearful suffering from famine, and on the 21st of October a few half-starved wretches seized a baker named François, whom they accused of holding back his bread, and in a moment of phrensy, before the police could interfere, strung him up at a lamp-post, and then cut off his head.
The deed was denounced by even the most violent of the revolutionists, and the Assembly took advantage of the feeling which the outrage excited to pass a martial law against tumultuous assemblies of the people. This law, which was almost a repetition of the English riot act, was assailed by many of the journals as a gross infringement of the rights of the people. Robespierre in the Assembly and Marat in his wide-spread journal were conspicuous in denouncing it.
The atrocious murder of François, who was a generous and a charitable man, and entirely innocent of the crime of which he was accused, produced a profound impression. It was indicative of the rapid and fearful rise of mob violence. The king and queen sent to his young widow a letter of condolence, with a gift in money amounting to about twenty-five hundred dollars. The city government of Paris sent a committee of its members to visit and console her. La Fayette, mortified and indignant at the outrage, scoured the faubourgs in search of the miscreants who perpetrated the deed. Two of the ringleaders were arrested and handed over to immediate trial.
They were condemned to death, and the next morning were hanged in the same Place de Grêve which had been the scene of the outrage. This was the only murder, perpetrated by a Parisian mob, during the Revolution, which the law was sufficiently powerful to punish.[237]
