“My private fortune secures me from want. It has outlasted two revolutions; and should it survive a third, through the complaisance of the people, it shall belong to them alone.”
Mirabeau said of La Fayette: “There is one man in the state who, from his position, is exposed to the hazard of all events; to whom successes can offer no compensation for reverses; and who is, in some manner, answerable for the repose, we may even say the safety, of the public,—and that man is La Fayette.”
But La Fayette was not superhuman. His arm could not turn backward the awful Juggernaut of the oncoming revolution. The corruption and oppression of past centuries could not be wiped out by the untarnished purity of life and principles of this self-sacrificing Knight of Liberty. And beneath the bloody wheels of the huge Juggernaut of license,—law, liberty, and La Fayette were all to be ruthlessly sacrificed.
The sword of Damocles hung suspended over the head of the unfortunate king, and the throne was tottering, soon to be engulfed in hopeless ruin.
On the morning of the 5th of October, a woman, frenzied with hunger, rushed into a guard-house, and seizing a drum, ran with it along the streets, accompanying her wild beating with the frantic cry of “Bread! bread!” As the crowd increases, every voice takes up the shrill shriek for bread, until at last the mad chorus changes to a furious clamor, and the words “To Versailles!” “A Versailles!“ ring out in hoarse yells from street to street, and the alarm bell sounds the direful tocsin which sends a knell of despair to every listener’s heart.
The news of the riot reaches La Fayette, and he says: “As soon as the tidings reached me, I instantly perceived that, whatever might be the consequence of this movement, the public safety required that I should take part in it, and after having received from the Hôtel de Ville an order and two commissaries, I hastily provided for the security of Paris, and took the road to Versailles, at the head of several battalions.”
THE CROWD SHOUT, “TO VERSAILLES.”
Alarmed lest the Guard themselves might be induced to join in the revolt, he halted on the way and made every one renew his oath of fidelity to the king and obedience to the law. A description of this momentous march is nowhere so quaintly and so graphically told as by Carlyle, who, in spite of certain sarcasms, seems to appreciate La Fayette’s difficult position, and surely it would seem as though only the grim irony of fate could have placed this Knight of Liberty in the midst of such lawless rioters: and yet, throughout all these trying circumstances, La Fayette is not once inconsistent to his avowed principles; and whether he sympathizes with the people’s wrongs, or endeavors to shield his king from their furious attacks, he is ever true to his principles of right and honor.
And so we will let Carlyle take La Fayette to Versailles in his own inimitable way.