The Story of Paris

by Thomas Okey

The Bastille, some time before its fall, was already under sentence of demolition, and various schemes for its disposal were before the court. One project was to destroy seven of the towers, leaving the eighth standing in a dilapidated state. On the site of the seven, a pedestal formed of chains and bolts from the dungeons and gates was to bear a statue of Louis XVI. in the attitude of a liberator, pointing with outstretched hand towards the remaining tower in ruins. But Louis XVI. was always too late, and the Place de la Bastille, with its column raised to those who fell in the Revolution of July, 1830, now recalls the second and final triumph of the people over the Bourbon kings. Some stones of the Bastille were, however, "in order that they might be trodden under foot by the people for ever," built into the new Pont Louis Seize, subsequently called Pont de la Révolution and now known as Pont de la Concorde; others were sold to speculators and were retailed at prices so high that people complained that Bastille stones were as dear as the best butcher's meat. Models of the Bastille, dominoes, inkstands, boxes and toys of all kinds were made of the material and had a ready sale all over France.

Far to the west and on the opposite side of the Seine is the immense area of the Champ de Mars, where, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, was enacted the fairest scene of the Revolution. The whole population of Paris, with their marvellous instinct of order and co-operation, spontaneously set to work to dig the vast amphitheatre which was to accommodate the 100,000 representatives of France, and 400,000 spectators, all united in an outburst of fraternal love and hope to swear allegiance to the new Constitution before the altar of the Fatherland. The king had not yet lost the affection of his people. As he came to view the marvellous scene an improvised bodyguard of excavators, bearing spades, escorted him about. When he was swearing the oath to the Constitution, the queen, standing on a balcony of the École militaire, lifted up the dauphin as if to associate him in his father's pledge. Suddenly the rain which had marred the great festival ceased, the sun burst forth and flooded in a splendour of light, the altar, Bishop Talleyrand, his four hundred clergy, and the king with upraised hand. The solemn music of the Te Deum mingled with the wild pæan of joy and enthusiasm that burst from half a million throats.

The unconscionable folly, the feeble-minded vacillation and miserable trickery by which this magnificent popularity was muddled away is one of the saddest tragedies in the stories of kings. It is clear from Sir S. Romilly's letters that after the acceptance of the Constitution, Louis was popular among all classes. But the people, with unerring instinct, had fixed on the queen as one of the chief obstacles to what might have been a peaceful revolution. Neither Marie Antoinette nor Louis Capet comprehended the tremendous significance of the forces they were playing with—the resolute and invincible determination of a people of twenty-six millions to emancipate itself from the accumulated wrongs of centuries. "Eh bien! factieux," said Marie to the Commissioners from the Assembly after the return from Varennes, "vous triomphez encore!" The despatches and opinions of American ambassadors during this period are of much value. The democratic Thomas Jefferson, reviewing in later years the course of events, declared that had there been no queen there would have been no revolution. Governor Morris, whose anti-revolutionary and conservative leanings made him the friend and confidant of the royal family, writes to Washington on January 1790: "If only the reigning prince were not the small-beer character he is, and even only tolerably watchful of events, he would regain his authority," but "what would you have," he continues scornfully "from a creature who, in his situation, eats, drinks, and sleeps well, and laughs, and is as merry a grig as lives. He must float along on the current of events and is absolutely a cypher." Nor would the court forego its crooked ways. "The queen is even more imprudent," Morris writes in 1791, "and the whole court is given up to petty intrigues worthy only of footmen and chambermaids." Moreover, in its amazing ineptitude, the monarchy had already toyed with republicanism by lending active military support to the revolutionists in America, at a cost to the already over-burdened treasury of 1,200,000,000 livres.

The American ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, was crowned at court with laurel as the apostle of liberty, and in the very palace of Versailles, medallions of Franklin were sold, bearing the inscription: "Eripui coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis" ("I have snatched the lightning from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants"). The revolutionary song, Ça ira, owes its origin to Franklin's invariable response to inquiries as to the progress of the American revolutionary movement.[166] There was explosive material enough in France to make playing with celestial fire perilous, and while the political atmosphere was heavy with the threatening storm, thousands of French soldiers returned saturated with enthusiasm and sympathy for the American revolution. Already before the Feast of the Federation the queen had been in secret correspondence with the émigrés at Turin and at Coblenz who were conspiring to throttle the nascent liberty of France. Madame Campan relates that the queen made her read a confidential letter from the Empress Catherine of Russia, concluding with these words: "Kings ought to proceed in their career undisturbed by the cries of the people as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the howling of dogs." Mirabeau was already in the pay of the monarchy; and attempts were made to buy over Robespierre, who up to 10th August was an avowed defender of the Constitution, by an offer of the emoluments and the nominal post of tutor to the dauphin in return for his support of the royal cause.

As early as December 1790 the court had been in secret communication with the foreigner. Louis' brother, the Count of Artois (afterwards Charles X.), with the queen's and king's approval, had made a secret treaty with the House of Hapsburg, the hereditary enemy of France, by which the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia and Spain agreed to cross the frontier at a given signal, and close on France with an army a hundred thousand strong. It was an act of impious treachery, and the beginning of the doom of the French Monarchy. Yet if but some glimmer of intelligence and courage had characterised the preparations for the flight of the royal family to join the armed forces waiting to receive them near the frontier, their lives at least had been saved.

The incidents of the four months' "secret" preparations to leave the Tuileries as described by Madame Campan—the disguised purchases of elaborate wardrobes of underlinen and gowns; the making of a dressing-case of enormous size, fitted with many and various articles from a warming-pan to a silver porringer; the packing of the diamonds—read like scenes in a comedy. The story of the pretended flight of the Russian baroness and her family; the start delayed by the queen losing her way in the slums of the Carrousel; the colossal folly of the whole business has been told by Carlyle in one of the most dramatic chapters in history.

The Assembly declared on hearing of Louis' flight, that the government of the country was unaffected and that the executive power remained in the hands of the ministers. After voting a levy of three hundred thousand National Guards to meet the threatened invasion, they passed calmly to the discussion of the new Penal Code.

The king returned to Paris through an immense and silent multitude. "Whoever applauds the king," said placards in the street, "shall be thrashed; whoever insults him, hung." The idea of a republic as a practical issue of the situation was now for the first time put forward by the extremists, but met with little sympathy, and a Republican demonstration in the Champ de Mars was suppressed by the Assembly by martial law at the cost of many lives. Owing to the aversion felt by Marie Antoinette to Lafayette, who with affectionate loyalty more than once had risked his popularity and life to serve the crown, the court made the fatal mistake of opposing his election to the mayoralty of Paris and paved the way for the triumph of Pétion and of the Dantonists.

At the news of the first victories of the invading Prussians and émigrés, Louis added to his amazing tale of follies by vetoing the formation of a camp near Paris and by turning a deaf ear to the earnest entreaties of the brave and sagacious Dumouriez and accepting his resignation. He sent a secret agent with confidential instructions to the émigrés and the coalesced foreign armies: the ill-starred proclamation[167] of the Duke of Brunswick completed the destruction of the monarchy. While the French were smarting under defeat and stung by the knowledge that their natural defender, the king, was leagued with their enemies, this foreign soldier warned a high-spirited and gallant nation that he was come to restore Louis XVI. to his authority, and threatened to treat as rebellious any town that opposed his march, to shoot all persons taken with arms in their hands, and in the event of any insult being offered to the royal family to take exemplary and memorable vengeance by delivering up the city of Paris to military execution and complete demolition. When the proclamation reached Paris at the end of July 1792, it sounded the death knell of the king and the triumph of the Republicans. Paris was now to become, in Goethe's phrase, the centre of the "world whirlwind"—a storm centre launching forth thunderbolts of terror. After the Assembly had twice refused to bring the king to trial, the extremists were able to organise and direct an irresistible wave of popular indignation towards the Tuileries, and on 10th August the palace was stormed. While a band of brave and devoted Swiss guards was being cut to pieces in hundreds, the feeble and futile king had fled to the Assembly and was sitting safely with his wife and children in a box behind the president's chair.

No room for compromise now. The printed trial of Charles I. was everywhere sold and read. "This," people said, "was how the English dealt with an impossible king and became a free nation." Old and new were in death-grapple, and the lives of many victims, for the people lost heavily,[168] had sealed the cause of the Revolution with a bloody consecration. Unhappily, the city of Paris, like all great towns in times of scarcity (and since 1780 scarcity had become almost permanent), had been invaded by numbers of starving vagabonds—the dregs that always rise to the surface in periods of political convulsion, ready for any villainy. When news came of the capture of Verdun, of the indecent joy of the courtiers, and that the road to Paris was open to the avenging army of Prussians, the horrors of the Armagnac massacres were renewed during four September days at the prisons of Paris, while the revolutionary ministry and the Assembly averted their gaze and, to their everlasting shame, abdicated their powers. The September massacres were the application by a minority of desperate and savage revolutionists of the ultima ratio of kings to a desperate situation: the tragedy of King Louis is the tragedy of a feeble prince called to rule in a tremendous crisis, where weakness and well-meaning folly are the fatalest of crimes.