De Launey[331] was torn from his hiding-place, and after undergoing a thousand outrages, was struck down on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville; Flesselles[332], the provost of the merchants, had his brains blown out by a pistol-shot: this was the spectacle which heartless enthusiasts thought so fine. In the midst of these murders, the people gave themselves up to orgies, as in the troubles in Rome under Otho and Vitellius. "The victors of the Bastille," happy drunkards, declared conquerors by pot-house votes, were driven about in hackney-coaches; prostitutes and sans-culottes commenced to reign and escorted them. The passers-by uncovered, with the respect born of fear, before those heroes, some of whom died of fatigue amidst their triumph. The keys of the Bastille multiplied; they were sent to all the important simpletons in the four quarters of the world. How often have I missed my fortune! If I, a spectator, had inscribed my name on the list of the victors, I should be in receipt of a pension today.
The experts hurried to assist at the post-mortem examination of the Bastille. Temporary cafés were established under tents; people hastened thither as to the fair at Saint-Germain or to Longchamp; numbers of carriages drove slowly past, or stopped at the foot of the towers, whence the stones were being hurled down amid whirlwinds of dust. Elegantly-dressed women and fashionable young men stood upon different points of the Gothic rubbish, and mingled with the half-naked workmen engaged in demolishing the walls amid the acclamations of the crowd. At this meeting-place were to be seen the most famous orators, the best-known men of letters, the most celebrated painters, the most renowned actors and actresses, the most popular dancers, the most illustrious foreigners, the nobles of the Court and the ambassadors of Europe: old France had come there to end, new France to commence, its existence.
No event, however wretched or hateful in itself, should be treated lightly when its circumstances are serious, or when it marks an epoch: what should have been seen in the capture of the Bastille (and what was not then seen) was, not the violent act of the emancipation of a people, but the emancipation itself which resulted from that act.
The fall of the Bastille.
Men admired what they ought to condemn, the accident, and did not seek to discover in the future the accomplishment of a peopled destiny, the changes in morals, ideas, political power, a renovation of the human race, of which the capture of the Bastille, like a blood-stained jubilee, inaugurated the era. Brutal anger wrought ruins, and beneath that anger was concealed the intelligence which laid among those ruins the foundations of the new edifice.
But the nation, deceived as to the grandeur of the material fact, was not deceived as to the grandeur of the moral fact: in the eyes of the nation, the Bastille was the trophy of its servitude, and seemed to be erected at the entrance to Paris, opposite the sixteen pillars of Montfaucon[333], as the gibbet of its liberties[334]. In demolishing a State fortress, the people considered that it was breaking the military yoke, and made a tacit engagement to take the place of the army which it was disbanding: we know what prodigies were wrought by the people turned soldier.
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Awakened by the sound of the fall of the Bastille, as though by the premonitory sound of the fall of the throne, Versailles had lapsed from the heights of self-confidence to the depths of despondency. The King hurried to the National Assembly, and delivered a speech from the president's chair; he declared that an order had been given for the withdrawal of the troops, and returned to his palace amid a shower of benedictions. A vain parade! Parties do not believe in the conversion of the opposing parties: the liberty which capitulates, or the power which degrades itself, receives no mercy from its foes.
Eighty deputies set out from Versailles to announce the making of peace to the Capital; illuminations followed. M. de La Fayette[335] was made Commandant of the National Guard, M. Bailly[336], Mayor of Paris: I never knew the poor but respectable scholar, save through his misfortunes. Revolutions possess men for each of their several periods; some follow these revolutions to their finish, others commence but do not complete them.