THE PEOPLE DELIVER THE FRENCH GUARDS.

127

But neither the court nor Paris desired any compromise. Everything was inclining towards open violence. The military gentlemen of the court were impatient to act. M. Du Châtelet, the colonel of the French Guards, had already sent to the Abbaye eleven of those soldiers who had sworn to obey no orders contrary to those of the Assembly. Neither did he stop there. He wanted to remove them from the military prison, and send them to the one for thieves, to that horrible sink, gaol and hospital at once, which subjected to the same lash the galley-slaves and the vénériens.* The terrible case of Latude, cast there to die, had revealed Bicêtre,-thrown the first light upon it; and a recent book, by Mirabeau, had filled every heart with disgust and every mind with terror.† And it was there they were going to imprison men whose greatest offence was to wish to be only the soldiers of the law.

The very day they were to be transferred to Bicêtre, the news reached the Palais Royal. A young man standing upon a chair, called out, " To the Abbaye! and let us deliver those who would not fire upon the people!" Soldiers offer themselves; but the citizens thank them, and go alone. The crowd increases on the road, and is joined by workmen with strong iron bars. At the Abbaye, they were four thousand in number. They burst open the wicket, and break down the large inside doors with their mallets, axes, and crow-bars. The victims are liberated. As they were going out, they met a body of hussars and dragoons, who were arriving full gallop with their swords drawn. The people rush at their bridles; an explanation ensues; the soldiers will not massacre the soldiers' deliverers; they sheathe their swords, and take off their helmets; wine is brought; and they all drink together to the king and the nation.

Everybody in the prison was set at liberty at the same time. The crowd conduct their conquest home,—to the Palais Royal. Among the prisoners delivered, they carried off an old soldier who had been rotting many years in the Abbaye, and was no

Will it be believed that in 1790, they still executed at Bicêtre the old barbarous ordinances which prescribed that the medical treatment of such patients should begin by a flagellation? The celebrated doctor Cullorier stated the fact to one of my friends.

Observations d'un Anglais sur Bicêtre, trad. et commentées par Mirabeau, 1788.

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THE PEOPLE DELIVER THE FRENCH GUARDS.

longer able to walk. The poor fellow, who had so long been accustomed to receive nothing but ill-treatment, was overpowered by his emotion: "I shall die, gentlemen," said he, "so much kindness will kill me!"

There was only one great criminal among them, and he was taken back to prison. All the others, citizens, soldiers, and prisoners, forming an immense procession, arrive at the Palais Royal. There they place a table in the garden, and make them all sit down. The difficulty was to lodge them. They house them for the night in the Théatre des Variétés, and mount guard at the door. The next morning, they were located in an hotel, under the arcades, and paid for and fed by the people. All night, either side of Paris had been illuminated, the neighbourhood of the Abbaye and the Palais Royal. Citizens, workmen, rich and poor, dragoons, hussars, and French Guards, all walked about together, and no other noise was heard but the shouts of "Vive la nation! They all gave themselves up to the transports of that fraternal union, to their dawning confidence in the birth of liberty.

Early in the morning, the young men were at Versailles, at the doors of the Assembly. There, everything wore a freezing aspect. A military insurrection and a prison broken open, appeared, at Versailles, most ill-omened. Mirabeau, avoiding the chief question, proposed an address to the Parisians, to advise them to be orderly. They at length came to the conclusion (not very comfortable for those who claimed the interference of the Assembly) of declaring that the affair belonged to nobody but the king, and all they could do was to implore his clemency.

This was on the 1st of July. On the 2nd, the king wrote,not to the Assembly, but to the Archbishop of Paris,-that if the culprits returned to prison, he might pardon them. The crowd considered this promise so unsatisfactory, that they repaired to the Hotel-de-Ville and demanded of the electors what they were to believe. The latter hesitated a long time; but the crowd insisted; and was increasing every instant. An hour after midnight, the electors promise to go on the morrow to Versailles, and not to return without the pardon. Trusting to their word, the liberated again returned to prison, and were soon enlarged.

PARIS ASKS PERMISSION TO ARM.

129

This was not a state of peace. Paris was surrounded by war: all the foreign troops had arrived. The old Marshal De Broglie, that Hercules and Achilles of the old monarchy, had been called to command them. The queen had sent for Breteuil, her confidential man, the ex-ambassador at Vienna, a valiant penman, but who, for noise and bravado, was equal to any swordsman. "His big manly voice sounded like energy; he used to step heavily and stamp with his foot, as if he would conjure an army out of the earth.'

All this warlike preparation at length aroused the Assembly. Mirabeau, who had read on the 27th an address for peace, without being listened to, now proposed a new one for the removal of the troops; that sonorous and harmonious speech, extremely flattering for the king, was very much relished by the Assembly. The best thing it contained, a demand for a citizen guard, was the only part they suppressed.*

The Paris electors, who had been the first to make this request now rejected by the Assembly, resumed it energetically on the 10th of July. Carra, in a very abstract dissertation, in the manner of Sieyès, set forth the right of the Commune,an imprescriptible right, and, said he, even anterior to that of the monarchy, which right specially comprehends that of selfprotection. Bonneville demanded, in his own name, and in that of his friend Fauchet, that they should pass on from theory to practice, and think of constituting themselves as a commune, preserving provisionally the pretended municipal body. Charton wished moreover the sixty districts to be assembled again, their decisions to be transmitted to the National Assembly, and a correspondence to be formed with the chief cities of the kingdom. All these bold motions were made in the great hall of Saint-Jean, in the Hôtel de Ville, in presence of an immense multitude. Paris seemed to crowd fondly about this authority which it had created, and to trust to no other; it wanted to obtain from it the permission to organize and arm itself, and thus to work out its own salvation.

It is not unlikely that the Duke of Orleans, seeing that his mediation was by no means solicited, urged Mirabeau to speak, in order to perplex the court, before it had completed its preparations for war. M. Droz assigns to this period the first connexion of Mirabeau with Laclos, and the money he received from him.

K

The weakness of the National Assembly was not calculated to give it comfort. On the 11th of July it had received the king's answer to the address, and remained satisfied with it. Yet, what was the answer? That the troops were there to secure the liberty of the Assembly; but that, if they gave umbrage, the king would transfer it to Noyon or Soissons; that is, would place it between two or three divisions of the army. Mirabeau could not prevail on them to insist on the troops being removed. It was evident that the junction of the five hundred deputies of the clergy and nobility had enervated the Assembly. It set the grand business aside, and gave its attention to a declaration of the rights of man presented by Lafayette.

ever.

One of the moderate, most moderate members, the philanthropic Guillotin, went to Paris on purpose to communicate this state of tranquillity to the assembly of the electors. That honest man, doubtless deceived, assured them that everything was going on prosperously, and that M. Necker was stronger than That excellent news was hailed with loud applause, and the electors, no less duped than the Assembly, amused themselves in like manner with admiring the declaration of rights which, by good fortune, was also just brought from Versailles. That very day, whilst honest Guillotin was speaking, M. Necker, dismissed, was already very far on his road to Brussels.

When Necker received the order to depart immediately, it was three o'clock, and he was sitting down to table. The poor man, who always so tenderly embraced the ministry, and never left it without weeping, contrived however to restrain his emotion before his guests, and to keep his countenance. After dinner he departed with his wife, without even giving notice to his daughter, and took the nearest way out of the country,-the road to the Netherlands. The queen's party, shameful to relate, were anxious to have him arrested; they were so little acquainted with Necker, that they were afraid he might disobey the king, and throw himself into Paris.

MM. de Broglie and de Breteuil, the first day they were summoned, had themselves been frightened to see the dangers into which they were running. Broglie was unwilling that Necker should be sent away. Breteuil is said to have exclaimed: Give us then a hundred thousand men and a

THE COURT PREPARES FOR WAR.

hundred millions."

131

“You shall have them," said the queen.

And they set about secretly fabricating paper-money.*

M. de Broglie, taken unawares, stooping beneath his burden of seventy-one years, bustled about but did nothing. Orders and counter-orders flew to and fro. His mansion was the headquarters, full of scribes, ordinances, and aides-de-camp, ready to mount on horse-back. "They made out a list of general officers and drew up an order of battle."†

The military authorities were not too well agreed among themselves. There were no less than three commanders. Broglie, who was about to be minister, Puységur, who was so still, and lastly Besenval, who had had for eight years the command of the provinces of the interior, and to whom they intimated unceremoniously that he would have to obey the old marshal. Besenval explained to him the dangerous position of things, and that they were not en campagne, but before a city of eight hundred thousand souls in a state of feverish excitement. Broglie would not listen to him. Strong in his conceit of his Seven Years' War, being acquainted with nothing but soldiers and physical force, full of contempt for citizens, he felt perfectly convinced that at the mere sight of an uniform the people would run away. He did not consider it necessary to send troops to Paris; he merely surrounded it with foreign regiments, being quite unconcerned about thus increasing the popular excitement. All those German soldiers presented the appearance of a Swiss or an Austrian invasion. The outlandish names of the regiments sounded harsh to the ear: RoyalCravate was at Charenton, Reinach and Diesbach at Sèvres, Nassau at Versailles, Salis-Samade at Issy, the hussars of Bercheny at the Military School; at other stations were Châteauvieux, Esterazy, Roemer, &c.

The Bastille, sufficiently defended by its thick walls, had just received a reinforcement of Swiss soldiers. It had ammunition and a monstrous quantity of gunpowder, enough to blow up the town. The cannon, mounted en batterie upon the towers ever since the 30th of June, frowned upon Paris, and ready loaded, thrust their menacing jaws between the battlements.

* "Several of my colleagues told me they had seen printed ones."-Bailly, i., pp. 395, 331.

Besenval, ii., 359.