CHAPTER VI.

INSURRECTION OF PARIS.

Danger of Paris.-Explosion of Paris, July 12th, 1789.-Inaction of Versailles.-Provocation of the Troops; Paris arms.-The National Assembly applics in vain to the King, July 13th.-The Electors of Paris authorise the People to arm.-Organisation of the Citizen Guard.-Hesitation of the Electors.-The People seize on the Powder Magazines and search for Guns.-Security of the Court.

FROM the 23rd of June to the 12th of July, from the king's menace to the outbreak of the people, there was a strange pause. It was, says an observer of those days, a stormy, heavy, gloomy time, like a feverish, painful dream, full of illusions and anxiety. There were false alarms, false news, and all sorts of fables and inventions. People knew, but nothing for certain. They wished to account for and guess at everything. Profound causes were discovered even in indifferent things. Partial risings began, without any author or project, of their own accord, from a general fund of distrust and sullen anger. The ground was burning, and as if undermined; and, underneath, you might hear already the grumbling of the volcano.

We have seen that, at the very first assembly of the electors, Bonneville had cried: "To arms!"-a strange cry in that assembly of the notables of Paris, and which expired of itself. Many were indignant, others smiled, and one of them said prophetically: "Young man, postpone your motion for a fortnight."

To arms? What, against a ready organised army at the gates? To arms? when that army could so easily famish the city, when famine was already beginning to be felt, and when the crowd was hourly growing larger at the doors of the bakers. The poor of the neighbouring country were flocking to town by every road, wan and ragged, leaning on their long walkingstaffs. A mass of twenty thousand beggars, employed at Montmartre, was suspended over the town; and if Paris made a movement, this other army might come down. A few had already attempted to burn and pillage the barrier-houses.

It was almost certain that the court would strike the first

EXPLOSION OF PARIS.

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blow. It was necessary for it to compel the king to lay aside his scruples, his hankering for peace, and do away at once with every compromise. To effect this it was necessary to conquer.

Young officers in the hussars, such as Sombreuil and Polignac, went even into the Palais Royal to defy the crowd, and left it sword in hand. Evidently, the court fancied itself too strong; it wished for violence.*

On Sunday morning, July 12th, nobody at Paris, up to 10 o'clock, had yet heard of Necker's dismissal. The first who spoke of it in the Palais Royal was called an aristocrat, and insulted. But the news is confirmed; it spreads; and so does the fury of the people. It was then noon, and the cannon of the Palais Royal was fired. "It is impossible," says the Ami du Roi, "to express the gloomy feeling of terror which pervaded every soul on hearing that report." A young man, Camille Desmoulins, rushed from the Café de Foy, leaped upon a table, drew a sword, and showed a pistol :-"To arms!" cried he; "the Germans in the Champ de Mars will enter Paris to-night, to butcher the inhabitants! Let us hoist a cockade!" He tore down a leaf from a tree, and stuck it in his hat everybody followed his example; and the trees were stripped of their leaves.

"No theatres! no dancing! This is a day of mourning! They go and fetch, from a collection of wax-figures, a bust of Necker; others, ever at hand to seize the opportunity, add one of the Duke of Orleans. They cover them with crape, and carry them through Paris: the procession, armed with staves, swords, pistols, and hatchets, proceeds first up the Rue Richelieu, then turning the boulevard, and the streets St. Martin, Saint-Denis, and Saint-Honoré, arrives at the Place Vendôme. There, in front of the hotels of the farmers of the revenue, a detachment of dragoons was waiting for the people; it charged them, put them to flight, and destroyed their Necker; one of the French guards, unarmed, stood his ground, and was killed.

"Take care," said Doctor Marat, a philanthropic physician, in one of the innumerable pamphlets of the day, "take care, consider what would be the fatal consequences of a seditious movement. If you are so unfortunate as to engage in it, you are treated as rebels; blood flows," &c. This prudence was conspicuous in many people.

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INACTION OF VERSAILLES.

The barriers, which were scarcely finished,—those oppressive little bastilles of the farmers of the revenue,-were attacked everywhere on that same Sunday, by the people, and but illdefended by the troops, who however killed a few persons. They were burnt during the night.

The court, so near Paris, could not be ignorant of what was passing. It remained motionless, and sent neither orders nor troops. Apparently, it was waiting till the disturbance, increasing to rebellion and war, should give it what the Réveillon riot (too soon appeased) had not been able to give-a specious pretext for dissolving the Assembly. Therefore, it allowed Paris to go on doing mischief at pleasure. It guarded well Versailles, the bridges of Sèvres and Saint-Cloud, cut off all communication, and believed itself sure of being able, if things came to the worst, to famish the city of Paris. As for itself, surrounded by troops, of which two-thirds were German, what had it to fear? Nothing, but to lose France.

The minister of Paris (there was one still) remained at Versailles. The other authorities, the lieutenant of police, Flesselles the provost, and Berthier the intendant, appeared equally inactive. Flesselles, summoned to court, was unable to go there; but it is likely he received instructions.*

Besenval, the commander, without any responsibility, since he could act only by the orders of Broglie, remained idly at the Military School. He durst not make use of the French guards, and kept them confined. But he had several detachments of different corps, and three disposable regiments, one of Swiss, and two of German cavalry. Towards the afternoon, seeing the riot increasing, he posted his Swiss in the Champs-Elysées with four pieces of cannon, and drew up his cavalry on the Place Louis XV.

Before evening, before the hour at which people return home on Sunday, the crowd was coming back by the Champs-Elysées, and filling the gardens of the Tuileries; they were, for the most part, quiet people taking their walk, families who wanted to return home early "because there had been disturbances." However, the sight of those German soldiers, drawn up in

*As we learn from the king himself. See his first reply (July 14th) to the National Assembly.

order of battle on the spot, necessarily excited some indignation. Some of the men abused them, and children threw stones.* Then Besenval, fearing at length lest he should be reproached at Versailles with having done nothing, gave the insensate, barbarous order, so like his thoughtlessness, to drive the people forward with the dragoons. They could not move in that dense crowd without trampling on some of them. Their colonel, prince of Lambesc, entered the Tuileries, at first at a slow pace. He was stopped by a barricade of chairs; and being assailed by a shower of bottles and stones, he fired upon the crowd. The women shrieked, and the men tried to shut the gates behind the prince. He had the presence of mind to retire. One man was thrown down and trampled upon; and an old man whilst trying to escape was grievously wounded.

The crowd, rushing out of the Tuileries, with exclamations of horror and indignation, filled Paris with the account of this brutality, of those Germans driving their horses against women and children, and even the old man wounded, so they said, by the hand of the prince himself. Then they run to the gunsmiths and take whatever they find. They hasten also to the Hôtel de Ville to demand arms and ring the alarm-bell. No municipal magistrate was at his post. A few electors, of their own good-will, repaired thither about six in the evening, occupied their reserved seats in the great hall, and tried to calm the multitude. But behind that crowd, already entered, there was another in the square, shouting "Arms! who believed the town possessed a secret arsenal, and were threatening to burn everything. They overpowered the guard, invaded the hall, pushed down the barriers, and pressed the electors as far as their bureau. Then they related to them a thousand accounts at once of what has just happened. The electors could not refuse the arms of the city guards; but the crowd

• If there had been any pistols fired by the people, or any dragoons wounded, as Besenval has stated, Desèze, his very clever defender, would not have failed to make the most of it in his Observations sur le rapport d'accusation. See this report in the Histoire Parlementaire, iv., p. 69; and Desèze, at the end of Besenval, ii., p. 369. Who is to be believed, Desèze, who pretends that Besenval gave no orders, or Besenval, who confesses before his judges that he had a strong desire to drive away that crowd, and that he gave orders to charge?-Hist. Parl., ii., p. 89.

136 THE ASSEMBLY APPLIES TO THE KING IN VAIN.

had sought, found, and taken them; and already a man in his shirt, without either shoes or stockings, had taken the place of the sentinel, and with his gun on his shoulder was resolutely mounting guard at the door of the hall.*

The electors declined the responsibility of authorising the insurrection. They only granted the convocation of the districts, and sent a few of their friends "to the posts of the armed citizens, to entreat them, in the name of their native land, to suspend riotous meetings and acts of violence." They had begun that evening in a very serious manner. Some French guards having escaped from their barracks, formed in the Palais Royal, marched against the Germans, and avenged their comrade. They killed three of the cavalry on the boulevard, and then marched to the Place Louis XV., which they found evacuated.

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On Monday, July 13th, Guillotin the deputy, with two electors, went to Versailles, and entreated the Assembly to concur in establishing a citizen guard." They gave a terrible description of the crisis of Paris. The Assembly voted two deputations, one to the king, the other to the city. That to the king obtained from him only a cold unsatisfactory answer, and a very strange one when blood was flowing: That he could make no alterations in the measures he had taken, that he was the only judge of their necessities, and that the presence of the deputies at Paris could do no good. The indignant Assembly decreed :—1st, that M. Necker bore with him the regret of the nation; 2ndly, that it insisted on the removal of the troops; 3rdly, that not only the ministers, but the king's counsellors, of whatever rank they might be, were personally responsible for the present misfortunes; 4thly, that no power had the right to pronounce the infamous word "bankruptcy." The third article sufficiently designated the queen and the princes, and the last branded them with reproach. The Assembly thus resumed its noble attitude; unarmed in the middle of the troops, without any other support than the law, threatened that very evening to be dispersed or made away

* Procès-Verbal des Électeurs, i., p. 180. Compare Dussaulx, Œuvre des Sept Jours. Dussaulx, who wrote some time after, often inverts the order of the facts.