THE BASTILLE INVADED BY THE PEOPLE.

157

from a cannon. Two subaltern officers prevented the crime; they crossed their bayonets, and barred his passage to the magazines. He then made a show of killing himself, and seized a knife, which they snatched from him.

He had lost his senses and could give no orders.* When the French Guards had ranged their cannon and fired (according to some), the captain of the Swiss saw plainly that it was necessary to come to terms; he wrote and passed a note,† in which he asked to be allowed to go forth with the honours of war. Refused. Next, that his life should be spared. Hullin and Elie promised it. The difficulty was to perform their promise. To prevent a revenge accumulating for ages, and now incensed by so many murders perpetrated by the Bastille, was beyond the power of man. An authority of an hour's existence, that had but just come from La Grève, and was known only to the two small bands of the vanguard, was not adequate to keep in order the hundred thousand men behind.

The crowd was enraged, blind, drunk with the very sense of their danger. And yet they killed but one man in the fortress. They spared their enemies the Swiss, whom their smockfrocks caused to pass for servants or prisoners; but they ill-treated and wounded their friends the Invalids. They wished to have annihilated the Bastille; they pelted and broke to pieces the two captives of the dial; they ran up to the top of the towers to spurn the cannon; several attacked the stones, and tore their hands in dragging them away. They hastened to the dungeons to deliver the prisoners: two had become mad. One, frightened by the noise, wanted to defend himself, and was quite astonished when those who had battered down his door threw themselves into his arms and bathed him with their tears. Another, whose beard reached to his waist, inquired about the health of Louis XV., believing him to be still reigning. To those who asked him his name, he replied that he was called the Major of Immensity.

The conquerors were not yet at the end of their labours: in

* Even in the morning, according to Thuriot's testimony. See the Procèsverbal des électeurs.

fell;

note.

To fetch it, a plank was placed on the moat.

The first who ventured, the second (Arné ?—or Maillard ?) was more lucky and brought back the

158

DEATH OF THE GOVERNOR.

the Rue Saint Antoine they had to fight a battle of a different kind. On approaching La Grève, they came successfully on crowds of men, who, having been unable to take any part in the fight, wanted at all events to do something, were it merely to massacre the prisoners. One was killed at the Rue des Tournelles, and another on the quay. Women, with dishevelled hair, came rushing forward, and recognizing their husbands among the slain, left them to fly upon their assassins; one of them, foaming at the mouth, ran about asking everybody for a knife.

De Launey was conducted and supported in that extreme danger by two men of extraordinary courage and strength, Hullin, and another. The latter went with him as far as the Petit Antoine, but was there torn from his side hy the rush of the crowd. Hullin held fast. To lead his man from that spot to La Grève, which is so near, was more than the twelve labours of Hercules. No longer knowing how to act, and perceiving that they knew De Launey only by his being alone without a hat, he conceived the heroic idea of putting his own upon his head; and, from that moment, he received the blows intended for the governor. * At length, he passed the Arcade Saint Jean; if he could but get him on the flight of steps, and push him towards the stairs, all was over. The crowd saw that very plainly, and accordingly made a desperate onset. The Herculean strength hitherto displayed by Hullin no longer served him here. Stifled by the pressure of the crowd around him, as in the crushing fold of an enormous boa, he lost his footing, was hurled to and fro, and thrown upon the pavement.

*The royalist tradition which aspires to the difficult task of inspiring interest for the least interesting of men, has pretended that De Launey, still more heroic than Hullin, gave him his hat back again, wishing rather to die than expose him. The same tradition attributes the honour of a similar deed to Berthier, the intendant of Paris. Lastly, they relate that the major of the Bastille, on being recognized and defended at La Grève, by one of his former prisoners, whom he had treated with kindness, dismissed him, saying: "You will ruin yourself without saving me." This last story, being authentic, very probably gave rise to the two others. As for De Launey and Berthier, there is nothing in their previous conduct to incline us to believe in the heroism of their last moments. The silence of Michaud, the biographer, in the article De Launey, drawn up from information furnished by that family, sufficiently shows that they did not believe in that tradition.

PRISONERS PARDONED BY THE PEOPLE.

159

Twice he regained his feet. The second time he beheld aloft the head of De Launey at the end of a pike.

Another scene was passing in the hall of Saint Jean. The prisoners were there, in great danger of death. The people were especially inveterate towards three Invalids, whom they supposed to have been the cannoneers of the Bastille. One was wounded; De la Salle, the commandant, by incredible efforts, and proclaiming loudly his title of commandant, at last managed to save him; whilst he was leading him out, the two others were dragged out and hung up to the lamp at the corner of the Vannerie, facing the Hôtel-de-Ville.

All this great commotion, which seemed to have caused Flesselles to be forgotten, was nevertheless what caused his destruction. His implacable accusers of the Palais Royal, few in number, but discontented to see the crowd occupied with any other business, kept close to the bureau, menacing him, and summoning him to follow them. At length he yielded: whether the long expectation of death appeared to him worse than death itself, or that he hoped to escape in the universal pre-occupation about the great event of the day. "Well! gentlemen," said he, "let us go to the Palais Royal." He had not reached the quay before a young man shot him through the head with a pistol bullet.

The dense multitude crowding the hall did not wish for bloodshed; according to an eye-witness, they were stupefied on beholding it. They stared gaping at that strange, prodigious, grotesque, and maddening spectacle. Arms of the middle ages and of every age were mingled together; centuries had come back again. Elie, standing on a table, with a helmet on his brow, and a sword hacked in three places, in his hand, seemed a Roman warrior. He was entirely surrounded by prisoners, and pleading for them. The French Guards demanded the pardon of the prisoners as their reward.

At that moment, a man, followed by his wife, is brought or rather carried in; it was the Prince de Montbarrey, an ancient minister, arrested at the barrier. The lady fainted; her husband was thrown upon the bureau, held down by the arms of twelve men, and bent double. The poor man, in that strange posture, explained that he had not been minister for a long time, and that his son had taken a prominent part in the revo

160

CLEMENCY OF THE PEOPLE.

lution of his province. De la Salle, the commandant, spoke for him, and exposed himself to great danger. Meanwhile, the people relented a little, and for a moment let go their hold. De la Salle, a very powerful man, caught him up, and carried him off. This trial of strength pleased the people, and was received with applause.

At the same moment, the brave and excellent Elie found means to put an end at once to every intention of trial or condemnation. He perceived the children of the Bastille, and began to shout: "Pardon! for the children, pardon!"

Then you might have seen sunburnt faces and hands blackened with gunpowder, washed with big tears, falling like heavy drops of rain after a shower. Justice and vengeance were thought of no longer. The tribunal was broken up; for Elie had conquered the conquerors of the Bastille. They made the prisoners swear fidelity to the nation, and led them away; the Invalids marched off in peace to their Hôtel; the French Guards took charge of the Swiss, placed them in safety within their ranks, conducting them to their own barracks, and gave them lodging and food.

What was most admirable, the widows showed themselves equally magnanimous. Though needy, and burdened with. children, they were unwilling to receive alone a small sum allotted to them; they shared it with the widow of a poor Invalid who had prevented the Bastille from being blown up, but was killed by mistake. The wife of the besieged was thus adopted, as it were, by those of the besiegers.

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

JULY TO OCTOBER, 1789.

CHAPTER I.

THE HOLLOW TRUCE.

Versailles, on the 14th of July.-The King at the Assembly, July 15th.— Paris in Mourning and Misery.-Deputation of the Assembly to the City of Paris, July 15th.-Hollow Truce.-The King goes to Paris on the 17th of July.-First Emigration: Artois, Condé, Polignac, &c.-The King's isolated Position.

THE Assembly passed the whole of the 14th of July in a state of two-fold trepidation, between the violent measures of the Court, the fury of Paris, and the chances of an insurrection, which, if unsuccessful, would stifle liberty. They listened to every rumour, and with their ears anxiously open imagined they heard the faint thunder of a distant cannonade. That moment might be their last; several members wished the bases of the constitution to be hastily established, that the Assembly, if it was to be dispersed and destroyed, should leave that testamentary evidence behind, as a beacon for the opponents of tyranny.

The Court was preparing the attack, and little was wanting for its execution. At two o'clock, Berthier, the intendant, was still at the military school, giving orders for the details of the attack. Foulon, his father-in-law, the under-minister of war, was at Versailles, completing the preparations. Paris was to be attacked, that night, on seven points simultaneously.* The council was discussing the list of the deputies who were

Bailly, i., pp. 391, 392.

M