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DEATH OF FOULON AND BERTHIER.

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That illegal power, invoked for everything, but powerless in all things, weakened still further by its fortuitous association with the ancient eschevins, having nobody for its head but the worthy Bailly, the new mayor, and for its arm only Lafayette, the commander of a scarcely organised national guard, was now about to find itself in face of a terrible necessity.

They heard almost at the same time that Berthier had been arrested at Compiègne, and that Foulon was being conducted back again. For the former, they assumed a responsibility both serious and bold (fear is so sometimes), that of telling the people of Compiègne : "That there was no reason for detaining M. Berthier." They replied that he would then be assuredly killed at Compiègne, and that he could only be saved by conducting him to Paris.

As to Foulon, it was decided: That henceforth delinquents of that description should be lodged in the Abbaye, and that these words should be inscribed over the door: "Prisoners

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entrusted to the care of the nation.' This general measure,

taken in the interest of one man, secured for the ex-counsellor his trial by his friends and colleagues, the ancient magistrates, the only judges of that time.

All that was too evident; but also well watched by keensighted men, the attorneys and the Basoche, by annuitants, enemies of the minister of bankruptcy, and lastly, by many men who held public securities and were ruined by the fall in the funds. An attorney filed an indictment against Berthier, for his deposits of guns. The Basoche maintained that he had moreover one of those deposits with the abbess of Montmartre, and obliged a search to be made. La Grève was full of men, strangers to the people, of a decent exterior," and some very well dressed. The Exchange was at La Grève.

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People came at the same time to the Hôtel-de-Ville, to denounce Beaumarchais, another financier, who had stolen some papers from the Bastille. They ordered them to be taken back.

It was thought that the poor, at all events, might be kept silent by filling their mouths; so they lowered the price of bread by means of a sacrifice of thirty thousand francs per day, the price was fixed at thirteen sous and a half the four pounds (equal to twenty sous at the present time).

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The multitude of La Grève did not vociferate the less.

At

two, Bailly descends; all demand justice. "He expounded the principles," and made some impression on those who were within hearing. The others shouted: "Hang! Hang him!" Bailly prudently withdrew, and shut himself up in the Bureau des Subsistances. The guard was strong, said he, but M. de Lafayette, who relied on his ascendancy, had the imprudence to lessen it.

The crowd was in a terrible fever of uneasiness lest Foulon should escape. He was shown to them at a window; nevertheless, they broke open the doors: it became necessary to place him in a chair in front of the bureau, in the great hall of Saint-Jean. There, they began to preach to the crowd again, to" expound the principles," that he must be judged. "Judged instantly, and hung!" cried the crowd. So saying, they appointed judges, among others two curés, who refused. "Make room there for M. de Lafayette!" He arrives, speaks in his turn, avows that Foulon is a villain, but says it is necessary to discover his accomplices; "Let him be conducted to the Abbaye!" The front ranks, who heard him, consented; not so the others. "You are joking," exclaimed a welldressed man, "does it require time to judge a man who has been judged these thirty years?" At the same time, a shout is heard, and a new crowd rushes in; some say: "It is the faubourg," others: "It is the Palais Royal." Foulon is carried off and dragged to the lamp opposite; they make him demand pardon of the nation. Then hoist him.The rope broke twice. They persisted, and go for a new one. At length, having hung him, they chopped off his head, and carried it through Paris.

Meanwhile, Berthier has just arrived by the Porte SaintMartin, through the most frightful mob that was ever seen : he had been followed for twenty leagues. He was in a cabriolet, the top of which they had broken to pieces in order to see him. Beside him sat an elector, Etienne de la Rivière, who was twenty times near being killed in defending him, and shielding him with his body. A furious mob was dancing on before him; others flung black bread into the carriage:"Take that, brigand, that is the bread you made us eat!"

What had also exasperated all the population about Paris

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was, that amid the scarcity, the numerous cavalry collected by Berthier and Foulon, had destroyed or eaten a great quantity of young green corn. This havoc was attributed to the orders of the intendant, to his firm resolution to prevent there being any crop and to starve the people.

To adorn that horrible procession of death, they carried before Berthier, as in the Roman triumphs, inscriptions to his glory" He has robbed the king and France. He has devoured the substance of the people. He has been the slave of the rich, and the tyrant of the poor. He has drunk the blood of the widow and the orphan. He has cheated the king. He has betrayed his country.'

At the fountain Maubuée, they had the barbarity to shew him Foulon's head, livid, with the mouth full of hay. At that sight his eyes were glazed; he smiled a ghastly smile.

They forced Bailly at the Hôtel-de-Ville to take his examination. Berthier alleged superior orders. The minister was his father-in-law, it was the same person. Moreover, if the hall of Saint-Jean was inclined to listen a little, La Grève neither listened nor heard; the vociferations were so dreadful, that the mayor and the electors felt more uneasy every moment. A new crowd of people having forced its way through the very mass, it was no longer possible to hold out. The mayor, on the advice of the board, exclaimed: "To the Abbaye!" adding that the guards were answerable for the prisoner. They could not defend him; but, seizing a gun, he defended himself. He was stabbed with a hundred bayonets ; a dragoon, who imputed his father's death to him, tore out his heart, and ran to show it at the Hôtel-de-Ville.

The spectators in La Grève, who had watched from the windows the tact of the leaders in urging and exciting the mob, believed that Berthier's accomplices had taken their measures well, in order that he might not have the time to make any revelation. He alone, perhaps, possessed the real intentions of the party. They found in his portfolio the description of the persons of many friends of liberty, who, doubtless, had no mercy to expect, if the court conquered.

• Histoire de la Révolution de '89, par deux amis de la liberté (Kerverseau et Clavelin, jusqu'au t. 7,) t. 2, p. 130. See also the account of Etienne de a Rivière, in the Procès-verbal des Electeurs.

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EMBARRASSMENT OF THE ASSEMBLY.

However this may be, a great number of the comrades of the dragoon declared to him, that having dishonoured the company he must die, and that they would all fight him till he was killed. He was killed the same evening.

CHAPTER III.

FRANCE IN ARMS.

Embarrassment of the Assembly.-It engages the People to confide in it, July 23rd.-Distrust of the People; Fears of Paris; Alarm of the Provinces.-Conspiracy of Brest; the Court compromised by the English Ambassador, July 27th.-Fury of the old Nobles and new Nobles: Menaces and Plots.-Terror in the Rural Districts.-The Peasants take up arms against the Brigands, Burn the Feudal Charters, and set fire to several Châteaux.-July to August, 1789.

THE vampires of the ancien régime, whose lives had done so much harm to France, did still more by their death.

Those people, whom Mirabeau termed so well "the refuse of public contempt," are as if restored to character by punishment. The gallows becomes their apotheosis. They are now become interesting victims, the martyrs of monarchy; their legend will go on increasing in pathetic fictions. Mr. Burke canonized them and prayed on their tomb.

The acts of violence of Paris, and those of which the provinces were the theatre, placed the National Assembly in a difficult position, from which it could not well escape.

If it did not act, it would seem to encourage anarchy and authorise murder, and thus furnish a text for eternal calumny. If it attempted to remedy the disorder, and raise fallen authority, it restored, not to the king, but to the queen and the court, the sword that the people had shivered in their hands.

In either hypothesis, despotism and caprice were about to be re-established, either for the old royalty or the royalty of the mob. At that moment they were destroying the odious symbol of despotism-the Bastille; and behold another Bastille-arbitrary rule-again springing up.

England rubs her hands with glee at this, and is grateful to

EMBARRASSMENT OF THE ASSEMBLY.

the Lanterne. never disappear."

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"Thank God," says she, "the Bastille will

What would you have done? Tell us, you officious counsellers, you friendly enemies, sages of European aristocracy, you who so carefully pour calumny on the hatred you have planted. Sitting at your ease on the dead bodies of Ireland, Italy, and Poland, deign to answer; have not your revolutions of interest cost more blood than our revolutions of ideas?

What would you have done? Doubtless what was advised on the eve and the morrow of the 22nd of July, by LallyTollendal, Mounier, and Malouet; to re-establish order, they wished that power should be restored to the king. Lally put his whole trust in the king's virtues. Malouet wanted them to entreat the king to use his power and lend a strong hand to the municipal authority. The king would have armed, and not the people; no national guard. Should the people complain, why then let them apply to the Parliament and the Attorney-General. Have we not magistrates? Foulon was a magistrate. So Malouet would send Foulon to the tribunal of Foulon.

It is necessary, they very truly said, to repress disturbances. Only it was necessary to come to a right understanding. This word comprehended many things:

Thefts, other ordinary crimes, pillaging committed by a starving population, murders of monopolists, irregular judgment pronounced on the enemies of the people, resistance offered to their plottings, legal resistance, resistance in arms. All comprised in the word troubles. Did they wish to suppress all with an equal hand? If royal authority was charged to repress the disturbances, the greatest in its estimation was, most certainly, the taking of the Bastille; it would have punished that first.

This was the reply made by Buzot and Robespierre on the 20th of July, two days before the death of Foulon; and this was what Mirabeau said, in his journal, after the event. He set this misfortune before the Assembly in its true light,—the absence of all authority in Paris, the impotency of the electors, who, without any lawful delegation of power, continued to exercise the municipal functions. He wished municipalities to be organised, invested with strength, and who should under

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