A.D. 1789.] DEMAND OF THE PEOPLE FOR ARMS. Swiss, who modelled busts in wax; this Curtius being the uncle of madame Tussaud, of London fame, in the same line. They seized on the busts of Necker and of the duke of Orleans, who, it was said, was to be banished; and, covering them with black crape, carried them through the streets, crying, "Hats off! hats off!" The cry was, "No theatres! no dancing! It is a day of woe!" The mob, armed with pistols, clubs, swords, and axes, continued their procession along the rue Richelieu; then turning on the Boulevard, along the rues St. Martin, St. Denis, St. Honoré, to the Place Vendôme, where they paraded the busts round the statue of Louis XIV., which stood where the Bonaparte column now stands. There a German squadron was drawn up before the hotel of the farmers-general, and attacked the crowd, destroyed the busts, and killed a soldier of the French guard who stood his ground. The commandant, Bezenval, remained inactive in the Ecole Militaire; he was without orders from Broglie; and, besides, dared not trust the French guards, but kept them close in their barracks. But he had three foreign regiments at his disposal, one of Swiss and two of German cavalry. Towards afternoon, seeing the disorder increase, he sent the Swiss into the Champs Elysées with four pieces of cannon, and the German cavalry into the Place Louis Quinze, adjoining. Towards evening, the crowd, returning from the Champs Elysées, entered the gardens of the Tuileries, where they saw the German cavalry drawn up, but continued to pass on. It is said that some of the mob insulted the Germans, and some boys threw stones; whereupon Bezenval, who had been accused at Versailles of doing nothing, ordered the prince Lambesc to charge them with the cavalry, and drive them back. Lambesc at first attempted to repel the throng by advancing only at a foot-pace, but he was opposed by a barricade of the chairs, which are let out in thousands in these resorts, and was assailed by showers of stones. He then fired over the heads of the people. The women raised piercing shrieks, the men pressed on to close the gates behind him. Lambesc rushed forward, overturning an old schoolmaster who was not alert enough to get behind the railing, and so was severely injured. As Lambesc was marching along the Chaussée d'Antin, he was met by a body of the French guards, who had escaped from their barracks to avenge their slain comrade. They fired on him and killed three of the German cavalry, and wounded numbers more. They then advanced with fixed bayonets to the Place Louis Quinze, where the Swiss guards were posted. There they and the Swiss remained facing each other under arms all night, the people feasting and encouraging the French guards; who, however, did not come to blows with the Swiss. Lambesc had continued his route Do St. Cloud, leaving the city all night in the hands of the mob, who burnt the barriers at the different entrances, so as to allow free access to the people from the country; and broke open the gunsmiths' shops, and carried off the arms. 449 ing arms and ringing the tocsin. The few electors who were there endeavoured to calm them; but fresh crowds came pouring in, and crying "Arms! arms!" The electors shrank from the responsibility of giving out the arms there, but the people forced their way in, and began to seize them for themselves. The electors were compelled to give way, and soon was seen a man clad only in his shirt, without shoes or stockings, placing himself, with a musket on his shoulder, as sentinel at the door of the hall. On the Monday morning, by six o'clock, the alarm bells were ringing from all the churches in the city; the tocsin was sounding from the Hôtel de Ville, and the crowds again ran thither, demanding arms and ammunition. The electors, in despair, declared that they could not issue arms without the order of the provost of trades. "Then send for him!" cried the mob; and Flesselles, the provost, was sent for. He had just been sent for by the king to Versailles, but he felt the necessity of obeying the people first, for the crowd was thickly interspersed with the thieves which figured so prominently at the destruction of Reveillon's house, and which always seem to start out of the ground on these occasions. He was received with loud applause in the Place de Grève, and he was patronisingly polite. "You shall be satisfied, my children; I am your father." He declared that he would not wish to hold office except by the election of the people. (Fresh applause.) Flesselles assured the crowd that he had made a contract with a gunsmith for a large quantity of muskets; a thing, considering the shortness of the time since the disturbances began, wholly incredible. Yet he promised them twelve thousand that day, and more the next. He demanded who should be their general. Some of the electors proposed Lafayette, some one, some another. The people grew rabid with impatience; they wanted arms, not arguments. The famishing multitude, hearing that there was a great hoard of corn at the monastery of St. Lazare, rushed away, broke in, found corn enough to load fifty carts, which were sent to the market, and there distributed. They seized sixty barrels of gunpowder on the Seine; attacked the Guarde Meuble, and seized the arms there, which, however, were old and nearly useless. They grew impatient, and demanded that Flesselles should inform them where the thirty thousand stand of arms which the intendant Berthier had had made were concealed. Не promised to discover, and send them to the Hôtel de Ville. About five o'clock in the evening, a number of carts were seen traversing the Grève, with large chests, marked "Artillery." Behold the expected muskets! they cried. The chests were broken open, and they were discovered to be only chests of old rags! There was a terrible cry of rage, and exclamations of treachery. Flesselles stood confounded; but some one near him, to extricate him from his perilous situation, declared that there was a great and concealed depôt of arms at the monastery of the Celestins, the Chartreux. The crowd hastened thither; the monks had none, and the fury now rose to a tremendous pitch. To avert sanguinary consequences, the electors gave orders for the manufacture of fifty thousand pikes, of which thirty-six thousand were made in as many hours. During all this night, however, Paris was in the hands of the mob, who tore up the pave The crowds who had dispersed themselves over Paris carried everywhere the most horrible reports of the savage cruelty of the German cavalry; of their firing upon, and running over women and children. The indignation became furious. Thousands rushed to the Hôtel de Ville, demand-ments and carried the stones into the houses, to be dropped on the heads of the military, should they enter the city; dug deep trenches, and threw up barricades. All round the Hôtel de Ville carriages were stopped, wagons intercepted, and travellers were waiting permission to proceed on their way. The powder seized on the Seine was brought to the Hôtel de Ville; there it was distributed amid circumstances of the most imminent peril to the place and all in it. The abbé Lefebre d'Onnesson, a man of the highest courage, charged himself with the task of distributing the powder to the furious crowd. During eight-and-forty hours he remained on an actual mine. The insensate claimants fought and struggled for the combustible material amid the light man found in arms, and wearing this cockade, without having been enrolled in this body by his district, was to be apprehended, disarmed, and punished. And thus arose the national guard of Paris. During these proceedings, the national assembly was sitting at Versailles in the utmost agitation. On the morning of the 13th, Mounier had risen and censured the dismissal of the ministers, and had been seconded by Lally-Tollendal, who had pronounced a splendid panegyric on Necker, and recommended an address to the king for his recall. M. de Virieu, a deputy of the noblesse, proposed to confirm by an oath the proceedings of the 17th of June; but Clermont of lanterns and candles, and one drunken fellow sate and Tonnerre declared that unnecessary, as the assembly hal smoked on the open casks of powder! Whilst these scenes were going on all around, and the city was menaced every moment by troops, by the raving multitude, and by whole squadrons of thieves and assassins, the electors were busily employed in organising a city-guard. But, previous to entering on this task, it was necessary to establish some sort of municipal authority more definite and valid than that of the electors at large. A requisition was then presented to the provost of trades (prévôt des marchands) to take the head. A number of electors were appointed his assistants. Thus was formed a municipality of sufficient powers. It was then determined that this militia, or guard, should consist of forty-eight thousand men furnished by the districts. They were to wear not the green, but the Parisian cockade, of red and blue. Every over. It appointed M. de La Fayette vice-president, in the place of the aged bishop of Vienne, who was not capable of so much exertion. The court itself was not less agitated. It declared that the duke of Orleans had stirred up this émeute, and the fact of his bust having been carried in procession gave a colour to the charge. But the duke himself had hastened to Versailles, and pretended that he had no concern whatever in the business. He was requested to remain in the palace, and having, as they thought, the author of the insurrection under their hands, the court was more at ease. Alarming tidings continued to reach Versailles through the night. The assembly having adjourned for a short time, met again at five in the morning on this the 15th of July. As if raised above all temporary perils, it at once appointed a committee to proceed with the constitution. The members of this committee were Talleyrand, the bishop of Autun; the bishop of Bordeaux, Messrs. Lally-Tollendal, ClermontTonnerre, Mounier, Sieyes, Chapelier, and Bergasse. Intelligence more and more alarming continued to arrive. It was rumoured that the king would quit the place the following night, and the assembly would be left to the mercy of the foreign regiments. It was even mentioned what members of it were to be secured. It was said that the princes, the queen, and the duchesse de Polignac were walking in the orangery flattering the officers and soldiers, and causing refreshments to be distributed amongst them. There is little doubt that a grand plan of a coup-d'etat had been arranged. Paris was to be attacked on the ensuing night, that between the 15th and 16th of July, at seven points. The troops had been advanced for the purpose. Paper money had been prepared. The barracks of the Swiss guards had been stored with ammunition, and the governor of the Bastille had furnished them everything that could possibly be spared. But the court had hesitated too long. The people had taken the start of them, and now came sounds which paralysed the court party with consternation. The prince de Lambesc was seen galloping up the avenue at Versailles at fullest speed; the roar of cannon came from the side of Paris-the people had attacked the Bastille! A second deputation had been dispatched to the palace entreating the king to withdraw the troops from Paris; no answer had been received, and a third was sent. As it was on its way the answer to the former one came, saying the king had ordered the troops to withdraw from the Champ de Mars; and having heard of the formation of the civic guard, had appointed officers to it. The third deputation held on its way, and the king appeared much agitated, and declared that the orders to the trocps could not have produced the calamities the deputies reported. On receiving this answer the assembly adjourned for a short time, and in the evening the news of the events of the 14th arrived. On the night of the 13th, numbers of the populace crowded about the Bastille. From that hour there were heard in different parts of Paris cries of "To the Bastille! down with the Bastille ! to the Bastille!" The Bastille, the old state prison of Paris, standing near the Faubourg St. Antoine, had long had throughout Europe a horrible name. It had not been at all the prison of the people, yet they had learnt to detest it as the gloomy instrument of royal despotism. The traditions of this horrible fortress were such as made the flesh creep and the blood run cold. It had been the living tomb of whomsoever had excited the jealousy of the monarchs by their freedom of sentiment, or had offended by their aspiring too boldly in the paths of their passions or desires. The word of an envious courtier, or a revengeful priest, or a haughty mistress, had been able to plunge into its dungeons in a moment the noblest hearts of France age after age. The mysterious story of the man in the iron mask had made the Bastille a word of horror even in the furthest wilds of Siberia. The tale of Latude, plunged into its dungeons at the instance of the king's mistress, madame de Pompadour, who had lain there for five-and-thirty years, who was liberated only by the indefatigable and heroic exertions of another woman, and who was yet living, and had told the awful tale in his memoirs, had caused a universal curse to issue from the hearts of the French people. As the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine and of the Marais saw its eight ponderous towers daily standing aloft in their view, they cursed it. These towers, six feet thick at their summits, and from thirty to forty feet at their bases, had resisted all the efforts of the great Condé to storm them. These towers rose above dungeons which had heard the groans and maledictions of thousands of sufferers, who never escaped to reveal their miseries. The fortress was surrounded by three courts, with their deep moats crossed by drawbridges The giant walls of these courts presented solid masses without windows, having only narrow loop-holes in the towers, from which the garrison could fire on any assailant. At the feet of these ponderous walls, deep, as it were, in pits, in profound shadow, and with nothing exposed to view but the inexorable nakedness of the walls, were the promenades of the prisoners, their very senses oppressed by the Titanic solidity around them. The battlements of the towers were cut for the accommodation of cannon, which could sweep the whole Faubourg St. Antoine and the Marais, and whence, from behind the solid parapet, the gunners could act in perfect security. On the face of the prison wall was a clock, supported by two figures of captives in chains, reminding the prisoners of their own condition, and recalling to them the creeping slowness of time. Besides the cannon on the towers, it had an arsenal in one of the courts, with cannon loaded with case-shot. On the towers also were kept six cart-loads of paving-stones, cannon-balls, and masses of iron, to cast down on the heads of assailants. Such was the place which the people now meditated attacking. The idea was not new. The demand for its destruction appeared in the instructions of the deputies, when first sent to the states-general, and it had been growing. Fortunately for the people, the greater part of the ammunition and balls had been removed to the Swiss barracks, and it contained only a garrison of thirty-two Swiss and eighty-two invalids. The governor, De Launay, has been painted by some historians as a mild and amiable man; but such is not the testimony of the best French historians. He is described as hard, stern, and avaricious. That, besides his pay of sixty thousand livres, he managed to amass yearly as much by his rapine; that he supported his household at the cost of the prisoners, had reduced their food, and made a profit on their wine-which, in fact, was but vinegar, and on their few miserable articles of furniture; that the only spot where the prisoners could get a breath of free air and a gleam of sunshine, a small garden on a bastion, he had let to a gardener, and had shut them out of it. "This base and avaricious soul," says Michelet, "had that which sunk its courage: he knew that he was known; the terrible memoirs of Linguet had made De Launay famous throughout Europe. The Bastille was detested, but the governor was detested, too, personally; and when, at length, he heard the terrible cries of the people, he felt that they were as much for him as for the monstrous old dungeon, and his heart sank within him." 453 Twice we find him starting forth on its bloody career: once to condemn the Bastille, once to denounce Robespierre; and each time with mortal effect. Thuriot would admit of no refusal. He entered, and told De Launay that he came to summon the Bastille to surrender in the name of the people and of France. De Launay appeared confused, even terrified. He told Thuriot that he had hauled back the guns, as he had been desired; but Thuriot, desirous to spy out the strength or weakness of the place, insisted on entering the prison, and ascending to the towers. Arrived there, Thuriot saw the guns were actually drawn back, and he demanded of the garrison that they should not fire on the people. The invalides readily promised, the Swiss were silent. As they gazed from the battlements, a hundred and forty feet high, what a scene presented itself! The streets, the squares, the garden of the arsenal, all swarming with people, and the population of the Faubourg St. Antoine advancing in one black mass. The governor turned pale. He seized Thuriot by the arm, crying, "What have you done? You abuse the character of a deputy; you have betrayed me!" They stood together on the tower; De Launay had his sentinels at hand, Thuriot appeared in his power; but the immovable man said, "Monsieur, one word more, and I swear that one of us shall go headlong into the fosse!" At that moment, a sentinel approached Thuriot, saying, "For God's sake, monsieur, show yourself. The people are impatient of your delay; they are advancing to attack us." Thuriot looked over the battlements, and the people, observing him, raised a deafening shout. And now scarcely was midnight passed on this eventful 14th of July, when the throngs increased rapidly around the Bastille, and the cries grew fiercer, "Down with it!" "Let us storm it!" There were suddenly a number of tnuskets discharged at the sentinels on the towers. De Launay, with an officer, ascended to the battlements; he heard only the distant hum of the city, and descended again. The populace had run off to the Hospital of Invalides, to seize the thirty thousand muskets there. When they had demanded them the day before, Bezenval had coolly replied that he would write to Versailles about it. Bezenval had then no fear. He had sent the governor, Sombreuil, a strong detachment of artillery, and he could take any assailing mob in flank, with his regiments of the Ecole - Militaire. But since then he had found that the French troops would not fight against the people; they As Thuriot quitted the Bastille, he said to the garrison, were actually going off in numbers to join them, and the "I shall report at the Hôtel de Ville, and the people, I Germans and Swiss were not numerous enough to engage trust, will send a civic guard to keep the Bastille with you." with the whole excited city, aided by the soldiery. At But, whilst he was gone on this errand, the crowd grew five o'clock in the morning a man entered, pale and first impatient, then furious. They advanced impetuously agitated, bidding him in God's name, to make no resistance; against the first drawbridge. Two men mounted the roof the barriers were all burst, the people were coming for the of the guard-house, and, with axes, cut the chains of the arms, and to endeavour to prevent them would only cause bridge, which fell down. The mass of assailants rushed torrents of unavailing blood to flow. Before nine o'clock, forwards towards the second bridge, but were met by a distwenty thousand men were in front of the Invalides; the charge of musketry, which did deadly execution amongst city solicitor at their head, the lawyers' clerks of the them, and brought them to a stand. The firing proceeded parliament of Paris in the crowd, in their old red robes; at once from the towers and from the loop-holes below. A several companies of French guards, and the curé of St. number of the assailants fell, whilst only two of the muskets Etienne-du-Mont actively marshalling the throng. Som-fired by the people during the whole day took effect. One breuil entreated them to wait till he received his answer from Versailles, but the leader replied they had no time to lose; the crowd rushed in, and carried off twenty-eight thousand muskets and twenty pieces of cannon. De Launay had made all necessary preparations, charged a dozen long guns on the towers with balls of a pound and A half each, disposed his little force to the best advantage. At an early hour, the committee at the Hôtel de Ville dispatched a deputation to him, requesting him to draw back his guns, promising that, if he did not fire, he should not be attacked. But this was promising for a party over which the authorities at the Hôtel de Ville had no power. As their deputation quitted the Bastille, a very different kind of man entered. This was Thuriot, a deputy of the district of St. Louis de le Culture. Thuriot was a man violent, audacious, destitute of human respect, unconscious of fear or pity. He was the very genius of this fiery revolution. only of the Swiss was killed. The muskets were already arriving at the Hôtel de Ville. A deputation was dispatched, with Fauchet at its head; but, amid the firing and the smoke, they were neither heard nor seen. A second followed, headed by the solicitor of the city, and accompanied by a flag and a drum. The soldiers on the towers displayed a white flag, and reversed their arms. The firing by the people ceased, and they followed the deputation into the court, when they were suddenly assailed by a murderous fire, and several men were killed at the side of the deputies. It is supposed that this came from the Swiss, who, being below, had not seen the white flag hoisted by the invalides. The people were seized with an inexpressible rage. They believed that they had been drawn into the court insidiously to be murdered, and they vowed that they would make a bridge of their dead bodies for others to advance over them to the attack. At this crisis, the people found |