XVII.
The mob, on quitting the Assembly, had marched in close columns to the Carrousel. Santerre and Alexandre, at the head of their battalions, directed the movement. A compact mass of the insurgents, followed by the Rue St. Honoré. The other branches of the populace, cut off from the main body, thronged the courts of the Manège and the Feuillants, and tried to make room for themselves by issuing violently by one of the avenues which communicated with the garden from these courts. A battalion of the national guard defended the approach to this iron gate. The weakness or complaisance of a municipal officer freed the passage, and the battalion fell back, and took up its ground beneath the windows of the Château. The crowd traversed the garden in an oblique direction, and passing before the battalions, saluted them with cries of Vive la nation! bidding them take their bayonets from their muskets. The bayonets were removed, and the mob then passed out by the entrance of the Port Royal, and fell back upon the gates of the Carrousel, which shut off this place from the Seine. The guards at these wickets again gave way, to allow a certain number of the malcontents to enter, and then shut the doors. These men, excited by their march, songs, the acclamations of the Assembly, and by intoxication, rushed with furious clamours into the court-yards of the Château. They ran to the principal doors, pressed upon the soldiers on guard, called their comrades without to come to them, and forced the hinges of the royal entrance gate. The municipal officer, Panis, gave orders that it should be opened. The Carrousel was forced, and the mob seemed for a moment to hesitate before the cannon pointed against them, and some squadrons of gendarmerie, drawn up in a line of battle. Saint Prix, who commanded the artillery, separated from his guns by a movement of the crowd, sent to the second in command an order to let them fall back in the door of the Château. He refused to obey: "The Carrousel is forced," he said in a loud voice, "and so must be the Château. Here, artillery men, here is the enemy!" And he pointed to the king's windows, turned his guns, and levelled them at the palace. The troops following this desertion of the artillery, remained in line, but took the powder from the pans of their muskets in sight of the people, in sign of fraternity, and allowed a free passage to the malcontents.
At this movement of the soldiers, the commandant of the national guard, who witnessed it, called from the court to the grenadiers, whom he saw at the windows of the Salle des Gardes, to take their arms, and defend the staircase. The grenadiers, instead of obeying, left the palace by the gallery leading to the garden.
Santerre, Théroigne, and Saint-Huruge hastened by the gate of the palace. The boldest and stoutest of the men in the mob went under the vault which leads from the Carrousel to the garden, dashed the artillerymen on one side, and seizing one of the guns, unlimbered it, and carried it in their arms to the Salle des Gardes, on the top of the grand staircase. The crowd, emboldened by this feat of strength and audacity, poured into the apartment and spread like a torrent throughout the staircase and corridors of the Château. All the doors were burst in, or fell beneath the shoulders and axes of the multitude. They shouted loudly for the king; only one door separated them, and this door was already yielding beneath the efforts of levers and blows of pikes from the assailants.
XVIII.
The king, relying on Pétion's promises, and the number of troops with which the palace was surrounded, had seen the assemblage of the mob without uneasiness.
The assault suddenly made on his abode had surprised him in complete security. Retired with the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his children to the interior apartments on the side of the garden, he had heard the distant thunder of the crowd without expecting that it was so soon to burst on him. The voices of his frightened servants, flying in all directions, the noise of doors burst open and falling on the floors, the shouts of the people as they approached, threw alarm suddenly amongst the family party, which had met in the king's bed-chamber. The prince, confiding, by his look, his wife, sister, and children to the officers and women of the household who surrounded them, went alone to the Salle du Conseil. He there found the faithful Marshal de Mouchy, who did not hesitate to offer the last days of his long life to his master; M. d'Hervilly, the commandant of the Constitutional Horse Guard, disbanded a few days previously; the governor Acloque, commandant of the battalion of the faubourg St. Marceau, at first a moderate republican, then, overcome by the private virtues of Louis XVI., was his friend, and ready to die for him; three brave grenadiers of the battalion of the faubourg St. Martin, Lecrosnier, Bridau, and Gossé, who alone remained at their post of the interior on the general defection, and ready to protect the king with their bayonets, men of the people, strangers at court, rallied round him by the sole sentiment of duty and affection, only defending the man in the king.
At the moment the king entered this apartment, the doors of the adjacent room, called the Salle des Nobles, were dashed in by the blows of the assailants. The king rushed forward to meet the danger. The door-panels fell at his feet, lance heads, iron-shod sticks, spikes were thrust through the opening. Cries of fury, oaths, imprecations accompanied the blows of the axe. The king, in a firm voice, ordered two devoted valets de chambre, who accompanied him, Hue, and de Marchais, to open the doors. "What have I to fear in the midst of my people?" said the prince, boldly advancing towards the assailants.
These words, his advancing step, the serenity of his brow, the respect of so many ages for the sacred person of the king, suspended the impetuosity of the ringleaders, and they appeared to hesitate in crossing the threshold they had burst open. During this doubtful moment, the Marshal de Mouchy, Acloque, the three grenadiers and two servants, made the king retreat a few paces, and then placed themselves between him and the populace. The grenadiers presented their bayonets, and for a moment kept the crowd at bay. But the increasing mob pushed forward the first ranks. The first who pressed in was a man in rags, with naked arms, haggard eyes, and foaming at the mouth. "Where is the veto?" he said, thrusting in the direction of the king's breast a long stick with an iron dart at the end. One of the grenadiers pressed down this stick with his bayonet, and thrust aside the arm of this infuriated creature. The brigand fell at the feet of the citizen, and this act of energy imposed on his companions, and they trampled upon the man as he lay. Pikes, hatchets, and knives were lowered or withdrawn. The majesty of royalty resumed its empire for a moment, and this mob restrained itself at a certain distance from the king, in an attitude rather of brutal curiosity than of ferocity.
XIX.
Several officers of the National Guard, roused by the report of the king's danger, had hastened to join the brave grenadiers, and made a space round Louis XVI. The king, who had but one thought, which was to keep the people away from the apartment in which he had left the queen, ordered the door of the Salle de Conseil to be closed behind him. He was followed by the multitude into the salon of the Œil de Bœuf, under pretence that this apartment, from its extent, would allow a greater quantity of citizens to see and speak with him. He reached the room surrounded by a vast and turbulent crowd, and was happy at finding that only himself was exposed to blows from weapons of all kinds, which thousands of hands brandished over his head; but as he turned his head he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, who extended her arms, and was anxious to rush towards him.
She had escaped from the women who retained the queen and children in the bed-chamber. She adored her brother, and wished to die with him. Young, excessively beautiful, and deeply respected at court, for the piety of her life and her passionate devotion to the king, she had renounced all love from her intense affection for her family. Her dishevelled hair, her eyes swimming with tears, her arms extended towards the king, gave to her a despairing and sublime expression. "It is the queen!" exclaimed several women of the faubourgs. This name, at such a moment, was a sentence of death. Some miscreants rushed towards the king's sister with uplifted arms, and were about to strike her, when the officers of the palace undeceived them. The venerated name of Madame Elizabeth made them drop their arms. "Ah! what are you doing?" exclaimed the princess sorrowfully; "let them suppose I am the queen; dying in her place, I might perhaps have saved her." At these words an irresistible movement of the crowd thrust Madame Elizabeth violently from her brother, and drove her into the opening of one of the windows of the salle, where the crowd which hemmed her in still contemplated her with respect.
XX.
The king was in a deep recess of the centre window; Acloque, Vaunot, d'Hervilly, twenty volunteers and national guards, made him a rampart with their bodies. Some of the officers drew their swords. "Put your swords into their scabbards," said the king, calmly, "this multitude is more excited than guilty." He got upon a bench in the window, the grenadiers mounted beside him, the others in front of him; they thrust aside, parried, and lowered the sticks, scythes, and pikes lifted above the heads of the people. Ferocious vociferations now rose confusedly from this irritated mass. "Down with the veto!—the camp of Paris! give us back our patriotic ministers! where is the Austrian woman?" Some ringleaders advanced from the ranks every moment to utter louder threats and menaces of death to the king. Unable to reach him through the hedge of bayonets crossed in front of him, they waved beneath his eyes and over his head hideous flags, with sinister inscriptions, ragged breeches, the guillotine, the bleeding heart, the gibbet. One of them tried perpetually to reach the king with his lance in his hand; it was the same cut-throat who, two years before, had washed with his own hands in a pail of water the heads of Berthier and Foulon, and, carrying them by the hair to the Quai de la Ferraille, had thrown them amongst the people for symbols of carnage, and incentives to fresh murders.
A fair young man, elegantly dressed, with menacing gesture continually attacked the grenadiers, and cut his fingers with their bayonets in order to move them aside and make a clear passage. "Sire—Sire!" he shouted, "I summon you in the name of one hundred thousand souls who surround me, to sanction the decree against the priests: that is death!" Other persons in the crowd, although armed with drawn swords, pistols, and pikes, made no violent gestures, and warded off every attempt on the life of the king. There were even seen expressions of respect and grief in the countenances of a great many. In this review of the Revolution, the people displayed themselves as very terrible, but did not identify themselves with assassins. A certain order began to establish itself in the staircases and apartments: the crowd, pressed by the crowd, after having seen the king, and uttered threats against him, wandered into other apartments, and went triumphantly over this palace of despotism.
Legendre the butcher drove before him, in order to find room, these hordes of women and children accustomed to tremble at his voice. He made signs that he desired to speak, and silence being established, the national guard separated a little in order to allow him to address the king. "Monsieur!" he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder: the king, at this word, which was a degradation, made a movement of offended dignity; "yes, Sir," continued Legendre, with more emphasis on the word, "listen to us; you were made to listen to us! you are a traitor! you have deceived us always—you deceive us again; but beware! the measure is heaped up. The people are weary of being your plaything and your victim." Legendre, after these threatening words, read a petition in language as imperious, in which he demanded, in the name of the people, the restitution of the Girondist ministers and the immediate sanction of their decrees. The king replied with intrepid dignity, "I will do what the constitution orders me to do."
XXI.
Scarcely had one sea of people gone away, than another succeeded. At each new invasion of the mob, the strength of the king and the small number of his defenders was exhausted in the renewed struggles with a crowd which never wearied. The doors no longer sufficed to the impatient curiosity of these thousands of men assembled in this pillory of royalty; they entered by the roof, the windows, and the high balconies which open on to the terraces. Their climbing up amused the multitude of spectators crowded in the gardens. The clapping of hands, the cheers of laughter of this multitude without encouraged the assailants. Menacing dialogues in loud tones took place between the malcontents above and the impatient who were below. "Have they struck him?—is he dead?—throw us the heads!" they shouted. Members of the Assembly, Girondist journalists, political characters, Garat, Gorsas, Marat, mingled in this crowd, and uttered their jokes as to this martyrdom of shame to which the king was being subjected. There was for a moment a report of his assassination.
There was no cry of horror thereat among the populace, which raised its eyes towards the balcony, expecting to see the carcase. Still, in the very whirlwind of its passion, the multitude appeared to require reconciliation. One of the multitude handed a bonnet rouge to Louis XVI. at the end of a pike. "Let him put it on! let him put it on!" exclaimed the mob, "it is the sign of patriotism, if he puts it on we will believe in his good faith." The king made a signal to one of his grenadiers to hand him the bonnet rouge, and smiling, he put it on his head; and then arose shouts of Vive le Roi! The people had crowned its chief with the symbol of liberty, the cap of democracy replaced the bandeau of Rheims. The people were conquerors, and felt appeased.
However, fresh orators, mounting on the shoulders of their comrades, demanded incessantly of the king, sometimes by entreaties, sometimes with threats, to promise the recall of Roland, and the sanction of the decrees. Louis XVI., invincible in his constitutional resistance, eluded, or refused to acquiesce in the injunctions of the malcontents. "Guardian of the prerogative of the executive power, I will not surrender to violence," he answered: "this is not the moment for deliberation, when it is impossible to deliberate freely." "Do not fear, sire," said a grenadier of the national guard to him. "My friend," was the king's reply, taking his hand, and placing it on his breast, "place your hand there, and see if my heart beats quicker than usual." This action, and the language of unshaken intrepidity, seen and heard in the crowd, had its effect on the rebels.
A fellow in tatters, holding a bottle in his hand, came towards the king, and said, "if you love the people, drink to their health!" Those who surrounded the prince, afraid of poison as much as the poignard, entreated the king not to drink. Louis XVI., extending his arm, took the bottle, raised it to his lips, and drank "to the nation!" This familiarity with the multitude, represented by a beggar, consummated the king's popularity. Renewed cries of Vive le Roi! burst from all tongues and reached even the staircases: these cries created consternation in the terrace of the garden amongst the groups who were expecting a victim, and thus learnt that his executioners were softened.
XXII.
Whilst the unfortunate prince thus contended alone against a whole people, the queen, in another apartment, was undergoing the same outrages and the same torments; more hated than the king, she ran more risks. Agitated nations require to have their hatreds personified as well as their love. Marie Antoinette represented in the eyes of the nation all the corruptions of courts, all the pride of despotism, and all the infamies of treason. Her beauty, her youthful inclination for pleasure, tenderness of heart provoked by calumny into excesses, the blood of the house of Austria, her pride, which she derived from her nature even more than from her blood, her close connection with the Comte D'Artois, her intrigues with the emigrants, her presumed complicity with the coalition, the scandalous or infamous libels disseminated against her for four years—made this princess the spied victim of public opinion. The women despised her as a guilty wife, the patriots detested her as a conspirator, political men feared her as the counsellor of the king. The name of Autrichienne which the people gave her, summed up all their alleged wrongs against her. She was the unpopularity of a throne of which she should have been the grace and forgiveness.
Marie Antoinette was aware of this hatred of the people to her person. She knew that her presence beside the king would be a provocation to assassination. This was the motive that restrained her to remain alone with her children in the bed-chamber. The king hoped that she was forgotten, but it was the queen particularly the women of this mob sought and called for in terms the most offensive for a wife, a woman, and a queen.
The king was scarcely surrounded by the masses of people in the Œil de Bœuf than the doors of the sleeping apartment were beset with the same uproar and violence. But this party was principally composed of women. Their weaker arms were not so efficient against oaken panels and stout hinges. They called to their assistance the men who had carried the piece of ordnance into the Salle des Gardes, and they hastened to them. The queen was standing up, pressing her two children to her bosom, and listening with mortal anxiety to the vociferations at her door. She had near her no one but M. de Lajard, minister of war,—alone, powerless, but devoted; a few ladies of her suite, and the Princesse de Lamballe, that friend of her happy and unhappy hours. Daughter-in-law of the Duc de Penthièvre, and sister-in-law of the Duc d'Orleans, the Princesse de Lamballe had succeeded in the queen's heart to that deep affection which Marie Antoinette had long entertained for the Comtesse de Polignac. The friendship of Marie Antoinette was adoration. Chilled by the coldness of the king, who had the virtues only, and not the graces of a husband; detested by the people, weary of the throne, she gave vent in private predilections to the overflow of a heart equally desirous and void of sentiment. This favouritism was even accused; the queen was calumniated in her very friendships.
The Princesse de Lamballe, a widow at eighteen, free from any suspicion of levity, above all ambition and every interest from her rank and fortune, loved the queen as a friend. The more adverse were the fortunes of Marie Antoinette, the more did her young favourite desire to share them with her. It was not greatness, but misfortune, that attracted her. Surintendante of the household, she lodged in the Tuileries, in an apartment adjacent to the queen, to share with her her tears and her dangers. She was sometimes obliged to be absent in order to go to the Château de Vernon to watch over the old Duc de Penthièvre. The queen, who foresaw the coming storm, had written to her some days before the 20th of June a touching letter, entreating her not to return. This letter, found in the hair of the Princesse de Lamballe after her assassination, and unknown until now, discloses the tenderness of the one and the devotion of the other.
"Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are perfectly recovered. The good Duc de Penthièvre would be sorry and distressed, and we must all take care of his advanced age, and respect his virtues. I have so often told you to take heed of yourself, that if you love me you must think of yourself; we shall require all our strength in the times in which we live. Oh do not return, or return as late as possible. Your heart would be too deeply wounded; you would have too many tears to shed over my misfortunes, you who love me so tenderly. This race of tigers which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself if it knew all the sufferings we undergo. Adieu, my dear Lamballe; I am always thinking of you, and you know I never change."
Madame Lamballe, contrary to this advice, made all haste to return, and clung to the queen as though she sought to be struck with the same blow. By her side were also other courageous women,—the Princesse de Tarente, Latrémouille, Mesdames de Tourzel, de Mackau, de La Roche-Aymon.
M. de Lajard, a cool soldier, responsible to the king and himself for so many dear and sacred lives, collected in haste by the secret passages which communicated with the sleeping chamber and the interior of the palace, several officers and national guards wandering about in the tumult. He had the queen's children brought to her, in order that their presence and appearance, by softening the mob, might serve as a buckler to their mother. He himself opened the doors. He placed the queen and her ladies in the depth of the window. They wheeled in front of this the massive council-table, in order to interpose a barrier between the weapons of the malcontents and the lives of the royal family. Some national guards were around the table on each side, and rather in advance of it. The queen, standing up, held by the hand her daughter, then fourteen years of age.
A child of noble beauty and precocious maturity, the anxieties of the family in the midst of whom she had grown up had already reflected their weight and sorrow in her features. Her blue eyes, her lofty brow, aquiline nose, light brown hair, floating in long waves down her shoulders, recalled at the decline of the monarchy those young girls of the Gauls who graced the throne of the earlier races. The young daughter pressed closely against her mother's bosom, as though to shield her with her innocence. Born amidst the early tumults of the Revolution, dragged to Paris captive amidst the blood of the 6th of October, she only knew the people by its turbulence and rage. The Dauphin, a child of seven years old, was seated on the table in front of the queen. His innocent face, radiant with all the beauty of the Bourbons, expressed more surprise than fear. He turned to his mother at every moment, raising his eyes towards her as though to read through her tears whether he should have confidence or alarm. It was thus that the mob found the queen as it entered and defiled triumphantly before her. The calming produced by the firmness and confidence of the king was already perceptible in the faces of the multitude. The most ferocious of the men were softened in the presence of weakness—beauty—childhood. A lovely woman, a queen, humiliated,—a young innocent girl,—a child, smiling at his father's enemies, could not fail to awaken sensibility even in hatred. The men of the suburbs moved on silent, and as if ashamed, before this group of humiliated greatness. Some of them the more cowardly made as they passed derisive or vulgar gestures, which were a dishonour to the insurrection. Their indignant accomplices checked them in their insolence, and made these dastards quit the room as speedily as possible. Some even addressed looks of sympathy and compassion, others smiles, and others a few familiar words to the dauphin. Conversations, half menacing, half respectful, were exchanged between the child and the throng. "If you love the nation," said a volunteer to the queen, "put the bonnet rouge on your son's head." The queen took the bonnet rouge from this man's hands, and placed it herself on the dauphin's head. The astonished child took these insults as play. The men applauded, but the women, more implacable towards a woman, never ceased their invectives. Obscene words, borrowed from the sinks of the fish-market, for the first time echoed in the vaults of the palace, and in the ears of these children. Their ignorance in not comprehending their meaning saved them from this horror. The queen, whilst she blushed to the eyes, did not allow her offended modesty to lessen her lofty dignity. It was evident that she blushed for the people, for her children, and not for herself. A young girl, of pleasing appearance and respectably attired, came forward and bitterly reviled in coarsest terms l'Autrichienne. The queen, struck by the contrast between the rage of this young girl and the gentleness of her face, said to her in a kind tone, "Why do you hate me? Have I ever unknowingly done you any injury or offence?" "No, not to me," replied the pretty patriot; "but it is you who cause the misery of the nation." "Poor child!" replied the queen; "some one has told you so, and deceived you. What interest can I have in making the people miserable? The wife of the king, mother of the dauphin, I am a Frenchwoman by all the feelings of my heart as a wife and mother. I shall never again see my own country. I can only be happy or unhappy in France. I was happy when you loved me."
This gentle reproach affected the heart of the young girl, and her anger was effaced in a flood of tears. She asked the queen's pardon, saying, "I did not know you, but I see that you are good." At this moment Santerre made his way through the crowd. Easily moved, and sensitive though coarse, Santerre had roughness, impetuosity, and feelings easily affected. The faubourgs opened before him and trembled at his voice. He made an imperious sign for them to leave the apartment, and thrust these men and women by the shoulders towards the door in front of the Œil de Bœuf. The current advanced by opposite issues of the palace, and the heat was suffocating. The dauphin's brow reeked with perspiration beneath the bonnet rouge. "Take the cap off the child," shouted Santerre; "don't you see he is half stifled." The queen darted a mother's glance at Santerre, who came towards her, and placing his hand on the table, he leaned towards Marie Antoinette and said, in an under tone, "You have some very awkward friends, madame; I know those who would serve you better!" The queen looked down, and was silent. It was from this moment that may be dated the secret understanding which she established with the agitators of the faubourgs. The leading malcontents received the queen's entreaties with complacency. Their pride was flattered in raising the woman whom they had degraded. Mirabeau, Barnave, Danton had in turns sold or offered to sell the influence of their popularity. Santerre merely offered his compassion.
XXIII.
The Assembly had again resumed its sitting on the news of the invasion of the Château. A deputation of twenty-four members was sent as a safeguard for the king. Arriving too late, these deputies wandered in the crowded court-yard, vestibules, and staircases of the palace. Although they felt repugnance at the idea of the last crime being committed on the person of the king, they were not very grievously afflicted in their hearts at this long-threatened insult to the court. Their steps were lost in the crowd, their words in the uproar. Vergniaud himself, from a top step of the grand staircase, vainly appealed to order, legality, and the constitution. The eloquence, so powerful to incite the masses, is powerless to check them. From time to time the royalist deputies, highly indignant, returned to the chamber, and, mounting the tribune, with their clothes all in disorder, reproached the Assembly with its indifference. Amongst these more conspicuously, Vaublanc, Ramond, Becquet, Girardin. Mathieu Dumas, La Fayette's friend, exclaimed, as he pointed to the windows of the Château, "I am just come from there; the king is in danger! I have this moment seen him, and can bear witness to the testimony of my colleagues MM. Isnard and Vergniaud in their unavailing efforts to restrain the people. Yes, I have seen the hereditary representative of the nation insulted, menaced, degraded! I have seen the bonnet rouge on his head. You are responsible for this to posterity!" They replied to him by ironical laughter and uproarious shouts. "Would you imply that the bonnet of patriots is a disgraceful mark for a king's brow?" said the Girondist, Lasource; "will it not be believed that we are uneasy as to the king's safety? Let us not insult the people by lending it sentiments which it does not possess. The people do not menace either the person of Louis XVI. or the prince royal. They will not commit excess or violence. Let us adopt measures of mildness and conciliation." This was the perfidious lulling of Pétion, and the Assembly was put to sleep by such language.
XXIV.
Pétion himself could not for any length of time feign ignorance of the gathering of 40,000 persons in Paris since the morning, and the entry of this armed mob into the Assembly and the Maison of the Tuileries. His prolonged absence recalled to mind the sleep of La Fayette on the 6th of October; but the one was an accomplice, and the other innocent. Night approached, and might conceal in its shades the disorders and attempts which would go even beyond the views of the Girondists. Pétion appeared in the court-yard, amidst shouts of Vive Pétion! They carried him in their arms to the lowest steps of the staircase, and he entered the apartment where for three hours Louis XVI. had been undergoing these outrages. "I have only just learned the situation of your majesty," said Pétion. "That is very astonishing," replied the king, in a tone of deep indignation, "for it is a long time that it has lasted."
Pétion, mounted on a chair, then made several addresses to the mob, without inducing it to move in the least. At length, being put on the shoulders of four grenadiers, he said, "Citizens, male and female, you have used with moderation and dignity your right of petition; you will finish this day as you began it. Hitherto your conduct has been in conformity with the law, and now in the name of the law I call upon you to follow my example and to retire."
The crowd obeyed Pétion, and moved off slowly through the long avenue of apartments of the chateau. Scarcely had the mass begun to grow perceptibly less, than the king, released by the grenadiers from the recess in which he had been imprisoned, went to his sister, who threw herself into his arms: he went out of the apartment with her by a side door, and hastened to join the queen in her apartment. Marie Antoinette, sustained until then by her pride against showing her tears, gave way to the excess of her tenderness and emotion on again beholding the king. She threw herself at his feet, and clasping his knees, sobbed bitterly but not loudly. Madame Elizabeth and the children, locked in each other's arms, and all embraced by the king, who wept over them, rejoiced at finding each other as if after a shipwreck, and their mute joy was raised to heaven with astonishment and gratitude for their safety. The faithful national guard, the generals attached to the king, Marshal de Mouchy, M. d'Aubier, Acloque, congratulated the king on the courage and presence of mind he had displayed. They mutually related the perils which they had escaped, the infamous remarks, gestures, looks, arms, costumes, and sudden repentance of this multitude. The king at this moment having accidently passed a mirror, saw on his head the bonnet rouge, which had not been taken off; he turned very red, and threw it at his feet, then casting himself into an arm-chair, he raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and looking at the queen, exclaimed, "Ah, madame! why did I take you from your country to associate you with the ignominy of such a day?"
XXV.
It was eight o'clock in the evening. The agony of the royal family had lasted for five hours. The national guard of the neighbouring quarters, assembling by themselves, arrived singly, in order to lend their aid to the constitution. There were still heard from the king's apartment tumultuous footsteps, and the sinister cries of the columns of people, who were slowly filing off by the courts and garden. The constitutional deputies ran about in indignation, uttering imprecations against Pétion and the Gironde. A deputation of the Assembly went over the château in order to take cognisance of the violence and disorder resulting from this visitation of the faubourgs. The queen pointed out to them the forced locks, the bursten hinges, the bludgeons, pike irons, panels, and the piece of cannon loaded with small shot, placed on the threshold of the apartments. The disorder of the attire of the king, his sister, the children, the bonnets rouges, the cockades forcibly placed on their heads; the dishevelled hair of the queen, her pale features, the tremulousness of her lips, her eyes streaming with tears, were tokens more evident than these spoils left by the people on the battle ground of sedition. This spectacle moistened the eyes, and excited the indignation, even of the deputies most hostile to the court. The queen saw this: "You weep, sir?" she said to Merlin. "Yes, madame," replied the stoic deputy; "I weep over the misfortunes of the woman, the wife, and the mother; but my sympathy goes no further. I hate kings and queens!"
Such was the day of the 20th of June. The people displayed discipline in disorder, and forbearance in violence: the king, heroic intrepidity in his resignation; and some of the Girondists, a cold brutality which gives to ambition the mask of patriotism.
XXVI.
Every thing was preparing in the departments to send to Paris the 20,000 troops ordered by the Assembly. The Marseillais, summoned by Barbaroux at the instigation of Madame Roland, were approaching the capital. It was the fire of the soul in the south coming to rekindle the revolutionary hearth, which, as the Girondists believed, was failing in Paris. This body of twelve or fifteen hundred men was composed of Genoese, Ligurians, Corsicans, Piedmontese, banished from their country and recruited suddenly on the shores of the Mediterranean; the majority sailors or soldiers accustomed to warfare, and some bandits, hardened in crime. They were commanded by young men of Marseilles, friends of Barbaroux and Isnard. Rendered fanatic by the climate and the eloquence of the provincial clubs, they came on amidst the applauses of the population of central France, received, fêted, overcome by enthusiasm and wine at the patriotic banquets which hailed them in constant succession on their way. The pretext of their march was to fraternise, at the federation of the 14th of July[25], with the other fédérés of the kingdom. The secret motive was to intimidate the Parisian national guard, to revive the energy of the faubourgs, and to be the vanguard of that camp of 20,000 men which the Girondists had made the Assembly vote, in order at the same time to control the Feuillants, the Jacobins, the king, and the Assembly itself, with an army from the departments wholly composed of their creatures. The sea of people was violently agitated on their approach. The national guard, the fédérés, the popular societies, children, women, all that portion of the population which lives on excitement of the streets, and runs after public spectacles, flew to meet the Marseillais. Their bronzed faces, martial appearance, eyes of fire, uniforms covered with the dust of their journey, their Phrygian head-dress, their strange weapons, the guns they dragged after them, the green branches which shaded their bonnets rouges, their strange language mingled with oaths, and accentuated by savage gestures, all struck the imagination of the multitude with great force. The revolutionary idea appeared to have assumed the guise of a mortal, and to be marching under the aspect of this horde, to the assault of the last remnant of royalty. They entered the cities and villages beneath triumphal arches. They sang terrible songs as they progressed. Couplets, alternated by the regular noise of their feet on the road, and by the sound of drums, resembled chorusses of the country and war, answering at intervals to the clash of arms and weapons of death in a march to combat. This song is graven on the soul of France.
XXVII.
THE MARSEILLAISE.
I.
Allons, enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous, de la tyrannie
L'étendart sanglant est levé.
Entendez-vous dans ces campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats!
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes!—
Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!
II.
Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves
Ces fers dès longtemps preparés?
Français, pour nous ah! quel outrage,
Quels transports il doit exciter!
C'est nous qu'on ose méditer
De rendre à l'antique esclavage;
Aux armes, &c.
III.
Quoi! des cohortes étrangères
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers?
Quoi! ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers?
Grand Dieu! par des mains enchainées,
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient;
De vils despotes deviendraient
Les maîtres de nos destineés!
Aux armes, &c.
IV.
Tremblez, tyrans! et vous, perfides,
L'opprobre de tous les partis!
Tremblez, vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leur prix!
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:
S'ils tombent nos jeunes héros,
La terre en produit les nouveaux,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre.
Aux armes, &c.
V.
Français, en guerriers magnanimes,
Portez ou retenez vos coups;
Epargnez ces tristes victimes
A regret s'armant contre nous.
Mais ces despotes sanguinaires,
Mais les complices de Bouillé,
Tous ces tigres sans pitié
Déchirent le sein de leur mère.
Aux armes, &c.
VI.
Amour sacré de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Liberté, liberté chérie,
Combats avec tes défenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux que la Victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents;
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!
Aux armes, &c.
VERSE SUNG BY CHILDREN
Nous entrerons dans la carrière,
Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus;
Nous y trouverons leur poussière,
Et la trace de leurs vertus!
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre!
Aux armes, &c.[26]
XXVIII.
These words were sung in notes alternately flat and sharp, which seemed to come from the breast with sullen mutterings of national anger, and then with the joy of victory. They had something as solemn as death, but as serene as the undying confidence of patriotism. It seemed a recovered echo of Thermopylæ—it was heroism sung.
There was heard the regular footfall of thousands of men walking together to defend the frontiers over the resounding soil of their country, the plaintive notes of women, the wailing of children, the neighing of horses, the hissing of flames as they devoured palaces and huts; then gloomy strokes of vengeance, striking again and again with the hatchet, and immolating the enemies of the people, and the profaners of the soil. The notes of this air rustled like a flag dipped in gore, still reeking in the battle plain. It made one tremble—but it was the shudder of intrepidity which passed over the heart, and gave an impulse—redoubled strength—veiled death. It was the "fire-water" of the Revolution, which instilled into the senses and the soul of the people the intoxication of battle. There are times when all people find thus gushing into their national mind accents which no man hath written down, and which all the world feels. All the senses desire to present their tribute to patriotism, and eventually to encourage each other. The foot advances—gesture animates—the voice intoxicates the ear—the ear shakes the heart. The whole heart is inspired like an instrument of enthusiasm. Art becomes divine; dancing, heroic; music, martial; poetry, popular. The hymn which was at that moment in all mouths will never perish. It is not profaned on common occasions. Like those sacred banners suspended from the roofs of holy edifices, and which are only allowed to leave them on certain days, we keep the national song as an extreme arm for the great necessities of the country. Ours was illustrated by circumstances, whence issued a peculiar character, which made it at the same time more solemn and more sinister: glory and crime, victory and death, seemed intertwined in its chorus. It was the song of patriotism, but it was also the imprecation of rage. It conducted our soldiers to the frontier, but it also accompanied our victims to the scaffold. The same blade defends the heart of the country in the hand of the soldier, and sacrifices victims in the hand of the executioner.
XXIX.
The Marseillaise preserves notes of the song of glory and the shriek of death: glorious as the one, funereal like the other, it assures the country, whilst it makes the citizen turn pale. This is its history.
There was then a young officer of artillery in garrison at Strasbourg, named Rouget de Lisle. He was born at Lons-le-Saunier, in the Jura, that country of reverie and energy, as mountainous countries always are. This young man loved war like a soldier—the Revolution like a thinker. He charmed with his verses and music the slow dull garrison life. Much in request from his twofold talent as musician and poet, he visited the house of Dietrick, an Alsatian patriot (maire of Strasbourg), on intimate terms. Dietrick's wife and young daughters shared in his patriotic feelings, for the Revolution was advancing towards the frontiers, just as the affections of the body always commence at the extremities. They were very partial to the young officer, and inspired his heart, his poetry, and his music. They executed the first of his ideas hardly developed, confidantes of the earliest flights of his genius.
It was in the winter of 1792, and there was a scarcity in Strasbourg. The house of Dietrick was poor, and the table humble; but there was always a welcome for Rouget de Lisle. This young officer was there from morning to night, like a son or brother of the family. One day, when there was only some coarse bread and slices of ham on the table, Dietrick, looking with calm sadness at De Lisle, said to him, "Plenty is not seen at our feasts; but what matter if enthusiasm is not wanting at our civic fêtes, and courage in our soldiers' hearts. I have still a bottle of wine left in my cellar. Bring it," he added, addressing one of his daughters, "and we will drink to liberty and our country. Strasbourg is shortly to have a patriotic ceremony, and De Lisle must be inspired by these last drops to produce one of those hymns which convey to the soul of the people the enthusiasm which suggested it." The young girls applauded, fetched the wine, filled the glasses of their old father and the young officer until the wine was exhausted. It was midnight, and very cold. De Lisle was a dreamer; his heart was moved, his head heated. The cold seized on him, and he went staggering to his lonely chamber, endeavouring, by degrees, to find inspiration in the palpitations of his citizen heart; and on his small clavicord, now composing the air before the words, and now the words before the air, combined them so intimately in his mind, that he could never tell which was first produced, the air or the words, so impossible did he find it to separate the poetry from the music, and the feeling from the impression. He sung every thing—wrote nothing.
XXX.
Overcome by this divine inspiration, his head fell sleeping on his instrument, and he did not awake until daylight. The song of the over night returned to his memory with difficulty, like the recollections of a dream. He wrote it down, and then ran to Dietrick. He found him in his garden. His wife and daughters had not yet risen. Dietrick aroused them, called together some friends as fond as himself of music, and capable of executing De Lisle's composition. Dietrick's eldest daughter accompanied them, Rouget sang. At the first verse all countenances turned pale, at the second tears flowed, at the last enthusiasm burst forth. The hymn of the country was found. Alas! it was also destined to be the hymn of terror. The unfortunate Dietrick went a few months afterwards to the scaffold to the sound of the notes produced at his own fireside, from the heart of his friend, and the voices of his daughters.
The new song, executed some days afterwards at Strasbourg, flew from city to city, in every public orchestra. Marseilles adopted it to be sung at the opening and the close of the sittings of its clubs. The Marseillais spread it all over France, by singing it every where on their way. Whence the name of Marseillaise. De Lisle's old mother, a royalist and religious, alarmed at the effect of her son's voice, wrote to him: "What is this revolutionary hymn, sung by bands of brigands, who are traversing France, and with which our name is mingled?" De Lisle himself, proscribed as a royalist, heard it and shuddered, as it sounded on his ears, whilst escaping by some of the wild passes of the Alps. "What do they call that hymn?" he inquired of his guide. "The Marseillaise," replied the peasant. It was thus he learnt the name of his own work. The arm turned against the hand that forged it. The Revolution, insane, no longer recognised its own voice!