CHAPTER VI.
THE NATION AND THE BASTILLE.—VERDICT FOR THE
FORMER.
At the end of the fifteenth day the Abbé Fortin had his furniture retouched, and when three months had expired I had finished the carpentry work for M. Drouet.
The work was estimated at five hundred francs, the materials alone costing a hundred and twenty; so that I received three hundred and eighty, with the compliments of my two masters on the excellency of my workmanship.
Whilst I was still engaged on the completion of the order, M. Drouet advanced me five hundred francs, to enable me to buy the wood, and at the same time, to take my lessons in the use of implements of warfare, and purchase useful books.
The warrant expected from M. Necker, for the convocation of the Etats Généraux, had appeared. For the first time, a great nation, or a great kingdom, as M. Dampierre said, admitted all its members to political rights.
No sooner had the warrant appeared (which can be translated in these words:—“All will assemble to elect; all will write their grievances in the books given to them for that purpose”) than all France thrilled, as it were, with an electric shock, and the people leapt from darkness into light.
That cry, treasured up for two centuries, becomes stronger and stronger every day. They complain that the year 1788 was barren; that the winter was bitterly cold; that the famine in the following spring was terrible.
They went to the municipality of St. Menehould, to write in the books; and my capital penmanship procured me the office of secretary.
Afterwards, they went to election. MM. Drouet, Guillaume, and Billaud exercised enormous influence.
M. Dampierre was balloted with a poor parish priest. The priest prevailed over him.
The event deceived all. The Etats, which ought to have opened on the 27th of April, were adjourned to the 4th of May.
The Court was frightened, and delayed the matter as long as it could.
All France had its eyes turned to Paris. Every hour brought forth unexpected events.
On the 5th of May, the opening of the Etats, in the procession from Versailles, the King was applauded, and the Queen hissed.
On the 8th of May, the three classes were changed into two—the one formed of the third class, the other of the nobility and clergy.
On the 18th of June, the assembly hall was closed by order of the King.
On the 22nd of June, the oath of Jeu-de-Pauvre was taken.
This oath was the declaration of war from the third Etat against the nobility and clergy. It was the first menace direct from the people against the throne.
All in a moment, these comparatively small events ceased, and a portentous calm intervened, so to speak, as if the minor combatants held their weapons to intently watch the issue of the combat between their superiors.
On the 12th of July, M. Drouet started for Paris.
It was the day of the dismissal of Necker—it was the day when Camille Desmoulins, jumping on a table in a café, drew his sword, and crying, “To arms!” placed the leaf of a tree in his hat.
We had no news of M. Drouet up to the 15th.
On the morning of the 15th, MM. Dampierre and De Valmy went out hunting, to which sport were invited two or three of their friends from Clermont and Varennes; among others, a certain Chevalier de Courtemont, whom we shall come across later on.
It was evident that the hunt was but a secondary affair, and that the real object was to meet and hear the news from Paris.
M. Dampierre had heard, on the 13th, that Paris was on fire, and the Court at Versailles guarded by German troops,—Benzenval commanding, under the old Marshal de Broglie.
The theatres were shut. The dismissal of Necker had, to a certain extent, paralyzed the public mind. Statues of him and of the Duke of Orleans were covered with crape, and paraded through the streets of Paris.
The procession, armed with sticks, swords, and pistols, after having passed through the streets Saint Martin and Saint Honoré, arrived at the Place Vendome.
There one division stopped, and having dispersed the people, destroyed the bust of the Prince and the Duke of Orleans, and put to death a French guard who disdained to fly.
That was not all.
M. de Bezenval had put a detachment of Swiss and four pieces of cannon in battery on the Champs Elysées, the crowd retired to the Tuileries, and the Prince de Lambese, a German, charged upon them with his cavalry, inoffensive though they were, and was the first to enter, on horseback, the gardens of the Tuileries. A barricade stopped him. From the back of that barricade, stones and bottles were thrown at him. He perceived that a group of men were shutting the gate, to take him prisoner. He ordered a retreat, and, in flying, crushed one man under his steed, and severely wounded another with a blow from his sabre.
The crowd now entered the armorers’ shops, and ransacked them.
The cannons were mounted on the Bastille, which was reinforced by another detachment of Swiss.
They knew nothing more on the night of the 13th, nor on the next day.
M. Dampierre ordered that if news came in the day, it was to be delivered to my uncle.
At four o’clock the sport finished, and they returned to the house. A dinner, prepared as usual, awaited them.
The companions remained at table, visibly preoccupied; the conversation was nothing but conjectures. They spoke in strong terms of the National Assembly. They wished to have been in the place of M. Brézé, of M. de Bezenval, of M. de Lambese; they were sure that they could have done better than they did.
The Queen was too good, not to have commanded the Swiss to exterminate the wretches.
At six o’clock, M. Dampierre’s servant brought a despatch. It was dated the morning of the 14th.
On the night of the 13th the people had forced the doors of the Invalides, and had taken thirty thousand muskets. They had also forced the doors of the Arsenal with sledge-hammers, and had taken seven or eight tons of powder. That powder had been distributed under the lamp-lights. Each man bearing a musket received fifty cartridges.
The Court had ordered all the foreign regiments, useful to royalty, to be at hand, if wanted.
M. de Launay, the Governor of the Bastille, who knew his unpopularity, and upon whom they could count, because of that unpopularity, had pledged himself to blow the Bastille into the air, along with half Paris, before he would surrender.
This news the companions thought good, as it promised a desperate resistance.
On the other hand, who were the people who menaced royalty? Men ignorant of the use of fire-arms, undisciplined, and without leaders, who would retreat at the first cannon-shot, and fly at the first charge.
How could that rabble hold out against practised soldiers, who feared not death, but disgrace?
On mastering the despatch, M. Dampierre told each guest to fill his glass; then, lifting his own, “To the victory of the King, and the extermination of the rebels!” he cried. “Drink with me, gentlemen.”
“To the victory of the King, and the extermination of the rebels!” cried all, with one voice.
But before they had time to put the glasses to their lips, a furious gallop, coming from the direction of Paris, was heard; and, shouting with joy, a horseman, with a tricolor in his hat, shot past like a whirlwind, crying to M. Dampierre and his friends these words—not less terrible than those that Belshazzar read, in letters of fire, on the wall,—“The Bastille is taken! Long live the people!”
The horseman was Jean Baptiste Drouet, who was riding at full speed to announce to his friends at Varennes the news of the victory that the people had obtained over their King.
This news which he proclaimed in every city and in every village that he passed, brightened his route with a flash vivid as lightning.