The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3: The French Revolution, Volume 2 by Hippolyte A. Taine

     The sections.—Commissioners of the sections at the Hôtel-
     de-ville.—The revolutionary Commune is substituted for the
     legal Commune.

During the night of the 9th and 10th of August their government forms itself for action, it has been set up as it will behave, with violence and fraud.—In vain have they annoyed and worked on the sections for the past fortnight; they are not yet submissive, only six out of forty-eight at the present hour, eleven o'clock at night, being found sufficiently excited or purged to send their commissioners forthwith, with full power, to the Hôtel-de-ville. The others will follow, but the majority rests inert or recalcitrant.2667—It is necessary, therefore, to deceive or force this majority, and, to this end, darkness, the late hour, disorder, dread of the coming day, and the uncertainty of what to do, are precious auxiliaries. In many of the sections,2668 the meetings are already adjourned or deserted; only a few members of the permanent bureau in the room, with a few men, perhaps asleep, on the nearly empty benches. An emissary arrives from the insurgent sections, along with a company of trusty fellows belonging to the quarter, and cries out, Save the country! The sleepers open their eyes, stretch themselves, raise their hands, and elect whoever is designated, sometimes strangers and other unknown individuals, who will be disowned the coming day at a full meeting of the section. There is no official report drawn up, no balloting, the course pursued being the most prompt. At the Arsenal section, six electors present choose three among their own number to represent 1,400 active citizens. Elsewhere, a throng of shrews, night-brawlers and dishonorable persons, invade the premises, chase out the believers in law and order, and win all the desired appointments.2669 Other sections consent to elect, but without consenting to give power of attorney. Several make express reservations, stipulating that their delegates shall act in concert with the legal municipality, distrusting the future committee, and declaring in advance that they will not obey it. A few elect their commissioners only to obtain information, and, at the same time, to show that they intend earnestly to stop all rioting.2670 Finally, at least twenty sections abstain from or disapprove of the proceedings and send no delegates.—Never mind, they can be dispensed with. At three o'clock in the morning, 19 sections, and, at seven o'clock, 24 or 25,2671 are represented one way or another at the Town-hall (Hôtel-de-ville), and this representation forms a central committee. Anyhow, there is nothing to prevent seventy or eighty subordinate intriguers and desperadoes, who have slipped in or pushed through, from calling themselves authorized delegates and ministers plenipotentiary of the entire Paris population,2672 and to operate accordingly.—Scarcely are they installed under the presidency of Huguenin, with Tallien as secretary, when they issue a summons for "twenty-five armed men from each section," five hundred strapping lads, to act as guards and serve as an executive force.—Against a band of this description the municipal council, in session in the opposite chamber, is feeble enough. Moreover, the most moderate and firmest of its members, sent away on purpose, are on missions to the Assembly, at the palace, and in different quarters of Paris, while its galleries are crammed with villainous looking men, posted there to create an uproar, its deliberations being carried on under menaces of death.—That's why, as the night passes, the equilibrium between the two assemblages, one legal the other illegal, facing each other like the two sides of a scale, disappears. Lassitude, fear, discouragement, desertion, increase on one side, while numbers, audacity, force and usurpation increase on the other. At length, the latter wrests from the former all the acts it needs to start the insurrection and render defense impossible. About six o'clock in the morning the intruding committee, in the name of the people, ends the matter by suspending the legitimate council, which it then expels, and takes possession of its chairs.

The first act of the new sovereign rulers indicates at once what they mean to do. M. de Mandat, in command of the National guard, summoned to the Hôtel-de-ville, had come to explain to the council what disposition he had made of his troops, and what orders he had issued. They seize him, interrogate him in their turn,2673 depose him, appoint Santerre in his place, and, to derive all the benefit they can from his capture, they order him to withdraw one-half of his men stationed around the palace. Fully aware of what he was exposed to in this den of thieves, he nobly refuses; forthwith they consign him to prison, and send him to the Abbaye "for his greater safety." At these significant words from Danton,2674 he is murdered at the door as he leaves by Rossignol, one of Danton's acolytes, with a pistol-shot at arm's length.—After tragedy comes comedy. At the repeated entreaties of Pétion, who does not want to be requisitioned against the rioters,2675 they send him a guard of 400 men, thus confining him in his own house, and, apparently in spite of himself.

On one side, sheltered by treachery and, on the other side, by assassination, the insurrection may now go on in full security in front of the terrible hypocrite who solemnly complains of his voluntary captivity, and before the corpse, with shattered brow, lying on the steps of the Hôtel-de-ville. On the right bank of the river, the battalions of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and, on the left, those of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, the Bretons, and the Marseilles band, march forth as freely as if going to parade. Measures of defense are frustrated by the murder of the commanding general, and by the mayor's duplicity; there is not resistance on guarded spots, at the arcade Saint-Jean, the passages of the bridges, along the quays, and in the court of the Louvre. An advance guard of the mob, women, children, and men, armed with cutters, cudgels, and pikes, spread over the abandoned Carrousel, and, towards eight o'clock, the advance column, led by Westerman, appears in front of the palace.

VII.—August 10.

     The King's forces.—Resistance abandoned.—The King in the
     National Assembly.—Conflict at the palace and discharge of
     the Swiss Guard.—The palace evacuated by the King's order.
     —The massacres.—The enslaved Assembly and its decrees.

If the King had wanted to fight, he might still have defended himself, saved himself, and even been victorious.2676—In the Tuileries, 950 of the Swiss Guard and 200 gentlemen stood ready to die for him to the last man. Around the Tuileries, two or three thousand National Guard, the élite of the Parisian population, had just cheered him as he passed.2677 "Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for Louis XVI.! He is our King and we want no other; we want him only! Down with the rioters! Down with the Jacobins! We will defend him unto death! Let him put himself at our head! Hurrah for the Nation, the Law, the Constitution, and the King, which are all one! If the gunners were silent, and seemed ill-disposed,2678 it was simply necessary to disarm them suddenly, and hand over their pieces to loyal men. Four thousand rifles and eleven pieces of artillery, protected by the walls of the courts and by the thick masonry of the palace, were certainly sufficient against the nine or ten thousand Jacobins in Paris, most of them pikemen, badly led by improvised or rebellious battalion officers,2679 and, still worse, commanded by their new general, Santerre, who, always cautious, kept himself aloof in the Hôtel-de-ville, out of harm's way. The only staunch men in the Carrousel were the eight hundred men from Brest and Marseilles; the rest consisted of a rabble like that of July 14, October 5, and June 20;2680 the palace, says Napoleon Bonaparte, was attacked by the vilest canaille, professional rioters, Maillard's band, and the bands of Lazowski, Fournier, and Théroigne, by all the assassins, indeed of the previous night and day, and of the following day, which species of combatants, as was proved by the event, would have scattered at the first discharge of a cannon.—But, with the governing as with the governed, all notion of the State was lost, the former through humanity become a duty, and the latter through insubordination erected into a right. At the close of the eighteenth century, in the upper as well as in the middle class, there was a horror of blood;2681 refined social ways, coupled with an idyllic imagination, had softened the militant disposition. Everywhere the magistrates had forgotten that the maintenance of society and of civilization is a benefit of infinitely greater importance than the lives of a parcel of maniacs and malefactors; that the prime object of government, as well as of a police, is the preservation of order by force; that a gendarme is not a philanthropist; that, if attacked on his post, he must use his sword, and that, in sheathing it for fear of wounding his aggressors, he fails to do his duty.

This time again, in the court of the Carrousel, the magistrates on the spot, finding that "their responsibility is insupportable," concern themselves only with how to "avoid the effusion of blood;" it is with regret, and this they state to the troops, "in faltering tones," that they proclaim martial law.2682 They "forbid them to attack," merely "authorizing them to repel force with force;" in other words, they order them to stand up to the first fire; "you are not to fire until you are fired upon."—Still better, they go from company to company, "openly declaring that opposition to such a large and well-armed assemblage would be folly, and that it would be a very great misfortune to attempt it."—"I repeat to you," said Leroux, "that a defense seems to me madness."—Such is the way in which, for more than an hour, they encourage the National Guard. "All I ask," says Leroux again, "is that you wait a little longer. I hope that we shall induce the King to yield to the National Assembly."—Always the same tactics: hand the fortress and the general over rather than fire on the mob. To this end they return to the King, with Roederer at their head, and renew their efforts: "Sire," says Roederer, "time presses, and we ask you to consent to accompany us."—For a few moments, the last and most solemn of the monarchy, the King hesitates.2683 His good sense, probably, enabled him to see that a retreat was abdication; but his phlegmatic understanding is at first unable to clearly define its consequences; moreover, his optimism had never explored the vastness of the stupidity of the people, nor sounded the depths of human malice and spite; he cannot imagine that slander may transform his determination not to shed blood into a desire to shed blood.2684 Besides, he is bound by his past, by his habit of always yielding; by his determination, declared and maintained for the past three years, never to cause civil war; by his obstinate humanitarianism, and especially by his religious goodwill. He has systematically extinguished in himself the animal instinct of resistance, the flash of anger in all of us which starts up under unjust and brutal aggressions; the Christian has supplanted the King; he is no longer aware that duty obliges him to be a man of the sword that, in his surrender, he surrenders the State, and that to yield like a lamb is to lead all honest people, along with himself, to the slaughterhouse. "Let us go," said he, raising his right hand; "we will give, since it is necessary, one more proof of our self-sacrifice."2685 Accompanied by his family and Ministers, he sets out between two lines of National Guards and the Swiss Guard,2686 and reaches the Assembly, which sends a deputation to meet him; entering the chamber he says: "I come here to prevent a great crime. "—No pretext, indeed, for a conflict now exists. An assault on the insurgent side is useless, since the monarch, with all belonging to him and his government, have left the palace. On the other side, the garrison will not begin the fight; diminished by 150 Swiss and nearly all the grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, who served as the King's escort to the Assembly, it is reduced to a few gentlemen, 750 Swiss, and about a hundred National Guards; the others, on learning that the King is going, consider their services at an end and disperse.2687—All seems to be over in the sacrifice of royalty. Louis XVI. imagines that the Assembly, at the worst, will suspend him from his functions, and that he will return to the Tuileries as a private individual. On leaving the palace, indeed, he orders his valet to keep up the service until he himself returns from the National Assembly.2688

He did not count on the exigencies, blindness and disorders of the riot. Threatened by the Jacobin gunners remaining with their artillery in the inside courts, the gatekeepers open the gates. The insurgents rush in, fraternise with the gunners, reach the vestibule, ascend the grand staircase, and summon the Swiss to surrender.2689—These show no hostile spirit; many of them, as a mark of good humor, throw packets of cartridges out of the windows; some even go so far as to let themselves be embraced and led away. The regiment, however, faithful to its orders, will not yield to force.2690 "We are Swiss," replies the sergeant, Blaser; "the Swiss do not part with their arms but with their lives. We think that we do not merit such an insult. If the regiment is no longer wanted, let it be legally discharged. But we will not leave our post, nor will we let our arms be taken from us." The two bodies of troops remain facing each other on the staircase for three-quarters of an hour, almost intermingled, one silent and the other excited, turbulent, and active, with all the ardor and lack of discipline peculiar to a popular gathering, each insurgent striving apart, and in his own way, to corrupt, intimidate, or constrain the Swiss Guards. Granier, of Marseilles, at the head of the staircase, holds two of them at arms' length, trying in a friendly manner to draw them down.2691 At the foot of the staircase the crowd is shouting and threatening; lighter men, armed with boat-hooks, harpoon the sentinels by their shoulder-straps, and pull down four or five, like so many fishes, amid shouts of laughter.—Just at this moment a pistol goes off; nobody being able to tell which party fired it.2692 The Swiss, firing from above, clean out the vestibule and the courts, rush down into the square and seize the cannon; the insurgents scatter and fly out of range. The bravest, nevertheless, rally behind the entrances of the houses on the Carrousel, throw cartridges into the courts of the small buildings and set them on fire. During another half-hour, under the dense smoke of the first discharge and of the burning buildings, both sides fire haphazard, while the Swiss, far from giving way, have scarcely lost a few men, when a messenger from the King arrives, M. d'Hervilly, who orders in his name the firing to cease, and the men to return to their barracks.

Slowly and regularly they form in line and retire along the broad alley of the garden. At the sight of these foreigners, however, in red coats, who had just fired on Frenchmen, the guns of the battalion stationed on the terraces go off of their own accord, and the Swiss column divides in two. One body of 250 men turns to the right, reaches the Assembly, lays down its arms at the King's order, and allows itself to be shut up in the Feuillants church. The others are annihilated on crossing the garden, or cut down on the Place Louis XV. by the mounted gendarmerie. No quarter is given. The warfare is that of a mob, not civilized war, but primitive war, that of barbarians. In the abandoned palace into which the insurgents entered five minutes after the departure of the garrison,2693 they kill the wounded, the two Swiss surgeons attending to them,2694 the Swiss who had not fired a gun, and who, in the balcony on the side of the garden, "cast off their cartridge-boxes, sabers, coats, and hats, and shout: 'Friends, we are with you, we are Frenchmen, we belong to the nation!'"2695 They kill the Swiss, armed or unarmed, who remain at their posts in the apartments. They kill the Swiss gate-keepers in their boxes. They kill everybody in the kitchens, from the head cook down to the pot boys.2696 The women barely escape. Madame Campan, on her knees, seized by the back, sees an uplifted saber about to fall on her, when a voice from the foot of the staircase calls out: "What are you doing there? The women are not to be killed!" "Get up, you hussy, the nation forgives you!"—To make up for this the nation helps itself and indulges itself to its heart's content in the palace which now belongs to it. Some honest persons do, indeed, carry money and valuables to the National Assembly, but others pillage and destroy all that they can.2697 They shatter mirrors, break furniture to pieces, and throw clocks out of the window; they shout the Marseilles hymn, which one of the National Guards accompanies on a harpsichord,2698 and descend to the cellars, where they gorge themselves. "For more than a fortnight," says an eye witness,2699 "one walked on fragments of bottles." In the garden, especially, "it might be said that they had tried to pave the walks with broken glass."—Porters are seen seated on the throne in the coronation robes; a trollop occupies the Queen's bed; it is a carnival in which unbridled base and cruel instincts find plenty of good forage and abundant litter. Runaways come back after the victory and stab the dead with their pikes. Nicely dressed prostitutes fooling around with naked corpses.26100 And, as the destroyers enjoy their work, they are not disposed to be disturbed in it. In the courts of the Carrousel, where 1800 feet of building are burning, the firemen try four times to extinguish the fire; "they are shot at, and threatened with being pitched into the flames,"26101 while petitioners appear at the bar of the Assembly, and announce in a threatening tone that the Tuileries are blazing, and shall blaze until the dethronement becomes a law.

The poor Assembly, become Girondist through its late mutilation, strives in vain to arrest the downhill course of things, and maintain, as it has just sworn to do, "the constituted authorities";26102 it strives, at least, to put Louis XVI. in the Luxembourg palace, to appoint a tutor for the Dauphin, to keep the ministers temporarily in office, and to save all prisoners, and those who walk the streets. Equally captive, and nearly as prostrate as the King himself; the Assembly merely serves as a recording office for the popular will, that very morning furnishing evidence of the value which the armed commonalty attaches to its decrees. That morning murders were committed at its door, in contempt of its safe conduct; at eight o'clock Suleau and three others, wrested from their guards, are cut down under its windows. In the afternoon, from sixty to eighty of the unarmed Swiss still remaining in the church of the Feuillants are taken out to be sent to the Hôtel-de-ville, and massacred on the way at the Place de Grève. Another detachment, conducted to the section of the Roule, is likewise disposed of in the same way.26103 Carle, at the head of the gendarmerie, is called out of the Assembly and assassinated on the Place Vendôme, and his head is carried about on a pike. The founder of the old monarchical club, M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, withdrawn from public life for two years past, and quietly passing along the streets, is recognized, dragged through the gutter and cut to pieces.—After such warnings (murder and pillage) the Assembly can only obey, and, as usual, conceal its submission beneath sonorous words. If the dictatorial committee, self-imposed at the Hôtel-de-ville, still condescends to keep it alive, it is owing to a new investiture,26104 and by declaring to it that it must not meddle with its doings now or in the future. Let it confine itself to its function, that of rendering decrees made by the faction. Accordingly, like fruit falling from a tree vigorously shaken, these decrees rattle down, one after another, into the hands that await them,26105

12. the arrest of suspicious persons confided to all well-disposed citizens,26107

13. domiciliary visits prescribed for the discovery of arms and ammunition,26108

14. all the justices of Paris to be re-elected by those within their jurisdiction,

15. all officers of the gendarmerie subject to re-election by their soldiers,26109

16. thirty sous per diem for the Marseilles troops from the day of their arrival,

18. a tribunal for the dispatch of justice against the vanquished of August 10, and a quantity of other decrees of a still more important bearing:

19. the suspension of the commissioners appointed to enforce the execution of the law in civil and criminal courts,26110

20. the release of all persons accused or condemned for military insubordination, for press offenses and pillaging of grain,26111

23. the relegation of their fathers, mothers, wives and children into the interior,

25. the establishment of easy divorce at two months' notice and on demand of one of the parties,26115 in short, every measure is taken which tend to disturb property, break up the family, persecute conscience, suspend the law, pervert justice, and rehabilitate crime. laws are promulgated to deliver:

to an autocratic, violent minority, which, having risked all to grab the dictatorship, dares all to keep it.26116

VIII.—State of Paris in the Interregnum.

The mass of the population.—Subaltern Jacobins.—The
Jacobin leaders.

Let us stop a moment to contemplate this great city and its new rulers.—From afar, Paris seems a club of 700,000 fanatics, vociferating and deliberating on the public squares; near by, it is nothing of the sort. The slime, on rising from the bottom, has become the surface, and given its color to the stream; but the human stream flows in its ordinary channel, and, under this turbid exterior, remains about the same as it was before. It is a city of people like ourselves, governed, busy, and fond of amusement. To the great majority, even in revolutionary times, private life, too complex and absorbing, leaves but an insignificant corner for public affairs. Through routine and through necessity, manufacturing, display of wares, selling, purchasing, keeping accounts, trades, and professions, continue as usual. The clerk goes to his office, the workman to his shop, the artisan to his loft, the merchant to his warehouse, the professional to his cabinet, and the official to his duty;26117 they are devoted, first of all, to their pursuits, to their daily bread, to the discharge of their obligations, to their own advancement, to their families, and to their pleasures; to provide for these things the day is not too long. Politics only briefly distract them, and then rather out of curiosity, like a play one applauds or hisses in his seat without stepping upon the stage.—"The declaration that the country is in danger," says many eye witnesses,26118 "has made no change in the physiognomy of Paris. There are the same amusements, the same gossip.... The theaters are full as usual. The wine-shops and places of diversion overflow with the people, National Guards, and soldiers.... The fashionable world enjoys its pleasure-parties,"—"The day after the decree, the effect of the ceremony, so skillfully managed, is very slight. "The National Guard in the procession, writes a patriotic journalist,26119 "first shows indifference and even boredom"; it is exasperated with night watches and patrol duty; they probably tell each others that in parading for the nation, one finds no time to work for one's self.—A few days after this the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick "produces no sensation whatever. People laugh at it. Only the newspapers and their readers are familiar with it... . The mass know nothing about it. Nobody fears the coalition nor foreign troops."26120—On the 10th of August, outside the theater of the combat, all is quiet in Paris. People walk about and chat in the streets as usual."26121—On the 19th of August, Moore, the Englishman,26122 sees, with astonishment, the heedless crowd filling the Champs Elysées, the various diversions, the air of a fête, the countless small shops in which refreshments are sold accompanied with songs and music, and the quantities of pantomimes and marionettes. "Are these people as happy as they seem to be?" he asks of a Frenchman along with him.—"They are as jolly as gods!"—"Do you think the Duke of Brunswick is ever in their heads?"—"Monsieur, you may be sure of this, that the Duke of Brunswick is the last man they think of."

Such is the unconcern or light-heartedness of the gross, egoistic mass, otherwise busy, and always passive under any government whatever it may be, a veritable flock of sheep, allowing government to do as it pleases, provided it does not hinder it from browsing and capering as it chooses.—As to the men of sensibility who love their country, they are still less troublesome, for they are gone or going (to the army), often at the rate of a thousand and even two thousand a day, ten thousand in the last week of July,26123 fifteen thousand in the first two weeks of September,26124 in all perhaps 40,000 volunteers furnished by the capital alone and who, with their fellows proportionate in number supplied by the departments, are to be the salvation of France.—Through this departure of the worthy, and this passivity of the flock, Paris belongs to the fanatics among the population. "These are the sans-culottes," wrote the patriotic Palloy, "the scum and riffraff of Paris, and I glory in belonging to that class which has put down the so-called honest folks."26125—"Three thousand workmen," says the Girondist Soulavie, later, "made the Revolution of the 10th of August, against the kingdom of the Feuillants, the majority of the capital and against the Legislative Assembly."26126 Workmen, day laborers, and petty shop-keepers, not counting women, common vagabonds and regular bandits, form, indeed, one-twentieth of the adult male population of the city, about 9,000 spread over all sections of Paris, the only ones to vote and act in the midst of universal stupor and indifference.—We find in the Rue de Seine, for example, seven of them, Lacaille, keeper of a roasting-shop; Philippe, "a cattle-breeder, who leads around she-asses for consumptives," now president of the section, and soon to become one of the Abbaye butchers; Guérard, "a Rouen river-man who has abandoned the navigation of the Seine on a large scale and keeps a skiff, in which he ferries people over the river from the Pont du Louvre to the Quai Mazarin," and four characters of the same stamp. Their energy, however, replaces their lack of education and numerical inferiority. One day, Guérard, on passing M. Hua, the deputy, tells him in the way of a warning, "You big rascal, you were lucky to have other people with you. If you had been alone, I would have capsized my boat, and had the pleasure of drowning a blasted aristocrat!" These are the "matadors of the quarter".26127—Their ignorance does not trouble them; on the contrary, they take pride in coarseness and vulgarity. One of the ordinary speechmakers of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Gouchon, a designer for calicos, comes to the bar of the Assembly, "in the name of the men of July 14 and Augusts 10," to glorify the political reign of brutal incapacity; according to him, it is more enlightened than that of the cultivated:26128 "those great geniuses graced with the fine title of Constitutionalists are forced to do justice to men who never studied the art of governing elsewhere than in the book of experience.... Consulting customs and not principles, these clever people have for a long period been busy with the political balance of things; we have found it without looking for it in the heart of man: Form a government which will place the poor above their feeble resources and the rich below their means, and the balance will be perfect." 26129

This is more than clear, their declared purpose is a complete leveling, not alone of political rights, but, again, and especially, of conditions and fortunes; they promise themselves "absolute equality, real equality," and, still better, "the magistracy and all government powers."26130 France belongs to them, if they are bold enough to seize hold of it.—And, on the other hand, should they miss their prey, they feel themselves lost, for the Brunswick manifesto,26131 which had made no impression on the public, remains deeply impressed in their minds. They apply its threats to themselves, while their imagination, as usual, translates it into a specific legend:26132 all the inhabitants of Paris are to be led out on the plain of Saint-Denis, and there decimated; previous to this, the most notorious patriots will be singled out together with forty or fifty market-women and broken on the wheel. Already, on the 11th of August, a rumor is current that 800 men of the late royal guards are ready to make a descent on Paris;26133 that very day the dwelling of Beaumarchais is ransacked for seven hours;26134 the walls are pierced, the privies sounded, and the garden dug down to the rock. The same search is repeated in the adjoining house. The women are especially "enraged at not finding anything," and wish to renew the attempt, swearing that they will discover where things are hidden in ten minutes. The nightmare is evidently too much for these unballasted minds. They break down under the weight of their accidental kingship, their inflamed pride, extravagant desires, and intense and silent fears which form in them that morbid and evil concoction which, in democracy as well as in a monarchy, fashions a Nero.26135

Their leaders, who are even more upset, conceited, and despotic, have no scruples holding them back, for the most noteworthy are corrupt, acting alone or as leaders. Of the three chiefs of the old municipality, Pétion, the mayor, actually in semi-retirement, but verbally respected, is set aside and considered as an old decoration. The other two remain active and in office, Manuel,26136 the syndic-attorney, son of a porter, a loud-talking, untalented bohemian, stole the private correspondence of Mirabeau from a public depository, falsified it, and sold it for his own benefit. Danton,26137 Manuel's deputy, faithless in two ways, receives the King's money to prevent the riot, and makes use of it to urge it on.—Varlet, "that extraordinary speech-maker, led such a foul and prodigal life as to bring his mother in sorrow to the grave; afterwards he spent what was left, and soon had nothing."26138—Others not only lacked honor but even common honesty. Carra, with a seat in the secret Directory of the Federates, and who drew up the plan of the insurrection, had been condemned by the Mâcon tribunals to two years' imprisonment for theft and burglary.26139 Westermann, who led the attacking column, had stolen a silver dish, with a coat of arms on it, from Jean Creux, keeper of a restaurant, rue des Poules, and was twice sent away from Paris for swindling.26140 Panis, chief of the Committee of Supervision,26141 was turned out of the Treasury Department, where his uncle was a sub cashier, in 1774, for robbery. His colleague, Sergent, appropriates to himself "three gold watches, an agate ring, and other jewels," left with him on deposit.26142 "Breaking seals, false charges, breaches of trust," embezzlements, are familiar transactions. In their hands piles of silver plate and 1,100,000 francs in gold are to disappear.26143 Among the members of the new Commune, Huguenin, the president, a clerk at the barriers, is a brazen embezzler.26144 Rossignol, a journeyman jeweller, implicated in an assassination, is at this moment subject to judicial prosecution.26145 Hébert, a journalistic garbage bag, formerly check-taker in a theatre, is turned away from the Variétés for larceny.26146 Among men of action, Fournier, the American, Lazowski, and Maillard are not only murderers, but likewise robbers,26147 while, by their side, arises the future general of the Paris National Guard, Henriot, at first a domestic in the family of an attorney who turned him out for theft, then a tax-clerk, again turned adrift for theft, and, finally, a police spy, and still incarcerated in the Bicêtre prison for another theft, and, at last, a battalion officer, and one of the September executioners.26148—Simultaneously with the bandits and rascals, monstrous maniacs come out of their holes. De Sades,26149 who lived the life of "Justine" before he wrote it, and whom the Revolution delivered from the Bastille, is secretary of the section of the Place Vendôme. Marat, the homicidal monomaniac, constitutes himself, after the 23rd of August, official journalist at the Hôtel-de-ville, political advisor and consciousness of the new Commune, and the obsessive plan, which he preaches for three years, is merely an instant and direct wholesale butchery.

"Give me," said he to Barbaroux,26150 "two hundred Neapolitans armed with daggers, and with only a hand-kerchief on their left arms for a buckler, and I will overrun France and build the Revolution."

According to him it is necessary to do away with 260,000 men "on humane grounds," for, unless this is done, there is no safety for the rest.

"The National Assembly may still save France; let it decree that all aristocrats shall wear a blue ribbon, and the moment that three of them are seen in company, let them be hung."

"to lay in wait in dark streets and at corners for the royalists and Feuillants, and cut their throats. Should ten patriots happen to be killed among a hundred men, what does it matter? It is only ninety for ten, which prevents mistakes. Fall upon those who own carriages, employ valets, wear silk coats, or go to the theatres. You may be sure that they are aristocrats."

The Jacobin proletariat has obviously found the leadership that suits them. They will get on with each other without difficulty. In order that this spontaneous massacre may become an administrative measure, the Neros of the gutter have but to await the word of command from the Neros of the Hôtel-de-ville.

2602 (return)
[Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 452.—Malouet (II. 213) states that there were seventy.]

2603 (return)
[Cf., for example, "Archives Nationales," A.F. II.116. Petition of 228 notables of Montargis.]

2604 (return)
[ Petition of the 20,000, so-called, presented by Messrs. Guillaume and Dupont de Nemours.—Cf.. Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 278.—According to Buchez et Roux, the petition containing only 7,411 names.]

2606 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 89. The act (July 7) is drawn up with admirable precision and force. On comparing it with the vague, turgid exaggerations of their adversaries, it seems to measure the intellectual distance between the two parties.]

2607 (return)
[ 339 against 224—Roederer ("Chronique des cinquante jours," p.79). "A strong current of opinion by a majority of the inhabitants of Paris sets in favor of the King."—C. Desmoulins; "That class of petty traders and shopkeepers, who are more afraid of the revolutionaries than of so many Uhlans... "]

2608 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 236. Letter of Roederer to the president of the National Assembly, June 25. "Mr. President, I have the honor to inform the Assembly that an armed mob is marching towards the Château."]

2610 (return)
[ The murder of M. Duhamel, sub-lieutenant of the national guard.]

2611 (return)
[ Letter of Vergniaud and Guadet to the painter Boze (in the "Mémoires de Dumouriez").—Roederer, "Chronique des cinquante jours," 295.—Bertrand de Molleville, "Mémoires," III. 29.]

2612 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 155 (session of July 16).—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 69. "Favored by you," says Manuel, "all citizens are entitled to visit the first functionary of the nation... The prince's dwelling should be open, like a church. Fear of the people is an insult to the people. If Louis XVI. possessed the soul of a Marcus Aurelius, he would have descended into his gardens and tried to console a hundred thousand beings, on account of the slowness of the Revolution... Never had there been fewer thieves in the Tuileries than on that day; for the courtiers had fled...The red cap was an honor to Louis XVI's head, and ought to be his crown." At this solemn moment the fraternization of the king with the people took place, and "the next day the same king betrayed, calumniated, and disgraced the people!" Manuel's rigmarole surpasses all that can be imagined. "After this there arises in the panelings of the Louvre, at the confluence of the civil list, another channel, which leads through the shades below to Pétion's dungeon... The department, in dealing a blow at the municipality, explains how, at the banquet of the Law, it represents the Law in the form of a crocodile, etc."]

2613 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 93 (session of July 9);—27 (session of July 2).]

2614 (return)
[ Moniteur, XII. 751 (session of June 24); XIII.33 (session of July 3).]

2615 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 224 (session of July 23). Two unsworn priests had just been massacred at Bordeaux and their heads carried through the streets on pikes. Ducos adds: "Since the executive power has put its veto on laws repressing fanaticism, popular executions begin to be repeated. If the courts do not render justice, etc."—Ibid., XIII. 301 (session of July 31).]

2616 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 72 (session of July 7). The king's speech to the Assembly after the Lamourette kiss. "I confess to you, M. President, that I was very anxious for the deputation to arrive, that I might hasten to the Assembly."]

2617 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 313 (session of Aug. 3). The declaration read in the king's name must be weighed sentence by sentence; it sums up his conduct with perfect exactness and thus ends: "What are personal dangers to a king, from whom they would take the love of his people? This is what affects me most. The day will come, perhaps, when the people will know how much I prize its welfare, how much this has always been my concern and my first need. What sorrows would disappear at the slightest sign of its return!"]

2618 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 33, 56 bis 85, 97 (sessions of July 3, 5, 6 and 9).]

2619 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 26, 170, 273 (sessions of July 12, 17, 28).—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 122 (session of July 23): Addresses of the municipal council of Marseilles, of the federates, of the Angers petitioners, of the Charente volunteers, etc. "A hereditary monarchy is opposed to the Rights of Man. Pass the act of dethronement and France is saved... Be brave, let the sword of the law fall on a perjured functionary and conspirator! Lafayette is the most contemptible, the guiltiest,... the most infamous of the assassins of the people," etc.]

2623 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 170, 171, 187, 208, 335 (sessions of July 17, 18, and 23, and Aug. 5).]

2624 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 187 (session of July 18). "The galleries applaud. The Assembly murmurs."—208 (July 21). "Murmuring, shouts, and cries of Down with the speaker! from the galleries. The president calls the house to order five times, but always fruitlessly."—224 (July 23). "The galleries applaud; long continued murmurs are heard in the Assembly."]

2625 (return)
[ Buzot, "Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban, 83 and 84). "The majority of the French people yearned for royalty and the constitution of 1790... It was at Paris particularly that this desire governed the general plan, the discussion of it being the least feared in special conversations and in private society. There were only a few noble-minded, superior men that were worthy of being republicans... The rest desired the constitution of 1791, and spoke of the republicans only as one speaks of very honest maniacs."]

2626 (return)
[ Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," May 29, 1792; July 15, 16, and 18; July 6-20.]

2627 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 25 (session of July 1). Petition of 150 active citizens of the Bonne-Nouvelle section.]

2628 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 194. Buchez et Roux, XVI. 253. The decree of dismissal was not passed until the 12th of August, but after the 31St of July the municipality demanded it and during the following days several Jacobin grenadiers go to the National Assembly, trample on their bearskin hats and put on the red cap of liberty.]

2631 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 129.—Buchez et Roux, XV. 458. According to the report of the Minister of War, read the 30th of July, at the evening session, 5,314 department federates left Paris between July 14 and 30. Pétion wrote that the levy of federates then in Paris amounted to 2,960, "of which 2,032 were getting ready to go to the camp at Soissons."—A comparison of these figures leads to the approximate number that I have adopted]

2632 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XVI. 120, 133 (session of the Jacobins, Aug. 6). The federates "resolved to watch the Château, each taking a place in the battalions respectively of the sections in which they lodge, and many incorporated themselves with the battalions of the faubourg St Antoine."]

2633 (return)
[ Mercure de France, April 14, 1793.—" The Revolution," I. p. 332.]

2634 (return)
[ Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 37-40.—Lauront-Lautard, "Marseilles depuis 1789 jusqu'à 1815," I. 134. "The mayor, Mourdeille," who had recruited them, "was perhaps very glad to get rid of them."—On the composition of this group and on the previous rôle of Rebecqui, see chapter VI.]

2635 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XVI. 197 and following pages.—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 148 (the grenadiers numbered only 166).—Moniteur, XIII. 310 (session of Aug. 1). Address of the grenadiers: "They swore on their honor that they did not draw their swords until after being threatened for a quarter of an hour, then insulted and humiliated, until forced to defend their lives against a troop of brigands armed with pistols, and some of them with carbines."—" The reading of this memorandum is often interrupted by hooting from the galleries, in spite of the president's orders."—Hooting again, when they file out of the chamber.]

2636 (return)
[ The lack of men of action greatly embarrassed the Jacobin party. ("Correspondance de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck," II. 326.) Letter of M. de Montmorin, July 13, 1792. On the disposition of the people of Paris, wearied and worn out "to excess." "They will take no side, either for or against the king... They no longer stir for any purpose; riots are wholly factitious. This is so right that they are obliged to bring men from the South to get them up. Nearly all of those who forced the gates of the Tuileries, or rather, who got inside of them on the 20th of June, were outsiders or onlookers, got together at the sight of such a lot of pikes and red caps, etc. The cowards ran at the slightest indication of presenting arms, which was done by a portion of the national guard on the arrival of a deputation from the National Assembly, their leaders being obliged to encourage them by telling them that they were not to be fired at."]

2637 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XVI. 447. "Chronique des cinquante jours," by Roederer.]

2638 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 378.-127 Jacobins of Arras, led by Geoffroy and young Robespierre, declare to the Directory that they mean to come to its meetings and follow its deliberations. "It is time that the master should keep his eye on his agents." The Directory, therefore, resigns (July 4, 1792).—Ibid., 462 (report of Leroux, municipal officer). The Paris municipal council, on the night of August 9-10 deliberates under threats of death and the furious shouts of the galleries.]

2639 (return)
[ Duvergier's "Collection of Laws and Decrees," July 4, 5-8, 11-12, 25-28.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 250. The section of the Theatre Français (of which Danton is president and Chaumette and Momoro secretaries) thus interpret the declaration of the country being in danger. "After a declaration of the country being in danger by the representatives of the people, it is natural that the people itself should take back its sovereign supervision."]

2640 (return)
[ Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution," I. 99-100. Report to Roland, Oct. 29, 1792.]

2641 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 199.—Buchez et Roux, XVI. 320.—Moniteur, XIII. 336 (session of Aug. 5). Speech by Collot d'Herbois.]

2642 (return)
[ Moniteur, XI. 20, session of Feb. 4. At this meeting Gorguereau, reporter of the committee on legislation, had already stated that "The authors of these multiplied addresses seem to command rather than demand... It is ever the same sections or the same individuals who deceive you in bringing to you their own false testimony for that of the capital."—"Down with the reporter! From the galleries."—Ibid., XIII. 93, session of July 11. M. Gastelier: "Addresses in the name of the people are constantly read to you, which are not even the voice of one section. We have seen the same individual coming three times a week to demand something in the name of sovereignty." (Shouts of down! down! in the galleries.) Ibid., 208, session of July 21. M. Dumolard: "You must distinguish between the people of Paris and these subaltern intriguers... these habitual oracles of the cafés and public squares, whose equivocal existence has for a long time occupied the attention and claimed the supervision of the police." (Down with the speaker! murmurs and hooting in the galleries).-Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 398. Protests of the arsenal section, read by Lavoisier (the chemist): "The caprice of a knot of citizens (thus) becomes the desire of an immense population."]

2643 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XVI. 251.—Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 239 and 243. The central bureau is first opened in "the building of the Saint-Esprit, in the second story, near the passage communicating with the common dwelling." Afterwards the commissioners of the section occupy another room in the Hôtel-de-ville, nearly joining the throne-room, where the municipal council is holding its sessions. During the night of August 9-10 both councils sit four hours simultaneously within a few steps of each other.]

2644 (return)
[ Robespierre, "Seventh letter to his constituents," says: "The sections... have been busy for more than a fortnight getting ready for the last Revolution."]

2645 (return)
[ Robespierre, "Seventh letter to his constituents"—Malouet, II. 233, 234.—Roederer, "Chronique des cinquante jours."]

2646 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 318, 319. The petition is drawn up apparently by people who are beside themselves. "If we did not rely on you, I would not answer for the excesses to which our despair would carry us! We would bring on ourselves all the horrors of civil war, provided we could, on dying, drag along with us some of our cowardly assassins!"——The representatives, it must be noted, talk in the same vein. La Source exclaims: "The members here, like yourselves, call for vengeance!"—Thuriot: "The crime is atrocious!"]

VI.—Nights of August 9 and 10.

VII.—August 10.

VIII.—State of Paris in the Interregnum.