Chapter I: From the 5th of May, 1789, to the Night of the 4th of August (2)

A deputy of the district of Saint Louis de la Culture, named Thuriot de la Rosière, then requested a parley with De Launay, the governor. When admitted to his presence he summoned him to change the direction of the cannon. The governor replied, that the cannon had always been placed on the towers, and it was not in his power to remove them; yet, at the same time, having heard of the alarm prevalent among the Parisians, he had had them withdrawn a few paces, and taken out of the port-holes. With some difficulty Thuriot obtained permission to enter the fortress further, and examine if its condition was really as satisfactory for the town as the governor represented it to be. As he advanced, he observed three pieces of cannon pointed on the avenues leading to the open space before the fortress, and ready to sweep those who might attempt to attack it. About forty Swiss, and eighty Invalides, were under arms. Thuriot urged them, as well as the staff of the place, in the name of honour and of their country, not to act as the enemies of the people. Both officers and soldiers swore they would not make use of their arms unless attacked. Thuriot then ascended the towers, and perceived a crowd gathering in all directions, and the inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint Antoine, who were rising in a mass. The multitude without, not seeing him return, were already demanding him with great clamour. To satisfy the people, he appeared on the parapet of the fortress, and was received with loud applause from the gardens of the arsenal. He then rejoined his party, and having informed them of the result of his mission, proceeded to the committee.

But the impatient crowd now clamoured for the surrender of the Bastille. From time to time the cry arose, "The Bastille! we will have the Bastille!" At length, two men, more determined than the rest, darting from the crowd, sprang on a guardhouse, and struck at the chains of the drawbridge with heavy hatchets. The soldiers shouted to them to retire, and threatened to fire; but they continued to strike, succeeded in breaking the chains and lowering the bridge, and then rushed over it, followed by the crowd. In this way they advanced to cut the chains of the second bridge. The garrison now dispersed them with a discharge of musketry. They returned, however, to the attack, and for several hours their efforts were confined to the second bridge, the approach to which was defended by a ceaseless fire from the fortress. The mob infuriated by this obstinate resistance, tried to break in the gates with hatchets, and to set fire to the guard-house. A murderous discharge of grapeshot proceeded from the garrison, and many of the besiegers were killed and wounded. They only became the more determined, and seconded by the daring and determination of the two brave men, Elie and Hulin, who were at their head, they continued the attack with fury.

The committee of the Hôtel de Ville were in a state of great anxiety. The siege of the Bastille seemed to them a very rash enterprise. They ever and anon received intelligence of the disasters that had taken place before the fortress. They wavered between fear of the troops should they prove victorious, and that of the multitude who clamoured for ammunition to continue the siege. As they could not give what they did not possess, the mob cried treachery. Two deputations had been sent by the committee for the purpose of discontinuing hostilities, and inviting the governor to confide the keeping of the place to the citizens; but in the midst of the tumult, the cries, and the firing, they could not make themselves heard. A third was sent, carrying a drum and banner, that it might be more easily distinguished, but it experienced no better fortune: neither side would listen to anything. The assembly at the Hôtel de Ville, notwithstanding it efforts and activity, still incurred the suspicions of the populace. The provost of the merchants, especially, excited the greatest mistrust. "He has already deceived us several times during the day," said one. "He talks," said another, "of opening a trench; he only wants to gain time, to make us lose ours." Then an old man cried: "Comrades, why do you listen to traitors? Forward, follow me! In less than two hours the Bastille will be taken!"

The siege had lasted more than four hours when the French guards arrived with cannon. Their arrival changed the appearance of the combat. The garrison itself begged the governor to yield. The unfortunate De Launay, dreading the fate that awaited him, wished to blow up the fortress, and bury himself under its ruins and those of the faubourg. He went in despair towards the powder magazine, with a lighted match. The garrison stopped him, raised a white standard on the platform, and reversed the guns, in token of peace. But the assailants still continued to fight and advance, shouting, "Lower the bridges!" Through the battlements a Swiss officer proposed to capitulate, with permission to retire from the building with the honours of war. "No! no!" clamoured the crowd. The same officer proposed to lay down arms, on the promise that their lives should be spared. "Lower the bridge," rejoined the foremost of the assailants, "you shall not be injured." The gates were opened and the bridge lowered, on this assurance, and the crowd rushed into the Bastille. Those who led the multitude wished to save from its vengeance the governor, Swiss soldiers, and Invalides; but cries of "Give them up! give them up! they fired on their fellow-citizens, they deserve to be hanged!" rose on every side. The governor, a few Swiss soldiers and Invalides were torn from the protection of those who sought to defend them, and put to death by the implacable crowd.

The permanent committee knew nothing of the issue of the combat. The hall of the sittings was invaded by a furious multitude, who threatened the provost of the merchants and electors. Flesselles began to be alarmed at his position; he was pale and agitated. The object of the most violent reproaches and threats, they obliged him to go from the hall of the committee to the hall of the general assembly, where a great crowd of citizens was assembled. "Let him come; let him follow us," resounded from all sides. "This is too much!" rejoined Flesselles. "Let us go, since they request it; let us go where I am expected." They had scarcely reached the great hall, when the attention of the multitude was drawn off by shouts on the Place de Grève. They heard the cries of "Victory! victory! liberty!" It was the arrival of the conquerors of the Bastille which this announced. They themselves soon entered the hall with the most noisy and the most fearful pomp. The persons who had most distinguished themselves were carried in triumph, crowned with laurels. They were escorted by more than fifteen hundred men, with glaring eyes and dishevelled hair, with all kinds of arms, pressing one upon another, and making the flooring yield beneath their feet. One carried the keys and standard of the Bastille; another, its regulations suspended to his bayonet; a third, with horrible barbarity, raised in his bleeding hand the buckle of the governor's stock. With this parade, the procession of the conquerors of the Bastille, followed by an immense crowd that thronged the quays, entered the hall of the Hôtel de Ville to inform the committee of their triumph, and decide the fate of the prisoners who survived. A few wished to leave it to the committee, but others shouted: "No quarter for the prisoners! No quarter for the men who fired on their fellow-citizens!" La Salle, the commandant, the elector Moreau de Saint-Méry, and the brave Elie, succeeded in appeasing the multitude, and obtained a general amnesty.

It was now the turn of the unfortunate Flesselles. It is said that a letter found on De Launay proved the treachery of which he was suspected. "I am amusing the Parisians," he wrote, "with cockades and promises. Hold out till the evening, and you shall be reinforced." The mob hurried to his office. The more moderate demanded that he should be arrested and confined in the Châtelet; but others opposed this, saying that he should be conveyed to the Palais-Royal, and there tried. This decision gave general satisfaction. "To the Palais-Royal! To the Palais-Royal!" resounded from every side. "Well--be it so, gentlemen," replied Flesselles, with composure, "let us go to the Palais-Royal." So saying, he descended the steps, passed through the crowd, which opened to make way for him, and which followed without offering him any violence. But at the corner of the Quay Pelletier a stranger rushed forward, and killed him with a pistol- shot.

After these scenes of war, tumult, dispute, and vengeance, the Parisians, fearing, from some intercepted letters, that an attack would be made during the night, prepared to receive the enemy. The whole population joined in the labour of fortifying the town; they formed barricades, opened intrenchments, unpaved streets, forged pikes, and cast bullets. Women carried stones to the tops of the houses to crush the soldiers as they passed. The national guard were distributed in posts; Paris seemed changed into an immense foundry and a vast camp, and the whole night was spent under arms, expecting the conflict.

While the insurrection assumed this violent, permanent, and serious character at Paris, what was doing at Versailles? The court was preparing to realize its designs against the capital and assembly. The night of the 14th was fixed upon for their execution. The baron de Breteuil, who was at the head of the ministry, had promised to restore the royal authority in three days. Marshal de Broglie, commander of the army collected around Paris, had received unlimited powers of all kinds. On the 15th the declaration of the 23rd of June was to be renewed, and the king, after forcing the assembly to adopt it, was to dissolve it. Forty thousand copies of this declaration were in readiness to be circulated throughout the kingdom; and to meet the pressing necessities of the treasury more than a hundred millions of paper money was created. The movement in Paris, so far from thwarting the court, favoured its views. To the last moment it looked upon it as a passing tumult that might easily be suppressed; it believed neither in its perseverance nor in its success, and it did not seem possible to it that a town of citizens could resist an army.

The assembly was apprised of these projects. For two days it had sat without interruption, in a state of great anxiety and alarm. It was ignorant of the greater portion of what was passing in Paris. At one time it was announced that the insurrection was general, and that all Paris was marching on Versailles; then that the troops were advancing on the capital. They fancied they heard cannon, and they placed their ears to the ground to assure themselves. On the evening of the 14th it was announced that the king intended to depart during the night, and that the assembly would be left to the mercy of the foreign regiments. This last alarm was not without foundation. A carriage and horses were kept in readiness, and the body-guard remained booted for several days. Besides, at the Orangery, incidents truly alarming took place; the troops were prepared and stimulated for their expedition by distributions of wine and by encouragements. Everything announced that a decisive moment had arrived.

Despite the approaching and increasing danger, the assembly was unshaken, and persisted in its first resolutions. Mirabeau, who had first required the dismissal of the troops, now arranged another deputation. It was on the point of setting out, when the viscount de Noailles, a deputy, just arrived from Paris, informed the assembly of the progress of the insurrection, the pillage of the Invalides, the arming of the people, and the siege of the Bastille. Wimpfen, another deputy, to this account added that of the personal dangers he had incurred, and assured them that the fury of the populace was increasing with its peril. The assembly proposed the establishment of couriers to bring them intelligence every half hour.

M. M. Ganilh and Bancal-des-Issarts, despatched by the committee at the Hôtel de Ville as a deputation to the assembly, confirmed all they had just heard. They informed them of the measures taken by the electors to secure order and the defence of the capital; the disasters that had happened before the Bastille; the inutility of the deputations sent to the governor, and told them that the fire of the garrison had surrounded the fortress with the slain. A cry of indignation arose in the assembly at this intelligence, and a second deputation was instantly despatched to communicate these distressing tidings to the king. The first returned with an unsatisfactory answer; it was now ten at night. The king, on learning these disastrous events, which seemed to presage others still greater, appeared affected. Struggling against the part he had been induced to adopt, he said to the deputies,--"You rend my heart more and more by the dreadful news you bring of the misfortunes of Paris. It is impossible to suppose that the orders given to the troops are the cause of these disasters. You are acquainted with the answer I returned to the first deputation; I have nothing to add to it." This answer consisted of a promise that the troops of the Champ de Mars should be sent away from Paris, and of an order given to general officers to assume the command of the guard of citizens. Such measures were not sufficient to remedy the dangerous situation in which men were placed; and it neither satisfied nor gave confidence to the assembly.

Shortly after this, the deputies d'Ormesson and Duport announced to the assembly the taking of the Bastille, and the deaths of De Launay and Flesselles. It was proposed to send a third deputation to the king, imploring the removal of the troops. "No," said Clermont Tonnerre, "leave them the night to consult in; kings must buy experience as well as other men." In this way the assembly spent the night. On the following morning, another deputation was appointed to represent to the king the misfortunes that would follow a longer refusal. When on the point of starting, Mirabeau stopped it: "Tell him," he exclaimed, "that the hordes of strangers who invest us, received yesterday, visits, caresses, exhortations, and presents from the princes, princesses, and favourites; tell him that, during the night, these foreign satellites, gorged with gold and wine, predicted in their impious songs the subjection of France, and invoked the destruction of the national assembly; tell him, that in his own palace, courtiers danced to the sound of that barbarous music, and that such was the prelude to the massacre of Saint Bartholomew! Tell him that the Henry of his ancestors, whom he wished to take as his model, whose memory is honoured by all nations, sent provisions into a Paris in revolt when besieging the city himself, while the savage advisers of Louis send away the corn which trade brings into Paris loyal and starving."

But at that moment the king entered the assembly. The duke de Liancourt, taking advantage of the access his quality of master of the robes gave him, had informed the king, during the night, of the desertion of the French guard, and of the attack and taking of the Bastille. At this news, of which his councillors had kept him in ignorance, the monarch exclaimed, with surprise, "this is a revolt!" "No sire! it is a revolution." This excellent citizen had represented to him the danger to which the projects of the court exposed him; the fears and exasperations of the people, the disaffection of the troops, and he determined upon presenting himself before the assembly, to satisfy them as to his intentions. The news at first excited transports of joy. Mirabeau represented to his colleagues, that it was not fit to indulge in premature applause. "Let us wait," said he, "till his majesty makes known the good intentions we are led to expect from him. The blood of our brethren flows in Paris. Let a sad respect be the first reception given to the king by the representatives of an unfortunate people: the silence of the people is the lesson of kings."

The assembly resumed the sombre demeanour which had never left it during the three preceding days. The king entered without guards, and only attended by his brothers. He was received, at first, in profound silence; but when he told them he was _one with the nation_, and that, relying on the love and fidelity of his subjects, he had ordered the troops to leave Paris and Versailles; when he uttered the affecting words--_Eh bien, c'est moi qui me fie à vous_, general applause ensued. The assembly arose spontaneously, and conducted him back to the château.

This intelligence diffused gladness in Versailles and Paris, where the reassured people passed, by sudden transition, from animosity to gratitude. Louis XVI. thus restored to himself, felt the importance of appeasing the capital in person, of regaining the affection of the people, and of thus conciliating the popular power. He announced to the assembly that he would recall Necker, and repair to Paris the following day. The assembly had already nominated a deputation of a hundred members, which preceded the king to the capital. It was received with enthusiasm. Bailly and Lafayette, who formed part of it, were appointed, the former mayor of Paris, the latter commander-in-chief of the citizen guard. Bailly owed this recompense to his long and difficult presidency of the assembly, and Lafayette to his glorious and patriotic conduct. A friend of Washington, and one of the principal authors of American independence, he had, on his return to his country, first pronounced the name of the states-general, had joined the assembly, with the minority of the nobility, and had since proved himself one of the most zealous partisans of the revolution.

On the 27th, the new magistrates went to receive the king at the head of the municipality and the Parisian guard. "Sire," said Bailly, "I bring your majesty the keys of your good town of Paris; they are the same which were presented to Henry IV.; he had regained his people; now the people have regained their king." From the Place Louis XV. to the Hôtel de Ville, the king passed through a double line of the national guard, placed in ranks three or four deep, and armed with guns, pikes, lances, scythes, and staves. Their countenances were still gloomy; and no cry was heard but the oft-repeated shout of "Vive la Nation!" But when Louis XVI. had left his carriage and received from Bailly's hands the tri-coloured cockade, and, surrounded by the crowd without guards, had confidently entered the Hôtel de Ville, cries of "Vive le Roi!" burst forth on every side. The reconciliation was complete; Louis XVI. received the strongest marks of affection. After approving the choice of the people with respect to the new magistrates, he returned to Versailles, where some anxiety was entertained as to the success of his journey, on account of the preceding troubles. The national assembly met him in the Avenue de Paris; it accompanied him as far as the château, where the queen and her children ran to his arms.

The ministers opposed to the revolution, and all the authors of the unsuccessful projects, retired from court. The count d'Artois and his two sons, the prince de Condé, the prince de Conti, and the Polignac family, accompanied by a numerous train, left France. They settled at Turin, where the count d'Artois and the prince de Condé were soon joined by Calonne, who became their agent. Thus began the first emigration. The emigrant princes were not long in exciting civil war in the kingdom, and forming an European coalition against France.

Necker returned in triumph. This was the finest moment of his life; few men have had such. The minister of the nation, disgraced for it, and recalled for it, he was welcomed along the road from Bâle to Paris, with every expression of public gratitude and joy. His entry into Paris was a day of festivity. But the day that raised his popularity to its height put a term to it. The multitude, still enraged against all who had participated in the project of the 14th of July, had put to death, with relentless cruelty, Foulon, the intended minister, and his nephew, Berthier. Indignant at these executions, fearing that others might fall victims, and especially desirous of saving the baron de Besenval, commander of the army of Paris, under marshal de Broglie, and detained prisoner, Necker demanded a general amnesty and obtained it from the assembly of electors. This step was very imprudent, in a moment of enthusiasm and mistrust. Necker did not know the people; he was not aware how easily they suspect their chiefs and destroy their idols. They thought he wished to protect their enemies from the punishment they had incurred; the districts assembled, the legality of an amnesty pronounced by an unauthorised assembly was violently attacked, and the electors themselves revoked it. No doubt, it was advisable to calm the rage of the people, and recommend them to be merciful; but instead of demanding the liberation of the accused, the application should have been for a tribunal which would have removed them from the murderous jurisdiction of the multitude. In certain cases that which appears most humane is not really so. Necker, without gaining anything, excited the people against himself, and the districts against the electors; from that time he began to contend against the revolution, of which, because he had been for a moment its hero, he hoped to become the master. But an individual is of slight importance during a revolution which raises the masses; that vast movement either drags him on with it, or tramples him under foot; he must either precede or succumb. At no time is the subordination of men to circumstances more clearly manifested: revolutions employ many leaders, and when they submit, it is to one alone.

The consequences of the 14th of July were immense. The movement of Paris communicated itself to the provinces; the country population, imitating that of the capital, organized itself in all directions into municipalities for purposes of self-government; and into bodies of national guards for self-defence. Authority and force became wholly displaced; royalty had lost them by its defeat, the nation had acquired them. The new magistrates were alone powerful, alone obeyed; their predecessors were altogether mistrusted. In towns, the people rose against them and against the privileged classes, whom they naturally supposed enemies to the change that had been effected. In the country, the châteaux were fired and the peasantry burned the title-deeds of their lords. In a moment of victory it is difficult not to make an abuse of power. But to appease the people it was necessary to destroy abuses, in order that, they might not, while seeking to get rid of them, confound privilege with property. Classes had disappeared, arbitrary power was destroyed; with these, their old accessory, inequality, too, must be suppressed. Thus must proceed the establishment of the new order of things, and these preliminaries were the work of a single night.

The assembly had addressed to the people proclamations calculated to restore tranquillity. The Châtelet was constituted a court for trying the conspirators of the 14th of July, and this also contributed to the restoration of order by satisfying the multitude. An important measure remained to be executed, the abolition of privileges. On the night of the 4th of August, the viscount de Noailles gave the signal for this. He proposed the redemption of feudal rights, and the suppression of personal servitude. With this motion began the sacrifice of all the privileged classes; a rivalry of patriotism and public offerings arose among them. The enthusiasm became general; in a few hours the cessation of all abuses was decreed. The duke du Châtelet proposed the redemption of tithes and their conversion into a pecuniary tax; the bishop of Chartres, the abolition of the game-laws; the count de Virieu, that of the law protecting doves and pigeons. The abolition of seigneurial courts, of the purchase and sale of posts in the magistracy, of pecuniary immunities, of favouritism in taxation, of surplice money, first-fruits, pluralities, and unmerited pensions, were successively proposed and carried. After sacrifices made by individuals, came those of bodies, of towns and provinces. Companies and civic freedoms were abolished. The marquis des Blacons, a deputy of Dauphiné, in the name of his province, pronounced a solemn renunciation of its privileges. The other provinces followed the example of Dauphiné, and the towns that of the provinces. A medal was struck to commemorate the day; and the assembly decreed to Louis XVI. the title of _Restorer of French Liberty_.

That night, which an enemy of the revolution designated at the time, the Saint Bartholomew of property, was only the Saint Bartholomew of abuses. It swept away the rubbish of feudalism; it delivered persons from the remains of servitude, properties from seigneurial liabilities; from the ravages of game, and the exaction of tithes. By destroying the seigneurial courts, that remnant of private power, it led to the principle of public power; in putting an end to the purchasing posts in the magistracy, it threw open the prospect of unbought justice. It was the transition from an order of things in which everything belonged to individuals, to another in which everything was to belong to the nation. That night changed the face of the kingdom; it made all Frenchmen equal; all might now obtain public employments; aspire to the idea of property of their own, of exercising industry for their own benefit. That night was a revolution as important as the insurrection of the 14th of July, of which it was the consequence. It made the people masters of society, as the other had made them masters of the government, and it enabled them to prepare the new, while destroying the old constitution.

The revolution had progressed rapidly, had obtained great results in a very short time; it would have been less prompt, less complete, had it not been attacked. Every refusal became for it the cause of a new success; it foiled intrigue, resisted authority, triumphed over force; and at the point of time we have reached, the whole edifice of absolute monarchy had fallen to the ground, through the errors of its chiefs. The 17th of June had witnessed the disappearance of the three orders, and the states- general changed into the national assembly; with the 23rd of June terminated the moral influence of royalty; with the 14th of July its physical power; the assembly inherited the one, the people the other; finally, the 4th of August completed this first revolution. The period we have just gone over stands prominently out from the rest; in its brief course force was displaced, and all the preliminary changes were accomplished. The following period is that in which the new system is discussed, becomes established, and in which the assembly, after having been destructive, becomes constructive.