Chapter VI: The Birth of the Terrible Paris Commune (2)

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]

1. the suspension of the King,

2. the convoking of a national convention,

3. electors and the eligible exempted from all property qualifications,

4. an indemnity for displaced electors,

5. the term of Assemblies left to the decision of the electors,[26106]

6. the removal and arrest of the late ministers,

7. the re-appointment of Servan, Clavières and Roland,

8. Danton as Minister of Justice,

9. the recognition of the usurping Commune,

10. Santerre confirmed in his new rank,

11. the municipalities empowered to look after general safety,

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,

17. a court-martial against the Swiss,

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]

21. the partition of communal possessions,[26112]

22. the confiscation and sale of property belonging to émigrés,[26113]

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

24. the banishment or transportation of unsworn ecclesiastics,[26114]

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:

* the judicial system,

* the full control of the nation,

* the selection of the members of the future omnipotent Assembly,

* in short, the entire government,

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."

Another way would be

"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.

*****

[Footnote 2601: An expression of Lafayette's in his address to the Assembly.]

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

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

[Footnote 2604: 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.]

[Footnote 2605: Mortimer-Ternaux, I.277.]

[Footnote 2606: 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.]

[Footnote 2607: 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... "]

[Footnote 2608: 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."]

[Footnote 2609: Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 245, 246.--II. 81, 131, 148, 170.]

[Footnote 2610: The murder of M. Duhamel, sub-lieutenant of the national guard.]

[Footnote 2611: 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.]

[Footnote 2612: 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."]

[Footnote 2613: Moniteur, XIII. 93 (session of July 9);--27 (session of July 2).]

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

[Footnote 2615: 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).]

[Footnote 2616: 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."]

[Footnote 2617: 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!"]

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

[Footnote 2619: 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.]

[Footnote 2620: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 126.--Bertrand de Molleville, III. 294.]

[Footnote 2621: Moniteur, XIII. 325 (session of Aug. 3).]

[Footnote 2622: Moniteur, XII. 738; XII. 340.]

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

[Footnote 2624: 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."]

[Footnote 2625: 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."]

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

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

[Footnote 2628: 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.]

[Footnote 2629: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 192 (municipal action of Aug. 5).]

[Footnote 2630: Decree of July 2.]

[Footnote 2631: 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]

[Footnote 2632: 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."]

[Footnote 2633: Mercure de France, April 14, 1793.--" The Revolution," I. p. 332.]

[Footnote 2634: 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.]

[Footnote 2635: 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.]

[Footnote 2636: 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."]

[Footnote 2637: Buchez et Roux, XVI. 447. "Chronique des cinquante jours," by Roederer.]

[Footnote 2638: 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.]

[Footnote 2639: 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."]

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

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

[Footnote 2642: 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."]

[Footnote 2643: 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.]

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

[Footnote 2645: Robespierre, "Seventh letter to his constituents"--Malouet, II. 233, 234.--Roederer, "Chronique des cinquante jours."]

[Footnote 2646: 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!"]

[Footnote 2647: Taine is describing a basic trait of human nature, something we see again and again whether our ancestors attacked small, harmless neighboring nations, witches, renegades, Jews, or religious people of another faith.(SR).]

[Footnote 2648: Buchez et Roux, XIX 93, session of Sept. 23, 1792. Speech by Panis: "Many worthy citizens would like to have judicial proof; but political proofs satisfy us"--Towards the end of July the Minister of the Interior had invited Pétion to send two municipal officers to examine the Tuileries; but this the council refused to do, so as to keep up the excitement.]

[Footnote 2649: Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires," 303. Letter of Malouet, June 29.--Bertrand de Molleville, "Mémoires," II. 301.--Hua, 148.--Weber, II. 208.--Madame Campan, "Mémoires," II. 188. Already, at the end of 1791, the king was told that he was liable to be poisoned by the pastry-cook of the palace, a Jacobin. For three or four months the bread and pastry he ate were secretly purchased in other places. On the 14th of July, 1792, his attendants, on account of the threats against his life, put a breastplate on him under his coat.]

[Footnote 2650: member of the 1789 Constituent Assembly. (SR).]

[Footnote 2651: Moniteur, VIII. 271, 278. A deputy, excusing his assailants, pretends that d'Ésprémesnil urged the people to enter the Tuileries garden. It is scarcely necessary to state that during the Constituent Assembly d'Espréménil was one of the most conspicuous members of the extreme "Right."--Duc de Gaëte, "Mémoires," I. 18.]

[Footnote 2652: Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 465.]

[Footnote 2653: Moniteur, XIII. 327,--Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 176.]

[Footnote 2654: Moniteur, XIII. 340.--The style of these petitions is highly instructive. We see in them the state of mind and degree of education of the petitioners: sometimes a half-educated writer attempting to reason in the vein of the Contrat Social; sometimes, a schoolboy spouting the tirades of Raynal; and sometimes, the corner letter-writer putting together the expressions forming his stock in trade.]

[Footnote 2655: Carra, "Précis historique sur l'origine et les véritables auteurs de l'insurrection du 10 Août."--Barbaroux, "Mémoires, 49. The executive directory, appointed by the central committee of the confederates, held its first meeting in a wine-shop, the Soleil d'or, on the square of the Bastille; the second at the Cadran bleu, on the boulevard; the third in Antoine's room, who then lodged in the same house with Robespierre. Camille Desmoulins was present at this latter meeting. Santerre, Westermann, Fournier the American, and Lazowski were the principal members of this Directory. Another insurrectionary plan was drawn up on the 30th of July in a wine-shop at Charenton by Barbaroux, Rebecqui, Pierre Bayle, Heron, and Fournier the American.--Cf. J. Claretie, "Camille Desmoulins," p. 192. Desmoulins wrote, a little before the 10th of August: "If the National Assembly thinks that it cannot save the country, let it declare then, that, according to the Constitution, and like the Romans, it hands this over to each citizen. Let the tocsin be rung forthwith, the whole nation assembled, and every man, as at Rome, be invested with the power of putting to death all well-known conspirators!"]

[Footnote 2656: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 182. Decision of the Quinze-Vingt Section, Aug. 4.--Buchez et Roux, XVI. 402-410. History of Quinze-Vingt Section.]

[Footnote 2657: Moniteur. XIII. 367, session of Aug. 8.--Ibid., 369 and following pages. Session of Aug. 9. Letters and speeches of maltreated deputies.]

[Footnote 2658: Moniteur, 371. Speech of M. Girardin: "I am convinced that most of those who insulted me were foreigners."--Ibid., 370. Letter of M. Frouvières: "Many of the citizens, coming out of their shops, exclaimed: How can they insult the deputies in this way? Run away! run off!"--M. Jolivet, that evening attending a meeting of the Jacobin Club, states "that the Jacobin tribunes were far from sharing in this frenzy." He heard "one individual in these tribunes exclaim, on the proposal to put the dwellings of the deputies on the list, that it was outrageous."--Countless other details show the small number and character of the factions.--Ibid., 374. Speech of Aubert-Dubacet: "I saw men dressed in the coats of the national guard, with countenances betraying everything that is most vile in wickedness." There are "a great many evil-disposed persons among the federates."]

[Footnote 2659: Moniteur, XIII. 170 (letter of M. de Joly, Minister of Justice).--Ibid., 371, declaration of M. Jolivet.--Buchez et Roux, XVI. 370 (session of the Jacobin Club, Aug. 8, at evening). Speech by Goupilleau.]

[Footnote 2660: One may imagine with what satisfaction Lenin, must have read this description agreeing: "Yes, open voting by a named and identified count, that is how a leader best can control any assembly." (SR).]

[Footnote 2661: Moniteur, XIII. 370.--Cf. Ibid., the letter of M. Chapron.--Ibid., 372. Speech by M. A. Vaublanc.--Moore, "Journal during a Residence in France," I. 25 (Aug. 10). The impudence of the people in the galleries was intolerable. There was "a loud and universal peal of laughter from all the galleries" on the reading of a letter, in which a deputy wrote that he was threatened with decapitation.--" Fifty members were shouting at the same time; the most boisterous night I ever was witness to in the House of Commons was calmness itself alongside of this."]

[Footnote 2662: Moniteur, Ibid., p. 371.--Lafayette, I. 467. "On the 9th of August, as can be seen in the unmutilated editions of the Logographe, the Assembly, almost to a man, arose and declared that it was not free." Ibid., 478. "On the 9th of August the Assembly had passed a decree declaring that it was not free. This decree was torn up on the 10th. But it is no that it was passed."]

[Footnote 2663: Moniteur, XIII. 370, 374, 375. Speech by Roederer, letter of M. de Joly, and speech by Pétion.]

[Footnote 2664: Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," II. 461.]

[Footnote 2665: "Chronique des cinquante jours," by Roederer.--Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 260.--Buchez et Roux, XVI. 458.--Towards half-past seven in the morning there were only from sixty to eighty members present. (Testimony of two of the Ministers who leave the Assembly.)]

[Footnote 2666: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 205. At the ballot of July 12, not counting members on leave of absence or delegated elsewhere, and the dead not replaced, there were already twenty-seven not answering the call, while after that date three others resigned.--Buchez et Roux, XVII. 340 (session of Sept. 2, 1792). Hérault de Séchelles is elected president by 248 out of 257 voters.--Hua, 164 (after Aug. 10). "We attended the meetings of the House simply to show that we had not given them up. We took no part in the discussions, and on the vote being taken, standing or sitting, we remained in our seats. This was the only protest we could make."]

[Footnote 2667: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 229, 233, 417 and following pages. M. Mortimer-Ternaux is the first to expose, with documents to support him and critical discussion, the formation of the revolutionary commune.--The six sections referred to are the Lombards, Gravilliers, Mauconseil, Gobelins, Théatre-Français, and Faubourg Poissonnière.]

[Footnote 2668: For instance, the Enfants Rouges, Louvre, Observatoire, Fontaine-Grenelle, Faubourg Saint-Denis, and Thermes de Julien..]

[Footnote 2669: For example, at the sections of Montreuil, Popincourt, and Roi de Sicile..]

[Footnote 2670: For example, Ponceau, Invalides, Sainte-Geneviève.]

[Footnote 2671: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 240.]

[Footnote 2672: Mortimer-Ternaux, 446 (list of the commissioners who took their seats before 9 o'clock in the morning). "Le Tableau général des Commisaires des 48 sections qui ont composé le conseil général de la Commune de Paris, le 10 Août, 1792," it must be noted, was not published until three or four months later, with all the essential falsifications. It may be found in Buchez et Roux, XVI. 450.--"Relation de l'abbé Sicard." "At that time a lot of scoundrels, after the general meeting of the sections was over, passed acts in the name of the whole assemblage and had them executed, utterly unknown to those who had done this, or by those who were the unfortunate victims of these proceedings." (supported by documents).]

[Footnote 2673: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 270, 273. (The official report of Mandat's examination contains five false statements, either through omission or substitution.)]

[Footnote 2674: Claretie, "Camille Desmoulins," p.467 (notes of Topino-Lebrun on Danton's trial). Danton, in the pleadings, says: "I left at 1 o'clock in the morning. I was at the revolutionary commune and pronounced sentence of death on Mandet, who had orders to fire op the people." Danton in the same place says: "I had planned the 10th of August." It is very certain that from 1 to 7 o'clock in the morning (when Mandat was killed) he was the principal leader of the insurrectional commune. Nobody was so potent, so overbearing, so well endowed physically for the control of such a conventicle as Danton. Besides, among the new-comers he was the best known and with the most influence through his position as deputy of the syndic-attorney. Hence his prestige after the victory and appointment as Minister of Justice. His hierarchical superior, the syndic-attorney Manuel, who was there also and signed his name, showed himself undoubtedly the pitiful fellow he was, an affected, crazy, ridiculous loud-talker. For this reason he was allowed to remain syndic-attorney as a tool and servant.--Beaulieu, "Essais sur la Révolution Française," III. 454. "Rossignal boasted of having committed this assassination himself."]

[Footnote 2675: "Pièces intéressantes pour l'histoire," by Pétion, 1793. "I desired the insurrection, but I trembled for fear that it might not succeed. My position was a critical one. I had to do my duty as a citizen without sacrificing that of a magistrate; externals had to be preserved without derogating from forms. The plan was to confine me in my own house; but they forgot or delayed to carry this out. Who do you think repeatedly sent to urge the execution of this measure? Myself; yes, myself!"]

[Footnote 2676: In "Histoire de la Révolution Française" by Ferrand & Lamarque, Cavaillés, Paris 1851, vol. II. Page 225 we may read the following footnote: "This very evening, a young artillery lieutenant observed, from a window of a house in the rue de l'Echelle, the preparations which were being undertaken in the château des Tuileries: that was Napoleon Bonaparte.--Well, right, asked the deputy Pozze di Borgo, his compatriot, what do you think of what is going on? This evening they will attack the château. Do you think the people will succeed?--I don't know, answered the future emperor, but what I can assure you is that if they gave me the command of two Swiss battalions and one hundred good horsemen, I should repel the insurgents in a manner which would for ever rid them of any desire to return." (SR)]

[Footnote 2677: Napoleon, at this moment, was at the Carrousel, in the house of Bourrienne's brother. "I could see conveniently," he says, "all that took place during the day... The king had at least as many troops in his defense as the Convention since had on the 13th Vendémaire, while the enemies of the latter were much more formidable and better disciplined. The greater part of the national guard showed that they favored the king; this justice must be done to it." (It might be helpful to some readers to know that when Napoleon refers to the 13th Vendémaire, (5th Oct. 1795) that was when he, as a young officer was given the task to defend the Convention against a royalist uprising. He was quick-witted and got hold of some guns in time, loaded them with grape-shot, placed them in front of the Parisian church of Saint-Roch and completely eliminated the superior royalist force. SR.)]

[Footnote 2678: Official report of Leroux. On the side of the garden, along the terrace by the river, and then on the return were "a few shouts of Vive le roi! many for Vive la nation! Vivent les sans-culottes! Down with the king! Down with the veto! Down with the old porker! etc.--But I can certify that these insults were all uttered between the Pont-Turnant and the parterre, and by about a dozen men, among which were five or six gunners following the king, the same as flies follow an animal they are bent on tormenting."]

[Footnote 2679: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 223, 273--Letter of Bonnaud, chief of the Sainte-Marguerite battalion: "I cannot avoid marching at their head under any pretext... Never will I violate the Constitution unless I am forced to."--The Gravilliers section and that of the Faubourg Poissonnière cashiered their officers and elected others.]

[Footnote 2680: Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 342. Speech of Fabre d'Eglantine at the Jacobin Club, Nov. 5, 1792. "Let it be loudly proclaimed that these are the same men who captured the Tuileries, broke into the prisons of the Abbaye, of Orleans and of Versailles."]

[Footnote 2681: In this respect the riot of the Champ-de-Mars (July 17, 1791), the only one that was suppressed, is very instructive: "As the militia would not as usual ground their arms on receiving the word of command from the mob, this last began, according to custom, to pelt them with stones. To be deprived of their Sunday recreational activities, to be marching through the streets under a scorching sun, and then be remain standing like fools on a public holiday, to be knocked out with bricks, was a little more than they had patience to bear so that, without waiting for an order, they fired and killed a dozen or two of the raggamuffins. The rest of the brave chaps bolted. If the militia had waited for orders they might, I fancy, have been all knocked down before they received any... Lafayette was very near being killed in the morning; but the pistol failed to go off at his breast. The assassin was immediately secured, but he arranged to be let free" (Gouverneur Morris, letter of July 20, 1791). Likewise, on the 29th of August, 1792, at Rouen, the national guard, defending the Hôtel-de-ville, is pelted with stones more than an hour while many are wounded. The magistrates make every concession and try every expedient, the mayor reading the riot act five or six times. Finally the national guard, forced into it, exclaim: "If you do not allow us to repel force with force we shall leave." They fire and four persons are killed and two wounded, and the crowd breaks up. ("Archives Nationales," F7, 2265, official report of the Rouen municipality, Aug. 29; addresses of the municipality, Aug. 28; letter of the lieutenant-colonel of the gendarmerie, Aug. 30, etc.).]

[Footnote 2682: Official report of Leroux.--"Chronique des cinquante jours," by Roederer.--"Détails particuliers sur la journée du 10 Aout," by a bourgeois of Paris, an eye-witness (1822).]

[Footnote 2683: Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 69. "Everything betokened victory for the court if the king had never left his post... If he had shown himself, if he had mounted on horseback the battalions of Paris would have declared for him."]

[Footnote 2684: "Révolution de Paris," number for Aug. 11, 1792. "The 10th of August, 1792, is still more horrible than the 24th of August, 1572, and Louis XVI. a greater monster than Charles IX. "--"Thousands of torches were found in cellars, apparently placed there to burn down Paris at a signal from this modern Nero." In the number for Aug.18: "The place for Louis Nero and for Medicis Antoinette is not in the towers of the Temple; their heads should have fallen from the guillotine on the night of the 10th of August." (Special details of a plan of the king to massacre all patriot deputies, and intimidate Paris with a grand pillaging and by keeping the guillotine constantly at work.) "That crowned ogre and his Austrian panther."]

[Footnote 2685: Narrative of the Minister Joly (written four days after the event). The king departs about half-past eight.--Cf. Madame Campan, "Mémoires," and Moniteur, XIII. 378.]

[Footnote 2686: "Révolution de Paris," number for Aug. 18. On his way a sans-culotte steps out in front of the rows and tries to prevent the king from proceeding. The officer of the guard argues with him, upon which he extends his hand to the king, exclaiming: "Touch that hand, bastard, and you have shaken the hand of an honest man! But I have no intention that your bitch of a wife goes with you to the Assembly; we don't want that whore."--"Louis XVI," says Prudhomme, "kept on his way without being upset by the with this noble impulse."--I regard this as a masterpiece of Jacobin interpretation.]

[Footnote 2687: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 311, 325. The king, at the foot of the staircase, had asked Roederer: "what will become of the persons remaining above?" "Sire," he replies, "they seem to be in plain dress. Those who have swords have merely to take them off, follow you and leave by the garden." A certain number of gentlemen, indeed, do so, and thus depart while others escape by the opposite side through the gallery of the Louvre.]

[Footnote 2688: Mathon de la Varenne, "Histoire particulière," etc., 108. (Testimony of the valet-de-chambre Lorimier de Chamilly, with whom Mathon was imprisoned in the prison of La Force.]

[Footnote 2689: De Lavalette, "Mémoires," I. 81. "We there found the grand staircase barred by a sort of beam placed across it, and defended by several Swiss officers, who were civilly disputing its passage with about fifty mad fellows, whose odd dress very much resembled that of the brigands in our melodramas. They were intoxicated, while their coarse language and queer imprecations indicated the town of Marseilles, which had belched them forth."]

[Footnote 2690: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 314, 317 (questioning of M. de Diesbach). "Their orders were not to fire until the word was given, and not before the national guard had set the example."]

[Footnote 2691: Buchez et Roux, XVI, 443. Narration by Pétion.--Peltier, "Histoire du 10 août."]

[Footnote 2692: M. de Nicolay wrote the following day, the 11th of August: "The federates fired first, which was followed by a sharp volley from the château windows." (Le Comte de Fersen et la cour de France. II. 347.)]

[Footnote 2693: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 491. The abandonment of the Tuileries is proved by the small loss of the assailants. (List of the wounded belonging to the Marseilles corps and of the killed and wounded of the Brest corps, drawn up Oct. 16, 1792.--Statement of the aid granted to wounded Parisians, to widows, to orphans, and to the aged, October, 1792, and then 1794.)--The total amounts to 74 dead and 54 severely wounded The two corps in the hottest of the fight were the Marseilles band, which lost 22 dead and 14 wounded, and the Bretons, who lost 2 dead and 5 wounded. The sections that suffered the most were the Quinze-Vingts (4 dead and 4 wounded), the Faubourg-Montmartre (3 dead), the Lombards (4 wounded), and the Gravilliers (3 wounded).--Out of twenty-one sections reported, seven declare that they did not lose a man.--The Swiss regiment, on the contrary, lost 760 men and 26 officers.]

[Footnote 2694: Napoleon's narrative.]

[Footnote 2695: Pétion's account.]

[Footnote 2696: Prudhomme's "Révolution de Paris," XIII. 236 and 237.--Barbaroux, 73.--Madame Campan, II. 250.]

[Footnote 2697: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 258.--Moore, I. 59. Some of the robbers are killed. Moore saw one of them thrown down the grand staircase.]

[Footnote 2698: Michelet, III. 289.]

[Footnote 2699: Mercier, "Le Nouveau Paris," II. 108.--"The Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France," II. 348. (Letter of Sainte-Foix, Aug. 11). "The cellars were broken open and more than 10,000 bottles of wine of which I saw the fragments in the court, so intoxicated the people that I made haste to put an end to an investigation imprudently begun amidst 2,000 sots with naked swords, handled by them very carelessly."]

[Footnote 26100: Napoleon's narrative.--Memoirs of Barbaroux.]

[Footnote 26101: Moniteur, XIII. 387.--Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 340.]

[Footnote 26102: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 303. Words of the president Vergniaud on receiving Louis XVI.--Ibid. 340, 342, 350.]

[Footnote 26103: Mortimer-Ternaux, 356, 357.]

[Footnote 26104: Mortimer-Ternaux, 337. Speech of Huguenin, president of the Commune, at the bar of the National Assembly: "The people by whom we are sent to you have instructed us to declare to you that they invest you anew with its confidence; but they at the same time instruct us to declare to you that, as judge of the extraordinary measures to which they have been driven by necessity and resistance to oppression, they k now no other authority than the French people, your sovereign and ours, assembled in its primary meetings."]

[Footnote 26105: Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," (between Aug. 10 and Sept. 20).]

[Footnote 26106: Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," Aug. 11-12. "The National Assembly considering that it has not the right to subject sovereignty in the formation of a national Convention to imperative regulations,... invites citizens to conform to the following rules."]

[Footnote 26107: August 11 (article 8)]

[Footnote 26108: Aug. 10-12 and Aug. 28.]

[Footnote 26109: Ibid., Aug. 10, Aug. 13.--Cf. Moniteur, XIII. 399 (session of Aug. 12).]

[Footnote 26110: Ibid., Aug. 18.]

[Footnote 26111: Aug. 23 and Sep. 3. After the 11th of August the Assembly passes a decree releasing Saint-Huruge and annulling the warrant against Antoine.]

[Footnote 26112: Ibid., Aug. 14.]