The state of the weather further added to the excitement of the Parisians, for the cold spring had been followed in July by a burst of almost tropical heat, a circumstance that seems always to have reacted on the minds of the populace, since nearly every great day of tumult during the Revolution in Paris was unusually hot. Sunday morning, the 12th of July, the day after Necker’s departure, was torrid ; the sun poured down from a http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_02.html (18 of 66)5.4.2006 10:39:44
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cloudless sky on to the crowds that from an early hour had filled the garden of the Palais Royal. Already at nine o’clock a vague rumour had reached the city that the worst had happened, that Necker was dismissed, and as the panic news passed from mouth to mouth the terrified citizens hurried to the Palais Royal to ascertain the truth. By midday the garden was so packed from end to end that no more standing room was available, and people climbed on to the trees until the branches bowed beneath their weight ; even the mob orators, after vainly attempting to pile up chairs and tables for their platforms, were reduced to hanging from the boughs of the lime-trees whilst they harangued the crowd. “ This agitation,” says Montjoie, who looked on at the scene, “ was terrifying.
One must have seen it to be able to form any idea of it.” At every moment a fresh rumour was circulated, adding to the general consternation ; now a messenger, wild-eyed, rushing into the square and crying out that he had just arrived from Versailles where the deputies were being massacred ; now a panic-monger announcing that the Due d’Orléans was exiled—thrown into the Bastille—condemned to death ; now warnings shrieked to the terrified people that the troops were marching on the city to put everything to fire and sword. The seething multitude that filled the garden and arcades was like a sea lashed by a hurricane ; at each new alarm a long deep moan arose from thousands of throats, a moan that now grew into a muffled roar of fury, now died away into the silence of consternation. Then suddenly rumour gave way to certainty. A fresh messenger from Versailles announced the terrible news—Necker was dismissed, had already taken his departure, the country’s doom was sealed ; and at this confirmation of their fears the maddened people turned on the bearer of ill-tidings and were with difficulty prevented from drowning him in one of the fountains of the garden.
It was now twelve o’clock and the sun had reached the meridian, beating down on the dense mass of heads and on the burning glass of the Palais Royal. Suddenly a strange thing happened. The glass mirror reflected the sun’s rays on to the cannon of the palace and, setting light to the charge, fired it with a terrifying report, and so “ the sun himself gave the first signal for the Revolution.” [31]
The effect of this circumstance on the minds of the people was indescribable. The wildest scene of confusion began. Men haggard with fear, women pale and tearful rushed hither and thither ; the streets were filled with bands of citizens, silent and distraught, hurrying like frightened sheep they knew not whither. Unhappy people driven desperately to and fro by the men who had made themselves their shepherds !
Yet the shepherds did not find their work too easy ; even sheep refuse at moments to be driven in the right direction, and still the people, for all their panic, showed no inclination to carry out the designs of the agitators and begin the revolution in earnest.
Camille Desmoulins afterwards described his desperate efforts that afternoon to stir the http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_02.html (19 of 66)5.4.2006 10:39:44
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people up to violence ; some, indeed, were so misguided as to cry, “ Vive le Roi ! ” “ In vain I tried to inflame their minds,” says Camille ; “ no one would take up arms ! ” It was three o’clock in the afternoon when at last Camille, coming out of the Café de Foy where the Orléaniste leaders forgathered, encountered several young men walking armin-arm and shouting, “Aux armes ! Aux armes ! ” Immediately he saw his opportunity and joined them ; in an instant he was hoisted up on to a table in front of the café, from which position he afterwards related that he delivered an eloquent harangue : “ Citizens, you know that the nation had asked for Necker to be retained, for a monument to be raised to him, and he has been driven away ! Could you be more insolently defied ? After this stroke they will dare anything, and for to-night they are meditating, have perhaps arranged, a Saint-Barthélemy of patriots ! To arms ! To arms ! Let us take green cockades, the colour of hope ! ” He waved a green ribbon, fastened it in his hat, and instantly the crowd, tearing down leaves from the trees above their heads, adorned themselves with the same emblem. Then, striking an attitude, Camille pointed a quivering finger at the crowd, pretending to see amongst them the agents of the police. “ The infamous police are here ! Let them look at me ! Let them observe me ! Yes, it is I who call my brothers to liberty ! ” He raised a pistol in the air.
“ At least they shall not take me alive, and I shall know how to die gloriously ; only one misfortune can befall me—that of seeing France become again enslaved ! ” Such is Camille’s version of his tirade, but it seems probable that much of it was inspired by esprit d’escalier and never found utterance, for none of his auditors record it in these words. Montjoie, in fact, declares that Camille’s performance consisted merely in standing on the table waving a pistol and calling out “ Aux armes ! ” making horrible grimaces the while to overcome his stutter.
At any rate his efforts were rewarded, for he was hauled down from the table and carried in triumph on the shoulders of the crowd, who now at last responded to the cry of insurrection, and arming themselves with sticks, hatchets, and pistols poured into the streets thirsting to do battle with the menacing legions—the legions that meanwhile remained peacefully encamped in the Champ de Mars.
This was undoubtedly the great moment to which the Orléaniste conspiracy had been leading up. The people’s minds had been prepared by the alarms concerning the fate of the duke, and were therefore more than usually disposed in his favour as the victim of despotism. If he had now come forward and shown himself to the frenzied crowd it seems probable that he could have placed himself at the head of the movement. But at this crucial moment the duke was not forthcoming, for he had gone off at eleven o’clock that morning with his mistress, Mrs. Elliott, to spend the day at his chateau of Raincy, http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_02.html (20 of 66)5.4.2006 10:39:44
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and did not reappear until the evening. Was his absence arranged by the conspirators to give colour to their stories of his exile or imprisonment ? Or did he disappoint his supporters by refusing to be present ? We know that the pusillanimity of the duke at every crisis made him the despair of his party, and that this fear, moreover, was founded on a very real danger—that of assassination. When he fainted in the Assembly that summer day only a few weeks earlier, and his coat was unfastened to give him air, had it not been discovered that he wore beneath it no less than four waistcoats, including one of leather, to protect him from a dagger-thrust ?[32] It is possible, therefore, that at the last moment his courage failed him ; but at any rate his absence was foreseen by the conspirators, for the duke himself being unavailable they led the crowd to the waxwork show of M. Curtius in the Boulevard du Temple, where— by mere coincidence, Orléaniste historians would have us believe—the busts of the Duc d’Orléans and Necker lay ready to hand.
Camille Desmoulins’ subsequent remarks on this incident show that he certainly did not believe in the theory of coincidence, but recognized very clearly the design of the faction—from which, like every other Orléaniste, he became anxious to disassociate himself. “ Will any one make me believe,” he wrote four years later, “ that when I mounted a table on the 12th of July and called the people to liberty, it was my eloquence that produced that great movement half an hour later, and that made the two busts of Orléans and Necker spring from the ground ? ”[33] The procession with the two effigies
had therefore been premeditated, and Mirabeau, hardly less an enfant terrible than Camille in giving away the secrets of his party, confirms this statement. Referring to the 12th of July in his answer to the Procedure du Châtelet, he attempted to prove the duke’s innocence on this day by remarking, “ When his bust was paraded he hid himself.”[34] Then the duke knew that his bust was to be paraded ? Otherwise where was the virtue of his disappearance from the scene four hours earlier ? Again, why should he hide himself ? Why not, if he was innocent, have come forward boldly and denied all complicity with the movement ? Thus from Orléaniste evidence alone it is obvious that the incident of the two busts was a ruse devised by the conspirators, with the idea of putting popular feeling to the test ; it had been resolved to try the people with the duke’s effigy, and if, as seemed not unlikely, it met with a hostile reception, nothing but wax would suffer ; if, on the other hand, it was received with acclamations, the duke was to be recalled from his retreat and placed at the head of the movement. The effigy of Necker was, of course, merely a cover to the real design—“ to parade only one,” remarks Prudhomme shrewdly, “ would have been clumsy.”[35] Accordingly the two
busts, wreathed in black crepe and crowned, were carried in procession through the streets whilst Orléaniste agents, posted in the crowd, cried out, “ Hats Off ! The country http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_02.html (21 of 66)5.4.2006 10:39:45
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is in danger ; here are its restorers. Vive D’Orléans ! ” Then, as the people failed to take up the cry, the agitators went amongst them repeating, “ Call out ‘ Vive D’Orléans !
’ ” For answer some asked wonderingly, “ What does all this mean ? ” and the agitators replied, “ Why, don’t you understand that Monsieur le duc d’Orléans is to be proclaimed king and M. Necker his prime minister ? Come, cry with us ‘ Vive D’Orléans !’ ”[36]
Even at the Palais Royal the busts met with a no more enthusiastic reception. On arrival in the garden one of the men bearing the effigies, pointing them out to the people, called aloud, “ Is it not true that you want this prince for your king, and this good man for his minister ? ” But only a few voices answered, “ We wish it ! ” [37]
After this discouraging response the procession made its way by the Boulevards to the Place Louis XV., where it encountered a regiment of the Royal Allemands under the Prince de Lambesc, who rode up with drawn sword and scattered the rioters. During the fray the bust of Orléans fell into the gutter ; a linen-draper’s assistant, Pepin by name, rushed to its rescue, and in his attempt to pick up the mutilated effigy was wounded in the leg and fell bleeding to the ground.[38] Raised in the arms of sympathizers, Pepin
was carried off to the Palais Royal to exhibit his wounds ; he was not, however, too seriously wounded to harangue the multitude. Dr. Rigby, an eyewitness of the scene, describes “ the whole mass agitated afresh by the appearance of a man with a green coat whose countenance and manner bespoke the utmost consternation. ‘ To arms, citizens,’
he cried, ‘ the Dragoons have fired on the people, and I myself have received a wound,’
pointing to his leg. This acted like an electric shock.”
Meanwhile the Prince de Lambesc and his troops made their way towards the Tuileries across the great Place Louis XV, which at this hour was filled with holiday-makers returning from their Sunday afternoon festivities in the Bois de Boulogne and the neighbouring villages ; through this crowd the troops advanced at foot pace, gently pushing aside those who obstructed their passage, but the people, infuriated by the sight of the soldiers, greeted them with a hail of stones. Gouverneur Morris, who at this moment arrived upon the scene, thus describes the incident : “ The people take post among the stones which lie scattered about the whole place, being then hewn for the bridge now building. The officer at the head of the party (a body of cavalry with their sabres drawn) is saluted by a stone, and immediately turns his horse in a menacing manner towards the assailant. But his adversaries are posted in ground where the cavalry cannot act. He pursues his route, and the pace is soon increased to a gallop, amid a shower of stones. One of the soldiers is either knocked from his horse, or the horse falls under him. He is taken prisoner and at first ill-treated. They fired several pistols, but without effect ; probably they were not even charged with ball. A party of the Swiss Guard are posted in the Champs Élysées with cannon.”
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The Prince de Lambesc, having thus reached the entrance of the Tuileries, crossed the swing bridge into the garden with his troops, but was again immediately assailed by a hail of stones, chairs, and bottles that the crowd, assembled on the terraces at each side of the bridge, flung down on the regiment. [39] In spite of these outrages the soldiers still
refrained from retaliating, and in order to avoid bloodshed the prince ordered the troops to evacuate the garden, whereupon the crowd rushed forward and attempted to cut off their retreat by closing the swing bridge. One old man, a schoolmaster named Chauvet, in the act of performing this manœuvre, was slightly injured by the Prince de Lambesc, who struck him with the flat of his sword, causing a wound that was speedily healed by means of a brandy compress. [40]
Such was “ the brutal charge ” of the “ ferocious Prince de Lambesc,” retailed with so much virtuous indignation by revolutionary writers. It is interesting to compare the evidence of eyewitnesses, of Gouverneur Morris, of Montjoie, and of those who appeared later at the trial of the Prince, with the version circulated that night in Paris by the leaders of the agitation. Dr. Rigby, who unfortunately was not present, thus records the account given him by Jefferson :
“ About seven in the evening Prince de Lambesc, who commanded a regiment of German Dragoons, entered the Tuileries … and made its gay crowds of citizens the objects of his attack, enforced his commands by a sudden discharge of musketry. The terrified multitude fled in all directions, and the middle of the square was suddenly cleared of all but a feeble old man, whose infirmities denied him the power of running.
Against this single defenceless individual the cowardly Prince lifted up his arm, and either desperately wounded or killed him with one stroke of his sabre.” This story—every word of which was afterwards disproved, and is now believed by no responsible historian[41]—was loudly proclaimed at the Palais Royal, and the alarm was followed by messengers rushing into the square frantically declaring that citizens were being massacred in the garden of the Tuileries, and dragoons withdrawn swords were crushing women and children beneath their horses’ feet. These fearful tidings had the effect that for seven hours the mob orators had striven in vain to produce, of arming the mob.
“ From this moment,” says Dr. Rigby, “ nothing could restrain the fury of the people ; they burst forth into the streets calling ‘ Aux armes ! Aux armes ! ’ Every house likely to afford any was immediately entered. The gunsmiths’ shops were ransacked, and in a very short time the principal streets were filled with a tumultuous populace, armed variously with guns, swords, pikes, spits, and every instrument of offence and defence.” This disorderly band, joined by numbers of deserters from the Gardes Françaises, now http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_02.html (23 of 66)5.4.2006 10:39:45
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marched on the King’s troops in the neighbourhood of the Place Louis XV. Let us consult the revolutionary account of the day to discover the manner in which these bloodthirsty soldiers received the onslaught.
“ Assembled in force near the depot on the old boulevard,” say the Two Friends of Liberty, “ they (the armed mob) advance in good order, attack a detachment of the Royal Allemand, and at the first discharge cause three horsemen to bite the dust. These, although assailed, endure the fire of their adversaries without replying, and double back on the Place Louis XV, where was the main body of their regiment.”[42]
This, then, was the conduct of the troops accused by the revolutionary leaders of carrying out a “ massacre of Saint-Barthèlemy ” amongst the citizens ! What further proof is needed of the King’s sincerity in assuring the people that these forces had been summoned merely to protect them ? Nothing could exceed the heroic forbearance of these much-tried men, and those historians who would have us believe that their attitude was owing to the fact that they sympathized with the people and therefore could not be induced to use their arms against them, calumniate not only the officers in command, but the people themselves. Is it conceivable that the people could be so cowardly as to insult and attack men they knew to be their friends ? All contemporary evidence points to the one conclusion—the men were acting under orders from their officers, and the officers, in their turn, were obeying the King’s command—at all costs to avoid bloodshed. The order given to Bézenval, and produced later at his trial, is proof positive of this assertion “ Give the most precise and moderate orders to the officers in command of the detachment you employ that they shall act only as protectors, and shall have the greatest care to avoid compromising themselves or engaging in any combat with the people unless they show themselves inclined to cause fires or commit excesses or pillage that would endanger the safety of citizens.” [43]
It was a frightful position for the men in command, and Bézenval, in deciding to withdraw the troops to the Champ de Mars, was evidently only doing what he conceived to be his duty. Royalists who reproached him for not adopting stronger measures, and revolutionaries who laughed at his retreat, were alike incapable of appreciating his dilemma. “ If I had marched the troops into Paris,” he wrote afterwards, “ I should have started civil war on one side or the other ; precious blood would have been shed without any useful result… .” True, but how much innocent blood might have been spared that flowed hereafter ? Civil war with all its horrors cannot equal the horror of leaving the mob to execute its own vengeances unrestrained, for a rioting mob, like a woman in hysterics, needs firmness to bring it to its senses ; too great solicitude but weakens its power of self-control, and leaves it a prey to frightful convulsions even more dangerous to itself than to those against whom its fury is directed. Paris, which through that http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_02.html (24 of 66)5.4.2006 10:39:45
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feverish Sunday had worked itself up into a nervous crisis that nothing but iron discipline could have allayed, was now, through the mistaken humanity of those in command, left unprotected, and at the withdrawal of all lawful authority rapidly passed into a state of frenzied panic. To all lawabiding citizens, the night that followed was a night of terror, for, at the signal of insurrection, the hordes of brigands, that since the Affaire Réveillon had been kept in reserve by the leaders to create fresh scenes of violence, [44] came forth armed with sticks and pikes and paraded the streets, pillaging the
armourers’ shops, and threatening to burn down the houses of the aristocrats. The Quinzaine Mémorable puts the number of these professional bandits at 20,000, Droz at no less than 40,000, and when we remember the terror created in the provinces of France only a few years ago by half-a-dozen motor bandits—Bonnard and his gang—it is easy to imagine the horror and confusion inspired by thousands of such ruffians suddenly let loose and armed in the streets of an undefended city.[45]
To these hired bands were added all the dregs of the Faubourgs—drunkards, wastrels, degenerates, prototypes of the modern Apache, whose native love of violence needed no incentive ; prostitutes who tore the ear-rings from the ears of passers-by, “ and if the rings resisted, tore the ears ” ; smugglers who saw their chance of booty and led the crowd to burn down the barriers and defraud the customs.[46] Where in all this pandemonium were “ the people ” to be found ? No good citizens were abroad that hot and terrible night, the true “ people,” the peaceful bourgeois, the quiet and laborious working men and women of Paris, hid themselves in their humble dwellings no less fearfully than the aristocrats in their hotels of the Faubourg Saint-Honore, whilst all the while the tocsin sounded drearily and the cry of the rioters, “ Des armes et du pain ! ” rang out in the darkness. “ During that disastrous night,” say the Two Friends of Liberty, “ sleep descended only on the eyes of children ; they alone reposed in peace whilst their distracted parents watched over their cots.”