But whilst the people slept the conspirators were all awake ; at the house of Santerre the final touches were added to the plan of insurrection ; Chabot, Bazire, Merlin, Lasource continued to harangue the inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, three of whom, outraged by the incendiary speeches of the agitators, denounced them later on to the Assembly, declaring that Chabot had collected the people in a church of the district and had actually proposed the assassination of the King.[123]
So the match was set to the mine, and the conspirators eagerly awaited the explosion. But, contrary to their expectations, Saint-Antoine showed no irresistible desire to rise. At five in the morning of the 20th Santerre had only succeeded in raising a mob of 1500 people ;[124]
according to one account of the day, this number had not been exceeded by eleven o’clock, including those who had collected from curiosity, and “ it was not until the sieur Santerre had placed himself at the head of a detachment of invalides …, and had incited during their march all onlookers to join them, that the multitude considerably increased.” [125] Meanwhile in Saint-
Marceau a motley crowd of men, women, and children had assembled, armed with the pikes provided by Pétion, who now with consummate hypocrisy sent out commissioners to make a feint of dissuading them from bearing arms and forming a procession. The people, well under the control of the agitators, of course refused to go back to their homes whence they had been summoned ; some indeed answered in all good faith that they had no evil intentions, and were resolved to march. Finally the Faubourgs, to which a number of deserters from the National Guard had joined themselves, set forth, divided into three bands led by Santerre, St. Huruge, and Théroigne de Méricourt, and now at last, as they passed through the streets, recruits began to pour in from all sides—coal-heavers, porters, chimney-sweeps—ready for the price of a day’s work [126] and the promise of free drinks to throw themselves into any tumult ; but besides these, terrible freaks of humanity, half naked, half in rags, dregs not only of the Paris underworld but of foreign cities, Italians, negroes and negresses, brigands of the South, bearing as well as the usual revolutionary weapons—pikes, scythes, pickaxes, knotted sticks, and rusty swords—horrible emblems of their own devising—filthy trousers held aloft on poles, the badge of the Sans-Culottes, the bleeding heart of a calf labelled “ Aristocrat’s heart,” toy gibbets, http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (32 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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hangmen’s ropes. Eyewitnesses speak shudderingly of this procession ; nothing so revolting had ever yet been seen in Paris.
The organizers of the movement—who as usual remained prudently in the background—had every reason to congratulate themselves on the success of their efforts ; never before in the whole course of the Revolution had so formidable a mob been collected : barely 1000 people had marched on the Bastille, 8000 on Versailles, but now on the 20th of June certain contemporaries declare that no less than 20,000 men, women, and children took part in the movement.[127] Arithmetically they constituted only about one-thirtieth of the population of the city ; still this number was sufficient to give some semblance of truth to the assertion that “ the whole people ” had risen in the cause of liberty.
It was more than sufficient to alarm the Assembly, who, hearing that the vanguard of the army consisting of 8000 people were at the door of the Assembly demanding admittance, were called upon instantly to decide whether the procession should be allowed to march through the hall with their arms. “ Since they are 8000, and we are only 745,” cried one deputy overcome with panic, “ this is the moment to close the sitting and depart ! ” Hua, more courageous, declared that the Assembly should stand its ground and refuse the mob admittance. “ Who are these men calling themselves the people who bring us a petition with cannons and pikes ? Close the doors ; they may break them down if they wish, but at least the Assembly will not have received them and will have maintained its dignity! ”
But the Girondins—Vergniaud, Guadet, Lasource—whose collusion with the mob leaders was a guarantee for their personal safety, arose indignantly to demand that “ the people ” should be allowed to enter and place their “ sufferings and anxieties ” before the Assembly. At this Jaucourt aptly exclaimed, “ It is evident that those who brought them here cannot send them away again ! ”
Other members rose to speak, when suddenly the waiting crowd, whose angry murmur had been growing louder, broke down the barriers and burst into the hall. A scene of indescribable confusion followed ; cries of protest and alarm arose from all parts of the Assembly ; members sprang on to the benches and vainly strove to make their voices heard above the tumult. The President hastily put on his hat to signify that the sitting was ended. Finally the advance-guard of the mob was driven out again, and after further discussion the Assembly decided to admit a deputation of “ the people.” The orator of the deputation, a man named Sylvestre Huguenin, formerly a deserter from the army, now an agent of brothels, was certainly not calculated to inspire confidence in the pacific disposition of his followers. Tall and gaunt, with a bald forehead, bloodshot eyes, a dry and withered skin, his aspect was no less frightful than the tirade he now delivered to the Assembly, of which every word was a veiled provocation to assassinate the King. “ A single man shall not influence the will of 20,000 men.
If out of consideration we maintain him in his post, it is on condition that he fills it constitutionally ; if he fails to do this he counts for nothing to the French nation and deserves the extreme penalty.”[128] As an address supposed to have been framed by the inhabitants of
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Saint-Antoine the thing was the clumsiest of frauds, for in this, as in every other bogus petition presented to the Assembly, the phraseology of the Jacobin Club was clearly recognizable. Thus the working-men of Saint-Antoine were represented as saying “ Imitate Cicero and Demosthenes and unveil before the whole Senate the perfidious machinations of Catilina ! ” or again in a wild medley of metaphor : “ The people will it so, and their head is of as much value as that of crowned despots. That head is the genealogical tree of the nation, and beneath that sturdy oak the feeble reed must bend.”
At each sanguinary threat the galleries broke out into tumultuous applause, and it was then decided to allow the Faubourgs to march through the Assembly. Immediately the wild horde, of which a great number were now reeling under the influence of drink, entered the hall led by Santerre and St. Huruge ; first came seven or eight musicians playing the “ Ça ira ! ” and behind them women armed with sabres singing and dancing to the strains, the men brandishing their ragged banners and ghastly trophies on the end of poles, and all shrieking incoherently, “ Long live the Sans-Culottes ! Long live the nation ! Down With the Veto ! ” “ The procession,” says the deputy Hua, “ lasted for three hours ; hideous countenances were there ; I can still see that moving forest of pikes, those handkerchiefs, those rags that served as standards… .” Meanwhile outside the hall an immense congestion had taken place. In order to understand this we must realize the situation of the hall occupied by the Assembly. This hall was the royal Manège, that is to say, the riding-school of the Tuileries, and stood on the spot where at the present day the Rue Castiglione joins the Rue de Rivoli. At the time of the Revolution neither of these streets existed, for the great gardens of the convents and private houses of the Rue Saint-Honoré stretched right up to the line now occupied by the Rue de Rivoli, and were separated from the Tuileries only by a long and narrow courtyard known as the Cour du Manège, whilst a still narrower passage—the Passage des Feuillants—took the place of the Rue Castiglione leading from the Rue Saint-Honoré to the Porte des Feuillants opening into the Tuileries gardens. The hall of the Assembly was entered by two doors, one in the Cour du Manège, the other in the Passage des Feuillants, and it was at this latter entrance that the mob had drawn up demanding admittance. During the delay that ensued the rearguard of the procession continued to pour into the passage which, since the Porte des Feuillants was locked, formed a blind alley, and soon became packed to suffocation. Thereupon the crowd, stifling for want of air and wearied with inaction, began to seek an outlet, and whilst one party proceeded to break open the Porte des Feuillants and swarm into the gardens of the Tuileries, another bethought themselves of the poplar tree they had brought with them on a cart to represent the “ tree of liberty.”
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Now the planting of this tree was to have formed the principal ceremony of the day, and the people, finding that their leaders had failed to carry out their programme, took the law into their own hands and, bursting into the garden of the Capucin convent next to the Assembly, amused themselves by planting there the tree of liberty. This diversion ended, the crowd began to grow bored, and were on the point of dispersing when the roll of drums and the strains of the “ Ça ira ! ” sounding from the hall of the Assembly rallied them once more, and the whole mass moved forward through the doorway.
This long delay was undoubtedly an error on the part of the conspirators, for it had taken the first edge off the people’s frenzy, who, if they had been marched straight on the Tuileries, might have shown themselves capable of greater violence. As it was, by the time they had finished parading through the hall, not only had they worked off a great part of their excitement, but also, no doubt, the effects of the wine that had inspired their hilarious entry to the Assembly.
It was nearly four o’clock when at last Santerre, comprehending the necessity of getting to the real business of the day, began to herd his flock towards the exit, crying out in stentorian tones, “ Forward ! March ! ” The supreme moment had arrived. The terrible crowd of ragged men and women, victims of vice and misery, were now to consummate the crime that for three years the conspirators had vainly striven to effect. Three times already—on the 17th of July and the 6th of October 1789, and on the 18th of April 1791—this same rabble of Paris had been driven http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (35 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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forward against their King, and on each occasion had refrained from violence ; now for the last time the great attempt was to be made, and, to judge by the ferocious aspect they presented, there seemed little doubt that amongst this savage horde a murderous hand would not be wanting. [129]
Santerre and St. Huruge, indeed, were evidently so confident that “ the people ” could be depended on to carry out the crime that, instead of marching at their head as they had done in the morning when leading them to the Assembly, they prudently remained behind in the hall.
There was every reason to prefer this safe retreat, for to-day it appeared that the military authorities intended to oppose a very vigorous resistance to any invasion of the Château. Ten battalions of the National Guard were ranged along the west terrace, two more were stationed at the south end by the river, four other battalions as well as five or six hundred mounted police and twenty cannons guarded the Cour Royale.
So on this occasion it was not merely the prime authors of the movement—Brissot, Danton, Pétion, Manuel—who according to their invariable custom remained in the background, but even the mob leaders themselves who retreated into safety, leaving it to the wretched instruments they had collected to do the deed and face the consequences. It is remarkable that in all the accounts of the day we find no mention of any of the usual agitators—Rotondo, Grammont, Malga, or Fournier l’Americain—mingling with the crowd at this stage of the proceedings ; even Théroigne seems to have vanished, for we hear no more of her after her start for the Assembly at the head of her contingent.
The mob, left therefore entirely to its own devices, streamed along the Cour du Manège in the direction of the Château, and then paused as if uncertain whether to go on to the Place du Carrousel or whether to break into the garden of the Tuileries by the gate on their right known as the “ Porte du Dauphin.” It was, apparently, Mouchet, a little bandy-legged municipal officer stationed at this gateway, who persuaded them to adopt the latter course, and thereupon the whole crowd poured into the garden. [130]
But still the uncomprehending herd failed to enter into the designs of the conspirators, for they made no attempt to invade the Château—which was most accessible from this side—but proceeded along the terrace to the gate leading out on to the quay, and during this march past the troops their behaviour was so peaceable that the King with his family and entourage looking down on the procession from the windows, and watching it file through the gateway with immense relief, concluded the movement to have ended : for a moment it appeared that the 6th of October was not to be repeated.
Once outside the garden the crowd turned to the left, but instead of continuing its way along the quay drew up outside the gateway leading into the Carrousel, where they were met by the extraordinary notice, here posted up, that only “ people armed, no matter in what way,” were to be admitted. In response to this invitation—issued evidently by municipal officers in collusion with the leaders—the whole mob, armed and unarmed, poured into the square. Yet even now the people showed no intention of invading the Château, but streamed onwards to the Rue Saint-http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (36 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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Niçaise, apparently with the intention of returning whence they came. The fact is that the day was very hot, and the people having been on their feet since dawn were growing tired of the whole performance. The tree of liberty had been planted, the petition read aloud to the Assembly, and now they were ready to go home. [131]
But Santerre and St. Huruge had been informed of the hitch in the proceedings, and, realizing that if the invasion of the Tuileries was to be accomplished they must place themselves once more at the head of the movement, they now appeared on the scene. Santerre, addressing his contingent from Saint-Antoine, shouted peremptorily, “ Why have you not got into the Château ? We must get in ! it was for that we came here ! ” [132] And turning to his gunners he ordered them to follow him with their cannons, declaring that if the doors were closed to them they must be broken down with cannon-balls. Then the mob, rallying at the word of command, surged en masse towards the gateway of the Cour Royale.
As we have already seen, the troops ranged round the gateway were far more than enough to resist the incursion of the crowd, and although the hundred mounted police in the Carrousel showed a disinclination to use force, the National Guard at the first onslaught offered a spirited resistance. “ We will die rather than let them enter ! ” cried some ; and others answered, “ But we have no orders and no officers to command us ! ” And this was true, for Ramainvilliers, their commander, remained absolutely inert, afterwards giving as his reason that having received no orders from the mayor he could not take upon himself to proclaim martial law ; but since the mayor was Pétion, the principal organizer of the movement, this omission is hardly surprising.
The truth is evidently that, as on the 12th and 14th of July and on the 5th of October 1789, the military leaders were paralysed by their knowledge of what Mr. Croker well describes as “ the King’s unfortunate monomania that no blow should ever be struck in his defence.” This being so they dared not offer resistance, uncertain as to the consequences if any injury were done to the people. Maintaining, therefore, their attitude of strict neutrality, they allowed the mob to advance their cannons and point them against the great gateway of the Cour Royale.
By what perfidy was this gateway at last opened ? It is impossible to say with certainty, for just as at the siege of the Bastille an unseen hand had let down the last drawbridge, and at the invasion of Versailles another unseen hand unlocked the gate into the Cour de Marbre, so by the same mysterious agency the courtyard of the Tuileries was thrown open to the invaders.
Santerre, says Roederer, had made sure beforehand of two municipal officers, and these men, rightly calculating on the authority inspired by their scarves of office, now came forward and in imperious tones demanded that the gates should be opened. Whoever then obeyed this order, [133] the fact remains that the great bar fastening the gates was raised from within and instantly
the crowd poured into the Cour Royale.
Then at last four officers, more courageous than their comrades—Mandat, Pinon, Vanotte, and Acloque, a brewer of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, rushed forward to close the doorway leading to the great staircase of the palace, summoning National Guards, gunners, and policemen to http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (37 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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their aid. But it was too late now to command obedience ; the gunners, urged on by Santerre, were already in open rebellion and thrust aside the officers in command.
Santerre was still reluctantly compelled to remain at the head of the mob and conduct operations. For even at this crisis the great mass of the people continued to display indifference, and seemed, says Roederer, “ to be only misled or carried away, or brought there by curiosity, and not to understand that it was an outrage on the King to violate his palace.
Several were yawning with fatigue and boredom. It would have been easy to count the men led by violent passions and ferocious designs.”[134]
Seeing this, a group of lawabiding citizens, who had collected at the foot of the staircase, came forward and angrily apostrophized Santerre, threatening to make him responsible for all the harm that might come from this fatal day, “ because,” they said to him, “ you alone are the author of this unconstitutional assemblage, you alone have misled these good people, and amongst them all you alone are a scoundrel ! ” At this Santerre turned pale, and exchanging a glance with his ally, the butcher Legendre, he turned to his troops and uttered these hypocritical words : “ Messieurs, draw up an official report of my refusal to march at your head into the King’s apartments ! ” [135] Then the ruffians that composed the cowardly brewer’s following,
understanding his intention, threw the honest citizens to the ground, and like a great tidal wave the mob, once more lashed to fury, burst into the Château. So tremendous was the impetus of that mighty onrush that a cannon, carried by the invaders, was borne upon their shoulders right up the splendid staircase, wreathed with the emblems of Louis XIV. and the arms of Colbert, into the huge Salle des Cent Suisses, and there jammed in the doorway, momentarily stemming the tide. But the obstacle was quickly removed with hatchet blows upon the woodwork, and the crowd swept onwards to the Œil de Bœuf.
Now at last they were on the threshold of that abode of mystery—the King’s apartments.
Undoubtedly, amongst the great proportion of the people, the predominating emotion at this tremendous moment was curiosity, tinged with superstitious awe, for, in the minds of many of the poor denizens of the Faubourgs, royalty had not yet lost its glamour, in spite of all the agitators’ efforts to ridicule and degrade it. But that tumultuous sea nevertheless held dangerous elements, brains that throbbed wildly to the tune of the “ Ça ira ! ” hands that closed around murderous weapons in feverish anticipation of coming violence, and in these disordered imaginations superstition assumed a terrible form—it was not Louis XVI., the descendant of St.
Louis, they were now to meet face to face, but that sinister personage “ Monsieur Veto ”—Nero, Machiavelli, and Charles IX. in one—the sanguinary monster, and his still more guilty consort, who with diabolical cunning had lulled a confiding people into security whilst planning a second massacre of St. Barthelemy—perhaps on that same Quai du Louvre their feet had traversed to the Château. Goaded to frenzy by these visions, the leaders of the mob continued to beat on the closed doors, clamouring loudly for admittance ; then, meeting with no response, they proceeded to attack them with their weapons ; beneath their savage blows the lower panels yielded and fell inwards—instantly a cluster of pikes was thrust menacingly http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (38 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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through the opening.
Suddenly from the inside a voice cried out, “ Open ! I have nothing to fear from Frenchmen !
” A Swiss guard threw wide the doors. The crowd surged forward, then, like an angry wave drawing back with a roar of foam, halted in confusion, for before them stood—the King. The sensation produced on the crowd by this sudden apparition, all contemporaries record, was one of stupor—they were utterly disconcerted, for here they saw before them no sanguinary monster but a homely personage, none the more imposing for all his powdered hair and embroidered coat, who stood regarding them with an expression of extreme benevolence obviously unmixed with fear. Louis XVI. was not afraid at that frightful moment. When the faithful Acloque had rushed into his room, where all the Royal Family had collected, to announce the incursion of the mob, the King had instantly decided to go forward to meet them, only insisting that the Queen, against whom the people’s hatred had been principally directed, should remain in safety ; and whilst Marie Antoinette, finally prevented by force from following him, was hurried into the bedroom of the Dauphin, the King passed calmly to the Œil de Bœuf, with Madame Elizabeth clinging to his arm, and followed by those of his loyal defenders who had remained at his side. Two hours earlier the King, foreseeing the invasion of the Château, had sent away nearly all his retainers lest their presence should serve to irritate the populace, but several—amongst them the old Maréchal de Mouchy, that bizarre personage the Chevalier de Rougeville, and brave young Canolles, a boy of eighteen who had belonged to the King’s old bodyguard—had refused to leave him ; others, borrowing pikes and ragged garments from some of the insurgents, mingled with the mob, and thus disguised hovered around the King for his protection.[136] Arrived in the Œil de Bœuf, Louis XVI. called four grenadiers of the National Guard to his side, and one of these, De la Chesnaye, seeing that the doors were about to be broken down, said to the King, “ Sire, do not be afraid.” “ I am not afraid,” answered the King ; “ put your hand on my heart, it is calm and tranquil,” and taking the hand of the grenadier he pressed it to his heart, which in truth beat no faster in the face of the appalling danger.
What was the secret of the King’s intrepidity ? Revolutionaries, obliged to admit his amazing sangfroid at this crisis, have tried to explain it by the natural phlegm of his character, but in reality his courage throughout the Revolution can always be traced to the same cause—the fact that, as Bertrand de Molleville observed, he was never afraid when he was face to face with the people. It was this conviction that from the people themselves he had nothing to fear which had nerved him to take that perilous journey to Paris on the 17th of July 1789, which had enabled him to confront the raging mob on the 6th of October, and which now again on the 20th of June inspired him with the serenity that amazed all beholders. So, by the calm and undaunted aspect of the King, the ragged horde was momentarily brought to bay on the threshold of the Œil de Bœuf. But certain of the brigands, having recovered from the first shock of surprise, thrust their way into the room, brandishing pikes and sabres as they called aloud for the death of the King. The Swiss Guards drew their swords, but Louis XVI.
interposed : “ Put back your swords in their scabbards, I command you.” Then a man, armed http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (39 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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with a stick to which a spear had been affixed, sprang forward crying out, “ Where is Veto that I may kill him ? ” Whereat young Canolles threw himself on the assassin, and forcing him to his knees at the King’s feet obliged him to call out, “ Vive le Roi ! ” [137]
This act of courage had the effect of once more stupefying the crowd, and the King’s defenders, profiting by the pause that ensued, succeeded in leading him to a seat in the recess of a window, forming there a rampart round him with their bodies. The heroic band included the four grenadiers of the National Guard, the Maréchal de Mouchy, aged seventy-seven, the intrepid brewer Acloque, and Stéphanie de Bourbon-Conti, the natural daughter of the Prince de Conti, who had armed herself with a sword and sabre, and throughout the day never ceased defending the King from the onslaughts of his assassins. [138]
Meanwhile Madame Elizabeth showed herself no less heroic ; hearing the mob crying out for the head of the Queen she came forward and, offering her breast to their daggers, said, “ Here is the Queen ! ” Several of her retainers cried out, “ No, no, she is not the Queen, she is Madame Elizabeth ! ”
“ Ah, messieurs,” she answered, “ why undeceive them ? Were it not better that they shed my blood than that of my sister ? ” The murderous weapons were lowered, and Madame Elizabeth was placed by her defenders in the embrasure of the window next to the one occupied by the King.
For four terrible hours Louis XVI. and Madame Elizabeth endured the threats and insults of the crowd. All through the hot June afternoon they breathed the fetid atmosphere exhaled by the densely packed mass of rags and nakedness that pressed around them ; they saw before their eyes all that was basest and most degraded in human nature, the dregs of foreign countries, above all brigands from the South, vomiting imprecations, dangling before their eyes those horrible emblems—the bleeding heart labelled “Cœur d’aristocrate,” a miniature gallows to which a female figure was attached with the words “ For Antoinette,” a guillotine bearing the inscription “ For the tyrant.”
Close to the King’s side a group of men had thrown themselves into the gilded armchairs of the palace, and gathered around a table covered with bottles of wine sat smoking and drinking amidst the tumult. [139] Some one passed a bottle to the King, ordering him to drink the health
of the nation ; at the same time a cap of liberty was thrust upon his head. [140] Louis XVI.
raised the bottle to his lips, exclaiming, “ People of Paris, I drink to your health and to the health of the French nation ! ” This courageous action, derided by the revolutionaries, went straight to the hearts of the people, [141] who broke out into applause, crying, “ Vive la nation !
Vive la liberty ! ” and even “ Vive le Roi ! ” If only Louis XVI. had known how to make the most of this moment, it is possible that the invasion of his palace would have turned into an ovation in his favour ; unhappily his slow-moving mind could never devise those happy phrases that exercised so great a power over the emotional Parisians. To this drama-loving people a King who on occasion could “ strike an attitude,” show himself commanding and heroic, must have proved irresistible. Louis XVI. was hopelessly undramatic ; his speech http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (40 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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proceeded always directly from his heart, never from his imagination ; he could not calculate effects, declaim to order, play upon the emotions of the mobile crowd as the revolutionary leaders knew so well how to do, and thus at this supreme moment he remained inarticulate, leaving it to his enemies to wrest his victory from him. Legendre pressed forward and addressed him brutally :
“ Monsieur, you are there to listen to us. You are a traitor, you have always deceived us, you are deceiving us still. But have a care, the measure is overflowing, and the people are tired of being your plaything.” And he read aloud a petition filled with threats and insults, “ expressing the wishes of the people, whose orator he declared himself to be.” The King answered calmly : “ I shall do that which the law and the Constitution order me to do.” Whilst these scenes were taking place the mayor, Pétion, arrived, and making his way through the crowd addressed the King in these hypocritical words :
“ Sire, I have only this instant heard of the situation in which you have been placed.” “ That is very surprising,” Louis XVI. interrupted brusquely, “ since this has been going on for two hours.”
“ The zeal of the mayor of Paris,” Condorcet afterwards had the effrontery to declare, “ the ascendant that his virtues and his patriotism exercised over the people, prevented all disorders ”; as a matter of fact his presence served as a direct encouragement to disorder, for, since not a word of protest escaped him during the whole course of the afternoon, the brigands quickly recognized in him an ally and, protected by the support his official position afforded, proceeded to greater violence. Forcing their way to the front of the crowd they lunged at the King with their weapons, which were deflected only by the bayonets of the four courageous grenadiers.
Two young men, Clément and Bourgoing, wearing long caps on which the words “ La Mort ” were inscribed in large letters, called out loudly for the death of the King and all the Royal Family. Clément, taking up his stand beside the mayor, continued to repeat incessantly the parrot phrases composed by the authors of the agitation : “ Sire ! Sire ! I demand in the name of the 100,000 souls around me the recall of the patriot ministers you have dismissed ! I demand the sanction of the decree on the priests and on the 20,000 men and the fulfilment of the law, or you will perish ! ” Throughout this tirade, accompanied by furious gestures, Pétion uttered no remonstrance, and, not content with complimenting the people on their behaviour, afterwards declared to the Assembly that “ no one had been insulted, that no excess or offence had been committed, and the King himself had no cause of complaint.”
On this day, at any rate, Louis XVI. showed himself not only heroic but capable of really amazing resolution. To the reiterated demand for the sanction of the two decrees and the recall of the ministers he replied immovably, “ This is neither the moment for you to ask nor for me to accord,” and in the matter of the decree on the priests he added, “ I would rather renounce my crown than submit to such a tyranny of consciences.”
It was at this crisis that a deputation arrived from the Assembly. The scene that met their eyes was indescribable ; the splendid Salle de l’Œil de Bœuf presented the appearance of a http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (41 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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tavern—through the suffocating atmosphere, thick with the fumes of foul tobacco, Louis XVI.
was seen seated in the embrasure of the window, the red cap of liberty still perched upon his powdered head, contemplating his strange guests with perfect tranquillity.
When the deputies came forward to inform him that “ the Assembly would neglect no means for ensuring his liberty,” the King, indicating by a gesture the carousing brigands, the winebottles, the guns, the pikes, and sanguinary emblems by which he was surrounded, answered briefly, “ So you see ! ” Then turning to a member of the deputation he added with a sudden rare flash of humour, “ You who have travelled much, what do you think they would say of us in foreign countries ? ” [142]
Certain of the deputies venturing to repeat to the King that they had come to ensure his safety, Louis XVI. replied that he was in the midst of the French people and had nothing to fear.[143]
Again turning to one of the grenadiers he placed the man’s hand on his heart, saying, “ See whether this is the movement of a heart agitated by fear ! ” [144]
The intrepid attitude of the King was not without its effect on his assailants, and by eight o’clock in the evening it became evident that little hope remained of his assassination. Pétion, therefore realizing that nothing was now to be gained by further agitation, decided that the moment had come to pose as the restorer of law and order. Accordingly, mounting an armchair, he addressed the crowd of pikes and rags, the bearers of toy guillotines and gibbets, the drunken and half-naked brigands from the South, in the following words : “ People, you have shown yourselves worthy of yourselves ! You have preserved all your dignity amidst acute alarms. No excess has sullied your sublime movements. Hope and believe that your voice will at last be heard. But night approaches, and its shadows might favour the attempts of ill-disposed persons to glide into your bosom. People, withdraw yourselves ! ” [145]
The mob, comprehending that this was really an order to disperse, showed themselves only too eager to comply and surged towards the doors. But the leaders had resolved to make a further venture and, instead of herding the people towards the staircase, led them to the Council Chamber where the Queen and her children had taken refuge. Santerre had already preceded them thither. On the arrival of the deputies, realizing the failure of the movement, he had been heard to mutter angrily, “ Le coup est manqué ! ” [146] But if the King had succeeded in
overawing “ that foolish herd, the people,” the Queen might still serve to rouse their fury, so collecting a horde of brigands around him, and followed by a large portion of the mob, he had set forth in search of this further victim.
Now on the first incursion of the crowd into the Château, whilst the main army attacked the Œil de Bœuf, a band of furies had broken into the Queen’s apartments on the ground floor and ransacked every corner in the hunt for their prey. Meanwhile Marie Antoinette, upstairs in the Dauphin’s bedroom, vainly endeavoured to follow Louis XVI. into the Œil de Bœuf. “ Let me pass,” she cried to the gentlemen who barred her way, “ my place is with the King. I will join him, or perish if necessary in defending him.” But convinced at last that any attempt to http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (42 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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penetrate the sea of pikes that separated her from Louis XVI. must prove the signal for bloodshed, she allowed herself to be drawn into the embrasure of the window in the Salle de Conseil. It was here that Santerre and his horde discovered her. Behind the great counciltable Marie Antoinette sat surrounded by her ladies—Madame de Tourzel, Madame de la Roche-Aymon, Madame de Maillé, and the heroic Princesse de Tarente, ready to shed the last drop of her blood in defence of the Queen. By the side of Marie Antoinette stood little Madame Royale ; the Dauphin was seated on the table with his mother’s arms around him. In front several rows of grenadiers belonging to the loyal battalion of the “ Filles-Saint-Thomas ” were drawn up. Santerre roughly ordered this bodyguard to stand aside : “ Make way that the people may see the Queen ! ” Instantly the crowd rushed forward pouring forth imprecations, but at the sight of the grenadiers paused uncertainly. One woman, bolder than the rest, flung a red cap of liberty down on the table, and in foul language ordered the Queen to place it on the head of the Dauphin. The hideous badge of the galley-slave was drawn over the boy’s fair curls.
The Queen and the brave women around her endured their terrible ordeal without a sign of weakness. When the main body of the ragged army, after evacuating the Œil de Bœuf, were driven through the Chambre de Conseil past the counciltable, Marie Antoinette looked still unmoved at the ghastly emblems thrust before her eyes—the gibbet from which her effigy was suspended, the banners bearing obscene legends ; she heard without a tremor the furious imprecations mouthed at her by the dishevelled furies, and, as on the 6th of October, ended by disarming her assailants. The strange power that had touched even the corrupt heart of Mirabeau, that had changed Barnave from a sanguinary demagogue into a royalist ready to die in her defence, that later was to win reluctant admiration from her gaolers and wring pity from the tricoteuses at the Revolutionary Tribunal, gradually made itself felt amongst the women crazed with drink and revolutionary frenzy who gazed at her across the counciltable at the Tuileries. Some of the furies in the crowd, melted to tenderness by the sight of the Queen—after all a woman and a mother like themselves, sheltering with her arm her little son who looked with wondering eyes at the strange spectacle before him—cried out that they would shed the last drop of their blood for the Queen and the Dauphin. Another, better remembering her lesson, began to pour forth fresh invectives, whereat the Queen asked gently, “ Have I done you any injury ? ” “ No,” said the woman, “ but it is you who cause the unhappiness of the nation.” “ So they have told you,” answered Marie Antoinette, “ but you have been deceived. I am the wife of the King of France, the mother of the Dauphin. I am French ; never again shall I see my own country. I can only be happy or unhappy in France. I was happy when you loved me.”
Then the fury, bursting into tears, besought the Queen’s pardon, sobbing out, “ It was that I did not know. I see now how good you are.” [147]
At this Santerre, stupefied at the turn affairs had taken, exclaimed, “ What is the matter with this woman that she weeps thus ? She must be drunk with wine.” [148]
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But a moment later Santerre, pushing his way through the crowd, found himself face to face with the Queen and suddenly fell likewise beneath her spell.[149] Planting his two fists on the table he roughly ordered the bystanders to take the red cap off the head of the Dauphin, who was stifling beneath its heat ; then turning to the Queen he said, “ Ah, Madame, have no fear, I do not wish to harm you, I would rather defend you ! ” but quickly repenting of his weakness he added brutally, “ Remember that it is dangerous to deceive the people ! ” At these words Marie Antoinette raised her head and, looking Santerre imperiously in the eye, exclaimed with indignation, “ It is not by you, monsieur, that I judge the people ! ” [150]
Santerre, utterly cowed by this reply, had no thought but to beat as hasty a retreat as possible.
Turning to his brigand horde he gave the order to march, and pushing the rest of the crowd brutally before him he drove them like trembling sheep from the room. [151]
So in the growing twilight the mighty human tide ebbed from the Château of the Tuileries, leaving the great rooms “ in solitude and stupor.”
The Royal Family, once more united, fell weeping into one another’s arms. The terrible ordeal was at last ended. A few moments later several deputies arrived from the Assembly ; one turning to the Queen, standing amidst the wreckage left by the invaders—the broken furniture, the shattered panels, the doors torn from their hinges—observed with unconscious irony, “ Without excusing everything, you must admit, Madame, that the people have shown themselves to be kind-hearted ? ”
“ The King and I, monsieur,” answered Marie Antoinette, “ are persuaded of the natural kindness of the people ; they are unkind only when they are misled.” [152]
That the King could have been assassinated on this 20th of June if the people had felt any unanimous desire for his death, there can be no doubt whatever. What could his handful of defenders have availed against the determined onslaught of a mob numbering many thousand armed men ? If “ the people ” had wished to kill him, he must have perished then. But on this point all contemporaries are agreed. The great majority of the crowd seemed throughout struck with stupor, and showed no inclination to join in the insults and bloodthirsty threats of the leaders. [153]
Santerre, driving his herd down the staircase of the Château, was heard to exclaim angrily, “ The King was difficult to move to-day, but we will return to-morrow and make him evacuate !
” [154] But some poor creatures, all in rags, murmured to each other, “ It would be a pity,
somehow, he looks like a good sort of fellow ! ”[155]
The day after the invasion of the Tuileries a witness, who appeared before a magistrate of Paris, related that he had traversed the whole Faubourg Saint-Antoine to discover the disposition of the people, that in an inn close to the Barrière du Trône he had listened to several men talking, and overheard these words : “ Yes, we might have been able … but when we saw … it is so imposing … and then we are Frenchmen … Sacredieu ! if it had been any one else we could have wrung his neck like a child’s … but he comes and he says, ‘ Here I am ! Here I am ! ’ ” http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (44 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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The witness added that he had seen several of these men who had been led away by Santerre, and they assured him that the majority of the citizens of the Faubourg were distressed at the action taken towards the King, that it had not been their intention, and that one could be sure it would never happen again, and that there was something behind all this.[156]
The authors of the movement, however, knew no relenting. Madame Roland, hearing of the Queen’s sufferings on that dreadful afternoon, cried out incontrollably, “ Ah ! how I should have loved to look on at her long humiliation ! ” [157]
But Manon’s triumph was mingled with bitter disappointment. From the point of view of both Girondins and Orléanistes the day had proved a failure ; it was not merely to humiliate the Royal Family they had planned the invasion of the Tuileries, the great coup of the day, as Santerre said, had failed. The people, like Balaam’s ass, had been driven forward for the fourth time against the King, and, seeing the angel with the flaming sword before them in the pathway, had refused to move in spite of blows and curses. So the crime from which the lowest rabble of the Faubourgs had shrunk was left to men of education, to philosophers, and “ intellectuals ” to execute.
EFFECTS OF THE 20TH OF JUNE
The “ true people,” the great mass of the citizens of Paris, had, of course, taken no part in the 20th of June. “ For the honour of our country,” cries Poujoulat, “ and for the sake of historical truth, it must be known that the crimes and ignominies of the French Revolution were not the work of the French nation… . The people of Paris were not beneath the filthy banners of Santerre, St. Huruge, and Théroigne, they were around the Tuileries on the 21st of June, raging against these criminal attempts, pitying the King and Queen, cursing Pétion, the Gironde, and the Jacobins, and signing their protestations.”
All over France a great storm of indignation arose ; addresses poured in from the provinces, denouncing in vehement language the efforts of the factions to overthrow the King and Constitution. The department of the Pas de Calais “ has learnt with horror what took place in the King’s palace on the 20th of the month ”; Rouen declares the country to be in danger, and demands justice of the Assembly : “ Punish the authors of the offences committed on the 20th of this month at the Château of the Tuileries. It is a public outrage, it is an attempt on the rights of the French people who will not accept laws from a few brigands in the capital ; we ask you for vengeance.” The department of the Aisne urges the Assembly to suppress the Jacobins and cease from dissensions : “ Put an end to the scandal of your divisions … put an end to the intolerable oppression, the revolting tyranny of the tribunes (the galleries occupied by the claques of the factions). The factions of the capital have not the right to dictate public opinion.
The opinion of Paris is only the opinion of the 83rd part of the Empire. We demand vengeance for the execrable day of June the 20th, day of imperishable shame for Paris, of mourning for all http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (45 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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“ The 20th of June,” Hua records, “ produced a salutary commotion in all minds… . The National Guards, more than ever roused, offered to the King their services and their entire devotion. The inhabitants of Paris, who were particularly answerable to France for the King’s safety since he left Versailles … ashamed of the excesses that had just been committed in their name, demanded reparation and vengeance. A petition addressed to the Assembly bore 20,000
signatures ; it was called ‘ the petition of the 20,000.’ … Nearly all the departments of France set themselves to deliberate, and forwarded unanimous demands for the punishment of the outrage. They offered to send all the forces that might be needed. It was a universal competition ; it seemed as if all France had raised her arm to annihilate the factions.” [159]
Needless to say, every effort was made by the Jacobins to suppress the reporting of these addresses, to silence the orators who were sent to read them aloud at the Assembly, to discredit the authors, to prove the signatures fraudulent, and also to provide counterblasts in the form of bogus addresses approving the events of June 20, and purporting to come from the provinces and from the sections of Paris. Thus, for example, on June 25, a deputation from Saint-Antoine, calling itself “ the men of the 14th of July,” presented itself at the Assembly, led by the professional orator, Gonchon, who proceeded to deliver a furious revolutionary harangue beginning with these words : “ Legislators, it is we fathers of families, it is we, the conquerors of the Bastille, it is we who are persecuted, outraged, and calumniated,” etc.
But where amongst this band of petitioners were the conquerors of the Bastille to be found ?
Where were “ the men of the 14th of July ”—Élie, Hullin, Tournay, Bonnemère—the real heroes of that day ? We may look for them in vain amongst the ruffianly followers of Gonchon, but if we go into the gardens of the Tuileries we shall discover Hullin at that very moment otherwise employed. At half-past twelve of this same day, a gendarme national reported to the Jacobin Club, he had met the King in the Tuileries followed by a crowd of “ brigands,” at the head of which was M. Hullin following the King, and calling out with all his might, “ Vive le Roi ! ” A sub-lieutenant answered with the cry of “Vive la Nation,” whereat “ the brave Hullin ” dealt him a heavy blow on the head, and but for the interposition of the gendarme would have marched him off to prison. [160]
This, then, was the attitude of the real “ men of the 14th of July ” to the second Revolution ; not one of their names occurs in the accounts of the outrages committed at the Tuileries or in the revolutionary deputations, and the only men of the first Revolution whose services the leaders were able to enlist were a couple of cut-throats, one of which named Soudin had distinguished himself by washing the heads of Foullon and Berthier and delivering them as trophies to the mob. [161]
As for Gonchon himself, who had now passed from the Orléanistes into the pay of the Girondins, Camille Desmoulins afterwards revealed that he had received over 2000 francs from Roland merely for reading the bogus petition to the Assembly. [162]
By methods such as these the voice of the true people was stifled, and the character of the http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (46 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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French nation misrepresented to the whole civilized world. Nowhere were the outrages of June 20 more bitterly resented than in the armies on the frontier. Lafayette at last, overwhelmed with protests from his men, decided to leave Lückner in command and hastened to Paris.
Presenting himself at the bar of the Assembly he denounced, in burning words, the efforts of the conspirators to overthrow the monarchy and Constitution : “ The violence committed at the Château on the 20th of this month has excited the alarm of all good citizens ; I have received addresses from the different corps of my army. Officers, non-commissioned officers, and men are one, and herein express their patriotic hatred of the factions … already many of them wonder whether it is really the cause of liberty they are defending… . I implore, in my own name and in that of all honest men, that the Assembly should take efficacious measures to make constituted authority respected, and to give the army the assurance that no attacks will be made on the Constitution from the inside, whilst they are shedding their blood to protect it from outside enemies.”
In spite of the insults with which the Girondins greeted these words, Lafayette succeeded in maintaining his popularity, and he was followed through the streets by crowds shouting, “ Down with the Jacobins ! ” But once again “ the hero of the two worlds ” showed his lamentable weakness. If at this crisis he had used his power and finally closed down the Jacobin Club, the whole situation might have been saved. The plan was proposed to him by a deputation of National Guards, who declared that if he would place himself at their head and march with two cannons to the Rue Saint-Honoré, they would undertake to clear the building.
But Lafayette, always halting between two opinions—detestation of sedition-mongers on one hand and fear of the ultra-Royalists on the other—refused to accede to the proposal of his grenadiers.[163]
If, under these circumstances, the Queen declined to avail herself of his services, is it altogether surprising ? “ It would be better to perish than to be saved by Lafayette,” she cried, when at this juncture he came forward as champion of the monarchy. What reason, indeed, had she to trust him ? Lafayette, who before the siege of the Bastille had declared that “ insurrection was the most sacred of duties,” and had then denounced the tumults of July ; who had convicted the Duc d’Orléans of conspiring to usurp the throne, and had then facilitated his return to France ; who had subjected the King and Queen to the humiliations of his intolerable gaolership, and then talked of the respect due to the person of the monarch ; who at one moment declared himself the opponent of disorders, and the next joined in singing “ Ça ira ! ”—what dependence was to be placed on such a weathercock ? Throughout the whole course of the Revolution it was rather as the enemy of the Duc d’Orléans than as the supporter of Louis XVI. that he had defended the throne ; towards the Royal Family he had displayed neither sympathy nor allegiance, only when Orléanism raised its head Lafayette’s hand went to his sword and he became the champion of Royalty. In this second Revolution he saw undoubtedly a revival of the hated conspiracy, but what guarantee was there that, once he had again succeeded in crushing it, he would not use his power to tyrannize over the King ?
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So Lafayette, chilled by his reception at the Court, left Paris and returned to the frontier, whilst the Orléanistes triumphantly burnt his effigy in the Palais Royal.
Yet the 20th of June had disappointed the hopes of the conspirators, as indeed of all the revolutionary intrigues—Orléanistes, Girondins, Subversives, Prussians, English Jacobins alike had met with a severe reverse. For not only had the invasion of the Tuileries shown the King in his true character to the nation, but in arousing public indignation all over France had revealed the true desires of the nation to the world. So the day had ended not only in a victory for the King but for the people.
1. La Conspiration révolutionnaire de 1789, by Gustave Bord, p. 20 ; Le Marquis de St. Huruge, by Henri Furgeot, pp. 192, 225 ; Crimes et Forfaits de L.P.J. d’Orléans découverts par un citoyen.
2. Mémoires de Mme. Campan, p. 276.
3. Mémoires de Lafayette, iii. 157 ; Correspondance secrète, p. 481.
4. See the Résumé of the Cahiers, p. 7, Article II. “ The person of the King is inviolable and sacred,” Article XI. “ Individual liberty is sacred.” Therefore either as King or subject Louis XVI. could not legally be kept a prisoner, not only without the formality of a trial but without even any reason being given for his detention.
5. Mémoires de Bouillé, p. 181.
6. All the following quotations are taken from L’Europe et la Révolution Française, by Albert Sorel, vol. ii. pp. 69, 157.
7. It was his refusal to form an alliance with Prussia at this crisis that formed the principal charge against Montmorin when he was brought to trial by the Girondins two years later. The words in which this accusation is conveyed afford clear evidence that the Girondins were acting in the interests of Prussia, and throw a curious light on their political morality : “ It had been assumed,” runs the official report read aloud by the Girondin, Lasource, that M. de Montmorin “ had not believed in the sincerity of the advances made by the Court of Berlin. It was not possible that this Court should not have been of good faith, since it (the Court of Berlin !) has been so from all time, and that it can only be the natural enemy of that of Vienna… . M. de Montmorin … knew that jealousy and rivalry was fomenting more than ever between these two Courts, since he knew and admitted himself that it was the King of Prussia who had excited and fomented by his agents the insurrection of the Belgians and the Liégeois (against Austria). He therefore knew perfectly the attitude of the King of Prussia, and if he refused to adopt his views it was not because he doubted his sincerity, but because he did not wish for an alliance with that Court. What reproaches, Messieurs, has not France to make against this ex-minister ? ” ( Moniteur, xiii.
591). Montmorin was therefore to be condemned as a traitor to France because he had refused to form an alliance with a Court that he knew to be fomenting sedition in a rival State !
8. Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France, i. 87.
9. Fragment de l’Histoire secrète de la Révolution, p. 44.
10. The Correspondence of William Augustus Miles on the French Revolution, i. 256.
11. Mémoires de Dumouriez.
12. “ The object of the plot was the assassination of the King ” ( Choderlos de Laclos, by Émile Dard, p. 286).
13. Correspondence secrète, p. 450.
14. Danton boasted of this at his trial : “ It was I who prevented the journey to St. Cloud.” See Notes de Topino Lebrun ; also Bulletin du Tribunal révolutionnaire, No. 21822, “ Défense de Danton.” 15. Émile Dard, op. cit.; Correspondence secrète, 523 ; Lettres d’Aristocrates, by Pierre de Vaissière, p. 291.
16. Émile Dard, op. cit.
17. Le Nouveau Paris, by Mercier, i. 192.
18. Révolutions de France et de Brabant, by Camille Desmoulins.
19. Séances des Jacobins for July 3, 1791.
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20. Mémoires de Mme. de Genlis, iv. 92.
21. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, ii. 285 ; Mémoires de Brissot, iv. 342.
22. Aulard’s Séances des Jacobins, iii. 43.
23. Buehez et Roux, x. 145.
24. See Journal des Débats de la Société des Amis de la Constitution, etc., Séance of July 1, 1791. M. Varennes asks whether the throne shall be set up again, and whether a monarchic or republican government would be best : “ Grand bruit, brouhahas ”; the President calls the member to order. Also Séance of July 8, 1791, M. Goupil in a speech refers to “ the opinions that prevail in this society in favour of Republicanism.” The greatest tumult arises at this sentence, and a member reminds the speaker that “ all this uproar is caused by your attributing to the society sentiments it has never entertained.
(Universal applause.)”
25. Beaulieu, ii. 540.
26. Ibid. ii. 538.
27. Ibid. ii. 541.
28. Lafayette was ever after blamed for this socalled “ massacre ” by the revolutionary leaders ; Bailly paid for it with his life. Yet it is certain that Lafayette did everything in his power to restrain the indignation of the troops. See Beaulieu, ii. 543, and the evidence of Gouverneur Morris, who was an eyewitness of the scene : “ To be paraded through the streets through the scorching sun, and then stand like holiday turkeys to be knocked down by brickbats, was a little more than they (the troops) had the patience to bear ; so that without waiting for orders they fired and killed a dozen or two of the ragged regiment. The rest ran off like lusty fellows,” etc. ( Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, i. 434).
29. Beaulieu, ii. 545.
30. Histoire des Girondins, by Granier de Cassagnac, i. 330 ; La Tribune des Patriotes, by Prudhomme ; Révolutions de France, by Camille Desmoulins, No. 86 ; Camille Desmoulins, by Édouard Fleury, i. 230.
31. Camille Desmoulins, by Édouard Fleury, i. 227 : “ The terror of Marat seems to have begun the day after the flight (to Varennes), when he was overcome by panic lest Louis XVI. should return at the head of an army and put him ‘ in a hot oven.’ ” See L’Ami du Peuple, No. 497.
32. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 65, 209, 210 and note. Robespierre’s terror also began at the flight to Varennes ( ibid. p.
204).
33. Danton Émigré, by Dr. Robinet, p. 24.
34. Le Père Duchesne, by Paul d’Estrée, p. 61.
35. Le Marquis de St. Huruge, by Henry Furgeot, p. 233.
36. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 139 ; Beaulieu, ii. 530 ; Mémoives de Mme. de Campan, p. 294. Fersen thought that this party only went over to the King out of self-interest, and neither he nor the Queen trusted them ( Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France, ii. 7, 213). Marie Antoinette has been bitterly reproached for this, but when we remember their former record—Barnave’s attitude to the murder of Foullon, the raising of the “ Compagnie du Sabbat ” by the De Lameths, and the infamous part they had all played in the former insurrections—it is not altogether surprising.
37. It should be noticed that this reaction set in before the King’s final acceptance of the Constitution on September 13, 1791. M. Louis Madelin ( La Révolution, p. 187) says that from August 1 to October 1 it was the general opinion that the Revolution was over.
38. “ Doubtless there were French farmers who rejoiced at the spectacle of all the great properties of the kingdom being levelled by the nation ; they did not, however, foresee that it would be their own turn next ; that the principle of equality being once abroad, would infallibly level ALL property ” (Arthur Young, The Example of France, p. 33).
39. Taine, La Révolution, iii. 136.
40. Ibid. v. 236.
41. See this petition in Buchez et Roux, x. 196, where the worst offenders are specified by the workmen in such terms as “ day-labourer now enriched with 50,000 livres of income,” or “ who arrived in Paris in sabots and now possess four fine houses.”
42. See, for example, the laws passed on June 14, 1791, suppressing “ coalitions of workmen ”— i.e. trades unions—in the following terms “ Article 1st. The annihilation of all kinds of corporations of citizens belonging to the same state or profession being one of the fundamental bases of the French constitution, it is forbidden to re-establish them on any pretext http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (49 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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or under any form whatsoever.” The workmen were further forbidden to “ name presidents, keep registers, make resolutions, deliberate or draw up regulations on their pretended common interests,” or to agree on any fixed scale of wages.
These resolutions were passed almost without discussion and without a word of protest from Robespierre or any of the other socalled democrats of the Assembly (Buchez et Roux, x. 196) ; in fact, they were enforced with still greater severity later on under the reign of Robespierre. See the edicts passed by the Comité de Salut Public on the 22nd of Frimaire, An II., quoted by Aulard, Études et Leçons sur la Révolution Française, iv. 51.
43. Mémoires de Ferrières, iii. 204.
44. “ Discours sur la Situation politique de la Nation du 21 Octobre 1791,” Aulard’s Séances des Jacobins, iii. 208.
45. “ Leopold had no intention of entering upon hostilities, and found a loophole by which to escape from declaring war in the acceptance by Louis XVI. of the completed Constitution on 21st September 1791. He then solemnly withdrew his pretensions to interfere in the internal affairs of France ” ( Revolutionary Europe, by H. Morse-Stephens, p. 103).
46. Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris, ix. 570 ; Journal d’un Étudiant, by Gaston Maugras, p. 166 ; Madelin, p. 186 ; The Journal of Mary Frampton, letter from James Frampton dated October 2, 1791 : “ You cannot conceive how ridiculous it is to hear the amazing popularity of the King at present.” Also letter in same volume from C.B. Wollaston on October 12, 1791.
47. Letter from M. Fougeret to M. Lecoy de la Marche, October 10, 1791, in Letters d’Aristocrates, by Pierre de Vaissiere, p. 413 ; Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, i. 462.
48. Mémoires de Dumouriez, ii. 117.
49. Crimes de la Révolution, iv. 1.
50. Ibid. iv. 213.
51. Beaulieu, iii. 192.
52. Mémoires de Bouillé, i. 185. See also Mirabeau’s note ( Correspondance entre Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marck, ii.
68), in which he says of Desmoulins, “ this man is very accessible to money.” Barbaroux declared that Desmoulins “ received indiscriminately from aristocrats and patriots alike ” for the opinions he expressed in his journal ( Mémoires de Barbaroux, p. 9).
53. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 333.
54. Mémoires de Lafayette, iii. 85. On the venality of Danton and his payment by the Court contemporary evidence is overwhelming. See, for example, Beaulieu, iii. 10 ; Bertrand de Molleville, i. 354 ; Mémoires de Brissot, iv. 193 ; Correspondance entre Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marck, iii. 82 ; also summing up by Taine, La Révolution, v. 317, and by Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Révolution, x. 409.
55. Danton, aware that the acquisition of this property had excited suspicions of his integrity, explained to the Commune that it was only an obscure farmhouse bought with the sum paid him in compensation for his post as solicitor to the King’s Council which was now abolished (Beaulieu, iii. 198). But M. Lenôtre reveals that the “ farmhouse ” was “ almost a château ” in a park of approximately 27 acres (see Paris révolutionnaire, p. 260), and the Mémoires de Lafayette explain the transaction to which Danton referred in these words : “ Danton had sold himself on condition that he should be paid 100,000 livres for his post of solicitor to the council which since its suppression was worth only 10,000 livres. The King’s present was therefore of 90,000 livres… . Danton was ready to sell himself to all parties ” ( Mémoires de Lafayette, iii. 85).
56. “ Discours sur la Situation politique de la Nation du 21 Octobre 1791,” Aulard’s Séances des Jacobins, iii. 206.
57. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 204 ; Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris, xiii. 526. See also Deux Amis, viii.
93 ; Mémoires de Barère, ii. 45. The statements of Camille Desmoulins and St. Just will be given later in this book.
58. Beaulieu records that early in 1793, when the Brissotins began to find themselves falling under the power of Robespierre, General Wimpfen came upon Pétion and Buzot, who were engaged in conversation. “Well,” he said to them, “ so this Republic that you wish to establish in the Constituent Assembly is now putting you in a great fix.” “I,” replied Buzot, “ never wished for a Republic in France ; its size and the character of its inhabitants are opposed to the establishment of such a form of government.” “What do you want, then ?” “ A change of dynasty.” “But whom would you choose ? ” “ A prince of the royal house of England.” ( Essais de Beaulieu, v. 192.) 59. See the description given by Pétion in his discourse to the Jacobin Club on November 18, 1791, of the “ flattering reception ” given him by the “ Friends of the Revolution ” in England. Several members of the Society wore the tricolour badge, a tricolour flag decorated the ceiling of the hall, and the band played the “ Ça ira ! ” 60. Précis de la Défense de Carra, p. 17.
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61. This proposal is so discreditable to the Jacobins that it is suppressed in the report of their debates. The Journal des Débats records the incident in the following words : “ M. Carra ascends the tribune where he delivers a discourse on the object of the war… . Certain propositions which do not seem in accord with the principles of the Constitution arouse the attention of M. Danton, and at his motion the orator is called to order in the name of the Constitution and of the Society.” M. Aulard supplies the missing clue in his Séances des Jacobins, iii. 311. Moreover Carra admitted it later at his trial. See Précis de la Defense de Carra, p. 13.
62. Annales Patriotiques for January 9, 1792. This journal of Carra’s, one of the most violent of all the revolutionary publications, exerted an immense influence over the provinces of France. Wordsworth, in Paris at this date, thus described the important part played by Carra in the Revolution of 1792 :
The land all swarmed with passion, like a plain
Devoured by locusts,—Carra, Gorsas,—add
A hundred other names, forgotten now,
Nor to be heard of more ; yet, they were powers,
Like earthquakes, shocks repeated day by day,
And felt through every nook of town and field.
The Prelude, “ Residence in France.”
63. Danton Émigré, by Dr. Robinet, p. 4.
64. Ibid. pp. 5. 24.
65. Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, i. 510, 516. Talleyrand “ received for answer that England could not take any engagement whatever respecting the affairs of France.”
66. Ibid. p. 511.
67. Danton Émigré, p. 90.
68. Souvenirs d’Étienne Dumont, p. 302. “ As for Talleyrand,” Mr. Burges writes from London to Lord Auckland on May 29, 1792, “ he is intimate with Paine, Horne Tooke, Lord Lansdowne, and a few more of that stamp, and generally scouted by every one else ” ( Journal and Correspondence of Lord Auckland, ii. 410).
69. Pamphlet by Brissot, A tous les Républicains.
70. Discours de Jérôme Pétion sur l’accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre, November 1792.
71. Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, i. 95.
72. On this point contemporaries are divided ; Montjoie and Pagès both represent Robespierre as an Orléaniste, whilst Beaulieu ( Essais, ii. 159) and the Marquis de Bouillé ( Memoires, p. 100) assert that he merely pretended sympathy with the Orléanistes in order to further his own designs. I have adopted the latter theory because it seems to me the most convincing and alone explains Robespierre’s conduct at certain crises of the Revolution. For it will be noticed that whenever he could deal a blow at the Orléanistes without injuring his own cause he never failed to do so.
73. Aulard’s Séances des Jacobins, iii. 12, Séance du 13 Juillet 1791.
74. Ibid. iii. 420, Séance du 2 Mars 1792.
75. Moniteur, xii. 583.
76. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 21.
77. Ibid. iv. 2.
78. It should be noted that the date of this letter is uncertain ; D’Allonville and Bertrand de Molleville state emphatically that it was written on December 3, 1790, before the King’s final acceptance of the Constitution, but the Correspondence of the Comte de Fersen tends to prove that the date was December 3, 1791, that is to say, nearly two months after his final acceptance, during which interval the Glaciere d’Avignon and other atrocities in the provinces had occurred. Beaulieu, who also takes this view, explains the King’s motives in writing it ( Essais, iii. 133).
79. See the evidence of the King’s minister, Bigot de Sainte-Croix : “ From the spring of 1791 onwards the King prevented the execution of a secret plan framed at Mantua for two months later attacking France whose armies were incomplete and whose frontiers were undefended ; in the summer of the same year he hindered the effects of the Convention of Pilnitz ; the following autumn be concerted with the Emperor to restrain beyond the Rhine the designs and hostile preparations formed there. Let them give us back our correspondence that it may be published ; it will all testify to the efforts of the King to http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (51 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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avert this war which was provoked and begun by those who to-day dare to impute it to him ” ( Histoire de la Conspiration du 10 Août, p. 152). See also Fantin Désodoards, op. cit. iv. 48.
80. For example, Buzot ( Mémoires, pp. 32, 35. 43. 195) : “ One must have the vices of the people of Paris to please them…
The stupid people of France… . Souls of mud ! … What a people is that of Paris ! What frivolity, what inconstancy, how contemptible it is ! ” Barbaroux ( Mémoires, p. 84) : “ The people do not deserve that one should attach oneself to them, for they are essentially ungrateful ; the more one defends their rights the more they take advantage of one.” Madame Roland ( Mémoires, i. 300) : “ Cowardice characterized by selfishness and corruption of a degraded people whom we hoped to be able to regenerate … but which was too brutalized by its vices.”
81. “ Our social institutions,” wrote Brissot, “ punish theft—a virtuous action commanded by Nature herself ” ( Recherches philosophiques sur le Droit de Propriété, etc.). As Brissot himself had been imprisoned for theft this point of view is not surprising.
82. “ Should men nourish themselves on their kind ? A single word decides this question, and this word is dictated by Nature herself. All beings have the right to nourish themselves in any manner that will satisfy their needs ” ( Bibliothèque philosophique, by Brissot de Warville, vi. 313).
83. Histoire particulière des Évènements qui ont eu lieu en France pendant les Mois de Juin, Juillet, d’Août, et de Septembre 1792, by Maton de la Varenne ; Mémoires pour servir d’Histoire de la Ville de Lyon pendant la Révolution, by l’Abbé Guillon de Montléon, i. 58, 59.
84. Deux Amis, vii. 235.
85. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 238.
86. Ibid. p. 233.
87. Révolutions de Paris, by Prudhomme, xii. 485.
88. Lettres de Mme. Roland aux demoiselles Cannet, ii. 573.
89. Souvenirs de Sophie Grandchamp.
90. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 236.
91. Journal d’un Étudiant pendant la Révolution, edited by M. Gaston Maugras, p. 203.
92. Mémoires de Dumouriez, ii. 152, 153 ; Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 142.
93. Ibid. i. 83.
94. Mémoires de Lafayette, iii. 299 ; Beaulieu, iv. 187.
95. Moniteur, xii. 183, 184 ; Deux Amis, vii. 156.
96. La Mission de Custine à Brunswick, by Albert Sorel ; Revue Historique, i. 157.
97. Mémoires de Mallet du Pan, i. 259.
98. Deux Amis, vii. 166 ; Mémoires tirés des Papiers d’un Homme d’État, i. 333.
99. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 171.
100. Correspondance secrète, p. 600.
101. Mémoires de Mme. Campan, p. 328. See also Correspondance secrète, p. 600, and the Journal d’un Étudiant, edited by M. Gaston Maugras, p. 248.
102. Note the hypocrisy of this pretext, since the men who had proposed the Oath of the Tennis Court were now regarded by the revolutionary leaders as their bitterest enemies—Mounier had been driven from the country, and Bailly, the object of their perpetual execrations, was to perish at their hands under circumstances of revolting brutality. The truth is, as Bigot de Sainte-Croix points out, that the 20th of June was chosen as the anniversary of the flight to Varennes in the hope of reviving the unpopularity which the Orléanistes had succeeded in arousing against the King on this day.
103. See Santerre’s admission at a Séance of the Jacobins on April 13, 1792 : “ The men of this Faubourg (Saint-Antoine) would like better, on coming in from their work, to find their homes in order than to see their wives return from an assembly where they do not always gain a spirit of sweetness, and therefore they have regarded with disfavour these assemblies that are repeated three times in the week.”
104. Deux Amis de la Liberté, vii. 242, viii. 24. See also Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 189 ; Essais de Beaulieu, iii. 104. “ Nothing was more usual than this kind of fraud,” writes the contemporary Senac de Meillan ; “ the sections and the Faubourgs were made to speak ; they were set in motion even without their knowledge… We saw one day the Faubourg Saint-Antoine arriving, to the number of eight to nine thousand men. Well, this Faubourg Saint-Antoine was http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (52 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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composed of about fifty bandits hardly known in the district, who had collected on their route every one they could see in the shops or workshops, so as to form an imposing mass. These good people were on the Place Vendôme, very much bored, not knowing what they had come for, and waiting impatiently for the leaders to give them permission to retire.” 105. This petition is recorded in the journal of Mme. Jullien, Journal d’une Bourgeoise, p. 89 : “ There is a petition signed by 30,000 idlers ( badauds) which is to appear on Sunday at the National Assembly against the Jacobins.” We must not forget that in revolutionary language the terms “ badauds,” “ brigands,” or “ canaille ” signify the lawabiding members of the people. Thus Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris, xii. 526 : “ The horde of fanatics and counter-revolutionaries who, to the number of more than 60,000, have taken refuge … in the capital.” 106. Paris pendant la Révolution, by Adolphe Schmidt, p. 21. This report of the Paris administration is quoted by Prudhomme, Révolulions de Paris, xii. 523, as an insulting “ libel.” 107. Mémoires de Hua, p. 119. See Camille Desmoulins’ reference to this incident in his Fragment de l’Histoire secrète, etc., p. 5 : “ Moreover I will establish against Brissot and Gensonné the existence of an Anglo-Prussian committee by means of a number of proofs a hundred times stronger than those by which they, Brissot and Gensonne, proved the existence of an Austrian committee.”
108. Madelin, p. 219.
109. Buchez et Roux, xv. 19-30.
110. Mémoires de Lafayette, iii. 332.
111. “ Je fis la fameuse lettre,” Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 241.
112. Mémoires de Dumouriez, ii. 274.
113. That the rising of the 20th of June had been planned long before the dismissal of the three ministers on the 12th and the King’s final refusal to sanction the two decrees on the 19th, and that these circumstances were therefore only the pretexts given to the people for marching on the Tuileries, is further evident from the fact that the plan of insurrection was known in London at least ten days before it took place. On June 13 a member of the Jacobin Club read aloud a letter he had received from London announcing a movement that was to take place between the 13th and the 20th, and in the Correspondance secrète for June 16 we find an entry to the same effect : “ Letters from London announce a great movement in Paris for the 20th of this month. It has been noticed that the great events of the Revolution have always been foretold us by the English.” The cooperation of the English revolutionaries is here clearly evident.
114. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 43. Montjoie asserts that Robespierre was also present at the meetings, but this seems improbable, since the movement was conducted by his enemies the Brissotins and Orléanistes. Moreover, at the Jacobin Club he had strongly opposed the plan of insurrection. If he was present the fact is only to be explained by his natural timidity—he may have been afraid to stay away lest he should be accused of sympathy with the Court. But it seems unlikely that he took any active part in the proceedings.
115. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 174 ; Ferrières, iii. 105.
116. A play on the word pique, which signifies both spades at cards and pikes.
117. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans,iii 174 ; Histoire particulière, etc., by Maton de la Varenne.
118. Ibid.
119. Roederer, Chronique des Cinquante Jours (edition de Lescure), p. 18.
120. Mortimer Ternaux, Histoire de la Terreur, i. 141.
121. Deux Amis, viii. 25.
122. Maton de la Varenne, op. cit.; Ferrières, iii. 105 ; Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 175.
123. Buchez et Roux, xv. 196. Chabot denied the accusation, but even if he did not make this definite proposition it is certain that he was in Saint-Antoine during the night stirring up the people against the King. See Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 175 ; Roederer, p. 19 ; Ferrières, iii. 106 ; Prudhomme, Crimes, iv. 38.
124. Roederer, p. 22.
125. Buchez et Roux, xv. 117.
126. See statement of Santerre on these payments to working-men quoted in the Memoirs of the Comtesse de Bohm (edition de Lescure), p. 196.
127. On this point contemporaries are entirely disagreed. Napoleon, an eyewitness of the scene, put the crowd at only 6000 ; Beaulieu says 8000, but Roederer says 20,000. Mr. Croker believed this to be an intentional exaggeration in order “ http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (53 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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to make the mob pass for the people ” and to excuse the terror of the Assembly.
128. These words in italics given by Maton de la Varenne are suppressed by the Moniteur and Buchez et Roux.
129. Even Roederer is obliged to admit that this was the idea of the leaders : “ The lack of concerted action between the people assembled seems to leave room for only one opinion—that the boldest and most subtle plotters of violence hoped that amongst so many disorderly people a fanatical hand would be raised against the monarch for whom it had not been thought necessary to designate or even to seek out an assassin.” ( Chronique des Cinquante Jours (edition de Lescure), p. 38).
130. It was at this moment that Napoleon Bonaparte, coming out of a restaurant near the Palais Royal with Bourrienne, made his memorable exclamation : “ What imbeciles, how could they allow that rabble ( canaille) to enter ? They should have swept away four or five hundred of them with cannons and the rest would still be running ! ” ( Mémoires de Bourrienne, i.
49).
131. Mortimer Ternaux, i. 184 ; Buchez et Roux, xv. 118.
132. Buchez et Roux, xv. 118.
133. Boucher Réné, a municipal officer, in his evidence to the police says “ a gunner ”; La Reynie, who declared Boucher Réné to be one of the officers to give the order, says “ men of the National Guard.” Roederer and Mortimer Ternaux accept the latter statement.
134. Roederer, p. 46.
135. Déposition de La Reynie, Buchez et Roux, xv. 118.
136. Mémoires de Hua, p. 136.
137. Histoire particulière, etc., by Maton de la Varenne. Canolles was guillotined for this action on May 23, 1794.
138. Ibid.
139. Mémoires de Hua.
140. According to Maton de la Varenne it was Santerre who thrust the cap of liberty on to the King’s head ; according to Beaulieu it was Clement, but other contemporaries relate that the King put it on of his own accord. This seems improbable, and is contradicted by the King’s statement to Bertrand de Molleville.
141. “ What saved Louis XVI. was his presence of mind in putting on the bonnet rouge and in drinking from a bottle offered him by a real Sans-Culotte ” ( Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 43).
142. Mémoires de Ferrières, iii. 115.
143. Evidence of the deputies Brunck and Lejosne, Moniteur, xii. 719.
144. Evidence of the deputy Alos, ibid. The grenadier, a tailor by profession named Lalanne, was guillotined later “ for having boasted that Capet had taken his hand and held it to his heart ” (Granier de Cassagnac, Causes de la Révolution, iii.
217).
145. Mémoires de Hua. The Moniteur tones down this discourse.
146. Dernières années . . de Louis XVI, by François Hue, p. 239 ; Fantin Désodoards, op. cit. ii. 300.
147. Mémoires de Mme. Campan, p. 331.
148. Vie de Marie Antoinette, by Montjoie, p. 323.
149. Ibid.
150. Vie de Marie Antoinette, by Montjoie, p. 323 ; Maton de la Varenne, op. cit.
151. Ferrières, iii. 119 ; Maton de la Varenne, op. cit.; Conjuration de d’Orléans, by Montjoie, iii. 184.
152. Dernières années . . de Louis XVI, by François Hue, p. 244.
153. “ Nothing of all this could move the crowd. Divided between the King and his sister it remained motionless. One read in all eyes astonishment, stupidity, or apprehension ” (Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 181).
“ In truth, and we are glad to say it, amongst all the people who introduced themselves to the apartments very few shared this atrocious attitude. It appears, according to various reports, that the greater number only showed the desire to see the King and Royal Family ” ( Rapport fait au Conseil du Département par MM. Garnier, Leveillard et Demautort, Commissaires, au Sujet des Événements du 20 Juin).
“ The people, ashamed of finding themselves all at once in the presence of their King and in the midst of his apartments, seemed frightened by their own temerity, at the sight of the ancient majesty of the throne that fourteen centuries of respect had in some way rendered sacred ” (Ferrières, iii. 113).
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154. Evidence of soldiers and commissioners, Revue retrospective, 2ième, série, tome i. pp. 213, 254.
155. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 43.
156. Déclarations de la Reynie et Fayel reçues par le Juge de Paix de la Section du Roi de Sicile.
157. Lamartine, Histoire des Girondins, iii. 3.
158. Moniteur, xiii. 5.
159. Mémoires de Hua, p. 138 ; Deux Amis, viii. 19 ; Dumont, Souvenirs de Mirabeau : “ The whole mass of France was weary of the excesses of the Jacobins, and the outrage of June the 20th had excited a general indignation.” See also Taine, La Révolution, v. 259.
160. Aulard’s Séances des Jacobins, iv. 48.
161. Buchez et Roux, xv. 165, 237.
162. Fragment d’Histoire secrète de la Révolution, by Camille Desmoulins, p. 55.
163. Essais de Beaulieu, iii. 396.
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