THE BANQUET OF THE BODYGUARD

The municipality of Versailles, alarmed no less for the safety of the town than of the Royal Family, now decided, on the advice of the Comte d’Estaing, commander of the National Guard of Versailles, to request the King to summon another regiment as a reinforcement of the bodyguard, the Swiss dragoons and milice bourgeoise that at present constituted the garrison, and were held to be inadequate “ to resist the attack of 2000 armed men.”[59] Accordingly the “ Régiment de Flandre “ was ordered to

Versailles and arrived on September 23. Immediately the conspirators set to work to corrupt the newly arrived troops, and women of the town were sent to distribute money, food, and wine amongst the soldiers,[60] and to exact from them the promise not to defend the King in case of insurrection. “ One would not have supposed,” writes a revolutionary chronicler of the day, “ that it is to the vilest class of our prostitutes that we owe the happy event that brought the King to Paris and the consolation that the day of October the 5th was not more murderous…. The leaders of the people … sent to Versailles … in bands and by different routes three hundred of the prettiest street-walkers of the Palais Royal with money, instructions, and the promise of being disembowelled by the people if they did not carry out their mission faithfully. It was these female deputies who, amidst the pleasures of love, obtained from the soldiers the patriotic oath which rendered their arms powerless before their fellow-citizens.” [61]

By the same means which had been employed to seduce the Gardes Françaises before the siege of the Bastille, the men of the Régiment de Flandre were now turned from their allegiance to the King, and as a sign of defection adopted the tricolour cockade. [62]

The loyal troops of the King saw all this with growing alarm, and resolved to bring the Flemish regiment back to its allegiance. Now it was a time-honoured custom for the King’s bodyguard to entertain at supper any newly arrived regiment ; accordingly the officers of the Régiment de Flandre were invited to a banquet at which a number of the Swiss Guards, the milice bourgeoise, and others were also present. The theatre of the Château, lent by the King for the occasion, was brilliantly decorated, and lit by hundreds of candles ; around a huge horse-shoe table the officers of the bodyguard and the officers of the Flemish regiment were seated alternately, and the bands of the two regiments played throughout the feast. Were the faithful soldiers of the King to blame if they took this opportunity to revive the waning loyalty of their comrades ? Were they to http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_03.html (14 of 58)5.4.2006 10:39:58

 

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be reproached with treachery to the nation if under their influence the men of the Flemish regiment broke out into cries of “ Vive le Roi ! ”

When at this juncture the Royal Family entered the hall, the Queen leading Madame Royale by the hand, an officer of the bodyguard carrying the Dauphin in his arms, enthusiasm knew no bounds, and a storm of acclamation burst forth unrestrained.

To the minds of Frenchmen there was something intensely tragic in the sudden apparition of the little group over whose heads so terrible a storm was gathering, and at the sight of the Queen—a beautiful woman, a wife, a mother, whose life they knew was daily threatened—all the ancient chivalry of France awoke in them, and to a man they resolved to defend her. The last touch of pathos was given by the band of the Régiment de Flandre with the air from “ Richard Cœur de Lion ” :

O ! Richard ! o mon Roi ! l’univers t’abandonne !

The selection was painfully apt ; all the world was deserting the unhappy King, and with the passionate loyalty of their race the gallant bodyguard at this supreme moment mustered around him. Men of both regiments sprang on to their chairs, waved their glasses aloft, and shouted themselves hoarse with cries of “ Vive le Roi ! Vive la Reine ! Vive le Dauphin ! ”

The scene was afterwards described by the revolutionaries as a “ drunken orgy ” ; it is possible that both wine and music had gone to the heads of the revellers—is the fact altogether unprecedented in the annals of regimental dinners ?—but the fact implies no criminal intention towards the nation.

The occasion provided, however, the pretext for which the conspirators were waiting, and the story was immediately circulated in Versailles and carried to the Palais Royal—it is said by the Due d’Orléans himself [63]—that the officers of the bodyguard had refused to drink the health of the nation and had trampled under foot the “ national cockade.” The accusation, emphatically denied by eyewitnesses of the scene, [64] rested

on the evidence of one man alone, a certain Laurent Lecointre, cloth-seller and officer in the milice bourgeoise of Versailles, who was filled with rancour against the bodyguard because he had not been invited to the banquet,[65] and who was therefore not present.

The exact truth about the “ toast of the nation ” is impossible to discover, but from the evidence of the most reliable witnesses it appears that the health of the nation was not drunk because the toast was not a customary one, and so was not proposed on this or any former occasion.[66] It was, therefore, not refused.

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the national cockades and trampled on them, for the simple reason that they had not adopted them but were still wearing the white cockade.[67] At the same time it seems that white cockades were distributed by the ladies of the Court to the Régiment de Flandre, and that voices were heard to exclaim, “ Long live the white cockade, it is the right one ! ”

But when we remember that the tricolour represented the colours of the Due d’Orléans, that it had become in reality not the “ national ” but the “ revolutionary cockade,” and was regarded amongst soldiers as the badge of desertion, [68] was it unnatural that those who desired the King’s cause to triumph over the designs of a usurper should have attempted to replace it by the royal emblem ? If so, as Mounier points out, “ Where was the crime ? What law obliged one at Versailles to wear the cockade of Paris ? Why should one not have been allowed to prefer the colour that from all time had been that of our flag ? Why, on a day that the Royal Family was threatened, should not all courageous men have rallied round this sign of fidelity ? ” [69]

A strange incident followed the banquet. A chasseur of the Trois Évêchés was found by Miomandre, an officer of the Royal Turenne, sunk in despair, with his forehead resting on the hilt of his sword. When asked what was his trouble he broke out into sobs and disjointed sentences in which the following words alone were audible : “ That fine household of the King … I am a great fool … The monsters, what do they demand ? …

those rascals of a commander and D’Orléans ! ” Then falling on his sword he attempted to take his life. At this moment several of his comrades appeared on the scene, and hearing what had occurred one of them exclaimed, “ He is a good-for-nothing—we must get rid of him ! ” Thereupon they kicked the wretched man to death “ as one would crush an insect.”[70]

It will be seen, then, how frightful were the consequences to any one who attempted to betray the designs of the conspirators, how potent was the Orléaniste “ terror ” that during the first stages of the Revolution held sway over the minds of men and sealed the lips of those who would have revealed the truth concerning the preparations for the insurrection of October 5.

 

PRELIMINARIES OF THE MARCH ON VERSAILLES

 

The story of the Guards’ “ orgy ” had served the purpose of rendering this loyal regiment odious to the people, but a further obstacle must be removed from their path if the conspirators were to succeed in their scheme of bringing the King to Paris. “ It was http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_03.html (16 of 58)5.4.2006 10:39:58

 

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necessary,” says Mounier, “ in order to execute their plan, to get rid of the King’s guards and of all those who would have defended his liberty. They feared the courage of the Queen, and so she must be given over to the fury of the people.” [71] Louis XVI.,

surrounded by his feeble and purblind ministers, was not to be feared ; they had but to assure him that the people wished him to go to Paris and to Paris he would go. But the Queen would see the plot and offer resistance. “ The King,” said Mirabeau a year later, “ has only one man with him—that is his wife.” [72]

So by every species of calumny, by the circulation of the foulest libels, by every method the “ infernal genius ” of Laclos could devise, [73] popular rage was stirred up against the Queen at the Palais Royal and in the Faubourgs of Paris. “ The Queen was at the head of a counter-revolution—the Queen was the sole cause of the disorder in the finances—the Queen had said that the happiest day of her life would be when she could wash her hands in the blood of the French,” that she “ would not mind being shut up in Paris, provided the walls of her prison were made of the bones of Frenchmen.” [74] But the accusation that stirred most deeply the passions of the people was that the Queen was responsible for the scarcity of bread. For, in spite of a magnificent harvest only six weeks earlier, the supplies of grain were again declared to be insufficient, the bakers’

shops were besieged, working-men waited all day to obtain a 4 lb. loaf and returned empty-handed to their starving families.

Hunger is apt to render one light-headed ; under its dizzying spell many things seem possible that with a well-nourished brain one would recognize as absurd, and so the half-famished dwellers in the Faubourgs readily accepted the assurance that the King, the Queen, and the “ aristocrats ” were at the bottom of the trouble. Gouverneur Morris thus describes an orator haranguing the people : “ The substance of his discourse was : ‘

Messieurs, we are in want of bread, and this is the reason—it is only three days since the King has had the suspensive Veto, and already the aristocrats have bought suspensions and sent the grain out of the kingdom.’ To this sensible and profound discourse his audience gave a hearty assent. ‘ Ma foi ! he is right. It is only that ! ’ Oh, rare ! These are the modern Athenians ! ”

But were these poor people altogether to blame for their credulity ? Many of them could neither read nor write. How were they to know that neither Court nor aristocrats had anything whatever to do with the circulation of grain at this crisis, since the whole question had been placed under the control of the “ Committee of Subsistences,” headed by the popular mayor, Bailly, who, helpless as ever before the manœuvres of the Orléanistes, vainly endeavoured to thwart the monopolizers ? [75]

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fictitious ; the want of bread, as contemporaries of all parties agree, did not really exist, but was artificially produced in order to inflame the minds of the people against the Court and Government.[76] This point, habitually overlooked by historians, gives the key

to the whole movement of October 5.

Moreover, that this artificial famine was again the work of the Orléaniste conspiracy there can be no doubt whatever, for apart from the statements of Montjoie, Rivarol, the Comte d’Hézecques, and Mounier, which all exactly agree, we have that of Bailly himself, and no one was in a better position than the mayor to judge of the real state of affairs, nor was any man less likely to defend the Court against the accusation of a plot if any such had existed. Who were the authors of the plot Bailly, however, indicates very clearly : “ The parties who sought to bring about an insurrection, well realizing that there was no finer opportunity than the want of supplies, made every effort to make an unequal division either by pillaging our convoys without (the city) or taking them by force from the bakers within, or else by cornering the bread so that one should have too much and the other go without, or in purposely placing amongst the crowd assembled at the bakers’ doors strong men who could ill-treat and injure the weak so as to make the people complain. When I passed in front of one of these shops and saw this crowd, my heart was torn, and I can still hardly see a baker’s shop without emotion.” [77] A further method employed by the agitators was to tell the people that the flour was bad, and as much of that which was now on the markets came from abroad, and differed in colour and flavour from the home-grown variety, this story was readily believed, and the people were persuaded to rip up the sacks, dispersing the contents. No less than 2000 sackfuls were thrown into the Seine.[78] These diabolical methods had the desired effect of

denuding the markets and driving the poor of Paris to desperation.

Meanwhile the agitators were hard at work. In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Santerre and the orator Gonchon, whose red and blotchy countenance rivalled in hideosity that of Danton or of St. Huruge, stirred up insurrection.[79] At the Palais Royal, on Sunday,

October 4, “ Danton roared his denunciations,” and “ Marat made as much noise as the four trumpets on the Day of Judgment.” It was now that the morrow’s march on Versailles was publicly announced on the pretext of “ the scarcity of bread, the desire of avenging the national cockade, and of bringing the King to Paris.” [80]

By these means the movement, like the one that had preceded the siege of the Bastille, was made to appear spontaneous—an uncontrollable rising of the people that the leaders were powerless to subdue. But at the Duc d’Orleans’ house in Passy [81] the march had

already been planned, and the elements of which the mob was to be composed arranged by the conspirators.

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“ If an insurrection were possible,” Mirabeau had said, “ it would only be in the event of women mingling in the movement and taking the lead.” [82] Did the idea of a “ hunger

march of women ” originate with Mirabeau ? Or had he merely in one of his frequent moments of indiscretion given away the secret of his party ? The truth will never be known, yet one thing is certain—the plan did not originate with the women, but was adopted for an excellent reason by the organizers of the expedition.

Now, the leaders of the revolutionary mobs were never fond of facing artillery or troops of whose defection they had not previously assured themselves, and at Versailles they well knew that not only the King’s faithful bodyguard awaited them, but also certain cannons which pointed threateningly at the Avenue de Paris, by which the procession must approach the Château. If, however, a contingent of women could be induced to march first and form a screen between them and the troops, the rest of the army could safely advance with their artillery. [83] The plan was well thought out, and the

conspirators entertained no doubt that the women of Paris could be incited by the pangs of hunger to co-operate. Accordingly supplies were now entirely cut off, and when the wet and windy morning of Monday the 5th of October dawned, the Faubourgs of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau found themselves absolutely without bread.