How could your paralytic National Executive be put ‘in action,’* in any measure, by such a Twentieth of June as this? Quite contrariwise: a large sympathy for Majesty so insulted arises everywhere; expresses itself in Addresses, Petitions, ‘Petition of the Twenty Thousand inhabitants of Paris,’ and such like, among all Constitutional persons; a decided rallying round the Throne.
Of which rallying it was thought King Louis might have made something. However, he does make nothing of it, or attempt to make; for indeed his views are lifted beyond domestic sympathy and rallying, over to Coblentz mainly. Neither in itself is this same sympathy worth much. It is sympathy of men who believe still that the Constitution can march. Wherefore the old discord and ferment, of Feuillant sympathy for Royalty, and Jacobin sympathy for Fatherland, acting against each other from within; with terror of Coblentz and Brunswick acting from without:—this discord and ferment must hold on its course, till a catastrophe do ripen and come. One would think, especially as Brunswick is near marching, such catastrophe cannot now be distant. Busy, ye Twenty-five French Millions; ye foreign Potentates, minatory Emigrants, German drill-serjeants; each do what his hand findeth!* Thou, O Reader, at such safe distance, wilt see what they make of it among them.
Consider therefore this pitiable Twentieth of June as a futility; no catastrophe, rather a catastasis,* or heightening. Do not its Black Breeches wave there, in the Historical Imagination, like a melancholy flag of distress; soliciting help, which no mortal can give? Soliciting pity, which thou wert hard-hearted not to give freely, to one and all! Other such flags, or what are called Occurrences, and black or bright symbolic Phenomena, will flit through the Historical Imagination: these, one after one, let us note, with extreme brevity.
The first phenomenon is that of Lafayette at the Bar of the Assembly; after a week and day. Promptly, on hearing of this scandalous Twentieth of June, Lafayette has quitted his Command on the North Frontier, in better or worse order; and got hither, on the 28th, to repress the Jacobins: not by letter now; but by oral Petition, and weight of character, face to face. The august Assembly finds the step questionable; invites him meanwhile to the honours of the sitting.1 Other honour, or advantage, there unhappily came almost none; the Galleries all growling; fiery Isnard glooming; sharp Guadet not wanting in sarcasms.
And out of doors, when the sitting is over, Sieur Resson, keeper of the Patriot Café in these regions, hears in the street a hurlyburly; steps forth to look, he and his Patriot customers: it is Lafayette’s carriage, with a tumultuous escort of blue Grenadiers, Cannoneers, even Officers of the Line, hurrahing and capering round it. They make a pause opposite Sieur Resson’s door; wag their plumes at him; nay shake their fists, bellowing À bas les Jacobins! but happily pass on without onslaught. They pass on, to plant a Mai before the General’s door, and bully considerably. All which the Sieur Resson cannot but report with sorrow, that night, in the Mother Society.2 But what no Sieur Resson nor Mother Society can do more than guess is this, That a council of rank Feuillants, your unabolished Staff of the Guard and who else has status and weight, is in these very moments privily deliberating at the General’s: Can we not put down the Jacobins by force? Next day, a Review shall be held, in the Tuileries Garden, of such as will turn out, and try. Alas, says Toulongeon, hardly a hundred turned out. Put it off till tomorrow, then, to give better warning. On the morrow, which is Saturday, there turn out ‘some thirty;’ and depart shrugging their shoulders!3 Lafayette promptly takes carriage again; returns musing on many things.
The dust of Paris is hardly off his wheels, the summer Sunday is still young, when Cordeliers in deputation pluck up that Mai of his: before sunset, Patriots have burnt him in effigy. Louder doubt and louder rises, in Section, in National Assembly, as to the legality of such unbidden Anti-jacobin visit on the part of a General: doubt swelling and spreading all over France, for six weeks or so; with endless talk about usurping soldiers, about English Monk,* nay about Cromwell: O thou poor Grandison-Cromwell!—What boots it? King Louis himself looked coldly on the enterprize: colossal Hero of two Worlds, having weighed himself in the balance,* finds that he is become a gossamer Colossus, only some thirty turning out.
In a like sense, and with a like issue, works our Department-Directory here at Paris; who, on the 6th of July, take upon them to suspend Mayor Pétion and Procureur Manuel from all civic functions, for their conduct, replete, as is alleged, with omissions and commissions, on that delicate Twentieth of June. Virtuous Pétion sees himself a kind of martyr, or pseudo-martyr, threatened with several things; drawls out due heroical lamentation; to which Patriot Paris and Patriot Legislative duly respond. King Louis and Mayor Pétion have already had an interview on that business of the Twentieth; an interview and dialogue, distinguished by frankness on both sides; ending on King Louis’s side with the words, “Taisez-vous, Hold your peace.”*
For the rest, this of suspending our Mayor does seem a mistimed measure. By ill chance, it came out precisely on the day of that famous Baiser de l’amourette, or miraculous reconciliatory Delilah-Kiss, which we spoke of long ago. Which Delilah-Kiss was thereby quite hindered of effect. For now his Majesty has to write, almost that same night, asking a reconciled Assembly for advice! The reconciled Assembly will not advise; will not interfere. The King confirms the suspension; then perhaps, but not till then will the Assembly interfere, the noise of Patriot Paris getting loud. Whereby your Delilah-Kiss, such was the destiny of Parliament First, becomes a Philistine Battle!
Nay there goes a word that as many as Thirty of our chief Patriot Senators are to be clapped in prison, by mittimus and indictment of Feuillant Justices, Juges de Paix; who here in Paris were well capable of such a thing. It was but in May last that Juge-de-Paix Larivière, on complaint of Bertrand-Moleville* touching that Austrian Committee, made bold to launch his mittimus against three heads of the Mountain, Deputies Bazire, Chabot, Merlin, the Cordelier Trio; summoning them to appear before him, and shew where that Austrian Committee was, or else suffer the consequences. Which mittimus the Trio, on their side, made bold to fling in the fire: and valiantly pleaded privilege of Parliament. So that, for his zeal without knowledge,* poor Justice Larivière now sits in the prison of Orléans, waiting trial from the Haute Cour there. Whose example, may it not deter other rash Justices; and so this word of the Thirty arrestments continue a word merely?
But on the whole, though Lafayette weighed so light, and has had his Mai plucked up, Official Feuillantism falters not a whit; but carries its head high, strong in the letter of the Law.* Feuillants all of these men; a Feuillant Directory; founding on high character, and such like; with Duke de la Rochefoucault for President,—a thing which may prove dangerous for him! Dim now is the once bright Anglomania of these admired Noblemen. Duke de Liancourt offers, out of Normandy where he is Lord-Lieutenant, not only to receive his Majesty, thinking of flight thither, but to lend him money to enormous amounts. Sire, it is not a Revolt, it is a Revolution; and truly no rose-water one! Worthier Noblemen were not in France nor in Europe than those two: but the Time is crooked,* quick-shifting, perverse; what straightest course will lead to any goal, in it?
Another phasis which we note, in these early July days, is that of certain thin streaks of Federate National Volunteers wending from various points towards Paris, to hold a new Federation-Festival, or Feast of Pikes, on the Fourteenth there. So has the National Assembly wished it, so has the Nation willed it. In this way, perhaps, may we still have our Patriot Camp in spite of Veto. For cannot these Fédérés, having celebrated their Feast of Pikes, march on to Soissons; and, there being drilled and regimented, rush to the Frontiers, or whither we like? Thus were the one Veto cunningly eluded!
As indeed the other Veto, about Priests, is also like to be eluded; and without much cunning. For Provincial Assemblies, in Calvados as one instance, are proceeding on their own strength to judge and banish Antinational Priests. Or still worse without Provincial Assembly, a desperate People, as at Bourdeaux, can ‘hang two of them on the Lanterne,’ on the way towards judgment.1 Pity for the spoken Veto, when it cannot become an acted one!
It is true, some ghost of a War-minister, or Home-minister, for the time being, ghost whom we do not name, does write to Municipalities and King’s Commanders, that they shall, by all conceivable methods, obstruct this Federation, and even turn back the Fédérés by force of arms:* a message which scatters mere doubt, paralysis and confusion; irritates the poor Legislature; reduces the Fédérés as we see, to thin streaks. But being questioned, this ghost and the other ghosts, What it is then that they propose to do for saving the country?—they answer, That they cannot tell; that indeed they for their part have, this morning, resigned in a body; and do now merely respectfully take leave of the helm altogether. With which words they rapidly walk out of the Hall, sortent brusquement de la salle, the ‘Galleries cheering loudly,’ the poor Legislature sitting ‘for a good while in silence’!2 Thus do Cabinet-ministers themselves, in extreme cases, strike work; one of the strangest omens. Other complete Cabinet-ministry there will not be; only fragments, and these changeful, which never get completed; spectral Apparitions that cannot so much as appear! King Louis writes that he now views this Federation Feast with approval; and will himself have the pleasure to take part in the same.
And so these thin streaks of Fédérés wend Paris-ward through a paralytic France. Thin grim streaks; not thick joyful ranks, as of old to the first Feast of Pikes! No: these poor Federates march now towards Austria and Austrian Committee, towards jeopardy and forlorn hope; men of hard fortune and temper, not rich in the world’s goods. Municipalities, paralyzed by War-ministers, are shy of affording cash; it may be, your poor Federates cannot arm themselves, cannot march, till the Daughter-Society of the place open her pocket, and subscribe. There will not have arrived, at the set day, Three thousand of them in all. And yet, thin and feeble as these streaks of Federates seem, they are the only thing one discerns moving with any clearness of aim, in this strange scene. Angry buz and simmer; uneasy tossing and moaning of a huge France, all enchanted, spell-bound by unmarching Constitution, into frightful conscious and unconscious Magnetic-sleep; which frightful Magnetic-sleep must now issue soon in one of two things: Death or Madness! The Fédérés carry mostly in their pocket some earnest cry and Petition, to have the ‘National Executive put in action;’ or as a step towards that, to have the King’s Déchéance, King’s Forfeiture, or at least his Suspension, pronounced. They shall be welcome to the Legislative, to the Mother of Patriotism; and Paris will provide for their lodging.
Déchéance, indeed: and, what next? A France spell-free, a Revolution saved; and anything, and all things next! so answer grimly Danton and the unlimited Patriots, down deep in their subterranean region of Plot, whither they have now dived. Déchéance, answers Brissot with the limited: and if next the little Prince Royal were crowned, and some Regency of Girondins and recalled Patriot Ministry set over him? Alas, poor Brissot; looking, as indeed poor man does always, on the nearest morrow as his peaceable promised land; deciding what must reach to the world’s end, yet with an insight that reaches not beyond his own nose! Wiser are the unlimited subterranean Patriots, who with light for the hour itself, leave the rest to the gods.
Or were it not, as we now stand, the probablest issue of all, that Brunswick, in Coblentz, just gathering his huge limbs towards him to rise, might arrive first; and stop both Déchéance, and theorizing on it? Brunswick is on the eve of marching; with Eighty Thousand, they say; fell Prussians, Hessians, feller Emigrants: a General of the Great Frederick, with such an Army. And our Armies? And our Generals? As for Lafayette, on whose late visit a Committee is sitting and all France is jarring and censuring, he seems readier to fight us than fight Brunswick. Lückner and Lafayette pretend to be interchanging corps, and are making movements, which Patriotism cannot understand. This only is very clear, that their corps go marching and shuttling, in the interior of the country; much nearer Paris than formerly! Lückner has ordered Dumouriez down to him; down from Maulde, and the Fortified Camp there. Which order the many-counselled Dumouriez, with the Austrians hanging close on him, he busy meanwhile training a few thousands to stand fire and be soldiers, declares that, come of it what will, he cannot obey.1 Will a poor Legislative, therefore, sanction Dumouriez; who applies to it, ‘not knowing whether there is any War-ministry’?* Or sanction Lückner and these Lafayette movements?
The poor Legislative knows not what to do. It decrees, however, that the Staff of the Paris Guard, and indeed all such Staffs, for they are Feuillants mostly, shall be broken and replaced. It decrees earnestly in what manner one can declare that the Country is in Danger.* And finally, on the 11th of July, the morrow of that day when the Ministry struck work, it decrees that the Country be, with all despatch, declared in Danger. Whereupon let the King sanction; let the Municipality take measures: if such Declaration will do service, it need not fail.
In Danger, truly, if ever Country was! Arise, O Country; or be trodden down to ignominious ruin! Nay, are not the chances a hundred to one that no rising of the Country will save it; Brunswick, the Emigrants, and Feudal Europe drawing nigh?
But to our minds the notablest of all these moving phenomena, is that of Barbaroux’s ‘Six Hundred Marseillese who know how to die.’
Prompt to the request of Barbaroux, the Marseilles Municipality has got these men together: on the fifth morning of July, the Townhall says, “Marchez, abattez le Tyran, March, strike down the Tyrant;”2 and they, with grim appropriate “Marchons,”* are marching. Long journey, doubtful errand; Enfans de la Patrie, may a good genius guide you! Their own wild heart and what faith it has will guide them: and is not that the monition of some genius, better or worse? Five Hundred and Seventeen able men, with Captains of fifties and tens; well armed all, musket on shoulder, sabre on thigh: nay they drive three pieces of cannon; for who knows what obstacles may occur? Municipalities there are, paralyzed by War-minister; Commandants with orders to stop even Federation Volunteers: good, when sound arguments will not open a Town-gate, if you have a petard to shiver it! They have left their sunny Phocean City and Sea-haven, with its bustle and its bloom: the thronging Course, with high-frondent Avenues, pitchy dockyards, almond and olive groves, orange trees on house-tops, and white glittering bastides that crown the hills, are all behind them. They wend on their wild way, from the extremity of French land, through unknown cities, toward an unknown destiny; with a purpose that they know.
Much wondering at this phenomenon, and how, in a peaceable trading City, so many householders or hearth-holders do severally fling down their crafts and industrial tools; gird themselves with weapons of war, and set out on a journey of six hundred miles to ‘strike down the tyrant,’—you search in all Historical Books, Pamphlets, and Newspapers, for some light on it: unhappily without effect. Rumour and Terror precede this march; which still echo on you; the march itself an unknown thing. Weber, in the back-stairs of the Tuileries, has understood that they were Forçats, Galley-slaves and mere scoundrels, these Marseillese; that, as they marched through Lyons, the people shut their shops;—also that the number of them was some Four Thousand. Equally vague is Blanc Gilli, who likewise murmurs about Forçats and danger of plunder.1 Forçats they were not; neither was there plunder, or danger of it. Men of regular life, or of the best-filled purse, they could hardly be; the one thing needful* in them was that they ‘knew how to die.’ Friend Dampmartin saw them, with his own eyes, march ‘gradually’ through his quarters at Villefranche in the Beaujolais: but saw in the vaguest manner; being indeed preoccupied, and himself minded for marching just then—across the Rhine. Deep was his astonishment to think of such a march, without appointment or arrangement, station or ration: for the rest, it was ‘the same men he had seen formerly’ in the troubles of the South; ‘perfectly civil;’ though his soldiers could not be kept from talking a little with them.2
So vague are all these; Moniteur, Histoire Parlementaire are as good as silent: garrulous History, as is too usual, will say nothing where you most wish her to speak! If enlightened Curiosity ever get sight of the Marseilles Council-Books, will it not perhaps explore this strangest of Municipal procedures; and feel called to fish up what of the Biographies, creditable or discreditable, of these Five Hundred and Seventeen, the stream of Time has not yet irrevocably swallowed?
As it is, these Marseillese remain inarticulate, undistinguishable in feature; a blackbrowed Mass, full of grim fire, who wend there, in the hot sultry weather: very singular to contemplate. They wend; amid the infinitude of doubt and dim peril; they not doubtful: Fate and Feudal Europe, having decided, come girdling in from without; they, having also decided, do march within. Dusty of face, with frugal refreshment, they plod onwards; unweariable, not to be turned aside. Such march will become famous. The Thought, which works voiceless in this blackbrowed mass, an inspired Tyrtæan Colonel, Rouget de Lille, whom the Earth still holds,1 has translated into grim melody and rhythm; into his Hymn or March of the Marseillese: luckiest musical-composition ever promulgated. The sound of which will make the blood tingle in men’s veins; and whole Armies and Assemblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of Death, Despot and Devil.
One sees well, these Marseillese will be too late for the Federation Feast. In fact, it is not Champ-de-Mars Oaths that they have in view. They have quite another feat to do: a paralytic National Executive to set in action. They must ‘strike down’ whatsoever ‘Tyrant,’ or Martyr-Fainéant,* there may be who paralyzes it; strike and be struck; and on the whole prosper, and know how to die.
Of the Federation Feast itself we shall say almost nothing. There are Tents pitched in the Champ-de-Mars; tent for National Assembly; tent for Hereditary Representative,—who indeed is there too early, and has to wait long in it. There are Eighty-three symbolic Departmental Trees-of-Liberty; trees and mais enough: beautifullest of all, there is one huge mai, hung round with effete Scutcheons, Emblazonries and Genealogy-books; nay better still, with Lawyers’-bags, ‘sacs de procédure:’ which shall be burnt. The Thirty seat-rows of that famed Slope are again full; we have a bright Sun; and all is marching, streamering and blaring: but what avails it? Virtuous Mayor Pétion, whom Feuillantism had suspended, was reinstated only last night, by Decree of the Assembly. Men’s humour is of the sourest. Men’s hats have on them, written in chalk, ‘Vive Pétion;’ and even, ‘Pétion or Death, Pétion ou la Mort.’*
Poor Louis, who has waited till five o’clock before the Assembly would arrive, swears the National Oath this time, with a quilted cuirass under his waistcoat which will turn pistol-bullets.1 Madame de Staël, from that Royal Tent, stretches out the neck in a kind of agony, lest the waving multitudes which receive him may not render him back alive. No cry of Vive le Roi salutes the ear; cries only of Vive Pétion; Pétion ou la Mort. The National Solemnity is as it were huddled by; each cowering off almost before the evolutions are gone through. The very Mai with its Scutcheons and Lawyers’-bags is forgotten, stands unburnt; till ‘certain Patriot Deputies,’ called by the people, set a torch to it, by way of voluntary after-piece. Sadder Feast of Pikes no man ever saw.
Mayor Pétion, named on hats, is at his zenith in this Federation; Lafayette again is close upon his nadir. Why does the stormbell of Saint-Roch speak out, next Saturday; why do the citizens shut their shops?2 It is Sections defiling, it is fear of effervescence. Legislative Committee, long deliberating on Lafayette and that Anti-jacobin Visit of his, reports, this day, that there is ‘not ground for Accusation’! Peace, ye Patriots, nevertheless; and let that tocsin cease: the Debate is not finished, nor the Report accepted; but Brissot, Isnard and the Mountain will sift it, and resift it, perhaps for some three weeks longer.
So many bells, stormbells and noises do ring;—scarcely audible; one drowning the other. For example: in this same Lafayette tocsin, of Saturday, was there not withal some faint bob-minor, and Deputation of Legislative, ringing the Chevalier Paul Jones to his long rest;* tocsin or dirge now all one to him! Not ten days hence Patriot Brissot, beshouted this day by the Patriot Galleries, shall find himself begroaned by them, on account of his limited Patriotism; nay pelted at while perorating, and ‘hit with two prunes.’3 It is a distracted empty-sounding world; of bob-minors and bob-majors,* of triumph and terror, of rise and fall!
The more touching is this other Solemnity, which happens on the morrow of the Lafayette tocsin: Proclamation that the Country is in Danger. Not till the present Sunday could such Solemnity be. The Legislative decreed it almost a fortnight ago; but Royalty and the ghost of a Ministry held back as they could. Now however, on this Sunday, 22nd day of July 1792, it will hold back no longer; and the Solemnity in very deed is. Touching to behold! Municipality and Mayor have on their scarfs; cannon-salvo booms alarm from the Pont-Neuf, and single-gun at intervals all day. Guards are mounted, scarfed Notabilities, Halberdiers, and a Cavalcade; with streamers, emblematic flags; especially with one huge Flag, flapping mournfully: Citoyens, la Patrie est en Danger. They roll through the streets, with stern-sounding music, and slow rattle of hoofs; pausing at set stations, and with doleful blast of trumpet, singing out through Herald’s throat, what the Flag says to the eye: “Citizens, our Country is in Danger!”
Is there a man’s heart that hears it without a thrill? The many-voiced responsive hum or bellow of these multitudes is not of triumph; and yet it is a sound deeper than triumph. But when the long Cavalcade and Proclamation ended; and our huge Flag was fixed on the Pont-Neuf, another like it on the Hôtel-de-Ville, to wave there till better days; and each Municipal sat in the centre of his Section, in a Tent raised in some open square, Tents surmounted with flags of Patrie en Danger, and topmost of all a Pike and Bonnet Rouge; and, on two drums in front of him, there lay a plank-table, and on this an open Book, and a Clerk sat, like recording-angel, ready to write the Lists, or as we say to enlist! O, then, it seems, the very gods might have looked down on it. Young Patriotism, Culottic and Sansculottic, rushes forward emulous: That is my name; name, blood, and life, is all my Country’s; why have I nothing more! Youths of short stature weep that they are below size. Old men come forward, a son in each hand. Mothers themselves will grant the son of their travail; send him, though with tears. And the multitude bellows Vive la Patrie, far reverberating. And fire flashes in the eyes of men;—and at eventide, your Municipal returns to the Townhall followed by his long train of Volunteer valour; hands in his List; says proudly, looking round, This is my day’s harvest.1 They will march, on the morrow, to Soissons; small bundle holding all their chattels.
So, with Vive la Patrie, Vive la Liberté, stone Paris reverberates like Ocean in his caves; day after day, Municipals enlisting in tricolor Tent; the Flag flapping on Pont-Neuf and Townhall, Citoyens, la Patrie est en Danger. Some Ten thousand fighters, without discipline but full of heart, are on march in few days. The like is doing in every Town of France.—Consider therefore whether the Country will want defenders, had we but a National Executive? Let the Sections and Primary Assemblies, at any rate, become Permanent! They do become Permanent, and sit continually in Paris, and over France, by Legislative Decree, dated Wednesday the 25th.1
Mark contrariwise how, in these very hours, dated the 25th, Brunswick ‘shakes himself, s’ébranle,’* in Coblentz; and takes the road! Shakes himself indeed; one spoken word becomes such a shaking. Successive, simultaneous dirl* of thirty thousand muskets shouldered; prance and jingle of ten-thousand horse-men, fanfaronading Emigrants in the van; drum, kettledrum; noise of weeping, swearing; and the immeasurable lumbering clank of baggage-waggons and camp-kettles that groan into motion: all this is Brunswick shaking himself; not without all this does the one man march, ‘covering a space of forty miles.’* Still less without his Manifesto, dated, as we say, the 25th; a State-Paper worthy of attention!
By this Document, it would seem great things are in store for France.The universal French People shall now have permission to rally round Brunswick and his Emigrant Seigneurs; tyranny of a Jacobin Faction shall oppress them no more; but they shall return, and find favour with their own good King; who, by Royal Declaration (three years ago) of the Twenty-third of June, said that he would himself make them happy. As for National Assembly, and other Bodies of Men invested with some temporary shadow of authority, they are charged to maintain the King’s Cities and Strong Places* intact, till Brunswick arrive to take delivery of them. Indeed, quick submission may extenuate many things; but to this end it must be quick. Any National Guard or other unmilitary person found resisting in arms shall be ‘treated as a traitor;’* that is to say, hanged with promptitude. For the rest, if Paris, before Brunswick gets thither, offer any insult to the King; or, for example, suffer a Faction to carry the King away elsewhither; in that case, Paris shall be blasted asunder with cannon-shot and ‘military execution.’* Likewise all other Cities, which may witness, and not resist to the uttermost, such forced-march of his Majesty, shall be blasted asunder; and Paris and every City of them, starting-place, course and goal of said sacrilegious forced-march, shall, as rubbish and smoking ruin, lie there for a sign. Such vengeance were indeed signal, ‘an insigne vengeance:’*—O Brunswick, what words thou writest and blusterest! In this Paris, as in old Nineveh,* are so many score thousands that know not the right hand from the left, and also much cattle. Shall the very milk-cows, hard-living cadgers’-asses,* and poor little canary-birds die?
Nor is Royal and Imperial Prussian-Austrian Declaration wanting: setting forth, in the amplest manner, their Sanssouci-Schönbrunn version of this whole French Revolution, since the first beginning of it; and with what grief these high heads have seen such things done under the Sun.* However, ‘as some small consolation to mankind,’1 they do now despatch Brunswick;* regardless of expense, as one might say, or of sacrifices on their own part; for is it not the first duty to console men?
Serene Highnesses, who sit there protocolling and manifestoing, and consoling mankind! how were it if, for once in the thousand years, your parchments, formularies, and reasons of state were blown to the four winds; and Reality Sans-indispensables stared you, even you, in the face; and Mankind said for itself what the thing was that would console it?—
But judge if there was comfort in this to the Sections all sitting permanent; deliberating how a National Executive could be put in action!
High rises the response, not of cackling terror, but of crowing counter-defiance, and Vive la Nation; young Valour streaming towards the Frontiers; Patrie en Danger mutely beckoning on the Pont-Neuf. Sections are busy, in their permanent Deep; and down, lower still, works unlimited Patriotism, seeking salvation in plot. Insurrection, you would say, becomes once more the sacredest of duties? Committee, self-chosen, is sitting at the Sign of the Golden Sun:* Journalist Carra, Camille Desmoulins, Alsatian Westermann friend of Danton, American Fournier of Martinique;—a Committee not unknown to Mayor Pétion, who, as an official person, must sleep with one eye open. Not unknown to Procureur Manuel; least of all to Procureur-Substitute Danton! He, wrapped in darkness, being also official, bears it on his giant shoulders; cloudy invisible Atlas of the whole.
Much is invisible; the very Jacobins have their reticences. Insurrection is to be: but when? This only we can discern, that such Fédérés as are not yet gone to Soissons, as indeed are not inclined to go yet, “for reasons,” says the Jacobin President, “which it may be interesting not to state,”—have got a Central Committee sitting close by, under the roof of the Mother Society herself. Also, what in such ferment and danger of effervescence is surely proper, the Forty-eight Sections have got their Central Committee; intended ‘for prompt communication.’ To which Central Committee the Municipality, anxious to have it at hand, could not refuse an Apartment in the Hôtel-de-Ville.
Singular City! For overhead of all this, there is the customary baking and brewing; Labour hammers and grinds. Frilled promenaders saunter under the trees; white-muslin promenaderess, in green parasol, leaning on your arm. Dogs dance, and shoeblacks polish, on that Pont-Neuf itself, where Fatherland is in danger. So much goes its course; and yet the course of all things is nigh altering and ending.
Look at that Tuileries and Tuileries Garden. Silent all as Sahara; none entering save by ticket! They shut their Gates, after the Day of the Black Breeches; a thing they had the liberty to do. However, the National Assembly grumbled something about Terrace of the Feuillants, how said Terrace lay contiguous to the back-entrance to their Salle, and was partly National Property; and so now National Justice has stretched a Tricolor Riband athwart it, by way of boundary-line, respected with splenetic strictness by all Patriots. It hangs there, that Tricolor boundary-line; carries ‘satirical inscriptions on cards,’ generally in verse; and all beyond this is called Coblentz,* and remains vacant; silent, as a fateful Golgotha; sunshine and umbrage alternating on it in vain. Fateful Circuit: what hope can dwell in it? Mysterious Tickets of Entry introduce themselves; speak of Insurrection very imminent. Rivarol’s Staff of Genius had better purchase blunderbusses; Grenadier bonnets, red Swiss uniforms may be useful. Insurrection will come; but likewise will it not be met? Staved off, one may hope, till Brunswick arrive?
But consider withal if the Bourne-stones and Portable-chairs remain silent; if the Herald’s College of Bill-Stickers sleep! Louvet’s Sentinel warns gratis on all walls; Sulleau is busy: People’s-Friend Marat and King’s-Friend Royou croak and counter-croak. For the man Marat, though long hidden since that Champ-de-Mars Massacre, is still alive. He has lain, who knows in what cellars; perhaps in Legendre’s; fed by a steak of Legendre’s killing: but, since April, the bull-frog voice of him sounds again; hoarsest of earthly cries. For the present, black terror haunts him: O brave Barbaroux wilt thou not smuggle me to Marseilles, ‘disguised as a jockey’?1 In Palais-Royal and all public places, as we read, there is sharp activity; private individuals haranguing that Valour may enlist; haranguing that the Executive may be put in action. Royalist Journals ought to be solemnly burnt: argument thereupon; debates, which generally end in single-stick, coups de cannes.1 Or think of this; the hour midnight; place Salle de Manége; august Assembly just adjourning: ‘Citizens of both sexes enter in a rush, exclaiming, Vengeance; they are poisoning our Brothers;’—baking brayed-glass among their bread at Soissons! Vergniaud has to speak soothing words, How Commissioners are already sent to investigate this brayed-glass, and do what is needful therein;—till the rush of Citizens ‘makes profound silence;’* and goes home to its bed.
Such is Paris; the heart of a France like to it. Preternatural suspicion, doubt, disquietude, nameless anticipation, from shore to shore:—and those black-browed Marseillese marching, dusty, unwearied, through the midst of it; not doubtful they. Marching to the grim music of their hearts, they consume continually the long road, these three weeks and more; heralded by Terror and Rumour. The Brest Fédérés arrive on the 26th; through hurrahing streets. Determined men are these also, bearing or not bearing the Sacred Pikes of Château-Vieux; and on the whole decidedly disinclined for Soissons as yet. Surely the Marseillese Brethren do draw nigher all days.
It was a bright day for Charenton, that 29th of the month, when the Marseillese Brethren actually came in sight. Barbaroux, Santerre and Patriots have gone out to meet the grim Wayfarers. Patriot clasps dusty Patriot to his bosom; there is footwashing and refection: ‘dinner of twelve hundred covers at the Blue Dial, Cadran Bleu;’ and deep interior consultation, that one wots not of.2 Consultation indeed which comes to little; for Santerre, with an open purse, with a loud voice, has almost no head. Here however we repose this night: on the morrow is public entry into Paris.
Of which public entry the Day-Historians, Diurnalists, or Journalists as they call themselves, have preserved record enough. How Saint-Antoine male and female, and Paris generally, gave brotherly welcome, with bravo and hand-clapping, in crowded streets; and all passed in the peaceablest manner;—except it might be our Marseillese pointed out here and there a riband-cockade, and beckoned that it should be snatched away, and exchanged for a wool one; which was done. How the Mother Society in a body has come as far as the Bastille-ground, to embrace you. How you then wend onwards, triumphant, to the Townhall, to be embraced by Mayor Pétion; to put down your muskets in the Barracks of Nouvelle France, not far off;—then towards the appointed Tavern in the Champs Elysées, to enjoy a frugal Patriot repast.1
Of all which the indignant Tuileries may, by its Tickets of Entry, have warning. Red Swiss look doubly sharp to their Château-Grates;—though surely there is no danger? Blue Grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas Section are on duty there this day: men of Agio, as we have seen; with stuffed purses, riband-cockades; among whom serves Weber. A party of these latter, with Captains, with sundry Feuillant Notabilities, Moreau de Saint-Méry of the three thousand orders, and others, have been dining, much more respectably, in a Tavern hard by. They have dined, and are now drinking Loyal-Patriotic toasts; while the Marseillese, National-Patriotic merely, are about sitting down to their frugal covers of delf.* How it happened remains to this day undemonstrable: but the external fact is, certain of these Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers do issue from their Tavern; perhaps touched, surely not yet muddled with any liquor they have had;—issue in the professed intention of testifying to the Marseillese, or to the multitude of Paris Patriots who stroll in these spaces, That they, the Filles-Saint-Thomas men, if well seen into, are not a whit less Patriotic than any other class of men whatever.
It was a rash errand! For how can the strolling multitude credit such a thing; or do other indeed than hoot at it, provoking and provoked?—till Grenadier sabres stir in the scabbard, and thereupon a sharp shriek rises: “À nous, Marseillais, Help, Marseillese!” Quick as lightning, for the frugal repast is not yet served, that Marseillese Tavern flings itself open: by door, by window; running, bounding, vault forth the Five hundred and Seventeen undined Patriots; and, sabre flashing from thigh, are on the scene of controversy. Will ye parley, ye Grenadier Captains and Official Persons; ‘with faces grown suddenly pale,’ the Deponents say?2 Advisabler were instant moderately swift retreat! The Filles-Saint-Thomas men retreat, back foremost; then, alas, face foremost, at treble-quick time; the Marseillese, according to a Deponent, “clearing the fences and ditches after them like lions: Messieurs, it was an imposing spectacle.”
Thus they retreat, the Marseillese following. Swift and swifter, towards the Tuileries: where the Drawbridge receives the bulk of the fugitives; and, then suddenly drawn up, saves them; or else the green mud of the Ditch does it. The bulk of them; not all; ah, no! Moreau de Saint-Méry for example, being too fat, could not fly fast; he got a stroke, flat-stroke only, over the shoulder-blades, and fell prone;—and disappears there from the History of the Revolution. Cuts also there were, pricks in the posterior fleshy parts; much rending of skirts, and other discrepant waste. But poor Sub-lieutenant Duhamel, innocent Change-broker, what a lot for him! He turned on his pursuer, or pursuers, with a pistol; he fired and missed; drew a second pistol, and again fired and missed; then ran: unhappily in vain. In the Rue Saint-Florentin, they clutched him; thrust him through, in red rage: that was the end of the New Era, and of all Eras, to poor Duhamel.
Pacific readers can fancy what sort of grace-before-meat this was to frugal Patriotism. Also how the Batallion of the Filles-Saint-Thomas ‘drew out in arms,’ luckily without further result; how there was accusation at the Bar of the Assembly, and counter-accusation and defence; Marseillese challenging the sentence of a free jury-court,—which never got impanneled. We ask rather, What the upshot of all these distracted wildly accumulating things may, by probability, be? Some upshot; and the time draws nigh! Busy are Central Committees, of Fédérés at the Jacobins Church, of Sections at the Townhall; Reunion of Carra, Camille and Company at the Golden Sun. Busy: like submarine deities, or call them mud-gods, working there in the deep murk of waters: till the thing be ready.
And how your National Assembly, like a ship water-logged, helmless, lies tumbling; the Galleries, of shrill Women, of Fédérés with sabres, bellowing down on it, not unfrightful;—and waits where the waves of chance may please to strand it; suspicious, nay on the Left-side, conscious, what submarine Explosion is meanwhile a-charging! Petition for King’s Forfeiture rises often there: Petition from Paris Section, from Provincial Patriot Towns; ‘from Alençon, Briançon, and the Traders at the Fair of Beaucaire.’ Or what of these? On the 3rd of August, Mayor Pétion and the Municipality come petitioning for Forfeiture: they openly, in their tricolor Municipal scarfs. Forfeiture is what all Patriots now want and expect. All Brissotins want Forfeiture; with the little Prince Royal for King, and us for Protector over him. Emphatic Fédérés ask the Legislature: “Can you save us, or not?”* Forty-seven Sections have agreed to Forfeiture; only that of the Filles-Saint-Thomas pretending to disagree. Nay Section Mauconseil declares Forfeiture to be, properly speaking, come; Mauconseil for one ‘does from this day,’ the last of July, ‘cease allegiance to Louis,’ and take minute of the same before all men.* A thing blamed aloud; but which will be praised aloud; and the name Mauconseil, of Ill-counsel, be thenceforth changed to Bonconseil, of Good-counsel.
President Danton, in the Cordeliers Section, does another thing: invites all Passive Citizens to take place among the Active in Section-business, one peril threatening all. Thus he, though an official person; cloudy Atlas of the whole. Likewise he manages to have that blackbrowed Batallion of Marseillese shifted to new Barracks, in his own region of the remote South-East. Sleek Chaumette, cruel Billaud, Deputy Chabot the Disfrocked, Huguenin with the tocsin in his heart, will welcome them there. Wherefore, again and again: “O Legislators, can you save us or not?” Poor Legislators; with their Legislature water-logged, volcanic Explosion charging under it! Forfeiture shall be debated on the ninth day of August; that miserable business of Lafayette may be expected to terminate on the eighth.
Or will the humane Reader glance into the Levee-day of Sunday the fifth? The last Levee! Not for a long time, ‘never,’ says Bertrand-Moleville, had a Levee been so brilliant, at least so crowded. A sad presaging interest sat on every face; Bertrand’s own eyes were filled with tears. For, indeed, outside of that Tricolor Riband on the Feuillants Terrace, Legislature is debating, Sections are defiling, all Paris is astir this very Sunday, demanding Déchéance.1 Here, however, within the riband, a grand proposal is on foot, for the hundredth time, of carrying his Majesty to Rouen and the Castle of Gaillon. Swiss at Courbevoye are in readiness; much is ready; Majesty himself seems almost ready. Nevertheless, for the hundredth time, Majesty, when near the point of action, draws back; writes, after one has waited, palpitating, an endless summer day, that ‘he has reason to believe the Insurrection is not so ripe as you suppose.’ Whereat Bertrand-Moleville breaks forth ‘into extremity at once of spleen and despair, d’humeur et de désespoir.’2
For, in truth, the Insurrection is just about ripe. Thursday is the ninth of the month August: if Forfeiture be not pronounced by the Legislature that day, we must pronounce it ourselves.
Legislature? A poor water-logged Legislature can pronounce nothing. On Wednesday the eighth, after endless oratory once again, they cannot even pronounce Accusation against Lafayette; but absolve him,—hear it, Patriotism!—by a majority of two to one. Patriotism hears it; Patriotism, hounded on by Prussian Terror, by Preternatural Suspicion, roars tumultuous round the Salle de Manége, all day; insults many leading Deputies, of the absolvent Right-side; nay chases them, collars them with loud menace: Deputy Vaublanc, and others of the like, are glad to take refuge in Guardhouses, and escape by the back window. And so, next day, there is infinite complaint; Letter after Letter from insulted Deputy; mere complaint, debate and self-cancelling jargon: the sun of Thursday sets like the others, and no Forfeiture pronounced. Wherefore in fine, To your tents, O Israel!*
The Mother-Society ceases speaking; groups cease haranguing: Patriots, with closed lips now, ‘take one another’s arm;’ walk off, in rows, two and two, at a brisk business-pace; and vanish afar in the obscure places of the East.1 Santerre is ready; or we will make him ready. Forty-seven of the Forty-eight Sections are ready; nay Filles-Saint-Thomas itself turns up the Jacobin side of it, turns down the Feuillant side of it, and is ready too. Let the unlimited Patriot look to his weapon, be it pike, be it firelock; and the Brest brethren, above all, the blackbrowed Marseillese prepare themselves for the extreme hour! Syndic Rœderer knows, and laments or not as the issue may turn, that ‘five thousand ball-cartridges, within these few days, have been distributed to Fédérés, at the Hôtel-de-Ville.’2
And ye likewise, gallant gentlemen, defenders of Royalty, crowd ye on your side to the Tuileries. Not to a Levee: no, to a Couchée; where much will be put to bed. Your Tickets of Entry are needful; needfuller your blunderbusses!—They come and crowd, like gallant men who also know how to die: old Maillé the Camp-Marshal has come, his eyes gleaming once again, though dimmed by the rheum of almost four-score years. Courage, Brothers! We have a thousand red Swiss; men stanch of heart, steadfast as the granite of their Alps. National Grenadiers are at least friends of Order; Commandant Mandat breathes loyal ardour, will “answer for it on his head.” Mandat will, and his Staff; for the Staff, though there stands a doom and Decree to that effect, is happily never yet dissolved.
Commandant Mandat has corresponded with Mayor Pétion; carries a written Order from him these three days, to repel force by force. A squadron on the Pont-Neuf with cannon shall turn back these Marseillese coming across the River: a squadron at the Townhall shall cut Saint-Antoine in two, ‘as it issues from the Arcade Saint-Jean;’ drive one half back to the obscure East, drive the other half forward ‘through the Wickets of the Louvre.’ Squadrons not a few, and mounted squadrons; squadrons in the Palais-Royal, in the Place Vendôme: all these shall charge, at the right moment; sweep this street, and then sweep that. Some new Twentieth of June we shall have; only still more ineffectual? Or probably the Insurrection will not dare to rise at all? Mandat’s Squadrons, Horse-Gendarmerie and blue Guards march, clattering, tramping; Mandat’s Cannoneers rumble. Under cloud of night; to the sound of his générale, which begins drumming when men should go to bed. It is the 9th night of August, 1792.
On the other hand, the Forty-eight Sections correspond by swift messengers; are choosing each their ‘three Delegates with full powers.’ Syndic Rœderer, Mayor Pétion are sent for to the Tuileries: courageous Legislators, when the drum beats danger, should repair to their Salle. Demoiselle Théroigne has on her grenadier-bonnet, short-skirted riding-habit;* two pistols garnish her small waist, and sabre hangs in baldric by her side.
Such a game is playing in this Paris Pandemonium, or City of All the Devils!—And yet the Night, as Mayor Pétion walks here in the Tuileries Garden, ‘is beautiful and calm;’ Orion and the Pleiades* glitter down quite serene. Pétion has come forth, the ‘heat’ inside was so oppressive.1 Indeed, his Majesty’s reception of him was of the roughest; as it well might be. And now there is no outgate; Mandat’s blue Squadrons turn you back at every Grate; nay the Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers give themselves liberties of tongue, How a virtuous Mayor ‘shall pay for it, if there be mischief,’ and the like; though others again are full of civility. Surely if any man in France is in straits this night, it is Mayor Pétion: bound, under pain of death, one may say, to smile dexterously with the one side of his face, and weep with the other;—death if he do it not dexterously enough! Not till four in the morning does a National Assembly, hearing of his plight, summon him over ‘to give account of Paris;’ of which he knows nothing: whereby however he shall get home to bed, and only his gilt coach be left. Scarcely less delicate is Syndic Rœderer’s task; who must wait whether he will lament or not, till he see the issue. Janus Bifrons, or Mr. Facing-both-ways, as vernacular Bunyan has it! They walk there, in the meanwhile, these two Januses, with others of the like double conformation; and ‘talk of indifferent matters.’
Rœderer, from time to time, steps in; to listen, to speak; to send for the Department-Directory itself, he their Procureur Syndic not seeing how to act. The Apartments are all crowded; some seven hundred gentlemen in black elbowing, bustling; red Swiss standing like rocks; ghost, or partial-ghost of a Ministry, with Rœderer and advisers, hovering round their Majesties; old Marshal Maillé kneeling at the King’s feet, to say, He and these gallant gentlemen are come to die for him.* List! through the placid midnight; clang of the distant stormbell! So, in very sooth: steeple after steeple takes up the wondrous tale. Black Courtiers listen at the windows, opened for air; discriminate the steeple-bells:1 this is the tocsin of Saint-Roch; that again, is it not Saint-Jacques, named de la Boucherie? Yes, Messieurs! Or even Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, hear ye it not? The same metal that rang storm, two hundred and twenty years ago; but by a Majesty’s order then; on Saint Bartholomew’s Eve!2—So go the steeple-bells; which Courtiers can discriminate. Nay, meseems, there is the Townhall itself; we know it by its sound! Yes, Friends, that is the Townhall; discoursing so, to the Night. Miraculously; by miraculous metal-tongue and man’s-arm: Marat himself, if you knew it, is pulling at the rope* there! Marat is pulling; Robespierre lies deep, invisible for the next forty hours; and some men have heart, and some have as good as none, and not even frenzy will give them any.
What struggling confusion, as the issue slowly draws on; and the doubtful Hour,* with pain and blind struggle, brings forth its Certainty, never to be abolished!—The Full-power Delegates, three from each Section, a Hundred and forty-four in all, got gathered at the Townhall, about midnight. Mandat’s Squadron, stationed there, did not hinder their entering: are they not the ‘Central Committee of the Sections’ who sit here usually; though in greater number tonight? They are there: presided by Confusion, Irresolution, and the Clack of Tongues. Swift scouts fly; Rumour buzzes, of black Courtiers, red Swiss, of Mandat and his Squadrons that shall charge. Better put off the Insurrection? Yes, put it off. Ha, hark! Saint-Antoine booming out eloquent tocsin, of its own accord!—Friends, no: ye cannot put off the Insurrection; but must put it on, and live with it, or die with it.
Swift now, therefore: let these actual Old Municipals, on sight of the Full-powers, and mandate of the Sovereign elective People, lay down their functions; and this New Hundred and Forty-four take them up! Will ye nill ye, worthy Old Municipals, go ye must. Nay is it not a happiness for many a Municipal that he can wash his hands* of such a business; and sit there paralyzed, unaccountable, till the Hour do bring forth; or even go home to his night’s rest?1 Two only of the Old, or at most three, we retain: Mayor Pétion, for the present walking in the Tuileries; Procureur Manuel; Procureur-Substitute Danton, invisible Atlas of the whole. And so, with our Hundred and Forty-four, among whom are a Tocsin-Huguenin, a Billaud, a Chaumette; and Editor-Talliens, and Fabre d’Eglantines, Sergents, Panises; and in brief, either emergent, or else emerged and full-blown, the entire Flower of unlimited Patriotism: have we not, as by magic, made a New Municipality; ready to act in the unlimited manner; and declare itself roundly, ‘in a State of Insurrection!’—First of all, then, be Commandant Mandat sent for, with that Mayor’s-Order of his; also let the New Municipals visit those Squadrons that were to charge; and let the stormbell ring its loudest;—and, on the whole, Forward, ye Hundred and Forty-four; retreat is now none for you!
Reader, fancy not, in thy languid way, that Insurrection is easy. Insurrection is difficult: each individual uncertain even of his next neighbour; totally uncertain of his distant neighbours, what strength is with him, what strength is against him; certain only that, in case of failure, his individual portion is the gallows! Eight hundred thousand heads, and in each of them a separate estimate of these uncertainties, a separate theorem of action conformable to that: out of so many uncertainties, does the certainty, and inevitable net-result never to be abolished, go on, at all moments, bodying itself forth;—leading thee also towards civic-crowns or an ignominious noose.
Could the Reader take an Asmodeus’ Flight, and waving open all roofs and privacies, look down from the Tower of Notre-Dame, what a Paris were it! Of treble-voice whimperings or vehemence, of bass-voice growlings, dubitations; Courage screwing itself to desperate defiance;* Cowardice trembling silent within barred doors;—and all round, Dulness calmly snoring; for much Dulness, flung on its mattresses, always sleeps. O, between the clangour of these high-storming tocsins and that snore of Dulness, what a gamut: of trepidation, excitation, desperation; and above it mere Doubt, Danger, Atropos and Nox!
Fighters of this Section draw out; hear that the next Section does not; and thereupon draw in. Saint-Antoine, on this side the River, is uncertain of Saint-Marceau on that. Steady only is the snore of Dulness, are the Six Hundred Marseillese that know how to die. Mandat, twice summoned to the Townhall, has not come. Scouts fly incessant, in distracted haste; and the many-whispering voices of Rumour. Théroigne and unofficial Patriots flit, dim-visible, exploratory, far and wide; like Night-birds on the wing. Of Nationals some Three thousand have followed Mandat and his générale; the rest follow each his own theorem of the uncertainties: theorem, that one should march rather with Saint-Antoine; innumerable theorems, that in such a case the wholesomest were sleep. And so the drums beat, in mad fits, and the stormbells peal. Saint-Antoine itself does but draw out and draw in; Commandant Santerre, over there, cannot believe that the Marseillese and Saint-Marceau will march. Thou laggard sonorous Beer-vat, with the loud voice and timber head, is it time now to palter? Alsatian Westermann clutches him by the throat with drawn sabre: whereupon the Timber-headed believes. In this manner wanes the slow night; amid fret, uncertainty and tocsin; all men’s humour rising to the hysterical pitch; and nothing done.
However, Mandat, on the third summons, does come;—come, unguarded; astonished to find the Municipality new. They question him straitly on that Mayor’s-Order to resist force by force; on that strategic scheme of cutting Saint-Antoine in two halves: he answers what he can: they think it were right to send this strategic National Commandant to the Abbaye Prison, and let a Court of Law decide on him. Alas, a Court of Law, not Book-Law but primeval Club-Law, crowds and jostles out of doors; all fretted to the hysterical pitch; cruel as Fear, blind as the Night: such Court of Law, and no other, clutches poor Mandat from his constables; beats him down, massacres him, on the steps of the Townhall. Look to it, ye new Municipals; ye People, in a state of Insurrection! Blood is shed, blood must be answered for;—alas, in such hysterical humour, more blood will flow: for it is as with the Tiger in that; he has only to begin.
Seventeen Individuals have been seized in the Champs Elysées, by exploratory Patriotism; they flitting dim-visible, by it flitting dim-visible. Ye have pistols, rapiers, ye Seventeen? One of those accursed ‘false Patrols;’ that go marauding, with Anti-National intent; seeking what they can spy, what they can spill! The Seventeen are carried to the nearest Guardhouse; eleven of them escape by back passages. “How is this?” Demoiselle Théroigne appears at the front entrance, with sabre, pistols,* and a train; denounces treasonous connivance; demands, seizes, the remaining six, that the justice of the People be not trifled with. Of which six two more escape in the whirl and debate of the Club-Law Court; the last unhappy Four are massacred, as Mandat was: Two Ex-Bodyguards; one dissipated Abbé; one Royalist Pamphleteer, Sulleau, known to us by name, Able Editor and wit of all work. Poor Sulleau: his Acts of the Apostles, and brisk Placard-Journals (for he was an able man) come to Finis, in this manner; and questionable jesting issues suddenly in horrid earnest! Such doings usher in the dawn of the Tenth of August, 1792.
Or think what a night the poor National Assembly has had: sitting there, ‘in great paucity,’ attempting to debate;—quivering and shivering; pointing towards all the thirty-two azimuths at once, as the magnet-needle does when thunderstorm is in the air! If the Insurrection come? If it come, and fail? Alas, in that case, may not black Courtiers with blunderbusses, red Swiss with bayonets rush over, flushed with victory, and ask us: Thou undefinable, waterlogged, self-distractive, self-destructive Legislative, what dost thou here unsunk?—Or figure the poor National Guards, bivouacking in ‘temporary tents’ there; or standing ranked, shifting from leg to leg, all through the weary night; New tricolor Municipals ordering one thing, old Mandat Captains ordering another. Procureur Manuel has ordered the cannons to be withdrawn from the Pont-Neuf; none ventured to disobey him. It seems certain, then, the old Staff, so long doomed, has finally been dissolved, in these hours; and Mandat is not our Commandant now, but Santerre? Yes, friends: Santerre henceforth,—surely Mandat no more! The Squadrons that were to charge see nothing certain, except that they are cold, hungry, worn down with watching; that it were sad to slay French brothers; sadder to be slain by them. Without the Tuileries Circuit, and within it, sour uncertain humour sways these men: only the red Swiss stand steadfast. Them their officers refresh now with a slight wetting of brandy; wherein the Nationals, too far gone for brandy, refuse to participate.
King Louis meanwhile had laid him down for a little sleep: his wig when he reappeared had lost the powder on one side.1 Old Marshal Maillé and the gentlemen in black rise always in spirits, as the Insurrection does not rise: there goes a witty saying now, “Le tocsin ne rend pas,”* The tocsin, like a dry milk-cow, does not yield. For the rest, could not one proclaim Martial Law? Not easily; for now, it seems, Mayor Pétion is gone. On the other hand, our Interim Commandant, poor Mandat being off ‘to the Hôtel-de-Ville,’ complains that so many Courtiers in black encumber the service, are an eyesorrow to the National Guards. To which her Majesty answers with emphasis, That they will obey all, will suffer all, that they are sure men these.
And so the yellow lamplight dies out in the gray of morning, in the King’s Palace, over such a scene. Scene of jostling, elbowing, of confusion, and indeed conclusion, for the thing is about to end. Rœderer and spectral Ministers jostle in the press; consult, in side-cabinets, with one or with both Majesties. Sister Elizabeth takes the Queen to the window: “Sister, see what a beautiful sunrise,” right over the Jacobins Church and that quarter! How happy if the tocsin did not yield! But Mandat returns not; Pétion is gone: much hangs wavering in the invisible Balance.* About five o’clock, there rises from the Garden a kind of sound; as of a shout which had become a howl, and instead of Vive le Roi were ending in Vive la Nation.* “Mon Dieu!” ejaculates a spectral Minister, “what is he doing down there?” For it is his Majesty, gone down with old Marshal Maillé to review the troops; and the nearest companies of them answer so. Her Majesty bursts into a stream of tears. Yet on stepping from the Cabinet her eyes are dry and calm, her look is even cheerful. ‘The Austrian lip, and the aquiline nose,* fuller than usual, gave to her countenance,’ says Peltier,2 ‘something of majesty, which they that did not see her in these moments cannot well have an idea of.’ O thou Theresa’s Daughter!
King Louis enters, much blown with the fatigue; but for the rest with his old air of indifference. Of all hopes now, surely the joyfullest were, that the tocsin did not yield.
Unhappy Friends, the tocsin does yield, has yielded! Lo ye, how with the first sun-rays its Ocean-tide, of pikes and fusils, flows glittering from the far East;—immeasurable; born of the Night! They march there, the grim host; Saint-Antoine on this side the River; Saint-Marceau on that, the blackbrowed Marseillese in the van. With hum, and grim murmur, far-heard; like the Ocean-tide, as we say: drawn up, as if by Luna and Influences, from the great Deep of Waters,* they roll gleaming on; no King, Canute or Louis, can bid them roll back. Wide-eddying side-currents, of onlookers, roll hither and thither, unarmed, not voiceless; they, the steel host, roll on. New-Commandant Santerre, indeed, has taken seat at the Townhall; rests there, in his halfway-house. Alsatian Westermann, with flashing sabre, does not rest; nor the Sections, nor the Marseillese, nor Demoiselle Théroigne; but roll continually on.
And now, where are Mandat’s Squadrons that were to charge? Not a Squadron of them stirs: or they stir in the wrong direction, out of the way; their officers glad that they will do even that. It is to this hour uncertain whether the Squadron on the Pont-Neuf made the shadow of resistance, or did not make the shadow: enough, the blackbrowed Marseillese, and Saint-Marceau following them, do cross without let; do cross, in sure hope now of Saint-Antoine and the rest; do billow on, towards the Tuileries, where their errand is. The Tuileries, at sound of them, rustles responsive: the red Swiss look to their priming; Courtiers in black draw their blunderbusses, rapiers, poniards, some have even fire-shovels; every man his weapon of war.
Judge if, in these circumstances, Syndic Rœderer felt easy! Will the kind Heavens open no middle-course of refuge for a poor Syndic who halts between two? If indeed his Majesty would consent to go over to the Assembly! His Majesty, above all her Majesty, cannot agree to that. Did her Majesty answer the proposal with a “Fi donc;”* did she say even, she would be nailed to the walls sooner? Apparently not. It is written also that she offered the King a pistol; saying, Now or else never was the time to shew himself. Close eye-witnesses did not see it, nor do we. They saw only that she was queenlike, quiet; that she argued not, upbraided not, with the Inexorable; but, like Cæsar in the Capitol, wrapped her mantle,* as it beseems Queens and Sons of Adam to do. But thou, O Louis! of what stuff art thou at all? Is there no stroke in thee, then, for Life and Crown? The silliest hunted deer dies not so. Art thou the languidest of all mortals; or the mildest-minded? Thou art the worst-starred.
The tide advances; Syndic Rœderer’s and all men’s straits grow straiter and straiter. Fremescent clangor comes from the armed Nationals in the Court; far and wide is the infinite hubbub of tongues. What counsel? And the tide is now nigh! Messengers, forerunners speak hastily through the outer Grates; hold parley sitting astride the walls. Syndic Rœderer goes out and comes in. Cannoneers ask him: Are we to fire against the people? King’s Ministers ask him: Shall the King’s House be forced? Syndic Rœderer has a hard game to play. He speaks to the Cannoneers with eloquence, with fervour; such fervour as a man can, who has to blow hot and cold in one breath. Hot and cold, O Rœderer? We, for our part, cannot live and die! The Cannoneers, by way of answer, fling down their linstocks.—Think of this answer, O King Louis, and King’s Ministers; and take a poor Syndic’s safe middle-course, towards the Salle de Manége. King Louis sits, his hands leant on his knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space fixedly on Syndic Rœderer; then answers, looking over his shoulder to the Queen: Marchons!* They march; King Louis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth, the two royal children and governess: these, with Syndic Rœderer, and Officials of the Department; amid a double rank of National Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully; but hear only these words from Syndic Rœderer: “The King is going to the Assembly; make way.” It has struck eight, on all clocks, some minutes ago: the King has left the Tuileries—forever.
O ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, for what a cause are ye to spend and be spent!* Look out from the western windows, ye may see King Louis placidly hold on his way; the poor little Prince Royal ‘sportfully kicking the fallen leaves.’ Fremescent multitude on the Terrace of the Feuillants whirls parallel to him; one man in it, very noisy, with a long pole: will they not obstruct the outer Staircase, and back-entrance of the Salle, when it comes to that? King’s Guards can go no further than the bottom step there. Lo, Deputation of Legislators come out; he of the long pole is stilled by oratory; Assembly’s Guards join themselves to King’s Guards, and all may mount in this case of necessity; the outer Staircase is free, or passable. See, Royalty ascends; a blue Grenadier lifts the poor little Prince Royal from the press; Royalty has entered in. Royalty has vanished forever from your eyes.—And ye? Left standing there, amid the yawning abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection; without course; without command: if ye perish it must be as more than martyrs, as martyrs who are now without a cause! The black Courtiers disappear mostly; through such issues as they can. The poor Swiss know not how to act: one duty only is clear to them, that of standing by their post; and they will perform that.
But the glittering steel tide has arrived; it beats now against the Château barriers, and eastern Courts; irresistible, loud-surging far and wide;—breaks in, fills the Court of the Carrousel, blackbrowed Marseillese in the van. King Louis gone, say you; over to the Assembly! Well and good: but till the Assembly pronounce Forfeiture of him, what boots it? Our post is in that Château or stronghold of his; there till then must we continue. Think, ye stanch Swiss, whether it were good that grim murder began, and brothers blasted one another in pieces for a stone edifice?—Poor Swiss! they know not how to act: from the southern windows, some fling cartridges, in sign of brotherhood; on the eastern outer staircase, and within through long stairs and corridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable and yet refusing to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German; Marseillese plead, in hot Provençal speech and pantomime; stunning hubbub pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss stand fast, peaceable and yet immovable; red granite pier in that waste-flashing sea of steel.
Who can help the inevitable issue; Marseillese and all France, on this side; granite Swiss on that? The pantomime grows hotter and hotter; Marseillese sabres flourishing by way of action; the Swiss brow also clouding itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its firelock to the cock. And hark! high-thundering above all the din, three Marseillese cannon from the Carrousel, pointed by a gunner of bad aim, come rattling over the roofs! Ye Swiss, therefore: Fire! The Swiss fire; by volley, by platoon, in rolling-fire: Marseillese men not a few, and ‘a tall man that was louder than any,’* lie silent, smashed, upon the pavement;—not a few Marseillese, after the long dusty march, have made halt here. The Carrousel is void; the black tide recoiling; ‘fugitives rushing as far as Saint-Antoine before they stop.’ The Cannoneers without linstock have squatted invisible, and left their cannon; which the Swiss seize.
Think what a volley: reverberating doomful to the four corners of Paris, and through all hearts; like the clang of Bellona’s thongs! The blackbrowed Marseillese, rallying on the instant, have become black Demons that know how to die. Nor is Brest behindhand; nor Alsatian Westermann; Demoiselle Théroigne is Sibyl Théroigne: Vengeance, Victoire ou la mort! From all Patriot artillery, great and small; from Feuillants Terrace, and all terraces and places of the wide-spread Insurrectionary sea, there roars responsive a red blazing whirlwind. Blue Nationals, ranked in the Garden, cannot help their muskets going off, against Foreign murderers. For there is a sympathy in muskets, in heaped masses of men: nay, are not Mankind, in whole, like tuned strings, and a cunning infinite concordance and unity; you smite one string, and all strings will begin sounding,—in soft sphere-melody, in deafening screech of madness! Mounted Gendarmerie gallop distracted; are fired on merely as a thing running; galloping over the Pont-Royal, or one knows not whither. The brain of Paris, brain-fevered in the centre of it here, has gone mad; what you call, taken fire.
Behold, the fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss rolling-fire slacken from within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw; and now, from the other side, they clutch three pieces more; alas, cannon without linstock; nor will the steel-and-flint answer, though they try it.1 Had it chanced to answer! Patriot onlookers have their misgivings; one strangest Patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat. He is a man not unqualified to judge; the name of him Napoleon Buonaparte.2 And onlookers, and women, stand gazing, and the witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow among them, on the other side of the River: cannon rush rumbling past them; pause on the Pont-Royal; belch out their iron entrails there, against the Tuileries; and at every new belch, the women and onlookers ‘shout and clap hands.’3 City of all the Devils! In remote streets, men are drinking breakfast-coffee; following their affairs; with a start now and then, as some dull echo reverberates a note louder. And here? Marseillese fall wounded; but Barbaroux has surgeons; Barbaroux is close by, managing, though underhand and under cover. Marseillese fall death-struck; bequeath their firelock, specify in which pocket are the cartridges; and die murmuring, “Revenge me, Revenge thy country!”* Brest Fédéré Officers, galloping in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo you, the Carrousel has burst into flame!—Paris Pandemonium! Nay the poor City, as we said, is in fever-fit and convulsion: such crisis has lasted for the space of some half hour.
But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, ventures through the hubbub and death-hail, from the back-entrance of the Manége? Towards the Tuileries and Swiss: written Order from his Majesty to cease firing! O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no order not to begin it? Gladly would the Swiss cease firing: but who will bid mad Insurrection cease firing? To Insurrection you cannot speak; neither can it, hydra-headed, hear. The dead and dying, by the hundred, lie all around; are borne bleeding through the streets, towards help; the sight of them, like a torch of the Furies, kindling Madness. Patriot Paris roars; as the bear bereaved of her whelps.* On, ye Patriots: Vengeance! Victory or death! There are men seen, who rush on, armed only with walking-sticks.1 Terror and Fury rule the hour.
The Swiss, pressed on from without, paralyzed from within, have ceased to shoot; but not to be shot. What shall they do? Desperate is the moment. Shelter or instant death: yet How, Where? One party flies out by the Rue de l’Echelle; is destroyed utterly, ‘en entier.’ A second, by the other side, throws itself into the Garden; ‘hurrying across a keen fusillade;’ rushes suppliant into the National Assembly; finds pity and refuge in the back benches there. The third, and largest, darts out in column, three hundred strong, towards the Champs Elysées: “Ah, could we but reach Courbevoye, where other Swiss are!” Wo! see, in such fusillade the column ‘soon breaks itself by diversity of opinion,’ into distracted segments, this way and that;—to escape in holes, to die fighting from street to street. The firing and murdering will not cease; not yet for long. The red Porters of Hôtels are shot at, be they Suisse by nature, or Suisse only in name.* The very Firemen, who pump and labour on that smoking Carrousel, are shot at: why should the Carrousel not burn? Some Swiss take refuge in private houses; find that mercy too does still dwell in the heart of man. The brave Marseillese are merciful, late so wroth; and labour to save. Journalist Gorsas pleads hard with enfuriated groups. Clemence, the Wine-merchant, stumbles forward to the Bar of the Assembly, a rescued Swiss in his hand; tells passionately how he rescued him with pain and peril, how he will henceforth support him, being childless himself; and falls a-swoon round the poor Swiss’s neck: amid plaudits. But the most are butchered, and even mangled. Fifty (some say Fourscore) were marched as prisoners, by National Guards, to the Hôtel-de-Ville: the ferocious people bursts through on them, in the Place-de-Grève; massacres them to the last man.* ‘O Peuple, envy of the universe!’ Peuple, in mad Gaelic effervescence!
Surely few things in the history of carnage are painfuller. What ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad in the memory, is that, of this poor column of red Swiss ‘breaking itself in the confusion of opinions;’ dispersing, into blackness and death! Honour to you, brave men; honourable pity, through long times! Not martyrs were ye; and yet almost more. He was no King of yours, this Louis; and he forsook you like a King of shreds and patches:* ye were but sold to him for some poor sixpence a-day; yet would ye work for your wages, keep your plighted word. The work now was to die; and ye did it. Honour to you, O Kinsmen; and may the old Deutsch Biederkeit and Tapferkeit,* and Valour which is Worth and Truth, be they Swiss, be they Saxon, fail in no age! Not bastards; true-born were these men: sons of the men of Sempach, of Murten, who knelt, but not to thee, O Burgundy!—Let the traveller, as he passes through Lucerne, turn aside to look a little at their monumental Lion; not for Thorwaldsen’s sake alone. Hewn out of living rock, the Figure rests there, by the still Lake-waters, in lullaby of distant-tinkling rance-des-vaches, the granite Mountains dumbly keeping watch all round; and, though inanimate, speaks.
Thus is the Tenth of August won and lost. Patriotism reckons its slain by the thousand on thousand, so deadly was the Swiss fire from these windows; but will finally reduce them to some Twelve hundred. No child’s-play was it;—nor is it! Till two in the afternoon the massacring, the breaking and the burning has not ended; nor the loose Bedlam shut itself again.
How deluges of frantic Sansculottism roared through all passages of this Tuileries, ruthless in vengeance; how the Valets were butchered, hewn down; and Dame Campan saw the Marseillese sabre flash over her head, but the Blackbrowed said, “Va-t-en, Get thee gone,” and flung her from him unstruck:1 how in the cellars wine-bottles were broken, wine-butts were staved in and drunk; and, upwards to the very garrets, all windows tumbled out their precious royal furnitures; and, with gold mirrors, velvet curtains, down of ript feather-beds, and dead bodies of men, the Tuileries was like no Garden of the Earth:—all this let him who has a taste for it see amply in Mercier, in acrid Montgaillard, or Beaulieu of the Deux Amis. A hundred and eighty bodies of Swiss lie piled there; naked, unremoved till the second day. Patriotism has torn their red coats into snips; and marches with them at the Pike’s point: the ghastly bare corpses lie there, under the sun and under the stars; the curious of both sexes crowding to look. Which let not us do. Above a hundred carts, heaped with Dead, fare towards the Cemetery of Sainte-Madeleine; bewailed, bewept; for all had kindred, all had mothers, if not here, then there. It is one of those Carnage-fields, such as you read of by the name ‘Glorious Victory,’ brought home in this case to one’s own door.
But the blackbrowed Marseillese have struck down the Tyrant of the Château. He is struck down; low, and hardly again to rise. What a moment for an august Legislative was that when the Hereditary Representative entered, under such circumstances; and the Grenadier, carrying the little Prince Royal out of the press, set him down on the Assembly-table! A moment,—which one had to smooth off with oratory; waiting what the next would bring! Louis said few words: “He was come hither to prevent a great crime; he believed himself safer nowhere than here.” President Vergniaud answered briefly, in vague oratory as we say, about “defence of Constituted Authorities,” about dying at our post.1 And so King Louis sat him down; first here, then there; for a difficulty arose, the Constitution not permitting us to debate while the King is present: finally he settles himself with his Family in the ‘Loge of the Logographe,’ in the Reporter’s-Box of a Journalist; which is beyond the enchanted Constitutional Circuit, separated from it by a rail. To such Lodge of the Logographe, measuring some ten feet square, with a small closet at the entrance of it behind, is the King of broad France now limited: here can he and his sit pent, under the eyes of the world, or retire into their closet at intervals; for the space of sixteen hours. Such quite peculiar moment has the Legislative lived to see.
But also what a moment was that other, few minutes later, when the three Marseillese cannon went off, and the Swiss rolling-fire and universal thunder, like the Crack of Doom,* began to rattle! Honourable Members start to their feet; stray bullets singing epicedium even here, shivering in with window-glass and jingle. “No, this is our post; let us die here!”* They sit therefore, like stone Legislators. But may not the Lodge of the Logographe be forced from behind? Tear down the railing that divides it from the enchanted Constitutional Circuit! Ushers tear and tug; his Majesty himself aiding from within: the railing gives way; Majesty and Legislative are united in place, unknown Destiny hovering over both.
Rattle, and again rattle, went the thunder; one breathless wide-eyed messenger rushing in after another: King’s order to the Swiss went out. It was a fearful thunder; but, as we know, it ended. Breathless messengers, fugitive Swiss, denunciatory Patriots, trepidation; finally tripudiation!—Before four o’clock much has come and gone.
The New Municipals have come and gone; with Three Flags, Liberté, Égalité, Patrie, and the clang of vivats. Vergniaud, he who as President few hours ago talked of dying for Constituted Authorities, has moved, as Committee-Reporter, that the Hereditary Representative be suspended; that a National Convention do forthwith assemble to say what further! An able Report: which the President must have had ready in his pocket? A President, in such cases, must have much ready, and yet not ready; and Janus-like look before and after.*
King Louis listens to all; retires about midnight ‘to three little rooms on the upper floor;’ till the Luxembourg be prepared for him, and ‘the safeguard of the Nation.’ Safer if Brunswick were once here! Or, alas, not so safe? Ye hapless discrowned heads! Crowds came, next morning, to catch a glimpse of them, in their three upper rooms. Montgaillard says the august Captives wore an air of cheerfulness, even of gaiety; that the Queen and Princess Lamballe, who had joined her overnight, looked out of the opened window, ‘shook powder from their hair on the people below, and laughed.’1 He is an acrid distorted man.
For the rest, one may guess that the Legislative, above all that the New Municipality continues busy. Messengers, Municipal or Legislative, and swift despatches rush off to all corners of France; full of triumph, blended with indignant wail, for Twelve hundred have fallen. France sends up its blended shout responsive; the Tenth of August shall be as the Fourteenth of July, only bloodier and greater. The Court has conspired? Poor Court: the Court has been vanquished; and will have both the scath to bear and the scorn. How the Statues of Kings do now all fall! Bronze Henri himself, though he wore a cockade once,* jingles down from the Pont-Neuf, where Patrie floats in Danger. Much more does Louis Fourteenth, from the Place Vendôme, jingle down;* and even breaks in falling. The curious can remark, written on his horse’s shoe: ‘12 Août 1692;’ a Century and a Day.*
The Tenth of August was Friday. The week is not done, when our old Patriot Ministry is recalled, what of it can be got: strict Roland, Genevese Clavière; add heavy Monge the Mathematician, once a stone-hewer; and, for Minister of Justice,—Danton, ‘led hither,’ as himself says, in one of his gigantic figures, ‘through the breach of Patriot cannon!’ These, under Legislative Committees, must rule the wreck as they can: confusedly enough; with an old Legislative water-logged, with a new Municipality so brisk. But National Convention will get itself together; and then! Without delay, however, let a new Jury-Court and Criminal Tribunal be set up in Paris, to try the crimes and conspiracies of the Tenth. High Court of Orléans is distant, slow: the blood of the Twelve hundred Patriots, whatever become of other blood, shall be inquired after. Tremble, ye Criminals and Conspirators; the Minister of Justice is Danton! Robespierre too, after the victory, sits in the New Municipality; insurrectionary ‘improvised Municipality,’ which calls itself Council General of the Commune.
For three days now, Louis and his Family have heard the Legislative Debates in the Lodge of the Logographe; and retired nightly to their small upper rooms. The Luxembourg and safeguard of the Nation could not be got ready: nay, it seems the Luxembourg has too many cellars and issues; no Municipality can undertake to watch it. The compact Prison of the Temple, not so elegant indeed, were much safer.* To the Temple, therefore! On Monday, 13th day of August 1792, in Mayor Pétion’s carriage, Louis and his sad suspended Household, fare thither; all Paris out to look at them. As they pass through the Place Vendôme, Louis Fourteenth’s Statue lies broken on the ground.* Pétion is afraid the Queen’s looks may be thought scornful, and produce provocation; she casts down her eyes, and does not look at all. The ‘press is prodigious,’ but quiet: here and there, it shouts Vive la Nation; but for most part gazes in silence. French Royalty vanishes within the gates of the Temple: these old peaked Towers, like peaked Extinguisher or Bonsoir,* do cover it up;—from which same Towers, poor Jacques Molay and his Templars were burnt out, by French Royalty, five centuries since.* Such are the turns of Fate below. Foreign Ambassadors, English Lord Gower have all demanded passports; are driving indignantly towards their respective homes.
So, then, the Constitution is over? Forever and a day!* Gone is that wonder of the Universe; First biennial Parliament, water-logged, waits only till the Convention come; and will then sink to endless depths. One can guess the silent rage of Old-Constituents, Constitution-builders, extinct Feuillants, men who thought the Constitution would march! Lafayette rises to the altitude of the situation; at the head of his Army. Legislative Commissioners are posting towards him and it, on the Northern Frontier, to congratulate and perorate: he orders the Municipality of Sedan to arrest these Commissioners, and keep them strictly in ward as Rebels, till he say further. The Sedan Municipals obey.
The Sedan Municipals obey: but the Soldiers of the Lafayette Army? The Soldiers of the Lafayette Army have, as all Soldiers have, a kind of dim feeling that they themselves are Sansculottes in buff belts; that the victory of the Tenth of August is also a victory for them. They will not rise and follow Lafayette to Paris; they will rise and send him thither! On the 18th, which is but next Saturday, Lafayette, with some two or three indignant Staff-officers, one of whom is Old-Constituent Alexandre de Lameth, having first put his Lines in what order he could,—rides swiftly over the Marches, towards Holland. Rides, alas, swiftly into the claws of Austrians! He, long wavering, trembling on the verge of the Horizon, has set, in Olmütz Dungeons; this History knows him no more. Adieu, thou Hero of two Worlds; thinnest, but compact honour-worthy man! Through long rough night of captivity, through other tumults, triumphs and changes, thou wilt swing well, ‘fast-anchored to the Washington Formula;’ and be the Hero and Perfect-character, were it only of one idea. The Sedan Municipals repent and protest; the Soldiers shout Vive la Nation. Dumouriez Polymetis, from his Camp at Maulde, sees himself made Commander in Chief.
And, O Brunswick! what sort of ‘military execution’ will Paris merit now? Forward, ye well-drilled exterminatory men; with your artillery-waggons, and camp-kettles jingling. Forward, tall chivalrous King of Prussia;* fanfaronading Emigrants and war-god Broglie, ‘for some consolation to mankind,’ which verily is not without need of some.