IN the remarkable book entitled Paris during the Revolution, M. Adolphe Schmidt writes: “All the purely revolutionary events, the events of the Fourteenth of July, of October 5 and 6, 1789, were the work of an obscure minority of reckless and violent revolutionists. If they succeeded, it was only because the great majority of the citizens avoided the scene of operations or were mere passive spectators there, attracted by curiosity, and giving in appearance an enhanced importance to the movement.” Further on he says: “After the fall of the Gironde, To enable the reader to understand the extraordinary and improbable event which is the subject of this chapter, it would be necessary to begin by explaining the circumstances and describing the material and moral state of things in which it happened; and that, unhappily, would occupy much space. Let us take the two principal facts, see what they led to, and then come to the events of the Fourteenth of July. For its task of governing France, the royal power had in its hands no administrative instrument, or, at any rate, administrative instruments of a very rudimentary character. It ruled through tradition and sentiment. The royal power had been created by the affection and devotion of the nation, and in this devotion and affection lay its whole strength. What, actually and practically, were the means of government in the hands of the king? “Get rid of lettres de cachet,” observed Malesherbes, “and you Below the royal power, the lords in the country, the upper ten in the towns, constituted the second degree in the government. The same remarks apply here also. And unhappily it is certain that, over the greater part of France, the territorial lords had forgotten the duties which their privileges and their station imposed. The old attachment of the labouring classes to them had almost everywhere disappeared, and in many particulars had given place to feelings of hostility. Thus on the eve of ’89 the whole fabric of the state had no longer any real existence: at the first shock it was bound to crumble into dust. And as, behind the fragile outer wall, there was no solid structure—no administrative machine, with its numerous, diverse, and nicely-balanced parts, like that which in our time acts as a buffer against the shocks of political crises,—the first blow aimed at the royal power was bound to plunge the whole country into a state of disorganization Such is the first of the two facts we desire to make clear. We come now to the second. Ever since the year 1780, France had been almost continually in a state of famine. The rapidity and the abundance of the international exchanges which in our days supply us constantly from the remotest corners of the world with the necessaries of life, prevent our knowing anything of those terrible crises which in former days swept over the nations. “The dearth,” writes Taine, “permanent, prolonged, having already lasted ten years, and aggravated by the very outbreaks which it provoked, went on adding fuel to all the passions of men till they reached a blaze of madness.” “The nearer we come to the Fourteenth of July,” says an eye witness, “the greater the famine becomes.” “In consequence of the bad harvest,” writes Schmidt, “the price of bread had been steadily rising from the opening of the year 1789. This state of things was utilized by the agitators who aimed at driving the people into excesses: these excesses in turn paralyzed trade. Business ceased, and numbers of workers found themselves without bread.” A few words should properly be said in regard to brigandage under the ancien rÉgime. The progress of manners and especially the development of executive government have caused it utterly to disappear. The reader’s imagination will supply all we have not space to So grew up towards the end of the ancien rÉgime what Taine has so happily called a spontaneous anarchy. In the four months preceding the capture of the Bastille, one can count more than three hundred riots in France. At Nantes, on January 9, 1789, the town hall was invaded, and the bakers’ shops pillaged. All this took place to the cries of “Vive le roi!” At Bray-sur-Seine, on May 1, peasants armed with knives and clubs forced the farmers to lower the price of corn. At Rouen, on May 28, the corn in the market place was plundered. In Picardy, a discharged carabineer put himself at the head of an armed band which attacked the villages and carried off the corn. On all sides houses were looted from roof to cellar. At Aupt, M. de Montferrat, defending himself, was “cut into little pieces.” At La Seyne, the mob brought a coffin in front of the house of one of the principal burgesses; he was told to prepare for death, and they would do him the honour to bury him. He escaped, and his house was sacked. We cull these facts haphazard from among hundreds of others. The immediate neighbourhood of Paris was plunged At this moment there had collected in the outskirts of Paris those troops whose presence was in the sequel so skilfully turned to account by the orators of the Palais-Royal. True, the presence of the troops made them uneasy. So far were the soldiers from having designs against the Parisians that in the secret correspondence of Villedeuil we find the court constantly urging that they should be reserved for the safeguarding of the adjoining districts, which were every day exposed to attack, and for the safe conduct of the convoys of corn coming up to Versailles and Paris. Bands mustered Meanwhile the electors chosen to nominate deputies to the National Assembly had been collecting. On April 22, 1789, Thiroux de Crosne, the lieutenant of police, speaking of the tranquillity with which the elections were being carried on, added: “But I constantly have my eye on the bakers.” On April 23, de Crosne referred to the irritation which was showing itself among certain groups of workmen in During the night of April 27 and the next day, howling mobs attacked the establishments of Henriot and RÉveillon, which were thoroughly plundered. Commissary Gueullette, in his report of May 3, notes that a wild and systematic devastation was perpetrated. Only the walls were left standing. What was not stolen was smashed into atoms. The “brigands”—the expression used by the Commissary—threw a part of the plant out of the windows into the street, where the mob made bonfires of it. Part of the crowd were drunk; nevertheless they flung themselves into the cellars, and the casks were stove in. When casks and bottles were The riot was not quelled by the troops until 10 o’clock that night; more than a hundred persons were left dead in the street. M. Alexandre Tuetey has devoted some remarkable pages to RÉveillon’s affair; he has carefully studied the interrogatories of rioters who were arrested. The majority, he says, had been drunk all day. RÉveillon, as is well known, only found safety by taking refuge in the Bastille. He was the only prisoner whom the Bastille received throughout the year 1789. In the night following these bacchanalian orgies, the agents of the Marquis du ChÂtelet, colonel of the Gardes FranÇaises, having crept along one of the moats, “saw a crowd of brigands” collected on the further side of the TrÔne gate. Their leader was mounted on a table, haranguing them. We come upon them again in the report of Commissary Vauglenne, quoted by M. Alexandre Tuetey. “On Meanwhile, in the garden of the Palais-Royal, Camille Desmoulins was haranguing groups of the unemployed and ravenous outcasts, who were pressing round him with wide glaring eyes. Desmoulins vociferates: “The beast is in the trap; now to finish him!... Never a richer prey has ever been offered to conquerors! Forty thousand palaces, mansions, chÂteaux, two-fifths of the wealth of France will be the prize of valour. Those who have set up as our masters will be mastered in their turn, the nation will be purged!” It is easy to understand that in Paris the alarm had become as acute as in the country; everyone was in terror of the “brigands.” On June 25 it was decided to form a citizen militia for the protection of property. “The notoriety of these disorders,” we read in the minutes of the electors, “and the excesses committed by several mobs have decided the general assembly to re-establish without delay the militia of Paris.” But a certain time was necessary for the organization of this civil guard. On June 30, the doors of the Abbaye, where some Gardes FranÇaises had been locked up, some for desertion, others for theft, were broken in by blows from hatchets and hammers. The prisoners were led in triumph to the The disturbances at the Palais-Royal, the rendezvous of idlers, light women, and hot-headed fools, were becoming ever more violent. They began to talk of setting fire to the place. If some honest citizen plucked up courage to protest he was publicly whipped, thrown into the ponds, and rolled in the mud. On July 11, Necker was dismissed from the ministry and replaced by Breteuil. At this time Necker was very popular; Breteuil was not, though he ought to have been, particularly in the eyes of supporters of a revolutionary movement. Of all the ministers of the ancien rÉgime, and of all the men of his time, Breteuil was the one who had done most for the suppression of lettres de cachet and of state prisons. It was he who had closed Vincennes and the ChÂtimoine tower of Caen, who had got the demolition of the Bastille decided on, who had set Latude at liberty, and how many other prisoners! who had drawn up and made respected, even in the remotest parts of the kingdom, those admirable circulars which will immortalize his name, by which he ordered the immediate liberation of all prisoners whose detention was not absolutely justified, and laid down such rigorous formalities for the future, that the arbitrary character of lettres de cachet may Meanwhile, Camille Desmoulins was continuing to thunder forth: “I have just sounded the people. My rage against the despots was turned to despair. I did not see the crowds, although keenly moved and dismayed, strongly enough disposed to insurrection.... I was rather lifted on to the table than mounted there myself. Scarcely was I there than I saw myself surrounded by an immense throng. Here is my short address, which I shall never forget: ‘Citizens! there is not a moment to lose. I come from Versailles; M. Necker is dismissed; this dismissal is the alarm bell of a St. Bartholomew of patriots; this evening all the Swiss and German battalions will march from the Champ de Mars to cut our throats. Only one resource remains to us: we must fly to arms!’” The Parisians were in an abject state of fright, but it was not the Swiss and German battalions which terrified them. The author of the Memorable Fortnight, devoted heart and soul as he was to the revolutionary movement, The organization of the citizen militia against these disorders was becoming urgent. When evening came, the majority of the districts set actively to work. Twelve hundred good citizens mustered in the Petit Saint-Antoine district. It was a motley crew: tradesmen and artisans, magistrates and doctors, writers and scholars, cheek by jowl with navvies and carpenters. The future minister of Louis XVI., Champion de Villeneuve, filled the post of secretary. The twelve hundred citizens, as we read in the minutes, “compelled to unite by the too well founded alarm inspired in all the citizens by the danger which seems to threaten them each individually, and by the imminent necessity of taking prompt measures The HÔtel de Ville was attacked, and one of the electors, Legrand, only cleared it of the hordes who were filling it with their infernal uproar by ordering six barrels of powder to be brought up, and threatening to blow the place up if they did not retire. During the night of July 13, the shops of the bakers and wine-sellers were pillaged. The excellent AbbÉ Morellet, one of the EncyclopÆdists, who, as we have seen, was locked up in the Bastille under Louis XV., writes: “I spent a great part of the night of the 13th at my windows, watching the scum of the population armed with muskets, pikes, and skewers, as they forced open the doors of the houses and got themselves food and drink, money and arms.” Mathieu Dumas also describes in his Souvenirs these ragged vagabonds, several almost naked, and with horrible faces. During these two days and nights, writes Bailly, Paris ran great risk of pillage, and was only saved by the National Guard. The proceedings of these bandits and the work of the National Guard are described in a curious letter from an English doctor, named Rigby, to his wife. “It was The author of the Authentic History, who left the best of the contemporary accounts of the taking of the Bastille which we possess, says rightly enough: “The riot began on the evening of July 12.” There was thus a combination of disorders and “brigandage” in which the capture of the Bastille, though it stands out more prominently than the other events, was only a part, and cannot be considered by itself. The morning of the Fourteenth dawned bright and sunny. A great part of the population had remained up all night, and daylight found them still harassed with anxiety and alarm. To have arms was the desire of all; the citizens and supporters of order, so as to protect themselves; the brigands, a part of whom had been disarmed, in order to procure or recover the means of assault and pillage. There was a rush to the Invalides, where the magazines of effective arms were. This was the first violent action of the day. The mob carried off 28,000 muskets and twenty-four cannon. And as it was known that other munitions of war were deposited in the Bastille, the cry of “To the Invalides!” was succeeded by the cry “To the Bastille!” We must carefully distinguish between the two elements of which the throng flocking to the Bastille was composed. On the one hand, a horde of nameless vagabonds, those whom the contemporary documents invariably style the “brigands”; and, on the other hand, the respectable citizens—these certainly formed the minority—who desired arms for the equipment of About 8 o’clock in the morning, the electors at the HÔtel de Ville received some inhabitants of the Suburb Saint-Antoine who came to complain that the district was threatened by the cannon trained on it from the towers of the Bastille. These cannon were used for firing salutes on occasions of public rejoicing, and were so placed that they could do no harm whatever to the adjacent districts. But the electors sent some of their number to the Bastille, where the governor, de Launey, received the deputation with the greatest affability, kept them to lunch, and at their request withdrew the cannon from the embrasures. To this deputation there succeeded another, which, however, was quite unofficial, consisting of three persons, with the advocate Thuriot de la RosiÈre at the head. They were admitted as their predecessors had been. Thuriot was the eloquent spokesman, “in the name of the nation and the fatherland.” He delivered an ultimatum to the governor and harangued the garrison, consisting of 95 Invalides and 30 Swiss soldiers. Some enlarge-image “The entrance to the first courtyard, that of the barracks, was open,” says M. Fernand Bournon in his admirable account of the events of this day; “but de Launey had ordered the garrison to retire within the enclosure, and to raise the outer drawbridge by which the court of the governor was reached, and which in the ordinary way used to be lowered during the day. Two daring fellows dashed forward and scaled the roof of the guard-house, one of them a soldier named Louis Tournay: the name of the other is unknown. They shattered the chains of the drawbridge with their axes, and it fell.” It has been said in a recent work, in which defects of judgment and criticism are scarcely masked by a cumbrous parade of erudition, that Tournay and his companion performed their feat under the fire of the garrison. At this moment the garrison did not fire a single shot, contenting themselves with urging the besiegers to retire. “While M. de Launey and his officers contented themselves with threats, these two vigorous champions succeeded in breaking in the doors and in lowering the outer drawbridge; then the horde A wine-seller named Cholat, aided by one Baron, nicknamed La GiroflÉe, had brought into position a piece of ordnance in the long walk of the arsenal. They fired, but the gun’s recoil somewhat seriously wounded the two artillerymen, and they were its only victims. As these means were insufficient to overturn the Bastille, the besiegers set about devising others. A pretty young girl named Mdlle. de Monsigny, daughter of the captain of the company of Invalides at the Bastille, had been encountered in the barrack yard. Some madmen imagined that she was Mdlle. de Launey. They dragged her to the edge of the moat, and gave the garrison to A detachment of Gardes FranÇaises, coming up with two pieces of artillery which the HÔtel de Ville had allowed to be removed, gave a more serious aspect to the siege. But the name of Gardes FranÇaises must not give rise to misapprehension: the soldiers of the regular army under the ancien rÉgime must not be compared with those of the present day. The regiment of Gardes FranÇaises in particular had fallen into a profound state of disorganization and degradation. The privates were permitted to follow a trade in the city, by this means augmenting their pay. It is certain that in the majority of cases the trade they followed was that of the bully. “Almost all the soldiers in the Guards belong to this class,” we read in the EncyclopÉdie mÉthodique, “and many men indeed only enlist in the corps in order to live on the earnings of these unfortunates.” The numerous documents relating to the Gardes FranÇaises preserved in the archives of the From the fifteen cannon placed on the towers, not a single shot was fired during the siege. Within the chÂteau, three guns loaded with grape defended the inner drawbridge; the governor had only one of them fired, and that only once. Not wishing to massacre the mob, de Launey determined to blow up the Bastille and find his grave among the ruins. The Invalides Ferrand and BÉquart flung themselves upon him to prevent him from carrying out his intention. “The Bastille was not captured by main force,” says Elie, whose testimony cannot be suspected of partiality in favour of the defenders; “it surrendered before it was attacked, on my giving my word of honour as a French officer that all should escape unscathed if they submitted.” We know how this promise was kept, in spite of the heroic efforts of Elie and Hulin, to whom posterity owes enthusiastic homage. Is the mob to be reproached for these atrocious crimes? It was a savage horde, the scum of the population. De Launey, whose confidence and kindness had never faltered, was massacred with every circumstance of horror. “The AbbÉ LefÈvre,” says Dusaulx, “was an involuntary witness of his last moments: ‘I saw him fall,’ he told me, ‘without being able to help “We learnt by-and-by,” continues Dusaulx, “of the death of M. de Losme-Salbray, which all good men deplored.” De Losme had been the good angel of the prisoners during his term of office as major of the Bastille: there are touching details showing to what lengths he carried his kindliness and delicacy of feeling. At the moment when the mob was hacking at him, there happened to pass the Marquis de Pelleport, who had been imprisoned in the Bastille for several years; he sprang forward to save him: “Stop!” he cried, “you are killing the best of men.” But he fell badly wounded, as also did the Chevalier de Jean, who had joined him in the attempt to rescue the unfortunate man from the hands of the mob. The adjutant Miray, Person the lieutenant of the Invalides, and Dumont, one of the Invalides, were massacred. Miray was led to the GrÈve, where the mob had resolved to execute him. Struck Further, they massacred Flesselles, the provost of the guilds, accused of a treacherous action as imaginary as that of de Launey. They cut the throat of Foulon, an old man of seventy-four years, who, as Taine tells us, had spent during the preceding winter 60,000 francs in order to provide the poor with work. They assassinated Berthier, one of the distinguished men of the time. Foulon’s head was cut off; they tore Berthier’s heart Those who had remained in front of the Bastille had dashed on in quest of booty. As at the pillage of the warehouses of RÉveillon and Henriot, and of the convent of the Lazarists, the first impulse of the conquerors was to bound forward to the cellar. “This rabble,” writes the author of the Authentic History, “were so blind drunk that they made in one body for the quarters of the staff, breaking the furniture, doors, and windows. All this time their comrades, taking the pillagers for some of the garrison, were firing on them.” No one gave a thought to the prisoners, but the keys were secured and carried in triumph through Paris. The doors of the rooms in which the prisoners were kept had to be broken in. The wretched men, terrified by the uproar, were more dead than alive. These victims of arbitrary power were exactly seven in number. Four were forgers, BÉchade, Laroche, La CorrÈge, and Such were the seven martyrs who were led in triumphant procession through the streets, amid the shouts of a deeply moved people. Of the besiegers, ninety-eight dead were counted, some of whom had met their death through the assailants’ firing on one another. Several had been killed by falling into the moat. Of this total, only nineteen were married, and only five had children. These are details of some interest. There was no thought of burying either the conquerors or the conquered. At midnight on Wednesday the 15th, the presence of the corpses of the officers of the Bastille, still lying in the Place de GrÈve, was notified to the commissaries of the ChÂtelet. In his admirable work Meanwhile the majority of the victors, the first moments of intoxication having passed, were hiding themselves like men who had committed a crime. The disorder in the city was extreme. “The commissioners of the districts,” writes the Sicilian ambassador, “seeing the peril in which the inhabitants were placed before this enormous number of armed men, including brigands More than one conqueror of the Bastille was hanged in this way, which was a great pity, for two days later his glorious brow might have been crowned with laurels and flowers! It has been said that the Bastille was captured by the people of Paris. But the number of the besiegers amounted to no more than a thousand, among whom, as Marat has already brought to our notice, there were many provincials and foreigners. As to the Parisians, they had come in great numbers, as they always do, to see what was going on. We have this too on the testimony of Marat. “I was present at the taking of the Bastille,” writes the Chancellor de Pasquier also: “what has been called the ‘fight’ was not serious, and of resistance there was absolutely none. A few musket shots were fired to which there was no reply, and four or five cannon shots. We know the results of this boasted victory, which has brought a shower of compliments upon the heads of the so-called conquerors: the truth is that this great fight did not give a moment’s uneasiness to the numerous spectators who had hurried up to see the By next day there was quite another story. The Bastille had been “stormed” in a formidable and heroic assault lasting a quarter of an hour. The guns of the assailants had made a breach in its walls. These, it is true, were still standing intact; but that did not signify, the guns had made a breach, unquestionably! The seven prisoners who had been set free had been a disappointment, for the best will in the world could not make them anything but scoundrels and lunatics; some one invented an eighth, the celebrated Comte de Lorges, the white-headed hero and martyr. This Comte de Lorges had no existence; but that fact also is nothing to the purpose: he makes an admirable and touching story. There was talk of instruments of torture that had been discovered: “an iron corslet, invented to hold a man fast by all his joints, and fix him in eternal immobility:” it was really a piece of knightly armour dating from the middle ages, taken from the magazine of obsolete arms which was kept at the Bastille. Some one discovered also The compilation of the roll of the conquerors of the Bastille was a laborious work. A great number of those who had been in the thick of the fray did not care to make themselves known: they did not know but that their laurel-crowned heads might be stuck aloft! It is true that these bashful heroes were speedily replaced by a host of fine fellows who—from the moment when it was admitted that the conquerors were heroes, deserving of honours, pensions, and medals—were fully persuaded that they had sprung to the assault, and in the very first rank. The final list contained 863 names. Victor Fournel in a charming book has sung the epic, at once ludicrous and lachrymose, of the men of the 14th of July. The book, which ought to be read, gives a host of delightful episodes it is impossible to abridge. In the sequel these founders of This is the amusing side of their story. But there is a painful side too: their rivalries with the Gardes FranÇaises, who charged them with filching the glory from them, and with the “volunteers of the Bastille.” The heroes were acquainted with calumny and opprobrium. There were, too, deadly dissensions among their own body. There were the true conquerors, and others who, while they were true conquerors, were nevertheless not true: there were always “traitors” among the conquerors, as well as “patriots.” On July 1, 1790, two of the conquerors were found beaten to death near Beaumarchais’ garden, in front of the theatre of their exploits. Next day there was a violent quarrel between four conquerors and some soldiers. In December two It remains to explain this amazing veering round of opinion, this legend, of all things the least likely, which transformed into great men the “brigands” of April, June, and July, 1789. The first reason is explained in the following excellent passage from Rabagas Carle.—But how then do you distinguish a riot from a revolution? Boubard.—A riot is when the mob is defeated ... they are all curs. A revolution is when the mob is the stronger: they are all heroes! During the night of July 14, the Duke de la Rochefoucauld woke Louis XVI. to announce to him the capture of the Bastille. “It’s a revolt then,” said the king. “Sire,” replied the duke, “it is a revolution.” The day on which the royal power, in its feebleness and irresolution, abandoned Paris to the mob, was the day of its abdication. The Parisians attempted to organize themselves into a citizen militia in order to shoot down the brigands. The movement on the Bastille was a stroke of genius on the part of the latter—instinctive, no doubt, but for all that a stroke of genius. The people now recognized its masters, and with its usual facility it hailed the new rÉgime with adulation. “From that moment,” said a deputy, “there was an end What rendered the national enthusiasm for the conquerors more easy was precisely all those legends to which credence was given, in all sincerity, by the most intelligent people in France—the legends on the horrors of the Bastille and the cruelties of arbitrary power. For fifty years they had been disseminated throughout the kingdom, and had taken firm root. The pamphlets of Linguet and Mirabeau, the recent stupendous success of the Memoirs of Latude, had given these stories renewed strength and vigour. Compelled to bow before the triumphant mob, people preferred to regard themselves—so they silenced their conscience—as hailing a deliverer. There was some sincerity in this movement of opinion, too. The same districts which on July 13 took arms against the brigands could exclaim, after the crisis had passed: “The districts applaud the capture of a fortress which, regarded hitherto as the seat of despotism, dishonoured the French name under a popular king.” In his edition of the Memoirs of Barras, M. George Duruy has well explained the transformation of opinion. “In the Memoirs, the capture of the Bastille is merely the object of a brief and casual mention. Barras only retained and transmits to us one single detail. He saw leaving the dungeons the ‘victims of arbitrary power, saved at last from rack and torture and from living tombs.’ Such a dearth of information is the more likely In the provinces, the outbreak had a violent counterpart. “There instantly arose,” writes Victor Fournel, “a strange, extraordinary, grotesque panic, which swept through the greater part of France like a hurricane of madness, and which many of us have heard our grand-fathers tell stories about under the name of the ‘day of the brigands’ or ‘the day of the fear.’ It broke out everywhere in the second fortnight of July, 1789. Suddenly, one knew not whence, an awful rumour burst upon the town or village: the brigands are here, at our very gates: they are advancing in troops of fifteen or twenty thousand, burning the standing crops, ravaging everything! Dust-stained couriers appear, spreading the terrible news. An unknown horseman goes through at the gallop, with haggard cheeks and dishevelled hair: ‘Up, to arms, they are here!’ Some natives rush up: it is only too true: they have seen them, the bandits are no more than a league or two away! The alarm bell booms out, the people fly to arms, line up in battle order, start off to reconnoitre. In the end, nothing happens, but their terrors revive. The brigands have only turned aside: every man must remain under arms.” In the frontier provinces, there were rumours of foreign enemies. The Bretons and Normans shook in fear of an English descent: in Along with these scenes of panic must be placed the deeds of violence, the assassinations, plunderings, burnings, which suddenly desolated the whole of France. In a book which sheds a flood of light on these facts, Gustave Bord gives a thrilling picture of them. The chÂteaux were invaded, and the owner, if they could lay hands on him, was roasted on the soles of his feet. At Versailles the mob threw themselves on the hangman as he was about to execute a parricide, and the criminal was set free: the state of terror in which the town was plunged is depicted in the journals of the municipal assembly. On July 23, the governor of Champagne sends word that the rising is general in his district. At Rennes, at Nantes, at Saint-Malo, at Angers, at Caen, at Bordeaux, at Strasburg, at Metz, the mob engaged in miniature captures of the Bastille more or less accompanied with pillage and assassination. Armed bands went about cutting down the woods, breaking down the dikes, fishing in the ponds. Nothing could more clearly show the character of the government under the ancien rÉgime: it was wholly dependent on traditions. Nowhere was there a concrete organization to secure the maintenance of order and the THE END. |