History of the Girondists Part 33

XIV.

Berthier, who afterwards became Napoleon's right hand, was then the head of Luckner's staff. The old general seized, with warlike instinct, on Dumouriez's bold plan. He had entered at the head of 22,000 men on the Austrian territory at Courtray and Menin. Biron and Valence, his two seconds in command, entreated him to remain there, and Dumouriez, in his letters, urged him in similar manner. On arriving at Lille, Dumouriez learnt that Luckner had suddenly retreated on Valenciennes, after having burnt the suburbs of Courtray; thus giving, on our frontier, the signal of hesitation and retreat.

The Belgian population, their impulses thus checked by the disasters or timidity of France, lost all hope, and bent beneath the Austrian yoke.

General Montesquiou collected the army of the south with difficulty. The king of the Sardinians concentrated a large force on the Var. The advanced guard of La Fayette, posted at Gliswel, at a league from Maubeuge, was beaten by the Duke of Saxe-Teschen, at the head of 12,000 men. The great invasion of the Duke of Brunswick, in Champagne, was preparing. The emigration took off the officers, desertion diminished our soldiery. The clubs disseminated distrust against the commanders of our strong places.

The Girondists were urging on rebellion, the Jacobins were exciting the army to anarchy, the volunteers did not rise, the ministry was null, the Austrian committee of the Tuileries corresponded with various powers, not to deceive the nation, but to save the lives of the king and his family. A suspected government, hostile a.s.sembly, seditious clubs, a national guard intimidated and deprived of its chief, incendiary journalism, dark conspiracies, factious munic.i.p.ality, a conspirator-mayor, people distrustful and starving, Robespierre and Brissot, Vergniaud and Danton, Girondists and Jacobins, face to face, having the same spoil to contend for--the monarchy, and struggling for pre-eminence in demagogism in order to acquire the favour of the people; such was the state of France, within and without, at the moment when exterior war was pressing France on all sides, and causing it to burst forth with disasters and crimes. The Girondists and Jacobins united for a moment, suspended their personal animosity, as if to see which could best destroy the powerless const.i.tution which separated them. The _bourgeoisie_ personified by the Feuillants, the National Guard, and La Fayette, alone remained attached to the const.i.tution. The Gironde, from the tribune itself, made that appeal to the people against the king which it was subsequently doomed to make in vain in favour of the king against the Jacobins. In order to control the city, Brissot, Roland, Petion, excited the suburbs, those capitals of miseries and seditions.

Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths, then appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue; such were about to appear under the conspiring hand of the Girondists and demagogues.

BOOK XVI

I.

In proportion as power s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hands of the king by the a.s.sembly disappeared, it pa.s.sed into the commune of Paris. The munic.i.p.ality, that first element of nations which are forming themselves, is also the last asylum of authority when they are crumbling to pieces. Before it falls quite to the people, power pauses for a moment in the council-chamber of the magistrates of the city. The Hotel de Ville had become the Tuileries of the people; after La Fayette and Bailly, Petion reigned there: this man was the king of Paris. The populace (which has always the instinct of position) called him _King Petion_. He had purchased his popularity, first by his private virtues, which the people almost always confound with public virtues, and subsequently by his democratic speeches in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. The skilful balance which he preserved at the Jacobins between the Girondists and Robespierre had rendered him respectable and important.

Friend of Roland, Robespierre, Danton, and Brissot, at the same time suspected of too close connection with Madame de Genlis and the Duc d'Orleans' party, he still always covered himself with the mantle of proper devotion to order and a superst.i.tious reverence for the const.i.tution. He had thus all the apparent t.i.tles to the esteem of honest men and the respect of factions; but the greatest of all was in his mediocrity. Mediocrity, it must be confessed, is almost always the brand of these idols of the people: either that the mob, mediocre itself, has only a taste for what resembles it; or that jealous contemporaries can never elevate themselves sufficiently high towards great characters and great virtues; or that Providence, which distributes gifts and faculties in proportion, will not allow that one man should unite in himself, amidst a free people, these three irresistible powers, virtue, genius, and popularity; or rather, that the constant favour of the mult.i.tude is a thing of such a nature that its price is beyond its worth in the eyes of really virtuous men, and that it is necessary to stoop too low to pick it up, and become too weak to retain it. Petion was only king of the people on condition of being complaisant to its excesses. His functions as mayor of Paris, in a time of trouble, placed him constantly between the king, the a.s.sembly, and the revolts. He bearded the king, flattered the a.s.sembly, and pardoned crime. Inviolable as the capital which he personified in his position of first magistrate of the commune, his unseen dictators.h.i.+p had no other t.i.tle than his inviolability, and he used it with respectful boldness towards the king, bowed before the a.s.sembly, and knelt to the malcontents. To his official reproaches to the rioters, he always added an excuse for crime, a smile for the culprits, encouragement to the misled citizens. The people loved him as anarchy loves weakness; it knew it could do as it pleased with him. As mayor, he had the law in his hand; as a man, he had indulgence on his lips and connivance in his heart: he was just the magistrate required in times of the _coups d'etat_ of the faubourgs.

Petion allowed them to make all their preparations without appearing to see them, and legalised them whenever they were completed.

II.

His early connection with Brissot had drawn him towards Madame Roland.

The ministry of Roland, Claviere, and Servan obeyed him more than even the king, he was present at all their consultations, and although their fall did not involve him, it wrested the executive power from his grasp.

The expelled Girondists had no need to infuse their thirst of vengeance into the mind of Petion. Unable any longer to conspire legally against the king, with his ministers, he yet could conspire with the factions against the Tuileries. The national guards, the people, the Jacobins, the faubourgs, the whole city, were in his hands; thus he could give sedition to the Girondists to aid this party to regain the ministry; and he gave it them with all the hazards--all the crimes that sedition carries with it. Amongst these hazards was the a.s.sa.s.sination of the king and his family: this event was beforehand accepted by those who provoked the a.s.sembly of the populace, and their invasion of the king's palace.

Girondists, Orleanists, Republicans, Anarchists, none of these parties perhaps actually meditated this crime, but they looked upon it as an eventuality of their fortune. Petion, who doubtless did not desire it, at least risked it; and if his intention was innocent, his temerity was a murder. What distance was there between the steel of twenty thousand pikes and the heart of Louis XVI.? Petion did not betray the lives of the king, the queen, and the children, but he placed them at stake. The const.i.tutional guard of the king had been ignominiously disbanded by the Girondists; the Duc de Brissac, its commander, was sent to the high court of Orleans, for imaginary conspiracies,--his only conspiracy was his honour; and he had sworn to die bravely in defence of his master and his friend. He could have escaped, but though even the king advised him to fly, he refused. "If I fly," replied he, to the king's entreaties, "it will be said that I am guilty, and that you are my accomplice; my flight will accuse you: I prefer to die." He left Paris for the national court of Orleans: he was not tried, but ma.s.sacred at Versailles, on the 6th of September, and his head with its white hairs was planted on one of the palisades of the palace gates, as if in atrocious mockery of that chivalrous honour that even in death guarded the gate of the residence of his king.

III.

The first insurrections of the Revolution were the spontaneous impulses of the people: on one side was the king, the court and the n.o.bility; on the other the nation. These two parties clashed by the mere impulse of conflicting ideas and interests. A word--a gesture--a chance--the a.s.sembling a body of troops--a day's scarcity--the vehement address of an orator in the Palais Royal, sufficed to excite the populace to revolt, or to march on Versailles. The spirit of sedition was confounded with the spirit of the Revolution. Every one was factious--every one was a soldier--every one was a leader. Public pa.s.sion gave the signal, and chance commanded.

Since the Revolution was accomplished, and the const.i.tution had imposed on each party legal order, it was different. The insurrections of the people were no longer agitations, but plans. The organised factions had their partisans--their clubs--their a.s.semblies--their army and their pa.s.s-word. Amongst the citizens, anarchy had disciplined itself, and its disorder was only external, for a secret influence animated and directed it unknown even to itself. In the same manner as an army possesses chiefs on whose intelligence and courage they rely; so the _quartiers_ and sections of Paris had leaders whose orders they obeyed. Secondary popularities, already rooted in the city and faubourgs, had been founded behind those mighty national popularities of Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Bailly. The people felt confidence in such a name, reliance in such an arm, favour for such a face; and when these men showed themselves, spoke, or moved, the mult.i.tude followed them without even knowing whither the current of the crowd would lead; it was sufficient for the chiefs to indicate a spot on which to a.s.semble, to spread abroad a panic terror, infuse a sudden rage, or indicate a purpose, to cause the blind ma.s.ses of the people to a.s.semble on the appointed spot ready for action.

IV.

The spot chosen was most frequently the site of the Bastille, the Mons Aventinus of the people, the national camp, where the place and the stones reminded them of their servitude and their strength. Of all the men who governed the agitators of the faubourgs, Danton was the most redoubtable. Camille Desmoulins, equally bold to plan, possessed less courage to execute. Nature, which had given this young man the restlessness of the leaders of the mob, had denied him the exterior and the power of voice necessary to captivate them; for the people do not comprehend intellectual force. A colossal stature and a sonorous voice are two indispensable requisites for the favourites of the people: Camille Desmoulins was small, thin, and had but a feeble voice, that seemed to "pipe and whistle in the wind" after the tones of Danton, who possessed the roar of the populace.

Petion enjoyed the highest esteem of the anarchists, but his official legality excused him from openly fomenting the disorder, which it was sufficient that he desired. Nothing could be done without him, and he was an accomplice. After them came Santerre, the commander of the battalion of the faubourg St. Antoine. Santerre, son of a Flemish brewer, and himself a brewer, was one of those men that the people respect because they are of themselves, and whose large fortune is forgiven them on account of their familiarity. Well known to the workmen, of whom he employed great numbers in his brewery; and by the populace, who on Sundays frequented his wine and beer establishments--Santerre distributed large sums of money, as well as quant.i.ties of provisions, to the poor; and, at a moment of famine, had distributed three hundred thousand francs' worth of bread (12,000_l_.).

He purchased his popularity by his beneficence; he had conquered it, by his courage, at the storming of the Bastille; and he increased it by his presence at every popular tumult. He was of the race of those Belgian brewers who intoxicated the people of Ghent to rouse them to revolt.

The butcher, Legendre, was to Danton what Danton was to Mirabeau, a step lower in the abyss of sedition. Legendre had been a sailor during ten years of his life, and had the rough and brutal manners of his two callings, a savage look, his arms covered with blood, his language merciless, yet his heart naturally good. Involved since '89 in all the Revolutionary movements, the waves of this agitation had elevated him to a certain degree of authority. He had founded, under Danton, the Cordeliers club, the club of _coups de main_, as the Jacobins was the club of radical theories; and he convulsed it to its very centre, by his eloquence untaught and unpolished. He compared himself to the peasant of the Danube. Always more ready to strike than to speak, Legendre's gesture crushed before he spoke. He was the mace of Danton. Huguenin, one of those men who roll from profession to profession, on the acclivity of troublous times, without the power to arrest his course; an advocate expelled from the body to which he belonged; then a soldier, and a clerk at the barriere; always disliked, aspiring for power to recover his fortune, and suspected of pillage. Alexandre, the commandant of the battalion of the Gobelins, the hero of the faubourg, the friend of Legendre. Marat, a living conspiracy, who had quitted his subterranean abode in the night; a living martyr of demagogism, revelling in excitement, carrying his hatred of society to madness, exulting in it, and voluntarily playing the part of the fool of the people as so many others had played at the courts the part of the king's fool. Dubois Crance, a brave and educated soldier. Brune, a sabre, at the service of all conspiracies. Mormoro, a printer, intoxicated with philosophy. Dubuisson, an obscure writer, whom the hisses of the theatre had forced to take refuge in intrigue. Fabre d'Eglantine, a comic poet, ambitious of another field for his powers. Chabot, a capuchin monk, embittered by the cloister, and eager to avenge himself on the superst.i.tion which had imprisoned him. Lareynie, a soldier-priest.

Gonchon, Duquesnois, friends of Robespierre. Carra, a Girondist journalist. An Italian, named Rotondo. Henriot, Sillery, Louvet, Laclos, and Barbaroux, the emissary of Roland and Brissot, were the princ.i.p.al instigators of the _emeute_ of the 20th of June.

V.

All these men met in an isolated house at Charenton, to concert in the stillness and secrecy of the night on the pretext, the plan, and the hour of the insurrection. The pa.s.sions of these men were different, but their impatience was the same; some wished to terrify, others to strike, but all wished to act; when once the people were let loose, they would stop where destiny willed. There were no scruples at a meeting at which Danton presided; speeches were superfluous where but one feeling prevailed; propositions were sufficient, and a look was enough to convey all their meaning. A pressure of the hand, a glance, a significant gesture, are the eloquence of men of action. In a few words, Danton dictated the purpose, Santerre the means, Marat the atrocious energy, Camilla Desmoulins the cynical gaiety of the projected movement, and all decided on the resolution of urging the people to this act. A revolutionary map of Paris was laid on the table, and on it Danton traced the sources, the tributary streams, the course, and the meeting-place of these gatherings of the people.

The Place de la Bastille, an immense square into which opened, like the mouths of so many rivers, the numerous streets of the faubourg St.

Antoine, which joins, by the quartier de l'a.r.s.enale and a bridge, the faubourg St. Marceau, and which, by the boulevard, opened before the ancient fortress, has a large opening to the centre of the city and the Tuileries, was the rendezvous a.s.signed, and the place whence the columns were to depart. They were to be divided into three bodies, and a pet.i.tion to present to the king and the a.s.sembly against the _veto_ to the decree against the priests and the camp of 20,000 men, was the ostensible purpose of the movement; the recall of the patriot ministers, Roland, Servan, and Claviere, the countersign; and the terror of the people, disseminated in Paris and the chateau of the Tuileries the effect of this day. Paris expected this visit of the faubourgs, for five hundred persons had dined together the previous day on the Champs Elysees.

The chief of the _federes_ of Ma.r.s.eilles and the agitators of the central quarters had fraternised there with the Girondists. The actor Dugazon had sung verses, denunciatory of the inhabitants of the Chateau; and at his window in the Tuileries the king had heard the applause and these menacing strains, that reached even to his palace. As for the order of the march, the grotesque emblems, the strange weapons, the hideous costumes, the horrible banners and the obscene language, destined to signal the apparition of this army of the faubourgs in the streets of the capital, the conspirators prescribed nothing, for disorder and horror formed a part of the programme, and they left all to the disordered imagination of the populace, and to that rivalry of cynicism which invariably takes place in such ma.s.ses of men. Danton relied on this fact.

VI.

Although the presence of Panis and Sergent, two members of the munic.i.p.ality, gave a tacit sanction to the plan, the leaders undertook to recruit the sedition in silence, by small groups during the night, and to collect the fiercest _ra.s.semblements_ of the quartier Saint Marceau and the Jardin des Plantes, on the bank of the a.r.s.enale, by means of a ferry, then the only means of communication between the two faubourgs. Lareynie was to arouse the faubourg St. Jacques and the market of the place Maubert, where the women of the lower cla.s.ses came daily to make their household purchases. To sell and to buy is the life of the lower orders, and money and famine are their two leading pa.s.sions. They are always ready for tumult in those places where these two pa.s.sions concentrate, and no where is sedition more readily excited, or in greater ma.s.ses of people.

The dyer Malard, the shoemaker Isambert, the tanner Gibon, rich and influential artizans, were to pour from the sombre and foetid streets of the faubourg Saint Marceau their indigent population, who but rarely show themselves in the princ.i.p.al quartiers. Alexandre, the military tribune of this quarter of Paris, in which he commanded a battalion, was to place himself at its head on the place, before daybreak, to concentrate the people, and then give them the impulse that should lead them to the quays and the Tuileries. Varlet, Gonchon, Ronsin, and Siret, the lieutenants of Santerre, who had been employed in this system of tactics since the first agitations of '89, were charged with the execution of similar manoeuvres in the faubourg St. Antoine. The streets of this quarter, full of manufactories and wine and beer shops, the abiding place of misery, toil, and sedition, which extend from the Bastille to la Roquette and Charenton, contained in themselves alone an army that could invade Paris.

VII.

This army had known its leaders for four years. They posted themselves at the openings of the princ.i.p.al streets, at the hour when the workmen leave the _ateliers_; they procured a chair and table from the nearest and best _cabaret_, and mounting on these wine-stained tribunes, they called by name some of the pa.s.sers by, who grouped round them; these stopped others, the street was blocked up by them, and this crowd was increased by all the men, women, and children, attracted by the noise.

The orator addressed this motley a.s.semblage, whilst wine or beer were gratuitously handed round. The cessation of work, the scarcity of money, the dearth of food, the manoeuvres of the aristocrats to starve Paris, the treacheries of the king, the orgies of the queen, the necessity of the nation's defeating the plots of an Austrian court, were the usual themes of their addresses. When once the agitation rose to fever heat, the cry of "_Marchons_" was heard, and the mob set itself in motion down every street. A few hours afterwards ma.s.ses of workmen from the quartiers Popincourt, Quinze-Vingts de la Greve, Port au Ble, and the Marche St. Jean, poured from the rues du Faubourg St. Antoine, and covered the Place de la Bastille. There the tumult of the meeting of all these tributaries of sedition for a moment stayed the progress of this living torrent; but the impulse soon carried them on, and the columns instinctively divided themselves, and plunged into the vast outlets and main streets of Paris. Some took the line of the boulevards, others marched along the quays to the Pont Neuf, there encountered the column of the Place Maubert, and poured, in constantly increasing ma.s.ses, on the Palais Royal, and the gardens of the Tuileries.

Such were the plans ordered on the night of the 19th of June, to be executed by the agitators in the different quartiers, and who separated with a rallying word, which gave the movement of the morrow the excitement and uncertainty of hope, and which, without commanding the consummation of crime, yet authorised the last excesses, "_To make an end of the Chateau_."

VIII.

Such was the meeting of Charenton, such were the unseen actors who were to set in motion a million of citizens. Did Laclos and Sillery, who were about to seek a throne for the Duc d'Orleans their master, in the faubourgs, distribute his gold there? It has been a.s.serted and believed, but never proved, and yet their presence at this meeting is suspicious.

History has the right of suspecting without evidence, but never of accusing without proof. The a.s.sa.s.sination of the king would give the crown, the next day, to the Duc d'Orleans; Louis XVI. might be a.s.sa.s.sinated by the weapon of some drunken man--he was not. This is the only justification of the Orleans' faction. Some of these men were disaffected, like Marat and Hebert; others, like Barbaroux, Sillery, Laclos, and Carra, were impatient malcontents; and others, like Santerre, were but citizens, whose love of liberty became fanaticism.

The conspirators concerted together, and disciplined and organised the city. Individual and distorted pa.s.sions kindled the mighty and virtuous love of the people for the triumph of democracy. It is thus that in a conflagration the most tainted substances oft light the fire; the combustible matter is foul, but the flames pure; the flame of the Revolution was liberty; the factious might dim, they could not stain, its brightness.

Whilst the conspirators of Charenton distributed their _roles_ and recruited their forces, the king trembled for his wife and children at the Tuileries. "Who knows," said he, to M. de Malesherbes, with a melancholy smile, "whether I shall behold the sun set to-morrow?"

Petion, by ordering the munic.i.p.al forces and the national guards under his orders to resist, could have entirely put down the sedition. The directory of the department presided over by the unfortunate Duc de la Rochefoucauld, summoned Petion in the most energetic terms to perform his duty. Petion smiled, took all on himself, and justified the legality of the proposed meetings and the pet.i.tions presented _en ma.s.se_ to the a.s.sembly.

Vergniaud in the tribune repelled the alarm felt by the const.i.tutionalists, as calumnies against the innocence of the people.

Condorcet laughed at the disquietude manifested by the ministers, and the demands for armed force they addressed to the a.s.sembly. "Is it not amusing," said he, addressing his colleagues, "to see the executive power demanding the means of action from the legislators? let them save themselves, it is their trade." Thus derision was united to the plots against the unfortunate monarch; the legislators derided the power their hands had disarmed, and applauded the factious.

IX.

It was under these auspices that the 20th of June dawned. A second council, more secret and less numerous than the former, had a.s.sembled the men destined to put these designs into execution, and they only separated at midnight. Each of them went to his post, awoke his most trusty followers, and stationed them in small groups, to stop and a.s.semble together the workmen, as they quitted their homes. Santerre answered for the neutrality of the national guard. "Do not fear," said he; "Petion will be there." Petion in reality had on the previous evening ordered the battalions of the national guard to get under arms, not to oppose the columns of the people, but to fraternise with the pet.i.tioners and swell the cortege of sedition. This equivocal measure at once saved the responsibility of Petion to the department, and his complicity before the a.s.sembled people; to the one he said I watch; to the other, I march with you.

At daybreak the battalions were a.s.sembled, and their arms piled on all the _grandes places_. Santerre harangued his on the Place de la Bastille, whilst around him flocked an immense throng, agitated, impatient, ready to rush upon the city at his signal. Uniforms and rags were blended, and detachments of invalides, gendarmes, national guards, and volunteers, received the orders of Santerre, and repeated them to the crowd. An instinctive discipline prevailed amidst this disorder, and the half military half civil appearance of this camp of the people gave the a.s.sembly rather the character of a warlike expedition than an _emeute_. This throng recognised leaders, manoeuvred at their command, followed their flags, obeyed their voice, and even controlled their impatience to await reinforcements and give detached bodies the appearance of a simultaneous movement. Santerre on horseback, surrounded by a staff of men of the faubourgs, issued his orders, fraternised with the citizens and insurgents, recommended the people to remain silent and dignified, and slowly formed the columns, ready for the signal to march.

X.