A.D. 1789.

ÉMEUTE IN PARIS.

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plated a strict adherence to established things, even to abuses. The king left the hall, followed by most of the clergy, and all the nobles, having given his command that each order should meet in its distinct place on the following morning, but that they were now to separate. The Commons refused to stir. Many speeches were made. The Assembly affirmed that they persevered in their former resolutions; and upon the proposition of Mirabeau it was declared that the persons of the deputies were inviolable that it should be a capital crime to arrest or detain any member, on whose part soever the same be commanded. On the 24th, the majority of the clergy joined the Tiers Etat, for the verification of their powers in On the 25th, between forty and fifty of the noblesse united in the same way. On the 27th the king, by letter, invited the whole body of the nobility, and the clergy, to do what he had protested against on the 23rd. On the 30th, the formal union was completed. The StatesGeneral were three orders no longer-they were the National Assembly.

common.

On the 10th of July, Mirabeau stated in the National Assembly that there were twenty-five thousand troops between Paris and Versailles, and that twenty thousand more were expected. Amongst these there were regiments of foreign troops. Mirabeau moved an Address to the king that he would cause the troops to be removed. The king replied that the troops were there to maintain order, and secure the freedom of their deliberations. Necker, who had become powerless to advise or to control, begged for permission to resign. On the 11th of July he was dismissed; and was requested to depart secretly from Versailles. On Sunday, the 12th of July, there were movements of troops from the suburbs to the city. Placards were issued in the name of the king inviting the inhabitants to keep their houses. At noon the Palais Royal was filled with eager crowds. A young man, Camille Desmoulins, came out from the Café Foy with sword and pistol in hand, and mounting a table, cried "To Arms." A multitude rushed forth, with green cockades or green boughs in their hats. They seized from an image shop a bust of Necker, and a bust of the duke of Orleans, and, draping them in crape, bore them about in procession. Prince Lambesc, at the head of the Royal German regiment, encountered the procession, and dispersed the people with musket and sabre. There were other fights between the Parisians and the foreign soldiery, the French guards taking part with the populace. The cry "To Arms" went through all the city. The night fell upon a population maddened with rage or fear. In the morning, thousands of fierce men were in the streets, searching for guns and ammunition in every public place. A municipal authority was hastily formed at the Hôtel de Ville. Public criers proclaimed that all men should resort to their districts to be enrolled. In a few hours the National Guard of Paris was constituted, each man wearing a red and blue cockade. By nine o'clock on the morning of the 15th, the Hôtel des Invalides had been ransacked; and twenty-eight thousand firelocks were in the hands of these furious volunteers. "To the Bastille" was now the cry that gave a precise direction to the popular violence.

France had many Bastilles, where, without legal trial or sentence, men might be shut up even to the end of their days, under the authority

of a lettre de cachet, through whose mysterious agency they vanished out of society, and were as if dead. The great Bastille of Paris was a fortress built in the fourteenth century-a massive stone structure of nine towers, surrounded by a deep ditch. The governor, De Launay, had expected an attack. He had placed artillery on the tops of the towers. He had a hundred and fourteen men in the fortress, with arms and ammunition, but with scanty store of provisions. By noon a vast multitude was swarming towards the grim towers, along every street and every ally of the Faubourg St. Antoine, which was the residence of a great artisan population. This roaring multitude had resolute men amongst them. Four with axes made their way from the roof of a neighbouring house to the outer wall of the Bastille, jumped down into the court, and began hewing at the chains of the drawbridge. The drawbridge at length fell; and the crowd poured into the exterior court. Another drawbridge impeded their progress. They rushed at it; and were received with a fire of musketry. Large numbers of the French guards came to assist in the attack. De Launay fired upon the crowd from the battlements; the populace fired upon the Swiss and the Invalides who defended the fortress. After five hours of this contest, the garrison had lost only one man, whilst nearly two hundred of the assailants had been killed or wounded. De Launay, in his despair of being able finally to repel a mob of thousands animated by one spirit, wrote a note to the besiegers, to the effect that he had twenty thousand pounds of powder within the magazine, and would blow up the Bastille, and thus destroy its neighbourhood, himself, and his besiegers, if they did not accept a capitulation which would leave him and his garrison to go free. Elie, an officer of the French guards, gave his assurance, in which his men joined, that if the drawbridge were lowered the garrison should receive no harm. It was lowered. The furious crowd rushed in. Only seven prisoners were found in the dungeons. It was determined to take De Launay to the Hôtel de Ville. As he moved along the yells of the multitude grew louder; the efforts to protect the unfortunate man were less and less availing. Hullin, one of the besiegers, even fought against the mob to defend his prisoner. Hullin was struck down, and De Launay was murdered. Major de Losme, one of the officers of the Bastille, was also killed. The officers of the French guard demanded that the Invalides and the Swiss should go free, as the reward of themselves and their men for their aid in this day's work. Another murder, that of Flesselles, a magistrate, was perpetrated that evening. Through the night Paris watched as if a foreign enemy were approaching to sack the city. St. Antoine gave itself up to a frenzy of delight, and the pains of hunger were less keenly felt in the time of triumph and of revenge. The danger which now threatened the throne, and all who surrounded the throne, was manifest.

On the morning of the 15th of July the king suddenly appeared in the midst of the National Assembly, to announce that he had given orders to the troops to withdraw from Paris and Versailles, and that he relied upon the Assembly to restore order and tranquillity. The deputies loudly ap plauded; as the king returned to the palace the people vociferously shouted. The king, it was held, had authorized the establishment of the National Guard. A commander must be found. La Fayette was elected by accla

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BREAD RIOTS IN PARIS.

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mation. In the same way Bailly was constituted Mayor of Paris, in the place of Flesselles, the Provost of the Merchants, who had been shot the night before. The king announced to the Assembly that he would visit his good city of Paris. He would dismiss his ministers; he would recall Necker. On the morning of the 17th, when the king was on his way to Paris, attended by a large number of the deputies, the count d'Artois (the king's brother), the prince de Condé, and others of royal blood-with several of the recent ministry-were on their way to the frontiers. The most obnoxious of the ministers, Foulon, the Intendant of Marine, was reported to have died; for a sumptuous funeral had proceeded from his house. On the morning of the 22nd of July some peasants led into Paris an old man bound with ropes to the tail of a cart. On his back was a bundle of grass, and a collar of nettles was round his neck. It was Foulon, who had said the poor should eat grass if they could not get bread. He was dragged to the Hôtel de Ville to be judged. La Fayette tried in vain to save the trembling man of seventy-four. The crowd rushed upon their victim; dragged him out of the hall; and in a few minutes he was hanging to a lantern at the corner of the street. His head was cut off; a bundle of hay was stuffed into the mouth; and this trophy of mob vengeance was carried through the city. The same night Berthier, the son-inlaw of Foulon-Intendant of Paris, and hated as a tax-levier—was brought in a carriage to the Hôtel de Ville, surrounded by National Guards, sent by the municipals to protect him. The protection availed him not. The lantern had its prey; and another ghastly head, and a bleeding heart, were carried in horrible procession. Bailly and La Fayette indignantly resigned their offices; but they were won back again, when the municipality was re-organized, under the name of La Commune. The doings of Paris were not without successful imitations in the provinces. Châteaux were burnt or plundered, the seigneurs hunted down like wild beasts, their wives and daughters outraged.

The National Assembly, all things being tolerably quiet in Paris, proceeded with its self-appointed work of sweeping away all ancient things, for the purpose of building up a wholly new system for the government of twenty-five millions of people. A work which Dumont says, "would have demanded a year of care and deliberation, was proposed, voted, resolved, by general acclamation. I know not how many laws were decreed: the abolition of feudal rights, the abolition of tithes, and the abolition of the privileges of provinces-three articles which in themselves embrace a whole system of jurisprudence and of policy-were decided, with ten or a dozen others, in less time than a Parliament of England would have taken for the first reading of a Bill of some importance." The barriers that stood between a people long misgoverned and oppressed, and all the ancient restraints of their servitude, being suddenly broken down, their excesses could scarcely be matter of wonder. The scarcity consequent upon a bad harvest was growing more fearful, especially in Paris. "The people," says Dumont, "attributed the scarcity to the aristocracy. The aristocrats had caused the corn to be cut down whilst in the blade; the aristocrats had paid the bakers not to make bread; the aristocrats had thrown the grain into the rivers." A foolish display of loyalty amongst the troops at Ver

sailles turned the follies of the people into a new channel of rage against the Court. On the morning of the 5th of October, crowds of market women assembled in the streets of Paris, clamouring for "Bread." They soon filled the Hôtel de Ville. In four or five hours they were joined by a body of men, who obtained muskets and two pieces of cannon from the municipal stores. Maillard, an usher of the court, proposed to lead the women away on the road to Versailles, where they wanted to go, that the authorities might have time to collect their forces and stop the tumult. The National Guard, the French Guards, the rough men from the Faubourg St. Antoine-all gathered round La Fayette, demanding to go to Versailles. The Commune deliberated till four o'clock, and then ordered La Fayette to march. Meanwhile, Maillard, with his female host, had reached Versailles about three o'clock. The women demanded to enter the National Assembly. Fifteen were admitted, with a soldier, who had belonged to the French guards. Mounier, the president, could only get rid of the troublesome visitors, upon the condition that he should accompany the deputation to see the king. They were admitted to the presence of Louis, who spoke to them affectionately; and they quitted the kind-hearted king crying "Vive le Roi." The women outside grew more violent, but they were pacified for a time by a written paper, signed by the king, declaring that every care should be taken for the provisioning of Paris. A conflict then appeared imminent between the men of St. Antoine and the king's bodyguard. In this night of peril, Mounier pressed upon the king the acceptance of the articles of the constitution, which assent he had not previously given. The king yielded. When Mounier returned to the hall of the Assembly, it was filled with women, who interrupted the proceedings. At midnight, La Fayette, with fifteen thousand of the National Guard, arrived. He had made the men under his command swear fidelity to the law and the king. He received orders to assign to the National Guards the external posts of the palace; the body-guard and the Swiss remaining in the interior. At three in the morning the Assembly separated, and La Fayette went to rest. About six in the morning a mob of the Parisians, mingled with some of Versailles, got over the iron railing of the palace, forced their way into the interior, and directed their furious steps towards the queen's apartments. A faithful guard kept the passage from the hall against many men, whilst the queen jumped from her bed and made her way to the king. The mob were thundering at the door of an apartment called the Eil-de-Bœuf, when a detachment of the French guards arrived, who soon cleared the palace of those who thirsted after blood. Two of the guards had been killed on the staircase; and a ruffian cut off their heads, which were carried about on pikes. La Fayette arrived. The mob outside cried that the king must go to Paris. It was agreed that the king and the royal family should go to Paris; and the Assembly voting that they were inseparable from the king, a hundred deputies were selected to accompany him. At one o'clock, a most unregal procession was in motion-National Guards mingled with shouting and singing men of St. Antoine; cannon, with pikemen astride them; waggon-loads of corn, lent from the stores of Versailles; hackney-coaches; the royal carriage; carriages with deputies; La Fayette on horseback; and, swarming round the king and his family,

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LOUIS XVI. IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.

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vociferous women, crying "We shall no more want bread; we are coming with the baker, the bakeress, and the baker's boy." As the darkness deepened, the multitudinous array reached the barrier. Mayor Bailly harangued the king; and then, at the Hôtel de Ville, there were more harangues. Finally, the king had to be shown to the people from a balcony by torchlight, wearing the tricolor cockade. There was an interval of tranquillity after the royal family arrived in Paris. An Englishman writes, on the 18th of October, "This morning I saw his majesty walking in the Champs Elysées, without guards. He seemed easy and cheerful."

CHAPTER LII.

THE history of the French Revolution is essentially connected with the history of England, almost from the first day of the meeting of the StatesGeneral. The momentous events in France so materially affected the state of public opinion amongst the British people, that they gradually exercised upon our external policy and our internal condition even a far greater influence than the American Revolution, which was the precursor of that of France. “The English,” says Tocqueville, "taught by their own history, and enlightened by the long practice of political freedom, perceived dimly, as through a thick veil, the approaching spectre of a great revolution. But they were unable to distinguish its real shape; and the influence it was so soon to exercise upon the destinies of the world, and upon their own, was unforeseen." "Between the spring of 1789 and the close of 1792," says Macaulay, “the public mind of England underwent a great change.” To young and ardent minds, 1789 was a season of hope and promise. The destruction of the Bastille was the type of the fall of tyranny to many Englishmen. Dumont says that in England, the most free and the most noble of the nations, the destruction of the Bastille had caused a general joy. Samuel Romilly, who had written to this effect to Dumont on the 28th of July, wrote to him in October, “I find the favour with which the popular cause in France is considered here, much less than it was the truth is, that you taught us to expect too much, and that we are disappointed and chagrined at not seeing those expectations fulfilled.”

On the 4th of February, 1790, Louis XVI. went to the National Assembly, which held its sitting in the Salle du Manége, near the Tuileries, and addressed the deputies in very remarkable words, indicative not only of his acquiescence in the great changes which the Assembly had decreed, but of his earnest desire to unite with them in building up a solid and enduring fabric of public liberty. In concert with the queen, who partakes all my sentiments, I will at the proper time prepare the mind and the heart of my son for the new order of things that circumstances have brought about." The most important of these changes was that of a new

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