1792.] CONFLICT AT THE TUILERIES. 179 of the splendid staircase, to defend a sort of barrcade which had been erected there, ever since the 20th June, to prevent such intrusions as distinguished that day. The insurgents, with the Marseillois and Breton Federates at their heads, poured into the court-yard without opposition, planted their cannon where some small buildings gave them advantage, and advanced without hesitation to the outposts of the Swiss. They had already tasted blood that day, having_massacred a patrol of Royalists, who, unable to get into the Tuileries, had attempted to assist the defence, by interrupting, or at least watching and discovering, the measures adopted by the insurgents. These men's heads were, as usual, borne on pikes among their ranks. They pushed forward, and it is said the Swiss at first offered demonstrations of truce. But the assailants thronged onward, crowded on the barricade, and when the parties came into such close collision, a struggle ensued, and a shot was fired. It is doubtful from what side it came, nor is it of much consequence, for, on such an occasion, that body must be held the aggressors who approach the pickets of the other, armed and prepared for assault; and although the first gun be fired by those whose position is endangered, it is no less defensive than if discharged in reply to a fire from the other side. This unhappy shot seems to have dispelled some small chance of a reconciliation between the parties. Hard firing instantly commenced from the Federates and Marseillois, whilst the palace blazed forth fire from every window, and killed a great many of the assailants. The Swiss, whose numbers were now only about seven hundred men, determined, notwithstanding, upon a sally, which, in the beginning, was completely successful. They drove the insurgents from the court-yard, killed many of the Marseillois and Bretons, took some of their guns, and turning them along the streets, compelled the assailants to actual flight, so that word was carried to the National Assembly that the Swiss were victorious. The utmost confusion prevailed there; the deputies upbraided each other with their share in bringing about the insurrection; Brissot showed timidity; and several of the deputies, thinking the guards were hastening to massacre them, attempted to escape by the windows of the hall.1 If, indeed, the sally of the Swiss had been supported by a sufficient body of faithful cavalry, the Revolution might have been that day ended. But the gens-d'armes, the only horsemen in the field, were devoted to the popular cause, and the Swiss, too few to secure their advantage, were obliged to return to the palace, where they were of new invested. Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 231; Mignet, tom. i., p. 195; Thiers, tom. ii., p. 263. 2 "S'il y avait eu trois cents cavaliers fidèles pour marcher à la poursuite des rebelles, Paris était soumis au roi, et l'Assemblée tombait aux pieds de son captif."- LACRETELLE, tom. ix., p. 230. Westerman posted his forces and artillery with much intelligence, and continued a fire on the Tuileries from all points. It was now returned with less vivacity, for the ammunition of the defenders began to fail. At this moment D'Hervilly arrived from the Assembly, with the King's commands that the Swiss should cease firing, evacuate the palace, and repair to the King's person. The faithful guards obeyed at once, not understanding that the object was submission, but conceiving they were summoned elsewhere, to fight under the King's eye. They had no sooner collected themselves into a body, and attempted to cross the garden of the Tuileries, than, exposed to a destructive fire on all sides, the remains of that noble regiment, so faithful to the trust assigned to it, diminished at every step; until, charged repeatedly by the treacherous gens-d'armes, who ought to have supported them, they were separated into platoons, which continued to defend themselves with courage, even till the very last of them was overpowered, dispersed, and destroyed by multitudes. A better defence against such fearful odds scarce remains on historical record-a more useless one can hardly be imagined.1 The rabble, with their leaders the Federates, now burst into the palace, executing the most barbarous vengeance on the few defenders who had not made their escape; and, while some massacred the living, others, and especially the unsexed women who were mingled in their ranks, committed the most shameful butchery on the corpses of the slain.2 Almost every species of enormity was perpetrated upon that occasion excepting pillage, which the populace would not permit, even amid every other atrocity.3 There exist in the coarsest minds, nay, while such are engaged in most abominable wickedness, redeeming traits of character, which show that the image of the Deity is seldom totally and entirely defaced even in the rudest bosoms. An ordinary workman of the suburbs, in a dress which implied abject poverty, made his way into the place where the royal family were seated, demanding the King by the name of Monsieur Veto. "So you are here," he said, "beast of a Veto! There is a purse of gold I found in your house yonder. If you had found mine, you would not have been so honest." 4 were, doubtless, amongst that dreadful assemblage many thousands, whose natural honesty would have made them despise pillage, although the misrepresentations by which they were influenced to fury easily led them to rebellion and murder. There Band after band of these fierce men, their faces blackened with powder, their hands and weapons streaming with blood, came 1 Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 233; Toulongeon, tom. ii., p. 253. 2 "L'histoire ne peut dire les obscènes et atroces mutilations que d'impudiques furies firent subir aux cadavres des Suisses."-LACRETELLE, tom. íx., p. 240. est fausse; mais 3 Prudhomme, tom. iii., p. 202; but see Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 241. 4 Mémoires de Barbaroux. "L'anecdote," says Lacretelle, quelle fiction atroce!" tom. ix., p. 243. 1792.1 FALL OF THE MONARCHY. 181 to invoke the vengeance of the Assembly on the head of the King and royal family, and expressed in the very presence of the victims whom they claimed, their expectations and commands how they should be dealt with. Vergniaud, who, rather than Brissot, ought to have given name to the Girondists, took the lead in gratifying the wishes of these dreadful petitioners. He moved, 1st, That a National Convention should be summoned. 2d, That the King should be suspended from his office. 3d, That the King should reside at the Luxembourg palace under safeguard of the law, a word which they were not ashamed to use. These proposals were unanimously assented to.1 An almost vain attempt was made to save the lives of that remaining detachment of Swiss which had formed the King's escort to the Assembly, and to whom several of the scattered Royalists had again united themselves. Their officers proposed, as a last effort of despair, to make themselves masters of the Assembly, and declare the deputies hostages for the King's safety. Considering the smallness of their numbers, such an attempt could only have produced additional bloodshed, which would have been ascribed doubtless to the King's treachery. The King commanded them to resign their arms, being the last order which he issued to any military force. He was obeyed; but, as they were instantly attacked by the insurgents, few escaped slaughter, and submission preserved but a handful. About seven hundred and fifty fell in the defence, and after the storm of the Tuileries. Some few were saved by the generous exertions of individual deputies-others were sent to prison, where a bloody end awaited them--the greater part were butchered by the rabble, so soon as they saw them without arms. The mob sought for them the whole night, and massacred many porters of private families, who, at Paris, are generally termed Swiss, though often natives of other countries. The royal family were at length permitted to spend the night, which, it may be presumed, was sleepless, in the cells of the neighbouring convent of the Feuillans.2 1 Mignet, tom. i., p. 195; Thiers, tom. i., p. 263; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 244. 2 "For fifteen hours the royal family were shut up in the short-hand writer's box. At length, at one in the morning, they were transferred to the Feuillans. When left alone, Louis prostrated himself in prayer. 'Thy trials, O God! are dreadful; give us courage to bear them. We bless thee in our afflictions, as we did in the day of prosperity: receive into thy mercy all those who have died fighting in our defence.'"-LACRETELLE, tom. ix., p. 250. "The royal family remained three days at the Feuillans. They occupied a small suite of apartments, consisting of four cells. In the first were the gentlemen who had accompanied the King. In the second we found the King: he was having his hair dressed; he took two locks of it, and gave one to my sister and one to me. In the third was the Queen, in bed, and in an indescribable state of affliction. We found her attended only by a bulky woman, who appeared tolerably civil; she waited upon the Queen, who, as yet, had none of her own people about her. I asked her Majesty what the ambassadors from foreign powers had done under existing circumstances? She told me that they could do nothing, but that the lady of the English ambassador had just given Thus ended, for the period of twenty years and upwards, the reign of the Bourbons over their ancient realm of France. CHAPTER X. La Fayette compelled to Escape from France-Is made Prisoner by the Prussians, with three Companions-Reflections-The Triumvirate, Danton, Robespierre, and Marat-Revolutionary Tribunal appointed Stupor of the Legislative Assembly-Longwy, Stenay, and Verdun, taken by the Prussians-Mob of Paris enraged-Great Massacre of Prisoners in Paris, commencing on the 2d, and ending 6th September-Apathy of the Assembly during and after these Events-Review of its Causes. THE success of the 10th of August had sufficiently established the democratic maxim, that the will of the people, expressed by their insurrections, was the supreme law; the orators of the clubs its interpreters; and the pikes of the suburbs its executive power. The lives of individuals and their fortunes were, from that time, only to be regarded as leases at will, subject to be revoked so soon as an artful, envious, or grasping demagogue should be able to turn against the lawful owners the readily-excited suspicions of a giddy multitude, whom habit and impunity had rendered ferocious. The system established on these principles, and termed liberty, was in fact an absolute despotism, far worse than that of Algiers; because the tyrannic dey only executes his oppression and cruelties within a certain sphere, affecting a limited number of his subjects who approach near to his throne; while, of the many thousand leaders of the Jacobins of France, every one had his peculiar circle in which he claimed right, as full as that of Robespierre or Marat, to avenge former slights or injuries, and to gratify his own individual appetite for plunder and blood. All the departments of France, without exception, paid the most unreserved submission to the decrees of the Assembly, or rather to those which the Community of Paris, and the insurgents, had dictated to that legislative body; so that the hour seemed arrived when the magistracy of Paris, supported by a democratic force, should, in the name and through the influence of the Assembly, impose its own laws upon France. La Fayette, whose headquarters was at this juncture at Sedan, in vain endeavoured to animate his soldiers against this new species of despotism. The Jacobins had their friends and represen her a proof of the private interest she took in her welfare by sending her linen for her son."-MAD. CAMPAN, vol. ii., p. 259. "At this frightful period, Lady Sutherland," [the present Duchess and Countess of Sutherland,] "then English ambassadress at Paris, showed the most devoted attentions to the royal family."-MAD. DE STAEL, tom. ii., p. 69. 792.1 LA FAYETTE ESCAPES FROM FRANCE. 183 tatives in the very trustiest of his battalions. He made an effort, however, and a bold one. He seized on the persons of three deputies, sent to him as commissioners by the Assembly, to compel submission to their decrees, and proposed to reserve them as hostages for the King's safety. Several of his own general officers, the intrepid Desaix amongst others, seemed willing to support him. Dumouriez, however, the personal enemy of La Fayette, and ambitious of being his successor in the supreme command, recognised the decrees of the Assembly in the separate army which he commanded. His example drew over Luckner, who also commanded an independent corps d'armée, and who at first seemed disposed to join with La Fayette.1 That unfortunate general was at length left unsupported by any considerable part even of his own army; so that with three friends, whose names were well known in the Revolution, he was fain to attempt an escape from France, and, in crossing a part of the enemy's frontier, they were made prisoners by a party of Prussians. Fugitives from their own camp for the sake of royalty, they might have expected refuge in that of the allied kings, who were in arms for the same object; but, with a littleness of spirit which augured no good for their cause, the allies determined that these unfortunate gentlemen should be consigned as state prisoners to different fortresses. This conduct on the part of the monarchs, however irritated they might be by the recollection of some part of La Fayette's conduct in the outset of the Revolution, was neither to be vindicated by morality, the law of nations, nor the rules of sound policy. We are no approvers of the democratic species of monarchy which La Fayette endeavoured to establish, and cannot but be of opinion, that if he had acted upon his victory in the Champ de Mars, he might have shut up the Jacobin Club, and saved his own power and popularity from being juggled out of his hands by those sanguinary charlatans. But errors of judgment must be pardoned to men placed amidst unheard-of difficulties; and La Fayette's conduct on his visit to Paris, bore testimony to his real willingness to save the King and preserve the monarchy. But even if he had been amenable for a crime against his own country, we know not what right Austria or Prussia had to take cognizance of it. To them he was a mere prisoner of war, and nothing farther. Lastly, it is very seldom that a petty and vindictive line of policy can consist with the real interest either of great princes or of private individuals. In the present case, the arrest of La Fayette was peculiarly the contrary. It afforded a plain proof to France and to all Europe, that the allied monarchs were determined to regard as enemies all who had, in any manner, or to any extent, favoured the Revolution, 1 Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 265; Mignet, tom. i., p. 197. 2 Bursau de Pucy, Latour Maubourg, and Alexander Lameth. Their intention was to proceed to the United States of America. |