UHWCftSlTY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 15416 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. ffirw THE FIE.V. ELE.-Aft WILLIAMS TWO ERAS OP FRANCE, OR, TRUE STOEIES FBOM HISTOBY. BY HUGH DE NORMAND. AUBURN: ALDEN, BEARDSLEY A CO. ROCHESTER: WANZER, BEARDSLEY that were calculated to unsettle men's minds, and to overturn the whole social fabric, yet it was not in the power of the government either to suppress it, or to control it. Moreover, these principles infected French literature generally at this period. Their diffusion was, in reality, almost the neces- sary consequence of the shameless conduct by which the Court had long distinguished itself. Ever since the accession of Louis XY. the most unbounded profligacy of manners had pervaded the household, first of the Eegent, and then of the King himself, and had from thence rapidly spread among the higher ranks in every part of the king- dom, till among this class of society the most sacred obligations of religion and morality had become little better than a theme of fashionable ridicule, and the voice of reproof as little heeded as the indistinct murmurs of them that dream. But it could not be possible but that morality ft should have her speedy and terrible revenge. The outraged laws of religion must vindicate them- selves. God's authority could not thus be openly and systematically contemned and spurned without bringing down terrible retribution. They who despised morality soon grew to be themselves despised. The old reverential prejudices with respect to rank and station were fast giving way when rank and station were sinking into shameless corruption. The irreligion of the times, also, was the natural produce of the dissoluteness and utter abandon- ment of decency which marked the conduct of the more influential orders, both in the State and Church. Some of the most reckless devotees of pleasure in this age were equally remarkable for their regular and scrupulous attention to all the outward ceremonies and corporeal taskwork of religion, whose genuine spirit could hardly fail to be brought into contempt by so profane a mock- ery. The manner in which many of the higher dignities in the ecclesiastical establishment wera CAUSES OF THE KEVOLUTION. 131 bestowed, tended perhaps still more to alienate men's minds from what seemed little better than a State contrivance for the worst of State purposes. To mention no other instance, what reverence or respect could be felt for a church in which the infamous Dubois, one of the most unblushing debauchees that ever lived, and notorious, indeed, as a systematic preceptor of vice, had risen to be first an Archbishop, and afterwards a Cardinal, and had finally been elected their first President by the assembled body of the Clergy ? The state of public feeling and opinion, how- ever, produced by these causes, may be rather said to have influenced the course of the Revo- lution, than to have actually set it in motion. That, as has been remarked, was done mainly by the pecuniary necessities and embarrassments of the government. These affairs had long been growing worse and worse, and had, at last, in the beginning of the year 1787, come to such a point that an appeal to the nation, in some form or other, was felt to be unavoidable. On the tlxir- 132 TEUE STOEIES FROM HISTORY. teentli of January in that year, a proclamation ac- cordingly appeared, convoking for the twenty- ninth of the same month, what was called an A sseiribly of Notables ; that is, of principal persons from the different towns and districts of the king- dom, selected by the King. This was the first as- sembly of the kind which had been called together since 1626. They did not commence their sitting till the twenty -second of February. The principal object which they accomplished was ascertaining and publishing a statement of the condition of the public finances. It was found that there was an annual deficit of more than twenty-five million dollars, besides a debt, incurred in the space of about ten years, amounting to about three hundred million dollars. After making these alarming discoveries, and passing a few unimportant resolu- tions, with the view of introducing a better order into the accounts of the State, the Assembly of Notables closed their session on the twenty-fifth of May. Their announcement, however, of the de- plorable condition of the revenue produced an CAUSES OF THE EEVOLUTIX. 133 extraordinary sensation in the public mind, and from that moment everybody began to talk of the convocation of the States-General, as the only measure suited to the exigencies of the kingdom. The Parliament in particular which had been re- established by Louis XYI. on his coming to the throne soon after expressly demanded from the King the adoption of this measure. This remon- strance being disregarded, they came to the resolu- tion, on the thirteenth of August, that for the fu- ture no impost could be legally levied, unless the enactment bore in the preamble, a statement of the fact that the opinion of the States-General had been taken upon it. This bold declaration was the commencement of a protracted struggle between the Court-on the one side and the Parliaments as well of the Prov- inces, as of Paris backed by the people, on the other. After a } 7 ear of collision between these parties, unused to difference, the contest in which force and artifice were equally unavailing on the part of the government, at last terminated in the 134 TEUE STORIES FROST HISTORY. victory of the popular will. On the 8th of Au- gust, 1788, an edict was issued for the Convoca- tion of the States, in May following. A few days after the national favorite, Necker, was re- placed as Minister of Finance, on the dismissal of De Brienne, the Archbishop of Toulouse, who had held that place during the preceding fifteen months. A second Assembly .of Notables had been in session from the sixth of November till the eighth of the following month, to determine the number of deputies which should be sent by each of the different estates of the realm. The matter was, however, at last settled by an ordinance of the King, who decided that the representatives of the Commons, or Tiers-Mat, as they were called should equal in number those of the nobility and clergy together. On the 5th of May, 1789, the great national Convocation which France had not seen assembled for a hundred and seventy -five years, once more met at Versailles, in the magnifi- cent hall of the palace named La Salle des Menus. This may be considered as the first day of the CAUSES OF THE KEVOLUTION. 135 devolution. From tliis time it advanced to its consummation, like an inundation, which, over- flowing the land, sweeps all before its resistless tide, and leaves nothing font desolation when its tide has subsided. The Tiers-Etat assumed, at once, the attitude of superior power. It had been arranged that the three orders should deliberate each in its own hall, and that each should have its single vote on whatever measure might be discussed. This method of proceeding would have deprived the Commons of every advantage from their supe- riority of numbers, and would, indeed, have left ;them without a chance of success, in any question at issue between themselves and the two privi- leged orders. The second day, therefore, having .again assembled in the hall, the game in which the opening sitting had been held, and which had be'en assigned them as forming the most numerous of the three bodies, they awaited without enter- ing upon business, the arrival of the deputies of the other .tsvo estates. They persisted in this 136 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. course for manj succeeding days. Afterwards they sent a formal invitation to the other deputies to join them, but their firmness produced no appa- rent effect till the thirteenth of June, when three members of the order of the Clergy at last pre- sented themselves in their hall. This example was followed, the next day, by several other deputies of the same order. Emboldened by this success, or rather wisely reckoning upon what had taken place as an evidence of their strength, and a sure presage of victory, on the seventeenth the Com- mons declared themselves a National Assembly. Three days afterwards another event happened, which operated with powerful effect in strengthen- ing and confirming the enthusiasm which had thus blazed out. On repairing to their hall, on the morning of the twentieth, the deputies of the Tiers- Etat found the gates shut, and the building sur- rounded by soldiers, while a notice on the wall informed them that his Majesty, meaning to hold & royal sitting on the twenty-second, had com- manded their meetings to be suspended while the CAUSES OF THE EEVOLUTIOX. 137 hall was undergoing the necessary preparations for that ceremonial. Astonished and enraged at the insolence of this proceeding, the deputies, after a few minutes of agitation, resolved to assemble in a tennis-court in the neighborhood. On arriving here, while they crowded around their president, Bailly, who had elevated himself on a table, they swore that no intimidation should make them cease from meeting together till they had given a constitution to their country. This patriotic vow rung throughout France, and was responded to by acclamations of applause and sympathy from her remotest borders. The royal sitting took place on the twenty-third, and ended only in adding another triumph to those already achieved by the Commons. After pronouncing a declaration, proposing various im- portant reforms, which were only objectionable in coming too late, his Majesty commanded the dep- uties of the different orders to disperse. But those of the Tiers-Etat remained in their seats. On the Grand-Master of ceremonies repeating to 138 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. them the King's command, " Go tell your master," exclaimed Hirabeau "that we are here by order of the people, and that we shall not be driven hence by his bayonets." After thus throw- ing down the gauntlet of defiance to the royal au- thority, they went on with their deliberations, as usual. On the twenty-seventh, the grand object for which they had been struggling from the first day they had met, was fully attained, by the return to their hall of all the deputies of the other two orders, in conformity with the recommendation of the King himself. Thus was the first act of the Eevolution com- pleted by the virtual subjection to the new power of the representatives of the Commons, of both the King and the privileged orders, almost the only parties who had hitherto 'been recognized in France as having any political rights at all. Soon after this a new scene of the drama opened, and other actors appeared upon the stage. Some days before the States-General had assembled, a mob had arisen in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION. 139 burned the manufactory of a paper-maker, of the name of Reveillon, who was said to have threat- ened to reduce the wages of his workmen. And on the 30th of June the populace had broken into the prison of the Abbey St. Germain, and liber- ated a number of soldiers of the Guards, who had been confined there for some acts of insubordina- tion. But these insulated outrages could hardly be regarded as indicating any general system of insurrection on the part of the lower orders. The true commencement of the attempt of the mob to constitute themselves the sovereign power of the state, was the riot which took place in Paris on the 12th of July, when the news arrived that the King had dismissed Necker, the popular Minister of Finance. This tumult continued for three days, on the last of which, the famous Fourteenth, the in- surgents having found themselves arms by pillag- ing the stores in the Hotel des Invalides, attacked and demolished the Bastille, and by a variety of other excesses, gave terrible demonstration both of their temper and their power. II. rY\ HE Revolution had now fairly begun. From -*- this time there were two energies at work in the destruction of the ancient government, and both, though often opposing each other, co-oper- ating in carrying forward the terrible work. The effect of this popular commotion was to ter- rify the -King into the recall of Necker. The National Assembly then proceeded with their reforms. Their next most celebrated sitting was that during the night of the 4th of August, in which one member after another of the nobility and clergy hastened to surrender his obnoxious privileges, and the Assembly decreed, by acclama- tion, the abolition of provincial immunities, of seig- norial courts, rights of chase, and all other similar institutions of Feudalism. On the llth "of the THE BEVOLUTION BEGUN. 141 same month, the same power decreed the abolition oftythes. During the months of August and September the popular agitation had continued, notwithstand- ing all the efforts of the legislature to preserve order, aided by the recently organized National Guards. The spirit of insubordination and out- rage had spread from Paris throughout the greater part of France. The state of the capital was ren- dered still more -alarming by symptoms of a scar- city which had for some time appeared, and were every day becoming stronger. In this exasperated temper of the popular mind, news arrived in Paris on the evening of the 3d of October, of certain extraordinary scenes which had been acted on that and the preceding two days, at Versailles, where a fete, it appeared, had been given by the soldiers of the King's Guard to their officers, at which the royal family having presented themselves, the most violent demonstrations had been offered by the whole company, of their detestation of the new order of things, and their determination to devote 142 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. themselves to bring about a counter-revolution. Among many similar extravagances, the white cockade, it was said, had been mounted by these daring revellers, and that of the nation trampled tinder foot. Inflamed to the highest pitch of fury by this intelligence, the people of Paris could scarcely be restrained from rushing, en masse, on the instant, to the scene of these insulting festivities. During that night, however, and the whole of the next day, the patrols of the National Guards succeeded in preserving tranquillity. But on the morning of the 5th, the outcry Bread! Bread! to Ver- sailles 1 to Versailles ! broke forth again among the rabble of the Faubourg St. Antoine, with tenfold violence, and the desperate multitude could no longer be kept from the execution of their purpose. A tumultuous throng, which is said to have swelled at last to thirty thousand persons, a great part of whom were women of the lowest descrip- tion, set out for Versailles, followed by a detach- ment of the National Guards, under the command THE KE VOLUTION BEGUN. 143 of their general, the patriotic La Fayette, who, after having exhausted all his eloquence in vain to dissuade them from their design, deemed it best to accompany their movement. He had, however, succeeded in detaining them so long, that, although they had begun to congre- gate at six o'clock in the morning, it was nearly seven in the evening when they commenced their march. It is not our purpose to narrate the suc- cessive scenes of riot, outrage, and bloodshed which now took place around the hall of the As- sembly and the royal residence. It was not long before active hostilities commenced between the mob and the military who guarded the palace. At last, at an early hour in the morning, the exer- tions of La Fayette succeeded in restoring tranquil- ity, and the royal family retired to sleep. But by six o'clock the confusion was again worse than ever, and the lives of the King and Queen were sought by infuriated crowds, armed with pikes, who penetrated even to the door of the Queen's bedchamber, and were only prevented from enter- TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. ing by learning that their intended victim had, a few moments before, fled to another part of the palace in her night-clothes. It has generally been asserted that the assassins actually rushed up to the bed from which her- Majesty had just risen, and in the rage of their disappointment, thrust their weapons with repeated strokes through the bed-clothes. Madame Campan's account, however, of these transactions, corresponds with the state- ment -above. In either case the mob was moved by such excited and malignant passions, that they would stop at no outrage, however horrible. By the exertions of La Fayette again, something like a calm was once more produced, and the populace consented to return to Paris, on condi- tion of being accompanied by their Majesties. The King, the Queen, the king's sister, Madame Elizabeth, the Dauphin, the deputies, Barnave and Petion, were then all put into the same carriage, which immediately took the road to the capital, surrounded on all sides by the immense multitude, who now, however, made the air resound with THE REVOLUTION BEGUN. 145 shouts of " Vive le Roil" It was one o'clock in the afternoon when the royal family left Versailles, but with this incumbering attendance, they did not reach the barriers of Paris till six in the evening. They were conducted first to the Hotel de Yille, where the King was addressed by Bailly, now Mayor of Paris, who informed him that the citizens hoped he would, in future, make the town his usual residence. After the ceremonial of this reception, he was allowed to proceed, with his family, to the Tuileries. On the nineteenth of October, the National Assembly followed his Ma- " jesty to Paris. This second great victory of the populace, how- ever, like their former on the fourteenth of July, was prevented from being followed by the full accomplishment of its natural consequences, the subjection of all the constituted authorities of the State. The partial acquiescence and participation of the legislative body itself in the changes thug forcibly brought about in the views of those by whom ihev had been effected, neutralised, fr a JO 146 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY, . time, the effects of such a violent shock to the 1 course of all order and government. A vast majority of the National Assembly had certainly rejoiced, for instance, in the destruction of the- Bastille. Many deputies also looked with com- placency on that prostration of the royal authority which the energy of the mob- had now achieved.. The two parties, therefore, were as yet, to a con- siderable extent, fellow-workers together in the- same cause, or at least, though divided as to the- means, they were united as to the object. This common end, accordingly, they pursued for a con- siderable time longer, each in its own way, with- out much interfering with the other. On the sec- ond of November, the Assembly declared the pos- sessions of the Church to be the property of the- nation, and on the nineteenth of the following: month they decreed their confiscation. On the 13th of February^ 1790, they proclaimed the- abolition- of religious orders and monastic vows. On the twenty-second of May, they determined' that "the right of declaring peace or war should THE KEVOLUTION BEGUN. 147 belong, henceforth, to the legislative body, the King retaining only that of initiating, or introduc- ing the question. On the.-nineteenth of June they decreed the suppression of hereditary nobility, coats-of-arms, and all distinctions of rank. Most of these innovations had been discussed and re- solved upon in the popular clubs, which, having their central meetings in Paris, had by this time spread their ramifications over all France. Of these associations the most influential, both at this period and for a long time afterwards, was that of the Jacobins so called from its place of meeting, the Convent of the Jacobins, in the Eue St. Honore. This Club had been originally es- tablished at Versailles, while the National Assem- bly sat there, by a few of the members of that body. But after it was transferred, together with the Legislature, to Paris, it very soon began to open its doors to persons of much more violent politics than those of which it had at first con- sisted. It became, in fact, the nightly rendezvous of many of the most turbulent spirits of the capi- 148 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. tal, who gradually obtained sucli a sway over its deliberations, that it was abandoned by most of its original members. The people, however, as we have said, continued to act upon the legislature through this, and similar societies, with an im- mense and daily-increasing influence. But they did not long confine themselves merely to this manner of demonstrating their strength. On the 18th -of April, 1791, the King and the rest of the royal family had made preparations to leave the Tuileries for the palace of St. Cloud. But before they had entered the carriage, the tocsin had been sounded from the neighboring Church of St. Eoch, and a mob had collected in the Place du Carrousel, who continued to vociferate with a determined accent, that the King should not leave the capital. His Majesty's object in going to St. Cloud, they said, was only that he might have a better oppor- tunity to make his escape from France. It was in vain that La Fayctte and Bailly used every effort to induce them to give way, and even the National Guards refused to obey the orders of THE KEVOLUTION BEGUN. 149 their commander to disperse the people. The consequence was, that the royal family were forced to give up their design, and return to their apartments. It was upon this occasion that La Fayette, indignant at the treatment he had re- ceived, threw up his command, which he was only prevailed upon to take back some days after- wards on the earnest solicitations of the munici- pality, and the solemn promise of the troops them- selves that they would in future yield him implicit obedience. As for the Bang, whatever his inten- tions might have been, up to this time, he now certainly cherished the wish natural to the pris- oner to escape. No favorable opportunity for carrying his purpose into effect presented itself for some weeks. But on the night of the twentieth of June, he and the Queen, accompanied by the Dauphin and the Princess Elizabeth, secretly left the Tuileries. They succeeded in getting out of the city, and took the road towards Montmedy, with the intention of afterwards throwing them- selves into the strongly -fortified town of Luxem- 150 TKUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. bourg, on the frontiers of the Low Countries, which was then in possession of the Emperor of Austria. But they were retaken on the third day of their flight, at the town of Yarennes, in the province of Lorraine, when more than two-thirds of their journey had been accomplished, and were brought back to Paris. They arrived at the Tuile- ries on the evening of the twenty-fifth, and next morning the Assembly declared the authority of the King suspended, and his person under ar- rest. Before this time, however, serious divisions had taken place in the ranks even of the original friends of the Eevolution. Mounier and Lally- Tolendal, the heads of what was considered the party of Necker in the legislative body, had quitted the Assembly immediately after the events of the fifth and sixth of October. The differences, too, between the Constitutionalists, as they were called, of whom La Fayette and Bailly were the leaders, and the more violent parties who domi- neered in the clubs, and who were understood to THE B EVOLUTION BEGUN. 151 tiave been already the instigators of several of the .^popular tumults that had already taken place -had long been widening, and now amounted to .almost avowed hostility, On the seventeenth of July the mob assembled in formidable numbers in the Champ de Mars to sign a petition to the Assembly for the dethrone- ment of the King. As the day -advanced, their conduct became so outrageous that it was deemed necessary to proclaim martial law, and to disperse them by the fire of the National Guards. The instigators of this commotion were Danton, Brissot, and Camille Desmoulins, then considered among the chiefs of the party called the Girondists. This faction consisted -originally of deputies from La Gironde, whose object was to establish a re- public, and who continued for some time after this, to fight their battles through the instru- mentality of the mob, of whom, however, they eventually became the victims, when they had been supplanted by still more violent leaders. There were many men of great talents and pure 152 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. patriotism among the Girondists. But the whole history of their career sufficiently proves how ill fitted they were to direct the storm which they showed themselves so little scrupulous in raising. At this period they formed only a minority in the National Assembly ; but that body closed its sit- * tings on the thirtieth of September. On the first of October the Legislative Assembly opened, from which, by a law that had been passed some time before, all who had been members of the former legislature were excluded. To this new convo- cation the people had returned their recent patrons, the zealots of republicanism, in great num- bers. The National Assembly, immediately before their separation, had drawn up a constitution in regular form, embodying the different innovations which they had introduced, and upon the King having signified his acceptance of this fundamental act, he had been restored to the exercise of his au- thority. From the temper of the new Legislature, however, he was very soon compelled to commit THE REVOLUTION BEGUN. 153 the direction of affairs to a Jacobin, or Girondist, ministry. At this time, in the spring of 1792, numerous troops of emigrants under command of the Count d'Artois, and other distinguished heads of the royalist party, who had left France immediately after the popular insurrection of July, 1789, were in arms in different parts of the frontiers. The troops of the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia were ready to act in concert with them, in conformity with the menace of the famous declara- tion of Pilnitz, of the preceding summer, and Sweden and other foreign powers had joined the coalition. To add to the formidable nature of this threatened attack, France was suffering at home under the accumulated evils of scarcity, ex- hausted finances, and rapidly-augmented civil dis- tractions. Yet, thus beset, the government assumed an at- titude worthy of a great people determined to be free, and on the twentieth of April declared war against Austria. After this bold step, the Giron- 154: TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. dists returned with renewed ardor, to pursue tlieir purpose of bringing about a second revolution, and of changing the monarchy into a republic. The Ministry which had been formed from their body, having been dismissed by the King on the thirteenth of June, after he had refused his assent to several bills which they had carried through the Assembly, they immediately resorted to their old instrument, the mob of the faubourgs, whom they excited to make a violent attack upon the Tuileries on the twentieth, in the course of which the lives of the royal family were exposed to the most imminent danger. Another riotous assault, of a still more violent description, was made on the royal residence on the tenth of August, from which the King, with his family, was obliged to take refuge in the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly immediately passed a decree suspend- ing him from his functions, and three days after- wards he was conducted, with the Queen, his son, and the Princess Elizabeth, to the prison of the Temple, from which he was destined to THE REVOLUTION BEGUN. 155 be led forth only to trial, condemnation, and the scaffold. From this period the career of the Revolution was, for a long time, one of headlong violence. Each faction that obtained possession of the su- preme authority was, in its turn, supplanted by another still more furious and blood-thirsty than itself. On the 2d of September the mob again rose, and commenced a massacre of the inmates of all the prisons of Paris, which lasted for three days. On this occasion their instigators were the members of the Comnlune, a self-elected body, that had recently assumed the government of the city. Danton, and some others, who formerly adhered to the party of the Girondists, had become mem- bers of the Commune, and were the chief projectors of the massacre. The Girondists, or at least the more moderate of them, were now at the head of affairs, and no longer required the aid of their ancient auxiliaries. On the 21st of this month, the Legislative Assembly gave place to the Convention in which 156 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. Danton, Robespierre, Marat, and others of the worst of the popular agitators, had seats. But the Girondists still continued for some time to bear up against their more violent antagonists. As the party of the Constitutionalists, however, had been, by this time completely overthrown, there was no difficulty in obtaining an unanimous vote for the abolition of royalty ; and a decree to that effect was carried at the first sitting, by acclamation. On the 19th of November the Convention proclaimed fraternity and aid to all other nations who might wish to rise against their governments. *0n the 17th of January, 1793, they condemned the King to death, and on the 21st he was executed. This vote was obtained in opposition to the strenuous efforts of the Girondists, who, although they had eagerly sought to dethrone Louis, did not wish to take his life. It proved that their opponents, now commonly called the Mountain, from the high place of the hall in which they sat, had by this time attained the superiority in point of numbers and influence in the legislature. It was some time THE KEVOLUTION BEGUN. 157 after this first defeat, however, before the power of the Girondists was entirely overthrown. On the 1st of February the Convention declared war against England. About the end of March commenced the formidable insurrection in favor of the old government, in La Vendee, a district on the western coast, immediately to the south of the Loire. About this time, also, were established the two famous Committees of General Security, and of Public Safety, the seats in which were very soon monopolized by the most violent members of the Convention. These tribunals long exercised a sanguinary dictatorship over France, before which even the Convention itself trembled. Meanwhile the contest between the Girondists and the party of the Mountain in that Assembly still proceeded with increased violence and varying success. But the failure of the former in their attempt to carry the condemnation of the atrocious Marat, finally threw the victory into the hands of their oppo- nents, the Montagnards, and on the 2d of June, after a week of popular outrage, of the most terri- 158 TEUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. ble description, during which the Convention was kept in a state of siege by the mobs of the Com- munes and the Committees, so that even Danton and his friends at last trembled with terror before the storm they had themselves assisted in raising, a sweeping decree of proscription was passed against more than thirty of the principal Girondist deputies, and that party in the legislature was extinguished. This event made Eobespierre the master of France. Marat, who might otherwise perhaps, have contended with him for the tyranny, was shortly afterwards assassinated by the heroic Charlotte Corday. The year that followed is usually called the Reign of Terror. On the 24th of June the Conven- tion proclaimed a new Constitution, which, how- ever, they formally declared suspended about two months afterwards. But the party which had now obtained the ascendency was in reality that of the lowest multitude. Even Robespierre, all-powerful dictator as he was, was merely the instrument whom they had set up to destroy all but them- THE REVOLUTION BEGUN. 159 selves. At the outcry, therefore, of these the true rulers of France, and to promote their momentary interests, the Convention on the 29th of September passed a law, imposing a maximum price upon all commodities. This was the last and most ruinous excess of mob legislation, which produced uni- versal stagnation of business and consequent scarcity. On the 6th of October they decreed the intro- duction of a new era, to commence from the 22d of September, 1792, the first day of the Kepublic, and also of a new calendar, according to which the year was to be reckoned as beginning on that day, which happened to be the autumnal equinox, and the twelve months into which it was divided received names descriptive of the natural character of each. The names were, for Autumn, (October,) VendemunrCj which is the grape harvest; (Novem- ber,) Brumaire, cloudy, misty sky; (December,) Frimaire, the month, of hail and snow. For Win- ter, (January.) ffivose, the snowy month ; (Febru- * r.ry,) Plumose^ the rainy month ; (March,) Ventose l 160 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. mouth of wind and tempest. For Spring, (April,) Germinal, the season in which the seeds begin to grow ; (May,) Floreal, the month in which vegeta- tion flourishes; (June,) Prairial, when the mea- dows are mowed. Lastly, for summer, (July,) Mes- sidor, the month of harvest ; (August,) Thermidor, which warms the furrows, and (September,) Fructi- dor, in which the fruits are ripened. The old arrangement, also, of the division of daj's into weeks was abandoned, and a decade of days sub- stituted for the Sabbatical division. The names of the days were derived from the Latin. They were primidi, duodi, tridi, quartidi, quintidi, sextidi, septidi, octidi, nonidi, and decadi. The French Republic, proud of the new era which it inaugurated for the world, desired to become one of the dates of history among man- kind. But the innovation was not adopted any- where but in France. There it was persisted in till the beginning of the year 1806, when they again recurred to the old method of reckoning tune in use throughout the rest of Christendom. III. TjlXECUTIONS and all kinds and degrees of -*-* atrocity and outrage were now perpetrated, in the name of the republic. The town of Lyons, where, as in many other parts of France, an insur- rection had broken out, was given up for punish- ment to a troop of commissioned destroyers, by whom the finest part of it was levelled to the ground, and the inhabitants butchered by hun- dreds. In this last respect it was the same in Paris. People were dragged to be guillotined by several scores at a time, and the scaffold remained constantly wet with blood. On the sixteenth of October the Queen of Louis XVL, the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette, was beheaded. On the twenty- first, Brissot and twenty more of the Girondist deputies underwent the same fate. The execution 11 162 TBUE STOEIES FROM HISTORY, of the Duke of Orleans, the celebrated EgalitK f took place on tlie sixtli of November, On the tenth of the same month, the Convention declared the abolition of Christianity, in place of which they established what they called the worship of Keason, Meanwhile, in the midst of these frenzied pro- ceedings, the excited energies of the country con- tinued both to struggle successfully with the inter- nal opponents of the government, and to beat back the foreign armies that threatened its in- dependence. Toulon, which some time before had been taken by the English was recovered, and the troops of the emigrants and their allies were defeated at various places. Thus triumphant over his enemies at home and abroad, Eobespierre it might be thought had founded and consoli- dated his despotism in a manner which would have secured its stability. But the earthquake was already gathering its strength which was to overthrow him. By the beginning of the year 1794, a party professing still more ferocious and THE EEPUBLIC. 163 ultra-democratic opinions than his own the Hebertists, as they were called, from one of their most active leaders had obtained the ascendency in the Commune, and in the club of the Corde- liers, and were already openly assailing the popu- larity, and through that the power, of the exist- ing dictator. For a considerable time Robespierre bore up with intrepidity and effect against his antagonists, and even succeeded in obtaining the condemna- tion of eighteen of their chiefs, including Hubert himself, who were all executed in one day. On the fifth of April, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and about twenty more of their adherents, were brought to the scaffold. In this manner Robespierre en- deavored to rid himself both of the moderate and the more violent factions by which he was threat- ened ; of those who sought to pull him down from his supremacy for having made too large a use of proscription and the guillotine, as well as those who complained that he had not shed enough of blood. As the latter party, however, 164 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. from the course which the Revolution had hitherto run, seemed the most dangerous, as being the most likely to gather strength, he probably considered that it would be well to arm himself with some additional protection against its assaults from an opposite quarter. He therefore induced the Con- vention on the seventh of May, to proclaim the restoration, as part of the national creed, of the two doctrines of the existence of a Supreme Being, and the Immortality of the Soul, which had been declared to be antiquated falsehoods a short time before the worship of Reason was established. He probably thought by this measure to array on his side all those who shrunk from the absolute Atheism of those who constituted the extreme of the revolutionary party. At the same time, to convince his friends among the rabble that no re- laxation was intended in any other part of his system, he took care that blood should continue to flow on the scaffold more plentifully than ever. Among other victims who perished about this time, was the sister of Louis XVI., the Princess THE REPUBLIC. 165 Elizabeth, who was executed on the twelfth of May. But all his management and determination combined became insufficient at last to preserve this enormous tyrant from destruction. Perceiv- ing his power to be evidently tottering, the more moderate party of the Convention, whom he had kept in awe so long as the undivided rabble were at his devotion, determined now that an opposition had raised itself against him in that quarter, to lend their best exertions to aid his downfall, in the hope of being able to seize the opportunity thereby afforded of establishing something like a regular government on the ruins, or the alternate anarchy and depotism that had so long desolated the country. The attempt was a somewhat hazard- ous one. Its result might have been the substitu- tion, at least for a time, of even a more wild and devastating tyranny than that of Robespierre. But partly by a concurrence of favorable circum- tances, and partly by the able dispositions of Bar- ras, who on that eventful day commanded the military attached to the Convention, on the 27th 166 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. of July the famous 9th Thermidor the hopes of Robespierre and his rivals of the Com- mune were extinguished together, and the Na- tional Legislature was once more reinstated in liberty and supremacy. This memorable catas- trophe terminated in the consignment to the scaf- fold of Robespierre and ninety-one of his principal partisans. Here ended the outward advance of the revolu- tionary wave. In the events that follow we distinctly perceive its recoil. This reaction must have taken place at some point, and whatever had been the event of the 9th Thermidor, could not, probably, have been much longer prevented. It was impossible that there should have followed many factions after that of Robespierre, each ex- ceeding its predecessor in violence. Once begun, too, the continuance of the reflux for some time was inevitable. All the tendencies of society in that direction were now awakened and called into action, while those of an opposite character, having been so long on the stretch, were exhausted, and, THE KEPUBLIC. 167 overdone as they were, left capable only of offer- ing, every day, a feebler resistance to the progress of the new events. The first thing which the liberated Convention proceeded to do was to restrain within certain de- fined bounds, the power of those terrible tribunals, the Committees of Public Safety and of General Security. This accomplished, the Legislature, skilfully availing itself of the vantage ground on which it stood, of the aid of the troops who had . committed themselves to its cause by their conduct on the 27th of July, and of the general longing of the country for a government of law and order, next dissolved the band of miscreants who called themselves the Communes of Paris, and took into its own hands the functions of the municipality of the city. Subsequent decrees began the work of reducing the clubs to subordination. On the 9th of December seventy-three deputies, who had fled from the Convention on the proscription of the Girondist chiefs, eighteen months before, returned to their seats. On this accession of strength, the 168 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. friends of moderation and legitimate government, who may be described as now consisting of a pow- erful combination of Girondists, Constitutionalists, and men of all degrees of opinion which had held the ascendency previous to the rise of Kobes- pierre, proceeded to the adoption of still bolder measures, and not satisfied with redressing the evils under which the State groaned, resolved also to set about the punishment of their authors. Many deputies of the democratic party, according- ly, were arrested, tried, and condemned to death. On the 24th of December, also, the absurd law of maximum was suppressed, after it had been in force for more than a year, and produced the most disastrous consequences to every branch of the .national industry. These different acts of reparation, however, could not of course be effected without encounter- ing opposition from those who conceived them- selves to be interested in the continuance of the Eeign of Terror. The rabble, accordingly, with the remaining chiefs of the defeated party for their THE EEPUBLIC. 169 leaders, at last roused themselves once more into activity, and rose against the Convention in suc- cessive revolts. On the 1st of April and the 20th of May in particular, the days, as they were called, of the 12th Germinal, and the 1st Prairial, numer- ous mobs from the Faubourgs attacked the hall of the legislative body, and almost succeeded in mak- ing themselves masters of the State. They were, however, on both occasions, at length driven back by the combined efforts of the armed forces of the Sections, which, since the day of the 9th Ther- midor, had supported the Convention, and of what were called Freron's Jeunesse Doree, a militia of young volunteers, chiefly from the higher and mid- dle classes, whom that deputy had organized, and whose uniting principle was that of hostility to the further progress of the Revolution. These repeated collisions, meanwhile, were fol- lowed by their natural consequence, the separation, to a still wider distance from each other, of the two contending parties. In fact, for some time the re- action began to assume an absolutely anti-revolu- 170 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. tionaiy tendency, so nraca so that, inspired with new hopes, by the new aspect of affairs, the priests and other emigrants returned to France in great numbers. Some of the journals even ventured to advocate royalist opinions, and to oppose the Con- vention as still animated by too democratic a spirit. In these circumstances the course of the Legis- lature was one of peculiar difficulty, obliged as it was, if it meant to save the State from anarchy on the one hand, and slavery on the other, to main- tain, at the same time, a firm resistance to two con- trary influences, both of great, though, for the mo- ment, of unequal force. They proceeded, with all expedition, to give the country a new Constitution. This, known by the name of the Constitution of the year III., was promulgated about the end of June. According to this arrangement, the legisla- tive power of the State was committed to two rep- resentative bodies, the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients, consisting of half that number of members, while a committee, or Direct- THE EEPUBLIC. 171 ory of Five was appointed to wield the executive authority. On being submitted to the people for their acceptance, this Constitution encountered a formid- able opposition from the royalists, who especially exerted themselves to prevent the popular ratifica- tion of two appended decrees, by which the Con- vention had reserved to itself the right of nomi- nating two-thirds of the members of the new Legislature from its own body. But by having recourse again to the military talents of Barras, the Convention on the 5th of October, the 13th Vendemaire, obtained a complete triumph over its opponents, and the new Constitution was estab- lished. It was on this occasion that Bonaparte first appeared in the drama of the Revolution, having been appointed second in command to Barras, at that officer's own request, who had been struck with the distinguished military talent he displayed at the recent siege of Toulon. Having achieved this victory, the Convention closed its sittings on the 26th of October, 172 TKTTE STORIES FROM HISTORY. after having existed more than three years. Among its last decrees were two especially honor- able to itself, and indicative of the improved con- dition of the times ; the first for the establish- ment of a National Institute, in place of the former scientific and literary academies, and the second for the general pardon an put on a brown frock coat and a wig. The Queen, and Madame Elizabeth, both, wearing large hats to conceal their features as much as possible, personated the Baroness and her maid, and the children were represented by the Dauphin and his sister, the former being dressed as a girl. It had also been resolved that Madame de Tourzel, the governess of the children, should accompany them, so that the party, not including attendants, was to consist of six persons. It had been necessary, therefore, to order a carriage to be built considerably larger than the usual size, to contain so many persons. This carriage, which had been kept concealed for some time, was now waiting outside the city wails, immediately beyond the Barriere St. Martin, To escape from the Tuileries without observa- tion, even at that late hour of the night, required the greatest precaution. But there was a small chamber near the royal apartments, which used to be occupied by one of the female servants, and 184 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. from which there was a communication to another room on the ground floor, having a private door opening upon one of the courts. The Queen had taken possession of this chamber, having removed the servant to another part of the palace, She had also obtained the key of the apartment below. Here, therefore, was a way of exit which saved the risk of making the attempt by any of the principal doors. Availing themselves, accordingly, of this outlet, Madame de Tourzel and the two children first made their escape. They were followed by Madame Elizabeth, who was accompanied by a friend as a conductor, and then the King, having also a guide with him, left the palace. All these parties made their way without difficulty to where a vehicle was waiting for them to convey them to the place where their travelling coach was stationed. The distance they had to walk was at most but a few hundred yards, yet the Queen, who was the last to leave the Tuileries, was so unfortunate as to lose her way entirely in attempting to reach the rendezvous, although she was accompanied by THE ATTEMPTED ESCAPE. 185 a person who attempted to act as her guide. The first object she saw on entering the Place du Car- rousel, was the carriage of La Fayette, who had command of the National guard, stationed round the palace. The night was very dark, but the at- tendants of the General carried torches, the light of which the Queen disguised as she was natu- rally wished to avoid, and she therefore walked aside till the carriage had passed. This rencontre, however, or the movement she had made to es- cape from it, seems to have confused both herself and her conductor. Instead of turning to the left, they took the opposite direction, and actually crossing the river by the Pont Eoyal, they wan- dered for a long time, bewildered among the quays and streets. At last they ventured to ask a sentinel to tell them the way. Having, by his direction, re-crossed the river, they soon found themselves once more in the court of the Tuileries, and from thence they found their way, without further accident, to the place where the carriage was waiting. The fugitives, however, had in this 186 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. way already lost a full hour of time, when every moment was precious. But this was not the only misfortune of the same kind which attended the commencement of their journey. When they were all assembled, and seated in the coach, the Count de Fersen mounted the box to drive. He was unacquainted with the route leading to the Barriere St. Martin, and took the opposite course, and by a circuitous way, at length, with considerable loss of time, reached the place where their travelling-carriage stood ready for them. On entering this vehicle they overturned the other in a ditch, and left it there. It is not necessary to pursue, except very curso- rily, the remainder of the story of this unfortunate journey of the royal fugitives. At the village of Bondy, about three leagues from Paris, they were joined by a coach containing two other ladies who had belonged to the Court, and the two car- riages thenceforward proceeded in company. This augmented attendance, while it added to the ordinary chances of delay, was well calculated, in THE ATTEMPTED ESCAPE. 187 conjunction with the unusual appearance of the vehicle in which the King rode, to attract general attention to the disguised travellers, and thereby greatly to increase the risk of their persons being discovered. Both at Claye and afterwards at Chalons, some time was lost in repairing the car- riages. At Chalons, the only large town through which they had to pass, a few idlers gathered round the carriage while the horses were changed, and the King somewhat imprudently put his head out of the window. He was recognized by the post-master, who felt that his Sovereign's life was in his hands, and without manifesting the least surprise, he helped to put to the horses, and or- dered the postilions to drive on. "When the car- riage passed the gates of that town, the royal party exclaimed with one voice, " We are saved." About half-past six o'clock in the evening the party arrived at Pont Sommerville, where they expected to meet the first detachment of military sent forward for their protection by the Marquis de Bouille. But the Duke of Choiseul, to whom 188 TBUE STOEIES FROM HISTORY. the command of the detachment had been given, after waiting beyond the latest hour he conceived it possible the arrival was to be looked for, had been obliged to retire from his post. This he seems to have done about an hour before, so that if it had not been for the mistakes and delays in the beginning of the journey, the royal party would have been in time for this escort. As matters had turned out, there was too much reason to fear that all the arrangements that had been made for the remainder of the journey would be disconcerted and rendered unavailable. It was possible that the same necessity which ap- peared to have prevented this first detachment from remaining at its station, would also withdraw the others from the several points at which they were to have been placed, before the arrival of the King. And so, in some sort, it happened. When the travellers reached the town of St. Menehould at half-past eight, the second guard which had been stationed at this place, although they had not left the town, had dismounted and dispersed them- THE ATTEMPTED ESCAPE. 189 selves. They had done this to avoid the observa- tion of the inhabitants, whose suspicions had begun to be excited by the length of time during which the troops had remained waiting, as they asserted, for the arrival of a quantity of treasure belonging to the government, which still had not made its appearance. But the consequence was that, on the royal carriages reaching the town, none of the expected preparations appeared to . \^ have been made. The King, therefore, was in the greatest perplexity, and in his agitation, and in the absence of any other person to take the direc- tion of affairs, he was obliged to expose himself so much that he excited both the notice and the sus- picions of the bystanders. It may be supposed that he did not sustain his new character of valet very naturally in all respects. Drouet, the post- master, in particular, felt almost convinced that he was in reality the King, especially after comparing his face with the engraving on an assignat which he happened to have in his possession. He, how- ever, did not attempt to detain the carriage, which, 190 TKUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. after a short delay, proceeded on the road towards Clermont. But as soon as it had departed, he sent his son forward to Varennes, to communicate what he suspected to the magistrates of that town. By this time the report that the King was in the car- riage had spread itself generally among the inhab- itants of St. Menehould, and the tocsin having sounded, and the drum beat to arms, the National Guard had assembled, and would not permit the departure of M. de Bouille's dragoons, who other- wise would have followed the royal party. y. 'Caftan anfc t(r* g rp HE fugitives had left Clermont before Drouet * arrived. Here also the commander of the detachment sent for their protection had been obliged, after remaining at his post as long as possible, to dismiss his men to their barracks before the King made his appearance. From Clermont they proceeded to Varennes, which they reached at half-past eleven at night. A stream passes through this little town, separat- ing it into two parts, the upper and lower town. A relay of horses had been stationed in the lower town, but the royal party had not been informed of it, and they stopped at the entrance of the upper town. The King had been surprised and greatly alarmed at not finding that arrangements had been made for continuing the journey. The peril of 192 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. pursuit was becoming, of course, greater with every moment of delay. He and the Queen de- scended from the carriage, and wandered about the deserted streets for some time, inquiring at every house where lights were seen, but seeking in vain for horses to carry them on. Meanwhile the pos- tilions, wearied with the rapid journey, and impa- tient for rest, threatened to leave them in the street. By means of large rewards and promises, they however persuaded them to continue the journey. , They were again on their way, and the royal party consoled themselves with thinking that this was only a misunderstanding, and that they would soon reach the camp of M. de Bouille, where they would find safety. They traversed the upper town without difficulty, all was tranquil and quiet. Those who were watching them were silent and concealed. Between the upper and lower town a bridge spans the stream, which is reached through a mas- sive and gloomy arch, surmounted by a feudal tower which had braved the storms of many years. THE CAPTURE AND RETURN. 193 As the carriages were passing through this arched way towards the bridge, they were stopped by a barricade which had been constructed for the pur- pose, and the horses' heads were seized by armed men, who demanded the passports of the travellers. They were, therefore, obliged to return to the house of the mayor of the town, where they alight- ed. At the same time the bells were rung, the - inhabitants aroused, and the National Guards of the town and the neighboring villages gathered together around the house of the Mayor. Any- thing like forcible resistance, of course, was utterly unavailing, with such disparity of numbers. It was alike in vain that the King denied his rank, and protested against the detention. His features and those of the Queen betrayed them, and he was at last obliged to acknowledge himself. He then appealed to them by every consideration which he 'could plead, for his release. He told them that they held in their hands the destiny of himself, the Queen, their innocent children, and of Madame Elizabeth. Their lives even the fate of the king- 13 dom the safety of the Constitution all that was: dear to him, as husband, father, brother, and King all that was dear to them as Frenchmen, de- pended upon their decision. lie declared that it was not his purpose to leave France, but that he was only going to place himself in the hands of his friendly subjects, where, surrounded by a part of the army, he could make terms with the revolu- tionary faction, and secure the Constitution and the peace of the country. " If you do not suffer me to go on," continued he, " the Constitution, I myself, France, all are lost. I conjure you, as a father, as a husband, as a man, as a citizen, leave the road free to us ; in an hour we shall be saved, and with us France is saved. And if you guard in your hearts that fidelity your words profess for him who was your master, I order you as your King." The crowd of men and women who surrounded him, and heard these earnest entreaties, could not fail to be moved, even to tears. Between their pity for such terrible reverse of fortune, and their THE CAPTUKE AND RETURN. 195 conscience as patriots, they scarcely knew how to resolve and act. The sight of the King, who pressed their hands in his, and of the Queen, so beautiful and majestic in her grief, striving to move them by her entreaties, almost fixed their wavering purposes. Their instincts of humanity would have bid him go in safety, but their con- science of duty, and their fear of consequences, compelled them to detain him. The Queen seeing then the wife of M. Sausse, the Mayor, approached her with her entreaties, hoping to find pity and compassion in her woman's heart. She showed her the Dauphin and- his sis- ter. "You are a mother," said the Queen, "you are a wife ; the fate of a wife and mother is in your hands. Think what I must suffer for these children, and for my husband. At one word from you I shall owe them to you. The Queen of France will owe you more than her kingdom more than her life." But there was no touch of pity in that hard woman's heart. Selfishness was there, but no generosity. She, too, thought of her 196 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. husband. She thought of the reward he would gain by sending back the fugitives. She thought of this, and her bosom was guarded with triple mail against all agonies and despair, against all depths of entreaty, all intensity of suffering. Through all the remainder of that long night, the King went back and forth between the Queen and Madame Elizabeth, who had retired to an upper room, and the people who crowded around the doorway of the mayor. He sought to soothe and console his wife and sister ; he still endeavored to gain over the crowd. He hoped, also, that he would be rescued by the forces of M. de Bouille before the couriers could return from Paris. He believed that his friends were mustering around him, and that as soon as they gathered sufficient numbers, they would release him. And so the night wore on. Hour after hour chimed, and yet there came no rescue. So imperfect and incom- plete had been the preparations partly for the reason that the King had himself thwarted them, by the delay and uncertainty of his flight from THE CAPTURE AND EETURN. 197 Paris that it was not until after the King had been sent away towards Paris that M. de Bouille arrived at Varennes, after a forced march. His forces were too small, and his horses too much fatigued, to continue the pursuit. The King and the Queen, and the other mem- bers of the ro3 r al party, would gladly have found a respite from their sufferings iu sleep. But their terror and despair were too great. The threaten- ing murmurs of the people, the clamorous voices, the noise of footsteps, the rattling of arms, a tide of sound which with increasing force came surging up to their ears, through all the night, and into that gray morning, kept them from rest. So ter- rible was the suffering of that beautiful Queen between the rage, the fear, the agony and despair which waged conflict in her mind, that in that one night her hair was changed from its natural au- burn, and became as white as snow. At seven o'clock the next morning, the servants of the palace on entering the apartments of the King and Queen at Paris, first discovered their 198 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY, flight and gave the alarm. During the night be- fore La Fayette had been twice at the Tuileries to assure himself that his orders had been obeyed, and that the -guard were at their posts. The fugitives had thus several hours the start of any attempt that could be made to pursue them, even supposing it could be ascertained in what direction they had fled. All Paris was stirred up in the greatest commo- tion. The alarm was circulated everywhere; " The King has escaped" was repeated every- where. Suspicions of treachery were, at once, aroused. Even La Fayette was suspected of hav- ing connived at the flight. It was not easily believed that so large a party could have eluded the vigilance of the guard, and made their way out of Paris, unless they had been assisted by the guard themselves. The doors of the Tuileries were forced open by the populace, who rushed into the royal apartments, and committed all man- ner of excesses, as if in this way they could avenge themselves for their disappointment. The general sentiment of indignation against the mon- THE CAPTURE AND RETURN. 199 arch displayed itself in the defacement of the royal arms, and other similar emblems, wherever they presented themselves. The Assembly having met at nine o'clock, the mayor immediately repaired to their hall, to an- nounce in form the departure or as it was called the carrying off of the King. The Assembly then passed the necessary decrees for the despatch of couriers after the fugitives, the detention of all persons attempting to leave the kingdom, the maintenance of the executive government during the absence of its head, and whatever other meas- ures were demanded in order to uphold the tran- quillity of the eity and of the kingdom, and to re- assure the public mind. The first of the messengers sent from Paris reached Varennes on the morning of the 22d, and immediately proceeded to the house at which their Majesties were detained, and delivered to the King the decree -of the National Assembly for his surest. All cha'nca of escape was now over. At .sight o'clock, therefore, the royal family quietly 200 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY, submitted again to take their seats, in order to be driven back to Paris in the same carriage that had conveyed them thus far on their flight from the capital. Returning by Clermont and St. Menehould they arrived, about eleven o'clock at night, at Chalons, where they remained till next morning. Continuing their route on the 23d, they proceeded that day as far as Epernay. Here they were joined by Barnave, Petion, and De Latour-Mau- bourg, the commissioners from the National As- sembly. The two former of these took their places in the first carriage with their majesties, in order to protect them from the violence of the multitude who thronged the highway, and the lat- ter seated himself with the attendants in the other. " An immense multitude and an army " said the commissioners, in a letter to the Assembly " ac- companied our progress." They passed the night of the 24th at Dormans, and at seven o'clock on the evening of the following day, the royal car- riage, escorted by about ten thousand National Guards, and a mob, whose numbers had been THE CAPTURE AND RETURN. 201 rapidly increasing all the way from Yarennes, en- tered tbe garden of the Tuileries. The news of the King's arrest had been brought to Paris two days before, by a messenger specially despatched for that purpose, by the civic author- ities of Yarennes. The Assembly had, therefore, nearly three days for the arrangement of the meas- ures to be taken on his arrival. They provided, accordingly, in the first place, as far as they could, for the preservation of order on the entry of the royal family into the capital, and on the morning which followed this event, they passed a decree for virtually suspending the authority of the King, and detaining him, with the Queen and Dauphin, in custody, by appointing a guard to each. This res- olution was dictated by quite as much moderation as could have been expected in the circumstances. The royal family remained in the same state of confinement till the 3d of September following, when the new Constitution was presented to the King by the Assembly, and accepted by him, on which he was immediately restored to liberty, and 202 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTO.RY. the exercise of his civil functions. But the im- pression made upon the public mind by his at- tempted flight, and the issue, was never obliterated, and nothing, perhaps, in the early course of the Revolution, contributed so greatly to extinguish the ancient prejudices of the people in favor of the royal person and dignity, and to precipitate the crisis in which both perished. On the 3d of September, the Constitution agreed upon was presented to the King. It was carried to the palace by a deputation of sixty of the mem- bers, who were received by the King, while the Queen, the Dauphin and his sister, presented them- selves at the door of the apartment. After express- ing, in general terms, his attachment to the national liberties, and his confidence in the loyalty of his people, he said to the Deputies, "There are my wife and my children, whose sentiments are the same as my own." The Queen felt it necessary to confirm this assurance, however far she was from partaking in the feelings of hope and confidence which it seemed to imply. THE CAPTURE AND EETURN. 203 Ten days afterwards the King wrote to the As- sembly that he was willing to accept the Constitu- tion, and the next day, accordingly, he proceeded to their Hall to give his public assent to it, with the solemnities becoming so important an act. At the hour of noon a discharge of cannon announced the approach of his Majesty, who, having entered the Hall, seated himself beside the President of the Assembly. The members, meanwhile, in con- formity with a resolution which had been passed in the earlier part of the day, remained in their places without rising. The King himself rose, when about to read his address, but on perceiving that no one else followed his example, he resumed his seat, and proceeded to speak as follows : " I have come, gentlemen, to ratify solemnly, in this place, the acceptance of the Constitution which I have already declared. Wherefore, I swear to be faithful to the nation and to the law, and to employ all the power which is delegated to me, in maintaining the Constitution, and causing the laws to be executed. May this great and memorable 204 TEUE STOKIES FROM HISTORY. epoch be that of the re-establishment of peace and union the pledge of the happiness of the people, and the prosperity of the empire." The tone and look, both of dignity and of confi- dence, with which these words were spoken, drew forth the plaudits of the Assembly. After a few words of reply from the President, his Majesty signed the Constitution, and then retiring from the Hall, was followed by the whole of the members, who escorted him to the sound of military music, as far as the door of the palace.. As soon, however, as he had escaped from the public gaze, the monarch, it would appear, gave free vent to the expression of very different senti- ments from those he had so recently manifested. Proceeding immediately to the apartment of the Queen, who had also been present in the Assem- bly, he threw himself on a chair, and while the tears gushed from his eyes, addressing himself to her Majesty, bewailed in the bitterest terms what he called the humiliation she had seen him under- go. The Queen could not console him, but throw- THE CAPTURE AND KETURN. 205 ing herself on her knees at his feet, clung to him, and joined in his grief and lamentations. It seemed to both that the manner in which the King had been treated by the Assembly, in being placed on a level with the President, and received without any of the usual marks of respect, was both cruelly insulting in itself, and ominous of the entire over- throw, at no distant hour, of the royal author- ity. Since such had been the demeanor of the exist- ing Assembly, what was not to be expected from the one immediately about to meet, the great ma- jority of the members of which were well known to be of much more violently anti-monarchical principles even than their predecessors ! The prospect seemed to their Majesties one of deepest .gloom. Such were the feelings that reigned within the palace. Without all was popular triumph and rejoicing. Four days after the King's visit to the Assembly, a public fete, which had been decreed by that body, was celebrated in Paris in honor of the great act, the completion, as it were, of the 206 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. edifice of freedom, which had just been consum- mated. The Constitution was solemnly proclaimed by the civic authorities, in a public manner, in several places in the capital. In the evening the city was brilliantly illuminated, and nowhere was there seen a more splendid display of festoons of light, transparencies, and other such ornaments, than along the front of the Tuileries, and in the garden of that palace. The royal family drove in their carriage through the streets, and to the differ- ent public places, to witness the rejoicings, and were in general received by the people with respect and demonstrations of attachment. It is related, however, by Madame de Campan, that whenever the cry of Vive le Roi was littered b}^ the crowd around the royal carriage, a man who had stationed himself by its side, and steadily kept his place there, immediately called out, " Ne les croyez pas; Vive la Nation /" Trust them not ; the Nation for- ever I It has been remarked that the general sen- timent was most correctly expressed by a trans- parency which a shoemaker of the Kue St. HonorS THE CAPTURE AND RETURN. 207 had placed over the door of his shop, exhibiting the following words : " Vive le Roi S'il est de bonne foi." The members of the first National Assembly held their last sitting on the 30th of September, the King having on that occasion again presented himself among them, and read an address full of apparently the most cordial assurances of his satis- faction with the new order of things. The next day their successors met in the same Hall. VI. f nstnt dE&ils anft imputing T GUIS XVI. trembled in his palace. He could -*-^ not conceal from himself that he was less the king than the captive of France, and that his own life and that of the Queen and their children would be sacrificed whenever reverse or peril should come. The public journals and the clubs de- nounced, more earnestly than ever, the Austrian influence which they alleged was at work, and of which they accused the Queen of being the pro- moter. Discord reigned in the councils of the ministers, and everything was in a state of confu- sion. Thus they passed the long and dreary months of the remainder of that year, nor did they find relief, except in the momentary gleams of hope which visited them, as the winter passed, and the spring wore on. They were guarded in EVILS AND PERILS. 209 the palace more closely than ever before. Every- where, at the outer gates, and in the inner cham- bers and passages, sentinels were posted. Even the private apartments of the Queen were invaded, and no respect was paid to the modest decencies of domestic life. The vigilant eyes of unfeeling sentinels were set to \vatch the royal family even in the retirement of tl^eir sleeping apartments and around the sacred retreats of domestic privacy. Besides all these sufferings and fears, the state of the city was such as to awaken the most gloomy and terrible apprehensions. The law was powerless, and the will of an insane mob governed everywhere. Assassination and murder were committed with impunity, and the Liost horrible barbarities were exercised upon such as fell under the popular suspicion or hate. The royal family were grossly insulted whenever they made their appearance, even if it were only at the windows of the palace. The King had refused his sanction to a decree of the Assembly for the persecution of the priest- 14 210 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. hood, and this aroused the mob of Paris to a vio- lent outrage. They made an assault upon the Tuileries, after he had retired with the royal family into one of the interior apartments which overlooked the garden of the palace. He heard at first the distant murmur and thunder of the gathering multitude, and soon afterwards the cries of his frightened servants, who were flying in all directions. The King confided his wife, his sis- ter and his children to the care of the officers of the household, who surrounded them, and went alone in the direction of the Hall of Council, near which the attack was made. When the King entered this apartment^ he found that the doors of the next room, the Hall of the nobles, as it was called, were broken in by the blows of the assail- ants. Instead of retreating,, the King rushed for- ward towards the door, through the broken panels of which the frantic mob thrust at him with iron- pointed sticks and lances, while he was assailed with furious cries, imprecations and menaces. Louis ordered his attendants to open the EVILS AND PERILS. 211 exclaiming in a firm voice, that he could have nothing to fear in the midst of his people. The impetuosity of the ringleaders was over- awed by his firmness and self-composure, and by that feeling of respect for the sacred person of the King which they had so long been accustomed to feel. Several officers of the National Guard, alarmed by the report of his Majesty's danger, had hastened to join the brave grenadiers who were in attendance upon him, and thus kept the crowd at bay. He was only anxious to prevent the people from entering the apartment of the royal family, regardless of his own danger. While thus exposed to the weapons which threatened him, he beheld his sister, Madame Elizabeth, en- deavoring to approach him, as if by her presence she might shield him, or failing in that, might die with him. The mob, mistaking her for the Queen, rushed towards her, and were about to kill her, but being undeceived, and hearing her venerated name, .they dropped their arms. "Ah, why do vou undeceive them ? " cried the Princess sorrow- 212 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. fully " let them suppose I am the Queen Could I die in her place, she perhaps might be saved," The assailants pressing round the King, loudly demanded that he- would sanction the decree against the priests. At each new invasion of the mob, the strength of the King and the small num- ber of his defenders was exhausted in the re- newed struggles of the unwearied crowd. They climbed up by the balconies, and entered by the roof and windows, while the maddened rabble below shouted impatiently to those above to finish the work. At one time there was a report that Louis was assassinated, and the people outside looked up to the windows, demanding that his head should be thrown down to them. One of the crowd thrust towards the King the bonnet rouge, on the end of a pike, and demanded that he should put it on, as a sign of patriotism. "With a smile the King placed it on his head, and then there arose shouts of Vive le Roi! Having thus crowned Louis with the symbol of liberty, the people felt that they were conquerors, and EVILS AND PERILS. 213 their rage was thus, for the time, appeased. Still they demanded the sanction of the decrees. But Louis firmly refused to acquiesce. He declared that he would not surrender to violence, that there was no time for deliberation, and that so sur- rounded, he could not possibly deliberate with freedom. "Do not fear, Sire," said a grenadier of the National Guard to him. " My friend," was the King's reply, taking his hand, and placing it on his breast, " place your hand there, and see if my heart beats quicker than usual." This action, and his unshaken firmness and calm self-reliance, was seen and observed by the crowd, and had its effect in turning the tide in his favor. While Louis was thus beset by the multitude, and was resisting their rage almost single-handed, the Queen, who was more hated than the King, was undergoing similar outrages and torments in another apartment of the palace. The doors of her room were assailed with the same uproar and violence which beset the Hall where the King met the crowd. But this party was composed chiefly 214: TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. of -women, assisted by some men whom they sum- moned to break down the doors. The Queen was standing with her two children pressed to her bosom, and listening with mortal fear to the cries of the assailants. She had near her no one but M. de Lajard, the Minister of "War, who was powerless but devoted, a few ladies of her suite, and the Princess de Lamballe, that friend who was endeared to her by many memories both of happy and unhappy hours. As the multitude poured into the apartment of the Queen, they found her with her daughter, then fourteen years of age, pressed closely against her mother's bosom, as though she would shield her by her innocence, and the Dauphin, a beautiful child of seven years old, seated on the table in front of her. The feroc- ity of her foes was softened before this moving spectacle of weakness, beauty, and childhood. They could! not, with all their passions of hate and revenge, fail to feel sensibility and pity in the presence of humiliated greatness. A young girl of pleasing appearance, and respectably attired, EVILS AND PERILS, 215 approached the Queen, and in the coarsest terms bitterly reviled her as base and treacherous. Marie Antoinette, moved by the gentleness of her face, in contrast with the rage and bitterness which she manifested, addressed her m a kind and sooth- ing manner. "Why do you hate me? Have I ever, unknow- ingly, done you any injury, or in any way offend- ed you ? " " No, not to me," replied the young girl. " But you' are the one who causes all the misery and suf- fering of the people." " Poor child," replied the Queen. " You have been deceived by the accusations of others. Whalt would it advance me to make the people miser- able ? I am the wife of your King, and the mother of the Dauphin. By all the affections of my heart, as a wife and mother, I am a Frenchwoman. I shall never more see my own country. I can only be happy or unhappy in France, I was happy when I had your love." These gentle reproaches melted the heart of the girl, and she burst into tears. Begging the pardon of the Queen, she. said to her, " I did not know you before, but I see that you are good." When the Assembly heard of the assault upon the King in his palace, they sent a deputation of twenty -four members to put a stop to the outrage, and protect the royal family. But the eloquence which is so powerful to excite the masses, is pow- erless to check them, and their words and remon- strances were lost in the confused noise of the assailants, and thus for five long hours the King and his household were exposed to the insults and rage of the unfeeling mob. Forty thousand per- Bons were collected, among whom were many women from the faubourgs, and in the wildest ex- cesses of rage, and obscenity, and drunkenness, they surrounded the Hall of the Assembly, and . thronged in the gardens and apartments of the Tuileries. At length, through the exertions of the National Guards, and of the president and mem- bers of the Assembly, the palace was cleared, and the royal family left to such quiet and repose as EVILS AND PERILS. 217 might follow a scene of such lawless outrage and terrible danger. The events of this awful time had taught Louis that there was no safety for them, and no protection against the fury of the excited populace. The most gloomy apprehensions and fears filled their bosoms, as they looked forward to the future. They could not forecast coming events, nor penetrate the dark and still darkening cloud which hung in deepest gloom over the prospect. These scenes occurred on the 20th of June, 1792. The departments were preparing to send to the capital twenty thousand troops, in obedience to the order of the Assembly. Among these troops was a body of twelve or fifteen hundred men, known as the Marseillais, who were summoned up from the south, at the instigation of the Girondists, to rekindle the revolutionary fires which seemed to be burning low in Paris. These men, rendered frantic by the eloquence of the provincial clubs, and by the applauses of the people, were every- where received with applause, feted and overcome 218 TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY. by enthusiasm and wine at the patriotic banquets which greeted them in constant succession on their way. The secret motive which brought them to Paris was to intimidate the. National Guard, to revive the energy of the faubourgs, and by their enthusiasm and reckless courage, to control the military forces then gathered in the capital. The famous Marsellaise Hymn, written and com- posed by a young officer of artillery in the garri- son at Strasbourg, named Eouget de Lisle, was chanted by this band, along their march, and as they approached the capital. Never, during all the revolution, was enthusiasm at greater height, or the idea of revolution more palpably embodied than when the populace of Paris, men, women, and children, in a vast multitude, received this horde with loud and impassioned greetings. THE MARSEILLAISE. I. ALLONS, enfauts de la patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive ! Centre nous, de la tyrannic L'etendart sanglant est levc. THE MARSEILLAISE. 219 Entendez-vous dans ces campagnes Mngir ces feroces soldats ! Us viennent j usque dans vos bras Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes I Aux arines, citoyens ! formez vos bataillons I Marchons ! qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons 1 II. Que veut cette horde d'esclaves, De traitres, de rois conjures f Pour qui ces ignobles entraves Ces fers des longtemps prepares f Franais, pour vous ah ! quel outrage, Qaels transports il doit exciter ? C'est vous qu'on ose mediter De rendre a 1'antique esclavage : Aux arnies,