178 PARISIAN MOB AT VERSAILLES. [1789. bakers' shops, and they would go to Versailles, to fetch the baker and his wife. The crowd of women increased to hundreds; and they soon filled the Hôtel de Ville. In four or five hours they were joined by a body of men, who obtained muskets and two pieces of cannon from the municipal stores. The excesses of the women, who wanted to burn the building, were stopped by Maillard, an usher of the court, who told them that he was one of the conquerors of the Bastille. By the consent of a superior officer he proposed to lead the women away on the road to Versailles, where they wanted to go, that the authorities might have time to collect their forces, and stop the tumult. On the troop of Amazons went, with this tall man in black as their general. As the day advanced the affair became more serious. La Fayette and the Committees of Districts were at the Hôtel de Ville. The National Guard, the French Guards (now called Grenadiers), the rough men from the Faubourg St. Antoine-all gathered round La Fayette, demanding to go to Versailles. The Commune deliberated till four o'clock, and then ordered La Fayette to march. Meanwhile, Maillard, with his female host, had reached Versailles about three o'clock. The women demanded to enter the National Assembly. Fifteen were admitted, with a soldier, who had belonged to the The Women of Paris entering the Hall of the National Assembly, Versailles. From the "Tableaux Historiques." French Guards. The soldier said Paris was starving; they came for bread; and for the punishment of the king's body-guard, who had insulted the national cockade. Mounier, the president, could only get rid of the troublesome visitors, upon the condition that he should accompany the deputation to 1789.] OUTRAGES OF THE MOB. 179 see the king. They were admitted to the presence of Louis, who spoke to them affectionately; and they quitted the kind-hearted king crying "Vive le Roi." The women outside, growing more violent, said that they had been betrayed by their deputation; but they were pacified for a time, by a written paper, signed by the king, declaring that every care should be taken for the provisioning of Paris. A conflict then appeared imminent between the men of St. Antoine and the king's body-guard. The cannon which had been brought from Paris was pointed against the guard; but the powder was wet, and the men sulkily said, "It is not time yet." In this night of peril, Mounier pressed upon the king the acceptance of the articles of the constitution, which assent he had not previously given. The king yielded. When Mounier returned to the hall of the Assembly, it was filled with women, who interrupted the proceedings. There was a discussion upon the criminal laws. A fishwoman called out-" Stop that babbler; that is not the question; the question is about bread." At midnight, La Fayette, with fifteen thousand of the National Guard, arrived. He had made the men under his command swear fidelity to the law and the king. He entered the Salle des Menus; told the president that the men had promised to obey the king and the National Assembly; and then, attended by only two commissioners, went to the king, and having explained to him the state of affairs, received orders to assign to the National Guards the external posts of the palace; the body guard and the Swiss remaining in the interior. At three in the morning the Assembly separated, and La Fayette went to rest. About six in the morning a mob of the Parisians, mingled with some of Versailles, got over the iron railing of. the palace, and forced their way into the interior. The subsequent occurrences of that terrible 6th of October are differently stated by various authorities. There is one description by the side of which all other descriptions look pale; and yet the facts which "History will record" are more definite than the general truth as coloured by the glowing imagination of Burke. The mob of assassins and plunderers, when they had penetrated into the interior of the palace, directed their furious steps towards the queen's apartments. They were probably guided by some spy about the royal family. Madame Campan looked out of the ante-chamber, and saw a faithful guard, covered with wounds, who kept the passage from the hall against many men, and who cried out, "Save the queen; they come to assassinate her." She bolted the door; the queen jumped from her bed, and made her way to the king's apartments. The assassins did not reach the queen's chamber, says Madame Campan. The body-guard had taken refuge there, and there also the king had arrived. To the famous apartment called the Eil-de-Bœuf the guards had been sent by the king; and in his own apartment, to which he had returned, he was joined by the queen and her children. The mob were thundering at the door of the Eil-de-Bœuf when a detachment of the French Guards arrived, under the command of serjeant Hoche, a man famous in after days. They came to save their brother soldiers; and they soon cleared the palace of those who thirsted after blood. Two of the guards had been killed on the staircase; and a ruffian cut off their heads, which were carried about on pikes. La Fayette arrived. The mob outside 180 ROYAL FAMILY REMOVED TO PARIS. [1789. cried that the king must go to Paris. Louis showed himself on a balcony; and so did the queen with her children. La Fayette took the queen's hand, and raised it respectfully to his lips, and then the mob shouted "Vive la Reine." It was agreed that the king and the royal family should go to Paris; and the Assembly voting that they were inseparable from the king, a hundred deputies were selected to accompany him. At one o'clock, a most unregal procession was in motion-National Guards mingled with shouting and singing men of St. Antoine; cannon, with pikemen astride them; waggonloads of corn, lent from the stores of Versailles; hackney-coaches; the royal carriage; carriages with deputies; La Fayette on horseback; and, swarming round the king and his family, vociferous women, crying "We shall no more want bread; we are coming with the baker, the bakeress, and the baker's boy." As the darkness deepens, the multitudinous array reaches the barrier. Mayor Bailly harangues the king; and then, at the Hôtel de Ville, there are more harangues. The king says he comes with pleasure and with confidence among his people. The mayor attempts to repeat the speech, but omits the word "confidence." Say with confidence," interposes the queen. Before wearied royalty can sleep, with hasty accommodation in the palace of the Tuileries, long since disused, the king has to be shown to the people from a balcony by torchlight, wearing the tricolor cockade. In a few days the Tuileries looks something like a palace. There was an interval of tranquillity. The harassed king, the slave of circumstances, soon manifested an outward show of that confidence which he had professed to feel. An Englishman in Paris writes, on the 18th of October, "This morning I saw his majesty walking in the Champs Elysées, without guards. He seemed easy and cheerful."* The King's Arrival at Paris from Versailles. From a Medal by Andreiu. *Trail to Romilly, in "Romilly's Memoirs." Connexion of the French Revolution with English history-The public opinion of England on the THE history of the French Revolution is essentially connected with the history of England, almost from the first day of the meeting of the StatesGeneral. The governments of the two countries were not, for several years, brought into collision, or into an exchange of remonstrance and explanation, on the subject of the momentous events in France. But these events, in all their shifting aspects, so materially affected the state of public opinion. amongst the British people, that they gradually exercised a greater influence upon our external policy and our internal condition, than any overthrow of dynasties, any wars, any disturbances of the balance of power, any one of "the incidents common in the life of a nation,"-to use the words of Tocqueville,-even a far greater influence than the American Revolution, which was the precursor of that of France. For this cause, we feel it ne 182 THE PUBLIC OPINION OF ENGLAND. [1789. cessary to relate the leading events of this signal uprooting of ancient institutions and established ideas, more fully than would at first sight appear proportionate in a general history of our own land. Nevertheless, we shall aim at the utmost brevity consistent with an intelligible narrative. At every act of this great drama, we shall endeavour to show the effect of its memorable scenes upon the thoughts and feelings of those amongst us who guided the national sentiment as statesmen and writers. Between the spring of 1789 and the close of 1792, the public mind of England underwent a great change."* To trace the formation of that aggregate public opinion,-to which the most powerful statesman of the time was compelled to yield a reluctant obedience, and against which the most eloquent advocate of popular rights could only feebly protest,-is a task of which the execution must be necessarily inadequate, but which, however imperfect, must have some illustrative historical value. The "change in the public mind" with which the fluctuating opinions of many eminent men were identified,—changes in most of those men very unjustly denounced as apostacy,-proceeded from the original inability of the most sagacious to see the probable career, and to estimate the real strength, of the new-born liberty of France. "The English," says Tocqueville, "taught by their own history, and enlightened by the long practice of political freedom, perceived dimly, as through a thick veil, the approaching spectre of a great revolution. But they were unable to distinguish its real shape; and the influence it was so soon to exercise upon the destinies of the world, and upon their own, was unforeseen."+ Much of the early feeling associated with the French Revolution depended upon youth and temperament. To young and ardent minds, 1789 was a season of hope and promise. "Bliss was it in the dawn to be alive, Coleridge, who first gave to the world these verses of Wordsworth in his poem "On the French Revolution, as it appeared to enthusiasts at its commencement," says in prose, almost as eloquent as his friend's poetry, " Many there were, young men of loftiest minds, yea, the prime stuff out of which manly wisdom and practical greatness are formed, who had appropriated their hopes and the ardour of their souls to mankind at large, to the wide expanse of national interests, which then seemed fermenting in the French republic as in the main outlet and chief crater of the revolutionary torrents; and who confidently believed that these torrents, like the lavas of Vesuvius, were to subside into a soil of inexhaustible fertility in the circumjacent lands, the old divisions and mouldering edifices of which they had covered or swept away." + “I was a sharer in the general vortex," adds Coleridge. Such a young man, one of loftiest mind, William Huskisson, was in his twentieth year residing with his uncle in Paris. That young man, destined Macaulay "Life of Pitt." "France before the Revolution," p. 3. |