Chapter IV · THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY (continued 2)

“(5) That the generals, officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates of the French troops of the line are equally ordered to return to their old allegiance and to submit at once to the King, their legitimate sovereign.

“(6) That the members of departmental, district, and town councils are equally responsible with their heads and property for all crimes, arson, murders, thefts, and assaults, the occurrence of which they allow or do not openly, and to the common knowledge, try to prevent in their jurisdiction; that they shall equally be bound to keep their functions provisionally until his Most Christian Majesty, reinstated in full liberty, has further decreed; or until, in the interval, other orders shall have been given.

“(7) That the inhabitants of towns, boroughs, and villages who may dare to defend themselves against the troops of their Imperial and Royal Majesties by firing upon them, whether in the open or from the windows, doors, or apertures of their houses, shall be punished at once with all the rigour of the laws of war, their houses pulled down or burnt. All those inhabitants, on the contrary, of the towns, boroughs, and villages who shall hasten to submit to their King by opening their gates to the troops of their Majesties shall be placed under the immediate protection of their Majesties; their persons, their goods, their chattels shall be under the safeguard of the laws, and measures will be taken for the general safety of each and all of them.

“(8) The town of Paris and all its inhabitants without distinction shall be bound to submit on the spot, and without any delay, to the King, and to give that Prince full and entire liberty, and to assure him and all the Royal Family that inviolability and respect to which the laws of nature and of nations entitle sovereigns from their subjects. Their Imperial and Royal Majesties render personally responsible for anything that may happen, under peril of their heads, and of military execution without hope of pardon, all members of the National Assembly as of the Districts, the Municipality, the National Guards, the Justices of the Peace, and all others whom it may concern. Their aforesaid Majesties declare, moreover, on their word and honour as Emperor and King, that if the Palace of the Tuilleries be insulted or forced, that if the least violence, the least assault, be perpetrated against their Majesties, the King, the Queen, and the Royal Family, and if steps be not at once taken for their safety, preservation, and liberty, they, their Imperial and Royal Majesties, will take an exemplary and never-to-be-forgotten vengeance, by giving up the town of Paris to military execution and to total subversion, and the guilty rebels to the deaths they have deserved. Their Imperial and Royal Majesties promise, on the contrary, to the inhabitants of Paris to use their good offices with his Most Christian Majesty to obtain pardon for their faults and errors, and to take the most vigorous measures to ensure their persons and goods if they promptly and exactly obey the above command.

“Finally, since their Majesties can recognise no laws in France save those that proceed from the King in full liberty, they protest in advance against any declarations that may be made in the name of his Most Christian Majesty, so long as his sacred person, those of the Queen and of the Royal Family, are not really safe, for which end their Imperial and Royal Majesties invite and beg his Most Christian Majesty to point out to what town in the immediate neighbourhood of his frontiers he may judge it best to retire with the Queen and the Royal Family, under good and sure escort that will be sent him for that purpose, in order that his Most Christian Majesty may be in all safety to call to him such deputies and counsellors as he sees fit, call such councils as may please him, see to the re-establishment of order, and arrange the administration of his kingdom.

“Lastly, I engage myself, in my own private name and in my aforesaid capacity, to cause the troops under my command to observe everywhere a good and exact discipline, promising to treat with mildness and moderation all well-meaning subjects who may show themselves peaceful and submissive, and to use force with those only who may be guilty of resistance and of recalcitrance.

“It is for these reasons that I require and exhort, in the strongest and most instant fashion, all the inhabitants of this kingdom not to oppose themselves to the march and operations of the troops under my command, but rather to give them on all sides a free entry and all the good-will, aid, and assistance that circumstances may demand.

“Given at our headquarters of Coblentz, July 28.

(Signed) “Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Lunebourg.”

With that weapon the insurrection was certain of all Paris. Mandat, who had replaced Lafayette at the head of the armed force in the town, was still loyal to the King; he organised, as far as was possible, the forces that he could count upon. The other side also prepared, and the movements had all the appearance of troops entrenching themselves before battle.

Danton went to Arcis and settled an income on his mother in case of his death, came back to Paris, and on the night of August the 9th the Sections named commissioners to act. They met and formed the “insurrectionary commune.” At eight the next morning they dissolved the legal commune, kept Danton, and directed the fighting of the morning.

Meanwhile the King had gathered in the Tuilleries about 6000 men, and depended very largely upon the thick mass of wooden buildings in the Carrousel for cover. The Swiss Guard, whom the decree had removed, were only as far off as Rueil, and were ordered into Paris, over 1500. They were the nucleus, and with them some 2000 of the National Guard, 1500 of the old “Constitutional Guards,” and a group of “Gentilshommes.” Mandat had ordered a battery of the National Guard’s artillery to keep the Pont Neuf; they revolted and joined the people, and Mandat himself, the chief of the defence, was killed on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. Danton, who had not slept, but had lain down in Desmoulin’s flat till midnight, had been to the Hotel de Ville since two in the morning, and he took before posterity—in his trial—the responsibility of Mandat’s death. He did more. He acted during the short night (a night of calm and great beauty, dark and with stars) as the organiser and chief of the insurrection. Especially he appoints Santerre to lead the National Guard. On these rapid determinations the morning broke, and the first hours of the misty day passed in gathering the forces.

Meanwhile all morning the King had waited anxiously in the Tuilleries gardens, and asked Roederer, like a king in comic opera, “when the revolt would begin.”

All night the tocsin had sounded, but the people were slow to gather—“le tocsin ne rend pas”—and it was not till the insurrectionary commune had done its work that a great mob, partly armed, and in no way disciplined, came into the Carrousel.

Westermann (riding, as was Santerre) came up to parley with the Swiss Guard; he asked them in German (which was his native tongue, for he was an Alsatian) to leave the Tuilleries, and promised that if the guard retired and left the palace un-garrisoned the people would also retire. The Swiss—the only real soldiers in Paris—replied that they were under orders, and when Westermann retired to the crowd they opened fire.

Antoinette had said, “Nail me to the Palace,” and even Louis, timid and uncertain, thought that the chances were in his favour. Let only this day succeed, and the city could be kept quiet till the allies should arrive; that had been the boast in the Royalist journal of August 1st; it was Louis’s hope now.

Had the Carrousel been a little more open, the battle might have ended in favour of the garrison, but the numerous buildings, on the whole, helped the attack, and the Swiss, unable to deploy, fought, almost singly, a very unequal fight. There were no volleys except the first. Rapid individual firing from the doors and windows of the palace, the crowd pressing up through the narrowest space (but at a loss of hundreds of lives), and finally, by the end which gave on the “Grande Galerie” the Tuilleries were forced, the garrison killed, and only a small detachment of the Swiss Guard retreated through the gardens, firing alternate volleys, and saving themselves by an admirable discipline.

But while the issue was still doubtful, Louis and his family had gone slowly through the same gardens to the Riding-school, and had taken refuge with the Assembly. The noise of the fusillade came sharply in at the windows, and the event was still uncertain when the Parliament received the King and promised him protection. The president opened for him a small door at the right of the chair, and the King and Queen and their children watched the meaningless resolutions through a grating as they sat in the little dark box that gave them refuge. The debate, I say, lacked meaning, but the battle grew full of meaning as they heard it. The shots were less frequent, the noise of the mob—the roar—was suddenly muffled in the walls of the palace. The crowd had entered it. Then came the few sharp volleys of the retreating guard right under the windows of the Manège, and finally the firing ceased, and the Assembly knew that their oath was of no value, and that the Tuilleries had fallen. Louis also knew it, eating his grotesque roast chicken in the silent and hidden place that was the first of his prisons. He saw in the bright light of the hall many of the faces that were to be the rulers of France, but for himself, in his silence, he felt all power to be gone. He had become a Capet—there was truth in the Republican formula. There had been played—though few have said it, it should be said—a very fine game. The stakes were high and the Court party dared them. They played to win all that the Kings had possessed, and for this great stake they risked a few foolish titles without power. The game was even; it was worth playing, and they had lost. But the man who had been their puppet and their figure-head hardly knew what had happened. Perhaps the Queen alone comprehended, and from that moment found the proud silence and the glance that has dignified her end. In her the legend of the lilies had found its last ally, but now the great shield was broken for ever.

So perished the French monarchy. Its dim origins stretched out and lost themselves in Rome; it had already learnt to speak and recognised its own nature when the vaults of the Thermae echoed heavily to the slow footsteps of the Merovingian kings. Look up that vast valley of dead men crowned, and you may see the gigantic figure of Charlemagne, his brows level and his long white beard tangled like an undergrowth, having in his left hand the globe and in his right the hilt of an unconquerable sword. There also are the short, strong horsemen of the Robertian house, half-hidden by their leather shields, and their sons before them growing in vestment and majesty, and taking on the pomp of the Middle Ages; Louis VII., all covered with iron; Philip the Conqueror; Louis IX., who alone is surrounded with light: they stand in a widening interminable procession, this great crowd of kings; they loose their armour, they take their ermine on, they are accompanied by their captains and their marshals; at last, in their attitude and in their magnificence they sum up in themselves the pride and the achievement of the French nation. But time has dissipated what it could not tarnish, and the process of a thousand years has turned these mighty figures into unsubstantial things. You may see them in the grey end of darkness, like a pageant all standing still. You look again, but with the growing light and with the wind that rises before morning they have disappeared.