The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte
Читать онлайн книгу.
the women ground their teeth and shook their fists at me. Two of my men had already been assassinated behind me. I finally got to within some hundreds of paces of the Hôtel-de-Ville, amidst a general cry that I should be hung, when a head, stuck on a pike, was presented to me to look at, while at. the same moment I was told that it was that of M. de Launay," the governor.—The latter, on going out, had received the cut of a sword on his right shoulder; on reaching the Rue Saint-Antoine "everybody pulled his hair out and struck him." Under the arcade of Saint-Jean he was already "severely wounded." Around him, some said, "his head ought to be struck off;" others, "let him be hung;" and others, "he ought to be tied to a horse's tail." Then, in despair, and wishing to put an end to his torments, he cried out, "Kill me," and, in struggling, kicked one of the men who held him in the lower abdomen. On the instant he is pierced with bayonets, dragged in the gutter, and, striking his corpse, they exclaim, "He's a scurvy wretch (galeux) and a monster who has betrayed us; the nation demands his head to exhibit to the public," and the man who was kicked is asked to cut it off.—This man, an unemployed cook, a simpleton who "went to the Bastille to see what was going on," thinks that as it is the general opinion, the act is patriotic, and even believes that he "deserves a medal for destroying a monster." Taking a saber which is lent to him, he strikes the bare neck, but the dull saber not doing its work, he takes a small black-handled knife from his pocket, and, "as in his capacity of cook he knows how to cut meat," he finishes the operation successfully. Then, placing the head on the end of a three-pronged pitchfork, and accompanied by over two hundred armed men, "not counting the mob," he marches along, and, in the Rue Saint-Honoré, he has two inscriptions attached to the head, to indicate without mistake whose head it is.—They grow merry over it: after filing alongside of the Palais-Royal, the procession arrives at the Pont-Neuf, where, before the statue of Henry IV., they bow the head three times, saying, "Salute thy master!"—This is the last joke: it is to be found in every triumph, and inside the butcher, we find the rogue.
VII.—Murders of Foulon and Berthier.
Meanwhile, at the Palais-Royal, other buffoons, who with the levity of gossips sport with lives as freely as with words, have drawn u. During the night between the 13th and 14th of July, a list of proscriptions, copies of which are hawked about. Care is taken to address one of them to each of the persons designated, the Comte d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the Prince de Lambesc, Baron de Bezenval, MM. de Breteuil, Foulon, Berthier, Maury, d'Espréménil, Lefèvre d'Amécourt, and others besides.1248 A reward is promised to whoever will bring their heads to the Café de Caveau. Here are names for the unchained multitude; all that now is necessary is that some band should encounter a man who is denounced; he will go as far as the lamppost at the street corner, but not beyond it.—Throughout the day of the 14th, this improvised tribunal holds a permanent session, and follows up its decisions with its actions. M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants and president of the electors at the Hôtel-de-Ville, having shown himself somewhat lukewarm,1249 the Palais-Royal declares him a traitor and sends him off to be hung. On the way a young man fells him with a pistol-shot, others fall upon his body, while his head, borne upon a pike, goes to join that of M. de Launay.—Equally deadly accusations and of equally speedy execution float in the air and from every direction. "On the slightest pretext," says an elector, "they denounced to us those whom they thought opposed to the Revolution, which already signified the same as enemies of the State. Without any investigation, there was only talk of the seizure of their persons, the ruin of their homes, and the razing of their houses. One young man exclaimed: 'Follow me at once, let us start off at once to Bezenval's!'"—Their brains are so frightened, and their minds so distrustful, that at every step in the streets "one's name has to be given, one's profession declared, one's residence, and one's intentions. … One can neither enter nor leave Paris without being suspected of treason." The Prince de Montbarrey, advocate of the new ideas, and his wife, are stopped in their carriage at the barrier, and are on the point of being cut to pieces. A deputy of the nobles, on his way to the National Assembly, is seized in his cab and conducted to the Place de Grève; the corpse of M. de Launay is shown to him, and he is told that he is to be treated in the same fashion.—Every life hangs by a thread, and, on the following days, when the King had sent away his troops, dismissed his Ministers, recalled Necker, and granted everything, the danger remains just as great. The multitude, abandoned to the revolutionaries and to itself, continues the same bloody antics, while the municipal chiefs1250 whom it has elected, Bailly, Mayor of Paris, and Lafayette, commandant of the National Guard, are obliged to use cunning, to implore, to throw themselves between the multitude and the unfortunates whom they wish to destroy.
On the 15th of July, in the night, a woman disguised as a man is arrested in the court of the Hôtel-de-Ville, and so maltreated that she faints away; Bailly, in order to save her, is obliged to feign anger against her and have her sent immediately to prison. From the 14th to the 22nd of July, Lafayette, at the risk of his life, saves with his own hand seventeen persons in different quarters.1251—On the 22nd of July, upon the denunciations which multiply around Paris like trains of gunpowder, two administrators of high rank, M. Foulon, Councillor of State, and M. Berthier, his son-in-law, are arrested, one near Fontainebleau, and the other near Compiègne. M. Foulon, a strict master,1252 but intelligent and useful, expended sixty thousand francs the previous winter on his estate in giving employment to the poor. M. Berthier, an industrious and capable man, had officially surveyed and valued Ile-de-France, to equalize the taxes, and had reduced the overcharged quotas first one-eighth and then a quarter. But both of these gentlemen have arranged the details of the camp against which Paris has risen; both are publicly proscribed for eight days previously by the Palais-Royal, and, with a people frightened by disorder, exasperated by hunger, and stupefied by suspicion, an accused person is a guilty one.—With regard to Foulon, as with Réveillon, a story is made up, coined in the same mint, a sort of currency for popular circulation, and which the people itself manufactures by casting into one tragic expression the sum of its sufferings and rankling memories:1253 "He said that we were worth no more than his horses; and that if we had no bread we had only to eat grass."—The old man of seventy-four is brought to Paris, with a truss of hay on his head, a collar of thistles around his neck, and his mouth stuffed with hay. In vain does the electoral bureau order his imprisonment that he may be saved; the crowd yells out: "Sentenced and hung!" and, authoritatively, appoints the judges. In vain does Lafayette insist and entreat three times that the judgment be regularly rendered, and that the accused be sent to the Abbaye. A new wave of people comes up, and one man, "well dressed," cries out: "What is the need of a sentence for a man who has been condemned for thirty years?" Foulon is carried off; dragged across the square, and hung to the lamp post. The cord breaks twice, and twice he falls upon the pavement. Re-hung with a fresh cord and then cut down, his head is severed from his body and placed on the end of a pike.1254 Meanwhile, Berthier, sent away from Compiègne by the municipality, afraid to keep him in his prison where he was constantly menaced, arrives in a cabriolet under escort. The people carry placards around him filled with opprobrious epithets; in changing horses they threw hard black bread into the carriage, exclaiming, "There, wretch, see the bread you made us eat!" On reaching the church of Saint-Merry, a fearful storm of insults burst forth against him. He is called a monopolist, "although he had never bought or sold a grain of wheat." In the eyes of the multitude, who has to explain the evil as caused by some evil-doer, he is the author of the famine. Conducted to the Abbaye, his escort is dispersed and he is pushed over to the lamp post. Then, seeing that all is lost, he snatches a gun from one of his murderers and bravely defends himself. A soldier of the "Royal Croats" gives him a cut with his saber across the stomach, and another tears out his heart. As the cook, who had cut off the head of M. de Launay, happens