The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte
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A fishwoman commands in a gallery, and about a hundred women around her shout or keep silence at her bidding, while she interrupts and abuses the deputies:
"Who is that speaker there? Silence that blabbermouth; he does not know what he is talking about. The question is how to get bread. Let papa Mirabeau speak—we want to hear him."
A decree on subsistence having been passed, the leaders demand something in addition; they must be allowed to enter all places where they suspect any monopolizing to be going on, and the price of "bread must be fixed at six sous the four pounds, and meat at six sous per pound."
"You must not think that we are children to be played with. We are ready to strike. Do as you are bidden."
All their political injunctions emanate from this central idea. And further:
"Send back the Flemish regiment—it is a thousand men more to feed, and they take bread out of our mouths."—"Punish the aristocrats, who hinder the bakers from baking." "Down with the skull-cap; the priests are the cause of our trouble!"—"Monsieur Mounier, why did you advocate that villainous veto? Beware of the lamp post!"
Under this pressure, a deputation of the Assembly, with the President at its head, sets out on foot, in the mud, through the rain, and watched by a howling escort of women and men armed with pikes: after five hours of waiting and entreaty, it wrings from the King, besides the decree on subsistence, about which there was no difficulty, the acceptance, pure and simple, of the Declaration of Rights, and his sanction to the constitutional articles.—Such is the independence of the King and the Assembly.1435 Thus are the new principles of justice established, the grand outlines of the Constitution, the abstract axioms of political truth under the dictatorship of a crowd which extorts not only blindly, but which is half-conscious of its blindness.
"Monsieur le President," some among the women say to Mounier, who returns with the Royal sanction, "will it be of any real use to us? will it give poor folks bread in Paris?"
Meanwhile, the scum has been bubbling up around the chateau; and the abandoned women subsidized in Paris are pursuing their calling.1436 They slip through into the lines of the regiment drawn on the square, in spite of the sentinels. Théroigne, in an Amazonian red vest, distributes money among them.
"Side with us," some say to the men; "we shall soon beat the King's Guards, strip off their fine coats and sell them."
Others lie sprawling on the ground, alluring the soldiers, and make such offers as to lead one of them to exclaim, "We are going to have a jolly time of it!" Before the day is over, the regiment is seduced; the women have, according to their own idea, acted for a good motive. When a political idea finds its way into such heads, instead of ennobling them, it becomes degraded there; its only effect is to let loose vices which a remnant of modesty still keeps in subjection, and full play is given to luxurious or ferocious instincts under cover of the public good.—The passions, moreover, become intensified through their mutual interaction; crowds, clamor, disorder, longings, and fasting, end in a state of frenzy, from which nothing can issue but dizzy madness and rage.—This frenzy began to show itself on the way. Already, on setting out, a woman had exclaimed,
"We shall bring back the Queen's head on the end of a pike!"1437
On reaching the Sèvres bridge others added,
"Let us cut her throat, and make cockades of her entrails!"
Rain is falling; they are cold, tired, and hungry, and get nothing to eat but a bit of bread, distributed at a late hour, and with difficulty, on the Place d'Armes. One of the bands cuts up a slaughtered horse, roasts it, and consumes it half raw, after the manner of savages. It is not surprising that, under the names of patriotism and "justice," savage ideas spring up in their minds against "members of the National Assembly who are not with the principles of the people," against "the Bishop of Langres, Mounier, and the rest." One man in a ragged old red coat declares that "he must have the head of the Abbé Maury to play nine-pins with." But it is especially against the Queen, who is a woman, and in sight, that the feminine imagination is the most aroused.
"She alone is the cause of the evils we endure … she must be killed, and quartered."—Night advances; there are acts of violence, and violence engenders violence.
"How glad I should be," says one man, "if I could only lay my hand on that she-devil, and strike off her head on the first curbstone!"
Towards morning, some cry out,
"Where is that cursed cat? We must eat her heart out … We'll take off her head, cut her heart out, and fry her liver!"—With the first murders the appetite for blood has been awakened; the women from Paris say that "they have brought tubs to carry away the stumps of the Royal Guards," and at these words others clap their hands. Some of the riffraff of the crowd examine the rope of the lamp post in the court of the National Assembly, and judging it not to be sufficiently strong, are desirous of supplying its place with another "to hang the Archbishop of Paris, Maury, and d'Espréménil."—This murderous, carnivorous rage penetrates even among those whose duty it is to maintain order, one of the National Guard being heard to say that "the body-guards must be killed to the last man, and their hearts torn out for a breakfast."
Finally, towards midnight, the National Guard of Paris arrives; but it only adds one insurrection to another, for it has likewise mutinied against its chiefs.1438
"If M. de Lafayette is not disposed to accompany us," says one of the grenadiers, "we will take an old grenadier for our commander."
Having come to this decision, they sought the general at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and the delegates of six of the companies made their instructions known to him.
"General, we do not believe that you are a traitor, but we think that the Government is betraying us. … The committee on subsistence is deceiving us, and must be removed. We want to go to Versailles to exterminate the body-guard and the Flemish regiment who have trampled on the national cockade. If the King of France is too feeble to wear his crown, let him take it off; we will crown his son and things will go better."
In vain Lafayette refuses, and harangues them on the Place de Grève; in vain he resists for hours, now addressing them and now imposing silence. Armed bands, coming from the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, swell the crowd; they take aim at him; others prepare the lamp-post. He then dismounts and endeavors to return to the Hôtel-de-Ville, but his grenadiers bar the way:
"Morbleu, General, you will stay with us; you will not abandon us!"
Being their chief it is pretty plain that he must follow them; which is also the sentiment of the representatives of the commune at the Hôtel-de-Ville, who send him their authorization, and even the order to march, "seeing that it is impossible for him to refuse."
Fifteen thousand men thus reach Versailles, and in front of and along with them thousands of ruffians, protected by the darkness. On this side the National Guard of Versailles, posted around the chateau, together with the people of Versailles, who bar the way against vehicles, have closed up every outlet.1439 The King is prisoner in his own palace, he and his, with his ministers and his court, and with no defense. For, with his usual optimism, he has confided the outer posts of the chateau to Lafayette's soldiers, and, through a humanitarian obstinacy which he is to maintain up to the last,1440 he has forbidden his own guards to fire on the crowd, so that they are only there for show. With common right in his favor, the law, and the oath which Lafayette had just obliged his troops to renew, what could he have to fear? What could be more effective with the people than trust in them and prudence? And by playing the sheep one is sure of taming brutes!
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