The French Revolution, A History
by Thomas Carlyle
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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And so our riding and running Avalanche and Hurlyburly has reached the
Abyss, Korff Berline foremost; and may pour itself thither, and jumble:
endless! For the next six hours, need we ask if there was a clattering far
and wide? Clattering and tocsining and hot tumult, over all the
Clermontais, spreading through the Three Bishopricks: Dragoon and Hussar
Troops galloping on roads and no-roads; National Guards arming and starting
in the dead of night; tocsin after tocsin transmitting the alarm. In some
forty minutes, Goguelat and Choiseul, with their wearied Hussars, reach
Varennes. Ah, it is no fire then; or a fire difficult to quench! They
leap the tree-barricades, in spite of National serjeant; they enter the
village, Choiseul instructing his Troopers how the matter really is; who
respond interjectionally, in their guttural dialect, "Der Konig; die
Koniginn!" and seem stanch. These now, in their stanch humour, will, for
one thing, beset Procureur Sausse's house. Most beneficial: had not
Drouet stormfully ordered otherwise; and even bellowed, in his extremity,
"Cannoneers to your guns!"--two old honey-combed Field-pieces, empty of all
but cobwebs; the rattle whereof, as the Cannoneers with assured countenance
trundled them up, did nevertheless abate the Hussar ardour, and produce a
respectfuller ranking further back. Jugs of wine, handed over the ranks,
for the German throat too has sensibility, will complete the business.
When Engineer Goguelat, some hour or so afterwards, steps forth, the
response to him is--a hiccuping Vive la Nation!

What boots it? Goguelat, Choiseul, now also Count Damas, and all the
Varennes Officiality are with the King; and the King can give no order,
form no opinion; but sits there, as he has ever done, like clay on potter's
wheel; perhaps the absurdest of all pitiable and pardonable clay-figures
that now circle under the Moon. He will go on, next morning, and take the
National Guard with him; Sausse permitting! Hapless Queen: with her two
children laid there on the mean bed, old Mother Sausse kneeling to Heaven,
with tears and an audible prayer, to bless them; imperial Marie-Antoinette
near kneeling to Son Sausse and Wife Sausse, amid candle-boxes and treacle-
barrels,--in vain! There are Three-thousand National Guards got in; before
long they will count Ten-thousand; tocsins spreading like fire on dry
heath, or far faster.

Young Bouille, roused by this Varennes tocsin, has taken horse, and--fled
towards his Father. Thitherward also rides, in an almost hysterically
desperate manner, a certain Sieur Aubriot, Choiseul's Orderly; swimming
dark rivers, our Bridge being blocked; spurring as if the Hell-hunt were at
his heels. (Rapport de M. Aubriot (Choiseul, p. 150-7.)  Through the
village of Dun, he, galloping still on, scatters the alarm; at Dun, brave
Captain Deslons and his Escort of a Hundred, saddle and ride. Deslons too
gets into Varennes; leaving his Hundred outside, at the tree-barricade;
offers to cut King Louis out, if he will order it: but unfortunately "the
work will prove hot;" whereupon King Louis has "no orders to give."
(Extrait d'un Rapport de M. Deslons (Choiseul, p. 164-7.)

And so the tocsin clangs, and Dragoons gallop; and can do nothing, having
gallopped: National Guards stream in like the gathering of ravens: your
exploding Thunder-chain, falling Avalanche, or what else we liken it to,
does play, with a vengeance,--up now as far as Stenai and Bouille himself.
(Bouille, ii. 74-6.)  Brave Bouille, son of the whirlwind, he saddles Royal
Allemand; speaks fire-words, kindling heart and eyes; distributes twenty-
five gold-louis a company:--Ride, Royal-Allemand, long-famed: no Tuileries
Charge and Necker-Orleans Bust-Procession; a very King made captive, and
world all to win!--Such is the Night deserving to be named of Spurs.

At six o'clock two things have happened. Lafayette's Aide-de-camp,
Romoeuf, riding a franc etrier, on that old Herb-merchant's route,
quickened during the last stages, has got to Varennes; where the Ten
thousand now furiously demand, with fury of panic terror, that Royalty
shall forthwith return Paris-ward, that there be not infinite bloodshed.
Also, on the other side, 'English Tom,' Choiseul's jokei, flying with that
Choiseul relay, has met Bouille on the heights of Dun; the adamantine brow
flushed with dark thunder; thunderous rattle of Royal Allemand at his
heels. English Tom answers as he can the brief question, How it is at
Varennes?--then asks in turn what he, English Tom, with M. de Choiseul's
horses, is to do, and whither to ride?--To the Bottomless Pool! answers a
thunder-voice; then again speaking and spurring, orders Royal Allemand to
the gallop; and vanishes, swearing (en jurant). (Declaration du Sieur
Thomas (in Choiseul, p. 188).)  'Tis the last of our brave Bouille. Within
sight of Varennes, he having drawn bridle, calls a council of officers;
finds that it is in vain. King Louis has departed, consenting: amid the
clangour of universal stormbell; amid the tramp of Ten thousand armed men,
already arrived; and say, of Sixty thousand flocking thither. Brave
Deslons, even without 'orders,' darted at the River Aire with his Hundred!
(Weber, ii. 386.) swam one branch of it, could not the other; and stood
there, dripping and panting, with inflated nostril; the Ten thousand
answering him with a shout of mockery, the new Berline lumbering Paris-ward
its weary inevitable way. No help, then in Earth; nor in an age, not of
miracles, in Heaven!

That night, 'Marquis de Bouille and twenty-one more of us rode over the
Frontiers; the Bernardine monks at Orval in Luxemburg gave us supper and
lodging.'  (Aubriot, ut supra, p. 158.)  With little of speech, Bouille
rides; with thoughts that do not brook speech. Northward, towards
uncertainty, and the Cimmerian Night: towards West-Indian Isles, for with
thin Emigrant delirium the son of the whirlwind cannot act; towards
England, towards premature Stoical death; not towards France any more.
Honour to the Brave; who, be it in this quarrel or in that, is a substance
and articulate-speaking piece of Human Valour, not a fanfaronading hollow
Spectrum and squeaking and gibbering Shadow! One of the few Royalist
Chief-actors this Bouille, of whom so much can be said.

The brave Bouille too, then, vanishes from the tissue of our Story. Story
and tissue, faint ineffectual Emblem of that grand Miraculous Tissue, and
Living Tapestry named French Revolution, which did weave itself then in
very fact, 'on the loud-sounding 'LOOM OF TIME!'  The old Brave drop out
from it, with their strivings; and new acrid Drouets, of new strivings and
colour, come in:--as is the manner of that weaving.

Chapter 2.4.VIII.

The Return.

So then our grand Royalist Plot, of Flight to Metz, has executed itself.
Long hovering in the background, as a dread royal ultimatum, it has rushed
forward in its terrors: verily to some purpose. How many Royalist Plots
and Projects, one after another, cunningly-devised, that were to explode
like powder-mines and thunderclaps; not one solitary Plot of which has
issued otherwise! Powder-mine of a Seance Royale on the Twenty-third of
June 1789, which exploded as we then said, 'through the touchhole;' which
next, your wargod Broglie having reloaded it, brought a Bastille about your
ears. Then came fervent Opera-Repast, with flourishing of sabres, and O
Richard, O my King; which, aided by Hunger, produces Insurrection of Women,
and Pallas Athene in the shape of Demoiselle Theroigne. Valour profits
not; neither has fortune smiled on Fanfaronade. The Bouille Armament ends
as the Broglie one had done. Man after man spends himself in this cause,
only to work it quicker ruin; it seems a cause doomed, forsaken of Earth
and Heaven.

On the Sixth of October gone a year, King Louis, escorted by Demoiselle
Theroigne and some two hundred thousand, made a Royal Progress and Entrance
into Paris, such as man had never witnessed: we prophesied him Two more
such; and accordingly another of them, after this Flight to Metz, is now
coming to pass. Theroigne will not escort here, neither does Mirabeau now
'sit in one of the accompanying carriages.'  Mirabeau lies dead, in the
Pantheon of Great Men. Theroigne lies living, in dark Austrian Prison;
having gone to Liege, professionally, and been seized there. Bemurmured
now by the hoarse-flowing Danube; the light of her Patriot Supper-Parties
gone quite out; so lies Theroigne: she shall speak with the Kaiser face to
face, and return. And France lies how! Fleeting Time shears down the
great and the little; and in two years alters many things.

But at all events, here, we say, is a second Ignominious Royal Procession,
though much altered; to be witnessed also by its hundreds of thousands.
Patience, ye Paris Patriots; the Royal Berline is returning. Not till
Saturday: for the Royal Berline travels by slow stages; amid such loud-
voiced confluent sea of National Guards, sixty thousand as they count; amid
such tumult of all people. Three National-Assembly Commissioners, famed
Barnave, famed Petion, generally-respectable Latour-Maubourg, have gone to
meet it; of whom the two former ride in the Berline itself beside Majesty,
day after day. Latour, as a mere respectability, and man of whom all men
speak well, can ride in the rear, with Dame Tourzel and the Soubrettes.

So on Saturday evening, about seven o'clock, Paris by hundreds of thousands
is again drawn up: not now dancing the tricolor joy-dance of hope; nor as
yet dancing in fury-dance of hate and revenge; but in silence, with vague
look of conjecture and curiosity mostly scientific. A Sainte-Antoine
Placard has given notice this morning that 'whosoever insults Louis shall
be caned, whosoever applauds him shall be hanged.'  Behold then, at last,
that wonderful New Berline; encircled by blue National sea with fixed
bayonets, which flows slowly, floating it on, through the silent assembled
hundreds of thousands. Three yellow Couriers sit atop bound with ropes;
Petion, Barnave, their Majesties, with Sister Elizabeth, and the Children
of France, are within.

Smile of embarrassment, or cloud of dull sourness, is on the broad
phlegmatic face of his Majesty: who keeps declaring to the successive
Official-persons, what is evident, "Eh bien, me voila, Well, here you have
me;" and what is not evident, "I do assure you I did not mean to pass the
frontiers;" and so forth: speeches natural for that poor Royal man; which
Decency would veil. Silent is her Majesty, with a look of grief and scorn;
natural for that Royal Woman. Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious
Royal Procession, through many streets, amid a silent-gazing people:
comparable, Mercier thinks, (Nouveau Paris, iii. 22.) to some Procession de
Roi de Bazoche; or say, Procession of King Crispin, with his Dukes of
Sutor-mania and royal blazonry of Cordwainery. Except indeed that this is
not comic; ah no, it is comico-tragic; with bound Couriers, and a Doom
hanging over it; most fantastic, yet most miserably real. Miserablest
flebile ludibrium of a Pickleherring Tragedy! It sweeps along there, in
most ungorgeous pall, through many streets, in the dusty summer evening;
gets itself at length wriggled out of sight; vanishing in the Tuileries
Palace--towards its doom, of slow torture, peine forte et dure.

Populace, it is true, seizes the three rope-bound yellow Couriers; will at
least massacre them. But our august Assembly, which is sitting at this
great moment, sends out Deputation of rescue; and the whole is got huddled
up. Barnave, 'all dusty,' is already there, in the National Hall; making
brief discreet address and report. As indeed, through the whole journey,
this Barnave has been most discreet, sympathetic; and has gained the
Queen's trust, whose noble instinct teaches her always who is to be
trusted. Very different from heavy Petion; who, if Campan speak truth, ate
his luncheon, comfortably filled his wine-glass, in the Royal Berline;
flung out his chicken-bones past the nose of Royalty itself; and, on the
King's saying "France cannot be a Republic," answered "No, it is not ripe
yet."  Barnave is henceforth a Queen's adviser, if advice could profit:
and her Majesty astonishes Dame Campan by signifying almost a regard for
Barnave: and that, in a day of retribution and Royal triumph, Barnave
shall not be executed. (Campan, ii. c. 18.)

On Monday night Royalty went; on Saturday evening it returns: so much,
within one short week, has Royalty accomplished for itself. The
Pickleherring Tragedy has vanished in the Tuileries Palace, towards 'pain
strong and hard.'  Watched, fettered, and humbled, as Royalty never was.
Watched even in its sleeping-apartments and inmost recesses: for it has to
sleep with door set ajar, blue National Argus watching, his eye fixed on
the Queen's curtains; nay, on one occasion, as the Queen cannot sleep, he
offers to sit by her pillow, and converse a little! (Ibid. ii. 149.)

Chapter 2.4.IX.

Sharp Shot.

In regard to all which, this most pressing question arises: What is to be
done with it? "Depose it!" resolutely answer Robespierre and the
thoroughgoing few. For truly, with a King who runs away, and needs to be
watched in his very bedroom that he may stay and govern you, what other
reasonable thing can be done? Had Philippe d'Orleans not been a caput
mortuum! But of him, known as one defunct, no man now dreams. "Depose it
not; say that it is inviolable, that it was spirited away, was enleve; at
any cost of sophistry and solecism, reestablish it!" so answer with loud
vehemence all manner of Constitutional Royalists; as all your Pure
Royalists do naturally likewise, with low vehemence, and rage compressed by
fear, still more passionately answer. Nay Barnave and the two Lameths, and
what will follow them, do likewise answer so. Answer, with their whole
might: terror-struck at the unknown Abysses on the verge of which, driven
thither by themselves mainly, all now reels, ready to plunge.

By mighty effort and combination this latter course, of reestablish it, is
the course fixed on; and it shall by the strong arm, if not by the clearest
logic, be made good. With the sacrifice of all their hard-earned
popularity, this notable Triumvirate, says Toulongeon, 'set the Throne up
again, which they had so toiled to overturn: as one might set up an
overturned pyramid, on its vertex; to stand so long as it is held.'

Unhappy France; unhappy in King, Queen, and Constitution; one knows not in
which unhappiest! Was the meaning of our so glorious French Revolution
this, and no other, That when Shams and Delusions, long soul-killing, had
become body-killing, and got the length of Bankruptcy and Inanition, a
great People rose and, with one voice, said, in the Name of the Highest:
Shams shall be no more? So many sorrows and bloody horrors, endured, and
to be yet endured through dismal coming centuries, were they not the heavy
price paid and payable for this same: Total Destruction of Shams from
among men? And now, O Barnave Triumvirate! is it in such double-distilled
Delusion, and Sham even of a Sham, that an Effort of this kind will rest
acquiescent? Messieurs of the popular Triumvirate: Never! But, after
all, what can poor popular Triumvirates and fallible august Senators do?
They can, when the Truth is all too-horrible, stick their heads ostrich-
like into what sheltering Fallacy is nearest: and wait there, a
posteriori!

Readers who saw the Clermontais and Three-Bishopricks gallop, in the Night
of Spurs; Diligences ruffling up all France into one terrific terrified
Cock of India; and the Town of Nantes in its shirt,--may fancy what an
affair to settle this was. Robespierre, on the extreme Left, with perhaps
Petion and lean old Goupil, for the very Triumvirate has defalcated, are
shrieking hoarse; drowned in Constitutional clamour. But the debate and
arguing of a whole Nation; the bellowings through all Journals, for and
against; the reverberant voice of Danton; the Hyperion-shafts of Camille;
the porcupine-quills of implacable Marat:--conceive all this.

Constitutionalists in a body, as we often predicted, do now recede from the
Mother Society, and become Feuillans; threatening her with inanition, the
rank and respectability being mostly gone. Petition after Petition,
forwarded by Post, or borne in Deputation, comes praying for Judgment and
Decheance, which is our name for Deposition; praying, at lowest, for
Reference to the Eighty-three Departments of France. Hot Marseillese
Deputation comes declaring, among other things: "Our Phocean Ancestors
flung a Bar of Iron into the Bay at their first landing; this Bar will
float again on the Mediterranean brine before we consent to be slaves."  
All this for four weeks or more, while the matter still hangs doubtful;
Emigration streaming with double violence over the frontiers; (Bouille, ii.
101.) France seething in fierce agitation of this question and prize-
question: What is to be done with the fugitive Hereditary Representative?

Finally, on Friday the 15th of July 1791, the National Assembly decides; in
what negatory manner we know. Whereupon the Theatres all close, the
Bourne-stones and Portable-chairs begin spouting, Municipal Placards
flaming on the walls, and Proclamations published by sound of trumpet,
'invite to repose;' with small effect. And so, on Sunday the 17th, there
shall be a thing seen, worthy of remembering. Scroll of a Petition, drawn
up by Brissots, Dantons, by Cordeliers, Jacobins; for the thing was
infinitely shaken and manipulated, and many had a hand in it: such Scroll
lies now visible, on the wooden framework of the Fatherland's Altar, for
signature. Unworking Paris, male and female, is crowding thither, all day,
to sign or to see. Our fair Roland herself the eye of History can discern
there, 'in the morning;' (Madame Roland, ii. 74.) not without interest. In
few weeks the fair Patriot will quit Paris; yet perhaps only to return.

But, what with sorrow of baulked Patriotism, what with closed theatres, and
Proclamations still publishing themselves by sound of trumpet, the fervour
of men's minds, this day, is great. Nay, over and above, there has fallen
out an incident, of the nature of Farce-Tragedy and Riddle; enough to
stimulate all creatures. Early in the day, a Patriot (or some say, it was
a Patriotess, and indeed Truth is undiscoverable), while standing on the
firm deal-board of Fatherland's Altar, feels suddenly, with indescribable
torpedo-shock of amazement, his bootsole pricked through from below; he
clutches up suddenly this electrified bootsole and foot; discerns next
instant--the point of a gimlet or brad-awl playing up, through the firm
deal-board, and now hastily drawing itself back! Mystery, perhaps Treason?
The wooden frame-work is impetuously broken up; and behold, verily a
mystery; never explicable fully to the end of the world! Two human
individuals, of mean aspect, one of them with a wooden leg, lie ensconced
there, gimlet in hand: they must have come in overnight; they have a
supply of provisions,--no 'barrel of gunpowder' that one can see; they
affect to be asleep; look blank enough, and give the lamest account of
themselves. "Mere curiosity; they were boring up to get an eye-hole; to
see, perhaps 'with lubricity,' whatsoever, from that new point of vision,
could be seen:"--little that was edifying, one would think! But indeed
what stupidest thing may not human Dulness, Pruriency, Lubricity, Chance
and the Devil, choosing Two out of Half-a-million idle human heads, tempt
them to? (Hist. Parl. xi. 104-7.)

Sure enough, the two human individuals with their gimlet are there. Ill-
starred pair of individuals! For the result of it all is that Patriotism,
fretting itself, in this state of nervous excitability, with hypotheses,
suspicions and reports, keeps questioning these two distracted human
individuals, and again questioning them; claps them into the nearest
Guardhouse, clutches them out again; one hypothetic group snatching them
from another: till finally, in such extreme state of nervous excitability,
Patriotism hangs them as spies of Sieur Motier; and the life and secret is
choked out of them forevermore. Forevermore, alas! Or is a day to be
looked for when these two evidently mean individuals, who are human
nevertheless, will become Historical Riddles; and, like him of the Iron
Mask (also a human individual, and evidently nothing more),--have their
Dissertations? To us this only is certain, that they had a gimlet,
provisions and a wooden leg; and have died there on the Lanterne, as the
unluckiest fools might die.

And so the signature goes on, in a still more excited manner. And
Chaumette, for Antiquarians possess the very Paper to this hour, (Ibid. xi.
113, &c.)--has signed himself 'in a flowing saucy hand slightly leaned;'
and Hebert, detestable Pere Duchene, as if 'an inked spider had dropped on
the paper;' Usher Maillard also has signed, and many Crosses, which cannot
write. And Paris, through its thousand avenues, is welling to the Champ-
de-Mars and from it, in the utmost excitability of humour; central
Fatherland's Altar quite heaped with signing Patriots and Patriotesses; the
Thirty-benches and whole internal Space crowded with onlookers, with comers
and goers; one regurgitating whirlpool of men and women in their Sunday
clothes. All which a Constitutional Sieur Motier sees; and Bailly, looking
into it with his long visage made still longer. Auguring no good; perhaps
Decheance and Deposition after all! Stop it, ye Constitutional Patriots;
fire itself is quenchable, yet only quenchable at first!

Stop it, truly: but how stop it? Have not the first Free People of the
Universe a right to petition?--Happily, if also unhappily, here is one
proof of riot: these two human individuals, hanged at the Lanterne.
Proof, O treacherous Sieur Motier? Were they not two human individuals
sent thither by thee to be hanged; to be a pretext for thy bloody Drapeau
Rouge? This question shall many a Patriot, one day, ask; and answer
affirmatively, strong in Preternatural Suspicion.

Enough, towards half past seven in the evening, the mere natural eye can
behold this thing: Sieur Motier, with Municipals in scarf, with blue
National Patrollotism, rank after rank, to the clang of drums; wending
resolutely to the Champ-de-Mars; Mayor Bailly, with elongated visage,
bearing, as in sad duty bound, the Drapeau Rouge! Howl of angry derision
rises in treble and bass from a hundred thousand throats, at the sight of
Martial Law; which nevertheless waving its Red sanguinary Flag, advances
there, from the Gros-Caillou Entrance; advances, drumming and waving,
towards Altar of Fatherland. Amid still wilder howls, with objurgation,
obtestation; with flights of pebbles and mud, saxa et faeces; with crackle
of a pistol-shot;--finally with volley-fire of Patrollotism; levelled
muskets; roll of volley on volley! Precisely after one year and three
days, our sublime Federation Field is wetted, in this manner, with French
blood.

Some 'Twelve unfortunately shot,' reports Bailly, counting by units; but
Patriotism counts by tens and even by hundreds. Not to be forgotten, nor
forgiven! Patriotism flies, shrieking, execrating. Camille ceases
Journalising, this day; great Danton with Camille and Freron have taken
wing, for their life; Marat burrows deep in the Earth, and is silent. Once
more Patrollotism has triumphed: one other time; but it is the last.

This was the Royal Flight to Varennes. Thus was the Throne overturned
thereby; but thus also was it victoriously set up again--on its vertex; and
will stand while it can be held.

BOOK 2.V.

PARLIAMENT FIRST

Chapter 2.5.I.

Grande Acceptation.

In the last nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is past, and
grey September fades into brown October, why are the Champs Elysees
illuminated; why is Paris dancing, and flinging fire-works? They are gala-
nights, these last of September; Paris may well dance, and the Universe:
the Edifice of the Constitution is completed! Completed; nay revised, to
see that there was nothing insufficient in it; solemnly proferred to his
Majesty; solemnly accepted by him, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, on the
fourteenth of the month. And now by such illumination, jubilee, dancing
and fire-working, do we joyously handsel the new Social Edifice, and first
raise heat and reek there, in the name of Hope.

The Revision, especially with a throne standing on its vertex, has been a
work of difficulty, of delicacy. In the way of propping and buttressing,
so indispensable now, something could be done; and yet, as is feared, not
enough. A repentant Barnave Triumvirate, our Rabauts, Duports, Thourets,
and indeed all Constitutional Deputies did strain every nerve: but the
Extreme Left was so noisy; the People were so suspicious, clamorous to have
the work ended: and then the loyal Right Side sat feeble petulant all the
while, and as it were, pouting and petting; unable to help, had they even
been willing; the two Hundred and Ninety had solemnly made scission, before
that: and departed, shaking the dust off their feet. To such
transcendency of fret, and desperate hope that worsening of the bad might
the sooner end it and bring back the good, had our unfortunate loyal Right
Side now come! (Toulongeon, ii. 56, 59.)

However, one finds that this and the other little prop has been added,
where possibility allowed. Civil-list and Privy-purse were from of old
well cared for. King's Constitutional Guard, Eighteen hundred loyal men
from the Eighty-three Departments, under a loyal Duke de Brissac; this,
with trustworthy Swiss besides, is of itself something. The old loyal
Bodyguards are indeed dissolved, in name as well as in fact; and gone
mostly towards Coblentz. But now also those Sansculottic violent Gardes
Francaises, or Centre Grenadiers, shall have their mittimus: they do ere
long, in the Journals, not without a hoarse pathos, publish their Farewell;
'wishing all Aristocrats the graves in Paris which to us are denied.'
(Hist. Parl. xiii. 73.)  They depart, these first Soldiers of the
Revolution; they hover very dimly in the distance for about another year;
till they can be remodelled, new-named, and sent to fight the Austrians;
and then History beholds them no more. A most notable Corps of men; which
has its place in World-History;--though to us, so is History written, they
remain mere rubrics of men; nameless; a shaggy Grenadier Mass, crossed with
buff-belts. And yet might we not ask: What Argonauts, what Leonidas'
Spartans had done such a work? Think of their destiny: since that May
morning, some three years ago, when they, unparticipating, trundled off
d'Espremenil to the Calypso Isles; since that July evening, some two years
ago, when they, participating and sacreing with knit brows, poured a volley
into Besenval's Prince de Lambesc! History waves them her mute adieu.

So that the Sovereign Power, these Sansculottic Watchdogs, more like
wolves, being leashed and led away from his Tuileries, breathes freer. The
Sovereign Power is guarded henceforth by a loyal Eighteen hundred,--whom
Contrivance, under various pretexts, may gradually swell to Six thousand;
who will hinder no Journey to Saint-Cloud. The sad Varennes business has
been soldered up; cemented, even in the blood of the Champ-de-Mars, these
two months and more; and indeed ever since, as formerly, Majesty has had
its privileges, its 'choice of residence,' though, for good reasons, the
royal mind 'prefers continuing in Paris.'  Poor royal mind, poor Paris;
that have to go mumming; enveloped in speciosities, in falsehood which
knows itself false; and to enact mutually your sorrowful farce-tragedy,
being bound to it; and on the whole, to hope always, in spite of hope!

Nay, now that his Majesty has accepted the Constitution, to the sound of
cannon-salvoes, who would not hope? Our good King was misguided but he
meant well. Lafayette has moved for an Amnesty, for universal forgiving
and forgetting of Revolutionary faults; and now surely the glorious
Revolution cleared of its rubbish, is complete! Strange enough, and
touching in several ways, the old cry of Vive le Roi once more rises round
King Louis the Hereditary Representative. Their Majesties went to the
Opera; gave money to the Poor: the Queen herself, now when the
Constitution is accepted, hears voice of cheering. Bygone shall be bygone;
the New Era shall begin! To and fro, amid those lamp-galaxies of the
Elysian Fields, the Royal Carriage slowly wends and rolls; every where with
vivats, from a multitude striving to be glad. Louis looks out, mainly on
the variegated lamps and gay human groups, with satisfaction enough for the
hour. In her Majesty's face, 'under that kind graceful smile a deep
sadness is legible.' (De Stael, Considerations, i. c. 23.)  Brilliancies,
of valour and of wit, stroll here observant: a Dame de Stael, leaning most
probably on the arm of her Narbonne. She meets Deputies; who have built
this Constitution; who saunter here with vague communings,--not without
thoughts whether it will stand. But as yet melodious fiddlestrings twang
and warble every where, with the rhythm of light fantastic feet; long lamp-
galaxies fling their coloured radiance; and brass-lunged Hawkers elbow and
bawl, "Grande Acceptation, Constitution Monarchique:"  it behoves the Son
of Adam to hope. Have not Lafayette, Barnave, and all Constitutionalists
set their shoulders handsomely to the inverted pyramid of a throne?
Feuillans, including almost the whole Constitutional Respectability of
France, perorate nightly from their tribune; correspond through all Post-
offices; denouncing unquiet Jacobinism; trusting well that its time is nigh
done. Much is uncertain, questionable: but if the Hereditary
Representative be wise and lucky, may one not, with a sanguine Gaelic
temper, hope that he will get in motion better or worse; that what is
wanting to him will gradually be gained and added?

For the rest, as we must repeat, in this building of the Constitutional
Fabric, especially in this Revision of it, nothing that one could think of
to give it new strength, especially to steady it, to give it permanence,
and even eternity, has been forgotten. Biennial Parliament, to be called
Legislative, Assemblee Legislative; with Seven Hundred and Forty-five
Members, chosen in a judicious manner by the 'active citizens' alone, and
even by electing of electors still more active: this, with privileges of
Parliament shall meet, self-authorized if need be, and self-dissolved;
shall grant money-supplies and talk; watch over the administration and
authorities; discharge for ever the functions of a Constitutional Great
Council, Collective Wisdom, and National Palaver,--as the Heavens will
enable. Our First biennial Parliament, which indeed has been a-choosing
since early in August, is now as good as chosen. Nay it has mostly got to
Paris: it arrived gradually;--not without pathetic greeting to its
venerable Parent, the now moribund Constituent; and sat there in the
Galleries, reverently listening; ready to begin, the instant the ground
were clear.

Then as to changes in the Constitution itself? This, impossible for any
Legislative, or common biennial Parliament, and possible solely for some
resuscitated Constituent or National Convention,--is evidently one of the
most ticklish points. The august moribund Assembly debated it for four
entire days. Some thought a change, or at least reviewal and new approval,
might be admissible in thirty years; some even went lower, down to twenty,
nay to fifteen. The august Assembly had once decided for thirty years; but
it revoked that, on better thoughts; and did not fix any date of time, but
merely some vague outline of a posture of circumstances, and on the whole
left the matter hanging. (Choix de Rapports, &c. (Paris, 1825), vi. 239-
317.)  Doubtless a National Convention can be assembled even within the
thirty years: yet one may hope, not; but that Legislatives, biennial
Parliaments of the common kind, with their limited faculty, and perhaps
quiet successive additions thereto, may suffice, for generations, or indeed
while computed Time runs.

Furthermore, be it noted that no member of this Constituent has been, or
could be, elected to the new Legislative. So noble-minded were these Law-
makers! cry some: and Solon-like would banish themselves. So splenetic!
cry more: each grudging the other, none daring to be outdone in self-
denial by the other. So unwise in either case! answer all practical men.
But consider this other self-denying ordinance, That none of us can be
King's Minister, or accept the smallest Court Appointment, for the space of
four, or at lowest (and on long debate and Revision), for the space of two
years! So moves the incorruptible seagreen Robespierre; with cheap
magnanimity he; and none dare be outdone by him. It was such a law, not so
superfluous then, that sent Mirabeau to the Gardens of Saint-Cloud, under
cloak of darkness, to that colloquy of the gods; and thwarted many things.
Happily and unhappily there is no Mirabeau now to thwart.

Welcomer meanwhile, welcome surely to all right hearts, is Lafayette's
chivalrous Amnesty. Welcome too is that hard-wrung Union of Avignon; which
has cost us, first and last, 'thirty sessions of debate,' and so much else:
may it at length prove lucky! Rousseau's statue is decreed: virtuous
Jean-Jacques, Evangelist of the Contrat Social. Not Drouet of Varennes;
nor worthy Lataille, master of the old world-famous Tennis Court in
Versailles, is forgotten; but each has his honourable mention, and due
reward in money. (Moniteur (in Hist. Parl. xi. 473.)  Whereupon, things
being all so neatly winded up, and the Deputations, and Messages, and royal
and other Ceremonials having rustled by; and the King having now
affectionately perorated about peace and tranquilisation, and members
having answered "Oui! oui!" with effusion, even with tears,--President
Thouret, he of the Law Reforms, rises, and, with a strong voice, utters
these memorable last-words: "The National Constituent Assembly declares
that it has finished its mission; and that its sittings are all ended."
Incorruptible Robespierre, virtuous Petion are borne home on the shoulders
of the people; with vivats heaven-high. The rest glide quietly to their
respective places of abode. It is the last afternoon of September, 1791;
on the morrow morning the new Legislative will begin.

So, amid glitter of illuminated streets and Champs Elysees, and crackle of
fireworks and glad deray, has the first National Assembly vanished;
dissolving, as they well say, into blank Time; and is no more. National
Assembly is gone, its work remaining; as all Bodies of men go, and as man
himself goes: it had its beginning, and must likewise have its end. A
Phantasm-Reality born of Time, as the rest of us are; flitting ever
backwards now on the tide of Time: to be long remembered of men. Very
strange Assemblages, Sanhedrims, Amphictyonics, Trades Unions, Ecumenic
Councils, Parliaments and Congresses, have met together on this Planet, and
dispersed again; but a stranger Assemblage than this august Constituent, or
with a stranger mission, perhaps never met there. Seen from the distance,
this also will be a miracle. Twelve Hundred human individuals, with the
Gospel of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in their pocket, congregating in the name
of Twenty-five Millions, with full assurance of faith, to 'make the
Constitution:'  such sight, the acme and main product of the Eighteenth
Century, our World can witness once only. For Time is rich in wonders, in
monstrosities most rich; and is observed never to repeat himself, or any of
his Gospels:--surely least of all, this Gospel according to Jean-Jacques.
Once it was right and indispensable, since such had become the Belief of
men; but once also is enough.

They have made the Constitution, these Twelve Hundred Jean-Jacques
Evangelists; not without result. Near twenty-nine months they sat, with
various fortune; in various capacity;--always, we may say, in that capacity
of carborne Caroccio, and miraculous Standard of the Revolt of Men, as a
Thing high and lifted up; whereon whosoever looked might hope healing.
They have seen much: cannons levelled on them; then suddenly, by
interposition of the Powers, the cannons drawn back; and a war-god Broglie
vanishing, in thunder not his own, amid the dust and downrushing of a
Bastille and Old Feudal France. They have suffered somewhat: Royal
Session, with rain and Oath of the Tennis-Court; Nights of Pentecost;
Insurrections of Women. Also have they not done somewhat? Made the
Constitution, and managed all things the while; passed, in these twenty-
nine months, 'twenty-five hundred Decrees,' which on the average is some
three for each day, including Sundays! Brevity, one finds, is possible, at
times: had not Moreau de St. Mery to give three thousand orders before
rising from his seat?--There was valour (or value) in these men; and a kind
of faith,--were it only faith in this, That cobwebs are not cloth; that a
Constitution could be made. Cobwebs and chimeras ought verily to
disappear; for a Reality there is. Let formulas, soul-killing, and now
grown body-killing, insupportable, begone, in the name of Heaven and
Earth!--Time, as we say, brought forth these Twelve Hundred; Eternity was
before them, Eternity behind: they worked, as we all do, in the confluence
of Two Eternities; what work was given them. Say not that it was nothing
they did. Consciously they did somewhat; unconsciously how much! They had
their giants and their dwarfs, they accomplished their good and their evil;
they are gone, and return no more. Shall they not go with our blessing, in
these circumstances; with our mild farewell?

By post, by diligence, on saddle or sole; they are gone: towards the four
winds! Not a few over the marches, to rank at Coblentz. Thither wended
Maury, among others; but in the end towards Rome,--to be clothed there in
red Cardinal plush; in falsehood as in a garment; pet son (her last-born?)
of the Scarlet Woman. Talleyrand-Perigord, excommunicated Constitutional
Bishop, will make his way to London; to be Ambassador, spite of the Self-
denying Law; brisk young Marquis Chauvelin acting as Ambassador's-Cloak.
In London too, one finds Petion the virtuous; harangued and haranguing,
pledging the wine-cup with Constitutional Reform Clubs, in solemn tavern-
dinner. Incorruptible Robespierre retires for a little to native Arras:
seven short weeks of quiet; the last appointed him in this world. Public
Accuser in the Paris Department, acknowledged highpriest of the Jacobins;
the glass of incorruptible thin Patriotism, for his narrow emphasis is
loved of all the narrow,--this man seems to be rising, somewhither? He
sells his small heritage at Arras; accompanied by a Brother and a Sister,
he returns, scheming out with resolute timidity a small sure destiny for
himself and them, to his old lodging, at the Cabinet-maker's, in the Rue
St. Honore:--O resolute-tremulous incorruptible seagreen man, towards what
a destiny!

Lafayette, for his part, will lay down the command. He retires
Cincinnatus-like to his hearth and farm; but soon leaves them again. Our
National Guard, however, shall henceforth have no one Commandant; but all
Colonels shall command in succession, month about. Other Deputies we have
met, or Dame de Stael has met, 'sauntering in a thoughtful manner;' perhaps
uncertain what to do. Some, as Barnave, the Lameths, and their Duport,
will continue here in Paris: watching the new biennial Legislative,
Parliament the First; teaching it to walk, if so might be; and the Court to
lead it.

Thus these: sauntering in a thoughtful manner; travelling by post or
diligence,--whither Fate beckons. Giant Mirabeau slumbers in the Pantheon
of Great Men: and France? and Europe?--The brass-lunged Hawkers sing
"Grand Acceptation, Monarchic Constitution" through these gay crowds: the
Morrow, grandson of Yesterday, must be what it can, as To-day its father
is. Our new biennial Legislative begins to constitute itself on the first
of October, 1791.

Chapter 2.5.II.

The Book of the Law.

If the august Constituent Assembly itself, fixing the regards of the
Universe, could, at the present distance of time and place, gain
comparatively small attention from us, how much less can this poor
Legislative! It has its Right Side and its Left; the less Patriotic and
the more, for Aristocrats exist not here or now: it spouts and speaks:
listens to Reports, reads Bills and Laws; works in its vocation, for a
season: but the history of France, one finds, is seldom or never there.
Unhappy Legislative, what can History do with it; if not drop a tear over
it, almost in silence? First of the two-year Parliaments of France, which,
if Paper Constitution and oft-repeated National Oath could avail aught,
were to follow in softly-strong indissoluble sequence while Time ran,--it
had to vanish dolefully within one year; and there came no second like it.
Alas! your biennial Parliaments in endless indissoluble sequence; they, and
all that Constitutional Fabric, built with such explosive Federation Oaths,
and its top-stone brought out with dancing and variegated radiance, went to
pieces, like frail crockery, in the crash of things; and already, in eleven
short months, were in that Limbo near the Moon, with the ghosts of other
Chimeras. There, except for rare specific purposes, let them rest, in
melancholy peace.

On the whole, how unknown is a man to himself; or a public Body of men to
itself! Aesop's fly sat on the chariot-wheel, exclaiming, What a dust I do
raise! Great Governors, clad in purple with fasces and insignia, are
governed by their valets, by the pouting of their women and children; or,
in Constitutional countries, by the paragraphs of their Able Editors. Say
not, I am this or that; I am doing this or that! For thou knowest it not,
thou knowest only the name it as yet goes by. A purple Nebuchadnezzar
rejoices to feel himself now verily Emperor of this great Babylon which he
has builded; and is a nondescript biped-quadruped, on the eve of a seven-
years course of grazing! These Seven Hundred and Forty-five elected
individuals doubt not but they are the First biennial Parliament, come to
govern France by parliamentary eloquence: and they are what? And they
have come to do what? Things foolish and not wise!

It is much lamented by many that this First Biennial had no members of the
old Constituent in it, with their experience of parties and parliamentary
tactics; that such was their foolish Self-denying Law. Most surely, old
members of the Constituent had been welcome to us here. But, on the other
hand, what old or what new members of any Constituent under the Sun could
have effectually profited? There are First biennial Parliaments so
postured as to be, in a sense, beyond wisdom; where wisdom and folly differ
only in degree, and wreckage and dissolution are the appointed issue for
both.

Old-Constituents, your Barnaves, Lameths and the like, for whom a special
Gallery has been set apart, where they may sit in honour and listen, are in
the habit of sneering at these new Legislators; (Dumouriez, ii. 150, &c.)
but let not us! The poor Seven Hundred and Forty-five, sent together by
the active citizens of France, are what they could be; do what is fated
them. That they are of Patriot temper we can well understand. Aristocrat
Noblesse had fled over the marches, or sat brooding silent in their unburnt
Chateaus; small prospect had they in Primary Electoral Assemblies. What
with Flights to Varennes, what with Days of Poniards, with plot after plot,
the People are left to themselves; the People must needs choose Defenders
of the People, such as can be had. Choosing, as they also will ever do,
'if not the ablest man, yet the man ablest to be chosen!'  Fervour of
character, decided Patriot-Constitutional feeling; these are qualities:
but free utterance, mastership in tongue-fence; this is the quality of
qualities. Accordingly one finds, with little astonishment, in this First
Biennial, that as many as Four hundred Members are of the Advocate or
Attorney species. Men who can speak, if there be aught to speak: nay here
are men also who can think, and even act. Candour will say of this ill-
fated First French Parliament that it wanted not its modicum of talent, its
modicum of honesty; that it, neither in the one respect nor in the other,
sank below the average of Parliaments, but rose above the average. Let
average Parliaments, whom the world does not guillotine, and cast forth to
long infamy, be thankful not to themselves but to their stars!

France, as we say, has once more done what it could: fervid men have come
together from wide separation; for strange issues. Fiery Max Isnard is
come, from the utmost South-East; fiery Claude Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet
Bishop of Calvados, from the utmost North-West. No Mirabeau now sits here,
who had swallowed formulas: our only Mirabeau now is Danton, working as
yet out of doors; whom some call 'Mirabeau of the Sansculottes.'

Nevertheless we have our gifts,--especially of speech and logic. An
eloquent Vergniaud we have; most mellifluous yet most impetuous of public
speakers; from the region named Gironde, of the Garonne: a man
unfortunately of indolent habits; who will sit playing with your children,
when he ought to be scheming and perorating. Sharp bustling Guadet;
considerate grave Censonne; kind-sparkling mirthful young Ducos; Valaze
doomed to a sad end: all these likewise are of that Gironde, or Bourdeaux
region: men of fervid Constitutional principles; of quick talent,
irrefragable logic, clear respectability; who will have the Reign of
Liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods. Round whom
others of like temper will gather; known by and by as Girondins, to the
sorrowing wonder of the world. Of which sort note Condorcet, Marquis and
Philosopher; who has worked at much, at Paris Municipal Constitution,
Differential Calculus, Newspaper Chronique de Paris, Biography, Philosophy;
and now sits here as two-years Senator: a notable Condorcet, with stoical
Roman face, and fiery heart; 'volcano hid under snow;' styled likewise, in
irreverent language, 'mouton enrage,' peaceablest of creatures bitten
rabid! Or note, lastly, Jean-Pierre Brissot; whom Destiny, long working
noisily with him, has hurled hither, say, to have done with him. A
biennial Senator he too; nay, for the present, the king of such. Restless,
scheming, scribbling Brissot; who took to himself the style de Warville,
heralds know not in the least why;--unless it were that the father of him
did, in an unexceptionable manner, perform Cookery and Vintnery in the
Village of Ouarville? A man of the windmill species, that grinds always,
turning towards all winds; not in the steadiest manner.

In all these men there is talent, faculty to work; and they will do it:
working and shaping, not without effect, though alas not in marble, only in
quicksand!--But the highest faculty of them all remains yet to be
mentioned; or indeed has yet to unfold itself for mention: Captain
Hippolyte Carnot, sent hither from the Pas de Calais; with his cold
mathematical head, and silent stubbornness of will: iron Carnot, far-
planning, imperturbable, unconquerable; who, in the hour of need, shall not
be found wanting. His hair is yet black; and it shall grow grey, under
many kinds of fortune, bright and troublous; and with iron aspect this man
shall face them all.

Nor is Cote Droit, and band of King's friends, wanting: Vaublanc, Dumas,
Jaucourt the honoured Chevalier; who love Liberty, yet with Monarchy over
it; and speak fearlessly according to that faith;--whom the thick-coming
hurricanes will sweep away. With them, let a new military Theodore Lameth
be named;--were it only for his two Brothers' sake, who look down on him,
approvingly there, from the Old-Constituents' Gallery. Frothy professing
Pastorets, honey-mouthed conciliatory Lamourettes, and speechless nameless
individuals sit plentiful, as Moderates, in the middle. Still less is a
Cote Gauche wanting: extreme Left; sitting on the topmost benches, as if
aloft on its speculatory Height or Mountain, which will become a practical
fulminatory Height, and make the name of Mountain famous-infamous to all
times and lands.

Honour waits not on this Mountain; nor as yet even loud dishonour. Gifts
it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; solely this one gift
of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and the Heavens.
Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from Thionville, hot
Bazire, Attorneys both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio.
Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has loud
lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon, little dreaming what he
is;--whom a sad chance has paralysed in the lower extremities. For, it
seems, he sat once a whole night, not warm in his true love's bower (who
indeed was by law another's), but sunken to the middle in a cold peat-bog,
being hunted out; quaking for his life, in the cold quaking morass;
(Dumouriez, ii. 370.) and goes now on crutches to the end. Cambon
likewise, in whom slumbers undeveloped such a finance-talent for printing
of Assignats; Father of Paper-money; who, in the hour of menace, shall
utter this stern sentence, 'War to the Manorhouse, peace to the Hut, Guerre
aux Chateaux, paix aux Chaumieres!'  (Choix de Rapports, xi. 25.)
Lecointre, the intrepid Draper of Versailles, is welcome here; known since
the Opera-Repast and Insurrection of Women. Thuriot too; Elector Thuriot,
who stood in the embrasures of the Bastille, and saw Saint-Antoine rising
in mass; who has many other things to see. Last and grimmest of all note
old Ruhl, with his brown dusky face and long white hair; of Alsatian
Lutheran breed; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught; who,
haranguing the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred Ampulla (Heaven-
sent, wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere
worthless oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pavement there; who,
alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own wild head, by pistol-
shot, and so end it.

Such lava welters redhot in the bowels of this Mountain; unknown to the
world and to itself! A mere commonplace Mountain hitherto; distinguished
from the Plain chiefly by its superior barrenness, its baldness of look:
at the utmost it may, to the most observant, perceptibly smoke. For as yet
all lies so solid, peaceable; and doubts not, as was said, that it will
endure while Time runs. Do not all love Liberty and the Constitution? All
heartily;--and yet with degrees. Some, as Chevalier Jaucourt and his Right
Side, may love Liberty less than Royalty, were the trial made; others, as
Brissot and his Left Side, may love it more than Royalty. Nay again of
these latter some may love Liberty more than Law itself; others not more.
Parties will unfold themselves; no mortal as yet knows how. Forces work
within these men and without: dissidence grows opposition; ever widening;
waxing into incompatibility and internecine feud: till the strong is
abolished by a stronger; himself in his turn by a strongest! Who can help
it? Jaucourt and his Monarchists, Feuillans, or Moderates; Brissot and his
Brissotins, Jacobins, or Girondins; these, with the Cordelier Trio, and all
men, must work what is appointed them, and in the way appointed them.

And to think what fate these poor Seven Hundred and Forty-five are
assembled, most unwittingly, to meet! Let no heart be so hard as not to
pity them. Their soul's wish was to live and work as the First of the
French Parliaments: and make the Constitution march. Did they not, at
their very instalment, go through the most affecting Constitutional
ceremony, almost with tears? The Twelve Eldest are sent solemnly to fetch
the Constitution itself, the printed book of the Law. Archivist Camus, an
Old-Constituent appointed Archivist, he and the Ancient Twelve, amid blare
of military pomp and clangour, enter, bearing the divine Book: and
President and all Legislative Senators, laying their hand on the same,
successively take the Oath, with cheers and heart-effusion, universal
three-times-three. (Moniteur, Seance du 4 Octobre 1791.)  In this manner
they begin their Session. Unhappy mortals! For, that same day, his
Majesty having received their Deputation of welcome, as seemed, rather
drily, the Deputation cannot but feel slighted, cannot but lament such
slight: and thereupon our cheering swearing First Parliament sees itself,
on the morrow, obliged to explode into fierce retaliatory sputter, of anti-
royal Enactment as to how they, for their part, will receive Majesty; and
how Majesty shall not be called Sire any more, except they please: and
then, on the following day, to recal this Enactment of theirs, as too
hasty, and a mere sputter though not unprovoked.

An effervescent well-intentioned set of Senators; too combustible, where
continual sparks are flying! Their History is a series of sputters and
quarrels; true desire to do their function, fatal impossibility to do it.
Denunciations, reprimandings of King's Ministers, of traitors supposed and
real; hot rage and fulmination against fulminating Emigrants; terror of
Austrian Kaiser, of 'Austrian Committee' in the Tuileries itself: rage and
haunting terror, haste and dim desperate bewilderment!--Haste, we say; and
yet the Constitution had provided against haste. No Bill can be passed
till it have been printed, till it have been thrice read, with intervals of
eight days;--'unless the Assembly shall beforehand decree that there is
urgency.'  Which, accordingly, the Assembly, scrupulous of the
Constitution, never omits to do: Considering this, and also considering
that, and then that other, the Assembly decrees always 'qu'il y a urgence;'
and thereupon 'the Assembly, having decreed that there is urgence,' is free
to decree--what indispensable distracted thing seems best to it. Two
thousand and odd decrees, as men reckon, within Eleven months!
(Montgaillard, iii. 1. 237.)  The haste of the Constituent seemed great;
but this is treble-quick. For the time itself is rushing treble-quick; and
they have to keep pace with that. Unhappy Seven Hundred and Forty-five:
true-patriotic, but so combustible; being fired, they must needs fling
fire: Senate of touchwood and rockets, in a world of smoke-storm, with
sparks wind-driven continually flying!

Or think, on the other hand, looking forward some months, of that scene
they call Baiser de Lamourette! The dangers of the country are now grown
imminent, immeasurable; National Assembly, hope of France, is divided
against itself. In such extreme circumstances, honey-mouthed Abbe
Lamourette, new Bishop of Lyons, rises, whose name, l'amourette, signifies
the sweetheart, or Delilah doxy,--he rises, and, with pathetic honied
eloquence, calls on all august Senators to forget mutual griefs and
grudges, to swear a new oath, and unite as brothers. Whereupon they all,
with vivats, embrace and swear; Left Side confounding itself with Right;
barren Mountain rushing down to fruitful Plain, Pastoret into the arms of
Condorcet, injured to the breast of injurer, with tears; and all swearing
that whosoever wishes either Feuillant Two-Chamber Monarchy or Extreme-
Jacobin Republic, or any thing but the Constitution and that only, shall be
anathema marantha. (Moniteur, Seance du 6 Juillet 1792.)  Touching to
behold! For, literally on the morrow morning, they must again quarrel,
driven by Fate; and their sublime reconcilement is called derisively Baiser
de L'amourette, or Delilah Kiss.

Like fated Eteocles-Polynices Brothers, embracing, though in vain; weeping
that they must not love, that they must hate only, and die by each other's
hands! Or say, like doomed Familiar Spirits; ordered, by Art Magic under
penalties, to do a harder than twist ropes of sand: 'to make the
Constitution march.'  If the Constitution would but march! Alas, the
Constitution will not stir. It falls on its face; they tremblingly lift it
on end again: march, thou gold Constitution! The Constitution will not
march.--"He shall march, by--!" said kind Uncle Toby, and even swore. The
Corporal answered mournfully: "He will never march in this world."

A constitution, as we often say, will march when it images, if not the old
Habits and Beliefs of the Constituted; then accurately their Rights, or
better indeed, their Mights;--for these two, well-understood, are they not
one and the same? The old Habits of France are gone: her new Rights and
Mights are not yet ascertained, except in Paper-theorem; nor can be, in any
sort, till she have tried. Till she have measured herself, in fell death-
grip, and were it in utmost preternatural spasm of madness, with
Principalities and Powers, with the upper and the under, internal and
external; with the Earth and Tophet and the very Heaven! Then will she
know.--Three things bode ill for the marching of this French Constitution:
the French People; the French King; thirdly the French Noblesse and an
assembled European World.

Chapter 2.5.III.

Avignon.

But quitting generalities, what strange Fact is this, in the far South-
West, towards which the eyes of all men do now, in the end of October, bend
themselves? A tragical combustion, long smoking and smouldering
unluminous, has now burst into flame there.

Hot is that Southern Provencal blood: alas, collisions, as was once said,
must occur in a career of Freedom; different directions will produce such;
nay different velocities in the same direction will! To much that went on
there History, busied elsewhere, would not specially give heed: to
troubles of Uzez, troubles of Nismes, Protestant and Catholic, Patriot and
Aristocrat; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpelier, Arles; to Aristocrat
Camp of Jales, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity, now fading pale-dim,
then always again glowing forth deep-hued (in the Imagination mainly);--
ominous magical, 'an Aristocrat picture of war done naturally!'  All this
was a tragical deadly combustion, with plot and riot, tumult by night and
by day; but a dark combustion, not luminous, not noticed; which now,
however, one cannot help noticing.

Above all places, the unluminous combustion in Avignon and the Comtat
Venaissin was fierce. Papal Avignon, with its Castle rising sheer over the
Rhone-stream; beautifullest Town, with its purple vines and gold-orange
groves: why must foolish old rhyming Rene, the last Sovereign of Provence,
bequeath it to the Pope and Gold Tiara, not rather to Louis Eleventh with
the Leaden Virgin in his hatband? For good and for evil! Popes, Anti-
popes, with their pomp, have dwelt in that Castle of Avignon rising sheer
over the Rhone-stream: there Laura de Sade went to hear mass; her Petrarch
twanging and singing by the Fountain of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most
melancholy manner. This was in the old days.

And now in these new days, such issues do come from a squirt of the pen by
some foolish rhyming Rene, after centuries, this is what we have: Jourdan
Coupe-tete, leading to siege and warfare an Army, from three to fifteen
thousand strong, called the Brigands of Avignon; which title they
themselves accept, with the addition of an epithet, 'The brave Brigands of
Avignon!'  It is even so. Jourdan the Headsman fled hither from that
Chatelet Inquest, from that Insurrection of Women; and began dealing in
madder; but the scene was rife in other than dye-stuffs; so Jourdan shut
his madder shop, and has risen, for he was the man to do it. The tile-
beard of Jourdan is shaven off; his fat visage has got coppered and studded
with black carbuncles; the Silenus trunk is swollen with drink and high
living: he wears blue National uniform with epaulettes, 'an enormous
sabre, two horse-pistols crossed in his belt, and other two smaller,
sticking from his pockets;' styles himself General, and is the tyrant of
men. (Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 267.)  Consider this one fact, O Reader;
and what sort of facts must have preceded it, must accompany it! Such
things come of old Rene; and of the question which has risen, Whether
Avignon cannot now cease wholly to be Papal and become French and free?

For some twenty-five months the confusion has lasted. Say three months of
arguing; then seven of raging; then finally some fifteen months now of
fighting, and even of hanging. For already in February 1790, the Papal
Aristocrats had set up four gibbets, for a sign; but the People rose in
June, in retributive frenzy; and, forcing the public Hangman to act, hanged
four Aristocrats, on each Papal gibbet a Papal Haman. Then were Avignon
Emigrations, Papal Aristocrats emigrating over the Rhone River; demission
of Papal Consul, flight, victory: re-entrance of Papal Legate, truce, and
new onslaught; and the various turns of war. Petitions there were to
National Assembly; Congresses of Townships; three-score and odd Townships
voting for French Reunion, and the blessings of Liberty; while some twelve
of the smaller, manipulated by Aristocrats, gave vote the other way: with
shrieks and discord! Township against Township, Town against Town:
Carpentras, long jealous of Avignon, is now turned out in open war with
it;--and Jourdan Coupe-tete, your first General being killed in mutiny,
closes his dye-shop; and does there visibly, with siege-artillery, above
all with bluster and tumult, with the 'brave Brigands of Avignon,'
beleaguer the rival Town, for two months, in the face of the world!

Feats were done, doubt it not, far-famed in Parish History; but to
Universal History unknown. Gibbets we see rise, on the one side and on the
other; and wretched carcasses swinging there, a dozen in the row; wretched
Mayor of Vaison buried before dead. (Barbaroux, Memoires, p. 26.)  The
fruitful seedfield, lie unreaped, the vineyards trampled down; there is red
cruelty, madness of universal choler and gall. Havoc and anarchy
everywhere; a combustion most fierce, but unlucent, not to be noticed
here!--Finally, as we saw, on the 14th of September last, the National
Constituent Assembly, having sent Commissioners and heard them; (Lescene
Desmaisons: Compte rendu a l'Assemblee Nationale, 10 Septembre 1791 (Choix
des Rapports, vii. 273-93).) having heard Petitions, held Debates, month
after month ever since August 1789; and on the whole 'spent thirty
sittings' on this matter, did solemnly decree that Avignon and the Comtat
were incorporated with France, and His Holiness the Pope should have what
indemnity was reasonable.

And so hereby all is amnestied and finished? Alas, when madness of choler
has gone through the blood of men, and gibbets have swung on this side and
on that, what will a parchment Decree and Lafayette Amnesty do? Oblivious
Lethe flows not above ground! Papal Aristocrats and Patriot Brigands are
still an eye-sorrow to each other; suspected, suspicious, in what they do
and forbear. The august Constituent Assembly is gone but a fortnight,
when, on Sunday the Sixteenth morning of October 1791, the unquenched
combustion suddenly becomes luminous! For Anti-constitutional Placards are
up, and the Statue of the Virgin is said to have shed tears, and grown red.
(Proces-verbal de la Commune d'Avignon, &c. (in Hist. Parl. xii. 419-23.)
Wherefore, on that morning, Patriot l'Escuyer, one of our 'six leading
Patriots,' having taken counsel with his brethren and General Jourdan,
determines on going to Church, in company with a friend or two: not to
hear mass, which he values little; but to meet all the Papalists there in a
body, nay to meet that same weeping Virgin, for it is the Cordeliers
Church; and give them a word of admonition. Adventurous errand; which has
the fatallest issue! What L'Escuyer's word of admonition might be no
History records; but the answer to it was a shrieking howl from the
Aristocrat Papal worshippers, many of them women. A thousand-voiced shriek
and menace; which as L'Escuyer did not fly, became a thousand-handed hustle
and jostle; a thousand-footed kick, with tumblings and tramplings, with the
pricking of semstresses stilettos, scissors, and female pointed
instruments. Horrible to behold; the ancient Dead, and Petrarchan Laura,
sleeping round it there; (Ugo Foscolo, Essay on Petrarch, p. 35.) high
Altar and burning tapers looking down on it; the Virgin quite tearless, and
of the natural stone-colour!--L'Escuyer's friend or two rush off, like
Job's Messengers, for Jourdan and the National Force. But heavy Jourdan
will seize the Town-Gates first; does not run treble-fast, as he might: on
arriving at the Cordeliers Church, the Church is silent, vacant; L'Escuyer,
all alone, lies there, swimming in his blood, at the foot of the high
Altar; pricked with scissors; trodden, massacred;--gives one dumb sob, and
gasps out his miserable life for evermore.

Sight to stir the heart of any man; much more of many men, self-styled
Brigands of Avignon! The corpse of L'Escuyer, stretched on a bier, the
ghastly head girt with laurel, is borne through the streets; with many-
voiced unmelodious Nenia; funeral-wail still deeper than it is loud! The
copper-face of Jourdan, of bereft Patriotism, has grown black. Patriot
Municipality despatches official Narrative and tidings to Paris; orders
numerous or innumerable arrestments for inquest and perquisition.
Aristocrats male and female are haled to the Castle; lie crowded in
subterranean dungeons there, bemoaned by the hoarse rushing of the Rhone;
cut out from help.

So lie they; waiting inquest and perquisition. Alas! with a Jourdan
Headsman for Generalissimo, with his copper-face grown black, and armed
Brigand Patriots chanting their Nenia, the inquest is likely to be brief.
On the next day and the next, let Municipality consent or not, a Brigand
Court-Martial establishes itself in the subterranean stories of the Castle
of Avignon; Brigand Executioners, with naked sabre, waiting at the door,
for a Brigand verdict. Short judgment, no appeal! There is Brigand wrath
and vengeance; not unrefreshed by brandy. Close by is the Dungeon of the
Glaciere, or Ice-Tower: there may be deeds done--? For which language has
no name!--Darkness and the shadow of horrid cruelty envelopes these Castle
Dungeons, that Glaciere Tower: clear only that many have entered, that few
have returned. Jourdan and the Brigands, supreme now over Municipals, over
all Authorities Patriot or Papal, reign in Avignon, waited on by Terror and
Silence.

The result of all which is that, on the 15th of November 1791, we behold
Friend Dampmartin, and subalterns beneath him, and General Choisi above
him, with Infantry and Cavalry, and proper cannon-carriages rattling in
front, with spread banners, to the sound of fife and drum, wend, in a
deliberate formidable manner, towards that sheer Castle Rock, towards those
broad Gates of Avignon; three new National-Assembly Commissioners following
at safe distance in the rear. (Dampmartin, i. 251-94.)  Avignon, summoned
in the name of Assembly and Law, flings its Gates wide open; Choisi with
the rest, Dampmartin and the Bons Enfans, 'Good Boys of Baufremont,' so
they name these brave Constitutional Dragoons, known to them of old,--do
enter, amid shouts and scattered flowers. To the joy of all honest
persons; to the terror only of Jourdan Headsman and the Brigands. Nay next
we behold carbuncled swollen Jourdan himself shew copper-face, with sabre
and four pistols; affecting to talk high: engaging, meanwhile, to
surrender the Castle that instant. So the Choisi Grenadiers enter with him
there. They start and stop, passing that Glaciere, snuffing its horrible
breath; with wild yell, with cries of "Cut the Butcher down!"--and Jourdan
has to whisk himself through secret passages, and instantaneously vanish.

Be the mystery of iniquity laid bare then! A Hundred and Thirty Corpses,
of men, nay of women and even children (for the trembling mother, hastily
seized, could not leave her infant), lie heaped in that Glaciere; putrid,
under putridities: the horror of the world. For three days there is
mournful lifting out, and recognition; amid the cries and movements of a
passionate Southern people, now kneeling in prayer, now storming in wild
pity and rage: lastly there is solemn sepulture, with muffled drums,
religious requiem, and all the people's wail and tears. Their Massacred
rest now in holy ground; buried in one grave.

And Jourdan Coupe-tete? Him also we behold again, after a day or two: in
flight, through the most romantic Petrarchan hill-country; vehemently
spurring his nag; young Ligonnet, a brisk youth of Avignon, with Choisi
Dragoons, close in his rear! With such swollen mass of a rider no nag can
run to advantage. The tired nag, spur-driven, does take the River Sorgue;
but sticks in the middle of it; firm on that chiaro fondo di Sorga; and
will proceed no further for spurring! Young Ligonnet dashes up; the
Copper-face menaces and bellows, draws pistol, perhaps even snaps it; is
nevertheless seized by the collar; is tied firm, ancles under horse's
belly, and ridden back to Avignon, hardly to be saved from massacre on the
streets there. (Dampmartin, ubi supra.)

Such is the combustion of Avignon and the South-West, when it becomes
luminous! Long loud debate is in the august Legislative, in the Mother-
Society as to what now shall be done with it. Amnesty, cry eloquent
Vergniaud and all Patriots: let there be mutual pardon and repentance,
restoration, pacification, and if so might any how be, an end! Which vote
ultimately prevails. So the South-West smoulders and welters again in an
'Amnesty,' or Non-remembrance, which alas cannot but remember, no Lethe
flowing above ground! Jourdan himself remains unchanged; gets loose again
as one not yet gallows-ripe; nay, as we transciently discern from the
distance, is 'carried in triumph through the cities of the South.'  (Deux
Amis vii. (Paris, 1797), pp. 59-71.)  What things men carry!

With which transient glimpse, of a Copper-faced Portent faring in this
manner through the cities of the South, we must quit these regions;--and
let them smoulder. They want not their Aristocrats; proud old Nobles, not
yet emigrated. Arles has its 'Chiffonne,' so, in symbolical cant, they
name that Aristocrat Secret-Association; Arles has its pavements piled up,
by and by, into Aristocrat barricades. Against which Rebecqui, the hot-
clear Patriot, must lead Marseilles with cannon. The Bar of Iron has not
yet risen to the top in the Bay of Marseilles; neither have these hot Sons
of the Phoceans submitted to be slaves. By clear management and hot
instance, Rebecqui dissipates that Chiffonne, without bloodshed; restores
the pavement of Arles. He sails in Coast-barks, this Rebecqui,
scrutinising suspicious Martello-towers, with the keen eye of Patriotism;
marches overland with despatch, singly, or in force; to City after City;
dim scouring far and wide; (Barbaroux, p. 21; Hist. Parl. xiii. 421-4.)--
argues, and if it must be, fights. For there is much to do; Jales itself
is looking suspicious. So that Legislator Fauchet, after debate on it, has
to propose Commissioners and a Camp on the Plain of Beaucaire: with or
without result.

Of all which, and much else, let us note only this small consequence, that
young Barbaroux, Advocate, Town-Clerk of Marseilles, being charged to have
these things remedied, arrived at Paris in the month of February 1792. The
beautiful and brave: young Spartan, ripe in energy, not ripe in wisdom;
over whose black doom there shall flit nevertheless a certain ruddy
fervour, streaks of bright Southern tint, not wholly swallowed of Death!
Note also that the Rolands of Lyons are again in Paris; for the second and
final time. King's Inspectorship is abrogated at Lyons, as elsewhere:
Roland has his retiring-pension to claim, if attainable; has Patriot
friends to commune with; at lowest, has a book to publish. That young
Barbaroux and the Rolands came together; that elderly Spartan Roland liked,
or even loved the young Spartan, and was loved by him, one can fancy: and
Madame--? Breathe not, thou poison-breath, Evil-speech! That soul is
taintless, clear, as the mirror-sea. And yet if they too did look into
each other's eyes, and each, in silence, in tragical renunciance, did find
that the other was all too lovely? Honi soit! She calls him 'beautiful as
Antinous:' he 'will speak elsewhere of that astonishing woman.'--A Madame
d'Udon (or some such name, for Dumont does not recollect quite clearly)
gives copious Breakfast to the Brissotin Deputies and us Friends of
Freedom, at her house in the Place Vendome; with temporary celebrity, with
graces and wreathed smiles; not without cost. There, amid wide babble and
jingle, our plan of Legislative Debate is settled for the day, and much
counselling held. Strict Roland is seen there, but does not go often.
(Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 374.)

Chapter 2.5.IV.

No Sugar.

Such are our inward troubles; seen in the Cities of the South; extant, seen
or unseen, in all cities and districts, North as well as South. For in all
are Aristocrats, more or less malignant; watched by Patriotism; which
again, being of various shades, from light Fayettist-Feuillant down to
deep-sombre Jacobin, has to watch itself!

Directories of Departments, what we call County Magistracies, being chosen
by Citizens of a too 'active' class, are found to pull one way;
Municipalities, Town Magistracies, to pull the other way. In all places
too are Dissident Priests; whom the Legislative will have to deal with:
contumacious individuals, working on that angriest of passions; plotting,
enlisting for Coblentz; or suspected of plotting: fuel of a universal
unconstitutional heat. What to do with them? They may be conscientious as
well as contumacious: gently they should be dealt with, and yet it must be
speedily. In unilluminated La Vendee the simple are like to be seduced by
them; many a simple peasant, a Cathelineau the wool-dealer wayfaring
meditative with his wool-packs, in these hamlets, dubiously shakes his
head! Two Assembly Commissioners went thither last Autumn; considerate
Gensonne, not yet called to be a Senator; Gallois, an editorial man. These
Two, consulting with General Dumouriez, spake and worked, softly, with
judgment; they have hushed down the irritation, and produced a soft
Report,--for the time.

The General himself doubts not in the least but he can keep peace there;
being an able man. He passes these frosty months among the pleasant people
of Niort, occupies 'tolerably handsome apartments in the Castle of Niort,'
and tempers the minds of men. (Dumouriez, ii. 129.)  Why is there but one
Dumouriez? Elsewhere you find South or North, nothing but untempered
obscure jarring; which breaks forth ever and anon into open clangour of
riot. Southern Perpignan has its tocsin, by torch light; with rushing and
onslaught: Northern Caen not less, by daylight; with Aristocrats ranged in
arms at Places of Worship; Departmental compromise proving impossible;
breaking into musketry and a Plot discovered! (Hist. Parl. xii. 131, 141;
xiii. 114, 417.)  Add Hunger too: for Bread, always dear, is getting
dearer: not so much as Sugar can be had; for good reasons. Poor Simoneau,
Mayor of Etampes, in this Northern region, hanging out his Red Flag in some
riot of grains, is trampled to death by a hungry exasperated People. What
a trade this of Mayor, in these times! Mayor of Saint-Denis hung at the
Lanterne, by Suspicion and Dyspepsia, as we saw long since; Mayor of
Vaison, as we saw lately, buried before dead; and now this poor Simoneau,
the Tanner, of Etampes,--whom legal Constitutionalism will not forget.

With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily what they
call dechire, torn asunder this poor country: France and all that is
French. For, over seas too come bad news. In black Saint-Domingo, before
that variegated Glitter in the Champs Elysees was lit for an Accepted
Constitution, there had risen, and was burning contemporary with it, quite
another variegated Glitter and nocturnal Fulgor, had we known it: of
molasses and ardent-spirits; of sugar-boileries, plantations, furniture,
cattle and men: skyhigh; the Plain of Cap Francais one huge whirl of smoke
and flame!

What a change here, in these two years; since that first 'Box of Tricolor
Cockades' got through the Custom-house, and atrabiliar Creoles too rejoiced
that there was a levelling of Bastilles! Levelling is comfortable, as we
often say: levelling, yet only down to oneself. Your pale-white Creoles,
have their grievances:--and your yellow Quarteroons? And your dark-yellow
Mulattoes? And your Slaves soot-black? Quarteroon Oge, Friend of our
Parisian Brissotin Friends of the Blacks, felt, for his share too, that
Insurrection was the most sacred of duties. So the tricolor Cockades had
fluttered and swashed only some three months on the Creole hat, when Oge's
signal-conflagrations went aloft; with the voice of rage and terror.
Repressed, doomed to die, he took black powder or seedgrains in the hollow
of his hand, this Oge; sprinkled a film of white ones on the top, and said
to his Judges, "Behold they are white;"--then shook his hand, and said
"Where are the Whites, Ou sont les Blancs?"

So now, in the Autumn of 1791, looking from the sky-windows of Cap
Francais, thick clouds of smoke girdle our horizon, smoke in the day, in
the night fire; preceded by fugitive shrieking white women, by Terror and
Rumour. Black demonised squadrons are massacring and harrying, with
nameless cruelty. They fight and fire 'from behind thickets and coverts,'
for the Black man loves the Bush; they rush to the attack, thousands
strong, with brandished cutlasses and fusils, with caperings, shoutings and
vociferation,--which, if the White Volunteer Company stands firm, dwindle
into staggerings, into quick gabblement, into panic flight at the first
volley, perhaps before it. (Deux Amis, x. 157.)  Poor Oge could be broken
on the wheel; this fire-whirlwind too can be abated, driven up into the
Mountains: but Saint-Domingo is shaken, as Oge's seedgrains were; shaking,
writhing in long horrid death-throes, it is Black without remedy; and
remains, as African Haiti, a monition to the world.

O my Parisian Friends, is not this, as well as Regraters and Feuillant
Plotters, one cause of the astonishing dearth of Sugar! The Grocer,
palpitant, with drooping lip, sees his Sugar taxe; weighed out by Female
Patriotism, in instant retail, at the inadequate rate of twenty-five sous,
or thirteen pence a pound. "Abstain from it?" yes, ye Patriot Sections,
all ye Jacobins, abstain! Louvet and Collot-d'Herbois so advise; resolute
to make the sacrifice: though "how shall literary men do without coffee?"
Abstain, with an oath; that is the surest! (Debats des Jacobins, &c.
(Hist. Parl. xiii. 171, 92-98.)

Also, for like reason, must not Brest and the Shipping Interest languish?
Poor Brest languishes, sorrowing, not without spleen; denounces an
Aristocrat Bertrand-Moleville traitorous Aristocrat Marine-Minister. Do
not her Ships and King's Ships lie rotting piecemeal in harbour; Naval
Officers mostly fled, and on furlough too, with pay? Little stirring
there; if it be not the Brest Gallies, whip-driven, with their Galley-
Slaves,--alas, with some Forty of our hapless Swiss Soldiers of Chateau-
Vieux, among others! These Forty Swiss, too mindful of Nanci, do now, in
their red wool caps, tug sorrowfully at the oar; looking into the Atlantic
brine, which reflects only their own sorrowful shaggy faces; and seem
forgotten of Hope.

But, on the whole, may we not say, in fugitive language, that the French
Constitution which shall march is very rheumatic, full of shooting internal
pains, in joint and muscle; and will not march without difficulty?

Chapter 2.5.V.

Kings and Emigrants.

Extremely rheumatic Constitutions have been known to march, and keep on
their feet, though in a staggering sprawling manner, for long periods, in
virtue of one thing only: that the Head were healthy. But this Head of
the French Constitution! What King Louis is and cannot help being, Readers
already know. A King who cannot take the Constitution, nor reject the
Constitution: nor do anything at all, but miserably ask, What shall I do?
A King environed with endless confusions; in whose own mind is no germ of
order. Haughty implacable remnants of Noblesse struggling with humiliated
repentant Barnave-Lameths: struggling in that obscure element of fetchers
and carriers, of Half-pay braggarts from the Cafe Valois, of Chambermaids,
whisperers, and subaltern officious persons; fierce Patriotism looking on
all the while, more and more suspicious, from without: what, in such
struggle, can they do? At best, cancel one another, and produce zero.
Poor King! Barnave and your Senatorial Jaucourts speak earnestly into this
ear; Bertrand-Moleville, and Messengers from Coblentz, speak earnestly into
that: the poor Royal head turns to the one side and to the other side; can
turn itself fixedly to no side. Let Decency drop a veil over it: sorrier
misery was seldom enacted in the world. This one small fact, does it not
throw the saddest light on much? The Queen is lamenting to Madam Campan:
"What am I to do? When they, these Barnaves, get us advised to any step
which the Noblesse do not like, then I am pouted at; nobody comes to my
card table; the King's Couchee is solitary."  (Campan, ii. 177-202.)  In
such a case of dubiety, what is one to do? Go inevitably to the ground!

The King has accepted this Constitution, knowing beforehand that it will
not serve: he studies it, and executes it in the hope mainly that it will
be found inexecutable. King's Ships lie rotting in harbour, their officers
gone; the Armies disorganised; robbers scour the highways, which wear down
unrepaired; all Public Service lies slack and waste: the Executive makes
no effort, or an effort only to throw the blame on the Constitution.
Shamming death, 'faisant le mort!'  What Constitution, use it in this
manner, can march? 'Grow to disgust the Nation' it will truly, (Bertrand-
Moleville, i. c. 4.)--unless you first grow to disgust the Nation! It is
Bertrand de Moleville's plan, and his Majesty's; the best they can form.

Or if, after all, this best-plan proved too slow; proved a failure?
Provident of that too, the Queen, shrouded in deepest mystery, 'writes all
day, in cipher, day after day, to Coblentz;' Engineer Goguelat, he of the
Night of Spurs, whom the Lafayette Amnesty has delivered from Prison, rides
and runs. Now and then, on fit occasion, a Royal familiar visit can be
paid to that Salle de Manege, an affecting encouraging Royal Speech
(sincere, doubt it not, for the moment) can be delivered there, and the
Senators all cheer and almost weep;--at the same time Mallet du Pan has
visibly ceased editing, and invisibly bears abroad a King's Autograph,
soliciting help from the Foreign Potentates. (Moleville, i. 370.)  Unhappy
Louis, do this thing or else that other,--if thou couldst!

The thing which the King's Government did do was to stagger distractedly
from contradiction to contradiction; and wedding Fire to Water, envelope
itself in hissing, and ashy steam! Danton and needy corruptible Patriots
are sopped with presents of cash: they accept the sop: they rise
refreshed by it, and travel their own way. (Ibid. i. c. 17.)  Nay, the
King's Government did likewise hire Hand-clappers, or claqueurs, persons to
applaud. Subterranean Rivarol has Fifteen Hundred men in King's pay, at
the rate of some ten thousand pounds sterling, per month; what he calls 'a
staff of genius:'  Paragraph-writers, Placard-Journalists; 'two hundred and
eighty Applauders, at three shillings a day:'  one of the strangest Staffs
ever commanded by man. The muster-rolls and account-books of which still
exist. (Montgaillard, iii. 41.)  Bertrand-Moleville himself, in a way he
thinks very dexterous, contrives to pack the Galleries of the Legislative;
gets Sansculottes hired to go thither, and applaud at a signal given, they
fancying it was Petion that bid them: a device which was not detected for
almost a week. Dexterous enough; as if a man finding the Day fast decline
should determine on altering the Clockhands: that is a thing possible for
him.

Here too let us note an unexpected apparition of Philippe d'Orleans at
Court: his last at the Levee of any King. D'Orleans, sometime in the
winter months seemingly, has been appointed to that old first-coveted rank
of Admiral,--though only over ships rotting in port. The wished-for comes
too late! However, he waits on Bertrand-Moleville to give thanks: nay to
state that he would willingly thank his Majesty in person; that, in spite
of all the horrible things men have said and sung, he is far from being his
Majesty's enemy; at bottom, how far! Bertrand delivers the message, brings
about the royal Interview, which does pass to the satisfaction of his
Majesty; d'Orleans seeming clearly repentant, determined to turn over a new
leaf. And yet, next Sunday, what do we see? 'Next Sunday,' says Bertrand,
'he came to the King's Levee; but the Courtiers ignorant of what had
passed, the crowd of Royalists who were accustomed to resort thither on
that day specially to pay their court, gave him the most humiliating
reception. They came pressing round him; managing, as if by mistake, to
tread on his toes, to elbow him towards the door, and not let him enter
again. He went downstairs to her Majesty's Apartments, where cover was
laid; so soon as he shewed face, sounds rose on all sides, "Messieurs, take
care of the dishes," as if he had carried poison in his pockets. The
insults which his presence every where excited forced him to retire without
having seen the Royal Family: the crowd followed him to the Queen's
Staircase; in descending, he received a spitting (crachat) on the head, and
some others, on his clothes. Rage and spite were seen visibly painted on
his face:' (Bertrand-Moleville, i. 177.)  as indeed how could they miss to
be? He imputes it all to the King and Queen, who know nothing of it, who
are even much grieved at it; and so descends, to his Chaos again. Bertrand
was there at the Chateau that day himself, and an eye-witness to these
things.

For the rest, Non-jurant Priests, and the repression of them, will distract
the King's conscience; Emigrant Princes and Noblesse will force him to
double-dealing: there must be veto on veto; amid the ever-waxing
indignation of men. For Patriotism, as we said, looks on from without,
more and more suspicious. Waxing tempest, blast after blast, of Patriot
indignation, from without; dim inorganic whirl of Intrigues, Fatuities,
within! Inorganic, fatuous; from which the eye turns away. De Stael
intrigues for her so gallant Narbonne, to get him made War-Minister; and
ceases not, having got him made. The King shall fly to Rouen; shall there,
with the gallant Narbonne, properly 'modify the Constitution.'  This is the
same brisk Narbonne, who, last year, cut out from their entanglement, by
force of dragoons, those poor fugitive Royal Aunts: men say he is at
bottom their Brother, or even more, so scandalous is scandal. He drives
now, with his de Stael, rapidly to the Armies, to the Frontier Towns;
produces rose-coloured Reports, not too credible; perorates, gesticulates;
wavers poising himself on the top, for a moment, seen of men; then tumbles,
dismissed, washed away by the Time-flood.

Also the fair Princess de Lamballe intrigues, bosom friend of her Majesty:
to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate, why did she ever
return from England? Her small silver-voice, what can it profit in that
piping of the black World-tornado? Which will whirl her, poor fragile Bird
of Paradise, against grim rocks. Lamballe and de Stael intrigue visibly,
apart or together: but who shall reckon how many others, and in what
infinite ways, invisibly! Is there not what one may call an 'Austrian
Committee,' sitting invisible in the Tuileries; centre of an invisible
Anti-National Spiderweb, which, for we sleep among mysteries, stretches its
threads to the ends of the Earth? Journalist Carra has now the clearest
certainty of it: to Brissotin Patriotism, and France generally, it is
growing more and more probable.

O Reader, hast thou no pity for this Constitution? Rheumatic shooting
pains in its members; pressure of hydrocephale and hysteric vapours on its
Brain: a Constitution divided against itself; which will never march,
hardly even stagger? Why were not Drouet and Procureur Sausse in their
beds, that unblessed Varennes Night! Why did they not, in the name of
Heaven, let the Korff Berline go whither it listed! Nameless incoherency,
incompatibility, perhaps prodigies at which the world still shudders, had
been spared.

But now comes the third thing that bodes ill for the marching of this
French Constitution: besides the French People, and the French King, there
is thirdly--the assembled European world? it has become necessary now to
look at that also. Fair France is so luminous: and round and round it, is
troublous Cimmerian Night. Calonnes, Breteuils hover dim, far-flown;
overnetting Europe with intrigues. From Turin to Vienna; to Berlin, and
utmost Petersburg in the frozen North! Great Burke has raised his great
voice long ago; eloquently demonstrating that the end of an Epoch is come,
to all appearance the end of Civilised Time. Him many answer: Camille
Desmoulins, Clootz Speaker of Mankind, Paine the rebellious Needleman, and
honourable Gallic Vindicators in that country and in this: but the great
Burke remains unanswerable; 'The Age of Chivalry is gone,' and could not
but go, having now produced the still more indomitable Age of Hunger.
Altars enough, of the Dubois-Rohan sort, changing to the Gobel-and-
Talleyrand sort, are faring by rapid transmutation to, shall we say, the
right Proprietor of them? French Game and French Game-Preservers did
alight on the Cliffs of Dover, with cries of distress. Who will say that
the end of much is not come? A set of mortals has risen, who believe that
Truth is not a printed Speculation, but a practical Fact; that Freedom and
Brotherhood are possible in this Earth, supposed always to be Belial's,
which 'the Supreme Quack' was to inherit! Who will say that Church, State,
Throne, Altar are not in danger; that the sacred Strong-box itself, last
Palladium of effete Humanity, may not be blasphemously blown upon, and its
padlocks undone?

The poor Constituent Assembly might act with what delicacy and diplomacy it
would; declare that it abjured meddling with its neighbours, foreign
conquest, and so forth; but from the first this thing was to be predicted:
that old Europe and new France could not subsist together. A Glorious
Revolution, oversetting State-Prisons and Feudalism; publishing, with
outburst of Federative Cannon, in face of all the Earth, that Appearance is
not Reality, how shall it subsist amid Governments which, if Appearance is
not Reality, are--one knows not what? In death feud, and internecine
wrestle and battle, it shall subsist with them; not otherwise.

Rights of Man, printed on Cotton Handkerchiefs, in various dialects of
human speech, pass over to the Frankfort Fair. (Toulongeon, i. 256.)  What
say we, Frankfort Fair? They have crossed Euphrates and the fabulous
Hydaspes; wafted themselves beyond the Ural, Altai, Himmalayah: struck off
from wood stereotypes, in angular Picture-writing, they are jabbered and
jingled of in China and Japan. Where will it stop? Kien-Lung smells
mischief; not the remotest Dalai-Lama shall now knead his dough-pills in
peace.--Hateful to us; as is the Night! Bestir yourselves, ye Defenders of
Order! They do bestir themselves: all Kings and Kinglets, with their
spiritual temporal array, are astir; their brows clouded with menace.
Diplomatic emissaries fly swift; Conventions, privy Conclaves assemble; and
wise wigs wag, taking what counsel they can.

Also, as we said, the Pamphleteer draws pen, on this side and that:
zealous fists beat the Pulpit-drum. Not without issue! Did not iron
Birmingham, shouting 'Church and King,' itself knew not why, burst out,
last July, into rage, drunkenness, and fire; and your Priestleys, and the
like, dining there on that Bastille day, get the maddest singeing:
scandalous to consider! In which same days, as we can remark, high
Potentates, Austrian and Prussian, with Emigrants, were faring towards
Pilnitz in Saxony; there, on the 27th of August, they, keeping to
themselves what further 'secret Treaty' there might or might not be, did
publish their hopes and their threatenings, their Declaration that it was
'the common cause of Kings.'

Where a will to quarrel is, there is a way. Our readers remember that
Pentecost-Night, Fourth of August 1789, when Feudalism fell in a few hours?
The National Assembly, in abolishing Feudalism, promised that
'compensation' should be given; and did endeavour to give it. Nevertheless
the Austrian Kaiser answers that his German Princes, for their part, cannot
be unfeudalised; that they have Possessions in French Alsace, and Feudal
Rights secured to them, for which no conceivable compensation will suffice.
So this of the Possessioned Princes, 'Princes Possessiones' is bandied from
Court to Court; covers acres of diplomatic paper at this day: a weariness
to the world. Kaunitz argues from Vienna; Delessart responds from Paris,
though perhaps not sharply enough. The Kaiser and his Possessioned Princes
will too evidently come and take compensation--so much as they can get.
Nay might one not partition France, as we have done Poland, and are doing;
and so pacify it with a vengeance?

From South to North! For actually it is 'the common cause of Kings.'
Swedish Gustav, sworn Knight of the Queen of France, will lead Coalised
Armies;--had not Ankarstrom treasonously shot him; for, indeed, there were
griefs nearer home. (30th March 1792 (Annual Register, p. 11). Austria
and Prussia speak at Pilnitz; all men intensely listening: Imperial
Rescripts have gone out from Turin; there will be secret Convention at
Vienna. Catherine of Russia beckons approvingly; will help, were she
ready. Spanish Bourbon stirs amid his pillows; from him too, even from
him, shall there come help. Lean Pitt, 'the Minister of Preparatives,'
looks out from his watch-tower in Saint-James's, in a suspicious manner.
Councillors plotting, Calonnes dim-hovering;--alas, Serjeants rub-a-dubbing
openly through all manner of German market-towns, collecting ragged valour!
(Toulongeon, ii. 100-117.)  Look where you will, immeasurable Obscurantism
is girdling this fair France; which, again, will not be girdled by it.
Europe is in travail; pang after pang; what a shriek was that of Pilnitz!
The birth will be: WAR.

Nay the worst feature of the business is this last, still to be named; the
Emigrants at Coblentz, so many thousands ranking there, in bitter hate and
menace: King's Brothers, all Princes of the Blood except wicked d'Orleans;
your duelling de Castries, your eloquent Cazales; bull-headed Malseignes, a
wargod Broglie; Distaff Seigneurs, insulted Officers, all that have ridden
across the Rhine-stream;--d'Artois welcoming Abbe Maury with a kiss, and
clasping him publicly to his own royal heart! Emigration, flowing over the
Frontiers, now in drops, now in streams, in various humours of fear, of
petulance, rage and hope, ever since those first Bastille days when
d'Artois went, 'to shame the citizens of Paris,'--has swollen to the size
of a Phenomenon of the world. Coblentz is become a small extra-national
Versailles; a Versailles in partibus: briguing, intriguing, favouritism,
strumpetocracy itself, they say, goes on there; all the old activities, on
a small scale, quickened by hungry Revenge.

Enthusiasm, of loyalty, of hatred and hope, has risen to a high pitch; as,
in any Coblentz tavern, you may hear, in speech, and in singing. Maury
assists in the interior Council; much is decided on; for one thing, they
keep lists of the dates of your emigrating; a month sooner, or a month
later determines your greater or your less right to the coming Division of
the Spoil. Cazales himself, because he had occasionally spoken with a
Constitutional tone, was looked on coldly at first: so pure are our
principles. (Montgaillard, iii. 517; Toulongeon, (ubi supra).)  And arms
are a-hammering at Liege; 'three thousand horses' ambling hitherward from
the Fairs of Germany: Cavalry enrolling; likewise Foot-soldiers, 'in blue
coat, red waistcoat, and nankeen trousers!'  (See Hist. Parl. xiii. 11-38,
41-61, 358, &c.)  They have their secret domestic correspondences, as their
open foreign: with disaffected Crypto-Aristocrats, with contumacious
Priests, with Austrian Committee in the Tuileries. Deserters are spirited
over by assiduous crimps; Royal-Allemand is gone almost wholly. Their
route of march, towards France and the Division of the Spoil, is marked
out, were the Kaiser once ready. "It is said, they mean to poison the
sources; but," adds Patriotism making Report of it, "they will not poison
the source of Liberty," whereat 'on applaudit,' we cannot but applaud.
Also they have manufactories of False Assignats; and men that circulate in
the interior distributing and disbursing the same; one of these we denounce
now to Legislative Patriotism: 'A man Lebrun by name; about thirty years
of age, with blonde hair and in quantity; has,' only for the time being
surely, 'a black-eye, oeil poche; goes in a wiski with a black horse,'
(Moniteur, Seance du 2 Novembre 1791 (Hist. Parl. xii. 212).)--always
keeping his Gig!

Unhappy Emigrants, it was their lot, and the lot of France! They are
ignorant of much that they should know: of themselves, of what is around
them. A Political Party that knows not when it is beaten, may become one
of the fatallist of things, to itself, and to all. Nothing will convince
these men that they cannot scatter the French Revolution at the first blast
of their war-trumpet; that the French Revolution is other than a blustering
Effervescence, of brawlers and spouters, which, at the flash of chivalrous
broadswords, at the rustle of gallows-ropes, will burrow itself, in dens
the deeper the welcomer. But, alas, what man does know and measure
himself, and the things that are round him;--else where were the need of
physical fighting at all? Never, till they are cleft asunder, can these
heads believe that a Sansculottic arm has any vigour in it: cleft asunder,
it will be too late to believe.

One may say, without spleen against his poor erring brothers of any side,
that above all other mischiefs, this of the Emigrant Nobles acted fatally
on France. Could they have known, could they have understood! In the
beginning of 1789, a splendour and a terror still surrounded them: the
Conflagration of their Chateaus, kindled by months of obstinacy, went out
after the Fourth of August; and might have continued out, had they at all
known what to defend, what to relinquish as indefensible. They were still
a graduated Hierarchy of Authorities, or the accredited Similitude of such:
they sat there, uniting King with Commonalty; transmitting and translating
gradually, from degree to degree, the command of the one into the obedience
of the other; rendering command and obedience still possible. Had they
understood their place, and what to do in it, this French Revolution, which
went forth explosively in years and in months, might have spread itself
over generations; and not a torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been
provided for many things.

But they were proud and high, these men; they were not wise to consider.
They spurned all from them; in disdainful hate, they drew the sword and
flung away the scabbard. France has not only no Hierarchy of Authorities,
to translate command into obedience; its Hierarchy of Authorities has fled
to the enemies of France; calls loudly on the enemies of France to
interfere armed, who want but a pretext to do that. Jealous Kings and
Kaisers might have looked on long, meditating interference, yet afraid and
ashamed to interfere: but now do not the King's Brothers, and all French
Nobles, Dignitaries and Authorities that are free to speak, which the King
himself is not,--passionately invite us, in the name of Right and of Might?
Ranked at Coblentz, from Fifteen to Twenty thousand stand now brandishing
their weapons, with the cry: On, on! Yes, Messieurs, you shall on;--and
divide the spoil according to your dates of emigrating.

Of all which things a poor Legislative Assembly, and Patriot France, is
informed: by denunciant friend, by triumphant foe. Sulleau's Pamphlets,
of the Rivarol Staff of Genius, circulate; heralding supreme hope.
Durosoy's Placards tapestry the walls; Chant du Coq crows day, pecked at by
Tallien's Ami des Citoyens. King's-Friend, Royou, Ami du Roi, can name, in
exact arithmetical ciphers, the contingents of the various Invading
Potentates; in all, Four hundred and nineteen thousand Foreign fighting
men, with Fifteen thousand Emigrants. Not to reckon these your daily and
hourly desertions, which an Editor must daily record, of whole Companies,
and even Regiments, crying Vive le Roi, vive la Reine, and marching over
with banners spread: (Ami du Roi Newspaper (in Hist. Parl. xiii. 175).)--
lies all, and wind; yet to Patriotism not wind; nor, alas, one day, to
Royou! Patriotism, therefore, may brawl and babble yet a little while:
but its hours are numbered: Europe is coming with Four hundred and
nineteen thousand and the Chivalry of France; the gallows, one may hope,
will get its own.

Chapter 2.5.VI.

Brigands and Jales.

We shall have War, then; and on what terms! With an Executive
'pretending,' really with less and less deceptiveness now, 'to be dead;'
casting even a wishful eye towards the enemy: on such terms we shall have
War.

Public Functionary in vigorous action there is none; if it be not Rivarol
with his Staff of Genius and Two hundred and eighty Applauders. The Public
Service lies waste: the very tax-gatherer has forgotten his cunning: in
this and the other Provincial Board of Management (Directoire de
Departmente) it is found advisable to retain what Taxes you can gather, to
pay your own inevitable expenditures. Our Revenue is Assignats; emission
on emission of Paper-money. And the Army; our Three grand Armies, of
Rochambeau, of Luckner, of Lafayette? Lean, disconsolate hover these Three
grand Armies, watching the Frontiers there; three Flights of long-necked
Cranes in moulting time;--wretched, disobedient, disorganised; who never
saw fire; the old Generals and Officers gone across the Rhine. War-
minister Narbonne, he of the rose-coloured Reports, solicits recruitments,
equipments, money, always money; threatens, since he can get none,- to
'take his sword,' which belongs to himself, and go serve his country with
that. (Moniteur, Seance du 23 Janvier, 1792; Biographie des Ministres para
Narbonne.)

The question of questions is: What shall be done? Shall we, with a
desperate defiance which Fortune sometimes favours, draw the sword at once,
in the face of this in-rushing world of Emigration and Obscurantism; or
wait, and temporise and diplomatise, till, if possible, our resources
mature themselves a little? And yet again are our resources growing
towards maturity; or growing the other way? Dubious: the ablest Patriots
are divided; Brissot and his Brissotins, or Girondins, in the Legislative,
cry aloud for the former defiant plan; Robespierre, in the Jacobins, pleads
as loud for the latter dilatory one: with responses, even with mutual
reprimands; distracting the Mother of Patriotism. Consider also what
agitated Breakfasts there may be at Madame d'Udon's in the Place Vendome!
The alarm of all men is great. Help, ye Patriots; and O at least agree;
for the hour presses. Frost was not yet gone, when in that 'tolerably
handsome apartment of the Castle of Niort,' there arrived a Letter:
General Dumouriez must to Paris. It is War-minister Narbonne that writes;
the General shall give counsel about many things. (Dumouriez, ii. c. 6.)
In the month of February 1792, Brissotin friends welcome their Dumouriez
Polymetis,--comparable really to an antique Ulysses in modern costume;
quick, elastic, shifty, insuppressible, a 'many-counselled man.'

Let the Reader fancy this fair France with a whole Cimmerian Europe
girdling her, rolling in on her; black, to burst in red thunder of War;
fair France herself hand-shackled and foot-shackled in the weltering
complexities of this Social Clothing, or Constitution, which they have made
for her; a France that, in such Constitution, cannot march! And Hunger
too; and plotting Aristocrats, and excommunicating Dissident Priests: 'The
man Lebrun by name' urging his black wiski, visible to the eye: and, still
more terrible in his invisibility, Engineer Goguelat, with Queen's cipher,
riding and running!

The excommunicatory Priests give new trouble in the Maine and Loire; La
Vendee, nor Cathelineau the wool-dealer, has not ceased grumbling and
rumbling. Nay behold Jales itself once more: how often does that real-
imaginary Camp of the Fiend require to be extinguished! For near two years
now, it has waned faint and again waxed bright, in the bewildered soul of
Patriotism: actually, if Patriotism knew it, one of the most surprising
products of Nature working with Art. Royalist Seigneurs, under this or the
other pretext, assemble the simple people of these Cevennes Mountains; men
not unused to revolt, and with heart for fighting, could their poor heads
be got persuaded. The Royalist Seigneur harangues; harping mainly on the
religious string: "True Priests maltreated, false Priests intruded,
Protestants (once dragooned) now triumphing, things sacred given to the
dogs;" and so produces, from the pious Mountaineer throat, rough growlings.
"Shall we not testify, then, ye brave hearts of the Cevennes; march to the
rescue? Holy Religion; duty to God and King?"  "Si fait, si fait, Just so,
just so," answer the brave hearts always: "Mais il y a de bien bonnes
choses dans la Revolution, But there are many good things in the Revolution
too!"--And so the matter, cajole as we may, will only turn on its axis, not
stir from the spot, and remains theatrical merely. (Dampmartin, i. 201.)

Nevertheless deepen your cajolery, harp quick and quicker, ye Royalist
Seigneurs; with a dead-lift effort you may bring it to that. In the month
of June next, this Camp of Jales will step forth as a theatricality
suddenly become real; Two thousand strong, and with the boast that it is
Seventy thousand: most strange to see; with flags flying, bayonets fixed;
with Proclamation, and d'Artois Commission of civil war! Let some
Rebecqui, or other the like hot-clear Patriot; let some 'Lieutenant-Colonel
Aubry,' if Rebecqui is busy elsewhere, raise instantaneous National Guards,
and disperse and dissolve it; and blow the Old Castle asunder, (Moniteur,
Seance du 15 Juillet 1792.) that so, if possible, we hear of it no more!

In the Months of February and March, it is recorded, the terror, especially
of rural France, had risen even to the transcendental pitch: not far from
madness. In Town and Hamlet is rumour; of war, massacre: that Austrians,
Aristocrats, above all, that The Brigands are close by. Men quit their
houses and huts; rush fugitive, shrieking, with wife and child, they know
not whither. Such a terror, the eye-witnesses say, never fell on a Nation;
nor shall again fall, even in Reigns of Terror expressly so-called. The
Countries of the Loire, all the Central and South-East regions, start up
distracted, 'simultaneously as by an electric shock;'--for indeed grain too
gets scarcer and scarcer. 'The people barricade the entrances of Towns,
pile stones in the upper stories, the women prepare boiling water; from
moment to moment, expecting the attack. In the Country, the alarm-bell
rings incessant: troops of peasants, gathered by it, scour the highways,
seeking an imaginary enemy. They are armed mostly with scythes stuck in
wood; and, arriving in wild troops at the barricaded Towns, are themselves
sometimes taken for Brigands.'  (Newspapers, &c. (in Hist. Parl. xiii.
325).)

So rushes old France: old France is rushing down. What the end will be is
known to no mortal; that the end is near all mortals may know.

Chapter 2.5.VII.

Constitution will not march.

To all which our poor Legislative, tied up by an unmarching Constitution,
can oppose nothing, by way of remedy, but mere bursts of parliamentary
eloquence! They go on, debating, denouncing, objurgating: loud weltering
Chaos, which devours itself.

But their two thousand and odd Decrees? Reader, these happily concern not
thee, nor me. Mere Occasional Decrees, foolish and not foolish; sufficient
for that day was its own evil! Of the whole two thousand there are not,
now half a score, and these mostly blighted in the bud by royal Veto, that
will profit or disprofit us. On the 17th of January, the Legislative, for
one thing, got its High Court, its Haute Cour, set up at Orleans. The
theory had been given by the Constituent, in May last, but this is the
reality: a Court for the trial of Political Offences; a Court which cannot
want work. To this it was decreed that there needed no royal Acceptance,
therefore that there could be no Veto. Also Priests can now be married;
ever since last October. A patriotic adventurous Priest had made bold to
marry himself then; and not thinking this enough, came to the bar with his
new spouse; that the whole world might hold honey-moon with him, and a Law
be obtained.

Less joyful are the Laws against Refractory Priests; and yet no less
needful! Decrees on Priests and Decrees on Emigrants: these are the two
brief Series of Decrees, worked out with endless debate, and then cancelled
by Veto, which mainly concern us here. For an august National Assembly
must needs conquer these Refractories, Clerical or Laic, and thumbscrew
them into obedience; yet, behold, always as you turn your legislative
thumbscrew, and will press and even crush till Refractories give way,--
King's Veto steps in, with magical paralysis; and your thumbscrew, hardly
squeezing, much less crushing, does not act!

Truly a melancholy Set of Decrees, a pair of Sets; paralysed by Veto!
First, under date the 28th of October 1791, we have Legislative
Proclamation, issued by herald and bill-sticker; inviting Monsieur, the
King's Brother to return within two months, under penalties. To which
invitation Monsieur replies nothing; or indeed replies by Newspaper Parody,
inviting the august Legislative 'to return to common sense within two
months,' under penalties. Whereupon the Legislative must take stronger
measures. So, on the 9th of November, we declare all Emigrants to be
'suspect of conspiracy;' and, in brief, to be 'outlawed,' if they have not
returned at Newyear's-day:--Will the King say Veto? That 'triple impost'
shall be levied on these men's Properties, or even their Properties be 'put
in sequestration,' one can understand. But further, on Newyear's-day
itself, not an individual having 'returned,' we declare, and with fresh
emphasis some fortnight later again declare, That Monsieur is dechu,
forfeited of his eventual Heirship to the Crown; nay more that Conde,
Calonne, and a considerable List of others are accused of high treason; and
shall be judged by our High Court of Orleans: Veto!--Then again as to
Nonjurant Priests: it was decreed, in November last, that they should
forfeit what Pensions they had; be 'put under inspection, under
surveillance,' and, if need were, be banished: Veto! A still sharper turn
is coming; but to this also the answer will be, Veto.

Veto after Veto; your thumbscrew paralysed! Gods and men may see that the
Legislative is in a false position. As, alas, who is in a true one?
Voices already murmur for a 'National Convention.'  (December 1791 (Hist.
Parl. xii. 257).)  This poor Legislative, spurred and stung into action by
a whole France and a whole Europe, cannot act; can only objurgate and
perorate; with stormy 'motions,' and motion in which is no way: with
effervescence, with noise and fuliginous fury!

What scenes in that National Hall! President jingling his inaudible bell;
or, as utmost signal of distress, clapping on his hat; 'the tumult
subsiding in twenty minutes,' and this or the other indiscreet Member sent
to the Abbaye Prison for three days! Suspected Persons must be summoned
and questioned; old M. de Sombreuil of the Invalides has to give account of
himself, and why he leaves his Gates open. Unusual smoke rose from the
Sevres Pottery, indicating conspiracy; the Potters explained that it was
Necklace-Lamotte's Memoirs, bought up by her Majesty, which they were
endeavouring to suppress by fire, (Moniteur, Seance du 28 Mai 1792; Campan,
ii. 196.)--which nevertheless he that runs may still read.

Again, it would seem, Duke de Brissac and the King's Constitutional-Guard
are 'making cartridges secretly in the cellars;' a set of Royalists, pure
and impure; black cut-throats many of them, picked out of gaming houses and
sinks; in all Six thousand instead of Eighteen hundred; who evidently gloom
on us every time we enter the Chateau. (Dumouriez, ii. 168.)  Wherefore,
with infinite debate, let Brissac and King's Guard be disbanded. Disbanded
accordingly they are; after only two months of existence, for they did not
get on foot till March of this same year. So ends briefly the King's new
Constitutional Maison Militaire; he must now be guarded by mere Swiss and
blue Nationals again. It seems the lot of Constitutional things. New
Constitutional Maison Civile he would never even establish, much as Barnave
urged it; old resident Duchesses sniffed at it, and held aloof; on the
whole her Majesty thought it not worth while, the Noblesse would so soon be
back triumphant. (Campan, ii. c. 19.)

Or, looking still into this National Hall and its scenes, behold Bishop
Torne, a Constitutional Prelate, not of severe morals, demanding that
'religious costumes and such caricatures' be abolished. Bishop Torne
warms, catches fire; finishes by untying, and indignantly flinging on the
table, as if for gage or bet, his own pontifical cross. Which cross, at
any rate, is instantly covered by the cross of Te-Deum Fauchet, then by
other crosses, and insignia, till all are stripped; this clerical Senator
clutching off his skull-cap, that other his frill-collar,--lest Fanaticism
return on us. (Moniteur, du 7 Avril 1792; Deux Amis, vii. 111.)

Quick is the movement here! And then so confused, unsubstantial, you might
call it almost spectral; pallid, dim, inane, like the Kingdoms of Dis!
Unruly Liguet, shrunk to a kind of spectre for us, pleads here, some cause
that he has: amid rumour and interruption, which excel human patience; he
'tears his papers, and withdraws,' the irascible adust little man. Nay
honourable members will tear their papers, being effervescent: Merlin of
Thionville tears his papers, crying: "So, the People cannot be saved by
you!"  Nor are Deputations wanting: Deputations of Sections; generally
with complaint and denouncement, always with Patriot fervour of sentiment:
Deputation of Women, pleading that they also may be allowed to take Pikes,
and exercise in the Champ-de-Mars. Why not, ye Amazons, if it be in you?
Then occasionally, having done our message and got answer, we 'defile
through the Hall, singing ca-ira;' or rather roll and whirl through it,
'dancing our ronde patriotique the while,'--our new Carmagnole, or Pyrrhic
war-dance and liberty-dance. Patriot Huguenin, Ex-Advocate, Ex-Carabineer,
Ex-Clerk of the Barriers, comes deputed, with Saint-Antoine at his heels;
denouncing Anti-patriotism, Famine, Forstalment and Man-eaters; asks an
august Legislative: "Is there not a tocsin in your hearts against these
mangeurs d'hommes!"  (See Moniteur, Seances (in Hist. Parl. xiii. xiv.).)

But above all things, for this is a continual business, the Legislative has
to reprimand the King's Ministers. Of His Majesty's Ministers we have said
hitherto, and say, next to nothing. Still more spectral these! Sorrowful;
of no permanency any of them, none at least since Montmorin vanished: the
'eldest of the King's Council' is occasionally not ten days old!
(Dumouriez, ii. 137.)  Feuillant-Constitutional, as your respectable Cahier
de Gerville, as your respectable unfortunate Delessarts; or Royalist-
Constitutional, as Montmorin last Friend of Necker; or Aristocrat as
Bertrand-Moleville: they flit there phantom-like, in the huge simmering
confusion; poor shadows, dashed in the racking winds; powerless, without
meaning;--whom the human memory need not charge itself with.

But how often, we say, are these poor Majesty's Ministers summoned over; to
be questioned, tutored; nay, threatened, almost bullied! They answer what,
with adroitest simulation and casuistry, they can: of which a poor
Legislative knows not what to make. One thing only is clear, That
Cimmerian Europe is girdling us in; that France (not actually dead,
surely?) cannot march. Have a care, ye Ministers! Sharp Guadet transfixes
you with cross-questions, with sudden Advocate-conclusions; the sleeping
tempest that is in Vergniaud can be awakened. Restless Brissot brings up
Reports, Accusations, endless thin Logic; it is the man's highday even now.
Condorcet redacts, with his firm pen, our 'Address of the Legislative
Assembly to the French Nation.'  (16th February 1792 (Choix des Rapports,
viii. 375-92).)  Fiery Max Isnard, who, for the rest, will "carry not Fire
and Sword" on those Cimmerian Enemies "but Liberty,"--is for declaring
"that we hold Ministers responsible; and that by responsibility we mean
death, nous entendons la mort."

For verily it grows serious: the time presses, and traitors there are.
Bertrand-Moleville has a smooth tongue, the known Aristocrat; gall in his
heart. How his answers and explanations flow ready; jesuitic, plausible to
the ear! But perhaps the notablest is this, which befel once when Bertrand
had done answering and was withdrawn. Scarcely had the august Assembly
begun considering what was to be done with him, when the Hall fills with
smoke. Thick sour smoke: no oratory, only wheezing and barking;--
irremediable; so that the august Assembly has to adjourn! (Courrier de
Paris, 14 Janvier, 1792 (Gorsas's Newspaper), in Hist. Parl. xiii. 83.)  A
miracle? Typical miracle? One knows not: only this one seems to know,
that 'the Keeper of the Stoves was appointed by Bertrand' or by some
underling of his!--O fuliginous confused Kingdom of Dis, with thy Tantalus-
Ixion toils, with thy angry Fire-floods, and Streams named of Lamentation,
why hast thou not thy Lethe too, that so one might finish?

Chapter 2.5.VIII.

The Jacobins.

Nevertheless let not Patriotism despair. Have we not, in Paris at least, a
virtuous Petion, a wholly Patriotic Municipality? Virtuous Petion, ever
since November, is Mayor of Paris: in our Municipality, the Public, for
the Public is now admitted too, may behold an energetic Danton; further, an
epigrammatic slow-sure Manuel; a resolute unrepentant Billaud-Varennes, of
Jesuit breeding; Tallien able-editor; and nothing but Patriots, better or
worse. So ran the November Elections: to the joy of most citizens; nay
the very Court supported Petion rather than Lafayette. And so Bailly and
his Feuillants, long waning like the Moon, had to withdraw then, making
some sorrowful obeisance, into extinction;--or indeed into worse, into
lurid half-light, grimmed by the shadow of that Red Flag of theirs, and
bitter memory of the Champ-de-Mars. How swift is the progress of things
and men! Not now does Lafayette, as on that Federation-day, when his noon
was, 'press his sword firmly on the Fatherland's Altar,' and swear in sight
of France: ah no; he, waning and setting ever since that hour, hangs now,
disastrous, on the edge of the horizon; commanding one of those Three
moulting Crane-flights of Armies, in a most suspected, unfruitful,
uncomfortable manner!

But, at most, cannot Patriotism, so many thousands strong in this
Metropolis of the Universe, help itself? Has it not right-hands, pikes?
Hammering of pikes, which was not to be prohibited by Mayor Bailly, has
been sanctioned by Mayor Petion; sanctioned by Legislative Assembly. How
not, when the King's so-called Constitutional Guard 'was making cartridges
in secret?'  Changes are necessary for the National Guard itself; this
whole Feuillant-Aristocrat Staff of the Guard must be disbanded. Likewise,
citizens without uniform may surely rank in the Guard, the pike beside the
musket, in such a time: the 'active' citizen and the passive who can fight
for us, are they not both welcome?--O my Patriot friends, indubitably Yes!
Nay the truth is, Patriotism throughout, were it never so white-frilled,
logical, respectable, must either lean itself heartily on Sansculottism,
the black, bottomless; or else vanish, in the frightfullest way, to Limbo!
Thus some, with upturned nose, will altogether sniff and disdain
Sansculottism; others will lean heartily on it; nay others again will lean
what we call heartlessly on it: three sorts; each sort with a destiny
corresponding. (Discours de Bailly, Reponse de Petion (Moniteur du 20
Novembre 1791).)

In such point of view, however, have we not for the present a Volunteer
Ally, stronger than all the rest: namely, Hunger? Hunger; and what
rushing of Panic Terror this and the sum-total of our other miseries may
bring! For Sansculottism grows by what all other things die of. Stupid
Peter Baille almost made an epigram, though unconsciously, and with the
Patriot world laughing not at it but at him, when he wrote 'Tout va bien
ici, le pain manque, All goes well here, victuals not to be had.'
(Barbaroux, p. 94.)

Neither, if you knew it, is Patriotism without her Constitution that can
march; her not impotent Parliament; or call it, Ecumenic Council, and
General-Assembly of the Jean-Jacques Churches: the MOTHER-SOCIETY, namely!
Mother-Society with her three hundred full-grown Daughters; with what we
can call little Granddaughters trying to walk, in every village of France,
numerable, as Burke thinks, by the hundred thousand. This is the true
Constitution; made not by Twelve-Hundred august Senators, but by Nature
herself; and has grown, unconsciously, out of the wants and the efforts of
these Twenty-five Millions of men. They are 'Lords of the Articles,' our
Jacobins; they originate debates for the Legislative; discuss Peace and
War; settle beforehand what the Legislative is to do. Greatly to the
scandal of philosophical men, and of most Historians;--who do in that judge
naturally, and yet not wisely. A Governing power must exist: your other
powers here are simulacra; this power is it.

Great is the Mother-Society: She has had the honour to be denounced by
Austrian Kaunitz; (Moniteur, Seance du 29 Mars, 1792.) and is all the
dearer to Patriotism. By fortune and valour, she has extinguished
Feuillantism itself, at least the Feuillant Club. This latter, high as it
once carried its head, she, on the 18th of February, has the satisfaction
to see shut, extinct; Patriots having gone thither, with tumult, to hiss it
out of pain. The Mother Society has enlarged her locality, stretches now
over the whole nave of the Church. Let us glance in, with the worthy
Toulongeon, our old Ex-Constituent Friend, who happily has eyes to see:
'The nave of the Jacobins Church,' says he, 'is changed into a vast Circus,
the seats of which mount up circularly like an amphitheatre to the very
groin of the domed roof. A high Pyramid of black marble, built against one
of the walls, which was formerly a funeral monument, has alone been left
standing: it serves now as back to the Office-bearers' Bureau. Here on an
elevated Platform sit President and Secretaries, behind and above them the
white Busts of Mirabeau, of Franklin, and various others, nay finally of
Marat. Facing this is the Tribune, raised till it is midway between floor
and groin of the dome, so that the speaker's voice may be in the centre.
From that point, thunder the voices which shake all Europe: down below, in
silence, are forging the thunderbolts and the firebrands. Penetrating into
this huge circuit, where all is out of measure, gigantic, the mind cannot
repress some movement of terror and wonder; the imagination recals those
dread temples which Poetry, of old, had consecrated to the Avenging
Deities.'  (Toulongeon, ii. 124.)

Scenes too are in this Jacobin Amphitheatre,--had History time for them.
Flags of the 'Three free Peoples of the Universe,' trinal brotherly flags
of England, America, France, have been waved here in concert; by London
Deputation, of Whigs or Wighs and their Club, on this hand, and by young
French Citizenesses on that; beautiful sweet-tongued Female Citizens, who
solemnly send over salutation and brotherhood, also Tricolor stitched by
their own needle, and finally Ears of Wheat; while the dome rebellows with
Vivent les trois peuples libres! from all throats:--a most dramatic scene.
Demoiselle Theroigne recites, from that Tribune in mid air, her
persecutions in Austria; comes leaning on the arm of Joseph Chenier, Poet
Chenier, to demand Liberty for the hapless Swiss of Chateau-Vieux. (Debats
des Jacobins (Hist. Parl. xiii. 259, &c.).)  Be of hope, ye Forty Swiss;
tugging there, in the Brest waters; not forgotten!

Deputy Brissot perorates from that Tribune; Desmoulins, our wicked Camille,
interjecting audibly from below, "Coquin!"  Here, though oftener in the
Cordeliers, reverberates the lion-voice of Danton; grim Billaud-Varennes is
here; Collot d'Herbois, pleading for the Forty Swiss; tearing a passion to
rags. Apophthegmatic Manuel winds up in this pithy way: "A Minister must
perish!"--to which the Amphitheatre responds: "Tous, Tous, All, All!"  But
the Chief Priest and Speaker of this place, as we said, is Robespierre, the
long-winded incorruptible man. What spirit of Patriotism dwelt in men in
those times, this one fact, it seems to us, will evince: that fifteen
hundred human creatures, not bound to it, sat quiet under the oratory of
Robespierre; nay, listened nightly, hour after hour, applausive; and gaped
as for the word of life. More insupportable individual, one would say,
seldom opened his mouth in any Tribune. Acrid, implacable-impotent; dull-
drawling, barren as the Harmattan-wind! He pleads, in endless earnest-
shallow speech, against immediate War, against Woollen Caps or Bonnets
Rouges, against many things; and is the Trismegistus and Dalai-Lama of
Patriot men. Whom nevertheless a shrill-voiced little man, yet with fine
eyes, and a broad beautifully sloping brow, rises respectfully to
controvert: he is, say the Newspaper Reporters, 'M. Louvet, Author of the
charming Romance of Faublas.'  Steady, ye Patriots! Pull not yet two ways;
with a France rushing panic-stricken in the rural districts, and a
Cimmerian Europe storming in on you!

Chapter 2.5.IX.

Minister Roland.

About the vernal equinox, however, one unexpected gleam of hope does burst
forth on Patriotism: the appointment of a thoroughly Patriot Ministry.
This also his Majesty, among his innumerable experiments of wedding fire to
water, will try. Quod bonum sit. Madame d'Udon's Breakfasts have jingled
with a new significance; not even Genevese Dumont but had a word in it.
Finally, on the 15th and onwards to the 23d day of March, 1792, when all is
negociated,--this is the blessed issue; this Patriot Ministry that we see.

General Dumouriez, with the Foreign Portfolio shall ply Kaunitz and the
Kaiser, in another style than did poor Delessarts; whom indeed we have sent
to our High Court of Orleans for his sluggishness. War-minister Narbonne
is washed away by the Time-flood; poor Chevalier de Grave, chosen by the
Court, is fast washing away: then shall austere Servan, able Engineer-
Officer, mount suddenly to the War Department. Genevese Claviere sees an
old omen realized: passing the Finance Hotel, long years ago, as a poor
Genevese Exile, it was borne wondrously on his mind that he was to be
Finance Minister; and now he is it;--and his poor Wife, given up by the
Doctors, rises and walks, not the victim of nerves but their vanquisher.
(Dumont, c. 20, 21.)  And above all, our Minister of the Interior? Roland
de la Platriere, he of Lyons! So have the Brissotins, public or private
Opinion, and Breakfasts in the Place Vendome decided it. Strict Roland,
compared to a Quaker endimanche, or Sunday Quaker, goes to kiss hands at
the Tuileries, in round hat and sleek hair, his shoes tied with mere riband
or ferrat! The Supreme Usher twitches Dumouriez aside: "Quoi, Monsieur!
No buckles to his shoes?"--"Ah, Monsieur," answers Dumouriez, glancing
towards the ferrat: "All is lost, Tout est perdu."  (Madame Roland, ii.
80-115.)

And so our fair Roland removes from her upper floor in the Rue Saint-
Jacques, to the sumptuous saloons once occupied by Madame Necker. Nay
still earlier, it was Calonne that did all this gilding; it was he who
ground these lustres, Venetian mirrors; who polished this inlaying, this
veneering and or-moulu; and made it, by rubbing of the proper lamp, an
Aladdin's Palace:--and now behold, he wanders dim-flitting over Europe,
half-drowned in the Rhine-stream, scarcely saving his Papers! Vos non
vobis.--The fair Roland, equal to either fortune, has her public Dinner on
Fridays, the Ministers all there in a body: she withdraws to her desk (the
cloth once removed), and seems busy writing; nevertheless loses no word:
if for example Deputy Brissot and Minister Claviere get too hot in
argument, she, not without timidity, yet with a cunning gracefulness, will
interpose. Deputy Brissot's head, they say, is getting giddy, in this
sudden height: as feeble heads do.

Envious men insinuate that the Wife Roland is Minister, and not the
Husband: it is happily the worst they have to charge her with. For the
rest, let whose head soever be getting giddy, it is not this brave woman's.
Serene and queenly here, as she was of old in her own hired garret of the
Ursulines Convent! She who has quietly shelled French-beans for her
dinner; being led to that, as a young maiden, by quiet insight and
computation; and knowing what that was, and what she was: such a one will
also look quietly on or-moulu and veneering, not ignorant of these either.
Calonne did the veneering: he gave dinners here, old Besenval
diplomatically whispering to him; and was great: yet Calonne we saw at
last 'walk with long strides.'  Necker next: and where now is Necker? Us
also a swift change has brought hither; a swift change will send us hence.
Not a Palace but a Caravansera!

So wags and wavers this unrestful World, day after day, month after month.
The Streets of Paris, and all Cities, roll daily their oscillatory flood of
men; which flood does, nightly, disappear, and lie hidden horizontal in
beds and trucklebeds; and awakes on the morrow to new perpendicularity and
movement. Men go their roads, foolish or wise;--Engineer Goguelat to and
fro, bearing Queen's cipher. A Madame de Stael is busy; cannot clutch her
Narbonne from the Time-flood: a Princess de Lamballe is busy; cannot help
her Queen. Barnave, seeing the Feuillants dispersed, and Coblentz so
brisk, begs by way of final recompence to kiss her Majesty's hand; augurs
not well of her new course; and retires home to Grenoble, to wed an heiress
there. The Cafe Valois and Meot the Restaurateur's hear daily gasconade;
loud babble of Half-pay Royalists, with or without Poniards; remnants of
Aristocrat saloons call the new Ministry Ministere-Sansculotte. A Louvet,
of the Romance Faublas, is busy in the Jacobins. A Cazotte, of the Romance
Diable Amoureux, is busy elsewhere: better wert thou quiet, old Cazotte;
it is a world, this, of magic become real! All men are busy; doing they
only half guess what:--flinging seeds, of tares mostly, into the Seed-field
of TIME"'  this, by and by, will declare wholly what.

But Social Explosions have in them something dread, and as it were mad and
magical: which indeed Life always secretly has; thus the dumb Earth (says
Fable), if you pull her mandrake-roots, will give a daemonic mad-making
moan. These Explosions and Revolts ripen, break forth like dumb dread
Forces of Nature; and yet they are Men's forces; and yet we are part of
them: the Daemonic that is in man's life has burst out on us, will sweep
us too away!--One day here is like another, and yet it is not like but
different. How much is growing, silently resistless, at all moments!
Thoughts are growing; forms of Speech are growing, and Customs and even
Costumes; still more visibly are actions and transactions growing, and that
doomed Strife, of France with herself and with the whole world.

The word Liberty is never named now except in conjunction with another;
Liberty and Equality. In like manner, what, in a reign of Liberty and
Equality, can these words, 'Sir,' 'obedient Servant,' 'Honour to be,' and
such like, signify? Tatters and fibres of old Feudality; which, were it
only in the Grammatical province, ought to be rooted out! The Mother
Society has long since had proposals to that effect: these she could not
entertain, not at the moment. Note too how the Jacobin Brethren are
mounting new symbolical headgear: the Woollen Cap or Nightcap, bonnet de
laine, better known as bonnet rouge, the colour being red. A thing one
wears not only by way of Phrygian Cap-of-Liberty, but also for convenience'
sake, and then also in compliment to the Lower-class Patriots and Bastille-
Heroes; for the Red Nightcap combines all the three properties. Nay
cockades themselves begin to be made of wool, of tricolor yarn: the
riband-cockade, as a symptom of Feuillant Upper-class temper, is becoming
suspicious. Signs of the times.

Still more, note the travail-throes of Europe: or, rather, note the birth
she brings; for the successive throes and shrieks, of Austrian and Prussian
Alliance, of Kaunitz Anti-jacobin Despatch, of French Ambassadors cast out,
and so forth, were long to note. Dumouriez corresponds with Kaunitz,
Metternich, or Cobentzel, in another style that Delessarts did. Strict
becomes stricter; categorical answer, as to this Coblentz work and much
else, shall be given. Failing which? Failing which, on the 20th day of
April 1792, King and Ministers step over to the Salle de Manege; promulgate
how the matter stands; and poor Louis, 'with tears in his eyes,' proposes
that the Assembly do now decree War. After due eloquence, War is decreed
that night.

War, indeed! Paris came all crowding, full of expectancy, to the morning,
and still more to the evening session. D'Orleans with his two sons, is
there; looks on, wide-eyed, from the opposite Gallery. (Deux Amis, vii.
146-66.)  Thou canst look, O Philippe: it is a War big with issues, for
thee and for all men. Cimmerian Obscurantism and this thrice glorious
Revolution shall wrestle for it, then: some Four-and-twenty years; in
immeasurable Briareus' wrestle; trampling and tearing; before they can come
to any, not agreement, but compromise, and approximate ascertainment each
of what is in the other.

Let our Three Generals on the Frontiers look to it, therefore; and poor
Chevalier de Grave, the Warminister, consider what he will do. What is in
the three Generals and Armies we may guess. As for poor Chevalier de
Grave, he, in this whirl of things all coming to a press and pinch upon
him, loses head, and merely whirls with them, in a totally distracted
manner; signing himself at last, 'De Grave, Mayor of Paris:' whereupon he
demits, returns over the Channel, to walk in Kensington Gardens; (Dumont,
c. 19, 21.) and austere Servan, the able Engineer-Officer, is elevated in
his stead. To the post of Honour? To that of Difficulty, at least.

Chapter 2.5.X.

Petion-National-Pique.

And yet, how, on dark bottomless Cataracts there plays the foolishest
fantastic-coloured spray and shadow; hiding the Abyss under vapoury
rainbows! Alongside of this discussion as to Austrian-Prussian War, there
goes on no less but more vehemently a discussion, Whether the Forty or Two-
and-forty Swiss of Chateau-Vieux shall be liberated from the Brest Gallies?
And then, Whether, being liberated, they shall have a public Festival, or
only private ones?

Theroigne, as we saw, spoke; and Collot took up the tale. Has not
Bouille's final display of himself, in that final Night of Spurs, stamped
your so-called 'Revolt of Nanci' into a 'Massacre of Nanci,' for all
Patriot judgments? Hateful is that massacre; hateful the Lafayette-
Feuillant 'public thanks' given for it! For indeed, Jacobin Patriotism and
dispersed Feuillantism are now at death-grips; and do fight with all
weapons, even with scenic shows. The walls of Paris, accordingly, are
covered with Placard and Counter-Placard, on the subject of Forty Swiss
blockheads. Journal responds to Journal; Player Collot to Poetaster
Roucher; Joseph Chenier the Jacobin, squire of Theroigne, to his Brother
Andre the Feuillant; Mayor Petion to Dupont de Nemours: and for the space
of two months, there is nowhere peace for the thought of man,--till this
thing be settled.

Gloria in excelsis! The Forty Swiss are at last got 'amnestied.'  Rejoice
ye Forty: doff your greasy wool Bonnets, which shall become Caps of
Liberty. The Brest Daughter-Society welcomes you from on board, with
kisses on each cheek: your iron Handcuffs are disputed as Relics of
Saints; the Brest Society indeed can have one portion, which it will beat
into Pikes, a sort of Sacred Pikes; but the other portion must belong to
Paris, and be suspended from the dome there, along with the Flags of the
Three Free Peoples! Such a goose is man; and cackles over plush-velvet
Grand Monarques and woollen Galley-slaves; over everything and over
nothing,--and will cackle with his whole soul merely if others cackle!

On the ninth morning of April, these Forty Swiss blockheads arrive. From
Versailles; with vivats heaven-high; with the affluence of men and women.
To the Townhall we conduct them; nay to the Legislative itself, though not
without difficulty. They are harangued, bedinnered, begifted,--the very
Court, not for conscience' sake, contributing something; and their Public
Festival shall be next Sunday. Next Sunday accordingly it is. (Newspapers
of February, March, April, 1792; Iambe d'Andre Chenier sur la Fete des
Suisses; &c., &c. (in Hist. Parl. xiii, xiv.).)  They are mounted into a
'triumphal Car resembling a ship;' are carted over Paris, with the clang of
cymbals and drums, all mortals assisting applausive; carted to the Champ-
de-Mars and Fatherland's Altar; and finally carted, for Time always brings
deliverance,--into invisibility for evermore.

Whereupon dispersed Feuillantism, or that Party which loves Liberty yet not
more than Monarchy, will likewise have its Festival: Festival of
Simonneau, unfortunate Mayor of Etampes, who died for the Law; most surely
for the Law, though Jacobinism disputes; being trampled down with his Red
Flag in the riot about grains. At which Festival the Public again assists,
unapplausive: not we.

On the whole, Festivals are not wanting; beautiful rainbow-spray when all
is now rushing treble-quick towards its Niagara Fall. National repasts
there are; countenanced by Mayor Petion; Saint-Antoine, and the Strong Ones
of the Halles defiling through Jacobin Club, "their felicity," according to
Santerre, "not perfect otherwise;" singing many-voiced their ca-ira,
dancing their ronde patriotique. Among whom one is glad to discern Saint-
Huruge, expressly 'in white hat,' the Saint-Christopher of the Carmagnole.
Nay a certain, Tambour or National Drummer, having just been presented with
a little daughter, determines to have the new Frenchwoman christened on
Fatherland's Altar then and there. Repast once over, he accordingly has
her christened; Fauchet the Te-Deum Bishop acting in chief, Thuriot and
honourable persons standing gossips: by the name, Petion-National-Pique!
(Patriote-Francais (Brissot's Newspaper), in Hist. Parl. xiii. 451.)  Does
this remarkable Citizeness, now past the meridian of life, still walk the
Earth? Or did she die perhaps of teething? Universal History is not
indifferent.

Chapter 2.5.XI.

The Hereditary Representative.

And yet it is not by carmagnole-dances and singing of ca-ira, that the work
can be done. Duke Brunswick is not dancing carmagnoles, but has his drill
serjeants busy.

On the Frontiers, our Armies, be it treason or not, behave in the worst
way. Troops badly commanded, shall we say? Or troops intrinsically bad?
Unappointed, undisciplined, mutinous; that, in a thirty-years peace, have
never seen fire? In any case, Lafayette's and Rochambeau's little clutch,
which they made at Austrian Flanders, has prospered as badly as clutch need
do: soldiers starting at their own shadow; suddenly shrieking, "On nous
trahit," and flying off in wild panic, at or before the first shot;--
managing only to hang some two or three Prisoners they had picked up, and
massacre their own Commander, poor Theobald Dillon, driven into a granary
by them in the Town of Lille.

And poor Gouvion: he who sat shiftless in that Insurrection of Women!
Gouvion quitted the Legislative Hall and Parliamentary duties, in disgust
and despair, when those Galley-slaves of Chateau-Vieux were admitted there.
He said, "Between the Austrians and the Jacobins there is nothing but a
soldier's death for it;" (Toulongeon, ii. 149.) and so, 'in the dark stormy
night,' he has flung himself into the throat of the Austrian cannon, and
perished in the skirmish at Maubeuge on the ninth of June. Whom
Legislative Patriotism shall mourn, with black mortcloths and melody in the
Champ-de-Mars: many a Patriot shiftier, truer none. Lafayette himself is
looking altogether dubious; in place of beating the Austrians, is about
writing to denounce the Jacobins. Rochambeau, all disconsolate, quits the
service: there remains only Luckner, the babbling old Prussian Grenadier.

Without Armies, without Generals! And the Cimmerian Night, has gathered
itself; Brunswick preparing his Proclamation; just about to march! Let a
Patriot Ministry and Legislative say, what in these circumstances it will
do? Suppress Internal Enemies, for one thing, answers the Patriot
Legislative; and proposes, on the 24th of May, its Decree for the
Banishment of Priests. Collect also some nucleus of determined internal
friends, adds War-minister Servan; and proposes, on the 7th of June, his
Camp of Twenty-thousand. Twenty-thousand National Volunteers; Five out of
each Canton; picked Patriots, for Roland has charge of the Interior: they
shall assemble here in Paris; and be for a defence, cunningly devised,
against foreign Austrians and domestic Austrian Committee alike. So much
can a Patriot Ministry and Legislative do.

Reasonable and cunningly devised as such Camp may, to Servan and
Patriotism, appear, it appears not so to Feuillantism; to that Feuillant-
Aristocrat Staff of the Paris Guard; a Staff, one would say again, which
will need to be dissolved. These men see, in this proposed Camp of
Servan's, an offence; and even, as they pretend to say, an insult.
Petitions there come, in consequence, from blue Feuillants in epaulettes;
ill received. Nay, in the end, there comes one Petition, called 'of the
Eight Thousand National Guards:'  so many names are on it; including women
and children. Which famed Petition of the Eight Thousand is indeed
received: and the Petitioners, all under arms, are admitted to the honours
of the sitting,--if honours or even if sitting there be; for the instant
their bayonets appear at the one door, the Assembly 'adjourns,' and begins
to flow out at the other. (Moniteur, Seance du 10 Juin 1792.)

Also, in these same days, it is lamentable to see how National Guards,
escorting Fete Dieu or Corpus-Christi ceremonial, do collar and smite down
any Patriot that does not uncover as the Hostie passes. They clap their
bayonets to the breast of Cattle-butcher Legendre, a known Patriot ever
since the Bastille days; and threaten to butcher him; though he sat quite
respectfully, he says, in his Gig, at a distance of fifty paces, waiting
till the thing were by. Nay, orthodox females were shrieking to have down
the Lanterne on him. (Debats des Jacobins (in Hist. Parl. xiv. 429).)

To such height has Feuillantism gone in this Corps. For indeed, are not
their Officers creatures of the chief Feuillant, Lafayette? The Court too
has, very naturally, been tampering with them; caressing them, ever since
that dissolution of the so-called Constitutional Guard. Some Battalions
are altogether 'petris, kneaded full' of Feuillantism, mere Aristocrats at
bottom: for instance, the Battalion of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, made up of
your Bankers, Stockbrokers, and other Full-purses of the Rue Vivienne. Our
worthy old Friend Weber, Queen's Foster-brother Weber, carries a musket in
that Battalion,--one may judge with what degree of Patriotic intention.

Heedless of all which, or rather heedful of all which, the Legislative,
backed by Patriot France and the feeling of Necessity, decrees this Camp of
Twenty thousand. Decisive though conditional Banishment of malign Priests,
it has already decreed.

It will now be seen, therefore, Whether the Hereditary Representative is
for us or against us? Whether or not, to all our other woes, this
intolerablest one is to be added; which renders us not a menaced Nation in
extreme jeopardy and need, but a paralytic Solecism of a Nation; sitting
wrapped as in dead cerements, of a Constitutional-Vesture that were no
other than a winding-sheet; our right hand glued to our left: to wait
there, writhing and wriggling, unable to stir from the spot, till in
Prussian rope we mount to the gallows? Let the Hereditary Representative
consider it well: The Decree of Priests? The Camp of Twenty Thousand?--By
Heaven, he answers, Veto! Veto!--Strict Roland hands in his Letter to the
King; or rather it was Madame's Letter, who wrote it all at a sitting; one
of the plainest-spoken Letters ever handed in to any King. This plain-
spoken Letter King Louis has the benefit of reading overnight. He reads,
inwardly digests; and next morning, the whole Patriot Ministry finds itself
turned out. It is the 13th of June 1792. (Madame Roland, ii. 115.)

Dumouriez the many-counselled, he, with one Duranthon, called Minister of
Justice, does indeed linger for a day or two; in rather suspicious
circumstances; speaks with the Queen, almost weeps with her: but in the
end, he too sets off for the Army; leaving what Un-Patriot or Semi-Patriot
Ministry and Ministries can now accept the helm, to accept it. Name them
not: new quick-changing Phantasms, which shift like magic-lantern figures;
more spectral than ever!

Unhappy Queen, unhappy Louis! The two Vetos were so natural: are not the
Priests martyrs; also friends? This Camp of Twenty Thousand, could it be
other than of stormfullest Sansculottes? Natural; and yet, to France,
unendurable. Priests that co-operate with Coblentz must go elsewhither
with their martyrdom: stormful Sansculottes, these and no other kind of
creatures, will drive back the Austrians. If thou prefer the Austrians,
then for the love of Heaven go join them. If not, join frankly with what
will oppose them to the death. Middle course is none.

Or alas, what extreme course was there left now, for a man like Louis?
Underhand Royalists, Ex-Minister Bertrand-Moleville, Ex-Constituent
Malouet, and all manner of unhelpful individuals, advise and advise. With
face of hope turned now on the Legislative Assembly, and now on Austria and
Coblentz, and round generally on the Chapter of Chances, an ancient
Kingship is reeling and spinning, one knows not whitherward, on the flood
of things.

Chapter 2.5.XII.

Procession of the Black Breeches.

But is there a thinking man in France who, in these circumstances, can
persuade himself that the Constitution will march? Brunswick is stirring;
he, in few days now, will march. Shall France sit still, wrapped in dead
cerements and grave-clothes, its right hand glued to its left, till the
Brunswick Saint-Bartholomew arrive; till France be as Poland, and its
Rights of Man become a Prussian Gibbet?

Verily, it is a moment frightful for all men. National Death; or else some
preternatural convulsive outburst of National Life;--that same, daemonic
outburst! Patriots whose audacity has limits had, in truth, better retire
like Barnave; court private felicity at Grenoble. Patriots, whose audacity
has no limits must sink down into the obscure; and, daring and defying all
things, seek salvation in stratagem, in Plot of Insurrection. Roland and
young Barbaroux have spread out the Map of France before them, Barbaroux
says 'with tears:'  they consider what Rivers, what Mountain ranges are in
it: they will retire behind this Loire-stream, defend these Auvergne
stone-labyrinths; save some little sacred Territory of the Free; die at
least in their last ditch. Lafayette indites his emphatic Letter to the
Legislative against Jacobinism; (Moniteur, Seance du 18 Juin 1792.) which
emphatic Letter will not heal the unhealable.

Forward, ye Patriots whose audacity has no limits; it is you now that must
either do or die! The sections of Paris sit in deep counsel; send out
Deputation after Deputation to the Salle de Manege, to petition and
denounce. Great is their ire against tyrannous Veto, Austrian Committee,
and the combined Cimmerian Kings. What boots it? Legislative listens to
the 'tocsin in our hearts;' grants us honours of the sitting, sees us
defile with jingle and fanfaronade; but the Camp of Twenty Thousand, the
Priest-Decree, be-vetoed by Majesty, are become impossible for Legislative.
Fiery Isnard says, "We will have Equality, should we descend for it to the
tomb."  Vergniaud utters, hypothetically, his stern Ezekiel-visions of the
fate of Anti-national Kings. But the question is: Will hypothetic
prophecies, will jingle and fanfaronade demolish the Veto; or will the
Veto, secure in its Tuileries Chateau, remain undemolishable by these?
Barbaroux, dashing away his tears, writes to the Marseilles Municipality,
that they must send him 'Six hundred men who know how to die, qui savent
mourir.'  (Barbaroux, p. 40.)  No wet-eyed message this, but a fire-eyed
one;--which will be obeyed!

Meanwhile the Twentieth of June is nigh, anniversary of that world-famous
Oath of the Tennis-Court: on which day, it is said, certain citizens have
in view to plant a Mai or Tree of Liberty, in the Tuileries Terrace of the
Feuillants; perhaps also to petition the Legislative and Hereditary
Representative about these Vetos;--with such demonstration, jingle and
evolution, as may seem profitable and practicable. Sections have gone
singly, and jingled and evolved: but if they all went, or great part of
them, and there, planting their Mai in these alarming circumstances,
sounded the tocsin in their hearts?

Among King's Friends there can be but one opinion as to such a step: among
Nation's Friends there may be two. On the one hand, might it not by
possibility scare away these unblessed Vetos? Private Patriots and even
Legislative Deputies may have each his own opinion, or own no-opinion: but
the hardest task falls evidently on Mayor Petion and the Municipals, at
once Patriots and Guardians of the public Tranquillity. Hushing the matter
down with the one hand; tickling it up with the other! Mayor Petion and
Municipality may lean this way; Department-Directory with Procureur-Syndic
Roederer having a Feuillant tendency, may lean that. On the whole, each
man must act according to his one opinion or to his two opinions; and all
manner of influences, official representations cross one another in the
foolishest way. Perhaps after all, the Project, desirable and yet not
desirable, will dissipate itself, being run athwart by so many
complexities; and coming to nothing?

Not so: on the Twentieth morning of June, a large Tree of Liberty,
Lombardy Poplar by kind, lies visibly tied on its car, in the Suburb-
Antoine. Suburb Saint-Marceau too, in the uttermost South-East, and all
that remote Oriental region, Pikemen and Pikewomen, National Guards, and
the unarmed curious are gathering,--with the peaceablest intentions in the
world. A tricolor Municipal arrives; speaks. Tush, it is all peaceable,
we tell thee, in the way of Law: are not Petitions allowable, and the
Patriotism of Mais? The tricolor Municipal returns without effect: your
Sansculottic rills continue flowing, combining into brooks: towards
noontide, led by tall Santerre in blue uniform, by tall Saint-Huruge in
white hat, it moves Westward, a respectable river, or complication of
still-swelling rivers.

What Processions have we not seen: Corpus-Christi and Legendre waiting in
Gig; Bones of Voltaire with bullock-chariots, and goadsmen in Roman
Costume; Feasts of Chateau-Vieux and Simonneau; Gouvion Funerals, Rousseau
Sham-Funerals, and the Baptism of Petion-National-Pike! Nevertheless this
Procession has a character of its own. Tricolor ribands streaming aloft
from pike-heads; ironshod batons; and emblems not a few; among which, see
specially these two, of the tragic and the untragic sort: a Bull's Heart
transfixed with iron, bearing this epigraph, 'Coeur d'Aristocrate,
Aristocrat's Heart;' and, more striking still, properly the standard of the
host, a pair of old Black Breeches (silk, they say), extended on cross-
staff high overhead, with these memorable words: 'Tremblez tyrans, voila
les Sansculottes, Tremble tyrants, here are the Sans-indispensables!'
Also, the Procession trails two cannons.

Scarfed tricolor Municipals do now again meet it, in the Quai Saint-
Bernard; and plead earnestly, having called halt. Peaceable, ye virtuous
tricolor Municipals, peaceable are we as the sucking dove. Behold our
Tennis-Court Mai. Petition is legal; and as for arms, did not an august
Legislative receive the so-called Eight Thousand in arms, Feuillants though
they were? Our Pikes, are they not of National iron? Law is our father
and mother, whom we will not dishonour; but Patriotism is our own soul.
Peaceable, ye virtuous Municipals;--and on the whole, limited as to time!
Stop we cannot; march ye with us.--The Black Breeches agitate themselves,
impatient; the cannon-wheels grumble: the many-footed Host tramps on.

How it reached the Salle de Manege, like an ever-waxing river; got
admittance, after debate; read its Address; and defiled, dancing and ca-
ira-ing, led by tall sonorous Santerre and tall sonorous Saint-Huruge: how
it flowed, not now a waxing river but a shut Caspian lake, round all
Precincts of the Tuileries; the front Patriot squeezed by the rearward,
against barred iron Grates, like to have the life squeezed out of him, and
looking too into the dread throat of cannon, for National Battalions stand
ranked within: how tricolor Municipals ran assiduous, and Royalists with
Tickets of Entry; and both Majesties sat in the interior surrounded by men
in black: all this the human mind shall fancy for itself, or read in old
Newspapers, and Syndic Roederer's Chronicle of Fifty Days. (Roederer, &c.
&c. (in Hist. Parl. xv. 98-194).)

Our Mai is planted; if not in the Feuillants Terrace, whither is no ingate,
then in the Garden of the Capuchins, as near as we could get. National
Assembly has adjourned till the Evening Session: perhaps this shut lake,
finding no ingate, will retire to its sources again; and disappear in
peace? Alas, not yet: rearward still presses on; rearward knows little
what pressure is in the front. One would wish at all events, were it
possible, to have a word with his Majesty first!

The shadows fall longer, eastward; it is four o'clock: will his Majesty
not come out? Hardly he! In that case, Commandant Santerre, Cattle-
butcher Legendre, Patriot Huguenin with the tocsin in his heart; they, and
others of authority, will enter in. Petition and request to wearied
uncertain National Guard; louder and louder petition; backed by the rattle
of our two cannons! The reluctant Grate opens: endless Sansculottic
multitudes flood the stairs; knock at the wooden guardian of your privacy.
Knocks, in such case, grow strokes, grow smashings: the wooden guardian
flies in shivers. And now ensues a Scene over which the world has long
wailed; and not unjustly; for a sorrier spectacle, of Incongruity fronting
Incongruity, and as it were recognising themselves incongruous, and staring
stupidly in each other's face, the world seldom saw.

King Louis, his door being beaten on, opens it; stands with free bosom;
asking, "What do you want?"  The Sansculottic flood recoils awestruck;
returns however, the rear pressing on the front, with cries of "Veto!
Patriot Ministers! Remove Veto!"--which things, Louis valiantly answers,
this is not the time to do, nor this the way to ask him to do. Honour what
virtue is in a man. Louis does not want courage; he has even the higher
kind called moral-courage, though only the passive half of that. His few
National Grenadiers shuffle back with him, into the embrasure of a window:
there he stands, with unimpeachable passivity, amid the shouldering and the
braying; a spectacle to men. They hand him a Red Cap of Liberty; he sets
it quietly on his head, forgets it there. He complains of thirst; half-
drunk Rascality offers him a bottle, he drinks of it. "Sire, do not fear,"
says one of his Grenadiers. "Fear?" answers Louis: "feel then," putting
the man's hand on his heart. So stands Majesty in Red woollen Cap; black
Sansculottism weltering round him, far and wide, aimless, with in-
articulate dissonance, with cries of "Veto! Patriot Ministers!"

For the space of three hours or more! The National Assembly is adjourned;
tricolor Municipals avail almost nothing: Mayor Petion tarries absent;
Authority is none. The Queen with her Children and Sister Elizabeth, in
tears and terror not for themselves only, are sitting behind barricaded
tables and Grenadiers in an inner room. The Men in Black have all wisely
disappeared. Blind lake of Sansculottism welters stagnant through the
King's Chateau, for the space of three hours.

Nevertheless all things do end. Vergniaud arrives with Legislative
Deputation, the Evening Session having now opened. Mayor Petion has
arrived; is haranguing, 'lifted on the shoulders of two Grenadiers.'  In
this uneasy attitude and in others, at various places without and within,
Mayor Petion harangues; many men harangue: finally Commandant Santerre
defiles; passes out, with his Sansculottism, by the opposite side of the
Chateau. Passing through the room where the Queen, with an air of dignity
and sorrowful resignation, sat among the tables and Grenadiers, a woman
offers her too a Red Cap; she holds it in her hand, even puts it on the
little Prince Royal. "Madame," said Santerre, "this People loves you more
than you think."  (Toulongeon, ii. 173; Campan, ii. c. 20.)--About eight
o'clock the Royal Family fall into each other's arms amid 'torrents of
tears.'  Unhappy Family! Who would not weep for it, were there not a whole
world to be wept for?

Thus has the Age of Chivalry gone, and that of Hunger come. Thus does all-
needing Sansculottism look in the face of its Roi, Regulator, King or
Ableman; and find that he has nothing to give it. Thus do the two Parties,
brought face to face after long centuries, stare stupidly at one another,
This am I; but, Good Heaven, is that thou?--and depart, not knowing what to
make of it. And yet, Incongruities having recognised themselves to be
incongruous, something must be made of it. The Fates know what.

This is the world-famous Twentieth of June, more worthy to be called the
Procession of the Black Breeches. With which, what we had to say of this
First French biennial Parliament, and its products and activities, may
perhaps fitly enough terminate.

BOOK 2.VI.  

THE MARSEILLESE

Chapter 2.6.I.

Executive that does not act.

How could your paralytic National Executive be put 'in action,' in any
measure, by such a Twentieth of June as this? Quite contrariwise: a large
sympathy for Majesty so insulted arises every where; expresses itself in
Addresses, Petitions 'Petition of the Twenty Thousand inhabitants of
Paris,' and such like, among all Constitutional persons; a decided rallying
round the Throne.

Of which rallying it was thought King Louis might have made something.
However, he does make nothing of it, or attempt to make; for indeed his
views are lifted beyond domestic sympathy and rallying, over to Coblentz
mainly: neither in itself is the same sympathy worth much. It is sympathy
of men who believe still that the Constitution can march. Wherefore the
old discord and ferment, of Feuillant sympathy for Royalty, and Jacobin
sympathy for Fatherland, acting against each other from within; with terror
of Coblentz and Brunswick acting from without:--this discord and ferment
must hold on its course, till a catastrophe do ripen and come. One would
think, especially as Brunswick is near marching, such catastrophe cannot
now be distant. Busy, ye Twenty-five French Millions; ye foreign
Potentates, minatory Emigrants, German drill-serjeants; each do what his
hand findeth! Thou, O Reader, at such safe distance, wilt see what they
make of it among them.

Consider therefore this pitiable Twentieth of June as a futility; no
catastrophe, rather a catastasis, or heightening. Do not its Black
Breeches wave there, in the Historical Imagination, like a melancholy flag
of distress; soliciting help, which no mortal can give? Soliciting pity,
which thou wert hard-hearted not to give freely, to one and all! Other
such flags, or what are called Occurrences, and black or bright symbolic
Phenomena; will flit through the Historical Imagination: these, one after
one, let us note, with extreme brevity.

The first phenomenon is that of Lafayette at the Bar of the Assembly; after
a week and day. Promptly, on hearing of this scandalous Twentieth of June,
Lafayette has quitted his Command on the North Frontier, in better or worse
order; and got hither, on the 28th, to repress the Jacobins: not by Letter
now; but by oral Petition, and weight of character, face to face. The
august Assembly finds the step questionable; invites him meanwhile to the
honours of the sitting. (Moniteur, Seance du 28 Juin 1792.)  Other honour,
or advantage, there unhappily came almost none; the Galleries all growling;
fiery Isnard glooming; sharp Guadet not wanting in sarcasms.

And out of doors, when the sitting is over, Sieur Resson, keeper of the
Patriot Cafe in these regions, hears in the street a hurly-burly; steps
forth to look, he and his Patriot customers: it is Lafayette's carriage,
with a tumultuous escort of blue Grenadiers, Cannoneers, even Officers of
the Line, hurrahing and capering round it. They make a pause opposite
Sieur Resson's door; wag their plumes at him; nay shake their fists,
bellowing A bas les Jacobins; but happily pass on without onslaught. They
pass on, to plant a Mai before the General's door, and bully considerably.
All which the Sieur Resson cannot but report with sorrow, that night, in
the Mother Society. (Debats des Jacobins (Hist. Parl. xv. 235).)  But what
no Sieur Resson nor Mother Society can do more than guess is this, That a
council of rank Feuillants, your unabolished Staff of the Guard and who
else has status and weight, is in these very moments privily deliberating
at the General's: Can we not put down the Jacobins by force? Next day, a
Review shall be held, in the Tuileries Garden, of such as will turn out,
and try. Alas, says Toulongeon, hardly a hundred turned out. Put it off
till tomorrow, then, to give better warning. On the morrow, which is
Saturday, there turn out 'some thirty;' and depart shrugging their
shoulders! (Toulongeon, ii. 180. See also Dampmartin, ii. 161.)
Lafayette promptly takes carriage again; returns musing on my things.

The dust of Paris is hardly off his wheels, the summer Sunday is still
young, when Cordeliers in deputation pluck up that Mai of his: before
sunset, Patriots have burnt him in effigy. Louder doubt and louder rises,
in Section, in National Assembly, as to the legality of such unbidden Anti-
jacobin visit on the part of a General: doubt swelling and spreading all
over France, for six weeks or so: with endless talk about usurping
soldiers, about English Monk, nay about Cromwell: O thou Paris Grandison-
Cromwell!--What boots it? King Louis himself looked coldly on the
enterprize: colossal Hero of two Worlds, having weighed himself in the
balance, finds that he is become a gossamer Colossus, only some thirty
turning out.

In a like sense, and with a like issue, works our Department-Directory here
at Paris; who, on the 6th of July, take upon them to suspend Mayor Petion
and Procureur Manuel from all civic functions, for their conduct, replete,
as is alleged, with omissions and commissions, on that delicate Twentieth
of June. Virtuous Petion sees himself a kind of martyr, or pseudo-martyr,
threatened with several things; drawls out due heroical lamentation; to
which Patriot Paris and Patriot Legislative duly respond. King Louis and
Mayor Petion have already had an interview on that business of the
Twentieth; an interview and dialogue, distinguished by frankness on both
sides; ending on King Louis's side with the words, "Taisez-vous, Hold your
peace."

For the rest, this of suspending our Mayor does seem a mistimed measure.
By ill chance, it came out precisely on the day of that famous Baiser de
l'amourette, or miraculous reconciliatory Delilah-Kiss, which we spoke of
long ago. Which Delilah-Kiss was thereby quite hindered of effect. For
now his Majesty has to write, almost that same night, asking a reconciled
Assembly for advice! The reconciled Assembly will not advise; will not
interfere. The King confirms the suspension; then perhaps, but not till
then will the Assembly interfere, the noise of Patriot Paris getting loud.
Whereby your Delilah-Kiss, such was the destiny of Parliament First,
becomes a Philistine Battle!

Nay there goes a word that as many as Thirty of our chief Patriot Senators
are to be clapped in prison, by mittimus and indictment of Feuillant
Justices, Juges de Paix; who here in Paris were well capable of such a
thing. It was but in May last that Juge de Paix Lariviere, on complaint of
Bertrand-Moleville touching that Austrian Committee, made bold to launch
his mittimus against three heads of the Mountain, Deputies Bazire, Chabot,
Merlin, the Cordelier Trio; summoning them to appear before him, and shew
where that Austrian Committee was, or else suffer the consequences. Which
mittimus the Trio, on their side, made bold to fling in the fire: and
valiantly pleaded privilege of Parliament. So that, for his zeal without
knowledge, poor Justice Lariviere now sits in the prison of Orleans,
waiting trial from the Haute Cour there. Whose example, may it not deter
other rash Justices; and so this word of the Thirty arrestments continue a
word merely?

But on the whole, though Lafayette weighed so light, and has had his Mai
plucked up, Official Feuillantism falters not a whit; but carries its head
high, strong in the letter of the Law. Feuillants all of these men: a
Feuillant Directory; founding on high character, and such like; with Duke
de la Rochefoucault for President,--a thing which may prove dangerous for
him! Dim now is the once bright Anglomania of these admired Noblemen.
Duke de Liancourt offers, out of Normandy where he is Lord-Lieutenant, not
only to receive his Majesty, thinking of flight thither, but to lend him
money to enormous amounts. Sire, it is not a Revolt, it is a Revolution;
and truly no rose-water one! Worthier Noblemen were not in France nor in
Europe than those two: but the Time is crooked, quick-shifting, perverse;
what straightest course will lead to any goal, in it?

Another phasis which we note, in these early July days, is that of certain
thin streaks of Federate National Volunteers wending from various points
towards Paris, to hold a new Federation-Festival, or Feast of Pikes, on the
Fourteenth there. So has the National Assembly wished it, so has the
Nation willed it. In this way, perhaps, may we still have our Patriot Camp
in spite of Veto. For cannot these Federes, having celebrated their Feast
of Pikes, march on to Soissons; and, there being drilled and regimented,
rush to the Frontiers, or whither we like? Thus were the one Veto
cunningly eluded!

As indeed the other Veto, about Priests, is also like to be eluded; and
without much cunning. For Provincial Assemblies, in Calvados as one
instance, are proceeding on their own strength to judge and banish
Antinational Priests. Or still worse without Provincial Assembly, a
desperate People, as at Bourdeaux, can 'hang two of them on the Lanterne,'
on the way towards judgment. (Hist. Parl. xvi. 259.)  Pity for the spoken
Veto, when it cannot become an acted one!

It is true, some ghost of a War-minister, or Home-minister, for the time
being, ghost whom we do not name, does write to Municipalities and King's
Commanders, that they shall, by all conceivable methods, obstruct this
Federation, and even turn back the Federes by force of arms: a message
which scatters mere doubt, paralysis and confusion; irritates the poor
Legislature; reduces the Federes as we see, to thin streaks. But being
questioned, this ghost and the other ghosts, What it is then that they
propose to do for saving the country?--they answer, That they cannot tell;
that indeed they for their part have, this morning, resigned in a body; and
do now merely respectfully take leave of the helm altogether. With which
words they rapidly walk out of the Hall, sortent brusquement de la salle,
the 'Galleries cheering loudly,' the poor Legislature sitting 'for a good
while in silence!'  (Moniteur, Seance du Juillet 1792.)  Thus do Cabinet-
ministers themselves, in extreme cases, strike work; one of the strangest
omens. Other complete Cabinet-ministry there will not be; only fragments,
and these changeful, which never get completed; spectral Apparitions that
cannot so much as appear! King Louis writes that he now views this
Federation Feast with approval; and will himself have the pleasure to take
part in the same.

And so these thin streaks of Federes wend Parisward through a paralytic
France. Thin grim streaks; not thick joyful ranks, as of old to the first
Feast of Pikes! No: these poor Federates march now towards Austria and
Austrian Committee, towards jeopardy and forlorn hope; men of hard fortune
and temper, not rich in the world's goods. Municipalities, paralyzed by
War-ministers are shy of affording cash: it may be, your poor Federates
cannot arm themselves, cannot march, till the Daughter-Society of the place
open her pocket, and subscribe. There will not have arrived, at the set
day, Three thousand of them in all. And yet, thin and feeble as these
streaks of Federates seem, they are the only thing one discerns moving with
any clearness of aim, in this strange scene. Angry buz and simmer; uneasy
tossing and moaning of a huge France, all enchanted, spell-bound by
unmarching Constitution, into frightful conscious and unconscious Magnetic-
sleep; which frightful Magnetic-sleep must now issue soon in one of two
things: Death or Madness! The Federes carry mostly in their pocket some
earnest cry and Petition, to have the 'National Executive put in action;'
or as a step towards that, to have the King's Decheance, King's Forfeiture,
or at least his Suspension, pronounced. They shall be welcome to the
Legislative, to the Mother of Patriotism; and Paris will provide for their
lodging.

Decheance, indeed: and, what next? A France spell-free, a Revolution
saved; and any thing, and all things next! so answer grimly Danton and the
unlimited Patriots, down deep in their subterranean region of Plot, whither
they have now dived. Decheance, answers Brissot with the limited: And if
next the little Prince Royal were crowned, and some Regency of Girondins
and recalled Patriot Ministry set over him? Alas, poor Brissot; looking,
as indeed poor man does always, on the nearest morrow as his peaceable
promised land; deciding what must reach to the world's end, yet with an
insight that reaches not beyond his own nose! Wiser are the unlimited
subterranean Patriots, who with light for the hour itself, leave the rest
to the gods.

Or were it not, as we now stand, the probablest issue of all, that
Brunswick, in Coblentz, just gathering his huge limbs towards him to rise,
might arrive first; and stop both Decheance, and theorizing on it?
Brunswick is on the eve of marching; with Eighty Thousand, they say; fell
Prussians, Hessians, feller Emigrants: a General of the Great Frederick,
with such an Army. And our Armies? And our Generals? As for Lafayette,
on whose late visit a Committee is sitting and all France is jarring and
censuring, he seems readier to fight us than fight Brunswick. Luckner and
Lafayette pretend to be interchanging corps, and are making movements;
which Patriotism cannot understand. This only is very clear, that their
corps go marching and shuttling, in the interior of the country; much
nearer Paris than formerly! Luckner has ordered Dumouriez down to him,
down from Maulde, and the Fortified Camp there. Which order the many-
counselled Dumouriez, with the Austrians hanging close on him, he busy
meanwhile training a few thousands to stand fire and be soldiers, declares
that, come of it what will, he cannot obey. (Dumouriez, ii. 1, 5.)  Will a
poor Legislative, therefore, sanction Dumouriez; who applies to it, 'not
knowing whether there is any War-ministry?'  Or sanction Luckner and these
Lafayette movements?

The poor Legislative knows not what to do. It decrees, however, that the
Staff of the Paris Guard, and indeed all such Staffs, for they are
Feuillants mostly, shall be broken and replaced. It decrees earnestly in
what manner one can declare that the Country is in Danger. And finally, on
the 11th of July, the morrow of that day when the Ministry struck work, it
decrees that the Country be, with all despatch, declared in Danger.
Whereupon let the King sanction; let the Municipality take measures: if
such Declaration will do service, it need not fail.

In Danger, truly, if ever Country was! Arise, O Country; or be trodden
down to ignominious ruin! Nay, are not the chances a hundred to one that
no rising of the Country will save it; Brunswick, the Emigrants, and Feudal
Europe drawing nigh?

Chapter 2.6.II.

Let us march.

But to our minds the notablest of all these moving phenomena, is that of
Barbaroux's 'Six Hundred Marseillese who know how to die.'

Prompt to the request of Barbaroux, the Marseilles Municipality has got
these men together: on the fifth morning of July, the Townhall says,
"Marchez, abatez le Tyran, March, strike down the Tyrant;" (Dampmartin, ii.
183.) and they, with grim appropriate "Marchons," are marching. Long
journey, doubtful errand; Enfans de la Patrie, may a good genius guide you!
Their own wild heart and what faith it has will guide them: and is not
that the monition of some genius, better or worse? Five Hundred and
Seventeen able men, with Captains of fifties and tens; well armed all,
musket on shoulder, sabre on thigh: nay they drive three pieces of cannon;
for who knows what obstacles may occur? Municipalities there are,
paralyzed by War-minister; Commandants with orders to stop even Federation
Volunteers; good, when sound arguments will not open a Town-gate, if you
have a petard to shiver it! They have left their sunny Phocean City and
Sea-haven, with its bustle and its bloom: the thronging Course, with high-
frondent Avenues, pitchy dockyards, almond and olive groves, orange trees
on house-tops, and white glittering bastides that crown the hills, are all
behind them. They wend on their wild way, from the extremity of French
land, through unknown cities, toward an unknown destiny; with a purpose
that they know.

Much wondering at this phenomenon, and how, in a peaceable trading City, so
many householders or hearth-holders do severally fling down their crafts
and industrial tools; gird themselves with weapons of war, and set out on a
journey of six hundred miles to 'strike down the tyrant,'--you search in
all Historical Books, Pamphlets, and Newspapers, for some light on it:
unhappily without effect. Rumour and Terror precede this march; which
still echo on you; the march itself an unknown thing. Weber, in the back-
stairs of the Tuileries, has understood that they were Forcats, Galley-
slaves and mere scoundrels, these Marseillese; that, as they marched
through Lyons, the people shut their shops;--also that the number of them
was some Four Thousand. Equally vague is Blanc Gilli, who likewise murmurs
about Forcats and danger of plunder. (See Barbaroux, Memoires (Note in p.
40, 41.).)  Forcats they were not; neither was there plunder, or danger of
it. Men of regular life, or of the best-filled purse, they could hardly
be; the one thing needful in them was that they 'knew how to die.'  Friend
Dampmartin saw them, with his own eyes, march 'gradually' through his
quarters at Villefranche in the Beaujolais: but saw in the vaguest manner;
being indeed preoccupied, and himself minded for matching just then--across
the Rhine. Deep was his astonishment to think of such a march, without
appointment or arrangement, station or ration: for the rest it was 'the
same men he had seen formerly' in the troubles of the South; 'perfectly
civil;' though his soldiers could not be kept from talking a little with
them. (Dampmartin, ubi supra.)

So vague are all these; Moniteur, Histoire Parlementaire are as good as
silent: garrulous History, as is too usual, will say nothing where you
most wish her to speak! If enlightened Curiosity ever get sight of the
Marseilles Council-Books, will it not perhaps explore this strangest of
Municipal procedures; and feel called to fish up what of the Biographies,
creditable or discreditable, of these Five Hundred and Seventeen, the
stream of Time has not yet irrevocably swallowed?

As it is, these Marseillese remain inarticulate, undistinguishable in
feature; a blackbrowed Mass, full of grim fire, who wend there, in the hot
sultry weather: very singular to contemplate. They wend; amid the
infinitude of doubt and dim peril; they not doubtful: Fate and Feudal
Europe, having decided, come girdling in from without: they, having also
decided, do march within. Dusty of face, with frugal refreshment, they
plod onwards; unweariable, not to be turned aside. Such march will become
famous. The Thought, which works voiceless in this blackbrowed mass, an
inspired Tyrtaean Colonel, Rouget de Lille whom the Earth still holds,
(A.D. 1836.) has translated into grim melody and rhythm; into his Hymn or
March of the Marseillese: luckiest musical-composition ever promulgated.
The sound of which will make the blood tingle in men's veins; and whole
Armies and Assemblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with
hearts defiant of Death, Despot and Devil.

One sees well, these Marseillese will be too late for the Federation Feast.
In fact, it is not Champ-de-Mars Oaths that they have in view. They have
quite another feat to do: a paralytic National Executive to set in action.
They must 'strike down' whatsoever 'Tyrant,' or Martyr-Faineant, there may
be who paralyzes it; strike and be struck; and on the whole prosper and
know how to die.

Chapter 2.6.III.

Some Consolation to Mankind.

Of the Federation Feast itself we shall say almost nothing. There are
Tents pitched in the Champ-de-Mars; tent for National Assembly; tent for
Hereditary Representative,--who indeed is there too early, and has to wait
long in it. There are Eighty-three symbolical Departmental Trees-of-
Liberty; trees and mais enough: beautifullest of all these is one huge
mai, hung round with effete Scutcheons, Emblazonries and Genealogy-books;
nay better still, with Lawyers'-bags, 'sacs de procedure:' which shall be
burnt. The Thirty seat-rows of that famed Slope are again full; we have a
bright Sun; and all is marching, streamering and blaring: but what avails
it? Virtuous Mayor Petion, whom Feuillantism had suspended, was reinstated
only last night, by Decree of the Assembly. Men's humour is of the
sourest. Men's hats have on them, written in chalk, 'Vive Petion;' and
even, 'Petion or Death, Petion ou la Mort.'

Poor Louis, who has waited till five o'clock before the Assembly would
arrive, swears the National Oath this time, with a quilted cuirass under
his waistcoat which will turn pistol-bullets. (Campan, ii. c. 20; De
Stael, ii. c. 7.)  Madame de Stael, from that Royal Tent, stretches out the
neck in a kind of agony, lest the waving multitudes which receive him may
not render him back alive. No cry of Vive le Roi salutes the ear; cries
only of Vive Petion; Petion ou la Mort. The National Solemnity is as it
were huddled by; each cowering off almost before the evolutions are gone
through. The very Mai with its Scutcheons and Lawyers'-bags is forgotten,
stands unburnt; till 'certain Patriot Deputies,' called by the people, set
a torch to it, by way of voluntary after-piece. Sadder Feast of Pikes no
man ever saw.

Mayor Petion, named on hats, is at his zenith in this Federation; Lafayette
again is close upon his nadir. Why does the stormbell of Saint-Roch speak
out, next Saturday; why do the citizens shut their shops? (Moniteur,
Seance du 21 Juillet 1792.)  It is Sections defiling, it is fear of
effervescence. Legislative Committee, long deliberating on Lafayette and
that Anti-jacobin Visit of his, reports, this day, that there is 'not
ground for Accusation!'  Peace, ye Patriots, nevertheless; and let that
tocsin cease: the Debate is not finished, nor the Report accepted; but
Brissot, Isnard and the Mountain will sift it, and resift it, perhaps for
some three weeks longer.

So many bells, stormbells and noises do ring;--scarcely audible; one
drowning the other. For example: in this same Lafayette tocsin, of
Saturday, was there not withal some faint bob-minor, and Deputation of
Legislative, ringing the Chevalier Paul Jones to his long rest; tocsin or
dirge now all one to him! Not ten days hence Patriot Brissot, beshouted
this day by the Patriot Galleries, shall find himself begroaned by them, on
account of his limited Patriotism; nay pelted at while perorating, and 'hit
with two prunes.'  (Hist. Parl. xvi. 185.)  It is a distracted empty-
sounding world; of bob-minors and bob-majors, of triumph and terror, of
rise and fall!

The more touching is this other Solemnity, which happens on the morrow of
the Lafayette tocsin: Proclamation that the Country is in Danger. Not
till the present Sunday could such Solemnity be. The Legislative decreed
it almost a fortnight ago; but Royalty and the ghost of a Ministry held
back as they could. Now however, on this Sunday, 22nd day of July 1792, it
will hold back no longer; and the Solemnity in very deed is. Touching to
behold! Municipality and Mayor have on their scarfs; cannon-salvo booms
alarm from the Pont-Neuf, and single-gun at intervals all day. Guards are
mounted, scarfed Notabilities, Halberdiers, and a Cavalcade; with
streamers, emblematic flags; especially with one huge Flag, flapping
mournfully: Citoyens, la Patrie est en Danger. They roll through the
streets, with stern-sounding music, and slow rattle of hoofs: pausing at
set stations, and with doleful blast of trumpet, singing out through
Herald's throat, what the Flag says to the eye: "Citizens, the Country is
in Danger!"

Is there a man's heart that hears it without a thrill? The many-voiced
responsive hum or bellow of these multitudes is not of triumph; and yet it
is a sound deeper than triumph. But when the long Cavalcade and
Proclamation ended; and our huge Flag was fixed on the Pont Neuf, another
like it on the Hotel-de-Ville, to wave there till better days; and each
Municipal sat in the centre of his Section, in a Tent raised in some open
square, Tent surmounted with flags of Patrie en danger, and topmost of all
a Pike and Bonnet Rouge; and, on two drums in front of him, there lay a
plank-table, and on this an open Book, and a Clerk sat, like recording-
angel, ready to write the Lists, or as we say to enlist! O, then, it
seems, the very gods might have looked down on it. Young Patriotism,
Culottic and Sansculottic, rushes forward emulous: That is my name; name,
blood, and life, is all my Country's; why have I nothing more! Youths of
short stature weep that they are below size. Old men come forward, a son
in each hand. Mothers themselves will grant the son of their travail; send
him, though with tears. And the multitude bellows Vive la Patrie, far
reverberating. And fire flashes in the eyes of men;--and at eventide, your
Municipal returns to the Townhall, followed by his long train of volunteer
Valour; hands in his List: says proudly, looking round. This is my day's
harvest. (Tableau de la Revolution, para Patrie en Danger.)  They will
march, on the morrow, to Soissons; small bundle holding all their chattels.

So, with Vive la Patrie, Vive la Liberte, stone Paris reverberates like
Ocean in his caves; day after day, Municipals enlisting in tricolor Tent;
the Flag flapping on Pont Neuf and Townhall, Citoyens, la Patrie est en
Danger. Some Ten thousand fighters, without discipline but full of heart,
are on march in few days. The like is doing in every Town of France.--
Consider therefore whether the Country will want defenders, had we but a
National Executive? Let the Sections and Primary Assemblies, at any rate,
become Permanent, and sit continually in Paris, and over France, by
Legislative Decree dated Wednesday the 25th. (Moniteur, Seance du 25
Juillet 1792.)

Mark contrariwise how, in these very hours, dated the 25th, Brunswick
shakes himself 's'ebranle,' in Coblentz; and takes the road! Shakes
himself indeed; one spoken word becomes such a shaking. Successive,
simultaneous dirl of thirty thousand muskets shouldered; prance and jingle
of ten-thousand horsemen, fanfaronading Emigrants in the van; drum, kettle-
drum; noise of weeping, swearing; and the immeasurable lumbering clank of
baggage-waggons and camp-kettles that groan into motion: all this is
Brunswick shaking himself; not without all this does the one man march,
'covering a space of forty miles.'  Still less without his Manifesto,
dated, as we say, the 25th; a State-Paper worthy of attention!

By this Document, it would seem great things are in store for France. The
universal French People shall now have permission to rally round Brunswick
and his Emigrant Seigneurs; tyranny of a Jacobin Faction shall oppress them
no more; but they shall return, and find favour with their own good King;
who, by Royal Declaration (three years ago) of the Twenty-third of June,
said that he would himself make them happy. As for National Assembly, and
other Bodies of Men invested with some temporary shadow of authority, they
are charged to maintain the King's Cities and Strong Places intact, till
Brunswick arrive to take delivery of them. Indeed, quick submission may
extenuate many things; but to this end it must be quick. Any National
Guard or other unmilitary person found resisting in arms shall be 'treated
as a traitor;' that is to say, hanged with promptitude. For the rest, if
Paris, before Brunswick gets thither, offer any insult to the King: or,
for example, suffer a faction to carry the King away elsewhither; in that
case Paris shall be blasted asunder with cannon-shot and 'military
execution.'  Likewise all other Cities, which may witness, and not resist
to the uttermost, such forced-march of his Majesty, shall be blasted
asunder; and Paris and every City of them, starting-place, course and goal
of said sacrilegious forced-march, shall, as rubbish and smoking ruin, lie
there for a sign. Such vengeance were indeed signal, 'an insigne
vengeance:'--O Brunswick, what words thou writest and blusterest! In this
Paris, as in old Nineveh, are so many score thousands that know not the
right hand from the left, and also much cattle. Shall the very milk-cows,
hard-living cadgers'-asses, and poor little canary-birds die?

Nor is Royal and Imperial Prussian-Austrian Declaration wanting: setting
forth, in the amplest manner, their Sanssouci-Schonbrunn version of this
whole French Revolution, since the first beginning of it; and with what
grief these high heads have seen such things done under the Sun: however,
'as some small consolation to mankind,' (Annual Register (1792), p. 236.)
they do now despatch Brunswick; regardless of expense, as one might say, of
sacrifices on their own part; for is it not the first duty to console men?

Serene Highnesses, who sit there protocolling and manifestoing, and
consoling mankind! how were it if, for once in the thousand years, your
parchments, formularies, and reasons of state were blown to the four winds;
and Reality Sans-indispensables stared you, even you, in the face; and
Mankind said for itself what the thing was that would console it?--

Chapter 2.6.IV.

Subterranean.

But judge if there was comfort in this to the Sections all sitting
permanent; deliberating how a National Executive could be put in action!

High rises the response, not of cackling terror, but of crowing counter-
defiance, and Vive la Nation; young Valour streaming towards the Frontiers;
Patrie en Danger mutely beckoning on the Pont Neuf. Sections are busy, in
their permanent Deep; and down, lower still, works unlimited Patriotism,
seeking salvation in plot. Insurrection, you would say, becomes once more
the sacredest of duties? Committee, self-chosen, is sitting at the Sign of
the Golden Sun: Journalist Carra, Camille Desmoulins, Alsatian Westermann
friend of Danton, American Fournier of Martinique;--a Committee not unknown
to Mayor Petion, who, as an official person, must sleep with one eye open.
Not unknown to Procureur Manuel; least of all to Procureur-Substitute
Danton! He, wrapped in darkness, being also official, bears it on his
giant shoulder; cloudy invisible Atlas of the whole.

Much is invisible; the very Jacobins have their reticences. Insurrection
is to be: but when? This only we can discern, that such Federes as are
not yet gone to Soissons, as indeed are not inclined to go yet, "for
reasons," says the Jacobin President, "which it may be interesting not to
state," have got a Central Committee sitting close by, under the roof of
the Mother Society herself. Also, what in such ferment and danger of
effervescence is surely proper, the Forty-eight Sections have got their
Central Committee; intended 'for prompt communication.'  To which Central
Committee the Municipality, anxious to have it at hand, could not refuse an
Apartment in the Hotel-de-Ville.

Singular City! For overhead of all this, there is the customary baking and
brewing; Labour hammers and grinds. Frilled promenaders saunter under the
trees; white-muslin promenaderess, in green parasol, leaning on your arm.
Dogs dance, and shoeblacks polish, on that Pont Neuf itself, where
Fatherland is in danger. So much goes its course; and yet the course of
all things is nigh altering and ending.

Look at that Tuileries and Tuileries Garden. Silent all as Sahara; none
entering save by ticket! They shut their Gates, after the Day of the Black
Breeches; a thing they had the liberty to do. However, the National
Assembly grumbled something about Terrace of the Feuillants, how said
Terrace lay contiguous to the back entrance to their Salle, and was partly
National Property; and so now National Justice has stretched a Tricolor
Riband athwart, by way of boundary-line, respected with splenetic
strictness by all Patriots. It hangs there that Tricolor boundary-line;
carries 'satirical inscriptions on cards,' generally in verse; and all
beyond this is called Coblentz, and remains vacant; silent, as a fateful
Golgotha; sunshine and umbrage alternating on it in vain. Fateful Circuit;
what hope can dwell in it? Mysterious Tickets of Entry introduce
themselves; speak of Insurrection very imminent. Rivarol's Staff of Genius
had better purchase blunderbusses; Grenadier bonnets, red Swiss uniforms
may be useful. Insurrection will come; but likewise will it not be met?
Staved off, one may hope, till Brunswick arrive?

But consider withal if the Bourne-stones and Portable chairs remain silent;
if the Herald's College of Bill-Stickers sleep! Louvet's Sentinel warns
gratis on all walls; Sulleau is busy: People's-Friend Marat and King's-
Friend Royou croak and counter-croak. For the man Marat, though long
hidden since that Champ-de-Mars Massacre, is still alive. He has lain, who
knows in what Cellars; perhaps in Legendre's; fed by a steak of Legendre's
killing: but, since April, the bull-frog voice of him sounds again;
hoarsest of earthly cries. For the present, black terror haunts him: O
brave Barbaroux wilt thou not smuggle me to Marseilles, 'disguised as a
jockey?'  (Barbaroux, p. 60.)  In Palais-Royal and all public places, as we
read, there is sharp activity; private individuals haranguing that Valour
may enlist; haranguing that the Executive may be put in action. Royalist
journals ought to be solemnly burnt: argument thereupon; debates which
generally end in single-stick, coups de cannes. (Newspapers, Narratives
and Documents (Hist. Parl. xv. 240; xvi. 399.)  Or think of this; the hour
midnight; place Salle de Manege; august Assembly just adjourning:
'Citizens of both sexes enter in a rush exclaiming, Vengeance: they are
poisoning our Brothers;'--baking brayed-glass among their bread at
Soissons! Vergniaud has to speak soothing words, How Commissioners are
already sent to investigate this brayed-glass, and do what is needful
therein: till the rush of Citizens 'makes profound silence:'  and goes home
to its bed.

Such is Paris; the heart of a France like to it. Preternatural suspicion,
doubt, disquietude, nameless anticipation, from shore to shore:--and those
blackbrowed Marseillese, marching, dusty, unwearied, through the midst of
it; not doubtful they. Marching to the grim music of their hearts, they
consume continually the long road, these three weeks and more; heralded by
Terror and Rumour. The Brest Federes arrive on the 26th; through hurrahing
streets. Determined men are these also, bearing or not bearing the Sacred
Pikes of Chateau-Vieux; and on the whole decidedly disinclined for Soissons
as yet. Surely the Marseillese Brethren do draw nigher all days.

Chapter 2.6.V.

At Dinner.

It was a bright day for Charenton, that 29th of the month, when the
Marseillese Brethren actually came in sight. Barbaroux, Santerre and
Patriots have gone out to meet the grim Wayfarers. Patriot clasps dusty
Patriot to his bosom; there is footwashing and refection: 'dinner of
twelve hundred covers at the Blue Dial, Cadran Bleu;' and deep interior
consultation, that one wots not of. (Deux Amis, viii. 90-101.)
Consultation indeed which comes to little; for Santerre, with an open
purse, with a loud voice, has almost no head. Here however we repose this
night: on the morrow is public entry into Paris.

On which public entry the Day-Historians, Diurnalists, or Journalists as
they call themselves, have preserved record enough. How Saint-Antoine male
and female, and Paris generally, gave brotherly welcome, with bravo and
hand-clapping, in crowded streets; and all passed in the peaceablest
manner;--except it might be our Marseillese pointed out here and there a
riband-cockade, and beckoned that it should be snatched away, and exchanged
for a wool one; which was done. How the Mother Society in a body has come
as far as the Bastille-ground, to embrace you. How you then wend onwards,
triumphant, to the Townhall, to be embraced by Mayor Petion; to put down
your muskets in the Barracks of Nouvelle France, not far off;--then towards
the appointed Tavern in the Champs Elysees to enjoy a frugal Patriot
repast. (Hist. Parl. xvi. 196. See Barbaroux, p. 51-5.)

Of all which the indignant Tuileries may, by its Tickets of Entry, have
warning. Red Swiss look doubly sharp to their Chateau-Grates;--though
surely there is no danger? Blue Grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas
Section are on duty there this day: men of Agio, as we have seen; with
stuffed purses, riband-cockades; among whom serves Weber. A party of these
latter, with Captains, with sundry Feuillant Notabilities, Moreau de Saint-
Mery of the three thousand orders, and others, have been dining, much more
respectably, in a Tavern hard by. They have dined, and are now drinking
Loyal-Patriotic toasts; while the Marseillese, National-Patriotic merely,
are about sitting down to their frugal covers of delf. How it happened
remains to this day undemonstrable: but the external fact is, certain of
these Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers do issue from their Tavern; perhaps
touched, surely not yet muddled with any liquor they have had;--issue in
the professed intention of testifying to the Marseillese, or to the
multitude of Paris Patriots who stroll in these spaces, That they, the
Filles-Saint-Thomas men, if well seen into, are not a whit less Patriotic
than any other class of men whatever.

It was a rash errand! For how can the strolling multitudes credit such a
thing; or do other indeed than hoot at it, provoking, and provoked;--till
Grenadier sabres stir in the scabbard, and a sharp shriek rises: "A nous
Marseillais, Help Marseillese!"  Quick as lightning, for the frugal repast
is not yet served, that Marseillese Tavern flings itself open: by door, by
window; running, bounding, vault forth the Five hundred and Seventeen
undined Patriots; and, sabre flashing from thigh, are on the scene of
controversy. Will ye parley, ye Grenadier Captains and official Persons;
'with faces grown suddenly pale,' the Deponents say? (Moniteur, Seances du
30, du 31 Juillet 1792 (Hist. Parl. xvi. 197-210.)  Advisabler were instant
moderately swift retreat! The Filles-Saint-Thomas retreat, back foremost;
then, alas, face foremost, at treble-quick time; the Marseillese, according
to a Deponent, "clearing the fences and ditches after them like lions:
Messieurs, it was an imposing spectacle."

Thus they retreat, the Marseillese following. Swift and swifter, towards
the Tuileries: where the Drawbridge receives the bulk of the fugitives;
and, then suddenly drawn up, saves them; or else the green mud of the Ditch
does it. The bulk of them; not all; ah, no! Moreau de Saint-Mery for
example, being too fat, could not fly fast; he got a stroke, flat-stroke
only, over the shoulder-blades, and fell prone;--and disappears there from
the History of the Revolution. Cuts also there were, pricks in the
posterior fleshy parts; much rending of skirts, and other discrepant waste.
But poor Sub-lieutenant Duhamel, innocent Change-broker, what a lot for
him! He turned on his pursuer, or pursuers, with a pistol; he fired and
missed; drew a second pistol, and again fired and missed; then ran:
unhappily in vain. In the Rue Saint-Florentin, they clutched him; thrust
him through, in red rage: that was the end of the New Era, and of all
Eras, to poor Duhamel.

Pacific readers can fancy what sort of grace-before-meat this was to frugal
Patriotism. Also how the Battalion of the Filles-Saint-Thomas 'drew out in
arms,' luckily without further result; how there was accusation at the Bar
of the Assembly, and counter-accusation and defence; Marseillese
challenging the sentence of free jury court,--which never got to a
decision. We ask rather, What the upshot of all these distracted wildly
accumulating things may, by probability, be? Some upshot; and the time
draws nigh! Busy are Central Committees, of Federes at the Jacobins
Church, of Sections at the Townhall; Reunion of Carra, Camille and Company
at the Golden Sun. Busy: like submarine deities, or call them mud-gods,
working there in the deep murk of waters: till the thing be ready.

And how your National Assembly, like a ship waterlogged, helmless, lies
tumbling; the Galleries, of shrill Women, of Federes with sabres, bellowing
down on it, not unfrightful;--and waits where the waves of chance may
please to strand it; suspicious, nay on the Left side, conscious, what
submarine Explosion is meanwhile a-charging! Petition for King's
Forfeiture rises often there: Petition from Paris Section, from Provincial
Patriot Towns; From Alencon, Briancon, and 'the Traders at the Fair of
Beaucaire.'  Or what of these? On the 3rd of August, Mayor Petion and the
Municipality come petitioning for Forfeiture: they openly, in their
tricolor Municipal scarfs. Forfeiture is what all Patriots now want and
expect. All Brissotins want Forfeiture; with the little Prince Royal for
King, and us for Protector over him. Emphatic Federes asks the
legislature: "Can you save us, or not?"  Forty-seven Seconds have agreed
to Forfeiture; only that of the Filles-Saint-Thomas pretending to disagree.
Nay Section Mauconseil declares Forfeiture to be, properly speaking, come;
Mauconseil for one 'does from this day,' the last of July, 'cease
allegiance to Louis,' and take minute of the same before all men. A thing
blamed aloud; but which will be praised aloud; and the name Mauconseil, of
Ill-counsel, be thenceforth changed to Bonconseil, of Good-counsel.

President Danton, in the Cordeliers Section, does another thing: invites
all Passive Citizens to take place among the Active in Section-business,
one peril threatening all. Thus he, though an official person; cloudy
Atlas of the whole. Likewise he manages to have that blackbrowed Battalion
of Marseillese shifted to new Barracks, in his own region of the remote
South-East. Sleek Chaumette, cruel Billaud, Deputy Chabot the Disfrocked,
Huguenin with the tocsin in his heart, will welcome them there. Wherefore,
again and again: "O Legislators, can you save us or not?"  Poor
Legislators; with their Legislature waterlogged, volcanic Explosion
charging under it! Forfeiture shall be debated on the ninth day of August;
that miserable business of Lafayette may be expected to terminate on the
eighth.

Or will the humane Reader glance into the Levee-day of Sunday the fifth?
The last Levee! Not for a long time, 'never,' says Bertrand-Moleville, had
a Levee been so brilliant, at least so crowded. A sad presaging interest
sat on every face; Bertrand's own eyes were filled with tears. For,
indeed, outside of that Tricolor Riband on the Feuillants Terrace,
Legislature is debating, Sections are defiling, all Paris is astir this
very Sunday, demanding Decheance. (Hist. Parl. xvi. 337-9.)  Here,
however, within the riband, a grand proposal is on foot, for the hundredth
time, of carrying his Majesty to Rouen and the Castle of Gaillon. Swiss at
Courbevoye are in readiness; much is ready; Majesty himself seems almost
ready. Nevertheless, for the hundredth time, Majesty, when near the point
of action, draws back; writes, after one has waited, palpitating, an
endless summer day, that 'he has reason to believe the Insurrection is not
so ripe as you suppose.'  Whereat Bertrand-Moleville breaks forth 'into
extremity at one of spleen and despair, d'humeur et de desespoir.'
(Bertrand-Moleville, Memoires, ii. 129.)

Chapter 2.6.VI.

The Steeples at Midnight.

For, in truth, the Insurrection is just about ripe. Thursday is the ninth
of the month August: if Forfeiture be not pronounced by the Legislature
that day, we must pronounce it ourselves.

Legislature? A poor waterlogged Legislature can pronounce nothing. On
Wednesday the eighth, after endless oratory once again, they cannot even
pronounce Accusation again Lafayette; but absolve him,--hear it,
Patriotism!--by a majority of two to one. Patriotism hears it; Patriotism,
hounded on by Prussian Terror, by Preternatural Suspicion, roars tumultuous
round the Salle de Manege, all day; insults many leading Deputies, of the
absolvent Right-side; nay chases them, collars them with loud menace:
Deputy Vaublanc, and others of the like, are glad to take refuge in
Guardhouses, and escape by the back window. And so, next day, there is
infinite complaint; Letter after Letter from insulted Deputy; mere
complaint, debate and self-cancelling jargon: the sun of Thursday sets
like the others, and no Forfeiture pronounced. Wherefore in fine, To your
tents, O Israel!

The Mother-Society ceases speaking; groups cease haranguing: Patriots,
with closed lips now, 'take one another's arm;' walk off, in rows, two and
two, at a brisk business-pace; and vanish afar in the obscure places of the
East. (Deux Amis, viii. 129-88.)  Santerre is ready; or we will make him
ready. Forty-seven of the Forty-eight Sections are ready; nay Filles-
Saint-Thomas itself turns up the Jacobin side of it, turns down the
Feuillant side of it, and is ready too. Let the unlimited Patriot look to
his weapon, be it pike, be it firelock; and the Brest brethren, above all,
the blackbrowed Marseillese prepare themselves for the extreme hour!
Syndic Roederer knows, and laments or not as the issue may turn, that 'five
thousand ball-cartridges, within these few days, have been distributed to
Federes, at the Hotel-de-Ville.'  (Roederer a la Barre (Seance du 9 Aout
(in Hist. Parl. xvi. 393.)

And ye likewise, gallant gentlemen, defenders of Royalty, crowd ye on your
side to the Tuileries. Not to a Levee: no, to a Couchee: where much will
be put to bed. Your Tickets of Entry are needful; needfuller your
blunderbusses!--They come and crowd, like gallant men who also know how to
die: old Maille the Camp-Marshal has come, his eyes gleaming once again,
though dimmed by the rheum of almost four-score years. Courage, Brothers!
We have a thousand red Swiss; men stanch of heart, steadfast as the granite
of their Alps. National Grenadiers are at least friends of Order;
Commandant Mandat breathes loyal ardour, will "answer for it on his head."
Mandat will, and his Staff; for the Staff, though there stands a doom and
Decree to that effect, is happily never yet dissolved.

Commandant Mandat has corresponded with Mayor Petion; carries a written
Order from him these three days, to repel force by force. A squadron on
the Pont Neuf with cannon shall turn back these Marseillese coming across
the River: a squadron at the Townhall shall cut Saint-Antoine in two, 'as
it issues from the Arcade Saint-Jean;' drive one half back to the obscure
East, drive the other half forward through 'the Wickets of the Louvre.'
Squadrons not a few, and mounted squadrons; squadrons in the Palais Royal,
in the Place Vendome: all these shall charge, at the right moment; sweep
this street, and then sweep that. Some new Twentieth of June we shall
have; only still more ineffectual? Or probably the Insurrection will not
dare to rise at all? Mandat's Squadrons, Horse-Gendarmerie and blue Guards
march, clattering, tramping; Mandat's Cannoneers rumble. Under cloud of
night; to the sound of his generale, which begins drumming when men should
go to bed. It is the 9th night of August, 1792.

On the other hand, the Forty-eight Sections correspond by swift messengers;
are choosing each their 'three Delegates with full powers.'  Syndic
Roederer, Mayor Petion are sent for to the Tuileries: courageous
Legislators, when the drum beats danger, should repair to their Salle.
Demoiselle Theroigne has on her grenadier-bonnet, short-skirted riding-
habit; two pistols garnish her small waist, and sabre hangs in baldric by
her side.

Such a game is playing in this Paris Pandemonium, or City of All the
Devils!--And yet the Night, as Mayor Petion walks here in the Tuileries
Garden, 'is beautiful and calm;' Orion and the Pleiades glitter down quite
serene. Petion has come forth, the 'heat' inside was so oppressive.
(Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante Jours: Recit de Petion. Townhall
Records, &c. (in Hist. Parl. xvi. 399-466.)  Indeed, his Majesty's
reception of him was of the roughest; as it well might be. And now there
is no outgate; Mandat's blue Squadrons turn you back at every Grate; nay
the Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers give themselves liberties of tongue, How
a virtuous Mayor 'shall pay for it, if there be mischief,' and the like;
though others again are full of civility. Surely if any man in France is
in straights this night, it is Mayor Petion: bound, under pain of death,
one may say, to smile dexterously with the one side of his face, and weep
with the other;--death if he do it not dexterously enough! Not till four
in the morning does a National Assembly, hearing of his plight, summon him
over 'to give account of Paris;' of which he knows nothing: whereby
however he shall get home to bed, and only his gilt coach be left.
Scarcely less delicate is Syndic Roederer's task; who must wait whether he
will lament or not, till he see the issue. Janus Bifrons, or Mr. Facing-
both-ways, as vernacular Bunyan has it! They walk there, in the meanwhile,
these two Januses, with others of the like double conformation; and 'talk
of indifferent matters.'

Roederer, from time to time, steps in; to listen, to speak; to send for the
Department-Directory itself, he their Procureur Syndic not seeing how to
act. The Apartments are all crowded; some seven hundred gentlemen in black
elbowing, bustling; red Swiss standing like rocks; ghost, or partial-ghost
of a Ministry, with Roederer and advisers, hovering round their Majesties;
old Marshall Maille kneeling at the King's feet, to say, He and these
gallant gentlemen are come to die for him. List! through the placid
midnight; clang of the distant stormbell! So, in very sooth; steeple after
steeple takes up the wondrous tale. Black Courtiers listen at the windows,
opened for air; discriminate the steeple-bells: (Roederer, ubi supra.)
this is the tocsin of Saint-Roch; that again, is it not Saint-Jacques,
named de la Boucherie? Yes, Messieurs! Or even Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois,
hear ye it not? The same metal that rang storm, two hundred and twenty
years ago; but by a Majesty's order then; on Saint-Bartholomew's Eve (24th
August, 1572.)--So go the steeple-bells; which Courtiers can discriminate.
Nay, meseems, there is the Townhall itself; we know it by its sound! Yes,
Friends, that is the Townhall; discoursing so, to the Night. Miraculously;
by miraculous metal-tongue and man's arm: Marat himself, if you knew it,
is pulling at the rope there! Marat is pulling; Robespierre lies deep,
invisible for the next forty hours; and some men have heart, and some have
as good as none, and not even frenzy will give them any.

What struggling confusion, as the issue slowly draws on; and the doubtful
Hour, with pain and blind struggle, brings forth its Certainty, never to be
abolished!--The Full-power Delegates, three from each Section, a Hundred
and forty-four in all, got gathered at the Townhall, about midnight.
Mandat's Squadron, stationed there, did not hinder their entering: are
they not the 'Central Committee of the Sections' who sit here usually;
though in greater number tonight? They are there: presided by Confusion,
Irresolution, and the Clack of Tongues. Swift scouts fly; Rumour buzzes,
of black Courtiers, red Swiss, of Mandat and his Squadrons that shall
charge. Better put off the Insurrection? Yes, put it off. Ha, hark!
Saint-Antoine booming out eloquent tocsin, of its own accord!--Friends, no:
ye cannot put off the Insurrection; but must put it on, and live with it,
or die with it.

Swift now, therefore: let these actual Old Municipals, on sight of the
Full-powers, and mandate of the Sovereign elective People, lay down their
functions; and this New Hundred and forty-four take them up! Will ye nill
ye, worthy Old Municipals, ye must go. Nay is it not a happiness for many
a Municipal that he can wash his hands of such a business; and sit there
paralyzed, unaccountable, till the Hour do bring forth; or even go home to
his night's rest? (Section Documents, Townhall Documents (Hist. Parl. ubi
supra).)  Two only of the Old, or at most three, we retain Mayor Petion,
for the present walking in the Tuileries; Procureur Manuel; Procureur
Substitute Danton, invisible Atlas of the whole. And so, with our Hundred
and forty-four, among whom are a Tocsin-Huguenin, a Billaud, a Chaumette;
and Editor-Talliens, and Fabre d'Eglantines, Sergents, Panises; and in
brief, either emergent, or else emerged and full-blown, the entire Flower
of unlimited Patriotism: have we not, as by magic, made a New
Municipality; ready to act in the unlimited manner; and declare itself
roundly, 'in a State of Insurrection!'--First of all, then, be Commandant
Mandat sent for, with that Mayor's-Order of his; also let the New
Municipals visit those Squadrons that were to charge; and let the stormbell
ring its loudest;--and, on the whole, Forward, ye Hundred and forty-four;
retreat is now none for you!

Reader, fancy not, in thy languid way, that Insurrection is easy.
Insurrection is difficult: each individual uncertain even of his next
neighbour; totally uncertain of his distant neighbours, what strength is
with him, what strength is against him; certain only that, in case of
failure, his individual portion is the gallows! Eight hundred thousand
heads, and in each of them a separate estimate of these uncertainties, a
separate theorem of action conformable to that: out of so many
uncertainties, does the certainty, and inevitable net-result never to be
abolished, go on, at all moments, bodying itself forth;--leading thee also
towards civic-crowns or an ignominious noose.

Could the Reader take an Asmodeus's Flight, and waving open all roofs and
privacies, look down from the Tower of Notre Dame, what a Paris were it!
Of treble-voice whimperings or vehemence, of bass-voice growlings,
dubitations; Courage screwing itself to desperate defiance; Cowardice
trembling silent within barred doors;--and all round, Dulness calmly
snoring; for much Dulness, flung on its mattresses, always sleeps. O,
between the clangour of these high-storming tocsins and that snore of
Dulness, what a gamut: of trepidation, excitation, desperation; and above
it mere Doubt, Danger, Atropos and Nox!

Fighters of this section draw out; hear that the next Section does not; and
thereupon draw in. Saint-Antoine, on this side the River, is uncertain of
Saint-Marceau on that. Steady only is the snore of Dulness, are the Six
Hundred Marseillese that know how to die! Mandat, twice summoned to the
Townhall, has not come. Scouts fly incessant, in distracted haste; and the
many-whispering voices of Rumour. Theroigne and unofficial Patriots flit,
dim-visible, exploratory, far and wide; like Night-birds on the wing. Of
Nationals some Three thousand have followed Mandat and his generale; the
rest follow each his own theorem of the uncertainties: theorem, that one
should march rather with Saint-Antoine; innumerable theorems, that in such
a case the wholesomest were sleep. And so the drums beat, in made fits,
and the stormbells peal. Saint-Antoine itself does but draw out and draw
in; Commandant Santerre, over there, cannot believe that the Marseillese
and Saint Marceau will march. Thou laggard sonorous Beer-vat, with the
loud voice and timber head, is it time now to palter? Alsatian Westermann
clutches him by the throat with drawn sabre: whereupon the Timber-headed
believes. In this manner wanes the slow night; amid fret, uncertainty and
tocsin; all men's humour rising to the hysterical pitch; and nothing done.

However, Mandat, on the third summons does come;--come, unguarded;
astonished to find the Municipality new. They question him straitly on
that Mayor's-Order to resist force by force; on that strategic scheme of
cutting Saint-Antoine in two halves: he answers what he can: they think
it were right to send this strategic National Commandant to the Abbaye
Prison, and let a Court of Law decide on him. Alas, a Court of Law, not
Book-Law but primeval Club-Law, crowds and jostles out of doors; all
fretted to the hysterical pitch; cruel as Fear, blind as the Night: such
Court of Law, and no other, clutches poor Mandat from his constables; beats
him down, massacres him, on the steps of the Townhall. Look to it, ye new
Municipals; ye People, in a state of Insurrection! Blood is shed, blood
must be answered for;--alas, in such hysterical humour, more blood will
flow: for it is as with the Tiger in that; he has only to begin.

Seventeen Individuals have been seized in the Champs Elysees, by
exploratory Patriotism; they flitting dim-visible, by it flitting dim-
visible. Ye have pistols, rapiers, ye Seventeen? One of those accursed
'false Patrols;' that go marauding, with Anti-National intent; seeking what
they can spy, what they can spill! The Seventeen are carried to the
nearest Guard-house; eleven of them escape by back passages. "How is
this?"  Demoiselle Theroigne appears at the front entrance, with sabre,
pistols, and a train; denounces treasonous connivance; demands, seizes, the
remaining six, that the justice of the People be not trifled with. Of
which six two more escape in the whirl and debate of the Club-Law Court;
the last unhappy Four are massacred, as Mandat was: Two Ex-Bodyguards; one
dissipated Abbe; one Royalist Pamphleteer, Sulleau, known to us by name,
Able Editor, and wit of all work. Poor Sulleau: his Acts of the Apostles,
and brisk Placard-Journals (for he was an able man) come to Finis, in this
manner; and questionable jesting issues suddenly in horrid earnest! Such
doings usher in the dawn of the Tenth of August, 1792.

Or think what a night the poor National Assembly has had: sitting there,
'in great paucity,' attempting to debate;--quivering and shivering;
pointing towards all the thirty-two azimuths at once, as the magnet-needle
does when thunderstorm is in the air! If the Insurrection come? If it
come, and fail? Alas, in that case, may not black Courtiers, with
blunderbusses, red Swiss with bayonets rush over, flushed with victory, and
ask us: Thou undefinable, waterlogged, self-distractive, self-destructive
Legislative, what dost thou here unsunk?--Or figure the poor National
Guards, bivouacking 'in temporary tents' there; or standing ranked,
shifting from leg to leg, all through the weary night; New tricolor
Municipals ordering one thing, old Mandat Captains ordering another!
Procureur Manuel has ordered the cannons to be withdrawn from the Pont
Neuf; none ventured to disobey him. It seemed certain, then, the old Staff
so long doomed has finally been dissolved, in these hours; and Mandat is
not our Commandant now, but Santerre? Yes, friends: Santerre henceforth,-
-surely Mandat no more! The Squadrons that were to charge see nothing
certain, except that they are cold, hungry, worn down with watching; that
it were sad to slay French brothers; sadder to be slain by them. Without
the Tuileries Circuit, and within it, sour uncertain humour sways these
men: only the red Swiss stand steadfast. Them their officers refresh now
with a slight wetting of brandy; wherein the Nationals, too far gone for
brandy, refuse to participate.

King Louis meanwhile had laid him down for a little sleep: his wig when he
reappeared had lost the powder on one side. (Roederer, ubi supra.)  Old
Marshal Maille and the gentlemen in black rise always in spirits, as the
Insurrection does not rise: there goes a witty saying now, "Le tocsin ne
rend pas."  The tocsin, like a dry milk-cow, does not yield. For the rest,
could one not proclaim Martial Law? Not easily; for now, it seems, Mayor
Petion is gone. On the other hand, our Interim Commandant, poor Mandat
being off, 'to the Hotel-de-Ville,' complains that so many Courtiers in
black encumber the service, are an eyesorrow to the National Guards. To
which her Majesty answers with emphasis, That they will obey all, will
suffer all, that they are sure men these.

And so the yellow lamplight dies out in the gray of morning, in the King's
Palace, over such a scene. Scene of jostling, elbowing, of confusion, and
indeed conclusion, for the thing is about to end. Roederer and spectral
Ministers jostle in the press; consult, in side cabinets, with one or with
both Majesties. Sister Elizabeth takes the Queen to the window: "Sister,
see what a beautiful sunrise," right over the Jacobins church and that
quarter! How happy if the tocsin did not yield! But Mandat returns not;
Petion is gone: much hangs wavering in the invisible Balance. About five
o'clock, there rises from the Garden a kind of sound; as of a shout to
which had become a howl, and instead of Vive le Roi were ending in Vive la
Nation. "Mon Dieu!" ejaculates a spectral Minister, "what is he doing down
there?"  For it is his Majesty, gone down with old Marshal Maille to review
the troops; and the nearest companies of them answer so. Her Majesty
bursts into a stream of tears. Yet on stepping from the cabinet her eyes
are dry and calm, her look is even cheerful. 'The Austrian lip, and the
aquiline nose, fuller than usual, gave to her countenance,' says Peltier,
(In Toulongeon, ii. 241.) 'something of Majesty, which they that did not
see her in these moments cannot well have an idea of.'  O thou Theresa's
Daughter!

King Louis enters, much blown with the fatigue; but for the rest with his
old air of indifference. Of all hopes now surely the joyfullest were, that
the tocsin did not yield.

Chapter 2.6.VII.

The Swiss.

Unhappy Friends, the tocsin does yield, has yielded! Lo ye, how with the
first sun-rays its Ocean-tide, of pikes and fusils, flows glittering from
the far East;--immeasurable; born of the Night! They march there, the grim
host; Saint-Antoine on this side of the River; Saint-Marceau on that, the
blackbrowed Marseillese in the van. With hum, and grim murmur, far-heard;
like the Ocean-tide, as we say: drawn up, as if by Luna and Influences,
from the great Deep of Waters, they roll gleaming on; no King, Canute or
Louis, can bid them roll back. Wide-eddying side-currents, of onlookers,
roll hither and thither, unarmed, not voiceless; they, the steel host, roll
on. New-Commandant Santerre, indeed, has taken seat at the Townhall; rests
there, in his half-way-house. Alsatian Westermann, with flashing sabre,
does not rest; nor the Sections, nor the Marseillese, nor Demoiselle
Theroigne; but roll continually on.

And now, where are Mandat's Squadrons that were to charge? Not a Squadron
of them stirs: or they stir in the wrong direction, out of the way; their
officers glad that they will even do that. It is to this hour uncertain
whether the Squadron on the Pont Neuf made the shadow of resistance, or did
not make the shadow: enough, the blackbrowed Marseillese, and Saint-
Marceau following them, do cross without let; do cross, in sure hope now of
Saint-Antoine and the rest; do billow on, towards the Tuileries, where
their errand is. The Tuileries, at sound of them, rustles responsive: the
red Swiss look to their priming; Courtiers in black draw their
blunderbusses, rapiers, poniards, some have even fire-shovels; every man
his weapon of war.

Judge if, in these circumstances, Syndic Roederer felt easy! Will the kind
Heavens open no middle-course of refuge for a poor Syndic who halts between
two? If indeed his Majesty would consent to go over to the Assembly! His
Majesty, above all her Majesty, cannot agree to that. Did her Majesty
answer the proposal with a "Fi donc;" did she say even, she would be nailed
to the walls sooner? Apparently not. It is written also that she offered
the King a pistol; saying, Now or else never was the time to shew himself.
Close eye-witnesses did not see it, nor do we. That saw only that she was
queenlike, quiet; that she argued not, upbraided not, with the Inexorable;
but, like Caesar in the Capitol, wrapped her mantle, as it beseems Queens
and Sons of Adam to do. But thou, O Louis! of what stuff art thou at all?
Is there no stroke in thee, then, for Life and Crown? The silliest hunted
deer dies not so. Art thou the languidest of all mortals; or the mildest-
minded? Thou art the worst-starred.

The tide advances; Syndic Roederer's and all men's straits grow straiter
and straiter. Fremescent clangor comes from the armed Nationals in the
Court; far and wide is the infinite hubbub of tongues. What counsel? And
the tide is now nigh! Messengers, forerunners speak hastily through the
outer Grates; hold parley sitting astride the walls. Syndic Roederer goes
out and comes in. Cannoneers ask him: Are we to fire against the people?
King's Ministers ask him: Shall the King's House be forced? Syndic
Roederer has a hard game to play. He speaks to the Cannoneers with
eloquence, with fervour; such fervour as a man can, who has to blow hot and
cold in one breath. Hot and cold, O Roederer? We, for our part, cannot
live and die! The Cannoneers, by way of answer, fling down their
linstocks.--Think of this answer, O King Louis, and King's Ministers: and
take a poor Syndic's safe middle-course, towards the Salle de Manege. King
Louis sits, his hands leant on knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space
fixedly on Syndic Roederer; then answers, looking over his shoulder to the
Queen: Marchons! They march; King Louis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth, the two
royal children and governess: these, with Syndic Roederer, and Officials
of the Department; amid a double rank of National Guards. The men with
blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully; but
hear only these words from Syndic Roederer: "The King is going to the
Assembly; make way."  It has struck eight, on all clocks, some minutes ago:
the King has left the Tuileries--for ever.

O ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, for what a cause are ye
to spend and be spent! Look out from the western windows, ye may see King
Louis placidly hold on his way; the poor little Prince Royal 'sportfully
kicking the fallen leaves.'  Fremescent multitude on the Terrace of the
Feuillants whirls parallel to him; one man in it, very noisy, with a long
pole: will they not obstruct the outer Staircase, and back-entrance of the
Salle, when it comes to that? King's Guards can go no further than the
bottom step there. Lo, Deputation of Legislators come out; he of the long
pole is stilled by oratory; Assembly's Guards join themselves to King's
Guards, and all may mount in this case of necessity; the outer Staircase is
free, or passable. See, Royalty ascends; a blue Grenadier lifts the poor
little Prince Royal from the press; Royalty has entered in. Royalty has
vanished for ever from your eyes.--And ye? Left standing there, amid the
yawning abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection; without course; without
command: if ye perish it must be as more than martyrs, as martyrs who are
now without a cause! The black Courtiers disappear mostly; through such
issues as they can. The poor Swiss know not how to act: one duty only is
clear to them, that of standing by their post; and they will perform that.

But the glittering steel tide has arrived; it beats now against the Chateau
barriers, and eastern Courts; irresistible, loud-surging far and wide;--
breaks in, fills the Court of the Carrousel, blackbrowed Marseillese in the
van. King Louis gone, say you; over to the Assembly! Well and good: but
till the Assembly pronounce Forfeiture of him, what boots it? Our post is
in that Chateau or stronghold of his; there till then must we continue.
Think, ye stanch Swiss, whether it were good that grim murder began, and
brothers blasted one another in pieces for a stone edifice?--Poor Swiss!
they know not how to act: from the southern windows, some fling
cartridges, in sign of brotherhood; on the eastern outer staircase, and
within through long stairs and corridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable
and yet refusing to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German;
Marseillese plead, in hot Provencal speech and pantomime; stunning hubbub
pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss stand fast, peaceable
and yet immovable; red granite pier in that waste-flashing sea of steel.

Who can help the inevitable issue; Marseillese and all France, on this
side; granite Swiss on that? The pantomime grows hotter and hotter;
Marseillese sabres flourishing by way of action; the Swiss brow also
clouding itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its firelock to the cock. And
hark! high-thundering above all the din, three Marseillese cannon from the
Carrousel, pointed by a gunner of bad aim, come rattling over the roofs!
Ye Swiss, therefore: Fire! The Swiss fire; by volley, by platoon, in
rolling-fire: Marseillese men not a few, and 'a tall man that was louder
than any,' lie silent, smashed, upon the pavement;--not a few Marseillese,
after the long dusty march, have made halt here. The Carrousel is void;
the black tide recoiling; 'fugitives rushing as far as Saint-Antoine before
they stop.'  The Cannoneers without linstock have squatted invisible, and
left their cannon; which the Swiss seize.

Think what a volley: reverberating doomful to the four corners of Paris,
and through all hearts; like the clang of Bellona's thongs! The
blackbrowed Marseillese, rallying on the instant, have become black Demons
that know how to die. Nor is Brest behind-hand; nor Alsatian Westermann;
Demoiselle Theroigne is Sybil Theroigne: Vengeance Victoire,ou la mort!
From all Patriot artillery, great and small; from Feuillants Terrace, and
all terraces and places of the widespread Insurrectionary sea, there roars
responsive a red whirlwind. Blue Nationals, ranked in the Garden, cannot
help their muskets going off, against Foreign murderers. For there is a
sympathy in muskets, in heaped masses of men: nay, are not Mankind, in
whole, like tuned strings, and a cunning infinite concordance and unity;
you smite one string, and all strings will begin sounding,--in soft sphere-
melody, in deafening screech of madness! Mounted Gendarmerie gallop
distracted; are fired on merely as a thing running; galloping over the Pont
Royal, or one knows not whither. The brain of Paris, brain-fevered in the
centre of it here, has gone mad; what you call, taken fire.

Behold, the fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss rolling-fire slacken from
within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw: and now, from the other side,
they clutch three pieces more; alas, cannon without linstock; nor will the
steel-and-flint answer, though they try it. (Deux Amis, viii. 179-88.)
Had it chanced to answer! Patriot onlookers have their misgivings; one
strangest Patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander,
would beat. He is a man not unqualified to judge; the name of him is
Napoleon Buonaparte. (See Hist. Parl. (xvii. 56); Las Cases, &c.)  And
onlookers, and women, stand gazing, and the witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow
among them, on the other side of the River: cannon rush rumbling past
them; pause on the Pont Royal; belch out their iron entrails there, against
the Tuileries; and at every new belch, the women and onlookers shout and
clap hands. (Moore, Journal during a Residence in France (Dublin, 1793),
i. 26.)  City of all the Devils! In remote streets, men are drinking
breakfast-coffee; following their affairs; with a start now and then, as
some dull echo reverberates a note louder. And here? Marseillese fall
wounded; but Barbaroux has surgeons; Barbaroux is close by, managing,
though underhand, and under cover. Marseillese fall death-struck; bequeath
their firelock, specify in which pocket are the cartridges; and die,
murmuring, "Revenge me, Revenge thy country!"  Brest Federe Officers,
galloping in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo you, the Carrousel has burst
into flame!--Paris Pandemonium! Nay the poor City, as we said, is in
fever-fit and convulsion; such crisis has lasted for the space of some half
hour.

But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, ventures through the
hubbub and death-hail, from the back-entrance of the Manege? Towards the
Tuileries and Swiss: written Order from his Majesty to cease firing! O ye
hapless Swiss, why was there no order not to begin it? Gladly would the
Swiss cease firing: but who will bid mad Insurrection cease firing? To
Insurrection you cannot speak; neither can it, hydra-headed, hear. The
dead and dying, by the hundred, lie all around; are borne bleeding through
the streets, towards help; the sight of them, like a torch of the Furies,
kindling Madness. Patriot Paris roars; as the bear bereaved of her whelps.
On, ye Patriots: vengeance! victory or death! There are men seen, who
rush on, armed only with walking-sticks. (Hist. Parl. ubi supra. Rapport
du Captaine des Canonniers, Rapport du Commandant, &c. (Ibid. xvii. 300-
18).)  Terror and Fury rule the hour.

The Swiss, pressed on from without, paralyzed from within, have ceased to
shoot; but not to be shot. What shall they do? Desperate is the moment.
Shelter or instant death: yet How? Where? One party flies out by the Rue
de l'Echelle; is destroyed utterly, 'en entier.'  A second, by the other
side, throws itself into the Garden; 'hurrying across a keen fusillade:'
rushes suppliant into the National Assembly; finds pity and refuge in the
back benches there. The third, and largest, darts out in column, three
hundred strong, towards the Champs Elysees: Ah, could we but reach
Courbevoye, where other Swiss are! Wo! see, in such fusillade the column
'soon breaks itself by diversity of opinion,' into distracted segments,
this way and that;--to escape in holes, to die fighting from street to
street. The firing and murdering will not cease; not yet for long. The
red Porters of Hotels are shot at, be they Suisse by nature, or Suisse only
in name. The very Firemen, who pump and labour on that smoking Carrousel,
are shot at; why should the Carrousel not burn? Some Swiss take refuge in
private houses; find that mercy too does still dwell in the heart of man.
The brave Marseillese are merciful, late so wroth; and labour to save.
Journalist Gorsas pleads hard with enfuriated groups. Clemence, the Wine-
merchant, stumbles forward to the Bar of the Assembly, a rescued Swiss in
his hand; tells passionately how he rescued him with pain and peril, how he
will henceforth support him, being childless himself; and falls a swoon
round the poor Swiss's neck: amid plaudits. But the most are butchered,
and even mangled. Fifty (some say Fourscore) were marched as prisoners, by
National Guards, to the Hotel-de-Ville: the ferocious people bursts
through on them, in the Place de Greve; massacres them to the last man. 'O
Peuple, envy of the universe!'  Peuple, in mad Gaelic effervescence!

Surely few things in the history of carnage are painfuller. What
ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad in the memory, is that, of this
poor column of red Swiss 'breaking itself in the confusion of opinions;'
dispersing, into blackness and death! Honour to you, brave men; honourable
pity, through long times! Not martyrs were ye; and yet almost more. He
was no King of yours, this Louis; and he forsook you like a King of shreds
and patches; ye were but sold to him for some poor sixpence a-day; yet
would ye work for your wages, keep your plighted word. The work now was to
die; and ye did it. Honour to you, O Kinsmen; and may the old Deutsch
Biederheit and Tapferkeit, and Valour which is Worth and Truth be they
Swiss, be they Saxon, fail in no age! Not bastards; true-born were these
men; sons of the men of Sempach, of Murten, who knelt, but not to thee, O
Burgundy!--Let the traveller, as he passes through Lucerne, turn aside to
look a little at their monumental Lion; not for Thorwaldsen's sake alone.
Hewn out of living rock, the Figure rests there, by the still Lake-waters,
in lullaby of distant-tinkling rance-des-vaches, the granite Mountains
dumbly keeping watch all round; and, though inanimate, speaks.

Chapter 2.6.VIII.

Constitution burst in Pieces.

Thus is the Tenth of August won and lost. Patriotism reckons its slain by
thousand on thousand, so deadly was the Swiss fire from these windows; but
will finally reduce them to some Twelve hundred. No child's play was it;--
nor is it! Till two in the afternoon the massacring, the breaking and the
burning has not ended; nor the loose Bedlam shut itself again.

How deluges of frantic Sansculottism roared through all passages of this
Tuileries, ruthless in vengeance, how the Valets were butchered, hewn down;
and Dame Campan saw the Marseilles sabre flash over her head, but the
Blackbrowed said, "Va-t-en, Get thee gone," and flung her from him
unstruck: (Campan, ii. c. 21.)  how in the cellars wine-bottles were
broken, wine-butts were staved in and drunk; and, upwards to the very
garrets, all windows tumbled out their precious royal furnitures; and, with
gold mirrors, velvet curtains, down of ript feather-beds, and dead bodies
of men, the Tuileries was like no Garden of the Earth:--all this let him
who has a taste for it see amply in Mercier, in acrid Montgaillard, or
Beaulieu of the Deux Amis. A hundred and eighty bodies of Swiss lie piled
there; naked, unremoved till the second day. Patriotism has torn their red
coats into snips; and marches with them at the Pike's point: the ghastly
bare corpses lie there, under the sun and under the stars; the curious of
both sexes crowding to look. Which let not us do. Above a hundred carts
heaped with Dead fare towards the Cemetery of Sainte-Madeleine; bewailed,
bewept; for all had kindred, all had mothers, if not here, then there. It
is one of those Carnage-fields, such as you read of by the name 'Glorious
Victory,' brought home in this case to one's own door.

But the blackbrowed Marseillese have struck down the Tyrant of the Chateau.
He is struck down; low, and hardly to rise. What a moment for an august
Legislative was that when the Hereditary Representative entered, under such
circumstances; and the Grenadier, carrying the little Prince Royal out of
the Press, set him down on the Assembly-table! A moment,--which one had to
smooth off with oratory; waiting what the next would bring! Louis said few
words: "He was come hither to prevent a great crime; he believed himself
safer nowhere than here.'  President Vergniaud answered briefly, in vague
oratory as we say, about "defence of Constituted Authorities," about dying
at our post. (Moniteur, Seance du 10 Aout 1792.)  And so King Louis sat
him down; first here, then there; for a difficulty arose, the Constitution
not permitting us to debate while the King is present: finally he settles
himself with his Family in the 'Loge of the Logographe' in the Reporter's-
Box of a Journalist: which is beyond the enchanted Constitutional Circuit,
separated from it by a rail. To such Lodge of the Logographe, measuring
some ten feet square, with a small closet at the entrance of it behind, is
the King of broad France now limited: here can he and his sit pent, under
the eyes of the world, or retire into their closet at intervals; for the
space of sixteen hours. Such quiet peculiar moment has the Legislative
lived to see.

But also what a moment was that other, few minutes later, when the three
Marseillese cannon went off, and the Swiss rolling-fire and universal
thunder, like the Crack of Doom, began to rattle! Honourable Members start
to their feet; stray bullets singing epicedium even here, shivering in with
window-glass and jingle. "No, this is our post; let us die here!"  They
sit therefore, like stone Legislators. But may not the Lodge of the
Logographe be forced from behind? Tear down the railing that divides it
from the enchanted Constitutional Circuit! Ushers tear and tug; his
Majesty himself aiding from within: the railing gives way; Majesty and
Legislative are united in place, unknown Destiny hovering over both.

Rattle, and again rattle, went the thunder; one breathless wide-eyed
messenger rushing in after another: King's orders to the Swiss went out.
It was a fearful thunder; but, as we know, it ended. Breathless
messengers, fugitive Swiss, denunciatory Patriots, trepidation; finally
tripudiation!--Before four o'clock much has come and gone.

The New Municipals have come and gone; with Three Flags, Liberte, Egalite,
Patrie, and the clang of vivats. Vergniaud, he who as President few hours
ago talked of Dying for Constituted Authorities, has moved, as Committee-
Reporter, that the Hereditary Representative be suspended; that a NATIONAL
CONVENTION do forthwith assemble to say what further! An able Report:
which the President must have had ready in his pocket? A President, in
such cases, must have much ready, and yet not ready; and Janus-like look
before and after.

King Louis listens to all; retires about midnight 'to three little rooms on
the upper floor;' till the Luxembourg be prepared for him, and 'the
safeguard of the Nation.'  Safer if Brunswick were once here! Or, alas,
not so safe? Ye hapless discrowned heads! Crowds came, next morning, to
catch a climpse of them, in their three upper rooms. Montgaillard says the
august Captives wore an air of cheerfulness, even of gaiety; that the Queen
and Princess Lamballe, who had joined her over night, looked out of the
open window, 'shook powder from their hair on the people below, and
laughed.'  (Montgaillard. ii. 135-167.)  He is an acrid distorted man.

For the rest, one may guess that the Legislative, above all that the New
Municipality continues busy. Messengers, Municipal or Legislative, and
swift despatches rush off to all corners of France; full of triumph,
blended with indignant wail, for Twelve hundred have fallen. France sends
up its blended shout responsive; the Tenth of August shall be as the
Fourteenth of July, only bloodier and greater. The Court has conspired?
Poor Court: the Court has been vanquished; and will have both the scath to
bear and the scorn. How the Statues of Kings do now all fall! Bronze
Henri himself, though he wore a cockade once, jingles down from the Pont
Neuf, where Patrie floats in Danger. Much more does Louis Fourteenth, from
the Place Vendome, jingle down, and even breaks in falling. The curious
can remark, written on his horse's shoe: '12 Aout 1692;' a Century and a
Day.

The Tenth of August was Friday. The week is not done, when our old Patriot
Ministry is recalled, what of it can be got: strict Roland, Genevese
Claviere; add heavy Monge the Mathematician, once a stone-hewer; and, for
Minister of Justice,--Danton 'led hither,' as himself says, in one of his
gigantic figures, 'through the breach of Patriot cannon!'  These, under
Legislative Committees, must rule the wreck as they can: confusedly
enough; with an old Legislative waterlogged, with a New Municipality so
brisk. But National Convention will get itself together; and then!
Without delay, however, let a New Jury-Court and Criminal Tribunal be set
up in Paris, to try the crimes and conspiracies of the Tenth. High Court
of Orleans is distant, slow: the blood of the Twelve hundred Patriots,
whatever become of other blood, shall be inquired after. Tremble, ye
Criminals and Conspirators; the Minister of Justice is Danton! Robespierre
too, after the victory, sits in the New Municipality; insurrectionary
'improvised Municipality,' which calls itself Council General of the
Commune.

For three days now, Louis and his Family have heard the Legislative Debates
in the Lodge of the Logographe; and retired nightly to their small upper
rooms. The Luxembourg and safeguard of the Nation could not be got ready:
nay, it seems the Luxembourg has too many cellars and issues; no
Municipality can undertake to watch it. The compact Prison of the Temple,
not so elegant indeed, were much safer. To the Temple, therefore! On
Monday, 13th day of August 1792, in Mayor Petion's carriage, Louis and his
sad suspended Household, fare thither; all Paris out to look at them. As
they pass through the Place Vendome Louis Fourteenth's Statue lies broken
on the ground. Petion is afraid the Queen's looks may be thought scornful,
and produce provocation; she casts down her eyes, and does not look at all.
The 'press is prodigious,' but quiet: here and there, it shouts Vive la
Nation; but for most part gazes in silence. French Royalty vanishes within
the gates of the Temple: these old peaked Towers, like peaked Extinguisher
or Bonsoir, do cover it up;--from which same Towers, poor Jacques Molay and
his Templars were burnt out, by French Royalty, five centuries since. Such
are the turns of Fate below. Foreign Ambassadors, English Lord Gower have
all demanded passports; are driving indignantly towards their respective
homes.

So, then, the Constitution is over? For ever and a day! Gone is that
wonder of the Universe; First biennial Parliament, waterlogged, waits only
till the Convention come; and will then sink to endless depths.

One can guess the silent rage of Old-Constituents, Constitution-builders,
extinct Feuillants, men who thought the Constitution would march!
Lafayette rises to the altitude of the situation; at the head of his Army.
Legislative Commissioners are posting towards him and it, on the Northern
Frontier, to congratulate and perorate: he orders the Municipality of
Sedan to arrest these Commissioners, and keep them strictly in ward as
Rebels, till he say further. The Sedan Municipals obey.

The Sedan Municipals obey: but the Soldiers of the Lafayette Army? The
Soldiers of the Lafayette Army have, as all Soldiers have, a kind of dim
feeling that they themselves are Sansculottes in buff belts; that the
victory of the Tenth of August is also a victory for them. They will not
rise and follow Lafayette to Paris; they will rise and send him thither!
On the 18th, which is but next Saturday, Lafayette, with some two or three
indignant Staff-officers, one of whom is Old-Constituent Alexandre de
Lameth, having first put his Lines in what order he could,--rides swiftly
over the Marches, towards Holland. Rides, alas, swiftly into the claws of
Austrians! He, long-wavering, trembling on the verge of the horizon, has
set, in Olmutz Dungeons; this History knows him no more. Adieu, thou Hero
of two worlds; thinnest, but compact honour-worthy man! Through long rough
night of captivity, through other tumults, triumphs and changes, thou wilt
swing well, 'fast-anchored to the Washington Formula;' and be the Hero and
Perfect-character, were it only of one idea. The Sedan Municipals repent
and protest; the Soldiers shout Vive la Nation. Dumouriez Polymetis, from
his Camp at Maulde, sees himself made Commander in Chief.

And, O Brunswick! what sort of 'military execution' will Paris merit now?
Forward, ye well-drilled exterminatory men; with your artillery-waggons,
and camp kettles jingling. Forward, tall chivalrous King of Prussia;
fanfaronading Emigrants and war-god Broglie, 'for some consolation to
mankind,' which verily is not without need of some.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

VOLUME III.

THE GUILLOTINE

  
BOOK 3.I.

SEPTEMBER

Chapter 3.1.I.

The Improvised Commune.

Ye have roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world; France is
roused; long have ye been lecturing and tutoring this poor Nation, like
cruel uncalled-for pedagogues, shaking over her your ferulas of fire and
steel: it is long that ye have pricked and fillipped and affrighted her,
there as she sat helpless in her dead cerements of a Constitution, you
gathering in on her from all lands, with your armaments and plots, your
invadings and truculent bullyings;--and lo now, ye have pricked her to the
quick, and she is up, and her blood is up. The dead cerements are rent
into cobwebs, and she fronts you in that terrible strength of Nature, which
no man has measured, which goes down to Madness and Tophet: see now how ye
will deal with her!

This month of September, 1792, which has become one of the memorable months
of History, presents itself under two most diverse aspects; all of black on
the one side, all of bright on the other. Whatsoever is cruel in the panic
frenzy of Twenty-five million men, whatsoever is great in the simultaneous
death-defiance of Twenty-five million men, stand here in abrupt contrast,
near by one another. As indeed is usual when a man, how much more when a
Nation of men, is hurled suddenly beyond the limits. For Nature, as green
as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations, were we farther down;
and Pan, to whose music the Nymphs dance, has a cry in him that can drive
all men distracted.

Very frightful it is when a Nation, rending asunder its Constitutions and
Regulations which were grown dead cerements for it, becomes transcendental;
and must now seek its wild way through the New, Chaotic,--where Force is
not yet distinguished into Bidden and Forbidden, but Crime and Virtue
welter unseparated,--in that domain of what is called the Passions; of what
we call the Miracles and the Portents! It is thus that, for some three
years to come, we are to contemplate France, in this final Third Volume of
our History. Sansculottism reigning in all its grandeur and in all its
hideousness: the Gospel (God's Message) of Man's Rights, Man's mights or
strengths, once more preached irrefragably abroad; along with this, and
still louder for the time, and fearfullest Devil's-Message of Man's
weaknesses and sins;--and all on such a scale, and under such aspect:
cloudy 'death-birth of a world;' huge smoke-cloud, streaked with rays as of
heaven on one side; girt on the other as with hell-fire! History tells us
many things: but for the last thousand years and more, what thing has she
told us of a sort like this? Which therefore let us two, O Reader, dwell
on willingly, for a little; and from its endless significance endeavour to
extract what may, in present circumstances, be adapted for us.

It is unfortunate, though very natural, that the history of this Period has
so generally been written in hysterics. Exaggeration abounds, execration,
wailing; and, on the whole, darkness. But thus too, when foul old Rome had
to be swept from the Earth, and those Northmen, and other horrid sons of
Nature, came in, 'swallowing formulas' as the French now do, foul old Rome
screamed execratively her loudest; so that, the true shape of many things
is lost for us. Attila's Huns had arms of such length that they could lift
a stone without stooping. Into the body of the poor Tatars execrative
Roman History intercalated an alphabetic letter; and so they continue Ta-r-
tars, of fell Tartarean nature, to this day. Here, in like manner, search
as we will in these multi-form innumerable French Records, darkness too
frequently covers, or sheer distraction bewilders. One finds it difficult
to imagine that the Sun shone in this September month, as he does in
others. Nevertheless it is an indisputable fact that the Sun did shine;
and there was weather and work,--nay, as to that, very bad weather for
harvest work! An unlucky Editor may do his utmost; and after all, require
allowances.

He had been a wise Frenchman, who, looking, close at hand, on this waste
aspect of a France all stirring and whirling, in ways new, untried, had
been able to discern where the cardinal movement lay; which tendency it was
that had the rule and primary direction of it then! But at forty-four
years' distance, it is different. To all men now, two cardinal movements
or grand tendencies, in the September whirl, have become discernible
enough: that stormful effluence towards the Frontiers; that frantic
crowding towards Townhouses and Council-halls in the interior. Wild France
dashes, in desperate death-defiance, towards the Frontiers, to defend
itself from foreign Despots; crowds towards Townhalls and Election
Committee-rooms, to defend itself from domestic Aristocrats. Let the
Reader conceive well these two cardinal movements; and what side-currents
and endless vortexes might depend on these. He shall judge too, whether,
in such sudden wreckage of all old Authorities, such a pair of cardinal
movements, half-frantic in themselves, could be of soft nature? As in dry
Sahara, when the winds waken, and lift and winnow the immensity of sand!
The air itself (Travellers say) is a dim sand-air; and dim looming through
it, the wonderfullest uncertain colonnades of Sand-Pillars rush whirling
from this side and from that, like so many mad Spinning-Dervishes, of a
hundred feet in stature; and dance their huge Desert-waltz there!--

Nevertheless in all human movements, were they but a day old, there is
order, or the beginning of order. Consider two things in this Sahara-waltz
of the French Twenty-five millions; or rather one thing, and one hope of a
thing: the Commune (Municipality) of Paris, which is already here; the
National Convention, which shall in few weeks be here. The Insurrectionary
Commune, which improvising itself on the eve of the Tenth of August, worked
this ever-memorable Deliverance by explosion, must needs rule over it,--
till the Convention meet. This Commune, which they may well call a
spontaneous or 'improvised' Commune, is, for the present, sovereign of
France. The Legislative, deriving its authority from the Old, how can it
now have authority when the Old is exploded by insurrection? As a floating
piece of wreck, certain things, persons and interests may still cleave to
it: volunteer defenders, riflemen or pikemen in green uniform, or red
nightcap (of bonnet rouge), defile before it daily, just on the wing
towards Brunswick; with the brandishing of arms; always with some touch of
Leonidas-eloquence, often with a fire of daring that threatens to outherod
Herod,--the Galleries, 'especially the Ladies, never done with applauding.'
(Moore's Journal, i. 85.)  Addresses of this or the like sort can be
received and answered, in the hearing of all France: the Salle de Manege
is still useful as a place of proclamation. For which use, indeed, it now
chiefly serves. Vergniaud delivers spirit-stirring orations; but always
with a prophetic sense only, looking towards the coming Convention. "Let
our memory perish," cries Vergniaud, "but let France be free!"--whereupon
they all start to their feet, shouting responsive: "Yes, yes, perisse
notre memoire, pourvu que la France soit libre!"  (Hist. Parl. xvii. 467.)
Disfrocked Chabot abjures Heaven that at least we may "have done with
Kings;" and fast as powder under spark, we all blaze up once more, and with
waved hats shout and swear: "Yes, nous le jurons; plus de roi!"  (Ibid.
xvii. 437.)  All which, as a method of proclamation, is very convenient.

For the rest, that our busy Brissots, rigorous Rolands, men who once had
authority and now have less and less; men who love law, and will have even
an Explosion explode itself, as far as possible, according to rule, do find
this state of matters most unofficial unsatisfactory,--is not to be denied.
Complaints are made; attempts are made: but without effect. The attempts
even recoil; and must be desisted from, for fear of worse: the sceptre is
departed from this Legislative once and always. A poor Legislative, so
hard was fate, had let itself be hand-gyved, nailed to the rock like an
Andromeda, and could only wail there to the Earth and Heavens; miraculously
a winged Perseus (or Improvised Commune) has dawned out of the void Blue,
and cut her loose: but whether now is it she, with her softness and
musical speech, or is it he, with his hardness and sharp falchion and
aegis, that shall have casting vote? Melodious agreement of vote; this
were the rule! But if otherwise, and votes diverge, then surely
Andromeda's part is to weep,--if possible, tears of gratitude alone.

Be content, O France, with this Improvised Commune, such as it is! It has
the implements, and has the hands: the time is not long. On Sunday the
twenty-sixth of August, our Primary Assemblies shall meet, begin electing
of Electors; on Sunday the second of September (may the day prove lucky!)
the Electors shall begin electing Deputies; and so an all-healing National
Convention will come together. No marc d'argent, or distinction of Active
and Passive, now insults the French Patriot: but there is universal
suffrage, unlimited liberty to choose. Old-constituents, Present-
Legislators, all France is eligible. Nay, it may be said, the flower of
all the Universe (de l'Univers) is eligible; for in these very days we, by
act of Assembly, 'naturalise' the chief Foreign Friends of humanity:
Priestley, burnt out for us in Birmingham; Klopstock, a genius of all
countries; Jeremy Bentham, useful Jurisconsult; distinguished Paine, the
rebellious Needleman;--some of whom may be chosen. As is most fit; for a
Convention of this kind. In a word, Seven Hundred and Forty-five
unshackled sovereigns, admired of the universe, shall replace this hapless
impotency of a Legislative,--out of which, it is likely, the best members,
and the Mountain in mass, may be re-elected. Roland is getting ready the
Salles des Cent Suisses, as preliminary rendezvous for them; in that void
Palace of the Tuileries, now void and National, and not a Palace, but a
Caravansera.

As for the Spontaneous Commune, one may say that there never was on Earth a
stranger Town-Council. Administration, not of a great City, but of a great
Kingdom in a state of revolt and frenzy, this is the task that has fallen
to it. Enrolling, provisioning, judging; devising, deciding, doing,
endeavouring to do: one wonders the human brain did not give way under all
this, and reel. But happily human brains have such a talent of taking up
simply what they can carry, and ignoring all the rest; leaving all the
rest, as if it were not there! Whereby somewhat is verily shifted for; and
much shifts for itself. This Improvised Commune walks along, nothing
doubting; promptly making front, without fear or flurry, at what moment
soever, to the wants of the moment. Were the world on fire, one improvised
tricolor Municipal has but one life to lose. They are the elixir and
chosen-men of Sansculottic Patriotism; promoted to the forlorn-hope;
unspeakable victory or a high gallows, this is their meed. They sit there,
in the Townhall, these astonishing tricolor Municipals; in Council General;
in Committee of Watchfulness (de Surveillance, which will even become de
Salut Public, of Public Salvation), or what other Committees and Sub-
committees are needful;--managing infinite Correspondence; passing infinite
Decrees: one hears of a Decree being 'the ninety-eighth of the day.'
Ready! is the word. They carry loaded pistols in their pocket; also some
improvised luncheon by way of meal. Or indeed, by and by, traiteurs
contract for the supply of repasts, to be eaten on the spot,--too lavishly,
as it was afterwards grumbled. Thus they: girt in their tricolor sashes;
Municipal note-paper in the one hand, fire-arms in other. They have their
Agents out all over France; speaking in townhouses, market-places, highways
and byways; agitating, urging to arm; all hearts tingling to hear. Great
is the fire of Anti-Aristocrat eloquence: nay some, as Bibliopolic Momoro,
seem to hint afar off at something which smells of Agrarian Law, and a
surgery of the overswoln dropsical strong-box itself;--whereat indeed the
bold Bookseller runs risk of being hanged, and Ex-Constituent Buzot has to
smuggle him off. (Memoires de Buzot (Paris, 1823), p. 88.)

Governing Persons, were they never so insignificant intrinsically, have for
most part plenty of Memoir-writers; and the curious, in after-times, can
learn minutely their goings out and comings in: which, as men always love
to know their fellow-men in singular situations, is a comfort, of its kind.
Not so, with these Governing Persons, now in the Townhall! And yet what
most original fellow-man, of the Governing sort, high-chancellor, king,
kaiser, secretary of the home or the foreign department, ever shewed such a
phasis as Clerk Tallien, Procureur Manuel, future Procureur Chaumette, here
in this Sand-waltz of the Twenty-five millions, now do? O brother
mortals,--thou Advocate Panis, friend of Danton, kinsman of Santerre;
Engraver Sergent, since called Agate Sergent; thou Huguenin, with the
tocsin in thy heart! But, as Horace says, they wanted the sacred memoir-
writer (sacro vate); and we know them not. Men bragged of August and its
doings, publishing them in high places; but of this September none now or
afterwards would brag. The September world remains dark, fuliginous, as
Lapland witch-midnight;--from which, indeed, very strange shapes will
evolve themselves.

Understand this, however: that incorruptible Robespierre is not wanting,
now when the brunt of battle is past; in a stealthy way the seagreen man
sits there, his feline eyes excellent in the twilight. Also understand
this other, a single fact worth many: that Marat is not only there, but
has a seat of honour assigned him, a tribune particuliere. How changed for
Marat; lifted from his dark cellar into this luminous 'peculiar tribune!'
All dogs have their day; even rabid dogs. Sorrowful, incurable Philoctetes
Marat; without whom Troy cannot be taken! Hither, as a main element of the
Governing Power, has Marat been raised. Royalist types, for we have
'suppressed' innumerable Durosoys, Royous, and even clapt them in prison,--
Royalist types replace the worn types often snatched from a People's-Friend
in old ill days. In our 'peculiar tribune' we write and redact: Placards,
of due monitory terror; Amis-du-Peuple (now under the name of Journal de la
Republique); and sit obeyed of men. 'Marat,' says one, 'is the conscience
of the Hotel-de-Ville.'  Keeper, as some call it, of the Sovereign's
Conscience;--which surely, in such hands, will not lie hid in a napkin!

Two great movements, as we said, agitate this distracted National mind: a
rushing against domestic Traitors, a rushing against foreign Despots. Mad
movements both, restrainable by no known rule; strongest passions of human
nature driving them on: love, hatred; vengeful sorrow, braggart
Nationality also vengeful,--and pale Panic over all! Twelve Hundred slain
Patriots, do they not, from their dark catacombs there, in Death's dumb-
shew, plead (O ye Legislators) for vengeance? Such was the destructive
rage of these Aristocrats on the ever-memorable Tenth. Nay, apart from
vengeance, and with an eye to Public Salvation only, are there not still,
in this Paris (in round numbers) 'thirty thousand Aristocrats,' of the most
malignant humour; driven now to their last trump-card?--Be patient, ye
Patriots: our New High Court, 'Tribunal of the Seventeenth,' sits; each
Section has sent Four Jurymen; and Danton, extinguishing improper judges,
improper practices wheresoever found, is 'the same man you have known at
the Cordeliers.'  With such a Minister of Justice shall not Justice be
done?--Let it be swift then, answers universal Patriotism; swift and sure!-
-

One would hope, this Tribunal of the Seventeenth is swifter than most.
Already on the 21st, while our Court is but four days old, Collenot
d'Angremont, 'the Royal enlister' (crimp, embaucheur) dies by torch-light.
For, lo, the great Guillotine, wondrous to behold, now stands there; the
Doctor's Idea has become Oak and Iron; the huge cyclopean axe 'falls in its
grooves like the ram of the Pile-engine,' swiftly snuffing out the light of
men?'  'Mais vous, Gualches, what have you invented?'  This?--Poor old
Laporte, Intendant of the Civil List, follows next; quietly, the mild old
man. Then Durosoy, Royalist Placarder, 'cashier of all the Anti-
Revolutionists of the interior:'  he went rejoicing; said that a Royalist
like him ought to die, of all days on this day, the 25th or Saint Louis's
Day. All these have been tried, cast,--the Galleries shouting approval;
and handed over to the Realised Idea, within a week. Besides those whom we
have acquitted, the Galleries murmuring, and have dismissed; or even have
personally guarded back to Prison, as the Galleries took to howling, and
even to menacing and elbowing. (Moore's Journal, i. 159-168.)  Languid
this Tribunal is not.

Nor does the other movement slacken; the rushing against foreign Despots.
Strong forces shall meet in death-grip; drilled Europe against mad
undrilled France; and singular conclusions will be tried.--Conceive
therefore, in some faint degree, the tumult that whirls in this France, in
this Paris! Placards from Section, from Commune, from Legislative, from
the individual Patriot, flame monitory on all walls. Flags of Danger to
Fatherland wave at the Hotel-de-Ville; on the Pont Neuf--over the prostrate
Statues of Kings. There is universal enlisting, urging to enlist; there is
tearful-boastful leave-taking; irregular marching on the Great North-
Eastern Road. Marseillese sing their wild To Arms, in chorus; which now
all men, all women and children have learnt, and sing chorally, in
Theatres, Boulevards, Streets; and the heart burns in every bosom: Aux
Armes! Marchons!--Or think how your Aristocrats are skulking into covert;
how Bertrand-Moleville lies hidden in some garret 'in Aubry-le-boucher
Street, with a poor surgeon who had known me;' Dame de Stael has secreted
her Narbonne, not knowing what in the world to make of him. The Barriers
are sometimes open, oftenest shut; no passports to be had; Townhall
Emissaries, with the eyes and claws of falcons, flitting watchful on all
points of your horizon! In two words: Tribunal of the Seventeenth, busy
under howling Galleries; Prussian Brunswick, 'over a space of forty miles,'
with his war-tumbrils, and sleeping thunders, and Briarean 'sixty-six
thousand' (See Toulongeon, Hist. de France. ii. c. 5.) right-hands,--
coming, coming!

O Heavens, in these latter days of August, he is come! Durosoy was not yet
guillotined when news had come that the Prussians were harrying and
ravaging about Metz; in some four days more, one hears that Longwi, our
first strong-place on the borders, is fallen 'in fifteen hours.'  Quick,
therefore, O ye improvised Municipals; quick, and ever quicker!--The
improvised Municipals make front to this also. Enrolment urges itself; and
clothing, and arming. Our very officers have now 'wool epaulettes;' for it
is the reign of Equality, and also of Necessity. Neither do men now
monsieur and sir one another; citoyen (citizen) were suitabler; we even say
thou, as 'the free peoples of Antiquity did:'  so have Journals and the
Improvised Commune suggested; which shall be well.

Infinitely better, meantime, could we suggest, where arms are to be found.
For the present, our Citoyens chant chorally To Arms; and have no arms!
Arms are searched for; passionately; there is joy over any musket.
Moreover, entrenchments shall be made round Paris: on the slopes of
Montmartre men dig and shovel; though even the simple suspect this to be
desperate. They dig; Tricolour sashes speak encouragement and well-speed-
ye. Nay finally 'twelve Members of the Legislative go daily,' not to
encourage only, but to bear a hand, and delve: it was decreed with
acclamation. Arms shall either be provided; or else the ingenuity of man
crack itself, and become fatuity. Lean Beaumarchais, thinking to serve the
Fatherland, and do a stroke of trade, in the old way, has commissioned
sixty thousand stand of good arms out of Holland: would to Heaven, for
Fatherland's sake and his, they were come! Meanwhile railings are torn up;
hammered into pikes: chains themselves shall be welded together, into
pikes. The very coffins of the dead are raised; for melting into balls.
All Church-bells must down into the furnace to make cannon; all Church-
plate into the mint to make money. Also behold the fair swan-bevies of
Citoyennes that have alighted in Churches, and sit there with swan-neck,--
sewing tents and regimentals! Nor are Patriotic Gifts wanting, from those
that have aught left; nor stingily given: the fair Villaumes, mother and
daughter, Milliners in the Rue St.-Martin, give 'a silver thimble, and a
coin of fifteen sous (sevenpence halfpenny),' with other similar effects;
and offer, at least the mother does, to mount guard. Men who have not even
a thimble, give a thimbleful,--were it but of invention. One Citoyen has
wrought out the scheme of a wooden cannon; which France shall exclusively
profit by, in the first instance. It is to be made of staves, by the
coopers;--of almost boundless calibre, but uncertain as to strength! Thus
they: hammering, scheming, stitching, founding, with all their heart and
with all their soul. Two bells only are to remain in each Parish,--for
tocsin and other purposes.

But mark also, precisely while the Prussian batteries were playing their
briskest at Longwi in the North-East, and our dastardly Lavergne saw
nothing for it but surrender,--south-westward, in remote, patriarchal La
Vendee, that sour ferment about Nonjuring Priests, after long working, is
ripe, and explodes: at the wrong moment for us! And so we have 'eight
thousand Peasants at Chatillon-sur-Sevre,' who will not be ballotted for
soldiers; will not have their Curates molested. To whom Bonchamps,
Laroche-jaquelins, and Seigneurs enough, of a Royalist turn, will join
themselves; with Stofflets and Charettes; with Heroes and Chouan Smugglers;
and the loyal warmth of a simple people, blown into flame and fury by
theological and seignorial bellows! So that there shall be fighting from
behind ditches, death-volleys bursting out of thickets and ravines of
rivers; huts burning, feet of the pitiful women hurrying to refuge with
their children on their back; seedfields fallow, whitened with human
bones;--'eighty thousand, of all ages, ranks, sexes, flying at once across
the Loire,' with wail borne far on the winds: and, in brief, for years
coming, such a suite of scenes as glorious war has not offered in these
late ages, not since our Albigenses and Crusadings were over,--save indeed
some chance Palatinate, or so, we might have to 'burn,' by way of
exception. The 'eight thousand at Chatillon' will be got dispelled for the
moment; the fire scattered, not extinguished. To the dints and bruises of
outward battle there is to be added henceforth a deadlier internal
gangrene.

This rising in La Vendee reports itself at Paris on Wednesday the 29th of
August;--just as we had got our Electors elected; and, in spite of
Brunswick's and Longwi's teeth, were hoping still to have a National
Convention, if it pleased Heaven. But indeed, otherwise, this Wednesday is
to be regarded as one of the notablest Paris had yet seen: gloomy tidings
come successively, like Job's messengers; are met by gloomy answers. Of
Sardinia rising to invade the South-East, and Spain threatening the South,
we do not speak. But are not the Prussians masters of Longwi
(treacherously yielded, one would say); and preparing to besiege Verdun?
Clairfait and his Austrians are encompassing Thionville; darkening the
North. Not Metz-land now, but the Clermontais is getting harried; flying
hulans and huzzars have been seen on the Chalons Road, almost as far as
Sainte-Menehould. Heart, ye Patriots, if ye lose heart, ye lose all!

It is not without a dramatic emotion that one reads in the Parliamentary
Debates of this Wednesday evening 'past seven o'clock,' the scene with the
military fugitives from Longwi. Wayworn, dusty, disheartened, these poor
men enter the Legislative, about sunset or after; give the most pathetic
detail of the frightful pass they were in:--Prussians billowing round by
the myriad, volcanically spouting fire for fifteen hours: we, scattered
sparse on the ramparts, hardly a cannoneer to two guns; our dastard
Commandant Lavergne no where shewing face; the priming would not catch;
there was no powder in the bombs,--what could we do? "Mourir! Die!"
answer prompt voices; (Hist. Parl. xvii. 148.) and the dusty fugitives must
shrink elsewhither for comfort.--Yes, Mourir, that is now the word. Be
Longwi a proverb and a hissing among French strong-places: let it (says
the Legislative) be obliterated rather, from the shamed face of the Earth;-
-and so there has gone forth Decree, that Longwi shall, were the Prussians
once out of it, 'be rased,' and exist only as ploughed ground.

Nor are the Jacobins milder; as how could they, the flower of Patriotism?
Poor Dame Lavergne, wife of the poor Commandant, took her parasol one
evening, and escorted by her Father came over to the Hall of the mighty
Mother; and 'reads a memoir tending to justify the Commandant of Longwi.'
Lafarge, President, makes answer: "Citoyenne, the Nation will judge
Lavergne; the Jacobins are bound to tell him the truth. He would have
ended his course there (termine sa carriere), if he had loved the honour of
his country."  (Ibid. xix. 300.)

Chapter 3.1.II.

Danton.

But better than raising of Longwi, or rebuking poor dusty soldiers or
soldiers' wives, Danton had come over, last night, and demanded a Decree to
search for arms, since they were not yielded voluntarily. Let 'Domiciliary
visits,' with rigour of authority, be made to this end. To search for
arms; for horses,--Aristocratism rolls in its carriage, while Patriotism
cannot trail its cannon. To search generally for munitions of war, 'in the
houses of persons suspect,'--and even, if it seem proper, to seize and
imprison the suspect persons themselves! In the Prisons, their plots will
be harmless; in the Prisons, they will be as hostages for us, and not
without use. This Decree the energetic Minister of Justice demanded, last
night, and got; and this same night it is to be executed; it is being
executed, at the moment when these dusty soldiers get saluted with Mourir.
Two thousand stand of arms, as they count, are foraged in this way; and
some four hundred head of new Prisoners; and, on the whole, such a terror
and damp is struck through the Aristocrat heart, as all but Patriotism, and
even Patriotism were it out of this agony, might pity. Yes, Messieurs! if
Brunswick blast Paris to ashes, he probably will blast the Prisons of Paris
too: pale Terror, if we have got it, we will also give it, and the depth
of horrors that lie in it; the same leaky bottom, in these wild waters,
bears us all.

One can judge what stir there was now among the 'thirty thousand
Royalists:' how the Plotters, or the accused of Plotting, shrank each
closer into his lurking-place,--like Bertrand Moleville, looking eager
towards Longwi, hoping the weather would keep fair. Or how they dressed
themselves in valet's clothes, like Narbonne, and 'got to England as Dr.
Bollman's famulus:' how Dame de Stael bestirred herself, pleading with
Manuel as a Sister in Literature, pleading even with Clerk Tallien; a pray
to nameless chagrins! (De Stael, Considerations sur la Revolution, ii. 67-
81.)  Royalist Peltier, the Pamphleteer, gives a touching Narrative (not
deficient in height of colouring) of the terrors of that night. From five
in the afternoon, a great City is struck suddenly silent; except for the
beating of drums, for the tramp of marching feet; and ever and anon the
dread thunder of the knocker at some door, a Tricolor Commissioner with his
blue Guards (black-guards!) arriving. All Streets are vacant, says
Peltier; beset by Guards at each end: all Citizens are ordered to be
within doors. On the River float sentinal barges, lest we escape by water:
the Barriers hermetically closed. Frightful! The sun shines; serenely
westering, in smokeless mackerel-sky: Paris is as if sleeping, as if
dead:--Paris is holding its breath, to see what stroke will fall on it.
Poor Peltier! Acts of Apostles, and all jocundity of Leading-Articles, are
gone out, and it is become bitter earnest instead; polished satire changed
now into coarse pike-points (hammered out of railing); all logic reduced to
this one primitive thesis, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!--
Peltier, dolefully aware of it, ducks low; escapes unscathed to England; to
urge there the inky war anew; to have Trial by Jury, in due season, and
deliverance by young Whig eloquence, world-celebrated for a day.

Of 'thirty thousand,' naturally, great multitudes were left unmolested:
but, as we said, some four hundred, designated as 'persons suspect,' were
seized; and an unspeakable terror fell on all. Wo to him who is guilty of
Plotting, of Anticivism, Royalism, Feuillantism; who, guilty or not guilty,
has an enemy in his Section to call him guilty! Poor old M. de Cazotte is
seized, his young loved Daughter with him, refusing to quit him. Why, O
Cazotte, wouldst thou quit romancing, and Diable Amoureux, for such reality
as this? Poor old M. de Sombreuil, he of the Invalides, is seized: a man
seen askance, by Patriotism ever since the Bastille days: whom also a fond
Daughter will not quit. With young tears hardly suppressed, and old
wavering weakness rousing itself once more--O my brothers, O my sisters!

The famed and named go; the nameless, if they have an accuser. Necklace
Lamotte's Husband is in these Prisons (she long since squelched on the
London Pavements); but gets delivered. Gross de Morande, of the Courier de
l'Europe, hobbles distractedly to and fro there: but they let him hobble
out; on right nimble crutches;--his hour not being yet come. Advocate
Maton de la Varenne, very weak in health, is snatched off from mother and
kin; Tricolor Rossignol (journeyman goldsmith and scoundrel lately, a risen
man now) remembers an old Pleading of Maton's! Jourgniac de Saint-Meard
goes; the brisk frank soldier: he was in the Mutiny of Nancy, in that
'effervescent Regiment du Roi,'--on the wrong side. Saddest of all: Abbe
Sicard goes; a Priest who could not take the Oath, but who could teach the
Deaf and Dumb: in his Section one man, he says, had a grudge at him; one
man, at the fit hour, launches an arrest against him; which hits. In the
Arsenal quarter, there are dumb hearts making wail, with signs, with wild
gestures; he their miraculous healer and speech-bringer is rapt away.

What with the arrestments on this night of the Twenty-ninth, what with
those that have gone on more or less, day and night, ever since the Tenth,
one may fancy what the Prisons now were. Crowding and Confusion; jostle,
hurry, vehemence and terror! Of the poor Queen's Friends, who had followed
her to the Temple and been committed elsewhither to Prison, some, as
Governess de Tourzelle, are to be let go: one, the poor Princess de
Lamballe, is not let go; but waits in the strong-rooms of La Force there,
what will betide further.

Among so many hundreds whom the launched arrest hits, who are rolled off to
Townhall or Section-hall, to preliminary Houses of detention, and hurled in
thither, as into cattle-pens, we must mention one other: Caron de
Beaumarchais, Author of Figaro; vanquisher of Maupeou Parlements and
Goezman helldogs; once numbered among the demigods; and now--? We left him
in his culminant state; what dreadful decline is this, when we again catch
a glimpse of him! 'At midnight' (it was but the 12th of August yet), 'the
servant, in his shirt,' with wide-staring eyes, enters your room:--
Monsieur, rise; all the people are come to seek you; they are knocking,
like to break in the door! 'And they were in fact knocking in a terrible
manner (d'une facon terrible). I fling on my coat, forgetting even the
waistcoat, nothing on my feet but slippers; and say to him'--And he, alas,
answers mere negatory incoherences, panic interjections. And through the
shutters and crevices, in front or rearward, the dull street-lamps disclose
only streetfuls of haggard countenances; clamorous, bristling with pikes:
and you rush distracted for an outlet, finding none;--and have to take
refuge in the crockery-press, down stairs; and stand there, palpitating in
that imperfect costume, lights dancing past your key-hole, tramp of feet
overhead, and the tumult of Satan, 'for four hours and more!'  And old
ladies, of the quarter, started up (as we hear next morning); rang for
their Bonnes and cordial-drops, with shrill interjections: and old
gentlemen, in their shirts, 'leapt garden-walls;' flying, while none
pursued; one of whom unfortunately broke his leg. (Beaumarchais'
Narrative, Memoires sur les Prisons (Paris, 1823), i. 179-90.)  Those sixty
thousand stand of Dutch arms (which never arrive), and the bold stroke of
trade, have turned out so ill!--

Beaumarchais escaped for this time; but not for the next time, ten days
after. On the evening of the Twenty-ninth he is still in that chaos of the
Prisons, in saddest, wrestling condition; unable to get justice, even to
get audience; 'Panis scratching his head' when you speak to him, and making
off. Nevertheless let the lover of Figaro know that Procureur Manuel, a
Brother in Literature, found him, and delivered him once more. But how the
lean demigod, now shorn of his splendour, had to lurk in barns, to roam
over harrowed fields, panting for life; and to wait under eavesdrops, and
sit in darkness 'on the Boulevard amid paving-stones and boulders,' longing
for one word of any Minister, or Minister's Clerk, about those accursed
Dutch muskets, and getting none,--with heart fuming in spleen, and terror,
and suppressed canine-madness: alas, how the swift sharp hound, once fit
to be Diana's, breaks his old teeth now, gnawing mere whinstones; and must
'fly to England;' and, returning from England, must creep into the corner,
and lie quiet, toothless (moneyless),--all this let the lover of Figaro
fancy, and weep for. We here, without weeping, not without sadness, wave
the withered tough fellow-mortal our farewell. His Figaro has returned to
the French stage; nay is, at this day, sometimes named the best piece
there. And indeed, so long as Man's Life can ground itself only on
artificiality and aridity; each new Revolt and Change of Dynasty turning up
only a new stratum of dry rubbish, and no soil yet coming to view,--may it
not be good to protest against such a Life, in many ways, and even in the
Figaro way?

Chapter 3.1.III.

Dumouriez.

Such are the last days of August, 1792; days gloomy, disastrous, and of
evil omen. What will become of this poor France? Dumouriez rode from the
Camp of Maulde, eastward to Sedan, on Tuesday last, the 28th of the month;
reviewed that so-called Army left forlorn there by Lafayette: the forlorn
soldiers gloomed on him; were heard growling on him, "This is one of them,
ce b--e la, that made War be declared."  (Dumouriez, Memoires, ii. 383.)
Unpromising Army! Recruits flow in, filtering through Depot after Depot;
but recruits merely: in want of all; happy if they have so much as arms.
And Longwi has fallen basely; and Brunswick, and the Prussian King, with
his sixty thousand, will beleaguer Verdun; and Clairfait and Austrians
press deeper in, over the Northern marches: 'a hundred and fifty thousand'
as fear counts, 'eighty thousand' as the returns shew, do hem us in;
Cimmerian Europe behind them. There is Castries-and-Broglie chivalry;
Royalist foot 'in red facing and nankeen trousers;' breathing death and the
gallows.

And lo, finally! at Verdun on Sunday the 2d of September 1792, Brunswick is
here. With his King and sixty thousand, glittering over the heights, from
beyond the winding Meuse River, he looks down on us, on our 'high citadel'
and all our confectionery-ovens (for we are celebrated for confectionery)
has sent courteous summons, in order to spare the effusion of blood!--
Resist him to the death? Every day of retardation precious? How, O
General Beaurepaire (asks the amazed Municipality) shall we resist him?
We, the Verdun Municipals, see no resistance possible. Has he not sixty
thousand, and artillery without end? Retardation, Patriotism is good; but
so likewise is peaceable baking of pastry, and sleeping in whole skin.--
Hapless Beaurepaire stretches out his hands, and pleads passionately, in
the name of country, honour, of Heaven and of Earth: to no purpose. The
Municipals have, by law, the power of ordering it;--with an Army officered
by Royalism or Crypto-Royalism, such a Law seemed needful: and they order
it, as pacific Pastrycooks, not as heroic Patriots would,--To surrender!
Beaurepaire strides home, with long steps: his valet, entering the room,
sees him 'writing eagerly,' and withdraws. His valet hears then, in a few
minutes, the report of a pistol: Beaurepaire is lying dead; his eager
writing had been a brief suicidal farewell. In this manner died
Beaurepaire, wept of France; buried in the Pantheon, with honourable
pension to his Widow, and for Epitaph these words, He chose Death rather
than yield to Despots. The Prussians, descending from the heights, are
peaceable masters of Verdun.

And so Brunswick advances, from stage to stage: who shall now stay him,--
covering forty miles of country? Foragers fly far; the villages of the
North-East are harried; your Hessian forager has only 'three sous a day:'
the very Emigrants, it is said, will take silver-plate,--by way of revenge.
Clermont, Sainte-Menehould, Varennes especially, ye Towns of the Night of
Spurs; tremble ye! Procureur Sausse and the Magistracy of Varennes have
fled; brave Boniface Le Blanc of the Bras d'Or is to the woods: Mrs. Le
Blanc, a young woman fair to look upon, with her young infant, has to live
in greenwood, like a beautiful Bessy Bell of Song, her bower thatched with
rushes;--catching premature rheumatism. (Helen Maria Williams, Letters
from France (London, 1791-93), iii. 96.)  Clermont may ring the tocsin now,
and illuminate itself! Clermont lies at the foot of its Cow (or Vache, so
they name that Mountain), a prey to the Hessian spoiler: its fair women,
fairer than most, are robbed: not of life, or what is dearer, yet of all
that is cheaper and portable; for Necessity, on three half-pence a-day, has
no law. At Saint-Menehould, the enemy has been expected more than once,--
our Nationals all turning out in arms; but was not yet seen. Post-master
Drouet, he is not in the woods, but minding his Election; and will sit in
the Convention, notable King-taker, and bold Old-Dragoon as he is.

Thus on the North-East all roams and runs; and on a set day, the date of
which is irrecoverable by History, Brunswick 'has engaged to dine in
Paris,'--the Powers willing. And at Paris, in the centre, it is as we saw;
and in La Vendee, South-West, it is as we saw; and Sardinia is in the
South-East, and Spain is in the South, and Clairfait with Austria and
sieged Thionville is in the North;--and all France leaps distracted, like
the winnowed Sahara waltzing in sand-colonnades! More desperate posture no
country ever stood in. A country, one would say, which the Majesty of
Prussia (if it so pleased him) might partition, and clip in pieces, like a
Poland; flinging the remainder to poor Brother Louis,--with directions to
keep it quiet, or else we will keep it for him!

Or perhaps the Upper Powers, minded that a new Chapter in Universal History
shall begin here and not further on, may have ordered it all otherwise? In
that case, Brunswick will not dine in Paris on the set day; nor, indeed,
one knows not when!--Verily, amid this wreckage, where poor France seems
grinding itself down to dust and bottomless ruin, who knows what miraculous
salient-point of Deliverance and New-life may have already come into
existence there; and be already working there, though as yet human eye
discern it not! On the night of that same twenty-eighth of August, the
unpromising Review-day in Sedan, Dumouriez assembles a Council of War at
his lodgings there. He spreads out the map of this forlorn war-district:
Prussians here, Austrians there; triumphant both, with broad highway, and
little hinderance, all the way to Paris; we, scattered helpless, here and
here: what to advise? The Generals, strangers to Dumouriez, look blank
enough; know not well what to advise,--if it be not retreating, and
retreating till our recruits accumulate; till perhaps the chapter of
chances turn up some leaf for us; or Paris, at all events, be sacked at the
latest day possible. The Many-counselled, who 'has not closed an eye for
three nights,' listens with little speech to these long cheerless speeches;
merely watching the speaker that he may know him; then wishes them all
good-night;--but beckons a certain young Thouvenot, the fire of whose looks
had pleased him, to wait a moment. Thouvenot waits: Voila, says
Polymetis, pointing to the map! That is the Forest of Argonne, that long
stripe of rocky Mountain and wild Wood; forty miles long; with but five, or
say even three practicable Passes through it: this, for they have
forgotten it, might one not still seize, though Clairfait sits so nigh?
Once seized;--the Champagne called the Hungry (or worse, Champagne
Pouilleuse) on their side of it; the fat Three Bishoprics, and willing
France, on ours; and the Equinox-rains not far;--this Argonne 'might be the
Thermopylae of France!'  (Dumouriez, ii. 391.)

O brisk Dumouriez Polymetis with thy teeming head, may the gods grant it!--
Polymetis, at any rate, folds his map together, and flings himself on bed;
resolved to try, on the morrow morning. With astucity, with swiftness,
with audacity! One had need to be a lion-fox, and have luck on one's side.

Chapter 3.1.IV.

September in Paris.

At Paris, by lying Rumour which proved prophetic and veridical, the fall of
Verdun was known some hours before it happened. It is Sunday the second of
September; handiwork hinders not the speculations of the mind. Verdun gone
(though some still deny it); the Prussians in full march, with gallows-
ropes, with fire and faggot! Thirty thousand Aristocrats within our own
walls; and but the merest quarter-tithe of them yet put in Prison! Nay
there goes a word that even these will revolt. Sieur Jean Julien, wagoner
of Vaugirard, (Moore, i. 178.) being set in the Pillory last Friday, took
all at once to crying, That he would be well revenged ere long; that the
King's Friends in Prison would burst out; force the Temple, set the King on
horseback; and, joined by the unimprisoned, ride roughshod over us all.
This the unfortunate wagoner of Vaugirard did bawl, at the top of his
lungs: when snatched off to the Townhall, he persisted in it, still
bawling; yesternight, when they guillotined him, he died with the froth of
it on his lips. (Hist. Parl. xvii. 409.)  For a man's mind, padlocked to
the Pillory, may go mad; and all men's minds may go mad; and 'believe him,'
as the frenetic will do, 'because it is impossible.'

So that apparently the knot of the crisis, and last agony of France is
come? Make front to this, thou Improvised Commune, strong Danton,
whatsoever man is strong! Readers can judge whether the Flag of Country in
Danger flapped soothing or distractively on the souls of men, that day.

But the Improvised Commune, but strong Danton is not wanting, each after
his kind. Huge Placards are getting plastered to the walls; at two o'clock
the stormbell shall be sounded, the alarm-cannon fired; all Paris shall
rush to the Champ-de-Mars, and have itself enrolled. Unarmed, truly, and
undrilled; but desperate, in the strength of frenzy. Haste, ye men; ye
very women, offer to mount guard and shoulder the brown musket: weak
clucking-hens, in a state of desperation, will fly at the muzzle of the
mastiff, and even conquer him,--by vehemence of character! Terror itself,
when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage; as frost
sufficiently intense, according to Poet Milton, will burn.--Danton, the
other night, in the Legislative Committee of General Defence, when the
other Ministers and Legislators had all opined, said, It would not do to
quit Paris, and fly to Saumur; that they must abide by Paris; and take such
attitude as would put their enemies in fear,--faire peur; a word of his
which has been often repeated, and reprinted--in italics. (Biographie des
Ministres (Bruxelles, 1826), p. 96.)

At two of the clock, Beaurepaire, as we saw, has shot himself at Verdun;
and over Europe, mortals are going in for afternoon sermon. But at Paris,
all steeples are clangouring not for sermon; the alarm-gun booming from
minute to minute; Champ-de-Mars and Fatherland's Altar boiling with
desperate terror-courage: what a miserere going up to Heaven from this
once Capital of the Most Christian King! The Legislative sits in alternate
awe and effervescence; Vergniaud proposing that Twelve shall go and dig
personally on Montmartre; which is decreed by acclaim.

But better than digging personally with acclaim, see Danton enter;--the
black brows clouded, the colossus-figure tramping heavy; grim energy
looking from all features of the rugged man! Strong is that grim Son of
France, and Son of Earth; a Reality and not a Formula he too; and surely
now if ever, being hurled low enough, it is on the Earth and on Realities
that he rests. "Legislators!" so speaks the stentor-voice, as the
Newspapers yet preserve it for us, "it is not the alarm-cannon that you
hear: it is the pas-de-charge against our enemies. To conquer them, to
hurl them back, what do we require? Il nous faut de l'audace, et encore de
l'audace, et toujours de l'audace, To dare, and again to dare, and without
end to dare!"  (Moniteur (in Hist. Parl. xvii. 347.)--Right so, thou brawny
Titan; there is nothing left for thee but that. Old men, who heard it,
will still tell you how the reverberating voice made all hearts swell, in
that moment; and braced them to the sticking-place; and thrilled abroad
over France, like electric virtue, as a word spoken in season.

But the Commune, enrolling in the Champ-de-Mars? But the Committee of
Watchfulness, become now Committee of Public Salvation; whose conscience is
Marat? The Commune enrolling enrolls many; provides Tents for them in that
Mars'-Field, that they may march with dawn on the morrow: praise to this
part of the Commune! To Marat and the Committee of Watchfulness not
praise;--not even blame, such as could be meted out in these insufficient
dialects of ours; expressive silence rather! Lone Marat, the man forbid,
meditating long in his Cellars of refuge, on his Stylites Pillar, could see
salvation in one thing only: in the fall of 'two hundred and sixty
thousand Aristocrat heads.'  With so many score of Naples Bravoes, each a
dirk in his right-hand, a muff on his left, he would traverse France, and
do it. But the world laughed, mocking the severe-benevolence of a
People's-Friend; and his idea could not become an action, but only a fixed-
idea. Lo, now, however, he has come down from his Stylites Pillar, to a
Tribune particuliere; here now, without the dirks, without the muffs at
least, were it not grown possible,--now in the knot of the crisis, when
salvation or destruction hangs in the hour!

The Ice-Tower of Avignon was noised of sufficiently, and lives in all
memories; but the authors were not punished: nay we saw Jourdan Coupe-
tete, borne on men's shoulders, like a copper Portent, 'traversing the
cities of the South.'--What phantasms, squalid-horrid, shaking their dirk
and muff, may dance through the brain of a Marat, in this dizzy pealing of
tocsin-miserere, and universal frenzy, seek not to guess, O Reader! Nor
what the cruel Billaud 'in his short brown coat was thinking;' nor Sergent,
not yet Agate-Sergent; nor Panis the confident of Danton;--nor, in a word,
how gloomy Orcus does breed in her gloomy womb, and fashion her monsters,
and prodigies of Events, which thou seest her visibly bear! Terror is on
these streets of Paris; terror and rage, tears and frenzy: tocsin-miserere
pealing through the air; fierce desperation rushing to battle; mothers,
with streaming eyes and wild hearts, sending forth their sons to die.
'Carriage-horses are seized by the bridle,' that they may draw cannon; 'the
traces cut, the carriages left standing.'  In such tocsin-miserere, and
murky bewilderment of Frenzy, are not Murder, Ate, and all Furies near at
hand? On slight hint, who knows on how slight, may not Murder come; and,
with her snaky-sparkling hand, illuminate this murk!

How it was and went, what part might be premeditated, what was improvised
and accidental, man will never know, till the great Day of Judgment make it
known. But with a Marat for keeper of the Sovereign's Conscience--And we
know what the ultima ratio of Sovereigns, when they are driven to it, is!
In this Paris there are as many wicked men, say a hundred or more, as exist
in all the Earth: to be hired, and set on; to set on, of their own accord,
unhired.--And yet we will remark that premeditation itself is not
performance, is not surety of performance; that it is perhaps, at most,
surety of letting whosoever wills perform. From the purpose of crime to
the act of crime there is an abyss; wonderful to think of. The finger lies
on the pistol; but the man is not yet a murderer: nay, his whole nature
staggering at such consummation, is there not a confused pause rather,--one
last instant of possibility for him? Not yet a murderer; it is at the
mercy of light trifles whether the most fixed idea may not yet become
unfixed. One slight twitch of a muscle, the death flash bursts; and he is
it, and will for Eternity be it;--and Earth has become a penal Tartarus for
him; his horizon girdled now not with golden hope, but with red flames of
remorse; voices from the depths of Nature sounding, Wo, wo on him!

Of such stuff are we all made; on such powder-mines of bottomless guilt and
criminality, 'if God restrained not; as is well said,--does the purest of
us walk. There are depths in man that go the length of lowest Hell, as
there are heights that reach highest Heaven;--for are not both Heaven and
Hell made out of him, made by him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery as he
is?--But looking on this Champ-de-Mars, with its tent-buildings, and
frantic enrolments; on this murky-simmering Paris, with its crammed Prisons
(supposed about to burst), with its tocsin-miserere, its mothers' tears,
and soldiers' farewell shoutings,--the pious soul might have prayed, that
day, that God's grace would restrain, and greatly restrain; lest on slight
hest or hint, Madness, Horror and Murder rose, and this Sabbath-day of
September became a Day black in the Annals of Men.--

The tocsin is pealing its loudest, the clocks inaudibly striking Three,
when poor Abbe Sicard, with some thirty other Nonjurant Priests, in six
carriages, fare along the streets, from their preliminary House of
Detention at the Townhall, westward towards the Prison of the Abbaye.
Carriages enough stand deserted on the streets; these six move on,--through
angry multitudes, cursing as they move. Accursed Aristocrat Tartuffes,
this is the pass ye have brought us to! And now ye will break the Prisons,
and set Capet Veto on horseback to ride over us? Out upon you, Priests of
Beelzebub and Moloch; of Tartuffery, Mammon, and the Prussian Gallows,--
which ye name Mother-Church and God! Such reproaches have the poor
Nonjurants to endure, and worse; spoken in on them by frantic Patriots, who
mount even on the carriage-steps; the very Guards hardly refraining. Pull
up your carriage-blinds!--No! answers Patriotism, clapping its horny paw on
the carriage blind, and crushing it down again. Patience in oppression has
limits: we are close on the Abbaye, it has lasted long: a poor Nonjurant,
of quicker temper, smites the horny paw with his cane; nay, finding
solacement in it, smites the unkempt head, sharply and again more sharply,
twice over,--seen clearly of us and of the world. It is the last that we
see clearly. Alas, next moment, the carriages are locked and blocked in
endless raging tumults; in yells deaf to the cry for mercy, which answer
the cry for mercy with sabre-thrusts through the heart. (Felemhesi
(anagram for Mehee Fils), La Verite tout entiere, sur les vrais auteurs de
la journee du 2 Septembre 1792 (reprinted in Hist. Parl. xviii. 156-181),
p. 167.)  The thirty Priests are torn out, are massacred about the Prison-
Gate, one after one,--only the poor Abbe Sicard, whom one Moton a
watchmaker, knowing him, heroically tried to save, and secrete in the
Prison, escapes to tell;--and it is Night and Orcus, and Murder's snaky-
sparkling head has risen in the murk!--

From Sunday afternoon (exclusive of intervals, and pauses not final) till
Thursday evening, there follow consecutively a Hundred Hours. Which
hundred hours are to be reckoned with the hours of the Bartholomew
Butchery, of the Armagnac Massacres, Sicilian Vespers, or whatsoever is
savagest in the annals of this world. Horrible the hour when man's soul,
in its paroxysm, spurns asunder the barriers and rules; and shews what dens
and depths are in it! For Night and Orcus, as we say, as was long
prophesied, have burst forth, here in this Paris, from their subterranean
imprisonment: hideous, dim, confused; which it is painful to look on; and
yet which cannot, and indeed which should not, be forgotten.

The Reader, who looks earnestly through this dim Phantasmagory of the Pit,
will discern few fixed certain objects; and yet still a few. He will
observe, in this Abbaye Prison, the sudden massacre of the Priests being
once over, a strange Court of Justice, or call it Court of Revenge and
Wild-Justice, swiftly fashion itself, and take seat round a table, with the
Prison-Registers spread before it;--Stanislas Maillard, Bastille-hero,
famed Leader of the Menads, presiding. O Stanislas, one hoped to meet thee
elsewhere than here; thou shifty Riding-Usher, with an inkling of Law!
This work also thou hadst to do; and then--to depart for ever from our
eyes. At La Force, at the Chatelet, the Conciergerie, the like Court forms
itself, with the like accompaniments: the thing that one man does other
men can do. There are some Seven Prisons in Paris, full of Aristocrats
with conspiracies;--nay not even Bicetre and Salpetriere shall escape, with
their Forgers of Assignats: and there are seventy times seven hundred
Patriot hearts in a state of frenzy. Scoundrel hearts also there are; as
perfect, say, as the Earth holds,--if such are needed. To whom, in this
mood, law is as no-law; and killing, by what name soever called, is but
work to be done.

So sit these sudden Courts of Wild-Justice, with the Prison-Registers
before them; unwonted wild tumult howling all round: the Prisoners in
dread expectancy within. Swift: a name is called; bolts jingle, a
Prisoner is there. A few questions are put; swiftly this sudden Jury
decides: Royalist Plotter or not? Clearly not; in that case, Let the
Prisoner be enlarged With Vive la Nation. Probably yea; then still, Let
the Prisoner be enlarged, but without Vive la Nation; or else it may run,
Let the prisoner be conducted to La Force. At La Force again their formula
is, Let the Prisoner be conducted to the Abbaye.--"To La Force then!"
Volunteer bailiffs seize the doomed man; he is at the outer gate;
'enlarged,' or 'conducted,'--not into La Force, but into a howling sea;
forth, under an arch of wild sabres, axes and pikes; and sinks, hewn
asunder. And another sinks, and another; and there forms itself a piled
heap of corpses, and the kennels begin to run red. Fancy the yells of
these men, their faces of sweat and blood; the crueller shrieks of these
women, for there are women too; and a fellow-mortal hurled naked into it
all! Jourgniac de Saint Meard has seen battle, has seen an effervescent
Regiment du Roi in mutiny; but the bravest heart may quail at this. The
Swiss Prisoners, remnants of the Tenth of August, 'clasped each other
spasmodically,' and hung back; grey veterans crying: "Mercy Messieurs; ah,
mercy!"  But there was no mercy. Suddenly, however, one of these men steps
forward. He had a blue frock coat; he seemed to be about thirty, his
stature was above common, his look noble and martial. "I go first," said
he, "since it must be so: adieu!"  Then dashing his hat sharply behind
him: "Which way?" cried he to the Brigands: "Shew it me, then."  They
open the folding gate; he is announced to the multitude. He stands a
moment motionless; then plunges forth among the pikes, and dies of a
thousand wounds.'  (Felemhesi, La Verite tout entiere (ut supra), p. 173.)

Man after man is cut down; the sabres need sharpening, the killers refresh
themselves from wine jugs. Onward and onward goes the butchery; the loud
yells wearying down into bass growls. A sombre-faced, shifting multitude
looks on; in dull approval, or dull disapproval; in dull recognition that
it is Necessity. 'An Anglais in drab greatcoat' was seen, or seemed to be
seen, serving liquor from his own dram-bottle;--for what purpose, 'if not
set on by Pitt,' Satan and himself know best! Witty Dr. Moore grew sick on
approaching, and turned into another street. (Moore's Journal, i. 185-
195.)--Quick enough goes this Jury-Court; and rigorous. The brave are not
spared, nor the beautiful, nor the weak. Old M. de Montmorin, the
Minister's Brother, was acquitted by the Tribunal of the Seventeenth; and
conducted back, elbowed by howling galleries; but is not acquitted here.
Princess de Lamballe has lain down on bed: "Madame, you are to be removed
to the Abbaye."  "I do not wish to remove; I am well enough here."  There
is a need-be for removing. She will arrange her dress a little, then; rude
voices answer, "You have not far to go."  She too is led to the hell-gate;
a manifest Queen's-Friend. She shivers back, at the sight of bloody
sabres; but there is no return: Onwards! That fair hindhead is cleft with
the axe; the neck is severed. That fair body is cut in fragments; with
indignities, and obscene horrors of moustachio grands-levres, which human
nature would fain find incredible,--which shall be read in the original
language only. She was beautiful, she was good, she had known no
happiness. Young hearts, generation after generation, will think with
themselves: O worthy of worship, thou king-descended, god-descended and
poor sister-woman! why was not I there; and some Sword Balmung, or Thor's
Hammer in my hand? Her head is fixed on a pike; paraded under the windows
of the Temple; that a still more hated, a Marie-Antoinette, may see. One
Municipal, in the Temple with the Royal Prisoners at the moment, said,
"Look out."  Another eagerly whispered, "Do not look."  The circuit of the
Temple is guarded, in these hours, by a long stretched tricolor riband:
terror enters, and the clangour of infinite tumult: hitherto not regicide,
though that too may come.

But it is more edifying to note what thrillings of affection, what
fragments of wild virtues turn up, in this shaking asunder of man's
existence, for of these too there is a proportion. Note old Marquis
Cazotte: he is doomed to die; but his young Daughter clasps him in her
arms, with an inspiration of eloquence, with a love which is stronger than
very death; the heart of the killers themselves is touched by it; the old
man is spared. Yet he was guilty, if plotting for his King is guilt: in
ten days more, a Court of Law condemned him, and he had to die elsewhere;
bequeathing his Daughter a lock of his old grey hair. Or note old M. de
Sombreuil, who also had a Daughter:--My Father is not an Aristocrat; O good
gentlemen, I will swear it, and testify it, and in all ways prove it; we
are not; we hate Aristocrats! "Wilt thou drink Aristocrats' blood?"  The
man lifts blood (if universal Rumour can be credited (Dulaure: Esquisses
Historiques des principaux evenemens de la Revolution, ii. 206 (cited in
Montgaillard, iii. 205).)); the poor maiden does drink. "This Sombreuil is
innocent then!"  Yes indeed,--and now note, most of all, how the bloody
pikes, at this news, do rattle to the ground; and the tiger-yells become
bursts of jubilee over a brother saved; and the old man and his daughter
are clasped to bloody bosoms, with hot tears, and borne home in triumph of
Vive la Nation, the killers refusing even money! Does it seem strange,
this temper of theirs? It seems very certain, well proved by Royalist
testimony in other instances; (Bertrand-Moleville (Mem. Particuliers,
ii.213), &c. &c.) and very significant.

Chapter 3.1.V.

A Trilogy.

As all Delineation, in these ages, were it never so Epic, 'speaking itself
and not singing itself,' must either found on Belief and provable Fact, or
have no foundation at all (nor except as floating cobweb any existence at
all),--the Reader will perhaps prefer to take a glance with the very eyes
of eye-witnesses; and see, in that way, for himself, how it was. Brave
Jourgniac, innocent Abbe Sicard, judicious Advocate Maton, these, greatly
compressing themselves, shall speak, each an instant. Jourgniac's Agony of
Thirty-eight hours went through 'above a hundred editions,' though
intrinsically a poor work. Some portion of it may here go through above
the hundred-and-first, for want of a better.

'Towards seven o'clock' (Sunday night, at the Abbaye; for Jourgniac goes by
dates): 'We saw two men enter, their hands bloody and armed with sabres; a
turnkey, with a torch, lighted them; he pointed to the bed of the
unfortunate Swiss, Reding. Reding spoke with a dying voice. One of them
paused; but the other cried Allons donc; lifted the unfortunate man;
carried him out on his back to the street. He was massacred there.

'We all looked at one another in silence, we clasped each other's hands.
Motionless, with fixed eyes, we gazed on the pavement of our prison; on
which lay the moonlight, checkered with the triple stancheons of our
windows.

'Three in the morning: They were breaking-in one of the prison-doors. We
at first thought they were coming to kill us in our room; but heard, by
voices on the staircase, that it was a room where some Prisoners had
barricaded themselves. They were all butchered there, as we shortly
gathered.

'Ten o'clock: The Abbe Lenfant and the Abbe de Chapt-Rastignac appeared in
the pulpit of the Chapel, which was our prison; they had entered by a door
from the stairs. They said to us that our end was at hand; that we must
compose ourselves, and receive their last blessing. An electric movement,
not to be defined, threw us all on our knees, and we received it. These
two whitehaired old men, blessing us from their place above; death hovering
over our heads, on all hands environing us; the moment is never to be
forgotten. Half an hour after, they were both massacred, and we heard
their cries.'  (Jourgniac Saint-Meard, Mon Agonie de Trente-huit heures
(reprinted in Hist. Parl. xviii. 103-135).)--Thus Jourgniac in his Agony in
the Abbaye.

But now let the good Maton speak, what he, over in La Force, in the same
hours, is suffering and witnessing. This Resurrection by him is greatly
the best, the least theatrical of these Pamphlets; and stands testing by
documents:

'Towards seven o'clock,' on Sunday night, 'prisoners were called
frequently, and they did not reappear. Each of us reasoned in his own way,
on this singularity: but our ideas became calm, as we persuaded ourselves
that the Memorial I had drawn up for the National Assembly was producing
effect.

'At one in the morning, the grate which led to our quarter opened anew.
Four men in uniform, each with a drawn sabre and blazing torch, came up to
our corridor, preceded by a turnkey; and entered an apartment close to
ours, to investigate a box there, which we heard them break up. This done,
they stept into the gallery, and questioned the man Cuissa, to know where
Lamotte (Necklace's Widower) was. Lamotte, they said, had some months ago,
under pretext of a treasure he knew of, swindled a sum of three-hundred
livres from one of them, inviting him to dinner for that purpose. The
wretched Cuissa, now in their hands, who indeed lost his life this night,
answered trembling, That he remembered the fact well, but could not tell
what was become of Lamotte. Determined to find Lamotte and confront him
with Cuissa, they rummaged, along with this latter, through various other
apartments; but without effect, for we heard them say: "Come search among
the corpses then: for, nom de Dieu! we must find where he is."

'At this time, I heard Louis Bardy, the Abbe Bardy's name called: he was
brought out; and directly massacred, as I learnt. He had been accused,
along with his concubine, five or six years before, of having murdered and
cut in pieces his own Brother, Auditor of the Chambre des Comptes at
Montpelier; but had by his subtlety, his dexterity, nay his eloquence,
outwitted the judges, and escaped.

'One may fancy what terror these words, "Come search among the corpses
then," had thrown me into. I saw nothing for it now but resigning myself
to die. I wrote my last-will; concluding it by a petition and adjuration,
that the paper should be sent to its address. Scarcely had I quitted the
pen, when there came two other men in uniform; one of them, whose arm and
sleeve up to the very shoulder, as well as the sabre, were covered with
blood, said, He was as weary as a hodman that had been beating plaster.

'Baudin de la Chenaye was called; sixty years of virtues could not save
him. They said, "A l'Abbaye:"  he passed the fatal outer-gate; gave a cry
of terror, at sight of the heaped corpses; covered his eyes with his hands,
and died of innumerable wounds. At every new opening of the grate, I
thought I should hear my own name called, and see Rossignol enter.

'I flung off my nightgown and cap; I put on a coarse unwashed shirt, a worn
frock without waistcoat, an old round hat; these things I had sent for,
some days ago, in the fear of what might happen.

'The rooms of this corridor had been all emptied but ours. We were four
together; whom they seemed to have forgotten: we addressed our prayers in
common to the Eternal to be delivered from this peril.

'Baptiste the turnkey came up by himself, to see us. I took him by the
hands; I conjured him to save us; promised him a hundred louis, if he would
conduct me home. A noise coming from the grates made him hastily withdraw.

'It was the noise of some dozen or fifteen men, armed to the teeth; as we,
lying flat to escape being seen, could see from our windows: "Up stairs!"
said they: "Let not one remain."  I took out my penknife; I considered
where I should strike myself,'--but reflected 'that the blade was too
short,' and also 'on religion.'

Finally, however, between seven and eight o'clock in the morning, enter
four men with bludgeons and sabres!--'to one of whom Gerard my comrade
whispered, earnestly, apart. During their colloquy I searched every where
for shoes, that I might lay off the Advocate pumps (pantoufles de Palais) I
had on,' but could find none.--'Constant, called le Sauvage, Gerard, and a
third whose name escapes me, they let clear off: as for me, four sabres
were crossed over my breast, and they led me down. I was brought to their
bar; to the Personage with the scarf, who sat as judge there. He was a
lame man, of tall lank stature. He recognised me on the streets, and spoke
to me seven months after. I have been assured that he was son of a retired
attorney, and named Chepy. Crossing the Court called Des Nourrices, I saw
Manuel haranguing in tricolor scarf.'  The trial, as we see, ends in
acquittal and resurrection. (Maton de la Varenne, Ma Resurrection (in
Hist. Parl. xviii. 135-156).)

Poor Sicard, from the violon of the Abbaye, shall say but a few words;
true-looking, though tremulous. Towards three in the morning, the killers
bethink them of this little violon; and knock from the court. 'I tapped
gently, trembling lest the murderers might hear, on the opposite door,
where the Section Committee was sitting: they answered gruffly that they
had no key. There were three of us in this violon; my companions thought
they perceived a kind of loft overhead. But it was very high; only one of
us could reach it, by mounting on the shoulders of both the others. One of
them said to me, that my life was usefuller than theirs: I resisted, they
insisted: no denial! I fling myself on the neck of these two deliverers;
never was scene more touching. I mount on the shoulders of the first, then
on those of the second, finally on the loft; and address to my two comrades
the expression of a soul overwhelmed with natural emotions. (Abbe Sicard:
Relation adressee a un de ses amis (Hist. Parl. xviii. 98-103).)

The two generous companions, we rejoice to find, did not perish. But it is
time that Jourgniac de Saint-Meard should speak his last words, and end
this singular trilogy. The night had become day; and the day has again
become night. Jourgniac, worn down with uttermost agitation, has fallen
asleep, and had a cheering dream: he has also contrived to make
acquaintance with one of the volunteer bailiffs, and spoken in native
Provencal with him. On Tuesday, about one in the morning, his Agony is
reaching its crisis.

'By the glare of two torches, I now descried the terrible tribunal, where
lay my life or my death. The President, in grey coats, with a sabre at his
side, stood leaning with his hands against a table, on which were papers,
an inkstand, tobacco-pipes and bottles. Some ten persons were around,
seated or standing; two of whom had jackets and aprons: others were
sleeping stretched on benches. Two men, in bloody shirts, guarded the door
of the place; an old turnkey had his hand on the lock. In front of the
President, three men held a Prisoner, who might be about sixty' (or
seventy: he was old Marshal Maille, of the Tuileries and August Tenth).
'They stationed me in a corner; my guards crossed their sabres on my
breast. I looked on all sides for my Provencal: two National Guards, one
of them drunk, presented some appeal from the Section of Croix Rouge in
favour of the Prisoner; the Man in Grey answered: "They are useless, these
appeals for traitors."  Then the Prisoner exclaimed: "It is frightful;
your judgment is a murder."  The President answered; "My hands are washed
of it; take M. Maille away."  They drove him into the street; where,
through the opening of the door, I saw him massacred.

'The President sat down to write; registering, I suppose, the name of this
one whom they had finished; then I heard him say: "Another, A un autre!"

'Behold me then haled before this swift and bloody judgment-bar, where the
best protection was to have no protection, and all resources of ingenuity
became null if they were not founded on truth. Two of my guards held me
each by a hand, the third by the collar of my coat. "Your name, your
profession?" said the President. "The smallest lie ruins you," added one
of the judges,--"My name is Jourgniac Saint-Meard; I have served, as an
officer, twenty years: and I appear at your tribunal with the assurance of
an innocent man, who therefore will not lie."--"We shall see that,"  said
the President: "Do you know why you are arrested?"--"Yes, Monsieur le
President; I am accused of editing the Journal De la Cour et de la Ville.
But I hope to prove the falsity"'--

But no; Jourgniac's proof of the falsity, and defence generally, though of
excellent result as a defence, is not interesting to read. It is long-
winded; there is a loose theatricality in the reporting of it, which does
not amount to unveracity, yet which tends that way. We shall suppose him
successful, beyond hope, in proving and disproving; and skip largely,--to
the catastrophe, almost at two steps.

'"But after all," said one of the Judges, "there is no smoke without
kindling; tell us why they accuse you of that."--"I was about to do so"'--
Jourgniac does so; with more and more success.

'"Nay," continued I, "they accuse me even of recruiting for the Emigrants!"
At these words there arose a general murmur. "O Messieurs, Messieurs," I
exclaimed, raising my voice, "it is my turn to speak; I beg M. le President
to have the kindness to maintain it for me; I never needed it more."--"True
enough, true enough," said almost all the judges with a laugh: "Silence!"

'While they were examining the testimonials I had produced, a new Prisoner
was brought in, and placed before the President. "It was one Priest more,"
they said, "whom they had ferreted out of the Chapelle."  After very few
questions: "A la Force!"  He flung his breviary on the table: was hurled
forth, and massacred. I reappeared before the tribunal.

'"You tell us always," cried one of the judges, with a tone of impatience,
"that you are not this, that you are not that: what are you then?"--"I was
an open Royalist."--There arose a general murmur; which was miraculously
appeased by another of the men, who had seemed to take an interest in me:
"We are not here to judge opinions," said he, "but to judge the results of
them."  Could Rousseau and Voltaire both in one, pleading for me, have said
better?--"Yes, Messieurs," cried I, "always till the Tenth of August, I was
an open Royalist. Ever since the Tenth of August that cause has been
finished. I am a Frenchman, true to my country. I was always a man of
honour.

'"My soldiers never distrusted me. Nay, two days before that business of
Nanci, when their suspicion of their officers was at its height, they chose
me for commander, to lead them to Luneville, to get back the prisoners of
the Regiment Mestre-de-Camp, and seize General Malseigne."'  Which fact
there is, most luckily, an individual present who by a certain token can
confirm.

'The President, this cross-questioning being over, took off his hat and
said: "I see nothing to suspect in this man; I am for granting him his
liberty. Is that your vote?"  To which all the judges answered: "Oui,
oui; it is just!"'

And there arose vivats within doors and without; 'escort of three,' amid
shoutings and embracings: thus Jourgniac escaped from jury-trial and the
jaws of death. (Mon Agonie (ut supra), Hist. Parl. xviii. 128.)  Maton and
Sicard did, either by trial, and no bill found, lank President Chepy
finding 'absolutely nothing;' or else by evasion, and new favour of Moton
the brave watchmaker, likewise escape; and were embraced, and wept over;
weeping in return, as they well might.

Thus they three, in wondrous trilogy, or triple soliloquy; uttering
simultaneously, through the dread night-watches, their Night-thoughts,--
grown audible to us! They Three are become audible: but the other
'Thousand and Eighty-nine, of whom Two Hundred and Two were Priests,' who
also had Night-thoughts, remain inaudible; choked for ever in black Death.
Heard only of President Chepy and the Man in Grey!--

Chapter 3.1.VI.

The Circular.

But the Constituted Authorities, all this while? The Legislative Assembly;
the Six Ministers; the Townhall; Santerre with the National Guard?--It is
very curious to think what a City is. Theatres, to the number of some
twenty-three, were open every night during these prodigies: while right-
arms here grew weary with slaying, right-arms there are twiddledeeing on
melodious catgut; at the very instant when Abbe Sicard was clambering up
his second pair of shoulders, three-men high, five hundred thousand human
individuals were lying horizontal, as if nothing were amiss.

As for the poor Legislative, the sceptre had departed from it. The
Legislative did send Deputation to the Prisons, to the Street-Courts; and
poor M. Dusaulx did harangue there; but produced no conviction whatsoever:
nay, at last, as he continued haranguing, the Street-Court interposed, not
without threats; and he had to cease, and withdraw. This is the same poor
worthy old M. Dusaulx who told, or indeed almost sang (though with cracked
voice), the Taking of the Bastille,--to our satisfaction long since. He
was wont to announce himself, on such and on all occasions, as the
Translator of Juvenal. "Good Citizens, you see before you a man who loves
his country, who is the Translator of Juvenal," said he once.--"Juvenal?'
interrupts Sansculottism: "who the devil is Juvenal? One of your sacres
Aristocrates? To the Lanterne!"  From an orator of this kind, conviction
was not to be expected. The Legislative had much ado to save one of its
own Members, or Ex-Members, Deputy Journeau, who chanced to be lying in
arrest for mere Parliamentary delinquencies, in these Prisons. As for poor
old Dusaulx and Company, they returned to the Salle de Manege, saying, "It
was dark; and they could not see well what was going on."  (Moniteur,
Debate of 2nd September, 1792.)

Roland writes indignant messages, in the name of Order, Humanity, and the
Law; but there is no Force at his disposal. Santerre's National Force
seems lazy to rise; though he made requisitions, he says,--which always
dispersed again. Nay did not we, with Advocate Maton's eyes, see 'men in
uniform,' too, with their 'sleeves bloody to the shoulder?'  Petion goes in
tricolor scarf; speaks "the austere language of the law:" the killers give
up, while he is there; when his back is turned, recommence. Manuel too in
scarf we, with Maton's eyes, transiently saw haranguing, in the Court
called of Nurses, Cour des Nourrices. On the other hand, cruel Billaud,
likewise in scarf, 'with that small puce coat and black wig we are used to
on him,' (Mehee, Fils (ut supra, in Hist. Parl. xviii. p. 189).) audibly
delivers, 'standing among corpses,' at the Abbaye, a short but ever-
memorable harangue, reported in various phraseology, but always to this
purpose: "Brave Citizens, you are extirpating the Enemies of Liberty; you
are at your duty. A grateful Commune, and Country, would wish to
recompense you adequately; but cannot, for you know its want of funds.
Whoever shall have worked (travaille) in a Prison shall receive a draft of
one louis, payable by our cashier. Continue your work."  (Montgaillard,
iii. 191.)--The Constituted Authorities are of yesterday; all pulling
different ways: there is properly not Constituted Authority, but every man
is his own King; and all are kinglets, belligerent, allied, or armed-
neutral, without king over them.

'O everlasting infamy,' exclaims Montgaillard, 'that Paris stood looking on
in stupor for four days, and did not interfere!'  Very desirable indeed
that Paris had interfered; yet not unnatural that it stood even so, looking
on in stupor. Paris is in death-panic, the enemy and gibbets at its door:
whosoever in Paris has the heart to front death finds it more pressing to
do it fighting the Prussians, than fighting the killers of Aristocrats.
Indignant abhorrence, as in Roland, may be here; gloomy sanction,
premeditation or not, as in Marat and Committee of Salvation, may be there;
dull disapproval, dull approval, and acquiescence in Necessity and Destiny,
is the general temper. The Sons of Darkness, 'two hundred or so,' risen
from their lurking-places, have scope to do their work. Urged on by fever-
frenzy of Patriotism, and the madness of Terror;--urged on by lucre, and
the gold louis of wages? Nay, not lucre: for the gold watches, rings,
money of the Massacred, are punctually brought to the Townhall, by Killers
sans-indispensables, who higgle afterwards for their twenty shillings of
wages; and Sergent sticking an uncommonly fine agate on his finger ('fully
meaning to account for it'), becomes Agate-Sergent. But the temper, as we
say, is dull acquiescence. Not till the Patriotic or Frenetic part of the
work is finished for want of material; and Sons of Darkness, bent clearly
on lucre alone, begin wrenching watches and purses, brooches from ladies'
necks 'to equip volunteers,' in daylight, on the streets,--does the temper
from dull grow vehement; does the Constable raise his truncheon, and
striking heartily (like a cattle-driver in earnest) beat the 'course of
things' back into its old regulated drove-roads. The Garde-Meuble itself
was surreptitiously plundered, on the 17th of the Month, to Roland's new
horror; who anew bestirs himself, and is, as Sieyes says, 'the veto of
scoundrels,' Roland veto des coquins. (Helen Maria Williams, iii. 27.)--

This is the September Massacre, otherwise called 'Severe Justice of the
People.'  These are the Septemberers (Septembriseurs); a name of some note
and lucency,--but lucency of the Nether-fire sort; very different from that
of our Bastille Heroes, who shone, disputable by no Friend of Freedom, as
in heavenly light-radiance: to such phasis of the business have we
advanced since then! The numbers massacred are, in Historical fantasy,
'between two and three thousand;' or indeed they are 'upwards of six
thousand,' for Peltier (in vision) saw them massacring the very patients of
the Bicetre Madhouse 'with grape-shot;' nay finally they are 'twelve
thousand' and odd hundreds,--not more than that. (See Hist. Parl. xvii.
421, 422.)  In Arithmetical ciphers, and Lists drawn up by accurate
Advocate Maton, the number, including two hundred and two priests, three
'persons unknown,' and 'one thief killed at the Bernardins,' is, as above
hinted, a Thousand and Eighty-nine,--no less than that.

A thousand and eighty-nine lie dead, 'two hundred and sixty heaped
carcasses on the Pont au Change' itself;--among which, Robespierre pleading
afterwards will 'nearly weep' to reflect that there was said to be one
slain innocent. (Moniteur of 6th November (Debate of 5th November, 1793).)
One; not two, O thou seagreen Incorruptible? If so, Themis Sansculotte
must be lucky; for she was brief!--In the dim Registers of the Townhall,
which are preserved to this day, men read, with a certain sickness of
heart, items and entries not usual in Town Books: 'To workers employed in
preserving the salubrity of the air in the Prisons, and persons 'who
presided over these dangerous operations,' so much,--in various items,
nearly seven hundred pounds sterling. To carters employed to 'the Burying-
grounds of Clamart, Montrouge, and Vaugirard,' at so much a journey, per
cart; this also is an entry. Then so many francs and odd sous 'for the
necessary quantity of quick-lime!'  (Etat des sommes payees par la Commune
de Paris (Hist. Parl. xviii. 231).)  Carts go along the streets; full of
stript human corpses, thrown pellmell; limbs sticking up:--seest thou that
cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in
its yellow paleness, in its cold rigour; the palm opened towards Heaven, as
if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de profundis, Take pity on the Sons of
Men!--Mercier saw it, as he walked down 'the Rue Saint-Jacques from
Montrouge, on the morrow of the Massacres:'  but not a Hand; it was a
Foot,--which he reckons still more significant, one understands not well
why. Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven? Rushing, like a wild
diver, in disgust and despair, towards the depths of Annihilation? Even
there shall His hand find thee, and His right-hand hold thee,--surely for
right not for wrong, for good not evil! 'I saw that Foot,' says Mercier;
'I shall know it again at the great Day of Judgment, when the Eternal,
throned on his thunders, shall judge both Kings and Septemberers.'
(Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 21.)

That a shriek of inarticulate horror rose over this thing, not only from
French Aristocrats and Moderates, but from all Europe, and has prolonged
itself to the present day, was most natural and right. The thing lay done,
irrevocable; a thing to be counted besides some other things, which lie
very black in our Earth's Annals, yet which will not erase therefrom. For
man, as was remarked, has transcendentalisms in him; standing, as he does,
poor creature, every way 'in the confluence of Infinitudes;' a mystery to
himself and others: in the centre of two Eternities, of three
Immensities,--in the intersection of primeval Light with the everlasting
dark! Thus have there been, especially by vehement tempers reduced to a
state of desperation, very miserable things done. Sicilian Vespers, and
'eight thousand slaughtered in two hours,' are a known thing. Kings
themselves, not in desperation, but only in difficulty, have sat hatching,
for year and day (nay De Thou says, for seven years), their Bartholomew
Business; and then, at the right moment, also on an Autumn Sunday, this
very Bell (they say it is the identical metal) of St. Germain l'Auxerrois
was set a-pealing--with effect. (9th to 13th September, 1572 (Dulaure,
Hist. de Paris, iv. 289.)  Nay the same black boulder-stones of these Paris
Prisons have seen Prison-massacres before now; men massacring countrymen,
Burgundies massacring Armagnacs, whom they had suddenly imprisoned, till as
now there are piled heaps of carcasses, and the streets ran red;--the Mayor
Petion of the time speaking the austere language of the law, and answered
by the Killers, in old French (it is some four hundred years old): "Maugre
bieu, Sire,--Sir, God's malison on your justice, your pity, your right
reason. Cursed be of God whoso shall have pity on these false traitorous
Armagnacs, English; dogs they are; they have destroyed us, wasted this
realm of France, and sold it to the English."  (Dulaure, iii. 494.)  And so
they slay, and fling aside the slain, to the extent of 'fifteen hundred and
eighteen, among whom are found four Bishops of false and damnable counsel,
and two Presidents of Parlement.'  For though it is not Satan's world this
that we live in, Satan always has his place in it (underground properly);
and from time to time bursts up. Well may mankind shriek, inarticulately
anathematising as they can. There are actions of such emphasis that no
shrieking can be too emphatic for them. Shriek ye; acted have they.

Shriek who might in this France, in this Paris Legislative or Paris
Townhall, there are Ten Men who do not shriek. A Circular goes out from
the Committee of Salut Public, dated 3rd of September 1792; directed to all
Townhalls: a State-paper too remarkable to be overlooked. 'A part of the
ferocious conspirators detained in the Prisons,' it says, 'have been put to
death by the People; and it,' the Circular, 'cannot doubt but the whole
Nation, driven to the edge of ruin by such endless series of treasons, will
make haste to adopt this means of public salvation; and all Frenchmen will
cry as the men of Paris: We go to fight the enemy, but we will not leave
robbers behind us, to butcher our wives and children.'  To which are
legibly appended these signatures: Panis, Sergent; Marat, Friend of the
People; (Hist. Parl. xvii. 433.) with Seven others;--carried down thereby,
in a strange way, to the late remembrance of Antiquarians. We remark,
however, that their Circular rather recoiled on themselves. The Townhalls
made no use of it; even the distracted Sansculottes made little; they only
howled and bellowed, but did not bite. At Rheims 'about eight persons'
were killed; and two afterwards were hanged for doing it. At Lyons, and a
few other places, some attempt was made; but with hardly any effect, being
quickly put down.

Less fortunate were the Prisoners of Orleans; was the good Duke de la
Rochefoucault. He journeying, by quick stages, with his Mother and Wife,
towards the Waters of Forges, or some quieter country, was arrested at
Gisors; conducted along the streets, amid effervescing multitudes, and
killed dead 'by the stroke of a paving-stone hurled through the coach-
window.'  Killed as a once Liberal now Aristocrat; Protector of Priests,
Suspender of virtuous Petions, and his unfortunate Hot-grown-cold,
detestable to Patriotism. He dies lamented of Europe; his blood spattering
the cheeks of his old Mother, ninety-three years old.

As for the Orleans Prisoners, they are State Criminals: Royalist
Ministers, Delessarts, Montmorins; who have been accumulating on the High
Court of Orleans, ever since that Tribunal was set up. Whom now it seems
good that we should get transferred to our new Paris Court of the
Seventeenth; which proceeds far quicker. Accordingly hot Fournier from
Martinique, Fournier l'Americain, is off, missioned by Constituted
Authority; with stanch National Guards, with Lazouski the Pole; sparingly
provided with road-money. These, through bad quarters, through
difficulties, perils, for Authorities cross each other in this time,--do
triumphantly bring off the Fifty or Fifty-three Orleans Prisoners, towards
Paris; where a swifter Court of the Seventeenth will do justice on them.
(Ibid. xvii. 434.)  But lo, at Paris, in the interim, a still swifter and
swiftest Court of the Second, and of September, has instituted itself:
enter not Paris, or that will judge you!--What shall hot Fournier do? It
was his duty, as volunteer Constable, had he been a perfect character, to
guard those men's lives never so Aristocratic, at the expense of his own
valuable life never so Sansculottic, till some Constituted Court had
disposed of them. But he was an imperfect character and Constable; perhaps
one of the more imperfect.

Hot Fournier, ordered to turn thither by one Authority, to turn thither by
another Authority, is in a perplexing multiplicity of orders; but finally
he strikes off for Versailles. His Prisoners fare in tumbrils, or open
carts, himself and Guards riding and marching around: and at the last
village, the worthy Mayor of Versailles comes to meet him, anxious that the
arrival and locking up were well over. It is Sunday, the ninth day of the
month. Lo, on entering the Avenue of Versailles, what multitudes,
stirring, swarming in the September sun, under the dull-green September
foliage; the Four-rowed Avenue all humming and swarming, as if the Town had
emptied itself! Our tumbrils roll heavily through the living sea; the
Guards and Fournier making way with ever more difficulty; the Mayor
speaking and gesturing his persuasivest; amid the inarticulate growling
hum, which growls ever the deeper even by hearing itself growl, not without
sharp yelpings here and there:--Would to God we were out of this strait
place, and wind and separation had cooled the heat, which seems about
igniting here!

And yet if the wide Avenue is too strait, what will the Street de
Surintendance be, at leaving of the same? At the corner of Surintendance
Street, the compressed yelpings became a continuous yell: savage figures
spring on the tumbril-shafts; first spray of an endless coming tide! The
Mayor pleads, pushes, half-desperate; is pushed, carried off in men's arms:
the savage tide has entrance, has mastery. Amid horrid noise, and tumult
as of fierce wolves, the Prisoners sink massacred,--all but some eleven,
who escaped into houses, and found mercy. The Prisons, and what other
Prisoners they held, were with difficulty saved. The stript clothes are
burnt in bonfire; the corpses lie heaped in the ditch on the morrow
morning. (Pieces officielles relatives au massacre des Prisonniers a
Versailles (in Hist. Parl. xviii. 236-249).)  All France, except it be the
Ten Men of the Circular and their people, moans and rages, inarticulately
shrieking; all Europe rings.

But neither did Danton shriek; though, as Minister of Justice, it was more
his part to do so. Brawny Danton is in the breach, as of stormed Cities
and Nations; amid the Sweep of Tenth-of-August cannon, the rustle of
Prussian gallows-ropes, the smiting of September sabres; destruction all
round him, and the rushing-down of worlds: Minister of Justice is his
name; but Titan of the Forlorn Hope, and Enfant Perdu of the Revolution, is
his quality,--and the man acts according to that. "We must put our enemies
in fear!"  Deep fear, is it not, as of its own accord, falling on our
enemies? The Titan of the Forlorn Hope, he is not the man that would
swiftest of all prevent its so falling. Forward, thou lost Titan of an
Enfant Perdu; thou must dare, and again dare, and without end dare; there
is nothing left for thee but that! "Que mon nom soit fletri, Let my name
be blighted:"  what am I? The Cause alone is great; and shall live, and
not perish.--So, on the whole, here too is a swallower of Formulas; of
still wider gulp than Mirabeau: this Danton, Mirabeau of the Sansculottes.
In the September days, this Minister was not heard of as co-operating with
strict Roland; his business might lie elsewhere,--with Brunswick and the
Hotel-de-Ville. When applied to by an official person, about the Orleans
Prisoners, and the risks they ran, he answered gloomily, twice over, "Are
not these men guilty?"--When pressed, he 'answered in a terrible voice,'
and turned his back. (Biographie des Ministres, p. 97.)  Two Thousand
slain in the Prisons; horrible if you will: but Brunswick is within a
day's journey of us; and there are Five-and twenty Millions yet, to slay or
to save. Some men have tasks,--frightfuller than ours! It seems strange,
but is not strange, that this Minister of Moloch-Justice, when any
suppliant for a friend's life got access to him, was found to have human
compassion; and yielded and granted 'always;' 'neither did one personal
enemy of Danton perish in these days.' (Ibid. p. 103.)

To shriek, we say, when certain things are acted, is proper and
unavoidable. Nevertheless, articulate speech, not shrieking, is the
faculty of man: when speech is not yet possible, let there be, with the
shortest delay, at least--silence. Silence, accordingly, in this forty-
fourth year of the business, and eighteen hundred and thirty-sixth of an
'Era called Christian as lucus a non,' is the thing we recommend and
practise. Nay, instead of shrieking more, it were perhaps edifying to
remark, on the other side, what a singular thing Customs (in Latin, Mores)
are; and how fitly the Virtue, Vir-tus, Manhood or Worth, that is in a man,
is called his Morality, or Customariness. Fell Slaughter, one the most
authentic products of the Pit you would say, once give it Customs, becomes
War, with Laws of War; and is Customary and Moral enough; and red
individuals carry the tools of it girt round their haunches, not without an
air of pride,--which do thou nowise blame. While, see! so long as it is
but dressed in hodden or russet; and Revolution, less frequent than War,
has not yet got its Laws of Revolution, but the hodden or russet
individuals are Uncustomary--O shrieking beloved brother blockheads of
Mankind, let us close those wide mouths of ours; let us cease shrieking,
and begin considering!

Chapter 3.1.VII.

September in Argonne.

Plain, at any rate, is one thing: that the fear, whatever of fear those
Aristocrat enemies might need, has been brought about. The matter is
getting serious then! Sansculottism too has become a Fact, and seems
minded to assert itself as such? This huge mooncalf of Sansculottism,
staggering about, as young calves do, is not mockable only, and soft like
another calf; but terrible too, if you prick it; and, through its hideous
nostrils, blows fire!--Aristocrats, with pale panic in their hearts, fly
towards covert; and a light rises to them over several things; or rather a
confused transition towards light, whereby for the moment darkness is only
darker than ever. But, What will become of this France? Here is a
question! France is dancing its desert-waltz, as Sahara does when the
winds waken; in whirlblasts twenty-five millions in number; waltzing
towards Townhalls, Aristocrat Prisons, and Election Committee-rooms;
towards Brunswick and the Frontiers;--towards a New Chapter of Universal
History; if indeed it be not the Finis, and winding-up of that!

In Election Committee-rooms there is now no dubiety; but the work goes
bravely along. The Convention is getting chosen,--really in a decisive
spirit; in the Townhall we already date First year of the Republic. Some
Two hundred of our best Legislators may be re-elected, the Mountain bodily:
Robespierre, with Mayor Petion, Buzot, Curate Gregoire, Rabaut, some three
score Old-Constituents; though we once had only 'thirty voices.'  All
these; and along with them, friends long known to Revolutionary fame:
Camille Desmoulins, though he stutters in speech; Manuel, Tallien and
Company; Journalists Gorsas, Carra, Mercier, Louvet of Faublas; Clootz
Speaker of Mankind; Collot d'Herbois, tearing a passion to rags; Fabre
d'Eglantine, speculative Pamphleteer; Legendre the solid Butcher; nay
Marat, though rural France can hardly believe it, or even believe that
there is a Marat except in print. Of Minister Danton, who will lay down
his Ministry for a Membership, we need not speak. Paris is fervent; nor is
the Country wanting to itself. Barbaroux, Rebecqui, and fervid Patriots
are coming from Marseilles. Seven hundred and forty-five men (or indeed
forty-nine, for Avignon now sends Four) are gathering: so many are to
meet; not so many are to part!

Attorney Carrier from Aurillac, Ex-Priest Lebon from Arras, these shall
both gain a name. Mountainous Auvergne re-elects her Romme: hardy tiller
of the soil, once Mathematical Professor; who, unconscious, carries in
petto a remarkable New Calendar, with Messidors, Pluvioses, and such like;-
-and having given it well forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman.
Sieyes old-Constituent comes; to make new Constitutions as many as wanted:
for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious eyes, he will cower low in
many an emergency, and find silence safest. Young Saint-Just is coming,
deputed by Aisne in the North; more like a Student than a Senator: not
four-and-twenty yet; who has written Books; a youth of slight stature, with
mild mellow voice, enthusiast olive-complexion, and long dark hair.
Feraud, from the far valley D'Aure in the folds of the Pyrenees, is coming;
an ardent Republican; doomed to fame, at least in death.

All manner of Patriot men are coming: Teachers, Husbandmen, Priests and
Ex-Priests, Traders, Doctors; above all, Talkers, or the Attorney-species.
Man-midwives, as Levasseur of the Sarthe, are not wanting. Nor Artists:
gross David, with the swoln cheek, has long painted, with genius in a state
of convulsion; and will now legislate. The swoln cheek, choking his words
in the birth, totally disqualifies him as orator; but his pencil, his head,
his gross hot heart, with genius in a state of convulsion, will be there.
A man bodily and mentally swoln-cheeked, disproportionate; flabby-large,
instead of great; weak withal as in a state of convulsion, not strong in a
state of composure: so let him play his part. Nor are naturalised
Benefactors of the Species forgotten: Priestley, elected by the Orne
Department, but declining: Paine the rebellious Needleman, by the Pas de
Calais, who accepts.

Few Nobles come, and yet not none. Paul Francois Barras, 'noble as the
Barrases, old as the rocks of Provence;' he is one. The reckless,
shipwrecked man: flung ashore on the coast of the Maldives long ago, while
sailing and soldiering as Indian Fighter; flung ashore since then, as
hungry Parisian Pleasure-hunter and Half-pay, on many a Circe Island, with
temporary enchantment, temporary conversion into beasthood and hoghood;--
the remote Var Department has now sent him hither. A man of heat and
haste; defective in utterance; defective indeed in any thing to utter; yet
not without a certain rapidity of glance, a certain swift transient
courage; who, in these times, Fortune favouring, may go far. He is tall,
handsome to the eye, 'only the complexion a little yellow;' but 'with a
robe of purple with a scarlet cloak and plume of tricolor, on occasions of
solemnity,' the man will look well. (Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans,
para Barras.)  Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, Old-Constituent, is a kind of
noble, and of enormous wealth; he too has come hither:--to have the Pain of
Death abolished? Hapless Ex-Parlementeer! Nay, among our Sixty Old-
Constituents, see Philippe d'Orleans a Prince of the Blood! Not now
d'Orleans: for, Feudalism being swept from the world, he demands of his
worthy friends the Electors of Paris, to have a new name of their choosing;
whereupon Procureur Manuel, like an antithetic literary man, recommends
Equality, Egalite. A Philippe Egalite therefore will sit; seen of the
Earth and Heaven.

Such a Convention is gathering itself together. Mere angry poultry in
moulting season; whom Brunswick's grenadiers and cannoneers will give short
account of. Would the weather only mend a little! (Bertrand-Moleville,
Memoires, ii. 225.)

In vain, O Bertrand! The weather will not mend a whit:--nay even if it
did? Dumouriez Polymetis, though Bertrand knows it not, started from brief
slumber at Sedan, on that morning of the 29th of August; with stealthiness,
with promptitude, audacity. Some three mornings after that, Brunswick,
opening wide eyes, perceives the Passes of the Argonne all seized; blocked
with felled trees, fortified with camps; and that it is a most shifty swift
Dumouriez this, who has outwitted him!

The manoeuvre may cost Brunswick 'a loss of three weeks,' very fatal in
these circumstances. A Mountain-wall of forty miles lying between him and
Paris: which he should have preoccupied;--which how now to get possession
of? Also the rain it raineth every day; and we are in a hungry Champagne
Pouilleuse, a land flowing only with ditch-water. How to cross this
Mountain-wall of the Argonne; or what in the world to do with it?--there
are marchings and wet splashings by steep paths, with sackerments and
guttural interjections; forcings of Argonne Passes,--which unhappily will
not force. Through the woods, volleying War reverberates, like huge gong-
music, or Moloch's kettledrum, borne by the echoes; swoln torrents boil
angrily  round the foot of rocks, floating pale carcasses of men. In vain!
Islettes Village, with its church-steeple, rises intact in the Mountain-
pass, between the embosoming heights; your forced marchings and climbings
have become forced slidings, and tumblings back. From the hill-tops thou
seest nothing but dumb crags, and endless wet moaning woods; the Clermont
Vache (huge Cow that she is) disclosing herself (See Helen Maria Williams.
Letters, iii. 79-81.) at intervals; flinging off her cloud-blanket, and
soon taking it on again, drowned in the pouring Heaven. The Argonne Passes
will not force: by must skirt the Argonne; go round by the end of it.

But fancy whether the Emigrant Seigneurs have not got their brilliancy
dulled a little; whether that 'Foot Regiment in red-facings with nankeen
trousers' could be in field-day order! In place of gasconading, a sort of
desperation, and hydrophobia from excess of water, is threatening to
supervene. Young Prince de Ligne, son of that brave literary De Ligne the
Thundergod of Dandies, fell backwards; shot dead in Grand-Pre, the
Northmost of the Passes: Brunswick is skirting and rounding, laboriously,
by the extremity of the South. Four days; days of a rain as of Noah,--
without fire, without food! For fire you cut down green trees, and produce
smoke; for food you eat green grapes, and produce colic, pestilential
dysentery, (Greek). And the Peasants assassinate us, they do not join us;
shrill women cry shame on us, threaten to draw their very scissors on us!
O ye hapless dulled-bright Seigneurs, and hydrophobic splashed Nankeens;--
but O, ten times more, ye poor sackerment-ing ghastly-visaged Hessians and
Hulans, fallen on your backs; who had no call to die there, except
compulsion and three-halfpence a-day! Nor has Mrs. Le Blanc of the Golden
Arm a good time of it, in her bower of dripping rushes. Assassinating
Peasants are hanged; Old-Constituent Honourable members, though of
venerable age, ride in carts with their hands tied; these are the woes of
war.

Thus they; sprawling and wriggling, far and wide, on the slopes and passes
of the Argonne;--a loss to Brunswick of five-and-twenty disastrous days.
There is wriggling and struggling; facing, backing, and right-about facing;
as the positions shift, and the Argonne gets partly rounded, partly
forced:--but still Dumouriez, force him, round him as you will, sticks like
a rooted fixture on the ground; fixture with many hinges; wheeling now this
way, now that; shewing always new front, in the most unexpected manner:
nowise consenting to take himself away. Recruits stream up on him: full
of heart; yet rather difficult to deal with. Behind Grand-Pre, for
example, Grand-Pre which is on the wrong-side of the Argonne, for we are
now forced and rounded,--the full heart, in one of those wheelings and
shewings of new front, did as it were overset itself, as full hearts are
liable to do; and there rose a shriek of sauve qui peut, and a death-panic
which had nigh ruined all! So that the General had to come galloping; and,
with thunder-words, with gesture, stroke of drawn sword even, check and
rally, and bring back the sense of shame; (Dumouriez, Memoires, iii. 29.)--
nay to seize the first shriekers and ringleaders; 'shave their heads and
eyebrows,' and pack them forth into the world as a sign. Thus too (for
really the rations are short, and wet camping with hungry stomach brings
bad humour) there is like to be mutiny. Whereupon again Dumouriez 'arrives
at the head of their line, with his staff, and an escort of a hundred
huzzars. He had placed some squadrons behind them, the artillery in front;
he said to them: "As for you, for I will neither call you citizens, nor
soldiers, nor my men (ni mes enfans), you see before you this artillery,
behind you this cavalry. You have dishonoured yourselves by crimes. If
you amend, and grow to behave like this brave Army which you have the
honour of belonging to, you will find in me a good father. But plunderers
and assassins I do not suffer here. At the smallest mutiny I will have you
shivered in pieces (hacher en pieces). Seek out the scoundrels that are
among you, and dismiss them yourselves; I hold you responsible for them."'
(Ibid., Memoires iii. 55.)

Patience, O Dumouriez! This uncertain heap of shriekers, mutineers, were
they once drilled and inured, will become a phalanxed mass of Fighters; and
wheel and whirl, to order, swiftly like the wind or the whirlwind: tanned
mustachio-figures; often barefoot, even bare-backed; with sinews of iron;
who require only bread and gunpowder: very Sons of Fire, the adroitest,
hastiest, hottest ever seen perhaps since Attila's time. They may conquer
and overrun amazingly, much as that same Attila did;--whose Attila's-Camp
and Battlefield thou now seest, on this very ground; (Helen Maria Williams,
iii. 32.) who, after sweeping bare the world, was, with difficulty, and
days of tough fighting, checked here by Roman Aetius and Fortune; and his
dust-cloud made to vanish in the East again!--

Strangely enough, in this shrieking Confusion of a Soldiery, which we saw
long since fallen all suicidally out of square in suicidal collision,--at
Nanci, or on the streets of Metz, where brave Bouille stood with drawn
sword; and which has collided and ground itself to pieces worse and worse
ever since, down now to such a state: in this shrieking Confusion, and not
elsewhere, lies the first germ of returning Order for France! Round which,
we say, poor France nearly all ground down suicidally likewise into rubbish
and Chaos, will be glad to rally; to begin growing, and new-shaping her
inorganic dust: very slowly, through centuries, through Napoleons, Louis
Philippes, and other the like media and phases,--into a new, infinitely
preferable France, we can hope!--

These wheelings and movements in the region of the Argonne, which are all
faithfully described by Dumouriez himself, and more interesting to us than
Hoyle's or Philidor's best Game of Chess, let us, nevertheless, O Reader,
entirely omit;--and hasten to remark two things: the first a minute
private, the second a large public thing. Our minute private thing is:
the presence, in the Prussian host, in that war-game of the Argonne, of a
certain Man, belonging to the sort called Immortal; who, in days since
then, is becoming visible more and more, in that character, as the
Transitory more and more vanishes; for from of old it was remarked that
when the Gods appear among men, it is seldom in recognisable shape; thus
Admetus' neatherds give Apollo a draught of their goatskin whey-bottle
(well if they do not give him strokes with their ox-rungs), not dreaming
that he is the Sungod! This man's name is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He
is Herzog Weimar's Minister, come with the small contingent of Weimar; to
do insignificant unmilitary duty here; very irrecognizable to nearly all!
He stands at present, with drawn bridle, on the height near Saint-
Menehould, making an experiment on the 'cannon-fever;' having ridden
thither against persuasion, into the dance and firing of the cannon-balls,
with a scientific desire to understand what that same cannon-fever may be:
'The sound of them,' says he, 'is curious enough; as if it were compounded
of the humming of tops, the gurgling of water and the whistle of birds. By
degrees you get a very uncommon sensation; which can only be described by
similitude. It seems as if you were in some place extremely hot, and at
the same time were completely penetrated by the heat of it; so that you
feel as if you and this element you are in were perfectly on a par. The
eyesight loses nothing of its strength or distinctness; and yet it is as if
all things had got a kind of brown-red colour, which makes the situation
and the objects still more impressive on you.'  (Goethe, Campagne in
Frankreich (Werke, xxx. 73.)

This is the cannon-fever, as a World-Poet feels it.--A man entirely
irrecognisable! In whose irrecognisable head, meanwhile, there verily is
the spiritual counterpart (and call it complement) of this same huge Death-
Birth of the World; which now effectuates itself, outwardly in the Argonne,
in such cannon-thunder; inwardly, in the irrecognisable head, quite
otherwise than by thunder! Mark that man, O Reader, as the memorablest of
all the memorable in this Argonne Campaign. What we say of him is not
dream, nor flourish of rhetoric; but scientific historic fact; as many men,
now at this distance, see or begin to see.

But the large public thing we had to remark is this: That the Twentieth of
September, 1792, was a raw morning covered with mist; that from three in
the morning Sainte-Menehould, and those Villages and homesteads we know of
old were stirred by the rumble of artillery-wagons, by the clatter of
hoofs, and many footed tramp of men: all manner of military, Patriot and
Prussian, taking up positions, on the Heights of La Lune and other Heights;
shifting and shoving,--seemingly in some dread chess-game; which may the
Heavens turn to good! The Miller of Valmy has fled dusty under ground; his
Mill, were it never so windy, will have rest to-day. At seven in the
morning the mist clears off: see Kellermann, Dumouriez' second in command,
with 'eighteen pieces of cannon,' and deep-serried ranks, drawn up round
that same silent Windmill, on his knoll of strength; Brunswick, also, with
serried ranks and cannon, glooming over to him from the height of La Lune;
only the little brook and its little dell now parting them.

So that the much-longed-for has come at last! Instead of hunger and
dysentery, we shall have sharp shot; and then!--Dumouriez, with force and
firm front, looks on from a neighbouring height; can help only with his
wishes, in silence. Lo, the eighteen pieces do bluster and bark,
responsive to the bluster of La Lune; and thunder-clouds mount into the
air; and echoes roar through all dells, far into the depths of Argonne Wood
(deserted now); and limbs and lives of men fly dissipated, this way and
that. Can Brunswick make an impression on them? The dull-bright Seigneurs
stand biting their thumbs: these Sansculottes seem not to fly like
poultry! Towards noontide a cannon-shot blows Kellermann's horse from
under him; there bursts a powder-cart high into the air, with knell heard
over all: some swagging and swaying observable;--Brunswick will try!
"Camarades," cries Kellermann, "Vive la Patria! Allons vaincre pour elle,
Let us conquer."  "Live the Fatherland!" rings responsive, to the welkin,
like rolling-fire from side to side: our ranks are as firm as rocks; and
Brunswick may recross the dell, ineffectual; regain his old position on La
Lune; not unbattered by the way. And so, for the length of a September
day,--with bluster and bark; with bellow far echoing! The cannonade lasts
till sunset; and no impression made. Till an hour after sunset, the few
remaining Clocks of the District striking Seven; at this late time of day
Brunswick tries again. With not a whit better fortune! He is met by rock-
ranks, by shouts of Vive la Patrie; and driven back, not unbattered.
Whereupon he ceases; retires 'to the Tavern of La Lune;' and sets to
raising a redoute lest he be attacked!

Verily so: ye dulled-bright Seigneurs, make of it what ye may. Ah, and
France does not rise round us in mass; and the Peasants do not join us, but
assassinate us: neither hanging nor any persuasion will induce them! They
have lost their old distinguishing love of King, and King's-cloak,--I fear,
altogether; and will even fight to be rid of it: that seems now their
humour. Nor does Austria prosper, nor the siege of Thionville. The
Thionvillers, carrying their insolence to the epigrammatic pitch, have put
a Wooden Horse on their walls, with a bundle of hay hung from him, and this
Inscription: 'When I finish my hay, you will take Thionville.'  (Hist.
Parl. xix. 177.)  To such height has the frenzy of mankind risen.

The trenches of Thionville may shut: and what though those of Lille open?
The Earth smiles not on us, nor the Heaven; but weeps and blears itself, in
sour rain, and worse. Our very friends insult us; we are wounded in the
house of our friends: "His Majesty of Prussia had a greatcoat, when the
rain came; and (contrary to all known laws) he put it on, though our two
French Princes, the hope of their country, had none!"  To which indeed, as
Goethe admits, what answer could be made? (Goethe, xxx. 49.)--Cold and
Hunger and Affront, Colic and Dysentery and Death; and we here, cowering
redouted, most unredoubtable, amid the 'tattered corn-shocks and deformed
stubble,' on the splashy Height of La Lune, round the mean Tavern de La
Lune!--

This is the Cannonade of Valmy; wherein the World-Poet experimented on the
cannon-fever; wherein the French Sansculottes did not fly like poultry.
Precious to France! Every soldier did his duty, and Alsatian Kellermann
(how preferable to old Luckner the dismissed!) began to become greater; and
Egalite Fils, Equality Junior, a light gallant Field-Officer, distinguished
himself by intrepidity:--it is the same intrepid individual who now, as
Louis-Philippe, without the Equality, struggles, under sad circumstances,
to be called King of the French for a season.

Chapter 3.1.VIII.

Exeunt.

But this Twentieth of September is otherwise a great day. For, observe,
while Kellermann's horse was flying blown from under him at the Mill of
Valmy, our new National Deputies, that shall be a NATIONAL CONVENTION, are
hovering and gathering about the Hall of the Hundred Swiss; with intent to
constitute themselves!

On the morrow, about noontide, Camus the Archivist is busy 'verifying their
powers;' several hundreds of them already here. Whereupon the Old
Legislative comes solemnly over, to merge its old ashes Phoenix-like in the
body of the new;--and so forthwith, returning all solemnly back to the
Salle de Manege, there sits a National Convention, Seven Hundred and Forty-
nine complete, or complete enough; presided by Petion;--which proceeds
directly to do business. Read that reported afternoon's-debate, O Reader;
there are few debates like it: dull reporting Moniteur itself becomes more
dramatic than a very Shakespeare. For epigrammatic Manuel rises, speaks
strange things; how the President shall have a guard of honour, and lodge
in the Tuileries:--rejected. And Danton rises and speaks; and Collot
d'Herbois rises, and Curate Gregoire, and lame Couthon of the Mountain
rises; and in rapid Meliboean stanzas, only a few lines each, they propose
motions not a few: That the corner-stone of our new Constitution is
Sovereignty of the People; that our Constitution shall be accepted by the
People or be null; further that the People ought to be avenged, and have
right Judges; that the Imposts must continue till new order; that Landed
and other Property be sacred forever; finally that 'Royalty from this day
is abolished in France:'--Decreed all, before four o'clock strike, with
acclamation of the world! (Hist. Parl. xix. 19.)  The tree was all so
ripe; only shake it and there fall such yellow cart-loads.

And so over in the Valmy Region, as soon as the news come, what stir is
this, audible, visible from our muddy heights of La Lune? (Williams, iii.
71.)  Universal shouting of the French on their opposite hillside; caps
raised on bayonets; and a sound as of Republique; Vive la Republique borne
dubious on the winds!--On the morrow morning, so to speak, Brunswick slings
his knapsacks before day, lights any fires he has; and marches without tap
of drum. Dumouriez finds ghastly symptoms in that camp; 'latrines full of
blood!'  (1st October, 1792; Dumouriez, iii. 73.)  The chivalrous King of
Prussia, for he as we saw is here in person, may long rue the day; may look
colder than ever on these dulled-bright Seigneurs, and French Princes their
Country's hope;--and, on the whole, put on his great-coat without ceremony,
happy that he has one. They retire, all retire with convenient despatch,
through a Champagne trodden into a quagmire, the wild weather pouring on
them; Dumouriez through his Kellermanns and Dillons pricking them a little
in the hinder parts. A little, not much; now pricking, now negotiating:
for Brunswick has his eyes opened; and the Majesty of Prussia is a
repentant Majesty.

Nor has Austria prospered, nor the Wooden Horse of Thionville bitten his
hay; nor Lille City surrendered itself. The Lille trenches opened, on the
29th of the month; with balls and shells, and redhot balls; as if not
trenches but Vesuvius and the Pit had opened. It was frightful, say all
eye-witnesses; but it is ineffectual. The Lillers have risen to such
temper; especially after these news from Argonne and the East. Not a Sans-
indispensables in Lille that would surrender for a King's ransom. Redhot
balls rain, day and night; 'six-thousand,' or so, and bombs 'filled
internally with oil of turpentine which splashes up in flame;'--mainly on
the dwellings of the Sansculottes and Poor; the streets of the Rich being
spared. But the Sansculottes get water-pails; form quenching-regulations,
"The ball is in Peter's house!"  "The ball is in John's!"  They divide
their lodging and substance with each other; shout Vive la Republique; and
faint not in heart. A ball thunders through the main chamber of the Hotel-
de-Ville, while the Commune is there assembled: "We are in permanence,"
says one, coldly, proceeding with his business; and the ball remains
permanent too, sticking in the wall, probably to this day. (Bombardement
de Lille (in Hist. Parl. xx. 63-71).)

The Austrian Archduchess (Queen's Sister) will herself see red artillery
fired; in their over-haste to satisfy an Archduchess 'two mortars explode
and kill thirty persons.'  It is in vain; Lille, often burning, is always
quenched again; Lille will not yield. The very boys deftly wrench the
matches out of fallen bombs: 'a man clutches a rolling ball with his hat,
which takes fire; when cool, they crown it with a bonnet rouge.'  Memorable
also be that nimble Barber, who when the bomb burst beside him, snatched up
a shred of it, introduced soap and lather into it, crying, "Voila mon plat
a barbe, My new shaving-dish!" and shaved 'fourteen people' on the spot.
Bravo, thou nimble Shaver; worthy to shave old spectral Redcloak, and find
treasures!--On the eighth day of this desperate siege, the sixth day of
October, Austria finding it fruitless, draws off, with no pleasurable
consciousness; rapidly, Dumouriez tending thitherward; and Lille too, black
with ashes and smoulder, but jubilant skyhigh, flings its gates open. The
Plat a barbe became fashionable; 'no Patriot of an elegant turn,' says
Mercier several years afterwards, 'but shaves himself out of the splinter
of a Lille bomb.'

Quid multa, Why many words? The Invaders are in flight; Brunswick's Host,
the third part of it gone to death, staggers disastrous along the deep
highways of Champagne; spreading out also into 'the fields, of a tough
spongy red-coloured clay;--like Pharaoh through a Red Sea of mud,' says
Goethe; 'for he also lay broken chariots, and riders and foot seemed
sinking around.'  (Campagne in Frankreich, p. 103.)  On the eleventh
morning of October, the World-Poet, struggling Northwards out of Verdun,
which he had entered Southwards, some five weeks ago, in quite other order,
discerned the following Phenomenon and formed part of it:

'Towards three in the morning, without having had any sleep, we were about
mounting our carriage, drawn up at the door; when an insuperable obstacle
disclosed itself: for there rolled on already, between the pavement-stones
which were crushed up into a ridge on each side, an uninterrupted column of
sick-wagons through the Town, and all was trodden as into a morass. While
we stood waiting what could be made of it, our Landlord the Knight of
Saint-Louis pressed past us, without salutation.'  He had been a Calonne's
Notable in 1787, an Emigrant since; had returned to his home, jubilant,
with the Prussians; but must now forth again into the wide world, 'followed
by a servant carrying a little bundle on his stick.

'The activity of our alert Lisieux shone eminent; and, on this occasion
too, brought us on: for he struck into a small gap of the wagon-row; and
held the advancing team back till we, with our six and our four horses, got
intercalated; after which, in my light little coachlet, I could breathe
freer. We were now under way; at a funeral pace, but still under way. The
day broke; we found ourselves at the outlet of the Town, in a tumult and
turmoil without measure. All sorts of vehicles, few horsemen, innumerable
foot-people, were crossing each other on the great esplanade before the
Gate. We turned to the right, with our Column, towards Estain, on a
limited highway, with ditches at each side. Self-preservation, in so
monstrous a press, knew now no pity, no respect of aught. Not far before
us there fell down a horse of an ammunition-wagon: they cut the traces,
and let it lie. And now as the three others could not bring their load
along, they cut them also loose, tumbled the heavy-packed vehicle into the
ditch; and, with the smallest retardation, we had to drive on, right over
the horse, which was just about to rise; and I saw too clearly how its
legs, under the wheels, went crashing and quivering.

'Horse and foot endeavoured to escape from the narrow laborious highway
into the meadows: but these too were rained to ruin; overflowed by full
ditches, the connexion of the footpaths every where interrupted. Four
gentlemanlike, handsome, well-dressed French soldiers waded for a time
beside our carriage; wonderfully clean and neat: and had such art of
picking their steps, that their foot-gear testified no higher than the
ancle to the muddy pilgrimage these good people found themselves engaged
in.

'That under such circumstances one saw, in ditches, in meadows, in fields
and crofts, dead horses enough, was natural to the case: by and by,
however, you found them also flayed, the fleshy parts even cut away; sad
token of the universal distress.

'Thus we fared on; every moment in danger, at the smallest stoppage on our
own part, of being ourselves tumbled overboard; under which circumstances,
truly, the careful dexterity of our Lisieux could not be sufficiently
praised. The same talent shewed itself at Estain; where we arrived towards
noon; and descried, over the beautiful well-built little Town, through
streets and on squares, around and beside us, one sense-confusing tumult:
the mass rolled this way and that; and, all struggling forward, each
hindered the other. Unexpectedly our carriage drew up before a stately
house in the market-place; master and mistress of the mansion saluted us in
reverent distance.'  Dexterous Lisieux, though we knew it not, had said we
were the King of Prussia's Brother!

'But now, from the ground-floor windows, looking over the whole market-
place, we had the endless tumult lying, as it were, palpable. All sorts of
walkers, soldiers in uniform, marauders, stout but sorrowing citizens and
peasants, women and children, crushed and jostled each other, amid vehicles
of all forms: ammunition-wagons, baggage-wagons; carriages, single,
double, and multiplex; such hundredfold miscellany of teams, requisitioned
or lawfully owned, making way, hitting together, hindering each other,
rolled here to right and to left. Horned-cattle too were struggling on;
probably herds that had been put in requisition. Riders you saw few; but
the elegant carriages of the Emigrants, many-coloured, lackered, gilt and
silvered, evidently by the best builders, caught your eye. (See Hermann
and Dorothea (also by Goethe), Buch Kalliope.)

'The crisis of the strait however arose further on a little; where the
crowded market-place had to introduce itself into a street,--straight
indeed and good, but proportionably far too narrow. I have, in my life,
seen nothing like it: the aspect of it might perhaps be compared to that
of a swoln river which has been raging over meadows and fields, and is now
again obliged to press itself through a narrow bridge, and flow on in its
bounded channel. Down the long street, all visible from our windows, there
swelled continually the strangest tide: a high double-seated travelling-
coach towered visible over the flood of things. We thought of the fair
Frenchwomen we had seen in the morning. It was not they, however, it was
Count Haugwitz; him you could look at, with a kind of sardonic malice,
rocking onwards, step by step, there.'  (Campagne in Frankreich, Goethe's
Werke (Stuttgart, 1829), xxx. 133-137.)

In such untriumphant Procession has the Brunswick Manifesto issued! Nay in
worse, 'in Negotiation with these miscreants,'--the first news of which
produced such a revulsion in the Emigrant nature, as put our scientific
World-Poet 'in fear for the wits of several.'  There is no help: they must
fare on, these poor Emigrants, angry with all persons and things, and
making all persons angry, in the hapless course they struck into. Landlord
and landlady testify to you, at tables-d'hote, how insupportable these
Frenchmen are: how, in spite of such humiliation, of poverty and probable
beggary, there is ever the same struggle for precedence, the same
forwardness, and want of discretion. High in honour, at the head of the
table, you with your own eyes observe not a Seigneur but the automaton of a
Seigneur, fallen into dotage; still worshipped, reverently waited on, and
fed. In miscellaneous seats, is a miscellany of soldiers, commissaries,
adventurers; consuming silently their barbarian victuals. 'On all brows is
to be read a hard destiny; all are silent, for each has his own sufferings
to bear, and looks forth into misery without bounds.'  One hasty wanderer,
coming in, and eating without ungraciousness what is set before him, the
landlord lets off almost scot-free. "He is," whispered the landlord to me,
"the first of these cursed people I have seen condescend to taste our
German black bread."  (Ibid. 152.)  (Ibid. 210-12.)

And Dumouriez is in Paris; lauded and feasted; paraded in glittering
saloons, floods of beautifullest blond-dresses and broadcloth-coats flowing
past him, endless, in admiring joy. One night, nevertheless, in the
splendour of one such scene, he sees himself suddenly apostrophised by a
squalid unjoyful Figure, who has come in uninvited, nay despite of all
lackeys; an unjoyful Figure! The Figure is come "in express mission from
the Jacobins," to inquire sharply, better then than later, touching certain
things: "Shaven eyebrows of Volunteer Patriots, for instance?"  Also "your
threats of shivering in pieces?"  Also, "why you have not chased Brunswick
hotly enough?"  Thus, with sharp croak, inquires the Figure.--"Ah, c'est
vous qu'on appelle Marat, You are he they call Marat!" answers the General,
and turns coldly on his heel. (Dumouriez, iii. 115.--Marat's account, In
the Debats des Jacobins and Journal de la Republique (Hist. Parl. xix. 317-
21), agrees to the turning on the heel, but strives to interpret it
differently.)--"Marat!"  The blonde-gowns quiver like aspens; the dress-
coats gather round; Actor Talma (for it is his house), and almost the very
chandelier-lights, are blue: till this obscene Spectrum, or visual
Appearance, vanish back into native Night.

General Dumouriez, in few brief days, is gone again, towards the
Netherlands; will attack the Netherlands, winter though it be. And General
Montesquiou, on the South-East, has driven in the Sardinian Majesty; nay,
almost without a shot fired, has taken Savoy from him, which longs to
become a piece of the Republic. And General Custine, on the North-East,
has dashed forth on Spires and its Arsenal; and then on Electoral Mentz,
not uninvited, wherein are German Democrats and no shadow of an Elector
now:--so that in the last days of October, Frau Forster, a daughter of
Heyne's, somewhat democratic, walking out of the Gate of Mentz with her
Husband, finds French Soldiers playing at bowls with cannon-balls there.
Forster trips cheerfully over one iron bomb, with "Live the Republic!"  A
black-bearded National Guard answers: "Elle vivra bien sans vous, It will
probably live independently of you!"  (Johann Georg Forster's Briefwechsel
(Leipzig, 1829), i. 88.)

BOOK 3.II.

REGICIDE

Chapter 3.2.I.

The Deliberative.

France therefore has done two things very completely: she has hurled back
her Cimmerian Invaders far over the marches; and likewise she has shattered
her own internal Social Constitution, even to the minutest fibre of it,
into wreck and dissolution. Utterly it is all altered: from King down to
Parish Constable, all Authorities, Magistrates, Judges, persons that bore
rule, have had, on the sudden, to alter themselves, so far as needful; or
else, on the sudden, and not without violence, to be altered: a Patriot
'Executive Council of Ministers,' with a Patriot Danton in it, and then a
whole Nation and National Convention, have taken care of that. Not a
Parish Constable, in the furthest hamlet, who has said De Par le Roi, and
shewn loyalty, but must retire, making way for a new improved Parish
Constable who can say De par la Republique.

It is a change such as History must beg her readers to imagine,
undescribed. An instantaneous change of the whole body-politic, the soul-
politic being all changed; such a change as few bodies, politic or other,
can experience in this world. Say perhaps, such as poor Nymph Semele's
body did experience, when she would needs, with woman's humour, see her
Olympian Jove as very Jove;--and so stood, poor Nymph, this moment Semele,
next moment not Semele, but Flame and a Statue of red-hot Ashes! France
has looked upon Democracy; seen it face to face.--The Cimmerian Invaders
will rally, in humbler temper, with better or worse luck: the wreck and
dissolution must reshape itself into a social Arrangement as it can and
may. But as for this National Convention, which is to settle every thing,
if it do, as Deputy Paine and France generally expects, get all finished
'in a few months,' we shall call it a most deft Convention.

In truth, it is very singular to see how this mercurial French People
plunges suddenly from Vive le Roi to Vive la Republique; and goes simmering
and dancing; shaking off daily (so to speak), and trampling into the dust,
its old social garnitures, ways of thinking, rules of existing; and
cheerfully dances towards the Ruleless, Unknown, with such hope in its
heart, and nothing but Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood in its mouth. Is
it two centuries, or is it only two years, since all France roared
simultaneously to the welkin, bursting forth into sound and smoke at its
Feast of Pikes, "Live the Restorer of French Liberty?"  Three short years
ago there was still Versailles and an Oeil-de-Boeuf: now there is that
watched Circuit of the Temple, girt with dragon-eyed Municipals, where, as
in its final limbo, Royalty lies extinct. In the year 1789, Constituent
Deputy Barrere 'wept,' in his Break-of-Day Newspaper, at sight of a
reconciled King Louis; and now in 1792, Convention Deputy Barrere,
perfectly tearless, may be considering, whether the reconciled King Louis
shall be guillotined or not.

Old garnitures and social vestures drop off (we say) so fast, being indeed
quite decayed, and are trodden under the National dance. And the new
vestures, where are they; the new modes and rules? Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity: not vestures but the wish for vestures! The Nation is for the
present, figuratively speaking, naked! It has no rule or vesture; but is
naked,--a Sansculottic Nation.

So far, therefore, in such manner have our Patriot Brissots, Guadets
triumphed. Vergniaud's Ezekiel-visions of the fall of thrones and crowns,
which he spake hypothetically and prophetically in the Spring of the year,
have suddenly come to fulfilment in the Autumn. Our eloquent Patriots of
the Legislative, like strong Conjurors, by the word of their mouth, have
swept Royalism with its old modes and formulas to the winds; and shall now
govern a France free of formulas. Free of formulas! And yet man lives not
except with formulas; with customs, ways of doing and living: no text
truer than this; which will hold true from the Tea-table and Tailor's
shopboard up to the High Senate-houses, Solemn Temples; nay through all
provinces of Mind and Imagination, onwards to the outmost confines of
articulate Being,--Ubi homines sunt modi sunt! There are modes wherever
there are men. It is the deepest law of man's nature; whereby man is a
craftsman and 'tool-using animal;' not the slave of Impulse, Chance, and
Brute Nature, but in some measure their lord. Twenty-five millions of men,
suddenly stript bare of their modi, and dancing them down in that manner,
are a terrible thing to govern!

Eloquent Patriots of the Legislative, meanwhile, have precisely this
problem to solve. Under the name and nickname of 'statesmen, hommes
d'etat,' of 'moderate-men, moderantins,' of Brissotins, Rolandins, finally
of Girondins, they shall become world-famous in solving it. For the
Twenty-five millions are Gallic effervescent too;--filled both with hope of
the unutterable, of universal Fraternity and Golden Age; and with terror of
the unutterable, Cimmerian Europe all rallying on us. It is a problem like
few. Truly, if man, as the Philosophers brag, did to any extent look
before and after, what, one may ask, in many cases would become of him?
What, in this case, would become of these Seven Hundred and Forty-nine men?
The Convention, seeing clearly before and after, were a paralysed
Convention. Seeing clearly to the length of its own nose, it is not
paralysed.

To the Convention itself neither the work nor the method of doing it is
doubtful: To make the Constitution; to defend the Republic till that be
made. Speedily enough, accordingly, there has been a 'Committee of the
Constitution' got together. Sieyes, Old-Constituent, Constitution-builder
by trade; Condorcet, fit for better things; Deputy Paine, foreign
Benefactor of the Species, with that 'red carbuncled face, and the black
beaming eyes;' Herault de Sechelles, Ex-Parlementeer, one of the handsomest
men in France: these, with inferior guild-brethren, are girt cheerfully to
the work; will once more 'make the Constitution;' let us hope, more
effectually than last time. For that the Constitution can be made, who
doubts,--unless the Gospel of Jean Jacques came into the world in vain?
True, our last Constitution did tumble within the year, so lamentably. But
what then, except sort the rubbish and boulders, and build them up again
better? 'Widen your basis,' for one thing,--to Universal Suffrage, if need
be; exclude rotten materials, Royalism and such like, for another thing.
And in brief, build, O unspeakable Sieyes and Company, unwearied! Frequent
perilous downrushing of scaffolding and rubble-work, be that an irritation,
no discouragement. Start ye always again, clearing aside the wreck; if
with broken limbs, yet with whole hearts; and build, we say, in the name of
Heaven,--till either the work do stand; or else mankind abandon it, and the
Constitution-builders be paid off, with laughter and tears! One good time,
in the course of Eternity, it was appointed that this of Social Contract
too should try itself out. And so the Committee of Constitution shall
toil: with hope and faith;--with no disturbance from any reader of these
pages.

To make the Constitution, then, and return home joyfully in a few months:
this is the prophecy our National Convention gives of itself; by this
scientific program shall its operations and events go on. But from the
best scientific program, in such a case, to the actual fulfilment, what a
difference! Every reunion of men, is it not, as we often say, a reunion of
incalculable Influences; every unit of it a microcosm of Influences;--of
which how shall Science calculate or prophesy! Science, which cannot, with
all its calculuses, differential, integral, and of variations, calculate
the Problem of Three gravitating Bodies, ought to hold her peace here, and
say only: In this National Convention there are Seven Hundred and Forty-
nine very singular Bodies, that gravitate and do much else;--who, probably
in an amazing manner, will work the appointment of Heaven.

Of National Assemblages, Parliaments, Congresses, which have long sat;
which are of saturnine temperament; above all, which are not 'dreadfully in
earnest,' something may be computed or conjectured: yet even these are a
kind of Mystery in progress,--whereby we see the Journalist Reporter find
livelihood: even these jolt madly out of the ruts, from time to time. How
much more a poor National Convention, of French vehemence; urged on at such
velocity; without routine, without rut, track or landmark; and dreadfully
in earnest every man of them! It is a Parliament literally such as there
was never elsewhere in the world. Themselves are new, unarranged; they are
the Heart and presiding centre of a France fallen wholly into maddest
disarrangement. From all cities, hamlets, from the utmost ends of this
France with its Twenty-five million vehement souls, thick-streaming
influences storm in on that same Heart, in the Salle de Manege, and storm
out again: such fiery venous-arterial circulation is the function of that
Heart. Seven Hundred and Forty-nine human individuals, we say, never sat
together on Earth, under more original circumstances. Common individuals
most of them, or not far from common; yet in virtue of the position they
occupied, so notable. How, in this wild piping of the whirlwind of human
passions, with death, victory, terror, valour, and all height and all depth
pealing and piping, these men, left to their own guidance, will speak and
act?

Readers know well that this French National Convention (quite contrary to
its own Program) became the astonishment and horror of mankind; a kind of
Apocalyptic Convention, or black Dream become real; concerning which
History seldom speaks except in the way of interjection: how it covered
France with woe, delusion, and delirium; and from its bosom there went
forth Death on the pale Horse. To hate this poor National Convention is
easy; to praise and love it has not been found impossible. It is, as we
say, a Parliament in the most original circumstances. To us, in these
pages, be it as a fuliginous fiery mystery, where Upper has met Nether, and
in such alternate glare and blackness of darkness poor bedazzled mortals
know not which is Upper, which is Nether; but rage and plunge distractedly,
as mortals, in that case, will do. A Convention which has to consume
itself, suicidally; and become dead ashes--with its World! Behoves us, not
to enter exploratively its dim embroiled deeps; yet to stand with
unwavering eyes, looking how it welters; what notable phases and
occurrences it will successively throw up.

One general superficial circumstance we remark with praise: the force of
Politeness. To such depth has the sense of civilisation penetrated man's
life; no Drouet, no Legendre, in the maddest tug of war, can altogether
shake it off. Debates of Senates dreadfully in earnest are seldom given
frankly to the world; else perhaps they would surprise it. Did not the
Grand Monarque himself once chase his Louvois with a pair of brandished
tongs? But reading long volumes of these Convention Debates, all in a foam
with furious earnestness, earnest many times to the extent of life and
death, one is struck rather with the degree of continence they manifest in
speech; and how in such wild ebullition, there is still a kind of polite
rule struggling for mastery, and the forms of social life never altogether
disappear. These men, though they menace with clenched right-hands, do not
clench one another by the collar; they draw no daggers, except for
oratorical purposes, and this not often: profane swearing is almost
unknown, though the Reports are frank enough; we find only one or two
oaths, oaths by Marat, reported in all.

For the rest, that there is 'effervescence' who doubts? Effervescence
enough; Decrees passed by acclamation to-day, repealed by vociferation to-
morrow; temper fitful, most rotatory changeful, always headlong! The
'voice of the orator is covered with rumours;' a hundred 'honourable
Members rush with menaces towards the Left side of the Hall;' President has
'broken three bells in succession,'--claps on his hat, as signal that the
country is near ruined. A fiercely effervescent Old-Gallic Assemblage!--
Ah, how the loud sick sounds of Debate, and of Life, which is a debate,
sink silent one after another: so loud now, and in a little while so low!
Brennus, and those antique Gael Captains, in their way to Rome, to Galatia,
and such places, whither they were in the habit of marching in the most
fiery manner, had Debates as effervescent, doubt it not; though no Moniteur
has reported them. They scolded in Celtic Welsh, those Brennuses; neither
were they Sansculotte; nay rather breeches (braccae, say of felt or rough-
leather) were the only thing they had; being, as Livy testifies, naked down
to the haunches:--and, see, it is the same sort of work and of men still,
now when they have got coats, and speak nasally a kind of broken Latin!
But on the whole does not TIME envelop this present National Convention; as
it did those Brennuses, and ancient August Senates in felt breeches? Time
surely; and also Eternity. Dim dusk of Time,--or noon which will be dusk;
and then there is night, and silence; and Time with all its sick noises is
swallowed in the still sea. Pity thy brother, O Son of Adam! The angriest
frothy jargon that he utters, is it not properly the whimpering of an
infant which cannot speak what ails it, but is in distress clearly, in the
inwards of it; and so must squall and whimper continually, till its Mother
take it, and it get--to sleep!

This Convention is not four days old, and the melodious Meliboean stanzas
that shook down Royalty are still fresh in our ear, when there bursts out a
new diapason,--unhappily, of Discord, this time. For speech has been made
of a thing difficult to speak of well: the September Massacres. How deal
with these September Massacres; with the Paris Commune that presided over
them? A Paris Commune hateful-terrible; before which the poor effete
Legislative had to quail, and sit quiet. And now if a young omnipotent
Convention will not so quail and sit, what steps shall it take? Have a
Departmental Guard in its pay, answer the Girondins, and Friends of Order!
A Guard of National Volunteers, missioned from all the Eighty-three or
Eighty-five Departments, for that express end; these will keep
Septemberers, tumultuous Communes in a due state of submissiveness, the
Convention in a due state of sovereignty. So have the Friends of Order
answered, sitting in Committee, and reporting; and even a Decree has been
passed of the required tenour. Nay certain Departments, as the Var or
Marseilles, in mere expectation and assurance of a Decree, have their
contingent of Volunteers already on march: brave Marseillese, foremost on
the Tenth of August, will not be hindmost here; 'fathers gave their sons a
musket and twenty-five louis,' says Barbaroux, 'and bade them march.'

Can any thing be properer? A Republic that will found itself on justice
must needs investigate September Massacres; a Convention calling itself
National, ought it not to be guarded by a National force?--Alas, Reader, it
seems so to the eye: and yet there is much to be said and argued. Thou
beholdest here the small beginning of a Controversy, which mere logic will
not settle. Two small well-springs, September, Departmental Guard, or
rather at bottom they are but one and the same small well-spring; which
will swell and widen into waters of bitterness; all manner of subsidiary
streams and brooks of bitterness flowing in, from this side and that; till
it become a wide river of bitterness, of rage and separation,--which can
subside only into the Catacombs. This Departmental Guard, decreed by
overwhelming majorities, and then repealed for peace's sake, and not to
insult Paris, is again decreed more than once; nay it is partially
executed, and the very men that are to be of it are seen visibly parading
the Paris streets,--shouting once, being overtaken with liquor: "A bas
Marat, Down with Marat!"  (Hist. Parl. xx. 184.)  Nevertheless, decreed
never so often, it is repealed just as often; and continues, for some seven
months, an angry noisy Hypothesis only: a fair Possibility struggling to
become a Reality, but which shall never be one; which, after endless
struggling, shall, in February next, sink into sad rest,--dragging much
along with it. So singular are the ways of men and honourable Members.

But on this fourth day of the Convention's existence, as we said, which is
the 25th of September 1792, there comes Committee Report on that Decree of
the Departmental Guard, and speech of repealing it; there come
denunciations of anarchy, of a Dictatorship,--which let the incorruptible
Robespierre consider: there come denunciations of a certain Journal de la
Republique, once called Ami du Peuple; and so thereupon there comes,
visibly stepping up, visibly standing aloft on the Tribune, ready to speak,
the Bodily Spectrum of People's-Friend Marat! Shriek, ye Seven Hundred and
Forty-nine; it is verily Marat, he and not another. Marat is no phantasm
of the brain, or mere lying impress of Printer's Types; but a thing
material, of joint and sinew, and a certain small stature: ye behold him
there, in his blackness in his dingy squalor, a living fraction of Chaos
and Old Night; visibly incarnate, desirous to speak. "It appears," says
Marat to the shrieking Assembly, "that a great many persons here are
enemies of mine."  "All! All!" shriek hundreds of voices: enough to drown
any People's-Friend. But Marat will not drown: he speaks and croaks
explanation; croaks with such reasonableness, air of sincerity, that
repentant pity smothers anger, and the shrieks subside or even become
applauses. For this Convention is unfortunately the crankest of machines:
it shall be pointing eastward, with stiff violence, this moment; and then
do but touch some spring dexterously, the whole machine, clattering and
jerking seven-hundred-fold, will whirl with huge crash, and, next moment,
is pointing westward! Thus Marat, absolved and applauded, victorious in
this turn of fence, is, as the Debate goes on, prickt at again by some
dexterous Girondin; and then and shrieks rise anew, and Decree of
Accusation is on the point of passing; till the dingy People's-Friend bobs
aloft once more; croaks once more persuasive stillness, and the Decree of
Accusation sinks, Whereupon he draws forth--a Pistol; and setting it to his
Head, the seat of such thought and prophecy, says: "If they had passed
their Accusation Decree, he, the People's-Friend, would have blown his
brains out."  A People's Friend has that faculty in him. For the rest, as
to this of the two hundred and sixty thousand Aristocrat Heads, Marat
candidly says, "C'est la mon avis, such is my opinion."  Also it is not
indisputable: "No power on Earth can prevent me from seeing into traitors,
and unmasking them,"--by my superior originality of mind? (Moniteur
Newspaper, Nos. 271, 280, 294, Annee premiere; Moore's Journal, ii. 21,
157, &c. (which, however, may perhaps, as in similar cases, be only a copy
of the Newspaper).)  An honourable member like this Friend of the People
few terrestrial Parliaments have had.

We observe, however, that this first onslaught by the Friends of Order, as
sharp and prompt as it was, has failed. For neither can Robespierre,
summoned out by talk of Dictatorship, and greeted with the like rumour on
shewing himself, be thrown into Prison, into Accusation;--not though
Barbarous openly bear testimony against him, and sign it on paper. With
such sanctified meekness does the Incorruptible lift his seagreen cheek to
the smiter; lift his thin voice, and with jesuitic dexterity plead, and
prosper: asking at last, in a prosperous manner: "But what witnesses has
the Citoyen Barbaroux to support his testimony?"  "Moi!" cries hot
Rebecqui, standing up, striking his breast with both hands, and answering,
"Me!"  (Moniteur, ut supra; Seance du 25 Septembre.)  Nevertheless the
Seagreen pleads again, and makes it good: the long hurlyburly, 'personal
merely,' while so much public matter lies fallow, has ended in the order of
the day. O Friends of the Gironde, why will you occupy our august sessions
with mere paltry Personalities, while the grand Nationality lies in such a
state?--The Gironde has touched, this day, on the foul black-spot of its
fair Convention Domain; has trodden on it, and yet not trodden it down.
Alas, it is a well-spring, as we said, this black-spot; and will not tread
down!

Chapter 3.2.II.

The Executive.

May we not conjecture therefore that round this grand enterprise of Making
the Constitution there will, as heretofore, very strange embroilments
gather, and questions and interests complicate themselves; so that after a
few or even several months, the Convention will not have settled every
thing? Alas, a whole tide of questions comes rolling, boiling; growing
ever wider, without end! Among which, apart from this question of
September and Anarchy, let us notice those, which emerge oftener than the
others, and promise to become Leading Questions: of the Armies; of the
Subsistences; thirdly, of the Dethroned King.

As to the Armies, Public Defence must evidently be put on a proper footing;
for Europe seems coalising itself again; one is apprehensive even England
will join it. Happily Dumouriez prospers in the North;--nay what if he
should prove too prosperous, and become Liberticide, Murderer of Freedom!--
Dumouriez prospers, through this winter season; yet not without lamentable
complaints. Sleek Pache, the Swiss Schoolmaster, he that sat frugal in his
Alley, the wonder of neighbours, has got lately--whither thinks the Reader?
To be Minister of war! Madame Roland, struck with his sleek ways,
recommended him to her Husband as Clerk: the sleek Clerk had no need of
salary, being of true Patriotic temper; he would come with a bit of bread
in his pocket, to save dinner and time; and, munching incidentally, do
three men's work in a day" punctual, silent, frugal,--the sleek Tartuffe
that he was. Wherefore Roland, in the late Overturn, recommended him to be
War-Minister. And now, it would seem, he is secretly undermining Roland;
playing into the hands of your hotter Jacobins and September Commune; and
cannot, like strict Roland, be the Veto des Coquins! (Madame Roland,
Memoires, ii. 237, &c.)

How the sleek Pache might mine and undermine, one knows not well; this
however one does know: that his War-Office has become a den of thieves and
confusion, such as all men shudder to behold. That the Citizen
Hassenfratz, as Head-Clerk, sits there in bonnet rouge, in rapine, in
violence, and some Mathematical calculation; a most insolent, red-
nightcapped man. That Pache munches his pocket-loaf, amid head-clerks and
sub-clerks, and has spent all the War-Estimates: that Furnishers scour in
gigs, over all districts of France, and drive bargains;--and lastly that
the Army gets next to no furniture. No shoes, though it is winter; no
clothes; some have not even arms: 'In the Army of the South,' complains an
honourable Member, 'there are thirty thousand pairs of breeches wanting,'--
a most scandalous want.

Roland's strict soul is sick to