constructed a barricade at the foot of the staircase, replied that their orders were not to attack, but to defend their posts if attacked. The Marseillois, who were foremost in the assault, attempted, by hooks fastened to the end of pikes, to catch the sentinels at the entrance of the vestibule; in which they succeeded; and drawing them to them, first disarmed, and then despatched them. They then made a rush at the barricade, carried it, and forced their way up the stairs. At the top, they were met by some Swiss officers, who still kept their men from firing, and sought to persuade them to retire. This only increased their audacity; and at length the Swiss, together with some grenadiers of the battalion Filles-Saint-Thomas, were obliged to charge them. A desperate affray ensued; but the insurgents were repulsed, driven down the stairs, hunted out of the courts, and put completely to flight. The Swiss even took their cannons, and on this side the palace was completely cleared of assailants. Meanwhile, the noise of the firing was heard in the Assembly, where it caused great consternation. The king was intreated to send an order to the Swiss, forbidding them to fire; he weakly complied, and a young officer, M. d'Hervilly, consented to carry it to the palace. This was a task of infinite danger, for he had to traverse the garden, filled with insurgents keeping up an incessant fire on the palace, which was returned by its defenders. Boldly passing through this cross fire, he reached the royal court in safety, and communicated the king's order to the Swiss. He directed them to follow him to the Assembly, which they joyfully agreed to do, thinking they were to be employed in protecting the king. In their transit, they were exposed to a tremendous fire from the insurgents, and nearly half of them fell killed or wounded. Upon their arrival at the Assembly, they were disarmed, and sent to prison. These formed only a portion of the whole Swiss force; the palace was still defended by a considerable number, besides the royalist volunteers. The insurgents had recovered from their first panic, and returned to the assault. Finding the courts unguarded, they rushed furiously up the stairs, and now, by overwhelming numbers, speedily overpowered the Swiss, whom they cut remorselessly to pieces, even after they had thrown away their arms, and craved for mercy on their knees. Spreading over the palace, they massacred all its inmates, from the armed defenders to the lowest menials. Madame Campan and some of the queen's ladies were spared when about to be immolated. A voice cried out, Pardon the women; don't disgrace the nation;' and they were conducted in safety to an asylum. The massacre was continued outside in the courts, the garden, and the streets; very few fugitives contrived to escape. Of 800 Swiss, only 150 survived the slaughter, and these were they who had accompanied or followed the king to the Assembly. When tired of killing, the conquerors appeared in the Assembly to dictate the law. With frightful imprecations they demanded the immediate deposition of Louis XVI. The president answered submissively, that, by the constitution, the Assembly was not competent to depose the king, but that it would convoke a national convention to determine the question. With this they were ultimately persuaded to be satisfied; and the Assembly, upon a report from the committee of twelve, passed a formal decree that a national convention should be summoned, Louis in the interim suspended from the royal authority, the payment of the civil list stopped, fresh ministers appointed, and proclamations issued to the nation and the armies enjoining order and obedience. The Luxumbourg was originally destined for the residence of the king, but the people objected that there were subterraneous passages with unknown outlets in that building; and until the fact could be ascertained, it was determined that he and his family should occupy the apartments in the Feuillants belonging to Camus the archive keeper. The royal prisoners had continued during the whole of this tumultuous sitting in the reporter's box, exposed to anxieties and insults of the most harrowing description, and with scarcely any refreshment to relieve their wants. The heat was excessive, and the king suffered most acutely. The young dauphin slept the greater part of the time on the lap of the queen. The Princess Elizabeth could scarcely restrain her indignation when she heard the abuse heaped upon her brother, and the princess-royal betrayed the terror and affliction natural to her age. After undergoing these torments for sixteen hours, they were, at one in the morning, removed to the rooms assigned them, which formed part of the old dormitory of the monks, fitted up with furniture of the meanest description. In this confined and sorry lodging they were immured, surrounded by a numerous and vigilant guard.* Thus was the ancient monarchy of France, in the person of its most virtuous and amiable prince, annihilated. The catastrophe had been long pending, and was at last consummated by the bloody day of the 10th of August. Madame Campan and her sister visited the queen on the following day. 'In the third room,' she says, we found the queen, in bed, and in an indescribable state of affliction. She was alone with a stout woman, whose demeanour seemed sufficiently becoming, and who was the keeper of the rooms; she waited upon the queen, who had not yet any of her own people about her. While we conversed, the dauphin came in, with the princess-royal and the Marchioness de Tourzel. On seeing them, the queen exclaimed, "Poor children! how cruel is our fate not to transmit to them so splendid an inheritance, and to have it said it ended with us!"'-Memoirs, tome ii. p. 253. CHAPTER VI. NATIONAL CONVENTION-TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI.- The constitution of 1791, then, immutable on its face, perishable in its core, fell after a trial of ten months. The future government of France was to be regulated by a National Convention, convoked forthwith, and elected upon the wide basis of universal suffrage. In the interim, the departments of the ministry were preserved, and filled by men who formed what was called the Executive Council. The three ministers dismissed by Louis XVI. were reinstated by acclamation: Roland in the interior, Servan in the war, and Claviere in the finance departments. Monge, a mathematician, was appointed to the office of the marine, and Lebrun to that of foreign affairs, whilst Danton was selected as the most appropriate to perform the functions of the minister of justice. The new Commune of Paris was confirmed in power, and the command of the National Guard conferred on Santerre. The king and his family, after remaining three days in the Assembly, the objects of incessant denunciations, were shut up in the tower of the Temple, a small gloomy prison, where municipal officers kept personal watch on them night and day. They were at first accompanied in their confinement by the Princess de Lamballe, and certain male and female attendants; but these the suspicious Commune soon caused to be removed, on pretence that they maintained, or might maintain, a criminal correspondence outside. Only one male attendant was left with them, M. Hue, who performed all necessary offices for the whole family. The Tuileries having been completely sacked and plundered, and in part consumed by fire, they were reduced to destitution, even to the lack of a change of linen; and but for supplies *On the first day Louis and his family were taken to the Temple, they were put into the part called the Palace, from which they were removed at night. Hue was conducted by a municipal officer to inspect their new abode. He himself relates the scene. "Your master," said the municipal to me, "was used to gilt ceilings; he shall now see how the assassins of the people are lodged. Follow me." I followed him up several steps. A narrow door led me to a spiral staircase. When from this principal staircase I entered upon a smaller one, which conducted me to the second floor, I perceived that I was in a tower went into a room, which had but one window, and scarcely any furniture, there being only a mean bed and three or four chairs. "Here," said the municipal to me, is the place where your master has to sleep." Chamilly had joined me; we looked at each other without uttering a syllable. A pair of sheets was thrown to us as a favour, and we were left alone for a few moments.'-Hue's work quoted in Authentic Memoirs of the Sufferings of the Royal Family, p. 107. I of clothes sent by private individuals (amongst the rest, the wife of the British ambassador), they would have remained in that dismal condition; for no consideration or mercy was shown to them by the barbarous wretches into whose power they had fallen. Indignities were studiously heaped upon them, and their captivity imbittered by every device the vilest malignity could invent. Louis bore all with an affecting resignation, which would have been heroic if it had not sprung in some measure from a natural insensibility, blunting the keenness of his emotions: the queen manifested that haughty reserve which befitted her character: the Princess Elizabeth, by her angelic piety, illumined the darkness of the dungeon, and imparted consolation where comfort or cheerfulness could not reign. Whatever hopes the Girondins had formed from the subversion of the throne, were doomed to be signally blasted. Instead of the gentle Louis for a master, they had given themselves an overbearing and insatiable Commune, prompted by Robespierre, Danton, and Marat. Wielding the insurrectionary force of the capital, this Commune was omnipotent, and imposed its commands on the Assembly with all the insolence of superiority. Before its menacing deputations the orators of the Gironde were dumb. No longer Brissot, Isnard, Vergniaud, who were wont to be so valiant in defying and maligning a helpless king, ventured to raise their voices; they had sunk into terror-stricken puppets. At the dictation of the Commune, the Assembly decreed the formation of an extraordinary tribunal for the trial of offences connected with the 10th of August, divided into two courts, for the sake of despatch, and composed of permanent juries, nominated by electors deputed from the several sections of Paris. As some hesitation was evinced in erecting so formidable an instrument of revolutionary vengeance, repeated deputations from the Commune insisted upon the measure, each excelling the other in violence of language. The people are tired of not being avenged,' they said; take care lest they do themselves justice. If within a certain hour the juries are not put in activity, this very day, at midnight, the tocsin shall be rung, and heavy calamities will fall upon Paris.' Some deputies remonstrated against such flagrant intimidation, and sought to encourage the Assembly to display a dignified resistance; but it shrunk from the peril, and succumbed. So, too, with regard to usurpations of authority by the Commune of the most audacious character, it was fain to be silent, and wink at them. Thus it allowed that body to cashier the directory of the department, which was legally a superior authority, and gave umbrage on that account, together with all other municipal and judicial functionaries, save Pétion, who was retained as a useful tool, still possessing a considerable share of popularity. In fact, the Commune proceeded, without let or hindrance, to exercise the highest prerogatives of sovereignty. It appointed a committee of research, armed with the powers of a practical despotism, which speedily filled the prisons of Paris to overflowing. It sent commissioners into the departments, who took upon themselves to supersede all persons in office who were not known to be ultraJacobins, and to put others in their places. Thus, by boldness and promptitude, it aspired to seize the reins of government, and to overrule the elections of deputies to the National Convention. Its conduct, and the success attending it, show how the most violent and unscrupulous gain the ascendancy in civil turmoils, because the resisting party is always restrained by considerations of order and legality, which clog and neutralise its action. Louis XVI. had fallen through lack of energy, derived equally from his character and from his position, which debarred him from resorting to aggression as a means of defence. The constitutionalists may be said to have had no existence, so speedily were they, through their conceited apathy and want of foresight, swept from the scene. The Girondins, who last opposed a barrier to the progress of anarchy, betrayed the same feebleness in the contest, and withstood the demagogical shock but a brief interval. It is the inherent curse of human strife that rational compromises must always follow, or at least very rarely precede, the exhaustion of hostilities. Reason resumes her sway only when passions are completely satiated or stifled. In the Executive Council the Commune ruled as over the Assembly, through its representative Danton.* He, with his loud voice, rough manner, threats, and oaths, browbeat and silenced his colleagues. Roland alone refused to tolerate his arrogance and submit to his dictatorship. This minister was a truly honest and upright man; and he was emboldened, moreover, by the courage and ambition of his wife, who affected the stern virtues of a Roman matron. He opposed Danton chiefly in the employment of the secret service money, of which the Assembly had voted a supply of two millions of francs. Danton insisted that each of the * During the first days of his ministry, Danton often visited Madame Roland, and she thus describes him: I studied with attention that repulsive and frightful countenance; and although I argued with myself that a man ought not to be judged by hearsay, that I knew nothing positively against him, that the most honest man might have two reputations in a time of discord; that, in short, appearances ought not to be trusted-I could not conceive the idea of virtue or integrity lurking beneath such a visage. I have never beheld anything which so perfectly depicted the sway of the brutal passions, and an astounding audacity, half hidden under an air of joviality and an affectation of frankness and a sort of good-nature.-Memoirs, t. ii. p. 14. The sort of influence he exercised may be judged by the following anecdote :-One day Roland discovered his name attached to a naval commission he had positively refused to sign. He remonstrated with Monge on the circumstance. Danton would have it,' the latter answered in a frightened whisper; if I had refused him, he would have denounced me to the Commune and the Cordeliers, and had me hanged. For my part,' observed the inflexible Roland, 'I would rather perish than yield to such considerations.' -Kol., vol. ii. p. 21. |