66 Some national guard a great many made their escape. It was eight o'clock on the morning of the 10th of August that Louis the Sixteenth, followed by his queen, his sister, the dauphin, and some ladies, left for the last time his palace to proceed to the assembly. A guard of grenadiers accompanied them. They walked up the great alley of the Tuileries gardens, strewn already with fallen leaves, the heaps of which the little dauphin amused himself by scattering. Turning to the right, they reached the terrace of the Feuillants. The popu CHAP. XXXIX. XXXIX. CHAP. lace was there in great excitement, of which, fortunately, the royal family knew not the immediate cause. In the guardhouse of the terrace were some prisoners taken up in the night armed. Suleau, the royalist journalist, was one of them, and it was against them the populace were chiefly aroused. They were led by a virago, a native of Liège, Theroigne de Mericourt, whom Suleau's pen had been accustomed to outrage. And she came for vengeance. The guardhouse was forced, the eleven prisoners brought forth, slain, decapitated, and the fierce Theroigne had consummated her vengeance when the royal family reached the terrace. Three of the heads on pikes were paraded at the time.* The guard of grenadiers being obliged to leave the royal family, as they crossed the terrace towards the assembly, the people surrounded them, some ferocious, some sympathetic in language. One snatched the dauphin from the queen and took him up, but it was only to place him on the table of the assembly. This body, which had vainly striven to save the prisoners of the neighbouring guardhouse, had sent a deputation to the king to offer him an asylum. "I have come," said Louis, entering the assembly, to avoid great crimes. I cannot be more in surety than amongst you." แ "You may count upon our firmness," replied Vergniaud, who presided. "The members have sworn to die in defence of the rights of the people and the constituted authorities." The king took his seat near the president, but, it being objected that the house could not debate in his presence, it was arranged that the royal family should occupy the box of the stenographs or logographs behind the president's chair. Here it was the fate of Louis and Marie Antoinette to sit during seventeen hours listening to the discussion and the votes, which terminated in * Deposition of Avril in Mortimer Ternaux. their deposition and transference as prisoners to the CHAP. tower of the Temple. The flight of the king was the signal for the rest of the national guard to withdraw. As to the gendarmerie, it had been posted in the Louvre to execute the manœuvres ordered by Mandar, which was to attack and disperse the advancing column of the faubourgs. Unsupported and without orders, instead of making any charge it retreated, not to the Tuileries, but round to the Place Louis Quinze. The commander of the Swiss, seeing the defence abandoned to them, withdrew the men from the courts into the interior of the palace, and especially to the great staircase. And this was no sooner achieved than the gates of the court were opened to the insurgents, with whom the cannoniers of the national guard, and even some of the gensdarmes, instantly fraternised. The first thought was to induce the Swiss to do the same. With hopes of succeeding in this, the insurgents advanced to the portal of the palace with their hats on their guns and pikes in token of amity. Some Swiss, stationed at the windows, answered by flinging down their cartouches. But the presence of the officers kept those on the staircase from making any such demonstration. Westerman, an Alsacian, consequently speaking German, and who commanded the advanced body of insurgents, then bravely ascended amongst the Swiss with a Marseillais and a cannonier, beseeching them in the name of Union to surrender. They denied that they could do so if their arms were to be taken from them. The Marseillais replied they should keep their arms. On this several Swiss soldiers joined the populace, when, to prevent the general defection, some shots were fired from the top of the staircase, where were the nonmilitary defenders of the château. If this account be correct, as it seems affirmed by the testimony of Colonel Pfyffer,* himself a Swiss officer, the provocation for car Mem. of Weber. XXXIX. СНАР. XXXIX. nage came from the palace. The royalists, on the other hand, declare that the mob not only tampered with the Swiss by promises, but dragged them down with hooks such as river-boatmen carry; and that it was on seeing this that the royalists fired from the top of the staircase. Whichever side provoked the collision, it took place; the Swiss fired upon the insurgents, who retreated, and following them, not only into the court but even the Carrousel, cleared in a short time the space before the château of the first division of its assailants. The Swiss, however, were too few to occupy so large a space, and the cannon of the faubourg soon opened upon them, partly protected by the houses, which obstructed the Carrousel, and the Swiss withdrew to the château. Here again there ensues a difference of opinion between the historians favourable to the cause of fallen royalty and those who worshipped the revolution. According to the former, the Swiss received an order from Louis the Sixteenth by D'Humilly to cease the combat, which the greater part of them obeyed, mustering in the garden behind and marching off to the assembly. When they reached it the king bade them lay down their arms and retire to their barracks. There can be no doubt that the Swiss could have made a longer and more murderous defence but for the order of the king that they should join him in the assembly. About sixty made their way to the Place Louis Quinze, when they were attacked by the mob and by the treacherous gensdarmes, so lately their comrades. Very few escaped. Between eighty or a hundred were left in the apartments, when the insurgents, finding no obstacle before them, rushed in. The Swiss gathered together and defended themselves as long as they had ammunition. It was this resistance that gave to the capture of the Tuileries the semblance of a victory. The sack of the palace by the infuriated mob followed the death of its last defender. But when this contest was over, the massacre was prolonged. Numbers of fugitives, of servants, of persons employed in a host of capacities, were found concealed in different corners of the château. The mob made no enquiry, and showed no mercy. Their mode of enjoying victory was to kill, and they indulged in it. The female attendants on the queen were saved by a happy appeal of the Duchess of Tarente, who besought pity for the maid servants. The assassins heard the appeal, and the ladies were put under guard till they could leave at night. Madame Campan separately had an equally miraculous escape. A Marseillais was in the act of slaying her in the upper story, when a voice from below cried, "The women are not to be killed." "Heim!" exclaimed the Marseillais to his interlocutor, and spared the life of his victim. She never forgot the terrible heim!* If Louis the Sixteenth, his queen, and their timid counsellor, Roederer, had had the sagacity to foresee that the abandonment of the Tuileries to a triumphant mob must have the intended effect of striking down the legislative assembly, and annihilating its power and independence, as well as those of the crown, they would have hesitated to take the fatal and pusillanimous flight. A young officer witnessed the attack from a window in the Carrousel, and could not but conceive the opinion, which he afterwards expressed and acted upon, that a few hundred of determined soldiers were quite sufficient to rout the turbulent mob. The officer was Napoleon Bonaparte. A soldier might have saved royalty, as he afterwards saved the convention; but the monarch was doomed not to find at that epoch one capable follower. Prostrate as monarchy was, the Gironde did not despair of preserving and raising it. This could only be done, however, by bowing the neck before the popular whirlwind. Guadet was president of the assembly, and * Memoirs of Madame Campan; Roederer, Chronique; Prudhomme; Soulavie; M. Dumas. Depositions CHAP. XXXIX. |