is in force; these cockades are torn off, trampled under foot, with menace of the Lanterne in case of relapse. A military gentleman, picking-up his cockade, is for fastening it on again; a hundred canes start into the air, saying Veto. The whole Sunday passes in huntingdown the white and the black cockades; in holding council at the Palais Royal, over the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the end of Bridges, on the Quais. At the doors of the coffee-houses, there arise free conferences between the Upper House, of the coats that are within, and the Lower House, of jackets and wool-caps, assembled extra muros. It is agreed upon that the audacity of the aristocrats increases rapidly; that Madame Villepatour and the Queen's women are distributing enormous white cockades to all comers in the Œil-de-Bœuf; that M. Lecointre, having refused to take one from their hands, has all but been assassinated. It is agreed upon that we have not a moment to lose; that the boat which used to bring us flour from Corbeil morning and evening, now comes only once in two days: - do they plan to make their attack at the moment when they have kept us for eight-and-forty hours in a fasting state? It is agreed upon,' &c.1 We hasten to the catastrophe, which arrives on the morrow. It is related elsewhere, in another leading article: 'At break of day, the women rush towards the Hôtel-de-Ville. All the way, they recruit fresh hands, among their own sex, to march with them; as sailors are recruited at London: there is an active press of women. The Quai de la Ferraille is covered with female crimps. The robust kitchen-maid, the slim mantua-maker, all must go to swell the phalanx; the ancient devotee, tripping to mass in the dawn, sees herself for the first time carried off, and shrieks Help! whilst more than one of the younger sort secretly is not so sorry at going, without mother or mistress, to Versailles to pay her respects to the august Assembly. At the same time, for the accuracy of this narrative, I must remark that these women, at least the battalion of them which encamped that night in the Assembly Hall, and had marched under the flag of M. Maillard, had among themselves a Presidentess and Staff; and that every woman, on being borrowed from her mother or husband, was presented to the Presi dentess or some of her aides-de-camp, who engaged to watch over her morality, and insure her honour for this day. 'Once arrived on the Place de Grêve, these women piously begin letting-down the Lanterne; as in great calamities, you let down the shrine of Saint Geneviève. Next they are for mounting into the Hôtel 1 Vol. iii. p. 63. de-Ville. The Commandant had been forewarned of this movement; he knew that all insurrections have begun by women, whose maternal bosom the bayonet of the satellites of despotism respects. Four thousand soldiers presented a front bristling with bayonets; kept them back from the step: but behind these women there rose and grew every moment a nucleus of men, armed with pikes, axes, bills; blood is about to flow on the place; the presence of these Sabine women hindered it. The National Guard, which is not purely a machine, as the Minister of War would have the soldier be, makes use of its reason. It discerns that these women, now for Versailles, are going to the root of the mischief. The four-thousand Guards, already getting saluted with stones, think it reasonablest to open a passage; and, like waters through a broken dike, the floods of the multitude inundate the Hôtel-de-Ville. 'It is a picture interesting to paint, and one of the greatest in the Revolution, this same army of ten-thousand Judiths setting forth to cut-off the head of Holofernes; forcing the Hôtel-de-Ville; arming themselves with whatever they can lay hands on; some tying ropes to the cannon-trains, arresting carts, loading them with artillery, with powder and balls for the Versailles National Guard, which is left without ammunition; others driving-on the horses, or seated on cannon, holding the redoubtable match; seeking for their generalissimo, not aristocrats with epaulettes, but Conquerors of the Bastille !' 1 Let So far Camille on veto, scarcity and the Insurrection of Women, in the end of 1789. As it is not fit that all our scenes should be of tragedy or low-tragedy, the reader will perhaps consent now to a touch of the moral-sublime. him enter the Hall of the Jacobins with us. All men have heard of the Jacobins' Club; but not all would think of looking for comedy or the moral-sublime there. Nevertheless so it is. Ah! the sublime of the Jacobins was not always of the blue-light pandemonial sort; far otherwise once! We will give this passage from the Journal of the Jacobins' Debates; not as one of the best, but as one of the pleasantest for English readers. Fancy that high Hall, with its seats for fifteenhundred, rising in amphitheatre to the cornice of the dome ;' its Tribune elevated to mid-air; Galleries and Ladies' Gallery full; President seated; shrill Huissiers perambulating 1 Vol. iii. p. 110. 12 VOL. IV. with their rods and liveries, sounding forth "Silence! Silence!" Consider that it is the 18th of December 1791 (free monarchic constitution solemnly accepted six weeks ago); and read: 'The confluence of strangers was so great that besides the new gallery erected for them, the old ones were quite full, as well as those on the opposite side of the Hall; and nevertheless a great multitude of citizens who could not find room or admittance on any terms. 'The reading of the announcements and select correspondence was scarcely begun, when the Hall resounded with applauses at the entrance of the three united Flags, of the English, the American and French Nation, which were to be placed in the Hall; as the Society of Friends of the Revolution in London had placed them in theirs. "Cries of " Liberty forever! The Nation forever! The three Free Peoples of the Universe forever (Vivent les trois peuples libres de l'univers)!" are re-echoed with enthusiasm by the galleries and visitors the expression, no less sincere than lively, of that ardour, of that love for Equality and Brotherhood, which Nature has engraved in the hearts of all men; and which nothing but the continued efforts of despots, in all classes, have managed to efface more or less. 'A Deputation of Ladies is introduced; Ladies accustomed to honour the galleries with their presence: they had solicited permission to offer a pledge of their enthusiasm for Liberty to the Constitutional Whig, who came lately to the National Assembly with the congratulation of this class of free Englishmen. The Deputation enters, amid the applauses of the meeting: a young Citizeness carries in her hand the Gift of these Ladies, lays it on the President's table, while the Lady-Deputies mount to the Tribune, to pronounce the following discourse. 'The Lady-speaker. We are not Roman Dames; we bring no jewels; but a tribute of gratitude for the feelings you have inspired us with. A Constitutional Whig (Wigh), a Brother, an Englishman, formed, few days ago, the object of one of your sweetest unitings (étreintes). What a charm had that picture! Souls of sensibility were struck with it; our hearts are yet full of emotion (Applause). This day you afford to that Brother, and to yourselves, a new enjoy. ment: you suspend to the dome of our temple three Flags, American, English, French. 'From all sides. la Liberté ! The Three Nations, Vivent les trois nations! Vive 'Lady-speaker. The union of the Three free Peoples is to be ce mented: forbid not us also, Messieurs, to contribute towards that. Your pure feelings prescribe it for us as a duty. Messieurs, accept a garland. And you, English Brother, accept another from the hands of innocence: it is the work of sisterhood; friendship gives it you. Receive also, O good Patriot, in the name of the French Citoyennes who are here, this Ark of Alliance, which we have brought for our brethren the Constitutional Whigs (Wighs): within it are enclosed the Map of France, divided into eighty-three departments; the Cap of Liberty (Applause); the Book of the French Constitution; a Civic Crown; some Ears of Wheat (Applause); three Flags; a National Cockade; and these words in the two languages, To live free or die. The whole Hall. To live free or die! 'Lady-speaker. Let this immortal homage done to Liberty be, for the English and the French, a sacred pledge of their union. Forget not to tell our brothers how you have received it. Let it be deposited with the brotherliest ceremonial! Invite all Englishmen to participate in this family act. Let it be precious to them as Nature herself. -Tell your wives, repeat to your children, that innocent maids, faithful spouses, tender mothers, after having done their household duties, and contributed to make their families and husbands happy, came and made this offering to their Country. Let one cry of gladness peal over Europe; let it roll across the waters to America. Hark! Amid the echoes, Philadelphia and the Far West repeat like us, Liberty forever! 'The whole Hall. Liberty forever! 'Lady-speaker. Tyrants! your enemies declare themselves. Nations will no longer battle with each other; straitly united, they will possess all Languages, and make of them but one Language. Strong in their Freedom they will be inseparable forever. 'Universal applauses: the Hall resounds long with cries, repeated by the Galleries and the Society, of Vive la Nation, Vive la Liberté ! The Three Nations! The Patriot Women! 'M. de la Source, Vice-president. Since Nature has willed that the world should owe to you its sweetest moments, this enthusiasm of yours with which you fill all hearts shall never be lost, never forgotten in the flight of ages: it stands engraved on our hearts in indelible characters.—(Then turning to the Deputies of the Whigs.) As for you, Brothers, tell your countrymen what we are; tell them that in France the women too can love their country and show themselves worthy of Liberty; tell them that the union, of which you see the emblems, shall be imperishable as the Free Peoples are; that we have henceforth only one sort of bonds, the bonds which unite us to the Free, and that these shall be eternal as virtue. 'The Whig Deputy. Mesdames and M. le Président, I really am not prepared to make a speech' (how true to the "leg-of-mutton or postprandial style!") for really I did not expect such a reception; but I hope you will excuse me. I have written to England, I have described the reception I met with here: I have had answers, but not from our Society, because that requires time; the Society must meet first and then answer. I wish it were in my power' (postprandially!) to express what my heart feels. This feeling towards you is not the work of a day, but indeed that of a year (!), for in August last, our Society wrote to M. Pétion, who, however, assures me that the Letter never reached him; and therefore — ' 1 - and so on, in the postprandial style; bringing down matters to the solid business-level again. Few readers, it is to be expected, have witnessed on the unelastic stage of mere Earth anything so dramatic as this. We terminate with a scene of a very different complexion, though but some few months farther on, that is to say in September 1792! Félémhesi (anagram for Méhée Fils), in his Vérité toute entière, a Pamphlet really more veracious than most, thus testifies, after a good deal of preambling: 'I was going to my post about half-past two' (Sunday the 2d of September, tocsins all ringing, and Brunswick just at hand); 'I was passing along the Rue Dauphine; suddenly I hear hisses. I look, I observe four hackney-coaches, coming in a train, escorted by the Fédérés of the Departments. Each of these coaches contained four persons: they were individuals' (priests) 'arrested in the preceding domiciliary visits. Billaud-Varennes, Procureur-Substitute of the Commune, had just been interrogating them at the Hôtel-de-Ville; and now they were proceeding towards the Abbaye, to be provisionally detained there. A crowd is gathering; the cries and hisses redouble: one of the prisoners, doubtless out of his senses, takes fire at these murmurs, puts his arm over the coach-door, gives one of the Fédérés a stroke over the head with his cane. The Fédéré, in a rage, draws his sabre, springs on the carriage-steps, and plunges it thrice-over into the heart of his aggressor. I saw the blood come out in great jets. "Kill every one of them; they are scoundrels, aristocrats!" cry the people. The Fédérés all draw their sabres, and instantly kill the three companions of the one who had just perished. I saw, at this moment, 1 Tome xii. 379. |