Chapter 4

All the shops were shut, and also most of the great gates of the hotels; lights were placed in almost every window, and few of the inhabitants retired to their repose: the night passed however without any other disturbance; many of the members of the National Assembly were sitting soon after midnight, and the others were expected. _Mr. Petion_, the mayor, had been sent for by the king, and was then in the _château_; the number of members necessary to form a sitting, being completed, the _tribunes_ (galleries) demanded and obtained a decree to oblige the _château_ to release its prey, the mayor; he soon after appeared at the bar, and from thence went to the _commune_ (mansion-house.)

It was now about six o'clock on Friday morning (10th) the people of the _fauxbourgs_ (suburbs) especially of _St. Antoine_ and _St. Marcel_, which are parted by the river, assembled together on the _Place de la Bastille_, and the crowd was so great that twenty-five persons were squeezed to death.[22] At seven the streets were filled with-armed citizens, that is to say, with _federates_ (select persons sent from the provinces to assist at the _Federation_, or confederacy held last July 14) from _Marseille_, from _Bretagne_, with national guards, and Parisian _sans-culottes_, (_without breeches_, these people have _breeches_, but this is the name which has been given to the mob.) The arms consisted of guns, with or without bayonets, pistols, sabres, swords, pikes, knives, scythes, saws, iron crows, wooden billets, in short of every thing that could be used offensively.

[Note 22: According to the _Journal de la seconde legislature_, _seance de la nuit_ II _Août_.]

A party of these met a false patrol of twenty-two men, who, of course, did not know the watch-word. These were instantaneously put to death, their heads cut off and carried about the streets on pikes (_on promena leurs têtes sur des piques._) This happened in _la Place Vendôme_; their bodies were still lying there the next day. Another false patrol, consisting of between two and three hundred men, with cannon, wandered all night in the neighbourhood of the _theatre français_: it is said they were to join a detachment from the battalion of Henri IV. on the _Pont-neuf_, to cut the throats of _Petion_ and the _Marseillois_, who were encamped on the _Pont St. Michel_ (the next bridge to the _Pont-neuf_) which caused the then acting parish assemblies to order an honorary guard of 400 citizens, who were to be answerable for the liberty and the life of that magistrate, then in the council-chamber. _Mandat_, commander-general of the National Guard, had affronted _M. Petion_, when he came from the _château_ of the _Tuileries_, to go to the National Assembly; he was arrested and sent to prison immediately.

The insurrection now became general; the _Place du Carrousel_ (square of the _Carousals_, a square in the _Tuileries_, so called from the magnificent festival which Lewis XIV. in 1662, there gave to the queen and the queen-mother) was already filled; the king had not been in bed; all the night had probably been spent in combining a plan of defence, if attacked, or rather of retreat; soon after seven the king, the queen, their two children (the dauphin, seven years old, and his sister fourteen) Princess Elizabeth, (the queen's sister, about 50 years old) and the Princess _de Lamballe_, crossed the garden of the _Tuileries_, which was still shut, escorted by the National Guard, and by all the Swiss, and took refuge in the National Assembly, when the Swiss returned to their posts in the _château_.

The alarm-bells, which were incessantly ringing, the accounts of the carrying heads upon pikes, and of the march of almost all Paris in arms; the presence of the king, throwing himself, as it were, on the mercy of the legislative body; the fierce and determinate looks of the _galleries_; all these things together had such an effect on the National Assembly, that it immediately decreed the suspension of Lewis XVI. which decree was received with universal applause and clapping.

At this moment a wounded man rushed into the Assembly, crying, "We are betrayed, to arms, to arms, the Swiss are firing on the citizens; they have already killed a hundred Marseillois."

This was about nine o'clock. The democrats, that is to say, the armed citizens, as beforementioned, had dragged several pieces of cannon, six and four pounders, into the _carousel_ square, and were assembled there, on the _quais_, the bridges, and neighbouring streets, in immense numbers, all armed; they knew the king was gone to the National Assembly, and came to insist on his _déchéance_ (forfeiture) or resignation of the throne. All the Swiss (six or seven hundred) came out to them, and permitted them to enter into the court-yard of the Tuileries, to the number of ten thousand, themselves standing in the middle, and when they were peaceably smoking their pipes and drinking their wine, the Swiss turned back to back, and fired a volley on them, by which about two hundred were killed;[23] the women and children ran immediately into the river, up to their necks, many jumping from the parapets and from the bridges, many were drowned, and many were shot in the water, and on the balustrades of the _Pont-royal_, from the windows of the gallery of the _Louvre_.

[Note 23: This is asserted on the authority of all the French newspapers, and of several eye-witnesses. It will never be possible to know the exact truth, for the people here said to be the aggressors are all slain.--These Swiss had trusted that they would have been backed by the National Guard, who, on the contrary, took the part of the people, and fired on the Swiss (who ran into the château as soon as they had discharged their pieces) by which several were killed.]

The populace now became, as it were, mad, they seized on five cannon they found in the court yard, and turned them against the château; they planted some more cannon on the _Pont-royal_ and in the garden, twenty-two pieces in all, and attacked the château on three sides at once. The Swiss continued their fire, and it is said they fired seven times to the people's once; the Swiss had 36 rounds of powder, whereas the people had hardly three or four. Expresses were sent several miles to the powder-mills, for more ammunition, even as far as _Essonne_, about twenty miles off, on the road to _Fontainebleau_. The people contrived however to discharge their twenty-two cannon nine or ten times.[24] From nine to twelve the firing was incessant; many waggons and carts were constantly employed in carrying away the dead to a large excavation, formerly a stone quarry, at the back of the new church _de la Madeleine de la ville l'Eveque_ (part of the _Fauxbourg St. Honoré_, thus called.)

[Note 24: The balls did no other damage to the palace than breaking the windows, and leaving impressions in the stones, perhaps an inch in depth.]

Soon after noon the Swiss had exhausted all their powder, which the populace perceiving, they stormed the _château_, broke open the doors, and put every person they found to the sword, tumbling the bodies out of the windows into the garden, to the amount, it is supposed, of about two thousand, having lost four thousand on their own side. Among the slain in the _château_, were, it is asserted, about two hundred noblemen and three bishops: all the furniture was destroyed, the looking-glasses broken, in short, nothing left but the bare walls.

Sixty of the Swiss endeavoured to escape through the gardens, but the horse (_gendarmerie nationale_) rode round by the street of _St. Honoré_, and met them full butt at the end of the gardens; the Swiss fired, killed five or six and twenty horses and about thirty men, and were then immediately cut to pieces; the people likewise put the Swiss porters at the _pont-tournant_ (turning bridge) to death, as well as all they could find in the gardens and elsewhere: they then set fire to all the _casernes_ (barracks) in the _carousel_, and afterwards got at the wine in the cellars of the château, all of which was immediately drank; many citizens were continually bringing into the National Assembly jewels, gold, louis d'ors, plate, and papers, and many thieves were, as soon as discovered, instantly taken to lamp irons and hanged by the ropes which suspend the lamps. This timely severity, it is supposed, saved Paris from an universal pillage. Fifty or sixty Swiss were hurried by the populace to the _Place de Grêve_, and there cut to pieces.

At about three o'clock in the afternoon every thing was tolerably quiet, and I ventured out for the first time that day.[25]

[Note 25: The whole of the foregoing account is taken from verbal information, and from all the French papers that could be procured.]

The _quais_, the bridges, the gardens, and the immediate scene of battle were covered with bodies, dead, dying, and drunk; many wounded and drunk died in the night; the streets were filled with carts, carrying away the dead, with litters taking the wounded to hospitals; with women and children crying for the loss of their relations, with men, women, and children walking among and striding over the dead bodies, in silence, and with apparent unconcern; with troops of the _sans-culottes_ running about, covered with blood, and carrying, at the end of their bayonets, rags of the clothes which they had torn from the bodies of the dead Swiss, who were left stark naked in the gardens.[26]

[Note 26: Although I was not an eye-witness, I was however an ear-witness of the engagement, being only half a mile distant from it.]

One of these _sans-culottes_ was bragging that he had killed eight Swiss with his own hand. Another was observed lying wounded, all over blood, asleep or drunk, with a gun, pistols, a sabre, and a hatchet by him.

The courage and ferocity of the women was this day very conspicuous; the first person that entered the _Tuileries_, after the firing ceased, was a woman, named _Teroigne_, she had been very active in the riots at _Brussels_, a few years ago; she afterwards was in prison a twelvemonth at _Vienna_, and when she was released, after the death of the Emperor, went to _Geneva_, which city she was soon obliged to leave; she then came to _Paris_, and headed the _Marseillois_; she began by cleaving the head of a Swiss, who solicited her protection, and who was instantaneously cut in pieces by her followers. She is agreeable in her person, which is small, and is about twenty-eight years of age.

Many men, and also many women, as well of the order of _Poissardes_ (which are a class almost of the same species and rank with our fishwomen, and who are easily distinguished by their red cotton bibs and aprons) as others, ran about the gardens, ripping open the bellies, and dashing out the brains of several of the naked dead Swiss.[27]

[Note 27: At the taking of the Bastille, on the day of which only eighty-three persons were killed on the spot, though fifteen died afterwards of their wounds, these _Poissardes_ were likewise foremost in bravery and in cruelty, so much, that the Parisians themselves ran away from them as soon as they saw them at a distance. They are armed, some with sabres and others with pikes.]

At six in the evening I saw a troop of national guards and _sans-culottes_ kill a Swiss who was running away, by cleaving his skull with a dozen sabres at once, on the _Pont-royal_, and then cast him into the river, in less time than it takes to read this, and afterwards walk quietly on.

The shops were shut all this day, and also the theatres; no coaches were about the streets, at least not near the place of carnage; the houses were lighted up, and patroles paraded the streets all night. Not a single house was pillaged.

The barracks were still in flames, as well as the houses of the Swiss porters at the end of the gardens; these last gave light to five or six waggons which were employed all night in carrying away the dead carcases.

STATUES PULLED DOWN. NEW NAMES.

THE next day, Saturday the 11th, about an hundred Swiss who had not been in the palace placed themselves under the protection of the National Assembly. They were sent to the _Palais Bourbon_ escorted by the Marseillois, with _Mr. Petion_ at their head, in order to be tried by a court-martial.

The people were now employed, some in hanging thieves, others with _Mademoiselle_ _Teroigne_ on horseback at their head, in pulling down the statues of the French Kings.

The first was the equestrian one in bronze of Lewis XV. in the square of the same name, at the end of the _Tuileries_ gardens; this was the work of _Bouchardon_, and was erected in 1763. At the corners of the pedestal were the statues, also in bronze, of strength, peace, prudence, and justice, by _Pigalle_. Many smiths were employed in filing the iron bars within the horse's legs and feet, which fastened it to the marble pedestal, and the _sans-culottes_ pulled it down by ropes, and broke it to pieces; as likewise the four statues above-mentioned, the pedestal, and the new magnificent balustrade of white marble which surrounded it.

The next was the equestrians statue of _Lewis XIV._ in the _Place Vendôme_, cast in bronze, in a single piece, by Keller, from the model of Girardon; twenty men might with ease have sat round a table in the belly of the horse; it stood on a pedestal of white marble of thirty feet in height, twenty-four in length, and thirteen in breadth. This statue crushed a man to pieces by falling on him, which must be attributed to the inexperience of the _pullers-down_.

The third was a pedestrian statue of _Lewis XIV._ in the _Place Victoire_, of lead, gilt, on a pedestal of white marble; a winged figure, representing victory, with one hand placed a crown of laurels on his head, and in the other held a bundle of palm and olive branches. The king was represented treading on _Cerberus_ and the whole group was a single cast. There were formerly four bronze slaves at the corners of the pedestal, each of twelve feet high; these were removed in 1790. The whole monument was thirty-five feet high, and was erected in 1689, at the expence of the Duke _de la Feuillade_, who likewise left his duchy to his heirs, on condition that they should cause the whole group to be new gilt every twenty-five years; and who was buried under the pedestal.

On Sunday the 12th, at about noon, the equestrian statue, in bronze, of _Henry IV._ which was on the _Pont-neuf_, was pulled down; this was erected in 1635, and was the first of the kind in Paris. The horse was begun at Florence, by _Giovanni Bologna_, a pupil of _Michael Angelo_, finished by _Pietro Tacca_, and sent as a present to _Mary of Medicis_, widow of _Henry IV._ Regent. It was shipped at _Leghorn_, and the vessel which contained it was lost on the coast of Normandy, near _Havre de Grace_, the horse remained a year in the sea, it was, however, got out and sent to Paris in 1614.

This statue used to be the idol of the Parisians; immediately after the revolution it was decorated with the national cockade; during three evenings after the federation, in 1790, magnificent festivals were celebrated before it.

It was broken in many pieces by the fall; the bronze was not half an inch thick, and the hollow part was filled up with brick earth.

The fifth and last was overthrown in the afternoon of the same day; it was situated in the _Place Royale_; it was an equestrian statue in bronze, of Lewis XIII. on a vast pedestal of white marble; it was erected in 1639. The horse was the work of _Daniel Volterra_; the figure of the king was by _Biard_.

The people were several days employed in pulling down all the statues and busts of kings and queens they could find. On the Monday I saw a marble or stone statue, as large as the life, tumbled from the top of the _Hôtel de Ville_ into the _Place de Grêve_, at that time full of people, by which two men were killed, as I was told, and I did not wish to verify the assertion myself, but retired.

They then proceeded to deface and efface every crown, every _fleur de lis_, every inscription wherein the words king, queen, prince, royal, or the like, were found. The hotels and lodging-houses were compelled to erase and change their names, that of the _Prince de Galles_ must be called _de Galles_ only; that of _Bourbon_ must have a new name; a sign _au lys d'or_ (the golden lily) was pulled down; even billiard tables are no longer _noble_ or _royal_.

The _Pont-royal_, the new bridge of _Lewis XVI._ the _Place des Victoires_, the _Place Royal_, the _Rue d'Artois, &c._ have all new names, which, added to the division of the kingdom into eighty-three departments, abolishing all the ancient noble names of _Bourgogne, Champagne, Provence, Languedoc, Bretagne, Navarre, Normandie, &c._ and in their stead substituting such as these: _Ain, Aube, Aude, Cher, Creuse, Doubs, Eure, Gard, Gers, Indre, Lot, Orne, Sarte, Tarne, Var, &c._ which are the names of insignificant rivers; to that of Paris into forty-eight new sections, and to all titles being likewise abolished, makes it very difficult for a stranger to know any thing about the geography of the kingdom, nor what were the _ci-devant_ titles of such of the nobility as still remain in France, and who are at present only known by their family names.

BEHEADING. DEAD NAKED BODIES.

BUT to return to those "active citizens, whom aristocratic insolence has stiled _sans-culottes, brigands_."[28]

[Note 28: These are the words of a French newspaper, called, _Journal universel, ou Revolutions des Royaumes, par J. P. Audarin_. No. 994, for Sunday, 12 August, 4th year of Liberty, under the motto of Liberty, Patriotism and Truth.]

On Sunday, they dragged a man to the _Hôtel de Ville_, before a magistrate, to be tried, for having stolen something in the _Tuileries_ as they said. He was accordingly tried, searched, and nothing being found on him, was acquitted; _n'importe_, said these citizens, we must have his head for all that, for we caught him in the act of stealing. They laid him on his back on the ground, and in the presence of the judge, who had acquitted him, they sawed off his head in about a quarter of an hour, with an old notched scythe, and then gave it to the boys to carry about on a pike, leaving the carcase in the justice-hall.[29]

[Note 29: This is inserted on the authority of a lady, a native of the French West-India isles, who resided in the same hotel with me, and who, with two gentlemen who attended her, were witnesses to this transaction, which they told to whoever chose to listen.]

At the corner of almost every chief street is a black marble slab, inserted in the wall about ten feet high, on which is cut in large letters, gilt, _Loix et actes de l'autorité publique_ (laws and acts of the public authority) and underneath are pasted the daily and sometimes hourly decrees and notices of the National Assembly. One of these acquainted the citizens, that _Mandat_ (the former commander-general of the national guards) had yesterday undergone the punishment due to his crimes; that is to say, the people had cut off his head.

During several days, after _the day I_ procured all the Paris newspapers, about twenty, but all on the same side, as the people had put the editors of the aristocratic papers, _hors d'état de parler_ (prevented their speaking) by beheading one or two of them, and destroying all their presses.

They, about this time, hanged two money changers (people who gave paper for _louis d'or_, crowns, and guineas) under the idea that the money was sent to the emigrants.

On the Saturday morning, at seven, I was in the _Tuileries_ gardens; only thirty-eight dead naked bodies were still lying there; they were however covered where decency required; the people who stript them on the preceding evening, having cut a gash in the belly, and left a bit of the shirt sticking to the carcase by means of the dried blood. I was told, that the body of a lady had just been carried out of the _Carousel_ square; she was the only woman killed, and that probably by accident. Here I had the pleasure of seeing many beautiful ladies (and ugly ones too as I thought) walking arm in arm with their male friends, though so early in the morning, and forming little groups, occupied in contemplating the mangled naked and stiff carcases.

The fair sex has been equally courageous and curious, in former times, in this as well as in other countries; and of this we shall produce a few instances, as follows:

COURAGE AND CURIOSITY OF THE FAIR SEX. MASSACRE IN 1572.

ON the 24th of August, St. Bartholemew's day, 1572, the massacre of the Hugonots or or Calvinists, began by the murder of Admiral _Coligni_ the signal was to have been given at midnight; but _Catherine of Medicis_, mother to the then King Charles IX. (who was only two and twenty years of age) _hastened the signal more than an hour_, and endeavoured to encourage her son, by quoting a passage from a sermon: "What pity do we not shew in being cruel? what cruelty would it not be to have pity?"

In _Mr. Wraxall's_ account of this massacre, in his _Memoirs of the Kings of France of the Race of Valois_, compiled from all the French historians, he says, _Soubise_, covered with wounds, after a long and gallant defence, was finally put to death under the queen-mother's windows. The ladies of the court, from a savage and horrible curiosity, went to view his naked body, disfigured and bloody.

"An Italian first cut off _Coligni's_ head, which was presented to _Catherine of Medicis_. The populace then exhausted all their brutal and unrestrained fury on the trunk. They cut off the hands, after which it was left on a dunghill; in the afternoon they took it up again, dragged it three days in the dirt, then on the banks of the _Seine_, and lastly carried it to _Montfaucon_ (an eminence between the _Fauxbourg St. Martin_ and the _Temple_, on which they erected a gallows.) It was here hung by the feet with an iron chain, and a fire lighted under it, with which it was half roasted. In this situation the King and several of the courtiers went to survey it. These remains were at length taken down privately in the night, and interred at _Chantilly_."

"During seven days the massacre did not cease, though its extreme fury spent itself in the two first."

"Every enormity, every profanation, every atrocious crime, which zeal, revenge, and cruel policy are capable of influencing mankind to commit, stain the dreadful registers of this unhappy period. More than five thousand persons of all ranks perished by various species of deaths. The _Seine_ was loaded with carcases floating on it, and _Charles_ fed his eyes from the windows of the _Louvre_, with this unnatural and abominable spectacle of horror. A butcher who entered the palace during the heat of the massacre, boasted to his sovereign, baring his bloody arm, that he himself had dispatched an hundred and fifty."

"_Catherine of Medicis_, the presiding demon, who scattered destruction in so many shapes, was not melted into pity at the view of such complicated and extensive misery; she gazed with savage satisfaction on the head of _Coligni_ which was brought her."

_Sully_ only slightly mentions this massacre of which he was notwithstanding an eye-witness, because he was but twelve years of age.

_Mezeray_ gives the most circumstantial account of it; he says, "The streets were paved with dead or dying bodies, the _portes-cochêres_, (great gates of the hotels) were stopped up with them, there were heaps of them in the public squares, the street-kennels overflowed with blood, which ran gushing into the river. Six hundred houses were pillaged at different times, and four thousand persons were massacred with all the inhumanity and all the tumult than can be imagined."