Élie and Hullin, it is needless to say, are historical characters; and worthy of an honorable place in history for their heroic attempts, then and afterwards, to prevent the needless shedding of blood.
The extraordinary thing about the attack on the Bastille is the startling unanimity of the people that it was the first and fittest object of attack. It seems the more extraordinary because, as Michelet has said, it "was by no means reasonable;" for the lower orders had suffered but little from imprisonment in the Bastille.
"Nobody proposed, but all believed and all acted. Along the streets, the quays, the bridges, and the boulevards, the crowd shouted to the crowd: 'To the Bastille! The Bastille!' And the tolling of the tocsin sounded in every ear: à la Bastille!
"Nobody, I repeat, gave the impulse. The orators of the Palais Royal passed the time in drawing up a list of proscriptions, in condemning the queen to death, as well as Madame de Polignac, Artois, Flesselles, the provost, and others. The names of the conquerors of the Bastille do not include one of these makers of motions."
Perhaps we may accept, in the absence of a better, Michelet's explanation of this instinctive action of the mob, as having been caused by the recent publicity given to the experience of one Latude, who was first confined in the Bastille during the reign of Madame de Pompadour, and had since "worn out all their prisons," and had finally reached the "dunghillss of Bicêtre," by way of Vincennes and Charenton. He was at last released through the pertinacious efforts of one Madame Legros, a poor mercer, who became interested in him by chance, and persevered for three years, meeting with obstacles of every sort and exposed to the vilest calumny, until success came at last, and Latude was released in 1784, after more than forty years of confinement. His release was followed by an ordinance enjoining intendants never again to incarcerate anybody at the request of families without a well-grounded reason, and in every case to indicate the duration of confinement,—a decidedly naive confession of the degree of arbitrariness which had been reached.
"From that day" (of Latude's deliverance), says Michelet, "the people of the town and the faubourg, who, in that much-frequented quarter, were ever passing and repassing in its shadow, never failed to curse it."
It is proper to observe that the state of things which existed in the Bastille when the Cellamare conspirators underwent mock imprisonment there (witness the Regency Romances) had been done away with. While other prisons had become more merciful, this had become more cruel. From reign to reign the privileges were taken away, the windows were walled up one after another, and new bars were added. The other encroachments by De Launay upon the "liberties of the Bastille" are described by Dumas in the course of the narrative.
To quote Michelet once more: "The Bastille was known and detested by the whole world. 'Bastille' and 'tyranny' were in every language synonymous terms. Every nation, at the news of its destruction, believed it had recovered its liberty."
The Comte de Ségur, then ambassador at Russia, relates that when the news arrived in St. Petersburg, men of every nation were to be seen shouting and weeping in the streets, and repeating, as they embraced one another: "Who can help weeping for joy? The Bastille is taken!"
The Duc de Liancourt announced the fall of the fortress to Louis XVI. "Why," said the king, "it is downright revolt!" "It's more than that," replied Liancourt, "it is revolution."
Nothing need be added to the description given by Dumas of the painful excitement at Versailles, or of the king's journey to Paris and experience there. The scenes attending the summary vengeance wreaked upon Foulon and Berthier, who were the very incarnation of the old régime, are also portrayed with the careful attention to detail which is so striking a characteristic of the historical portions of the author's romances; and the same may be said of the assassination of Flesselles, and, by anticipation, of the events of the 5th of October in the streets of Paris and at the Hôtel de Ville, when Stanislas Maillard assumed the leadership of the women ("the Menadic hosts"), and Lafayette was reluctantly compelled to lead the march of the thirty thousand upon Versailles.
The fall of the Bastille was followed throughout France by the enlistment of National Guards, ostensibly, in most instances, as a protection against mythical brigands, whose coming in great numbers was continually heralded in every town and village, but who never came. The experience of Pitou, in Haramont, is typical of the great movement which was in progress everywhere.
"It is a terrible but certain fact," says Michelet, "that in Paris, that city of eight hundred thousand souls, there was no public authority for the space of three months, from July to October."
Meanwhile the National Assembly was going haltingly on with its work of constitution-making. The session of the 4th of August shines out with peculiar prominence, as it was the occasion of all the privileged classes vying with one another in renouncing their privileges. Such good effect as this tardy renunciation might have had, however, was destroyed by the king's refusal to sanction it, except in so far as he was personally affected.
Towards the end of August the knotty question of the veto was duly reached: whether the king should have any veto upon the acts of the Assembly, and if so, whether it should be absolute or suspensive.
Throughout Lafayette assumed a position of great prominence in other directions than as commander-in-chief of the National Guard. The suspensive" veto was finally decided upon, and there was a vague prospect of a return of quieter times, except for the continued scarcity and dearness of grain. "Our rights of man are voted," says Carlyle; "feudalism and all tyranny abolished; yet behold we stand in queue [at the bakers' doors]! Is it aristocrat forestallers—a court still bent on intrigue? Something is rotten somewhere."
With hope, terror, suspicion, excitement, succeeding one another with bewildering rapidity, comes the certainty that the "Œil-de-Bœuf is rallying," that the Flanders regiment has been summoned to Versailles, and that some scheme of flight or repression is in the wind. Then comes the news of the banquet of the 1st of October,—of the appearance of the king and queen, the trampling under foot of cockades, and the announcement of Marie Antoinette the next day, that she was "enchanted with the events of the supper." Of all fatuous performances of mortals foredoomed to destroy themselves, surely that was the most fatuous. It is significant, by the way, of the extreme caution with which the statements of Madame Campan must be accepted, that in describing this scene, at which she was present, she does not mention the word "cockade," nor does she imply that it was aught but a quiet, orderly function, at which, perhaps, some one or two may have imbibed a thought too freely.
With regard to the events of the night of October 5-6 at Versailles, nothing need be said, save that the body-guard who heroically defended the door to the queen's apartments, where Georges de Charny is said to have been slain, was one Miomandre de Sainte-Marie; and that although "fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead, he has crawled to the Œil-de-Bœuf, and shall live honored of loyal France."
In the "Comtesse de Charny" we shall find the king and queen on the road to Paris, on the 6th of October. We shall there meet many old acquaintances and make some new ones, and shall follow the setting sun of the time-honored monarchy of France till it sinks at last below the horizon.
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Ange Pitou
Chapter I
In which the Reader is made acquainted with the Hero of this History, as well as with the Country in which he first saw the Light
ON the borders of Picardy and the province of Soissons, and on that part of the national territory which, under the name of the Isle of France, formed a portion of the ancient patrimony of our kings, and in the centre of an immense crescent formed by a forest of fifty thousand acres which stretches its horns to the north and south, rises, almost buried amid the shades of a vast park planted by Francis I. and Henry II., the small city of Villers-Cotterets. This place is celebrated from having given birth to Charles Albert Demoustier, who, at the period when our present history commences,
was there writing his "Letters to Emilie on Mythology," to the unbounded satisfaction of the pretty women of those days, who eagerly snatched his publications from each other as soon as printed.
Let us add, to complete the poetical reputation of this little city, whose detractors, not withstanding its royal chateau and its two thousand four hundred inhabitants, obstinately persist in calling it a mere village,—let us add, we say, to complete its poetical reputation, that it is situated at two leagues' distance from Laferté-Milon, where Racine was born, and eight leagues from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine.
Let us also state that the mother of the author of "Britannicus" and "Athalie" was from Villers-Cotterets.
But now we must return to its royal chateau and its two thousand four hundred inhabitants.
This royal chateau, begun by Francis I., whose salamanders still decorate it, and finished by Henry II., whose cipher it bears entwined with that of Catherine de Médicis and encircled by the three crescents of Diana of Poictiers, after having sheltered the loves of the knightking with Madame d'Étampes, and those of Louis-Philippe of Orleans with the beautiful Madame de Montesson, had become almost uninhabited since the death of this last named prince; his son, Philippe d'Orléans, afterwards called Égalité, having reduced it from the rank of a royal residence to that of a mere hunting rendezvous.
It is well known that the chateau and forest of Villers-Cotterets formed part of the appanage settled by Louis XIV. on his brother Monsieur, when the second son of Anne of Austria married the sister of Charles II., the Princess Henrietta of England.
As to the two thousand four hundred inhabitants of whom we have promised our readers to say a word, they were, as in all localities where two thousand four hundred people are united, a heterogeneous assemblage.
First, of a few nobles, who spent their summers in the neighboring châteaux and their winters in Paris, and who, mimicking the prince, had only a lodging-place in the city.
Secondly, of a goodly number of citizens, who could be seen, let the weather be what it might, leaving their houses after dinner, umbrella in hand, to take their daily walk,—a walk which was regularly bounded by a wide ditch which separated the park from the forest, situated about a quarter of a league from the town, and which was called, doubtless on account of the exclamation which the sight of it drew from the asthmatic lungs of the promenaders, satisfied at finding themselves, after so long a walk, not too much out of breath, the "Ha! ha!"
Thirdly, of a considerably greater number of artisans, who worked the whole of the week, and only allowed themselves to take a walk on the Sunday; whereas their fellow-townsmen, more favored by fortune, could enjoy it every day.
Fourthly and finally, of some miserable proletarians, for whom the week had not even a Sabbath, and who, after having toiled six days in the pay of the nobles, the citizens, or even of the artisans, wandered on the seventh day through the forest to gather up dry wood or branches of the lofty trees, torn from them by the storm,—that mower of the forest, to whom oak-trees are but as ears of wheat,—and which it scattered over the humid soil beneath the lofty trees, the magnificent appanage of a prince.
If Villers-Cotterets (Villerii ad Cotiam Retiæ) had been, unfortunately, a town of sufficient importance in history to induce archaeologists to ascertain and follow up its successive changes from a village to a burgh and from a burgh to a city,—the last, as we have said, being strongly contested,—they would certainly have proved this fact, that the village had begun by being a row of houses on either side of the road from Paris to Soissons; then they would have added that its situation on the borders of a beautiful forest having, though by slow degrees, brought to it a great increase of inhabitants, other streets were added to the first, diverging like the rays of a star and leading towards other small villages with which it was important to keep up communication, and converging towards a point which naturally became the centre,—that is to say, what in the provinces is called The Square,—around which the handsomest buildings of the village, now become a burgh, were erected, and in the middle of which rises a fountain, now decorated with a quadruple dial; in short, they would have fixed the precise date when, near the modest village church—the first want of a people—arose the first turrets of the vast château, the last caprice of a king; a château which, after having been, as we have already said, by turns a royal and a princely residence, has in our days become a melancholy and hideous receptacle for mendicants under the direction of the Prefecture of the Seine.
But at the period at which this history commences, royal affairs, though already somewhat tottering, had not yet fallen to the low degree to which they have fallen in our days; the château was no longer inhabited by a prince, 't is true, but it had not yet become the abode of beggars; it was simply uninhabited, excepting the indispensable attendants required for its preservation; among whom were to be remarked the doorkeeper, the master of the tennis court, and the house steward; and therefore the windows of this immense edifice, some of which looked toward the park and others on a large court aristocratically called the square of the chateau, were all closed, which added not a little to the gloominess and solitary appearance of this square, at one of the extremities of which rose a small house, regarding which the reader, we hope, will permit us to say a few words.
It was a small house, of which, if we may be allowed to use the term, the back only was to be seen. But, as is the case with many individuals, this back had the privilege of being the most presentable part. In fact, the front, which was towards the Rue de Soissons, one of the principal streets of the town, opened upon it by an awkwardly constructed gate, which was ill-naturedly kept closed eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, while the back was gay and smiling; that is to say, on the back was a garden, above the wall of which could be seen the tops of cherry, pear, and plum trees, while on each side of a small gate by which the garden was entered from the square was a centenary acacia-tree, which in the spring appeared to stretch out their branches above the wall to scatter their perfumed flowers over the surrounding grounds.
The abode was the residence of the chaplain of the chateau, who, notwithstanding the absence of the master, performed mass every Sunday in the seignorial church. He had a small pension, and besides this had the charge of two purses,—the one to send a scholar yearly to the college of Plessis, the other for one to the seminary at Soissons. It is needless to say that it was the Orleans family who supplied these purses,—founded, that of the seminary by the son of the Regent, that for the college by the father of the prince,—and that these two purses were the objects of ambition to all parents, at the same time that they were a cause of absolute despair to the pupils, being the source of extraordinary compositions, which compositions were to be presented for approval of the chaplain every Thursday.
Well, one Thursday in the month of July, 1789, a somewhat disagreeable day, being darkened by a storm, beneath which the two magnificent acacias we have spoken of, having already lost the virginal whiteness of their spring attire, shed a few leaves yellowed by the first heats of summer, after a silence of some duration, broken only by the rustling of those leaves as they whirled against each other upon the beaten ground of the square, or by the shrill cry of the martin pursuing flies as it skimmed along the ground, eleven o'clock resounded from the pointed and slated belfry of the town hall.
Instantly a hurrah, loud as could have been uttered by a whole regiment of fusileers, accompanied by a rushing sound like that of the avalanche when bounding from crag to crag, was heard; the door between the two acaciatrees was opened, or rather burst open, and gave egress to a torrent of boys, who spread themselves over the square, when instantly some five or six joyous and noisy groups were formed,—one around a circle formed to keep pegtops prisoners, another about a game of hop-scotch traced with chalk upon the ground, another before several holes scientifically hollowed out, where those who were fortunate enough to have sous might lose them at pitch and toss.
At t
he same time that these gambling and playful scholars—who were apostrophized by the few neighbors whose windows opened on this square as wicked do-no-goods, and who, in general, wore trousers the knees of which were torn, as were also the elbows of their jackets—assembled to play upon the square, those who were called good and reasonable boys, and who, in the opinion of the gossips, must be the pride and joy of their respective parents, were seen to detach themselves from the general mass, and by various paths, though with slow steps, indicative of their regret, to walk, basket in hand, towards their paternal roofs, where awaited them the slice of bread and butter, or of bread and preserved fruit, destined to be their compensation for the games they had thus abjured. The latter were, in general, dressed in jackets in tolerably good condition, and in breeches which were almost irreproachable; and this, together with their boasted propriety of demeanor, rendered them objects of derision and even of hatred to their worse-dressed and, above all, worse-disciplined companions.
Besides the two classes we have pointed out under the denomination of gambling and well-conducted scholars, there was still a third, which we shall designate by the name of idle scholars, who scarcely ever left school with the others, whether to play in the square or to return to their paternal homes; seeing that this unfortunate class were almost constantly, what in school language is termed "kept," which means to say, that while their companions, after having said their lessons and written their themes, were playing at top or eating their bread and jam, they remained nailed to their school benches or before their desks, that they might learn their lessons or write their themes during the hours of recreation, which they had not been able to accomplish satisfactorily during the class, when, indeed, the gravity of their faults did not demand a punishment more severe than that of mere detention, such as the rod, the cane, or the cat-o'-nine-tails.