CHAPTER XV.
THE BLOOD-STAINS.
For a space, the Swiss might believe that they had dealt with an armyand wiped it off the earth. They had slain nearly four hundred men inthe royal yard, and almost two hundred in the Carrousel; seven gunswere the spoils.
As far as they could see, no foes were in sight.
One small isolated battery, planted on the terrace of a house facingthe Swiss guard-house, continued its fire without their being able tosilence it. As they believed they had suppressed the insurrection, theywere taking measures to finish with this battery at any cost, when theyheard on the water-side the rolling of drums and the much more awfulrolling of artillery over the stones.
This was the army which the king was watching through his spy-glassfrom the Louvre gallery.
At the same time the rumor spread that the king had quitted the palaceand had taken refuge in the House of Representatives.
It is hard to tell the effect produced by this news, even on the mostfirm adherents.
The monarch, who had promised to die at his royal post, desertingit and passing over to the enemy, or at least surrendering withoutstriking a blow!
Thereupon the National Guards regarded themselves as released fromtheir oath, and almost all withdrew.
Several noblemen followed them, thinking it foolish to die for a causewhich acknowledged itself lost.
Alone the Swiss remained, somber and silent, the slaves of discipline.
From the top of the Flora terrace and the Louvre gallery windows, couldbe seen coming those heroic working-men whom no army had ever resisted,and who had in one day brought low the Bastile, though it had beentaking root during four centuries.
These assailants had their plan; believing the king in his castle, theysought to encompass him so as to take him in it.
The column on the left bank had orders to get in by the river gates;that coming down St. Honore Street to break in the Feuillants' gates,while the column on the right bank were to attack in front, led byWesterman, with Santerre and Billet under his orders.
The last suddenly poured in by all the small entrances on theCarrousel, singing the "It shall go on."
The Marseilles men were in the lead, dragging in their midst twofour-pounders loaded with grape-shot.
About two hundred Swiss were ranged in order of battle on CarrouselSquare.
Straight to them marched the insurgents, and as the Swiss leveled theirmuskets, they opened their ranks and fired the pieces.
The soldiers discharged their guns, but they immediately fell back tothe palace, leaving some thirty dead and wounded on the pavement.
Thereupon, the rebels, headed by the Breton and Marseilles Federals,rushed on the Tuileries, capturing the two yards--the royal, in thecenter, where there were so many dead, and the princes', near the riverand the Flora restaurant.
Billet had wished to fight where Pitou fell, with a hope that he mightbe only wounded, so that he might do him the good turn he owed forpicking him up on the parade-ground.
So he was one of the first to enter the center court. Such was the reekof blood that one might believe one was in the shambles; it rose fromthe heap of corpses, visible as a smoke in some places.
This sight and stench exasperated the attackers, who hurled themselveson the palace.
Besides, they could not have hung back had they wished, for they wereshoved ahead by the masses incessantly spouted forth by the narrowdoors of the Carrousel.
But we hasten to say that, though the front of the pile resembled aframe of fire-works in a display, none had the idea of flight.
Nevertheless, once inside the central yard, the insurgents, like thosein whose gore they slipped, were caught between two fires: that fromthe clock entrance and from the double row of barracks.
The first thing to do was stop the latter.
The Marseillais threw themselves at the buildings like mad dogs on abrasier, but they could not demolish a wall with hands; they called forpicks and crows.
Billet asked for torpedoes. Westerman knew that his lieutenant hadthe right idea, and he had petards made. At the risk of having thesecannon-cartridges fired in their hands, the Marseilles men carriedthem with the matches lighted and flung them into the apertures. Thewoodwork was soon set aflame by these grenades, and the defenders wereobliged to take refuge under the stairs.
Here the fighting went on with steel to steel and shot for shot.
Suddenly Billet felt hands from behind seize him, and he wheeled round,thinking he had an enemy to grapple: but he uttered a cry of delight.It was Pitou; but he was pretty hard to identify, for he was smotheredin blood from head to foot; but he was safe and sound and without asingle wound.
When he saw the Swiss muskets leveled, he had called out for all todrop flat, and he had set the example.
But his followers had not time to act like him. Like a monstrousscythe, the fusillade had swept along at breast-high, and laid twothirds of the human field, another volley bending and breaking theremainder.
Pitou was literally buried beneath the swathe, and bathed by the warmand nauseating stream. Despite the profoundly disagreeable feeling,Pitou resolved not to make any move, while bathed in the blood of thebodies stifling him, and to wait for a favorable time to show tokens oflife.
He had to wait for over an hour, and every minute seemed an hour. Buthe judged he had the right cue when he heard his side's shouts ofvictory, and Billet's voice, among the many, calling him.
Thereupon, like the Titan under the mountain, he shook off the moundof carcasses covering him, and ran to press Billet to his heart, onrecognizing him, without thinking that he might soil his clothes,whichever way he took him.
A Swiss volley, which sent a dozen men to the ground, recalled them tothe gravity of the situation.
Two thousand yards of buildings were burning on the sides of thecentral court. It was sultry weather, without the least breath;like a dome of lead the smoke of the fire and powder pressed on thecombatants; the smoke filled up the palace entrances. Each windowflamed, but the front was sheeted in smoke; no one could tell whodelivered death or who received it.
Pitou and Billet, with the Marseillais at the fore, pushed through thevapor into the vestibule. Here they met a wall of bayonets--the Swiss.
The Swiss commenced their retreat, a heroic one, leaving a rank of deadon each step, and the battalion most slowly retiring.
Forty-eight dead were counted that evening on those stairs.
Suddenly the cry rang through the rooms and corridors:
"Order of the king--the Swiss will cease firing."
It was two in the afternoon.
The following had happened in the House to lead to the order proclaimedin the Tuileries; one with the double advantage of lessening theassailants' exasperation and covering the vanquished with honor.
As the doors were closing behind the queen, but still while she couldcatch a glimpse of the bars, bayonets, and pikes menacing Charny, shehad screamed and held her hands out toward the opening; but draggedaway by her companions, at the same time by her maternal instinct, shehad to enter the Assembly Hall.
There she had the great relief afforded her of seeing her son seated onthe speaker's desk; the man who had carried him there waved his red captriumphantly over the boy's head and shouted gladly:
"I have saved the son of my master--long live the dauphin!"
But a sudden revulsion of feeling made Marie Antoinette recur to Charny.
"Gentlemen," she said, "one of my bravest officers, most devoted offollowers, has been left outside the door, in danger of death. I begsuccor for him."
Five or six members sprung away at the appeal.
The king, the queen, and the rest of the royal family, with theirattendants, proceeded to the seats intended for the cabinet officers,and took places there.
The Assembly received them standing, not from etiquette, but therespect misfortune compelled.
Before sitting down, the king held up his hand to intimate th
at hewished to speak.
"I came here to prevent a great crime," he said, in the silence; "Ithought I could not be in safety anywhere else."
"Sire," returned Vergniaud, who presided, "you may rely on the firmnessof the National Assembly; its members are sworn to die in defending thepeople's rights and the constitutional authorities."
As the king was taking his seat, a frightful musketry dischargeresounded at the doors. It was the National Guards firing, intermingledwith the insurgents, from the Feuillants' terrace, on the Swissofficers and soldiers forming the royal escort.
An officer of the National Guard, probably out of his senses, ran in inalarm, and only stopped by the bar, cried: "The Swiss--the Swiss arecoming--they have forced past us!"
For an instant the House believed that the Swiss had overcome theoutbreak and were coming to recover their master; for at the time LouisXVI. was much more the king to the Swiss than to any others.
With one spontaneous movement the House rose, all of a mind, and therepresentatives, spectators, officials, and guards, raising theirhands, shouted, "Come what may, we vow to live and die free men!"
In such an oath the royals could take no part, so they remained seated,as the shout passed like a whirlwind over their heads from threethousand mouths. The error did not last long, but it was sublime.
In another quarter of an hour the cry was: "The palace is overrun--theinsurgents are coming here to take the king!"
Thereupon the same men who had sworn to die free in their hatred ofroyalty, rose with the same spontaneity to swear they would defend theking to the death. The Swiss captain, Durler, was summoned outside tolay down his arms.
"I serve the king and not the House," he said. "Where is the royalorder?"
They brought him into the Assembly by force; he was black with powderand red with blood.
"Sire," he said, "they want me to lay down arms. Is it the king'sorder?"
"Yes," said Louis; "hand your weapons to the National Guard. I do notwant such brave men to perish."
Durler lowered his head with a sigh, but he insisted on a writtenorder. The king scribbled on a paper: "The king orders the Swiss to laydown their arms and return into barracks."
This was what voices were crying throughout the Tuileries, on thestairs, and in the rooms and halls. As this order restored some quietto the House, the speaker rang his bell and called for the debating tobe resumed.
A member rose and pointed out that an article of the Constitutionforbade debates in the king's presence.
"Quite so," said the king; "but where are you going to put us?"
"Sire," said the speaker, "we can give you the room and box of the'Logographe,' which is vacant owing to the sheet having ceased toappear."
The ushers hastened to show the party where to go, and they had toretrace some of the path they had used to enter.
"What is this on the floor?" asked the queen. "It looks like blood!"
The servants said nothing; for while the spots might be blood, theywere ignorant where they came from.
Strange to say, the stains grew larger and nearer together as theyapproached the box. To spare her the sight, the king quickened thepace, and opening the box door himself, he bid her enter.
The queen sprung forward; but even as she set foot on the sill, sheuttered a scream of horror and drew back, with her hands covering hereyes. The presence of the blood-spots was explained, for a dead bodyhad been placed in the room.
It was her almost stepping upon this which had caused her to leap back.
"Bless us," said the king, "it is poor Count Charny's body!" in thesame tone as he had said to the gory relic on the pike, "This is poorMandat's head."
Indeed, the deputies had snatched the body from the cutthroats, andordered it to be taken into the empty room, without the least ideathat the royal family would be consigned to this room in the next tenminutes. It was now carried out and the guests installed. They talkedof cleaning up, but the queen shook her head in opposition, and was thefirst to take a place over the blood-stains. No one noticed that sheburst her shoe-laces and dabbled her foot in the red, still warm blood.
"Oh, Charny, Charny!" she murmured; "why does not my life-blood oozeout here to the last drop to mingle with yours unto all eternity?"
Three P. M. struck.
The last of her Life Guards was no more, for in and about her palacenearly a thousand nobles and Swiss had fallen.