by Marge Piercy
For the first time, Claire felt apart from the crowd. Hungry, tired, she leaned against the wall. Anything could happen. Indeed, if a leader emerged who grabbed the King, he could be killed. He had lost his mystique; his person was no longer sacred. Men who never expected to lay eyes on him, women who had blessed him in their prayers, automatically listing him among the saints, now looked at him as part symbol and part obstacle and part ordinary man. Maybe they had a little goodwill left over, but only a little. He looked at them with resignation and puzzlement.
Everyone was shouting at once, Pauline with them. “Down with the veto!” “Bring back the good ministers!” “Out with the bad priests!” On and on. Claire was tired of shouting. She simply lay against the wall, held up by the crowd. It was hot, with more people trying to force their way in, screaming and chanting outside in the hall. For an hour the people yelled and the King moved his mouth. Nobody could hear. Finally leaders with petitions made their way in and gave the petitions to the King. In the tumult, Claire was carried away from Pauline, away from the safety of the wall and across the room in the wake of the petitioners. She ended up too near the King for comfort. He was standing on a green and gold striped brocade chair, trying to make himself heard. His gold damask waistcoat was stained with sweat. She could see the gossamer lace at his throat and his cuffs, but she was struck by his shoes, leather as thin as silk but inlaid with what she assumed were jewels. His stockings were heavy with gold embroidery. He was wearing far too many layers for the heat. His hands were laden with heavy rings with more big winking jewels. A man turned and grinned at Claire. “Give me your cap.”
“Sure,” she said, too hot and sweaty to care. Who needed a wool hat on a day like this?
He took it, and sticking it on the end of his pike, began battering his way toward the King. “Here, Louis. You need this.”
Louis took the cap and put it on his head. A bald guy laughed, made as if to clap him on the back. A guard started to go for his pistol, but another restrained his arm. The guy handed the King a wine skin. “Drink to the nation, Louis.”
The King stood there in the hat he must have hated and drank the wine he must have found loathsome and nodded and smiled and tried to save his life; and Claire saw that he was succeeding. Santerre had finally made his way in and now he mounted a table. “You’ve given your petitions to the King and he has heard you. Now it’s time to move along so that your neighbors can meet the King too. Don’t be pigs. Move along and give your neighbors a chance.”
In good humor, the crowd began to shuffle out of the end of the Oeil de Boeuf chamber, giving the folks who had been screaming in the hall opportunity to enter. Claire left with her contingent. By the time she got downstairs, it was clear that Santerre had managed to set up a receiving line for the King. Mayor Pétion was running up and down the staircase, trying to move the crowd along, trying to make sure that those who had already seen the King left the palace promptly.
Mostly people were tired and satisfied. They had been marching since dawn, and they were ready to go home. So was she.
FIFTY
Max
(Summer 1792)
MAX had lost much of his popularity because of his harsh criticism of the war. Now he was subjected to a war at home. Charlotte had taken a dislike to all the Duplays except Elisabeth, with whom she went about everywhere arm in arm. Charlotte particularly resented Mme Duplay and Eléanore. “I can’t believe how she invades your privacy. The girl is shameless.”
“She goes nowhere I do not wish her to go.”
“Max, she comes into your bedroom as if she were your mistress!”
“She’s in my confidence. She acts on my behalf. She carries messages for me and reports back.”
“It’s not proper.”
“Would you prefer I marry her, Charlotte? Would that make Eléanore’s working with me proper in your eyes?”
“Max, don’t joke! You can’t marry a carpenter’s daughter. Really!”
“I should think marrying the daughter of an honest artisan would be most appropriate. Unless you think people would suspect I was marrying her for money. After all, they’re much better off than we are.”
“Max, you can’t marry her! And as for money, if you wanted to make money now, I know you could do it. For instance—”
“Enough!” He glared at her. She was carefully dressed, yet somehow her appearance always slightly annoyed him. There was a family resemblance. He was careful about his own appearance, but seeing his fussiness and his fastidiousness writ large in Charlotte and turned into open and foundationless vanity was not a boost to his self-esteem. He wanted to thunder at her to shut up, but she would weep. “Charlotte, I am not about to marry anyone. You can rest easy on that count. I can’t afford a wife, financially or morally. I am wedded to the Revolution.”
“You could make a dozen advantageous matches. I see how the women look at you. Even the rich ladies. They make eyes at you.”
“I’m not a plate of hors d’oeuvres. Have you nothing better to think about? Why don’t you assist Madame Duplay with the preserving of peaches? I love peach conserve.”
It was no gift he was inflicting on Mme Duplay, but he had to get Charlotte out of his hair in order to do any work. How happy he had been in the house of the Duplays before he imported Charlotte. August in, however, was a true brother. They went to the Jacobins together. Augustin attended the Cordeliers several times a week and kept Max up-to-date.
Things were moving rapidly from both the left and the right. Lafayette returned to Paris without warning and attempted a coup in the Assembly, where he expected a majority to support him. Runners came to Max telling him that Lafayette planned to march on the Jacobins and crush them by force. Lafayette could not find support to carry out his plan. In a huff, he withdrew to his troops at the front. The wildest suspicions of counter-revolution that Max harbored were seldom equal to reality. He was stunned how quickly events had come to crisis and been resolved, while he sat working on a paper about freedom for Blacks. He must snap to and take an active part again. Even if he wasn’t in the Assembly, he could still have some effect on the rapid slide of events. He began spending even more time at the Jacobins.
Something massive was brewing. Unlike the June twentieth demonstration, this one did not have Mme Roland’s salon behind it. He no longer trusted her. A touch of power had changed her ideas about war. Couldn’t she imagine the actual bloody deaths of the peasants she claimed to hold so dear? Everything to her was a drama, starring none other than Manon. Perhaps he saw himself in that intense self-scrutiny, but he did not like it in a woman. She was a schemer like Charlotte, but more dangerous than his silly sister, because more intelligent.
The armies were losing every battle, when they bothered to fight at all instead of just surrendering or fleeing. It was possible that the army’s plans were being leaked to the enemy, for the enemy’s intelligence always proved superior to theirs; the Austrians and Germans seemed to know exactly where the French armies were preparing to strike and the weak points in their lines. The generals might be betraying them. Or the Queen might be sending information to the Austrians. He hated the war, but if they were in it, they must not lose. They must make peace or win.
The Assembly was a bird with a broken wing. The deputies were too conservative. The people were being asked to fight a war when they could not vote for representatives to speak for them. They needed universal manhood suffrage now. They needed a real elected body to govern France, and this time, he would run again.
He had not wanted a demonstration on June twentieth. For one thing, he did not support the Girondin ministers, and wouldn’t waste five minutes getting them back into office. People should risk their lives to make Roland a minister again? But now the Marseillais fédérés had arrived to defend Paris: superb fighting men who marched to a new song that everyone was learning, “The Marseillaise.”
He sat in on planning sessions. All over Paris and its suburbs, people were hammerin
g out tactics for the coming demonstration, this time a serious attack. He disliked depending on armed rebellion in the streets. For one thing, the outcome was uncertain. The King had been badly frightened by the twentieth of June and had moved his most reliable foreign troops, the Swiss, into the palace. Louis had ordered the defenses thoroughly overhauled. He was fortifying the Tuileries to withstand a siege. Further, violent demonstrations encouraged the worst elements in the lower classes. Finally, it cost lives. But to get to a republic, it seemed that violence would be necessary.
He was as out of place in a demonstration as a Persian cat. He had never mastered a single weapon except his political skills and his tongue. He could not imagine himself physically injuring anyone. He was feared because of his integrity, not because he could pick up a truncheon and bash some stranger’s head in. He could not inspire troops. He was too fastidious to rush along in a crowd screaming. Yet he was helping to make this insurrection happen, and happen effectively. He saw no other choice.
They must have a republic. He could not rest with the patched system they were suffering under. The Revolution would be destroyed if it was not completed, for the government could neither win the war they had insisted on starting, nor give the people the rights they had been promised and passionately wanted right now. He spoke nightly at the Jacobins, standing at the high rostrum in front of the slab of black marble that had been a memorial and created a dramatic backdrop he appreciated. The Jacobins held fifteen hundred spectators in seats canted sharply up to the vaulted ceiling. Every night it was mobbed. “The State must be saved by whatever means. Nothing is unconstitutional except what can lead to ruin!” He argued for the right to insurrection, knowing it was planned for the fifth of August.
Then on the first of August the Duke of Brunswick, who had been winning easy victories against the disorganized and ill-armed French troops, issued a manifesto. Although his name sounded British, he led Austrian and Prussian troops against the French armies of the Rhine. Brunswick said he was fighting to restore the power of the King and the Church. He threatened to lay waste to France in punishment for the Revolution and to execute the entire population of Paris if the royal family was threatened again. The proclamation was in every paper. People could talk of nothing else. Max could feel a fury seething in the streets. Everywhere knots of people were letting anger take them over. Their fear for themselves and their families translated quickly into an anger that demanded an outlet. The Duke of Brunswick had just enlarged the size of the coming demonstration by half.
The insurrection was postponed till the tenth. It must be successful. The sections of Paris issued an ultimatum—which Max helped hammer out—that the Assembly must remove the King from power, or the people would do so themselves; they gave the legislature five days to quit waffling. Five days, or the people would act.
FIFTY-ONE
Pauline
(August 9–10, 1792)
PAULINE could not stop talking about that bastard the Duke of Brunswick who was going to level Paris and kill them all. “Well, he has to take the city before he can burn it down and shoot us. Sitting over there with those rotten aristocrats who ran off as soon as they lost a few privileges.”
“We aren’t winning,” Claire said. “The government tries to pretend everything is jolly, but you can tell if you read the papers carefully, the war’s a mess. Maybe Robespierre was right.”
“Our soldiers are as good as anybody’s. They’re guys just like in the neighborhood. It’s the damned aristo officers, betraying them. It’s the Queen sending the army’s plans to her brother.”
“Marat says they don’t have boots and they don’t have muskets and they don’t have ammunition and they don’t have food,” Claire said. “Imagine if we had to go to the big demonstration barefoot.”
“This won’t be a walkover like last time,” Pauline said, pacing in the basement of the Cordeliers Club where their women’s group would be meeting in half an hour. “We didn’t face any resistance. Now we’ll be going up against Swiss Guards who hate us.”
After the women met, they went upstairs. The ultimatum ran out at midnight. The sections were in session, the elected reps of the neighborhoods and ordinary people. The children who had come with their parents were cranky and whining and hungry. Babies were crying and then cried themselves to sleep and still the sections met. When she had to use the latrine in the hall, its stench was worse than usual. People had diarrhea from fear. The Cordeliers hall stank of fear. Could it be a giant mistake? Just as on the night of June twentieth, messengers ran back and forth between City Hall and the sections, to the faubourgs, back again. The Assembly was still in session, but the followers of Brissot were holding the line against revolt. They were negotiating with the King.
As far as she was concerned, the King had no right to form or dismiss a government. He was just a gold hole down which they were expected to pour money. She had looked the royals right in the face in June as the people confronted them in the Tuileries. When she remembered how she had called Louis her father, she felt ashamed. How could she have been so stupid? She had a real father who had died in the street.
Midnight came and the Assembly had not dismissed the King and the King had not abdicated. It was time. The tocsin, that bell of alarm in the churches, began to sound. Come, come, come, come, to arms, to arms. “This is it,” she said to Claire and Babette. “We stand or fall tonight. If they crush us, then we’ve had it. We can eat sawdust and remember our glorious adventures while we starve.” She did not add that they might well die.
Danton was speaking. He was a fine speaker, but Pauline looked at him differently since Claire had fucked him. “How was he?” she asked Claire. Anything to get her mind off what was coming.
“Very vigorous. He can do it all night.”
“So he was the best?”
“No. Some men are good lovers because they have so much drive that you get satisfied. But the very best know your body as you do. My Jew was like that. He could just reach out and put his hands in the right places. That’s a knack few men have.”
She could not understand how Claire could size up a man and decide if she wanted him. For Pauline, attraction was slow, gradual, rare. If she died in the morning in the battle that was to be, she would have had only one lover, Henri. At least she would not die a virgin. She had never experienced love as the songs and plays depicted it. Maybe she was too practical. She knew herself to be affectionate with her friends. Even her little apprentice was always telling her he loved her. But a great passion, even a middle-sized one, she would die without having known. Oh, she had her adoration of Robespierre, but that was like a special devotion to a saint. She could adore him for years and never lose sleep. She was one of an army of women who revered that small neat passionate man whose voice moved her almost to tears, who was the voice of the Revolution and its conscience. He knew this battle was necessary. So did she.
Babette’s mother threw open the Dancing Badger and fed everyone free. “You can’t go to battle on empty stomachs. This is my gift to the Revolution. We’ll eat till the food runs out, and then we’ll march.”
None of them went to bed. They might be dead in a few hours. The streets were simmering. Torches were lit and the darkness pushed back. People were everywhere, as if it were noon. The rallying points for the two pincers that would converge on the palace were the Faubourg Saint Antoine and their own neighborhood, by the Cordeliers Club. Guardsmen, gendarmes, soldiers, men and women were marching in companies, armed with everything they could lay hands on from muskets and pistols to pikes and hatchets, saws, kitchen knives, cudgels, the spikes from railings mounted on broom handles. This time they did not carry flowers. They had drums and some had flags and banners, but this was not a peaceful demonstration. They were not going to educate the King, to rebuke or instruct him. They were marching to bring him down. They were marching for a republic. The Marseillais fédérés, patriots all, had been billeted at the Cordeliers Club and formed up smart
ly. They were a real citizen army. Maybe they could fight the professional soldiers, the Swiss.
Dawn came up brilliant and red above the slate roofs and chimney pots. “Is that a sign of blood or victory?” Claire wondered. “My grandmère always said it meant that there would be a storm later. I guess that’s sure.”
Runners came to the Cordeliers every few minutes. Word came that Danton had led a successful coup: an insurrectionary commune had taken City Hall and was now the authority in Paris. Danton had sent to the palace for Mandat, the commander of the National Guard.
“He won’t obey us,” Claire said. “He doesn’t respect the people.”
Pauline grimaced. “Danton has to get Santerre to take over the Guard. Then instead of attacking us, the Guard will march with us.”
Finally, with City Hall secured and their own people in power, they began to move out. The latest news was that the Tuileries and even the old palace of the Louvre at the east end of the gardens were heavily defended. All the palace gates were reported to be sealed and guarded. Artillery was placed to defend the Place du Carrousel, where the people had entered on June twentieth. The King had been seen reviewing his troops just after dawn. He had been greeted enthusiastically by the Swiss and his noble guards, but the National Guards posted there booed him. The King was believed to have between four and five thousand troops, maybe more. The frontier between palace and city was closed.
A vast underarmed and raggedy army was crossing the river in the hazy morning light. Over on the right bank Théroigne de Méricourt with a sword and a pistol in a dashing version of a military outfit was leading the women’s club from the Faubourg Saint Antoine. The National Guard had been ordered by Mandat to prevent them from crossing the Seine, but the Guard stood aside. Some joined the marchers. She saw the Marseillais crossing the next bridge. They congregated on the right bank and waited two hours till everyone made the crossing.