The deliberations took some time but it was finally decided not to answer. Instead twenty-four Représentants were nominated to go out and fraternise with the Sections and attempt to pacify them individually. By this time it was half-past four and, having received no reply, General Danican gave the order to attack. Thereupon Buonaparte sent eight hundred musket and cartridge boxes to the Convention Hall with the suggestion that the Deputies should cease talking and come out to help defend themselves.
For some hours past the Convention troops had been under severe provocation and General Carteaux had, with Buonaparte’s approval, even withdrawn his men from the Pont Neuf to the Quai des Tuileries rather than have them shed first blood. But now a company of insurgents that had taken up its position on the steps of the Church of St. Roch began to fire down on Buonaparte’s gunners.
Reluctant as he was to have his name associated with killing Frenchmen, now that he was left no option he acted swiftly and ruthlessly. In a few minutes, blasts of grape-shot from his cannon rendered the steps of the church a tangled mass of dead and dying. Ordering the guns to be swung about in sections back to back he then had them sweep both ends of the Rue St. Honoré for its whole length with their devastating fire. His horse was shot under him, but the faithful Junot, ever at his side, got him another, and leaping on to it, he personally led a company of ‘patriots’ into the nearest fray.
In the hour that followed, his extraordinary instinct for directing a battle sent him from point to point so that he appeared as though miraculously at every place where danger threatened. At each he rallied the troops, ordered a charge or himself directed the fire of the nearest cannon, so that they mowed down the heads of the packed columns of the insurgents.
The most determined attack was made from the east, where some eight thousand men endeavoured to force their way past the Louvre. Their object was to join up with the troops of the Comte de Maulevrier in the Rue Dauphine, and the column on the Pont Neuf led by a young Royalist named Lafond, who showed great gallantry. But Buonaparte deployed several batteries on the Quai des Tuileries and, by blasting both the exits of the streets and the bridge, drove the insurgents back everywhere in hopeless confusion.
By six o’clock the conflict was over, and the final dispersion of the great mobs that had gathered was brought about by a continued firing of the cannon but with blank ammunition. There remained only three strong points—the Place Vendôme, the church of St. Roch and the Palais Royal—in each of which bodies of the insurgents had fortified themselves. These Buonaparte promptly surrounded, and a few musket shots the following morning proved sufficient to bring about their surrender.
Barras and Buonaparte both received a tremendous ovation from the Convention, which they had undoubtedly saved. The former was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Interior. The latter, whose name for the first time became one of national significance, was given the post of Second in Command; which transformed him overnight from an obscure Brigadier, suspended and penniless, to a highly paid and influential man in the second rank of France’s Generals.
Roger, by an apparent eagerness to help, and a great display of activity, had succeeded in retaining Barras’s esteem without having had actually to participate in the fighting. There had been no means by which he could influence the battle in favour of the monarchists; so he had had to watch their defeat while riding to and fro with Barras and cheering lustily on every suitable occasion.
Consequently, with a dozen others, he came in for a minor share of the triumph; and, when the story of his escape from the Army of Conde got about, scores of his old acquaintances welcomed him back to Paris. As he had no post Barras promptly gave him one, with the rank of Colonel, in his new office; and nothing could have suited Roger better, as the job was a sinecure having no hours and few duties, yet gave him access to all the papers concerning the Army of the Interior.
Thus, by having inadvertently backed the right horse at what had appeared to be the wrong moment, he now found himself more safely entrenched in the favour of the men who governed France than he ever dreamed could again be possible. Yet he was quick to realise that it was only at a price—it had now become impossible to carry out his intentions.
Within twenty-four hours it became clear that, having triumphed, the Convention intended to pursue a policy of conciliation rather than revenge. A few of the most belligerent Sections were disarmed and the National Guards of the others placed under Buonaparte; but, except for Lafond, who had been captured and stubbornly refused a pardon, the leaders of the insurgents were permitted to escape. Against the jeunesse dorée no move was made at all. They were allowed to continue going freely about Paris wearing the reactionist colours of black and green, and to boast unchecked in the salons of the bravery they had displayed in facing the ‘little ragamuffin’s’ cannon; so in a very short time, apart from those who mourned four hundred dead, all trace that there had been of an insurrection disappeared from the capital and it resumed its feverish post-Terror gaiety.
Nevertheless, the fact remained that the Monarchists and the Moderates had shot their bolt. They had never had an acknowledged leader or formed a coherent party, but were a score of groups with different aims knit loosely together only by a mutual hatred of the Convention. Their numbers and readiness to rise, had they continued to simmer for a few weeks longer, would have made an excellent lever for Roger to persuade two or three of his old colleagues who still had real power to collaborate with Pichegru. But now that the discontented had blown off their steam, months must elapse before they were ripe for another outbreak; and men like Fréron, Dubôis-Crancé, Tallien or Boissy d’Anglas were not going to risk their necks by arresting the die-hard members of the Committee of Public Safety unless they could be assured of immediate popular support.
An even greater obstacle to the fulfilment of Roger’s plans had emerged in the person of Buonaparte. This swift-thinking, resolute young man would neither have panicked nor sat still when he learned that the conqueror of Holland had left the Rhine and was marching his army on Paris. His readiness to defend the Convention, although it had treated him ill, showed where his sentiments lay; at all events for the present. With every man he could muster he would have marched out of Paris and given battle to Pichegru; and who could say which of them would have proved the victor?
These considerations decided Roger that there was nothing really worthwhile that he could do by remaining in Paris; yet he felt that it would be a mistake to leave the city precipitately. Should he do so without giving any adequate excuse, his disappearance was now certain to arouse considerable comment, and after another prolonged absence it would be more than doubly difficult to lie his way back a second time into the sort of position he held; in fact he could not possibly hope to do so. The limitation of his commitment to Mr. Pitt made it unlikely that he would wish to return; but, all the same, it seemed like repudiating the good fortune with which he had been favoured by fate, not to consolidate his gains before, in due course, retiring smoothly from the scene with an aura of goodwill about him.
In consequence, as his duties with Barras entailed little more than appearing on public occasions in a fine uniform as a member of that ostentatious potentate’s staff, he shaved off his whiskers and moustache, and spent most of his time cultivating the society of the day. Many doors were already open to him, and through them he passed to others; so that within ten days he had become an accepted frequenter of the leading salons in Paris.
Tallien had been known to Roger ever since the desperate night upon which the legally elected members of the Municipality of Paris had been violently deposed to make way for the Commune, and during the even more desperate days of Thermidor they had risked their lives together to bring about the fall of Robespierre. As an opener of doors no one could now have served better; for, not only had he just been made the head of a Committee charged with governing until the new Constitution came into force, but, as Fouché had informed Roger, his wife had become the most i
nfluential woman in Paris.
Theresa Tallien was the daughter of the Spanish banker François Cabarrus, and the divorced wife of the Comte de Fontenay. Tallien, while deluging Bordeaux in blood as a Représentant en Mission, had seen her, fallen in love with her on sight, saved her from the guillotine and, after the fall of Robespierre, married her. In the meantime, by her influence over him she had saved many other people; and such was her beauty, compassion and grace that she had become known as Our Lady Thermidor’.
Recently, she had taken a large house called the Chaumière right out in the market garden area between the Rond-point and the Seine, and had had it done up to look like a stage farm. In spite of its being so far from central Paris all the smart world now flocked to it; so in her salon there Roger met numerous old friends and made several new ones. Among the latter was a ci-devant Marquise of great intelligence and charm named Madame de Chateau-Renault, and it was in her salon a few nights later that he was first presented to Madame de Beauharnais, the ravishing brunette whom he had seen leave Barras’s house on the night of the 12th-13th Vendémiaire. She was known as La belle Créole and was certainly a very handsome woman, although her nose was slightly retroussé and her ready smile was robbed of much of its attraction by her bad teeth.
Another salon, which now rivalled and was soon to surpass Madame Tallien’s, was that of Madame de Staël. She was the daughter of M. Necker, the Swiss banker whose pompous ineptitude and popularity-seeking at the expense of his sovereign, while acting as Louis XVI’s last Minister at Versailles, had done much to precipitate the Revolution. In ’86 she had married the Swedish Ambassador to France and after Thermidor had returned with him to their Embassy, an imposing mansion fronted with pillars in the Rue du Bac. No one would have called her a beauty, and she was of a most restless disposition; but she had good eyes, a fine brow and a great gift for intelligent conversation.
In allowing Garat, the handsome singer who was at that time the idol of Paris, to take him to Madame de Staël’s, Roger knew that he was running a certain risk. He had been slightly acquainted with her in the old days, and might at her house run into someone who had known him well before he had transformed himself from the Chevalier de Breuc info a Revolutionary Commissar. In that event an unpleasant incident might occur and land him with a duel. On the other hand there was a much brighter possibility, for Madame de Staël had been the devoted friend of Louis de Narbonne, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, Mathieu de Montmorency and many other Liberal nobles who had sided with the Third Estate in the early days of the Revolution. It was therefore possible that her salon might prove the very bridge he needed unostentatiously to link up his two identities; and it was that which decided him to risk a visit to her.
When Garat had presented him, she gave him a searching look and said: ‘Both the name Breuc and your features are vaguely familiar to me, Citizen Colonel. Can we have met before?’
Roger took the plunge. ‘Yes, Madame la Baronne. It was at the house of M. le Talleyrand-Périgord, out at Passy.’ Then with a twinkle, he added; ‘And about that I will tell you a secret, if you will promise to keep it’.
‘Certainly I promise,’ she smiled. ‘I adore secrets.’
She waved away the people nearest to them, and, stepping up to her, Roger whispered in her ear. ‘I have looked after the house for him all through the Revolution, and when he returns he will find it just as he left it.’
‘You intriguing man.’ She tapped his arm lightly with her fan. ‘You are then another of those whom we now discover to have disguised themselves as destroyers in order that they might act as preservers. It is quite a revelation these days to learn how many of our friends succeeded in making fools of that horrid little Robespierre and his brutal associates. How delighted our dear Bishop will be. I am so glad for him.’
Turning, she beckoned over a good-looking young man whose fair curly hair fell in ringlets to his shoulders, and introduced him. ‘This is Mr. Benjamin Constant. He has recently arrived from America, and can give you newsof our mutual friend.’
From Constant, Roger learned that de Talleyrand, while living in very straitened circumstances in Boston, had been employing his fine brain in evolving numerous vast commercial ventures; but none of these attempts to repair his fallen fortunes had yet come to anything. Moreover, the amorous ci-devant shop had given great offence to the ladies of Boston society by appearing openly in the street with a lovely young mulatto girl on his arm; but the less, strait laced among the men continued to seek his company on account of his charm and wit.
Garat then introduced Roger to his mistress, a beautiful blonde cendrée named Madame de Krüdner. She was a Courlander and at the age of fourteen had been married to a Russian ambassador. It was said that she possessed mediumistic powers; and occasionally she fell into trances, which were probably mild epileptic fits, in the middle of parties.
She was certainly an angelic-looking creature, but Roger found her vapid and distrait. He was much more intrigued by an equally lovely and much more vivacious chestnut-haired beauty of eighteen. Her name was Madame Récamier, and she had already been married for two years to a man twenty-six years older than herself. He was an immensely rich hat manufacturer of Lyons, and during the Terror had not missed watching the guillotine at work for a single day; the excuse for this macabre pastime that he gave his friends being that, as he must sooner or later die by that instrument, he wished to familiarise himself with it.
Yet he had not parted with his head under its blade, and Roger now found remarkable the number of titled and wealthy people who had succeeded in escaping a similar fate although they had remained in Paris all through the Revolution. Nearly all of them had been in prison for a few months during the height of the Terror, and had resigned themselves to death; but Robespierre’s fall had saved them, and by bribing the venal revolutionary officials most of them had managed to retain a good part of their fortunes.
Previously to 1789, although the Government had become bankrupt through mismanagement, and the poor in the cities were forced to toil for little more than a starvation wage.’ France had been by far the richest country in the world. This wealth lay not so much in the hands of the nobility as—apart from a few hundred extremely rich families, their refusal to demean themselves by engaging in any form of commerce had kept them poor—but in the coffers of enormous numbers of prosperous bourgeoisie. It was mainly the nobility that had emigrated and sent its sons to fight in the army of de Condé: while the bulk of the professional and merchant classes had remained, simply lying low.
Now, although the Government was still bankrupt and the masses starving, thousands of property-owners were digging up large and small hoards of coin from their gardens, or recovering them from under floor boards and other hiding places. The revolutionary paper money was at a huge discount, but purses full of louis d’or and cart-wheel silver ecus were once more changing hands in Paris with the utmost freedom.
With the disappearance of the fear that ostentation would result in imprisonment and perhaps death, a new era of luxury had set in. It was apparent not only in the exclusive salons, but everywhere. No sooner had the actors and actresses of the Comédie Française been released from prison than the theatre had nightly become packed with well-dressed people applauding anti-revolutionary quips. The boxes at the Feydeau were now always occupied by bevies of lovely women and elegantly attired men. In the streets handsome equipages with coachmen in livery were again to be seen by the score. Shops long closed were once more open for the sale of jewellery, lace, furs, brocades, perfumes, wines, delicacies of all sorts and clothes in the new fashion.
Previously to the Revolution, apart from the aristocratic oligarchies of Venice and Genoa there had been no Republics in Europe; so the new France had modelled herself largely on the ancient ones of Greece and Rome. The smart women were termed merveilleuses. They had adopted the high waisted tunic of Corinth and wore their hair piled high in a cone bound with ribbon, leaving the neck bare. Arms and legs w
ere also left bare and the dresses were made of the thinnest obtainable materials; while beneath them so little was worn as to be barely decent. In fact they vied with one another quite shamelessly in exposing their limbs, and often wore tunics slit down the sides which were caught together only by cameos at the shoulder, waist and knee.
The fashion for men had also changed out of all recognition. The incroyables, as the exquisites among the jeunesse dorée were called, wore their hair turned up behind but with long tresses nicknamed ‘dog’s-ears’ in front. Their high-collared, square-cut frock coats were buttoned tightly over the stomach and had tails coming down to the calf of the legs, which were encased in silk stockings striped with red, yellow or blue. For evening wear waistcoats were of white dimity with broad facings, and small-clothes of pearl-grey or apple-green satin, over which hung double gold watch chains. But the most outstanding feature of this costume was a huge muslin cravat worn so high that it dipped from ear to ear concealing the chin and almost hiding the mouth.
As a final mark of their antithesis from the sans-culottes both me’veilleuses and inc’oyables, as they called themselves, spoke in drawling affected voices and dropped their ‘r’s’, which reminded Roger somewhat of the Creole French used in the West Indies. From mixing with them he derived only one satisfaction; it showed him that he no longer had the least reason to fear being charged by some noble that he had known in the past as a renegade.
Madame de Staël’s implication, that few people knew what their friends had been up to, or the true motives behind their actions during the past few years, was unquestionably correct. And, apparently, they could not have cared less. Scores of men who had, in part at least, been responsible for wholesale murder and plunder, but could point to a few acts of mercy, now dressed as incroyables and were freely admitted to the salons. Many of them were even accepted as friends by the émigré nobles, considerable numbers of whom, although still technically liable to the death penalty, had returned to Paris in the hope of getting their names removed from the lists of outlaws; and there were actually cases in which ex-terrorists had been taken as lovers by young demoiselles of the nobility whose fathers they had sent to the guillotine.
The Dark Secret of Josephine Page 42