The Marquis

by Laura Auricchio

  The Bastille has earned a place in history as a site of arbitrary imprisonment, but the massive stone structure was also a fort and a munitions depot. In the preceding weeks, as tensions rose in and around Paris, the army had quietly warehoused thousands of pounds of gunpowder within the seemingly impregnable edifice. Little by little, dozens of cannons, guns, and other weapons had been mounted on its roof, and cannons trained on the Rue Saint-Antoine below. Thus provisioned, the Bastille was both dangerous and desirable. As long as it remained in the hands of the crown, it posed a lethal threat to the citizenry. If it could be taken, it promised the city a nearly endless supply of ammunition.

  All of this was known to the three representatives sent to negotiate with Bernard-René de Launay, the royal official in charge of the Bastille. After making their way through the crowd, the municipal delegation presented the city’s requests to Launay, who spoke with them in front of an enormous iron gate. Agreeing to continue the conversation inside, Launay ordered the drawbridge lowered and the gate raised and invited the visitors to join him for breakfast. Several hours passed before the electors made their way back to the Hôtel de Ville bearing mixed tidings. They reported that Launay would not surrender, but neither would he permit his men to fire on the people.

  The electors were ready to announce the agreement when cries of “perfidy” and “treason” went up from the Place de Grève. Two injured men—one with a wounded arm, the other near death—had been transported there from the Bastille, and fifteen or twenty other casualties were reported. Evidently, the Bastille had again lowered its drawbridge and the people, taking the gesture as an invitation, had begun to cross it when the musketeers guarding the fortress opened fire. A second deputation was immediately dispatched to remind Launay of his promise, but as these men approached the Bastille, they saw that the fortress’s soldiers were engaged in a fierce firefight with armed citizens. Observing the crowd, one delegate understood that “a deputation is no longer what they want; it is the siege of the Bastille, the destruction of this horrible prison, it is the death of [Launay] that they demand in great cries.”

  All of this was accomplished. Before the day was out, the Bastille was captured and its prisoners—seven aged men—were freed, but eighty-three citizens lay dead. In addition, one of the building’s defenders was killed in action, and two others were hanged. Launay fought to the end. Taken into custody, he was marched toward the Hôtel de Ville. En route, he lashed out, kicking one of his captors, and was promptly felled by a furious onslaught of blades and guns. Soon, his head was making the rounds of Paris atop a pike, having been unceremoniously hacked off by a cook who had been the recipient of Launay’s kick, and who went on to boast of the decapitation. The city leaders lost one of their own: Jacques de Flesselles, the provost of merchants (a member of the municipal council), was shot dead on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville as punishment for the transgression of hedging his bets. He had proclaimed his support of the electors but withheld arms. His became the second head to be paraded through the streets.

  News of the Bastille’s fall reached Lafayette late that night. Having been elected vice president of the National Assembly, Lafayette was at the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs, standing in for the president, who had retired for the evening, when two representatives from the Hôtel de Ville arrived to report on the tumultuous day. While Lafayette led a discussion of what steps the assembly should take next, François-Alexandre-Frédéric, Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, a deputy from Soissons and a confidant of the king, slipped out of the chamber and made his way to the royal apartments to inform Louis XVI. According to popular legend, Louis asked, “Is it a revolt?” and Liancourt famously replied, “No sire, it’s a revolution.” In any case, Louis was at last convinced that the troops around Paris were doing more harm than good, and so at approximately eleven in the morning on July 15, he went to the Menus Plaisirs accompanied by his two brothers and announced to the National Assembly—a term he used that day for the first time—that the troops would be removed. Recalling the events years later in his memoirs, Lafayette wrote with satisfaction that “the cause of the people triumphed.”

  Lafayette’s own moment in the spotlight was not far off. Having served as commander of the citizens’ militia for less than twenty-four hours, the Marquis de La Salle tendered his resignation on the morning of July 15, clearing the way for Lafayette to take his place. According to the records of the Assembly of Electors, a mere gesture toward Lafayette’s bust, which was now accompanied on the meeting hall mantelpiece by the painting Saint Peter in Chains—an image of miraculous liberation that had itself been liberated from the Bastille chapel—was all it took to remind the audience that it was time to install Lafayette at the head of the citizens’ militia. Médéric-Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, the Martinique-born president of the electors, explained succinctly that “the defense of French liberty” belonged in the hands of the “illustrious defender of the liberty of the New World.”

  Lafayette wrote in his memoirs that he had no knowledge of these events when he set out from Versailles around two in the afternoon. In his capacity as vice president of the National Assembly, he rode in the first of forty carriages that transported more than one hundred deputies to the Hôtel de Ville to celebrate the accomplishments of the city and the nation. It took time to find enough seats for the deputies in the overcrowded meeting hall, but once everyone was in place and the audience’s cries of joy were calmed, Lafayette addressed the crowd with a discourse that the electors praised for being “filled with that eloquence which he possesses, so touching, because it is simple and natural.” Lafayette’s optimism about the future and faith in the king shone through as he “congratulated the Assembly of Electors and all the citizens of Paris on the liberty they had won by their courage” and reminded them that they owed their happiness to “the justice of a beneficent and disabused monarch,” whose speech to the National Assembly Lafayette read into the record.

  After several more speeches and a great deal more applause, the meeting seemed to be over and the deputies were getting ready to depart when, suddenly, “all the voices joined together to proclaim Monsieur the Marquis de Lafayette Commander-General of the Parisian Militia.” Lafayette did not hesitate. “Accepting this honor with every sign of respect and gratitude,” he “drew his sword; and swore to sacrifice his life for the preservation of this precious liberty that he was entrusted with defending.” Moments later, the chorus of voices resumed, this time to proclaim Lafayette’s friend and ally Jean-Sylvain Bailly mayor of Paris.

  The offices given to Lafayette and Bailly were municipal, but with the authority of Versailles on the wane, Paris was fast becoming the seat of national power. On July 16, Lafayette asked that his title and his troops be renamed to reflect this new reality—the leader of the Parisian militia would henceforth be known as commander of the National Guard. Yet before the day was out, Lafayette began to wonder if his was an impossible position. He might well have been the most powerful man in the nation, but there was no force on earth that could possibly stop events from spiraling out of control.

  CHAPTER 14

  “I REIGN IN PARIS”

  I reign in Paris,” Lafayette wrote on the night of July 16, “and it is over an infuriated people driven by abominable cabals.” Casting himself as a calming influence, he explained that he was all but trapped in Paris, held hostage by his own success. “The people, in the delirium of their enthusiasm, can be tempered only by me,” he wrote. “Forty thousand souls gather, the fermentation is at its height, I appear, and one word from me disperses them. I have already saved the lives of six people who would have been hanged in various quarters.” He insisted, however, that his was not a position to be envied. Although he yearned to go to Versailles, where he hoped that he might persuade Louis XVI to hasten the promised removal of troops, “the well-being of Paris,” Lafayette reported, “demands that I not remove myself for a moment. As I write, eighty thousand people surround the Hôtel de
Ville and say that they are deceived, that the troops are not withdrawing, that the king must come. Even at this moment, they issue terrible cries. If I were to appear, they would calm themselves; but others will replace them.”

  Versailles, too, was astir that night. The Comte d’Artois, the Du- chesse de Polignac, and a half dozen more of the queen’s closest allies were preparing for a timely departure into exile. As the foreign troops dismissed by the king were making their way out of France, Artois and his circle took advantage of the military cover and traveled with the soldiers into more hospitable climes. Marie Antoinette, hoping that the royal family would join the exodus, was making her own preparations. By nightfall, the queen had arranged for all of her matching sets of diamond earrings and necklaces to be packed carefully into a single coffer for safe transport in her personal carriage. Assisted by Madame Campan, a lady-in-waiting, the queen set fire to a stash of papers lest they be seized in her absence; their contents have been lost to history. But Louis, convinced that he could win the people back, was determined to stay. Marie Antoinette was reduced to tears. And the diamonds would have to be unpacked.

  As morning arrived on July 17, Louis XVI prepared to humble himself before the crowds of Paris. Accompanied by a handful of his remaining allies, the dispirited king climbed into a waiting carriage, passed through the palace gates, and set out along the Avenue de Paris, where expectant onlookers witnessed a sight unthinkable just a few weeks earlier. The customary royal entourage had dwindled to a skeleton crew; the king’s chief escorts consisted of the newly assembled citizens’ militia of Versailles, whose ranks were fleshed out by hundreds of the National Assembly’s deputies joining the procession on foot. To the eyes of the disapproving Marquis de Ferrières, the troupe looked more like a gang of vagabonds than the retinue of a great monarch. Yet such were the supporting players with whom Louis reached the southwestern edge of Paris, near Sèvres, around three in the afternoon. There, speeches by various officials welcomed the sovereign to his city, with the best-remembered passage coming from the mouth of the mayor, Bailly. “I bring your Majesty the keys to the good city of Paris,” he began. “These are the same keys that were presented to Henri IV. He had regained his people; here it is the people who have regained their king.” When the pleasantries concluded, the Versailles militia withdrew, and Louis XVI was then in the hands of Lafayette.

  For the next ninety minutes, two royal carriages, hundreds of the nation’s deputies, and scores of city leaders followed behind Lafayette, who led the way on a white horse, surrounded by his aides-de-camp. Although planned in haste, the convoy was orderly, making its way through streets lined with tens of thousands of Parisian citizen soldiers, who stood six deep, from the city limit to the Hôtel de Ville—a route spanning more than three and a half miles. Unified by their red-and-blue cockades, this ragtag lot of men, women, and children made up in zeal what they lacked in refinement. Those who had gotten to the armaments carried muskets seized from the Bastille and the Invalides, while others equipped themselves with anything that might serve the purpose. Jefferson spotted not only pistols and swords but also “pikes, pruning hooks, scythes, etc.” carried by the crowd that day. “Vive la nation!” was the cry shouted from doors, windows, balconies, and rooftops along the route. The king had come to Paris of his own volition, but as Jefferson poignantly observed, “not a single ‘Vive le roi’ was heard.”

  At four-thirty, the procession came to a halt at the Hôtel de Ville. A pulsing, cheering crowd surrounded the building, while an honor guard, épées unsheathed, awaited the king at the entrance. Making his way up the steps, Louis was startled to hear the loud clang of metal on metal as a ceremonial arch of swords went up over his head. By the time he took his seat on the throne that had been placed in the electors’ meeting hall, he was a badly shaken man.

  Bailly approached, carrying in his hand a bouquet of red and blue ribbons. He hoped the monarch would join with the people in wearing the colors of Paris. Silently, Louis accepted the cockade and affixed it to his hat. At last the crowd erupted: “Vive le roi!” An address was expected, but the king was unable to stir his voice. Pressed by Bailly, he issued a few halting words audible only to the mayor, who repeated them at greater volume (and perhaps with a measure of embellishment) for the sake of the eager audience. The king, declared Bailly, loved his people and wished only for calm.

  Lafayette, too, was silent, but his actions spoke louder than words. For him, the day had been an unmitigated success, and he later said as much to Morris, who watched the spectacle unfold from a well-placed window on the Rue Saint-Honoré—a plum location secured through the good graces of the Comtesse de Flahaut. It seems that Morris had hoped to arrange a government appointment for Lafayette as governor of the Île-de-France—the region that includes Paris—but the marquis had refused, declaring the command of the militia to be “the utmost of his Wishes.” No civilian post could possibly have compared. As Morris recalled Lafayette’s proud narration of the day’s events, “He had his Sovereign during the late Procession to Paris completely within his Power. He had marched him where he pleased, measured out the Degree of Applause he should receive as he pleased, and if he pleased could have detained him Prisoner.” Even Morris, who frequently questioned Lafayette’s grasp of political nuance, had to concede that “all this is strictly true.”

  As Lafayette saw it, the king had “turned himself over as my prisoner” on that July day. Writing just a few weeks later, he remembered being moved by what he saw as the monarch’s humility. It had, Lafayette wrote, “attached me to his service more fully than if he had promised me half of his kingdom.” Still, Lafayette expected more from Louis, and he intended to get it: “If the king refuses the constitution, I will fight him. If he accepts it, I will defend him.”

  Lafayette was well prepared to fight the king on almost any front—militarily with support from the National Guard, legislatively through his influence in the National Assembly, and rhetorically in the court of public opinion, thanks to allies in the press who became increasingly active in the wake of the Bastille’s fall. Le Patriote français, one of the new breed of explicitly political newspapers that emerged in 1789, was founded by Lafayette’s abolitionist colleague Jacques-Pierre Brissot and was particularly avid in its support of the forward-looking marquis. Brissot had been inspired by the free press he’d encountered during his 1788 visit to the United States, and his paper’s prospectus asserted that “without the Gazettes, the American Revolution, in which France played such a glorious role, could never have been achieved.” His explicit intent was to make the Patriote français into a vehicle for promoting sweeping reform in France. And as soon as Brissot began publishing on a daily basis, praise of Lafayette’s plans and speeches became a standard part of his paper’s fare.

  Lafayette was a formidable rival to the weakened monarch, but his power soon faltered on the streets of Paris. Although the National Guard was charged with keeping the peace, Lafayette could not deploy the militia against the people in time of crisis without losing his credibility—and possibly his life. The predicament weighed on Lafayette. He alluded to it on July 16 when, in a fit of frustration, he wrote, presumably to Madame de Simiane, that “this furious, drunken populace will not always listen to me.” On the fateful date of July 22, he came face-to-face with the limits of his authority at a meeting that turned very ugly indeed.

  Joseph-François Foulon de Doué understood that his life was in danger. The seventy-four-year-old financier had been named comptroller general of finances after Necker’s July 11 exile, only to be dismissed eight days later when the king announced Necker’s recall to France. Foulon was no friend of the general population. According to the weekly Révolutions de Paris—a paper that published its first issue on July 12—Foulon appeared to have profited at the expense of the nation, amassing “a stunning fortune” through “odious speculation” on the grain market. Worse still, he had reportedly scoffed at the starvation of the people, directing those affl
icted by famine to sate themselves on hay. (The oft-repeated but almost certainly apocryphal story that Marie Antoinette, upon learning that the people lacked bread, exclaimed, “Let them eat cake!” may have originated as a variation on the Foulon story.) In a macabre episode that was later adapted by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, Foulon planted rumors of his own demise, going so far as to fake his own funeral by burying a conveniently deceased servant in his stead. Dead in name only, Foulon quietly stole out of Paris with the probable intention of fleeing the country; he was apprehended by villagers in the town of Viry, having hidden himself at the home of a friend. It was said that one of the widely despised moneyman’s own tenants had turned him in.

  At five o’clock in the morning on July 22, a motley crowd deposited Foulon at the Paris Hôtel de Ville. Neither Lafayette nor Bailly was present, but the electors on site determined that Foulon, who had not been officially charged with any crime, should be imprisoned in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, located about a mile away, on the Left Bank, where he could later be turned over to the appropriate legal authorities. But with calls for Foulon’s death already being voiced, a transfer in broad daylight seemed too dangerous. Foulon would therefore remain in protective custody at the Hôtel de Ville until after dark, when the move could be effected surreptitiously. That, at least, was the plan. As news of Foulon’s whereabouts spread throughout the city, throngs of people flocked to the Place de Grève clamoring for instant gratification. “Hang him!” the crowd implored Bailly, as he desperately attempted to assure them that Foulon would be brought to justice after proper procedures had been followed.