The Days of the French Revolution

by Christopher Hibbert

  I was about the eighth or tenth man to enter the courtyard [the watchmaker, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, wrote]. The invalides shouted, ‘Lay down your arms!’ Apart from one Swiss officer they all did so. I went up to this officer and threatened him with a bayonet, repeating, ‘Lay down your arms!’ He appealed to the others, saying, ‘Gentlemen, please believe me, I never fired.’

  ‘How dare you say you never fired,’ I immediately replied, ‘when your lips are still black from biting your cartridges?’ As I said this I made a grab for his sword.

  ‘They disarmed us immediately,’ confirmed Deflue. ‘They took us prisoner, each of us having a guard. They flung our papers and records out of the windows and plundered everything.’ Deflue, and those of his men who were captured with him, were marched away to the Hôtel de Ville, and all the way were ‘met with threats and insults, and a clamour from the whole mob that [they] ought to be hanged’. ‘The streets through which we passed and the houses flanking them (even the roof-tops) were filled with masses of people shouting at me and cursing me,’ Deflue wrote. ‘Swords, bayonets and pistols were being continually pressed against me. I did not know how I should die but felt that my last moment had come. Stones were thrown at me and women gnashed their teeth and brandished their fists at me.’ He firmly ‘believed that but for the efforts of an officer of the Arquebusiers to protect the Swiss prisoners’ none of them would have escaped with their lives.

  Other defenders of the Bastille were not so fortunate; three of the invalides were killed, so were three of the Governor’s staff. The Governor himself was seized by one of the Gardes-françaises and Marie Julien Stanislas Maillard, a tall, dark man, suffering from consumption, who claimed to have walked the plank to snatch the ultimatum. As a hostile crowd gathered round de Launay, shouting for his death, his sword was snatched from his side. Hulin and Élie tried to get him away to the Hôtel de Ville, Élie, leading the party and carrying the text of the capitulation on the point of his sword; but on the way he was attacked by an out-of-work cook named Desnot. Kicking out wildly de Launay caught Desnot an agonizing blow in the testicles. Desnot cried out, ‘He’s done me in’, whereupon someone else stabbed de Launay in the stomach with a bayonet. The mob gathered round him as he lay in the gutter, firing pistols at him and thrusting the blades of swords and bayonets into his now lifeless body. A man bent down and tore the queue from his scalp as a souvenir, another ripped the Cross of Saint Louis from his coat and fixed it to his own. There was a call for his head to be cut off so that it could be displayed to the people as that of a traitor. ‘Here,’ said a man to Desnot, handing him a sword. ‘You do it. It was you he hurt.’ Desnot knelt down to do so, but could not manage the operation with the sword; then, having swallowed some brandy mixed with gunpowder, he finished the job with his pocket-knife.

  Jacques de Flesselles, accused of hindering the people’s search for arms, was also killed and decapitated. And the two dripping heads were then carried through the streets on pikes to what a witness described as loud applause from the spectators.

  No one knew for sure how many men had been killed in the fighting. Deflue reported that only one invalide was killed on top of the towers and three or four wounded. None of his own soldiers was hurt, but he afterwards ‘learned that two were massacred by the populace on their way to the Hôtel de Ville’. He could ‘never discover the exact number of casualties among the besiegers’; he had heard them put as high as 160 but he thought this figure must be exaggerated. Subsequent estimates suggested that eighty-three of the assailants were killed, fifteen died from wounds, and seventy-three were wounded.

  Most of them were artisans from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine who had been born outside Paris whence they had come to find work. Of those who survived the assault 954 were awarded the title of Vainqueur de la Bastille the following June. As the occupation of more than two-thirds of these are known, it is possible to form some idea of the kind of people who were involved in the assault, allowing for the probability that a good number were not anxious to claim the title of Vainqueur as they were already in trouble with the police. There were several men from bourgeois homes, including the oldest ‘conqueror’ of all, a man of seventy-two. The youngest was a boy of eight. Thirty-five described themselves as merchants, fourteen, more specifically as wine merchants, four were rentiers, three were industrialists, and one, Antoine Santerre of whom much more was to be heard, owned the nearby brewery. Eighty were soldiers. Of the artisans, most worked in the furniture industry which was largely centred in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Ninety-seven were cabinet-makers of whom four were unemployed. There were twenty-eight cobblers, twenty-three workers of gauze, nine jewellers, nine dyers and nine masons, nine nailsmiths, nine hatters and nine tailors. There was one woman, a laundress.

  All were eventually granted a certificate describing their services, and those able to bear arms were rewarded at public expense with a uniform coat as well as a sword and musket, their names engraved on blade and barrel. It was also decreed that an honourable certificate would ‘similarly be sent…to the widows and children of those who died, as a public record of the gratitude and honour due to men who brought about the triumph of liberty over despotism’.

  During the evening of 14 July most of these Vainqueurs de la Bastille were to be seen in the streets of the city celebrating the great victory which they had helped to bring about and which the officers of the King’s army, aware of the feelings of their men, had been unable to prevent. They marched up and down joyfully shouting the news of the Bastille’s fall, while guns fired in salute of their triumph.

  At the same time crowds of sightseers surged into the Bastille to see the inside of the fearful place of which they had heard so many grisly tales. They were shown parts of a suit of fifteenth-century armour which was described as a kind of strait-jacket used to keep prisoners in tight constraint, and a confiscated printing-press which they were told was an instrument of torture. Later they were regaled with bones, probably of soldiers killed in a long-forgotten siege, but ascribed to poor unfortunate prisoners of much later date.

  The next morning, a contractor specializing in the demolition of old buildings submitted an application he had put forward before to pull the building down, supporting his claim for consideration by making the unfounded assertion that he had played a leading role in its capture. He was given the contract and, having taken on a thousand workmen to fulfil the Permanent Committee’s instructions that the Bastille ‘should be demolished without delay’, he made a great deal of money in providing the people of France with relief plans of the fortress carved on stones and with souvenir paperweights, boxes, inkpots, doorstops and key-plates made from the irons in which the prisoners had allegedly been locked.

  While Paris celebrated the fall of the Bastille, voices were heard in the crowds urging the people to follow up their triumph by marching on Versailles and demanding the recall of Necker. But more cautious men suggested that, so long as there were so many troops in and around Paris, it would be better to wait and see what the King would now do. In the meantime the tocsin rang repeatedly to warn them that the danger was not past, and the more determined and wary citizens continued to tear up paving-stones and to build barricades. Before nightfall a heavy rain began to pour down, driving the revellers home and bringing their celebrations to an end.

  3

  THE DAY OF THE MARKET-WOMEN

  5–6 October 1789

  ‘We must have a second fit of Revolution’

  LOUSTALOT

  The King had been out all day hunting. Returning tired, he went to bed early and was awakened by the news of the fall of the Bastille. ‘Is this a rebellion?’ he is said sleepily to have asked the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, the Grand Master of the Wardrobe. ‘No, Sire,’ the Duke replied emphatically, ‘it is a revolution.’

  Within an hour the Duke was hurrying over to the National Assembly to tell the deputies that the King was coming to address them. The deputies greeted this announcem
ent warmly, but their applause was cut short by Mirabeau who stood up to advise them, ‘Wait until the King has let us know what friendly overtures we may expect from him. Let our first greeting to him at this distressing moment be marked by a cold respect…The silence of the people is a lesson for kings.’

  Mirabeau’s warning was justified. The King’s submission was, as Thomas Jefferson, the American Minister, described it, only a ‘surrender at discretion’. He did say that he had ordered the withdrawal of troops from Paris and Versailles, but, while denying that he planned any action against the National Assembly – to which he referred by that name – he undertook neither to dismiss Breteuil nor to recall Necker. All the same, grateful for his concession regarding the troops, the delegates respectfully escorted the King back to the palace and were followed by a cheering crowd. Even the Queen was applauded for a short time when she appeared on a balcony of the Cour de Marbre.

  Soon afterwards a delegation of eighty-eight deputies left Versailles to convey the King’s reassurances about the troops to the people of Paris. They drove ‘in splendid weather in an atmosphere like that of a public festival’. ‘Our journey,’ wrote Bailly, ‘was one long triumph. At several places we came upon troops marching away from the capital, and crowds of people shouting, “Vive la Nation!” as our carriages drove past.’ In Paris, where most workshops were closed and groups of tense people had been gathered in the streets since dawn, the deputies were greeted with delight, their carriages were surrounded, they were handed flowers and cockades, hugged and kissed. ‘Every window was crammed,’ Bailly continued. ‘The crowds were immense; but everything was very orderly. On all sides the enthusiasm was open and sincere.’

  At the Hôtel de Ville there were speeches full of compliments and mutual congratulations. Lafayette, who read out to the Assembly of Electors the speech which the King had just made in Versailles, said that His Majesty had been misled by his advisers, but now understood the true position. In replying for the Electors, Moreau de Saint-Méry, their second President, asked the Marquis to tell the King how much they appreciated his gesture and to assure him of their loyalty. As a demonstration of regard for their personal qualities and for the National Assembly which they represented, the Electors appointed Bailly Mayor of Paris and Lafayette commander of the citizens’ militia which was shortly to become the National Guard. The militiamen were authorized to wear cockades of red and blue, the colours of Paris, to which was added a band of white, the colour of the King, thus joining in the tricolour the old France with the new.

  The pleasant atmosphere in the Hôtel de Ville was not matched for long, however, by the mood of the people outside. For, when it became known that although the King had agreed to withdraw the troops, he had made no promises about Breteuil or Necker, crowds gathered, loudly demanding a change of Ministers. Barricades were erected in the streets, new trenches were dug across them, the Electors were besieged in the Hôtel de Ville, passers-by were stopped by armed citizens who demanded proof of their identity. And when the deputies and Electors proceeded together for a service of thanksgiving in Notre Dame, conducted by the Archbishop of Paris, they were surrounded by people clamouring for further concessions by the King.

  At Versailles, too, deputies dissatisfied with the King’s promises were now demanding more. Antoine Barnave, representing Dauphiné, supported by Mirabeau, pressed for the recall of Necker. So did the Marquis de Lally-Tollendal, one of the deputies for the Parisian nobility, who passionately declared, ‘Messieurs, as we have seen and heard, in the streets and squares, on the quais and in the markets, the cry is “Bring back Necker!”…The people’s request is an order. We must therefore demand the recall of M. Necker.’

  By now the King had himself reluctantly concluded that this was, indeed, what he must do. On the morning of 16 July, at a council meeting attended by his Ministers, the Queen and the Comtes de Provence and Artois, he asked them all to consider whether or not it was still possible to resist. The Comte d’Artois strongly urged him to do so, but Marshal de Broglie, the War Minister, advised him that resistance would be impossible with the troops in their present mood. Well, then, the King asked, what were the possibilities of withdrawal to a less disaffected part of the country where the Estates General could be reconvened and protected by loyal troops? This idea, which had already been discussed, met with the approval of the Queen who urged them to withdraw the Court to Metz on the north-east frontier. But once again de Broglie objected: he could not trust the army to escort the royal family through a countryside on the verge of revolt.

  The King, therefore, decided he had no alternative but to give way. He had a message sent to the National Assembly to inform them of his decision, and unwillingly prepared himself for the twelve-mile journey to Paris where the people were demanding his presence. He said his prayers, he made his will and, while the Comte d’Artois made haste to flee abroad with his wife and mistress, his sons and the Polignacs, he created the Comte de Provence Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom with full powers to act in his name while he was absent from Versailles.

  Bailly, who had now returned to Versailles, rose very early the next morning to give himself time to prepare a speech of welcome before leaving at seven o’clock for Paris where, as Mayor of the city, he was to receive the King.

  When I went out [Bailly recorded in his memoirs] I was met by all the coachmen who gave me a tree bedecked with flowers and ribbons…I had to allow them to fasten this tree to the front of my coach. All the coachmen accompanied me, letting off fireworks, although it was broad daylight, right to the end of the avenue…In the Place Louis XV, I left Mme Bailly and went on to the Hôtel de Ville in a hired coach. I arrived at ten o’clock and joined everyone there busily preparing to receive the King.

  The King, accompanied by bodyguards, about thirty deputies and a vast crowd of workers and their wives, proceeded slowly up the Rue Saint-Honoré which was lined on either side with men and women, and even monks and friars, carrying guns, swords, lances, pikes, scythes and cudgels. They cried out, ‘Vive la Nation!’ ‘Vive Monsieur Lafayette ! Et les deputés ! Et les electeurs!’

  Bailly said that there were shouts, too, of ‘Vive le Roi!’ But another witness, Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, a deputy from Gascony, recorded that there was ‘great difficulty in certain districts in restraining the indignation of citizens outraged by the measures that had provoked the insurrection’. And the Austrian Ambassador reported, ‘It is certain that during his journey there were very few cries of” Vive le Roi!”…whereas on all sides there were shouts of “Vive la Nation!”’ The British Ambassador, the Duke of Dorset, said that His Majesty was treated more like a captive than a King. He was led along like ‘a tame bear’.

  On entering the Hôtel de Ville the King was offered the tricolour cockade which had already become the emblem of the revolution, the original green cockade having been discarded when it was realized that green was the colour of the Comte d’Artois. Bailly, who had been asked to make the presentation, ‘did not know quite how the King would take it, and whether there was not something improper about the suggestion’. The King, however, accepted the cockade without protest and fastened it to his hat. He then went up the staircase of the Hôtel de Ville. He had no guard with him now, but instead was surrounded by a number of citizens. They were ‘all holding swords and forming an arcade of blades over his head’.

  In response to the speeches made to him in the great hall, the King endeavoured to frame suitable replies. But he had prepared nothing and could think of little to say appropriate to the occasion. After uttering a few disjointed sentences, he walked out on to the balcony where he was joyfully greeted by the crowds who, seeing the cockade in his hat, were now prepared to give him the wholehearted ovation they had previously reserved for the Electors and deputies. ‘Well done!’ they cried. ‘Well done! He now belongs to the Third Estate!’ And the Comte d’Estaing said to him excitedly, ‘Sire, with that cockade and the Third Estate you will conquer Europe!’
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  ‘Applause and shouts of “Vive le Roi!” welcomed him on every side,’ said Bailly. ‘All eyes, filled with tears, were turned towards him. The people held out their hands to him. And when he was placed on the throne which had been prepared for him, a voice from the back of the assembly uttered the heartfelt cry: “Our King! Our father!” At this applause, the excitement, the shouts of “Vive le Roi!” redoubled.’

  This happy mood continued in Paris for some days after the King had returned to Versailles. A new municipality or Commune was formed, while the National Assembly were granted fresh powers to accelerate reform and frame a constitution. Shops and theatres opened their doors again; men returned to work, encouraged by the Commune’s offer of six livres to all who produced a certificate of attendance from their employers. Yet it seemed to many of the poorer people all over the provinces that the Assembly had utterly failed to tackle or even to appreciate their problems. And, with bread still expensive and in short supply, with unemployment increasing in the wake of the bad harvest of 1788, riots erupted in numerous towns and villages. Millers and farmers suspected of hoarding grain were assaulted, walls and fences were pulled down, forests were devastated, stags and rabbits were slaughtered wholesale while gamekeepers hid in their cottages, fishponds were dredged, pigeons were shot in the courtyards of manor houses. In several places the deserted manor houses themselves were looted or burned down, and in others the owners were made to sign away their droits. At Agde the bishop was dragged from his house and forced to relinquish all rights to his mill; at Troyes the mayor was killed; and at Caen an army officer who had become involved in arguments about the wearing of medals bearing the head of Necker, was also murdered. At Rennes the royal garrison was prevailed upon to desert and at Marseilles it was disbanded by armed citizens. Forts and prisons were stormed, arsenals were seized, hotels de ville were invaded under the eyes of complaisant guards, customs duties were withheld, unpopular mayors were ousted from office and more amenable ones elected in their place, intendants fled. Gangs of beggars roamed intimidatingly through the streets and down the country lanes. A combination of brigands, hungry peasants and a middle-class intent upon the replacement of their authority for that of the royal government was producing an irresistible revolutionary power.