During the journey from the Feuillants, Roger had been consumed by anxiety to return to the Hôtel de Ville, so that he might endeavour to put a good light on his unauthorised activities; but the reception rendered it unnecessary. Santerre, Hébert, Tallien, Marat, Chaumette and Robespierre were all present, and, realising that his only hope of averting the suspicion that Pétion and Manuel might entertain about him lay in showing a fanatical patriotism, he went about openly boasting that before the Assembly had been brought to heel he had taken the law into his own hands. No one questioned his right, as one of themselves, to have done so; and after an hour he could breathe freely again from the knowledge that, although his attempt at rescue had failed, it had made his position with the extremists even stronger.
Meanwhile, the great tower having been found utterly unsuitable for habitation, a smaller tower that jutted out from one of its sides was commandeered. M. Berthélemy, a scholarly bachelor who occupied it in his capacity of archivist, was evicted into the street, and into its three floors were crowded the fourteen people who made up the Royal Party, together with a score or more Commissars and guards who sat up drinking and singing for the rest of the night in rooms adjacent to the prisoners’.
Having seen them installed, and realising the hopelessness of any further attempt at rescue for the present, Roger made his way back to the Cushion and Keys. It was nearly three o’clock when he flopped into bed, and he did so with heartfelt thanks at having had such a narrow escape from arrest, imprisonment and probable execution.
In the fortnight that followed, a state of alarm and semi-anarchy continued. The Commune’s hold on the power it had usurped was still tenuous and was threatened both from outside Paris and from within.
Once more Lafayette could have saved the situation had he possessed the necessary resolution. His prestige was still enormous; the Prussians were far away on the Moselle, and he was no great distance from Paris. Had he marched upon the capital, both the Provinces and the National Guard would have supported him, and a majority in the Assembly would have thanked him for saving them from the Commune. As it was he refused to take an oath of fidelity to the Provisional Government, arrested the Commissioners it had sent to him, and entered into various measures aimed at saving the King and the Constitution. But these moves were too slow and too half-hearted. While he was still weighing his theories about the “Rights of Man” against the now obvious fact that the capital had become the prey of a gang of brigands, Danton succeeded in having him superseded in his command. He was forced to flee the country, and fell into the hands of the Austrians, paying for this, the last of his many fatal hesitations, by spending the following five years as a prisoner.
Thus relieved of the most serious menace to its continued existence, the Commune felt itself strong enough to hector the Assembly and terrorise the many thousands of honest citizens who made up the great bulk of the electorate of Paris. On the 11th of August the Assembly had appointed a court martial to try the King’s ex-Ministers and a number of important civil and military prisoners who had been arrested during the riots of the previous day. On the 15th, Robespierre appeared at the bar of the House and insisted that instead of being court martialled these prisoners should be handed over for trial by the Sections, which was equivalent to ensuring their deaths. For two days the Assembly resisted the Commune’s demand, then with criminal weakness sacrificed these innocent men who had done no more than carry out their duties.
The terrorisation of Paris was then undertaken as a deliberate policy. On the 10th the Assembly had decreed its own dissolution as soon as a Convention could be elected to replace it. This offered a chance for the firebrands of the Commune to gain control of the National Chamber, but they knew they could count on only a small minority of votes; so they decided that their best hope lay in making the moderates believe that to attend the polls would be to risk their lives.
It was decided to spread the belief among the mob that the Royalists were plotting a coup d’état to release the King and murder the representatives of the People. A story was circulated that the reactionaries had 80,000 muskets concealed in their houses, and were only waiting for a few thousand more fédérés to leave for the front before opening the prisons and, with the help of the nobles and officers confined in them, capturing Paris for the Austrians.
Most unfortunately, events played into the hands of the plotters. On the 26th, after only a light skirmish, the frontier town of Longwy was captured by the enemy. This was made to appear the opening of a great Austro-Prussian offensive aimed at Paris, and Danton demanded the right to subject the city to domiciliary visits in search of arms.
No measure could have been better calculated to intimidate middle-class families. During the days that followed every house, office and apartment owned by people of means was searched by gangs of sans-culottes, who took the opportunity of threatening to return and break it up if its owner was later reported to them as being on the “wrong” side. And it did not end there. The searchers had been furnished with lists of Royalists, and the possession of a sword, a pistol, or even a sporting gun was made sufficient excuse to drag these opponents of mob law off to prison. In the course of the week thousands of arrests were made and the prisons of Paris were filled to overflowing.
Roger found himself forced to lead many of these domiciliary visits in his own Section. It was a hateful task, but vital to the maintenance of his official status, which not only enabled him to secure reliable information about the extremists’ plans, but also gave him access to the Temple.
The Commune displayed a most lively fear that, somehow or other, its Royal hostages would vanish from its grasp; so hardly a day passed without some further measure designed to make their rescue more difficult. On the 19th, in the middle of the night, their remaining friends were taken from them, the Princesse de Lamballe and the de Tourzels being carted off to the prison of La Force. On the following day the King’s two valets were allowed to return to him, but thereafter neither he nor the Queen was allowed to communicate with any other of their old friends or servants. By night and day 200 National Guards, equipped with cannon, guarded the Temple from attack; nobody without a pass was allowed to enter its precincts, the number of Commissars charged with acting as jailers was increased from four to eight, and instructions were issued that they were never to allow the Sovereigns out of their sight.
As a pass-holder Roger was able to witness the state of affairs at the Temple for himself, but although he saw the Royal Family taking their exercise in a railed-off part of the garden, under the personal supervision of “General” Santerre, he was not allowed to approach them. However, he knew that he could arrange to act as one of their guardians in due course, and he hoped that during his tour of duty he would be able to devise some means by which communication could be established between them and the outside world. He was well aware that they would not trust him personally; but waiters, cleaners, and carriers of wood for their fires were regularly in their immediate vicinity, and if one of these could be induced to play the rôle of messenger it seemed possible that, when the Commune’s first acute apprehension had died down, their rescue might yet be accomplished.
By way of protest at the imprisonment of their Most Christian Majesties, the British Ambassador was recalled; but he left Mr. William Lindsay as Chargé d’Affaires, and, through the latter, Roger sent another report to his master, giving detailed particulars of the situation of the prisoners and forecasting that when the Convention met it would be dominated by the Communists. In one paragraph of the report he wrote of Danton as follows:
“The most potent personality on the political scene at the moment is the Minister of Justice. He is a little over thirty, comes from Arcis-sur-Aube and has been a moderately successful barrister. He is coarse, cruel, unscrupulous, corrupt, and owes his power largely to his unquestionable gifts as an orator. He has a foot in both camps, having intrigued his way into office with the aid of Madame Roland, while being secretly hand in glove
with the most violent extremists, whom he represents in the Ministry. I have it on good authority that early this year, through the ex-Minister, M. le Comte de Montmorin, Danton accepted a considerable sum from the King as a bribe to counter certain revolutionary motions in that hotbed of communism, the Cordeliers Club. As is customary among these demagogues, he kept the money and failed to honour his promise. Recently he has seized on the war as a means of increasing his own popularity. With Gallic abandon he declaims about the honour of France and the sacred duty of all Frenchmen to defend her soil; but in secret he sees to it that call-up papers are issued only to the young men of the upper and middle classes, while exemption is given to his political supporters, the sans-culottes. He has deliberately prevented the Marseillais from being despatched to the front, because he wishes to make them his instrument in another Saint Bartholomew, for the destruction of her enemies en masse, of which plot I shall have the honour of informing you in a later portion of this despatch. Therefore, should your attention be drawn to reports in the Monitor of glowing orations made by M. Danton, while you should not discount their effects on the masses here, you would be well advised to disabuse your mind of any idea that he is inspired by genuine patriotism. He is governed only by a voracious appetite for power, money and women.”
The plot to which Roger referred was the peak in the Communists’ campaign to terrify the great mass of moderate electors. On the pretext that “honest patriots” could not be expected to go to the front while thousands of reactionaries, now in the prisons, were conspiring to break out when they had gone and murder their wives and families, the fédérés were to be instigated to massacre the inmates of the prisons.
Appalled as Roger was by the prospect of this heinous crime, there seemed nothing he could do to prevent it; but it did occur to him that if he informed Gouverneur Morris of the plot the rich American might find ways of procuring the release of a certain number of the intended victims before the massacre started.
It was now ten weeks since those first hectic thirty-six hours after his arrival in Paris, during which time he had met the American and had twice availed himself of Madame de Flahaut’s aid in disguising himself; but he had seen neither of them since, as to have pursued his acquaintance with either might have led to unwelcome complications. The servants of the rich were by no means all trustworthy, and had one of them reported to some of his colleagues in the Commune that he was in the habit of visiting aristosy his whole position would have been endangered. For that reason he was loath now to seek out the banker-diplomat personally, or even to send a letter to him; so, after some thought, he sent a note to the beautiful Adèle, on the afternoon of the 29th, simply saying that he wished Mr. Morris to meet him regarding a very urgent matter on the Quai du Louvre at nine o’clock that night, and signed it The Chimney-Sweep.
Dusk had fallen when he reached the place of appointment; but there were few people about, so he was soon able to identify a portly figure, stumping slowly along with a wooden leg. The night was warm; so, after exchanging greetings, they went over to sit on the stone parapet, and while the river gurgled below them Roger gave a brief account of his own doings, then revealed the hideous plot.
After a few shrewd questions, the American said, “Owing to the state of terror to which all moderate men have been reduced, I see no hope of being able to prevent this horrible business through such friends as I have in the Assembly; but, as you suggest, we might buy the release of a certain number of prisoners. The devil of it is, who among these rogues can one trust not to take the money and do nothing to earn it?”
Roger nodded. “That is the trouble. It is useless to approach any but the few at the top, who are sufficiently powerful to do as we wish without endangering their own position; and they are all either fanatics or thieves. Danton would certainly betray us; Robespierre is, I believe, both heartless and incorruptible; Marat is a criminal lunatic whose lust for blood is greater than for gold; Roland and his friends would be too frightened to interfere.”
“What of Pétion?” Gouverneur Morris asked. “He is greedy and unscrupulous, and I know that in the past he took big bribes from the Court to ease its situation.”
“No. He has intrigued with both sides so often already that his own position is no longer any too secure. He would take the money, but he dare not risk liberating any of the prisoners. Still, that gives me an idea. His Procureur, Manuel, might be your man. He is, I know, considered to be one of the reddest of the red, but I have formed the impression that he is not altogether heartless or without principles. His official position would make it easy for him to arrange releases, and if his better instincts were stimulated by a handsome compensation for the awkward business of explaining matters to his colleagues afterwards, he would, I think, observe his part of the bargain honourably.”
The American slid off the parapet and stood up. “Then I will try him first; and there is no time to lose, lest he refuse and I have to try some of the lesser men. I will go at once and send one of my agents to sound him.”
They shook hands, and Mr. Morris stumped away in the direction of the Tuileries gardens. As Roger watched him go, he noticed another figure emerge from the heavy shadows cast by one of the buttresses of the old Palace and limp towards its nearest entrance. In a few swift strides he crossed the road, caught up with the figure, and tapped it on the shoulder.
With amazing swiftness, the man he had followed swivelled round with his back against the wall, threw open his cloak, and drew a thin, glittering blade from a sword-cane.
CHAPTER XIII
PARIS RUNS WITH BLOOD
“Come, come, Your Grace!” said Roger in English. “Surely you would not stick that dangerous toy through the ribs of an old friend?” He would have gambled on knowing that elegant limp anywhere, and seeing it in the vicinity of Adèle de Flahaut’s apartment had made him certain of the limper’s identity.
M. de Talleyrand sighed with relief and put up his weapon. “So ‘tis you! God be thanked! I thought myself caught by one of these cut-throats who are after me to throw me into prison.”
Roger stared at him in surprise. “Do you really mean to say that you, one of the Fathers of the Revolution—a legislator who has introduced more sensible reforms into France than any other—have actually been proscribed as a reactionary?”
“Yes; and if they catch me they will like as not parade my head on a pike without further argument.” The handsome Bishop laughed cynically. “Let my case be a lesson to you. The nobilty who really ground down the poor have fled abroad and are safe. It is liberals like myself who must now pay the penalty for their own folly in having undermined authority. I must have been mad to return to Paris.”
“I had no idea you were back. When did you return, and why?”
“I have been back a week. I came to report the appalling repercussions that the events of the 10th of August have had in England. Till then, in spite of the publication of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, we had managed to retain the goodwill of a strong liberal minority; but the tales of massacre and of the imprisoning of the King that have been pouring across the Channel are doing us untold damage. Charles James Fox alone has dared to defend the actions of the French mob. Even his friends among the Whig nobility criticise him severely for it; practically the only pro-French element left in Britain are the voteless people who form the radical Corresponding Societies and an out-at-elbows religious sect who call themselves Methodists. I returned to impress upon our new Government the danger they are in of uniting the whole of the English nation against us; to implore them to retrieve the situation by announcing a programme of moderation while there is still a chance of keeping England from joining our enemies. And do you know what they said to me?”
Roger shook his head.
“Lebrun, that miserable clerk they have made Foreign Minister, had the insolence to tell me that as I put forward the English point of view so strongly it was evident that I could no longer be in sympathy with
the Revolution, so I had better go back to England and he would have me listed as an émigré.”
“Strap me! That’s a fine way to reward a man for his services! There is a law by which the property of all émigrés is subject to confiscation.”
“I know it! But one’s property is a small matter compared with one’s life; and it is that I am now liable to lose if I stay here. I learned this afternoon that the Commune has ordered the arrest of all the Directors of the Department of Paris, and I am one of them.”
“Why do you not leave, then?”
“I cannot. I have no passport.”
“But surely Lebrun———”
“No, no! The issue of passports has now been taken over by the Ministry of Justice, so that before an applicant is granted one it can be ascertained that he is in what is called a state of ‘civic virtue’.”
“Dare you not apply?”
“I had been to Danton already; and listen to what happened. That stinking brute welcomed me with open arms. ‘What a delightful surprise, my dear Bishop,’ said he; ‘I could not be better pleased to see anyone at this moment. You, so talented, so clever, so subtle, are the very man to help me, and help France. Do you know that the tyrants of other countries are complaining of the way we have treated our King, and have the insolence to threaten us on that account? If I had my way I would tell them to mind their own business, or we will march upon them and aid their subjects to treat them in a like manner. But my fellow Ministers are of the opinion that the soft answer turneth away wrath; so they are anxious that a pacific reply should be framed. In fact, they want a few thousand words outlining the wicked manner in which the good, honest people of Paris had been provoked by the Sovereigns, and explaining how fully justified the People were in acting as they did on the 10th of August. Now, who better than yourself—understanding as you do the mind of despots—could perform the patriotic duty of writing this memorandum? I am told, too, that you want a passport.’”
The Man who Killed the King Page 23