Lieutaud. Summoned to proclaim martial law, the municipality refuses, declaring that "the general detestation of the accused is too manifest"; it demands the return of the Swiss regiment to its barracks, and that the prisoners remain where they are; the only thing which it grants them is a secret permission to escape, as if they were guilty; they, accordingly, steal away clandestinely and in disguise.[12] -- The Swiss regiment, however, which prevents the magistrates from violating the law, must pay for its insolence, and, as it is incorruptible, they decide to drive it out of the town. For four months the municipality multiplies against it every kind of annoyance,[13] and, on the 16th of October, 1791, the Jacobins provoke a row in the theater against its officers. The same night, outside the theater, four of these are attacked by armed bands; the post to which they retreat is nearly taken by assault; they are led to a prison for safety, and there they still remain five days afterwards, "although their innocence is admitted." Meanwhile, to ensure "public tranquility," the municipality has required the commander of the post to immediately replace the Swiss Guard with National Guards on all the military posts; the latter yields to force, while the useless regiment, insulted and threatened, has nothing to do but to pack off.[14] This being done, the new municipality, still more Jacobin than the old one,[15] separates Marseilles from France, erects the city into a marauding republican government, gets up expeditions, levies contributions, forms alliances, and undertakes an armed conquest of the department.
II. The expedition to Aix.
The town of Marseilles send an expedition to Aix. -- The regiment is disarmed. -- The Directory driven out. -- Pressure on the new Directory.
The first thing is to lay its hand on the district capital, Aix, where the Swiss regiment is stationed in garrison and where the superior authorities are installed. This operation is the more necessary inasmuch as the Directory of the department loudly commends the loyalty of the Swiss Guard and takes occasion to remind the Marseilles municipality of the respect due to the law. Such remonstrance is an insult, and the municipality, in a haughty tone, calls upon the Directory to avow or disavow its letter; "if you did not write it, it is a foul report which it is our duty to examine into, and if you did, it is a declaration of war made by you against Marseilles."[16] The Directory, in polite terms and with great circumspection, affirms both its right and its utterance, and remarks that "the prorata list of taxes of Marseilles for 1791 is not yet reported;" that the municipality is much more concerned with saving the State than with paying its contribution and, in short, it maintains its censure. -- If it will not bend it must break, and on the 4th of February, 1792, the municipality sends Barbaroux, its secretary, to Paris, that he may mitigate the outrages they are preparing. During the night of the 25-26, the drums beat the general alarm, and three or four thousand men gather and march to Aix with six pieces of cannon. As a precaution they pretend to have no leaders, no captains or lieutenants or even corporals; to quote them, all are equal, all volunteers, each being summoned by the other; in this fashion, as all are responsible, no one is.[17] They reach Aix at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, find a gate open through the connivance of those in league with them among the populace of the town and its suburbs, and summon the municipality to surrender the sentinels. In the mean time their emissaries have announced in the neighboring villages that the town was menaced by the Swiss regiment; consequently four hundred men from Aubagne arrive in haste, while from hour to hour the National Guards from the surrounding villages likewise rush in. The streets are full of armed men; shouts arise and the tumult increases; the municipal body, in the universal panic, loses its wits. This body is afraid of a nocturnal fight "between troops of the line, citizens, National Guards and armed strangers, no one being able to recognize one another or know who is an enemy." It sends back a detachment of three hundred and fifty Swiss Guards, which the Directory had ordered to its support, and consigns the regiment to its quarters. -- At this the Directory takes to flight. Military sentinels of all kinds are disarmed while the Marseilles throng, turning its advantages to account, announces to the municipality at two o'clock in the morning that, "allow it or not " it is going to attack the barracks immediately; in fact, cannon are planted, a few shots are fired, a sentinel killed, and the hemmed-in regiment is compelled to evacuate the town, the men without their guns and the officers without their swords. Their arms are stolen, the people seize the suspected, the street-lamp is hauled down and the noose is made ready. Cayol, the flower-girl, is hung. The municipality, with great difficulty, saves one man who is already lifted by the rope two feet from the ground, and obtains for three others "a temporary refuge" in prison.