书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
19097600000501

第501章

On one side, sheltered by treachery and, on the other side, by assassination, the insurrection may now go on in full security in front of the terrible hypocrite who solemnly complains of his voluntary captivity, and before the corpse, with shattered brow, lying on the steps of the H?tel-de-ville. On the right bank of the river, the battalions of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and, on the left, those of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, the Bretons, and the Marseilles band, march forth as freely as if going to parade. Measures of defense are frustrated by the murder of the commanding general, and by the mayor's duplicity; there is not resistance on guarded spots, at the arcade Saint-Jean, the passages of the bridges, along the quays, and in the court of the Louvre. An advance guard of the mob, women, children, and men, armed with cutters, cudgels, and pikes, spread over the abandoned Carrousel, and, towards eight o'clock, the advance column, led by Westerman, appears in front of the palace.

VII.

August 10. -- The King's forces. -- Resistance abandoned. - -The King in the National Assembly. -- Conflict at the palace and discharge of the Swiss Guard. -- The palace evacuated by the King's order. -- The massacres. -- The enslaved Assembly and its decrees.

If the King had wanted to fight, he might still have defended himself, saved himself, and even been victorious.[76] -- In the Tuileries, 950of the Swiss Guard and 200 gentlemen stood ready to die for him to the last man. Around the Tuileries, two or three thousand National Guard, the élite of the Parisian population, had just cheered him as he passed.[77] "Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for Louis XVI.! He is our King and we want no other; we want him only! Down with the rioters!

Down with the Jacobins! We will defend him unto death! Let him put himself at our head! Hurrah for the Nation, the Law, the Constitution, and the King, which are all one! If the gunners were silent, and seemed ill-disposed,[78] it was simply necessary to disarm them suddenly, and hand over their pieces to loyal men. Four thousand rifles and eleven pieces of artillery, protected by the walls of the courts and by the thick masonry of the palace, were certainly sufficient against the nine or ten thousand Jacobins in Paris, most of them pikemen, badly led by improvised or rebellious battalion officers,[79] and, still worse, commanded by their new general, Santerre, who, always cautious, kept himself aloof in the H?tel-de-ville, out of harm's way. The only staunch men in the Carrousel were the eight hundred men from Brest and Marseilles; the rest consisted of a rabble like that of July 14, October 5, and June 20;[80] the palace, says Napoleon Bonaparte, was attacked by the vilest canaille, professional rioters, Maillard's band, and the bands of Lazowski, Fournier, and Théroigne, by all the assassins, indeed of the previous night and day, and of the following day, which species of combatants, as was proved by the event, would have scattered at the first discharge of a cannon. -- But, with the governing as with the governed, all notion of the State was lost, the former through humanity become a duty, and the latter through insubordination erected into a right. At the close of the eighteenth century, in the upper as well as in the middle class, there was a horror of blood;[81] refined social ways, coupled with an idyllic imagination, had softened the militant disposition. Everywhere the magistrates had forgotten that the maintenance of society and of civilization is a benefit of infinitely greater importance than the lives of a parcel of maniacs and malefactors; that the prime object of government, as well as of a police, is the preservation of order by force; that a gendarme is not a philanthropist; that, if attacked on his post, he must use his sword, and that, in sheathing it for fear of wounding his aggressors, he fails to do his duty.