Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men Part 19

Was a pet.i.tion to the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly illegal that was got up on the 17th of July, 1791, against a decree issued on the 15th?

Had the pet.i.tioners, by a.s.sembling on the Champ de Mars, violated any law?

Could the two murders committed in the morning be imputed to these men?

Had projects of disorder and rebellion been manifested with sufficient evidence to justify the proclamation of martial law, and especially the putting it into practice?

I say it, Gentlemen, with deep grief, these problems will be answered in the negative by whoever takes the trouble to a.n.a.lyze without pa.s.sion, and without preconceived opinions, some authentic doc.u.ments, which people in general seem to have made it a point to leave in oblivion. But I hasten to add, that considering the question as to intention, Bailly will continue to appear, after this examination, quite as humane, quite as honourable, quite as pure as we have found him to be in the other phases of a public and private life, which might serve as a model.

In the best epochs of the National a.s.sembly, no one who belonged to it would have dared to maintain, that to draw up and sign a pet.i.tion, whatever might be the object of it, were rebellious acts. Never, at that time, would the President of that great a.s.sembly have called down hate, public vengeance, or a sanguinary repression upon those who attempted, said Charles Lameth, in the sitting of the 16th of July, "to oppose their individual will to the law, which is an expression of the national will." The right of pet.i.tion seemed as if it ought to be absolute, even if contrary to sanctioned and promulgated laws in full action, and even more so against legislative arrangements still under discussion, or scarcely voted.

The pet.i.tioners of the Champ de Mars asked the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly to revise a decree that they had issued two days before. We have no occasion to examine whether the act was reasonable, opportune, dictated by an enlightened view of the public good. The question is simple; in soliciting the a.s.sembly to revise a decree, they violated no law.

Perhaps it will be thought that the pet.i.tioners at least committed an unusual act, contrary to all custom. Even this would be unfounded. In ten various instances, the National a.s.sembly modified or annulled its own decrees; in twenty others, it had been entreated to revise them, without any cry of anarchy being raised.

It is well ascertained, that the crowd on the Champ de Mars availed itself of a right that the const.i.tution recognized, that of getting up and signing a pet.i.tion against a decree which, right or wrong, it thought was opposed to the true interests of the country. Still, the exercise of the right of pet.i.tioning was always wisely subjected to certain forms. Had these forms been violated? Was the meeting illegal?

In 1791, according to the decrees, every meeting that wished to exercise the right of pet.i.tion must consist of unarmed citizens, and be announced to the competent authorities twenty-four hours beforehand.

Well, on the 16th of July, twelve persons had gone as a deputation to the munic.i.p.ality, in order to declare, according to law, that the next day, the 17th, numerous citizens would meet, without arms, on the Champ de Mars, where they wished to sign a pet.i.tion. The deputation obtained an acknowledgment of its declaration from the hand of the syndic procurator Desmousseaux, who addressed them besides with these solemn words: "The law s.h.i.+elds you with its inviolability."

The acknowledgment was presented to Bailly on the day of his condemnation.

Had they committed some a.s.sa.s.sinations? Yes, undoubtedly; they had committed two; but in the morning, very early; but at the Gros Caillou, and not on the Champ de Mars. Those horrid murders could not legitimately be imputed to the pet.i.tioners who, eight or ten hours after, surrounded the altar of their country; to the crowd who fell by the fusillade of the National Guard. By changing the date of these crimes, and displacing also the localities where these crimes were committed, some historians of our revolution, and amongst others the best known of all, have given, without intending it, to the meeting in the afternoon, a character that cannot be honestly concurred in.

It is requisite we should know at what hour, in what place, and how, these misfortunes happened, before we hazard an opinion on the sanguinary acts of that day, the 17th of July.

A young man had gone that day very early to the altar of his country.

This young man wished to copy several inscriptions. All at once he heard a singular noise, and very soon after the worm of a wimble shot up from the planked floor on which he was standing. The youth went and sought the guard, who raised the plank, and found beneath the altar two ill-looking individuals, lying down, and furnished with provisions. One of these men was an invalid with a wooden leg. The guard seized them, and took them to the Gros Caillou, to the section, to the Commissary of Police. On the way, the barrel of water with which these unfortunate men had provided themselves under the altar of their country, was transformed, according to the ordinary course of things, into a barrel of gunpowder. The inhabitants of that quarter of the town collected together; it was on a Sunday. The women especially showed themselves very much irritated when the purpose of the auger-holes was told them, as declared by the invalid. When the two prisoners came out of the hall to be conducted to the Hotel de Ville, the crowd tore them from the guard, ma.s.sacred them, and paraded their heads on pikes!

It cannot be too often repeated, that these hideous a.s.sa.s.sinations, this execution of two old vagabonds by the barbarous and blinded population of the Gros Caillou, evidently had no relation to, no connection with, the events which, in the evening, carried mourning into the Champ de la Federation.

On the evening of the 17th of July, from five to seven o'clock, had the crowd which was collected around the altar of their country an aspect of turbulence, giving reason to fear a riot, sedition, violence, or any anarchical enterprise?

Relative to this point, we have the written declaration of three councillors, whom the munic.i.p.ality had sent in the morning to the Gros Caillou, on the first intimation of the two a.s.sa.s.sinations of which I have just spoken. This declaration was presented to Bailly on the day of his condemnation. We read therein, "that the a.s.sembled citizens on the Champ de Mars had in no way acted contrary to law; that they only asked for time to sign their pet.i.tion before they retired; that the crowd had shown all possible respect to the commissaries, and given proofs of submission to the law and its agents." The Munic.i.p.al Councillors, on their return to the Hotel de Ville, accompanied by a deputation of twelve of the pet.i.tioners, protested strongly against the proclamation of martial law; they declared that if the red flag was unfurled, they would be regarded, and with some appearance of reason, as traitors and faithless men.

Vain efforts; the anger of the councillors, confined since the morning at the Hotel de Ville, carried the day over the enlightened opinion of those who had been sent scrupulously to study the state of affairs, who had mixed in the crowd, who returned after having rea.s.sured it by promises.

I might invoke the testimony of one of my honourable colleagues. Led by the fine weather, and somewhat also by curiosity, towards the Champ de Mars, he was enabled to observe all; and he has a.s.sured me that there never was a meeting which showed less turbulence or seditious spirit; that especially the women and children were very numerous. Is it not, besides, perfectly proved now, that on the morning of the 17th July, the Jacobin club, by means of printed placards, disavowed any intention of pet.i.tioning; and that the influential men of the Jacobins and of the Cordeliers,--those men whose presence might have given to this concourse the dangerous character of a riot,--not only did not appear there, but had started in the night for the country?

By thus connecting together all the circ.u.mstances whence it is proved that martial law was proclaimed and put in practice on the 17th of July without legitimate motives, a most terrible responsibility seems at first sight to be cast on the memory of Bailly. But rea.s.sure yourselves, Gentlemen; the events which are now grouped together, and are exhibited to our eyes with complete evidence, were not known on that inauspicious day at the Hotel de Ville, until they had been distorted by the spirit of party.

In the month of July, 1791, after the king had returned from Varennes, the monarchy and the republic began for the first time to be dangerously opposed to each other; in an instant pa.s.sion took the place of cool reason in the minds of the respective partisans of the two different forms of government. The terrible formula: _We must make an end of it!_ was in everybody's mouth.

Bailly was surrounded by those pa.s.sionate politicians who, without the least scruple as to the honesty or legality of the means, are determined to make an end of the adversaries who annoy them, as soon as circ.u.mstances seem to promise them victory.

Bailly had still near him some Eschevins long accustomed to regard him as a magistrate for show.

The former gave the Mayor false, or highly coloured intelligence. The others, by long habit, did not conceive themselves obliged to communicate any thing to him.

On the b.l.o.o.d.y day of July, 1791, of all the inhabitants of Paris, perhaps Bailly was the man who knew with least detail or correctness the events of the morning and of the evening.

Bailly, with his deep horror for falsehood, would have thought that he was most cruelly insulting the magistrates, if he had not attributed to them similar sentiments to his own. His uprightness prevented his being sufficiently on the watch against the machinations of parties. It was evidently by false reports that he was induced to unfurl the red flag on the 17th of July: "It was from the reports that followed each other," he said to the Revolutionary Tribunal, on being questioned by the President, "and became more and more alarming every hour, that the council adopted the measure of marching with the armed force to the Champ de Mars."

In all his answers Bailly insisted on the repeated orders he had received from the President of the National a.s.sembly; on the reproaches addressed to him for not sufficiently watching the agents of foreign powers; it was against these pretended agents and their creatures, that the Mayor of Paris thought he was marching when he put himself at the head of a column of National Guards.

Bailly did not even know the cause of the meeting; he had not been informed that the crowd wished to sign a pet.i.tion; and that the previous evening, according to the decree of the law, there had been a declaration made to this effect before the competent authority. His answers to the Revolutionary Tribunal leave not the least doubt on this point!

Oh Eschevins, Eschevins! when your vain pretensions only were treated of, the public could forgive you; but the 17th of July, you took advantage of Bailly's confidence; you induced him to take sanguinary measures of repression, after having fascinated him with false reports; you committed a real crime. If it was the duty of the Revolutionary Tribunal, of deplorable memory, to demand in 1793 from any one an explanation of the ma.s.sacres of the Champ de Mars, it was not Bailly a.s.suredly who ought to have been accused in the first place.

The political party whose blood flowed on the 17th of July, pretended to have been the victim of a plot concocted by its adversaries. When interrogated by the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Bailly answered: "I had no knowledge of it, but experience has since given me reason to think that such a plot did exist at that time."

Nothing more serious has ever been written against the promoters of the sanguinary violences on the 17th of July.

The blame that has been thrown on the events of the Champ de Mars has not been confined solely to the fact of proclaiming martial law; the repressive measures that followed that proclamation have been criticized with equal bitterness.

The munic.i.p.al administration was especially reproached for having hoisted a red flag much too small; a flag that was called in the Tribunal _a pocket flag_; for not having placed this flag at the head of the column, as the law commands, but in such a position, that the public on whom the column was advancing could not see it; for having made the armed force enter the Champ de Mars, by all the gates on the side towards the town, a manoeuvre that seemed rather intended to surround the mult.i.tude, than to disperse it; for having ordered the National Guard to load their arms, even on the Place de Greve; for having made the guard fire before the three required summonses were made, and fire upon the people around the altar, whilst the stones and the pistol shot, which were a.s.signed as the motive for the sanguinary order, came from the steps and benches; for allowing some people who were endeavouring to escape on the side towards l'Ecole Militaire, and others who had actually jumped into the Seine, to be pursued, shot, and bayonetted.

It results clearly from one of Bailly's publications, from his answers to the questions put to him by the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, from the writings of the day:

That the Mayor of Paris gave no order for the troops to be collected on the 17th of July; that he had had no conference on that day with the military authority; that if any arrangements, culpable and contrary to law were adopted, as to the situation of the cavalry, of the red flag, and of the Munic.i.p.al Body, in the column marching on the Champ de Mars, they could not without injustice be imputed to him; that Bailly was not aware of the National Guard having loaded their muskets with ball before quitting the square of the Hotel de Ville; that he was not aware even of the existence of the red flag, with whose small dimensions he had been so severely reproached; that the National Guard fired without his order; that he made every effort to stop the firing, to stop the pursuit, and make the soldiers resume their ranks; that he congratulated the troops of the line, who under the command of Hulin, entered by the gate of l'Ecole Militaire, and not only did not fire, but tore many of the unfortunate people from the hands of the National Guard, whose exasperation amounted to delirium. In short, it might he asked, relative to any want of exactness attributable to Bailly in that unfortunate affair, whether it was just to impute it to him who, in his letters to Voltaire on the origin of the sciences, wrote as follows in 1776:

"I am unfortunately short-sighted. I am often humiliated in the open country. Whilst I with difficulty can distinguish a house at the distance of a hundred paces, my friends relate to me what they see at the distance of five or six hundred. I open my eyes, I fatigue myself without seeing any thing, and I am sometimes inclined to think that they amuse themselves at my expense."

You begin to see, Gentlemen, the advantage that a firm and able lawyer might have drawn from the authentic facts that I have just been relating. But Bailly knew the pretended jury before whom he had to appear. This jury was not a collection of drunken cobblers, whatever some pa.s.sionate writers may have a.s.serted; it was worse than that, Gentlemen, notwithstanding the deservedly celebrated names that were occasionally interspersed among them: it was--let us cut the subject short--an odious, commission.

The very circ.u.mscribed list from which chance in 1793 and 1794 drew the juries of the Revolutionary Tribunals, did not embrace, as the sacred word _jury_ seems to imply, all one cla.s.s of citizens. The authorities formed it, after a prefatory and very minute inquiry, of their adherents only. The unfortunate defendants were thus judged not by impartial persons free from any preconceived system, but by political enemies, which is as much as to say, by that which is the most cruel and remorseless in the world.

Bailly would not be defended. After his appearance as a witness in the trial of Marie Antoinette, the ex-Mayor only wrote and had printed for circulation, a paper ent.i.tled _Bailly to his fellow-citizens_. It closes with these affecting words:

"I have only gained by the Revolution that which my fellow-citizens have gained: liberty and equality. I have lost by it some useful situations, and my fortune is nearly destroyed. I could be happy with what remains of it to me and a clear conscience; but to be happy in the repose of my retreat, I require, my dear fellow-citizens, your esteem: I know well that, sooner or later, you will do me justice; but I require it while I live, and while I am yet amongst you."

Our colleague was unanimously condemned. We should despair of the future, unless such a unanimity struck all friends of justice and humanity with stupor, if it did not increase the number of decided adversaries to all political tribunals.

When the President of the Tribunal interrogated the accused, already declared guilty, as to whether he had any reclamations to make relative to the execution of the sentence, Bailly answered:

"I have always carried out the law; I shall know how to submit myself to it, since you are its organ."

The ill.u.s.trious convict was led back to his cell.

Bailly had said in his eloge on M. de Tressan: "French gaiety produces the same effect as stoicism." These words occurred to my memory at the time when I was gathering from various sources the proof that on reentering the Conciergerie after his condemnation, Bailly showed himself at once both gay and stoical.

He desired his nephew, M. Batbeda, to play a game at piquet with him as usual. He thought of all the circ.u.mstances connected with the frightful morrow with such coolness, that he even said with a smile to M. Batbeda during the game: "Let us rest awhile, my friend, and take a pinch of snuff; to-morrow I shall be deprived of this pleasure, for I shall have my hands tied behind my back."

I will quote some words which, while testifying to a similar degree Bailly's serenity of mind, are more in harmony with his grave character, and more worthy of being preserved in history.

One of the companions of the ill.u.s.trious academician's captivity, on the evening of the 11th of November, with tears in his eyes and moved by a tender veneration, exclaimed: "Why did you let us fancy there was a possibility of acquittal? You deceived us then?"--Bailly answered: "No, I was teaching you never to despair of the laws of your country."

In the paroxysms of wild despair, some of the prisoners reviewing the past, went so far as to regret that they had never infringed the laws of the strictest honesty.