The Story of Paris Part 14

Wealthy bishops and abbots[157] and clergy, n.o.blesse and royal officials, were wholly exempt from the main incidents of taxation; for personal and land taxes, t.i.thes and forced labour, were exacted from the common people alone. No liberty of wors.h.i.+p, nor of thought: Protestants were condemned to the galleys by hundreds; booksellers met the same fate. Authors and books were arbitrarily sent by _lettres de cachet_ to the Bastille or Vincennes. Yet in spite of all repression, a generation of daring, witty, emanc.i.p.ated thinkers in Paris was elaborating a weapon of scientific, rationalistic and liberal doctrine that cut at the very roots of the old _regime_. "I care not whether a man is good or bad," says the Deity in Blake's prophetic books, "all I care, is whether he is a wise man or a fool." While France was in travail of the palingenesis of the modern world, the futile king was trifling with his locks and keys and colouring maps, the queen playing at shepherdesses at Trianon or performing before courtiers, officers and equerries the _roles_ of Rosina in the _Barbier de Seville_ and of Colette in the _Devin du Village_, the latter composed by the democratic philosopher, whose _Contrat Social_ was to prove the Gospel of the Revolution.[158] Jean Jacques Rousseau, the solitary, self-centred Swiss engraver and musician, has described for us in words that will bear translation how an ineffaceable impression of the sufferings of the people was burnt into his memory, and the fire of an unquenchable hatred of their oppressors was kindled in his breast.

Journeying on foot between Paris and Lyons, he was one day diverted from his path by the beauty of the landscape, and wandered about, seeking in vain to discover his way. "At length," he writes, "weary, and dying of thirst and hunger, I entered a peasant's house, not a very attractive one, but the only one I could see. I imagined that here as in Switzerland every inhabitant of easy means would be able to offer hospitality. I entered and begged that I might have dinner by paying for it. The peasant handed me some skim milk and coa.r.s.e barley bread, saying that was all he had. The milk seemed delicious and I ate the bread, straw and all, but it was not very satisfying to one exhausted by fatigue. The man scrutinised me and judged by my appet.i.te the truth of the story I had told. Suddenly, after saying that he perceived I was a good, honest youth and not there to spy upon him, he opened a trap door, descended and returned speedily with some good wheaten bread, a ham appetising but rather high, and a bottle of wine which rejoiced my heart more than all the rest. He added a good thick omelette and I enjoyed a dinner such as those alone who travel on foot can know. When it came to paying, his anxiety and fears again seized him; he would have none of my money and pushed it aside, exceedingly troubled, nor could I imagine what he was afraid of. At last he uttered with a shudder the terrible words, _commis, rats de cave_" ("a.s.sessors, cellar rats"). He made me understand that he hid the wine because of the _aides_,[159] and the bread because of the _tailles_,[160] and that he would be a ruined man if it were supposed that he was not dying of hunger. That man, although fairly well-off, dared not eat the bread earned by the sweat of his brow, and could only escape ruin by pretending to be as miserable as those he saw around him. I issued forth from that house indignant as well as affected, deploring the lot of that fair land where nature had lavished all her gifts only to become the spoil of barbarous tax-farmers (_publicans_)." And Voltaire, that implacable avenger of injustice, in verse that rends the heart, has in _les Finances_, (1775), pictured a peaceful home ruined; its inmates evicted to misery, to the galleys and to death, by the cruel exactions of the royal director of the _aides_ and _gabelles_, with his _sergents de la finance habilles en guerriers_. The elder Mirabeau too has told how he saw a bailiff cut off the hand of a peasant woman who had clung to her kitchen utensils when distraint was made on her poor possessions for dues exacted by the tax-farmers. In 1776 two poor starving wretches were hanged on the gallows of the Place de Greve at Paris for having stolen some bread from a baker's shop.

[Footnote 157: Taine estimates the revenues of thirty-three abbots in terms of modern values at from 140,000 to 480,000 francs (5,600 to 19,200). Twenty-seven abbesses enjoyed revenues nearly as large.]

[Footnote 158: The score of Rousseau's opera is still preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale.]

[Footnote 159: The Excise duty.]

[Footnote 160: Personal and land-taxes paid by the humbler cla.s.ses alone.]

"But though the G.o.ds see clearly, they are slow In marking when a man, despising them, Turns from their wors.h.i.+p to the scorn of fools."

Half a century had elapsed since that meal in the peasant's house when the Nemesis that holds sleepless vigil over the affairs of men stirred her pinions and, like a strong angel with glittering sword, prepared to avenge the wrongs of a people whose rulers had outraged every law, human and divine, by which human society is held together. King, n.o.bles, and prelates had a supreme and an awful choice. They might have led and controlled the Revolution; they chose to oppose it, and were broken into s.h.i.+vers as a potter's vessel.

After the memorable cannonade at Valmy, a knot of defeated German officers gathered in rain and wind moodily around the circle where they durst not kindle the usual camp-fire. In the morning the army had talked of nothing but spitting and devouring the whole French nation: in the evening everyone went about alone; n.o.body looked at his neighbour, or if he did, it was but to curse and swear. "At last,"

says Goethe, "I was called upon to speak, for I had been wont to enliven and amuse the troop with short sayings. This time I said, 'From this day forth, and from this place, a new era begins in the history of the world and you can all say that you were present at its birth.'" This is not the place to write the story of the French Revolution. Those who would read the tremendous drama may be referred to the pages of Carlyle. As a formal history, that work of transcendent genius is open to criticism, especially on the score of accuracy in detail. Indeed to the present writer the magnificent and solemn prosody seems to partake of the nature of a Greek chorus--the comment of an idealised spectator, a.s.suming that the hearer has the drama unfolding before his eyes. Recent researches have supplemented and modified our knowledge. It is no longer possible to accept the more revolting representations of the misery[161] of the French peasantry as true of the whole of France, for France before the Revolution was an a.s.semblage of many provinces of varying social conditions, subjected to varying administrative laws. Nor can we accept Carlyle's portraiture of Robespierre as history, after Louis Blanc's great work. So far from Robespierre having been the bloodthirsty protagonist of the later Terror, it was precisely his determination to make an end of the more savage excesses of the extreme Terrorists and to chastise their more furious pro-consuls, such as Carrier and Fouche, that brought about his ruin. It was men like Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varenne and Barrere, the bloodiest of the Terrorists, who, to save their own heads, united to cast the odium of the later excesses on Robespierre, and to overthrow him.[162] The Thermidorians had no intention of staying the Terror and the actual consequences of their success were wholly unexpected by them. But whatever defects there be in Carlyle, his readers will at least understand the significance of the Revolution, and why it is that the terrible, but temporary excesses which stained its progress have been so unduly magnified by reactionary politicians, while the cruelties of the White Terror[163] are pa.s.sed by.

[Footnote 161: It is difficult, however, to read the sober and irrefutable picture of their miserable condition, given in the famous Books II. and V. of Taine's _Ancien Regime_, without deep emotion.]

[Footnote 162: See also Bodley's _France_, where the author favours the view that Robespierre was not a democrat with a thirst for blood, but rather a man of government, destroyed as a reactionary by surviving Revolutionists who saw their end coming.]

[Footnote 163: After the Thermidorian reaction in 1795, ninety-seven Jacobins were ma.s.sacred by the royalists at Lyons on 5th May; thirty at Aix on 11th May. Similar horrors were enacted at Avignon, Arles, and Ma.r.s.eilles, and at other places in the south.]

Camille Desmoulins has described in his Memoirs how on 11th July he was lifted on the famous table, known as the tripod of the Revolution, in front of the Cafe Foy, in the garden of the Palais Royal, and delivered that short but pregnant oration which preceded the capture of the Bastille on the 14th, warning the people that a St. Bartholomew of patriots was contemplated, and that the Swiss and German troops in the Champ de Mars were ready for the butchery. As the crowd rushed to the Hotel de Ville, shouting "To arms!" they were charged by the Prince de Lambesc at the head of a German regiment, and the first blood of the Revolution in Paris was shed.

The Bastille, like the monarchy, was the victim of its past sins. That grisly fortress, long useless as a defence of Paris, with the jaws of its rusty cannon opening on the most populous quarter of the city to overawe sedition, and its sinister memories of the Man in the Iron Mask,[164] symbolised in the popular mind all that was hateful in the old _regime_, though it had long ceased to be more than occasionally used as a state prison. If we would restore its aspect we must imagine the houses at the ends of the Rue St. Antoine and the Boulevard Henri IV. away and the huge ma.s.s erect on their site and on the lines marked in white stone on the present Place de la Bastille. A great portal, always open by day, yawned on the Rue St. Antoine opposite the Rue des Tournelles and gave access to the first quadrangle which was lined with shops and the houses of the _personnel_ of the prison: then came a second gate, with entrances for carriages and for foot pa.s.sengers, each with its drawbridge. Beyond these a second quadrangle was entered, to the right of which stood the Governor's house and an armoury. Another double portal to the left gave entrance across the old fosse once fed by the waters of the Seine, to the prison fortress itself, with its eight tall blackened towers, each divided into five floors, and its crenelated ramparts.

[Footnote 164: A whole library has been written concerning the ident.i.ty of this famous prisoner. There is little doubt that the mask was of velvet and not of iron, and that the mysterious captive who died on 19th November 1703 in the Bastille, was Count Mattioli of Bologna, who was secretly arrested for having betrayed the confidence of Louis XIV.]

The Bastille, which in the time of the English rule, had seen as its captains the Duke of Exeter, Falstaff, and invincible Talbot, was first used in Richelieu's time as a permanent state prison, and filled under Louis XIV. with Jansenists and Protestants, who were thus separated from the prisoners of the common jails; and, later, under Louis XV. by a whole population of obnoxious pamphleteers and champions of philosophy. Books as well as their authors were incarcerated, and released when considered no longer dangerous; the tomes of famous _Encyclopedie_ spent some years there. From the middle of the eighteenth century the horrible, dark and damp dungeons, half underground and sometimes flooded, formerly inhabited by the lowest type of criminals, were reserved as temporary cells for insubordinate prisoners, and since the accession of Louis XIV. they were no more used. The Bastille during the reigns of the three later Louis was the most comfortable prison in Paris, and detention there rather than in the other prisons was often sought for and granted as a favour; the prisoners might furnish their rooms, and have their own libraries and food. In the middle of the seventeenth century, certain rooms were furnished at the king's expense for those who were without means. The rooms were warmed, the prisoners well fed, and sums varying from three to thirty-five francs per day, according to condition,[165] were allotted for their maintenance. A considerable amount of personal liberty was allowed to many and indemnities were in later years paid to those who had been unjustly detained. But a prison where men are confined indefinitely without trial and at a king's arbitrary pleasure is none the less intolerable, however its horrors be mitigated.

Prisoners were sometimes forgotten, and letters are extant from Louvois and other ministers, asking the governor to report how many years certain prisoners had been detained, and if he remembered what they were charged with. In Louis XIV.'s reign 2228 persons were incarcerated there; in Louis XV.'s, 2567. From the accession of Louis XVI. to the destruction of the prison the number had fallen to 289.

Seven were found there when the fortress was captured, the remainder having been transferred to Vincennes and other prisons by the governor who had some fears of treachery within but none of danger from without. Four were accused of forgery, two insane; one, the Count of Solages, accused of a monstrous crime, was detained there to spare the feelings of his family. So unexpected was the attack, that although well furnished with means of defence, the governor had less than twenty-four hours' provisions in hand when the a.s.sault began.

[Footnote 165: Only five francs were allowed for a bourgeois; a man of letters was granted ten; a Marshal of France obtained the maximum.]

The Bastille, some time before its fall, was already under sentence of demolition, and various schemes for its disposal were before the court. One project was to destroy seven of the towers, leaving the eighth standing in a dilapidated state. On the site of the seven, a pedestal formed of chains and bolts from the dungeons and gates was to bear a statue of Louis XVI. in the att.i.tude of a liberator, pointing with outstretched hand towards the remaining tower in ruins. But Louis XVI. was always too late, and the Place de la Bastille, with its column raised to those who fell in the Revolution of July, 1830, now recalls the second and final triumph of the people over the Bourbon kings. Some stones of the Bastille were, however, "in order that they might be trodden under foot by the people for ever," built into the new Pont Louis Seize, subsequently called Pont de la Revolution and now known as Pont de la Concorde; others were sold to speculators and were retailed at prices so high that people complained that Bastille stones were as dear as the best butcher's meat. Models of the Bastille, dominoes, inkstands, boxes and toys of all kinds were made of the material and had a ready sale all over France.

Far to the west and on the opposite side of the Seine is the immense area of the Champ de Mars, where, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, was enacted the fairest scene of the Revolution. The whole population of Paris, with their marvellous instinct of order and co-operation, spontaneously set to work to dig the vast amphitheatre which was to accommodate the 100,000 representatives of France, and 400,000 spectators, all united in an outburst of fraternal love and hope to swear allegiance to the new Const.i.tution before the altar of the Fatherland. The king had not yet lost the affection of his people.

As he came to view the marvellous scene an improvised bodyguard of excavators, bearing spades, escorted him about. When he was swearing the oath to the Const.i.tution, the queen, standing on a balcony of the _ecole militaire_, lifted up the dauphin as if to a.s.sociate him in his father's pledge. Suddenly the rain which had marred the great festival ceased, the sun burst forth and flooded in a splendour of light, the altar, Bishop Talleyrand, his four hundred clergy, and the king with upraised hand. The solemn music of the _Te Deum_ mingled with the wild paean of joy and enthusiasm that burst from half a million throats.

The unconscionable folly, the feeble-minded vacillation and miserable trickery by which this magnificent popularity was muddled away is one of the saddest tragedies in the stories of kings. It is clear from Sir S. Romilly's letters that after the acceptance of the Const.i.tution, Louis was popular among all cla.s.ses. But the people, with unerring instinct, had fixed on the queen as one of the chief obstacles to what might have been a peaceful revolution. Neither Marie Antoinette nor Louis Capet comprehended the tremendous significance of the forces they were playing with--the resolute and invincible determination of a people of twenty-six millions to emanc.i.p.ate itself from the acc.u.mulated wrongs of centuries. "_Eh bien! factieux_," said Marie to the Commissioners from the a.s.sembly after the return from Varennes, "_vous triomphez encore!_" The despatches and opinions of American amba.s.sadors during this period are of much value. The democratic Thomas Jefferson, reviewing in later years the course of events, declared that had there been no queen there would have been no revolution. Governor Morris, whose anti-revolutionary and conservative leanings made him the friend and confidant of the royal family, writes to Was.h.i.+ngton on January 1790: "If only the reigning prince were not the small-beer character he is, and even only tolerably watchful of events, he would regain his authority," but "what would you have," he continues scornfully "from a creature who, in his situation, eats, drinks, and sleeps well, and laughs, and is as merry a grig as lives.

He must float along on the current of events and is absolutely a cypher." Nor would the court forego its crooked ways. "The queen is even more imprudent," Morris writes in 1791, "and the whole court is given up to petty intrigues worthy only of footmen and chambermaids."

Moreover, in its amazing inept.i.tude, the monarchy had already toyed with republicanism by lending active military support to the revolutionists in America, at a cost to the already over-burdened treasury of 1,200,000,000 livres.

The American amba.s.sador, Benjamin Franklin, was crowned at court with laurel as the apostle of liberty, and in the very palace of Versailles, medallions of Franklin were sold, bearing the inscription: "_Eripui coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis_" ("I have s.n.a.t.c.hed the lightning from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants"). The revolutionary song, _ca ira_, owes its origin to Franklin's invariable response to inquiries as to the progress of the American revolutionary movement.[166] There was explosive material enough in France to make playing with celestial fire perilous, and while the political atmosphere was heavy with the threatening storm, thousands of French soldiers returned saturated with enthusiasm and sympathy for the American revolution. Already before the Feast of the Federation the queen had been in secret correspondence with the _emigres_ at Turin and at Coblenz who were conspiring to throttle the nascent liberty of France. Madame Campan relates that the queen made her read a confidential letter from the Empress Catherine of Russia, concluding with these words: "Kings ought to proceed in their career undisturbed by the cries of the people as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the howling of dogs." Mirabeau was already in the pay of the monarchy; and attempts were made to buy over Robespierre, who up to 10th August was an avowed defender of the Const.i.tution, by an offer of the emoluments and the nominal post of tutor to the dauphin in return for his support of the royal cause.

[Footnote 166: When Sir S. Romilly called on Franklin in 1783, the latter expressed his amazement that the French Government had permitted the publication of the American Const.i.tution, which produced a great impression in Paris. The music of _ca ira_, taken from a dance tune, _Le Carillon National_, very popular in the _guinguettes_ of Paris, has been published in the _Revolution Francaise_ for 16th December 1898.]

As early as December 1790 the court had been in secret communication with the foreigner. Louis' brother, the Count of Artois (afterwards Charles X.), with the queen's and king's approval, had made a secret treaty with the House of Hapsburg, the hereditary enemy of France, by which the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia and Spain agreed to cross the frontier at a given signal, and close on France with an army a hundred thousand strong. It was an act of impious treachery, and the beginning of the doom of the French Monarchy. Yet if but some glimmer of intelligence and courage had characterised the preparations for the flight of the royal family to join the armed forces waiting to receive them near the frontier, their lives at least had been saved.

The incidents of the four months' "secret" preparations to leave the Tuileries as described by Madame Campan--the disguised purchases of elaborate wardrobes of underlinen and gowns; the making of a dressing-case of enormous size, fitted with many and various articles from a warming-pan to a silver porringer; the packing of the diamonds--read like scenes in a comedy. The story of the pretended flight of the Russian baroness and her family; the start delayed by the queen losing her way in the slums of the Carrousel; the colossal folly of the whole business has been told by Carlyle in one of the most dramatic chapters in history.

The a.s.sembly declared on hearing of Louis' flight, that the government of the country was unaffected and that the executive power remained in the hands of the ministers. After voting a levy of three hundred thousand National Guards to meet the threatened invasion, they pa.s.sed calmly to the discussion of the new Penal Code.

The king returned to Paris through an immense and silent mult.i.tude.

"Whoever applauds the king," said placards in the street, "shall be thrashed; whoever insults him, hung." The idea of a republic as a practical issue of the situation was now for the first time put forward by the extremists, but met with little sympathy, and a Republican demonstration in the Champ de Mars was suppressed by the a.s.sembly by martial law at the cost of many lives. Owing to the aversion felt by Marie Antoinette to Lafayette, who with affectionate loyalty more than once had risked his popularity and life to serve the crown, the court made the fatal mistake of opposing his election to the mayoralty of Paris and paved the way for the triumph of Petion and of the Dantonists.

At the news of the first victories of the invading Prussians and _emigres_, Louis added to his amazing tale of follies by vetoing the formation of a camp near Paris and by turning a deaf ear to the earnest entreaties of the brave and sagacious Dumouriez and accepting his resignation. He sent a secret agent with confidential instructions to the _emigres_ and the coalesced foreign armies: the ill-starred proclamation[167] of the Duke of Brunswick completed the destruction of the monarchy. While the French were smarting under defeat and stung by the knowledge that their natural defender, the king, was leagued with their enemies, this foreign soldier warned a high-spirited and gallant nation that he was come to restore Louis XVI. to his authority, and threatened to treat as rebellious any town that opposed his march, to shoot all persons taken with arms in their hands, and in the event of any insult being offered to the royal family to take exemplary and memorable vengeance by delivering up the city of Paris to military execution and complete demolition. When the proclamation reached Paris at the end of July 1792, it sounded the death knell of the king and the triumph of the Republicans. Paris was now to become, in Goethe's phrase, the centre of the "world whirlwind"--a storm centre launching forth thunderbolts of terror. After the a.s.sembly had twice refused to bring the king to trial, the extremists were able to organise and direct an irresistible wave of popular indignation towards the Tuileries, and on 10th August the palace was stormed.

While a band of brave and devoted Swiss guards was being cut to pieces in hundreds, the feeble and futile king had fled to the a.s.sembly and was sitting safely with his wife and children in a box behind the president's chair.

[Footnote 167: It was composed by one of the _emigres_, M. de Limon, approved by the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, and signed, against his better judgment, by the Duke of Brunswick.]

No room for compromise now. The printed trial of Charles I. was everywhere sold and read. "This," people said, "was how the English dealt with an impossible king and became a free nation." Old and new were in death-grapple, and the lives of many victims, for the people lost heavily,[168] had sealed the cause of the Revolution with a b.l.o.o.d.y consecration. Unhappily, the city of Paris, like all great towns in times of scarcity (and since 1780 scarcity had become almost permanent), had been invaded by numbers of starving vagabonds--the dregs that always rise to the surface in periods of political convulsion, ready for any villainy. When news came of the capture of Verdun, of the indecent joy of the courtiers, and that the road to Paris was open to the avenging army of Prussians, the horrors of the Armagnac ma.s.sacres were renewed during four September days at the prisons of Paris, while the revolutionary ministry and the a.s.sembly averted their gaze and, to their everlasting shame, abdicated their powers. The September ma.s.sacres were the application by a minority of desperate and savage revolutionists of the _ultima ratio_ of kings to a desperate situation: the tragedy of King Louis is the tragedy of a feeble prince called to rule in a tremendous crisis, where weakness and well-meaning folly are the fatalest of crimes.

[Footnote 168: The numbers have been variously estimated from 100 to 5000 killed on the popular side.]

On 21st September 1792 royalty was formally abolished, and on the 22nd, when "the equinoctional sun marked the equality of day and night in the heavens," civil equality was proclaimed at Paris.

CHAPTER XVIII

_Execution of the King--Paris under the First Republic--the Terror--Napoleon--Revolutionary and Modern Paris_

An inscription opposite No. 230 Rue de Rivoli indicates the site of the old Salle du Manege, or Riding School,[169] of the Tuileries, where the destinies of modern France were debated. Three a.s.semblies--the Const.i.tuent, the Legislative and the prodigious National Convention--filled its long, poorly-furnished amphitheatre, decorated with the tattered flags captured from the Prussians and Austrians, from 7th November 1789 to 9th May 1793.

[Footnote 169: The Academie d'equitation was an expensive and exclusive establishment where the young n.o.bles and gentlemen of fortune were taught fencing, riding and dancing. It was long and narrow, 240 feet by 60, and only the most powerful voices could be heard in the a.s.sembly. The Rue de Rivoli between the Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione cuts through the site.]

There, on Wednesday, 16th January 1793, began the solemn judgment of Louis XVI. by 721 representatives of the people of France. The sitting opened at ten o'clock in the morning, but not till eight in the evening did the procession of deputies begin, as the roll was called, to ascend the tribune, and utter their word of doom. All that long winter's night, and all the ensuing short winter's day, the fate of a king trembled in the balance, as the judgment: death--banishment: banishment--death, with awful alternation echoed through the hall.

Amid the speeches of the deputies was heard the chatter of fas.h.i.+onable women in the boxes, p.r.i.c.king with pins on cards the votes for and against death, and eating ices and oranges brought to them by friendly deputies. Above, in the public tribunes, sat women of the people, greeting the words of the deputies with coa.r.s.e gibes. Betting went on outside. At every entrance, cries, hoa.r.s.e and shrill, were heard of hawkers selling "The Trial of Charles I." Time-serving Philip Egalite, Duke of Orleans, voted _la mort_, but failed to save his skin. An Englishman was there--Thomas Paine, author of the _Rights of Man_ and deputy for Calais. His voice was raised for clemency, for temporary detention, and banishment after the peace. "My vote is that of Paine,"

cried a member, "his authority is final for me." One deputy was carried from a sick-bed to cast his vote in the scale of mercy; others slumbering on the benches were awakened and gave their votes of death between two yawns. At length, by eight o'clock on the evening of the 17th, exactly twenty-four hours after the voting began, the President rose to read the result. A most august and terrible silence reigned in the a.s.sembly as President Vergniaud rose and p.r.o.nounced the sentence "Death" in the name of the French nation. The details of the voting as given in the _Journal de Perlet_, 18th January 1793, are as follows: "Of the 745 members one had died, six were sick, two absent without cause, eleven absent on commission, four abstained from voting. The absolute majority was therefore 361. Three hundred and sixty-six voted for death, three hundred and nineteen for detention and banishment, two for the galleys, twenty-four for death with various reservations, eight for death with stay of execution until after the peace, two for delay with power of commutation." Three Protestant ministers and eighteen Catholic priests voted for death. Louis' defenders were there and asked to be heard; they were admitted to the honours of the sitting. At eleven o'clock the weary business of thirty-seven hours was ended, only, however, to be resumed the next morning, for yet another vote must decide between delay or summary execution. Again the voice of Paine was heard pleading for mercy, but without avail. At three o'clock on Sunday morning the final voting was over. Six hundred and ninety members were present, of whom three hundred and eighty voted for death within twenty-four hours.

To the guillotine on the fatal Place de la Revolution, formerly Place Louis XV., the very scene of a terrible panic at his wedding festivities which cost the lives of hundreds of sightseers, the sixteenth Louis of France was led on the morning of 21st January 1793.

As he turned to address the people, Santerre ordered the drums to beat--it was the echo of the drums reverberating through history which had smothered the cries of the Protestant martyrs sent to the scaffold by the fourteenth Louis a century before. This was the beginning of that _annee terrible_, into which was crowded the most stupendous struggle in modern history. Threatened by the monarchies of Europe, united to crush the Revolution, France, in the tremendous words of Danton, flung to the coalesced kings, the head of a king as a gage of battle. A colossal energy, an unquenchable devotion were evoked by the supreme crisis, and directed by a committee of nine inexperienced young civilians, sitting in a room of the Tuileries at Paris, to whom later Carnot, an engineer officer, was added. "The whole Republic,"

they proclaimed, "is a great besieged city: let France be a vast camp.

Every age is called to defend the liberty of the Fatherland. The young men will fight: the married will forge arms. Women will make clothes and tents: children will tear old linen for lint. Old men shall be carried to the market-place to inflame the courage of all."

In twenty-four hours, 60,000 men were enrolled; in two months, fourteen armies organised. Saltpetre for powder failed; it was torn from the bowels of the earth. Steel, too, and bronze were lacking: iron railings were trans.m.u.ted into swords, and church bells and royal statues into cannon. Paris became a vast armourer's shop. Smithy fires in hundreds roared and anvils clanged in the open places--one hundred and forty at the Invalides, fifty-four at the Luxembourg. The women sang as they worked:--

"Cousons, filons, cousons bien, V'la des habits de notre fabrique Pour l'hiver qui vient.

Soldats de la Patrie Vous ne manquerez de rien."[170]

[Footnote 170: "Sew we, spin we, sew we well, behold the coats we have made for the winter that is coming. Soldiers of the Fatherland, ye shall want for nothing."]

The smiths chanted to the rhythm of their strokes:--

"Forgeons, forgeons, forgeons bien!"