: The Chautauquan Vol. 04 April 1884 No. 7 by Chautauqua Institution Chautauqua Literary And Scientific Circle Flood Theodore L Editor - Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Periodicals; Chautauqua Institution Periodicals

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Transcriber's Note: This table of contents of this periodical was created for the HTML version to aid the reader.

REQUIRED READING

FOR THE

APRIL.

READINGS FROM FRENCH HISTORY.

To the government of this crumbling edifice and this murmuring people came Louis, with his good heart, his boyish timidity, and his woful inexperience. His queen, Marie Antoinette, was a daughter of Maria Theresa, fair, generous and impetuous. Surrounded by eager courtiers, and saluted for the first time as king and queen, they fell upon their knees, and cried, weeping, "Oh God, guide us! Protect us! We are too young to reign!"

The guards, when called out to disperse the mobs, refused to fire. The citizens formed themselves into a national guard. The foodless multitude attacked and pillaged in various quarters. The barriers were fired; and on the 14th of July, this wild army appeared before the walls of the Bastile. Stanch in his principles of military honor, the aged Marquis de Launay, then governor of the prison, refused to surrender, raised the drawbridge, and fired upon the multitude. His feeble garrison, consisting of eighty-two invalids and thirty-two Swiss, was menaced by thousands. The siege lasted four hours. The besiegers were joined by the French guards--cannon were brought--De Launay capitulated--the drawbridge was lowered, and the Bastile taken. Taken by a lawless sea of raging rebels, who forthwith massacred the governor, his lieutenant, and some of the aged invalids--set fire to the building, and razed it to the ground--freed the few prisoners found in the cells--garnished their pikes with the evidences of murder, and so paraded Paris. From this moment the people were supreme. The troops were dismissed from Versailles--Necker was recalled--the king visited Paris, and was invested at the Hotel de Ville with the tri-colored emblem of democracy.

Then began the first emigration. The Count d'Artois, the Prince of Cond?, the Polignacs, and other noble and royal families, deserted in the moment of peril, and from beyond the frontiers witnessed the revolution in ignoble safety. The king and his family remained at Versailles, sad at heart amid their presence-chambers and garden-groves, just four leagues from volcanic Paris. Hither, from time to time, during the few days that intervened between the 14th of July and the 4th of August, came strange tidings of a revolution which was no longer Parisian, but national--tidings of provincial gatherings--of burning chateaux--of sudden vengeances done upon unpopular officials, intendants, tax-gatherers, and the like. It was plain that the First Estate must bow its proud head before the five-and-twenty savage millions, make restitution, speak well, smile fairly--or die. The memorable 4th of August came, when the nobles did this, making an ample confession of their weakness. The Viscount de Noailles proposed to reform the taxation by subjecting to it every order and rank; by regulating it according to the fortune of the individual; and by abolishing personal servitude, and every remaining vestige of the feudal system. An enthusiasm, which was half fear and half reckless excitement, spread throughout the Assembly. The aristocrats rose in their places and publicly renounced their seignorial dues, privileges, and immunities. The clergy abolished tithes and tributes. The representative bodies resigned their municipal rights. All this availed but little; and should have been done many months before to have weighed with the impatient commons. The people scorned a generosity which relinquished only that which was untenable, and cared little for the recognition of a political equality that had already been established with the pike. The Assembly was at this time divided into three parties--that of the aristocracy, composed of the greater part of the noblesse and clergy; that of the moderate party, headed by M. Necker; and that of the republicans, among whom the most conspicuous were Lafayette, Si?yes, Robespierre, and the great, the impetuous, the profligate Mirabeau. But theirs was not the only deliberative body. A minor assembly, consisting of one hundred and eighty electors; a mass of special assemblies of mechanics, tradesmen, servants, and others; and a huge incongruous mob at the Palais Royal, met daily and nightly for purposes of discussion. These demonstrations, and the extreme opinions to which they hourly gave rise, alarmed the little court yet lingering around the king. They persuaded him that he must have military assistance, and the troops were, unhappily, recalled to Versailles.

The regiment of Flanders and a body of dragoons came, and on the 1st of October the newly-arrived officers were invited to a grand banquet by their comrades of the royal body-guard. After the dinner was removed and the wine had begun to circulate, the queen presented herself with the Dauphin in her arms, and her husband at her side. Cries of loyalty and enthusiasm burst forth--their healths were drunk with drawn swords--the tri-colored cockades were trampled under foot, and white ones, emblematic of Bourbon, were distributed by the maids of honor. The news of this fatal evening flew to Paris. Exasperated by the arrival of the soldiery--by the insult offered to the tri-color--by the fear of famine and civil war--the mob rose in fury, and with cries of "Bread! bread!" poured out of Paris and took the road to Versailles. Here, sending messages, threats, and deputations to the king and to the Assembly, the angry thousands encamped for the night, in inclement weather, round about the palace. Toward morning a grate leading into the grand court was found to be unfastened, and the mob rushed in. On they went, across the marble court and up the grand staircase. The body-guards defended themselves valiantly and raised the alarm--the queen fled, half-dressed, to the king's chamber--the "living deluge" poured through galleries and reception-rooms, making straight for the queen's apartments. On this terrible day, Marie Antoinette was, above all, the object of popular hatred. Separated now from the revolutionists by the hall of the OEil-de-Boeuf, where the faithful remnant of body-guards had assembled to defend them to the last, the royal family listened tremblingly to the battering of the axes on the yet unbroken doors. At this moment of peril came Lafayette, with the national guard of Paris, and succeeded in clearing the palace, in pacifying the multitude, and in rescuing, for the time, the hapless group in the king's apartments. The mob, now driven outside, demanded that Louis should show himself, and go to Paris with his family. Refusal and remonstrance were alike useless. The royal carriage was brought out, the king and his family took their places, the mob thronged round, and so, with the defeated body-guards in the midst, and some bloody trophies of the struggle carried forward upon pikes, the mournful procession went from Versailles to Paris. Lodged thenceforth in the Tuileries, treated with personal disrespect, and subjected to all the restrictions of imprisonment, Louis and his queen supported indignities with dignity, and insult with resignation.

On the 4th of September, M. Necker relinquished his office. He had been so courageous as to oppose the decree of the 16th of June, by which all distinctions of titles, armorial bearings, and other hereditary honors were abolished. From having been the idol of the republicans he now found himself dangerously unpopular, and so retired in safety to Geneva. During all this time the emigration of the noblesse went on. Assembling upon the German frontier toward the spring-time of the year 1791, they formed themselves into an army under the command of the Prince of Cond?, and adopted for their motto, "Conquer or die." Fearful, however, of endangering the king's personal safety, they took no measures to stay the tide of rebellion, but hovered by the Rhine, watchful and threatening. Soon the king and queen, their two children, and the Princess Elizabeth, sister to the king, were the only members of the royal family left in Paris. Flight had long been talked of and frequently delayed; but at last everything was arranged, and Monday night, June 20, 1791, was fixed for the attempt. Eluding the vigilance of the guards, they stole out of the palace in disguise, and after numerous delays and misapprehensions, during which the queen lost her way in the Rue de Bac, they entered a hackney-coach driven by the Count de Fersen, and exchanged it, at the gate St. Martin, for a carriage and four. Thus, never pausing, they passed Chalons, and arrived at St. Menehould. Here they were to have been met by some cavalry, commanded by the Marquis de Bouill?; but the time fixed for their arrival was so long gone by that the escort, weary of waiting, had given them up, and gone on to Varennes. Stopping to change horses at St. Menehould, the king was recognized; and at Varennes, within reach of Bouill?'s soldiers, he was stopped and questioned. The national guard flew to arms--an aid-de-camp came up in breathless haste, seeking the fugitives and bearing the decree of arrest--the horses' heads were turned toward Paris, and the last chance for life and liberty was past! After a return-journey of eight days, the king and his family re?ntered the capital, and were received in profound silence by an immense concourse. More closely guarded, more mistrusted than ever, he was now suspended by the National Assembly from those sovereign functions which he had so long ceased to exercise or possess. In the meantime the articles of a new Constitution had been drawn up, and were publicly ratified by the royal oath and signature on the 14th of September. The National Assembly, having completed this work, dissolved itself on the 30th, and the members of the new, or legislative assembly, took their seats on the 1st of October, 1791.

In the meantime, enraged at this interference of the foreign powers, and fluctuating between apprehension and exultation, the Parisian mob and the extreme republican party came to regard the king with increased enmity. He was named in the Assembly with violent opprobrium; the mob, incited to fury by Robespierre and his associates, demanded the abolition of the royal authority; and on the 10th of August the palace of the Tuileries was attacked. The national guards, who had been appointed to the defence of the courtyards, went over to the insurgents, and pointed their cannon against the chateau. Only the gallant Swiss were left, and they, overpowered by numbers and fighting gallantly to the last, were literally cut to pieces. The king and his family escaped to the National Assembly, and on the 14th were removed to the old Temple prison. From this time the reign of terror may properly be said to have begun. The chronicles of September are written in blood. Supreme in power as in crime, the party of the F?d?r?s, or Red Republicans, secured the barriers, sounded the tocsin, and proceeded to clear the prisons by an indiscriminate massacre. Nobles and priests, aged men and delicate women, all who were guilty of good birth, loyalty, or religion, were slain without distinction. The inmates of the Abbaye, the Conciergerie, the Carmes, La Force, and the Bic?tre were all murdered, after a hideous mockery of trial, at which neither innocence nor evidence availed. The head of the beautiful and hapless Princess de Lamballe was paraded about Paris on a pike, and displayed before the eyes of the wretched prisoners in the Temple, whose confidential friend and companion she had been. Mademoiselle de Sombreuil only saved her father's life by drinking a goblet of blood. Mademoiselle Cazotte flung herself between her father and the murderers. Instances of the sublimest resignation, of the loftiest courage, are abundant amid the records of this appalling period. Thirteen thousand souls are said to have been sacrificed in Paris alone, and similar massacres were perpetrated at Orleans, at Rheims, at Lyons, and at Meaux. On the 21st of September, the legislative assembly, having presided for the allotted space of one year, was succeeded by a new body of representatives, chiefly consisting of the extreme republican party, and known by the name of the National Convention. To abolish the statutes of the kings, to leave the offices of government open to men of every condition, to persecute the members of the more moderate faction, and to impeach the king before the bar of the convention, were among the first acts of the new government.

The government, after the king was deposed, was placed in the hands of the National Assembly--or Convention, as it now called itself--of deputies chosen by the people.

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