The History of French Revolution. Taine Hippolyte

1228 lead the majority, and they do not allow them to free themselves.—On the 28th of May, Malouet, having demanded a secret session to discuss the conciliatory measures which the King had proposed, the galleries hoot at him, and a deputy, M. Bourche, addresses him in very plain terms. "You must know, sir, that we are deliberating here in the presence of our masters, and that we must account to them for our opinions." This is the doctrine of the Contrat-Social. Through timidity, fear of the Court and of the privileged class, through optimism and faith in human nature, through enthusiasm and the necessity of adhering to previous actions, the deputies, who are novices, provincial, and given up to theories, neither dare nor know how to escape from the tyranny of the prevailing dogma.—Henceforth it becomes the law. All the Assemblies, the Constituent, the Legislative, the Convention,1229 submit to it entirely. The public in the galleries is the admitted representatives of the people, under the same title, and even under a higher title, than the deputies. Now, this public is that of the Palais-Royal, consisting of strangers, idlers, lovers of novelties, Paris romancers, leaders of the coffee-houses, the future pillars of the clubs, in short, the wild enthusiasts among the middle-class, just as the crowd which threatens doors and throws stones is recruited from among the wild enthusiasts of the lowest class. Thus by an involuntary selection, the faction which constitutes itself a public power is composed of nothing but violent minds and violent hands. Spontaneously and without previous concert dangerous fanatics are joined with dangerous brutes, and in the increasing discord between the legal authorities this is the illegal league which is certain to overthrow all.

When a commanding general sits in council with his staff-officers and his counselors, and discusses the plan of a campaign, the chief public interest is that discipline should remain intact, and that intruders, soldiers, or menials, should not throw the weight of their turbulence and thoughtlessness into the scales which have to be cautiously and firmly held by their chiefs. This was the express demand of the Government;1230 but the demand was not regarded; and against the persistent usurpation of the multitude nothing is left to it but the employment of force. But force itself is slipping from its hands, while growing disobedience, like a contagion, after having gained the people is spreading among the troops.—From the 23rd of June,1231 two companies of the French Guards refused to do duty. Confined to their barracks, they on the 27th break out, and henceforth "they are seen every evening entering the Palais-Royal, marching in double file." They know the place well; it is the general rendezvous of the abandoned women whose lovers and parasites they are.1232 "The patriots all gather around them, treat them to ice cream and wine, and debauch them in the face of their officers."—To this, moreover, must be added the fact that their colonel, M. du Châtelet, has long been odious to them, that he has fatigued them with forced drills, worried them and diminished the number of their sergeants; that he suppressed the school for the education of the children of their musicians; that he uses the stick in punishing the men, and picks quarrels with them about their appearance, their board, and their clothing. This regiment is lost to discipline: a secret society has been formed in it, and the soldiers have pledged themselves to their ensigns not to act against the National Assembly. Thus the confederation between them and the Palais-Royal is established.—On the 30th of June, eleven of their leaders, taken off to the Abbaye, write to claim their assistance. A young man mounts a chair in front of the Café Foy and reads their letter aloud; a band sets out on the instant, forces the gate with a sledge-hammer and iron bars, brings back the prisoners in triumph, gives them a feast in the garden and mounts guard around them to prevent their being re-taken.—When disorders of this kind go unpunished, order cannot be maintained; in fact, on the morning of the 14th of July, five out of six battalions had deserted.—As to the other corps, they are no better and are also seduced. "Yesterday," Desmoulins writes, "the artillery regiment followed the example of the French Guards, overpowering the sentinels and coming over to mingle with the patriots in the Palais-Royal. … We see nothing but the rabble attaching themselves to soldiers whom they chance to encounter. 'Allons, Vive le Tiers-Etat!' and they lead them off to a tavern to drink the health of the Commons." Dragoons tell the officers who are marching them to Versailles: "We obey you, but you may tell the ministers on our arrival that if we are ordered to use the least violence against our fellow-citizens, the first shot shall be for you." At the Invalides twenty men, ordered to remove the cocks and ramrods from the guns stored in a threatened arsenal, devote six hours to rendering twenty guns useless; their object is to keep them intact for plunder and for the arming of the people.

      In short, the largest portion of the army has deserted. However kind a superior officer might be, the fact of his being a superior officer secures for him the treatment of an enemy. The governor, "M. de Sombreuil, against whom these people could utter no reproach," will soon see his artillerists point their guns at his apartment, and will just escape being hung on the iron-railings by their own hands. Thus the force which is brought forward to suppress insurrection only serves to furnish it with recruits. And even worse, for the display of arms that was relied on to restrain the mob, furnished the instigation to rebellion.

VI.—July 13th and 14th 1789.

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The fatal moment has arrived; it is no longer a government which falls that it may give way to another; it is all government which ceases to exist in order to make way for an intermittent despotism, for factions blindly impelled on by enthusiasm, credulity, misery, and fear.1233 Like a tame elephant suddenly become wild again, the mob throws off it ordinary driver, and the new guides who it tolerates perched on its neck are there simply for show. In future it will move along as it pleases, freed from control, and abandoned to its own feelings, instincts, and appetites.—Apparently, there was no desire to do more than anticipate its aberrations. The King has forbidden all violence; the commanders order the troops not to fire;1234 but the excited and wild animal takes all precautions for insults; in future, it intends to be its own conductor, and, to begin, it treads its guides under foot.—On the 12th of July, near noon,1235 on the news of the dismissal of Necker, a cry of rage arises in the Palais-Royal; Camille Desmoulins, mounted on a table, announces that the Court meditates "a St. Bartholomew of patriots." The crowd embrace him, adopt the green cockade which he has proposed, and oblige the dancing-saloons and theaters to close in sign of mourning: they hurry off to the residence of Curtius, and take the busts of the Duke of Orleans and of Necker and carry them about in triumph.—Meanwhile, the dragoons of the Prince de Lambesc, drawn up on the Place Louis-Quinze, find a barricade of chairs at the entrance of the Tuileries, and are greeted with a shower of stones and bottles.1236 Elsewhere, on the Boulevard, before the Hôtel Montmorency, some of the French Guards, escaped from their barracks, fired on a loyal detachment of the "Royal Allemand."—The alarm bell is sounding on all sides, the shops where arms are sold are pillaged, and the Hôtel-de-Ville is invaded; fifteen or sixteen well-disposed electors, who meet there, order the districts to be assembled and armed.—The new sovereign, the people in arms and in the street, has declared himself.

The dregs of society at once come to the surface. During the night between the 12th and 13th of July,1237 "all the barriers, from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, besides those of the Faubourgs Saint-Marcel and Saint-Jacques, are forced and set on fire." There is no longer an octroi; the city is without a revenue just at the moment when it is obliged to make the heaviest expenditures; but this is of no consequence to the mob, which, above all things, wants to have cheap wine. "Ruffians, armed with pikes and sticks, proceed in several parties to give up to pillage the houses of those who are