The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI

CHAPTER XI.
IN THE MORNING

The early sunbeams shone on two horsemen riding at a walking pace along the deserted water-side by the Tuileries. They were Colonel Mandat and his aid.

At one A. M. he was summoned to the City Hall, and refused to go; but on the order being renewed more peremptorily at two, Attorney Roederer said to him:

"Mark, colonel, that under the law the commander of the National Guard is to obey the City Government."

He decided to go, ignorant of two things.

In the first place, forty-seven sections of the forty-eight had joined to the town rulers each three commissioners, with orders to work with the officials and "save the country." Mandat expected to see the old board as before, and not at all to behold a hundred and forty-one fresh faces. Again, he had no idea of the order from this same board to clear the New Bridge of cannon and vacate St. John's Arcade, an order so important that Danton and Manuel personally had superintended its execution.

Consequently, on reaching the Pont Neuf, Mandat was stupefied to find it utterly deserted. He stopped and sent his aid to scout. In ten minutes this officer returned with the word that he saw no guns or National Guards, while the neighborhood was as lonesome as the bridge.

Mandat continued his way, though he perhaps ought to have gone back to the palace; but men, like things, must wend whither their destiny impels.

Proportionably to his approach to the City Hall, he seemed to enter into liveliness. In the same way as the blood in some organizations leaves the extremities cold and pale on rushing back to fortify the heart, so all the movement and heat – the Revolution, in short – was around the City Hall, the seat of popular life, the heart of that great body, Paris.

He stopped to send his officer to the Arcade; but the National Guard had been withdrawn from there, too. He wanted to retrace his steps; but the crowd had packed in behind him, and he was carried, like a waif on the wave, up the Hall steps.

"Stay here," he said to his follower, "and if evil befalls me, run and tell them at the palace."

Mandat yielded to the mob, and was floated into the grand hall, where he met strange and stern faces. It was the insurrection complete, demanding an account of the conduct of this man, who had not only tried to crush it in its development, but to strangle it in its birth.

One of the members of the Commune, the dread body which was to stifle the Assembly and struggle with the Convention, advanced and in the general's name asked:

"By whose order did you double the palace guard?"

"The Mayor of Paris'."

"Show that order."

"I left it at the Tuileries, so that it might be carried out during my absence."

"Why did you order out the cannon?"

"Because I set the battalion on the march, and the field-pieces move with the regiment."

"Where is Petion?"

"He was at the palace when I last saw him."

"A prisoner?"

"No; he was strolling about the gardens."

The interrogation was interrupted here by a new member bringing an unsealed letter, of which he asked leave to make communication. Mandat had no need to do more than cast a glance on this note to acknowledge that he was lost; he recognized his own writing. It was his order to the commanding officer at St. John's Arcade, sent at one in the morning, for him to attack in the rear the mob making for the palace, while the battalion on New Bridge attacked it in flank. This order had fallen into the Commune's hands after the dismissal of the soldiers.

The examination was over; for what could be more damning than this letter in any admissions of the accused?

The council decided that Mandat should be imprisoned in the abbey. The tale goes that the chairman of the board, in saying, "Remove the prisoner," made a sweep of the hand, edge downward, like chopping with an ax. As the guillotine was not in use then, it must have been an arranged sign – perhaps by the Invisibles, whose Grand Copt had divined that instrument.

At all events, the result showed that the sign was taken to imply death.

Hardly had Mandat gone down three of the City Hall steps before a pistol-shot shattered his skull, at the very instant when his son ran toward him. Three years before, the same reception had met Flesselles.

Mandat was only wounded, but as he rose, he fell again with a score of pike-wounds. The boy held out his hands and wailed for his father, but none paid any heed to him. Presently, in the bloody ring, where bare arms plunged amid flashing pikes and swords, a head was seen to surge up, detached from the trunk.

The boy swooned.

The aid-de-camp galloped back to the Tuileries to report what he had witnessed.

The murderers went off in two gangs: one took the body to the river, to throw it in, the other carried the head through the streets.

This was going on at four in the morning.

Let us precede the aid to the Tuileries, and see what was happening.

Having confessed, and made easy about matters since his conscience was tranquilized, the king, unable to resist the cravings of nature, went to bed. But we must say that he lay down dressed.

On the alarm-bells ringing more loudly, and the roll of the drums beating the reveille, he was roused.

Colonel Chesnaye, to whom Mandat had left his powers, awoke the monarch to have him address the National Guards, and by his presence and some timely words revive their enthusiasm.

The king rose, but half awake, dull and staggering. He was wearing a powdered wig, and he had flattened all the side he had lain upon. The hair-dresser could not be found, so he had to go out with the wig out of trim.

Notified that the king was going to show himself to the defenders, the queen ran out from the council hall where she was.

In contrast with the poor sovereign, whose dim sight sought no one's glance, whose mouth-muscles were flabby and palpitating with involuntary twitches, while his violet coat suggested he was wearing mourning for majesty, the queen was burning with fever, although pale. Her eyes were red, though dry.

She kept close to this phantom of monarchy, who came out in the day instead of midnight, with owlish, blinking eyes. She hoped to inspire him with her overflow of life, strength, and courage.

All went well enough while this exhibition was in the rooms, though the National Guards, mixed in with the noblemen, seeing their ruler close to this poor, flaccid, heavy man, who had so badly failed on a similar occasion at Varennes, wondered if this really was the monarch whose poetical legend the women and the priests were already beginning to weave.

This was not the one they had expected to see.

The aged Duke of Mailly – with one of those good intentions destined to be another paving-stone for down below – drew his rapier, and sinking down at the foot of the king, vowed in a quavering voice to die, he and the old nobility which he represented, for the grandson of Henry IV. Here were two blunders: the National Guards had no great sympathy for the old nobility, and they were not here to defend the descendant of Henry IV., but the constitutional king.

So, in reply to a few shouts of "Hail to the king!" cheers for the nation burst forth on all sides.

Something to make up for this coolness was sought. The king was urged to go down into the royal yard. Alas! the poor potentate had no will of his own. Disturbed at his meals, and cheated, with only one hour's sleep instead of seven, he was but an automaton, receiving impetus from outside its material nature.

Who gave this impetus? The queen, a woman of nerve, who had neither slept nor eaten.

Some unhappy characters fail in all they undertake, when circumstances are beyond their level. Instead of attracting dissenters, Louis XVI., in going up to them, seemed expressly made to show how little glamour majesty can lend a man who has no genius or strength of mind.

Here, as in the rooms, when the Royalists managed to get up a shout of "Long live the king!" an immense hurrah for the nation replied to them.

The Royalists being dull enough to persist, the patriots overwhelmed them with "No, no, no; no other ruler than the nation!"

And the king, almost supplicating, added: "Yes, my sons, the nation and the monarch make but one henceforward."

"Bring the prince," whispered Marie Antoinette to Princess Elizabeth; "perhaps the sight of a child may touch them."

While they were looking for the dauphin, the king continued the sad review. The bad idea struck him to appeal to the artillerists, who were mainly Republicans. If the king had the gift of speech-making, he might have forced the men to listen to him, though their belief led them astray, for it would have been a daring step, and it might have helped him to face the cannon; but there was nothing exhilarating in his words or gesture; he stammered.

The Royalists tried to cover his stammerings with the luckless hail of "Long live the king!" already twice a failure, and it nearly brought about a collision.

Some cannoniers left their places and rushed over to the king, threatening him with their fists, and saying:

"Do you think that we will shoot down our brothers to defend a traitor like you?"

The queen drew the king back.

"Here comes the dauphin!" called out voices. "Long live the hope of the realm!"

Nobody took up the cry. The poor boy had come in at the wrong time; as theatrical language says, he had missed his cue.

The king went back into the palace, a downright retreat – almost a flight. When he got to his private rooms he dropped, puffing and blowing, into an easy-chair.

Stopping by the door, the queen looked around for some support. She spied Charny standing up by the door of her own rooms, and she went over to him.

"Ah, all is lost!" she moaned.

"I am afraid so, my lady," replied the Life Guardsman.

"Can we not still flee?"

"It is too late."

"What is left for us to do, then?"

"We can but die," responded Charny, bowing.

The queen heaved a sigh, and went into her own rooms.

CHAPTER XII.
THE FIRST MASSACRE

Mandat had hardly been slain, before the Commune nominated Santerre as commanding general in his stead, and he ordered the drums to beat in all the town and the bells to be rung harder than ever in all the steeples. He sent out patrols to scour the ways, and particularly to scout around the Assembly.

Some twenty prowlers were made prisoners, of whom half escaped before morning, leaving eleven in the Feuillants' guard-house. In their midst was a dandified young gentleman in the National Guard uniform, the newness of which, the superiority of his weapons, and the elegance of his style, made them suspect he was an aristocrat. He was quite calm. He said that he went to the palace on an order, which he showed the examining committee of the Feuillants' ward. It ran:

"The National Guard, bearer of this paper, will go to the palace to learn what the state of affairs is, and return to report to the Attorney-and-Syndic-General of the Department.

(Signed) "Boirie,

"Leroulx,

"Municipal Officers."

The order was plain enough, but it was thought that the signatures were forged, and it was sent to the City Hall by a messenger to have them verified.

This last arrest had brought a large crowd around the place, and some such voices as are always to be heard at popular gatherings yelled for the prisoner's death.

An official saw that this desire must not spread, and was making a speech, to which the mob was yielding, when the messenger came back from the Hall to say the order was genuine, and they ought to set at liberty the prisoner named Suleau.

At this name, a woman in the mob raised her head and uttered a scream of rage.

"Suleau?" she cried. "Suleau, the editor of the 'Acts of the Apostles' newspaper, one of the slayers of Liege independence? Let me at this Suleau! I call for the death of Suleau!"

The crowd parted to let this little, wiry woman go through. She wore a riding-habit of the national colors, and was carrying a sword in a cross-belt. She went up to the city official and forced him to give her the place on the stand. Her head was barely above the concourse, before they all roared:

"Bravo, Theroigne!"

Indeed, Theroigne was a most popular woman, so that Suleau had made a hit when he said she was the bride of Citizen Populus, as well as referring to her free-and-easy morals.

Besides, he had published at Brussels the "Alarm for Kings," and thus helped the Belgian outbreak, and to replace under the Austrian cane and the priestly miter a noble people wishing to be free and join France.

At this very epoch Theroigne was writing her memoirs, and had read the part about her arrest there to the Jacobin Club.

She claimed the death of the ten other prisoners along with Suleau.

Through the door he heard her ringing voice, amid applause. He called the captain of the guard to him, and asked to be turned loose to the mob, that by his sacrifice he might save his fellow-prisoners. They did not believe he meant it. They refused to open the door to him, and he tried to jump out of the window, but they pulled him back. They did not think that they would be handed over to the slaughterers in cold blood; they were mistaken.

Intimidated by the yells, Chairman Bonjour yielded to Theroigne's demand, and bid the National Guardsman stand aloof from resisting the popular will. They stepped aside, and the door was left free. The mob burst into the jail and grabbed the first prisoner to hand.

It was a priest, Bonyon, a playwright noted for his failures and his epigrams. He was a large-built man, and fought desperately with the butchers, who tore him from the arms of the commissioner who tried to save him; though he had no weapon but his naked fists, he laid out two or three of the ruffians. A bayonet pinned him to the wall, so that he expired without being able to hit with his last blows.

Two of the prisoners managed to escape in the scuffle.

The next to the priest was an old Royal Guardsman, whose defense was not less vigorous; his death was but the more cruel. A third was cut to pieces before Suleau's turn came.

"There is your Suleau," said a woman to Theroigne.

She did not know him by sight; she thought he was a priest, and scoffed at him as the Abbe Suleau. Like a wild cat, she sprung at his throat. He was young, brave, and lusty; with a fist blow he sent her ten paces off, shook off the men who had seized him, and wrenching a saber from a hand, felled a couple of the assassins.

Then commenced a horrible conflict. Gaining ground toward the door, Suleau cut himself three times free; but he was obliged to turn round to get the cursed door open, and in that instant twenty blades ran through his body. He fell at the feet of Theroigne, who had the cruel joy of inflicting his last wound.

Another escaped, another stoutly resisted, but the rest were butchered like sheep. All the bodies were dragged to Vendome Place, where their heads were struck off and set on poles for a march through the town.

Thus, before the action, blood was spilled in two places; on the City Hall steps and in Feuillants' yard. We shall presently see it flow in the Tuileries; the brook after the rain-drops, the river after the brook.

While this massacre was being perpetrated, about nine A. M., some eleven thousand National Guards, gathered by the alarm-bell of Barbaroux and the drum-beat of Santerre, marched down the St. Antoine ward and came out on the Strand. They wanted the order to assail the Tuileries.

Made to wait for an hour, two stories beguiled them: either concessions were hoped from the court, or the St. Marceau ward was not ready, and they could not fall on without them.

A thousand pikemen waxed restless; as ever, the worst armed wanted to begin the fray. They broke through the ranks of the Guard, saying that they were going to do without them and take the palace.

Some of the Marseilles Federals and a few French Guards – of the same regiments which had stormed the Bastile three years before – took the lead and were acclaimed as chiefs. These were the vanguard of the insurrection.

In the meanwhile, the aid who had seen Mandat murdered had raced back to the Tuileries; but it was not till after the king and the queen had returned from the fiasco of a review that he announced the ghastly news.

The sound of a disturbance mounted to the first floor and entered by the open windows.

The City and the National Guards and the artillerists – the patriots, in short – had taunted the grenadiers with being the king's tools, saying that they were bought up by the court; and as they were ignorant of their commander's murder by the mob, a grenadier shouted:

"It looks as though that shuffler Mandat had sent few aristocrats here."

Mandat's eldest son was in the Guards' ranks – we know where the other boy was, uselessly trying to defend his father on the City Hall steps. At this insult to his absent sire, the young man sprung out of the line with his sword flourished. Three or four gunners rushed to meet him. Weber, the queen's attendant, was among the St. Roch district grenadiers, dressed as a National Guardsman. He flew to the young man's help. The clash of steel was heard as the quarrel spread between the two parties.

Drawn to the window by the noise, the queen perceived her foster-brother, and she sent the king's valet to bring him to her.

Weber came up and told what was happening, whereupon she acquainted him with the death of Mandat.

The uproar went on beneath the windows.

"The cannoniers are leaving their pieces," said Weber, looking out; "they have no spikes, but they have driven balls home without powder, so that they are rendered useless!"

"What do you think of all this?"

"I think your majesty had better consult Syndic Roederer, who seems the most honest man in the palace."

Roederer was brought before the queen in her private apartment as the clock struck nine.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE REPULSE

At this point, Captain Durler, of the Switzers, went up to the king to get orders from him or the major-general. The latter perceived the good captain as he was looking for some usher to introduce him.

"What do you want, captain?" he inquired.

"You, my Lord Charny, as you are the garrison commander. I want the final orders, as the head of the insurrectionary column appears on the Carrousel."

"You are not to let them force their way through, the king having decided to die in the midst of us."

"Rely on us, major-general," briefly replied Captain Durler, going back to his men with this order, which was their death-sentence.

As he said, the van of the rebels was in sight. It was the thousand pikemen, at the head of whom marched some twenty Marseilles men and fifteen French Guardsmen; in the ranks of the latter gleamed the bullion epaulets of a National Guards captain. This young officer was Ange Pitou, who had been recommended by Billet, and was charged with a mission of which we shall hear more.

Behind these, at a quarter-mile distance, came a considerable body of National Guards and Federals, preceded by a twelve-gun battery.

When the garrison commandant's order was transmitted to them, the Swiss fell silently into line and resolutely stood, with cold and gloomy firmness.

Less severely disciplined, the National Guards took up their post more disorderly and noisily, but with equal resolution.

The nobles, badly marshaled, and armed with striking weapons only, as swords or short-range pistols, and aware that the combat would be to the death, saw the moment approach with feverish glee when they could grapple with their ancient adversary, the people, the eternal athlete always thrown, but growing the stronger during eight centuries.

While the besieged were taking places, knocking was heard at the royal court-yard gate, and many voices shouting: "A flag of truce!" Over the wall at this spot was seen a white handkerchief tied to the tip of a pike-staff.

Roederer was on his way to the king when he saw this at the gate and ordered it to be opened. The janitor did so, and then ran off as fast as he could. Roederer confronted the foremost of the revolutionists.

"My friends," said he, "you wanted the gates open to a flag of truce, and not to an army. Who wants to hold the parley?"

"I am your man," said Pitou, with his sweet voice and bland smile.

"Who are you?"

"Captain Ange Pitou, of the Haramont Federal Volunteers."

Roederer did not know who the Haramont Federals were, but he judged it not worth while to inquire when time was so precious.

"What are you wanting?"

"I want way through for myself and my friends."

Pitou's friends, who were in rags, brandished their pikes, and looked with their savage eyes like dangerous enemies indeed.

"What do you want to go through here for?"

"To go and surround the Assembly. We have twelve guns, but shall not use e'er a one if you do as we wish."

"What do you wish?"

"The dethronement of the king."

"This is a grave question, sir," observed Roederer.

"Very grave," replied Pitou, with his customary politeness.

"It calls for some debate."

"That is only fair," returned Ange. "It is going on ten o'clock, less the quarter," said he; "if we do not have an answer by ten as it strikes, we shall begin our striking, too."

"Meanwhile, I suppose you will let us shut the door?"

Pitou ordered his crowd back; and the door was closed; but through the momentarily open door the besiegers had caught a glimpse of the formidable preparations made to receive them.

As soon as the door was closed, Pitou's followers had a keen desire to keep on parleying.

Some were hoisted upon their comrades' shoulders, so that they could bestride the wall, where they began to chat with the National Guardsmen inside. These shook hands with them, and they were merry together as the quarter of an hour passed.

Then a man came from the palace with the word that they were to be let in.

The invaders believed that they had their request granted, and they flocked in as soon as the doors were opened, like men who had been kept waiting – all in a heap. They stuck their caps on their pikes and whooped "Hurrah for the nation!" – "Long live the National Guard!" – "The Swiss forever!"

The National Guard echoed the shout of the nation, but the Swiss kept a gloomy and sinister muteness.

The inrush only ceased when the intruders were up to the cannon muzzles, where they stopped to look around.

The main vestibule was crammed with Swiss, three deep; on each step was a rank, so that six could fire at once.

Some of the invaders, including Pitou, began to consider, although it was rather late to reflect.

But though seeing the danger, the mob did not think of running away; it tried to turn it by jesting with the soldiers. The Guards took the joking as it was made, but the Swiss looked glum, for something had happened five minutes before the insurrectionary column marched up.

In the quarrel between the Guards and the grenadiers over the insult to Mandat, the former had parted from the Royalist guards, and as they went off they said good-bye to the Swiss, whom they wanted to go away with them.

They said that they would receive in their own homes as brothers any of the Swiss who would come with them.

Two from the Waldenses – that is, French Swiss – replied to the appeal made in their own tongue, and took the French by the hand. At the same instant two shots were fired up at the palace windows, and bullets struck the deserters in the very arms of those who decoyed them away.

Excellent marksmen as chamois-hunters, the Swiss officers had nipped the mutiny thus in the bud. It is plain now why the other Swiss were mute.

The men who had rushed into the yard were such as always oddly run before all outbreaks. They were armed with new pikes and old fire-arms – that is, worse than unarmed.

The cannoniers had come over to their side, as well as the National Guards, and they wanted to induce the Switzers to do the same.

They did not notice that time was passing and that the quarter of an hour Pitou had given Roederer had doubled; it was now a quarter past ten. They were having a good time; why should they worry?

One tatterdemalion had not a sword or a pike, but a pruning-hook, and he said to his next neighbor:

"Suppose I were to fish for a Swiss?"

"Good idea! Try your luck," said the other.

So he hooked a Swiss by the belt and drew him toward him, the soldier resisting just enough to make out that he was dragged.

"I have got a bite," said the fisher for men.

"Then, haul him in, but go gently," said his mate.

The man with the hook drew softly indeed, and the guardsman was drawn out of the entrance into the yard, like a fish from the pond onto the bank. Up rose loud whoops and roars of laughter.

"Try for another," said the crowd.

The fisherman hooked another, and jerked him out like the first. And so it went on to the fourth and the fifth, and the whole regiment might have melted away but for the order, "Make ready – take aim!"

On seeing the muskets leveled with the regular sound and precise movement marking evolutions of regular troops, one of the assailants – there is always some crazy-head to give the signal for slaughter under such circumstances – fired a pistol at the palace windows.

During the short space separating "Make ready" and "Fire" in the command, Pitou guessed what was going to happen.

"Flat on your faces!" he shouted to his men; "down flat, or you are all dead men!"

Suiting the action to the word, he flung himself on the ground.

Before there was time for his advice to be generally followed, the word "Fire!" rang in the entrance-way, which was filled with a crashing noise and smoke, while a hail of lead was spit forth as from one huge blunderbuss.

The compact mass – for perhaps half the column had entered the yard – swayed like the wheat-field before the gust, then like the same cropped by the scythe, reeled and fell down. Hardly a third was left alive.

These few fled, passing under the fire from two lines of guns and the barracks firing at close range. The musketeers would have killed each other but for the thick screen of fugitives between.

This curtain was ripped in wide places; four hundred men were stretched on the ground pavement, three hundred slain outright.

The hundred, more or less badly injured, groaned and tried to rise, but falling, gave part of the field of corpses a movement like the ocean swell, frightful to behold.

But gradually all died out, and apart from a few obstinate fellows who persisted in living, all fell into immobility.

The fugitives scattered over the Carrousel Square, and flowed out on the water-side on one hand and on the street by the other, yelling, "Murder – help! we were drawn into a death-trap."

On the New Bridge, they fell in with the main body. The bulk was commanded by two men on horseback, closely attended by one on foot, who seemed to have a share in the command.

"Help, Citizen Santerre!" shouted the flyers, recognizing in one of the riders the big brewer of St. Antoine, by his colossal stature, for which his huge Flemish horse was but a pedestal in keeping; "help! they are slaughtering our brothers."

"Who are?" demanded the brewer-general.

"The Swiss – they shot us down while we were cheek by jowl with them, a-kissing them."

"What do you think of this?" asked Santerre of the second horseman.

"Vaith, me dink of dot milidary broverb which it say: 'De soldier ought to march to where he hear dot gun-firing going on,'" replied the other rider, who was a small, fair man, with his hair cropped short, speaking with a strong German accent. "Zubbose we go where de goons go off, eh?"

"Hi! you had a young officer with you," called out the leader on foot to one of the runaways; "I don't see anything of him."

"He was the first to be dropped, citizen representative; and the more's the pity, for he was a brave young chap."

"Yes, he was a brave young man," replied, with a slight loss of color, the man addressed as a member of the House, "and he shall be bravely avenged. On you go, Citizen Santerre!"

"I believe, my dear Billet," said the brewer, "that in such a pinch we must call experience into play as well as courage."

"As you like."

"In consequence, I propose to place the command in the hands of Citizen Westerman – a real general and a friend of Danton – offering to obey him like a common soldier."

"I do not care what you do if you will only march right straight ahead," said the farmer.

"Do you accept the command, Citizen Westerman?" asked Santerre.

"I do," said the Russian, laconically.

"In that case give your orders."

"Vorwarts!" shouted Westerman, and the immense column, only halted for a breathing-spell, resumed the route.

As its pioneers entered at the same time the Carrousel by all gates, eleven struck on the Tuileries clocks.