Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (best color ebook reader txt) 📕

the enthusiasm that pervades the palace; he is morose and silent. The gelid silence of the people as he drove through their ranks⁠—a silence to which he is not accustomed⁠—has impressed him unfavourably. He will require a deal of stiffening from his evil counsellors before he will consent to be thrust onwards along the path of doom to which this day he has set his foot.

The gauntlet which he threw down in the Assembly has been taken up by the Third. When the master of ceremonies comes to remind Bailly, its president, that the King has ordered the Third to depart, “It seems to me,” he is answered, “that the Assembled Nation cannot receive orders.”

And then that great man Mirabeau⁠—massive of body as of genius⁠—dismisses the master of ceremonies in a voice of thunder: “We have heard the intentions that have been suggested to the King, and it is not for you, sir, who have here no place, or voice, or right to speak, to remind us of his words. Go back and tell those who sent you that we are here by the will of the people, and that we shall not leave save by force of bayonets.”

That was to pick up the glove indeed. And the story runs that M. de Brézé, the young master of ceremonies in question, was so stricken by that dismissal, by the majesty of the man, the majesty of the twelve hundred deputies silently facing him, that he went out backwards as if in the presence of royalty.

The crowd outside, learning of the turn of events, goes off furiously to the Château. Six thousand men flood the courtyards, storm the gardens and the terraces. The Queen’s gaiety is checked by sudden fear. It is the first time such a thing has happened to her. But it shall not be the last; for she misses the warning it conveys. She shall know it again and again before the end, and ever in increasing quantity; but wisdom never. Yet now in her panic she begs the King quickly to undo that which she and her friends have done, and to recall the magician Necker, who alone can save the situation.

Fortunately the Swiss banker has not yet taken his departure. He is at hand. He comes down to the courtyard. He pacifies the people.

“Yes, yes, my children. Reassure yourselves. I will remain! I will remain!”

They kiss his hands as he moves through them, in tears, deeply moved by this display of faith in him. Thus covering with his reputation for honesty the brutal stupidity of the cabal, he gains them a respite.

That was on the twenty-third of June. The news of it came quickly to Paris. Did it mean, wondered André-Louis, that the National Assembly had conquered, that the door would be opened to the reforms the need for which grew every day more desperate? He hoped it might be so, for Paris was becoming restive and ever hungrier. The queues outside the bread shops were daily increasing as bread grew daily more scarce, and accusations of gambling in corn flew recklessly and dangerously, likely at any moment to precipitate grave trouble.

For two days nothing happened. The reconciliation was not confirmed; the royal declaration was not revoked. It began to look as if the Court would not keep faith. And then the electors of Paris took a hand. This body had concerted to continue to assemble after the elections, so as to complete the instructions of their elected deputies. They now proposed the formation of a civic guard, the organisation of an elective annual commune, and an address to the King petitioning the withdrawal of the troops assembled at Versailles, and the revocation of the royal declaration of the twenty-third. On that same day the soldiers of the French Guards broke out of barracks, and came to fraternise with the people in the Palais Royal, swearing to refuse to obey any order against the National Assembly. For this, eleven of them were placed under arrest by their Colonel, M. du Châtelet.

Meanwhile the petition of the electors was before the King. In addition to this, a minority of the nobles, with the self-seeking effete Duke of Orléans at their head, had of their own impulse joined the National Assembly, to the great delight of Paris.

The King, urged to prudence by M. Necker, decided upon the reunion of the orders, which the National Assembly demanded. There was great joy at Versailles, and thus, apparently, the peace was made between Privilege and People. Had it been real all might have been well. But Privilege had not yet learnt its lesson; indeed, would never learn it until all was lost. The reunion was but a pretence, a mockery, made by the temporising nobles, who now⁠—as was becoming obvious⁠—but watched for an opportunity, awaited a pretext to resort to the force in which alone they believed.

And the opportunity came soon, at the very beginning of July. M. du Chatelet, a harsh, haughty disciplinarian, proposed to transfer the eleven French Guards placed under arrest from the military gaol of the Abbaye to the filthy prison of Bicêtre reserved for thieves and felons of the lowest order. Word of that intention going forth, the people at last met violence with violence. A mob four thousand strong broke into the Abbaye, and delivered thence not only the eleven guardsmen, but all the other prisoners, with the exception of one whom they discovered to be a thief, and whom they put back again.

That was open revolt at last, and with revolt Privilege knew how to deal. It would strangle this mutinous Paris in the iron grip of the foreign regiments. Measures were quickly concerted. Old Maréchal de Broglie, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War, imbued with a soldier’s contempt for civilians, conceiving that the sight of a uniform would be enough to restore peace and order, took control with Besenval as his second-in-command. The foreign regiments were stationed in the environs of Paris, regiments