This was no normal state of things at the Academy
of Bertrand des Amis. Whatever else in Paris
might have been at a standstill lately, the fencing
academy had flourished as never hitherto. Usually
both the master and his assistant were busy from morning
until dusk, and already Andre-Louis was being paid
now by the lessons that he gave, the master allowing
him one half of the fee in each case for himself,
an arrangement which the assistant found profitable.
On Sundays the academy made half-holiday; but on
this Sunday such had been the state of suspense and
ferment in the city that no one having appeared by
eleven o’clock both des Amis and Andre-Louis
had gone out. Little they thought as they lightly
took leave of each other — they were very good
friends by now — that they were never to meet
again in this world.
Bloodshed there was that day in Paris. On the
Place Vendome a detachment of dragoons awaited the
crowd out of which Andre-Louis had slipped.
The horsemen swept down upon the mob, dispersed it,
smashed the waxen effigy of M. Necker, and killed one
man on the spot — an unfortunate French Guard
who stood his ground. That was a beginning.
As a consequence Besenval brought up his Swiss from
the Champ de Mars and marshalled them in battle order
on the Champs Elysees with four pieces of artillery.
His dragoons he stationed in the Place Louis XV.
That evening an enormous crowd, streaming along the
Champs Elysees and the Tuileries Gardens, considered
with eyes of alarm that warlike preparation.
Some insults were cast upon those foreign mercenaries
and some stones were flung. Besenval, losing
his head, or acting under orders, sent for his dragoons
and ordered them to disperse the crowd, But that crowd
was too dense to be dispersed in this fashion; so
dense that it was impossible for the horsemen to move
without crushing some one. There were several
crushed, and as a consequence when the dragoons, led
by the Prince de Lambesc, advanced into the Tuileries
Gardens, the outraged crowd met them with a fusillade
of stones and bottles. Lambesc gave the order
to fire. There was a stampede. Pouring
forth from the Tuileries through the city went those
indignant people with their story of German cavalry
trampling upon women and children, and uttering now
in grimmest earnest the call to arms, raised at noon
by Desmoulins in the Palais Royal.
The victims were taken up and borne thence, and amongst
them was Bertrand des Amis, himself — like all
who lived by the sword — an ardent upholder
of the noblesse, trampled to death under hooves of
foreign horsemen launched by the noblesse and led by
a nobleman.
To Andre-Louis, waiting that evening on the second
floor of No. 13 Rue du Hasard for the return of his
friend and master, four men of the people brought
that broken body of one of the earliest victims of
the Revolution that was now launched in earnest.
