The French Revolution eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,095 pages of information about The French Revolution.

The French Revolution eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,095 pages of information about The French Revolution.

How deluges of frantic Sansculottism roared through all passages of this Tuileries, ruthless in vengeance, how the Valets were butchered, hewn down; and Dame Campan saw the Marseilles sabre flash over her head, but the Blackbrowed said, “Va-t-en, Get thee gone,” and flung her from him unstruck:  (Campan, ii. c. 21.) how in the cellars wine-bottles were broken, wine-butts were staved in and drunk; and, upwards to the very garrets, all windows tumbled out their precious royal furnitures; and, with gold mirrors, velvet curtains, down of ript feather-beds, and dead bodies of men, the Tuileries was like no Garden of the Earth:—­all this let him who has a taste for it see amply in Mercier, in acrid Montgaillard, or Beaulieu of the Deux Amis.  A hundred and eighty bodies of Swiss lie piled there; naked, unremoved till the second day.  Patriotism has torn their red coats into snips; and marches with them at the Pike’s point:  the ghastly bare corpses lie there, under the sun and under the stars; the curious of both sexes crowding to look.  Which let not us do.  Above a hundred carts heaped with Dead fare towards the Cemetery of Sainte-Madeleine; bewailed, bewept; for all had kindred, all had mothers, if not here, then there.  It is one of those Carnage-fields, such as you read of by the name ‘Glorious Victory,’ brought home in this case to one’s own door.

But the blackbrowed Marseillese have struck down the Tyrant of the Chateau.  He is struck down; low, and hardly to rise.  What a moment for an august Legislative was that when the Hereditary Representative entered, under such circumstances; and the Grenadier, carrying the little Prince Royal out of the Press, set him down on the Assembly-table!  A moment,—­which one had to smooth off with oratory; waiting what the next would bring!  Louis said few words:  “He was come hither to prevent a great crime; he believed himself safer nowhere than here.”  President Vergniaud answered briefly, in vague oratory as we say, about “defence of Constituted Authorities,” about dying at our post.  (Moniteur, Seance du 10 Aout 1792.) And so King Louis sat him down; first here, then there; for a difficulty arose, the Constitution not permitting us to debate while the King is present:  finally he settles himself with his Family in the ‘Loge of the Logographe’ in the Reporter’s-Box of a Journalist:  which is beyond the enchanted Constitutional Circuit, separated from it by a rail.  To such Lodge of the Logographe, measuring some ten feet square, with a small closet at the entrance of it behind, is the King of broad France now limited:  here can he and his sit pent, under the eyes of the world, or retire into their closet at intervals; for the space of sixteen hours.  Such quiet peculiar moment has the Legislative lived to see.

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The French Revolution from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.