Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1. Edwards Henry Sutherland

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СКАЧАТЬ began in Paris, the revolutionary spirit spread rapidly to the provinces. This is clearly set forth in Arthur Young’s account of what took place at Strasburg, where he had just arrived when news of the Revolution reached him.

      “I arrived there,” he writes, “at a critical moment, which I thought would have broken my neck: a detachment of horse, with their trumpets, on one side, a party of infantry, with their drums beating, on the other, and a great mob hallooing, frightened my French mare, and I could scarcely keep her from trampling on Messrs. the tiers état. On arriving at the inn, one heard the interesting news of the revolt of Paris; the Garde Française joining the people; the unreliability of the rest of the troops; the taking of the Bastille; and the institution of the milice bourgeoise– in a word, the absolute overthrow of the old government. Everything being now decided, and the kingdom absolutely in the hands of the Assembly, they have the power to make a new constitution such as they think proper; and it will be a spectacle for the world to view in this enlightened age the representatives of twenty-five millions of people sitting on the construction of a new and better fabric of liberty than Europe has yet offered. It will now be seen whether they will copy the constitution of England, freed from its faults, or attempt from theory to frame something absolutely speculative. In the former case they will prove a blessing to their country; in the latter they will probably involve it in inextricable confusion and civil wars: perhaps not immediately, but certainly in the future. I hear nothing of their removing from Versailles. If they stay there under the control of an armed mob, they must make a government that will please the mob; but they will, I suppose, be wise enough to move to some central town – Tours, Blois, or Orleans, where their deliberations may be free. But the Parisian spirit of commotion spreads rapidly; it is here; the troops that were near breaking my neck are employed to keep an eye on the people who show signs of an intended revolt. They have broken the windows of some magistrates who are no favourites; and a great mob of them is at this moment assembled, demanding clamorously to have meat at five sous a pound. They have a cry among them that will conduct them to good lengths: ‘Point d’impôt et vivent les états!’ I have spent some time at the Cabinet Littéraire reading the gazettes and journals that give an account of the transactions at Paris; and I have had some conversation with several sensible and intelligent men in the present revolution. The spirit of revolt is gone forth into various parts of the kingdom; the price of bread has prepared the populace everywhere for all sorts of violence; at Lyons there have been commotions as furious as at Paris, and likewise at a great many other places. Dauphiné is in arms, and Bretagne in absolute rebellion. The idea is that hunger will drive the people to revolt, and that when once they find any other means of subsistence than honest labour everything will have to be feared. Of such consequence it is to a country to have a policy on the subject of corn: one that shall, by securing a high price to the farmer, encourage his culture sufficiently to secure the people from famine. I have been witness to a scene curious to a foreigner, but dreadful to those Frenchmen who consider. Passing through the square of the Hôtel de Ville, the mob were breaking the windows with stones, notwithstanding that an officer and a detachment of horse were on the spot. Observing not only that their numbers increased, but that they grew bolder and bolder every moment, I thought it worth staying to see how the thing would end, and clambered on to the roof of a row of low stalls opposite the building against which their malice was directed. Here I could view the whole scene. Perceiving that the troops would not attack them except in words and menaces, they grew more violent, and furiously attempted to beat the door in pieces with iron crows, placing ladders to the windows. In about a quarter of an hour, which gave time for the assembled magistrates to escape by a back door, they burst everything open, and entered like a torrent, amid a universal shout of triumph. From that minute a medley of casements, sashes, shutters, chairs, tables, sofas, books, papers, pictures, etc., rained down incessantly from all the windows of the house, which is seventy or eighty feet long; this being succeeded by a shower of tiles, skirting-boards, banisters, framework, and whatever parts of the building force could detach. The troops, both horse and foot, were quiet spectators. They were at first too few to interpose, and when they became more numerous the mischief was too far advanced to admit of any other course than that of guarding every avenue around, permitting no fresh arrivals on the scene of action, but letting everyone that pleased retire with his plunder; guards at the same time being placed at the doors of the churches and all public buildings. I was for two hours a spectator of this scene: secure myself from the falling furniture, but near enough to see a fine lad of about fourteen crushed to death by some object as he was handing plunder to a woman – I suppose his mother, from the horror pictured in her countenance. I remarked several common soldiers with their white cockades among the plunderers, and instigating the mob even in sight of the officers of the detachment. Mixed in the crowd, there were people so decently dressed that I regarded them with no small surprise. The public archives were destroyed, and the streets for some way around strewed with papers. This was a wanton mischief, for it will be the ruin of many families unconnected with the magistrates.”

      Although at the critical moment the first object of the revolutionists’ attack was the Bastille, that hateful building did not, according to Mercier, inspire the common people with any peculiar indignation. It will be seen from his own words that he was in this particular a less keen-sighted observer than he is generally reputed to have been. Writing just before the Revolution, Mercier saw well that his fellow-countrymen were oppressed, but believed they were too much inured to this oppression ever to rise against it.

      “I have already observed,” he writes, “that the Parisians in general are totally indifferent as to their political interest; nor is this to be wondered at in a place where a man is hardly allowed to think for himself. A coercive silence, imposed upon every Frenchman from the hour of his birth on whatever regards the affairs of government, grows with him into a habit which the fear of the Bastille and his natural indolence daily strengthen, till the man is totally lost in the slave. Kingly prerogative knows no bounds, because no one ever dared to resist the monarch’s despotic commands. It is true that at times, in the words of the proverb, the galled horse has winced. The Parisians have at times attempted to withstand tyranny; but popular commotions amongst them have had very much the air of a boyish mutiny at school; a rod with the latter, the butt end of a firelock with the former, quiets all, because neither act with the spirit and resolution of men who assert their natural rights. What would cost the minister his life in those unhappy countries where self-denial and passive obedience are unknown is done off in Paris by a witty epigram, a smart song, etc.; the authors of which, however, take the greatest care to remain concealed, having continually the fear of ministerial runners before their eyes; nor has a bon mot unfrequently occasioned the captivity of its author.”

      Mercier at the same time points out that never since the days of Henri IV. had France been so mildly governed as under Louis XVI. One of the last acts of Louis XV. had been to cast into the Bastille all the volumes of the Encyclopædia. One of the first acts of Louis XVI. was to liberate from the Bastille all prisoners who had not been guilty of serious, recognisable offences.

      “At the accession of his present Majesty,” writes Mercier, “his new ministers, actuated by humanity, signalised the beginning of their administration with an act of justice and mercy, ordering the registers of the Bastille to be laid before them, when a great number of prisoners were set at large.” Among those liberated was a man of whom Mercier tells the same story that was afterwards to be told of one of the seven prisoners who were freed at the taking of the Bastille.

      “Their number included a venerable old man, who for forty-seven years had remained shut up between four walls. Hardened by adversity, which steels the heart when it does not break it, he had supported his long and tedious captivity with unexampled constancy and fortitude; and he thought no more of liberty. The day is come. The door of his tomb turns upon its rusty hinges, it opens not ajar, as usual, but wide, for liberty, and an unknown voice acquaints him that he may now depart. He thinks himself in a dream; he hesitates, and at last ventures out with trembling steps; wonders at everything; thinks to have travelled a great way before he reaches the outward gate. Here he stops a while; his feeble eyes, long deprived of the sun’s cheering beams, can hardly support its first light. A coach waits for him in the streets; he gets into it, desires СКАЧАТЬ