Part 25 (1/2)
”FIELD OF MARS, JULY 17 OF THE YEAR III OF LIBERTY.
”Representatives of the Nation:
”You are approaching the end of your labors. A great crime has been committed. Louis XVI flees, unworthily abandons his post. The citizens arrest him at Varennes. He is brought back to Paris. The people of the capital immediately demand that the fate of the guilty one be left undecided until an expression of opinion be obtained from the eighty-three departments of France. A mult.i.tude of addresses demanded of you that you pa.s.s judgment on Louis XVI.
You, gentlemen, have prejudged him innocent and inviolable!
”Legislators, such was not the opinion of the people. Justice must be done.
”Everything compels us to demand of you, in the name of all France, that you reconsider your decision, that you hold that the offense of Louis XVI is proven; that the King, by the very fact of his flight, has abdicated.
”Receive, then, his abdication.
”Legislators, convoke a new const.i.tuent power, which will proceed in a truly national manner to deal with this guilty King, and above all to the organization of a new executive power.
”Signed:
”PEYRE,
”VACHART,
”ROBERT,
”DEMOY.”
The reading of the pet.i.tion, concise, measured in terms, but marked with energy, was received with unanimous applause. Its summary tenor, repeated from mouth to mouth down the whole length of the Field of Mars, received the a.s.sent of everyone. Then began an admirable scene. The pet.i.tioners, men, women and children, forming in long files, in perfect order, to the left of the staging, stopped one by one at the foot of the Altar of the Country, placing their signatures upon the thick book, whose many pages were bound together with lacings, and then descended on the other side of the stage; and all without confusion, without outcry, as if each were deeply conscious of the importance of the civic act.
Toward three o'clock I saw three munic.i.p.al officers, girt in their sashes, mount the stage. They were Leroux, Hardy, and Renaud. The Jacobin delegation having given them notice of the pet.i.tion, one of the three, after reading it to his colleagues, addressed the mult.i.tude as follows:
”Citizens, your pet.i.tion is perfectly legal. We are charmed at the sight presented to us. Everything here is being carried on in admirable order.
Some have told us there was a riot on the Field of Mars; we are now convinced that the report is baseless. Far from interfering with the signing of your pet.i.tion, we shall aid you with the public powers if anyone attempts to trouble you in the exercise of your rights.”
The words of the committee of the Commune of Paris were applauded by the crowd. The committee left, and the people continued to pour towards the Altar of the Country to sign the lists.
The day drew to its close. The sun disappeared behind the hill of Meudon. The hour of eight sounded from the clock of the Military School.
A part of the vast throng which surrounded me, setting out to regain their homes, turned their steps toward that entrance to the Field of Mars which gives upon Great Rock. Each one rejoiced that he had a.s.sisted at the great demonstration.
Suddenly, from the neighborhood of the Great Rock gate, towards which we were proceeding, we heard the sound of a large corps of drums, beaten at the double-quick; then, in the pauses of the march, the heavy rumbling of several pieces of artillery; almost at the same instant, but further off, in the direction of the gate near the Military School, sounded the trumpet calls of cavalry; and finally, more distant still, the snarl of other drums from the quarter of the bridge leading across the Seine from the end of the field. The vast parade-ground, surrounded by walls whose perpendicular sides overhung great moats, was thus being invaded by an armed force advancing at once toward the three outlets through which the people intended to return to Paris. The immense deploy of troops, infantry, cavalry and artillery, converging in unison upon the Field of Mars, filled with an inoffensive mult.i.tude at the point of leaving it, caused great and general surprise, but at first aroused neither fear nor suspicion. The groups around me, yielding to innocent curiosity and to the love of sight-seeing native in the Parisian, quickened their steps ”to see the soldiers go by,” all the while asking themselves what could be the object of this ma.s.sing of military forces. The advance guard of the column which entered by the Great Rock gate, was composed of the battalion of the National Guard called, from their district, the Daughters of St. Thomas. Then followed General Lafayette, surrounded by his brilliant staff, and finally Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, accompanied by several munic.i.p.al officers. One of these carried a staff around which was furled a piece of red cloth, hardly visible, for I had not noticed it except for the exclamation of an old man in front of me:
”Meseems they hoist the red flag! I believe that is not done except in the presence of public danger, in case of insurrection, or when martial law has been proclaimed from the City Hall!”
”In that case,” anxiously queried the spectators, ”can they have proclaimed martial law in the interior of Paris?” ”Is there, then, trouble, or a tumult of the people, or an insurrection in the city? What about?”
While these words were being anxiously exchanged around me, the apparition of the almost invisible bit of red bunting, the expression of sinister glee I had just remarked on the faces of several inebriated National Guardsmen who, marching past the crowd, tapped their guns, crying ”We shall send a few pills into the Jacobins;”--all these circ.u.mstances connected themselves in my mind and forced upon me all too clear a premonition of what was about to occur. The batteries of artillery had commenced to disgorge through the Great Rock gate when the bourgeois guard which was in line halted, and, deploying before its banner, advanced, with leveled guns and quickened pace, upon the mult.i.tude, which recoiled before it. At the same instant the cavalry entered at a rapid trot by the gate near the Military School, while the other column poured in by the bridge over the Seine. By this simultaneous manoeuvre the forty thousand persons or thereabouts who still remained in the Field of Mars, surrounded by embankments and walls, saw themselves hemmed in on every side by the troops who occupied the gates.
Vain would be any attempt on my part to give an idea of the stupor, then the fright, and soon the panic, which seized the helpless mult.i.tude.
Great G.o.d, what a picture! What heartrending cries! What shrieks of children, of women, mingling with the imprecations of men whose energy became paralyzed, either by the physical impossibility of doing anything in the crush, or by their preoccupation to safeguard a wife, a mother, a daughter, or children of tender age, exposed to smothering, or to being trampled under foot!
Suddenly I saw appear, on top of one of the embankments, Lehiron and about a score of his cut-throat band, accompanied by some tattered, bare-headed urchins who cried: