Thus is the Tenth of August won and lost. Patriotism reckons its slain by thousand on thousand, so deadly was the Swiss fire from these windows; but will finally reduce them to some Twelve hundred. No child's play was it;--nor is it! Till two in the afternoon the massacring, the breaking and the burning has not ended; nor the loose Bedlam shut itself again.
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 ***es 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.
But also what a moment was that other, few minutes later, when the three Marseillese cannon went off, and the Swiss rolling-fire and universal thunder, like the Crack of Doom, began to rattle! Honourable Members start to their feet; stray bullets singing epicedium even here, shivering in with window-glass and jingle. "No, this is our post; let us die here!" They sit therefore, like stone Legislators. But may not the Lodge of the Logographe be forced from behind? Tear down the railing that divides it from the enchanted Constitutional Circuit! Ushers tear and tug; his Majesty himself aiding from within: the railing gives way; Majesty and Legislative are united in place, unknown Destiny hovering over both.
Rattle, and again rattle, went the thunder; one breathless wide-eyed messenger rushing in after another: King's orders to the Swiss went out.
It was a fearful thunder; but, as we know, it ended. Breathless messengers, fugitive Swiss, denunciatory Patriots, trepidation; finally tripudiation!--Before four o'clock much has come and gone.
The New Municipals have come and gone; with Three Flags, Liberte, Egalite, Patrie, and the clang of vivats. Vergniaud, he who as President few hours ago talked of Dying for Constituted Authorities, has moved, as Committee-Reporter, that the Hereditary Representative be suspended; that a NATIONAL CONVENTION do forthwith assemble to say what further! An able Report: which the President must have had ready in his pocket? A President, in such cases, must have much ready, and yet not ready; and Janus-like look before and after.
King Louis listens to all; retires about midnight 'to three little rooms on the upper floor;' till the Luxembourg be prepared for him, and 'the safeguard of the Nation.' Safer if Brunswick were once here! Or, alas, not so safe? Ye hapless discrowned heads! Crowds came, next morning, to catch a climpse of them, in their three upper rooms. Montgaillard says the august Captives wore an air of cheerfulness, even of gaiety; that the Queen and Princess Lamballe, who had joined her over night, looked out of the open window, 'shook powder from their hair on the people below, and laughed.' (Montgaillard. ii. 135-167.) He is an acrid distorted man.