to have been the demolishers of the Bastille, poured forth on the road to Vincennes to demolish the donjon likewise. They had been in in

JEAN PAUL MARAT.-From a portrait by Duplessi-Bertaux.

surrection a day or two before, for the purpose of burning the gates and barriers of Paris, where the octroi or duty on provisions was exacted, so that they had their pikes and clubs all ready for action. A part of the national guards of the district, under that burly small-beer brewer Santerre, marched after them, but it was to assist, not to hinder them in their work of demolition. The municipality of Vincennes and a few officers on the spot represented that the reason why the fortress was undergoing a slight repair was, that it might serve to relieve of some of their inmates the prisons of Paris, which were so crammed as to give serious apprehensions that pestilential disorders might break out among them and spread through the city. They also added that the repairs had been ordered by the national assembly itself, in a decree sanctioned by the

tower, though old, were discouragingly strong. The terrible noise that these faubourg men had made in taking their departure from Paris had been heard all over that city, and had created an universal alarm, for very few knew the object they had in view. La Fayette was summoned to the Hôtel de Ville, and instructed by the munici pality to march after the insurgents as fast as he could, with the more respectable part of his national guard. The hero of two worlds was presently on his white charger, and before long. in front of the donjon of Vincennes, with several thousands of his militia, both horse and foot, and not without some light artillery capable of grapeshot, at his back. Close by the old tower he found Santerre, with his faubourg militiamen, looking complacently on the havoc the mob were making. He rode up to him and ordered him to fire upon those rascals. "Mr. General," said the broad-faced brewer, "those are the men that took the Bastille!" La Fayette then applied to the magistrates of Vincennes to issue some neces sary orders, and to assist him in arresting some of the rioters; but these worshipful personages refused to co-operate in any way whatsoever. The general, therefore, took the whole duty upon himself; and, after some hard blows given and received, but miraculously without any recourse to firearms, the respectabilities of the national guard succeeded in clearing the donjon, and in taking about sixty of the demolishers prisoners. Retracing his steps to Paris with these captives in his train, he found the gates of the Faubourg

threatened to blow them open with cannon-ball and gunpowder; and thus obtained an entrance. Several shots were fired at him and the officers of his staff; and as he rode through the faubourg a very deadly attempt was made upon the legs of his white charger, in the view of bringing horse and rider to the ground together.

In the morning, as La Fayette was starting eastward for Vincennes, a good many devoted royalists went westward to the Tuileries to offer their very useless services to the king, believing, as they said, and as appears really to have been the case, that the insurrection was to become general, and that the life of the sovereign was to be attempted. These royalists, gentlemen all, and apparently all crazed, began to arrive at the palace about noon, or shortly after; but, if we guess rightly in a confusion of contradictory accounts, it was not till towards evening that their numbers excited any notice or suspicion. It is said that they had been admitted into the interior of the palace by different doors, having tickets of admission from the Duke de Villequier and other gentlemen of the household; but many of them must have had what were called in court language les petites entrées, which would render unnecessary any such tickets or smuggling in. The national guards doing duty that day at the Tuileries were the salaried Centre Grenadiers, the terrible ex-Gardes Françaises. It is said that reports reached these desperate fellows that La Fayette had not only been fired at but had been killed on his return from Vincennes, and that they were just going to rush into the palace to bring the king to account for this foul deed, when one of their corps seized a gentleman as he was going into the palace, and found that he had a long dagger in his coat pocket.' This quickened their suspicions and their movements; a rush was made up the great staircase; and in the ante-chambers, galleries, and saloons were found collected from 400 to 500 very suspicious aristocrat-looking persons, with powdered heads and black coats. A search much ruder than that of the rudest custom-house officers was immediately commenced by these ex-Gardes Françaises; and then it was found that many of these gentlemen carried small sword-canes, or had daggers in their pockets or under their waistcoatsnay, that two or three of them had pocket-pistols. As these things were brought to light the guardsmen hurled or kicked them down the stone stairs, at first singly, then by twos and threes, and at last by dozens and by scores at a time, until the terrace and the upper part of the garden of the Tuileries were littered with powdered heads and black coats. Ex-dukes, ex-marquises, ex-counts, ex-chevaliers of the order of

1 According to La Fayette's account, it was not a dagger but a pocket pistol that led to the discovery. "The first alarm," he says, "was given by a hot-headed royalist, the Chevalier de St. Elme, who, setting ajar the doors of the apartment, exhibited a pistol to the national guards. This discovery produced a great sensation. The king was frightened, and begged the chivalrous company to disband and lay down their arms."-Narrative of Erents from the Federation to the Departure and Arrest of the King. in Memoirs, Correspondence, and Manuscripts, published by his Family.

VOL. III.

St. Louis, ex-parlementers, and among them the hottest of all parlementers, and once the chief of all patriots, D'Espréménil, were direfully constrained to make this sort of exit. Well had it been for these unlucky zealots if their punishment had ended here. When the Gardes Françaises had done with them, they fell into the hands of the mob that had collected in the garden and outside the iron railing, and they were hustled and tossed, beaten and bruised, and sent running home at last all tattered and torn. Marat, who took the earliest opportunity of describing this opprobrium of gentility and chivalry, was elated and rhapsodized into his grandest style in thinking of the kicks behind, the twitches by the nose, the spittle in the face, that the aristocrats received from the plebeians.

La Fayette arrived safe and sound at the Tuileries soon after the Gardes Françaises had cleared the apartments of these royalists. We have his own account for what followed-"He treated several of the courtiers very sharply, and read a particular lecture to the Duke de Villequier, first gentleman of the chamber, of whom he thought he had the most reason to complain. He saw the king, who expressed his regret at this piece of folly, which, it seemed, had been begun without his privity. The king told him that the false zeal and wild extravagance of the people who called themselves his friends would end in ruining him. On his return to the great hall the general-in-chief learned from public rumour that a whole pile of arms had been secreted in the closets of the apartments, a thing not to be endured by those who were charged with the protection and safety of the king: consequently the general requested that an order should be given for the surrender of these arms. They were brought out in a hand-basket, and it was visible to everybody present that there were daggers amongst them. They were given up to the national guards, and were broken to pieces in the court of the Tuileries, with an exhibition of gaiety little respectful perhaps to the palace of the sovereign, but especially offensive to the chevaliers, who from this time bore the name of "the Chevaliers of the Poignard." Some were not less shocked on the morrow, by an order of the day, in which the general-in-chief spoke in severe terms of the chiefs of the domesticity, meaning the courtiers and the gentlemen of the household." But the very strangest part of this unseemly,

2 Narrative of Events from the Federation to the Departure and Arrest of the King, written by himself, in Memoirs, Correspondence, and Manuscripts of La Fayette, published by his Family. La Fayette, rather from a desire to make up a good case for his national guards, than from any anxiety about the humiliation of the order to which by birth he belonged, or from any regard to the feelings of gentlemen that were royalists, says that there was not much beating or kicking-that "the chevaliers escaped with a few insults and blows as they went out."

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ridiculous business, and that which throws most light on the temper of the times and the state of the factions, is the variety of ways in which the plot was accounted for; though, as we verily believe, there had been no plot at all, but a rash, hot-headed impulse, such as all classes of Frenchmen were liable to, especially in these maddening times. La Fayette himself was quite sure that the whole thing was preconcerted by the fanatic royalists and the courtiers; but he does not say for what object, nor attempt to explain how four or five hundred gentlemen, many of them far gone in years and in infirm health, with their sword-sticks, daggers, and pocket-pistols, were to effect a counter-revolution in the midst of a hundred thousand armed men, and in a great capital where the population were quite as frantic for their new liberty as these preux chevaliers were for their old royalty; nor does he, indeed, so much as hint that the object was to carry off the king, an object impossible to be executed in this open manner. He says and his authority is certainly worth no more than that of those who deny the facts-that many of the crowd of royalists found in the Tuileries had been expressly invited from the provinces; and that from daybreak an attempt had been made to ply the national guards on duty at the palace with drink, under pretence of treating them with breakfast; that the aristocrats got up the insurrection in the faubourg in order to decoy him out of the capital to Vincennes, and to get him murdered there; and that but for the bayonet of one of his national guards he would have been murdered on his return. On the other hand Marat, in a terrible article headed "New Conspiracy discovered by M. la Fayette," swore that La Fayette himself, aided by Bailly, the police, and the more opulent of the citizens, had not only incited the Faubourg St. Antoine to march upon Vincennes, but was also in league with the royalists who meant to carry off the king. He dwelt upon the subject many days, in order to show what a narrow escape the common people, the only patriots, had had on the "Day of the Poignards." He pretended to describe with the utmost minuteness and accuracy the labours and machinations of "the hero of two worlds and his head valet Bailly," declaring, among numerous other particulars, that they had brought furtively into Paris gangs of brigands and assassins; that they had corrupted the staff of the citizen army of the capital, composed of scoundrels that were wallowing in luxury, and that ought never to have been trusted; that they had bought with money a part of the soldiers, and had enchained another part by cajoleries and promises, or by threats.

Some little circumstances contributed to give, with the multitude, additional weight and effect

to this newspaper article. A few days before the "Day of Poignards," Marat had announced to the people that 5000 poignards, to butcher patriots, were a-making in Paris; an extra-judicial search had been made by the people, who had found in a certain shop thirty-six poignards. It was true that this number was very small, and that the armourer gave proof that they were made to the order of some persons engaged in the African slave trade, who found such implements very useful; but to the popular credulity the circumstance was quite enough to confirm their own suspicions, and Marat's reputation for vigilance and veracity. On the other hand, the royalists maintained that the émeute in the faubourg and the march upon Vincennes had been planned by the ultra-revolutionists and the Duke of Orleans, and that the assembling of the gentlemen in the palace was wholly unpremeditated and arose out of the impression of the moment, that violence was intended to the royal family. Other parties again, who were less anxious to fix the émeute upon any particular persons, thought that the riot had arisen, like so many others, out of a determination to control the national assembly, and terrify them into the passing of a most severe law against the emigrants, which was under discussion on this very day; and to these parties it appeared not very unlikely that a number of enthusiastic royalists should gather in the Tuileries to offer up their lives a sacrifice to the royal family. If there was a previous plot, one surely might have expected some better preparation. There is not perhaps a more striking specimen of the bathos, than La Fayette's pile of arms, brought forth in a hand-basket, in which it was visibly beheld by all present that there were some daggers. As to the daggers, sword-canes, and pocketpistols carried by the royalists, there was nothing in them to establish a proof of any preconcerted plan or bloody design whatever; for, as one of them said, when examined by Mayor Bailly and his municipals, these were days when nearly every gentleman constantly carried arms about his person for his own protection from the rabble. It was long before this that Abbé Maury had taken to wearing pistols and Mirabeau himself had adopted the practice long before Maury-never going down to the assembly, or anywhere else, without putting his pistols in his pocket, and looking well to their priming. We admit, however, that there is no possibility of calculating the extent of popular rashness and folly under such exciting circumstances, and that the fanaticism of some of these ultra-aristocrats and royalists was capable of almost any madness, and of almost any sanguinary excess, if they had succeeded in making, at any time, a successful

counter-revolution.

For many months the queen and a part of the court had been relying with a desperate hope upon the promises and services of Mirabeau, the most eloquent speaker, and probably the most unprincipled, profligate man in the national assembly. This orator, who had lived some time (though in no very honourable manner) in England, had certainly some knowledge of our institutions; among his private friends he seems to have invariably expressed a preference for an hereditary constitutional monarchy; but when he saw how unpopular this notion was becoming, and what a complete ascendency the republican and democratic principle was obtaining, he timidly shrank from any public avowal of his preference. He was a loud magnificent talker; but his courage, whether moral or physical, was very doubtful. He was a vainglorious, most excitable man; but though self-indulgent and dissolute, he had occasional visitations of high, generous, and noble thoughts. He had quitted the queen after a private interview on the heights of St. Cloud, in the month of May, 1790, by solemnly assuring her majesty that from that moment the French monarchy was saved!'

By fits and starts Mirabeau was really of opinion that he could save the monarchy; but he was most assuredly deficient in moral courage, deficient in principle, altogether wanting, from first to last, in character and fixity of purpose. If he had really proposed to himself to be this saviour, he ought to have begun the work of salvation with courage and steadiness long before this he ought to have checked the glowing wheels of the revolutionary car before they were about reaching their maximum velocity on that steeply inclined plane that ended in a gulf too fearful for the eye to look at-he ought to have made a life-and-death struggle at the time of the confusion of the three orders of the state into one anomalous chamber or house-at the time when the declaration of the rights of man was under discussion-at the time when the veto question was debated-at the time when the plots were forming to drag the court to Paris at the feet of the multitude; but on all these times and occasions, as on others equally critical and equally potential upon future events, the heart of the loud-tongued man had failed him, and, instead of seeking the salvation of the state, he had sought his own personal safety by conforming with the tyrannous will of the majority of the assembly and of the populace, by explaining away his own words and sentiments, and by sneaking out of the principles he had professed. His chiefest care had been to keep free of the black lists of proscription. We repeat it, he had not such courage, nor nearly so much courage, as that Madame Campan, Memoires.

and constantly increasing dangers, was unable to resist the propensity of indulging all his vicious habits and tastes for expenditure and prodigality.

When the royal coffers were almost emptywhen every louis-d'or was wanted-he took his money and spent it in luxury and profligacy. A tribune of the people thus leading the life of a Lucullus, could not escape suspicion; and suspicion was every day becoming equivalent to a sentence of proscription or of death. Although he continued to take the wages of the court, he did absolutely nothing for it, his fears preventing him from persevering in a plan to form a party in the assembly. To those who hinted that the court was leading him into great danger, and might betray him, he replied, in words too gross to be literally translated, that, if they did, or attempted it, he would drive them into a republic. He declared in private that the Jacobins and the Parisian mob would destroy alike the whole monarchy and the new reformers-would swallow up the king and the assembly-would plunge the country into a frightful and long-lasting anarchy; yet he continued to frequent the Jacobin Club, and to pander to the worst passions of the people. But by this time he had utterly ruined his robust constitution by his excesses, and a mortal disease had him in its grip. He made one more apparition in the hall of the Jacobins, to do away, by force of declamation, some evil reports which had been raised against him for his behaviour on the emigrant-law question, and to declare that he would remain among the