Love and liberty : $b A thrilling narrative of the French Revolution of 1792Dumas, Alexandre
History
Love and liberty : $b A thrilling narrative of the French Revolution of 1792
Dumas, Alexandre
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Fiction
The procession, armed with sticks, swords, and pistols, after having
passed through the streets Saint Martin and Saint Honoré, arrived at
the Place Vendome.
There one division stopped, and having dispersed the people,
destroyed the bust of the Prince and the Duke of Orleans, and put to
death a French guard who disdained to fly.
That was not all.
M. de Bezenval had put a detachment of Swiss and four pieces of
cannon in battery on the Champs Elysées, the crowd retired to the
Tuileries, and the Prince de Lambese, a German, charged upon them
with his cavalry, inoffensive though they were, and was the first
to enter, on horseback, the gardens of the Tuileries. A barricade
stopped him. From the back of that barricade, stones and bottles were
thrown at him. He perceived that a group of men were shutting the
gate, to take him prisoner. He ordered a retreat, and, in flying,
crushed one man under his steed, and severely wounded another with a
blow from his sabre.
The crowd now entered the armorers’ shops, and ransacked them.
The cannons were mounted on the Bastille, which was reinforced by
another detachment of Swiss.
They knew nothing more on the night of the 13th, nor on the next day.
M. Dampierre ordered that if news came in the day, it was to be
delivered to my uncle.
At four o’clock the sport finished, and they returned to the house. A
dinner, prepared as usual, awaited them.
The companions remained at table, visibly preoccupied; the
conversation was nothing but conjectures. They spoke in strong terms
of the National Assembly. They wished to have been in the place of M.
Brézé, of M. de Bezenval, of M. de Lambese; they were sure that they
could have done better than they did.
The Queen was too good, not to have commanded the Swiss to
exterminate the wretches.
At six o’clock, M. Dampierre’s servant brought a despatch. It was
dated the morning of the 14th.
On the night of the 13th the people had forced the doors of the
Invalides, and had taken thirty thousand muskets. They had also
forced the doors of the Arsenal with sledge-hammers, and had taken
seven or eight tons of powder. That powder had been distributed under
the lamp-lights. Each man bearing a musket received fifty cartridges.
The Court had ordered all the foreign regiments, useful to royalty,
to be at hand, if wanted.
M. de Launay, the Governor of the Bastille, who knew his
unpopularity, and upon whom they could count, because of that
unpopularity, had pledged himself to blow the Bastille into the air,
along with half Paris, before he would surrender.
This news the companions thought good, as it promised a desperate
resistance.
On the other hand, who were the people who menaced royalty? Men
ignorant of the use of fire-arms, undisciplined, and without leaders,
who would retreat at the first cannon-shot, and fly at the first
charge.
How could that rabble hold out against practised soldiers, who feared
not death, but disgrace?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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