Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of RoyaltyImbert de Saint-Amand
History
Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty
Imbert de Saint-Amand
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France, 1755-1793
A little further off is the National Assembly. Its sessions are held
in the riding-school built when the little Louis XV. was to be taught
horsemanship. It adjoins the terrace of the Feuillants. One of its
courtyards which looks towards the front of the edifice, is at the
upper end of the rue de Dauphin. The other extremity occupies the site
where the rue Castiglione will be opened later on. There, close beside
the Tuileries, sits the National Assembly, the rival and victorious
power that will overcome the monarchy.
The Assembly terrorizes the Tuileries. The Jacobin Club terrorizes the
Assembly. Close beside the Hall of the Manège, on the site to be
occupied afterward by the market of Saint-Honoré, the revolutionary
club holds its tumultuous sessions in the former convent founded in
1611 by the Jacobin, or Dominican, friars. The club meets three times
a week, at seven in the evening. The hall is a long rectangle with a
vaulted roof. Four rows of stalls occupy the longer sides, while the
two ends serve as public galleries. Nearly in the middle of the hall,
the speaker's platform and the president's writing-table stand opposite
each other. Hither come all ambitious revolutionists who desire to
talk, to agitate, to make themselves conspicuous. Here Robespierre
lords it, not being a deputy in consequence of the law forbidding
members of the {6} Constituent Assembly to belong to the legislative
body. Those who love disorder come here to seek emotions. Some find
lucrative employment, applause being paid for, and the different
parties having each its _claque_ in the galleries. Since April, 1791,
the Jacobin Club has affiliations in two thousand French towns and
villages. At its orders and in its pay is an army of agents whose
business it is to make stump speeches, to sing in the streets, to make
propositions in cafés, to applaud or to hiss in the galleries of the
National Assembly. These hirelings usually receive about five francs a
day, but as the number of the chevaliers of the revolutionary lustrum
increases, the pay diminishes, until it is finally reduced to forty
sous. Deserters and soldiers dismissed from their regiments for
misconduct are admitted by preference.
For some days past, the Club of Moderate Revolutionists, friends of
Lafayette, who might have closed the old clubs after the sanguinary
repression of the riot in the Champ-de-Mars, and who contented
themselves with opening a new one, have been meeting in the convent of
the Feuillants, rue Saint-Honoré. But this new club has not been a
great success; moderation is not the order of the day; the Jacobins
have regained their empire, and on December 26, 1791, seals are placed
on the door of the Club of the Feuillants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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