Part 27

The account that Bailly gave of the celebrated royal meeting on the 23d of June, does not exactly agree with that of most historians.

The king finished his speech with the following imprudent words: "I order you, Gentlemen, to separate immediately."

The whole of the nobility and a portion of the clergy retired; while the Deputies of the Communes remained quietly in their places. The Grand Master of the Ceremonies having remarked it, approaching Bailly said to him, "You heard the king's order, Sir?" The illustrious President answered, "I cannot adjourn the Assembly until it has deliberated on it." "Is that indeed your answer, and am I to communicate it to the king?" "Yes, Sir," replied Bailly, and immediately addressing the Deputies who surrounded him, he said, "It appears to me that the assembled nation cannot receive an order."

It was after this debate, at once both firm and moderate, that Mirabeau addressed from his place the well-known apostrophe to M. de Breze. The President disapproved both of the basis and the form of it; he felt that there was no sufficient motive; for, said he, the Grand Master of the Ceremonies made use of no menace; he had not in any way insinuated that there was an intention to resort to force; he had not, above all, spoken of bayonets. At all events, there is an essential difference between the words of Mirabeau as related in almost all the Histories of the Revolution, and those reported by Bailly. According to our illustrious colleague the impetuous tribune exclaimed, "Go tell those who sent you, that the force of bayonets can do nothing against the will of the nation." This is, to my mind, much more energetic than the common version. The expression, "We will only retire by the force of bayonets!" had always appeared to me, notwithstanding the admiration conceded to it, to imply only a resistance which would cease on the arrival of a corporal and half-a-dozen soldiers.

Bailly quitted the chair of President of the National Assembly on the 2d of July. His scientific celebrity, his virtue, his conciliating spirit, had not been superfluous in habituating certain men to see a member of the Communes preside over an assembly in which there was a prince of the blood, a prince of the church, the greatest lords of the kingdom, and all the high dignitaries of the clergy. The first person named to succeed to Bailly was the Duke d'Orleans. After his refusal, the Assembly chose the Archbishop of Vienne (Pompignan).

Bailly recalls to mind with sensibility, in his memoirs, the testimonies of esteem that he obtained through his difficult and laborious presidency. The 3d of July, on the proposition of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld and of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the National Assembly sent a deputation to their illustrious ex-president, to thank him (these are the precise words) "for his noble, wise, and firm conduct." The electoral body of Bordeaux had been beforehand with these homages. The Chamber of Commerce of that town, at the same time, decided that the portrait of the great citizen should decorate their hall of meeting. The Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, did not remain insensible to the glory that one of their members had acquired in the career of politics, and testified it by numerous deputations. Finally, Marmontel, in the name of the French Academy, expressed to Bailly "how proud that assembly was to count, among its members an Aristides that no one was tired of calling the Just."

I shall not excite surprise, I hope, by adding, after such brilliant testimonies of sympathy, that the inhabitants of Chaillot celebrated the return of Bailly amongst them by fetes, and fireworks, and that even the curate of the parish and the churchwardens, unwilling to be surpassed by their fellow-citizens, nominated the historian of antediluvian astronomy honorary churchwarden. I will, at all events, repress the smile that might arise from such private reminiscences, by reminding the reader that a man's moral character is better appreciated by his neighbours, to whom he shows himself daily without disguise, than that of more considerable persons, who are only seen on state occasions, and in official costume.

BAILLY BECOMES MAYOR OF PARIS.--SCARCITY.--MARAT DECLARES HIMSELF INIMICAL TO THE MAYOR.--EVENTS OF THE 6TH OF OCTOBER.

The Bastille had been taken on the 14th of July. That event, on which, during upwards of half a century, there have been endless discussions, on opposite sides, was characterized in the following way, in the address to the National Assembly, drawn up by M. Moreau de Saint Mery, in the name of the City Committee:--

"Yesterday will be for ever memorable by the taking of a citadel, consequent on the Governor's perfidy. The bravery of the people was irritated by the breaking of the word of honour. This act (the strongest proof that the nation who knows best how to obey, is jealous of its just liberties,) has been followed by incidents that from the public misfortunes might have been foreseen."

Lally Tollendal said to the Parisians, on the 15th of July: "In the disastrous circumstances that have just occurred, we did not cease to participate in your griefs; and we have also participated in your anger; it was just."

The National Assembly solicited and obtained permission from the king on the 15th of July, to send a deputation to Paris, which they flattered themselves would restore order and peace in that great city, then in a convulsed state. Madame Bailly, always influenced by fear, endeavoured, though vainly, to dissuade her husband from joining the appointed deputies. The learned academician naively replied, "After a presidency that has been applauded, I am not sorry to show myself to my fellow-citizens." You see, Gentlemen, that Bailly always admits the future reader of his Posthumous Memoirs confidentially into his most secret feelings.

The deputation completed its mandate at the Town Hall, to the entire satisfaction of the Parisian populace; the Archbishop of Paris, its President, had already proposed to go in procession to the Cathedral to sing Te Deum; they were preparing to depart, when the Assembly, giving way to a spontaneous enthusiasm, with an unanimous voice, proclaimed Bailly Mayor of Paris, and Lafayette Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, the creation of which had just been authorized.

The official minutes of the Municipality state, that on being thus unexpectedly named, Bailly bent forward to the Assembly, his eyes bathed in tears, and that amidst his sobs he could only utter a few unconnected words to express his gratitude. The Mayor's own recital differs very little from this official relation. Still I shall quote it as a model of sincerity and of modesty.

"I know not whether I wept, I know not what I said; but I remember well that I was never so surprised, so confused, and so beneath myself. Surprise adding to my usual timidity before a large assembly, I rose, I stammered out a few words that were not heard, and that I did not hear myself, but which my agitation, much more than my mouth, rendered expressive. Another effect of my sudden stupidity was, that I accepted without knowing what a burden I was taking on myself."

Bailly having become Mayor, and being tacitly accepted by the National Assembly, even from the 16th of July, availed himself of his intimacy with Vicq-d'Azyr, the Queen's physician, to persuade Louis XVI. to show himself to the Parisians. This advice was listened to. On the 17th the new magistrate addressed the king near the barriere de la Conference, in a discourse that began thus:--

"I bring to your Majesty the keys of your good city of Paris. They are the same that were presented to Henry IV. He had reconquered his people, here the people have reconquered their king."

The antithesis: "he had reconquered his people, here the people have reconquered their king," was universally applauded. But since then, it has been criticized with bitterness and violence. The enemies of the Revolution have striven to discover in it an intention of committing an outrage, to which the character of Bailly, and still more so the first glance at an examination of the rest of his discourse, give a flat contradiction. I will acknowledge, Gentlemen, I think that I have even a right to decline the epithet of "unfortunate," which one of our most respectable colleagues in the French Academy has pronounced relative to this celebrated phrase, while doing justice at the same time to the sentiments of the author. The poison contained in the few words that I have quoted, was very inoffensive, since more than a year passed without any courtier, though furnished like a microscope with, all the monarchical susceptibilities, beginning to suspect its existence.

The Mayor of Paris was at the Hotel de Ville in the midst of those same Parisian citizens who inspired him, a few months before, with the mortifying reflection already quoted: "I remarked in the Assembly of Electors a dislike to literary people and Academicians." The feeling did not appear to be changed.

The political movement in 1789, had been preceded by two very serious physical perturbations which had great influence on the march of events. Every one is aware, that the excessively rigorous winter of 1788-89 was the cause of severe sufferings to the people. But it may not be so generally known, that on the 13th of July, 1788, a fall of hail of unprecedented size and quantity, in a few hours completely ravaged the two parallel zones lying between the department of the Charente and the frontiers of the Pays-Bas, and that in consequence of this frightful hail, the wheat partly failed, both in the north and in the west of France, until after the harvest of 1789.

The scarcity was already severely felt, when Bailly on the 15th of July accepted the appointment of Mayor of Paris. That day, it had been ascertained, from an examination of the quantity of corn at the Market Hall and of the private stocks of the bakers, that the supply of grain and flour would be entirely exhausted in three days. The next day, the 16th of July, all the overseers in the victualling administration had disappeared. This flight, the natural consequence of the terrible intimidation that hovered over those who were in any way connected with the furnishing of provisions, interrupted the operations which had been commenced, and exposed the city of Paris to famine.

Bailly, a magistrate of only one day's standing, considered that the multitude understands nothing, hears nothing when bread fails; that a scarcity, either real or supposed, is the great promoter of riots; that all classes of the population grant their sympathy to whoever cries, I am hungry; that this lamentable cry soon unites individuals of all ages, of both sexes, of every condition, in one common sentiment of blind fury; that no human power could maintain order and tranquillity in the bosom of a population that dreads the want of food; he therefore resolved to devote his days and his nights to provisioning the capital; to deserve, as he himself said, the title of the Father nourisher of the Parisians,--that title of which he showed himself always so proud, after having painfully gained it.

Bailly day by day recorded in his Memoirs a statement of his actions, of his anxieties, and of his fears. It may be good for the instruction of the more fortunate administrators of the present epoch, to insert here a few lines from the journal of our colleague.

"18th August. Our provisions are very much reduced. Those of the morrow depend strictly on the arrangements made on the previous evening; and now amidst this distress, we learn that our flour-wagons have been stopped at Bourg-la-Reine; that some banditti are pillaging the markets in the direction of Rouen, that they have seized twenty wagons of flour that were destined for us; ... that the unfortunate Sauvage was massacred at Saint Germain-en-Laye; ... that Thomassin escaped with difficulty from the fury of the populace at Choisy."

By repeating either these literal words, or something equivalent to them, for every day of distress throughout the year 1789, an exact idea may be formed of the anxieties that Bailly experienced from the morning after his installation as mayor. I deceive myself; to complete the picture we ought also to record the unreflecting and inconsiderate actions of a multitude of people whose destiny appeared to be, to meddle with every thing and to spoil every thing. I will not resist the wish to show one of these self-important men, starving (or very nearly so) the city of Paris.

"21st August. The store of victuals, Bailly says, was so scanty, that the lives of the inhabitants of Paris depended on the somewhat mathematical precision of our arrangements. Having learnt that a barge with eighteen hundred sacks of flour had arrived at Poissy, I immediately despatched a hundred wagons from Paris to fetch them. And behold, in the evening, an officer without powers and without orders, related before me, that having met some wagons on the Poissy road, he made them go back, because he did not think that there was a wharf for any loaded barge on the Seine. It would be difficult for me to describe the despair and the anger into which this recital threw me. We were obliged to put sentinels at the bakers' doors!"

The despair and the anger of Bailly were very natural. Even now, after more than half a century, no one thinks without a shudder of that obscure individual who, from not believing that a loaded barge could get up to Poissy, was going, on the 21st August, 1789, to plunge the capital into bloody disorders.

By means of perseverance, devotedness, and courage, Bailly succeeded in overcoming all the difficulties that the real scarcity, and the fictitious one, which was still more redoubtable, caused daily to arise. He succeeded, but his health from that epoch was deeply injured; his mind had undergone several of those severe shocks that we can never entirely recover from. Our colleague said, "when I used to pass the bakers' shops during the scarcity, and saw them besieged by a crowd, my heart sunk within me; and even now that abundance has been restored to us, the sight of one of those shops strikes me with a deep emotion."