Part 30

These enemies had collected in the capital thirty or forty thousand vagabonds. What could be opposed to them? The Tribunals? They had no moral power, and were declared enemies to the revolution. The National Guard? It was only just formed; the officers scarcely knew each other, and moreover scarcely knew the men who were to obey them. Was it at least permitted to depend on the regular armed force? It consisted of six battalions of French Guards without officers; of six thousand soldiers who, from every part of France, had flocked singly to Paris, on reading in the newspapers the following expressions from General Lafayette: "They talk of deserters! The real deserters are those men who have not abandoned their standards." There were finally six hundred Swiss Guards in Paris, deserters from their regiments; for, let us speak freely, the celebrated monument of Lucerne will not prevent the Swiss themselves from being recognized by impartial and intelligent historians, as having experienced the revolutionary fever.

Those who, with such poor means of repression, flattered themselves that they could entirely prevent any disorder, in a town of seven or eight hundred thousand inhabitants in exasperation, must have been very blind. Those, on the other hand, who attempt to throw the responsibility of the disorders on Bailly, would prove by this alone, that good people should always keep aloof from public affairs during a revolution.

The administrator, a being of modern creation, now declares, with the most ludicrous self-sufficiency, that Bailly was not equal to the functions of a Mayor of Paris. It is, he says, by undeserved favour that his statue has been placed on the facade of the Hotel de Ville. During his magistracy, Bailly did not create any large square in the capital, he did not open out any large streets, he elevated no splendid monument; Bailly would therefore have done better had he remained an astronomer or erudite scholar.

The enumeration of all the public erections that Bailly did not execute is correct. It might also have been added, that far from devoting the municipal funds to building, he had the vast and threatening castle of the Bastille demolished down to its very foundation's; but this would not deprive Bailly of the honour of having been one of the most enlightened magistrates that the city of Paris could boast.

Bailly did not enlarge any street, did not erect any palace during the twenty-eight months of his administration! No, undoubtedly! for, first it was necessary to give bread to the inhabitants of Paris; now the revenues of the town, added to the daily sums furnished by Necker, scarcely sufficed for those principal wants. Some years before, the Parisians had been very much displeased at the establishment of import dues on all alimentary substances. The writers of that epoch preserved the burlesque Alexandrine, which was placarded all over the town, on the erection of the Octroi circumvallation:

"Le mur murant Paris, rend Paris murmurant."

The multitude was not content with murmuring; the moment that a favourable opportunity occurred, it went to the barriers and broke them down. These were reestablished by the administration with great trouble, and the smugglers often took them down by main force. The Octroi revenue from the imports, which used to amount to 70,000 francs, now fell to less than 30,000. Those persons who have considered the figures of the present revenue, will assuredly not compare such very dissimilar epochs.

But it is said that ameliorations in the moral world may often be effected without expense. What were those for which the public was indebted to the direct exertions of Bailly? The question is simple, but repentance will follow the having asked it. My answer is this: One of the most honourable victories gained by mathematics over the avaricious prejudices of the administrations of certain towns has been, in our own times, the radical suppression of gambling-houses. I will hasten to prove that such a suppression had already engaged Bailly's attention, that he had partly effected it, and that no one ever spoke of those odious dens with more eloquence and firmness.

"I declare," wrote the Mayor of Paris on the 5th of May, 1790, "that the gambling-houses are in my opinion a public scourge. I think that these meetings not only should not be tolerated, but that they ought to be sought out and prosecuted, as much as the liberty of the citizens, and the respect due to their homes, will admit.

"I regard the tax that has been levied from such houses as a disgraceful tribute. I do not think that it is allowable to employ a revenue derived from vice and disorder, even to do good. In consequence of these principles, I have never granted any permit to gambling-houses; I have constantly refused them. I have constantly announced that not only they would not be tolerated, but that they would be sought out and prosecuted."

If I add that Bailly suppressed all spectacles of animal-fighting, at which the multitude cannot fail to acquire ferocious and sanguinary habits, I shall have a right to ask of every superficial writer, how he would justify the epithet of sterile, applied with such assurance to the administration of our virtuous colleague.

Anxious to carry out in practice that which had been largely recognized theoretically in the declaration of rights--the complete separation of religion from civil law,--Bailly presented himself before the National Assembly on the 14th of May, 1791, and demanded, in the name of the city of Paris, the abolition of an order of things which, in the then state of men's minds, gave rise to great abuses. If declarations of births, of marriages, and of deaths are now received by civil officers in a form agreeing with all religious opinions, the country is chiefly indebted for it to the intelligent firmness of Bailly.

The unfortunate beings for whom all public men should feel most solicitous, are those prisoners who are awaiting in prison the decrees of the courts of justice. Bailly took care not to neglect such a duty. At the end of 1790, the old tribunals had no moral power; they could no longer act; the new ones were not yet created. This state of affairs distracted the mind of our colleague. On the 18th of November, he expressed his grief to the National Assembly, in terms full of sensibility and kindness. I should be culpable if I left them in oblivion.

"Gentlemen, the prisons are full. The innocent are awaiting their justification, and the criminals an end to their remorse. All breathe an unwholesome air, and disease will pronounce terrible decrees. Despair dwells there: Despair says, either give me death, or judge me. When we visit those prisons, that is what the fathers of the poor and the unfortunate hear; this is what it is their duty to repeat to the fathers of their country. We must tell them that in those asylums of crime, of misery, and of every grief, time is infinite in its duration; a month is a century, a month is an abyss the sight of which is frightful.... We ask of the tribunals to empty the prisons by the justification of the innocent, or by examples of justice."

Does it not appear to you, Gentlemen, that calm times may occasionally derive excellent lessons, and, moreover, lessons expressed in very good language, from our revolutionary epoch?

FOOTNOTE:

"The wall walling Paris, renders Paris wailing."

THE KING'S FLIGHT.--EVENTS ON THE CHAMP DE MARS.

In the month of April, 1791, Bailly perceived that his influence over the Parisian population was decreasing. The king had announced that he should depart on the 18th, and would remain some days at St. Cloud. The state of his health was the ostensible cause of his departure. Some religious scruples were probably the real cause; the holy week was approaching, and the king would have no communications with the ecclesiastics sworn in for his parish. Bailly was not discomposed at this projected journey; he regarded it even with satisfaction. Foreign courts, said our colleague, looked upon him as a prisoner. The sanction he gives to various decrees, appears to them extorted by violence; the visit of Louis XVI. to Saint Cloud will dissipate all these false reports. Bailly therefore concerted measures with La Fayette for the departure of the royal family; but the inhabitants of Paris, less confiding than their mayor, already saw the king escaping from St. Cloud, and seeking refuge amidst foreign armies. They therefore rushed to the Tuileries, and notwithstanding all the efforts of Bailly and his colleague, the court carriages could not advance a step. The king and queen therefore, after waiting for an hour and a half in their carriage, reascended into the palace.

To remain in power after such a check, was giving to the country the most admirable proof of devotion.

In the night of the 20th to the 21st of June, 1791, the king quitted the Tuileries. This flight, so fatal to the monarchy, irretrievably destroyed the ascendency that Bailly had exercised over the capital. The populace usually judges from the event. The king, they said, with the queen and their two children, were freely allowed to go out of the palace. The Mayor of Paris was their accomplice, for he has the means of knowing every thing; otherwise he might be accused of carelessness, or of the most culpable negligence.

These attacks were not only echoed in the shops, in the streets, but also in the strongly organized clubs. The Mayor answered in a peremptory manner, but without entirely effacing the first impression. During several days after the king's flight, both Bailly and La Fayette were in personal danger. The National Assembly had often to look to their safety.

I have now reached a painful portion of my task, a frightful event, that led finally to Bailly's cruel death; a bloody catastrophe, the relation of which will perhaps oblige me to allow a little blame to hover over some actions of this virtuous citizen, whom thus far it has been my delight to praise without any restriction.

The flight of the king had an immense influence on the progress of our first revolution. It threw into the republican party some considerable political characters who, till then, had hoped to realize the union of a monarchy with democratical principles.

Mirabeau, a short time before his death, having heard this projected flight spoken of, said to Cabanis: "I have defended monarchy to the last; I defend it still, although I think it lost.... But, if the king departs, I will mount the tribune, have the throne declared vacant, and proclaim a Republic."

After the return from Varennes, the project of substituting a republican government for a monarchical government was very seriously discussed by the most moderate members of the National Assembly, and we now know that the Duke de La Rochefoucauld and Dupont (de Nemours) for example, were decidedly in favour of a republic. But it was chiefly in the clubs that the idea of such a radical change had struck root. When the Commission of the National Assembly had expressed itself, through M. Muguet, at the sitting of the 13th of July, 1791, against the forfeiture of Louis XVI., there was a great fermentation in Paris. Some agents of the Cordeliers (Shoemakers') Club were the first to ask for signatures to a petition on the 14th of July, against the proposed decision. The Assembly refused to read and even to receive it. On the motion of Laclos, the club of the Jacobins got up another. This, after undergoing some important modifications, was to be signed on the 17th on the Champ de Mars, on the altar of their country. These projects were discussed openly, in full daylight. The National Assembly deemed them anarchical. On the 16th of July it called to its bar the municipality of Paris, enjoining it to have recourse to force, if requisite, to repress any culpable movements.

The Council of the Commune on the morning of the 17th placarded a proclamation that it had prepared according to the orders of the National Assembly. Some municipal officers went about preceded by a trumpeter, to read it in various public squares. Around the Hotel de Ville, the military arrangements, commanded by La Fayette, led to the expectation of a sanguinary conflict. All at once, on the opening of the sitting of the National Assembly, a report was circulated that two good citizens having dared to tell the people collected around their country's altar, that they must obey the law, had been put to death, and that their heads, stuck upon pikes, were carried through the streets. The news of this attack excited the indignation of all the deputies, and under this impression, Alexander Lameth, then President of the Assembly, of his own accord transmitted to Bailly very severe new orders, a circumstance which, though only said en passant, has been but recently known.

The municipal body, as soon as it was informed, about eleven o'clock, of the two assassinations, deputed three of its members, furnished with full powers, to reestablish order. Strong detachments accompanied the municipal officers. About two o'clock it was reported that stones had been thrown at the National Guard. The Municipal Council instantly had martial law proclaimed on the Place de Greve, and the red flag suspended from the principal window of the Hotel de Ville. At half-past five o'clock, just when the municipal body was about to start for the Champ de Mars, the three councillors, who had been sent in the morning to the scene of disorder, returned, accompanied by a deputation of twelve persons, taken from among the petitioners. The explanations given on various sides occasioned a new deliberation of the Council. The first decision was maintained, and at six o'clock the municipality began its march with the red flag, three pieces of cannon, and numerous detachments of the National Guard.