The Whites and the Blues (39 page)

The next day, the 3d of October (llth Yendemiaire), had been set apart for a funeral celebration, to be held in the

Hall of Sessions itself, in memory of the Girondins. Sev eral members proposed that the ceremony should be post poned for another day, but Tallien arose and said that it was unworthy of the Convention not to attend to its duties in times of danger even as in times of peace.

In permanent session, the Convention issued a decree ordering all illegal meetings of electors to disperse. The night passed in the midst of uproars which beggar descrip tion in all parts of the city. Shots were fired and people were knocked down. Whenever bands of the Sections and the Convention met, blows invariably ensued.

The Sections, on the other hand, in virtue of the rights of sovereignty they had assumed, issued their own decrees. Thus it was as a result of a decree of the Section Le Pele-tier that the meeting at the Ode*on had been set for the llth Vende'miaire.

Every moment brought in most disastrous news from the towns around Paris where the royalist committee had estab lished its agencies. Eisings had occurred at Orleans, Dreux, Verneuil, and Nonancourt. At Chartres, Tellier, the repre sentative, had endeavored to prevent an insurrection, and finding that his efforts were unavailing, he blew out his brains. The Chouans had cut down all the trees planted in honor of the 14th of July—those glorious symbols of the people's triumph. They had hurled the Statue of Liberty into the mud; and in the provinces, as well as in Paris, patriots had been assaulted in the streets.

While the Convention was deliberating against the con spirators, the latter, in their turn, were acting against the Convention. About eleven in the morning the electors began to put in appearance at the Ode*on, although only the more adventurous had taken this risk, and had they been counted they would scarcely have comprised a full thousand. In their midst a crowd of young men passed to and fro, shouting, scraping the railings and overturning the seats with their swords. But the number of chasseurs and grenadiers sent by the Sections did not exceed four

hundred. More than ten thousand people surrounded the monument, the place of meeting, blocking up the entrances to the hall, and filling the neighboring streets.

If, on that day, the Convention, which was kept fully informed, had but acted with decision, the insurrection could have been suppressed; but once again it resorted to conciliatory measures. They issued a decree declaring the meeting illegal, and specified in one of its articles that all those who should at once disperse would be exempt from punishment. As soon as the decree was issued, some of ficers of the police, escorted by six dragoons, started from the Tuileries, where the Convention was in session, to com mand the mob to disperse.

But the streets were crowded with spectators. They wanted to know what the police and the dragoons intended to do; and they impeded them so successfully, that, al though they left the palace at three o'clock, it was almost seven before they reached the Odeon, whither they were accompanied by cries, hoots, jeers, and provocations of every sort. From a distance they could be seen in the Place de rfigalitd opposite the monument, on the backs of their horses; and they looked like ships towering above the crowd and tossed upon a stormy sea.

They finally reached the square. The dragoons drew up before the steps of the theatre; the police officers, intrusted with the proclamation, went up under the portico, and there, lighted by torch-bearers, they read the proclamation.

But at the first words, the doors of the theatre flew open, and the "sovereigns," as the men of the Sections were called, came out at a run, followed by the electoral guards. The police were hurled from the top to the bottom of the steps, and the electoral guards charged the dragoons with fixed bayonets. The police disappeared, swallowed up by the crowd, followed by hooting and jeering; the dragoons dis persed, the torches were extinguished, and from the chaos rose cries of "Long live the Sections! Down with the Convention 1''

These cries, passing from street to street, finally reached the ears of the Convention itself. And while the victors re-entered the Sections, and, enthusiastic as men always are after a first success, took oath never to lay down arms until the Tuileries should be destroyed, the patriots, even those who opposed the Convention, realizing the dangers now threatening that liberty of which the Convention was the last tabernacle, hastened in a body to offer their services and to demand arms. Some came from the prisons, while others had been ejected from the Sections. A large num ber of them were officers whose names had been struck off by the chairman of the war committee. Aubry joined them. The Convention hesitated for 'some time; but Lou vet, that indefatigable patriot who had survived the ruin of all the parties, and who was desirous of reopening the Jacobin Club and of arming the faubourgs, insisted so strenuously that he carried the day.

Then not a minute was lost. They assembled all the unemployed officers and gave them the command of the soldiers, putting them all under the orders of brave General Berruyer.

This occurred on the evening of the llth, just as word arrived of the rout of the police and the dragoons; and it was determined to clear the Oddon by means of an armed force.

In virtue of this order, General Menou directed a col umn of troops and two pieces of artillery to proceed from the camp at Sablons. But when they reached the Odeon at eleven o'clock at night, they found the square and the theatre empty and deserted. The whole night was spent in arming the patriots and in receiving defiance after defiance from the Sections Le Peletier, Butte-des-Moulins, Contrat-Social, Comedie-Frangaise, Luxembourg, Kue Poissoniere, Brutus, and Temple.

CHAPTEK XIV

THE TWELFTH VENDEMIAIRE

ON THE morning of the 12th Vend^miaire, all the walls were covered with posters enjoining the na tional guards to report at their several Sections, which were threatened by the Terrorists, or, in other words, the Convention.

At nine o'clock in the morning the Section Le Peletier declared its sessions permanent, and proclaimed revolt by beating to arms in all the quarters of Paris. The Con vention, exasperated, did likewise. Messengers were sent through the streets to reassure the citizens and to vouch for those to whom arms had been given. The air was filled with those strange thrills which betray the fevers of great cities, and which are the symptoms of great events. It was recognized that, so far as the Sections were concerned, the rebellion had gained such strength that it was no longer a question of reclaiming and convincing them, but of crushing them.

None of the days of the Eevolution had yet dawned with such terrible presages—not the 14th of July, nor the 10th of August, nor even the 2d of September.

About eleven o'clock in the morning the Convenion felt that the moment for action had arrived. Seeing that the Section Le Peletier was the headquarters, it was resolved to disarm it, and General Menou was ordered to inarch against it with a sufficient body of troops and artillery.

The general came from Sablons and crossed Paris. But when he reached the city he saw something that he had not suspected; namely, that he was opposing the nobility and the richer citizens, the class which represented public opinion. It was not the faubourgs, as he had supposed,

which were to be swept with hot shell, it was the Place \ T endome, the Eue Saint-Honore, the Boulevards, and the Kaubourg Saint-Germain.

The man of the 1st Prairial hesitated on the 12th Vende*-miaire. He went on, however, but so reluctantly that the Convention was obliged to send ^Representative Laporte to urge him on. All Paris was watching this great duel. Unfortunately the Section Le Peletier had for a president the man whom we already know from his interviews with the president of the Convention and the Chouan general; he was as rapid in his decisions as Menou was feeble and hesitating.

Therefore it was already eight o'clock in the evening when General Verdieres received orders from General Menou to take sixty grenadiers of the Convention, one hundred of the battalion of the Oise, and twenty horse men, to form a column on the left side of the Eue des Filles-de-Saint-Thomas, and there to await orders.

Scarcely, however, had he entered the Eue Yivienne than Morgan appeared at the door of the Convent of the Daughters of Saint-Thomas, where the Section Le Peletier was in session, and ordered out a hundred of the Sectional party, commanding them to shoulder arms. Morgan's gren adiers obeyed without hesitation. Verdieres gave the same order to his troops, but murmurs of dissent were heard.

4 'Friends," cried Morgan, "we shall not fire first, but when the fighting has once begun you need expect no quarter from us. If the Convention wants war it shall have it."

Verdieres's grenadiers wished to reply, but the general called out: "Silence in the ranks!"

He was obeyed. Then he ordered the cavalry to draw their sabres and the infantry to ground arms. In the mean time the centre column arrived by way of the Eue Vivienne, and the right by the Eue Notre-Dame-des- Victoires.

The entire assembly had been converted into an armed

force ; a thousand men issued from the convent and formed

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in the portico. Morgan, sword in hand, placed himself a few steps in advance of the rest.

"Citizens," he said, addressing the Sectionists under his orders, "you are for the most part married men and fathers of families; I am, therefore, responsible for more lives than yours; as much as I should like to return death for death to these human tigers who have guillotined my father and Bhot my brother, I command you, in the names of your wives and children, not to fire first. But if our enemies fire a single shot—as you see, I am ten feet in front of you— the first who fires from their ranks perishes by my hand.''

These words were uttered amid the most profound si lence; for before speaking Morgan had raised his sword to impose silence, and neither his own men nor the patriots had lost a syllable of what he said.

Nothing could have been easier than to have replied to these words with a triple volley, the first from the right, the second from the left, and the third from the Eue Yivi-enne, in which case this would have amounted merely to pure bravado. Exposed like a target to the bullets, Mor gan would necessarily have fallen.

The astonishment was great when, instead of the ex pected volley, Laporte, after consulting with General Me-nou, advanced toward Morgan, and the general ordered his men to ground arms. The order was promptly obeyed.

But the astonishment increased, when, after exchanging a few words with Laporte, Morgan said: "lam here only to fight, and because I thought there was to be fighting. When it comes to compliments and concessions, the affair passes into the vice-president's hands, and I will retire."

And returning his sword into the scabbard, he withdrew into the crowd, where he was soon lost. The vice-president advanced in his stead. After a conference, which lasted about ten minutes, a portion of the Sectional troops marched off, turning a corner of the convent to regain the Eue Montmartre, and the Kepublican troops retired to the Palais Eoyal.

But scarcely had the troops of the Convention disap peared before the Sectional troops, led by Morgan, re appeared, crying with one accord: "Down with the Two-thirds! Down with the Convention!"

This cry, starting at the convent of the Daughters of Saint-Thomas, spread like wild-fire all over Paris. Two or three churches, which had retained their bells, began to sound the tocsin. This sinister sound, which had not been heard for more than four years, produced an effect more terrible than the booming of cannon. It was the coming of a religious and political reaction, wafted as if upon the wings of the wind.

It was eleven o'clock at night when the unwelcome sound, together with word of Menou's advance and its re sult, reached the hall where the Convention was in session. All the deputies swarmed into the room, questioning each other, and unable to believe that the positive command to surround and disarm the Section Le Peletier had been dis obeyed, and converted into a friendly interview at the end of which both parties had gone their ways.

But when tidings came that the party of the Section, in stead of dispersing, had retraced their steps, and, from their convent as from a fortress, defied and insulted the Conven tion, Che'nier sprang to the tribune.

Imbittered by the cruel accusation, which followed him as long as he lived, and even beyond the grave, that he had allowed his brother Andre* to be executed through jeal ousy, Marie-Joseph Che'nier always advocated the harshest and most expeditious measures.

"Citizens!" he cried, "I cannot believe what we have just been told. A retreat before the enemy is a misfortune, but retreat before rebels is treason. Before I descend from this tribune I want to know whether the will of the major ity of the French people is to be respected, or whether we are to bow before the authority of the Sections—we, the will of the nation. I demand that the government be called to ac count before the Assembly for what has taken place in Paris."

Shouts of approbation followed this energetic appeal, and Chenier's motion was unanimously agreed to.

CHAPTER XV

THE NIGHT OF THE 12TH AND THE 13TH VENDEMIAIBB

DELAUNAY (D' ANGERS), a member of the govern-ment, mounted the tribune to reply in its name. "Citizens," he said, "I have just been told that the Section Le Peletier is hemmed in on all sides."

Applause greeted these words from all sides; but a voice rang out above them, crying: "That is not true."

"And I tell you," continued Delaunay, "that it is true."

"That is not true," repeated the same voice with still greater firmness. "I have just come from the Section Le Peletier, and 1 know. Our troops have retreated, and the Sectionists are masters of Paris."

Just then the noise of many cries, footsteps, and vocif erations resounded in the corridors. A flood of people swept into the room, terrible and resistless as a tidal wave. The tribunes were invaded; the wave flowed round them. A hundred voices cried in the crowd: "To arms! To arms! To prison with General Menou! We are be trayed."