Читать книгу Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1 - Edwards Henry Sutherland - Страница 7

From the Bastille to the Madeleine – Boulevard Beaumarchais – Beaumarchais – The Marriage of Figaro– The Bastille – The Drama in Paris – Adrienne Lecouvreur – Vincennes – The Duc d’Enghien – Duelling – Louis XVI.

THE most important, the most interesting, the most absorbing thoroughfare on the right bank of the Seine, and, therefore, in Paris generally is that of the boulevards, in which the whole of the gay capital may be said to be concentrated. Numbers of Parisians pass almost the whole of their life on the Boulevard des Italiens; or between the Boulevard Montmartre to the east, and the Boulevard de la Madeleine to the west of what, to the fashionable Parisian, is the central boulevard. Nothing can be easier than to breakfast and dine on the boulevards; and it is along their length or in their immediate neighbourhood that not only the best restaurants, but the finest theatres are to be found. Stroll about the boulevards for a few hours – an occupation of which the true boulevardier seems never to get tired – and you will meet everyone you know in Paris.

If, moreover, the upper boulevards, those of the Madeleine, the Capucines, and the Italiens, represent fashionable Paris, the lower boulevards, from the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard Beaumarchais, represent the Paris of commerce and of industry; so that the line of boulevards, as a whole, from the Madeleine to the Bastille, gives a fair epitome of the French capital.

The poorest of the boulevards are at the eastern end of the line, and the richest at the western; and the difference in character between the inhabitants of these opposite extremes is shown by a military regulation instituted under the Second Empire. Neither the district inhabited by the needy workmen of the east nor the western district, where dwelt the richest class of shop-keepers, was allowed to furnish the usual contingent of National Guards. The artisans were too turbulent to be entrusted with arms, while the tradespeople were equally unreliable, because from timidity they allowed their arms to be taken from them.

Beginning at what most visitors to Paris will consider the wrong end of the line of boulevards, we find that on the Boulevard Beaumarchais Paris has a very different physiognomy from that which she presents on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, which the visitor may reach by omnibus, though it is more interesting to travel in some hired vehicle which may now and then be stopped, and more interesting still to make the whole of the three-mile journey on foot.

At either end of the line of boulevards is a Place, or open space, which, for want of a better word, may be called a square: Place de la Bastille to the east, Place de la Madeleine to the west. The omnibuses which ply between the two extremities bear the inscription “Madeleine – Bastille”; and, beginning at the Bastille, the traveller passes eleven different boulevards, or, rather, one boulevard bearing in succession eleven different names: Beaumarchais, des Filles du Calvaire, du Temple, Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, Bonne-Nouvelle, Poissonnière, Montmartre, des Italiens, des Capucines, and de la Madeleine.

Advancing from the Bastille to the Madeleine, we find the appearance of the shops constantly improving, until, from poor at one end, they become magnificent at the other. What the military authorities of Germany call “necessary luxuries” (such as coffee, tea, and sugar), as well as luxuries in a more absolute sense (such as costly articles of attire, sweetmeats, and champagne), are sold all along the line. But at the Bastille end one notices here and there a little sacrifice to the useful and the indispensable. Indeed, on the lower boulevards grocers’ shops are to be found, though nothing so commonplace offends the eye on the boulevards to which the name of “upper” is given.

In like manner, the importance of the theatres increases as you proceed from the Bastille westward. Nearly half the playhouses of Paris are on the boulevards: ten on the north side, and three on the south. Many other theatres, if not entered direct from the boulevards, are in their close vicinity. The theatre nearest the Madeleine is the new Opera House; that nearest the Place de la Bastille is the Théâtre Beaumarchais. The Boulevard Beaumarchais owes its name to the brilliant dramatist who, among other works, wrote the Barber of Seville and the Marriage of Figaro, still familiar to all Europe in their musical form. From 1760 to 1831 what is now called the Boulevard Beaumarchais was known as the Boulevard St. – Antoine. In the last-named year, however, under the government of Louis Philippe, it was determined to render homage to the author of the best comedies in the French language after those of Molière by naming a boulevard after him.

The Marriage of Figaro was played in public for the first time on April 27th, 1784. “The description of the first performance is,” says M. de Loménie, “in every history of the period”; for which insufficient reason M. de Loménie omits it in his own history of “Beaumarchais and his Times.” For at least two years before the Marriage of Figaro was played in public the work must have been well known in the aristocratic and literary circles of Paris. The brilliant comedy, which was not to be brought out until April, 1784, had been accepted at the Théâtre Français in October, 1781. “As soon as the actors,” writes Beaumarchais, “had received, by acclamation, my poor Marriage, which has since had so many opponents, I begged M. Lenoir (the Lieutenant of Police) to appoint a censor; at the same time asking him, as a special favour, that the piece might be examined by no one else: which he readily promised; assuring me that neither secretary nor clerk should touch the manuscript, and that the play should be read in his own cabinet. It was so read by M. Coqueley, advocate, and I begged M. Lenoir to notify what he retrenched, objected to, or approved. Six weeks afterwards I learnt in society that my piece had been read at all the soirées of Versailles, and I was in despair at this complaisance – perhaps forced – of the magistrate in regard to a work which still belonged to me; for such was certainly not the austere, discreet, and loyal course which belongs to the serious duty of a censor. Well or ill read – perhaps maliciously mutilated – the piece was pronounced detestable; and not knowing in what respect I had sinned (for according to custom nothing was specified), I stood before the inquisition obliged to guess my crimes, but aware, nevertheless, that I was already tacitly proscribed. As, however, this proscription by the court only irritated the curiosity of the town, I was condemned to readings without number. Whenever one party was discovered, another would immediately be formed.”

At the beginning of 1782 it was already a question who could obtain the privilege of hearing the play read by Beaumarchais – an admirable reciter – whether at his own house or in some brilliant salon. “Every day,” writes Madame Campan, “persons were heard to say: ‘I was present, or I shall be present, at a reading of Beaumarchais’s piece.’”

The first performance of the Marriage of Figaro was thus described by a competent judge. “Never,” says Grimm, in one of the letters addressed by him and by Diderot to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Gotha, “never did a piece attract such crowds to the Théâtre Français. All Paris wished to see this famous ‘marriage,’ and the house was crammed almost the very moment the doors were opened to the public. Scarcely half of those who had besieged the doors since eight in the morning succeeded in finding places. Most persons got in by force or by throwing money to the porters. It is impossible to be more humble, more audacious, more eager in view of obtaining a favour from the Court than were all our young lords to ensure themselves a place at the first representation of Figaro. More than one duchess considered herself too happy that day to find in the balconies, where ladies are seldom seen, a wretched stool side by side with Madame Duthé, Carline, and company.”

Ladies of the highest rank dined in the actresses’ rooms, in order to be sure of places. “Cordons bleus,” says Bachaumont, “mixed up in the crowd, elbowing with Savoyards – the guard being dispersed, and the iron gates broken by the efforts of the assailants.” La Harpe, in one of his series of letters to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and Count Schouvaloff, declares that three porters were killed; being “one more than were killed at the production of Scudéry’s last piece.” “On the stage, when the curtain was raised, there was seen,” says De Loménie, “perhaps the most splendid assemblage of talent that was ever contained within the walls of the Théâtre Français, employed in promoting the success of a comedy which sparkled with wit, which carried the audience along by its dramatic movement and audacity, and which, if it shocked or startled some of the private boxes, excited and enchanted, inflamed and electrified the pit.”

All the parts were entrusted to performers of the first merit. Mademoiselle Sainval, who was the tragic actress then in vogue, had, at the urgent request of Beaumarchais, accepted the part of the Countess Almaviva, in which she displayed a talent the more striking from being quite unexpected. Mademoiselle Contat enchanted the public in the character of Susanna by her grace, the refinement of her acting, and the charms of her beauty and her voice. A very young and pretty actress, destined soon afterwards, at the age of eighteen, to be nipped in the bud by death – Mademoiselle Olivier, whose talent, says a contemporary, “was as naïve and fresh as her face” – lent her naïveté and her freshness to the seemingly ingenuous character of Cherubino. Molè acted the part of Count Almaviva with the elegance and dignity which distinguished him. Dazincourt represented Figaro with all his wit, and relieved the character from any appearance of vulgarity. Old Préville, who was not less successful in the part of Bridoison, gave it up after a few days to Dugazon, who interpreted it with more power and equal intelligence. Delessarts, with his rich humour, gave relief to the personage of Bartholo, which is thrown somewhat into the background. The secondary parts of Basil and Antonio were equally well played by Vanhove and Bellemont. Finally, through a singular caprice, a somewhat celebrated tragedian, Larive, not wishing tragedy to be represented in the piece by Mademoiselle Sainval alone, asked for the insignificant little part of Grippe-soleil.

“The success of this Aristophanic comedy,” writes De Loménie, “while it filled some persons with anxiety and alarm, naturally roused the curious crowd, who are never wanting, particularly when a successful person takes a pleasure in spreading his fame abroad – and this foible of Beaumarchais is well known. It was in the midst of a fire of epigrams in prose and verse that the author of the Marriage of Figaro pursued his career, pouring out on his enemies not torrents of fire and light, but torrents of liveliness and fun.”

Beaumarchais, on the famous first night, sat in a loge grillée– a private box, that is to say, with lattice-work in front – between two abbés, with whom he had been dining, and whose presence seemed indispensable to him, in order, as he said, that they might administer to him des secours très spirituels in case of death.

The Marriage of Figaro was represented sixty-eight times in succession, and each time with the greatest possible success. In eight months, from April 27th, 1784, till January 10th, 1785, the piece brought the Théâtre Français, without counting the fiftieth representation (which, at Beaumarchais’s request, was given for the poor), no less than 346,197 livres or francs; an immense sum for that period. When all expenses had been paid, there remained a profit of 293,755 livres for division amongst the actors, after the deduction from it of Beaumarchais’s share as author, amounting to 41,469 livres.

All sorts of anecdotes were told in connection with the success of the work. A gentleman – whom gossip transformed into a duke – wrote to Beaumarchais, asking for a loge grillée for himself and two ladies who wished to see the piece without being seen. Beaumarchais replied that he had no sympathy with persons who wished to combine “the honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice”; and, moreover, that his comedy was not a work which honourable persons need be ashamed to see.

The Boulevard Beaumarchais of the present day was (as already mentioned) called, until some fifty years after the Revolution, Boulevard St. – Antoine; where, until 1789, the year of its destruction, stood the celebrated fortress and prison of the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was the first event in the French Revolution; and many have asked why the fury of the crowd was particularly directed against a building which, monument of tyranny though it was, had never been employed against the people at large, but almost always against members of the aristocracy, on whose behalf the Revolutionists were certainly not fighting. But although the dungeons of the Bastille were for the most part filled with political offenders, persons of every station in life did, from time to time, find themselves enclosed within its walls.

The too celebrated fortress was originally built to protect the east of Paris, as the Louvre was constructed to guard the west. It stood on the south side of the boulevard now known by the name of Beaumarchais, and consisted of eight towers, four of which looked towards the town – that is to say, the Rue St. – Antoine – and four towards the country – that is to say, the Faubourg St. – Antoine.

Above the shop of the wine-seller who inhabits No. 232 in the Rue St. – Antoine, at the corner of the newly-built Rue Jacques-Cœur, a marble tablet sets forth that the house in question occupies the site of the outlying building into which the assailants, on the 14th of July, 1789, made their way before storming the fortress itself. The café which stands at the corner of the street and of the square bears for its sign, “The Cannon of the Bastille.”

It was less as a fortress than as a State prison that the Bastille was known, and by the nation at large execrated. Prisoners were taken to the Bastille on a simple lettre de cachet: a sealed order or warrant, which was sometimes given out blank, so that the favoured recipient might make whatever use of it he pleased, against no matter whom. The victims were introduced secretly into the fortress; and the soldiers on guard had instructions to turn aside when any prisoner was being brought in, so that they might not afterwards recognise him. Once inside the dungeon, he was liable to undergo frequent interrogations without even knowing on what charge, or even suspicion, he had been arrested. The treatment in prison depended absolutely on the will of the governor. Those under detention were kept in solitary confinement, without anyone outside being able to obtain news as to whether they even existed. They were not allowed to receive letters from their family or friends. The internal regulations of the Bastille are sufficiently well known to us by the numerous chronicles and memoirs published in connection with it, including, in particular, those of Linguet. “During the seven years that I passed in the Bastille,” says M. Pelissery, quoted by Linguet, “I had no air even in fine weather, and in winter they gave me nothing in the way of fuel except wood just taken from the river. My bed was intolerable, and the bedclothes dirty and worm-eaten. I drank, or rather poisoned myself with, foul stagnant water. What food they brought me! Famished dogs would not have touched it. Accordingly, my body was soon covered with pustules, my legs gave way beneath me, I spat blood, and became scorbutic. The dungeons received neither light nor air, except by one narrow window pierced in a wall nearly five metres thick, and traversed by a triple row of bars, between which there were intervals of only five centimetres. Even on the most beautiful days the prisoners received but feeble rays of light. In the winter these fatal caves resembled ice-houses, being sufficiently raised for the cold to penetrate; while in summer they were like damp stoves, in which it was difficult not to be stifled, since the walls are so thick as to keep out the heat necessary for drying the interior. There are some rooms – and mine was one of them – which look out directly upon the moat into which flows the great sewer of the Rue St. – Antoine. Thence ascends a pestilential exhalation, which, when once it has entered these rooms, can only with much difficulty be got out again. It is in such an atmosphere that the prisoner has to breathe. There, not to be absolutely stifled, he is obliged to pass his nights and days glued to the inside bars of the little window in the door, through which a glimmer of light and a breath of air may reach him.”

“The history of the Bastille as a State prison,” says Mongin, “might almost be said to include everything intellectual and political in France. Into its dungeons were thrown, one after the other, Hugues; Aubriot, who himself founded the Bastille, and who expiated by perpetual imprisonment his alleged heresy and his love relations with a Jewess; Jacques d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, in 1475; with many high and powerful noblemen in the time of Louis XI. and Richelieu. Here also were confined Marshal de Biron and Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, besides more than one officer of distinction under Louis XIV.”

When the Bastille had done its work on the last remains of feudalism and on the Court aristocracy, the turn came of the people – the precursors of the Republic, the martyrs of the Revolution. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Bastille was filled with Protestants. Here were shut up the Jansenists and the fanatics known as the Convulsionnaires. Here, too, suffered, until he was taken to the scaffold, the brave Governor of India under the French domination, Lally, who had given offence to the Court rather than to the sovereign. Voltaire, Mirabeau, Linguet (who, after making his escape, published in London his eloquent account of the cruelties to which prisoners in the Bastille were subjected), Latude, and numberless other men distinguished in different walks of life.

The 14th of July, 1789, saw the first blow struck by the Revolutionists against that monument which, to them, symbolised all that was hateful in the ancient monarchy. War had already virtually been declared between the two sides. Everything seemed in favour of the king, the Court, the nobility, and the monarchical party generally. “If Paris must be burnt,” one of the Ministers had said, “we will burn it.”

Paris was, indeed, surrounded with foreign troops; and whatever might be the attitude of the French regiments, commanded by officers some of whom were Royalists and others Republicans, it was certain that the popular movement would have to count with the Swiss, Austrian, and German troops stationed at Charenton, Sèvres, Versailles, at the Military School, and elsewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital.

On the 8th of July the National Assembly had, on the motion of Mirabeau, demanded from the king the removal of the foreign troops. The king’s only reply, a few days afterwards, was to dismiss Necker, the popular Minister. The news of this tyrannical step fell upon Paris on Sunday, July 12th, like a spark on a barrel of gunpowder. The Palais Royal, which might be regarded as the head-quarters of the Revolution, became violently agitated. It was twelve o’clock on a hot summer’s day when suddenly the midday cannon, with its lens above the touch-hole, was fired by the blazing sun.

A superstitious importance was attached to the familiar incident; and the Revolutionists, with the people around them, saw in the ordinary explosion of a midday gun, intended only to interest the public by marking the time, the signal for an uprising against the ancient monarchy. A young man of twenty, then absolutely unknown, but who was afterwards to be remembered as Camille Desmoulins, rushed out of the Café Foy, sprang upon a table just outside, and in impassioned language addressed the crowd. “Citizens,” he cried, “there is not a moment to lose! I have just come from Versailles. Necker is dismissed, and his dismissal is the signal for a new massacre of St. Bartholomew. This evening all the Swiss and German battalions will march from the Champ-de-Mars to put to death every patriot. We have but one resource: to rise to arms, after assuming cockades by which we may recognise each other. What colours do you prefer – green, the colour of hope, or the blue of Cincinnatus, the colour of American liberty and of democracy?”

“Green, green!” cried the crowd.

“Friends,” continued the young man, in a sonorous voice, “the signal is already given. I see staring me in the face the spies and satellites of the police. But I will not fall alive into their hands. Let every citizen follow my example.” He waved in the air two pistols, fastened a green ribbon to his hat, and descending from his chair, urged those present to take, as signs of recognition, leaves from the trees around them. Soon the trees of the Palais Royal garden were stripped. The excitement and enthusiasm spread in every direction. Arms were seized wherever they could be found. The busts of Necker and of the Duke of Orleans, idols of the moment, were carried through the streets veiled with black crape. More than one detachment of the French Guards joined the crowd. In the Tuileries Gardens several persons were killed by a cavalry charge under the command of Prince de Lambesc, of which the chief effect was to exasperate the insurgents to the utmost. Partial engagements now took place at various points. At the gates of Paris, the barriers where a tax was levied on provisions brought into the city were set in flames. Towards evening committees were formed in all the districts of the capital “for preventing tumult.” The shops were now everywhere closed, and the theatres gave no performances. During the night the district assemblies held a general meeting, at which it was resolved to urge all who possessed arms to bring them to district head-quarters, that militia companies, to be promptly formed for the occasion, might be furnished therewith in a regular manner. These militia bands were intended to act on behalf of the nation; if necessary, against the populace. But the general excitement was too great to allow of such formal measures being taken as the well-to-do citizens of the hurriedly constituted district assemblies thought advisable. To all recommendations of prudence there was but one reply: “To Arms!” The Provost of the Paris merchants, De Flesselles by name, who had been elected president of the district assemblies, endeavoured to stay the spirit of revolution, now spreading so widely; but to no purpose. The Hôtel de Ville, from which he held forth, was now occupied in every corner by armed men, who had no intention of giving their weapons up for the equipment of any imaginary militia company; and as yet these companies were unformed. An order to evacuate the Hôtel de Ville met with no attention, and deliberations were now carried on beneath the eyes and under the pressure of the enraged mob.

In place of the green colour adopted in the first instance by the insurgents of the Palais Royal, which the day afterwards was rejected as the family colour of the Counts of Artois, the tricolour had now been assumed: blue, in the new flag, being held to signify hope; red, the blood of sacrifice; and white, the ancient monarchy, against which war had not yet been declared. It was against the abuses of the ancient system, and in view of a thorough reform, that the people were rising.

Camille Desmoulins had begun the Revolution on Sunday, the 12th of July, at noon. On the morning of Monday, July 13th, the alarm bell was rung in every church, and the drum beaten in every street. Bands were now formed, without much system, under the names of Volunteers of the Palais Royal, of the Tuileries, etc. Women were everywhere making blue and red cockades – the white was not absolutely essential; the blacksmiths were forging arms; and it has been calculated that in thirty-six hours fifty thousand pikes were made. Tumultuous meetings were held in the churches, with a view to some regular organisation of the movement. A Government dépôt of arms was invaded, and plundered of its contents. The Place de la Grève became an important centre to which arms taken from gunsmiths’ shops or from Government stores, sacks of wheat and flour (stopped at the barriers), and even herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, were brought. Paris was being turned into a camp. The citizens of the district assemblies, carried away by the ardour of the people whose impetuosity they had sought to restrain, the students of the various schools, the clerks of the public offices, the workmen of the faubourgs: all hurried to the Hôtel de Ville, swearing to conquer or to die. The fact that Paris was threatened by Swiss, German, and various kinds of Austrian troops could not but awaken the patriotism of Frenchmen generally. The first enemy to be fought was the army of foreigners waiting to swoop down on the city. An important collection of arms, formed by those who had obeyed the first recommendations of the district assemblies, was reported to exist at the Invalides; and an enormous quantity of powder which was being sent out of Paris by way of the River Seine, apparently under the orders of the timid citizens composing the aforesaid assemblies, was seized, carried to the Hôtel de Ville, and partially distributed.

No movement, meanwhile, had been made by the foreign troops, who were for the most part encamped or quartered in the École Militaire; the inaction being attributable to divided counsels among the king’s ministers, and to hesitation on the part of the king himself. The one thing decided upon was to stop the entrance of provisions into Paris: a sure means, it was thought, of reducing the tumult, which at the outset was scarcely looked upon as serious. The National Assembly was behaving, meanwhile, in the most heroic manner. Threatened with dissolution and arrest, and quite at the mercy of the foreign troops, it voted an expression of regret at the dismissal of Necker, a demand that the foreign troops be forthwith sent away from Paris, and a declaration that the king’s ministers, whatever their rank, would be held personally responsible for any misfortunes that might result from the present condition of things.

On the morning of the 14th of July Paris was surrounded at all points by foreign troops, and was at the same time threatened with famine. But one course was open to the insurgents: that of immediate action. There was a general feeling that an attack must be made, and the object unanimously chosen for the first assault was the Bastille: symbol of everything hateful in the government it was proposed to overturn. “A la Bastille!” was now the universal cry. But a dearth of muskets retarded the impulse, and it was determined in the first instance to attack the Hôtel des Invalides, where arms in large numbers were known to be stored away. Thirty thousand men hurried to the asylum of aged soldiers; when, without much time being wasted in parleying with the governor, the sentinels were seized and the place entered by force. In the cellars twenty-eight thousand muskets were discovered concealed beneath hay and straw; and with these the invaders, whose numbers had gradually increased, hastened to arm themselves. Five years before, the king, on consenting to the liberation of Latude, had promised that henceforth no one should be sent to the Bastille except for a definite period, and after formal conviction on a positive charge. But this engagement had not been kept; people had been arrested, and incarcerated (as at the present time in Russia) on the simple denunciation of police officers and spies; sometimes on mere suspicion, at others without even suspicion, and simply for the gratification of private malice. The terrible lettre de cachet, on the strength of which arrests were made without further explanation, had indeed become a purchasable thing, with a fixed price, like any other article of commerce. It was doubtless, however, the memory of a long course of ancient wrongs that, above all, animated the people in their rage against the Bastille. There was, moreover, however, a strategical reason. As a fortress, the Bastille commanded the Rue St. – Antoine and the adjoining faubourg, and indeed dominated all Paris. To destroy it, therefore, was considered at once a good moral and a good military act.

The governor, De Launay, had already prepared his defence; and in addition to the guns of position in the towers, he had placed a number in the interior courtyard. The gates and the outer walls had been loopholed and armed with wall-pieces, and a quantity of paving-stones, cannon-balls, and lumps of iron had been carried up to the towers, in order to be hurled down upon the heads of the expected assailants.

The garrison consisted only of 114 men, 32 of whom were Swiss, while the other 82 were old pensioners. The defenders, indeed, were nearly all of them aged, but experienced, soldiers. Their material appliances and the strength of their position were such that the governor looked upon the fortress as impregnable against a mob of people who had neither the art nor the time to undertake regular siege operations. With his powerful batteries, De Launay could lay the whole quarter in ruins; and foreseeing this possibility, the committee of the Hôtel de Ville sent a deputation to the governor, promising not to attack him if he would withdraw the cannon, and promise not on his side to begin hostilities. A man of more energy, Thuriot de la Rozière, called, in the name of his district, upon the governor, and demanded the surrender of the fortress. His account of what was taking place in Paris astonished De Launay, and gained the sympathy of the French portion of the garrison. His final demand was that the Bastille should be occupied by some of the newly-formed bands conjointly with troops of the regular army. But this proposition, though more advanced than the feeble one made by the committee of the Hôtel de Ville, was by no means on a level with popular demands; and Thuriot, on leaving the Bastille, was threatened by the armed bands assembled outside, who demanded, not the occupation of the Bastille, but its destruction.

A few brave men got into the outer yard through the roof of the guard-house, and at once destroyed with hatchets the chains of the drawbridge leading to the inner yard. They were followed by others, and soon the outer gates were forced. A terrible fire had been opened on the crowd of assailants, and it was resolved once more to approach De Launay by means of a deputation, which, however, was unable to reach him. At this moment the besiegers set fire to several carts of hay and manure, in order to burn the buildings which masked the fortress and to smoke out the defenders. At the same time, a constant fire was kept up from the windows and roofs of the neighbouring houses. All this, however, had but little effect on the garrison. A new deputation was now sent forward, bearing a white flag. A white flag was displayed in reply from the Bastille, and the soldiers reversed their muskets. An officer of the Swiss troops passed forward a note, by means of a crane, with these words: “We have twenty thousand pounds of powder, and we will blow up the fortress and the whole of the neighbourhood unless you accept a capitulation.”

The Commissaries of the Hôtel de Ville, believing in the pacific demonstrations of the garrison, were already urging the people to retire, when suddenly there was a discharge of musketry from the fortress, which laid low a good number of the insurgents. It was apparently the Swiss who had fired, heedless of the conciliatory attitude assumed by the French portion of the defending force. The whole garrison was held responsible for this act of treachery. The exasperation of the people had now gone beyond all bounds, and there was but one cry heard: “Down with the Bastille!” A number of the French guards seized five of the guns which had been brought from the Invalides, and pointed them at the fortress. The fire of the artillery proved more effective than that of the musketry, and the drawbridge was now swept by cannon-balls.

Meanwhile, the garrison was divided against itself. The pensioners wished the contest, of which the end could now be foreseen, to cease, whereas the Swiss mercenaries, careless about the effusion of French blood (and, it must be admitted, full of a more youthful courage), were determined to resist to the last.

There was another reason which made it unadvisable to prolong the defence. The fortress contained abundance of ammunition, but little or no food; and the numbers, constantly increasing, of the besiegers rendered it impossible to renew the supply. It was evident that all Paris demanded the fall of the Bastille. The Swiss, however, would hear of no surrender. As for De Launay, he felt that he was personally detested, not only for the blood he was uselessly shedding, but even more for his persecution of the prisoners under his charge. The Memoirs of Linguet and other revelations had made his name odious throughout Europe. Thus the vengeful cries of the people seemed directed against himself personally. Wild with terror, he seized a match, and was about to explode his powder magazine, when two non-commissioned officers drove him back at point of bayonet. Outside, a sort of organisation had now established itself. Many bands of volunteers had been moving together since the first uprising, with the volunteers of the Palais Royal, under Camille Desmoulins, among them. These bands were under the command of officers of the French Guards, or of energetic men who were afterwards to distinguish themselves in the military career.

According to some accounts, the surrender of the fortress took place immediately after the episode of the note thrust forward on a crane, or, according to another version, pushed through a loophole. The moment in any case arrived when, promised by some of the French Guards that their lives should be spared, the garrison agreed formally to surrender. The drawbridges were now lowered, and the Bastille was occupied in force. On being recognised, De Launay was arrested and led off towards the Hôtel de Ville. Hulin, afterwards one of Napoleon’s generals and nobles, took charge of the prisoner, and, forming an escort, did his best to convey him safely through the infuriated mob, which, with execrations, pressed towards him from all sides. More than once De Launay was thrown down. Having lost his hat, he was now an easier mark than ever for the assaults of the crowd. That he might not so readily be distinguished, Hulin gave him his own hat, thus running the risk of being himself mistaken for the odious governor. At last Hulin and several members of the escort were thrown together to the ground; and when Hulin managed to rise, the head of the hated governor was being carried aloft on the point of a pike.

Within the Bastille the invaders were, meanwhile, breaking open the dungeons. Only seven prisoners, however, were found, two of whom had become insane. One of the latter had a long white beard falling to his waist, and fancied himself still under the reign of Louis XV., who had been dead fifteen years. Instruments of torture were discovered. Shocking as this detail may be to a reader of the present day, it should be remembered that under the old monarchy torture was constantly employed in criminal process. It is only just to add that it was formally abolished a few years before the Revolution, and not afterwards, as is generally supposed.

The archives of the prison were in part destroyed. All that was preserved of them was afterwards published, in order once more to throw light on the iniquity of the system under which such an institution as the Bastille could exist.

The taking of the Bastille cost the assailants eighty-three killed on the spot, and fifteen who died from their injuries, besides sixty-three wounded. The garrison, on their side, protected by the walls of the fortress, lost but one killed and one wounded during a struggle which lasted five hours.

The major of the garrison, De Losme, shared the fate of the governor, except that, instead of being put to death summarily by an enraged mob, he was taken deliberately to the famous lanterne, or lamp of the Place de la Grève, and hanged. Two of the pensioners, accused, like the major, of having pointed the guns of the fortress against the people, were also strung up. These were the first victims of the cry “À la lanterne!” afterwards to be heard so often in the streets of Paris. The lanterne in question was attached to an iron gibbet; and it was on this gibbet that the victims of popular fury were hoisted aloft.

The lives of all the other defenders were spared. They were set at liberty and a subscription opened for them, as they had now no means of earning an honest penny.

The news of the capture of the Bastille caused great excitement at Versailles, where Louis XVI., in his habitual state of indecision, seemed unable to give an order of any kind. He had gone to bed at his usual hour, but was awakened early the next morning by the Duke de Liancourt, who enjoyed the privilege of entering the royal bedchamber at any time. The Duke informed his sovereign of what was taking place at Paris, and impressed upon him the necessity of putting himself in accord with the nation and with the Assembly.

“Is it a revolt, then?” asked Louis XVI., with his eyes half open. “No, Sire,” replied the duke; “it is a revolution.” In these words, destined to become celebrated, the astonished king was informed that the ancient monarchy was at an end.

The Bastille was now pulled down: partly in the natural course of things, partly in virtue of a formal resolution. The stones were broken up into little pieces, and worn by ladies as jewellery; ornaments and playthings were also made from the remains of the detested edifice.

The conquerors of the Bastille formed a special corps, which had its recognised place in all public ceremonies. A medal was struck in their honour, and each of them was commissioned with an office. During the Revolution the ground on which the Bastille stood became a favourite place for public meetings. The Bronze Column which now lifts its head in the Place de la Bastille was erected under the reign of Louis Philippe, in memory of the Revolution of 1789 and of the lesser revolt of 1830.

Although the Revolution began in Paris, the revolutionary spirit spread rapidly to the provinces. This is clearly set forth in Arthur Young’s account of what took place at Strasburg, where he had just arrived when news of the Revolution reached him.

“I arrived there,” he writes, “at a critical moment, which I thought would have broken my neck: a detachment of horse, with their trumpets, on one side, a party of infantry, with their drums beating, on the other, and a great mob hallooing, frightened my French mare, and I could scarcely keep her from trampling on Messrs. the tiers état. On arriving at the inn, one heard the interesting news of the revolt of Paris; the Garde Française joining the people; the unreliability of the rest of the troops; the taking of the Bastille; and the institution of the milice bourgeoise– in a word, the absolute overthrow of the old government. Everything being now decided, and the kingdom absolutely in the hands of the Assembly, they have the power to make a new constitution such as they think proper; and it will be a spectacle for the world to view in this enlightened age the representatives of twenty-five millions of people sitting on the construction of a new and better fabric of liberty than Europe has yet offered. It will now be seen whether they will copy the constitution of England, freed from its faults, or attempt from theory to frame something absolutely speculative. In the former case they will prove a blessing to their country; in the latter they will probably involve it in inextricable confusion and civil wars: perhaps not immediately, but certainly in the future. I hear nothing of their removing from Versailles. If they stay there under the control of an armed mob, they must make a government that will please the mob; but they will, I suppose, be wise enough to move to some central town – Tours, Blois, or Orleans, where their deliberations may be free. But the Parisian spirit of commotion spreads rapidly; it is here; the troops that were near breaking my neck are employed to keep an eye on the people who show signs of an intended revolt. They have broken the windows of some magistrates who are no favourites; and a great mob of them is at this moment assembled, demanding clamorously to have meat at five sous a pound. They have a cry among them that will conduct them to good lengths: ‘Point d’impôt et vivent les états!’ I have spent some time at the Cabinet Littéraire reading the gazettes and journals that give an account of the transactions at Paris; and I have had some conversation with several sensible and intelligent men in the present revolution. The spirit of revolt is gone forth into various parts of the kingdom; the price of bread has prepared the populace everywhere for all sorts of violence; at Lyons there have been commotions as furious as at Paris, and likewise at a great many other places. Dauphiné is in arms, and Bretagne in absolute rebellion. The idea is that hunger will drive the people to revolt, and that when once they find any other means of subsistence than honest labour everything will have to be feared. Of such consequence it is to a country to have a policy on the subject of corn: one that shall, by securing a high price to the farmer, encourage his culture sufficiently to secure the people from famine. I have been witness to a scene curious to a foreigner, but dreadful to those Frenchmen who consider. Passing through the square of the Hôtel de Ville, the mob were breaking the windows with stones, notwithstanding that an officer and a detachment of horse were on the spot. Observing not only that their numbers increased, but that they grew bolder and bolder every moment, I thought it worth staying to see how the thing would end, and clambered on to the roof of a row of low stalls opposite the building against which their malice was directed. Here I could view the whole scene. Perceiving that the troops would not attack them except in words and menaces, they grew more violent, and furiously attempted to beat the door in pieces with iron crows, placing ladders to the windows. In about a quarter of an hour, which gave time for the assembled magistrates to escape by a back door, they burst everything open, and entered like a torrent, amid a universal shout of triumph. From that minute a medley of casements, sashes, shutters, chairs, tables, sofas, books, papers, pictures, etc., rained down incessantly from all the windows of the house, which is seventy or eighty feet long; this being succeeded by a shower of tiles, skirting-boards, banisters, framework, and whatever parts of the building force could detach. The troops, both horse and foot, were quiet spectators. They were at first too few to interpose, and when they became more numerous the mischief was too far advanced to admit of any other course than that of guarding every avenue around, permitting no fresh arrivals on the scene of action, but letting everyone that pleased retire with his plunder; guards at the same time being placed at the doors of the churches and all public buildings. I was for two hours a spectator of this scene: secure myself from the falling furniture, but near enough to see a fine lad of about fourteen crushed to death by some object as he was handing plunder to a woman – I suppose his mother, from the horror pictured in her countenance. I remarked several common soldiers with their white cockades among the plunderers, and instigating the mob even in sight of the officers of the detachment. Mixed in the crowd, there were people so decently dressed that I regarded them with no small surprise. The public archives were destroyed, and the streets for some way around strewed with papers. This was a wanton mischief, for it will be the ruin of many families unconnected with the magistrates.”

Although at the critical moment the first object of the revolutionists’ attack was the Bastille, that hateful building did not, according to Mercier, inspire the common people with any peculiar indignation. It will be seen from his own words that he was in this particular a less keen-sighted observer than he is generally reputed to have been. Writing just before the Revolution, Mercier saw well that his fellow-countrymen were oppressed, but believed they were too much inured to this oppression ever to rise against it.

“I have already observed,” he writes, “that the Parisians in general are totally indifferent as to their political interest; nor is this to be wondered at in a place where a man is hardly allowed to think for himself. A coercive silence, imposed upon every Frenchman from the hour of his birth on whatever regards the affairs of government, grows with him into a habit which the fear of the Bastille and his natural indolence daily strengthen, till the man is totally lost in the slave. Kingly prerogative knows no bounds, because no one ever dared to resist the monarch’s despotic commands. It is true that at times, in the words of the proverb, the galled horse has winced. The Parisians have at times attempted to withstand tyranny; but popular commotions amongst them have had very much the air of a boyish mutiny at school; a rod with the latter, the butt end of a firelock with the former, quiets all, because neither act with the spirit and resolution of men who assert their natural rights. What would cost the minister his life in those unhappy countries where self-denial and passive obedience are unknown is done off in Paris by a witty epigram, a smart song, etc.; the authors of which, however, take the greatest care to remain concealed, having continually the fear of ministerial runners before their eyes; nor has a bon mot unfrequently occasioned the captivity of its author.”

Mercier at the same time points out that never since the days of Henri IV. had France been so mildly governed as under Louis XVI. One of the last acts of Louis XV. had been to cast into the Bastille all the volumes of the Encyclopædia. One of the first acts of Louis XVI. was to liberate from the Bastille all prisoners who had not been guilty of serious, recognisable offences.

“At the accession of his present Majesty,” writes Mercier, “his new ministers, actuated by humanity, signalised the beginning of their administration with an act of justice and mercy, ordering the registers of the Bastille to be laid before them, when a great number of prisoners were set at large.” Among those liberated was a man of whom Mercier tells the same story that was afterwards to be told of one of the seven prisoners who were freed at the taking of the Bastille.

“Their number included a venerable old man, who for forty-seven years had remained shut up between four walls. Hardened by adversity, which steels the heart when it does not break it, he had supported his long and tedious captivity with unexampled constancy and fortitude; and he thought no more of liberty. The day is come. The door of his tomb turns upon its rusty hinges, it opens not ajar, as usual, but wide, for liberty, and an unknown voice acquaints him that he may now depart. He thinks himself in a dream; he hesitates, and at last ventures out with trembling steps; wonders at everything; thinks to have travelled a great way before he reaches the outward gate. Here he stops a while; his feeble eyes, long deprived of the sun’s cheering beams, can hardly support its first light. A coach waits for him in the streets; he gets into it, desires to be carried to a certain street, but unable to support the motion of the coach, he is set down, and by the assistance of two men at length he reaches the quarter where he formerly dwelt; but the spot is altered, and his house is no more. His wandering eye seems to interrogate every passenger, saying with heartrending accents of despondency: ‘Where shall I find my wife? Where are my children?’ All in vain; the oldest man hardly remembers to have heard his name. At last a poor old decrepit porter is brought to him. This man had served in his family, but knew him not. Questioned by the late prisoner, he replied, with all the indifference which accompanies the recollection of events long passed, that his wife had died above thirty years before in the utmost misery, and that his children were gone into foreign countries, nothing having been heard of them for many years. Struck with grief and astonishment, the old gentleman, his eyes riveted to the ground, remains for some time motionless; a few tears would have eased his deeply wounded heart, but he could not weep. At last, recovering from his trance, he hastens to the minister to whose humanity he was indebted for a liberty now grown burdensome. ‘Sir,’ he says to him, ‘send me back to my dungeon! Who is it that can survive his friends, his relations, nay, a whole generation? Who can hear of the death of all he held dear and precious, and not wish to die? All these losses, which happen to other men by gradation, and one by one, have fallen upon me in an instant. Ah, sir! it is not dreadful to die; but it is to be last survivor.’ The minister sympathised with this truly unfortunate man. Care was taken of him, and the old porter assigned to him for his servant, as he could speak with this man of his wife and children: the only comfort now left for the aged son of sorrow, who lived some time retired, though in the midst of the noise and confusion of the capital. Nothing, however, could reconcile him to a world quite new for him, and to which he resolved to remain a perfect stranger; and friendly death at last came to his relief and closed his eyes in peace.”

Although, as frigid historians have pointed out, the Bastille never did any harm to the common people, it was sometimes made use of to punish actresses who were much admired by the populace. Mlle. Clairon, a distinguished actress and excellent woman, on quitting the stage from religious scruples – or rather because, contrary to her own views on the subject, she found the profession of actress condemned absolutely by the Church – was sent to the Bastille on the ground that, being a paid servant of the king, she refused to do her duty. “The case of this lady,” said a writer of the time, “is indeed hard. The king sends her to prison if she does not act, and the Church sends her to perdition if she does.” Mlle. Clairon was much troubled at the view taken of her profession by the clergy; and after consulting her confessor, she came to the conclusion that so long as she remained on the stage she could have no hope of salvation. It was then that she refused any longer to act, and determined to retire altogether from the stage. So indignant had Mlle. Clairon become on learning for the first time under what severe condemnation the stage lay, that she raised a strong party with the view of removing so great a scandal. Much was written and said in favour of the comedians, but all to no purpose. The priests stood firm to their text, and, in the words of a French writer, would by no means give up “their ancient and pious privilege of consigning to eternal punishment everyone who had anything to do with the stage.”

Mlle. Clairon’s retirement threw her manager into the greatest confusion. She was by far the best actress of the day, and such a favourite that it was almost impossible to do without her. The theatre was soon deserted by the public, and still Mlle. Clairon refused to act. Then it was that by royal mandate she was imprisoned. She had not, however, been long in the Bastille, when an order came from the Court for the players to go to Versailles to perform before the king. Mlle. Clairon was released, and commanded to make her appearance with the rest of the company. Being already very tired of the Bastille, she decided to obey, and performing at Court with immense success, and finding that all attempts to gain even the toleration of the Church were in vain, she resigned herself to her fate and went on acting as usual. Some years previously, Mlle. Clairon, accused of organising a cabal against a rival, had been sent to another State prison, Fort l’Évêque, where, instead of pining, as at the Bastille, she held high court, receiving visits from all kinds of illustrious people, whose carriages are said to have made the approach to the prison impassable.

Besides the Bastille and Fort l’Évêque, there was yet another prison, La Force, to which recalcitrant actresses used to be sent in the strange days of the ancient régime. Thus Mlle. Gavaudin, a singer at the Opera, having refused the part assigned to her in a piece called the “Golden Fleece,” was sent to La Force, where she enjoyed herself so much, that she was warned as to the possibility of her being punished by solitary confinement in a genuine dungeon. On this, she agreed to appear in the character which she had at first rejected. When, however, an official came to the prison to set her at liberty, in order that she might play her part that very evening, she told him that for the present she would remain where she was, that she had ordered an excellent dinner, and meant to eat it. The official charged with her liberation insisted, however, on setting her free, telling her that after he had once got her into the street she might go wherever she chose. She simply returned to the prison, where she dined copiously, with a due allowance of wine. “Then,” says a narrator of these incidents, “she went to the Opera, had a furious scene with the stage-manager, who, during her imprisonment, had given her dressing-room to another singer, and after a quarter of an hour of violent language calmed down, dressed herself for the part of Calliope, and sang very charmingly.” It may be mentioned that before she was consigned to the Bastille, Mlle. Clairon’s case interested greatly some of the best writers of the day, including Voltaire, who published an eloquent defence of the stage against the overbearing pretensions of the Church.

It seems strange that in France, where the drama is cultivated with more interest and with more success than in any other country, actors and actresses should so long have been regarded as beyond the pale of Christianity. Happily, this is no longer the case. But the traditional view of the French Church in regard to actors and actresses was, until within a comparatively recent time, that they were, by the mere fact of exercising their profession, in the position of excommunicated persons. This is sufficiently shown not only by the case of Mlle. Clairon in connection with the Bastille, but also by the circumstances attending the burial of Molière in the seventeenth, of Adrienne Lecouvreur in the eighteenth, and of Mlle. Raucourt in the nineteenth century. Acting in Le Malade Imaginaire, Molière broke a blood-vessel, and was carried home to die. He was attended in his last moments by a priest of his acquaintance; he expired in presence of two nuns whom he frequently entertained, and who had come to visit him on that very day. Funeral rites were denied him, all the same, by the Archbishop of Paris; and when Mme. Molière appealed in person to Louis XIV., the king took offence at her audacious mode of address, and threw the whole responsibility on the Archbishop of Paris – to whom, nevertheless, he sent a private message. As a result of the king’s interference – not a very authoritative one – a priest was allowed to accompany Molière’s body to its otherwise unhonoured grave. The great comedy-writer was buried at midnight in unconsecrated ground; and of course, therefore, without any religious service.

Adrienne Lecouvreur, who, more than a century after her death, was to be made the heroine of Scribe and Legouve’s famous drama, is known to all playgoers as the life-long friend of Marshal Saxe, whom she furnished with money for his famous expedition to Courland. Voltaire entertained the greatest regard for her, and was never so happy as when he had persuaded her to undertake a part in one of his plays. Adrienne died in Voltaire’s arms, and no sooner was she dead than public opinion accused her rival, the Duchess de Bouillon, of having poisoned her from jealousy and hatred; for the duchess had conceived a passion for Marshal Saxe to which that gallant warrior could not bring himself to respond. The clergy refused to bury Adrienne, as in the previous century they had refused to bury Molière. Her body was taken possession of by the police, who buried it at midnight, without witnesses, on the banks of the Seine. “In France,” said Voltaire, “actresses are adored when they are beautiful, and thrown into the gutter when they are dead.”

Nearly a hundred years after the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur died another great actress, Mlle. Raucourt, who, like Adrienne Lecouvreur and like Molière, was refused Christian burial. This was in 1815, just after the Restoration, at a time when the clergy, so long deprived of power, were beginning once more to exercise it in earnest. The Curé of St. – Roch refused to admit the body of the actress into his church. An indignant crowd assembled, and became so riotous that the troops had to be called out. At last King Louis XVIII. ordered the church doors to be opened, and with the tact which distinguished him, commissioned his private chaplain to perform the service. In such horror was the stage held by the French clergy (if not by the Catholic clergy throughout Europe) so late as the beginning of the present century, that money offered to the Church by actors and actresses for charitable purposes, although accepted, was at the same time looked upon as contaminating. Thus, when Mlle. Contat gave performances for the starving poor of Paris, and handed the proceeds to the clergy of her parish for distribution, they refused to touch the money until it had been “purified” by passing through the hands of the police, to whom it was paid in by the stage, and by whom it was afterwards paid out to the Church.

The Place de la Bastille was formed in virtue of a decree of the First Consul, but it was not completed until after the establishment of the Empire. The principal ornament of the square was to be a triumphal arch to the glory of the Grand Army. But after taking the opinion of the Academy of Fine Arts, the emperor altered his views; and the triumphal arch was reserved for the place it now occupies at the top of the Champs Élysées. Oddly enough, too, a massive object, intended originally for the spot now occupied by the Arc de l’Étoile, was carried to the Bastille in the form of an elephant, whose trunk, according to the fantastic design, was to give forth a column of water large enough to feed a triumphal fountain, which was inaugurated December 2nd, 1808. The wooden model of the elephant, covered with plaster, was seventeen metres long and fifteen metres high, counting the tower which the animal bore on its back. Set up for a time on the western bank of the Canal de l’Ourcq, the plastered elephant was afterwards abandoned, like the project in which it played a preliminary part, and its wooden carcase became a refuge for innumerable rats. The remains of the elephant were not removed until just before the completion of the bronze column which now stands in the centre of the Place de la Bastille, in memory of the victims of the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830.

The first stone of this monument was laid by King Louis Philippe on the 27th of July, 1831. It was finished at the beginning of 1843; and on the 28th of July of that year were placed, in the vaults constructed beneath the column for their reception, the remains of the insurgents of 1830, which for ten years had been lying buried in all parts of Paris, but particularly in the neighbourhood of the markets and at the foot of the Colonnade of the Louvre, where the relics reposed side by side with those of the Swiss soldiers who had died in protecting the palace. The figure lightly poised on the ball at the top of the column represents the Genius of Liberty.

At a short distance from the Place de la Bastille, and easily accessible by train, is Vincennes: known by its wood, at one time the favourite resort of duellists; by its military establishment, to which the famous Chasseurs de Vincennes owed their name when, after the downfall of Louis Philippe, it was thought desirable to get rid of their former designation – that of Chasseurs d’Orléans; and for its castle, in whose ditch the ill-fated Duke d’Enghien was shot, after a mock trial, on an all but groundless accusation.

The Duke d’Enghien, who, according to one of his biographers, had no fault but the one common to all the Bourbons – that of being “too easily influenced by beautiful eyes” – was living on the German side of the Rhine, nearly opposite Strasburg, with his wife, a Princess de Rohan-Rochefort, to whom he had been secretly married. As a royalist and a member of the royal family, he was naturally the enemy of Napoleon and the Napoleonic régime. But he had taken no part in any conspiracy, unless the League of Sovereigns and States formed against Napoleon could be so considered. The duke frequently crossed over from the right or German bank, especially at Binfelden, where the Prince de Rohan-Rochefort, his wife’s father, had taken apartments at the local inn. It became known, moreover, to the French authorities that the Prefect of Strasburg had for some time past been sending various agents to the German side. The princess received at this time from an officer of the Strasburg garrison, who had been formerly attached to the Rohan family, secret intelligence that inquiries were being made in regard to the Duke d’Enghien. Soon afterwards a small body of troops crossed the Rhine, surrounded the little castle or Gothic villa where the duke was living at Ettenheim, seized him, and brought him over to Strasburg. He was permitted to write, and lost no time in sending a note to the princess, who, from the windows of the house, had followed in painful anxiety all the events of the alarming drama acted before her eyes.

“They have promised me,” wrote the duke from the citadel of Strasburg, “that this letter shall be delivered to you intact. This is the first opportunity I have had of reassuring you as to my present condition, and I do so now without losing a moment. Will you, in your turn, reassure those who are attached to me in your neighbourhood? My own fear is that this letter may find you no longer at Ettenheim, but on the way to this place. The pleasure of seeing you, however, would not be nearly so great as the fear I should have of your sharing my fate… You know, from the number of men employed, that all resistance would have been useless. There was nothing to be done against such overpowering forces.

“I am treated with attention and politeness. I may say, except as regards my liberty (for I am not allowed to leave my room), that I am as well off as could be. If some of the officers sleep in my chamber, that is because I desired it. We occupy one of the commandant’s apartments, but another room is being prepared for me, which I am to take possession of to-morrow, and where I shall be better off still. The papers found on me, and which were sealed at once with my seal, are to be examined this morning in my presence.”

The first letters written by the young man from Strasburg to his wife (they are still preserved in the French Archives) showed no apprehension of danger; nothing could be proved against him except what was known beforehand, that he was a Bourbon and an enemy of Napoleon. “As far as I remember,” wrote the duke to his wife, “they will find letters from my relations and from the king, together with copies of some of mine. In all these, as you know, there is nothing that can compromise me, any more than my name and mode of thinking would have done during the whole course of the Revolution. All the papers will, I believe, be sent to Paris, and it is thought, according to what I hear, that in a short time I shall be free; God grant it! They were looking for Dumouriez, who was thought to be in our neighbourhood. It seems to have been supposed that we had had conferences together, and apparently he is implicated in the conspiracy against the life of the First Consul. My ignorance of this makes me hope that I shall obtain my liberty, but we must not flatter ourselves too soon. The attachment of my people draws tears from my eyes at every moment. They might have escaped; no one forced them to follow me. They came of their own accord… I have seen nobody this morning except the commandant, who seems to me an honest, kind-hearted man, but at the same time strict in the fulfilment of his duty. I am expecting the colonel of gendarmes who arrested me, and who is to open my papers before me.”

Transferred to Vincennes, the duke was tried summarily by court-martial, sentenced to death, and shot in the moat of the fortress on the 21st of March, 1804. Immediately before the execution he asked for a pair of scissors, cut off a lock of his hair, wrapped it up in a piece of paper, with a gold ring and a letter, and gave the packet to Lieut. Noirot, begging him to send it to the Princess Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort. Lieut. Noirot forwarded the packet to General Hulin, who transmitted it to an official named Réal, together with the following letter: —

“Paris, 30th Ventôse, Year 12 of the French Republic. – P. Hulin, General of Brigade commanding the Grenadiers on Foot of the Consular Guard, to Citizen Réal, Councillor of State charged with the conduct of affairs relating to the internal tranquillity and security of the Republic. I have the honour, Councillor of State, to address you a packet found on the former Duke d’Enghien. I have the honour to salute you. (Signed) P. HULIN.”

The receipt of the package was thus acknowledged by Citizen Réal: —

“Paris, 2 Germinal, Year 12 of the Republic. – The Councillor of State, especially charged with the conduct of all affairs relating to the internal tranquillity and security of the Republic, has received from the General of Brigade, Hulin, commanding the Grenadiers on Foot of the Guard, a small packet, containing hair, a gold ring, and a letter; this small packet bearing the following inscription: ‘To be forwarded to the Princess de Rohan from the former Duke d’Enghien.’

“(Signed) RÉAL.”

The last wishes of the unfortunate duke were not carried out. The packet was never forwarded to his wife. She may have received the letter, but the ring, the lock of hair, and some fifteen epistles, written in German, from the princess to the duke, and found upon him after his death, remained, without the duke’s letter, in the Archives of the Prefecture of Police. A fortnight after the duke’s execution, his widow addressed from Ettenheim, on the 16th of July, 1804, the following letter to the Countess d’Ecquevilly: —

“Since I still exist, dear Countess, it is certain that grief does not kill. Great God! for what frightful calamity was I reserved? In the most cruel torments, the most painful anxiety, never once did the horrible fear present itself to my mind that they might take his life. But, alas! it is only too true that the unhappy man has been made their victim: that this unjust sentence, this atrocious sentence, to which my whole being refused to lend credence, was pronounced and thereupon executed. I have not the courage to enter into details of this frightful event; but there is not one of them which is not heartrending, not one that would not paralyze with terror – I do not say every kind-hearted person, but anyone who has not lost all feeling of humanity. Alone, without support, without succour, without defence, oppressed with anxiety, worn out with fatigue, denied one moment of the repose demanded by Nature after his painful journey, he heard his death-sentence hurriedly pronounced, during which the unhappy man sank four times into unconsciousness. What barbarity! Great God! And when the end came he was abandoned on all sides, without sympathy or consolation, without one affectionate hand to wipe away his tears or close his eyelids.

“Ah! I have not the cruel reproach to make to myself of not having done everything to follow him. Heaven knows that I would have risked my life with joy, I do not say to save him, but to soften the last moments of his life. Alas! they envied me this sad delight. Prayers, entreaties, were all in vain; I could not share his fate. They preferred to leave me to this wretched existence, condemned to eternal regret, eternal sorrow.”

Princess Charlotte died at Paris in 1841; and quite recently a note on the subject of her last wishes appeared in the Paris Intermédiaire, the French equivalent of our Notes and Queries. It was as follows: – “After the death of the Princess Charlotte, there was found among her papers a sealed packet, of which the superscription directed that it should be opened by the President of the Tribunal – at that time M. de Balli. This magistrate opened the packet and examined its contents. He found the whole correspondence of Bonaparte’s victim with ‘his friend,’ as the worthy magistrate put it: avec son amie. The president gave the packet to the family notary after re-closing it, saying that the letters were very touching, very interesting, but that they must be burnt; which was in fact done.”

The marriage of the Duke d’Enghien to the Princess de Rohan had been informal; the informality consisting solely in its having been celebrated without some necessary sanction: probably that of the king, Louis XVI. The ceremony was performed by Cardinal de Rohan, the bride’s uncle; and it is evident from her first letters that she was regarded by her nearest friends and relatives as the duke’s lawful wife.

Let us now, passing from political to private executions, say a few words about some of the famous duels of which Vincennes, or rather the wood of Vincennes, has from time to time been the scene.

Duels in France are generally fought with swords; and as it depends upon the combatants to strike or not to strike at a mortal part, a hostile meeting is by no means always attended with serious consequences. It is a mistake, however, to assume, as Englishmen frequently do, that a duel in France fought for grave reasons is not itself a grave affair. Plenty of sword duels have placed the worsted combatant in imminent danger of his life; though it is undeniable that the pistol, being a more hazardous weapon, proves, as a rule, deadlier than the sword. When M. Paolo Fiorentino, blackballed at the Society of Men of Letters, on the ground that he had accepted bribes, undertook to fight every member of the association, beginning with M. Amédée Achard, whose name, thanks to its two A’s, headed the alphabetical list, the Italian critic and bravo ran his first opponent through the body, and all but killed him. M. Henri de Pène received like treatment at the hands of an officer by reason of his having described the unseemly conduct of officers generally, as shown at a ball of which the École Militaire was the scene. Both Achard and Pène, however, recovered. Not so the unfortunate Armand Carrel, one of the boldest and most brilliant writers that the Republican Press of France possessed. Armand Carrel and his antagonist, Émile de Girardin, another famous journalist of Louis Philippe’s reign, fought with pistols in that Bois de Vincennes whose name at once suggests crossed rapiers or whizzing bullets.

M. de Girardin was the inventor of the cheap press, not only in France, but in Europe. To reduce the price of the newspaper, and thus increase the number of subscribers, while covering any possible loss on the sale by the enlarged revenue from advertisements, which would flow in more and more rapidly as the circulation widened: such was Girardin’s plan. According, however, to his enemies, he proposed to “enlarge the portion hitherto allotted in newspapers to mendacious announcements to the self-commendations of quackery and imposture, at the sacrifice of space which should be devoted to philosophy, history, literature, the arts, and whatever else elevates or delights the mind of man.”

The proposed change was really one which Democrats and Republicans should have hailed with delight; for it promised to extend a knowledge of public affairs to readers who had hitherto been prevented from becoming acquainted with them by the high price of the newspapers, which, apart from their own articles on political affairs, published long accounts of the debates in the Chamber.

M. de Girardin, however, found his innovation attacked as the device of a charlatan. He was accused of converting journalism into the most sordid of trades: of making it “a speaking-trumpet of the money-grabber and the speculator.” Some of M. de Girardin’s opponents went so far as to hint that he was not working in good faith, and that the losses to which the diminution of price must expose his journal were to be made good by a secret subsidy. Armand Carrel, as editor of the National, entered into the quarrel, and took part against Girardin, who, on his side, wrote a bitter attack upon Carrel. No sooner had Carrel read the scathing article than he called upon its author, demanding either retractation or personal satisfaction. He entered Girardin’s room, accompanied by M. Adolphe Thibaudeau, holding open in his hand the journal which contained the offensive lines. Girardin asked Carrel to wait until he also could have a friend present. M. Lautour-Mézeray was sent for; but pending that gentleman’s arrival some sharp words were interchanged.

Armand Carrel conceived that he was justified in regarding the course adopted by M. de Girardin as indicating an intention to bring the matter to a duel, and on his suggesting as much, M. de Girardin replied, “A duel with such a man as you, sir, would be quite a bonne fortune.” “Sir,” replied Carrel, “I can never regard a duel as a bonne fortune.” A few moments afterwards M. Lautour-Mézeray arrived. His presence served to give the discussion a more conciliatory tone, and it was ultimately agreed that a few words of explanation should be published in both journals. On M. de Girardin’s proposing to draw up the note at once, “You may rely upon me, sir,” said Armand Carrel, with dignity. The quarrel seemed almost at an end; but an incident reanimated it. M. de Girardin required that the publication of the note should take place simultaneously in the two journals. Carrel, on the contrary, held that it ought to appear first in the Presse, Girardin’s paper; but he experienced on this point the most determined resistance. It was then that, carried away with indignation, wounded to the quick, utterly unable to adhere any longer to the moderation which, by a determined effort, he had hitherto enforced upon himself, Carrel rose and exclaimed, “I am the offended person; I choose the pistol!”

It was early on the morning of Friday, July 22, 1836, that Armand Carrel and M. de Girardin found themselves face to face in the Bois de Vincennes.

While the pistols were being loaded, Carrel said to M. de Girardin, “Should chance be against me and you should afterwards write my life, you will, in all honour, adhere strictly and simply to the facts?” “Rest assured,” replied his adversary. The seconds had measured a distance of forty paces; the combatants were to advance within twenty of each other. Armand Carrel immediately took his place and advanced, presenting, despite the urgent entreaties of M. Ambert that he would show less front, the whole breadth of his person to his adversary’s aim. M. de Girardin having also advanced some paces, both parties fired nearly at the same instant, and both fell wounded, the one in the leg, the other in the groin.

“I saw him,” wrote Louis Blanc some time afterwards, “as he lay; his pale features expressing passion in repose. His attitude was firm, inflexible, martial, like that of a soldier who slumbers on the eve of battle.”

M. de Girardin was profoundly grieved at the result of the duel, and he made a vow never to fight again. Many years afterwards, under the Republic of 1848, he visited the grave of the man he had killed, to express his regret and ask for pardon in the name of the form of Government to which he had now become a convert, and which Carrel had always placed above every other.

The duelling chronicles of the Bois de Vincennes would lead us far away from the Paris of to-day. It may be mentioned, however, that in this wood Alexandre Dumas the elder fought his famous duel with a collaborateur, who claimed to have written the whole of the Tour de Nesle and who, undoubtedly, supplied to the skilful dramatist the framework of the piece.

Dumas was in all truth a skilful dramatist, though one may hesitate to give him the title of dramatic poet, which he loved to claim. “What are you?” said the judge of the Rouen Tribunal to the author of so many clever pieces, who had to give evidence in a certain case. “If I were not in the city of Corneille,” answered Alexander the Great, “I should call myself a dramatic poet.” “There are degrees in everything,” replied the judge. Alexandre Dumas was, all the same, a great inventor, and he possessed an extraordinary talent for putting dramatic things into shape. When, therefore, the future editor of the Courier des États-Unis claimed to have written all that was important in the Tour de Nesle, he doubtless declared what from a literary point of view was false. Dumas not only rejected his contention, but declined to allow his own name to appear in the bill side by side with that of his collaborateur. Hence angry words and a duel: once more a serious one, and with pistols, not swords.

With a calm desire to kill his man, of which, were he not his own accuser, one would refuse to suspect him, Dumas tells us, in his Memoirs, how, when he appeared on the ground, he examined his adversary’s costume, and, while thinking it excellent as a “make-up,” was sorry to find that it offered no salient mark for a pistol-shot. M. Gaillardet was dressed entirely in black; his trousers, his buttoned-up coat, his cravat were all as inky as Hamlet’s cloak, and according to the Parisian fashion of the time, he wore no shirt-collar. “Impossible to see the man,” said Dumas to himself; “there is no point about him to aim at.” He at the same time made a mental note of the costume, which he afterwards reproduced in the duel scene of the “Corsican Brothers.” At last he noticed a little speck of white in his adversary’s ear: simply a small piece of cotton-wool. “I will hit him in the ear,” said Dumas to himself; and on his confiding the amiable intention to one of his seconds, the latter promised to watch carefully the effect of the shot, inasmuch as he was anxious to see whether a man hit with a bullet through the head turned round a little before falling or fell straight to the ground. Dumas’s pistol, however, missed fire. The delightful experiment contemplated could not, therefore, be tried; and the encounter was bloodless.

At Vincennes was confined for a few days, just before his expulsion from France, the Young Pretender, or “Charles Edward,” as the French called him. The Duke de Biron had been ordered to see to his arrest; and one evening when it was known that he intended to visit the Opera, Biron surrounded the building with twelve hundred guards as soon as the prince had entered it. He was arrested, taken to Vincennes, and kept there four days; then to be liberated and expelled from France, in accordance with the treaty of 1748, so humiliating to the French arms. The servants of the Young Pretender, and with them one of the retinue of the Princess de Talmont, whose antiquated charms had detained him at Paris, were conveyed to the Bastille; upon which the princess wrote the following letter to M. de Maurepas, the minister: “The king, sir, has just covered himself with immortal glory by arresting Prince Edward. I have no doubt but that his Majesty will order a Te Deum to be sung to thank God for so brilliant a victory. But as Placide, my lacquey, taken captive in this memorable expedition, can add nothing to his Majesty’s laurels, I beg you to send him back to me.” “The only Englishman the regiment of French guards has taken throughout the war!” exclaimed the Princess de Conti, when she heard of the arrest.

“Besides the Bastille and the Castle of Vincennes, which are the privileged places of confinement for State prisoners, there are others,” says an old chronicler, “which may be called the last strongholds of tyranny. The minister by his private lettre de cachet sends an objectionable individual to Bicêtre or Charenton. The latter place, indeed, is for lunatics; but a minister who deprives a citizen of his liberty because he so wills it may make him pass for what he pleases; and if the person taken up is not at that time, he will in a few months be, entirely out of his senses, so that at worst it is only a kind of ministerial anticipation. Upon any complaint laid by the parents or other relations, a young man is sent to St. – Lazare, where sometimes he will remain till the death of the complainants; and Heaven knows how fervently this is prayed for by the captive!”

Under the reign of Charles VII. there stood in the Wood of Vincennes a castle which the King named Château de Beauté, and presented to Agnes Sorel. Of this abode the royal favourite duly took possession. Charles was by no means popular with his subjects, whom he taxed severely; and they were scandalised by the way in which Agnes Sorel squandered money, by her undisguised relations with the king, and by the kindness with which she was apparently treated even by the queen. Far, then, from rendering honours to “the beautiful Agnes,” the Parisians murmured at her prodigality and arrogance; and the favourite, indignant to find herself so ill received in Paris, departed, saying that the Parisians were churls, and that if she had suspected they would render her such insufficient honour she would never have set foot in their city: “which,” says a contemporary writer, “would have been a pity, but not a great one.”

After saying so much against Agnes Sorel, it is only fair to add that, according to many historians, it was she who roused Charles VII. from his habitual lethargy, and inspired him with the idea of driving the English out of France.

Vincennes is a military station, where a considerable body of troops is maintained. Hence, as already mentioned, the once famous Chasseurs derived their name. Each division has now its own battalion of Chasseurs. It may be added that special corps of infantry, such as Chasseurs de Vincennes, Zouaves, Turcos, together with the Chasseurs d’Afrique and other kinds of ornamental cavalry, have been abolished: to the detriment of the picturesqueness, if not the practical efficiency, of the French army.

The infantry regiments are all armed and dressed absolutely alike, with the exception of the battalions of “chasseurs” (corresponding to the “schützen” battalions of the German Army), whose tunics are of a lighter blue than those of the line regiments. The Germans, by the way, have only one battalion of sharpshooters to each army corps, whereas the French have two, one to each division. As the French are adopting as much as possible the principle of uniformity in their army, it seems strange that they should have made any distinction between chasseurs and infantry of the line; that, in short, they should have retained chasseurs in their army at all. Formerly sharp-shooters carried rifles and were supposed to be particularly good shots; whereas infantry of the line were armed with smooth-bore muskets, and if they could pull the trigger, could certainly not aim straight. Now every infantry soldier is supposed, more or less correctly, to be a good marksman; and linesmen and chasseurs are armed alike.

Lancers exist no more; and the French cavalry, but for differences of uniform, would all be of the same medium pattern, neither “light” nor “heavy,” but presumably fit for duties of all kinds. Some cavalry regiments are uniformed as dragoons, some as chasseurs, some as hussars; and every army corps has attached to it, or rather included in its integral force, four cavalry regiments of one of these three descriptions.

The Recruitment Bill of 1872 and the Organisation Bill of 1873 form a net which, with the additions since made to them, takes at one sweep everybody whom the military authorities can possibly want. Even seminarists and students of theology are no longer exempted.

Postmen, policemen of all kinds, workmen in Government factories, students of a certain age in Government schools and in all educational establishments private or public, members of the custom house and octroi service, firemen, Government engineers, clerks and workmen in the Department of Woods, Bridges, and Mines, scavengers, lighthouse-keepers, coast-guardsmen, engine-drivers, stokers, guards, pointsmen, station-masters, signalmen and clerks of the railway service, all persons employed in the telegraph service, all seamen not already on the lists of the navy, and generally all members of bodies having some recognised constitution in time of peace, may in time of war be formed into special corps in order to serve either with the active army or with the “territorial army” – as the French equivalent to the German Landwehr is called. “The formation of these special corps,” says the text of the Law on the General Organisation of the French Army, “is authorised by decree. They are subject to all the obligations of military service, enjoy all the rights of belligerents, and are bound by the rules of the law of nations.”

For private gentlemen going out in plain clothes to shoot at invaders from behind hedges no provision is made; and such persons, whether called “francs-tireurs” or by any other name, would, if caught by the enemy, evidently be left to their fate. The franc-tireur, in fact, though still popular with the sort of people who delight in stories of brigands and highwaymen, is not looked back to with admiration even by his own Government. “These articles,” says the report on the Law of Military Organisation in reference to the clause above cited, “are introduced in order to prevent the return of such unhappy misunderstandings as occurred in the last war, during which it is said that National Guards and francs-tireurs were shot by the enemy because our military laws had not given them the rights of belligerents.” The rules under which these bodies of armed civilians, temporarily endowed with the military character, may be organised are strictly defined, so that the country may at no future time be troubled by “the formation of bands of foreign adventurers who have during all the worst epochs of our history fallen upon France, and, under pretext of defending her, have often subjected her to devastation and pillage.” This is, of course, meant for the bands of Garibaldians. They were, nevertheless, regularly organised under officers bearing commissions from the Minister of War, and, apart from the question of “devastation and pillage,” were the only bodies of partisans who showed any aptitude for guerilla warfare.