A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 by Various

V >> Various >> Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843




I can of course offer but an imperfect transcript of the brave
guardsman's narrative; seconded as it was by an intelligent countenance,
and that national vividness of voice and gesture which often tell so
much more than words. But, to describe its effect on his auditory is
impossible. Every countenance was riveted on him, every change of those
extraordinary scenes was marked by a new expression of every face round
the table. Sighs and tears, wringing hands, and eyes turned on heaven,
were universal evidences of the interest excited by his fearful detail.
Yet, unused as I was to this quick emotion among my own sober
countrymen, I could scarcely wonder even at its wildness. They were
listening to the fate of all that belonged to them by affection,
loyalty, hope, and possession, on this side of the grave. Every hour was
big with the destinies of their king, their relations, and their
country. On the events happening, even at the moment, depended, whether
a deluge of blood might not roll over France, whether flame might not be
devouring their ancient castles, whether they might not be doomed to
mendicancy in a strange land, wanderers through the earth, without a
spot whereon to lay their head, fugitives forever. Yet the anxiety for
those left behind was of a still deeper dye; the loved, the familiar,
the honoured, all involved in a tide of calamity, irresistible by human
strength or skill.--All so near, yet all so lost; like the crew of some
noble ship hopelessly struggling with the winds and waves, within sight
of the shore, within reach almost of the very voices of their friends,
yet at the mercy of a tremendous element which forbade their ever
treading on firm ground.

But there was still much to tell; the fate of the royal family was the
general question; and the remainder of the melancholy tale was given
with manly sensibility.

"When I recovered my senses it was late in the day; and I found myself
in humble room, with only an old woman for my attendant; but my wounds
bandaged, and every appearance of my having fallen into friendly hands.
The conjecture was true. I was in the house of one of my father's
_gardes de chasse_, who, having commenced tavern-keeper in the Fauxbourg
St Antoine some years back, and being a thriving man, had become a
'personage' in his section, and was now a captain in the Federes.
Forced, _malgre_, to join the march to the Hotel de Ville, he had seen
me in the melee, and dragged me from under a heap of killed and wounded.
To his recollection I probably owed my life; for the patriots mingled
plunder with their principles, stripped all the fallen, and the pike and
dagger finished the career of many of the wounded. It happened, too,
that I could not have fallen into a better spot for information. My
_cidevant garde de chasse_ was loyal to the midriff; but his position as
the master of a tavern, made his house a rendezvous of the leading
patriots of his section. Immediately after their victory of the morning,
a sort of council was held on what they were to do next; and the room
where I lay being separated from their place of meeting only by a slight
partition, I could hear every syllable of their speeches, which, indeed,
they took no pains to whisper; they clearly thought that Paris was their
own. Lying on my bed, I learned that the attack on the Hotel de Ville
was only a part of a grand scheme of operations; that an insurrection
was to be organized throughout France; that the king was to be deposed,
and a 'lieutenant of the kingdom' appointed, until the sovereign people
had declared their will; and that the first movement was to be a march
of all the Parisian sections to Versailles. I should have started from
my pillow, to spring sabre in hand among the traitors; but I was held
down by my wounds, and perhaps still more by the entreaties of my old
attendant, who protested against my stirring, as it would be instantly
followed by her murder and that of every inmate of the house. The club
now proceeded to enjoy themselves after the labours of the day. They had
a republican carouse. Their revels were horrible. They speedily became
intoxicated, sang, danced, embraced, fought, and were reconciled again.
Then came the harangues; each orator exceeding his predecessor in
blasphemy, till all was execration, cries of vengeance against kings and
priests, and roars of massacre. I there heard the names of men long
suspected, but of whom they now spoke openly as the true leaders of the
national movement; and of others marked for assassination. They drank
toasts to Death, to Queen Poissarde, and to Goddess Guillotine. It was a
pandemonium.

"A drum at length beat the 'Alarme' in the streets; the orgie was at an
end, and amid a crash of bottles and glasses, they staggered, as well as
their feet could carry them, out of the house. They were received by the
mob with shouts of laughter. But the column moved forward; to the amount
of thousands, as I could judge by their trampling, and the clashing of
their arms. When the sound had died away in the distance, my humble
friend entered my room, thanking his stars that 'he had contrived to
escape this march.'

"'Where are they gone?' I asked.

"'To Versailles,' was his shuddering answer.

"Nothing could now detain me. After one or two helpless efforts to rise
from my bed, and an hour or two of almost despair, I succeeded in
getting on my feet, and procuring a horse. Versailles was now my only
object. I knew all the importance of arriving at the palace at the
earliest moment; I knew the unprotected state of the king, and knew that
it was my place to be near his person in all chances. I was on the point
of sallying forth in my uniform, when the precaution of my friend forced
me back; telling me, truly enough, that, in the ferment of the public
mind, it would be impossible for me to reach Versailles as a _garde du
corps_, and that my being killed or taken, would effectually prevent me
from bearing any information of the state of the capital. This decided
me; and, disguised as a courier, I set out by a cross-road in hope to
arrive before the multitude.

"But I had not gone above a league when I fell in with a scattered
platoon of the mob, who were rambling along as if on a party of
pleasure; tossing their pikes and clashing their sabres to all kinds of
revolutionary songs. I was instantly seized, as a 'courier of the
Aristocrats.' Their sagacity, once at work, found out a hundred names
for me:--I was a 'spy of Pitt,' an 'agent of the Austrians,' a
'disguised priest,' and an 'emigrant noble;' my protestations were in
vain, and they held a court-martial, on me and my horse, on the road;
and ordered me to deliver up my despatches, on pain of being piked on
the spot. But I could give up none; for the best of all possible
reasons. Every fold of my drapery was searched, and then I was to be
piked for _not_ having despatches; it being clear that I was more than a
courier, and that my message was too important to be trusted to pen and
ink. I was now in real peril; for the party had continued to sing and
drink until they had nearly made themselves frantic; and as Versailles
was still a dozen miles off, and they were unlikely to annihilate the
garrison before nightfall, they prepared to render their share of
service to their country by annihilating me. In this real dilemma, my
good genius interposed, in the shape of an enormous _poissarde_; who,
rushing through the crowd, which she smote with much the same effect as
an elephant would with his trunk, threw her huge arms round me, called
me her _cher Jacques_, poured out a volley of professional eloquence on
the shrinking heroes, and proclaimed me her son returning from the army!
All now was sentiment. The _poissarde_ was probably in earnest, for her
faculties were in nearly the same condition with those of her fellow
patriots. I was honoured with a general embrace, and shared the
privilege of the travelling bottle. As the night was now rapidly
falling, an orator proposed that the overthrow of the monarchy should be
deferred till the next day. A Federe uniform was provided for me; I was
hailed as a brother; we pitched a tent, lighted fires, cooked a supper,
and bivouacked for the night. This was, I acknowledge, the first night
of my seeing actual service since the commencement of my soldiership.

"In ten minutes the whole party were asleep. I arose, stole away, left
my newly found mother to lament her lost son again, and with a heavy
heart took the road to Versailles. The night had changed to sudden
tempest, and the sky grown dark as death. It was a night for the fall of
a dynasty. But there was a lurid blaze in the distant horizon, and from
time to time a shout, or a sound of musketry, which told me only too
well where Versailles lay. I need not say what my feelings were while I
was traversing that solitary road, yet within hearing of this tremendous
mass of revolt; or what I imagined in every roar, as it came mingled
with the bellowing of the thunder. The attack might be commencing at the
moment; the blaze that I saw might be the conflagration of the palace;
the roar might be the battle over the bodies of the royal family. I
never passed three hours in such real anxiety of mind, and they were
deepened by the total loneliness of the whole road. I did not meet a
single human being; for the inhabitants of the few cottages had fled, or
put out all their lights, and shut themselves up in their houses. The
multitude had rushed on, leaving nothing but silence and terror behind.

"The church clocks were striking three in the morning when I arrived at
Versailles, after the most exhausting journey that I had ever made. But
there, what a scene met my eye! It was beyond all that I had ever
imagined of ferocity and rabble triumph. Though it was still night, the
multitude thronged the streets; the windows were all lighted up, huge
fires were blazing in all directions, torches were carried about at the
head of every troop of the banditti; it was the bivouac of a hundred
thousand bedlamites. It was now that I owned the lucky chance which had
made me a Federe. In any other dress I should have been a suspicious
person, and have probably been put to death; but in the brown coat,
sabre, and red cap of the Sectionaire, I was fraternized with in all
quarters. My first object was to approach the palace, if possible. But
there I found a _cordon_ of the national guard drawn up, who had no
faith even in my mob costume; and was repelled. I could only see at a
distance, drawn up in front of the palace, a strong line of troops--the
regiment of Flanders and the Swiss battalion. All in the palace was
darkness. It struck me as the most funereal sight that I had ever
beheld.

"In my disappointment I wandered through the town. The night was rainy,
and gusts of wind tore every thing before them, yet the armed populace
remained carousing in the streets--all was shouting, oaths, and
execrations against the royal family. Some groups were feasting on the
plunder of the houses of entertainment, others were dancing and roaring
the 'Carmagnole.' One party had broken into the theatre, and dressed
themselves in the spoils of the wardrobe; others were drilling, and
exhibiting their skill by firing at the king's arms hung over the shops
of the restaurateurs. Those shops were crowded with hundreds eating and
drinking at free cost. All the _cafes_ and gaming-houses were lighted
from top to bottom. The streets were a solid throng, and almost as
bright as at noonday, and the jangling of all the Savoyard organs,
horns, and voices, the riot and roar of the multitude, and the frequent
and desperate quarrels of the different sections, who challenged each
other to fight during this lingering period, were absolutely
distracting. Versailles looked alternately like one vast masquerade,
like an encampment of savages, and like a city taken by storm. Wild
work, too, had been done during the day.

"As, wearied to death, I threw myself down to rest on the steps of one
of the churches, a procession of patriots happened to fix its quarters
on the spot. Its leader, an old grotesque-looking fellow, dressed in a
priest's vestments--doubtless a part of the plunder of the night--and
seated on a barrel on wheels, like a Silenus, from which, at their
several halts, he harangued his followers, and drank to the 'downfal of
the Bourbons,' soon let me into the history of the last twelve hours.
'Brave Frenchmen,' exclaimed the ruffian, 'the eyes of the world are
fixed upon you; and this night you have done what the world has never
rivalled. You have shaken the throne of the tyrant. What cared you for
the satellites of the Bourbon? You scorned their bayonets; you laughed
at their bullets. Nothing can resist the energy of Frenchmen.' This
flourish was, of course, received with a roar. The orator now produced a
scarf which he had wrapped round his waist, and waved it in the light
before them. 'Look here, citizen soldiers,' he cried; 'brave Federes,
see this gore. It is the blood of the monsters who would extinguish the
liberty of France. Yesterday I headed a battalion of our heroes in the
attack of the palace. One of the slaves of the tyrant Capet rushed on me
sword in hand; I sent a bullet through his heart, and, as he fell, I
tore this scarf from his body. See the marks of his blood.' It may be
conceived with what feelings I heard this narrative.--The palace had
been sacked, the queen insulted, my friends and comrades murdered. I
gave an involuntary groan; his fierce eye fell upon me as I endeavoured
to make my escape from this horrible neighbourhood, and he ordered me to
approach him. The fifty pikes which were brandished at his word made
obedience necessary. He whispered, 'I know you well; you are at my
mercy; I have often played the barrel organ outside the walls of your
_corps-de-garde_; you are acquainted with the secret ways of the palace,
and you must lead us in, or die upon the spot.' He probably took my
astonishment and silence for acquiescence; for he put a musket into my
hand. 'This night,' said he, aloud, 'will settle every thing. The whole
race of the Bourbons are doomed. The fry may have escaped, but we have
netted all the best fish. We have friends, too, in high quarters;' and
he shook a purse of louis-d'ors at my ear. 'We are to storm the palace
an hour before daybreak; the troops must either join us or be put to
death; the king and his tribe will be sent to a dungeon, and France,
before to-morrow night, will have at her head, if not the greatest man,
the richest fool, in Europe.' He burst out into an irrestrainable laugh,
in which the whole party joined; but the sound of cannon broke off his
speech; all shouldered pike or musket; I was placed under the especial
surveillance of a pair with drawn sabres, which had probably seem some
savage service during the night, for they were clotted with blood; and
with me for their guide, the horde of savages rushed forward, shouting,
to join the grand attack on the defenders of our unfortunate king.

"My situation had grown more trying at every moment, but escape was
impossible, and my next thought was to make the best of my misfortune,
enter the palace along with the crowd, and, when once there, die by the
side of my old comrades. I had, however, expected a sanguinary struggle.
What was my astonishment when I saw the massive gates, which might have
been so easily defended, broken open at once--a few random shots the
only resistance, and the staircases and ante-rooms in possession of the
multitude within a quarter of an hour. 'Where is La Fayette?' in wrath
and indignation, I cried to one of the wounded _garde-du-corps_, whom I
had rescued from the knives of my _sans-culotte_ companions. 'He is
asleep,' answered the dying man, with a bitter smile. 'Where are the
National Guard whom he brought with him last night from Paris?' I asked,
in astonishment. 'They are asleep, too,' was the contemptuous answer. I
rushed on, and at length reached my friends; tore off my Federe uniform,
and used, with what strength was left me, my bayonet, until it was
broken.

"I shall say no more of that night of horrors. The palace was completely
stormed. The splendid rooms, now the scene of battle hand to hand; the
royal furniture, statues, pictures, tossed and trampled in heaps;
wounded and dead men lying every where; the constant discharge of
muskets and pistols; the breaking open of doors with the blows of
hatchets and hammers; the shrieks of women flying for their lives, or
hanging over their wounded sons and husbands; and the huzzas of the
rabble, at every fresh entrance which they forced into the suites of
apartments, were indescribable. I pass over the other transactions of
those terrible hours; but some unaccountable chance saved the royal
family--I fear, for deeper sufferings; for the next step was
degradation.

"The rabble leaders insisted that the king should go with them to Paris.
Monsieur La Fayette was now awake; and he gave it as his opinion that
this was the only mode of pleasing the populace. When a king submits to
popular will, he is disgraced; and a disgraced king is undone. It was
now broad day; the struggle was at an end; the royal carriages were
ordered, and the _garde-du-corps_ were drawn up to follow them. At this
moment, the barrel-organ man, my leader of the night, passed me by with
a grimace, and whispered, 'Brother Federe, did I not tell you how it
would be? The play is only beginning; all that we have seen is the
farce.' He laughed, and disappeared among the crowd.

"There was one misery to come, and it was the worst; the procession to
Paris lasted almost twelve hours. It was like the march of American
savages, with their scalps and prisoners, to their wigwams. The crowd
had been largely increased by the national guards of the neighbouring
villages, and by thousands flocking from Paris on the intelligence of
the rabble victory. Our escort was useless; we ourselves were prisoners.
Surrounding the carriage of the king, thousands of the most profligate
refuse of Paris, men and women, railed and revelled, sang and shouted
the most furious insults to their majesties. And in front of this mass
were carried on pikes, as standards, the heads of two of our corps, who
had fallen fighting at the door of the queen's chamber. Loaves, borne on
pikes, and dipped in blood, formed others of their standards. Huge
placards, with the words, 'Down with the tyrant! Down with the priests!
Down with the nobles!' waved above the heads of the multitude. 'Make way
for the baker, his wife, and the little apprentice,' was shouted, with
every addition of obloquy and insolence; and in this agony we were
forced to drag on our weary steps till midnight. One abomination more
was to signalize the inhuman spirit of the time. Within about a league
of Paris, the royal equipages were ordered to halt; and for what
inconceivable purpose? It was, that the bleeding heads of our
unfortunate comrades might be dressed and powdered by the village
barber--to render them fit to enter Paris. The heads were then brought
to the carriage windows, for the approval of the royal prisoners; and
the huge procession moved onward with all its old bellowings again.

"We entered the city by torchlight, amid the firing of cannon; the
streets were all illuminated, and the mob and the multitude maddened
with brandy. Yet the scene was unlike that of the night before. There
was something in the extravagances of Versailles wholly different from
the sullen and frowning aspect of Paris. The one had the look of a
melodrame; the other the look of an execution. All was funereal. We
marched with the king to the Place du Carrousel, and when the gates of
the palace closed on him, I felt as if they were the gates of the tomb.
Perhaps it would be best that they were; that a king of France should
never suffer such another day; that he should never look on the face of
man again. He had drained the cup of agony; he had tasted all the
bitterness of death; human nature could not sustain such another day;
and, loyal as I was, I wished that the descendant of so many kings
should rather die by the hand of nature than by the hand of traitors and
villains; or should rather mingle his ashes with the last flame of the
Tuileries, than glut the thirst of rebellion with his blood on the
scaffold."

The story left us all melancholy for a while; bright eyes again
overflowed, as well they might; and stately bosoms heaved with evident
emotion. Yet, after all, the night was wound up with a capital cotillon,
danced with as much grace, and as much gaiety too, as if it had been in
the Salle d'Opera.

* * * * *

I rose early next morning, and felt the spirit-stirring power of the sea
breeze. In those days, Brighton covered but the borders of the shore. It
was scarcely more than a little line of fishermen's cottages, fenced
against the surge by the remaining timbers of boats which had long seen
their last adventure. Scattered at distances of at least a quarter of a
mile from each other, lay some houses of a better description, a few
deeply embosomed in trees, or rather in such thickets as could grow in
the perpetual exposure to the rough winds and saline exhalations of the
Channel. Of those, the one in which I had taken up my present residence
was amongst the best; though its exterior was so unpresuming, that I was
inclined to give Mordecai, or rather his gay heiress, credit for
humility, or perhaps for the refinement of striking their visiters with
the contrast between its simplicity of exterior and richness of
decoration within.

It was a brisk, bright morning, and the waves were curling before a
lively breeze, the sun was glowing above, and clusters of vessels,
floating down the Channel, spread their sails like masses of summer
cloud in the sunshine. It was my first sight of the ocean, and that
first sight is always a new idea. Alexander the Great, standing on the
shores of the Persian Gulf, said, "That he then first felt what the
world was." Often as I have seen the ocean since, the same conception
has always forced itself on me.

In what a magnificent world do we live! What power, what depth, what
expanse, lay before me! How singular, too, that while the grandeur of
the land arises from bold irregularity and incessant change of aspect,
from the endless variety of forest, vale, and mountain; the same effect
should be produced on the ocean by an absence of all irregularity and
all change! A simple, level horizon, perfectly unbroken, a line of
almost complete uniformity, compose a grandeur that impresses and fills
the soul as powerfully as the most cloud-piercing Alp, or the Andes
clothed with thunder.

This was the ocean in calm; but how glorious, too, in tempest! The storm
that sweeps the land is simply a destroyer or a renovator; it smites the
surface, and is gone. But the ocean is the seat of its power, the scene
of its majesty, the element in which it sports, lives, and
rules--penetrating to its depths, rolling its surface in thunder on the
shore--changing its whole motion, its aspect, its uses, and, grand as it
is in its serenity, giving it another and a more awful grandeur in its
convulsion. Then, how strangely, yet how admirably, does it fulfil its
great human object! Its depth and extent seem to render it the very
element of separation; all the armies of the earth might be swallowed up
between the shores of the Channel. Yet it is this element which actually
combines the remotest regions of the earth. Divisions and barriers are
essential to the protection of kingdoms from each other; yet what height
of mountain range, or what depth of precipice could be so secure as the
defence so simply and perpetually supplied by a surrounding sea? While
this protecting element at the same time pours the wealth of the globe
into the bosom of a nation.

Even all this is only the ocean as referred to man. How much more
magnificent is it in itself! Thrice the magnitude of the land, the world
of waters! its depth unfathomable, its mountains loftier than the
loftiest of the land, its valleys more profound, the pinnacles of its
hills islands! What immense shapes of animal and vegetable life may fill
those boundless pastures and plains on which man shall never look! What
herds, by thousands and millions, of those mighty creatures whose
skeletons we discover, from time to time, in the wreck of the
antediluvian globe! What secrets of form and power, of capacity and
enjoyment, may exist under the cover of that mighty expanse of waves
which fills the bed of the ocean, and spreads round the globe!

While those and similar ramblings were passing through my mind, as I sat
gazing on the bright and beautiful expanse before me, I was aroused by a
step on the shingle. I turned, and saw the gallant guardsman, who had so
much interested our party on the night before. But he received my
salutation with a gravity which instantly put an end to my good-humour;
and I waited for the _denouement_, at his pleasure. He produced a small
billet from his pocket, which I opened, and which, on glancing my eye
over it, appeared to me a complete rhapsody. I begged of him to read it,
and indulge me with an explanation. He read it, and smiled.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Mrs. Sutherland Orr - "A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)"

Various - "American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4)"

Pierre Besnier - "A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages"

John Ruskin - "Selections From the Works of John Ruskin"