The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic

Further discussion of Franz's plan was interrupted by the return of John Lebrenn. As soon as he entered the room, Victoria divined, by the expression he wore, the ill success of his mission.

"Alas! Monsieur Desmarais has refused you the hand of his daughter?"

"It is true," replied John. "Charlotte made a solemn declaration, before her assembled family, that she would never have another husband but me. That is the sole favorable result of my errand."

"Son, listen, what noise is that!" suddenly exclaimed Madam Lebrenn, turning her head toward the stairway. "There seems to be a gathering in our yard."

With a crash the chamber door was flung open, and their neighbor Jerome, who lodged on the same story, entered, pale, fearsome, and crying in a voice of alarm:

"You are lost – they're coming up – there they are – they want to kill you!"

Then arose from the staircase the noise of tumultuous steps, mingled with cries of,

"Long live the Nation!"

"Death to the traitors!"

"To the lamp-post with the aristocrats!"

"Death to the nobles and those who support them!"

John Lebrenn, after sharing for a moment the surprise of his family, cried out as he ran towards the door, "What do these men want?"

"It is a band of mad-men," answered Jerome, gasping. "They pretend that there is a noblewoman here – some Marchioness or other whom they want to hang to the lamp-post. Flee! Do not attempt resistance!"

At Jerome's words a light dawned upon Victoria. The Jesuit at Neroweg's banquet had recognized her in the column of the victors of the Bastille! It was he who had pointed her out to the swords of the assassins as a Marchioness!

"As to me," quoth the Prince of Gerolstein, drawing two double-barrelled pistols from his pockets, "I shall singe the heads of four of these brigands!"

"Franz, let us see, first of all, to the defense of mother and father," cried Victoria; and drawing from its sheath the hunting knife which the Prince carried at his side, she gripped the weapon with a virile hand, and prepared to protect the aged man and his wife, who instinctively retreated into a corner of the room.

All this occurred with the rapidity of thought. John, who, in spite of the prayers and efforts of neighbor Jerome, had stepped out upon the landing to see what manner of men were invading the house and mounting the stairway, was immediately hurled back across the sill by Lehiron. A dozen scoundrels armed with pikes and sabers were ranged on the landing and the topmost stairs. Seizing his musket and clapping on the bayonet, John then drew near to Franz and Victoria in order to cover with his body his mother and father, who, mute and terrified, trembled at every limb. Thus ranged, the two men and Victoria prepared to meet their assailants.

Lehiron, who strode alone into the chamber, was taken aback by the resolute attitude of the three. Franz, with his double-barrelled pistols, covered the intruders; Victoria, fearless, her eyes flashing, held aloft her hunting-knife; and John Lebrenn stood ready to plunge his bayonet into the bandits' breasts. Suddenly little Rodin appeared. He slipped through Lehiron's followers, entered the room, approached the giant, made him a sign to stoop over, and then, stretching on tiptoes, whispered in his ear:

"Don't forget the papers!"

"Hush, vermin, I know what's to be done here," retorted the Hercules; and taking two steps toward John, whom he threatened with his cutlass, he roared:

"Citizen Lebrenn, you play the people false! You are hiding here an aristocrat, Marchioness Aldini – there she stands – " and Lehiron designated Victoria with his weapon. "She is one of the harpies of the Austrian party. She sat last night at the board of a royalist council-feast. You are conspiring with her against the Nation. You will deliver the jade to us, and also all the papers in your house, which are claimed by justice. Quick! Or your lives shall pay the penalty."

"To the lamp-post with the noblewoman! Live the Nation! Death to the traitors!" cried Lehiron's band of jackals, and brandishing their pikes and swords they poured into the room. But the giant, held in awe by the pistols trained upon him and not anxious to have recourse to force except in the last extremity, waved back his brigands with a gesture and addressed himself again to John:

"Deliver up the noblewoman and the papers, and your life will be spared. But be quick about it."

"Helas! My God! Have pity on us!" murmured Madam Lebrenn, overcome with terror and throwing her arms about her blind old husband.

"Out of here, you scoundrels!" was the answer of John Lebrenn. Lehiron waved his hand to his gang of bandits and cried:

"Forward! To the lamp-post with the traitors!"

As the valiant leader of the cut-throats gave the command, he himself leaped to one side and ducked his head to escape the pistol-fire of Franz of Gerolstein. But the latter no less quickly changed the aim of his weapon, and pulled the trigger. The giant flew back almost his full length, flung out his arms, dropped his cutlass, tumbled to his knees, and rolled over, face down, on the floor, almost mortally wounded.

All of a sudden, above the tumult was heard a cry of pain from Madam Lebrenn:

"Oh, the wicked child! He is biting me!"

John turned, and while his two companions fell upon their adversaries, ran to his mother and found her in a desperate struggle with little Rodin. The latter, faithful to the tuition of his dear god-father, and hoping to profit by the turmoil, was about to make off with the bundle of manuscripts. Madam Lebrenn seized hold of him to take them away, and the little rat had bitten her savagely on the hand. To snatch from the Jesuit's god-son the treasured legends, seize him by the slack of his pantaloons, and send him rolling ten paces away, was the work of an instant for young Lebrenn. The terrible child, wriggling and sliding like a snake between the legs of John's companions, gained the stairway and escaped with his discomfited accomplices.

The attempted arrest of Victoria and theft of the legends added fuel to the fears of the family on the machinations of the Jesuits. That very day the Prince deposited in safe keeping the records and relics of the family of Lebrenn.

Two days after our interview, Charlotte Desmarais wrote to me, John Lebrenn, a letter that was touching, and in all points worthy of her. She informed me of her departure for Lyons, whither her mother was to accompany her.

From the month of July, 1789, up till December, 1792, nothing of importance occurred in our family save the death of our beloved parents. My father died on the 11th of August, 1789; my mother, ill for years, survived him but briefly; she expired in our arms on October 29th of the same year.

Monsieur Desmarais continues to hold his seat at the extreme Left of the National Assembly, near Robespierre. He defended Marat from the tribunal, and makes one of the republican group headed by Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, Condorcet and Bonneville. Formerly a member of the Jacobin club, Desmarais later transferred his allegiance to the Cordeliers. He seemed to fear losing his popularity, which he regards as the safeguard of his property and perhaps of his life. Monsieur Hubert, differently from his brother-in-law, has the courage of his convictions; he declares frankly for the Moderates. The financier still commands the battalion of the Daughters of St. Thomas, one of the most hostile to the Revolution. Franz of Gerolstein was suddenly called to the side of his father, who had been stricken gravely ill. Our relics and legends are still in the place of security where he deposited them.

My sister Victoria shares my dwelling and lives on the proceeds of her sempstress's trade. We have promised Franz to fall back on his aid in case of necessity. I notice with disquietude the character of Victoria growing somber apace; at times her revolutionary fervor becomes wild in its exaltation. In vain I attempt to calm her, in vain I appeal to her heart, to her good sense, in order to convince her that, apart from cases of insurrection or legitimate defense, we must strike our enemies only with the sword of the law, unorganized popular justice being always blind in its execution.

"And when the sword of the law, confided to the hands of our enemies, rusts in its sheath? When treason enwraps the great criminals from justice, and insures them impunity, what shall the sovereign people do then?" Victoria asks me.

To which I reply: "The sovereign people, the source and dispenser of all power, by election, should depose its faithless officers at the expiration of their term, and, if they be traitors, send them before their natural judges. That is the rational course to pursue."

"No," my sister makes answer. "All these formalities are too slow. On certain occasions the people should exterminate its enemies in the name of public safety."

Alas, it was in the name of public safety that men, the most pure and heroic of the Revolution, were one day to smite each other down, to the profit of our eternal enemies.

Victoria did not soon again see the Count of Plouernel. Seized, in spite of his braggadocio, with panic and alarm at the taking of the Bastille, he was among the first to emigrate at the heels of the Count of Artois and the Princes of Conti and Condé. We did not set eyes on him again till 1793.

Lehiron survived his wound. Doubtless at the instigation of Abbot Morlet, he later made a similar descent, I know not for what purpose, upon an old and isolated house in St. Francois Street, in the Swamp, occupied by an aged Jew and his wife. The Voyants had for a long time held their meetings in this building. Lehiron's attempt upon it was without result, according to what the Jew later told my sister, without, however, going at all into the causes that led to it.

The interval between the months of July, 1789, and December, 1792, a period so uneventful in our private life, was nevertheless fertile in great occurrences in the life of the Nation, occurrences the importance of which was immense. I have preserved these to our family legends by means of extracts from a journal kept by me, in which, of an evening, I would inscribe the striking events observed by Victoria and myself during the day. To these notes I have often added salient passages from the Revolutionary journals of the time – a heroic epoch which will leave its mark on the annals of the people!

PART II

THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION

CHAPTER I

THE NATION INSULTED – AND AVENGED

The taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, dealt a mortal blow to the power of the monarchy, the same as its influence and that of the nobility and the clergy were wiped out when, upon the closing of the Tennis Court at Versailles, and braving the orders of dissolution pronounced by Louis XVI, the deputies of the Third Estate constituted themselves a sovereign, constituent, and inviolable assembly. The results of that immortal day of the Fourteenth of July were in the highest degree advantageous to the cause of the people. The King was forced to return to Paris to render homage to the popular victory, and threw off the white cockade for the new national tricolor, blue, white, and red.

The fall of the Bastille re-echoed throughout France. Everywhere the people and the bourgeoisie of the towns rose against the representatives of the royal power, and replaced them with municipal governors elected by the citizens.

This general insurrection against royalty, and against the privileges of nobility and clergy, threw into affright the Right side of the National Assembly, where sat the most violent antagonists of the Revolution.

The Center of the Assembly, called by turns the Plain and the Swamp, had no settled convictions whatsoever. The Left was almost entirely composed of the deputies of the Third Estate, among whom, famous for their eloquence, were Sieyès, Duport, and Barnave. On this side also were some few scattering representatives of the nobility, such as the Duke of Orleans, the Marquis of Lafayette, the Lameths, and, most illustrious of all, the elder Mirabeau, a magnificent orator, but corrupt in his private life. At the extreme Left sat a deputy, then obscure and next to unknown, but destined soon to become the incarnation of the French Revolution. 'Twas Maximilien Robespierre, attorney at the bar of Arras.

In one single night, the night of the 4th of August, 1789, the old feudal edifice crumbled before the determined attitude of the nation. O, sons of Joel, let us glorify the memory of our obscure ancestors, who prepared the triumph of the Revolution.

The imperishable work of the National Assembly was the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This monumental document embraced territorial and administrative unity; social, civil, political and religious equality; and above all, the formal recognition of the sovereignty of the people as the source of all power and of all functions, which it delegated to its representatives by election. Nevertheless we must admit that the Constitution of 1789-1791 lacked much that it should have contained, and contained much which it would have been better without. Such, for instance, were its several breaches of the sovereignty of the people, like the distinction drawn between "active" and "passive" citizens, the two-degree election, and the requirement of a certain amount of direct taxation to qualify one for election as a representative. The Convention later corrected these injustices; but it must be noted that the Constitution of 1789-91 made no provision for the rights of women. Our Gallic fathers admitted women into their city councils, even when the deliberations turned on matters of war. Equality of civil and political rights for men and women should have figured at the very head of the Constitution. The question of marriage should there have been taken up and established as a matter of free unions, ruled by mutual tastes and agreements. Property should also have been reorganized, and declared collective in the state, the department, the district, or the commune, according to its nature, and no individual should have possessed more than a temporary title to the instrument of labor or the plot of ground which he needed for his support, and which should have been assigned to him gratuitously by the commune. The abolition of inheritance would have logically followed, and the suppression of interest on capital. A system of free, compulsory, and nonsectarian education should have been proclaimed, and also the right to assistance during youth, old age, illness or unemployment.

However that may be, and in spite of the regrettable omissions in the Constitution, honor to the labors of the legislators of '79. The clergy, the nobility, the monarchy, smitten in their prestige, in their property, in their privileges, and in their temporal authority, received their death blow. The National Assembly inaugurated the era of enfranchisement. It could, with good right, date its work the Year I of Liberty. But we must not forget that it was the revolutionary attitude of the populace of Paris at the attack on the Bastille, that ushered in our freedom.

But a fact often before made manifest, almost one century after another, was now once more to come into play. The royal power, forced to grant concessions, sought only how best to elude or annul them, employing to this end, each in its turn, perfidy, perjury, and violence!

Soon the hostility of the court showed itself in the open. Louis XVI refused to sanction the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the corner-stone and basis of the Constitution, and opposed his veto to the law attaching for sale the goods of the clergy. Thereupon, projects fatal to liberty began to rear their heads with unheard-of insolence. On October 1, 1789, the foreign troops were summoned to Versailles. The Body Guard bespoke to a banquet the newly arrived officers, together with those of the Montmorency Dragoons, the Swiss regiments, the Hundred-Swiss, the mounted Police, and the Mayor's Guard. Several monarchical captains, picked out from among the National Guard of Versailles, were also invited. The officers of the army, instead of wearing the national tricolored cockade, affectatiously displayed enormous cockades of white. The Court was tendering to the Army a sumptuous banquet, the expenses of which were paid by the King. The tables were spread in the Opera Hall of the palace, which was brilliantly lighted. The bands of the Flanders regiment and the Body Guard played during the repast royalist or topical airs, such as "Long Live Henry IV," or "O Richard, O My King, the World Is All Forsaking Thee." The wine, liberally distributed, rose to all heads. They drained their bumpers to the health of the royal family; one captain of the National Guard proposed the health of the Nation; he was drowned with hoots.

Soon the officers called in their soldiers, who were massed in all the alcoves. Then the King entered the hall in a hunting habit, accompanied by the Queen, who held the Dauphin by the hand. At the sight of Louis XVI, the officers were transported with enthusiasm. The German regimental band struck up the "March of the Uhlans," a foreign war song. The drunkenness rose to frenzy. Insults and bloody threats were hurled against the Revolution, against the Assembly. The cavalry trumpets sounded the charge. The officers whipped out their sabers to cries of "Long live the King!" The tricolored cockade was trampled under foot. Then these rebels, dragging after them their soldiers, as drunk as themselves, poured out into the courtyard of the palace, crying savage imprecations against the Representatives of the people. The National Assembly, intimidated, defenseless, surrounded by these saturnalia of military force and placing little reliance in the National Guard of Versailles, hardly dared show its fears. Unpardonable weakness!

But the people of Paris were watching in their clubs. The press sounded the alarm.

"That Saturday night," wrote Camille Desmoulins in his journal, Revolutions of France and Brabant, "Paris rises. It is a woman, who, seeing that her husband is not listened to in his district meeting, is first to run to Foy's Cafe, at the Palais Royal, and denounce the royalist orgy. Marat flies to Versailles, returns like the lightning, and cries to us, 'O ye dead, – awake!' Danton, on his part, thunders in the club of the Cordeliers; and the next day this patriotic district posts its manifesto demanding a march on Versailles. Everywhere the people arm; they seek out the white cockades and the black ones, the latter the Catholic rallying sign, and – just reprisals – trample them under foot. Everywhere the people gather, discussing the imminence of the danger. They hold councils in the gardens of the Palais Royal, in the St. Antoine suburb, at the ends of the bridges, on the quays. They say the hardihood of the nobility is growing visibly, that the boat laden with flour, which arrives morning and night from Corbeil, has not come at all for two days. Is the court, then, going to take Paris by famine? They say that despite the orders of the Assembly, the local councils are still functioning; that that of Toulouse is burning patriotic leaflets; that the council of Rouen has ordered the seizure of citizens acquitted by the Assembly; that the one of Paris has recorded itself, and is obstinately determined to make use of its Gothic formulas 'Louis, by the grace of God, King' and 'Such is our good pleasure.' And finally they say that conclaves are being held in the aristocrats' mansions, and that they are secretly enrolling gangs of ruffians for the court."

Loustalot, a fearless young man, a generous and noble character, and one of the most brilliant spirits of his time, wrote in his journal, The Revolutions of Paris (No. XIII):

"There must be a second burst of revolution, we have maintained for several days. Everything is ready for it. The soul of the aristocratic party has not yet left the court! A crowd of Knights of St. Louis, of old officers, of gentlemen, and of employes already included in the reforms or desiring to be, have signed agreements to enlist in the Body Guards or other troops. This roll includes already more than thirty thousand names. The project of the court is to carry the King to Metz, there to await foreign aid, in order to undertake a civil war and exterminate the Revolution!"

And finally Marat, in The Friend of the People, of the 4th of October, 1789, gave the following advice, with that promptitude of decision, that deep sagacity, and that admirable and practical good sense which were his characteristics:

"The orgy has taken place! The alarm is general. There is not an instant to lose. All good citizens should assemble in arms, and send strong detachments to take possession of the powder at Essonne; let each district supply itself with cannon from the City Hall. The National Guard is not so senseless as not to join with us, and to take care of its officers if they give orders hostile to the people. Finally, the peril is so imminent that we are done for if the people does not establish a tribunal and arm it with public powers!"

Admonished, enlightened, aroused by these ardent appeals to its revolutionary spirit, Paris was soon assembled in insurrection. But, strange and touching at once as it was, the signal for this new revolution was given by the women. Flour and grain, by reason of the court's complot, began to run low. A young girl of the market quarter entered the barracks of the St. Eustace body guard, seized a drum, and marched through the streets beating the charge, and crying "Bread! Bread!" A great throng of women fell in behind her, and together they invaded the City Hall, where the monarchical directorate was in session. These virile Gallic women demanded arms and powder, exclaiming, "If the men are too cowardly to go with us to Versailles, we shall go alone, and demand bread of the King and avenge the insult to the national cockade!" Stanislas Maillard, an usher and a Bastille-hero, addressed the courageous women. They hailed him as their chief, and marched on Versailles.

Close upon their heels a deputation of grenadiers of the National Guard presented itself at the City Hall, and addressing Lafayette, their General, held to him the following language:

"General, we are commissioned by six companies of grenadiers. We do not yet wish to believe you a traitor, but we believe the government has betrayed us. That must end! The people want bread, and cry for it. We shall not turn our bayonets against women. The source of the evil is at Versailles – let us go after the King and fetch him to Paris. Chastisement is demanded for the Body Guards and the Flanders regiment, who, at the royal orgy, trampled on the national cockade. If the King is too weak to bear the crown, let him be deposed."

In the face of the exasperation of the people, Lafayette decided to take horse, and himself gave the signal for departure. The National Guard took the road for Versailles, preceded by an advance guard of about ten thousand women. My sister Victoria joined the Amazons. From her I have the following account of their expedition:

Along the way, they recruited their ranks steadily from among their own sex. The Old Iron Quay was thronged with women recruiting agents and the troops they had marshalled. The robust kitchen maid, the trim modiste, and the humble sempstress, all swelled the phalanx of warriors. The old devotee, who was on her way to mass, found herself carried off for the first time in her life, and protested vehemently against the abduction! The women elected a president and a council board. All who were "borrowed" from their husbands or parents were first presented before the president and her aides-de-camp, who pledged themselves to watch over the morals and honor of all who joined the troop. And the promise was religiously kept; not the slightest disorder marred the journey.

The vanguard of women arrived at Versailles. Usher Maillard counseled his companions to send a committee of twelve to the National Assembly, to request that several Representatives of the people be added to their number to accompany them before the King. The Assembly granted their request, and commissioned several of its members to conduct to the palace the delegates of the women of Paris. The deputation was brought before Louis XVI. He greeted the women with apparent good will, and promised them to watch over the provisioning of Paris.