A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792

R >> Richard Twiss >> A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792

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This was about nine o'clock. The democrats, that is to say, the armed
citizens, as beforementioned, had dragged several pieces of cannon, six
and four pounders, into the _carousel_ square, and were assembled
there, on the _quais_, the bridges, and neighbouring streets, in immense
numbers, all armed; they knew the king was gone to the National
Assembly, and came to insist on his _decheance_ (forfeiture) or
resignation of the throne. All the Swiss (six or seven hundred) came out
to them, and permitted them to enter into the court-yard of the
Tuileries, to the number of ten thousand, themselves standing in the
middle, and when they were peaceably smoking their pipes and drinking
their wine, the Swiss turned back to back, and fired a volley on them,
by which about two hundred were killed;[23] the women and children ran
immediately into the river, up to their necks, many jumping from the
parapets and from the bridges, many were drowned, and many were shot in
the water, and on the balustrades of the _Pont-royal_, from the windows
of the gallery of the _Louvre_.

[Note 23: This is asserted on the authority of all the French
newspapers, and of several eye-witnesses. It will never be possible to
know the exact truth, for the people here said to be the aggressors are
all slain.--These Swiss had trusted that they would have been backed by
the National Guard, who, on the contrary, took the part of the people,
and fired on the Swiss (who ran into the chateau as soon as they had
discharged their pieces) by which several were killed.]

The populace now became, as it were, mad, they seized on five cannon
they found in the court yard, and turned them against the chateau; they
planted some more cannon on the _Pont-royal_ and in the garden,
twenty-two pieces in all, and attacked the chateau on three sides at
once. The Swiss continued their fire, and it is said they fired seven
times to the people's once; the Swiss had 36 rounds of powder, whereas
the people had hardly three or four. Expresses were sent several miles
to the powder-mills, for more ammunition, even as far as _Essonne_,
about twenty miles off, on the road to _Fontainebleau_. The people
contrived however to discharge their twenty-two cannon nine or ten
times.[24] From nine to twelve the firing was incessant; many waggons
and carts were constantly employed in carrying away the dead to a large
excavation, formerly a stone quarry, at the back of the new church _de
la Madeleine de la ville l'Eveque_ (part of the _Fauxbourg St. Honore_,
thus called.)

[Note 24: The balls did no other damage to the palace than breaking
the windows, and leaving impressions in the stones, perhaps an inch in
depth.]

Soon after noon the Swiss had exhausted all their powder, which the
populace perceiving, they stormed the _chateau_, broke open the doors,
and put every person they found to the sword, tumbling the bodies out of
the windows into the garden, to the amount, it is supposed, of about two
thousand, having lost four thousand on their own side. Among the slain
in the _chateau_, were, it is asserted, about two hundred noblemen and
three bishops: all the furniture was destroyed, the looking-glasses
broken, in short, nothing left but the bare walls.

Sixty of the Swiss endeavoured to escape through the gardens, but the
horse (_gendarmerie nationale_) rode round by the street of _St.
Honore_, and met them full butt at the end of the gardens; the Swiss
fired, killed five or six and twenty horses and about thirty men, and
were then immediately cut to pieces; the people likewise put the Swiss
porters at the _pont-tournant_ (turning bridge) to death, as well as all
they could find in the gardens and elsewhere: they then set fire to all
the _casernes_ (barracks) in the _carousel_, and afterwards got at the
wine in the cellars of the chateau, all of which was immediately drank;
many citizens were continually bringing into the National Assembly
jewels, gold, louis d'ors, plate, and papers, and many thieves were, as
soon as discovered, instantly taken to lamp irons and hanged by the
ropes which suspend the lamps. This timely severity, it is supposed,
saved Paris from an universal pillage. Fifty or sixty Swiss were hurried
by the populace to the _Place de Greve_, and there cut to pieces.

At about three o'clock in the afternoon every thing was tolerably quiet,
and I ventured out for the first time that day.[25]

[Note 25: The whole of the foregoing account is taken from verbal
information, and from all the French papers that could be procured.]

The _quais_, the bridges, the gardens, and the immediate scene of battle
were covered with bodies, dead, dying, and drunk; many wounded and drunk
died in the night; the streets were filled with carts, carrying away the
dead, with litters taking the wounded to hospitals; with women and
children crying for the loss of their relations, with men, women, and
children walking among and striding over the dead bodies, in silence,
and with apparent unconcern; with troops of the _sans-culottes_ running
about, covered with blood, and carrying, at the end of their bayonets,
rags of the clothes which they had torn from the bodies of the dead
Swiss, who were left stark naked in the gardens.[26]

[Note 26: Although I was not an eye-witness, I was however an
ear-witness of the engagement, being only half a mile distant from it.]

One of these _sans-culottes_ was bragging that he had killed eight Swiss
with his own hand. Another was observed lying wounded, all over blood,
asleep or drunk, with a gun, pistols, a sabre, and a hatchet by him.

The courage and ferocity of the women was this day very conspicuous; the
first person that entered the _Tuileries_, after the firing ceased, was
a woman, named _Teroigne_, she had been very active in the riots at
_Brussels_, a few years ago; she afterwards was in prison a twelvemonth
at _Vienna_, and when she was released, after the death of the Emperor,
went to _Geneva_, which city she was soon obliged to leave; she then
came to _Paris_, and headed the _Marseillois_; she began by cleaving the
head of a Swiss, who solicited her protection, and who was
instantaneously cut in pieces by her followers. She is agreeable in her
person, which is small, and is about twenty-eight years of age.

Many men, and also many women, as well of the order of _Poissardes_
(which are a class almost of the same species and rank with our
fishwomen, and who are easily distinguished by their red cotton bibs and
aprons) as others, ran about the gardens, ripping open the bellies, and
dashing out the brains of several of the naked dead Swiss.[27]

[Note 27: At the taking of the Bastille, on the day of which only
eighty-three persons were killed on the spot, though fifteen died
afterwards of their wounds, these _Poissardes_ were likewise foremost in
bravery and in cruelty, so much, that the Parisians themselves ran away
from them as soon as they saw them at a distance. They are armed, some
with sabres and others with pikes.]

At six in the evening I saw a troop of national guards and
_sans-culottes_ kill a Swiss who was running away, by cleaving his skull
with a dozen sabres at once, on the _Pont-royal_, and then cast him into
the river, in less time than it takes to read this, and afterwards walk
quietly on.

The shops were shut all this day, and also the theatres; no coaches were
about the streets, at least not near the place of carnage; the houses
were lighted up, and patroles paraded the streets all night. Not a
single house was pillaged.

The barracks were still in flames, as well as the houses of the Swiss
porters at the end of the gardens; these last gave light to five or six
waggons which were employed all night in carrying away the dead
carcases.

STATUES PULLED DOWN. NEW NAMES.

THE next day, Saturday the 11th, about an hundred Swiss who had not been
in the palace placed themselves under the protection of the National
Assembly. They were sent to the _Palais Bourbon_ escorted by the
Marseillois, with _Mr. Petion_ at their head, in order to be tried by a
court-martial.

The people were now employed, some in hanging thieves, others with
_Mademoiselle_ _Teroigne_ on horseback at their head, in pulling down
the statues of the French Kings.

The first was the equestrian one in bronze of Lewis XV. in the square of
the same name, at the end of the _Tuileries_ gardens; this was the work
of _Bouchardon_, and was erected in 1763. At the corners of the pedestal
were the statues, also in bronze, of strength, peace, prudence, and
justice, by _Pigalle_. Many smiths were employed in filing the iron bars
within the horse's legs and feet, which fastened it to the marble
pedestal, and the _sans-culottes_ pulled it down by ropes, and broke it
to pieces; as likewise the four statues above-mentioned, the pedestal,
and the new magnificent balustrade of white marble which surrounded it.

The next was the equestrians statue of _Lewis XIV._ in the _Place
Vendome_, cast in bronze, in a single piece, by Keller, from the model
of Girardon; twenty men might with ease have sat round a table in the
belly of the horse; it stood on a pedestal of white marble of thirty
feet in height, twenty-four in length, and thirteen in breadth. This
statue crushed a man to pieces by falling on him, which must be
attributed to the inexperience of the _pullers-down_.

The third was a pedestrian statue of _Lewis XIV._ in the _Place
Victoire_, of lead, gilt, on a pedestal of white marble; a winged
figure, representing victory, with one hand placed a crown of laurels on
his head, and in the other held a bundle of palm and olive branches. The
king was represented treading on _Cerberus_ and the whole group was a
single cast. There were formerly four bronze slaves at the corners of
the pedestal, each of twelve feet high; these were removed in 1790. The
whole monument was thirty-five feet high, and was erected in 1689, at
the expence of the Duke _de la Feuillade_, who likewise left his duchy
to his heirs, on condition that they should cause the whole group to be
new gilt every twenty-five years; and who was buried under the
pedestal.

On Sunday the 12th, at about noon, the equestrian statue, in bronze, of
_Henry IV._ which was on the _Pont-neuf_, was pulled down; this was
erected in 1635, and was the first of the kind in Paris. The horse was
begun at Florence, by _Giovanni Bologna_, a pupil of _Michael Angelo_,
finished by _Pietro Tacca_, and sent as a present to _Mary of Medicis_,
widow of _Henry IV._ Regent. It was shipped at _Leghorn_, and the vessel
which contained it was lost on the coast of Normandy, near _Havre de
Grace_, the horse remained a year in the sea, it was, however, got out
and sent to Paris in 1614.

This statue used to be the idol of the Parisians; immediately after the
revolution it was decorated with the national cockade; during three
evenings after the federation, in 1790, magnificent festivals were
celebrated before it.

It was broken in many pieces by the fall; the bronze was not half an
inch thick, and the hollow part was filled up with brick earth.

The fifth and last was overthrown in the afternoon of the same day; it
was situated in the _Place Royale_; it was an equestrian statue in
bronze, of Lewis XIII. on a vast pedestal of white marble; it was
erected in 1639. The horse was the work of _Daniel Volterra_; the figure
of the king was by _Biard_.

The people were several days employed in pulling down all the statues
and busts of kings and queens they could find. On the Monday I saw a
marble or stone statue, as large as the life, tumbled from the top of
the _Hotel de Ville_ into the _Place de Greve_, at that time full of
people, by which two men were killed, as I was told, and I did not wish
to verify the assertion myself, but retired.

They then proceeded to deface and efface every crown, every _fleur de
lis_, every inscription wherein the words king, queen, prince, royal, or
the like, were found. The hotels and lodging-houses were compelled to
erase and change their names, that of the _Prince de Galles_ must be
called _de Galles_ only; that of _Bourbon_ must have a new name; a sign
_au lys d'or_ (the golden lily) was pulled down; even billiard tables
are no longer _noble_ or _royal_.

The _Pont-royal_, the new bridge of _Lewis XVI._ the _Place des
Victoires_, the _Place Royal_, the _Rue d'Artois, &c._ have all new
names, which, added to the division of the kingdom into eighty-three
departments, abolishing all the ancient noble names of _Bourgogne,
Champagne, Provence, Languedoc, Bretagne, Navarre, Normandie, &c._ and
in their stead substituting such as these: _Ain, Aube, Aude, Cher,
Creuse, Doubs, Eure, Gard, Gers, Indre, Lot, Orne, Sarte, Tarne, Var,
&c._ which are the names of insignificant rivers; to that of Paris into
forty-eight new sections, and to all titles being likewise abolished,
makes it very difficult for a stranger to know any thing about the
geography of the kingdom, nor what were the _ci-devant_ titles of such
of the nobility as still remain in France, and who are at present only
known by their family names.

BEHEADING. DEAD NAKED BODIES.

BUT to return to those "active citizens, whom aristocratic insolence has
stiled _sans-culottes, brigands_."[28]

[Note 28: These are the words of a French newspaper, called,
_Journal universel, ou Revolutions des Royaumes, par J. P. Audarin_. No.
994, for Sunday, 12 August, 4th year of Liberty, under the motto of
Liberty, Patriotism and Truth.]

On Sunday, they dragged a man to the _Hotel de Ville_, before a
magistrate, to be tried, for having stolen something in the _Tuileries_
as they said. He was accordingly tried, searched, and nothing being
found on him, was acquitted; _n'importe_, said these citizens, we must
have his head for all that, for we caught him in the act of stealing.
They laid him on his back on the ground, and in the presence of the
judge, who had acquitted him, they sawed off his head in about a quarter
of an hour, with an old notched scythe, and then gave it to the boys to
carry about on a pike, leaving the carcase in the justice-hall.[29]

[Note 29: This is inserted on the authority of a lady, a native of
the French West-India isles, who resided in the same hotel with me, and
who, with two gentlemen who attended her, were witnesses to this
transaction, which they told to whoever chose to listen.]

At the corner of almost every chief street is a black marble slab,
inserted in the wall about ten feet high, on which is cut in large
letters, gilt, _Loix et actes de l'autorite publique_ (laws and acts of
the public authority) and underneath are pasted the daily and sometimes
hourly decrees and notices of the National Assembly. One of these
acquainted the citizens, that _Mandat_ (the former commander-general of
the national guards) had yesterday undergone the punishment due to his
crimes; that is to say, the people had cut off his head.

During several days, after _the day I_ procured all the Paris
newspapers, about twenty, but all on the same side, as the people had
put the editors of the aristocratic papers, _hors d'etat de parler_
(prevented their speaking) by beheading one or two of them, and
destroying all their presses.

They, about this time, hanged two money changers (people who gave paper
for _louis d'or_, crowns, and guineas) under the idea that the money was
sent to the emigrants.

On the Saturday morning, at seven, I was in the _Tuileries_ gardens;
only thirty-eight dead naked bodies were still lying there; they were
however covered where decency required; the people who stript them on
the preceding evening, having cut a gash in the belly, and left a bit of
the shirt sticking to the carcase by means of the dried blood. I was
told, that the body of a lady had just been carried out of the
_Carousel_ square; she was the only woman killed, and that probably by
accident. Here I had the pleasure of seeing many beautiful ladies (and
ugly ones too as I thought) walking arm in arm with their male friends,
though so early in the morning, and forming little groups, occupied in
contemplating the mangled naked and stiff carcases.

The fair sex has been equally courageous and curious, in former times,
in this as well as in other countries; and of this we shall produce a
few instances, as follows:

COURAGE AND CURIOSITY OF THE FAIR SEX. MASSACRE IN 1572.

ON the 24th of August, St. Bartholemew's day, 1572, the massacre of the
Hugonots or or Calvinists, began by the murder of Admiral _Coligni_ the
signal was to have been given at midnight; but _Catherine of Medicis_,
mother to the then King Charles IX. (who was only two and twenty years
of age) _hastened the signal more than an hour_, and endeavoured to
encourage her son, by quoting a passage from a sermon: "What pity do we
not shew in being cruel? what cruelty would it not be to have pity?"

In _Mr. Wraxall's_ account of this massacre, in his _Memoirs of the
Kings of France of the Race of Valois_, compiled from all the French
historians, he says, _Soubise_, covered with wounds, after a long and
gallant defence, was finally put to death under the queen-mother's
windows. The ladies of the court, from a savage and horrible curiosity,
went to view his naked body, disfigured and bloody.

"An Italian first cut off _Coligni's_ head, which was presented to
_Catherine of Medicis_. The populace then exhausted all their brutal and
unrestrained fury on the trunk. They cut off the hands, after which it
was left on a dunghill; in the afternoon they took it up again, dragged
it three days in the dirt, then on the banks of the _Seine_, and lastly
carried it to _Montfaucon_ (an eminence between the _Fauxbourg St.
Martin_ and the _Temple_, on which they erected a gallows.) It was here
hung by the feet with an iron chain, and a fire lighted under it, with
which it was half roasted. In this situation the King and several of the
courtiers went to survey it. These remains were at length taken down
privately in the night, and interred at _Chantilly_."

"During seven days the massacre did not cease, though its extreme fury
spent itself in the two first."

"Every enormity, every profanation, every atrocious crime, which zeal,
revenge, and cruel policy are capable of influencing mankind to commit,
stain the dreadful registers of this unhappy period. More than five
thousand persons of all ranks perished by various species of deaths. The
_Seine_ was loaded with carcases floating on it, and _Charles_ fed his
eyes from the windows of the _Louvre_, with this unnatural and
abominable spectacle of horror. A butcher who entered the palace during
the heat of the massacre, boasted to his sovereign, baring his bloody
arm, that he himself had dispatched an hundred and fifty."

"_Catherine of Medicis_, the presiding demon, who scattered destruction
in so many shapes, was not melted into pity at the view of such
complicated and extensive misery; she gazed with savage satisfaction on
the head of _Coligni_ which was brought her."

_Sully_ only slightly mentions this massacre of which he was
notwithstanding an eye-witness, because he was but twelve years of age.

_Mezeray_ gives the most circumstantial account of it; he says, "The
streets were paved with dead or dying bodies, the _portes-cocheres_,
(great gates of the hotels) were stopped up with them, there were heaps
of them in the public squares, the street-kennels overflowed with
blood, which ran gushing into the river. Six hundred houses were
pillaged at different times, and four thousand persons were massacred
with all the inhumanity and all the tumult than can be imagined."

"Among the slain was _Charles de Quelleue Pontivy_, likewise called
_Soubise_, because he had married _Catherine_, only daughter and heiress
of _Jean de Partenay_ Baron _de Soubise_: this Lady had entered an
action against him for impotence; His naked dead body being among others
dragged before the _Louvre_, there were ladies curious enough to examine
leisurely, if they could discover the cause or the marks of the defeat
of which he had been accused."

_Brantome_, in his memoirs of _Charles IX._ says, "As soon as it was day
the king looked out of the window, and seeing that many people were
running away in the _fauxbourg St. Germain_, he took a large hunting
_arquebuse_, and shot at them many times, but in vain, for the gun did
not carry so far."[30]

[Note 30: The king was shooting from the _Louvre_, and the
_Fauxbourg_ St. _Germain_ is on the other side of the river.]

"He took great pleasure in seeing floating in the river, under his
windows, more than four thousand dead bodies."

A French writer, _Mr. du Laure_, in a Description of Paris, just
published, says, "About thirty thousand persons were killed on that
night in Paris and in the country; few of the citizens but were either
assassins or assassinated. Ambition, the hatred of the great, of a
woman, the feebleness and cruelty of a king, the spirit of party, the
fanaticism of the people, animated those scenes of horror, which do not
depose so much against the French nation, at that time governed by
strangers, as against the passions of the great, and the ill-directed
zeal of the religion of an ignorant populace."

A few more modern instances of female fortitude are given in a note.[31]

[Note 31: On the 28th of March, 1757, _Damiens_, who stabbed _Lewis_
XV. was executed in the _Place de Greve_, four horses were to pull his
arms and legs from his body: they were fifty minutes pulling in vain,
and at last his joints were obliged to be cut: he supported these
torments patiently, and expired whilst the tendons of his shoulders were
cutting, though he was living after his legs and thighs had been torn
from his body; his right hand had previously been cut off. I was in
Paris in 1768, and then, and at various times since have been assured by
eye-witnesses, that almost all the windows of the square where the
execution was performed were hired by ladies, at from two to ten _louis_
each.

Mr. Thicknesse in his "_Year's journey through France and Part of
Spain_," in a letter dated _Dijon_,_ in Burgundy_, 1776, mentions a man
whom he saw broke alive on the wheel by, "the executioner and _his
mother_, who assisted at this horrid business, these both seemed to
enjoy the deadly office."

I have formerly given an account of the Spanish ladies enjoying the
barbarities of the bull-fights.]

MISCELLANIES. NUMBER OF SLAIN.

ON that same Saturday morning the dead Swiss, the broken furniture of
the palace, and the burning woodwork of the barracks, were all gathered
together in a vast heap, and set fire to. I saw this pile at twenty or
thirty yards distance, and I was told that some of the women who were
spectators took out an arm or a leg that was broiling, to taste: this I
did _not see_, but I see no reason for _not believing it_.

On the afternoon of this day, the coffee-houses were, as usual, filled
with idle people, who amused themselves with playing at the baby-game of
_domino_.

No coaches except fiacres (hackney-coaches) were now to be seen about
the streets; the theatres continued on the following mornings to
advertise their performances, and in the afternoon fresh advertisements
were pasted over these, saying, there would be _relache au theatre_
(respite, intermission.) A few days after, some of the theatres
advertised to perform for the benefit of the families of the slain, but
few persons attended the representation, through fear; because the
_sans-culottes_ talked of pulling down all the theatres, which, they
said, _gataient les moeurs_, (corrupted the morals) of the people.

Ever since the 10th, I knew the barriers had been guarded, to prevent
any person from leaving Paris, but I now was informed that that had been
the case, three days previous to that day, which may seem to imply that
some apprehensions were formed, that violent measures would take place
somewhere.

About this time the officers were obliged by the _sans-culottes_ to wear
worsted instead of gold or silver shoulder-knots; and no more _cloudy_
carriages were to be seen in the streets.

Portraits of the king, with the body of a hog, and of the queen, with
that of a tygress were engraven and publicly sold. A book was published,
entitled, _Crimes of Louis_ XVI. the author of which advertised that he
was then printing a book of the _Crimes of the Popes_, after which he
intended to publish the crimes of all the potentates in Europe.

As I could not get out of Paris, to make any little excursions to
nursery and other gardens, to _Vincennes_, to _Montreuil_, and as the
inhabitants of Paris were too much alarmed to retain any relish for
society, (public places out of the question,) I was desirous of getting
away as soon as possible, and applied first to the usual officers for a
pass, which was refused. That of _Lord Gower_ (the ambassador) was at
this time of no use, but it became so afterwards, as shall be mentioned.

On the Monday (13th August) I wrote a letter of about ten lines to the
President of the National Assembly, soliciting a pass. This I carried
myself, and sent it in by one of the clerks. The President immediately
read the letter, and the Assembly decreed a pass for me; but the next
day, when I applied for it to the _comite de surveillance_, (committee
of inspection) it, or they, knew nothing of the matter. I then went to
the _mairie_ (mayoralty house) but in vain.

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