Back Aa

Taking the Bastile

<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> THE TRIANGLE OF LIBERTY. At the door of the Register Hall they had made a bonfire of the documents. One of the first feelings of the masses after a victory is for destruction, unfortunately. The memorials of the prison were turned out of the large room, where the records of all the prisoners since a hundred years back were kept higgledy piggledy. The mob shut up the papers with anger, seeming to think that they gave the prisoners freedom by annulling the warrants. Gilbert, assisted by Pitou, looked at the registers, but the present year's was missing. Though a calm and cool man, the doctor stamped his foot with impatience while he turned blanched. At this Pitou spied a boy, such a little hero as always pops up in the reign of King Mob, who was carrying on his head the volume to throw it into the fire. With his long legs he soon overtook him. It was the register for 1789. The deal did not take long, for Ange announced himself as one who had captured the place and explained that a prisoner wanted the book. The boy gave it up with the comforting remark that there were lots more where it came from. Pitou opened the book and on the last page he saw the entry: "This day, ninth of July, 1789, enters Dr. Gilbert, a most dangerous writer of public matters and philosophy: keep in solitary confinement." He carried the register to the physician. It was of course what he sought. Looking whence the order emanated, he exclaimed: [Pg 115] "The warrant to arrest me signed by my friend Necker? then there must be some trick played on him." "Necker your friend?" ejaculated the crowd, for the name had great influence over them. "Yes, my friend, and I upheld him. I am convinced that he is ignorant of my being in prison. But I will go and find him, and——" "He is not at Versailles," said Billet, "but at Brussels; he is exiled." "His daughter lives in the country out by St. Ouen," suggested one of the throng, whom Gilbert thanked without seeing who it was. "Friends," he said, "in the name of history, who will find the condemnation of tyranny in these papers, cease such devastation, I entreat you. Demolish the Bastile, stone by stone, till not a trace remains, but respect documents and books, for the light of the future is in them." The multitude had scarce heard the rebuke than its high intelligence gauged he was correct. "The doctor is right," cried a hundred voices; "no more spoiling. Let us take these papers to the City Hall." A fireman who had brought a small hand-engine into the fort, with half a dozen comrades, directed the horse-butt at the fire which was about to repeat a conflagration of books like that of Alexandria, and they put it out. "At whose request were you arrested?" inquired the farmer. "Just what I was looking for but the name is blank. I shall learn," he added after brief meditation. Tearing out the leaf concerning himself, he folded it up and pocketed it. "Let us be off, friends," said he, "we have no farther business here." "It is easier to say, let us go, than manage it," remarked the countryman. Indeed, the concourse, entering the Castle by all openings, choked up the doorways. They had liberated eight prisoners, including Gilbert. Four excited no interest; they had been locked up on a charge of forging a bank draft, without any [Pg 116] evidence, which leads to the premise that it was a false charge; they had been in jail only two years. The next was Count Solange, a man of thirty, who was in rapture: he hugged his liberators, exalted their victory and related his captivity. Arrested in 1782, and shut up in Vincennes Castle on a blank warrant obtained by his father, he had been transferred to the Bastile, where he remained five years without having seen a magistrate or being examined once: his father had died two years back, and nobody asked after him. Had not the Bastile been captured, he would probably have died there unasked for. White was another wretch; he was sixty years old and jabbered incoherent words with a foreign accent. To the many questions he replied that he was ignorant how long he had been detained and for what cause. He remembered he was a kinsman of Chief of Police Sartines. A turnkey recalled having seen Lord Sartines enter White's cell and force him to sign a power of attorney. But the prisoner had utterly forgotten the incident. Tavernier was the oldest of all. He had been ten years imprisoned in another states prison before coming to the Bastile for thirty years; he was in his ninetieth year, white in beard and hair; his eyes were so used to the gloom that he could not bear the light. When they broke open his dungeon, he did not understand what they wanted to do. When they spoke of liberty, he shook his head. When finally they said the Bastile was taken by the people, he cried: "What will Louis XV. say?" White was crazed, but Tavernier was an idiot. The delight of the rest was terrible to view, so close was it to alarm; it called for vengeance. Two or three were almost ready to expire, amid the hubbub of thousands of voices, having never heard two speaking at the same time while in the prison. They had become accustomed to the slow and odd sounds of wood cracking with dampness, or the death-watch cricket, or the spider weaving its web, or the frightened rat gnawing his Majesty's prisonwalls. [Pg 117] As Gilbert appeared, the resolution was unanimously adopted that the rescued ones should be carried in triumph through the town. Gilbert wished to elude this ovation but he could not do so, as he was recognized as well as Billet and his comrade. "To the City Hall!" shouted everybody, and Gilbert was taken up on the shoulders of twenty fellows. In vain did Gilbert resist, and Billet and Pitou shower punches and cuffs on their brothers-in-arms; joy and enthusiasm had made the people's hide tough. Fisticuffs, digs with the elbow or thrusts with musket butts, all seemed soft as strokings and only enhanced their glee. A spear was stuck in a table and Gilbert placed on it to be carried. Thus he was above the level of the sea of heads, undulating from the Bastile to St. John's Arcade, a stormy sea which transported the delivered captives amid billows crested with bloody swords, bayonets and pikes. At the same time another sea roiled terribly and irresistibly, a group closely serried around the prisoner Launay. Around him the shouts were as loud and hearty as for the liberated prisoners, but they were of death not of triumph. Gilbert, from his elevated stand, did not lose an incident of the horrible occurrence. Alone, among all his fellow captives, he enjoyed the fulness of his faculties, because five days' imprisonment was but a black speck in his career. His eye had not had time to be dimmed by the Bastile's darkness. Usually fighting makes men hardhearted only during the action. Men coming out of the fire with their own lives intact, feel kindly towards their foes. But in great popular uprisings, such as France had seen many from the Jacquerie or Peasants' Outbreak in 1358, those whom fear kept in the rear during the conflict, but were irritated by the turbulence, are ferocious cowards who seek after the victory to redden their hands in the blood of those they dared not face in the combat. They take their share in the reprisal. Since he was dragged out of his castle the march of the governor was a dolorous one. Elie, protected by his uniform and the part he had taken in the assault, marched at the head, having taken Launay's life [Pg 118] under his special care: he was admired for the manner in which he had borne himself. On his swordpoint he carried the letter which Launay had passed out of the prison loophole to be taken by Maillard. After him came the Tax-Commissioners Guards, carrying the keys of the royal fortress; then, Maillard, bearing the Bastile flag; then, a young man who bore on a pike the Bastile's rules and regulations, an odious rescript by virtue of which many a tear had been made to flow. Lastly came the governor, protected by Hullin and three or four others, but almost covered in with shaking fists, flourished blades and brandished pikeheads. Beside this column, almost parallel, rolling up St. Antoine Street, leading from the main avenue to the River Seine, was to be distinguished another, no less awful and menacing, dragging Major Losme, whom we saw struggle against his superior for a space but succumb under the determination to resist to the last. He was a kind, good and brave man who had alleviated many miseries within the jail, but the general public did not know this. On account of his showy uniform many took him to be the governor. The latter, clothed in grey, having torn off the embroidery and the St. Louis scarf, was shielded by some doubt from those who did not recognize him. This was the spectacle which Gilbert beheld with his gloomy, profound and observant glance, amid the dangers foreseen by his powerful organization. On leaving the Bastile, Hullin had rallied his own friends the surest and most devoted, the most valiant soldiers of the day; these four or five tried to second his generous design of shielding the governor. Impartial history had preserved the names of three: Arne, Chollat and Lepine. These four, with Hullin and Maillard in advance, attempted to defend the life for which a hundred thousand were clamoring. A few French Grenadiers, whose uniform had become popular within three days, clustered round them. They were venerated by the mob. [Pg 119] As long as his generous defenders could do it they beat off the blows aimed at Count Launay; but he could not evade the hooting, the insults and the curses. At Jouy Street corner, all the grenadiers had been brushed aside. Not the crowd's excitement, but the calculation of murderers may have had something to do with this; Gilbert had seen them plucked away as beads are flipped off a string. He foresaw by this that the victory would be tarnished by bloodshed; he tried to get off the table but iron hands held him to it. In his impotence he sent Billet and Pitou to the defense of the governor, and obeying his voice they made efforts to reach the threatened one. His protectors stood in strong need of reinforcement. Chollat, who had eaten nothing since the evening before, fell with exhaustion, though he tried to struggle on: had he not been assisted, he would have been trodden under foot. His falling out of line made a breach in the living wall. A man darted in by this crevasse in the dyke and clubbing his musket, delivered a crushing blow at the governor's bared head. Lepine saw the mace descending and had time to throw his arms around Launay and receive the blow on his own forehead. Stunned by the shock and blinded by the blood, he staggered back and when he recovered, he was twenty paces apart from the prisoner. This was the moment when Billet fought his way up, towing Pitou after him, like a steamship-of-war bringing up a sailing man-of-war into action. He noticed that what marked Launay out was his being without a hat: he snatched off his own and put it on the count's head. The latter turned and recognized him. "I thank you," he said, "but whatever you do you cannot save me." "If I can get you inside the City Hall, I will answer for all," said Hullin. "Yes, but can you do it?" said the victim. "God helping us, we'll try it." They might hope this as they reached the City Hall Square, It was packed with men with their arms bared to the pit, waving [Pg 120] swords and spears. The rumor had run along that they were bringing the Bastile Governor and his major, and they were waiting for them like a pack of wolfhounds held back from breaking up the quarry. As soon as they saw the party they rushed at it. Hullin saw that this was going to be the supreme peril and final struggle. If he could only get the governor up the steps and inside the building, he would save him. "Help, Elie, and Millard, all men who hold our honor dear!" he shouted. Elie and Maillard forged onward but the mob closed in behind them and they were isolated. The crowd saw the advantage it had won, and made a furious effort. Like a gigantic boa, it wound its coils round the knot: Billet was taken off his feet and swept away with Pitou, who stuck to him. The same whirlwind made Hullin reel on the steps where he fell. He rose but was forced down anew, and Launay fell with him this time. He stayed down; up to the last he did not murmur or beg for mercy, but he cried in a hoarse voice: "Do not at least keep me lingering, tigers that you are. Slay me outright." Never had he issued an order executed more promptly than this prayer: in one instant, armed hands flourished round his stooped head. Fists and plunging blades were seen: and then a head severed from the trunk rose disgustingly on the tip of a pike; it had preserved its cold and scornful smile. This was the first head lopped off by the Revolution. Gilbert had foreseen the atrocity: he had tried again to dart to the rescue but a hundred hands held him down. He turned his head and sighed. This head was lifted with its eyes glaring, up to the window where Flesselles stood, surrounded and supported by the electors—as if to bid him a last farewell. It would be hard to say which was the paler, his face or the corpses. All at once a deafening uproar burst from where the headless body lay. In searching it, in the vest pocket, was found the note addressed to him by the Provost of the Traders, the [Pg 121] one he had shown to Losme. It will be remembered as in these terms: <div class="blockquot"> "Hold out firmly; I will amuse the Parisians with cockades and promises. Before day is done, Bezenval will send you reinforcements. </div> Flesselles."&emsp;&emsp;  A horrible yell of blasphemy rose from the pavement to the window where the writer stood. Without divining the cause, he understood the threat and threw himself back. But he had been seen and was known to be within; the rush for him was so universal that even the bearers of Dr. Gilbert left him to join the hunters. Gilbert sought to enter with them to protect Flesselles. He had not run up three steps before he felt himself pulled back by the coatskirts. He turned to shake off the hand but saw they were of Billet and Pitou. From the higher standpoint he overlooked the square. "What is going on over there?" he inquired, pointing towards a spot of commotion. "Come, doctor, come," said the two countrymen together. "The butchers," said the doctor. At that instant Major Losme fell, struck down by a hatchet; in their hatred the people confounded the persecutor of the prisoners with the merciful warden. "Let us begone," said the physician, "for I begin to be ashamed that such murderers let me out." "Do not say that, doctor," reproved Billet, "those who stormed the Bastile are not the cutthroats yonder." As they descended the steps which he had mounted to try to help Flesselles, the throng which had flowed through the doorway, was hurled forth. In the midst of the battling gathering one man was struggling. "Take him to the Palais Royal," vociferated the thousands. "Yes, my friends, yes, my good friends, to the Palais Royal," gasped this wretch. But the human inundation rolled towards the river as though it intended to drown him. [Pg 122] "Another they mean to murder," shouted Gilbert; "let us try to save him at any rate." But he had hardly got the words out of his mouth before a pistol-shot resounded; Flesselles disappeared in the smoke. Gilbert covered his eyes, cursing the multitude, great but unable to remain pure, and sullying the victory by a triple murder. When he took his hands from his eyes, he beheld three heads on pike points: Flesselles', Launay's and Losme's. One rose on the City Hall steps, another in the mouth of Tixeranderie Street and the last in Pelletier Street, so that the trio formed a triangle. He remembered the sign in the Order of the Invisibles. "Oh, Balsamo," he muttered, "is this the emblem of Liberty?" And sighing, he fled up Vannerie Street, dragging Billet and Pitou with him. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.