The French Revolution eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,095 pages of information about The French Revolution.

The French Revolution eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,095 pages of information about The French Revolution.

And yet, alas, what to do?  Lafayette, with his Patrols prohibits every thing, even complaint.  Saint-Huruge and other heroes of the Veto lie in durance.  People’s-Friend Marat was seized; Printers of Patriotic Journals are fettered and forbidden; the very Hawkers cannot cry, till they get license, and leaden badges.  Blue National Guards ruthlessly dissipate all groups; scour, with levelled bayonets, the Palais Royal itself.  Pass, on your affairs, along the Rue Taranne, the Patrol, presenting his bayonet, cries, To the left!  Turn into the Rue Saint-Benoit, he cries, To the right!  A judicious Patriot (like Camille Desmoulins, in this instance) is driven, for quietness’s sake, to take the gutter.

O much-suffering People, our glorious Revolution is evaporating in tricolor ceremonies, and complimentary harangues!  Of which latter, as Loustalot acridly calculates, ’upwards of two thousand have been delivered within the last month, at the Townhall alone.’ (Revolutions de Paris Newspaper (cited in Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 357).) And our mouths, unfilled with bread, are to be shut, under penalties?  The Caricaturist promulgates his emblematic Tablature:  Le Patrouillotisme chassant le Patriotisme, Patriotism driven out by Patrollotism.  Ruthless Patrols; long superfine harangues; and scanty ill-baked loaves, more like baked Bath bricks,—­which produce an effect on the intestines!  Where will this end?  In consolidation?

Chapter 1.7.II.

O Richard, O my King.

For, alas, neither is the Townhall itself without misgivings.  The Nether Sansculottic world has been suppressed hitherto:  but then the Upper Court-world!  Symptoms there are that the Oeil-de-Boeuf is rallying.

More than once in the Townhall Sanhedrim; often enough, from those outspoken Bakers’-queues, has the wish uttered itself:  O that our Restorer of French Liberty were here; that he could see with his own eyes, not with the false eyes of Queens and Cabals, and his really good heart be enlightened!  For falsehood still environs him; intriguing Dukes de Guiche, with Bodyguards; scouts of Bouille; a new flight of intriguers, now that the old is flown.  What else means this advent of the Regiment de Flandre; entering Versailles, as we hear, on the 23rd of September, with two pieces of cannon?  Did not the Versailles National Guard do duty at the Chateau?  Had they not Swiss; Hundred Swiss; Gardes-du-Corps, Bodyguards so-called?  Nay, it would seem, the number of Bodyguards on duty has, by a manoeuvre, been doubled:  the new relieving Battalion of them arrived at its time; but the old relieved one does not depart!

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The French Revolution from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.