The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI

The first thing to do was stop the latter.

The Marseillais threw themselves at the buildings like mad dogs on a brasier, but they could not demolish a wall with hands; they called for picks and crows.

Billet asked for torpedoes. Westerman knew that his lieutenant had the right idea, and he had petards made. At the risk of having these cannon-cartridges fired in their hands, the Marseilles men carried them with the matches lighted and flung them into the apertures. The woodwork was soon set aflame by these grenades, and the defenders were obliged to take refuge under the stairs.

Here the fighting went on with steel to steel and shot for shot.

Suddenly Billet felt hands from behind seize him, and he wheeled round, thinking he had an enemy to grapple: but he uttered a cry of delight. It was Pitou; but he was pretty hard to identify, for he was smothered in blood from head to foot; but he was safe and sound and without a single wound.

When he saw the Swiss muskets leveled, he had called out for all to drop flat, and he had set the example.

But his followers had not time to act like him. Like a monstrous scythe, the fusillade had swept along at breast-high, and laid two thirds of the human field, another volley bending and breaking the remainder.

Pitou was literally buried beneath the swathe, and bathed by the warm and nauseating stream. Despite the profoundly disagreeable feeling, Pitou resolved not to make any move, while bathed in the blood of the bodies stifling him, and to wait for a favorable time to show tokens of life.

He had to wait for over an hour, and every minute seemed an hour. But he judged he had the right cue when he heard his side's shouts of victory, and Billet's voice, among the many, calling him.

Thereupon, like the Titan under the mountain, he shook off the mound of carcasses covering him, and ran to press Billet to his heart, on recognizing him, without thinking that he might soil his clothes, whichever way he took him.

A Swiss volley, which sent a dozen men to the ground, recalled them to the gravity of the situation.

Two thousand yards of buildings were burning on the sides of the central court. It was sultry weather, without the least breath; like a dome of lead the smoke of the fire and powder pressed on the combatants; the smoke filled up the palace entrances. Each window flamed, but the front was sheeted in smoke; no one could tell who delivered death or who received it.

Pitou and Billet, with the Marseillais at the fore, pushed through the vapor into the vestibule. Here they met a wall of bayonets – the Swiss.

The Swiss commenced their retreat, a heroic one, leaving a rank of dead on each step, and the battalion most slowly retiring.

Forty-eight dead were counted that evening on those stairs.

Suddenly the cry rang through the rooms and corridors:

"Order of the king – the Swiss will cease firing."

It was two in the afternoon.

The following had happened in the House to lead to the order proclaimed in the Tuileries; one with the double advantage of lessening the assailants' exasperation and covering the vanquished with honor.

As the doors were closing behind the queen, but still while she could catch a glimpse of the bars, bayonets, and pikes menacing Charny, she had screamed and held her hands out toward the opening; but dragged away by her companions, at the same time by her maternal instinct, she had to enter the Assembly Hall.

There she had the great relief afforded her of seeing her son seated on the speaker's desk; the man who had carried him there waved his red cap triumphantly over the boy's head and shouted gladly:

"I have saved the son of my master – long live the dauphin!"

But a sudden revulsion of feeling made Marie Antoinette recur to Charny.

"Gentlemen," she said, "one of my bravest officers, most devoted of followers, has been left outside the door, in danger of death. I beg succor for him."

Five or six members sprung away at the appeal.

The king, the queen, and the rest of the royal family, with their attendants, proceeded to the seats intended for the cabinet officers, and took places there.

The Assembly received them standing, not from etiquette, but the respect misfortune compelled.

Before sitting down, the king held up his hand to intimate that he wished to speak.

"I came here to prevent a great crime," he said, in the silence; "I thought I could not be in safety anywhere else."

"Sire," returned Vergniaud, who presided, "you may rely on the firmness of the National Assembly; its members are sworn to die in defending the people's rights and the constitutional authorities."

As the king was taking his seat, a frightful musketry discharge resounded at the doors. It was the National Guards firing, intermingled with the insurgents, from the Feuillants' terrace, on the Swiss officers and soldiers forming the royal escort.

An officer of the National Guard, probably out of his senses, ran in in alarm, and only stopped by the bar, cried: "The Swiss – the Swiss are coming – they have forced past us!"

For an instant the House believed that the Swiss had overcome the outbreak and were coming to recover their master; for at the time Louis XVI. was much more the king to the Swiss than to any others.

With one spontaneous movement the House rose, all of a mind, and the representatives, spectators, officials, and guards, raising their hands, shouted, "Come what may, we vow to live and die free men!"

In such an oath the royals could take no part, so they remained seated, as the shout passed like a whirlwind over their heads from three thousand mouths. The error did not last long, but it was sublime.

In another quarter of an hour the cry was: "The palace is overrun – the insurgents are coming here to take the king!"

Thereupon the same men who had sworn to die free in their hatred of royalty, rose with the same spontaneity to swear they would defend the king to the death. The Swiss captain, Durler, was summoned outside to lay down his arms.

"I serve the king and not the House," he said. "Where is the royal order?"

They brought him into the Assembly by force; he was black with powder and red with blood.

"Sire," he said, "they want me to lay down arms. Is it the king's order?"

"Yes," said Louis; "hand your weapons to the National Guard. I do not want such brave men to perish."

Durler lowered his head with a sigh, but he insisted on a written order. The king scribbled on a paper: "The king orders the Swiss to lay down their arms and return into barracks."

This was what voices were crying throughout the Tuileries, on the stairs, and in the rooms and halls. As this order restored some quiet to the House, the speaker rang his bell and called for the debating to be resumed.

A member rose and pointed out that an article of the Constitution forbade debates in the king's presence.

"Quite so," said the king; "but where are you going to put us?"

"Sire," said the speaker, "we can give you the room and box of the 'Logographe,' which is vacant owing to the sheet having ceased to appear."

The ushers hastened to show the party where to go, and they had to retrace some of the path they had used to enter.

"What is this on the floor?" asked the queen. "It looks like blood!"

The servants said nothing; for while the spots might be blood, they were ignorant where they came from.

Strange to say, the stains grew larger and nearer together as they approached the box. To spare her the sight, the king quickened the pace, and opening the box door himself, he bid her enter.