"Arms! Arms! Give us arms!"
France to-day is desperate. Her people are starving. Women and
children cry for bread; famine, injustice and oppression have
made slaves of the men. But the time has come at last when the
cry for freedom and for justice has drowned the wails of hungry
children. It is Sunday the twelfth of July. Camille Desmoulins
the fiery young demagogue is here, standing on a table in the
Palais Royal, a pistol in each hand, with a herd of gaunt and
hollow-eyed men around him.
"Friends," he demands vehemently, "shall our children die like sheep? Shall we continue to plead for ears that will not hear and appeal to hearts that are made of stone? Shall we labour to feed the well-filled and see our wives and daughters starve? Frenchmen! The hour has come: the hour of our deliverance. To arms, friends! to arms! Let our oppressors look to themselves. Let them come to grips with us, the oppressed, and see if brutal force can conquer justice."
With burning hearts and quivering lips they listened to him for
a while, some in silence, others muttering incoherent words. But
soon they took up the echo of the impassioned call: "To arms!"
and in a few moments what had been a tentative murmur became a
delirious shout: "To arms! To arms!" Throughout the
long afternoon, until dusk and nightfall, and thereafter the call
to arms like the roar of ocean waves breaking on a rocky shore
resounded from one end of Paris to the other. And all night long
men in threadbare suits and wooden shoes roamed about the streets,
gesticulating, forming groups, talking, arguing, shouting. Shouting
always their rallying cry: "To arms!"
By dawn the next day the herd of gaunt, hollowed-eyed men has become a raging multitude. The call for arms has become a vociferous demand: "Give us arms!" Right to-day must be at grips with might. The oppressed shall rise against the oppressor. But the oppressed must have arms wherewith to smite the tyrant, the extortioner, the relentless task-master of the poor. And so they march, these hungry, wan-faced men, at first in their hundreds but soon in their thousands. They march to the Town Hall demanding arms.
"Arms! Arms! Give us arms!"
It is Monday morning but all the shops are shut: neither cobblers,
nor weavers, barbers nor venders of miscellaneous goods have taken
down their shutters. Labourers and scavengers are idle, for every
worker to-day has become a fighter. Alone the bakers and the vinters
ply their trade, for fighting men must eat and drink. And the
smiths are set to work to forge pikes as fast as they can, and
the women up in their attics to sew cockades. Red and blue which
are the municipal colours are tacked on to the constitutional
white, thus making of the Tricolour the badge of France in revolt.
The rest of Paris continues to roam the streets demanding arms:
first at the Hôtel de Ville, the Town Hall where provost
and aldermen are forced to admit they have no arms: not in any
quantity, only a few antiquated firelocks, which are immediately
seized upon. Then they go, those hungry thousands, to the Arsenal,
where they only find rubbish and bits of rusty iron which they
hurl into the streets, often wounding others who had remained,
expectant, outside. Next to the King's warehouse where there are
plenty of gewgaws, tapestries, pictures, a gilded sword or two
and suits of antiquated armour, also the cannon, silver mounted
and coated with grime, which a grateful King of Siam once sent
as a present to Louis XIV, but nothing useful, nothing serviceable.
No matter! A Siamese cannon is better than none. It is trundled
along the streets of Paris to the Debtors' prison, to the Chatelet,
to the House of Correction where prisoners are liberated and made
to swell the throng.
News of all this tumult soon wakens the complacent and the luxurious from their slumbers. They tumble out of bed wanting to know what "those brigands" were up to. The "brigands it seems were in possession of the barriers, had seized the carts which conveyed food into the city for the rich. They were marching through Paris, yelling, and roaring, wearing strange cockades. The tocsin was pealing from every church steeple. Every smith in the town was forging pikes; fifty thousand it was asserted had been forged in twenty-four hours, and still the "brigands" demanded more.
So what were the complacent and the luxurious to do but make haste
to depart from this Paris with its strange cockades and its unseemly
tumult? There were some quick packings-up and calls for coaches,
tumbrils, anything whereon to pile up furniture, silver and provisions
and hurry to the nearest barrier. But already Paris in revolt
had posted its scrubby hordes at all the gates, with orders to
stop every vehicle from going through and to drag every person
who attempted to leave the city, willy-nilly to the Town Hall.
And the complacent and the luxurious, driven back into Paris which
they wished to quit, desire to know what the commandant of the
city, M. le baron Pierre Victor de Besenval is doing about it.
They demand to know what is being done for their safety. Well!
M. de Besenval has sent courier after courier to Versailles asking
for orders, or at least for guidance. But all that he gets in
reply to his most urgent messages are a few vague words from His
Majesty saying that he has called a Council of his Ministers who
will decide what is to be done, and in the meanwhile let M. le
baron do his duty as beseems an officer loyal to his King.
Besenval in his turn calls a Council of his Officers. His troops
are deserting in their hundreds, taking their arms with them.
Two of his Colonels declare that their men will not fight. Later
in the afternoon three thousand six hundred Gardes Françaises
ordered to march against the insurgents go over to them in a body
with their guns and their gunners, their arms and accoutrements.
Gardes Françaises no longer, they are re-named Gardes Nationales,
and enrolled in the fastgrowing Paris Militia, which is like to
number forty-eight thousand soon, and by to-morrow nearer one
hundred thousand.
If only it had arms, the Paris Militia would be unconquerable.
And now it is Tuesday, the fourteenth of July, a date destined to remain for all time the most momentous in the annals of France, a date on which century-old institutions shall totter and fall, not only in France, but in the course of time, throughout the civilized world, and archaic systems shall perish that have taken root and gathered power since might became right in the days of cave-dwelling man.
Still no definite orders from Versailles. The Council of Ministers
continues to deliberate. Hoary-headed Senators decide to sit in
unbroken session, while Commandant Besenval in Paris does his
duty as a soldier loyal to his King. But what can Besenval do,
even though he be a soldier and loyal to his King? He may be loyal
but the men are not. Their Colonels declare that the troops will
not fight. Who then can stem that army of National Volunteers,
now grown to a hundred and fifty thousand, as they march with
their rallying cry "To arms!" and roll like a flood
to the Hôtel des Invalides?
"There are arms there. Why had we not thought of that before?"
On they roll, scale the containing wall and demand entrance. The
Invalides, old soldiers, veterans of the Seven Years' War stand
by; the gates are opened, the Garde Nationale march in, but the
veterans still stand by without firing a shot. Their Commandant
tries to parley with the insurgents, put they push past him and
his bodyguards; they swarm all over the building rummaging through
every room and every closet from attic to cellar. And in the cellar
the arms are found. Thousands of firelocks soon find their way
on the shoulders of the National Guard. What indeed can Commadant
Besenval do, even though he be a soldier and loyal to his King?