Ange Pitou by Alexandre Dumas part one

Élie and Hullin, it is needless to say, are historical characters; and worthy of an honorable place in history for their heroic attempts, then and afterwards, to prevent the needless shedding of blood.

The extraordinary thing about the attack on the Bastille is the startling unanimity of the people that it was the first and fittest object of attack. It seems the more extraordinary because, as Michelet has said, it “was by no means reasonable;” for the lower orders had suffered but little from imprisonment in the Bastille.

“Nobody proposed, but all believed and all acted. Along the streets, the quays, the bridges, and the boulevards, the crowd shouted to the crowd: ‘To the Bastille! The Bastille!’ And the tolling of the tocsin sounded in every ear: à la Bastille!

“Nobody, I repeat, gave the impulse. The orators of the Palais Royal passed the time in drawing up a list of proscriptions, in condemning the queen to death, as well as Madame de Polignac, Artois, Flesselles, the provost, and others. The names of the conquerors of the Bastille do not include one of these makers of motions.”

Perhaps we may accept, in the absence of a better, Michelet’s explanation of this instinctive action of the mob, as having been caused by the recent publicity given to the experience of one Latude, who was first confined in the Bastille during the reign of Madame de Pompadour, and had since “worn out all their prisons,” and had finally reached the “dunghillss of Bicêtre,” by way of Vincennes and Charenton. He was at last released through the pertinacious efforts of one Madame Legros, a poor mercer, who became interested in him by chance, and persevered for three years, meeting with obstacles of every sort and exposed to the vilest calumny, until success came at last, and Latude was released in 1784, after more than forty years of confinement. His release was followed by an ordinance enjoining intendants never again to incarcerate anybody at the request of families without a well-grounded reason, and in every case to indicate the duration of confinement,—a decidedly naive confession of the degree of arbitrariness which had been reached.

“From that day” (of Latude’s deliverance), says Michelet, “the people of the town and the faubourg, who, in that much-frequented quarter, were ever passing and repassing in its shadow, never failed to curse it.”

It is proper to observe that the state of things which existed in the Bastille when the Cellamare conspirators underwent mock imprisonment there (witness the Regency Romances) had been done away with. While other prisons had become more merciful, this had become more cruel. From reign to reign the privileges were taken away, the windows were walled up one after another, and new bars were added. The other encroachments by De Launay upon the “liberties of the Bastille” are described by Dumas in the course of the narrative.

To quote Michelet once more: “The Bastille was known and detested by the whole world. ‘Bastille’ and ‘tyranny’ were in every language synonymous terms. Every nation, at the news of its destruction, believed it had recovered its liberty.”

The Comte de Ségur, then ambassador at Russia, relates that when the news arrived in St. Petersburg, men of every nation were to be seen shouting and weeping in the streets, and repeating, as they embraced one another: “Who can help weeping for joy? The Bastille is taken!”

The Duc de Liancourt announced the fall of the fortress to Louis XVI. “Why,” said the king, “it is downright revolt!” “It’s more than that,” replied Liancourt, “it is revolution.”

Nothing need be added to the description given by Dumas of the painful excitement at Versailles, or of the king’s journey to Paris and experience there. The scenes attending the summary vengeance wreaked upon Foulon and Berthier, who were the very incarnation of the old régime, are also portrayed with the careful attention to detail which is so striking a characteristic of the historical portions of the author’s romances; and the same may be said of the assassination of Flesselles, and, by anticipation, of the events of the 5th of October in the streets of Paris and at the Hôtel de Ville, when Stanislas Maillard assumed the leadership of the women (“the Menadic hosts”), and Lafayette was reluctantly compelled to lead the march of the thirty thousand upon Versailles.

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