The count still remained silent.
“Do you think,” continued the queen, “that in a battle fought in such a cause, two men of the people are worth more than one of my soldiers?”
Charny said nothing.
“Speak,—answer me!—Do you think so?” exclaimed the queen, growing impatient.
“Madame,” answered the Count, at last, throwing aside, on this order from the Queen, the respectful reserve which he had so long maintained, “on a field of battle, where these hundred thousand men would be isolated, undisciplined and badly armed as they are, your fifty thousand soldiers would defeat them in half an hour.”
“Ah!” said the queen, “I was then right.”
“Wait a moment. But it is not as you imagine. And, in the first place, your hundred thousand insurgents in Paris are five hundred thousand.”
“Five hundred thousand?”
“Quite as many. You had omitted the women and children in your calculation! Oh, Queen of France! Oh, proud and courageous woman! consider them as so many men, these women of Paris; the day will perhaps come when they will compel you to consider them as so many demons.”
“What can you mean, Count?”
“Madame, do you know what part a woman plays in a civil war? No, you do not. Well, I will tell you; and you will see that two soldiers against each woman would not be too many.”
“Count, have you lost your senses?”
Charny smiled sadly.
“Did you see them at the Bastille?” asked he, “in the midst of the fire, in the midst of the shot, crying, ‘To arms!’ threatening with their fists your redoubtable Swiss soldiers, fully armed and equipped, uttering maledictions over the bodies of the slain, with that voice that excites the hearts of the living. Have we not seen them boiling the pitch, dragging cannon along the streets, giving cartridges to those who were eager for the combat, and to the timid combatants a cartridge and a kiss? Do you know that as many women as men trod the drawbridge of the Bastille, and that at this moment, if the stones of the Bastille are falling, it is by pickaxes wielded by women’s hands? Ah! Madame, do not overlook the women of Paris; take them into consideration; think also of the children who cast bullets, who sharpen swords, who throw paving-stones from a sixth story; think of them, for the bullet which was cast by a child may kill your best general from afar off, for the sword which it has sharpened will cut the hamstrings of your war-horses, for the clouds of stones which fall as from the skies will crush your dragoons and your guards; consider the old men, Madame, for if they have no longer the strength to raise a sword, they have still enough to serve as shields. At the taking of the Bastille, Madame, there were old men; do you know what they did,—those aged men whom you affect to despise? They placed themselves before the young men, who steadied their muskets on their shoulders, that they might take sure aim, so that the balls of your Swiss killed the helpless aged man, whose body served as a rampart to the vigorous youth. Include the aged men, for it is they who for the last three hundred years have related to succeeding generations the insults suffered by their mothers,—the desolation of their fields, caused by the devouring of their crops by the noblemen’s game; the odium attached to their caste, crushed down by feudal privileges; and then the sons seize a hatchet, a club, a gun, in short, any weapon within their reach, and sally out to kill, fully charged with the curses of the aged against all this tyranny, as the cannon is loaded with powder and iron. At Paris, at this moment, men, women, old men, and children are all crying, ‘Liberty, deliverance!’ Count everything that has a voice, Madame, and you may estimate the number of combatants in Paris at eight hundred thousand souls.”
“Three hundred Spartans defeated the army of Xerxes, Monsieur de Charny.”
“Yes; but to-day your three hundred Spartans have increased to eight hundred thousand, and your fifty thousand soldiers compose the army of Xerxes.”