no recital can seem too long, and no detail too minute; the main event is so important, the incidents so terrible. On this day of the 10th day of August, the king was driven from his palace and dethroned. "Hæc finis Priami fatorum." Through the fiery clouds and rushing storm of a popular insurrection, descended the setting monarchy of France; and, but a century before, Louis XIV. had seen his greatness imaged, by a sun that beamed with meridian splendour-a splendour that was only to sink, as it was then fondly supposed, with the sinking fabric of the world. LECTURE XXX. TENTH OF AUGUST. THE main events of this dreadful day of the 10th of August are sufficiently ascertained. There is some difference between the accounts of the opposite parties on one point, whether the Swiss or the assailants fired first, but on all the other leading facts they are agreed. They may be differently coloured or explained, but an inquirer will find no difficulty in satisfying himself what they really were. They are a tremendous specimen of the bloody fury of which human nature is capable, and a mortifying part of the history of mankind to have occurred in the metropolis of one of the first kingdoms of the civilized world so late as at the close of the eighteenth century. It appears, as I have already mentioned, that through most of the month of July a regular committee had been sitting in the correspondence room of the Assembly of the Jacobins, and at Charenton, a small town near Paris, the object of which was to recall the three ministers, and depose the king; and this object was to be accomplished (as the effort on the 20th of June had failed) by a more distinct and decisive insurrection, by an attack on the Tuileries. In that palace the king and royal family remained, as in a last fortress which only waited its fall; and Barbaroux had some time before agreed to send for six hundred of the Marseillois, a desperate band, to be the life and soul of the enterprise. After traversing the kingdom from the 5th of July, they arrived at Charenton on the 30th. "We flew," says Barbaroux, "to receive them. I cannot describe our mutual congratulations. We gave and received a thousand testimonies of affection: we had a fraternal repast.' Barbaroux, however, and his friends had no sooner retired from their fraternal repast, and held their little cabinet council, than the representations of those of the conspirators who came from Paris inspired them with a delusion, which is edifying in its way, as all instances of self-delusion are; and this was no other, than to appear themselves and their friends in Paris in such force, that the king was to be deposed, and liberty established without a struggle. The faubourgs, it was agreed, were to march and lead on the Marseillois. Santerre had assured them, that they might depend on being met by forty thousand men. They were then to take possession of the principal posts and places in the metropolis, and finally encamp in the garden of the Tuileries. Thence they were to notify to the Assembly, that the people of Paris encamped in the Tuileries would not lay down their arms till liberty had been secured by what they called grand measures, and till the departments had approved them. "It was our wish," says Barbaroux, "that this insurrection in the cause of liberty should be majestic, as is Liberty herself; holy, as are the rights which she alone can ensure, and worthy to serve as an example to every people, who, to break the chains of their tyrants, have only to show themselves." These idle dreams, however, of Barbaroux, and perhaps of his friends, were soon dissipated; for Santerre, instead of meeting them at the time and place appointed, with forty thousand representatives of the national will, appeared with scarcely two hundred; most of them not Parisians, but Fédérés of the 14th of July, from the different departments. Nothing could exceed their astonishment. "But Santerre," says Barbaroux, “was not then known to be a heavy fellow, proud enough, but incapable of the grand: The moment was melancholy. Our hopes," he says, were deceived; but we followed the Marseillois, who filed off to the town-house in the most beautiful order." Barbaroux then gives an account of the quarrel between these Marseillois and a part of the national guards in the Champ Elysées, and then interrupts an interesting narrative like this, in the most cold-blooded manner, to give descriptions of Marat and Robespierre. The remainder of the chapter is occupied with the insurrection, of which the account is neither very clear, nor fair, nor valuable. The conspirators were disposed of in different places it seems: Bertin, in the National Assembly; Aubert, at the faubourg St. Antoine; Carrière, with the Marseillois. Barbaroux and Rebecqui appear to have reserved to themselves the office of observing events from some secure point of distance, and superintending the movements of the whole.The rise, then, the intention, and the names and characters of some of the first and chief movers of this insurrection are clear from this account, however short, of Barbaroux. We will now turn from these memoirs, and advert to the main general results furnished us from all our other sources. Barbaroux and the Marseillois were disappointed, in what they represent as their first notion of appearing with Santerre and his Parisians in such force, as to overcome the Assembly and the metropolis, and depose the king, by an intimation of their Sovereign will. This could not be done; but force remained as a measure to be resorted to, and to the employment of such an expedient everything seemed favourable. That an insurrection was intended for the 9th or 10th of August was a matter of perfeet notoriety. It was evident, from what was daily passing in the Assembly, that no resistance would be made from that quarter; Pétion (the mayor), as the conspirators knew, was heart and part in the enterprise; the department, unpopular and disorganized by the resignation of all the members of the directory, was without power; the commune and sections, who alone might have been able to restrain the populace and brigands, had joined them in demanding from the Assembly the deposition of the king; of the forty-eight battalions of the national guard, there were not more than three or four well inclined to the king, and the artillery (a most important point) were all, without exception, furious Revolutionists. This was but a melancholy prospect for the king and royal family, and the other inhabitants of the Tuileries. They saw around them the Swiss guards, some of the national guards, and a body of noblemen and gentlemen, who came in this last extremity, and came (they could suppose no other) to die, with their swords in their hands, the last ensign of honour left them, in defence of their royal master. These were to be his protectors, evidently not sufficient for the office: the Swiss, about nine hundred; the national guard, of doubtful fidelity; the gentlemen and noblemen not properly armed, and very offensive, as decided Royalists and Aristocrats, to all the national guard, who were at best only Constitutionalists. And this was not all that was to be lamented. This insurrection, this 10th of August, was a crisis in the king's fate for which the unhappy monarch was in no respect fitted. He feared not death; he wanted not understanding; he was not without the softer, or even many of the respectable virtues of the human character: but he was not endowed with the high and commanding qualities that his situation now, more than ever, required; with the prompt, decisive, resentful energies, that enable a man to maintain his authority against the fierce, unfeeling, unjust assaults of those who invade it. Men of gentle dispositions and mere passive courage, if they voluntarily present themselves in public situations, are to be blamed if they fail; their situation has been their choice. But it was not so with Louis: he was born a king; and his failures, therefore, are a just cause of compassion to the considerate and the good. As this attack was every hour expected, the king spent a sleepless night; sometimes in his own room, sometimes in the council room, where the ministers were assembled, and constantly receiving fresh intelligence of what was passing out of doors: at other moments he retired with his confessor, turning away from all human hopes and aid, from all human arbiters of his motives and conduct, to that Almighty Being who could now best furnish him with courage and resignation, and of whom, as an equitable judge, he would have no reason to complain. The queen, in the meantime, who was as unconcerned for her own danger as anxious for all that might affect the king's, frequently went to his room, and to her children's, accompanied by Me. Elizabeth, and then returned to the council chamber; while the enthusiasm and fidelity of all who saw her were animated by the presence of mind, the greatness, and the intrepidity she displayed, in the slightest things she said; and not less affected by the countenance of M. Elizabeth, where visibly were expressed, her sisterly tenderness, her grief, her piety, and all the virtues which belonged to a mind so eminently softened by the feelings of humanity, and strengthened by the sentiments of religion. But the dawn appeared, the night had worn away, and the palace had not yet been attacked. The tocsins, however, had been sounding since midnight, the dreadful notes of preparation had never ceased, and the assault was not likely to be long deferred. The committee that was charged with the insurrection had, in fact, formed itself on three points. Fournier and others were at the Faubourg St. Marceau; Santerre and Westermann, at the Faubourg St. Antoine; Danton, the chief agitator, Camille Desmoulins, Carra, were at the Cordeliers with the bat talion from Marseilles, where Barbaroux was also, provided with poison, if necessary, and waiting the result of the insurrection. Some measures, however, had been taken for the defence of the palace: a reinforcement had arrived from the Swiss barracks at Courbevoye; some battalions of the national guard had been collected; the cannoniers, with their artillery, were in the court; and, above all, the commandant, Mandat, was faithful to his trust, and had disposed of his force, which was in numbers at least very respectable, in a regular manner, occupying the proper posts, and making every provision for repelling the invaders. It was thought advisable, therefore, early in the morning, that the king should go down into the courts, attended by a few general officers, and by the queen and the royal family, to review the troops, and to animate the soldiers in his defence. This was a scene in which the king was little formed to shine. There had been no war on the continent during his reign; he had seen no field of battle, had no taste for the military profession, had sacrificed little to the Graces, was awkward in his carriage and manner, and had the air rather of a man of thought than of energy and spirit. He descended, therefore, among the soldiers with but ill effect; he received, indeed, their acclamations, and addressed them in a few broken sentences, which were sensible, but no more; and on the whole, he went through the part he was recommended to act rather as a duty he had to perform, than as a pleasure he had to enjoy. How do we not wish on this occasion that we could but have given perfection to the character of an amiable man like this, who had fallen on these evil times; that we could have assimilated him to the hero of Agincourt, as seen in the beautiful description of the poet : "Oh! now, who will behold Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, Bids them good morrow, with a modest smile, And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen; How dread an army hath enrounded him, |