When the King Took Flight (18 page)

The demonstration of June 24 was another signal event in the
development of popular radicalism and the politicization of the
sans-culottes. In some respects, it might be viewed as the first modern political demonstration in French history-anticipating in its
form and its spirit the great Parisian political marches of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Coordinated through the network
of popular societies and sections, people from all over Paris set off
on foot toward the designated rallying point at the Place Vendome.
The organizers built on the success of the previous day's Corpus
Christi parade through the Assembly. In this sense, there was another fascinating link between the religious processions of the
Old Regime and the new form of mass democratic culture. Men,
women, and children-most of them from working-class families,
according to witnesses-paraded through the streets, linking arms
and walking seven or eight abreast, and occasionally singing or
shouting slogans. Many wore armbands or badges on their coats
with the eye that symbolized their club and its mission to search for
conspirators. Guittard de Floriban, the elderly bourgeois property
owner who lived not far from the Cordeliers, looked on as thousands marched by. At first he was frightened, fearing violence and a
riot. But then he noted that the participants were calm and well organized. Unlike the previous night at the Assembly, no one carried
arms, not even sticks or canes. He followed them as they crossed the
river on the Pont-Neuf, heading toward the Place des Victoires, where they converged with thousands arriving from eastern Paris.
In the Place Vendome, just north of the Assembly hall, they were
met by Lafayette, who clearly had been tipped off about the demonstration and had gathered a large contingent of national guardsmen with cannons and muskets in readiness. But the crowd remained peaceful, announcing only that they wished to present to the
Assembly a petition signed by 30,000 people. After a nervous faceoff, seven delegates from the crowd were allowed to deliver their
statement.48

The demonstrators could only have been disappointed when the
Assembly postponed reading the petition until the following day.
When it was introduced, according to one member of the Cordeliers, it was read by a mere secretary "in such a manner that it could
be heard by no one" and then sent to a committee to be promptly
forgotten. Over the next three weeks the Cordeliers and the other
fraternal societies in Paris continued their campaign. By one count,
seventeen petitions were drawn up between June 21 and July 17,
each of them rejected out of hand or ignored by the Assembly.
Throughout this period both the Cordeliers and the fraternal societies continued to hold nightly debates on the king and the fate he
deserved. Marie-Jeanne Roland, who went out each evening to
watch and participate-for many such meetings invited the involvement of women-was stunned by the quasi-millenarian transformation she witnessed. The common people of Paris, who only a
few years earlier would "stupidly sing amen" no matter what they
were told by the authorities, were now becoming enlightened and
were ready to support "our just cause" and demand "the reign of
justice." "We are advancing ten years in a single day."49

The republican campaign by the popular societies was significantly affected, moreover, by two other developments. In the
first place, it coincided with a series of worker demonstrations that
contemporaries perceived as better organized and more intense than
anything they had previously witnessed. By the first week in July,
national guardsmen were being sent out almost daily to suppress labor protests and attempted strikes-by journeymen hatmakers, ma sons, and street workers, for example-strikes now rendered illegal
by the National Assembly's recent Le Chapelier law. At almost the
same time the city government, backed by the Assembly, had begun
dismantling a system of public works, initiated in 1789 as a dole for
the unemployed and now deemed too expensive. These actions generated enormous anxiety and anger, and in late June and early July
workers organized several protest marches, many of them again
converging on the Place Vendome. Although these labor movements were not necessarily related to the political events, they
helped to intensify the atmosphere of crisis and to energize the
sans-culotte movement."

In the second place, the Cordeliers and the fraternal societies,
along with several of the more radical sections of Paris, came increasingly to focus their anger on the National Assembly itself. Disenchanted that the Assembly took so little notice of their petitions,
they were also increasingly suspicious of the deputies' treatment of
the king and queen after their return, allowing them to remain in
the palace with their servants and advisers, almost as though nothing had happened. And they were beside themselves with anger and
frustration when word began to leak out by the second week in July
that the deputies were moving toward exonerating the king." Already prone to paranoid perspectives, the men and women of the
Cordeliers and the fraternal societies began to sense a plot being
hatched in the Assembly. Rumors spread that the deputies had "sold
out to the court," that they had doctored or fabricated the king's
private testimony-notably Louis' statement that he had never intended to leave the country. There were even stories that the majority of the deputies were planning the assassination of the small
group of Assembly radicals, like Petion and Robespierre, who were
sympathetic to the Cordeliers' position. In the midst of the crisis,
the Assembly had postponed the election of a new legislature, and
now there were accusations that the representatives were using the
situation to perpetuate themselves in power, like the members of
the Long Parliament in seventeenth-century England.52

On July 12 the Cordeliers and their allies drew up yet another petition. Once again it was rejected by the Assembly, after the president, Charles de Lameth, had read only a few lines and had announced it "contrary to the constitution." Furious at this snub,
which resembled only too closely the upper-class condescension
they had known under the Old Regime-and Lameth himself was a
former count-the Cordeliers resolved to bypass the Assembly and
to appeal their case directly to the French people. They drew up an
"Address to the Nation" to be published and circulated throughout
the country, an address soon supported by most of the neighborhood fraternal societies. Until now the radicals had taken great
care to act within the law, carefully obeying the Assembly's decrees
on petitions and duly notifying the municipal government before
each street demonstration. But the new address could be seen as a
veritable call for insurrection, prefiguring the convocation of the
National Convention in the summer of 1792. The petitioners summoned each of the eighty-three French departments, the administrative units of the new regime, to send a delegate to Paris, there
to constitute a new "executive authority" that would replace the
king-and presumably the National Assembly as well-"until the
nation can decide the fate of the ex-king and determine the new
mode of government." They also denounced the deputies for refusing to allow new elections to take place: "this arbitrary and abusive
prolongation of their term in office." The departments should immediately and unilaterally convoke new elections, replacing the
current deputies, who had "lost the confidence of the nation." Finally, the local administrators were urged to organize these elections through universal male suffrage, ignoring the National Assembly's laws placing tax qualifications on the right to vote.53

During the same period many of the radical newspapers-whose
messages were soon being read aloud in cafes and shouted in the
streets throughout the city-began pushing even more directly for
insurrection. Brissot thundered against the Assembly and its position on the king: "an infamy, an absurdity, an atrocity." Freron and
Bonneville predicted and urged an impending revolt. One article,
probably written by the Cordeliers' Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, was even more blunt. The author reminded the deputies of the fate
of the governor of the Bastille in 1789, who had been decapitated
by the insurrectionary crowds when he acted against public opinion.
"There are moments," he wrote, "when insurrection is the holiest
of duties.""

The second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fell in the
very midst of the crisis. Although there had been some talk of canceling the event after June 21, Paris officials decided in the end to
follow through with their original scheme. The Cordeliers and the
nascent sans-culottes did not speak for all the complex population
of the city. Indeed, large numbers of Parisians, including most of
the deputies in the Assembly, were appalled by the recurrent street
demonstrations of workers and political radicals. Few had been
happy with Louis' flight, and most had felt considerable anger toward the king. But the continuing violence or threat of violence
from the crowds, and the Cordeliers' scarcely veiled appeals for insurrection against the Assembly, had frightened them and made
them all the more wary of radical changes to the constitution. Now
the town fathers hoped that a reprise of the Federation Festival of
1790 might somehow resurrect the magic and the unity of the previous year and provide the means for respectable citizens to counter
the demonstrations of the republicans. It would be a ringing response to the "fanatics who want to destroy the monarchy, to the
treacherous rogues who can only shout for a republic," as one moderate journalist put it. In any case, the great stadium on the Champ
de Mars at the western end of the city was refurbished to hold even
more people than the year before, and the central "Altar to the Fatherland" was remodeled for the occasion.SS

The citywide celebration began on the evening of July 13, with a
great musical event in the cathedral of Notre Dame, attended by
various Revolutionary dignitaries and by the individuals who had
led the attack on the great medieval fortress two years earlier. A ritual thanksgiving Te Deum was sung by the pro-Revolutionary
clergy, and the composer Francois-Joseph Gossec organized a musical extravaganza titled The Fall of the Bastille.56 The festivities continued the next morning when a long procession set off at ten
o'clock from the site of the now-demolished Bastille in the direction
of the parade grounds across the city. Led by Bailly and the municipal government, the march included a long line of officials from the
government ministries, the judiciary, the military, and the fortyeight sections, all interspersed with bands, batteries of drummers,
national guard units, and a model of the Bastille carried like a religious reliquary in an Old Regime procession. For three hours the
musical parade wound through the city: past the city hall, down the
right bank of the Seine, across the river near the Tuileries, through
the Left Bank district of Saint-Germain, and into the stadium.
When everyone was in place, around two o'clock, there was a mass
and another Te Deum, led by the newly elected "constitutional"
bishop of Paris. The ceremony ended with a series of military maneuvers by the national guards, directed by General Lafayette
astride his white horse.57

In certain respects the event appeared to be a success. Most observers thought that the crowds were at least as large as in 1790, and
perhaps larger. And no one could deny that the weather was better.
The day had dawned warm and beautiful, in sharp contrast to the
miserable rain and mud of a year earlier." But there were also ample signs of a sea change in attitudes from the previous year and of
the sharp political differences now dividing the Parisians. Claiming
that they were too occupied with debates, the National Assembly
sent only twenty-four delegates instead of the entire body, which
had arrived in procession in I79o. Even more obvious was the absence of the king and the rest of the royal family. No one had even
considered asking Louis to renew his oath to the constitution. Some
witnesses also noted the apparent last-minute changes executed by
unknown artists on the Altar of the Fatherland. There was a basrelief of the "Triumph of Voltaire," alluding to the anticlerical procession celebrated only a few days earlier in honor of the patriarch of the Enlightenment. There was another scene that witnesses took
to be a monument to citizen Drouet, the hero of Varennes. And
most conspicuous of all, the word king had been effaced from the
altar, which now read "the Nation, the Law, the [blank]." References to the monarch had also been removed from virtually all the
flags of the national guard units. At several points during the ceremony, people even cried out, "No more Louis XVI, no more
king! "s1

There were also reports of tension and violence of a kind quite
unknown twelve months earlier. The visiting Creole noble HenriPaulin Panon Desbassayns made the mistake of wearing his cross
of Saint Louis, an Old Regime marker of aristocratic status, and he
was insulted and badly handled by the crowds. Even worse treatment was meted out to two supporters of the refractory clergy, who
threw stones at the national altar. Early in the proceedings a rumor
spread that the National Assembly was going to profit from the people's presence at the Champ de Mars to vote the exoneration of the
king, and some individuals rushed back across town to the Assembly hall. Indeed, members of several of the popular societies, including the Cordeliers, had not even attended the ceremony. They
had sent their own procession to the Assembly earlier in the day to
demonstrate their continuing opposition to its policies, presenting
the deputies with yet another petition. Once again they demanded
that the deputies take no decision on the king until all the people of
France had been consulted in a referendum. And this time, they
went even further. The true sovereign body, they argued, was not
the Assembly at all, but "the people." A failure to recognize this reality, they continued, might well lead to civil war.60