To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest,
man is properly an Accident under the sky.
man is properly an Accident under the sky.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 - Cal to Chr
Was it not true, God's truth?
And if true, was it not then
the very thing to do? The strongest practical intellect in
England dared to answer, Yes! This I call a noble true pur-
pose; is it not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter
into the heart of Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up
was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense.
and experience of what our world was, History, I think, shows
it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating
point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that "Faith in the
Bible" was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it
were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right
supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed
and prayed for, as the highest good to England and all lands,
an attainable fact!
Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its knowingness,
its alertness and expertness in "detecting hypocrites," seems to
me a rather sorry business. We have had but one such States-
man in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever
had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in
the course of fifteen hundred years; and this was his welcome.
He had adherents by the hundred or the ten; opponents by the
million. Had England rallied all round him, - why, then, Eng-
land might have been a Christian land! As it is, vulpine know-
ingness
sits yet at its hopeless problem, "Given a world of
Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action; "-how
cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and
some other places! Till at length, by Heaven's just anger, but
also by Heaven's great grace, the matter begins to stagnate; and
this problem is becoming to all men a palpably hopeless one.
## p. 3271 (#245) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3271
THE PROCESSION
From The French Revolution'
WE
E DWELL no longer on the mixed shouting Multitude, for
now, behold, the Commons Deputies are at hand!
Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white
cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one
guess would become their king? For a king or leader they, as
all bodies of men, must have, be their work what it may; there
is
there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest
of all to do it; that man, as future, not-yet-elected king walks
there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it
With the hure, as himself calls it, or black boar's-head, fit
to be "shaken" as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy
beetle-brows and rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face there look
natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,-and burn-
ing fire of genius, like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through
murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honoré Riquetti de Mira-
beau, the world-compeller; man-ruling Deputy of Aix! According
to the Baroness de Staël, he steps proudly along, though looked
at askance here, and shakes his black chevelure, or lion's mane,
as if prophetic of great deeds.
be?
Yes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch, as
Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acqui-
sitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than
any other man; — and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too.
Mark him well.
The National Assembly were all different with-
that one; nay, he might say, with the old Despot:-"The
National Assembly? I am that. "
Of
a southern climate, of wild southern blood: for the
Riquettis,
or Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the
Guelfs, long centuries ago, and settled in Provence, where from
generation to generation they have ever approved themselves a
peculiar kindred, irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like
steel they wore; of an intensity and activity that sometimes
One ancient Ri-
the
verged towards madness, yet did not reach it.
quetti, in mad fulfillment of a mad vow, chains two Mountains
together, and the chain, with its "iron star of five rays," is still
to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and
set it drifting—which also shall be seen?
## p. 3272 (#246) ###########################################
3272
THOMAS CARLYLE
Destiny has work for that swart, burly-headed Mirabeau; Des-
tiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not
his Grandfather, stout Col-d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named
him), shattered and slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one
fell day, lie sunk together on the Bridge at Casano, while Prince
Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him-only the
flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head;
and Vendôme, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out, "Mirabeau
is dead, then! " Nevertheless he was not dead; he awoke to
breath and miraculous surgery - for Gabriel was yet to be.
With his silver stock he kept his scarred head erect, through
long years, and wedded, and produced tough Marquis Victor, the
friend of men. Whereby at last in the appointed year, 1749, this
long-expected, rough-hewn Gabriel Honoré did likewise see the
light; roughest lion's-whelp ever littered of that rough breed.
How the old lion (for our old Marquis, too, was lion-like, most
unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on
his offspring, and determined to train him as no lion had yet
been! It is in vain, O Marquis! This cub, though thou slay
him and flay him, will not learn to draw in dog-cart of Political
Economy, and be a friend of men; he will not be Thou, but must
and will be Himself, another than Thou. Divorce law-suits,
" whole family save one in prison, and threescore lettres-de-
cachet" for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.
Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in
the Isle of Rhé, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the
Castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has
been in the Fortress of Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly
clothing to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes;-all by lettre-
de-cachet, from his lion father. He has been in Pontarlier Jails
(self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording estuaries of the
sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has
pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife), the public
gathering on roofs, to see, since they could not hear: "The
clatter-teeth (claque-dents)! ” snarls singular old Mirabeau; dis-
cerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two
clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum
species.
But as for Gabriel Honoré, in these strange wayfarings, what
has he not seen and tried! From drill-sergeants to prime min-
isters, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he
## p. 3273 (#247) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3273
has seen.
All manner of men he has gained; for at bottom it
is a social loving heart, that wild unconquerable one more
especially all manner of women. From the Archer's Daughter
at Saintes to that fair young Sophie, Madame Monnier, whom he
could not but "steal" and be beheaded for- in effigy! For
indeed, hardly since the Arabian Prophet lay dead, to Ali's
admiration, was there seen such a Love-hero, with the strength
of thirty men. In War again, he has helped to conquer Corsica;
fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons.
In Literature, he has written on 'Despotism,' on 'Lettres-de-
Cachet'; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities;
Books on the Prussian Monarchy,' on 'Cagliostro,' on 'Calonne,'
on The Water-Companies of Paris':- each book comparable, we
will say, to a bituminous alarum-fire, huge, smoky, sudden! The
fire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen, were his own; but the lum-
ber, of rags, old wood, and nameless combustible rubbish (for all
is fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters and ass-panniers
of every description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters
enough have been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is
mine!
―――
Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent
for borrowing.
The idea, the faculty of another man, he can
make his; the man himself he can make his. "All reflex and
echo (tout de reflet et de réverbère)! " snarls old Mirabeau, who
can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his so-
ciality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of
qualities for him. In that forty years' "struggle against despot-
ism, »
he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not
the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped.
union: this man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in
the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him;
a born king of men!
lost
Rare
But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he
has made away with (hume, swallowed, snuffed-up) all Formu
<<
las";
much.
fiercely
a fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean
This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of
instincts and insights.
A man, nevertheless, who will glare
on any object, and see through it, and conquer it: for he
has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men.
A man not
with logic-spectacles, but with an eye! Unhappily without Deca-
logue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not without
## p. 3274 (#248) ###########################################
3274
THOMAS CARLYLE
a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there; a Reality, not
an artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having struggled "forty
years against despotism," and "made away with all formulas,"
shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the
same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to
cast off despotism, to make away with her old formulas,- having
found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will
make away with such formulas; and even go bare, if need be,
till she have found new ones.
-
Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singu
lar Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-
locks under the slouch hat, he steps along there. A fiery,
fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but
would fill all France with smoke! And now it has got air; it
will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too,
and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that
smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor enough; then victory
over that, and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high;
and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame
and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Won-
der-sign of an amazed Europe;- and then lies hollow, cold for-
ever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest
of them all in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation,
there is none like and none second to thee.
But now, if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six
Hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say that anxious,
slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his
eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with upturned face,
snuffing dimly the uncertain future time; complexion of a
multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade of which may be the
pale sea-green. That greenish-colored (verdâtre) individual is
an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre. The
son of an Advocate; his father founded Mason-lodges under
Charles Edward, the English Prince or Pretender. Maximilien,
the first-born, was thriftily educated; he had brisk Camille
Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at
Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the
patron, to let him depart thence, and resign in favor of a
younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed, home
paternal Arras; and even had a Law-case there, and pleaded, not
unsuccessfully, "in favor of the first Franklin thunder-rod. ”
to
## p. 3275 (#249) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3275
With a strict, painful mind, an understanding small but clear
and ready, he grew in favor with official persons, who could
foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free
from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints
him Judge of his diocese, and he faithfully does justice to the
people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime mer-
its hanging, and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his
conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to
die. A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolu-
tions? whose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small-
ale, could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar, — the
mother of ever-new alegar; - till all France were grown acetous
virulent? We shall see.
-
Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so
many grand and mean roll on, towards their several destinies, in
that
Procession! There is Cazalès, the learned young soldier,
who shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the
shadow of a name. Experienced Mounier, experienced Malouet,
whose Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things
shall soon leave stranded. A Pétion has left his gown and briefs
at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten
his violin, being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he
is still young; convictions, beliefs placid-unalterable, are in that
man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself. A Protestant-
clerical Rabaut-St. -Étienne, a slender young eloquent and ve-
hement Barnave, will help to regenerate France. There are so
of them young.
Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer
to marry: but how many men here under thirty; com-
ing to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a
many
a man
world
of such! The old to heal up rents, the young to remove
rubbish:- which latter is it not, indeed, the task here?
with
Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou
noticest the Deputies from Nantes? To us mere clothes-screens,
Slouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a Cahier
of doléances with this singular clause, and more such, in it:-
"That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with
new
――――――
guild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two
being more than sufficient! " The Rennes people have elected
farmer Gérard, "a man of natural sense and rectitude without
any learning. " He walks there with solid step; unique, "in his
rustic farmer-clothes;" which he will wear always, careless of
## p. 3276 (#250) ###########################################
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THOMAS CARLYLE
short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gérard, or "Père Gérard,
Father Gérard," as they please to call him, will fly far, borne
about in endless banter, in Royalist satires, in Republican Didactic
Almanacks. As for the man Gérard, being asked once what he
did, after trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,-
"I think," answered he, "that there are a good many scoundrels
among us. "
So walks Father Gérard, solid in his thick shoes,
whithersoever bound.
And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one
other time? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see
him with the eye of prophecy; for indeed the Parisian Deputies
are all a little late. Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner:
doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that
ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of
oblivion! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in
all cases of medical police and hygiène be a present aid: but
greater far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal Code,' and
reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which
shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of
Guillotin's endeavors, gained not without meditation and reading;
which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine
derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine!
"With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais
sauter la tête) in a twinkling, and you have no pain; " — whereat
they all laugh. Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years
he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing
but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander,
as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and
Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar's.
See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honored Historian of Astron-
omy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beauti-
ful Philosophizing, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thin-
ness, ends in foul thick confusion of Presidency, Mayorship,
diplomatic officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of everlast-
ing Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly Gal-
axy to the Drapeau Rouge: beside that fatal dung-heap, on that
last hell-day, thou must "tremble," though only with cold-
"de froid. " Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not
so miserable, but to be weaker than our task. Woe the day
when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild
Hippogriff of a Democracy, which, spurning the firm earth, nay,
## p. 3277 (#251) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3277
lashing at the very stars, no yet known Astolpho could have.
ridden!
In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of
Letters; 374 Lawyers, and at least one Clergyman, the Abbé
Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him,
the light, thin man; cold, but elastic, wiry; instinct with the
pride of Logic; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-
conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which in its
independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into
transcendentalism; and to sit there with a kind of godlike indif-
ference, and look down on passion! He is the man, and wisdom
Ishall die with him. This is the Sieyès who shall be System-
builder, Constitution-builder General, and build Constitutions (as
many as wanted) sky-high,-which shall all unfortunately fall
before he get the scaffolding away. "La Politique," said he to
Dumont, "polity is a science I think I have completed (achevée). »
What things, O Sieyès, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou
to see! But were it not curious to know how Sieyès, now in
these days (for he is said to be still alive) looks out on all that
Constitution masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme
age? Might we hope, still with the old irrefragable transcend-
entalism? The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished
one pleased Sieyès (victa Catoni).
Thus, however, amid sky-rending vivats, and blessings from
every heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled
by.
Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning
both of whom it might be asked What they specially have come
for. Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this ques-
tion, put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God's
fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is
begging or stealing? Woe, woe to themselves and to all, if they
can only answer; Collecting tithes, Preserving game! Remark,
meanwhile, how D'Orléans affects to step before his own Order
and mingle with the Commons. For him are vivats; few for the
rest, though all wave in plumed "hats of a feudal cut," and
have sword on thigh; though among them is D'Antraigues, the
young Languedocian gentleman,—and indeed many a peer more
or less noteworthy.
There are Liancourt and La Rochefoucault, the liberal Anglo-
maniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal
## p. 3278 (#252) ###########################################
3278
THOMAS CARLYLE
Lameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette; whose name shall be
Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the world. Many a "formula" has
this Lafayette, too, made away with; yet not all formulas. He
sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick; --
and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the
tight war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and
water, is found still hanging. Happy for him, be it glorious or
not! Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and
right mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect
character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note further our
old parlementary friend, Crispin-Catiline d'Espréménil. He is
returned from the Mediterranean islands, a red-hot royalist,
repentant to the finger-ends; — unsettled-looking; whose light,
dusky-glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the
National Assembly will by and by, to save time, "regard as in a
state of distraction. " Note lastly that globular Younger Mira-
beau, indignant that his elder Brother is among the Commons; it
is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (Barrel
Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of
strong liquor he contains.
-
There, then, walks our French noblesse. All in the old pomp
of chivalry; and yet, alas, how changed from the old position;
drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs
got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these
Chivalry Duces (Dukes, as they are still named) did actually
lead the world,-were it only toward battle-spoil, where lay
the world's best wages then; moreover, being the ablest leaders
going, they had their lion's share, these Duces, which none could
grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Plow-
shares, Steam-Engines, and Bills of Exchange have been invented;
and for battle-brawling itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at eigh-
teen pence a day, what mean these gold-mantled Chivalry Fig-
ures, walking there in "black-velvet cloaks," in high-plumed "hats
of a feudal cut"? Reeds shaken in the wind!
――――――――――
The clergy have got up; with Cahiers for abolishing pluralities,
enforcing residence of bishops, better payment of tithes. The
Dignitaries, we can observe, walk stately, apart from the numer-
ous Undignified,-who, indeed, are properly little other than
Commons disguised in Curate-frocks. Here, however, though by
strange ways, shall the Precept be fulfilled, and they that are
greatest (much to their astonishment) become least. For one
## p. 3279 (#253) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3279
example out of many, mark that plausible Grégoire: one day
Curé Grégoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are wan-
dering distracted, as Bishops in partibus. With other thought,
mark also the Abbé Maury; his broad bold face, mouth accu-
rately primmed, full eyes, that ray out intelligence, falsehood,-
the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find it
sophistical. Skillfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather, to make
it look like new; always a rising man; he used to tell Mercier,
"You will see; I shall be in the Academy before you. " Likely
indeed, thou skillfulest Maury; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal's
hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in the long run-mere
oblivion, like the rest of us, and six feet of earth! What boots
it, vamping rotten leather on these terms? Glorious in compari-
son is the livelihood thy good old Father earns by making shoes,
one may hope, in a sufficient manner. Maury does not want
for audacity. He shall wear pistols by-and-by; and at death-
cries of "La lanterne, The Lamp-iron! " answer coolly, "Friends,
will you see better there? "
-
――
But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop
Talleyrand-Perigord, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grim-
ness lies in that irreverend Reverence of Autun. He will do and
suffer strange things; and will become surely one of the strangest
things ever seen, or like to be seen. A man living in false-
hood and on falsehood; yet not what you can call a false man:
there is the specialty! It will be an enigma for future ages, one
may hope; hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was pos-
sible only for this age of ours-Age of Paper, and of the Burn-
ing of Paper. Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafayette
as the topmost of their two kinds; and say once more, looking at
what they did and what they were, O tempus ferax rerum!
On
the whole, however, has not this unfortunate clergy also
drifted
in the Time-stream, far from its native latitude?
anomalous mass of men; of whom the whole world has already a
dim
understanding that it can understand nothing. They were
once
a Priesthood, interpreters of Wisdom, revealers of the Holy
that is in Man; a true Clerus (or Inheritance of God on Earth):
but now? -They pass silently, with such Cahiers as they have
been able to redact; and none cries, God bless them.
King Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in
this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits: still more Necker his
Minister. Not so the Queen, on whom hope shines not steadily
## p. 3280 (#254) ###########################################
3280
THOMAS CARLYLE
any more.
Ill-fated Queen! Her hair is already gray with many
cares and crosses; her first-born son is dying in these weeks:
black falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name- ineffaceably
while this generation lasts. Instead of Vive la reine, voices
insult her with Vive d'Orléans. Of her queenly beauty little
remains except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty,
rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein
joy has no part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to
have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette; with thy quick, noble in-
stincts, vehement glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the
work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store for thee,
bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the
heart of an imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one,
shut thy eyes on the future!
And so in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of
France. Some toward honor and quick fire-consummation; most
toward dishonor; not a few toward massacre, confusion, emigra-
tion, desperation: all toward Eternity! So many heterogeneities
cast together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable
action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments,
to work out healing for a sick, Moribund System of Society!
Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that
ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thou-
sand-fold complex a Society, ready to burst up from its infinite
depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without life-rule
for themselves, other life-rule than a Gospel according to Jean
Jacques!
To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest,
man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without Duty
round him; except it be "to make the Constitution. " He is with-
out Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in
the world.
-
What further or better belief can be said to exist in these
Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in
heraldic scutcheons; in 'the divine right of Kings, in the divine
right of Game-Destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting
half-belief; or worst of all, mere Machiavellic pretense-of-belief,-
in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old
Italian Man! Nevertheless, in that immeasurable Confusion and
Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less con-
fused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of
a New Life discernible — the deep fixed Determination to have
-
## p. 3281 (#255) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3281
done with Shams. A determination which, consciously or uncon-
sciously, is fixed; which waxes ever more fixed, into very mad-
ness and fixed-idea; which, in such embodiment as lies provided
there, shall now unfold itself rapidly: monstrous, stupendous,
unspeakable; new for long thousands of years! How has the
heaven's light, oftentimes in this Earth, to clothe itself in thunder
and electric murkiness, and descend as molten lightning, blasting,
if purifying! Nay, is it not rather the very murkiness, and
atmospheric suffocation, that brings the lightning and the light?
The new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the
Destruction of a World?
THE SIEGE OF THE BASTILLE
From The French Revolution>
——
tion.
UT, to the living and the struggling, a new, Fourteenth morn-
Under all roofs of this distracted City is the
nodus of a Drama, not untragical, crowding toward solu-
The bustlings and preparings, the tremors and menaces;
the tears that fell from old eyes! This day, my sons, ye shall
quit you like men. By the memory of your fathers' wrongs; by
the hope of your children's rights! Tyranny impends in red
wrath: help for you is none, if not in your own right hands.
This day ye must do or die.
From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has
heard the old cry, now waxing almost frantic, mutinous: Arms!
Arms! Provost Flesselles, or what traitors there are among you,
may think of those Charleville Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty
thousand of us, and but the third man furnished with so much
as a pike! Arms are the one thing needful: with arms we are
an unconquerable man-defying National Guard; without arms, a
rabble to be whiffed with grape-shot.
Happily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept,- that
there lie muskets at the Hôtel des Invalides. Thither will we:
King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of author-
ity a Permanent Committee can lend, shall go with us. Besen-
val's Camp is there; perhaps he will not fire on us; if he kill us,
we shall but die.
Alas! poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that
manner, has not the smallest humor to fire! At five o'clock this
VI-206
## p. 3282 (#256) ###########################################
3282
THOMAS CARLYLE
morning, as he lay dreaming, oblivious in the École Militaire, a
"figure" stood suddenly at his bedside; "with face rather hand-
some, eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, air audacious: " such
a figure drew Priam's curtains! The message and monition of
the figure was that resistance would be hopeless; that if blood
flowed, woe to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure: and
vanished. "Withal there was a kind of eloquence that struck
Besenval admits that he should have arrested him, but
did not. Who this figure with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid
and curt, might be? Besenval knows, but mentions not. Camille
Desmoulins? Pythagorean Marquis Valadi, inflamed with "vio-
lent motions all night at the Palais Royal"? Fame names him
"Young M. Meillar"; then shuts her lips about him forever.
In any case, behold, about nine in the morning, our National
Volunteers, rolling in long wide flood south-westward to the
Hôtel des Invalides, in search of the one thing needful. King's
Procureur M. Ethys de Corny and officials are there; the Curé
of Saint-Étienne du Mont marches unpacific at the head of
his militant Parish; the Clerks of the Basoche in red coats we see
marching, now Volunteers of the Palais Royal; - National Volun-
teers, numerable by tens of thousands; of one heart and mind.
The King's Muskets are the Nation's; think, old M. de Sombreuil,
how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de Som-
breuil would fain hold parley, send couriers, but it skills not:
the walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be
flung open.
Patriotism rushes in tumultuous, from grunsel up
to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages; rummaging dis-
tractedly for arms. What cellar or what cranny can escape it?
The arms are found; all safe there, lying packed in straw,-
apparently with a view to being burnt! More ravenous than
famishing lions over dead prey, the multitude, with clangor and
vociferation, pounces on them; struggling, dashing, clutching,-to
the jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture, and probable extinc-
tion of the weaker Patriot. And so, with such protracted crash
of deafening, most discordant Orchestra-music, the Scene is
changed; and eight-and-twenty thousand sufficient firelocks are
on the shoulders of as many National Guards, lifted thereby out
of darkness into fiery light.
Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets as they
flash by! Gardes Françaises, it is said, have cannon leveled on
him; ready to open, if need were, from the other side of the
## p. 3283 (#257) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3283
river. Motionless sits he; "astonished," one may flatter one's
self, "at the proud bearing (fière contenance) of the Parisians. ”
And now to the Bastille, ye intrepid Parisians! There grape-
shot still threatens; thither all men's thoughts and steps are now
tending.
Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew into his interior »
soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since,
hampered, as all military gentlemen now are, in the saddest con-
flict of uncertainties. The Hôtel-de-Ville "invites" him to admit
National Soldiers, which is a soft name for surrendering. On the
other hand, his Majesty's orders were precise. His garrison is
but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young
Swiss; his walls, indeed, are nine feet thick; he has cannon and
powder, but alas! only one day's provision of victuals. The
city, too, is French, the poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous
old De Launay, think what thou wilt do!
All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere:
To the Bastille! Repeated "deputations of citizens" have been
here, passionate for arms, whom De Launay has got dismissed
by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon, Elector
Thuriot de la Rosière gains admittance, finds De Launay indis-
posed for surrender, nay, disposed for blowing up the place,
rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements; heaps of
paving-stones, old iron, and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly lev-
eled;
in every embrasure a cannon, only drawn back a little!
But outwards, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on,
welling through every street, tocsin furiously pealing, all drums
beating the générale; the suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hither-
ward wholly as one man!
Such vision (spectral, yet real) thou,
0 Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this mo-
ment: prophetic of what other Phantasmagories and loud-gibber-
ing Spectral Realities which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt!
"Que voulez-vous? " said De Launay, turning pale at the sight,
with
an air of reproach, almost of menace. "Monsieur," said
Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime, "what mean you? Con-
sider if I could not precipitate both of us from this height," -
say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch! Where-
De Launay fell silent. Thuriot shows himself from some
pinnacle to comfort the multitude becoming suspicious, fremes-
cent, then descends, departs with protest, with warning addressed
also to the Invalides, on whom however it produces but a mixed,
upon
-
## p. 3284 (#258) ###########################################
3284
THOMAS CARLYLE
indistinct impression. The old heads are none of the clearest;
besides, it is said, De Launay has been profuse of beverages.
(prodigue des buissons). They think they will not fire if not
fired on if they can help it; but must, on the whole, be ruled
considerably by circumstances.
- -
Wo to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not,
taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches
will not serve, hard grape-shot is questionable, but hovering
between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide
of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations,
perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,- which latter, on walls
nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has
been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the
third and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the Outer
Court; soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay
gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge. A slight sputter, which has
kindled the too combustible chaos, made it a roaring fire-chaos!
Bursts forth Insurrection, at sight of its own blood (for there
were deaths by that sputter of fire), into endless, rolling explos-
ion of musketry, distraction, execration; - and over head, from
the fortress, let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go booming,
to show what we could do. The Bastille is besieged!
On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in your bodies!
Roar with all your throats of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of
Liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in
you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite thou, Louis
Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment
Dauphiné; smite at that Outer Drawbridge chain, though the
fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did
thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man; down with it
to Orcus: let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and tyr-
anny be swallowed up forever! Mounted, some say, on the roof
of the guard-room, some "on bayonets stuck into joints of the
wall," Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemère (also an
old soldier) seconding him; the chain yields, breaks; the huge
Drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glorious! and
yet, alas! it is still but the outworks. The Eight Grim Towers,
with their Invalide musketry, their paving-stones and cannon-
mouths, still soar aloft intact; - Ditch yawning impassable, stone-
faced; the inner Drawbridge with its back toward us; the Bastille
is still to take!
## p. 3285 (#259) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3285
To describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of
the most important in History) perhaps transcends the talent
of mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading, get to under-
stand so much as the plan of the building! But there is open
Esplanade at the end of the Rue Saint-Antoine; there are such
Forecourts (Cour Avancé), Cour de l'Orme, arched gateway (where
Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-
bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a laby-
rinthic Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years
to four hundred and twenty; — beleaguered, in this its last hour, as
we said, by mere Chaos come again! Ordnance of all calibres;
throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own
engineer; seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was, there
seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of
regimentals; no one would heed him in colored clothes; half-pay
Hulin is haranguing Gardes Françaises in the Place de Grève.
Frantic patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot (or
seemingly so), to the Hôtel-de-Ville: - Paris, you perceive, is to
be burnt! Flesselles is "pale to the very lips," for the roar of
the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme
of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness.
At every
street-barricade, there whirls simmering a minor whirlpool,-
strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming;
and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-
Maelstrom which is lashing round the Bastille.
non.
non
And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant
has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget of the
marine service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam's can-
Singular (if we were not used to the like). Georget lay,
last night, taking his ease at his inn; the King of Siam's can-
also lay, knowing nothing of him, for a hundred years;
yet now, at the right instant, they have got together, and dis-
course eloquent music. For hearing what was toward, Georget
sprang from the Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Françaises,
also,
will be here, with real artillery: were not the walls so
thick! Upward from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neigh-
boring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of
musketry, without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing com-
paratively at their ease from behind stone; hardly through
port-holes show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make
no impression!
-
## p. 3286 (#260) ###########################################
3286
THOMAS CARLYLE
Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-
rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted "Peruke-
maker with two fiery torches" is for burning "the saltpetres of
the Arsenal," had not a woman run screaming; had not a Patriot,
with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the
wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned
barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful
lady, seized, escaping, in these Outer Courts, and thought
falsely to be De Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in De Lau-
nay's sight; she lies, swooned, on a paillasse; but again a
Patriot it is brave Aubin Bonnemère, the old soldier-dashes
in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it,
hauled hither, go up in white smoke, almost to the choking
of Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to
drag back one cart, and Réole the "gigantic haberdasher "
another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of Babel; noise as
of the Crack of Doom!
-
Blood flows; the ailment of new madness. The wounded are
carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their
last mandate not to yield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And
yet, alas! how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three
in number, arrive from the Hôtel-de-Ville; Abbé Fauchet (who
was of one) can say with what almost superhuman courage of
benevolence. These wave their Town-flag in the arched Gateway,
and stand, rolling their drum, but to no purpose. In such Crack
of Doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them;
they return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing
in their ears. What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting
with their fire-pumps on the Invalides cannon, to wet the touch-
holes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce
only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge pro-
pose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb
Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired by a "mix-
ture of phosphorus and oil of turpentine spouted up through
forcing-pumps. " O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture
ready? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-
deluge abates not; even women are firing, and Turks; at least
one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Fran-
çaises have come; real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard
is busy; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin, rage in the midst of
thousands.
## p. 3287 (#261) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3287
How the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner
Court, there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special,
for it or the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing
began, and is now pointing toward Five, and still the firing
slakes not. — Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear
muffled din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely.
Woe to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides!
Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy; Besenval hears, but can
send no help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoi-
tring, cautiously along the Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. « We
are come to join you," said the Captain; for the crowd seems
shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared
aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense
in him; and croaks, "Alight then, and give up your arms! " The
Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the barriers and
dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men
answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au
Peuple'! Great, truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy
day of emergence and new-birth; and yet this same day come
four years! But let the curtains of the Future hang.
What shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay could
have done: what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from
the first, with lighted taper, within arm's-length of the Powder-
Magazine; motionless, like old Roman Senator, or Bronze Lamp-
holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion
of his eye, what his resolution was:- Harmless he sat there,
while unharmed; but the King's Fortress, meanwhile, could, might,
would, or should in nowise be surrendered save to the King's
Messenger; one old man's life is worthless, so it be lost with
honor; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a
whole Bastille springs skyward? In such statuesque, taper-holding
attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, the red
clerks of the Basoche, Curé of Saint-Stephen, and all the tagrag
and bobtail of the world, to work their will.
of
And, yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered
how each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts
of all men? Hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound
many men ? How their shriek of indignation palsies the
strong soul; their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs?
The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest
passage in one of his noblest Operas was the voice of the
## p. 3288 (#262) ###########################################
3288
THOMAS CARLYLE
populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser, Bread!
Bread! Great is the combined voice of men, the utterance of
their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts; it is the
greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows which
make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his
footing somewhere beyond Time. De Launay could not do it.
Distracted, he hovers between two; hopes in the middle of
despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it
up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy
old De Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee!
Jail, Jailoring, and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been,
must finish.
For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared; call it the
World-Chimæra, Llowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under
their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have
made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seem-
ing to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the
Portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge; a
port-hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak.
See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank swinging.
over the abyss of that stone Ditch; plank resting on parapet,
balanced by weight of Patriots, he hovers perilous; such a Dove
toward such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher; one man already
fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry!
Usher Maillard falls not; deftly, unerring, he walks, with out-
spread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his port-hole;
the shifty Usher snatches it and returns. Terms of surrender,
Pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted? "Foi d'officier,
On the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin, or half-pay
Elie for men do not agree on it "they are! " Sinks the .
drawbridge, Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes in
the living deluge; the Bastille is fallen! Victoire! La Bastille
est prise!
-
-
Why dwell on what follows? Hulin's foi d'officier should have
been kept, but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up, disguised
in white canvas smocks; the Invalides without disguise, their
arms all piled against the wall. The first rush of victors, in
ecstasy that the death peril is passed, "leaps joyfully on their
necks"; but new victors rush, and ever new, also in ecstasy not
wholly of joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging
## p. 3289 (#263) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3289
headlong; had not the Gardes Françaises, in their cool military
way, "wheeled round with arms leveled," it would have plunged
suicidally, by the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.
And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing
uncontrollable, firing from windows-on itself; in hot frenzy of
triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides
will fare ill; one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven
back, with a death-thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to the
Town-hall to be judged! Alas, already one poor Invalide has his
right hand slashed off him; his maimed body dragged to the
Place de Grève, and hanged there.
the very thing to do? The strongest practical intellect in
England dared to answer, Yes! This I call a noble true pur-
pose; is it not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter
into the heart of Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up
was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense.
and experience of what our world was, History, I think, shows
it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating
point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that "Faith in the
Bible" was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it
were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right
supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed
and prayed for, as the highest good to England and all lands,
an attainable fact!
Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its knowingness,
its alertness and expertness in "detecting hypocrites," seems to
me a rather sorry business. We have had but one such States-
man in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever
had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in
the course of fifteen hundred years; and this was his welcome.
He had adherents by the hundred or the ten; opponents by the
million. Had England rallied all round him, - why, then, Eng-
land might have been a Christian land! As it is, vulpine know-
ingness
sits yet at its hopeless problem, "Given a world of
Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action; "-how
cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and
some other places! Till at length, by Heaven's just anger, but
also by Heaven's great grace, the matter begins to stagnate; and
this problem is becoming to all men a palpably hopeless one.
## p. 3271 (#245) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3271
THE PROCESSION
From The French Revolution'
WE
E DWELL no longer on the mixed shouting Multitude, for
now, behold, the Commons Deputies are at hand!
Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white
cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one
guess would become their king? For a king or leader they, as
all bodies of men, must have, be their work what it may; there
is
there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest
of all to do it; that man, as future, not-yet-elected king walks
there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it
With the hure, as himself calls it, or black boar's-head, fit
to be "shaken" as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy
beetle-brows and rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face there look
natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,-and burn-
ing fire of genius, like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through
murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honoré Riquetti de Mira-
beau, the world-compeller; man-ruling Deputy of Aix! According
to the Baroness de Staël, he steps proudly along, though looked
at askance here, and shakes his black chevelure, or lion's mane,
as if prophetic of great deeds.
be?
Yes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch, as
Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acqui-
sitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than
any other man; — and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too.
Mark him well.
The National Assembly were all different with-
that one; nay, he might say, with the old Despot:-"The
National Assembly? I am that. "
Of
a southern climate, of wild southern blood: for the
Riquettis,
or Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the
Guelfs, long centuries ago, and settled in Provence, where from
generation to generation they have ever approved themselves a
peculiar kindred, irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like
steel they wore; of an intensity and activity that sometimes
One ancient Ri-
the
verged towards madness, yet did not reach it.
quetti, in mad fulfillment of a mad vow, chains two Mountains
together, and the chain, with its "iron star of five rays," is still
to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and
set it drifting—which also shall be seen?
## p. 3272 (#246) ###########################################
3272
THOMAS CARLYLE
Destiny has work for that swart, burly-headed Mirabeau; Des-
tiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not
his Grandfather, stout Col-d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named
him), shattered and slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one
fell day, lie sunk together on the Bridge at Casano, while Prince
Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him-only the
flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head;
and Vendôme, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out, "Mirabeau
is dead, then! " Nevertheless he was not dead; he awoke to
breath and miraculous surgery - for Gabriel was yet to be.
With his silver stock he kept his scarred head erect, through
long years, and wedded, and produced tough Marquis Victor, the
friend of men. Whereby at last in the appointed year, 1749, this
long-expected, rough-hewn Gabriel Honoré did likewise see the
light; roughest lion's-whelp ever littered of that rough breed.
How the old lion (for our old Marquis, too, was lion-like, most
unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on
his offspring, and determined to train him as no lion had yet
been! It is in vain, O Marquis! This cub, though thou slay
him and flay him, will not learn to draw in dog-cart of Political
Economy, and be a friend of men; he will not be Thou, but must
and will be Himself, another than Thou. Divorce law-suits,
" whole family save one in prison, and threescore lettres-de-
cachet" for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.
Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in
the Isle of Rhé, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the
Castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has
been in the Fortress of Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly
clothing to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes;-all by lettre-
de-cachet, from his lion father. He has been in Pontarlier Jails
(self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording estuaries of the
sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has
pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife), the public
gathering on roofs, to see, since they could not hear: "The
clatter-teeth (claque-dents)! ” snarls singular old Mirabeau; dis-
cerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two
clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum
species.
But as for Gabriel Honoré, in these strange wayfarings, what
has he not seen and tried! From drill-sergeants to prime min-
isters, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he
## p. 3273 (#247) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3273
has seen.
All manner of men he has gained; for at bottom it
is a social loving heart, that wild unconquerable one more
especially all manner of women. From the Archer's Daughter
at Saintes to that fair young Sophie, Madame Monnier, whom he
could not but "steal" and be beheaded for- in effigy! For
indeed, hardly since the Arabian Prophet lay dead, to Ali's
admiration, was there seen such a Love-hero, with the strength
of thirty men. In War again, he has helped to conquer Corsica;
fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons.
In Literature, he has written on 'Despotism,' on 'Lettres-de-
Cachet'; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities;
Books on the Prussian Monarchy,' on 'Cagliostro,' on 'Calonne,'
on The Water-Companies of Paris':- each book comparable, we
will say, to a bituminous alarum-fire, huge, smoky, sudden! The
fire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen, were his own; but the lum-
ber, of rags, old wood, and nameless combustible rubbish (for all
is fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters and ass-panniers
of every description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters
enough have been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is
mine!
―――
Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent
for borrowing.
The idea, the faculty of another man, he can
make his; the man himself he can make his. "All reflex and
echo (tout de reflet et de réverbère)! " snarls old Mirabeau, who
can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his so-
ciality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of
qualities for him. In that forty years' "struggle against despot-
ism, »
he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not
the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped.
union: this man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in
the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him;
a born king of men!
lost
Rare
But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he
has made away with (hume, swallowed, snuffed-up) all Formu
<<
las";
much.
fiercely
a fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean
This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of
instincts and insights.
A man, nevertheless, who will glare
on any object, and see through it, and conquer it: for he
has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men.
A man not
with logic-spectacles, but with an eye! Unhappily without Deca-
logue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not without
## p. 3274 (#248) ###########################################
3274
THOMAS CARLYLE
a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there; a Reality, not
an artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having struggled "forty
years against despotism," and "made away with all formulas,"
shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the
same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to
cast off despotism, to make away with her old formulas,- having
found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will
make away with such formulas; and even go bare, if need be,
till she have found new ones.
-
Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singu
lar Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-
locks under the slouch hat, he steps along there. A fiery,
fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but
would fill all France with smoke! And now it has got air; it
will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too,
and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that
smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor enough; then victory
over that, and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high;
and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame
and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Won-
der-sign of an amazed Europe;- and then lies hollow, cold for-
ever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest
of them all in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation,
there is none like and none second to thee.
But now, if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six
Hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say that anxious,
slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his
eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with upturned face,
snuffing dimly the uncertain future time; complexion of a
multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade of which may be the
pale sea-green. That greenish-colored (verdâtre) individual is
an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre. The
son of an Advocate; his father founded Mason-lodges under
Charles Edward, the English Prince or Pretender. Maximilien,
the first-born, was thriftily educated; he had brisk Camille
Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at
Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the
patron, to let him depart thence, and resign in favor of a
younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed, home
paternal Arras; and even had a Law-case there, and pleaded, not
unsuccessfully, "in favor of the first Franklin thunder-rod. ”
to
## p. 3275 (#249) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3275
With a strict, painful mind, an understanding small but clear
and ready, he grew in favor with official persons, who could
foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free
from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints
him Judge of his diocese, and he faithfully does justice to the
people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime mer-
its hanging, and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his
conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to
die. A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolu-
tions? whose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small-
ale, could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar, — the
mother of ever-new alegar; - till all France were grown acetous
virulent? We shall see.
-
Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so
many grand and mean roll on, towards their several destinies, in
that
Procession! There is Cazalès, the learned young soldier,
who shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the
shadow of a name. Experienced Mounier, experienced Malouet,
whose Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things
shall soon leave stranded. A Pétion has left his gown and briefs
at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten
his violin, being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he
is still young; convictions, beliefs placid-unalterable, are in that
man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself. A Protestant-
clerical Rabaut-St. -Étienne, a slender young eloquent and ve-
hement Barnave, will help to regenerate France. There are so
of them young.
Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer
to marry: but how many men here under thirty; com-
ing to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a
many
a man
world
of such! The old to heal up rents, the young to remove
rubbish:- which latter is it not, indeed, the task here?
with
Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou
noticest the Deputies from Nantes? To us mere clothes-screens,
Slouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a Cahier
of doléances with this singular clause, and more such, in it:-
"That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with
new
――――――
guild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two
being more than sufficient! " The Rennes people have elected
farmer Gérard, "a man of natural sense and rectitude without
any learning. " He walks there with solid step; unique, "in his
rustic farmer-clothes;" which he will wear always, careless of
## p. 3276 (#250) ###########################################
3276
THOMAS CARLYLE
short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gérard, or "Père Gérard,
Father Gérard," as they please to call him, will fly far, borne
about in endless banter, in Royalist satires, in Republican Didactic
Almanacks. As for the man Gérard, being asked once what he
did, after trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,-
"I think," answered he, "that there are a good many scoundrels
among us. "
So walks Father Gérard, solid in his thick shoes,
whithersoever bound.
And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one
other time? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see
him with the eye of prophecy; for indeed the Parisian Deputies
are all a little late. Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner:
doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that
ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of
oblivion! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in
all cases of medical police and hygiène be a present aid: but
greater far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal Code,' and
reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which
shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of
Guillotin's endeavors, gained not without meditation and reading;
which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine
derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine!
"With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais
sauter la tête) in a twinkling, and you have no pain; " — whereat
they all laugh. Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years
he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing
but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander,
as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and
Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar's.
See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honored Historian of Astron-
omy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beauti-
ful Philosophizing, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thin-
ness, ends in foul thick confusion of Presidency, Mayorship,
diplomatic officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of everlast-
ing Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly Gal-
axy to the Drapeau Rouge: beside that fatal dung-heap, on that
last hell-day, thou must "tremble," though only with cold-
"de froid. " Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not
so miserable, but to be weaker than our task. Woe the day
when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild
Hippogriff of a Democracy, which, spurning the firm earth, nay,
## p. 3277 (#251) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3277
lashing at the very stars, no yet known Astolpho could have.
ridden!
In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of
Letters; 374 Lawyers, and at least one Clergyman, the Abbé
Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him,
the light, thin man; cold, but elastic, wiry; instinct with the
pride of Logic; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-
conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which in its
independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into
transcendentalism; and to sit there with a kind of godlike indif-
ference, and look down on passion! He is the man, and wisdom
Ishall die with him. This is the Sieyès who shall be System-
builder, Constitution-builder General, and build Constitutions (as
many as wanted) sky-high,-which shall all unfortunately fall
before he get the scaffolding away. "La Politique," said he to
Dumont, "polity is a science I think I have completed (achevée). »
What things, O Sieyès, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou
to see! But were it not curious to know how Sieyès, now in
these days (for he is said to be still alive) looks out on all that
Constitution masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme
age? Might we hope, still with the old irrefragable transcend-
entalism? The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished
one pleased Sieyès (victa Catoni).
Thus, however, amid sky-rending vivats, and blessings from
every heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled
by.
Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning
both of whom it might be asked What they specially have come
for. Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this ques-
tion, put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God's
fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is
begging or stealing? Woe, woe to themselves and to all, if they
can only answer; Collecting tithes, Preserving game! Remark,
meanwhile, how D'Orléans affects to step before his own Order
and mingle with the Commons. For him are vivats; few for the
rest, though all wave in plumed "hats of a feudal cut," and
have sword on thigh; though among them is D'Antraigues, the
young Languedocian gentleman,—and indeed many a peer more
or less noteworthy.
There are Liancourt and La Rochefoucault, the liberal Anglo-
maniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal
## p. 3278 (#252) ###########################################
3278
THOMAS CARLYLE
Lameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette; whose name shall be
Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the world. Many a "formula" has
this Lafayette, too, made away with; yet not all formulas. He
sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick; --
and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the
tight war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and
water, is found still hanging. Happy for him, be it glorious or
not! Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and
right mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect
character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note further our
old parlementary friend, Crispin-Catiline d'Espréménil. He is
returned from the Mediterranean islands, a red-hot royalist,
repentant to the finger-ends; — unsettled-looking; whose light,
dusky-glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the
National Assembly will by and by, to save time, "regard as in a
state of distraction. " Note lastly that globular Younger Mira-
beau, indignant that his elder Brother is among the Commons; it
is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (Barrel
Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of
strong liquor he contains.
-
There, then, walks our French noblesse. All in the old pomp
of chivalry; and yet, alas, how changed from the old position;
drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs
got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these
Chivalry Duces (Dukes, as they are still named) did actually
lead the world,-were it only toward battle-spoil, where lay
the world's best wages then; moreover, being the ablest leaders
going, they had their lion's share, these Duces, which none could
grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Plow-
shares, Steam-Engines, and Bills of Exchange have been invented;
and for battle-brawling itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at eigh-
teen pence a day, what mean these gold-mantled Chivalry Fig-
ures, walking there in "black-velvet cloaks," in high-plumed "hats
of a feudal cut"? Reeds shaken in the wind!
――――――――――
The clergy have got up; with Cahiers for abolishing pluralities,
enforcing residence of bishops, better payment of tithes. The
Dignitaries, we can observe, walk stately, apart from the numer-
ous Undignified,-who, indeed, are properly little other than
Commons disguised in Curate-frocks. Here, however, though by
strange ways, shall the Precept be fulfilled, and they that are
greatest (much to their astonishment) become least. For one
## p. 3279 (#253) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3279
example out of many, mark that plausible Grégoire: one day
Curé Grégoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are wan-
dering distracted, as Bishops in partibus. With other thought,
mark also the Abbé Maury; his broad bold face, mouth accu-
rately primmed, full eyes, that ray out intelligence, falsehood,-
the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find it
sophistical. Skillfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather, to make
it look like new; always a rising man; he used to tell Mercier,
"You will see; I shall be in the Academy before you. " Likely
indeed, thou skillfulest Maury; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal's
hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in the long run-mere
oblivion, like the rest of us, and six feet of earth! What boots
it, vamping rotten leather on these terms? Glorious in compari-
son is the livelihood thy good old Father earns by making shoes,
one may hope, in a sufficient manner. Maury does not want
for audacity. He shall wear pistols by-and-by; and at death-
cries of "La lanterne, The Lamp-iron! " answer coolly, "Friends,
will you see better there? "
-
――
But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop
Talleyrand-Perigord, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grim-
ness lies in that irreverend Reverence of Autun. He will do and
suffer strange things; and will become surely one of the strangest
things ever seen, or like to be seen. A man living in false-
hood and on falsehood; yet not what you can call a false man:
there is the specialty! It will be an enigma for future ages, one
may hope; hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was pos-
sible only for this age of ours-Age of Paper, and of the Burn-
ing of Paper. Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafayette
as the topmost of their two kinds; and say once more, looking at
what they did and what they were, O tempus ferax rerum!
On
the whole, however, has not this unfortunate clergy also
drifted
in the Time-stream, far from its native latitude?
anomalous mass of men; of whom the whole world has already a
dim
understanding that it can understand nothing. They were
once
a Priesthood, interpreters of Wisdom, revealers of the Holy
that is in Man; a true Clerus (or Inheritance of God on Earth):
but now? -They pass silently, with such Cahiers as they have
been able to redact; and none cries, God bless them.
King Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in
this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits: still more Necker his
Minister. Not so the Queen, on whom hope shines not steadily
## p. 3280 (#254) ###########################################
3280
THOMAS CARLYLE
any more.
Ill-fated Queen! Her hair is already gray with many
cares and crosses; her first-born son is dying in these weeks:
black falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name- ineffaceably
while this generation lasts. Instead of Vive la reine, voices
insult her with Vive d'Orléans. Of her queenly beauty little
remains except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty,
rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein
joy has no part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to
have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette; with thy quick, noble in-
stincts, vehement glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the
work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store for thee,
bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the
heart of an imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one,
shut thy eyes on the future!
And so in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of
France. Some toward honor and quick fire-consummation; most
toward dishonor; not a few toward massacre, confusion, emigra-
tion, desperation: all toward Eternity! So many heterogeneities
cast together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable
action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments,
to work out healing for a sick, Moribund System of Society!
Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that
ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thou-
sand-fold complex a Society, ready to burst up from its infinite
depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without life-rule
for themselves, other life-rule than a Gospel according to Jean
Jacques!
To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest,
man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without Duty
round him; except it be "to make the Constitution. " He is with-
out Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in
the world.
-
What further or better belief can be said to exist in these
Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in
heraldic scutcheons; in 'the divine right of Kings, in the divine
right of Game-Destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting
half-belief; or worst of all, mere Machiavellic pretense-of-belief,-
in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old
Italian Man! Nevertheless, in that immeasurable Confusion and
Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less con-
fused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of
a New Life discernible — the deep fixed Determination to have
-
## p. 3281 (#255) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3281
done with Shams. A determination which, consciously or uncon-
sciously, is fixed; which waxes ever more fixed, into very mad-
ness and fixed-idea; which, in such embodiment as lies provided
there, shall now unfold itself rapidly: monstrous, stupendous,
unspeakable; new for long thousands of years! How has the
heaven's light, oftentimes in this Earth, to clothe itself in thunder
and electric murkiness, and descend as molten lightning, blasting,
if purifying! Nay, is it not rather the very murkiness, and
atmospheric suffocation, that brings the lightning and the light?
The new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the
Destruction of a World?
THE SIEGE OF THE BASTILLE
From The French Revolution>
——
tion.
UT, to the living and the struggling, a new, Fourteenth morn-
Under all roofs of this distracted City is the
nodus of a Drama, not untragical, crowding toward solu-
The bustlings and preparings, the tremors and menaces;
the tears that fell from old eyes! This day, my sons, ye shall
quit you like men. By the memory of your fathers' wrongs; by
the hope of your children's rights! Tyranny impends in red
wrath: help for you is none, if not in your own right hands.
This day ye must do or die.
From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has
heard the old cry, now waxing almost frantic, mutinous: Arms!
Arms! Provost Flesselles, or what traitors there are among you,
may think of those Charleville Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty
thousand of us, and but the third man furnished with so much
as a pike! Arms are the one thing needful: with arms we are
an unconquerable man-defying National Guard; without arms, a
rabble to be whiffed with grape-shot.
Happily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept,- that
there lie muskets at the Hôtel des Invalides. Thither will we:
King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of author-
ity a Permanent Committee can lend, shall go with us. Besen-
val's Camp is there; perhaps he will not fire on us; if he kill us,
we shall but die.
Alas! poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that
manner, has not the smallest humor to fire! At five o'clock this
VI-206
## p. 3282 (#256) ###########################################
3282
THOMAS CARLYLE
morning, as he lay dreaming, oblivious in the École Militaire, a
"figure" stood suddenly at his bedside; "with face rather hand-
some, eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, air audacious: " such
a figure drew Priam's curtains! The message and monition of
the figure was that resistance would be hopeless; that if blood
flowed, woe to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure: and
vanished. "Withal there was a kind of eloquence that struck
Besenval admits that he should have arrested him, but
did not. Who this figure with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid
and curt, might be? Besenval knows, but mentions not. Camille
Desmoulins? Pythagorean Marquis Valadi, inflamed with "vio-
lent motions all night at the Palais Royal"? Fame names him
"Young M. Meillar"; then shuts her lips about him forever.
In any case, behold, about nine in the morning, our National
Volunteers, rolling in long wide flood south-westward to the
Hôtel des Invalides, in search of the one thing needful. King's
Procureur M. Ethys de Corny and officials are there; the Curé
of Saint-Étienne du Mont marches unpacific at the head of
his militant Parish; the Clerks of the Basoche in red coats we see
marching, now Volunteers of the Palais Royal; - National Volun-
teers, numerable by tens of thousands; of one heart and mind.
The King's Muskets are the Nation's; think, old M. de Sombreuil,
how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de Som-
breuil would fain hold parley, send couriers, but it skills not:
the walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be
flung open.
Patriotism rushes in tumultuous, from grunsel up
to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages; rummaging dis-
tractedly for arms. What cellar or what cranny can escape it?
The arms are found; all safe there, lying packed in straw,-
apparently with a view to being burnt! More ravenous than
famishing lions over dead prey, the multitude, with clangor and
vociferation, pounces on them; struggling, dashing, clutching,-to
the jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture, and probable extinc-
tion of the weaker Patriot. And so, with such protracted crash
of deafening, most discordant Orchestra-music, the Scene is
changed; and eight-and-twenty thousand sufficient firelocks are
on the shoulders of as many National Guards, lifted thereby out
of darkness into fiery light.
Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets as they
flash by! Gardes Françaises, it is said, have cannon leveled on
him; ready to open, if need were, from the other side of the
## p. 3283 (#257) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3283
river. Motionless sits he; "astonished," one may flatter one's
self, "at the proud bearing (fière contenance) of the Parisians. ”
And now to the Bastille, ye intrepid Parisians! There grape-
shot still threatens; thither all men's thoughts and steps are now
tending.
Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew into his interior »
soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since,
hampered, as all military gentlemen now are, in the saddest con-
flict of uncertainties. The Hôtel-de-Ville "invites" him to admit
National Soldiers, which is a soft name for surrendering. On the
other hand, his Majesty's orders were precise. His garrison is
but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young
Swiss; his walls, indeed, are nine feet thick; he has cannon and
powder, but alas! only one day's provision of victuals. The
city, too, is French, the poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous
old De Launay, think what thou wilt do!
All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere:
To the Bastille! Repeated "deputations of citizens" have been
here, passionate for arms, whom De Launay has got dismissed
by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon, Elector
Thuriot de la Rosière gains admittance, finds De Launay indis-
posed for surrender, nay, disposed for blowing up the place,
rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements; heaps of
paving-stones, old iron, and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly lev-
eled;
in every embrasure a cannon, only drawn back a little!
But outwards, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on,
welling through every street, tocsin furiously pealing, all drums
beating the générale; the suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hither-
ward wholly as one man!
Such vision (spectral, yet real) thou,
0 Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this mo-
ment: prophetic of what other Phantasmagories and loud-gibber-
ing Spectral Realities which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt!
"Que voulez-vous? " said De Launay, turning pale at the sight,
with
an air of reproach, almost of menace. "Monsieur," said
Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime, "what mean you? Con-
sider if I could not precipitate both of us from this height," -
say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch! Where-
De Launay fell silent. Thuriot shows himself from some
pinnacle to comfort the multitude becoming suspicious, fremes-
cent, then descends, departs with protest, with warning addressed
also to the Invalides, on whom however it produces but a mixed,
upon
-
## p. 3284 (#258) ###########################################
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THOMAS CARLYLE
indistinct impression. The old heads are none of the clearest;
besides, it is said, De Launay has been profuse of beverages.
(prodigue des buissons). They think they will not fire if not
fired on if they can help it; but must, on the whole, be ruled
considerably by circumstances.
- -
Wo to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not,
taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches
will not serve, hard grape-shot is questionable, but hovering
between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide
of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations,
perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,- which latter, on walls
nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has
been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the
third and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the Outer
Court; soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay
gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge. A slight sputter, which has
kindled the too combustible chaos, made it a roaring fire-chaos!
Bursts forth Insurrection, at sight of its own blood (for there
were deaths by that sputter of fire), into endless, rolling explos-
ion of musketry, distraction, execration; - and over head, from
the fortress, let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go booming,
to show what we could do. The Bastille is besieged!
On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in your bodies!
Roar with all your throats of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of
Liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in
you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite thou, Louis
Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment
Dauphiné; smite at that Outer Drawbridge chain, though the
fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did
thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man; down with it
to Orcus: let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and tyr-
anny be swallowed up forever! Mounted, some say, on the roof
of the guard-room, some "on bayonets stuck into joints of the
wall," Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemère (also an
old soldier) seconding him; the chain yields, breaks; the huge
Drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glorious! and
yet, alas! it is still but the outworks. The Eight Grim Towers,
with their Invalide musketry, their paving-stones and cannon-
mouths, still soar aloft intact; - Ditch yawning impassable, stone-
faced; the inner Drawbridge with its back toward us; the Bastille
is still to take!
## p. 3285 (#259) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3285
To describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of
the most important in History) perhaps transcends the talent
of mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading, get to under-
stand so much as the plan of the building! But there is open
Esplanade at the end of the Rue Saint-Antoine; there are such
Forecourts (Cour Avancé), Cour de l'Orme, arched gateway (where
Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-
bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a laby-
rinthic Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years
to four hundred and twenty; — beleaguered, in this its last hour, as
we said, by mere Chaos come again! Ordnance of all calibres;
throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own
engineer; seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was, there
seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of
regimentals; no one would heed him in colored clothes; half-pay
Hulin is haranguing Gardes Françaises in the Place de Grève.
Frantic patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot (or
seemingly so), to the Hôtel-de-Ville: - Paris, you perceive, is to
be burnt! Flesselles is "pale to the very lips," for the roar of
the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme
of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness.
At every
street-barricade, there whirls simmering a minor whirlpool,-
strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming;
and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-
Maelstrom which is lashing round the Bastille.
non.
non
And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant
has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget of the
marine service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam's can-
Singular (if we were not used to the like). Georget lay,
last night, taking his ease at his inn; the King of Siam's can-
also lay, knowing nothing of him, for a hundred years;
yet now, at the right instant, they have got together, and dis-
course eloquent music. For hearing what was toward, Georget
sprang from the Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Françaises,
also,
will be here, with real artillery: were not the walls so
thick! Upward from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neigh-
boring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of
musketry, without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing com-
paratively at their ease from behind stone; hardly through
port-holes show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make
no impression!
-
## p. 3286 (#260) ###########################################
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THOMAS CARLYLE
Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-
rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted "Peruke-
maker with two fiery torches" is for burning "the saltpetres of
the Arsenal," had not a woman run screaming; had not a Patriot,
with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the
wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned
barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful
lady, seized, escaping, in these Outer Courts, and thought
falsely to be De Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in De Lau-
nay's sight; she lies, swooned, on a paillasse; but again a
Patriot it is brave Aubin Bonnemère, the old soldier-dashes
in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it,
hauled hither, go up in white smoke, almost to the choking
of Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to
drag back one cart, and Réole the "gigantic haberdasher "
another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of Babel; noise as
of the Crack of Doom!
-
Blood flows; the ailment of new madness. The wounded are
carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their
last mandate not to yield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And
yet, alas! how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three
in number, arrive from the Hôtel-de-Ville; Abbé Fauchet (who
was of one) can say with what almost superhuman courage of
benevolence. These wave their Town-flag in the arched Gateway,
and stand, rolling their drum, but to no purpose. In such Crack
of Doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them;
they return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing
in their ears. What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting
with their fire-pumps on the Invalides cannon, to wet the touch-
holes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce
only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge pro-
pose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb
Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired by a "mix-
ture of phosphorus and oil of turpentine spouted up through
forcing-pumps. " O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture
ready? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-
deluge abates not; even women are firing, and Turks; at least
one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Fran-
çaises have come; real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard
is busy; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin, rage in the midst of
thousands.
## p. 3287 (#261) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3287
How the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner
Court, there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special,
for it or the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing
began, and is now pointing toward Five, and still the firing
slakes not. — Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear
muffled din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely.
Woe to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides!
Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy; Besenval hears, but can
send no help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoi-
tring, cautiously along the Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. « We
are come to join you," said the Captain; for the crowd seems
shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared
aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense
in him; and croaks, "Alight then, and give up your arms! " The
Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the barriers and
dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men
answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au
Peuple'! Great, truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy
day of emergence and new-birth; and yet this same day come
four years! But let the curtains of the Future hang.
What shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay could
have done: what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from
the first, with lighted taper, within arm's-length of the Powder-
Magazine; motionless, like old Roman Senator, or Bronze Lamp-
holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion
of his eye, what his resolution was:- Harmless he sat there,
while unharmed; but the King's Fortress, meanwhile, could, might,
would, or should in nowise be surrendered save to the King's
Messenger; one old man's life is worthless, so it be lost with
honor; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a
whole Bastille springs skyward? In such statuesque, taper-holding
attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, the red
clerks of the Basoche, Curé of Saint-Stephen, and all the tagrag
and bobtail of the world, to work their will.
of
And, yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered
how each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts
of all men? Hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound
many men ? How their shriek of indignation palsies the
strong soul; their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs?
The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest
passage in one of his noblest Operas was the voice of the
## p. 3288 (#262) ###########################################
3288
THOMAS CARLYLE
populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser, Bread!
Bread! Great is the combined voice of men, the utterance of
their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts; it is the
greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows which
make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his
footing somewhere beyond Time. De Launay could not do it.
Distracted, he hovers between two; hopes in the middle of
despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it
up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy
old De Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee!
Jail, Jailoring, and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been,
must finish.
For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared; call it the
World-Chimæra, Llowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under
their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have
made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seem-
ing to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the
Portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge; a
port-hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak.
See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank swinging.
over the abyss of that stone Ditch; plank resting on parapet,
balanced by weight of Patriots, he hovers perilous; such a Dove
toward such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher; one man already
fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry!
Usher Maillard falls not; deftly, unerring, he walks, with out-
spread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his port-hole;
the shifty Usher snatches it and returns. Terms of surrender,
Pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted? "Foi d'officier,
On the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin, or half-pay
Elie for men do not agree on it "they are! " Sinks the .
drawbridge, Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes in
the living deluge; the Bastille is fallen! Victoire! La Bastille
est prise!
-
-
Why dwell on what follows? Hulin's foi d'officier should have
been kept, but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up, disguised
in white canvas smocks; the Invalides without disguise, their
arms all piled against the wall. The first rush of victors, in
ecstasy that the death peril is passed, "leaps joyfully on their
necks"; but new victors rush, and ever new, also in ecstasy not
wholly of joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging
## p. 3289 (#263) ###########################################
THOMAS CARLYLE
3289
headlong; had not the Gardes Françaises, in their cool military
way, "wheeled round with arms leveled," it would have plunged
suicidally, by the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.
And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing
uncontrollable, firing from windows-on itself; in hot frenzy of
triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides
will fare ill; one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven
back, with a death-thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to the
Town-hall to be judged! Alas, already one poor Invalide has his
right hand slashed off him; his maimed body dragged to the
Place de Grève, and hanged there.
