style="font-size:15px;"> Stanislas Maillard, an officer of the Châtelet court, preached to the market-women. He referred, needlessly, to their hungry children. A procession formed. Maillard was a long, gaunt figure, like Death in a picture-book. On his right was a tinker woman, a tramp, known to the down-and-outs as the Queen of Hungary. On his left was a brain-damaged escapee from an asylum, clutching in his hand a bottle of the cheapest spirits. The liquor ran from his nerveless mouth down his chin, and in his flint-coloured eyes there was no expression at all. Sunday.
Monday morning: ‘I suppose you think you are going somewhere?’ Danton asked his clerks.
They had thought of a day at Versailles, actually.
‘Is this a legal practice, or a field headquarters?’
‘Danton has an important shipping case,’ Paré told Camille, later in the morning. ‘He is not to be disturbed. You weren’t really thinking of going there yourself, were you?’
‘It was just that he gave the impression, at the District Assembly – well, no, I wasn’t, not really. By the way, is this the same shipping case he had when the Bastille was taken?’
‘The appeal,’ Danton said, from behind his bolted door.
SANTERRE, a National Guard battalion commander, leads an assault on City Hall; some money is stolen and papers are torn up. The market-women run through the streets, sweeping up the women they meet, exhorting and threatening them. In the Place de Grève the crowd is collecting arms. They want the National Guard to go to Versailles with them, Lafayette at their head. From nine a.m. to eleven a.m. the Marquis argues with them. A young man tells him, ‘The government is deceiving us – we’ve got to go and bring the King to Paris. If, as they say, he’s an imbecile, then we’ll have his son for King, you’ll be Regent, everything will be better.’
At eleven a.m., Lafayette goes to argue with the Police Committee. All afternoon he is barricaded in, gets the news only in snatches. But by five o’clock he is on the road to Versailles, at the head of fifteen thousand National Guardsmen. The number of the mob is uncounted. It is raining.
An advance party of women have already invaded the Assembly. They are sitting on the deputies’ benches, with sodden skirts hitched up and legs spread out, jostling the deputies and making jokes, calling for Mirabeau. A small delegation of the women is admitted to the King’s presence, and he promises them all the bread that can be found. Bread or blood? Théroigne is outside, talking to soldiers. She wears a scarlet riding-habit. She is in possession of a sabre. The rain is spoiling the plumes on her hat.
A message to General Lafayette, on the road: the King has decided after all to accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Oh really? To the general, weary and dispirited, his hands frozen on the harness and rain running down his pointed nose, it is not the most relevant piece of news.
PARIS: Fabre talking round the cafés, making opinion. ‘The point is,’ he said, ‘one initiates something like this, one should take the credit. Who can deny that the initiative was seized by President Danton and his district? As for the march itself, who better than the women of Paris to undertake it? They won’t fire on women.’
Fabre felt no disappointment that Danton had stayed at home; he felt relief. He began to sense dimly the drift of events. Camille was right; in public, before his appropriate audience, Danton had the aura of greatness about him. From now on, Fabre would always urge him to think of his physical safety.
NIGHT. Still raining. Lafayette’s men waiting in the darkness, while he is interrogated by the Assembly. What is the reason for this unseemly military demonstration?
In his pocket Lafayette has a desperate note from the president of this same Assembly, begging him to march his men to Versailles and rescue the King. He would like to put his hand in his pocket, to be sure that the message is not a dream, but he cannot do that in front of the Assembly; they would think he was being disrespectful. What would Washington do? he asks himself: without result. So he stands, mud-spattered up to his shoulders, and answers these strange questions as best he can, pleading with the Assembly in an increasingly husky voice – could the King, to save a lot of trouble, be persuaded to make a short speech in favour of the new national colours?
A little later, exhausted, he is assisted into the presence of the King and, still covered in mud, addresses himself to His Majesty, His Majesty’s brother the Comte de Provence, the Archbishop of Bordeaux and M. Necker. ‘Well,’ the King says, ‘I suppose you’ve done what you could.’
Become semi-articulate, the general clasps his hands to his breast in an attitude he has hitherto seen only in paintings, and pledges his life as surety for the King’s – he is also the devoted servant of the constitution, and someone, someone, he says, has been paying out a great deal of money.
The Queen stood in the shadows, looking at him with dislike.
He went out, fixed patrols about the palace and the town, watched from a window the low burning of torches and heard drunken singing on the night wind. Ballads, no doubt, relating to Court life. Melancholy swept him, a sort of nostalgia for heroism. He checked his patrols, visited the royal apartments once more. He was not admitted; they had retired for the night.
Towards dawn, he threw himself down fully clothed and shut his eyes. General Morpheus, they called him later.
Sunrise. Drumbeats. One small gate is left unguarded, by negligence or treachery; shooting breaks out, the Bodyguard are overwhelmed, and within minutes there are heads on pikes. The mob are in the palace. Women armed with knives and clubs are sprinting through the galleries towards their victims.
The general awake. Move, and at the double. Before he arrives the mob have reached the door of the Salon de la
Lafayette arrives. He meets the eyes of the barefoot woman – the woman who drove him from Court, who once ridiculed his manners and laughed at his dancing. Now she requires of him more than a courtier’s skills. The mob seethes beneath the windows. Lafayette indicates the balcony. ‘It is necessary,’ he says.
The King steps out. The people shout, ‘To Paris.’ They wave pikes and level guns. They call for the Queen.
Inside the room, the general makes a gesture of invitation to her. ‘Don’t you hear what they are shouting?’ she says. ‘Have you seen the gestures they make?’
‘Yes.’ Lafayette draws his finger across his throat. ‘But either you go to them, or they come for you. Step out, Madame.’
Her face frozen, she takes her children by the hands, steps out on to the balcony. ‘No children!’ the mob call. The Queen drops the Dauphin’s hand; he and his sister are drawn back inside the room.
Antoinette stands alone. Lafayette’s mind is racing to consequences – all hell will be let loose, there will be total war by nightfall. He steps out beside her, hoping to shield her with his body if the worst…and the people howl…and then – O perfect courtier! – he takes the Queen’s hand, he
