A man of very fearless and determined character, M. Thuriot, was sent by the electors at the Hôtel de Ville to summon the Bastile to surrender that it might be held by the people for their protection. The governor was in great perplexity. He dared not assume the responsibility of deluging the streets of Paris with blood without explicit orders from the king; and he could get no such order. The slightest degree of firmness would have enabled him, with a few discharges of grape, to sweep the streets clean of all assailants; but the slaughter would be enormous, and he had every reason to fear that he would be denounced for the carnage by the King as well as by the people. His life would be the inevitable forfeit. of force of character would have decided upon a prompt surrender, or upon a desperate and a deathly defense. De Launay, who had no elements of heroism in his character, adopted the very worst of possible resolves. He refused to surrender, and yet dared not venture upon a vigorous defense. It should, however, be mentioned that he was expecting every moment the arrival of Marshal Broglie with the royal troops to disperse the crowd. M. Thuriot had hardly emerged from the massive portals of the prison with the governor's refusal to surrender ere the people commenced the attack. A scene of confusion and uproar ensued which can not be described. A hundred thousand men filling the streets and alleys which In addition to this, though he could rely upon opened upon the Bastile, crowding the windows his Swiss soldiers, he had every reason to fear and housetops of the adjacent buildings, kept that the French troops of his garrison would not up an incessant firing, harmlessly flattening long contemplate patiently the massacre of their their bullets against walls of stone as impregnafriends in the streets. In this dilemma a man ble as Gibraltar's rock. The Swiss soldiery kept up a fire of musketry, without venturing upon the murderous discharge of the rampart guns. While the battle was raging an intercepted letter was brought to the Hôtel de Ville, in which Bensenval, commandant of the troops in the Field of Mars, exhorted De Launay to remain firm, assuring him that the royal troops I would soon come to his succor. But fortunately for the people, even these foreign troops refused to march for the protection of the Bastile. The French Guards now broke from their barracks, and, led by their subaltern officers, came with several pieces of artillery to join the people. They were received with thunders of applause. Energetically they opened their batteries upon the fortress, but the balls rebounded harmlessly from the impregnable rock. Apparently the whole of Paris, with one united will, For four hours the battle had now raged, and one hundred and seventy-one of the citizens had been either killed or wounded. The French * Histoire des Montagnards par ALPHONSE ESQUIROS, p. 17. "Old men," says Michelet, "who have had the hap piness and the misery to see all that has happened in this unprecedented half-century, declare that the grand and national achievements of the Republic and of the Empire had nevertheless a partial, non-unanimous character, but that the 14th of July alone was the day of the whole people."-MICHELET, vol. i. p. 144. portion of the garrison now began to murmur exasperated by the shedding of blood, but one and remonstrate, and at last from the summits man in the fortress, a Swiss soldier, fell a victim of the towers waved white towels attached to to their rage. They found but six prisoners in their bayonets, as flags of truce. De Launay the Bastile. The humanity of Louis XVI. had was in despair. He knew that the blood which almost emptied its dungeons. had already been shed would doom him to death by the infuriated people. Almost in a state of delirium he seized a match and rushed toward the magazine. There were two hundred and thirty-five barrels of gunpowder in the vaults. The explosion would have thrown the Bastile into the air, have buried one hundred thousand people beneath its ruins, and have demolished one third of Paris.* Two subaltern officers crossed their bayonets before him and prevented the accomplishment of this horrible design. Some wretches seized a young lady, whom they thought the governor's daughter, and wished, by the threat of burning her, compel the governor to surrender; but the citizens promply rescued her from their hands and conveyed her to a place of safety. At length through the smoke the flags of truce were seen, the firing ceased, and the cry resounded through the crowd, "The Bastile surrenders!" It can hardly be said that it was taken, for the assailants had produced no impression upon the impregnable fortress. The same popular opinion which was dominant in the General Assembly, and in the streets of Paris, was supreme also within the Bastile. The massive portals were thrown open, and the vast multitude, a living deluge, plunging headlong, rushed in. They clambered the towers, penetrated the cells, and descended into the dungeons and the oubliettes. Appalled, they gazed upon the instruments of torture with which former victims of oppression had been torn and broken. Excited as they were by the strife and Michelet, vol. i. p. 156. The victorious populace now set out in a tumultuous procession to convey the governor and the soldiers of the garrison to the Hôtel de Ville. Those of the populace whose relatives had perished in the strife were roused to fury, and called loudly for the blood of De Launay." Two men of extraordinary courage and strength walked by the side of De Launay to protect him from violence; but the crowd, breathing vengeance, pressed upon them. The governor in the mêlée lost his hat, and was thus easily recognized. M. Hullin, one of his protectors, with a magnanimity above all praise, placed his own hat upon the governor's head, and from that moment all the blows of the infuriate [crowd were aimed at M. Hullin, whom the crowd supposed to be the governor. Soon the rush of the multitude became so great that the governor and his protectors were torn from each other. Hullin was struck down upon the pavement. Twice he regained his feet but to be again smitten down, when a deafening shout filled the air, and he saw the head of De Launay raised aloft upon à pike—a hideous especially the Swiss, who for five hours pointed out, "Some wanted to surrender; others went on firing, aimed at, and brought down whomsoever they pleased, without any danger or even the chance of being hurt in return. They killed eighty-three men, and wounded eighty-eight. Twenty of the slain were poor fathers of families, who left wives and children to die of hunger. Shame for such cowardly warfare, and the horror of shedding French blood, which but little affected the Swiss, caused the Invalides to drop their arms. At four o'clock the subaltern officers begged and prayed De Launay to put an end to the massacre. He knew what he deserved." -Hist. View of the French Revolution by J. MICHELET, vol. i. p. 156. trophy of the rage of the brutal few who ever dominate in the hour of popular tumult.* The great body of the people, aided by the French Guards, did all in their power to proIn the midst of this terrible scene two of the tect the garrison. The Swiss soldiers were parsoldiers of the Bastile, whom the populace sup-doned, as allowances were made for their obliposed to have been particularly active in shoot-gations to obey their officers. They now, with ing their friends, were seized, notwithstanding the French soldiers who had also composed the the most strenuous efforts to save them, and hanged to a lamp-post. A rumor passed through the crowd that a letter had been found from the Mayor Flesselles to the governor of the Bastile, in which he said, "I am amusing the Parisians with cockades and promises. Hold out till the evening, and you shall be relieved." The citizens had already suspected that Flesselles was acting the part of a traitor and a spy. He was at this time in the hall of the Hôtel de Ville, presiding over the meeting of the elect ors. Loud murmurs arose from the crowd which filled and surrounded the building. It was an hour of terrible excitement. All Paris was in a state of insurrection, and it was every moment expected that resistless battalions of royal troops would come rushing upon them. The electors composed the only body to whom the populace could look for any guidance; and now it was evident that the officer presiding over that body was only plotting their ruin. Still counsels of moderation strangely influenced the masses of the people.† They would not have him condemned untried. It was proposed that he should go to the Palais Royal, there to account before the people for the suspicious circumstances urged against him. To this he consented, and he left the hall surrounded by those who wished to protect him from violence. At the turning of the first street an unknown assassin approached, and with a pistol shot him dead. Infuriate wretches, whose brutality could not be restrained, cut off his head and bore it upon a pike in savage triumph through the streets. garrison, took the oath of fidelity to the nation, and then, encircled by the French Guards, they were conducted to the barracks, where they were received as brothers, and refreshed with the kindest hospitality. Thus terminated the eventful 14th of July, 1789. It was the inauguration-day of the French Revolution. T THE PRIDE OF MOSES GRANT. I. T was a wild, wet December night, full of tempest. Outside the red wooden house in the hollow, where Moses Grant had lived all his respectable life, the winds blew with an eerie sound, like a lost spirit's wail, and the snow fell steadily, folding the earth in great white shrouds. Moses Grant and his wife sat before the fire. A cheerful glow came out from the blazing logs -a mug of cider was toasting unheeded on the hearth, and a few apples stood untouched on the stand between them. Every thing in this peaceful family sitting-room wore a snug and comfortable look, from the neat bed standing in a recess in the wall, with home-made blue woolen spread and snowy linen, to the brightly polished pewter-plates upon the dresser and the unsoiled sand on the white floor. Outside, through the snow and the storm, tottered a single female figure-wearily, painfully, as if every step must be her last. Forsaken of God and man, the very elements seemed to do battle with her-the winds blew her feeble steps backward-the snow piled up higher and higher drifts before her feet, and yet those feeble feet tottered on-over the drifts, against the wind-steadily toward the red house in the hollow. These excesses cast a shade upon the glory of the day. And yet it is surprising, and it pleads eloquently for the moderation of the peoThere was a strange shadow on the face of ple, that there should not have been more acts that meek woman, Moses Grant's wife. Her of ungovernable revenge. Nearly two hundred knitting had fallen from her busy fingers, her of the citizens had been either killed or wound-foot tapped the floor with a restless beat, and at ed by the soldiers, who had deliberately shot them from behind the walls of the Bastile. But five perished by the hands of the populace. "De Launay, now a prisoner, is conducted to the His Hôtel de Ville, through a tide of enraged citizens. conductors displayed as much courage in protecting him as they had already displayed in possessing themselves of his castle. But after an hour spent in marching and resisting, De Launay was butchered at the foot of the stair-case of the Hôtel de Ville, when he was just on the point of being in safety."-The History of the Revolution of France by M. RABAUT DE ST. ETIENNE. "Les religieux des divers convents avaient pris la cocarde aux couleurs de la nation, bleu et rouge; ils formèrent des détachments; le temps de la ligue et des croisades etait revenu. Ces guerriers, en frocs et en capuchins, attestaient l'unanimité des sentiments qui faisaient agir toute la ville. Il se trouvait là des nobles, des bourgois, des abbés, du peuple. Ils n'avaient tous qu'une volenté, qu'une âme."-Histoire des Montagnards, par ALPHONSE ESQUIROS, p. 16. last, as if she could endure the stillness no longer, she arose and began moving hurriedly about the room, giving a touch here and there to her domestic arrangements, and now and then going stealthily to the window to look forth into the night. “Oh!” she muttered, in a low voice, “God have mercy-this pitiless, pitiless storm!" "You are thinking of Margaret," said the slow, firm tones of Moses Grant. The woman started, and dropped the candlestick she held in her confusion. She turned ghastly pale and grasped the dresser, near which she stood, for support. If a grave had opened at her very feet she would have been no more overwhelmed with wonder. For many months in that household that name-Margaret-had been dead and buried-a forbidden sound. Perhaps her eyes gleamed with a wild hope, and the color came back to her cheeks; perhaps her husband had relented; perhaps he would forgive their child-their Margaret. She went toward him, that meek woman, and kneeling at his feet, lifted up her pleading voice. "Surely, father, I may speak of her, now you have called her name. It may be you are willing to forgive her to let her come back again. Five-and-twenty years I have walked patiently by your side; I have tried to be a help-meet to you. God has given us seven children, and we have made their graves-all but one-behind the church on the hill-top. And now she is gone-the last-my one child-Margaret. Oh husband, will you forgive her? Will you let her come back? What would even shame be to the loss of her? And perhaps she has not sinned as we have thought. She was a good child always, our Margaret. She loved the church and the Bible, and you used to say no one else learned their lessons in the catechism so well as she. We are getting old, fathermay I have my one girl back again ?" The old man's face had worked convulsively while she poured forth her pleading prayer, but it settled back now into stony, immovable calm. He looked sternly at the woman crouching at his knees, as if she, too, had some share in Margaret's sin. He said, in his cold, resolved tones, "What are you thinking of, Mary ?" he cried, passionately; "have you no mother's heartwill you let her die there before your eyes—our child, Margaret ?" He caught the prostrate figure in his armsto his breast; he carried her in to the warmth, the light, the father's house whence she had wandered; and then the cold, iron man wept over her like a helpless child, while the mother, fully herself now, worked with wild energy, collecting and applying restoratives, chafing the thin hands and the numb, half-frozen feet. Her efforts were successful in so far that the girl, for she was not more than eighteen, opened her eyes and came back to life with a gasping shudder. She did not seem quite restored, however, to the full use of her faculties. She spoke by snatches, in a strange, wandering fashion. "I thought I was dead," she said, "but I'm not. This is home, isn't it, and there's father. What do you cry so for, father? You never used to. I never saw you do so before. Oh! I know; you are crying about poor Margaret. You think now that she wasn't so bad, after all. You are glad she has come home." "Margaret," broke in her mother's voice, "were you deceived? Did you think you were married to that man—that Gilbert Trumbull ?” It was pitiful to see such fierce passion in one so gentle as Margaret Grant, who, from childhood, had never known a thought save of loving submission to her parents' will, until that stronger love came and compelled her obedience in another direction. The blood mantled her pale She rose up in the bed and shrieked out, with her eyes gleaming, her frame trembling, "It is of no use. If we would take the child back we do not even know where to seek her. She is dead to us, now and forever. Hear me, Mary; if she lay at this moment outside that door, with this storm falling on her bare, un-cheek, and burned there in one round, red spot. sheltered head, I would not open it one inch to let her in. She has made her bed; she shall lie in it. We have lived here many years-I, and my father, and my father's father, elders, one after another, in the church, and when did disgrace ever come to our humble, honest name till she brought it? She chose that bad young man and his unholy love, and father and mother she has none. Hear me, Mary; we are childless. Let her name never pass your lips or mine." The woman rose and groped blindly to her chair. She sat there with half-closed eyes, swaying herself to and fro, muttering now and then, "Oh, this pitiless storm!" Outside, the figure tottered on. Suddenly there was a cry borne upon the blast--a wild, wailing, human cry, rising high above the wind, piercing into the red house, piercing Moses Grant's firm, stony heart, as he sat before the fire. A weight seemed to fall helplessly against the outside door, and then there was silence. The mother sprang up and mechanically threw open the door, and the snow tumbled in, and the wailing wind rushed in. What was it lying there, stiff and helpless, upon the stone step, lifting up, whiter than the snow, its ghastly human face? The old man sprang to his wife's side. He had overrated his own stoicism. He shook her arm, almost harshly. "You shall not, I say you shall not speak his name—you who hate him so. You shall not drive me into betraying his secret. Turn me out again into the storm, if you will. I can die there as well as here; but you shall not make me answer your questions." "Hush, darling, darling, darling," murmured Mary Grant; the mother-love, the mother-tenderness, stronger than life, choking in her voice, thrilling in her touch, raining in tears from her eyes-"you shall not tell me if you do not wish to. Be satisfied. You shall never go out into the cold world again-you shall never suffer any more." And Moses Grant wept on, the while, his proud, stony heart melted, for the time, quite into childishness; saying nothing, only looking now and then at the girl whom his anger had driven forth, and who had come back to himalas! he knew it now, to die. That night a babe was born in the red house in the hollow, She came in the storm: was it a token of the life that awaited her? Outside were the snow, the darkness, the pitiless, wailing blast; within, only the girl, so young, so fair even in her ruin, and the two old people, tearless now and silent, keeping breathless watch over their one child. |