CHAPTER 13
The Declaration of the Rights of Man had been published less than twenty-four hours earlier, but all anyone was talking about on the afternoon of July 12 was Louis XVI’s banishment of Jacques Necker, the director-general of finance, who was the only member of the government whom the people still generally admired. In short order, most of the remaining ministers submitted their resignations or were forced out in a purge orchestrated by the Comte d’Artois and his circle, to be replaced by men loyal to the absolutist cause. Necker had been dining at home on Saturday, July 11, when he’d received a visit from the Comte de la Luzerne, minister of the navy, bearing a letter from the king ordering his immediate exile. Necker calmly finished his meal, and without uttering a word about his plans, he then ushered his wife into a carriage and proceeded to his château at Saint-Ouen, just north of Paris. Less than a day later, the Neckers were safely on the road to Brussels, leaving the king—now stripped of all moderating influences—to attempt a reversal of all the reforms that his coterie of reactionary advisers assured him had already gone too far.
In Paris, word of Necker’s dismissal ignited fears that the emboldened forces of absolutism might seek to quell the growing unrest in Paris by attempting an all-out military offensive against the city. From every corner of the capital, angry citizens made their way to the gardens of the Palais-Royal, where orators clambered atop fences, tables, and chairs to declaim the government shake-up and warn of impending danger. “Aux armes!” they shouted to the frenzied crowds jostling for space among the trees. According to Gouverneur Morris’s diary, roving bands were soon “breaking open the Armorers’s Shops” and scouring the streets for weapons and ammunition to be used in defense of the city.
Others set out on missions of a more symbolic variety. The multitudes who gathered at the Palais-Royal had been ruled by a monarchy that was second to none when it came to deploying visual spectacle for political ends; from a fountain erected in the garden of Versailles in the seventeenth century portraying the Roman goddess Latona in the process of transforming disrespectful peasants into frogs, to the costumes prescribed for the Assembly of Notables, the people of France received constant visual reminders of royal authority. Now, as ordinary men and women struggled to wrest control of their destinies from the government, they armed themselves not only with guns and stones but also with symbols. By order of the populace at large, the theaters of Paris would be dark that night. Mourning was to be observed in honor of the exiled Necker, just as it had been in memory of the six-year-old dauphin, who’d died from tuberculosis in June. This time, though, in lieu of a royal proclamation, the news would be delivered by masses of citizens roaming the city, closing places of entertainment as they passed.
Philippe Curtius, an enterprising Swiss anatomist who had adapted his wax-modeling skills for commercial purposes, was at his waxworks gallery on the Boulevard du Temple when hundreds of men and women arrived at the door on the afternoon of July 12. The uncanny likenesses on display in his galleries—one of which was among the many popular attractions at the Palais-Royal—were always up-to-date, as Curtius constantly changed the heads of his figures in accordance with the interests of his public. Curtius, best remembered today as Madame Tussaud’s mentor, had both fueled and capitalized on the cults of personality that sustained the political leaders of the day. On this date, the crowd was particularly interested in two of these heads; they demanded that Curtius hand over the busts of Necker and Orléans. Soon, the wax heads were wending their way through the streets in triumph, borne aloft by long poles carried above the crowd. Had anyone wanted to take it, a wax bust of Lafayette was also available at Curtius’s shop. But the Palais-Royal crowd, partial to Orléans, was not interested in glorifying the marquis.
Scores of eyewitnesses documented the remarkable events of July 1789, and no account is more revealing than the diary of Gouverneur Morris. Morris—who was a deputy to the Continental Congress, an advocate for Washington’s army throughout the American Revolution, a signer of the Articles of Confederation, and an author of the Constitution—had participated in every stage of the American experiment in liberty and was particularly attuned to the implications of each action and reaction of the French situation. On the evening of July 12, he found himself in the midst of the melee as he made his usual Sunday rounds. He had visited the Club Valois in the Palais-Royal, his home away from home, and called on the Comtesse de Flahaut—a mistress whose favors he famously shared with Talleyrand and whose husband supported the faction of Artois and the queen. He had left her apartments and was on his way to see Jefferson when his carriage approached a remarkable scene on the Place Louis XV (known today as the Place de la Concorde). Behind him was “a body of Cavalry with their Sabres drawn”; before him a hundred people were “picking up stones” from the piles of building materials being used to construct the bridge now known as the Pont de la Concorde. Showers of rock rained down upon the mounted soldiers, who responded with pistols. The confrontation between citizens and cavalry continued into the adjacent garden of the Tuileries Palace, where members of the Gardes Françaises, armed with bayonets, joined forces with the people to face off against a detachment of the Royal Allemand—a mounted regiment of the royal army with a name that referenced its German origins. As Morris understood at once, there was no going back. “These poor Fellows,” he wrote, “have passed the Rubicon with a witness.”
By the next morning, the attention of Paris had shifted to the Hôtel de Ville. Inside that stately edifice, every room, corridor, stairway, and courtyard was filled to overflowing with panicked men and women clamoring for arms; the city was in danger, and the people demanded protection. Thrust into the center of a crisis with few resources at their disposal, the electors were desperate to strengthen their tenuous hold on the city, using whatever means they could. Since late June, they had considered seeking permission from the National Assembly and the king to reestablish a citizens’ militia that might ensure the city’s safety. The request had never been acted upon. Now, engulfed in chaos around eight in the morning on July 13, the electors tried to calm the crowd by announcing that a citizens’ militia had been authorized and urging the assembled multitudes to return to their home districts to report for duty.
With some semblance of calm restored, the flags of the city were carried into the meeting hall and, according to the published proceedings of the electors, mounted “as trophies” on the fireplace, where they fluttered over a marble bust of Lafayette. Carved by Houdon, and received as a gift from the state of Virginia to the city of Paris, the bust had decorated the mantelpiece since 1784, standing as a reminder of France’s role in winning American independence. But now, paired with the city flag, the sculpted face seemed to promise liberation closer to home. The minutes of the day’s meeting report that the fortuitous pairing of flag and bust gave the electors ideas. “As if by a sudden inspiration,” several electors expressed a shared sentiment that command of the militia must be given to Lafayette. Only he, they agreed, could protect Paris from Versailles and save the city from itself. By naming Lafayette to command the militia, the electors had chosen, as Condorcet eloquently put it, “a storybook hero who, thanks to the éclat of his adventures, his youth, his bearing, and his renown, could enchant … the imagination and rally all of the popular interests to his side.” Any other choice, he added, would have faced “strong opposition” and resulted in “great harm.” Only Lafayette—the renowned friend of Washington—had sufficient credibility to reassure the city.
Charles Marville, Hôtel de Ville, 1871. In 1789, the electors of Paris and Lafayette established their headquarters in the Paris Hôtel de Ville, seen here in a photograph taken shortly after the building had been burned during the Paris Commune. Most of the city’s records from the 1789 revolution were destroyed in the fire, but the façade was left virtually intact. (illustration credit 13.1)
For the time being, the marble bust was the closest the militia would come to seeing Lafayette at its helm. Another man, the Marquis de La Salle, was placed in command while Lafayette was still some five leagues away, at Versailles, where the National Assembly was trying to persuade the king to remove his menacing troops. Angered by the insubordination of the assembly, Louis spurned the deputation sent to him on July 13. “I have already made known to you my intentions regarding the measures that the disorders of Paris have forced me to take,” he declared. “It is for me alone to judge their necessity.” On July 14, two more groups of deputies again entreated the king. To the second, Louis responded tersely and abruptly ended the discussion by stating, “I have nothing to add.”
While Louis XVI held his ground in the palace and debates raged at the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs, rumors of invasion and massacre swept Paris. At two o’clock in the morning on July 14, several of the Paris electors were holed up in the Hôtel de Ville, trying desperately to cobble together a provisional government that might succeed in controlling the terrified city, when, according to a record of the proceedings, a motley group “wearing on their faces every sign of fright and alarm” burst through the doors “crying that all had been lost, the City taken, and the Rue de Saint-Antoine inundated with 15,000 soldiers who might seize the Hôtel de Ville at any moment.” Their story was unfounded. But by six o’clock, the entire populace seemed ready for an imminent siege. Outside city hall, on the Place de Grève, the electors perceived “a countless multitude of people of every age and walk of life” bearing “arms of every variety.” Anticipating violence and starvation, crowds rushed to secure provisions from Les Halles, the city’s main marketplace, as strong gusts of wind blowing from the west hastened their steps. According to the electors’ notes, the roads were packed with “carts of flour, wheat, wine, and other comestibles, cannons, guns, ammunition” being pushed, pulled, or otherwise cajoled in the direction of the Hôtel de Ville.
Around seven o’clock, news of troop movements once again reached the electors. This time, they took action, instructing all citizens of Paris who possessed weapons of any sort to report to the militia’s ad hoc leadership, which was dispersed across the city’s sixty districts. The electors further ordered all members of the militia to proclaim their allegiance to Paris by wearing the colors of the city in the form of red and blue cockades and to begin constructing defenses by ripping paving stones from the streets, digging trenches, and erecting barricades. Meanwhile, the electors sent formal deputations to two military strongholds: the Hôtel des Invalides—named for its role as a government-sponsored home for aged and disabled veterans—and the Bastille. At these sites, the city’s representatives hoped to acquire not only armaments but also solemn pledges that the king’s soldiers would not fire upon the citizens. Those sent to the Invalides returned with cannons. Those sent to the Bastille met with less success.
The Bastille has earned a place in history as a site of arbitrary imprisonment, but the massive stone structure was also a fort and a munitions depot. In the preceding weeks, as tensions rose in and around Paris, the army had quietly warehoused thousands of pounds of gunpowder within the seemingly impregnable edifice. Little by little, dozens of cannons, guns, and other weapons had been mounted on its roof, and cannons trained on the Rue Saint-Antoine below. Thus provisioned, the Bastille was both dangerous and desirable. As long as it remained in the hands of the crown, it posed a lethal threat to the citizenry. If it could be taken, it promised the city a nearly endless supply of ammunition.
All of this was known to the three representatives sent to negotiate with Bernard-René de Launay, the royal official in charge of the Bastille. After making their way through the crowd, the municipal delegation presented the city’s requests to Launay, who spoke with them in front of an enormous iron gate. Agreeing to continue the conversation inside, Launay ordered the drawbridge lowered and the gate raised and invited the visitors to join him for breakfast. Several hours passed before the electors made their way back to the Hôtel de Ville bearing mixed tidings. They reported that Launay would not surrender, but neither would he permit his men to fire on the people.
The electors were ready to announce the agreement when cries of “perfidy” and “treason” went up from the Place de Grève. Two injured men—one with a wounded arm, the other near death—had been transported there from the Bastille, and fifteen or twenty other casualties were reported. Evidently, the Bastille had again lowered its drawbridge and the people, taking the gesture as an invitation, had begun to cross it when the musketeers guarding the fortress opened fire. A second deputation was immediately dispatched to remind Launay of his promise, but as these men approached the Bastille, they saw that the fortress’s soldiers were engaged in a fierce firefight with armed citizens. Observing the crowd, one delegate understood that “a deputation is no longer what they want; it is the siege of the Bastille, the destruction of this horrible prison, it is the death of [Launay] that they demand in great cries.”
All of this was accomplished. Before the day was out, the Bastille was captured and its prisoners—seven aged men—were freed, but eighty-three citizens lay dead. In addition, one of the building’s defenders was killed in action, and two others were hanged. Launay fought to the end. Taken into custody, he was marched toward the Hôtel de Ville. En route, he lashed out, kicking one of his captors, and was promptly felled by a furious onslaught of blades and guns. Soon, his head was making the rounds of Paris atop a pike, having been unceremoniously hacked off by a cook who had been the recipient of Launay’s kick, and who went on to boast of the decapitation. The city leaders lost one of their own: Jacques de Flesselles, the provost of merchants (a member of the municipal council), was shot dead on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville as punishment for the transgression of hedging his bets. He had proclaimed his support of the electors but withheld arms. His became the second head to be paraded through the streets.
News of the Bastille’s fall reached Lafayette late that night. Having been elected vice president of the National Assembly, Lafayette was at the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs, standing in for the president, who had retired for the evening, when two representatives from the Hôtel de Ville arrived to report on the tumultuous day. While Lafayette led a discussion of what steps the assembly should take next, François-Alexandre-Frédéric, Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, a deputy from Soissons and a confidant of the king, slipped out of the chamber and made his way to the royal apartments to inform Louis XVI. According to popular legend, Louis asked, “Is it a revolt?” and Liancourt famously replied, “No sire, it’s a revolution.” In any case, Louis was at last convinced that the troops around Paris were doing more harm than good, and so at approximately eleven in the morning on July 15, he went to the Menus Plaisirs accompanied by his two brothers and announced to the National Assembly—a term he used that day for the first time—that the troops would be removed. Recalling the events years later in his memoirs, Lafayette wrote with satisfaction that “the cause of the people triumphed.”
Lafayette’s own moment in the spotlight was not far off. Having served as commander of the citizens’ militia for less than twenty-four hours, the Marquis de La Salle tendered his resignation on the morning of July 15, clearing the way for Lafayette to take his place. According to the records of the Assembly of Electors, a mere gesture toward Lafayette’s bust, which was now accompanied on the meeting hall mantelpiece by the painting Saint Peter in Chains—an image of miraculous liberation that had itself been liberated from the Bastille chapel—was all it took to remind the audience that it was time to install Lafayette at the head of the citizens’ militia. Médéric-Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, the Martinique-born president of the electors, explained succinctly that “the defense of French liberty” belonged in the hands of the “illustrious defender of the liberty of the New World.”
Lafayette wrote in his memoirs that he had no knowledge of these events when he set out from Versailles around two in the afternoon. In his capacity as vice president of the National Assembly, he rode in the first of forty carriages that transported more than one hundred deputies to the Hôtel de Ville to celebrate the accomplishments of the city and the nation. It took time to find enough seats for the deputies in the overcrowded meeting hall, but once everyone was in place and the audience’s cries of joy were calmed, Lafayette addressed the crowd with a discourse that the electors praised for being “filled with that eloquence which he possesses, so touching, because it is simple and natural.” Lafayette’s optimism about the future and faith in the king shone through as he “congratulated the Assembly of Electors and all the citizens of Paris on the liberty they had won by their courage” and reminded them that they owed their happiness to “the justice of a beneficent and disabused monarch,” whose speech to the National Assembly Lafayette read into the record.
After several more speeches and a great deal more applause, the meeting seemed to be over and the deputies were getting ready to depart when, suddenly, “all the voices joined together to proclaim Monsieur the Marquis de Lafayette Commander-General of the Parisian Militia.” Lafayette did not hesitate. “Accepting this honor with every sign of respect and gratitude,” he “drew his sword; and swore to sacrifice his life for the preservation of this precious liberty that he was entrusted with defending.” Moments later, the chorus of voices resumed, this time to proclaim Lafayette’s friend and ally Jean-Sylvain Bailly mayor of Paris.
The offices given to Lafayette and Bailly were municipal, but with the authority of Versailles on the wane, Paris was fast becoming the seat of national power. On July 16, Lafayette asked that his title and his troops be renamed to reflect this new reality—the leader of the Parisian militia would henceforth be known as commander of the National Guard. Yet before the day was out, Lafayette began to wonder if his was an impossible position. He might well have been the most powerful man in the nation, but there was no force on earth that could possibly stop events from spiraling out of control.