The Reign of George III. (Continued.)

The Roland or Gironde ministry being dismissed by Louis XVI., with the exception of Dumouriez, Lacoste, and Duranthon, Dumouriez was made war minister, Morgue, a Protestant, of Montpelier, minister of the home department and pro tempore minister of finance, and Naillac, minister for foreign affairs. Dumouriez immediately presented himself before the assembly, and reproached the ex-minister, Servan, with having ordered the levy of no less than two hundred and forty thousand men, without taking any proper measures for arming and equipping them; he also severely blamed the assembly for taking no active orders for suppressing mutiny and mob rule. He declared that instead of having on the frontiers a well-disciplined and trustworthy army, the troops were corrupted by the clubs, and disorderly from lack of enforced subordination. He declared this dangerous state of things to be the fault of the officers, and previously of the assembly. Such a speech was not made without violent opposition, and cries of "Send him to Orleans!" "So much the better," replied Dumouriez, "for I shall then take the mineral baths there, and the milk diet, of which I stand in need, and shall have rest." He quitted the assembly with a smiling countenance, showing the utmost carelessness of the furious menaces of the cote gauche.

Dumouriez was immediately attacked by the jacobins and Girondists, in the journals, with charges of having peculated the public money. He had demanded, and received, six millions of livres, on accepting office, as secret service money. Brissot and others declared that he had spent the greater part of this large sum in his secret pleasures, and in extravagant living. Dumouriez, like most Frenchmen, had a; mistress, madame Beauvert, the sister of count Rivarol, a royalist, and it was asserted that he had not only spent a great part of this money on her, but had, through her connections, allowed the plans of reform to be revealed to the royalists, and so counteracted by them. Dumouriez replied that the simple fact was, that the bulk of this money was yet actually untouched, but that he had offended the Girondists by depositing it in the hands of M. Amelot, the keeper of the national treasure, instead, as they wished, of placing it with their partisan, Bidermann, the banker. He also turned the tables on Brissot, by affirming that he and his party were only incensed because they had not been allowed to appropriate the whole of this sum; and he declared that he would soon publish a statement of the payments, and the names of those who had received them. Brissot defied Dumouriez to do so; but other and more startling matters speedily drove this question from the public attention, driving Dumouriez also from office. No sooner did that general return to the Tuileries from the assembly, than the king congratulated him on his triumphant defeat of the Gironde. But Dumouriez replied that the triumph would not be complete unless the king at once conceded his sanction to the two decrees ordering the federate camp near Paris and the banishment of the unsworn priests. Louis refused peremptorily, and even angrily, saying, "Do not think, sir, that I am to be terrified by menaces; my resolution is fixed!"

Dumouriez immediately resigned, and all the ministers with him, except Duranthon and Lacoste. In their stead succeeded a number of Feuillants or moderates, Lagard, Chambonas, Terrier de Mont-Cile, men of no mark or consideration, but friends of La Fayette, were appointed. This took place on the 17th of June; and the very next day a letter was presented to the assembly and read from La Fayette himself. It was written from his camp, and called on the assembly to put down with a firm hand the tyranny of clubs and mobs, which he declared was become intolerable, and had scarcely left a remnant of liberty in France. This letter raised a most terrible commotion. The assembly was furious. The Girondists were beside themselves. Vergniaud declared that such language could not be allowed in the commander of an army to the assembly. He must be dismissed. Guadet pronounced La Fayette to be treading exactly in the steps of Cromwell; he was aiming at the destruction of all liberty by the assumption of a military dictatorship. He pointed out that the letter spoke of the dismissal of Dumouriez, and yet that dismissal could not be known on the frontier at the date of that letter. The signature must- have been affixed to a carte blanche, and filled up in Paris by his partizans, or else some calumniator of La Fayette must have forged his name. He demanded that the letter be submitted to the committee of twelve for examination. The committee pronounced the signature genuine; and the assembly declared that there was no longer a constitution, if the general of an army could dictate laws to it.

Robespierre and the ultras were in ecstacies at this step of La Fayette's. They saw that it would rouse all the passion of the clubs and of the mob, and precipitate, not only his destruction, but that of the throne - the object of their deadliest desire. Robespierre, in the jacobin club and in his paper, opened afresh his implacable hatred of La Fayette. He heaped upon him every term of reproach - he called him coward, traitor, intriguant, dictator. He declared that the assembly must destroy him, or be destroyed itself. Brissot, Condorcet, Murat, Desmoulins, all the bloodthirsty tribe of journalists and club orators, joined in the murderous cry. There was a universal stir and agitation throughout the faubourgs of Paris. Petion, the mayor of Paris, whose business it should have been to take all possible measures for keeping order, on the other hand, was calling together the most violent red republicans - Santerre, the brewer; Legendre, the butcher; Chabot, Hurugue, and others - to hold meetings in different quarters of the city. At these meetings they called on all the citizens to be ready, with their pikes and other arms, on the 20th, to celebrate the anniversary of the Jeu de Paume, by presenting a memorial to the assembly and another to the king; by erecting a Mai, or maypole, the Tree of Liberty, on the terrace of the Feuillants, and by other acts of demonstration. A demand for this fete was made to the commune, but Petion did not make any communication to the assembly, or even to the departmental directory, till the 18th. The directory, on receiving his communication, immediately issued an order forbidding any such meeting on the 20th, and enjoined Petion and the national guards to do everything possible to prevent it. On the next day, the 19th, the directory informed the assembly of the proposed demonstration on the morrow, and Barbarous, at the head of a deputation of citizens of Marseilles, appeared at the bar of the house, and demanded that the patriotic men of the south should be summoned in arms to Paris; that the revolution was in danger from traitors, and that it must be finished and for ever established. The proposal was received with acclamations, and thus another measure of the jacobins and Girondists was accomplished. Barbaroux had been put on this movement by them and Petion. Petion - now called the virtuous Petion - and Robespierre made up their differences, and thus all the instigators of mob rule were, for the moment, combined for a great blow at the monarchy.

Amid the cheering for Barbaroux's proposition, the letter of the departmental directory was introduced. Jacobins and Girondists united to oppose its being read. In this they failed; but they succeeded in inducing the assembly to pass to the order of the day, and thus Paris was left to the mercy of the furious populace, without any preparations for the defence of the palace and the royal family.

That night Petion, instead of being engaged in taking measures to insure the peace of the city the next day, hastened to the house of Santerre, the brewer, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where soon arrived Robespierre, Manuel, procureursyndic of the commune; Sillery, the husband of madame Genlis; Alexandre, commandant of the Faubourg St. Marceau; Legendre, the butcher; Sergent and Panis, whose names, at a later period, were connected with a terrible event; Rossignol, a journeyman goldsmith, of rabid republican character, and others of the same stamp. There were numbers of desperate jacobins, too, summoned by Santerre from the neighbouring towns and villages. At midnight Petion wrote to the directory, soliciting it to authorise the assemblage by permitting the national guards to receive the citizens into its own ranks. The directory replied, at five o'clock in the morning, to this extraordinary demand, by refusing it. Petion then, according to his own statement, doubled the guard at the Tuileries; but he did nothing more, and he knew very well that the majority of these guards would not lift a hand against the people. Chabot went and harangued the section of the Quinze-Vingts, and declared that the assembly was waiting for them with open arms.

At dawn of day the drums beat in the Faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marcel; these districts were all in commotion, and at eight o'clock they were formed into column. At about eleven Santerre put himself at their head, attended by a strong force of invalids, and the march commenced towards the Tuileries. This sans-culotte army was interspersed with women and children, uttering ferocious cries, and nearly all were armed with pikes or other weapons. They carried standards, bearing many such mottoes as "Tremble, tyrants: the sans-culottes are coming!" "Down with all tyrants!" One standard consisted of a pair of black silk breeches extended on a pole, with the motto, "Without breeches, but free!" A bullock's heart was carried on a pike, to represent an aristocrat's heart. And this was the style in which Frenchmen in 1792 pretended to be on their way to present a petition to the assembly.

Before they reached that body, Roederer, the procureursyndic of the department, entered, and warned the members of the style in which this armed rabble was approaching, He reminded them of the laws enacted against armed assemblages, and of the standing resolution not to admit more than twenty to present petitions, and entreated them to close their doors. But the jacobins and Girondists declared that, as they only wanted to present a petition, they ought to be received with all respect. Vergniaud contended that this was not the first time that armed petitioners had not only been received, but allowed to file through the hall, and that they could not, on this occasion, be excluded. Dumolard opposed their admission, as tending to establish a monstrous abuse, and render both the king and assembly the merest slaves in the eyes of all Europe. But the mob was already at the door, with fierce shouting and beating of drums. A letter was handed in by Santerre to the president, stating that the petitioners wanted to be admitted to the bar of the assembly to confront their caluminators, and prove themselves still the men of the 14th of July, 1789. Vergniaud urged their immediate admission, saying they were uneasy about the future, and wanted to show that they were ever ready to defend it. There were cries of, "They are only eight thousand in number!" To which Calvet replied, "And we are only seven hundred and forty-five! But the debate was cut short by the noisy crowd bursting into the hall, with Santerre and Hurugue at its head, with drawn swords in their hands. Santerre then read, in a loud voice, the petition, which was couched in the most insolent and violent terms. It complained of the perfidious chateau of the Tuileries, of the dismissal of the patriot ministers, Roland, Servan, and Clavieres; of the inaction in the armies on the frontiers; and it denounced revenge and the death of all traitors. It justified its proceedings by the second article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, commanding resistance to oppression; called for the guillotine, and intimated that "the people would be obliged to take the sword of the law into their own hands, and exterminate, by one terrible blow, not only all the state prisoners, but all those who would not execute the laws upon them."

This bloodthirsty petition was loudly applauded by the assembly, and then the sovereign mob filed through the hall, thirty thousand men, women, and children, so that the place was not clear of them till four o'clock in the afternoon. As they left the assembly, they marched to the Place du Carrousel, and there collected for an assault on the palace. They marched along by the railing inclosing the court of the Tuileries, with the so-called heart of the aristocrat on the pike. Seeing all the gates closed, and battalions of national guards drawn up within, they marched round to the front of the palace in the gardens. There they saw detachments of national guards, extending from the Feuillants to the river. They had intended to plant their tree of liberty on the terrace of the Feuillants; but the appearance of the troops prevented them. Searching all the side gates in vain for entrance, the king at length ordered the garden-gate to be opened to them. They rushed in, and they filed off under the windows of the palace, before the national guards, but without making any hostile demonstrations, only crying, "Down with the veto! The sans culotte for ever! "They then moved off by the garden-gate leading to the Pont Royal, along the quay, and through the wickets of the Louvre to the Place du Carrousel again. This place, now so spacious, was then intersected by numerous streets. Instead of that immense court, extending from the body of the palace to the gate, and from one wing to the other, there were small courts separated by walls and houses. Ancient wickets opened from each of them into the Carrousel, They crowded round the royal gate, but were refused entrance. Some of the municipal officers addressed them, and had just prevailed on them to retire, when Santerre, who had staid some time behind at the assembly, arrived, and assured them that the municipal guards were secretly their friends. He assured them that, if they would not open the gate, he would blow it open with the piece of cannon they had dragged thither.

As for defence within, there was no body of troops that could be depended upon. A number of the king's friends, of the aristocratic class, had flocked to the palace, as on the day of poignards; but the king had feared that their presence might excite a repetition of the outrages of that day, and had prevailed on most of them to go away again. Almost every regiment well disposed to the king had, on one pretence or other, been sent by the assembly to a distance from the capital. It was hoped that the gendarmes and the national guards would stand firm, but it was soon found that they were resolved not to fire on the people. No sooner was the mob aware of this, than the "ca ira" was struck up, the Carmagnole was danced, and, on the repeated demand for entrance, about five o'clock two municipal officers suddenly threw open the gates. The crowd streamed in, and, Santerre and the cannon at their head, made for the door of the palace. A number of respectable citizens, surrounding Santerre, endeavoured to persuade him not to force an entrance, assuring him that he should be held responsible for it. Santerre appeared for a moment alarmed; but, encouraged by the butcher Legendre, he exclaimed, " Gentlemen, bear witness that I refuse to go into the king's apartments." But the crowd well understood what this meant; they pushed on Santerre, by their mass, before them; they poured into every part of the palace, dragged their piece of cannon up the main staircase, and commenced a furious attack with hatchets and butt-ends of pikes on the doors closed against them. The door to the room in which Louis was, he ordered to be opened, and advanced boldly to meet the in-rushing multitude, followed by the old marshal de Mouchy Acloque, chef de bataillon M. de Bougainville, and others. The officers of the national guards present also closed around him to defend him. "What is it you want?" demanded Louis, calmly; and, at sight of him, some of the foremost ragamuffins recoiled, but they were soon forced forward again by the throng behind, and Louis was carried forcibly back into the room. De Bougainville commanded some grenadiers, who entered at a side door, to form betwixt his majesty and the mob; and, conducting the king to an embrasure of a window, they made a barricade, in front of him, with benches and tables. u Sire," said one of the grenadiers, " fear nothing! " Taking the man's hand, and placing it on his heart, Louis said, " Feel whether I fear." The fact was that Louis XVI. had no want of personal courage; had he had as much moral courage and promptitude, he would never have been reduced to this situation. The queen, who was with the children in an adjoining apartment, could not reach the king before he was thus imprisoned by the mob, and continued in a state of extreme alarm; but the princess Elizabeth, who was present, endeavoured to rush to her brother to reassure him. The mob mistook her for the queen, and assailed her with a volley of the most terrible curses and epithets. " Let them think it is the queen," said this courageous and devoted woman, " so that she may have time to escape!" Not being able to reach the king, and being surrounded on all sides by the ferocious mob, the grenadiers, assisted by the courtiers, made an effort, and succeeded in getting her into the council chamber, where the queen and children were. There, placed in an embrasure of a window, like the king, these ladies, and the princess Lamballe, the princess Tarente, and three other ladies, remained imprisoned during this fearful scene. A grenadier handed to the queen a tricolour cockade, which she placed in her cap, and which probably saved her life.