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043 - Book 7 Chapter 4 The Menads · The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille

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  Speaker 1: The French Revolution, A history by Thomas Carlyle, Volume one,
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  Speaker 1: Book seven, The Insurrection of Women, Chapter four, The Meanads.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
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  Speaker 1: Peter Dan Book seven, Chapter four, The Mean Ads. If Faultaire,
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  Speaker 1: once in splanetic humor, asked his countrymen, but you, guilsh,
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  Speaker 1: what have you invented, they can now answer the art
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  Speaker 1: of insurrection. It was an art, indeed needed in these
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  Speaker 1: last singular times, an art for which the French nature,
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  Speaker 1: so full of vehemence, so free from depth, was perhaps
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  Speaker 1: of all others the fittest. Accordingly to what a height
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  Speaker 1: one may well say of perfection has this branch of
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  Speaker 1: human industry been carried by France within the last half century. Insurrection,
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  Speaker 1: which Lafayette thought might be the most sacred of duties,
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  Speaker 1: ranks now for the French people among the duties which
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  Speaker 1: they can perform. Other mobs are dull masses, which roll
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  Speaker 1: onwards with a dull, fierce tenacity, a dull fierce heat,
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  Speaker 1: but amid no light flashes of genius as they go.
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  Speaker 1: The French mob again is among the liveliest phenomena of
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  Speaker 1: our world, so rapid or dacious, so clear, sighted inventive
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  Speaker 1: prompt to seize the moment instinct with life to its finger,
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  Speaker 1: ends that talent there were no other of spontaneously standing
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  Speaker 1: in Q distinguishes, as we said, the French people, from
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  Speaker 1: all peoples, ancient and modern. Let the reader confess too,
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  Speaker 1: that taking one thing with another, perhaps few terrestrial appearances
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  Speaker 1: are better worth considering than mobs. Your mob is a
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  Speaker 1: genuine outburst of nature, issuing from or communicating with the
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  Speaker 1: deepest deep of nature. When so much goes grinning and
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  Speaker 1: grimacing as a lifeless formality, and under the stiff buckram,
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  Speaker 1: no heart can be felt beating here once more, if
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  Speaker 1: nowhere else is a sincerity and reality, shudder at it,
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  Speaker 1: or even shrink over it, if thou must nevertheless consider
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  Speaker 1: it such a complex of human forces and individualities, hurled
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  Speaker 1: forth in their transcendental mood to act and react on
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  Speaker 1: circumstances and on one another, to work out what it
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  Speaker 1: is in them to work. The thing they will do
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  Speaker 1: is known to no man, least of all to themselves.
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  Speaker 1: It is the inflammablest, immeasurable firework generating, consuming itself with
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  Speaker 1: what phases, to what extent, with what results, it will
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  Speaker 1: burn off philosophy and perspicacity. Conjecture in vain man, as
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  Speaker 1: has been written, is forever interesting to man, nay properly,
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  Speaker 1: there is nothing else interesting in which light. Also, may
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  Speaker 1: we not discern why most battles have become so wearisome.
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  Speaker 1: Battles in these ages are transacted by mechanism, with the
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  Speaker 1: slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity. Men now
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  Speaker 1: even die and kill one another in an artificial manner.
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  Speaker 1: Battles Ever since Homer's time, when they were fighting mobs
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  Speaker 1: have mostly ceased to be worth looking at, worth reading of,
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  Speaker 1: or remembering. How many wearisome, bloody battles does history strive
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  Speaker 1: to represent, or even in a husky way to sing
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  Speaker 1: and she would omit or carelessly slur over this one
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  Speaker 1: insurrection of women. A thought or dim raw material of
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  Speaker 1: a thought was fermenting all night universally in the female head,
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  Speaker 1: and might explode in squalid garret. On Monday morning, maternity
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  Speaker 1: awakes to hear children weeping for bread. Maternity must forth
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  Speaker 1: to the streets to the herb markets and bakers cues.
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  Speaker 1: Meets there with hunger stricken maternity, sympathetic, exasperative, Oh we
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  Speaker 1: unhappy women. But instead of Baker's cues, why not to
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  Speaker 1: aristocrat's palaces the root of the matter, allans, let us
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  Speaker 1: assemble to the Hotel de Villa, to Versailles, to the
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  Speaker 1: lantern in one of the guard houses of the caat'er
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  Speaker 1: Saint Mustache. A young woman seizes a drum, for how
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  Speaker 1: shall national guards give fire on women? On a young woman?
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  Speaker 1: The young woman seizes the drum, sets forth, beating it,
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  Speaker 1: uttering cries relative to the dearth of grains, descend o mothers,
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  Speaker 1: descend ye judiths, to food and revenge. All women gather
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  Speaker 1: and go. Crowds storm or stairs, force out all women.
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  Speaker 1: The female insurrectionary force, according to Camille, resembles the English
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  Speaker 1: naval one. There is a universal press of women, robust
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  Speaker 1: dames of the hull, slim mantua makers, assiduous risen from
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  Speaker 1: the dawn, ancient virginity, tripping to mattins, the housemaid with
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  Speaker 1: early broom. All must go rouse, ye, o women. The
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  Speaker 1: laggard men will not act, they say, we ourselves may act.
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  Speaker 1: And so like snow break from the mountains. For every
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  Speaker 1: staircase is a melted brook, Its storms, tumultuous, wild shrilling,
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  Speaker 1: towards the Hotel de Ville, tumultuous with or without drum
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  Speaker 1: music for the Faubourg sant Antoine also has tucked up
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  Speaker 1: its gown, and with bessom staves, fire irons and even
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  Speaker 1: rusty pistols, void of ammunition is flowing on sound of
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  Speaker 1: it flies with a velocity of sound to the utmost barriers.
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  Speaker 1: By seven o'clock on this raw October morning, fifth of
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  Speaker 1: the month, the town hall will see wonders nay, as
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  Speaker 1: chance would have at a male party, are already there,
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  Speaker 1: clustering tumultuously round some national patrol and a baker who
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  Speaker 1: is been seized with short weights. They are there, and
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  Speaker 1: have even lowered the rope of the lantern, so that
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  Speaker 1: the official persons have to smuggle forth the short weighing
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  Speaker 1: baker by back doors, and even send to all the
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  Speaker 1: district for more force. Grand it was, says Camilla, to
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  Speaker 1: see so many judiths, from eight to ten thousand of
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  Speaker 1: the men all rushing out to search into the root
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  Speaker 1: of the matter. Not done frightful, It must have been
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  Speaker 1: ludicro terrific and most unmanageable at such hour. The over
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  Speaker 1: watched three hundred are not yet stirring, none but some clerks,
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  Speaker 1: a company of National Guards, and Monsieur de Gouvion, the
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  Speaker 1: Major General Gouvian has fought in America for the cause
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  Speaker 1: of civil liberty. A man of no inconsiderable heart, but
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  Speaker 1: deficient in head, he is for the moment in his
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  Speaker 1: back apartment, assuaging Aushamallard, the bastillo sergeant, who has come,
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  Speaker 1: as too many do, with representations. The assuagement is still
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  Speaker 1: incomplete when our judiths arrive. The National Guards form on
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  Speaker 1: the outer stairs with leveled bayonets. The ten thousand judiths
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  Speaker 1: press up, resistless with obtestations, with outspread hands, merely to
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  Speaker 1: speak to the mayor. The rear forces them nay from
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  Speaker 1: male hands in the rear stones already fly. The National
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  Speaker 1: Guards must do one of two things. Sweep the plaster
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  Speaker 1: grave with cannon or else open to right and left.
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  Speaker 1: They open. The living deluge rushes in through all rooms
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  Speaker 1: and cabinets, upwards to the topmost belfry, ravenous, seeking arms,
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  Speaker 1: seeking mayors, seeking justice. While again the better crest dressed
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  Speaker 1: speak kindly to the clerks, point out the misery of
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  Speaker 1: these poor women, also their ailment, some even of an
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  Speaker 1: interesting sort. Poor Misieu du Gouvion is shiftless in this extremity,
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  Speaker 1: a man shiftless, perturbed, who will one day commit suicide. Ud,
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  Speaker 1: how happy for him that usher my yard, the shifty
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  Speaker 1: was there at the moment, though making representations. Fly back, Thou,
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  Speaker 1: shifty my yard, seek the bastie accompany, and oh return
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  Speaker 1: fast with it above all, with thy own shifty head.
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  Speaker 1: For behold, the Judaths can find no mare or municipal.
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  Speaker 1: Scarcely in the topmost belfry can they find poor abbe Lefavre,
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  Speaker 1: the powdered distributor him. For want of a better they
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  Speaker 1: suspend there, in the pale morning light, over the top
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  Speaker 1: of all Paris, which swims in one's failing eyes, a
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  Speaker 1: horrible land. Nay, the rope broke, as French ropes often did,
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  Speaker 1: or else an amazon cut it. Abbe Lefevre falls some
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  Speaker 1: twenty feet, rattling among the leads, and lives long years after,
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  Speaker 1: though always with a tremblement in the limbs and now
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  Speaker 1: doors fly under hatchets. The Judaths have broken the armory,
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  Speaker 1: have seized guns and cannons, three money bags, paper heaps.
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  Speaker 1: Torture is flair in a few minutes our brave Hotel
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  Speaker 1: de Ville, which dates from the fourth Henry, will, with
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  Speaker 1: all that it holds be in flames. End of Book seven,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter four,