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028 - Book 5 Chapter 3 Broglie the War-God · The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille

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  Speaker 1: The French Revolution are History by Thomas Carlyle, Volume one,
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  Speaker 1: Book five, The Third Estate, Chapter three, Bollier the War God.
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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 five, Chapter three, Bollie the War God.
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  Speaker 1: The court feels indignant that it is conquered. But what then,
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  Speaker 1: another time it will do better? Mercury descended in vain.
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  Speaker 1: Now has the time come from Mars. The gods of
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  Speaker 1: the Eude Boeuf have withdrawn into the darkness of their
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  Speaker 1: cloudy Ida, and sit there shaping and forging what may
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  Speaker 1: be need for be it billets of a new national bank,
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  Speaker 1: munitions of war, or things forever inscrutable to men. Accordingly
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  Speaker 1: what means this apparatus of troops? The National Assembly can
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  Speaker 1: get no furtherance, for its Committee of Subsistences can hear
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  Speaker 1: only that at powers the baker's shops are besieged. That
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  Speaker 1: in the provinces people are living on meal husks and
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  Speaker 1: boiled grass, but on all highways their hover dust clouds,
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  Speaker 1: with the march of regiments, with the trailing of cannon
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  Speaker 1: foreign pandas of fierce aspect. Salis Samad Estehazi, Royal l' Lamonde,
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  Speaker 1: so many of them foreign to the number of thirty thousand,
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  Speaker 1: which fear can magnify to fifty, all wending towards Paris
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  Speaker 1: and Versailles, already on the heights of Montmartres are digging
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  Speaker 1: and delving too, like a scarping and trenching. The effluence
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  Speaker 1: of Paris is arrested Versailles woods by a barrier of
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  Speaker 1: cannon at Seva Bridge from the Queen's mewse cannons stand
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  Speaker 1: pointed on the National Assembly Hall itself. The National Assembly
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  Speaker 1: has its very slumbers broken by the tramp of soldiery,
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  Speaker 1: swarming and defiling, endless or seemingly endless, on those spaces,
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  Speaker 1: at dead of night, without drum music, without audible word
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  Speaker 1: of command? What means it shall eight, or even shall
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  Speaker 1: twelve depities our mirrabos, by naves at the head of
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  Speaker 1: them be whirled suddenly to the Castle of ham the
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  Speaker 1: rest ignominiously dispersed to the winds. No National Assembly can
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  Speaker 1: make the Constitution with cannon leveled on it from the
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  Speaker 1: Queen's muse. What means this reticence of the Oi de Boeuf,
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  Speaker 1: broken only by nods and shrugs. In the mystery of
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  Speaker 1: that cloudy Ida. What is it that they forge and shape?
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  Speaker 1: Such questions must distracted patriotism keep asking and receive no
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  Speaker 1: answer but an echo enough of themselves. But now, above all,
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  Speaker 1: while the hungry food year, which runs from August to August,
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  Speaker 1: is getting older, becoming more and more a famine year,
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  Speaker 1: with meal husks and boiled grass, brigands may actually collect
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  Speaker 1: and in crowds at farm and mansion howl angrily food food.
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  Speaker 1: It is in vain to send soldiers against them. At
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  Speaker 1: sight of soldiers, they disperse, They vanish as underground, then
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  Speaker 1: directly reassemble elsewhere for new tumult and plunder. Frightful enough
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  Speaker 1: to look upon, but what to hear of? Reverberated through
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  Speaker 1: twenty five millions of suspicious minds, brigands and boliere, open conflagration,
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  Speaker 1: preternatural rumor are driving mad most hearts in France. What
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  Speaker 1: will the issue of these things be? At Marseilles many
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  Speaker 1: weeks ago, the townsmen have taken arms for suppressing of
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  Speaker 1: brigands and other purposes. The military commandant may make of
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  Speaker 1: it what he will. Elsewhere everywhere, could not the like
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  Speaker 1: be done? Dubious on the distracted patriot imagination waivers as
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  Speaker 1: a last deliverance, some foreshadow of a national guard. But
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  Speaker 1: conceive above the wooden tent in the Palais Royale a
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  Speaker 1: universal hubbub there as of dissolving worlds. Their loudest bellows,
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  Speaker 1: the mad mad making voice of rumor, their sharpest gazers,
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  Speaker 1: suspicion into the pale, dim world whirlpool, discerning shapes and phanfasms,
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  Speaker 1: Imminent bloodthirsty regiments camped on the Champ de Mars, dispersed
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  Speaker 1: National assembly, red hot cannon bolts to burn Paris, the
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  Speaker 1: mad war god, and Belona's sounding thongs to the calmest man.
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  Speaker 1: It is becoming too plain that battle is inevitable, inevitable.
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  Speaker 1: Silently nod messeigneurs and breniere, inevitable and brief. Your National Assembly,
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  Speaker 1: stopped short in its constitutional labors, may fatigue the royal
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  Speaker 1: ear with addresses and remonstrances. Those cannon of our stand
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  Speaker 1: duly leveled. Those troops are here. The King's Declaration, with
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  Speaker 1: its thirty five two generous articles, was spoken, was not
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  Speaker 1: listened to, but remains yet unrevoked. He himself shall affect it,
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  Speaker 1: Sir Leufera. As for Brollier, he has his headquarters at Versailles,
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  Speaker 1: all as in a seat of war. Clerk's writing, significant staff,
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  Speaker 1: officers inclined to taciturnity plume dei de compe, scouts, orderlies
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  Speaker 1: flying or hovering. He himself looks forth important, impenetrable, listens
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  Speaker 1: to bessont val, Commandant of Paris, and his warning and
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  Speaker 1: earnest counsels. For he has come out repeatedly on purpose,
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  Speaker 1: with a silent smile. The Parisians resist, scornfully, cry messeigneurs
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  Speaker 1: as a meal mob. May they have sat quiet? These
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  Speaker 1: five generations, submitting to all their mercier, declared in these
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  Speaker 1: very years that a Parisian revolt was henceforth impossible. Stand
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  Speaker 1: by the royal declaration of the twenty third of June.
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  Speaker 1: The nobles of France, valorous, chivalrous as of old, will
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  Speaker 1: rally round us with one heart. And as for this
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  Speaker 1: which you call third estate, in which we call Canai
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  Speaker 1: of unwashed sants, collottes of patal and scribblers, facetious spouters,
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  Speaker 1: brave boglier with a whiff of grape shot salved cannon,
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  Speaker 1: if need be, will give quick account of it. Thus
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  Speaker 1: reason they on their cloudy ida hidden from men, men
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  Speaker 1: also hidden from them. Good is grape shot miss sears
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  Speaker 1: on one condition that the shooter also were made of metal,
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  Speaker 1: But unfortunately he is made of flesh. Under his buffs
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  Speaker 1: and bandoliers. Your hired shooter has instincts, feelings, even a
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  Speaker 1: kind of thought. It is his kindred bone, of his bone,
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  Speaker 1: this same canai that shall be whiffed. He has brothers
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  Speaker 1: in it, a father and mother, living on meal husks
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  Speaker 1: and boiled grass. His very doxy, not yet dead in
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  Speaker 1: the spittle, drives him into military hatred, declares that if
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  Speaker 1: he shed patriot blood, he shall be a curse at
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  Speaker 1: among men. The soldier who has seen his pay stolen
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  Speaker 1: by rapacious fulans, his blood wasted by subees's pompadours, and
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  Speaker 1: the gates of promotion shut inexorably on him, if he
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  Speaker 1: were not born noble, is himself not without griefs against you.
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  Speaker 1: Your cause is not the soldier's cause, but as would
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  Speaker 1: seem your own only, and no other gods nor man's.
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  Speaker 1: For example, the world may have heard how at Bethun
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  Speaker 1: lately when there rose some riot about grains, of which
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  Speaker 1: sort there are so many, and the soldiers stood drawn out,
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  Speaker 1: and the word fire was given. Not a trigger stirred.
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  Speaker 1: Only the butts of all muskets rattled angrily against the ground,
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  Speaker 1: and the soldiers stood glooming with a mixed expression of countenance,
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  Speaker 1: till clutched each under the arm of a patriot householder.
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  Speaker 1: They were all hurried off in this manner to be
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  Speaker 1: treated and caressed, and have their pay increased by some inscription.
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  Speaker 1: Neither have the Guard Franseilles, the best regiment of the line,
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  Speaker 1: shown any promptitude for street firing. Lately they returned grumbling
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  Speaker 1: from ravellance, and have not burnt a single cartridge since Nay,
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  Speaker 1: as we saw, not even when bid. A dangerous humor
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  Speaker 1: dwells in these guards. Notable men too in their way.
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  Speaker 1: Vladi the Pythegorean, was at one time an officer of Theirs, nay,
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  Speaker 1: in the ranks under the three cornered felt and cockade.
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  Speaker 1: What hard heads may there not be, and reflections going
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  Speaker 1: on unknown to the public. One head of the hardest
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  Speaker 1: we do now discern there on the shoulders of a
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  Speaker 1: certain sergeant Hosh Lazarre Hosh, that is the name of him.
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  Speaker 1: He used to be about the Versailles royal stables, nephew
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  Speaker 1: of a poor herb woman, a handy lad exceedingly addicted
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  Speaker 1: to reading. He is now Sergeant Hosh and can rise
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  Speaker 1: no farther. He lays out his pay in rush lights
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  Speaker 1: and cheap editions of books. On the whole the best
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  Speaker 1: seems to be consign these guard Fronseie to their barracks.
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  Speaker 1: So besson Val thinks and orders consigned to their barracks.
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  Speaker 1: The guard Fronseie do but form a secret association, an
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  Speaker 1: engagement not to act against the National Assembly. Debauched by Vladi,
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  Speaker 1: the Pythagorean, debauched by money and women, cry besson Val,
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  Speaker 1: and innumerable others, debauched by what you will, or in
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  Speaker 1: need of no debauching, behold them, long files of them,
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  Speaker 1: their consignment broken, arrive headed by their sergeants on the
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  Speaker 1: twenty sixth day of June at the Palais Royale, welcomed
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  Speaker 1: with vivats, with presents and a pledge of patriot liquor,
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  Speaker 1: embracing and embraced, declaring in words that the cause of
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  Speaker 1: France is their cause. Next day and the following day
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  Speaker 1: the like. What is singular too, except this patriot humor
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  Speaker 1: and breaking of their consignment they behave otherwise with the
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  Speaker 1: most rigorous accuracy, they are growing questionable. These guards, eleven
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  Speaker 1: ring leaders of them are put in the abbey prison.
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  Speaker 1: It boots not in the least. The imprisoned eleven have
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  Speaker 1: only by the hand of an individual to drop towards
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  Speaker 1: nightfall a line in the Cafe du Foi, where patriotism
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  Speaker 1: harangue'es loudest on its table. Two hundred young persons, soon
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  Speaker 1: waxing to four thousand, with fit crowbars, rolled towards the abbey,
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  Speaker 1: smite asunder the needful doors and bear out their eleven
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  Speaker 1: with other military victims to supper in the Palais Royal garden,
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  Speaker 1: to board and lodging in camp beds in the Tiatra
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  Speaker 1: de Variete other national pritanium as yet not being in readiness.
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  Speaker 1: Most deliberate, nay so punctual, were the young persons that,
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  Speaker 1: finding one military victim to have been imprisoned for real
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  Speaker 1: civil crime, they returned him to his cell with protest
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  Speaker 1: why new military force was not called out? New military
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  Speaker 1: force was called out. New military force did arrive full
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  Speaker 1: gallop with drawn saber, but the people gently laid hold
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  Speaker 1: of their bridles. The dragoons, sheathed their swords, lifted their
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  Speaker 1: caps by way of salute, and sat like mere statues
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  Speaker 1: of dragoons, except indeed, that a drop of liquor being
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  Speaker 1: brought them. They drank to the King and nation with
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  Speaker 1: the greatest cordiality, and now ask in return why messeeurs
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  Speaker 1: and Broadli the great god of war, on seeing these things,
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  Speaker 1: did not pause and take some other course, any other
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  Speaker 1: course unhappily, as we said, they could see nothing pride
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  Speaker 1: which goes before a fall. Wrath, if not reasonable yet pardonable,
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  Speaker 1: most natural had hardened their hearts and heated their heads.
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  Speaker 1: So with imbecility and violence, ill matched pair, they rushed
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  Speaker 1: to seek their hour. All regiments are not guard fronseie
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  Speaker 1: or debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean. Let fresh underbauched regiments
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  Speaker 1: come up. Let royal a lament salat, Samads, Swiss chateau
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  Speaker 1: vieux come up, which can fight, but can hardly speak,
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  Speaker 1: except in German gutturals. Let soldiers march and highways thunder
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  Speaker 1: with artillery wagons. Majesty has a new royal session to
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  Speaker 1: hold and miracles to work. There the whiff of grape
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  Speaker 1: shot can if needful, become a blast and tempest, in
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  Speaker 1: which circumstances before the red hot balls begin raining, may
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  Speaker 1: not one hundred and twenty Paris electors, though their cair
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  Speaker 1: as long since finished, see good to meet again daily
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  Speaker 1: as an electoral club. They meet first in a tavern,
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  Speaker 1: where the largest wedding party cheerfully gives place to them.
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  Speaker 1: But latterly they meet in the Hotel de Villa in
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  Speaker 1: the town hall itself. Flessell, Provost of Merchants, with his
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  Speaker 1: four chivens scabonds assessors, could not prevent it. Such was
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  Speaker 1: the force of public opinion. He, with his yeshevins, and
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  Speaker 1: the six and twenty town councilors, all appointed from above,
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  Speaker 1: may well sit silent there in their long gowns, and
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  Speaker 1: consider with awed eye, what prelude this is of convulsion
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  Speaker 1: coming from below, and how themselves shall fare in that
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  Speaker 1: end of Book five, Chapter three,