On the morning of the 12th Vendémiaire, all the walls were covered with posters enjoining the national guards to report at their several Sections, which were threatened by the Terrorists, or, in other words, the Convention.
At nine o'clock in the morning the Section Le Peletier declared its sessions permanent, and proclaimed revolt by beating to arms in all the quarters of Paris. The Convention, exasperated, did likewise. Messengers were sent through the streets to reassure the citizens and to vouch for those to whom arms had been given. The air was filled with those strange thrills which betray the fevers of great cities, and which are the symptoms of great events. It was recognized that, so far as the Sections were concerned, the rebellion had gained such strength that it was no longer a question of reclaiming and convincing them, but of crushing them.
None of the days of the Revolution had yet dawned with such terrible presages—not the 14th of July, nor the 10th of August, nor even the 2d of September.
About eleven o'clock in the morning the Convention felt that the moment for action had arrived. Seeing that the Section Le Peletier was the headquarters, it was resolved to disarm it, and General Menou was ordered to march against it with a sufficient body of troops and artillery.
The general came from Sablons and crossed Paris. But when he reached the city he saw something that he had not suspected; namely, that he was opposing the nobility and the richer citizens, the class which represented public opinion. It was not the faubourgs, as he had supposed,[Pg 287] which were to be swept with hot shell, it was the Place Vend?me, the Rue Saint-Honoré, the Boulevards, and the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
The man of the 1st Prairial hesitated on the 12th Vendémiaire. He went on, however, but so reluctantly that the Convention was obliged to send Representative Laporte to urge him on. All Paris was watching this great duel. Unfortunately the Section Le Peletier had for a president the man whom we already know from his interviews with the president of the Convention and the Chouan general; he was as rapid in his decisions as Menou was feeble and hesitating.
Therefore it was already eight o'clock in the evening when General Verdières received orders from General Menou to take sixty grenadiers of the Convention, one hundred of the battalion of the Oise, and twenty horsemen, to form a column on the left side of the Rue des Filles-de-Saint-Thomas, and there to await orders.
Scarcely, however, had he entered the Rue Vivienne than Morgan appeared at the door of the Convent of the Daughters of Saint-Thomas, where the Section Le Peletier was in session, and ordered out a hundred of the Sectional party, commanding them to shoulder arms. Morgan's grenadiers obeyed without hesitation. Verdières gave the same order to his troops, but murmurs of dissent were heard.
"Friends," cried Morgan, "we shall not fire first, but when the fighting has once begun you need expect no quarter from us. If the Convention wants war it shall have it."
Verdières's grenadiers wished to reply, but the general called out: "Silence in the ranks!"
He was obeyed. Then he ordered the cavalry to draw their sabres and the infantry to ground arms. In the meantime the centre column arrived by way of the Rue Vivienne, and the right by the Rue N?tre-Dame-des-Victoires.
The entire assembly had been converted into an armed force; a thousand men issued from the convent and formed[Pg 288] in the portico. Morgan, sword in hand, placed himself a few steps in advance of the rest.
"Citizens," he said, addressing the Sectionists under his orders, "you are for the most part married men and fathers of families; I am, therefore, responsible for more lives than yours; as much as I should like to return death for death to these human tigers who have guillotined my father and shot my brother, I command you, in the names of your wives and children, not to fire first. But if our enemies fire a single shot—as you see, I am ten feet in front of you—the first who fires from their ranks perishes by my hand."
These words were uttered amid the most profound silence; for before speaking Morgan had raised his sword to impose silence, and neither his own men nor the patriots had lost a syllable of what he said.
Nothing could have been easier than to have replied to these words with a triple volley, the first from the right, the second from the left, and the third from the Rue Vivienne, in which case this would have amounted merely to pure bravado. Exposed like a target to the bullets, Morgan would necessarily have fallen.
The astonishment was great when, instead of the expected volley, Laporte, after consulting with General Menou, advanced toward Morgan, and the general ordered his men to ground arms. The order was promptly obeyed.
But the astonishment increased, when, after exchanging a few words with Laporte, Morgan said: "I am here only to fight, and because I thought there was to be fighting. When it comes to compliments and concessions, the affair passes into the vice-president's hands, and I will retire."
And returning his sword into the scabbard, he withdrew into the crowd, where he was soon lost. The vice-president advanced in his stead. After a conference, which lasted about ten minutes, a portion of the Sectional troops marched off, turning a corner of the convent to regain the Rue Montmartre, and the Republican troops retired to the Palais Royal.
[Pg 289]
But scarcely had the troops of the Convention disappeared before the Sectional troops, led by Morgan, reappeared, crying with one accord: "Down with the Two-thirds! Down with the Convention!"
This cry, starting at the convent of the Daughters of Saint-Thomas, spread like wild-fire all over Paris. Two or three churches, which had retained their bells, began to sound the tocsin. This sinister sound, which had not been heard for more than four years, produced an effect more terrible than the booming of cannon. It was the coming of a religious and political reaction, wafted as if upon the wings of the wind.
It was eleven o'clock at night when the unwelcome sound, together with word of Menou's advance and its result, reached the hall where the Convention was in session. All the deputies swarmed into the room, questioning each other, and unable to believe that the positive command to surround and disarm the Section Le Peletier had been disobeyed, and converted into a friendly interview at the end of which both parties had gone their ways.
But when tidings came that the party of the Section, instead of dispersing, had retraced their steps, and, from their convent as from a fortress, defied and insulted the Convention, Chénier sprang to the tribune.
Imbittered by the cruel accusation, which followed him as long as he lived, and even beyond the grave, that he had allowed his brother André to be executed through jealousy, Marie-Joseph Chénier always advocated the harshest and most expeditious measures.
"Citizens!" he cried, "I cannot believe what we have just been told. A retreat before the enemy is a misfortune, but retreat before rebels is treason. Before I descend from this tribune I want to know whether the will of the majority of the French people is to be respected, or whether we are to bow before the authority of the Sections—we, the will of the nation. I demand that the government be called to account before the Assembly for what has taken place in Paris."
[Pg 290]
Shouts of approbation followed this energetic appeal, and Chénier's motion was unanimously agreed to.