on the King's left, said to him with his strong country accent-"Sire, don't be afraid-we are good people; but we won't submit to be betrayed any longer. Be a good citizen, Sire, and don't forget to expel the Calotins [clergy] from the palace. Don't forget." It was a fit time, forsooth, to make a memorandum to that effect. The King, however, replied with good humour. He now entered the Assembly-he first-I next; there was a crowd in the corridor which prevented the Queen and her son, from whom she would not be separated, from following the King. I entered the hall [la salle, the place of sitting of the Assembly], and asked permission to introduce, for a moment, the national guards, (the greatest part of whom were, in fact, the guards of the Assembly,) who stopped up the passage, and were prevented by the crowd from retreating, so as to make way. At this proposal, a strong expression of displeasure burst from that part of the Assembly called the Mountain. I understood that they supposed that there was a conspiracy against the Assembly, and that it was with some criminal design that I proposed to introduce the King's guard. I observed that M. Thuriot and M. Cambon were among the most violent. They talked of impeaching me. M. Cambon exclaimed, addressing me personally, that "he held me responsible for any attempt which should be made against the national representatives." Instead of answering, I made half a dozen national guards, without arms, advance to clear the passage, and at that moment a grenadier, with the prince royal in his arms, entered the hall, and placed the child on the table of the secretaries, which produced applauses; the Queen, and the rest of the family, advanced to the table; the King, the royal family, and the ministers, now placed themselves in the seats reserved for the ministry. "The King addressed the Assembly:-"I am come hither to prevent (éviter) a great crime; and I think I can be nowhere more secure than, gentlemen, in the midst of you." The President replied, "You may reckon, Sir, on the firmness of the National Assembly; the members have sworn to die in defence of the rights of the people and the constituted authorities.'-p. 374. The frequent oaths of fidelity to the constitution and constituted authorities had received a striking and general confirmation so recently as the 3rd July, when the Assembly, in a burst of unanimous enthusiasm, took an oath of abjuration and execration against a REPUBLIC. Within five weeks that same Assembly swore, with like magnanimity and enthusiasm, eternal fidelity to the republic! Such are popular assemblies! 'The King now took his seat next the President. A member observes that the constitution forbids deliberation in the presence of the King. The box of the logographes [reporters] is suggested as a situation for the royal family, and they are placed there. I then appeared at the bar, where my colleagues of the department had remained ever since the King's arrival, and I made to the As sembly, sembly, in their name, the following report,-if, indeed, words uttered in such agitation and fatigue as I was suffering under can be called a report,'-p. 374. · Here follows a long and interesting report of the preceding transactions, but as it is to be found in extenso in the Moniteur, and all the publications of the time, we do not lengthen our article by repeating it here. We shall only state, that it affords a clear and irresistible train of evidence, to show that the movement was not a mere attack on the palace, but on the constitution,—that it was encouraged by the principal authorities,-and that on the part of the King, his family, or his friends, it was utterly unprovoked. M. Ræderer proceeds to state, that, at the conclusion of his report, 'the President replied "The National Assembly has heard with the greatest interest the narrative you have given. It will take into consideration the petition you have presented, and invites you to the honours of the sitting."'-p. 378. Our readers will have observed that there was no 'petition' on this occasion; but these were words of course which the regulations had provided to be used by the President on all occasions-not foreseeing any address from the bar but a petition. A former President, having taken upon himself on some occasion, a few days before, to vary the form into something more appropriate to the circumstances, had been severely censured, which no doubt occasioned the adherence to the ceremonial in this unsuitable case. M. Roederer does not notice this incongruity, yet it is characteristic of the disorder, inconsistency, and cowardice of all the constituted authorities of the time, and of the miserable attention which was paid to forms, when everything substantial was disregarded, or if it offered any impediment to the revolutionists— overthrown. 'My colleagues and I now crossed the hall to the benches reserved for those invited to the sittings; but supposing that I should be seen there with an evil eye by those members who had talked of impeaching me, I was proceeding to the door of exit, when several voices from the Mountain recalled me, and insisted that I should remain during sitting. I then ascended the benches and sat down. At this moment a municipal officer and an adjutant of the National Guard appeared at the bar; they announced that the assemblage in the Carousel had made their way into the court of the palace, and planted and pointed their cannon against the building, and seemed disposed to take it by force. The Assembly immediately deputed twenty members to harangue the crowd, and to employ all modes of persuasion to restore order and to insure the safety of persons and properties. Twelve other members were also sent to the Commune to confer with it upon the means of maintaining order. Up to that moment every thing was indicative in the Assembly of the most constitutional dispositions, and these would certainly certainly have continued but for the events which suddenly and unexpectedly occurred.'-p. 378. This seems to us, like most of M. Ræderer's obiter dicta,' entirely erroneous, and founded only on his own narrow views and partialities. He and his friends might think it constitutional to intimidate the king to re-accepting a Girondine ministry; but it seems a strange moment to insist on the constitutional spirit of the Assembly, when it had just decided to oppose a mob avowedly in arms to overthrow the constitution, by harangues and persuasion only, and when it-the supreme legislature-sent a deputation to the rebel Commune of Paris, which had, during the night, expelled the lawful magistrates, and not only usurped their power, but turned it to the vehement support of the insurrection. M. Roederer may have been in a fool's paradise, dreaming about the constitution; but from the moment that he had dragged the King from his palace, to be shut up in the reporters' box at the Assembly, it was either idiotcy or irony to talk of the constitution.' 'Cannon were now heard. The twenty deputies returned, declaring that the people would not allow them to proceed to the palace, for fear, they said, of exposing them to the fire of the assassins. The sound of the cannon now redoubled-fearful cries filled the gardens of the Tuileries. An officer of the National Guard ran in, exclaiming, "We are overpowered." The galleries, which saw by the windows into the garden, cried, "There are the Swiss." Some.firing of musketry was now heard along the Terrace des Feuillans. Petitioners now crowded to the bar, asserting that the Swiss had fired on the citizens, after having inveigled them to approach. They demanded the déchéance of the king-his trial-his DEATH. Their fury was extreme." We demand the déchéance," said one body of petitioners-" that is, we confine ourselves to requiring the déchéance-but have the courage to swear that you will save the state.” “ We swear it," cried the Assembly, and from that moment was neither free itself, nor master of the fate of the king. 'Here ended the fifty days-the chronicle of which I had undertaken to write.'-p. 379. We have given the foregoing chapter of M. Roederer's 'Chronicle' at full length, and we have given no more, because it relates to the only portion of the events of the fifty days in which he was individually implicated, and of which he is now probably the sole surviving witness. Those of our readers who have the history of the revolution present to their memories will have seen that M. Roederer adds nothing to our previous knowledge of the general features of the Tenth of August. It might naturally be expected, that the unjust prepossessions with which he originally entered the palace-the insincerity, or at least the inconsistency, of the part he had to play and his subsequent connexion with, and obligations obligations to the victorious party-would have biassed his mind and his pen against the royal family; but such was their admirable and irreproachable conduct, and such, we willingly add, is the candour of M. Roederer, that there are very few expressions of which even a royalist would complain, and scarcely a statement, except as to his own conduct, which requires correction. On other points M. Roederer's offences are not of commission, but of omission-he is erroneous, not in fact, but in feeling he tells, perhaps, nothing but the truth, but he does not tell all the truth-he states minutely enough whatever he thinks favourable to his own case, but he takes little notice of a variety of other persons and circumstances which influenced, though not in so great a degree as M. Roederer, the events of that night; and the way in which his anti-royalist bias most strongly shows itself is in the dry, cool, and almost sneering spirit in which he saw and records scenes of such pathetic heroism as would have touched the heart and softened the style of any one but a doctrinaire. It is, however, fair to recollect, that M. Roederer professes to write only a chronicle, and a chronicle, moreover, limited to his own share of the transactions, and with a view to the defence of his own individual character. This in strictness may be a sufficient excuse, but it is a dry hard line, to which no man of feeling would have adhered—and we will even say, that his own conduct cannot be fairly estimated, without a fuller exhibition of the emotions and sentiments-the fears-the hopes-the courage-the weaknessby which he was surrounded, and which ought to have had their respective influences on his conduct. The truth we are convinced is, that he takes little notice of such circumstances, because he knew that they had nothing to do with his determination. That had been already taken in the councils of the Palais Royal or the Gironde, and Roederer's mission was, we have no doubt, to drag the King to the Assembly'-by advice-by persuasion-by intimidation-any how. Without taking upon ourselves to censure too decidedly this policy, which had at least the momentary merit of removing the King from the scene of the conflict, we may be allowed to express our distaste of the mean and fraudulent spirit in which it was conceived and executed. As to the prudence of a different course and the probabilities of the success of resistance, they can now be but matters of argument and opinion; but as we live in times in which similar questions have been and may again be brought to practical experiment, it may not be useless shortly to consider the subject. It suited M. Roederer's policy to think, on the 10th August, that all resistance was impossible. We have seen, however, that on the 20th June, when he was a more impartial judge, he was of a quite VOL. IV. NO. CX. QA quite contrary opinion, and alleged his own experience in the case of Metz, where 600 men, without the shelter and advantage which the Tuileries would have afforded its defenders, repelled 6000 assailants. In the next place, it is admitted on all hands that the very project of the insurrection was founded upon, and its execution confided to, the battalion of Marseillais, who did not exceed 800. It is certain, too, that, whether from pusillanimity or from better feelings, the Parisians could not have been brought to assault, except in the train of the Marseillais. Equally certain it is, that when, after the retreat of the King, the Marseillais and their followers had advanced into the courts,-possessed themselves of the guns,-occupied the very vestibule of the palace, and had there murdered five of the Swiss on the staircase-when, we say, under all these disadvantages, the Swiss were driven, in the extremities of self-defence, to retort hostilities and to attack the assailants, the Marseillais and their supporters were utterly defeated. This is undeniable-and M. Roederer not only admits but corroborates it by the evidence of an eye-witness, whose authority on such a point as this is equally unquestionable and interesting Napoleon told me in the month of December, 1813, that he was present at the affair. "As an officer of artillery, Sire?" I asked. 66 "No," said he ; 66 as an amateur. The Swiss [who had in their first sally retaken the guns] served the artillery vigorously. In ten minutes the Marseillais were driven back as far as the Rue de l'Echelle, [that is, not only out of the courts of the palace, but out of the Carousel,] and only came back after the Swiss had retreated by the King's order!"'—p. 405. This is decisive as to the facts as they were; but how much more effective would the resistance of the Swiss have been if it had been made under the eyes of the King-by order of the magistrates at the command of their proper officers, and supported and aided by the National Guards, of whom two or three battalions were staunch to the last, and the greater part of whom would probably have been so if they had been encouraged by the constituted authorities? But, on the other hand, we do not deny to M. Roederer that there was an enormous risk—and that few men would have ventured to incur the fearful responsibility of exposing not merely the Royal Family but a great palace-full, not of soldiers, but of women and old men, servants, and other non-combatants-to the chances of an assault. Besides M. Roederer was not in any way responsible for the King's conduct-his Majesty's ministers were all present, and should not have allowed Roederer to interfere in what was really the business of his constitutional advisers. And after all it must be confessed that it would have required an in finitely |