"Days of Glory" PDF, Chapter 6, 1789
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Summary
This chapter details a firsthand account by a participant of the events surrounding the French Revolution in 1789, emphasizing the political discussions, demonstrations, and unrest occurring throughout the period and daily lives within the streets of Paris. The document meticulously notes the widespread rumors and anxieties prevalent during this tumultuous era.
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6 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 Days of Glory By the spring of 1789, Adrien Colson, then 62 years of age, was entirely swe...
6 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 Days of Glory By the spring of 1789, Adrien Colson, then 62 years of age, was entirely swept up in the events transpiring in Versailles and Paris. Where once the news of the day had been confined to one or two paragraphs at the end of his business correspondence, he began devoting ever more space, sometimes his entire four-to six-page letter, to the political debates, demonstrations, and violence in and around the capital. A number of these letters read like veri- table histories, as he sorted through the sequence of events, day by day and sometimes hour by hour, and the emotions those events generated both in his own mind and among the people living on the Rue des Arcis.1 Throughout it all, Colson had to grapple with the problem of re- liable information. Some of the most important developments were announced by royal heralds, loudly proclaiming decrees on the street corner below his apartment or affixing posters to a nearby wall.2 And from the beginning of July 1789, as all censorship on periodicals effectively collapsed, there would be an extraordinary proliferation of newspapers, with dozens of publications appearing by the end of the summer. It soon became clear, however, that every journalist had his or her own point of view and that some entirely mangled and misrepresented events. Such distortions were only further compounded by the newspaper hawkers who surged up the Rue des Arcis every morning and evening, shouting out “headlines” that were often conceived more to sell their wares than to describe accurately the contents of the papers.3 Invariably Colson had to rely heavily on the rumors swirling through the neighborhood, rumors that he always tried critically 80 The Glory and the Sorrow to evaluate but that he could never entirely dismiss. Such rumors might be specifically attributed to a “young woman” or a “valet Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 de chambre” or a passing soldier. Others were picked up from the nearby Palais Royal, where he continued to sit with a drink and chat with people, some of them claiming just to have returned from Versailles or to have learned the news from an absolutely reliable source. On other occasions he fell back on stories passed along by fellow parishioners before or after mass in Saint-Jacques-de-la- Boucherie. Frequently the information he confided to Lemaigre was described only as “hear-say” or “from what I’ve been told,” stories arriving on the grapevine to his central quarter in Paris, told and retold, presented and transformed on the street by a myriad of neighbors and individual passers-by as they were conveyed from one to another.4 In any case, one must constantly keep in mind that Colson and his neighbors had no foreknowledge of what was happening, of where things were leading, or of what it all meant. One must also remember that however they might glory in the events transpiring that summer, Colson and the other citizens living in central Paris were altogether unprepared for them. To some extent, it was this very suddenness, the unanticipated sweep of the transformations of the kingdom that engendered such intense emotions, emotions both “positive” and “negative.” There would be a continual oscilla- tion between hope and fear, between joy and anxiety from letter to letter, and sometimes within the same letter. As Colson would de- scribe his feelings somewhat later, “this Revolution, as stunning as it has been unexpected, both astonishes me and enormously moves me.” And the following year: “What a century’s worth of amazing events of all kind have come about in a single year!”5 At the end of April, as everyone waited for the meeting of the Estates General to convene, and as the price of bread continued to rise, an explosion of violence broke out in one of the eastern districts of Paris. Colson had feared the possibility of just such an outbreak since the terrible hailstorms the previous summer had Days of Glory 81 destroyed a portion of the wheat crop, but he had come to hope and believe that the lower classes would be patient and await the actions Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 of the anticipated assembly in Versailles. But words spoken by one of the Paris electors, the industrialist Jean-Baptiste Réveillon, misinterpreted by the population and rumored to imply that cur- rent bread prices were perfectly reasonable, led to a violent con- frontation between some elements of the people and royal troops stationed in the city. Colson watched as an effigy of Réveillon was burned in the Place de Grève a few blocks from his apart- ment. In the meantime, from the rumors he heard, the people of the neighborhood of Saint-Antoine where the industrialist lived were attempting to find and kill the man himself and destroy all his possessions. Episodes of looting and extortion of well-dressed cit- izens who happened into the area were also said to be taking place. Whatever the sympathy that Colson had long felt for the plight of the lower classes, he would show nothing but scorn in the present case for the “rabble” and “riffraff ” involved, especially after they killed several of the soldiers sent in to calm the riot. He was relieved that no one from his own street had taken part and he applauded the violent repression and execution of some of the suspected leaders. Such a reaction was a mark of an increasingly complex atti- tude toward the lower classes that would characterize his opinions throughout the Revolution.6 In the first days of May 1789, however, all eyes turned toward Versailles, where the elected representatives of the three “estates” of the land—the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners of the “Third Estate”—were arriving from throughout the kingdom. Like the great majority of Parisians, Colson was unable to make the trek out to Versailles—a half-day’s walk from the city center—to witness the meetings directly. His professional preoccupations would also have made this difficult. But he and his neighbors followed the opening ceremonies as well as they could through the reports of heralds and with what they could glean from the still heavily censored newspapers. He described to Lemaigre the formal welcoming 82 The Glory and the Sorrow ceremony for the deputies who had arrived by May 2 and who were presented, one by one, to Louis XVI in his palace. And everyone, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 as he described it, was talking about the magnificent procession of the representatives two days later, with each “estate” dressed in its designated costumes, holding candles and marching through the streets of the royal capital to the church of Saint-Louis. Here they attended an opening mass and a sermon by the bishop of Nancy. The following day, May 5, 1789, marked the official opening of the Estates General, with a short speech read by the king and a much longer three-hour oration delivered by the minister Necker—and by another official after Necker’s voice gave out. Each of the three es- tates was then instructed to retire to a separate hall for the verifica- tion of credentials and, presumably, to wait for further instructions from the monarch.7 But as with the Assembly of Notables two years earlier, it was by no means simple for the Parisians to follow all that was happening during the early sessions in Versailles. In general, Colson and those he encountered were well aware of the confrontation over the issue of voting between the nobles of the second estate allied with the noble bishops of the first estates, on the one hand, and the Third Estate, on the other. And they were increasingly impatient with the nobles’ “stubborn refusal”—as he put it—to meet with the commoners, even to verify the deputies’ credentials. By June more new words and phrases were entering Colson’s vocabulary—words never before used in his letters to Lemaigre and picked up perhaps from the brochures he had read and the discussions he overheard in the Palais Royal. He strongly denounced the “despotism” and “op- pression” by the nobility and their refusal to consider the “welfare of the nation” that could only be achieved through the equal suf- frage of all members of all three estates.8 Colson wrote at length when the Third Estate voted on June 14 to go it alone if necessary, with or without the deputies of the other two estates, “as representative of the entire nation.”9 Three days later he described with growing excitement how the Third had Days of Glory 83 “formed itself into a National Assembly,” henceforth to have con- trol over all taxation. He conveyed the moment, as he heard it re- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 ported, when all the deputies of the new Assembly rose and swore a solemn oath “to God, to the fatherland, and to the king” to fulfill the duties with which they had been entrusted, an oath followed by “numerous shouts of ‘long live the King’ and a flow of tears of joy.” Colson underlined in his letter the words “to God.” For the strongly devout lawyer, there could be no doubt that God Himself was supporting the creation of a new nation.10 Curiously, however, he never mentioned the Assembly’s second oath never to disband until a Constitution had been written, the oath sworn three days later in a nearby tennis court that has usually been judged far more important by historians and that Colson would only come to view as iconic many months later. When he stopped by the Palais Royal on June 22, Colson found a spirit of optimism among virtually all those he encountered, convinced as they were “that there was no longer any division be- tween the three estates.” Everyone was hopeful that the three estates would now join together to reform the nation, just as they were portrayed in the popular engravings in wide circulation at the time of the clergy, the nobles, and the commoners all linked together arm in arm. “This may in fact be somewhat exaggerated,” he con- tinued, “but at least the divisions are certainly much diminished.”11 People were thus all the more shocked and disillusioned on June 23 when the king came to the meeting hall and in a formal dec- laration “rejected and annulled everything the National Assembly had done” and essentially embraced the position of the nobles. Thereafter, as Louis made clear, he alone would determine, if neces- sary, “the welfare of France.” Colson described in detail the stories he heard of how the Third Estate deputies had been humiliated, compelled to wait several hours in a cramped room—with some of them forced outside into the rain—while the representatives of the clergy and the nobility were comfortably seated in the hall for the “royal session” of that day.12 84 The Glory and the Sorrow Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 Figure 6.1 The Tennis Court Oath, June 20, 1789, in Versailles. Drawn a year after the event by the great Revolutionary artist, Jacques-Louis David, this imaginative recreation memorializes the determination of the deputies of the nascent National Assembly to draw up a constitution, no matter what opposition they might encounter. The president of the Assembly, Bailly, leads the oath, standing on a table; Abbé Sieyès sits writing at a desk; Robespierre is a bit farther to the right with both hands on his breast. The scene conveys the enormous passion and enthusiasm and sentiments of fraternity arising during the summer of 1789. Similar patriotic oaths were sworn on several occasions in Colson’s neighborhood. Bibliothèque nationale de France. It seemed that they had all been living in a dream, and that they must squarely face reality. Up until then they had assumed it was a group of conservative nobles who formed the principal force of opposition, that the king and much of the lower clergy of parish priests were the allies of the Third Estate, and that the “prejudice” of the nobility might soon be overcome. In sharing this opinion, Colson may well have been thinking of the liberal position of the two young nobles who employed him. The marquis had always Days of Glory 85 made it clear, he wrote, “that he only desires, he desires above all else the welfare of the nation, and that he is of the opinion that this Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 welfare can only be achieved through the perfect equilibrium of power and the equality of suffrage between the Third Estate and the two other estates.”13 But now Colson was outraged by the king’s actions. Never pre- viously in his long correspondence had he pronounced such bitter remarks against Louis XVI. The king had committed “a pure act of despotism,” a veritable lit de justice, as when he had forced his will on the Parlement under the Old Regime.14 To be sure, a few days later, on June 28, it seemed as though the king had reversed himself yet again, when he formally commanded the three orders to sit together in a single hall. At this point, from what Colson had heard, “the popula- tion of Versailles, overcome with joy from so happy an event, rushed to the Château to shout out its cheers of ‘Long live the King!’ ” Several days of public celebrations followed in Versailles and in Paris.15 Yet despite these initial moments of joy, for Colson and for the people on the Rue des Arcis, the spell had been broken, and fears and suspicions began to circulate profusely. The lawyer was hopeful that the king was well intentioned, but he feared that Louis was too easily influenced by a small group of arch-conservative courtiers. If he had changed his position at the end of June, it was only fol- lowing the vociferous protests of the Versailles public, who had surrounded the royal residence and had “given full rein to their anger” late into the night.16 But could one really believe that the aristocratic nobles and the upper clergy of bishops and abbots who had dominated France from time immemorial would give up their power so easily and that they would not seek to retake con- trol of a weak and indecisive king? Could one really believe that these “aristocrats” would not seek revenge against the commoners? “It is well known,” he wrote in late July, “that a powerful party has long sought to persuade the king that the people of the kingdom are conspiring to make themselves entirely independent of his will and are even plotting against his life.”17 86 The Glory and the Sorrow Colson’s breathless accounts over the next two months described the anxiety in the city as everyone attempted to confront and react Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 to a series of harrowing crises during one of the most terrifying periods for the people of Paris in the entire Revolution. It was at the end of June, even as the three estates were supposed to be meeting and working together, that Colson first openly raised the fear of an “aristocratic plot.” In fact, anxiety over an imagined conspiracy of a variety of villains to raise bread prices and punish the people, the so-called famine pact, had been a recurring fear under the Old Regime among the common people. Yet such conspiracy beliefs had usually been scoffed at by the elites and it had never been re- ferred to by Colson in his correspondence. The sole usage of the word “conspiracy” before the Revolution occurred in accusations against an opponent in a case being defended in court by his two noble clients.18 However, the lawyer become convinced that dissident nobles were conspiring to spread rumors of a civil war about to begin and of an impending shortage of bread so that the people might starve. He described the appearance of mysterious posters affixed to the walls in his neighborhood predicting just such disasters. And with bread prices as high as they had been in the entire century, lines in front of the bakeries grew increasingly long, and one had to ar- rive ever earlier in the night in order to obtain a loaf. Moreover, the bread that was available seemed to be of very poor quality. There were even persistent rumors of foreign ingredients—sand or sawdust or broken glass—being added to the dough by myste- rious individuals. Colson complained that he could hardly eat such bread without suffering stomach cramps and diarrhea. Indeed, the flu-like symptoms that touched many inhabitants that summer were widely attributed to the contamination of the bread they were forced to consume.19 Citizens were heartened somewhat when many of the French soldiers sent to quell grain and political riots in the city began refusing to attack the crowds and throwing down their arms when Days of Glory 87 ordered by their officers to take aim at the people. Colson recounted his conversation with one of the king’s soldiers in the Palais Royal Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 who told him that his garrison had abandoned their barracks three days in a row, despite the efforts of their officer to win them over with money and extra wine. He also described an incident he had heard of a detachment of cavalry blocked at the Pont-Neuf by a group of citizens on foot who convinced the soldiers to dismount and share a glass with them. In fact, it was in characterizing these mutinies that Colson first used the word “revolution,” a term that he only gradually expanded over the coming weeks to describe all the events taking place.20 Indeed, it was in the summer of 1789 that the modern concept of “revolution,” as it would be used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—implying a rapid and funda- mental political and social transformation—would come into ge- neral usage. Tensions were raised further, however, by reports that soldiers, most of them German or Swiss mercenaries, had been pulled back from the French frontiers and were encircling both Paris and Versailles. From letter to letter, Colson’s estimations of the number of troops involved expanded from 6,000 to 40,000, to as many as 100,000. What was their purpose and would they soon invade the city?21 By the second week in July the entire population of Paris, both the popular masses and the middle-class leadership, was “ex- tremely agitated and feeling the need to act.” Colson continued to walk to the Palais Royal to hear the latest news and rumors. He watched as one noble accused of inappropriate language was uncer- emoniously tossed into the fountain at the center of the colonnade and as a suspicious clergyman was stripped of his breeches by the crowd and publicly spanked. Some of the crowds from the Palais Royal, he reported, had marched to a prison and forcibly liberated soldiers arrested for refusing to obey orders. Soon many aristocrats, including even the two liberal nobles that Colson worked for, began leaving the city for fear of the violence that might be directed against all nobles, regardless of their political positions. Others 88 The Glory and the Sorrow were said to be holed up in their apartments, never venturing out- side. Numerous judges from the Paris Parlement, most of them Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 nobles, were also choosing to remain out of sight, while most of the lawyers attached to that court seemed entirely wrapped up in the events. For all practical purposes, the law courts had ceased functioning, and the various suits being followed by Colson once again had to be placed on hold.22 By mid-July Colson was convinced that a veritable state of “an- archy” was sweeping across the city, leading to a rise in crime and a threat of “brigands” of dubious political positions attacking patriots in the streets.23 The situation became even more tense when Jacques Necker and the other liberal ministers with whom he was allied were abruptly dismissed by the king and replaced by a team of arch-conservatives. In the face of the growing chaos, the fear of a counterrevolution, and the perceived danger of an invasion by the mercenary army, the Electors of Paris, who had never ceased meeting after having chosen deputies to the Estates General, pushed aside the Old Regime municipal administration and took control of the city. On July 12 they issued a general call for volunteers to con- verge on the city hall and help create an emergency “citizen’s mi- litia,” soon to be described as the “national guard.” The “tocsin,” the particularly rapid tolling of the church bells that indicated danger, was sounded in parishes across the city. And Colson watched from his window as people from all over Paris marched toward the city hall to join up: law clerks from the principal court houses, students from the Sorbonne across the river, even parish priests placing themselves at the head of processions of their parishioners to an- swer the call of the Electors. Colson himself, despite his age, would soon join this improvised para-military force in his own district and pin to his coat a circular red and blue cocarde, the badge that had become the symbol of one’s patriotic commitment.24 The description of the next few weeks in Colson’s neighborhood and in Paris generally was at times almost as confused and scattered as the events themselves, and his letters were sometimes cut short, Days of Glory 89 as he explained to Lemaigre, by his responsibilities to his neigh- borhood militia. By mid-July the weather had become humid and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 oppressive, an atmosphere that could only help increase the ten- sion. As soon as the new militia had been formed, everyone began looking to equip themselves with muskets and powder. Arms shops and potential munitions depots were raided all over the city, in- cluding the Ecole militaire—the school for the military training of young nobles—and the Invalides military hospital. Then, in the af- ternoon of July 14, the crowds began to converge on the Bastille, the great medieval fortress that continued to serve, so it was believed, as a political prison. Looming over the popular eastern section of Saint-Antoine, it supposedly contained large quantities of muskets and ammunition—as well as many prisoners held without trial.25 Although Colson rarely ventured in his daily life to the far eastern district where the Bastille stood—well over a kilometer from his residence—he could well remember it from his first arrival in Paris almost forty years earlier, rising as it did over the approaches to the city, with its eight great towers and eighty-foot walls. Only a handful of residents from Colson’s neighborhood and no one, as far as we know, from the Rue des Arcis, was actually present for the attack on the fortress. Only eight individuals from the two districts near the lawyer’s apartment would be listed in the official accounts of the over 600 “victors of the Bastille.”26 But word spread rapidly through the neighborhood, describing both accurately and inaccu- rately the events of that extraordinary day. Colson received most of his information from “a young individual” he met who claimed to have taken part. In any case, he and his neighbors were outraged by the stories they heard of the “perfidiousness” and “treachery” of those defending the Bastille: the soldiers on the parapets who were said to have displayed their bare behinds to the crowds as a symbol of their scorn; the commander’s decision to open fire on the people after luring them into an outer courtyard; the rather incredible but widely believed story that the Bastille was linked by an under- ground tunnel to the château of Vincennes—some five kilometers 90 The Glory and the Sorrow away—and through which 20,000 mercenaries were said to be preparing to pour into the city.27 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 For Colson it was impressive indeed that the besiegers, most of whom had never carried arms in their lives, were able to capture a fortress that everyone believed to be impregnable and that even the great king Henry IV, it was said, had been unable to take by force in the sixteenth century. In the end, the commander of the Bastille capitulated under the pressure of local citizens and after a small contingent of professional French soldiers, sympathizing with the attackers, joined in the fray. Following an hour of random shooting by the crowds, the soldiers were able to drag up a cannon at great risk and place it ready to fire directly in front of the second draw- bridge. But in the firefight that preceded the surrender, almost a hundred Parisians lost their lives, several of them shot dead when they accompanied two municipal delegations holding white flags, attempting to negotiate.28 “It is unbelievable,” Colson wrote shortly afterward, “with what boldness and courage a crowd of individuals, without rank, without orders, moving in uncoordinated groups, and who never in their lives had witnessed a siege, went forward to confront such a danger.”29 Given the widely believed stories of treachery, “this vile barbarism” of the commander and the soldiers in the Bastille, Colson seemed to show no remorse as he watched the crowds on the Place de Grève decapitate the commander of the fortress and several other defenders and place their heads on pikes to be paraded through the streets. His energetic descriptions of such popular lynchings in 1789 contrasted sharply with his gen- erally disapproving accounts of public executions under the Old Regime.30 But the population’s anxiety was scarcely allayed by the fall of the Bastille. Even if the people of Paris were beginning to accumulate arms and powder, would they really be able to resist the concerted attack by professional soldiers that everyone feared? A veritable tsunami of rumors swept through Colson’s neighborhood of the imminent dangers threatening the city, of the artillery said to be Days of Glory 91 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 Figure 6.2 The attack on the Bastille, July 14, 1789. Soldiers, national guardsmen, and common citizens have just broken into the great medieval fortress in eastern Paris and are streaming across the drawbridge. The Marquis de Launay, governor of the Bastille, was found hiding in one of the towers and would be dragged out and taken to the Place de Grève, where he would be executed and decapitated. Colson heard many accounts of the event, though he did not witness it himself. Bibliothèque nationale de France. positioned in the suburbs with cannons aimed toward the major avenues of Paris, and of troops supposedly poised to attack through Saint Martin’s gate and down toward the Rue des Arcis. It was also widely believed that once the soldiers broke into Versailles, they were set to crush the National Assembly and murder the deputies. The fear was perhaps all the greater for the citizens cramped into the narrow lanes and alleyways around Colson’s residence, who had enormous difficulty discerning what was happening elsewhere 92 The Glory and the Sorrow in the city or in the suburbs and when and how the enemy might strike. People overturned wagons at Saint-Martin’s gate to block the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 entrance of troops, they filled barrels with earth to help barricade the smaller streets, and women carried cobblestones in their aprons to the upper floors of buildings, ready to rain down on the soldiers they expected to arrive at any moment below their windows. Citizens were instructed to keep candles and lanterns burning in their windows at night, so that the militia could more easily pa- trol the streets. Some contingents of armed patriots scoured the passageways beneath the Bastille looking for enemy soldiers rumored to be hiding there, and others went off to scout the nearby countryside for foreign troops and “brigands.”31 Hopes were raised on July 15 when the king entered the newly created National Assembly in Versailles and seemed to accept its transformation from an Estates General, and when he traveled to Paris two days later to appear before the people on a balcony of the city hall. Colson was present that day on the Place de Grève in front of the city hall. He noted how the crowds were entirely sullen and silent when Louis first appeared in central Paris—a silence “that undoubtedly contributed to the deep sadness that we could all perceive on his face”—but how everyone cheered with abandon and cries of “long live the King!” after he had attached a tricolored cocarde to his coat and allowed the crowd to festoon the royal car- riage with many more of the small colorful badges. It was now, for the first time, that the lawyer used the phrase “the great Revolution” to indicate all of the extraordinary events that were taking place in Paris and in France.32 Yet the fall of the Bastille by no means brought an end to pop- ular violence in the city. Colson may well have witnessed the brutal torture and decapitation on July 22 before the city hall of two more Old Regime officials, the intendant of Paris and a conservative royal minister, captured as they attempted to flee. Once again he seemed to show complete sympathy for the lynching of the two men, widely rumored to have contributed to the grain shortages in Days of Glory 93 Paris.33 “Everyone accused them of having criminally used every means available to create a famine and of having taken part in the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 plots conspired against the nation and especially against Paris. Thus, the people hanged them [from a light post] four or five hours apart... and paraded their heads on the end of pikes.”34 Colson and his friends continued to be overwhelmed by “an end- less current of sinister rumors that crossed the neighborhood and sometimes contradicted one another.”35 It soon appeared that the violence and anarchy besetting Paris were spreading across the en- tire kingdom. Toward the end of July rumors began filtering in of bands of “brigands” north of the city, allegedly paid by aristocrats, Figure 6.3 Thousands of national guardsmen and common citizens, many at their windows, watch the lynching of the minister Foullon de Doué on July 22, 1789, on the Place de Grève across from the City Hall. Foullon was accused of a plot to create a grain shortage. After the lynching rope attached to a lamppost broke, he was beheaded instead. Colson, whose apartment was only a few blocks away, may well have been present in the crowd. Bibliothèque nationale de France. 94 The Glory and the Sorrow who were burning and pillaging their way through the countryside and cutting the grain crops before they were ripe, the episode that Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 came to be known as the “Great Fear.” Waves of panic spread in a chain reaction across hundreds of kilometers, even penetrating portions of Paris itself, with tales of brigands marching down the Champs-Elysées. At almost the same time, and in largely inde- pendent actions, peasants in certain regions of the country rose up in revolt and attacked the local nobility, sometimes burning chateaus, sometimes only demanding the destruction of the lords’ archives that justified their seigniorial rights.36 The Longaunays’ chateau in Normandy was not put to the torch, but the local peasants did go after the seigniorial records. When they were told that the lords’ papers had been moved to the Norman capital of Caen for safekeeping, they marched off to the city to re- trieve and destroy them.37 In Berry the crisis evolved rather differ- ently. The town of Levroux was severely touched by the Great Fear, with much of the citizenry initially fleeing into the woods and fields before the rumored arrival of the “brigands”—brigands whom they soon discovered never actually existed. When the people returned to their homes and regrouped, they quickly formed their own para- military force—like the national guard in Paris—to defend against future threats. But while the people in some regions of France turned against the lords and against the seigniorial system itself, here and in a great many other regions of the kingdom they looked to the lords for leadership. They asked the Marquis of Longaunay, in residence in his chateau at the time, to serve as commander of the newly created militia.38 Yet if the lord of Levroux was still regarded with respect by the population, the people concentrated their venom against Lemaigre, the nobles’ agent over the last several decades, the man who had actually been present to exact the rents and dues. In fact, Lemaigre had a long history of run-ins with the local peasantry over the col- lection of seigniorial dues, and on several occasions—notably during the period 1779 to 1781—Colson had offered his advice on Days of Glory 95 how best to handle the situation. He had passed along his sympathy for Lemaigre who was compelled to “face the hatred and plotting Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 of a malicious public.”39 Yet in the summer of 1789, the estate agent was so threatened that he had to be placed in preventive custody in the local prison to protect him from harm. He would be released only after the young Count of Longaunay bravely stepped forward and defended Lemaigre before the crowds. The episode was pro- foundly shocking for Colson. Although he thought he understood the rural common people, and had previously defended those arrested in Levroux for an earlier grain riot, this time he spilled out his fury against those who had threatened the life of his friend. They were “all like a pack of two-legged animals, devoid of any sense or reason, who growl and want only to devour.” He would never again feel quite the same tolerance and compassion he had once displayed for the violence of the country people. All one could hope to do now, as he described it sadly, was to “wait until their madness had passed and boiled away.”40 In Colson’s own neighborhood, the chaos and near anarchy only slowly subsided through the months of July and August. Excited by the very word “liberty” that was on everyone’s lips and with no real grasp of its limits, whole cohorts of citizens began organizing and claiming the freedom to “legislate” for themselves and de- termine their own destinies. Colson was stunned when appren- tice carpenters, tailors, and wigmakers, young notary clerks, and even contingents of servants from great houses banded together to demand higher pay and better working conditions. At the same time, deserters from the army, some of whom had adapted their own concept of liberty, were wandering the streets and sometimes threatening civilians. And almost everywhere outside Paris the peasantry had taken to trespassing on woods and forests owned by nobles in order to kill game. In Normandy, the young gamekeeper paid to protect the Longauyon’s woodlands would take his life in his hands when he attempted to halt the local population from their poaching.41 96 The Glory and the Sorrow In the midst of the uncertainty and anxiety, Colson’s parish priest of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, the abbé Nicolas Morel, called Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 for a special ceremony of Forty Hours of Devotion. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed continuously at the altar as Colson and many of his fellow parishioners, men and women, took turns in a vigil, praying day and night for the return of calm in the parish and in the city. Across the river on the Left Bank a series of processions were organized to the newly rebuilt church of Sainte-Géneviève—a structure that would soon be converted into a “Pantheon”—asking the patron saint of Paris to intercede for much the same pur- pose.42 By late August the situation in Paris seemed so dangerous that Lemaigre urged his friend to leave the city and take refuge with him and his family in Berry. But Colson responded that his responsibilities to his noble clients required him to remain. “I feel obliged to stay in Paris,” he wrote, “so I can continue to advise Monsieur the Marquis and Monsieur the Count of everything that takes place here.”43 Nevertheless, through all the turmoil and fear, the enthusiasm of Colson and his neighbors never diminished for the spectacular achievements of the early Revolution, achievements that no one would have imagined possible only a few years earlier. Indeed, the inextricable mixture of hope and fear, of joy and uncertainty seemed to be part and parcel of the times they were living through. It was, after all, impossible to forget the “tears of joy” that had been shed with the creation of the first National Assembly in French history, and “that glorious day” when a crowd of simple citizens had man- aged to break into the Bastille and seize the arms and powder they so desperately needed to defend themselves. And who could not but be overwhelmed by the great foundation decrees promulgated by the National Assembly that summer? In the celebrated night- time session of August 4, the deputies had largely abolished the seigniorial system and a whole range of oppressive institutions of the pre-Revolutionary monarchy. And toward the end of the month they had issued a Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, Days of Glory 97 built on the principle—as Colson put it—of the “natural liberty of all men,” a phrase that few in the neighborhood would previously Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 have had any concept of.44 Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, equality before the law, the right of resistance to oppression, the right of habeas corpus were among the most im- portant new liberties now to be guaranteed. Colson was quick to re- assure the noble family he worked for that the new laws were in no way intended to exclude them. Thus, even though the seigniorial courts, controlled by the marquis before the Revolution, were to be abolished, the change would actually be to his advantage. The ex- pense of paying judges and maintaining a local prison cost more than they were worth. He also underlined that, by the new laws, the payment of the seigniorial dues was supposed to be maintained until this “property” was reimbursed by the peasantry. Such a pro- cess, in his opinion (utterly incorrect as it would turn out) might easily take sixty to eighty years.45 Colson was also quick to recount the monetary sacrifices made by citizens faced with the continuing financial crisis of the na- tion. There was a great outpouring of national devotion, as people from all walks of life offered donations to the public treasury to allay the continuing budgetary crisis. He described the group of wealthy women who traveled to Versailles to offer their jewels for the coffers of the fatherland; the clergymen who handed over their sacred vessels; the merchants and legal clerks, wigmakers, even seamstresses and washerwomen who chipped in whatever they could. He was hopeful that soon “these examples of gener- osity would spread throughout the land.” “Indeed,” as he wrote to Lemaigre, “if such a transformation were really to take place, it would be as fortunate and of as great significance for the nation as all the reforms of the laws and the end of governmental abuse.” The triumph of “patriotic sentiments” over “egotism” would truly con- stitute a “great revolution,” amounting to nothing less than a ren- ovation of French culture.46 Thus, already in the summer of 1789 one could observe the origins of the strong popular sentiment of 98 The Glory and the Sorrow “fraternity,” that was to take its place in the celebrated Revolutionary triad, along with “liberty and equality.” Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 Perhaps above all, there was the enthusiasm experienced by Colson and his neighbors with the creation of the citizens’ mi- litia or “national guard,” as it soon came to be called. By August he would write that the militia “is taking shape more and more as a veritable military formation.” He stressed, however, that un- like the situation in the regular army, the guardsmen democrati- cally elected their officers. In early 1790 he watched as special contingents of elderly men wearing uniforms and hats in the style of Henry IV and of young boys—“these formidable defenders of the fatherland”—solemnly marched through the Palais Royal. The king and his young son, the Dauphin, were also said to be wearing such uniforms on ceremonial occasions. And the story was told of a couple who baptized a baby boy dressed as a national guardsman. In one extended letter, Colson described to Lemaigre in the greatest detail and with obvious pride the uniform he was having made for himself by his tailor to wear as he marched in formation with his neighbors in the district. He carefully enumerated the color and form of each portion of his coat and vest and collar, the breeches and hat, and the style of every button, buckle, and badge. He would even purchase a saber, which he would hardly have known how to use, but which he hung on his wall at the ready near his door. Indeed, the saber would still be there at the time of his death, a symbol of the days of glory in the early Revolution.47 Toward the middle of September the flags of the various national guard detachments, sewn together by local women, were formally blessed in all the parish churches. Such ceremonies culminated in a great service at the cathedral of Notre Dame. Units of guardsmen arrived from all over the city and the archbishop of Paris blessed the flags of each of the districts “with the greatest solemnity.” The lawyer, who seems to have been present in the cathedral that day, was overwhelmed by the majesty of the moment, an event he described as “a great spectacle, which in terms of the number of Days of Glory 99 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/39939/chapter/340215008 by Brock University user on 28 January 2025 Figure 6.4 Blessing of national guard flags in Notre Dame Cathedral, September 12, 1789. Contingents from the national guard units of each district of the city line up behind their flags to have them blessed by the archbishop of Paris. The Marquis de Lafayette, general of the Paris National Guard, is in the group at the center. Colson was probably present, standing at attention behind the flag of his district. Bibliothèque nationale de France. troops present, had never before been seen in Paris.” For the deeply pious Colson, this union of religion and Revolution was clearly central to the amazing transformations they were all experiencing. He could only hope that, once the fear and chaos had been over- come, feelings of generosity and fraternity might soon dominate in Paris and in France.48