CHAPTER FIVE: DOWN WITH THE OLD TERROR, UP WITH THE NEW, INTERLUDE
Paris smelled of excitement. Tension. Movement. Edward loved it. But not as much as this café’s smell of coffee. Truly, the greatest invention in the world, coffee. That, and alcohol. Edward observed the growing crowd from the safety of the large window beside his seat. He looked back to the rest of the patrons, hoping to find that sweet French girl that had smiled at him earlier; maybe he could treat her to some wine. He accidentally kicked over his bottle of wine at his feet as he turned. It was empty. Well, he might as well celebrate a successful desertion. He deserved it. No more battlefields for Edward. Of course, he
had been celebrating for close to a month now. He really needed to move on, Gascony sounds nice. Open fields, far from the war, a lot like Albany, really.
Edward remembered Albany. He and his family, Loyalists to the core, sleeping in the kitchen to make room for two of the King’s soldiers. His brother, rebellious little Sammy, who had always found some mischief to get in, sneaking into the upstairs and killing the soldiers in their sleep. Sammy’s brave eyes glassing over under the shadow of the gallows. Edward had joined the army later that year. He’d wanted to kill every last one of those rebel bastards that had filled Sammy’s head with such ideas. He had only meant to fight in the American Rebellion, and he did a damn fine job there, but then his family had moved to England, and then this Robespierre fellow started this mess in France, and then— Edward winced, gingerly touching his shoulder. Now he was here. He shook his head. At least the old wound had managed to keep him from being conscripted.
What was he doing? Wallowing around in old memories? He took a sip of coffee. Cold. Starting to feel the wine really go to his head, he decided to look back up toward the room behind him. Maybe he could find that girl and—
What was the barkeep
doing?
Gervaise— was that his name?— had, for some reason, decided it would be
acceptable to his customers if he stood on top on the bar. Well, Edward would show him what for. His father had run a tavern, and he wasn’t about to let this emaciated creature ruin the good name of the establishment in the minds of all these fine people. He reached into his coat and gripped the cold metal “grip” of his bayonet. It wasn’t meant to be used as a knife, but it was all he had from his army days. Edward imagined it: he would stand up from his seat, whip out the bayonet, and brandish it at the idiot on the bar before he sullied coffee’s reputation beyond repair, thus winning the affections of that wonderful girl and.... Edward’s jaw dropped. Was Gervaise
snatching the drinks from his patrons?
With a loud crash, the old, jowly barkeep threw one of the half-drunk glasses of alcohol to the ground, spewing the liquid across the small room, including onto Edward’s perfectly good beige jacket. The alcohol was green—absinthe, probably. The stuff was getting to be extremely popular, despite it basically being pure alcohol. The patrons sat still, shocked. Another crash. This time, it was wine. Another. Rum. Another. Wine again. Another. Coffee. People started to grumble, and Edward moved to stand up. Now was his chance. One more night here with a pretty girl, then he was off to Gascony, and from there… Spain, maybe?
But then, the café grew silent. And Edward, looking into Gervaise’s face, saw why. The man had an aura about him. There he stood on top of the bar, hands now empty of glasses. His wispy grey beard no longer seemed a sad complement to his hanging jowls, but rather a testament to age and wisdom. The old codger looked downright
regal.
He shed his coat jacket like a cape. Then, slowly, with shaking hands, he unbuttoned his undercoat, leaving only a simple collared white shirt. He stood before the small café of people. Then, he pulled from his pocket a shriveled, yellowed paper cockade of red white and blue: the symbol of the French Revolution that had put Robespierre into power and killed so many of Edward’s friends. He crumpled the thin, brittle paper into pieces, and dusted off the remains onto his discarded coats. Several older gentlemen from the table next to Edward abruptly stood up and left, grumbling to each other. Everyone else stayed seated, transfixed. Gervaise bent over pulled out a revolver and a knife from inside one of the coats.
Edward understood. The smell of tension, the growing crowd outside, the cockade. He had misinterpreted the situation. And, strangely, he only grew more excited.
A few other people hurriedly left: young ladies— including, unfortunately, the one Edward had been eyeing— and the last remaining man over the age of forty. All who remained in the café were Edward, Gervaise, a few women, and a small group of young men.
“Tonight is the night!” Gervaise said in French. “The government has stopped printing the Assignat. What is a people without money? What is a people without their dignity? The Sea Green Incorruptible has become the beacon of corruption! King Robbespiere’s reign has gone on too long! We’ve been done gone with one king before. We’ll do it again! Who’s with me?”
Silence. The young men looked around awkwardly. All the women but one left. It was a rather lousy speech after all. But Edward knew what he would do. He stood up.
“I am,” he answered in his own French. Time abroad pays off.
After, him, the woman stood as well. Then the other young men. Gervaise smiled grimly.
“There’s knives and wooden beams in the back closet,” he said.
“No need,” Edward replied. He pulled out his bayonet.
“I’ve got a weapon.”
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“This is bad, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, this is
really bad, this is bad, this is—“
“Would you SHUT UP already?”
Robespierre’s attendant yelped and stopped his pacing and rambling.
“Of course it’s
bad,” Robespierre said through gritted teeth. “Six members of the Assembly called me a tyrant before the entire group. Then, they marched right outside to join an ever-growing mob of rabble with rifles and torches that demand my head on a pike. And here we are, trapped in the Chateau of the Assembly with a bunch of politicians, with
no way out. What about this situation would not be bad?”
The entire room of worried politicians stopped their hushed conversations to look at their Director-Consul. Robespierre swore he heard a flute of champagne drop to the floor.
The poor attendant was white as a sheet.
“It’s just… twelve hours…,” he said, “Nothing to eat, no way to escape… we’re going to die. Did you all hear that? We are going to—“ The door to the courtyard slammed open.
The preliminary panicked squeals were silenced when everyone saw just who had opened the door— the captain of the Parisian National Guard, the most elite police force on the continent. He straightened his scabbard, cleared his throat, and announced in a droning voice.
“Parisian National Guard, reporting for duty, Director-Consul Robespierre, sir. Three full contingents are waiting in the courtyard. We have the gates under seal and lock, sir. The crowd hasn’t fired. We await your command.”
“Well… that’s quite nice,” Robespierre replied. He, like just about everyone else, had assumed that the Guard had abandoned them; the contingent that had been posted by the courtyard gates had defected to the mob, and no help was expected. Well, he would have to give the captain quite the medal for this.
The Director-Consul had the Guard march him out to see the mob. The people jeered and booed at the sight of him. He stared into the crowd. A pathway of lightly sprinkled bodies lay scattered between the street and gates— presumably how the Guard reached the gates to replace the missing post. He thought he saw some men in uniform among the crowd, angrily brandishing bayonetted rifles his direction. All the angry eyes glared from over a makeshift barricade that ran across the wide gate, broken furniture and raw lumber making its majority.
What an ungrateful people. After he gave them their freedom.
“Fire at will.”
He solemnly walked back to the big oaken doors to the Chateau. As he walked, blood pooled across channels formed by the mortar in the brick courtyard. Robespierre’s steps were met with quiet splashes.
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The people fled as the shots began. The gates unlocked, and soldiers poured out, stabbing and shooting as they climbed over the makeshift barricades. The mob fought back valiantly. They returned fire with the firearms they had, and more than a few Guards were pummeled to death by boards or shanked with knives. But it wasn’t enough. The pale sun rose to corpses littering the gutters. The songs say there wasn’t a street in Paris that wasn’t tainted by blood.
Among the corpses by the sides of the gate laid two broken bodies, side by side. One, a young man shot in the head gripping a bayonet. The other, a long-jowled man stabbed through the neck, a revolver laying by his side.
In the Massacre at the Chateau of the Assembly: Marriane Guiding the People, 1843 by Théodore Géricault, an idealized depiction of the doomed mob, led by Marriane to symbolize their yearning for freedom. The triumphant feel of the painting is due to the Massacre being the first step to Robespierre's fall.
