as how the English
dealt with an impossible king and became a free nation." Old and new
were in death-grapple, and the lives of many victims, for the people
lost heavily,[168] had sealed the cause of the Revolution with a
bloody consecration. Unhappily, the city of Paris, like all great
towns in times of scarcity (and since 1780 scarcity had become almost
permanent), had been invaded by numbers of starving vagabonds--the
dregs that always rise to the surface in periods of political
convulsion, ready for any villainy. When news came of the capture of
Verdun, of the indecent joy of the courtiers, and that the road to
Paris was open to the avenging army of Prussians, the horrors of the
Armagnac massacres were renewed during four September days at the
prisons of Paris, while the revolutionary ministry and the Assembly
averted their gaze and, to their everlasting shame, abdicated their
powers. The September massacres were the application by a minority of
desperate and savage revolutionists of the _ultima ratio_ of kings to
a desperate situation: the tragedy of King Louis is the tragedy of a
feeble prince called to rule in a tremendous crisis, where weakness
and well-meaning folly are the fatalest of crimes.

[Footnote 168: The numbers have been variously estimated from 100 to
5000 killed on the popular side.]

On 21st September 1792 royalty was formally abolished, and on the
22nd, when "the equinoctional sun marked the equality of day and night
in the heavens," civil equality was proclaimed at Paris.

CHAPTER XVIII

_Execution of the King--Paris under the First Republic--the
Terror--Napoleon--Revolutionary and Modern Paris_

An inscription opposite No. 230 Rue de Rivoli indicates the site of
the old Salle du Manege, or Riding School,[169] of the Tuileries,
where the destinies of modern France were debated. Three
Assemblies--the Constituent, the Legislative and the prodigious
National Convention--filled its long, poorly-furnished amphitheatre,
decorated with the tattered flags captured from the Prussians and
Austrians, from 7th November 1789 to 9th May 1793.

[Footnote 169: The Academie d'Equitation was an expensive and
exclusive establishment where the young nobles and gentlemen of
fortune were taught fencing, riding and dancing. It was long and
narrow, 240 feet by 60, and only the most powerful voices could be
heard in the Assembly. The Rue de Rivoli between the Rues d'Alger and
de Castiglione cuts through t