Lucile Desmoulins on the Insurrection of August 10 in her diary
Thursday, August 9 — What will become of us? I can’t anymore. C, oh my poor C, what will become of you? I no longer have the strength to breathe, tonight is the fatal night! My God, if it is true that you exist, then save men who are worthy of you! We want to be free. O God, the cost of it! And to make matters worse, my courage abandons me!
December 12 — What a gap since August 9! How many things! What a volume I would have filled if I had continued! How do I remember so many things? My memory escapes me… No matter, I will try to trace something. O my child, my dear child, what palpitation I feel when thinking about you! My son! Why then does this word make my tears flow?…
On August 8, I returned from the countryside. Already the spirits were brewing very strongly, one had wanted to assassinate Robespierre. On the 9th, I had some Marseillais to dinner, we had pretty fun. After dinner, we all went to D[anton’s place]. Her mother was crying, she was sad, her father looked dazed. D[anton] was resolute. As for me, I was laughing like a madwoman! They feared that the affair would not take place; although I was not at all sure, I told them, as if I knew it well, that it would take place. “But can we laugh too?” mde D[anton] said to me. ”Alas, I said to her, that presages to me that I will perhaps shed a lot of tears this evening! I was not wrong.
In the evening we went back to Madame Charpentier (Danton’s mother-in-law). The weather was fine, we made a few turns in the street, there were enough people. We retraced our steps and we all sat down next to the cafe. Several sans-culottes passed by shouting “Vive la Nation!” Then troops on horseback, and then finally a bunch of people! Fear gripped me. I say to Madame Danton: “Let’s go!” She laughed at my fear, but by dint of telling her, she too became scared and we left. I say to her mother: ”Farewell! You will soon hear the toscin sound!”
When I arrived at D[anton’s place], I found madame R[obert] and many others there. D[anton] was restless. I ran to madame Robert, I said to her “will they ring the tocsin?” “Yes, she told me, but tonight.” I listened to everything and did not say a word. Soon I saw everyone arming themselves. C, my C, arrived with a gun!… O God! I sank into the ground, hid myself with both my hands and started to cry. However, not wanting to show so much weakness and say aloud to C that I did not want him to get involved in all this, I waited for a moment when I could speak to him alone, and I told him all my fears. He reassured me by telling me that he would not leave D[anton’s] side. I have since found out that he exposed himself. F[réron] looked like he was determined to perish, “I’m weary of life,” he said, “I just want to die.” Every patriot who came I thought I was seeing for the last time. I went to the salon, which was without light, so as not to see all these preparations. No one in the street, everyone had gone home.
Our patriots left. I sat down near a bed, overwhelmed, devastated, sometimes dozing off, and when I wanted to talk, I was nonsense. Madame D[anton] and R[obert] reasoned. D[anton] went to bed, he did not seem to be in a hurry. He hardly went out. Midnight was approaching. People came looking for him several times. Finally he left for the Commune. The toscin of the Cordeliers rang, it rang for a long time! Alone, bathed in tears, on my knees by the window, hidden in my handkerchief, I listened to the sound of that fatal bell. In vain they came to console me, this fatal night seemed to me to be the last! D[anton] came back. Madame Robert, who was very worried about her husband, who had gone to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine as a deputy through his section, ran to D[anton], who only gave her a very vague answer. He threw himself on his bed. One came several times to give us good and bad news. I thought I noticed that their plan was to go to the Tuileries, Sobbing, I told them I thought I was going to faint… In vain did madame Robert ask for news of her husband, no one gave her any. She thought he was marching with the faubourg. “Yes,” she said to me, “if he perishes I will not survive him! But this D[anton] who remains in his bed, he, the rallying point, if my husband perishes I am the woman to stab him!” Her eyes were rolling. From that moment on I never left her. What did I know what could happen? Did I know what she was capable of?
We thus passed the night in cruel agitations. C came back at 1 o’clock, he fell asleep on my shoulder. Mde R[obert] who was next to me seemed to be preparing to learn of her husband’s death. “No,” she told me, “I can’t stay here any longer! Madame D[anton] is unbearable to me, she seems to be calm, her husband does not want to expose himself!” The big day having come, I suggested that she come and rest at my place. C went to bed. I had a sling bed put out in the salon, with a mattress, a blanket. She threw herself on it and took some rest. I went to bed and dozed off to the sound of the toscin which sounded from all sides and which I still heard. We got up. C left, assuring me that he would not expose himself. Madame Robert, still uncertain if her husband still existed, did not exhale her pain but her heart was so tightly pinched that she turned yellow. We had breakfast. 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock passed without us knowing anything. We took some newspapers from the day before. Sitting on the sofa in the salon, we began to read them. She was reading me an article, it seemed to me during this time that the canon was fired, but, uncertain, I listened to several shots without saying anything. They became more frequent. I tell her: “They are firing the canon.” She listens to it, hears it, turns pale, lets go and passes out! I undressed her. I myself was ready to fall there, but the need to help her I found myself in gave me strength. She came back to herself. Jeannette (the Desmoulins’ housekeeper) was screaming like a goat, she almost beat up MRQ who said that it was C who was the cause of this.
We heard shouting and crying in the street, we thought that Paris was going to be all bloody. We made arrangements, and we left to go to D[anton’s]. They shouted ”to arms” and everyone ran there. We found the door to the heart of the trade closed. We knocked, shouted, no one came to open the door. We wanted to enter through the baker’s, they closed the door in our face! I was furious. Finally we were let in. Madame D[anton] ran up to us to see how we looked, she was soon informed when she saw the silence of one and the tears of the other. We waited long enough without knowing anything. Finally they came to tell us that we were victorious. At 1 o’clock everyone came to tell us what had happened. A few Marseillais had been killed. But the stories were cruel. C arrived, he told me that the first head he had seen was that of Suleau. Suleau had come the day before and had, so to speak, asked him for asylum. Robert was in town and had before his eyes the dreadful spectacle of the Swiss being massacred. He came after dinner to give us a horrible account of what he had seen, and all day we heard about nothing but what had happened.
The next day, the 11th, we saw the Marseillais convoy. O God, what a sight! How our hearts were heavy… C and I went and slept at R[obert’s]. I do not know what fear agitated me, it seemed to me that we would not be safe at home. The next day, the 12th, when I returned, I learned that D[anton] was minister. This news gave me great pleasure, especially when C came to tell me that he was secretary. It took eight days for me to recover from the astonishment of everything that had happened. Maman came. What projects we made! If all this could last… I thought I would have the power to do good to whom I wanted. Vain chimera! I couldn’t do anything…
Bonus: Lucile describes the insurrection in a letter to her mother from August 10 1792, cited in La Libre Parole, number 4500 (August 15 1904), page 3:
How many tears I have shed, my dear maman, since yesterday at midnight when the toscin started ringing, without stopping until today, at one o'clock in the afternoon. We are victorious, the castle is burning and the blood of the Swiss is flowing. Suivau (Suleau) had his head cut off; one paraded it throughout Paris yesterday. C had said to him: ”My dear, if you want to fight for the king you will be hanged tomorrow.” What C said was only too true, the monsters had rained cannon shots on the dome of the castle, and the unfortunate Marseillais suffered the first volley; the king is at the National Assembly, they are dying of stupidity, they are waiting for the assembly to pronounce on his forfeiture. Lafayette is in Paris, the people are going to tear down his house, one is carrying the tatters of the clothes of the Swiss on the end of pikes, there are a lot of wounded, but thank God none of our Parisian patriots are among them. C does not leave the commune or the section. I believe that now the patriots and the people are going to camp at the Tuilleries. Mme Danton (illegible word) we do not leave each other, when I would have liked to flee it would have been impossible, the women are kept from going out, it is impossible for C to leave, and events follow one another too quickly for me to be able to leave myself. It is from Danton’s house that I write, I barely breathe; I dare not believe that we have won. As we had every reason to believe that the danger has passed, at least the greatest, risk coming here, but inform yourself well before crossing the barriers if you will be able to do so again; one is still killing and the people do not say grace. Farewell, when I see you you will know more; O my dear maman, how I long to embrace you; it seems to me that it has been ten years since I last saw you. Commit P[apa] to come; tell him I embrace him. Everything will no doubt be over within a week; they are breaking the windows in the castle, they have brought us sponges and brushes from the queen's bathroom, they tread on the silverware with their feet, and they don't touch it; farewell, farewell, the (illegible words) return triumphantly shouting "vive la nation!" they wear shreds covered in the blood of their villains. Oh what fermentation! C and all the patriots are going to embrace all the Marseille generals, I would need a volume to tell you everything.
