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The permanent committee knew nothing of the issue of the combat. The hall of the sittings was invaded by a furious multitude, who threatened the provost of the merchants and electors. Flesselles began to be alarmed at his position; he was pale and agitated.
The electors who were still assembled, replied in vain that they had none; they insisted on having them. The electors then sent the head of the city, M. de Flesselles, the Prevot des marchands, who alone knew the military state of the capital, and whose popular authority promised to be of great assistance in this difficult conjuncture.
About the same instant, a treacherous correspondence having been discovered in M. de Flesselles, Prévôt des Marchands, they seized him in the Hotel de Ville, where he was in the execution of his office, and cut off his head.
No quarter for the men who fired on their fellow-citizens!" La Salle, the commandant, the elector Moreau de Saint-Mery, and the brave Elie, succeeded in appeasing the multitude, and obtained a general amnesty. It was now the turn of the unfortunate Flesselles. It is said that a letter found on De Launay proved the treachery of which he was suspected.
Tradition tells us, though history is silent on the subject, that the sad fate of the daughter of a French citizen, flung into the Bastille for alleged complicity in a conspiracy during the early days of Louis XVI., and dying there rankled in the minds of the Parisians much more than the wrongs done to thousands of brave and noble men during the centuries previous, and furnished the burden of the terrible cry with which the men of 1789 thundered at the walls of that old fortress of feudal oppression, and with which they butchered not only De Launay, the Governor of the Bastille, but Flesselles, the Provost Marshal.
Flesselles, the prevôt des marchands, was shot through the head. Such were the sights delighted in by heartless saintly hypocrites. In the midst of these murders the people abandoned themselves to orgies similar to those carried on in Rome during the troubles under Otto and Vitellius.
To the Palais-Royal!" resounded from every side. "Well be it so, gentlemen," replied Flesselles, with composure, "let us go to the Palais-Royal." So saying, he descended the steps, passed through the crowd, which opened to make way for him, and which followed without offering him any violence. But at the corner of the Quay Pelletier a stranger rushed forward, and killed him with a pistol- shot.
In vain did M. Necker endeavour to excuse himself by saying that his advice had not been followed. The massacre of M. de Flesselles and M. de Launay drew bitter tears from the Queen, and the idea that the King had lost such devoted subjects wounded her to the heart. The character of the movement was no longer merely that of a popular insurrection; cries of "Vive la Nation! Vive le Roi!
The object of the most violent reproaches and threats, they obliged him to go from the hall of the committee to the hall of the general assembly, where a great crowd of citizens was assembled. "Let him come; let him follow us," resounded from all sides. "This is too much!" rejoined Flesselles. "Let us go, since they request it; let us go where I am expected."
In vain did M. Necker endeavour to excuse himself by saying that his advice had not been followed. The massacre of M. de Flesselles and M. de Launay drew bitter tears from the Queen, and the idea that the King had lost such devoted subjects wounded her to the heart. The character of the movement was no longer merely that of a popular insurrection; cries of "Vive la Nation! Vive le Roi!
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