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But what in the world we poets had to do with this military person who served under the lilies at the siege of Gibraltar that ended so badly in the year 1783, and who did a great deal of very pretty fighting later under the tri-colour I am sure I do not know!
The executioners wore breeches, coats in the French style as the Revolution had modified it, and three-cornered hats with enormous tri-colour cockades. They executed the King with their hats on, and it was without taking his hat off that Samson, seizing by the hair the severed head of Louis XVI., showed it to the people, and for a few moments let the blood from it trickle upon the scaffold.
Between Lyons and Fontainebleau Napoleon often travelled several miles ahead of his army with no other escort than a few Polish lancers. White flags and cockades everywhere disappeared; the tri-colour resumed its pride of place. It was spring, and true to its season the violet had reappeared!
Each hill, at its ajutment towards the sea, was crowned with a fort, on which waves the tri-colour certainly, in appearance, one of the most warlike flags in the world.
February was closing in, damp and icy, with squalls of sleet, under a sullen, hideous sky, lowering furiously down to the level of the ground. Everywhere there were graves, uniformly decent, or rather according to pattern, showing a shield of tri-colour or black and white, and figures.
The charge was sounded; tottering guests climbed the boxes as if mounting to an assault; white cockades were distributed; the tri-colour cockade, it is said, was trampled on. The news of this banquet produced the greatest sensation in Paris. On the 4th suppressed rumours announced an insurrection; the multitude already looked towards Versailles.
This he proposed himself to the Duke of Orleans, who wrote to the King, and in accepting the office said his conduct would show with what views he did it. Then he issued a tri-colour proclamation! Lord Stuart says this was done at the last possible moment. The proclamation was received with cries of Vive la Republique!
In front of the booth a man dressed in ragged breeches, with Phrygian cap on his head, adorned with a tri-colour cockade, was vigorously beating a drum, shouting volubly the while: "Come in and see, come in and see! the only realistic presentation of the original guillotine. Hundreds perish in Paris every day! Come and see!
Then, all of a sudden, words came an inarticulate, sobbing commotion. Tears blinded the eyes of every spectator, even those who had witnessed similar scenes often; we were crying because the singing was so little human. "Vive la France! Vive la France!" They waved flags not the tri-colour, but flags which had been given them in Switzerland.
Instead of flying the British Union Jack the launch that now appeared in the harbour displayed the tri-colour of the French Republic. Thus, when Cabot and White reached the wharf, they were just in time to greet their acquaintance of St. Pierre, the lieutenant of the French frigate "Isla," whom White had so neatly outwitted in that port.
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