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Updated: May 28, 2025
When the venerable Bailly was brought forward, who formerly so often predicted to the Court the calamities which its imprudence must produce, he appeared painfully affected; and when he was asked if he knew the wife of Capet, "Yes," said he, bowing respectfully, "I have known Madame."
There were sages, like Bailly and Mounier; thinkers, like Siéyès; factious partisans, like Barnave; statesmen like Talleyrand; men, epochs, like Mirabeau, and men, principles like Robespierre. Each cause was personified by what most distinguished each party. The very victims were illustrious.
It is, he says, by undeserved favour that his statue has been placed on the façade of the Hôtel de Ville. During his magistracy, Bailly did not create any large square in the capital, he did not open out any large streets, he elevated no splendid monument; Bailly would therefore have done better had he remained an astronomer or erudite scholar.
The scarcity was already severely felt, when Bailly on the 15th of July accepted the appointment of Mayor of Paris. That day, it had been ascertained, from an examination of the quantity of corn at the Market Hall and of the private stocks of the bakers, that the supply of grain and flour would be entirely exhausted in three days.
Of this cycle, Bailly says: "No person could have invented the Neros who had not arrived at much greater perfection in astronomy than we know was the state of the most ancient Assyrians, Egyptians, and Greeks."
The King stopt at the Hotel de Ville. There M. Bailly presented, and put into his hat the popular cockade, and addrest him. The King being unprepared, and unable to answer, Bailly went to him, gathered from him some scraps of sentences, and made out an answer, which he delivered to the audience as from the King. On their return, the popular cries were "vive le Roi et la nation."
Two or three quotations will explain my ideas, and will show, besides, how scrupulously Bailly registered all that could shed honour on our country. I will take the first fact from the military annals; a grenadier of the French Guard saves his commanding officer's life, although the people thought that they had great reason of complaint against him.
To quote the words of Bailly, in 1784, "Magnetism has not been altogether unavailing to the philosophy which condemns it: it is an additional fact to record among the errors of the human mind, and a great experiment on the strength of the imagination."
He announced to the assembly that he would recall Necker, and repair to Paris the following day. The assembly had already nominated a deputation of a hundred members, which preceded the king to the capital. It was received with enthusiasm. Bailly and Lafayette, who formed part of it, were appointed, the former mayor of Paris, the latter commander-in-chief of the citizen guard.
The progress of the procession was so slow that it was near six in the evening when this august family, made prisoners by their own people, arrived at the Hotel de Ville. Bailly received them there; they were placed upon a throne, just when that of their ancestors had been overthrown.
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