Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
The springtime sun gives to the capital a festive air. All the people are out. The twelve legions and the mounted guards more than twenty thousand men are under arms awaiting the King on the Champ-de-Mars. An enormous crowd occupies the slope.
She had to lean out to distinguish the deserted square of the Champ-de-Mars, barred at the farther end by the sombre Military School. Down below, on thoroughfare and pavement on each side of the Seine, she could see the passers-by a busy cluster of black dots, moving like a swarm of ants.
They breakfasted together, after which his Majesty, accompanied by the King of Saxony, his brothers and nephews, repaired to the meadow behind the palace, where fifteen thousand men of the guard awaited him in as fine condition as on the most brilliant parades on the Champ-de-Mars.
The minister exerts himself to make the sovereign see the situation in a very different light. He represents the incident of the Minister of Finance as secondary, but insists on the facts occurring at the Champ-de-Mars, notably the shouts around the carriage of the princesses. "It is a fact," replies the King. "I did hear them complain. Well, what do you advise me to do?"
It was the ecclesiastical dignitary whom Paris had beheld celebrating the Mass of the Federation on the Champ-de-Mars, the wedded prelate who, as Minister of the Directory, had for some years observed as a national festival the anniversary of this same execution, now the subject of so many tears."
It is true, the object of the occasion was imposing; but how could an impressive ceremony be held in a deluge of melted snow, and amid a sea of mud, which was the appearance the Champ-de-Mars presented that day? The troops were under arms from six in the morning, exposed to rain, and forced to endure it with no apparent necessity so at least they regarded it.
These artisans of the new order of things, so respectful of the law that they continued Royalists in 1791 and would fain have been Royalists still on the King's return from Varennes, so obstinate in their attachment to the Constitution, friends of the established order of the State even after the massacres of the Champ-de-Mars, and never revolutionaries against the Revolution, heedless of popular agitation, cherished in their dark and puissant soul a love of the fatherland that had given birth to fourteen armies and set up the guillotine.
At a given signal the deputations of the army, scattered over the Champ-de-Mars, placed themselves in solid column, and approached the throne amid a flourish of trumpets. The Emperor then rose, and immediately a deep silence ensued, while in a loud, clear tone he pronounced these words, "Soldiers, behold your standards! These eagles will serve you always as a rallying point.
The pas de charge beaten by 400 drums, and the rolling of the cannon over the stones, announced the arrival of the national army. These sounds drowned for an instant the hollow murmurs and the shrill cries of 50,000 men, women, and children, who filled the centre of the Champ-de-Mars, or crowded on the glacis.
There are three different barracks in Rouen: the first is situated near the quai aux Meules at Saint-Sever, and contains about one thousand men. The second on the Champ-de-Mars, and contains about seven hundred and fifty men. The third is the caserne Bonne-Nouvelle, situated in the suburb of Saint-Sever.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking