Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/115

AUG. 31, 1790] men: the shattered remnants of Château-Vieux are seeking covert. Regiment du Roi, not effervescent now, alas no, but having effervesced, will offer to ground its arms; will 'march in a quarter of an hour.' Nay these poor effervesced require 'escort' to march with, and get it; though they are thousands strong, and have thirty ball-cartridges a man! The Sun is not yet down, when Peace, which might have come bloodless, has come bloody: the mutinous Regiments are on march, doleful, on their three Routes; and from Nanci rises wail of women and men, the voice of weeping and desolation; the City weeping for its slain who awaken not. These streets are empty but for victorious patrols.

Thus has Fortune, favouring the brave, dragged Bouillé as himself says, out of such a frightful peril 'by the hair of the head.' An intrepid adamantine man, this Bouillé:—had he stood in old Broglie's place in those Bastille days, it might have been all different! He has extinguished mutiny, and immeasurable civil war. Not for nothing, as we see; yet at a rate which he and Constitutional Patriotism consider cheap. Nay, as for Bouillé, he, urged by subsequent contradiction which arose, declares coldly, it was rather against his own private mind, and more by public military rule of duty, that he did extinguish it, —immeasurable civil war being now the only chance. Urged, we say, by subsequent contradiction! Civil war, indeed, is Chaos; and in all vital Chaos there is new Order shaping itself free but what a faith this, that of all new Orders out of Chaos and Possibility of Man and his Universe, Louis Sixteenth and Two-Chamber Monarchy were precisely the one that would shape itself! It is like undertaking to throw deuce-ace, say only five hundred successive times, and any other throw to be fatal—for Bouillé. Rather thank Fortune, and Heaven, always, thou intrepid Bouillé; and let contradiction go its way! Civil war, conflagrating universally over France at this moment, might have led to one VOL. II.