Americans at the First Bastille Celebration

THE centenary celebration of the fall of the Bastille has been observed this year with pomp and ceremony by great multitudes both of Frenchmen and foreigners, among whom the American contingent was very noticeable. Ninety-nine years ago the first Bastille anniversary was exciting an almost equally universal interest, and the Champ de Mars was the scene of unexampled enthusiasm. Foreigners of all nations had been eager to witness that scene, and on the 19th of June, 1790, Anacharsis (then John Baptist) Cloots and his thirty-five colleagues, the ” députation du genre humain,” waited on the Assembly to bespeak a place at the festival. The United States were not represented in that deputation. Either the Americans in Paris did not think that the tone of Cloots’s address befitted the representatives of a people who had been assisted by Louis XVI. in gaining their independence, or they preferred to appear by themselves. At the morning sitting of the 10th of July, the president, the Marquis de Bonnay, announced that “ Paul Jones and other North Americans ” had solicited admission to the Champ de Mars, and he was directed to reply that the Assembly would be glad to see them there. Some misunderstanding must, however, have existed as to this semi-private or perfunctory application, for at the evening sitting a deputation presented itself, consisting, according to the official minutes, of G. Howell, Alexander Contee,¹ N. Harrison, James Swan,² Benjamin Jarvis, John Anderson, Joel Barlow, W. H. Vernon, Samuel Blackden, F. L. Tancy (?), Thomas Appleton, Paul Jones.

The spokesman was Vernon, whose courtly manners, which earned him in his native Newport.. R. I., the sobriquet of “ Count Vernon,”had probably recommended him for this distinction, but the address had in all probability been drawn up by Barlow, and it was in these terms : —

“Struck with admiration at the development and extension of their principles in this happy country, the citizens of the United States of America now in Paris ardently solicit the favor of approaching the sacred altar of liberty, and of testifying to the National Assembly the warm gratitude and profound respect merited by the founders of a great people and the benefactors of the human race. The western star which is shedding its light on distant shores unites its rays with those of the glorious sun which is pouring floods of light on the French Empire, to enlighten, eventually, the universe. The force of truth is irresistible, and the celerity of its progress is beyond all calculation. We believed and we sincerely desired that the blessings of liberty would be one day appreciated; that the nations would emerge from their lethargy, and would claim the rights of man with a voice which could not be stifled. We believed that the luxury and passion of ruling would lose their illusory charm; that those chiefs, those kings, those gods of the earth, would renounce the idolatrous distinctions lavished upon them, in order to mingle with their fellow-citizens and rejoice at their happiness. We believed that religion would divest itself of its borrowed terrors, and would reject the murderous arms of intolerance and fanaticism, in order to take up the sceptre of peace. These events are now hastening in a surprising manner, and we experience an inexpressible and till now unknown delight at finding ourselves in the presence of this venerable assembly of the heroes of humanity, who with so much success have fought in the fields of truth and virtue. May the pleasing emotions of a satisfied conscience and the benedictions of a happy and grateful people be the reward of your generous efforts ! May the patriot king who has so nobly sacrificed with you upon the altar of the country ultimately share the fruits! The monarch who, in beginning his career, threw his blessings on distant regions was well worthy of exchanging the seductive lustre of arbitrary power for the love and gratitude of his fellow-citizens. In regenerated France he may well be called king of the French, but in the language of the universe he will be the first king of men. We have but one desire : it is that you would kindly grant us the honor of attending the august ceremony which is to insure forever the happiness of France. When the French fought and shed their blood with us under the standard of liberty, they taught us to love it. Now that the establishment of the same principles brings us nearer together and tightens our bonds, we can find in our hearts only the pleasing sentiments of brothers and fellow-citizens. It is at the foot of the same altar where the representatives and citizen soldiers of a vast and powerful empire will pronounce the oath of fidelity to the nation, to the law, and to the king that we shall swear everlasting friendship to the French, — yes, to all Frenchmen faithful to the principles which you have consecrated ; for like you we cherish liberty, like you we love peace.”

The president replied : —

“ It was by helping you to conquer liberty that the French learned to understand and love it. The hands which went to burst your fetters were not made to wear them themselves ; but, more fortunate than you, it is our king himself, it is a patriot and citizen king, who has called us to the happiness which we are enjoying, — that happiness which has cost us merely sacrifices, but which you paid for with torrents of blood. Two different paths have led us to the same goal. Courage broke your chains ; reason has made ours fall off. Through you liberty has founded its empire in the west, but in the east also it has innumerable subjects, and its throne now rests on the two worlds. The National Assembly receives with pleasing satisfaction the fraternal homage rendered by the citizens of the United States of America now present. May they still call us brothers ! May Americans and French be only one people! United in heart, united in principles, the National Assembly will see them with pleasure united in that national festival which is about to furnish a spectacle hitherto unknown in the universe. The National Assembly offers you the honors of the sitting.”

How deceptive, alas, were the expectations thus indulged in ! Scarcely a year had passed before the Marquis do Bonnay was a fugitive. Formerly page to Louis XVI., a ready versifier, popular in fashionable society, he soon took alarm at the serious character assumed by the Revolution, and, on the king being brought back a virtual prisoner from Varennes he joined the émigrés at Coblenz. He left behind him a sealed packet, not to be opened, according to the label on it, till his death, but the Assembly broke the seals. It proved, however, to contain love-letters of 1787, from a married princess, whose name, with more delicacy than might in such times have been expected, was kept secret. The Assembly laughed contemptuously on learning the real nature of these apparently important documents. One is reminded of the love-letter which, brought to Cæsar in the Senate, he was forced, in order to dispel suspicions, to hand over to the mockery of an adversary. Bonnay remained in exile till the fall of Napoleon, and was afterwards ambassador at Berlin ; but in 1820, when a second time a widower, he dressed up a young secretary in woman’s dress and passed him off as his wife. This freak, inexcusable in a septuagenarian, cost him his place, and he died at Paris five years subsequently.

How Bonnay must have sighed over his illusions of 1790 ! The deputation, too, must have been rudely disenchanted, with the exception of Paul Jones, who died before the Terror set in, and who, as Gouverneur Morris assures us, all along detested the Revolution. Que diable allait-il faire dans cette — députation ? A review of their subsequent careers would not lack interest. Much might be said of Vernon, a welcome visitor at the French court, who, but for a French friend happening to pass, would have been mobbed or even hanged as an aristocrat, and who carried home a collection of paintings ; or of Barlow, whose death was caused, or hastened, by his being involved in the disastrous retreat from Moscow. I leave these men, however, to American writers better acquainted with them, and confine myself to Colonel James Swan, whose history is the most curious and probably the least known.

Swan was born in Fifeshire in 1754, but went, in his teens, to America, and was clerk to a Boston merchant. Indignant at the inhumanity on board slave ships, he published in 1773 Dissuasions from the Slave Trade. The dispute with England aroused his enthusiasm, and he was one of the sham Indians who threw the tea-chests into Boston harbor. He joined the force raised by General Joseph Warren, who made him his aid-de-camp, and Swan was by his side when Warren fell at Bunker Hill. After holding some fiscal offices, he rejoined the army in September, 1776, as major of artillery, and distinguished himself in the occupation of the heights of Dorchester, whereby the English fleet, busy in honoring St. Patrick’s Day, was obliged to evacuate Boston harbor. He was next secretary to the War Committee, then a member of the Provincial Congress, then again in the field. In 1784 he wrote on the fisheries, and in 1786 he published National Arithmetic, an argument for a closer federal union.

On the cessation of the War for Independence he had begun trading with France, and is said to have visited that country, where his old friends, Lafayette and others, assisted him in procuring favorable terms for American commerce. During the dearth of 1789 he sent large consignments of wheat to France. Shortly after this he established a rum distillery at Passy, just outside Paris, rum being a spirit which had hitherto been imported from England. How long he remained in Paris is not clear. He had a partner there, apparently a Frenchman, named Dallard. In 1796 he was back at Boston, where he succored the distressed French garrisons, driven from Martinique and Guadaloupe. He is said to have been agent to the French government for supplies from foreign countries.

It is not clear when he returned to France, but he had a protracted dispute with a Hamburg firm, Lubbert & Dumas, with whom he had had dealings since 1792. In 1803, Dallard, Swan & Company acknowledged a debt of 235,000 francs, Lubbert agreeing that payment should await a settlement of claims by Swan against the French government. In 1807 an arbitration took place, which resulted in Swan being adjudged debtor to the amount of 625,000 francs. In that year a law was passed whereby foreigners not domiciled in France might be imprisoned for debt, and might be arrested pending the suit if they had not sufficient property in France to cover the claim, or if they did not give security. Imprisonment for debt had been abolished since 1793, but. this new law was based on the plea that foreigners were able to leave their creditors in the lurch. In 1808 Swan was arrested under it. He had accepted bills for 600,000 francs, some of which, amounting to 58,000 francs, had been discounted by Paris bankers, Audinet & Slingerland. He disputed the validity of the arrest, arguing that the law was not retrospective; but on the 22d of March, 1809, the Supreme Court confirmed the arrest.

Swan accordingly remained in prison at St. Pélagie, and nothing more is heard of him till 1816, except legends of his fitting up his room luxuriously, and hiring a house just opposite for his family, who kept their carriage, went to theatres, and gave dinner parties, at which a vacant chair was a reminder of the absent host. A discount must evidently be taken off these stories. In February, 1816, Swan petitioned the Chamber of Deputies, publishing his petition, as also a letter to the newspapers, in support of it. Hyde de Neuville, in presenting the petition, stated that Swan had been eight years in confinement, and that there had been conflicting decisions as to whether foreigners enjoyed after five years, like natives, the right of release. Piet replied that the case had been decided by a Paris court, an Orleans court, and the Court of Cassation, and that Swan’s refusal to give sureties was the cause of his detention. A third speaker, Pasquier, recalled the case of Lord Massareene, who, though possessing £8000 a year, was obstinate enough to remain twenty years in prison in Paris rather than find sureties. The Chamber refused to interfere, but some months later Hyde introduced a bill entitling male debtors to release at sixty-five years of age, and females at sixty, instead of both having to wait till they were seventy. Gambling and usury, he had been told by the St. Pélagie authorities, were the principal causes of incarceration.

The bill was taken into consideration (equivalent to the first reading) ; but in January, 1817, the government took the matter out of Hyde’s hands by submitting a measure which raised the allowance to imprisoned debtors from their creditors to forty instead of twenty francs a month, entitled them to release after three years on payment of one third of the claim and giving security for the remainder, and made foreigners, like natives, entitled to release after five years. This last provision was objected to by Piet, who stated that a Chinaman, released after five years, had gone home. Other objections were taken to the bill, which was referred back to the committee, and was not heard of again.

Swan, meanwhile, twice petitioned the Chamber. He mentioned the case of a Portuguese, named Matheus, who, losing 5000 louis in a gaming-house, was coerced into signing bills for twenty times the amount, and though he offered to pay much more than the real debt was at St. Pélagie with him for five years, and was then released. His own imprisonment he attributed to usury. He denied the representations of the Paris newspapers that he was very rich, for the 700,000 francs demanded of him would consummate the ruin of his large family.³ Lubbert, moreover, he insisted, owed him a larger sum, though the cross-suit had not been tried, and he had rejected very fair proposals for a compromise. Swan took his stand upon principle:

“Considerations far superior to interest can alone dictate such conduct, and can make a man prefer to liberty an obstinacy instigated by honor and the goodness of his cause.” He spoke of himself as a sexagenarian whom culpable intrigues had deprived of his liberty, and whom legal quibbles had prevented from recovering it. He was determined that the claims on both sides should be fully investigated, relying for this on the kindness of the sovereign and the wisdom of the Chamber. He reproached Piet, his opponent’s counsel, with not having observed in the Chamber the silence maintained by his own advocate, Perignon, and he twitted Lubbert with having had a relative, Timothy Lubbert, convicted of custom-house frauds.

Lubbert wrote a reply, and Swan a rejoinder, after which there is a silence of twelve years. Swan, who in 1817 had published at Boston a pamphlet on agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, issued in 1828 Observations on the Present State of European Manufactures, Commerce, and Finances. In 1829 the duel was renewed, Lubbert this time dealing the first blow, and Swan retorting with A Word in Reply to the Pamphlet Published by M. Lubbert, styling himself of Bordeaux, but a Citizen of Hamburg.

The Revolution of 1830 set Swan at liberty. On the 28th of July, twenty-two years after he had entered St. Pélagie, a mob assailed the prison in order to release the political captives, while a rising took place inside. Of the two hundred and fifty-seven debtors, one hundred and sixty-eight forced their way out, Swan among them ; sixty-three waited till the next day ; and twenty-six preferred remaining within the walls. On the 31st, nineteen gave themselves up again, and Swan was on his way to do the same, — perhaps, like the prisoner of Chillon he said,

when he was struck with apoplexy in the Rue de l’Echiquier. He was carried into a house in that street, and expired there.

Like Lord Massareene, he had a patriarchal beard, and must have been a conspicuous object in the streets of Paris during his three days of liberty. He had left the prison with his comrades by way of protest, but scorned the idea of foiling his antagonist by unfair play. Fifteen of his old companions were almost immediately re-arrested on the restoration of order, one hundred and one were gradually apprehended, and ninety-six retained their liberty.

Thus the man who had witnessed and exulted over the first Revolution just lived to see and benefit by the second. Had he survived two years longer, he would have profited by a new law, which fixed ten years as the maximum term of imprisonment for foreigners, and accorded release to septuagenarians. It would be interesting to know what sort of life was led by him during his long captivity. He must have made the acquaintance of Béranger and Courier, and have seen a curious succession of political offenders, — Napoleon’s state prisoners, sixty-eight of whom were released in 1814, a crowd of Russian deserters in 1815, and so forth. If his family were in Paris, they doubtless had free access to him. As for his implacable creditor, he was bound to advance twenty francs a month towards Swan’s maintenance, so that in twentytwo years he must have paid more than 5000 francs. This was throwing good money after bad, but in point of pertinacity the two litigants were on a level. Par nobile fratrum, — or rather hostium.

J. G. Alger.