Page 117 - Reading Mercury
P. 117
We hear the additional duty on newspapers and advertisements will take place on
the second of August.
th
Mon 19 October/
LONDON, Thursday, Oct. 15
The Commons of Paris have sworn, in the name of the people in arms, to defend and
protect the National Assembly during their stay in that city.
The Marquis de la Fayette has been appointed by the King commandant of all the
troops within the circle of fifteen leagues from Paris.
The regiment of Flanders as well as the King’s body guard, have taken the oath of
allegiance to the nation, they now do duty in Paris, with the Parisian troops.
The King of France has, in the most unreserved manner, confirmed all the articles of
constitution. Bread, since the last riots, is become much more plentiful at Paris. When
the contest was at its greatest height, on Tuesday morning last, between the Paris
militia and the life-guards at Versailles, a body of women, whom the voice of reason
could not restrain, rushed in between the militia and the life-guards, for the purpose of
falling with their own hands, on the life-guards.
The fury of the women was the preservation of the life-guards, against whom it was
directed:---For just at that moment, the Parisian militia had drawn up their artillery,
loaded with grape shot, and pointed it against their enemies. And in the very instant
they were preparing to fire, the women rushed between them, to that the militia could
not fire without killing them.
When the Parisian women attacked the King’s body guards, a girl of eighteen years
of age discharged a pistol at the head of one of the most violent of the soldiers, and
killed him on the spot.
The women of Paris are formed into corps of militia, and actually mount guard day
and night in the District of the Recollets, opposite St. Lawrence.
After the transaction at Versailles, the populous paraded the streets with the heads of
these persons on spikes, and it was generally believed for some time, that they were
those of the Dukes of Guiche, Chatelet, and Count de Lusignan; those noblemen,
however, effected their escape, and the heads were those of the three soldiers killed in
the first onset of the tumult by the women.
The national cockade has now received the addition of Liberty in the center,
trampling on another figure, representing Absolute Monarchy.
A proclamation has been publicly read by the Heralds, to prevent the distribution of
seditious papers, and to announce that the military will check any mobbing.
Several of the representatives, imagining that the National Assembly is on the eve of
being deprived of its liberty, and that on its removal to Paris it will be dangerous to
manifest opinions contrary to those of the multitude, have demanded its pass-ports.
It is generally believed by every well-informed person in France, that it was his
Christian Majesty’s intention to have escaped to Mets, if he had not been prevented by
the Parisians.
Large quantities of bread and ammunition, provided on purpose for the Body
Guards and the regiment de Flanders, which have been found at Versailles, add not
little weight to this opinion
By a resolution of the National Assembly, the French King is hereafter not to be
styled King of France, but King of the Franks, or freemen.
We learn from Madrid, that the King of Spain has ordered a nine-day’s supplication
to Heaven over all his dominions, praying that the Almighty would be pleased to
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