n statue of
Louis XV, by Bouchardon, sculptor in ordinary to his Majesty,
inaugurated on the 17th of April, 1763, and, Bouchardon having died, the
design was completed by Pigalle, who placed on the marble pedestal four
bronze figures typifying Strength, Prudence, Justice, and Love of
Country,--supposed to represent the typical qualities of the monarch.
Consequently, the Parisians soon had the pleasure of reading on the
pedestal the following unofficial couplet:

"_Oh! la belle statue! oh! le beau piedestal!
Les vertus sont a pied, le vice est a cheval._"

[Oh! the fine statue! Oh! the beautiful pedestal! The Virtues go afoot,
and Vice rides on horseback.] This statue was overthrown on the 11th of
August, 1792, and the Place Louis XV became the Place de la Revolution,
a stone and plaster figure of Liberty seated, colored to imitate bronze,
being set up on the pedestal. On the 26th of October, 1795, it was
rebaptized Place de la Concorde; the Restoration restored its name of
Louis XV, and the Revolution of 1830, its present name.

[Illustration: THE DRUMS OF THE REPUBLIC. From a drawing by Adrien
Karbowsky.]

A very great majority of the bishops having refused to take the oath to
the new _constitution civile du clerge_, decreed by the Constituante
Assemblee, which placed them under the control of the civil authorities,
and being strengthened in this refusal by the authority of the Pope, the
new Assemblee, by the law of May 24, 1792, directed that as a measure of
public security all these priests _non assermentes_ should be banished.
The king refused to sanction this measure, and dismissed his Girondist
ministers; he sent a secret agent to the foreign coalition menacing the
frontiers: in the Assemblee, which allowed its sittings to be constantly
interrupted and overawed by irruptions of so-called delegations of the
citizens, of the sections, of the national guards, the suspicion and the
open denunciation of the court constantly increased. The agitation and
violence in the clubs, in the streets, in the journals, augmented from
day to day; on the 20th of June an enormous mass of the populace
overflowed the Assemblee chamber, broke into the Tuileries, shook their
fists in the queen's face, and compelled the king to assume the red cap.
A thin, pale young artillery officer, standing on the terrace by the
river, watched this mob with indignation. "The wretches!" he exclaimed,
"they ought to shoot down the first five