Retreat of the Eleven.
It is one of the notablest Retreats, this of the Eleven, that
History presents: The handful of forlorn Legislators retreating
there, continually, with shouldered firelock and well-filled
cartridge-box, in the yellow autumn; long hundreds of miles
between them and Bourdeaux; the country all getting hostile,
suspicious of the truth; simmering and buzzing on all sides, more
and more. Louvet has preserved the Itinerary of it; a piece worth
all the rest he ever wrote.
O virtuous Pétion, with thy early-white head, O brave young
Barbaroux, has it come to this? Weary ways, worn shoes, light
purse;—encompassed with perils as with a sea! Revolutionary
Committees are in every Township; of Jacobin temper; our friends
all cowed, our cause the losing one. In the Borough of
Moncontour, by ill chance, it is market-day: to the gaping public
such transit of a solitary Marching Detachment is suspicious; we
have need of energy, of promptitude and luck, to be allowed to
march through. Hasten, ye weary pilgrims! The country is getting
up; noise of you is bruited day after day, a solitary Twelve
retreating in this mysterious manner: with every new day, a wider
wave of inquisitive pursuing tumult is stirred up till the whole
West will be in motion. “Cussy is tormented with gout, Buzot is
too fat for marching.” Riouffe, blistered, bleeding, marching
only on tiptoe; Barbaroux limps with sprained ancle, yet ever
cheery, full of hope and valour. Light Louvet glances hare-eyed,
not hare-hearted: only virtuous Pétion’s serenity “was but once
seen ruffled.”[668] They lie in straw-lofts, in woody brakes;
rudest paillasse on the floor of a secret friend is luxury. They
are seized in the dead of night by Jacobin mayors and tap of
drum; get off by firm countenance, rattle of muskets, and ready
wit.
Of Bourdeaux, through fiery La Vendée and the long geographical
spaces that remain, it were madness to think: well, if you can
get to Quimper on the sea-coast, and take shipping there. Faster,
ever faster! Before the end of the march, so hot has the country
grown, it is found advisable to march all night. They do it;
under the still night-canopy they plod along;—and yet behold,
Rumour has outplodded them. In the paltry Village of Carhaix (be
its thatched huts, and bottomless peat-bogs, long notable to the
Traveller), one is astonished to find light still glimmering:
citizens are awake, with rush-lights burning, in that nook of the
terrestrial Planet; as we traverse swiftly the one poor street, a
voice is heard saying, ‘There they are, _Les voilà qui
passent!_’[669] Swifter, ye doomed lame Twelve: speed ere they
can arm; gain the Woods of Quimper before day, and lie squatted
there!
The doomed Twelve do it; though with difficulty, with loss of
road, with peril, and the mistakes of a night. In Quimper are
Girondin friends, who perhaps will harbour the homeless, till a
Bourdeaux ship weigh. Wayworn, heartworn, in agony of suspense,
till Quimper friendship get warning, they lie there, squatted
under the thick wet boscage; suspicious of the face of man. Some
pity to the brave; to the unhappy! Unhappiest of all Legislators,
O when ye packed your luggage, some score, or two-score months
ago; and mounted this or the other leathern vehicle, to be
Conscript Fathers of a regenerated France, and reap deathless
laurels,—did ye think your journey was to lead _hither?_ The
Quimper Samaritans find them squatted; lift them up to help and
comfort; will hide them in sure places. Thence let them dissipate
gradually; or there they can lie quiet, and write _Memoirs_, till
a Bourdeaux ship sail.
And thus, in Calvados all is dissipated; Romme is out of prison,
meditating his Calendar; ringleaders are locked in his room. At
Caen the Corday family mourns in silence; Buzot’s House is a heap
of dust and demolition; and amid the rubbish sticks a Gallows,
with this inscription, _Here dwelt the Traitor Buzot who
conspired against the Republic_. Buzot and the other vanished
Deputies are _hors la loi_, as we saw; their lives free to take
where they can be found. The worse fares it with the poor
Arrested visible Deputies at Paris. “Arrestment at home”
threatens to become “Confinement in the Luxembourg;” to end:
_where?_ For example, what pale-visaged thin man is this,
journeying towards Switzerland as a Merchant of Neuchâtel, whom
they arrest in the town of Moulins? To Revolutionary Committee he
is suspect. To Revolutionary Committee, on probing the matter, he
is evidently: Deputy Brissot! Back to thy Arrestment, poor
Brissot; or indeed to strait confinement,—whither others are
fared to follow. Rabaut has built himself a false-partition, in a
friend’s house; lives, in invisible darkness, between two walls.
It will end, this same Arrestment business, in Prison, and the
Revolutionary Tribunal.
Nor must we forget Duperret, and the seal put on his papers by
reason of Charlotte. One Paper is there, fit to breed woe enough:
A secret solemn Protest against that _suprema dies_ of the Second
of June! This Secret Protest our poor Duperret had drawn up, the
same week, in all plainness of speech; waiting the time for
publishing it: to which Secret Protest his signature, and that of
other honourable Deputies not a few, stands legibly appended. And
now, if the seals were once broken, the Mountain still
victorious? Such Protestors, your Merciers, Bailleuls,
Seventy-three by the tale, what yet remains of Respectable
Girondism in the Convention, may tremble to think!—These are the
fruits of levying civil war.
Also we find, that, in these last days of July, the famed Siege
of Mentz is _finished;_ the Garrison to march out with honours of
war; not to serve against the Coalition for a year! Lovers of the
Picturesque, and Goethe standing on the Chaussée of Mentz, saw,
with due interest, the Procession issuing forth, in all
solemnity:
“Escorted by Prussian horse came first the French Garrison.
Nothing could look stranger than this latter: a column of
Marseillese, slight, swarthy, party-coloured, in patched clothes,
came tripping on;—as if King Edwin had opened the Dwarf Hill, and
sent out his nimble Host of Dwarfs. Next followed regular troops;
serious, sullen; not as if downcast or ashamed. But the
remarkablest appearance, which struck every one, was that of the
Chasers (_Chasseurs_) coming out mounted: they had advanced quite
silent to where we stood, when their Band struck up the
_Marseillaise_. This Revolutionary _Te-Deum_ has in itself
something mournful and bodeful, however briskly played; but at
present they gave it in altogether slow time, proportionate to
the creeping step they rode at. It was piercing and fearful, and
a most serious-looking thing, as these cavaliers, long, lean men,
of a certain age, with mien suitable to the music, came pacing
on: singly you might have likened them to Don Quixote; in mass,
they were highly dignified.
“But now a single troop became notable: that of the Commissioners
or _Représentans_. Merlin of Thionville, in hussar uniform,
distinguishing himself by wild beard and look, had another person
in similar costume on his left; the crowd shouted out, with rage,
at sight of this latter, the name of a Jacobin Townsman and
Clubbist; and shook itself to seize him. Merlin drew bridle;
referred to his dignity as French Representative, to the
vengeance that should follow any injury done; he would advise
every one to compose himself, for this was not the _last time_
they would see him here.[670] Thus rode Merlin; threatening in
defeat. But what now shall stem that tide of Prussians setting in
through the open North-East?” Lucky, if fortified Lines of
Weissembourg, and impassibilities of Vosges Mountains, confine it
to French Alsace, keep it from submerging the very heart of the
country!
Furthermore, precisely in the same days, Valenciennes Siege is
finished, in the North-West:—fallen, under the red hail of York!
Condé fell some fortnight since. Cimmerian Coalition presses on.
What seems very notable too, on all these captured French Towns
there flies not the Royalist fleur-de-lys, in the name of a new
Louis the Pretender; but the Austrian flag flies; as if Austria
meant to keep them for herself! Perhaps General Custines, still
in Paris, can give some explanation of the fall of these
strong-places? Mother Society, from tribune and gallery, growls
loud that he ought to do it;—remarks, however, in a splenetic
manner that “the _Monsieurs_ of the Palais Royal” are calling,
Long-life to this General.
The Mother Society, purged now, by successive “scrutinies or
_épurations_,” from all taint of Girondism, has become a great
Authority: what we can call shield-bearer, or bottle-holder, nay
call it fugleman, to the purged National Convention itself. The
Jacobins Debates are reported in the _Moniteur_, like
Parliamentary ones.