Destruction.
The suspect may well tremble; but how much more the open
rebels;—the Girondin Cities of the South! Revolutionary Army is
gone forth, under Ronsin the Playwright; six thousand strong; in
“red nightcap, in tricolor waistcoat, in black-shag trousers,
black-shag spencer, with enormous moustachioes, enormous
sabre,—in _carmagnole complète;_”[702] and has portable
guillotines. Representative Carrier has got to Nantes, by the
edge of blazing La Vendée, which Rossignol has literally set on
fire: Carrier will try what captives you make, what accomplices
they have, Royalist or Girondin: his guillotine goes always, _va
toujours;_ and his wool-capped “Company of Marat.” Little
children are guillotined, and aged men. Swift as the machine is,
it will not serve; the Headsman and all his valets sink, worn
down with work; declare that the human muscles can no more.[703]
Whereupon you must try fusillading; to which perhaps still
frightfuller methods may succeed.
In Brest, to like purpose, rules Jean-Bon Saint-André; with an
Army of Red Nightcaps. In Bourdeaux rules Tallien, with his
Isabeau and henchmen: Guadets, Cussys, Salleses, may fall; the
bloody Pike and Nightcap bearing supreme sway; the Guillotine
coining money. Bristly fox-haired Tallien, once Able Editor,
still young in years, is now become most gloomy, potent; a Pluto
on Earth, and has the keys of Tartarus. One remarks, however,
that a certain Senhorina Cabarus, or call her rather _Senhora_
and wedded not yet widowed _Dame de Fontenai_, brown beautiful
woman, daughter of Cabarus the Spanish merchant,—has softened the
red bristly countenance; pleading for herself and friends; and
prevailing. The keys of Tartarus, or any kind of power, are
something to a woman; gloomy Pluto himself is not insensible to
love. Like a new Proserpine, she, by this red gloomy Dis, is
gathered; and, they say, softens his stone heart a little.
Maignet, at Orange in the South; Lebon, at Arras in the North,
become world’s wonders. Jacobin Popular Tribunal, with its
National Representative, perhaps where Girondin Popular Tribunal
had lately been, rises here and rises there; wheresoever needed.
Fouchés, Maignets, Barrases, Frérons scour the Southern
Departments; like reapers, with their guillotine-sickle. Many are
the labourers, great is the harvest. By the hundred and the
thousand, men’s lives are cropt; cast like brands into the
burning.
Marseilles is taken, and put under martial law: lo, at
Marseilles, what one besmutted red-bearded corn-ear is this which
they cut;—one gross Man, we mean, with copper-studded face;
plenteous beard, or beard-stubble, of a tile-colour? By Nemesis
and the Fatal Sisters, it is Jourdan Coupe-tête! Him they have
clutched, in these martial-law districts; him too, with their
“national razor,” their _rasoir national_, they sternly shave
away. Low now is Jourdan the Headsman’s own head;—low as
Deshuttes’s and Varigny’s, which he sent on pikes, in the
Insurrection of Women! No more shall he, as a copper Portent, be
seen gyrating through the Cities of the South; no more sit
judging, with pipes and brandy, in the Ice-tower of Avignon. The
all-hiding Earth has received him, the bloated Tilebeard: may we
never look upon his like again!—Jourdan one names; the other
Hundreds are not named. Alas, they, like confused faggots, lie
massed together for us; counted by the cartload: and yet not an
individual faggot-twig of them but had a Life and History; and
was cut, not without pangs as when a Kaiser dies!
Least of all cities can Lyons escape. Lyons, which we saw in
dread sunblaze, that Autumn night when the Powder-tower sprang
aloft, was clearly verging towards a sad end. Inevitable: what
could desperate valour and Précy do; Dubois-Crancé, deaf as
Destiny, stern as Doom, capturing their “redouts of cotton-bags;”
hemming them in, ever closer, with his Artillery-lava? Never
would that _ci-devant_ d’Autichamp arrive; never any help from
Blankenberg. The Lyons Jacobins were hidden in cellars; the
Girondin Municipality waxed pale, in famine, treason and red
fire. Précy drew his sword, and some Fifteen Hundred with him;
sprang to saddle, to cut their way to Switzerland. They cut
fiercely; and were fiercely cut, and cut down; not hundreds,
hardly units of them ever saw Switzerland.[704] Lyons, on the 9th
of October, surrenders at discretion; it is become a devoted
Town. Abbé Lamourette, now Bishop Lamourette, whilom Legislator,
he of the old _Baiser-l’Amourette_ or Delilah-Kiss, is seized
here, is sent to Paris to be guillotined: “he made the sign of
the cross,” they say when Tinville intimated his death-sentence
to him; and died as an eloquent Constitutional Bishop. But wo now
to all Bishops, Priests, Aristocrats and Federalists that are in
Lyons! The _manes_ of Chalier are to be appeased; the Republic,
maddened to the Sibylline pitch, has bared her right arm. Behold!
Representative Fouché, it is Fouché of Nantes, a name to become
well known; he with a Patriot company goes duly, in wondrous
Procession, to raise the corpse of Chalier. An Ass, housed in
Priest’s cloak, with a mitre on its head, and trailing the
Mass-Books, some say the very Bible, at its tail, paces through
Lyons streets; escorted by multitudinous Patriotism, by clangour
as of the Pit; towards the grave of Martyr Chalier. The body is
dug up and burnt: the ashes are collected in an Urn; to be
worshipped of Paris Patriotism. The Holy Books were part of the
funeral pile; their ashes are scattered to the wind. Amid cries
of ‘Vengeance! Vengeance!’—which, writes Fouché, shall be
satisfied.[705]
Lyons in fact is a Town to be abolished; not Lyons henceforth but
“_Commune Affranchie_, Township Freed;” the very name of it shall
perish. It is to be razed, this once great City, if Jacobinism
prophesy right; and a Pillar to be erected on the ruins, with
this Inscription, _Lyons rebelled against the Republic; Lyons is
no more_. Fouché, Couthon, Collot, Convention Representatives
succeed one another: there is work for the hangman; work for the
hammerman, _not_ in building. The very Houses of Aristocrats, we
say, are doomed. Paralytic Couthon, borne in a chair, taps on the
wall, with emblematic mallet, saying, ‘_La Loi te frappe_, The
Law strikes thee;’ masons, with wedge and crowbar, begin
demolition. Crash of downfall, dim ruin and dust-clouds fly in
the winter wind. Had Lyons been of soft stuff, it had all
vanished in those weeks, and the Jacobin prophecy had been
fulfilled. But Towns are not built of soap-froth; Lyons Town is
built of stone. Lyons, though it rebelled against the Republic,
_is_ to this day.
Neither have the Lyons Girondins all one neck, that you could
despatch it at one swoop. Revolutionary Tribunal here, and
Military Commission, guillotining, fusillading, do what they can:
the kennels of the Place des Terreaux run red; mangled corpses
roll down the Rhone. Collot d’Herbois, they say, was once hissed
on the Lyons stage: but with what sibilation, of world-catcall or
hoarse Tartarean Trumpet, will ye hiss him now, in this his new
character of Convention Representative,—not to be repeated! Two
hundred and nine men are marched forth over the River, to be shot
in mass, by musket and cannon, in the Promenade of the Brotteaux.
It is the second of such scenes; the first was of some Seventy.
The corpses of the first were flung into the Rhone, but the Rhone
stranded some; so these now, of the second lot, are to be buried
on land. Their one long grave is dug; they stand ranked, by the
loose mould-ridge; the younger of them singing the Marseillaise.
Jacobin National Guards give fire; but have again to give fire,
and again; and to take the bayonet and the spade, for though the
doomed all fall, they do not all die;—and it becomes a butchery
too horrible for speech. So that the very Nationals, as they
fire, turn away their faces. Collot, snatching the musket from
one such National, and levelling it with unmoved countenance,
says ‘It is thus a Republican ought to fire.’
This is the second Fusillade, and happily the last: it is found
too hideous; even inconvenient. They were Two hundred and nine
marched out; one escaped at the end of the Bridge: yet behold,
when you count the corpses, they are Two hundred and _ten_. Rede
us this riddle, O Collot? After long guessing, it is called to
mind that two individuals, here in the Brotteaux ground, did
attempt to leave the rank, protesting with agony that they were
not condemned men, that they were Police Commissaries: which two
we repulsed, and disbelieved, and shot with the rest![706] Such
is the vengeance of an enraged Republic. Surely this, according
to Barrère’s phrase, is Justice “under rough forms, _sous des
formes acerbes_.” But the Republic, as Fouché says, must ‘march
to Liberty over corpses.’ Or again as Barrère has it: ‘None but
the dead do not come back, _Il n’y a que les morts qui ne
reviennent pas_.’ Terror hovers far and wide: “The Guillotine
goes not ill.”
But before quitting those Southern regions, over which History
can cast only glances from aloft, she will alight for a moment,
and look fixedly at one point: the Siege of Toulon. Much
battering and bombarding, heating of balls in furnaces or
farm-houses, serving of artillery well and ill, attacking of
Ollioules Passes, Forts Malbosquet, there has been: as yet to
small purpose. We have had General Cartaux here, a whilom Painter
elevated in the troubles of Marseilles; General Doppet, a whilom
Medical man elevated in the troubles of Piemont, who, under
Crancé, took Lyons, but cannot take Toulon. Finally we have
General Dugommier, a pupil of Washington. Convention
_Représentans_ also we have had; Barrases, Salicettis,
Robespierres the Younger:—also an Artillery _Chef de brigade_, of
extreme diligence, who often takes his nap of sleep among the
guns; a short taciturn, olive-complexioned young man, not unknown
to us, by name Buonaparte: one of the best Artillery-officers yet
met with. And still Toulon is not taken. It is the fourth month
now; December, in slave-style; _Frostarious_ or _Frimaire_, in
new-style: and still their cursed Red-Blue Flag flies there. They
are provisioned from the Sea; they have seized all heights,
felling wood, and fortifying themselves; like the coney, they
have built their nest in the rocks.
Meanwhile, _Frostarious_ is not yet become _Snowous_ or _Nivose_,
when a Council of War is called; Instructions have just arrived
from Government and _Salut Public_. Carnot, in _Salut Public_,
has sent us a plan of siege: on which plan General Dugommier has
this criticism to make, Commissioner Salicetti has that; and
criticisms and plans are very various; when that young Artillery
Officer ventures to speak; the same whom we saw snatching sleep
among the guns, who has emerged several times in this
History,—the name of him Napoleon Buonaparte. It is his humble
opinion, for he has been gliding about with spy-glasses, with
thoughts, That a certain Fort l’Eguillette can be clutched, as
with lion-spring, on the sudden; wherefrom, were it once ours,
the very heart of Toulon might be battered, the English Lines
were, so to speak, turned inside out, and Hood and our Natural
Enemies must next day either put to sea, or be burnt to ashes.
Commissioners arch their eyebrows, with negatory sniff: who is
this young gentleman with more wit than we all? Brave veteran
Dugommier, however, thinks the idea worth a word; questions the
young gentleman; becomes convinced; and there is for issue, Try
it.
On the taciturn bronze-countenance, therefore, things being now
all ready, there sits a grimmer gravity than ever, compressing a
hotter central-fire than ever. Yonder, thou seest, is Fort
l’Eguillette; a desperate lion-spring, yet a possible one; this
day to be tried!—Tried it is; and found _good_. By stratagem and
valour, stealing through ravines, plunging fiery through the
fire-tempest, Fort l’Eguillette is clutched at, is carried; the
smoke having cleared, wiser the Tricolor fly on it: the
bronze-complexioned young man was right. Next morning, Hood,
finding the interior of his lines exposed, his defences turned
inside out, makes for his shipping. Taking such Royalists as
wished it on board with him, he weighs anchor: on this 19th of
December 1793, Toulon is once more the Republic’s!
Cannonading has ceased at Toulon; and now the guillotining and
fusillading may begin. Civil horrors, truly: but at least that
infamy of an English domination is purged away. Let there be
Civic Feast universally over France: so reports Barrère, or
Painter David; and the Convention assist in a body.[707] Nay, it
is said, these infamous English (with an attention rather to
their own interests than to ours) set fire to our store-houses,
arsenals, warships in Toulon Harbour, before weighing; some score
of brave warships, the only ones we now had! However, it did not
prosper, though the flame spread far and high; some two ships
were burnt, not more; the very galley-slaves ran with buckets to
quench. These same proud Ships, Ships _l’Orient_ and the rest,
have to carry this same young Man to Egypt first: not yet can
they be changed to ashes, or to Sea-Nymphs; not yet to
sky-rockets, O Ship _l’Orient_, nor became the prey of
England,—before their time!
And so, over France universally, there is Civic Feast and
high-tide: and Toulon sees fusillading, grape-shotting in mass,
as Lyons saw; and “death is poured out in great floods, _vomie à
grands flots_” and Twelve thousand Masons are requisitioned from
the neighbouring country, to raze Toulon from the face of the
Earth. For it is to be razed, so reports Barrère; all but the
National Shipping Establishments; and to be called henceforth not
Toulon, but _Port of the Mountain_. There in black death-cloud we
must leave it;—hoping only that Toulon too is built of stone;
that perhaps even Twelve thousand Masons cannot pull it down,
till the fit pass.
One begins to be sick of “death vomited in great floods.”
Nevertheless hearest thou not, O reader (for the sound reaches
through centuries), in the dead December and January nights, over
Nantes Town,—confused noises, as of musketry and tumult, as of
rage and lamentation; mingling with the everlasting moan of the
Loire waters there? Nantes Town is sunk in sleep; but
_Représentant_ Carrier is not sleeping, the wool-capped Company
of Marat is not sleeping. Why unmoors that flatbottomed craft,
that _gabarre;_ about eleven at night; with Ninety Priests under
hatches? They are going to Belle Isle? In the middle of the Loire
stream, on signal given, the gabarre is scuttled; she sinks with
all her cargo. “Sentence of Deportation,” writes Carrier, “was
executed _vertically_.” The Ninety Priests, with their
gabarre-coffin, lie deep! It is the first of the _Noyades_, what
we may call _Drownages_, of Carrier; which have become famous
forever.
Guillotining there was at Nantes, till the Headsman sank worn
out: then fusillading “in the Plain of Saint-Mauve;” little
children fusilladed, and women with children at the breast;
children and women, by the hundred and twenty; and by the five
hundred, so hot is La Vendée: till the very Jacobins grew sick,
and all but the Company of Marat cried, Hold! Wherefore now we
have got Noyading; and on the 24th night of _Frostarious_ year 2,
which is 14th of December 1793, we have a second Noyade:
consisting of “a Hundred and Thirty-eight persons.”[708]
Or why waste a gabarre, sinking it with them? Fling them out;
fling them out, with their hands tied: pour a continual hail of
lead over all the space, till the last struggler of them be sunk!
Unsound sleepers of Nantes, and the Sea-Villages thereabouts,
hear the musketry amid the night-winds; wonder what the meaning
of it is. And women were in that gabarre; whom the Red Nightcaps
were stripping naked; who begged, in their agony, that their
smocks might not be stript from them. And young children were
thrown in, their mothers vainly pleading: ‘Wolflings,’ answered
the Company of Marat, ‘who would grow to be wolves.’
By degrees, daylight itself witnesses Noyades: women and men are
tied together, feet and feet, hands and hands: and flung in: this
they call _Mariage Républicain_, Republican Marriage. Cruel is
the panther of the woods, the she-bear bereaved of her whelps:
but there is in man a hatred crueller than that. Dumb, out of
suffering now, as pale swoln corpses, the victims tumble
confusedly seaward along the Loire stream; the tide rolling them
back: clouds of ravens darken the River; wolves prowl on the
shoal-places: Carrier writes, “_Quel torrent révolutionnaire_,
What a torrent of Revolution!” For the man is rabid; and the Time
is rabid. These are the Noyades of Carrier; twenty-five by the
tale, for what is done in darkness comes to be investigated in
sunlight:[709] not to be forgotten for centuries,—We will turn to
another aspect of the Consummation of Sansculottism; leaving this
as the blackest.
But indeed men are all rabid; as the Time is. Representative
Lebon, at Arras, dashes his sword into the blood flowing from the
Guillotine; exclaims, ‘How I like it!’ Mothers, they say, by his
order, have to stand by while the Guillotine devours their
children: a band of music is stationed near; and, at the fall of
every head, strikes up its _ça-ira_.[710] In the Burgh of
Bedouin, in the Orange region, the Liberty-tree has been cut down
over night. Representative Maignet, at Orange, hears of it; burns
Bedouin Burgh to the last dog-hutch; guillotines the inhabitants,
or drives them into the caves and hills.[711] Republic One and
Indivisible! She is the newest Birth of Nature’s waste inorganic
Deep, which men name Orcus, Chaos, primeval Night; and knows one
law, that of self-preservation. _Tigresse Nationale:_ meddle not
with a whisker of her! Swift-crushing is her stroke; look what a
paw she spreads;—pity has not entered her heart.
Prudhomme, the dull-blustering Printer and Able Editor, as yet a
Jacobin Editor, will become a renegade one, and publish large
volumes on these matters, _Crimes of the Revolution;_ adding
innumerable lies withal, as if the truth were not sufficient. We,
for our part, find it more edifying to know, one good time, that
this Republic and National Tigress _is_ a New Birth; a Fact of
Nature among Formulas, in an Age of Formulas; and to look,
oftenest in silence, how the so genuine Nature-Fact will demean
itself among these. For the Formulas are partly genuine, partly
delusive, supposititious: we call them, in the language of
metaphor, regulated modelled _shapes;_ some of which have bodies
and life still in them; most of which, according to a German
Writer, have only emptiness, “glass-eyes glaring on you with a
ghastly affectation of life, and in their interior unclean
accumulation of beetles and spiders!” But the Fact, let all men
observe, is a genuine and sincere one; the sincerest of Facts:
terrible in its sincerity, as very Death. Whatsoever is equally
sincere may front it, and beard it; but whatsoever is _not?_—