(1768-1793)
[Illustration: A guillotine.]
The despotism of Louis XIV. and the exhaustion of the finances by his
wars and his reckless extravagance had reduced France to a very
unhappy condition. His son, the Grand-Dauphin, died four years before
his father, and his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, a year later.
Louis the Great was therefore succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis
XV. During this reign the nation continued on the decline. He was
followed by his grandson, Louis XVI., a better man than his immediate
predecessor, but too weak to carry out the reforms necessary to
restore the prosperity of the nation. Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu,
and many other writers, as well as the influence of the American
Revolution, had fostered democratic ideas among the people, for the
government was reeking with abuses.
The parliament had not assembled for three-quarters of a century;
but representatives of the people met in 1789, in spite of the
opposition of the king. The extreme of license followed the extreme
of absolutism. The king opposed the Constituent Assembly, for this
body changed its name several times, till the political conflict
ended in the death by the guillotine of Louis XVI., and later by the
execution of his queen, Marie Antoinette. For every two hundred and
fifty of the gross population there was a member of the nobility who
was exempted from the payment of any land tax, though this kind of
property was almost exclusively in their possession, and from many
other taxes and burdens, which all the more heavily weighed down
the great body of the people. The latter had a long list of genuine
grievances which the king and his advisers refused to remedy.
The revolution became an accomplished fact in the capture and
destruction of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789, which day is still
celebrated as a national holiday in France. It had been for hundreds
of years a prison for political offenders, and was regarded by the
people as the principal emblem and instrument of tyranny. The
population became as intemperate as their rulers had been, thousands
perished by the guillotine, and the reign of terror was established.
The National Convention proclaimed a republic; but this body was
divided by conflicting opinions, and had not the power to inaugurate
their ideal government. Blood flowed in rivers, and the reaction was
infinitely more terrible than the tyranny which had produced it.
The Convention was divided into at least four parties, though the
lines which separated them were not very clearly defined. The
Jacobins were the most prominent, and the most radical. It had its
origin in the Jacobin Club, formed in Versailles, taking its name
from a convent in which it met. This organization soon spread
through its branches all over France, and its party was the most
violent and blood-thirsty in the convention. Danton, Robespierre,
Marat, Desmoulins, and other desperate leaders were of this faction.
The Girondists were next in numbers and influence. They were the
moderate republicans of the time, though at first they were inclined
to accept the constitution, and favor a limited monarchy. Its name
came from the earliest leaders of the party who were representatives
from the department of the Gironde. Its members labored to check the
violence and bloodshed of the times, and might be called the
respectable party of the period. Unfortunately they were in the
minority, and all the members of the party in the Convention who did
not escape, were arrested, convicted, and guillotined.
The Montagnards (mountaineers) or Montagne (Mountain) was the term
applied to the Democrats holding the most extreme views, though its
members were also Jacobins and Cordeliers. Among them were the most
blood-thirsty, unreasonable, and intolerant men of the time, for
Danton, Robespierre, Marat, St. Just, and others of that stamp,
affiliated with them. They took their name from the fact that they
were grouped together in the uppermost seats of the chamber of the
Convention. The Cordeliers was hardly more than another name for a
club of the same men, so called from the chapel of a Franciscan
monastery where they held their meetings.
[Illustration: Charlotte Corday and Marat.]
Jean Paul Marat was one of the most prominent personages of the
Revolution, whose infamy will continue to be perpetuated down to
generations yet to come, with other of his red-handed associates. He
was a Frenchman, though he spent considerable time in Holland and
Great Britain, where he practised medicine, having studied the
profession at Bordeaux. He made some reputation as a political
writer, and in Edinburgh obtained a degree. It is believed that he
was convicted for stealing, and sentenced to five years imprisonment
at Oxford under several _aliases_. Perhaps he was sincere in his
opinions, and he threw himself vigorously into the work of the
Revolution in Paris, issuing inflammatory pamphlets, which he caused
to be printed and circulated secretly. He established an infamous
journal, attacking the king and all his supporters, and especially
the Girondists, whose moderation disgusted him. His virulence caused
him to be intensely hated, and twice he was compelled to flee to
London, and once to hide in the sewers. In the latter he contracted
a loathsome disease of the skin which soon began to eat away his
life; and his sufferings from it intensified his zeal and his
hatred.
Marat was elected to the Convention as a delegate from Paris.
Perhaps he was to a greater degree responsible for the September
massacre than any other man. While he was dying of his malady he was
urging on his fanatical measures, and declared that most of the
members of the Convention, Mirabeau first, ought to be executed. His
most virulent hatred was directed against the Girondists, whose
execution he advocated with all the venom of his nature. Though he
could write only when seated in a bath, he continued to hurl his
invectives against them, impatient for the guillotine to do its gory
work upon them.
The avenger was at hand. Charlotte Corday d'Armont was the
granddaughter of Corneille, the great tragic poet of France. Though
of noble descent, she was born in a cottage, for her father was a
country gentleman so poor that he could not support his family. His
daughters worked in the fields like the peasants, till he was
compelled to abandon them. Then they obtained admission to a convent
in Caen, where they were received on account of their birth and
their poverty. The library furnished Charlotte abundant reading
matter, and she read works on philosophy, though she also rather
inflated her imagination by the perusal of romances, which had some
influence on her after life.
When monasteries and convents were abolished, she was turned loose
upon the world; but her aunt, as poor almost as her father, took the
young woman, now nineteen years old, to her home in Caen. Charlotte
had developed into a beautiful girl, rather tall, honest, and
innocent. She had imbibed republican sentiments from her father in
spite of his nobility, and Caen was the head-quarters of the
Girondists. She was familiar with the details of the struggle
between the Jacobins and the Girondists, and they inspired her with
an intense feeling against the persecutors of her people, as she
regarded the latter. The members of that party who had been driven
from Paris instructed her. She was a woman; but if she had been a
queen she had the nerve to rule a nation and fight its battles.
A tremendous purpose took possession of her being. It was not
prompted by the spirit of revenge. She was mistaken, but she
believed that the removal of Marat was the remedy for the evils of
the time; and this became the work of her life, upon which she
entered, fully conscious that her path ended at an ignominious
grave. She had an admirer in a young man by the name of Franquelin,
and though she favored him she sacrificed her attachment to what she
regarded as a lofty, even a sublime duty. She had the means to
proceed to Paris and she went by the coach. She deceived her aunt,
her father, and her sisters with the statement that she was going to
England in search of remunerative employment. She went to a hotel in
the great city which had been recommended to her in Caen.
A friend had given her a letter of recommendation to Duperret, a
Girondist deputy, by the aid of which she hoped to get into the
presence of Marat. She had arranged a plan for the assassination of
the brawling fanatic, and it was to take place at the celebration of
the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille, July 14th, on
the Champ de Mars. She desired to do the deed as publicly as
possible, not to make it sensational, but in order to produce the
stronger impression upon the minds of the people. The postponement
of the celebration, for the suppression of the rebellion among the
Vendeans, prevented the execution of her first plan, and she then
decided to strike down her victim in his seat at the "summit of the
mountain," in the midst of the victim's accomplices. Then she
learned that Marat was confined to his lodgings by his malady. She
promptly determined to confront him in his own home.
She wrote a note to him, professing to be a sufferer at the hands of
the Girondists, asking for an appointment at his house. He made it,
but was unable to keep it. She wrote another note, and then went to
the house in the Rue de l'École de Médecine, now a part of the
Boulevard St. Germain. The woman with whom Marat lived refused to
admit her, and she crowded up a short stairway. Her intended victim
heard the altercation, and suspecting it was the person who had sent
him two notes, he called out to Catherine Everard to admit her.
Charlotte had visited the Palais Royal and purchased a knife, which
was concealed in her bosom in readiness to do the deed.
Marat, though at the height of his pernicious influence, lived in
mean and squalid apartments, in a sort of pride of poverty as "the
friend of the people." In spite of his disease, which compelled him
to work in a bath, he was always busy. The room was littered with
papers and pamphlets. He was only five feet in height, with a
naturally disagreeable face, increased by his malady. At the very
time his visitor entered his den, he was making out on a board
before him a list of Girondists to be executed. She would not look
at him, but she told him a story she had invented, and gave him the
names of Girondist refugees at Caen; to which he replied as he wrote
them down, that "they should have the guillotine before they were a
week older."
At these words, as though they had steeled her arm, she drew the
knife from her bosom, and with superhuman power, plunged it to the
hilt and to the heart of Marat. He called for help and then expired.
Assistance came, and the house was thronged with National Guards and
policemen. They were necessary to save the murderess from the fury
of those who forced their way into the house. She was arrested, and
conveyed in the same carriage in which she had come to the
Conciergerie. All Paris groaned and howled.
She had the form of a trial, and the guillotine quickly followed it.
Her fortitude did not forsake her at any time, and she died as
firmly as any martyr ever went to the stake. Her beauty and her
heroism excited the sympathy of the crowd, but they could not save
her. She was a mistaken heroine, but her courage and fortitude were
sublime.
[Signature: William S. Adams.]