Security had mastered Paris, and established the Reign of
Terror there by means of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and could
answer to the Great Committee of Public Safety for the
tranquillity of the capital. There were no more riots; men
were afraid even to express their opinions, much less to
quarrel about them; the system of denunciation made Paris into
a hive of unpaid spies, and ordinary crimes, pocket-picking
and the like, vanished as if by magic. Yet it must not be
supposed that Paris was gloomy or dull; on the contrary, the
vast majority of citizens seemed glad to have an excuse to
avoid politics, of which they had had a surfeit during the
last four years, and to turn their thoughts to the literary
side of their favourite journals, to the theatres, and to art.
... The dull places of Paris were the Revolutionary
Committees, the Jacobin Club, the Convention, the Hôtel de
Brienne, where the Committee of General Security sat, and the
Pavillon de l'Egalité, formerly the Pavillon de Flore, in the
Tuileries, where the Great Committee of Public Safety
laboured. ... Elsewhere men were lighthearted and gay,
following their usual avocations, and busy in their pursuit of
pleasure or of gain. It is most essential to grasp the fact
that there was no particular difference, for the vast majority
of the population, in living in Paris during the Reign of
Terror and at other times. The imagination of posterity,
steeped in tales of the tumbrils bearing their burden to the
guillotine, and of similar stories of horror, has conceived a
ghastly picture of life at that extraordinary period, and it
is only after living for months amongst the journals, memoirs,
and letters of the time that one can realize the fact that to
the average Parisian the necessity of getting his dinner or
his evening's amusement remained the paramount thought of his
daily life. ... Strange to say, nowhere was life more happy
and gay than in the prisons of Paris, where the inmates lived
in the constant expectation that the haphazard chance of being
brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and condemned to
death might befall them at any moment. ... A little more must
be said about the market-women, the tricoteuses, or
knitting-women of infamous memory. These market-women had been
treated as heroines ever since their march to Versailles in
October, 1789. ... They formed their societies after the
fashion of the Jacobin Club, presided over by Renée Audu,
Agnès Lefevre, Marie Louise Bouju, and Rose Lacombe, and went
about the streets of Paris insulting respectably dressed
people, and hounding on the sans-culottes to deeds of
atrocity. These Mænads were encouraged by Marat, and played an
important part in the street history of Paris, up to the Reign
of Terror, when their power was suddenly taken from them. On
May 21, 1793, they were excluded by a decree from the
galleries of the Convention; on May 26 they were forbidden to
form part of any political assembly; and when they appealed
from the Convention to the Commune of Paris, Chaumette
abruptly told them 'that the Republic had no need of Joans of
Arc.' Thus deprived of active participation in politics, the
market-women became the tricoteuses, or knitting-women, who
used to take their seats in the Place de la Revolution, and
watch the guillotine as they knitted. Their active power for
good or harm was gone. ... Life during the Terror in Paris ...
differed in little things, in little affectations of liberty
and equality, which are amusing to study. The fashions of
dress everywhere betrayed the new order of things. A few men,
such as Robespierre, might still go about with powdered hair
and in knee-breeches, but the ordinary male costume of the
time was designed to contrast in every way with the costume of
a dandy of the 'ancien régime.' Instead of breeches, the
fashion was to wear trousers; instead of shoes, top-boots; and
instead of shaving, the young Parisian prided himself on letting
his moustache grow. In female costume a different motive was
at work. Only David's art disciples ventured to imitate the
male apparel of ancient Greece and Rome, but such imitation
became the fashion among women. Waists disappeared; and
instead of stiffened skirts and narrow bodices, women wore
short loose robes, which they fancied resembled Greek chitons;
sandals took the place of high-heeled shoes; and the hair,
instead of being worked up into elaborate edifices, was
allowed to flow down freely. For ornaments, gun-metal and
steel took the place of gold, silver and precious stones. ...
The favourite design was the guillotine.
{1299}
Little guillotines were worn as brooches, as earrings and as
clasps, and the women of the time simply followed the fashion
without realizing what it meant. Indeed, the worship of the
guillotine was one of the most curious features of the epoch.
Children had toy guillotines given them; models were made to
cut off imitation heads, when wine or sweet syrup flowed in
place of blood; and hymns were written to La Sainte
Guillotine, and jokes made upon it, as the 'national razor.'
... It is well known that the desire to emphasize the
abolition of titles was followed by the abolition of the terms
'Monsieur' and 'Madame,' and that their places were taken by
'Citizen' and 'Citizeness;' and also how the use of the second
person plural was dropped, and it was considered a sign of a
good republican to tutoyer everyone, that is, to call them
'thou' and 'thee.' ... The Reign of Terror in Paris seems to
us an age of unique experiences, a time unparalleled in the
history of the world; yet to the great majority of
contemporaries it did not appear so; they lived their ordinary
lives, and it was only in exceptional cases that the serenity
of their days was interrupted, or that their minds were
exercised by anything more than the necessity of earning their
daily bread."
_H. M. Stephens,
History of the French Revolution,
volume 2, chapter 10._
ALSO IN
_J. Michelet,
Women of the French Revolution,
chapters 20-30._
FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (October).
The new republican calendar.
"Before the year ended the legislators of Paris voted that
there was no God, and destroyed or altered nearly everything
that had any reference to Christianity. Robespierre, who would
have stopped short at deism, and who would have preserved the
external decencies, was overruled and intimidated by Hébert
and his frowsy crew, who had either crept into the governing
committees or had otherwise made themselves a power in the
state. ... All popular journalists, patriots, and public
bodies, had begun dating 'First Year of Liberty,' or 'First
Year of the Republic;' and the old calendar had come to be
considered as superstitious and slavish, as an abomination in
the highest degree disgraceful to free and enlightened
Frenchmen. Various petitions for a change had been presented;
and at length the Convention had employed the mathematicians
Romme and Monge, and the astronomer Laplace, to make a new
republican calendar for the new era. These three philosophers,
aided by Fabre d'Eglantine, who, as a poet, furnished the
names, soon finished their work, which was sanctioned by the
Convention and decreed into universal use as early as the 5th
of October. It divided the year into four equal seasons, and
twelve equal months of 30 days each. The five odd days which
remained were to be festivals, and to bear the name of
'Sansculottides.' ... One of these five days was to be
consecrated to Genius, one to Industry, the third to Fine
Actions, the fourth to Rewards, the fifth to Opinion. ... In
leap-years, when there would be six days to dispose of, the
last of those days or Sansculottides was to be consecrated to
the Revolution, and to be observed in all times with all
possible solemnity. The months were divided into three
decades, or portions of ten days each, and, instead of the
Christian sabbath, once in seven days, the décadi, or tenth
day, was to be the day of rest. ... The decimal method of
calculation ... was to preside over all divisions: thus,
instead of our twenty-four hours to the day, and sixty minutes
to the hour, the day was divided into ten parts, and the tenth
was to be subdivided by tens and again by tens to the minutest
division of time. New dials were ordered to mark the time in
this new way, but, before they were finished, it was found
that the people were puzzled and perplexed by this last
alteration, and therefore this part of the calendar was
adjourned for a year, and the hours, minutes and seconds were
left as they were. As the republic commenced on the 21st of
September close on the [autumnal] equinox, the republican year
was made to commence at that season. The first month in the
year (Fabre d'Eglantine being god-father to them all) was
called Vendémiaire, or the vintage month, the second Brumaire,
or the foggy month, the third Frimaire, or the frosty month.
These were the three autumn months. Nivôse, Pluviôse, and
Ventôse, or the snowy, rainy and windy, were the three winter
months. Germinal, Floreal, and Prairial, or the bud month, the
flower month, and the meadow month, formed the spring season.
Messidor, Thermidor and Fructidor, or reaping month, heat
month, and fruit month, made the summer, and completed the
republican year. In more ways than one all this was calculated
for the meridian of Paris, and could suit no other physical or
moral climate. ... But the strangest thing about this
republican calendar was its duration. It lasted till the 1st
of January, 1806."
_C. Mac Farlane,
The French Revolution,
volume 4, volume 3._
The Republican Calendar for the Year Two of the Republic
(September 22, 1793-Sept. 21, 1794) is synchronized with the
Gregorian Calendar as follows:
1 Vendémiaire = September 22;
1 Brumaire = October 22;
1 Frimaire = November 21;
1 Nivôse = December 21;
1 Pluviôse = January 20;
1 Ventôse = February 19;
1 Germinal = March 21;
1 Floreal = April 20;
1 Prairial = May 20;
1 Messidor = June 19;
1 Thermidor = July 19;
1 Fructidor= August 18;
1st to 5th Sansculottides = September 17-21.
_H. M. Stephens,
History of the French Revolution,
volume 2, appendix 12._
ALSO IN
_A. Thiers,
History of the French Revolution
(American edition), volume 2, pages 364-365._
FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (November).
Abandonment of Christianity.
The Worship of Reason instituted.
"The earliest steps towards a public abandonment of
Christianity appear to have been taken by Fouché, the future
minister of Police, and Duke of Otranto. ... He published at
Nevers (October 10, 1793) a decree" ordaining that "no forms
of religious worship be practised except within their
respective temples;" that "ministers of religion are
forbidden, under pain of imprisonment, to wear their official
costumes in any other places besides their temples;" and that
the inscription, "Death is an eternal sleep," should be placed
over the entrance to the cemetery. "This decree was reported
to the municipality of Paris by Chaumette, the fanatical
procureur of the Commune, and was warmly applauded. ... The
atheistical cabal of which he was the leader (his chief
associates being the infamous Hébert, the Prussian baron
Anacharsis Clootz, and Chabot, a renegade priest), now judged
that public feeling was ripe for an avowed and combined
onslaught on the profession of Christianity. ... They decreed
that on the 10th of November the 'Worship of Reason' should be
inaugurated at Notre Dame.
{1300}
On that day the venerable cathedral was profaned by a series
of sacrilegious outrages unparalleled in the history of
Christendom. A temple dedicated to 'Philosophy' was erected on
a platform in the middle of the choir. A motley procession of
citizens of both sexes, headed by the constituted authorities,
advanced towards it; on their approach, the Goddess of Reason,
impersonated by Mademoiselle Maillard, a well known figurante
of the opera, took her seat upon a grassy throne in front of
the temple; a hymn, composed in her honour by the poet
Chenier, was sung by a body of young girls dressed in white
and bedecked with flowers; and the multitude bowed the knee
before her in profound adoration. It was the 'abomination of
desolation sitting in the holy place.' At the close of this
grotesque ceremony the whole cortège proceeded to the hall of
the Convention, carrying with them their 'goddess,' who was
borne aloft in a chair of state on the shoulders of four men.
Having deposited her in front of the president, Chaumette
harangued the Assembly. ... He proceeded to demand that the
ci-devant metropolitical church should henceforth be the
temple of Reason and Liberty; which proposition was
immediately adopted. The 'goddess' was then conducted to the
president, and he and other officers of the House saluted her
with the 'fraternal kiss,' amid thunders of applause. After
this, upon the motion of Thuriot, the Convention in a body
joined the mass of the people, and marched in their company to
the temple of Reason, to witness a repetition of the impieties
above described. These demonstrations were zealously imitated
in the other churches of the capital. ... The interior of St.
Eustache was transformed into a 'guinguette,' or place of low
public entertainment. ... At St. Gervais a ball was given in
the chapel of the Virgin. In other churches theatrical
spectacles took place. ... Representatives of the people
thought it no shame to quit their curule chairs in order to
dance the 'carmagnole' with abandoned women in the streets
attired in sacerdotal garments. On Sunday, the 17th of
November, all the parish churches of Paris were closed by
authority, with three exceptions. ... Chaumette, at a sitting
of the Commune on the 26th of November, called for further
measures for the extermination of every vestige of Christian
worship;" and the Council of the Commune, on his demand,
ordered the closing of all churches and temples, of every
religious denomination; made priests and ministers of religion
responsible for any troubles that might arise from religious
opinions, and commanded the arrest as a "suspect" of any
person who should ask for the reopening of a church. "The
example set by Paris, at this melancholy period, was
faithfully repeated, if not surpassed in atrocity, throughout
the provinces. Religion was proscribed, churches closed,
Christian ordinances interdicted; the dreary gloom of
atheistical despotism overspread the land. ... These infamies
were too monstrous to be tolerated for any length of time. ...
Robespierre, who had marked the symptoms of a coming reaction,
boldly seized the opportunity, and denounced without mercy the
hypocritical faction which disputed his own march towards
absolute dictatorship."
_W. H. Jervis,
The Gallican Church and the Revolution,
chapter 7._
ALSO IN
_A. de Lamartine,
History of the Girondists,
book 52 (volume 3)._
_T. Carlyle,
The French Revolution,
book 5, chapter 4 (volume 3)._
_E. de Pressense,
Religion and the Reign of Terror,
book 2, chapter 2._
FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (October-April).
The Terror in the Provinces.
Republican vengeance at Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon,
Bordeaux, Nantes.
Fusillades and Noyades.
"The insurgents of Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, and Bordeaux,
were punished with pitiless severity. Lyons had revolted, and
the convention decreed [October 12] the destruction of the
city, the confiscation of the property of the rich, for the
benefit of the patriots, and the punishment of the insurgents
by martial law. Couthon, a commissioner well tried in cruelty,
hesitated to carry into execution this monstrous decree, and
was superseded by Collot d'Herbois and Fouché. Thousands of
workmen were employed in the work of destruction: whole
streets fell under their pickaxes: the prisons were gorged:
the guillotine was too slow for revolutionary vengeance, and
crowds of prisoners were shot, in murderous 'mitraillades.'
... At Marseilles, 12,000 of the richest citizens fled from
the vengeance of the revolutionists, and their property was
confiscated, and plundered. When Toulon fell before the
strategy of Bonaparte, the savage vengeance and cruelty of the
conquerors were indulged without restraint. ... The dockyard
labourers were put to the sword: gangs of prisoners were
brought out and executed by fusillades: the guillotine also
claimed its victims: the sans-culottes rioted in confiscation
and plunder. At Bordeaux, Tallien threw 15,000 citizens into
prison. Hundreds fell under the guillotine; and the
possessions and property of the rich were offered up to
outrage and robbery. But all these atrocities were far
surpassed in La Vendee. ... The barbarities of warfare were
yet surpassed by the vengeance of the conquerors, when the
insurrection was, at last, overcome. At Nantes, the monster
Carrier outstripped his rivals in cruelty and insatiable
thirst for blood. Not contented with wholesale mitraillades,
he designed that masterpiece of cruelty, the noyades; and
thousands of men, women and children who escaped the muskets
of the rabble soldiery were deliberately drowned in the waters
of the Loire. In four months, his victims reached 15,000. At
Angers, and other towns in La Vendee, these hideous noyades
were added to the terrors of the guillotine and the
fusillades."
_Sir T. E. May,
Democracy in Europe,
chapter 14._
"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 [November 16], what we may call
'Drownages' of Carrier; which have become famous forever.
{1301}
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 Véndee: 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 '138 persons.' 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 there-abouts, 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 crueler than that.
Dumb, out of suffering now, as pale swollen 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: not to be
forgotten for centuries. ... 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 orders, 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.'"
_T. Carlyle,
The French Revolution,
volume 3, book 5, chapter 3._
ALSO IN
_H. M. Stephens,
History of the French Revolution,
volume 2, chapter 11._
_H. A. Taine,
The French Revolution,
book 5, chapter 1, section 9 (volume 3)._
_Horrors of the Prison of Arras
("The Reign of Terror: A Collection of Authentic
Narratives," volume 2)._
_Duchesse de Duras,
Prison Journals during the French Revolution_
_A. des Echerolles,
Early Life,
volume 1, chapters 7-13, and volume 2, chapter l._
See, also, FRANCE: 1794 (JUNE-JULY).
FRANCE: A. D. 1793-1794 (November-June).
The factions of the Mountain devour one another.
Destruction of the Hebertists.
Danton and his followers brought to the knife.
Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety.
The Feast of the Supreme Being.