By these means he kept himself concealed for some time, and afterwards

made a journey to London, in the latter part of the reign of Henry,

VIII. Here, being unknown, he was in much distress, and was even reduced

to the danger of being starved to death, had not Providence interfered

in his favour in the following manner:

One day as Mr. Fox was sitting in St. Paul's church, exhausted with long

fasting, a stranger took a seat by his side, and courteously saluted

him, thrust a sum of money into his hand, and bade him cheer up his

spirits; at the same time informing him, that in a few days new

prospects would present themselves for his future subsistence. Who this

stranger was, he could never learn, but at the end of three days he

received an invitation from the dutchess of Richmond to undertake the

tuition of the children of the earl of Surry who, together with his

father, the duke of Norfolk, was imprisoned in the Tower, by the

jealousy and ingratitude of the king. The children thus confided to his

care were, Thomas, who succeeded to the dukedom; Henry, afterwards earl

of Northampton; and Jane who became countess to Westmoreland. In the

performance of his duties, he fully satisfied the expectations of the

dutchess, their aunt.

These halcyon days continued during the latter part of the reign of

Henry VIII. and the five years of the reign of Edward VI. till Mary came

to the crown, who, soon after her accession, gave all power into the

hands of the papists.

At this time Mr. Fox, who was still under the protection of his noble

pupil, the duke, began to excite the envy and hatred of many,

particularly Dr. Gardiner, then bishop of Winchester, who in the sequel

became his most violent enemy.

Mr. Fox, aware of this, and seeing the dreadful persecutions then

commencing, began to think of quitting the kingdom. As soon as the duke

knew his intention, he endeavoured to persuade him to remain; and his

arguments were so powerful, and given with so much sincerity, that he

gave up the thought of abandoning his asylum for the present.

At that time the bishop of Winchester was very intimate with the duke

(by the patronage of whose family he had risen to the dignity he then

enjoyed,) and frequently waited on him to present his service when he

several times requested that he might see his old tutor. At first the

duke denied his request, at one time alleging his absence, at another,

indisposition. At length it happened that Mr. Fox, not knowing the

bishop was in the house, entered the room where the duke and he were in

discourse; and seeing the bishop, withdrew. Gardiner asked who that was;

the duke answered, "his physician, who was somewhat uncourtly, as being

new come from the university." "I like his countenance and aspect very

well," replied the bishop "and when occasion offers, I will send for

him." The duke understood that speech as the messenger of some

approaching danger; and now himself thought it high time for Mr. Fox to

quit the city, and even the country. He accordingly caused every thing

necessary for his flight to be provided in silence, by sending one of

his servants to Ipswich to hire a bark, and prepare all the requisites

for his departure. He also fixed on the house of one of his servants,

who was a farmer, where he might lodge till the wind became favourable;

and every thing being in readiness, Mr. Fox took leave of his noble

patron, and with his wife, who was pregnant at the time, secretly

departed for the ship.

The vessel was scarcely under sail, when a most violent storm came on,

which lasted all day and night, and the next day drove them back to the

port from which they had departed. During the time that the vessel had

been at sea, an officer, despatched by the bishop of Winchester, had

broken open the house of the farmer with a warrant to apprehend Mr. Fox

wherever he might be found, and bring him back to the city. On hearing

this news he hired a horse, under the pretence of leaving the town

immediately; but secretly returned the same night, and agreed with the

captain of the vessel to sail for any place as soon as the wind should

shift, only desiring him to proceed, and not to doubt that God would

prosper his undertaking. The mariner suffered himself to be persuaded,

and within two days landed his passengers in safety at Nieuport.

After spending a few days in that place, Mr. Fox set out for Basle,

where he found a number of English refugees, who had quitted their

country to avoid the cruelty of the persecutors, with these he

associated, and began to write his "History of the Acts and Monuments of

the Church," which was first published in Latin at Basle, and shortly

after in English.

In the meantime the reformed religion began again to flourish in

England, and the popish faction much to decline, by the death of Queen

Mary; which induced the greater number of the protestant exiles to

return to their native country.

Among others, on the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, Mr. Fox

returned to England; where, on his arrival, he found a faithful and

active friend in his late pupil, the duke of Norfolk, till death

deprived him of his benefactor: after which event, Mr. Fox inherited a

pension bequeathed to him by the duke, and ratified by his son, the earl

of Suffolk.

Nor did the good man's successes stop here. On being recommended to the

queen by her secretary of state, the great Cecil, her majesty granted

him the prebendary of Shipton, in the cathedral of Salisbury, which was

in a manner forced upon him; for it was with difficulty that he could be

persuaded to accept it.

On his resettlement in England, he employed himself in revising and

enlarging his admirable Martyrology. With prodigious pains and constant

study he completed that celebrated work in eleven years. For the sake of

greater correctness, he wrote every line of this vast book with his own

hand, and transcribed all the records and papers himself. But, in

consequence of such excessive toil, leaving no part of his time free

from study, nor affording himself either the repose or recreation which

nature required, his health was so reduced, and his person became so

emaciated and altered, that such of his friends and relations as only

conversed with him occasionally, could scarcely recognise his person.

Yet, though he grew daily more exhausted, he proceeded in his studies as

briskly as ever, nor would he be persuaded to diminish his accustomed

labours. The papists, forseeing how detrimental his history of their

errors and cruelties would prove to their cause, had recourse to every

artifice to lessen the reputation of his work; but their malice was of

signal service, both to Mr. Fox himself, and to the church of God at

large, as it eventually made his book more intrinsically valuable, by

inducing him to weigh, with the most scrupulous attention, the certainty

of the facts which he recorded, and the validity of the authorities from

which he drew his information.

But while he was thus indefatigably employed in promoting the cause of

truth, he did not neglect the other duties of his station; he was

charitable, humane, and attentive to the wants, both spiritual and

temporal, of his neighbours. With the view of being more extensively

useful, although he had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the

rich and great on his own account, he did not decline the friendship of

those in a higher rank who proffered it, and never failed to employ his

influence with them in behalf of the poor and needy. In consequence of

his well known probity and charity, he was frequently presented with

sums of money by persons possessed of wealth, which he accepted and

distributed among those who were distressed. He would also occasionally

attend the table of his friends, not so much for the sake of pleasure,

as from civility, and to convince them that his absence was not

occasioned by a fear of being exposed to the temptations of the

appetite. In short, his character as a man and as a christian, was

without reproach.

Of the esteem in which he was held, the names of the following

respectable friends and noble patrons, will afford ample proof. It has

been already mentioned that the attachment of the duke of Norfolk was so

great to his tutor, that he granted him a pension for life; he also

enjoyed the patronage of the earls of Bedford and Warwick, and the

intimate friendship of Sir Francis Walsingham, (secretary of state,) Sir

Thomas, and Mr. Michael Hennage, of whom he was frequently heard to

observe, that Sir Thomas had every requisite for a complete courtier,

but that Mr. Michael possessed all the merits of his brother, besides

his own, still untainted by the court. He was on very intimate and

affectionate terms with Sir Drue Drury, Sir Francis Drake, Dr. Grindal,

archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Elmar, bishop of London, Dr. Pilkington,

bishop of Durham, and Dr. Nowell, dean of St. Paul's. Others of his most

intimate acquaintances and friends were, Doctors Umphrey, Whitaker, and

Fulk, Mr. John Crowly, and Mr. Baldwin Collins. Among the eminent

citizens, we find he was much venerated by Sir Thomas Gresham, Sir

Thomas Roe, Alderman Bacchus, Mr. Smith, Mr. Dale, Mr. Sherrington, &c.

&c. &c.

At length, having long served both the church and the world by his

ministry, by his pen, and by the unsullied lustre of a benevolent

useful, and holy life, he meekly resigned his soul to Christ, on the

18th of April, 1587, being then in the seventieth year of his age. He

was interred in the chancel of St Giles', Cripplegate; of which parish

he had been, in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, for some time

vicar.

The Lord had given him a foresight of his departure; and so fully was he

assured that the time was just at hand when his soul should quit the

body, that (probably to enjoy unmolested communion with God, and to have

no worldly interruptions in his last hours) he purposely sent his two

sons from home, though he loved them with great tenderness; and before

they returned, his spirit, as he had foreseen would be the case, had

flown to heaven.

His death occasioned great lamentations throughout the city, and his

funeral was honoured with a great concourse of people, each of whom

appeared to bewail the loss of a father or a brother.

In his able martyrology he has elaborately treated of the vices and

absurdities of papal hierarchy, of which the following is a brief

enumeration.

_Errors, Rites, Ceremonies, and Superstitious Practices, of the Romish

Church._

TRADITIONS.] The church of Rome having deprived the laity of the Bible,

substitutes in its stead apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions; and

obliges her disciples to admit for truth whatever she teaches them: but

what do the holy scriptures say? "Why do ye transgress the commandment

of God by your tradition?" Matt. xv. 3, 9, &c. They also command us "to

call no man master (in spiritual concerns;) to try the spirit, and

beware of false teachers."

PRAYERS AND DIVINE SERVICES IN LATIN.] The Roman Catholics will not

interpret the scriptures otherwise than according to the sense of holy

mother church, and the pretended unanimous consent of the fathers: they

assert also, that the scriptures ought not to be read publicly, nor

indifferently by all; and, that the common people may be enslaved by

gross ignorance, they perform public worship in an unknown tongue,

contrary to the rule laid down by the apostle, "That all things should

be done to edification." St. Paul says, "If I pray in an unknown tongue,

my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful."

SEVEN SACRAMENTS.] Two only were instituted by Christ, to which the

Romish church has added five more, making in all seven, necessary to

salvation, namely, the eucharist, baptism, confirmation, penance,

extreme unction, orders, and matrimony. To those two which Christ

instituted, she has added a mixture of her own inventions; for in the

sacrament of baptism, she uses, salt, oil, or spittle; and in the

sacrament of the Lord's supper, the laity have only the bread

administered to them; and even that not after the manner ordained by

Christ, who broke the bread and gave it to his disciples; instead of

which the church of Rome administers to her members not bread, but a

wafer, and the priests only drink the wine, though our blessed Lord

said, "Drink ye ALL of this." Matt. xxvi. 27.

THE MASS.] Roman catholics believe it to be a true, proper, and

propitiatory sacrifice, and therefore call it the sacrament of the

altar; whereas, the death of Christ was a full and complete sacrifice,

"in which he hath, by one suffering, perfected for ever them that are

sanctified. He himself is a priest for ever; who, being raised from the

dead, died no more; and who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself

without spot to God." Paul's Epist. to the Hebrews, ch. ix. 10. It was

on account of this gross absurdity, and the irreligious application of

it, that our first reformers suffered, and so many were put to death in

the reign of queen Mary.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION.] Roman catholics profess, that in the most holy

sacrament of the Lord's supper, there is really and substantially the

body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of Christ, and that

the whole substance of the bread is turned into his body, and the whole

substance of the wine into his blood; which conversion, so contradictory

to our senses, they call transubstantiation, but at the same time they

affirm, that, under either kind or species, only one whole entire

Christ, and the true sacrament, is received. But why are those words,

"This is my body," to be taken in a literal sense, any more than those

concerning the cup? Our Saviour says, "I am the true vine, I am the

door." St. Paul says, "Our fathers drank of the rock that followed them,

and that rock was Christ;" and writing to the Corinthians, he affirms,

that, "he had fed them with milk." Can these passages be taken

literally? Why then must we be forced to interpret our Saviour's words

in a literal sense, when the apostle has explained the intention of the

sacrament to be "to show forth the Lord's death till he come!"

PURGATORY.] This, they say, is a certain place, in which, as in a

prison, after death, those souls, by the prayers of the faithful, are

purged, which in this life could not be fully cleansed; no not by the

blood of Christ: and notwithstanding it is asserted in the scriptures,

"if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us, and to

cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John i. 9. This place of

purgatory is in the power of the pope, who dispenses the indulgences,

and directs the treasury of his merits, by which the pains are

mitigated, and the deliverance hastened. For the tormented sufferers, in

this ideal inquisition, his monks and friars say masses, all of whom

must be paid for their trouble; because, no penny, no pater-noster; by

which bubble the church of Rome amasses great wealth.

IDOLATRY AND CREATURE-WORSHIP.] In all the Romish worship the blessed

virgin is a principal object of adoration. She is styled the queen of

Heaven, lady of the world, the only hope of sinners, queen of angels,

patroness of men, advocate for sinners, mother of mercies, under which

titles they desire her, by the power of a mother, to command her Son. In

some prayers, they invoke God to bring them to heaven by the merits and

mediation of the Virgin Mary and all her saints, and that they may enjoy

perpetual soundness both of body and mind by her glorious intercession.

Hence it might be imagined by a papist, that the sacred writings were

full of encomiums on this pretended mother of God; whereas, on the

contrary, we do not find Christ in any part of scripture called the Son

of Mary, nor that he at any time calls her mother; and when the woman

cried, "Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that thou hast

sucked." "Yea, (returns our Lord) rather blessed are they that hear the

word of God, and keep it." Nor does our Saviour own any relation but

that of a disciple; for when his mother and brethren stood without,

desiring to speak with him, Jesus answered, "Who are my mother and

brethren?" And looking round upon his disciples, he saith, "Behold my

mother and my brethren; for whosoever shalt do the will of my Father who

is in heaven, the same is my brother, sister, and mother." Of the same

nature are their prayers to other saints and angels, by which they

derogate from the honour of our Christ, and transfer his offices to

others; though the scriptures expressly assert, there is but one

mediator between God and man. Nor must we omit under this head the

idolatry of the mass, in the elevation of the host. Thus is the second

commandment infringed, which the Romish church has endeavoured as much

as possible to suppress, and in many of their little manuals it is

altogether omitted.

PAPAL SOVEREIGNTY.] This is politically supported by a pretended

infallibility; auricular confession, founded upon the priest's power to

forgive sins; indulgences; pretended relics; penance; strings of beads

for Ave-Marys and pater-nosters; celibacy; merits and works of

supererogations; restrictions; monkish austerities; religious vows and

orders; palms; candles; decorated images; holy water; christening of

bells; hallowed flowers and branches; agnus dei; oblations;

consecrations, &c., &c.

LUDICROUS FORMS AND CEREMONIES.] At the feast of Christmas, the Roman

catholics have exhibited in their churches a cradle, with an image of an

infant in it, which is rocked with great seeming devotion; and on

Good-Friday they have the figure of our Saviour on the cross, and then

they perform the service which they call the Tenebres; having abundance

of lighted candles, all of which they extinguish one by one, after which

the body is taken down from the cross and put into a sepulchre, and men

stand to watch it.

CRUEL MAXIMS.] Papists hold that heretics may not be termed children and

kindred; that no faith is to be kept with heretics; and that it is

lawful to torture or kill them for the good of their souls.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SKETCH OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, AS CONNECTED WITH THE HISTORY

OF PERSECUTION.

The design of those who were the primary agents in originating the

causes of the French Revolution, was the utter subversion of the

christian religion. Voltaire, the leader in this crusade against

religion, boasted that "with one hand he would pull down, what took

twelve Apostles to build up." The motto on the seal of his letters was,

"Crush the wretch," having reference to Jesus Christ, and the system of

religion, which he promulgated. To effect his object he wrote and

published a great variety of infidel tracts, containing the most

licentious sentiments and the most blasphemous attacks upon the religion

of the Bible. Innumerable copies of these tracts were printed, and

gratuitously circulated in France and other countries. As they were

adapted to the capacity of all classes of persons, they were eagerly

sought after, and read with avidity. The doctrines inculcated in them

were subversive of every principle of morality and religion. The

everlasting distinctions between virtue and vice, were completely broken

down. Marriage was ridiculed--obedience to parents treated as the most

abject slavery--subordination to civil government, the most odious

despotism--and the acknowledgement of a God, the height of folly and

absurdity. Deeply tinged with such sentiments, the revolution of 1789,

found the popular mind in France prepared for all the atrocities which

followed. The public conscience had become so perverted, that scenes of

treachery, cruelty and blood were regarded with indifference, and

sometimes excited the most unbounded applause in the spectators. Such a

change had been effected in the French character, by the propagation of

Infidel and Atheistical opinions, "that from being one of the most light

hearted and kind tempered of nations," says Scott, "the French seemed

upon the revolution to have been animated, not merely with the courage,

but with the rabid fury of wild beasts." When the Bastile was stormed

"Fouton and Berthier, two individuals whom they considered as enemies of

the people, were put to death, with circumstances of cruelty and insult

fitting only at the death stake of an Indian encampment; and in

imitation of literal cannibals, there were men, or rather monsters

found, not only to tear asunder, the limbs of their victims, but to eat

their hearts, and drink their blood."

Croly, in his new interpretation of the Apocalypse, holds the following

language.

The primary cause of the French revolution was the exile of

Protestantism.

Its decency of manners had largely restrained the licentious tendencies

of the higher orders; its learning had compelled the Romish

Ecclesiastics to similar labours; and while christianity could appeal to

such a church in France, the progress of the infidel writers was checked

by the living evidence of the purity, peacefulness and wisdom of the

Gospel. It is not even without sanction of scripture and history to

conceive that, the presence of such a body of the servants of God was a

divine protection to their country.

But the fall of the church was followed by the most palpable, immediate,

and ominous change. The great names of the Romish priesthood, the

vigorous literature of Bossnett, the majestic oratory of Massillon, the

pathetic and classic elegance of Fenelon, the mildest of all

enthusiasts; a race of men who towered above the genius of their country

and of their religion; passed away without a successor. In the beginning

of the 18th century, the most profligate man in France was an

ecclesiastic, the Cardinal Dubois, prime minister to the most profligate

prince in Europe, the Regent Orleans. The country was convulsed with

bitter personal disputes between Jesuit and Jansenist, fighting even to

mutual persecution upon points either beyond or beneath the human

intellect. A third party stood by, unseen, occasionally stimulating

each, but equally despising both, a potential fiend, sneering at the

blind zealotry and miserable rage that were doing its unsuspected will.

Rome, that boasts of her freedom from schism should blot the 18th

century from her page.

The French mind, subtle, satirical, and delighting to turn even matters

of seriousness into ridicule, was immeasurably captivated by the true

burlesque of those disputes, the childish virulence, the extravagant

pretensions, and the still more extravagant impostures fabricated in

support of the rival pre-eminence in absurdity; the visions of half-mad

nuns and friars; the Convulsionaries; the miracles at the tomb of the

Abbe Paris, trespasses on the common sense of man, scarcely conceivable

by us if they had not been renewed under our eyes by popery. All France

was in a burst of laughter.

In the midst of this tempest of scorn an extraordinary man arose, to

guide and deepen it into public ruin, VOLTAIRE; a personal profligate;

possessing a vast variety of that superficial knowledge which gives

importance to folly; frantic for popularity, which he solicited at all

hazards; and sufficiently opulent to relieve him from the necessity of

any labours but those of national undoing. Holding but an inferior and

struggling rank in all the manlier provinces of the mind, in science,

poetry, and philosophy; he was the prince of scorners. The splenetic

pleasantry which stimulates the wearied tastes of high life; the

grossness which half concealed captivates the loose, without offence to

their feeble decorum; and the easy brilliancy which throws what colours

it will on the darker features of its purpose; made Voltaire, the very

genius of France. But under this smooth and sparkling surface,

reflecting like ice all the lights flung upon it, there was a dark

fathomless depth of malignity. He hated government; he hated morals; he

hated man, he hated religion. He sometimes bursts out into exclamations

of rage and insane fury against all that we honour as best and holiest,

that sound less the voice of human lips than the echoes of the final

place of agony and despair.

A tribe worthy of his succession, showy, ambitious, and malignant,

followed; each with some vivid literary contribution, some powerful and

popular work, a new despotic of combustion in that mighty mine on which

stood in thin and fatal security the throne of France. Rousseau, the

most impassioned of all romancers, the great corrupter of the female

mind. Buffon, a lofty and splendid speculator, who dazzled the whole

multitude of the minor philosophers, and fixed the creed of

Materialism. Moutesquieu, eminent for knowledge and sagacity in his

"Spirit of Laws" striking all the establishments of his country into

contempt; and in his "Persian Letters," levelling the same blow at her

morals. D'Alembert, the first mathematician of his day, an eloquent

writer, the declared pupil of Voltaire, and, by his secretary-ship of

the French academy, furnished with all the facilities for propagating

his master's opinions. And Diderot, the projector and chief conductor of

the Encyclopedia, a work justly exciting the admiration of Europe, by

the novelty and magnificence of its design, and by the comprehensive and

solid extent of its knowledge; but in its principles utterly evil, a

condensation of all the treasons of the school of anarchy, the _lex

scripta_ of the Revolution.

All those men were open infidels; and their attacks on religion, such as

they saw it before them, roused the Gallican church. But the warfare was

totally unequal. The priesthood came armed with the antiquated and

unwieldy weapons of old controversy, forgotten traditions and exhausted

legends. They could have conquered them only by the bible; they fought

them only with the breviary. The histories of the saints, and the

wonders of images were but fresh food for the most overwhelming scorn.

The bible itself, which popery has always laboured to close, was brought

into the contest, and used resistlessly against the priesthood. They

were contemptuously asked, in what part of the sacred volume had they

found the worship of the Virgin, of the Saints, or of the Host? where

was the privilege that conferred Saintship at the hands of the pope?

where was the prohibition of the general use of scripture by every man

who had a soul to be saved? where was the revelation of that purgatory,

from which a monk and a mass could extract a sinner? where was the

command to imprison, torture, and slay men for their difference of

opinion with an Italian priest and the college of cardinals? To those

formidable questions the clerics answered by fragments from the fathers,

angry harangues, and more legends of more miracles. They tried to enlist

the nobles and the court in a crusade. But the nobles were already among

the most zealous, though secret, converts to the Encyclopedia; and the

gentle spirit of the monarch was not to be urged into a civil war. The

threat of force only inflamed contempt into vengeance. The populace of

Paris, like all mobs, licentious, restless, and fickle; but beyond all,

taking an interest in public matters, had not been neglected by the deep

designers who saw in the quarrel of the pen the growing quarrel of the

sword. The Fronde was not yet out of their minds; the barrier days of

Paris; the municipal council which in 1648, had levied war against the

government; the mob-army which had fought, and terrified that government

into forgiveness; were the strong memorials on which the anarchists of

1793 founded their seduction. The perpetual ridicule of the national

belief was kept alive among them. The populace of the provinces, whose

religion was in their rosary, were prepared for rebellion by similar

means and the terrible and fated visitation of France began.

After passing through many scenes from the recital of which the mind

turns away with loathing and disgust, the reign of terror commenced.

Previous to this, however, there had been dreadful riots, and disorders

in Paris. The Swiss Guards had been cut to pieces, and the king and

royal family imprisoned. The priests had nearly all perished or been

banished from France. The national assembly was divided into desperate

factions, which often turned their arms against one another. When one

party triumphed, proscription followed, and the guillotine was put in

requisition, and blood flowed in torrents. The grossest irreligion

likewise prevailed. Leaders of the atheistical mob would extend their

arms to heaven and dare a God, if he existed, to vindicate his insulted

majesty, and crush them with his thunderbolts. Over the entrance of

their grave yards was placed this inscription, "DEATH AN ETERNAL SLEEP."

Men who dared to think differently from the dominant faction, were

immediately executed, in mockery, often, of all the forms of justice.

The most ferocious of the bloody factions, were the jacobins, so called

from their place of meeting. The leaders of this party were Danton,

Robespierre, and Marat. They are thus described by Scott in his life of

Napoleon.

Three men of terror, whose names will long remain, we trust, unmatched

in history by those of any similar miscreants, had now the unrivalled

leading of the jacobins, and were called the Triumvirate.

Danton deserves to be named first, as unrivalled by his colleagues in

talent and audacity. He was a man of gigantic size, and possessed a

voice of thunder. His countenance was that of an Ogre on the shoulders

of a Hercules. He was as fond of the pleasures of vice as of the

practice of cruelty; and it was said there were times when he became

humanized amidst his debauchery, laughed at the terror which his furious

declamation excited, and might be approached with safety like the

Maelstrom at the turn of tide. His profusion was indulged to an extent

hazardous to his popularity, for the populace are jealous of a lavish

expenditure, as raising their favourites too much above their own

degree; and the charge of peculation finds always ready credit with

them, when brought against public men.

Robespierre possessed this advantage over Danton, that he did not seem

to seek for wealth, either for hoarding or expending, but lived in

strict and economical retirement, to justify the name of the

Incorruptible, with which he was honoured by his partisans. He appears

to have possessed little talent, saving a deep fund of hypocrisy,

considerable powers of sophistry, and a cold exaggerated strain of

oratory, as foreign to good taste, as the measures he recommended were

to ordinary humanity. It seemed wonderful, that even the seething and

boiling of the revolutionary cauldron should have sent up from the

bottom, and long supported on the surface, a thing so miserably void of

claims to public distinction; but Robespierre had to impose on the minds

of the vulgar, and he knew how to beguile them, by accommodating his

flattery to their passions and scale of understanding, and by acts of

cunning and hypocrisy, which weigh more with the multitude than the

words of eloquence, or the arguments of wisdom. The people listened as

to their Cicero, when he twanged out his apostrophes of _Pauvre Peuple,

Peuple verteueux!_ and hastened to execute whatever came recommended by

such honied phrases, though devised by the worst of men for the worst

and most inhuman of purposes.

Vanity was Robespierre's ruling passion, and though his countenance was

the image of his mind, he was vain even of his personal appearance, and

never adopted the external habits of a sans culotte. Amongst his fellow

jacobins he was distinguished by the nicety with which his hair was

arranged and powdered; and the neatness of his dress was carefully

attended to, so as to counterbalance, if possible, the vulgarity of his

person. His apartments, though small, were elegant, and vanity had

filled them with representations of the occupant. Robespierre's picture

at length hung in one place, his miniature in another, his bust occupied

a niche, and on the table were disposed a few medallions exhibiting his

head in profile. The vanity which all this indicated was of the coldest

and most selfish character, being such as considers neglect as insult,

and receives homage merely as a tribute; so that, while praise is

received without gratitude, it is withheld at the risk of mortal hate.

Self-love of this dangerous character is closely allied with envy, and

Robespierre was one of the most envious and vindictive men that ever

lived. He never was known to pardon any opposition, affront, or even

rivalry; and to be marked in his tablets on such an account was a sure,

though perhaps not an immediate sentence of death. Danton was a hero,

compared with this cold, calculating, creeping miscreant; for his

passions, though exaggerated, had at least some touch of humanity, and

his brutal ferocity was supported by brutal courage. Robespierre was a

coward, who signed death-warrants with a hand that shook, though his

heart was relentless. He possessed no passions on which to charge his

crimes; they were perpetrated in cold blood, and upon mature

deliberation.

Marat, the third of this infernal triumvirate, had attracted the

attention of the lower orders, by the violence of his sentiments in the

journal which he conducted from the commencement of the revolution, upon

such principles that it took the lead in forwarding its successive

changes. His political exhortations began and ended like the howl of a

blood-hound for murder; or, if a wolf could have written a journal, the

gaunt and famished wretch could not have ravined more eagerly for

slaughter. It was blood which was Marat's constant demand, not in drops

from the breast of an individual, not in puny streams from the slaughter

of families, but blood in the profusion of an ocean. His usual

calculation of the heads which he demanded amounted to two hundred and

sixty thousand; and though he sometimes raised it as high as three

hundred thousand, it never fell beneath the smaller number. It may be

hoped, and, for the honour of human nature, we are inclined to believe,

there was a touch of insanity in this unnatural strain of ferocity; and

the wild and squalid features of the wretch appear to have intimated a

degree of alienation of mind. Marat was, like Robespierre, a coward.

Repeatedly denounced in the Assembly, he skulked instead of defending

himself, and lay concealed in some obscure garret or cellar, among his

cut-throats, until a storm appeared, when, like a bird of ill omen, his

death-screech was again heard. Such was the strange and fatal

triumvirate, in which the same degree of cannibal cruelty existed under

different aspects. Danton murdered to glut his rage; Robespierre to

avenge his injured vanity, or to remove a rival whom he envied! Marat,

from the same instinctive love of blood, which induces a wolf to

continue his ravage of the flocks long after his hunger is appeased.

These monsters ruled France for a time with the most despotic sway. The

most sanguinary laws were enacted--and the most vigilant system of

police maintained. Spies and informers were employed--and every murmur,

and every expression unfavourable to the ruling powers was followed with

the sentence of death and its immediate execution.

"Men," says Scott, "read Livy for the sake of discovering what degree of

private crime might be committed under the mask of public virtue. The

deed of the younger Brutus, served any man as an apology to betray to

ruin and to death, a friend or a patron, whose patriotism might not be

of the pitch which suited the time. Under the example of the elder

Brutus, the nearest ties of blood were repeatedly made to give way

before the ferocity of party zeal--a zeal too often assumed for the most

infamous and selfish purposes. As some fanatics of yore studied the old

testament for the purpose of finding examples of bad actions to

vindicate those which themselves were tempted to commit, so the

republicans of France, we mean the desperate and outrageous bigots of

the revolution, read history to justify, by classical instances, their

public and private crimes. Informers, those scourges of a state, were

encouraged to a degree scarce known in ancient Rome in the time of the

emperors, though Tacitus has hurled his thunders against them, as the

poison and pest of his time. The duty of lodging such informations was

unblushingly urged as indispensable. The safety of the republic being

the supreme charge of every citizen, he was on no account to hesitate in

_denouncing_, as it was termed, any one whomsoever, or howsoever

connected with him,--the friend of his counsels, or the wife of his

bosom,--providing he had reason to suspect the devoted individual of the

crime of _incivism_,--a crime the more mysteriously dreadful, as no one

knew exactly its nature."

In this place we shall give an account of some of the scenes to which

France was subject during this awful period. In order to render the

triumph complete, the leaders of the Jacobins determined upon a general

massacre of all the friends of the unfortunate Louis and the

constitution in the kingdom. For this purpose, suspected persons of all

ranks were collected in the prisons and jails, and on the 2d of

September, 1792, the work of death commenced.

_Massacre of Prisoners._

The number of individuals accumulated in the various prisons of Paris

had increased by the arrests and domiciliary visits subsequent to the

10th of August, to about eight thousand persons. It was the object of

this infernal scheme to destroy the greater part of these under one

general system of murder, not to be executed by the sudden and furious

impulse of an armed multitude, but with a certain degree of cold blood

and deliberate investigation. A force of armed banditti, Marsellois

partly, and partly chosen ruffians of the Fauxbourgs, proceeded to the

several prisons, into which they either forced their passage, or were

admitted by the jailers, most of whom had been apprised of what was to

take place, though some even of these steeled officials exerted

themselves to save those under their charge. A revolutionary tribunal

was formed from among the armed ruffians themselves, who examined the

registers of the prison, and summoned the captives individually to

undergo the form of a trial. If the judges, as was almost always the

case, declared for death, their doom, to prevent the efforts of men in

despair, was expressed in the words "Give the prisoner freedom." The

victim was then thrust out into the street, or yard; he was despatched

by men and women, who, with sleeves tucked up, arms dyed elbow-deep in

blood, hands holding axes, pikes, and sabres, were executioners of the

sentence; and, by the manner in which they did their office on the

living, and mangled the bodies of the dead, showed that they occupied

the post as much from pleasure as from love of hire. They often

exchanged places; the judges going out to take the executioners' duty,

the executioners, with reeking hands, sitting as judges in their turn.

Mailard, a ruffian alleged to have distinguished himself at the siege of

the Bastile, but better known by his exploits on the march to

Versailles, presided during these brief and sanguinary investigations.

His companions on the bench were persons of the same stamp. Yet there

were occasions when they showed some transient gleams of humanity, and

it is not unimportant to remark, that boldness had more influence on

them than any appeal to mercy or compassion. An avowed royalist was

occasionally dismissed uninjured, while the constitutionalists were sure

to be massacred. Another trait of a singular nature is, that two of the

ruffians who were appointed to guard one of these intended victims home

in safety, as if they were acquitted, insisted on seeing his meeting

with his family, seemed to share in the transports of the moment, and on

taking leave, shook the hand of their late prisoner, while their own

were clotted with the gore of his friends, and had been just raised to

shed his own. Few, indeed, and brief, were these symptoms of relenting.

In general, the doom of the prisoner was death, and that doom was

instantly accomplished.

In the meanwhile, the captives were penned up in their dungeons like

cattle in a shambles, and in many instances might, from windows which

looked outwards, mark the fate of their comrades, hear their cries, and

behold their struggles, and learn from the horrible scene, how they

might best meet their own approaching fate. They observed, according to

St. Meard, who, in his well-named Agony of Thirty-Six Hours, has given

the account of this fearful scene, that those who intercepted the blows

of the executioners, by holding up their hands, suffered protracted

torment, while those who offered no show of struggle were more easily

despatched; and they encouraged each other to submit to their fate, in

the manner least likely to prolong their sufferings.

Many ladies, especially those belonging to the court, were thus

murdered. The Princess de Lamballe, whose only crime seems to have been

her friendship for Marie Antoinette, was literally hewn to pieces, and

her head, and that of others, paraded on pikes through the metropolis.

It was carried to the temple on that accursed weapon, the features yet

beautiful in death, and the long fair curls of the hair floating around

the spear. The murderers insisted that the King and Queen should be

compelled to come to the window to view this dreadful trophy. The

municipal officers who were upon duty over the royal prisoners, had

difficulty, not merely in saving them from this horrible inhumanity, but

also in preventing their prison from being forced. Three-coloured

ribbons were extended across the street, and this frail barrier was

found sufficient to intimate that the Temple was under the safeguard of

the nation. We do not read that the efficiency of the three-coloured

ribbons was tried for the protection of any of the other prisoners. No

doubt the executioners had their instructions where and when they should

be respected.

The clergy, who had declined the constitutional oath from pious

scruples, were, during the massacre, the peculiar objects of insult and

cruelty, and their conduct was such as corresponded with their religious

and conscientious professions. They were seen confessing themselves to

each other, or receiving the confessions of their lay companions in

misfortune, and encouraging them to undergo the evil hour, with as much

calmness as if they had not been to share its bitterness. As

protestants, we cannot abstractedly approve of the doctrines which

render the established clergy of one country dependant upon the

sovereign pontiff, the prince of an alien state. But these priests did

not make the laws for which they suffered; they only obeyed them; and as

men and christians we must regard them as martyrs, who preferred death

to what they considered as apostacy.

In the brief intervals of this dreadful butchery, which lasted four

days, the judges and executioners ate, drank, and slept: and awoke from

slumber, or arose from their meal, with fresh appetite for murder. There

were places arranged for the male, and for the female murderers, for the

work had been incomplete without the intervention of the latter. Prison

after prison was invested, entered, and under the same form of

proceeding made the scene of the same inhuman butchery. The Jacobins had

reckoned on making the massacre universal over France. But the example

was not generally followed. It required, as in the case of St.

Bartholomew, the only massacre which can be compared to this in

atrocity, the excitation of a large capital, in a violent crisis, to

render such horrors possible.

The community of Paris were not in fault for this. They did all they

could to extend the sphere of murder. Their warrant brought from Orleans

near sixty persons, including the Duke de Cosse-Brissac, De Lesart the

late minister, and other royalists of distinction, who were to have been

tried before the high court of that department. A band of assassins met

them, by appointment of the community, at Versailles, who, uniting with

their escort, murdered almost the whole of the unhappy men.

From the 2d to the 6th of September, these infernal crimes proceeded

uninterrupted, protracted by the actors for the sake of the daily pay of

a louis to each, openly distributed amongst them, by order of the

Commune. It was either from a desire to continue as long as possible a

labour so well requited, or because these beings had acquired an

insatiable lust of murder, that, when the jails were emptied of state

criminals, the assassins attacked the Bicetre, a prison where ordinary

delinquents were confined. These unhappy wretches offered a degree of

resistance which cost the assailants more dear than any they had

experienced from their proper victims. They were obliged to fire on them

with cannon, and many hundreds of the miserable creatures were in thus

way exterminated, by wretches worse than themselves.

No exact account was ever made of the number of persons murdered during

this dreadful period; but not above two or three hundred of the

prisoners arrested for state offences were known to escape, or be

discharged, and the most moderate computation raises the number of those

who fell to two or three thousand, though some carry it to twice the

extent. Truchod announced to the Legislative Assembly, that four

thousand had perished. Some exertion was made to save the lives of those

imprisoned for debt, whose numbers, with those of common felons, may

make up the balance betwixt the number slain and eight thousand who were

prisoners when the massacre began. The bodies were interred in heaps, in

immense trenches, prepared beforehand by order of the community of

Paris; but their bones have since been transferred to the subterranean

catacombs, which form the general charnel-house of the city. In those

melancholy regions, while other relics of mortality lie exposed all

around, the remains of those who perished in the massacres of September,

are alone secluded from the eye. The vault in which they repose is

closed with a screen of freestone, as if relating to crimes unfit to be

thought of even in the proper abode of death; and which France would

willingly hide in oblivion.

After this dreadful massacre, the Jacobins eagerly demanded the life of

Louis XVI. He was accordingly tried by the convention and condemned to

be beheaded.

_Death of Louis XVI. and other Members of the Royal Family._

On the 21st of January, 1793, Louis XVI. was publicly beheaded in the

midst of his own metropolis, in the _Place Louis Quinze_, erected to the

memory of his grandfather. It is possible, for the critical eye of the

historian, to discover much weakness in the conduct of this unhappy

monarch; for he had neither the determination to fight for his rights,

nor the power of submitting with apparent indifference to circumstances

where resistance inferred danger. He submitted, indeed, but with so bad

a grace, that he only made himself suspected of cowardice, without

getting credit for voluntary concession. But yet his behaviour on many

trying occasions effectually vindicate him from the charge of timidity,

and showed that the unwillingness to shed blood, by which he was

peculiarly distinguished, arose from benevolence, not from

pusillanimity.

Upon the scaffold, he behaved with the firmness which became a noble

spirit, and the patience beseeming one who was reconciled to heaven. As

one of the few marks of sympathy with which his sufferings were

softened, the attendance of a confessor, who had not taken the

constitutional oath, was permitted to the dethroned monarch. He who

undertook the honourable but dangerous office, was a gentleman of gifted

family of Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown; and the devoted zeal with which

he rendered the last duties to Louis, had like in the issue to have

proved fatal to himself. As the instrument of death descended, the

confessor pronounced the impressive words,--"Son of Saint Louis, ascend

to heaven!"

There was a last will of Louis XVI. circulated upon good authority,

bearing this remarkable passage:--"I recommend to my son, should you

have the misfortune to become king, to recollect that his whole

faculties are due to the service of the public; that he ought to consult

the happiness of his people, by governing according to the laws,

forgetting all injuries and misfortunes, and in particular those which I

may have sustained. But while I exhort him to govern under the authority

of the laws, I cannot but add, that this will be only in his power, in

so far as he shall be endowed with authority to cause right to be

respected, and wrong punished; and that without such authority, his

situation in the government must be more hurtful than advantageous to

the state."

Not to mingle the fate of the illustrious victim of the royal family

with the general tale of the sufferers under the reign of terror, we

must here mention the deaths of the rest of that illustrious house,

which closed for a time a monarchy, that existing through three

dynasties, had given sixty-six kings to France.

It was not to be supposed, that the queen was to be long permitted to

survive her husband. She had been even more than he the object of

revolutionary detestation; nay, many were disposed to throw on Marie

Antoinette, almost exclusively, the blame of those measures which they

considered as counter-revolutionary.

The terms of her accusation were too basely depraved to be even hinted

at here. She scorned to reply to it, but appealed to all who had been

mothers, against the very possibility of the horrors which were stated

against her. The widow of a king, the sister of an emperor, was

condemned to death, dragged in an open tumbril to the place of

execution, and beheaded on the 16th October, 1793. She suffered death in

her 39th year.

The princess Elizabeth, sister of Louis, of whom it might he said, in

the words of lord Clarendon, that she resembled a chapel in a king's

palace, into which nothing but piety and morality enter, while all

around is filled with sin, idleness, and folly, did not, by the most

harmless demeanour and inoffensive character, escape the miserable fate

in which the Jacobins had determined to involve the whole family of

Louis XVI. Part of the accusation redounded to the honour of her

character. She was accused of having admitted to the apartments of the

Tuilleries some of the national guards, of the section of Filles de

Saint Thomas, and causing the wounds to be looked to which they had

received in a skirmish with the Marsellois, immediately before the 10th

of August. The princess admitted her having done so, and it was exactly

in consistence with her whole conduct. Another charge stated the

ridiculous accusation, that she had distributed bullets chewed by

herself and her attendants, to render then more fatal, to the defenders

of the castle of the Tuilleries; a ridiculous fable, of which there was

no proof whatever. She was beheaded in May, 1794, and met her death as

became the manner in which her life had been spent.

We are weary of recounting these atrocities, as others must be of

reading them. Yet it is not useless that men should see how far human

nature can be carried, in contradiction to every feeling the most

sacred, to every pleading, whether of justice or of humanity. The

Dauphin we have already described as a promising child of seven years

old, an age at which no offence could have been given, and from which no

danger could have been apprehended. Nevertheless, it was resolved to

destroy the innocent child, and by means to which ordinary murders seem

deeds of mercy.

The unhappy boy was put in charge of the most hard-hearted villain whom the

community of Paris, well acquainted where such agents were to be found, were

able to select from their band of Jacobins. This wretch, a shoemaker called

Simon, asked his employers, "what was to be done with the young wolf-whelp;

Was he to be slain?"--"No?"--"Poisoned?"--"No."--"Starved to death?"--"No."

"What then?"--"He was to be got rid of." Accordingly, by a continuance of

the most severe treatment--by beating, cold, vigils, fasts, and ill usage

of every kind, so frail a blossom was soon blighted. He died on the 8th

June, 1795.

After this last horrible crime, there was a relaxation in favour of the

daughter, and now the sole child of this unhappy house. The princess

royal, whose qualities have honoured even her birth and blood,

experienced from this period a mitigated captivity. Finally, on the

19th December, 1795, this last remaining relic of the family of Louis,

was permitted to leave her prison and her country, in exchange for La

Fayette and others, whom, on that condition, Austria delivered from

captivity. She became afterwards the wife of her cousin, the duke

d'Angouleme, eldest son of the reigning monarch of France, and obtained,

by the manner in which she conducted herself at Bourdeaux in 1815, the

highest praise for gallantry and spirit.

_Dreadful scenes in La Vendee._

In La Vendee, one of the departments of France, an insurrection broke

out against the Jacobinical government, in 1793.

Upwards of two hundred battles and skirmishes were fought in this

devoted country. The revolutionary fever was in its access; the shedding

of blood seemed to have become positive pleasure to the perpetrators of

slaughter, and was varied by each invention which cruelty could invent

to give it new zest. The habitations of the Vendeans were destroyed,

their families subjected to violation and massacre, their cattle houghed

and slaughtered, and their crops burnt and wasted. One republican column

assumed and merited the name of the Infernal, by the horrid atrocities

which they committed. At Pilau, they roasted the women and children in a

heated oven. Many similar horrors could be added, did not the heart and

hand recoil from the task. Without quoting any more special instances of

horror, we use the words of a republican eye witness, to express the

general spectacle presented by the theatre of public conflict.

"I did not see a single male being at the towns of St. Hermand,

Chantonnay, or Herbiers. A few women alone had escaped the sword.

Country-seats, cottages, habitations of whichever kind, were burnt. The

herds and flocks were wandering in terror around their usual places of

shelter, now smoking in ruins. I was surprised by night, but the

wavering and dismal blaze of conflagration afforded light over the

country. To the bleating of the terrified flocks, and bellowing of the

terrified cattle, was joined the deep hoarse notes of carrion crows, and

the yells of wild animals coming from the recesses of the woods to prey

upon the carcasses of the slain. At length a distant colume of fire,

widening and increasing as I approached, served me as a beacon. It was

the town of Mortagne in flames. When I arrived there, no living

creatures were to be seen, save a few wretched women who were striving

to save some remnants of their property from the general

conflagration."--_Les Memoires d'un Ancien Administrateur des Armees

Republicaines._

_Scenes at Marseilles and Lyons._

Marseilles, Toulon, and Lyons, had declared themselves against the

Jacobin supremacy. Rich from commerce and their maratime situation,

and, in the case of Lyons, from their command of internal navigation,

the wealthy merchants and manufacturers of those cities foresaw the

total insecurity of property, and in consequence of their own ruin, in

the system of arbitrary spoliation and murder upon which the government

of the Jacobins was founded. But property, for which they were

solicitous, though, if its natural force is used in time, the most

powerful barrier to withstand revolution, becomes, after a certain

period of delay, its helpless victim. If the rich are in due season

liberal of their means, they have the power of enlisting in their cause,

and as adherents, those among the lower orders, who, if they see their

superiors dejected and despairing, will be tempted to consider them as

objects of plunder. But this must be done early, or those who might be

made the most active defenders of property, will join with such as are

prepared to make a prey of it.

Marseilles showed at once her good will and her impotency of means. The

utmost exertions of that wealthy city, whose revolutionary band had

contributed so much to the downfall of the monarchy in the attack on the

Tuilleries, were able to equip only a small and doubtful army of about

3000 men, who were despatched to the relief of Lyons. This

inconsiderable army threw themselves into Avignon, and were defeated

with the utmost ease, by the republican general Cartaux, despicable as a

military officer, and whose forces would not have stood a single

_engaillement_ of Vendean sharp-shooters. Marseilles received the

victors, and bowed her head to the subsequent horrors which it pleased

Cartaux, with two formidable Jacobins, Barras and Ferron, to inflict on

that flourishing city. The place underwent the usual terrors of Jacobin

purifaction, and was for a time affectedly called "nameless commune."

Lyons made a more honourable stand. That noble city had been subjected

for some time to the domination of Chalier, one of the most ferocious,

and at the same time one of the most extravagantly absurd, of the

Jacobins. He was at the head of a formidable club, which was worthy of

being affiliated with the mother society, and ambitious of treading in

its footsteps; and he was supported by a garrison of two revolutionary

regiments, besides a numerous artillery, and a large addition of

volunteers, amounting in all to about ten thousand men, forming what was

called a revolutionary army. This Chalier, was an apostate priest, an

atheist, and a thorough-paced pupil in the school of terror. He had been

procureur of the community, and had imposed on the wealthy citizens a

tax, which was raised from six to thirty millions of livres. But blood

as well as gold was his object. The massacre of a few priests and

aristocrats confined in the fortress of Pierre-Scixe, was a pitiful

sacrifice; and Chalier, ambitious of deeds more decisive, caused a

general arrest of an hundred principal citizens, whom he destined as a

hecatomb more worthy of the demon whom he served.

This sacrifice was prevented by the courage of the Lyonnois; a courage

which, if assumed by the Parisians, might have prevented most of the

horrors which disgraced the revolution. The meditated slaughter was

already announced by Chalier to the Jacobin club. "Three hundred heads,"

he said, "are marked for slaughter. Let us lose no time in seizing the

members of the departmental office-bearers, the presidents and

secretaries of the sections, all the local authorities who obstruct our

revolutionary measures. Let us make one fagot of the whole, and deliver

them at once to the guillotine."

But ere he could execute his threat, terror was awakened into the

courage of despair. The citizens rose in arms and besieged the Hotel de

Ville, in which Chalier, with his revolutionary troops, made a

desperate, and for some time a successful, yet ultimately a vain

defence. But the Lyonnois unhappily knew not how to avail themselves of

their triumph. They were not sufficiently aware of the nature of the

vengeance which they had provoked, or of the necessity of supporting the

bold step which they had taken, by measures which precluded a

compromise. Their resistance to the violence and atrocity of the

Jacobins had no political character, any more than that offered by the

traveller against robbers who threaten him with plunder and murder. They

were not sufficiently aware, that, having done so much, they must

necessarily do more. They ought, by declaring themselves royalists, to

have endeavoured to prevail on the troops of Savoy, if not on the Swiss,

(who had embraced a species of neutrality, which, after the 10th of

August, was dishonourable to their ancient reputation,) to send in all

haste, soldiery to the assistance of a city which had no fortifications

or regular troops to defend it; but which possessed, nevertheless,

treasures to pay their auxiliaries, and strong hands and able officers

to avail themselves of the localities of their situation, which, when

well defended, are sometimes as formidable as the regular protection

erected by scientific engineers.

The people of Lyons vainly endeavoured to establish a revolutionary

character for themselves upon the system of Gironde; two of whose

proscribed deputies tried to draw them over to their unpopular and

hopeless cause: and they inconsistently sought protection by affecting a

republican zeal, even while resisting the decrees, and defeating the

troops of the Jacobins. There were undoubtedly many of royalist

principles among the insurgents, and some of their leaders were

decidedly such; but these were not numerous or influential enough to

establish the true principle of open resistance, and the ultimate chance

of rescue, by a bold proclamation of the king's interest. They still

appealed to the convention as their legitimate sovereign, in whose eyes

they endeavoured to vindicate themselves, and at the same time tried to

secure the interest of two Jacobin deputies, who had countenanced every

violation attempted by Chalier, that they might prevail upon them to

represent their conduct favourably. Of course they had enough of

promises to this effect, while Messrs. Guathier and Nioche, the deputies

in question, remained in their power; promises, doubtless the more

readily given, that the Lyonnois, though desirous to conciliate the

favour of the convention, did not hesitate in proceeding to the

punishment of the Jacobin Chalier. He was condemned and executed, along

with one of his principal associates, termed Reard.

To defend these vigourous proceedings, the unhappy insurgents placed

themselves under the interim government of a council, who, still

desirous to temporize and maintain the revolutionary character, termed

themselves "the popular and republican commission of public safety of

the department of the Rhine and Loire;" a title which, while it excited

no popular enthusiasm, and attracted no foreign aid, no ways soothed,

but rather exasperated, the resentment of the convention, now under the

absolute domination of the Jacobins, by whom every thing short of

complete fraternization was accounted presumptuous defiance. Those who

were not with them, it was their policy to hold as their most decided

enemies.

The Lyonnois had indeed letters of encouragement, and promised

concurrence, from several departments; but no effectual support was ever

directed to their city, excepting the petty reinforcement from

Marseilles, which we have seen was intercepted and dispersed with little

trouble by the Jacobin general, Cartaux.

Lyons had expected to become the patroness and focus of an Anti-Jacobin

league, formed by the great commercial towns, against Paris and the

predominant part of the convention. She found herself isolated and

unsupported, and left to oppose her own proper forces and means of

defence, to an army of sixty thousand men, and to the numerous Jacobins

contained within her own walls. About the end of July, after a lapse of

an interval of two months, a regular blockade was formed around the

city, and in the first week of August, hostilities took place. The

besieging army was directed in its military character by general

Kellerman, who, with other distinguished soldiers, had now began to hold

an eminent rank in the republican armies. But for the purpose of

executing the vengeance for which they thirsted, the Jacobins relied

chiefly on the exertions of the deputies they had sent along with the

commander, and especially of the representative, Dubois Crance, a man

whose sole merit appears to have been his frantic Jacobinism. General

Percy, formerly an officer in the royal service, undertook the almost

hopeless task of defence, and by forming redoubts on the most commanding

situations around the town, commenced a resistance against the immensely

superior force of the besiegers, which was honourable if it could have

been useful. The Lyonnois, at the same time, still endeavoured to make

fair weather with the besieging army, by representing themselves as firm

republicans. They celebrated as a public festival the anniversary of the

10th of August, while Dubois Crance, to show the credit he gave them for

their republican zeal, fixed the same day for commencing his fire on the

place, and caused the first gun to be discharged by his own concubine, a

female born in Lyons. Bombs and red-hot bullets were next resorted to,

against the second city of the French empire; while the besieged

sustained the attack with a constancy, and on many parts repelled it

with a courage highly honourable to their character. But their fate was

determined. The deputies announced to the convention their purpose of

pouring their instruments of havoc on every quarter of the town at once,

and when it was on fire in several places, to attempt a general storm.

"The city," they said, "must surrender, or there shall not remain one

stone upon another, and this we hope to accomplish in spite of the

suggestions of false compassion. Do not then be surprised when you hear

that Lyons exists no longer." The fury of the attack threatened to make

good these promises.

The sufferings of the citizens became intolerable. Several quarters of

the city were on fire at the same time, immense magazines were burnt to

the ground, and a loss incurred, during two night's bombardment, which

was calculated at two hundred millions of livres. A black flag was

hoisted by the besieged on the Great Hospital, as a sign that the fire

of the assailants should not be directed on that asylum of hopeless

misery. The signal seemed only to draw the republican bombs to the spot

where they could create the most frightful distresses, and outrage in

the highest degree the feelings of humanity. The devastations of famine

were soon added to those of slaughter; and after two months of such

horrors had been sustained, it became obvious that farther resistance

was impossible.

The parylitic Couthon, with Collot D'Herbois, and other deputies were

sent to Lyons by the committee of public safety, to execute the

vengeance which the Jacobins demanded; while Dubois Crance was recalled,

for having put, it was thought, less energy to his proceedings than the

prosecution of the siege required. Collot D'Herbois had a personal

motive of a singular nature for delighting in the task intrusted to him

and his colleagues. In his capacity of a play-actor, he had been hissed

from the stage at Lyons, and the door to revenge was now open. The

instructions of this committee enjoined them to take the most

satisfactory revenge for the death of Chalier and the insurrection of

Lyons, not merely on the citizens, but on the town itself. The principal

streets and buildings were to be levelled with the ground, and a

monument erected where they stood, was to record the cause:--"_Lyons

rebelled against the Republic--Lyons is no more._" Such fragments of the

town as might be permitted to remain, were to bear the name of Ville

Affranchie. It will scarce be believed that a doom like that which might

have passed the lips of some eastern despot, in all the frantic madness

of arbitrary power and utter ignorance, could have been seriously

pronounced, and as seriously enforced, in one of the most civilized

nations in Europe; and that to the present enlightened age, men who

pretended to wisdom and philosophy, should have considered the labours

of the architect as a proper subject of punishment. So it was, however;

and to give the demolition more effect, the impotent Couthon was carried

from house to house, devoting each to ruin, by striking the door with a

silver hammer, and pronouncing these words--"House of a rebel. I condemn

thee in the name of the law." Workmen followed in great multitudes, who

executed the sentence by pulling the house down to the foundations. This

wanton demolition continued for six months, and is said to have been

carried on at an expense equal to that which the superb military

hospital, the Hotel des Invalides, cost its founder, Louis XIV. But

republican vengeance did not waste itself exclusively upon senseless

lime and stone--it sought out sentient victims.

The deserved death of Chalier had been atoned by an apotheosis executed

after Lyons had surrendered; but Collot D'Herbois declared that every

drop of that patriotic blood fell as if scalding his own heart, and that

the murder demanded atonement. All ordinary process, and every usual

mode of execution, was thought too tardy to avenge the death of a

Jacobin proconsul. The judges of the revolutionary commission were worn

out with fatigue--the arm of the executioner was weary--the very steel

of the guillotine was blunted. Collot D'Herbois devised a more summary

mode of slaughter. A number of from two to three hundred victims at once

were dragged from prison to the place de Baotteaux, one of the largest

squares in Lyons, and there subjected to a fire of grape-shot.

Efficacious as this mode of execution may seem, it was neither speedy

nor merciful. The sufferers fell to the ground like singed flies,

mutilated but not slain, and imploring their executioners to despatch

them speedily. This was done with sabres and bayonets, and with such

haste and zeal, that some of the jailers and assistants were slain along

with those whom they had assisted in dragging to death; and the mistake

was not discerned, until, upon counting the dead bodies, the military

murderers found them to amount to more than the destined tale. The

bodies of the dead were thrown into the Rhone, to carry news of the

republican vengeance, as Collot D'Herbois expressed himself, to Toulon,

then also in a state of revolt. But the sullen stream rejected the

office imposed on it, and headed back the dead in heaps upon the banks;

and the committee of Representatives was compelled at length to allow

the relics of their cruelty to be interred, to prevent the risk of

contagion.

_The Installation of the Goddess of Reason._

At length the zeal of the infuriated Atheists in France hurried them to

the perpetration of one of the most ridiculous, and at the same time

impious transactions which ever disgraced the annals of any nation. It

was no less than a formal renunciation of the existence of a Supreme

Being, and the installation of the _Goddess of Reason_, in 1793.

"There is," says Scott, "a fanaticism of atheism, as well as of

superstitious belief; and a philosopher can harbour and express as much

malice against those who persevere in believing what he is pleased to

denounce as unworthy of credence, as an ignorant and bigoted priest can

bear against a man who cannot yield faith to dogmata which he thinks

insufficiently proved." Accordingly, the throne being totally

annihilated, it appeared to the philosophers of the school of Hebert,

(who was author of the most gross and beastly periodical paper of the

time, called the _Pere du Chene_) that in totally destroying such

vestiges of religion and public worship as were still retained by the

people of France, there was room for a splendid triumph of liberal

opinions. It was not enough, they said, for a regenerate nation to have

dethroned earthly kings, unless she stretched out the arm of defiance

towards those powers which superstition had represented as reigning over

boundless space.

An unhappy man, named Gobet, constitutional bishop of Paris, was brought

forward to play the principal part in the most impudent and scandalous

farce ever acted in the face of a national representation.

It is said that the leaders of the scene had some difficulty in inducing

the bishop to comply with the task assigned him, which, after all, he

executed, not without present tears and subsequent remorse. But he did

play the part prescribed. He was brought forward in full procession, to

declare to the convention, that the religion which he had taught so many

years, was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no

foundation either in history or sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn and

explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to whose worship he had been

consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage of liberty,

equality, virtue, and morality. He then laid on the table his episcopal

decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the president of the

convention. Several apostate priests followed the example of this

prelate.

The gold and silver plate of the churches was seized upon and

desecrated, processions entered the convention, travestied in priestly

garments, and singing the most profane hymns; while many of the chalices

and sacred vessels were applied by Chaumette and Hebert to the

celebration of their own impious orgies. The world for the first time,

heard an assembly of men, born and educated in civilization, and

assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the European nations,

uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man's soul

receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of a Deity.

For a short time the same mad profanity continued to be acted upon.

One of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivalled for

absurdity, combined with impiety. The doors of the convention were

thrown open to a band of musicians; preceded by whom, the members of the

municipal body entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn in praise of

liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future worship, a veiled

female, whom they termed the Goddess of Reason. Being brought within the

bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed on the right hand of

the president; when she was generally recognized as a dancing-girl of

the opera, with whose charms most of the persons present were acquainted

from her appearance on the stage, while the experience of individuals

was farther extended. To this person, as the fittest representative of

that reason whom they worshipped the national convention of France

rendered public homage.

This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fashion; and the

installation of the Goddess of reason was renewed and imitated

throughout the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to

show themselves equal to all the heights of the revolution. The churches

were, in most districts of France, closed against priests and

worshippers--the bells were broken and cast into cannon--the whole

ecclesiastical establishment destroyed--and the republican inscription

over the cemeteries, declaring death to be perpetual sleep, announced to

those who lived under that dominion, that they were to hope no redress

even in the next world.

Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion, was that which

reduced the union of marriage, the most sacred engagement which human

beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the

consolidation of society, to the state of a mere civil contract of a

transitory character, which any two persons might engage in, and cast

loose at pleasure, when their taste was changed, or their appetite

gratified. If fiends had set themselves to work, to discover a mode of

most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or

permanent in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time an

assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should

be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have

invented a more effectual plan than the degradation of marriage into a

state of mere occasional co-habitation, or licensed concubinage. Sophie

Arnoult, an actress famous for the witty things she said, described the

republican marriage as the sacrament of adultery.

_Fall of Danton, Robespierre, Marat and other Jacobins._

These monsters fell victims by the same means they had used for the

destruction of others. Marat was poignarded in 1793, by Charlotte

Corday, a young female, who had cherished in a feeling between lunacy

and heroism, the ambition of ridding the world of a tyrant. Danton was

guillotined in 1794. Robespierre followed soon after. His fall is thus

described by Scott in his life of Napoleon.

At length his fate urged him on to the encounter. Robespierre descended

to the convention, where he had of late but rarely appeared, like the

far nobler dictator of Rome; and in his case also, a band of senators

was ready to poignard the tyrant on the spot, had they not been afraid

of the popularity he was supposed to enjoy, and which they feared might

render them instant victims to the revenge of the Jacobins. The speech

which Robespierre addressed to the convention was as menacing as the

first distant rustle of the hurricane, and dark and lurid as the eclipse

which announces its approach. Anxious murmurs had been heard among the

populace who filled the tribunes, or crowded the entrances of the hall

of the convention, indicating that a second 31st of May (being the day

on which the Jacobins proscribed the Girondists) was about to witness a

similar operation.

The first theme of the gloomy orator was the display of his own virtues

and his services as a patriot, distinguishing as enemies to their

country all whose opinions were contrary to his own. He then reviewed

successively the various departments of the government, and loaded them

in turn with censure and contempt. He declaimed against the supineness

of the committees of public safety and public security, as if the

guillotine had never been in exercise; and he accused the committee of

finance of having _counter-revolutionized_ the revenues of the republic.

He enlarged with no less bitterness on withdrawing the artillery-men

(always violent Jacobins) from Paris, and on the mode of management

adopted in the conquered countries of Belgium. It seemed as if he wished

to collect within the same lists all the functionaries of the state, and

in the same breath to utter defiance to them all.

The usual honorary motion was made to print the discourse; but then the

storm of opposition broke forth, and many speakers vociferously

demanded, that before so far adopting the grave inculpations which it

contained, the discourse should be referred to the two committees.

Robespierre in his turn, exclaimed, that this was subjecting his speech

to the partial criticism and revision of the very parties whom he had

accused. Exculpations and defences were heard on all sides against the

charges which had been thus sweepingly brought forward; and there were

many deputies who complained in no obscure terms of individual tyranny,

and of a conspiracy on foot to outlaw and murder such part of the

convention as might be disposed to offer resistance. Robespierre was but

feebly supported, save by Saint Just, Couthon, and by his own brother.

After a stormy debate, in which the convention were alternately swayed

by their fear and their hatred of Robespierre, the discourse was finally

referred to the committees, instead of being printed; and the haughty

and sullen dictator saw in the open slight, thus put on his measures and

opinions, the sure mark of his approaching fall.

He carried his complaints to the Jacobin Club, to repose, as he

expressed it, his patriotic sorrows in their virtuous bosoms, where

alone he hoped to find succour and sympathy. To this partial audience he

renewed, in a tone of yet greater audacity, the complaints with which he

had loaded every branch of the government, and the representative body

itself. He reminded those around him of various heroic eras, when their

presence and their pikes had decided the votes of the trembling

deputies. He reminded them of their pristine actions of revolutionary

vigour--asked them if they had forgot the road to the convention, and

concluded by pathetically assuring them, that if they forsook him, "he

stood resigned to his fate; and they should behold with what courage he

would drink the fatal hemlock." The artist David, caught him by the hand

as he closed, exclaiming, in rapture at his elocution, "I will drink it

with thee."

The distinguished painter has been reproached, as having, on the

subsequent day, declined the pledge which he seemed so eagerly to

embrace. But there were many of his original opinion, at the time he

expressed it so boldly; and had Robespierre possessed either military

talents, or even decided courage, there was nothing to have prevented

him from placing himself that very night at the head of a desperate

insurrection of the Jacobins and their followers.

Payan, the successor of Hebert, actually proposed that the Jacobins

should instantly march against the two committees, which Robespierre

charged with being the focus of the anti-revolutionary machinations,

surprise their handful of guards, and stifle the evil with which the

state was menaced, even in the very cradle. This plan was deemed too

hazardous to be adopted, although it was one of those sudden and master

strokes of policy which Machiavel would have recommended. The fire of

the Jacobins spent itself in tumult, and threatening, and in expelling

from the bosom of their society Collot d'Herbois, Tallien, and about

thirty other deputies of the mountain party, whom they considered as

specially leagued to effect the downfall of Robespierre, and whom they

drove from their society with execration and even blows.

Collot d'Herbois, thus outraged, went straight from the meeting of the

Jacobins to the place where the committee of public safety was still

sitting, in consultation on the report which they had to make to the

convention the next day upon the speech of Robespierre. Saint Just, one

of their number, though warmly attached to the dictator, had been

intrusted by the committee with the delicate task of drawing up that

report. It was a step towards reconciliation; but the entrance of Collot

d'Herbois, frantic with the insults he had received, broke off all hope

of accommodation betwixt the friends of Danton and those of Robespierre.

D'Herbois exhausted himself in threats against Saint Just, Couthon, and

their master, Robespierre, and they parted on terms of mortal and avowed

enmity. Every exertion now was used by the associated conspirators

against the power of Robespierre, to collect and combine against him the

whole forces of the convention, to alarm the deputies of the plain with

fears for themselves, and to awaken the rage of the mountaineers,

against whose throat the dictator now waved the sword, which their short

sighted policy had placed in his hands. Lists of proscribed deputies

were handed around, said to have been copied from the tablets of the

dictator; genuine or false, they obtained universal credit and currency;

and these whose names stood on the fatal scrolls, engaged themselves for

protection in the league against their enemy. The opinion that his fall

could not be delayed now became general.

This sentiment was so commonly entertained in Paris on the 9th

Thermidor, or 27th July, that a herd of about eighty victims, who were

in the act of being dragged to the guillotine, were nearly saved by

means of it. The people, in a generous burst of compassion, began to

gather in crowds, and interrupted the melancholy procession, as if the

power which presided over these hideous exhibitions had already been

deprived of energy. But the hour was not come. The vile Henriot,

commandant of the national guards, came up with fresh forces also on

the day destined to be the last of his own life, proved the means of

carrying to execution this crowd of unhappy and doubtless innocent

persons.

On this eventful day, Robespierre arrived in the convention, and beheld

the mountain in close array and completely manned, while, as in the case

of Catiline, the bench on which he himself was accustomed to sit, seemed

purposely deserted. Saint Just, Couthon, Le Bas (his brother-in-law,)

and the younger Robespierre, were the only deputies of name who stood

prepared to support him. But could he make an effectual struggle, he

might depend upon the aid of the servile Barrere, a sort of Belial in

the convention, the meanest, yet not the least able, amongst those

fallen spirits, who, with great adroitness and ingenuity, as well as wit

and eloquence, caught opportunities as they arose, and was eminently

dexterous in being always strong upon the strongest, and safe upon the

safest side. There was a tolerably numerous party ready, in times so

dangerous, to attach themselves to Barrere, as a leader who professed to

guide them to safety if not to honour; and it was the existence of this

vacillating and uncertain body, whose ultimate motions could never be

calculated upon, which rendered it impossible to presage with assurance

the event of any debate in the convention during this dangerous period.

Saint Just arose, in the name of the committee of public safety, to

make, after his own manner, not theirs, a report on the discourse of

Robespierre on the previous evening. He had begun a harangue in the tone

of his patron, declaring that, were the tribune which he occupied the

Tarpeian rock itself, he would not the less, placed as he stood there,

discharge the duties of a patriot. "I am about," he said, "to lift the

veil."--"I tear it asunder," said Tallien, interrupting him. "The public

interest is sacrificed by individuals, who come hither exclusively in

their own name, and conduct themselves as superior to the whole

convention." He forced Saint Just from the tribune, and a violent debate

ensued.

Billaud Varennes called the attention of the assembly to the sitting of

the Jacobin club on the preceding evening. He declared the military

force of Paris was placed under the command of Henriot, a traitor and a

parricide, who was ready to march the soldiers whom he commanded,

against the convention. He denounced Robespierre himself as a second

Catiline, artful as well as ambitious, whose system it had been to nurse

jealousies and inflame dissentions in the convention, so as to disunite

parties, and even individuals from each other, attack them in detail,

and thus destroy those antagonists separately, upon whose combined and

united strength he dared not have looked.

The convention echoed with applause every violent expression of the

orator, and when Robespierre sprung to the tribune, his voice was

drowned by a general shout of "down with the tyrant!" Tallien moved the

denunciation of Robespierre, with the arrest of Henriot, his

staff-officers, and of others connected with the meditated violence on

the convention. He had undertaken to lead the attack upon the tyrant he

said, and to poignard him in the convention itself, if the members did

not show courage enough to enforce the law against him. With these words

he brandished an unsheathed poignard, as if about to make his purpose

good. Robespierre still struggled hard to obtain audience, but the

tribune was adjudged to Barrere; and the part taken against the fallen

dictator by that versatile and self-interested statesman, was the most

absolute sign that his overthrow was irrecoverable. Torrents of

invective were now uttered from every quarter of the hall, against him

whose single word was wont to hush it into silence.

This scene was dreadful; yet not without its use to those who may be

disposed to look at it as an extraordinary crisis, in which human

passions were brought so singularly into collision. While the vaults of

the hall echoed with exclamations from those who had hitherto been the

accomplices, the flatterers, the followers, at least the timid and

overawed assentors to the dethroned demagogue--he himself, breathless,

foaming, exhausted, like the hunter of classical antiquity when on the

point of being overpowered and torn to pieces by his own hounds, tried

in vain to raise those screech-owl notes, by which the convention had

formerly been terrified and put to silence. He appealed for a hearing

from the president of the assembly, to the various parties of which it

was composed. Rejected by the mountaineers, his former associates, who

now headed the clamour against him, he applied to the Girondists, few

and feeble as they were, and to the more numerous but equally helpless

deputies of the plain, with whom they sheltered. The former shook him

from them with disgust, the last with horror. It was in vain he reminded

individuals that he had spared their lives, while at his mercy. This

might have been applied to every member in the house; to every man in

France; for who was it during two years that had lived on other terms

than under Robespierre's permission? and deeply must he internally have

regretted the clemency, as he might term it, which had left so many with

ungashed throats to bay at him. But his agitated and repeated appeals

were repulsed by some with indignation, by others with sullen, or

embarrassed and timid silence.

A British historian might say, that even Robespierre ought to have been

heard in his defence; and that such calmness would have done honour to

the convention, and dignified their final sentence of condemnation. As

it was, they no doubt treated the guilty individual according to his

deserts: but they fell short of that regularity and manly staidness of

conduct which was due to themselves and to the law, and which would have

given to the punishment of the demagogue the effect and weight of a

solemn and deliberate sentence, in place of its seeming the result of

the hasty and precipitate seizure of a temporary advantage.

Haste was, however, necessary, and must have appeared more so at such a

crisis, than perhaps it really was. Much must be pardoned to the terrors

of the moment, the horrid character of the culprit, and the necessity of

hurrying to a decisive conclusion. We have been told that his last

audible words, contending against the exclamations of hundreds, and the

bell which the president was ringing incessantly, had uttered in the

highest tones which despair could give to a voice naturally shrill and

discordant, dwelt long on the memory, and haunted the dreams of many who

heard him:--"President of assassins," he screamed, "for the last time I

demand privilege of speech!" After this exertion, his breath became

short and faint; and while he still uttered broken murmurs and hoarse

ejaculations, the members of the mountain called out, that the blood of

Danton choked his voice.

The tumult was closed by a decree of arrest against Robespierre, his

brother, Couthon, and Saint Just; Le Bas was included on his own motion,

and indeed could scarce have escaped the fate of his brother-in-law,

though his conduct then, and subsequently, showed more energy than that

of the others. Couthon hugging in his bosom the spaniel upon which he

was wont to exhaust the overflowing of his affected sensibility,

appealed to his decrepitude, and asked whether, maimed of proportion and

activity as he was, _he_ could be suspected of nourishing plans of

violence or ambition. "Wretch," said Legendre, "thou hast the strength

of Hercules for the perpetration of crime." Dumas, president of the

revolutionary tribunal, with Henriot, commandant of the national guards,

and other satellites of Robespierre, were included in the doom of

arrest.

The convention had declared their sitting permanent, and had taken all

precautions for appealing for protection to the large mass of citizens,

who, wearied out by the reign of terror, were desirous to close it at

all hazards. They quickly had deputations from several of the

neighbouring sections, declaring their adherence to the national

representatives, in whose defence they were arming, and (many

undoubtedly prepared beforehand) were marching in all haste to the

protection of the convention. But they heard also the less pleasing

tidings, that Henriot, having effected the dispersion of those citizens

who had obstructed, as elsewhere mentioned, the execution of the eighty

condemned persons, and consummated that final act of murder, was

approaching the Tuilleries, where they had held their sitting, with a

numerous staff, and such of the Jacobinical forces as could hastily be

collected.

Happily for the convention, this commandant of the national guards, on

whose presence of mind and courage the fate of France perhaps for the

moment depended, was as stupid and cowardly as he was brutally

ferocious. He suffered himself without resistance, to be arrested by a

few gens d'armes, the immediate guards of the convention, headed by two

of its members, who behaved in the emergency with equal prudence and

spirit.

But fortune, or the demon whom he had served, afforded Robespierre

another chance for safety, perhaps even for empire; for moments which a

man of self-possession might have employed for escape, one of desperate

courage might have used for victory, which, considering the divided and

extremely unsettled state of the capital, was likely to be gained by the

boldest competitor.

The arrested deputies had been carried from one prison to another, all

the jailers refusing to receive under their official charge

Robespierre, and those who had aided him in supplying their dark

habitations with such a tide of successive inhabitants. At length the

prisoners were secured in the office of the committee of public safety.

But by this time all was in alarm amongst the commune of Paris, where

Fleuriot the mayor, and Payan the successor of Hebert, convoked the

civic body, despatched municipal officers to raise the city and the

Fauxbourgs in their name, and caused the tocsin to be rung. Payan

speedily assembled a force sufficient to liberate Henriot, Robespierre,

and the other arrested deputies, and to carry them to the Hotel de

Ville, where about two thousand men were congregated, consisting chiefly

of artillerymen, and of insurgents from the suburb of Saint Antoine, who

already expressed their resolution of marching against the convention.

But the selfish and cowardly character of Robespierre was unfit for such

a crisis. He appeared altogether confounded and overwhelmed with what

had passed and was passing around him; and not one of all the victims of

the reign of terror felt its disabling influence so completely as he,

the despot who had so long directed its sway. He had not, even though

the means must have been in his power, the presence of mind to disperse

money in considerable sums, which of itself would not have failed to

insure the support of the revolutionary rabble.

Meantime the convention continued to maintain the bold and commanding

front which they had so suddenly and critically assumed. Upon learning

the escape of the arrested deputies, and hearing of the insurrection at

the Hotel de Ville, they instantly passed a decree outlawing Robespierre

and his associates, inflicting a similar doom upon the mayor of Paris,

the procureur, and other members of the commune, and charging twelve of

their members, the boldest that could be selected, to proceed with the

armed force to the execution of the sentence. The drums of the national

guards now beat to arms in all the sections under authority of the

convention, while the tocsin continued to summon assistance with its

iron voice to Robespierre and the civic magistrates. Every thing

appeared to threaten a violent catastrophe, until it was seen clearly

that the public voice, and especially amongst the national guards, was

declaring itself generally against the terrorists.

The Hotel de Ville was surrounded by about fifteen hundred men, and

cannon turned upon the doors. The force of the assailants was weakest in

point of number, but their leaders were men of spirit, and night

concealed their inferiority of force.

The deputies commissioned for the purpose read the decree of the

assembly to those whom they found assembled in front of the city hall,

and they shrunk from the attempt of defending it, some joining the

assailants, others laying down their arms and dispersing. Meantime the

deserted group of terrorists within conducted themselves like scorpions,

which, when surrounded by a circle of fire, are said to turn their

stings on each other, and on themselves. Mutual and ferocious upbraiding

took place among these miserable men. "Wretch, were these the means you

promised to furnish?" said Payan to Henriot, whom he found intoxicated

and incapable of resolution or exertion; and seizing on him as he spoke,

he precipitated the revolutionary general from a window. Henriot

survived the fall only to drag himself into a drain, in which he was

afterwards discovered and brought out to execution. The younger

Robespierre threw himself from the window, but had not the good fortune

to perish on the spot. It seemed as if even the melancholy fate of

suicide, the last refuge of guilt and despair, was denied to men who had

so long refused every species of mercy to their fellow-creatures. Le Bas

alone had calmness enough to despatch himself with a pistol shot. Saint

Just, after imploring his comrades to kill him, attempted his own life

with an irresolute hand, and failed. Couthon lay beneath the table

brandishing a knife, with which he repeatedly wounded his bosom, without

daring to add force enough to reach his heart. Their chief, Robespierre,

in an unsuccessful attempt to shoot himself, had only inflicted a

horrible fracture on his under-jaw.

In this situation they were found like wolves in their lair, foul with

blood, mutilated, despairing, and yet not able to die. Robespierre lay

on a table in an anti-room, his head supported by a deal box, and his

hideous countenance half hidden by a bloody and dirty cloth bound round

the shattered chin.

The captives were carried in triumph to the convention, who, without

admitting them to the bar, ordered them, as outlaws, for instant

execution. As the fatal cars passed to the guillotine, those who filled

them, but especially Robespierre, were overwhelmed with execrations from

the friends and relatives of victims whom he had sent on the same

melancholy road. The nature of his previous wound, from which the cloth

had never been removed till the executioner tore it off, added to the

torture of the sufferer. The shattered jaw dropped, and the wretch

yelled aloud to the horror of the spectators. A masque taken from that

dreadful head was long exhibited in different nations of Europe, and

appalled the spectator by its ugliness, and the mixture of fiendish

expression with that of bodily agony.

Thus fell Maximilian Robespierre, after having been the first person in

the French republic for nearly two years, during which time he governed

it upon the principles of Nero or Caligula. His elevation to the

situation which he held, involved more contradictions than perhaps

attach to any similar event in history. A low-born and low-minded tyrant

was permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful despotism a

people, whose anxiety for liberty had shortly before rendered them

unable to endure the rule of a humane and lawful sovereign. A dastardly

coward arose to the command of one of the bravest nations in the world;

and it was under the auspices of a man who dared scarce fire a pistol,

that the greatest generals in France began their careers of conquest. He

had neither eloquence nor imagination; but substituted in their stead a

miserable, affected, bombastic style, which, until other circumstances

gave him consequence, drew on him general ridicule. Yet against so poor

an orator, all the eloquence of the philosophical Girondists, all the

terrible powers of his associate Danton, employed in a popular

assembly, could not enable them to make an effectual resistance. It may

seem trifling to mention, that in a nation where a good deal of

prepossession is excited by amiable manners and beauty of external

appearance, the person who ascended to the highest power was not only

ill-looking, but singularly mean in person, awkward and constrained in

his address, ignorant how to set about pleasing even when he most

desired to give pleasure, and as tiresome nearly as he was odious and

heartless.

To compensate all these deficiencies, Robespierre had but an insatiable

ambition, founded on a vanity which made him think himself capable of

filling the highest situation; and therefore gave him daring, when to

dare is frequently to achieve. He mixed a false and overstrained, but

rather fluent species of bombastic composition, with the grossest

flattery to the lowest classes of the people; in consideration of which,

they could not but receive as genuine the praises which he always

bestowed on himself. His prudent resolution to be satisfied with

possessing the essence of power, without seeming to desire its rank and

trappings, formed another art of cajoling the multitude. His watchful

envy, his long-protracted but sure revenge, his craft, which to vulgar

minds supplies the place of wisdom, were his only means of competing

with his distinguished antagonists. And it seems to have been a merited

punishment of the extravagances and abuses of the French revolution,

that it engaged the country in a state of anarchy which permitted a

wretch such as we have described, to be for a long period master of her

destiny. Blood was his element, like that of the other terrorists and he

never fastened with so much pleasure on a new victim; as when he was at

the same time an ancient associate. In an epitaph, of which the

following couplet may serve as a translation, his life was represented

as incompatible with the existence of the human race:--

"Here lies Robespierre--let no tear be shed:

Reader, if he had lived, thou hadst been dead."

The fall of Robespierre ended the "_Reign of Terror_." Most of the

leaders who had acted a conspicuous part in these horrid scenes, met a

doom similar to that of their leaders. It is impossible to convey to the

reader any adequate conception of the atrocities committed in France

during this gloomy period, in the name of liberty. Men, women, and

children were involved in the massacres which took place at the

instigation of the Jacobin chiefs. Hundreds of both sexes were thrown

into the Loire, and this was called republican marriage and republican

baptism. And it should never be forgotten, that it was not till France

as a nation, had denied the existence of a Deity, and the validity of

his institutions, that she was visited by such terrible calamities. Let

it be "burnt in on the memory" of every generation, that such is the

legitimate tendency of infidel opinions. They first destroy the

conscience--blunt the moral sense--harden the heart, and wither up all

the social and kindly affections, and then their votaries are ripe for

any deed of wickedness within the possibility of accomplishment by human

agency.

Says an eloquent writer--"When the Sabbath was abolished in France, the

Mighty God whose being they had denied, and whose worship they

abolished, stood aloof and gave them up,--and a scene of proscription,

and assassination, and desolation, ensued, unparalleled in the annals of

the civilized world. In the city of Paris, there were in 1803, eight

hundred and seven suicides and murders. Among the criminals executed,

there were seven fathers who had poisoned their children, ten husbands

who had murdered their wives, six wives who had poisoned their husbands,

and fifteen children who had destroyed their parents."

It may be profitable here to record the end of several other Jacobin

leaders who had been conspicuous during these scenes of atrocity and

bloodshed. Public opinion demanded that some of the most obnoxious

members should be condemned. After hesitating for some time, at length

the convention, pressed by shame on the one side and fear on the other,

saw the necessity of some active measure, and appointed a commission to

consider and report upon the conduct of the four most obnoxious Jacobin

chiefs, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varennes, Vadier, and Barrere. The

report was of course unfavourable; yet upon the case being considered,

the convention were satisfied to condemn them to transportation to

Cayenne. Some resistance was offered to this sentence, so mild in

proportion to what those who underwent it had been in the habit of

inflicting; but it was borne down, and the sentence was carried into

execution. Collot d'Herbois, the demolisher and depopulator of Lyons, is

said to have died in the common hospital, in consequence of drinking off

at once a whole bottle of ardent spirits. Billaud Varennes spent his

time in teaching the innocent parrots of Guiana the frightful jargon of

the revolutionary committee; and finally perished in misery.

These men both belonged to that class of atheists, who, looking up

towards heaven, loudly and literally defied the Deity to make his

existence known by launching his thunderbolts. Miracles are not wrought

on the challenge of a blasphemer more than on the demand of a sceptic;

but both these unhappy men had probably before their death reason to

confess, that in abandoning the wicked to their own free will, a greater

penalty results even in this life, than if Providence had been pleased

to inflict the immediate doom which they had impiously defied.

Encouraged by the success of this decisive measure, the government

proceeded against some of the terrorists whom they had hitherto spared,

but whose fate was now determined, in order to strike dismay into their

party. Six Jacobins, accounted among the most ferocious of the class,

were arrested and delivered up to be tried by a military commission.

They were all deputies of the mountain gang. Certain of their doom, they

adopted a desperate resolution. Among the whole party, they possessed

but one knife, but they resolved it should serve them all for the

purpose of suicide. The instant their sentence was pronounced, one

stabbed himself with this weapon; another snatched the knife from his

companion's dying hand, plunged it in his own bosom, and handed it to

the third, who imitated the dreadful example. Such was the consternation

of the attendants, that no one arrested the fatal progress of the

weapon--all fell either dead or desperately wounded--the last were

despatched by the guillotine.

After this decisive victory, and last dreadful catastrophe, Jacobinism,

considered as a pure and unmixed party, can scarce be said to have again

raised its head in France, although its leaven has gone to qualify and

characterize, in some degree, more than one of the different parties

which have succeeded them. As a political sect, the Jacobins can be

compared to none that ever existed, for none but themselves ever thought

of an organized, regular, and continued system of murdering and

plundering the rich, that they might debauch the poor by the

distribution of their spoils. They bear, however, some resemblance to

the frantic followers of John of Leyden and Knipperdoling, who occupied

Munster in the seventeenth century, and committed, in the name of

religion, the same frantic horrors which the French Jacobins did in that

of freedom. In both cases, the courses adopted by these parties were

most foreign to, and inconsistent with, the alleged motives of their

conduct. The Anabaptists practised every species of vice and cruelty, by

the dictates, they said, of inspiration--the Jacobins imprisoned three

hundred thousand of their countrymen in the name of liberty, and put to

death more than half the number, under the sanction of fraternity.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired except where noted below.

Page vi, "Vallie's" changed to "valleys" (the valleys of Piedmont)

Page vii, "stupifies" changed to "stupefies (first stupefies the)

Page xi, "Hawkes" changed to "Haukes" (Ardeley, Haukes, and)

Page 18, "Icunum" changed to "Iconium" (Jerusalem, Iconium, Lystra)

Page 23, "northen" changed to "northern" (restless northern nations)

Page 26, "catechhmun" changed to "catechumen" (catechumen of Carthage)

Page 33, "i ine" changed to "in fine" (in fine, he was)

Page 39, "batoons" changed to "batons" (with batons, and)

Page 42, "martrydom" changed to "martyrdom" (conclusion of her

martyrdom)

Page 51, "dioceas" changed to "diocese" (in the diocese)

Page 51, "remand" changed to "remanded" (They remanded him)

Page 60, "cardina" changed to "cardinal" (crowns of the cardinal)

Page 64, "no" changed to "not" (reached not to)

Page 73, "nflicted" changed to "inflicted" (inflicted twice without)

Page 73, "quiety" changed to "quietly" (peaceably and quietly)

Page 73, "hreatening" changed to "threatening" (threatening words to)

Page 75, "erwise" changed to "otherwise" (far otherwise than)

Page 77, "contributious" changed to "contributions" (last contributions

to)

Page 77, word "a" was inferred and placed in text do to spacing and

context (such a procedure)

Page 80, inconsistent quotation marks were retained as original intent

could not be assertained.

Page 91, "iner" changed to "Gardiner" (Gardiner was drawn)

Page 91, "ne" changed to "near" (near the fire)

Page 125, "Vilaro" changed to "Villaro" (of Villaro and Bobbio)

Page 126, "apprended" changed to "apprehended" (Michialm, was

apprehended)

Page 132, "dorpped" changed to "dropped" (till they dropped)

Page 134, "stil kep" changed to "still kept" (and still kept)

Page 136, "s" changed to "his" (completed his regiment)

Page 136, "retron" changed to "return" (and return thanks)

Page 137, "Vilaro" changed to "Villaro" (rocks of Villaro)

Page 137, word "to" inserted into text (put to death)

Page 138, "that" changed to "than" (than their suffering)

Page 158, "tr s" changed to "troops" (of his troops)

Page 158, "un ook" changed to "undertook" (princes undertook the)

Page 158, "wel" changed to "well" (were all well)

Page 159, "w s" changed to "was" (Zisca was solicited)

Page 175, "possesion" changed to "possession" (his possession.)

Page 179, "ban- s hour" changed to "banish our" (banish our preachers)

Page 180, "enj ned" changed to "enjoined" (strictly enjoined his)

Page 204, "see" changed to "she" (whom she forgave)

Page 206, "queen" changed to "Queen" (in Queen Mary's)

Page 207, "Northhampton" changed to "Northampton" (preached at

Northampton)

Page 214, "halbered" changed to "halberd" (halberd struck him)

Page 222, "Osmand" changed to "Osmond" (Thomas Watts, Thomas Osmond)

Page 223, "Was" changed to "was" (he was brought)

Page 224, "sherif" changed to "sheriff" (of the sheriff)

Page 232, "passsed" changed to "passed" (he passed Bocardo)

Page 232, word "be" deleted from text. Original read "he be bent

himself"

Page 235, the last four names in the article "Rev. T. Whittle, B. Green,

T. Brown" do not match the names used in the article. As each was used

only once, this was retained as author's intent could not be

ascertained.

Page 237, "charg" changed to "charge" (closely the charge)

Page 239, "lest" changed to "lost" (forever lost his)

Page 248, "Asking" changed to "Askin" (Askin and one John Guin)

Page 251, "cemetry" changed to "cemetary" (their former cemetary)

Page 260, "hallejahs" changed to "hallelujahs" (invocations and

hallelujahs)

Page 264, "he" changed to "the" (at the stake)

Page 268, "fo" changed to "for" (for these Dr.)

Page 268, word "I" inserted into text (I am unlearned)

Page 276, "Preston" changed to "Prest" (Mrs. Prest for some)

Page 278, "Duchman" changed to "Dutchman" (The Dutchman accused)

Page 285, "nowithstanding" changed to "notwithstanding" (notwithstanding

his passion)

Page 292, "t" changed to "to" (every day, to)

Page 293, "beesech" changed to "beseech" (humbly beseech your)

Page 300, deleted repeated word "words". Original read "such words words

fell"

Page 310, "Englisman" changed to "Englishman" (an Englishman, who)

Page 314, word "to" inserted into text (to his master)

Page 321, "Richlieu" changed to "Richelieu" (Cardinal Richelieu, the)

Page 321, duplicate word "in" deleted. Original read: "evening in in the

city"

Page 325, "massacreing" changed to "massacring" (besides massacring at)

Page 326, "belley" changed to "belly" (up its belly)

Page 336, "addess" changed to "address" (address to the king)

Page 338, "religous" changed to "religious" (of religious duty)

Page 341, word "any" inserted into text (that any person)

Page 347, "Elb" changed to "Elba" (the Isle of Elba)

Page 357, "owever" changed to "however" (This, however, would)

Page 357, "no" changed to "not" (would not avail)

Page 370, word "of" inserted in text. (member of the Roman)

Page 376, "skekh" changed to "shekh" (The shekh declared)

Page 377, "wordly" changed to "wordly" (other worldly motives)

Page 386, word "but" presumed due to smudged text. (but when I)

Page 386, word "the" presumed due to smudged text. (merely the gospel)

Page 387, word "then" presumed due to smudged text. (and then there)

Page 391, "evi" changed to "evil" (you an evil)

Page 398, "o" changed to "to" (to which I was)

Page 399, Footnote: word "a" inserted into text (to a distance)

Page 406, the word "excellent" is presumed as the text was smudged. (a

more excellent)

Page 408, repeated word "the" deleted. Original read: "or the the

palace"

Page 410, "Assaad" changed to "Asaad" (history of Asaad)

Page 413, "words" changed to "word" (This word tells)

Page 416, "angy" changed to "angry" (more angry than ever)

Page 419, "enter d th" changed to "entered the" (entered the garden)

Page 425, word "I" inserted into text (period, I was)

Page 426, "are" changed to "or" (if you or any other)

Page 432, "word" changed to "words" (first words of)

Page 432, "worne" changed to "worn" (worn out with fatigue)

Page 437, "purose" changed to "purpose" (express purpose of)

Page 442, "Woongypee" changed to "Woongyee" (a Woongyee and Woondouk)

Page 445, "ion" changed to "accusation" (on an accusation)

Page 448, "beeen" changed to "been" (having been transmitted)

Page 453, "Misssionary" changed to "Missionary" (the Wesleyan

Missionary)

Page 456, "tell" changed to "Tell" (Tell and Winkelreid)

Page 457, "enlighted" changed to "enlightened" (most enlightened

cantons)

Page 480, "exeedingly" changed to "exceedingly" (continued exceedingly

troublesome)

Page 481, word "in" inserted into text (in all christian)

Page 483, "subsisttence" changed to "subsistence" (his future

subsistence)

Page 485, "cathdral" changed to "cathedral" (cathedral of Salisbury)

Page 486, "Canterbery" changed to "Canterbury" (archbishop of

Canterbury)

Page 492, "unwieldly" changed to "unwieldy" (antiquated and unwieldy)

Page 496, "accummulated" changed to "accumulated" (individuals

accumulated in)

Page 498, "t" changed to "It" (It required, as in)

Page 499, repeated word "Louis" was deleted. Original text reads: "will

of Louis Louis XVI."

Page 501, "Vendee" changed to "Vendee" twice. (La Vendee)

Page 503, "terrour" changed to "terror" (terror was awakened)

Page 508, "poinarded" changed to "poignarded" (poignarded in 1793)

Page 508, "poinard" changed to "poignard" (poignard the tyrant)

Page 511, "l o" changed to "also" (also on the day destined)

Page 512, "assentators" changed to "assentors" (overawed assentors to

the)

Varied capitalization of Christian, Jew, de Legal, and d'Herbois was

retained. Inconsistent spacing in meanwhile/mean while was retained.

Different spellings of proper names such as Benifield and Benefield,

Tlowtdan and Tlowtdau, Wittenberg and Wittenburg were retained. Varied

hyphenation was retained throughout.