gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tip-toe, the fatal Cart
issues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of
Murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying toward
death--alone amid the World. Many take off their hats, saluting
reverently; for what heart but must be touched? Others growl and howl.
Adam Lux, of Mainz, declares that she is greater than Brutus; that it
were beautiful to die with her: the head of this young man seems turned.
At the Place de la Revolution, the countenance of Charlotte wears the
same still smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she
resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she
submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready,
they take the neckerchief from her neck; a blush of maidenly shame
overspreads that fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with
it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the
people. "It is most true," says Forster, "that he struck the cheek
insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes: the Police imprisoned him for
it."
But during these same hours, another guillotine is at work on another;
Charlotte, for the Girondins, dies at Paris to-day; Chalier, by the
Girondins, dies at Lyons to-morrow.
From rumbling of cannon along the streets of that City, it has come to
firing of them, to rabid fighting: Nievre Chol and the Girondins
triumph; behind whom there is, as everywhere, a Royalist Faction waiting
to strike in. Trouble enough at Lyons; and the dominant party carrying
it with a high hand! For, indeed, the whole South is astir;
incarcerating Jacobins; arming for Girondins: wherefore we have got a
"Congress of Lyons"; also a "Revolutionary Tribunal of Lyons," and
Anarchists shall tremble. So Chalier was soon found guilty, of
Jacobinism, of murderous Plot, "address with drawn dagger on the sixth
of February last"; and, on the morrow, he also travels his final road,
along the streets of Lyons, "by the side of an ecclesiastic, with whom
he seems to speak earnestly"--the axe now glittering nigh. He could
weep, in old years, this man, and "fall on his knees on the pavement,"
blessing Heaven at sight of Federation Programmes or the like; then he
pilgrimed to Paris to worship Marat and the Mountain: now Marat and he
are both gone--we said he could not end well. Jacobinism groans
inwardly, at Lyons, but dare not outwardly. Chalier, when the Tribunal
sentenced him, made answer: "My death will cost this City dear."
Montelimart Town is not buried under its ruins; yet Marseilles is
actually marching, under order of a "Lyons Congress"; is incarcerating
Patriots; the very Royalists now showing face. Against which a General
Cartaux fights, though in small force, and with him an Artillery Major,
of the name of--Napoleon Bonaparte. This Napoleon, to prove that the
Marseillese have no chance ultimately, not only fights but writes;
publishes his _Supper of Beaucaire_, a Dialogue which has become
curious. Unfortunate Cities, with their actions and their reactions!
Violence to be paid with violence in geometrical ratio; Royalism and
Anarchism both striking in--the final net-amount of which geometrical
series, what man shall sum?
Is not La Vendee still blazing--alas too literally--rogue Rossignol
burning the very corn-mills? General Santerre could do nothing there.
General Rossignol in blind fury, often in liquor, can do less than
nothing. Rebellion spreads, grows ever madder. Happily those lean
Quixote figures, whom we saw retreating out of Mainz, "bound not to
serve against the Coalition for a year," have got to Paris. National
Convention packs them into post-vehicles and conveyances; sends them
swiftly, by post, into La Vendee. There valiantly struggling in obscure
battle and skirmish, under rogue Rossignol, let them, unlaurelled, save
the Republic and "be cut down gradually to the last man."
Does not the Coalition, like a fire-tide, pour in; Prussia through the
opened Northeast; Austria, England through the Northwest? General
Houchard prospers no better there than General Custine did. Let him look
to it! Through the Eastern and the Western Pyrenees Spain has deployed
itself; spreads, rustling with Bourbon banners, over the face of the
South. Ashes and embers of confused Girondin civil war covered that
region already. Marseilles is damped down, not quenched--to be quenched
in blood. Toulon, terror-struck, too far gone for turning, has flung
itself, ye righteous Powers, into the hands of the English! On Toulon
Arsenal there flies a flag--nay not even the Fleur-de-lis of a Louis
Pretender; there flies that accursed St. George's Cross of the English
and Admiral Hood! What remnant of sea-craft, arsenals, roperies, war
navy France had, has given itself to these enemies of human nature,
"_ennemis du genre humain_." Beleaguer it, bombard it, ye Commissioners
Barras, Freron, Robespierre Junior; thou General Cartaux, General
Dugommier; above all, thou remarkable Artillery-Major, Napoleon
Bonaparte! Hood is fortifying himself, victualling himself; means,
apparently, to make a new Gibraltar of it.
But lo, in the Autumn night, late night, among the last of August, what
sudden red sun-blaze is this that has risen over Lyons City; with a
noise to deafen the world? It is the Powder-tower of Lyons, nay the
Arsenal with Four Powder-towers, which has caught fire in the
Bombardment; and sprung into the air, carrying "a hundred and seventeen
houses" after it. With a light, one fancies, as of the noon sun; with a
roar second only to the Last Trumpet! All living sleepers far and wide
it has awakened. What a sight was that, which the eye of History saw, in
the sudden nocturnal sun-blaze!
The roofs of hapless Lyons, and all its domes and steeples made
momentarily clear; Rhone and Saone streams flashing suddenly visible;
and height and hollow, hamlet and smooth stubble-field, and all the
region round; heights, alas, all scarped and counterscarped, into
trenches, curtains, redoubts; blue Artillery-men, little Powder
devilkins, plying their hell-trade there through the _not_ ambrosial
night! Let the darkness cover it again; for it pains the eye. Of a
truth, Chalier's death is costing the City dear. Convention
Commissioners, Lyons Congresses have come and gone; and action there was
and reaction; bad ever growing worse; till it has come to this;
Commissioner Dubois-Crance, "with seventy thousand men, and all the
Artillery of several Provinces," bombarding Lyons day and night.
Worse things still are in store. Famine is in Lyons, and ruin and fire.
Desperate are the sallies of the besieged; brave Precy, their National
Colonel and Commandant, doing what is in man: desperate but ineffectual.
Provisions cut off; nothing entering our city but shot and shell! The
Arsenal has roared aloft; the very Hospital will be battered down, and
the sick buried alive. A black Flag hung on this latter noble Edifice,
appealing to the pity of the besiegers; for though maddened, were they
not still our brethren? In their blind wrath, they took it for a flag of
defiance, and aimed thitherward the more. Bad is growing ever worse
here; and how will the worse stop, till it have grown worst of all?
Commissioner Dubois will listen to no pleading, to no speech, save this
only: "We surrender at discretion."
Lyons contains in it subdued Jacobins; dominant Girondins; secret
Royalists. And now, mere deaf madness and cannon-shot enveloping them,
will not the desperate Municipality fly, at last, into the arms of
Royalism itself? Majesty of Sardinia was to bring help, but it failed.
Emigrant D'Autichamp, in name of the Two Pretender-Royal-Highnesses, is
coming through Switzerland with help; coming, not yet come: Precy hoists
the Fleur-de-lis!
At sight of which all true Girondins sorrowfully fling down their arms.
Let our Tricolor brethren storm us then and slay us in their wrath; with
_you_ we conquer not. The famishing women and children are sent forth:
deaf Dubois sends them back--rains in more fire and madness. Our
"redoubts of cotton-bags" are taken, retaken; Precy under his
Fleur-de-lis is valiant as Despair. What will become of Lyons? It is a
siege of seventy days.
Or see, in these same weeks, far in the Western waters: breasting
through the Bay of Biscay, a greasy dingy little Merchant ship, with
Scotch skipper; under hatches whereof sit, disconsolate, the last
forlorn nucleus of Girondism, the Deputies from Quimper! Several have
dissipated themselves, whithersoever they could. Poor Riouffe fell into
the talons of Revolutionary Committee and Paris Prison. The rest sit
here under hatches; reverend Petion with his gray hair, angry Buzot,
suspicious Louvet, brave young Barbaroux, and others. They have escaped
from Quimper, in this sad craft; are now tacking and struggling; in
danger from the waves, in danger from the English, in still worse danger
from the French--banished by Heaven and Earth to the greasy belly of
this Scotch skipper's Merchant vessel, unfruitful Atlantic raving round.
They are for Bordeaux, if peradventure hope yet linger there. Enter not
Bordeaux, O Friends! Bloody Convention Representatives, Tallien and such
like, with their Edicts, with their Guillotine, have arrived there;
Respectability is driven under ground; Jacobinism lords it on high. From
that Reole landing-place, or "Beak of Ambes," as it were, pale Death,
waving his Revolutionary Sword of Sharpness, waves you elsewhither!
On one side or the other of that Bec d'Ambes, the Scotch Skipper with
difficulty moors, a dexterous greasy man; with difficulty lands his
Girondins; who, after reconnoitring, must rapidly burrow in the Earth;
and so, in subterranean ways, in friends' back-closets, in cellars,
barn-lofts, in caves of Saint-Emilion and Libourne, stave off cruel
Death. Unhappiest of all Senators!
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Written in 1836-1837.--ED.
THE REIGN OF TERROR
A.D. 1794
FRANCOIS P. G. GUIZOT
By the Reign of Terror, or the "Terror," is meant that
period of the first revolution in France during which the
ruling faction caused thousands of obnoxious persons to be
sent to the guillotine. The Terror is usually considered as
beginning in March, 1793, when the Revolutionary Tribunal
was established by the National Convention. This tribunal
was an extraordinary court empowered to deal with all acts
or persons hostile to the Revolution.
In July, 1793, Robespierre became a member of the Committee
of Public Safety, and, with Saint-Just, was most prominently
connected with the Terror. He secured a decree, known as the
decree of the 22d Prairial, "to accelerate the movements of
the Committee, and open for them a shorter route to the
guillotine," whereby persons marked for death might be
executed as soon as recognized. Against this bloody decree
it is said that even the "Mountain"--the Red Republican
party in the Convention--recoiled. It was nevertheless
remorselessly carried out, and "caused torrents of blood to
flow."
The climax of the Terror was reached in 1794, and its end
came in July of that year, when Robespierre and his
associates were overthrown. It was followed by a reaction
against the excesses of the revolutionists, the closing of
the radical clubs of the Jacobins and others, and the
release of those whom the Revolutionary Tribunal had
imprisoned on suspicion. The tribunal itself, together with
the Committee of Public Safety, who had executed the fierce
will of the Convention, was speedily swept away.
It is a hideous spectacle to contemplate the enthusiasm of crime, and
see men madly intoxicating themselves with their own atrocities. The
Revolutionary Tribunal was in operation from March, 1793; the registry
of condemnations had reached the number of five hundred seventy-seven.
From 22 Prairial to 9 Thermidor (June 10, to July 27, 1794), two
thousand two hundred eighty-five unfortunates perished on the scaffold.
Fouquier-Tinville[41] comprehended the thought of Robespierre. For the
dock he had substituted benches, upon which he huddled together at one
time the crowd of the accused. One day he erected the guillotine in the
very hall of the tribunal.
The Committee of Public Safety had a moment of fright. "Thou art wishing
then to demoralize punishment!" cried Collot d'Herbois. A hundred sixty
accused persons had been brought from the Luxembourg under pretence of a
conspiracy in prison. The lower class of prisoners were encouraged to
act as spies, thus furnishing pretexts for punishment. The judges sat
with pistols ready to hand; the President cast his eyes over the lists
for the day and called upon the accused. "Dorival, do you know anything
of the conspiracy?" "No!"
"I expected that you would make that reply; but it won't succeed. Bring
another."
"Champigny, are you not an ex-noble?"
"Yes."
"Bring another."
"Guidreville, are you a priest?"
"Yes, but I have taken the oath."
"You have no right to say any more. Another."
"Menil, were you not a domestic of the ex-constitutional Menou?"
"Yes."
"Another."
"Vely, were you not architect for Madame?"
"Yes, but I was disgraced in 1789."
"Another."
"Gondrecourt, is not your father-in-law at the Luxembourg?"
"Yes."
"Another."
"Durfort, were you not in the bodyguard?"
"Yes, but I was dismissed in 1789."
"Another."
So the examination went on. The questions, the answers, the judgment,
the condemnation, were all simultaneous. The juries did not leave the
hall; they gave their opinions with a word or a look. Sometimes errors
were evident in the lists. "I am not accused," exclaimed a prisoner one
day.
"No matter; what is thy name? See, it is written now. Another."
M. de Loizerolles perished under the name of his father. Jokes were
mingled with the sentences. The Marechale de Mouchy was old, and did not
reply to the questions of President Dumas. "The _citoyenne_ is deaf"
(_sourde_), said the registrar; "Put down that she has conspired
secretly" (_sourdement_), replied Dumas.
It became necessary to forbid Fouquier-Tinville to send more than sixty
victims a day to the scaffold. "Things go well, and see the heads fall
like slates with my file-firing; the next decade we shall do better
still; I shall want at least four hundred fifty." The lists were
prepared in the prison itself, by the class of informers known as
_moutons_.[42] The public accuser, like the judges and the jailers, was
often ignorant of the names of the human flock crowded in the dungeons.
Death recalled them to recollection. In the evening, under the windows
of each prison, the list of the victims of the day was shouted out.
"These are they who have gained prizes in the lottery of Saint
Guillotine." The unfortunates who crowded to the windows thus learned
the tidings of the execution of those they loved. The horrors of the
unforeseen and unknown were added to the agonies of death and
separation. Under the windows of the Conciergerie the names of the
Marechale de Noailles, the Duchesse d'Ayen and the Vicomtesse de
Noailles, who died together on the scaffold, were proclaimed. Among the
prisoners was Madame la Fayette, herself awaiting death; happily she did
not recognize in the coarse accents of the criers the cherished names of
her grandmother, mother, and sister. The peasants of the Vendee[43] came
to die at Paris, like the Carmelites of Compiegne or the magistrates of
Toulouse. It was astonishing that there still remained in the dungeons
great lords and noble ladies, bearing the most illustrious names in the
history of France; on the 8th and 9th Thermidor the poets Roucher and
Andre Chenier; Baron Trenck, famous for his numerous escapes; the
Marechale d'Armentieres, the Princesse de Chimay, the Comtesse de
Narbonne, the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, the Marquis de Crussol, and the
Messieurs de Trudaine, counsellors of the Parliament of Paris, perished
upon the scaffold.
Insulters always surrounded the scaffold, but their number had
decreased; the Committee of Public Safety no longer had recourse to the
popular manoeuvres of its early days. Terror was now sufficient to
insure the silence and submission of the victims. Paris grew weary of
the horrors of which it was witness; the odor of blood had driven away
the residents from the houses adjacent to the Place de la Revolution; a
new guillotine had been erected upon the Place du Trone. Upon the route
along which ran the fatal carts shops were closed, and passers-by
endeavored to avoid meeting the procession. A few rare loungers of the
lowest class alone walked in the gardens of the Tuileries and the
Champs-Elysees. All was silent, but pity was growing in the minds of
men. The distant sound of the horrors that were general throughout
France redoubled the terror of Paris.
The provincial sufferings were not uniform, and the fury of the
representative commissioners was unequally distributed. Either by a
happy chance, or it might be by an instinctive knowledge of the
character of the population, the revolutionary scaffold was never set up
in Lower Normandy; the Vendee, on the contrary, expiated its long
resistance in its blood, and Carrier filled with terror the city of
Nantes, always favorable to revolution. He had tried guillotine and
grape-shot, but both were too tardy in their action to suit his zeal. He
conceived the idea of crowding the condemned into ships with valves,
launched upon the Loire: the beautiful river saw these unfortunates
struggling in its waters. Henceforth the executioners tied the prisoners
together by one hand and one foot; these "Republican Marriages," as they
were called, insured the speedy death of the victims. The waters of the
Loire became infected; its shores were covered with corpses; the fishes
themselves could no longer serve as nourishment for human beings; fever
decimated the inhabitants of Nantes. The fury of Carrier bordered on
madness: he caused the little Vendean infants, collected by Breton
charity, to be cast into the water. "It is necessary," said he, "to slay
the wolves' cubs."
The same terror also, and the same atrocities which desolated the West,
reigned in the North and the South. In the Department of Vaucluse,
Maignet, in the Pas-de-Calais, Joseph Lebon, had obtained the erection
of local revolutionary tribunals. "The arrests which I have ordered in
the Departments of Vaucluse and the Bouches-du-Rhone amount to twelve
or fifteen thousand," wrote Maignet to his friend Couthon. "It would
require an army to conduct them to Paris; besides, it is necessary to
appal, and the blow is only terrifying when struck in the sight of those
who have lived with the guilty." They had felled the tree of liberty in
the little town of Bedouin; sixty-three of the inhabitants were
executed; the rest fled. "I have wished to give the national vengeance a
grand character," wrote Maignet to the Committee of Public Safety, "and
I have ordered that the town should be given to the flames. If you think
this new measure too rigorous, let me know your wishes, and do not read
my letter to the Convention." To the complaints of Rovere,
representative of Vaucluse, Robespierre replied, "We are content with
Maignet; he knows well how to guillotine." Joseph Lebon established an
orchestra close by the guillotine; he caused the _Ca ira_[44] to be sung
during the executions, which he witnessed from his balcony. Formerly a
priest and well esteemed, he was moderate at the outburst of the
Revolution, but his reason had yielded to the dizziness of despotic
power; it was of a veritable madman that Barere said: "Lebon has
completely beaten the aristocrats, and he has protected Cambrai against
the approaches of the enemy; besides, what is there that is not
permitted to the hatred of a republican against the aristocracy? The
Revolution and revolutionary measures must only be spoken of with
respect. Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is culpable to raise."
For some time Robespierre had appeared but rarely at the Committee of
Public Safety; he reserved himself for the department of general police,
that is to say, the direction of the "Terror" throughout France.
Underhand dissensions and jealousies began to creep in among these
criminals, secretly disquieted by projects of which they were
reciprocally suspicious. Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois dreaded
Robespierre and began to conspire against him. Robespierre established
himself with the Jacobins, as in an impregnable fortress. The President
and Vice-President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the commandant of
the armed forces, Henriot, awaited his orders. They pressed him to take
action against the enemies whom he had himself denounced to the
Jacobins. "Formerly," said he, "on the 13th Messidor [July 1st], the
underhand faction that has sprung from the remnant of the followers of
Danton and Camille Desmoulins attacked the committees _en masse_; now
they prefer to attack a few members in particular; in order to succeed
in breaking the bundle, they attribute to a single individual that which
appertains to the whole Government. They dare not say that the
Revolutionary Tribunal has been instituted in order to swallow up the
National Convention; they have spoken of a dictator, and named him; it
is I who have been thus designated, and you would tremble if I told you
in what place."
A dictatorship had, in fact, been spoken of, but it was Saint-Just, on
returning from the army, who had uttered this terrible word, in a
conference of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security
expressly convoked by Robespierre. The latter had proposed the
institution of four great revolutionary tribunals, in order to forge new
weapons for himself; but the conference refused. Robespierre went out
irritated and gloomy. "Misfortune has reached a climax," cried
Saint-Just. "You are in a state of anarchy. The Convention is inundating
France with laws inoperative and often impracticable. The
representatives accompanying the armies dispose at their will of the
public fortune and our military destinies; the representatives sent as
Commissioners to the Provinces usurp all power and amass gold for which
they substitute assignats. How can such political and legislative
disorder be regulated? I declare upon my honor and my conscience, I see
only one means of safety; and that is the concentration of power in the
hands of one man who has enough genius, force, patriotism, and
generosity to become the embodiment of public authority. It is
necessary, above all, to have a man endowed with long practical
knowledge of the Revolution, its principles, its phases, its modes of
action, and its agents. Finally, he must be a man who has the general
good-will and confidence of the people in his favor, and who is at once
a virtuous and inflexible as well as an incorruptible citizen. That man
is Robespierre; it is he only who can save the State. I ask that he be
invested with the dictatorship, and that the committees make a
proposition to this effect at the Convention to-morrow."
The imprudence of the speech equalled the audacity of the act. The
members of the two councils looked at each other, hesitating to accept
the declaration of war. A few of them contended for their lives against
the vengeance of Robespierre and his friends. "This Robespierre is
insatiable," said Barere, with anger. "Let him ask for Tallien, Bourdon
de l'Oise, Thuriot, Guffroy, Rovere, Lecointre, Panis, Barras, Freron,
Legendre, Monestier, Dubois Crance, Fouche, Cambon, and all the
Dantonist remnant, well and good; but to Duval, Audouin, Leonard
Bourdon, Vadier, Vauland, it is impossible to consent."
The two parties waited face to face, shrinking from the blows they were
about to exchange, counting on the impatience or temerity of their
adversaries. The boldest among the opposition ventured on a circuitous
attack by denouncing the sect of mystic dreamers led by a demented
woman, Catherine Theot, styled by her followers, Mother of God. Her
principal disciple was Gerle, formerly prior of the Chartreuse, and a
member of the Constituent Assembly. When the papers of this handful of
maniacs were seized, the copy of a letter to Robespierre was found; he
was to have been the Messiah of the sect. Vadier denounced at the
Convention this elementary school of fanaticism, discovered on a third
floor in the Rue Contrescarpe, and who were connected, he said, with the
machinations of Pitt; but he dared not speak of the letter to
Robespierre. The latter undoubtedly took some interest in Catherine
Theot, for he did not allow the affair to be followed up; the prophetess
died in prison soon after.