[Footnote 26140: "C. Desmoulins," by Claretie, 238 (in 1786 and

in 1775). "The inquest still exists, unfortunately it is

convincing."--Westermann was accused of these acts in December, 1792,

by the section of the Lombards, "proofs in hand."--Gouverneur Morris, so

well informed, writes to Washington, Jan. 10, 1793: The retreat of the

King of Prussia "was worth to Westermann about 10,000 pounds... The

council ... exerted against him a prosecution for old affairs of no

higher rank than petty larceny."]

[Footnote 26141: "Archives Nationales," F7, 4434 (papers of the

committee of general safety). Note on Panis, with full details and

references to the occurrence.]

[Footnote 26142: "Révolutions de Paris," No.177 (session of the

council-general at the Hotel-de-ville, Nov. 8, 1792, report of the

committee of surveillance). "Sergent admits, except as to one of the

watches, that he intended to pay for the said object the price they

would have brought. It was noticed, as he said this, that he had on his

finger the agate ring that was claimed."]

[Footnote 26143: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 638; III. 500 and following

pages; IV. 132.--Cf. II. 451.]

[Footnote 26144: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 456.]

[Footnote 26145: Buchez et Roux, XVI. 138, 140 (testimony of Mathon de

la Varenne, who was engaged in the case).]

[Footnote 26146: "Dictionnaire biographique," by Eymery (Leipsic, 1807),

article HÉBERT.]

[Footnote 26147: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 484, 601. Cf. letter of the

representative Cavaignac, Ibid., 399.]

[Footnote 26148: "Dictionnaire biographique," article HENRIOT.-The

lives of many of these subordinate leaders are well done. Cf. "Stanislas

Maillard," by AL Sorel; "Le Patriote Palloy," by V Fournel.]

[Footnote 26149: Granier de Cassagnac, "Histoire des Girondins,"

409.--"Archives Nationales," F7 3196. Letters of de Sades on the sacking

of his house near Apt, with supporting document and proofs of his

civism; among others a petition drawn up by him in the name of the Pique

section and read at the Convention year II. brumaire 25. "Legislators,

the reign of philosophy has at last annihilated that of imposture...

The worship of a Jewish slave of the Romans is not adapted to the

descendants of Scoevola. The general prosperity which is certain to

proceed from individual happiness will spread to the farthest regions

of the universe and everywhere the dreaded hydra of ultramontane

superstition, chased by the combined lights of reason and virtue, no

longer finding a refuge in the hateful haunts of a dying aristocracy,

will perish at her side in despair at finally beholding on this earth

the triumph of philosophy!"]

[Footnote 26150: Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 57, 59. The latter months of the

legislative assembly.]

BOOK THIRD. THE SECOND STAGE OF THE CONQUEST.

CHAPTER I.

I.--Government by gangs in times of anarchy.

Case where anarchy is recent and suddenly brought on.--The

band that succeeds the fallen government and its

administrative tools.

The worst feature of anarchy is not so much the absence of the

overthrown government as the rise of new governments of an inferior

grade. In every state which breaks up, new groups will form to conquer

and become sovereign: it was so in Gaul on the fall of the Roman empire,

also under the latest of Charlemagne's successors; the same state

of things exists now (1875) in Rumania and in Mexico. Adventurers,

gangsters, corrupted or downgraded men, social outcasts, men overwhelmed

with debts and lost to honor, vagabonds, deserters, dissolute troopers,

born enemies of work, of subordination, and of the law, unite to break

the worm-eaten barriers which still surround the sheep-like masses;

and as they are unscrupulous, they slaughter on all occasions. On this

foundation their authority rests; each in turn reigns in its own area,

and their government, in keeping with its brutal masters, consists in

robbery and murder; nothing else can be looked for from barbarians and

brigands.

But never are they so dangerous as when, in a great State recently

fallen, a sudden revolution places the central power in their hands;

for they then regard themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the

shattered government, and, under this title, they undertake to manage

the commonwealth. Now in times of anarchy the ruling power does not

proceed from above, but from below; and the chiefs, therefore, who

would remain such, are obliged to follow the blind impulsion of their

flock.[3101] Hence the important and dominant personage, the one whose

ideas prevail, the veritable successor of Richelieu and of Louis XIV.

is here the subordinate Jacobin, the pillar of the club, the maker of

motions, the street rioter, Panis Sergent, Hébert, Varlet, Henriot,

Maillard, Fournier, Lazowski, or, still lower in the scale, the

Marseilles "rough," the Faubourg gunner, the drinking market-porter

who elaborates his political conceptions in the interval between his

hiccups.[3102]--For information he has the rumors circulating in

the streets which tell of a traitor to each house, and for confirmed

knowledge the club slogans inciting him to rule over the vast machine.

A machinery so vast and complicated, a whole assembly of entangled

services ramifying in innumerable offices, with so much apparatus

of special import, so delicate as to require constant adaptation

to changing circumstances, diplomacy, finances, justice, army

administration--all this surpasses his limited comprehension; a bottle

cannot be made to contain the bulk of a hogshead.[3103] In his narrow

brain, perverted and turned topsy-turvy by the disproportionate notions

put into it, only one idea suited to his gross instincts and aptitudes

finds a place there, and that is the desire to kill his enemies; and

these are also the State's enemies, however open or concealed, present

or future, probable or even possible. He carries this savagery and

bewilderment into politics, and hence the evil arising from his

government. Simply a brigand, he would have murdered only to rob, and

his murders would have been restricted. As representing the State,

he undertakes wholesale massacres, of which he has the means ready

at hand.--For he has not yet had time enough to take apart the old

administrative implements; at all events the minor wheels, gendarmes,

jailers, employees, book-keepers, and accountants, are always in their

places and under control. There can be no resistance on the part

of those arrested; accustomed to the protection of the laws and to

peaceable ways and times, they have never relied on defending themselves

nor ever could imagine that any one could be so summarily slain. As

to the mass, rendered incapable of any effort of its own by ancient

centralization, it remains inert and passive and lets things go their

own way.--Hence, during many long, successive days, without being

hurried or impeded, with official papers quite correct and accounts in

perfect order, a massacre can be carried out with the same impunity and

as methodically as cleaning the streets or clubbing stray dogs.[3104]

II.--The development of the ideas of killings in the mass of the party.

The morning after August 10.--The tribunal of August 17.

--The funereal fête of August 27.--The prison plot.

Let us trace the progress of the homicidal idea in the mass of the

party. It lies at the very bottom of the revolutionary creed. Collot

d'Herbois, two months after this, aptly says in the Jacobin tribune:

"The second of September is the great article in the credo of our

freedom."[3105] It is peculiar to the Jacobin to consider himself as a

legitimate sovereign, and to treat his adversaries not as belligerents,

but as criminals. They are guilty of lèse-nation; they are outlaws, fit

to be killed at all times and places, and deserve extinction, even when

no longer able or in a condition do any harm.--Consequently, on the 10th

of August the Swiss Guards, who do not fire a gun and who surrender, the

wounded lying on the ground, their surgeons, the palace domestics, are

killed; and worse still, persons like M. de Clermont-Tonnerre who pass

quietly along the street. All this is now called in official phraseology

the justice of the people.--On the 11th the Swiss Guards, collected

in the Feuillants building, come near being massacred; the mob on the

outside of it demand their heads;[3106] "it conceives the project

of visiting all the prisons in Paris to take out the prisoners and

administer prompt justice on them."--On the 12th in the markets "diverse

groups of the low class call Pétion a scoundrel," because "he saved the

Swiss in the Palais Bourbon"; accordingly, "he and the Swiss must be

hung to-day."-In these minds turned topsy-turvy the actual, palpable

truth gives way to its opposite; "the attack was not begun by them; the

order to sound the tocsin came from the palace; it is the palace which

was besieging the nation, and not the nation which was besieging the

palace."[3107] The vanquished "are the assassins of the people,"

caught in the act; and on the 14th of August the Federates demand a

court-martial "to avenge the death of their comrades."[3108] And even

a court-martial will not answer. "It is not sufficient to mete out

punishment for crimes committed on the 10th of August, but the vengeance

of the people must be extended to all conspirators;" to that "Lafayette,

who probably was not in Paris, but who may have been there;" to all the

ministers, generals, judges, and other officials guilty of maintaining

legal order wherever it had been maintained, and of not having

recognized the Jacobin government before it came into being. Let them

be brought before, not the ordinary courts, which are not to be trusted

because they belong to the defunct régime, but before a specially

organized tribunal, a sort of "chambre ardente,"[3109] elected by the

sections, that is to say, by a Jacobin minority. These improvised judges

must give judgment on conviction, without appeal; there must be no

preliminary examinations, no interval of time between arrest and

execution, no dilatory and protective formalities. And above all, the

Assembly must be expeditious in passing the decree; "otherwise," it is

informed by a delegate from the Commune,[3110] "the tocsin will be rung

at midnight and the general alarm sounded; for the people are tired

of waiting to be avenged. Look out lest they do themselves justice!--A

moment later, new threats and with an advanced deadline. "If the juries

are not ready to act in two or three hours great misfortunes will

overtake Paris."

Even if the new tribunal, set up on the spot, is quick, guillotining

three innocent persons in five days; it does not move fast enough.

On the 23rd of August one of the sections declares to the Commune in

furious language that the people themselves, "wearied and indignant"

with so many delays, mean to force open the prisons and massacre the

inmates.[3111]--Not only do the sections harass the judges, but they

force the accused into their presence: a deputation from the Commune and

the Federates summons the Assembly "to transfer the criminals at Orleans

to Paris to undergo the penalty of their heinous crimes". "Otherwise,"

says the speaker, "we will not answer for the vengeance of the

people."[3112] And in a still more imperative manner:

"You have heard and you know that insurrection is a sacred duty," a

sacred duty towards and against all: towards the Assembly if it refuses,

and towards the tribunal if it acquits. They dash at their prey contrary

to all legislative and judicial formalities, like a kite across the web

of a spider, while nothing detach them from their fixed ideas. On the

acquittal of M. Luce de Montmorin[3113] the gross audience, mistaking

him for his cousin the former minister of Louis XVI., break out in

murmurs. The president tries to enforce silence, which increases

the uproar, and M. de Montmorin is in danger. On this the president,

discovering a side issue, announces that one of the jurors is related to

the accused, and that in such a case a new jury must be impaneled and

a new trial take place; that the matter will be inquired into, and

meanwhile the prisoner will be returned to the Conciergerie prison.

Thereupon he takes M. de Montmorin by the arm and leads him out of the

court-room, amidst the yells of the audience and not without risks to

himself; in the outside court a soldier of the National Guard strikes

at him with a saber, and the following day the court is obliged to

authorize eight delegates from the audience to go and see with their own

eyes that M. de Montmorin is really in prison.

At the moment of his acquittal a tragic remark is heard:

"You discharge him to-day and in two weeks he will cut our throats!"

Fear is evidently an adjunct of hatred. The Jacobin rabble is vaguely

conscious of their inferior numbers, of their usurpation, of their

danger, which increases in proportion as Brunswick draws near. They feel

that they live above a mine, and if the mine should explode!--Since they

think that their adversaries are scoundrels they feel they are capable

of a dirty trick, of a plot, of a massacre. As they themselves have

never behaved in any other way, they cannot conceive anything else.

Through an inevitable inversion of thought, they impute to others the

murderous intentions obscurely wrought out in the dark recesses of

their own disturbed brains.--On the 27th of August, after the funeral

procession gotten up by Sergent expressly to excite popular resentment,

their suspicions, at once specific and guided, begin to take the form of

certainty. Ten "commemorative" banners,[3114] each borne by a volunteer

on horseback, have paraded before all eyes the long list of massacres

"by the court and its agents":

1. the massacre at Nancy,

2. the massacre at Nîmes,

3. the massacre at Montauban,

4. the massacre at Avignon,

5. the massacre at La Chapelle,

6. the massacre at Carpentras,

7. the massacre of the Champ de Mars, etc.

Faced with such displays, doubts and misgivings are out of the question.

To the women in the galleries, to the frequenters of the clubs, and to

pikemen in the suburbs it is from now beyond any doubt proved that the

aristocrats are habitual killers.

And on the other side there is another sign equally alarming "This

lugubrious ceremony, which ought to inspire by turns both reflection

and indignation,... did not generally produce that effect." The National

Guard in uniform, who came "apparently to make up for not appearing on

the day of action," did not behave themselves with civic propriety,

but, on the contrary, put on "an air of inattention and even of noisy

gaiety"; they come out of curiosity, like so many Parisian onlookers,

and are much more numerous than the sans-culottes with their

pikes.[3115] The latter could count themselves and plainly see that they

are just a minority, and a very small one, and that their rage finds

no echo. The organizers and their stooges are the only ones to call for

speedy sentencing and for death-penalties. A foreigner, a good observer,

who questions the shop-keepers of whom he makes purchases, the tradesmen

he knows, and the company he finds in the coffee-houses, writes that he

never had "seen any symptom of a sanguinary disposition except in the

galleries of the National Assembly and at the Jacobin Club," but then

the galleries are full of paid "applauders,' especially "females, who

are more noisy and to be had cheaper than males." At the Jacobin Club

are "the leaders, who dread a turnaround or who have resentments to

gratify[3116]": thus the only enragés are the leaders and the populace

of the suburbs.--Lost in the crowd of this vast city, in the face of a

National Guard still armed and three times their own number, confronting

an indifferent or discontented bourgeoisie, the patriots are alarmed.

In this state of anxiety a feverish imagination, exasperated by the

waiting, involuntarily gives birth to imaginings passionately accepted

as truths. All that is now required is an incident in order to put the

final touch to complete the legend, the germ of which has unwittingly

grown in their minds.

On the 1st of September a poor wagoner, Jean Julien,[3117] condemned to

twelve years in irons, has been exposed in the pillory. After two hours

he becomes furious, probably on account of the jeers of the bystanders.

With the coarseness of people of his kind he has vented his impotent

rage by abuse, he has unbuttoned and exposed himself to the public, and

has naturally chosen expressions which would appear most offensive to

the people looking at him:

"Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for the Queen! Hurra for Lafayette! To hell

with the nation!"

It is also natural that he missed being torn to pieces. He was at once

led away to the Conciergerie prison, and sentenced on the spot to be

guillotined as soon as possible, for being a promoter of sedition in

connection with the conspiracy of August the 10th.--The conspiracy,

accordingly, is still in existence. It is so declared by the tribunal,

which makes no declaration without evidence. Jean Julien has certainly

confessed; now what has he revealed?--On the following day, like a crop

of poisonous mushrooms, the growth of a single night, the story obtains

general credence. "Jean Julien has declared that all the prisons in

Paris thought as he did, that there would soon be fine times, that the

prisoners were armed, and that as soon as the volunteers cleared out

they would be let loose on all Paris."[3118] The streets are full of

anxious faces. "One says that Verdun had been betrayed like Longwy.

Others shook their heads and said it was the traitors within Paris and

not the declared enemies on the frontier that were to be feared."[3119]

On the following day the story grows: "There are royalist officers and

soldiers hidden away in Paris and in the outskirts. They are going to

open the prisons, arm the prisoners, set the King and his family free,

put the patriots in Paris to death, also the wives and children of those

in the army... Isn't it natural for men to look after the safety of

their wives and children, and to use the only efficient means to arrest

the assassin's dagger."[3120]--The working-class inferno has been

stirred up, now it's up to the contractors of public revolt to fan and

direct the flames.

III. Terror is their Salvation.

Rise of the homicidal idea among the leaders.--Their

situation.--The powers they seize.--Their pillage.--The

risks they run--Terror is their rescue.

They have been fanning the flames for a long time. Already, on the 11th

of August, the new Commune had announced, in a proclamation,[3121]

that "the guilty should perish on the scaffold," while its threatening

deputations force the national Assembly into the immediate institution

of a bloody tribunal. Carried into power by brutal force, it must

perish if it does not maintain itself, and this can be done only through

terror.--Let us pause and consider this unusual situation. Installed

in the Hôtel-de-ville by a nightly surprise attack, about one hundred

strangers, delegated by a party which thinks or asserts itself to be the

peoples' delegates, have overthrown one of the two great powers of the

State, mangled and enslaved the other, and now rule in a capital of

700,000 souls, by the grace of eight or ten thousand fanatics and

cut-throats. Never did a radical change promote men from so low a point

and raise so high! The basest of newspaper scribblers, penny-a-liners

out of the gutters, bar-room oracles, unfrocked monks and priests, the

refuse of the literary guild, of the bar, and of the clergy, carpenters,

turners, grocers, locksmiths, shoemakers, common laborers, many with no

profession at all, strolling politicians and [3122]public brawlers,

who, like the sellers of counterfeit wares, have speculated for the past

three years on popular credulity. There were among them a number of

men in bad repute, of doubtful honesty or of proven dishonesty, who,

in their youth led shiftless lives. They are still besmirched with old

slime, they were put outside the pale of useful labor by their vices,

driven out of inferior stations even into prohibited occupations,

bruised by the perilous leap, with consciences distorted like the

muscles of a tight-rope dancer. Were it not for the Revolution, they

would still grovel in their native filth, awaiting prison or forced

labor to which they were destined. Can one imagine their growing

intoxication as they drink deep draughts from the bottomless cup of

absolute power?--For it is absolute power which they demand and which

they exercise.[3123] Raised by a special delegation above the regular

authorities, they put up with these only as subordinates, and tolerate

none among them who may become their rivals. Consequently, they reduce

the Legislative body simply to the function of editor and herald of

their decrees; they have forced the new department electors to "abjure

their title," to confine themselves to tax assessments, while they lay

their ignorant hands daily on every other service, on the finances, the

army, supplies, the administration, justice, at the risk of breaking the

administrative wheels or of interrupting their action.

One day they summon the Minister of War before them, or, for lack of

one, his chief clerk; another day they keep the whole body of officials

in his department in arrest for two hours, under the pretext of finding

a suspected printer.[3124] At one time they affix seals on the funds

devoted to extraordinary expenses; at another time they do away with

the commission on supplies; at another they meddle with the course of

justice, either to aggravate proceedings or to impede the execution of

sentences rendered.[3125] There is no principle, no law, no regulation,

no verdict, no public man or establishment that is not subject to the

risk of their arbitrariness.--And, as they have laid hands on power,

they do the same with money. Not only do they extort from the Assembly

850,000 francs a months, with arrears from the 1st of January, 1792,

more than six millions in all, to defray the expenses of their military

police, which means to pay their bands,[3126] but again, "invested with

the municipal scarf," they seize, "in the public establishment belonging

to the nation, all furniture, and whatever is of most value." "In one

building alone, they carry off the value of 100,000 crowns."[3127]

Elsewhere, in the hands of the treasurer of the civil list, they

appropriate to themselves, a box of jewels, other precious objects, and

340, 000 francs.[3128] Their commissioners bring in from Chantilly

three wagons each drawn by three horses "loaded with the spoils of M. de

Condé," and they undertake "removing the contents of the houses of

the émigrés."[3129] They confiscate in the churches of Paris "the

crucifixes, music-stands, bells, railings, and every object in bronze or

of iron, chandeliers, cups, vases, reliquaries, statues, every article

of plate," as well "on the altars as in the sacristies,"[3130] and we

can imagine the enormous booty obtained; to cart away the silver plate

belonging to the single church of Madeleine-de-la-ville required a

vehicle drawn by four horses.--Now they use all this money, so freely

seized, as freely as they do power itself. One fills his pockets in the

Tuileries without the slightest concern; another, in the Garde-Meuble,

rummages secretaries, and carries off a wardrobe with its

contents.[3131] We have already seen that in the depositories of the

Commune "most of the seals are broken," that enormous sums in plate, in

jewels, in gold and silver coin have disappeared. Future inquests and

accounts will charge on the Committee of Supervision, "abstractions,

dilapidations, and embezzlements," in short, "a mass of violations

and breaches of trust."--When one is king, one easily mistakes the

money-drawer of the State for the drawer in which one keeps one's own

money.

Unfortunately, this full possession of public power and the public funds

holds only by a slender thread. Let the evicted and outraged majority

dare, as subsequently at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, to Return to

the section assemblies and revoke the false mandate which they have

arrogated to themselves through fraud and force, and, on the instance,

they again become, through the sovereign will of the people, and by

virtue of their own deed, what they really are, usurpers, extortioners,

and robbers, there is no middle course for them between a dictatorship

and the galleys.--The mind, before such an alternative, unless

extraordinarily well-balanced, loses its equilibrium; they have no

difficulty in deluding themselves with the idea that the State is

menaced in their persons, and, in postulating the rule, that all is

allowable for them, even massacre. Has not Bazire stated in the

tribune that, against the enemies of the nation, "all means are fair

justifiable? Has not another deputy, Jean Debry, proposed the formation

of a body of 1,200 volunteers, who "will sacrifice themselves," as

formerly the assassins of the Old Man of the Mountain, in "attacking

tyrants, hand to hand, individually," as well as generals?[3132] Have we

not seen Merlin de Thionville insisting that "the wives and children of

the émigrés should be kept as hostages," and declared responsible, or,

in other words, ready for slaughter if their relatives continue their

attacks?[3133]

That is all that is left to do, since all the other measures have proved

insufficient.--In vain has the Commune decreed the arrest of journalists

belonging to the opposite party, and distributed their printing

machinery amongst patriotic printers.[3134] In vain has it declared the

members of the Sainte-Chapelle club, the National Guards who have sworn

allegiance to Lafayette, the signers of the petition of 8,000, and of

that of 20,000, disqualified for any service whatever.[3135] In vain has

it multiplied domiciliary visits, even to the residence and carriages

of the Venetian ambassador. In vain, through insulting and repeated

examinations, does it keep at its bar, under the hootings and

death-cries of its tribunes, the most honorable and most illustrious

men, Lavoisier, Dupont de Nemours, the eminent surgeon Desault, the most

harmless and most refined ladies, Madame de Tourzel, Mademoiselle de

Tourzel, and the Princesse de Lamballe.[3136] In vain, after a profusion

of arrests during twenty days, it envelopes all Paris inside one cast of

its net for a nocturnal search[3137]during which,

1. the barriers are closed and doubly guarded,

2. sentinels are on the quays and boats stationed on the Seine to

prevent escape by water,

3. the city is divided beforehand into circumscriptions, and for each

section, a list of suspected persons,

4. the circulation of vehicles is stopped,

5. every citizen is ordered to stay at home,

6. the silence of death reigns after six o'clock in the evening, and

then,

7. in each street, a patrol of sixty pikemen, seven hundred squads

of sans-culottes, all working at the same time, and with their usual

brutality,

8. doors are burst in with pile drivers,

9. wardrobes are picked by locksmiths,

10. walls are sounded by masons,

11. cellars are searched even to digging in the ground,

12. papers are seized,

13. arms are confiscated,

14. three thousand persons are arrested and led off;[3138] priests, old

men, the infirm, the sick.

The action lasts from ten in the evening to five o'clock in the morning,

the same as in a city taken by assault, the screams of women rudely

treated, the cries of prisoners compelled to march, the oaths of the

guards, cursing and drinking at each grog-shop; never was there such

an universal, methodical execution, so well calculated to suppress all

inclination for resistance in the silence of general stupefaction.

And yet, at this very moment, there are those who act in good faith

in the sections and in the Assembly, and who rebel at being under such

masters. A deputation from the Lombards section, and another from the

Corn-market, come to the Assembly and protest against the Commune's

usurpations.[3139] Choudieu, the Montagnard, denounces its blatant

corrupt practices. Cambon, a stern financier, will no longer consent

to have his accounts tampered with by thieving tricksters.[3140]

The Assembly at last seems to have recovered itself. It extends its

protection to Géray, the journalist, against whom the new pashas had

issued a warrant; it summons to its own bar the signers of the warrant,

and orders them to confine themselves in future to the exact limits

of the law which they transgress. Better still, it dissolves the

interloping Council, and substitutes for it ninety-six delegates, to be

elected by the sections in twenty-four hours. And, even still better, it

orders an account to be rendered within two days of the objects it has

seized, and the return of all gold or silver articles to the Treasury.

Quashed, and summoned to disgorge their booty, the autocrats of the

Hôtel-de-ville come in vain to the Assembly in force on the following

day[3141] to extort from it a repeal of its decrees; the Assembly,

in spite of their threats and those of their satellites, stands its

ground.--So much the worse for the stubborn; if they are not disposed to

regard the flash of the saber, they will feel its sharp edge and point.

The Commune, on the motion of Manuel, decides that, so long as public

danger continues, they will stay where they are; it adopts an address by

Robespierre to "restore sovereign power to the people," which means

to fill the streets with armed bands;[3142] it collects together its

brigands by giving them the ownership of all that they stole on the

10th of August.[3143] The session, prolonged into the night, does not

terminate until one o'clock in the morning. Sunday has come and there

is no time to lose, for, in a few hours, the sections, by virtue of the

decree of the National Assembly, and following the example of the Temple

section the evening before, may revoke the pretended representatives at

the Hôtel-de-ville. To remain at the Hôtel-de-ville, and to be elected

to the convention, demands on the part of the leaders some striking

action, and this they require that very day.--That day is the second of

September.

IV.--Date of the determination of this.--The actors and their parts.

Marat.--Danton.--The Commune.--Its co-operators.--Harmony of

dispositions and readiness of operation.

Since the 23rd of August their resolution is taken.[3144] They have

arranged in their minds a plan of the massacre, and each one, little by

little, spontaneously, according to his aptitudes, takes the part that

suits him or is assigned to him.

Marat, foremost among them all, is the proposer and preacher of the

operation, which, for him, is a perfectly natural one. It is the epitome

of his political system: a dictator or tribune, with full power to

slay, and with no other power but that; a good master executioner,

responsible, and "tied hand and foot"; this is his program for a

government since July the 14th, 1789, and he does not blush at it:

"so much the worse for those who are not on a level with it!"[3145] He

appreciated the character of the Revolution from the first, not through

genius, but sympathetically, he himself being equally as one-sided and

monstrous; crazy with suspicion and beset with a homicidal mania for

the past three years, reduced to one idea through mental impoverishment,

that of murder, having lost the faculty for even the lowest order of

reasoning, the poorest of journalists, save for pikemen and Billingsgate

market-women, so monotonous in his constant paroxysms that the regular

reading of his journal is like listening to hoarse cries from the cells

of a madhouse.[3146] From the 19th of August he excites people to attack

the prisons. "The wisest and best course to pursue," he says, "is to

go armed to the Abbaye, drag out the traitors, especially the Swiss

officers and their accomplices, and put them to the sword. What folly

it is to give them a trial! That is already done. You have massacred the

soldiers, why should you spare the officers, ten times guiltier?"--Also,

two days later, his brain teeming with an executioner's fancies,

insisting that "the soldiers deserved a thousand deaths. As to the

officers, they should be drawn and quartered, like Louis Capet and his

tools of the Manège."[3147]--On the strength of this the Commune adopts

him as its official editor, assigns him a tribune in its assembly room,

entrusts him to report its acts, and soon puts him on its supervisory or

executive committee.

A fanatic of this stamp, however, is good for nothing but as a

mouthpiece or instigator; he may, at best, figure in the end among the

subordinate managers.--The chief of the enterprise,[3148] Danton, is

of another species, and of another stature, a veritable leader of

men: Through his past career and actual position, through his popular

cynicism, ways and language, through his capacity for taking the

initiative and for command, through his excessive corporeal and

intellectual vigor, through his physical ascendancy due to his ardent,

absorbing will, he is well calculated for his terrible office.--He

alone of the Commune has become Minister, and there is no one but him to

shelter the violations of the Commune under the protection or under the

passivity of the central authority.--He alone of the Commune and of

the ministry is able to push things through and harmonize action in

the pell-mell of the revolutionary chaos; both in the councils of the

ministry which he governs, as he formerly governed at the Hôtel-de

ville. In the constant uproar of incoherent discussions,[3149] athwart

"propositions ex abrupto, among shouts, swearing, and the going and

coming of questioning petitioners," he is seen mastering his new

colleagues with his "stentorian voice, his gestures of an athlete, his

fearful threats," taking upon himself their duties, dictating to them

what and whom he chooses, "fetching in commissions already drawn

up," taking charge of everything, "making propositions, arrests, and

proclamations, issuing brevets," and drawing millions out of the public

treasury, casting a sop to his dogs in the Cordeliers and the Commune,

"to one 20,000 francs, and to another 10,000," "for the Revolution,

and on account of their patriotism,"--such is a summary report of

his doings. Thus gorged, the pack of hungry "brawlers" and grasping

intriguers, the whole serviceable force of the sections and of the

clubs, is in his hands. One is strong in times of anarchy at the head of

such a herd. Indeed, during the months of August and September, Danton

was king, and, later on, he may well say of the 2d of September, as he

did of the 10th of August, "I did it!"[3150]

Not that he is naturally vindictive or sanguinary: on the contrary,

with a butcher's temperament, he has a man's heart, and, at the risk

of compromising himself, against the wills of Marat and Robespierre, he

will, by-and-by, save his political adversaries, Duport, Brissot, and

the Girondists, the old party of the "Right."[3151] Not that he is

blinded by fear, enmities, or the theory; furious as a clubbist, he

has the clear-sightedness of the politician; he is not the dupe of

the sonorous phrases he utters, he knows the value of the rogues he

employs;[3152] he has no illusions about men or things, about other

people or about himself; if he slays, it is with a full consciousness

of what he is doing, of his party, of the situation, of the revolution,

while the crude expressions which, in the tones of his bull's voice, he

flings out as he passes along, are but a vivid statement of the precise

truth "We are the rabble! We spring from the gutters!" With the normal

principles of mankind, "we should soon get back into them. We can only

rule through fear!"[3153] "The Parisians are so many j... f...; a river

of blood must flow between them and the émigrés."[3154] The tocsin about

to be rung is not a signal of alarm, but a charge on the enemies of

the country... What is necessary to overcome them? Boldness, boldness,

always boldness![3155] I have brought my mother here, seventy years of

age; I have sent for my children, and they came last night. Before

the Prussians enter Paris, I want my family to die with me. Let

twenty thousand torches be applied, and Paris instantly reduced to

ashes!"[3156] "We must maintain ourselves in Paris at all hazards.

Republicans are in an extreme minority, and, for fighting, we can rely

only on them. The rest of France is devoted to royalty. The royalists

must be terrified!"[3157]--It is he who, on the 28th of August, obtains

from the Assembly the great domiciliary visit, by which the Commune

fills the prisons. It is he who, on the 2d of September, to paralyze the

resistance of honest people, causes the penalty of death to be

decreed against whoever, "directly or indirectly shall, in any manner

whatsoever, refuse to execute, or who shall interfere with the orders

issued, or with the measures of the executive power." It is he who, on

that day, informs the journalist Prudhomme of the pretended prison plot,

and who, the second day after, sends his secretary, Camille Desmoulins,

to falsify the report of the massacres,[3158] It is he who, on the

3rd of September, at the office of the Minister of Justice, before

the battalion officers and the heads of the service, before Lacroix,

president of the Assembly, and Pétion, mayor of Paris, before Clavières,

Servan, Monge, Lebrun, and the entire Executive Council, except Roland,

reduces at one stroke the head men of the government to the position of

passive accomplices, replying to a man of feeling, who rises to stay the

slaughter, "Sit down--it was necessary!"[3159] It is he who, the

same day, dispatches the circular, countersigned by him, by which the

Committee of Supervision announces the massacre, and invites "their

brethren of the departments" to follow the example of Paris.[3160] It

is he who, on the 10th of September, "not as Minister of Justice, but as

Minister of the People," is to congratulate and thank the

slaughterers of Versailles.[3161]--After the 10th of August, through

Billaud-Varennes, his former secretary, through Fabre d'Eglantine, his

Keeper of the Seals, through Tallien, secretary of the Commune and

his most trusty henchman, he is present at all deliberations in

the Hôtel-de-ville, and, at the last hour, is careful to put on

the Committee of Supervision one of his own men, the head clerk,

Desforges.[3162]--Not only was the reaping-machine constructed under his

own eye, and with his assent, but, again, when it is put in motion, he

holds the handle, so as to guide the scythe.

He is right; if he did not sometimes put on the brake, it would go

to pieces through its own action. Introduced into the Committee as

professor of political blood-letting, Marat, stubbornly following out a

fixed idea, cuts down deep, much below the designated line; warrants of

arrest were already out against thirty deputies, Brissot's papers were

rummaged, Roland's house was surrounded, while Duport, seized in a

neighboring department, is deposed in the slaughterhouse. The latter is

saved with the utmost difficulty; many a blow is necessary before he

can be wrested from the maniac who had seized him. With a surgeon like

Marat, and medics like the four or five hundred leaders of the Commune

and of the sections, it is not essential to guide the knife; it is a

foregone conclusion that the amputation will be extensive. Their names

speak for themselves: in the Commune, Manuel, the syndic-attorney; and

his two deputies Hébert and Billaud-Varennes, Huguenin, Lhuillier,

M.-J. Chénier, Audoin, Léonard Bourdon, Boula and Truchon, presidents

in succession. In the Commune and the sections, Panis, Sergent, Tallien,

Rossignol, Chaumette, Fabre d'Eglantine, Pache, Hassenfratz, the

cobbler Simon, and the printer Momoro. From the National Guard, the

commanding-general, Santerre, and the battalion commander Henriot, and,

lower down, the common herd of district demagogues, Danton's,

Hébert's, or Robespierre's side kicks, guillotined later on with

their file-leaders, in brief, the flower of the future

terrorists.[3163]--Today they are taking their first steps in blood,

each with their own attitude and motives:

* Chénier denounced as a member of the Sainte-Chapelle club, in danger

because he is among the suspected;[3164]

* Manuel, poor, excitable, bewildered, carried away, and afterwards

shuddering at the sight of his own work;

* Santerre, a fine circumspect figure-head, who, on the 2nd of

September, under pretense of watching the baggage, climbs on the seat of

a landau standing on the street, where he remains a couple of hours, to

avoid doing his duty as commanding-general;[3165]

* Panis, president of the Committee of Supervision, a good subordinate,

his born disciple and bootlicker, an admirer of Robespierre's whom he

proposes for the dictatorship, as well as of Marat, whom he extols as a

prophet;[3166]

* Henriot, Hébert, and Rossignol, simple evil-doers in uniform or in

their scarves;

* Collot d'Herbois, a stage poetaster, whose theatrical imagination

delights in a combination of melodramatic horrors;[3167]

* Billaud-Varennes, a former oratorian monk, irascible and gloomy, as

cool before a murder as an inquisitor at an auto-da-fé;

finally, the wily Robespierre, pushing others without committing

himself, never signing his name, giving no orders, haranguing a great

deal, always advising, showing himself everywhere, getting ready to

reign, and suddenly, at the last moment, pouncing like a cat on his

prey, and trying to slaughter his rivals, the Girondists.[3168]

Up to this time, in slaughtering or having it done, it was always as

insurrectionists in the street; now, it is in places of imprisonment, as

magistrates and functionaries, according to the registers of a lock-up,

after proofs of identity and on snap judgments, by paid executioners,

in the name of public security, methodically, and in cool blood, almost

with the same regularity as subsequently under "the revolutionary

government." September, indeed, is the beginning of it, a summary and

a model; they will not do it differently or better than during the best

days of the guillotine. Only, as they are as yet poorly supplied with

tools, they are obliged to use pikes instead of the guillotine, and,

as decency has not entirely disappeared, the chiefs conceal themselves

behind maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can track them, take them in the act,

and we have their signatures; they planned commanded, and conducted the

operation. On the 30th of August, the Commune decided that the sections

should try accused persons, and, on the 2nd of September, five

trusted sections reply to it by resolving that the accused shall be

murdered.[3169] The same day, September 2, Marat takes his place on the

Committee of Supervision. The same day, September 2, Panis and Sergent

sign the commissions of "their comrades," Maillard and associates,

for the Abbaye, and "order them to judge," that is to say, kill the

prisoners.[3170] The same and the following days, at La Force, three

members of the Commune, Hébert, Monneuse, and Rossignol, preside in

turn over the assassin court.[3171] The same day, a commissar of

the Committee of Supervision comes and demands a dozen men of

the Sans-Culottes section to help massacre the priests of Saint

Firmin.[3172] The same day, a commissar of the Commune visits the

different prisons during the slaughter, and finds that "things are going

on well in all of them."[3173] The same day, at five o'clock in the

afternoon, Billaud-Varennes, deputy-attorney for the Commune, "in his

well-known puce-colored coat and black perruque," walking over the

corpses, says to the Abbaye butchers: "Fellow-citizens, you are

immolating your enemies, you are performing your duty." He returns

during the night, highly commends them, and confirms the promise of

the "agreed wages." On the following any at noon, he again returns,

congratulates them more warmly, allows each one twenty francs, and urges

them to keep on.[3174]--In the mean time, Santerre, summoned to the

general staff headquarters by Roland, hypocritically deplores his

voluntary inability, and persists in not giving the orders, without

which the National Guard cannot move.[3175] At the sections, the

presidents, Chénier, Ceyrat, Boula, Momoro, Collot d'Herbois,

dispatch or take their victims back under pikes. At the Commune, the

council-general votes 12,000 francs, to be taken from the dead,

to defray the expenses of the operation.[3176] In the Committee of

Supervision, Marat sends off dispatches to spread murder through the

departments.--It is evident that the leaders and their subordinates are

unanimous, each at his post and in the service he performs; through

the spontaneous co-operation of the whole party, the command from above

meets the impulse from below;[3177] both unite in a common murderous

disposition, the work being done with the more precision in proportion

to its being easily done.--Jailers have received orders to open the

prison doors, and give themselves no concern. Through an excess of

precaution, the knives and forks of the prisoners have been taken away

from them.[3178] One by one, on their names being called, they will

march out like oxen in a slaughter-house, while about twenty butchers to

each prison, from to two to three hundred in all,[3179] will suffice to

do the work.

V. Abasement and Stupor.

Common workers.--Their numbers.--Their condition.--Their

sentiments.--Effect of murder on the murderers.--Their

degradation.--Their insensibility.

Two kinds of men make up the recruits, and it is especially on their

crude brains that we have to admire the effect of the revolutionary

dogma.

First, there are the Federates of the South, lusty fellows, former

soldiers or old bandits, deserters, bohemians, and scoundrels of

all lands and from every source, who, after finishing their work at

Marseilles and Avignon, have come to Paris to begin over again. "Triple

nom de Dieu!" exclaims one of them, "I didn't come a hundred and eighty

leagues to restrain myself from sticking a hundred and eighty heads

on the end of my pike!"[3180] Accordingly, they form in themselves a

special, permanent, resident body, allowing no one to divert them from

their adopted occupation. "They turn a deaf ear to the excitements of

spurious patriotism";[3181] they are not going to be sent off to the

frontier. Their post is at the capital; they have sworn "to defend

liberty"; neither before nor after September make them deviate from this

end. When, after having drawn money on every treasury and under

every pretext, they at last consent to leave Paris, it is only on the

condition that they return to Marseilles. Their operations are limited

to the interior of France, and only against political adversaries. But

their zeal in this field is only the greater; it is their band which,

first of all, takes the twenty-four priests from the town hall, and, on

the way, begins the massacre with their own hands.[3182]

Then there are the "enragés" of the Paris proletariat, a few of

them clerks or shopkeepers, most of them artisans of all the trades;

locksmiths, masons, butchers, wheelwrights, tailors, shoemakers,

waggoners, especially dockers working in the harbor, market-porters,

and, above all, journeymen and apprentices of all kinds, in short,

manual workers on the bottom of the social ladder.[3183] Among these

we find beasts of prey, murderers by instinct, or simple robbers.[3184]

Others who, like one of the disciples of Abbé Sicard, whom he loves

and venerates, confess that they never stirred except under

constraint.[3185] Others are simple machines, who let themselves be

driven: for instance the local forwarding agent, a good sort of man, but

who, dragged along, plied with liquor, and then made crazy, kills twenty

priests for his share, and dies at the end of the month, still

drinking, unable to sleep, frothing at the mouth and trembling in every

limb.[3186] And finally the few, who, with good intentions, are carried

away by the bloody whirlwind, and, struck by the grace of Revolution,

become converted to the religion of murder. One of them a certain

Grapin, deputized by his section to save two prisoners, seats himself

alongside of Maillard, sits in judgment at his side during sixty-three

hours, and demands a certificate from him.[3187] The majority, however,

entertain the same opinions as the cook, who, after taking the Bastille,

finding himself on the spot and having cut off M. de Launay's head,

regards it as a "patriotic" action, and deems himself worthy of a "medal

for having destroyed a monster." These people are not common criminals,

but well-disposed persons living in the vicinity, who, seeing a public

service established in their neighborhood,[3188] issue from their homes

to give a hand; their degree of probity is about the same as we find

nowadays among people of the same condition in life.

At the outset, especially, no one considers filling his pockets. At the

Abbaye prison, they come honorably and place on the table in the room

of the civil committee the purses and jewels of the dead.[3189] If they

appropriate anything to themselves, it is shoes to cover their naked

feet, and then only after asking permission. As to pay, all rough work

deserves it, and, moreover, between them and their recruiters, the

answer is obvious. With nothing but their own hands to rely on, they

cannot work for nothing,[3190] and, as the work is hard, they ought to

be paid double time. They require six francs a day, besides their meals

and as much wine as they want. One caterer alone furnished the men at

the Abbaye with 346 pints:[3191] when working incessantly day and night

with a task like that of sewer-cleaners and miners, nothing else will

keep their courage up.--Food and wages must be paid for by the nation;

the work is done for the nation, and, naturally, on interposing

formalities, they get out of temper and betake themselves to Roland,

to the City treasurer, to the section committees, to the Committee of

Supervision,[3192] murmuring, threatening, and showing their bloody

pikes. That is the evidence of having done their work well. They

boast of it to Pétion, impress upon him how "just and attentive" they

were,[3193] their discernment, the time given to the work, so many days

and so many hours; they ask only for what is "due to them"; when the

treasurer, on paying them, demands their names, they give them without

the slightest hesitation. Those who escort a dismissed prisoner; masons,

hairdressers, federates, require no recompense but "something to drink";

"we do not carry on this business for money," they say; "here is your

friend; he promised us a glass of brandy, which we will take and then

go back to our work."[3194]--Outside of their business they possess the

expansive cordiality and ready sensitivity of the Parisian workman. At

the Abbaye, a federate,[3195] on learning that the prisoners had been

kept without water for twenty-six hours, wanted to "exterminate" the

turnkey for his negligence, and would have done it if "the prisoners

themselves had not pleaded for him." On the acquittal of a prisoner, the

guards and the butchers, everybody, embraces him with enthusiasm; Weber

is greeted again and again for more than a hundred yards; they cheer

to excess. Each wants to escort the prisoner; the cab of Mathon de la

Varenne is invaded; "they perch themselves on the driver's seat, at the

doors, on top, and behind."[3196]--A few even display strange fits

of tact. Two of the butchers, still covered with blood, who lead the

chevalier de Bertrand home, insist on going up stairs with him to

witness the joy of his family; after their terrible task they need the

relaxation of tender emotion. On entering, they wait discreetly in the

drawing-room until the ladies have been prepared; the happiness of which

they are witnesses melts them; they remain some time, refuse money,

expressing their gratitude and depart.[3197]--Still more extraordinary

are the vestiges of innate politeness. A market-porter desirous of

embracing a discharged prisoner, first asks his permission. Old "hags,"

who had just clapped their hands at the slaughtering, stop the guards

"violently" as they hurry Weber along, in white silk stockings, across

pools of blood: "Hey, guard, look out, you are making Monsieur walk in

the gutter!"[3198] In short, they display the permanent qualities

of their race and class; they seem to be neither above nor below the

average of their brethren, Most of them, probably, would never have done

anything very monstrous had a rigid police, like that which maintains

order in ordinary times, kept them in their shops or at home in their

lodgings or in their tap-rooms.

But, in their own eyes, they are so many kings; "sovereignty is

committed to their hands,"[3199] their powers are unlimited; whoever

doubts this is a traitor, and is properly punished; he must be put out

of the way; while, for royal councillors, they take maniacs and rascals,

who, through monomania or calculation, have preach all that to them:

just like a Negro king surrounded by white slave-dealers, who urge him

into raids, and by black sorcerers, who prompt him to massacre. How

could such a man with such guides, and in such an office, be retarded by

the formalities of justice, or by the distinctions of equity? Equity and

justice are the elaborate products of civilization, while he is merely a

political savage. In vain are the innocent recommended to his mercy!

"Look here, citizen,[31100] do you, too, want to put us to sleep?

Suppose that those cursed Prussian and Austrian beggars were in Paris,

would they pick out the guilty? Wouldn't they strike right and left,

the same as the Swiss did on the 10th of August? Very well, I can't make

speeches, but I don't put anybody to sleep. I say, I am the father of

a family--I have a wife and five children that I mean to leave here for

the section to look after, while I go and fight the enemy. But I have no

intention that while I am gone these villains here in prison, and other

villains who would come and let them out, should cut the throats of my

wife and children. I have three boys who I hope will some day be more

useful to their country than those rascals you want to save. Anyhow, all

that can be done is to let 'em out and give them arms, and we will

fight 'em on an equal footing. Whether I die here or on the frontiers,

scoundrels would kill me all the same, and I will sell my life dearly.

But, whether it is done by me or by someone else, the prison shall be

cleaned out of those cursed beggars, there, now!" At this a general cry

is heard: "He's right! No mercy! Let us go in!"

All that the crowd assent to is an improvised tribunal, the reading of

the jailer's register, and prompt judgment; condemnation and slaughter

must follow, according to the famous Commune, which simplifies

things--There is another simplification still more formidable, which is

the condemnation and slaughter by categories. Any title suffices, Swiss,

priest, officer, or servant of the King, "the 'worms' on the civil

list"; wherever a lot of priests or Swiss are found, it is not worth

while to have a trial, the throats of the lot can be slit.--Reduced to

this, the operation is adapted to the operators; the arms of the new

sovereign are as strong as his mind is weak, and, through an inevitable

adaptation, he degrades his work to the level of his faculties.

His work, in its turn, degrades and perverts him. No man, and especially

a man of the people, rendered pacific by an old civilization, can, with

impunity, become at one stroke both sovereign and executioner. In vain

does he work himself up against the condemned and heap insults on them

to augment his fury;[31101] I he is dimly conscious of committing a

great crime, and his soul, like that of Macbeth, "is full of scorpions."

Through a terrible tightening up, he hardens himself against the

inborn, hereditary impulses of humanity; these resist while he becomes

exasperated, and, to stifle them, there is no other way but to "gorge

himself on horrors,"[31102] by adding murder to murder. For murder,

especially as he practices it, that is to say, with a naked sword on

defense-less people, introduces into his animal and moral machine two

extraordinary and disproportionate emotions which unsettle it, on the

one hand, a sensation of omnipotence exercised uncontrolled, unimpeded,

without danger, on human life, on throbbing flesh[31103] and, on the

other hand, an interest in bloody and diversified death, accompanied

with an ever new series of contortions and exclamations;[31104]

formerly, in the Roman circus, one could not tear one's self away from

it; the spectacle once seen, the spectator always returned to see it

again. Just at this time each prison court is a circus, and what makes

it worse is that the spectators are likewise actors.--Thus, for them,

two fiery liquids mingle together in one draught. To moral intoxication

is added physical intoxication, wine in profusion, bumpers at every

pause, revelry over corpses; and we see rising out of this unnatural

creature the demon of Dante, at once brutal and refined, not merely

a destroyer, but, again, an executioner, instigator and calculator of

suffering, and radiant and joyous over the evil it accomplishes.

They are merry; they dance around each new corpse, and sing the

carmagnole;[31105] they arouse the people of the quarter "to amuse

them," and that they may have their share of "the fine fête."[31106]

Benches are arranged for "gentlemen" and others for "ladies": the

latter, with greater curiosity, are additionally anxious to contemplate

at their ease "the aristocrats" already slain; consequently, lights are

required, and one is placed on the breast of each corpse.--Meanwhile,

the slaughter continues, and is carried to perfection. A butcher at the

Abbaye[31107] complains that "the aristocrats die too quick, and that

those only who strike first have the pleasure of it"; henceforth they

are to be struck with the backs of the swords only, and made to run

between two rows of their butchers, like soldiers formerly running a

gauntlet. If there happens to be well-known person, it is agreed to take

more care in prolonging the torment. At La Force, the Federates who come

for M. de Rulhières swear "with frightful imprecations that they will

cut the head of anyone daring to end his sufferings with a thrust of

his pike"; the first thing is to strip him naked, and then, for half

an hour, with the flat of their sabers, they cut and slash him until he

drips with blood and is "skinned to his entrails."--All the monstrous

instincts who grovels chained up in the dregs of the human heart, not

only cruelty with its bared fangs,[31108] but also the slimier desires,

unite in fury against women whose noble or infamous repute makes them

conspicuous; against Madame de Lamballe, the Queen's friend; against

Madame Desrues, widow of the famous poisoner; against the flower-girl

of the Palais-Royal, who, two years before, had mutilated her lover, a

French guardsman, in a fit of jealousy. Ferocity here is associated with

lewdness to add debasement to torture, while life is violated through

outrages on modesty. In Madame de Lamballe, killed too quickly,

the libidinous butchers could outrage only a corpse, but for the

widow,[31109] and especially the flower-girl, they revive, like so many

Neros, the fire-circle of the Iroquois.[31110]--From the Iroquois to

the cannibal, the gulf is small, and some of them jump across it. At the

Abbaye, an old soldier named Damiens, buries his saber in the side of

the adjutant-general la Leu, thrusts his hand into the opening, tears

out the heart "and puts it to his mouth as if to eat it"; "the blood,"

says an eye-witness, "trickled from his mouth and formed a sort of

mustache for him."[31111] At La Force, Madame de Lamballe is carved up.

What Charlot, the wig-maker, who carried her head did, I to it, should

not be described. I merely state that another wretch, in the Rue

Saint-Antoine, bore off her heart and "ate it."[31112]

They kill and they drink, and drink and kill again. Weariness comes and

stupor begins. One of them, a wheelwright's apprentice, has dispatched

sixteen for his share; another "has labored so hard at this merchandise

as to leave the blade of his saber sticking in it"; "I was more tired,"

says a Federate, "with two hours pulling limbs to pieces, right

and left, than any mason who for two days has been plastering a

wall."[31113] The first excitement is gone, and now they strike

automatically.[31114] Some of them fall asleep stretched out on benches.

Others, huddled together, sleep off the fumes of their wine, removed

on one side. The exhalation from the carnage is so strong that the

president of the civil committee faints in his chair,[31115] the fumes

of the tavern blending with those from the charnel-house. A heavy,

dull state of torpor gradually overcomes their clouded brains, the last

glimmerings of reason dying out one by one, like the smoky lights on

the already cold breasts of the corpses lying around them. Through

the stupor spreading over the faces of butchers and cannibals, we see

appearing that of the idiot. It is the revolutionary idiot, in which

all conceptions, save two, have vanished, two fixed, rudimentary, and

mechanical ideas, one destruction and the other that of public safety.

With no others in his empty head, these blend together through an

irresistible attraction, and the effect proceeding from their contact

may be imagined. "Is there anything else to do?" asks one of these

butchers in the deserted court.--"If there is no more to do," reply

a couple of women at the gate, "you will have to think of

something,"[31116] and, naturally, this is done.

As the prisons are to be cleaned out, it is as well to clean them all

out, and do it at once. After the Swiss, priests, the aristocrats, and

the "white-skinned gentlemen," there remain convicts and those confined

through the ordinary channels of justice, robbers, assassins, and those

sentenced to the galleys in the Conciergerie, in the Châtelet, and in

the Tour St. Bernard, with branded women, vagabonds, old beggars, and

boys confined in Bicêtre and the Salpétrière. They are good for nothing,

cost something to feed,[31117] and, probably, cherish evil designs. At

the Salpétrière, for example, the wife of Desrues, the poisoner, is,

assuredly, like himself, "cunning, wicked, and capable of anything"; she

must be furious at being in prison; if she could, she would set fire to

Paris; she must have said so; she did say it[31118]--one more sweep of

the broom.--This time, as the job is more foul, the broom is wielded by

fouler hands; among those who seize the handle are the frequenters of

jails. The butchers at the Abbaye prison, especially towards the close,

had already committed thefts;[31119] here, at the Châtelet and the

Conciergerie prisons, they carry away "everything which seems to them

suitable," even to the clothes of the dead, prison sheets and coverlids,

even the small savings of the jailers, and, besides this, they enlist

their cronies. "Out of 36 prisoners set free, many were assassins and

robbers, the killers attached them to their group. There were also 75

women, confined in part for larceny, who promised to faithfully serve

their liberators." Later on, indeed, these are to become, at the

Jacobin and Cordeliers clubs, the tricoteuses (knitters) who fill their

tribunes.[31120]--At the Salpétrière prison, "all the pimps of Paris,

former spies,... libertines, the rascals of France and all Europe,

prepare beforehand for the operation," and rape alternates with

massacre.[31121]--Thus far, at least, slaughter has been seasoned with

robbery, and the grossness of eating and drinking; at Bicétre, however,

it is crude butchery, the carnivorous instinct alone satisfying itself.

Among other prisoners are 43 youths of the lowest class, from 17 to 19

years of age, placed there for correction by their parents, or by those

to whom they are bound;[31122] one need only look at them to see that

they are genuine Parisian scamps, the apprentices of vice and misery,

the future recruits for the reigning band, and these the band falls on,

beating them to death with clubs. At this age life is tenacious, and, no

life being harder to take, it requires extra efforts to dispatch them.

"In that corner," said a jailer, "they made a mountain of their bodies.

The next day, when they were to be buried, the sight was enough to break

one's heart. One of them looked as if he were sleeping like one of God's

angels, but the rest were horribly mutilated."[31123]--Here, man has

sunk below himself, down into the lowest strata of the animal kingdom,

lower that the wolf; for wolves do not strangle their young.

VI. Jacobin Massacre.

Effect of the massacre on the public.--General dejection and

the dissolution of society.--The ascendancy of the Jacobins

assured in Paris.--The men of September upheld in the

Commune and elected to the Convention.

There are six days and five nights of uninterrupted butchery,[31124] 171

murders at the Abbaye, 169 at La Force, 223 at the Châtelet, 328 at the

Consciergerie, 73 at the Tour-Saint-Bernard, 120 at the Carmelites,

79 at Saint Firmin, 170 at Bicêtre, 35 at the Salpétrière; among the

dead,[31125] 250 priests, 3 bishops or archbishops, general officers,

magistrates, one former minister, one royal princess, belonging to the

best names in France, and, on the other side, one Negro, several working

class women, kids, convicts, and poor old men: What man now, little or

big, does not feel himself threatened?--And all the more because the

band has grown larger. Fournier, Lazowski, and Bécard, the chiefs

of robbers and assassins, return from Orleans with fifteen hundred

cut-throats.[31126] One the way they kill M. de Brissac, M. de Lessart,

and 42 others accused of lése-nation, whom they wrested from their

judges' hands, and then, by the way of surplus, "following the example

of Paris," twenty-one prisoners taken from the Versailles prisons. At

Paris the Minister of Justice thanks them, the Commune congratulates

them, and the sections feast them and embrace them.[31127]--Can anybody

doubt that they were ready to begin again? Can a step be taken in or out

of Paris without being subject to their oppression or encountering their

despotism? Should one leave the city, sentinels of their species are

posted at the barriers and on the section committees in continuous

session. Malouet, led before that of Roule,[31128] sees before him a

pandemonium of fanatics, at least a hundred individuals in the same

room, the suspected, those denouncing them, collaborators, attendants,

a long, green table in the center, covered with swords and daggers,

with the committee around it, "twenty patriots with their shirt sleeves

rolled up, some holding pistols and others pens," signing warrants of

arrest, "quarreling with and threatening each other, all talking

at once, and shouting: Traitor!--Conspirator!--Off to prison with

him!--Guillotine him!--and behind these, a crowd of spectators,

pell-mell, yelling, and gesticulating" like wild beasts pressed against

each other in the same cage, showing their teeth and trying to spring at

each other. "One of the most excited, brandishing his saber in order

to strike an antagonist, stopped on seeing me, and exclaimed, 'There's

Malouet!'--The other, however, less occupied with me than with his

enemy, took advantage of the opportunity, and with a blow of his club,

knocked him down." Malouet had a close shave, in Paris escapes take

place by such accidents.--If one remains in the city, one is beset with

lugubrious fears by,

1. the hurrying step of squads of men in each street, leading the

suspected to prison or before the committee;

2. around each prison the crowds that have come "to see the disasters";

3. in the court of the Abaye the cry of the auctioneer selling the

clothes of the dead;

4. the rumbling of carts on the pavement bearing away 1,300 corpses;

5. the songs of the women mounted aloft on the carts, beating time on

the naked bodies.[31129]

Is there a man who, after one of these encounters, does not see himself

in imagination before the green table of the section committee, after

this, in prison with sabers over his head, and then in the cart in the

midst of the bloody pile?

Courage falters before a vision like this. All the journals approve,

palliate, or keep silent; nobody dares offer resistance.[31130] Property

as well as lives belong to whoever wants to take them. At the barriers,

at the markets, on the boulevard of the Temple, thieves, decked with

the tricolor ribbon, stop people as they pass along, seize whatever they

carry, and, under the pretext that jewels should be deposited on the

altars of Patriotism, take purses, watches, rings, and other articles,

so rudely that women who are not quick enough, have the lobes of their

ears torn in unhooking their earrings[31131]. Others, installed in the

cellars of the Tuileries, sell the nation's wine and oil for their own

profit. Others, again, given their liberty eight days before by

the people, scent out a bigger job by finding their way into

the Garde-meuble and stealing diamonds to the value of thirty

millions.[31132]

Like a man struck on the head with a mallet, Paris, felled to the

ground, lets things go; the authors of the massacre have fully attained

their ends. The faction has fast hold of power, and will maintain its

hold. Neither in the Legislative Assembly nor in the Convention will the

aims of the Girondins be successful against its tenacious usurpation.

It has proved by a striking example that it is capable of anything,

and boasts of it; it is still armed, it stands there ever prepared and

anonymous on its murderous basis, with its speedy modes of operation,

its own group of fanatical agents and bravos, with Maillard and

Fournier, with its cannon and its pikes. All that does not live within

it lives only through its favor from day to day, through its good will.

Everybody knows that. The Assembly no longer thinks of dislodging people

who meet decrees of expulsion with massacre; it is no longer a question

of auditing their accounts, or of keeping them within the confines

of the law. Their dictatorship is not to be disputed, and their

purification continue. From four to five hundred new prisoners, arrested

within eleven days, by order of the municipality, by the sections,

and by this or that individual Jacobin, are crowded into cells still

dripping with blood, and the report is spread that, on the 20th of

September, the prisons will be emptied by a second massacre.[31133]--Let

the Convention, if it pleases, pompously install itself as sovereign,

and grind out decrees--it makes no difference; regular or irregular,

the government still marches on in the hands of those who hold the

sword.[31134] The Jacobins, through sudden terror, have maintained their

illegal authority; through a prolongation of terror they are going to

establish their legal authority. A forced suffrage is going to put

them in office at the Hôtel-de-ville, in the tribunals, in the National

Guard, in the sections, and in the various administrations, while

they have already elected to the Convention, Marat, Danton, Fabre

d'Eglantine, Camille Desmoulins, Manuel, Billaud-Varennes, Panis,

Sergent, Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, Legendre, Osselin, Fréron,

David, Robert, Lavicourterie, in short, the instigators, leaders and

accomplices of the massacre.[31135] Nothing that could force or falsify

voting is omitted.[31136] In the first place the presence of the

people is imposed on the electoral assembly, and, to this end, it is

transferred to the large hall of the Jacobin club, under the pressure

of the Jacobin galleries. As a second precaution, every opponent is

excluded from voting, every Constitutionalist, every former member of

the monarchical club, of the Feuillants, and of the Sainte-Chapelle

club, of the Feuillants, and of the Sainte-Chapelle club, every signer

of the petition of the 20,000, or of that of the 8,000, and, on the

sections protesting against this, their protest is thrown out on

the ground of its being the fruit of "an intrigue." Finally, at each

balloting, each elector's vote is called out, which ensures the

right vote beforehand, the warnings he has received being very

explicit.[31137] On the 2nd of September, during the first meeting of

the electoral body, held at the bishop's palace, the Marseilles

troop, 500 yards away, came and took the twenty-four priests from the

town-hall, and, on the way, hacked them to pieces on the Pont-Neuf.

Throughout the evening and all night the agents of the municipality

carried on their work at the Abbaye, at the Carmelites, and at La Force,

and, on the 3rd of September, on the electoral assembly transferring

itself to the Jacobin club, it passed over the Pont-au-Change between

two rows of corpses, which the slaughterers had brought there from the

Châtelet and the Conciergerie prisons.

*****

[Footnote 3101: Thierry, son of Clovis, unwilling to take part in an

expedition of his brothers into Burgundy, was told by his men: "If thou

art unwilling to march into Burgundy with thy brothers, we will leave

thee and follow them in thy place."--Clotaire, another of his sons,

disposed to make peace with the Saxons, "the angry Francs rush upon him,

revile him, and threaten to kill him if he declines to accompany them.

Upon which he puts himself at their head."]

[Footnote 3102: Social condition and degree of culture are often

indicated orthographically.--Granier de Cassagnac, II..480. Bécard,

commanding the expedition which brought back the prisoners from Orleans,

signs himself: "Bécard, commandant congointement aveque M. Fournier

generalle. "--"Archives Nationales," F7, 4426. Letter of Chemin,

commissioner of the Gravilliers section, to Santerre, Aug.11, 1792.

"Mois Charles Chemin commissaire... fait part à Monsieur Santaire

générale de la troupe parisiene que le nommé Hingray cavaliers de la

gendarmeris nationalle.. me délarés qu'ille sestes trouvés aux jourduis

11 aoux avec une home attachés à la cours aux Equris; quille lui aves

dis quiere 800 home a peupres des sidevant garde du roy étes tous près a

fondre sure Paris pour donaire du sécour a naux rébelle et a signer avec

moi la presante."]

[Footnote 3103: On the 19th of March, 1871, I met in the Rue de Varennes

a man with two guns on his shoulder who had taken part in the pillage of

the Ecole d'Etat-major and was on his way home. I said to him: "But this

is civil war, and you will let the Prussians in Paris."--"I'd rather

have the Prussians than Thiers. Thiers is Prussian on the inside!"]

[Footnote 3104: Today, 115 years after these words were written, we have

seen others, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, etc

following in the Jacobin's footsteps. Nobles, Bourgeois, Jews and other

undesirables have been methodically put away. The sheeplike majority

did not read Taine or did not profit from his warnings while most of the

great tyrants learned from him or from the events he described (SR.)]

[Footnote 3105: Moniteur, Nov. 14, 1792.]

[Footnote 3106: "Archives Nationales," F7, 4426. Letter of the police

administrators, Aug. 11. Declaration of Delaunay, Aug. 12.]

[Footnote 3107: Buchez et Roux, XVII. 59 (session of Aug. 12) Speech by

Leprieur at the bar of the house.]

[Footnote 3108: Buchez et Roux, XVII. 47.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 31.

Speech by Robespierre at the bar of the Assembly in the name of the

commune, Aug. 15.]

[Footnote 3109: Brissot, in his report on Robespierre's petition.--The

names of the principal judges elected show its character:

Fouquier-Tinville, Osselin, Coffinhal.]

[Footnote 3110: Buchez et Roux, XVII.91 (Aug. 17).]

[Footnote 3111: Stated by Pétion in his speech (Moniteur, Nov. 10,

1792).]

[Footnote 3112: Buchez et Roux, XVII. 116 (session of Aug. 23).]

[Footnote 3113: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 461.--Moore, I. 273 (Aug. 31).]

[Footnote 3114: Buchez et Roux, XVII. 267 (article by Prudhomme in the

"Révolutions de Paris").]

[Footnote 3115: "Les Révolutions de Paris," Ibid., "A number of

sans-culottes were there with their pikes; but these were

largely outnumbered by the multitude of uniforms of the various

battalions."--Moore, Aug, 31: "At present the inhabitants of the

faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau are all that is felt of the

sovereign people in Paris."]

[Footnote 3116: More, Aug. 26.]

[Footnote 3117: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 471. Indictment against

Jean-Julien.--In referring to M. Mortimer-Ternaux we do so because, like

a true critic, he cites authentic and frequently unedited documents.]

[Footnote 3118: Rétif de la Bretonne, "les Nuits de Paris," 11th night,

p. 372.]

[Footnote 3119: Moore, Sept. 2.]

[Footnote 3120: Moore, Sept. 3.--Buchez et Roux, XVI. 159 (narrative

by Tallien).--Official report of the Paris commune, Sept. 4 (in the

collection of Barrière and Berville, the volume entitled "Mémoires sur

les journées de Septembre"). The commune adopts and expands the fable,

probably invented by it. Prudhomme well says that the story of the

prison plot, so scandalously circulated during the Reign of Terror,

appears for the first time on the 2d of September. The same report was

spread through the rural districts. At Gennevilliers, a peasant while

lamenting the massacres, said to Malouet: "It is, too, a terrible thing

for the aristocrats to want to kill all the people by blowing up the

city" (Malouet, II. 244).]

[Footnote 3121: Official reports of the commune, Aug. 11.]

[Footnote 3122: Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 446. List of the section

commissioners sitting at the Hôtel-de-ville, Aug. 10, before 9 o'clock

in the morning.]

[Footnote 3123: Official reports of the commune, Aug. 21. "Considering

that, to ensure public safety and liberty, the council-general of the

commune required all the power delegated to it by the people, at the

time it was compelled to resume the exercise of its rights," sends a

deputation to the National Assembly to insist that "the new

department be converted, pure and simple, into a tax-commissioners'

office."--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 25. Speech of Robespierre in the

name of the commune: "After the people have saved the country, after

decreeing a National Convention to replace you, what remains for you to

do but to gratify their wishes?... The people, forced to see to its

own salvation, has provided for this through its delegates... It is

essential that those chosen by itself for its magistrates should enjoy

the plenary powers befitting the sovereign."]

[Footnote 3124: Official reports of the commune, Aug.

10.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 155. Letter of the Minister Servan, Aug.

30.-Ibid., 149.--Ibid., 148. The commission on supplies having been

broken up by the commune, Roland, the Minister of the Interior, begs the

Assembly to act promptly, for "he will no longer be responsible for the

supplies of Paris."]

[Footnote 3125: Official reports of the commune, Aug. 21. A resolution

requiring that, on trials for lésé-nation, those who appear for the

defendants should be provided with a certificate of their integrity,

issued by their assembled section, and that the interviews between them

and the accused be public.--Ibid., Aug.17, a resolution to suspend the

execution of the two assassins of mayor Simonneau, condemned to death by

the tribunal of Seine-et-Oise.]

[Footnote 3126: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 11. Decree of Aug.11.]

[Footnote 3127: Prudhomme, "Révolutions de Paris" (number for Sep. 22)..

Report by Roland to the National Assembly (Sept. 16, at 9 o'clock in the

morning).]

[Footnote 3128: Madame Roland, "Mémoires," II. 414 (Ed. Barrière et

Berville). Report by Roland Oct. 29. The seizure in question tool place

Aug.27.]

[Footnote 3129: "Mémoirs sur les journées de Septembre" (Ed. Barrière

et Berville, pp. 307-322). List of sums paid by the treasurer of the

commune.--See, on the prolongation of this plundering, Roland's report,

Oct. 29, of money, plate, and assignats taken from the Senlis Hospital

(Sept. 13), the Hotel de Coigny emptied, and sale of furniture in the

Hotel d'Egmont, etc.]

[Footnote 3130: Official reports of the commune, Aug. 17 and 20.--List

of sums paid by the treasurer of the commune, p. 321.--On the 28th of

August a "Saint-Roch in silver is brought to the bar of the National

Assembly."]

[Footnote 3131: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 150, 161, 511.--Report by Roland,

Oct. 29. P. 414.]

[Footnote 3132: Moniteur.514, 542 (sessions of Aug. 23 and 26).]

[Footnote 3133: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 99 (sessions of Aug.15 and 23).

"Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug. 18, a resolution to obtain a law

authorizing the commune "to collect together with wives and children

of the émigrés in places of security, and to make use of the former

convents for this purpose."]

[Footnote 3134: "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug. 12.--Ibid., Aug. 18.

Not being able to find M. Geoffrey, the journalist, the commune "passes

a resolution that seals be affixed to Madame Geoffroy's domicile and

that she be placed in arrest until her husband appears to release her."]

[Footnote 3135: "Procès-verbaux de la Commune." Aug.17 and 18. Another

resolution, again demanding of the National Assembly a list of the

signers for publication.]

[Footnote 3136: "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug. 18, 19, 20.--On the

20th of August the commune summons before it and examines the Venetian

Ambassador. "A citizen claims to be heard against the ambassador, and

states that several carriages went out of Paris in his name. The name

of this citizen is Chevalier, a horse-shoer's assistant... The Council

decrees that honorable mention be made of the affidavits brought

forward in the accusation." On the tone of these examinations read Weber

("Mémoires," II. 245), who narrates his own.]

[Footnote 3137: Buchez et Roux, XVII. 215. Narration by Peltier.--In

spite of the orders of the National Assembly the affair is repeated on

the following day, and it lasts from the 19th to the 31st of August,

in the evening.--Moore, Aug.31. The stupid, sheep-like vanity of the

bourgeois enlisted as a gendarme for the sans-culottes is here well

depicted. The keeper of the Hôtel Meurice, where Moore and Lord

Lauderdale put up, was on guard and on the chase the night before: "He

talked a good deal of the fatigue he had undergone, and hinted a little

of the dangers to which he had been exposed in the course of this

severe duty. Being asked if he had been successful in his search after

suspected persons--'Yes my lord, infinitely; our battalion arrested four

priests.' He could not have looked more lofty if he had taken the Duke

of Brunswick,"]

[Footnote 3138: According to Roederer, the number arrested amounted to

from 5,000 to 6,000 persons.]

[Footnote 3139: Mortimer-Ternaux, III.147, 148, Aug.28 and

29.--Ibid., 176. Other sections complain of the Commune with some

bitterness.--Buchez et Roux, XVII. 358.--"Procès-verbaux de la Commune,"

Sept. 1. "The section of the Temple sends a deputation which declares

that by virtue of a decree of the National Assembly it withdraws

its powers entrusted to the commissioners elected by it to the

council-general."]

[Footnote 3140: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 154 (session of Aug. 30).]

[Footnote 3141: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 171 (session of Aug. 31).--Ibid.,

208.----On the following day, Sept. 1, at the instigation of Danton,

Thuriot obtains from the National Assembly an ambiguous decree which

seems to allow the members of the commune to keep their places,

provisionally at least, at the Hotel-de-ville.]

[Footnote 3142: "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Sept. 1.]

[Footnote 3143: "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Sept. 1. "It is resolved

that whatever effects fell into the hands of the citizens who fought

for liberty and equality on the 10th of August shall remain in their

possession; M. Tallien, secretary-general, is therefore authorized to

return a gold watch to M. Lecomte, a gendarme."]

[Footnote 3144: Four circumstances, simultaneous and in full agreement

with each other, indicate this date: 1. On the 23d of August the

council-general resolves "that a tribune shall be arranged in the

chamber for a journalist (M. Marat), whose duty it shall be to conduct

a journal giving the acts passed and what goes on in the commune"

("Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug.23) 2. On the same day, "on the

motion of a member with a view to separate the prisoners of lése-nation

from those of the nurse's hospital and others of the same stamp in the

different prisons, the council has adopted this measure" (Granier de

Cassagnac, II. 100). 3. The same day the commune applauds the deputies

of a section, which "in warm terms" denounce before it the tardiness of

justice and declare to it that the people will "immolate" the prisoners

in their prisons (Moniteur, Nov. 10, 1793, Narrative of Pétion). The

same day it sends a deputation to the Assembly to order a transfer of

the Orleans prisoners to Paris (Buchez et Roux, XVII. 116). The next

day, in spite of the prohibitions of the Assembly, It sends Fournier

and his band to Orleans (Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 364), and each knows

beforehand that Fournier is commissioned to kill them on the way.

(Balleydier, "Histoire politique et militaire du people de Lyon," I.79.

Letter of Laussel, dated at Paris, Aug.28): "Our volunteers are at

Orleans for the past two or three days to bring the anti-revolutionary

prisoners here, who are treated too well there." On the day of

Fournier's departure (Aug. 24) Moore observes in the Palais Royal and

at the Tuileries "a greater number than usual of stump-speakers of the

populace, hired for the purpose of inspiring the people with a horror of

monarchy."]

[Footnote 3145: Moniteur, Sept. 25,1792, speech by Marat in the

Convention.]

[Footnote 3146: See his two journals, "L'Ami du people" and the "Journal

de la Républic Française," especially for July and October 1792.--The

number for August 16 is headed: "Development of the vile plot of the

court to destroy all patriots with fire and sword."--That of August 19:

"The infamous conscript Fathers of the Circus, betraying the people

and trying to delay the conviction of traitors until Mottié arrives, is

marching with his army on Paris to destroy all patriots!"--That of Aug.

21: "The rotters of the Assembly, the perfidious accomplices of Mottié

arranging for flight... The conscript Fathers, the assassins of patriots

at Nancy, the Champ de Mars and in the Tuileries, etc."--All this

was yelled out daily every morning by those who hawked these journals

through the streets.]

[Footnote 3147: Ami du Peuple, Aug.19 and 21.]

[Footnote 3148: "Lettres autographs de Madame Roland," published by

Madame Bancal des Issarts, Sept. 9. "Danton leads all; Robespierre is

his puppet; Marat holds his torch and dagger."]

[Footnote 3149: Madame Roland "Mémoires," II. 19 (note by

Roland).--Ibid., 21, 23, 24. Monge says: "Danton wants to have it so; if

I refuse he will denounce me to the Commune and at the Cordeliers, and

have me hung." Fournier's commission to Orleans was all in order, Roland

probably having signed it unawares, like those of the commissioners sent

into the departments by the executive council (Cf. Mortimer-Ternaux,

III. 368.)]

[Footnote 3150: The person who gives me the following had it from the

king, Louis Philippe, then an officer in Kellerman's corps: On the

evening of the battle of Valmy the young officer is sent to Paris to

carry the news. On his arrival (Sept. 22 or 23. 1792) he learns that he

is removed from his post and appointed governor of Strasbourg. He goes

to Servan's house, Minister of War, and at first they refuse to let him

in. Servan is unwell and in bed, with the ministers in his room. The

young man states that he comes from the army and is the bearer of

dispatches. He is admitted, and finds, indeed, Servan in bed with

various personages around him, and he announces the victory.--They

question him and he gives the details.--He then complains of having

been displaced, and, stating that he is too young to command with any

authority at Strasbourg, requests to be reinstated with the army in the

field. "Impossible," replies Servan; "your place is given to another."

Thereupon one of the personages present, with a peculiar visage and a

rough voice, takes him aside and says to him: "Servan is a fool! Come

and see me to-morrow and I will arrange the matter." "Who are you?" "I

am Danton, the Minister of Justice."--The next day he calls on Danton,

who tells him: "It is all right; you shall have your post back--not

under Kellerman, however, but under Dumouriez; are you content?" The

young man, delighted, thanks him. Danton resumes: "Let me give you one

piece of advice before you go: You have talent and will succeed. But get

rid of one fault. You talk too much. You have been in Paris twenty-four

hours, and already you have repeatedly criticized the affair of

September. I know this; I have been informed of it" "But that was a

massacre; how can one help calling it horrible?" "I did it," replies

Danton, "The Parisians are all so many j--f--. A river of blood had

to flow between them and the émigrés. You are too young to understand

these matters. Return to the army; it is the only place nowadays for a

young man like you and of your rank. You have a future before you; but

mind this--keep your mouth shut!"]

[Footnote 3151: Hua, 167.. Narrative by his guest, the physician Lambry,

an intimate friend of Danton ultra-fanatical and member of a committee

in which the question came up whether the members of the "Right" should

likewise be put out of the way. "Danton had energetically repelled this

sanguinary proposal. 'Everybody knows,' he said, 'that I do not shrink

from a criminal act when necessary; but I disdain to commit a useless

one."']

[Footnote 3152: Mortimer-Ternaux, Iv. 437. Danton exclaims, in relation

to the hot-headed commissioners sent by him into the department: "Eh!

damn it, do you suppose that we would send you young ladies?"]

[Footnote 3153: Philippe de Ségur, "Mémoires,"I.12. Danton, in a

conversation with his father, a few weeks after the 2nd of September.]

[Footnote 3154: See above, narrative of the king, louis Philippe.]

[Footnote 3155: Buchez et Roux, xvii. 347. The words of Danton in the

National Assembly, Sept. 2nd a little before two o'clock, just as the

tocsin and cannon gave the signal of alarm agreed upon. Already on

the 31st of August, Tailien, his faithful ally, had told the National

Assembly: "We have arrested the priests who make so much trouble. They

are in confinement in a certain domicile, and in a few days the soil of

liberty will be purged of their presence."]

[Footnote 3156: Meillan, "Mémoires," 325 (Ed. Barrière et Berville).

Speech by Fabre d'Eglantine at the Jacobin Club, sent around among the

affiliated clubs, May 1, 1793.]

[Footnote 3157: Robinet, "Procès des Dantonistes," 39, 45 (words of

Danton in the committee on general defense).--Madame Roland, "Mémoires,"

II. 30. On the 2nd of September Grandpré ordered to report to the

Minister of the Interior on the state of the prisons, waits for Danton

as he leaves the council and tells him his fears. "Danton, irritated by

the description, exclaims in his bellowing way, suiting his word to the

action. 'I don't give a damn about the prisoners! Let them take care of

themselves! And he proceeded on in an angry mood. This took place in the

second ante-room, in the presence of twenty persons."--Arnault, II. 101.

About the time of the September massacres "Danton, in the presence

of one of my friends, replied to someone that urged him to use his

authority in stopping the spilling of blood: 'Isn't it time for the

people to take their revenge?' "]

[Footnote 3158: Prudhomme, "Crimes de la Révolution," iv. 90. On the

2nd of September, at the alarm given by the tocsin and cannon, Prudhomme

calls on Danton at his house for information. Danton gives him the

agreed story and adds: "The people, who are now aroused and know what

to do, want to administer justice themselves on the nasty imprisoned

persons."--Camille Desmoulins enters: "Look here," says Danton,

"Prudhomme has come to ask what is going to be done?"--"Didn't you tell

him that the innocent would not be confounded with the guilty? All those

that are demanded by their Sections will be given up."--On the 4th,

Desmoulins calls at the office of the journal and says to the editors:

"Well, everything has gone off in the most perfect order. The people

even set free a good many aristocrats against whom there was no direct

proof. I trust that you will state all this exactly, because the Journal

des Révolutions is the compass of public opinion."]

[Footnote 3159: Prudhomme, "Crimes de la Révolution," IV. 123. According

to the statements of Théophile Mandar, vice-president of a section,

witness and actor in the scene; he authorizes Prudhomme to mention his

name.----Afterwards, in the next room, Mandar proposes to Pétion and

Robespierre to attend the Assembly the next day and protest against the

massacre; if necessary, the Assembly may appoint a director for one day.

"Take care not to do that," replied Robespierre; "Brissot would be

the dictator."--Pétion says nothing. "The ministers were in perfect

agreement to let the massacres continue."]

[Footnote 3160: Madame Roland, II. 37.--"Angers et le départment de

Maine-et-Loire de 1787 à 1830," by Blordier Langlois. Appended to the

circular was a printed address bearing the title of Compte rendu au

peuple souverain, "countersigned by the Minister of Justice and with the

Minister's seal on the package," and addressed to the Jacobin Clubs of

the departments, that they, too, might preach massacre.]

[Footnote 3161: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 391, 398.--Warned by Alquier,

president of the criminal court of Versailles, of the danger to which

the Orleans prisoners were exposed, Danton replied: "What is that to

you? That affair does not concern you. Mind your own business, and do

not meddle with things outside of it!"--"But, Monsieur, the law says

that prisoners must be protected."--"What do you care? Some among them

are great criminals, and nobody knows yet how the people will regard

them and how far their indignation will carry them." Alquier wished to

pursue the matter, but Danton turned his back on him]

[Footnote 3162: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 217]

[Footnote 3163: Madame Roland, "Lettres autographes, etc.," Sept. 5,

1792. "We are here under the knives of Marat and Robespierre. These

fellows are striving to excite the people and turn them against the

National Assembly and the council. They have organized a Star Chamber

and they have a small army under pay, aided by what they found or stole

in the palace and elsewhere, or by supplies purchased by Danton, who is

underhandedly the chieftain of this horde."--Dusaulx, "Mémoires," 441.

"On the following day (Sept. 3) I went to see one of the most estimated

personalities at this epoch. 'You know,' said I to him, 'what is going

on?'--'Very well; but keep quiet; it will soon be over. A little more

blood is still necessary.'--I saw others who explained themselves much

more definitely. "--Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 445.]

[Footnote 3164: Madame Roland, "Lettres autographes, etc.," Sept. 5,

1792. "We are here under the knives of Marat and Robespierre. These

fellows are striving to excite the people and turn them against the

National Assembly and the council. They have organized a Star Chamber

and they have a small army under pay, aided by what they found or stole

in the palace and elsewhere, or by supplies purchased by Danton, who is

underhandedly the chieftain of this horde."--Dusaulx, "Mémoires," 441.

"On the following day (Sept. 3) I went to see one of the most estimated

personalities at this epoch. 'You know,' said I to him, 'what is going

on?'--'Very well; but keep quiet; it will soon be over. A little more

blood is still necessary.'--I saw others who explained themselves much

more definitely. "--Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 445.]

[Footnote 3165: Madame de Staël, "Considérations sur la Révolution

Française," 3rd part, ch. X.]

[Footnote 3166: Prudhomme, "Les Révolutions de Paris" (number for Sept.

22). At one of the last sessions of the commune "M. Panis spoke of Marat

as of a prophet, another Siméon Stylite. 'Marat,' said he, 'remained six

weeks sitting on one thigh in a dungeon.' "--Barbaroux, 64.]

[Footnote 3167: Weber, II. 348. Collot dwells at length, "in

cool-blooded gaiety," on the murder of Madame de Lamballe and on the

abominations to which her corpse was subjected. "He added, with a sigh

of regret, that if he had been consulted he would have had the head of

Madame de Lamballe served in a covered dish for the queen's supper."]

[Footnote 3168: On the part played by Robespierre and his

presence constantly at the Commune see Granier de Cassagnac, II.

55.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 205. Speech by Robespierre at the commune,

Sept. 1: "No one dares name the traitors. Well, I give their names

for the safety of the people: I denounce the libertycide Brissot, the

Girondist factionists, the rascally commission of the Twenty-One in the

National Assembly; I denounce them for having sold France to Brunswick,

and for having taken in advance the reward for their dastardly act." On

the 2nd of September he repeats his denunciation, and consequently on

that day warrants are issued by the committee of supervision against

thirty deputies and against Brissot and Roland (Mortimer-Ternaux, III.

216, 247).]

[Footnote 3169: "Procès-verbaux de la Commune," Aug.

30.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 217 (resolutions of the sections

Poissonnière and Luxembourg).--Granier de Cassagnac, II. 104 (adhesion

of the sections Mauconseil, Louvre, and Quinze-Vingt).]

[Footnote 3170: Granier de Cassagnac, II. 156.]

[Footnote 3171: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 265.--Granier de Cassagnac, XII.

402. (The other five judges were also members of the commune.)]

[Footnote 3172: Granier de Cassagnac, II. 313. Register of the General

Assembly of the sans-culottes, section, Sept. 2.--"Mémoires sur les

journées de Septembre," 151 (declaration of Jourdan).]

[Footnote 3173: "Mémoires sur les journées de Septembre," narrative of

Abbé Sicard, 111.]

[Footnote 3174: Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 109, 178. ("La vérite tout

entière," by Méhée, Jr.)--Narrative of Abbé Sicard, 132, 134.]

[Footnote 3175: Granier de Cassagnac, II. 92, 93.--On the presence and

complicity of Santerre. Ibid, 89-99.]

[Footnote 3176: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 277 and 299 (Sept. 3).--Granier

de Cassagnac, II. 257. A commissary of the section of the Quatre-Nations

states in his report that "the section authorized them to pay

expenses out of the affair."--Declaration of Jourdan, 151.--Lavalette,

"Mémoires," I. 91. The initiative of the commune is further proved by

the following detail: "Towards five o'clock (Sept. 2) city officials on

horseback, carrying a flag, rode through the streets crying: 'To arms!

To arms!' They added: 'The enemy is coming; you are all lost; the city

will be burnt and given up to pillage. Have no fear of the traitors or

conspirators behind your backs. They are in the hands of the patriots,

and before you leave the thunderbolt of national justice will fall on

them!"--Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 105. Letter of Chevalier Saint-Dizier,

member of the first committee of supervision, Sept. 10. "Marat, Duplain,

Fréron, etc., generally do no more in their supervision of things than

wreak private vengeance... Marat states openly that 40,000 heads must

still be knocked off to ensure the success of the revolution."]

[Footnote 3177: Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 146. "Ma Résurrection," by Mathon

de la Varenne. "The evening before half-intoxicated women said publicly

on the Feuillants terrace: 'To-morrow is the day when their souls will

be turned inside out in the prisons."]

[Footnote 3178: "Mémoires sur les journées de Septembre. Mon agonie,"

by Journiac de Saint-Méard.--Madame de la Fausse-Landry, 72. The 29th of

August she obtained permission to join her uncle in prison: "M. Sergent

and others told me that I was acting imprudently; that the prisons were

not safe."]

[Footnote 3179: Granier de Cassagnac,--II. 27. According to Roch

Marcandier their number "did not exceed 300." According to Louvet there

were "200, and perhaps not that number." According to Brissot, the

massacres were committed by about "a hundred unknown brigands."--Pétion,

at La Force (Ibid., 75), on September 6, finds only about a dozen

executioners. According to Madame Roland (II. 35), "there were not

fifteen at the Abbaye." Lavalette the first day finds only about fifty

killers at the La Force prison.]

[Footnote 3180: Mathon de la Varenne, ibid., 137.]

[Footnote 3181: Buchez et Roux, XVII. 183 (session of the Jacobin Club,

Aug. 27). Speech by a federate from Tarn.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 126.]

[Footnote 3182: Sicard, 80.--Méhée, 187.--Weber, II. 279.--Cf., in

Journiac de Saint-Méard, his conversation with a Provençal.--Rétif de

la Bretonne, "Les Nuits de Paris," 375. "About 2 o'clock in the morning

(Sept. 3) I heard a troop of cannibals passing under my window, none of

whom appeared to have the Parisian accent; they were all strangers."]

[Footnote 3183: Granier de Cassagnac, II. 164, 502.--Mortimer-Ternaux,

III. 530.--Maillard's assessors at the Abbaye were a watchmaker living

in the Rue Childebert, a fruit-dealer in the Rue Mazarine, a keeper of

a public house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain, a journeyman hatter

in the Rue Sainte-Marguerite, and two others whose occupation is not

mentioned.--On the composition of the tribunal at La Force, Cf. Journiac

de Saint-Méard, 120, and Weber, II. 261.]

[Footnote 3184: Granier de Cassagnac, II. 507 (on Damiens), 513 (on

L'empereur).--Meillan, 388 (on Laforet and his wife, old-clothes dealers

on the Quai du Louvre, who on the 31st of May prepare for a second blow,

and calculate this time on having for their share the pillaging of fifty

houses).]

[Footnote 3185: Sicard, 98]

[Footnote 3186: De Ferrières (Ed. Berville et Barrière), III.

486.--Rétif de la Bretonne, 381. At the end of the Rue des Ballets a

prisoner had just been killed, while the next one slipped through the

railing and escaped. "A man not belonging to the butchers, but one of

those thoughtless machines of which there are so many, interposed his

pike and stopped him... The poor fellow was arrested by his pursuers and

massacred. The pikeman coolly said to us: 'I couldn't know they wanted

to kill him.'"]

[Footnote 3187: Granier de Cassagnac, II. 511.]

[Footnote 3188: The judges and slaughterers at the Abbaye, discovered in

the trial of the year IV., almost all lived in the neighborhood, in the

rues Dauphine, de Nevers, Guégénaud, de Bussy, Childebert, Taranne,

de l'Egoût, du Vieux Colombier, de l'Echaudé-Saint-Benoit, du

Four-Saint-Germain, etc.]

[Footnote 3189: Sicard, 86, 87, 101.--Jourdan, 123. "The president of

the committee of supervision replied to me that these were very honest

persons; that on the previous evening or the evening before that, one

of them, in a shirt and wooden shoes, presented himself before

their committee all covered with blood, bringing with him in his hat

twenty-five louis in gold, which he had found on the person of a man

he had killed."--Another instance of probity may be found in the

"Procès-verbaux du conseil-général de la Commune de Versailles," 367,

371.--On the following day, Sept. 3, robberies commence and go on

increasing.]

[Footnote 3190: Méhée, 179. "'Would you believe that I have earned only

twenty-four francs?' said a baker's boy armed with a club. 'I killed

more than forty for my share.'"]

[Footnote 3191: Granier de Cassagnac. II. 153.--Cf. Ibid., 202-209,

details on the meals of the workmen and on the more delicate repast of

Maillard and his assistants.]

[Footnote 3192: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 175-176.--Granier de Cassagnac.

II. 84.----Jourdan, 222.--Méhée, 179. "At midnight they came back

swearing, cursing, and foaming with rage, threatening to cut the throats

of the committee in a body if they were not instantly paid."]

[Footnote 3193: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 320. Speech by Pétion on the

charges preferred against Robespierre.]

[Footnote 3194: Mathon de la Varenne, 156.--Journiac de Saint-Méard,

129.--Moore, 267.]

[Footnote 3195: Journiac de Saint-Méard, 115.]

[Footnote 3196: Weber, II. 265.--Journiac de Saint-Méard, 129.--Mathon

de la Varenne, 155.]

[Footnote 3197: Moore, 267.--Cf. Malouet, II. 240. Malouet, on the

evening of Sept. 1, was at his sister-in-law's; there is a domiciliary

visit at midnight; she faints on hearing the patrol mount the stairs. "I

begged them not to enter the drawing-room, so as not to disturb the poor

sufferer. The sight of a woman in a swoon and pleasing in appearance

affected them, and they at once withdrew, leaving me alone with

her."--Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 108. (Regarding the two Abbaye butchers

he meets in the house of Journiac-de-Saint-Méard, and who chat with him

while issuing him with a safe-conduct): "What struck me was to detect

generous sentiments through their ferocity, those of men determined to

protect any one whose cause they adopted."]

[Footnote 3198: Weber, II. 265, 348.]

[Footnote 3199: Sicard, 101. Billaud-Varennes, addressing the

slaughterers.--Ibid.75. "Greater power," replied a member of the

committee of supervision, "what are you thinking of? To give you greater

power would be limiting those you have already. Have you forgotten that

you are sovereigns? That the sovereignty of the people is confided to

you, and that you are now in full exercise of it?"]

[Footnote 31100: Méhée, 171.]

[Footnote 31101: Sicard, 81. At the beginning the Marseilles men

themselves were averse to striking the disarmed, and exclaimed to the

crowd: "Here, take our swords and pikes and kill the monsters!"]

[Footnote 31102: Macbeth by Shakespeare: "I have supped full with

horrors."]

[Footnote 31103: Observe children drowning a dog or killing a snake.

Tenacity of life irritates them, as if it were a rebellion against their

despotism, the effect of which is to render them only the more violent

against their victim.]

[Footnote 31104: One may recall to mind the effect of bull-fights, also

the irresistible fascination which Saint-Augustin experienced on first

hearing the death-cry of a gladiator in the amphitheater.]

[Footnote 31105: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 131. Trial of the September

actors; the judge's summing up. "The third and forty-sixth witnesses

stated that they saw Monneuse (member of the commune) go to and come

from la Force, express his delight at those sad events that had just

occurred, acting very immorally in relation thereto, adding that

there was violin playing in his presence, and that his colleague

danced."--Sicard, 88.]

[Footnote 31106: Sicard, 87, 91. This expression by a wine-merchant, who

wants the custom of the murderers.--Granier de Cassagnac, II. 197-200.

The original bills for wine, straw, and lights have been found.]

[Footnote 31107: Sicard, 91.--Maton de la Varenne, 150.]

[Footnote 31108: Mathon de la Varenne, 154. A man from the suburbs said

to him (Mathon is an advocate): "All right, Monsieur Fine-skin; I shall

treat myself to a glass of your blood."]

[Footnote 31109: Rétif de la Bretonne, "Les Nuits de Paris," 9th night,

p.388. "She screamed horribly, whilst the brigands amused themselves

with their disgraceful acts. Her body even after death was not exempt.

These people had heard that she had been beautiful."]

[Footnote 31110: Prudhomme, "Les Révolutions de Paris," number for Sept.

8, 1792. "The people subjected the flower-girl of the Palais-Royal to

the law of retaliation."--Granier de Cassagnac, II. 329. According

to the bulletin of the revolutionary tribunal, number for Sept.

3.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 291. Deposition of the caretaker's office of

the Conciergerie prison.--Buchez et Roux, XVII.198. "Histoire des hommes

de proi," by Roch Marcandier.]

[Footnote 31111: Mortimer-Ternaux III, 257. Trial of the September

murderers; deposition of Roussel.--Ib., 628.]

[Footnote 31112: Deposition of the woman Millet, ibid., 63.--Weber, II.

350.----Roch Marcandier, 197, 198.--Rétif de la Bretonne, 381.]

[Footnote 31113: Deposition of the woman Millet, ibid., 63.--Weber, II.

350.----Roch Marcandier, 197, 198.--Rétif de la Bretonne, 381.]

[Footnote 31114: On this mechanical and murderous action Cf: Dusaulx,

"Mémoires," 440. He addresses the bystanders in favor of the prisoners,

and, affected by his words, they hold out their hands to him. "But

before this the executioners had struck me on the cheeks with the points

of their pikes, from which hung pieces of flesh. Others wanted to cut

off my head, which would have been done if two gendarmes had not kept

them back."]

[Footnote 31115: Jourdan, 219.]

[Footnote 31116: Méhée, 179.]

[Footnote 31117: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 558. The same idea is found

among the federates and Parisians composing the company of the Egalité,

which brought the Orleans prisoners to Versailles and then murdered

them. They explain their conduct by saying that they "hoped to put an

end to the excessive expenditure to which the French empire was subject

through the prolonged detention of conspirators."]

[Footnote 31118: Rétif de la Bretonne, 388.]

[Footnote 31119: Méhée, 177.]

[Footnote 31120: Prudhomme, "Les Crimes de la Révolution." III. 272.]

[Footnote 31121: Rétif de la Bretonne, 388. There were two sorts of

women at the Salpétrière, those who were banded and young girls brought

in the prison. Hence the two alternatives.]

[Footnote 31122: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 295. See list of names, ages,

and occupations.]

[Footnote 31123: Barthélemy Maurice, "Histoire politique and anecdotique

des prisons de la Seine," 329.]

[Footnote 31124: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 295. See list of names, ages,

and occupations.]

[Footnote 31125: The Encyclopedia "QUID" (ROBERT LAFONT, PARIS 1998)

advises us that the number of victims killed with "cold steel and clubs"

etc total 1395 persons. The total number of French victims due to the

Revolution is considered to be between 600,000 and 800,000 dead. (SR)]

[Footnote 31126: Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 399, 592,

602-606.--"Procès-verbal des 8, 9, 10 Septembre, extrait des registres

de la municipalité de Versailles." (In the "Mémoires sur les journées de

Septembre"), p. 358 and following pages.--Granier de Cassagnac, II. 483.

Bonnet's exploit at Orleans, pointed out to Fournier, Sept. I. Fournier

replies: "In God's name, I am not to be ordered; when the bloody beggars

have had their heads cut off the trial may be held later!"]

[Footnote 31127: Roch Marcandier, 210. Speech by Lazowski to the section

of Finistère, fauborg Saint-Marceau. Lazowski had, in addition, set free

the assassins of the mayor of Etampes, and laid their manacles on the

bureau table.]

[Footnote 31128: Malouet, II. 243 (Sept. 2).--Moniteur, XIII. 48

(session of Sept. 27, 1792). We see in the speech of Panis that

analogous scenes took place in the committee of supervision. "Imagine

our situation. We were surrounded by citizens irritated against the

treachery of the court. We were told: 'Here is an aristocrat who is

going to fly; you must stop him, or your yourselves are traitors!'

Pistols were pointed at us and we found ourselves obliged to sign

warrants, not so much for our own safety as for that of the persons

denounced."]

[Footnote 31129: Granier de Cassagnac, II. 258.--Prudhomme, "Les Crimes

de la Révolution," III. 272.--Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 631.--De

Ferrière, III. 391.--(The expression quoted was recorded by Rétif de la

Bretonne.)]

[Footnote 31130: That is how to do it, must any anarchist or hopeful

revolutionary have thought, upon reading Taine's livid description.-But

also: "Do not let the bourgeois read this, it might scare them and make

our task more difficult." (SR).]

[Footnote 31131: Moniteur, XIII. 698, 698 (numbers for Sept. 15 and 16).

Ibid., Letter of Roland, 701; of Pétion, 711.--Buchez et Roux, XVIII.

33. 34.--Prudhomme's journal contains an engraving of this subject

(Sept. 14)--"An Englishman admitted to the bar of the house denounces to

the National Assembly a robbery committed in a house occupied by him at

Chaillot by two bailiffs and their satellites. The robbery consisted

of twelve louis, five guineas, five thousand pounds in assignats, and

several other objects." The courts before which he appeared did not dare

take up his case (Buchez et Roux, XVII. P. 1, Sept. 18).]

[Footnote 31132: Buchez et Roux, XVII. 461.--Prudhomme, "Les Révolutions

de Paris," number for Sept. 22, 1792.]

[Footnote 31133: Moniteur, XIII. 711 (session of Sept. 16). Letter of

Roland to the National Assembly.--Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 42.--Moniteur,

XIII. 731 (session of Sept. 17). Speech by Pétion: "Yesterday there

was some talk of again visiting the prisons, and particularly the

Conciergerie."]

[Footnote 31134: Perhaps Mao read this and later coined his famous

slogan "that all political power emanates from the barrels of guns."

(SR).]

[Footnote 31135: "Archives Nationales," II. 58 to 76. Official reports

of the Paris electoral assembly.--Robespierre is elected the twelfth

(Sept. 5), then Danton and Collot d'Herbois (Sept. 6) then Manuel and

Billaud-Varennes (Sept. 7), next C. Desmoulins (Sept. 8), Marat (Sept.

9) etc.--Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 35 (act passed by the commune at

the instigation of Robespierre for the regulation of electoral

operations).--Louvet, "Mémoires." Louvet, in the electoral assembly asks

to be heard on the candidacy of Marat, but is unsuccessful. "On going

out I was surrounded by those men with big clubs and sabers by whom

the future dictator was always attended, Robespierre's body-guard. They

threatened me and told me in very concise terms: 'Before long you

shall have your turn. This is the freedom of that assembly in which one

declared his vote under a dagger pointed at him."']

[Footnote 31136: In reading this all socialist and communists and other

potential manipulators of democracy would have taken and will continue

to take note. Once the hidden combination can manage to invest all the

different, in theory opponent, parties with their own men, an eternal

control by a hidden mafia can now take place. (SR).]

[Footnote 31137: Such procedures set a precedence for 200 years of

'guided democracy' in many trade unions and elsewhere. (SR).]

CHAPTER II. THE DEPARTMENTS.--THE EPEDEMIC AND CONTAGIOUS CHARACTER OF

THE REVOLUTIONARY DISEASE.

In the departments, it is by hundreds that we enumerate days like the

20th of June, August 10, September 2. The body has its epidemic, its

contagious diseases; the mind has the same; the revolutionary malady is

one of them. It appears throughout the country at the same time; each

infected point infects others. In each city, in each borough, the club

is a Center of inflammation which disorganizes the sound parts; and

the example of each disorganized Center spreads afar like contagious

fumes.[3201] Everywhere the same fever, delirium, and convulsions mark

the presence of the same virus. That virus is the Jacobin dogma. By

virtue of the Jacobin dogma, theft, usurpation, murder, take on the

guise of political philosophy, and the gravest crimes against persons,

against public or private property, become legitimate; for they are

the acts of the legitimate supreme power, the power that has the public

welfare in its keeping.

I. The Sovereignty of the People.

Its principle is the Jacobin dogma of the sovereignty of the

people.----The new right is officially proclaimed.--Public

statement of the new régime.--Its object, its opponents, its

methods.--Its extension from Paris to the provinces.