August 24, they deprived him, the chief of gentlemen, of his sword, as
if taking away his sceptre were not enough. He consoled himself by
prayer, meditation, and reading. He spent hours in the room containing
the library of the keeper of archives of the Order of Malta, who had
previously occupied the little tower. One day when he was looking for
books, he pointed out to M. Hue the works of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. "Those two men have ruined France," said he in an undertone.
On another day he was pained by overhearing the insults heaped on this
faithful servant by one of the Municipal Guards. "You have had a great
deal to suffer to-day," he said to him. "Well! for the love of me,
continue to endure everything; make no answer." At another time he
slipped into his hand a folded paper. "This is some of my hair," said
he; "it is the only present I can give you at this moment." M. Hue
exclaims in his pathetic book: "O shade forever cherished! I will
preserve this precious gift to my latest day! The inheritance of my
son, it will pass on to my descendants, and all of them will see in
this testimonial of Louis XVI.'s {347} goodness, that they had a father
who merited the affection of his King by his fidelity."
In the evenings the Queen made the Dauphin recite this prayer:
"Almighty God, who created and redeemed me, I adore Thee. Spare the
lives of the King, my father, and those of my family! Defend us
against our enemies! Grant Madame de Tourzel the strength she needs to
support the evils she endures on our account." And the angel of the
Temple, Madame Elisabeth, recited every day this sublime prayer of her
own composition: "What will happen to me to-day, O my God! I do not
know. All I know is, that nothing will happen that has not been
foreseen by Thee from all eternity. It is enough, my God, to keep me
tranquil. I adore Thy eternal designs, I submit to them with my whole
heart; I will all, I accept all; I sacrifice all to Thee; I unite this
sacrifice to that of Thy dear Son, my Saviour, asking Thee by His
sacred heart and His infinite merits, the patience in our afflictions
and the perfect submission which is due to Thee for all that Thou
wiliest and permittest." One day when she had finished her prayer, the
saintly Princess said to M. Hue: "It is less for the unhappy King than
for his misguided people that I pray. May the Lord deign to be moved,
and to look mercifully upon France!" Then she added, with her
admirable resignation: "Come, let us take courage. God will never send
us more troubles than we are able to bear."
{348}
The prisoners were permitted to walk a few steps in the garden every
day to get a breath of fresh air. But even there they were insulted.
As they passed by, the guards stationed at the base of the tower took
pains to put on their hats and sit down. The sentries scrawled insults
on the walls. Colporteurs maliciously cried out bad tidings, which
were sometimes false. One day, one of them announced a pretended
decree separating the King from his family. The Queen, who was near
enough to hear distinctly the voice which told this news, not exact as
yet, was struck with a terror from which she did not recover.
And yet there were still souls that gave way to compassion. From the
upper stories of houses near the Temple enclosure there were eyes
looking down into the garden when the prisoners took their walk. The
common people and the workmen living in these poor abodes were
affected. Sometimes, to show her gratitude for the sympathy of those
unknown friends, Marie Antoinette would remove her veil, and smile.
When the little Dauphin was playing, there would be hands at the
windows, joined as if to applaud. Flowers would sometimes fall, as if
by chance, from a garret roof to the Queen's feet, and occasionally it
happened that when the captives had gone back to their prison, they
would hear in the darkness the echo of some royalist refrain, hummed by
a passer-by in the silence of the night.
The Temple tower is no longer in existence. Bonaparte visited it when
he was Consul. "There are {349} too many souvenirs in that prison," he
exclaimed. "I will tear it down." In 1811 he kept his promise. The
palace of the grand-prior was destroyed in 1853. No trace remains of
that famous enclosure of the Templars whose legend has so sombre a
poetry. But it has left an impress on the imagination of peoples which
will never be effaced. It seems to rise again gigantic, that tower
where the son of Saint Louis realized not alone the type of the antique
sage of whom Horace said: _Impavidum ferient ruinae_, but also the
purest ideal of the true Christian. Does not the name Temple seem
predestinated for a spot which was to be sanctified by so many virtues,
and where the martyr King put in practice these verses of the
_Imitation of Jesus Christ_, his favorite book: "It needs no great
virtue to live peaceably with those who are upright and amiable; one is
naturally pleased in such society; we always love those whose
sentiments agree with ours. But it is very praiseworthy, and the
effect of a special grace and great courage to live in peace with
severe and wicked men, who are disorderly, or who contradict us.... He
who knows best how to suffer, will enjoy the greatest peace; such a one
is the conqueror of himself, master of the world, the friend of Jesus
Christ, and the inheritor of heaven."
{350}
XXXIV.
THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE'S MURDER.
The Princess de Lamballe, after being taken from the Temple in the
night of August 18-19, had been examined by Billaud-Varennes at the
Hotel-de-Ville, and then sent, at noon, August 19, to the Force. This
prison, divided into two distinct parts, the great and the little
Force, was situated between the rues Roi-de-Sicile, Culture, and Pavee.
In 1792 it supplemented the Abbey and Chatelet prisons, which were
overcrowded. The little Force had a separate entry on the rue Pavee to
the Marais, while the door of the large one opened on the rue des
Ballets, a few steps from the rue Saint-Antoine. The register of the
little Force, which is preserved in the archives of the prefecture of
police, records that, at the time of the September massacres, this
prison in which the Princess de Lamballe was immured, contained one
hundred and ten women, most of them not concerned with political
affairs, and in great part women of the town. Here, from August 19 to
September 3, the Princess suffered inexpressible anguish. She never
heard a turnkey open the door of her cell without thinking that her
last hour had come.
{351}
The massacres began on September 2. On that day the Princess de
Lamballe was spared. In the evening she threw herself on her bed, a
prey to the most cruel anxiety. Toward six o'clock the next morning,
the turnkey entered with a frightened air: "They are coming here," he
said to the prisoners. Six men, armed with sabres, guns, and pistols,
followed him, approached the beds, asked the names of the women, and
went out again. Madame de Tourzel, who shared the Princess de
Lamballe's captivity, said to her: "This threatens to be a terrible
day, dear Princess; we know not what Heaven intends for us; we must ask
God to forgive our faults. Let us say the _Miserere_ and the
_Confiteor_ as acts of contrition, and recommend ourselves to His
goodness." The two women said their prayers aloud, and incited each
other to resignation and courage.
There was a window which opened on the street, and from which, although
it was very high, one could see what was passing by mounting on Madame
de Lamballe's bed, and thence to the window ledge. The Princess
climbed up, and as soon as her head was noticed on the street, a
pretence of firing on her was made. She saw a considerable crowd at
the prison door.
Very little doubt remained concerning her fate. Neither she nor Madame
de Tourzel had eaten since the previous day. But they were too greatly
moved to take any breakfast. They dared not speak to each other. They
took their work, and sat down to await the result of the fatal day in
silence.
{352}
Toward eleven o'clock the door opened. Armed men filled the room and
demanded Madame de Lamballe. The Princess put on a gown, bade adieu to
Madame de Tourzel, and was led to the great Force, where some municipal
officers, wearing their insignia, subjected the prisoners to a
pretended trial. In front of this tribunal stood executioners with
ferocious faces, who brandished bloody weapons. The atmosphere was
sickening: full of the steam of carnage, and the odors of wine and
blood. Madame de Lamballe fainted. When she recovered consciousness
she was interrogated: "Who are you?"--"Marie Louise, Princess of
Savoy."--"What is your rank?"--"Superintendent of the Queen's
household."--"Were you acquainted with the conspiracies of the court on
August 10?"--"I do not know that there were any conspiracies on August
10, but I know I had no knowledge of them."--"Swear liberty, equality,
hatred to the King, the Queen, and royalty."--"I will swear the first
two without difficulty; I cannot swear the last; it is not in my
heart." Here an assistant said in a whisper to Madame de Lamballe:
"Swear it! if you do not swear, you are a dead woman." The Princess
made no answer; she put her hands up to her eyes, covered her face with
them and made a step toward the wicket. The judge exclaimed: "Let some
one release Madame!" This phrase was the death signal. Two men took
the victim roughly by the arms, and made her walk over corpses. Hardly
had she crossed the threshold when she received a {353} blow from a
sabre on the back of her head, which made her blood flow in streams.
In the narrow passage leading from the rue Saint-Antoine to the Force,
and called the Priests' cul-de-sac, she was despatched with pikes on a
heap of dead bodies. Then they stripped off her clothes and exposed
her body to the insults of a horde of cannibals. When the blood that
flowed from her wounds, or that of the neighboring corpses, had soiled
the body too much, they washed it with a sponge, so that the crowd
might notice its whiteness better. They cut off her head and her
breasts. They tore out her heart, and of this head and this heart they
made horrible trophies. The pikes which bore them were lifted high in
air, and they went to carry around these excellent spoils of the
Revolution.
At the very moment when the hideous procession began its march, Madame
de Lebel, the wife of a painter, who owed many benefits to Madame de
Lamballe, was trying to get near the prison, hoping to hear news of
her. Seeing the great commotion in the crowd, she inquired the cause.
When some one replied: "It is Lamballe's head that they are going to
carry through Paris," she was seized with horror, and, turning back,
took refuge in a hairdresser's shop on the Place Bastille. Hardly had
she done so when the crowd entered the Place. The murderers came into
the shop and required the hairdresser to arrange the head of the
Princess. They washed it, and powdered the fair hair, all soiled with
{354} blood. Then one of the assassins cried joyfully: "Now, at any
rate, Antoinette can recognize her!" The procession resumed its march.
From time to time they called a halt before a wine-shop. Wishing to
empty his glass, the scoundrel who had the Princess's head in his hand,
set it flat down on the lead counter. Then it was put back on the end
of a pike. The heart was on another pike, and other individuals
dragged along the headless corpse. In this manner they arrived in
front of the Temple. It was three o'clock in the afternoon.
On that day the royal family had been refused permission to go into the
garden. They were in the little tower when the cries of the multitude
became audible. The workmen who were then employed in tearing down the
walls and buildings contiguous to the Temple dungeon, mingled with the
crowd, increased also by innumerable curious spectators, and uttered
furious shouts. One of the Municipal Guards at the Temple closed doors
and windows, and pulled down curtains so that the captives could see
nothing.
On the street in front of the enclosure a tricolored ribbon had been
fastened across, with this inscription: "Citizens, you who know how to
ally the love of order with a just vengeance, respect this barrier; it
is necessary to our surveillance and our responsibility." This was the
sole dike they meant to oppose to the torrent. At the side of this
ribbon stood a municipal officer named Danjou, formerly a priest, who
was called Abbe Six-feet, on account of his {355} height. He mounted
on a chair and harangued the crowd. He felt his face touched by Madame
de Lamballe's head, still on the end of a pike which the bearer shook
about and gesticulated with, and also by a rag of her chemise, soaked
with blood and mire, which another individual also carried on a pike.
The naked body was there likewise, with its back to the ground and the
front cut open to the very breast. Danjou tried to make the crowd of
assassins who wanted to invade the Temple understand that at a moment
when the enemy was master of the frontiers, it would be impolitic to
deprive themselves of hostages so precious as Louis XVI. and his
family. "Moreover," he added, "would it not demonstrate their
innocence if you dare not try them? How much worthier it is of a great
people to execute a king guilty of treason on the scaffold!" Thus,
while preventing an immediate massacre, he held the scaffold in
reserve. Danjou said that the Communal Council, in order to show its
confidence in the citizens composing the mob, had decided that six of
them should be admitted to make the rounds of the Temple garden, with
the commissioners at their head. The ribbon was then raised and
several persons entered the enclosure. They were those who carried the
remains of Madame de Lamballe. With these were the laborers who had
been at work on the demolitions. Voices were heard demanding furiously
that Marie Antoinette should show herself at a window, so that some one
might climb up and make her {356} kiss her friend's head. As Danjou
opposed this infernal scheme, he was accused of being on the side of
the tyrant. Was the dungeon of the Temple to be forced? Were the
assassins about to seize the Queen, tear her in pieces, and drag her,
like her friend, through streets and squares to the rolling of drums
and the chanting of the _Marseillaise_ and the _Ca ira_?
A municipal officer entered the tower and began a mysterious parley
with his colleagues. As Louis XVI. asked what was going on, some one
replied: "Well, sir, since you desire to know, they want to show you
Madame de Lamballe's head." Meanwhile the cries outside were growing
louder. Another municipal came in, followed by four delegates from the
mob. One of them, who carried a heavy sabre in his hand, insisted that
the prisoners should present themselves at the window, but this was
opposed by the municipal officers, who were less cruel. This man said
to the Queen in an insulting tone: "They want us to hide the Princess
de Lamballe's head from you when we brought it to let you see how the
people avenge themselves on their tyrants. I advise you to show
yourself if you don't want the people to come up." Marie Antoinette
fainted on learning her friend's death in this manner. Her children
burst into tears and tried by their caresses to bring her back to
consciousness. The man did not go away. "Sir," the King said to him,
"we are prepared for the worst, but you might have dispensed yourself
from informing the Queen of this frightful calamity." {357} Clery, the
King's valet, was looking through a corner of the window blinds, and
saw Madame de Lamballe's head. The person carrying it had climbed up
on a heap of rubbish from the buildings in process of demolition.
Another, who stood beside him, held her bleeding heart. Clery heard
Danjou expostulating the crowd in words like these: "Antoinette's head
does not belong to you; the departments have their rights in it also.
France has confided these great criminals to the care of Paris; and it
is your business to assist us in guarding them until national justice
shall avenge the people." Then, addressing himself to these cannibals
as if they were heroes whose courage and exploits he praised, he added,
in speaking of the profaned corpse of the Princess de Lamballe: "The
remains you have there are the property of all. Do they not belong to
all Paris? Have you the right to deprive others of the pleasure of
sharing your triumph? Night will soon be here. Make haste, then, to
quit this precinct, which is too narrow for your glory. You ought to
place this trophy in the Palais Royal or the Tuileries garden, where
the sovereignty of the people has been so often trampled under foot, as
an eternal monument of the victory you have just won." Remarks like
these were all that could prevent these tigers from entering the Temple
and destroying the prisoners. Shouts of "To the Palais Royal!" proved
to Danjou that his harangue had been appreciated. The assassins at
last departed, after having covered his face with {358} kisses that
smelt of wine and blood. They wanted to show their victim's head at
the Hotel Toulouse, the mansion of the venerable Duke de Penthievre,
her father-in-law, but were deterred by the assurance that she did not
ordinarily live there, but at the Tuileries. Then they turned toward
the Palais Royal. The Duke of Orleans was at a window with his
mistress, Madame de Buffon. He left it, but he may have seen the head
of his sister-in-law.
Some of the cannibals had remained in the neighborhood of the Temple.
Sitting down at table in a wine-shop, they had the heart of the
Princess de Lamballe cooked, and ate it with avidity. "Thus," says M.
de Beauchesne in his excellent work on Louis XVII., "this civilization
which had departed from God, surpassed at a single bound the fury of
savages, and the eighteenth century, so proud of its learning and
humanity, ended by anthropophagy." In the evening, when some one was
giving Collot d'Herbois an account of the day's performances, he
expressed but one regret,--that they had not succeeded in showing Marie
Antoinette the remains of the Princess de Lamballe. "What!" he
spitefully exclaimed, "did they spare the Queen that impression? They
ought to have served up her best friend's head in a covered dish at her
table."
{359}
XXXV.
THE SEPTEMBER MASSACRES.
Lovers of paradoxes have tried to represent the September massacres as
something spontaneous, a passing delirium of opinion, a sort of great
national convulsion. This myth was a lie against history and humanity.
It exists no longer, Heaven be thanked. The mists with which it was
sought to shroud these execrable crimes are now dissipated. Light has
been shed upon that series of infernal spectacles which would have made
cannibals blush. No; these odious massacres were not the result of a
popular movement, an unforeseen fanaticism, a paroxysm of rage or
vengeance. They present an ensemble of murders committed in cool
blood, a planned and premeditated thing. M. Mortimer-Ternaux, in his
_Histoire de la Terreur_, M. Granier de Cassagnac, in his _Histoire des
Girondins et des Massacres de Septembre_, have proved this abundantly.
They have exhumed from the archives and the record offices such a mass
of uncontested and incontestable documents, that not the slightest
doubt is now permissible. Edgar Quinet has not hesitated to recognize
this in his book, _La Revolution_. He says: "The {360} massacres were
executed administratively; the same discipline was everywhere displayed
throughout the carnage.... This was not a piece of blind, spontaneous
barbarism; it was a barbarity slowly meditated, minutely elaborated by
a sanguinary mind. Hence it bears no resemblance to anything
previously known in history. Marat harvested in September what he had
been sowing for three years." The Parisian populace, eight hundred
thousand souls, was inert; it was cowardly, it trembled; but it did not
approve, it was not an accomplice. It was a monstrous thing that a
handful of cut-throats should be enough to transform Paris into a
slaughter-house. One shudders in thinking what a few criminals can
accomplish in the midst of an immense population. "The people, the
real people--that composed of laborious and honest workmen, ardent and
patriotic at heart, and of young _bourgeois_ with generous aspirations
and indomitable courage--never united for an instant with the
scoundrels recruited by Maillard from every kennel in the capital.
While the hired assassins of the Committee of Surveillance established
in the prisons what Vergniaud called a butcher's shop for human flesh,
the true populace was assembled on the Champ-de-Mars, and before the
enlistment booths; it was offering its purest blood for the country; it
would have blushed to shed that of helpless unfortunates."[1] In 1871,
the murder of hostages and {361} the burning of monuments was no more
approved by the population than the massacres in the prisons were in
1792. The crimes were committed at both epochs by a mere handful of
individuals. The great majority of the people were guilty merely of
apathy and fear.
The hideous tableau surpasses the most lugubrious conceptions of
Dante's sombre imagination. Paris is a hell. From August 29, it is
like a torpid Oriental town. The whole city is in custody, like a
criminal whose limbs are held while he is being searched and put in
irons. Every house is inspected by the agents of the Commune. A knock
at the door makes the inmates tremble. The denunciation of an enemy, a
servant, a neighbor, is a death sentence. People scarcely dare to
breathe. Neither running water nor solid earth is free. The parapets
of quays, the arches of bridges, the bathing and washing boats are
bristling with sentries. Everything is surrounded. There is no
refuge. Three thousand suspected persons are taken out of houses, and
crowded into prisons. The hunt begins anew the following day. The
programme of massacres is arranged. The Communal Council of
Surveillance has minutely regulated everything. The price of the
actual work is settled. The personnel of cut-throats is at its post.
Danton has furnished the executioners; Manuel, the victims. All is
ready. The bloody drama can begin.
On September 2, Danton said to the Assembly: "The tocsin about to sound
is not an alarm signal; it {362} is a charge upon the enemies of the
country. To vanquish them, gentlemen, all that is needed is boldness,
and again boldness, and always boldness." Two days before, he had been
still more explicit. "The 10th of August," said he, "divided us into
republicans and royalists; the first few in number, the second many...;
we must make the royalists afraid." A frightful gesture, a horizontal
gesture, sufficed to express his meaning.
Robbery preceded murder. It was a veritable raid. The Commune caused
the palaces, national property, the Garde-Meuble, the houses and
mansions of the _emigres_ to be pillaged. One saw nothing but carts
and wagons transporting stolen goods to the Hotel-de-Ville. All the
plate was stolen from the churches likewise. "Millions," says Madame
Roland in her Memoirs, "passed into the hands of people who used it to
perpetuate the anarchy which was the source of their domination." When
will the men of the Commune render their accounts? Never. Who are the
accomplices of Danton and Marat in organizing the massacres? A band of
defaulting accountants, faithless violators of public trusts, breakers
of locks, swindlers, spies, and men overwhelmed with debts. What
interest have they in planning the murders? That of perpetuating the
dictatorship they had assumed on the eve of August 10, and, above all,
of having no accounts to render. A few weeks later on, Collot
d'Herbois will say at the Jacobin Club: "The 2d of September is the
chief article in the creed of our liberty."
{363}
The jailors were forewarned. They served the prisoners' dinner
earlier, and took away their knives. There was a disturbed and uneasy
look in their faces which made the victims suspect their end was near.
Toward noon the general alarm was beaten in every street. The citizens
were ordered to return at once to their dwellings. An order was issued
to illuminate every house when night fell. The shops were closed.
Terror overspread the entire city.