juries of the Revolutionary Tribunals, did not embrace, as the sacred
word _jury_ seems to imply, all one class of citizens. The authorities
formed it, after a prefatory and very minute inquiry, of their
adherents only. The unfortunate defendants were thus judged not by
impartial persons free from any preconceived system, but by political
enemies, which is as much as to say, by that which is the most cruel and
remorseless in the world.
Bailly would not be defended. After his appearance as a witness in the
trial of Marie Antoinette, the ex-Mayor only wrote and had printed for
circulation, a paper entitled _Bailly to his fellow-citizens_. It closes
with these affecting words:
"I have only gained by the Revolution that which my fellow-citizens have
gained: liberty and equality. I have lost by it some useful situations,
and my fortune is nearly destroyed. I could be happy with what remains
of it to me and a clear conscience; but to be happy in the repose of my
retreat, I require, my dear fellow-citizens, your esteem: I know well
that, sooner or later, you will do me justice; but I require it while I
live, and while I am yet amongst you."
Our colleague was unanimously condemned. We should despair of the
future, unless such a unanimity struck all friends of justice and
humanity with stupor, if it did not increase the number of decided
adversaries to all political tribunals.
When the President of the Tribunal interrogated the accused, already
declared guilty, as to whether he had any reclamations to make relative
to the execution of the sentence, Bailly answered:
"I have always carried out the law; I shall know how to submit myself to
it, since you are its organ."
The illustrious convict was led back to his cell.
Bailly had said in his éloge on M. de Tressan: "French gaiety produces
the same effect as stoicism." These words occurred to my memory at the
time when I was gathering from various sources the proof that on
reëntering the Conciergerie after his condemnation, Bailly showed
himself at once both gay and stoical.
He desired his nephew, M. Batbéda, to play a game at piquet with him as
usual. He thought of all the circumstances connected with the frightful
morrow with such coolness, that he even said with a smile to M. Batbéda
during the game: "Let us rest awhile, my friend, and take a pinch of
snuff; to-morrow I shall be deprived of this pleasure, for I shall have
my hands tied behind my back."
I will quote some words which, while testifying to a similar degree
Bailly's serenity of mind, are more in harmony with his grave character,
and more worthy of being preserved in history.
One of the companions of the illustrious academician's captivity, on the
evening of the 11th of November, with tears in his eyes and moved by a
tender veneration, exclaimed: "Why did you let us fancy there was a
possibility of acquittal? You deceived us then?"--Bailly answered: "No,
I was teaching you never to despair of the laws of your country."
In the paroxysms of wild despair, some of the prisoners reviewing the
past, went so far as to regret that they had never infringed the laws of
the strictest honesty.
Bailly brought back these minds, erring for the moment from the path of
duty, by repeating to them maxims which both in form and substance would
not disparage the collections of the most celebrated moralists:
"It is false, very false, that a crime can ever be useful. The trade of
an honest man is the safest, even in times of revolution. Enlightened
egotism suffices to put any intelligent individual into the path of
justice and truth. Whenever innocence can be sacrificed with impunity,
crime is not sure of succeeding. There is so great a difference between
the death of a good man and that of a wicked man, that the multitude is
incapable of estimating it."
Cannibals devouring their vanquished enemies seem to me less hideous,
less contrary to nature, than those wretches, the refuse of the
population of large towns, who, too often alas! have carried their
ferocity so far, as to disturb by their clamorous and infamous raillery
the last moments of the unhappy victims about to be struck by the sword
of the law. The more humiliating this picture of the degradation of the
human species may be, the more we should beware of overcharging the
colouring. With few exceptions, the historians of Bailly's last agony
appear to me to have forgotten this duty. Was the truth, the strict
truth, not sufficiently distressing? Was it requisite, without any sort
of proof, to impute to the mass of the people the infernal cynicism of
cannibals? Should they lightly make just sentiments of disgust and
indignation rest upon an immense class of citizens? I think not,
Gentlemen, and I will therefore avoid the cruelty and poignancy of
chaining the thoughts for a long time on such scenes; I will prove that
by rendering the drama a little less atrocious, I have only sacrificed
imaginary details, which are the envenomed fruits of the spirit of the
party.
I will not shut my ears to the questions that already hum around me.
People will say to me, What are your claims for daring to modify a page
of our revolutionary history, on which every one seemed agreed? What
right have you to weaken contemporary testimonies, you, who at the time
of Bailly's death, were scarcely born; you, who lived in an obscure
valley of the Pyrenees, two hundred and twenty leagues from the capital?
These questions do not embarrass me at all. In short, I do not ask that
the relation of what seems to me to be the expression of the truth,
should be adopted upon my word. I enumerate my proofs, I express my
doubts. Within these limits there is no one but has claims to bring
forward; the discussion is open to all the world, the public will
pronounce its definitive judgment.
As a general thesis, I will add that by concentrating our researches on
one circumscribed and special object, we have a better chance of seeing
it correctly and knowing it well, all other things being equal, than by
scattering our attention in all directions.
As to the merit of contemporaneous narratives, it seems to me very
dubious. Political passions do not allow us to see objects in their real
dimensions, nor in their true forms, nor in their natural colours.
Moreover, have not unpublished and very valuable documents come to shed
bright colours, just where the spirit of party had spread a thick veil?
The account that Riouffe gave of the death of Bailly has almost blindly
led all the historians of our revolution. What does it consist of "at
bottom." The prisoner of la Conciergerie said it himself; of tales
related by executioners' valets, repeated by turnkeys.
I would willingly allow this account to be set against me,
notwithstanding the horrid sewer from which Riouffe had been obliged to
draw, if it were not evident that this clever writer saw all the
revolutionary events through the just anger that an ardent and active
young man must feel after an iniquitous imprisonment; if this current of
sentiments and ideas had not led him into some manifest errors.
Who has not, for example, read with tears in their eyes, in the
_Mémoires sur les Prisons_, what the author relates of the fourteen
girls of Verdun? "Of those girls," he said, "of unparalleled fairness,
and who appeared like young virgins dressed for a public fête. They
disappeared," added Riouffe, "all at once, and were mowed down in the
spring of life. The court occupied by the women the day after their
death, had the appearance of a garden that had been despoiled of its
flowers by a storm. I have never seen amongst us a despair equal to that
excited by this barbarity."
Far be from me the intention to weaken the painful feelings which the
catastrophe related by Riouffe must naturally inspire; but every one has
remarked that the report of this writer is very circumstantial; the
author appears to have seen all with his own eyes. Yet he has been
guilty of the gravest inaccuracy.
Out of the fourteen unfortunate women who were sentenced after Verdun
was retaken from the Prussians, two girls of seventeen years of age were
not condemned to death on account of their youth.
This first circumstance was well worth recording. Let us go farther. A
historian having lately consulted the official journals of that epoch,
and the bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal, discovered with some
surprise that among the twelve _young girls_ who were condemned, there
were seven either married or widows, whose ages varied from forty-one to
sixty-nine!
Contemporary accounts then, even those of Riouffe, may be submitted
without irreverence to earnest discussion. When a tenth part of the
funds annually devoted to researches in and examination of old
chronicles, is applied to making extracts from the registers relative to
the French Revolution, we shall certainly see many other hideous
circumstances that revolt the soul, disappear from our contemporary
history. Look at the massacres of September! The historians most in
vogue report the number of victims that fell in that butchery to have
been from six to twelve thousand; whilst a writer who has lately taken
the trouble to analyze the prison registers in the gaoler's books,
cannot make the whole amount to one thousand. Even this number is very
large; but, for my part, I thank the author of this recent publication
for having reduced the number of assassinations in September to less
than a tenth part of what had been generally admitted.
When the discussion which I have here undertaken becomes known to the
public, it will be seen how many and how important are the retrenchments
to be made from that lugubrious page of our history. Another important
circumstance may be appreciated, which appears to me to arise from all
these facts. After having weighed my proofs, every one I hope will join
me in seeing that the wretches around the scaffold of Bailly were but
the refuse of the population, fulfilling for pay the part that had been
assigned them by three or four wealthy cannibals.
The sentence pronounced against Bailly by the Revolutionary Tribunal was
to be executed on the 12th of November, 1793. The reminiscences recently
published by a fellow-prisoner of our colleague, the reminiscences of M.
Beugnot, will enable us to penetrate into the Conciergerie, on the
morning of that inauspicious day.
Bailly had risen early, after having slept as usual, the sleep of the
just. He took some chocolate, and conversed a long time with his
nephew. The young man was a prey to despair, but the illustrious
prisoner preserved all his serenity. The previous evening in returning
from the Tribunal, he remarked, with admirable coolness, though
springing from a certain disquietude, "that the spectators of his trial
had been strongly excited against him. I fear," he added, "that the mere
execution of the sentence will no longer satisfy them, which might be
dangerous in its consequences. Perhaps the police will provide against
it." These reflections having recurred to Bailly's mind on the 12th, he
asked for, and drank hastily, two cups of coffee without milk. These
precautions were a sinister omen. To his friends who surrounded him at
this awful moment, and were sobbing aloud, he said, "Be calm; I have
rather a difficult journey to perform, and I distrust my constitution.
Coffee excites and reanimates; I hope, however, to reach the end
properly."
Noon had just struck. Bailly addressed a last and tender adieu to his
companions in captivity, wished them a better fate, followed the
executioner without weakness as well as without bravado, mounted the
fatal cart, his hands tied behind his back. Our colleague was accustomed
to say: "We must entertain a bad opinion of those who, in their dying
moments, have not a look to cast behind them." Bailly's last look was
towards his wife. A gendarme of the escort feelingly listened to his
last words, and faithfully repeated them to his widow. The procession
reached the entrance to the Champ de Mars, on the side towards the
river, at a quarter past one o'clock. This was the place where,
according to the words of the sentence, the scaffold had been raised.
The blinded crowd collected there, furiously exclaimed that the sacred
ground of the Champ de la Fédération should not be soiled by the
presence and by the blood of him whom they called a great criminal. Upon
their demand (I had almost said their orders), the scaffold was taken
down again, and carried piecemeal into one of the fosses, where it was
put up afresh. Bailly remained the stern witness of these frightful
preparations, and of these infernal clamours. Not one complaint escaped
from his lips. Rain had been falling all the morning; it was cold; it
drenched the body, and especially the bare head, of the venerable man. A
wretch saw that he was shivering, and cried out to him, _"Thou
tremblest, Bailly."_--"_I am cold, my friend_," mildly answered the
victim. These were his last words.
Bailly descended into the moat, where the executioner burnt before him
the red flag of the 17th July; he then with a firm step mounted the
scaffold. Let us have the courage to say it, when the head of our
venerable colleague fell, the paid witnesses whom this horrid execution
had assembled on the Champ de Mars burst into infamous acclamations.
I had announced a faithful recital of the martyrdom of Bailly; I have
kept my word. I said that I should banish many circumstances without
reality, and that the drama would thus become less atrocious. If I am to
trust your aspect, I have not accomplished the second part of my
promise. The imagination perhaps cannot reach beyond the cruel facts on
which I have been obliged to dilate. You ask what I can have retrenched
from former relations, whilst what remains is so deplorable.
The order for execution addressed by Fouquier Tinville to the
executioner has been seen by several persons now living. They all
declare that if it differs from the numerous orders of a similar nature
that the wretch sent off daily, it was only by the substitution of the
following words: "Esplanade du Champ de Mars," for the usual designation
of "Place de la Revolution." Now, the Revolutionary Tribunal has
deserved many anathemas, but I never remarked its being reproached with
not having known how to enforce obedience.
I felt myself relieved from an immense weight, Gentlemen, when I could
dispel from my thoughts the image of a melancholy march on foot of two
hours, because with it there disappeared two hours of corporeal
ill-usage, which, according to those same accounts, our virtuous
colleague must have endured from the Conciergerie to the Champ de Mars.
An illustrious writer asserts that they conducted Bailly to the Place de
la Revolution, that the scaffold there was taken to pieces on the
multitude demanding it, and that the victim was then led to the Champ de
Mars. This relation is not correct. The sentence expressed in positive
terms, that, as an exception, the Square of the Revolution was not to be
the scene of Bailly's execution. The procession went direct to the place
designated.
The historian already quoted affirms that the scaffold on being put up
again on the bank of the Seine was erected on a heap of rubbish; that
this operation lasted some hours, and that Bailly meanwhile was drawn
round the Champ de Mars several times.
These promenades are imaginary. Those men who on the arrival of the
lugubrious procession vociferated that the presence of the old Mayor of
Paris would soil the Champ de la Fédération, could not the next minute
force him to make the circuit of it. In fact, the illustrious victim
remained in the road. The cruel idea, so knowingly attributed to the
actors of those hideous scenes, to raise the fatal instrument on a heap
of rubbish on the river bank, so that Bailly might in his last moments
see the house at Chaillot where he had composed his works, was so far
from occurring to the mind of the multitude, that the sentence was
executed in the moat between two walls.
I have not thought it my duty, Gentlemen, to represent the condemned man
forced to carry some parts of the scaffold himself, because he had his
hands tied behind his back. In my recital nobody waves the burning red
flag over Bailly's head, because this barbarity is not mentioned in the
narratives, otherwise so shocking, drawn up by some friends of our
colleague shortly after the event; nor have I consented, with the author
of _The History of the French Revolution_, to represent one of the
soldiers forming the escort asking the question that led the victim to
make, we must say so, the theatrical answer: "Yes, I tremble, but it is
with cold;" but the more touching answer, so characteristic of Bailly;
"Yes, my friend, I am cold."
Far be it from me, Gentlemen, to suppose that no soldier in the world
would be capable of a despicable and culpable act. I do not ask,
assuredly, the suppression of all courts-martial; but to be induced to
attribute to a man dressed in a military uniform, a personal part in
this frightful drama, proofs or contemporary testimonies would be
required, of which I have found no trace.
If the fact had occurred, its results would certainly have become known
to the public. I take to witness an event which is found related in
Bailly's Memoirs.
On the 22d of July, 1789, on the square of the Hôtel de Ville, a dragoon
with his sabre mutilated the corpse of Berthier. His comrades, feeling
outraged by this barbarity, all showed themselves instantly resolved to
fight him in succession, and so wash out in his blood the disgrace he
had thrown on the whole corps. The dragoon fought that same evening and
was killed.
In his _History of Prisons_, Riouffe says that "Bailly exhausted the
ferocity of the populace, of whom he had been the idol, and was basely
abandoned by the people, though they had never ceased to esteem him."
Nearly the same idea is found expressed in _The History of the
Revolution_, and in several other works.
What is called the populace rarely read and did not write. To attack it
and calumniate it therefore was a convenient thing, since no refutation
need to be feared. I am far from supposing that the historians whose
works I have quoted, ever gave way to such considerations; but I affirm,
with entire certainty, that they have deceived themselves. In the
sanguinary drama that has been unrolled before your eyes, the atrocities
had a quite different source from the sentiments common to the
barbarians that were swarming in the dregs of society and always ready
to soil it with every crime; in plainer words, it is not to the
unfortunate people who have neither property, nor capital, living by the
work of their hands, to the _prolétaires_, that we are to impute the
deplorable incidents which marked Bailly's last moments. To put forward
an opinion so remote from received opinions, is imposing on one's self
the duty of proving its truth.
After his condemnation, our colleague exclaimed, says La Fayette: "I die
for the sitting of the Jeu de Paume, and not for the fatal day at the
Champ de Mars." I do not here intend to expound these mysterious words
in the glimpses they give us by a half-light; but, whatever meaning we
may attribute to them, it is evident that the sentiments and passions of
the lower class have no share in them; it is a point beyond discussion.
On reëntering the Conciergerie, the evening before his death, Bailly
spoke of the efforts that must have been made to excite the passions of
the auditors, who followed the various phases of his trial. Factitious
excitement is always the produce of corruption. The working classes are
without money;, they then cannot have been the corruptors or direct
promoters of the distressing scenes of which Bailly complained.
The implacable enemies of the former President of the National Assembly
had procured for pay some auxiliaries among the turnkeys of the
Conciergerie. M. Beugnot informs us that when the venerable magistrate
was consigned to the gendarmes who were to conduct him to the Tribunal,
"these wretches pushed him violently, sending him from one to the other
like a drunken man, calling out: _Hold there, Bailly! Catch, Bailly,
there!_ and that they laughed and shouted at the grave demeanour the
philosopher maintained amidst the insults of those cannibals."
To confirm my statement that these violences (in comparison with which,
in truth, those of the Champ de Mars lose their virulence,) were
fomented by pay, I have more than the formal declaration of our
colleague's fellow prisoner. For in fact I find that no other prisoner
or convict underwent such treatment; not even the man called the
Admiral, when he was taken to the Conciergerie for having attempted to
assassinate Collot-d'Herbois.
Besides, it is not only on indirect considerations that my decided
opinion is founded relative to the intervention of rich and influential
people in those scenes of indescribable barbarity on the Champ de Mars.
Mérard St. Just, the intimate friend of Bailly, has alluded by his
initials to a wretch who, the very day of our colleague's death,
publicly boasted of having electrified the few acolytes who, together
with him, insisted on the removal of the scaffold; the day after the
execution, the meeting of the Jacobins reëchoed with the name of another
individual of the Gros Caillou, who also claimed his share of influence
in the crime.
I have progressively unrolled before you the series of events in our
revolution, in which Bailly took an active part; I have scrupulously
searched out the smallest circumstances of the deplorable affair on the
Champ de Mars; I have followed our colleague in his proscription to the
Revolutionary Tribunal, and to the foot of the scaffold. We had seen him
before, surrounded by esteem, by respect, and by glory, in the bosom of
our principal academies. Yet the work is not complete; several essential
traits are still wanting.
I will therefore claim a few more minutes of your kind attention. The
moral life of Bailly is like those masterpieces of ancient sculpture,
that deserve to be studied in every point of view, and in which new
beauties are continually discovered, in proportion as the contemplation
is prolonged.
PORTRAIT OF BAILLY.--HIS WIFE.
Nature did not endow Bailly generously with those exterior advantages
that please us at first sight. He was tall and thin. His visage
compressed, his eyes small and sunk, his nose regular, but of unusual
length, and a very brown complexion, constituted an imposing whole,
severe and almost glacial. Fortunately, it was easy to perceive through
this rough bark, the inexhaustible benevolence of the good man; the
kindness that always accompanies a serene mind, and even some rudiments
of gayety.
Bailly early endeavoured to model his conduct on that of the Abbé de
Lacaille, who directed his first steps in the career of astronomy. And
therefore it will be found that in transcribing five or six lines of the
very feeling eulogy that the pupil dedicated to the memory of his
revered master, I shall have made known at the same time many of the
characteristic traits of the panegyrist:
"He was cold and reserved towards those of whom he knew little; but
gentle, simple, equable, and familiar in the intercourse of friendship.
It is there that, throwing off the grave exterior which he wore in
public, he gave himself up to a peaceful and amiable gayety."
The resemblance between Bailly and Lacaille goes no farther. Bailly
informs us that the great astronomer proclaimed truth on all occasions,
without disquieting himself as to whom it might wound. He would not
consent to put vice at its ease, saying:
"If good men thus showed their indignation, bad men being known, and
vice unmasked, could no longer do harm, and virtue would be more
respected." This Spartan morality could not accord with Bailly's
character; he admired but did not adopt it.
Tacitus took as a motto: "To say nothing false, to omit nothing true."
Our colleague contented himself in society with the first half of the
precept. Never did mockery, bitterness, or severity issue from his lips.
His manners were a medium between those of Lacaille and the manners of
another academician who had succeeded in not making a single enemy, by
adopting the two axioms: "Every thing is possible, and everybody is in
the right."