THE REIGN OF TERROR.
Charges against the Girondists.--Danton.--The French Embassador
ordered to leave England.--War declared against England.--Navy of
England.--Internal War.--Plot to assassinate the Girondists.--Bold
Words of Vergniaud.--Insurrection in La Vendée.--Conflict between
Dumouriez and the Assembly.--Flight of Dumouriez.--The Mob aroused
and the Girondists arrested.--Charlotte Corday.--France rises _en
masse_ to repel the Allies.--The treasonable Surrender of Toulon.
The execution of the king roused all Europe against republican France.
The Jacobins had gained a decisive victory over the Girondists, and
succeeded in turning popular hatred against them by accusing them of
being enemies of the people, because they opposed the excesses of the
mob; of being the friends of royalty, because they had wished to save
the life of the king; and of being hostile to the republic, because
they advocated measures of moderation.[389]
Danton was now the acknowledged leader of the Jacobins. He had obtained
the entire control of the mob of Paris, and could guide their terrible
and resistless energies in any direction. With this potent weapon in
his hand he was omnipotent, and his political adversaries were at his
mercy. The Reign of Terror had now commenced. The Girondists made a
heroic attempt to bring to justice the assassins of September, but the
Jacobins promptly stopped the proceedings.
The aristocracy of birth was now effectually crushed, and the Jacobins
commenced a warfare against the aristocracy of wealth and character.
An elegant mansion, garments of fine cloth, and even polished manners,
exposed one to the charge of being an aristocrat, and turned against
him the insults of the rabble. Marat was particularly fierce, in his
journal, against the aristocracy of the burghers, merchants, and
statesmen.
Upon the arrival of the courier in London conveying intelligence of the
execution of the king, M. Chauvelin, the French embassador, was ordered
to leave England within twenty-four hours.
"After events," said Pitt, "on which the imagination can only dwell
with horror, and since an infernal faction has seized on the supreme
power in France, we could no longer tolerate the presence of M.
Chauvelin, who has left no means untried to induce the people to rise
against the government and the laws of this country."
The National Convention at once declared war against England.[390]
Pitt, with almost superhuman energy, mustered the forces of England
and Europe for the strife. In less than six months England had entered
into a treaty of alliance with Russia, Prussia, Austria, Naples,
Spain, and Portugal, for the prosecution of the war; and had also
entered into treaties by which she promised large subsidies to Hesse
Cassel, Sardinia, and Baden. England thus became the soul of this
coalition, which combined the whole of Europe, with the exception of
Venice, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Turkey, against France.
These combined armies were to assail the Republic by land, while the
invincible fleet of England was to hurl a storm of shot and shells into
all her maritime towns.
France, at this time, had but one hundred and fifty-nine vessels of
war all told. England had four hundred and fifteen, and her ally,
Holland, one hundred. Most of these were large ships, heavily armed;
and, consequently, England had but little fear that any French armies
could reach her isles.[391] Parliament voted an extraordinary supply
of £3,200,000 ($16,000,000). One hundred and thirty-one thousand
Austrians, one hundred and twelve thousand Prussians, and fifty
thousand Spaniards were speedily on the march to assail France at every
point on the frontier.[392]
The Royalists in La Vendée rose in arms against the Republic, and
unfurled the white banner of the Bourbons. France was now threatened
more fearfully than ever before with external and internal war. The
Convention, controlled by the Jacobins and appalled by the danger,
decreed a levy of three hundred thousand men to repel the assailants,
and also organized an extraordinary revolutionary tribunal, invested
with unlimited powers to arrest, judge, and punish any whom they should
deem dangerous to the Republic. Violence filled the land, terror
reigned every where, and even Robespierre was heard to exclaim, "I am
sick of the Revolution."
Dumouriez had driven the Austrians out of Belgium and the Netherlands,
and was at the head of an army of about seventy-five thousand men.
Disgusted with the anarchy which reigned in France, he formed the bold
design of marching upon Paris with his army, dispersing the Convention,
abolishing the Republic, reinstituting a constitutional monarchy by
establishing the Constitution of 1791, and by placing a king, probably
the son of the Duke of Orleans, subsequently Louis Philippe, upon the
throne. The Jacobins, goaded by these accumulating dangers--all Europe
assailing France from without, and Royalists plotting within--were
prepared for any measures of desperation. The Girondists, with
unavailing heroism, opposed the frantic measures of popular violence,
and the Jacobins resolved to get rid of them all by a decisive blow.
The assassins of September were ready to ply the dagger, under the
plea that murder was patriotism. A plan was formed to strike them all
down, in the Convention, on the night of the 10th of March. But the
Girondists, informed of the plot, absented themselves from the meeting
and the enterprise failed. The bold spirit of the Girondists was avowed
in the words of Vergniaud:
"We have witnessed," said he, "the development of that strange system
of liberty in which we are told 'You are free, but think with us, or we
will denounce you to the vengeance of the people; you are free, but
bow down your head to the idol we worship, or we will denounce you to
the vengeance of the people; you are free, but join us in persecuting
the men whose probity and intelligence we dread, or we will denounce
you to the vengeance of the people.' Citizens! we have reason to
fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, will devour successively all
its children, and only engender despotism and the calamities which
accompany it."
The Province of La Vendée contained a population of about three hundred
thousand. It was a rural district where there was no middle class. The
priests and the nobles had the unlettered peasantry entirely under
their influence. Three armies were raised here against the Republic, of
about twelve thousand each. Royalists from various parts of the empire
flocked to this region, and emigrants were landed upon the coast to
join the insurgents. For three years a most cruel and bloody war was
here waged between the Royalists and the Republicans.
The intelligence of this formidable insurrection increased the panic
of the Convention. A law was passed disarming all who had belonged to
the privileged class, and declaring those to be outlaws who should be
found in any hostile gathering against the Republic. The emigrants
were forbidden to land in France under the penalty of death. Every
house in the kingdom was to inscribe upon its door the names of all its
inmates, and was to be open at all times to the visits of the Vigilance
Committee.
Dumouriez sullied his character by surrendering to the Austrians
several fortresses, and agreeing with them that he would march upon
Paris and restore a monarchical government to France. The Austrians
trusted that he would place upon the throne the young son of Louis
XVI., though it was doubtless his intention to place there the young
Duke of Chartres (Louis Philippe), who would be the representative of
popular ideas.
The Jacobin Club sent a deputation of three of its members to the
camp, to sound the views of Dumouriez. The general received them with
courtesy, but said, with military frankness,
"The Convention is an assembly of tyrants. While I have three inches of
steel by my side that monster shall not exist. As for the Republic, it
is an idle word. I had faith in it for three days. There is only one
way to save the country; that is, to re-establish the Constitution of
1791 and a king."
"Can you think of it!" one of the deputation exclaimed; "the French
view royalty with horror. The very name of Louis is an abomination."
"What does it signify," replied Dumouriez, "whether the king be called
Louis, or Jacques, or Philippe?"
"And what are your means to effect this revolution?" they inquired.
"My army," Dumouriez proudly replied. "From my camp or from the
stronghold of some fortress they will express their resolve for a king."
"But your plan will peril the lives of the rest of the royal family in
the Temple."
"If every member of that family in France or at Coblentz should
perish," Dumouriez replied, "I can still find a chief. And if any
farther barbarities are practiced upon the Bourbons in the Temple
I will surround Paris with my army and starve the Parisians into
subjection."
The deputation returned to Paris with their report, and four
commissioners were immediately dispatched, accompanied by the Minister
of War, to summon Dumouriez to the bar of the Convention. Dumouriez
promptly arrested the commissioners and sent them off to the Austrians,
to be retained by them as hostages.
[Illustration: DUMOURIEZ ARRESTING THE ENVOYS.]
The Convention immediately offered a reward for the head of Dumouriez,
raised an army of forty thousand men to defend Paris, and arrested all
the relatives of the officers under Dumouriez as hostages.
Dumouriez now found that he had not a moment to lose. Perils were
accumulating thick around him. There were many indications that it
might be difficult to carry the army over to his views. On the 4th of
April, as he was repairing to a place of rendezvous with the Austrian
leaders, the Prince of Coburg and General Mack, a battalion of
soldiers, suspecting treachery, endeavored to stop him. He put spurs
to his horse and distanced pursuit, while a storm of bullets whistled
around his head. He succeeded, after innumerable perils, in the
circuitous ride of a whole day, in reaching the head-quarters of the
Austrians. They received him with great distinction, and offered him
the command of a division of their army. After two days' reflection, he
said that it was with the soldiers of France he had hoped to restore
a stable government to his country, accepting the Austrians only as
auxiliaries; but that as a Frenchman he could not march against France
at the head of foreigners. He retired to Switzerland. The Duke of
Chartres (Louis Philippe), in friendlessness and poverty, followed him,
and for some time was obliged to obtain a support by teaching school.
The Jacobins now accused their formidable rivals, the Girondists,
of being implicated in the conspiracy of Dumouriez. Robespierre, in
a speech of the most concentrated and potent malignity, urged that
France had relieved herself of the aristocracy of birth, but that
there was another aristocracy, that of wealth, equally to be dreaded,
which must be crushed, and that the Girondists were the leaders
of this aristocracy. This was most effectually pandering to the
passions of the mob, and directing their fury against the Girondists.
The Girondists were now in a state of terrible alarm. They knew the
malignity of their foes, and could see but little hope for escape.
They had overturned the throne of despotism, hoping to establish
constitutional liberty: they had only introduced Jacobin phrensy and
anarchy. Immense crowds of armed men paraded the streets of Paris,
surrounded the Convention, and demanded vengeance against the leaders
of the Gironde.[393]
The moderate Republicans, enemies of these acts of violence, striving
to stem the torrent, endeavored to carry an act of accusation against
Marat. He was charged with having encouraged assassination and carnage,
of dissolving the National Convention, and of having established a
power destructive of liberty.
Marat replied to the accusation by summoning the mob to his aid. They
assembled in vast, tumultuous throngs, and the tribunal, overawed,
after the trial of a few moments, unanimously acquitted him. This was
the 24th of April. The mob accompanied him back to his seat in the
Convention. He was borne in triumph into the hall in the arms of his
confederates, his brow encircled by a wreath of victory.
"Citizen President," shouted one of the burly men who bore Marat, "we
bring you the worthy Marat. Marat has always been the friend of the
people, and the people will always be the friends of Marat. If Marat's
head must fall, our heads must fall first."
As he uttered these words he brandished a battle-axe defiantly, and
the mob in the aisles and crowded galleries vehemently applauded. He
then demanded permission for the escort to file through the hall. The
president, appalled by the hideous spectacle, had not time to give his
consent before the whole throng, men, women, and boys, in rags and
filth, rushed pell-mell into the hall, took the seats of the vacant
members, and filled the room with indescribable tumult and uproar,
shouting hosannas to Marat. The successful demagogue could not but
boast of his triumph. Ascending the tribune, he said,
"Citizens! indignant at seeing a villainous faction betraying the
Republic, I endeavored to unmask it and to _put the rope about its
neck_. It resisted me by launching against me a decree of accusation. I
have come off victorious. The faction is humbled, but not crushed.
Waste not your time in decreeing triumphs. Defend yourselves with
enthusiasm."
[Illustration: MARAT'S TRIUMPH.]
Robespierre now demanded an act of accusation against the Girondists.
Resistance was hopeless. The inundation of popular fury was at its
flood, sweeping every thing before it. The most frightful scenes of
tumult took place in the Convention, members endeavoring by violence to
pull each other from the tribune.[394]
The whole Convention was now in a state of dismay, eighty thousand
infuriate men surrounding it with artillery and musketry, declaring
that the Convention should not leave its hall until the Girondists
were arrested. The Convention, in a body, attempted to leave and force
its way through the crowd, but it was ignominiously driven back. Under
these circumstances it was voted that the leaders of the Girondists,
twenty-two in number, should be put under arrest. This was the 2d of
June, 1793.[395]
The Jacobins, having thus got rid of their enemies, and having the
entire control, immediately decided to adopt a new Constitution, still
more democratic in its character; and a committee was appointed to
present one within a week. But the same division which existed in the
Convention between the Jacobins and the Girondists existed all over
France. In many of the departments fierce battles rose between the two
parties.
In the mean time the Allies were pressing France in all directions. The
Austrians and Prussians were advancing upon the north; the Piedmontese
threading the passes of the maritime Alps; the Spaniards were prepared
to rush from the defiles of the Pyrenees, and the fleet of England
threatened every where the coast of France on the Mediterranean and the
Channel.[396]
With amazing energy the Convention aroused itself to meet these perils.
A new Constitution, exceedingly democratic, was framed and adopted.
Every Frenchman twenty-one years of age was a voter. Fifty thousand
souls were entitled to a deputy. There was but a single Assembly. Its
decrees were immediately carried into execution.[397]
Danton, Robespierre, and Marat were now the idols of the mob of Paris
and the real sovereigns of France. All who ventured opposition to them
were proscribed and imprisoned. Members of the Republican or Girondist
party every where, all over France, were arrested, or, where they were
sufficiently numerous to resist, civil war raged.
At Caen there was a very beautiful girl, Charlotte Corday, twenty-five
years of age, highly educated and accomplished. She was of spotless
purity of character, and, with the enthusiasm of Madame Roland, she had
espoused the cause of popular constitutional liberty. The principles
of the Girondist party she had embraced, and the noble leaders of that
party she regarded almost with adoration.
When she heard of the overthrow of the Girondists and their
imprisonment, she resolved to avenge them, and hoped that, by striking
down the leader of the Jacobins, she might rouse the Girondists
scattered over France to rally and rescue liberty and their country. It
was a three days' ride in the diligence from Caen to Paris. Arriving at
Paris on Thursday the 11th of July, she carefully inspected the state
of affairs, that she might select her victim, but confided her design
to no one.
Marat appeared to her the most active, formidable, and insatiable in
his proscription. She wrote him a note as follows:
"Citizen: I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your country
inclines me to suppose you will listen with pleasure to the secret
events of that part of the Republic. I will present myself at your
house. Have the goodness to give orders for my admission, and grant me
a moment's private conversation. I can point out the means by which you
can render an important service to France."
She dispatched this note from her hotel, the Inn de la Providence in
the Rue des Vieux Augustins, went to the Palais Royal and purchased a
large sheath knife, and, taking a hackney-coach, drove to the residence
of Marat, No. 44 Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine. It was Saturday night.
Marat was taking a bath and reading by a light which stood upon a
three-footed stool. He heard the rap of Charlotte, and called aloud to
the woman who, as servant and mistress, attended him, and requested
that she might be admitted.
Marat was a man of the most restless activity. Eagerly he inquired
respecting the proscribed at Caen and of others who were opposed to
Jacobin rule. Charlotte, while replying coolly, measured with her eye
the spot she should strike with the knife. As she mentioned some names,
he eagerly seized a pencil and began to write them down, saying,
"They shall all go to the guillotine."
"To the guillotine?" exclaimed Charlotte, and, instantly drawing the
knife from her bosom, plunged it to the handle directly in his heart.
The miserable man uttered one frantic shriek of "Help!" and fell back
dead into the water. The paramour of Marat and a serving-man rushed in,
knocked Charlotte down with a chair, and trampled upon her. A crowd
soon assembled. Without the slightest perturbation she avowed the
deed. Her youth and beauty alone saved her from being torn in pieces.
Soldiers soon arrived and conveyed her to prison.
"The way to avenge Marat," exclaimed Robespierre from the tribune in
tones which caused France to tremble, "is to strike down his enemies
without mercy."
The remains of the wretched man, whom all the world now execrates,
were buried with the highest possible honors. His funeral at midnight,
as all Paris seemed to follow him to his grave in a torch-light
procession, was one of the most imposing scenes of the Revolution.
On Wednesday morning Charlotte was led to the Revolutionary Tribunal
in the Palace of Justice. She appeared there dignified, calm, and
beautiful. The indictment was read, and they were beginning to
introduce their witnesses, when Charlotte said,
"These delays are needless. It is I that killed Marat."
There was a moment's pause, and many deplored the doom of one so
youthful and lovely. At last the president inquired, "By whose
instigation?"
"By that of no one," was the laconic reply.
"What tempted you?" inquired the president.
"His crimes," Charlotte answered; and then, continuing in tones of
firmness and intensity which silenced and overawed all present, she
said,
"I killed one man, to save a hundred thousand; a villain, to save the
innocent; a savage wild beast, to give repose to my country. I was a
Republican before the Revolution. I never wanted energy."[398]
[Illustration: CHARLOTTE CORDAY ARRESTED.]
She listened to her doom of immediate death with a smile, and was
conducted back to the prison, to be led from thence to the guillotine.
A little after seven o'clock on this same evening a cart issued from
the Conciergerie, bearing Charlotte, in the red robe of a murderess,
to the guillotine. A vast throng crowded the streets, most of whom
assailed her with howls and execrations. She looked upon them with a
serene smile, as if she were riding on an excursion of pleasure. She
was bound to the plank. The glittering axe glided through the grove,
and the executioner, lifting her severed head, exhibited it to the
people, and then brutally struck the cheek.
Robespierre and Danton, the idols of the mob, now divided the supreme
power between them. The organization of a revolutionary government was
simply the machine by means of which they operated.
On the 10th of August there was another magnificent festival in Paris
to commemorate the adoption of the Jacobin Constitution. The celebrated
painter David arranged the fête with great artistic skill, and again
all Paris, though on the verge of ruin, was in a blaze of illumination
and in a roar of triumph. The Austrian armies were now within fifteen
days' march of Paris, and there was no organized force which could
effectually arrest their progress. But the fear of the old Bourbon
despotism rallied the masses to maintain, in preference, even the
horrors of Jacobin ferocity. The aristocrats crushed the _people_; the
Jacobins crushed the _aristocrats_. The populace naturally preferred
the latter rule.
And now France rose, as a nation never rose before. At the motion of
Danton it was decreed on the 23rd of August,
"From this moment until when the enemy shall be driven from the
territory of the French Republic, _all the French_ shall be in
permanent requisition for the service of the armies. The young men
shall go forth to fight. The married men shall forge the arms and
transport the supplies. The women shall make tents and clothes, and
attend on the hospitals. The children shall make lint out of rags; the
old men shall cause themselves to be carried to the public places, to
excite the courage of the warriors, to preach hatred of kings and love
of the Republic."
[Illustration: MARCH OF VOLUNTEERS.]
All unmarried men or widowers without children, between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-five, were to assemble at appointed rendezvous and
march immediately. This act raised an army of one million two hundred
thousand men. The men between twenty-five and thirty were to hold
themselves in readiness to follow. And those between thirty and sixty
were to be prepared to obey orders whenever they should be summoned to
the field. There is sublimity, at least, in such energy.
All France was instantly converted into a camp, resounding with
preparations for war. In La Vendée the friends of the Bourbons had
rallied. The Convention decreed its utter destruction, the death of
every man, conflagration of the dwellings, destruction of the crops,
and the removal of the women and children to some other province, where
they should be supported at the expense of the government. It was
sternly resolved that no mercy whatever should be shown to Frenchmen
who were co-operating with foreigners to rivet anew upon France the
chains of Bourbon despotism. These decrees were executed with merciless
fidelity. The illustrious Carnot, who, to use his own words, "had the
ambition of the three hundred Spartans, going to defend Thermopylæ,"
organized and disciplined fourteen armies, and selected for them able
leaders.
[Illustration: EXECUTION IN LA VENDÉE.]
While matters were in this condition, the inhabitants of Marseilles,
Lyons, and Toulon rose, overpowered the Jacobins, and, raising the
banner of the Bourbons, invited the approach of the Allies. Toulon was
the naval arsenal of France, a large French fleet crowded its port,
and its warehouses were filled with naval stores. Lord Hood, with an
English squadron, was cruising off the coast. The Royalists, Admiral
Troyoff at their head, gave the signal to the English, and basely
surrendered to them the forts, shipping, and stores. It was a fearful
loss to the Revolutionists. Lord Hood, the British admiral, immediately
entered with his fleet, took possession, and issued a proclamation in
which he said,
"Considering that the sections of Toulon have, by the commissioners
whom they have sent to me, made a solemn declaration in favor of Louis
XVII. and a monarchical government, and that they will use their
utmost efforts to break the chains which fetter their country, and
re-establish the Constitution as it was accepted by their defunct
sovereign in 1789, I repeat by this present declaration that I take
possession of Toulon, and shall keep it solely as a deposit for Louis
XVII., and that only till peace is re-established in France."[399]
An army of sixty thousand men was sent against rebellious Lyons.
The city, after a prolonged siege and the endurance of innumerable
woes, was captured. The Convention decreed that it should be utterly
destroyed, and that over its ruins should be reared a monument with
the inscription, "_Lyons made war upon Liberty: Lyons is no more!_"
The cruelties inflicted upon the Royalists of this unhappy city are
too painful to contemplate. The imagination can hardly exaggerate
them. Fouché and Collot d'Herbois, the prominent agents in this bloody
vengeance, were atheists. In contempt of Christianity, they ordered the
Bible and the Cross to be borne through the streets on an ass; the ass
was compelled to drink of the consecrated wine from the communion-cup.
Six thousand of the citizens of Lyons perished in these sanguinary
persecutions, and twelve thousand were driven into exile. The
Revolutionary Tribunal was active night and day condemning to death.
One morning a young girl rushed into the hall, exclaiming,
"There remain to me, of all our family, only my brothers. Mother,
father, sisters, uncles--you have butchered all. And now you are going
to condemn my brothers. In mercy ordain that I may ascend the scaffold
with them."
Her prayer of anguish was refused, and the poor child threw herself
into the Rhone.
The Royalist insurrection in La Vendée, after a long and terrible
conflict, was crushed out. No language can describe the horrors of
vengeance which ensued. The tale of brutality is too awful to be told.
Demons could not have been more infernal in mercilessness.
"Death by fire and the sword," writes Lamartine, "made a noise,
scattered blood, and left bodies to be buried and be counted. The
silent waters of the Loire were dumb and would render no account. The
bottom of the sea alone would know the number of the victims. Carrier
caused mariners to be brought as pitiless as himself. He ordered them,
without much mystery, to pierce plug-holes in a certain number of
decked vessels, so as to sink them with their living cargoes in parts
of the river.
"These orders were first executed secretly and under the color of
accidents of navigation. But soon these naval executions, of which the
waves of the Loire bore witness even to its mouth, became a spectacle
for Carrier and for his courtiers. He furnished a galley of pleasure,
of which he made a present to his accomplice Lambertye, under pretext
of watching the banks of the river. This vessel, adorned with all
the delicacies of furniture, provided with all the wines and all the
necessaries of feasting, became the most general theatre of these
executions. Carrier embarked therein sometimes himself, with his
executioners and his courtesans, to make trips upon the water. While he
yielded himself up to the joys of love and wine on deck, his victims,
inclosed in the hold, saw, at a given signal, the valves open, and the
waves of the Loire swallow them up. A stifled groaning announced to the
crew that hundreds of lives had just breathed their last under their
feet. They continued their orgies upon this floating sepulchre.
[Illustration: MASSACRES IN LYONS.]
"Sometimes Carrier, Lambertye, and their accomplices rejoiced in the
cruel pleasure of this spectacle of agony. They caused victims of
either sex, in couples, to mount upon the deck. Stripped of their
garments, they bound them face to face, one to the other--a priest
with a nun, a young man with a young girl. They suspended them, thus
naked and interlaced, by a cord passed under the shoulders through a
block of the vessel. They sported with horrible sarcasms on this parody
of marriage in death, and then flung the victims into the river. This
cannibal sport was termed 'Republican Marriages.'"
[Illustration: DROWNING VICTIMS IN THE LOIRE.]
Robespierre, informed of these demoniac deeds, recalled Carrier, but
he did not dare to bring an act of accusation against the wretch, lest
he should peril his own head by being charged with sympathy with the
Royalists. It is grateful to record that Carrier himself was eventually
conducted, amid the execrations of the community, to the scaffold.[400]
The prisons of Paris were now filled with victims. Municipal
instructions, issued by Chaumette, catalogued as follows those who
should be arrested as suspected persons: 1. Those who, by crafty
addresses, check the energy of the people. 2. Those who mysteriously
deplore the lot of the people, and propagate bad news with affected
grief. 3. Those who, silent respecting the faults of the Royalists,
declaim against the faults of the Patriots. 4. Those who pity those
against whom the law is obliged to take measures. 5. Those who
associate with aristocrats, priests, and moderates, and take an
interest in their fate. 6. Those who have not taken an active part
in the Revolution. 7. Those who have received the Constitution with
indifference and have expressed fears respecting its duration. 8.
Those who, though they have done nothing against liberty, have done
nothing for it. 9. Those who do not attend the sections. 10. Those who
speak contemptuously of the constituted authorities. 11. Those who
have signed counter-revolutionary petitions. 12. The partisans of La
Fayette, and those who marched to the charge in the Champ de Mars.
There were but few persons in Paris who were not liable to be arrested,
by the machinations of any enemy, upon some one of these charges. Many
thousands were soon incarcerated. The prisons of the Maire, La Force,
the Conciergerie, the Abbaye, St. Pelagie, and the Madelonettes were
crowded to their utmost capacity. Then large private mansions, the
College of Duplessis, and finally the spacious Palace of the Luxembourg
were converted into prisons, and were filled to suffocation with the
suspected. In these abodes, surrendered to filth and misery, with
nothing but straw to lie upon, the most brilliant men and women of
Paris were huddled together with the vilest outcasts. After a time,
however, those who had property were permitted to surround themselves
with such comforts as their means would command. From these various
prisons those who were to be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal
were taken to the Conciergerie, which adjoined the Palace of Justice,
where the tribunal held its session. A trial was almost certain
condemnation, and the guillotine knew no rest. Miserable France was now
surrendered to the Reign of Terror. The mob had become the sovereign.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 389: Mignet, p. 192.]
[Footnote 390: "The Convention, finding England already leagued with
the coalition, and consequently all its promises of neutrality vain and
illusive, on the 1st of February, 1793, declared war against the King
of Great Britain and the Stadtholder of Holland, who had been entirely
guided by the cabinet of St. James's since 1788."--_Mignet_, vol. i.,
p. 195.]
[Footnote 391: Lamartine, History of the Girondists, vol. ii., p. 395.]
[Footnote 392: "It was in Spain, more particularly, that Pitt set
intrigues at work to urge her to the greatest blunder she ever
committed--that of joining England against France, her only maritime
ally."--_Thiers_, vol. ii., p. 82.]
[Footnote 393: In reference to the terrific conflict between the
privileged classes and the enslaved people, Prof. Smyth writes,
"My conclusion is that neither the high party nor the low have the
slightest right to felicitate themselves on their conduct during this
memorable revolution. No historian, no commentator on these times can
proceed a moment, but on the supposition that, while he is censuring
the faults of the one, he is perfectly aware of the antagonistic faults
of the other; that each party is to take its turn; and that the whole
is a dreadful lesson of instruction both to the one and the other.
_I have dwelt with more earnestness on the faults of the popular
leaders, because their faults are more natural and more important;
because the friends of freedom (hot and opinionated though they be) are
still more within the reach of instruction than are men of arbitrary
temperament, than courts and privileged orders, who are systematically
otherwise._"--_Prof Smyth, Fr. Rev._, vol. iii., p. 245.
The story of the French Revolution has too often been told in this
spirit, veiling the atrocities of the oppressors and magnifying the
inhumanity of the oppressed. While truth demands that all the violence
of an enslaved people, in despair bursting their bonds, should be
faithfully delineated, truth no less imperiously demands that the
mercilessness of proud oppressors, crushing millions for ages, and
goading a whole nation to the madness of despair, should be also
impartially described.]
[Footnote 394: In the Convention, each one who addressed the body
ascended to a desk on the platform, called the tribune.]
[Footnote 395: Thiers, vol. ii., p. 194.]
[Footnote 396: The Allies acted without union, and, under disguise of
a holy war, concealed the most selfish views. The Austrians wanted
Valenciennes; the King of Prussia, Mayence; the English, Dunkirk;
the Piedmontese aspired to recover Chambéry and Nice; the Spaniards,
the least interested of all, had nevertheless some thoughts of
Roussillon.--_Thiers_, vol. ii., p. 217.]
[Footnote 397: "As the Constitution thus made over the government
to the multitude, as it placed the power in a disorganized body, it
would have been at all times impracticable, but at a period of general
warfare it was peculiarly so. Accordingly, it was no sooner made than
suspended."--_Mignet._]
[Footnote 398: Procès de Charlotte Corday (Hist. Parl., vol. xxviii.,
p. 311, 338).]
[Footnote 399: After the death of Louis XVI. the Royalists considered
the young Dauphin, then imprisoned in the tower, as the legitimate
king, with the title of Louis XVII.]
[Footnote 400: Carrier was heard to say one day, while breakfasting in
a restaurant, that France was too densely populated for a republic, and
that it was necessary to kill off at least one third of the inhabitants
before they could have a good government. It is estimated that fifteen
thousand were massacred in La Vendée at his command.]