FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS AND OF THE DANTONISTS.
Continued Persecution of the Girondists.--Robespierre opposes the
Atheists.--Danton, Souberbielle, and Camille Desmoulins.--The _Vieux
Cordelier_.--The Hebertists executed.--Danton assailed.--Interview
between Danton and Robespierre.--Danton warned of his
Peril.--Camille Desmoulins and others arrested.--Lucile, the Wife
of Desmoulins.--Letters.--Execution of the Dantonists.--Arrest and
Execution of Lucile.--Toulon recovered by Bonaparte.
The leaders of the Girondists were now destroyed, and the remnants
of the party were prosecuted with unsparing ferocity. On the 11th of
November, Bailly, the former mayor, the friend of La Fayette, the
philanthropist and the scholar, was dragged to the scaffold. The day
was cold and rainy. His crime was having unfurled the red flag in the
Field of Mars, to quell the riot there, on the 17th of July, 1791.
He was condemned to be executed on the field which was the theatre
of his alleged crime. Behind the cart which carried him they affixed
the flag which he had spread. A crowd followed, heaping upon him the
most cruel imprecations. On reaching the scaffold, some one cried out
that the field of the federation ought not to be polluted with his
blood. Immediately the mob rushed upon the guillotine, tore it down,
and erected it again upon a dunghill on the banks of the Seine. They
dragged Bailly from the tumbril, and compelled him to make the tour of
the Field of Mars on foot. Bareheaded, with his hands bound behind him,
and with no other garment than a shirt, the sleet glued his hair and
froze upon his breast. They pelted him with mud, spat in his face, and
whipped him with the flag, which they dipped in the gutters. The old
man fell exhausted. They lifted him up again, and goaded him on. Blood,
mingled with mire, streamed down his face, depriving him of human
aspect. Shouts of derision greeted these horrors. The freezing wind and
exhaustion caused an involuntary shivering. Some one cried out, "You
tremble, Bailly." "Yes, my friend," replied the heroic old man, "but
it is with cold."[411] After five hours of such a martyrdom, the axe
released him from his sufferings.
Pétion and Buzot wandered many days and nights in the forest. At
length their remains were found, half devoured by wolves. Whether they
perished of cold and starvation, or sought relief from their misery in
voluntary death, is not known.
The illustrious Condorcet, alike renowned for his philosophical genius
and his eloquent advocacy of popular rights, had been declared an
outlaw. For several months he had been concealed in the house of Madame
Verney, a noble woman, who periled her own life that she might save
that of her friend. At last Condorcet, learning from the papers that
death was denounced against all who concealed a proscribed individual,
resolved, at every hazard, to leave the roof of his benefactress. For
some time he wandered through the fields in disguise, until he was
arrested and thrown into prison. On the following morning, March 28,
1794, he was found dead on the floor of his room, having swallowed
poison, which for some time he carried about with him.
"It would be difficult in that or any other age to find two men of
more active or, indeed, enthusiastic benevolence than Condorcet and
La Fayette. Besides this, Condorcet was one of the most profound
thinkers of his time, and will be remembered as long as genius is
honored among us. La Fayette was no doubt inferior to Condorcet in
point of ability, but he was the intimate friend of Washington, on
whose conduct he modeled his own, and by whose side he had fought for
the liberties of America; his integrity was, and still is, unsullied,
and his character had a chivalrous and noble turn which Burke, in his
better days, would have been the first to admire. Both, however, were
natives of that hated country whose liberties they vainly attempted
to achieve. On this account Burke declared Condorcet to be guilty of
'impious sophistry,' to be a 'fanatic atheist and furious democratic
republican,' and to be capable of the 'lowest as well as the highest
and most determined villainies.' As to La Fayette, when an attempt was
made to mitigate the cruel treatment he was receiving from the Prussian
government, Burke not only opposed the motion made for that purpose in
the House of Commons, but took the opportunity of grossly insulting the
unfortunate captive, who was then languishing in a dungeon. So dead had
he become on this subject, even to the common instincts of our nature,
that in his place in parliament he could find no better way of speaking
of this injured and high-souled man than by calling him a ruffian. 'I
would not,' says Burke, '_debase_[412] my humanity by supporting an
application in behalf of so horrid a ruffian.'"[413]
[Illustration: DEATH OF CONDORCET.]
Madame Roland was led to the guillotine, evincing heroism which the
world has never seen surpassed. Her husband, in anguish, unable to
survive her, and hunted by those thirsting for his blood, anticipated
the guillotine by plunging a stiletto into his own heart.
Danton and Robespierre were both opposed to such cruel executions, and
especially to the establishment in France of that system of atheism
which degraded man into merely the reptile of an hour. When Robespierre
was informed of the atrocities which attended the execution of Bailly,
in shame and grief he shut himself up in his room, saying, with
prophetic foresight, to his host Duplay, "It is thus that they will
martyrize ourselves."
Hebert[414] and the atheists were now dominant in the Commune of Paris,
and Danton and Robespierre organized a party to crush them. Hebert soon
saw indications of this movement, and began to tremble. He complained
in the Jacobin Club that Robespierre and Danton were plotting against
him. Robespierre was present on the occasion, and, with his accustomed
audacity, immediately ascended the tribune and hurled his anathemas
upon the heads of these blood-crimsoned fanatics.
"There are men," said he, "who, under the pretext of destroying
superstition, would fain make a sort of religion of atheism itself.
Every man has a right to think as he pleases; whoever would make a
crime of this is a madman. But the legislator who should adopt the
system of atheism would be a hundred times more insane. The National
Convention abhors such a system. It is a political body, not a maker
of creeds. _Atheism is aristocratic._ The idea of a great Being who
watches over oppressed innocence and who punishes triumphant guilt is
quite popular. The people, the unfortunate, applaud me. _If God did not
exist, it would behoove man to invent him._"
One of the last evenings in the month of January, Danton, Souberbielle,
one of the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Camille
Desmoulins came from the Palace of Justice together. It was a cold
gloomy winter's night. It had been a day of blood. Fifteen heads had
fallen upon the guillotine and twenty-seven were condemned to die
on the morrow. These three men were all appalled by the progress of
events, and for some time walked along in silence. On reaching Pont
Neuf, Danton turned suddenly round to Souberbielle and said,
"Do you know that, at the pace we are now going, there will speedily
be no safety for any person? The best patriots are confounded with
traitors. Generals who have shed their blood for the Republic perish on
the scaffold. I am weary of living. Look there; the very river seems to
flow with blood."
"True," replied Souberbielle, "the sky is red, and there are many
showers of blood behind those clouds. Those who were to be judges have
become but executioners. When I refuse an innocent head to their knife
I am accused of sympathy with traitors. What can I do? I am but an
obscure patriot. Ah, if I were Danton!"
"All this," replied Danton, "excites horror in me. But be silent.
Danton sleeps; he will awake at the right moment. I am a man of
revolution, but not a man of slaughter. But you," he added, addressing
Camille Desmoulins, "why do you keep silence?"
"I am weary of silence," was Desmoulins's reply. "My hand weighs
heavily, and I have sometimes the impulse to sharpen my pen into a
dagger and stab these scoundrels. Let them beware. My ink is more
indelible than their blood. It stains for immortality."
"Bravo!" cried Danton. "Begin to-morrow. You began the Revolution; be
it you who shall now most thoroughly urge it. Be assured this hand
shall aid you. You know whether or not it be strong."
The three friends separated at Danton's door. The doom of the miserable
Hebert and his party was now sealed. Robespierre, Danton, and Camille
Desmoulins were against him. They could wield resistless influences.
The next day Camille Desmoulins commenced a series of papers called
the _Vieux Cordelier_. He took the first number to Danton and then to
Robespierre. They both approved, and the warfare against Hebert and
his party was commenced. The conflict was short and desperate; each
party knew that the guillotine was the doom of the vanquished.[415]
Robespierre and Danton were victors. Hebert, Cloots, and their friends,
nineteen in number, were arrested and condemned to death. On the 24th
of March, 1794, five carts laden with the Hebertists proceeded from the
Conciergerie to the guillotine. Cloots died firmly. Hebert was in a
paroxysm of terror, which excited the contempt and derision of the mob.
The bold invectives against the Reign of Terror in the _Vieux
Cordelier_, written by Desmoulins, began to alarm the Committee of
Public Safety. Danton and Robespierre were implicated. They were
accused of favoring moderate measures, and of being opposed to
those acts of bloody rigor which were deemed necessary to crush the
aristocrats. Danton and Desmoulins were in favor of a return to mercy.
Robespierre, though opposed to cruelty and to needless carnage, was
sternly for death as the doom of every one not warmly co-operating with
the Revolution. To save himself from suspicion he became the accuser of
his two friends. And now it came the turn of Danton and Desmoulins to
tremble. For five years Danton and Robespierre had fought together to
overthrow royalty and found the Republic. But Danton was disgusted with
carnage, and had withdrawn from the Committee of Public Safety.
"Danton, do you know," said Eglantine to him one day, "of what you are
accused? They say that you have only launched the car of the Revolution
to enrich yourself, while Robespierre has remained poor in the midst of
the monarchical treasures thrown at his feet."
"Well," replied Danton, "do you know what that proves? that I love
gold, and that Robespierre loves blood. Robespierre is afraid of money
lest it should stain his hands."
Robespierre earnestly wished to associate Danton with him in all the
rigor of the Revolutionary government, for he respected the power of
this bold, indomitable man. They met at a dinner-party, through the
agency of a mutual friend, when matters were brought to a crisis. They
engaged in a dispute, Danton denouncing and reviling the acts of the
Revolutionary Tribunal, and Robespierre defending them, until they
separated in anger. The friends of Danton urged him either to escape by
flight or to take advantage of his popularity and throw himself upon
the army.
"My life is not worth the trouble," said Danton. "Besides, I am weary
of blood. I had rather be guillotined than be a guillotiner. They dare
not attack me. I am stronger than they."
A secret meeting of the Committee of Public Safety was convened by
night, and Danton was accused of the "treason of clemency." A subaltern
door-keeper heard the accusation, and ran to Danton's house to warn
him of his peril and to offer him an asylum. The young and beautiful
wife of Danton, with tears in her eyes, threw herself at his feet, and
implored him, for her sake and for that of their children, to accept
the proffered shelter. Danton proudly refused, saying,
"They will deliberate long before they will dare to strike a man like
me. While they deliberate I will surprise them."
He dismissed the door-keeper and retired to bed. At six o'clock _gens
d'armes_ entered his room with the order for his arrest.
"They dare, then," said Danton, crushing the paper in his hand. "They
are bolder than I had thought them to be."
He dressed, embraced his wife convulsively, and was conducted to
prison. At the same hour Camille Desmoulins and fourteen others, the
supposed partisans of Danton, were also arrested. It was the 31st of
March. Danton was taken to the Luxembourg. Here he found Desmoulins and
his other friends already incarcerated. As Danton entered the gloomy
portals of the prison he said,
"At length I perceive that, in revolutions, the supreme power
ultimately rests with the most abandoned."[416]
A crowd of the _detained_ immediately gathered around him, amazed at
that freak of fortune which had cast the most distinguished leader of
the Jacobins into the dungeons of the accused. Danton was humiliated
and annoyed by the gaze, and endeavored to veil his embarrassment under
the guise of derision.
"Yes," said he, raising his head and forcing loud laughter, "it is
Danton. Look at him well. The trick is well played. We must know how
to praise our enemies when they conduct adroitly. I would never have
believed that Robespierre could have juggled me thus." Then softening,
and growing more sincere, he said, "Gentlemen, I hoped to have been the
means of delivering you all from this place; but here I am among you,
and no one can tell where this will end."
The accused Dantonists--accused of advocating moderate measures in
the treatment of the enemies of the Revolution--were soon shut up in
separate cells. The report of the arrest of men of such acknowledged
power, and who had been so popular as patriots, spread anxiety and
gloom through Paris. The warmest friends of the arrested dared not
plead their cause; it would only have imperiled their own lives.
Even in the Assembly great excitement was produced by these important
arrests. The members gathered in groups and spoke to each other in
whispers, inquiring what all this meant and where it was to end. At
last, Légendre ventured to ascend the tribune, and said,
"Citizens, four members of this Assembly have been arrested during
the night. Danton is one. I know not the others. Citizens, I declare
that I believe Danton to be as pure as myself; yet he is in a dungeon.
They feared, no doubt, that his replies would overturn the accusations
brought against him. I move, therefore, that, before you listen to any
report, you send for the prisoners and hear them."
Robespierre immediately ascended the tribune and replied,
"By the unusual agitation which pervades this Assembly--by the
sensation the words of the speaker you have just heard have produced,
it is manifest that a question of great interest is before us--a
question whether two or three individuals shall be preferred to the
country. The question to-day is whether the interests of certain
ambitious hypocrites shall prevail over the interests of the French
nation. Légendre appears not to know the names of those who have been
arrested. All the Convention knows them. His friend Lacroix is among
the prisoners. Why does he pretend to be ignorant of it? Because he
knows that he can not defend Lacroix without shame. He has spoken of
Danton, doubtless because he thinks that a privilege is attached to
this name. No! we will have no privilege. No! we will have no idols. We
shall see to-day whether the Convention will break a false idol, long
since decayed, or whether in its fall it will crush the Convention and
the French people.
"I say, whoever now trembles is guilty, for never does innocence dread
public surveillance. Me, too, have they tried to alarm. It has been
attempted to make me believe that the danger which threatens Danton
might reach me. I have been written to. The friends of Danton have sent
me their letters; have besieged me with their importunities. They have
thought that the remembrance of a former acquaintance, that a past
belief in false virtues, might determine me to relax in my zeal and my
passion for liberty. Well, then, I declare that none of these motives
have touched my soul with the slightest impression; my life is for my
country, my heart is exempt from fear.
"I have seen in the flattery which has been addressed to me, in the
concern of those who surrounded Danton, only signs of the terror which
they felt, even before they were threatened. And I, too, have been the
friend of Pétion; as soon as he was unmasked I abandoned him. I have
also been acquainted with Roland; he became a traitor and I denounced
him. Danton would take their place, and in my eyes he is but an enemy
to his country."
Légendre, appalled, immediately retracted, and trembling for his
life, like a whipped spaniel, crouched before the terrible dictator.
At that moment St. Just came in, and read a long report against the
members under arrest. The substance of the vague and rambling charges
was that they had been bought up by the aristocrats and were enemies
to their country. The Assembly listened without a murmur, and then
unanimously, and even with applause, voted the impeachment of Danton
and his friends. "Every one sought to gain time with tyranny, and gave
up others' heads to save his own."[417]
The Dantonists were men of mark, and they now drank deeply of that
bitter chalice which they had presented to so many lips. Camille
Desmoulins, young, brilliant, enthusiastic, was one of the most
fascinating of men. His youthful and beautiful wife, Lucile, he loved
to adoration. They had one infant child, Horace, their pride and joy.
Camille was asleep in the arms of his wife when the noise of the butt
end of a musket on the threshold of his door aroused him. As the
soldiers presented the order for his arrest, he exclaimed, in anguish,
"This, then, is the recompense of the first voice of the Revolution."
Embracing his wife for the last time, and imprinting a kiss upon the
cheek of his child asleep in the cradle, he was hurried to prison.
Lucile, frantic with grief, ran through the streets of Paris to plead
with Robespierre and others for her husband; but her lamentations were
as unavailing as the moaning wind. In the following tender strain
Camille wrote his wife:
"My prison recalls to my mind the garden where I spent eight years
in beholding you. A glimpse of the garden of the Luxembourg brings
back to me a crowd of remembrances of our loves. I am alone, but
never have I been in thought, imagination, feeling nearer to you,
your mother, and to my little Horace. I am going to pass all my time
in prison in writing to you. I cast myself at your knees; I stretch
out my arms to embrace you; I find you no more. Send me the glass on
which are our two names; a book, which I bought some days ago, on
the immortality of the soul. I have need of persuading myself that
there is a God more just than man, and that I can not fail to see you
again. Do not grieve too much over my thoughts, dearest; I do not yet
despair of men. Yes! my beloved, we will see ourselves again in the
garden of the Luxembourg. Adieu, Lucile! Adieu, Horace! I can not
embrace you; but in the tears which I shed it appears that I press
you again to my bosom.
Thy Camille."
Lucile, frantic with grief, made the most desperate efforts to gain
access to Robespierre, but she was sternly repulsed. She then thus
imploringly wrote to him,
* * * * *
"Can you accuse us of treason, you who have profited so much by the
efforts we have made for our country? Camille has seen the birth of
your pride, the path you desired to tread, but he has recalled your
ancient friendship and shrunk from the idea of accusing a friend, a
companion of his labors. That hand which has pressed yours has too
soon abandoned the pen, since it could no longer trace your praise;
and you, you send him to death. But, Robespierre, will you really
accomplish the deadly projects which doubtless the vile souls which
surround you have inspired you with? Have you forgotten those bonds
which Camille never recalls without grief? you who prayed for our
union, who joined our hands in yours, who have smiled upon my son
whose infantile hands have so often caressed you? Can you, then,
reject my prayers, despise my tears, and trample justice under foot?
For you know it yourself, we do not merit the fate they are preparing
for us, and you can avert it. If it strike us, it is you who will
have ordered it. But what is, then, the crime of my Camille?
"I have not his pen to defend him. But the voice of good citizens,
and your heart, if it is sensible, will plead for me. Do you believe
that people will gain confidence in you by seeing you immolate your
best friends? Do you think that they will bless him who regards
neither the tears of the widow nor the death of the orphan? Poor
Camille! in the simplicity of his heart, how far was he from
suspecting the fate which awaits him to-day! He thought to labor
for your glory in pointing out to you what was still wanting to our
republic. He has, no doubt, been calumniated to you, Robespierre, for
you can not believe him guilty. Consider that he has never required
the death of any one--that he has never desired to injure by your
power, and that you were his oldest and his best friend. And you are
about to kill us both! For to strike him is to kill me--"
The unfinished letter she intrusted to her mother, but it never
reached the hands of Robespierre. The prisoners were soon taken to the
Conciergerie and plunged into the same dungeon into which they had
thrown the Girondists. The day of trial was appointed without delay. It
was the 3d of April. As the prisoners, fourteen in number, were arrayed
before the Tribunal, the president, Hermann, inquired of Danton, in
formal phrase, his name, age, and residence.
"My name," was the proud and defiant reply, "is Danton, well enough
known in the Revolution. I am thirty-five years old. My residence will
soon be void, and my name will exist in the Pantheon of history."
To the same question Camille Desmoulins replied, "I am thirty-three, a
fatal age to revolutionists,--the age of the _sans culotte_ Jesus when
he died."
The trial lasted three days. Danton, in his defense, struggled like a
lion in the toils. An immense crowd filled the court and crowded the
surrounding streets. The windows were open, and the thunders of his
voice were frequently heard even to the other side of the Seine. The
people in the streets, whom he doubtless meant to influence, caught up
his words and transmitted them from one to another. Some indications
of popular sympathy alarmed the Tribunal, and it was voted that the
accused were wanting in respect to the court, and should no longer be
heard in their defense. They were immediately condemned to die.
They were reconducted to their dungeon to prepare for the guillotine.
The fortitude of Camille Desmoulins was weakened by the strength of
his domestic attachments. "Oh, my dear Lucile! Oh, my Horace! what
will become of them!" he incessantly cried, while tears flooded his
eyes. Seizing a pen, he hastily wrote a few last words to Lucile, which
remain one of the most touching memorials of grief.
[Illustration: DANTON'S DEFENSE.]
"I have dreamed," he wrote, "of a republic which all the world would
have adored. I could not have believed that men were so cruel and
unjust. I do not dissimulate that I die a victim to my friendship for
Danton. I thank my assassins for allowing me to die with Philippeaux.
Pardon, my dear friend, my true life which I lost from the moment they
separated us. I occupy myself with my memory. I ought much rather to
cause you to forget it, my Lucile. I conjure you do not call to me by
your cries. They would rend my heart in the depths of the tomb. Live
for our child; talk to him of me; you may tell him what he can not
understand, that I should have loved him much. Despite my execution, I
believe there is a God. My blood will wash out my sins, the weakness of
my humanity; and whatever I have possessed of good, my virtues and my
love of liberty, God will recompense it. I shall see you again one day.
"O my Lucile, sensitive as I was, the death which delivers me from the
sight of so much crime, is it so great a misfortune? Adieu, my life, my
soul, my divinity upon earth! Adieu, Lucile! my Lucile! my dear Lucile!
Adieu, Horace! Annette! Adèle! Adieu, my father! I feel the shore of
life fly before me. I still see Lucile! I see her, my best beloved! my
Lucile! My bound hands embrace you, and my severed head rests still
upon you its dying eyes."
As Danton re-entered the gloomy corridor of the prison he said,
"It was just a year ago that I was instrumental in instituting the
Revolutionary Tribunal. I beg pardon of God and men. I intended it as a
measure of humanity, to prevent the renewal of the September massacres,
and that no man should suffer without trial. I did not mean that it
should prove the scourge of humanity."
Then, pressing his capacious brow between his hands, he said, "They
think that they can do without me. They deceive themselves. I was the
statesman of Europe. They do not suspect the void which this head
leaves."
"As to me," he continued, in cynical terms, "I have enjoyed my moments
of existence well. I have made plenty of noise upon earth. I have
tasted well of life. Let us go to sleep," and he made a gesture with
head and arms as if about to repose his head upon a pillow.
After a short pause he resumed, "We are sacrificed to the ambition of a
few dastardly brigands. But they will not long enjoy the fruit of their
villainy. I drag Robespierre after me. Robespierre follows me to the
grave." At four o'clock the executioners entered the Conciergerie to
bind their hands and cut off their hair.
"It will be very amusing," said Danton, "to the fools who will gape
at us in the streets, but we shall appear otherwise in the eyes of
posterity."
When the executioners laid hold of Camille Desmoulins, he struggled
in the most desperate resistance. But he was speedily thrown upon
the floor and bound, while the prison resounded with his shrieks and
imprecations. The whole fourteen Dantonists were placed in one cart.
Desmoulins seemed frantic with terror. He looked imploringly upon the
crowd, and incessantly cried,
"Save me, generous people! I am Camille Desmoulins. It was I who called
you to arms on the 14th of July. It was I who gave you the national
cockade."
He so writhed and twisted in the convulsions of his agony that his
clothes were nearly torn from his back. Danton stood in moody silence,
occasionally endeavoring to appease the turbulence of Desmoulins.
Herault de Séchelles first ascended the scaffold. As he alighted from
the cart he endeavored to embrace Danton. The brutal executioner
interposed.
"Wretch," said Danton, "you will not, at least, prevent our heads from
kissing presently in the basket."
Desmoulins followed next. In his hand he held a lock of his wife's
hair. For an instant he gazed upon the blade, streaming with the blood
of his friend, and then said, turning to the populace,
"Look at the end of the first apostle of liberty. The monsters who
murder me will not survive me long."
The axe fell, and his head dropped into the basket. Danton looked
proudly, imperturbably on as, one after another, the heads of his
thirteen companions fell. He was the last to ascend the scaffold. For a
moment he was softened as he thought of his wife.
"Oh my wife, my dear wife," said he, "shall I never see you again?"
Then checking himself, he said, "But, Danton, no weakness." Turning to
the executioner, he proudly remarked, "You will show my head to the
people; it will be well worth the display."
His head fell. The executioner, seizing it by the hair, walked around
the platform, holding it up to the gaze of the populace. A shout
of applause rose from the infatuated people. "Thus," says Mignet,
"perished the last defenders of humanity and moderation, the last who
sought to promote peace among the conquerors of the Revolution and
pity for the conquered. For a long time after them no voice was raised
against the dictatorship of terror, and from one end of France to the
other it struck silent and redoubled blows. The Girondists had sought
to prevent this violent reign, the Dantonists to stop it. All perished,
and the conquerors had the more victims to strike, the more the foes
arose around them."
The Robespierrians, having thus struck down the leaders of the moderate
party, pursued their victory, by crushing all of the advocates of
moderation from whom they apprehended the slightest danger. Day after
day the guillotine ran red with blood. Even the devoted wife of Camille
Desmoulins, but twenty-three years of age, was not spared. It was her
crime that she loved her husband, and that she might excite sympathy
for his fate. Resplendent with grace and beauty, she was dragged before
the Revolutionary Tribunal. Little Horace was left an orphan, to cry in
his cradle. Lucile displayed heroism upon the scaffold unsurpassed by
that of Charlotte Corday or Madame Roland. When condemned to death she
said calmly to her judges,
"I shall, then, in a few hours, again meet my husband. In departing
from this world, in which nothing now remains to engage my affections,
I am far less the object of pity than are you."
Robespierre had been the intimate friend of Desmoulins and Lucile. He
had often eat of their bread and drunk of their cup in social converse.
He was a guest at their wedding. Madame Duplessis, the mother of
Lucile, was one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of France.
In vain she addressed herself to Robespierre and all his friends, in
almost frantic endeavors to save her daughter.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.]
"Robespierre," she wrote to him, "is it not enough to have assassinated
your best friend; do you desire also the blood of his wife, of my
daughter? Your master, Fouquier Tinville, has just ordered her to be
led to the scaffold. Two hours more and she will not be in existence.
Robespierre, if you are not a tiger in human shape, if the blood of
Camille has not inebriated you to the point of losing your reason
entirely, if you recall still our evenings of intimacy, if you recall
to yourself the caresses you lavished upon the little Horace, and how
you delighted to hold him upon your knees, and if you remember that
you were to have been my son-in-law, spare an innocent victim! But, if
thy fury is that of a lion, come and take us also, myself, Adèle [her
other daughter], and Horace. Come and tear us away with thy hands still
reeking in the blood of Camille. Come, come, and let one single tomb
reunite us."
To this appeal Robespierre returned no reply. Lucile was left to her
fate. In the same car of the condemned with Madame Hebert she was
conducted to the guillotine. She had dressed herself for the occasion
with remarkable grace. A white gauze veil, partially covering her
luxuriant hair, embellished her marvelous beauty. With alacrity and
apparent cheerfulness she ascended the steps, placed her head upon the
fatal plank, and a smile was upon her lips as the keen-edged knife,
with the rapidity of the lightning's stroke, severed her head from her
body.
While these cruel scenes were transpiring in Paris, and similar scenes
in all parts of France, the republican armies on the frontiers were
struggling to repel the invading armies of allied Europe. It was the
fear that internal enemies would rise and combine with the foreign foe
which goaded the Revolutionists to such measures of desperation. They
knew that the triumph of the Bourbons was their certain death. The
English were now in possession of Toulon, the arsenal of the French
navy, which had been treasonably surrendered to an English fleet by the
friends of the Bourbons. A republican army had for some months been
besieging the city, but had made no progress toward the expulsion of
the invaders.
Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young man about twenty-five years of age and
a lieutenant in the army, was sent to aid the besiegers. His genius
soon placed him in command of the artillery. With almost superhuman
energy, and skill never before surpassed, he pressed the siege, and,
in one of the most terrific midnight attacks which ever has been
witnessed, drove the British from the soil of France. This is the first
time that Napoleon appears as an actor in the drama of the Revolution.
The achievement gave him great renown in the army. On this occasion
the humanity of Napoleon was as conspicuous as his energy. He abhorred
alike the tyrannic sway of the Bourbons and the sanguinary rule of the
Jacobins. One of the deputies of the Convention wrote to Carnot, then
Minister of War, "I send you a young man who distinguished himself
very much during the siege, and earnestly recommend you to advance him
speedily. If you do not, he will most assuredly advance himself."
At St. Helena Napoleon said, "I was a very warm and sincere Republican
at the commencement of the Revolution. I cooled by degrees, in
proportion as I acquired more just and solid ideas. My patriotism sank
under the political absurdities and monstrous domestic excesses of our
legislatures."[418]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 411: "Few victims ever met with viler executioners; few
executioners with so exulted a victim. Shame at the foot of the
scaffold, glory above, and pity every where. One blushes to be a man in
contemplating this people. One glories in this title in contemplating
Bailly."--_Lamartine, Hist. Gir._, vol. iii., p. 282.]
[Footnote 412: In Parl. Hist., "I would not _debauch_ my humanity."]
[Footnote 413: History of Civilization in England, by Henry Thomas
Buckle, vol. i., p. 338.]
[Footnote 414: Hebert was a low fellow, impudent, ignorant, and
corrupt, and connected with one of the theatres in Paris. He was an
ardent Jacobin, and established a paper called "Father Duchesne,"
which, from its ribaldry, was eagerly sought for by the populace. He
was one of the leaders of the prison massacres on the 10th of August.
His paper was the zealous advocate of atheism. He it was who brought
the disgusting charge against the queen that she had endeavored to
pollute her own son, and had committed incest with him, a child of
eight years. Robespierre even was indignant at the foul accusation, and
exclaimed, "Madman! was it not enough for him to have asserted that she
was a Messalina, without also making an Agrippina of her?"--_Biographie
Moderne._]
[Footnote 415: In this celebrated pamphlet, the "Old Cordelier,"
Desmoulins thus powerfully describes France, while pretending to
describe Rome under the emperors: "Every thing, under that terrible
government, was made the groundwork of suspicion. Does a citizen
avoid society and live retired by his fireside? That is to ruminate
in private on sinister designs. Is he rich? That renders the danger
greater that he will corrupt the citizens by his largesses. Is he poor?
None so dangerous as those who have nothing to lose. Is he thoughtful
and melancholy? He is revolving what he calls the calamities of his
country. Is he gay and dissipated? He is concealing, like Cæsar,
ambition under the mask of pleasure. The natural death of a celebrated
man has become so rare that historians transmit it, as a matter worthy
of record, to future ages. The tribunals, once the protectors of life
and property, have become the mere organs of butchery."
Speaking of Hebert, he said, "Hebert, the head of this turbulent
and atrocious faction, is a miserable intriguer, a caterer for the
guillotine, a traitor paid by Pitt, a thief expelled for theft from his
office of check-taker at a theatre."--_Le Vieux Cordelier._]
[Footnote 416: Rioufle, p. 67.]
[Footnote 417: Mignet, p. 245.]
[Footnote 418: Napoleon at St. Helena, p. 125.]