MADAME ROLAND AND THE JACOBINS.
1792
Advance of the allies.--Hopes of the king's friends.--Consternation
at Paris.--Speech of Danton.--Despotic measures.--Domiciliary
visits.--Opening of the catacombs.--Terror of the people.--Scenes of
terror.--Vain attempts at concealment.--Numbers arrested.--The
priests.--A human fiend.--Butchery of the priests.--Arrival at the
prison.--Prison tribunal.--Massacre in the prisons.--Fiendish
orgies.--Female spectators.--Character of the victims.--The
Bicetre.--Numbers massacred.--Girls sent to the guillotine.--Their
heroism.--The assassins rewarded.--They threaten their
instigators.--Ascendency of the mob.--Peril of the Girondists.--The
Assembly surrounded.--Adroitness of the Jacobins.--Advance of the
allies.--Robespierre and Danton.--Bold measures proposed by Madame
Roland.--Decisive stand taken by MM. Roland and Vergniaud.--The
Girondists defeated.--Resignation of M. Roland.--Attacks upon Madame
Roland.--How received in the Assembly.--Letter from M. Roland.--Its
lofty tone.--Danton seeks a reconciliation.--His failure.--Plans of
the Jacobins.--Fearlessness of Madame Roland.
The Prussians were now advancing on their march to Paris. One after
another of the frontier cities of France were capitulating to the
invaders as the storm of bomb-shells, from the batteries of the allied
army, was rained down upon their roofs. The French were retreating
before their triumphant adversaries. Sanguine hopes sprung up in the
bosoms of the friends of the monarchy that the artillery of the
Prussians would soon demolish the iron doors of the Temple, where the
king and the royal family were imprisoned, and reinstate the captive
monarch upon his throne. The Revolutionists were almost frantic in
view of their peril. They knew that there were tens of thousands in
Paris, of the most wealthy and the most influential, and hundreds of
thousands in France, who would, at the slightest prospect of success,
welcome the Prussians as their deliverers. Should the king thus prove
victorious, the leaders in the revolutionary movement had sinned too
deeply to hope for pardon. Death was their inevitable doom.
Consternation pervaded the metropolis. The magnitude of this peril
united all the revolutionary parties for their common defense. Even
Vergniaud, the most eloquent leader of the Girondists, proposed a
decree of death against every citizen of a besieged city who should
speak of surrender.
It was midnight in the Assembly. The most extraordinary and despotic
measures were adopted by acclamation to meet the fearful emergency.
"We must rouse the whole populace of France," exclaimed Danton, in
those tones which now began to thrill so portentously upon the ear of
Europe, "and hurl them, _en masse_, upon our invaders. There are
traitors in Paris, ready to join our foes. We must arrest them all,
however numerous they may be. The peril is imminent. The precautions
adopted must be correspondingly prompt and decisive. With the morning
sun we must visit every dwelling in Paris, and imprison those whom we
have reason to fear will join the enemies of the nation, even though
they be thirty thousand in number."
The decree passed without hesitation. The gates of Paris were to be
locked, that none might escape. Carriages were to be excluded from
the streets. All citizens were ordered to be at home. The sections,
the tribunals, the clubs were to suspend their sittings, that the
public attention might not be distracted. All houses were to be
brilliantly lighted in the evening, that the search might be more
effectually conducted. Commissaries, accompanied by armed soldiers,
were, in the name of the law, to enter every dwelling. Each citizen
should show what arms he had. If any thing excited suspicion, the
individual and his premises were to be searched with the utmost
vigilance. If the slightest deception had been practiced, in denying
or in not fully confessing any suspicious appearances, the person was
to be arrested and imprisoned. If a person were found in any dwelling
but his own, he was to be imprisoned as under suspicion. Guards were
to be placed in all unoccupied houses. A double cordon of soldiers
were stationed around the walls, to arrest all who should attempt to
escape. Armed boats floated upon the Seine, at the two extremities of
Paris, that every possible passage of escape might be closed. Gardens,
groves, promenades, all were to be searched.
With so much energy was this work conducted, that that very night a
body of workmen were sent, with torches and suitable tools, to open an
access to the subterranean burial-grounds extending under a portion of
Paris, that a speedy disposal might be made of the anticipated
multitude of dead bodies. The decree, conveying terror to ten thousand
bosoms, spread with the rapidity of lightning through the streets and
the dwellings of Paris. Every one who had expressed a sentiment of
loyalty; every one who had a friend who was an emigrant or a loyalist;
every one who had uttered a word of censure in reference to the
sanguinary atrocities of the Revolution; every one who inherited an
illustrious name, or who had an unfriendly neighbor or an inimical
servant, trembled at the swift approach of the impending doom.
Bands of men, armed with pikes, brought into power from the dregs of
society, insolent, merciless, and resistless, accompanied by martial
music, traversed the streets in all directions. As the commissaries
knocked at a door, the family within were pale and paralyzed with
terror. The brutal inquisitors appeared to delight in the anguish
which their stern office extorted, and the more refined the family in
culture or the more elevated in rank, the more severely did vulgarity
in power trample them in the dust of humiliation. They took with them
workmen acquainted with all possible modes of concealment. They broke
locks, burst in panels, cut open beds and mattresses, tore up floors,
sounded wells, explored garrets and cellars for secret doors and
vaults, and could they find in any house an individual whom affection
or hospitality had sheltered, a rusty gun, an old picture of any
member of the royal family, a button with the royal arms, a letter
from a suspected person, or containing a sentiment against the "Reign
of Terror," the father was instantly and rudely torn from his home,
his wife, his children, and hurried with ignominious violence, as a
traitor unfit to live, through the streets, to the prison. It was a
night of woe in Paris.
The friends of the monarchy soon found all efforts at concealment
unavailing. They had at first crept into chimneys, from which they
were soon smoked out. They had concealed themselves behind tapestry.
But pikes and bayonets were with derision thrust through their bodies.
They had burrowed in holes in the cellars, and endeavored to blind the
eye of pursuit by coverings of barrels, or lumber, or wood, or coal.
But the stratagems of affection were equally matched by the sagacity
of revolutionary phrensy, and the doomed were dragged to light. Many
of the Royalists had fled to the hospitals, where, in the wards of
infection, they shared the beds of the dead and the dying. But even
there they were followed and arrested. The domiciliary visits were
continued for three days. "The whole city was like a prisoner, whose
limbs are held while he is searched and fettered." Ten thousand
suspected persons were seized and committed to the prisons. Many were
massacred in their dwellings or in the streets. Some were subsequently
liberated, as having been unjustly arrested.
Thirty priests were dragged into a room at the Hotel de Ville. Five
coaches, each containing six of the obnoxious prisoners, started to
convey them to the prison of the Abbayé. A countless mob gathered
around them as an alarm-gun gave the signal for the coaches to proceed
on their way. The windows were open that the populace might see those
whom they deemed traitors to their country, and whom they believed to
be ready to join the army of invasion, now so triumphantly
approaching. Every moment the mob increased in density, and with
difficulty the coaches wormed their way through the tumultuous
gatherings. Oaths and execrations rose on every side. Gestures and
threats of violence were fearfully increasing, when a vast multitude
of men, and women, and boys came roaring down a cross-street, and so
completely blocked up the way that a peaceful passage was impossible.
The carriages stopped. A man with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the
elbows, and a glittering saber in his hand, forced his way through the
escort, and, deliberately standing upon the steps of one of the
coaches, clinging with one hand to the door, plunged again, and again,
and again his saber into the bodies of the priests, wherever chance
might direct it. He drew it out reeking with blood, and waved it
before the people. A hideous yell of applause rose from the multitude,
and again he plunged his saber into the carriage. The assassin then
passed to the next coach, and again enacted the same act of horrid
butchery upon the struggling priests crowded into the carriages, with
no shield and with no escape. Thus he went, from one to the other,
through the whole line of coaches, while the armed escort looked on
with derisive laughter, and shouts of fiendish exultation rose from
the phrensied multitude. The mounted troops slowly forced open a
passage for the carriages, and they moved along, marking their passage
by the streams of blood which dripped, from their dead and dying
inmates, upon the pavements. When they arrived at the prison, eight
dead bodies were dragged from the floor of the vehicles, and many of
those not dead were horridly mutilated and clotted with gore. The
wretched victims precipitated themselves with the utmost consternation
into the prison, as a retreat from the billows of rage surging and
roaring around them.
But the scene within was still more terrible than that without. In the
spacious hall opening into the court-yard of the prison there was a
table, around which sat twelve men. Their brawny limbs, and coarse and
brutal countenances, proclaimed them familiar with debauch and blood.
Their attire was that of the lowest class in society, with woolen caps
on their heads, shirt sleeves rolled up, unembarrassed by either vest
or coat, and butchers' aprons bound around them. At the head of the
table sat Maillard, at that time the idol of the blood-thirsty mob of
Paris. These men composed a self-constituted tribunal to award life or
instant death to those brought before them. First appeared one
hundred and fifty Swiss officers and soldiers who had been in the
employ of the king. They were brought _en masse_ before the tribunal.
"You have assassinated the people," said Maillard, "and they demand
vengeance." The door was open. The assassins in the court-yard, with
weapons reeking with blood, were howling for their prey. The soldiers
were driven into the yard, and they fell beneath the blows of
bayonets, sabers, and clubs, and their gory bodies were piled up, a
hideous mound, in the corners of the court. The priests, without
delay, met with the same fate. A moment sufficed for trial, and
verdict, and execution. Night came. Brandy and excitement had roused
the demon in the human heart. Life was a plaything, murder a pastime.
Torches were lighted, refreshments introduced, songs of mirth and
joviality rose upon the night air, and still the horrid carnage
continued unabated. Now and then, from caprice, one was liberated; but
the innocent and the guilty fell alike. Suspicion was crime. An
illustrious name was guilt. There was no time for defense. A frown
from the judge was followed by a blow from the assassin. A similar
scene was transpiring in all the prisons of Paris. Carts were
continually arriving to remove the dead bodies, which accumulated much
faster than they could be borne away. The court-yards became wet and
slippery with blood. Straw was brought in and strewn thickly over the
stones, and benches were placed against the walls to accommodate those
women who wished to gaze upon the butchery. The benches were
immediately filled with females, exulting in the death of all whom
they deemed tainted with aristocracy, and rejoicing to see the exalted
and the refined falling beneath the clubs of the ragged and the
degraded. The murderers made use of the bodies of the dead for seats,
upon which they drank their brandy mingled with gunpowder, and smoked
their pipes. In the nine prisons of Paris these horrors continued
unabated till they were emptied of their victims. Men most illustrious
in philanthropy, rank, and virtue, were brained with clubs by
overgrown boys, who accompanied their blows with fiendish laughter.
Ladies of the highest accomplishments, of exalted beauty and of
spotless purity, were hacked in pieces by the lowest wretches who had
crawled from the dens of pollution, and their dismembered limbs were
borne on the points of pikes in derision through the streets of the
metropolis. Children, even, were involved in this blind slaughter.
They were called the cubs of aristocracy.
We can not enter more minutely into the details of these sickening
scenes, for the soul turns from them weary of life; and yet thus far
we must go, for it is important that all eyes should read this
dreadful yet instructive lesson--that all may _know_ that there is no
despotism so dreadful as the despotism of anarchy--that there are no
laws more to be abhorred than the absence of all law.
In the prison of the Bicetre there were three thousand five hundred
captives. The ruffians forced the gates, drove in the dungeon doors
with cannon, and for five days and five nights continued the
slaughter. The phrensy of the intoxicated mob increased each day, and
hordes came pouring out from all the foul dens of pollution greedy for
carnage. The fevered thirst for blood was inextinguishable. No tongue
can now tell the number of the victims. The mangled bodies were
hurried to the catacombs, and thrown into an indiscriminate heap of
corruption. By many it is estimated that more than ten thousand fell
during these massacres. The tidings of these outrages spread through
all the provinces of France, and stimulated to similar atrocities the
mob in every city. At Orleans the houses of merchants were sacked, the
merchants and others of wealth or high standing massacred, while some
who had offered resistance were burned at slow fires.
In one town, in the vicinity of the Prussian army, some Loyalist
gentlemen, sanguine in view of the success of their friends, got up an
entertainment in honor of their victories. At this entertainment their
daughters danced. The young ladies were all arrested, fourteen in
number, and taken in a cart to the guillotine. These young and
beautiful girls, all between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and
from the most refined and opulent families, were beheaded. The group
of youth and innocence stood clustered at the foot of the scaffold,
while, one by one, their companions ascended, were bound to the plank,
the ax fell, and their heads dropped into the basket. It seems that
there must have been some supernatural power of support to have
sustained children under so awful an ordeal. There were no faintings,
no loud lamentations, no shrieks of despair. With the serenity of
martyrs they met their fate, each one emulous of showing to her
companions how much like a heroine she could die.
These scenes were enacted at the instigation of the Jacobins. Danton
and Marat urged on these merciless measures of lawless violence. "We
must," said they, "strike _terror_ into the hearts of our foes. It is
our only safety." They sent agents into the most degraded quarters of
the city to rouse and direct the mob. They voted abundant supplies to
the wretched assassins who had broken into the prisons, and involved
youth and age, and innocence and guilt, in indiscriminate carnage. The
murderers, reeking in intoxication and besmeared with blood, came in
crowds to the door of the municipality to claim their reward. "Do you
think," said a brawny, gigantic wretch, with tucked-up sleeves, in the
garb of a butcher, and with his whole person bespattered with blood
and brains, "do you think that I have earned but twenty-four francs
to-day? I have killed forty aristocrats with my own hands!" The money
was soon exhausted, and still the crowd of assassins thronged the
committee. Indignant that their claims were not instantly discharged,
they presented their bloody weapons at the throats of their
instigators, and threatened them with immediate death if the money
were not furnished. Thus urged, the committee succeeded in paying one
half the sum, and gave bonds for the rest.
M. Roland was almost frantic in view of these horrors, which he had no
power to quell. The mob, headed by the Jacobins, had now the complete
ascendency, and he was minister but in name. He urged upon the
Assembly the adoption of immediate and energetic measures to arrest
these execrable deeds of lawless violence. Many of the Girondists in
the Assembly gave vehement but unavailing utterance to their
execration of the massacres. Others were intimidated by the weapon
which the Jacobins were now so effectually wielding; for they knew
that it might not be very difficult so to direct the fury of the mob
as to turn those sharp blades, now dripping with blood, from the
prisons into the hall of Assembly, and upon the throats of all
obnoxious to Jacobin power. The Girondists trembled in view of their
danger. They had aided in opening the sluice-ways of a torrent which
was now sweeping every thing before it. Madame Roland distinctly saw
and deeply felt the peril to which she and her friends were exposed.
She knew, and they all knew, that defeat was death. The great struggle
now in the Assembly was for the popular voice. The Girondists hoped,
though almost in despair, that it was not yet too late to show the
people the horrors of anarchy, and to rally around themselves the
multitude to sustain a well-established and law-revering republic. The
Jacobins determined to send their opponents to the scaffold, and by
the aid of the terrors of the mob, now enlisted on their side,
resistlessly to carry all their measures. A hint from the Jacobin
leaders surrounded the Assembly with the hideous howlings of a haggard
concourse of beings just as merciless and demoniac as lost spirits.
They exhibited these allies to the Girondists as a bull-dog shows his
teeth.
In speeches, and placards, and proclamations they declared the
Girondists to be, in heart, the enemies of the Republic. They accused
them of hating the Revolution in consequence of its necessary
severity, and of plotting in secret for the restoration of the king.
With great adroitness, they introduced measures which the Girondists
must either support, and thus aid the Jacobins, or oppose, and
increase the suspicion of the populace, and rouse their rage against
them. The allied army, with seven thousand French emigrants and over a
hundred thousand highly-disciplined troops, under the most able and
experienced generals, was slowly but surely advancing toward Paris, to
release the king, replace him on the throne, and avenge the insults to
royalty. The booming of their artillery was heard reverberating among
the hills of France, ever drawing nearer and nearer to the insurgent
metropolis, and sending consternation into all hearts. Under these
circumstances, the Jacobins, having massacred those deemed the friends
of the aristocrats, now gathered their strength to sweep before them
all their adversaries. They passed a decree ordering every man in
Paris, capable of bearing arms, to shoulder his musket and march to
the frontiers to meet the invaders. If money was wanted, it was only
necessary to send to the guillotine the aristocrat who possessed it,
and to confiscate his estate.
Robespierre and Danton had now broken off all intimacy with Madame
Roland and her friends. They no longer appeared in the little library
where the Girondist leaders so often met, but, placing themselves at
the head of the unorganized and tumultuous party now so rapidly
gaining the ascendency, they were swept before it as the crest is
borne by the billow. Madame Roland urged most strenuously upon her
friends that those persons in the Assembly, the leaders of the Jacobin
party, who had instigated the massacres in the prisons, should be
accused, and brought to trial and punishment. It required peculiar
boldness, at that hour, to accuse Robespierre and Danton of crime.
Though thousands in France were horror-stricken at these outrages, the
mob, who now ruled Paris, would rally instantaneously at the sound of
the tocsin for the protection of their idols.
Madame Roland was one evening urging Vergniaud to take that heroic and
desperate stand. "The only hope for France," said she "is in the
sacredness of law. This atrocious carnage causes thousands of bosoms
to thrill with horror, and all the wise and the good in France and in
the world will rise to sustain those who expose their own hearts as a
barrier to arrest such enormities."
"Of what avail," was the reply, in tones of sadness, "can such
exertions be? The assassins are supported by all the power of the
street. Such a conflict must necessarily terminate in a street fight.
The cannon are with our foes. The most prominent of the friends of
order are massacred. Terror will restrain the rest. We shall only
provoke our own destruction."
"Of what use is life," rejoins the intrepid woman, "if we must live in
this base subjection to a degraded mob? Let us contend for the right,
and if we must die, let us rejoice to die with dignity and with
heroism."
Though despairing of success, and apprehensive that their own doom was
already sealed, M. Roland and Vergniaud, roused to action by this
ruling spirit, the next day made their appearance in the Assembly with
the heroic resolve to throw themselves before the torrent now rushing
so wildly. They stood there, however, but the representatives of
Madame Roland, inspired by her energies, and giving utterance to those
eloquent sentiments which had burst from her lips.
The Assembly listened in silence as M. Roland, in an energetic
discourse, proclaimed the true principles of law and order, and called
upon the Assembly to defend its own dignity against popular violence,
and to raise an armed force consecrated to the security of liberty and
justice. Encouraged by these appearances of returning moderation,
others of the Girondists rose, and, with great boldness and vehemence,
urged decisive action. "It requires some courage," said Kersaint, "to
rise up here against assassins, but it is time to erect scaffolds for
those who provoke assassination." The strife continued for two or
three days, with that intense excitement which a conflict for life or
death must necessarily engender. The question between the Girondist
and the Jacobin was, "Who shall lie down on the guillotine?" For some
time the issue of the struggle was uncertain. The Jacobins summoned
their allies, the mob. They surrounded the doors and the windows of
the Assembly, and with their howlings sustained their friends. "I have
just passed through the crowd," said a member, "and have witnessed its
excitement. If the act of accusation is carried, many a head will lie
low before another morning dawns." The Girondists found themselves, at
the close of the struggle, defeated, yet not so decidedly but that
they still clung to hope.
M. Roland, who had not yet entirely lost, with the people, that
popularity which swept him, on so triumphant a billow, again into the
office of Minister of the Interior, now, conscious of his utter
impotency, presented to the Assembly his resignation of power which
was merely nominal. Great efforts had for some time been made, by his
adversaries, to turn the tide of popular hatred against him, and
especially against his wife, whom Danton and Robespierre recognized
and proclaimed as the animating and inspiring soul of the Girondist
party.
The friends of Roland urged, with high encomiums upon his character,
that he should be invited to retain his post. The sentiment of the
Assembly was wavering in his favor. Danton, excessively annoyed, arose
and said, with a sneer, "I oppose the invitation. Nobody appreciates
M. Roland more justly than myself. But if you give him this
invitation, you must give his wife one also. Every one knows that M.
Roland is not alone in his department. As for myself, in my department
I am alone. I have no wife to help me."
These indecorous and malicious allusions were received with shouts of
derisive laughter from the Jacobin benches. The majority, however,
frowned upon Danton with deep reproaches for such an attack upon a
lady. One of the Girondists immediately ascended the tribune. "What
signifies it to the country," said he, "whether Roland possesses an
intelligent wife, who inspires him with her additional energy, or
whether he acts from his own resolution alone?" The defense was
received with much applause.
The next day, Roland, as Minister of the Interior, presented a letter
to the Convention, expressing his determination to continue in office.
It was written by Madame Roland in strains of most glowing eloquence,
and in the spirit of the loftiest heroism and the most dignified
defiance. "The Convention is wise," said this letter, "in not giving a
solemn invitation to a man to remain in the ministry. It would attach
too great importance to a name. But the _deliberation_ honors me, and
clearly pronounces the desire of the Convention. That wish satisfies
me. It opens to me the career. I espouse it with courage. I remain in
the ministry. I remain because there are perils to face. I am not
blind to them, but I brave them fearlessly. The salvation of my
country is the object in view. To that I devote myself, even to death.
I am accused of wanting courage. Is no courage requisite in these
times in denouncing the protectors of assassins?"
Thus Madame Roland, sheltered in the seclusion of her library, met, in
spirit, in the fierce struggle of the tribune, Robespierre, Danton,
and Marat. They knew from whose shafts these keen arrows were shot.
The Girondists knew to whom they were indebted for many of the most
skillful parries and retaliatory blows. The one party looked to her
almost with adoration; the other, with implacable hate. Never before,
probably, in the history of the world, has a woman occupied such a
position, and never by a woman will such a position be occupied again.
Danton began to recoil from the gulf opening before him, and wished to
return to alliance with the Girondists. He expressed the most profound
admiration for the talents, energy, and sagacity of Madame Roland. "We
must act together," said he, "or the wave of the Revolution will
overwhelm us all. United, we can stem it. Disunited, it will overpower
us." Again he appeared in the library of Madame Roland, in a last
interview with the Girondists. He desired a coalition. They could not
agree. Danton insisted that they must overlook the massacres, and give
at least an implied assent to their necessity. "We will agree to all,"
said the Girondists, "except impunity to murderers and their
accomplices." The conference was broken up. Danton, irritated,
withdrew, and placed himself by the side of Robespierre. Again the
Jacobins and the Girondists prepared for the renewal of their
struggle. It was not a struggle for power merely, but for life. The
Girondists, knowing that the fury of the Revolution would soon sweep
over every thing, unless they could bring back the people to a sense
of justice--would punish with the scaffold those who had incited the
massacre of thousands of uncondemned citizens. The Jacobins would rid
themselves of their adversaries by overwhelming them in the same
carnage to which they had consigned the Loyalists. Madame Roland might
have fled from these perils, and have retired with her husband to
regions of tranquillity and of safety but she urged M. Roland to
remain at his post and resolved to remain herself and meet her
destiny, whatever it might be. Never did a mortal face danger, with a
full appreciation of its magnitude, with more stoicism than was
exhibited by this most ardent and enthusiastic of women.