hardships or confinement, and in fact, wretched as personal
inconvenience could make it, was yet Elysium, compared to the
prisons of other departments. At St. Omer, the prisoners were
frequently disturbed at midnight by the entrance of men into their
apartments, who, with the detestable ensign of their order, (red
caps,) and pipes in their mouths, came by way of frolic to search
their pockets, trunks, &c.--At Montreuil, the Maisons d'Arret were
under the direction of a Commissary, whose behaviour to the female
prisoners was too atrocious for recital--two young women, in
particular, who refused to purchase milder treatment, were locked up
in a room for seventeen days.--Soon after I left Arras, every prison
became a den of horror. The miserable inhabitants were subject to
the agents of Le Bon, whose avarice, cruelty, and licentiousness,
were beyond any thing a humane mind can imagine. Sometimes the
houses were suddenly surrounded by an armed force, the prisoners
turned out in the depth of winter for several hours into an open
court, during the operation of robbing them of their pocket-books,
buckles, ear-rings, or whatever article of value they had about
them. At other times they were visited by the same military array,
and deprived of their linen and clothes. Their wine and provisions
were likewise taken from them in the same manner--wives were
separated from their husbands, parents from their children, old men
treated with the most savage barbarity, and young women with an
indecency still more abominable. All communication, either by
writing or otherwise, was often prohibited for many days together,
and an order was once given to prevent even the entry of provisions,
which was not revoked till the prisoners became absolutely
distressed. At the Hotel Dieu they were forbidden to draw more than
a single jug of water in twenty-four hours. At the Providence, the
well was left three days without a cord, and when the unfortunate
females confined there procured people to beg water of the
neighbours, they were refused, "because it was for prisoners, and if
Le Bon heard of it he might be displeased!" Windows were blocked
up, not to prevent escape, but to exclude air; and when the general
scarcity rendered it impossible for the prisoners to procure
sufficient food for their support, their small portions were
diminished at the gate, under pretext of searching for letters, &c.
--People, respectable both for their rank and character, were
employed to clean the prisons and privies, while their low and
insolent tyrants looked on and insulted them. On an occasion when
one of the Maisons d'Arrets was on fire, guards were planted round,
with orders to fire upon those that should attempt to escape.--My
memory has but too faithfully recorded these and still greater
horrors; but curiosity would be gratified but too dearly by the
relation. I added the above note some months after writing the
letter to which it is annexed.
Nov. 20.
Besides the gentry and clergy of this department, we have likewise for
companions a number of inhabitants of Lisle, arrested under circumstances
singularly atrocious, even where atrocity is the characteristic of almost
every proceeding.--In the month of August a decree was passed to oblige
all the nobility, clergy, and their servants, as well as all those
persons who had been in the service of emigrants, to depart from Lisle in
eight-and-forty hours, and prohibiting their residence within twenty
leagues from the frontiers. Thus banished from their own habitations,
they took refuge in different towns, at the prescribed distance; but,
almost as soon as they were arrived, and had been at the expence of
settling themselves, they were arrested as strangers,* and conducted to
prison.
* I have before, I believe, noticed that the term estranger at this
time did not exclusively apply to foreigners, but to such as had
come from one town to another, who were at inns or on a visit to
their friends.
It will not be improper to notice here the conduct of the government
towards the towns that have been besieged. Thionville,* to whose gallant
defence in 1792 France owed the retreat of the Prussians and the safety
of Paris, was afterwards continually reproached with aristocracy; and
when the inhabitants sent a deputation to solicit an indemnity for the
damage the town had sustained during the bombardment a member of the
Convention threatened them from the tribune with "indemnities a coup de
baton!" that is, in our vernacular tongue, with a good thrashing.
* Wimpsen, who commanded there, and whose conduct at the time was
enthusiastically admired, was driven, most probably by the
ingratitude and ill treatment of the Convention, to head a party of
the Foederalists.--These legislators perpetually boast of imitating
and surpassing the Romans, and it is certain, that their ingratitude
has made more than one Coriolanus. The difference is, that they are
not jealous for the liberty of the country, but for their own
personal safety.
The inhabitants of Lisle, who had been equally serviceable in stopping
the progress of the Austrians, for a long time petitioned without effect
to obtain the sums already voted for their relief. The noblesse, and
others from thence who have been arrested, as soon as it was known that
they were Lillois, were treated with peculiar rigour;* and an _armee
revolutionnaire,_** with the Guillotine for a standard, has lately
harrassed the town and environs of Lisle, as though it were a conquered
country.
* The Commandant of Lisle, on his arrival at the Bicetre, was
stripped of a considerable sum of money, and a quantity of plate he
had unluckily brought with him by way of security. Out of this he
is to be supplied with fifty livres at a time in paper, which,
according to the exchange and the price of every thing, is, I
suppose, about half a guinea.
** The armee revolutionnaire was first raised by order of the
Jacobins, for the purpose of searching the countries for provisions,
and conducting them to Paris. Under this pretext, a levy was made
of all the most desperate ruffians that could be collected together.
They were divided into companies, each with its attendant
Guillotine, and then distributed in the different departments:
they had extraordinary pay, and seem to have been subject to no
discipline. Many of them were distinguished by the representation
of a Guillotine in miniature, and a head just severed, on their
cartouch-boxes. It would be impossible to describe half the
enormities committed by these banditti: wherever they went they were
regarded as a scourge, and every heart shrunk at their approach.
Lecointre, of Versailles, a member of the Convention, complained
that a band of these wretches entered the house of a farmer, one of
his tenants, by night, and, after binding the family hand and foot,
and helping themselves to whatever they could find, they placed the
farmer with his bare feet on the chaffing-dish of hot ashes, by way
of forcing him to discover where he had secreted his plate and
money, which having secured, they set all the vessels of liquor
running, and then retired.
You are not to suppose this a robbery, and the actors common thieves; all
was in the usual form--"au nom de la loi," and for the service of the
republic; and I do not mention this instance as remarkable, otherwise
than as having been noticed in the Convention. A thousand events of this
kind, even still more atrocious, have happened; but the sufferers who had
not the means of defence as well as of complaint, were obliged, through
policy, to be silent.
--The garrison and national guard, indignant at the horrors they
committed, obliged them to decamp. Even the people of Dunkirk, whose
resistance to the English, while the French army was collecting together
for their relief, was perhaps of more consequence than ten victories,
have been since intimidated with Commissioners, and Tribunals, and
Guillotines, as much as if they had been convicted of selling the town.
In short, under this philanthropic republic, persecution seems to be very
exactly proportioned to the services rendered. A jealous and suspicious
government does not forget, that the same energy of character which has
enabled a people to defend themselves against an external enemy, may also
make them less submissive to domestic oppression; and, far from repaying
them with the gratitude to which they have a claim, it treats them, on
all occasions, as opponents, whom it both fears and hates.
Nov. 22. We have been walking in the yard to-day with General Laveneur,
who, for an act which in any other country would have gained him credit,
is in this suspended from his command.--When Custine, a few weeks before
his death, left the army to visit some of the neighbouring towns, the
command devolved on Laveneur, who received, along with other official
papers, a list of countersigns, which, having probably been made some
time, and not altered conformably to the changes of the day, contained,
among others, the words Condorcet--Constitution; and these were in their
turn given out. On Custine's trial, this was made a part of his
accusation. Laveneur, recollecting that the circumstance had happened in
the absence of Custine, thought it incumbent on him to take the blame, if
there were any, on himself, and wrote to Paris to explain the matter as
it really stood; but his candour, without availing Custine, drew
persecution on himself, and the only notice taken of his letter was an
order to arrest him. After being dragged from one town to another, like
a criminal, and often lodged in dungeons and common prisons, he was at
length deposited here.
I know not if the General's principles are republican, but he has a very
democratic pair of whiskers, which he occasionally strokes, and seems to
cherish with much affection. He is, however, a gentleman-like man, and
expresses such anxiety for the fate of his wife and children, who are now
at Paris, that one cannot but be interested in his favour.--As the agents
of the republic never err on the side of omission, they arrested Mons.
Laveneur's aid-de-camp with him; and another officer of his acquaintance,
who was suspended, and living at Amiens, has shared the same fate, only
for endeavouring to procure him a trifling accommodation. This gentleman
called on Dumont, to beg that General Laveneur's servant might be
permitted to go in and out of the prison on his master's errands. After
breakfasting together, and conversing on very civil terms, Dumont told
him, that as he concerned himself so much in behalf of his friend, he
would send him to keep the latter company, and at the conclusion of his
visit he was sent prisoner to the Bicetre.
Perhaps the greater part of between three and four hundred thousand
people, now imprisoned on suspicion, have been arrested for reasons as
little substantial.
--I begin to fear my health will not resist the hardship of a long
continuance here. We have no fire-place, and are sometimes starved
with partial winds from the doors and roof; at others faint and heartsick
with the unhealthy air produced by so many living bodies. The water we
drink is not preferable to the air we breathe; the bread (which is now
every where scarce and bad) contains such a mixture of barley, rye,
damaged wheat, and trash of all kinds, that, far from being nourished by
it, I lose both my strength and appetite daily.--Yet these are not the
worst of our sufferings. Shut out from all society, victims of a
despotic and unprincipled government capable of every thing, and ignorant
of the fate which may await us, we are occasionally oppressed by a
thousand melancholy apprehensions. I might, indeed, have boasted of my
fortitude, and have made myself an heroine on paper at as small an
expence of words as it has cost me to record my cowardice: but I am of an
unlucky conformation, and think either too much or too little (I know not
which) for a female philosopher; besides, philosophy is getting into such
ill repute, that not possessing the reality, the name of it is not worth
assuming.
A poor old priest told me just now, (while Angelique was mending his
black coat with white thread,) that they had left at the place where they
were last confined a large quantity of linen, and other necessaries; but,
by the express orders of Dumont, they were not allowed to bring a single
article away with them. The keeper, too, it seems, was threatened with
dismission, for supplying one of them with a shirt.--In England, where,
I believe, you ally political expediency as much as you can with justice
and humanity, these cruelties, at once little and refined, will appear
incredible; and the French themselves, who are at least ashamed of, if
they are not pained by, them, are obliged to seek refuge in the fancied
palliative of a "state of revolution."--Yet, admitting the necessity of
confining the persons of these old men, there can be none for heaping
them together in filth and misery, and adding to the sufferings of years
and infirmity by those of cold and want. If, indeed, a state of
revolution require such deeds, and imply an apology for them, I cannot
but wish the French had remained as they were, for I know of no political
changes that can compensate for turning a civilized nation into a people
of savages. It is not surely the eating acorns or ragouts, a
well-powdered head, or one decorated with red feathers, that constitutes
the difference between barbarism and civilization; and, I fear, if the
French proceed as they have begun, the advantage of morals will be
considerably on the side of the unrefined savages.
The conversation of the prison has been much engaged by the fate of an
English gentleman, who lately destroyed himself in a Maison d'Arret at
Amiens. His confinement had at first deeply affected his spirits, and
his melancholy increasing at the prospect of a long detention, terminated
in deranging his mind, and occasioned this last act of despair.--I never
hear of suicide without a compassion mingled with terror, for, perhaps,
simple pity is too light an emotion to be excited by an event which
reminds us, that we are susceptible of a degree of misery too great to be
borne--too strong for the efforts of instinct, reflection, and religion.
--I could moralize on the necessity of habitual patience, and the benefit
of preparing the mind for great evils by a philosophic endurance of
little ones; but I am at the Bicetre--the winds whistle round me--I am
beset by petty distresses, and we do not expatiate to advantage on
endurance while we have any thing to endure.--Seneca's contempt for the
things of this world was doubtless suggested in the palace of Nero. He
would not have treated the subject so well in disgrace and poverty. Do
not suppose I am affecting to be pleasant, for I write in the sober
sadness of conviction, that human fortitude is often no better than a
pompous theory, founded on self-love and self-deception.
I was surprized at meeting among our fellow-prisoners a number of Dutch
officers. I find they had been some time in the town on their parole,
and were sent here by Dumont, for refusing to permit their men to work on
the fortifications.--The French government and its agents despise the
laws of war hitherto observed; they consider them as a sort of
aristocratie militaire, and they pretend, on the same principle, to be
enfranchised from the law of nations.--An orator of the convention lately
boasted, that he felt himself infinitely superior to the prejudices of
Grotius, Puffendorff, and Vatel, which he calls "l'aristocratie
diplomatique."--Such sublime spirits think, because they differ from the
rest of mankind, that they surpass them. Like Icarus, they attempt to
fly, and are perpetually struggling in the mire.--Plain common sense has
long pointed out a rule of action, from which all deviation is fatal,
both to nations and individuals. England, as well as France, has
furnished its examples; and the annals of genius in all countries are
replete with the miseries of eccentricity.--Whoever has followed the
course of the French revolution, will, I believe, be convinced, that the
greatest evils attending on it have been occasioned by an affected
contempt for received maxims. A common banditti, acting only from the
desire of plunder, or men, erring only through ignorance, could not have
subjugated an whole people, had they not been assisted by narrow-minded
philosophers, who were eager to sacrifice their country to the vanity of
making experiments, and were little solicitous whether their systems were
good or bad, provided they were celebrated as the authors of them. Yet,
where are they now? Wandering, proscribed, and trembling at the fate of
their followers and accomplices.--The Brissotins, sacrificed by a party
even worse than themselves, have died without exciting either pity or
admiration. Their fall was considered as the natural consequence of
their exaltation, and the courage with which they met death obtained no
tribute but a cold and simple comment, undistinguished from the news of
the day, and ending with it.
December.
Last night, after we had been asleep about an hour, (for habit, that
"lulls the wet sea-boy on the high and giddy mast," has reconciled us to
sleep even here,) we were alarmed by the trampling of feet, and sudden
unlocking of our door. Our apprehensions gave us no time for conjecture
--in a moment an ill-looking fellow entered the room with a lantern, two
soldiers holding drawn swords, and a large dog! The whole company walked
as it were processionally to the end of the apartment, and, after
observing in silence the beds on each side, left us. It would not be
easy to describe what we suffered at this moment: for my own part, I
thought only of the massacres of September, and the frequent proposals at
the Jacobins and the Convention for dispatching the _"gens suspect,"_
and really concluded I was going to terminate my existence
_"revolutionnairement."_ I do not now know the purport of these visits,
but I find they are not unusual, and most probably intended to alarm the
prisoners.
After many enquiries and messages, I have had the mortification of
hearing that Mr. and Mrs. D____ were taken to Arras, and were there even
before I left it. The letters sent to and from the different prisons are
read by so many people, and pass through so many hands, that it is not
surprizing we have not heard from each other. As far as I can learn,
they had obtained leave, after their first arrest, to remove to a house
in the vicinity of Dourlens for a few days, on account of Mrs. D____'s
health, which had suffered by passing the summer in the town, and that at
the taking of Toulon they were again arrested while on a visit, and
conveyed to a _Maison d'Arret_ at Arras. I am the more anxious for them,
as it seems they were unprepared for such an event; and as the seals were
put upon their effects, I fear they must be in want of every thing. I
might, perhaps, have succeeded in getting them removed here, but Fleury's
Arras friend, it seems, did not think, when the Convention had abolished
every other part of Christianity, that they intended still to exact a
partial observance of the eighth article of the decalogue; and having, in
the sense of Antient Pistol, "conveyed" a little too notoriously, Le Bon
has, by way of securing him from notice or pursuit, sent him to the
frontiers in the capacity of Commissary.
The prison, considering how many French inhabitants it contains, is
tolerably quiet--to say the truth, we are not very sociable, and still
less gay. Common interest establishes a sort of intimacy between those
of the same apartment; but the rest of the house pass each other, without
farther intercourse than silent though significant civility. Sometimes
you see a pair of unfortunate aristocrates talking politics at the end of
a passage, or on a landing-place; and here and there a bevy of females,
en deshabille, recounting altogether the subject of their arrest. One's
ear occasionally catches a few half-suppressed notes of a proscribed
aire, but the unhallowed sounds of the Carmagnole and Marseillois are
never heard, and would be thought more dissonant here than the war-whoop.
In fact, the only appearance of gaiety is among the ideots and lunatics.
--_"Je m'ennuye furieusement,"_ is the general exclamation.--An Englishman
confined at the Bicetre would express himself more forcibly, but, it is
certain, the want of knowing how to employ themselves does not form a
small part of the distresses of our fellow-prisoners; and when they tell
us they are _"ennuyes,"_ they say, perhaps, nearly as much as they feel--
for, as far as I can observe, the loss of liberty has not the same effect
on a Frenchman as an Englishman. Whether this arises from political
causes, or the natural indifference of the French character, I am not
qualified to determine; probably from both: yet when I observe this
facility of mind general, and by no means peculiar to the higher classes,
I cannot myself but be of opinion, that it is more an effect of their
original disposition than of their form of government; for though in
England we were accustomed from our childhood to consider every man in
France as liable to wake and find himself in the Bastille, or at Mont St.
Michel, this formidable despotism existed more in theory than in
practice; and if courtiers and men of letters were intimidated by it,
the mass of the people troubled themselves very little about Lettres de
Cachet. The revenge or suspicion of Ministers might sometimes pursue
those who aimed at their power, or assailed their reputation; but the
lesser gentry, the merchants, or the shopkeepers, were very seldom
victims of arbitrary imprisonment--and I believe, amongst the evils which
it was the object of the revolution to redress, this (except on the
principle) was far from being of the first magnitude. I am not likely,
under my present circumstances, to be an advocate for the despotism of
any form of government; and I only give it as a matter of opinion, that
the civil liberty of the French was not so often and generally violated,*
as to influence their character in such a degree as to render them
insensible of its loss. At any rate, we must rank it among the
_bizarreries_ [Unaccountable whimsical events.] of this world, that the
French should have been prepared, by the theory of oppression under their
old system, for enduring the practice of it under the new one; and that
what during the monarchy was only possible to a few, is, under the
republic, almost certain to all.
* I remember in 1789, after the destruction of the Bastille, our
compassionate countrymen were taught to believe that this tremendous
prison was peopled with victims, and that even the dungeons were
inhabited; yet the truth is, though it would not have told so
pathetically, or have produced so much theatrical effect, there were
only seven persons confined in the whole building, and certainly not
one in the dungeons.
Amiens, Providence, Dec. 10, 1793.
We have again, as you will perceive, changed our abode, and that too
without expecting, and almost without desiring it. In my moments of
sullenness and despondency, I was not very solicitous about the
modifications of our confinement, and little disposed to be better
satisfied with one prison than another: but, heroics apart, external
comforts are of some importance, and we have, in many respects, gained by
our removal.
Our present habitation is a spacious building, lately a convent, and
though now crouded with more prisoners by two or three hundred than it
will hold conveniently, yet we are better lodged than at the Bicetre, and
we have also a large garden, good water, and, what above all is
desirable, the liberty of delivering our letters or messages ourselves
(in presence of the guard) to any one who will venture to approach us.
Mad. de ____ and myself have a small cell, where we have just room to
place our beds, but we have no fire-place, and the maids are obliged to
sleep in an adjoining passage.
A few evenings ago, while we were at the Bicetre, we were suddenly
informed by the keeper that Dumont had sent some soldiers with an order
to convey us that night to the Providence. We were at first rather
surprized than pleased, and reluctantly gathered our baggage together
with as much expedition as we could, while the men who were to escort us
were exclaiming "a la Francaise" at the trifling delay this occasioned.
When we had passed the gate, we found Fleury, with some porters, ready to
receive our beds, and overjoyed at having procured us a more decent
prison, for, it seems, he could by no means reconcile himself to the name
of Bicetre. We had about half a mile to walk, and on the road he
contrived to acquaint us with the means by which he had solicited this
favour of Dumont. After advising with all Mad. de ____'s friends who
were yet at liberty, and finding no one willing to make an effort in her
behalf, for fear of involving themselves, he discovered an old
acquaintance in the "femme de chambre" of one of Fleury's mistresses.--
This, for one of Fleury's sagacity, was a spring to have set the whole
Convention in a ferment; and in a few days he profited so well by this
female patronage, as to obtain an order for transferring us hither. On
our arrival, we were informed, as usual, that the house was already full,
and that there was no possibility of admitting us. We however, set up
all night in the keeper's room with some other people newly arrived like
ourselves, and in the morning, after a little disputing and a pretty
general derangement of the more ancient inhabitants, we were "nichees,"
as I have described to you.
We have not yet quitted our room much, but I observe that every one
appears more chearful, and more studied in their toilette, than at the
Bicetre, and I am willing to infer from thence that confinement here is
less insupportable.--I have been employed two days in enlarging the notes
I had made in our last prison, and in making them more legible, for I
ventured no farther than just to scribble with a pencil in a kind of
short-hand of my own invention, and not even that without a variety of
precautions. I shall be here less liable either to surprize or
observation, and as soon as I have secured what I have already noted,
(which I intend to do to-night,) I shall continue my remarks in the usual
form. You will find even more than my customary incorrectness and want
of method since we left Peronne; but I shall not allow your competency as
a critic, until you have been a prisoner in the hands of French
republicans.