3. Exercising personal vengeance in his summary executions of accused
persons.
He was then tried and found guilty of an “unlimited abuse of the
guillotine.”
Le Bon exclaimed, as they dressed him in the red garment reserved for
murderers upon their road to the scaffold; “It is not I who should wear
this garment, but those whose orders I obeyed.” He showed pitiable
cowardice at his execution, and his cries and groans rent the air.
Lamartine says of Le Bon:
He decimated the Departments of Le Nord and Pas du Calais. This
man is a striking example of the kind of vertigo by which men
of weak mind are affected in great political crises. Certain
periods of history excite criminality. Blood is in the air.
Revolutionary fever has its delirium. Le Bon during his short
life of thirty years experienced all the phases of this mental
disease. In ordinary times he would have left behind him the
reputation of a worthy, respectable, and religious man. In those
sinister days he became a pitiless proscriptor.
BEAUHARNAIS, EUGÈNE, DUKE DE LEUCHTENBERG, PRINCE OF EICHSTADT,
VICEROY OF ITALY.
Born in Paris, 1781, died February 22, 1824.
His father was executed by order of the Revolutionary Tribunal in
1794, and his mother would have shared the same fate but for the
fall of Robespierre. At the age of fourteen he was taken by General
Hoche, who had been his father’s friend, to join the army in Brittany.
His mother’s marriage to Napoleon in 1796 changed the course of his
existence. In 1797 he was created sub-lieutenant, and from that time
was the constant companion of his stepfather; and for the future that
stepfather’s fortunes were his own.
He was only twenty-four when he became ruler of Italy, and showed
extraordinary intelligence and moderation during his Vice-Royalty.
After the signature of the Treaty of Pressburg, he married in 1806
Princess Louisa of Bavaria, and Napoleon bestowed upon him the titles
of “Prince of the Empire, adopted son and heir-presumptive to the crown
of Italy.”
After the fall of Napoleon, Prince Eugène retired with his wife and
family to Bavaria, and was created Duke de Leuchtenberg by the King,
his father-in-law. He spent a few years in seclusion, devoting himself
to the education of his children. He died suddenly from an accident
when only forty-three years of age.
His sons and daughters made brilliant alliances, his eldest son
marrying Donna Maria della Gloria, Queen Regnant of Portugal; his
younger son, Olga, daughter of the Emperor Nicholas. Of his daughters,
the eldest became Queen of Sweden, the second Princess Hohenzollern,
and the third Empress of Brazil.
The present Russian semi-Imperial family of Leuchtenberg is descended
from Prince Eugène.