After all, it may be permitted to doubt, whether the sort of enthusiasm

so liberally ascribed to the French, would really contribute more to

their successes, than the thoughtless courage I am willing to allow

them.--It is, I believe, the opinion of military men, that the best

soldiers are those who are most disposed to act mechanically; and we are

certain that the most brilliant victories have been obtained where this

ardour, said to be produced by the new doctrines, could have had no

influence.--The heroes of Pavia, of Narva, or those who administered to

the vain-glory of Louis the Fourteenth, by ravaging the Palatinate, we

may suppose little acquainted with it. The fate of battles frequently

depends on causes which the General, the Statesman, or the Philosopher,

are equally unable to decide upon; and the laurel, "meed of mighty

conquerors," seems oftener to fall at the caprice of the wind, than to be

gathered. It is sometimes the lot of the ablest tactician, at others of

the most voluminous muster-roll; but, I believe, there are few examples

where these political elevations have had an effect, when unaccompanied

by advantages of situation, superior skill, or superior numbers.--_"La

plupart des gens de guerre_ (says Fontenelle) _sont leur metier avec

beaucoup de courage. Il en est peu qui y pensent; leurs bras agissent

aussi vigoureusement que l'on veut, leurs tetes se reposent, et ne

prennent presque part a rieu"_*--

* "Military men in general do their duty with much courage, but few

make it a subject of reflection. With all the bodily activity that

can be expected of them, their minds remain at rest, and partake but

little of the business they are engaged in."

--If this can be applied with truth to any armies, it must be to those of

France. We have seen them successively and implicitly adopting all the

new constitutions and strange gods which faction and extravagance could

devise--we have seen them alternately the dupes and slaves of all

parties: at one period abandoning their King and their religion: at

another adulating Robespierre, and deifying Marat.--These, I confess are

dispositions to make good soldiers, but convey to me no idea of

enthusiasts or republicans.

The bulletin of the Convention is periodically furnished with splendid

feats of heroism performed by individuals of their armies, and I have no

doubt but some of them are true. There are, however, many which have

been very peaceably culled from old memoirs, and that so unskilfully,

that the hero of the present year loses a leg or an arm in the same

exploit, and uttering the self-same sentences, as one who lived two

centuries ago. There is likewise a sort of jobbing in the edifying

scenes which occasionally occur in the Convention--if a soldier happen to

be wounded who has relationship, acquaintance, or connexion, with a

Deputy, a tale of extraordinary valour and extraordinary devotion to the

cause is invented or adopted; the invalid is presented in form at the bar

of the Assembly, receives the fraternal embrace and the promise of a

pension, and the feats of the hero, along with the munificence of the

Convention, are ordered to circulate in the next bulletin. Yet many of

the deeds recorded very deservedly in these annals of glory, have been

performed by men who abhor republican principles, and lament the

disasters their partizans have occasioned. I have known even notorious

aristocrats introduced to the Convention as martyrs to liberty, and who

have, in fact, behaved as gallantly as though they had been so.--These

are paradoxes which a military man may easily reconcile.

Independently of the various secondary causes that contribute to the

success of the French armies, there is one which those persons who wish

to exalt every thing they denominate republican seem to exclude--I mean,

the immense advantage they possess in point of numbers. There has

scarcely been an engagement of importance, in which the French have not

profited by this in a very extraordinary degree.*

* This has been confessed to me by many republicans themselves; and

a disproportion of two or three to one must add considerably to

republican enthusiasm.

--Whenever a point is to be gained, the sacrifice of men is not a matter

of hesitation. One body is dispatched after another; and fresh troops

thus succeeding to oppose those of the enemy already harassed, we must

not wonder that the event has so often proved favourable to them.

A republican, who passes for highly informed, once defended this mode of

warfare by observing, that in the course of several campaigns more troops

perished by sickness than the sword. If then an object could be attained

by such means, so much time was saved, and the loss eventually the same:

but the Generals of other countries dare not risk such philosophical

calculations, and would be accountable to the laws of humanity for their

destructive conquests.

When you estimate the numbers that compose the French armies, you are not

to consider them as an undisciplined multitude, whose sole force is in

their numbers. From the beginning of the revolution, many of them have

been exercised in the National Guard; and though they might not make a

figure on the parade at Potsdam, their inferiority is not so great as to

render the German exactitude a counterbalance for the substantial

inequality of numbers. Yet, powerfully as these considerations favour

the military triumphs of France, there is a period when we may expect

both cause and effect will terminate. That period may still be far

removed, but whenever the assignats* become totally discredited, and it

shall be found requisite to economize in the war department, adieu la

gloire, a bas les armes, and perhaps bon soir la republique; for I do not

reckon it possible, that armies so constituted can ever be persuaded to

subject themselves to the restraints and privations which must be

indispensible, as soon as the government ceases to have the disposal of

an unlimited fund.

* The mandats were, in fact, but a continuation of the assignats,

under another name. The last decree for the emission of assignats,

limited the quantity circulated to forty milliards, which taken at

par, is only about sixteen hundred millions of pounds sterling!

What I have hitherto written you will understand as applicable only to

the troops employed on the frontiers. There are some of another

description, more cherished and not less serviceable, who act as a sort

of police militant and errant, and defend the republic against her

internal enemies--the republicans. Almost every town of importance is

occasionally infested by these servile instruments of despotism, who are

maintained in insolent profusion, to overawe those whom misery and famine

might tempt to revolt. When a government, after imprisoning some hundred

thousands of the most distinguished in every class of life, and disarming

all the rest, is yet obliged to employ such a force for its protection,

we may justifiably conclude, it does not presume on the attachment of the

people. It is not impossible that the agents of different descriptions,

destined to the service of conciliating the interior to republicanism,

might alone form an army equal to that of the Allies; but this is a task,

where the numbers employed only serve to render it more difficult. They,

however, procure submission, if they do not create affection; and the

Convention is not delicate.

Amiens, Sept. 30, 1794.

The domestic politics of France are replete with novelties: the

Convention is at war with the Jacobins--and the people, even to the most

decided aristocrats, have become partizans of the Convention.--My last

letters have explained the origin of these phaenomena, and I will now add

a few words on their progress.

You have seen that, at the fall of Robespierre, the revolutionary

government had reached the very summit of despotism, and that the

Convention found themselves under the necessity of appearing to be

directed by a new impulse, or of acknowledging their participation in the

crimes they affected to deplore.--In consequence, almost without the

direct repeal of any law, (except some which affected their own

security,) a more moderate system has been gradually adopted, or, to

speak more correctly, the revolutionary one is suffered to relax. The

Jacobins behold these popular measures with extreme jealousy, as a means

which may in time render the legislature independent of them; and it is

certainly not the least of their discontents, that, after all their

labours in the common cause, they find themselves excluded both from

power and emoluments. Accustomed to carry every thing by violence, and

more ferocious than politic, they have, by insisting on the

reincarceration of suspected people, attached a numerous party to the

Convention, which is thus warned that its own safety depends on

repressing the influence of clubs, which not only loudly demand that the

prisons may be again filled, but frequently debate on the project of

transporting all the "enemies of the republic" together.

The liberty of the press, also, is a theme of discord not less important

than the emancipation of aristocrats. The Jacobins are decidedly adverse

to it; and it is a sort of revolutionary solecism, that those who boast

of having been the original destroyers of despotism, are now the

advocates of arbitrary imprisonment, and restraints on the freedom of the

press. The Convention itself is divided on the latter subject; and,

after a revolution of five years, founded on the doctrine of the rights

of man, it has become matter of dispute--whether so principal an article

of them ought really to exist or not. They seem, indeed, willing to

allow it, provided restrictions can be devised which may prevent calumny

from reaching their own persons; but as that cannot easily be atchieved,

they not only contend against the liberty of the press in practice, but

have hitherto refused to sanction it by decree, even as a principle.

It is perhaps reluctantly that the Convention opposes these powerful and

extended combinations which have so long been its support, and it may

dread the consequences of being left without the means of overawing or

influencing the people; but the example of the Brissotins, who, by

attempting to profit by the services of the Jacobins, without submitting

to their domination, fell a sacrifice, has warned their survivors of the

danger of employing such instruments. It is evident that the clubs will

not act subordinately, and that they must either be subdued to

insignificance, or regain their authority entirely; and as neither the

people nor Convention are disposed to acquiesce in the latter, they are

politicly joining their efforts to accelerate the former.

Yet, notwithstanding these reciprocal cajoleries, the return of justice

is slow and mutable; an instinctive or habitual preference of evil

appears at times to direct the Convention, even in opposition to their

own interests. They have as yet done little towards repairing the

calamities of which they are the authors; and we welcome the little they

have done, not for its intrinsic value, but as we do the first spring

flowers--which, though of no great sweetness or beauty, we consider as

pledges that the storms of winter are over, and that a milder season is

approaching.--It is true, the revolutionary Committees are diminished in

number, the prisons are disencumbered, and a man is not liable to be

arrested because a Jacobin suspects his features: yet there is a wide

difference between such toleration and freedom and security; and it is a

circumstance not favourable to those who look beyond the moment, that the

tyrannical laws which authorized all the late enormities are still

unrepealed. The Revolutionary Tribunal continues to sentence people to

death, on pretexts as frivolous as those which were employed in the time

of Robespierre; they have only the advantage of being tried more

formally, and of forfeiting their lives upon proof, instead of without

it, for actions that a strictly administered justice would not punish by

a month's imprisonment.*

* For instance, a young monk, for writing fanatic letters, and

signing resolutions in favour of foederalism--a hosier, for

facilitating the return of an emigrant--a man of ninety, for

speaking against the revolution, and discrediting the assignats--a

contractor, for embezzling forage--people of various descriptions,

for obstructing the recruitment, or insulting the tree of liberty.

These, and many similar condemnations, will be found in the

proceedings of the Revolutionary Tribunal, long after the death of

Robespierre, and when justice and humanity were said to be restored.

A ceremony has lately taken place, the object of which was to deposit the

ashes of Marat in the Pantheon, and to dislodge the bust of Mirabeau--

who, notwithstanding two years notice to quit this mansion of

immortality, still remained there. The ashes of Marat being escorted to

the Convention by a detachment of Jacobins, and the President having

properly descanted on the virtues which once animated the said ashes,

they were conveyed to the place destined for their reception; and the

excommunicated Mirabeau being delivered over to the secular arm of a

beadle, these remains of the divine Marat were placed among the rest of

the republican deities. To have obliged the Convention in a body to

attend and consecrate the crimes of this monster, though it could not

degrade them, was a momentary triumph for the Jacobins, nor could the

royalists behold without satisfaction the same men deploring the death of

Marat, who, a month before, had celebrated the fall of Louis the

Sixteenth! To have been so deplored, and so celebrated, are, methinks,

the very extremes of infamy and glory.

I must explain to you, that the Jacobins have lately been composed of two

parties--the avowed adherents of Collot, Billaud, &c. and the concealed

remains of those attached to Robespierre; but party has now given way to

principle, a circumstance not usual; and the whole club of Paris, with

several of the affiliated ones, join in censuring the innovating

tendencies of the Convention.--It is curious to read the debates of the

parent society, which pass in afflicting details of the persecutions

experienced by the patriots on the parts of the moderates and

aristocrats, who, they assert, are become so daring as even to call in

question the purity of the immortal Marat. You will suppose, of course,

that this cruel persecution is nothing more than an interdiction to

persecute others; and their notions of patriotism and moderation may be

conceived by their having just expelled Tallien and Freron as moderates.*

* Freron endeavoured, on this occasion, to disculpate himself from

the charge of "moderantisme," by alledging he had opposed

Lecointre's denunciation of Barrere, &c.--and certainly one who

piques himself on being the pupil of the divine Marat, was worthy of

remaining in the fraternity from which he was now expelled.--Freron

is a veteran journalist of the revolution, of better talents, though

not of better fame, than the generality of his contemporaries: or,

rather, his early efforts in exciting the people to rebellion

entitle him to a preeminence of infamy.

Amiens, October 4, 1794.

We have had our guard withdrawn for some days; and I am just now returned

from Peronne, where we had been in order to see the seals taken off the

papers, &c. which I left there last year. I am much struck with the

alteration observable in people's countenances. Every person I meet

seems to have contracted a sort of revolutionary aspect: many walk with

their heads down, and with half-shut eyes measure the whole length of a

street, as though they were still intent on avoiding greetings from the

suspicious; some look grave and sorrow-worn; some apprehensive, as if in

hourly expectation of a _mandat d'arret;_ and others absolutely ferocious,

from a habit of affecting the barbarity of the times.

Their language is nearly as much changed as their appearance--the

revolutionary jargon is universal, and the most distinguished aristocrats

converse in the style of Barrere's reports. The common people are not

less proficients in this fashionable dialect, than their superiors; and,

as far as I can judge, are become so from similar motives. While I was

waiting this morning at a shop-door, I listened to a beggar who was

cheapening a slice of pumpkin, and on some disagreement about the price,

the beggar told the old _revendeuse_ [Market-woman.] that she was

_"gangrenee d'aristocratie."_ ["Eat up with aristocracy."] _"Je vous en

defie,"_ ["I defy you."] retorted the pumpkin-merchant; but turning pale

as she spoke, _"Mon civisme est a toute epreuve, mais prenez donc ta

citrouille,"_ ["My civism is unquestionable; but here take your pumpkin."]

take it then." _"Ah, te voila bonne republicaine,_ ["Ah! Now I see you

are a good republican."] says the beggar, carrying off her bargain; while

the old woman muttered, _"Oui, oui, l'on a beau etre republicaine tandis

qu'on n'a pas de pain a manger."_ ["Yes, in troth, it's a fine thing to

be a republican, and have no bread to eat."]

I hear little of the positive merits of the convention, but the hope is

general that they will soon suppress the Jacobin clubs; yet their attacks

continue so cold and cautious, that their intentions are at least

doubtful: they know the voice of the nation at large would be in favour

of such a measure, and they might, if sincere, act more decisively,

without risk to themselves.--The truth is, they would willingly proscribe

the persons of the Jacobins, while they cling to their principles, and

still hesitate whether they shall confide in a people whose resentment

they have so much deserved, and have so much reason to dread. Conscious

guilt appears to shackle all their proceedings, and though the punishment

of some subordinate agents cannot, in the present state of things, be

dispensed with, yet the Assembly unveil the register of their crimes very

reluctantly, as if each member expected to see his own name inscribed on

it. Thus, even delinquents, who would otherwise be sacrificed

voluntarily to public justice, are in a manner protected by delays and

chicane, because an investigation might implicate the Convention as the

example and authoriser of their enormities.--Fouquier Tinville devoted a

thousand innocent people to death in less time than it has already taken

to bring him to a trial, where he will benefit by all those judicial

forms which he has so often refused to others. This man, who is much the

subject of conversation at present, was Public Accuser to the

Revolutionary Tribunal--an office which, at best, in this instance, only

served to give an air of regularity to assassination: but, by a sort of

genius in turpitude, he contrived to render it odious beyond its original

perversion, in giving to the most elaborate and revolting cruelties a

turn of spontaneous pleasantry, or legal procedure.--The prisoners were

insulted with sarcasms, intimidated by threats, and still oftener

silenced by arbitrary declarations, that they were not entitled to speak;

and those who were taken to the scaffold, after no other ceremony than

calling over their names, had less reason to complain, than if they had

previously been exposed to the barbarities of such trials.--Yet this

wretch might, for a time at least, have escaped punishment, had he not,

in defending himself, criminated the remains of the Committee, whom it

was intended to screen. When he appeared at the bar of the Convention,

every word he uttered seemed to fill its members with alarm, and he was

ordered away before he could finish his declaration. It must be

acknowledged, that, however he may be condemned by justice and humanity,

nothing could legally attach to him: he was only the agent of the

Convention, and the utmost horrors of the Tribunal were not merely

sanctioned, but enjoined by specific decrees.

I have been told by a gentleman who was at school with Fouquier, and has

had frequent occasions of observing him at different periods since, that

he always appeared to him to be a man of mild manners, and by no means

likely to become the instrument of these atrocities; but a strong

addiction to gaming having involved him in embarrassments, he was induced

to accept the office of Public Accuser to the Tribunal, and was

progressively led on from administering to the iniquity of his employers,

to find a gratification in it himself.

I have often thought, that the habit of watching with selfish avidity for

those turns of fortune which enrich one individual by the misery of

another, must imperceptibly tend to harden the heart. How can the

gamester, accustomed both to suffer and inflict ruin with indifference,

preserve that benevolent frame of mind, which, in the ordinary and less

censurable pursuits of common life, is but too prone to become impaired,

and to leave humanity more a duty than a feeling?

The conduct of Fouquier Tinville has led me to some reflections on a

subject which I know the French consider as matter of triumph, and as a

peculiar advantage which their national character enjoys over the

English--I mean that smoothness of manner and guardedness of expression

which they call "aimable," and which they have the faculty of attaining

and preserving distinctly from a correspondent temper of the mind. It

accompanies them through the most irritating vicissitudes, and enables

them to deceive, even without deceit: for though this suavity is

habitual, of course frequently undesigning, the stranger is nevertheless

thrown off his guard by it, and tempted to place confidence, or expect

services, which a less conciliating deportment would not have been

suggested. A Frenchman may be an unkind husband, a severe parent, or an

arrogant master, yet never contract his features, or asperate his voice,

and for this reason is, in the national sense, "un homme bien doux." His

heart may become corrupt, his principles immoral, and his disposition

ferocious--yet he shall still retain his equability of tone and

complacent phraseology, and be "un homme bien aimable."

The revolution has tended much to develope this peculiarity of the French

character, and has, by various examples in public life, confirmed the

opinions I had formed from previous observation. Fouquier Tinville, as I

have already noticed, was a man of gentle exterior.--Couthon, the

execrable associate of Robespierre, was mildness itself--Robespierre's

harangues are in a style of distinguished sensibility--and even Carrier,

the destroyer of thirty thousand Nantais, is attested by his

fellow-students to have been of an amiable disposition. I know a man of

most insinuating address, who has been the means of conducting his own

brother to the Guillotine; and another nearly as prepossessing, who,

without losing his courteous demeanor, was, during the late

revolutionary excesses, the intimate of an executioner.

*It would be too voluminous to enumerate all the contrasts of

manners and character exhibited during the French revolution--The

philosophic Condorcet, pursuing with malignancy his patron, the Duc

de la Rochefoucault, and hesitating with atrocious mildness on the

sentence of the King--The massacres of the prisons connived at by

the gentle Petion--Collot d'Herbois dispatching, by one discharge of

cannon, three hundred people together, "to spare his sensibility"

the talk of executions in detail--And St. Just, the deviser of a

thousand enormities, when he left the Committee, after his last

interview, with the project of sending them all to the Guillotine,

telling them, in a tone of tender reproach, like a lover of romance,

"Vous avez fletri mon coeur, je vais l'ouvrir a la Convention."--

Madame Roland, in spite of the tenderness of her sex, could coldly

reason on the expediency of a civil war, which she acknowledged

might become necessary to establish the republic. Let those who

disapprove this censure of a female, whom it is a sort of mode to

lament, recollect that Madame Roland was the victim of a celebrity

she had acquired in assisting the efforts of faction to dethrone the

King--that her literary bureau was dedicated to the purpose of

exasperating the people against him--and that she was considerably

instrumental to the events which occasioned his death. If her

talents and accomplishments make her an object of regret, it was to

the unnatural misapplication of those talents and accomplishments in

the service of party, that she owed her fate. Her own opinion was,

that thousands might justifiably be devoted to the establishment of

a favourite system; or, to speak truly, to the aggrandisement of

those who were its partizans. The same selfish principle actuated

an opposite faction, and she became the sacrifice.--"Oh even-handed

justice!"

I do not pretend to decide whether the English are virtually more gentle

in their nature than the French; but I am persuaded this douceur, on

which the latter pride themselves, affords no proof of the contrary. An

Englishman is seldom out of humour, without proclaiming it to all the

world; and the most forcible motives of interest, or expediency, cannot

always prevail on him to assume a more engaging external than that which

delineates his feelings.

If he has a matter to refuse, he usually begins by fortifying himself

with a little ruggedness of manner, by way of prefacing a denial he might

otherwise not have resolution to persevere in. "The hows and whens of

life" corrugate his features, and disharmonize his periods; contradiction

sours, and passion ruffles him--and, in short, an Englishman displeased,

from whatever cause, is neither "un homme bien doux," nor "un homme bien

aimable;" but such as nature has made him, subject to infirmities and

sorrows, and unable to disguise the one, or appear indifferent to the

other. Our country, like every other, has doubtless produced too many

examples of human depravity; but I scarcely recollect any, where a

ferocious disposition was not accompanied by corresponding manners--or

where men, who would plunder or massacre, affected to retain at the same

time habits of softness, and a conciliating physiognomy.

We are, I think, on the whole, authorized to conclude, that, in

determining the claims to national superiority, the boasted and unvarying

controul which the French exercise over their features and accents, is

not a merit; nor those indications of what passes within, to which the

English are subject, an imperfection. If the French sometimes supply

their want of kindness, or render disappointment less acute at the

moment, by a sterile complacency, the English harshness is often only the

alloy to an efficient benevolence, and a sympathizing mind. In France

they have no humourists who seem impelled by their nature to do good, in

spite of their temperament--nor have we in England many people who are

cold and unfeeling, yet systematically aimable: but I must still persist

in not thinking it a defect that we are too impetuous, or perhaps too

ingenuous, to unite contradictions.

There is a cause, that doubtless has its effects in representing the

English disadvantageously, and which I have never heard properly allowed

for. The liberty of the press, and the great interest taken by all ranks

of people in public affairs, have occasioned a more numerous circulation

of periodical prints of every kind in England, than in any other country

in Europe. Now, as it is impossible to fill them constantly with

politics, and as the taste of different readers must be consulted, every

barbarous adventure, suicide, murder, robbery, domestic fracas, assaults,

and batteries of the lower orders, with the duels and divorces of the

higher, are all chronicled in various publications, disseminated over

Europe, and convey an idea that we are a very miserable, ferocious, and

dissolute nation. The foreign gazettes being chiefly appropriated to

public affairs, seldom record either the vices, the crimes, or

misfortunes of individuals; so that they are thereby at least prevented

from fixing an unfavourable judgement on the national character.

Mercier observes, that the number of suicides committed in Paris was

supposed to exceed greatly that of similar disasters in London; and that

murders in France were always accompanied by circumstances of peculiar

horror, though policy and custom had rendered the publication of such

events less general than with us.--Our divorces, at which the Gallic

purity of manners used to be so much scandalized, are, no doubt, to be

regretted; but that such separations were not then allowed, or desired in

France, may perhaps be attributed, at least as justly, to the

complaisance of husbands, as to the discretion of wives, or the national

morality.*

* At present, in the monthly statement, the number of divorces in

France, is often nearly equal to that of the marriages.

I should reproach myself if I could feel impartial when I contemplate the

English character; yet I certainly endeavour to write as though I were

so. If I have erred, it has been rather in allowing too much to received

opinions on the subject of this country, than in suffering my affections

to make me unjust; for though I am far from affecting the fashion of the

day, which censures all prejudices as illiberal, except those in

disfavour of our own country, yet I am warranted, I hope, in saying, that

however partial I may appear to England, I have not been so at the

expence of truth.--Yours, &c.

October 6, 1794.

The sufferings of individuals have often been the means of destroying or

reforming the most powerful tyrannies; reason has been convinced by

argument, and passion appealed to by declamation in vain--when some

unvarnished tale, or simple exposure of facts, has at once rouzed the

feelings, and conquered the supineness of an oppressed people.

The revolutionary government, in spite of the clamorous and weekly

swearings of the Convention to perpetuate it, has received a check from

an event of this nature, which I trust it will never recover.--By an

order of the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes, in November 1793, all

prisoners accused of political crimes were to be transferred to Paris,

where the tribunal being more immediately under the direction of

government, there would be no chance of their acquittal. In consequence

of this order, an hundred and thirty-two inhabitants of Nantes, arrested

on the usual pretexts of foederalism, or as suspected, or being

Muscadins, were, some months after, conducted to Paris. Forty of the

number died through the hardships and ill treatment they encountered on

the way, the rest remained in prison until after the death of

Robespierre.

The evidence produced on their trial, which lately took place, has

revealed but too circumstantially all the horrors of the revolutionary

system. Destruction in every form, most shocking to morals or humanity,

has depopulated the countries of the Loire; and republican Pizarro's and

Almagro's seem to have rivalled each other in the invention and

perpetration of crimes.

When the prisons of Nantes overflowed, many hundreds of their miserable

inhabitants had been conducted by night, and chained together, to the

river side; where, being first stripped of their clothes, they were

crouded into vessels with false bottoms, constructed for the purpose, and

sunk.*--

* Though the horror excited by such atrocious details must be

serviceable to humanity, I am constrained by decency to spare the

reader a part of them. Let the imagination, however repugnant,

pause for a moment over these scenes--Five, eight hundred people of

different sexes, ages, and conditions, are taken from their prisons,

in the dreary months of December and January, and conducted, during

the silence of the night, to the banks of the Loire. The agents of

the Republic there despoil them of their clothes, and force them,

shivering and defenceless, to enter the machines prepared for their

destruction--they are chained down, to prevent their escape by

swimming, and then the bottom is detached for the upper part, and

sunk.--On some occasions the miserable victims contrived to loose

themselves, and clinging to the boards near them, shrieked in the

agonies of despair and death, "O save us! it is not even now too

late: in mercy save us!" But they appealed to wretches to whom

mercy was a stranger; and, being cut away from their hold by strokes

of the sabre, perished with their companions. That nothing might be

wanting to these outrages against nature, they were escribed as

jests, and called "Noyades, water parties," and "civic baptisms"!

Carrier, a Deputy of the Convention, used to dine and make parties

of pleasure, accompanied by music and every species of gross luxury,

on board the barges appropriated to these execrable purposes.

--At one time, six hundred children appear to have been destroyed in this

manner;--young people of different sexes were tied in pairs and thrown

into the river;--thousands were shot in the high roads and in the fields;

and vast numbers were guillotined, without a trial!*

* Six young women, (the _Mesdemoiselles la Meterie,_) in particular,

sisters, and all under four-and-twenty, were ordered to the

Guillotine together: the youngest died instantly of fear, the rest

were executed successively.--A child eleven years old, who had

previously told the executioner, with affecting simplicity, that he

hoped he would not hurt him much, received three strokes of the

Guillotine before his head was severed from his body.

--Two thousand died, in less than two months, of a pestilence, occasioned

by this carnage: the air became infected, and the waters of the Loire

empoisoned, by dead bodies; and those whom tyranny yet spared, perished

by the elements which nature intended for their support.*

* Vast sums were exacted from the Nantais for purifying the air, and

taking precautions against epidemical disorders.

But I will not dwell on horrors, which, if not already known to all

Europe, I should be unequal to describe: suffice it to say, that whatever

could disgrace or afflict mankind, whatever could add disgust to

detestation, and render cruelty, if possible, less odious than the

circumstances by which it was accompanied, has been exhibited in this

unfortunate city.--Both the accused and their witnesses were at first

timid through apprehension, but by degrees the monstrous mysteries of the

government were laid open, and it appeared, beyond denial or palliation,

that these enormities were either devised, assisted, or connived at, by

Deputies of the Convention, celebrated for their ardent republicanism and

revolutionary zeal.--The danger of confiding unlimited power to such men

as composed the majority of the Assembly, was now displayed in a manner

that penetrated the dullest imagination, and the coldest heart; and it

was found, that, armed with decrees, aided by revolutionary committees,

revolutionary troops, and revolutionary vehicles of destruction,*

missionaries selected by choice from the whole representation, had, in

the city of Nantes alone, and under the mask of enthusiastic patriotism,

sacrificed thirty thousand people!

* A company was formed of all the ruffians that could be collected

together. They were styled the Company of Marat, and were specially

empowered to arrest whomsoever they chose, and to enter houses by

night or day--in fine, to proscribe and pillage at their pleasure.

Facts like these require no comment. The nation may be intimidated, and

habits of obedience, or despair of redress, prolong its submission; but

it can no longer be deceived: and patriotism, revolutionary liberty, and

philosophy, are for ever associated with the drowning machines of

Carrier, and the precepts and calculations of a Herault de Sechelles,* or

a Lequinio.**--

* Herault de Sechelles was distinguished by birth, talents, and

fortune, above most of his colleagues in the Convention; yet we find

him in correspondence with Carrier, applauding his enormities, and

advising him how to continue them with effect.--Herault was of a

noble family, and had been a president in the Parliament of Paris.

He was one of Robespierre's Committee of Public Welfare, and being

in some way implicated in a charge of treachery brought against

Simon, another Deputy, was guillotined at the same time with Danton.

** Lequinio is a philosopher by profession, who has endeavoured to

enlighten his countrymen by a publication entitled "_Les Prejuges

Detruits,_" and since by proving it advantageous to make no prisoners

of war.

--The ninety Nantais, against whom there existed no serious charge, and

who had already suffered more than death, were acquitted. Yet, though

the people were gratified by this verdict, and the general indignation

appeased by an immediate arrest of those who had been most notoriously

active in these dreadful operations, a deep and salutary impression

remains, and we may hope it will be found impracticable either to renew

the same scenes, or for the Convention to shelter (as they seemed

disposed to do) the principal criminals, who are members of their own

body. Yet, how are these delinquents to be brought to condemnation?

They all acted under competent authority, and their dispatches to the

Convention, which sufficiently indicated their proceedings, were always

sanctioned by circulation, and applauded, according to the excess of

their flagitiousness.

It is worthy of remark, that Nantes, the principal theatre of these

persecutions and murders, had been early distinguished by the attachment

of its inhabitants to the revolution; insomuch, that, at the memorable

epoch when the short-sighted policy of the Court excluded the Constituent

Assembly from their Hall at Versailles, and they took refuge in the Jeu

de Paume, with a resolution fatal to their country, never to separate

until they had obtained their purposes, an express was sent to Nantes, as

the place they should make choice of, if any violence obliged them to

quit the neighbourhood of Paris.

But it was not only by its principles that Nantes had signalized itself;

at every period of the war, it had contributed largely both in men and

money, and its riches and commerce still rendered it one of the most

important towns of the republic.--What has been its reward?--Barbarous

envoys from the Convention, sent expressly to level the aristocracy of

wealth, to crush its mercantile spirit, and decimate its inhabitants.*--

* When Nantes was reduced almost to a state of famine by the

destruction of commerce, and the supplies drawn for the maintenance

of the armies, Commissioners were sent to Paris, to solicit a supply

of provisions. They applied to Carrier, as being best acquainted

with their distress, and were answered in this language:--_"Demandez,

pour Nantes! je solliciterai qu'on porte le fer et la flamme dans

cette abominable ville. Vous etes tous des coquins, des contre-

revolutionnaires, des brigands, des scelerats, je ferai nommer une

commission par la Convention Nationale.--J'irai moi meme a la tete

de cette commission.--Scelerats, je serai rouler les tetes dans

Nantes--je regenererai Nantes."_--"Is it for Nantes that you

petition? I'll exert my influence to have fire and sword carried

into that abominable city. You are all scoundrels, counter-

revolutionists, thieves, miscreants.--I'll have a commission

appointed by the Convention, and go myself at the head of it.--

Villains, I'll set your heads a rolling about Nantes--I'll

regenerate Nantes."

Report of the Commission of Twenty-one, on the conduct of Carrier.

--Terrible lesson for those discontented and mistaken people, who,

enriched by commerce, are not content with freedom and independence, but

seek for visionary benefits, by becoming the partizans of innovation, or

the tools of faction!*

* The disasters of Nantes ought not to be lost to the republicans of

Birmingham, Manchester, and other great commercial towns, where "men

fall out they know not why;" and where their increasing wealth and

prosperity are the best eulogiums on the constitution they attempt

to undermine.

I have hitherto said little of La Vendee; but the fate of Nantes is so

nearly connected with it, that I shall make it the subject of my next

letter.

[No Date or Place Given.]

It appears, that the greater part of the inhabitants of Poitou, Anjou,

and the Southern divisions of Brittany, now distinguished by the general

appellation of the people of La Vendee, (though they include those of

several other departments,) never either comprehended or adopted the

principles of the French revolution. Many different causes contributed

to increase their original aversion from the new system, and to give

their resistance that consistency, which has since become so formidable.

A partiality for their ancient customs, an attachment to their Noblesse,

and a deference for their Priests, are said to characterize the brave

and simple natives of La Vendee. Hence republican writers, with

self-complacent decision, always treat this war as the effect of

ignorance, slavery, and superstition.

The modern reformist, who calls the labourer from the plough, and the

artizan from the loom, to make them statesmen or philosophers, and who

has invaded the abodes of contented industry with the rights of man, that

our fields may be cultivated, and our garments wove, by metaphysicians,

will readily assent to this opinion.--Yet a more enlightened and liberal

philosophy may be tempted to examine how far the Vendeans have really

merited the contempt and persecution of which they have been the objects.

By the confession of the republicans themselves, they are religious,

hospitable, and frugal, humane and merciful towards their enemies, and

easily persuaded to whatever is just and reasonable.

I do not pretend to combat the narrow prejudices of those who suppose the

worth or happiness of mankind compatible but with one set of opinions;

and who, confounding the adventitious with the essential, appreciate only

book learning: but surely, qualities which imply a knowledge of what is

due both to God and man, and information sufficient to yield to what is

right or rational, are not descriptive of barbarians; or at least, we may

say with Phyrrhus, "there is nothing barbarous in their discipline."*

*"The husbandmen of this country are in general men of simple

manners, naturally well inclined, or at least not addicted to

serious vices." Lequinio, Guerre de La Vendee.

Dubois de Crance, speaking of the inhabitants of La Vendee, says,

"They are the most hospitable people I ever saw, and always disposed

to listen to what is just and reasonable, if proffered with mildness

and humanity."

"This unpolished people, whom, however, it is much less difficult to

persuade than to fight." Lequinio, G. de La V.

"They affected towards our prisoners a deceitful humanity,

neglecting no means to draw them over to their own party, and often

sending them back to us with only a simple prohibition to bear arms

against the King or religion."

Report of Richard and Choudieu.

The ignorant Vendeans then could give lessons of policy and

humanity, which the "enlightened" republicans were not capable of

profiting by.

--Their adherence to their ancient institutions, and attachment to their

Gentry and Clergy, when the former were abolished and the latter

proscribed, might warrant a presumption that they were happy under the

one, and kindly treated by the other: for though individuals may

sometimes persevere in affections or habits from which they derive

neither felicity nor advantage, whole bodies of men can scarcely be

supposed eager to risk their lives in defence of privileges that have

oppressed them, or of a religion from which they draw no consolation.

But whatever the cause, the new doctrines, both civil and religious, were

received in La Vendee with a disgust, which was not only expressed by

murmurs, but occasionally by little revolts, by disobedience to the

constitutional authorities, and a rejection of the constitutional clergy.

Some time previous to the deposition of the King, Commissioners were sent

to suppress these disorders; and though I doubt not but all possible

means were taken to conciliate, I can easily believe, that neither the

King nor his Ministers might be desirous of subduing by force a people

who erred only from piety or loyalty. What effect this system of

indulgence might have produced cannot now be decided; because the

subsequent overthrow of the monarchy, and the massacre or banishment of

the priests, must have totally alienated their minds, and precluded all

hope of reconcilement.--Disaffection, therefore, continued to increase,

and the Brissotines are suspected of having rather fostered than

repressed these intestine commotions,* for the same purpose which induced

them to provoke the war with England, and to extend that of the

Continent.

* Le Brun, one of the Brissotin Ministers, concealed the progress of

this war for six months before he thought fit to report it to the

Convention.

--It is impossible to assign a good motive to any act of this literary

intriguer.

--Perhaps, while they determined to establish their faction by "braving

all Europe," they might think it equally politic to perplex and overawe

Paris by a near and dangerous enemy, which would render their continuance

in power necessary, or whom they might join, if expelled from it.*

* This last reason might afterwards have given way to their

apprehensions, and the Brissotins have preferred the creation of new

civil wars, to a confidence in the royalists. These men, who

condemned the King for a supposed intention of defending an

authority transmitted to him through whole ages, and recently

sanctioned by the voice of the people, did not scruple to excite a

civil war in defence of their six months' sovereignty over a

republic, proclaimed by a ferocious comedian, and certainly without

the assent of the nation. Had the ill-fated Monarch dared thus to

trifle with the lives of his subjects, he might have saved France

and himself from ruin.

When men gratify their ambition by means so sanguinary and atrocious as

those resorted to by the Brissotines, we are authorized in concluding

they will not be more scrupulous in the use or preservation of power,

than they were in attaining it; and we can have no doubt but that the

fomenting or suppressing the progress of civil discord, was, with them,

a mere question of expediency.

The decree which took place in March, 1793, for raising three hundred

thousand men in the departments, changed the partial insurrections of La

Vendee to an open and connected rebellion; and every where the young

people refused going, and joined in preference the standard of revolt.

In the beginning of the summer, the brigands* (as they were called) grew

so numerous, that the government, now in the hands of Robespierre and his

party, began to take serious measures to combat them.

* Robbers--_banditti_--The name was first given, probably, to the

insurgents of La Vendee, in order to insinuate a belief that the

disorders were but of a slight and predatory nature.

--One body of troops were dispatched after another, who were all

successively defeated, and every where fled before the royalists.

It is not unusual in political concerns to attribute to deep-laid plans

and abstruse combinations, effects which are the natural result of

private passions and isolated interests. Robespierre is said to have

promoted both the destruction of the republican armies and those of La

Vendee, in order to reduce the national population. That he was capable

of imagining such a project is probable--yet we need not, in tracing the

conduct of the war, look farther than to the character of the agents who

were, almost necessarily, employed in it. Nearly every officer qualified

for the command of an army, had either emigrated, or was on service at

the frontiers; and the task of reducing by violence a people who resisted

only because they deemed themselves injured, and who, even in the

estimation of the republicans, could only be mistaken, was naturally

avoided by all men who were not mere adventurers. It might likewise be

the policy of the government to prefer the services of those, who, having

neither reputation nor property, would be more dependent, and whom,

whether they became dangerous by their successes or defeats, it would be

easy to sacrifice.

Either, then, from necessity or choice, the republican armies in La

Vendee were conducted by dissolute and rapacious wretches, at all times

more eager to pillage than fight, and who were engaged in securing their

plunder, when they should have been in pursuit of the enemy. On every

occasion they seemed to retreat, that their ill success might afford them

a pretext for declaring that the next town or village was confederated

with the insurgents, and for delivering it up, in consequence, to murder

and rapine. Such of the soldiers as could fill their pocket-books with

assignats, left their less successful companions, and retired as invalids

to the hospitals: the battalions of Paris (and particularly "the

conquerors of the Bastille") had such ardour for pillage, that every

person possessed of property was, in their sense, an aristocrat, whom it

was lawful to despoil.*

* _"Le pillage a ete porte a son comble--les militaires au lieu de

songer a ce qu'ils avoient a faire, n'ont pense qu'a remplir leurs

sacs, et a voir se perpetuer une guerre aussi avantageuse a leur

interet--beaucoup de simples soldats ont acquis cinquante mille

francs et plus; on en a vu couverts de bijoux, et faisant dans tous

les genres des depenses d'une produgaloite, monstreuse."

Lequinio, Guerre de la Vendee._

"The most unbridled pillage prevailed--officers, instead of

attending to their duty, thought only of filling their portmanteaus,

and of the means to perpetuate a war they found so profitable.--Many

private soldiers made fifty thousand livres, and they have been seen

loaded with trinkets, and exercising the most abominable

prodigalities of every kind."

Lequinio, War of La Vendee.

"The conquerors of the Bastille had unluckily a most unbridled

ardour for pillage--one would have supposed they had come for the

express purpose of plunder, rather than fighting. The stage coaches

for Paris were entirely loaded with their booty."

Report of Benaben, Commissioner of the Department of Maine and

Loire.

--The carriages of the army were entirely appropriated to the conveyance

of their booty; till, at last, the administrators of some departments

were under the necessity of forbidding such incumbrances: but the

officers, with whom restrictions of this sort were unavailing, put all

the horses and waggons of the country in requisition for similar

purposes, while they relaxed themselves from the serious business of the

war, (which indeed was nearly confined to burning, plundering, and

massacring the defenceless inhabitants,) by a numerous retinue of

mistresses and musicians.

It is not surprizing that generals and troops of this description were

constantly defeated; and their reiterated disasters might probably have

first suggested the idea of totally exterminating a people it was found

so difficult to subdue, and so impracticable to conciliate.--On the first

of October 1793, Barrere, after inveighing against the excessive

population of La Vendee, which he termed "frightful," proposed to the

Convention to proclaim by a decree, that the war of La Vendee "should be

terminated" by the twentieth of the same month. The Convention, with

barbarous folly, obeyed; and the enlightened Parisians, accustomed to

think with contempt on the ignorance of the Vendeans, believed that a

war, which had baffled the efforts of government for so many months, was

to end on a precise day--which Barrere had fixed with as much assurance

as though he had only been ordering a fete.

But the Convention and the government understood this decree in a very

different sense from the good people of Paris. The war was, indeed, to

be ended; not by the usual mode of combating armies, but by a total

extinction of all the inhabitants of the country, both innocent and

guilty--and Merlin de Thionville, with other members, so perfectly

comprehended this detestable project, that they already began to devise

schemes for repeopling La Vendee, when its miserable natives should be

destroyed.*

* It is for the credit of humanity to believe, that the decree was

not understood according to its real intention; but the nation has

to choose between the imputation of cruelty, stupidity, or slavery--

for they either approved the sense of the decree, believed what was

not possible, or were obliged to put on an appearance of both, in

spite of their senses and their feelings. A proclamation, in

consequence, to the army, is more explicit--"All the brigands of La

Vendee must be exterminated before the end of October."

From this time, the representatives on mission, commissaries of war,

officers, soldiers, and agents of every kind, vied with each other in the

most abominable outrages. Carrier superintended the fusillades and

noyades at Nantes, while Lequinio dispatched with his own hands a part of

the prisoners taken at La Fontenay, and projected the destruction of the

rest.--After the evacuation of Mans by the insurgents, women were brought

by twenties and thirties, and shot before the house where the deputies

Tureau and Bourbotte had taken up their residence; and it appears to have

been considered as a compliment to these republican Molochs, to surround

their habitation with mountains of the dead. A compliment of the like

nature was paid to the representative Prieur de la Marne,* by a

volunteer, who having learned that his own brother was taken amongst the

enemy, requested, by way of recommending himself to notice, a formal

permission to be his executioner.--The Roman stoicism of Prieur accepted

the implied homage, and granted the request!!

* This representative, who was also a member of the Committee of

Public Welfare, was not only the Brutus, but the Antony of La

Vendee; for we learn from the report of Benaben, that his stern

virtues were accompanied, through the whole of his mission in this

afflicted country, by a cortege of thirty strolling fiddlers!

Fourteen hundred prisoners, who had surrendered at Savenay, among whom

were many women and children, were shot, by order of the deputy

Francastel, who, together with Hentz, Richard, Choudieu, Carpentier, and

others of their colleagues, set an example of rapine and cruelty, but too

zealously imitated by their subordinate agents. In some places, the

inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex, were put indiscriminately

to the sword; in others, they were forced to carry the pillage collected

from their own dwellings, which, after being thus stripped, were

consigned to the flames.*

* "This conflagration accomplished, they had no sooner arrived in

the midst of our army, than the volunteers, in imitation of their

commanders, seized what little they had preserved, and massacred

them.--But this is not all: a whole municipality, in their scarfs of

office, were sacrificed; and at a little village, inhabited by about

fifty good patriots, who had been uniform in their resistance of the

insurgents, news is brought that their brother soldiers are coming

to assist them, and to revenge the wrongs they have suffered. A

friendly repast is provided, the military arrive, embrace their

ill-fated hosts, and devour what they have provided; which is no

sooner done, than they drive all these poor people into the

churchyard, and stab them one after another."

Report of Faure, Vice-President of a Military Commission at

Fontenay.

--The heads of the prisoners served occasionally as marks for the

officers to shoot at for trifling wagers, and the soldiers, who imitated

these heinous examples, used to conduct whole hundreds to the place of

execution, singing _"allons enfans de la patrie."_*

* Woe to those who were unable to walk, for, under pretext that

carriages could not be found to convey them, they were shot without

hesitation!--Benaben.

The insurgents had lost Cholet, Chatillon, Mortagne, &c. Yet, far from

being vanquished by the day appointed, they had crossed the Loire in

great force, and, having traversed Brittany, were preparing to make an

attack on Granville. But this did not prevent Barrere from announcing to

the convention, that La Vendee was no more, and the galleries echoed with

applauses, when they were told that the highways were impassable, from

the numbers of the dead, and that a considerable part of France was one

vast cemetery. This intelligence also tranquillized the paternal

solicitude of the legislature, and, for many months, while the system of

depopulation was pursued with the most barbarous fury, it was not

permissible even to suspect that the war was yet unextinguished.

It is only since the trial of the Nantais, that the state of La Vendee

has again become a subject of discussion: truth has now forced its way,

and we learn, that, whatever may be the strength of these unhappy people,

their minds, embittered by suffering, and animated by revenge, are still

less than ever disposed to submit to the republican government. The

design of total extirpation, once so much insisted on, is at present said

to be relinquished, and a plan of instruction and conversion is to be

substituted for bayonets and conflagrations. The revolted countries are

to be enlightened by the doctrines of liberty, fanaticism is to be

exposed, and a love of the republic to succeed the prejudices in favour

of Kings and Nobles.--To promote these objects, is, undoubtedly, the real

interest of the Convention; but a moralist, who observes through another

medium, may compare with regret and indignation the instructors with the

people they are to illumine, and the advantages of philosophy over

ignorance.

Lequinio, one of the most determined reformers of the barbarism of La

Vendee, proposes two methods: the first is, a general massacre of all the

natives--and the only objection it seems susceptible of in his opinion

is, their numbers; but as he thinks on this account it may be attended

with difficulty, he is for establishing a sort of perpetual mission of

Representatives, who, by the influence of good living and a company of

fiddlers and singers, are to restore the whole country to peace.*--

*"The only difficulty that presents itself is, to determine whether

recourse shall be had to the alternative of indulgence, or if it

will not be more advantageous to persist in the plan of total

destruction.

"If the people that still remain were not more than thirty or forty

thousand, the shortest way would doubtless be, to cut all their

throats (egorger), agreeably to my first opinion; but the population

is immense, amounting still to four hundred thousand souls.--If

there were no hope of succeeding by any other methods, certainly it

were better to kill all (egorger), even were there five hundred

thousand.

"But what are we to understand by measures of rigour? Is there no

distinction to be made between rigorous and barbarous measures? The

utmost severity is justified on the plea of the general good, but

nothing can justify barbarity. If the welfare of France

necessitated the sacrifice of the four hundred thousand inhabitants

of La Vendee, and the countries in rebellion adjoining, they ought

to be sacrificed: but, even in this case, there would be no excuse

for those atrocities which revolt nature, which are an outrage to

social order, and repugnant equally to feeling (sentiment) and

reason; and in cutting off so many entire generations for the good

of the country, we ought not to suffer the use of barbarous means in

a single instance.

"Now the most effectual way to arrive at this end (converting the

people), would be by joyous and fraternal missions, frank and

familiar harangues, civic repasts, and, above all, dancing.

"I could wish, too, that during their circuits in these countries,

the Representatives were always attended by musicians. The expence

would be trifling, compared with the good effect; if, as I am

strongly persuaded, we could thus succeed in giving a turn to the

public mind, and close the bleeding arteries of these fertile and

unhappy provinces."

Lequinio, Guerre de La Vendee.

And this people, who were either to have their throats cut, or be

republicanized by means of singing, dancing, and revolutionary Pans

and Silenus's, already beheld their property devastated by pillage

or conflagration, and were in danger of a pestilence from the

unburied bodies of their families.--Let the reader, who has seen

Lequinio's pamphlet, compare his account of the sufferings of the

Vendeans, and his project for conciliating them. They convey a

strong idea of the levity of the national character; but, in this

instance, I must suppose, that nature would be superior to local

influence; and I doubt if Lequinio's jocund philosophy will ever

succeed in attaching the Vendeans to the republic.

--Camille Desmouins, a republican reformer, nearly as sanguinary, though

not more liberal, thought the guillotine disgraced by such ignorant prey,

and that it were better to hunt them down like wild beasts; or, if made

prisoners, to exchange them against the cattle of their country!--The

eminently informed Herault de Sechelles was the patron and confidant of

the exterminating reforms of Carrier; and Carnot, when the mode of

reforming by noyades and fusillades was debated at the Committee, pleaded

the cause of Carrier, whom he describes as a good, nay, an excellent

patriot.--Merlin de Thionville, whose philosophy is of a more martial

cast, was desirous that the natives of La Vendee should be completely

annihilated, in order to furnish in their territory and habitations a

recompence for the armies.--Almost every member of the Convention has

individually avowed principles, or committed acts, from which common

turpitude would recoil, and, as a legislative body, their whole code has

been one unvarying subversion of morals and humanity. Such are the men

who value themselves on possessing all the advantages the Vendeans are

pretended to be in want of.--We will now examine what disciples they have

produced, and the benefits which have been derived from their

instructions.

Every part of France remarkable for an early proselytism to the

revolutionary doctrines has been the theatre of crimes unparalleled in

the annals of human nature. Those who have most boasted their contempt

for religious superstition have been degraded by an idolatry as gross as

any ever practiced on the Nile; and the most enthusiastic republicans

have, without daring to murmur, submitted for two years successively to a

horde of cruel and immoral tyrants.--A pretended enfranchisement from

political and ecclesiastical slavery has been the signal of the lowest

debasement, and the most cruel profligacy: the very Catechumens of

freedom and philosophy have, while yet in their first rudiments,

distinguished themselves as proficients in the arts of oppression and

servility, of intolerance and licentiousness.--Paris, the rendezvous of

all the persecuted patriots and philosophers in Europe, the centre of the

revolutionary system, whose inhabitants were illumined by the first rays

of modern republicanism, and who claim a sort of property in the rights

of man, as being the original inventors, may fairly be quoted as an

example of the benefits that would accrue from a farther dissemination of

the new tenets.

Without reverting to the events of August and September, 1792, presided

by the founders of liberty, and executed by their too apt sectaries, it

is notorious that the legions of Paris, sent to chastise the

unenlightened Vendeans, were the most cruel and rapacious banditti that

ever were let loose to afflict the world. Yet, while they exercised this

savage oppression in the countries near the Loire, their fellow-citizens

on the banks of the Seine crouched at the frown of paltry tyrants, and

were unresistingly dragged to dungeons, or butchered by hundreds on the

scaffold.--At Marseilles, Lyons, Bourdeaux, Arras, wherever these baleful

principles have made converts, they have made criminals and victims; and

those who have been most eager in imbibing or propagating them have, by a

natural and just retribution, been the first sacrificed. The new

discoveries in politics have produced some in ethics not less novel, and

until the adoption of revolutionary doctrines, the extent of human

submission or human depravity was fortunately unknown.

In this source of guilt and misery the people of La Vendee are now to be

instructed--that people, who are acknowledged to be hospitable, humane,

and laborious, and whose ideas of freedom may be better estimated by

their resistance to a despotism which the rest of France has sunk under,

than by the jargon of pretended reformers.--I could wish, that not only

the peasants of La Vendee, but those of all other countries, might for

ever remain strangers to such pernicious knowledge. It is sufficient for

this useful class of men to be taught the simple precepts of religion and

morality, and those who would teach them more, are not their benefactors.

Our age is, indeed, a literary age, and such pursuits are both liberal

and laudable in the rich and idle; but why should volumes of politics or

philosophy be mutilated and frittered into pamphlets, to inspire a

disgust for labour, and a taste for study or pleasure, in those to whom

such disgusts or inclinations are fatal. The spirit of one author is

extracted, and the beauties of another are selected, only to bewilder the

understanding, and engross the time, of those who might be more

profitably employed.

I know I may be censured as illiberal; but I have, during my abode in

this country, sufficiently witnessed the disastrous effects of corrupting

a people through their amusements or curiosity, and of making men neglect

their useful callings to become patriots and philosophers.*--

*This right of directing public affairs, and neglecting their own,

we may suppose essential to republicans of the lower orders, since

we find the following sentence of transportation in the registers of

a popular commission:

"Bergeron, a dealer in skins--suspected--having done nothing in

favour of the revolution--extremely selfish (egoiste,) and blaming

the Sans-Culottes for neglecting their callings, that they may

attend only to public concerns."--Signed by the members of the

Commission and the two Committees.

--_"Il est dangereux d'apprendre au peuple a raisonner: il ne faut pas

l'eclairer trop, parce qu'il n'est pas possible de l'eclairer assez."_

["It is dangerous to teach the people to reason--they should not be too

much enlightened, because it is not possible to enlighten them

sufficiently."]--When the enthusiasm of Rousseau's genius was thus

usefully submitted to his good sense and knowledge of mankind, he little

expected every hamlet in France would be inundated with scraps of the

contrat social, and thousands of inoffensive peasants massacred for not

understanding the Profession de Foi.

The arguments of mistaken philanthropists or designing politicians may

divert the order of things, but they cannot change our nature--they may

create an universal taste for literature, but they will never unite it

with habits of industry; and until they prove how men are to live without

labour, they have no right to banish the chearful vacuity which usually

accompanies it, by substituting reflections to make it irksome, and

propensities with which it is incompatible.

The situation of France has amply demonstrated the folly of attempting to

make a whole people reasoners and politicians--there seems to be no

medium; and as it is impossible to make a nation of sages, you let loose

a horde of savages: for the philosophy which teaches a contempt for

accustomed restraints, is not difficult to propagate; but that superior

kind, which enables men to supply them, by subduing the passions that

render restraints necessary, is of slow progress, and never can be

general.

I have made the war of La Vendee more a subject of reflection than

narrative, and have purposely avoided military details, which would be

not only uninteresting, but disgusting. You would learn no more from

these desultory hostilities, than that the defeats of the republican

armies were, if possible, more sanguinary than their victories; that the

royalists, who began the war with humanity, were at length irritated to

reprisals; and that more than two hundred thousand lives have already

been sacrificed in the contest, yet undecided.

Amiens, Oct. 24, 1794.

Revolutions, like every thing else in France, are a mode, and the

Convention already commemorate four since 1789: that of July 1789, which

rendered the monarchical power nugatory; that of August the 10th, 1792,

which subverted it; the expulsion of the Brissotins, in May 1793; and the

death of Robespierre, in July 1794.

The people, accustomed, from their earliest knowledge, to respect the

person and authority of the King, felt that the events of the two first

epochs, which disgraced the one and annihilated the other, were violent

and important revolutions; and, as language which expresses the public

sentiment is readily adopted, it soon became usual to speak of these

events as the revolutions of July and August.

The thirty-first of May has always been viewed in a very different light,

for it was not easy to make the people at large comprehend how the

succession of Robespierre and Danton to Brissot and Roland could be

considered as a revolution, more especially as it appeared evident that

the principles of one party actuated the government of the other. Every

town had its many-headed monster to represent the defeat of the

Foederalists, and its mountain to proclaim the triumph of their enemies

the Mountaineers; but these political hieroglyphics were little

understood, and the merits of the factions they alluded to little

distinguished--so that the revolution of the thirty-first of May was

rather a party aera, than a popular one.

The fall of Robespierre would have made as little impression as that of

the Girondists, if some melioration of the revolutionary system had not

succeeded it; and it is in fact only since the public voice, and the

interest of the Convention, have occasioned a change approaching to

reform, that the death of Robespierre is really considered as a benefit.

But what was in itself no more than a warfare of factions, may now, if

estimated by its consequences, be pronounced a revolution of infinite

importance. The Jacobins, whom their declining power only rendered more

insolent and daring, have at length obliged the Convention to take

decided measures against them, and they are now subject to such

regulations as must effectually diminish their influence, and, in the

end, dissolve their whole combination. They can no longer correspond as

societies, and the mischievous union which constituted their chief force,

can scarcely be supported for any time under the present restrictions.*

* "All affiliations, aggregations, and foederations, as well as

correspondences carried on collectively between societies, under

whatever denomination they may exist, are henceforth prohibited, as

being subversive of government, and contrary to the unity of the

republic.

"Those persons who sign as presidents or secretaries, petitions or

addresses in a collective form, shall be arrested and confined as

suspicious, &c. &c.--Whoever offends in any shape against the

present law, will incur the same penalty."

The whole of the decree is in the same spirit. The immediate and

avowed pretext for this measure was, that the popular societies, who

have of late only sent petitions disagreeable to the Convention, did

not express the sense of the people. Yet the deposition of the

King, and the establishment of the republic, had no other sanction

than the adherence of these clubs, who are now allowed not to be the

nation, and whose very existence as then constituted is declared to

be subversive of government.

It is not improbable, that the Convention, by suffering the clubs still

to exist, after reducing them to nullity, may hope to preserve the

institution as a future resource against the people, while it represses

their immediate efforts against itself. The Brissotins would have

attempted a similar policy, but they had nothing to oppose to the

Jacobins, except their personal influence. Brissot and Roland took part

with the clubs, as they approved the massacres of August and September,

just as far as it answered their purpose; and when they were abandoned by

the one, and the other were found to incur an unprofitable odium, they

acted the part which Tallien and Freron act now under the same

circumstances, and would willingly have promoted the destruction of a

power which had become inimical to them.*--

* Brissot and Roland were more pernicious as Jacobins than the most

furious of their successors. If they did not in person excite the

people to the commission of crimes, they corrupted them, and made

them fit instruments for the crimes of others. Brissot might affect

to condemn the massacres of September in the gross, but he is known

to have enquired with eager impatience, and in a tone which implied

he had reasons for expecting it, whether De Morande, an enemy he

wished to be released from, was among the murdered.

--Their imitators, without possessing more honesty, either political or

moral, are more fortunate; and not only Tallien and Freron, who since

their expulsion from the Jacobins have become their most active enemies,

are now in a manner popular, but even the whole Convention is much less

detested than it was before.

It is the singular felicity of the Assembly to derive a sort of

popularity from the very excesses it has occasioned or sanctioned, and

which, it was natural to suppose, would have consigned it for ever to

vengeance or obloquy; but the past sufferings of the people have taught

them to be moderate in their expectations; and the name of their

representation has been so connected with tyranny of every sort, that it

appears an extraordinary forbearance when the usual operations of

guillotines and mandates of arrest are suspended.

Thus, though the Convention have not in effect repaired a thousandth part

of their own acts of injustice, or done any good except from necessity,

they are overwhelmed with applauding addresses, and affectionate

injunctions not to quit their post. What is still more wonderful, many

of these are sincere; and Tallien, Freron, Legendre, &c. with all their

revolutionary enormities on their heads, are now the heroes of the

reviving aristocrats.

Situated as things are at present, there is much sound policy in

flattering the Convention into a proper use of their power, rather than

making a convulsive effort to deprive them of it. The Jacobins would

doubtless avail themselves of such a movement; and this is so much

apprehended, that it has given rise to a general though tacit agreement

to foment the divisions between the Legislature and the Clubs, and to

support the first, at least until it shall have destroyed the latter.

The late decrees, which obstruct the intercourse and affiliation of

popular societies, may be regarded as an event not only beneficial to

this country, but to the world in general; because it is confessed, that

these combinations, by means of which the French monarchy was subverted,

and the King brought to the scaffold, are only reconcileable with a

barbarous and anarchical government.

The Convention are now much occupied on two affairs, which call forth all

their "natural propensities," and afford a farther confirmation of this

fact--that their feelings and principles are always instinctively at war

with justice, however they may find it expedient to affect a regard for

it--_C'est la chatte metamorphosee en femme_ [The cat turned into a

woman.]--

_"En vain de son train ordinaire"

"On la veut desaccoutumer,

"Quelque chose qu'on puisse faire

"On ne fauroit la reformer."_

La Fontaine.

The Deputies who were imprisoned as accomplices of the Girondists, and on

other different pretexts, have petitioned either to be brought to trial

or released; and the abominable conduct of Carrier at Nantes is so fully

substantiated, that the whole country is impatient to have some steps

taken towards bringing him to punishment: yet the Convention are averse

from both these measures--they procrastinate and elude the demand of

their seventy-two colleagues, who were arrested without a specific

charge; while they almost protect Carrier, and declare, that in cases

which tend to deprive a Representative of his liberty, it is better to

reflect thirty times than once. This is curious doctrine with men who

have sent so many people arbitrarily to the scaffold, and who now detain

seventy-two Deputies in confinement, they know not why.

The ashes of Rousseau have recently been deposited with the same

ceremonies, and in the same place, as those of Marat. We should feel for

such a degradation of genius, had not the talents of Rousseau been

frequently misapplied; and it is their misapplication which has levelled

him to an association with Marat. Rousseau might be really a fanatic,

and, though eccentric, honest; yet his power of adorning impracticable

systems, it must be acknowledged, has been more mischievous to society

than a thousand such gross impostors as Marat.

I have learned since my return from the Providence, the death of Madame

Elizabeth. I was ill when it happened, and my friends took some pains to

conceal an event which they knew would affect me. In tracing the motives

of the government for this horrid action, it may perhaps be sufficiently

accounted for in the known piety and virtues of this Princess; but

reasons of another kind have been suggested to me, and which, in all

likelihood, contributed to hasten it. She was the only person of the

royal family of an age competent for political transactions who had not

emigrated, and her character extorted respect even from her enemies. [The

Prince of Conti was too insignificant to be an object of jealousy in this

way.] She must therefore, of course, since the death of the Queen, have

been an object of jealousy to all parties. Robespierre might fear that

she would be led to consent to some arrangement with a rival faction for

placing the King on the throne--the Convention were under similar

apprehensions with regard to him; so that the fate of this illustrious

sufferer was probably gratifying to every part of the republicans.

I find, on reading her trial, (if so it may be called,) a repetition of

one of the principal charges against the Queen--that of trampling on the

national colours at Versailles, during an entertainment given to some

newly-arrived troops. Yet I have been assured by two gentlemen,

perfectly informed on the subject, and who were totally unacquainted with

each other, that this circumstance, which has been so usefully enlarged

upon, is false,* and that the whole calumny originated in the jealousy of

a part of the national guard who had not been invited.

* This infamous calumny (originally fabricated by Lecointre the

linen draper, then an officer of the National Guard, now a member of

the council of 500) was amply confuted by M. Mounier, who was

President of the States-General at the time, in a publication

intitled "_Expose de ma Conduite,_" which appeared soon after the

event--in the autumn of 1789.--Editor.

But this, as well as the taking of the Bastille, and other revolutionary

falsehoods, will, I trust, be elucidated. The people are now undeceived

only by their calamities--the time may come, when it will be safe to

produce their conviction by truth. Heroes of the fourteenth of July, and

patriots of the tenth of August, how will ye shrink from it!--Yours, &c.

Amiens, Nov. 2, 1794.

Every post now brings me letters from England; but I perceive, by the

suppressed congratulations of my friends, that, though they rejoice to

find I am still alive, they are far from thinking me in a state of

security. You, my dear Brother, must more particularly have lamented the

tedious confinement I have endured, and the inconveniencies to which I

have been subjected; I am, however, persuaded that you would not wish me

to have been exempt from a persecution in which all the natives of

England, who are not a disgrace to their country, as well as some that

are so, have shared. Such an exemption would now be deemed a reproach;

for, though it must be confessed that few of us have been voluntary

sufferers, we still claim the honour of martyrdom, and are not very

tolerant towards those who, exposed by their situation, may be supposed

to have owed their protection to their principles.

There are, indeed, many known revolutionists and republicans, who, from

party disputes, personal jealousies, or from being comprised in some

general measure, have undergone a short imprisonment; and these men now

wish to be confounded with their companions who are of a different

description. But such persons are carefully distinguished;* and the

aristocrats have, in their turn, a catalogue of suspicious people--that

is, of people suspected of not having been suspicious.

* Mr. Thomas Paine, for instance, notwithstanding his sufferings, is

still thought more worthy of a seat in the Convention or the

Jacobins, than of an apartment in the Luxembourg.--Indeed I have

generally remarked, that the French of all parties hold an English

republican in peculiar abhorrence.

It is now the fashion to talk of a sojourn in a maison d'arret with

triumph; and the more decent people, who from prudence or fear had been

forced to seek refuge in the Jacobin clubs, are now solicitous to

proclaim their real motives. The red cap no longer "rears its hideous

front" by day, but is modestly converted into a night-cap; and the bearer

of a diplome de Jacobin, instead of swinging along, to the annoyance of

all the passengers he meets, paces soberly with a diminished height, and

an air not unlike what in England we call sneaking. The bonnet rouge

begins likewise to be effaced from flags at the doors; and, as though

this emblem of liberty were a very bad neighbour to property, its

relegation seems to encourage the re-appearance of silver forks and

spoons, which are gradually drawn forth from their hiding-places, and

resume their stations at table. The Jacobins represent themselves as

being under the most cruel oppression, declare that the members of the

Convention are aristocrats and royalists, and lament bitterly, that,

instead of fish-women, or female patriots of republican external, the

galleries are filled with auditors in flounces and anti-civic top-knots,

femmes a fontanges.

These imputations and grievances of the Jacobins are not altogether

without foundation. People in general are strongly impressed with an

idea that the Assembly are veering towards royalism; and it is equally

true, that the speeches of Tallien and Freron are occasionally heard and

applauded by fair elegantes, who, two years ago, would have recoiled at

the name of either. It is not that their former deeds are forgotten, but

the French are grown wise by suffering; and it is politic, when bad men

act well, whatever the motive, to give them credit for it, as nothing is

so likely to make them persevere, as the hope that their reputation is

yet retrievable. On this principle the aristocrats are the eulogists of

Tallien, while the Jacobins remind him hourly of the massacres of the

priests, and his official conduct as Secretary to the municipality or

Paris.*

* Tallien was Seecretary to the Commune of Paris in 1792, and on the

thirty-first of August he appeared at the bar of the Legislative

Assembly with an address, in which he told them "he had caused the

refractory priests to be arrested and confined, and that in a few

days the Land of Liberty should be freed of them."--The massacres of

the prisons began two days after!

As soon as a Representative is convicted of harbouring an opinion

unfavourable to pillage or murder, he is immediately declared an

aristocrat; or, if the Convention happen for a moment to be influenced by

reason or justice, the hopes and fears of both parties are awakened by

suspicions that the members are converts to royalism.--For my own part,

I believe they are and will be just what their personal security and

personal interest may suggest, though it is but a sorry sort of panegyric

on republican ethics to conclude, that every one who manifests the least

symptom of probity or decency, must of course be a royalist or an

aristocrat.

Notwithstanding the harmony which appears to subsist between the

Convention and the people, the former is much less popular in detail than

in the gross. Almost every member who has been on mission, is accused of

dilapidations and cruelties so heinous, that, if they had not been

committed by Representans du Peuple, the criminal courts would find no

difficulty in deciding upon them.--But as theft or murder does not

deprive a member of his privileges, complaints of this nature are only

cognizable by the Assembly, which, being yet in its first days of

regeneration, is rather scrupulous of defending such amusements overtly.

Alarmed, however, at the number, and averse from the precedent of these

denunciations, it has now passed a variety of decrees, which are termed a

guarantee of the national representation, and which in fact guarantee it

so effectually, that a Deputy may do any thing in future with impunity,

provided it does not affect his colleagues. There are now so many forms,

reports, and examinations, that several months may be employed before the

person of a delinquent, however notorious his guilt, can be secured. The

existence of a fellow-creature should, doubtless, be attacked with

caution; for, though he may have forfeited his claims on our esteem, and

even our pity, religion has preserved him others, of which he should not

be deprived.--But when we recollect that all these merciful ceremonies

are in favour of a Carrier or a Le Bon, and that the King, Madame

Elizabeth, and thousands of innocent people, were hurried to execution,

without being allowed the consolations of piety or affection, which only

a mockery of justice might have afforded them; when, even now, priests

are guillotined for celebrating masses in private, and thoughtless people

for speaking disrespectfully of the Convention--the heart is at variance

with religion and principle, and we regret that mercy is to be the

exclusive portion of those who were never accessible to its dictates.*

* The denunciation being first presented to the Assembly, they are

to decide whether it shall be received. If they determine in the

affirmative, it is sent to the three Committees of Legislation,

Public Welfare, and General Safety, to report whether there may be

room for farther examination. In that case, a commission of

twenty-one members is appointed to receive the proofs of the accuser,

and the defence of the accused. These Commissioners, after as long a

delay as they may think fit to interpose, make known their opinion;

and if it be against the accused, the Convention proceed to

determine finally whether the matter shall be referred to the

ordinary tribunal. All this time the culprit is at large, or, at

worst, and merely for the form, carelessly guarded at his own

dwelling.

I would not "pick bad from bad," but it irks one's spirit to see these

miscreants making "assurance doubly sure," and providing for their own

safety with such solicitude, after sacrificing, without remorse, whatever

was most interesting or respectable in the country.--Yours, &c.

Basse-ville, Arras, Nov. 6, 1794.

Since my own liberation, I have been incessantly employed in endeavouring

to procure the return of my friends to Amiens; who, though released from

prison some time, could not obtain passports to quit Arras. After

numerous difficulties and vexations, we have at length succeeded, and I

am now here to accompany them home.

I found Mr. and Mrs. D____ much altered by the hardships they have

undergone: Mrs. D____, in particular, has been confined some months in a

noisome prison called the Providence, originally intended as a house of

correction, and in which, though built to contain an hundred and fifty

persons, were crouded near five hundred females, chiefly ladies of Arras

and the environs.--The superintendance of this miserable place was

entrusted to a couple of vulgar and vicious women, who, having

distinguished themselves as patriots from the beginning of the

revolution, were now rewarded by Le Bon with an office as profitable

as it was congenial to their natures.

I know not whether it is to be imputed to the national character, or to

that of the French republicans only, but the cruelties which have been

committed are usually so mixed with licentiousness, as to preclude

description. I have already noticed the conduct of Le Bon, and it must

suffice to say, his agents were worthy of him, and that the female

prisoners suffered every thing which brutality, rapaciousness, and

indecency, could inflict. Mr. D____ was, in the mean time, transferred

from prison to prison--the distress of separation was augmented by their

mutual apprehensions and pecuniary embarrassments--and I much fear, the

health and spirits of both are irretrievably injured.

I regret my impatience in coming here, rather than waiting the arrival of

my friends at home; for the changes I observe, and the recollections they

give birth to, oppress my heart, and render the place hateful to me.--All

the families I knew are diminished by executions, and their property is

confiscated--those whom I left in elegant hotels are now in obscure

lodgings, subsisting upon the superfluities of better days--and the

sorrows of the widows and orphans are increased by penury; while the

Convention, which affects to condemn the crimes of Le Bon, is profiting

by the spoils of his victims.

I am the more deeply impressed by these circumstances, because, when I

was here in 1792, several who have thus fallen, though they had nothing

to reproach themselves with, were yet so much intimidated as to propose

emigrating; and I then was of opinion, that such a step would be

impolitic and unnecessary. I hope and believe this opinion did not

influence them, but I lament having given it, for the event has proved

that a great part of the emigrants are justifiable. It always appeared

to me so serious and great an evil to abandon one's country, that when I

have seen it done with indifference or levity, I may perhaps have

sometimes transferred to the measure itself a sentiment of

disapprobation, excited originally by the manner of its adoption. When I

saw people expatiate with calmness, and heard them speak of it as a means

of distinguishing themselves, I did not sufficiently allow for the

tendency of the French to make the best of every thing, or the influence

of vanity on men who allow it to make part of the national

characteristic: and surely, if ever vanity were laudable, that of marking

a detestation for revolutionary principles, and an attachment to loyalty

and religion, may justly be considered so. Many whom I then accused of

being too lightly affected by the prospect of exile, might be animated by

the hope of personally contributing to the establishment of peace and

order, and rescuing their country from the banditti who were oppressing

it; and it is not surprising that such objects should dazzle the

imagination and deceive the judgment in the choice of measures by which

they were to be obtained.

The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great;

and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the

humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have

ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?--But if

the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so.

By Emigrants, I mean all who, without being immediately in danger, left

their country through apprehension of the future--from attachment to the

persons of the Princes, or to join companions in the army whom they might

deem it a disgrace to abandon.--Those whom I think may with truth be

styled Refugees, are the Nobility and Priests who fled when the people,

irritated by the literary terrorists of the day, the Brissots, Rolands,

Camille Desmoulins, &c. were burning their chateaux and proscribing their

persons, and in whom expatriation cannot properly be deemed the effect of

choice. These, wherever they have sought an asylum, are entitled to our

respect and sympathy.

Yet, I repeat, we are not authorized to discriminate. There is no

reasoning coldly on the subject. The most cautious prudence, the most

liberal sacrifices, and the meanest condescensions, have not insured the

lives and fortunes of those who ventured to remain; and I know not that

the absent require any other apology than the desolation of the country

they have quitted. Had my friends who have been slaughtered by Le Bon's

tribunal persisted in endeavouring to escape, they might have lived, and

their families, though despoiled by the rapacity of the government, have

been comparatively happy.*

* The first horrors of the revolution are well known, and I have

seen no accounts which exaggerate them. The niece of a lady of my

acquaintance, a young woman only seventeen, escaped from her

country-house (whilst already in flames) with her infant at her

breast, and literally without clothes to cover her. In this state

she wandered a whole night, and when she at length reached a place

where she procured assistance, was so exhausted that her life was in

danger.--Another lady, whom I knew, was wounded in the arm by some

peasants assembled to force from her the writings of her husband's

estates. Even after this they still remained in France, submitted

with cheerfulness to all the demands of patriotic gifts, forced

loans, requisitions and impositions of every kind; yet her husband

was nevertheless guillotined, and the whole of their immense

property confiscated.

Retrospections, like these, obliterate many of my former notions on the

subject of the Emigrants; and if I yet condemn emigration, it is only as

a general measure, impolitic, and inadequate to the purposes for which it

was undertaken. But errors of judgment, in circumstances so

unprecedented, cannot be censured consistently with candour, through we

may venture to mark them as a discouragement to imitation; for if any

nation should yet be menaced by the revolutionary scourge, let it beware

of seeking external redress by a temporary abandonment of its interests

to the madness of systemists, or the rapine of needy adventurers. We

must, we ought to, lament the fate of the many gallant men who have

fallen, and the calamities of those who survive; but what in them has

been a mistaken policy, will become guilt in those who, on a similar

occasion, shall not be warned by their example. I am concerned when I

hear these unhappy fugitives are any where objects of suspicion or

persecution, as it is not likely that those who really emigrated from

principle can merit such treatment: and I doubt not, that most of the

instances of treachery or misconduct ascribed to the Emigrants originated

in republican emissaries, who have assumed that character for the double

purpose of discrediting it, and of exercising their trade as spies.

The common people here, who were retained by Le Bon for several months to

attend and applaud his executions, are still dissolute and ferocious, and

openly regret the loss of their pay, and the disuse of the guillotine.

--I came to Arras in mourning, which I have worn since the receipt of

your first letter, but was informed by the lady with whom my friends

lodge, that I must not attempt to walk the streets in black, for that it

was customary to insult those who did so, on a supposition that they were

related to some persons who had been executed; I therefore borrowed a

white undress, and stole out by night to visit my unfortunate

acquaintance, as I found it was also dangerous to be seen entering houses

known to contain the remains of those families which had been dismembered

by Le Bon's cruelties.

We return to Amiens to-morrow, though you must not imagine so formidable

a person as myself is permitted to wander about the republic without due

precaution; and I had much difficulty in being allowed to come, even

attended by a guard, who has put me to a considerable expence; but the

man is civil, and as he has business of his own to transact in the town,

he is no embarrassment to me.

Amiens, Nov. 26, 1794.

The Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, and the National

Convention, all seem to have acted from a persuasion, that their sole

duty as revolutionists was comprised in the destruction of whatever

existed under the monarchy. If an institution were discovered to have

the slightest defect in principle, or to have degenerated a little in

practice, their first step was to abolish it entirely, and leave the

replacing it for the present to chance, and for the future to their

successors. In return for the many new words which they have introduced

into the French language, they have expunged that of reform; and the

havock and devastation, which a Mahometan conqueror might have performed

as successfully, are as yet the only effects of philosophy and

republicanism.

This system of ignorance and violence seems to have persecuted with

peculiar hostility all the ancient establishments for education; and the

same plan of suppressing daily what they have neither leisure nor

abilities to supply, which I remarked to you two years ago, has directed

the Convention ever since. It is true, the interval has produced much

dissertation, and engendered many projects; but those who were so

unanimous in rejecting, were extremely discordant in adopting, and their

own disputes and indecision might have convinced them of their

presumption in condemning what they now found it so difficult to excel.

Some decided in favour of public schools, after the example of Sparta--

this was objected to by others, because, said they, if you have public

schools you must have edifices, and governors, and professors, who will,

to a certainty, be aristocrats, or become so; and, in short, this will

only be a revival of the colleges of the old government--A third party

proposed private seminaries, or that people might be at liberty to

educate their children in the way they thought best; but this, it was

declared, would have a still greater tendency to aristocracy; for the

rich, being better able to pay than the poor, would engross all the

learning to themselves. The Jacobins were of opinion, that there should

be no schools, either public or private, but that the children should

merely be taken to hear the debates of the Clubs, where they would

acquire all the knowledge necessary for republicans; and a few spirits of

a yet sublimer cast were adverse both to schools or clubs, and

recommended, that the rising generation should "study the great book of

Nature alone." It is, however, at length concluded, that there shall be

a certain number of public establishments, and that people shall even be

allowed to have their children instructed at home, under the inspection

of the constituted authorities, who are to prevent the instillation of

aristocratic principles.*

* We may judge of the competency of many of these people to be

official censors of education by the following specimens from a

report of Gregoire's. Since the rage for destruction has a little

subsided, circular letters have been sent to the administrators of

the departments, districts, &c. enquiring what antiquities, or other

objects of curiosity, remain in their neighbourhood.--"From one,

(says Gregoire,) we are informed, that they are possessed of nothing

in this way except four vases, which, as they have been told, are of

porphyry. From a second we learn, that, not having either forge or

manufactory in the neighbourhood, no monument of the arts is to be

found there: and a third announces, that the completion of its

library cataloges has been retarded, because the person employed at

them ne fait pas la diplomatique!"--("does not understand the

science of diplomacy.")

The difficulty as to the mode in which children were to be taught being

got over, another remained, not less liable to dispute--which was, the

choice of what they were to learn. Almost every member had a favourite

article---music, physic, prophylactics, geography, geometry, astronomy,

arithmetic, natural history, and botany, were all pronounced to be

requisites in an eleemosynary system of education, specified to be

chiefly intended for the country people; but as this debate regarded only

the primary schools for children in their earliest years, and as one man

for a stipend of twelve hundred livres a year, was to do it all, a

compromise became necessary, and it has been agreed for the present, that

infants of six years shall be taught only reading, writing, gymnastics,

geometry, geography, natural philosophy, and history of all free nations,

and that of all the tyrants, the rights of man, and the patriotic songs.

--Yet, after these years of consideration, and days of debate, the

Assembly has done no more than a parish-clerk, or an old woman with a

primer, and "a twig whilom of small regard to see," would do better

without its interference.

The students of a more advanced age are still to be disposed of, and the

task of devising an institution will not be easy; because, perhaps a

Collot d'Herbois or a Duhem is not satisfied with the system which

perfectioned the genius of Montesquieu or Descartes. Change, not

improvement, is the object--whatever bears a resemblance to the past must

be proscribed; and while other people study to simplify modes of

instruction, the French legislature is intent on rendering them as

difficult and complex as possible; and at the moment they decree that the

whole country shall become learned, they make it an unfathomable science

to teach urchins of half a dozen years old their letters.

Foreigners, indeed, who judge only from the public prints, may suppose

the French far advanced towards becoming the most erudite nation in

Europe: unfortunately, all these schools, primary, and secondary, and

centrical, and divergent, and normal,* exist as yet but in the

repertories of the Convention, and perhaps may not add "a local

habitation" to their names, till the present race** shall be unfit to

reap the benefit of them.

* _Les Ecoles Normales_ were schools where masters were to be

instructed in the art of teaching. Certain deputies objected to

them, as being of feudal institution, supposing that Normale had

some reference to Normandy.

** This was a mistake, for the French seem to have adopted the

maxim, "that man is never too old to learn;" and, accordingly, at

the opening of the Normal schools, the celebrated Bougainville, now

eighty years of age, became a pupil. This Normal project was,

however, soon relinquished--for by that fatality which has hitherto

attended all the republican institutions, it was found to have

become a mere nursery for aristocrats.

But this revolutionary barbarism, not content with stopping the progress

of the rising generation, has ravaged without mercy the monuments of

departed genius, and persecuted with senseless despotism those who were

capable of replacing them. Pictures have been defaced, statues

mutilated, and libraries burnt, because they reminded the people of their

Kings or their religion; while artists, and men of science or literature,

were wasting their valuable hours in prison, or expiring on the

scaffold.--The moral and gentle Florian died of vexation. A life of

abstraction and utility could not save the celebrated chymist, Lavoisier,

from the Guillotine. La Harpe languished in confinement, probably, that

he might not eclipse Chenier, who writes tragedies himself; and every

author that refused to degrade his talents by the adulation of tyranny

has been proscribed and persecuted. Palissot,* at sixty years old, was

destined to expiate in a prison a satire upon Rousseau, written when he

was only twenty, and escaped, not by the interposition of justice, but by

the efficacity of a bon mot.

* Palissot was author of "The Philosophers," a comedy, written

thirty years ago, to ridicule Rousseau. He wrote to the

municipality, acknowledged his own error, and the merits of

Rousseau; yet, says he, if Rousseau were a god, you ought not to

sacrifice human victims to him.--The expression, which in French is

well tuned, pleased the municipality, and Palissot, I believe, was

not afterwards molested.

--A similar fate would have been awarded Dorat, [Author of "Les Malheurs

de l'Inconstance," and other novels.] for styling himself Chevalier in

the title-pages of his novels, had he not commuted his punishment for

base eulogiums on the Convention, and with the same pen, which has been

the delight of the French boudoir, celebrated Carrier's murders on the

Loire under the appellation of "baptemes civiques." Every province in

France, we are informed by the eloquent pedantry of Gregoire, exhibits

traces of these modern Huns, which, though now exclusively attributed to

the agents of Robespierre and Mr. Pitt,* it is very certain were

authorized by the decrees of the Convention, and executed under the

sanction of Deputies on mission, or their subordinates.

* _"Soyez sur que ces destructions se sont pour la plupart a

l'instigation de nos ennemis--quel triomphe pour l'Anglais si il eul

pu ecraser notre commerce par l'aneantissement des arts dont la

culture enrichit le sien."_--"Rest assured that these demolitions

were, for the most part, effected at the instigation of our enemies

--what a triumph would it have been for the English, if they had

succeeded in crushing our commerce by the annihilation of the arts,

the culture of which enriched their own."

--If the principal monuments of art be yet preserved to gratify the

national taste or vanity, it is owing to the courage and devotion of

individuals, who obeyed with a protecting dilatoriness the destructive

mandates of government.

At some places, orangeries were sold by the foot for fire-wood, because,

as it was alledged, that republicans had more occasion for apples and

potatoes than oranges.--At Mousseaux, the seals were put on the

hot-houses, and all the plants nearly destroyed. Valuable remains of

sculpture were condemned for a crest, a fleur de lys, or a coronet

attached to them; and the deities of the Heathen mythology were made war

upon by the ignorance of the republican executioners, who could not

distinguish them from emblems of feodality.*

* At Anet, a bronze stag, placed as a fountain in a large piece of

water, was on the point of being demolished, because stags are

beasts of chace, and hunting is a feodal privilege, and stags of

course emblems of feodality.--It was with some difficulty preserved

by an amateur, who insisted, that stags of bronze were not included

in the decree.--By a decree of the Convention, which I have formerly

mentioned, all emblems of royalty or feodality were to be demolished

by a particular day; and as the law made no distinction, it could

not be expected that municipalities, &c. often ignorant or timid,

should either venture or desire to spare what in the eyes of the

connoisseur might be precious.

"At St. Dennis, (says the virtuoso Gregoire,) where the National

Club justly struck at the tyrants even in their tombs, that of

Turenne ought to have been spared; yet strokes of the sword are

still visible on it."--He likewise complains, that at the Botanic

Garden the bust of Linnaeus had been destroyed, on a presumption of

its being that of Charles the Ninth; and if it had been that of

Charles the Ninth, it is not easy to discern how the cause of

liberty was served by its mutilation.--The artist or moralist

contemplates with equal profit or curiosity the features of Pliny or

Commodus; and History and Science will appreciate Linnaeus and

Charles the Ninth, without regarding whether their resemblances

occupy a palace, or are scattered in fragments by republican

ignorance.--Long after the death of Robespierre, the people of

Amiens humbly petitioned the Convention, that their cathedral,

perhaps the most beautiful Gothic edifice in Europe, might be

preserved; and to avoid giving offence by the mention of churches or

cathedrals, they called it a Basilique.--But it is unnecessary to

adduce any farther proof, that the spirit of what is now called

Vandalism originated in the Convention. Every one in France must

recollect, that, when dispatches from all corners announced these

ravages, they were heard with as much applause, as though they had

related so many victories gained over the enemy.

--Quantities of curious medals have been melted down for the trifling

value of the metal; and at Abbeville, a silver St. George, of uncommon

workmanship, and which Mr. Garrick is said to have desired to purchase at

a very high price, was condemned to the crucible--

_"----Sur tant de tresors

"Antiques monumens respectes jusqu'alors,

"Par la destruction signalant leur puissance,

"Las barbares etendirent leur stupide vengeance."

"La Religion,"_ Racine.

Yet the people in office who operated these mischiefs were all appointed

by the delegates of the Assembly; for the first towns of the republic

were not trusted even with the choice of a constable. Instead,

therefore, of feeling either surprise or regret at this devastation, we

ought rather to rejoice that it has extended no farther; for such agents,

armed with such decrees, might have reduced France to the primitive state

of ancient Gaul. Several valuable paintings are said to have been

conveyed to England, and it will be curious if the barbarism of France in

the eighteenth century should restore to us what we, with a fanaticism

and ignorance at least more prudent than theirs, sold them in the

seventeenth. The zealots of the Barebones' Parliament are, however, more

respectable than the atheistical Vandals of the Convention; and, besides

the benefit of our example, the interval of a century and an half, with

the boast of a philosophy and a degree of illumination exceeding that of

any other people, have rendered the errors of the French at once more

unpardonable and more ridiculous; for, in assimilating their past

presentations to their present conduct and situation, we do not always

find it possible to regret without a mixture of contempt.

Amiens, Nov. 29, 1794.

The selfish policy of the Convention in affecting to respect and preserve

the Jacobin societies, while it deprived them of all power, and help up

the individuals who composed them to abhorrence, could neither satisfy

nor deceive men versed in revolutionary expedients, and more accustomed

to dictate laws than to submit to them.*

* The Jacobins were at this time headed by Billaud Varenne, Collot,

Thuriot, &c.--veterans, who were not likely to be deceived by

temporizing.

Supported by all the force of government, and intrinsically formidable by

their union, the Clubs had long existed in defiance of public

reprobation, and for some time they had braved not only the people, but

the government itself. The instant they were disabled from corresponding

and communicating in that privileged sort of way which rendered them so

conspicuous, they felt their weakness; and their desultory and

unconnected efforts to regain their influence only served to complete its

annihilation. While they pretended obedience to the regulations to which

the Convention had subjected them, they intrigued to promote a revolt,

and were strenuously exerting themselves to gain partizans among the idle

and dissolute, who, having subsisted for months as members of

revolutionary committees, and in other revolutionary offices, were

naturally averse from a more moderate government. The numbers of these

were far from inconsiderable: and, when it is recollected that this

description of people only had been allowed to retain their arms, while

all who had any thing to defend were deprived of them, we cannot wonder

if the Jacobins entertained hopes of success.

The Convention, aware of these attempts, now employed against its ancient

accomplices the same arts that had proved so fatal to all those whom it

had considered as its enemies. A correspondence was "opportunely"

intercepted between the Jacobins and the Emigrants in Switzerland, while

emissaries insinuated themselves into the Clubs, for the purpose of

exciting desperate motions; or, dispersed in public places, contrived, by

assuming the Jacobin costume, to throw on the faction the odium of those

seditious exclamations which they were employed to vociferate.

There is little doubt that the designs of the Jacobins were nearly such

as have been imputed to them. They had, however, become more politic

than to act thus openly, without being prepared to repel their enemies,

or to support their friends; and there is every appearance that the Swiss

plots, and the insurrections of the _Palais Egalite,_ were the devices of

the government, to give a pretext for shutting up the Club altogether,

and to avert the real dangers with which it was menaced, by spreading an

alarm of fictitious ones. A few idle people assembled (probably on

purpose) about the _Palais Egalite,_ and the place where the Jacobins held

their meetings, and the exclamation of "Down with the Convention!" served

as the signal for hostilities. The aristocrats joined the partizans of

the Convention, the Jacobins were attacked in their hall, and an affray

ensued, in which several persons on each side were wounded. Both parties

accused each other of being the aggressor, and a report of the business

was made to the Assembly; but the Assembly had already decided--and, on

the ninth of November, while the Jacobins were endeavouring to raise the

storm by a recapitulation of the rights of man, a decree was passed,

prohibiting their debates, and ordering the national seal to be put on

their doors and papers. The society were not in force to make

resistance, and the decree was carried into execution as quietly as

though it had been levelled against the hotel of some devoted aristocrat.

When the news of this event reached the departments, it occasioned an

universal rejoicing--not such a rejoicing as is ordered for the successes

of the French arms, (which always seems to be a matter of great

indifference,) but a chearfulness of heart and of countenance; and many

persons whom I do not remember to have ever seen in the least degree

moved by political events, appeared sincerely delighted at this--

"And those smile now, who never smil'd before,

"And those who always smil'd, now smile the more."

Parnell's Claudian.

The armies might proceed to Vienna, pillage the Escurial, or subjugate

all Europe, and I am convinced no emotion of pleasure would be excited

equal to that manifested at the downfall of the Jacobins of Paris.

Since this disgrace of the parent society, the Clubs in the departments

have, for the most part, dissolved themselves, or dwindled into peaceable

assemblies to hear the news read, and applaud the convention.--The few

Jacobin emblems which were yet remaining have totally disappeared, and no

vestige of Jacobinism is left, but the graves of its victims, and the

desolation of the country.

The profligate, the turbulent, the idle, and needy, of various countries

in Europe, have been tempted by the successes of the French Jacobins to

endeavour to establish similar institutions; but the same successes have

operated as a warning to people of a different description, and the fall

of these societies has drawn two confessions from their original

partizans, which ought never to be forgotten--namely, that they were

formed for the purpose of subverting the monarchy, and that their

existence is incompatible with regular government of any kind.--"While

the monarchy still existed, (says the most philosophic Lequinio, with

whose scheme of reforming La Vendee you are already acquainted,) it was

politic and necessary to encourage popular societies, as the most

efficacious means of operating its destruction; but now we have effected

a revolution, and have only to consolidate it by mild and philosophic

laws, these societies are dangerous, because they can produce only

confusion and disorder."--This is also the language of Brissot, who

admires the Jacobins from their origin till the end of 1792, but after

that period he admits they were only the instruments of faction, and

destructive of all property and order.*

* The period of the Jacobin annals so much admired by Brissot,

comprises the dethronement of the King, the massacres of the

prisons, the banishment of the priests, &c. That which he

reprobates begins precisely at the period when the Jacobins disputed

the claims of himself and his party to the exclusive direction of

the government.--See Brissot's Address to his Constituents.

--We learn therefore, not from the abuses alone, but from the praises

bestowed on the Jacobins, how much such combinations are to be dreaded.

Their merit, it appears, consisted in the subversion of the monarchical

government, and their crime in ceasing to be useful as agents of tyranny,

the moment they ceased to be principals.

I am still sceptical as to the conversion of the Assembly, and little

disposed to expect good from it; yet whatever it may attempt in future,

or however its real principles may take an ascendant, this fortunate

concurrence of personal interests, coalition of aristocrats and

democrats, and political rivalry, have likewise secured France from a

return of that excess of despotism which could have been exercised only

by such means. It is true, the spirit of the nation is so much

depressed, that an effort to revive these Clubs might meet no resistance;

but the ridicule and opprobrium to which they have latterly been subject,

and finally the manner of their being sacrificed by that very Convention,

of which they were the sole creators and support, will, I think, cool the

zeal, and diminish the numbers of their partizans too much for them ever

again to become formidable.

The conduct of Carrier has been examined according to the new forms, and

he is now on his trial--though not till the delays of the Convention had

given rise to a general suspicion that they intended either to exonerate

or afford him an opportunity of escaping; and the people were at last so

highly exasperated, that six thousand troops were added to the military

force of Paris, and an insurrection was seriously apprehended. This

stimulated the diligence, or relaxed the indulgence, of the commission

appointed to make the report on Carrier's conduct; and it being decided

that there was room for accusation, the Assembly confirmed the decision,

and he was ordered into custody, to be tried along with the Revolutionary

Committee of Nantes which had been the instrument of his crimes.

It is a circumstance worth noting, that most of the Deputies who

explained the motives on which they thought Carrier guilty, were silent

on the subject of his drowning, shooting, and guillotining so many

thousands of innocent people, and only declared him guilty, as having

been wanting in respect towards Trehouard, one of his colleagues, and of

injuring the republican cause by his atrocities.

The fate of this monster exhibits a practical exposition of the enormous

absurdity of such a government. He is himself tried for the exercise of

a power declared to be unbounded when entrusted to him. The men tried

with him as his accomplices were obliged by the laws to obey him; and the

acts of which they are all accused were known, applauded, and held out

for imitation, by the Convention, who now declare those very acts to be

criminal!--There is certainly no way of reconciling justice but by

punishing both chiefs and subordinates, and the hour for this will yet

come.--Adieu.