_La Fayette compelled to Escape from France--Is made Prisoner by
the Prussians, with three Companions--Reflections--The
Triumvirate, Danton, Robespierre, and Marat--Revolutionary
Tribunal appointed--Stupor of the Legislative Assembly--Longwy,
Stenay, and Verdun, taken by the Prussians--Mob of Paris
enraged--Great Massacre of Prisoners in Paris, commencing on the
2d, and ending 6th September--Apathy of the Assembly during and
after these Events--Review of its Causes._
The success of the 10th of August had sufficiently established the
democratic maxim, that the will of the people, expressed by their
insurrections, was the supreme law; the orators of the clubs its
interpreters; and the pikes of the suburbs its executive power. The
lives of individuals and their fortunes were, from that time, only to be
regarded as leases at will, subject to be revoked so soon as an artful,
envious, or grasping demagogue should be able to turn against the lawful
owners the readily-excited suspicions of a giddy multitude, whom habit
and impunity had rendered ferocious. The system established on these
principles, and termed liberty, was in fact an absolute despotism, far
worse than that of Algiers; because the tyrannic dey only executes his
oppression and cruelties within a certain sphere, affecting a limited
number of his subjects who approach near to his throne; while, of the
many thousand leaders of the Jacobins of France, every one had his
peculiar circle in which he claimed right, as full as that of
Robespierre or Marat, to avenge former slights or injuries, and to
gratify his own individual appetite for plunder and blood.
All the departments of France, without exception, paid the most
unreserved submission to the decrees of the Assembly, or rather to those
which the Community of Paris, and the insurgents, had dictated to that
legislative body; so that the hour seemed arrived when the magistracy of
Paris, supported by a democratic force, should, in the name and through
the influence of the Assembly, impose its own laws upon France.
La Fayette, whose headquarters was at this juncture at Sedan, in vain
endeavoured to animate his soldiers against this new species of
despotism. The Jacobins had their friends and representatives in the
very trustiest of his battalions. He made an effort, however, and a bold
one. He seized on the persons of three deputies, sent to him as
commissioners by the Assembly, to compel submission to their decrees,
and proposed to reserve them as hostages for the King's safety. Several
of his own general officers, the intrepid Desaix amongst others, seemed
willing to support him. Dumouriez, however, the personal enemy of La
Fayette, and ambitious of being his successor in the supreme command,
recognised the decrees of the Assembly in the separate army which he
commanded. His example drew over Luckner, who also commanded an
independent corps d'armée, and who at first seemed disposed to join with
La Fayette.[265]
[Sidenote: LA FAYETTE ESCAPES FROM FRANCE.]
That unfortunate general was at length left unsupported by any
considerable part even of his own army; so that with three friends,
whose names were well known in the Revolution,[266] he was fain to
attempt an escape from France, and, in crossing a part of the enemy's
frontier, they were made prisoners by a party of Prussians.
Fugitives from their own camp for the sake of royalty, they might have
expected refuge in that of the allied kings, who were in arms for the
same object; but, with a littleness of spirit which augured no good for
their cause, the allies determined that these unfortunate gentlemen
should be consigned as state prisoners to different fortresses. This
conduct on the part of the monarchs, however irritated they might be by
the recollection of some part of La Fayette's conduct in the outset of
the Revolution, was neither to be vindicated by morality, the law of
nations, nor the rules of sound policy. We are no approvers of the
democratic species of monarchy which La Fayette endeavoured to
establish, and cannot but be of opinion, that if he had acted upon his
victory in the Champ de Mars, he might have shut up the Jacobin Club,
and saved his own power and popularity from being juggled out of his
hands by those sanguinary charlatans. But errors of judgment must be
pardoned to men placed amidst unheard-of difficulties; and La Fayette's
conduct on his visit to Paris, bore testimony to his real willingness to
save the King and preserve the monarchy. But even if he had been
amenable for a crime against his own country, we know not what right
Austria or Prussia had to take cognizance of it. To them he was a mere
prisoner of war, and nothing farther. Lastly, it is very seldom that a
petty and vindictive line of policy can consist with the real interest
either of great princes or of private individuals. In the present case,
the arrest of La Fayette was peculiarly the contrary. It afforded a
plain proof to France and to all Europe, that the allied monarchs were
determined to regard as enemies all who had, in any manner, or to any
extent, favoured the Revolution, being indeed the whole people of
France, excepting the emigrants now in arms. The effect must necessarily
have been, to compel every Frenchman, who was desirous of enjoying more
liberty than the ancient despotism permitted, into submission to the
existing government, whatever it was, so long as invading armies of
foreigners, whose schemes were apparently as inconsistent with the
welfare as with the independence of the country, were hanging on the
frontiers of France.
For a short space, like hounds over the carcass of the prey they have
jointly run down, the Girondists and Jacobins suspended their
dissensions; but when the Constitutional party had ceased to show all
signs of existence, their brawl soon recommenced, and the Girondists
early discovered, that in the allies whom they had called on to assist
them in the subjugation of royalty, they had already to strive with men,
who, though inferior to them in speculative knowledge, and in the
eloquence which was to sway the Assembly, possessed in a much higher
degree the practical energies by which revolutions are accomplished,
were in complete possession of the community (or magistracy) of Paris,
and maintained despotic authority over all the bands of the metropolis.
Three men of terror, whose names will long remain, we trust, unmatched
in history by those of any similar miscreants, had now the unrivalled
leading of the Jacobins, and were called the Triumvirate.
Danton deserves to be named first, as unequalled by his colleagues in
talent and audacity. He was a man of gigantic size, and possessed a
voice of thunder. His countenance was that of an Ogre on the shoulders
of a Hercules.[267] He was as fond of the pleasures of vice as of the
practice of cruelty; and it was said there were times when he became
humanized amidst his debauchery, laughed at the terror which his furious
declamations excited, and might be approached with safety, like the
Maelstrom at the turn of tide. His profusion was indulged to an extent
hazardous to his popularity, for the populace are jealous of a lavish
expenditure, as raising their favourites too much above their own
degree; and the charge of peculation finds always ready credit with
them, when brought against public men.[268]
[Sidenote: ROBESPIERRE.]
Robespierre possessed this advantage over Danton, that he did not seem
to seek for wealth, either for hoarding or expending, but lived in
strict and economical retirement, to justify the name of the
Incorruptible, with which he was honoured by his partisans. He appears
to have possessed little talent, saving a deep fund of hypocrisy,
considerable powers of sophistry, and a cold exaggerated strain of
oratory, as foreign to good taste, as the measures he recommended were
to ordinary humanity. It seemed wonderful, that even the seething and
boiling of the revolutionary cauldron should have sent up from the
bottom, and long supported on the surface, a thing so miserably void of
claims to public distinction; but Robespierre had to impose on the minds
of the vulgar, and he knew how to beguile them, by accommodating his
flattery to their passions and scale of understanding, and by acts of
cunning and hypocrisy, which weigh more with the multitude than the
words of eloquence, or the arguments of wisdom. The people listened as
to their Cicero, when he twanged out his apostrophes of "Pauvre Peuple!
Peuple vertueux!" and hastened to execute whatever came recommended by
such honied phrases, though devised by the worst of men for the worst
and most inhuman of purposes.[269]
Vanity was Robespierre's ruling passion, and though his countenance was
the image of his mind, he was vain even of his personal appearance, and
never adopted the external habits of a Sans Culotte. Amongst his fellow
Jacobins, he was distinguished by the nicety with which his hair was
arranged and powdered; and the neatness of his dress was carefully
attended to, so as to counterbalance, if possible, the vulgarity of his
person. His apartments, though small, were elegant, and vanity had
filled them with representations of the occupant. Robespierre's picture
at length hung in one place, his miniature in another, his bust occupied
a niche, and on the table were disposed a few medallions, exhibiting his
head in profile.[270] The vanity which all this indicated was of the
coldest and most selfish character, being such as considers neglect as
insult, and receives homage merely as a tribute; so that, while praise
is received without gratitude, it is withheld at the risk of mortal
hate. Self-love of this dangerous character is closely allied with envy,
and Robespierre was one of the most envious and vindictive men that ever
lived. He never was known to pardon any opposition, affront, or even
rivalry; and to be marked in his tablets on such an account was a sure,
though perhaps not an immediate, sentence of death. Danton was a hero,
compared with this cold, calculating, creeping miscreant; for his
passions, though exaggerated, had at least some touch of humanity, and
his brutal ferocity was supported by brutal courage. Robespierre was a
coward, who signed death-warrants with a hand that shook, though his
heart was relentless. He possessed no passions on which to charge his
crimes; they were perpetrated in cold blood, and upon mature
deliberation.[271]
Marat, the third of this infernal triumvirate, had attracted the
attention of the lower orders, by the violence of his sentiments in the
journal which he conducted from the commencement of the Revolution, upon
such principles that it took the lead in forwarding its successive
changes. His political exhortations began and ended like the howl of a
blood-hound for murder; or, if a wolf could have written a journal, the
gaunt and famished wretch could not have ravened more eagerly for
slaughter. It was blood which was Marat's constant demand, not in drops
from the breast of an individual, not in puny streams from the slaughter
of families, but blood in the profusion of an ocean. His usual
calculation of the heads which he demanded amounted to two hundred and
sixty thousand; and though he sometimes raised it as high as three
hundred thousand, it never fell beneath the smaller number.[272] It may
be hoped, and, for the honour of human nature, we are inclined to
believe, there was a touch of insanity in this unnatural strain of
ferocity; and the wild and squalid features of the wretch appear to have
intimated a degree of alienation of mind. Marat was, like Robespierre, a
coward. Repeatedly denounced in the Assembly, he skulked instead of
defending himself, and lay concealed in some obscure garret or cellar,
among his cut-throats, until a storm appeared, when, like a bird of ill
omen, his death-screech was again heard. Such was the strange and fatal
triumvirate, in which the same degree of cannibal cruelty existed under
different aspects. Danton murdered to glut his rage; Robespierre, to
avenge his injured vanity, or to remove a rival whom he envied; Marat,
from the same instinctive love of blood, which induces a wolf to
continue his ravage of the flocks long after his hunger is
appeased.[273]
These three men were in complete possession of the Community of Paris,
which was filled with their adherents exclusively, and which, now in
command of the armed force that had achieved the victory of the 10th of
August, held the Assembly as absolutely under their control, as the
Assembly, prior to that period, had held the person of the King. It is
true, Pétion was still Mayor of Paris; but, being considered as a
follower of Roland and Brissot, he was regarded by the Jacobins as a
prisoner, and detained in a sort of honourable restraint, having a body
of their most faithful adherents constantly around him, as a guard which
they pretended was assigned for his defence and protection. The truth
is, that Pétion, a vain man, and of very moderate talents, had already
lost his consequence. His temporary popularity arose almost solely out
of the enmity entertained against him by the court, and his having
braved on one or two occasions the King's personal displeasure,
particularly on the 20th of June. This merit was now forgotten, and
Pétion was fast sinking into his natural nullity. Nothing could be more
pitiful than the appearance of this magistrate, whose name had been so
lately the theme of every tongue in Paris, when brought to the bar of
the Assembly, pale and hesitating, to back, by his appearance among his
terrible revolutionary associates, petitions for measures, as
distasteful to himself as to his friends of the Gironde party, who had
apparently no power to deliver him from his state of humiliating
restraint.[274]
[Sidenote: REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS.]
The demands of the Community of Paris, now the Sanhedrim of the
Jacobins, were of course for blood and vengeance, and revolutionary
tribunals to make short and sharp execution upon constitutionalist and
royalist, soldier and priest--upon all who acted on the principle, that
the King had some right to defend his person and residence against a
furious mob, armed with muskets and cannon--and upon all who could, by
any possible implication, be charged with having approved such doctrines
as leaned towards monarchy, at any time during all the changes of this
changeful-featured Revolution.
A Revolutionary Tribunal was appointed accordingly; but the Girondists,
to impose some check on its measures, rendered the judgment of a jury
necessary for condemnation--an encumbrance which seemed to the Jacobins
a needless and uncivic restriction of the rights of the people.
Robespierre was to have been appointed president of this tribunal, but
he declined the office, on account of his philanthropic principles![275]
Meantime, the sharpness of its proceedings was sufficiently assured by
the nomination of Danton to the office of minister of justice, which had
fallen to his lot as a Jacobin, while Roland, Servan, and Clavière,
alike fearing and detesting their dreadful colleague, assumed, with
Monge and Lebrun, the other offices, in what was now called a
Provisionary Executive. These last five ministers were Girondists.
It was not the serious intention of the Assembly to replace Louis in a
palace, or to suffer him to retain the smallest portion of personal
freedom or political influence. It had, indeed, been decreed on the
night of the 10th of August, that he should inhabit the Luxembourg
palace, but, on the 13th, his residence was transferred, with that of
the royal family, to an ancient fortress called the Temple, from the
Knights Templars, to whom it once belonged.[276] There was in front a
house, with some more modern apartments, but the dwelling of Louis was
the donjon or ancient keep, itself a huge square tower of great
antiquity, consisting of four stories. Each story contained two or three
rooms or closets; but these apartments were unfurnished, and offered no
convenience for the accommodation of an ordinary family, much less to
prisoners of such distinction. The royal family were guarded with a
strictness, of which every day increased the rigour.
[Sidenote: DANTON'S PLAN OF EXTERMINATION.]
In the meanwhile, the revolutionary tribunal was proceeding against the
friends and partisans of the deposed monarch with no lack, one would
have thought, of zeal or animosity. De la Porte, intendant of the King's
civil list, D'Augrémont, and Durosoi, a Royalist author, were with
others condemned and executed. But Montmorin, the brother of the royal
minister, was acquitted; and even the Comte d'Affri, though Colonel of
the Swiss guards, found grace in the eyes of this tribunal;--so lenient
it was, in comparison to those which France was afterwards doomed to
groan under. Danton, baulked of his prey, or but half-supplied with
victims, might be compared to the spectre-huntsman of Boccaccio,--
"Stern look'd the fiend, as frustrate of his will,
Not half sufficed, and greedy yet to kill."
But he had already devised within his soul, and agitated amongst his
compeers, a scheme of vengeance so dark and dreadful, as never ruffian
before or since had head to contrive, or nerve to execute. It was a
measure of extermination which the Jacobins resolved upon--a measure so
sweeping in its purpose and extent, that it should at once drown in
their own blood every Royalist or Constitutionalist who could raise a
finger, or even entertain a thought, against them.
Three things were indispensably essential to their execrable plan. In
the first place, they had to collect and place within reach of their
assassins, the numerous victims whom they sought to overwhelm with this
common destruction. Secondly, it was necessary to intimidate the
Assembly, and the Girondist party in particular; sensible that they were
likely to interfere, if it was left in their power, to prevent acts of
cruelty incompatible with the principles of most or all of their number.
Lastly, the Jacobin chiefs were aware, that ere they could prepare the
public mind to endure the massacres which they meditated, it was
necessary they should wait for one of those critical moments of general
alarm, in which fear makes the multitude cruel, and when the agitations
of rage and terror combine to unsettle men's reason, and drown at once
their humanity and their understanding.
To collect prisoners in any numbers was an easy matter, when the mere
naming a man, however innocent, as an aristocrat or a suspected person,
especially if he happened to have a name indicative of gentle blood, and
an air of decency in apparel, was sufficient ground for sending him to
prison. For the purpose of making such arrests upon suspicion, the
Commune of Paris openly took upon themselves the office of granting
warrants for imprisoning individuals in great numbers, and at length
proceeded so far in their violent and arbitrary conduct, as to excite
the jealousy of the Legislative Body.
This Assembly of National Representatives seemed to have been stunned by
the events of the 10th of August. Two-thirds of the deputies had a few
days before exculpated La Fayette for the zeal with which he impeached
the unsuccessful attempt of the 20th of June, designed to accomplish the
same purpose which had been effected on this last dread epoch of the
Revolution. The same number, we must suppose, were inimical to the
revolution achieved by the taking of the Tuileries, and the dethronement
of the monarch, whom it had been La Fayette's object to protect and
defend, in dignity and person. But there was no energy left in that
portion of the Assembly, though by far the largest, and the wisest.
Their benches were left deserted, nor did any voice arise, either to
sustain their own dignity, or, as a last resource, to advise a union
with the Girondists, now the leading force in the Representative Body,
for the purpose of putting a period to the rule of revolutionary terror
over that of civil order. The Girondists themselves proposed no decisive
measures, and indeed appear to have been the most helpless party,
(though possessing in their ranks very considerable talent,) that ever
attempted to act a great part in the convulsions of a state. They seem
to have expected, that, so soon as they had accomplished the overthrow
of the throne, their own supremacy should have been established in its
room. They became, therefore, liable to the disappointment of a child,
who, having built his house of boughs after his own fashion, is
astonished to find those bigger and stronger than himself throw its
materials out of their way, instead of attempting, according to his
expectations, to creep into it for the purpose of shelter.
[Sidenote: COMMUNE OF PARIS.]
Late and timidly, they at length began to remonstrate against the
usurped power of the Commune of Paris, who paid them as little regard,
as they were themselves doing to the constituted authorities of the
executive power.
The complaints which were laid before them of the violent encroachments
made on the liberty of the people at large, the Girondists had hitherto
answered by timid exhortations to the Commune to be cautious in their
proceedings. But, on the 29th of August, they were startled out of their
weak inaction, by an assumption of open force, and open villany, on the
part of those formidable rivals, under which it was impossible to remain
silent.[277] On the night previous, the Commune, proceeding to act upon
their own sole authority, had sent their satellites, consisting of the
municipal officers who were exclusively attached to them, (who were
selected from the most determined Jacobins, and had been augmented to an
extraordinary number,) to seize arms of every description, and to arrest
suspicious persons in every corner of Paris. Hundreds and thousands of
individuals had been, under these usurped powers, committed to the
various prisons of the city, which were now filled, even to choking,
with all persons of every sex and age, against whom political hatred
could allege suspicion, or private hatred revive an old quarrel, or love
of plunder awake a thirst for confiscation.
The deeds of robbery, of license, and of ferocity, committed during
these illegal proceedings, as well as the barefaced contempt which they
indicated of the authority of the Assembly, awakened the Girondists, but
too late, to some sense of the necessity of exertion. They summoned the
Municipality to their bar. They came, not to deprecate the displeasure
of the Assembly, not to submit themselves to its mercy,--they came to
triumph; and brought the speechless and trembling Pétion in their train,
as their captive, rather than their mayor. Tallien explained the defence
of the Commune, which amounted to this: "The provisional representatives
of the city of Paris," he said, "had been calumniated; they appeared, to
justify what they had done, not as accused persons, but as triumphing in
having discharged their duty. The Sovereign People," he said, "had
committed to them full powers, saying, Go forth, save the country in our
name--whatever you do we will ratify." This language was, in effect,
that of defiance, and it was supported by the shouts and howls of
assembled multitudes, armed as for the attack on the Tuileries, and
their courage, it may be imagined, not the less, that there were neither
aristocrats nor Swiss guards between them and the Legislative Assembly.
Their cries were, "Long live our Commune--our excellent
commissioners--we will defend them or die!"[278]
The satellites of the same party, in the tribunes or galleries, joined
in the cry, with invectives on those members of the Assembly, who were
supposed, however republican in principle, to be opposed to the
revolutionary measures of the Commune. The mob without soon forced their
way into the hall--joined with the mob within,--and left the theoretical
Republicans of the Assembly the choice of acquiescence in their
dictates, flight, or the liberty of dying on their posts, like the
senators of that Rome which they admired. None embraced this last
alternative. They broke up the meeting in confusion, and left the
Jacobins secure of impunity in whatever they might next choose to
attempt.
Thus, Danton and his fell associates achieved the second point necessary
to the execution of the horrors which they meditated: the Legislative
Assembly were completely subdued and intimidated. It remained to avail
themselves of some opportunity which might excite the people of Paris,
in their present feverish state, to participate in, or to endure crimes,
at which, in calm moments, the rudest would probably have shuddered. The
state of affairs on the frontier aided them with such an
opportunity--_aided_ them, we say, because every step of preparation
beforehand, shows that the horrors acted on the 3d September were
premeditated; nay, the very trenches destined to inhume hundreds and
thousands of prisoners, yet alive, untried and undoomed, were already
excavated.
A temporary success of the allied monarchs fell upon the mine already
prepared, and gave fire to it, as lightning might have fired a powder
magazine. Longwy, Stenay, and Verdun, were announced to have fallen into
the hands of the King of Prussia. The first and last were barrier
fortresses of reputed strength, and considerable resistance had been
expected. The ardent and military spirit of the French was awakened in
the resolute, upon learning that their frontier was thus invaded; fear
and discomfiture took possession of others, who thought they already
heard the allied trumpets at the gates of Paris. Between the eager
desire of some to march against the army of the invaders, and the terror
and dismay of others, there arose a climax of excitation and alarm,
favourable to the execution of every desperate design; as ruffians ply
their trade best, and with least chance of interruption, in the midst of
an earthquake or a conflagration.
On the 2d September, the Commune of Paris announced the fall of Longwy,
and the approaching fate of Verdun, and, as if it had been the only
constituted authority in the country, commanded the most summary
measures for the general defence. All citizens were ordered to keep
themselves in readiness to march on an instant's warning. All arms were
to be given up to the Commune, save those in the hands of active
citizens, armed for the public protection. Suspected persons were to be
disarmed, and other measures were announced, all of which were
calculated to call men's attention to the safety of themselves and their
families, and to destroy the interest which at ordinary times the public
would have taken in the fate of others.[279]
The awful voice of Danton astounded the Assembly with similar
information, hardly deigning to ask their approbation of the measures
which the Commune of Paris had adopted on their own sole authority. "You
will presently hear," he said, "the alarm-guns--falsely so called--for
they are the signal of a charge. Courage--courage--and once again
courage, is all that is necessary to conquer our enemies." These words,
pronounced with the accent and attitude of an exterminating spirit,
appalled and stupified the Assembly. We find nothing that indicated in
them either interest in the imminent danger of the public from without,
or in the usurpation from within. They appeared paralysed with
terror.[280]
The armed bands of Paris marched in different quarters, to seize arms
and horses, to discover and denounce suspected persons; the youth fit
for arms were every where mustered, and amid shouts, remonstrances, and
debates, the general attention was so engaged, each individual with his
own affairs, in his own quarter, that, without interference of any kind,
whether from legal authority, or general sympathy, a universal massacre
of the numerous prisoners was perpetrated, with a quietness and
deliberation, which has not its parallel in history. The reader, who may
be still surprised that a transaction so horrid should have passed
without opposition or interruption, must be again reminded of the
astounding effects of the popular victory of the 10th of August; of the
total quiescence of the Legislative Assembly; of the want of an armed
force of any kind to oppose such outrages; and of the epidemic panic
which renders multitudes powerless and passive as infants. Should these
causes not appear to him sufficient, he must be contented to wonder at
the facts we are to relate, as at one of those dreadful prodigies by
which Providence confounds our reason, and shows what human nature can
be brought to, when the restraints of morality and religion are cast
aside.
The number of individuals accumulated in the various prisons of Paris,
had increased by the arrests and domiciliary visits subsequent to the
10th of August, to about eight thousand persons. It was the object of
this infernal scheme to destroy the greater part of these under one
general system of murder, not to be executed by the sudden and furious
impulse of an armed multitude, but with a certain degree of cold blood
and deliberate investigation. A force of armed banditti, Marseillois
partly, and partly chosen ruffians of the Fauxbourgs, proceeded to the
several prisons, into which they either forced their passage, or were
admitted by the jailors, most of whom had been apprised of what was to
take place, though some even of these steeled officials exerted
themselves to save those under their charge. A revolutionary tribunal
was formed from among the armed ruffians themselves, who examined the
registers of the prisons, and summoned the captives individually to
undergo the form of a trial. If the judges, as was almost always the
case, declared for death, their doom, to prevent the efforts of men in
despair, was expressed in the words, "Give the prisoners freedom."[281]
The victim was then thrust out into the street, or yard; he was
despatched by men and women, who, with sleeves tucked up, arms dyed
elbow-deep in blood, hands holding axes, pikes, and sabres, were
executioners of the sentence; and, by the manner in which they did
their office on the living, and mangled the bodies of the dead, showed
that they occupied their post as much from pleasure as from love of
hire. They often exchanged places; the judges going out to take the
executioners' duty, the executioners, with their reeking hands, sitting
as judges in their turn. Maillard, a ruffian alleged to have
distinguished himself at the siege of the Bastile, but better known by
his exploits upon the march to Versailles,[282] presided during these
brief and sanguinary investigations. His companions on the bench were
persons of the same stamp. Yet there were occasions when they showed
some transient gleams of humanity, and it is not unimportant to remark,
that boldness had more influence on them than any appeal to mercy or
compassion. An avowed Royalist was occasionally dismissed uninjured,
while the Constitutionalists were sure to be massacred. Another trait of
a singular nature is, that two of the ruffians who were appointed to
guard one of these intended victims home in safety, as a man acquitted,
insisted upon seeing his meeting with his family, seemed to share in the
transports of the moment, and on taking leave, shook the hand of their
late prisoner, while their own were clotted with the gore of his
friends, and had been just raised to shed his own. Few, indeed, and
brief, were these symptoms of relenting. In general, the doom of the
prisoner was death, and that doom was instantly accomplished.
In the meanwhile, the captives were penned up in their dungeons like
cattle in a shambles, and in many instances might, from windows which
looked outwards, mark the fate of their comrades, hear their cries, and
behold their struggles, and learn from the horrible scene, how they
might best meet their own approaching fate. They observed, according to
Saint Meard, who, in his well-named "Agony of Thirty-Six Hours," has
given the account of this fearful scene, that those who intercepted the
blows of the executioners, by holding up their hands, suffered
protracted torment, while those who offered no show of struggle were
more easily despatched; and they encouraged each other to submit to
their fate, in the manner least likely to prolong their sufferings.[283]
[Sidenote: MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER.]
Many ladies, especially those belonging to the court, were thus
murdered. The Princess de Lamballe, whose only crime seems to have been
her friendship for Marie Antoinette, was literally hewn to pieces, and
her head, and that of others, paraded on pikes through the metropolis.
It was carried to the Temple on that accursed weapon, the features yet
beautiful in death, and the long fair curls of the hair floating around
the spear. The murderers insisted that the King and Queen should be
compelled to come to the window to view this dreadful trophy. The
municipal officers who were upon duty over the royal prisoners, had
difficulty, not merely in saving them from this horrible inhumanity,
but also in preventing the prison from being forced. Three-coloured
ribbons were extended across the street, and this frail barrier was
found sufficient to intimate that the Temple was under the safeguard of
the nation. We do not read that the efficiency of the three-coloured
ribbons was tried for the protection of any of the other prisons. No
doubt the executioners had their instructions where and when they should
be respected.[284]
The Clergy, who had declined the Constitutional oath from pious
scruples, were, during the massacre, the peculiar objects of insult and
cruelty, and their conduct was such as corresponded with their religious
and conscientious professions. They were seen confessing themselves to
each other, or receiving the confessions of their lay companions in
misfortune, and encouraging them to undergo the evil hour, with as much
calmness as if they themselves had not been to share its bitterness. As
Protestants, we cannot abstractedly approve of the doctrines which
render the established clergy of one country dependent upon a sovereign
pontiff, the prince of an alien state: but these priests did not make
the laws for which they suffered; they only obeyed them; and as men and
Christians we must regard them as martyrs, who preferred death to what
they considered as apostasy.[285]
In the brief intervals of this dreadful butchery, which lasted for four
days, the judges and executioners ate, drank, and slept; and awoke from
slumber, or rose from their meal, with fresh appetite for murder. There
were places arranged for the male and for the female murderers, for the
work had been incomplete without the intervention of the latter. Prison
after prison was invested, entered, and under the same form of
proceeding, made the scene of the same inhuman butchery. The Jacobins
had reckoned on making the massacre universal over France. But the
example was not generally followed. It required, as in the case of Saint
Bartholomew, the only massacre which can be compared to this in
atrocity, the excitation of a large capital, in a violent crisis, to
render such horrors possible.
The Commune of Paris were not in fault for this. They did all they could
to extend the sphere of murder. Their warrant brought from Orleans near
sixty persons, including the Duke de Cossé-Brissac, De Lessart the late
minister, and other Royalists of distinction, who were to have been
tried before the high court of that department. A band of assassins met
them, by appointment of the Commune, at Versailles, who, uniting with
their escort, murdered almost the whole of these unhappy men.[286]
[Sidenote: MASSACRE IN THE BICÊTRE.]
From the 2d to the 6th of September, these infernal crimes proceeded
uninterrupted, protracted by the actors for the sake of the daily pay of
a louis to each, openly distributed amongst them, by order of the
Commune.[287] It was either from a desire to continue as long as
possible a labour so well requited, or because these beings had acquired
an insatiable lust of murder, that, when the jails were emptied of state
criminals, the assassins attacked the Bicêtre, a prison where ordinary
delinquents were confined. These unhappy wretches offered a degree of
resistance which cost the assailants dearer than any they had
experienced from their proper victims. They were obliged to fire on them
with cannon, and many hundreds of the miserable creatures were in this
way exterminated, by wretches worse than themselves.
No exact account was ever made of the number of persons murdered during
this dreadful period; but not above two or three hundred of the
prisoners arrested for state offences were known to escape, or be
discharged, and the most moderate computation raises the number of those
who fell to two or three thousand, though some carry it to twice the
extent. Truchod announced to the Legislative Assembly, that four
thousand had perished. Some exertion was made to save the lives of
persons imprisoned for debt, whose numbers, with those of common felons,
may make up the balance betwixt the number slain, and eight thousand who
were prisoners when the massacre began. The bodies were interred in
heaps, in immense trenches, prepared beforehand by order of the Commune
of Paris; but their bones have since been transferred to the
subterranean Catacombs, which form the general charnel-house of the
city. In those melancholy regions, while other relics of mortality lie
exposed all around, the remains of those who perished in the massacres
of September are alone secluded from the eye. The vault in which they
repose is closed with a screen of freestone, as if relating to crimes
unfit to be thought of even in the proper abode of death, and which
France would willingly hide in oblivion.
In the meanwhile, the reader may be desirous to know what efforts were
made by the Assembly to save the lives of so many Frenchmen, or to put a
stop to a massacre carried on in contempt of all legal interference, and
by no more formidable force than that of two or three hundred atrocious
felons, often, indeed, diminished to only fifty or sixty.[288] He might
reasonably expect that the national representatives would have thundered
forth some of those decrees which they formerly directed against the
crown, and the noblesse; that they should have repaired by deputations
to the various sections, called out the national guards, and appealed to
all, not only that were susceptible of honour or humanity, but to all
who had the breath and being of man, to support them in interrupting a
series of horrors disgraceful to mankind. Such an appeal to the feelings
of their fellow-citizens made them at last successful in the overthrow
of Robespierre. But the Reign of Terror was now but in its commencement,
and men had not yet learned that there lay a refuge in the efforts of
despair.
Instead of such energy as might have been expected from the principles
of which they boasted, nothing could be more timid than the conduct of
the Girondists, being the only party in the Assembly who had the power,
and might be supposed to have the inclination, to control the course of
crime.
We looked carefully through the _Moniteurs_ which contain the official
account of the sittings of the Assembly on these dreadful days. We find
regular entries of many patriotic gifts, of such importance as the
following:--A fusee from an Englishman--a pair of hackney-coach horses
from the coachman--a map of the country around Paris from a lady. While
engaged in receiving and registering these civic donations, their
journal bears few and doubtful references to the massacres then in
progress. The Assembly issued no decree against the slaughter--demanded
no support from the public force, and restricted themselves to sending
to the murderers a pitiful deputation of twelve of their number, whose
commission seems to have been limited to petition for the safety of one
of their colleagues, belonging to the Constitutional faction. With
difficulty they saved him, and the celebrated Abbé Sicard, the
philanthropic instructor of the deaf and dumb, imprisoned as a
non-juring priest, for whom the wails and tears of his hapless pupils
had procured a reprieve even from the assassins.[289] Dussault, one of
that deputation, distinguished himself by the efforts which he used to
persuade the murderers to desist. "Return to your place," said one of
the ruffians, his arms crimsoned with blood. "You have made us lose too
much time. Return to your own business, and leave us to ours."
[Sidenote: APATHY OF THE ASSEMBLY.]
Dussault went back, to recount to those who had sent him what he had
witnessed, and how he had been received; and concluded with the
exclamation, "Woe's me, that I should have lived to see such horrors,
without the power of stopping them!" The Assembly heard the detail, and
remained timid and silent as before.[290]
Where, in that hour, were the men who formed their judgment upon the
models presented by Plutarch, their feelings on the wild eloquence of
Rousseau? Where were the Girondists, celebrated by one of their
admirers,[291] as distinguished by good morals, by severe probity, by a
profound respect for the dignity of man, by a deep sense of his rights
and his duties, by a sound, constant, and immutable love of order, of
justice, and of liberty? Were the eyes of such men blind, that they
could not see the blood which flooded for four days the streets of the
metropolis? were their ears deadened, that they could not hear the
shouts of the murderers, and the screams of the victims? or were their
voices mute, that they called not upon God and man--upon the very stones
of Paris, to assist them in interrupting such a crime? Political reasons
have, by royalist writers, been supposed to furnish a motive for their
acquiescence; for there is, according to civilians, a certain degree of
careless or timid imbecility, which can only be explained as having its
origin in fraud. They allege that the Girondists saw, rather with
pleasure than horror, the atrocities which were committed, while their
enemies the Jacobins, exterminating their equally hated enemies the
Constitutionalists and Royalists, took on themselves the whole odium of
a glut of blood, which must soon, they might naturally expect, disgust
the sense and feelings of a country so civilized as France. We remain,
nevertheless, convinced, that Vergniaud, Brissot, Roland, and, to a
certainty, his high-minded wife, would have stopped the massacres of
September, had their courage and practical skill in public affairs borne
any proportion to the conceit which led them to suppose, that their
vocation lay for governing such a nation as France.
But whatever was the motive of their apathy, the Legislative Assembly
was nearly silent on the subject of the massacres, not only while they
were in progress, but for several days afterwards. On the 16th of
September, when news from the army on the frontiers was beginning to
announce successes, and when the panic of the metropolis began to
subside, Vergniaud adroitly charged the Jacobins with turning on unhappy
prisoners of state the popular resentment, which should have animated
them with bravery to march out against the common enemy. He upbraided
also the Commune of Paris with the assumption of unconstitutional
powers, and the inhuman tyranny with which they had abused them; but his
speech made little impression, so much are deeds of cruelty apt to
become familiar to men's feelings, when of frequent recurrence. When the
first accounts were read in the Constituent Assembly, of the massacres
perpetrated at Avignon, the president fainted away, and the whole body
manifested a horror, as well of the senses as of the mind; and now, that
a far more cruel, more enduring, more extensive train of murders was
perpetrated under their own eye, the Legislative Assembly looked on in
apathy. The utmost which the eloquence of Vergniaud could extract from
them was a decree, that in future the Commune should be answerable with
their own lives for the security of the prisoners under their charge.
After passing this decree, the Legislative Assembly, being the second
representative body of the French nation, dissolved itself according to
the resolutions of the 10th of August, to give place to the National
Convention.[292]
The Legislative Assembly was, in its composition and its character, of a
caste greatly inferior to that which it succeeded. The flower of the
talents of France had naturally centred in the National Assembly, and,
by an absurd regulation, its members were incapacitated from being
re-elected; which necessarily occasioned their situation being in many
instances supplied by persons of inferior attainments. Then the
destinies of the first Assembly had been fulfilled in a more lofty
manner. They were often wrong, often absurd, often arrogant and
presumptuous, but never mean or servile. They respected the liberty of
debate, and even amidst the bitterest political discussions, defended
the persons of their colleagues, however much opposed to them in
sentiment, and maintained their constitutional inviolability. They had
also the great advantage of being, as it were, free born. They were
indeed placed in captivity by their removal to Paris, but their courage
was not abated; nor did they make any concessions of a personal kind to
the ruffians, by whom they were at times personally ill-used.
But the second, or Legislative Assembly, had, on the contrary been
captive from the moment of their first convocation. They had never met
but in Paris, and were inured to the habit of patient submission to the
tribunes and the refuse of the city, who repeatedly broke into their
hall, and issued their mandates in the form of petitions. On two
memorable occasions, they showed too distinctly, that considerations of
personal safety could overpower their sense of public duty. Two-thirds
of the representatives joined in acquitting La Fayette, and declared, by
doing so, that they abhorred the insurrection of the 20th of June; yet,
when that of the 10th of August had completed what was before attempted
in vain upon the occasion preceding, the Assembly unanimously voted the
deposition of the monarch, and committed him to prison. Secondly, they
remained silent and inactive during all the horrors of September, and
suffered the executive power to be wrenched out of their hands by the
Commune of Paris, and used before their eyes for the destruction of many
thousands of Frenchmen whom they represented.
It must be, however, remembered, that the Legislative Assembly were
oppressed by difficulties and dangers the most dreadful that can
threaten a government;--the bloody discord of contending factions, the
arms of foreigners menacing the frontier, and civil war breaking out in
the provinces. In addition to these sources of peril and dismay, there
were three divided parties within the Assembly itself; while a rival
power, equally formidable from its audacity and its crimes, had erected
itself in predominating authority, like that of the maires du palais
over the feeble monarchs of the Merovingian dynasty.
FOOTNOTES:
[265] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 265; Mignet, tom. i., p. 197.
[266] Bursau de Pucy, Latour Maubourg, and Alexander Lameth. Their
intention was to proceed to the United States of America.
[267] "I never saw any countenance that so strongly expressed the
violence of brutal passions, and the most astonishing audacity,
half-disguised by a jovial air, an affectation of frankness, and a sort
of simplicity."--MAD. ROLAND, part i., p. 88.
[268] "In 1789, he was a miserable lawyer, more burdened with debts than
causes. He went to Belgium to augment his resources, and now had the
hardihood to avow a fortune of 1,400,000 livres, (£58,333,) and to
wallow in luxury, whilst preaching sans-culottism, and sleeping on heaps
of slaughtered men. O, Danton! cruel as Marius, and more terrible than
Cataline, you surpass their misdeeds, without possessing their good
qualities."--MAD. ROLAND, part ii., p. 59.
[269] "Il avait une manière de prononcer _pauvre peuple et peuple
vertueux_, qui ne manqua jamais son effet sur de feroces
spectateurs."--LACRETELLE, tom. ix., p. 15.
[270] Mémoires de Barbaroux, p. 63.
[271] "I once conversed with Robespierre at my father's house, in 1789.
His features were mean, his complexion pale, his veins of a greenish
hue."--MAD. DE STAËL, vol. ii., p. 140.
"I had twice occasion to converse with Robespierre. He had a sinister
expression of countenance, never looked you in the face, and had a
continual and unpleasant winking of the eyes."--DUMONT, p. 202.
[272] Mémoires de Barbaroux, p. 57.
[273] Mignet, tom. i., p. 220; Garat, p. 174.
[274] Lacretelle, tom. ix., pp. 292, 316.
[275] "Un emploi si rigoureux répugnerait trop à mes principes
philanthropiques."--LACRETELLE, tom. ix., p. 274.
[276] "The carriage which conveyed the royal family to the Temple, was
stopped on the Place Vendôme, in order that the King might see the
fragments of the statue of Louis the Great."--LACRETELLE, tom. ix., p.
262.
[277] "Nuit de terreur! prelude affreux de plusieurs jours de sang! nuit
où une capitale perdue dans la mollesse, infectée des maximes de
l'égoïsme philosophique, expia le sort honteux de s'être laissé asservir
par tout ce que sa population offrait de plus abjèct et de plus
criminel!"--LACRETELLE, tom. ix., p. 288.
[278] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 296.
[279] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 298.
[280] Mignet, tom. i., p. 204; Thiers, tom. ii., p. 61; Lacretelle, tom.
ix., p. 293.
[281] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 314.
[282] See _ante_, p. 92.
[283] Mon Agonie de Trente-six Heures, p. 30.
[284] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 8; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 325.
[285] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 64.
[286] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 127; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 348.
[287] The books of the Hôtel de Ville preserve evidence of this fact.
Billaud-Varennes appeared publicly among the assassins, and distributed
the price of blood.--S.--"I am authorised," he said, "to offer to each
of you twenty-four francs, which shall be instantly paid. Respectable
citizens, continue your good work, and acquire new titles to the homage
of your country! Let every thing on this great day be fitting the
sovereignty of the people, who have committed their vengeance to your
hands."--SICARD, p. 135; THIERS, tom. iii., p. 74.
[288] Louvet's Memoirs, p. 73; Barbaroux, p. 57; Thiers, tom. iii., p.
77.
[289] "The abbé would have been instantly murdered, had not a courageous
watchmaker, of the name of Monnot, rushed between them, and staid the
lance already raised to be plunged in his bosom."--THIERS, tom. iii., p.
71.
[290] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 317
[291] Mémoires de Buzot, p. 82.
[292] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 359.