Assembly to those whom they found assembled in front of the city-hall,
and they shrunk from the attempt of defending it, some joining the
assailants, others laying down their arms and dispersing. Meantime, the
deserted group of Terrorists within conducted themselves like scorpions,
which, when surrounded by a circle of fire, are said to turn their
stings on each other, and on themselves. Mutual and ferocious upbraiding
took place among these miserable men. "Wretch, were these the means you
promised to furnish?" said Coffinhal to Henriot, whom he found
intoxicated and incapable of resolution or exertion; and seizing on him
as he spoke, he precipitated the revolutionary general from a window.
Henriot survived the fall only to drag himself into a drain, in which he
was afterwards discovered and brought out to execution. The younger
Robespierre[508] threw himself from the window, but had not the good
fortune to perish on the spot. It seemed as if even the melancholy fate
of suicide, the last refuge of guilt and despair, was denied to men who
had so long refused every species of mercy to their fellow-creatures. Le
Bas alone had calmness enough to despatch himself with a pistol-shot.
Saint Just, after imploring his comrades to kill him, attempted his own
life with an irresolute hand, and failed. Couthon lay beneath the table
brandishing a knife, with which he repeatedly wounded his bosom, without
daring to add force enough to reach his heart. Their chief, Robespierre,
in an unsuccessful attempt to shoot himself,[509] had only inflicted a
horrible fracture on his under jaw.[510]
In this situation they were found like wolves in their lair, foul with
blood, mutilated, despairing, and yet not able to die. Robespierre lay
on a table in an ante-room, his head supported by a deal-box, and his
hideous countenance half hidden by a bloody and dirty cloth bound round
the shattered chin.[511]
The captives were carried in triumph to the Convention, who, refusing to
admit them to the bar, sent them before the Revolutionary Tribunal,
which ordered them, as outlaws, for instant execution. As the fatal cars
passed to the guillotine, those who filled them, but especially
Robespierre,[512] were overwhelmed with execrations from the friends and
relatives of victims whom he had sent on the same melancholy road. The
nature of his previous wound, from which the cloth had never been
removed till the executioner tore it off, added to the torture of the
sufferer. The shattered jaw dropped, and the wretch yelled aloud, to the
horror of the spectators.[513] A mask taken from that dreadful head was
long exhibited in different nations of Europe, and appalled the
spectator by its ugliness, and the mixture of fiendish expression with
that of bodily agony. At the same time fell young Robespierre,
Couthon,[514] Saint Just, Coffinhal,[515] Henriot, Dumas, President of
the Revolutionary Tribunal,[516] the Mayor, and fourteen of their
subalterns.
[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF ROBESPIERRE.]
Thus fell Maximilian Robespierre, after having been the first person in
the French Republic for nearly two years, during which time he governed
it upon the principles of Nero or Caligula. His elevation to the
situation which he held involved more contradictions than perhaps attach
to any similar event in history. A low-born and low-minded tyrant was
permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful despotism a people,
whose anxiety for liberty had shortly before rendered them unable to
endure the rule of a humane and lawful sovereign. A dastardly coward
arose to the command of one of the bravest nations in the world; and it
was under the auspices of a man who dared scarce fire a pistol, that the
greatest generals in France began their careers of conquest. He had
neither eloquence nor imagination; but substituted in their stead a
miserable, affected, bombastic style, which, until other circumstances
gave him consequence, drew on him general ridicule. Yet against so poor
an orator, all the eloquence of the philosophical Girondists, all the
terrible powers of his associate Danton, employed in a popular assembly,
could not enable them to make an effectual resistance. It may seem
trifling to mention, that in a nation where a good deal of prepossession
is excited by amiable manners and beauty of external appearance, the
person who ascended to the highest power was not only ill-looking, but
singularly mean in person, awkward and constrained in his address,
ignorant how to set about pleasing even when he most desired to give
pleasure, and as tiresome nearly as he was odious and heartless.
To compensate all these deficiencies, Robespierre had but an insatiable
ambition, founded on a vanity which made him think himself capable of
filling the highest situation; and therefore gave him daring, when to
dare is frequently to achieve. He mixed a false and overstrained, but
rather fluent species of bombastic composition, with the grossest
flattery to the lowest classes of the people;[517] in consideration of
which, they could not but receive as genuine the praises which he
always bestowed on himself. His prudent resolution to be satisfied with
possessing the essence of power, without seeming to desire its rank and
trappings, formed another art of cajoling the multitude. His watchful
envy, his long-protracted but sure revenge, his craft, which to vulgar
minds supplies the place of wisdom, were his only means of competing
with his distinguished antagonists. And it seems to have been a merited
punishment of the extravagances and abuses of the French Revolution,
that it engaged the country in a state of anarchy which permitted a
wretch such as we have described, to be for a long period master of her
destiny. Blood was his element,[518] like that of the other Terrorists,
and he never fastened with so much pleasure on a new victim, as when he
was at the same time an ancient associate. In an epitaph,[519] of which
the following couplet may serve as a translation, his life was
represented as incompatible with the existence of the human race:--
"Here lies Robespierre--let no tear be shed;
Reader, if he had lived thou hadst been dead."
When the report of Robespierre's crimes was brought to the Convention,
in which he is most justly charged with the intention of possessing
himself of the government, the inconsistent accusation is added, that he
plotted to restore the Bourbons; in support of which it is alleged that
a seal, bearing a fleur-de-lis, was found at the Hôtel de Ville. Not
even the crimes of Robespierre were thought sufficiently atrocious,
without their being mingled with a tendency to Royalism!
[Sidenote: THE THERMIDORIENS.]
With this celebrated demagogue the Reign of Terror may be said to have
terminated, although those by whose agency the tyrant fell were as much
Terrorists as himself, being, indeed, the principal members of the very
committees of public safety and public security, who had been his
colleagues in all the excesses of his revolutionary authority. Among the
_Thermidoriens_, as the actors in Robespierre's downfall termed
themselves, there were names almost as dreadful as that of the dictator,
for whom the ninth Thermidor proved the Ides of March. What could be
hoped for from Collot D'Herbois, the butcher of the Lyonnois--what from
Billaud-Varennes--what from Barras, who had directed the executions at
Marseilles after its ephemeral revolt--what from Tallien, whose arms
were afterwards died double red, from finger-nails to elbow, in the
blood of the unfortunate emigrant gentlemen who were made prisoners at
Quiberon? It seemed that only a new set of Septembrisers had succeeded,
and that the same horrible principle would continue to be the moving
spring of the government, under the direction of other chiefs indeed,
but men who were scarce less familiar with its horrors, than was the
departed tyrant.
Men looked hopelessly towards the Convention, long rather like the
corpse of a legislative assembly, actuated, during its apparent
activity, like the supposed vampire, by an infernal spirit not its own,
which urged it to go forth and drink blood, but which, deserted by the
animating demon, must, it was to be expected, sink to the ground in
helpless incapacity. What could be expected from Barrère, the ready
panegyrist of Robespierre, the tool who was ever ready to show to the
weak and the timid the exact point where their safety recommended to
them to join the ranks of the wicked and the strong? But, in spite of
these discouraging circumstances, the feelings of humanity, and a spirit
of self-protection, dictating a determined resistance to the renovation
of the horrid system under which the country had so long suffered, began
to show itself both in the Convention and without doors. Encouraged by
the fall of Robespierre, complaints poured in against his agents on all
sides. Lebon was accused before the Convention by a deputation from
Cambrai; and as he ascended the tribune to put himself on his defence,
he was generally hailed as the hangman of Robespierre. The monster's
impudence supported him in a sort of defence; and when it was objected
to him, that he had had the common executioner to dine in company with
him, he answered, "That delicate people might think that wrong; but
Lequinio (another Jacobin proconsul of horrible celebrity) had made the
same useful citizen the companion of his leisure, and hours of
relaxation."[520] He acknowledged with the same equanimity, that an
aristocrat being condemned to the guillotine, he kept him lying in the
usual posture upon his back, with his eyes turned up to the axe, which
was suspended above his throat,--in short, in all the agonies which can
agitate the human mind, when within a hair's breadth of the distance of
the great separation between Time and Eternity,--until he had read to
him, at length, the Gazette which had just arrived, giving an account of
a victory gained by the Republican armies. This monster, with Heron,
Rossignol, and other agents of terror more immediately connected with
Robespierre, were ordered for arrest, and shortly after for execution.
Tallien and Barras would have here paused in the retrospect; but similar
accusations now began to pour in from every quarter, and when once
stated, were such as commanded public attention in the most forcible
manner. Those who invoked vengeance, backed the solicitations of each
other--the general voice of mankind was with them; and leaders who had
shared the excesses of the Reign of Terror, Thermidoriens as they were,
began to see some danger of being themselves buried in the ruins of the
power which they had overthrown.[521]
Tallien, who is supposed to have taken the lead in the extremely
difficult navigation which lay before the vessel of the state, seems to
have experienced a change in his own sentiments, at least his principles
of action, inclining him to the cause of humanity. He was also, it is
said, urged to so favourable a modification of feelings by his newly
married wife, formerly Madame Fontenai, who, bred a royalist, had
herself been a victim to the law of suspicion, and was released from a
prison[522] to receive the hand, and influence the activity of the
republican statesman. Barras, who, as commanding the armed force, might
be termed the hero of the 9th Thermidor, was supposed to be also
inclined towards humanity and moderation.
Thus disposed to destroy the monstrous system which had taken root in
France, and which, indeed, in the increasing impatience of the country,
they would have found it impossible to maintain, Tallien and Barras had
to struggle, at the same time to diminish and restrict the general
demand for revenge, at a time when, if past tyranny was to be strictly
inquired into and punished, the doom, as Carrier himself told them,
would have involved every thing in the Convention, not excepting the
president's bell and his arm-chair. So powerful were these feelings of
resisting a retrospect, that the Thermidoriens declined to support Le
Cointre in bringing forward a general charge of inculpation against the
two Committees of Public Safety and Public Security, in which
accusation, notwithstanding their ultimate quarrel with Robespierre, he
showed their intimate connexion with him, and their joint agency in all
which had been imputed to him as guilt. But the time was not mature for
hazarding such a general accusation, and it was rejected by the
Convention with marks of extreme displeasure.[523]
[Sidenote: FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.]
Still, however, the general voice of humanity demanded some farther
atonement for two years of outrage, and to satisfy this demand, the
Thermidoriens set themselves to seek victims connected more immediately
with Robespierre; while they endeavoured gradually to form a party,
which, setting out upon a principle of amnesty, and oblivion of the
past, should in future pay some regard to that preservation of the lives
and property of the governed, which, in every other system saving that
which had been just overthrown in France, is regarded as the principal
end of civil government. With a view to the consolidation of such a
party, the restrictions of the press were removed, and men of talent and
literature, silenced during the reign of Robespierre, were once more
admitted to exercise their natural influence in favour of civil order
and religion. Marmontel, La Harpe, and others, who, in their youth, had
been enrolled in the list of Voltaire's disciples, and amongst the
infidels of the Encyclopédie, now made amends for their youthful errors,
by exerting themselves in the cause of good morals, and of a regulated
government.[524]
At length followed that general and long-desired measure, which gave
liberty to so many thousands, by suspending the law denouncing
suspected persons, and emptying at once of their inhabitants the
prisons, which had hitherto only transmitted them to the
guillotine.[525] The tales which these victims of Jacobinism had to
repeat, when revealing the secrets of their prison-house, together with
the moral influence produced by such a universal gaol-delivery, and the
reunion which it effected amongst friends and relations that had been so
long separated, tended greatly to strengthen the hands of the
Thermidoriens, who still boasted of that name, and to consolidate a
rational and moderate party, both in the capital and provinces. It is,
however, by no means to be wondered at, that the liberated sufferers
showed a disposition to exercise retribution in a degree which their
liberators trembled to indulge, lest it might have recoiled upon
themselves. Still both parties united against the remains of the
Jacobins.
A singular and melancholy species of force supported these movements
towards civilisation and order. It was levied among the orphans and
youthful friends of those who had fallen under the fatal guillotine, and
amounted in number to two or three thousand young men, who acted in
concert, were distinguished by black collars, and by their hair being
plaited and turned up _à la victime_, as prepared for the guillotine.
This costume was adopted in memory of the principle of mourning on which
they were associated. These volunteers were not regularly armed or
disciplined, but formed a sort of free corps, who opposed themselves
readily and effectually to the Jacobins, when they attempted their
ordinary revolutionary tactics of exciting partial insurrections, and
intimidating the orderly citizens by shouts and violence. Many scuffles
took place betwixt the parties, with various success; but ultimately the
spirit and courage of the young Avengers seemed to give them daily a
more decided superiority. The Jacobins dared not show themselves, that
is, to avouch their principles, either at the places of public
amusement, or in the Palais Royal, or the Tuileries, all of which had
formerly witnessed their victories. Their assemblies now took place
under some appearance of secrecy, and were held in remote streets, and
with such marks of diminished audacity as augured that the spirit of the
party was crest-fallen.[526]
Still, however, the Jacobin party possessed dreadful leaders in
Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois, who repeatedly attempted to
awaken its terrific energy. These demagogues had joined, indeed, in the
struggle against Robespierre, but it was with the expectation that an
Amurath was to succeed an Amurath--a Jacobin a Jacobin--not for the
purpose of relaxing the reins of the revolutionary government, far less
changing its character. These veteran revolutionists must be considered
as separate from those who called themselves Thermidoriens, though they
lent their assistance to the revolution on the 9th Thermidor. They
viewed as deserters and apostates Legendre, Le Cointre, and others,
above all Tallien and Barras, who, in the full height of their career,
had paused to take breath, and were now endeavouring to shape a course
so different from that which they had hitherto pursued.
[Sidenote: JACOBIN CLUB REOPENED.]
These genuine Sans-Culottes endeavoured to rest their own power and
popularity upon the same basis as formerly. They reopened the sittings
of the Jacobin Club, shut up on the 9th Thermidor. This ancient
revolutionary cavern again heard its roof resound with denunciations, by
which Vadier, Billaud-Varennes, and others, devoted to the infernal
deities Le Cointre, and those, who, they complained, wished to involve
all honest Republicans in the charges brought against Robespierre and
his friends. Those threats, however, were no longer rapidly followed by
the thunderbolts which used to attend such flashes of Jacobin eloquence.
Men's homes were now in comparison safe. A man might be named in a
Jacobin club as an Aristocrat, or a Moderate, and yet live. In fact, the
demagogues were more anxious to secure immunity for their past crimes,
than at present to incur new censure. The tide of general opinion was
flowing strongly against them, and a singular incident increased its
power, and rendered it irresistible.
The Parisians had naturally enough imagined, that the provinces could
have no instances of Jacobinical cruelty and misrule to describe, more
tragic and appalling than the numerous executions which the capital had
exhibited every day. But the arrival of eighty prisoners, citizens of
Nantes, charged with the usual imputations cast upon suspected persons,
undeceived them. These captives had been sent, for the purpose of being
tried at Paris, before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Fortunately, they did
not arrive till after Robespierre's fall, and consequently when they
were looked upon rather as oppressed persons than as criminals, and were
listened to more as accusers of those by whom they were persecuted, than
as culprits on their defence.
It was then that the metropolis first heard of horrors which we have
formerly barely hinted at. It was then they were told of crowds of
citizens, most of whom had been favourable to the republican order of
things, and had borne arms against the Vendéans in their attack upon
Nantes; men accused upon grounds equally slight, and incapable of proof,
having been piled together in dungeons, where the air was pestilential
from ordure, from the carcasses of the dead, and the infectious diseases
of the dying. It was then they heard of Republican baptism and
Republican marriages--of men, women, and children sprawling together,
like toads and frogs in the season of spring, in the waters of the
Loire, too shallow to afford them instant death. It was then they heard
of a hundred other abominations--how those uppermost upon the expiring
mass prayed to be thrust into the deeper water, that they might have
the means of death--and of much more that humanity forbears to detail;
but in regard to which, the sharp, sudden, and sure blow of the Parisian
guillotine was clemency.[527]
[Sidenote: TRIAL OF CARRIER.]
This tale of horrors could not be endured; and the point of immediate
collision between the Thermidoriens, compelled and driven onward by the
public voice and feeling, and the remnant of the old Jacobin faction,
became the accusation of Carrier, the commissioned deputy under whom
these unheard-of horrors had been perpetrated. Vengeance on the head of
this wretch was so loudly demanded, that it could not be denied even by
those influential persons, who, themselves deeply interested in
preventing recrimination, would willingly have drawn a veil over the
past. Through the whole impeachment and defence, the Thermidoriens stood
on the most delicate and embarrassing ground; for horrid as his actions
were, he had in general their own authority to plead for them. For
example, a letter was produced with these directions to General
Haxo--"It is my plan to carry off from that accursed country all manner
of subsistence or provisions for man or beast, all forage--in a word,
_every thing_--give all the buildings to the flames, and exterminate the
whole inhabitants. Oppose their being relieved by a single grain of corn
for their subsistence. I give thee the most positive, most imperious
order. Thou art answerable for the execution from this moment. In a
word, leave nothing in that proscribed country--let the means of
subsistence, provisions, forage, every thing--absolutely every thing, be
removed to Nantes." The representatives of the French nation heard with
horror such a fiendish commission; but with what sense of shame and
abasement must they have listened to Carrier's defence, in which he
proved he was only literally executing the decrees of the very
Convention which was now inquiring into his conduct! A lunatic, who, in
a lucid moment, hears some one recount the crimes and cruelties he
committed in his frenzy, might perhaps enter into their feelings. They
were not the less obliged to continue the inquiry, fraught as it was
with circumstances so disgraceful to themselves; and Carrier's
impeachment and conviction proved the point on which the Thermidoriens,
and those who continued to entertain the violent popular opinions, were
now at issue.
The atrocious Carrier was taken under the avowed protection of the
Jacobin Club, before which audience he made out a case which was heard
with applause. He acknowledged his enormities, and pleaded his patriotic
zeal; ridiculed the delicacy of those who cared whether an aristocrat
died by a single blow, or a protracted death; was encouraged throughout
by acclamations, and received assurances of protection from the remnant
of that once formidable association. But their magic influence was
dissolved--their best orators had fallen successively by each other's
impeachment--and of their most active ruffians, some had been killed or
executed, some had fled, or lay concealed, many were in custody, and the
rest had become intimidated. Scarce a man who had signalized himself in
the French Revolution, but had enjoyed the applause of these demagogues,
as versatile in personal attachments, as steady in their execrable
principles--scarce one whom they had not been active in sacrificing.
Nevertheless, those members of the Revolutionary Committees, who had so
lately lent their aid to dethrone Robespierre, the last idol of the
Society, ventured to invoke them in their own defence, and that of their
late agents. Billaud-Varennes, addressing the Jacobins, spoke of the
Convention as men spared by their clemency during the reign of
Robespierre, who now rewarded the Mountain deputies by terming them Men
of Blood, and by seeking the death of those worthy patriots, Joseph
Lebon and Carrier, who were about to fall under their
counter-revolutionary violence. These excellent citizens, he said, were
persecuted, merely because their zeal for the Republic had been somewhat
ardent--their forms of proceeding a little rash and severe. He invoked
the awaking of the Lion--a new revolutionary rising of the people, to
tear the limbs and drink the blood[528]--(these were the very words)--of
those who had dared to beard them. The meeting dispersed with shouts,
and vows to answer to the halloo of their leaders.
But the opposite party had learned that such menaces were to be met
otherwise than by merely awaiting the issue, and then trying the force
of remonstrances, or the protection of the law, with those to whom the
stronger force is the only satisfying reason.
Well organized, and directed by military officers in many instances,
large bands of Anti-jacobins, as we may venture to call the volunteer
force already mentioned, appeared in the neighbourhood of the suburbs,
and kept in check those from whom the Mother Club expected its strongest
aid; while the main body of the young Avengers marched down upon the
citadel of the enemy, and invested the Jacobin Club itself in the midst
of its sitting. These demagogues made but a wretched defence when
attacked by that species of popular violence, which they had always
considered as their own especial weapon; and the facility with which
they were dispersed, amid ridicule and ignominy, served to show how
easily, on former occasions, the mutual understanding and spirited
exertion of well-disposed men could have at any time prevented criminal
violence from obtaining the mastery. Had La Fayette marched against and
shut up the Jacobin Club, the world would have been spared many horrors,
and in all probability he would have found the task as easy as it proved
to those bands of incensed young men.--It must be mentioned, though the
recital is almost unworthy of history, that the female Jacobins came to
rally and assist their male associates, and that several of them were
seized upon and punished in a manner, which might excellently suit their
merits, but which shows that the young associates for maintaining order
were not sufficiently aristocratic to be under the absolute restraints
imposed by the rules of chivalry. It is impossible, however, to grudge
the flagellation administered upon this memorable occasion.[529]
When the Jacobins had thus fallen in the popular contest, they could
expect little success in the Convention; and the less, that the impulse
of general feeling seemed about to recall into that Assembly, by the
reversal of their outlawry, the remnant of the unhappy Girondists, and
other members, who had been arbitrarily proscribed on the 31st of May.
The measure was delayed for some time, as tending to effect a change in
the composition of the House, which the ruling party might find
inconvenient. At length upwards of sixty deputies were first declared
free of the outlawry, and finally re-admitted into the bosom of the
Convention, with heads which had been so long worn in insecurity, that
it had greatly cooled their love of political theory.[530]
In the meantime the government, through means of a revolutionary
tribunal, acting however with much more of legal formality and caution
than that of Robespierre, made a sacrifice to the public desire of
vengeance. Lebon, Carrier, already mentioned, Fouquier-Tainville,[531]
the public accuser under Robespierre, and one or two others of the same
class, selected on account of the peculiar infamy and cruelty of their
conduct, were condemned and executed, as an atonement for injured
humanity.
Here, probably, the Thermidoriens would have wished the reaction to
stop; but this was impossible. Barras and Tallien perceived plainly,
that with whatever caution and clemency they might proceed towards their
old allies of The Mountain, there was still no hope of any thing like
reconciliation; and that their best policy was to get rid of them as
speedily and as quietly as they could. The Mountain, like a hydra whose
heads bourgeoned, according to the poetic expression, as fast as they
were cut off, continued to hiss at and menace the government with
unwearied malignity, and to agitate the metropolis by their intrigues,
which were the more easily conducted that the winter was severe, bread
had become scarce and high-priced, and the common people of course angry
and discontented. Scarcity is always the grievance of which the lower
classes must be most sensible; and when it is remembered that
Robespierre, though at the expense of the grossest injustice to the rest
of the kingdom, always kept bread beneath a certain _maximum_ or fixed
price in the metropolis, it will not be wondered at that the population
of Paris should be willing to favour those who followed his maxims. The
impulse of these feelings, joined to the machinations of the Jacobins,
showed itself in many disorders.
[Sidenote: JACOBIN CHIEFS BANISHED.]
At length the Convention, pressed by shame on the one side and fear on
the other, saw the necessity of some active measure, and appointed a
commission to consider and report upon the conduct of the four most
obnoxious Jacobin chiefs, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes,
Vadier,[532] and Barrère.[533] The report was of course unfavourable;
yet, upon the case being considered, the Convention were satisfied to
condemn them to transportation to Cayenne. Some resistance was offered
to this sentence, so mild in proportion to what those who underwent it
had been in the habit of inflicting; but it was borne down, and the
sentence was carried into execution. Collot d'Herbois, the demolisher
and depopulator of Lyons, is said to have died in the common hospital,
in consequence of drinking off at once a whole bottle of ardent
spirits.[534] Billaud-Varennes spent his time in teaching the innocent
parrots of Guiana the frightful jargon of the Revolutionary Committee;
and finally perished in misery.[535]
These men both belonged to that class of atheists, who, looking up
towards heaven, loudly and literally defied the Deity to make his
existence known by launching his thunderbolts. Miracles are not wrought
on the challenge of a blasphemer more than on the demand of a sceptic;
but both these unhappy men had probably before their death reason to
confess, that in abandoning the wicked to their own free will, a greater
penalty results even in this life, than if Providence had been pleased
to inflict the immediate doom which they had impiously defied.
[Sidenote: THE FIRST OF PRAIRIAL.]
The notice of one more desperate attempt at popular insurrection,
finishes, in a great measure, the history of Jacobinism and of The
Mountain; of those, in short, who professed the most outrageous popular
doctrines, considered as a political body. They continued to receive
great facilities from the increasing dearth, and to find ready
opportunities of agitating the discontented part of a population,
disgusted by the diminution not only of comforts, but of the very means
of subsistence. The Jacobins, therefore, were easily able to excite an
insurrection of the same description as those which had repeatedly
influenced the fate of the Revolution, and which, in fact, proceeded to
greater extremities than any which had preceded it in the same desperate
game. The rallying word of the rabble was "Bread, and the Democratic
Constitution of 1793;" a constitution which the Jacobins had projected,
but never attempted seriously to put into force. No insurrection had yet
appeared more formidable in numbers, or better provided in pikes,
muskets, and cannon. On the first of Prairial [20th May] they invested
the Convention, without experiencing any effectual opposition; burst
into the hall, assassinated one deputy, Ferraud, by a pistol-shot, and
paraded his head amongst his trembling brethren, and through the
neighbouring streets and environs on a pike. They presented Boissy
d'Anglas, the President, with the motions which they demanded should be
passed; but were defeated by the firmness with which he preferred his
duty to his life.[536]
The steadiness of the Convention gave at length confidence to the
friends of good order without. The national guards began to muster
strong, and the insurgents to lose spirits. They were at length,
notwithstanding their formidable appearance, dispersed with very little
effort. The tumult, however, was renewed on the two following days;
until at length the necessity of taking sufficient measures to end it at
once and for ever, became evident to all.
Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland, who chanced to be in Paris at the
time, was placed at the head of the national guards and the volunteers,
whose character we have noticed elsewhere. At the head of this force,
he marched in military order towards the Fauxbourg Saint Antoine, which
had poured forth repeatedly the bands of armed insurgents that were the
principal force of the Jacobins.
After a show of defending themselves, the inhabitants of this disorderly
suburb were at length obliged to surrender up their arms of every kind.
Those pikes, which had so often decided the destinies of France, were
now delivered up by cartloads; and the holy right of insurrection was
rendered in future a more dangerous and difficult task.[537]
Encouraged by the success of this decisive measure, the government
proceeded against some of the Terrorists whom they had hitherto spared,
but whose fate was now determined, in order to strike dismay into their
party. Six Jacobins, accounted among the most ferocious of the class,
were arrested as encouragers of the late insurrection, and delivered up
to be tried by a military commission. They were all deputies of The
Mountain gang. Certain of their doom, they adopted a desperate
resolution. Among the whole party, they possessed but one knife, but
they resolved it should serve them all for the purpose of suicide. The
instant their sentence was pronounced, one stabbed himself with this
weapon; another snatched the knife from his companion's dying hand,
plunged it in his own bosom, and handed it to the third, who imitated
the dreadful example. Such was the consternation of the attendants, that
no one arrested the fatal progress of the weapon--all fell either dead
or desperately wounded--the last were despatched by the guillotine.[538]
After this decisive victory, and last dreadful catastrophe, Jacobinism,
considered as a pure and unmixed party, can scarce be said to have again
raised its head in France, although its leaven has gone to qualify and
characterise, in some degree, more than one of the different parties
which have succeeded them. As a political sect, the Jacobins can be
compared to none that ever existed, for none but themselves ever thought
of an organized, regular, and continued system of murdering and
plundering the rich, that they might debauch the poor by the
distribution of their spoils. They bear, however, some resemblance to
the frantic followers of John of Leyden and Knipperdoling, who occupied
Munster in the seventeenth century and committed, in the name of
Religion, the same frantic horrors which the French Jacobins did in that
of Freedom. In both cases, the courses adopted by these parties were
most foreign to, and inconsistent with, the alleged motives of their
conduct. The Anabaptists practised every species of vice and cruelty, by
the dictates, they said, of inspiration--the Jacobins imprisoned three
hundred thousand of their countrymen in name of liberty, and put to
death more than half the number, under the sanction of fraternity.
Now at length, however, society began to resume its ordinary course, and
the business and pleasures of life succeeded each other as usual.[539]
But even social pleasures brought with them strange and gloomy
associations with that Valley of the Shadow of Death, through which the
late pilgrimage of France appeared to have lain. An Assembly for
dancing, very much frequented by the young of both sexes, and highly
fashionable, was called the "Ball of the Victims." The qualification for
attendance was the having lost some near and valued relation or friend
in the late Reign of Terror. The hair and head-dress were so arranged as
to resemble the preparations made for the guillotine, and the motto
adopted was, "We dance amidst tombs."[540] In no country but France
could the incidents have taken place which gave rise to this
association; and certainly in no country but France would they have been
used for such a purpose.
But it is time to turn from the consideration of the internal government
of France, to its external relations; in regard to which the destinies
of the country rose to such a distinguished height, that it is hardly
possible to reconcile the two pictures of a nation, triumphant at every
point against all Europe coalesced against her, making efforts and
obtaining victories, to which history had been yet a stranger; while, at
the same time, her affairs at home were directed by ferocious
bloodthirsty savages, such as Robespierre. The Republic, regarded in her
foreign and domestic relations, might be fancifully compared to the tomb
erected over some hero, presenting, without, trophies of arms and the
emblems of victory, while, within, there lies only a mangled and
corrupted corpse.
FOOTNOTES:
[452] Charlotte Corday was born, in 1768, near Séez, in Normandy. She
was twenty-five years of age, and resided at Caen, when she conceived
and executed the design of ridding the world of this monster. She
reached Paris on the 11th July, and on the 12th wrote a note to Marat,
soliciting an interview, and purchased in the Palais Royal a knife to
plunge into the bosom of the tyrant. On the 13th, she obtained admission
to Marat, whom she found in his bath-room. He enquired after the
proscribed deputies at Caen. Being told their names--"They shall soon,"
he said, "meet with the punishment they deserve."--"Thine is at hand!"
exclaimed she, and stabbed him to the heart. She was immediately brought
to trial, and executed on the 17th.--LACRETELLE, tom. xi., p. 47;
MONTGAILLARD, tom. iv., p. 55.--Charlotte Corday was descended, in a
direct line, from the great Corneille. See the genealogical table of the
Corneille family, prefixed to Lepan's _Chefs d'Œuvres de Corneille_,
tom. v., 8vo, 1816.
[453] Marat was born at Neuchatel in 1744. He was not five feet high.
His countenance was equally ferocious and hideous, and his head
monstrous in size. "He wore," says Madame Roland, "boots, but no
stockings, a pair of old leather breeches, and a white silk waistcoat.
His dirty shirt, open at the bosom, exhibited his skin of yellow hue;
while his long and dirty nails displayed themselves at his fingers'
ends, and his horrid face accorded perfectly with his whimsical
dress."--_Mémoires_, part i., p. 176.
"After Marat's death, honours, almost divine, were decreed to him. In
all the public places in Paris triumphal arches and mausoleums were
erected to him: in the Place du Carousel a sort of pyramid was raised in
celebration of him, within which were placed his bust, his bathing-tub,
his writing desk, and his lamp. The honours of the Pantheon were decreed
him, and the poets celebrated him on the stage and in their works. But
at last France indignantly broke the busts which his partisans had
placed in all the theatres, his filthy remains were torn from the
Pantheon, trampled under foot, and dragged through the mud, by the same
populace who had deified him."--_Biog. Mod._, tom. ii., p. 355; MIGNET,
tom. ii., p. 279.
"In 1774, Marat resided at Edinburgh, where he taught the French
language, and published, in English, a volume entitled 'The Chains of
Slavery;' a work wherein the clandestine and villanous attempts of
princes to ruin liberty are pointed out, and the dreadful scenes of
despotism disclosed; to which is prefixed an address to the electors of
Great Britain.'"--_Biog. Univ._
[454] See Note, _ante_, p. 264.
[455] "Pache, Hébert, and Chaumette, the leaders of the municipality,
publicly expressed their determination to dethrone the King of Heaven,
as well as the kings of the earth!"--LACRETELLE, tom. xi., p. 300.
[456] Gobel was born at Thann, in Upper Alsace, in 1727. In January,
1791, he took the oath of fidelity to the new constitution, and in March
following was installed Bishop of Paris, by the Bishop of Autun, M. de
Talleyrand. In April, 1794, he was dragged before the revolutionary
tribunal, accused (with Chaumette, and the actor Grammont,) of
conspiracy and atheism, and executed. See, in the _Annales Catholiques_,
tom. iii., p. 466, a letter from the Abbé Lothringer, one of his vicars,
showing that Gobel died penitent.
[457] "On présente le bonnet rouge à Gobel; il le met sur la tête. Un
grand nombre de membres--'L'accolade à l'évêque de Paris.'--_Le
Président._ 'D'après l'abjuration qui vient d'être faite, l'évêque de
Paris est un être de raison: mais je vais embrasser Gobel.'--Le
président donne l'accolade à Gobel."--_Moniteur_, No. 49, 2d décade de
Brumaire, 9th November.
[458] Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 124; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 157.
"Gaivernon, one of the constitutional bishops, exclaimed, 'I want no
other god, and no other king, but the will of the people.'"--LACRETELLE,
tom. xi., p. 302.
[459] A Mademoiselle Maillard, at that time the mistress of Mormoro.
[460] "The goddess, after receiving the fraternal hug of the president,
was mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted, amidst an immense
crowd, to the church of Notre-Dame, to take the place of the Holy of
Holies. Thenceforward that ancient and imposing cathedral was called
'the Temple of Reason.'"--LACRETELLE, tom. xi., p. 306; THIERS, tom. v.,
p. 342; TOULONGEON, tom. iv., p. 124.
[461] "C'est ici l'asile du sommeil eternel."
[462] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 333.
[463] Sophie Arnould, born at Paris in 1740, was not less celebrated for
her native wit than her talents on the stage. Shortly after her death,
in 1803, appeared "Arnouldiana, ou Sophie Arnould et ses
contemporaires."
[464] This miserable visionary passed herself off at one time as the
mother of God, and at another as a second Eve, destined to regenerate
mankind. In 1794, she was arrested and sent to the Conciergerie, where
she died, at the age of seventy.--See _Les Mystères de la Mère de Dieu
devoilés_, in the _Collection des Mémoires relatifs à la Rev. Franç._,
tom. xx., p. 271.
[465] This aged lunatic, who fancied herself to be with child of a new
Messiah, died in 1815.
[466] See _ante_, p. 109.
[467] Gerle was imprisoned in the Conciergerie, but liberated through
the interference of Robespierre. He was employed, during the reign of
Napoleon, in the office of the home department.
[468] Chaumette was born at Nevers in 1763. For some time he was
employed as a transcriber by the journalist Prudhomme, who describes him
as a very ignorant man. In 1792, he was appointed attorney of the
Commune of Paris, upon which occasion he changed his patronymic of
Pierre-Gaspard for that of Anaxagoras--"a saint," he said, "who had been
hanged for his republicanism." He it was who prepared the charges and
arranged the evidence against Marie Antoinette. On being committed to
the prison of the Luxembourg, "he appeared," says the author of the
Tableau des Prisons de Paris, "oppressed with shame, like a fox taken in
a net: he hung his head, his eye was mournful and cast down, his
countenance sad, his voice soft and supplicating. He was no longer the
terrible attorney of the Commune." He was guillotined, 13th April, 1794,
with the apostate bishop, Gobel, and the actor Grammont.
[469] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 363.
[470] "Such was the public avidity to witness the execution of Hébert
and his companions, that considerable sums were realized by the sale of
seats. Hébert wept from weakness, and made no attempt to conceal his
terrors. He sunk down at every step; while the populace, who had so
recently endeavoured to deliver him from the fangs of the Convention,
loaded him with execrations, mimicking the cry of the newsmen who hawked
his journal about the streets."--THIERS, tom. vi., p. 142.
[471] Of the pamphlet, entitled "Le Vieux Cordelier," one hundred
thousand copies, Lacretelle says, were sold in a few days. It was
reprinted, in 1825, in the _Collection des Mémoires sur la Révolution_.
[472] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 308; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 189.
[473] "Sneak into exile!" said he, "can a man carry his country at the
sole of his shoe?"--THIERS, tom. vi., p. 148.
[474] Riouffe, a fellow captive, states, that when Danton entered his
prison, he exclaimed, "At last I perceive, that in revolutions the
supreme power rests with the most abandoned."--_Mémoires_, p. 67.
"Seeing Thomas Payne, he said to him, 'What you have accomplished for
the happiness and freedom of your country, I have in vain endeavoured to
effect for mine. I have been less successful, but am not more culpable.'
At another time he exclaimed, 'It is just about a year since I was the
means of instituting the revolutionary tribunal. I ask pardon of God and
man for what I did: my object was to prevent a new September, and not to
let loose a scourge of humanity.' ... 'My treacherous brethren (mes
frères Caïn) understand nothing of government: I leave every thing in
frightful confusion.' ... 'It were better to be a poor fisherman than a
ruler of men.'"--THIERS, tom. vi., p. 155; MIGNET, tom. ii., p. 312.
[475] La Croix was born, in 1754, at Pont-Audemer. His destruction being
resolved on by Robespierre, he was arrested with Danton, 31st March, and
executed 5th April, 1794. When the act of accusation was brought, Danton
asked him what he said to it. "That I am going to cut off my hair," said
he, "that Samson [the executioner] may not touch it."
[476] Boyer Fonfrède was born at Bordeaux. Being appointed deputy from
the Gironde to the Convention, he vigorously opposed Marat and the
Mountain. He escaped the first proscription of the Girondists, but
perished on the scaffold in 1793.
[477] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 380.
[478] Camille Desmoulins was born at Guise in 1762, and educated with
Robespierre, at the College of Louis-le-Grand. He it was who, in 1789,
began the practice of collecting groups of people to harangue them in
the streets, and who advised the revolutionists to distinguish
themselves by a badge. Hence the tricolor cockade. After the taking of
the Bastile, he published, under the name of "Attorney-General of the
Lantern," a periodical paper, called "Révolutions de France et de
Brabant." "It must not, however," says M. Dumont, "be imagined, that he
excited the people to use the lantern-posts instead of the gallows, an
abomination attributed to him by Bertrand de Moleville--quite the
reverse: he pointed out the danger and injustice of such summary
executions, but in a tone of lightness and badinage, by no means in
keeping with so serious a subject. Camille appeared to me what is called
a good fellow; of rather exaggerated feelings, devoid of reflection or
judgment, as ignorant as he was unthinking, not deficient in wit, but in
politics possessing not even the first elements of reason."--P. 135. On
his trial, being interrogated as to his age, he answered, "I am
thirty-three, the same age as the Sans-Culotte Jesus Christ when he
died." On the day of execution he made the most violent efforts to avoid
getting into the fatal cart. His shirt was in tatters, and his shoulders
bare; his eyes glared, his mouth foamed at the moment when he was bound,
and on seeing the scaffold, he exclaimed, "This, then, is the reward
reserved for the first apostle of liberty!" His wife, a beautiful
creature, by whom he was tenderly beloved, was arrested a few days after
his death, and sent to the scaffold.--THIERS, tom. vi., p. 169; _Biog.
Mod._, tom. i., p. 364; LACRETELLE, tom. xi., p. 380.
[479] Hérault Séchelles was born at Paris in 1760. He began his career
at the bar, by holding the office of King's advocate at the Châtelet;
and afterwards, by the patronage of the Queen, was appointed
advocate-general. Shortly before his arrest he was offered a retreat in
Switzerland, and a passport, in a fictitious name, from the agent of
Bâle, but his answer was, "I would gladly accept the offer, if I could
carry my native country with me." He published "Visite à Buffon,"
"Théorie de l'Ambition," and "Rapports sur la Constitution," &c., 1793.
[480] Fabre d'Eglantine, born at Carcassonne in 1755, was in early life
an actor, and performed at Versailles, Brussels, and Lyons, but with
moderate success. As an author he discovered considerable talent; the
latter part of his name being assumed, in memory of a prize which he had
won in his youth. His most successful production was a comedy, entitled,
"Le Philinte de Molière, ou La Suite du Misanthrope," in which he has
traced the _beau idéal_ of an honest man. His "Œuvres Mêlées et
Posthumes," were published, in two volumes, in 1802. One of the things
that seemed most to trouble him after his arrest was, that he had left
among his papers an unpublished comedy called "L'Orange de Malte," which
he considered better than his "Philinte," and which he feared
Billaud-Varennes would get hold of, and publish as his own. Mercier, his
colleague, says of him, "I do not know whether Fabre's hands were
stained by the lavishing of money not his own, but I know that he was a
promoter of assassinations; poor before the 2d of September, 1792, he
had afterwards an hotel, and carriages, and servants, and women." "As to
Fabre," says Madame Roland, "muffled in a cowl, armed with a poniard,
and employed in forging plots to defame the innocent, or to ruin the
rich, whose wealth he covets, he is so perfectly in character, that
whoever would paint the most abandoned hypocrite, need only draw his
portrait in that dress."
[481] Westermann was born in 1764, at Molsheim, in Alsace. In December,
1792, he was denounced to the Convention, upon proof, as having, in
1786, stolen some silver plate from a coffee-house. "In La Vendée," says
Prudhomme, "he ran from massacre to massacre, sparing neither
adversaries taken in arms, nor the peaceful inhabitants." M. Beauchamp
says that "he delighted in carnage, and would throw off his coat, tuck
up his sleeves, and then, with his sabre, rush into the crowd, and hew
about him to the right and left. But from the moment that he apprehended
death, his dreams were of the horrors which he had perpetrated."
[482] "On the way to execution, Danton cast a calm and contemptuous look
around him. Arrived at the steps of the scaffold, he advanced to embrace
Hérault Séchelles, who held out his arms to receive him; the executioner
interposing, 'What!' said he, with a smile of scorn, 'are you, then,
more cruel than death? Begone! you cannot prevent our heads from soon
uniting in that basket.' For a moment he was softened, and said, 'Oh! my
beloved! oh, my wife, I shall never see thee more!' but instantly
checking himself, exclaimed, 'Danton, no weakness!' and ascended the
scaffold."--THIERS, tom. vi., p. 169; _Biog. Mod._, tom. i., p. 332.
[483] It has been said, that when Danton observed Fabre d'Eglantine
beginning to look gloomy, he cheered him with a play on words: "Courage,
my friend, we are all about to take up your trade--_Nous allons faire
des_ vers."
[484] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 382.
[485] When we read such miserable stuff, and consider the crimes which
such oratory occasioned, it reminds us of the opinion of a Mahomedan
doctor, who assured Bruce that the Degial, or Antichrist, was to appear
in the form of an ass, and that multitudes were to follow him to hell,
attracted by the music of his braying.--S.
[486] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 291.
[487] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 197.
[488] Poor Anacharsis Clootz! He had been expelled from the Jacobin Club
as a Prussian, an ex-noble, and, what perhaps was not previously
suspected, a person of fortune enough to be judged an aristocrat. His
real offence was being a Hébertist, and he suffered accordingly with the
leaders of that party.--This note was rather unnecessary; but Anacharsis
Clootz was, in point of absurdity, one of the most inimitable personages
in the Revolution.--S.--See _ante_, p. 139.
[489] "The most indecent irreligion served as a lever for the subversion
of the social order. There was a kind of consistency in founding crime
upon impiety; it is an homage paid to the intimate union of religious
opinions with morality. Robespierre conceived the idea of celebrating a
festival in honour of the Supreme Being, flattering himself, doubtless,
with being able to rest his political ascendency on a religion arranged
according to his own notions; as those have frequently done who have
wished to seize the supreme power. But, in the procession of this
impious festival, he bethought himself of walking the first, in order to
mark his pre-eminence; and from that time he was lost."--MAD. DE STAËL,
vol. ii., p. 142.
[490] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 268; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 15; Mignet,
tom. ii., p. 322; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 207.
[491] "Lecointre de Versailles, stepping up to him, said, 'I like your
festival, Robespierre, but you I detest mortally.' Bourdon de l'Oise
reminded him of Mirabeau's famous saying, 'the Capitol is near the
Tarpeian rock;' many among the crowd muttered the word 'Tyrant' adding,
'there are still Brutuses;' and when, in the course of his speech, he
said, 'It is the Great Eternal who has placed in the bosom of the
oppressor the sensation of remorse and terror;' a powerful voice
exclaimed, 'True! Robespierre, very true!'"--LACRETELLE, tom. xii., p.
18.
[492] This unheard-of iniquity is stated in the report of the committee
appointed to examine Robespierre's papers, of which Courtois was the
reporter. It is rather a curious circumstance that, about the time of
Cécile Regnault's adventure, there appeared, at a masked ball at London,
a character dressed like the spectre of Charlotte Corday, come, as she
said, to seek Robespierre, and inflict on him the doom of Marat.--S.
[493] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 322; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 10; _Biog.
Mod._, tom. iii., p. 149.
[494] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 291; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 53.
[495] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 22.
[496] See it in Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 23.
[497] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 30; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 273.
[498] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 307.
[499] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 61.
[500] "Robespierre was a fanatic, a monster, but he was incorruptible,
and incapable of robbing, or of causing the deaths of others, from a
desire of enriching himself. He was an enthusiast, but one who believed
that he was acting right, and died not worth a sous."--NAPOLEON, _Voice
from St. Helena_, vol. ii., p. 170.
[501] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 328; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 71.
[502] "I know," said Henriot, "the road to the Convention."--"Go," said
Robespierre, "separate the wicked from the weak; deliver the Assembly
from the wretches who enthral it. March! you may yet save
liberty!"--THIERS, tom. vi., p. 337.
[503] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 85.
[504] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 86.
[505] Thuriot, whom Robespierre had repeatedly threatened with death.
[506] Garnier de l'Aube.
[507] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 344; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 94; Mignet,
tom. ii., p. 339; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 382; Montgaillard, tom. iv.,
p. 249.
[508] "Young Robespierre had but recently returned from the army of
Italy, whither he had been sent by the Convention on a mission. He
earnestly pressed Buonaparte to accompany him to Paris. 'Had I followed
young Robespierre,' said Napoleon, 'how different might have been my
career. On what trivial circumstances does human fate depend!'"--LAS
CASES, vol. i., p. 348.
[509] Baron Méda, then a simple gendarme, states, in his "Précis
Historique," that it was the discharge of his pistol that broke
Robespierre's jaw.--See _Collection des Mémoires Rév._, tom. xlii., p.
384.
[510] Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 390; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 257;
Thiers, tom. vi., p. 360; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 117.
[511] It did not escape the minute observers of this scene, that he
still held in his hand the bag which had contained the fatal pistol, and
which was inscribed with the words _Au grand Monarque_, alluding to the
sign, doubtless, of the gunsmith who sold the weapon, but singularly
applicable to the high pretensions of the purchaser.--S.--See
Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 257.
[512] The horsemen who escorted him showed him to the spectators with
the point of their sabres. The mob stopped him before the house in which
he lived; some women danced before the cart, and one of them cried out
to him, "Murderer of all my kindred, thy agony fills me with joy;
descend to hell, with the curses of all wives, mothers, and
children!"--LACRETELLE, tom. xii., p. 119; _Biog. Mod._, vol. i., p.
179.
[513] The fate of no tyrant in story was so hideous at the conclusion,
excepting perhaps that of Jugurtha.--S.
[514] "Couthon was born at Orsay in 1756. Before the Revolution he had
been distinguished for the gentleness, as well as the integrity of his
character. Owing to the malformation of his lower limbs, it was
difficult to fasten him to the moving plank of the guillotine; and the
executioner was at last obliged to lay him on his side to receive the
blow."--_Biog. Mod._, vol. i., p. 309.
[515] "Coffinhal was born at Aurillac in 1746. He it was who, when
Lavoisier requested that his death might be delayed a fortnight, in
order that he might finish some important experiments, made answer that
the Republic had no need of scholars and chemists."--_Biog. Univ._
[516] On the very day of his arrest he had signed the warrant for
putting sixty persons to death. In the confusion, no person thought of
arresting the guillotine. They all suffered.
[517] The following is M. Dumont's report of Robespierre's maiden speech
in the National Assembly:--
"I cannot forget the occasion on which a man, who afterwards acquired a
fatal celebrity, first brought himself into notice. The clergy were
endeavouring, by a subterfuge, to obtain a conference of the orders; and
for this purpose deputed the Archbishop of Aix to the Tiers Etat. This
prelate expatiated very pathetically upon the distresses of the people,
and the poverty of the country parishes. He produced a piece of black
bread, which a dog would have rejected, but which the poor were obliged
to eat or starve. He besought the Assembly to appoint some members to
confer with those deputed by the nobility and clergy, upon the means of
bettering the condition of the indigent classes. The Tiers Etat
perceived the snare, but dared not openly reject the proposal, as it
would render them unpopular with the lower classes. Then a deputy rose,
and after professing sentiments in favour of the poor still stronger
than those of the prelate, adroitly threw doubts upon the sincerity of
the intentions avowed by the clergy. 'Go,' said he to the archbishop,
'and tell your colleagues, that if they are so impatient to assist the
suffering poor, they had better come hither and join the friends of the
people. Tell them no longer to embarrass our proceedings with affected
delays; tell them no longer to endeavour, by unworthy means, to make us
swerve from the resolutions we have taken; but as ministers of
religion--as worthy imitators of their master--let them forego that
luxury which surrounds them, and that splendour which puts indigence to
the blush;--let them resume the modesty of their origin, discharge the
proud lackeys by whom they are attended, sell their superb equipages,
and convert all their superfluous wealth into food for the indigent.'
"This speech, which coincided so well with the passions of the time, did
not elicit loud applause, which would have been a bravado and out of
place, but was succeeded by a murmur much more flattering: 'Who is he?'
was the general question; but he was unknown; and it was not until some
time had elapsed that a name was circulated which, three years later,
made France tremble. The speaker was Robespierre. Reybas, who was seated
next to me, observed, 'This young man is as yet unpractised; he does not
know when to stop, but he has a store of eloquence which will not leave
him in the crowd."--_Souvenirs de Mirabeau_, p. 49.
[518] "Robespierre had been a studious youth and a respectable man, and
his character contributed not a little to the ascendency which he
obtained over rivals, some of whom were corrupt, others impudently
profligate, and of whom there were few who had any pretensions to
morality. He became bloody, because a revolutionist soon learns to
consider human lives as the counters with which he plays his perilous
game; and he perished after he had cut off every man who was capable of
directing the republic, because they who had committed the greatest
abominations of the Revolution united against him, that they might
secure themselves, and wash their hands in his blood."--_Quarterly
Review_, vol. vii., p. 432.
Robespierre wrote, in 1785, an Essay against the Punishment of Death,
which gained the prize awarded by the Royal Society of Metz.
[519]
Passant! ne pleure point son sort:
Car s'il vivait, tu serais mort.
[520] Mercier, in his _Nouveau Tableau de Paris_, has devoted a chapter
to this personage. "What a man," he says, "is that Samson! Insensible to
suffering, he was always identified with the axe of execution. He has
beheaded the most powerful monarch in Europe, his Queen, Couthon,
Brissot, Robespierre--and all this with a composed countenance. He cuts
off the head that is brought to him, no matter whose. What does he say?
What does he think? I should like to know what passes in his head, and
whether he has considered his terrible functions only as a trade. The
more I meditate on this man, the president of the great massacre of the
human species, overthrowing crowned heads like that of the purest
republican, without moving a muscle, the more my ideas are confounded.
How did he sleep, after receiving the last words, the last looks of all
these severed heads? I really would give a trifle to be in the soul of
this man for a few hours. He sleeps, it is said, and, very likely, his
conscience may be at perfect rest. He is sometimes present at the
Vaudeville: he laughs, looks at me; my head has escaped him, he knows
nothing about it; and as that is very indifferent to him, I never grow
weary of contemplating in him the indifference with which he has sent
that crowd of men to the other world."
[521] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 204; Chateaubriand, Etud. Hist., tom.
i., p. 102; Prudhomme, Victimes de la Rév., tom. ii., p. 274. On the
scaffold, when the red shirt was thrown over him, he exclaimed, "It is
not I who should put it on: it should be sent to the Convention, for I
have only executed their orders."--_Biog. Mod._, vol. ii., p. 267.
[522] She was the daughter of Count Cabarus. During her imprisonment,
she had formed a close intimacy with Josephine Beauharnais, afterwards
the wife of Napoleon. These ladies were the first to proscribe the
revolutionary manners, and seized every opportunity of saving those whom
the existing government wished to immolate. The marriage of Madame
Fontenai with Tallien was not a happy one. On his return from Egypt, a
separation took place, and in 1805 she married M. de Caraman, prince of
Chemai.
[523] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 131.
[524] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 138.
[525] "In the space of eight or ten days, out of ten thousand suspected
persons, not one remained in the prisons of Paris."--LACRETELLE, tom.
xii., p. 145.
[526] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 147.
[527] Toulongeon, tom. v., p. 119; Thiers, tom. vii., p. 117;
Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 162; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 301.
[528] "Briser leurs membres, et boire leur sang."--THIERS, tom. vii., p.
121. "Nager dans leur sang."--LACRETELLE, tom. xii., p. 157.
[529] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 154.
[530] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 177.
[531] Fouquier-Tainville made an able defence, which he concluded with
saying, "I was but the axe of the Convention, and would you punish an
axe?" Mercier says, "while standing before the Tribunal, from which he
had condemned so many victims, he kept constantly writing; but, like
Argus, all eyes and ears, he lost nothing that was said or done. He
affected to sleep during the public accuser's recapitulation, as if to
feign tranquillity, while he had hell in his heart. When led to
execution, he answered the hisses of the populace by sinister
predictions. At the foot of the scaffold he seemed, for the first time,
to feel remorse, and trembled as he ascended it." In early life,
Fouquier scribbled poetry for the journals. Some verses of his, in
praise of Louis XVI., will be found in the notes to Delille's "_La
Pitié_."
[532] Vadier contrived to conceal himself in Paris, and thereby avoided
his sentence. He continued to reside in the capital up to the law of the
12th January, 1816, when he was compelled to quit France. He died at
Brussels, in 1828, at the age of ninety-three.
[533] Barrère contrived to be left behind, at the isle of Olèron, when
his colleagues sailed for Cayenne; upon which Boursault observed, that
"it was the first time he had ever failed to sail with the wind." He
also remained in France, till the law of January, 1816, compelled him to
leave it.
[534] M. Piton, who, in 1797, was himself transported to Cayenne by the
Directory gives, in his "Voyage à Cayenne," the following account of the
death of Collot d'Herbois:--"He was lying upon the ground, his face
exposed to a burning sun, in a raging fever--the negroes, who were
appointed to bear him from Kouron to Cayenne, having thrown him down to
perish; a surgeon, who found him in this situation, asked him what ailed
him, he replied, 'J'ai la fièvre, et une sueur brulante!'--'Je le crois
bien, vous suez le crime,' was the bitter rejoinder. He expired,
vomiting froth and blood, calling upon that God whom he had so often
renounced!" M. Piton describes Collot as not naturally wicked,--"Il
avait d'excellentes qualités du coté du cœur, beaucoup de clinquant
du coté de l'esprit; un caractère faible et irascible à l'excès;
généreux sans bornes, bon ami, et ennemi implacable. La Révolution a
fait sa perte."
[535] "After Billaud-Varennes reached Cayenne, his life was a continued
scene of romantic adventures. He escaped to Mexico, and entered, under
the name of Polycarpus Varennes, the Dominican convent at Porto Ricco.
Obliged to flee the continent for the part he took in the disputes
between the Spanish colonies and the mother country, Pethion, then
president of Hayti, not only afforded him an asylum, but made him his
secretary. After Pethion's death, Boyer refusing to employ him, he went
to the United States, and died at Philadelphia in 1819."--_Biog. Univ._
[536] "They held up to him the bloody head of Ferraud; he turned aside
with horror: they again presented it, and he bowed before the remains of
the martyr; nor would he quit the chair till compelled by the efforts of
his friends; and the insurgents, awed with respect, allowed him to
retire unmolested."--LACRETELLE, tom. xii., p. 221.
[537] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 370; Thiers, tom. vii., p. 371; Lacretelle,
tom. xii., p. 220.
[538] Romme, Bourbotte, Duquesnoy, Duroi, Soubrani, and Goujon. Five out
of the six had voted for the death of the King.--See Mignet, tom. ii.,
p. 373; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 335; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 230.
[539] At the theatres the favourite air "Le Reveil du Peuple," was
called for several times in the course of an evening. The law of the
maximum, and the prohibitions against Christian worship were repealed;
and this was followed by an act restoring to the families of those
executed during the Revolution such part of their property as had not
been disposed of.--LACRETELLE, tom. xii., p. 182.
[540] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 356; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 174.