yet the mean and cruel wretches who were her judges, had the littleness
to endeavour at mortifying, by divesting her of her ornaments, and
covering her with the most loathsome rags. But a mind tortured to
madness by the sufferings of her country, was not likely to be shaken by
such puerile malice; and, when interrogated under this disguise, she
still preserved the same firmness, mingled with contempt, which she had
displayed when first apprehended. No accusation, nor even implication,
of any person could be drawn from her, and her only confession was that
of a passionate loyalty: yet an universal conspiracy was nevertheless
decreed by the Convention to exist, and Miss Renaud, with sixty-nine
others,* were sentenced to the guillotine, without farther trial than
merely calling over their names.
* It is worthy of remark, that the sixty-nine people executed as
accomplices of Miss Renaud, except her father, mother, and aunt,
were totally unconnected with her, or with each other, and had been
collected from different prisons, between which no communication
could have subsisted.
--They were conducted to the scaffold in a sort of red frocks, intended,
as was alleged, to mark them as assassins--but, in reality, to prevent
the crowd from distinguishing or receiving any impression from the number
of young and interesting females who were comprised in this dreadful
slaughter.--They met death with a courage which seemed almost to
disappoint the malice of their tyrants, who, in an original excess of
barbarity, are said to have lamented that their power of inflicting could
not reach those mental faculties which enabled their victims to suffer
with fortitude.*
* Fouquier Tinville, public accuser of the Revolutionary Tribunal,
enraged at the courage with which his victims submitted to their
fate, had formed the design of having them bled previous to their
execution; hoping by this means to weaken their spirits, and that
they might, by a pusillanimous behaviour in their last moments,
appear less interesting to the people.
Such are the horrors now common to almost every part of France: the
prisons are daily thinned by the ravages of the executioner, and again
repeopled by inhabitants destined to the fate of their predecessors. A
gloomy reserve, and a sort of uncertain foreboding, have taken possession
of every body--no one ventures to communicate his thoughts, even to his
nearest friend--relations avoid each other--and the whole social system
seems on the point of being dissolved. Those who have yet preserved
their freedom take the longest circuit, rather than pass a republican
Bastille; or, if obliged by necessity to approach one, it is with
downcast or averted looks, which bespeak their dread of incurring the
suspicion of humanity.
I say little of my own feelings; they are not of a nature to be relieved
by pathetic expressions: "I am e'en sick at heart." For some time I have
struggled both against my own evils, and the share I take in the general
calamity, but my mortal part gives way, and I can no longer resist the
despondency which at times depresses me, and which indeed, more than the
danger attending it, has occasioned my abandoning my pen for the last
month.--Several circumstances have occurred within these few days, to add
to the uneasiness of our situation, and my own apprehensions. Le Bon,*
whose cruelties at Arras seem to have endeared him to his colleagues in
the Convention, has had his powers extended to this department, and Andre
Dumont is recalled; so that we are hourly menaced with the presence of a
monster, compared to whom our own representative is amiable.--
* I have already noticed the cruel and ferocious temper of Le Bon,
and the massacres of his tribunals are already well known. I will
only add some circumstances which not only may be considered as
characteristic of this tyrant, but of the times--and I fear I may
add of the people, who suffered and even applauded them. They are
selected from many others not susceptible of being described in
language fit for an English reader.
As he was one day enjoying his customary amusement of superintending
an execution, where several had already suffered, one of the victims
having, from a very natural emotion, averted his eyes while he
placed his body in the posture required, the executioner perceived
it, and going to the sack which contained the heads of those just
sacrificed, took one out, and with the most horrible imprecations
obliged the unhappy wretch to kiss it: yet Le Bon not only
permitted, but sanctioned this, by dining daily with the hangman.
He was afterwards reproached with this familiarity in the
Convention, but defended himself by saying, "A similar act of
Lequinio's was inserted by your orders in the bulletin with
'honourable mention;' and your decrees have invariably consecrated
the principles on which I acted." They all felt for a moment the
dominion of conscience, and were silent.--On another occasion he
suspended an execution, while the savages he kept in pay threw dirt
on the prisoners, and even got on the scaffold and insulted them
previous to their suffering.
When any of his colleagues passed through Arras, he always proposed
their joining with him in a _"partie de Guillotine,"_ and the
executions were perpetrated on a small square at Arras, rather than
the great one, that he, his wife, and relations might more
commodiously enjoy the spectacle from the balcony of the theatre,
where they took their coffee, attended by a band of music, which
played while this human butchery lasted.
The following circumstance, though something less horrid, yet
sufficiently so to excite the indignation of feeling people,
happened to some friends of my own.--They had been brought with many
others from a distant town in open carts to Arras, and, worn out
with fatigue, were going to be deposited in the prison to which they
were destined. At the moment of their arrival several persons were
on the point of being executed. Le Bon, presiding as usual at the
spectacle, observed the cavalcade passing, and ordered it to stop,
that the prisoners might likewise be witnesses. He was, of course,
obeyed; and my terrified friends and their companions were obliged
not only to appear attentive to the scene before them, but to join
in the cry of _"Vive la Republique!"_ at the severing of each head.--
One of them, a young lady, did not recover the shock she received
for months.
The Convention, the Committees, all France, were well acquainted
with the conduct of Le Bon. He himself began to fear he might have
exceeded the limits of his commission; and, upon communicating some
scruples of this kind to his employers, received the following
letters, which, though they do not exculpate him, certainly render
the Committee of Public Welfare more criminal than himself.
"Citizen,
"The Committee of Public Welfare approve the measures you have
adopted, at the same time that they judge the warrant you solicit
unnecessary--such measures being not only allowable, but enjoined by
the very nature of your mission. No consideration ought to stand in
the way of your revolutionary progress--give free scope therefore to
your energy; the powers you are invested with are unlimited, and
whatever you may deem conducive to the public good, you are free,
you are even called upon by duty, to carry into execution without
delay.--We here transmit you an order of the Committee, by which
your powers are extended to the neighbouring departments. Armed
with such means, and with your energy, you will go on to confound
the enemies of the republic, with the very schemes they have
projected for its destruction.
"Carnot.
"Barrere.
"R. Lindet."
Extract from another letter, signed Billaud Varenne, Carnot,
Barrere.
"There is no commutation for offences against a republic. Death
alone can expiate them!--Pursue the traitors with fire and sword,
and continue to march with courage in the revolutionary track you
have described."
--Merciful Heaven! are there yet positive distinctions betwixt bad and
worse that we thus regret a Dumont, and deem ourselves fortunate in being
at the mercy of a tyrant who is only brutal and profligate? But so it
is; and Dumont himself, fearful that he has not exercised his mission
with sufficient severity, has ordered every kind of indulgence to cease,
the prisons to be more strictly guarded, and, if possible, more crowded;
and he is now gone to Paris, trembling lest he should be accused of
justice or moderation!
The pretended plots for assassinating Robespierre are, as usual,
attributed to Mr. Pitt; and a decree has just passed, that no quarter
shall be given to English prisoners. I know not what such inhuman
politics tend to, but my contempt, and the conscious pride of national
superiority; certain, that when Providence sees fit to vindicate itself,
by bestowing victory on our countrymen, the most welcome
"Laurels that adorn their brows
"Will be from living, not dead boughs."
The recollection of England, and its generous inhabitants, has animated
me with pleasure; yet I must for the present quit this agreeable
contemplation, to take precautions which remind me that I am separated
from both, and in a land of despotism and misery!
--Yours affectionately.
June 11, 1794.
The immorality of Hebert, and the base compliances of the Convention, for
some months turned the churches into "temples of reason."--The ambition,
perhaps the vanity, of Robespierre, has now permitted them to be
dedicated to the "Supreme Being," and the people, under such auspices,
are to be conducted from atheism to deism. Desirous of distinguishing
his presidency, and of exhibiting himself in a conspicuous and
interesting light, Robespierre, on the last decade, appeared as the hero
of a ceremony which we are told is to restore morals, destroy all the
mischiefs introduced by the abolition of religion, and finally to defeat
the machinations of Mr. Pitt. A gay and splendid festival has been
exhibited at Paris, and imitated in the provinces: flags of the
republican colours, branches of trees, and wreaths of flowers, were
ordered to be suspended from the houses--every countenance was to wear
the prescribed smile, and the whole country, forgetting the pressure of
sorrow and famine, was to rejoice. A sort of monster was prepared,
which, by some unaccountable ingenuity, at once represented Atheism and
the English, Cobourg and the Austrians--in short, all the enemies of the
Convention.--This external phantom, being burned with proper form,
discovered a statue, which was understood to be that of Liberty, and the
inauguration of this divinity, with placing the busts of Chalier* and
Marat in the temple of the Supreme Being, by way of attendant saints,
concluded the ceremony.--
* Chalier had been sent from the municipality of Paris after the
dethronement of the King, to revolutionize the people of Lyons, and
to excite a massacre. In consequence, the first days of September
presented the same scenes at Lyons as were presented in the capital.
For near a year he continued to scourge this unfortunate city, by
urging the lower classes of people to murder and pillage; till, at
the insurrection which took place in the spring of 1793, he was
arrested by the insurgents, tried, and sentenced to the guillotine.
--The Convention, however, whose calendar of saints is as
extraordinary as their criminal code, chose to beatify Chalier,
while they executed Malesherbes; and, accordingly, decreed him a
lodging in the Pantheon, pensioning his mistress, and set up his
bust in their own Hall as an associate for Brutus, whom, by the way,
one should not have expected to find in such company.
The good citizens of the republic, not to be behind hand with their
representatives, placed Chalier in the cathedrals, in their
public-houses, on fans and snuff-boxes--in short, wherever they thought
his appearance would proclaim their patriotism.--I can only exclaim as
Poultier, a deputy, did, on a similar occasion--"Francais, Francais,
serez vous toujours Francais?"--(Frenchmen, Frenchmen, will you never
cease to be Frenchmen?)
--But the mandates for such celebrations reach not the heart: flowers
were gathered, and flags planted, with the scrupulous exactitude of
fear;* yet all was cold and heavy, and a discerning government must have
read in this anxious and literal obedience the indication of terror and
hatred.
* I have more than once had occasion to remark the singularity of
popular festivities solemnized on the part of the people with no
other intention but that of exact obedience to the edicts of
government. This is so generally understood, that Richard, a deputy
on mission at Lyons, writes to the Convention, as a circumstance
extraordinary, and worthy of remark, that, at the repeal of a decree
which was to have razed their city to the ground, a rejoicing took
place, _"dirigee et executee par le peuple, les autorites
constitutees n'ayant fait en quelque sorte qu'y assister,"_--
(directed and executed by the people, the constituted authorities
having merely assisted at the ceremony).
--Even the prisons were insultingly decorated with the mockery of
colours, which, we are told, are the emblems of freedom; and those whose
relations have expired on the scaffold, or who are pining in dungeons for
having heard a mass, were obliged to listen with apparent admiration to a
discourse on the charms of religious liberty.--The people, who, for the
most part, took little interest in the rest of this pantomime, and
insensible of the national disgrace it implied, beheld with stupid
satisfaction* the inscription on the temple of reason replaced by a
legend, signifying that, in this age of science and information, the
French find it necessary to declare their acknowledgment of a God, and
their belief in the immortality of the soul.
* Much has been said of the partial ignorance of the unfortunate
inhabitants of La Vendee, and divers republican scribblers attribute
their attachment to religion and monarchy to that cause: yet at
Havre, a sea-port, where, from commercial communication, I should
suppose the people as informed and civilized as in any other part of
France, the ears of piety and decency were assailed, during the
celebration above-mentioned, by the acclamations of, _"Vive le Pere
Eternel!"--"Vive l'etre Supreme!"_--(I entreat that I may not be
suspected of levity when I translate this; in English it would be
"God Almighty for ever! The Supreme Being for ever!")
--At Avignon the public understanding seems to have been equally
enlightened, if we may judge from the report of a Paris missionary, who
writes in these terms:--"The celebration in honour of the Supreme Being
was performed here yesterday with all possible pomp: all our
country-folks were present, and unspeakably content that there was still
a God--What a fine decree (cried they all) is this!"
My last letter was a record of the most odious barbarities--to-day I am
describing a festival. At one period I have to remark the destruction of
the saints--at another the adoration of Marat. One half of the newspaper
is filled with a list of names of the guillotined, and the other with
that of places of amusement; and every thing now more than ever marks
that detestable association of cruelty and levity, of impiety and
absurdity, which has uniformly characterized the French revolution. It
is become a crime to feel, and a mode to affect a brutality incapable of
feeling--the persecution of Christianity has made atheism a boast, and
the danger of respecting traditional virtues has hurried the weak and
timid into the apotheosis of the most abominable vices. Conscious that
they are no longer animated by enthusiasm,* the Parisians hope to imitate
it by savage fury or ferocious mirth--their patriotism is signalized only
by their zeal to destroy, and their attachment to their government only
by applauding its cruelties.--If Robespierre, St. Just, Collot d'Herbois,
and the Convention as their instruments, desolate and massacre half
France, we may lament, but we can scarcely wonder at it. How should a
set of base and needy adventurers refrain from an abuse of power more
unlimited than that of the most despotic monarch; or how distinguish the
general abhorrence, amid addresses of adulation, which Louis the
Fourteenth would have blushed to appropriate?*
* Louis the Fourteenth, aguerri (steeled) as he was by sixty years
of adulation and prosperity, had yet modesty sufficient to reject a
"dose of incense which he thought too strong." (See D'Alembert's
Apology for Clermont Tonnerre.) Republicanism, it should seem, has
not diminished the national compliasance for men in power, thought
it has lessened the modesty of those who exercise it.--If Louis the
Fourteenth repressed the zeal of the academicians, the Convention
publish, without scruple, addresses more hyperbolical than the
praises that monarch refused.--Letters are addressed to Robespierre
under the appellation of the Messiah, sent by the almighty for the
reform of all things! He is the apostle of one, and the tutelar
deity of another. He is by turns the representative of the virtues
individually, and a compendium of them altogether: and this monster,
whose features are the counterpart of his soul, find republican
parasites who congratulate themselves on resembling him.
The bulletins of the Convention announce, that the whole republic is in a
sort of revolutionary transport at the escape of Robespierre and his
colleague, Collot d'Herbois, from assassination; and that we may not
suppose the legislators at large deficient in sensibility, we learn also
that they not only shed their grateful tears on this affecting occasion,
but have settled a pension on the man who was instrumental in rescuing
the benign Collot.
The members of the Committee are not, however, the exclusive objects of
public adoration--the whole Convention are at times incensed in a style
truly oriental; and if this be sometimes done with more zeal than
judgment, it does not appear to be less acceptable on that account. A
petition from an incarcerated poet assimilates the mountain of the
Jacobins to that of Parnassus--a state-creditor importunes for a small
payment from the Gods of Olympus--and congratulations on the abolition of
Christianity are offered to the legislators of Mount Sinai! Every
instance of baseness calls forth an eulogium on their magnanimity. A
score of orators harangue them daily on their courage, while they are
over-awed by despots as mean as themselves and whom they continue to
reinstal at the stated period with clamorous approbation. They
proscribe, devastate, burn, and massacre--and permit themselves to be
addressed by the title of "Fathers of their Country!"
All this would be inexplicable, if we did not contemplate in the French a
nation where every faculty is absorbed by a terror which involves a
thousand contradictions. The rich now seek protection by becoming
members of clubs,* and are happy if, after various mortifications, they
are finally admitted by the mob who compose them; while families, that
heretofore piqued themselves on a voluminous and illustrious genealogy,**
eagerly endeavour to prove they have no claim to either.
* _Le diplome de Jacobin etait une espece d'amulette, dont les
inities etaient jaloux, et qui frappoit de prestiges ceux qui ne
l'etaient pas_--"The Jacobin diploma was a kind of amulet, which the
initiated were jealous of preserving, and which struck as it were
with witchcraft, those who were not of the number."
Rapport de Courtois sur les Papiers de Robespierre.
** Besides those who, being really noble, were anxious to procure
certificates of sans-cullotism, many who had assumed such honours
without pretensions now relinquished them, except indeed some few,
whose vanity even surmounted their fears. But an express law
included all these seceders in the general proscription; alledging,
with a candour not usual, that those who assumed rank were, in fact,
more criminal than such as were guilty of being born to it.
--Places and employments, which are in most countries the objects of
intrigue and ambition, are here refused or relinquished with such
perfect sincerity, that a decree became requisite to oblige every
one, under pain of durance, to preserve the station to which his ill
stars, mistaken politics, or affectation of patriotism, had called
him. Were it not for this law, such is the dreadful responsibility
and danger attending offices under the government, that even low and
ignorant people, who have got possession of them merely for support,
would prefer their original poverty to emoluments which are
perpetually liable to the commutation of the guillotine.--Some
members of a neighbouring district told me to-day, when I asked them
if they came to release any of our fellow-prisoners, that so far
from it, they had not only brought more, but were not certain twelve
hours together of not being brought themselves.
The visionary equality of metaphysical impostors is become a substantial
one--not constituted by abundance and freedom, but by want and
oppression. The disparities of nature are not repaired, but its whole
surface is levelled by a storm. The rich are become poor, but the poor
still remain so; and both are conducted indiscriminately to the scaffold.
The prisons of the former government were "petty to the ends" of this.
Convents, colleges, palaces, and every building which could any how be
adapted to such a purpose, have been filled with people deemed
suspicious;* and a plan of destruction seems resolved on, more certain
and more execrable than even the general massacre of September 1792.
* Now multiplied to more than four hundred thousand!--The prisons of
Paris and the environs were supposed to contain twenty-seven
thousand. The public papers stated but about seven thousand,
because they included the official returns of Paris only.
--Agents of the police are, under some pretended accusation, sent to the
different prisons; and, from lists previously furnished them, make daily
information of plots and conspiracies, which they alledge to be carrying
on by the persons confined. This charge and this evidence suffice: the
prisoners are sent to the tribunal, their names read over, and they are
conveyed by cart's-full to the republican butchery. Many whom I have
known, and been in habits of intimacy with, have perished in this manner;
and the expectation of Le Bon,* with our numbers which make us of too
much consequence to be forgotten, all contribute to depress and alarm me.
* Le Bon had at this period sent for lists of the prisoners in the
department of the Somme--which lists are said to have been since
found, and many of the names in them marked for destruction.
--Even the levity of the French character yields to this terrible
despotism, and nothing is observed but weariness, silence, and sorrow:--
_"O triste loisir, poids affreux du tems."_ [St. Lambert.] The season
returns with the year, but not to us--the sun shines, but to add to our
miseries that of insupportable heat--and the vicissitudes of nature only
awaken our regret that we cannot enjoy them--
"Now gentle gales o'er all the vallies play,
"Breathe on each flow'r, and bear their sweets away."
[Collins.]
Yet what are fresh air and green fields to us, who are immured amidst a
thousand ill scents, and have no prospect but filth and stone walls? It
is difficult to describe how much the mind is depressed by this state of
passive suffering. In common evils, the necessity of action half
relieves them, as a vessel may reach her port by the agitation of a
storm; but this stagnant listless existence is terrible.
Those most to be envied here are the victims of their religious opinions.
The nuns, who are more distressed than any of us,* employ themselves
patiently, and seem to look beyond this world; whilst the once gay deist
wanders about with a volume of philosophy in his hand, unable to endure
the present, and dreading still more the future.