than by adding, that when the revolutionary furor was at its acme, he was
deemed by the Committee of Public Welfare worthy of an important mission
in the South. The people of Bourdeaux were, accordingly, for some time
harassed by the usual effects of these visitations--imprisonments and the
Guillotine; and Tallien, though eclipsed by Maignet and Carrier, was by
no means deficient in the patriotic energies of the day.
I think I must before have mentioned to you a Madame de Fontenay, the
wife of an emigrant, whom I occasionally saw at Mad. de C____'s. I then
remarked her for the uncommon attraction of her features, and the
elegance of her person; but was so much disgusted at a tendency to
republicanism I observed in her, and which, in a young woman, I thought
unbecoming, that I did not promote the acquaintance, and our different
pursuits soon separated us entirely. Since this period I have learned,
that her conduct became exceedingly imprudent, or at least suspicious,
and that at the general persecution, finding her republicanism would not
protect her, she fled to Bourdeaux, with the hope of being able to
proceed to Spain. Here, however, being a Spaniard by birth, and the wife
of an emigrant, she was arrested and thrown into prison, where she
remained till the arrival of Tallien on his mission.
The miscellaneous occupations of a deputy-errant, naturally include an
introduction to the female prisoners; and Tallien's presence afforded
Mad. de Fontenay an occasion of pleading her cause with all the success
which such a pleader might, in other times, be supposed to obtain from a
judge of Tallien's age. The effect of the scenes Tallien had been an
actor in, was counteracted by youth, and his heart was not yet
indifferent to the charms of beauty--Mad. de Fontenay was released by the
captivation of her liberator, and a reciprocal attachment ensued.
We must not, however, conclude, all this merely a business of romance.
Mad. de Fontenay was rich, and had connexions in Spain, which might
hereafter procure an asylum, when a regicide may with difficulty find
one: and on the part of the lady, though Tallien's person is agreeable, a
desire of protecting herself and her fortune might be allowed to have
some influence.
From this time the revolutionist is said to have given way: Bourdeaux
became the Capua of Tallien; and its inhabitants were, perhaps, indebted
for a more moderate exercise of his power, to the smiles of Mad. de
Fontenay.--From hanging loose on society, he had now the prospect of
marrying a wife with a large fortune; and Tallien very wisely considered,
that having something at stake, a sort of comparative reputation among
the higher class of people at Bourdeaux, might be of more importance to
him in future, than all the applause the Convention could bestow on a
liberal use of the Guillotine.--The relaxed system which was the
consequence of such policy, soon reached the Committee of Public Welfare,
to whom it was highly displeasing, and Tallien was recalled.
A youth of the name of Julien, particularly in the confidence of
Robespierre, was then sent to Bourdeaux, not officially as his successor,
but as a spy, to collect information concerning him, as well as to watch
the operations of other missionaries, and prevent their imitating
Tallien's schemes of personal advantage, at the expence of scandalizing
the republic by an appearance of lenity.--The disastrous state of Lyons,
the persecutions of Carrier, the conflagrations of Maignet, and the
crimes of various other Deputies, had obliterated the minor
revolutionisms of Tallien:* The citizens of Bourdeaux spoke of him
without horror, which in these times was equal to eulogium; and Julien
transmitted such accounts of his conduct to Robespierre,** as were
equally alarming to the jealousy of his spirit, and repugnant to the
cruelty of his principles.
* It was Tallien's boast to have guillotined only aristocrats, and
of this part of his merit I am willing to leave him in possession.
At Toulon he was charged with the punishment of those who had given
up the town to the English; but finding, as he alledged, nearly all
the inhabitants involved, he selected about two hundred of the
richest, and that the horrid business might wear an appearance of
regularity, the patriots, that is, the most notorious Jacobins, were
ordered to give their opinion on the guilt of these victims, who
were brought out into an open field for that purpose. With such
judges the sentence was soon passed, and a fusillade took place on
the spot.--It was on this occasion that Tallien made particular
boast of his humanity; and in the same publication where he relates
the circumstance, he exposes the "atrocious conduct" of the English
at the surrender of Toulon. The cruelty of these barbarians not
being sufficiently gratified by dispatching the patriots the
shortest way, they hung up many of them by their chins on hooks at
the shambles, and left them to die at their leisure.--See
"Mitraillades, Fusillades," a recriminating pamphlet, addressed by
Tallien to Collot d'Herbois.--The title alludes to Collot's exploits
at Lyons.
** It is not out of the usual course of things that Tallien's
moderation at Bourdeaux might have been profitable; and the wife or
mistress of a Deputy was, on such occasions, a useful medium,
through which the grateful offerings of a rich and favoured
aristocrat might be conveyed, without committing the legislative
reputation.--The following passage from Julien's correspondence with
Robespierre seems to allude to some little arrangements of this
nature:
"I think it my duty to transmit you an extract from a letter of
Tallien's, [Which had been intercepted.] to the National Club.--It
coincides with the departure of La Fontenay, whom the Committee of
General Safety have doubtless had arrested. I find some very
curious political details regarding her; and Bourdeaux seems to have
been, until this moment, a labyrinth of intrigue and peculation."
It appears from Robespierre's papers, that not only Tallien, but
Legendre, Bourdon de l'Oise, Thuriot, and others, were incessantly
watched by the spies of the Committee. The profession must have improved
wonderfully under the auspices of the republic, for I doubt if _Mons. le
Noir's Mouchards_ [The spies of the old police, so called in derision.--
Brissot, in this act of accusation, is described as having been an agent
of the Police under the monarchy.--I cannot decide on the certainty of
this, or whether his occupation was immediately that of a spy, but I have
respectable authority for saying, that antecedent to the revolution, his
character was very slightly estimated, and himself considered as "hanging
loose on society."] were as able as Robespierre's.--The reader may judge
from the following specimens:
"The 6th instant, the deputy Thuriot, on quitting the Convention,
went to No. 35, Rue Jaques, section of the Pantheon, to the house of
a pocket-book maker, where he staid talking with a female about ten
minutes. He then went to No. 1220, Rue Fosse St. Bernard, section
of the Sans-Culottes, and dined there at a quarter past two. At a
quarter past seven he left the last place, and meeting a citizen on
the Quay de l'Ecole, section of the Museum, near le Cafe Manoury,
they went in there together, and drank a bottle of beer. From
thence he proceeded to la Maison Memblee de la Providence, No. 16,
Rue d'Orleans Honore, section de la Halle au Bled, whence, after
staying about five-and-twenty minutes, he came out with a citoyenne,
who had on a puce Levite, a great bordered shawl of Japan cotton,
and on her head a white handkerchief, made to look like a cap. They
went together to No. 163, Place Egalite, where after stopping an
instant, they took a turn in the galleries, and then returned to
sup.--They went in at half past nine, and were still there at eleven
o'clock, when we came away, not being certain if they would come out
again.
"Bourdon de l'Oise, on entering the Assembly, shook hands with four
or five Deputies. He was observed to gape while good news was
announcing."
Tallien was already popular among the Jacobins of Paris; and his
connexion with a beautiful woman, who might enable him to keep a domestic
establishment, and to display any wealth he had acquired, without
endangering his reputation, was a circumstance not to be overlooked; for
Robespierre well knew the efficacy of female intrigue, and dinners,* in
gaining partizans among the subordinate members of the Convention.
* Whoever reads attentively, and in detail, the debates of the
Convention, will observe the influence and envy created by a
superior style of living in any particular member. His dress, his
lodging, or dinners, are a perpetual subject of malignant reproach.
--This is not to be wondered at, when we consider the description of
men the Convention is composed of;--men who, never having been
accustomed to the elegancies of life, behold with a grudging eye the
gay apparel or luxurious table of a colleague, who arrived at Paris
with no other treasure but his patriotism, and has no ostensible
means beyond his eighteen livres a day, now increased to thirty-six.
Mad. de Fontenay, was, therefore, on her arrival at Paris, whither she
had followed Tallien, (probably in order to procure a divorce and marry
him,) arrested, and conveyed to prison.
An injury of this kind was not to be forgiven; and Robespierre seems to
have acted on the presumption that it could not. He beset Tallien with
spies, menaced him in the Convention, and made Mad. de Fontenay an offer
of liberty, if she would produce a substantial charge against him, which
he imagined her knowledge of his conduct at Bourdeaux might furnish her
grounds for doing. A refusal must doubtless have irritated the tyrant;
and Tallien had every reason to fear she would soon be included in one of
the lists of victims who were daily sacrificed as conspirators in the
prisons. He was himself in continual expectation of being arrested; and
it was generally believed Robespierre would soon openly accuse him.--Thus
situated, he eagerly embraced the opportunity which the schism in the
Committee presented of attacking his adversary, and we certainly must
allow him the merit of being the first who dared to move for the arrest
of Robespierre.--I need not add, that la belle was one of the first whose
prison doors were opened; and I understand that, being divorced from
Mons. de Fontenay, she is either married, or on the point of being so, to
Tallien.
This conclusion spoils my story as a moral one; and had I been the
disposer of events, the Septembriser, the regicide, and the cold assassin
of the Toulonais, should have found other rewards than affluence, and a
wife who might represent one of Mahomet's Houris. Yet, surely, "the time
will come, though it come ne'er so slowly," when Heaven shall separate
guilt from prosperity, and when Tallien and his accomplices shall be
remembered only as monuments of eternal justice. For the lady, her
faults are amply punished in the disgrace of such an alliance--
"A cut-purse of the empire and the rule;
"____ a King of shreds and patches."
Providence, Aug. 14, 1794.
The thirty members whom Robespierre intended to sacrifice, might perhaps
have formed some design of resisting, but it appears evident that the
Convention in general acted without plan, union, or confidence.*--
* The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly
evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined
on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the
prison of St. Lazare.--A single word from any member might at this
crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word
no one had the courage or the humanity to utter.
--Tallien and Billaud were rendered desperate by their situation, and it
is likely that, when they ventured to attack Robespierre, they did not
themselves expect to be successful--it was the consternation of the
latter which encouraged them to persist, and the Assembly to support
them:
"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
"Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."
And to have been lucky enough to seize on this crisis, is, doubtless, the
whole merit of the convention. There has, it is true, been many
allusions to the dagger of Brutus, and several Deputies are said to have
conceived very heroic projects for the destruction of the tyrant; but as
he was dead before these projects were brought to light, we cannot justly
ascribe any effect to them.
The remains of the Brissotin faction, still at liberty, from whom some
exertions might have been expected, were cautiously inactive; and those
who had been most in the habit of appreciating themselves for their
valour, were now conspicuous only for that discretion which Falstaff
calls the better part of it.--Dubois Crance, who had been at the expence
of buying a Spanish poniard at St. Malo, for the purpose of assassinating
Robespierre, seems to have been calmed by the journey, and to have
finally recovered his temper, before he reached the Convention.--Merlin
de Thionville, Merlin de Douay, and others of equal note, were among the
"passive valiant;" and Bourdon de l'Oise had already experienced such
disastrous effects from inconsiderate exhibitions of courage, that he now
restrained his ardour till the victory should be determined. Even
Legendre, who is occasionally the Brutus, the Curtius, and all the
patriots whose names he has been able to learn, confined his prowess to
an assault on the club-room of the Jacobins, when it was empty, and
carrying off the key, which no one disputed with him, so that he can at
most claim an ovation. It is, in short, remarkable, that all the members
who at present affect to be most vehement against Robespierre's
principles, [And where was the all-politic Sieyes?--At home, writing his
own eulogium.] were the least active in attacking his person; and it is
indisputable, that to Tallien, Billaud, Louchet, Elie Lacoste, Collot
d'Herbois, and a few of the more violent Jacobins, were due those first
efforts which determined his fall.--Had Robespierre, instead of a
querelous harangue, addressed the convention in his usual tone of
authority, and ended by moving for a decree against a few only of those
obnoxious to him, the rest might have been glad to compound for their own
safety, by abandoning a cause no longer personal: but his impolicy, not
his wickedness, hastened his fate; and it is so far fortunate for France,
that it has at least suspended the system of government which is ascribed
to him.
The first days of victory were passed in receiving congratulations, and
taking precautions; and though men do not often adapt their claims to
their merits, yet the members of the Convention seemed in general to be
conscious that none amongst them had very decided pretensions to the
spoils of the vanquished.--Of twelve, which originally composed the
Committee of Public Welfare, seven only remained; yet no one ventured to
suggest a completion of the number, till Barrere, after previously
insinuating how adequate he and his colleagues were to the task of
"saving the country," proposed, in his flippant way, and merely as a
matter of form, that certain persons whom he recommended, should fill up
the vacancies in the government.
This modest Carmagnole* was received with great coolness; the late
implicit acquiescence was changed to demur, and an adjournment
unanimously called for.
* A ludicrous appellation, which Barrere used to give to his reports
in the presence of those who were in the secret of his Charlatanry.
The air of "La Carmagnole" was originally composed when the town of
that name was taken by Prince Eugene, and was adapted to the
indecent words now sung by the French after the 10th of August 1792.
--Such unusual temerity susprised and alarmed the remains of the
Committee, and Billaud Varennes sternly reminded the Convention of the
abject state they were so lately released from. This produced retort and
replication, and the partners of Robespierre's enormities, who had hoped
to be the tranquil inheritors of his power, found, that in destroying a
rival, they had raised themselves masters.
The Assembly persisted in not adopting the members offered to be imposed
upon them; but, as it was easier to reject than to choose, the Committee
were ordered to present a new plan for this part of the executive branch,
and the election of those to be entrusted with it was postponed for
farther consideration.
Having now felt their strength, they next proceeded to renew a part of
the committee of General Safety, several of its members being inculpated
as partizans of Robespierre, and though this Committee had become
entirely subordinate to that of Public Welfare, yet its functions were
too important for it to be neglected, more especially as they comprised a
very favourite branch of the republican government, that of issuing writs
of arrest at pleasure.--The law of the twenty-second of Prairial is also
repealed, but the Revolutionary Tribunal is preserved, and the necessity
of suspending the old jury, as being the creatures of Robespierre, has
not prevented the tender solicitude of the Convention for a renovated
activity in the establishment itself.
This assumption of power has become every day more confirmed, and the
addresses which are received by the Assembly, though yet in a strain of
gross adulation,* express such an abhorrence of the late system, as must
suffice to convince them the people are not disposed to see such a system
continued.
* A collection of addresses, presented to the Convention at various
periods, might form a curious history of the progress of despotism.
These effusions of zeal were not, however, all in the "sublime"
style: the legislative dignity sometimes condescended to unbend
itself, and listen to metrical compositions, enlivened by the
accompaniment of fiddles; but the manly and ferocious Danton, to
whom such sprightly interruptions were not congenial, proposed a
decree, that the citizens should, in future, express their
adorations in plain prose, and without any musical accessories.
Billaud Varennes, Collot, and other members of the old Committee, view
these innovations with sullen acquiescence; but Barrere, whose frivolous
and facile spirit is incapable of consistency, even in wickedness,
perseveres and flourishes at the tribune as gaily as ever.--Unabashed by
detection, insensible to contempt, he details his epigrams and antitheses
against Catilines and Cromwells with as much self-sufficiency as when, in
the same tinsel eloquence, he promulgated the murderous edicts of
Robespierre.
Many of the prisoners at Paris continue daily to obtain their release,
and, by the exertions of his personal enemies, particularly of our
quondam sovereign, Andre Dumont, (now a member of the Committee of
General Safety,) an examination into the atrocities committed by Le Bon
is decreed.--But, amidst these appearances of justice, a versatility of
principle, or rather an evident tendency to the decried system, is
perceptible. Upon the slightest allusion to the revolutionary
government, the whole Convention rise in a mass to vociferate their
adherence to it:* the tribunal, which was its offspring and support, is
anxiously reinstalled; and the low insolence with which Barrere announces
their victories in the Netherlands, is, as usual, loudly applauded.
* The most moderate, as well as the most violent, were always united
on the subject of this irrational tyranny.--_"Toujours en menageant,
comme la prunelle de ses yeux, le gouvernement revolutionnaire."_--
"Careful always of the revolutionary government, as of the apple of
their eye." _Fragment pour servir a l'Hist. de la Convention, par
J. J. Dussault_.
The brothers of Cecile Renaud, who were sent for by Robespierre from the
army to Paris, in order to follow her to the scaffold, did not arrive
until their persecutor was no more, and a change of government was
avowed. They have presented themselves at the bar of the Convention, to
entreat a revisal of their father's sentence, and some compensation for
his property, so unjustly confiscated.--You will, perhaps, imagine, that,
at the name of these unfortunate young men, every heart anticipated a
consent to their claims, even before the mind could examine the justice
of them, and that one of those bursts of sensibility for which this
legislature is so remarkable instantaneously accorded the petition.
Alas! this was not an occasion to excite the enthusiasm of the
Convention: Coupilleau de Fontenay, one of the "mild and moderate party",
repulsed the petitioners with harshness, and their claim was silenced by
a call for the order of the day. The poor Renauds were afterwards coldly
referred to the Committee of Relief, for a pittance, by way of charity,
instead of the property they have a right to, and which they have been
deprived of, by the base compliance of the Convention with the caprice of
a monster.
Such relapses and aberrations are not consolatory, but the times and
circumstances seem to oppose them--the whole fabric of despotism is
shaken, and we have reason to hope the efforts of tyranny will be
counteracted by its weakness.
We do not yet derive any advantage from the early maturity of the
harvest, and it is still with difficulty we obtain a limited portion of
bad bread. Severe decrees are enacted to defeat the avarice of the
farmers, and prevent monopolies of the new corn; but these people are
invulnerable: they have already been at issue with the system of terror--
and it was found necessary, even before the death of Robespierre, to
release them from prison, or risk the destruction of the harvest for want
of hands to get it in. It is now discovered, that natural causes, and
the selfishness of individuals, are adequate to the creation of a
temporary scarcity; yet when this happened under the King, it was always
ascribed to the machinations of government.--How have the people been
deceived, irritated, and driven to rebellion, by a degree of want, less,
much less, insupportable than that they are obliged to suffer at present,
without daring even to complain!
I have now been in confinement almost twelve months, and my health is
considerably impaired. The weather is oppressively warm, and we have no
shade in the garden but under a mulberry-tree, which is so surrounded by
filth, that it is not approachable. I am, however, told, that in a few
days, on account of my indisposition, I shall be permitted to go home,
though with a proviso of being guarded at my own expence.--My friends are
still at Arras; and if this indulgence be extended to Mad. de la F____,
she will accompany me. Personal accommodation, and an opportunity of
restoring my health, render this desirable; but I associate no idea of
freedom with my residence in this country. The boundary may be extended,
but it is still a prison.--Yours.
Providence, Aug. 15, 1794.
To-morrow I expect to quit this place, and have been wandering over it
for the last time. You will imagine I can have no attachment to it: yet
a retrospect of my sensations when I first arrived, of all I have
experienced, and still more of what I have apprehended since that period,
makes me look forward to my departure with a satisfaction that I might
almost call melancholy. This cell, where I have shivered through the
winter--the long passages, which I have so often traversed in bitter
rumination--the garden, where I have painfully breathed a purer air, at
the risk of sinking beneath the fervid rays of an unmitigated sun, are
not scenes to excite regret; but when I think that I am still subject to
the tyranny which has so long condemned me to them, this reflection, with
a sentiment perhaps of national pride, which is wounded by accepting as a
favour what I have been unjustly deprived of, renders me composed, if not
indifferent, at the prospect of my release.