Chapter 24

[416]Mémoires d'un Ancien Administrateur des Armées Republicaines.—S.[417]Haxo died at Roche-sur-yon, April 26, 1794.[418]See Jomini, tom. vi., p 400.[419]A picture by Vernet, representing the attack on Nantes, estimable as a work of art, but extremely curious in an historical point of view, used to be in the Luxembourg palace, and is probably now removed to the Louvre. The Vendéans are presented there in all their simplicity of attire, and devoted valour; the priests who attended them displaying their crosses, and encouraging the assault, which is, on the other hand, repelled by the regular steadiness of the Republican forces.—S.—[This picture is still in the Luxembourg. The paintings of living artists are never admitted to the Louvre.][420]La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 69; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 143.[421]King Charles the Tenth.[422]Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 145.[423]See Southey's Thalaba, b. 12.[424]They punned on the wordMayence(Mentz,) and said, the newly arrived Republicans were soldiers offayence(potter' ware,) which could not endure the fire.—S.[425]Beauchamp, Hist. de la Guerre de la Vendée, tom. ii., p. 99; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 318; La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 239; Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 151.[426]Mémoires, p. 240.[427]Jomini, tom. iv., p. 319. Beauchamp, tom. ii., p. 102.[428]Some derived it fromChat-huant, as if the insurgents, like owls, appeared chiefly at night; others traced it toChouin, the name of two brothers, sons of a blacksmith, said to have been the earliest leaders of the Breton insurgents.—S.[429]Canclaux was born at Paris in 1740. After the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, Napoleon gave him the command of the 14th military division, and made him a senator. At the restoration he was created a peer. He died in 1817.[430]We can and ought to make great allowances for national feeling; yet it is a little hard to find a well-informed historian, like M. Lacretelle, [tom. xi., p. 146,] gravely insinuate, that England threw the unfortunate Royalists on the coast of Quiberon to escape the future burden of maintaining them. Her liberality towards the emigrants, honourable and meritorious to the country, was entirely gratuitous. She might have withdrawn when she pleased a bounty conferred by her benevolence; and it is rather too hard to be supposed capable of meditating their murder, merely to save the expense of supporting them. The expedition was a blunder; but one in which the unfortunate sufferers contributed to mislead the British Government.—S.[431]"This man, originally a painter, had become an adjutant in the Parisian corps; he was afterwards employed in the army; and, having been successful against the Marseillois, the deputies of the Mountain had, in the same day, obtained him the appointments of brigadier-general and general of division. He was extremely ignorant, and had nothing military about him, otherwise he was not ill-disposed."—Napoleon,Memoirs, vol. i., p. 19.[432]Stanislaus Fréron was son of the well-known victim of Voltaire, and godson of the unfortunate King of Poland. He accompanied the French expedition to St. Domingo in 1802, and being appointed sub-prefect at the Cayes, soon sunk under the influence of the climate. His portfolio falling into the hands of the black government, some of its contents were published by the authority of Dessaline, and subjoined to a work entitled "Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de Hayti." Among them are several amatory epistles from Napoleon's second sister Pauline, by which it appears that Fréron was the earliest object of her choice, but that Napoleon and Josephine would not hear of an alliance with the friend of Robespierre, and ready instrument of his atrocities.[433]Jomini, tom. iv., p. 208; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 63.[434]Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 98; Thiers, tom. iv., p. 161.[435]Before the arrival of Collot d'Herbois, Fouché (afterwards Duke of Otranto) issued a decree, directing that all religious emblems should be destroyed, and that the words "Death is an eternal sleep!" should be placed over the entrance of every burial ground.—SeeMoniteur, Nos. 57, 64.[436]An ass formed a conspicuous part of the procession, having a mitre fastened between his ears, and dragging in the dirt a Bible tied to its tail; which Bible was afterwards burnt, and its ashes scattered to the winds. Fouché wrote to the Convention—"The shade of Châlier is satisfied. Yes, we swear that the people shall be avenged. Our severe courage shall keep pace with their just impatience."—Moniteur; Montgaillard, tom. iv., pp. 113, 138.[437]Fouché, on the 19th December, wrote to Collot d'Herbois—"Let us show ourselves terrible: let us annihilate in our wrath, and at one blow, every conspirator, every traitor, that we may not feel the pain, the long torture, of punishing them as kings would do. We this evening send two hundred and thirteen rebels before the thunder of our cannon. Farewell, my friend! tears of joy stream from my eyes, and overflow my heart.—(Signed)Fouché."—Moniteur, No. 85.[438]Guillon de Montléon, Mémoires pour servir à l'Hist. de la Ville de Lyon, tom. ii., p. 405; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 68; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 186; Thiers, tom. v., p. 310; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 109.[439]The Convention having, by a decree of the 17th March, 1792, come to the determination to substitute decapitation for hanging, this instrument was adopted, on the proposition of Dr. Guillotin, an eminent physician of Paris; who regretted to the hour of his death, in 1814, that his name should have been thus associated with the instrument of so many horrors. He had devised it with a view to humanity.[440]The fate of Custine illustrates this,—a general who had done much for the Republic, and who, when his fortune began to fail him, excused himself by saying, "Fortune was a woman, and his hairs were growing grey."—S.—He was guillotined in August, 1793.[441]Witness Houchard, who performed the distinguished service of raising the siege of Dunkirk, and who, during his trial, could be hardly made to understand that he was to suffer for not carrying his victory still farther.—S.—Guillotined, Nov., 1793.[442]Several generals of reputation sustained capital punishment, from no other reason than the jealousy of the committees of their influence with the army.—S.[443]Luckner, an old German thick-headed soldier, who was of no party, and scrupulously obeyed the command of whichever was uppermost at Paris, had no better fate than others.—S.—He was guillotined in Nov., 1793.[444]David is generally allowed to have possessed great merit as a draughtsman. Foreigners do not admire his composition and colouring, so much as his countrymen.—S.[445]Thiers, tom. iv., p. 6; Mignet, tom. i., p. 248.[446]Moniteur, No. 995, 25th December, 1793.—S.[447]Carrier was born at Yolay, near Aurillac, in 1756, and, previous to the Revolution, was an attorney. During his mission to Nantes, not less than thirty-two thousand human beings were destroyed bynoyadesandfusillades, and by the horrors of crowded and infected prisons. Being accused by Merlin de Thionville, Carnot, and others, he declared to the Convention, 23d November, 1794, that by trying him it would ruin itself, and that if all the crimes committed in its name were to be punished, "not even the little bell of the president was free from guilt." He was convicted of having had children of thirteen and fourteen years old shot, and of having ordered drownings, and this with counter-revolutionary intentions. He ascended the scaffold with firmness and said, "I die a victim and innocent: I only executed the orders of the committees."[448]See Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 42; Toulongeon, tom. v., p. 120; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 373; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 165; Vie et Crimes de Carrier, par Gracchus Babœuf; Dénonciation des Crimes de Carrier, par Philippes Tronjolly; Procès de Carrier; Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Nantes.[449]Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 309. "In 1793, a bookseller, (apureRoyalist in 1814,) had this inscription painted over his shop door, 'A Notre Dame de la Guillotine.'"—Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 189.[450]Ronsin was born at Soissons in 1752. He figured in the early scenes of the Revolution, and in 1789, brought out, at one of the minor Paris theatres, a tragedy called "La Ligue des Fanatiques et des Tyrans," which, though despicable in point of style, had a considerable run. Being denounced by Robespierre, he was guillotined, March 24, 1794. His dramatic pieces have been published under the title of "Théâtre de Ronsin."[451]Strangers are forcibly affected by the trifling incidents which sometimes recall the memory of those fearful times. A venerable French ecclesiastic being on a visit at a gentleman's house in North Britain, it was remarked by the family, that a favourite cat, rather wild and capricious in its habits, paid particular attention to their guest. It was explained, by the priest giving an account of his lurking in the waste garret, or lumber-room, of an artisan's house, for several weeks. In this condition, he had no better amusement than to study the manners and habits of the cats which frequented his place of retreat, and acquire the mode of conciliating their favour. The difficulty of supplying him with food, without attracting suspicion, was extreme, and it could only be placed near his place of concealment, in small quantities, and at uncertain times. Men, women, and children knew of his being in that place; there were rewards to be gained by discovery, life to be lost by persevering in concealing him; yet he was faithfully preserved, to try upon a Scottish cat, after the restoration of the Monarchy, the arts which he had learned in his miserable place of shelter during the Reign of Terror. The history of the time abounds with similar instances.[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'sChefs 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 theAnnales 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.—SeeLes Mystères de la Mère de Dieu devoilés, in theCollection 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]Seeante, 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 theCollection 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 thebeau idéalof an honest man. His "[OE]uvres 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 desvers."[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.—Seeante, 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.

[416]Mémoires d'un Ancien Administrateur des Armées Republicaines.—S.

[417]Haxo died at Roche-sur-yon, April 26, 1794.

[418]See Jomini, tom. vi., p 400.

[419]A picture by Vernet, representing the attack on Nantes, estimable as a work of art, but extremely curious in an historical point of view, used to be in the Luxembourg palace, and is probably now removed to the Louvre. The Vendéans are presented there in all their simplicity of attire, and devoted valour; the priests who attended them displaying their crosses, and encouraging the assault, which is, on the other hand, repelled by the regular steadiness of the Republican forces.—S.—[This picture is still in the Luxembourg. The paintings of living artists are never admitted to the Louvre.]

[420]La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 69; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 143.

[421]King Charles the Tenth.

[422]Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 145.

[423]See Southey's Thalaba, b. 12.

[424]They punned on the wordMayence(Mentz,) and said, the newly arrived Republicans were soldiers offayence(potter' ware,) which could not endure the fire.—S.

[425]Beauchamp, Hist. de la Guerre de la Vendée, tom. ii., p. 99; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 318; La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 239; Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 151.

[426]Mémoires, p. 240.

[427]Jomini, tom. iv., p. 319. Beauchamp, tom. ii., p. 102.

[428]Some derived it fromChat-huant, as if the insurgents, like owls, appeared chiefly at night; others traced it toChouin, the name of two brothers, sons of a blacksmith, said to have been the earliest leaders of the Breton insurgents.—S.

[429]Canclaux was born at Paris in 1740. After the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, Napoleon gave him the command of the 14th military division, and made him a senator. At the restoration he was created a peer. He died in 1817.

[430]We can and ought to make great allowances for national feeling; yet it is a little hard to find a well-informed historian, like M. Lacretelle, [tom. xi., p. 146,] gravely insinuate, that England threw the unfortunate Royalists on the coast of Quiberon to escape the future burden of maintaining them. Her liberality towards the emigrants, honourable and meritorious to the country, was entirely gratuitous. She might have withdrawn when she pleased a bounty conferred by her benevolence; and it is rather too hard to be supposed capable of meditating their murder, merely to save the expense of supporting them. The expedition was a blunder; but one in which the unfortunate sufferers contributed to mislead the British Government.—S.

[431]"This man, originally a painter, had become an adjutant in the Parisian corps; he was afterwards employed in the army; and, having been successful against the Marseillois, the deputies of the Mountain had, in the same day, obtained him the appointments of brigadier-general and general of division. He was extremely ignorant, and had nothing military about him, otherwise he was not ill-disposed."—Napoleon,Memoirs, vol. i., p. 19.

[432]Stanislaus Fréron was son of the well-known victim of Voltaire, and godson of the unfortunate King of Poland. He accompanied the French expedition to St. Domingo in 1802, and being appointed sub-prefect at the Cayes, soon sunk under the influence of the climate. His portfolio falling into the hands of the black government, some of its contents were published by the authority of Dessaline, and subjoined to a work entitled "Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de Hayti." Among them are several amatory epistles from Napoleon's second sister Pauline, by which it appears that Fréron was the earliest object of her choice, but that Napoleon and Josephine would not hear of an alliance with the friend of Robespierre, and ready instrument of his atrocities.

[433]Jomini, tom. iv., p. 208; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 63.

[434]Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 98; Thiers, tom. iv., p. 161.

[435]Before the arrival of Collot d'Herbois, Fouché (afterwards Duke of Otranto) issued a decree, directing that all religious emblems should be destroyed, and that the words "Death is an eternal sleep!" should be placed over the entrance of every burial ground.—SeeMoniteur, Nos. 57, 64.

[436]An ass formed a conspicuous part of the procession, having a mitre fastened between his ears, and dragging in the dirt a Bible tied to its tail; which Bible was afterwards burnt, and its ashes scattered to the winds. Fouché wrote to the Convention—"The shade of Châlier is satisfied. Yes, we swear that the people shall be avenged. Our severe courage shall keep pace with their just impatience."—Moniteur; Montgaillard, tom. iv., pp. 113, 138.

[437]Fouché, on the 19th December, wrote to Collot d'Herbois—"Let us show ourselves terrible: let us annihilate in our wrath, and at one blow, every conspirator, every traitor, that we may not feel the pain, the long torture, of punishing them as kings would do. We this evening send two hundred and thirteen rebels before the thunder of our cannon. Farewell, my friend! tears of joy stream from my eyes, and overflow my heart.—(Signed)Fouché."—Moniteur, No. 85.

[438]Guillon de Montléon, Mémoires pour servir à l'Hist. de la Ville de Lyon, tom. ii., p. 405; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 68; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 186; Thiers, tom. v., p. 310; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 109.

[439]The Convention having, by a decree of the 17th March, 1792, come to the determination to substitute decapitation for hanging, this instrument was adopted, on the proposition of Dr. Guillotin, an eminent physician of Paris; who regretted to the hour of his death, in 1814, that his name should have been thus associated with the instrument of so many horrors. He had devised it with a view to humanity.

[440]The fate of Custine illustrates this,—a general who had done much for the Republic, and who, when his fortune began to fail him, excused himself by saying, "Fortune was a woman, and his hairs were growing grey."—S.—He was guillotined in August, 1793.

[441]Witness Houchard, who performed the distinguished service of raising the siege of Dunkirk, and who, during his trial, could be hardly made to understand that he was to suffer for not carrying his victory still farther.—S.—Guillotined, Nov., 1793.

[442]Several generals of reputation sustained capital punishment, from no other reason than the jealousy of the committees of their influence with the army.—S.

[443]Luckner, an old German thick-headed soldier, who was of no party, and scrupulously obeyed the command of whichever was uppermost at Paris, had no better fate than others.—S.—He was guillotined in Nov., 1793.

[444]David is generally allowed to have possessed great merit as a draughtsman. Foreigners do not admire his composition and colouring, so much as his countrymen.—S.

[445]Thiers, tom. iv., p. 6; Mignet, tom. i., p. 248.

[446]Moniteur, No. 995, 25th December, 1793.—S.

[447]Carrier was born at Yolay, near Aurillac, in 1756, and, previous to the Revolution, was an attorney. During his mission to Nantes, not less than thirty-two thousand human beings were destroyed bynoyadesandfusillades, and by the horrors of crowded and infected prisons. Being accused by Merlin de Thionville, Carnot, and others, he declared to the Convention, 23d November, 1794, that by trying him it would ruin itself, and that if all the crimes committed in its name were to be punished, "not even the little bell of the president was free from guilt." He was convicted of having had children of thirteen and fourteen years old shot, and of having ordered drownings, and this with counter-revolutionary intentions. He ascended the scaffold with firmness and said, "I die a victim and innocent: I only executed the orders of the committees."

[448]See Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 42; Toulongeon, tom. v., p. 120; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 373; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 165; Vie et Crimes de Carrier, par Gracchus Babœuf; Dénonciation des Crimes de Carrier, par Philippes Tronjolly; Procès de Carrier; Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Nantes.

[449]Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 309. "In 1793, a bookseller, (apureRoyalist in 1814,) had this inscription painted over his shop door, 'A Notre Dame de la Guillotine.'"—Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 189.

[450]Ronsin was born at Soissons in 1752. He figured in the early scenes of the Revolution, and in 1789, brought out, at one of the minor Paris theatres, a tragedy called "La Ligue des Fanatiques et des Tyrans," which, though despicable in point of style, had a considerable run. Being denounced by Robespierre, he was guillotined, March 24, 1794. His dramatic pieces have been published under the title of "Théâtre de Ronsin."

[451]Strangers are forcibly affected by the trifling incidents which sometimes recall the memory of those fearful times. A venerable French ecclesiastic being on a visit at a gentleman's house in North Britain, it was remarked by the family, that a favourite cat, rather wild and capricious in its habits, paid particular attention to their guest. It was explained, by the priest giving an account of his lurking in the waste garret, or lumber-room, of an artisan's house, for several weeks. In this condition, he had no better amusement than to study the manners and habits of the cats which frequented his place of retreat, and acquire the mode of conciliating their favour. The difficulty of supplying him with food, without attracting suspicion, was extreme, and it could only be placed near his place of concealment, in small quantities, and at uncertain times. Men, women, and children knew of his being in that place; there were rewards to be gained by discovery, life to be lost by persevering in concealing him; yet he was faithfully preserved, to try upon a Scottish cat, after the restoration of the Monarchy, the arts which he had learned in his miserable place of shelter during the Reign of Terror. The history of the time abounds with similar instances.

[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'sChefs 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.

"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 theAnnales 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.—SeeLes Mystères de la Mère de Dieu devoilés, in theCollection 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]Seeante, 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 theCollection 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.

"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 thebeau idéalof an honest man. His "[OE]uvres 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 desvers."

[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.—Seeante, 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.

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