There are places which, by the very souvenirs they evoke, seem fatal and accursed. Such was the dungeon that was to serve as a prison for Louis XVI. and his family. The great tower for which Marie Antoinette had felt a nameless instinctive repugnance in the happiest days of her reign, arose at the extremity of Paris like a gigantic phantom, and recalled in a sinister fashion the tragedies of the Middle Ages and the sombre legends of the Templars. It was formerly the manor, the fortress, of that religious and military Order of the Temple, founded in the Holy Land at the beginning of the twelfth century, to protect the pilgrims, and which, after the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, had spread all over Europe. The great tower was built by Frère Hubert, in the early years of the thirteenth century, in the midst of an enclosure surrounded by turreted walls. There ruled, by cross and sword, those men of iron, in white habits, who took the triple vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and who excited royal jealousy by the increase of their power. It was there that Philippe le Bel went on October 13,1307, with his lawyers and his archers, to lay his hand on the grand-master, seize the treasures of the order, and on the same day, at the same hour, cause all Templars to be arrested throughout the realm. Then began that mysterious trial which has remained an insoluble problem to posterity, and after which these monastic knights, whose bravery and whose exploits have made so prolonged an echo, perished in prisons or on scaffolds. Pursued by horrible accusations, they had confessed under torture, but they denied at execution. When the grand-master, Jacques de Molay, and the commander of Normandy were burned alive before the garden of Philippe le Bel, March 11, 1314, even in the midst of flames, they did not cease to attest the innocence of the Order of the Temple. The people, astonished by their heroism, believed that they had summoned the Pope and the King to appear in the presence of God before the end of the year. Clement V., on April 20, and Philippe IV., on November 29, obeyed the summons.
The possessions of the order were given to the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem, who transformed themselves into Knights of Malta toward the middle of the sixteenth century. The Temple became the provincial house of the grand-prior of the Order of Malta for thenationorlanguageof France, and the great tower contained successively the treasure, the arsenal, and the archives. In 1607, the grand-prior, Jacques de Souvré, had a house built infront of the old manor, between the court and the garden, which was called the palace of the grand-prior. His successor, Philippe de Vendôme, made his palace a rendezvous of elegance and pleasure. There shone that Anacreon in a cassock, the gay and sprightly Abbé de Chaulieu, who died a fervent Christian in the voluptuous abode where he had dwelt a careless Epicurean. There young Voltaire went to complete the lessons he had begun in the sceptical circle of Ninon de l'Enclos. The office of grand-prior, which was worth sixty thousand livres a year, passed afterwards to Prince de Conti, who in 1765 sheltered Jean-Jacques Rousseau there, aslettres de cachetcould not penetrate within its privileged precinct. Under Louis XVI. the palace of the grand-prior had served as a passing hostelry to the young and brilliant Count d'Artois when he came from Versailles to Paris. The flowers of the entertainments given there by the Prince were hardly faded when Louis XVI. suddenly entered it as a prisoner.
It was seven o'clock in the evening when the wretched King and his family, coming from the convent of the Feuillants, arrived at the Temple. Situated near the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, not far from the former site of the Bastille, the Temple enclosure at this period was not more than two hundred yards long by nearly as many wide. The rest of the ancient precinct had disappeared under the pavements or the houses of the great city. Nevertheless, the enclosure still formed a sort of littleprivate city, sometimes called the Ville-Neuve-du-Temple, the gates of which were closed every night. In one of its angles stood the house called the grand-prior's palace.
This was the first stopping-place of the royal family, which had been entrusted by Pétion to the surveillance of the municipality and the guard of Santerre. The municipal officers stayed close to the King, kept their hats on, and gave him no title except "Monsieur." Louis XVI., not doubting that the palace of the grand-prior was the residence assigned him by the nation until the close of his career, began to visit its apartments. While the municipal officers took a cruel pleasure in this error, thinking of the still keener one they would enjoy when they disabused him of it, he pleased himself by allotting the different rooms in advance. The word palace had an unpleasant sound to the persecutors of royalty. The Temple tower looked more like a prison. Toward eleven o'clock, one of the commissioners ordered the august captives to collect such linen and other clothing as they had been able to procure, and follow him. They silently obeyed, and left the palace. The night was very dark. They passed through a double row of soldiers holding naked sabres. The municipal officers carried lanterns. One of them broke the dismal silence he had observed throughout the march. "Thy master," said he to M. Hue, "has been accustomed to gilded canopies. Very well! he is going to find out how we lodge the assassins of the people."
The lamps in the windows of the old quadrangular dungeon lighted up its high pinnacles and turrets, its gigantic profile and gloomy bulk. The immense tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, and with walls nine feet thick, rose, menacing and fatal, amidst the darkness. Beside it was another tower, narrower and not so high, but which was also flanked by turrets. Thus the whole dungeon was composed of two distinct yet united towers. The second of these, called the little tower, to distinguish it from the great one, was selected as the prison of the former hosts of Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the Tuileries.
The little tower of the Temple, which had no interior communication with the great one against which it stood, was a long quadrangle flanked by two turrets. Four steps led to the door, which was low and narrow, and opened on a landing at the end of which began a winding staircase shaped like a snail-shell. Wide from its base as far as the first story, it grew narrower as it climbed up into the second. The door, which was considered too weak, was to be strengthened on the following day by heavy bars, and supplied with an enormous lock brought from the prisons of the Châtelet. The Queen was put on the second floor, and the King on the third. On entering his chamber, Louis XVI. found a miserable bed in an alcove without tapestry or curtains. He showed neither ill humor nor surprise. Engravings, indecent for the most part, covered the walls. Hetook them down himself. "I will not leave such objects before my children's eyes," said he. Then he lay down and slept tranquilly.
The first days of captivity were relatively calm. The prisoners consoled themselves by their family life, reading, and, above all, prayer. Forgetting that he had been a king, and remembering that he was a father, Louis XVI. gave lessons to the Dauphin. "It would have been worth while for the whole nation to be present at these lessons; they would have been both surprised and touched at all the sensible, cordial, and kindly things the good King found to say when the map of France lay spread out before him, or concerning the chronology of his predecessors. Everything in his remarks showed the love he bore his subjects and how greatly his paternal heart desired their happiness. What great and useful lessons one could learn in listening to this captive king instructing a child born to the throne and condemned to share the captivity of his parents." (Souvenirs de Quarante Ans, by Madame de Béarn,néede Tourzel.)
All those who had been authorized to follow the royal family to the Temple—the Princess de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel and her daughter, Mesdames Thibaud, Basire, Navarre, MM. de Chamilly and François Hue—surrounded the captives with the most respectful and devoted attentions. But these noble courtiers of misfortune, these voluntary prisoners who were so glad to be associated in theirmaster's trials, were not long to enjoy an honor they had so keenly desired. In the night of August 18-19, two municipal officers presented themselves, who were commissioned to fetch away "all persons not belonging to the Capet family." The Queen pointed out in vain that the Princess de Lamballe was her relative. The Princess must go with the others. "In our position," has said Madame de Tourzel, the governess of the children of France, "there was nothing to do but obey. We dressed ourselves and then went to the Queen, to whom I resigned that dear little Prince, whose bed had been carried into her room without awaking him." It was an indescribable torture for Madame de Tourzel to abandon the Dauphin, whom she cherished so tenderly, and whom she had educated since 1789. "I abstained from looking at him," she adds, "not only to avoid weakening the courage we had so much need of, but in order to give no room for censure, and so come back, if possible, to a place we left with so much regret. The Queen went instantly into the chamber of the Princess de Lamballe, from whom she parted with the utmost grief. To Pauline and me she showed a touching sensibility, and said to me in an undertone: 'If we are not so happy as to see you again, take good care of Madame de Lamballe. Do the talking on all important occasions, and spare her as much as possible from having to answer captious and embarrassing questions.'" The two municipal officers said to Hue and Chamilly: "Are youthe valets-de-chambre?" On their affirmative response, the two faithful servants were ordered to get up and prepare for departure. They shook hands with each other, both of them convinced that they had reached the end of their existence. One of the municipal officers had said that very day in their presence: "The guillotine is permanent, and strikes with death the pretended servants of Louis." When they descended to the Queen's antechamber, a very small room in which the Princess de Lamballe slept, they found that Princess and Madame de Tourzel all ready to start, and clasped in one embrace with the Queen, the children, and Madame Elisabeth. Tender and heart-breaking farewells, presages of separations more cruel still!
All these exiles from the prison left at the same time. Only one of them, M. François Hue, was to return. He was examined at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and at the close of this interrogation an order was signed permitting him to be taken back to the tower. "How happy I was," he writes, "to return to the Temple! I ran to the King's chamber. He was already up and dressed, and was reading as usual in the little tower. The moment he saw me, his anxiety to know what had occurred made him advance toward me; but the presence of the municipal officers and the guards who were near him made all conversation impossible. I indicated by a glance that, for the moment, prudence forbade me to explain myself. Feeling the necessity of silence as well as myself, the King resumed hisreading and waited for a more opportune moment. Some hours later, I hastily informed him what questions had been asked me and what I had replied." (Dernières Années de Louis XVI., par François Hue.)
The unfortunate sovereign doubtless believed that the others were also about to return. Vain hope! During the day Manuel announced to the King that none of them would come back to the Temple. "What has become of them?" asked Louis XVI. anxiously.—"They are prisoners at the Force," returned Manuel.—"What are they going to do with the only servant I have left?" asked the King, glancing at M. Hue.—"The Commune leaves him with you," said Manuel; "but as he cannot do everything, men will be sent to assist him."—"I do not want them," replied Louis XVI.; "what he cannot do, we will do ourselves. Please God, we will not voluntarily give those who have been taken from us the chagrin of seeing their places taken by others!" In Manuel's presence, the Queen and Madame Elisabeth aided M. Hue to prepare the things most necessary for the new prisoners of the Force. The two Princesses arranged the packets of linen and other matters with the skill and activity of chambermaids.
Behold the heir of Louis XIV., the King of France and Navarre, with but a single servant left him! He has but one coat, and at night his sister mends it. Behold the daughter of the German Cæsars, with not even one woman to wait upon her, and who waits on herself, incessantly watched, meanwhile, by theinquisitors of the Commune; who cannot speak a word or make a gesture unwitnessed by a squad of informers who pursue her even into the chamber where she goes to change her dress, and who spy on her even when she is sleeping! And yet neither the calmness nor the dignity of the prisoners suffers any loss.
There was but one thing that keenly annoyed Louis XVI. It was when, on August 24, they deprived him, the chief of gentlemen, of his sword, as if taking away his sceptre were not enough. He consoled himself by prayer, meditation, and reading. He spent hours in the room containing the library of the keeper of archives of the Order of Malta, who had previously occupied the little tower. One day when he was looking for books, he pointed out to M. Hue the works of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. "Those two men have ruined France," said he in an undertone. On another day he was pained by overhearing the insults heaped on this faithful servant by one of the Municipal Guards. "You have had a great deal to suffer to-day," he said to him. "Well! for the love of me, continue to endure everything; make no answer." At another time he slipped into his hand a folded paper. "This is some of my hair," said he; "it is the only present I can give you at this moment." M. Hue exclaims in his pathetic book: "O shade forever cherished! I will preserve this precious gift to my latest day! The inheritance of my son, it will pass on to my descendants, and all of them will see in this testimonial of Louis XVI.'sgoodness, that they had a father who merited the affection of his King by his fidelity."
In the evenings the Queen made the Dauphin recite this prayer: "Almighty God, who created and redeemed me, I adore Thee. Spare the lives of the King, my father, and those of my family! Defend us against our enemies! Grant Madame de Tourzel the strength she needs to support the evils she endures on our account." And the angel of the Temple, Madame Elisabeth, recited every day this sublime prayer of her own composition: "What will happen to me to-day, O my God! I do not know. All I know is, that nothing will happen that has not been foreseen by Thee from all eternity. It is enough, my God, to keep me tranquil. I adore Thy eternal designs, I submit to them with my whole heart; I will all, I accept all; I sacrifice all to Thee; I unite this sacrifice to that of Thy dear Son, my Saviour, asking Thee by His sacred heart and His infinite merits, the patience in our afflictions and the perfect submission which is due to Thee for all that Thou wiliest and permittest." One day when she had finished her prayer, the saintly Princess said to M. Hue: "It is less for the unhappy King than for his misguided people that I pray. May the Lord deign to be moved, and to look mercifully upon France!" Then she added, with her admirable resignation: "Come, let us take courage. God will never send us more troubles than we are able to bear."
The prisoners were permitted to walk a few steps in the garden every day to get a breath of fresh air. But even there they were insulted. As they passed by, the guards stationed at the base of the tower took pains to put on their hats and sit down. The sentries scrawled insults on the walls. Colporteurs maliciously cried out bad tidings, which were sometimes false. One day, one of them announced a pretended decree separating the King from his family. The Queen, who was near enough to hear distinctly the voice which told this news, not exact as yet, was struck with a terror from which she did not recover.
And yet there were still souls that gave way to compassion. From the upper stories of houses near the Temple enclosure there were eyes looking down into the garden when the prisoners took their walk. The common people and the workmen living in these poor abodes were affected. Sometimes, to show her gratitude for the sympathy of those unknown friends, Marie Antoinette would remove her veil, and smile. When the little Dauphin was playing, there would be hands at the windows, joined as if to applaud. Flowers would sometimes fall, as if by chance, from a garret roof to the Queen's feet, and occasionally it happened that when the captives had gone back to their prison, they would hear in the darkness the echo of some royalist refrain, hummed by a passer-by in the silence of the night.
The Temple tower is no longer in existence. Bonaparte visited it when he was Consul. "There aretoo many souvenirs in that prison," he exclaimed. "I will tear it down." In 1811 he kept his promise. The palace of the grand-prior was destroyed in 1853. No trace remains of that famous enclosure of the Templars whose legend has so sombre a poetry. But it has left an impress on the imagination of peoples which will never be effaced. It seems to rise again gigantic, that tower where the son of Saint Louis realized not alone the type of the antique sage of whom Horace said:Impavidum ferient ruinae, but also the purest ideal of the true Christian. Does not the name Temple seem predestinated for a spot which was to be sanctified by so many virtues, and where the martyr King put in practice these verses of theImitation of Jesus Christ, his favorite book: "It needs no great virtue to live peaceably with those who are upright and amiable; one is naturally pleased in such society; we always love those whose sentiments agree with ours. But it is very praiseworthy, and the effect of a special grace and great courage to live in peace with severe and wicked men, who are disorderly, or who contradict us.... He who knows best how to suffer, will enjoy the greatest peace; such a one is the conqueror of himself, master of the world, the friend of Jesus Christ, and the inheritor of heaven."
The Princess de Lamballe, after being taken from the Temple in the night of August 18-19, had been examined by Billaud-Varennes at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and then sent, at noon, August 19, to the Force. This prison, divided into two distinct parts, the great and the little Force, was situated between the rues Roi-de-Sicile, Culture, and Pavée. In 1792 it supplemented the Abbey and Châtelet prisons, which were overcrowded. The little Force had a separate entry on the rue Pavée to the Marais, while the door of the large one opened on the rue des Ballets, a few steps from the rue Saint-Antoine. The register of the little Force, which is preserved in the archives of the prefecture of police, records that, at the time of the September massacres, this prison in which the Princess de Lamballe was immured, contained one hundred and ten women, most of them not concerned with political affairs, and in great part women of the town. Here, from August 19 to September 3, the Princess suffered inexpressible anguish. She never heard a turnkey open the door of her cell without thinking that her last hour had come.
The massacres began on September 2. On that day the Princess de Lamballe was spared. In the evening she threw herself on her bed, a prey to the most cruel anxiety. Toward six o'clock the next morning, the turnkey entered with a frightened air: "They are coming here," he said to the prisoners. Six men, armed with sabres, guns, and pistols, followed him, approached the beds, asked the names of the women, and went out again. Madame de Tourzel, who shared the Princess de Lamballe's captivity, said to her: "This threatens to be a terrible day, dear Princess; we know not what Heaven intends for us; we must ask God to forgive our faults. Let us say theMiserereand theConfiteoras acts of contrition, and recommend ourselves to His goodness." The two women said their prayers aloud, and incited each other to resignation and courage.
There was a window which opened on the street, and from which, although it was very high, one could see what was passing by mounting on Madame de Lamballe's bed, and thence to the window ledge. The Princess climbed up, and as soon as her head was noticed on the street, a pretence of firing on her was made. She saw a considerable crowd at the prison door.
Very little doubt remained concerning her fate. Neither she nor Madame de Tourzel had eaten since the previous day. But they were too greatly moved to take any breakfast. They dared not speak to each other. They took their work, and sat down to await the result of the fatal day in silence.
Toward eleven o'clock the door opened. Armed men filled the room and demanded Madame de Lamballe. The Princess put on a gown, bade adieu to Madame de Tourzel, and was led to the great Force, where some municipal officers, wearing their insignia, subjected the prisoners to a pretended trial. In front of this tribunal stood executioners with ferocious faces, who brandished bloody weapons. The atmosphere was sickening: full of the steam of carnage, and the odors of wine and blood. Madame de Lamballe fainted. When she recovered consciousness she was interrogated: "Who are you?"—"Marie Louise, Princess of Savoy."—"What is your rank?"—"Superintendent of the Queen's household."—"Were you acquainted with the conspiracies of the court on August 10?"—"I do not know that there were any conspiracies on August 10, but I know I had no knowledge of them."—"Swear liberty, equality, hatred to the King, the Queen, and royalty."—"I will swear the first two without difficulty; I cannot swear the last; it is not in my heart." Here an assistant said in a whisper to Madame de Lamballe: "Swear it! if you do not swear, you are a dead woman." The Princess made no answer; she put her hands up to her eyes, covered her face with them and made a step toward the wicket. The judge exclaimed: "Let some one release Madame!" This phrase was the death signal. Two men took the victim roughly by the arms, and made her walk over corpses. Hardly had she crossed the threshold when she received ablow from a sabre on the back of her head, which made her blood flow in streams. In the narrow passage leading from the rue Saint-Antoine to the Force, and called the Priests' cul-de-sac, she was despatched with pikes on a heap of dead bodies. Then they stripped off her clothes and exposed her body to the insults of a horde of cannibals. When the blood that flowed from her wounds, or that of the neighboring corpses, had soiled the body too much, they washed it with a sponge, so that the crowd might notice its whiteness better. They cut off her head and her breasts. They tore out her heart, and of this head and this heart they made horrible trophies. The pikes which bore them were lifted high in air, and they went to carry around these excellent spoils of the Revolution.
At the very moment when the hideous procession began its march, Madame de Lebel, the wife of a painter, who owed many benefits to Madame de Lamballe, was trying to get near the prison, hoping to hear news of her. Seeing the great commotion in the crowd, she inquired the cause. When some one replied: "It is Lamballe's head that they are going to carry through Paris," she was seized with horror, and, turning back, took refuge in a hairdresser's shop on the Place Bastille. Hardly had she done so when the crowd entered the Place. The murderers came into the shop and required the hairdresser to arrange the head of the Princess. They washed it, and powdered the fair hair, all soiled withblood. Then one of the assassins cried joyfully: "Now, at any rate, Antoinette can recognize her!" The procession resumed its march. From time to time they called a halt before a wine-shop. Wishing to empty his glass, the scoundrel who had the Princess's head in his hand, set it flat down on the lead counter. Then it was put back on the end of a pike. The heart was on another pike, and other individuals dragged along the headless corpse. In this manner they arrived in front of the Temple. It was three o'clock in the afternoon.
On that day the royal family had been refused permission to go into the garden. They were in the little tower when the cries of the multitude became audible. The workmen who were then employed in tearing down the walls and buildings contiguous to the Temple dungeon, mingled with the crowd, increased also by innumerable curious spectators, and uttered furious shouts. One of the Municipal Guards at the Temple closed doors and windows, and pulled down curtains so that the captives could see nothing.
On the street in front of the enclosure a tricolored ribbon had been fastened across, with this inscription: "Citizens, you who know how to ally the love of order with a just vengeance, respect this barrier; it is necessary to our surveillance and our responsibility." This was the sole dike they meant to oppose to the torrent. At the side of this ribbon stood a municipal officer named Danjou, formerly a priest, who was called Abbé Six-feet, on account of hisheight. He mounted on a chair and harangued the crowd. He felt his face touched by Madame de Lamballe's head, still on the end of a pike which the bearer shook about and gesticulated with, and also by a rag of her chemise, soaked with blood and mire, which another individual also carried on a pike. The naked body was there likewise, with its back to the ground and the front cut open to the very breast. Danjou tried to make the crowd of assassins who wanted to invade the Temple understand that at a moment when the enemy was master of the frontiers, it would be impolitic to deprive themselves of hostages so precious as Louis XVI. and his family. "Moreover," he added, "would it not demonstrate their innocence if you dare not try them? How much worthier it is of a great people to execute a king guilty of treason on the scaffold!" Thus, while preventing an immediate massacre, he held the scaffold in reserve. Danjou said that the Communal Council, in order to show its confidence in the citizens composing the mob, had decided that six of them should be admitted to make the rounds of the Temple garden, with the commissioners at their head. The ribbon was then raised and several persons entered the enclosure. They were those who carried the remains of Madame de Lamballe. With these were the laborers who had been at work on the demolitions. Voices were heard demanding furiously that Marie Antoinette should show herself at a window, so that some one might climb up and make herkiss her friend's head. As Danjou opposed this infernal scheme, he was accused of being on the side of the tyrant. Was the dungeon of the Temple to be forced? Were the assassins about to seize the Queen, tear her in pieces, and drag her, like her friend, through streets and squares to the rolling of drums and the chanting of theMarseillaiseand theÇa ira?
A municipal officer entered the tower and began a mysterious parley with his colleagues. As Louis XVI. asked what was going on, some one replied: "Well, sir, since you desire to know, they want to show you Madame de Lamballe's head." Meanwhile the cries outside were growing louder. Another municipal came in, followed by four delegates from the mob. One of them, who carried a heavy sabre in his hand, insisted that the prisoners should present themselves at the window, but this was opposed by the municipal officers, who were less cruel. This man said to the Queen in an insulting tone: "They want us to hide the Princess de Lamballe's head from you when we brought it to let you see how the people avenge themselves on their tyrants. I advise you to show yourself if you don't want the people to come up." Marie Antoinette fainted on learning her friend's death in this manner. Her children burst into tears and tried by their caresses to bring her back to consciousness. The man did not go away. "Sir," the King said to him, "we are prepared for the worst, but you might have dispensed yourself from informing the Queen of this frightful calamity."Cléry, the King's valet, was looking through a corner of the window blinds, and saw Madame de Lamballe's head. The person carrying it had climbed up on a heap of rubbish from the buildings in process of demolition. Another, who stood beside him, held her bleeding heart. Cléry heard Danjou expostulating the crowd in words like these: "Antoinette's head does not belong to you; the departments have their rights in it also. France has confided these great criminals to the care of Paris; and it is your business to assist us in guarding them until national justice shall avenge the people." Then, addressing himself to these cannibals as if they were heroes whose courage and exploits he praised, he added, in speaking of the profaned corpse of the Princess de Lamballe: "The remains you have there are the property of all. Do they not belong to all Paris? Have you the right to deprive others of the pleasure of sharing your triumph? Night will soon be here. Make haste, then, to quit this precinct, which is too narrow for your glory. You ought to place this trophy in the Palais Royal or the Tuileries garden, where the sovereignty of the people has been so often trampled under foot, as an eternal monument of the victory you have just won." Remarks like these were all that could prevent these tigers from entering the Temple and destroying the prisoners. Shouts of "To the Palais Royal!" proved to Danjou that his harangue had been appreciated. The assassins at last departed, after having covered his face withkisses that smelt of wine and blood. They wanted to show their victim's head at the Hôtel Toulouse, the mansion of the venerable Duke de Penthièvre, her father-in-law, but were deterred by the assurance that she did not ordinarily live there, but at the Tuileries. Then they turned toward the Palais Royal. The Duke of Orleans was at a window with his mistress, Madame de Buffon. He left it, but he may have seen the head of his sister-in-law.
Some of the cannibals had remained in the neighborhood of the Temple. Sitting down at table in a wine-shop, they had the heart of the Princess de Lamballe cooked, and ate it with avidity. "Thus," says M. de Beauchesne in his excellent work on Louis XVII., "this civilization which had departed from God, surpassed at a single bound the fury of savages, and the eighteenth century, so proud of its learning and humanity, ended by anthropophagy." In the evening, when some one was giving Collot d'Herbois an account of the day's performances, he expressed but one regret,—that they had not succeeded in showing Marie Antoinette the remains of the Princess de Lamballe. "What!" he spitefully exclaimed, "did they spare the Queen that impression? They ought to have served up her best friend's head in a covered dish at her table."
Lovers of paradoxes have tried to represent the September massacres as something spontaneous, a passing delirium of opinion, a sort of great national convulsion. This myth was a lie against history and humanity. It exists no longer, Heaven be thanked. The mists with which it was sought to shroud these execrable crimes are now dissipated. Light has been shed upon that series of infernal spectacles which would have made cannibals blush. No; these odious massacres were not the result of a popular movement, an unforeseen fanaticism, a paroxysm of rage or vengeance. They present an ensemble of murders committed in cool blood, a planned and premeditated thing. M. Mortimer-Ternaux, in hisHistoire de la Terreur, M. Granier de Cassagnac, in hisHistoire des Girondins et des Massacres de Septembre, have proved this abundantly. They have exhumed from the archives and the record offices such a mass of uncontested and incontestable documents, that not the slightest doubt is now permissible. Edgar Quinet has not hesitated to recognize this in his book,La Révolution. He says: "Themassacres were executed administratively; the same discipline was everywhere displayed throughout the carnage.... This was not a piece of blind, spontaneous barbarism; it was a barbarity slowly meditated, minutely elaborated by a sanguinary mind. Hence it bears no resemblance to anything previously known in history. Marat harvested in September what he had been sowing for three years." The Parisian populace, eight hundred thousand souls, was inert; it was cowardly, it trembled; but it did not approve, it was not an accomplice. It was a monstrous thing that a handful of cut-throats should be enough to transform Paris into a slaughter-house. One shudders in thinking what a few criminals can accomplish in the midst of an immense population. "The people, the real people—that composed of laborious and honest workmen, ardent and patriotic at heart, and of youngbourgeoiswith generous aspirations and indomitable courage—never united for an instant with the scoundrels recruited by Maillard from every kennel in the capital. While the hired assassins of the Committee of Surveillance established in the prisons what Vergniaud called a butcher's shop for human flesh, the true populace was assembled on the Champ-de-Mars, and before the enlistment booths; it was offering its purest blood for the country; it would have blushed to shed that of helpless unfortunates."[1] In 1871, the murder of hostages andthe burning of monuments was no more approved by the population than the massacres in the prisons were in 1792. The crimes were committed at both epochs by a mere handful of individuals. The great majority of the people were guilty merely of apathy and fear.
The hideous tableau surpasses the most lugubrious conceptions of Dante's sombre imagination. Paris is a hell. From August 29, it is like a torpid Oriental town. The whole city is in custody, like a criminal whose limbs are held while he is being searched and put in irons. Every house is inspected by the agents of the Commune. A knock at the door makes the inmates tremble. The denunciation of an enemy, a servant, a neighbor, is a death sentence. People scarcely dare to breathe. Neither running water nor solid earth is free. The parapets of quays, the arches of bridges, the bathing and washing boats are bristling with sentries. Everything is surrounded. There is no refuge. Three thousand suspected persons are taken out of houses, and crowded into prisons. The hunt begins anew the following day. The programme of massacres is arranged. The Communal Council of Surveillance has minutely regulated everything. The price of the actual work is settled. The personnel of cut-throats is at its post. Danton has furnished the executioners; Manuel, the victims. All is ready. The bloody drama can begin.
On September 2, Danton said to the Assembly: "The tocsin about to sound is not an alarm signal; itis a charge upon the enemies of the country. To vanquish them, gentlemen, all that is needed is boldness, and again boldness, and always boldness." Two days before, he had been still more explicit. "The 10th of August," said he, "divided us into republicans and royalists; the first few in number, the second many...; we must make the royalists afraid." A frightful gesture, a horizontal gesture, sufficed to express his meaning.
Robbery preceded murder. It was a veritable raid. The Commune caused the palaces, national property, the Garde-Meuble, the houses and mansions of theémigrésto be pillaged. One saw nothing but carts and wagons transporting stolen goods to the Hôtel-de-Ville. All the plate was stolen from the churches likewise. "Millions," says Madame Roland in her Memoirs, "passed into the hands of people who used it to perpetuate the anarchy which was the source of their domination." When will the men of the Commune render their accounts? Never. Who are the accomplices of Danton and Marat in organizing the massacres? A band of defaulting accountants, faithless violators of public trusts, breakers of locks, swindlers, spies, and men overwhelmed with debts. What interest have they in planning the murders? That of perpetuating the dictatorship they had assumed on the eve of August 10, and, above all, of having no accounts to render. A few weeks later on, Collot d'Herbois will say at the Jacobin Club: "The 2d of September is the chief article in the creed of our liberty."
The jailors were forewarned. They served the prisoners' dinner earlier, and took away their knives. There was a disturbed and uneasy look in their faces which made the victims suspect their end was near. Toward noon the general alarm was beaten in every street. The citizens were ordered to return at once to their dwellings. An order was issued to illuminate every house when night fell. The shops were closed. Terror overspread the entire city.
It was agreed that at the third discharge of cannon the cut-throats should set to work. The first blood shed was that of prisoners taken from the mayoralty to the Abbey prison. The carriages containing them passed along the Quai des Orfèvres, the Pont-Neuf and rue Dauphine, until it reached the Bussy square. Here there was a crowd assembled around a platform where enlistments were going on. The throng impeded the progress of the carriages. Thereupon one of the escort opened the door of one of them, and standing on the step, plunged his sabre into the breast of an aged priest. The multitude shuddered and fled in affright. "That makes you afraid," said the assassin; "you will see plenty more like it."
The rest of the escort followed the example set them. The carriages go on again, and so do the massacres. They kill along the route, and they kill on arriving at the Abbey. Towards five o'clock, Billaud-Varennes presents himself there, wearing his municipal scarf. "People," says he—what he callspeople is a band of salaried assassins—"people, thou immolatest thine enemies, thou art doing thy duty." Then he walks into the midst of the dead bodies, dipping his feet in blood, and fraternizes with the murderers. "There is nothing more to do here," exclaims Maillard; "let us go to the Carmelites."
At the Carmelites, one hundred and eighty priests, crowded into the church and convent, were awaiting their fate with pious resignation. Two days before, Manuel had said to them ironically: "In forty-eight hours you will all be free. Get ready to go into a foreign country and enjoy the repose you cannot find here." And on the previous day a gendarme had said to the Archbishop of Arles, blowing the smoke from his pipe into his face as he did so: "It is to-morrow, then, that they are going to kill Your Grandeur." A short time before the massacre began, the victims were sent into the garden. At the bottom of it was an orangery which has since become a chapel. Mgr. Dulau, Archbishop of Arles, and the Bishops of Beauvais and de Saintes, both of whom were named de la Rochefoucauld, kneeled down with the other priests and recited the last prayers. The murderers approached. The Archbishop of Arles, who was upwards of eighty, advanced to meet them. "I am he whom you seek," he said; "my sacrifice is made; but spare these worthy priests; they will pray for you on earth, and I in heaven." They insulted him before they struck him. "I have never done harm to any one," said he. An assassinresponded: "Very well; I'll do some to you," and killed him. The other priests were chased around the garden from one tree to another, and shot down. During this infernal hunt the murderers were shouting with laughter and singing their favorite song:Dansez la Carmagnole!
The massacre of the Carmelites is over. "Let us go back to the Abbey!" cries Maillard; "we shall find more game there." This time there is a pretence of justice made. The tribunal is the vestibule of the Abbey; Maillard, the chief cut-throat, is president; the assassins are the judges, and the public, the Marseillais, the sans-culottes, the female furies, and men to whom murder was a delightful spectacle. The prisoners are summoned one after another. They enter the vestibule, which has a wicket as a door of exit. They are questioned simply as a matter of form. Their answers are not even listened to. "Conduct this gentleman to the Force!" says the president. The prisoner thinks he is safe; he does not know that this phrase has been agreed upon as the signal of death. On reaching the wicket, hatchet and sabre strokes cut him down in the midst of his dream. The Swiss officers and soldiers who had survived August 10 were murdered thus. Their torture lasted a longer or shorter time, and was accomplished with more or less cruel refinements, according to the caprice of the assassins, who were nearly all drunk.
Night came, and torches were lighted. Noshadows; a grand illumination. They must see clearly in the slaughter house. Lanterns were placed near the lakes of blood and heaps of dead bodies, so as plainly to distinguish the work from the workmen. There were some who were bent on losing no details of the carnage. The spectators wanted to take things easy. They were tired of standing too long. Benches for men and others for dames were got ready for them. The death-rattle of the agonizing, the vociferations of the assassins, the emulation between the executioners who kill slowly and the victims who are in haste to die, give joy to the spectators. There is no interruption to the human butchery. There has been so much blood spilled that the feet of the murderers slip on the pavement. A litter is made of straw and the clothes of the victims, and thereafter none are killed except upon this mattress. In this way the work is more commodiously accomplished. The assassins have plenty of assurance. Morning dawns on the continuation of the murders, and the wives of the murderers bring them something to eat.
On September 2, the only persons handed over to the cut-throats, were at the Abbey, the Carmelites, and Saint-Firmin. On September 3, the massacre became more general. The assassins had said: "If there is no more work, we shall have to find some." Their desire realizes itself. Work will not be lacking. There is still some at the Force, where the Princess de Lamballe, the preferred victim, ismurdered. The assassins, who at the Abbey had been paid at the rate of eight francs a day, get only fifty sous at the Force. They work with undiminished zeal, even at this reduction. If necessary, they would work for nothing. To drink wine and shed blood is the essential thing. The negro Delorme, servant to Fournier "the American," distinguishes himself among them all. His black skin, reddened with blood, his white teeth and ferocious eyes, his bestial laugh, his ravenous fury, make him a choice assassin. There is work too at the Conciergerie, at the great and little Châtelet, the Salpêtrière, and the Bicêtre. A great number of those detained are people condemned or accused of private crimes which had absolutely nothing in common with politics. No matter; blood is wanted; they kill there as elsewhere. At the Grand Châtelet, work is so plenty, and the assassins so few, that they release several individuals imprisoned for theft, and impress them into their service. One of these unfortunate accidental executioners begins in a hesitating way, strikes a few undecided blows, and then throws down the hatchet placed in his hands. "No, no," he cries, "I cannot. No, no! Rather a victim than a murderer! I would rather receive death from scoundrels like you, then give it to innocent, disarmed people. Strike me!" And at once the veteran murderers kill the inexperienced cut-throat. There was a woman, known on account of her charms as the Beautiful Flower Girl, who was accused of having woundedher lover, a French guard, in a fit of jealousy. Théroigne de Mericourt, an amazon of the gutters, was her rival. She pointed her out to the assassins. They fastened her naked to a post, her legs apart and her feet nailed to the ground. They burned her alive. They cut off her breasts with sabre strokes. They impaled her on a hot iron. Her shrieks carried dismay as far as the outer banks of the Seine. Théroigne was at the height of felicity.
At the Salpêtrière there was still another spectacle. This prison for fallen women is a place of correction for the old, of amendment for the young, and an asylum for those who are still children. More than forty children of the lower classes were slain during these horrible days. The delirium of murder reached its height. Gorged with wine mingled with gunpowder, intoxicated with the fumes and reek of carnage, the assassins experienced a devouring, inextinguishable thirst for blood which nothing could quench. More blood, and yet more blood! And where can it now be found? The prisons are empty. There are no more nobles, no more priests, to put to death. Very well! for lack of anything better, they will go to an asylum for the poor, the sick, and the insane; to the Bicêtre. Vagabonds, paupers, fools, thieves, steward, chaplains, janitor, all is fish that comes to their net. The butchery lasts five days and nights without stopping. Massacre takes every form; some are drowned in the cellars, others shot in the courts. Water, fire, and sword, every sort of torture.