Chapter 17

FOOTNOTES:[340]La Fayette's Memoirs."M. de La Fayette seemed not to have been quite discouraged by the ill-success of his former embassy; for on the 10th of July M. de Lally came to me with a long letter written by M. La Fayette from his army, in which he drew a plan, ready as he said, for execution, to open the way for the king through his enemies, and to establish him in safety either in Compiègne or in the north part of France, surrounded by his constitutional guards and his faithful army,"—Bertrand de Moleville.[341]"That there should be no more sympathy," says Professor Smyth, "expressed by the king or the Royalists ever after, with the elevated nature of the principles of La Fayette or the steadiness of his loyalty, whenever he saw, as he thought, the king in danger, is quite intolerable; and there are no occasions on which the royal party appear to so little advantage as when it is desirable that they should show some little candor, some common justice to La Fayette."—Lectures on French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 298.[342]History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 36.[343]"Russia and England secretly approved the attacks of the European league, without as yet co-operating with it."—Mignet, p. 142. The Britishgovernmentwere at this time restrained from active measures by the Britishpeople, the great mass of whom sympathized with the French in their struggle for liberty.[344]"The chiefs," says Bertrand do Moleville, "of the Gironde faction, who had planned the insurrection, did not, at that time, intend to overset the monarchy. Their design was to dethrone the king, make the crown pass to his son, and establish a council of regency."[345]Lamartine's History of the Girondists, vol. 2, p. 40. Barbaroux, one of the most active of the leaders in this movement, "a man of genius, fine affections, and noble sentiments," in his memoirs writes, "It was our wish that this insurrection in the cause of liberty should be majestic as is Liberty herself; holy as are the rights which she alone can ensure, and worthy to serve as an example to every people, who, to break the chains of their tyrants, have only to show themselves."[346]"The greatest sensation was produced in our own country of Great Britain, and all over Europe, by a manifesto like this, which went in truth to say, that two military powers were to march into a neighboring and independent kingdom to settle the civil dissensions there as they thought best, and to punish by military law, as rebels and traitors, all who presumed to resist them. No friend to freedom or the general rights of mankind could, for a moment, tolerate such a procedure as this. Even the success of the Jacobins and Anarchists was thought preferable to the triumph of invaders like these."—Prof. Smyth's Lectures on the Fr. Rev., vol. ii., p. 326.[347]The Garden of the Tuileries includes an area of about sixty-seven acres. A whole army could encamp there.[348]One of the officers of the staff said to Madame Campan, in the midst of this scene of terror and confusion, "Put your jewels and money into your pockets. Our dangers are unavoidable. The means of defense are unavailing. Safety might be obtained from some degree of energy in the king; but that is the only virtue in which he is deficient."—Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 240.[349]Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante Jours.[350]"List! through the placid midnight; clang of the distant storm-bell. Steeple after steeple takes up the wondrous tale. Black courtiers listen at the windows opened for air; discriminate the steeple-bells. This is the tocsin of St. Roch; that, again, isitnot St. Jaques, namedde la Boucherie? Yes, messieurs! or even St. Germain l'Auxerrois, hear ye it not? The same metal that rang storm two hundred and twenty years ago; but by a majesty's order then; on St. Bartholomew's Eve!"—Carlyle, vol. ii., p. 138.[351]"The behavior of Marie Antoinette was magnanimous in the highest degree. Her majestic air, her Austrian lip and aquiline nose, gave her an air of dignity which can only be conceived by those who beheld her in that trying hour."—Peltier.[352]Where the iron railing now stands which separates the spacious court of the Tuileries from the Carrousel, so called because Louis XIV., in 1662, held a great tournament here, there were, in 1792, rows of small houses and sheds. The court was then divided by railings into three divisions. The central one, which was rather larger than the others, was called the Cour Royale. The king's troops were stationed in these courts, while the insurgents were filling the Carrousel. These court-yards, now thrown into one, afforded Napoleon ample space for the review of his troops.[353]M. Roederer, a constitutional monarchist, was one of the most illustrious men of the Revolution. Denounced by the Jacobins he was compelled, like La Fayette, to seek refuge in flight. Upon Napoleon's return from Egypt he aided effectually in rescuing France from anarchy, and in establishing the Consulate and the Empire. He co-operated cordially with the Emperor in his plans of reform, was the chief instrument in concluding a treaty between France and the United States, and took a large share in the regeneration of the Kingdom of Naples by Joseph Bonaparte. When Napoleon fell beneath the blows of allied Europe, Roederer, in sadness, withdrew to retirement.—Enc. Am.[354]Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 274, note.

FOOTNOTES:

[340]La Fayette's Memoirs."M. de La Fayette seemed not to have been quite discouraged by the ill-success of his former embassy; for on the 10th of July M. de Lally came to me with a long letter written by M. La Fayette from his army, in which he drew a plan, ready as he said, for execution, to open the way for the king through his enemies, and to establish him in safety either in Compiègne or in the north part of France, surrounded by his constitutional guards and his faithful army,"—Bertrand de Moleville.

[340]La Fayette's Memoirs.

"M. de La Fayette seemed not to have been quite discouraged by the ill-success of his former embassy; for on the 10th of July M. de Lally came to me with a long letter written by M. La Fayette from his army, in which he drew a plan, ready as he said, for execution, to open the way for the king through his enemies, and to establish him in safety either in Compiègne or in the north part of France, surrounded by his constitutional guards and his faithful army,"—Bertrand de Moleville.

[341]"That there should be no more sympathy," says Professor Smyth, "expressed by the king or the Royalists ever after, with the elevated nature of the principles of La Fayette or the steadiness of his loyalty, whenever he saw, as he thought, the king in danger, is quite intolerable; and there are no occasions on which the royal party appear to so little advantage as when it is desirable that they should show some little candor, some common justice to La Fayette."—Lectures on French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 298.

[342]History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 36.

[343]"Russia and England secretly approved the attacks of the European league, without as yet co-operating with it."—Mignet, p. 142. The Britishgovernmentwere at this time restrained from active measures by the Britishpeople, the great mass of whom sympathized with the French in their struggle for liberty.

[344]"The chiefs," says Bertrand do Moleville, "of the Gironde faction, who had planned the insurrection, did not, at that time, intend to overset the monarchy. Their design was to dethrone the king, make the crown pass to his son, and establish a council of regency."

[345]Lamartine's History of the Girondists, vol. 2, p. 40. Barbaroux, one of the most active of the leaders in this movement, "a man of genius, fine affections, and noble sentiments," in his memoirs writes, "It was our wish that this insurrection in the cause of liberty should be majestic as is Liberty herself; holy as are the rights which she alone can ensure, and worthy to serve as an example to every people, who, to break the chains of their tyrants, have only to show themselves."

[346]"The greatest sensation was produced in our own country of Great Britain, and all over Europe, by a manifesto like this, which went in truth to say, that two military powers were to march into a neighboring and independent kingdom to settle the civil dissensions there as they thought best, and to punish by military law, as rebels and traitors, all who presumed to resist them. No friend to freedom or the general rights of mankind could, for a moment, tolerate such a procedure as this. Even the success of the Jacobins and Anarchists was thought preferable to the triumph of invaders like these."—Prof. Smyth's Lectures on the Fr. Rev., vol. ii., p. 326.

[347]The Garden of the Tuileries includes an area of about sixty-seven acres. A whole army could encamp there.

[348]One of the officers of the staff said to Madame Campan, in the midst of this scene of terror and confusion, "Put your jewels and money into your pockets. Our dangers are unavoidable. The means of defense are unavailing. Safety might be obtained from some degree of energy in the king; but that is the only virtue in which he is deficient."—Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 240.

[349]Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante Jours.

[350]"List! through the placid midnight; clang of the distant storm-bell. Steeple after steeple takes up the wondrous tale. Black courtiers listen at the windows opened for air; discriminate the steeple-bells. This is the tocsin of St. Roch; that, again, isitnot St. Jaques, namedde la Boucherie? Yes, messieurs! or even St. Germain l'Auxerrois, hear ye it not? The same metal that rang storm two hundred and twenty years ago; but by a majesty's order then; on St. Bartholomew's Eve!"—Carlyle, vol. ii., p. 138.

[351]"The behavior of Marie Antoinette was magnanimous in the highest degree. Her majestic air, her Austrian lip and aquiline nose, gave her an air of dignity which can only be conceived by those who beheld her in that trying hour."—Peltier.

[352]Where the iron railing now stands which separates the spacious court of the Tuileries from the Carrousel, so called because Louis XIV., in 1662, held a great tournament here, there were, in 1792, rows of small houses and sheds. The court was then divided by railings into three divisions. The central one, which was rather larger than the others, was called the Cour Royale. The king's troops were stationed in these courts, while the insurgents were filling the Carrousel. These court-yards, now thrown into one, afforded Napoleon ample space for the review of his troops.

[353]M. Roederer, a constitutional monarchist, was one of the most illustrious men of the Revolution. Denounced by the Jacobins he was compelled, like La Fayette, to seek refuge in flight. Upon Napoleon's return from Egypt he aided effectually in rescuing France from anarchy, and in establishing the Consulate and the Empire. He co-operated cordially with the Emperor in his plans of reform, was the chief instrument in concluding a treaty between France and the United States, and took a large share in the regeneration of the Kingdom of Naples by Joseph Bonaparte. When Napoleon fell beneath the blows of allied Europe, Roederer, in sadness, withdrew to retirement.—Enc. Am.

[354]Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 274, note.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE ROYAL FAMILY IMPRISONED.

Tumult and Dismay in the Assembly.—Storming the Tuileries.—Aspect of the Royal Family.—The Decree of Suspension.—Night in the Cloister.—The Second Day in the Assembly.—The Royal Family Prisoners.—Third Day in the Assembly.—The Temple.—The Royal Family Transferred to the Temple.

Butfew of the excited thousands who crowded all the approaches to the Tuileries were conscious that the royal family had escaped from the palace. The clamor rapidly increased to a scene of terrific uproar. First a few gun-shots were heard, then volleys of musketry, then the deep booming of artillery, while shouts of onset, cries of fury, and the shrieks of the wounded and the dying filled the air. The hall of the Assembly was already crowded to suffocation, and the deputies stood powerless and appalled. A tumultuous mass pressed the door. Blows, pistol-shots, and groans of death were heard beneath the windows, and it was every moment apprehended that the assassins would break into the hall, and that the royal family and all their defenders would be cut down. Several bullets shattered the windows, and one or two cannon-balls passed through the roof of the building. Every one was exposed to fearful peril.

There was no longer any retreat for the king. By the side of the president's chair there was a space inclosed by an iron railing, appropriated to the reporters. Several of the members aided the king in tearing down a portion of this railing, and all the royal family sought refuge there. At this moment the door of the hall was attacked, and tremendous blows seemed to shake the whole building. "We are stormed!" shouted one of the deputies. There was, however, no escape for any one in any direction, and for some moments there was witnessed a scene of confusion and terror which no language can describe.

At the same time there was a frightful conflict raging in and around the palace. Immediately upon the departure of the king, all the Swiss troops, who were hated as foreign mercenaries hired to shoot down the French, were drawn into the palace from the court-yard, and were mingled in confusion through its apartments with the loyalist gentlemen, the officers, and the domestics. Notwithstanding the vast dimensions of the palace, it was so crowded that there was scarcely space to move.

STORMING THE TUILERIES, AUGUST 10, 1792.

The throng in the Carrousel attacked one of the gates, broke it down, and rushed into the royal court, which was nearly vacated by the retirement of the Swiss. The companies of the National Guard in the Carrousel, instead of opposing, looked approvingly on, and were evidently quite disposed to lend the assailants a helping hand. A large piece of timber was placed at the foot of the staircase of the palace in the form of a barrier, andbehind this were intrenched in disorder, crowding the steps, the Swiss and some of the National Guard who adhered to the king.[355]

Just then the whole Faubourg St. Antoine came marching along in solid column. They marched through the Carrousel, entered the court, and placed six pieces of cannon in battery to open a fire upon the palace. It was to avoid, if possible, a conflict, that the guards had been withdrawn from the court into the palace. The shouts of a countless multitude applauded this military movement of the mob. The Swiss had received command from the king not to fire. The crowd cautiously pressed nearer and nearer to the door, and at length, emboldened by the forbearance of the defenders of the palace, seized, with long poles to which hooks were attached, one after another of the sentinels, and, with shouts, captured and disarmed them. Thus five of the Swiss troops were taken prisoners.

MASSACRE OF THE ROYAL GUARD, AUGUST 10, 1792.

At last a single shot was fired, no one can tell on which side. It was the signal for blood. The Swiss, crowded upon the magnificent marble stairs,rising one above another, occupied a very formidable position. They instantly opened a deadly fire. Volley succeeded volley, and every bullet told upon the dense mass crowding the court. At the same moment, from every window of the palace, a storm of shot was showered down upon the foe. In a moment the pavement was red with blood, and covered with the dying and the dead. The artillerymen abandoned their pieces, and the whole multitude rushed pell-mell, trampling the dead and wounded beneath them in frantic endeavors to escape from the court into the Carrousel. In a few moments the whole court was evacuated, and remained strewed with pikes, muskets, grenadiers' caps, and gory bodies.

The besiegers, however, soon rallied. Following the disciplined troops from Marseilles, who were led by able officers, the multitude returned with indescribable fury to the charge. Cannon-balls, bullets, and grapeshot dashed in the doors and the windows. Most of the loyalist gentlemen escaped by a secret passage through the long gallery of the Louvre, as the victorious rabble, with pike, bayonet, and sabre, poured resistlessly into the palace and rushed through all its apartments. The Swiss threw down their arms and begged for quarter. But the pitiless mob, exasperated by the slaughter of their friends, knew no mercy. Indiscriminate massacre ensued, accompanied with every conceivable act of brutality. For four hours the butchery continued, as attics, closets, cellars, chimneys, and vaults were searched, and the terrified victims were dragged out to die. Some leaped from the windows and endeavored to escape through the Garden. They were pursued and mercilessly cut down. Some climbed the marble monuments. The assassins, unwilling to injure the statuary, pricked them down with their bayonets and then slaughtered them at their feet. Seven hundred and fifty Swiss were massacred in that day of blood.

The Assembly during these hours were powerless, and they awaited in intense anxiety the issue of the combat. Nothing can more impressively show the weak and frivolous mind of the king than that, in such an hour, seeing the painter David in the hall, he inquired of him,

"How soon shall you probably have my portrait completed?"

David brutally replied, "I will never, for the future, paint the portrait of a tyrant until his head lies before me on the scaffold."[356]

The queen sat in haughty silence. Her compressed lip, burning eye, and hectic cheek indicated the emotions of humiliation and of indignation with which she was consumed. The young princess wept, and her fevered face was stained with the dried current of her tears. The dauphin, too young to appreciate the terrible significance of the scene, looked around in bewildered curiosity.

At eleven o'clock reiterated shouts of victory, which rose from the Garden, the palace, the Carrousel, and all the adjoining streets and places, proclaimed that the triumph of the people was complete. The Assembly, now overawed, unanimously passed a decree suspending the king, dismissing the Royalist ministers, recalling the Girondist ministry, and convoking a National Assembly for the trial of the king. As Vergniaud read, in accents of grief, this decree to which the Assembly had been forced, the king listenedintently, and then said satirically to M. Coustard, who was standing by his side,

"This is not a veryconstitutionalact."

"True," M. Coustard replied; "but it is the only means of saving your majesty's life."

The Assembly immediately enacted the decrees, which the king had vetoed, banishing the refractory priests and establishing a camp near Paris. Danton,[357]whose tremendous energies had guided the insurrection, was appointed Minister of Justice. Monge, the illustrious mathematician, by the nomination of his equally illustrious friend Condorcet, was placed at the head of the Marine. Lebrun, a man of probity and untiring energy, was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Thus was the whole government effectually revolutionized and reorganized. During all the long hours of this day the royal family sat in the crowded Assembly almost suffocated with heat, and enduring anguish which no tongue can tell. The streets were filled with uproar, and the waves of popular tumult dashed against the old monastery of the Feuillans, even threatening to break in the doors. The regal victims listened to the decrees which tore the crown from the brow of the king, and which placed his sceptre in the hands of his most envenomed foes. In the conflict with the defenders of the palace, between three and four thousand of the populace had perished, in revenge for which nearly eight hundred of the inmates of the Tuileries had been massacred. The relatives of the slain citizens, exasperated beyond measure, were clamorous for the blood of the king as the cause of the death of their friends. There was no possible covert for the royal family but in the Assembly. Fifty armed soldiers, with bayonets fixed, surrounded them in their box, and yet it was every moment feared that the populace would break in and satiate their rage with the blood of the monarch and his family.

The king was ever famed for his ravenous appetite. Even in the midst of these terrific scenes he was hungry and called for food. Bread, wine, and cold viands were brought to him. He ate and drank voraciously to the extreme mortification of the queen, who could not but perceive how little respect the conduct of the king inspired. Neither she, Madame Elizabeth, nor the children could taste of any food. They merely occasionally moistened their fevered lips with iced water.

It was now ten o'clock in the evening. The night was calm and beautiful. The tumult of the day was over, but the terrific excitement of the scene had brought the whole population of Paris out into the promenades. Fireswere still blazing beneath the trees of the Tuileries, consuming the furniture which had been thrown from the windows of the chateau. Lurid flames flashed from the barracks of the Swiss in the court-yard, which had been set on fire, streaming over the roof of the palace, and illuminated both banks of the Seine.

The whole number slain during the day, Royalists and Revolutionists, amounted to over four thousand. Many of the dead had been removed by relatives, but the ground was still covered with the bodies of the slain, who were entirely naked, having been stripped of their clothing by those wretches who ever swarm in the streets of a great city, and who find their carnival in deeds of violence and blood. By order of the insurrectional committee at the Hôtel de Ville, who had deposed the municipal government and usurped its authority, these dead bodies were collected and piled in vast heaps in the court-yards, in the Garden, in the Place Louis XV., and in the Elysian Fields. Immense quantities of wood were thrown upon them, and the whole city was illuminated by the glare of these funeral fires. The Swiss and the Marsellais, the Royalists and the Jacobins, were consumed together, and the ashes were swept clean from the pavement into the Seine.

As these scenes at midnight were transpiring in the streets, the Assembly sent a summary of its decrees to be read by torch-light to the groups of the people. It was hoped that these decrees would satisfy them, and put a stop to any farther acts of violence on the morrow. It was two o'clock in the morning before the Assembly suspended its sitting. For seventeen hours the royal family had sat in the reporters' box, enduring all of humiliation and agony which human hearts can feel.

In the upper part of the old monastery, above the committee-rooms of the Assembly, there was a spacious corridor, from which opened several cells formerly used by the monks. These cells, with walls of stone and floors of brick, and entirely destitute of furniture, were as gloomy as the dungeons of a prison. Here only could the king and his family find safety for the night. Some articles of furniture were hastily collected from different parts of the building, and four of these rooms were prepared for the royal party. Five nobles, who had heroically adhered to the king in these hours of peril, occupied one, where, wrapped in their cloaks and stretched out upon the floor, they could still watch through the night over the monarch. The king took the next. It was furnished with a table, and a plain wooden bedstead. He bound a napkin around his head for a night-cap, and threw himself, but partially undressed, upon his uncurtained bed. The queen, with her two children, took the next cell. Madame Elizabeth, with the governess of the children, Madame de Tourzel, and the Princess Lamballe, who had joined the royal family in the evening, took the fourth. Thus, after thirty-six hours of sleeplessness and terror, the royal family were left to such repose as their agitated minds could attain.

The sun had long arisen when the queen awoke from her fevered slumber. She looked around her for a moment with an expression of anguish, and then, covering her eyes with her hands, exclaimed,

"Oh, I hoped that it had all been a dream!"

The whole party soon met in the apartment of the king. As MadameTourzel led in the two royal children, Marie Antoinette looked at them sadly, and said,

"Poor children! how heart-rending it is, instead of handing down to them so fine an inheritance, to say, it ends with us!"

"I still see, in imagination," writes Madame Campan, "and shall always see, that narrow cell of the Feuillans, hung with green paper; that wretched couch where the dethroned queen stretched out her arms to us, saying that our misfortunes, of which she was the cause, aggravated her own. There, for the last time, I saw the tears, I heard the sobs of her whom her high birth, the endowments of nature, and, above all, the goodness of her heart, had seemed to destine for the ornament of a throne and for the happiness of her people."

The tumult of the streets still penetrated their cells, and warned them that they had entered upon another day of peril. The excited populace were still hunting out the aristocrats, and killing them pitilessly wherever they could be found. At ten o'clock the royal family were conducted again to the Assembly, probably as the safest place they could occupy, and there they remained all day. Several of the Swiss had been taken prisoners on the previous day, and by humane people had been taken to the Assembly that their lives might be saved. The mob now clamored loudly at the door of the hall, and endeavored to break in, demanding the lives of the Swiss and of the escort of the king, calling them murderers of the people. Vergniaud, the president, was so shocked by their ferocity that he exclaimed, "Great God, what cannibals!"

At one time the doors were so nearly forced that the royal family were hurried into one of the passages, to conceal them from the mob. The king, fully convinced that the hour of his death had now come, entreated his friends to provide for their safety by flight. Heroically, every one persisted in sharing the fate of the king. Danton hastened to the Assembly, and exerted all his rough and rude energy to appease the mob. They were at length pacified by the assurance that the Swiss, and all others who had abetted in the slaughter of the people on the preceding day, should be tried by a court-martial and punished. With great difficulty the Assembly succeeded in removing the Swiss and the escort of the king to the prison of the Abbaye.

At the close of this day the king and his family were again conducted to their cells, but they were placed under a strict guard, and their personal friends were no longer permitted to accompany them. This last deprivation was a severe blow to them all, and the king said bitterly,

"I am, then, a prisoner, gentlemen. Charles I. was more fortunate than myself. His friends were permitted to accompany him to the scaffold."

Another morning dawned upon this unhappy family, and again they were led to the hall of the Assembly, where they passed the weary hours of another day in the endurance of all the pangs of martyrdom.

It was at length decided that the royal family, for safe keeping, should be imprisoned in the tower of the Temple. This massive, sombre building, in whose gloomy architecture were united the palace, the cloister, the fortress, and the prison, was erected and inhabited by the Knights Templar of theMiddle Ages. Having been long abandoned it was now crumbling to decay. It was an enormous pile which centuries had reared near the site of the Bastille, and with its palace, donjon, towers, and garden, which was choked with weeds and the débris of crumbling walls, covered a space of many acres.

THE TEMPLE.

The main tower was one hundred and fifty feet high, nine feet thick at the base, surrounded by a wide, deep ditch, and inclosed by an immensely high wall. This tower was ascended by a very narrow flight of circular stairs, and was divided into four stories, each containing a bare, dismal room about thirty feet square. The iron doors to these rooms were so low and narrow that it was necessary to stoop almost double to enter them. The windows, which were but slits in the thick wall, were darkened by slanting screens placed over them, and were also secured by stout iron bars.

Such were the apartments which were now assigned to the former occupants of the Tuileries, Versailles, and Fontainebleau. It was a weary ride for the royal captives through the Place Vendôme and along the Boulevards to the Temple. An immense crowd lined the road. All the royal family, with Pétion, the mayor, occupied one carriage, and the procession moved so slowly that for two hours the victims were exposed to the gaze of the populace before the carriages rolled under the arches of the Temple. It was latein the afternoon when they left the Assembly, and the shades of night darkened the streets ere they reached the Temple.

The Assembly had surrendered the safe-keeping of the king to the Commune of Paris, and appropriated one hundred thousand dollars to meet the expenses of the royal family until the king should be brought to trial. Conscious that an army of nearly two hundred thousand men was within a few days' march of Paris, hastening to rescue the king, and that there were thousands of Royalists in the city, and tens of thousands in France, who were ready at any moment to lay down their lives to secure the escape of the monarch, and conscious that the escape of the king would not only re-enslave France, but consign every friend of the Revolution to the dungeon or the scaffold, they found it necessary to adopt the most effectual measures to hold the king securely. They, therefore, would no longer allow the friends of the king to hold free communication with him.

The Temple itself, by outworks, had been promptly converted into a fortress, and was strongly garrisoned by the National Guard. Twelve commissioners were without interruption to keep watch of the king's person. No one was allowed to enter the tower of the Temple without permission of the municipality. Four hundred dollars were placed in the hands of the royal family for their petty expenses. They were not intrusted with more, lest it might aid them to escape. A single attendant, the king's faithful valet Clery,[358]was permitted to accompany the captives. It does not appear that the authorities wished to add unnecessary rigor to the imprisonment. Thirteen cooks were provided for the kitchen, that their table might be abundantly supplied. One of these only was allowed to enter the prison and aid Clery in serving at the table, the expenses of which for two months amounted to nearly six thousand dollars.[359]

It was an hour after midnight when the royal family were led from the apartments of the Temple to which they had first been conducted to their prison in the tower. The night was intensely dark. Dragoons with drawn sabres marched by the side of the king, while municipal officers with lanterns guided their steps. Through gloomy and dilapidated halls, beneath massive turrets, and along the abandoned paths of the garden, encumbered with weeds and stones, they groped their way until they arrived at the portals of the tower, whose summit was lost in the obscurity of night. As in perfect silence the sad procession was passing through the garden, a valet-de-chambre of the king inquired in a low tone of voice whither the king was to be conducted.

"Thy master," was the reply, "has been used to gilded roofs. Now he will see how the assassins of the people are lodged."

The three lower rooms of the tower were assigned to the captives. They had been accompanied by several of their friends who adhered to them in these hours of adversity. All were oppressed with gloom, and many shedbitter tears. Still they were not indespair. Powerful armies were marching for their rescue, and they thought it not possible that the French people, all unprepared for war, could resist such formidable assailants. A week thus passed away, when on the 19th the municipal officers entered and ordered the immediate expulsion of all not of the royal family. This harsh measure was deemed necessary in consequence of the conspiracies which were formed by the Royalists for the rescue of the king. Unfeeling jailers were now placed over them, and, totally uninformed of all that was passing in the world without, they sank into the extreme of woe.

FOOTNOTES:[355]"Napoleon se trouvait au 10ième Août à Paris; il avait été présent à l'action. Il m'écrevit une lettre très détaillée, que je lus à mes collègues du directoire du département; voici les deux traits principaux. 'Si Louis XVI. se fût montré à cheval la victoire lui fût restée; c'est ce qui m'a paru, à l'esprit qui animait les groupes le matin."'Après la victoire des Marseillais, j'en vis un sur le point de tuer un garde du corps; je lui dis,"'Homme du midi, sauvons ce malheureux!"'Es tu du midi?"'Oui!"'Eh, bien! sauvons le!'"—Mémoires du Roi Joseph, t. i., p. 47.[356]History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 77.[357]Danton was one of the fiercest of the Jacobins. Madame Roland, a political opponent, thus describes him: "I never saw any countenance that so strongly expressed the violence of brutal passions, and the most astonishing audacity, half disguised by a jovial air, an affectation of frankness, and a sort of simplicity, as Danton's. In 1778 he was a needy lawyer, more burdened with debts than causes. He went to Belgium to augment his resources, and, after the 10th of August, had the hardihood to avow a fortune of £158,333 ($791,665), and to wallow in luxury while preaching sans culottism and sleeping on heaps of slaughtered men." "Danton," says Mignet, "was a gigantic revolutionist. He deemed no means censurable so they were useful. He has been termed the Mirabeau of the populace. Mirabeau's vices were those of a patrician. Danton's those of a democrat. He was an absolute exterminator without being personally ferocious; inexorable toward masses, humane, generous even, toward individuals."—Mignet, p. 158.[358]"Clery we have seen and known, and the form and manners of that model of pristine faith and loyalty ran never be forgotten. Gentlemanlike and complaisant in his manners, his deep gravity and melancholy features announced that the sad scenes in which he had acted a part so honorable were never for a moment out of his memory."—Scott's Life of Napoleon.[359]Thiers's Hist. French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 26.

FOOTNOTES:

[355]"Napoleon se trouvait au 10ième Août à Paris; il avait été présent à l'action. Il m'écrevit une lettre très détaillée, que je lus à mes collègues du directoire du département; voici les deux traits principaux. 'Si Louis XVI. se fût montré à cheval la victoire lui fût restée; c'est ce qui m'a paru, à l'esprit qui animait les groupes le matin."'Après la victoire des Marseillais, j'en vis un sur le point de tuer un garde du corps; je lui dis,"'Homme du midi, sauvons ce malheureux!"'Es tu du midi?"'Oui!"'Eh, bien! sauvons le!'"—Mémoires du Roi Joseph, t. i., p. 47.

"'Après la victoire des Marseillais, j'en vis un sur le point de tuer un garde du corps; je lui dis,

"'Homme du midi, sauvons ce malheureux!

"'Es tu du midi?

"'Oui!

"'Eh, bien! sauvons le!'"—Mémoires du Roi Joseph, t. i., p. 47.

[356]History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 77.

[357]Danton was one of the fiercest of the Jacobins. Madame Roland, a political opponent, thus describes him: "I never saw any countenance that so strongly expressed the violence of brutal passions, and the most astonishing audacity, half disguised by a jovial air, an affectation of frankness, and a sort of simplicity, as Danton's. In 1778 he was a needy lawyer, more burdened with debts than causes. He went to Belgium to augment his resources, and, after the 10th of August, had the hardihood to avow a fortune of £158,333 ($791,665), and to wallow in luxury while preaching sans culottism and sleeping on heaps of slaughtered men." "Danton," says Mignet, "was a gigantic revolutionist. He deemed no means censurable so they were useful. He has been termed the Mirabeau of the populace. Mirabeau's vices were those of a patrician. Danton's those of a democrat. He was an absolute exterminator without being personally ferocious; inexorable toward masses, humane, generous even, toward individuals."—Mignet, p. 158.

[358]"Clery we have seen and known, and the form and manners of that model of pristine faith and loyalty ran never be forgotten. Gentlemanlike and complaisant in his manners, his deep gravity and melancholy features announced that the sad scenes in which he had acted a part so honorable were never for a moment out of his memory."—Scott's Life of Napoleon.

[359]Thiers's Hist. French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 26.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE MASSACRE OF THE ROYALISTS.

Supremacy of the Jacobins.—Their energetic Measures.—The Assembly threatened.—Commissioners sent to the Army.—Spirit of the Court Party in England.—Speech of Edmund Burke.—Triumphant March of the Allies.—The Nation summoneden masseto resist the Foe.—Murder of the Princess Lamballe.—Apology of the Assassins.—Robespierre and St. Just.—Views of Napoleon.

Themajestic armies of the Allies were now rapidly on the march toward France, and there was no force on the frontiers which could present any effectual resistance. La Fayette was at Sedan, about one hundred and fifty miles northwest of Paris, at the head of twenty thousand troops who were devoted to him. His opposition to the Jacobins had already caused him to be denounced as a traitor, and it was feared that he might go over to the enemy, and by his strong influence carry not only his own troops, but those of General Luckner with him. The condition of the Patriots was apparently desperate. The Allies were confident of a triumphant and a rapid march to Paris, where all who had sacrilegiously laid hands upon the old despotism of France would be visited with condign punishment.

The Jacobin Club was now the sovereign power in France. It was more numerous than the Legislative Assembly, and its speakers, more able and impassioned, had perfect control of the populace. The Jacobins had, by the insurrection, or rather revolution of the 10th of August, organized a new municipal government. Whatever measure the Jacobin Club decided to have enforced it sent to the committee which the club had organized as the city government at the Hôtel de Ville. This committee immediately demanded the passage of the decree by the Legislative Assembly. If the Assembly manifested any reluctance in obeying, they were informed that the tocsin would be rung, the populace summoned, and the scenes of the 10th of August renewed, to make them willing. Such was now the new government instituted in France.

TheCommune of Paris, as this municipal body at the Hôtel de Ville was called, immediately entered upon the most vigorous measures to break up the conspiracy of the Royalists, that they might not be able to rise and join the invading armies of the Allies. The French Patriots had two foes equally formidable to dread—the emigrants with the Allies marching upon the frontiers, composing an army nearly two hundred thousand strong, and the Royalists in France, who were ready, as soon as the Allies entered the kingdom,to raise the standard of civil war, and to fall upon the Patriots with exterminating hand. There was thus left for the leaders of the Revolution only the choice between killing and being killed. It was clear that they must now either exterminate their foes or be exterminated by them. And it must on all hands be admitted that the king and the court, by refusing to accept constitutional liberty, had brought the nation to this direful alternative.

To prevent suspected persons from escaping, no one was allowed to leave the gates of Paris without the most careful scrutiny of his passport. A list was made out of every individual known to be unfriendly to the Revolution, and all such were placed under the most vigilant surveillance. The citizens were enjoined to denounce all who had taken any part in the slaughter of the citizens on the 10th of August. All writers who had supported the Royalist cause were ordered to be arrested, and their presses were given to Patriotic writers. Commissioners were sent to the prisons to release all who had been confined for offenses against the court. As it was feared that the army, influenced by La Fayette, might manifest hostility to the revolutionary movement in Paris, which had so effectually demolished the Constitution, commissioners were sent to enlighten the soldiers and bring them over to the support of the people. It was at first contemplated to assign the palace of the Luxembourg as the retreat of the royal family. The Commune of Paris, however, decided that the public safety required that they should be held in custody where escape would be impossible, and that their safe-keeping should be committed to the mayor, Pétion, and to Santerre, who had been appointed commander of the National Guards.

The Assembly, alarmed at the encroachments of the self-constitutedCommune of Paris, ordered a re-election of a municipal government to take the place of that which the insurrection had dissolved. The Commune instantly dispatched a committee to inform the Assembly that if they made any farther move in that direction the tocsin should again be rung, and that the populace, who had stormed the Tuileries, should be directed against their hall. The deputies, overawed by the threat, left the Commune in undisputed possession of its power. The Commune now demanded of the Assembly the appointment of a special tribunal to punish the Royalists who had fired upon the people from the Tuileries, and those who "as conspirators and traitors" were ready to join the Allies as soon as they should enter France. The Assembly hesitated. The Commune sent Robespierre at the head of a deputation to inform them in those emphatic terms which he ever had at his command, that the country was in danger, that the Allies and emigrants were on the march, that no delay could be tolerated, and that if the decree were not immediately passedthe tocsin should be rung. The appalling threat was efficient, and the decree, though some heroically opposed, was passed.[360]Such was the origin of the first revolutionary tribunal.

LA FAYETTE IN PRISON AT OLMUTZ.

As soon as the commissioners from Paris arrived at the camp of La Fayette they were by his orders arrested and imprisoned, and the soldiers took anew the oath of fidelity to thelawand theking. The news of their arrest reached Paris on the 17th, and excited intense irritation. La Fayette was denounced more vehemently than ever, and a fresh deputation was dispatched to the army. La Fayette was now ruined. The court was ready to hang him for his devotion to liberty. The Jacobins thirsted for his blood because he thwarted their plans. Every hour his situation became more desperate, and it was soon evident that he could do no more for his country, and that there was no refuge for him but in flight. On the 20th, accompanied by a few friends, he secretly left his army, and took the road to the Netherlands. When he reached the Austrian outposts at Rochefort, he was arrested as a criminal in defiance of all law. With great secrecy he was taken into the interior of Austria, and thrown into a dungeon in the impregnable fortress of Olmutz. His only crime was that he had wished to introduceconstitutional libertyto his country. This, in the eye of despots, was an unpardonable sin. Here we must leave him to languish five years in captivity, deprived of every comfort. Many efforts were made in vain for his release. Washington wrote directly to the Emperor of Austria in his behalf, but without effect. It was not till Napoleon, thundering at the walls of Vienna with his invincible legions, demanded the release of La Fayette, in 1797, that the doors of his dungeon were thrown open.[361]

The Britishpeoplesympathized deeply with La Fayette, but the Britishgovernmentassailed him with unrelenting ferocity. On the 17th of March, 1794, General Fitzpatrick moved an address in the House of Commons, to his majesty, requesting his interference with the King of Prussia in behalf of La Fayette. Mr. Fox advocated the measure in a speech of great eloquence and power. Nothing can more clearly show the spirit of the court party in England at this time than the speeches made by them on this occasion. William Pitt assailed La Fayette in the most unfeeling manner, declaring that "he would never admit that La Fayette was a true friend of liberty or deserved well of his country or of Europe." "He said," writes Prof. Smyth, "every thing that it is painful to read—he was rendered insensible on this occasion to all the better notions of his education and natural intuitions of his understanding. There is no pleasure in reading the abstract of his speech. It might have been made by the most vulgar minister that ever appeared." Edmund Burke followed in a speech of unmeasured abuse. In glowing colors he depicted all the scenes of violence which had occurred in France, and, declaring La Fayette responsible for them all, concluded with the words, "I would not debauch my humanity by supporting an application like the present in behalf of such a horrid ruffian."[362]Mr. Windham followed in the same strain. He expressed exultation in view of the calamities which had fallen upon this great patriot. "La Fayette," said he, "has brought himself into that state into which all fomenters of great and ruinous revolutions must necessarily fall; he has betrayed and ruined his country and his king. I am not sorry. I rejoice to see such men drink deep of the cup of calamity which they have prepared for the lips of others; and I never will consent to do an act which will put a premium on revolution, and which will give the example of sanction to treason, and of reward to rebellion."

Such was the spirit of the court of St. James at this time. These speeches were made after La Fayette had been languishing for two years in the dungeons of Olmutz, exposed to almost every conceivable indignity, the particulars of which Mr. Fox had affectingly narrated. The debate was concluded by Mr. Dundas, who thanked Mr. Windham for his admirable speech. When the vote was taken but fifty were found in sympathy with La Fayette, while one hundred and thirty-two voted against him.

The two sovereigns of Prussia and Austria were now at Mayence. Sixty thousand Prussians were marching in single column by Luxembourg upon Longwy, flanked on the right by twenty thousand Austrians, and on the left by twenty-six thousand Austrians and Hessians. This majestic force was strengthened by several co-operating corps of French emigrants, destined to attack exposed positions, and to afford rallying points for treason. The invaders crossed the frontiers unimpeded, and after a short and bloody strife captured Longwy. Onward they rushed. The feeble, undisciplined patriots, could make no resistance, and fled rapidly before them. Thionville and Verdun were surrounded, and after a short but terrific storm of balls and shells capitulated. There were many Royalists in each of these towns, and they received the invaders with every demonstration of joy. Their daughters in congratulatory procession met the King of Prussia at the gates and strewed his path with flowers.

The garrison of Verdun might have held out for several days, though they would have eventually been compelled to surrender. General Beaurepaire urged very strenuously that they should maintain the siege to the last possible moment. But the defensive council of the city, with whom rested the decision, voted an immediate capitulation.

"Gentlemen," said Beaurepaire, "I have sworn never to surrender but with my life. You may live in disgrace, since you wish it; but as for me, faithful to my oath, behold my last words:I die free."

Immediately he discharged a pistol-shot through his brain, and fell dead before them. The Convention decreed to him the honors of the Pantheon, and granted a pension to his widow.

SUICIDE OF BEAUREPAIRE.

The victorious allies, having surmounted these first obstacles, now plunged into the defiles of the Argonne, and in fierce and bloody assaults drove before them the troops of Dumouriez, who had hoped in these forest-encumbered passes to present effectual resistance to the foe. The invaders werenow triumphantly marching on the high-road to Paris, and fugitives were continually arriving in the metropolis, declaring that the army of the north was destroyed, and that there was no longer any obstacle to the advance of the enemy. No language can describe the consternation which pervaded the capital. The exultation in the enemy's camp was immense. The "cobblers and tailors," as the emigrants contemptuously called the Patriots, were running away, it was said, like sheep.[363]

As each day brought tidings of the fearful strides which the Allies were making toward the capital, indescribable terror was enkindled. The Constitutionalists and the Girondists were utterly paralyzed. But the leaders of the Jacobins—Danton, Robespierre, and Marat—resolved that, if they were to perish, their Royalist enemies should perish with them. It was known that the Royalists intended, as soon as the Allies should be in Paris, to rise, liberate the king, and with the immense moral force they would attain by having the king at their head, join the invaders. Nothing would then remain for the Revolutionists but exile, death, and the dungeon.[364]

It was now with them but a desperate struggle for life. They must either destroy or be destroyed. The first great peril to be apprehended was the rising of the Royalists in Paris. The barriers were immediately ordered to be closed, and guard-boats were stationed on the river that no one might escape. At the beat of the drum every individual was enjoined to repair to his home. Commissioners then, accompanied by an armed force, visited every dwelling. Party lines were so distinctly drawn that the Royalists could not easily escape detection. At the knock of the commissioners they held their breath with terror. Many attempted concealment in chimneys, in cellar-vaults, beneath the floors, and in recesses covered by pictures of tapestry. But workmen, accustomed to all such arts, accompanied the commissioners. Chimneys were smoked, doors burst open, and cellars, floors, and walls sounded. In one short night five thousand suspected persons were torn from their homes and dragged to prison. Every man was deemed guilty who could not prove his devotion to the popular cause.[365]

Still the enemy was approaching. "In three days," rumor said, "the Prussians will be in Paris." The whole city was in a state of phrensy, and ready for any deed of desperation which could rescue them from their peril. Danton entered the Assembly and ascended the tribune with pallid face and compressed lips. Silence, as of the grave, awaited his utterance.

"The enemy," said he, "threatens the kingdom, and the Assembly must prove itself worthy of the nation. It is by a convulsion that we have overthrown despotism; it is only by another vast national convulsion that we shall drive back the despots. It is time to urge the people to precipitate themselvesen masseagainst their enemies. The French nation wills to be free, and it shall be."

There was lurking beneath these words a terrible significance then little dreamed of. Jacobins and Girondists were now united by the pressure of a common and a terrible danger. A decree was immediately passed for every citizen in Paris capable of bearing arms to repair to the Field of Mars, there to be enrolled to march to repel the Allies. It was the morning of the Sabbath. Thegénéralewas beat, the tocsin rung, alarm-guns fired, and placards upon the walls, and the voice of public criers, summoned every able-bodied man to the appointed rendezvous. The philosophic Vergniaud, in a word, explained to Paris the necessity and the efficacy of the measure.[366]

"The plan of the enemy," said he, "is to march directly to the capital, leaving the fortresses behind him. Let him do so. This course will be our salvation and his ruin. Our armies, too weak to withstand him, will be strong enough to harass him in the rear. When he arrives, pursued by our battalions, he will find himself face to face with our Parisian army drawn up in battle array under the walls of the capital. There, surrounded on all sides, he will be swallowed up by the soil which he has profaned."

In the midst of the uproar of the multitudes surging through the streets, as the bells were ringing, drums beating, and the armed citizens hurrying to the Field of Mars, the rumor was widely circulated that the Royalists had formed a conspiracy to strike down their jailers, break from their prisons, liberate the king, take possession of the city, rally all their confederates around them, and thus throw open the gates of Paris to the Prussians. It was manifest to all that, in the confusion which then reigned, and when the thunders of the Prussian and Austrian batteries were hourly expected to be heard from the heights of Montmartre, this was far from an impracticable plan. It was certain that the Royalists would attempt it, whether they had already formed such a plan or not.

It is, however, probable that shrewd men, foreseeing this peril, had deliberately resolved to hurl the mob of Paris upon the prisons for the assassinationof all the Royalists, before emptying the city of its defenders to march to meet the foe. While the bewildered masses were in this state of terrific excitement, six hackney-coaches left the Hôtel de Ville, conducting twenty-four Royalist priests, who had refused to take the oath, to the prisons of the Abbaye. The people crowding around and following the carriages began to murmur. "Here are the traitors," said they, "who intend to murder our wives and children while we are on the frontiers."

The first carriage reached the door of the prison. One priest alighted. He was instantly seized, and fell pierced by a thousand poniards. It was the signal for the slaughter of the whole. The murderers fell upon every carriage, and in a few moments all but one, who miraculously escaped, were slain. This hideous massacre roused the populace as the tiger is roused when he has once lapped his tongue in blood. The cry was raised, "To the Carmelites, to the Carmelites." In this prison two hundred priests were confined. The mob broke in and butchered them all.

BUTCHERY AT THE CARMELITES.

A man by the name of Maillard headed this mob, which consisted of but a few hundred men. Having finished the work at the Carmelites and gorged themselves with wine, Maillard exclaimed, "Now to the Abbaye." The blood-stained crew rushed after him through the streets, and dashed in the doors of the prison. The Abbaye was filled with debtors and ordinary convicts as well as suspected aristocrats. As the mob rushed into the corridor one of the jailers mounted a stool, and, addressing the assassins, said, "My friends, you wish to destroy the aristocrats, who are the enemies of the people, and who meant to murder your wives and children while you were at the frontiers. You are right no doubt; but you are good citizens; you love justice; and you would be very sorry to steep your hands in innocent blood."

"Yes, certainly," one of the leaders replied.

"Well, then," continued the jailer, "when you are rushing like furious tigers upon men who are strangers to you, are you not liable to confound the innocent with the guilty?"

These thoughts seemed to impress them, and it was immediately decided that Maillard should judge each prisoner. He took his seat at a table; the prison list was placed in his hands, and the prisoners, one by one, were brought before his prompt and terrible tribunal. It was agreed, in order to spare unnecessary suffering, that when the judge should say, "Sir, you must go to the prison of La Force," as soon as the prisoner was led out into the court-yard he should be cut down.

A Swiss officer was first brought forward. "It was you," said Maillard, "who murdered the people on the 10th of August."

"We were attacked," the unfortunate man replied, "and only obeyed our superior officers."

"Very well," said Maillard, "we must send you to the prison of La Force."

He was led into the court-yard and instantly slain. Every Swiss soldier in the prison met the same fate. Thus the work went on with terrible expedition until one hundred and eighty were put to death. All the women were left unharmed. Many who were brought before the tribunal were acquitted, and the crowd manifested great joy in rescuing them as their friends. Amid these horrid scenes there were some gleams of humanity. The Governor of the Invalides was doomed to death. His daughter clasped her father in her arms and clung to him so despairingly that the hearts of the assassins were melted. One, in a strange freak, presented her with a cup of blood, saying, "If you would save your father drink this blood of an aristocrat." She seized the cup and drained it. Shouts of applause greeted the act, and her father was saved.[367]

All the night long these horrid scenes were continued. Every prison in Paris witnessed the same massacres, accompanied with every conceivable variety of horrors.

The unfortunate Princess Lamballe, bosom friend of Marie Antoinette, was confined in the prison of La Force. She was brought before the revolutionary judge, and after a brief interrogation she was ordered to "swear to love liberty and equality; to swear to hate the king, the queen, and royalty." "I will take the first oath," the princess replied; "the second I can not take; it is not in my heart." One of the judges, wishing to save her, whispered in her ear, "Swear every thing or you are lost." But the unhappy princess was now utterly bewildered with terror, and could neither see nor hear. Her youth and beauty touched the hearts even of many of these brutal men. They desired her rescue, and endeavored to lead her safely through the crowd. Cry out, said they, 'long live the nation,' and you will not be harmed. But as she beheld the pavement strewn with corpses of the slain, she could not utter a word. Her silence was taken for defiance. A sabre blow struck her down. The murderers fell upon her like famished wolves upon a lamb. Her body was cut into fragments, and a band of wretches, with her head and heart upon pikes, shouted "Let us carry them to the foot of the throne." They rushed through the streets to theTemple, and shouted for the king and queen to look out at the windows. A humane officer, to shield them from the awful sight, informed them of the horrors which were transpiring. The queen fainted. As the king and Madame Elizabeth bent over her, for hours they were appalled by the clamor of the rabble around the walls of the Temple.

At last the prisons were emptied, and the murderers themselves became weary of blood. It is impossible to ascertain the numbers who perished. The estimate varies from six to twelve thousand. The Commune of Paris, which was but the servant of the Jacobin Club, issued orders that no more blood should be shed. Assuming that the assassination was demanded by the public danger, and that the wretches who had perpetrated it had performed a patriotic though a painful duty, they rewarded them for their work. Nothing can more clearly show the terrible excitation of the public mind, produced by a sense of impending danger, than that a circular should have been addressed to all the communes of France, giving an account of the massacre as a necessary and a praiseworthy deed. In this extraordinary memorial, signed by the Administrators of the Committee of Surveillance, the writers say,

"Brethren and Friends,—A horrid plot, hatched by the court, to murder all the Patriots of the French empire, a plot in which a great number of members of the National Assembly are implicated, having, on the ninth of last month, reduced the Commune of Paris to the cruel necessity of employing the power of the people to save the nation, it has not neglected any thing to deserve well of the country."Apprised that barbarous hordes are advancing against it, the Commune of Paris hastens to inform its brethren in all the departments that part of the ferocious conspirators confined in the prisons have been put to death by the people—acts of justice which appear to it indispensable for repressing by terror the legions of traitors encompassed by its walls, at the moment when the people were about to march against the enemy; and no doubt the nation, after the long series of treasons which have brought it to the brink of the abyss, will eagerly adopt this useful and necessary expedient; and all the French will say, like the Parisians, 'We are marching against the enemy, and we will not leave behind us brigands to murder our wives and children.'"

"Apprised that barbarous hordes are advancing against it, the Commune of Paris hastens to inform its brethren in all the departments that part of the ferocious conspirators confined in the prisons have been put to death by the people—acts of justice which appear to it indispensable for repressing by terror the legions of traitors encompassed by its walls, at the moment when the people were about to march against the enemy; and no doubt the nation, after the long series of treasons which have brought it to the brink of the abyss, will eagerly adopt this useful and necessary expedient; and all the French will say, like the Parisians, 'We are marching against the enemy, and we will not leave behind us brigands to murder our wives and children.'"

The instigators of these atrocious deeds defended the measure as one of absolute necessity. "We must all go," it was said, "to fight the Prussians, and we can not leave these foes behind us, to rise and take the city and assail us in the rear." "If they had been allowed to live," others said, "in a few days we should have been murdered. It was strictly an act of self-defense." Danton ever avowed his approval of the measure, and said, "I looked my crime steadfastly in the face and I did it." Marat is reproached as having contributed to the deed.[368]Robespierre appears to have given hisassent to the massacre with reluctance, but it is in evidence that he walked his chamber through the whole night in agony, unable to sleep.

At eleven o'clock at night of this 2d of September Robespierre and St. Just retired together from the Jacobin Club to the room of the latter. St. Just threw himself upon the bed for sleep. Robespierre exclaimed in astonishment,

"What, can you think of sleeping on such a night? Do you not hear the tocsin? Do you not know that this night will be the last to perhaps thousands of our fellow-creatures, who are men at the moment you fall asleep, and when you awake will be lifeless corpses?"

"I know it," replied St. Just, "and deplore it; and I wish that I could moderate the convulsions of society; but what am I?" then, turning in his bed, he fell asleep. In the morning, as he awoke, he saw Robespierre pacing the chamber with hasty steps, occasionally stopping to look out of the window, and listening to the noises in the streets. "What, have you not slept?" asked St. Just.

"Sleep!" cried Robespierre; "sleep while hundreds of assassins murdered thousands of victims, and their pure or impure blood runs like water down the streets! Oh no! I have not slept. I have watched like remorse or crime. I have had the weakness not to close my eyes, butDanton, he has slept."[369]

Paris was at this time in a state of such universal consternation, the government so disorganized, and the outbreak so sudden and so speedy in its execution, that the Legislative Assembly, which was not in sympathy with the mob, and which was already overawed, ventured upon no measures of resistance.[370]

But there can be no excuse offered in palliation of such crimes. Language is too feeble to express the horror with which they ever must be regarded by every generous soul. But while we consign to the deepest infamy the assassins of September, to equal infamy let those despots be consigned who, in the fierce endeavor to rivet the chains of slavery anew upon twenty-five millions of freemen, goaded a nation to such hideous madness. The allied despots of Europe roused the people to a phrensy of despair, and thus drove them to the deed. Let it never be forgotten that it wasdespotism, notliberty, which planted the tree which bore this fruit. If the government of a country be such that there is no means of redress for the oppressed people but inthe horrors of insurrection, that country must bide its doom, for, sooner or later, an outraged people will rise. While, therefore, we contemplate with horror the outrages committed by the insurgent people, with still greater horror must we contemplate the outrages perpetrated by proud oppressors during long ages, consigning the people to ignorance and degradation. They whobrutalizea people should be the last to complain that, when these people rise in the terribleness of their might, they behavelike brutes. There is no safety for any nation but in the education, piety, and liberty of its masses.[371]

The Duke of Brunswick, urging resistlessly on his solid columns, battering down fortresses, plunging through defiles, anticipated no check. But on the 20th of September, to his great surprise, he encountered a formidable army intrenched upon the heights of Valmy, near Chalons, apparently prepared for firm resistance. Here Dumouriez, with much military skill, had rallied his retreating troops. All France had been roused and was rushing eagerly to his support. Paris, no longer fearing a rise of the Royalists, was dispatching several thousand thoroughly-armed men from the gates every day to strengthen the camp at Valmy, which was hardly a hundred miles from Paris. Dumouriez, when first assailed, had less than forty thousand troops in his intrenchments, but the number rapidly increased to over seventy thousand.

These were nearly all inexperienced soldiers, but they were inspired with intense enthusiasm, all struggling for national independence, and many conscious that defeat would but conduct them to the scaffold. Macdonald,[372]who afterward so gloriously led the columns at Wagram, and Kellerman, who subsequently headed the decisive charge at Marengo, were aids of Dumouriez. Louis Philippe also, then the Duke of Chartres and eldest son of the Duke of Orleans, signalized himself on the patriot side at the stern strife of Valmy.

The Duke of Brunswick brought forward his batteries and commenced a terrific cannonade. Column after column was urged against the redoubts. But the young soldiers of France, shoutingVive la Nation, bravely repulsed every assault. The Prussians, to their inexpressible chagrin, found it impossible to advance a step. Here the storm of battle raged with almost incessant fury for twenty days. The French were hurrying from all quarters to the field; the supplies of the invaders were cut off; dysentery broke out in their camp; autumnal rains drenched them; winter was approaching; andthey were compelled, in discomfiture and humiliation, to turn upon their track and retire.

On the 15th of October the Allies abandoned their camp and commenced a retreat. They retired in good order, and recrossed the frontier, leaving behind them twenty-five thousand, who had perished by sickness, the bullet, and the sword. Dumouriez did not pursue them with much vigor, for the army of the Allies was infinitely superior in discipline to the raw troops under his command.

Winter was now at hand, during which no external attack upon France was to be feared. All government was disorganized, and the question which agitated every heart was, "What shall be done with the king?"

The Duke of Chartres, subsequently Louis Philippe, King of the French, then a young man but seventeen years of age, after vigorously co-operating with Dumouriez in repelling the invaders, returned to Paris. He presented himself at the audience of Servan, Minister of War, to complain of some injustice. Danton was present, and, taking the young duke aside, said to him,

"What do you do here? Servan is but the shadow of a minister. He can neither help nor harm you. Call on me to-morrow and I will arrange your business."

The next day Danton, the powerful plebeian, received the young patrician with an air of much affected superiority. "Well, young man," said he, "I am informed that your language resembles murmurs; that you blame the great measures of government; that you express compassion for the victims and hatred for the executioners. Beware; patriotism does not admit of lukewarmness, and you have to obtain pardon for your great name."

The young prince boldly replied, "The army looks with horror on bloodshed any where but on the battle-field. The massacres of September seem in their eyes to dishonor liberty."

"You are too young," Danton replied, "to judge of these events; to comprehend these you must be in our place. For the future be silent. Return to the army; fight bravely; but do not rashly expose your life. France does not love a republic; she has the habits, the weaknesses, the need of a monarchy. After our storms she will return to it, either through her vices or necessities, and you will be king. Adieu, young man. Remember the prediction of Danton."[373]

In reference to these scenes Napoleon remarked at St. Helena, on the 3d of September, 1816, "To-day is the anniversary of a hideous remembrance; of the massacres of September, the St. Bartholomew of the French Revolution. The atrocities of the 3d of September were not committed under the sanction of government, which, on the contrary, used its endeavors to punish the crime. The massacres were committed by the mob of Paris, and were the result of fanaticism rather than of absolute brutality. The Septembriseurs did not pillage, they only wished to murder. They even hanged one of their own party for having appropriated a watch which belonged to one of their victims.

"This dreadful event arose out of the force of circumstances and the spirit of the moment. We must acknowledge that there has been no politicalchange unattended by popular fury, as soon as the masses enter into action. The Prussian army had arrived within one hundred miles of Paris. The famous manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick was placarded on all the walls of the city. The people had persuaded themselves that the death of all the Royalists in Paris was indispensable to the safety of the Revolution. They ran to the prisons and intoxicated themselves with blood, shoutingVive la Revolution. Their energy had an electric effect, from the fear with which it inspired one party, and the example which it gave to the other. One hundred thousand volunteers joined the army, and the Revolution was saved.

"I might have preserved my crown by turning loose the masses of the people against the advocates of the restoration. You well recollect, Montholon, when, at the head of yourfaubouriens, you wished to punish the treachery of Fouché and proclaim my dictatorship. I did not choose to do so. My whole soul revolted at the thought of being king of another mob. As a general rule no social revolution can take place without terror. Every revolution is in principle a revolt, which time and success ennoble and render legal, but of which terror has been one of the inevitable phases. How, indeed, can we say to those who possess fortune and public situations, 'Begone and leave us your fortunes and your situations,' without first intimidating them, and rendering any defense impossible. In France this point was effected by the lantern and the guillotine."[374]

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