Chapter 20

FOOTNOTES:[401]Thomas Jefferson, during his residence in Paris, formed a very unfavorable opinion of Marie Antoinette. Speaking of the good intentions of Louis XVI., he says, "But he had a queen of absolute sway over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke with some smartness of fancy but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate gamblings and dissipations, with those of the Count d'Artois and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit led herself to the guillotine, drew the king on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and calamities which will for ever stain the pages of modern history. I have ever believed that had there been no queen there would have been no revolution. The king would have gone hand in hand with the wisdom of his sounder counselors, who, guided by the increased lights of the age, wished only, with the same pace, to advance the principles of their social Constitution. The deed which closed the mortal course of these sovereigns I shall neither approve nor condemn."—Life of Jefferson, by Randall, vol i., p. 533.As Jefferson was intimate with La Fayette and other prominent popular leaders, it is evident that these views were those which were generally entertained of the queen at that time. It is deeply to be regretted that no subsequent developments can lead one to doubt that they were essentially correct. While we weep over the woes of the queen we must not forget that she was endeavoring with all her energy to rivet the chains of unlimited despotism upon twenty-five millions of people.

FOOTNOTES:

[401]Thomas Jefferson, during his residence in Paris, formed a very unfavorable opinion of Marie Antoinette. Speaking of the good intentions of Louis XVI., he says, "But he had a queen of absolute sway over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke with some smartness of fancy but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate gamblings and dissipations, with those of the Count d'Artois and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit led herself to the guillotine, drew the king on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and calamities which will for ever stain the pages of modern history. I have ever believed that had there been no queen there would have been no revolution. The king would have gone hand in hand with the wisdom of his sounder counselors, who, guided by the increased lights of the age, wished only, with the same pace, to advance the principles of their social Constitution. The deed which closed the mortal course of these sovereigns I shall neither approve nor condemn."—Life of Jefferson, by Randall, vol i., p. 533.As Jefferson was intimate with La Fayette and other prominent popular leaders, it is evident that these views were those which were generally entertained of the queen at that time. It is deeply to be regretted that no subsequent developments can lead one to doubt that they were essentially correct. While we weep over the woes of the queen we must not forget that she was endeavoring with all her energy to rivet the chains of unlimited despotism upon twenty-five millions of people.

As Jefferson was intimate with La Fayette and other prominent popular leaders, it is evident that these views were those which were generally entertained of the queen at that time. It is deeply to be regretted that no subsequent developments can lead one to doubt that they were essentially correct. While we weep over the woes of the queen we must not forget that she was endeavoring with all her energy to rivet the chains of unlimited despotism upon twenty-five millions of people.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE JACOBINS TRIUMPHANT.

Views of the Girondists.—Anecdote of Vergniaud.—The Girondists brought to Trial.—Suicide of Valazé.—Anguish of Desmoulins.—Fonfrede and Ducos.—Last Supper of the Girondists.—Their Execution.—The Duke of Orleans; his Execution.—Activity of the Guillotine.—Humane Legislation.—Testimony of Desodoards.—Anacharsis Cloots.—The New Era.

TheJacobins now resolved to free themselves from all internal foes, that they might more vigorously cope with all Europe in arms against them. Marie Antoinette was executed the 16th of October. On the 22d, the Girondists, twenty-two in number, were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. They were the most illustrious men of the most noble party to which the Revolution had given birth. They had demolished a despotic throne that they might establish a constitutional monarchy upon the model of that of England.[402]With great generosity they had placed Louis XVI. on that throne, and he had feigned to accept the Constitution. But with hypocrisy which even his subsequent woes can not obliterate, he secretly rallied his nobles around him, or rather allowed them to use him as their leader, and appealed to the armies of foreign despotisms to overthrow the free Constitution and re-establish the old feudal tyranny.

"The question thenceforth was, whether their sons should, as in times past (as in Mr. Burke's splendid Age of Chivalry), be sent to manure Europe with their bodies, in wars undertaken at the nod of a courtesan—whether their wives and daughters, cursed with beauty enough to excite a transient emotion of sensuality, should be lured and torn from them and debauched—whether every man who dared to utter a manly political thought or to assert his rights against rank should be imprisoned at pleasure without a hearing—whether the toiling masses, for the purpose of supporting lascivious splendor, of buildingParcs aux Cerfs, of pensioning discarded mistresses, of swiftly enriching corrupt favorites and minions of every stamp, should be so taxed that the light and air of heaven hardly came to them untaxed, and that they should be so sunk by exactions of every kind in the dregs of indigence that a short crop compelled them to live on food that the hounds, if not the swine, of their task-masters would reject; and, finally, whether, when, in the bloody sweat of their agony, they asked some mitigation of their hard fate, they should be answered by the bayonets of foreign mercenaries; and a people—stout manhood, gentle womanhood, gray-haired age, and tender infancy, turned their pale faces upward and shrieked for food, fierce, licentious nobles should scornfully bid them eat grass."[403]

In this terrible dilemma, the Girondists felt compelled to abandon the newly-established Constitutional monarchy, which had proved treacherous to its trust, and to fall back upon a republic, as their only asylum from destruction, and as the only possible refuge for French liberty. But the populace of France, ignorant and irreligious, were unfitted for a republic. Universal suffrage threw the power into the hands of millions of newly-emancipated slaves. Violence and blood commenced their reign. The Girondists in vain endeavored to stem the flood. They were overwhelmed. Such is their brief history.

The Girondists had been for some time confined in the dungeons of the Conciergerie. They were in a state of extreme misery. Vergniaud, one of the most noble and eloquent of men, was their recognized leader. His brother-in-law, M. Alluaud, came to the prison to bring him some money. A child of M. Alluaud, ten years of age, accompanied his father. Seeing his uncle with sunken eyes and haggard cheeks and disordered hair, and with his garments falling in tatters around him, the child was terrified, and, bursting into tears, clung to his father's knees.

"My child," said Vergniaud, taking him in his lap, "look well at me. When you are a man you can say that you saw Vergniaud, the founder of the Republic, at the most glorious period, and in the most splendid costume he ever wore—that in which he suffered the persecution of wretches, and in which he prepared to die for liberty."

The child remembered these words, and repeated them fifty years after to Lamartine. At ten o'clock in the morning of the 26th of October the accused were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Two files ofgens d'armesconducted them into the hall of audience and placed them on the prisoners' bench.[404]Theact of accusation, drawn up by Robespierre and St. Just,[405]from an exceedingly envenomed pamphlet written by Camille Desmoulins, entitledHistory of the Faction of the Gironde, was long and bitter. The trial lasted several days.

On the 30th of October, at eight o'clock in the evening, the debate was closed. At midnight they were summoned to the bar to hear the verdict of the jury. It declared them all guilty of treason, and condemned them to die in the morning. One of the condemned, Valazé, immediately plunged a concealed poniard into his heart, and fell dead upon the floor. Camille Desmoulins, on hearing the verdict, was overwhelmed with remorse, and cried out,

"It is my pamphlet which has killed them. Wretch that I am, I can notbear the sight of my work. I feel their blood fall on the hand that has denounced them."

There were two brothers, Fonfrede and Ducos, among the condemned, sitting side by side, both under twenty-eight years of age. Fonfrede threw his arms around the neck of Ducos, and bursting into tears said,

"My dear brother, I cause your death; but we shall die together."

Vergniaud sat in silence, with an expression of proud defiance and contempt. Lasource repeated the sententious saying of one of the ancients, "I die on the day when the people have lost their reason. You will die when they have recovered it." As they left the court to return to their cells, there to prepare for the guillotine, they spontaneously struck up together the hymn of the Marseillais:

"Allons, enfans de la patrie,Le jour de gloire est arrivé;Contre nous de la tyrannieL'étendard sanglant est levé."[406]

As they passed along the corridors of the prison, their sublime requiem echoed along the gloomy vaults, and awoke the sleepers in the deepest dungeons. They were all placed in one large room opening into several cells. The lifeless body of Valazé was deposited in one of the corners; for, by a decree of the Tribunal, his remains were to be taken in the cart of the condemned to be beheaded with the rest. A sumptuous banquet was sent in to them by their friends as their last repast. The table was richly spread, decorated with flowers, and supplied with all the delicacies which Paris could furnish. A Constitutional priest, the Abbé Lambert, a friend of the Girondists, had obtained admission to the prison, to administer to them the last supports of religion and to accompany them to the guillotine. To him we are indebted for the record of these last scenes.

Vergniaud, thirty-five years of age, presided. He had but little to bind him to life, having neither father nor mother, wife nor child. In quietness and with subdued tones they partook of their repast. When the cloth was removed, and the flowers and the wine alone remained, the conversation became more animated. The young men attempted with songs and affected gayety to disarm death of its terror; but Vergniaud, rallying to his aid his marvelous eloquence, endeavored to recall them to more worthy thoughts.

"My friends," said he, sorrowing more over the misfortunes of the Republic than over his own, "we have killed the tree by pruning it. It was too aged. The soil is too weak to nourish the roots of civic, liberty. This people is too childish to wield its laws without hurting itself. It will return to its kings as babes return to their toys. We were deceived as to the age in which we were born and in which we die for the freedom of the world."

"What shall we be doing to-morrow at this time?" asked Ducos. Each answered according to his skepticism or his faith. Vergniaud again spake. "Never," says the Abbé Lambert, "had his look, his gesture, his language,and his voice more profoundly affected his hearers." His discourse was of the immortality of the soul, to which all listened deeply moved, and many wept.

THE GIRONDISTS ON THEIR WAY TO EXECUTION.

A few rays of morning light now began to struggle in at their dungeon windows. The executioners soon entered to cut off their hair and robe them for the scaffold. At ten o'clock they were marched in a column to the gate of the prison, where carts, surrounded by an immense crowd, awaited them. As they entered the carts they all commenced singing in chorus the Marseilles Hymn, and continued the impassioned strains until they reached the scaffold. One after another they ascended the scaffold. Sillery was the firstwho ascended. He was bound to the plank, but continued in a full, strong voice to join in the song, till the glittering axe glided down the groove and his head dropped into the basket. Each one followed his example. The song grew fainter as head after head fell, till at last one voice only remained. It was that of Vergniaud. As he was bound to the plank he commenced anew the strain,

"Allons, enfans de la patrie,Le jour de gloire est arrivé."

The axe fell, and the lips of Vergniaud were silent in death. In thirty-one minutes the executioner had beheaded them all. Their bodies were thrown into one cart, and were cast into a grave by the side of that of Louis XVI.[407]

On the 6th of November the Duke of Orleans was taken from prison and led before the Tribunal. As there was no serious charge to be brought against him, he had not apprehended condemnation. But he was promptly doomed to die. As he was conducted back to his cell to prepare for immediate death, he exclaimed, in the utmost excitement of indignation,

"The wretches! I have given them all—rank, fortune, ambition, honor, the future reputation of my house—and this is the recompense they reserve for me!"

At three o'clock he was placed in the cart with three other condemned prisoners. The prince was elegantly attired and all eyes were riveted upon him. With an air of indifference he gazed upon the crowd, saying nothing which could reveal the character of his thoughts. On mounting the scaffold the executioner wished to draw off his boots.

"No, no," said the duke, "you will do it more easily afterward."

He looked intently for a moment at the keen-edged axe, and, without a word, submitted to his fate. Madame Roland and others of the most illustrious of the friends of freedom and of France soon followed to the scaffold. And now every day the guillotine was active as the efficient agent of government, extinguishing all opposition and silencing every murmur. The prisons were full, new arrests were every day made, and dismay paralyzed all hearts. Four thousand six hundred in the prisons of Paris alone were awaiting that trial which almost surely led to condemnation.

The Jacobin leaders, trembling before Europe in arms, felt that there was no safety for France but in the annihilation of all internal foes. Danton, Marat, Robespierre, were not men who loved blood and cruelty; they were resolute fanatics who believed it to be well to cut off the heads of many thousand reputed aristocrats, that a nation of thirty millions might enjoy popular liberty. While the Revolutionary Tribunal was thus mercilessly plying the axe of the executioner, the National Convention, where these Jacobins reigned supreme, were enacting many laws which breathed the spirit of liberty and humanity. The taxes were equally distributed in proportion to property. Provision was made for the poor and infirm. All orphans were adopted by the Republic. Liberty of conscience was proclaimed. Slavery and the slave-trade were indignantly abolished. Measures were adopted for a general system of popular instruction, and decisive efforts were made to unite the rich and the poor in bonds of sympathy and alliance.[408]

We can not give a better account of the state of Paris at this time than in the words of Desodoards, a calm philosophic writer, who had ardently espoused the cause of the Revolution, and who consequently will not be suspected of exaggeration.

"What then," says he, "was this Revolutionary government? Every right, civil and political, was destroyed. Liberty of the press and of thought was at an end. The whole people were divided into two classes, the privileged and the proscribed. Property was wantonly violated,lettres de cachetre-established, the asylum of dwellings exposed to the most tyrannical inquisition, and justice stripped of every appearance of humanity and honor. France was covered with prisons; all the excesses of anarchy and despotism struggling amid a confused multitude of committees; terror in every heart; the scaffold devouring a hundred every day, and threatening to devour a still greater number; in every house melancholy and mourning, and in every street the silence of the tomb.

"War was waged against the tenderest emotions of nature. Was a tear shed over the tomb of father, wife, or friend, it was, according to these Jacobins, a robbery of the Republic. Not to rejoice when the Jacobins rejoiced was treason to freedom. All the mob of low officers of justice, some of whom could scarcely read, sported with the lives of men without the slightest shame or remorse. Often an act of accusation was served upon one person which was intended for another. The officer onlychanged the nameon perceiving his error, and often didnotchange it. Mistakes of the most inconceivable nature were made with impunity. The Duchess of Biron was judged by an act drawn up against her agent. A young man oftwentywas guillotined for having, as it was alleged, asonbearing arms against France. A lad of sixteen, by the name of Mallet, was arrested under an indictment for a man of forty, named Bellay.

"'What is your age?' inquired the president, looking at him with some surprise.

"'Sixteen,' replied the youth.

"'Well, you are quite forty in crime,' said the magistrate; 'take him to the guillotine.'

"From every corner of France victims were brought in carts to the Conciergerie. This prison was emptied every day by the guillotine, and refilled from other prisons. These removals were made in the dark, lest public sympathy should be excited. Fifty or sixty poor creatures, strait bound, conducted by men of ferocious aspect, a drawn sabre in one hand and a lighted torch in the other, passed in this manner through the silence of night. The passenger who chanced to meet them had to smother his pity. A sigh would have united him to the funeral train.

READING THE LIST OF THE VICTIMS IN THE PRISONS OF PARIS.

"The prisons were the abode of every species of suffering. The despair which reigned in these sepulchres was terrific: one finished his existence by poison; another dispatched himself by a nail; another dashed his head against the walls of his cell; some lost their reason. Those who had sufficient fortitude waited patiently for the executioner. Every house of arrest was required to furnish a certain number of victims. The turnkeys wentwith these mandates of accusation from chamber to chamber in the dead of night. The prisoners, starting from their sleep at the voice of their Cerberuses, supposed their end had arrived. Thus warrants of death for thirty threw hundreds into consternation.[409]

"At first the sheriffs ranged fifteen at a time in their carts, then thirty, and about the time of the fall of Robespierre preparations had been made for the execution of one hundred and fifty at a time. An aqueduct had been contrived to carry off the blood. In these batches, as they were called, were often united people of the most opposite systems and habits. Sometimes whole generations were destroyed in a day. Malesherbes, at the age of eighty, perished with his sister, his daughter, his son-in-law, his grandson, and his granddaughter. Forty young women were brought to the guillotine for having danced at a ball given by the King of Prussia at Verdun. Twenty-two peasant women, whose husbands had been executed in La Vendée, were beheaded."

Such was the thraldom from which, at last, the empire of Napoleon rescued France. Nothing less than the strength of his powerful arm could have wrought out the achievement.

In the midst of such scenes it is not strange that all respect should have been renounced for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Jacobins of Paris crowded the Convention, demanding the abjuration of all forms of religion and all modes of worship. They governed the Convention with despotic sway. The Commune of Paris, invested with the local police of the city, passed laws prohibiting the clergy from exercising religious worship outside the churches. None but friends and relatives were to be allowed to follow the remains of the dead to the grave. All religious symbols were ordered to be effaced from the cemeteries, and to be replaced by a statue of Sleep. The following ravings of Anacharsis Cloots, a wealthy Prussian baron, who styled himself the orator of the human race, and who was one of the most conspicuous of the Jacobin agitators, forcibly exhibits the spirit of the times:[410]

"Paris, the metropolis of the globe, is the proper post for the orator of the human race. I have not left Paris since 1789. It was then that I redoubled my zeal against the pretended sovereigns of earth and heaven. I boldly preached that there is no other god but Nature, no other sovereign but the human race—the people-god. The people is sufficient for itself. Nature kneels not before herself. Religion is the only obstacle to universal happiness. It is high time to destroy it."

The popular current in Paris now set very strongly against all religion. Infidel and atheistic principles were loudly proclaimed. The unlettered populace, whose faith was but superstition, were easily swept along by the current. The Convention made a feeble resistance, but soon yielded to the general impulse. In the different sections of Paris, gatherings of the populace abjured all religion. The fanaticism spread like wild-fire to the distantdepartments. The churches were stripped of their baptismal plate and other treasures, and the plunder was sent to the Convention. Processions paraded the streets, singing, derisively, Hallelujahs, and profaning with sacrilegious caricature all the ceremonies of religion. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was administered to an ass.

The Convention had appointed a committee of twelve men, called the Committee of Public Safety, and invested them with dictatorial power. The whole revolutionary power was now lodged in their hands. They appointed such sub-committees as they pleased, and governed France with terrific energy. The Revolutionary Tribunal was but one of their committees. In all the departments they established their agencies. The Convention itself became powerless before this appalling despotism. This dictatorship was energetically supported by the mob of Paris; and the city government of Paris was composed of the most violent Jacobins, who were in perfect fraternity with the Committee of Public Safety. St. Just, who proposed in the Convention the establishment of this dictatorship, said,

"You must no longer show any lenity to the enemies of the new order of things. Liberty must triumph at any cost. In the present circumstances of the Republic the Constitution can not be established; it would guarantee impunity to attacks on our liberty, because it would be deficient in the violence necessary to restrain them."

This Committee, overawing the Convention, constrained the establishment of a new era. To obliterate the Sabbath, they divided the year into twelve months of thirty days each, each month to consist of three weeks of ten days each. The tenth day was devoted to festivals. The five surplus days were placed at the end of the year, and were consecrated to games and rejoicing. Thus energetically were measures adopted to obliterate entirely all traces of the Sabbath. There were thousands in France who looked upon these measures with unutterable disgust, but they were overwhelmed by the powers of anarchy. Anxiously they waited for a deliverer. In Napoleon they found one, who was alike the foe of the despotism of the Bourbons and the despotism of the mob.

FOOTNOTES:[402]La Fayette was an illustrious member of this party. Even Jefferson advised to make the English Constitution the model for France. He was present at the opening of the Assembly of Notables, and soon after wrote to La Fayette, "Keeping the good model of your neighboring country before your eyes, you may get on step by step toward a good Constitution. Though that model is not perfect, yet, as it would unite more suffrages than any new one which could be proposed, it is better to make that the object."—Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry S. Randall, vol. i., p. 406.[403]Henry S. Randall, Life of Jefferson, vol. i., p. 529.[404]"Never since the Knights Templar had a party appeared more numerous, more illustrious, or more eloquent. The renown of the accused, their long possession of power, their present danger, and that love of vengeance which arises in men's hearts at the spectacle of mighty reverses of fortune, had collected a crowd in the precincts of the Revolutionary Tribunal. A strong armed force surrounded the gates of the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice. The cannon, the uniforms, the sentinels, thegens d'armes, the naked sabres, all announced one of those political crises in which a trial is a battle and justice an execution."—Hist. Gir., Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 169.[405]Such is the statement of Lamartine. Thiers, however, says that the act was drawn up by Amar, a barrister of Grenoble.[406]"Come, children of your country, come,The day of glory dawns on high,And tyranny has wide unfurl'dHer blood-stained banner in the sky."[407]Edmund Burke has most unpardonably calumniated these noble men. Even Prof. Smyth, who espouses his opinions, says, "Burke was a man who, from the ardor of his temperament and the vehemence of his eloquence, might be almost said to have ruined every cause and every party that he espoused. No mind, however great, that will not bow to the superiority of his genius; yet no mind, however inferior, that will not occasionally feel itself entitled to look down upon him, from the total want which he sometimes shows of all calmness and candor, and even, at particular moments, of all reasonableness and propriety of thought."—Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. iii., p. 4.[408]History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. iii., p. 291.[409]"There were in the prisons of Paris on the 1st of September, 1793, 597; October 1, 2400; November 1, 3203; December 1, 4130; and in six months after, 11,400."—Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards.[410]Cloots declared himself "the personal enemy of Jesus Christ." France adopted the atheistic principles of Cloots, and sent him to the guillotine. See article Cloots, Enc. Am.

FOOTNOTES:

[402]La Fayette was an illustrious member of this party. Even Jefferson advised to make the English Constitution the model for France. He was present at the opening of the Assembly of Notables, and soon after wrote to La Fayette, "Keeping the good model of your neighboring country before your eyes, you may get on step by step toward a good Constitution. Though that model is not perfect, yet, as it would unite more suffrages than any new one which could be proposed, it is better to make that the object."—Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry S. Randall, vol. i., p. 406.

[403]Henry S. Randall, Life of Jefferson, vol. i., p. 529.

[404]"Never since the Knights Templar had a party appeared more numerous, more illustrious, or more eloquent. The renown of the accused, their long possession of power, their present danger, and that love of vengeance which arises in men's hearts at the spectacle of mighty reverses of fortune, had collected a crowd in the precincts of the Revolutionary Tribunal. A strong armed force surrounded the gates of the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice. The cannon, the uniforms, the sentinels, thegens d'armes, the naked sabres, all announced one of those political crises in which a trial is a battle and justice an execution."—Hist. Gir., Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 169.

[405]Such is the statement of Lamartine. Thiers, however, says that the act was drawn up by Amar, a barrister of Grenoble.

[406]"Come, children of your country, come,The day of glory dawns on high,And tyranny has wide unfurl'dHer blood-stained banner in the sky."

[406]

"Come, children of your country, come,The day of glory dawns on high,And tyranny has wide unfurl'dHer blood-stained banner in the sky."

[407]Edmund Burke has most unpardonably calumniated these noble men. Even Prof. Smyth, who espouses his opinions, says, "Burke was a man who, from the ardor of his temperament and the vehemence of his eloquence, might be almost said to have ruined every cause and every party that he espoused. No mind, however great, that will not bow to the superiority of his genius; yet no mind, however inferior, that will not occasionally feel itself entitled to look down upon him, from the total want which he sometimes shows of all calmness and candor, and even, at particular moments, of all reasonableness and propriety of thought."—Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. iii., p. 4.

[408]History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. iii., p. 291.

[409]"There were in the prisons of Paris on the 1st of September, 1793, 597; October 1, 2400; November 1, 3203; December 1, 4130; and in six months after, 11,400."—Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards.

[410]Cloots declared himself "the personal enemy of Jesus Christ." France adopted the atheistic principles of Cloots, and sent him to the guillotine. See article Cloots, Enc. Am.

CHAPTER XXXV.

FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS AND OF THE DANTONISTS.

Continued Persecution of the Girondists.—Robespierre opposes the Atheists.—Danton, Souberbielle, and Camille Desmoulins.—TheVieux Cordelier.—The Hebertists executed.—Danton assailed.—Interview between Danton and Robespierre.—Danton warned of his Peril.—Camille Desmoulins and others arrested.—Lucile, the Wife of Desmoulins.—Letters.—Execution of the Dantonists.—Arrest and Execution of Lucile.—Toulon recovered by Bonaparte.

Theleaders of the Girondists were now destroyed, and the remnants of the party were prosecuted with unsparing ferocity. On the 11th of November, Bailly, the former mayor, the friend of La Fayette, the philanthropist and the scholar, was dragged to the scaffold. The day was cold and rainy. His crime was having unfurled the red flag in the Field of Mars, to quellthe riot there, on the 17th of July, 1791. He was condemned to be executed on the field which was the theatre of his alleged crime. Behind the cart which carried him they affixed the flag which he had spread. A crowd followed, heaping upon him the most cruel imprecations. On reaching the scaffold, some one cried out that the field of the federation ought not to be polluted with his blood. Immediately the mob rushed upon the guillotine, tore it down, and erected it again upon a dunghill on the banks of the Seine. They dragged Bailly from the tumbril, and compelled him to make the tour of the Field of Mars on foot. Bareheaded, with his hands bound behind him, and with no other garment than a shirt, the sleet glued his hair and froze upon his breast. They pelted him with mud, spat in his face, and whipped him with the flag, which they dipped in the gutters. The old man fell exhausted. They lifted him up again, and goaded him on. Blood, mingled with mire, streamed down his face, depriving him of human aspect. Shouts of derision greeted these horrors. The freezing wind and exhaustion caused an involuntary shivering. Some one cried out, "You tremble, Bailly." "Yes, my friend," replied the heroic old man, "but it is with cold."[411]After five hours of such a martyrdom, the axe released him from his sufferings.

Pétion and Buzot wandered many days and nights in the forest. At length their remains were found, half devoured by wolves. Whether they perished of cold and starvation, or sought relief from their misery in voluntary death, is not known.

The illustrious Condorcet, alike renowned for his philosophical genius and his eloquent advocacy of popular rights, had been declared an outlaw. For several months he had been concealed in the house of Madame Verney, a noble woman, who periled her own life that she might save that of her friend. At last Condorcet, learning from the papers that death was denounced against all who concealed a proscribed individual, resolved, at every hazard, to leave the roof of his benefactress. For some time he wandered through the fields in disguise, until he was arrested and thrown into prison. On the following morning, March 28, 1794, he was found dead on the floor of his room, having swallowed poison, which for some time he carried about with him.

"It would be difficult in that or any other age to find two men of more active or, indeed, enthusiastic benevolence than Condorcet and La Fayette. Besides this, Condorcet was one of the most profound thinkers of his time, and will be remembered as long as genius is honored among us. La Fayette was no doubt inferior to Condorcet in point of ability, but he was the intimate friend of Washington, on whose conduct he modeled his own, and by whose side he had fought for the liberties of America; his integrity was, and still is, unsullied, and his character had a chivalrous and noble turn which Burke, in his better days, would have been the first to admire. Both, however, were natives of that hated country whose liberties theyvainly attempted to achieve. On this account Burke declared Condorcet to be guilty of 'impious sophistry,' to be a 'fanatic atheist and furious democratic republican,' and to be capable of the 'lowest as well as the highest and most determined villainies.' As to La Fayette, when an attempt was made to mitigate the cruel treatment he was receiving from the Prussian government, Burke not only opposed the motion made for that purpose in the House of Commons, but took the opportunity of grossly insulting the unfortunate captive, who was then languishing in a dungeon. So dead had he become on this subject, even to the common instincts of our nature, that in his place in parliament he could find no better way of speaking of this injured and high-souled man than by calling him a ruffian. 'I would not,' says Burke, 'debase[412]my humanity by supporting an application in behalf of so horrid a ruffian.'"[413]

DEATH OF CONDORCET.

Madame Roland was led to the guillotine, evincing heroism which the world has never seen surpassed. Her husband, in anguish, unable to survive her, and hunted by those thirsting for his blood, anticipated the guillotine by plunging a stiletto into his own heart.

Danton and Robespierre were both opposed to such cruel executions, and especially to the establishment in France of that system of atheism which degraded man into merely the reptile of an hour. When Robespierre was informed of the atrocities which attended the execution of Bailly, in shameand grief he shut himself up in his room, saying, with prophetic foresight, to his host Duplay, "It is thus that they will martyrize ourselves."

Hebert[414]and the atheists were now dominant in the Commune of Paris, and Danton and Robespierre organized a party to crush them. Hebert soon saw indications of this movement, and began to tremble. He complained in the Jacobin Club that Robespierre and Danton were plotting against him. Robespierre was present on the occasion, and, with his accustomed audacity, immediately ascended the tribune and hurled his anathemas upon the heads of these blood-crimsoned fanatics.

"There are men," said he, "who, under the pretext of destroying superstition, would fain make a sort of religion of atheism itself. Every man has a right to think as he pleases; whoever would make a crime of this is a madman. But the legislator who should adopt the system of atheism would be a hundred times more insane. The National Convention abhors such a system. It is a political body, not a maker of creeds.Atheism is aristocratic.The idea of a great Being who watches over oppressed innocence and who punishes triumphant guilt is quite popular. The people, the unfortunate, applaud me.If God did not exist, it would behoove man to invent him."

One of the last evenings in the month of January, Danton, Souberbielle, one of the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Camille Desmoulins came from the Palace of Justice together. It was a cold gloomy winter's night. It had been a day of blood. Fifteen heads had fallen upon the guillotine and twenty-seven were condemned to die on the morrow. These three men were all appalled by the progress of events, and for some time walked along in silence. On reaching Pont Neuf, Danton turned suddenly round to Souberbielle and said,

"Do you know that, at the pace we are now going, there will speedily be no safety for any person? The best patriots are confounded with traitors. Generals who have shed their blood for the Republic perish on the scaffold. I am weary of living. Look there; the very river seems to flow with blood."

"True," replied Souberbielle, "the sky is red, and there are many showers of blood behind those clouds. Those who were to be judges have become but executioners. When I refuse an innocent head to their knife I am accused of sympathy with traitors. What can I do? I am but an obscure patriot. Ah, if I were Danton!"

"All this," replied Danton, "excites horror in me. But be silent. Danton sleeps; he will awake at the right moment. I am a man of revolution, but not a man of slaughter. But you," he added, addressing Camille Desmoulins, "why do you keep silence?"

"I am weary of silence," was Desmoulins's reply. "My hand weighs heavily, and I have sometimes the impulse to sharpen my pen into a dagger and stab these scoundrels. Let them beware. My ink is more indelible than their blood. It stains for immortality."

"Bravo!" cried Danton. "Begin to-morrow. You began the Revolution; be it you who shall now most thoroughly urge it. Be assured this hand shall aid you. You know whether or not it be strong."

The three friends separated at Danton's door. The doom of the miserable Hebert and his party was now sealed. Robespierre, Danton, and Camille Desmoulins were against him. They could wield resistless influences. The next day Camille Desmoulins commenced a series of papers called theVieux Cordelier. He took the first number to Danton and then to Robespierre. They both approved, and the warfare against Hebert and his party was commenced. The conflict was short and desperate; each party knew that the guillotine was the doom of the vanquished.[415]Robespierre and Danton were victors. Hebert, Cloots, and their friends, nineteen in number, were arrested and condemned to death. On the 24th of March, 1794, five carts laden with the Hebertists proceeded from the Conciergerie to the guillotine. Cloots died firmly. Hebert was in a paroxysm of terror, which excited the contempt and derision of the mob.

The bold invectives against the Reign of Terror in theVieux Cordelier, written by Desmoulins, began to alarm the Committee of Public Safety. Danton and Robespierre were implicated. They were accused of favoring moderate measures, and of being opposed to those acts of bloody rigor which were deemed necessary to crush the aristocrats. Danton and Desmoulins were in favor of a return to mercy. Robespierre, though opposed to cruelty and to needless carnage, was sternly for death as the doom of every one not warmly co-operating with the Revolution. To save himself from suspicion he became the accuser of his two friends. And now it came the turn of Danton and Desmoulins to tremble. For five years Danton and Robespierre had fought together to overthrow royalty and found the Republic. But Danton was disgusted with carnage, and had withdrawn from the Committee of Public Safety.

"Danton, do you know," said Eglantine to him one day, "of what you are accused? They say that you have only launched the car of the Revolution to enrich yourself, while Robespierre has remained poor in the midst of the monarchical treasures thrown at his feet."

"Well," replied Danton, "do you know what that proves? that I love gold, and that Robespierre loves blood. Robespierre is afraid of money lest it should stain his hands."

Robespierre earnestly wished to associate Danton with him in all the rigor of the Revolutionary government, for he respected the power of this bold, indomitable man. They met at a dinner-party, through the agency of a mutual friend, when matters were brought to a crisis. They engaged in a dispute, Danton denouncing and reviling the acts of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Robespierre defending them, until they separated in anger. The friends of Danton urged him either to escape by flight or to take advantage of his popularity and throw himself upon the army.

"My life is not worth the trouble," said Danton. "Besides, I am weary of blood. I had rather be guillotined than be a guillotiner. They dare not attack me. I am stronger than they."

A secret meeting of the Committee of Public Safety was convened by night, and Danton was accused of the "treason of clemency." A subaltern door-keeper heard the accusation, and ran to Danton's house to warn him of his peril and to offer him an asylum. The young and beautiful wife of Danton, with tears in her eyes, threw herself at his feet, and implored him, for her sake and for that of their children, to accept the proffered shelter. Danton proudly refused, saying,

"They will deliberate long before they will dare to strike a man like me. While they deliberate I will surprise them."

He dismissed the door-keeper and retired to bed. At six o'clockgens d'armesentered his room with the order for his arrest.

"They dare, then," said Danton, crushing the paper in his hand. "They are bolder than I had thought them to be."

He dressed, embraced his wife convulsively, and was conducted to prison. At the same hour Camille Desmoulins and fourteen others, the supposed partisans of Danton, were also arrested. It was the 31st of March. Danton was taken to the Luxembourg. Here he found Desmoulins and his other friends already incarcerated. As Danton entered the gloomy portals of the prison he said,

"At length I perceive that, in revolutions, the supreme power ultimately rests with the most abandoned."[416]

A crowd of thedetainedimmediately gathered around him, amazed at that freak of fortune which had cast the most distinguished leader of the Jacobins into the dungeons of the accused. Danton was humiliated and annoyed by the gaze, and endeavored to veil his embarrassment under the guise of derision.

"Yes," said he, raising his head and forcing loud laughter, "it is Danton. Look at him well. The trick is well played. We must know how to praise our enemies when they conduct adroitly. I would never have believed that Robespierre could have juggled me thus." Then softening, and growing more sincere, he said, "Gentlemen, I hoped to have been the means of delivering you all from this place; but here I am among you, and no one can tell where this will end."

The accused Dantonists—accused of advocating moderate measures in the treatment of the enemies of the Revolution—were soon shut up in separate cells. The report of the arrest of men of such acknowledged power, and who had been so popular as patriots, spread anxiety and gloom through Paris. The warmest friends of the arrested dared not plead their cause; it would only have imperiled their own lives.

Even in the Assembly great excitement was produced by these important arrests. The members gathered in groups and spoke to each other in whispers, inquiring what all this meant and where it was to end. At last, Légendre ventured to ascend the tribune, and said,

"Citizens, four members of this Assembly have been arrested during the night. Danton is one. I know not the others. Citizens, I declare that I believe Danton to be as pure as myself; yet he is in a dungeon. They feared, no doubt, that his replies would overturn the accusations brought against him. I move, therefore, that, before you listen to any report, you send for the prisoners and hear them."

Robespierre immediately ascended the tribune and replied,

"By the unusual agitation which pervades this Assembly—by the sensation the words of the speaker you have just heard have produced, it is manifest that a question of great interest is before us—a question whether two or three individuals shall be preferred to the country. The question to-day is whether the interests of certain ambitious hypocrites shall prevail over the interests of the French nation. Légendre appears not to know the names of those who have been arrested. All the Convention knows them. His friend Lacroix is among the prisoners. Why does he pretend to be ignorant of it? Because he knows that he can not defend Lacroix without shame. He has spoken of Danton, doubtless because he thinks that a privilege is attached to this name. No! we will have no privilege. No! we will have no idols. We shall see to-day whether the Convention will break a false idol, long since decayed, or whether in its fall it will crush the Convention and the French people.

"I say, whoever now trembles is guilty, for never does innocence dread public surveillance. Me, too, have they tried to alarm. It has been attempted to make me believe that the danger which threatens Danton might reach me. I have been written to. The friends of Danton have sent me their letters; have besieged me with their importunities. They have thought that the remembrance of a former acquaintance, that a past belief in false virtues, might determine me to relax in my zeal and my passion for liberty. Well, then, I declare that none of these motives have touched my soul with the slightest impression; my life is for my country, my heart is exempt from fear.

"I have seen in the flattery which has been addressed to me, in the concern of those who surrounded Danton, only signs of the terror which they felt, even before they were threatened. And I, too, have been the friend of Pétion; as soon as he was unmasked I abandoned him. I have also been acquainted with Roland; he became a traitor and I denounced him. Danton would take their place, and in my eyes he is but an enemy to his country."

Légendre, appalled, immediately retracted, and trembling for his life, like a whipped spaniel, crouched before the terrible dictator. At that moment St. Just came in, and read a long report against the members under arrest. The substance of the vague and rambling charges was that they had been bought up by the aristocrats and were enemies to their country. The Assembly listened without a murmur, and then unanimously, and even with applause, voted the impeachment of Danton and his friends. "Every one sought to gain time with tyranny, and gave up others' heads to save his own."[417]

The Dantonists were men of mark, and they now drank deeply of that bitter chalice which they had presented to so many lips. Camille Desmoulins, young, brilliant, enthusiastic, was one of the most fascinating of men. His youthful and beautiful wife, Lucile, he loved to adoration. They had one infant child, Horace, their pride and joy. Camille was asleep in the arms of his wife when the noise of the butt end of a musket on the threshold of his door aroused him. As the soldiers presented the order for his arrest, he exclaimed, in anguish, "This, then, is the recompense of the first voice of the Revolution."

Embracing his wife for the last time, and imprinting a kiss upon the cheek of his child asleep in the cradle, he was hurried to prison. Lucile, frantic with grief, ran through the streets of Paris to plead with Robespierre and others for her husband; but her lamentations were as unavailing as the moaning wind. In the following tender strain Camille wrote his wife:

"My prison recalls to my mind the garden where I spent eight years in beholding you. A glimpse of the garden of the Luxembourg brings back to me a crowd of remembrances of our loves. I am alone, but never have I been in thought, imagination, feeling nearer to you, your mother, and to my little Horace. I am going to pass all my time in prison in writing to you. I cast myself at your knees; I stretch out my arms to embrace you; I find you no more. Send me the glass on which are our two names; a book, which I bought some days ago, on the immortality of the soul. I have need of persuading myself that there is a God more just than man, and that I can not fail to see you again. Do not grieve too much over my thoughts, dearest; I do not yet despair of men. Yes! my beloved, we will see ourselves again in the garden of the Luxembourg. Adieu, Lucile! Adieu, Horace! I can not embrace you; but in the tears which I shed it appears that I press you again to my bosom.Thy Camille."

Thy Camille."

Lucile, frantic with grief, made the most desperate efforts to gain access to Robespierre, but she was sternly repulsed. She then thus imploringly wrote to him,

"Can you accuse us of treason, you who have profited so much by the efforts we have made for our country? Camille has seen the birth of your pride, the path you desired to tread, but he has recalled your ancient friendship and shrunk from the idea of accusing a friend, a companion of his labors. That hand which has pressed yours has too soon abandoned the pen, since it could no longer trace your praise; and you, you send him to death. But, Robespierre, will you really accomplish the deadly projects which doubtless the vile souls which surround you have inspired you with? Have you forgotten those bonds which Camille never recalls without grief? you who prayed for our union, who joined our hands in yours, who have smiled upon my son whose infantile hands have so often caressed you? Can you, then, reject my prayers, despise my tears, and trample justice under foot? For you know it yourself, we do not merit the fate they are preparing for us, and you can avert it. If it strike us, it is you who will have ordered it. But what is, then, the crime of my Camille?"I have not his pen to defend him. But the voice of good citizens, and your heart, if it is sensible, will plead for me. Do you believe that people will gain confidence in you by seeing you immolate your best friends? Do you think that they will bless him who regards neither the tears of the widow nor the death of the orphan? Poor Camille! in the simplicity of his heart, how far was he from suspecting the fate which awaits him to-day! He thought to labor for your glory in pointing out to you what was still wanting to our republic. He has, no doubt, been calumniated to you, Robespierre, for you can not believe him guilty. Consider that he has never required the death of any one—that he has never desired to injure by your power, and that you were his oldest and his best friend. And you are about to kill us both! For to strike him is to kill me—"

"I have not his pen to defend him. But the voice of good citizens, and your heart, if it is sensible, will plead for me. Do you believe that people will gain confidence in you by seeing you immolate your best friends? Do you think that they will bless him who regards neither the tears of the widow nor the death of the orphan? Poor Camille! in the simplicity of his heart, how far was he from suspecting the fate which awaits him to-day! He thought to labor for your glory in pointing out to you what was still wanting to our republic. He has, no doubt, been calumniated to you, Robespierre, for you can not believe him guilty. Consider that he has never required the death of any one—that he has never desired to injure by your power, and that you were his oldest and his best friend. And you are about to kill us both! For to strike him is to kill me—"

The unfinished letter she intrusted to her mother, but it never reached the hands of Robespierre. The prisoners were soon taken to the Conciergerie and plunged into the same dungeon into which they had thrown the Girondists. The day of trial was appointed without delay. It was the 3d of April. As the prisoners, fourteen in number, were arrayed before the Tribunal, the president, Hermann, inquired of Danton, in formal phrase, his name, age, and residence.

"My name," was the proud and defiant reply, "is Danton, well enough known in the Revolution. I am thirty-five years old. My residence will soon be void, and my name will exist in the Pantheon of history."

To the same question Camille Desmoulins replied, "I am thirty-three, a fatal age to revolutionists,—the age of thesans culotteJesus when he died."

The trial lasted three days. Danton, in his defense, struggled like a lion in the toils. An immense crowd filled the court and crowded the surrounding streets. The windows were open, and the thunders of his voice were frequently heard even to the other side of the Seine. The people in the streets, whom he doubtless meant to influence, caught up his words and transmitted them from one to another. Some indications of popular sympathy alarmed the Tribunal, and it was voted that the accused were wanting in respect to the court, and should no longer be heard in their defense. They were immediately condemned to die.

They were reconducted to their dungeon to prepare for the guillotine. The fortitude of Camille Desmoulins was weakened by the strength of his domestic attachments. "Oh, my dear Lucile! Oh, my Horace! what willbecome of them!" he incessantly cried, while tears flooded his eyes. Seizing a pen, he hastily wrote a few last words to Lucile, which remain one of the most touching memorials of grief.

DANTON'S DEFENSE.

"I have dreamed," he wrote, "of a republic which all the world would have adored. I could not have believed that men were so cruel and unjust. I do not dissimulate that I die a victim to my friendship for Danton. Ithank my assassins for allowing me to die with Philippeaux. Pardon, my dear friend, my true life which I lost from the moment they separated us. I occupy myself with my memory. I ought much rather to cause you to forget it, my Lucile. I conjure you do not call to me by your cries. They would rend my heart in the depths of the tomb. Live for our child; talk to him of me; you may tell him what he can not understand, that I should have loved him much. Despite my execution, I believe there is a God. My blood will wash out my sins, the weakness of my humanity; and whatever I have possessed of good, my virtues and my love of liberty, God will recompense it. I shall see you again one day.

"O my Lucile, sensitive as I was, the death which delivers me from the sight of so much crime, is it so great a misfortune? Adieu, my life, my soul, my divinity upon earth! Adieu, Lucile! my Lucile! my dear Lucile! Adieu, Horace! Annette! Adèle! Adieu, my father! I feel the shore of life fly before me. I still see Lucile! I see her, my best beloved! my Lucile! My bound hands embrace you, and my severed head rests still upon you its dying eyes."

As Danton re-entered the gloomy corridor of the prison he said, "It was just a year ago that I was instrumental in instituting the Revolutionary Tribunal. I beg pardon of God and men. I intended it as a measure of humanity, to prevent the renewal of the September massacres, and that no man should suffer without trial. I did not mean that it should prove the scourge of humanity."

Then, pressing his capacious brow between his hands, he said, "They think that they can do without me. They deceive themselves. I was the statesman of Europe. They do not suspect the void which this head leaves."

"As to me," he continued, in cynical terms, "I have enjoyed my moments of existence well. I have made plenty of noise upon earth. I have tasted well of life. Let us go to sleep," and he made a gesture with head and arms as if about to repose his head upon a pillow.

After a short pause he resumed, "We are sacrificed to the ambition of a few dastardly brigands. But they will not long enjoy the fruit of their villainy. I drag Robespierre after me. Robespierre follows me to the grave." At four o'clock the executioners entered the Conciergerie to bind their hands and cut off their hair.

"It will be very amusing," said Danton, "to the fools who will gape at us in the streets, but we shall appear otherwise in the eyes of posterity."

When the executioners laid hold of Camille Desmoulins, he struggled in the most desperate resistance. But he was speedily thrown upon the floor and bound, while the prison resounded with his shrieks and imprecations. The whole fourteen Dantonists were placed in one cart. Desmoulins seemed frantic with terror. He looked imploringly upon the crowd, and incessantly cried,

"Save me, generous people! I am Camille Desmoulins. It was I who called you to arms on the 14th of July. It was I who gave you the national cockade."

He so writhed and twisted in the convulsions of his agony that his clothes were nearly torn from his back. Danton stood in moody silence, occasionally endeavoring to appease the turbulence of Desmoulins.

Herault de Séchelles first ascended the scaffold. As he alighted from the cart he endeavored to embrace Danton. The brutal executioner interposed.

"Wretch," said Danton, "you will not, at least, prevent our heads from kissing presently in the basket."

Desmoulins followed next. In his hand he held a lock of his wife's hair. For an instant he gazed upon the blade, streaming with the blood of his friend, and then said, turning to the populace,

"Look at the end of the first apostle of liberty. The monsters who murder me will not survive me long."

The axe fell, and his head dropped into the basket. Danton looked proudly, imperturbably on as, one after another, the heads of his thirteen companions fell. He was the last to ascend the scaffold. For a moment he was softened as he thought of his wife.

"Oh my wife, my dear wife," said he, "shall I never see you again?" Then checking himself, he said, "But, Danton, no weakness." Turning to the executioner, he proudly remarked, "You will show my head to the people; it will be well worth the display."

His head fell. The executioner, seizing it by the hair, walked around the platform, holding it up to the gaze of the populace. A shout of applause rose from the infatuated people. "Thus," says Mignet, "perished the last defenders of humanity and moderation, the last who sought to promote peace among the conquerors of the Revolution and pity for the conquered. For a long time after them no voice was raised against the dictatorship of terror, and from one end of France to the other it struck silent and redoubled blows. The Girondists had sought to prevent this violent reign, the Dantonists to stop it. All perished, and the conquerors had the more victims to strike, the more the foes arose around them."

The Robespierrians, having thus struck down the leaders of the moderate party, pursued their victory, by crushing all of the advocates of moderation from whom they apprehended the slightest danger. Day after day the guillotine ran red with blood. Even the devoted wife of Camille Desmoulins, but twenty-three years of age, was not spared. It was her crime that she loved her husband, and that she might excite sympathy for his fate. Resplendent with grace and beauty, she was dragged before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Little Horace was left an orphan, to cry in his cradle. Lucile displayed heroism upon the scaffold unsurpassed by that of Charlotte Corday or Madame Roland. When condemned to death she said calmly to her judges,

"I shall, then, in a few hours, again meet my husband. In departing from this world, in which nothing now remains to engage my affections, I am far less the object of pity than are you."

Robespierre had been the intimate friend of Desmoulins and Lucile. He had often eat of their bread and drunk of their cup in social converse. He was a guest at their wedding. Madame Duplessis, the mother of Lucile, was one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of France. In vain she addressed herself to Robespierre and all his friends, in almost frantic endeavors to save her daughter.

INTERIOR OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.

"Robespierre," she wrote to him, "is it not enough to have assassinated your best friend; do you desire also the blood of his wife, of my daughter? Your master, Fouquier Tinville, has just ordered her to be led to the scaffold. Two hours more and she will not be in existence. Robespierre, if you are not a tiger in human shape, if the blood of Camille has not inebriated you to the point of losing your reason entirely, if you recall still our evenings of intimacy, if you recall to yourself the caresses you lavished uponthe little Horace, and how you delighted to hold him upon your knees, and if you remember that you were to have been my son-in-law, spare an innocent victim! But, if thy fury is that of a lion, come and take us also, myself, Adèle [her other daughter], and Horace. Come and tear us away with thy hands still reeking in the blood of Camille. Come, come, and let one single tomb reunite us."

To this appeal Robespierre returned no reply. Lucile was left to her fate. In the same car of the condemned with Madame Hebert she was conducted to the guillotine. She had dressed herself for the occasion with remarkable grace. A white gauze veil, partially covering her luxuriant hair, embellished her marvelous beauty. With alacrity and apparent cheerfulness she ascended the steps, placed her head upon the fatal plank, and a smile was upon her lips as the keen-edged knife, with the rapidity of the lightning's stroke, severed her head from her body.

While these cruel scenes were transpiring in Paris, and similar scenes in all parts of France, the republican armies on the frontiers were struggling to repel the invading armies of allied Europe. It was the fear that internal enemies would rise and combine with the foreign foe which goaded the Revolutionists to such measures of desperation. They knew that the triumph of the Bourbons was their certain death. The English were now in possession of Toulon, the arsenal of the French navy, which had been treasonably surrendered to an English fleet by the friends of the Bourbons. A republican army had for some months been besieging the city, but had made no progress toward the expulsion of the invaders.

Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young man about twenty-five years of age and a lieutenant in the army, was sent to aid the besiegers. His genius soon placed him in command of the artillery. With almost superhuman energy, and skill never before surpassed, he pressed the siege, and, in one of the most terrific midnight attacks which ever has been witnessed, drove the British from the soil of France. This is the first time that Napoleon appears as an actor in the drama of the Revolution. The achievement gave him great renown in the army. On this occasion the humanity of Napoleon was as conspicuous as his energy. He abhorred alike the tyrannic sway of the Bourbons and the sanguinary rule of the Jacobins. One of the deputies of the Convention wrote to Carnot, then Minister of War, "I send you a young man who distinguished himself very much during the siege, and earnestly recommend you to advance him speedily. If you do not, he will most assuredly advance himself."

At St. Helena Napoleon said, "I was a very warm and sincere Republican at the commencement of the Revolution. I cooled by degrees, in proportion as I acquired more just and solid ideas. My patriotism sank under the political absurdities and monstrous domestic excesses of our legislatures."[418]

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