THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ISAAC FOOT" LIBRARY ,THE EEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST BY HENRY JEPHSON AUTHOR OF 'THE PLATFORM — ITS RISE AND PROGRESS ' iLontron MAC MILL AN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1899 All rights reserved PREFACE In recent years there has been published in France a very large number of books and magazine articles which have given a great deal of new information about the French Eevolution. A set of able, conscientious, hard-working searchers for historical truth have devoted the best years of their lives to the examination of hitherto unattainable or unused material : the local archives — the records of local courts of justice — the registers of prisons — the minutes of proceedings of the local administrations. Messieurs Taine, Berriat Saint Prix, and Wallon have done great service in this respect as regards France as a whole ; but in the west of France, which was the scene of the A r endean struggle, Messieurs Ch-L. Chassin, Benjamin Fillon, A. Lallie, Charles Dugast-Matifeux, Camille Bourcier, and many others have been working on the same lines, and have brought to light a mass of documents of the utmost value. Startling facts have been discovered, details of events hitherto buried in obscurity have been unearthed, and the workings of the minds and the true characters of many revolutionists revealed and laid bare to the world. The results of the toil of these labourers in the field vi THE REAL FEEXCH REVOLUTIONIST of history have from time to time been published, either in reviews and magazines such as "La Revolution Fran- raise," " La Revue tie Bretagne," " La Revue de la Revolution," or as books such as M. Berriat Saint Prix's La Justice Eevolutionnaire or M. Chassin's series of works on La Vendee. Also in the older and contemporary books upon the subject, of which there is such a splendid collection in the British Museum, there is a mass of material which has been but very partially drawn upon by historians or brought within the reach of the general reader. As the facts stated in these works must profoundly moilify the views generally held on the subject of that Revolution, it is desirable that a wider public attention should be directed to them than they have hitherto received. The information being derived almost exclusively from revolutionary records, and the opinions being mostly those of contemporary republicans — actors and participators in the events described, whatever accounts of revolutionary methods and proceedings are given can scarcely be censured on account of anti-republican bias. Notes on each page giving the exact chapter and verse for verification of each statement are a constant inter- ruption to a narrative. Instead thereof is given in an Appendix to this work a list of the principal books which have been utilised. The more recent ones are easily obtainable. The earlier and rarer works are to be found in the British Museum. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE The Vendue ..... I CHAPTER II The Causes of the Vendean War — Part I. . .9 CHAPTER III The Causes of the Vendean War — Part II. . 2G CHAPTER IV The Vendean War— Part I. . . .40 CHAPTER V The Vendean War— Part II. . . . .55 CHAPTER VI Revolutionary Tribunals and .Military Commissions . 70 viii THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST CHAPTER VII PACK The Vendean War — Part III. . . . 82 CHAPTER VIII The Vendean War— Part IV. . . . .94 CHAPTER IX The Vendean War— Part V. . . . .108 CHAPTER X Pi evolutionary Organisation 123 CHAPTER XI Religious Liberty . . . . .144 CHAPTER XII Nantes . . .152 CHAPTER XIII ' The Calvary of the Vendeans' . . ICG CHAPTER XIV Extermination .... .180 CHAPTER XV The Terror at Angers . . . 210 CONTENTS CHAPTER XVI PACK Noirmoutier . . . . . .229 CHAPTER XVII XOYADES AND FUSILLADES . . . .239 CHAPTER XVIII Carrier and the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes 260 CHAPTER XIX Terror . . .... 280 CHAPTER XX Nature's Protest ..... 290 CHAPTER XXI •The Infernal Columns' — Part I. . . 293 CHAPTER XXII ' The Infernal Columns' — Part II. . .312 CHAPTER XXIII The Recall of Carrier .... 324 CHAPTER XXIV 'The Infernal Columns'— Part III. . . . 3:53 x THE HEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST CHAPTER XXV I 'A OF A Representative's Expenditure . . . 357 CHAPTER XXVI The Towxs after Carrier's Recall . . . 360 CHAPTER XXVII The Country after Turreac's Recall . . .373 CHAPTER XXVIII Retribution and Amnesty .... 384 CHAPTER XXIX Vendean Victory ..... 396 CHAPTER XXX Conclusion . . . . . .410 Appendix . . ... 425 Index . . .... i29 CHAPTER I THE VENDKE In the mid-west of France, just south of where the Loire liows into the Atlantic, lies the Department which gave its name to the great civil war in that country in the latter part of the last century — La Vendee. There, when French society was being shattered to its foundations by the fearful upheaval of the French Revolution, a prolonged and desperate conflict took place, which for splendid heroism on one side, and brutal ferocity on the other, finds scarcely a parallel in modern history. That conflict, remarkable in itself in many ways, is now, however, mainly memorable for its connection with the infinitely greater event — the French Revolution, and for the illuminating light it throws upon aspects of that Revolution which are of the highest importance. And the light is welcome ; for that Revolution, with its violences, and horrors, and confused din of strife of voice and sword, remains one of the most momentous and inscrutable events in the world's history. More than a century has passed since it took place, but interest in it has not flagged nor waned. Men are B 2 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. still examining and discussing its principles, its incidents, and its effects, — in fact everything in connection with it, — in the hope of even yet discovering therein some clues to help in the unravelment of the tangled skein of human tendencies and passions, or of gaining inspiration for the solution of some of the great problems which so cease- lessly confront human society. Is it, men still ask, in that direction that lies the amelioration, the regeneration of the social fabric ''. Or, is that Revolution, like the flashings of the light- house across the stormy waters of the deep, a warning to humanity from steering to shipwreck and destruction ? In the true answer to those questions lies, so far as is permitted to us in this stage of the world's progress to discern, much of the future peace, happiness, and pros- perity of civilised mankind. It has been hitherto by far ton generally the practice to judge the French Revolution by the events which occurred in Paris. Certainly there was a great tempta- tion to do so; for their startling nature, their lurid horror, the thrilling incidents of the overthrow of the monarchy, the fierce struggle of Girondists and Jacobins, the courageous efforts to repel the onslaught of foreign foes, all these fascinate by their interest. Important as those events were, however, they formed but a part of the Revolution of which France, and not only Paris, was the scene. And being but a part, they give a very dubious, indeed a misleading, light on th^ great issue of that terrible convulsion. Pari- was under the eyes of Europe; the incidents there in the great drama were reported daily in the Parisian press, and were discussed by many of the ablest writers and speakers of the time: actions had to some extent to be modified, because they had to be justified i THE VENDEE 3 or accounted for ; certain semblances had to be kept up : and reasons sometimes vouchsafed for particular lines of policy. The Revolutionary Government in Paris was therefore somewhat hampered and restrained by opposition and by publicity : revolutionary principles did not have really free play : and the character of the revolutionist was not seen in its completeness. But in France, as apart from Paris, the circumstances were different. The country and the country-towns were out of European ken ; and restraining or impeding influences there, of any and every sort, were non-existent, in them the revolutionist had a completely clear held for putting into action all his theories and principles, and free hands to do exactly as his feelings or ideas prompted him. In them, therefore, his true character is unfolded to our eyes, and the actual workings of the Republican Government are presented undisturbed by any dis- torting medium. And even still better and more clearly are these most instructive results displayed in the actions of the revolu- tionists in the Vendee ; for there the Revolution was seen, not in its dealings with a. tyrannical monarch or a worthless aristocracy, hut in its dealings with the people — with the humblest, poorest, most hard-working classes of society — exactly those whom, theoretically, the Revolu- tion was supposed to emancipate and benefit. And the prolonged resistance made by the Vendeans to the Revolutionary Government brought into operation a whole phase of revolutionary activities and character- istics which showed themselves to only a limited extent in Paris. Hence, the actions of the revolutionists in and around 4 THE HEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST « H . the Vendee, and of the Revolutionary Government in combating the Vendeans, are of entirely exceptional value. They throw, as it were, Rontgen rays on the nature and methods and character of the French revolutionist and republican, piercing through outward semblances and asseverations, and revealing to us the actualities, the innermost verities. The principles, policy, ideas, and the very nature of the revolutionist are shown to us, no longer as mere abstract theories, about which there might be any amount of debate, but in unimpeded operation, and being tested by actual experiment. The system and machinery of republican government is displayed actually at work in the country. And the result is the most complete and realistic picture of the French revolutionist in his genuine character, and the most impressive illustration of French revolutionary principles in untrammelled operation. Which things, as they help mankind in its onward march, are the only compensations, the only consolations, for a shuddering humanity, as it peers into the seething hell of human passions and brutalities presented to its affrighted gaze. The scene of the sad, yet most instructive, drama was not an extensive one. Known generally as the Vendee, it was made up of parts of the old provinces of Poitou, Anjou, and Brittany. The majestic Loire swept along its northern portion, whilst its western side was caressed by the ebb and flow of the Atlantic tides, or fiercely battered by the tremendous waves of the great ocean as they rolled in on its shores. South and east it had no precise boundaries; but a line drawn parallel to the Loire from Saumur to its r THE VENDEE 5 estuary, and some sixty miles south, would approximately enclose the whole area. More than once, however, the strife between Yendean and revolutionist flowed across the river on to the north side of the Loire ; indeed Nantes, which might be regarded as practically the capital of the Vendee, and Angers also were throughout involved in and often the centres of revolutionary and Venclean operations. This comparatively small extent of country was very varied in character. There was the Plain, an uninterest- ing, somewhat monotonous tract of rich agricultural land ; the Marais, or marsh districts near the estuary of the Loire, — a half- reclaimed, half- submerged fen country, intersected in every direction by great ditches and canals. And there was the Bocage, a beautiful bewildering labyrinth of hills and valleys and woods. The physical conformation of this Bocage had a great influence on the fortunes of the war waged on its soil. Successive ranges of low hills spread out in all direc- tions over its surface; with successive series of valleys or ravines lying between them, each with its meandering stream or river flowing towards the Loire. Clothing many of the hillsides were forests and woods and trees, with that dee]) richness of vegetation which is produced by the rain-laden breezes of the Atlantic. Down to the very last detail it was a Bocage, a leafy bower. Where the trees were not massed together, they grew in rows in tin; fences: and where the land was not under cultivation, or covered witb trees, it was decked with great stretches of gorse and broom. The greater part of this Bocage was impenetrable to all but those win.) lived in it, and who were familial' with its paths; and the Government had done but little G THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. to make it accessible or to bring it into communication with the outer world. Few main roads intercepted it, and those were rough in summer and often impassable in winter, fenced in usually by high hedges or by the natural undergrowth of the woods. The cross-roads could scarcely be called roads: most of them being little better than the bed of a stream many feet below the level of the land at their sides, and beneath overarching trees through which the light of the sun scarcely penetrated. From off these roads branched narrow and tortuous footpaths, known only to the inhabitants themselves, and a source of confusion and perplexity to the travel- ler. It was in fact, as described by General Kleber, " a dark and deep labyrinth, in which one can only march by feeling or groping one's way." Of towns actually in the Vendee there were none of any size. On the very edge of it, separated from it only by the Loire, was the great port and city of Nantes, with some 80,000 inhabitants. And farther east, some sixty miles or so. also on the north side of the river, and some two or three miles away from it. was Angers. another ancient town with a considerable population — some 30,000, it was said. The towns on the south side of the Loire were all small. Saumur. perched on a height overlooking the river; and westward of Saumur. Thouars, with its then almost impregnable castle on a hill. Farther west again — and somewhat south — were Lressuire and Fontenay : ami. westernmost of all. the small seaport of Sables-d'Olonne. And there was ;l number of much smaller towns called " buiirgs." little more than big villages, such as Cholet, Clisson, and Chatillon ; most of them, and of the not very numerous villages, being almost concealed i THE VENDEE 7 in the depths of the woods and in the rich masses of foliage. Only a small portion of the Vendean people lived in the towns, or even in the villages ; for there were no factories of importance or other industries to give them employment there. The greater number lived in detached farmhouses scattered over the country, ensconced in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. And there they carried on their farming operations, con- tinuing in monotonous routine the old habits and practices and systems handed down to them by many venerations : growing grain where grain would grow, the vine where it would thrive, and raising cattle and sheep; almost entirely self- supplying, self-supporting, and bartering their surplus produce in the towns and villages for such articles of clothing and other house- hold goods as they could not themselves produce. Taken as a whole, it was a most productive country. The extensive vineyards produced large quantities of wine and brandy; whilst its plains and fields produced immense quantities of grain of every kind. Over a million of cattle, it was estimated, and some two million of sheep were supported on the land, together with a large number of horses and mules, and the population was variously estimated at from 600,000 to 800,000 persons. Of the Yendeans themselves — the people whose sad mission in history appears to have been to expose to mankind the true character of the revolutionist — there is a unanimity of description by those who knew them. Hospitable, kind, simple in their tastes and manners, thrifty, sober, hard-working, robust in constitution, inured to fatigue ; some fairly well off, but strangers 8 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. i to all sorts of luxury ; others in hard circumstances, and but poorly fed. Living in the midst of the hilly and wooded soli- tudes, far from the centres of life, without communica- tion with towns, rarely having even the society of a village, they had little means of acquiring instruction — little to drag them out of the rut of monotony — or to incite them to progress. Indeed the lapse of a couple of centuries had scarcely altered their condition. Their ignorance was great. The State had clone nothing for them : had left them for their education to their priests, who had brought them up in absolute submission to the Church, in absolute faith in the Roman Catholic religion, and who had won their dee}) devotion and unlimited confidence. Living so much in contact with nature, and so solitarily, they were more or less superstitious, and extremely credulous ; but they were none the less passionately sincere in their religion. By the republicans and revolutionists in subsequent years they were scorned and condemned as fanatics ; but coming from that quarter the term carries no discredit with it. And there was one other prominent trait in the Yendean's character, linked in a way with his intense religious belief — a magnificent, unquenchable courage, — a courage of which he was to give proof on hundreds of battlefields ; and under the even greater trial — that of death by the most horrible and cruel forms which republican ingenuity could devise., — death in prison by the lingering torture of disease: or death on the scaffold, or l>y noyade, fusillade, or sabrade ; death with the deep sense of bitter wrong and infamous injustice, which adds the last drops to the cup of human agony. CHAPTEE II THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAR Part I It was this interesting and unfortunate country which was destined to become the prey of the French revolu- tionists, and these were the unfortunate people who first were driven and goaded into revolt, and then subjected to a tyranny infinitely greater and more cruel than anything from which the Revolution was delivering them. It was a strange destiny ; for the Yendeans were not antagonistic to the Revolution. They constituted a part of the French people who were making it, and in its earlier stages they took an active and sympathetic part. They had their deep wrongs and grievances, as the rest of France had ; they suffered under the exorbitant privileges of the noblesse and upper ranks of the clergy, and under the countless tyrannies of the crown and the aristocracy; and they were weighed down by the merciless exactions and extortions of the tax-collector. They belonged to the " third estate "-- the people of France — which paid all the taxes, which bore all the 10 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. expenses of the State, which by its labour fed and nourished the nation. And now this third estate, unable longer to carry on life under the existing conditions, desired to end the tyrannies and injustices and inequalities it had long groaned under; to efface the badges of its servitude: and to make the other "estates" take their proper share of the national burdens. In all these desires the Vendeans participated thoroughly, and the spirit of reform which possessed the people of France possessed them too. When the elec- tions of deputies to the States-General took place in the early spring of 1789. and when the local assemblies were drawing up their cahicrs, or petitions of grievances, the Vendeans joined in with no uncertain voice. They asked for the sovereignty of the law: for respect of property and personal liberty; for the sup- pression of the pecuniary privileges of the nobles and of the clergy: for the equalisation of taxation: for the abolition of the salt-tax : for the better administration of justice: for a popular system of local government: for the reform of the episcopacy, and payment of the clergy: and for grants of money for the construction of roads and the improvement of the means of communica- tion. In fart, they asked for every tiling which the rest of their countrymen were asking for, and sent their representatives to the meeting of the States-General to help in the general efforts to obtain it. The States - General assembled at Versailles on the 5th May 1789. Tut while it was talking instead of acting, a section of I he people of Paris struck the Hist great blow against the existing order of thing.-. On the 1 1-th July the}' stormed the Bastille and captured it. The effects of this startling event were far - reaching. ii THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAS 11 Within almost a few days the greater part of the country, taking authority into its own hands, shook itself free of all the existing local powers and governments, and substituted therefor popular local committees, backed by the armed strength of the people. Under so sharp a stimulus, the States-General (trans- formed into the Constituent or Xational Assembly) hurried on to actual work ; and on the night of the 4th August, at one sitting, in an access of enthusiasm on the part of some of its members, and of desperation on the part of others, it effected such a wide-embracing mass of reforms that, so far as legislation went, the country passed through a revolution in that one night. The Assembly abolished the privileges of rank, and exemptions from taxation ; it wiped out tithes, seignorial dues, game laws, the salt-tax, and other burdens whose removal had been asked for. It swept away serfdom, and decreed the admission of all citizens, without dis- tinction of birth, to public employment. In this same month of August too, on the 26th, the Assembly, after much discussion, attained to a. Declara- tion of the Eights of Man ; it being deemed desirable to have in black and white a statement of the new order of things, and a record of the new position of man. This celebrated measure, " made in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being," declared as natural and imprescriptible rights of man — the right of liberty ; security of property ; the safety of his person ; the right to resist oppression. It flourished liberty of thought on high ; according to each citizen freedom to speak, write, print, and publish his thoughts. It acclaimed freedom of religion and religious worship. It declared that everyone should be presumed innocent until lie was declared guilty. It L2 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. laid down a code of principles, many of which were admirable in themselves, but every one of which was to be most flagrantly set at naught by the revolutionists in the course of the next few years. And then the Assembly, impelled forwards by its extremer sections, and by the incitements and terrorism of the mob which packed its galleries, proceeded rapidly in the career of reform. It established equality — at least by law. Privileges of rank had been abolished ; now rank itself must go ; and the noblesse, the peerage, titles, hereditary distinctions, and orders, and all dis- tinctions of birth, were abolished. Still, however, events did not move rapidly enough to please the wilder spirits of revolution; and earl)' in October the Paris mob once more took the bit in its teeth, marched out to Versailles, captured the King and Queen, and brought them back to Paris, practically as prisoners. Thither also promptly followed the National Assembly. Seeing these events, and numerous other signs and tokens of imminent ruin and peril to themselves, a great body of the nobility lied from France: all to avoid a pressing danger, some in the hope of obtaining foreign help to enable them to re-establish the old order of things. A large number of the Vendean noblesse followed the example, whilst the few who remained sought retirement in their country places. Fortunately for them, their relations with the peasantry were friendly, and they were not massacred or driven out of the country as the noblesse iii other parts of France were. The National Assembly, now working at high speed under constant pressure from within and without, followed up its popular measures by a series of laws which abolished the old and historic provinces and a THE CAUSES OF THE YEXDEAX WAR 13 provincial governments of France, and welded the country into one great whole — France. And then it began constructing a new system of government. For the purposes of local government, a wholly new division of the country was made — eighty-three Depart- ments were formed, each with a government upon the basis of popular election. All the ancient municipalities were abolished : and the new municipal authorities were also to be popularly elected. And in addition to these great changes, the whole of the existing machinery for the administration of justice was abolished: royal jurisdictions, feudal jurisdictions, ecclesiastical jurisdictions — all were swept away, and a wholly new system substituted : each Department being given its own criminal and civil tribunal, and each district and commune its own court of justice. The Assembly had further been giving its attention to the relationship of the Church to the State ; and money being badly wanted by the new Government, and the Church having plenty, it decreed that all ecclesiastical property was to be at the disposition of the State, the State undertaking that adequate provision would be made for the clergy. 1 In all these measures there was practically nothing which had not been petitioned for in the cahiers, and throughout the Vendee the reforms were received with approbation. When the elections for the new local government bodies took place in the earlier half of 1790, the Vendeans took a keen part in the proceedings, and when the ecclesiastical property was put up at public auction, they bought largely and freely. 1 2nd November 1789. 14 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. But thf National Assembly,, in entering upon a campaign against the Church, had taken the first step on a path of legislation which was to alienate the great mass of the Venclean people from the Revolutionary Government, and ultimately to drive them to appeal to arms in defence of that which they prized so highly, their religious faith. The step which led to the great disaster of civil war was the decree of the Assembly made on the 12th duly 1700, which enacted the civil constitution of the clergy. This measure fundamentally altered the whole posi- tion and status of the Roman Catholic Church in Trance. and at one stroke transferred the authority in almost everything relating to the Church, except doctrine, from the Roman Catholic Hierarchy to the State. By it almost all the ancient ecclesiastical institutions were swept away, and a plan of ecclesiastical government was formed on the same lines as that which had just been adopted for departmental government. Ecclesiastical divisions were made to coincide with the new civil divisions of Departments: and each of the new eighty-three Departments was to have a bishop and a number of priests according to its size. The appoint- ment of bishop- and priests by the King was to cease, and in future all bishops and priests were to be elected to their offices. But the most galling part of the enactment was that which imposed on both bishops and priests the necessity of taking an oath of allegiance to the new State. On a Sunday, in presence of the local authorities, and of the people, they were to take an oath "to be faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the King, and to maintain with all their strength the Constitution decreed bv the ii THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAE 15 National Assembly and accepted by the King," — a Con- stitution which was as yet in the air. The clergy were in effect to be cut loose from their connection with Rome and the Pontiff, the spiritual and temporal head of the Church ; their appointment was to be made by the people of each parish ; and they were to become the servants of, and to be paid by, the State. This new civil constitution of the clergy struck root and branch at the whole system of the Roman Catholic Church, both in temporal and spiritual spheres. And it arrayed the great mass of the Catholic clergy — some G 4,0 00 in number — in opposition to the ( lovernment. " By the constitution of Jesus Christ," said the priests, " the supreme power of the Church rests with the bishops and the Pontiff; and it was to them that the govern- ment of the Church of God had been given. By your decrees, it is you who govern the Church and its ministers. "What! Is it not enough to have made the sacrifice of all our property, of all our privileges, and of all the gold of the temple, but that one must abandon even the religion of which we are the ministers ? . . . "We warn you, that, since it is not a question of our fortunes, but of faith, and of the eternal salvation of the people, the time of complaisance is past. Our conscience forces us to tell you it is better to obey God than man. '■' It is impossible, without apostasy, to accept this proposed constitution. "Even the pretension to give to the Church this new constitution is an outrage, and a veritable blasphemy against the Author of our religion." 1G THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. In terms such as these was the Government inveighed against, and a very small proportion of the clergy took the prescribed oath. The Government, however, was not to be trifled with, and after a few months' delay measures were adopted to enforce obedience to the new law. On the 27th November 1790 the Assembly made a decree that all bishops and priests were to take the oath within eight days. A delay, however, occurred in its enforcement, owing to the King for some time with- holding his sanction to it : but his sanction being at last obtained, the Assembly determined on itself beginning the enforcement of the law, and it fixed the -4th January 1701 as the day on which the oath was to be taken by the clergy who were members of the Assembly, some 300 in number. The day came: two bishops and thirty or forty priests took the oath ; but the great majority of them would not. One by one they refused. " 1 was born a Roman and Apostolic Catholic," said one; "I wish to die in that faith. I should not do so were I to take the oath you ask me to." " Sirs," said another, the Bishop of Poitiers, — '■ Sirs, 1 am seventy years of age ; for thirty-three of which I have been a bishop. I will not stain my white hairs by the oath of your decrees." Furious with these replies, and tins firm opposition, the Assembly shortened the scene. The President ordered all who had not yet taken the oath to come and take it collectively. No one came. It was a question now of conscience, and there would he no flinching;, even though the Assembly was at white heat, and outside a huue and excited mob. the sound of ii THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAE 17 whose voices readied the Chamber ; and whose cries were the now familiar "A la lanterne ! " "Ala lantcrnc with the bishops and priests who will not take the oath ! " Foiled for the moment in its object, the Assembly ordered proceedings to be taken for the enforcement of the penalties prescribed by the law ; and decreed that the King should order the election of other priests in the place of those who refused to take the oath. Flere, in this anti-church legislation, lay the origin of the Vendean war. Republican writers, in their efforts to belaud the devolution, and to clear the revolutionary cause of the infamy attached to it by the iniquities perpetrated during the Yendean war, have done their utmost to lay the blame on the royalists, on the Roman Catholic clergy, on the fanaticism and ignorance of the peasantry, on everybody except those upon whom it rightly falls. But their efforts are labour in vain, for the case is so absolutely clear, the cause so very patent. The whole and entire blame of the A r endean war rests un- mistakably upon those who began and carried to the bitter end a system of the most grievous religious proscription and persecution. There is no doubt that all sorts of vague and hopeless schemes passed through the minds of the small number of royalist noblesse left in the A'endee ; and it is perfectly true that efforts were made by some few of the royalists in, and many out of, France, to organise in the west of France a counter-revolutionary movement which should lend to the restoration of the old regime : but, from the very condition of things at the time, they were feebly contrived, and had no practical effect. c 18 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. Savaiy, who could speak with authority on the subject, wrote : " At this epoch all who pertained to the noblesse were closely watched by the local administrative bodies. It would have been difficult to see each other, to consult together, to concert plans or put them in execution. Living in isolation, all their thoughts were their own personal safety. Thus, as was later avowed by d'Elbee, the noblesse did not organise the civil war. They were constrained to take part in it by circum- stances and by the wishes of the peasantry." And the Catholic clergy used all their power to oppose a persecution which fell upon them with iron hand. But not even they could have evoked a general movement if the Yendean people had not en masse been actually suffering and writhing under an unendurable state of affairs: and the efforts of the noblesse and the clergy were no more the original cause of the Yendean insurrection than Niagara is the cause of the Gulf Stream. The first and main cause was the anti-church legislation, which, whilst striking at the Roman Catholic Church, fell with its full force on the Yendean people in the exercise of their religious creed. With an intensely religious people religion goes infinitely deeper than loyalty to a particular Government, and in the belief of these Yendean people not merely their temporal but their eternal welfare was felt to be at stake in their religion, and though manv of them may have been attached to their King, they cared for their religion infinitely more. It has been said, indeed, and probably with truth, that they would have rebelled against him had he been responsible for the laws and the enforce- ment of those laws which finally broke down their patience and goaded them into insurrection. The majority of republican writers on this period ii THE CAUSES OF THE YENDEAN WAS 19 have underrated the immense influence of religion upon the individual or upon a religious people. They have not realised that intense religious fervour helbre which every other consideration vanishes from view. Certainly they have underrated it in the case of the Yendean people. No royalist plots, no clerical intrigues, no " gold of Pitt," that nightmare of the French revolutionist, were required to account for resistance to a treatment which a religious people would naturally combat a I'outrance. Indeed, neither the royalists, nor even the clergy, would have succeeded in so alienating the Yendean people from the Revolutionary Government as to have driven them en masse to appeal to arms. It was the Revolutionary Government itself which first alienated them by enacting legislation which, though directed against the Church as an institution, yet was not in its effects limited to that Church or its priesthood, but fell with terrible effect upon the Yendean people. And it was the Revolutionary Government itself which drove them to arms by persevering in and savagely enforcing a policy so repugnant to them. The stupidity of the legislation was that it was not possible to strike down the Roman Catholic Church in the manner attempted without at the same time hitting even harder the believers in the Roman Catholic faith. But the Assembly did not at first recognise this fact. As time went on it evinced its indifference to it, becom- ing more and more vindictive as it found itself met by a dogged and pertinacious opposition. Thus, in their measures to compel obedience, the Assembly, setting at naught its solemn declarations of religious liberty, embarked on a career of violent and extreme religious persecution, and recklessly passed on from one measure of intolerance and violence to another. 20 THE REAL FREXCH REVOLUTIONIST en. Where the priest of a parish would not take the oath, he was deprived of his office, and another priest — one who was willing to take the oath — was foisted on the parish, after going through the form of election, to the indignation of the people, who designated him as an " intruder." — an intrus, — and who would have nothing to say to him. The views and feelings of the Yendeans are easily to be understood by any one who has any knowledge of the Roman Catholic faith. The Pope, by Bull of 13th April 1791, had denounced the civil constitution of the clergy as founded on heretical principles. A priest, therefore, who had taken the oath was regarded by them as a schismatic and a heretic. His offices, therefore, they felt, were of no avail, for he ceased to hold the divine authority of the Church, and his services therefore ceased to have any religious sanction or efficacy. The people accordingly would not attend his celebrations of the Mass, or listen to his instruction, or receive from him any sacrament. They would not confess to him, nor did they believe in the efficacy of his absolution. These consequences in themselves were sufficient to have awakened the most bitter resentment. But they were by no means all : for the effects of the change of the law were not confined to the ministerial or religious offices of the priesthood, The intrus, or priest who, having taken the prescribed oath, was " intruded :: into the parish as a successor to their own priest, became, by virtue of his office, the officer of State in the parish for matters concerning the civil state of the population. The position of the sworn priest carried with it the exclusive right of legally marrying people : with it also the leiral registration of births and deaths, and the ii THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAE 21 burial of the dead. And so the people could not be legally married except by a heretic ; the birth of their children could not be legally registered except by a heretic ; the last offices to their dead could not be performed except by a heretic. The broad truth is, that the Vendean peasantry, a devoutly religious people, were, so far as the Revolu- tionary Government could make them so, practically excommunicated. Their churches, they believed, were defiled by heretical priests officiating in them : and the rites of religion, rites in the exercise of which they believed their eternal welfare depended, were denied them. For their children to be born without baptism imperilled the salvation of their children ; to die without confession and absolution meant, to them, eternal damnation. The sacrament of marriage, indeed its legitimacy, and therefore the legitimacy of the children, was denied them. In vain the Vendean peasant sought the Holy Sacrament to comfort and nourish his soul. The Revolutionary Government, with "religious liberty" as its motto, denied it to him. In vain the dying longed for the last consolations of religion, for confession, absolution, extreme unction, for the last rites of his faith which should secure him an entrance into the new world of happiness — the Revolutionary Government denied them to him. The Revolutionary Government, with the assertion on its lips that it was " in the principles of the new constitution to respect liberty of conscience," denied the liberty it paraded, and excommunicated him from the Catholic Church almost as effectually as the Pope could do. Nor were these mere grievances of the moment. 22 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Day and night, and every hour of each, they pressed upon him. They were an ever-present, ever-constant, galling grief. What more natural, then, that the Vendean people, thus injured in all the most sacred and cherished affairs of life, and the most deep-seated feelings of their nature, and thus practically excommunicated, should have be- come vehemently hostile to the Government which inflicted this cruel persecution upon them. No other cause for the Vendean rebellion need be sought. It was all-sufficient in itself. And the iron ate deep into their souls. The records of the time teem with poignant expressions of despair and unhappiness. " Misery tortures us on every side. We have no consolation but in religion, and they wish to take that consolation from us. We are in absolute despair." But at the same time another spirit finds expression also. " We are determined to avenge ourselves. We must destroy those who are destroying religion. We must defend our religion with our lives. I write this with pen and ink ; but my blood will prove my words when the time is appropriate." Patience and forbearance were not traits of the Revolutionary Government, and with but little delay, and regardless of warnings, the Government persevered in its punitive legislation against the priests who would not take the prescribed oath. Measure after measure, each of increasing severity, was taken against them; tbe consequences of which were felt not alone by them, but also by tbe Vendeans, until at last, as time went on, the people were deprived of all t he religious services rendered them by their priests, except such as they could obtain secretly and a THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAR 23 surreptitiously from those of their clergy who had fled from the tyranny of the Government, and who were in hiding in the woods or other remote places. With the growing severity of legislation, actual opposition to the local authorities arose in many parishes, and there was rioting. In some cases even the National Guards had to be supported by the military. And, as the feelings of the people became more deeply moved by this persecution, evidence of ever- growing religious excitement was revealed. Strange rumours were bruited abroad and whispered from one to the other — reports of apparitions of the Virgin, and miracles being performed by her. An oak near St. Laurent, reputed to be sacred, was visited by thousands. At Bellefontaine, in a small chapel, an image of the Virgin, which had a great reputation as a worker of miracles, was worshipped by crowds. Nocturnal religious processions took place ; nocturnal religious meetings were held. Late one night, from the crest of the highest hill in Anjou, where there was a celebrated sanctuary of a Madonna, a " patriot " patrol saw numerous lines of nickering lights ; then, 1))' the illuminated outlines made by blazing torches and lanterns and candles carried by processionists, they could trace the paths of processions coining from all sides ; and then they could hear the subdued murmurs of voices, and borne upon the midnight air the solemn melodies of sacred ritual, the Salve Eegina, and the litanies of the Virgin. In places, too, the rising emotions and passions of the people showed themselves in hostility to the priests who had taken the oath— the intrus. At one village so serious were the disturbances that in the restoration of order five peasants were shot by the National Guards. 24 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. Hut the feelings and passions of the people were too deeply involved to be checked even by such severity. The removal of their favourite priests was more than they could quietly submit to. " Our priests are given us by God," said one: "let them stay with us till their death. After that we will see. If you don't, there will be bloodshed. We will defend them till death." But these incidents, instead of having any effect in warning the National Assembly of the danger of the path it was treading, and of inducing some moderation or modification of policy, only made it harden its heart. Indeed, a revolutionary Assembly was not likely to be diverted from a revolutionary policy by any con- siderations of prudence, and the flight of the King from Paris in June did not improve the revolutionary temper generally, or incline the Assembly to a more lenient course. Nor did the state of the Vendee improve. Rumours of royalist meetings and clerical plots, and equally reliable ones of mysterious ships hovering about the coast, added to the ferment. But at last the National Assembly, somewhat puzzled and perplexed with the state of the Vendee, and feeling in need of enlightenment, sent down com- missioners to make a thorough investigation and to report the result of their inquiries. And then, for one moment, the dark masses of storm- cloud which had been covering the political sky broke ; and a gleam of light— like a gleam of hope— came throng] i. The King accepted the new Constitution which had at length been produced by the Constituent Assembly, and swore fealty to it; and on the 15th September 1791 the Assembly, in a transport of delight, declared ii THE CAUSES OF THE YEXDEAN WAR 25 that the object of the French Revolution was accom- plished, and that here the Revolution was ended. And as a sign and token of the new order of things, it proclaimed a general amnesty. But, after a brief moment, the delusive gleam of light died out ; the clouds closed in again darker and denser than ever. Some fearful destiny seemed to be impelling the country towards a catastrophe; and the stupendous folly of the Revolutionary Government drove l he Vendeans to fearful and unescapable disaster. CHAPTER III THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAR Part II In October (1791) the commissioners Gensoime and Gallois who had been sent into the Vendee reported to the new National Legislative Assembly — which had succeeded the National Constituent Assembly — the results of their investigations and inquiries. The salient, decisive fact established by them in " their faithful picture of the political and religious situation of the Vendee at this time " was, that " the imposition on the clergy of the oath was the beginning of the troubles.'"' " Until then the people had enjoyed the most perfect tranquillity . . . they were disposed by their natural character to a love of peace, to the sentiment of order, and a respect of the law: they reaped the benefits of the Revolution without experiencing its storms . . . and they asked no favour beyond having priests in whom they would have confidence and trust." And the commissioners also clearly showed that any excitement or disturbances there, any hostility to the Government, any clerical machinations, all had their c.i. in THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAE 27 foundation in that cause, their starting-point from the enforcement of that ill-omened decree. The Assembly listened to the report of the com- missioners, and the President, speaking in an oracular way, declared that the Assembly would leave no stone unturned to heal the evils described. To re-establish the public spirit was the first of its desires, as it was the first of its duties. But the Assembly set about this first of its desires, this first of its duties, in a way directly the opposite of that which would lead to quiet. With the ink scarcely dry on the new Constitution of France, and on as solemn a declaration of religious liberty as any constituted body could possibly make, the Assembly counted it no wrong to violate what had just been laid down as the fundamental law of the country, as the very basis of the Constitution, and to act in dia- metrically the opposite manner. The truth was, the revolutionists had no intention — Constitution or no Constitution — of being balked in their attack on the Church and on religion. And so the Assembly not alone persevered in the course of religious persecution commenced by its predecessor, the Constituent Assembly, but became more violent in it. On the 29th November 1791 it decreed that those of the priests who had not taken the oath by the 7th January next should be put under surveillance as sus- pects of revolt against the law ; and further, that if any religious disturbances took place in the commune where any refractory priests resided, they were to be held re- sponsible, and were to be remove* 1 to and confined in the chief town of the Department. The King vetoed this decree ; but matters had gone so far that his veto was contemptuously disregarded, and 28 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. the enthusiastic local patriots in the towns in or border- ing on the Vendee enforced the decree as if it had been sanctioned by the King and had become law. There was no one to call them to account for such violations of law, or for actions neither prescribed nor authorised by the Constitution. And they were energetic in their persecution. Thus, the Directory of the Department of Maine and Loire, intent on effectually preventing religious services being held, had a- short time previously sent com- missioners throughout the Department who despoiled several of the churches, carried away the sacred vessels and ornaments, overturned the altars, and pulled down the bells — proceedings which naturally caused the most intense indignation. ]'»y some even these usurped powers were not held to be enough, for the mayor and people of Sables besought the National Assembly for still severer measures against the non-oath-taking priests. "The Patrie," they said, "can no longer retain in her bosom these sanguinary monsters. . . . She can no longer nourish children rebels to the law, and sworn against her. These perverse ministers must subscribe to the social pact, or be expelled. We call for the deportation and exile of these madmen. We demand that they be transported to the pestiferous marshes of Italy, there to be purged of the venom with which they poison us, — that they be sent thither to join the chief of their infernal cohort, Pope Pius VI." All this, too, in spite of the Articles of the new Con- stitution, in spite of Article 10 of the great Declaration of the Rights of Alan, the Charter of the Revolution, that " no one was to be interfered with (inq aietd) " on account of his religious opinions — a declaration like so in THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAE 29 many other laws and declarations of the French revolu- tionists and republicans, loud-sounding clap-trap, the absolute antithesis to the actual intentions and actions of its adherents. The Vendeans, though excited and bitterly aggrieved by the persecution of their priests, and though provoked almost beyond endurance by the effects of that per- secution, comported themselves during the early part of 1792 with great patience and self-possession. There were mutterings and grumblings of deep, indeed threaten- ing discontent, but there was little overt action. No small part of the calm was due to the admirable tact and effective military arrangements of General Du- mouriez, who tor some little time had been holding an important military appointment in the Vendee, and whose general line of conduct may be gathered from a speech he made in the summer of 1791 at Sables. " Let us remember," he said, " that the rebels, if we come across any, are Frenchmen, dazed by fanaticism and prejudice. Let us be severe, as is the law which orders us to act, but let us not be cruel or unjust ; let us not stain ourselves with the blood of unarmed in- dividuals : let us not dishonour ourselves by pillaging ; let us not deliver to the flames houses which may one day become the cradle of enlightened citizens. We are Frenchmen — that is to say, humane, generous. Liberty should add new virtues to those which Europe acknow- ledged we already possessed before our glorious Involu- tion." The very things he said they ought not to do, were the very things the true revolutionist wished to do, and was about to do ; and principles such as these laid down by him were a long way below that revolutionary height which was the hall-mark of the true sans-culotte. 30 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Early in 179 2 Dumouriez left the Vendue, and his skilful hand removed, the situation there became more strained. The Assembly went on raining down blow upon blow upon the priesthood. On the 27th May it decreed that, at the request of twenty citizens of a canton, any non- juring priests might be sent to the chief town to be imprisoned, and in case of any further intriguing they might be sent over the frontier. The decree was vetoed by the King, but as before, the local authorities, in their impatience to persecute, disregarded the veto, and acted on the decree. And so, without any form of justice, and often for purely supposititious offences, the priests were arrested in hundreds, and hurried oft' to the chief town of the Department, there to be imprisoned, or thence sent over the frontier. For them there was not a glimmer of justice or consideration anywhere. Apart from the anti-religious measures of the Revolu- tionary Government, other events necessitated measures which in their effects still further increased the irritation of the Vendeaiis. Foreign affairs had assumed a very threatening aspect for France, and on the 12th July 1792 the National Assembly declared the country in danger, and called for 85,000 volunteers to defend the frontiers. Every man, too, was ordered to wear the tricoloured cockade as a mark of his loyalty to the new order of things, and the white cockade was declared to be a sign of rebellion punishable by death. Very soon after, Prussia declared war against France, and the Duke of Brunswick issued his notorious manifesto, which evoked tremendous feeling against the King and the emigre noblesse, and rallied to the side in THE CAUSES OF THE VENDEAN WAR 31 of the Government many who disapproved of its actions. The consequences were disastrous to the King'. On the 10th of August the Parisian mob, this time under orders from higher authorities, attacked and captured the Tuileries. The King took refuge with the Assembly, which there and then made a decree that he should be suspended from his functions, and that the French people should be invited to elect a National Convention to draw up a new constitution. It was practically the end of the monarchy. While Paris and France were thus in a state of the wildest excitement, the state of the Vendee grew more critical. The feeling among the Yendeans had become so exacerbated that the enrolment of volunteers for the army led to partial revolts. From the beginning of the year they had shown their disinclination to military service. Already in March there had been some slight disturbances on this account, and as time went on this aversion became stronger. And now in August a gathering of the peasants took place in the neighbourhood of Chatillon, which they captured, and then they proceeded to make an attack on Bressuire, where after three days' righting they were repulsed. Some thirty-five to fifty " patriots " were killed or wounded, while some three hundred to five hundred of the peasants were killed. Here, in the first real engagement between the Yendeans and the republicans, the latter began their atrocities. Some hundreds of prisoners were massacred in cold blood ; and it is a well-attested fact that after the fiu,'htin i : m /;//■' s. In principle the Military Commissions only dealt with revoltes and emigre's taken with arms in their hands. Soon, however, these courts gave wide extension to their own powers, and took cognisance of almost any counter-revolutionary offences. Though there are instances of the generals appointing such commissions, the Representatives, with their un- limited powers, appear to have taken the appointment of them into their own hands, and appointed them wherever and whenever they thought they would be useful. Each Commission or court consisted of five members, but it was not necessary for the live members to act together, and iiom the very outset these courts were simply instruments in the bands of the Representative in his task of " purging the country," of " purifying the air of liberty/' and of raising the country to the full heights ni' revolutionary grandeur. And so the Representatives, with these and other objects before them, soon began dotting the Departments over with Revolutionary Tribunals and Military Com- missions. The latter were the most convenient and simple means of sending to death those whom the Representa- tive wished to doom to death, and as they Were there for that purpose, instructions from him as to the treatment of prisoners were in reality unnecessary. vi REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS 75 These Military Commissions were the veriest mockery of a judicial tribunal. As was truly said of them, "they clad murder with the mantle of the law." Men were appointed to preside in them whose principal quali- fications were, not knowledge, not integrity, not fair- mindedness, but vehement revolutionary views and true sans-culotte fervour, with the necessary callousness to give effect thereto. In most cases the members of them were the very scum of blackguardism, cruel, bloodthirsty men, often not even military men, ignorant of the com- monest principles of law, swayed solely by their passions, prejudices, and desires. And a procedure was adopted in these courts which deprived the prisoner of any opportunity, any possibility of defence. At first one iiroc&s-verhcd, supported by the deposition of one witness, or the oral and uniform deposition • if two witnesses, 1 were required for the establishment of the guilt of a prisoner, and as sufficient for his being sentenced to death. But, as time wore on, even this formality fell into abeyance, and procedure was reduced to a mere request for the prisoner's name, and then the sentence of death. " One trembles," wrote a republican commissioner who witnessed their handiwork, " when one thinks of the horrors perpetrated by these tribunals of blood." As for the nature <^ the justice administered by the various Revolutionary Tribunals, it was in flagrant viola- tion of all the most elementary principles of justice in civilised countries. It is doubtful whether the extremest despotism has ever shown such a complete negation of justice, such a callous disregard of even the forms of fairness. 1 " Lo fait denieurera constant soit par un proces-verbal revetu d'uue seule signature coiifirme par la deposition d'uii temoin, soit par la deposi tion orale et uniforme do deux temoins." 7 b" THE LiEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. It is this complete disregard of justice which is the most striking feature in the system of the Revolutionary Government, in every phase and aspect of its actions, in every grade of its organisation. Running through all its acts, woven into its very tissue, was an absolute hostility to, a defiance of, justice. Splendid speeches might he delivered in the Con- vention upon the beauties of justice, particularly of French just ice: courts might laud the impartiality of the justice they administered, and the fairness of their proceedings; hut the grim horrors of these years con- trast tacts with theories, contrast deeds with profes- sions, tell, in fact, how justice was assassinated even by the highest officials of the State, and by every court in it, from the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris to the worst of the roving Military Commissions in the country. These desperate engines of tyranny, and the dreadful [(revisions of the law of 19th March, — "the Law of Death," as it was called, — were not long allowed to lie unused. From .Angers, General Berruyer wrote on the 5th April : " I have given orders to disarm and arrest all suspects." (This, be it remarked, was more than four months before the celebrated Loi des Suspects was passed.) "The Military Commissions are in vigour, and have already executed a large number of persons who have been taken with arms in their hands.''' At Sables, the seaport of the Vendee, on the 1st April, the militar) officers elected a Military Commission which promptly proceeded to try prisoners charged with having joined the rebels, and having worn a white cockade. vi REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS 77 A guillotine was erected on the highest of the sand- hills in the neighbourhood, so that all men might see it and its work, and in the course of the mouth some sixty- live to seventy executions took place there, all of persons in the humblest callings of life- — -took place in batches, those whose turn came last being forced to stand by and see their companions in misery being executed — until their own turn came. Many of these unfortunates had avowed themselves guilty, in complete ignorance of the fate awaiting them, but no mercy was shown them. In the earlier days of the Military Commissions, when the members had not yet become quite inured to the work, and sonic hazy sense of responsibility existed, some discrimination was exercised as to the guilt of the prisoners, and there were acquittals. Here at Sables many acquittals took place. In many cases the accused had been arrested without any legal formality, and sent for trial without a prods-verlol or written charge, without even a single declaration. Indeed, the form of the acquittals — "There exists against them no proof of rebellion. They have been arrested without arms, without a white cockade, and on their own hearths" — shows how unjustifiable the majority of arrests had been. This Commission at Sables was so far conscientious as to acknowledge that it felt itself" cruelly embarrassed" by the terms of the law. As the military forces drew up no legal process against the persons arrested, how could the court declare what the crime of the prisoner was — or what proof was there even of the identity of the prisoner ? Subtleties such as these, however, were not of long duration. Convictions by the Military Commissions ?s THE REAL FREXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. multiplied rapidly, and acquittals became rarer, until finally there were none. Here and there in all this ghastly tragedy one comes across an idea so grim as almost to he humorous. Thus the " patriot " authorities at Xiort — the Directory there — did not think the new form of execution quite impressive enough, and having devoted some consideration to the subject, wrote to the Con- vent inn begging it, in order to show how much Frenchmen abhorred royalty, to decree that every man condemned to death as a counter -revolutionist should be led to the place of his execution with a crown on his head. The execution once of the one King was evidently not sufficient. His execution over and over again — in living effigy — could not fail to impress the evil-disposed, whilst it would be a constant gratification to the multi- tude to witness the repetition of its triumph. If the chances of escape were slender once a person came before the revolutionary courts, revolutionary justice displayed itself in as cruel and infamous a way in the stage preliminary to trial, namely the imprison- ment — an imprisonment often if not usually equivalent to death. It mattered little under what law action was taken, the people, on one charge or another, were torn from their homes in hundreds and thousands and sent to prison — man}", if not most of them, innocent of amy crime. By the beginning of May the prison- in the towns which were not in the hands of the Vendcans were crammed with prisoners in a manner involving the gravest risk to life; but that was a trilling matter in the eyes of the revolutionist, if anything it was an advantage. vi REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS 79 In the prisons of Fontenay and Sables alone more than 1250 prisoners wore massed or heaped together, all of humble rank, there being no aristocrats, none of the noblesse — not even a single Vendean chief among them. And in Nantes, from March onwards, National Guards had been arriving daily with numerous prisoners, women as well as men, all of whom were thrown pell-mell into one or other of the prisons in the city. Here in the prisons the most appalling state of things existed. One of the prisons was the grim old castle Le Bouffay, whose origin dated back to the tenth century, and whose walls under the regime of republican "liberty" were witnessing more suffering and misery in one day than in the darkest period of its existence it witnessed in a decade. The report of some commissioners who visited it has come down to us. There were three cachots, or cells, in it, dark, damp, and unhealthy, which only received light through a hole of three inches. Several other cells had no light when tlic door was shut. Everywhere there was want of air. Itch, scurvy, dysentery, and fever were habitual among the prisoners. There was no surgeon, and a doctor did not come once in three months to see the prisoners. And in the prison of St. Claire tilings were not any 1 letter. Ten or twelve were in each room. The air was pestiferous, and charged with mephitic miasmas. The great majority were sick, and without even straw to lie on ; they were devoured by vermin ; and their state was so bad as to cause fears of a plague or epidemic, not only in the prison, but in the town. SO THE REAL FUEXCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. The most horrible sufferings were undergone in these fearful pest-houses — these hells upon earth — and thou- sands of prisoners never came out alive; but at this date the state of the prisons was still far from being at its worst, and the climax of horrors was not reached until the government of "liberty and fraternity" was well settled in the seat of authority. To complete the provisions for the extermination of the Yendeans and other counter-revolutionists, ample preparations were made by the revolutionary authorities for the final disposal of offenders. The newly-invented guillotine was adopted as the instrument of death. In L 792 a model guillotine, with minute instructions as to its use, had been sent to all the Departments, which forthwith provided themselves with the full-sized imple- ment of revolutionary justice — the Department of Deux Sevres, which was next to La Vendee, with an eye to the future, ordering a batch of five. A little later — to facilitate and expedite matters — some of the Military Commissions carried their own guillotine about with them, as a part of their personal luggage. On one occasion some inconvenience was caused by the blade having been left behind in a cupboard at the last place; where the Commission had been sitting. The Revolutionary Government, in its dealings with the Yendeans, at this period of its existence, was like some mighty and horrible snake coiling itself round its victim, getting it ever more and more completely in its power before crushing the life out of it. "With diabolical ingenuity, and without a shadow of relenting, or vestige of hesitation or remorse, the Revolutionary Government, and its agents and instruments, "brave republicans" all, took measure after measure to close vi REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS 81 up any possible loophole of evasion or escape ; and then, having got its victim powerless and harmless in its grasp, deadening its ears to any appeals for mercy, dealt out to it death in the most cruel and terrible forms — to guilty and innocent alike, to man, woman, and child. CHAP TEE VI I THE VENDEAN WAK Part III Whilst the central and local revolutionary governing bodies were thus getting everything into thorough working order for the reign of Liberty according to revolutionary ideas, a phase of moderation, real or assumed, suddenly passed over the Convention, but as suddenly vanished. The Convention, on the 23rd May, stepped down off its high pedestal, and, in a " Proclamation to the citizens of tin: disturbed districts," condescended to argue with them. " You desire to keep your religion. But who has endeavoured to take it from you, or to trouble your consciences? Has any one proposed to change anything in your belief, or in the ceremonies of your worship? No. Vou have been deprived of those whom you regard as the sole legitimate ministers. But have they not justified by their conduct these too necessary measures? These men who to-day preach murder and pillage;, are the)' the true ministers of a God of peace, or the vile satellites of despots leagued against your country? . . . on. vii THE VENDEAN WAE 83 These priests who call themselves the only Catholics are paid by the gold of Protestant England." The people were called on to abjure their errors. " Show yourselves worthy of retaking the name of Frenchmen. You will find then none but brothers in the Republic, which arms itself with regret to punish you — which, ready to crush you with all its power, would weep over successes purchased at the price of your blood. " If any scruples continue to agitate your con- sciences, remember that liberty of worship is one of the necessary conditions of a republican constitution." Specious self-contradictory verbiage such as this was not likely to detach the Vendeans from their cause ; and they knew already too much of republican fraternity to trust the hazy promises hinted at rather than expressed. But at the very same time this public proclamation was being made, with its painful alternative of submis- sion, or of revolutionary tears and the employment of force, the Minister of War was answering certain questions which Biron, the newly appointed commander- in-chief in the Vendee, had asked him, and which were very much more to the point. Biron wanted to know whether he could employ other means than those of arms to subdue the rebellious country. The evasive answer was given : " The Republic could but applaud the zeal which would suggest the best means of reclaiming the misguided Vendeans by circulating among them the instructions most likely to lead to this result." To his other question, " Is it allowed to enter into negotiations with those of the chiefs who could be induced to abandon the counter-revolutionary army, and 84 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ii. who could bring with them considerable numbers 1 " the reply was a very clear and distinct negative. " I tin not think that in any ease it would be proper to enter into negotiations with the chiefs of the rebels." So that was settled. The issue must be fought out. And then, as it was plain to the Revolutionary Govern- ment that something was amiss with the army in the west, its condition was seriously taken in hand. The Minister of War sent one of his ■''colleagues/'' Ron-in. a Jacobin of Jacobins, to the Vendee with extensive powers to "revolutionise''' the arm}'. Ronsin began by appointing a lot of colleagues (cirl joints): and as numerous other commissioners of all sorts and kinds were already roving about, ; " a war of reports arose, all more or less exaggerated, and there were rivalries and denunciations — in a word, complete anarchy." Representatives, commissioners, and generals all vied with each other in reports to the Minister of War or to the Committee of Public Safety, filled with censure of the proceedings of every one else, or insinuations against their patriotism or their sense. Some abused some, others abused others, a mutual secret abuse society instead of a public admiration society. though occasionally the proceedings of a crai snus-cidotti. were praised so as to be a foil to others who had the taint of noblesse about them, or who were possessed of any ability. Even the Minister of War did not escape secret adverse reports addressed to the Committee of Public Safety. Biron, by Ins conspicuous position, and Ids widely known antecedents, attracted special hostility, and though vi f THE YEXDEAN WAR 35 he struggled valiantly on, all his plans, military and political, were thwarted by an organised sans-culotte opposition. To get what material of war and supplies he could, he went to Saumur, early in June, and thence on to Tours, where there was almost a rebellion among the troops, which he appeased. Here he held a council of war, hut lie could get no detailed information from any one as to the number of troops. Arms were wanted, but the Committee of Public Safety wrote: "We cannot possibly send yon any. "We have none available." These would he reasons for his inability to act against the Vendeans, but they were no excuse in the eyes of the vrais sans-cv.lottes, Already Bouchotte, "an excellent citizen but a very bail minister," was writing to him complaining of delay. " The public desires to see an end put to the troubles in the Vendee. It bears them impatiently, and attributes them to em lyres. The general who wishes to preserve his reputation as a patriot cannot put too much activity into his movements." And Biron wrote to the Minister of War exonerating himself, and complaining of" a multitude of disorganisers who preach indiscipline to the soldiers, pillage, defiance of the generals, contempt and hatred of the Convention, and of the Representatives delegated to this army. . . . The agents of your agents preach everywhere insub- ordination and the division of property. They wish to meddle with everything. Some of them can scarcely read/' A specimen of this sort of " disorganiser " was one Felix, afterwards the notorious president of the Military Commission at Angers, — one of the must bloodthirsty 86 THE REAL FREXCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. and infamous wretches among the numerous herd of them at this period. At Xiort he publicly denounced the generals, and evm the Representatives. He was a firebrand among revolutionists, if such a thing is imaginable: half-a- dozen times lie was arrested for one reason or another, but he had a passport which described him as "the colleague of the colleague of the Minister of War, Ronsin," and he had to be released. The system of denunciation and calumny which was carried on as regarded the army extended under the rule of the Representatives to all branches of administration : it paralysed and disorganised all; frightened the good citizens; cooled the sincere ones; and created enemies to the Republic among those even most favourably dis- posed to serve it. But as tire system met with the approval of the Revolutionary Government in Paris, and the actions of the Representatives were the result of the directions of the Government, there was no one to whom appeal could be made by those who were aggrieved. The downfall of the Girondists left the extreme revolutionists freer than ever to govern on revolutionary principles, and to demonstrate for all time to the world at large the beauties and advantages of the republican form of government, and its superiority to all others. The immediate effect of the Girondist defeat was a fresh impulse to the already despotic energies of the revolutionary authorities in the area of the Vendean strife. The way was made easier for the free working of revolutionary principles, and for the unchecked rule of the revolutionists; and marvellous ingenuity was dis- played in the elaboration of fresh instruments of tyranny. The army was beiim seen to: civil organisation must vii TILE VENDEAN WAR 87 also be rendered more effective ; and so the grip of the revolutionist steadily tightened upon the towns. Nantes, if not technically the capital of the Vendee, was at any rate one of the great centres of interest in the Vendean war. From the outset, it had been strongly revolutionary, and had more or less kept pace with the Revolution in its progress. Here, on the first outbreak of the Vendeans, the administrative bodies had established an extraordinary criminal tribunal to judge, without appeal, the brigands confined in the Chateau, though their authority to take any such measure appears questionable. To expedite its work, this tribunal was divided into two sections, and a number of capital sentences were pronounced. And then, that means of punishment should lie easily available, they directed that the guillotine should be immediately erected on the Place du Bouffay. On the 20th March, still solicitous about that horrible instrument, they decreed that it should be painted red ; and that under it sand a foot deep should be put, so that no traces of blood be left on the pavement. The execu- tioner, too, was enjoined "to act promptly, and to keep the fatal instrument in good order." Also the lighting it at night engaged attention; for there was a serious row one night owing to the execution of a man in the dark — no torches having been lighted — the populace being unable to see the sight, or, as they said, identify the victim, and fearing "a substitution or dangerous suppression." In April a Revolutionary Tribunal, on the Paris model, was added to the different tribunals already in operation, and Phelippes de Tronjolly was made president of it. S8 THE REAL FEEXCH REVOLUTIONIST en. Though for a considerable period Xantes was practi- cally of one mind as regarded the Revolution, there had developed itself, as time went on, a difference of opinion as to the length to which the Revolution should lie carried: the wealthier and more respectable classes supporting the opinions of the Girondists — Revolution without terror: while the more extreme men supported the desire of the Mountain for a radical Revolution, and adopted its view that terror was the only way of resist- ing foreign attacks and the internal efforts against the Republic. The Club de la Halle 1 was the principal club of those holding Girondist opinions; the Club St. Vincent that iif those holding the extremer views. When strife ran high in Paris between the Girondists and the Mountain, the local authorities at Xantes had pronounced in favour of the Girondists and against the Mountain, and on the 19th May, hair of the Representa- tives came there, not as friends hut as enemies, and Merlin (de Douai) accused them of inertia, egotism, and other transgressions. Baco, the Mayor, replied that the city had been declared " to have deserved well of the country.'" — which in effect he said it had saved, during the terrible days of the 10th to 20th March, — and that since then, though daily menaced by the royalists, it had maintained a force of 5000 men and had held its own. It again "deserved well of the country" by repelling the Vendean attack, but it did not give its adhesion to the Mountain, and by a decree of the Commune on the oth -Inly, recording its determination not to recognise the authority of the Convention, and to sustain the Girondists, it really placed itself in insurrection. It was, however, but a Hash in the pan. The more vii THE VENUE AN WAE 89 extreme and energetic portion of the Club St. Vincent vehemently opposed the step taken by the constituted authorities ; and many of the members of these bodies, becoming afraid of what they had done, revoked their action. The decision of the 5th July was reversed, and the authorities made their submission to the Convention. The Representatives came then in triumph to Nantes ; the nmre active leaders in the recent movement were removed from their prists ; sounder and more genuine revolutionists were appointed in their stead, and affairs thus put in fair train at Nantes. Angers was the other principal town within the scope of the Vendean trouble, and its state may be gathered from a document drawn up by the electors of Angers, who met on the 30th of May and adopted an address to the Convention. It was a vehement complaint against the Representa- tives, "whose selection appeared to have been calculated to degrade in the eyes of citizens the national represent- ation, and to make them hate Liberty. " To calumniate patriots of the highest integrity, and the most devoted to the cause of Liberty: to vilify and menace the constituted authorities who are firmest at their post and the most attached to their duties; to chain the liberty of the Press; to throw the brand of discord among the citizens: to commit arbitrary deeds which even royal despotism would scarcely have dared to allow itself: to endeavour to stifle the public voice by the trenchant and dictatorial fiat of their individual opinion, — it is thus they accomplish their mission. " Hasten to recall these dangerous proconsuls." It is evident the people of Angers were realising the first -fruits of •''liberty, equality, and fraternity," as understood by the true republican. But their request 90 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. betrayed their misapprehension of the true state of affairs. The more moderate and respectable republicans in both Aimers and Nantes were soon to find out that they themselves were at the beginning of their troubles; and that the despotic Representatives thus inveighed against were only, so to speak, getting settled in the saddle for their labours in the revolutionary cause. And at Angers, in duly, alter the retirement of the Vendeans, and its reoccupation by the republicans, a fresh engine of terror and tyranny was created there — a Revolutionary Committee and also a Military Commis- sion. That, for the time being, settled Angers. At Saumur. which had " made so many sacrifices in the cause of the Revolution," but which like Angers had suffered the disgrace of being in the hands of the enemy for some time, a Revolutionary Committee was also appointed (on 1st July 1793)''' to throw light on the conduct of the bad citizens, to discover any communica- tion with the rebels, or acts of incivism, and to arrest those suspected of same." A Military Commission of its own was not requisite, for that of Angers officiated here when required; but the first labours of that commission were cut short by tlie fact of the Vendean prisoners having typhus, and so the summary method was had recourse to of drag- ging these unfortunate beings out to a plain and there shooting them. Thus all around the Vendee, north, south, east,and west, wherever the Revolutionary Government had authority, measures of ever-increasing severity were being taken to consolidate its power, and vengeance was being exer- cised on all who in any way opposed or were suspected of opiiosiim it. vri THE VENDEAN WAE 91 The revolutionists were already showing what, as their reign went on, was ever more and more clearly demonstrated, that the new regime of "liberty, frater- nity, and equality," which was not only to do such wonders for France, hut to usher in a new era fur humanity, was the greatest sham and imposture ever presented to the human intelligence ; that they them- selves were impostors of the worst and rankest kind, tyrants aping liberty, despots aping equality, fratricides aping fraternity. Here is a contemporary description of the actual state of affairs under the new regime, in Touraine, which was contiguous to the scene of the Yendean struggle. " Every one here is in terror and despair. . . There is no other law than the will and caprice of the Bepresentatives. The populations which believed them- selves enfranchised by the devolution of 1789 are reduced to a veritable slavery. Nevertheless the word 'Liberty' meets one everywhere. One sees it written in gigantic characters on all the monuments : it displays itself at the head of all the public documents. The men of government, from the executioner to the minister, have it always in their mouths; everything is done and ordered in the name of Liberty. But it is nothing but an abominable piece of jugglery; nothing but an infamous mockery. " Never, in effect, at any epoch of humanity has per- sonal liberty, liberty of worship, liberty of thought, liberty of conscience, the liberty of the Press, liberty of commerce been more ignored. Never has the contempt of the rights of man been pushed further, nor those rights been scouted at more insolently. Never, in fact, has power shown itself more despotic, more intolerant, 92 TTTE HEAL FEEXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. more cowardly malignant, more vile in its means of action, and more eager to shed innocent blood than the existing Government. Better a hundred times that we were back in the feudal times. . . . " Misery is everywhere. . . . There is no more com- merce ; the law of maximum has killed it. We are crushed with imposts, with forced loans, and revolutionary taxes, the amount of which is arbitrarily fixed by our tyrants. They take away from agriculture the arms which are essential for its work. Our horses are requi- sitioned, and we are paid with dirty bits of paper of no value. The feudal corvees which had been abolished in the memorable night of the 4th August have been re- established. . . . And if any one dares to make an observation or to complain, lie is shown the scaffold, in permanence on the public place, and often . . . the person is conducted to it." Every word of this crushing indictment of the Re- volutionary Government applied equally to life in those parts of the Vendee where that Government reigned. But the Vendeans had in addition to bear the sufferings inflicted by the operations of a cruel and degraded soldiery and all the horrors of actual war. It lias been argued by republican writers that the unparalleled severity of the Revolutionary Government was accounted for, and indeed justified, by the fact that the Vendeans had put themselves in the same category as the cmijji't'S, namely that of traitors to France, by appealing to England for hid}). The details of the Yendean communications with England fall into a later period than this. Suffice it here to remark, that war' with England was only de- clared in February 170-5 : that, until then. England, though holding out the hand of charity and an asylum vii THE VEN.DEAN WAE 93 to French emigres, lay and cleric alike, had maintained a strict neutrality ; that the Vendean outbreak only took place on the 10th or 11th March; that the fearful law of 19th March — the warrant for the extermination of the Vendeans — had been adopted by the Govern- ment, and the whole machinery of revolutionary tyranny, Representatives, Military Commissions, etc, started, and got into working' order, long before any communication could have been made by the Yendean leaders. It is difficult, therefore, to see what value such an argument has. The real fact is, the career of merciless severity towards the Vendeans had been decided on, and the first momentum had been given to the various republican authorities, to carry out the exterminating policy of the Government, long before the element of an appeal by them to England for help entered into the matter; and it was the dogged resistance of the Vendeans, and the crushing defeats and humiliations inflicted on the re- publican cause by them, that drove the revolutionists to fury and to the excesses begotten of fury, and not indignation at an appeal for foreign help which had not yet been made. CHAPTER VIII THE VENDEAN WAR Pakt IV Arm: their defeat at Xantes, which was a severe blow to them, the Vendeans re-entered the Vendee. Here, during their absence on the north side of the Loire, the republican general "Westermann, a thief and swindler, " an escroc of the Palais - Royal, a leader in the attack of the Tuileries, but of incredible courage," had appeared conspicuously on the scene, and had given the first demonstration of the revolutionary system of carrying on the war. He announced to all that he would burn and deliver over to pillage all the communes which should furnish recruits to the rebels, or give them any other assistance. "That will make the peasant tremble," he wrote ; "this terrible example is necessary to stop the torrent which will destroy the Republic." And lie promptly proceeded to put his threats into execution. On the 1st duly he attacked the village of Ainailhou, and as a reprisal for some Vendean pillage at L'arthenay lie delivered it up to pillage. Put that was not all : he set fire to it and burned it to the ch. viii THE VENDEAN WAE 95 ground ; also the castle of Clisson, belonging to M. de Lescure. " Here," wrote Savary, the most reliable historian of the war — a republican — " began the atrocities which were called reprisals." Soon after this, he inflicted a severe defeat on the Vendeans at Chatillon, having signalised his march thither by " robbery, assassination, incendiary fire, pillage, and devastation." His actions drew from the Yendean chiefs a strong- protest in an address to the republican troops. ■'" . . . You bathe inhumanly in the blood of our soldiers whom the fate of battle delivers into your hands. You penetrate into the retreats where our Yendean wounded still dispute with death over the languishing remains of a mutilated body. You plunge into their bosom the murderous steel. . . . You set fire to the dwellings and the crops of those whom you have not been able to conquer. " Frenchmen, is this then the boasted humanity ? Are these the bitter fruits of the chimera of Liberty of which the phantom deceives and seduces you \ " Protests or appeals such as these had little weight, and the Vendeans, stung by his treatment, attacked him on the 5th near Chatillon, and almost annihilated his army. One republican battalion alone was reduced from 469 men to 1 7. Westermann was forthwith denounced by his fellow- republicans as a traitor, and summoned to appear before the Convention. Under ordinary circumstances he would have been guillotined, but, being a creature of Iionsin's, things were made easy for him, and he was sent back to his command. Any charge against a general was always listened to 9 6 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ™. it' he had any leaven of the old regime about him whilst complaints made about the more advanced revolutionary generals were quietly ignored. The true sans-culotte could, in the eyes of the Revolutionary Government, do no wrong. The explanation was that the " true republican " held that "liberty and equality could never be maintained by those against whom the Revolution had been made"'': and that " the true means of saving the army and the country was summarily to get rid of all generals or officers who had any taint of la noblesse about them," and to compose it of generals " really sans-culottes in manners and principles." " It is a great truth, and one on which our future success depends — republican commanders and we shall beat our enemies." Biron, not being a sans-culotte, but one of the old regime, was denounced secretly by Rossignol about the middle of duly, on an absolutely false charge, and was summoned to Paris — the first step to the scaffold : and Rossignol, one of " the conquerors of the Bastille," — who had presided at the massacres of La Force, — who was an avowed assassin,- — who had been currying favour with the troops by meeting them as they returned from forays and giving them glasses of brandy, and who now was at the bottom of most of the lies and intrigues against the generals, was made commander-in-chief. Ronsin became his chief of the staff and practically directed everything. The rapidity with which revolutionary favourites were pushed on was remarkable. Even under the monarchy no parallel could be found for it. Military experience or knowledge was not required — only revolu- tionary principles and fervour — and men were given via THE VENDEAN WAR 97 high military appointments who had no military knowledge, and who had not even mounted guard. Thus (Jrammont, a comic actor in Paris, was made " adjutant -general." Thus Ronsin became on the 1st July a captain of cavalry; on 2nd duly he was given the command of a squadron ; on the 3rd he was made chief of a brigade ; and on the 4th, a general of brigade ; and at the end of the month, chief of the staff — under Rossignol. Rossignol's promotion was nearly as rapid. From a colonelcy on 3rd duly he was promoted to be commander- in-chief before the end of the month. The example of ferocity and destruction set by Westermann was quickly followed by other republicans, and soon became the common republican practice. It had been decided to strengthen the military forces at Nantes; a force of some 14.000 men started from Tours. Their own generals, Berthier and Dutruy, thus described the march: "During this march, in a country where the greater part of the inhabitants are devoted to the Republic, a great part of the troops gave themselves up to the most frightful pillage and violence — patriots were no more spared than suspected rebels ; all were pillaged : and the small amount of discipline which had been previously established was in a moment lost. The battalions of Paris made daily requisitions of silver and other effects, contrary to the regulations, and they threatened not to march if their demands were not complied with. Many of them sold their boots and their arms, and when arrested replied that these tilings be- longed to them, inasmuch their sections in Paris had given them to them. Santerre even had his life threatened." Reports from other places also confirm this complete demoralisation of the republican troops. H 98 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. In the force assembled at Saumur, after its abandon- ment by the Vendeans, it was impossible to establish discipline, or prevent pillage and drunkenness. Hazard, one of the National Commissioners, wrote duly 1st:— " The decree which excludes women from the battalions is entirely evaded. One sees in the follow- ing of our armies a prodigious multitude of women dressed as men. The camps are infested with them. Vou know the unfortunate results of such an abuse. I will not disguise from you that these women have such an influence on the esprit of the battalions that they direct at their caprice the discontent, the insubordina- tion, and the indiscipline of the soldiers and the officers. . . . Many generals even participate in it." And a commissioner of the Commune of Paris who was with the army wrote to a member of that Commune (July 28 th):— ,: I cannot report to you all the violations, thefts, and assassinations which the men of 500 livres commit in the army. I will cite some which will make you tremble (fremir). They violated in the arms of her mother the daughter of the Mayor of Saumur, aged nine- teen years. Two servants of the same house suffered the same fate. These women died of despair in the camp at ( Iliinon." All which is a most interesting picture of the revolutionary soldier in his own country, and particularly of such revolutionary creme as the Parisian volunteer. Valiant pillagers, they were not much of lighters : for attacked by the Vendeans at Vihiers on the 18th duly, they promptly ran away, leaving guns and stores in the hands of the victors; some Hying so far that they did not stop till they u'ot to Paris. "Our laurels are vin THE VEXPEAX WAR 99 turned into cypress, owing to the imbecility of Santerre," wrote Alercier. And again on the 26th duly they ran away at Ponts- de-Ce, nearly 400, it was said, perishing in the river. These arc not the inventions of counter-revolutionists. The Representatives themselves affirm the dreadful state of the army. ■'"Every one knows that the cowardice of our troops has caused all our misfortunes," wrote Choudieu, a reel- hot Montagnard. And Momoro, another Representative, wrote, " Our troops won't fight"; and he consoles himself with the reflection, " It is easy for the rebels to conquer men who don't want to resist them.'' The Vendean victory of Vihiers had important con- sequences, as it drove the Convention into the adoption of more severe measures. At the end of July the general position of the Republican Government was very critical. Lyons. Mar- seilles, Toulon, had withdrawn themselves from the authority of the Convention ; Mayence and Valenciennes had capitulated to the Allies ; the frontiers were invaded. A fever of fear and rage took possession of the men in power: and ideas of moderation of any sort were thrown tii the wind. Xow literally breathing fire and fury against the Vendeans, the Convention, on the 1st August, decreed that fire should be added to the sword. Barere in addressing the Convention said : " In ex- tirpating evil one is doing good. Louvois was blamed by history for having burned the Palatinate, and Louvois ought to he blamed for it, for he worked for tyrants. " The Palatinate of the Republic is the Vendee. Destroy it, and you save the Patrie. . . . The Committee 100 THE REAL KREXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. of 1'ulilic Safety has prepared measures which tend to exterminate this rehel race of Vendeans, to destroy their haunts, to hum their forests, to cut down their crops." The Minister of \\ ar was ordered to .-end down " com- bustibles " of every kind to burn the woods and copses in the Vendee. The forests were to be hewn down: the haunts of the rebels were to be destroyed: the crops were to be cut and carried to the rear of the armies; and the eat tie were to be seized. The women, children, and sick were to be removed from it. and conducted into the interior of Trance, where provision would be made for their subsistence and safety. " witli all due regard to humanity." All the property of the rebels was declared to belong to the Republic, and was to be used to indemnity those who had remained faithful. A fern' ''a ma sue of all male citizens between sixteen and sixty years of age in the surrounding localities was to be ma.de for the purpose of crushing the rebels. And all the resources of revolutionary, indeed of scientific, ingenuity were ransacked for devices whereby to crush the Vendeans. Indeed "at this time there was no scheme, however wild, which the revolutionists were not disposed to try." ; " Mines, some powerful mines,'"' suggested Santerre. ; " some soporific vapours, and then, fall upon l hem." In due course five waggon-loads of sulphur were sent down from Talis — scarcely enough to do much burning with, but enough to prove that the decisions of the Con- vention were no idle threats. Il was a ferocious decree, passed too " with enthusiasm after one of the most lightning-laden reports of Rare re." It was the deliberate avowal of the intention of the vin THE VENDEAN WAR 101 Government to make a desert of the Vendee. Even the presence of a large number of " patriots" or republicans in the district to be destroyed — to whom the carrying' out of the decree would be complete ruin, and expatria- tion — did not induce the Convention to hesitate. Inno- cent and guilty were alike involved in a common fate. Revolutionary justice could not stay to discriminate. But that the French revolutionist was dead to every idea of policy except extermination and annihilation, the thought might have occurred to him which was so pathetically expressed by Biron in one of his reports : — " Here, Frenchmen fall under the blows of French- men. The villages which we ravage belong to us. The harvests, the crops which we destroy are our property ; and all the blood which is shed is ours." Sentiments such as these, however, were not " revolu- tionary." And the Convention bent all its energies to- wards the absolute wiping out of the A'endeans. There was one phase of republican brutality which was early noticeable in the Vendean strife, and which as time went on became ever more and more conspicuous, until it reached a height which stamped the French revolutionist as a being of the most cowardly, debased, and degraded type of humanity. This was their treatment of women. Cruel and fearful as was the treatment meted out to men by the revolutionists, their treatment of women was infinitely worse. The defencelessness of women, their weakness, their position of dependence on others, awoke no sense of pit}' or consideration in the heart of the " brave republican " : their helplessness appealed in no way to the vrai sans- culotte except as an encouragement to violence and brutality. 102 TIIK REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST The Committee of Public Safety and the Convention on some occasions meted out a less rigorous treatment to women than to men: but in most of their decrees, and I hose their most severe ones, no such discrimination was used. And the local authorities and the Revolutionary Committees vigorously enforced those laws: and girls and women of all ages were swept into prison on any charge, and from there to the Revolutionary Tribunals or to the Military Commissions and thence to deatli : while by the military forces they wen' given but short shrift. And the Representatives inspired and aided, abetted and encouraged this cowardly work. Two of them, (lander (de Saintes) and Mazade, wrote to the Con- vention in June: "It is the women and children and old people who do us the greatest harm, partly because the}' come among us and find out our plans and our strength. ... It is necessary as our forces advance to cany otf the women and children and place them in the interior of the Republic." And they were effectually "carried off," by bullet or bayonet, and, in a very literal sense, "placed in the in- terior of the Republic." A more formidable foe to the Vendeans than the live waggon-loads of sulphur was the large body of seasoned and experienced soldiers and capable generals which was sent with all possible speed to the Vendee about the end of August. After the capture of Mayence and of Valenciennes by the. Allies, the garrisons of those towns were allowed to return to France, on signing an engagement not to carry arms again within a year against, the Allies, and the Committee of L'ublie Safety ordered the troops so viii THE VENDEAN WAR 103 set free to proceed with all possible speed to the Vendee. The 15,000 to 1G,000 troops so sent were a formid- able addition to the power of the Revolutionary Govern- ment in the Vendee. The men — "men of iron," as they were called — were well trained in the sharp school of experience; they knew what discipline was, and how to fight ; their officers had acquired valuable knowledge of actual warfare, while several of them were brilliant generals. Their arrival in the Vendee gave rise to fresh jealousies and divisions among the self-seeking worth- less crew of sans-culotte Representatives and generals there, each of whom became anxious to get them placed under his command so as to reap the glory of their successes. " The report alone of their arrival," wrote the Minis- ter of War, "should make the rebels tremble." But trembling was not a Vendean characteristic ; and the Vendeans only braced themselves up still further to encounter the fresh and more formidable on- slaught of the republicans. The crisis of the struggle was now rapidly approach- ing. Trance was sore beset by foreign enemies, and revolutionary measures multiplied as danger increased. By decree of the 23rd August the Convention put all Frenchmen in permanent requisition for military service. On the 5th September it decreed the creation of a revolutionary army in Paris, and put the final seal and stamp to the policy of the Government by the celebrated resolution: " Placons la terreur a l'ordre du jour" (" Let terror be the order of the day "). As a matter of fact government by terror had already long been the order of the day. 104 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. The Vendeans were nevertheless quite undaunted. On the 5th September they lust a battle at Lucon, hut the same day they won a great victory at Chantonay over Lecomte, against whom a plot had been made by the sans-culotte generals to secure the destruction of a man of too great promise. And on the 18th they won another at Coron over some 28,000 republicans, with Ronsin and Santerre at their head, and captured 1 2 guns and some 4000 prisoners. On the 19th at Pont-Barre they won another battle,. and the same day another at Torfou, 1 beating even the Mayenoais troops under Kleber. Two days later they beat the republicans at Montaigu, and the following day they were again victorious at St. Fulgent. Thus five great battles were won in eight days. Even the war- seasoned troops from Mayence had failed to check the victorious career of the Vendeans — animated as they still were by the deep religious en- thusiasm which had carried them to victory in the earlier contests. " We fight ibr Jesus Christ," they said. On one occasion a Vendean chief remonstrated against the men stopping to pray at a cross. " Let them pray,'' said Leseure, "they will light the better for it." On another occasion, where they were certain to be overwhelmed by numbers, they cried aloud, ''Let us march to heaven," and they dashed at the battalions of the enemy, happy tu rush on martyrdom. 1 Strong ground- •■:.;-! for tin.- suspicion that the milit iry plan- which lcignol and Ronsin as a pitfall for the Mayi n ■■ ::- troops, whom they hated, and who were to end the war quicker than suited the. desires of these and other san>- culotte general- and oiiicials (see ChaShiu, iii. ^ : ;. SI . vin THE VENDEAN WAE 105 And they were fighting now with the added passion of despair: for they knew by this time that their foes were merciless, and that they were doomed to destruction unless they could defend themselves. They did not march upon the enemy, they hurled themselves upon him, closed with him, and fought him breast to breast, with obstinacy and fury. And sometimes, when the battle was raging, and the musketry and artillery were heard, " the women and children, and all the inhabitants not engaged, repaired to the churches, or prostrated themselves in the fields, to pray for the success of the Vendean arms. And thus through a whole country, and at one moment, there was but one thought, one prayer ! The fate of all hung upon the same battle." The losses on both sides were at times tremendous. Thousands upon thousands fell in many a battle. The accounts read as exaggerations — doubtless they were often so, — indeed many of the revolutionary triumphs were pure fictions of the sans-culotte generals. That the losses were fearful, however, is acknowledged by Barere, who ought to have known ; and who gave ex- pression to his exasperation against the generals for their bad measures, which, he said, had already cost more than 200,000 republican lives. Ami now to the religious fervour which had fired the Vendeans with a heroic courage, and to the determina- tion of despair, was added the fury of revenge. With the exception of the Mayeneais officers and troops, the great bulk of revolutionary forces had carried on the war in the most merciless fashion. From the general down to the lowest rank, they had given free rein to every vice. Villages and farms had been pillaged and burned; every form of movable property had been 100 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. carried off; prisoners had been massacred in cold blood, and non-combatants had been seized and slaughtered. "We execute your decree (of 1st August) to the letter." wrote the Representatives to the Convention, early in September, — that terrible decree ordering the burning and destruction of the Vendee. "Tins great act of national severity strikes salutary terror into the hearts of the rebels. Great heaps of ashes, and famine, and death present themselves on every side to their eyes." Of the barbarities committed during these autumn months a captain of the republican army," an eye-witness and actor in the cruel war," has given an account in a letter to Robespierre. " As soon as our army had entered the Vendee each soldier from that moment put to death whom he pleased, and pillaged whom he pleased, on the pretext that he whom he killed or pillaged was a rebel or a favourer of rebels, or thought as a royalist. Xo punishment has been inflicted, no precaution taken to repress or moderate the ardour for blood and pillage. Judge, then, to what excess the fury of the scoundrel has been carried, freed from the restraint of the law. Judge how many innocents have fallen victims to brigandage. ' : 1 see among us men who do not cease to incite to carnage ; who breathe only blood {qui ne respircnt que, h- sang), who take a pleasure in butchering an unfortunate and defenceless wretch who has fallen into their hands, — and who lly at the first shot." The exasperation caused by the cruel butchery of relatives found expression at times, and not unnaturally, in reprisals; and prisoners sometimes received but short shrift from some of the Vendeans ; but considering the desperate provocation they had received, the instances vni THE VENDEAN WAR 1 07 bore but an infinitesimal proportion to the wholesale infamies of the revolutionists. The levee en masse called together " by the tocsin of Liberty"' did not help the revolutionists. It brought together masses of men — 50,000 it was said, — Bar ere said 400,000, — " a fabulous army," in the double sense. Unarmed and undisciplined and ill-disposed to fight, they were an embarrassment to the republicans instead of a help. Against the Vendeans they were worse than useless. Some lied at the first contact with the Vendeans ; others disappeared without even having seen the enemy; some were sent home because they had learned to pillage and violate. The levee en masse melted away. CHAP TEE IX THE VEXDEAN WAR Part V The successive victories of the Vendeans once more made the Revolutionary Government in Paris wild with fury, and it bent itself with greater energy to the task of crushing the Vendeans. On the 1st October, Barere made a long report to the Convention: — " The inexplicable Vendee exists still . . . and the efforts of the republicans up to this have been powerless against the brigandage, and the plots of the royalists concealed there. The Vendee threatens to become a dangerous volcano. . . . To the levee e a masse of the Vendeans we opposed the levee en masse of the entire country, . . . but a panic of terror struck all. frightened all, dissipated all like a vapour." And then, apparently with the object of exciting feeling against even women and children, and of justifying both the past and the future treatment of them which is so appalling a feature of the revolutionary despotism, he said: •"The brigands from the age of ten to sixty are in oh. ix THE YENDEAN WAR 109 requisition by the proclamation of the Vendean chiefs. The women act as scouts or vedettes. The entire population of the revolted country is in rebellion, and in arms." And, as the crowning incitement to exasperation against the Yendeans, lie declared that the Representa- tives at Nantes had proofs of the communication of the Yendeans with the English. Some of the defeats he attributed to the cowardice- — not of French republicans, for that would have been too much for him to admit- — but of some battalions composed of foreigners, Neapolitans, Germans, and Genoese, picked up in the streets of Paris by the aristocrats, who had made this present to them — also to some t'//u'///'c'.s who had enrolled themselves among the republican troops. But he admitted that the Yendeans had made pro- gress owing to the insatiable avarice of the administrators of the army, who made a trade of war ; who speculated on battles being lost: who made their profits on the disasters of their country : who increased their wealth by the duration of the war: who opposed the military plans of campaign so as to prolong the period of their profits; and who enriched themselves by the piles of dead. But instead of his turning the wrath of the Con- vention on these sans-culottes, he impassionedly rang out the changes on the phrase " Destroy the Vendee ! " " Destroy the Vendee ! " This was the revolutionary remedy for everything that ran counter to the Revolution — destruction and annihilation. Revolutionary intelligence appeared unable to rise above this very primitive and barbaric policy. If the term '•'administrator" included generals, his 110 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. description was not alone not exaggerated, but fell tar short of the truth ; for it was the sans-culotte generals and officers, as well as the administrators, who were to a great extent the cause of the military break- down. The more sans-culotte the generals were, the worse they were. Curious revelations from time to time were made as to the scandalous luxury of the generals of the Republic and of the Representatives of the people there. The volunteers who returned to Paris recounted how General Santerre lived in Asiatic luxury ; that he had the most splendid carriages, the best cooks, the prettiest women. Berruyer's practices were also exposed : " Never has a general paraded such insolent luxury: one only appears before him with bended knee."' Philippeaux, a Representative, described the division at Saumur as commanded by " chiefs without morals, without talent, without mind {nmc), moustached braggarts (fanfarons a moustaches) who are going to sabre every one and finish the war, but who, when the moment comes for fulfilling their promises, skulk in the rearguard or decamp at full gallop without firing a shot." Cavaignac, another Representative, wrote of them as being '"fools, drunkards, or knaves . . . men without talent and without experience: invisible in the morning. and after dinner inapproachable {int raitahli )." And this drinking braggart lot were as dissolute as they were stupid and incapable. Philippeaux describes as having seen with Ins own eyes "one of the superior officers (who had sprung from the mountebank's stage to his grade of rank; affording the shameless spectacle of four courtesans ("republican Dubarrys '") seated in a gorgeous vehicle and escorted by fifty men," going to see something of camp life, five days after the defeat at ix THE VKXDEAN WAR 111 Viliiers, " when all republicans ought to have been in a state of consternation." Beubell, another Eepresentative, wrote to " My dear Barere," telling him that while the generals were report- ing victory upon victory they were losing their cannons and their stores. " They only occupy themselves in inventing lies to conceal their defeats, and they console themselves for all their griefs by the pleasures of the table, and in the arms of les sales Venus, with whom they concert the plans of calumny against those who do not resemble them." Philippeaux further remarked : " The Asiatic luxury of the generals, their orgies, their examples of licentious- ness presented to the soldiers, tended to make of our armies a mob of men without restraint and without courage, no less formidable to the peaceable inhabitants than to the rebels themselves." Bossignol, the commander-in-chief and a " true sans- culotte," had a little while back set an example of shame- less pillage. Mercier du Bocher — a republican — has given the details. Bossignol. accompanied by Bourbotte, a Eepresentative, arrived at Fontenay on the night of the 21st August, The municipality lodged him and the Eepresentative and their suite in the house of one Beaumont. The master of this house had joined the brigands, and the official seals of the Eepublic were placed on the contents of it. These were broken by Eossignol and his party, and the jewels and dresses of women were confiscated, to the profit of the general and his cortege. " There was nothing," writes Mercier, " down even to the china ware, which did not become the prey of these pillagers, who called themselves republicans ami who took about with them showy harlots. The prettiest of them were for Ill' THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. the highest in dignity, Bourbotte the Representative, and Rossignol; the others were left to the inferiors. It is thus they gave the example of republican virtues."' When leaving Fontenay, Rossignol and his party carried away many of the things in the house, though, being scaled, they were national property. If Commanders-in-Chief and Representatives could do such tilings, what was to be expected of their subordi- nates ', Two other Representatives, Bourdon de l'Oise and Gou- pilleau de Fontenay, with stricter ideas of what was right and wrong, suspended Rossignol for his misconduct, and sent him to Paris. Here he appeared before the Convention. " My heart, my soul," he said, " all is my country's {tout est a ma patrie. . ' And the Convention, which canted itself, and gravely accepted the cant of its officers, invited him to the honours of the sitting, and scut him back to his position of commander-in-chief, and recalled to its bosom the two Representatives who had suspended him. These then were the men who were the product of the new regime, the upholders of the banner of the sublime principles of '' liberty, equality, and fraternity/" under which they were supposed to be fighting. The anomaly of the thing struck Rhilippeaux, one of the Representatives. " It is a strange thing,'"' he wrote, " that the royalist soldiers fight for despotism as veritable sans- culottes, without gratuities, without pay, with a piece of bad bread for food: while we, for the sublime cause of Liberty, make a war of slaves and sybarites." Alter hearing Raivre's report, the Convention declared that it '"'counted on the courage of the army of the west, and of the generals who commanded it. to terminate ix THE VENDEAN WAE 113 between that date and the 20 th October the execrable war of the Vendee." But it did more. It placed on record as its deliberate opinion and will the cruel and merciless decision that extermination was to be the fate of all the brigands in the Vendee. It was a record appealed to in later time by Repre- sentative and officers alike as their justification for the iniquities which later they were charged with having' perpetrated. A proclamation by the Convention was issued on 1st October. "Soldiers of Liberty — It is imperative that the brigands of the A r endee be exterminated before the end of October: the safety of the country exacts it: the im- patience of the French people commands it; its courage ought to accomplish it." And now great activity prevailed among the re- publicans. All the generals who had any taint of la noblesse about them were got rid of; even some sans-culottes were removed, Grammont and Santerre among the number ; Ronsin was given another appointment, and Rossignol was transferred to Brest : and as commander- in-chief there was appointed L'Echelle, "a man of the people, an old soldier," described by Kleber " as being the most ignorant of chiefs one has ever seen, knowing nothing of the map, and scarcely able even to write his name." Imperative communications passed from the executive in Paris to the Representatives and generals in the Vendee. More skilful and combined plans were devised against the Vendeans. Every effort was to be made to crush, to exterminate them. The Government in Paris i 114 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. was in deadly earnest, and the sans-culotte generals were made to understand that no scheming or skulking would be tolerated, that they had no alternative but to fight or die on the scaffold. The outcome of all the changes was that the actual — as apart from the nominal — command passed into the hands of a real soldier like Kleber, and a complete change came over the fortunes of the Republic. The Vendeans themselves felt that everything was working up towards the crisis. ' : In spite of such repeated successes," wrote one of their leaders, " in spite of so many brilliant victories, the clouds which had been dispersed soon began to gather again, and formed a fresh storm. - ' Gradually they were being hemmed in by superior forces. They were embarrassed, too, by the vast number of non-combatants — the whole population, women, children, old people, sick and wounded, all flying before the advance of the republicans, to avoid massacre, and seeking safety behind the ranks of their own people. '■' The army of the Republic," wrote the Representa- tives, " is preceded everywhere by terror. Steel and lire are now the only weapons we make use of." On the 6th October the Vendeans were beaten at St. Symphorien. On the 9th at Moulin aux Chevres. " Six leagues in circumference are covered with dead," wrote L'Echelle, with considerable exaggeration. On the 11 th an almost lost battle was turned into a republican victory, and from the Government in Paris came fresh incitements. On the Oth October the Committee of Public Safety ,x THE VENDEAN WAB 1.15 issued a savage proclamation to the troops, hounding them on to the extermination of the rebels. The tri- umphant example was held up to them of the republican army at Lyons, which at that moment was "cutting all the traitors there to pieces," and where it was declared that not a single one of " the vile and cruel satellites of despotism should escape." " And you also, brave soldiers : you will obtain a victory. Tor long enough now has the Vendee wearied the Eepublic. March, strike, and make an end of it. All our enemies ought to fall at one and the same time. Each army will conquer. Will you be the last to gather the palms, to merit the glory of having exterminated the rebels and saved the country ? Hurl yourselves on the mad and ferocious hordes ; crush them so that each one may say to himself, ' To-day the Vendee is being annihilated, and the Vendee will be conquered.' " Events other than those in the Vendee were resulting in the very concentration of despotism in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety in Paris. On the 10 th October the Convention decreed that the government should be " revolutionary " until peace came ; and declared that " no other law would be followed but that of public safety." The Constitution was sus- pended, and the Committee of Public Safety was practi- cally made dictator. For the moment these changes did not affect the Vendee. There everything depended on the military campaign, the fortunes of which were hanging in the balance. The Vendeans were being gradually forced hack on Cholet, fighting day after day, now winning a victory, now suffering defeat, ever coming nearer the supreme hour, the decisive struggle. The enormities committed by the Blues, or republi- 11G THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. cans, in their advance, pillage and burning and cruelties of all sorts, had excited universal horror and indignation, and the Vendean chiefs were resolved to die or conquer in the approaching battle. On the 1 7th the decisive battle was fought near ('Jiolet. The republicans numbered about 22,000 men, including the hulk of the Mayen^ais troops, who bore the brunt of the day. The Vendeans had about -40,000 under d'Elbee and Bonchamps. The fall of these most trusted and capable leaders — both of whom were fearfully wounded — in great measure decided the fate of the day. After a desperate light, and heavy losses on both sides, the Vendeans were defeated; and the capture of Beaupreau, the same night, completed their discomfiture. '• Never," wrote Kleber, ' ; have they fought so stubbornly; never in such disciplined order: but never has a day been so disastrous for them. The rebels fought like tigers — our soldiers like lions.'" This disastrous defeat of the Vendeans was in great measure, if not entirely, due to the division between the various Vendean leaders. In the absence of a royal prince, or of any one of commanding position, to take supreme command, personal rivalries were great, and serious differences had most unfortunately arisen between the Vendean chiefs, differences as regards objects and as regards the means of attaining those objects. These differences had already come to such a head that Charette with his army — a no inconsiderable force — had retired to Lvonehamps, the Vendean leader, who, wounded to the death, was lying in a cottage near by, and heard the cries. His dying request to the men he had so often led to victory was that the prisoners might be spared. And his men respected his wish, and the prisoners were not alone spared but released. It was a splendid display of Vendean generosity. The prisoners themselves all proclaimed that Bonchamps was their liberator. Kleber also bore witness to the fact. But it was not so regarded by the Representative Merlin (de Thionville), a shining light of the Revolution, who wrote to the Committee of Public Safety: — ■' These cowardly enemies of the nation (the Vendeans) have spared more than 4000 of our men who were their prisoners. Some of those of our men allowed them- selves to be touched by this trait of incredible hypocrisy. I harangued them, and they soon understood that they were under no debt of gratitude to the brigands. "' But as the nation has not yet reached the height of our patriotic sentiments, you would act wisely in not breathing a word about such an indignity. Free men accepting life from the hand of slaves! It is not revolutionary. This unfortunate action must be buried in oblivion. Do not speak of it even in the Convention. Tin- brigands have no time to write or to start news- papers, and so it will lie forgotten like many other things." Rut the incident has not been forgotten — has not fallen into oblivion — nor will the light which this letter of Merlin throws upon the grotesque abortions of the revolutionary mind be forgotten either. The incident is too instruct ive to be so. Three other Representatives, llentx. Francastel, and ix THE VENDEAN WAR 119 Prieur (de la Marne), evidently thought that a lie would be the best way of dealing with it, for they wrote : — " We have had the satisfaction to deliver at St. Florent 5500 of our republicans." One Representative, Choudieu, had the decency to avow the truth. " It is a pleasure to me here," he wrote, " to render to Bonchamps full and signal justice (une iclatante justice). Brave men do not assassinate their enemy when he is disarmed." The republicans did not follow up their great victory quite as quickly as they might have done, and their prey had time to escape them — across the Loire. The passage of that river by the Yendean fugitives was a most pathetic scene. Madame de Lescure, who was tlying with the others and tending her dying husband, who had been wounded a few days before, has described it. " We arrived early at St. Florent, and then I saw the greatest and the saddest sight which can be imagined. The heights of St. Florent form a kind of semicircular boundary to a vast level strand reaching to the Loire, which is very wide at this place. Eighty thousand people were crowded together in this valley — soldiers, women, children, the aged, and the wounded, flying from immediate destruction. . . . Nothing was heard but loud sobs, groans, and cries. . . . Many of us compared this disorder, this despair, this terrible uncertainty of the future, this immense spectacle, this bewildered crowd, this valley, this river which must be crossed, to the ideas of the last judgment." With much difficulty the Yendean army and fugitives got over by boats and rafts. 120 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Ami for a few days, on the north side of the rapid flowing river, uninterfered with by the republican troops, they obtained breathing time before beginning another act of the sad drama. This battle iif Cholet was the second great crisis in the Yendean war. By their courage and perseverance the Vendeans had retrieved the disaster of their defeat at Nantes. Now, however, in addition to the defeat just experienced at Cholet, a decision was taken by the leaders which led the Vendeans to irretrievable disaster. "Worse could imt have befallen them. The fate of almost every individual in that vast crowd was sealed. Descriptions of military movements, of the advances and retreats of great opposing forces — of their battles, their victories, and defeats — interesting as they are, leave, however, the great underneath untouched. And one must pierce through the appearance of things, and go down into the individualities, so to speak, to at all com- prehend or realise the real purport and meaning of it all. Men's sympathies are moved, mid their hearts thrilled. by the suffering of a single individual, when they see and realise it : their indignation is stirred by the sight of a single crime : their wrath Hashes up at a single act of injustice. But suffering, crime, and injustice on a large scale, en masse as it were, and the effect is too stunning to bo at once appreciated. One does not take in what it really is. Here, on the visible surface, was the flight or migration of a great struggling mass of some 80,000 to 100,000 people; but underneath, in each individual case, what unutterable agony and heartbreak. Kvervthinu' that each individual of that vast crowd ix THE VENDEAN WAR 121 loved most dearly, and prized most highly, had just been torn from their possession. At night, the red flames which lighted up the dark sky with a lurid glow : in day, the volumes of thick smoke on the horizon ascending into the heavens, told each of the destruction of their home, and with it the destruction of all the joys of existence. To them it was the tearing up of the roots of their life. Underneath, too, was the agony of loss of nearest relatives and friends never again to he seen — the anguish of apprehension as to their own immediate fate, and that of those who still remained to them — the despair that peace, happiness, home, property, comfort, everything had gone, gone irretrievably for ever. Underneath, too, was the constant torturing sense of undeserved wrong, and of the cruellest injustice. And all these woes caused by the hands of their own countrymen masquerading as the champions of liberty and fraternity. The republicans were wild with elation at the triumph of their arms. The commander-in-chief L'Echelle wrote to the Minis- ter of War :— " The Vendee, purged in eight days of the principal gatherings of brigands emboldened by ephemeral suc- cesses, steaming with blood, strewn with corpses, and in great part delivered to the flames, is a striking example of national justice, which should intimidate countries in which villainy wishes to create insurrection/' The Representatives wrote to the Committee of Public Safety: "The National Convention wished the war to be finished before the end of October. We can to-day tell it that there is no longer a Vendee. A profound solitude actually reigns in the country which the rebels occupied. 122 TTTE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. ix One can travel far in it without meeting a man, or a cottage; tor, with scarce an exception, we have left behind us only cinders and heaps of corpses." The Committee of Public Safety issued a proclama- tion, signed by Robespierre and others, to the army: — " The defenders of the Republic have destroyed the haunts of the rebels ; they have exterminated their sacrilegious cohorts: that guilty land has herself de- voured the monsters she produced: the rest of them will fall under the axe of the people. . . . Republican soldiers ; march, strike . . . so that tyrants and slaves may dis- appear from the earth." And, on the 23rd October, Barere declared before the Convention that the Vendee existed no longer. And the Convention decreed that " there is no longer a Vendee," — which, of course, was conclusive. CHATTER X REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION While the republican military forces had, during the months of duly to October, been making spasmodic efforts to cope with the Vendeans, at times defeating them, at times being defeated by them, the other revolutionary powers and authorities in or near the Vendee had un- ceasingly been pursuing their efforts for crushing, by other means than military measures, all who were nut active supporters of the Revolution. The flat of extermination and destruction had gone forth. It had been reiterated, almost day after day, by the Revolutionary Government in Paris. Extermination was the fixed idea of the revolutionary mind. All the advice tendered by revolutionists around or in the Vendee was " extermination." All their recom- mendations breathed nothing but bloodshed and destruc- tion ; all their prayers to the Convention were for more destruction, more bloodshed. Kill, destroy, exterminate, tins was the burden of every letter, of every counsel : it was the refrain of the Convention itself. Nothing but extermination or annihilation would satisfy the revolutionary craving for the punishment of those who had dared to lay sacrilegious hands on the 124 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. ark of the new Republic. No composition should he made with the "brigands"; no measures of conciliation should be thought of; not even submission on the part of the rebels would be accepted. On no terms would the Republic receive the Vendeans again into its fold. The only right it would accord them was the right to die. The policy found ardent instruments in the arm}' of the west, from the highest general down to the lowest private, so many of them profiting by it. It had ardent instruments, too, from the Representa- tives down to the pettiest collection of village ruffians who erected themselves into a popular society, all of whom derived advantages therefrom. And no single voice opposed it. The idea expressed in Biron's sad reminder that the villages which were being pillaged, and the crops which were being destroyed, and the blood which was being shed, were all French, found no echo in the revolutionary mind. The defence made by the admirers of. or apologists for, this merciless and inhuman policy was that the safety of the Republic demanded it : and the sacred name of patriotism has been invoked as its justification. France, beset by foreign foes, had, it was argued, for very existence sake, to crush the enemies within her own border. But crimes can be committed in the name of patriotism as well as in the name of liberty, and this policy of extermination must ever rank as one of the greatest of such crimes. That it was a wholly unnecessary policy is manifest beyond question. For time alter time, indeed during the whole war. the ureal bulk of the Vendeans would have gladly accepted peace, and have been glad to be x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 125 allowed to go back to their homes and resume the ordinary course of their lives. It had only been in sheer desperation that they had appealed to arms ; it was only in absolute despair that they continued to tight. Death being the inevitable goal, if they might not triumph they would at least sell their lives as dearly as they could. The Federalist insurrection, which occurred in parts of France in July — one more stand by the more honest and intelligent class of the people against the advancing torrents of revolutionary bloodshed and violence — had still further infuriated the Revolutionary Government in Paris, which became wilder than ever, and more terrible and ruthless in its measures of repression. In this progressive increase of revolutionary energy the office of Representative became of ever greater importance, and his authority more all-embracing and despotic. Afore and more the Convention handed over to the Representatives its own powers, and centred in them all the might of the executive : and more and more it insisted on their using those powers with a very whirlwind of energy. '•' Terror shall be the order of the day," it declared on the oth September, and it entrusted the sword of sharpness into their hands, and ordered them to use it. It reserved to itself still the legislative powers, but such a tremendous coercive code was already in existence that the Representatives stood in no need of any such powers. It reserved to itself, too, the power of recalling the Representatives and appointing others in their places, a power which it seldom failed to act on when it thought there was any slackness or remissness in the energy of 12G THE KEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. the Representatives. It backed them up by declaring that those of their instruments who had perpetrated even the most appalling injustices and cruelties " de- served well of their country," and resolutely it turned a blind eye to any actions, however tyrannical or despotic on their part, their most extreme excesses, even finding in the Convention the protection of silence. The Representatives themselves were not backward in taking their cue from the Convention. Armed with this tremendous authority, and drunk, as it were, with the sense of their own importance and power, they flung themselves into their duties with infuriated energy. And "liberty" vanished, — the "liberty" for which the Revolution had been made. And instead of "liberty," despotism and tyranny came, a tyranny compared with which previous tyranny had been that of a child's hand. And, in the process, the revolutionists showed them- selves to all the world, for all time, in their true character as the greatest impostors who have ever stepped this earth. Nearly every privilege won by the people, though confirmed to them by the Declara- tion of the Eights of Man and by other legislation, was promptly taken away from them. By force the revolutionists imposed on the people their tyrannical rule. With barefaced impudence they adopted all the vices of the ancien regime, and drew upon it for ideas and precedents for their own measures of persecu- tion and repression. And to cover their iniquities, they were ceaselessly invoking the names of liberty and equality and fraternity, and posing as the saviours of the 1'atrie, and as the regenerators of humanity. At the time there was none could gainsay them, the x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 127 penalty was too great ; but history, at any rate, can tear the mask from their laces, and expose their contradic- tions, their inconsistencies, their false pretences, and their lying' excuses for acts which were the absolute negation of their professions. There were frequent changes among the Representa- tives in the west. They were appointed, recalled, reappointed, and shifted about from Department to Department, as suited the convenience of the Conven- tion ; a sort of sifting process went on in which, ultimately, the most violent and reckless came to the top. And all the changes tended to an increase of tyranny. Their fierce restless energy knew no limits, had no restraints. Some of them stooped to any infamy, any cruelty, so long as they could compass their ends or gratify their passion. They evoked and encouraged all that was worst in the nature of the French people, and stifled and trampled on whatever was good and generous. They lied when a lie suited their purpose ; they deceived when deception redounded to their advantage. They were merciless in their injustice. They deluged their country with their countrymen's blood ; and then, with loathsome hypocrisy and effrontery, claimed credit to themselves for the professed purity of their motives, and for the patriotism of their conduct. The first care of the Representatives was to secure the mastery over, or complete co-operation of, the local governing bodies. This they did by packing them with their own nominees, or superseding them entirely, and putting Revolutionary Committees or popular societies in their place, thus taking away from the people their newlv-won right of electhm their own local governing bodies. 128 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST While they were engaged in the congenial task of establishing the reign of liberty, the Convention (on the 12th August), at the same moment that it decreed the levde en masse to repel the invasion of France by foreign powers, decreed in principle the arrest of all suspects. The liability of all persons to be regarded as suspects facilitated very much the action of the Representatives : and the purged and renovated local authorities in and near the Vendee, without waiting for a law on the subject, began arresting all persons who could be con- sidered as suspects ; indeed, in many places, several months before the law on the subject was made, the practice of arresting suspected persons had been in full swing. The celebrated Loi des Suspects, as enacted on the 17th September, decreed that all suspected persons who were in the territory of the Republic, and who were still at liberty, should be arrested, and that they should lie detained until peace was made. Those persons were "' suspects " who either by their discourse or their writings had shown themselves partisans of tyranny or federalism, and enemies of liberty: former nobles, together with the husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, brothers and sisters, and agents of emigres, who have not con- stantly manifested their attachment to the Revolution. It has been urged in excuse of this severe law, that the definition of suspects was taken from royal edicts against persons of the "so-called reformed religion"; but if it was so, the argument is a clear admission that the Republican Government was treading in the very steps of the iniquitous Royalist Government which it had supplanted. x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 129 About the same time that personal liberty was thus being invaded, commercial liberty was also sup- pressed. The people must be supplied with food. The scarcity, it was asserted, was the result of the grasping avarice of merchants, and speculators, and hoarders, who must be made disgorge ; and so laws were passed (on 11 th and 29th September) prescribing the fixing of the prices above which food and other articles might not be sold. Buyers and sellers had to conform to the tables of maximum, under penalty of being treated as " suspects " ; and lest this should check business, mer- chants or manufacturers who suspended their commerce or manufactures were threatened with similar conse- quences. Before the great republican victory at Cholet, the authority of the Representatives did not extend far into the Vendee itself, — -the Vendeans were still masters there ; so the Representatives were obliged to confine their activities to the towns and country around it. Their procedure ran all on one line. The estab- lishment of Revolutionary Tribunals and of Military Commissions to try counter-revolutionists and Vendean prisoners ; and in the larger towns, such as Angers, Nantes, Saumur, and Fontenay, the creation of Revolutionary Committees to aid and advise them in their operations, and to carry out their policy and their behests. Early in September (1793) two Representatives were sent to La Rochelle and Rochefort to secure those ports from foreign attack. These two towns were south of the actual scene of the strife, but to a certain extent felt the effects of the war. A large number of prisoners taken in the Vendee had been sent to La Rochelle, and the prisons were crammed with some 800 of them. K 130 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Here an interesting incident happened which throws light on the character of these Representatives. They created a Revolutionary Tribunal for the trial of some of the prisoners, and appointed the judges and all the officials except one. namely, "he who ought to close the procedure " — the executioner. The nomination of this functionary the Representatives left to the popular society which existed there, as they wished "to destroy one of the most foolish and rooted, of prejudices," con- tempt of the executioner. At the meeting of the popular society held for the purpose of the election several volunteered for the post, which was by no means a sinecure, and finally a man named Ance was selected. " [," exclaimed Alice, with noble enthusiasm, " it is I who ambition the honour of making the heads of the assassins of my patrie fall." '■ We have proclaimed Ance guillotineur," wrote the Representative Lequinio ; "we invited him to come and dine with us, and take his powers from us in writing, and to libate them in honour of the Republic." And the executioner was given the name of "Avenger of the people"; and to the guillotine an inscription in large letters was attached describing it as " The people's justice " {Jnati-e da y iqile). Here a -Military Commission was also formed (on the 28th September^ by Lequinio, and a letter of his shows in what a state of dependence upon the Representative these courts were, how completely they were under his control, and what a small chance a prisoner had of fair treatment. "1 ordered," wrote Lequinio, " the commissioners to sentence in accordance with the law (that is to say, to death all the former priests, bourgeois, nobles, tax- x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 131 gatherers, and deserters ; and to sentence only to the galleys the workmen and labourers whose profound ignorance had enabled them to be misled." In the larger towns the measures taken by the Repre- sentatives were on a larger and naturally bolder scale. At Angers the revolutionists who had run away had returned, embittered by the disgrace of their flight, and keen for any atrocities which might rehabilitate their revolutionary reputation. Here the most active of the Representatives was Choudieu, a man whose views and character can be gauged from the fact of his being president of the Society of Jacobins in Paris at the time of the September massacres there. He was extremely violent in temper, pitiless and cruel, a bitter persecutor, enforcing the tyranny of the terror with unswerving severity, sacri- ficing old friends in his Montagnard fervour, leaving even his mother in the clutches of revolutionary law and in peril of life for a period which he might easily have curtailed. <: In revolution one is inexorable," he wrote ; and inexorable he certainly was in all his proceedings in the west. One Military Commission had been appointed in June. A fresh one was appointed by the Representatives on the 10th July, with Felix as president. But a far more important and powerful body was the Revolutionary Committee which had been appointed there, in July also, by the Representatives. It consisted of some ten or twelve members — all men of the extremest republi- can ideas and desperate character, true sans-culottes — ■ witli a renegade priest as president. The closeness of the connection between a Revolutionary Committee and the Representative is proved by the fact that Choudieu himself is known to have presided at it. 132 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. This Committee was to employ every means it thought proper for obtaining information about individuals sus- pected of rebellion, treason, incivism, or of a counter- revolutionary disposition. It was given power to arrest, examine, and imprison all who were denounced to it, as well as any persons who furthered the projects of the rebels, and it could call in the National Guard for the execution of its decrees. Practically it possessed the power of life and death over every citizen of Angers. Everything was under its rule, and nothing was done except with its good pleasure and approval. Police, military, administration, worship, justice, — in one word, everything was subject to its absolute autocratic power. Its first act was a decree stating : " The Committee, considering that the institution of a Revolutionary Com- mittee ought to inspire with confidence all good citizens, and with terror all bad ones," ordered that henceforth no one should go out of the town except he had a passport. And the next thing it did was to take possession of the post-office, as two of its members went there and opened all letters to suspects, or which appeared sus- picious. Having thus shut the gate- of the town and barred escape, the revolutionists proceeded in their usually cowardly fashion to wreak their wrath on their helpless victims. On 2nd September the Committee, anticipating the law of suspects, ordered domiciliary visits in the town and suburbs to arrest "emigres, dtyorte's, brigands, spies. agents of the enemies of the Republic, suspected persons, ami generally all the counter-revolutionists of the two sexes who might be found in private houses." And this same Committee, in its career of despotic x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 133 government, afforded another illustration of the frequent adoption of measures of the ancien regime by the revolu- tionists. It might, for very manifest reasons, be thought that the people who had made a Revolution to put an end to tyranny and the host of abuses of a. Royalist Government would have fought very shy of adopting any of the hated practices of its predecessors ; that that would have been the very last thing they would have done. But, so far as the French revolutionist is concerned, any such idea is completely erroneous. Whenever it served their purpose to follow royalist forms of tyranny, they did not hesitate to do so. "Denunciation" had been one of the practices in- veighed against in the most vehement language, and yet in one of its decrees the Committee wrote : " Denuncia- tions, odious in the ancien regime, because they were of service to tyranny, are become legitimate because they tend to-day to the good of all. The Committee invites all good citizens to come and declare to them all that they know against the interests of the Republic." The departmental authorities of La Mayenne went even a little further, and declared that " the first and noblest of the duties of a Republic is civic denuncia- tion." This theory of denunciation erected into a republican virtue was everywhere applied and set in work, and it became one of the great moyens or instruments of the revolutionary administrators. This Revolutionary Committee at Angers " soon dominated all the constituted authorities in the town, carried disquietude and fright- among all classes in all families, and furnished to the Military Commission an ample pasturage of human victims." 134 THE REAL FREXCH REVOLUTIONIST en. Until August 1793 the municipality of Angers had been more or less moderate and pacific. Its hand was then forced by the extremer parties, as in other places, and it was compelled to submit to the Revolutionary Committee. In the course of October two other Representatives were sent to Angers, Hentz and Francastel, Choudieu taking other work in the neighbourhood. It was a change for the worse for all who were not sans-culottes of the ''/''//-est type, for they were men who hesitated at no injustice, no amount of cruelty or bloodshed which served their purposes. Thus by the end of October, so far as Angers was concerned, all preparations had been completed, and all the machinery got into working order for the new regime of '"liberty, equality, and fraternity.'' In Saumur, which though a small town was strategic- ally of great importance, revolutionary organisation pro- ceeded on identically the same lines as at Angers. The Revolutionary Committee which had been appointed here had been working diligently, crushing out the last vestiges of religious liberty; but when Hentz and Francastel came, it was not deemed to be up to the mark, and they "purified" it. appointing some new and more revolutionary members. The most influential person on the reorganised com- mittee was Lepetit, " a sinister gamin of eighteen " whom Bourbotte had employed for some time as his secretary, and who had come to Tours with the battalions of Paris : and he was aided by Yilnau, "a pale copy of Robes- pierre," and some others of the same type. To firing revolutionary inquisitorialness down to the minutest sections of the people, the town, small though it was. was divided into four sections: and in each x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 135 section there was appointed a committee of surveillance — diminutive Revolutionary Committees in fact. And as if all this were not enough, there was a " Society of the Friends of Liberty and Equality," com- posed of the worst elements of the Saumur population, to aid the Revolutionary Committee in its work. The Military Commission of Angers was within easy reach, and came over whenever its services were re- quired. The revolutionary organisation at Saumur was there- fore complete ; and at its head were Hentz and Fran- castel, who, according to Turreau's later dictum, were "worth more than an army to the Republic." Tn Nantes the preparations were on the same lines as those in Angers and Saumur. Carrier had been for some time one of the Repre- sentatives in the west, and at the end of September Heraut Seychelles wrote to him from Paris in the name of the Committee of Public Safety: "We implore you to go at once to Nantes. We send you a decree to purge that town. . . . We can be humane (Jiumains) when we are assured of victory." The populace at Nantes, irritated by Vendean triumphs, by A'endean reprisals for revolutionary atro- cities committed in the Vendee, and by the loss of many relatives and friends, were calling for vengeance. Moreover, there was great anxiety on account of the great scarcity of food; and there were crushings and crowds and lighting mobs at bakers' shops for the daily doles of food, and the scarcity was attributed to the wealthier merchants, to monopolists, to royalists. The scarcity was aggravated by the working of the laws of maximum, by the increase in the number of the people in the city, and by the large number of troops 1:36 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. constantly passing through, or who hud to be fed from, Nantes. Just previous to Carrier's arrival the council of Nantes had been "purified" by the Representatives, by the dismissal or arrest of most of its members and ollicers ; numerous arrests, too, were made under the law of suspects : the extremer revolutionary party was rapidly possessing itself of all authority. The popular society of Vincent la Montague, composed altogether of sans- culottes, was giving a great impetus to revolutionary ideas and acts, and the "terror" had already begun to exist before his arrival. Before his arrival, also, a Revolutionary Committee had been appointed by the Representatives Gillet, Philip- peaux, and Ruelle, as a substitute for the weaker-kneed one hitherto operating there ; and to constitute it. a dozen or more of some of the choicest .scoundrels in France were selected, men whom Philippeaux described as ■' sans-culottes, vigorous revolutionists, but at the same time sage and prudent." Bachelier, " a man of the law," was appointed its president, but its presiding spirit of evil was Jean Jactpues Goullin, a dissolute roue, a "politician of the cafes,"' a man of ;: insatiable avarice " ; and among its other members were Grandmaison, an assassin: Chaux, a swindler and bankrupt : Jolly, l'errochaux, Pinard, and other " intrepid Montagnards " ; all of the very shadiest antecedents, but of the loftiest and purest revolutionary principles, and all greedy for the salary of some eight francs or so a day, with the opportunities and prospects of unlimited plunder and extortion. Their arts during the next few months showed what a hellish crew Revolution had placed in authority in the L>reat citv of Nantes. x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 137 What a disillusionment most of the inhabitants of Xantes were to undergo is clear from Phelippes de Tronjolly's assertion that " when the creation of a Revolu- tionary Committee became known, the people, always good, but often the dupe of its goodness, believed at last what the men greedy of place had ceaselessly vociferated, that the reign of virtue and justice was about to begin in Nantes." Carrier reached Nantes on the 8th October, but went on into the A^endee for a few days, and was at the battle of Cholet, where he ran away, but in a couple of days he took up his permanent residence at Nantes. By the time of his arrival there " everything and all had received the revolutionary impulsion, and the sans-culottcs were fully victorious." The spirit which animated Carrier may be judged from the speech which, soon after his arrival, he made to the people : — " People, people ! take your clubs, crush all these fat merchants, all these men who have enriched themselves by the fruit of your sweat. Go, run, burst in the ware- houses which overflow with riches, exterminate all these scoundrels who abuse your patience. People, you can count on me to aid you to take vengeance on all the vampires of the public. The guillotine will do justice to all, and I will make their heads roll on the national scaffold." It was not only the Vendeans who were to be crushed in Nantes. The so - called Federalists — the moderates, all who had wealth or any possessions, all who had character and respectability, all who could by any stretch of imagination be considered as counter-revolu- tionists — were alike to lie included in the revolutionary anathema. 138 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. The [lowers of the Revolutionary Committee, as author- ised by law, were most arbitrary and despotic. Its members had the power of search, arrest, imprisonment : and the law of suspects, "the most terrible arm which tyranny ever had at its disposition," gave them absolute power over all their fellow-citizens. Whatever other powers the Committee wanted were easily obtainable from the Representative. The Committee lost little time in setting to work. On the 11th October it held its first sitting. To impose silence on its adversaries was its first task. On the 12th October it closed the Club de la Halle, and on the following day the various reading-rooms, assembly rooms, gardens, and clubs were also all closed. Thus, on the loth October, opposition was silenced in Nantes, and the committee had no contradiction to fear. Some of the well-to-do citizens tried to leave the city, but this was soon stopped. On the 24th October the council of Nantes decreed that no inhabitant should leave it except with a passport. All avenues of escape were thus closed. The Revolutionary Committee was now supreme, and was able to dare anything: but to do everything it required instruments, and a sort of police force was created by decree of (.'airier and Francastel, the Repre- sentatives, a "revolutionary corps" called the Marat Company, in obedience to the wishes of its members, who deemed that title a more splendid one. It was composed of three corps — the Marat Corps, the Scouts of the Mountain, and the American Hussars, these latter being negroes or mulattoes (presumably from Domenique). HachelitT. himself a member of the Revolutionary Committee, has left on record the statement that the Compagnie Marat was composed of fathers of families x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 139 known for their probity and their civism ; but, in reality, language is beggared to describe this crew. They were seleeted from the refuse and dregs and off- scourings of the populace, and were men of the most infamous, degraded, brutal, and ferocious character. Goullin, when he was getting this force together, held strongly that the greatest scoundrels should be chosen, and at each recommendation he inquired, " Is there no lugger scoundrel ? for we want men of that kind to bring aristocrats to their senses." When enlisted, they took the following oath : " I swear death to royalists, to fanatics, to coxcombs (rtiiiseadins), to feuillants, to moderates, in whatever colour, in whatever cloak (or mask), or in whatever form they clothe themselves. I swear to recognise those only as relations, brothers, and friends who are true patriots and ardent defenders of the Republic." To this low and degraded crew practically unlimited powers were given by the Representatives. They were given the right of surveillance over suspected persons, over enemies of the Republic — terms elastic enough to include everybody; they were given the authority to make domiciliary visits as, when, and where they wished; and they were also given the power of arrest — a power equivalent almost to that of life and death- — for, for any one in prison, it was but a short step to the scaffold. Their pay was to he ten francs a day; and, as a whet to their zeal, Carrier decided that the spoils of the brigands should belong to the individual making the arrest. In that loving republican spirit which is so beauti- ful a feature of the revolutionary character, Carrier addressed these wretches as "my children"'; but it is to be remembered that he, and they, and the Revolu- 140 THE EEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. tionary Committee were all pretty much of the same sort. The company called " the Scouts of tlie Mountain " was for the neighbourhood of Xantes what the others were for the city. One Lebatteux, an innkeeper, an ex-cook, and a man of desperate character, was appointed chief of it, and was given a manclat, with •'unlimited powers," by Carrier, who described him as " le patviote le plus i>ii.r" " le rejjahlicain le 2^" s pvononci" to make war on suspects of all classes. Having an extended held of action, the Scouts were mounted, and their occupation was daily or nocturnal raids for murder, pillage, robbery, and every other atrocity. There was not a horror they did not commit. Their misdeeds do not till so large a place in history as those of their comrades in Xantes — probably there was no one to report them fully — but glimpses of their proceedings are got from time to time. Of a man working in the fields being ridden down by them and killed: of a child tending cattle ami sheep being pitilessly murdered ; of chapels and houses being set fire to and burned alter having been pillaged : of levying unjust taxes : of stealing considerable sums of money ; of a church where some people were secretly holding a service being attacked, some eight young men being seized, their graves dug, and then their being shot — in all which crimes "patriots" as well as "brigands" were the sufferers. For the trial of prisoners in Xantes greatly increased provision was made. A Revolutionary Tribunal was installed on the 1st Xovemher in the I'alais de Justice, with power to judge revolutionarily, and without appeal, all those accused of x REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION 141 treason or conspiracy against the Republic, all individuals who furthered the counter-revolution, or who had com- mitted any of a whole lot of other offences. And a Military Commission was established by Carrier and Francastel, by decree on the 31st October, which was to judge militarily all individuals suspected of having borne arms against the Republic, This commission was completely under the influence of the Revolutionary Committee, and extreme as its powers were, it habitually exceeded them. " Are proofs necessary," exclaimed Goullin indignantly one day, "to send a person to the rasoir national / " The vigorous enforcement of the laws against counter- revolutionists resulted in the prisons in all the principal towns becoming ever more and more crammed. It is remarkable that a large proportion of those arrested were women. The revolutionist seemed to have a special spite against them. Thus at Lucon, out of 33 persons arrested as suspects, 28 were women — sisters, cousins, aunts of emigre*, or deported priests. In many of the prisons disease became epidemic, and in the prison of Rochelle some 250 persons died during the autumn. At Fontenay also a large number died. In Angers and Nantes they died by hundreds. Extra prison accommodation had to be provided, and the Revolutionary Committee at Nantes, with a view to future contingencies, secured possession of a large build- ing known as the "' Entrepot des cafes." Thus then, by the time that the victory of the republican arms at the battle of Cholet, and the flight of the A'eudeans across the Loire, had given more assured hopes of the ultimate triumph of the republican cause, all necessary preparations had been made for 142 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST m. meting' out, without stint or delay, revolutionary "justice" to all the unfortunate people who had already been thrown into prison, or who, by any stretch of malice or suspicion, could be construed into being counter-revolutionists. The organisation for the reign of revolutionary government — the government of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," and of "justice" — was at last sufficiently, indeed ideally, complete: the whole paraphernalia of slaughter ready. The Representatives, armed with un- limited powers, roaming about seeking whom they might devour. The Revolutionary Committees, composed of the extremest revolutionists, the very scum of France, to aid and advise them, also with practically unlimited powers: and special or public forces to carry out their minutest directions. These for the enforcement of rev« dutionary authority. For the administration of such laws as existed, or as were made by the revolutionists, exceptional tribunals, not for the liberty of the people, but for the liberty of assassination under judicial sanction, merciless instru- ments of revolutionary bloodthirstiness. And for enforcement, a code of repressive laws enacted by the Xational Assemblies and by the National Con- vention, so thorough and comprehensive as to provide for every imaginable offence, or even the suspicion of offence. Omnipotent and all-powerful, the revolutionists could now work their will; could give effect to those principles of "' liberty, equality, and fraternity " of which they boasted they were the true and the only exponents: and could demonstrate to the world the splendid superiority of a Republic over every other form of human Lfovernmenl . x REVOLUTIONARY ORG AXIS ATI OX 143 They had no opposition to tear, no opponents capable of thwarting them, for the Vendean army was moving ever farther away. External public opinion there was none, for the Vendee was out of the ken of Europe. Individual resistance was impossible and hopeless. And, finally, the guillotine was in permanence at Nantes, at Angers, at Sables, and elsewhere ; and where not in permanence it was being carried about by ambula- tory tribunals, and as even then it could not do the work quickly enough, Carrier was devising speedier means of execution, and was "arranging to have the greatest culprits shot.'' As he grimly summed up the state of affairs at the moment, "Tout ira, mais il faut des terribles exemples " ('•' Everything will go all right, but there must be some terrible examples "). Every chance of escape from revolutionary justice, or, in other words, merciless tyranny, had been closed. Such protection as the law had previously given to innocence had been entirely abrogated and was utterly gone. The victims were powerless : their throats were bared for the republican knife: their breasts for the republican bullets and bayonets, — there remained only the killing to be done. And the revolutionist began to be happy, for this was "liberty." CHAPTER XI RELIGIOUS LIBERTY The measures and organisation which the Representatives were thus getting into working order for the suppression of the Yendeans, and for the destruction of personal and political liberty, were equally efficacious for the destruction of religious liberty, — which object the Con- vention, the Committee of Public Safety, the Repre- sentatives, and the revolutionists had as deeply at heart as they had the annihilation of the Yendeans. Practically, it was a case of killing two birds with one stone. The paraphernalia for the conviction and punishment of Yendeans and other counter-revolution- ists would answer equally for the conviction and punish- ment of " lunatics," under which term the revolutionist included all persons who believed in the Christian faith. Tn spite of the many pressing claims on their atten- tion, the revolutionists never slackened in their assault on religion, nor in their attack on every one and every- thing connected with religious worship. Though with unceasing professions of tolerance and liberty on their lips, and witli the avowal of it blazoned across the republican firmament in their Declaration of the Rights of Man, and in their Constitutions, they on. xi RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 145 were unceasingly, in true revolutionary style, giving the lie to their professions and protestations. That is a most remarkable fact in their conduct, and shows conclusively how through and through insincere the revolutionists were, and what a miserable sham their professions of liberty were. it is one more proof of the truth which is becoming clearer to all calm and impartial investigators of the French Revolution under the more recent light thrown upon it by the publication of official records, and by different memoirs, that the revolutionist was an impostor of the very highest rank, of the supremest order — an arch impostor — and that all his high-sounding declara- tions and affirmations of liberty, equality, and fraternity were bid cloaks for the gratification of his own ambition, the advancement of his own interests, the indulgence of his own passions, and for ever)- infamy which the mind of man could conceive, or the hand of man could perpetrate. The Convention, taking up the policy initiated by the Constituent and continued by the Legislative Assembly, went on enacting law after law, each with some fresh restriction on religious liberty, or some increased penalty against religious worship; and it was thoroughly supported by the authorities in the country, for there was no humiliation which the local " patriots " could devise, no matter how mean or petty, which they did not inflict on the ministers of religion. Everything they could do, too, to offend the feelings of religious people they did. Religion was "fanati- cism/" — it was therefore to be swept away with other dark things of the earth ; religious people were " fana- tics," — they were therefore to be exterminated by an enlightened Government and State. L 146 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST on. "Tolerance," wrote a Representative, " is one of the most Leant i fill attributes of the republican constitution, but it ought not to exist for real charlatans." The proscription of the clergy, which had begun with those who would not take the oath, was unceasingly persevered in. Many already slept their last sleep — sent to it by the hand of the assassin or of the State executioner. Thousands had already been deported under circumstances of every possible hardship. Thousands were in prison, and those who still were at large were pursued as wild beasts. But before long the persecution passed on to the con- stitutional priests also, and even those who had taken the oath were hieing made to feel the weight of the revolutionary hand; for they were priests, and their form of worship was the Catholic religion. A premium was offered to all who abdicated their priesthood; but other more decisive measures were adopted to secure this end. The only conclusion at all satisfactory to those who were warring against the priests was when the priests "came to depose on the altar of philosophy and of reason the ridiculous tokens (signcs) with which they deceive the people," when they abjured their priesthood, and "changed their doctoral hat for the bonnet of the sans-culottes." Even then, however, they were more or less regarded as conspirators and persons to be watched by true repub- licans, and real contentment only came when a priest took the step from which there was no retreat — getting married. Hounded on by the Representatives, who were as raging against religion and religious practices as they were against counter-revolutionists, the most virulent xi RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 147 religious persecution was carried on, and a veritable war against religion was waged. The churches were forcibly closed, and converted into places for the meetings of popular societies, or other secular purposes, and into temples for the celebration of the worship of reason. The church ornaments, those " scandalous ornaments of gold and silver which have too long insulted the misery of the people and dishonoured the simplicity of the true religion," were carried off to be deposited on the altar of the country, — heavy toll being usually taken out of them on the way by the immaculate sans- culotte. The bells were taken away or destroyed. A petition from the Society of Vincent la Montague in Nantes, in November 1793, affords an illustration of the ideas of the time. The petition asked for measures to be taken " to destroy the remains of superstition, to overthrow entirely the edifice of errors and lies, and to warn the people against imposture and hypocrisy." And in reply the council of Nantes decreed that all wooden or stone figures tending to encourage fana- ticism should be removed ; that priests should he for- bidden to wear their clerical dress outside their houses : and that they should join the National Guard. But what brought this persecution more effectually home to those people who believed in religion were the tremendous penalties incurred by all who had any deal- ings or communications with the ministers of religion. Attendance at a service held by an unsworn priest was a capital offence ; whilst even the possession of any religious emblem was a crime also promptly punished with death. The Convention did not leave any room for doubt as to its views, for the proceedings at its sitting on the 148 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. Ttli November were a demonstration of its opinion that the Catholic religion should be abolished — an opinion which was being acted on with full vigour in the Depart- ments which were: the scene of the Vendean struggle. But in another measure it went beyond the expres- sion of hostility to a special form of religion, and evinced its animus against all religion. On the 5th October it decreed that the Republic should have a new calendar, starting from the date of the birth of the Republic, namely, the 22nd September 170-!; and on the 24th November this new calendar was inaugurated. Like many other revolutionary crudities and ab- surdities, it did not long survive its creation, and it is now mainly of interest as showing the revolutionary animus against religion. It suppressed all Saints' days, but what was far more notable, it abolished the Sab- bath, and substituted therefor a day of national fetes — a revolutionary Sabbath — every tenth day, which was called a cUcacli. " Instead of a foolish Sabbath {an sot dimanche)" said Mallarme, " we have the cUcacli." But the change was manifestly for the worse so far as the working man was concerned, who thus only got three days of rest in the month instead of four. The observance of these decadis was made obligatory, and in that spirit of " religious liberty " which was the boast of the Republic, any recognition of the Sundays was prohibited. Any one who shut their shops or abstained from work on the Sabbath was liable to heavy penalties. '"Denounce to me," said Carrier, "the fanatics who shut their shops on a Sunday, and 1 will have them guillotined." xi RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 149 The new calendar was in effect a declaration against the State acknowledgment of the existence of any religion. In fact, under the Revolutionary Government, which was to have been a Government of Liberty, not alone was there no vestige of religious liberty, but there was religious persecution of the most active, extreme, and bloody character. Every possible insult was heaped on religion, and every effort made to destroy all outward signs and evidence of religious worship, and to annihilate those who still dared to avow their religious belief — and extirpate it. To such a state of anti-religiousness did things come, that " Atheism became the best certificate of eivism." If anything could add to the iniquity of the persecu- tion, it was the audacious pretence that religious liberty existed. The Republican Government of France of this time, speaking of it as a whole, with its deputy sovereigns, the Representatives, and its other officers, has excelled beyond all Governments that ever have been in the contradictions of its professions and its acts. Never has any Government or form of Government acted in such direct, instantaneous, and flagrant opposition to its own professions as this Government did. One would wonder that it took the trouble to make pro- fessions it so promptly violated, were it not that the professions were a part of the sham which had to be kept up. On the 1G Friinaire (6th December 1793) the Oon- vention had passed a decree pour maintcnir la paix et la liberU de c idles (to maintain the peace and liberty of forms of worship). The action of Lequinio, one of its Representatives in the west, interprets the meaning of this decree. 150 THE HEAL FREXCH REYOLVTTOXIST ch. On the 21st December he issued a proclamation to the citizens of the Vendee : — " All forms of worship are free (tons les cidtes sont lihrrs. The first of the Rights of Man is to think freely, to render homage freely to the god which his imagination depicts. But he is not free whose mind is tormented by the discourse and instigations of another. He is a tyrant who wishes to force the opinions of others into submission to his own. and to make him believe what he himself believes, and to imitate his practices. . . . '' That each of us should render Ins homage as he pleases, that he should exercise his worship in private, as lie thinks good, here is liberty of worship. But let him beware of endeavouring to inspire others with his views — henceforward that will be a crime, and our duty will be to make the sword of the law fall on the guilt}'." And it was decreed by this Representative — " "With the object that liberty of worship exist in its pleni- tude, it is prohibited to all — be he who he may — to preach or write to bring into favour any worship or religious opinion, be it what it may. Whoever is guilty of this offence shall be at once arrested, treated as an enemy of the Republican Constitution, as a conspirator against French liberty, and handed over to the Revolu- tionary Tribunal established at Rochefort." Xo longer was the Roman Catholic religion alone in being persecuted. All religious creeds were equally assailed. Former or present ministers of any form of creed were expressly forbidden to preach, write or teach morals (In ,/in,'"/'\ under the penalty of being treated as '-'suspect." And they were all prohibited from holding any public otlice except with the approval of the Representatives. Laignelot, another Representative, wrote to the Com- xi RELIGIOUS LIBEETY 151 mittee of Public Safety his disapproval of this proclama- tion. " Write, I pray you, to Lequinio to be more reserved in his speeches and writings. The greater part of the deputies possess in sovereign degree the art of making themselves feared, and few that of attracting hearts. Recommend above all to those you send, as well as to Lequinio, never to forget for one single moment in their august missions that they are representatives of the people." The Committee of Public Safety on the 7th January (18 Nivose) wrote to Lequinio that his decree was not at all in the spirit of the deeree of the 6th December, and that he should take another attitude. " You ought to have known that religious opinions cede to force less than any others. " Your experience ought to have reminded you that in the matter of worship persecution only tends to give to fanaticism a more terrible energy. . . . " Let the law, let the triumphant Republic crush its internal enemies by the force of reason." This, however, was not a principle acted on by the Committee nor by the Revolutionary Government. The censure, such as it was, was, however, purely personal, for elsewhere there was no mitigation of persecu- tion — no condemnation expressed of the persecutors — even individual religious worship in private was dangerous, as the possession of some religious emblems was used as proof of their possessor being a counter-revolutionist, and led direct to the scaffold. It was not, however, in the nature of the Revolutionary Government to act on its avowed principles of religious liberty, or on its avowed knowledge of the evil results of religio u s persecu tion , I'll A TIE i; XI XANTE? The proclamation of revolutionary government made little immediate change as regarded pivceedings in the W-ndre and Xante?. despotism there had already ' '■ such a height that no addition eould well he' made to it — a somewhat remarkahle commentary on the lb-volution whose sole justification was the abolition el tyranny aid despotism, and the inauguration of a ' ^ : " • i f liberty. equality, and fraternity. X mtes became, unfortunately for itself, the centre of the storm of revolutionary violence in the west. Here not only were there Yendeans to be dealt with, but al8 THE UKAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Paris, Carrier and liis Committee were the first to give effect to it. Doubtless he felt proud of being the first to give effect to this new method of dealing with re- calcitrant priests — a "vertical deportation" as he or (loullin facetiously called it; cheaper, too, and more rapid than deportation. Doubtless, too, the actors felt self-satisfied with their prowess. But what an appalling scene, this drunken glorifica- tion of wholesale murder, on the very scaffold of the slaughter : what an illustration of the reality of the boasted superiority of the new gospel of Revolution as expounded by the '"'brave republican/' by the vrai m ns-cidottc ! The industry of the revolutionists was not confined to priests. Since the imaginary plot the [{evolutionary Com- mittee and Carrier had been considering how best to deal with the prominent citizens of Nantes whom they had in their custody. To bring them before the local tribunals at Nantes, where the patriotism of most of them was so well known, would, even at this period, have been useless: and so the Committee determined to send them to Paris for trial there by the .Revolutionary Tribunal, which could be relied on to make short work of them. And so on the 2 7th November, having selected about 132, they started them under escort for Paris. There appears to have been ever}' intention on the part of the Committee that they should be massacred /'// route, a not unknown revolutionary device for getting rid of people. " So much the better if they die," said Chaux and Goullin : " it is so much gain to the nation ": and ( roullin spoke of them as men no longer in existence. But the plot miscarried, and after every imaginable xii NANTES 159 hardship, from which several died, some 120 readied Paris, and were there consigned to prison, and for a time to oblivion. Rid of these people, the Committee turned its atten- tion in other directions. Want was pressing on the city, food becoming ever more difficult to obtain — the plague was spreading, and exciting growing alarm. Robin, one of Carrier's staff, pointed out the evil winch next wanted remedying. "The brigands," he said, "eat the bread of the patriots. They had wished to destroy the Republic. They now caused the risk of the spread of the plague. People so notoriously culpable had no right to live, and every one would profit by the national vengeance being executed upon them." And. so the national vengeance was determined upon by the Committee and the Representative — the representative of"' liberty" and "fraternity," and of the power and authority and dignity of France, An excuse soon arose. On the 3rd December some half-a-dozen prisoners in the Bouffay had formed a plan to escape by means of false keys. The Revolutionary Committee, with the help of a spy of theirs who was among the prisoners, magnified this into a vast conspiracy, with ramifications throughout the prisons, for the destruc- tion of the buildings, and the death of " patriots." ( hi the next afternoon the six culprits were sentenced to death, and forthwith guillotined by torchlight. But tin's was not enough. As Carrier said, " A grand mea- sure will deliver us of the rest." The same evening the different administrative corps in Nantes met together, the Revolutionary Committee and Carrier himself being present. Their proceedings are really hardly credible. After a "tempestuous" discussion, the question was put 100 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. on Goullin's motion, " Shall the prisoners lie made to perish in a mass ? Yes or no '. " There was no question of the prisoners confined in one special prison being the victims. Their wholesale slaughter was contemplated. There was no question of their being first tried, not even by the rapid-acting Military Commission. The derision of the meeting was to settle their fate without further bother, and that decision was unanimously, "' Yes." Goullin playing the principal part, a sort of ""national jury" was appointed, which drew up lists of those who were to be shot, and he then signed an order, together with Grandmaison and Mainguet, to General Boivin, commandant of Nantes, to seize the prisoners named on the list, some 300 in number, to conduct them to l'Eperomiiere, and there shoot them. Early on the 5th General Boivin received the order, and protested against its illegality, none of the prisoners having been legally tried, and some of them being only confined on a charge of drunkenness ; and he refused to execute it. A fresh meeting was held, at which Phelippes de Tronjolly, president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, opposed the scheme, and the arm}" having refused to carry out the measure, the administrative bodies refused also to associate themselves with such a measure. But the Revolutionary Committee, though thus foiled, deter- mined to have recourse to other means of getting rid of the prisoners — one where obstruction was not possible. And one gets one or two glimpses in the next few days of Carrier and the Revolutionary Committee, Grand- maison, Goullin, and Bachelier, sitting in solemn conclave, with expert carpenter in attendance, organising the pre- parations for further drownings or noyades, designing the xii NANTES 1 6 1 most effective and commodious form of barge for the purpose, and selecting a staff for the work. The staff selected were sans-culottes of the vrai-e&t type, worthy of those who employed them, and of the rank and file of the Maratist Company, whom they worked with, and than whom they were no better — Lam- berty, previously a spy in the Vendee, and whom Carrier had made an adjutant-general, and who was one of his most active and trusted instruments ; Eohin, a dissolute and vicious youth ; Laveau, one of the prisoners saved by Bonchamps at St. Florent, who thus showed his gratitude to Vendean mercy ; Fouquet, who, two years previously, had been turned out of the National Guard as unworthy of wearing its uniform : Foucault, and several others, all men of the most cruel and infamous character, all chosen for "' their known civism, for their patriotism, and their sans-culottic ardour." "What a light is being thrown on what French " civism " and " patriotism " really was ! Lamberty was placed in command ; and Carrier, by virtue of his unlimited powers, gave him full authority to do practically anything, and to go anywhere, at any time, and prohibited any one opposing him. While they were still at work on their preparations, a vessel arrived (on or about the 7th December) at Nantes from Angers, laden with some fifty-eight priests. Carrier was asked as to whether they should be sent to a prison. " No," he replied ; " not so much mystery. All these . . . must be put under water." And on the night of the Oth his order was carried (Hit. Details are unknown ; only this one, that Lam- berty was not at the slaughter, and had a heated quarrel with those who were, over the clothes and small property of the victims, of which he wanted his share : and this M 162 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. one, that the nine sailors who helped in the business each received four francs. And on the 10th, Carrier wrote a letter to the Convention, in which he announced a republican victory which had just been gained over Charette ; adding to his report, " But why was it necessary that this event should be accompanied by another which is no longer of a new kind;' Fifty-eight individuals, described under the name of refractory priests, arrived at Xantes from Angers. They were immediately confined in a vessel on the Loire. Last night they were all swallowed {engloutis) up by the river. What a revolutionary torrent is the Loire! — Saint et fraternity Carrier." The reading of this letter in the Convention was, as Mercier reports, " covered by immortal plaudits." Henceforward, no possible exculpation of the Conven- tion as to its knowledge of the noyades. The arrangements were at last complete. It was night, the night of the 14th December. The inmates of the grim and gloomy old prison, Le Bouffay, worn out with another day's misery, had sunk into fevered torpor on the vermin -infected straw, or tossed to and fro on the clammy floors in sleepless anguish. Sickness and cold, semi-starvation and filth, and a pestiferous atmosphere, had brought most of them to the edge of the precipice which separates life from death. They were not deep -dyed criminals, the pri- soners ; many were under short sentences for only petty offences, such as theft : many had not even yet been tried. Suddenly, in the early hours of the night, an unwonted noise is heard in the prison. Loud voices, unusual sounds, and disturbance ; and presently, nickering lights, and heavy steps in the long dark corridors, and keys grating in the locks, and the doors of all the cells opened by the xr. NANTES 1 63 turnkey, and the harsh command given: "(let up at once, pack your tilings, especially your purses, they are essential; leave nothing behind." And then several drunken men, wearing the national uniform, members of the infamous Maratist Company, crowd in, calling out the names on the list. " The first who does not answer," said a furious Maratist, " I will stick my sword through." Dazed with fear, ami in a panic of terror, the miser- able prisoners obey the order. Those who delay are dragged out by the brutal Maratists, half-mad with drink, then all are plundered of everything they possess, are hurried to the yard, where, by the flickering light of torches, they are pinioned and bound in couples with such savage force that the ropes cut almost to the bone. It mattered nothing what offence they were in prison for ; whether they were convicted or untried ; whether innocent or guilty ; even whether they were patriots or aristocrats ; revolutionary justice did not condescend to discriminate; they were prisoners, and all must come. And Goullin and the big Grandmaisoii are there, and Mainguet, aiding in the pinioning of the prisoners; cursing and swearing and threatening — Grandmaison emphasising his oaths and threats with his drawn sword. Some hours- — the greater part of the night — are spent in this dreadful work. Horrible imprecations are hurled at the prisoners, and jocular allusions as to their fate. One asked for a glass of water, " No need," said a Maratist. " in a few minutes you will drink out of the big cup," — so clear the allusions that one wretched prisoner exclaims, " We are lost, my friends, they are Lroinu' to drown us." 1G4 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST «i. And as the number un the list — 155 — is short by some, (ioullin wishes to send to the hospital near by to complete the number; but time does not admit, and as the pinioning process is slow, he urges haste. " Dear friends, let us hurry ; the tide is going out." At last at about four in the morning all was ready, the prison gate was opened, and the miserable procession started. Resistance is impossible ; escape almost hope- less ;. almost, for one tried it, and got away, but another who attempted it had his skull smashed in by Grand- maison. And one who, unable to walk, fell by the way, promptly had his brains blown out by a urai sans- culotte, the shot resounding like a volley through the empty and silent streets. What a prolonged agony for these unfortunates, this march along the dark streets — on by the Quai de la Fosse, escorted or rather dragged or driven along by armed and infuriated demons panting for their death. Their worst fears were confirmed as they were drawn up on the edge of the river, and by a faint moonlight could see the waters rushing along. The barge which was to be their tomb was not ready for their reception, and they were kept waiting there while the finishing touches were being given to it. At last the agony draws to its close. The barge is ready — they are made to descend into it, or are pitched in, and battened down. With several members of the Revolutionary Committee and of the Maratist Company on board, it is east loose, and drifts for a while with the current. And now, no longer able to restrain their terror, silence is broken : fearful cries arise, cries for mercy, amongst them the reproaching cry, " Is it republicans who aet thus cruelly?" But their executioners sanu r to drown these cries. xn NANTES 165 And then the death-struggle begins. Some had got the cords loose, and struggled to be free, pushing their arms through the gaps in the planks. Grandmaison sabred these unfortunates, and plunged his sword through the gaps in the planks, pleased doubtless by the exclamation, " Ah, the scoundrel, he pierces me ! " Opposite the island of Chavire the barge is anchored. Goullin, Grandmaison, and their colleagues and the Maratists descend into boats, and hover around to witness the climax of their night's work. The carpenters knock away the carefully prepared planks, the water rushes in, rises, ever rises, until the barge- slowly sinks with its human freight of nearly 130 souls. By some blunder of the carpenters, a few of the victims come to the surface, and endeavour to swim away. They are pursued by the men in the boats, and knocked on the head. Two, however, actually do escape, snatched from the very jaws of death ; the rest are soon wrapped in eternal sleep, victims of republican despotism which has been misnamed " liberty," and of sans-culotte savagery which masqueraded as " fraternity." CHAPTER XIII ' ttie calvary of the vendeans ' The Campaign on the North Side of the Loire While the extermination of counter-revolutionists was thus, in the period immediately succeeding the battle of Cholet, absorbing the attention of the revolutionists, the Yendean army and people who had crossed the Loire were moving off through Brittany, in the hopeless pursuit of better fortune, getting farther and farther away from their own country, and falling more and more a victim to the ambitions and dissensions of their leaders. The Revolutionary Government was first startled, and then enraged, to find that the Vendeans had not been annihilated at Cholet, that the Yendean war was not yet over, that only the scene had been changed from one side of the Loire to the other. Fear conjured up all sorts of contingencies and magnified the danger, and the Government dreaded the possibility of the Yendeans making a dash for Paris, and foresaw an alliance between them and the hated English, which should give that inveterate foe a footing in Prance and a basis for further operations. Every effort must be made to prevent these dis- ch. xiii 'THE CALVAEY OF THE VENDEANS' 167 asters, and imperative orders were despatched to the com- manders of the republican military forces to attack, over- come, and annihilate the Vendeans as promptly as possible. The jourueyings of the Vendean army on the north side of the Loire, with their wives and families, have been likened unto the wanderings of the Children of Israel after they had departed out of Egypt and crossed the Eed Sea, but the comparison is much in favour of the latter. For the Vendeans took with them no spoils of their enemies, only heavy burdens, in the helpless or wounded members of their family, women, children, and old people. For them, moreover, poor people, there was no manna in the wilderness, there was before them no land of promise flowing with milk and honey, not even for their descendants. Their time of trial was shorter — that was the only difference in their favour. Ten weeks of strife and battle, of restless wandering to and fro, of fatigue, cold, hunger, and mental and physical misery in every shape ; ten weeks of despairing struggle, with the heart-wrench- ing trial of relatives and friends dropping by the wayside, to be destroyed by the revolutionists, as surely as the traveller who falls from his sleigh when pursued by a pack of hungry wolves. And then, when every avenue of escape was closed against them, and when the human frame could stand no more, when no asylum but death remained for them, the final valiant, heroic effort, and final defeat, and death. " It was not an army," says a depicter of these scenes, " it was more like a migration similar to those of the ancient times, when a whole people fled before fire and flame in search of a new land." Having crossed the Loire, the first necessity was the appointment of new leaders in place of those who had 1G8 THE REAL FEEXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. fallen, and Henri de la Iiochejaquelein was selected as commander-in-chief. Strenuous efforts were at once made to evoke some order from the fearful chaos. An advance guard of some 10,000 to 12,000 men was formed. Then followed the bulk of the wanderers, anyhow, without any order, com- batants mixed up with non-combatants; "and filling up the road, artillery, baggage, women carrying their children, old men supported by their sons, the wounded who could scarce drag themselves along, and soldiers — all in confusion. . . . This sad procession occupied almost always four leagues in length." A community of anxiety and misery welded the whole of them into one mass. " Every one experienced the wish of running common dangers and of sharing a common fate. Families and friends walked together and tried to keep united." " We are all brothers and sisters now," said a peasant ; " we must not separate." A strong rear-guard was formed of the best troops, and in this formation the whole body started for Iiennes, in the hope and belief that Brittany would rise and help them. The republicans were quite unprepared for the sudden movement of the Vendeans across the Loire, and had no forces there which would enable them to offer any effective resistance to the Vendean advance. The A^endeans overcame everything at first, capturing several small towns, and, on the 23rd October, capturing the large town of Laval, where they were joined by some GO 00 Bretons. By this time the republican forces had crossed the Loire, and, under the command of L'Echelle, with Generals Marceau, Xleber, AVestermann, and the Mayeneais troops, were following them pretty closely. xiii 'THE CALVAEY OF THE YENDEANS ' 1G9 At Entrammes, near Laval, they overtook the Yendeans and attacked them (on the 27th October), and a fiercely contested battle took place. The desperate valour of the Yendeans prevailed, and the republican soldiers, each with an " ceil sur le dos," as Kleber said, were driven back with heavy loss. " They fled like flocks of sheep," wrote a corporal present. "Each one was afraid of being wounded, knowing well that if he were so unfortunate no one would have the humanity to help him to save himself." The Mayencais troops, who stood their ground most valiantly, were almost annihilated. Two republican generals and a large number of officers were killed, nineteen cannon and as many caissons were lost, also many waggons of bread and brandy, and over 4000 men were killed or wounded. " We provided them with everything," adds the corporal. " They were in a pitiable condition — reduced to living on apples, and carrying off the spoons from the houses they passed, to make them into bullets." The republican defeat was so crushing that a council of war was field. Kleber described to it the state of the troops. " It is necessary first to settle whether we have an army or not. Already you would have decided this question if, as I did, before daybreak, you had gone round the camp ; if you had seen the soldier wet to the bone, without tents, without straw, without boots, without breeches, some without coats, knee deep in mud, shivering with cold . . . the colours surrounded by twenty or thirty, or at most fifty, men who form the different battalions ; if, too, you had heard them complain, ' The cowards are at Angers, and we — we are here in the greatest misery.' " 170 THE REAL FEEXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. With the army in such a state there was nothing for the republicans to do hut to retire to Angers to re- organise. The Vendean army thus found itself, for a time at least, master of its movements. Once more its fate, and that of the mass of people dependent upon it, was in its own hands, or rather in the hands of its leaders. 'Here we ought to have stopped," writes Madame Lescure, " and returned in triumph to our own country, having taken ample revenge on those Mayencais who had driven us from it." The question was decided at a council of war. The commander-in-chief and Stoftiet and some others were in favour of going hack at once and in triumph to the Vendee, now that they were in a position to do so : and many of the men were clamouring for this course to he adopted. The prospect of Brittany rising to help them was proving delusive, and having no provisions and no money, the Vendean demands on the people of the country they passed through for the necessary food were awakening hostility instead of friendship. They were making more enemies than friends. But cabals and jealousies existed among the Vendean chiefs, and considerable disunion prevailed. Information reached the council from the emigres in Jersey that an expedition to help them was being pre- pared in England, and they were urged to seize a seaport. Some of the new leaders of the Vendeans, such as the Prince of Talmont. a vain and incapable personage, the evil genius of the Vendeans, and Monsieur d'Autichainp, being more ambitious in their aims than those who had fallen, and dreaming of overthrowing the Revolutionary Government itself and re-establishing the monarchy. succeeded in imposing their will on the others, and the in. THE CALVARY OF THE YENDEANS ' 171 decision was come to to move on instead of going back. it was a fatal decision, but the responsibility for it rests on the leaders, and not on the rank and file. Gradually the unfortunate Yendeans had been led away from the objects for which they had at first risen — the free exercise of their religion and exemption from com- pulsory conscription. They cared little for aught else. And now they were powerless to give effect to their anxiety to return to their own country ; there could be no separation from the main body ; all must stand or lull together, and so they bad to bow to the decision of their leaders. They moved on accordingly, and attacked and cap- tured Fougeres, inflicting heavy loss on the republicans. While there, two emigre emissaries arrived from England with despatches from the English Govern- ment offering the Yendeans help, and saying that troops were ready to bear on any port the Yendean leaders sliould name, and suggesting Granville. A reply was sent accepting aid, and asking above all for a prince of the French royal family, or a marshal of France, to command the army, so that an end might be put to tbe conflict of private pretensions. And they pressed onwards towards Dol and Gran- ville. The weather was horrible, the roads frightful. The continual marching, the wandering life in the cold air at this late season of the year, the extreme rigour of the climate, the privations, and the bad food were already telling severed}' upon them. Dysentery broke out, and not a place did they pass through but they were forced to leave many sick behind — at Mayenne some 2 (JO, at Fougeres a large number. They met witli no serious opposition. A republican 172 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. army was collected as rapidly as possible at Rennes, but it was not formidable; and a force of about 1500 "re- cpiisitionists " was collected at Mayenne. but they either deserted or tied when a Yendean appeared. ■• I fear to find myself alone by the end of the day." wrote their general, Lenoir. The Committee of Public Safety had been moved to fury by the defeat at Laval. It was a rude awakening from the dream of la. Vendee nest 'plus. The orders to destroy Vendeans and the Vendee in accordance with the decree of the 1st August were reiterated — not merely against the Vendeans on the north side of the Loire, but against the Vendee itself. And a new decree was made on the 1st November declaring that every town which received the brigands, or gave them help, or which had not resisted them to the utmost, was to be punished as a rebel town, razed, and the property of the inhabitants confiscated to the Republic. The Committee wrote to their colleague Prieur (de la Alarne) complaining vehemently of the slackness and of the feeble measures being taken by the Representatives to crush the Vendeans. " "We hope that you, with your fiery spirit (dme de feu), your military eloquence, and your pronounced patriotism, will repair so many blunders. We have given orders for considerable re- inforcements from the army of the north." And to dean Ron St. Andre, another Representative. it wrote that it "was strongly determined to neglect no steps which would clear the territory of the Republic of this race of brigands." and that he was " to take the strongest measures that the sea or the maritime Depart- ments should be their tomb." xiii 'THE CALVARY OF THE VENDEANS' 173 On the oth November Barere confessed from the tribune in the Convention that " the atrocious Vendee remained inexplicable." But, he added, " the terrible day approaches when the torch of truth will illumine the depths of these dens (repaiirs) in the Vendee ; the day when, with sure hand, we will tear the thick veil which still for a few moments covers all these distant intrigues {^intrigues lointaines), all these local manoeuvres, all these military treasons, and these divers ambitions of the chiefs. Victories coloured, half- successes exaggerated, fabulous tales, all will have their proper place {tout aura sa place), and the nation will be avenged." Granville, the seaport, was at last reached ; and the attack on it began on the 14th November ; but Gran- ville was a walled and fortified place, with a garrison of over 5000 men, and the A'endeans had no siege artillery, no scaling ladders, no military appliances for attacking such a place, and after a not too vigorous effort to capture it, they were repulsed with heavy loss. The blow was decisive. The effect was disastrous ; and the danger of the position of the Vendean army and its followers suddenly became apparent to all. The confidence of the Vendeans in their chiefs vanished : they became outspoken in their discontent with their leaders, some of whom they accused, not without appar- ent justification, of the intention of deserting them and escaping across the sea, and they declared their deter- mination to return to the Vendee. Winter was rapidly closing in upon them : the severity of the weather, the drenching rains, the pene- trating winds, the bitter eold, were piercing them to their marrow. There was no sign of emigre help, nor of the English fleet — which by no possibility could 174 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. have arrived off the French coast within the time. No course, in tact, was open but retreat, and, in consterna- tion, they turned south again, making for Angers, in the despairing hope of there crossing the Loire and once more entering their own country. But though in consternation they were still full of tight ; and as it was said at the time by an eye-witness : •■ The entire army was like a wounded boar, which before perishing would crush the unskilful hunter who came in his way." On the 20th November they had got back once more to Do! — their woes and miseries pressing ever heavier upon them — their strength failing them from hardship and privation. At nine at night the town was alarmed, and in the darkness fighting began. The next day they found themselves face to face with the army of Marceau, Kleber, and Westermann, and a desperate battle ensued. Fortune favoured now one side, now the other. " When the men were retreating great efforts were made to stop them. A number of women performed prodigies of resolution and decision of character. The priests exer- cised a still greater influence. It is the only time that 1 have seen them fanaticise the soldiers by employing all the means of religion to animate them. While the people paused to listen to the cannon, the curate of St. Marie de Ehe got upon a hillock near me, raised a large crucifix, and with a stentorian voice began to preach to the Vendeans. He was carried away by his enthusiasm ; he asked the soldiers if they would really be so infamous as to give up their wives and their children to be slaughtered by the Blues; he told them the only means of safety was to return to the battle. ' My children,' said he, ' I will march at your head, the crucifix in my hand : let those who choose to follow me xin 'THE CALVARY OF THE VENDEANS' 175 kneel, I will give them absolution ; if they die they will go to Paradise ; but the cowards who forsake God, and abandon their families, will have their throats cut by the Blues, and will go to hell.' More than 2000 men knelt down, and he gave them absolution with a loud voice ; and with the curate at their head they departed, calling out ' Vive le Roi ! We go to Paradise.' " In the midst of the fighting a thick fog came on, and then night — and the battle was drawn. It was resumed the next day. The Vendeans once- more fought with desperate courage, and completely routed the republican army, inflicting very heavy loss upon it, and An train was entered. Here they learned that their wounded, which they had left in hospital at Fougeres, had been massacred in their beds by the soldiers of tin; Eepublic. As some republican administrators expressed it: " Our army lias given to the stragglers and the sick of the brigand army passports to go to the devil." Here, too, they learned some horrible details as Lo the treatment of some of their women by the republicans ; and recognising among the prisoners they had captured several soldiers who had been released at fougeres on swearing not again to fight against the Vendeans, they immediately shot them. They were so exhausted by their prolonged trials, and by their almost superhuman efforts, that they did not avail themselves as quickly as they might have of the advantages of their success. For them now victories even were defeats, and everything which delayed their march to the Vendee and augmented the number of their wounded added to their difficulties. A council of war was held, but the men declared that 176 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. they would only go the road to the Vendee, and their desire had to be acceded to. With enemies on every side of them, and closing in more and more upon them, they bravely struggled on, upheld by the one hope of once more reaching their beloved Vendee. The march from Antrum was unopposed, and on the 3rd December they presented themselves before Angers. But the town was not now abandoned as it had been in the previous June. Instead of which, the gates were closed, and inside a considerable garrison to defend it. Strong in itself, it laid been made stronger by rapidly constructed defences and additional batteries. For the Vendeans to attack it with the limited resources at their disposal, and with their weakened and diminished numbers, was literally dashing their heads against the stone walls. But they were scarcely in a condition to judge what was wisdom and what was folly. "Worn out with cold and fatigue and sickness and every kind of hardship, they were in a state of appalling misery. The winter was one of exceptional and terrific severity: and grief, anxiety, hunger, and exposure had crushed the spirit of the men. Still, in their desperation to secure the means of crossing the Loire into their own land, they attacked it. but after thirty hours of valiant though hopeless effort, they had to desist. Retreat became necessary. And when, the next morning, some republican officers came out of the town to make a reconnaissance, they found in the plain the remains of the Vendean bivouacs with men and women and children lying dead there — dead from cold and misery. Confusion aiming the Vendeans now was paramount. They were stunned by the disaster, and knew not whither to turn, or what to do. " Thev had lost every xiii 'THE CALVARY OF THE VENDEANS ' 177 hope of safety ; the army gave itself up to the most complete despair ; it no longer saw any means of repassing the Loire : sickness increased ; on all sides were heard the cries of the unfortunate wounded who had to be abandoned. Famine and bad weather added to all this misery. The chiefs were harassed in mind and body ; they knew not what determination to take." Some of the men started of their own accord on the road for Bauge — anywhither, so long as some start was made, some action was taken : and, grateful for any lead, the mass of the army and its unfortunate companions followed. At La Fleche there was a combat, and the repub- licans there were routed ; passing through which the Vendeans continued their journey northwards away from home and country to Le Mans, which they reached on the 11th. " Everybody was overcome with fatigue . . . generals, officers, and soldiers, everybody was cast down. It was evident we should be destroyed sooner or later; and that the struggles we made were only the agonies of death. We were surrounded with suffering ; the sight of the women, children, and wounded weakened the strongest minds at the very time when a miraculous courage was necessary. . . . Everything presaged our utter ruin." The following day they were again attacked, and the battle was continued, the army of Kleber, Marceau, and the impetuous AVestermann having come up. The combat reached the climax — the acme — of horror of the campaign. In parts of the fiercely, despairingly contested field of battle the revolutionists gained the advantage ; in other parts they were worsted, but as night fell the town had been in great part captured by N ITS THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. the revolutionists, and many of the Yen deans were in full night. And all the long winter's night, in cold and snow and wet, and by the occasional gleams of a pale moon, there was desperate lighting in the narrow and irregular streets, and a fearful butchery; and when day broke the streets were piled with corpses, " many of them naked women whom the soldiers had despoiled and killed after violating them," and the houses were Idled with dead and dying; and crowding and crushing out of it by the one bridge towards Laval were women and children and old people, and sick and wounded — all, in fact, who could still move. The Representatives (Bourbotte, Prieur (de la Marne), and Turreau) in their report which was read before the Convention on loth December gave an account of the victory. •• Chiefs, marchionesses, countesses, priests in plenty, carriages, baggage, cannon, guns, everything has fallen into our power. . . . The streets, the houses, the public places, the roads, are piled with corpses, and tor fifteen hours the massacre lias lasted. . . . The treasure, baggage, everything is in the hands of our soldiers, even to the silver crosses, the mitres, the croziers, the banners, the signs and instruments of fanaticism with which the priests made drunk this mad and ferocious horde. In tine, citizens, this is the most splendid day we have had during the ten months in which we have been fighting the brigands. Everything presages that those to follow it will not lie less happy/' The Convention, on receiving the news, decreed that the 'army of the west had deserved well of its country, and called on the brave republicans of the north who were on their way to the scene of action to complete tla' entire destruction of the brigands. xiii THE CALVAEY OF THE VENDEANS ' 179 In all some 17,000 Vendeans, women and children in- eluded, were estimated as having perished. " The A'endean army received its death-blow, and it was inevitable." The flight to Laval was continued, the pursuit kept ii}). " Heaps (if corpses," wrote Frieur (de la Marne), " are the only obstacles which the army opposes to the pursuit of our troops"; and Gamier (de Saintes) wrote, " In the space of fourteen leagues of the road there is not a fathom's length upon which a corpse is not stretched." And an enthusiastic revolutionist commissioner— Maignan by name — ■ gave his description, which also throws light on the republican character: — " They had taken the road to Laval, and we followed them. I never saw such a carnage. The road was piled with corpses . . . women, priests, monks, men and children, all have been given over to death. I let no one off. I did my duty. There is pleasure in avenging one's country." The republican cavalry, under Westermann, with some light artillery, vigorously kept up the pursuit, harassing and attacking the Vendeans without cessation — killing all who through fatigue or other cause fell behind; and the infantry followed by forced marches as rapidly as possible. " One must render justice to the army," wrote Maignan. " It works well. Westermann is indefatigable ; he gives the rebels no breathing time. On the right and on the left the soldiers shoot those who have not been exterminated by his advance guard. Oh, how that goes (comme ca va) '. What a delight to see the triumphs of the Republic ! " As if the valiant republican army was not doing quite enough in the way of slaughtering, the peasants were hounded on to complete the work ordered by the 180 THE HEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Convention. ( kirnier (de Saintes),a Representative, issued a proclamation enjoining the inhabitants of these districts (under a penalty of death) to take guns, pitchforks, any weapon in fact, and to pursue the brigands. How thoroughly they obeyed this proclamation is described by Maignan the commissioner. " At Pouancc I saw the inhabitants of the commune hunt the brigands as one hunts the wolves. At Nort all the inhabitants were hunting the scoundrels. When 1 arrived there, nearly two hundred were in the charnel- house which they had made 1 . Every moment, four, five, etc., etc., are brought in. Immediately a shot tumbles them over into the ditch." And then he adds tins char- acteristic touch of the true republican, "I am quite satisfied with the spirit of the citizens of this part of the country." And Benaben, a commissioner, wrote : " The peas- ants put the corpses in heaps alongside the roads very much as if they were pigs for salting.'"' In one place, some five leagues from Le Mans, he saw a hundred naked bodies piled in a heap. Collected once more in a sort of way at Laval, with deci- mated ranks, and fewer leaders, for some had fallen, sonic had fled, the Yendeans attempted to make for Ancenis, in the forlorn hope of being able to get over the Loire there. lint the Loire was no longer low, as it had been in October; it was a great wide racing flood of brown water. Only a few boats could be obtained, and only a few succeeded in crossing, their two principal leaders, Henri de la liochejaquelein and Stofnet, among the number. The rest, now leaderless, and hard pressed by the republicans closing in on them, failed to get across, lust some hundred men in a tight, and, turning west- ward, once more wandered on. I low any survived this (light is incomprehensible. xin 'THE CALVARY OF THE VENDEANS ' 181 The weather was terrific — ceaseless torrents of rain : the roads in a fearful state. Their only food was such as they happened to be able to seize ; for days they lived on raw turnips ; their ammunition was nearly at an end. Though exhausted by fatigue and enfeebled by fever, dysentery, and disease, no opportunity for repose could be got. With ever-thinning ranks, with ever - diminishing strength, they still kept moving, pressed hard by the republicans. On the 22nd they reached Savenay. Here, unable to move farther, the republican army overtook them. Here, on the 23rd, they made their final stand, and suffered annihilation. The battle began at the break of day. The re- publicans attacked. "The 2 K(S <^<" charge is heard everywhere," wrote Kleber. " Canuel overwhelms the enemy on the left, Marceau in the centre, and Kleber on the right. The cry of ' Vive la Republique ' fills the air. The Vendeans fly, and fall under the fire of the republicans. Savenay is crossed ; each column takes a different direction in pursuit of the rebels: the carnage becomes horrible ; one part of them go to drown them- selves in the marshes of Montoir, the remainder throw themselves into the woods and disperse there. Vehicles, cannons, everything falls into the power of the republicans, and this time the destruction of the enemy is certain." Benaben says: "More than 1200 have been obliged to lay down their arms and to sue for life. AVestermann has had about 400 1 of them shot ; the rest were; shot by orders of the court-martial. . . . The loss which the enemy has suffered is immense. The entire of this 1 This number he corrected the next day, with ruder information, and stated it to be over 2000 ; and over and above these, he says, sonic 1200 were noyaded. 1S2 THE EEAL FEENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. great army lias sunk. . . . To-morrow we will all scatter ourselves as tirailleurs and make a general battue in the woods where the rebels have been able to take refuge." Over the final horrors of the to-morrow and the days immediately following a veil may be drawn. The hunt- ing down and ferreting out and slaughter of individuals may be left to the imagination. The one great resulting fart was that scarcely any of the vast horde of SO, 000 to 100,000 Vendeans who had crossed the Loire ten weeks before lived to re-cross it. Non-combatants as well as combatants were all involved together in the common doom. AVomen were hunted down and slaughtered as remorselessly and triumphantly as was the most valiant soldier; children, too, of tender age were slaughtered: sick and wounded i'ell under the massacring steel or bullet. All, to use the expressive phrase of the Bible, were " put to the sword." And they were valiant to the last these " fanatics,''' these men for whose abuse the dictionary of the French language was exhausted for terms of contumely and reproach. The revolutionary general Beaupuy has left strong testimony as to their courage and lighting qualities. " They wanted but the uniform;"' he said. " to make them soldiers. . . . The troops who have conquered such Frenchmen can flatter themselves that they can conquer the allied defenders of the cause of kings."' Certainly time after time these Vendeans had. under every possible circumstance of discouragement) fought as veritable heroes: and in their dogged perseverance to the very end. they showed a sterling courage which stamps them as having possessed some of the very highest qualities of mankind. xni 'THE CALVARY OF THE VENDEANS ' 183 Two incidents reported by Benaben, the above- mentioned republican commissioner, throw such a flood of light, of the grimmest kind, on the conduct of the revolutionists in the concluding scene of this bloody campaign, that they must be described, and best in his own words. At the close of the battle of Savenay he met some republican volunteers or troops escorting some hundred Vendean prisoners to execution, and as they went they sang the " Marseillaise " — Allons enfants de la patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive. And he remarks, " Here is an atrocious action." And then he goes on to describe another. " Here is a worse," he says ; " incredible, but attested by all the army." Five hundred to six hundred brigands lay down their arms crying " Vive la nation," " Vive la Eepublique." A general (I know not which) 1 had them hemmed in by one or two battalions, and then ordered that fire should be opened on them. They all fell, some shot, some from fear. But as there were many who still moved, he cried, " Those who are not wounded, stand up." These poor people, thinking that it was intended to spare their lives, hastened to do so : but a second volley is fired into them, and those not killed are finished off with the bayonet or sabre. "Such traits of inhumanity," he adds, "are unworthy of the most ferocious nation, are of a character to revolt every mind." The battle over, Westermann wrote to the Committee of Public Safety : " There is no longer a A'endee. She is dead under our 1 Rumour, however, says it was Westermann. 184 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. free sword {sabre Hire), with her women and her children. I have just buried her in the marshes and woods of Savenay, in obedience to the orders you gave me. " I have crushed the children under the feet of the horses, and massacred the women, who, so far at least as they are concerned, will breed no more brigands. 1 have not to reproach myself with a prisoner. I have exterminated all. The roads are strewn with corpses. There are so many in several places that they form pyramids. The shooting of the prisoners goes on with- out ceasing at Savenay, because every moment brigands arrive, who pretend to surrender themselves as prisoners. We make no prisoners. It would be necessary to give them the bread of liberty, and pity is not revolutionary." This was waging war " revolutionarily," as the revolu- tionary authorities in Paris wished. Francastel, too, had written to the Convention, " No more brigands this side of the Loire " : and the citizen soldier who brought the letter to Paris was invited to address the Convention. He said, amidst applause, " AVe have made no prisoners, because we do not make any more " ; and Couthon, the President of the Convention, addressed him and said : " Soldier of the Republic, the applause of the National Convention conveys to you its lively satisfac- tion. Go; return to your brothers-in-arms ; tell them that they have deserved well of their country." And the Convention, wild with joy at getting the news of the annihilation of the Vendeans, forthwith decreed a vote of thanks to the army, and declared that it had deserved well of its country. Vet over and above all the scli'-gratulat ions and votes of thanks and expressions of approval by the Convention, there rises the wailing reflection of Biron : xiii 'THE CALVARY OF THE YEXDEAXS ' 185 " Here Frenchmen fall under the. blows of Frenchmen. The villages which we ravage belong to us ; all the blood which we shed is ours." And the same sentiment touched the heart of Marceau, one of the chief actors in the fearful drama ; for in a letter to his sister, who had been celebrating his victories, he wrote : " What, my dear sister, you send me felicitations on these two battles, or rather these two carnages ; and you wish to have some of the leaves from my laurels. Does it not occur to you that they are stained with human blood, with French blood? I shall not return to the Vendee. It revolts me too much to fight Frenchmen. T wish to turn my arms against the foreigner. In that direction alone is glory " (or fame). But such sentiments had no place, however, in the revolutionary mind as displayed by the Convention, and by those who were acclaiming themselves as the vrai re'puUicain. CHATTER XIV EXTERMINATION Rebellion is rebellion, no matter how well justified it may be, and those who rebel must expect the worst it' they are not successful. But after all is said in ex- tenuation of severity, there is a limit which cannot be passed without incurring the reprobation of civilised humanity. It is another of those extraordinary inconsistencies of the French revolutionists that the right of insurrec- tion had been proclaimed by them in their Declaration of the Tights of Man as one of the primary and most sacred rights. Vet when the Vendeans rose in insur- rection against the Republican Government, having been provoked and forced thereinto by the action of that Government, action in diametric opposition to the great principles it professed and acclaimed, no language was adequate to condemn their conduct, no measure was too severe for their repression and punishment. Ferhaps those who made the Declaration thought mainly of justifying their own action in the past, and did not think of the contingency of any one exercising the right against themselves. But even acknowledging that for self-preservation ch. xiv EXTERMINATION 187 sake the Revolutionary Government had to suppress the Vendeans, though it itself was a Government only just attained by rebellion and violence, and granting that, being an i'pso facto Government, it was justified in repressing rebellion, though it itself had provoked and was alone responsible for that disaster, no imaginable reasons or excuses can justify the extreme and brutal barbarism with which the repression was effected. The cruelty, the mercilessness, the inhumanity, with which the Vendeans were visited and pursued by their own fellow-countrymen, finds no parallel in the history of civilised races. Extermination, pure and simple, that was the decree against them — they, and their sons and their daughters, their man-servants and their maid- servants, and every living thing in connection with them — innocent or guilty — all alike. And so far as their country was concerned, that would have been destroyed too if the National Convention had had the power to annihilate matter. The exasperation of the Committee of Public Safety has been sought to be explained, and the implacability of the Government attempted to be justified on the ground of the efforts of the Vendeans to get help from the emigres in the Channel Islands, and from the English, the enemies of France. The Government, it is said, felt that the Vendee was anti-French, and must be extirpated to save France. " All thought the Patrie could not exist with this 'cancer' in its side, and, with clear conscience, gave the Vendee over to the surgery of the Terror." Put those who use this argument ignore a fact which completely shatters their contention, namely, that the revolutionists entered on this process of " surgery " long before these later incidents of exasperation. From the 188 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. very outset, when the Vendeans had dared to defy them, they had been on bloody thoughts intent ; and their frequent defeats and humiliations in the Vendee first exasperated and then infuriated them. Soon after the outbreak of the Revolution, large numbers of royalists had fled to England and the Channel Islands, and the Revolutionary Government lived in a constant state of alarm that they would obtain help from England, and come back in force to attack France. This, too, long before the war broke out between England and France. Some leading royalists in Brittany had been endea- vouring to organise a rising in Brittany, and a royalist expedition, and to get help from England ; but, as has already been stated, so far as the Vendeans were con- cerned, the first great measure of repression, that of the 19th March, was enacted before any communication passed from the Vendean leaders to England. As a matter of fact there were no Vendean leaders before the outbreak of the civil war. For a considerable time after the outbreak, moreover, the English Government knew little either about the war or the objects of the Vendeans ; and it was by no means anxious to commit itself to a landing on the coast of France, especially on a dangerous coast with practically no harbours. And the Vendean leaders, conscious of the unpopularity which an alliance with the enemies of France would entail, desired far more the leadership of a Prince Royal, and the help of the emif/r~/'isonn~ters et tovjowrs des pi'isonniers.} Mercilessness and ruthless severity were prominent features in his character. " Xot even a child in the cradle should lie spared," In- is reported to have said. And so, with an irresponsible bloodthirsty despot of Ibis type in supreme authority in the town: with the xv THE TERROR AT ANGERS 21:3 gates closed to all except those who could obtain a revolutionary passport ; with a Revolutionary Committee and two Military Commissions in keen working order ; and with a guillotine erected in permanence in the Place du Ralliement, the preparations were all complete for the administration of revolutionary justice, and the population was given full assurances for their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty, equality, and fraternity which the Revolution was supposed to have brought. Just as at Nantes the Revolutionary Committee was made up of a gang of infamous wretches, so here was the Committee composed of men of the most infamous character. With the sacred names of liberty, equality, and fraternity on their lips, they gave themselves over to every form of atrocity. Though professing to do every- thing for the Republic, they did everything for them- selves. They stole, they plundered the public funds, they levied money illegally, they appropriated everything they wanted, they lived on the proceeds of pillage. They abused their power to debauch girls and women in prison. They revelled in drunken orgies. And to do this they waded through rivers of blood, the blood of their own countrymen and countrywomen, even the blond of children, setting every principle of justice and humanity at naught, and perpetrating such crimes that posterity could not credit the facts were they not vouched for by ample evidence. The Revolutionary Committee had throughout the summer been in a state of feverish energy, filling their days with ordering or superintending domiciliary visits, and arrests, and imprisonments, and sending victims to the Military Commissions to be formally sentenced to death — and executed : and spending their nights in 214 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. drunken orgies and debauches. They were, so to speak, let loose on society, and were making the most of their opportunity. " A single suspicion, a single verbal denunciation was sufficiently powerful motive for our arrests," they themselves wrote. The religious persecution in Angers had been un- ceasing in its activity and virulence. Under the active instigation, first of Choudieu, and then of Francastel, who was a revolutionary inquisitor, the anti- religious mania was given full swing. The proceedings in the Convention on the 7th November 1793 added fresh impetus to the persecution, and religious persecution ran riot. In this enlightened era, with its boasted " liberty of opinion " and " freedom of worship," there was neither one nor the other, only very much the reverse. Priest-hunting had been carried on unintermittently, and still afforded good results. To have been at the celebration of the mass by an unsworn priest was a crime punished by death; to have taken part in a religious procession, even a year before, was a crime punished by death ; to be found in posses- sion of any religious emblem was a crime punished by death. The anti-religious fury vented itself even on inani- mate objects. The monuments in the churches, the sepulchres, inscriptions, marbles, the altars, everything destroyable was destroyed, and everything portable was carried away: even members of the Committee helped in the destruction, and one of the members of one of the Military Commissions cut some of the pictures to pieces with his sabre. The buildings themselves were turned into prisons, or stables, or to any sort of secular purpose, all except the cathedral, which was converted into a Temple of Reason that new and enlightened xv THE TERROR AT ANGERS 215 worship which was to succeed the low and degrading superstitions of Christianity. It might he thought that the revolutionist would have had enough of the real thing to prevent him hungering after the counterfeit presentment. But this would 1)0 a misappreciation of the revolutionary char- acter, for at the theatre at Angers a piece was acted called ( ' The capture of Cholet, or the destruction of the brigands of the Vendee." The Revolutionary Committee — whose permission for its performance had of course to he obtained — blessed it as " a piece which breathed the purest patriotism/' The hero — a vrai sans-culotte — declaimed sentiments in accord with the revolutionary feelings of the moment. " I fear not death," he said, " but I pray I may lie spared till I have exterminated the last of the tyrants, and their odious satellites. Kings I detest. Priests — the mere name infuriates me — I abhor. Nobles I despise": and then lie burst into song: "Let us strike, till their vile blood streams under our blows." And then, as if there were not enough death and destruction going on outside, there was a stage tight between the republicans and the Vendeans, the hero with his sword hewing daylight through the latter, capturing cardboard castles, and finally planting the tricolour on the highest tower. And the Jacobins, and soldiers, and public functionaries loudly applauded, and betook themselves to their homes with fresh zest to participate the next day in the real business, the fusillades or guillotinings nt' their unfortunate fellow-countrymen. The repulse of the Vendeans in their attack on the town on the 3rd and 4th December, and their crushing del'eats at Le Mans, Laval, and Ancenis, brought thousands of them within the reach of the arm of revolutionary 21G THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. justice, and quickly the prisons of Angers, and several churches and other large buildings converted into prisons, were filled to suffocation with them. Here they under- went all the miseries, all the cruelties which imprison- ment at this time entailed. But it was not merely the Yendeans who were seized on by the revolutionists ; all those who had, or were suspected of having, given the Yendeans any help, or food, or shelter during their wanderings on the north side of the Loire, were also treated as enemies of the Republic. And prisoners were brought in " in batches of 50 or 100 without any proch-terhavx — without any denunciations, without even a list of their names." Francastel rose to the occasion. He wrote to Felix, the president of the Military Commission : — '•' Your presence here becomes very necessary. Every place is crammed. A sort of policy (une sorte de police) sends this herd to our prisons. The time will come to judge them all. Indulgence, forgiveness for the past, compassion, tenderness, all these beautiful names only cover weakness, moderation, and perfidy. You know that a herd of several hundred women were taken at Mans. They are amazons, royalist paladines, concubines of priests, cles dames en pelisse, etc. "Well, all that inspires interest. To whom ? To the revolutionists ; to the members of a Military Commission. Come here — I count on you — I know your principles; your republican inflexibility, your unshakable intention to purge theVendean generation, to bleed it till it is white''' (scngner a hlo.nc). And Felix came, and hundreds wore promptly haled before his Military Commission — the proceedings of which were like all the other Military Commissions in that part of the country, "a profanation of justice." xv THE TERROR AT ANGERS 217 Legally, the majority of the prisoners should have been tried before the criminal tribunal, but it was the privilege of the Representatives to ignore all laws. Even Felix and his commission could not keep pace with the work expected from it, and so another was appointed, with Proust as president, and Vacheron and Morin, two awful scoundrels, among the members. So great was the press of work that the judgments were noted in the registries of the court with a single letter — " E " to fusillade or shoot, " G " to guillotine, and an " X " to detain. And so keen were the judges to slaughter, that against many names the fatal letters " G " and " E " were doubled — as if they wished to have the unfortunate people guillotined or shot twice over. One of the members of the Revolutionary Committee declared that if it was necessary to note the particulars of those who deserved death one would never be done. " Let us rather than lengthen our work by writing, shorten it by beheading." Even yet, however, the procedure did not meet the necessities of the case, and Erancastel ordered that the members of the Commission should go to the prisons and there interrogate and deal with the prisoners. This was done : and the prisoners were interrogated in batches, and condemned in batches, Vacheron and Morin being conspicuous, and Hodoux and Lepetit also aiding. And report says that the members of the Military Commission outraged some of the women before their execution. What an exhibition of "justice" — a justice claiming to be superior to all the world had yet seen or imagined, revealed now to an ignorant humanity by the gospel of Revolution. Glance at it as depicted by those who saw it. A 218 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. large chamber or corridor in one of the temporary prisons, crowded with prisoners steeped in misery and physical suffering — men, women, and even children, many scarcely alive. " Your name," says a judge to one, " Your name, and yours, and yours — " Possibly in a few cases a question or two in addition was asked, but there was no attempt at taking evidence, for there was no one to give it. There was no attempt at identification even. They were there in prison ; that was evidence enough ; they were guilty. And then turning to the lot of them, he says: "You have been interrogated. You are all convicted of having conspired against the sovereignty of the Trench people. The Commission, in the name of the law, condemns you to the penalty of death. The sentence will be immedi- ately carried out." In a way worse even than tins, a large number were never interrogated at all — being sick — their names were simply put on the list at the caprice of one man, some- times of a drunken man, and in many cases mistakes were made, and persons were executed for others. Even this very cursory procedure was sometimes waived. Hundreds of those taken prisoners were sent to exe- cution on the mere direction of Francastel, without any interrogatory or form of trial. There is no vestige of evidence anywhere that they were brought before a military court-martial first, as directed by the law of 10th March. On the contrary, at Vial's trial it was stated in evidence that '' prisoners were sometimes taken to Francastel, and on coming out of bis house were led away 100 yards or so and shot." They were con- veniently regarded as Jmrs In Jul -outlaws — and batches xv THE TERROR AT ANGERS 219 of them were put to death on the edge of the river in the centre of the town, within half a gunshot of the street where Franeastel resided : even women and children were there butchered, whose cries in the silence of the night struck terror into the hearts of the inhabitants. Daily the guillotine ended the lives of numerous priests or royalists or other victims of the better class — men and women alike. And every ingenuity was exer- cised to add insult and ignominy to the sufferings of the victims. Death by decapitation was reserved for persons of a higher position, as being more humiliating than death by shooting. A letter, dated 1st January 1794, from the Mayor and municipality of Angers to the Mayor of Paris ran thus : " Our holy mother guillotine works. Within three days she has shaved eleven priests, one former nun, a general, and a superb Englishman, six 1'eet high, whose head was de trop. It is in the sack to-day." Victim after victim of revolutionary intolerance — of revolutionary tyranny — ascended the fatal steps, 105, it is said, on one day, the 12th January 1794; the drums rolled to prevent their final words or cries being heard, and the blade fell. And the Abbe Gruget, who was in concealment in a house which commanded a partial view of the scaffold, has recorded how he heard the cries, or rather the howls, which burst forth as each head fell, and how he saw hats waved in the air to the cherished cry of "Vive la Republique!" in sign of approbation. The members of the Military Commission, not con- tent with sentencing hundreds to death, seldom deprived themselves of the pleasure of witnessing the execution of their sentences. They had a room in a house near where the guillotine was so near that the victims 220 Till-; REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. could hear their jukes unci buffooneries — with a window whence between the mid-day dinner and the coffee and liqueur which followed it they could lick their lips (lecher d.v. rcyard) at the sight of the blood of their victims. Report has it that noyading, or execution by drown- ing, was also had recourse to. Carrier said, later, there had been noyades at Angers, and a letter from the Revolutionary Committee at Angers — who would have known for a certainty — supports his statement. Writing to Francastel as to the disposal of sixty priests, the Committee asked, " Shall we send them to Nantes \ Shall we give them over to the Military Commission ? Shall we have them shot at a coiner of a wood \ or shall we embark them on the Mayenne (the river which runs through Angers; to make them fish for coral opposite la Baumette ? Speak, citizen, and whatever may be your decision, you may be sure it will be punctually carried out." The reasons given, or rather the excuses mad',', by the Military Commission for sentencing to death were remarkable. Some persons were sentenced for being "enraged fanatics,"' others for being "real pests," for being "gossips," for having "dangerous tongues." one for being "an old scoundrel who would not take the oath," one, an old woman, "an aristocrat, not liking anyone, accustomed to live alone," one for being "a fanatical beast, 3 one a fanatique en diable. Property was of course a crime. One, Leclerc by name, possessed 40,000 franc--: "eyoiste pur consequent''- and therefore must die. A priest, •'. Moreau, was asked if lie "had seen the famous miracle of the resurrection of the brigands." lie replied, " No. Those who have been killed have no wisli to come to life a^ain for fear that the same fate xv THE TERROR AT AXGERS 221 might again befall them," — and he was sentenced to death ; but he would have been any way, so it was not his answer which doomed him. The criminal tribunal was but little better, for it sentenced to deatli a man who, by his position, had obtained the release (from the Yendeans) of several prisoners — ■ " patriots " presumably — on a charge of having communicated with the rebels. Neither age nor sex was considered by the revolu- tionary judges. One old man of eighty - four was guillotined, and, on 19th January 179-4, among the list of persons sentenced to death by the Military Com- mission, are recorded the names " Fenime Meunier and her six little children." And whilst on the side of the judges and the Revolutionary Committee and of the Republican Govern- ment of France there were thus these appalling cases of brutal injustice and cruelty, on the side of the un- fortunate and wronged victims there was a display of magnificent heroism. People of the very humblest class, as well as those of the higher classes — men, women, and children — all, in this dark hour of trial, acquitted themselves with splendid fortitude, with an heroic courage. Some members of religious societies, by their answers, con- demned themselves. "With the fearless spirit of true martyrdom, they scorned equivocation or lies ; " would rather die than take the oath, being convinced that their conscience would be compromised"; and they died. Their conduct drew admiration from even the Revolutionary Committee of Angers. In March 1794 it testified, " Our nobles go to death with firmness (caracUre), and our charlatans of priests piously and in sacerdotal dress." 222 THE HEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. But thf number of those guillotined was small as compared with those who were shot. The narratives of the butchery and slaughterings of these unfortunates are somewhat confused. But it is absolutely clear that thousands perished at Angers and at the Ponts-de-Ce by fusillades. Of that there is no shadow of doubt. This latter place was sonic two and a half miles from Angers, and was a village composed of the houses on and on both sides of the series of bridges which here, from island to island, crossed the Loire. Here on the 27th, 28th ; and 29th December about S00 prisoners were fusilladed on the Prairie de Saint Genmies, a great open space near the river, the majority being men who, trusting to the lying promises of the vrais rfyuhlicains that no harm would be done to them if they surrendered and laid down their arms, had sur- rendered, but who now were murdered, by order of Franeastel, tire Representative, without trial or legal process of any kind. On the following days further fusillades took place, bringing the number up to about 1500 ; and, on the 1 2th January, another lot of .'300 were put to death here. They were made to kneel with their faces towards the Loire, and were shot in the back. Two members of the Pevolutionary Committee (of whom Vacheron, a Parisian volunteer, was one) were present, and even actors, killing with sabre or bayonet ; and Vacheron, the secretary to the Representatives, and their house manager or butler, used to make himself con- spicuous by a ferocious joy ami by Ids barbarous songs. The dead or dying were not even buried, but flung naked into the Loire, a process described by one of the republican generals as "sending them to Nantes by xv THE TEBEOE AT AXGERS 223 water," their clothes being torn from their bodies and taken back to Angers and sold. It was not, however, alone at the Prairie de Saint Gemmes that the fusillades took place. A larger number of victims of revolutionary injustice and fury were slaughtered in the park of the priory of La Haie, a wild and secluded spot some little distance out of Angers, stretches of rough grass land surrounded by trees and tangled undergrowth of wood. The actual fusillades or shootings are almost too horrible for description, but the unpleasant task must be gone through, as the proceeding throws a flood of light on the French revolutionist as he really was. The victims who had been sentenced in such unjust, off-hand, and callous manner by the members of the Military Commission were bound together in couples in the respective prisons, and then led to a central meeting- place in the town. Here they were formed into one long procession ; and then, through the dark and gloomy streets of Angers, they took their final way. What a sight for humanity to gaze at, humanity to shudder at. "Watch them as they pass. The military band playing patriotic airs leads the way. And then, proud with the importance of office, the commandant of Angers and the members of the Military Commission, gorgeous in uniform and with tricolour cockade. And then the long chain of prisoners — sometimes 100, sometimes over 400 in number — bound together in twos and twos, with soldiers on their right and on their left to prevent their escape, and presently to do them to death. 224 THE HEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. And tin' prisoners — infamous criminals, according to la justice rh'nhi.tionnctire, but, in reality, unfortunate. miserable, wronged, mostly innocent victims of revolu- tionary tyranny and injustice. They, in twos and twos, worn and haggard from privation and suffering, heart- broken in appearance and fact, half-starved, and many smitten with mortal disease, walk with staggering, falter- ing steps to their unjust, their iniquitous doom : some in dazed and silent agony, some in prayer, some in the triumph of martyrdom singing a hymn. Usually the majority were women, the greater part of them poor Vendeans whose greatest crime had been that rather than face the brutalities of the republican troops and vrais sans-cv.lottes in the Vendee, they had bravely followed their lighting relatives, and shared their sufferings in the disastrous Vendean campaign on the north side of the Loire ; or women whose unpardon- able crime had been that, unable to stifle the feelings of humanity, they had given food or help to their starving and perishing fellow-countrymen and women, or who were suspected of having done this thing. Immediately behind the prisoners were some carts carrying those of the condemned whose age, weakness, or infirmities prevented walking ; or those who fainted by the way, and who were picked up and pitched into them any way. And then more soldiers closed the procession. Down the steep street they come, past the Chateau, across the bridge, then up the rough ascent to the old gateway, out through it along the " Chemin cle Silence," on to the Pare de la Haie, where the last scene was to lie enacted. No spectator dare show the slightest sign of sympathy as the sad procession passed along. One woman, one xv THE TEEEOE AT ANGEKS 225 day, unable to repress a cry of indignation at the sight of the unfortunates piled anyhow in heaps in the carts, was seized on the spot, was fastened on to the "chain," and led off with the others to share their fate. The procession entered the park ; an immense ditch was there yawning to receive them. Placed in a row on the edge of the ditch, they awaited death with that fortitude which their faith gave them. The dread signal was given, the drums rolled, but loud above the drums rang out the death-dealing shots. The bullets missed some. Then the soldiers hurled themselves sword in hand on the survivors, and finished them off with sabrings, and bayonetings, and blows from the butt-ends of their guns, trampling with fury upon their miserable victims, wallowing, as it were, in blood and slaughter. And then, when the last has been done to death, and the butchery was over, the blood-stained clothes were torn from, the bodies and carried ostentatiously back by the uniformed executioners to town, where they were sold. Sometimes, like the tricotcuscs in Paris, the dealers, allured by the prospects of gain, waited actually on the scene of the slaughter for the sale of the clothes of the victims whose end they witnessed. And while these appalling scenes were going on — the sounds of the shots reaching the ears of those still left in prison — republican fetes were being constantly held to inspire the people with the beauties of republican principles, to lead them into the paths of liberty and enlightenment, and to prove to them that the new Eepublic was an arcadia of peace, innocence, pure enjoy- ment, and freedom. A fete of childhood, with its procession of children ; a fete of old age. with its procession of aged people; Q 220 THE UEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. fetes of agriculture ; fetes of industry. On one day, the dectnlt, the revolutionary Sabbath, a republican pro- cession to the Temple of Reason, where patriotic discourses were delivered, followed by a civic banquet and public games. And on the other days of the revolutionists' week processions of helpless and innocent women and children and old people along the Chemin de Silence to the revolutionary shambles in the park, and to eternal silence. During one fearful month there were nine fusillades on a large scale at the Pare de la Haie, and some two thousand persons were butchered. One special feature of horror attaches to these fusillades at Angers, placing them in atrocity alongside, if not above, even the crimes at Nantes, and that was the dreadful fact that an enormous proportion of the victims were women, though at Nantes, too, women were massacred wholesale. Of the 300 persons shot on the loth January, about one-half were women. Of the 408 shot or hacked to death on the 20th, 300 were women. On the 22nd, when 88 were shot, all were women. On the 1st February, of the 400 shot, about half were women. What a scene must have been presented that 20th January in the Park, when 300 women were brutally massacred. A long row of 300 helpless and feeble women, bound hand in hand, trembling and half-dead with fear, standing on the edge of a great ditch so soon to be their grave, and opposite them a number of soldiers, the representatives of the authority of the Republic of France, (dad in tin.' full panoply of war, with muskets loaded and bavonets fixed, waiting for the signal to xv THE TERROR AT ANGERS 227 slaughter these weak and defenceless victims. And then the signal given, and then the bloody work. A scene which should burn itself into the brain of humanity by its inapproachable horror. The infinite cruelty of it — these masses of armed men who might have been serving their country to some purpose on the frontiers instead of massacring helpless French women at home. The infinite pathos of it — many of these poor people absolute heroines and martyrs dying for their faith as much as the martyrs in a Roman arena, others whose only crime was that they followed their husbands or brothers across the Loire to avoid the brutalities of the revolutionary troops — their own countrymen. And now, after the long sufferings and privations, tiie agonies of weeks, this was their cruel doom. How can such a stain ever be wiped from the escutcheon of a nation ? Immeasurable in cowardice, unfathomable in wicked- ness, were these wholesale holocausts of women. The first laws of humanity should have made the judges and the executioners, and all concerned, recoil from this dastardly inhuman work. But they did not. Was the newly-founded Republic in such a critical state or position that it was endangered by the existence of these women 1 Were they all slaughtered out of patriotic exasperation because some few of the Vendean chiefs had asked England for help ? Justification there can be none, but what explanation is there possible '. Whatever explanation may be attempted, the fact remains, and is beyond question. It was not even a sudden outburst of passion 1))' people uncontrolled by the Government. It was quite the contrary, for week after week, with cold deliberation and with carefully organised arrangement, the revolutionists, from the Representative 22S THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. xv Francastel down to the lowest sans-culotte official, pro- ceeded in the perpetration of atrocities which would have been a disgrace even to barbarism. That they should have been persevered in so long displays the innate brutality and cruelty of the French revolutionist, of the vrcci sans-culotte. That they should have been uninterfered with by the Government in Paris — with whom the Representatives were in direct and constant communication — incriminates the authorities there also, the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. There is but one consolation to be derived from these appalling iniquities. Their occurrence gave to the world, for its informa- tion and guidance, one more invaluable illustration, one more example, of revolutionary '"justice" — in all its stages of cruelty and unfairness, arrest, imprisonment, trial, sentence, execution — revolutionary justice, not as theorised about by philosophers, or idealised by enthusi- astic republicans, but the actual thing as it worked out in practice. CHATTER XVI NOIKMOUTIE]; In the far west of the Vendee lay Xoirmoutier, an island when the tide was in, a promontory when the tide was out, a wild and melancholy storm-swept., storm-beaten place, lonesome even when husking in the summer sun, hut desolate beyond description in the gloomy, stormy days of winter. A sort of idea existed among the Vendeans that as there was a port there, although it was but a small one, it might lie of use to them to obtain supplies from England or Spain, and among the republicans there, was a constant dread that it might be used as a base for a landing by the English. And so it had been fought for on more than one occasion. Early in the year it had been taken by the Vendeans, then captured from them by the republicans. In October it had again been taken by the A'endeans under Charette, and nearly 200 republicans shot, as reprisals for some of the barbarities inflicted by the republicans on the A'en- deans; some republican soldiers in the hospital even, it is said, being massacred, so embittered were the; A'endeans. Tut after the fearful atrocities already committed by the republicans reprisals were only to lie expected. 230 THE REAL FREXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. It had remained in the hands of the Vendeans until the end of the year, although the Committee of Public Safety had given the order on October 21 that it was •" to be captured or sunk in the sea."' Hither for safety sake had come many refugees, priests, and other victims of revolutionary fury : hither had been brought the Yendean commander-in-chief, d'Elbee, with chest ripped to pieces by the fourteen wounds received at the battle of (J ho let. After the annihilation of the Vendeans on the north side of the Loire, the republicans, anxious to complete their triumph, determined to wrest this place from the Vendeans. Plans were made accordingly, and Turreau, the commander-in-chief, had come to be present at the assault. Generals Haxo. Dutruy, and Jordy were in charge of the actual operations, and three Representatives, L. Turreau,. Prieur 'de la Marne), ami Bourbotte, were there to supervise. On the .'3rd January a combined attack by sea and land was made, and after a somewhat feeble defence the Yendean garrison surrendered. Far better it' they had fought it out to the bitter end. for they could not have fared worse. A German hussar brought to the Representatives a formal capitulation. The Representatives accepted it on condition that the Vendeans piled their arms and sub- mitted to ln-ing made prisoners. The Vendeans, who ought by this time to have known their opponents better, expressed their willingness to do so. There were about 1 1 00. On the approach of the republican troops, the royalist oflicers presented themselves before tin 1 Representatives, anil declared that the garrison submitted to the Republic, and undeitoiik not to serve acrainst it if their lives were xvi NOIIiMOUTIEK 231 spared. Not until the white flag was hauled down would the Representatives listen. When that was done, they said, "We ought not, and we do not wish to come to any terms with brigands. Let them all be put to the sword." The action of the Eepresentatives in accepting the surrender implied acceptance of the terms on which it was made ; but truth, honour, every moral obligation, were as naught when the revolutionary cause was thought to be served by setting them aside. It was known that the Eepresentatives were very much disposed towards massacre. Carrier, speaking at Xantes, at the Society of Vincent la Montague, with reference to the coming attack on the island, had said: " Every one there must be exterminated — everything burned. Soldiers who are truly republican ought never to allow themselves to be moved by a false pity. Nothing more beautiful than to be willing to sacrifice all human sentiments to national vengeance." His opinions were fully shared by his colleagues at Noirmoutier. Their ideas of the beautiful coincided. The Vendeans were made prisoners, and promptly marched off to the church, and there imprisoned. Those of the inhabitants of Noirmoutier who had not to reproach themselves with having helped the royalists, thought that they could present themselves to the republican army as peaceable people, but they were (prickly disillusioned, and were the first to become the victims of the fury of the soldiery. In vain they begged for mercy. To such appeal the republicans were ever deaf. Without caring to distinguish the innocent from the guilty, and as if they had entered a town taken by assault, they indiscriminately put to death all the men they found. S.'rl THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. This portrait of one of the republican troopers who took a prominent part in this slaughter— a brute named Felix — is drawn by F. Piet, an eye-witness: — "A sombre and farouche air, eyes of fire almost hidden beneath heavy eyelashes, a swarthy complexion, hard features, long red moustaches, a forehead furrowed by debauch., which usually gave to his face a ferocious aspect. Stained by the grossest of vices, keen for pillage, he knew how, without emotion, to face dangers. A butcher does not drive the knife into the throat of the animal he kills with greater calm than Felix massacred his fellow-creatures. This monster alone killed more than twenty heads of families." Once captured, the island was ransacked to find any persons who might be concealed on it. " After having encircled the island by the vessels of our little fleet," wrote the Representatives to the Com- mittee of Public Safety, " we searched it from one end to the other, as one would do at a rabbit-hunt; and this battue forced from the woods, even from caves and under- ground places, a deluge of priests and wives of emigre's." Among the captured, and to the intense joy of the Representatives, was d'Elbee, the commander-in-chief of the Vendeans, still hanging between life and death. All of them, as well as the prisoners who had sur- rendered, were doomed to death. The decision is specially noteworthy as having been shared in, if not actually imposed, by the Representative 1'rieur (cle la Marne), who was himself a member of the Committee of Public Safety. It was decisive proof and demonstration of the determination of the Revolutionary Government to accept no surrender from the Vendeans at large, and no stronger affirmation of the policy of extermination could possibly be given than that a xvi NOIEMOUTIEE 2?,:\ member of the Committee of Public Safety should him- self in person give such an order. A Military Commission of " men of the right temper " was appointed on the spot by him and the two other representatives " to administer prompt justice to all the traitors." It was purely a form, and the prisoners, some 1200 in number, were all promptly sentenced to death. General Haxo, a general of the Mayencais, made a valiant stand against this wholesale execution. " Repre- sentatives," lie said, " we are soldiers, not executioners , we do not know how to massacre our enemy when he is unarmed." In vain he pleaded that the lives of men who surrender at discretion ought to be as sacred as that of the unfortunate who has been hurled on the shore by the tempest. His efforts were useless. The necessity was pointed out to him of conforming to the decrees of the Conven- tion, and of giving a great example to the enemies of the Republic. The prisoners therefore must die. " We had a two days' job of it " (j\\>vs en cumes four deux jours), wrote a republican soldier, who was evidently a participator in the slaughter. And a republican officer has left a gruesome description of the horrible proceed- ings : " [n the space of two days all the under officers and soldiers succumbed to the murderous lead. They were taken from the church in batches of sixty at a time. They were conducted to the quartier of Banzeaux, on the border of the sea. There, pushed along and often wounded before receiving the mortal blow, they made useless efforts to (/sea])!' it. Amidst the smoke of the musketry they appeared as bloody shades — fallen to the ground they were stripped and buried." Before this horrid work was begun General Haxo 234 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ™. had left with the greater part of his army to attack an assembly of Yendeans somewhere on the mainland. General Turreau also, for different motives, started by sea for Xantes. Specially instructive is the light thrown upon the real character of these three Representatives by a revolu- tionist. F. Piet, who, as aide-de-camp to General Dutruy, was brought much in contact with them, and was an eye-witness of the scenes he described. Describing the Montagnards he says: :: It is easy to set' that their delirc is that of a political fanaticism, of which all the excesses are the same as those of religious fanaticism. Their hearts were hardened, they struck without remorse, knew no law but their own frenzy, and looked on as a crime the defence of those whom they named as enemies of the Republic; they were furious with their own fury, and it seemed to them that death was too light a punishment for their victims. " Such were the three .Representatives — Bourbotte, Prieur (de la Marne), and L. Turreau. Bourbotte pos- sessed in an eminent degree the ( revolutionary energy.' Prieur and Turreau were not so sanguinary as Bourbotte, especially when not excited by drink, which they took immoderately. Unceasingly they had on their lips the words patrie, liberty, fraternity, which they used as talis- mans to dazzle and inflame credulous minds. . . . Up to this time they had no occasion to unveil Tor betray) to me their real character. 1 was far from thinking that they only preached certain social virtues the better to command crime. Their title of mandataires of the nation gave them great importance in my eyes." Tie evidently, like many others then and since, had al last to suffer disillusionment. I'Klhee was too important a person to lie treated as xvi NOIRMOUTIEK 235 summarily as the ordinarily soldier. For two days, whilst lying on his bed of suffering, he was interrogated by the Representatives, and the commander-in-chief Turreau, who were anxious to get from him all the information they could before they closed his mouth for ever. How easily the whole trouble in the Vendee could have been assuaged had the Revolutionary Government been capable of taking a statesmanlike view of the position, and of subduing within themselves their savage and vindictive " possession " against the Veil deans, is apparent from d'Elbee's statement. Asked as to what means he could suggest for the pacification of the Vendee, he is reported to have re- plied : " A general amnesty — the refractory priests not included ; but leaving the toleration of them to the discretion of agents who should be employed to effect the pacification. ... In each district there should be an agent known and trusted by the rebels to work in concert witli the local authorities." He swore upon his honour that although lie desired a monarchical government reduced to its proper degree of authority, he would have lived as a peaceable citizen under any form of government, provided it assured his tranquillity and the free exercise, or, at least, the tolerance of the religious faith he had always professed. And then he said : " T am so little an enemy to the republican system, that, if my execution is delayed until this system is well on foot, and I am no longer required, I offer to work under any surveillance." And he named several districts which he could pacify. But a conciliatory policy was not revolutionary, indeed one may say that common sense was not revolutionary, and his offer was declined. 23U THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. His fate was inevitable, and he was sentenced to be shot. And. doubtless, with the deliberate design of adding to his grief, — for these revolutionary Representa- tives were refined in their schemes for inflicting suffering, — his friend de Boissy, and his brother-in-law Duhoux, were to be shot with him. The closing scenes are pathetic and dramatic to a degree, but horrible in their exposure of the brutality and reckless injustice of persons of such exalted positions as the Representatives. •■ The evening before, at a supper at which I was present/' wrote Piet, " the Representatives were discussing the military arrangements for the execution, when one of them pretended to be annoyed that it was not a partic van'ce, a ['arty of four. "'Eh. sac re Dieu," said Bourbotte, "haven't we got the traitor Wieland ? " (Wit-land was an officer of the Republic who had unsuccessfully defended Xoirmoutier against the Vendeans in October — since which time he had been residing there, a prisoner of the Vendeans, on parole.) No sooner suggested than agreed to. Wieland should make the fourth : his death was decided on. What an illustration of the secret ways of revolutionary justice The court of justice — a supper-table. The tribunal — three drunken or semi-drunken Representatives. The trial— no prisoner, no witnesses, nu proof, no evidence, no opportunity given for explanation or exculpation, only a sentence — death. The Vehmgerieht or the Inquisition could not have improved on this, could not even have equalled it. A more shameful murder can scarcely ever have been perpetrated in the name of authority. Even (: revolu- tiunarv justice" could scarce! v go further than this. xvi NOIEMOUTIEE 2:; 7 The next day Wieland was .sent for, and for form's sake was brought before the Military Commission. He asked for a delay of twenty-four hours, but the Repre- sentatives " ordered the Commission to send him to execu- tion without listening to anything." Forthwith is he led to execution with the others. In vain he claimed the right, sacred in all nations, except France, the right of being heard before his life was taken from him ; but it was denied him. And in vain the Yendean leaders — his companions in doom — exonerated him from the charge of communicating with them. He had been their enemy and not their friend, they said. But the will of the Eepresentatives must take its course. And so, that wild winter's afternoon, the last scene of their lives was enacted. D'Elbee, too ill to walk, was carried to the place of execution in a chair. And then, just as the signal for the fatal volley was about to be given, Madame d'Elbee, the loving wife and faithful companion of all his dangers and trials, in a transport of agony, rushed shrieking on to the scene, " precisely under the windows where the Representatives wen; feasting their eyes on the frightful spectacle of their victims waiting to receive the death- shot." And the drums roll, and the volley rings out, and there is a partie carree of bleeding corpses ; d'Elbee still in lus chair, the others lying on the sand. And the troops march off the ground as usual with flying colours, and bands playing lively republican airs ; and the representatives retire to refresh themselves after their labours, and to contrive some new display of revolutionary justice which shall equally redound to their credit. For was it not a great work satisfactorily* ac- 2:38 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. xvi eomplished '. Noirmoutier captured : the Vendean commander-in-chief finally got rid of; the "national vengeance" executed on "the traitor Wieland"; and down there in the sands, sonic little distance off, the bodies of 1200 or more who would never again trouble the Republic. Once more, " ( s 'a va ! " " Ca ira ! " "Vive la Ri- publique ! " " Vive la justice revolutionnaire ! " CHAPTER XVII NOYADES AND FUSILLADES If events at Angers were giving an illustration of how the principles of " liberty, equality, and fraternity " really worked out in actual practice under the newly-formed Republic, Nantes was giving exactly a similar illustration, only on a larger, and, in some ways, an accentuated scale. Carrier had been ruling it with a fierce and cruel despotism which was becoming ever more violent and extreme as time went on. He expressed himself to the Committee of Public Safety as quite pleased with the progress made. "You cannot form an idea," he wrote (about 12th December), " of the rapid progress which the public spirit has made here in the last three weeks. You would have difficulty in believing that it is at the full height of the Revolution — everywhere one only hears cries of the most ardent civism — the tricolour iloats from every window — everywhere are patriotic inscriptions — the old churches become public establishments — everything announces the death of fanaticism and of superstition, and the assured triumph of patriotism." A few days after this, however, even so extreme a body as the Society of Vincent incurred his censure — 240 THE REAL FLENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. that popular club which contained the elite of Nantes sans-eulottism, which had done so much to further the Revolution in that city, and where he and his friends were in the habit of ventilating, amidst echoing applause, their wildest and most atrocious ideas, their crudest theories. He fell foul of it about the case of one Gamier, and on the 15th December came down to the society, abused its members all round, there and then dissolved it, and had the key of its meeting-place brought to himself. For three days the society remained non- existent : then with his permission it was reopened; but the incident left a scar on the society — " Liberty.''" they said, <; had been invaded." Other more serious matters, however, engaged his attention and that of the Revolutionary Committee. So worried (desoU) was the Committee by the perpetual appeals made to it by the relatives of .the prisoners for their release, that it issued a notice on 1 4th December (24 Frimaire) announcing that it would be deaf to any such appeal, and furthermore that it would regard as a suspect any individual who solicited mi behalf of a prisoner. Nantes being a great city, with an estimated popula- tion of 100,000 persons, would in itself have afforded ample material for the display of revolutionary energy. There were enough people in it to keep the guillotine at work, and even fusillades and noyades, in full swing. But the gradual dissolution of the Vendean army on the north side of the Loire, and its miserable followers, from the time of the repulse at .Angers to the final catastrophe at Savenay, had resulted in constant arrivals at Nantes of large numbers of Vendeans who had been taken prisoners, or who bad surrendered on revolutionary promises of amnesty. xvn NOYADES AND FUSILLADES 241 " The defeat of the brigands," wrote Carrier to the Convention on the 20th December, "is so complete that our posts kill them or capture and bring them to Nantes by hundreds. The guillotine is not equal to the task. I have taken the line of having them shot. They surrender themselves here and at Angers by hundreds. I assure to these the same fate as those. I invite my colleague Francastel not to put aside this salutary and expeditious method. Tt is on principles of humanity that I purge the soil of Liberty of these monsters." This letter was read before the Convention on 2Gth December. I hit it was not only by shooting that the revolu- tionists at Nantes were purging the soil of Liberty. After the first successful demonstrations of the feasibility of drowning, it also was used as an expeditious and effective method ; the guillotine, too, was kept steadily at work ; and supplementing them all was the unceasing death-roll of the prisons, — hundreds upon hundreds being let die, rapidly or slowly, through deliberate neglect and indifference. Nantes, in fact, presented at this period the appear- ance of a great slaughter-house or abattoir, only instead of cattle and sheep, human beings were being slaughtered, — men, women, and even children, — and the butchers were the bons and braves rfyublicains, and the vrais sans - culottes, animated by "patriotism," and imbued with " pure principles " of the highest Montagnard standard. The unfortunate Vendeans who came, or were brought to Nantes were mostly sent at once to the " Entrepot." Eossignol, the commander - in - chief, had once absurdly remarked, " Since I assisted to overthrow the i; 242 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. Bastille, no prison ought to exist," and the saying is interesting as being typical of the absurdity of many of the views ut' the revolutionists; hut prisons not alone went on existing, hut, as revolutionary liberty developed. they rapidly increased in number, and for the one prisoner in custody under the ancient regime, hundreds wen' in custody under the new revolutionary regime. The old Bouffay, which for centuries of tyranny had answered all the requirements of the times, held, when densely packed, some 200 prisoners. The Chateau of Xantes also held a considerable number. For the new era of liberty, however, they were quite inadequate, and so the Convent of St. Claire, emptied of its previous inhabitants, was pressed into service, and packed with prisoners. Then, with the object of separating the women from the men, all having hitherto been stowed indiscriminately together anyhow, a building called "the Good Shepherd " was taken. Here, where 200 persons might have been lodged, 700 women were put, as many as .'50 to 40 being crammed into a small chamber, sick and dying, all together. And there were several other prisons, the favourite one of the Revolutionary Committee being the Entrepot, a great barrack of a place, where several thousand prisoners could be kept. It was the favourite on account of the facilities it afforded for the free play of revolutionary " fraternity." It was situated at the extremity of one of the least inhabited parts of Xantes: close to the Loire, which simplified the noyades ; and close to the great quarries of Cigant, which were a safe and convenient place for the fusillades. The prisoners had not to be conveyed far to meet their fate. Here were sent pell-mell in December some of the xvn NOYADES AND FUSILLADES 243 debris of the Vendean army ; on three days, the 24th, 26th, and 28th December, 1500 arrived, having sur- rendered on the faith of the amnesty promised by the republicans. 1 Either, too, were drafted from the other prisons in Nantes the suspects and counter-revolutionists whom the Revolutionary Committee had determined to get rid of. It was the last stepping-stone to death. No sooner was it nearly emptied by noyades and fusillades than it was promptly filled again; and of the 8000 to 10,000 persons imprisoned here, only a very few escaped the destruction decreed by Carrier and his accomplices. Its condition was appalling — " a veritable slaughter- house, a tomb where the prisoners perished of misery, and were practically buried alive." Epidemic disease raged in it ; and so fearful was its state that even the soldiers mounting guard on it died of illnesses contracted there. Fever and dysentery were specially virulent, and the prisoners attacked by illness were left to die in their misery. Medical attendance there was none ; food in sufficient quantities to maintain life was scarcely forth- coming, and the only drinking-water was contaminated by sewage and every filth. The cold, moreover, during that fearful winter was dreadful, and the prisoners died by scores, sparing the various Revolutionary Tribunals the trouble of trying them, and the revolutionists the trouble of deciding whether to drown or shoot them. Pest-houses were all these prisons, and a committal to any of them was almost tantamount to a sentence of death. Life in them was literally hell upon earth. From the dawn of one day, when the cold gray rays of morning light slowly illumined the festering mass of 244 TUK REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. human misery within the walls, until the dawn of the next day when the sun rose on the same spectacle of republican "fraternity," what human agony was end lived ! The misery of cold, the gnawing pains of semi- starvation, the brutalities of the gaolers, the endless sight of suffering, the grief and woe, and mental and physical torture, the awful heartbreak from destruction uf home and loss of family; and then at night, the fevered sleep on sewage-soddened earth or vermin-laden straw, the ceaseless moaning of the sick or dying, all crowded, crushed, and crammed together. How life re- mained under such circumstances is almost incompre- hensible. Arid over and above the hopeless misery of it all was the infuriating sense of cruel, infamous, and irremediable wrong. Nor was there any sign of mercy or shadow of turn- ing on the part of those in authority in the new Republic. Mercy and pity and justice all had vanished under the. new regime, which was to have introduced " liberty and equality and fraternity" into the countries of the earth, and to have been the prelude to, if not absolutely itself, the millennium of humanity. As if there were not enough tribunals at Nantes for the form of sentencing the inmates of the prisons, the Representatives l'rieur (de la Marne) and L. Turreau ordered the Military Commission of Le Mans, presided over by the infamous Bignon, which had done such expe- ditious work at Savenay, to proceed at once to Nantes, and there administer revolutionary justice. Arrived in Nantes on the 28th December, if set to Work on the following day, and as a beginning sent 100 persons to he shot. In thirteen days it sentenced 1GG9 xvii XOVADES AND FUSILLADES 245 persons to death, and did not acquit a single one, as many as 280 being condemned in one single day. It devoted two days to women and girls, sentencing to death G2 one day, and 45 the next. By the 19th it had brought up its total of capital sentences to over 1900. And then, reldche cm tliedtre rouge ("vaca- tion at the red theatre "). And this was the work of but one of the Commissions there sitting — the worst, it is true. It is impossible now to present anything approaching a complete account of the victims sentenced by the Mili- tary Commissions or Revolutionary Tribunals, or of the infamies perpetrated by the Revolutionary Committee, by Carrier, and by the Marat Company, complete records of persons imprisoned, tried, and punished not being avail- able. Records were but very incompletely kept, if at all, and the time came when every effort was made to hush up these revolutionary abominations, and to destroy the proofs and traces of them. These 1900 unfortunates, and thousands of others, many without any form of trial, were mostly noyaded or fusilladed, only a comparatively small proportion being guillotined. As regarded fusillades, the services of the members of the Revolutionary Committee were scarcely required, and so the members devoted themselves mainly to carrying out noyades. Fusillading was quite a simple process. A chain of prisoners, a military escort, a short march to the quarries of Gigant, a volley, some bayoneting, and the thing was done. Rut noyading required much greater preparation, and the Committee, together with Carrier's aides, Lamberty and Robin, gave a great part of their time to this congenial work. With the facility begotten of experience, they embarked on larger opera- 24G THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. tiuiiSj ami on or about the 23rd December a great coup was made. Some 800 persons were noyaded. It was night. " T\v8 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Convent ion was the head. " Von are the levers it uses to crush resistance. You are like the redoubtable and warlike implements which, placed by the general, wait but the electric communication of flame to hurl forth terror and death. " Approach this terrible ministere with an upright heart and pure hands. . . . Be so great (grands) that even the eyes of your enemies can never discover in your conduct a single stain." The popular societies (which, under the control of the Society of Jacobins in Paris, had become almost official bodies of the State) were called on " to place the pinnacle on the edifice of the Revolution of which, vigilant sentinels at the advance posts of opinion, they had already created the indestructible foundation — they were to unveil the intriguer ... to tear the mask from the Tartufes of patriotism, to denounce the faithless agent, the cowardly deserter, and the egoist who had no country " : they were to be the torch to the Repre- sentatives in their task of purifying the constituted a ui horities. The Revolutionary Tribunals — Military Commissions included — who wen 1 charged with "the national vengeance," were told that there was no treaty between virtue and crime: they were to purge their souls of all weakness; they were to have no family but la pati'le, and were to sacrifice (like Brutus) brothers, friends, children, if the)' were culpable. "Such is the high level of your dut ies." And the district authorities were told thai, the law ought to take the (light and the talons of the eagle: they were the sentinels of the Revolution; that it was by their eyes the Government saw: that, so to speak, thev were t he electrical conductors of its thunderbolts: xvii NOYADES A XI) FUSILLADES 259 ami they wore charged with supervising the execution of revolutionary laws and of the measures of the Government. These incitements to energy were not wanted at Nantes, or Angers, or elsewhere in the Vendee, for every section of the republicans there was acting up to the fullest height of Montagnard fanaticism. To make the system uniform throughout France, a new decree as to Representatives was made, also on the 29 th December. As to measures of " public safety," their powers remained unlimited, but were confined to the Departments in their charge. Francastel was re- appointed to Angers ; and Carrier, "as a new mark of its confidence" (conJia?ice), with Prieur (de la Marne) as associate, was confirmed in his appointment, which is as conclusive proof as can well be given that the Committee of Public Safeiy approved of their actions. CHAPTEE XVIII CARRIER AND THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF NANTES Carrier has figured largely in the pictures of the French Revolution, and he has been made more or less the scapegoat for the worst of the revolutionary horrors. He has been depicted as a being so towering over others in wickedness, so entirely abnormal in tempera- ment, and exceptional in ferocity, that other malefactors, and other crimes, by contrast, were made to look not really so bad ; and it is argued that it is not fair to judge the Revolution by the standard of his atrocities. This view, though consoling to the apologists and admirers of the French Revolution, is, however, funda- mentally false. Had he been the sole product of his kind, such an argument might have had some little plausibility : but there was such a host of malefactors, both military and civilians. — some who aided him in his atrocities, others who perpetrated atrocities quite as bad in their own spheres, — that he was very far from having possessed ;i monopoly of cruelty and tyranny, as is usually implied, and is very far indeed from standing on that pinnacle of wronir which would isolate him from his fellow-workers. ch. xviii CARRIER 261 By no means does he stand alone. A stronger light falls upon him. That is all. And in the shadows and background was not merely a crowd, but a great horde of wretches as bad as he was, only not so conspicuous or notorious, because not so well seen. As a matter of fact, in Nantes alone there was little difference in all the vicious elements of character between him and the members of the Revolutionary Committee, between him and his own staff, or between him and the members of the Marat Company. Xor was there much difference between him and several of his Representative colleagues. Francastel, for instance, at Angers, was quite as eminent in cruelty, tyranny, and injustice of all sorts, though not so notorious, being endowed with a greater amount of prudence, doing his work more secretly, not talking or ranting so much about it and liberty : being careful not to leave so many proofs of his iniquities behind, and never having been dragged into the publicity of a court of law as Carrier was. Xor is there sufficient to confirm the theory of Carrier having been insane, which is also put forward in mitigation of his misdeeds. He was of an extremely violent and unrestrained temper : but he cannot escape the execration of posterity on the plea of insanity. Conspicuous through all his acts were the very common and matter-of-fact motives of vanity and self-indulgence ; and his furious violence was often but the result of his ease and self-indulgence being interrupted and interfered with. An arch -impostor he was, as all his colleagues, aides, and underlings were : spinning grandiloquent phrases about " liberty," but practising a brutal tyranny : canting about " equality," and only pulling down everything to raise themselves into the places of those they pulled 02 THE REAL FKEXCH REVOLUTIONIST C h. down, and to enable themselves to perpetrate on a more extended scale, and with intensified energy, the very misdeeds and climes and self-indulgence for which they slaughtered theii predecessors. disinterested not one of them was. No fact stands nut elearer in all this horrible business. Here in the Vendee and its surroundings, where one Sees the revolutionists in their unchecked, unrestrained. m I, therefore, natural character, able to do as they liked. and undeterred by any outside opinion or comment, one sees that revolutionary principles were only the cloak for the gratification of their passions: and the expression and parade of those principles were only the means for attaining their own selfish ends. To obtain the means of _: itifying all their passions., be the cost to other people what it might, and then to gratify them to the utmost 1 issible extent, that was the creed: those were the con- sistently worked for objects, of the men who claimed for th niselves the title, and acclaimed their comrades with the title of " true patriot " and " brave republican." A Revolution which placed such men in authority was ,i calamity, a curse of the direst sort, and not a blessing. Unfortunate indeed was it far all classes at Nantes that lie and his picked crew of rumans ever came into autln >rity in the place. Th ' _ ■ it ity should fall under such guvcrnnient and such tyranny must have been indeed a suiprise to - who had helped to destroy tile old l'eginic because ' ■'• - tyrannical, and who expected liberty and freedom undel the HeW a ginie. ('.irrier. when he came to Xante-, was deeply imbued Tth very thm-nugh sans-culotte revnlutinnary idea-. " In the Vendee." he said, "every one is a brigand: ill nv ci lunt-'i'-revi ilutioiii>ts." xvni CARRIER 263 There may not have been much justice in the idea, but it simplified things very much. And as tn Xantes, he said, " The people of Nantes act only from motives of coterie. . . . Steel, water, and fire shall nationalise their town. . . . All the Nantais are scoundrels. One must play ball with their heads." Against every one possessing any property, too, lie held equally thorough views. in a speech which he made before the popular society at Ancenis, a small town on the Loire, he said, " I see everywhere beggars in rags. You are as stupid as they are at Xantes. Plenty is close to you, and you want everything. Don't you know chat fortune, the riches of these fat merchants, belongs to you ? And is not the river there ? " And at Xante's, speech after speech which lie made contained fierce indictments against "the fat merchants," agents, tradesmen of every rank and sort and kind, whom he charged with being monopolists, who only sought to deprive the citizens of the necessaries of life : and incite- ments to the lowest of the populace to exterminate them, and to appropriate their property. liis ideas soared even higher than this; for once, at a dinner, lie declared that the population of France was too large for the food produced — that it ought to be reduced — by the nobles, magistrates, priests, business- men — then working himself up into a fury he cried out. "Kill, kill!" Extermination and destruction, these were his ideas, these his passions. As to the methods of carrying out his views he had no scruples. Death — that was the one penalty. " All the brigands and all the conspirators ought to be shot." L'G4 THE REAL FKENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Noyades, fusillades, sabrades, guillotine, death by disease and hardship in prison, all served his purposes, and served them thoroughly. The guillotine by itself not being sufficiently rapid, he had recourse to noyades ; and even wholesale noyades not getting through the work of destruction quickly enough, lie had recourse to fusillades. The Military Commissions and other tribunals even did not work rapidly enough to suit him: for on one occasion he gave an order to Citizen Phelippes de Tron- jolly, president of the criminal tribunal, to have immedi- ately executed, without trial, twenty-four " brigands " who had just been arrested with arms in their hands — although there were four children among them aged thirteen and fourteen years. A couple of days after he similarly sent twenty-seven to execution without trial — of whom seven were women, four of them sisters — the youngest seventeen, stated to be "brigands taken with arms in their hands." "But we have not been tried or heard," cried these unfortunate girls. ■■ It is an order of Carrier's," was the reply: "at nine o'clock it will be carried out" — and carried out it was. And on another occasion he sent for the president of one of the Military Commissions and told him that if all the prisoners in the Entrepot were not condemned within two hours, he would have all the members of the Com- mission shot. There were in fact no limits to his sanguinary ideas. " We will make a cemetery of France," he said. "rather than not regenerate it in the manner we want " ; luil thai t mo was the policy of the Convention as to the \ endi'e, ;is expressed in its decrees. He lived in an incessant impulse of slaughter. Speaking to some of the municipal authorities as to the xviir CARRIER 265 treatment of Vendean prisoners who laid down their arms, he exclaimed : "' You set of imbeciles. You are poor s, I must tell you that. The fusillade and the guillotine must he kept going; that is the only way to get any repose. It is hotter to kill the devil than to let the devil kill one- self." One day he fell foul even of the Revolutionary Com- mittee. "What is this Committee about?" he exclaimed. " Five hundred heads ought to have fallen by this time. I don't see one. Your heads will have to answer for the execution of my orders." He had but one regret, and he expressed it strongly, that he had not the power himself to butcher all his victims. But he did the next thing to it. Reports give us a glimpse of him driving up to close proximity of the guillotine on the day of the execution of the twenty brigands and four children, sent to death by himself without trial, and looking on at it at its deadly work. He must have been at it on other occasions too, for speaking much later to a merchant of Nantes of the measures against the priests, he recalled the pleasure he enjoyed in seeing the grimaces which these — — s of priests made when dying. Again, lie was present while some unfortunates were being put into a barge to be noyaded, and was seen speak- ing to Goullin. And lie is said to have been seen one night, in a. cloak', accompanying the procession of victims on their way to a noyade, and to have been heard saying, " Hurry up : walk in line." When shown one of the barges which was to be used for a noyade, he remarked, " Comme e'est commode." 2G6 THE REAL FItEXCH REVOLUTIOXIST ch. This was one side of his life - this " cleansing of the air of liberty." as the Committee of Public Safety called it —this " opening a large passage to the Revolution": and it' one part of his time was given up to these horrors and iniquities, the rest was given up to the other side of his life- -an almost unceasing debauch. While all around him death was reaping a tremend- ous harvest ; while thousands were suffering from sick- ness and disease which a wise governor might have checked and alleviated ; and while almost the whole of the people of Xantes, some 100,000 in number, patriots and republicans constituting the vast majority, were half starving, this ruler of the new regime, far from sharing with them their miserable diet of a small ration of ji'i in (Viyrdite, or bread of equality, as it was called, was showing the new spirit of equality and fraternity by revelling with some chosen friends in every procurable luxury. His cook used to go out early, before the usual market hour, to get poultry for him. Had he been a royalist, his house would have been burned down by an "enlightened" mob of sans-eulottes. and his head would have been paraded through the streets stuck on a pike. But lie was a sans-culotte, a Montagnard, a member of the Convention, a Representa- tive of the people, with unlimited powers, and no one could say aughl against him. lb' had a villa at Richebourg, one of the suburbs of Nantes, and here Ins nights, and sometimes his days, were -pent in the wildest debauch. His favourite sultana was "la Caroii,'"' a daughter "I' mie of the directors of the vessels used in his uoyades. She' figured in the fetes of the Montague as the u'.iddess .if libertv. where -he showed herself half xvin CARRIER 2 07 naked, adorned with a red cap, and with a pike in her hand. After thus displaying herself to the people, she went to preside over the scandalous orgies at the Palais du Bceuf, the name of the house which Carrier had given her; "where he realised with his friends and their mistresses everything that the imagination could invent in the way of luxury and orgy." In the bacchanals at this villa, one saw these women showing themselves off, covered with magnificent sets of diamonds torn from the victims of the Revolution before their heads fell beneath the knife of the executioner. And Goullin — "a charming man" — when Carrier was not present, amused himself fingering the beautiful jewels, and saying, " Ah, this belonged to the beautiful Countess of X . It is Venus who has the heritage of Madame de Pompadour. It is the parure of royalty on the breast of liberty." One night, in the midst of one of these orgies, three of the Maratist Corps came to tell him that some 500 prisoners were arriving, men, women, and children, and asked what was to lie done with them. " Pretty sort of question," lie replied, furious at being interrupted; " send them to drink in the glass of the calotins." An answer which excited the ferocious laughter of the guests. But as the stupid executioners of the Compagnie Marat did not always understand the symbolical answers of their master, one of them said, " What orderest thou, Citizen Represent- ative ? " " Parblev, let them be pitched into the water," replied Carrier. " And the children ? " added one of the Maratists, with hesitation. "Sacra mille clicux, in what country am I V he cried in a ferocious voice ; "all of them just alike." A slight remonstrance from one of them. "Am I Representative of the people or not?" he cried 268 THE REAL FKEXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. furiously, taking his sword in his hand, " do you want to go in their place .' " Then taking his glass, he proposed the health of those who were going to drink a la grande ta.iven over to the flames. 1 Savary, jealous of the reputation of the Mayencais troops, says : " Xo general, no ofiicer, nor any portion even of the troops of Mayence were employed '' (Savary, iii. 45). 298 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Thirteen communes out of the whole country were exempted from this decree of destruction as being proper places for the necessary garrisons. This barbarous plan surpassed in atrocity even the decree of the Convention of the previous August, which, though ordering the destruction of the Vendee, did not condemn the population en masse, but directed that the old men, women, and children should be removed before the villages were destroyed. Xo such exception was made by Turreau. On the 19th January he wrote to the Minister of War announcing his plans for the extermination of the rest of the rebels, and informing him that the columns were to make "a general battue," and so definitely purge the country of the brigands. And on the same day he wrote to the Committee of Public Safety informing it in full detail of his intended " military promenade," which, he expected, would be finished about the 3rd or 4th of February, and sending it a copy of his letter to the Representatives. " I have reason to hope you will approve. Please send me an answer by return courier. ... I am abandoned by the Representatives." Doue, from which he wrote, was little more than a couple of days' post from Paris, but he would not wait for a reply. As a matter of fact, some three weeks passed before one was sent. lie bad established his headquarters at Done, and there he held a council of war, informing the generals of his great plan. Some of them remonstrated as to the impolicy of the scheme, but he crushed remonstrance by saying that his plan was approved by the Committee of Public Safety. The generals were u'iven their detailed instruct ions, xxi 'THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 299 What they were may be gathered from Cordellier's orders to his column : — " All the brigands who are found with arms in their hands, or convicted of having taken them to revolt, shall be bayoneted to death. Girls, women, and children in similar circumstances shall be treated in the same way. Suspected persons shall not be spared either ; but in their cases the general must have given an order for their execution. Persons of whose civism the general shall be satisfied, would be at liberty to go to the rear of the army." And so, on the 21st January, all preparations being made, the " infernal columns " are let go, and the Vendee is delivered to fire and sword, Turreau himself taking- command of the centre column to see how his plan worked out. In the previous year the light had been more or less of a fair stand-up character — that much could be said for it — now, there is no fight ; it is a horrid and unprovoked massacre of defenceless and surprised men, women, and children, for none are spared. No inkling had reached the unfortunate people of the fate in store for them; no warning had been given them ; they were not in arms fighting — had made no sign of taking to arms— nor had they done anything to draw down such violence upon themselves. The thunderbolt fell before the lightning flashed. To them the first tidings of the fate in store for them are the furious invading horde of armed men, the rough capture of their fellow -villagers, the loud reverberations of the death-shots from the muskets, the shrieks of the falling victims, the prodding and hewing and hacking of bloody bayonets or sabres, the blazing torches. Like a cyclone of destruction these " infernal columns" swept down upon their hellish mission. :;0U THE REAL FUE.WII REVOLUTIONIST cu. Stretched out in echelon, searching right and left, on they come : the cavalry sometimes with their horses' hoots mullled so that no alarm might be given and the surprise he complete. Here, in the recesses of a valley, a farm-house is found, the farmer is seized, " suspect " of course : his servants, male and female, are captured. brigands also; lucky if his wife and daughters are not violated before his eyes before they are killed; a few minutes and all are lying mangled, mutilated corpses, or writhing in their death agonies ; and then, whatever property or valuables there are in the house are swept into the soldiers' sack-, or hoisted into the carts or waggons, to be divided later between the plunderers — generals, officers, and soldier-: fiends with lighted brands rush hither and thither, setting tire to the house, to the sheds, to the woods, to everything that will burn; and then, with shouts of " Vive la L'epubliqiie .' " " Ca-ira ! " push on to further conquests. In the villages the procedure is a little slower; the slaughter and destruction being on a larger scale, the amount of pillage greater, the search for it more pro- longed. There, sometimes, the victims were kept over- night — and what a night. Here is one night, in one place — a scene multiplied by many in the earlier period of the "infernal columns." " Everything was quiet in the bourg until about six o'clock in the evening — near the time of pillage. But as the citizens knew that their houses were to be burned the next day. they attached little value to their property, knowing that they could not save it from the flames. At this hour the aspect of affairs changed. The soldiers. po ed with tlie idea that they were to burn and kill everything in this unfortunate country, gave themselves up to all sort of excesses, — the women wore violated, xxi 'THE INFEEXAL COLUMNS' 301 pillaged, mutilated : the men were .struck down ; and soon the greater number of officers, worse a thousand times than the soldiers, allowed themselves the greatest violence against the unhappy women who had prepared their supper for them, nourishing their naked swords and threatening to cut their heads off if they did not consent to the officers gratifying their brutal passion. They breathed only blood and carnage, and threatened to kill every one." The fearful night slowly drags its length along, every moment an agony to the unfortunate and innocent villagers surrounded by these drunken fiends ; dawn at last breaks — ■ the cold, gloomy, clammy dawn of a winter's day ; and then the final scene — the collecting of the terror-stricken women and children ; the shootings and sabrings and bayonetings, till the last villager has been done to death, and a heap of slain lies there, jocularly called a " patriotic mountain " (des montagnes patriot i([ues). And the column passes on with its plunder, leaving behind it blazing roofs and rafters, and charring corpses, and a village — wiped out. Once more " En avant ! " " Vive la Eepublique ! "' Think of it. Eleven l " infernal columns " under republican generals and officers, scattered in one great line across the A^endee, most of them hard at work at this hellish employment, most of them revelling in it, getting up in the morning to it ; killing the women and girls they had violated and outraged in the night, and the children, to get their hand in for the day : seizing anything valuable that they could get, appropriating all the food and drink they could find, setting ablaze the 1 Those historians who have vaguely noticed, these horrors say there were twelve columns, but Moulin could only form one column, not having enough troops for a second, and being himself ill, had to appoint a substitute to take the command (Savary, iii. 82). 302 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. roof that had sheltered them, and then, moving on to new slaughtering grounds, adopting the devices of a hunter to secure their prey : shooting, stabbing, hacking all through the day all they unearth; burning every- thing that will burn, until the evening comes : a fresh village is captured, and the night's debauch of drink and violation once more comes round. " What did I find there ?'" wrote a republican officer who had seen some of these places in the wake of the republican troops. " Fathers, mothers, children of every age and both sexes, bathed in their blood, naked, and in attitudes which the most ferocious person could not look at without shuddering."' And so, under the presidency and immediate super- vision of Louis Marie Turreau. commander-in-chief of the republican army in the Vendee, the merciless slaughter and destruction by the republican troops and generals go on, day after day. Villages and bourgs, or small towns, right and left, are burned : farm-houses destroyed; everything that will burn is burned, every human being killed, every living thing slaughtered or driven away. Horrible and incredible in brutality as their proceed- ings were, the generals wrote jocular reports to Turreau: '■' To-morrow," wrote Grignon, " I shall begin the feux <1? j'l'ir, 1 turning and bayoneting everything that comes in the [lower of my column." And Cordellier wrote: " 1 will arrange so as not to lie cold to-morrow morning before starting"; and on another day: "The municipal authorities declare to me that tin.' only anti-revolutionists in the commune are some women whose husbands are away with the brigands. As they appear to me to be suspects, 1 will take care that thev L r et their breakfast to-morrow morniim." xx, THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 303 Playful terms also were used. " All those we find go to the headquarters," a phrase which with " to go to the hospital " or "behind the hedge" were equivalent expres- sions to their being sent to death. Several of the generals were keen in their work. "1 arrived here this evening," wrote Grignon, "after burning and smashing heads a I' ordinaire. . . . We kill about 100 a day. Perhaps 300 were killed yesterday." And Boucret wrote : "There are about 1500 houses in these communes, not counting farm-houses. I do not wish that there remain a trace of them ; the country shall be purged with fire and sword. Not a brigand shall escape me." Now and then an even ghastlier note is struck. " I have to inform you," wrote Grignon to Turreau, " that the soldiers break their guns in killing with the bayonets the brigands whom they find in the broom and in the woods, and the brigands resist (se revoltent). Would it not be better to kill them by shooting them ; that would be quicker '( " The columns are tracked by " cinders and corpses. . . . The eyes met nothing but bloody objects in every direction ; the fields near the road were covered with butchered victims." It is a carnival of butchery, pillage, rape, and confla- gration ; everywhere burnings — " at tbis moment forty farmsteads light up the country " — ■ and everywhere slaughterings, mostly of women. " This morning," wrote Boucret, " I had fourteen women and girls shot " — a truly valiant deed to record, one of which a French general of the regime of liberty and fraternity was apparently proud. On the 25th January, Turreau, the arch-organiser 304 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST «... and superintendent of it all — the nominee of the Com- mitter of Public Safety— wrote to the Committee: — •■ 1 have begun the execution of the plan I conceived of crossing the Vendee in twelve columns. Ilaxo has divided his army into eight parties, who come to meet us. My columns on the right and left have already done wonders. Xot a rebel has escaped their search. . . . If my intentions are well supported, there will not exist in the Vendee in another fortnight houses, food, nor army, nor inhabitants, except those who, hidden in the depths of the woods, have escaped the must scrupu- lous search. ... It is important that this country be entirely cleared out, even of those who are believed to be revolutionists, and who perhaps wear but the mask of patriotism. . . . •• Behold, citizens, this is the third letter I write to you without a reply. I beg you to lie so good as to tell me if you approve of my dispositions, and to inform me by special courier of the new measures you adopt, so that I may conform to them." (July two loopholes for escape from death and destruction had been left to the unfortunate inhabitants of the Vendee. One was that persons only " suspected " were not to be killed without the order of the general, and no harm was to be dime to those in whom the general recognised civic or revolutionary sentiments, and who were accord- ingly to be free to go to the rear of the army. And for escaping destruction by fire, houses or farms were not to be burned until the stores of food in them had been removed. But both these exceptions were entirely illusory, for in most cases the soldiery took the decision into their own hands, not waiting to inquire whether persons were xxi THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 305 suspects or not, and when they found they could not carry away the stores, they usually set fire to them. At the very outset of the movement of the " infernal columns " it was found that many districts inhabited by ;i patriots,"' and men who had actually been fighting the Yendeans, came within the sphere marked out for the action of the columns. Some communes escaped, because a few of the generals were less bloodthirsty than the others. Some houses, too, escaped being burned, because the corn and supplies of food could not be moved from them, there being no vehicles. General Duval wrote : " All the places I have passed through are inhabited by patriots," and he braved responsibility and spared them. Moulin wrote : " The conduct of the communes of Rochefort and Chalonne has not been such as to justify their being involved in the general proscription." Grignon found one place so " patriotic " that he did not burn it : whilst even Turreau himself could find nothing against one place he passed through, and had to spare it. But usually this was a matter of no consequence ; no discrimination was exercised ; as a matter of fact, the orders left no room for discrimination, and patriot com- munes were devastated : the success of the plan depended on a clean sweep being made, and the patriot inhabitants were massacred, their property being as good as that of the brigands. Plunder was what was wanted by the columns, and it was quite immaterial whence it came, or who was the victim. ft was not alone, therefore, the brigands who were butchered : the blows of the revolutionists fell remorse- lessly upon their own allies, friends, and comrades, " patriots " and republicans. X THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. The saus-culottc generals, with their impatient sweep ; • v luti nary mind, considered all in the Vendee as : ' Is. uid .mly ri; to 1 ■:• exterminated. "There are only brigands in the Vendue." wrote Griirnon. " I wish :o exterminate them all." Eve:: National Guards, alth ugh republi ens. and •:i wno d actually been fighting against the '::_.:::-. were shot. Even the local and municipal auth rities in their scarfs ot o trice, and "patriots" with eertifLates of eivism. were not exempt nee., slaughter by these valiant generals, by these hei k officers and ah. ... ...v.. w L..e ?pueie L'l ... — j mien, i he:..::-" were iuv lved in one huge system of in : :~- pillage md plunder. The columns were "armies of extermina: rs." And so the xLumns continued theii daily, their ni-htly. career. ■ For the _: : of the Republic. L- EcharJ : _-.;• - exists :: 1 uger. Not , single house remains there." ■■ Continue, my comrade."' wrote Turreau to Grignon. A::; F:o. asrel wrote to Grigu- n ■ :. 29th January: I ::. : y :: over '■: :'■: :\r te continue with the same .. tivity and the same revolutionary inflexibility " : h -e:._ ::. ; previous letter to him. written before the o:: : :> ns ire ; urstiug •' •".: :■ ' with them. The ..:..:::_: .: the republican columns was api hL:._. THE INFERNAL COLUMNS 307 " The delinquencies " [deiitsj, wrote Lequinio, one of the Representatives at the time, ''''are not confined to pillage : violation and barbarism of the most outrageous description are to be seen in every corner. Republican soldiers have been seen violating women on the stone heaps at the side of the roads, and the next moment shooting or stabbing them. Others have been seen carrying babies on the point of the bayonets or pikes which had pierced at the same blow mother and child. Nor have the rebels been the sole- victims of the brutality of the soldiers and officers; the daughters and wives of the patriots even have- often been raises en requisition, as the phrase is. 1 ' Ijijubts have been thrown by republican writers these statements of Lequinio. Jullien, about whose revolutionary republicanism there can be no question, amply confirms even his strongest, most startling asser- tions: "Entire communes destroyed, burned, communes which had opposed the rebels. Would you believe it." he says in a letter to the Committee of Public Safety, ■•'that under pretence of following your orders they butcher children, women, municipal authorities in their scarf- of office after a civic banquet given by them to a division of the army ? Would yuu believe it. that at a moment when famine appear- to threaten the country. they set fire to the supplies of food, and those not burned are left to the enemy ) Would you believe that your generals give the example of pillage, and wish to degrade to the vile trade of thief the sublime employ- ment of defender of the patrie '• '■ The inhabitants of a commune which had helped to arrest some of Charette's scoundrels, fearing to be the victim- of the devastation ordered by the commander-in- chief, went to General Bard, who gave them a certi:: ite 308 THE REAL KItEXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. in these terms : ' I declare that the commune of . . . lias always shown itself well disposed, that the inhabitants have daily brought me brigands to shoot, and that they ought to be treated as friends of the Republic,' " The municipality presents this certificate to the general charged with the execution of ' great measures,' as they are called. He answers that he has contrary orders; he has these unfortunates disarmed; he allows their wives and daughters to be violated in their pre- sence, and ends this scene of horror by massacring all, even to the children at the breast. Everything is given over to pillage and fire." Jullien adds : " I have read not one but twenty letters from different soldiers or officers of different corps. I have heard generals, citizens, inhabitants of the localities, strangers who were witnesses of the facts, all unite to unveil the same crimes. " 1 send herewith a proclamation of General Turreau, which alone is, in my eyes, an offence, because it presents a tissue of lies, because it depicts as victories the mas- sacre of children and women, or of unarmed peasants, and that he conceals all the reverses : and it is thus that one deceives a free people." The Vendeans who " had gone asleep, so to speak, in the hope of peace," and been awakened from their slumber by flames and death-shots all around them, and by the tales of fugitives, recovering from the first shock of incredulous surprise, lied in advance of the troops, concealing their property as best they could, and driving their cattle away. " Even to the domestic animals," it was said, "every living thing tied at the sight of the national uniform without waitiiiL! to be pursued." xxi 'THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 309 As many as could rushed once more to arms to defend or avenge themselves. And the "patriots" in the Vendee, affrighted by the rumours and reports reaching them as to the treat- ment of their friends, began soon to take alarm, and to fear that they themselves would be carried away by the devouring flood of military revolutionary violence ; and remonstrances and petitions began to flow in to the generals and Representatives and governing authorities ; petitions from communes, and towns, and villages, and patriot municipalities, and republican local authorities — all for exemption from the decree of proscription and destruction. " This commune has always been faithful to the law." ..." These communes have always shown them- selves supporters of the Revolution." ..." If there is one commune which should remain intact it is this one." Some went so far as to protest to Turreau about the conduct of his troops. " General," wrote the president of the district author- ities at Cholet, where Turreau himself was, " your soldiers, calling themselves republicans, deliver them- selves over to debauch, to all the horrors of which can- nibals even would not be guilty," — a protest for which Cholet had later to pay dearly. But the petitions were ignored. Such trivialities as the destruction of some " patriots " could not interfere with the carrying out of the great idea of a sans-culotte general. And so the massacres and burnings went on, and drove all those who could escape from them, and who were threatened by them, into revolt ; — forced even those who had not taken part in the first war to take part in this new one, fabricated once again by the republicans themselves. 310 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Elsewhere than in revolt there was no chance of safety: for there was no opening left for conciliation, nothing was gained even by submission, for submission meant a prompt and cruel death. The immediate result of all the hellish work of these " infernal columns " therefore was that the whole uiltv They burned and pillaged everything and bayoneted women, children, and old people. I have lost everything I have nothing left. I shall tight to live." And they fought— and considerable numbers of the " patriots " had now been driven to fight too. And so they made common cause. Jullien had let in light on Carrier's proceedings at A antes; his letters confirm the statements of other republican writers who let light in on the proceedings of republican officers placed in power by the Revolution. All through the history of the strife between the bepubbc and the Vendee appears the fact damning to the revolutionists, that there was on the part of the republi- can sans-clotte generals a deliberate intention to prolong the war. 1 & Their salaries ami perquisites and plunder were too valuable, their mode of life too enjoyable to be ended one moment sooner than avoidable. xxiv 'THE INFEENAL COLUMNS' 335 " I have seen among the generals/' wrote Jullien, " a well-formed design of prolonging the war. . . . ; We will finish it when we want to,' they said." He accused them, too, of actually corresponding with the Vendean chiefs : " It is proved," he said, " that they often let a comrade be defeated through motives of jealousy of his success : it is proved that time after time they allowed themselves to be defeated, so that they could say that the stores had been taken by the enemy, and thus conceal and cover their own robberies ; it is proved that they had sent a ' patriot ' colleague to certain defeat and death because he knew too much of the abuses goin<>' on." All those things, he said, were proved. Those who were not traitors were intriguers, who occupied themselves with satisfying their own personal ambition, and not the public interest. " Egotism, vanity, avarice, and perfidy have eternal- ised the Vendee. " The Vendee is at the gates of Xantes, and the generals are inside the walls steeped in pleasure and indolence. " An army is in Xantes without discipline, without order ; and small corps are sent out to butchery. On one side people pillage, on the other they kill, the Republic. A crowd of generals (un peiqyle tie generaux), proud of their epaulettes and the gold embroidery on their collars, rich with the salaries they steal, bespattering with their carriages the pedestrian sans-culottes, are always with women at the plays and spectacles, or at the sumptuous fetes and repasts which insult the public misery." The description reads like an echo of the indictment of the old regime ; for these were precisely some of the 336 THE REAL FEEXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. causes for offence which were cited as justifying the Revolution. The monstrous contrasts of wealth and poverty, of self-indulgence and privation, so passionately inveighed against by revolutionists, and which were to be abolished by them, had been quickly revived by them, and again flourished, only this time it was under the revolutionary order of things, and it was the revolution- ists who had possessed themselves of the wealth and were the self-indulgent. Jullien's judgment was not tinged by impetuosity, for a fortnight later he wrote : — " Each day brings me fresh proof of the villainy of our generals." This picture of the French military authorities in the Vendee was not overdrawn, for even Prieur (de la Marne) and his colleagues issued a rigorous decree against " the military of all rank- who, in considerable number at Nantes, wallow in idleness and debauch, while their brave brothers -in -arms are in incessant pursuit of the brigands."' And again, somewhat later, their successors. Bo and Bourbotte, whose revolutionary characters were above reproach, also issued a decree against military abuses, in which they give a description precisely parallel to that given by Jullien, and announced penalties against — " The military, officers as well as soldiers, who had left their corps and abandoned their posts to come to Xantes, where, unblushingly, they spent voluptuously in the theatre, in the cafes, and other places of pleasure, the time which they have sworn to consecrate entirely to the defence of the country." Drunkenness was too universal a habit in those times to be considered as a vice, but it was prevalent in all ranks. '•' Our sans-culotte generals know nothing of xxiv 'THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 337 the business of war," wrote a national agent, " but very well that of drinking from morning to evening." Com- manders-in-chief even set the example. Rossignol was always drinking. Turreau was also addicted to the practice. " I have seen Turreau twice, and drunk both times. Many people informed me it was his custom." His generals spoke of him as one qui ne se de'soiVait ^os, who never got sober. And once Grignon — -himself not immaculate in this respect — had to complain of Huche : " General Huche appeared at the head of my column drunk, and addressed me in a manner not becoming for a general to be ad- dressed in presence of his troops. I knew for some time past that his head did not belong to himself after mid- day, and that the service of the Republic might suffer." A report supplemented by Adjutant- General Liebaut, who said : " He must have drunk a lot." As to other comparatively minor delinquencies on the part of the sans-culotte revolutionary generals, such as lying, duplicity, untrustworthiness, they were so habitual as to excite no notice. But now and then some illustra- tive incidents are incidentally recorded. Thus Huche, appealed to by the local authorities of a commune not to devastate it, told them that he would write to Turreau for his decision ; but simultaneously with his letter to Turreau, who was several days' post away, he gave orders to his troops to destroy the com- mune the very next day. A precisely similar act is reported of Grignon. Not the slightest reliance could be placed on the words or promises of these men. Lying was, according to their standards, a justifiable finesse. For truth they had no regard. Of honour they had not the slightest conception. z 338 THE HEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Que general, with evident self-satisfaction as to his cleverness, has recorded how, tired with pursuing the brigands, he announced an amnesty for all those who surrendered voluntarily. " My ruse succeeded. Twenty- one were sent yesterday to Nantes, with the request that they should he made accept the constitution behind the hedge. "What matters it what means one employs ? " These, then, were the new military "patriots" which the Revolution had hoisted into authority, and in whose hands were the lives and property of every inhabitant of the Vendee and its neighbourhood, ''patriots'"' and " brigands " alike — men who prolonged the internecine war for the sake of their own profits and emoluments : paying in the life's-hlood of their own countrymen and women the cost of their pleasures and the gratification of their passions ; and plundering their country and fellow-citizens so that they themselves might live in self- indulgence and vice. And presiding over them all, and over this saturnalia of crime and bloodshed, Turreau. Theoretically the Revolution aimed at abolishing iniquity in high places — aimed at installing in power a better class of men than were there. Practically, how- ever, as it worked out, it installed a far worse lot, and initiated a severer and bloodier despotism. Turreau having got a new lease of power, and being bound therefore to do something energetic, he and the Representatives held a council at Nantes to devise further plans for bringing the Vendean war to an end. There was not much room for further great ideas. Unable, therefore, to devise any fresh atrocity upon the Yendeans. the new measures were devised with the intention of crippling them through the " patriots " re- siding in the Vendee, and accordingly were directed against those loyal to the Republic. xxiv 'THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 339 The decree of February, ordering the disarming of the people in all the communes in or near the revolted country, patriots as well as suspects, was already being acted on, but was exciting great hostility. Its object was to prevent the brigands obtaining arms or ammunition. "With the object of preventing them obtaining men, it was determined to remove from the revolted country all the inhabitants who had not taken arms — in other words, the " patriots," because some, under the appear- ances of neutrality, secretly favoured the rebels, and because others, although republicans, gave them help under compulsion. And a circular was addressed to the administrators of the Department by Hentz and Francastel setting forth with innocent simplicity the advantages of such a pro- ceeding. " You surely are penetrated with the importance of this measure, which will have the effect of leaving only rebels in the revolted country, whom one will be able more easily to destroy without confounding with them innocent and good citizens." The impracticability of such a plan was quickly pointed out to them by the inhabitants of Nueil, who declared that it was impossible to obey this rigorous order to quit their homes and to leave their property at the mercy of the enemy. " The distance of some six leagues from the nearest town, the impracticable state of the roads, their wives, children, furniture, animals to be transported to heaven knows where, are insurmountable obstacles. Moreover, the cultivation of the land and the culture of the vines, without which they would be reduced to starvation, are considerations which merit your attention." 340 THE HEAL FPEXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. And then, even the unfortunate " refugees " from the revolted Departments were not yet far enough away from the Vendee. Among them also traitors might lurk ; " they were evil-disposed persons, aristocrats, scoundrels," so all were to be moved farther on- — only not nearer to Taris than fifteen miles. "If they are patriots," it was sententiously remarked, i: they will endure this removal." Thus, ''•'covered with opprobrium and infamy, con- demned in public opinion by the decree of the Representa- tives, ruined, without help and without support, they were obliged to move away, and to beg the protection of some distant administrations where they were exposed to insult and outrage." These measures taken, it was hoped that a sufficient display of energy had been made. And all the while the ghastly work of killing and burning and destroying went on. .February. March, April, May — no longer by definite " infernal columns" working on a definite plan, but as, when, and where possible, whenever sufficient troops could be got to move, any detachment of troops under any general, in the Upper Vendee and in the Lower Vendee, in the Bocage and in the Plain — not a day passing without tens or hundreds beiu- massacred under every conceivable circumstance of cruelty. General Duquesnoy (February 1G) took credit to himself for having killed 3000 of them — " to wit, 2000 taken without arms, and 1000 killed at Pont- . lames." Other generals also sent in large death-rolls. Turreau, on the 2nd March, told the Committee of Public Safety that 15,000 brigands had been destroyed by the columns. Making ample allowance for gross exaggerations, it is evident that fearful cruelties were being inflicted on the people in the Vendee- -"patriots" and " brigands " alike xxiv 'THE INFEENAL COLUMNS' 341 Huche, one of the worst of the whole revolutionary lot — an actual assassin, a drunken monster, this " tiger," this "enemy of humanity," as Lequinio called him, sent Turreau an account of the sortie he had made from Cholet against the Veudeans : — " I stirred them up pretty lively (Je les ai egayte de bonne manure). More than 500, as many men as women, were killed. This canaille had the audacity to provoke us by defiances, and shouts, and reproaches. I had the copses, the ditches, the hedges, and the woods searched, and it is there we found them cowering. All were bayoneted or sabred, because I had prohibited the waste of ammunition." And Turreau wrote in reply : " Courage, comrade, and soon the neighbourhood of Cholet will be cleansed of rebels. If each general or superior officer would only kill them as you do, by the hundred, one would soon be at the end of the business." The end was by no means so near as Turreau wished, although several generals were little if at all behind Huche in the killing way. Charette and Stofllet held head against the re- publicans, appearing and disappearing here and there and everywhere, in the most unexpected way, pouncing on convoys, sweeping out of the woods on to weakly- held posts ; now and then braving the larger columns of the republicans ; ever being destroyed (according to re- publican accounts), yet appearing again ; their followers scattered and killed, yet coming to life and collecting themselves together again; taking terrible toll every now and then for the republican barbarities; paying the repub- licans back in their own coin ; and receiving constantly fresh recruits to their ranks from the " patriots " driven to desperation by revolutionary or " patriotic " atrocities. 342 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. The Representatives were every bit as bloodthirsty as Turreau. " We are convinced," wrote Hentz and Francastel on the 14th March, " that the Vendean war will not be finished until there remains no single inhabitant in this miserable country." And Garrau, the third Representative, thus expressed his views : — " It has been long enough and too long that this infernal Vendee occupies us. If one could get a burning glass large enough to burn and consume it entirely, one would be doing well." Thus from top to bottom of the revolutionary hier- archy, all were bent on destruction ; and the burnings of villages and farms and wholesale destruction of grain and forage went on in spite of protests from " patriot " sufferers. The demon of destruction had possession of the revolutionists, and military tyranny and injustice stalked throughout the land — a land which under the new regime of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" that the Revolution was to introduce should have been the peaceful and happy home of an emancipated people ; but which, thanks to the Revolution and the way revolutionary theories and principles worked out, had become a veritable "inferno." The short-sighted folly of this destructive policy was remarkable. It mattered not that Nantes was suffering from almost a famine : it mattered not that the troops them- selves were often half-starved ; it mattered not that the Republic itself was in urgent want of food for its million of soldiers. Revolutionary generals and Representatives could not descend to such considerations — and so the burnings went on. xxiv THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 343 Other forms of destruction, which also would by and by tell against themselves, were recklessly indulged in ; mills — wind- mills and water-mills — -were destroyed; wind-mills especially, as it was believed that they were used as means of signalling between the Vendeans. " To-day I burned a dozen wind-mills," wrote Cor- dellier. Ovens and bakehouses, these too were destroyed. And so, when the need came, the troops could not grind the corn they captured into flour, or bake the flour which they found into bread. One butchery on a large scale took place at Bougue- naix, on the river some little distance below Nantes. Some republican cavalry who had been attacked near there early in April, surrounded the place, and captured 210 men (if boys of 15 to 17 can be included in that category) and 22 women. Hither came, in hot haste, from Nantes, the Military Commission under Bignon, and in two days it sentenced 209 men to death, and acquitted one aged 13. They were promptly shot. " I have seen a great deal of war," wrote General Hugo (father of the poet), in later years. " I have gone over vast fields of battle. Never has anything struck me so much as the massacre of these victims of opinion and fanaticism." The trial of the 22 women was postponed a little and left to another tribunal, and they were acquitted. Gradually the "patriot" opposition gathered volume, and remonstrances from the popular societies in different towns in the Vendee, which were republican, and not counter-revolutionary, presaged the commencement of a storm of opposition against the severity of the Turreau military regime. 344 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Once more, as in the case of the sans-culottes at Nantes and Angers, no sooner were revolutionary prin- ciples applied to themselves than there were mutterings and resistance. Astonishment and wrath flare forth in a letter which the Committee of Surveillance at Fontenay wrote to Turreau, March 29 : — " Do you wish to know what the thousands of men have done whom you wish to tear from their hearths in delivering those hearths to the flames ? " They have detested tyrants and fanaticism. . . . Never did they take part in the crimes of the enemies of the patrie — they have fought them — they have beaten them . . . they have devoted life and fortune to the Republic. "... Hasten, general, to convince us that you pro- tect virtue and liberty." Rut it was not in the nature of a sans-culotte general to protect either virtue or liberty, nor did the Revolu- tionary Government do so either. The gradual disillusionment of some of these " patriots " as to what revolution meant, and as to how revolutionary government practically worked out, is most interesting. "We think," wrote the popular society at Lueon to the Representatives, "it cannot enter the minds of any of our legislators to confound the innocent with the guilty — the patriot with the enemy of the State." But the recent history of revolutionary government had very clearly shown that this was one of the chief things that the revolutionist did do. And they them- selves were quickly to have it proven to them. General Huehe, the drunkard and murderer, at the head of a body of troops, arrived there, and literally ran xxiv 'THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 345 amok. Forthwith he sentenced two men to be shot. The tribunal was the dinner-table; the judge, himself; the prosecutor, himself; the evidence, the answers he extracted from the prisoner. This was revolutionary "justice." The next day he had two more shot ; one, Bardou by name, whose innocence had just been recognised by a Revolutionary Tribunal winch had acquitted him. There was no trial, nor other formality ; nothing but Huehe's mere order. "I had them shot," wrote Huehe, " as is customary and right." But Turreau by letter mildly reproved him for this. " One ought not," wrote Turreau, " to employ those measures when one has a Military Commission or Revolu- tionary Tribunal close to one. Leave that to your chiefs of columns to do when they are on the march." And then he ordered the destruction and burning of commune after commune in the neighbourhood — patriot communes — perpetrating every imaginable enormity. Furious at opposition from the administrators of the district, he wrote : " In the Vendee, no constituted authority, according to my mind and that of all good republicans, ought to hinder, contradict, or oppose itself to military operations." On receiving a remonstrance from the president of the Committee of Surveillance as to his proceedings, he said : " What, Mr. President, you dare to criticise my conduct. Do you know what are my orders i 1 have the right to order you to be shot, and this very moment you shall be." And on his being told that the president was an excellent patriot, and one of the best on the 346 THE REAL FREXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Committee, he threatened to have the whole Committee shot. The revolutionists and patriots at Lucon at last recognised what the new government really was. '•' AVe are bursting with horror," they wrote, "at seeing the abominable despotism which surrounds us."' Just as Jullien had truly seen what revolutionary government at.Xantes was — namely, the ancien regime— so now these "patriots" of Lucon under the enlightening- process of experience had come to see what revolutionary government really was — " an abominable despotism."'' That is just what it was. Xo "liberty" about it, — no " fraternity," no " equality," and no justice. Only despotism, an " abominable despotism." It was a despotism, too, which with cold-blooded indifference victimised its own republican supporters — if even by that means it could get at those it considered its foes. On the highly moral principle enunciated by Collot d'Herbois, " If one spared the innocent, too many of the guilty would escape." A\ nile Huche was at Lucon, one of his most trusted oflicers, his lieutenant, Coy Martiniere by name, had been given an illustration of sans-culotte proceedings. He was in charge of a detachment of troops, and had been pillaging and burning and murdering in "patriot" communes — communes so indisputably " patriot " that in one of them the tree of liberty was growing. At Mareuil he had had a woman shot and her three children — one child of six months was in its mother's arms. At Bellenoue he collected a lot of women and little children one day, and had them all shot the next. He violated innocent girls, and then had the barbarity to have them assassinated. He promised a man his life tor money, took the moiiev and had the man shot. xxiv 'THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 347 The Revolutionary Committee, with full proofs of these atrocities, for which lie probably would not have been punished, and of some very definite offences against the Republic — a more serious matter than these atrocities — called on Huche to order his arrest, — a request which Huche dared not refuse. He was tried before the Military Commission, was sentenced to death, and guillotined on the 11th April. Ten days later the Representatives Garrau, Hentz, and Francastel wrote to the Committee of Public Safety as to this brutal murderer, violater, and pillager : — ■ " The Republic should lie in mourning the day when la Martiniere was guillotined for having done his duty as a republican. . . . We groaned over it, and still groan." Strange idea of duty this, — stranger epitaph has never been written by high State officials on a criminal so infamous. In endeavouring to form an idea of the extent of revolutionary barbarities and crimes, one must always recollect that those which have been recorded are but an infinitesimal portion of those which were committed, a few isolated instances or illustrations of widespread practices. A corner of the veil only is lifted just for a moment as we peruse the description of one scene of crime ; that is all. We get a glimpse of an " infernal column " at its hellish work on two or three occasions. The details of the horrors perpetrated day after day and night after night, by it and the eighteen others, are concealed from us. We only know from chance statements here and there that one day was as another — one night was as another — during those awful weeks — those fearful months. 348 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. We get glimpses of soldiers, officers, generals, and even Representatives, plunged in drunkenness and de- bauchery and crime, and know that that was the chronic condition of most of them. For a moment one gets a glimpse of a Revolutionary Committee at work — -of a Military Commission ad- ministering revolutionary '•'justice" — of Representatives exercising their despotic powers in the secrecy of their chambers, and we know that day after day these engines of revolutionary tyranny and terror were in similar manner dealing out injustice and death to innocent and guilty alike. Occasionally one gets from some of the actual victims of tyranny and injustice the narrative of their maddening wrongs and sufferings : but even so, these are but a few of the voices of the tens upon tens of thousands who went down in silence to their graves ; or if they voiced their agonies and their wrongs, could not make their voices reach the outer world or the tribunal of posterity. As it is, one stands appalled at the horror of that much of it which is known, and at the depths of human depravity presented to one's gaze even by the momentary raising of one corner of the veil; one is overwhelmed if one tries to realise what the fearful drama must have been in its entirety, as enacted behind the now im- penetrable curtain. Some republican writers contend that it was all necessary for " tbe safety of the fatherland " — others that it was justified because some Vendean leaders had made appeals to England for help, and that these people were allies with the enemies of fiance. Such contentions only show the straits to which they have been put in their ('Hurts to defend those who com- mitted these enormities, and they bear their refutation xxiv THE INTERNAL COLUMNS' 349 on their face. For how can it be contended that the violation and murder of women was essential for the salut de la patrie ? Or that tiny children, down to the babe at its mother's breast, were allies of the English, and that so their destruction was justified ? The quarrel between Huche and the Revolutionary Committee at Lucon continued briskly. " "Who has clad this man who seeks to overwhelm us by terror, with absolute power?" it asked of the Representatives. The true answer to such a question was " the new regime of liberty — the Republic." but the Representatives would be little likely to give it. The Committee — boldly persevering — issued a warrant of arrest against Huche for various crimes, among them that of having had Barclou shot; and for burning corn and forage, instead of having them carried away ; and for the great crime of dispersing by the bayonet the republican society, "which abuse of authority was the most terrible blow against the liberty and against the sovereignty of the people." The warrant was executed — Hue-he's troops sym- pathising with the people instead of with their general. He was arrested and sent to Paris. Hentz and Francastel were furious at this audacious proceeding. At the popular society at Xiort, Hentz eulogised Huche, Grignon, and their agents. " Huche was a good and frank sans-culotte- -the very man for the Vendee. He had been reproached for having dis- solved the' popular society. He had a right to do so. In a counter-revolutionary town, such as it was, the military are everything. I recognise no civil authority there. A general is sovereign. Generals were above being denounced or complained against. It would lie 350 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. absurd to imagine that a Revolutionary Committee could arrest a general. A general ought to exercise supreme authority. There should he no civil authority in the Vendee." Then on to Fontenay, where Ilentz harangued the popular society for two hours on its audacity in making- protests against the incendiarism of patriot communes, dissolved it, and formed a new one of their own creatures. That done, they hurried to Lucon, the " execrable Lucon " as they called it. Martiniere they could not bring to life again, but they suppressed the Military Commission which had dared to convict him, " without giving him time or the means of defending himself," and declared Lucon in a state of siege ; they dissolved the popular society, and soon after had the members of the Committee arrested and sent off to Paris. It was a perilous undertaking to protest against the proceedings of the vrai sans-ndotte. Four members of the popular society at Niort were sent by the people of Niort to Paris in April to depict to the Government the horrors they were suffering under the hands of Huche and Grignon and their agents, the devastation and incendiarism of communes faithful to the Republic, and tin 1 butchery of old people, and women, and children, and carrying with them the proofs thereof. They were treated as counter-revolu- tionists ; accused of having advanced false facts ; and were told that Hentz and Francastel were on the spot, and had not reported anything about it. And they very nearly paid for their zeal with their heads. Even the troops at last showed signs of wavering. Discontent was spreading among them, and began to show itself. The men were sickening of the life they xxiv 'THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 351 were leading. They had pretty well had their fill of plunder, and many were anxious to secure its enjoyment. Many were undergoing desperate hardships, having been shamefully neglected by their generals. Bread failed them, and clothes, and boots. Torrential rains poured down upon them, illnesses of every kind swept the ranks, and every now and then the Vendeans fell upon them. " I am in a terrible position," wrote Adjutant-General Dusirat. " My column, on which you rely to make up the 3600 men which you wish to confide to me, cannot furnish me with more than 500 to GOO. . . . You have no idea of the spirit which reigns in our troops, and especially among the officers. They murmur loudly against your dispositions." And in a letter to Turreau he wrote, April 12th: "There is one great fact; that it is impossible to end the Vendean war quickly with the troops which compose the army of the west. . . . Nothing decisive will ever be done with the troops which we command at the present moment." This view is passed on to the Minister of War, and endorsed by Turreau. The cowardice of the soldiers, which Turreau emphasised, was, he said, due " to the riches of the soldier who had pillaged much." And as to their state of health, lie said that more than 20,000 filled the different hospitals in different places around the Vendee. One finishing touch to the picture is given by General Dusirat : — " I begin to perceive that the greater part of the soldiers 1 command prefer defeat to victory. That is not surprising. After defeat one goes to Lone (a small town, but still a town), and after a victory one pursues the brigands." 352 THE REAL FKEXCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. And one more touch : " T tell you the truth, citizen general. The cry, ' Here are the brigands.' inspires terror among our soldiers ; and I can assure you that if there is any place in the world where terror is the order of the day, it is at St. Florent, and in some battalions of my column/' One graphic expression of the time summed it all up : " The army, sleeping in crime, succumbed under the weight of pillage and debauch." As month succeeded month, and no definite result was secured, the Committee of Public Safety had been becoming more and more discontented with the conduct of the war, their disapproval not merely being confined to Turreau, but to the Representatives Hentz and Fran- castel, who were with him. Was it the first turn in the tide which induced the Committee on the 9th April to order the Representatives to issue a decree preserving factories (v. sines) from destruction '. The inculcation to preserve anything in the Vendee was a remarkable portent. Hentz and Francastel endeavoured to back up Turreau and the miscreant sans-culotte generals, and to fan the name of hostility against the Vendeans. "Every breathing thing in the Vendee is brigand . . ." they wrote. " There is wanted in these parts a man like Carrier, who saved Xantes by the vigour of his measures, or some one like him." They de- nounced the conduct of those who wished to lead tin' Committee to grant an amnesty to the brigands. •' To-day all the brigands whom we take say nothing else to us but 'Only leave us alone, and we won't trouble any one'"; but they (Hentz and Francastel) scouted such an idea. They were too confirmed in ways of bloodshed and brutality during their xxiv THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 353 despotic rule in the Vendee to take any new or sensible view of the position. At the end of the month the Committee of Public Safety recalled them. Their departure was a happy riddance for the unfortu- nate inhabitants of the Vendee, brigand and patriot alike. Cruel, bloodthirsty despots — men dead to every sense of justice or honour ; associated in iniquities innumerable, in cruelties untold, friends of Carrier, admirers of and applauders of Huclie and Martiniere- — they were two of the most infamous wretches which the Eevolution in the name of " liberty" produced. Turreau remained a little longer. For nearly another month the war dragged on; now Vendean victories, now Vendean defeats; all on an ever- diminishing scale. But success did not come to the Revolutionary Government. The Vendee was not anni- hilated, and the limit of forbearance towards even such a true sans-culotte was at last reached. The Committee of Public Safety could no longer ignore the increasing volume of complaint and reprobation, and on the 13th May it removed him from his command. But being a vrai sans-culotte he was let down easy. He was given another appointment — the Governorship of Belle-isle-en- Mer — by Robespierre, it was said ; and the Vendee was rid of one whose presence and career in it had been altogether evil. Personally Turreau was a despicable creature — one of the vainest and meanest of those who strutted for a short time on the revolutionary stage. Militarily lie was a bungler of the highest order ; and, as a leader, what can be thought of the man who, in an address to his "brothers in arms" urging them to action, says, "I will follow you ; do not doubt it " ? '1 A 354 TJIK HEAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. To humanity now he is only interesting as another specimen of I he vrai repvMicain in authority, and as a demonstration of how the Revolution worked out in practice. The military despotism exercised by him under and in the name of the Republic was as absolute a despotism as any which had been exercised by any previous royal despots in France: it was, too, a despotism exercised against, not the noblesse or wealthy classes, of whom there were not many left, but against the people of the humblest class, the rank and file of the agricultural and industrial population — -the people who had helped to make the Revolution, and who were to have been bene- fited by it. Nor was it exercised alone against the Yendeans — who were considered as rebels ; but also against the " patriots," staunch supporters of the new regime. Turreau's military despotism in the Vendee was the complement to Carrier's civil despotisin in Xantes. In one way it was unquestionably more iniquitous, inasmuch as his severities were unprovoked, and wholly gratuitous. Carrier was given his authority publicly by the Convention itself. Turreau usurped his. ( 'arricr found the prisons full : found also at Xantes a numbei of opponents to the extremer ideas of revolution, and he hail bemi sent to deal with them. Turreau found the Vendee peaceable and anxious foi peace — upon that point there is an almost unanimous opinion of the republican officials most qualified to speai about ii — and he deliberately created the occasion for hif inhumanities. He had no mission such as Carrier. lb himself has avowed it in a letter to the Minister of War dated 1.4th February 1704: "You know that, withoui any authorisation, I have taken, and put into execution, tin xxiv THE INFERNAL COLUMNS' 355 most rigorous measures to end this frightful war." He made an absolutely wanton attack on masses of peaceful people, great numbers of them being "patriots" and republicans, and not " brigands," and he remorselessly proceeded to apply to them a military despotism in its cruellest and bloodiest form. He created a fresh civil war, causing a vast loss of innocent life, and the destruc- tion of an enormous amount of property — a war lasting not alone for the time he was in command, but for months and months after he had been superseded. But there is little profit in discussing his and Carrier's relative positions in infamy. The real, salient, emergent fact is, that each, in his own sphere, and in different ways, proved the same con- clusion — that a Kepublie could be as tyrannical, cruel, and unjust a, Government as any other form of govern- ment which humanity had ever tried and suffered under. And as their combined spheres of authority covered the whole held of government, the general conclusion possesses irresistible force, Together these two high officials of the Republic afforded awful proof of the abominations of cruelty and inhumanity which could bo committed by, and in the name of, a Republic, which posed as being a revelation to mankind of the liberty and fraternity and justice which should prevail upon the earth ; and their actions, aided, abetted, and in most part approved, by the Execu- tive Government in Paris, exploded once for all the colossal pretensions of the new Republic to be regard as the realised ideal, the faultless paragon of Governments. Indeed, not only was it demonstrated to be, not a Government of law, justice, liberty, and order, or even of any one of those things, but if was demonstrated by the incontrovertible evidence of actual experience and visible 356 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. xxiv fact to be a Government excelling in lawlessness, injustice, tyranny, and disorder — a Government which afforded no guarantee, no safeguard, no shelter even, against the invasion and destruction of all the most cherished, the most elementary, rights of man. CHAPTER XXV A representative's expenditure It is u relief to turn one's eyes for a moment from these unceasing horrors to a phase of the life of a Representa- tive which, while instructive, is in lighter vein, — to a little bit of autobiography which, being apologetic or deprecatory, is refreshingly free from the vanity and brag and revolutionary cant of their usual reports, which takes one, as it were, behind the scenes of a part of their life when they were not actually occupied in de- vising or carrying out deeds of bloodshed and tyranny and injustice. The Representatives were, of course, paid by the Con- vention for their labours, and some of them managed, one way or the other, to get through good round sums. They travelled about with a regular retinue — one or two secretaries and copyists, with military officers, couriers, and others, vaguely called personnes ; and then they required house or lodging, and such things cost no small amount of money. The Convention made a decree ordering them to send in an account of the money they had received from the Republic, and of their expenditure. Among the accounts sent in was one from Bourbotte, 358 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. — lie who at Noirmoutier proposed and decreed Wie- land's death, and who also was guilty of many other atrocities. Justifying his expenditure, he described " the neces- sity the Representative was under of having several people with him, secretaries, copyists, also of having to entertain generals, officials, and other public functionaries " (Lequinio once entertained the executioner, it will be remembered). His wine bill he was evidently anxious about, which confirms Piet's statement that he took wine immoderately. " The excessive scarcity and dearness of wine decided me to requisition the administrators of the district to furnish me with that coming from (prevenant dcs) the emigres, or those condemned to death, for my consump- tion and that of the persons with me. " On different occasions T received from the people proofs of affection which became for me the cause of some indispensable expense, notably at Nantes, Troyes, etc. " After having made several civic promenades, and sung hymns in honour of 'liberty,' the crowd was so large, the heat so excessive, our courses and our dances so fatiguing, that I felt it my duty to provide some refreshment for several of the citizens who re- conducted me to my lodgings. " I only enter into these details to give you an idea of the nature of the expenses to which a Representative on mission can be forced." There was also an item of 250 livres for " refresh- ments furnished occasionally to mounted orderlies who accompanied me and the general-in-chief when we went to make some reconnaissances.'"' And there were items for new outfits. At the xxv A REPRESENTATIVE'S EXPENDITURE 359 capture of Saumur by the Vendeans, he says, " the Representatives lost everything, saving only what they had on." He himself got some of his things back, but he had to replace many. Worse befell him, however, at the republican defeat and rout at Vihiers, where he lost his horse, arms, and equipage, and where all his things were pillaged. " To escape from the fury of the rebels, who pursued me even in the night," lie continued, " I had to disembarrass myself of all my clothes which impeded my march. I took off my boots. I threw away my coat, without thinking an instant (for it was difficult to do so in such circumstances) of what was in my pocket." The "what" was a pocket-book with 2100 livres in it. He winds up his report : " Here is my account. I should have very much desired to have been able to import more economy into my expenditure ; but, whilst putting ostentation and luxury away from me, I also thought that if a Representative on mission pushed the simplicity of republican manners, of which he should give the first example, beyond reasonable bounds, he would, in the eyes of those over whom the power of modest and reserved appearances has a useful effect, diminish the consideration with which he is in need of being always surrounded." CHAPTEE XXVI THE TOWNS AFTEi: CARRIER'S RECALL While Turreau had been devastating the Vendee with his " infernal columns," the revolutionists in Nantes and Angers, and elsewhere in the surrounding districts, had been continuing their campaign in their usual way ; but so many tens of thousands of Vendeans, counter-revolu- tionists, and " patriots" had been wiped out of existence, that the revolutionary battues could no longer be on the splendid scale they had been. Proceedings, moreover, were becoming somewhat tempered by the slowly awakening opinion among larger numbers of the people that the action of the revolu- tionists in power was being carried to too great lengths : by misgivings on the part of some who hitherto had aided or abetted in the atrocities, that they themselves might be marked down as the next victims, and on the part of others by the desire to rest under their laurels, and to enjoy at leisure the fruits of their plunder and triumphs. With Carrier's recall, the climax of tyranny, so far as Nantes was concerned, was passed; but only the climax, for, for some time after his departure, tyranny there remained rampant; the prisons being full of ch. xxvi AFTEE CAEEIEE'S EEC ALL 361 prisoners, the Eevolutionary Committee still making arrests, perpetrating fresh iniquities, and expressing its intention " to prevent as far as possible aristocrats from fouling the streets with their mephitic presence." All the machinery of revolutionary government remained in operation, and Nantes and its inhabitants had still to go through a great deal before the peace necessary for happiness, and the security necessary for material pro- sperity, once more prevailed. And away from down the Loire, from Bourgneuf, there came, like a distant peal of the thunderstorm which has passed, the news of a noyade ordered by Foucault of noyade fame, promoted to the Governorship of Paimbceuf. There, on the 24th February, a noyade, not with sinking of barge as at Nantes, but simply throwing, or chucking, overboard into the rapid running river, 41 bodies and souls, as i: rebels to the law" — 2 men, one of them aged 78 and blind, a dangerous rebel, 12 women, 12 girls, and 15 children, of whom 10 were between 5 and 10 years of age, the remainder in arms. The fact is not contested, was avowed by Foucault himself. After a little while the energy of the Eevolutionary Committee was somewhat cramped by the enforced absence of Goullin and Chaux ; these two " true patriots," as Carrier called them, having been summoned to Paris to explain a somewhat discreditable transaction on their part. Prieur, moreover, merciless and cruel as lie was, did not lend himself in Nantes, as Carrier had done, to measures of wholesale and extreme violence. That things had improved by the latter part of March is evident from the fact that seventy-two priests 3G2 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. who were in prison on board a ship in the Loire were there alive, and not noyaded. The proceedings against Lambert) 7 and Fouquet, although kept as secret as possible, helped somewhat towards the change of feeling. These two criminals had been sent before the Mili- tary Commission, of which Bignon was president, by the Revolutionary Committee on a charge, not of the count- less murders and noyades and other crimes they had committed, but of abstracting from the Republic and defrauding the sword of justice of several women who were 1 counter-revolutionists. To murder counter-revolutionists, and even innocent people, was evidently, according to the revolutionary standard of morality, not an indictable offence. To pre- vent them being noyaded, or, in other words, to deprive the Republic of its prey, was a capital offence. When the lives of only " brigands " or counter-revolu- tionists were at stake, a few minutes, if even that, usually sufficed to dispose of a case once it came before a Mili- tary Commission : but now where sans-culottes were con- cerned, revolutionary justice proceeded more hesitatingly. Bignon considered it "a very delicate affair,' - and unusual delay took place between the commencement of their trial and the decision. Communications with Carrier were deemed necessary, the culprits having defended themselves by pleading the necessity of obeying Carrier's orders. Lilt Carrier refused to intervene in any way; he would throw no light on the matter, being probably glad to secure the destruction of two accomplices who knew too much, and who would be dangerous witnesses should be himself by any chance be put on trial, lie protested that tliev were " the two best patriots of Nantes," but xxvi AFTER CARRIER'S RECALL 363 none the less he took no step to clear them, or to help them to avoid their fate. They were convicted on the 14th April — that one act of justice the Bignon Military Commission performed — and they were sentenced to death and guillotined, and with their deaths eternal silence fell over countless of the most heinous crimes of the revolutionists at Nantes. 1 While Goullin and Chaux were away in Paris, Phelippes de Tronjolly had been looking into things. From being president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, he had been reduced to being public accuser before it, and he had become a bitter eneny of the Revolutionary Com- mittee owing to a well-founded belief of its intention to cUharrasser itself of him by the guillotine or other equally efficacious means. Xo one was better qualified to unveil the iniquities of the Committee, and, carefully choosing his ground, he, in virtue of his office, formally called on the Committee for explanations as to certain, fur them, very awkward matters — for instance, for the pro- duction of two men who had been prisoners in the Bouffay, of whom he could get no account ; and also for an account of moneys received by the Committee, which, according even to revolutionary law, they were bound to supply, but which obligation they had hitherto ignored or evaded. Just at this time, too, the power of the Committee was also crippled in another very material respect. Hitherto it had had the various tribunals of revolutionary justice in Nantes almost absolutely under its control. It only had to signify a wish as to the fate of a prisoner, and the wish was obeyed. On the 8th May an order of the Committee of Public Safety suspended the operations of all the Military Commissions established in the Depart- 1 The records of this case are not in existence (Berriat St. Prix, p. 4). 364 THE REAL FBENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. mcnts, and nil persons accused of " conspiracy " were to be sent before the Eevolutionary Tribunal in Paris. Thus the power of dictating to the tribunals which were to try their victims was taken from them, and they were deprived of the means of murdering their victims under the forms of law. J tow effective these Military Commissions, which " clad murder with the mantle of the law," had been can be realised from the fact that the celebrated Bignon Commission, the worst of all of them, it is true, in a little less than five months, namely, from the 14th December 1793 to the 8th May 1794, sentenced 2919 people to death, 8 to deportation, 9 to irons, 1 to prison, and acquitted 40. Of these, some 800 or so had been sentenced before the Commission came to Nantes. A change of representatives also made things less favourable for them. Prieur (do la Marne) was sent to Brest, and Bo and Bourbotte succeeded him. Bo's arrival towards the end of May marked, it is said, the end of the actual " reign of terror " there, though not the end of much injustice and cruelty. Phelippes all the while was hard at work ferreting out some of the misdemeanours of the Eevolutionary Com- mittee, and on the 31st May lie reported to the repre- sentatives that the members of the Committee had on different occasions ordered the removal to their own dwellings of wine, wood, and other articles taken from the houses of 6mig?fa or suspects, and had rendered no account thereof, as by revolutionary law they wen; bound to do, and he demanded an account of same, and also par- ticulars as to certain instances in which the official seals hail been broken. The Revolutionary Committee, said Phelippes, had xxvi AFTEE CARRIER'S RECALL 365 received more than a million livres. It contented itself with surrendering 73,000 livres, but could give no account of the balance. The matter was so serious, it was reported to the Com- mittee of Public Safety, and on the 6 th June Bo and Bourbotte. acting under the direct instructions of the Committee, called for a reply within twenty-four hours. The replies not being forthcoming, the Representa- tives on the 12th June ordered the arrest of the mem- bers of the Committee, and the same day these bons et braves republicains found themselves experiencing some of the miseries to which they had unjustly doomed thousands of their countrymen. Gradually the trend of affairs continued towards moderation. The Revolutionary Government in Paris, although Robespierre was still supreme, and also the Con- vention, was becoming more impressed with the convic- tion that moderation would have better effects with the Vendeans than extreme measures, and the Representa- tives Po and Bourbotte, taking their cue from Paris, per- severed in a milder regime. The Revolutionary Committee being under lock and key, the people slowly gathered courage to speak. Light, too, was thrown on the state of the prisons of Nantes, which still were crowded, the prisoners venturing on appeals for mercy. On 17th June some 500 women, imprisoned in the old Convent of the Good Shepherd, sent a petition to the Representatives : " Our misery is at its climax. Shut up more than eight months ago in an unhealthy building, contagious diseases carry off every day some of our companions. You would be touched, Representatives, to see 500 women heaped together — some infirm, some even blind, 36C TJIE REAL FEENCH REVOLUTIONIST oh. some of over seventy years of age, pregnant women, nurses, mothers of families, poor and indigent — the greater number victims of private hatred. We have not been able before this to make known our innocence, as our relatives were prohibited asking for our release." And in the next month, being still in prison, they again complained : " The devouring heat of the sun con- sumes our bodies, weakened by grief. The want of water, increasing our thirst, becomes a new torture." What an awful picture of revolutionary " fraternity." A commission of inquiry reported that in all there were about 4000 prisoners in Nantes, of whom more than 1000 were women. And their report was the old story: "The afflicting picture of masses of men breath- ing a mephitic atmosphere, lying on the ground or paving-stones, without straw or covering, without linen or clothing, without sufficient nourishment"- a story which, though it may weary one by repetition, lias to be borne in mind, for it was a constant factor in the system of revolutionary tyranny, the sufferings of the imprisoned thousands never ceasing. Tor now considerably over two years, under the regime of " liberty and fraternity," thousands of prisoners were each day and night welter- ing in misery and physical agony in the revolutionary torture-houses. But enough has been said on this painful subject to convey some faint idea of what revolutionary prisons were. They played a great part in the tyranny of the "good republican " and vrai sans-culottc. They were the means of inflicting untold suffering and infamous injustice upon all, whether guilty or innocent, whom the revolu- tionists marked down as their prey. Various have been the estimates of the number of persons who actually died in the prisons of Nantes during xxvi AFTEE CARRIER'S EECALL 367 the regime of the revolutionists. Dr. Laennec said 10,000, Lallie 9000, Guepin 5000, Goullin 2000. Tlie truth probably is much nearer 10,000 than 5000. But Nantes was only one place where these evils existed. All around the Vendee, or wherever in it revolutionary authority existed, in Angers, Done, Saurnur, Fontenay, Xoirnioutier, there were prisons crammed with prisoners, and the same evils, the same misery existed. The roll of victims of revolutionary "justice" who died in prison in the Vendee and its sur- roundings, could it by any possibility be obtained, would 1)C appalling, and the infamy of it is increased by the fact that the vast bulk of the prisoners were " untried," and, according to the theory of even revolutionary law, innocent. The plain matter of fact truth is that the revolu- tionists—utterly reckless of human life, utterly regard- less of human suffering — let the unfortunate prisoners die en masse. it mattered not whether the prisoners were innocent ; whether age, infirmity, or physical in- capacity absolutely prevented them taking any action against the revolutionary regime; they were in prison, let them die ; their death saved further trouble. As it was in Nantes this spring and summer of 1794, so was it in Angers, only there the tyrannical rule of the Eevolutionary Committee and of the Eepre- sentatives died more slowly. The Committee kept up its character. Perturbed at a change of opinion which it noticed, it wrote a long letter to Francastel defending its actions and its principles. In their "revolutionary infancy" they said they had been too considerate or lenient, and had done things which they had since rectified. "As long as you leave us our powers we will go our 368 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. way, proud, full of confidence in the justice of our past and future operations ; we will revolutionise, we will electrify, we will ; Maratise ' our fellow-citizens, and our last cry will be ' Vive la Montague '. Vive la Republique ! one and indivisible ; war against traitors and anarchists l ,: ' A fusillade on the 10th February resulted in a quarrel between the Military Commission and the Re- volutionary Committee. The previous day some twenty persons had been arrested in their own houses for no other offence than being aristocrats, and were included in the fusillade, though they had not even been tried. The Revolutionary Committee, which aspired to hold- ing exclusive power, thought that the Commission was taking too much upon itself. " You stop our march, and we will not suffer it any longer. It is more than can be put up with {(Sen est trop)." " Do not accuse us of ambition," the Committee sanctimoniously remarked; '•'the sole ambition we have is to administer justice": and it prohibited the members of the Commission from going any more into the prisons to draw up there the death-lists. The quarrel resulted in a cessation of the fusillades for a time, but they were resumed, though on a smaller scale, and terror continued to reign. The state of affairs in Angers at this precise time is graphically set forth in the following highly descriptive and characteristic letter from the Revolutionary Com- mittee to the Committee of Public Safety: — " Our prisons empty themselves : then they are idled up again : then they are emptied again. One would believe that the country was purged. Eh. well, not at all. It is a hydra. One may cut away [on a beau rmijirr), there always remains a head. The ferocity and injustice of the .Military Commission had become such that some of the best " patriots " ol xxvi AFTEE CAEEIEE'S RECALL 3G9 Angers, and at last even many of the Jacobins, did not feel themselves safe. When the patriots became possessed of the idea that their own heads might be the next to be cut away, they began to think that the existing state of things was not quite so desirable as it had hitherto seemed, and they leagued themselves with the Moderates against the extreme Montagnards actually in power. In March the Revolutionary Committee was dissolved, and a new one appointed, somewhat less violent, and with somewhat curtailed powers. But executions on a considerable scale did not even then end, for on the 8th April 441 women were inter- rogated, of whom 84 were ordered to be shot — a pro- portion of acquittals which shows a great change ; and on the 15th April 99 persons, of whom over 40 were women, were condemned, and shot the following day at La Haie, in presence of Felix and the other members of the Commission. The movement against the proceedings of the Military Commission gained strength, and at last complaints began to voice themselves against even the Representatives. Early in May, all the Military Commissions came to an end ; but a special exception was made as to the Com- mission under Felix. Tie and it were sent to Xoir- moutier, there to continue the brutalities which had distinguished them at Angers, and. which had earned for them a certificate of character from Hentz and Fran- castel. " The Representatives announce their satisfac- tion witli the energetic manner, revolutionary and full of dignity, with which the Military Commission of Angers lias exercised its functions." Revolutionary vindictiveness against women did not terminate with the extinction of the Military Commis- 370 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST en. sions and Revolutionary Tribunals in the provinces. Several batches of prisoners were sent up from the Vendee for trial in Paris. One list is on record showing that a batch of 22 Vendeans were removed to Paris for trial. Of these, 2 1 were women. The act of accusation against them expressed the views of the revolutionists in authority in Paris us regarded Vendean women. " They were all the instruments and the accomplices of tlie priests and the nobles who, in the name of Heaven, inundated French territory with the blood of its citizens. In the Departments of the Vendee, Deux-Sevres, and others, all have contributed, either personally or by their husbands or their children, and by the help they have given, to this disastrous and sanguinary war, which has cost the country so many citizens, and which has delivered entire Departments to devastation and fin-, in fact to all the excesses of an expiring fanaticism.'' They appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 25th dune 1 794, and out of them all only two were acquitted, one of them being a girl of fourteen years of age. Noirmoutier, probably on account of its remoteness, to the last retained its notoriety as the scene of revolu- tionary horrors of the most atrocious type. Thither had been sent prisoners from Fontenay, from Challans, from Sables, where "the prisons were infected with a pestiferous and morbiferous air," until at last the island became " one vast prison. One day the Revolutionary Committee at Sables d'Olonne sent over a small ship with about 200 prisoners. Tyroco, a captain, and a member of the Military ( 'ommission, went down with soldiers to receive them. When disembarked, some 50 or GO were too ill xxvi AFTEB CARRIER'S RECALL 371 or weak to walk, and lay there helpless on the ground. Said Tyroco, " Their condemnation is certain. They have only been sent here to be shot. Help can only prolong their sufferings, and defer their death by a few days. Comrades, let us end their ills, let them be shot." And so some 50 persons perished there and then on the sands, done to death — people innocent according even to revolutionary law and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. " Posterity," wrote Piet, " will have difficulty in believing in such crimes " ; but posterity, having at last learned what infamous wretches the revolutionists were, and what crimes they committed, has no difficulty what- ever in believing his narrative. Felix and his Military Commission must, however, have slackened in their energies as time went on, for a few days before the 9th Thermidor — the date of the downfall of Robespierre — Carnot had written on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety to the Representa- tives at Niort a letter with quite the old ring about it. He told them instanter to order that revolutionary justice at Noirmoutier should resume its course, and that vigorous measures should be taken against the pro- moters, chiefs, and abettors of tin 1 cruel war. " AVhence has been taken the idea that the Govern- ment wish to pardon the authors and abettors and instigators of the outrages committed in the Vendee against the sovereignty of the people ? "Hasten, on the contrary, dear colleagues, to deliver to the avenging sword all the 1 promoters and chiefs of this cruel war, that the scoundrels who for so long have torn the bowels of the patrie receive at last the deserts for their crimes." Alter the 9th Thermidor, when more moderate Repre- 372 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch.xxvi sentatives came there, they found over 400 prisoners " groaning in irons for a long time, and in the most frightful misery." How many had died there before these were tardily released? How many had been done to deatli by revolutionary "justice" in that remote place, that secret prison-house, away from the vision of men, and out of the ken of the world, who can tell ? CHAP TEE XXVII THE COUNTRY AFTER TURREAU'S RECALL There is no clearer proof of the iniquity of the system of government which had been carried on in the Vendee than the admission by the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety that they had been wrong. Not an open and avowed confession — that would have been too much to expect — not even a complete and generous reversal of policy, but, at first, a hesitating and grudging reversal, forced on them by the inherent strength of the A'endean cause, the inherent rottenness of the revolutionary cause, and by the failure of their policy of extermination. The Committee of Public Safety, sensible at last of the disadvantages following Turreau's method of finishing the Vendean war, determined en a new procedure, and on the loth May gave precise instructions to General Vimeux, his successor. Though a mitigation of the previous system, the new one was still very severe, but, within little more than a week, the Committee again toned down its views. The fact was that the curses of the revolutionists were coming home to roost. The insensate destruction of the great stores of grain 374 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. and other food found in the Vendee, which had been one of the keynotes of the policy of the Revolutionary Government, was telling now against themselves. Starving the Vendeans into submission was found to entail starvation of themselves first. Nantes, with its 100,000 inhabitants, mostly republicans, was nearly famished, the people being reduced to live on less than a pound of bread a day. The republican troops there and elsewhere in the west were also on starvation rations ; Paris itself was daily bordering on insurrection on account of the want of food. The great armies on the frontiers, amounting to almost 1,000,000 of men, had also to be fed. Every grain of corn, therefore, was wanted. And so a change of policy was imperative. The Convention, forced to see the danger of a continuance of the scarcity, became deeply concerned as to the prospects of the next harvest ; and the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre included, made an elaborate decree with the object of getting into cultivation again the land which it itself had ordered to be laid waste. A Commission of Agriculture was appointed to undertake the task. A census was to lie made in each commune; seed was to be supplied to those who had none ; workmen were even to lie paid to do the work which the agricultural classes had previously done in their own interests, preparing the land, sowing the grain, reaping the harvest. And to put a stop to the pillaging practices of the troops, the strictest military discipline was ordered to be maintained, and, what was most important, only those were to be treated as rebels who carried arms, who had no domicile, and who did not come to the assemblies of the commune and inscribe their names there. xxvii AFTER TUEREAU'S RECALL 375 The military necessities of the Republican Govern- ment had also considerable influence in the change of policy. The French had lost the important position of Kaiserslautern, which covered the Lower Rhine, and it was a matter of the greatest urgency to send help to that part of the frontier. Troops accordingly must be taken from the army of the west. But the Committee of Public Safety was mistaken in thinking that the Vendean war was almost finished, and was over-sanguine as to what troops could be sent, for a great part were absolutely without arms, and more than one-third of the army w r as in hospital. Moreover, the situation in the Vendee still was more serious than the Committee thought. Charette and Stoftiet were still able to show a bold front and to strike heavy blows. " The affair of the 1st -Tune," wrote General Dusirat, '■'cost us 243 men, 1 colour, and 19 carts." The new commander-in-chief (Vimeux) made no con- cealment of the real state of affairs. " The end of the war," he informed the Committee on the 14th June, " depends absolutely on the means which you fix, and the combined and persevering measures you order. There are still battles to be fought, and many brigands to be killed. Not alone do we find them in force, but they even attack us. ... To tell you this war will end in so many decades — only an ignoramus or a charlatan could hold such language." The change of policy on the part of the Government ijuickly found imitation on the part of the generals. Their acts became more moderate, and their reports also. Women and children and old people were brought in as prisoners instead of being murdered: sometimes even men who were not found actually in arms. But still the 3 70 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. generals report attacks on the brigands, and their defeat with heavy losses — some real, some more or less exaggerated. Boussard, on the 14th June, made an attack on le Marais, capturing with it old people, sick, and 300 to 400 women, also an enormous quantity of grain — "at least 30,000 sacks," he said. " Thirty men without arms surrendered." " Two hundred men have parleyed with heboid. The gentler means (Jes moyens tie douceur} of the Com- mittee of Public .Safety assure the return of a large number of the others. Happy presage for the harvest." As June went on the tendency towards clemency continued. The agents of the Agricultural Commission continued their work to the best of their capacity, and (on the 21st) the Commissioners issued a proclamation to the Yendoans : — "Men, misled or intimidated by certain measures winch the Government never authorised, the Patrie opens its arms to you. Return to your hearths, continue to cultivate your iields, prepare to secure your abundant harvest, and be confident that t lie Government will shut its eyes on the past. One will think no more of the evil than to seek the means to cure it. . . . Return to your hearths with confidence, surrender to us your arms, ami we give you the most positive assurance that you will not be disturbed. " When the Republic promises safety and protection, she always keeps her word. Those who tell you to the contrary are 'calumniators.'" And Vimeux issued an address to the army on the 2Gth June: — " Soldiers of the Patrie, you are called to take xxvii AFTEE TUEEEAU'S EEGALL 377 part in the execution of the beneficent measures decreed by the Commission of Agriculture. " Frenchmen and republicans, you will fight the rebels who oppose in arms the national wish. But you will open your arms to the men seduced or carried away by violence, who have ceded to the perfidious suggestions of the priests and of the nobles ; and who, recognising their error, return to their hearths with the olive-branch of peace in their hand, with repentance in their heart, and with the firm desire to obey the laws of the Eepublic. You will respect property. It is the base of society ; it is the riches of the nation. You will protect individuals. Humanity commands it, your glory exacts it." The style of these proclamations was very different from those of the previous year. The results of the new policy might have been more effective and rapid were it not fur what had gone before. The base deceptions practised by the republican generals had very naturally destroyed any possibility of now believing in the promises held nut. "The brigands declare,"' wrote Grignon (duly 8th), '" that the amnesty now offered them will no more avail them than that of last year, that one is only treating with them to deceive them, and that after surrendering their arms one would put them in prison and shoot them, as had been done to their comrades the previous year." Thus was another curse coming home to roost. The shameful breaches of promises given by republican Eepresentatives, generals, and officers had produced the natural result of a complete distrust of any pledge or promise or proclamation now tendered by them. 378 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. And the Vendean chiefs issued proclamations warning the Yendeans against these overtures. " Yon invite us to return to our hearths," said some of them to the republicans. ; " Where shall we rind them 1 You have burned our houses and massacred our wives and children. You wish now to get our crops and our arms." Though the Republic had entered on a more moderate course of action, there was still a hankering after severe measures, especially when the proposed healing measures were so badly received. Even Bo wrote to the Committee of Public Safety : — •"' I think it will be necessary to put all the columns in march, and fall vigorously and promptly on the brigands, who only take the sheep's skin to conceal the rage of the wolf." The Committee of Public Safety, after considering generally the state of affairs in the west, gave orders that the troops should be kept in constant activity. The generals were to report to the Representatives what they had done "for the extermination of the brigands." Each day of inaction would be regarded as a crime. " They will be responsible for indiscipline among the troops, as well as for any arts of inhumanity, which can only aggravate the evil instead of putting an end to it." Another incident occurred which showed that the Committee of Public Safety were still rather sitting upon the rail between coercion and conciliation. A report got about at Xantes that the Committee had decreed amnesty to the brigands of the Vendee. The Committee wrote (duly ~) indignantly denying the truth of the re] tort, and saying: "Any one who knows the principles of the Committee cannot give the slightest credence to such calumnies/' xxvi. AFTEE TURREAU'S RECALL 379 The upshot of it all appeared to be that the Com- mittee had gone hack to the policy of the neglected decree of the 10 th May of the previous year, to spare the rank and file, " the duped and fanaticised," as the republicans always talked of them, but to he merciless towards the chiefs who had misled them. The conduct of the Yendean chiefs should have facili- tated the task of the Republican Government, for bitter dissensions broke out between them, and unity of action on their side need no longer be feared. The chiefs went their own ways and fought independently ; and there were combats here, there, and every place, sometimes im- portant, sometimes unimportant, but less formidable than previously, the forces being smaller. Fighting, however, was, on the part of the Yendeans, manifestly necessary, for not yet was revolutionary cruelty over. Huche, who, inconceivable as it may appear, was, in spite of all his infamies, still entrusted by the Revolu- tionary Government with a command, broke out into a week's debauch of massacre and incendiarism and pillage in J uly. " Four columns have been set in motion. Castles, mills, bakehouses burned and destroyed, more than 300 persons of both sexes found here and there, bearing con- vincing proofs of their brigandage, killed . . .", he himself reported. It was quite in his old form ; a repetition of brutal horrors, a revival of the promenades of one of Turreau's " infernal columns," ruthless massacre of peaceable and innocent men, women and children, reckless destruction of grain and provisions urgently wanted by starving people, and this too in face of the proclamation of the 21st June of the Agricultural Commissioners. Complaint now more quickly reached the Government 380 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. in Paris, and once more Huche was removed from his appointment and ordered to appear before the Committee of Public Safety: and the Representatives on the 30th duly, on the same day that the news of Robespierre's downfall reached Nantes, issued a decree condemning acts such as had been perpetrated. But they also, barking back to the severer methods of revolutionary government, decreed that all rebels captured with arms in their hands would be treated as rebels and brigands, and those taken without arms, who were recog- nised as having taken active part in the rebellion, should be tried by the Military Commission still existing at Xoirmoutier. The decree produced a very bad impression, as it was very naturally interpreted as contrary to the generous and loyal application of the promises given by the Com- missioners of Agriculture. On the 27th July — the 9th Thermidor — Robes- pierre fell, and the policy of comparative moderation which, with much vacillation, had been entered on, re- ceived a fresh and strong impulse. Not until the latter half of August, however, did the remodelled Committee of Public Safety get time to take up Vendean affairs. It then decreed (on the 18th; that "'justice and dis- interestedness should be made the order of the day " : good manners, the way of persuasion, good faith, should be put in force guises en uigucur). Representatives should exact that the chiefs of the army should set the example of energy and austere principles ; the military staff was to be purified — in a good, and not the revolutionary, sense of the word; and no headquarters were to be fixed in a town. And as regarded the Vendeans, the order was reiter- ated that all the chiefs and oiticers should be punished xxvn AFTEE TUEEEAU'S RECALL 381 with death, but those who had only been misled, or carried away by violence, should be pardoned. A new set of Representatives was sent to the Vendee to give effect to the policy of the new Government in Paris, and they at once proceeded to remove from the public bodies those who were most notorious as " terror- ists," and suspended a lot of generals — among them Huche and Carpentier (who had already been suspended), Dutruy and Grignon, all of " infernal column " fame ; and Guillaume, a hairdresser who under revolutionary regime had developed into a brigade general, and now was sent to prison " on account of the extraordinary and dangerous measures he had employed." So long as harvesting operations lasted there was comparative quiet, but those over, it was easy for the Vendean chiefs to collect assemblies to attack the re- publicans. It was still only the autumn of the year that Turreau and his "infernal columns" had been devastating their homes and fields with lire and sword, and had inflicted on them or their kith or kin the greatest cruelties and sufferings that one class of humanity can inflict on another. The feelings of infamous wrong and injury still rankled so dee}) that numbers were panting for revenge. The offers of pardon were very naturally dis- trusted : and so, once more, the Vendeans assembled together in small armies, and on the 1 8th September they captured even the fortified camps of the republicans at Eoulliere and at Freligne, inflicting a loss on their enemies of 300 men. Beyond that, however, they did little. And the republican army was incapable of making any great efforts, for it was going from bad to worse, growing weaker from day to day. 382 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Nor were the efforts to strengthen it of much avail. The new levies arrived destitute of everything, and the military authorities had nothing wherewith to supply their necessities. Except by spasmodic efforts every now and then, the republican forces were unable to undertake any important movements. A report from the Representatives sums up the state of affairs at this time. " You told us/' they wrote to the Committee of Public- Safety, "that this army was at least 70,000 strong. " Since the 30th August we informed you it was only 45,000, from which had to be deducted at least 15,000 (at present 17.000 to 18,000) sick. Of the remaining 30,000, 14,000 are scattered in all sorts of places, and scarcely '2 0,0 00 are well armed. . . . " The brigands are more numerous than is thought. They are in possession of 400 square leagues of country. . . . We require greater forces. . . . These countries, in spite of the devastations to which they have been sub- jected, still have a population of 250,000 person-, an immense quantity of cattle, and the fields are cow-red with grain and forage sufficient to feed the army of the west for a year." A new commander-in-chief, Dumas, a mulatto, who had succeeded Vimeux. added Ins quota of testimony to the information already in possession of the Committee of Public Safety. •• The Vendee has been treated as a city taken by assault. Everything has been sacked, pillaged, and burned. II existn pen. dr ghu'wavx copelles dr fairr dc Lien. There reigns in all the arm}' a deplorable confu- sion (jd>a //'/"//) and a spirit of insubordination and liilbmo. . . . How convince the inhabitants of these xxvii AFTEE TUEEEAU'S RECALL 383 countries of your justice while the troops violate justice ? — of your respect for persons and property, while they pillage ? " and soon after he resigned. The well-informed Savary has summarised the con- dition of things on both sides. Of the republicans he wrote : " The army, disorganised, scattered around the Vendee in small posts, with no power of resistance, awaited the arrival of a commander- in-chief and of generals to replace those who had been suspended. It was reduced to inaction." And of the Yendeans : " Lassitude has succeeded to the prolonged efforts of the peasants of the Vendee. They sighed only for repose. The chiefs and the strangers surrounding them were alone interested in continuing the war — to preserve their authority and their existence. . . . One heard no further talk of hostilities." Thus, as the end of the year approached, both sides were nearly exhausted. CHAPTEE XXVIII RETRIBUTION AND AMNESTY, DEC. 2, 1794 Events elsewhere than in the Vendee were accentuating the change in general policy of those in authority in Paris. To Paris in July had been conveyed the members of the Revolutionary Committee of Xantes, about twenty in all, realising in mild fashion some of the sufferings they had inflicted on others : for ( kiepin, the historian of Xantes, recounts that they were treated " with the greatest in- humanity," being in chains, and each with an iron collar round bis neck. But they were driven while others had walked ; they were fed while the others bad starved — altogether there was no comparison between their journey and that of the Xantais they had sent to Paris in the previous November. While on their way they received tidings of the downfall and deatli of Uobespierre. Dismay fell upon l hem. ( loullin exclaimed. " ( rood heavens, is it possible ?" (Irandmaison said, " It' it is true, we are lost." Cliaux wept and tore out bis hair. It is quite possible that they might have escaped trial for their crimes bad ii not been for the fact that the survivors of the 1:!2 Nantais whom they had arrested en. xxviii RETEIBUTION 385 and sent to Paris wore still lingering in confinement there, and were pressing their request to be brought to trial. These Nantais appear to have been forgotten, there having been a long delay in furnishing even the modicum of evidence required by the notorious Fouquier Tinville. Nearly forty had died either on the forty days' journey to Paris or in prison there; and inasmuch as the re- maining ninety-two were acquitted, the practical outcome was that nearly forty innocent men were wrongfully sent to death by the Revolutionary Committee — were, in plain words, murdered. Some revenge the survivors had. In September, six weeks after Robespierre's downfall, they were put on their trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, together with Phelippes de Tronjolly, who had been also accused by the Committee. The trial, with its fearful disclosures, almost instantaneously seized and absorbed the attention of Paris, and it soon took an unexpected turn. The principal witnesses were the members of the Revolutionary Committee. Brought from prison to give evidence; before the tribunal, they soon had to answer for themselves, the tables were turned, and the accused Nantais, by their replies and questions to the witnesses, took u] > the role of accusers. Phelippes de Tronjolly, answering the charges against himself of being a federalist and not a republican, turned on his accusers and said: ; ' It is de toute evidence that the Revolutionary Com- mittee has been the origin and motive power of all the miseries which the best republicans have suffered. . . . This Committee is stained with every crime ; and par- ticularly so is Goullin. 1 accuse him to his face. 1 undertake to establish beyond denial all the crimes •2 c :;,S6 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ctober, which had declared that " it is necessary that the brigands of the Vendee be exterminated before the end of the month of October." " For himself, he had only executed the decrees of the National Convention, which put hors la loi all the enemies of the people." There was no symptom of madness in his defence, nor in his conduct during the trial ; nothing more than tin 1 fury to be expected from any scoundrel who finds the tables at last turned, and he himself in imminent danger of unexpected punishment. This defence did not serve him, nor did the plea of " purity of intentions," which so often afforded the means of escape to criminals of his sort. The jury gave its verdict. He was convicted of having given unlimited powers to members of the Marat Company, of having sent to death certain prisoners without trial, and of several other of the charges brought against him: and :i90 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST « n. on the With December was sentenced to death — he and Grandmaison and l'inard — ■ who had massacred men, women, and children, and who based his ferocity on an order lie said he had received " to spare nothing." These three were convicted, and no more ; and a few hours afterwards — so far as the death of each could be a penalty for countless murders each had committed- — they each paid it. The other members of the Committee — even Goullin. Chaux, Bachelier, and Jolly, the garrottew par excellence des 2>risonnicrs — escaped the guillotine. They were found guilty of most of the crimes charged against them ; bid., " not having done these things with criminal or counter- revolutionary intentions." they were acquitted, and forth- with released. How preposterous this result of the trial was, is evidenced by the fact that so much indignation was ox- pressed in Paris, and in the Convention, that they were re-arrested. But there it ended; for though in the following April their trial at Angers was ordered, it never came off, and so they all escaped practically scot- free. Revolutionary justice seemed, in fact, to consider that it had fulfilled all its duties in making ('airier and two of his accomplices scapegoats for the crimes of the herd of sans-eulotte brutes who had participated in their crimes, or had perpetrated other similar ones. And French historians have; followed very much the load thus given. By making Carrier notorious, and by thrusting him into as conspicuous a position as possible, the inference has been suggested that he was an excep- tional product of the Revolution. And the Convention, in putting him on his trial, is xxvm RETRIBUTION 391 supposed to have cleared itself from any reproach of sanctioning such atrocities. The theory, though plausible, is absolutely untenable. Infamous as he was, there was practically nothing to dis- tinguish him from the regular sans-eulotte type, which was as infamous and cruel as himself when it got the chance. But though Carrier's plea of obedience to superior orders is an extenuation of some of his acts, it can never lie an exculpation. It is true to a great extent that he acted under the general, if not precise, instructions of the Committee of Public Safety, and of the Convention, and that they were fully aware of most of his proceedings at Nantes, and did not stop them till the work they had sent him to do had practically been accomplished. "II a, fallu cela a Nantes" ("That had to be done at Nantes "), Robespierre is reported to have remarked when complaint was once made to him of Carrier's iniqui ties. As Carrier himself said in the Convention, when addressing it for the last time, " Tout ici est cov.pable, jusqu'd la soanette die President" Nor was any effort to punish him made during the many months he was in Paris after his recall, where he lived, as lie himself said, " in the sweet satisfaction of having rendered the greatest services to the patrie." On the contrary, he was well received by the Convention, and was appointed first secretary to it, and performed the functions of that otfice under the presidency of Robespierre. And though it is impossible to exonerate or acquit him on such a plea, the main blame for such infamies as he perpetrated must fall on the system of government which used the services of men such as he was, which 392 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. connived at their abominations, and which profited by their iniquities. It is, in fact, the Republican Government, as then constituted in France, which primarily was stained by the acts of its chosen servant, and which ultimately must bear the responsibility for his crimes, and for the crimes of other of its servants, military and civilian, who fell little if at all short of him in every quality that can disgrace humanity. P>ut, at the same time, his career in the Vendee was another illustration of how the Revolution worked out in actual practice, and another proof of the true nature of the brave re'jpublicain, the vrai sans-calotte, when left free, of his true character, when, unchecked and uncontrolled, he was able to give effect to his theories and his ideas, and able to go his own way. While the trial of the Revolutionary Committee was proceeding, the popular society of Angers denounced Hentz and Francastel, and Choudieu's name was added to the denunciation — "to the end that the National Convention may be informed of all the evils which the country has suffered, and know those who caused them." Thus murder was coming out, not only as to Nantes but also as to Angers. The public disclosure in Paris of the horrors com- mitted in Nantes and in the Vendee gave a great impulse towards a milder treatment of the Vendeans. " People in the Convention only spoke of humanity and justice -: : and the Representatives in the west, sensible of this change of feeling, were active in inaugurating and even pressing on the Convention a policy of conciliation. And as they moved about their districts they released a large number of unfortunate prisoners. Their reports show the classes of people who were xxvnr AMNESTY 393 victimised and tyrannised over by the patriots and sans- culottes — show therefore the classes who were dealt with by the Military Commissions and Revolutionary Tribunals, and who afforded the material for the imillotinings and noyades and fusillades by the revolutionists. At Anders more than 500 were released — small farmers, day labourers, and artisans. At Saumur 83 citizens and citizenesses, all artisans, labourers, and work- men, " who are detained for no reason " (dttenu mas aucwn motif). At Fontenay " more than 400 prisoners groaning this long time past in irons have been released. We have given liberty to all those who appeared to be victims of intrigue or passion, and whose infirmities or old age could justify, on the ground of humanity, the mitigation of the severity of measures of safety, to all labourers, artisans, workmen, tradesmen, and fathers of the defenders of the patrie." And on the 5th December Bezard wrote : " L have released from the prisons at Nantes all the unfortunates who were there detained sans motifs, the greater part workmen and agriculturists, also about sixty ex-nobles whose only crime was their birth." This was nearly ten months after Carrier's recall from Nantes. Truly revolutionary mercy worked but slowly. Still slower was it in reaching Eochefort. Here it was on the 12th January 1795 that Blutel, the Eepre- sentative, wrote : " I have just ordered the release of .">00 Vendeans who were in irons, who claim the benefit of the amnesty." In the latter part of November the idea of an amnesty to the Vendeans gained ground. On the 1st December certain deputies of the Vendee 394 THE REAL KlcENOH REVOLUTIONIST m. and Deux-Sevres presented to the Committee of Public Safety an expose of the situation, and of the measures which they considered best calculated for terminating the war. " There arc two lines to take," they wrote. " One is to exterminate the last inhabitant of the country. . . . The Convention has never wished that." (It would have been truer to state that it had tried it and failed.) " The other is to listen to the voice of humanity, to show indulgence, ami to conquer these Departments by persua- sion rather than by arms. But this course must be accompanied by real and imposing forces. Military order and discipline must be enforced, because the con- duct of the generals and Military Commissions has made more partisans to royalism than fanaticism has done." On the 2nd December the Convention approved the conclusions of this expose, and made a decree that all persons known under the name of rebels who surrendered their arms within the period of a month would be neither disturbed nor called to account for the fact of their having taken part in the revolt. It was, in fact, an amnesty ; and as it drew no dis- tinction between the chiefs and the soldiers, it was an amnesty to all. Simultaneously with making the decree tin 1 Conven- tion issued a proclamation to those who had taken part in the revolts in the west. " There remains for you an asylum in the national generosity. Yes, your brothers, the entire French people, wish to believe you as more misled than culpable. Its arms are extended towards you, and the National Convention pardons you in its name if you deposit your arms, and if repentance and sincere friend- ship lead you back to it. Its word is sacred, and it' xxvni AMNESTY 395 faithless delegates have abused its confidence and yours, justice shall he done." It is indeed strange how extraordinarily blind the Convention was to the truth of their proclamation in a different sense from that which they meant. " For two years," the Convention said, u your countries have been the prey of the horrors of war. These fertile climes, which nature seemed to have destined to be the abode of happiness, have become places of proscription and carnage. . . . Fire has devoured the habitations, and the earth, covered with ruins and cypress, refuses to those who remain the livelihood of which it was so prodigal. Such, Frenchmen ! are the grievous wounds which pride and imposture have inflicted on the country." It was true — every word of it ; but the evils described were the handiwork of the republicans them- selves; the pride was the pride of the sans-culotte, who professed to believe that his own gospel was the only true one ; and the imposture was the imposture of the revolutionist, who was the absolute antithesis of all Ids professions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. CHAPTEE XXIX VENDEAN VICTOKY The amnesty decreed on the 2nd December 1794. though helping towards a settlement of the difficulties in the Vendee, was not sufficient to induce the Vendean chiefs to end their opposition to the Kepublic, or to give their consent to their troops doing so. Thus to have ended the strife would have been to sacrifice the objects for which the appeal to arms had been made. But both the republicans and the Vendean chiefs were feeling the pressure of circumstances which made them anxious to come to some satisfactory settlement: and, first, overtures were made, and then negotiations entered into between them. Nantes was almost at starvation point : at times having scarcely a day's food in the city for the people, and scarcely any forage for the horses, winch were dying of starvation; and not only Xantes, but several of the smaller towns in and around the Vendee, and even some of the larger communes were almost without food, and supplies were almost impossible to obtain. And the Vendeans, though they had food enough, had scarcely any Lfnnpowder or other material of war left not c-h. xxix VEXDEAN VICTORY .".07 30 lbs., it was said, over and above the few cartridges which some of the men had. The impulse towards a settlement came from the Government in Paris; and a Commission of Representa- tives, under the presidency of Ruelle, took up its abode at X antes with the object of arranging matters. And then began the revolutionary debacle. Decision after decision, proclamation after proclamation, decree after decree followed each other : all made, endorsed, or approved by the National Convention, which, with its pre- decessors the Constituent and the Legislative Assemblies, had caused the evils which it was now sought to remedy ; all acknowledging out of the mouths of the revolutionists and republicans themselves in the clearest and most precise terms the outrageous despotism — the infamous cruelties — the shameful persecution which under the name of " liberty, equality, and fraternity " they had subjected their countrymen to. The negotiations began with Charette — Stofllet, who had quarrelled with him, taking no part in them. On the 2nd January (1795) the Representatives issued a proclamation informing the Vendeans of the amnesty, and of the conditions on which the past would be forgotten, and their re-entrance into the great Trench family would be allowed. "Tor too long has blood flowed in your unhappy countries. Let the carnage cease — let your country re- take in the Republic the position it never should have quitted. . . . Let us stop the effusion of blood — let brothers no longer massacre each other. Your chiefs are included in the amnesty. "What motives except pride and imposture can any one give you to check the execution of this beneficial law ? -08 TIIK REAL FLEXCH REVOLUTIONIST , ■„. '•Your i-otta^ are burned. We will aid yen to rebuild them. Our own hands shall construct them with you. •" Yiuir lands are uncultivated. We will give you help: animals, harness, ploughs. " The arms are wanting to make your fields valuable. . . . Wo will leave you for the purpose the young men of the requisition: and if your children who for the love of the patrie tlew to the frontiers are necessary to enahle you to repair your misfortunes, they will be restored to you. "Your manufactures are destroyed. We will procure you the means of restarting them." It was, in a way, an abject appeal, and its contrition would have made it pathetic, but contrition could not obliterate the awful past. For there were suine things beyond the power v( the Representatives, or even ^( the Convention. They could not give back to the Vendee the un- numbered thousands who had been deliberately butchered by the republicans. They could not call back to life airain the victims oi' republican tyranny and persecution, whose blood still stained the land, and whose graves still formed high, mounds of newly-turned soil. They could not re-create the happy homes which had been broken up and destroyed with every form of atrocity which revolutionary passion could devise. They could not give back to heart-broken men and women their wives, husbands, and children, nor restore the countless families swept from the face of the earth. Those were things beyond remedy or alleviation, irrevocable, which could never be undone, however full an amrndt the (iovernnien! was now willing to make. The Representatives in their negotiations and dibits xxix VKNDKAN VJCTOltY 399 to win over the Vundeuns had to reiterate over and over again their sincerity ; for previous violations of republican promises were too vivid in Vendean minds and too base to have been forgotten. It was humiliating, but necessary, and those very protestations are proof and admission of their previous deceptions. "This law is no make-believe amnesty. . . . I'o not distrust it. Ah, do not doubt French loyalty and generosity. . . . No. Frenchmen do not doubt the sincerity of the amnesty which is offered them/' And to give greater effect and emphasis, the proclama- tion was posted up in public places to the sound of drum and trumpet. In Nantes a great function gave weight to the declaration. The Representatives, at the head of the constituted authorities, and in presence of the garrison and a great crowd of people, solemnly proclaimed the amnesty, after a salvo of twenty-one guns, and amidst enthusiastic cheering. By mutual agreement between the Yendeans and republicans hostilities were suspended for a month, and the time was turned to account in making arrangements for a conference. There was not over much time to spare. " In the country the leaves will come," wrote Lofficial, the Representative, " and you know how very difficult then the war is in this country." The preliminaries were at last settled, and on the 1 2th February the conference took place in a large tent, at a place called la Jaunaye, near Nantes on the road to ( 'lisson. The ten Representatives came, accompanied by the principal military officers of Nantes and. an escort of cavalry and infantry. Charette also, with a large cavalry escort and many officers. 400 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Lollicial has left a description of these redoubtable warriors : — "All his officers had large white holts, and plumes of the same colour. Charette, in a flesh-coloured coat (veste) trimmed with red and lacings it fleurs-de-lys. At the end of his belt a large piece of black laeo : on the left side of his coat an embroidered medallion enclosing an embroidered crucifix with this motto, Vous qui plaigncz, considercz Mes s<> off ranees — "You who complain, consider My sufferings. 5 In his hat a plume of green, black, and white feathers, with two rows of gold braid. The other chiefs each wore a small gold cross on their left side." The Representatives sat at one side <>\' the table, Charette and his chief officers at the other, and the conference began. Ami. as in one's mind's eye one views this scene, what a descent it was from those hilly heights of republicanism which the true revolutionist had paraded before the people as the true revolutionary ideal : what a departure from those standards of revolutionary morality which the vrai sans-culotte had set up. the great Republic no longer dictating to its rebellious children, but through its Representatives humbly treating with their chiefs, entertaining the demands of '■'fanatics'' who were championing an ''abominable and accursed superstition." holding converse with the upholders of a vile and detested royalty, tolerating " their mephitic presence,'"' and making concessions to those for whose iniquities a short time before no punishment was deemed adequate. biii' six days the conference continued, the republicans meanwhile entertaining the Yendean chiefs with princely hospitality. Finally, on the 17th an agreement was arrived at, 1 he terms of peace were settled. xxrx VENDEAN VICTORY 401 On the Vendean side the concession made was their submission to and recognition of the Republic — not a very great concession considering how little during the long and costly strife the royalist party had done to aid them ; considering too that they had lived under the Republic for some time before the outbreak took place, and that in reality the free exercise of their religion was the first object of their appeal to arms. On the republican side — short of this one thing — everything for which the Vendeans had fought was conceded. The young men of the first requisition were left in their homes. For a certain number of years the Vendeans were to lie exempted from compulsory military service ; but what was even of greater importance was the decision that the churches were to be reopened, and even the refractory priests were to be allowed to officiate in all parishes where the patriots were not in a majority. The settlement was embodied in a set of five decrees made by the Representatives at Nantes on the 17th February. But in a way more important even than the settlement arrived at was the avowal made by the revolutionary Representatives as to the responsibility for the war, and for all its attendant horrors. In the preamble of the decrees it was written : — ''Considering that the Departments of the west have been devastated for two years by a disastrous war, that the troubles which agitate them have their origin in the closing of the temples and the interruption of the peace- able exeivise of all worship whatever: "That the men, the authors of these evils and these disorders, are those who wished to plunge France into anarchy, and who, by persecution, sought to establish a special worship (un < "tdte part kid ier) of which they wished themselves to be the pontiffs; that these anarchists, after 2 i) 40 2 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. having audaciously violated the rights of man, have been reached by the sword of the law ; " Considering that the National Convention never intended to prohibit any form of worship (n'a jamais cntendu interdire) ; that by Article 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Alan and the Act of the Constitution it, on the contrary, authorised the peaceable exercise of worship; the Representatives decree: " 1. That every individual, every section whatever of citizens, may exercise freely and peaceably their worship. " II. The individuals and ministers of all forms of worship are not to be troubled, disturbed, or proceeded against on account of the free, peaceful, ami indoor exercise of their worship." And, by another decree, they directed that the in- surgent chiefs and inhabitants of the Vendee, by virtue of their submission to the Republic, should be free from all recherches for the past, and should enter once more into their property. Indemnity was to be given to the people for their losses, and help to enable them to re- build their houses, re-establish agriculture, and restart trade. The young men of the requisition were to remain in the Vendee to re-establish agriculture, and make com- merce flourish. On the same day that the Representatives made their decree, a declaration was made by Charette and his principal officers : " We have felt that we were Frenchmen, that the general good of our country should alone animate us; and it is under the influence of these sentiments that we declare solemnly to the National Convention, and to the whole of France, that we submit ourselves to the Republic xxix YEN DEAN VICTORY 403 one and indivisible, that we acknowledge its laws, and that we undertake the formal engagement not to make any attack against it. . . . " We make the solemn engagement never to bear arms against the Republic." And a short time later, as some of Charette's officers, discontented with the peace, were endeavouring to excite fresh troubles, he and three others issued an address to the inhabitants of the Vendee explaining to them fully what had been done and won. " The peaceable exercise of your religion is accorded to you ; you can use this imprescriptible right with security. . . . You are free from this moment to offer to the Supreme Being, in accordance with your ancient usages, your homage and your gratitude. . . . " The National Convention contracts to-day to in- demnify you for your losses, and to repair, if it is pos- sible, all the evils caused by a regime of proscription and injustice." To duly, formally, and publicly mark the fact of peace having been established, a great military and official function was again held at Nantes. The Repre- sentatives, the generals of the army of the west, Charette, and the Vendean chiefs, in one great procession, entered Nantes, to the music of military bands, the salvos of artillery, and the cheers of the crowds. The city was filled with joy and resounded to the cries of " Vive la Republic pie ! " "Vive la Convention Nationale ! " "Vive l'union ! " and there was a state dinner given by the Representatives to the Vendean chiefs, and a gala, spec- tacle ; and the next day the city was en fete, and a ball was given, and Charette was greeted with cries of " Vive le heros et le pacificateur de la, Vendee!" He and the Vendean chiefs paid a visit also to the 404 THE REAL l-KENCTI REVOLUTIONIST popular society, where they wore received with " fraternal acclamations." At the same time the Representatives issued a pro- clamation to the inhabitants of the Departments — be- ginning it with familiar words which excited such joy in the Convention in previous years, when that august body thought that the Vendee had been destroyed. Now, however, they bore a different sense. ■■'There is no longer a Vendee, the Departments of the west re-enter the bosom of the Republic. Its unit}' and indivisibility have just been recognised by the chiefs of the Vendean army." It was a great triumph for the Vendeans to have extracted from the Representatives the admissions as to where the responsibility for the war lay, but it was as nothing to that gained by extracting a similar declara- tion from the National Convention itself. About a fortnight later (on the 1 4th March; the National Convention itself, the walls of whose chamber had time after time resounded with awful imprecations and maledictions against the Vendeans and all their works — with cruel and bloodthirsty decrees against these enemies of the country — the National Convention decreed unanimously that it approved these decrees of its Representatives-— a] (proved them with their account of the causes of the war. namely, the closing of the temples, and the interruption of the peaceable exercise of worship. Not many weeks later Stofllet, together with his principal officers, gave their adhesion to the terms of the pacification accepted by Charette, and on the 2nd May they signed at St. Florent their formal assent. And the decrees consequent thereon were in identi- cally tin.- same terms as those at la daunave. and once xxix VENDEAN VICTORY 405 mure the Convention converted into law the decrees of its Representatives, and in so doing once more reiterated its condemnation of its own previous action. Thus all sections of the Vendeans had come to terms with the Republic, and the war for a time was over. Republicans have claimed the peace of la Jaunaye as a triumph, and from one point of view it was so, for the Vendeans made their submission to the Republic. But the triumph was an empty one, for the Vendeans had been republicans till they had been driven out of the Republic by republican tyranny, and to get them back in diminished numbers into the republican fold afforded little ground for boasting. The real victory lay with the Vendeans ; for they won back the essentials of religious liberty. That they should pay their own ministers, and that service should he indoors, and that no emblems should be publicly dis- played, were small matters, so long as they could worship and were allowed to have their own ministers. Over and above this, however, there was another triumph, and it is this which is of abiding importance. They wrung from the Republican Government, through the acts of its Representatives and the decrees of the Convention, the confession, that revolutionary and re- publican legislation and administration were the first cause of the Vendean war. In adopting, approving, and giving the force of law to the decrees of the Representatives, it placed on record in the clearest terms a positive refutation of the con- tentions of the revolutionary writers who, both before and since, have lauded the Revolution and all its works in the Vendee, and have cursed the counter-revolutionists and all their works. It acknowledged that " the troubles which had 40 G THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. agitated the Departments of the west had their origin in the closing of the temples and the interruption of the peaceable exercise of all worship whatever." It acknowledged that the rights of man had been I; audaciously violated." It acknowledged that there had been " persecution." Manifestly, therefore, the contention of revolutionary writers from the time of the Revolution down to the present day, namely, that those troubles had their origin in the machinations of the noblesse and the intrigues of a fanatical priesthood, is wholly false and untrue. Manifestly, too, as the closing of the temples and other acts of persecution were the acts of the Revolu- tionary Government, the whole onus of responsibility for the Vendean war, with its ruin and bloodshed, and the whole shame and infamy of the revolutionary pro- ceedings and actions in the Vendee, lie on the Republic. And precluding any argument as to this acknow- ledgment being only words, there is the decree of the Convention that indemnity was to be given to the people for their losses, and help to enable them to start afresh. It was a tremendous avowal for the Convention to make, for it was an absolute exculpation of the Vendeans, and an inculpation of the Revolutionary Government, not merely of Robespierre and his colleagues, but of the National Assembly, of the National Legislative Assembly, and of the National Convention itself. And coming from the body which had directed and enacted the vast portion of the measures of revolutionary tyranny, there is no going behind it. To have, out of the mouth of the Convention itself, the verdict "guilty" in the charges brought against the revolutionary Republic is decisive. xxix VEX DEAN VICTORY 407 Here then we may stop, as the peace made between the Vendeans and the republicans is practically the end of the period in which the true character and unfettered nature of the revolutionist are best studied. Subsequent events throw little or no further light thereon, nor do they alter the ineradicable records of accomplished facts. In connection with the A r endeans, however, there are just a few incidents more which are of interest, and bring their history also to the end of a definite period. Xot long after the peace of la Jaunaye and the peace of St. Florent, differences once more arose between the Vendean leaders and the Government. Indeed, actual peace and quiet had not been realised even for a brief period, for the country had remained in a disturbed and restless state. The excitement entailed by the war could not quickly be allayed, nor could fierce passions quickly cool ; there were many desperate men left who were so habituated to a life of violence, and so dependent on war for their livelihood, that they could not settle down to peaceful ways. And there were robberies, and assassinations, and violence, and small armed bodies of wandering pillagers, and disturbance in many parts of the country : and it soon became apparent that the peace was little more than a mock peace. And then some of the Vendean leaders — Charette himself included — -either impelled by royalist pressure, or unable to restrain their more violent followers, violating the oath they had taken not to bear arms again against the Republic, again took to arms : and, on the 25th June, once more raised the standard of revolt, and without giving any notice attacked and captured the republican camp of " des Essarts," and inflicted a loss of some 50 to 100 men on the republicans. 408 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Once more there was months of righting, now, however, on a very much smaller scale. And while the lighting was going on there occurred one episode which has added deep pathos to this final stage of the struggle. He for whose leadership the Yendeans had been beseeching, he in whose cause they had been so valiantly warring, came, saw, and made the great refusal. The Count d'Artois, the brother of the titular King of France, embarked on an English frigate, the Jason, and reached the lie d'Yeu on the 2nd October. Four leagues off was the continent where Charette awaited him — Charette who some months previously had received a letter from the Regent (now the titular King;, dated 1st February, which had taken nearly live months reaching him — an effusive letter : " At last I can communicate direct with you. I can tell you of my admiration, of my gratitude, of the ardent desire 1 have to join you, to partake your perils and your glory. I shall fulfil my desire, even it' it should cost me all my blood/' He had not come, could not come, but his brother had, and was there, within sight and reach of France. Rut "this magnanimous prince," as Charette in his illusionment had called him, unable to gather courage, to risk one drop of his blood, after weeks of hesitation, gave up the idea, and sailed away for England, well deserving the scornful, scathing, contemptuous, condemnation which Charette wrote of him to Louis XVIII. : — "'Sire, the cowardice of your brother has lost every- thing. His return to England has decided our fate. In a little while nothing will remain for us but to perish uselessly for your service." And perish he soon did. The struggle was disastrous XXIX YKNDKAX VICTORY 409 for those of the Vendeans who still were in arms ; disastrous for StofHet, who was captured and shot ; disastrous, too, for Charette, the leader of a hundred tights, for lie, too, was captured and condemned, and one afternoon in March 179 6, on the small Place at Nantes now known as the Place Viarme, he, with un- bound eyes, bravely faced the firing party, and gave the signal for the shots winch ended his stormy and courageous career. But the new campaign did not last long. The skilful hand of Iloche quelled any further resistance: the essential had, moreover, been already conceded by the Republic — religious liberty — and once more comparative peace resigned. It is but right that tribute should be paid to the Yendean people for the splendid struggle they had made, and for their victory. Hundreds of the Yendeans during the war performed feats as valorous as any ever recorded in other wars; thousands of them faced and met death in the battle- field as courageously as the most disciplined soldier, or as the most valiant knight ever did; and thousands, women as well as men, were as genuine martyrs for their faith as were those early Christians who fought the wild beasts in the Roman arena. Nor were their trials, their sufferings, their deaths in vain. They were victorious in the cause for which they really fought, that of religious liberty : and against them all the power and tyranny of the Revolutionary Government did not prevail. GHAPTEK XXX CONCLUSION The picture which has been presented in the previous pages of the French revolutionist, he who was acclaimed by himself and his associates as "the good/' "the pure," "the brave republican," and "the true sans-eulotte," is the picture of him in the plenitude of his powers, in the full flower of his existence, in the days of his uncon- trolled liberty, when his instincts and his passions had full, free, and unchecked play, and when he showed his real self. And painted as it is by himself and his comrades, the picture is there for a wondering world to contemplate, a sign and portent to the end of time. So wrapt up was he in his own glory, so proud was lie of all his sayings and doings, so confident that men would lake him at his own valuation, that tyranny could be passed off as liberty, and fratricide as fraternity, that he was reckless in displaying qualities, and performing ads which the world and posterity might not judge in quite the way he expected. A lew touches are still required to complete the picture, for one phase of his character has not yet been touched on, the phase of his adversity. In the Vendee he showed himself as what is cH.xxx CONCLUSION 411 familiarly known as " a poor creature/' always blaming other people for his own ignorance, blunders, and misdeeds. " Xous sommes trains " (we are betrayed), shouted the soldier as he bolted from the held of battle, the only betrayal or treason being his own in running away. " AVe are starved," said the sans- culotte, the starvation being the result of the reck- less destruction of corn and food by himself and his comrades, or his absurd interference with the great laws of supply and demand. " We are stricken with plague," he said, and the infection which laid him low was the result of his own inhumanities, the overcrowding of his prisoners in the republican pest-houses, or the imperfect burial of his victims. Some men, however atrocious their lives and acts, succeed in winning a certain measure of admiration by ] (resenting a bold front in their adversity, and by their faithful adherence to their principles when circumstances change and go against them. But not many of the revolutionists were of this metal. The moment the measure they had meted out to thousands was meted out to themselves they whined. Chaux, for instance, a prominent member of tin: Revolutionary Committee of Nantes who had actively helped and participated in the perpetration of many of the horrors which have been described, when arrested, howled over his ill-treatment, his imprisonment, his being torn from Ins family, his being put in irons, his being put in a carriage already full, reduced to beg some clothes, having been only allowed five minutes to change his shirt, proscribed, dragged before the tribunal of blood, his being thrown on a handful of straw, devoured by insects, living in a place intended for the enemies of his country, groaning under false accusations which con- 412 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST founded him with assassins, which presented him as a cannibal, as a false patriot gorged with gold and crimes, covered with the blood of his fellow-citizens. He is so overcome by his reflections that he says : " At this thought the pen falls, at the recollections of my sufferings my ideas become troubled and confused." But it was only his own sufferings which he thought of, those of the thousands he had made endure a crueller lot, a worse fate, were ignored. Goullin, who, while in power, had violated every form of law, and jeered at the sufferings of his victims, complained indignantly of what he considered the violation of the forms of law in Ids treatment, and of his being confined in a prison intended for the greatest scoundrels, as if it were not an appropriate place for him. The gentle Carrier was so aggrieved by being called a tyrant, that he exclaimed. "How harassing it is to me to be called a tyrant ! " History has rather generally attributed the responsi- bilities of the horrors of the French Revolution to one individual — Robespierre — but gradually it has been recognised that he was by no means the sole culprit : that the disease was far more widespread, more deep- seated in the French constitution : and that there were countless willing hands in all this horrible work. And history, too, has attributed all the horror.- at Xantes and in the west to Carrier, and pinned him down as the culprit. It would naturally he consolatory to a great and high-spirited nation thus to limit the number of its infamous sons: but facts do not fit in with the theory. hi Xantes, Carrier was by no means the only culprit : nor at Angers was Francastel the only culprit : nor were these two Representatives the only culprits among xxx CONCLUSION 413 the Representatives who ruled in the Vendee. Bourbotte, Choudieu, Hentz, Esnau Lavallee, Prieur (de la Marne), in many ways ran them elose. Nantes, Angers, and Saumur, and all the towns in or around the Vendee, were inundated with "apostles of carnage." Revolu- tionary Committees, Revolutionary Tribunals, Military Commissions, popular societies, sans-culotte generals and revolutionary tyrants were everywhere; all of these throwing themselves heart and soul into the most horrible measures of oppression, cruelty, and bloodshed; civilians and military vying with each ether in revolu- tionary energy, in deeds of atrocity, scrambling for plunder, regardless whether it was taken from friend or foe, and revelling in the proceeds. And then, when brought to book for their infamies, they all tried to throw the blame and responsibility on some one else than themselves, instead of boldly avowing their handiwork, as really sincere and conscientious men engaged in a great and good cause would have done. The military despots defended themselves by the plea of the necessity of military obedience. Turreau, the; commander-in-chief, the chief of them, pleaded the decrees of the Committee of Public Safety and the Con- vention. The Revolutionary Committees pleaded the necessity of obedience to the orders of the Representatives, and the Representatives sheltered themselves under the necessity of carrying out the policy imposed upon them by the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention. This left the responsibility altogether on the shoulders of the Convention ; but it evaded most of it by asserting that things had been done without its orders or approval, or even its knowledge. And so, as if worked out, no one was to blame. As to some of the most notorious cases, the Conven- 414 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. tion loudly announcing that ''Justice was to be the order of the day,'"' made a show of energetically pursuing some of those who committed the atrocities, but its energy did not carry it very far. Its conscience was appeased by a few small con- cessions. It delivered Carrier up to justice. It ordered the arrest of a few Representatives who had been denounced to it, Hentz and Francastel among the number; and so that there might be material for the proper consideration of the matter, it decreed that the correspondence of the Representatives with the Committee of Public Safety and their reports should lie printed. The reports never were printed, however. It ordered the arrest of Turrcau and a very few of the most notorious of his generals of " infernal column " fame; and as the basis of an indictment against them it ordered that a report should be made to it by the Com- mittee of Public Safely as to the conduct of the generals and the acts of the Military Commissions. A prolonged inquiry was made as to the horrors which had been committed, the testimony of numerous witnesses was taken in different localities, a great mass of evidence collected, but the result never saw the light of day, and the report never appeared either. Evidently, the reputation of the rrai ri'^iulilknin, such as it was. could not have stood the weight of such an rxposi' 1 , A full disclosure would have been too terrible, the iniquities narrated too appalling for ears t<> hear <>r eyes to read, tin' injury to republican government tun overwhelming; and so the 1200 documents which were collected, describing some of the infamies and cruelties which had been committed, were buried in tic secrecy of tic vaults of the hVpiiblic. They would lie thrilling and instructive reading were they now published. xxx CONCLUSION 415 And with the exception of Carrier and his gang, the few culprits who had been singled out were not even put on their trial. They were kept in custody — that was all. And then, as the existence of the Convention drew to an end, that august body, frightened at the number of culprits who, if there was any justice under a Republic, ought to be tried, and possibly with misgivings as to its own share in the nefarious business, wishing:, in ending its labours, to throw a veil over all its own transgressions and iniquities, decided on a dying deed of dazzling generosity and forgiveness, and forgave itself. On the 2Gth October 1795 (4 Brumaire, An iv.), the last day of its existence, it passed a. law giving amnesty to all those who in their acts relating to the Revolution had overstepped the limits of their duties (etaient sortis iles homes des devoirs) — a form of condemnation — so mild as to amount to approval, and all proceedings against sue) i persons were extinguished and destroyed. And so Hentz, and Francastel, and Huche, and Orignon, and the rest of them, men steeped in every iniquity, and saturated with the blood of innocent men, women, and children, were released from prison, and the authoritative revelation of their crimes, which would have brought disgrace and infamy on the Convention itself, was obviated. And the sponge of revolutionary oblivion was passed across the slate on which were written in blood the records of the atrocities, the injustices, the crimes of the whole revolutionary crew of Military Commissioners, [{evolutionary Committees, Marat ist Companies, soldiers, generals, and Representatives. ^Turreau, with diplomatic effrontery, refused to avail him- self of thi' amnesty, and insisted on being put on his trial. On the 10th December 1795 he was tried by the 4 10 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Military Council sitting' at Paris, and whitewashed ; the Council unanimously declaring that '"'all the charges ini-ulpntion$\ against him were unfounded and calum- nious, and that he had worthily performed his duties {rcmpli $>:$ fonctions) in the said command as a soldier and citizen " — a decision which in downright moral obliquity has only a parallel in that passed by Hentz and Francastel upon Coy Martiniere. And in later years this vrai sans-cu I 'ottc, the organiser and commander-in-chief of the " infernal columns." passed on into employment under the Emperor, and then under the erstwhile detested Bourbon royalty, against which he had fought, accepting honours and decorations from both: and in the train of royalty, as Lieutenant-* General of the army of the King, and Chevalier of St. Louis, once more revisiting the Vendee, the scene of his infamies. And so, out of the vast numbers of evildoers but an infinitesimal few were brought to account for their iniquities. One can almost count on one's lingers the number of those who suffered the extreme penalty of the law for their climes. Carrier. Grandmaison. I'inard. Lamberty, Fouquet, Maitiniere, and a lew others. Lut what are they among so many who deserved tin- saint.' fate .' Some few suffered a short imprisonment, awaiting a trial which never took place, but the great bulk of them escaped all punishment whatever. It ha- been the fashion to account lor and palliate the crimes of the revolutionists by saying that they were in d. Some excuse would, in charity, be devised to remove from the French character the stain of such fearful cruelrii-s. xxx CONCLUSION 417 But then; is little to confirm such a theory, whilst there is much to refute it. ■ Violent and extreme they were, but even if they were all mad, that does not exonerate the Republic as a form of Government which permitted madmen seizing possession of it, and governing. There is, however, little sign of that motiveless irresponsibility of wickedness which is the mark of insanity. For, when one examines the lives of the revolutionists as seen on the Vendean stage, one finds one object con- sistently* running through all their evil deeds — the object of self; one finds their actions prompted by very common and base passions — greed, covetousness, lust ; and by a very common ambition — the love of power, of fame, of position, of wealth : the desire for the means — coute que route — uf gratifying their appetites. These were their motives, these their incentives. Even patriotism, with which it has been sought to cover the multitude of their sins, had no share in their acts and objects, — nothing but self. Their high-flown professions of adoration of the great principles whose names they prostituted were nothing but cant. No sooner did the opportunity offer than they did the very things themselves which they decried in others. Carrier, Goullin, the whole of the Revolutionary Com- mittees at Nantes and Angers and elsewhere, having pulled down all authorities, placed, or got themselves placed, in authority. Having decried wealth as a crime, they appropriated as much as they could lay their hands on — wading through blood to get it. Having decried luxury, they revelled in orgies of food and drink and lasciviousness. 2 E 418 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. Not one crime or sin committed lty those whom they destroyed, but they themselves committed when they got the opportunity. It was as it' Lazarus had assassinated Dives oil account of his self-indulgence and inhumanity, had seized on his wealth, had clothed himself in his fine robes, fared sumptuously every day, and then spurned the unfortunates who had taken his place at the gate, and posed to them as a redresser of evils, as a regenerator of mankind, as a true patriot. But they did not content themselves with pulling down the aristocracy, the noblesse, the clergy, the wealthier section of the bourgeoisie: they fell upon the people, for plunder was to be got out of them too. Of the 200,000 persons destroyed in the Vendee, but an infinitesimal portion belonged to the upper and governing classes against whom the Revolution was made. Of the hundreds and thousands they robbed and plundered, only a small proportion belonged to the wealthier classes of society. The people were the victims, the people in whose favour the Revolution was declared to be made. The administrators of Iioche-sur-Yon wrote once to Huche protesting against the actions of his soldiers, and urging in support of their protest the statement that '" republicans do not pillage their friends and their brothers." This prevalent superstition could not have been put more tersely. The whole treatment of the Vendee, from the very inception of trouble downwards, proved that this was the one consistent thing the re- publicans did do— that that was in fact and effect the Revolution. The revolutionists could not slop, alter appropriating the property of the noblesse and the Uhurch, but they went on to pillage their friends and xxx CONCLUSION 419 their brothers. And what is worse, they did not content themselves therewith, but went on to put them to death with every form of fiendish injustice and brutality they could devise or carry out. Mouthing incessantly about .justice, they were the incarnation of the most outrageous injustice. Indeed from the highest executive authority in France, the Committee of Public Safety, backed by the Convention, down to the lowest private soldier in the ranks, the same spirit of injustice was rampant. Here and there there were exceptions. A few of the Representatives had some sense of right and justice, had some feeling. Among the generals of the army also were several against whom no dishonourable charge can be brought — Biron, Marceau, Richer, Savary, for instance. And here and there both officers and men, at the risk of their own lives even, showed that they were human, that they were made of better stuff than the regular revolutionist, but they were the exceptions. The bulk, the vast bulk of the revolutionists as seen in the Vendee, were such as have been described. A chance phrase often sums up a whole policy. " X'y en a-t-il pas un plus scelerat ? " (" Isn't there a bigger scoundrel?") Goullin is reported to have asked when enlisting the most debased, depraved, and blood- thirsty wretches who could be found for the Maratist corps of revolutionary fiends at Nantes. That this was the guiding principle of revolutionists m authority is evidenced throughout the Yendean war. Carrier and Francastel and Hentz could only have been appointed to their important posts of Representative after a " Xo " to the question of the Committee of Public Safety, " Is there no bigger scoundrel ? " Rossignol, " the cherished child of the Revolution," " the eldest son of the Committee of Public Safety," and Turreau could only have 420 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. been appointed as commanders-in-chief after the same question and the same answer; whilst as for them, and the generals of divisions or of brigades such as Huche, Grignon, Cordellier, and a host of others, members of Revolutionary Committees such as Goullin, Vaeheron, or of Military Commissions such as Bignon, Felix, — " Xo, no : humanity has readied its lowest, basest, most infamous type ; there are no greater scoundrels." It is marvellous that the French Revolution should have imposed on the world so long, but the explanation is that its praises have been so vociferated and dinned into the public ear by those whose work it was, or who had or have an interest in keeping up the delusion, or by those who have seen in it great " realities " and " verities " winch had no existence, that men have accepted what the revolutionists told them as true — have taken the revolutionists, in fact, at their own valuation. They have taken those fellows at their word : they have accepted their professions as genuine ; they have accorded to them all the honours of their being apostles of liberty and equality and fraternity, as if they had been really so. Whereas, in reality, the vmi rdpuldieain was the most transparent impostor. He filched from the Christianity which he derided and persecuted and did his very utmost to destroy the great principles of liberty and equality and fraternity, and proceeded then to give to each his own seliish and degraded interpretation. And in and around the Vendee that interpretation is seen actually at work. The revolutionist is ^oen there through no disturbing. distorting medium. He is seen as he really was — the living lie to each of the three great cardinal principles xxx CONCLUSION 421 of the political creed which he professed, " Liberty, equality, fraternity." His idea of " liberty " was unrestrained licence for himself to pillage, rape, rob, and murder with impunity, and he acted on it. His idea of " equality " was to pull down all authority, and to put himself in the places of those he pulled down, and he acted on it. Whilst his idea of "fraternity" is graven for ever in letters of blood and fire throughout the Vendee. •' Justice " had no place in the new political motto, for the French revolutionist had not the remotest idea of what the word meant, or what the thing was. The conclusion which emerges with the most absolute clearness from the history of the Revolutionary Govern- ment in the west in those years is that the republican form of government as then organised in France had the very widest capacities for tyranny. Every evil in the monarchical form of government which the Revolution aimed at destroying was reproduced in an intensified form under the Revolutionary Govern- ment. Personal liberty was invaded in a more wholesale manner and on a far larger scale than under the monarchy. The right of anything even approaching fair trial was completely ignored. Freedom of expression could not have been more rigorously suppressed. Religious liberty was annihilated, and a republican form of government showed that it was as capable of a religious persecution as infamous as that which directed the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or as that of the Spanish Inquisition. The rights of property were systematically invaded and set at naught. 422 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST ch. All the rights of production, of manufactures, of commerce, of business dealing between man and man — everything, in fact, on which the industrial pro- sperity of a country depends — were broken in on and destroyed. And over and above all there was no justice, only rampant and brutal injustice. Everything that the freedom-loving, intelligent man struggles for, would give his life for — free thought, free speech, free worship, justice, security for life, security for property, these great blessings which are the highest object of true statesmanship to give to a people — were conspicuous by their absence under the revolutionary regime. The fact, so plain and evident, so incontrovertible, is a crushing refutation of the laudation which has been so lavishly bestowed on the revolutionary cataclysm in France. No rational people would risk a repetition of such sufferings or the occasion for such wrongdoing : no rational nation would wish to lay itself open to a repeti- tion in its own body of the appalling horrors of the Revolution. To attain ever nearer the Christian ideals of real liberty, equality, and fraternity will doubtless be the very high desire and ambition of many existing and future nations and races, but for those who wish to attain those ideals the French Revolution is a warning signal of the clearest, most portentous, character. And just as ships sailing across the waters of tin' great dee}) see the light which tells them of danger and shipwreck, so in future ages will the great nations of the world in their voyage towards their unknown destinies see in the history of the crimes, and cruelties, and horror, xxx CONCLUSION 423 and terror of the French Revolution the warning light that there lie injustice, and tyranny, and inhumanity, and fratricide, and all those dangers and miseries which are the negation of the aims and desires of a civilised and intelligent people. APPENDIX LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS USED IN THIS BOOK Anon. — La Loire vengee (Paris). Babeuf, F. N. — Du systeme de depopulation, etc. (Paris, 1795). Baclielier, J. M. — Memoire pour les acquittes (Angers, An iii.) Baguenier-Desormeaux — Documents sur Noirmouticr (Valines). Baralere — Aete d'accusation eontre Carrier (Paris, 1794). Barruel, A. — Histoire du clerge pendant la revolution francaise (London, 1801). Benaben, L. G. — Rapport (Angers, 1795). Blordier-Langlois — Angers et le departenient de Maine-et-Loire de 1787- 1830 (Angers, 1837). Boncliamps, Madame de — Memoires sur la Vendee de (London, 1S23). Bourcier, Camille — Essai sur la terreur en Anjou (Angers, 1870). Buehez, P.-J.-B., et P.-C. Roux — Histoire parlementaire de la revolu- tion francaise (Paris, 1834-38). Busserollc, Carre de — Les Vendeens ;i Thouars (Montsorcau, 1890). Massacre de 200 prisonniers (Tours, 1884). Souvenirs de la revolution, etc. Carrier, J. B. — Rapport de la Commission des Vingt-un, etc. (Paris, An iii.) Cavoleau, J. A. — Description du departenient de la Vendee (Nantes, 1818). C***, Comte de — Sejour de dix mois en France (Londres, 1795). Chardon, E. H. — Les Vendeens dans la Sarthe (Le Mans, 1869-72). Charette — Correspondence secrete, etc. (Paris, 1799). Chassin, Ch.-L. — La preparation de la guerre de Vendee (Paris, 1S92). La Vendee patriote (Paris, 1893-95). Les pacifications de l'ouest (Paris, 1896-99). Choudieu, Pierre, et C. J. Richard — Les representants du peuple (Saumur, 1793). Courtois, E. B. — Rapport de la commission; papiers de Robespierre (Paris, 1795). Cretineau-Joly — Histoire de la Vendee militaire (Paris, 1840-42). Croix, Bloequel de — Une page do la terreur a Nantes (Valines, 1894). 2 E 2 42 THE REAL FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST Deniati, F. Abbe — Histoire de la Vendee, etc. (Angers, 1878-79). Dugast-XIatifeux — Carrier a Nantes (Xante?, 1885). Fillon, Benjamin — Reclierches historiques sur Fontenay- Vendee (Fon- tenay, 1647). Poitou et Vendee (Niort, 1862-87). Gensonne, J. A., et A. G. Gallois — Rapport sur la Vendee (Paris, 1791;. Godard-Faultrier, V. — Le champ des martyrs (Angers, 1855). Guepin, A.— Histoire de Nantes (Nantes, 1839). Lallie, Alfred— Le district de Macheeoul 'Nantes, 1869). Les noyades de Nantes (Nantes, 1879). L'eglise constitutionnelle dans la Loire Inferieure (Nantes, 1883). Les fusillades de Nantes (Nantes, 1882 . Les prisons de Nantes (Nantes, 1883). Le sans-culotte J. -J. Goullin (Nantes, 18S0). Lcniarchand, Albeit — Album Vendeen (Angers, 18511-60). Lequinio — Guerre de la Vendee et des Chouans (Paris, An iii.) Leroux-Cesbron, C. — Lotlieial, rcpresentant du [>euple (Paris, 1896). Lockroy, Edouard — Une mission en Vendee (Paris, 1893). Mellinet, Camille — La commune et la milice de Nantes (Nantes, 1840-14). Mortimer, Ternaux- Histoire de la terreur (Paris, 1862-81). Philippeaux, Pierre — Compte rendu a la convention. l'iet. F. — Reclierches sur 1'ile de Noirmoutier. Port, C- Dietionnaire historique de Xlaine-et-Loire (Angers, 1874-78 . La Vendee angevine (Paris, Angers, 1868). La legende de Cathelineau (Pans, 1893). Portais, Chauoine— L'Abbe Gruget ; sa paroisse, etc. (Angers, Paris. 1896). Pressense, E. de — L'eglise et la revolution francaise. Prix. Berriat St La justice revolutionnaire (Paris, 1870 . Des tribuneaux et de la procedure, etc. (Paris, 1S59). Proust, A. — La justice revolutionnaire a Niort (Niort, 1869 . Prudhonnne, L. XL — Histoire geiierale des erreurs commis, etc. (Pan-. 1797). yueruau-Lamerie — Les eonventionnels tin departement de la XIayenne (Laval, 1885). Notice sin' le theatre d'Angers (Angers. 1SS9). Ruchejaquelein, Madame de la — Xleinoires de (Paris, 1816). Kossignol, J.- La vie veritable du citoven (Paris, 1S96). Kousset, C— Les volontaires 1791-1794" (Paris, 1870). Savary, J. .1. XL, Adjt.-Gen. — Guerres des Vendeens et des Chouans centre la republique francaise (Paris, 1^2 4). Tronjolly, Phelippes C— Noyades, fusillades, etc. (Paris, 1794). Turreau, L. XL, General — Xleinoires, etc. (London, 171"'' . Vial, L A.— Causes de la guerre de la Vendee 'Angers. 1795 . Ligue de ramni.-tieii Delaunay (Anger.-, 1795 . APPENDIX 427 Verger, F. .J. — Archives curieusesde la ville de Nantes (Nantes, 1837-41). Valette. R. — La commission militaire de Fontenay (Fontenay, 1894). Wallon, Henri A. — Histoire du tribunal revolutionnaire de Paris (Paris, 1SS0). La terreur (Paris, 1881). Les representants du peuple en mission et la justice revolutionnaire (Paris, 1889). Westermann, F. J., General — Canipagne de la Vendee (Paris, An ii.) Proces verbal de l'Assemblec Nationale. Do. de l'Assemblee Nationale Legislath Do. de la Convention Nationale. REVIEWS Revue de l'Anjou, 1852, etc. (Angers). Do. de Bretagne et de Vendee, 1857, etc. (Nantes). Do. historique de l'oiiest, l sv ~>. etc. Pari- . Do. du Bas-Poitou, 1888, etc. Fontenay).' Do. de la revolution, 1883, etc. Paris). La revolution francaise, 1881, etc. (Paris). (The articles in these mayazines on subjects connected with the Revolution are too numerous to mention separately.) 'A .Ml 'I I LETS To enumerate separately the pamphlets would require much space. Those utilised are mostly contained in the following list of volumes described in the special catalogue recently compiled by Mr. G. K. Fortescue oi' works relating to the Revolution which are in the library of the British Museum. F.R.— 61 (3) | 85-88 221-222 220 229-230 207 | R.- 105 | 147-148 235-237 238-239 568-569 578 | P.— S58 (1) j 959-961 ' 968-970 | 1046-1048 , 1019-1051 | 1082 | 1550-1552 ! 1568-1570 I F. 31*5* I F. 67"* INDEX Agriculture, Commission of, 374, etc. Amnesty, 376-378, 394. 395, 415 Ancenis, 180, 196 Ancien regime, 72, 126, 133, 273. 276, 328, 329 Andre, J. B. St. (Representative), 172 Augers, 5. 6, 33, 51, 67, 89, 90, 131, 132. 161, 176, 194, 199, 200. 209, 210-228, 319, 367, 36S, 393 Army, see Military Artois, Comte d', 42, 408 Assembly, National Constituent. 11. 16, 17, 19. 24-26, 71, 142. 397, 406 National Legislative, 26, 27, 30, 32. 34, 142, 397, 406 Aubiers, 60 August 4th, 1789, 11 1st, 1793. decree of, 99 Austrians, 64 Aiitichamp, Marquis d', 170 Babeuf, 203 Bachelier, 136-138, 160, 248. 272,387 Barere, 99, 100. 107, 10S. 112, 122, 173, 323. 328 Bastille, the. 10 Beaupreau, 60, 11 (i Beaupuv. General, 182 Benaben, 181, 1 S3. 315 Berruyer, General, 57. 110 Bertier, General, 97 Bignou, 195. 197. 214. 313. 362-364, 420 Biron, Due de, General, 62. 83-85, 96, 124, 185, 419 Blues, the. 55. 60. 117 Bo (Representative), 336, 378 Bocage, the, 5, 340 Boivin, General, 160 Bonchamps, de. 46, 116-119 Bonnaire, General, 297 Bouchotte, 59 Boueret, General, 297, 303 Bouft'ay, le, 79, 149, 162. 242 Bougenay, 343 Bourbotte (Representative), 111, 112. 178. 230, 234. 297, 336, 357- 359, 413 Bourdon (de l'Oise) (Representative), 112 Bourgneuf, 361 Bressuire, 6, 43 Brittany, 4, 166. 188, 191 Calendar, revolutionary, 148 Carnot, 371 Carpentier, General, 318 Carrier (Representative), 135 - 139, 143, 148, 153-159, 161, 162, 190, 201. 220, 231. 239-241, 2 17. 252. 254, 255, 259, 260- 26s, 293-295, 324-332, 354, 355, 362, 386. 3S8, 389, 390-392. 412, 415, 417, 419 Cathelineau, 46, 68 Cavaignac (Representative), 110 Challans, 318 Champenois, 321 Channel Islands, 187 Chantonav, 104 Charette, * 46, 116, 229. 296, 310, 311, 324, 341, 375. 397, 399, 400. 402, 407-409 430 THE [{EAT, FEEXCH REVOLUTIONIST rhatillf.il, I), 31, 95 Clianx, 136, 15S, 270. 272. 361, 363. 384, 387, HI Children. ">7. 100. 108, 195, 20-1. 212, 249. 252 254, 264, 299, 329, 347. 375 Cholet, 6, 45, 115. 116, 120, 129, 141, 166, 309, 317, 321 Choiulieu (Representative). 56, 99, 119, 132. 211. 214. 413 Churches. 21, 147 Clergy, the. 13, IS, 22, 26-28, 33. 34. 73. S3. 145. 146. 155, 156. 161, 162. 214, 220. 232, 294, 362 civil constitution of, 14, 17, 20, 21 Clisson, 6, 95 Club . 371, 373- 375. 378, 3-0, 3-2. 3-7 Committees. Revolutionary — Aiders. 90. 129. 213. 220-222. 368. 369 Nantes. 129, 136. 13S. 154, 158, 159. 239. 210. 245. 249. 253, 26S-279, 321, 330,' 361, 363- 365. 3S4, 3S5 elsewhere, 127. 134, 142, 203. 20-, 201', 257, 317. 348, 350 Conscription (military . 30, 36-3-. 40, 41 Constituent Assembly, see Assembly Constitution, the. 25-27, 49, 115. 1 } 1 Convention, National, the, 34-36, 50. 51. 59, 67, 70-72. >2. 99. 101, 102. 112. 113. 115, '123, 128, 1 12, 1 I 1. 1 15. 162. 178, L-1, 1-7, 192, 206, 21 1. 228, 2-11. 3 S 6 ■ 390. 413-115 102- I'M. 406. Cordellier (General). 199. 297, 302. 120 Danton, 59 Decadis, 14S, 226 Declaration of Rights of Man. see Rights Department-, 13, 14, 49 Dol, 171. 174 Don/-, 63. 194, 195. 298, 351 Dubois-Crancy [Representative), 311 Dumonriez, General, 29 Duquesnoy, General, 340 Dusirat, General, 351, 375 Dutruy, General, 97, 230 Duval, General, 297, 305 Elb.'e, d', 18, 46, 116, 117, 188, 230- 236 Euurjris, 12. 31, 35, 52, 62-74. 85, 132, 170, 173. 187, 232 England. 36, 62. S3, 93, 109, 166, 170, 173,187-189, 228, 229,318 Entrepot, the. 111. 242. 243, 216 Equality, 12. 39. 64, 134. 1 12, 211, 213. 231'. 24 1, 276. 319, 323. 329, 342, 346 Felix, 86, 192. 216. 217. 369. 420 Fleche, la. 177 Fontenav. 6. 62. 63. 79, 205. 206. 344'. 393 Foncanlt, 156, 161. 21S, 361 Fougi-res, 171. 175 Fouqnet, 157, 161, 275, 362 Francastel (Representative), US. 13 1, 13-, 191. 199, 200. 211, 214. 216-21S. 222, 22S. 259, 261, 306, 339. 342. 3 17. 352. 353, 369, 412. 114, 415. 419 Fraternity. 39, 117, 13-1, 142. 20'.', 211, '213. 231, 239. 212, 244. 217. 276, 319, 323. 329. 3 12. 316. 319. 366 Fusillades. 209. 222-225. 241, 245. 251. 2-0, 32^. 343, 369 Gallois, 26 Gamier de Saintes) Representative), 102. 180, 2ii2 Garran (Representative . 322. 342, 3-17 Generals, - ■ Military Gensonm'-, 26 1XDF.X 431 Germans, 64, 109 Geste, 311 Gillet (Representative). 136 Girondists, S6, 284 Goullin, J. J., 136, 141, 153, 158, 160, 164, 165, 265, 267, 270, 273, 361, 363. 3S4-388, 412. 417, 419 Goivpilleau (Representative), 112 Gourdon, Jeanne, 316 Government, local, new scheme of, 13 municipal, new scheme of, 13 Revolutionary, the, 3, 19, 21, 51, 60, 80,81, 93, 100, 107, 113, 123, 1-27, 142, 149, 151, 186, 187.189. 232. 249. 256. 257. 284,319. '332. 346, 355, 365, 406. 409, 421 Grammont, 97, 113 Grandmaison, 136, 160, 164, 165, 384, 390 Granville. 171, 173, 192. 209 Grignon, General, 297, 302, 303, 305, 311. 337. 377, 115. 420 Gruget, Abbe, 199, 219 Guards, National, 23, 31, 36, 53, 55, 56, 62, 306 Guillotine. 77, 80, 87, 143, 191, 209, 219, 241, 250, 286 Haxo, General, 230, 233, 294, 295 Hazard (Representative), 98 Hentz (Representative), lis. 131, 211, 322, 339, 312, 347, 349- 353, 369. 414, 415 Hoclie. General, 409 Hospitals. 175, 192, 196, 229 Huche, General, 337-341. 344-347, 349, 379, 380, 415, 420 ■'Infernal Columns." the, chaps. xxi. xxii. xxiv. Ingrandes, 200 Inquisition, the, 236, 277-279 Intrus, the, 20,' 24 Jacobins. 84, 325 Jannaye, la, 399 Jersey, 170 Jullien, M. A.. 307. 326-329, 334- 336 Justice, revolutionary, 71, 75, 76, 101. 191, '202. 217, 221, 228, 236.243, 244, 285. 291. 292. 327, 329, 315, 346. 367, 390. 121, 422 King, the. 11, 16. 18. 27, 3". 31, 35, 78 Kh'ber, 6, 113, 114, 116, 118, 168, 169, 177. 181, 419 Laignelot, 150 Lamberty, 156, 157, 161, 245, 274. 278, 362 Lanjuinais, 52 Laplanche (Representative 1 , 192 La Roehelle, see Rochelle Laval, 168, 179. 196 Lavallee, Esnau (Representative), 193. 413 Lubatteux, 140. 274 L'Echelle, General, 113. 121, 168 | Lege, 116 Le Mans, 177-179, 195-196, 202 Lenoir. General, 1 72 Le Petit, 134, 207, 217 ! Lequinio (Representative), 130, 149- 151, 205, 206, 307, 333 Lescure, de, 16, 60. 104, 119 j Letourneur (Representative), 202 i Levasseur (de la Sarthe) (Representa- tive). 207 /, etc en masse. 100. 107, 103 ! Liberty, 29, 39. 64, 82, 91, 93, 126, 134, 142, 209. 211, 213. 234. 239. 240. 212, 214. 251. 261. 276, 279. 281, 289, 319. -".23. 329. 342. 316. 355. 421 Loflicial, 322, 399 Loire, the, 1. 4, 5. 119, 166, 167. 176, 177, 180, 182, 290, 292 Louis XVI., see King Louis XVIII.. 108 Lucon, 344, 345, 350 Lyons, 99, 115 Machecoul, 42, 43, 45 Maignan, 179 Maignen, 386 Maine-et- Loire, 28 Malo, St.. 192 Man. Rights of. see Rights Mans, le, 6. 2u6. 35u. 371 Xiou (Representative). 59 Xoblesse, 12 Xoirmoutier, 229-238. 369-372 Xort, 201 Noyades, 155, 161-165, 220, 239, 241. '250, 253, 286, 328. 361 O'Sullivan. 268, 276 64, Paris, 2, 10-12, 31-33, 35. 166, 250, 374, 384 Commune of, 58, 65 Revolutionary- Tribunal in, 49. 72, 76, 370. 385 volunteers, 65. 97. 98 Parthenay, 94 Phelippes de Tronjolly, see Tronjolly Philippeaux (Representative), 110-112 Piet, F.. 232-234 Pitt, W., 19 Ponts-de-CV-, 194, 200, 222 Pope, the, 15, 20, 28 Pornic, 44 Prieur (de la Marne) (Representative). 119. 172, 17e. 194. 230. 232. 234, 259. 330, 331, 336, 361. 364, 413 Prisoners, 61-06, 117. 118, 184, 194. 206-208. 216-218, 287, 365-36;. 392 Prisons, 66-80, 141, 204. 208, 216. 242, 289 Prussia, 30, 64 Public Safety, Committee of. see Com- mittee Quetineau, General, 60, 61 Religious liberty, 11, 28, 29, 14 1, etc., 214. 2*83, 402, 409. 421 Reimes, 192, 209 Representatives of the people, 49. 50, 59, 64. 71, 71, 75, 84, 86. 89. 90, 102. 103. 106. 121, 124- 126, 138, 142-144, 146. 149, 172, 192. 197-199. 208, 211, 217! 228, 230, 257, 259, 279. 281, 322. 331, 333. 342, 352, 353, 357-359. 377. 381. 3^2. 387. 397-399. 414 Revolutionary calendar, 14<\ etc. Committees, ,*< • • < 'ommittees ( lovernnieiit. .* • ( iovernmeiit justice, ."rr .1 ustiee Tribunals. ,*_•- Tribunals INDEX 433 [lights of Man, Declaration of, 11, 126, 144, 150, ISO Robert, General, 191, 200 Robespierre, 10(3, 131, 326, 328, 365, 371, 371, 380, -112 Robin, 157, 159, 161, 2 15 Rochefort, 129 Rochejaquelein, 11. de la, 16, 60, 168, 180 Roohelle, la, 129, 141, 209 Ronsin, 84-86, 97, 101 llossignol, General, 96, 97, 104, 111 113, 241, 419 Ruelle (Representative), 136 Sables-d'Olonne, 6, 29, 62, 70, 77, 79, 209 Kabrades, 219 SI. Florent, 46, 117. 119, St. Fulgent, 104, 311 St. Laurent, 23 Hans-culottes, 30, 96, 101. 209, 211, 228, 2 11. 274, 280, 291, 291, 334, 314, 366, 392 Santerre, General, 99, 100, 110, 113 Sapincau, 312 Saumur, 4, 6, 51, 63, 65, 6/ 98, 131,' 135, 199, 203 Savarv, 53, 255 Save nay, 181-183, 197, 210 Spain, 62, 229 States-General, the, 10, 11 Stofflet, 46. 170, 180, 310, 312, 341, 375, 397, 404, 409 Suspects, 76, 128, 299 104 204, , 217 320, 205 328 . 85, 90, 206 Talmont, Prince de, 1 ', 'taxation, 11, 35, 36 Theatre at Angers, 21 i Theatre Rouge, 245 Thoinnet, 270 Thouars, 60 Tours, 64-91 Trade, 282, 422 Tribunals, Revolutionary, 49, 71, 130, 140, 195, 2(12, 258, 277, 278 criminal, 13, 73, 221 Tronjolly, Phelippes de, 88, 137, 160, 274, 363, 364, 385, 386 Turreau, General, 230, 293-299, 302- 304, 306. 308, 309, 311, 313, 314, 316-318, 320-323, 333, 337. 338, 341, 344, 345, 351, 353- 355, 387, 413, 415, 416, 419 Turreau (Representative), 178, 193, 230, 234, 297 Vacheron, 217, 222, 278 Vendean noblesse, 12, 18, 12, 46 Council, 67, 1 1 (5, 176 Vendeans, the, character of, 7, 8 ; objects of, 9-11, 37, 42, 43, 46 Vendee, la, description of, 1-8 ; population of. 7 Versailles, 10. 12 Vihiers, 98, 99, 111 Vilnau, 134 Vimeux, General, 327, 373, 375, 376, 382 Vincent la Montague, Society of, 147. 153, 240, 250, 325, 327 Westermann, General, 94, 95, 97, 168, 177, 179, 181, 183 Wieland, 236-238 Women, 57, 98, 100-102, 108, 192, 195, 217, 226, 227, 246, 248, 252, 253, 273-275, 294, 299 329, 349, 370, 375 I'HK END Printed by K. & R. 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