^ #• . y^^ »m km^:^ I^^p i^'^ ^ '. • -r^ "m M *i}£» ■ ■4.y-;#ki Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/essaysonearlyperOOcrokrich ESSAYS THE EARLY PERIOD OP THE FRENCH REYOLUTIOK BY THE LATE RIGHT HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER. REPRINTED FROM « THE QUARTERLY REVIEW,' WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1857. • e e ^ *Z « LONDON: PUINTED BY W. CLOWES ANI> SONS, STAMFOUD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS. PREFACE. I HAVE been requested to revise and collect into one volume the half-dozen Essays which I contributed to the * Quarterly Eeview' on the earlier period of the French Eevolution : and I am the more willing to do so, because I believe those Essays contain a good deal of curious, and what is rarer and of more importance, authentic, informa- tion on that subject that is not, as far as I know, to be found in any single publication. My memory and observation of public affairs are about coeval with that event. I was in my ninth year when the Bastille was taken ; it naturally made a great im- pression on me, and the bloody scenes that so rapidly followed rendered that impression unfavourable. Such also was the feeling of my wise and excellent parents, and an alliance between our family and that of Mr* Burke helped to confirm us in that great man's prophetic opinions, which every event from that day to this appears to me to have wonderfully illustrated and fulfilled. I have thought it fair to say thus much of my own personal feeling, that the reader may be aware of the bias under which I may be suspected of writing, but 1 must at the same time most conscientiously protest that I have not knowingly allowed it to warp my judgment, nor, as I still more confidently afiirm, to misrepresent either by attenuation or aggravation any personal motive or any historical fact. I have endeavoured to be jmt — 678603 vi PREFACE. I am sure that I have not written a word that I do not believe to be the truth ! The early attention which I was thus led to pay to the Eevolution has been actively sustained through a long life, and made me a collector (I believe to a much greater extent than any other person in England) of the innu- merable pamphlets and periodical and other publications that I may say deluged France as long as anything like a freedom of opinion existed, as well as of those which were afterwards published under the corrupt and in- timidating influence of the successive tyrannies, which found little difficulty in converting a licentious and dis- graced press into a rigorous and shameless engine of despotism. These publications, however ephemeral in interest, or apocryphal as authorities, are still valuable and important as contemporaneous evidence, both positive and negative, for what they tell, and, for what they do not, are often as instructive in their falsehood as in their truth. From my acquaintance, imperfect as it must be, with this enormous mass of documents, I am satisfied that no accurate idea of the real springs and interior workings of the great revolutionary machine can be formed without a much deeper and more diligent exami- nation than any historian that I have read appears to have made of them. Under this persuasion, but feeling myself in every way unequal to undertake a more extensive work, I was glad to take the opportunities that my connection with the * Quarterly Eeview ' presented, of examining some isolated but important points of the early period of the Eevolution, in more detail, and with a more critical reference to con- temporaneous documents, than had been, as far as I PREFACE. vii knew, hitherto attempted ; and in the humble hope of inducing others to consult those documents of which the British Museum now contains a large collection, I have consented to the present publication. I have made a few alterations in my original text, chiefly for the purpose of adapting it to the new shape and order in which it now appears, by the omission of explanatory observations which were necessary when the articles were published separately and at considerable intervals, but, when brought together, would be useless repetitions. I have also made a few corrections and additions on points concerning which 1 have found more recent information. The first events that I have treated of — those of 1789 — ^were included in the first livraison of M. Thiers' History of the Revolution ; and finding myself forced to deny the accuracy, to contest the details, and to question the good faith of that work, I was led into a prehminary inquiry as to the circumstances of M. Thiers' life and character, which had led him to take views that I consider so pre- judiced and so unjust. His Histories, however, by the personal and political successes and eminence of their author — not certainly by the historical merit of the works themselves — have attained such general circulation and such an appearance of authority, that, even if my article concerning him had not heen first in chronological order, I should have thought it an appropriate introduction to the consideration of any portion or period of the Eevolu- tion of which he seems now to be the most popular, and I fear the most influential historian. [1856.] J. W. C. NOTICE. The lamented Author of this work, in the process of seeing it through the press, bestowed more time and greater pains on it, and made larger additions to one or two of the Essays, than he appears to have originally contemplated. The latter portion of this volume had not received the advantage of his final revision at the moment of his death. Pains have been taken, as far as possible, to supply the want of his editorial care, and it is hoped that the work will be found free from any serious error. October, 1857. CONTENTS. ESSAY I. Page Thiers' Histories i 1. Hlstoire de la Revolution Frangaise. Par A. Thiers et F. Bodin. 8vo. Paris. Vols. 1 and 2, 1823 ; vols. 3 and 4, 1824 ; vols. 5 and 6, 1825 ; vols. 7, 8, 9, 10, 1827. 2. Histoire de la Revolution de France. Par A. Thiers. 10 vols. 8vo. 2nd ed. Paris, 1828. 3. Histoire du Consulat et de V Empire. Par A. Thiers, Ancien President du Conseil des Ministres, Membre de la Chambre des De'putes, et de I'Academie Fran9aise. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4. 8vo. Paris, 1845. ESSAY II. Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette 72 1. Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France and Navarre : to which are added, Recollections, Sketches^ and Anecdotes, illustrative of the Reigns of Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Louis XVI. By Madame Campan, First Femme-de-Chambre to the Queen. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1823. 2. Foreign Reminiscences hy Henry Richard Lord Holland. Edited by his Son, Henry Edward Lord Holland. Pp. 362. London, 1850. ESSAY IIL The Journeys to Varennes and Brussels, June, 1791 . 105 1. Royal Memoirs. A Narrative of the Journey to Varennes. By H.K.H. the Duchess of AngonlSme. A Narrative of the Journey to Brussels and Cohlentz in 1791. By Monsieur, now Louis XVIII. King of France. Murray, 1823. 2. M^moires sur V Affaire de Varennes. Paris, 1823. b X CONTENTS. ESSAY IV. Pagb On the 20th June and 10th August, 1792 161 Chronique de Cinquante Jours— die 20 Juin au 10 Aout, 1792, redigee sur Pieces autlientiques. Par P. L. Roederer. Paris, 1832. ESSAY V. The Captivity in the Temple 241 1. Private Memoirs of tuhat passed in the Temple from, the hnprison- ment of the Boyal Family to the Death of the Dauphin. By Madame Eoyale, Duchess of Angouleme. 1853. 2. Louis X VII., sa Vie, son Agonie, sa Mort ; Captivite de la Famille Boy ale au Temple, ouvrage enrichi d^Autographes, de Portraits, et de Plans. Par M. A. de Beauchesne. 2 vols. Paris, 1852. ESSAY VI. . Eobespierre 299 1. Memoires authentiques de Maximilien Rohespierre. 2 tomes. Paris, 1830. 2. Memoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux Freres. Paris, 1835. ESSAY VII. The Eevolutionary Tribunals 431 1. Souvenirs d'un Demi-Siecle ; Vie Puhlique — Vie Intime — Mouve- ment Litteraire — Portraits^ 1787-1836. Public par G. Touchard-Lafosse, Auteur des Chroniques de CEil-de-Boeuf, de I'Histoire de Paris, &c. &c. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1836. 2. Souvenirs de la Terreur de 1788 a 1793. Par M. G. Duval, pr6- c^d6s d'une Introduction Historique, par M. Charles Nodier, de 1' Academic Francaise. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1841. 3. Souvenirs Thermidoriens. Par Georges Duval. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1844. ESSAY VIII. The Guillotine 519 1 . Notice Historique et Physiologiqu^ sur le SuppUce de la Guillo' tine. Par G. D. F. [i.e. Guyot de Fere.] pp. 16. Paris, 1830. 2. Recherches Bistoriques et Physiologiques sur la Guillotine ; et Details sur Sanson, ouvrage redige sur pieces ojicielles. Par M. Louis du BoiSj Ancien Bibliothecaire de PEcole centrale de POme. pp. 35. Paris, 1843. ESSAY I. [Quarterly Review, September, 1845.] J . ' THIERS' HISTOEIES 1. Ilisfaire de la devolution Frangam. Par A. Thiers et F. Bodin. - 8vo. Paris. Yols. 1 and 2, 1823; vols. 3 and 4, 1824; vols. 5 and 6, 1825; vols. 7, 8, 9, 10, 1827. 2. Histoire de la Revolution de France. Par A. Thiers. 10 vols. 8vo. 2nd ed. Paris, 1828. 3. Histoire du Considat et de V Empire. Par A. Thiers, Aneien President du Conseil des Ministres, Membre de la Chambre des Deputes, et de rAcademie Frangaise. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4. 8vo. Paris, 1845. M. TJiiers — Sketch of his life illustrative of his credit as an historian — First events of the Ii evolution — The influence of the Duhe of Orleans — The Affaire- Beveillon — The affair of the Prince de Lamhesc — 'The Capture of the Bastile •-— The ensuing Massacres — Tlie 5th and 6th October. 1789. We believe that we shall be able — we are sure that there are abundant materials — to demolish utterly and irretrievably M. Thiers' credit as an historian. Whatever of praise may be due to lively talents and artistic skill, unscrupulously employed to misrepresent and falsify en gros et en detail every subject he touches, we will not deny him : but we deliberately believe, and shall, we trust, produce sufficient evidence to convince our readers, that never was there a writer less entitled to confidence or who has more shamelessly sacrificed historical truth to his private opinions, and, what is worse, his personal interests. Of his work, under the successive titles of Histories of the B 2 THIERS' HISTORIES. 'Revolution and of the ' Consulate and Empire^ fourteen* octavo volumes have already appeared, others are announced, and it is probable that he will bring them down even to the later times in which he has had so prominent and so profitable a share in alternately reviving and repressing the revolutionary spirit to which his first Essays were devoted. Of a work so various and so voluminous, yet still incomplete, we '5a' wot pretend .toi give our readers even a general view. We mean to confine ourselves to an examination of the earlier portion .'c^f >t'— tiie. facade or portico, as it were, from which we may form a reasonable "estiiiiate of the spirit and the style in which the rest of the edifice has been planned and constructed. We may seem to owe an apology to our readers for not having sooner undertaken this task — but our most popular Parisian contemporary — La Revue des Deux 3Iondes — prefaces an article of the current year on M. Thiers' historical works, written by M. Sainte-Beuve, of the Academie Frangaise, an avowed friend and panegyrist of M. Thiers, with the confession of a similar neglect. And the truth is that, in spite of its lively style and a certain air of originality and pretence of candour which M. Thiers had the tact and talent to assume, the peculiar circumstances and patronage under which the work originally appeared and the spirit in which it was written, gave it the character — not of a serious and conscien- tious History — but of a bookseller's speculation on the state of political parties. No one looked upon it in any other light than as a branch of the general conspiracy then at work against the elder Bourbons — a paradoxical apology for the old Revolution, and a covert provocation to a new one ; and this was, we are satisfied, its chief motive — though there was of course something of literary ambition and something more of pecuniary speculation mixed up with it. It appeared, too, with a very ambiguous aspect — the first livraison of two volumes bore the joint names of ' A. Thiers and Felix Bodin ' — Bodin being a young litterateur employed by the booksellers in manufacturing a series of historical abridgments, who was willing to introduce his still younger and more obscure friend Thiers into this species of handicraft. The account given They now amount to twenty-four (1855). OKIGIN OF THE WORK— M. BODIN. 3 by M. Quevrard, in his elaborate ' History of French Bibho- graphy,' is as follows : — ' The two first volumes were written in common with M. Bodin, but, M. Thiers ha-ving subsequently retouched them, the name of M. Bodin was omitted from the title-pages of the later editions. We are assured by a well-informed authority that this work was originally composed on a much smaller scale, and was comprised at first in four small volumes in eighteens, which were to have formed part of the series of Historical Abridgments published by Le Cointe and Durey. But these booksellers, thinking that a better thing might be made of the book, cancelled the four volumes in 18mo. as waste paper, and it re-appeared with large additions, in an 8vo. shape, as the " History of the Ee volution. " ' — Quevrard^ tit. Thiers. M. Sainte-Beuve, in the article which we have just alluded to, gives an account of the origin of the work, and of the merit of these first volumes, substantially similar but still less flatter- inof : — ' The idea was Bodin's — who urged it upon Thiers, and seeing him working so well at it, resigned his co-operation with a good grace. Bodin's name therefore was thus associated with that of M. Thiers in the first volumes, but disappeared from the third. In those two first volumes it is evident that the young historian was only a ti/ro, and had not yet attained either method or originality. Like most historians, after a study mo7^e or less adequate of the facts, after inquiries soon and easily satisfied, and having said at once "mo^t siege est fait " he gets out of the scrape by his style— by the dramatic interest of the narrative, and by some brilliant portraits. The publication of these two volumes over, M. Thiers felt (and he him- self confesses it with that candour which is one of the charms of superior minds) that he had almost everything to learn on the sub- ject he had undertaken, and that a cuisory perusal and a lively arrangement of materials and memoirs already published — was not history — such as he was capable of conceiving it.' — p. 223. The character of a work thus described by a friend, and under- taken and carried on — not as serious history, but as a pecuniary and party speculation, and to serve accidental and personal pur- poses — is so necessarily blended with the writer's individual cir- cumstances, that both M. Thiers' admirers and adversaries have thought it necessary to preface their reviews of his book with a sketch of his life. We, in following this example, shall avoid as much as possible any mere personality, and shall only observe on those circum- B 2 4 THIERS' HISTORIES. stances which appear to have influenced his soi-disant historical labours. Marie-Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was born at Marseilles on the 16th of April, 1797, of very poor parents *— his father beino^, we are told, a working locksmith. This topic has been handled in- vidiously by his detractors, and eulogistically by his admirers, to an extent which we cannot adopt in either sense. In revolutionary times sudden, and even brilliant, successes are not always the proof of merit : they are sometimes the very reverse, and more frequently the result of accident ; and however honourable it may be to the individual to have raised himself to eminence from a low origin, it rarely happens that he can emancipate himself altogether from the feelings and habits in which he was brought up. Buonaparte himself, notwithstanding his education in the military, and therefore nohle, school of Brienne, never, even in his highest elevation, could get rid of the instincts of his early humility ; and though a con- queror and an emperor, he never was a gentleman. So M. Thiers — advocate, journalist, historian, minister, nay, prime minister — has always been and will be essentially un peu gamin ; and we think that we can trace throughout his career a want of that con- sistency, decorum, and mesure, as the French call it — that discipline of mind, manners, and principles, which can rarely be acquired under the precarious and reckless habits of low life. AVhatever favourable training the young mind receives in such a case may be generally traced to maternal care ; so in this case, we are told that the mother of M. Thiers, though fallen into extreme poverty, was of a decent bourgeois family, related, it is said, though distantly, to the two poets C^em^r— Joseph, the Jacobin Tyrtaeus, and Andre, his victim brother. By her connexions she was enabled to obtain for her boy a bourse, that is, gratuitous education, in the public school of Marseilles : so that it must be admitted that M. Thiers may naturally remember with gratitude the Imperial regime. Here his progress is said to have been from the first satis- factory, and towards the conclusion of the course brilliant, though of the details no more is told than that he was a tolerable Latinist,t * They appear on the register of their f "We have some doubts as to his son's birth as ' Pierre Louis Marie 'Thiers classical attainments. In all the edi- et Marie Magdalaine Amic, miries.' The tions that we have seen of his History Christian names and the emphatic addi- we find the egregious blunder of con- tion marids imply that the parents were founding ^schines, the rival of De- of the good old-fashioned school. mosthenes, with ^iSchylus, the tragic M. THIERS' BIOGEAPHY. o and that he studied geometry with that taste for the military profession with which Buonaparte inoculated the rising generation. We cannot now forbear to smile at the idea of M. Thiers en mili- taire ; but we recollect that the ' Historian of the Decline and Fall ' professes to have learned something from his services in the Hampshire militia — and from the superabundant diligence with which the Historian of the French Revolution loves to dwell on the details of the War, it is evident that he fancies that he had a vocation in that direction, and he dreams, perhaps, that if the peace had not imposed upon him the inferior necessity of being only a Prime Minister, he might, himself, have been another First Consul. But in 1814-15 the military despot fell, and Thiers, like thou- sands of other embryo heroes, had to look out for another pro- fession ; and it was natural that the activity and ambition of his mind, as well perhaps as an instinctive literary taste, should have led him to the bar. In 1815 he removed to Aix, the seat of the chief tribunal of the department and of the schools of law, where he seems to have looked into codes and digests no more than was just necessary to pass a slight examination, while his real occupation was writing literary essays and getting up political mutinies against the existing government — a road that led so many of the literary heroes of the Revolution to the Tarpeian rock, but carried him in triumph to the Capitol. * M. Thiers, whose ardent and ambitious spirit seems to have bad the presentiment of a brilliant futurity, already played in the law schools the part of the leader of a party : he harangued, ranted, poet ; which bkmder is repeated in was then in high vogue) the Jacobins the English translation. Again : of the determined to suppi-ess, and a red cap * bonnet roiige ' of the Jacobins, he says, on b. pique was the standard under which * a new kind of ornament borrowed from they marshalled their party. The the Phryrjians, and noxv become [devenu'] rioters were successful, one of their the emblem of Liberty.' It was neither opponents was killed, and the red cap new nor borrowed from the Phrygians. came immediately into general use as It had been in all classical antiquity the the distinction of a patriot. It is re- emblem of Liberty. Its first appear- markable that this signal alarmed even ance as an emblem of the French Revolu- the Ultra-Patriots, who at first endea- tion was on Friday, the 24th of Febi-ii- voured to check the title Jacobin and ary, 1792, at the representation of a emblem of the Bonnet rouge, both of piece at the TMdtre des Variete's, called which in a few weeks they so zealously IJAutenr du Moment, which (being sup- adopted. See Bevoltdions de Paris, Nos. posed to ridicule Joseph Chenier, 139-141; Feuille Villaxjeoise, No. 28; whose patriotic play of Charles IX. BertrawJ, Annals, vi. 11. 6 THIERS' HISTORIES. and roared against the restored government— invoked the recol- lections of the Eepnblic and the Empire — became an object of sus- picion to his professors — of alarm to the police — and of enthusiasm to his fellow-students.' — Golem des Contemporains Illustres. At Aix he formed what our classical neighbours call a Pylades- and- Orestes friendship with Mignet, a young man whose circum- stances were very similar to his own — cultivating, like him, small literature, and propagating ultra-liberalism under the guise of studying the law — like him producing a ' History of the Revolu- tion,' and like him, and chiefly we believe by his patronage, . re- warded—though not in so eminent a degree — by the July dynasty,' with honours and offices. About this time the Academy of Aix proposed a prize for the best ' Eloge of Vauvenargues,' a metaphysical and deistical writer of the last century, and a native of that town. .Thiers contributed an Essay — which, though applauded, was not, any more than its competitors, thought worthy of the subject, and the adjudication of the prize was adjourned to the next year. It is said that Thiers owed this mortification to his having allowed the secret of his authorship to transpire, and to the reluctance of the Academy to encourage the turbulent young lawyer, ' le petit Jacobin J Not disheartened, however, he next year sent in his former Essay ; but one from an unknown hand had in the mean while arrived from Paris, which was so decidedly superior to all the others, that the Academicians hastened to give it the prize — though they awarded Thiers the second place. On opening the sealed packets that contained the names of the authors, Thiers was found to be the author of both the first and the second — to the mortification, it is said, of the Academicians and the triumph of the Liberals. This work seems, from the extracts which we have seen, to be a re-i spectable coup d^essai, written with some thought, in an easy style, and peculiarly free from the affectation and bombast which are the common characteristics of the French ' Eloge.' Meanwhile M. Thiers had been called to the bar ; and practised, or rather endeavoured to practise, but with, as might be expected from his temper and his studies, very little success ; and so, im- patient of an obscure and humble position, he and his bosom friend Mignet set out in September, 1821, to try their fortunes in Paris — * rich in hope and talents, but very low in cash.' Their expedition to the capital reminds us of that of Johnson and Garrick MIGNET— MANUEL— LAFITTE. 7 to London,' and, like our moralist, their chief if not only resource was a recommendation from some friend in the provincial city to a fellow-townsman resident in Paris. This patron was the then celebrated deputy Manuel, who, like themselves, had been a barrister at Aix. Elected for the violence of his liberalism into Buonaparte's chamber of the 100 days, and subsequently re-elected by the same party, he was now the boldest and most eloquent orator of the Opposition, of which Lafitte, then thought one of the wealthiest bankers of Europe, was the patron, paymaster, and, we believe, chief manager. There can be little doubt that, even at this time, Lafitte must have suspected, if he had not actually begun to feel, those commercial embarrassments which, some years later, ended in a great and somewhat scan- dalous bankruptcy ;* but, as always happens in such desperate cases, he was not on that account the less profuse of what was really other "people's money, in endeavouring to bring about another revolution, for the purpose — such was his predominant and almost avowed idea— of raising the Duke of Orleans to the throne. The Press, which had been so long and so utterly enslaved by Buonaparte, had, like the prototype of ilf'mc? in the heathen mythology, started at once into life, full grown and full armed ; and challenging not liberty merely, but sovereignty, it be- came the chief engine to overthrow the only French government that had ever allowed it anything like freedom. Opposition newspapers were founded with the double object of influencing public opinion and of enlisting and rewarding the young and clever literary adventurers with whom the system of cheap educa- tion and the sudden limitation of the military profession had overstocked society. Manuel recommended his two young patriots to Lafitte, who very soon provided for them by employing them in two opposition journals — Mignet in the Courrier, and Thiers in the Constitutionnel. One of M. Thiers' young friends, Loeve Vemars, gives the following account of the * very modest ' habi- tation — even after he had obtained some reputation amongst his associates — of the future Prime Minister of France : — * I clambered up the innumerable steps of the dismal staircase of * It was proved in a subsequent suit the amount of about 400,000/. How between the Bank of France and the long this deficit had been growing house of Lafitte and Co., that in 1828 up did not appear. — Deux Ans de Eegne, the latter were already insolvent to p. 422. 8 THIERS' HISTORIES. a lodging-house situated at the bottom of the dark and dirty Passage Montesquieu^ in one of the most crowded and noisy parts of Paris. It was with a lively feeling of interest that I opened, on the fourth stoiy, the smoky door of a little room which is worth describing — its whole furniture being an humble chest of drawers — a bedstead of walnut-tree, with white calico curtains — two chairs, and a little black table with rickety legs.' — Hommes d'Etat de France. This was probably as good accommodation as either Johnson or Goldsmith were able to afford themselves on their first arrival in London — and we are induced to notice it only from the rapidity with which this humble scenery was changed, and its striking contrast with the singular elegance of M. Thiers' private residence in the Place St. George, and still more with the splendour of the ministerial palace of the Boulevard des Capucines. The first publication of M. Thiers, of which we have any notice, will appear to an English reader an odd debut for a poli- tician and historian of such eminence. It was a biographical essay on the life of Mrs. George Anne Bellamy, en tete of the 'Memoires' of that actress (1822). This we have never seen, and it is now, we suppose, a curiosity. He must also at this period have been writing his ' History,' of which the first volumes were published in 1823, in less, it seems, than two years after his arrival in Paris. But his chief employment and resource was the Gonstitutionnel, in the columns of which he soon distinguished himself by the vivacity and taste of his literary contributions, and by the vigour and boldness of his political articles. The Consti- tutionnel rose in 1825 to 16,250 subscribers, the greatest number of any journal in Paris : while the Journal des Dehats, written in a moderating and conservative spirit, had only 13,000 — a number, however, equal to that of all the other journals of Paris put together. At the July revolution the Constitutionnel had reached near 20,000, while the Dehats had fallen off to 12,000 ; and the most popular of the pure Royalist journals did not exceed 5000. This is a sufficient indication of the political feeling of the reading public. M. Ttiiers' growing value was duly appreciated. M. Lafitte saw that he had made a prize : he introduced him into the higher circles and confidence of his party ; and this not only flattered M. Thiers' vanity and taste, but it extended his sphere of know- ledge and of thought, and stimulated at once his diligence and his energy. LAFITTE. 9 Lafitte was a light and giddy man, with a great flux of plausible talk, and an ultra-Gascon vanity. It was no uncommon thing to hear him tell Englishmen, ' Je suis le Fox de ee pays-eV His position as a great banker gave him a reputation for solid talents which he never possessed, and a degree of weight and authority which he never deserved. Whether from his secret financial trans- actions with Buonaparte, which were very extensive — or from some pique against the restored family — or from higher motives of political conviction — or from some lower and discreditable influ- ences which were subsequently imputed to him — it is certain that he had very early ' affiche ' his enmity to the Restoration : — so much so that in 1814 an eminent Englishman — to whom he was declaiming in that strain — pleasantly told him * that he was sorry to find that the Blouse of Lafitte had declared war against the House of Bourbon.^ When subsequently his neglect of his business and the expenses of his political intrigues had involved him in pecuniary diflftculties, it was very natural that he should become more and more anxious to merge — or excuse — or perhaps repair his own insolvency in a general confusion : and he was not, in such circumstances, likely to forget that the Duke of Orleans was the richest subject in Europe, and in a condition, if he should become King of France, to be magnificently gi-ateful.* It is, however, within our own knowledge that as early as 1818, when his great pecuniary difl&culties were not yet suspected, the ex- amples of James II. and William III. were frequently in his mouth — and we have little doubt that from this source gradually flowed all the allusions and analogies which the opposition press was in the habit of drawing from the English proceedings in 1688. It must indeed be admitted that there had been, throughout the whole course of the French Revolution, a chain of very remarkable coincidences with corresponding events in English history, which * When Louis-Philippe found him- that he had guaranteed a loan from self obliged to dismiss the Lafitte mi- the Bank of France to M. Lafitte of nistry in March, 1831, the extent of 240,000^. These amounts were dis- his pecuniary gratitude to M. Lafitte puted; but whatever may have been was the subject of an angry discussion. the degree of the royal liberality, what It was alleged, on the part of the King, honest claim could M. Lafitte have for that he had paid in 1831 for M. Lafitte any liberality at all, unless, indeed, he 12,000Z. — that he had given him thought himself entitled to extort from 400,000/. for the forest of Breteuil, Louis-Philippe the humiliating confes- which, as it produced only 8000/. a year, sion that, like old Didius, he had bought was considerably above its value — and the crown ? 10 THIERS' HISTORIES. we have before incidentally noticed, but which we think it is worth while to exhibit more clearly in the following synopsis : — Charles I. . Louis XVI. Unpopularity of the Queen. Unpopularity of the Queen. The Long Parliament. The self-constituted Assembly. Flight to the Isle of Wight. Flight to Yarennes. Trial and execution. Trial and execution. Government by the Parliament. Government by the Convention. Cromwell. Buonaparte. Expels the Parliament. Expels the Assemblies. Military despotism. Military despotism. Eichard Cromwell set aside. Napoleon II. set aside. Restoration of Charles II. Eestoration of Louis XVIII. Amnesty to all but regicides. Amnesty to all but regicides. Popish and Ryehouse plots. Conspiracies of Berton, Bories, &c. Unpopularity of the Duke of York. Unpopularity of Count d'Artois. Outcry against the Jesuits. Outcry against the Jesuits. James II., late King's brother. Charles X., late King's brother. Suspected birth of the Pretender. Suspected birth of D. of Bordeaux. Eoyal Declarations of indulgence. Royal Ordinances. Convention Parliament. Meeting of the dissolved Chamber. Flight and abdication of the King. Flight and abdication of the King. Expulsion of him and his family. Expulsion of him and his family. They take refuge in France. They take refuge in England. And, finally, both Revolutions arrived at the same identical result — the calling to the vacant throne the late King's cousin, being the next male heir after the abdicating branch. These leading coincidences, and some collateral ones too com- plicated for a synopsis, are very curious, and at first sight surprising — but they are not unnatural nor even accidental — they only prove, when closely examined, that the rule of ' like causes pro- ducing like effects' is almost as certain in the moral and political as in the physical world. But there were in France stronger incentives to the change of dynasty than existed in England. The English rebellion had not essentially disturbed the great founda- tions of society — and the English Restoration endangered no private rights, and rather satisfied than alarmed public principle. But in France everything had been subverted — houleverse^— not merely the face of things, but the things themselves ; — property, HISTORICAL COINCIDENCES. IX above all, had changed hands to an extent infinitely wider than the Commonwealth confiscations in England, and that too under the operation of such cruel and unjustifiable illegalities as could not but render the new possessors very sensitive as to their titles. The usurping government of France had moreover created an exten- sive nobility and gentry of its own : — now all those interests and feelings were ofiended, and pretended to be alarmed, by the return of those whom, if they did not really fear as claimants of their properties, they certainly hated as antagonists of their principles, and rivals to their new-fangled aristocracy. Many even of those who most wished for peace and quiet under the shelter of a monarchy were not sorry to have a monarch whose own revolutionary title to the crown should be a guarantee for all the interests that had grown out of the Revolution. This was no doubt the basis and reasoning of M. Lafitte's project, which artfully allied itself with and assumed the direction of all other dissatisfactions and disturbances as they successively appeared. One instance, out of many, too little noticed at the time and since almost forgotten, is worth recalling : — ' On the morning of the 11th of March, 1821, an insufxection broke out in Grenoble, the leader of the mob proclaiming " that a revolution had been effected in Pam — that the King liad abdicated — thxit the Duke of Orleans had been placed at the head of a provisional government — that the tn-coloured flag had been hoisted, and the constitution of 1791 restored." ' — Lacretelle, Bestor., iii. 31. This singular anticipation of the events of July, 1830, proves at least what were the predominant ideas of the Movement party. In the trial of Bertin, in 1822, the law-officers of the crown dis- tinctly charged these and similar disturbances upon a directing committee in Paris, and by name on its leading members, Generals Lafayette and Foy, and MM. Lafitte and Manuel. This grave imputation was denied at the time — rather faintly, because the parties were afraid of daring the ministry to the proof ; but since the July revolution it has been boasted of. Sarrans makes it a new claim for Lafayette on the gratitude of his country, that his own head and that of his son were risked on this ocaision. And M. Thiers, in his pamphlet ^ La Mmarchie de 1830,* published in 1831, states that the idea of the Duke of Orleans' eleva- tion ' dated from fifteen years before, and that every intelligent mhid had already designated him for King.' This probably was 12 THIEES' HISTORIES. true only of M. Lafitte and the ' intelligent minds ' of his special friends and followers ; but it is — like the more celebrated phrase of ' la eomedie de quinze ayis ' — an admission that such were the sentiments and doctrines into which the patronage of M. Lafitte had enlisted, amongst a great many others, MM. Mignet and Thiers.* At first their co-operation was confined to their respective newspapers, but it soon overflow^ed into other channels, and pro- duced, as we think, a very strange occurrence. These two young men, bosom friends — inhabiting, together it seems {Gal. des Contemp.), the poor apartment before described and working for a precarious livelihood — suddenly came before the public as rival authors, each with a ''History of the French Revolutioni.^ The works are no doubt very different in their styles — Mignet's being a kind of fost mortem anatomical lecture, which exhibits little more than the skeleton of the subject : — while Thiers' presents the Revolution dressed up like a stage-player, with the most elaborate endeavour to conceal its deformities, and to give it, by theatrical illusion, an air of grace or of grandeur. But, notwithstanding this marked difi*erence in the execution of the works, it still seems very strange that two young men, in such very peculiar circumstances, should have simultaneously under- taken tasks so nearly identical — so likely to force them into a kind of rivalry or collision, and to spoil in some degree each other's market. Finding no explanation of this odd concurrence in the reviews or biographies, we are driven to our own con- jectures ; and the following appears to us to be at least a plausible solution of the enigma. We have just stated M. Lafitte 's fixed and passionate desire to place the Duke of Orleans on the throne, and we have sufficient indications of the indefatigable intrigues and profuse expenditure * The Duke of Orleans, however, nalist, as Thiers then was, not to see was too prudent to mix himself per- the Duke of Orleans'^ What could Bonally in these matters, and it seems Thiers have had to do with the Duke that he had never seen M. Thiers till of Orleans ? We, however, in spite of the night between the 30th and 3lst M. Sainte-Beuve's unlucky suggestion, July, 1830. But M. Saint-Beuve, in persist in our doubt that the Duke stating this, adds a fact, which entirely was ever directly concerned in any of contradicts his own inference ; he says M. Lafitte's earlier intrigues. He may that ' Manuel advised Thiers early not have had some notion of his design, but to see the Duke of Orleans.' Why probably kept himself clear of all guilty should Manuel have thus early ad- participation, vised an obscure and subaltern jour- LAFITTE— THE HOUSE OF OELEANS. 13 with which he pursued that object ; but he met little sympathy in fact, the great difficulty he found in accomplishing it, even after the July revolution had vacated the throne, proves that there was no public opinion with him or the Duke ; and so — with that con- fidence which financiers are apt to have in their power to influence public credit— he resolved to bring his candidate into fashion, and raise the character of the House of Orleans, as he might do the price of Bank Stock ; but the antecedens of that house were not favourable to this speculation : all former historians had joined in a chorus of indignation against the crimes of the Revolution, and even the most liberal amongst them had a tendency to keep alive and sharpen the feelings of shame and horror with which the majority of the French people looked back on those disastrous and disgraceful days, and in an especial degree on the most odious cause and accomplice of all those atrocities — Philippe Egalite. Now, towards producing the son — little known to the public except as the son of such a man — the first step would natu- rally be an attempt to efface or extenuate the crimes of the father. It was therefore, as we suspect, decided by the leaders that, in addition to the light troops of newspapers and pamphlets, the heavy artillery of regular history should be brought into action, and that, while the inestimable benefits and the immortal glory conferred on France by the Revolution should be blazoned to the highest, its crimes and horrors should be palliated and excused ; and, as an important corollary to the general design, that the case of Ugalite should be kindly yet cautiously handled — keeping him in a shadowy background — not wholly unnoticed, lest it should be said that the Revolution was ashamed of him — not altogether whitewashing him, lest outraged truth should rise up and remonstrate too loudly — but just mentioned where he could not well be omitted, with a charit- able ambiguity — the precursor of that bolder insult to the feeling and common sense of all mankind, which, when M. Lafitte's plot had ripened into success, proclaimed him * le plus honnete homme de la France.* Of course it would add greatly to the effect if all this should be done in two solemn and substantial His- torical Works, so different in size, style, general arrangement, and artistic character, that they never could be suspected of being con- certed fabrications of the same shop. We do not venture to say that these twin Histories were concocted solely for this Orleanist project. There were, no doubt, as we before said, the concur- 14 THIERS' HISTORIES. rent objects of literary profit and fame, and a powerful share of the old revolutionary impulse in the minds of the writers ; but we do believe, and think we could show from a concurrence of minute circumstances, that they were written in concert — that Thiers is only an amplification of Mignet, and Mignet a table of contents to Thiers ; and that both, whether spontaneously or by the suggestion of the leader of the party, were made subservient to the general views of the new revolutionists, and collaterally to their designs in favour of the Duke of Orleans. It is at least cer- tain that if the works had been undertaken with that special object, they could hardly have fulfilled it better. We shall examine in due course M. Thiers' mode of handling these matters ; but in order to have done with M. Mignet, we shall at once produce all the passages of his philosophical History in which this primum mobile of the Revolution, the Egalite Duke of Orleans, is mentioned — and they are hut three ! The first introduces that prince — very much a i^ropos de hottes — for the purpose of denying that he had any party or real influence in the Revolution : — ' The Buke of Orleans, to whom they [that is, all mankind, except MM. Mignet and Co.] have imputed a party, had very little influence in the Assembly — he voted with the majority and not the majority with him. The personal attachment of some few members — his name — the fears of the Court — the popularity with which his opi- nions were rewarded — hq^es much more than plots — gave him the cha- racter of factious ; but he had neither the qualities nor even the defects of a conspirator ; he 7nay have helped, with his purse and his name, popular movements which would have equally happened without him, and which had a very different object from his elevation.' — Migmt, 108. We need not stop to expose the confusion, self-contradictions, and general falsehood of this passage ; but our readers will con- trast the hesitating hypothesis that the ' Duke might have helped with his purse,' with the bold assertion that, whether he did or not, it produced no result. Again: in the relation of the frightful events of the 5th and 6th of October, 1789 — the real pivot on which the Revolution turned from good to irretrievable evil,* and which was the indis- -i * Whatever of permanent good, either from the Fievolution of 1789, was begun political or social, France has derived and in principle irrevocably ratified, MIGNET'S HISTORY. 15 putable movement of the Duke of Orleans — his name is not even alluded to ; but by and bye, on occasion of his subsequent visit to England, it is thus mentioned : — *■ The Duke of Orleans — who wrongly or rightly was considered the planner of the insurrection — consented to go on a mission to Eng- land.'— i6. 131. ' Wrongly or rightly.^ And this complaisant doubt is expressed by a philosophical historian of a fact as notorious as the sun, and admitted by the pusillanimous evasion of the culprit, which broke up the confederacy between him and the more daring Mirabeau. The third direct mention of him is in a general attempt of M. Mignet to varnish over some of the most atrocious murders of the Convention by a kind of classification motivce: — ' The Dictatorial Government [the Committees of the Convention] struck at all the parties with whix^h it was at war in their highest and most sensitive places. The condemnation of the Queen was directed against Europe — that of the Twenty-two [Brissot, ^c] against the Girondins — that of the wise [le sage!] Bailly against the old Con- stituant party — and, finally, that of the Duke of Orleans against certain members of the Montague, who were suspected of plotting his elevation.' — lb. 405. This exceeds the former passage in absurdity and falsehood, and deserves a few words of fuller exposure. That bloody mockery of justice, the Revolutionary Tribunal, is kept altogether out of sight, and M. Mignet endeavours indirectly to palliate its murders by thus presenting them as the acts of a Government invested by the perilous circumstances of the country with a dicta- torial right of war against its public enemies — a nefarious prin- ciple, too bad to have been alleged even by the original murderers. He would have us believe — contrary to all evidence, contrary to the knowledge of all — not a few — surviving v/itnesses — that the murder of the prostrate and helpless Queen was a stroke of public policy against JEurope ; as if the previous execution of the King, and declaration of war against the very name of monarchy through- out Europe, had not rendered the death of the Queen a mere insulated, wanton, and unmeaning cruelty :— that * the murder of with the full concurrence of the King October ; after that, all was violence and of the sounder portion of the and terror — alternate anarchy and des- peoplB) prior to the outrages of the 6th potism ! IG THIERS' HISTOEIES. the Twenty-two was directed against the Grirondms ;' as if the Twentt/-tivo were not themselves the Qirondins : — that the ' mur- der of Bailly was meant to intimidate the old Constituants ;' as if any one at that time cared, or even thought of the old Constituants ; as if it were not one of the most striking and notorious facts of the whole revolutionary tragedy that the poor raorosoph Bailly was rather tortured to death than executed, in the Champ de Mars, in personal vengeance of his share in repressing a riot on that very spot three years before ; and, finally, that * the murder of the Duke of Orleans was a demonstration against certain members of the Mountain who had plotted his elevation ; ' as if it were not the Mountain and the plotters themselves who put him to death ; as if the historian had not just before told us that the Duke had no party and 7io plots ; and as if he had been a victim of the same innocent and interesting class as the Queen, or Bailly, or the Girondins : — for the crimes of the latter, great as they were, can never be justly placed in the same category with those oi Egalite. We have been led to notice these passages, not by selection, but because they comprise the whole of what M. Mignet thinks proper to tell us of the share of the Duke of Orleans in the Revo- lution — he does not so much as allude to his vote for the death of the King, nor even to the assumption of the name Egalite — a most significant silence : to which we may add, as an appropriate pendant — that no description, nor, as we recollect, any mention of that revolutionary Saint, whose influence worked so large a portion of M. Mignet's miracles — the Guillotine — is allowed to sully the pages of his philanthropic History : and the stupendous horrors of the Bevolutionary Tribunal of Paris, with its 2700 victims — the Noyades of Nantes — the Mitraillades of Lyons — the proconsular massacres in all the great towns of France — are huddled together, and rather concealed than recorded in these few vague words — ' Death became the only rule of governing, and the Republic was delivered over to daily and systematic executions:' to which the impartial historian takes care to append a gentle hint that, for whatever mischief was done, the suff'erers themselves were really the guilty parties by the resistance with which the Revolu- tion had been originally met : all that followed, he thinks, was natural — inevitable : and if we were to push this philosopher's reasoning to its obvious conclusion, we should find that poor Louis XVI. was guilty not only of his own murder, but of cutting MIGKET'S HISTORY. 17 off the heads of the thousands of all ranks and parties that fol- lowed him to the scaffold. We shall see by-and-by that M. Thiers' ' History ' is also composed on exactly the same absurd and mischievous falsification of facts and perversion of reasoning. We are not reviewing M. Mignet — though we confess we ought to have done so long ago ; but all the French biographers and critics admit that he and M. Thiers were so identified in principle, and so evidently '■fingers of the same liand^ that we could not overlook the connexion and mutual elucidation of their Histories — coming from the same workshop — at the same period of time — under the same patronage — and, as we think the result shows, for the same ultimate purpose. Besides, we are not sorry to have an opportunity of expressing, however late and however cursorily, our very unfavourable opinion of Mignet's work— for his skeleton style and method have obtahied for him a kind Kii 'prima facie reputation of accuracy and impartiality which he assuredly does not deserve. An ordinary reader may sometimes suspect that Thiers is too brilliant to be trusted, while Mignet seems too dry to be doubted ; whereas, in truth, they are, though by different processes, equally deceptive. Thiers' portrait flatters the Revolution by altering the details ; Mignet's coarser and colourless hand falsifies the outline. Here, in strict chronological order, we should pursue our obser- vations on M. Thiers' first History ; but it will be more convenient, we think, to complete our slight sketch of his life before we pro- ceed to the fuller examination of his work. We have said that his articles in the Const itutionnel had given him a political position ; and his ' History,' written in the sense of the prevailing public opinion, and hardly less a measure of Oppo- sition than his newspaper articles — which it resembled in many respects —obtained him, at least with his own party, a more deter- mined and permanent reputation. But still the wished-for revo- lution did not arrive : the respectable and not unpopular ministry of M. de Martignac seemed even to adjourn any immediate pro- bability of it ; and the activity and ambition of M. Thiers seem to have become somewhat impatient of the fruitless conflict he was engaged in. * He began,' says M. Sainte-Beuve, 'to contemplate a " General History." ' He does not say of what ; but adds, ' that for this new object M. Thiers thought it necessary to prepare him- self by a diligent study of the higher sciences.' 18 THIERS' HISTORIES. ' Those wlio have had the pleasure of a long acquaintance with M. Thiers remember — not without charm — this, as 1 may call it, scientifiG phase of M. Thiers' life. He studies Laplace, Lagrange — studies them pen in hand — smitten with the love of the higher calcids, and making them. He traces meridians (des meridiens) at his window, and arrives in the evening at a party of friends, reciting, with an accent of enthusiasm, those noble and simple last words of the Systeme de la Nature — " Let us preserve, nay, carefully augment, the storehouse of these high pursuits, the delights (delices) of thinking beings." ' Whatever doubts this high-flown passage may excite as to the scientific acquirements of either M. Sainte-Beuve or M. Thiers, it would be uncivil to doubt the facts : we, therefore, must believe that M. Thiers actually makes his calculations ' pen in hand ;' and that he has accomplished that heretofore undiscovered problem of finding: more than one meridian for the same window. The meri- dian of a window every schoolboy can find with two pins and two half-hours of sunshine. About the time that M. Thiers was thus in his ' scientific fhase^ it happened that M. Hyde de Neuville, the Minister of Marine, was preparing a voyage of discovery under Captain Laplace. The scheme attracted M. Thiers' active and inquisitive propensities : he asked, says M. Sainte-Beuve, and obtained, the consent of the minister and the commandant to his joining the expedition ; and M. Hyde de Neuville even proposed to him the office of historian (redacteur) of the voyage. All was arranged ; M. Thiers had taken leave of his friends, and was on the point of embarking, when the Martlgnac ministry was overthrown, and, on the accession of M. de Pollgnac, M. Thiers or his advisers foresaw the approach of a political tempest, in which he should be more in his element than in the storms of the ocean. He unpacked his trunks, and resumed his pen. The story has been doubted, and we ourselves do not believe it : but it affords his panegyrist an occasion to remind us of Oliver Cromwell about to sail for New England, when turned back by a proclamation of the royalty that he was destined to overthrow. M. Sainte-Beuve candidly adds that he does not compare Adolphe Thiers to Oliver Cromwell ; though, * bon grd^ mal gre, ce souvenir saute tout d'abord a VespritJ By one of those turns of fortune which revolutions only can produce, and the hope of which has been the chief incentive of all the revo- THE NATIONAL— ARMAND CARPvEL. 19 lutions of France, M. Thiers, as Minister^ gave Captain Laplace a complimentary dinner on his return from this expedition, which M. Thiers had (according to M. Sainte-Beuve) so narrowly and for himself so luckily escaped. But M. Thiers' revived zeal, and the importance of the crisis, now required another and more vehement organ than the mea- sured, and somewhat monotonous essayism of the Constitutionnel ; and with funds supplied from the same source as all the -other ex- penses of this opposition, ' les sommitcs financieres de la Gauche,'' — that is, M. Lafitte — he, with his old friend Mignet, and a younger and more dashing one, Armand Carrel, founded the National. The principles and character of Carrel reflect some light on those of his associate. Educated in the Royal Military School of St Cyr, he was remarked for his early turbulence. In 1819 he joined the army as a sub-lieutenant, and being in garrison at Befort, became involved in the military conspiracy of 18*22, in which Lafayette and the Comite directeur of Paris were so seriously implicated. On this occasion Carrel withdrew or was removed from the army ; and on the French invasion of Spain he joined the Spanish insurgents, and served under Mina against his own countrymen. Being taken prisoner in the course of this affair, he was tried and twice condemned to death, but the sen- tences were successively set aside for technical irregularities ; and on a third trial, as is usual in such cases, indulgence prevailed, and he was acquitted. He then came to Paris, and fell into the same course of literature, and, we suppose, under the same patronage, as Thiers and Mignet. He was a regular contributor to the Constitutionnel, and published abridgments of the Histories of Scotland and Modern Greece ; and in more direct furtherance of the grand conspiracy, a History of the Counter-revolution in England under Charles II. and James II. This work was sup- pressed by the Government, and we have never seen it ; but w-e presume it was an amplification of the heads of our preceding synopsis. When the July revx)lution removed Thiers and Mignet to ministerial office. Carrel was rewarded, more obscurely and scantily, with a secret mission into Belgium, and was subsequently offered a prefecture. These, we believe, seemed to him an inade- quate recompense, and he continued in the chief direction of the National, in which he showed not a little mortification and depit at the inconsistency and ingratitude of the Citizen-Monarchy ; and c 2 20 THIERS' HISTORIES. ill 1838 was killed in a half personal, half journalist duel by M. Emile Girardin, who had just started La Presse, at half the usual price of its contemporaries. The earlier days of the National, to which we must return, were brilliant and successful. M. Thiers' conception of his subject and object — the prmctple, so to call it, of his warfare — was as saga- cious as its execution was bold and able. It was to paralyze the Government, and push it eventually to its own destruction, by affecting to lay down as the inexorable and only rule for the con- duct of affairs — ' the Charter — the whole Charter, and nothing hut the Charter ;' to employ against the Government every power and means that were not expressly forbidden in the Charter, and to deny them every power and means of resistance that were not specifically recognized. , ' Confine,' said M. Thiers, ' these Bour- bons within the four walls of their Charter ; shut the doors, stop the chimneys, and we shall soon force them to jump out of the windows.' This was logical ; it was bringing to practical proof Mr. Burke's philosophical objections to pen-and-ink constitutions, whose theories can never provide for the incalculable contingencies of human affairs ; but it is equally applicable to the Charter of Louis-Philippe,* or any other extemporized paper constitution, as to that of Louis XVIII. ; and it is, in fact, the best excuse that can be made for Charles X. and his ministers ; for it is an admission on the part of M. Thiers that government, under such a formula as ' nothing hut the Charter,^ was impracticable. So M. Thiers himself found it when he became, under the revised Charter, Louis- Philippe's minister. The mitraille of St. Mery, the bloody scenes of the Rue Transnonain, and the ' laws of Sep- temher^ forced on the new monarchy by the ungovernable violence of its former partizans, now become its victims, were no more than successful imitations of what the Ministry of Charles X. had been driven to attempt, without having either head cr hand to * ' Oui ; apres deux ans de regne, surrection against Charles X. — the Louis-Philippe a d^chlr^ la Charte aussi denouement of the comedie de quinze ans manifestement que Charles X., et bien — seems to us to differ only in degree, plus manifestement encore, car il I'a and not at all in principle, from the dechire apres la revolution, apres Tin- various insurrections against Louis- troduction dans la Charte de disposi- Philippe; indeed, the latter seem in tions destinees k prevenir de pareilles one respect more excusable, as they violations.' — Cahet, Ii^i\de\9>?>0, -p. 19,1. had the example of the Mly insur- M. Thiers, no doubt, sees a great dif- rection for attempting to take the law ference between the cases; but the in- into their own bands. THE NATIONAL— THE ORDONNANCES. 21 execute. We have never changed our opinion on the extreme rashness and folly — fool-hardiness alternating with faint-hearted- ness — of the Polignac Government ; but the best excuse we can find for it is the sagacious principle on which M. Thiers con- ducted, as journalist, the opposition of the National, and the energetic measures by which he subsequently, as minister, quelled the insurrections of his former friends, associates, and admirers. M. Thiers is the best apologist for M. de Polignac* The National had a large share in preparing men's minds for a change ; but on the appearance of the Ordonnances M. Thiers took a more active part in deciding the new Revolution. The Ordonnances on their first appearance produced little effect, and would probably not have occasioned an insurrection, but that the editors of the newspapers whose presses were next morning seized were convoked at the ofl[ice of the National, where they agreed to and signed the celebrated protest drawn up by M, Thiers, which was instantly printed and published all over Paris, and became the immediate signal for revolt. Then came the Three Days — during which, as in the beginning of the Revolution, the working hands showed so much courage in the streets, and their insti- gators so much doubt and hesitation — not to say personal weakness — in their councils. M. Thiers himself, though he had had the courage to set fire to the train, did not wait for the explosion. We should have expected from his temper, his energy, and the peculiar taste which he professes for military affairs, to have seen him prominent in the conflict which he had taken so forward a part in exciting. But no !— Immediately after signing the protest he retired to Montmorency, a village a few miles from Paris, and did not re-appear till early on the morning of the 30th, when the victory had been won, and when Deputies and Journalists were seen hastening from their respective retreats to divide the spoil. This part of M. Thiers' history no longer reminds M. Sainte-Beuve of Oliver Cromwell, and he jumps a pieds Joints over the Three Great Days — with a dexterity worthy of the historical school which he eulogises : — * M. Thiers' conduct in these critical and decisive moments, from th^ 26th to the 31st July, may be comprised in two facts — he con- * Still more recent events, Feb. 1848, account in any impartial view of the and Dec. 1850, should be taken into policy of M. de Polignac— 1855. 22 THIERS' HISTORIES. tributed inora than any one to the opening act — the protest — and as much as any one to the dosing one.' This mode of covering M. Thiers' latebration during the Th7'ee Days — by ' comprising his conduct in two facts,' which occurred, one before and the other after them, is admirable. In regular war it would be very presumptuous and foolish for a civilian, acci- dentally present, to intrude his co-operation — and even in his History, M. Thiers would have escaped some strange blunders if he had been less confident in his own military skill — but in such a conflict as that of the Three Days^ and under his very peculiar circumstances, M. Thiers' absence from a resistance which he had so directly instigated, reminds us, involuntarily, of the ' relictd non bene parmuld ' of another little Epicurean — for whom, how- ever, it may be said that Horace never professed to be Brutus, nor ventured to criticise the campaigns of Csesar. This circumstance is rendered the more piqiiant, by M. Thiers' own observations on ' Robespierre's having — during the three days of the insurrection of the 10th of August — stood aside (reste a Vecart) till the revolu- tion had been accomplished ; and then coming forward to claim the merit and recompense of the victory, of which he had been the trumpeter, not the soldier.' This is certainly a curious coinci- dence : — M. Thiers little thought that he was anticipating his own history under the name of Robespierre ! We do not, however, attribute M. Thiers' disappearance to a want of physical courage — neither his countrymen in general, nor those particularly of the province to which he belongs, have ever been deficient in personal bravery, and M. Thiers in some subsequent emeutes, in which he happened to be personally exposed, showed sufficient firmness. We attribute it rather to political prudence — a ramification of the same system which induced the Duke of Orleans to retire, at the same period, to a summer-house in his park. There were, in our view, three parties to the July movement. First, the Republicans and the mob, who thought of nothing but the over- throw of the existing authority :— these took the field thoughtlessly, instinctively, and boldly. Secondly, the Constitutional Conser- vatives — at the head of whom were the Duke de Broglie and M. Guizot, and, with a shade more of democracy, Casimir Perier ; — their wishes did not go beyond a change of ministry, or perhaps^ by way of guarantee, an abdication of Charles X. in favour of the Duke of Bordeaux : — naturally and rationally disapproving of so THE JULY MOVEMENT. 23 violent a proceeding as the ordonnances, they would have preferred a parliamentary solution, and therefore regretted the insurrection, or at least its extent and violence, and to the last possible moment would have gladly compromised the dispute. Thirdly, Lafitte and his satellites, Thiers, &c., who may be called the Orleanists — who had prepared the mischief, and assembled, bribed, and intoxicated the populace, but, doubtful both of their cause and of their candidate, kept aloof, watching events and waiting their opportunity. It seems to us that they were playing the same game as the Orleanists of the first Revolution. They had calculated on just so much commotion as should intimidate the King into a transfer of the crown to the Duke of Orleans, and were surprised and alarmed to find that the populace, victorious beyond calculation or expecta- tion, was not very ready to devolve the sovereign power, of which it had — to the tune of * a has les Bourbons ' — possessed itself, upon the first Prince of the Bourbon blood. Our reviews of the works of Sarrans, Mazas, Berard, and Bonnellier * have informed our readers of the difficulty that M. Lafitte eventually found in accomplishing his object ; and it may have been, and probably was, this uncertainty that determined M. Thiers' triduan retreat into the valley of Montmorency. Fortunately, however, for France and the world, a strange combination of accident, common sense, and legerdemain, placed Louis-Philippe on the throne of those whom, however, he did not dare to call his ancestors ; and after some ministerial experiments at a more comprehensive administration, M. Lafitte was declared first minister with a cabinet of his demo- cratic friends. M. Thiers was at once admitted into the Conseil d'Etat and the Legion of Honour, and soon after became Under Secretary of State for the Finance Department — while his Pylades, M. Mignet— * after the remarkable days that overthrew the Restoration, received the rewards to which his enlightened liberalism — his talents and his patriotism justly entitle him : — He is a Counsellor of State extraordinary— Director of the Archives of the Foreign Department — and decorated with the Star of the Legion of Honour.'' — Biog. des Contemporains, tit. Mignet. Of M. Thiers' brilliant career we shall say no more than is * Quarterly Review, Sarrans, vol. Bdrard, vol. lii, p. 2G2 ;,anton butchery of several of these unfortunate gentle- men, who were only overpowered because they would not fire on the mob. On the contrary, he says in general terms that ' La- fayette saved the Gardes-du-corps from massacre,' and it is only by an allusion in a subsequent page, introduced to do Lafayette an honour he did not deserve, that we discover that any of the Gardes-du-corps had been murdered : — ' Lafayette gave orders to disarm [strange phrase !] the two ruffians who carried at the tops of their pikes the heads of the Gardes-du- corps. This horrible trophy was forced from them ; and it is not true that it preceded the King's coach.' This is a mixture of falsehood and equivocation. The ruffians were not disarmed of their horrid trophies ; on the contrary, they carried them to Paris — not indeed immediately in front of the King's carriage, but in the van of the procession, which of course had begun to march before the King set out. This first detach- ment stopped half-way at Sevres, where they forced the village hair- dresser to dress the hair of the two bloody heads {Bertrand de Moleville, vol. i. p. 144). And finally, M.Thiers' impartiality sup- presses one of the noblest and most striking traits of the Queen's character. When the officers of the Chatelet wished to obtain her evidence on these transactions, she replied that ' she would not appear as a witness against any of the King's subjects,' adding nobly, ' J\ii tout vu — tout su — et tout oiihlie ! ' All M. Thiers' other characters are treated in the same style : every Royalist is depreciated and libelled directly and indirectly, by misrepresentation, by sneer, by calumny ; and not a crime or horror is mentioned without, sometimes, an insidious suggestion, but generally a downright assertion, that the King, the Court, or the Royalists were themselves the cause of it ; while, on the other hand, every Revolutionist is a patriot, a sage, or a hero ; and from the equivocating imbecility of Lafayette up to the bloody audacity PERSONAL MISPtEPRESENTATIOXS. 49 of Danton, every shade of worthlessness and crime finds in M. Thiers an admirer or an apologist.* Marat, we think, ^nd, in some degree, Robespierre, are the only exceptions. Doomed as they already were to the part of scapegoats of all the sins of the early Revolution, M. Thiers finds it convenient to continue them in that character. As his narrative approaches later times, it is curious to observe with what evident, and sometimes gross personal flattery or personal injustice, he treats the objects of (as the case may be) his own political bias or antipathy. But it would take a Bio- graphical Dictionary to follow him into all the details of his per- sonal misrepresentations. We m.ust content ourselves with having indicated his general practice, and pursue the more important duty of examining his narrative of events ; — and in fulfilment of the principle which we professed at the outset, we will not make what might be thought a selection to suit our own purpose ; — we shall accept the first marked events which the work presents — by them M. Thiers himself could not object to be judged. * There is another species of par- tiality which he constantly employs, and which, petty as it is, produces a certain general effect. The young historian, addressing himself to the passions of La Jeiine France, exagge- rates on every occasion the youth and beauty of his revolutionary heroes and heroines. For instance — ' About this time there was at Paris a young Mar- seillais, full of ardour, courage, and re- publican illusions, who was surnamcd Antinous for his beauty — qii'on nomma Antinous, tant il etait beau' (vol. i. p. 303). A mere fiction : he never was so named. The assertion is a misre- presentation of a phrase of Madame lloland's ; who, however, says no more than that a * painter would not have disdained to have copied his featio^es for a head of Antinous.' A natural remark from an artist's daughter, and who was herself supposed to have a penchant for Barbaroux ; but it is far from the as- sertion that he was ' nomme Antinous tant il etait beau I ' — for even Madame lioland does not so call him, and no one else that we can discover, except M. Thiers and his copyists, ever men- tioned him and Antinous together. The truth is, that, whatever Barbaroux's features may have been, his figure was so clumsy, that, when the Giron- dins were endeavouring to escape after their insurrection in Normandy, his size was a serious embarrassment. ' Buzot,' says Louvet, one of the party, ' ddbarra.sse de ses arnies, etait encore trop pesant. Non mains lourd, mais plus courageux, Barbaroux, a vingt-huit ans, dtait gros et gras comme un homme de quarante' — as bulky and as fat as a man of forty ! What an Antinous ! Of Madame Roland herself, M. Thiers says, ' IJlle etait jeune et belle.' She was neither : her countenance, though very agreea,ble, and even engaging, had never, as she herself tells us, been what is called belle; and she was now thirty- eight years old. We even read at this same epoch that it was a matter of surprise that Dulaure should have ' quitte les charmes de la citoyenne Lejay [the handsome wife of a bookseller] pour s'attacher a ceux de la vieille /I'o- land.' (M^m. de Dulaure. — Rev. Ret. iii. 3, 11.) And she herself, with more good humour than is usual with her, owns that ' Camille Desmoulins a en raison de setonner qu'a son age, et avec si peu de beauts, elle avait ce qu'il ap- pelle des adoratears' (^Appel a la Foster ite, iii. Gl). These are trifles in themselves, but they serve to illustrate the general sys- tem of deception — retail as well as wholesale— hj which M. Thiers proceeds. 50 THIEKS' HISTOEIES. We begin with the first bloodshed of the Revolution, the emeute of the 27th of April, 1789, called ' Vaffaire Beveillon,' in which, without any visible cause or conjectured object, and while Paris, as well as the rest of France, was still in the tranquillity and legal order of the old regime — when nothing like an insurrectionary Revolution was thought of — a ferocious mob of persons, unknown in the neighbourhood and evidently hired and guided by some unseen agency, suddenly emerged from the Faubourg St. Antoine, dragging along the figure of a man labelled with the name of M. Reveillon, an extensive paper-manufacturer in the Faubourg St. Antoine, one of the most blameless and respectable citizens of Paris, esteemed by all his neighbours, and particularly popular with the working classes, of whom he employed a great number, and in the famine of the preceding year had been a large bene- factor. After parading this figure through the streets, to the great terror of their inhabitants, as far as the Palais Royal, they there held a mock court upon it, and condemned Reveillon to be hanged in effigy, which, after dragging the figure through a number of other streets, was executed on the Place de Greve. We wish we had been told whether this mock execution was a la lanterne, and a precedent of the real murders so soon perpetrated there. This band of rioters passed the night in drinking and uproar in different public-houses, and next morning, reinforced by numbers of their own description, who seemed to have come in from the country, they again paraded the streets, increasing their force, and at last proceeded to attack Reveillon's residence and manufactory. The unresisted riot grew so obstinate and serious, that the troops were at length called out, but too late to prevent the total destruc- tion of M. Reveillon's establishment, or that of M. Henriot, his neighbour and friend. The mob were so intoxicated with the plunder of the cellars of these houses, and so inflamed by their first successes and continued impunity, that they made a desperate resistance, and the riot was not eventually quelled but with a loss to the troops of nearly 100 killed and wounded, and between 400 and 500 of the mob. For this lamentable, and apparently unaccountable affair (which Mignet does not notice at all), M. Thiers assigns no motive and affords no explanation, except by repeating the notoriously false pretext of the mob — that Reveillon had pro- posed to reduce the wages of his workmen— for which there was not the slightest foundation, nor even colour ; and we have evidence ELECTIONS FOR PARIS. 61 of all kinds, and, if it were worth anything, M. Thiers' own, that the mob were not workmen, but altogether strangers to that neigh- bourhood. That M. Thiers was aware of the truth of the case, we are convinced by the art with which he contrives to evade it. He reverses the chronology of the facts, and relates the Reveillon riot after his account of the Elections of the Deputies of Paris to the States-General, though it happened before them. .Of these he says that * the elections were tumultuous in some provinces — active every- where — and very quiet in Paris, where great unanimity prevailed. Lists were distributed, and people strove to promote concord and good understanding.' Now, M. Thiers must have known that the facts were the very reverse of this. The elections of Paris were by no means that smooth and unanimous proceeding which he repre- sents. The lists that he says were distributed were adverse lists — a strange form of unanimity. * All parties,' he says, ' con- curred :' — in fact, all parties differed, and so widely, that all the other elections of the kingdom were terminated, and the Assembly had actually met, above ten days before the Paris electors could agree on their members. Indeed, in the very next page he con- tradicts his statement as to the tranquillity and unanimity of the elections by admitting that the Duke of Orleans was accused of having been very active in procuring his own return and that of his friends. This is true, but not the whole truth. The moderate party, consisting of the most respectable citizens — of whom Reveill(m was one — were anxious to prevent the election of the Orleans faction ; and, with this view, they put forward a list of candidates, at the head of which stood the popular name of ' Reveillon.' This is the key of the enigma. The Reveillon-list was to be got rid of — the electors were to be intimidated — and the Orleanist candidates returned ! and so it was : and, then, to be sure ' the elections for Paris ' became ' quiet ' enough, and exhibited the same general unanimity and good understanding that the massacres of September, 1792, afterwards produced on the elections for the Convention ! And who conducted this atrocious plot, which cost hundreds of lives at the moment, and hundreds of thousands in its consequences? M. Thiers' candour can go no further than to admit that * the money found in the pockets of some of the lioters who were killed, and some expressions which dropped from others, led to the E 2 52 THIERS' HISTORIES. conjecture tliat they had been urgedv on by a secret band. The enemies of the popular party accused the Duke of Orleans of a wish to try the efficacy of the Eevolutionary mob.' And there the historian closes the subject — with a panegyric on the Prince, implying that the accusation was a mere party calumny, resting on those very slight circumstances. He does not choose to mention the exhibition of Reveillon's effigy the night before, nor the trial and sentence at the Palais Royal, nor to state that this riot took place on a day when the Duke of Orleans had collected the populace of Paris at a horse-race (then a great novelty) at Vincennes, on the high road to w^hich stood Reveillon's house ; — that he, the Duke, passed through the mob before the extreme violence had begun, and addressed to them some familiar and flattering phrases ; and so passed through the crowd amidst shouts of ' Vive le Due d' Orleans ! ' Later in the day, when the troops had been called out, and were just about to act against the mob, the Duchess of Orleans drove in her coach into the street in which the parties w^ere hostilely arrayed ; and, while the troops endeavoured to persuade her to take another and less perilous route, her servants persisted in passing through, and the mob, affecting to make way for her carriage, broke with impunity the line of the troops, who of course could not offer violence to a lady — and that lady the Duchess of Orleans. This incident gave the mob additional confidence : they attacked the troops, and the result was as we have stated. This exhibition of the Duchess of Orleans in such critical circumstances has been adduced by other writers as a proof of the Duke's innocence of the riot — M. Thiers, more prudent, does not notice any of the circumstances, well aware that the rational inference is just the reverse. Who can doubt that the whole affair was concerted, and that the amiable and universally respected Duchess was thus brought forward by her profligate husband to encourage and protect his hired mob, just as in^he subsequent attack of Versailles the first line of assailants were women, and men dressed in women's clothes, that the courage and fidelity of the troops might be embarrassed and neutralised by their reluctance to use violence towards anything in the semblance of a woman ? All this elaborate suggestio falsi and suppressio veri is clearly employed on the part of M. Thiers to forward the double object of his whole ' History ' — to throw as much doubt as he could venture THE MASSACKES OF SEPTEMBER. 53 to raise over the criminality of the Duke of Orleans, and to conceal — and where it could not be concealed, to excuse — the system of violence and terror which, from the first moment to the last, was the primum mobile of the Revolution. Of the same kind, and for the same purpose, is one of, we suppose, the most audacious suppressions of an historical fact that any writer has ever ventured to make, which, from its resemblance to the fraud just exposed, we shall notice here, though out of its chronological order. In M. Thiers' long and laboured account of the massacres of September 1792, in his details of the state of parties and persons, and in his description of the aspect and feelings of the capital during those awful days — days of such mysterious and unaccountable slaughter as the world never before saw, and we trust never will again — M. Thiers does not notice nor even seem to know that they too just preceded and were accessary to the struggle of the Elections for the Convention. On the contrary, he attributes the massacres to the old hackneyed excuse of the terror occasioned by the advance of the Prussians, and endeavours, by what no doubt he thinks a philosophical re- flection, to palliate those atrocities as the result of an accidental and not wholly irrational panic ; — ' Sad lesson for nations ! People believe in dangers ; they persuade themselves that they ought to repel them ; they repeat this ; they work themselves up into a frenzy, and while some proclaim with levity that a blow must be struck, others strike with sanguinary audacity.'' What ' lesson ' nations are to learn from this galimatias about 'terror,' 'frenzy,' 'levity,' and 'sanguinary audacity' — as if they were all the same thing, and all good excuses for massacre — we know not ; and the whole phrase, like many other of those exclamatory apophthegms with which M. Thiers gems his pages, appears to us no better than detestal)le principles swaddled up in contemptible verbiage. He closes the chapter with tji-r^xecrable or, as he calls, ' monumental ' letter of the murderous Commune of Paris, inviting the rest of France to imitate the massacres— and concludes by observing : — * From this document the reader may form some conception of the degree of fanaticism which the approach of public danger had excited in men's minds.' 54 THIERS' HISTORIES. As if that ' monumental ' atrocity had even the paltry excuse of being the product of real fanaticism, or any sincere apprehension of public danger ! We must here pause a moment to observe that this is an in- stance of one of M. Thiers' most frequent tricks — he relates with an affectation of candour and some vague and dubious epithet (such as * monumental ') an atrocity which he could not' conceal, and then he subjoins some explanation or reflection calculated to attenuate the horror. This Jesuitism is one of the most prominent and remarkable features of the whole work. Having thus adroitly disposed of the September massacres by the plea of fanaticism and fatality, he dedicates a long and very ela- borate chapter to Dumouriez' celebrated campaign in the north ; after which he reverts to Paris, and then first mentions, as a quite dis- tinct subject, the Elections for the Convention, to tell us that they were severely contested throughout France between the Girondins and the Mountain, and that in Paris the latter were predominant ; but he makes no other allusion to the terrible circumstances that really decided that predominance than these vague words, ' that in Paris the violent faction which had prevailed since the 10th August had rendered itself mistress of the elections ' without the slightest retrospect to the Massacres ; and by placing those events at such a distance from each other in his narrative, and by carefully omitting the date of the elections, he conceals their coin- cidence. That this suppression was not from either ignorance or accident, but mere had faith^ is evident from the vague expressions above quoted, but still more so from an admission made, inad- vertently, we suspect, in a long subsequent passage, that the Girondins had reproached the Jacobins with * having filled the Deputation of Paris by men only known for their participation in those horrible Saturnalia.' The similarity of the cases has induced us to produce the latter out of its chronological order ; and we now return to see how M. Thiers treats the second great emeute of the Revolution — which was still more important than the affaire-Beveillon as it produced immediately the attack and capture of the Bastille, whence may be dated the lawless portion of the Revolution. We mean the insurrection of the 12th July, of which the dismissal of M. Necker was not, as M. Thiers with all the Jacobin historians would have us believe, the cause, but the opportunity : — AFFAIR 12th JULY. 65 ' On Sunday, July 12, a report was spread that M. Necker had been dismissed, as well as the other ministers, and that the gentle- men mentioned as their successors were almost all known for their opposition to the popular cause. The alarm spread throughout Paris — the people hurried to the Palais Koyal. A young man, since celebrated for his republican enthusiasm, endowed with a tender hearty but an impetuous spirit, Camille Desmoulins, mounted a table, held up a pair of pistols, and shonting To arms I plucked a leaf from a tree, of which he made a cockade, and exhorted the crowd to follow his example: the trees were instantly stripped. The people then repaired to a museum containing busts in wax. They seized those of Necker and the Duhe of Orleans, who was threatened, it was said, with exile, and they spread themselves in the various quarters of Paris. This mob was passing through the Eue St. Honore when it was met near the Place Vendome by a detachment of the Eoyal-Allemand regiment, which rushed upon it, and wounded several persons, among whom was a soldier of the French guards. The latter, predisposed in favour of the people and against the Eoyal-Allemand, with whom they but a few days before had a quarrel, were in barracks near the Place Louis X V. They fired upon the Eoyal-Allemand. The Prince de Lambesc, who commanded this regiment, instantly fell back on thd Garden of the Tuileries, charged the people who were quietly walking there, killed an old man amidst the confusion, and cleared the garden. Terror now becomes unbounded, and changes into fury.' Now it is hardly possible to imagine a grosser series of mis- representations than is contained in the passage we have quoted, compiled without discrimination or consistency from the herd of revolutionary libellers. Who would not think that all this move- ment on the part of the people was a sudden impulse excited by the dismissal of M. Necker, and confined to the parading two busts? But it is notorious that these commotions had actually commenced several days earlier, and it was proved before the Chatelet that the dismissal of M. Necker only accelerated by two days the insurrection which was already in preparation. And why the bust of the Duke of Orleans? Why was he coupled with M. Necker on this occasion ? Because ' it was said he was threatened with exile." A ridiculous pretence !— the truth is, the mob was Ms, and the exhibition of his bust was the signal of the intended change of dynasty. But we are further told that this procession, peaceably carryhig the busts from the Palais Royal along the Rue St. Honore towards the Place Louis XV., 56 THIERS' HISTORIES. was rushed upon by the regiment of Royal- Allemand. M. Thiers must have known that this procession was not the accidental and unarmed movement that he chooses to describe it : we have abundant evidence that it was a preconcerted insurrection, organized and launched from that officina motuum, the Faubourg St. Antoine. Beffroy de Rigny, for instance, a patriotic writer of considerably note in his day, and an enthusiastic admirer if not an associate of the insurrectionary proceedings, gives us this account (published at the moment) of what he himself saw of the affair : — * I heard that there was some commotion. I directed my steps to the Boulevard du Temple [on the opposite side of the tovm. from the Place Louis XV.] ; there I saw about Jive or six thousand men marching rather quick and in no very regular order- — but all armed — some with guns, some with sabres, some with pikes, some with forks, carrying wax busts of the Duke of Orleans and M. Necker, which they had borrowed from M. Curtius [a sculptor, who had an exhibition of wax figures on the Boulevard du Temjjle]. This litth army^ as it passed along the Boulevard, ordered all the theatres to be closed that evening, on pain of being burned. This armed troop received reinforcements at every street that it passed [towards the Place Louis XV.]' — Histoire de France pendant Trois Mois de 1789. It was not, therefore, the Royal- Allemand that wantonly charged an unarmed crowd, which in a sudden effervescence had seized and paraded two busts — it was an army of five or six thousand armed men (increasing in numbers as they proceeded), which had premeditatedly borrowed the two busts (which were some days after returned to the owner), and marched from the Faubourg St. Antoine to brave, if not to attack, the troops posted, for the protection of the public peace, in the neighbourhood of the Place Louis XV., a distance of at least three miles — that is, as if a London mob were to march from Whitechapel to St. James's. M. Thiers in his first edition described the young man ' ivith the tender hearty' Camille Desmoulins, who made the motion in the Palais Royal, as known for his 'exaltation demagogique' — which in his second edition he softens into ' exaltation repuhlicaine^' and he omits to state that he was the bloodthirsty ruffian who, two days later, assumed the title of Procureur- General de la Lanterne, and was subsequently the dme damnee of Danton — both, as Des- moulins himself boasted, belonging to that Orleanist party which THE PEINCE DE LAMBE^C. 57 MM. Mignet and Thiers affect to believe never existed.* But we pass over these and several other gross mistakes and grosser mis- representations in M. Thiers' account, to direct particular attention to the alleged ' attack on the people quietly walking in the Tuileries Gardens by the Prince de Lambesc' This utter falsehood was the main incentive of the more extended insurrection which ensued, and in fact overturned the ancient monarchy of France : and an historian of common honesty ought to have made himself master of the facts of so important a case — which indeed happen to be better and more authentically established than almost any other event of the Revolution. As this matter is of considerable importance, not only to history, but, specially, as a test of M. Thiers' veracity, we recall the particular attention of our readers to his assertion : — ' The Prince of Lambesc, at the head of bis regiment, falls hack (se replie) on the Garden of the Tuileries — charges the people who Were quietly walking there — kills an old man in the midst of the confusion, and clears the Garden.' In the whole of this statement there is not one word of truth — and there can be no doubt or question about the facts, for the matter was the subject of a long, full, and anxious judicial pro- ceeding—in the proces instituted by the rebellious Commune of Paris against the Prince de Lambesc — the report of which was officially published at the time, and is now before us. We here find from the original evidence of a host of witnesses, that the regiment of Royal- Allemand being drawn up, with several other bodies of troops, in the Place Louis XV., was pressed upon by an armed mob, which had marched from the most distant part of the town with the avowed purpose of a conflict, and whose pressure and violence rendered the position of the troops very perilous. The Prince was therefore ordered by Baron de Bezenval, who commanded the whole, to clear away the mob that was closing round them — ^^not, as M. Thiers says, hy falling hack on the Garden, but by coming for- ward — not by charging^ but by slowly advancing^ and obliging the crowd to retire from the Place over the Pmit-tournant or drawbridge * Here we have to notice another of Duke of Orleans ;' but that would seem M. Thiers' variances. He had stated to attribute to the Duke of Orleans in his first edition that this faction of the 'command of the Dantonist party, Desmoulins and Danton ' was said to and therefore the historian, in his re- have been subjected (soumis) to the vised copy, changes soumis into unis. 58 THIERS' HISTORIES. into the Garden— (see the prefixed plan) — following them no farther than to occupy the interior entrance to prevent the return of the rioters. So far was the Prince from attempting to clear the Garden, or charging the peaceable promenaders, that the detachment made no attempt whatsoever to advance beyond the entrance, which is confined between two terraces ; but the mob in front and on the terraces high on both sides, soon became so numerous and violent as to force him, by an attack of stones, broken bottles, billets of wood, and even some shots, to retreat back again from the Garden into the Place. When the people saw the troops about to execute this retreat, they made a rush at the drawbridge to endeavour to turn it, and so have the small detachment at their mercy. The Prince, seeing this attempt, spurred his horse to the bridge, and just as he reached it, a man who had been endeavouring to turn it laid hold of his bridle and tried to unhorse him. The Prince thus assailed struck the man with his sabre, and, cutting through his hat, wounded him in the head, and thus intimidating the mob secured the retreat of the troops. The man, after being wounded, walked to one of the garden-seats, whence the mob took him, and, laying him out for dead on a kind of bier, paraded him through the streets to the Palais Royal (again ' the Palais Royal !^) as a victim wantonly murdered by the Prince de Lambesc. This was the man whom M. Thiers states to have been killed — but lo ! on the trial of the Prince de Lambesc, one of the first witnesses examined was the murdered man himself— a school- master, Jean Louis Chauvel by name — who, though he denied having seized the Prince's bridle, or taken any part in the riot, admitted that he was at the edge of the bridge as the Prince was endeavouring to pass ; and he related, with a naivete and candour which, after M. Thiers' tragic version, is almost amusing, that * after receiving the blow through his hat, he went and sat down on one of the garden-seats, whence he was removed by a troop of persons who gathered round him, and carried him to the Falais Royal and afterwards home, when he sent for his surgeon to dress the wound, and was in about a fortnight quite well again.' — Proces du Pr. de Lambesc, p. 19. As this trial did not take place for six months after the event, we could excuse a writer who had in the interval adopted the exaggerated rumour of the day ; but that M. Thiers should have repeated it in 1823, and in all his subsequent editions, is indis- TAKING OF THE BASTILLE. 59 putable evidence of either the most unpardonable negligence or the most reprehensible bad faith, and in either case would — even if it stood alone, instead of being surrounded by crowds of similar cases— irretrievably destroy the character of the historian and the credit of his History. But we must proceed with the narrative of events. Monday the 13th and the morning of the 14th were employed by the same insurgents in seizing arms from the gunsmiths, the barracks of the troops and the Invalides, and in the afternoon of Tuesday the Bastille was taken ! ' The share,' says M. Thiers, ' that secret means had in producing the insurrection of the 14th of July is unknown, and will probably remain so for ever — but 'tis little matter — \_peu importe]. Varistocratie was conspiring — the popular party might well conspire in its turn — the means employed were the same on both sides. The question is, on which side was justice ?' We really fear that the repetition of such outrageous instances of bad faith will become as nauseous to our readers as we have found them in perusing the pages of M. Thiers — but as they form in fact the staple of his whole work, we are obliged, with whatever contempt and disgust, to reproduce them. Our readers will observe that the assertion that ' the secret means employed to bring about the insurrection of the 14th of July are, and will always be unknown,' is made to save M. Thiers the trouble of finding further excuses for the Duke of Orleans' notorious share in these continuous riots;— and for this purpose, as well as for that of bringing a new accusation against the Royalist party, he makes the following extraordinary statement : — ' It appears that a grand plan had been devised for the night between the 14th and 15th : — ^that Paris was to be attacked on seven points — the Palais Eoyal surrounded — ^the Assembly dis- solved, and the Declaration of the 23rd of June submitted to the Parliament of Paris — and finally that the wants of the Exchequer should be supplied by a bankruptcy and paper money [billets d'etat']. So much is certain — that the Commandants of the troops had received orders to advance from the 14th to the 15th — that the paper money had been prepared— that the barracks of the Swiss Guards were full of ammunition [munitions — military stores in general] — and that the Governor of the Bastille had disfumished the fortress [demenage'\ , with the exception of some indispensable articles of furniture.' 60 THIERS' HISTORIES. On this heterogeneous mass of notorious falsehood and arrant nonsense, which we copy from ShoherVs translation, we must first observe, that the statement, as above quoted, is a fraudulent variation from M. Thiers' own first edition. In that edition the attack of Paris — the dissolution of the Assembly, &c. — had been stated only as ' (w a dit ' — it has been said — which was, as we shall see, true enough ; but M. Thiers in his subsequent editions expunged the on a dit and left the naked assertion, which was utterly false. But that is a trifle. The essential fact is, not only that no such things had any existence — but, what more imme- diately concerns M. Thiers' credit and character, that there is not the smallest colour or pretence for any part of the state- ment — that every detail of it has been fully and judicially dis- proved — that in its present shape and combination it is alto- gether a wilful falsehood. While the events were still fresh in memory and hot in popular feeling, there was a regular legal inquiry into all the circumstances, by the trial — before the lately re-organized tribunal of the Chdtelet^ for the new crime of Lese- Nation* or High Treason against the People — of MM. de Barentin and Puysegur, ministers at the time, of the Marshal de Broglie, commander-in-chief, and of the Baron de Bezenval, the General of the Swiss Guards (already mentioned), who then, as he had for the eight preceding years, commanded all the troops in and around Paris, and who was peculiarly obnoxious to the Revolutionists for the confidence which the King, and particu- larly — as it was said ad invidiam — the Queen placed in him. The charges drawn up by a committee of the rebellious Commune of Paris comprised most of the absurd allegations which M. Thiers has revived — absurd, says Bezenval himself, ' to the degree of a pitiable insanity, — projects of the siege of Paris — massacre — red-hot shot, and so forth.' — {MeTn. de Bez. ii. p. 380.) But there was not even a shadow of proof ; and this officer, who had three times, with great difficulty, escaped being hanged a la lanterne, was, with all his co-accused, even in those days, acquitted from the insane charges which M. Thiers has again raked up in this calumnious romance which he calls a History. The reproduction of these charges after, and without any men- * * Ce mot dont s'enricliissait la rendre I'application plus commode.' — langue r^volutionnaire indiqua tin delit Mem. de Bezenval. qu'on se garda bien de d^finir afin d'en TAKING OF THE BASTILLE. 61 tion of, this judicial and contemporaneous disproof, is a fair test of the historian's veracity ; but it is also a specimen either of his own want of thought and judgment, or, which is more probable, his utter contempt for the understanding of his readers. There are other points, however, of this strange statement that deserve par- ticular notice. ' The barracks of the Swiss were full of munitions.'' Un- doubtedly the Swiss Guards ought to have been supplied with the necessary stores and provisions, whether they were to be moved or not ; and indeed any unusual accumulation of * munitions ' in the barracks would prove that they rather apprehended than intended an attack ; but in truth there is the clearest evidence, and amongst others that of M. de Bezenval himself, that not only were no pro vident measures of any kind taken, but that, on the contrary, the most obvious precautions had been inconceivably neglected — and this M. Thiers himself blindly intimates in the last and most won- derful member of this wonderful paragraph : — ' The Governor of the Bastille had unfurnished the fortress^ with the exception of some indispensable articles.' One translation says * disfurnished ;' the other, ^removed all his furniture ;' the original, ' le Gouverneur de la Bastille avait demenage^ which, in the ordinary use of the words, would mean removed both himself and furniture. We know not whether M. Thiers, whose acquaintance with Paris dates only from 1821, and who, as it appears from other passages, was in 1823 by no means au fait of the ancient topography of the city, was aware that the Governor's residence made no part of the fortress, but was an exterior and separate building ; it seems not, as he applies the term ^demenagS' to "la place^ — the fortress. But in whatever sense he meant to use the ambiguous term, the result to which he comes is this — that the royal fortress of the Bastille was disfurnished, because it was about to become the head- quarters of the royal army, with which it was to co-operate. Now, if the Governor had furriished the place, it might have been said that he anticipated some movements ; but to demenager, what- ever may be M. Thiers' meaning of that term, at the moment, and with the view of making the place a poi7it d'attaque on Paris, would be the grossest absurdity. But we must add a far more important fact, which M. Thiers does not mention — the fortress had been, in fact, left most strangely and suspiciously unprovided of men, ammunition, and even provisions. Out of this supposed 62 THIEES' HISTOEIES. army, which M. Thiers represents as surrounding Paris in such force as to be sufficient to attack the city on seven separate points, ' and which,' he says, ' struck horror into the minds of men ' — the Bastille was left with a garrison of 82 Invalides, and 32 of the Swiss Guards, who had been sent there on the 7th — five days before M. Necker's dismissal — and after that day, in spite of the growing agitation in the city, not one man was added ; and to complete the incredible apathy and negligence of the Government, they had no ' munitions ' for either attack or defence, and 7iot one day's provisions ; and in this state of things M. Thiers does not blush to assert, and to repeat, that the Government had meditated a general attack on Paris on the very day when the Bastille was found without a second day's bread for the 114 Invalides and Swiss who formed the garrison. And there is still another circumstance, which, minute as it is, may not be thought insignificant : when the Governor was made prisoner, he was not armed nor even in uniform, but in a grey frock, and with a cane in his hand. It would be an infinitely more reasonable inference from all the known and certain facts, that treachery in some high quarter must have occasioned so strange a neglect of the most obvious and most necessary pre- cautions on the part of the Government. M. Thiers' details of the actual capture of the Bastille — though of comparatively less importance — still deserve notice as further instances of inaccuracy and misrepresentation. ' No succours arriving, the Governor seized a match with the inten- tion of blowing up the fortress, but the garrison opposed it and obliged him to surrender.' This is a repetition of a silly rumour of the day. The Governor was one of the first, if not the very first, to think of surrendering, and exhibited no romantic point of honour as to defending — much less blowing up the fortress. One story says that he was about to do so with his own hands, when stopped by two invalides. Another, and less improbable one, is, that not the Governor — but one of the inferior officers — wrote and threw across the ditch a note to say, * We are willing to surrender provided we are assured that the garrison shall not be massacred ; but if you do not accept our capitulation we shall blow up the fortress and the neighbourhood.'' This menace, if employed at all (which is by no means certain), was but a weak attempt to save their lives by TAKING OF THE BASTILLE. 63 alarming the assailants for their own ; for as to really blowing up the Bastille rather than surrender, how could it have come into any one's head ? What worse could the mob do than destroy the royal fortress and kill the garrison ? 'The besiegers approached, promising not to do any mischief; the Invalides, attacked by the populace, were only saved from their /wn/ by the zealous interference of the French-Guards. The Swiss found means to escape.' Who would not imagine from this statement that the Invalides and Swiss were all saved, as the capitulation guaranteed?— now hear the fact : — ' Most of the Invalides remaining in the courts of the fortress were put to death in the most merciless manner ; two of the survivors were hanged at the Hotel de Yille a la lanterne — the Gardes Fran- daises [who had joined the mob] saved others who were fortunate enough to have escaped from their assassins.' — Bert, de Moleville, i. 24. As to the Swiss, their own officer relates — ' We experienced every sort of outrage. We were threatened with massacre in all possible shapes — at length I and some of my men were taken to the Hotel de Yille. On the way I was assailed with all kinds of weapons, and saved only by the zeal of one of the Gardes Frangaises, who protected me. Two of my men were massacred close behind me.' — Rev. Ret. The rest — the ' debris,^ the hrolcen remains, as he emphatically terms the few who had accompanied him, escaped by a con- currence of fortunate accidents which deceived the ferocity of the mob : but what became of the others he does not seem to have known ; and the total number of either Swiss or Invalides mas- sacred in the Bastille, or afterwards in the streets, was never, we believe, ascertained. M. Thiers, in a subsequent passage, dis- patches the whole of this butchery in three words — ' other victims fell ' — but who these victims were — whether of the garrison or the besiegers —or whether they fell in the conflict or by subsequent mas- sacre, or what was the number of victims, M. Thiers does not afford us a hint. And yet there was a circumstance in these latter mas- sacres which M. Thiers' silence will not obliterate from the history of France. In them was first employed that new instrument of death, ' la lanterne ; ' but, wonderful to say, that watchword of murder, G4 THIERS' HISTORIES. which had so large a share in the early Revolution — from which one of M. Thiers' pet patriots, Camille Desmoulins, ' 71 e avec un coeur tendre^ took his infamous title — which has been adopted into modern editions of the Dictionnaire de VAvademie — (' Lanterne — Lanterner — sorte de, supplice que le peuple au commencement de la Revolution faisaient subir,^ &c.) — this remarkable word, we say, and the atrocity it describes, M. Thiers suppresses ; and as one closes M. Mignet's ' History ' without learning that there was such an implement as the Guillotiyie^ so we must read M. Thiers' narrative of the 14th July without the light of the Lanterne. We cannot refrain from adding two minute circumstances with which M. Thiers concludes his account of the capture of the Bastille. In describing the triumphal procession of its conquerors, he states — ' The keys of the Bastille were carried at the end of a bayonet. A bloody hand, raised above the crowd, exhibited a stock-buckle — it was that of the Governor, de Launay' — His stocJc-hucJcle ? — it was his head ! — This, the first of those frightful exhibitions that became so rapidly the standards and trophies of Parisian valour, was surely not undeserving the notice of the impartial historian, even if it did not excite his indignation and horror. M. Thiers indeed adds that M. de Launay was ' beheaded'/ yet even that dry and tardy statement is a miserable equivocation — he was not ' beheaded ' — he was (as we shall see presently) massacred, after a long and miserable agony, and it was after death that his head was hacked off, placed on a pike, and paraded through all Paris — though M. Thiers' historic eye rested only on his stock-buckle ! Immediately after these horrors another victim was added — M. de Flesselles, the Prevot des Marchands — chief magistrate of Paris. For this murder M. Thiers has also several palliatives, with which we will not disgust our readers. We will notice only one, common to both the cases : — ' On pretend that a letter had been fonnd on de Launay from Flesselles, in which he said, " Hold out while I amuse the Parisians with cockades." ' M. Thiers says pretend, — it is asserted, — but M. Thiers knows very well that no one now believes — nor, indeed, ever did — such a nolo- INTEEROGATOEY OF F. F. DESNOT. 65 rlous absurdity, or rather indeed impossibility : he knows that, fifty years ago^ M. Bertrand de Moleville — a gentleman of the highest station and character, on whose ' Annals of the Revolution ' M. Thiers frequently relies, though, with his usual inconsistency, he as frequently garbles and depreciates the authority to which he is so largely indebted — M. Bertrand de Moleville, we say, condescended to expose this absurd calumny ; and had, we should have supposed, extinguished it for ever. The real character of all this series of events — their causes and concatenation — which M. Thiers so elaborately obscures, will be explained, we think, to the surprise and horror of our readers, by a document which any French historian — and, above all, those of the Revolutionary school — might be reluctant to quote, and English writers may probably not have known, but which was judicially published in Paris in January, 1790, and which we possess in a supplement to the Journal de Paris of the 26th of that month. We have just alluded to the trials before the Chatelet, in which the Prince de Lambesc and M. de Bezenval were acquitted. As those trials were drawing to a close, an attempt was made to intimidate the judges, or, if that should fail, to massacre the prisoners, by collecting round the Chatelet the same sanguinary mobs that had committed all the former enormities. At this mo- ment, however, Lafayette and his friends being in power, he, with the National Guard, protected the tribunal ; some of the mob were arrested ; and of one of them we have before us the following extraordinary examination and confession : — ' Chatelet de Paris. * IQth January, 1790. ' Interrogatory of Francis Felix Desnot,* now a prisoner in the Chatelet ^ aged thirty-three years, by profession a cook, out of place, and residing in tJie Rue St. Denis, ' Asked — Hov7 long he has been out of place, and how he has lived ? * Desnot was well dressed, and seemed the fellow's name was differently caught very much surprised that so useful a by different reporters. Prudhomme gave patriot should be arrested. There is no it as Demos. We have no means of dovibt that he was one of those habitu- tracing whether Prudhomme was cor- ally employed in these atrocities. On rect, nor whether i)eswos was the same as the 29th of June, 1792, complaint was Desnot, but the Jacobins in the Assembly made in the National Assembly that seemed to take a warm interest in the the Jacobin Club had given a certificate fellow's case, of civism to a thrice-convicted gak'rien : GO THIERS' HISTORIES. ' Answ3rs — That he has been six months out of place ; and that he has lived with his wife, who embroiders, and is very well able to support him.* ' Asked — What he did on [Sunday] the 12th of July last, and the subsequent days ? * Answers — That on the 12th of July last, in the afternoon, as soon as he saw the procession of the busts of M. Necker and M. d'Orleans, he joined the party that were carrying them, and crying " Vive M. Necker! " " Vive M. d'Orleans ! " — that he proceeded thus as far as the Palais Royal ; that there four persons proposed that they should go to the Place Louis XV. to prevent the troops from massacring the people, whom they were pursuing ; that he, deponent, went with all the rest ; that the troops — amongst whom was, as he heard said, the Prince de Lambesc — dispersed and sabred them ; that he, deponent, was overset, and was struck by several stones, and heard one gunshot ; that to avoid the stones that were flying about, he lay down flat on a heap of building-stones on the Place ; that on rising he picked up a dragoon's helmet, which he kept, and carried away ; that in returning he cried out, as he went along, " Citizens! be on your guard to-night!" — that he then went home, and did not go out again that day. ' That on the next morning, Monday [the 13th] — hearing that the citizens had taken arms — ^he joined them about nine o'clock on the Place de Greve with his helmet on his head. That he, deponent, went with the people to get the arms from the Popincourt barracks ; that he, having already a gun, marched at the head and prevented the people stopping by the way to take the wiiiQ of two shops ; that when they reached the barracks they armed themselves with guns, and he, deponent, took care that those only who were steady and able to use arms should have any; that, thus armed, the crowd went different ways ; that he, deponent, with one body came to the Hotel de Ville ; that these were told "to go home ; that they were about to organise districts in order to take prudent measures ;" that he, deponent, went home, and thence to his district (St. Oppor- tune), and with other citizens formed patroles that day and others — so that in fact he, deponent, was eight days and nights continually on foot to maintain good oi-den ("/) 'That the morning of Tuesday [the 14th] was employed in going to seize the arms at the Invalides ; that, being informed in the afternoon that there was a movement towards the Bastille, he went also to get, like the rest, a gun [he himself having been the day before a distributor of guns] and some powder and ball, * The reader sees that this circum- that he was living on the icaqes of his stance is thi-own in to conceal the fact terrible employment. INTERROGATORY OF F. F. DESKOT. 67 according to a message from the Governor of that fortress to the rector (cure) of St. Paul's. Soon after he had entered the Bastille he heard that the people were conducting M. de Launay to the Hotel de Yille. That he, deponent, hastened after him and over- took him near the Arcade of St. John [one of the entrances to the Place de Greve], and never quitted him till they came to the barrier in front of the Hotel de Ville : — that then the people cried out, " Hang him, hang him ! " That M. de Launay, seeing that the people were attacking without hearing him, called out — opening his eyes and grinding his teeth — " Put me to death at once " that at that moment several persons unknown to this deponent fell on M. de Launay with bayonets, guns, pistols, and other weapons; that he, deponent, who was standing near M. de Launay, received a violent kick, which forced him to fall back a little ; but after- wards the people, seeing his helmet, said, " Come, dragoon, he struck you — cut off his head;' that although M. de Launay had been dead a quarter of an hour, and in spite of his own repugnance, he began with a sabre that they gave him to endeavour to separate the head from the body ; but finding the sabre too blunt, he took out his pocket-knife * and finished the operation. That the head, being thus separated, was placed on the end of a pike ; and that he, deponent, still pressed and solicited by the people, carried that head about the streets until the close of day ; that the person who carried the head of M. de Flesselles having joined him, they both came and deposited the heads at the lower jail, for which they gave him a crown ; that he had promised the^ people to carry about the head next day, but on getting home he reflected seriously on this event. That he so little thought that he was compromising himself in this affair, that he prepared several addresses [claiming some additional and honorary reward] ; that he even presented them to the deputies who came next day to Paris; to some of whom he even said that he had rid society of a monster, and hoped he might receive a medal as a reward for having gone to take the arms from the barracks and the Invalides, and particularly from the prison of La Force, where the jailer consented to deliver them, he, deponent, having politely invited him so to do. He adds, that about an hour before he cut off M. de Launay's head he had taken a small glass of brandy, into which he had poured some gunpowder, which had turned his head. He knows that several persons came to his resi- dence next morning to get from him the receipt for the two heads which he had received from the turnkey at the jail, and that, not * On the production of the knife it that he was a cook, and had been bred was observed to him that it was rather a butcher, and therefore knew how to small for such an operation. He replied dissect. —Moniteur, 1 5th January, 1790, F 2 68 THIEES' HISTORIES. having found him at home, they forged a receipt, by means of which he has heard that they obtained the heads, giving the receipt to the jailers.' We must here pause a moment in this astonishing narrative to remind our readers that a week after the capture of the Bastille, Messrs. Foulon and Berthier — the first, one of the ministry named to succeed that which was dissolved by the dismissal of M. Necker, and the latter his son-in-law — were massacred in the Place de Greve on the most absurd pretexts and in the most cruel manner, and their heads, and the lieart of M. Berthier, were paraded through the town. M. Thiers on this occasion says that M. Fou- lon was hanged ' a un reverbere ' — a reflector — an inoffensive synonyme which he employs to avoid using the true and technical description of a la lanterne — he even admits that M. Foulon's head was promenaded through Paris — but he does not condescend to mention the head and heart of M. Berthier ; and he sums up this new tragedy by observing, that * these murders must have been planned (conduits) either by the personal enemies of M. Foulon or by those of the public v^elfare ; for though the fury of the people had been spontaneous at the sight of the victims, as most popular movements are, their original arrest must have been the result of concert.' Here again M. Thiers misrepresents, and endeavours to sepa- rate this case from the other events ; the fury of the people was not spontaneous— and the concert and combination, which he admits to have existed, were no other than the same concert and combination which had been at work for the preceding ten days— for here again we find Desnot acting the same part that he had done on the 12th, 13th, and 14th, and as he boasted that he did 'for eight days a/if^r,'— and it was on the eighth day that these gentlemen were massacred. Thus proceeds this wretch's deposition : — ' This deponent further declares, that on the day that M. Berthier vras brought to the Hotel de Ville, he, deponent, was on the Place de Greve, but he participated in no way in that assassination — but he was so close to that terrible execution, that he heard the said Berthier say to the people, " Spare me, my friends, I am innocent; I vrill give you a million," or several millions ; that the said Berthier was not hanged at the gallows of la lanterne, but massacred by the INTERROGATORY OF F. F. DESNOT. 69 -r sabres of the soldiers ; that amongst others a soldier of the regiment of Roy ale Cramtte cut open his belly with his sabre ; that the crowd was so great that he, deponent, fell upon the body— that an indi- vidual to him unknown tore out the heart of M. Berthier, and placed it in his, deponent's, hand— and that the soldier took him by the collar and said, "Come, dragoon, carry this heart to the Hotel de Ville " — that he did so carry it, and obtained an audience of M. de Lafayette* and on leaving M. de Lafayette and coming down the stairs of the Hotel de Ville, the same soldier stuck the heart on the end of his sabre, and forced him, deponent, to carry it about— that they went through several streets of Paris, and to the Palais Eoyal, and that at last, while he and the soldier were getting their supper in a public-house in one of the streets that lead into the Rue St. Honore, the people came and demanded the heart from them, and that deponent threw it out of the window to them, and does not know what became of the heart afterwards ; and deponent further says, that he has nothing more to reproach himself with, in all the unlucky events that have since happened : — that he accom- panied, indeed, M. Lafayette to Versailles on the 5th of October last, but took no part in the murder of the Eoyal Guards, but only possessed himself of a shoe belonging to one of those that were killed, to show it in Paris. ' Asked if he was not excited to cut off M. de Launay's head, to carry M. Berthier's heart at the point of a sabre, and to attend all the mobs that have collected, and if he has not received sums of money for doing so ? ' Answers, that he has not been excited by any one in particular, but by the people in general, as he before stated; that he has received nothing for these actions — that he has ten or a dozen times played the bassoon in certain processions of women to St. Gene- vieve, and that he received three or four livres for each turn.' — Supplement au Journal de Paris, 26 Jan. 1790. Such is the real picture of the Revolution ! — the portrait ad vivum — not as outlined by Mignet or coloured by Thiers, but the living image — which to get rid of and obliterate, and to throw a veil over its authors and clouds of suspicion over its victims, is the first object of these pretended Histories. We need enter into * 111 as we think of most parts of chief magistracy ? and stranger still that Lafayette's conduct, we do not infer the bloody trophy was not taken from from this statement that he gave any him? and strangest of all that such a countenance to this hideous visitor. But fact, solemnly stated in a court of jus- is it not strange that the wretch was not tice and published at the time, should aiTcsted at theH6tel de Ville, the seat never have been again noticed— at least of both the military command and the that we know of? 70 THIERS' HISTORIES. no detailed observations on Desnot's deposition, a strange and frightful mixture of confession and concealment — but which — as is always the case when the criminal is allowed to talk — in- voluntarily reveals what it attempts to hide. Can any one believe that it was ' fatality,' or * accident,^ or ' spontaneous excitement,' as M. Thiers indulgently phrases it, that occasioned this cook out of place, with no means of livelihood but his wife's needle, to be an active leader in all these successive scenes — in the insurrection of the 1 2th of July — in the plunder of arms on the 13th — in the attack of the Bastille on the 14th — in the patroles that filled Paris with terror for the ensuing week — in the murderous riot of the 22nd — in the attack on Versailles on the 5th of October — and in the mob of murderers that besieged the Chatelet in January 1790 : — who w^as the trophy-bearer of all these popular victories — who for ten days was distinguished in the streets of the capital by the plundered helmet, at once the trophy and the proof of the popular aggression — who sawed off and paraded M. de Launay's head on the 14th — who tore out and paraded the heart of M. Berthier on the 22nd — who on the same evening, after a visit to M. Lafayette, went to sup with his brother murderer, having on their table the heart of their victim, which, on the requisitions of the mob outside, they threw out of the wdn- dow — and who finally brought back from Versailles on the 6th of October the shoe of one of the murdered Gardes-du-corps, which he treats — ^just as M. Thiers does M. de Launay's stock-buckle — as if the heads of the victims were a minor incident not worth notice ? Can it be doubted that this was a chain of preconcerted emeutes ; and can M. Thiers hope to persuade any man of common sense that ' Vor repandu ' in preparing such scenes and in hiring such actors was ' without any influence on the Revolution ? ' This wonderful case of Desnot, though the most circumstantial that we have happened to find, is by no means a solitary proof that all these enormities were prepared by the same heads and executed by the same hands. We could produce many other indications that it was an organised system. One case is so flagrant that even M. Thiers cannot suppress, though, as usual, he endeavours to excuse it. He is forced to admit that a fellow of the name of Maillard {ante, p. 45), formerly a tipstaff' or bailiff' in one of the courts of law, played a great part on all these occasions — that he was at the head of an organised band of assassins— that he was the CONCLUSION. 71 most prominent leader of the attack on the Bastille— that it was the same Maillard who led the mob of women * to Versailles on the 5th of October — and again the same Maillard — still more decidedly damned to everlasting horror for having presided over and directed the 3fassacre at the Ahhai/e. Here again we have the same man appearing and re-appearing in all these various scenes of blood. M. Thiers cannot pretend that these repeated, or we may rather say constant, coincidences could have been * accident ' and 'spontaneous excitement' Who then were the employers and paymasters of Desnot and Maillard — who but the two main objects of M. Thiers' special protection and apology, Banton and Egalitef Here, for the present, we conclude. We have got through little more than the first livraison of M. Thiers' first work, and have already exceeded our usual limits ; but this portion affbrds the most decisive and irrefragable tests of the historian's credit. •We have not selected our instances ; we have, as we before said, taken what M. Thiers presented to us as his first and greatest objects; we have exhibited his mode of dealing with the two Jirst and most imjyortaut personages of each party — the King and Queen, and the Duke of Orleans and Lafayette ; the two most remarkable elections — those of 1789 and 1792; the two Jirst emeutes — of the 27th of April and 12th of July ; the two ^first massacres — of the 14th and 22nd of July ; the eventful and decisive days of the 5th and 6th of October, and of the 2nd and 3rd of September ; — all, in short, that was most striking, most important, and most influen- tial in the early Revolution ; all that required, in the highest degree, diligent research, careful investigation, and an impartial spirit ; and in all these great cases we have proved against him what we cannot — on the soberest reconsideration — call by any gentler name than a deliberate system of fraud and falsehood. * One of M. Thiers' strange shifts who led this ' smgula?^ a>7n?/ ' to Ver- and misrepresentations is his adopting sailles against his will, to prevent their Maillard — whom Senart, himself an doing more mischief elsewhere— though active Jacobin, calls ' le G eneralissime where or how they could do more the des Brigands' — as a well-meaning man, historian does not tell. ESSAY II. [Quarterly Review, January 1823 — March 1851.*] LOUIS XVI. AND MARIE ANTOINETTE, 1. Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette^ Queen of France end Navarre : to which are added, Recollections, Sketches, and Anecdotes, illus- trative of the Reigns of Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Louis XVL By Madame Campan, First Femme-de-Chambre to the Queen. 2 vols.* 8vo. London, 1823. 2. Foreign Reminiscences by Henry Richard Lord Holland. Edited by his Son, Henry Edward Lord Holland. Pp. 362. London, 1850. We slightly alluded in the last Essay to the work of Madame Campan, as affording an authentic contradiction of some of the misrepresentations by which the character and conduct of Marie Antoinette were so long and so unjustly assailed by the Revo- lutionary press. We now pursue the same subject in a fuller * This Essay originally appeared in two separate articles : the first, on ' Madame Campan's Memoirs/ in January 1823, took a general view of the characters of the King and Queen and of the aspect of the Court. An Article in the preceding number on 0'Mea,ra's ' Napoleon in Exile ' had dealt shortly, btit it was thought con- clusively, with some gross personal slander against the Queen, for which Buonaparte had cited the authority of Madame Campan, and which the un- expected appearance of Madame Cam- pan's own Memoirs triumphantly dis- proved. After a lapse, however, of near thirty years, the same calumnies, and on the same pretended authority, were reproduced in Lord Holland's * Foreign Reminiscences,' which ren- dered it necessary to repeat the" re- futation with more precision and detail, and with some inquiry as to the motive which could have induced Lord Holland to revive and endeavour to accredit that disgusting fable. This inquiry was, in a great measure, a re-examination of that portion of Madame Campan's Me- moirs, and it seems therefore proper to bring them together under one head. The original Article on Lord Holland followed him through an excursive and defamatory description of almost all the Coux-ts in Europe, but I extract for republication only those parts that have reference to the early period of the French Revolution, to which this volume is expressly dedicatee^,; and I reprint no more of my opinion of Lord Holland than is necessary to a fair appreciation of his historical credit. — [1855.] SLANDERS ON MAIUE ANTOINETTE. 73 account of these important, as well as interesting, Memoirs. Interesting every one will allow them to be ; but their importance will be best appreciated by those who recollect the infernal arts and assiduity with which the partizans of the Revolution in all its stages libelled the Queen of France. It was the system of the designing, and the fashion amongst the thoughtless, to attribute to her such levity, prodigality, and folly as might (in the opinion of the authors of the slander) justify the horrible extre- mities to which the royal family and the ancient institutions of France were pre -condemned. No doubt the Queen's character has been long since re-established — the last heroic years of her life — her magnanimity, her prudence and her talents — her attach- ment to her husband's person — her generous devotion to his inte- rests — her maternal virtues — her affectionate constancy to her family and her friends — her courage in all the horrors of her long and complicated misfortunes, and, when courage could do no more, the dignified resignation and modest piety of her last moments — all have placed Marie Antoinette among the highest examples of conjugal faith, maternal duty, and Christian heroism. But the libels against her early life still exist — repelled indeed by the character she subsequently displayed — refuted by the inference drawn from her latter conduct, but not till now so directly and authoritatively contradicted as might be wished, but, from the peculiar nature of the case, was scarcely to be hoped. Many historians of the Revolution, who do ample justice to the con- duct of Marie Antoinette since 1789, have nevertheless been seduced into the belief that there was something in her earlier life which justified the public hatred ; and we have seen that, even in our own day, Buonaparte thought he might venture to renew accusations which, we know, were assiduously circu- lated during the obscure commencement of his career. The greater part of these calumnies — all indeed that could be reached by public discussion — have been repelled by the memoirs of per- sons who were well acquainted with the several circumstances, such as M. de Choiseul, the Baron de Bezenval, the Abbe Georgel, the Marquis de Ferrieres, M. Weber, M. Bertrand de Moleville, &c. Some of these writers were politically hostile to the queen, and some imagined that they had personal causes of resentment against her, and their works are more or less tinged with the pre- 74 MADAME CAMPAN'S MEMOIRS. ' judices which would naturally accompany such feelings ; but the force of truth is too powerful for such prejudices ; and accordingly we may safely assert that the perusal and collation of the works to which we allude have, in the minds of those who have taken the trouble to follow the inquiry, completely and unanswerably cleared the character of the Queen from all those calumnies which, from her accession to the throne to the moment she ascended the scaf- fold, were propagated against her, by intriguers whose malignity was aided by the gratuitous scandal in which a profligate and gos- siping capital is always ready to indulge. It is curious and touching to find the Queen fully alive to this painful peculiarity of her position. She was well aware of this system of calumny ; she deplored it as a public mischief, and felt it as a personal danger, but never thought that it could leave any stain on her character. When apprehensions were enter- tained of a design to poison her, she countermanded some pre- cautions that she found had been taken against it, saying to Madame Campan, ' 'Tis useless ; no poison will ever be employed against me. This is not an age for the Brinvilliers [a celebrated empoisomieuse of the time of Louis XIV.]. They now-a-days have calumny, which is a surer and safer mode — and it is by it that I shall be put to death.' But she did not anticipate that calumny would pursue her even after death. We repeat therefore that the work now before us, though cer- tainly not necessary, was yet desirable, to complete the evidence. So many of the accusations were directed against the interior and strictly private circumstances of the Queen's life, that, except herself or her femme-de-chambre, none could, of their own knowledge, deny them. The Queen's denial would probably not have had much weight with her malignant accusers, nor even with the world at large, credulous of slander and very slow to be corrected ; but ' quod optanti Divum promittere nemo Auderet, volvenda dies en attulit' beyond all hope this work adduces the evidence of the femme-de- chamhre — and such evidence ! Had Madame Campan been an ordinary waiting-woman, she would not have been admitted to — nor, if admitted, could she have understood and described — those circumstances of intimate society HISTOKY OF MADAME CAMPAN. 75 on which her evidence is so important; but she fortunately was a lady by birth, and exceedingly well educated : these qualities obtained her the Queen's favour and confidence ; she was besides, as we now find, an accurate observer, and a very agreeable writer. Thus then she had all the opportunities of informing herself, and the capacity of informing us. But it will be asked, was she a person of veracity ? — or, if of veracity, might she not be blinded by prejudices from seeing, or restrained by interest from telling, the whole truth on so delicate a subject? Here again the confirmatory evidence is full and satisfactory. Madame Campan's prejudices were all in favour of the Revolution ; her private friends and society were inclined to that party. Some of her family, and particularly her brother, the once famous Citizen Genet, threw themselves a corps perdu into republicanism, and these and other circumstances (which we shall presently mention) gave Madame Campan herself the reputation of being a partizan of the Revolution — nay, of having betrayed the Queen ! The charge of treachery was undoubtedly false ; but, it is certain that she was inclined to liberal opinions ; that, there- fore, her judgment was not likely to be warped by courtly preju- dices, and that her defence of the Queen was not the mere effect of a blind adulation. The other doubt which might be raised against her testimony is liable to an equally convincing answer. She could have no object of personal interest in varying from truth in her narrative. The time at which the Memoirs may have been composed does not clearly appear ; but it seems probable that they were begun about the period of Buonaparte's assuming the imperial crown. Madame Campan had been intrusted with the edu- cation of his step-daughter, and this produced intimacy with Josephine and acquaintance with her husband. In the course of the Memoirs, and still more in the notes and the Appendix, a variety of facts relative to the etiquette of the old French court are very carefully collected and systematically arranged. There is little doubt that these memoranda were written by Madame Campan (whose former situation had made her an authority in these matters) at the desire of Buonaparte, as the guide and model of the eti- quette of the Court which he was about to revive. It is, therefore, very likely that the being set upon this task obliged Madame Campan to revive her recollections of Versailles, and that these 76 MADAME CAMPAN'S MEMOIKS. Memoirs are the indirect result of Buonaparte's inquiries into the manners of the old Court. When we recollect the slander against both the Queen and Madame Campan that he subsequently dic- tated to O'Meara, we may be convinced that it could not be for the hope of Buonaparte's favour that she would emenuate any faults which could have been attributed to Marie Antoinette. Thus then on every point the credit and veracity of these Memoirs appear to be confirmed, by a concurrence of circumstances very unex- pected, and yet perfectly natural and convincing. To which we must add, that we find throughout the work an air of sincerity and an accuracy as to dates and persons (very unusual in modern French literature) which must establish, in the judgment of every attentive reader, the authenticity and truth of Madame Campan's narrative. The circumstances, however, of Madame Campan's connexions with the revolutionary party (although now so eminently useful in establishing her credit and the character of the Queen) subjected her to the jealousy, the suspicion, and even the hatred of the royalists, who judged her too hastily by the politics of her family in 1792, and by her own subsequent connexions with Buonaparte. Madame Campan tells us that at the period of the flight to Varennes the Queen was betrayed by a ' femme suhalterne ' who belonged to her household. We find in the works of the day in- sinuations, and in a later work a direct charge, that this treacher-- ous femme suhalterne was no other than Madame Campan her- self, and that to this crime she owed her ultimate favour with the Jacobin emperor. If, as is very probable, Buonaparte was in the habit of repeating to others the same lie he told to O'Meara, or even a less offensive version, which, as we shall see presently, he dictated to Las Cases, it is not surprising that ^ (not merely the zealous royalists, but) every man of honour, and woman of delicacy, should abhor the baseness attributed to her ; and ac- cordingly, when her Memoirs were announced for publication, they were expected with considerable anxiety .by all the well- disposed, and with something like hope and anticipated triumph by the Jacobin faction, which still, ' like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.' . The work appeared, and disappointed everybody. The bed- ^\ chamber-woman shows no tinge of court prejudices; the sister of Citizen Genet seems to have been a faithful royalist ; the SCHOOL AT ST. GERMAIN'S. 77 supposed tool of Buonaparte is the defender of the Bourbons ; and the pretended betrayer and calumniator of Marie Antoinette will be, to the latest posterity, a faithful friend and powerful defender. We must not, however, conceal from our readers that Madame Campan's character has been assailed by imputations of another kind ; which, though not directly affecting the truth of her Me- moirs, would undoubtedly tend to diminish the credit which we give, and the respect we are inclined to feel for her. Madame Campan, as we before stated, after the reign of terror, applied her talents to the education of young ladies ; and her rank, her cha- racter, and her former connexions with the court, soon placed her at the head of the most extensive and respectable seminary in France. In this situation Madame Campan became a very remark- able and not unimportant personage in society. Our readers will recollect that before the Revolution all female education was con- ducted in convents — they fell even sooner than the throne, and education fell with them. During the anarchy no two subjects were so often in men's mouths as humanity and education. The erection of a thousand scaffolds testified the love of the former, and the destruction of every kind of discipline proved the anxiety for the latter. Madame Campan's establishment, then, had not only the attraction of utility, but of novelty also ; and it was moreover regarded as the commencement of a restoration of morals and education in France. ' " A month after the fall of Robespierre," she says, " I con- sidered of the means of providing for myself, for a mother seventy years of age, my sick husband, my child nine years old, and part of my ruined family. I now possessed nothing in the vrorld but an assignat of five hundred francs (20/.). I had become responsible for my husband's debts, to the amount of thirty thousand francs. I chose St. Germain to set up a boarding school ; that town did not remind me, as Versailles did, both of the happy times and the first misfortunes of France, while it was at some distance from Paris, w^here our dreadful disasters had occurred, and where people resided with whom I did not wish to be acquainted. I took with me a nun of V Enfant- Jesus, to give an unquestionable pledge of my religious principles. I had not the means of printing my prospectus. I wrete a hundred copies of it, and sent them to those persons of my acquaintance who had survived our dreadful commotions. ' " At the year's end I had sixty pupils ; soon aftei-wards a 78 MADAME CAMPAN'S MEMOIRS. hundred.* I bouglit furniture, and paid my debts. I rejoiced in having met with this resource so remote from all intrigue. ' " A literary man, a friend of Madame de Beauhamais, mentioned my establishment to her. She brought me her daughter Hortense de Beauharnais, and her niece Emilie de Beauhamais. Six months afterwards she came to inform me of her marriage with a Corsican gentle- man, who had been brought up in the Military School, and was then a general. I was requested to communicate this information to her daughter, who long lamented her mother's change of name. ' " I was also desired to watch over the education of little Eugene de Beauharnais, who was placed at St. Germain, in the same school with my son. ' " My nieces, Mesdemoiselles Auguie, were with me, and slept in the same room as the Mesdemoiselles Beauhamais. A great intimacy took place between these young people. Madame de Beauhamais set out for Italy, and left her children with me. On her return, after the triumphs of Buonaparte, that general was much pleased with the improvement of his step-daughter : he invited me to dine at Malmaison, and attended two representations of Esther, at my school." ' — p. xxviii. When Buonaparte, in imitation of Louis XIV., resolved to re- vive the establishment of St. Cyr, at Ecouen, he selected Madame Campan to be the head of his new institution. One of her nieces (Mademoiselle Auguie) married Marshal Ney; another (Madame de Broc) was lady of honour to the Queen of Holland, and, in short, she and her family were at the height at once of court favour and of popular consideration. So much good fortune, says one of her biographers, naturally excited envy. Unpleasant reports were circulated as to the morals of the school at St. Germain's ; Buonaparte's omnipo- tence, however, silenced all complaints against those whom he protected. But on the overthrow of her supposed patron these rumours were revived. A person of the name of Revel, whose wife, educated at St. Germain's, had, to use his own phrase, ' passee des bras de Murat dans ceux de Buonaparte,' accused * ' The brilliant and rapid success court, cherish, and show attention to of the establishment at St. Germain any person who had been at court, was was undoubtedly owing to the talents, to defy and humble the reigning power ; expei'ience, and excellent principles of and every one knows that people never Madame Campan. Nevertheless, it denied themselves that pleasure in must be allowed that she was wonder- France.' — (^French Editor.') fully seconded by public opinion. To CHAKACTER OF MADAME CAMPAN. 79 Madame Campan of having contributed to the irregularities of her pupil. To the outcry which Revel's accusation produced were now superadded the charge of treachery to the Queen ; and the violent deaths of her nephew Marshal Ney, of her niece Madame de Broc,* and some other near relations, happening about the same time, reduced Madame Campan to a state of great depression and misery. She had resolved on publishing a defence of herself; but this idea she abandoned, probably because she found that justice was done to her by other hands. Amongst them was the celebrated Count de Lally-Tolendal and the Duchesse de Tourzel, whose evidence in favour of her fidelity to Marie An- toinette removed every doubt on that subject ; while the baseness and falsehoods w^hich, in the course of the legal investigation of Revel's case, were proved upon that calumniator, and the testimony of, perhaps, a thousand of the most respectable women in France " whom she had educated, cleared Madame Campan from the other imputation. The consolation which this general recognition of her innocence must have given Madame Campan was but short-lived. In addition to the family misfortunes we have already mentioned, she was now overwhelmed by the loss of her only son. ' This violent crisis,' as the editor informs us, ' disturbed her whole organization,' a painful illness was the result, and, in spite of the fortitude with which she sought a chance of relief in a painful operation, she died on the 16th March, 1822. To these calumnies against Madame Campan's private life we have reluctantly alluded ; but attaching, as we do, a high his- torical importance to her work, we thought that we might be taxed with unfairness if we suppressed circumstances which might so seriously affect the character of the writer. We are glad to be able to conclude by declaring our conviction that the charges of treachery to the Queen arose from mistake and misunderstanding ; while those connected with the conduct of the seminary were suggested by malignity, and supported only by falsehood. If our object were the mere amusement of our readers, we could * In a visit made by the Reine Hor- gulf below. A monument marks tlie tense and her suite on the 16th June, scene of this event, which was still 1813, to the romantic cascade of Gr^sy, fresh in the memory and regrets of the near Aix en Savoie, Madame de Broc, neighbourhood when I visited the spot approaching too near the edge of the pre- twenty years later. — [1855.] cipice, slipped over and was lost in the 80 MADAME CAMPAN'S MEMOIRS. fill our pages with anecdotal extracts ; we think that we shall do better by dedicating the space we can spare for this work to a few of the historical topics which it presents. The first and most important of these is the intimate view which Madame Campan gives of the temper, disposition, and talents of the King and Queen. It is a theorem, and of no very easy solution, how far the per- sonal characters of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette contributed to the events of the Revolution. Would greater firmness and decision have arrested it? Could a more dexterous and judi- cious policy have guided it into a smoother current? We are strongly inclined to answer in the aflSrmative — at least up to the 6th October ; but it seems as if Heaven, for purposes inscrutable to human reason, had endowed the King and Queen with the very characters, nay, with the very virtues, which were most certain to contribute to the overthrow and ruin of themselves, their family, and their kingdom. The King was brought to the block for perfidy and tyranny. Had he possessed the qualities which such charges were meant to impute, he would probably have saved both his life and his crown ; but he happened to carry even to a (politically speaking) blameable excess the contrary virtues. He was, in theory, obsti- nately attached to what he thought right, but could neither explain himself nor influence others ; and the honest but awkward rectitude of his mind was uncongenial with that system of compromise by which all the aftairs of the world, private and public, must be con- ducted. And while thus fixed in his own opinions, and thus wanting the moral power of propagating them, he was still more deficient in the firmness of purpose and decision of action which were necessary to give them practical effect. A great aversion to violence ; strong religious scruples ; a real love for his people ; and, in addition to all these, an over-value of popularity, with which he had been early imbued, rendered him incapable of exercising the necessary force of authority. His truth and justice limited his disposition to reward, and his tenderness and timidity rendered him reluctant to punish. In short, if he had not possessed, in ex- traordinary combination, the arts of ' cooling his friends and heating his enemies,' he could not have been on the 6th October led into captivity, nor driven, on the 10th of August, to beg a de- grading asylum in the reporter's box of the National Convention. LOUIS XVI. 81 On the other hand, the chief political accusations against the Queen were her offensive German pride and partialities ; her despotic influence over her husband ; and her intrigues with the enemies of the Revolution. Alas ! the reverse of all this led her to the dungeon and the scaffold. The simplicity of her tastes and manners had broken down the old etiquettes which fenced the throne ; and although the greater vivacity of her character seemed to throw her husband into the shade, yet it appears that she never was able to inspire him with the spirit and firm- ness which the difficulty of their circumstances required. Louis was in truth not so easily managed as is generally thought. His heart was excellent, but his temper was at once obstinate and hasty, though in public, and with his ministers, he repressed it with admirable self-command. Dumouriez says, that ' the only occa- sion on which he ever saw that pure and gentle soul at all ruffled was, when he was pressed to sanction the iniquitous decree against the non-juring clergy ;' and there is no doubt that such was his general disposition ; but in his interior he was by no means so tractable. He seems to have had some jealousy of the Queen's superiority, and often acted without, and even against, her advice, particularly in the earlier days of the Revolution, before he had painfully learned to appreciate his own deficiencies and her devo- tion and intelligence ;, but it is not so generally known that he sometimes treated her with harshness. It was stated by a hostile witness on the Queen's trial that the King had, on one occasion, confined her to her apartment for a fortnight — a fact, that she ad- mitted, though she did not state what her offence had been. It seems to have happened at Versailles. — Dull, du Trih. Rev. iii. 104. The Queen, very early, delineated to Madame Campan with great force and justice the King's character and her own position. * The Queen was also very uneasy as to v^^hat would take place at Paris, and spoke to me upon the King's want of energy, but always in terms expressive of her veneration of his virtues, and her attachment to his person. " The King," said she, " is not a coward ; he possesses abundance of passive courage, but he is over- whelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which proceeds from his education as much as from his disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things, dreads speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at ease, under the eyes of Louis XV. until the age of twenty-one. This 82 MADAME CAMPAN'S MEMOIRS. constraint confirmed his timidity. Circumstanced as we are, a few well-delivered words, addressed to the Parisians who are devoted to him, would multiply the strength of our party a hundred fold ; he will not utter them. What can we expect from those addresses to the people which he has been advised to post up ? Nothing but fresh outrages. As for myself, I could do anything, and would appear on horseback, if necessary. But if I were really to begin to act, that would be furnishing arms to the King's enemies ; the cry against the Austrian, and against the sway of a iwman, would become general in France ; and, moreover, by showing myself, I should render the King a mere nothing. A Queen, who is not Eegent, ought, under these circumstances, to remain passive, and prepare to die ! ' M. Bertrand de Molleville, the most trustworthy authority on this as on every subject he treats of, tells us that — * the most remarkable features of the King's character and intellect were his natural timidity or shyness, and an obstinate difficulty of expressing himself on ordinary occasions; but this hesitation,' he adds, ' disappeared on any subject connected with religion or the happiness of the people, when he would speak with a readiness and energy that used to surprise particularly his new ministers, who generally came into his closet with a prejudice that his intellect was of a very low rate.' This strange reserve showed itself on small occasions and in his interior, quite as much as in public. Madame Campan relates : — ' The two Gardes-du- corps who were wounded at Her Majesty's door on the 6th of October were M. du Eepaire and M. de Miomandre ; on the dreadful night of the 6th of October the latter took the post of the former, when his wounds rendered him incapable of maintaining it. ' M. de Miomandre was at Paris, living on terms of friendship with another of the guards, M. Bertrand, who, on the same day, had received a gun-shot wound from the brigands in another part of the chateau. These two officers, who were attended and cured together at the infirmary of Versailles, were almost constant com- panions; they were, one day, recognised at the Palais Royal, and insulted.* The Queen thought it advisable they should leave Paris. She desired me to write to M. de Miomandre, and tell him to come to me at eight o'clock in the evening ; and then to communicate to * This was probably the affair so and prudence of the King's rejection of misrepresented by M. Thiers or M. Lafayette's insidious, or at best most Lafayette, ante, p. 35. The necessity of injudicious, advice to recall the Gardes- sending them away proves the sincerity du-corps. LOUIS XVI. 83 him her wish to hear of his being in safety ; and she ordered me, when he had made up his mind to go, to open her cassette, and tell him in her name, that gold could not repay such a service as ho had rendered ; that she hoped some day to be in sufticiently happy circumstances to recompense him as she ought ; but that, for the present, her offer of money was only that of a sister to a brother, and that she requested he would take whatever might be necessary to discharge his debts at Paris and defray the expenses of his journey. She told me also to desire he would bring his friend Bertrand with him, and to make him the same offer as I was to make to M. de Miomandre. ' These two gentlemen came at the appointed hour, and accepted, I think, each one or two hundred louis. A moment afterwards the Queen opened my door ; she was accompanied by the King and Madame Elizabeth ; the King stood with his back against the fire- place ; the Queen sat down upon a sofa and Madame Elizabeth sat near her ; I placed myself behind the Queen, and the two Gardes stood facing the King. The Queen told them that the King wished to see, before they went away, two of the brave men who had afforded him such proofs of courage and attachment. Miomandre spoke and said all that the Queen's affecting and flattering observa- tions were calculated to inspire, Madame Elizabeth spoke of the King's sensibility ; the Queen resumed the subject of their speedy departure, urging the necessity of it ; but the King was silent ; his emotion indeed was evident, and his eyes were suffused with the tears of sensibility. The Queen rose, the King went out, and Madame Elizabeth followed him ; the Queen stopped and said to me, in the recess of a window, " I am sorry I brought the King here ! I am sure Elizabeth thinks with me : if the King had but given utterance to a fourth part of what he thinks of those brave men, they would have been in ecstacies ; but he cannot overcome his diffidence." ' This seems incomprehensible ; but the fact cannot be doubted, and it affords an obvious clue to the first cause of the otherwise unaccountable fall of the most ancient monarchy of Europe, under the honestest man that ever sat on its throne. The following instance is less surprising, but equally significant : — ' At four o'clock [on the morning of the 10th August] the Queen came out of the King's chamber and told us she had no longer any hope; that M. Mandat, who had gone to the Hotel de Ville to re- ceive further orders, had just been assassinated ; and that the people were at that time carrying his head about the streets. Day came ; the King, the Queen, Madame Elizabeth, Madame, and the Dauphin, went down to pass through the ranks of the sections of the national 84 MADAME CAMPAN'S MEMOIRS. guard : the cry of Vive le Eoi ! was heard from a few places. I was at a window on the garden side ; I saw some of the gunners quit their posts, go up to the King, and thrust their fists in his face, insulting him by the most brutal language. Messieurs de Salvert and M. de Briges drove them off in a spirited manner, llie King was as pale as a corpse. The royal family came in again ; the Queen told me that all was lost ; that the King had shown no energy ; and that this sort of review had done more harm than good.'' It sealed his doom. ' Re showed no energy^ — that is, he noticed no one, spoke to nobody, and exhibited to his disheartened friends and insulting enemies no better appearance than an unwieldy puppet led about by his servants. The bad effect of this exhi- bition must have been greatly increased by a circumstance that except at such a crisis would be too trifling for notice. The King had not undressed that night, though he had thrown himself for a few minutes on his bed ; and he made this unhappy review in the costume of the preceding evening — a court suit of violet silk, a dress sword, a chapeau bras, and his hair full dressed on one side, but disordered on the other by his having lain down upon it* In the course of the night the King communicated to one of the officers in command the intended measures of defence, which seemed to him so inadequate, that he hastened to advise Madame Campan to put whatever jewels or money she might have in her pockets ready for an escape, for that ' all resistance would be ineffectual without some energy on the King's part — and that is the only virtue which he has not.' But all this moral weakness was, as the Queen said, not incom- patible with a large share of passive courage. If he showed no feeling, he appears to have felt no fear ; and in several instances, as in the terrible crisis of the 20th June, his personal fortitude rose almost to dignity. And what could exceed the propriety and the feeling of the whole subsequent period of his life ? Where is there to be found, either for expression or sentiment, a more beautiful and elevated composition than his Will — of the authen- ticity and sole penmanship of which the jealous cruelty of his jailers has precluded all doubt ? We are really at a loss to * Let it be remembered, however, occasion seemed to require, but that that in Feb. 1848 Louis Philippe made he was abandoned just as shamefully as a similar review, in the costume and poor Louis XVI. had been. — [1855.] with the air and spirit which a similar ETIQUETTES. 85 reconcile such moral contradictions ; and in our perplexity have been sometimes inclined to suspect that the ill-timed silence, and appa- rent apathy, which afflicted the king's friends, may have been, in some degree, an awkward effort at showing tranquillity and firm- ness ; and that his morbid diffidence took refuge in a phlegmatic deportment, which he perhaps thought might pass for dignity. But even this solution would by no means satisfy all the diffi- culties. The Queen was at first idolised by the nation. Madame Campan suspects that there was an Anti-Austrian faction which, from the beginning, endeavoured by slanders and libels to render her odious. We cannot acquiesce in this designation — a faction there un- doubtedly was, but love or hatred of Austria had nothing to do with it ; it began with the Duke d' Aiguillon and Madame Dubarry, enraged at the noble scorn with which the Princess treated that infamous faction. To them succeeded the Duke of Orleans, whose profligacy, while it made him odious to the King and Queen, rendered him also little scrupulous as to the modes by which he could repay their hatred. The youth and gaiety of the Queen, who was only fifteen years of age at her marriage, and the extra- ordinary but now well-attested indifference of the King towards her person, which lasted till the end of the seventh year of their union, while it may have excited a hope in the Duke of Orleans of being eventually the direct heir to the crown, may have also afibrded a motive and a kind of probability for the slanders which were circulated, while the disuse of the Etiquettes of the Court seemed to affi^rd the opportunity of irregularities, which, under the old court regime, could" not have occurred. The importance which Madame Campan attaches to the aboli- tion of these etiquettes may appear to savour of the femme-de- chamhre; but we are much deceived if the philosopher and politician, who look closely at the subject, will not be of her opinion. Sovereign power has a natural tendency to abuse ; the private life of individuals is under a control (not always efficacious even in that class) which does not exist for princes : over the manners of the latter, courtly etiquettes and the formalities of official attendants are almost the only restraints, and they have at least this good eff'ect, that, while they operate as a real check on the demeanour of princes, they also affiDrd the public a kind of guarantee not merely for the personal safety, but, iii some degree. 86 MADAME CAIMPAN'S MEMOIRS. for the decorous conduct, of their sovereigns. The vulgar, who do not see, and the heedless who do not examine these etiquettes, think lightly of them. In France they had become a subject of popular reproach and ridicule. Marie Antoinette was delighted to throw them aside ; and Louis, whose personal habits were ex- tremely simple, and whose mind had received some impression from the philosophes, was not very strenuous in support of these ' idle forms and antiquated prejudices.' On this subject Madame Cam pan makes the following interesting observations : — ' Speaking here of etiquette, I do not allude to that order of state, laid dowoi for days of ceremony in all courts. I mean those minute ceremonies that were observed towards our kings in their inmost privacies, in their hours of pleasure, in those of pain, and even during the most revolting of human infirmities. ' Under this sort of etiquette our princes were in private treated as idols, but in public they were martyrs to decorum. Marie Antoinette found at Versailles a multitude of customs established and revered which appeared to her insupportable. ' One of the customs most disagreeable to the Queen was that of dining every day in public. Marie Leckzinska had constantly sub- mitted to this wearisome practice : Marie Antoinette followed it as long as she was dauphiness. The Dauphin dined with her, and each branch of the family had its public dinner daily. The ushers suffered all decently dressed people to enter ; the sight was the delight of persons from the country. ' Very ancient usage too, required that the Queens of France should appear in public, surrounded only by women ; even at meal times, no persons of the other sex attended to serve at table ; and although the King ate publicly vrith the Queen, yet he himself was served by women with everything which* was ' presented to him directly at table. The Queen, upon her accession to the throne, abolished this usage altogether ; she also freed herself from the necessity of being follow^ed, in the palace of Versailles, by two of her women in court dresses, during those hours of the day when the ladies in waiting were not with her. From that time she was accompanied only by a single valet-de-chambre and two footmen. All the errors of Marie Antoinette were of the same description with those which I have just detailed. A disposition gradually to substitute the simple manners of private life for those of Versailles, was more injurious to her than she could possibly have imagined. ' The Queen frequently spoke to the Abbe de Vermond * of the perpetually recurring ceremonies from which she had to disengage * He had been the Queen's preceptor. ETIQUETTES. 87 herself; and I observed that always, after having listened to what he had to say on the subject, she very complacently indulged in philosophical reveries on " simplicity under the diadem," and "paternal confidence in devoted subjects." This pleasing romance of royalty, which it is not given to all sovereigns to realize, flattered the tender heart and youthful fancy of Marie Antoinette in an extraordinary degree. ' Brought up in the court of Vienna where simplicity was com- bined with majesty ; placed at Versailles between an importunate dame d'honneur \_Majdame de Noailles] and an imprudent adviser \VAhhe Vermond'], it is not surprising that when she became Queen she should be desirous of evading these disagreeable ceremonies, the indispensable necessity of which she could not see : this error sprung from a true feeling of sensibility.' The continued and successive abolition of the forms with which a Queen of France was surrounded, afforded the Orleanist fac- tion a colourable pretext for those monstrous calumnies which were propagated against the Queen. Not one of them — neither the imagniary midnight walks — the fabulous orgies of Trianon — the imputed levities of Madame de Polignac's society — the exag- gerated prodigality of her toilette — nor, above all, the atrocious details of the famous, the infamous affair of the necklace — could have been imagined, if the old etiquettes of the court had not been disused : and it would not be difficult to derive the insulting nick- name of Madame Veto, given by the Jacobins to the Queen, from that of Madame L' Etiquette, given by her, with too much levity, to the Countess de Noailles, her first lady of the bedchamber. This principle of lowering the regal dignity to the simplicity of private life, however amiable in its motives, was, and ever will be, when practically applied, injurious to Majesty. Our readers will re- collect that most of the detestable libels which for so many years inundated the press against our late most excellent and virtuous sovereign, George III., were founded on a few circumstances in which his majesty had condescended to put away some portion of the reserve and dignity of the royal station. A certain degree of constraint on his own feelings and wishes is the price at which every public functionary must purchase public respect ; and kings, being the highest in the scale, must buy it the dearest. I'his both Louis and Marie- Antoinette discovered when too late. It was at last the disregard, by the National Assembly, of a point of etiquette, which seems to have most fully opened the eyes of the 88 MADAME CAMPAN'S MEMOIKS. King to the degradation into which he had fallen and to the danger with which he was menaced. The King had voluntarily offered to accept the Constitution in the very hall of the Assembly. He knew the King of England so met his Parliament, and expected to do so with equal dignity. But a preliminary debate on the manner of receiving him ended in the resolution that the Members should be seated, while the King should stand — the King, however, sat down, and, not rising when the President rose to answer him, the latter sat down also and addressed him sitting, Madame Campan must describe how these insults affected the King. The date was the 14th Sept., 1791. ' The Queen attended the sitting in a private box. I remarked on her return her total silence and the deep grief which was de- picted in her countenance. * The King came to her apartment the private way : he was pale ; his features were much changed ; the Queen uttered an exclamation of surprise at his appearance. I thought he was ill ; but what was my affliction when I heard the unfortunate monarch say, as he threw himself into a chair, and put his handkerchief to his eyes, " All is lost ! Ah ! Madam, and you are witness to this humiliation ! What ! You are come into France to see ." These words were interrupted by sobs ; the Queen threw herself upon her knees before him, and pressed him in her arms. I remained with them, not from any blameable curiosity, but from a stupefaction which rendered me incapable of determining what I ought to do. The Queen said to me. Oh ! go, go ! with an accent which expressed, " Do not remain to see the dejection and despair of your sovereign !" ' It may at first sight be wondered at that the King should feel so deeply an insult which appears trivial compared with those he had often suffered — on the 6th of October — in the defeated journey to St. Cloud — and in the return from Varennes ; but it must be observed that those indignities were apparently the acts of a misguided populace ; but in this affair the King could not mistake the solemn and calculated determination of the National Assembly — from that hour he saw that he was no longer King, and the very ceremony of his Constitutional inauguration gave him a clear prospect of his approaching deposition. It was some time after this, and evidently from something of a similar feeling, that the King fell, as Madame Campan relates, into a fit of extreme dejection both moral and physical. ' For ten whole days he never articulated one word, even in the LOUIS XVI. 89 bosom of his family. The Queen was at last driven to rouse him from this morbid apathy by making a scene. She threw herself at his feet, and urged upon him alternately topics of alarm and expressions of affection. She appealed to his sense of duty to his family and to his character, and went so far as to say that, if they were doomed to perish, it were better to do so with honour than wait to be strangled — both he and she — on the floor of their apartment.' Madame Campan does not give us the precise date of this occurrence, nor of the immediate cause of the King's despondency ; but it is evident that the period was the close of May and begin- ning of June, 1792, and the subject, two decrees, recently passed by the Assembly, one for the formation of a revolutionary army of 20,000 men near Paris, and the other, which the King was still more averse to, for banishing the nonjuring clergy. These de- crees, which his Girondin Cabinet were pressing him, by menaces of personal violence and even massacre, to sanction, he could not reconcile with his own safety or authority as to the army, nor, above all, with his conscience as to the clergy. Hence these ten days of apparent apathy, but real suffering ; and Dumouriez has told us how deeply he felt it. His painful deliberation ended in his dismissing that ministry, and putting his veto on the decrees. This was announced on the 19th of June, and on the 20th the mob broke into the palace, and were only prevented, by some fortunate accidents, from realizing the Queen's apprehensions of ' being strangled on the floor of their apartment.' In this case, as in several other instances, it is evident that the apparent apathy was not the result of insensibility, but, on the contrary, of the acute and conscientious feelings of an honest man, doubtful of his own judgment, and still more so of his power to carry it into effect. These, which we may almost call personal defects, would in ordi- nary times have but little obscured the rectitude of his intentions and the innate goodness of his heart; but, in the cruel circumstances into which he was. thrown, his very virtues, we repeat, became accessory to his ruin ; and it may be truly said of him, as Bishop Burnet says of one of his characters, ' his piety made him too apt to mis- trust his own sense, and to be too tender, or rather fearful, in anything where there might be a needless effusion of blood.' On his return to Versailles from the humiliating visit which he made to Paris three days after the capture of the Bastille, he 90 LORD HOLLAND'S REMINISCENCES. seemed to find consolation in repeating, ' Thank God, no blood has been shed, and I swear that no drop of French hlood shall ever he shed by my orders/ This humane resolution, adds Madame Campan, he repeated too often and too loudly for the circum- stances in which he was placed. What a deluge of blood this tenderness brought on him, his family, France, and the world ! W must now revert to some circumstances that more parti- cularly affect the Queen herself. We had believed that the pub- lication of Madame Campan's work had extinguished for ever the calumnies against the Queen's personal character, but we regret to find them revived near thirty years after that publication in Lord Holland's ' Foreign Reminiseences.^ It will be asked— as we, after the first few pages, began to ask ourselves — how it was that a man so clever and so amiable as Lord Holland was thought, could write, and, above all, leave for publication, so stupid, malevolent, and indecent a work as this is universally admitted to be.* The logical mode of solving this difficulty would be to deny the premises, and to say that the author of such a book could by no possibility be either good-natured or clever. That, however, would not be just. Lord Holland, generally speaking, was both ; but there were topics and times on and at which he was neither — and of these aspera tempora fandi this unhappy volume was the product. Our solution is this : strong, violent, party feeling is not incom- patible with great personal good-nature, nor, we need hardly add, with eminent abilities. Nay, these qualities have rather a tendency to inflame the partisan spirit ; for personal good-nature cements political friendships, and quick talents sharpen political hostility. There were, besides, in Lord Holland's particular case, some circumstances which tended still more decidedly to warp his understanding and to sour his temper on political subjects. Born in 1773, he was sixteen at the taking of the Bastille, and those who remember the violent and factious course of Mr. Fox's political life from that time to the death of Mr. Pitt will easily under- stand the influence that it must have had on the sentiments of his * It turns out that Lord Holland tervened, and procured the cancelling left in the work, and his son had of several pages throughout the volume, printed, several still more discreditable where blanks appear in lieu of sup- passages than noW' appear; but some pressed passages too bad to be pub- more prudent friend seems to have in- lished. HIS TEIISONAL niEJUDICES. 91 afFectlonate and admiring nephew. When Lord Holland went abroad in 1791, the name of Fox was a kind of revolutionary passport, and wherever he went he probably found himself looked upon with suspicion, or at least coolness, by all that were attached to the ancient regime^ and caressed, flattered, and/e^e, by all the partisans of Revolution. What society would he be disposed to frequent — what confidences was he likely to receive — but those which might be supposed to be congenial to the nephew of Fox ? Those considerations afford the least unfavourable, and, probably, the truest explanation of the leading peculiarities of Lord Hol- land's book. But whatever grains of allowance we may admit for the pecu- liarities of Lord Holland's personal position, or with whatever indulgence experience may have taught us to look at the extra- vagance of party feeling, they never can excuse either deliberate perversions of fact, nor even the repetition of misstatements which a moderate exercise of inquiry and candour must have detected, nor, above all, the injustice and wanton cruelty of the aspersions on female character which form perhaps the most remarkable, and certainly the most painful, feature of his work. We should ex- haust our reader's patience, if we were to endeavour to hunt Lord Holland through all the mazes of his defamatory gossip : we here limit ourselves to the case of the Queen of France, and shall endeavour to test his credit by examining his statements, first by the comparison and contrast of his own testimony, and secondly by the help of evidence which happens to be aff'orded aliunde. ' I can only vouch' — -he says in limine — ' for the anecdotes I record, by assuring my readers that I believe them, I repeat them as they were received and understood by me from what appeared a sufficient authority.* And yet, when we come to the details, we find that there is hardly one of his authorities that he does not in some way discredit. For instance— still confining ourselves to the special case— he relies on the evidence of Madame Campan, and makes it indeed the foundation of all his calumnies against Marie Antoinette, but by-and-by talks of her as * disingenuous and concealing the truth ;' and, of all the witnesses on whom he professes to rely, there is not, as we remember, one whom he does not also try to discredit. This, which seems at first sight a strange and puzzling incon- sistency, had however a secret motive — most of his witnesses 92 LORD HOLLAND'S REMINISCENCES; happen to relate here and there some insulated fact which Lord Holland thinks capable of receiving a defamatory turn — while the great mass of their evidence tends directly and deci- dedly the other way — as especially in the statements of Ma- dame Campan, and MM. Dumont and Calonne, as to the Royal Family of France. He therefore quotes and relies on the defa- matory item, but endeavours at the same time to discredit the favourable impression which he feels that the testimony taken all together could not fail to produce. ^ Having thus opened to our readers a general view of the temper in which the book was written, and of the kind of evidence on which it relies, it may seem almost superfluous to say anything of its historical value ; but the weight that will be vulgarly given to Lord Holland's name, and the authority that even better informed persons may be disposed to * attribute to one who was so long a prominent politician if not a statesman, and for some years a cabinet minister, induce us to examine with peculiar interest the charge which he has revived against the personal character of the martyred Queen of France ; and we think our readers will excuse our entering into some detail on this interesting and important case, not so much for the purpose of vindicating the Queen — that has been already done beyond all doubt or question — but as the most decisive test of Lord Holland's taste, candour, and credibility that could be selected. We must begin by reminding our readers that calumny against the Queen was one of the first engines of the Revolution, and supposed and indeed proved to have been in a more especial degree part of the machinery expressly organized in the view of transferring the sovereign power to the Duke of Orleans. Even before the first ruffle of the revolutionary storm she was the object of the most infamous as well as the most extravagant calumnies ; and the outrage to nature exhibited at her trial was but the continuation of a series of charges almost as odious, almost as unnatural — equally false, equally impossible. One of these, the most impossible of all — if there could be degrees of impos- sibility — Lord Holland does not scruple to produce as an his- torical reminiscence^ and he does so under circumstances which justify us in thinking his conduct in this matter one of the strangest and most unaccountable aberrations of an intellect reputed sane that we ever heard of. COUNT DE FERSEN. 93 The first and most venial fault that we have to find with him in this discreditable affair is, that, even if it were true, it does not belong to his reminiscences, and that, he is a mere plagiary* — adopting as his own what, we hope, there is hardly another man in England that would have defiled his fingers with. The story and its refutation had been before the world nearly twenty years prior to Lord Holland's death, in O'Meara's ' Napoleon in Exile,' and in our number for October, 1822, p. 256. O'Meara had said, — * Madame Campan (continued Napoleon) bad a very indifferent opinion of Marie- Antoinette. She told me that a person well known for his attachment to the Queen [Count de Fersen] came to see her at Versailles on the 5th or 6th of October, where he remained all night. The palace was stormed by the populace. Marie- Antoinette fled undressed from her own chamber to that of the King for shelter, and the lover descended from the window. On going to seek the Queen in her bed-room, Madame Campari found she was absent ; but discovered a pair of breeches vrhich the favourite had left behind in his haste, and which were immediately recognised.' — O'Meara, i. 122. The Count de Fersen was a Swedish nobleman. Colonel of the regiment of Royal Suedois in the service of France. His name was probably used on this occasion because he was really very much in the confidence of the King and Queen, and eighteen months later had a principal share in the flight to Varennes. If M. de Fersen happened to be on the 5th of October at Versailles (of which we have no evidence either way), we have no doubt that he, like every other Royalist gentleman, was at the chateau all that day and night, to assist in protecting the Royal Family from outrage, and may have been, as flfty other gentlemen certainly were, in the royal closet during that tumultuous night. This is the colour which Las Cases in his tenderness for Buonaparte's character wishes to represent him as having given to the affair ; and — if Fersen was then at Versailles — it would certainly be the true one ; but nevertheless we do not doubt that Buonaparte told O'Meara the fabulous story which Lord Holland has re- produced. Now let us examine his Lordship's Reminiscence of it. ♦ An article in Fraser's Magazine disingenuous (to say the least of it) (Feb. 1851) develops Lord Holland's mode of fabricating /<«s 'Reminiscences.' 94 LORD HOLLAND'S REMINISCENCES. He introduces it by the following wonderful preamble : — ' Madame Campan was in fact the confidante of Marie-Antoinette's amours. These amours were not numerous, scandalous, or degrading, Jjut they were amours J' — p. 18. Lord Holland, it appears, thought that the adulterous amours of a wife, a mother, and a queen might be neither ' scandalous nor degrading.^ We abstain from any comment on this test of his Lordship's appreciation of female character. He proceeds, and we are sorry to be obliged to copy such silly slander, — ' She [Madame Campan] acknowledged to persons, who acknow- ledged it to me, that she was privy to the intercourse between the Queen and the Duke de Coigny.' — p. 16. If Madame Campan had been vile enough to make such a con- fession against herself^ the very fact would discredit all the rest of her testimony ; but why, of the several persons to whom the supposed shameless woman told it, and who repeated it to Lord Holland, does he not indicate one ? He has no scruple in naming the two ladies stigmatized, but he conceals the intermediate witnesses, to whom no disgrace would have attached. _ But we need not appeal to moral or inferential evidence. We fortunately have Madame Campan's own distinct testimony on the very point. In exposing and indignantly repelling the long series of calumnies with which the Queen was assailed, she produces indeed the name of the Duke de Coigny — but how ? — as confessing any knowledge, or even suspicion of an intrigue ? — no, but as the most prominent instance she could give of not merely the falsehood but the absurdity of such slanders ! The Queen was not ignorant of them ; ' but,' adds Madame Campan, ' confiding in the innocence of her conduct, and in the justice which she knew all the witnesses of her private life must do her, she treated these calumnies with open disdain.' Thus, then, we find Lord Holland imputing on hearsay to Ma- dame Campan the very scandal which she herself had indignantly denied, and circumstantially disproved. Having disposed of the first falsehood attributed to Madame Campan, we proceed to examine the calumny concerning Count de Fersen, in refutation of which we find evidence stronger than that of any one or two or ten individual witnesses could be. We have seen Buonaparte's two versions of the Fersen story — here is Lord Holland's : — BUONAPARTE'S CALUMNIES. 95 ' Madame Campan confessed a curious fact, namely, that Fersen was in the Queen's boudoir or bedchamber tete-a-tete with her Majesty on the famous night of the 6th of October. He escaped observation with considerable difficulty in a disguise which she, Madame Campan, herself procured for him. This, M. de Talleyrand, though generally somewhat averse to detailing anecdotes disparaging of the royal family of France, has twice recounted to me, and assured me that he had it from Madame Campan herself.' — p. 19. And after this followed, ^ as we have before stated (p. 88), two lines of asterisks, containing obviously something which Lord Holland's friends thought still worse. Our readers will observe on the variance between the two stories — O'Meara's as derived from Buonaparte — Lord Holland's as from Talleyrand — and both, as both pretend, from the one com- mon source of Madame Campan. In one case Madame Campan is an accomplice in disguising the lover ; in the other she does not even see him, but finds the clothes which he had left behind, and which were immediately recognised. This discrepancy would only go to the credibility of Madame Campan, if she were the original narrator, as to which it is not worth while to waste a word. We mean at present to confine ourselves to Lord Holland's adoption and reproduction of the calumny — a calumny, like the former, on Madame Campan as well as the Queen. Is it not strange that his Lordship, writing in 1826 (as appears from his notes), should have taken no notice of the same story published by O'Meara in 1822, and countenanced to a certain extent by Las Cases's version of Buonaparte's statement to him (published a little later), and that, while endeavouring to sub- stantiate Talleyrand's report against the ' disingenuous silence of Madame Campan's Memoirs,' he does not avail himself of the obvious corroboration which it would receive from Buonaparte's statement that she had told him that Fersen had been in the royal apartments that night ? We think we are here entitled to retaliate on his Lordship, and to say that Ms ' silence ' also is ' disingenuous.* But we are constrained to go a step further, and to confess our disbelief that Talleyrand could have told the story as having him- self had it from Madame Campan. He may have said that she told it to Buonaparte, who related it to him, and what Lord Holland describes as his own inaccurate memory may have dropped a link in the chain. We suggest this solution, not from being disposed DC LORD HOLLAND'S REMINISCENCES. to stickle, as Lord Holland does, for Talleyrand's veracity, but because the ex-Bishop of Autun was too well acquainted, and, we beheve, too much mixed up,* with both the secret history and the notorious facts of the 5th of October, to have volunteered any allusion to that very ticklish subject, and, above all, to have ven- tured to commit himself in any way to a story, to the absurdity of which, if the matter came to be inquired into, he must necessarily have been the first contradictory witness. But however that may be, — whether the falsehood be Buonaparte's, Talleyrand's, or Lord Holland's — it is utterly impossible that Madame Campan could have told the story as related by any of them ; for she left behind her her own written evidence — and the great Pro- cedure or legal inquiry before the Coiir du Chdtelet in 1790 had already established the fact — that Madame Campan — the supposed eye-witness and accomplice — happened not to have been in attendance on the Queen on the celebrated day or night of the 6th of October ! — which by another, by no means unimportant, ' inaccuracy ' Lord Holland calls the 6th of October. Thus then vanishes all of the story that rests on Madame Campan's presence and co-operation in and confession of the guilty scene : but that is not all. Even if Madame Campan had chanced to be in attendance that night, the substantial fact of the presence of a lover is in itself absolutely impossible. On that point we must take leave to quote part of the indignant exposure which we made of O'Meara's ver- sion of this calumny in October, 1822 : — ' This diabolical story fixes a more indelible disgrace on Buona- parte's character than anything we have ever heard concerning him. This abominable slander of that heroic woman may be placed by the side of the before-unparalleled calumny with which at her trial Hebert insulted human nature. If Madame Campan had told Buonaparte this horrible tale, he must have known it to have been false. The scene and the circumstances of the night between the 5th and the 6th of October are too notorious to leave any doubt how, and where, and with whom the unhappy Queen passed everi/ moment of that horrible interval. Everybody knows that the palace had been blockaded from an early hour in the evening * It is a small but not unimportant tenance and encourage the insurrection fact, that on the morning of the 6th, — he alighted not at the chateau — not at when the Duke of Orleans arrived — a his own residence— not even at the little before 8 a.m.— from Paris at Ver- National Assembly— but at the Bishop sailles, to take, we may almost say, ofAutun's! command of the mob— at least to couu- NIGHT OF Stii OCTOBEE. 97 by a blood-thirsty mob, who particularly besieged the apartment of the Queen, the female part of the crowd showing the aprons in which they intended, they said, to carry off — why should we pollute our lan- guage with such horrors ? — les eutrailles de rAutrichienne, dont elles feraient des cocardes ! The windows of the Queen's apartment are about thirty feet from the ground ; and it was this very night of horrors that Buonaparte affected to believe the Queen had dedicated to an adulterous intrigue ! and it was from these windows and into this crowd that he supposed the naked lover to have escaped ! No ! not in all the obscene and absurd libels of the Revolution was there anything so false and so absurd as this. It was reserved for Buona- parte and O'Meara, and it is worthy of them.' — Q. H., xxviii. 257. We at that time little expected to have occasion to reproduce these observations with any reference to such a man as Lord Holland. In addition to the foregoing general statement, we then entered into various details, confirming, what was evident on the first aspect of the case, the impossibility — the material, phy- sical impossibility— of the alleged circumstance. Lord Holland might perhaps say that he was not bound to read, and still less to credit, the Quarterly Review ; but as he professed to have read the Memoirs of Madame Campan, he ought not to have suppressed her assertion that she had not been in or near the Queens apart- ment that night ; or, if he chose to disbelieve her, he might have looked into a very accessible book — the report of the evidence taken before the Chdtelet, and printed by order of the National Assembly (ante, p. 44) — from which we shall, for the more complete satisfaction of our readers, quote a few passages, accounting, by the evidence of the most respectable witnesses, for every moment of the Queen's time during the evening and night of the 5th of October. A hundred witnesses prove that from the time — about 5 p.m. — when the Parisian mob had surrounded the palace until past two o'clock in the morning, the King, the Queen, and Madame Eliza- beth were together under the eyes not only of the whole Court, but of a vast number of other persons, deputies, officers, ladies, and gentlemen, who from loyalty or curiosity crowded all the apart- ments of the palace. A number of these persons were examined — a few only need be cited. The Vicomte de la Chatre (afterwards duke and peer of France and ambassador in England), at that time a Deputy to the National Assembly, 127th witness, deposes that 98 LOUD HOLLAND'S REMINISCENCES. * between live and six o'clock in the evening of the 5th, hearing that the mob had besieged the palace, and that the King and Queen were in danger, he thought it his duty to endeavour to reach their Majesties. He got in with great difficulty, and found in the King's ante-room, called the Q^il-de-Bceuf, an enortmus crowd ; and amongst others, Madame Necher, Madame de Stael, Madame de Beauvau, &c. ; — that this crowd was still there as long as he himself remained, which was till ha^f-past twelve at night, when the King desired such of the gentlemen as were deputies to return to the hall of the Assembly with M. Mounier, their president, who had been for a couple of hours with their Majesties with a deputation from the Assembly.' — Procedure Criminelle da Chdtelet de Paris. M. de Frondeville, President of the Parliament of Normandy, a member of the Assembly, 17 7th witness, deposes, ' about eight o'clock in the evening I went to the King s apart- ment, which, as well as the (Eil-d^-Bceaf, was full of various persons, where I remarked nothing particular, but a deep and general con- sternation. I remained there about two hours, when I went to the Assembly, but found there a very few of my colleagues lost in a crowd of many hundred men and women of the mob. ... I then returned immediately to the Queens apartment, where all, except herself, seemed to be in consternation. Several persons arriving successively announced the approach of the army of Paris under Lafayette ; the consternation increased ; the Queen alone showed not the slightest terror, but endeavoured to encourage the persons about her. It was now midnight, when some gentlemen came to the door and requested me to step out ; their object was to engage me to obtain an order from the Queen for the horses in the royal stable to be employed in endeavouring to save the royal family in case of an attack. I undertook to do so, and applied to Madame Elizabeth, who immediately went to speak to the Queen, who had gone for a moment into another room. The Queen came back and told me, *' I consent to give you the order that you ask, but only on this condition, that, if the King is in any danger, you will make imme- diate use of it ; but if I only am in danger, you are not to make use of it." By-and-by, the Parisian army having arrived and occupied the outward jjosts of the. Chateau, the Queen went to bed, and I continued wandering about the apartments for a considerable time, when, seeing that all was quiet, I went home, where I re- mained about two hours, at the end of which, hearing the attack on the Chateau was renewed, I hastened back and endeavoured to get into the Chateau, but found it impossible to make my way through the crowd, and I was forced to become a spectator of NIGHT OF 5th OCTOBEE. 99 massacres and horrors of such public notoriety that I need not recapitulate them.' — Ihid, There is a crowd of other witnesses to the same effect up to the time — a little after tivo in the morning — when the Queen retired to her bedchamber, and then commences the evidence of her two bedchamber ladies — Madame Thibault (the 81st witness) and Ma- dame Auguie (104th witness) — to the following effect— that when M. Lafayette had assured their Majesties that all was safe for the night, and that his army, occupying all the exterior posts of the Chateau, had quieted the noise and tumult of the mob, the Queen, wearied out by the toils and troubles of that eventful day, retired to her bedchamber, where, attended by these two ladies, she un- dressed and went to bed (between half-past two and tliree)^ desiring them to do the same. They, fortunately, were too much alarmed for their mistress to do so ; but, summoning their own femmes-de- chamhre to join them, the four women kept watch over the Queen — sitting down clustered together with their backs against the door of the Queen's bed-chamber, which had another but secret communi- cation with the King's apartment, to be mentioned presently. In this feverish state they remained for near two hours ; but about half- past four in the morning the attack on the palace was renewed. The Queen's apartment, especially indicated to the mob by their leaders, was first invaded. The Gardes-du-corps, who most gallantly attempted to defend their respective posts {ante, p. 82), were overpowered, severely wounded, and left for dead. The last, who was stationed at the door of the Queen's ante- chamber, M. de Miomandre, had barely time to call to the ladies at the bedchamber door to save the Queen ! After making for a few moments a desperate resistance at the door of the ante- chamber, he fell covered with wounds — but those few moments saved, for that time, the life of the Queen ! The ladies hastened to her bedside, and hurried her away, with no covering but her night-dress and one petticoat, by a passage that communicated from the ante-room to the King's apartment. While the Queen thus sought the King, He, alarmed for her, proceeded to her chamber through the secret passage before mentioned, which communicated from his bedchamber to hers, and of which he alone had the hey — (what a place for an adulterous intrigue !) — but not finding her, she having passed through the ante chamber, the H 2 100 LORD HOLLAND'S REMINISCENCES. King then hurried back to his own apartment, and had there the momentary consolation of finding his wife and children. Such is the history, hour by hour, of the celebrated evening and night of the 5th, and of the early morning of the 6th of October — published as to all the leading facts in the judicial proceedings of the Chatelet — repeated by all the historians — recapitulated (with the addition of a few minor circumstances) in 3Iadame Campari's Memoirs. The calumny published by O'Meara in 1822 was then, as completely as now, refuted by us ; and yet Lord Holland, writing, as appears from his notes, in 1826 — correcting his MS. down at least to 1837 — and not dying till 1840, has chosen to ignore, as it were, all the preceding evidence, and to leave behind him for posthumous publication an additionally offensive version of this Infamous slander. What can be said for him?— what for the editor? — what for those who, intrusted with the suppression of ani/ portion of the work, have not had the decency to suppress this ? After this great calumny the following misrepresentation may seem trifling ; but we think that it shows even more conclusively that the acharnement against the Queen with which the Jacobins originally infected Lord Holland had fermented in his head to a virulence which surpassed that of the Jacobins themselves, and had, on the most charitable theory possible, obscured his under- standing. In all the historical relations of the Queen's execution, and even in the most ferocious of the contemporary publications, she is represented to have died with courage and dignity. But this last reluctant tribute to truth Lord Holland cannot bring himself to pay ; he could not, indeed, venture to impute to her, in con- tradiction to the whole world, any visible pusillanimity, but he insidiously describes her tranquillity as the effect, not of courage, but of the excess of fear. ' She was insensible when led to the scaffold.' — p. 20. And this insinuation is so adroitly managed that we have little doubt that Lord Holland, if reproached with it during his life, would have pleaded that he had the most authentic authority for it in the Moniteur and other contemporary journals, which had all described her as ' insensible.' But what the journals really said was this, that her courage and tranquillity were so great that she even THE QUEEN'S EXECUTION. 101 seemed to be insensible to the insulting cries of the mob which surrou7ided the cart that conveyed her slowly to the place of exe- cution. This misrepresentation, at once so sly and so gross, seems to us to weigh so heavily on Lord Holland's character, that we think it right to give the official account of her behaviour at her trial and execution, published in the Moniteur and the Journal du Tribunal Revolutionnaire of the day, where his Lordship would probably have said that he found the expression which he has so uncandidly or so stupidly perverted : — ' During the trial she almost always maintained a calm and steady demeanour \contenance calme et assuree\ She heard the sentence without betraying any sign of emotion.' To appreciate fully the dignity and strength of mind which she exhibited at that awful moment, it must be recollected that she had been for near three months buried in the * filthiest and dampest ' dungeon of the Conciergerie, without even the consola- tion of being alone, for ' a police soldier watched her night and day, and never lost sight of her' The; swterct:) was prCn0.anced at half- past four o'clock in the morniqg, after sh^ had uridfergone for two days and nights,* before tbat fcj-utal; Jnbun^l, ; personal insult and moral torture worse than the death to which she had been foredoomed. The Journals proceed : — ' At eleven o'clock [16th Oct. 1793] Marie Antoinette, Widow Capet, in an undress of white linen, was led to execution in the same way as other criminals, accompanied by a constitutional priest in a layman's dress. Antoinette all along the way [about a mile and a half, which occupied above an hour] appeared to see with indifference the armed force which, to the amount of above 30,000 men, formed a double line through the streets she passed. Her countenance showed neither dejection nor haughtiness \ni abattement ni Jierte], and she appeared insensible to the cries of Vive la Repuhlique ! a has la Tyrannie I which she never ceased to hear during her passage. She said little to the confessor [who was an apostate priest, whose services she had declined]. She appeared to notice the tricoloured flags hung out in the streets. She observed also the inscriptions on the fronts of the houses. | When arrived at the Place de la Revo- lution [Louis XV.] she turned her eyes towards the Tuileries, and * The trial began on the morning of any intermission of the proceedings, the 14th Oct. and ended at 30 min. past f These flags and inscriptions were 4 A.M. on the morning of the 16th, and features of the Kevolution new to the there is no note in any of the reports of Queen. 102 . LORD HOLLAND'S REMINISCENCES: her coimtenance gave signs of strong [vive] emotion. Slie tlien ascended the scaffold with sufficient courage \_eUe est monfe sur Vecha- faud avec assez de courage] — at a quarter past twelve her head fell ! '■ — • Moniteur, Oct. 26th, 1793. Again, we ask, what can be said for an English nobleman who thus perverts the scant and reluctant justice paid to that heroic woman even by her murderers into an additional insult? Having thus vindicated the unfortunate Queen from the asper- sions on her personal conduct, we think it not superfluous to say a word concerning an impression which, Madame Campan tells us, had been suggested to and entertained by the Queen, that the English ministry, and especially Mr. Pitt, fomented, by intrigues and bribes, the earlier movements of the Revolution. This would seem to justify a doubt of Madame Campan's veracity ; for it is hard to believe that the Queen should have been so ignorant of the real state of affairs in France, and of the wishes and powers of our ministry, as to have believed for a moment so absurd, or, as M. Bertr^iijl'de J^^ollevtlle more indignantly calls it, 'so atrocious a calumny'- (vol. i. p. 37^). We are not however disposed to d&kyk M'aJd^.he Ca;Q?pan' ^ statement ; we believe the Queen might at a very early period have expressed the suspicion attributed to her — but the grounds of that suspicion, however erroneous, may be rationally explained. In the first place, the conduct of France, in abetting the American insurgents against their sovereign, was disapproved of by a large party in France, and in their private minds by the King and Queen themselves ; they, therefore, and the public in general, admitting that retaliation would be natural, were ready to believe that it was attempted. Secondly, a con- stitution similar to that of England was the professed object of the reformers, and the Anglomanes, as they were emphatically called, were the most violent partizans of the Revolution ; the English nation, therefore, was not unnaturally supposed to favour the projects of its panegyrists and imitators. Thirdly, the Duke of Orleans often came amongst us, and mixed a good deal in our society and amusements, and, though that made little sensa- tion here, it made a great one in France ; for he was, we believe, the first prince of the blood of St. Louis who ever visited England. The English and the Duke of Orleans were, therefore, easily united in the opinion of the rest of the royal family, who were CALUMNY AGAINST ENGLAND. 103 jealous of that prince's proceedings, though they might have known that the Duke was no favourite either with our court or our ministry. Fourthly, a rebellion against the Kiyig being, as it seemed, quite inexplicable in a nation which piqued itself on an idolatrous love for its monarchs, it became necessary to dis- cover some external cause for so strange an alteration — and where could that be so rationally found as in the example of a people who had beheaded one sovereign and expelled another ? The Baron de Bezenval, who was much in the confidence of the Queen, and who commanded the troops in Paris, at the first riot in the Fau- bourg St Antoine, gives, in a few words, the grounds on which he for a moment believed that England fomented these dis- turbances. After describing the destruction of M. Reveillon's manufactory, and stating that it was not done by the Parisians, but by people hired from the country to commit this disorder — ' This,' he adds, * satisfied me that the riot of the Faubourg St. Antoine was the explosion of a mine charged by hostile hands. I thought it must come from England, not daring, at that time, to suspect altogether the Duke of Orleans.' — Mem. de Bezenval, vol. ii. p. 348. 'The atrocious calumny, however,' says M. Bertrand {ih.), ' gained so much credit, that the English ambassador, the Duke of Dorset, thought proper to refute it officially ;' and in a letter of the 26th July, 1789, requested M. de Montmorin, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to communicate to the National Assembly a formal denial that either the English government or English subjects had in any degree fomented the commotions that had for some time past agitated the capital. These assurances the ambassador received orders from London to renew and confirm ; and after the sack of the Tuileries on the 10th August, there was found, in the celebrated iron safe, among the King's secret papers, a letter to his Majesty from M. de Calonne in London, dated 9th April, 1790, in which he states that, understanding that malevolent persons have endea- voured to persuade him that England has been, in revenge for the loss of America, fomenting these disturbances, he thinks it his duty to assure his Majesty that nothing can be more contrary 'to truth, nothing more opposite to either the private sentiments of the King or more distant from the policy of his ministers ; and that, for further assurance of this fact, the King had directed 104 LORD HOLLAND'S EEMINISCENCES. Mr. Pitt, ' to declare, in the most positive manner, that such reports were totally unfounded, and that his Majesty had always felt, and continued to feel, the most lively and sincere desire to see those troubles terminated in the manner most conducive to the honour and happiness of the King of France and his subjects.' Of Mr. Pitt's letter, dated the 6th April, 1790, Calonne enclosed a copy; but it was not produced at the King's trial, nor was it till very lately, and after a long search, that we found it. But, in the meanwhile, the reproduction of the calumny in these memoirs of Madame Campan, and in those of the Baron de Bezenval and of MM. de Bouille, lately republished, made us desirous of obtaining whatever further evidence might exist. We therefore have made personal inquiries from persons of the highest rank, who were well acquainted with all the affairs of the day ; we have con- sulted political friends and colleagues of Mr. Pitt ;* we have had access to the public and private correspondence of our ministers and ambassadors at the principal courts of Europe, and especially at Paris ; — and we can conscientiously declare that we have not found the slightest ground for suspecting that England fomented, directly or indirectly, any of the revolutionary disturbances of France ; but that, on the contrary, the English sovereign and ministers viewed them with unfeigned regret — a feeling from the most public manifestation of which they were only restrained by their respect and regard for the French monarch himself; by their reluctance to incur the risk of offending the sus- ceptibility of the French people ; and by their anxiety not to afford the ill-disposed in either country the slightest excuse for accusing Louis of having asked, or the King of England of having offered, any interference in the internal affairs of France. * I consulted individually on this and indeed every other person then point Lords Grenville, Westmoreland, living who had held high office in Spencer, and Chatham, the only sur- Mr. Pitt's first administration, and, as vivors of Mr. Pitt's Cabinet ; and might be expected, all solemnly denied Lords Wellesley, Liverpool, Harrowby, that there was the slightest colour for Mulgrave, Sidmouth, and Farnborough, any such imputation. — 1855. Messrs. Canning, Rose, and Huskisson, ESSAY III. [Quarterly Review, January 1823.] THE JOURNEYS TO YARENNES AND BRUSSELS, June 1791. 1. Boy al Memoirs. A Narrative of the Journey to Varennes. By H.R.H. th.e Duchess of Angouleme. A Narrative of the Journey to Brussels and CoUentz m 1791. By Monsieur, now Louis XVIII. King of France. Murray, 1823. 2. Memoires sur I Affaire de Varennes. Paris, 1823. From the sanguinary outrage of the 6th October, and the violent and ignominious abduction of the King and Queen to Paris, every thinking mind must have presaged, in a general way, their fall and their fate ; but the local circumstances of the Chateau des Tuile- ries, the new residence, or rather prison, to which they were led, aggravated their personal sufferings, and afforded and created occasions and opportunities of additional disorders and violences that no body, probably not even the authors of the movement, could have originally foreseen. As those special circumstances had a consider- able influence, not only on the fate of the old monarchy, but of seve- ral succeeding governments, a short sketch of this interesting and important locality will be, we think, not unacceptable to our readers. At the western extremity of Paris there stood, up to the time of Francis I., an irregular mass of Gothic towers called the Louvre, in which, as was the custom of those early ages, were combined a palace, a prison, and a fortress which protected the town on the west side as the Bastille did on the east. Francis, findino^ this * The original Article comprised a Fifth Essay. Several Notes, however, review of the Duchess of Angouleme's which I had contributed to the tx-ans- * Memoirs of what passed in the Temple ;' lation of the Narratives of the Journeys but, to avoid repetition, this is trans- to Varennes and Brussels, for which ferred to the more general account of there was not room in the original re- the Captivity in the Temple in the view, are now incorporated with it. 106 JOURNEY TO VARENNES. building unfit for a residence and not worth repairing, began, and his son Henry 11. completed, a more regular edifice in the Italian taste, which is now the western side of the Vieux Louvre. This new edifice was, however, soon surrounded by the encroachments of the increasing town, and his widow, Catherine de Medicis, wishing to have a residence of her own when her son should occupy the Louvre, began in the open country to the westward, on a piece of ground called from the use then made of it Les Tuileries, the magnificent palace now known by that name ; and her sons, three successive Kings of France, continued the work by additional wings and pavilions. In the mean while the town continued to increase, and the space between the two palaces was covered with buildings, and grew, and continued, up to 1804, to be a closely built and densely inhabited quarter of the city. Whether in pur- suance of Catherine's original design, or from his own, her second son, Charles IX., determined to unite his two palaces by the cele- brated gallery along the river- side. This was continued by his brother, Henry HI., and completed by Henry IV., so far, at least, that we know that on the 1st May, 1610, exactly a fortnight before the day of his death, he walked from the Tuileries to the Louvre along ' la grande galerie ' arm-in-arm with the Due de Guise and the Marshal de Bassompiere. We note this because some writers attribute the completion of the gallery to Louis XIII. and to Louis XIV. ; nay, we have even met persons, in France and England, so ignorant as to attribute both the design and execution to Buonaparte. No doubt both Louis XIII. and XIV. continued the works at both palaces, but it seems certain that the gallery was so far completed by Henry IV. that the espousals of the Prince de Conde with Mademoiselle de Montmorenci were cele- brated there in 1609, and that Henry himself walked through it, as we have said, in 1610. Buonaparte's only, but not inglorious, share in the gallery, was the splendid execution of a design pro- posed and even begun in the reign of Louis XVI., for appropriating it to the reception and exhibition of objects of science and of art.* But the vast space now open between the two palaces was, to a recent period, covered with houses, which ran up close to both. The front of the Tuileries, especially, was encumbered and dis- figured by a number of mean irregular buildings, domestic oflSces, porters' lodges, barracks, stables, and the like, which formed I have added, as an appendix to this article, some notices on this subject. — 1855. THE TUILERIES. 107 four courts, of which that to the south was called La Cour ctes Princes ; the next and largest, occupying ahout a third of the whole space, called La Cour Royale^ formed the main approach to the palace. It was enclosed by an ordinary wall, through which there were close wooden gates, from La Place du Carrousel, This Place was a kind of square, where three or four streets met : about what was its centre, Buonaparte's Arch now occu- pies the site where the first permanent Guillotine had been erected. The domestic offices and adjuncts that disfigured this side of the Tuileries seem to have been almost necessary, if the palace were to be a residence. Their removal — so advantageous in an artistical view — has rendered it a most uncomfortable, and, in the neighbourhood of so turbulent a popu- lation, dangerous residence, for it has no internal light or air; every entrance and window open on public thoroughfares, and are of course subjected to the sight, and possibly to the fire, of the people in the surrounding houses and streets. During the time that Louis XVI. and his family inhabited it, they could take no exercise but on the terrace next the river, and there only early in the morning ; and even that was soon interdicted to them by the increasing impatience and insolence of the mob ; and the Queen herself complained to Dumouriez, that ' even in the summer evenings she could not open the windows for a little fresh air without being exposed to the grossest invectives and menaces.' It is evident that an edifice so circumstanced, how^ever noble as a palace for royal representation, was a very unsafe one as a royal residence.* It had not, however, been so occupied for near a century till the violences of the 6th of October dragged the royal family from Versailles, and confined them in this stately prison, in which they languished, rather than lived, under a close surveillance, daily insults, and frequent perils, till the crowning catastrophe of the tenth of August^ which, atrocious as it was in its purpose and disastrous in its results, had the unforeseen consequence of re- moving the obstructions we have described, and making the first opening towards that magnificent esplanade which now extends from the Tuileries to the Louvre. That fatal day sent the monarch to a stronger prison, but it liberated the palaces. * The Convention, when they occu- in a frequent state of siege, often at- pied it, found it equally insecure. The tacked and twice at least stormed, hall wlaere they sat (the theatre) was 108 JOUKNEY TO VARENNES. Its first local effect was the conflagration and destruction of the out-buildings jnst described, and the opening the space in front of the Chateau, about as far as the arch and iron rails that we now see ; but all the rest of that quarter of the town — streets, hotels, churches — still remained untouched, till another crime contributed to much more extensive improve- ments. The explosion of the infernal machine, on the 24th December, 1800, as the First Consul was going to the opera, through one of those streets (Rue de Sainte Nicaise), de- stroyed or injured no less than forty-six houses. So extensive a demolition seems to have given Buonaparte the first idea of clear- ing all the space between the two palaces, and enclosing it on the north side by a gallery similar to the old gallery on the south. This gigantic plan was, however, too expensive and too much com- plicated with private interests to be rapidly pursued ; and it appears indeed that neither Buonaparte nor his architects had been able to decide how the local and architectural difficulties of bringing the area to one level and the edifices into one symmetrical character were to be overcome ; and though the succeeding governments have persevered in the design, the progress has been hesitating and slow. Its completion seems to be reserved for another generation : but the change — the obliteration, we may say — of the main features of the locality has been already so complete that many important events would be imperfectly understood without a retrospective reference to the scene as it appeared prior to August, 1792.* * See the plan prefixed to this volume. the 24th February, 1848, would pro- These observations on the Tuileries bably have had a different result. M, de were originally scattered through other de Talleyrand seems to have foreseen essays not now reprinted, but are here something of this danger to which the brought together for the use of the Palais Royal was also liable. The day or readers of this volume. The great work two after his arrival in London, in 1830, of completing the projected junction of as ambassador, I met him at dinner at the the Tuileries and the Louvre has been Duke of Wellington's. He talked freely of late carried out with great architec- and not reverently of the new revolu- tural magnificence and effect ; and the tion, and represented the King as very palaces are better protected from a little his otcn master in the whole affair, popular coup de main by the enclosure Some one mentioning the inconvenience on the north side, which makes the whole of his position in Paris, Talleyrand said something of a fortress; but I do not * Oui;' and then added, with his pecu- understand how it can ever be made liar look and tone of grave pleasantry, more than a palace for show and cere- ' avant de partir j'ai pins la liberty de mony. If Louis Philippe, too confident conseiller a Sa Majeste de faire vn grand in his popularity with so changeable covp politique — mais rm tres grand coup.' a people, had not made it a family re- We were all attention and curiosity, sidence, and been thereby embarrassed ' C'etait d'aller passer, aussitot qv'elle le with a crowd of women and children, pourrait, quelques jours a Neuilly.' — whose safety could not be perilled, [1855.] THE TUILEKIES. 109 The events that subsequently developed themselves have in- duced us to make these general observations as to the inconvenience and danger of having the domestic residence of a sovereign sur- rounded hi/ the obstructions and inti'usions of a great city, but in the state in which the chateau then was — separated from the town by gardens, walls, and buildings of its own, it seemed as safe as any town palace could be ; and, at all events, the King had no alternative choice, for the Louvre, besides its being locally still less isolated, was wholly unfurnished and partly dilapidated, and indeed it is only surprising how the Tuileries, unvisited as it had so long been by its masters, could, on so sudden an emergency, and in so short time, have afforded even decent accommodation for the Royal Family. We find, however, no complaints on that score after the first day or two ; nor do we suppose that either of the two parties that concurred in dragging the King from Ver- sailles, had reckoned on the local advantages which the Tuileries afterwards afibrded them. The object of the Orleanists was to bring him within the reach and power of the Parisian mob ; and that of Lafayette to be able to be Viceroy over him by means of the National Guard ; and both were in the first instance satisfied to degrade his authority and to secure his person. For the first few days, however, all was well — Paris was in trans- ports of joy — the mob at their victory, the soberer citizens at the honour of having their King, for the first time for a hundred years, amongst them, and at the hopes of profit in their business from the immediate residence of the Court ; and the mortification and anxieties of the King and Queen themselves were alleviated by this sunny but deceitful gleam of popularity. The disloyalty and ingratitude of the people of Versailles tended also to reconcile their majesties to their new abode, and they hoped that the gene of their necessary residence in Paris would be compensated by a more quiet domesticity at St. Cloud, where they hoped to pass their summers — and passed but one. The King being thus settled in Paris, the Assembly followed him on the 9th of October, and held its sitting in the palace of the Archbishop of Paris, whence it again removed on the 19th to the Manege, or riding-school — an appurtenance to the palace of the Tuileries which adjoined the north terrace of the Tuileries-gardens, nearly at the junction of the present Rues 110 JOURNEY TO YARENNES. (le Rivoli and de Castiglione. This location of the Assembly was, for the King's public interests and domestic quiet, very unlucky. It brought the great revolutionary power into more im- mediate contact with him, and subjected him and his family to the individual as well as collective surveillance of its members. Both Mirabeau and Vergniaud employed the prospect of the Palace from the windows of the Manege as a topic of insult and menace : — ' " I see," said Mirabeau, soon after the removal of the Assembly to Paris, " from the tribune whence I speak, that window from which a French sovereign, under the influence of execrable advisers, fired the shot that gave the signal of the massacre of St. Bartholomew ;" " and I," added Vergniaud two years later, " see from the place where I speak that same palace, where wicked ministers deceive and lead astray that King, whom the Constitution has given us ; I see, I repeat, the windows of that palace, where chains are preparing for delivering us over to the House of Austria, and where they a]e plotting to replunge us in slavery, after dragging us through the horrors of anarchy and all the furies of a civil war." ' — (^Moniteur, \2th March, 1792.) But a still graver, because more practical, danger ensued ; the Assembly declared that the north terrace of the garden was within its precincts, and as its principal communications were in that direction, and of course open to the public, the palace and the garden had no longer any barrier on that side, and in a short time the King had no authority over either the courts or gardens, or even the external doors, all the posts being supplied by the Na- tional Guards, over whom he had no command, or even control.* The royal family were, in fact, prisoners from the first moment ; but the restraint upon them became gradually more scandalous and alarming; and in the course of 1790 plans of escape were pressed upon the King, which, however, produced no result. On the 28th February, 1791, the mob made an irruption into the palace, and insulted, disarmed, and maltreated the King's attendants and several gentlemen (who had come thither to pay their respects to * Kersaint, one of the most moderate rles ; mats je ne vois nulle part qu'elle of the Girondins, insisted, a couple of lui ait donne la joulssance exclusive de ce months prior to the attack of the 20th jardin.'—Mun. 26 Avr. 1792. Another June, on the People' a right to their own deputy, Brival, pushed this 'insolence garden. * La nation loge Louis aux Tuile- still ioxihQr.—Rev. de Paris, 7 Mai. OUTRAGES OF THE 28th FEB. AND 18th APRIL. Ill the monarch), whom they calumniously denominated Chevaliers du Poignard, and the palace was, in truth, placed in a state of siege, and guarded and sentinelled not only at every external issue but in the interior passages, nay, even in the corridors of communication between the King's and Queen's private apartments. Soon after this, the King, who had been seriously ill from anxiety of mind and the want of exercise, was anxious to go to St. Cloud, for quiet and change of air : Easter was also approaching, and the pious Louis wished to be able to perform the religious duties of that season in tranquillity. In the afternoon of the 18th of April, having gotten into his carriage to proceed to St. Cloud, he was arrested by the mob, and neither the popularity nor even the military power of General Lafayette could operate his release ; he was obliged to submit to this monstrous insult and cruelty {ante, p. 37). This event determined the unhappy monarch to pursue the plan which had been already in agitation for endea- vouring to escape from the humiliating and alarming situation in which he and his helpless family were placed. He resolved to make his escape to Montmedy, the only asylum that he could depend upon, short of quitting France, which he was so scru- pulously determined not to do, that he would not even consent to shorten the danger of his journey by crossing the frontier, though to enter France again next day. This attempt, commonly called the Journey to Varennes, from a little town of that name about 150 miles from Paris, where the royal family was arrested, was in itself one of the most important facts of the Revolution — we might almost say of modern history. No insulated event, perhaps, ever had more important conse- quences than the King's arrest at Varennes ; others perhaps as great would have followed his escape, but they, at least, would not have been the events which followed his arrest — the 20th of June, the 10th of August, the 2nd of September — the executions of the King, of the Queen, and of Madame Elizabeth — the anarchy, the republic, the consulate, the empire, could never have oc- curred : what else might have happened would be a vain and idle conjecture, but it is highly interesting to contemplate the progress of this affair, on which the destinies of the world vibrated, and to observe by what an extraordinary — what an almost miraculous combination of petty accidents the design was defeated — and defeated only at the moment and at the place where the danger 112 JOURNEY TO VARENNES. might have been considered, according to all calculation and reasoning, as past. But, besides its political importance, the journey to Varennes has an interest of another kind as affording an extraordinary instance of the difficulty of ascertaining historical truth. There have been published at least twelve narratives by eye-witnesses of, and partakers in, those transactions, viz. the Duchess d'Angouleme, who, then twelve years old, accompanied her parents in their flight— the Mar- quis and his eldest son Count Louis de Bouille, who were charged with the general arrangement — the Duke de Choiseul-Stainville, and Messrs. de Goguelat, Damas, Raigecourt, and Deslons, who commanded detachments along the road — Messrs. de Moustier and de Valory, two gardes-du-corps who accompanied the king:— five or six subordinate persons, who speak as to particular portions of the affair — and, finally, M. de Fontanges, Archbishop of Toulouse, who, though not himself an eye-witness, is supposed to have written partly from the information of the Queen and partly from that of M. de Choiseul ; and all these narratives contradict each other, some on trivial and some on more essential points, but always in a wonderful and inexplicable manner. In the sharp controversy which arose (after the Restoration) between the Messrs. de Bouiile on one side, and the Duke de Choiseul and the Baron de Goguelat on the other, in which each party laid the blame of the failure on the other, — in such a con- troversy, we say, we are not surprised at conflicting views and even statements, but what we cannot so easily account for is that they, as tvell as all the other witnesses^ should so directly contradict each other on a variety of points, great and small, where there could be no possible object or interest in misrepresenting the truth. Never have we seen a more comprehensive instance of the fallibility of human testimony. AVhen the journey was resolved on, there could be no great doubt that— short of quitting France, which the King was resolved not to do voluntarily — his safest refuge would be with the army of the Meuse, then luckily under the command of the Marquis de Bouille, a general, and we believe the only one, in whose royalist fidelity the King could confide, and who happened to have under his command two or three of the best disposed cavalry regiments of the army — an important consideration, for the general discipline and loyalty of the troops had been very much deteriorated by the PLAN OF THE JOURNEY. 113 temper of the times. Montmedy, a small but tolerably strong town, about 170 miles from Paris, in the centre of M. de Bouille's command and close to the frontiers, if a further retreat should become necessary, was selected as his Majesty's first asylum. The attempt had been originally fixed for the night of Sunday, the 19th of June 1791. The plan was that the royal family were to escape by a glass door * in the south wing of the Tuileries, and, crossing the two courts, des Princes and Cour Hoyale^ on foot, get into a job-coach which was to be stationed on the Petit Carrousel, at the corner of the Rue de I'Echelle, which was to convey them beyond the barrier of Paris, where a travelling carriage was to be ready to receive them ; and the relays of post-horses were to be ordered by a courier, as for ordinary travellers, as far as Varennes, where, there being no post-house, a special relay was provided ; and at each stage after Chalons a detachment of cavalry from M. de Bouille's army was to be ready to prevent interruption, if any should be attempted ; and, after a short interval, to follow the royal carriage, picking up each detachment successively, and thus at every stage increasing the force ; but the utmost secresy and pru- dence were enjoined to the officers commanding these detachments, lest their appearance at the stages should excite attention, and lead to opposition and interruption. The minor military details, and the general conduct of the affair from Chalons forward, was principally entrusted to M. de Goguelat, an officer of Engineers, who had formerly become known to the Queen by having made plans of St. Cloud and Trianon, and he had been subsequently employed in some private missions which he executed in a way that impressed both the King and Queen with an opinion of his activity and sagacity ; so that when this journey was resolved upon, M. de Goguelatf was thought of, and was placed on the staff of the Marquis de Bouille, to be employed by him in the details of the arrangement. To make sure of the time at which the travellers might be expected at the several stages, M de Goguelat made at least one experimental journey ; but it * See 'B,' on the plan. England, {Bertrand de MoJeville, iii. 35.) t M. de Goguelat had the year before This spirited indiscretion, which deeply rendered himself remarkable by having exasperated the Duke, probably in- rudely insulted the Duke of Orleans, creased the confidence of the King and when that Prince presented himself at Queen. Court on his return from his mission to I 114 JOUENEY TO VARENNES. was reproached to him that he omitted to calculate on the difference between his own light postchaise and a heavily-laden coach : we need not stop to examine either this charge or M. de Goguelat's explana- tion, as any delay from that cause must have been inconsiderable. The Duke de Choiseul was colonel of the Royal-Dragons, one of M. de Bouille's regiments, which was to furnish some of the local detachments, and particularly the first and most important of them at the next stage beyond Chalons, called the Pont de Somme-Velle, whither the Duke, after receiving the King's final orders in Paris, was to precede him by a few hours, to command in person, and where M. de Goguelat, who had been placed under his orders, was to join him with a detachment of 40 dragoons, and assist him in following out the prescribed operations. The King himself, with the assistance of the Queen and Count de Fersen {ajite, p. 93), undertook the arrangements of the journey as far as and through Chalons — by much the most perilous part of the way. Fersen was both head and hand ; he procured the duplicate of a passport which had been issued for a relation of his, the Baroness de Korff, a Russian lady, and her suite, about to return to her own country. He it was who con- ducted the correspondence between the King and the Marquis de Bouille at Metz, and personally with the Duke of Choiseul and the younger M. de Bouille in Paris. He also provided the travelling- carriage — a berline or coach — which, indeed, he had built for the occasion, and he himself acted as coachman of the town-carriage which was to convey the fugitives beyond the barrier. The dis- tribution of the other parts of the drama was this : Madame de Tourzel, governess '' des Mifans de France^' was to represent the Baroness de Korff, and Madame Royale, and the Dauphin dressed as a girl, were to be her daughters Amelia and Aglae. The Queen was to be Madame Rocher, their governess ; Madame Elizabeth a female companion under the name of Rosalie ; and the King their valet-de-chambre under that of Durand.* Three gentlemen of the gardes-du-corps disbanded in October 1789, MM. de Valory, de Moustier, and de Maiden, were to act as servants and couriers. So closely was the royal family watched, that there was considerable * It is curious that the assumed name her gaolers in the Temple, and that of the Queen should be that of a fero- taken by the King was the name of one cious woman who was afterwards one of of his Convent ionnel judges. PREPARATIONS. 115 risk in introducing these gentlemen into the royal apartments ; hut the Queen, with her usual good sense, thought it better to incur it than not to have some communication and acquaintance with them previous to the actual departure. ^Accordingly, two days before, they saw the King and her together, and received some general directions and instructions, but were not informed of the precise object or destination. The Queen on this occasion had the fore- thought to tell them that, as they were to pass for servants, they must be prepared with other names, and that their own baptismal names would be most familiar to them : — de Maiden was John^ de Moustier Melchior^ de Valory Francis ; and so they were called during the journey. Thus far all seems to have been prudent and promising. Let us now see by what a combination of mismanagement and misfortune the whole proceeding was deranged and defeated. The preparations made may seem to us rather too complicated and cumbrous, but when we recollect the rank, number, and ages of the fugitives, the immense interests at stake, and the rigorous custody in which the Royal Family was held — their personal inex- perience and indeed helplessness in any such undertaking, and the jealous and tumultuous spirit that had, like an epidemic insanity, seized the whole nation even in its most remote recesses — we can- not venture to accuse any portion of the arrangements of being at the moment either deficient or superfluous. For instance : the troops stationed at the several relays, instead of securing the progress of the Royal Family, were (as we shall see) every- where, tvithout exception, a danger, and undoubtedly a main cause of all the mischief. Yet who beforehand would have ventured to reject such a precaution ? And, again ; M. Louis de Bouille, though doing full justice to the zeal and talents of M. de Fersen, criticises the building a coach of an unusual size, weight, and shape, ill calculated for rapidity, and likely to excite, as he says it did, observation and suspicion. This seems rational ; but, on the other hand, we can imagine some at least of M. de Fersen's reasons. In the first place, every line of all the narra- tives shows how deeply impressed everybody entrusted with the secret were with the danger of giving any alarm.* M. de Fersen * The extent of isolation and espion- subjected may be judged of by this fact, age to which the Royal family were that the frock coat and round hat which I 2 IIG JOURNEY TO YARENJNES. may not have possessed, and may have been unable to borrow or to hire without exciting suspicion, a carriage capable of convey- ing at least eight persons, and proof against the accidents which, from the then state of the roads, were so frequent as to be consi- dered as almost inevitable. Now it had happened, the year before, that Count Fersen had ordered for a friend of his in Russia or Sweden a large and strong berline or travelling-coach, exactly suited for the present purpose, and it was therefore quite natural that when the King's escape was first thought of, he should tell the coachmaker that his former work had been so successful that he had been commissioned to order another for the same destination : and as to the excess of weight, which M. de Bouille complained of, we have the evidence of the Duke de Choiseul, that though it looked very heavy, and had purposely more than the usual proportion of trunks, boots, vaches, and imperials, they were in fact all empty, containing nothing whatever but a single gold-laced hat of the King's, which he was to wear on appearing in uniform when he should arrive at the army, and which it was impossible to pack in the small port- manteau in which M. de Choiseul conveyed the rest of the uniform. A few refreshments, and some precautions against the necessity of alighting, were placed in the carriage. It seems therefore that the providing this carriage was a very prudent measure, though it certainly had one unlucky result, which M. Louis de Bouille does not seem to have known, which is that, notwithstand- ing a trial which M. de Choiseul says was made of it, it had hardly completed the second stage when some mechanical acci- dent occurred, which, as Madame, who alone mentions the circum- stance, tells us it required an hour to repair, when the loss of an hour might be the loss of all. But if the carriage had not been a new and sound one, and carrying within itself, as M. de Choiseul tells us, means of repair, how many hours might have been lost by the recurrence of such accidents.* the King was to wear, and the travel- or three. As a point of vehicular ling dresses and bonnets for the Queen statistics, it may be worth mentioning and Madam Elizabeth, and two linen that the cost of this carriage, ordered frocks for the children, were furnished by an Ambassador, of the best maker by M. de Fersen, and procured by him in Paris, and of the most elaborate secretly and under various pretexts. workmanship, was only 300 louis. * Monsieur J the same night, had two MISTAKES. 117 Another arrangement, more really injudicious if it could have been avoided, was giving the King a character that should require any such deportment or exertions as might be expected from a valet- de-chambre : this, however, was a necessity imposed by the de- scription in the borrowed passport, and it happened to have no consequence, as the passports were nowhere compared with the persons, or even asked for till the arrest at Varennes* There were indeed obvious difficulties in finding any character that the King could have usefully filled on such an occasion, except perhaps that of a medical man ; but there was, we suspect, a latent impediment which had more serious consequences; It must not be forgotten that Louis was still King of France, an object of venera- tion to all those about him ; and, modest as he certainly was even to a fault, he was not so low in his own opinion as to doubt his being equal to manage personally the travelling part of the expedition, as well as the preliminary arrangements, on all of which he had been minutely consulted. Some such feeling at least affords the only explanation we can arrive at of the following circumstance. The Marquis de Bouille, knowing the King's shyness, inde- cision, and inexperience in travelling, had (probably in concert with the Queen and Count Fersen) proposed, and the King agreed, that Count Annibal d'Agoult, late major of one of the companies of the Gardes-du-corps, should accompany him, and he was selected as un homme de tete, capable of acting and commanding along the road, and of a character to prevent and overcome acci- dental difficulties. M. d'Agoult would probably not have been stopped at Varennes. All this seemed definitely settled, when lo ! in the King's last communication to the Marquis de Bouille, dated the 15th of June, he acquainted him that the day of departure was changed from the 19th to the 20th, adding, ' That he could not bring with him in his carriage M. d'Agoult because Madame de Tourzel, Governess of the children of France, must accompany them; she insisted on the right of her office never to be separated from the children, and this consideration had determined the King.' — Mem. 234. Now, we will at once confess that we do not believe that any such ridiculous etiquette could have been allowed to prevail under such circumstances ; and that it was only a pretext used to soften to M. de Bouille the rejection of his advice, which must, we are 118 JOUENEY TO YAREXNES. satisfied, have had some other and more serious motive. It could certainly not have arisen, as is generally said, from any compe- tition between M. d'Agoult and Madame de Tourzel for a seat in the carriage ; for when the Marquis de Bouille proposed M. d'Agoult, he distinctly specified that he would ' make a seventh m the coach,' including therefore Madame de Tourzel, or some other, besides the five royal persons and M. d'Agoult. It was even doubtful whether Madame Je Tourzel' s state of health would admit of her undertaking such a journey, and the Queen proposed that she should not. It is therefore clear that the Queen- the weightiest opinion, it may be presumed, on such a point — was no party to this plea of etiquette : and as to the actual space in the car- riage, it was proved on the return from Varennes that it could re- ceive, in addition to the royal party, two of the commissaries of the Convention, Barnave and Petion.* But even supposing that the etiquette was so insurmountable, we may ask why should M. d'Agoult, or whoever was to be the managing person, have been in the coach at all ? There might be reasons why his being for so long a journey confined to the same carriage with the ladies and children would have been in- convenient ; but surely his proper place would have been that destined for and occupied by one of the attendants — the seat in front of it. So that the real and only question was between M. d'Agoult and — not Madame de Tourzel, but — one of the three gardes-du-corps. Nor should it be forgotten that the pre- sence of Madame de Tourzel or some other lady was likely to be as necessary within the carriage as M. d'Agoult's outside. She was to act the part of the Baroness de Korff' — she would have to speak to the people at the post-houses — in short, to take a promi- nent part as the mistress of all, which it would have endangered the incognito of the Queen and embarrassed the inexperience of Madame Elizabeth to have done. The ostensible woman was there- fore as necessary as the active man ; and there seems reason to think that when the Queen proposed to Madame de Tourzel to stay * The following anecdote is worth one said they were too many; on which citing, as illustrative of this point: — his Majesty said, with a look of good After the 10th of August, when the humoiir (surely ill-timed and mis- whole royal family were put into one placed), ^ Not at all; M. Petion knows ordinary coach to be conveyed to the that I can support a much longer journey Temple, and that Petion, as mayor of with a great many in the carriage.' — Paris, was about to get in also, some Moore's Journal^ i. 102. m ETIQUETTE. 119 behind, on account of her weak state of health, she had some other lady m her eye, and that the question of etiquette — if, in order to support the King's strict veracity, we must imagine one — was that Madame de Tourzel insisted on her right in preference to any other lady. From all this we are forced to conclude that the King did not wish for M. d'Agoult's company, either from a pique of amour propre that made him jealous of appear- ing in leading-strings, or from some other such motive : but we must add one extraordinary fact stated directly by the Archbishop, and inferentially by both MM. de Choiseul and Bouille, that M. d'Agoult was not in the secret, nor aware of the intended journey, nor of his having been himself ever thought of for it. He was asked (as he had often been before for occasional services) to select the gardes- du-corps, but he was not told for what duty, but only that they were to be trustworthy, and robust enough to ride with dispatches to Vienna. The employment of the Gardes-du-corps was itself another mis- take, which M. de Choiseul says that both he and M. de Fersen deplored. The utter inexperience of the gentlemen selected in the office of couriers and postilions was — notwithstanding their zeal and fidelity — one of the many unfortunate circum- stances, the combination of which defeated the enterprise : had they had the habits and experience of couriers, they might have prevented the difficulty which occurred at Varennes ; while, on the contrary, their ignorance of the duties of their apparent station excited suspicion in m-ore places than one, and particularly at Ste. Menehoud, the stage before Varennes, where the royal fugitives were first recognised and narrowly escaped arrest. It had been arranged that one of them was to precede the King's carriage on horseback to have the relays ready ; a second, also on horseback, was to attend the carriage ; the third was to sit on the seat in front of it. There is no mention of any alternation of duty amongst these gentlemen ; and on the contrary, it appears certain that M. de Valory (37 years old) rode, as avant-courier, the whole distance of 150 miles in twenty-three hours without in- termission. If this be so, we can hardly be surprised that he was somewhat confused and bewildered in the unexpected difficulty in which we shall, by-and-by, see him at Varennes. Before we proceed with the details of this eventful journey, we think that the following preliminary view of the order and dis- 120 JOURNEY TO VAEENNES. tances of the principal stages may render the narrative clearer : Relays. Fr. postes. Eng. miles Officers commanding escorts. Bondy .... . u .. 7 . Claye .... .2 10 Meanx .... .2 .. 10 Montmirail . . . .7 35 Chalons sur Manie . 71 .. 39 j Sub-Lieut. Boudet. Pont Somme-Velle . 2i . 11 . < Duke de Choiseul. (M. de Goguelat. Ste. Menehoud . 3 . 15 . . Marquis d'Andoins. Clermont . . . . 2 . . 10 Count Ch. de Damas. Lt. Eodwell or Eohrig.* Varennes . ; [4 lienes] . 10 . . < Le Chev. de Bouille. Count de Raip-ecourt. The details of the departure will be best given in the words of Madame Royale's own notes, made soon after their return to Paris, and subsequently confided to Mr. Weber, her mother's foster- brother, who, after escaping the massacres both of the 10th of August and the 2nd of September, reached England in the latter iend of 1792. The narrative itself is very characteristic ; it is marked by the simplicity and naivete of the age and sex of the young and inexperienced traveller. She tells what happened under her own eyes, but she neither indulges in conjectures on the causes of the events, nor in regrets at their consequences ; and her narra- tive is in truth the only one that we believe to be entirely correct. At half past 10 o'clock at night of Monday the 20th of June 1791, writes the Princess — • My brother was wakened by my mother, and Madame de Tourzel brought him down to my mother's apartment, where I also * We suspect that these two names belong to the same officer. We find at least that the young man who command- ed the post at Varennes is called Eohrig by both the MM. de Bouill^ and M. de Valory ; Eodv:ell by Goguelat ; Rodvall by the Archbishop, Rorrick by de Moustier, and Rottwell by the Duke de Choiseul. We adopt M. de Bouill^'s orthography; and it is but justice to add that if the Eohrig of MM. de Bouille and the Eodwell of Goguelat be the same person, he was not guilty, as was subsequently stated, of having run away from his post under pretence of carrying the news of the arrest to M. de Bouille, for Goguelat admits that he sent Rodu-ell on that errand, though he complains just after that he found the hussars without an officer. But all the affair is full of absolutely contradictory details ; even the distances are variously given, and the times hardly ever exactly coincide. ESCAPE FROM THE TUILERIES. 121 came : there we found one of the gardes-du-corps, called Monsieur de Maiden, who was to assist our departiire. My mother came in and out several times to see us. They dressed my brother as a little girl : he looked beautiful, but he was so sleepy that he could not stand, and did not know what we were all about. I asked hini what he thought we were going to do ; he answered, " I stippose to act a play, since we have all got these odd dresses." ' At half-past ten, when we were all ready, my mother herself con- ducted us to the carnage in the middle of the court ; which was exposing herself to great risk.' Here on the very threshold we meet one of those contradictions to which we before alluded. It would be strange that Madame should be mistaken in so remarkable a fact, and one in every way so transcendently interesting to her, yet the Archbishop, the Duke of Choiseul, and the two gardes-du-corps, the latter eye-witnesses and assistants, all assert, and some of them with minute corrobor- ative details, that the Queen did not conduct the children to the carriage. There could be no hesitation in preferring the testi- mony of Madaine to all the rest, but that it seems contradicted by that of the Queen herself, who on her trial stated ' that her children, under the care of Madame de Tourzel, left the chateau an hour before her, and waited for her on the Little CarrouseV * This discrepancy, however, is only apparent, and is perfectly explained by the fact, correctly stated by M. de Bouille, and by him alone, that the job-coach driven by Count Fersen was at first stationed in the Cour des Princes, near the glass door through which all the family escaped ; that was the * Court ' which Madame meant, and so far the Queen certainly accompanied the children, though she did not herself leave the palace for an hour later ; by which time the carriage was stationed in the Little Carrou- sel at the northern end of the Tuileries. Madame continues : — * Madame de Tourzel, my brother, and I, got into the carriage ; M. de Fersen was the coachman. To deceive any one that might follow us, we drove about several streets ; at last we returned to the Little Carrousel, which is close to the Tuileries. My brother was fast asleep in the bottom of the carriage, under the petticoats of Madame de Tourzel. We saw M. de Lafayette go by, who had been at my father's coucher.' See again the prefixed plan for all these details. 122 JOURNEY TO VARENNES. Lafayette's carriage drove through the Coiir Royale into the Carrousel as the Queen was crossing it ; it passed so near her, says one account, that, by an impulse for which she could not account, she made an effort to touch it icith a switch which she carried in her hand* Its very lights, says another account, so alarmed her, that she fled to a considerable distance to avoid them. To one who examines all these accounts critically, this affair of Lafayette's carriage offers at first sight a great deal of confusion and contradiction. One set of witnesses describe the carriage as * coming to ;' another, with Madame Royale, as ' going from,' the coucher. The fact is that the coming and going were nearly simultaneous ; Lafayette meant to have been at the coucher — something delayed him ; the King, on the other hand, was in haste to get rid of his attendants, and had retired before Lafayette arrived, who drove away immediately. What a critical conjunc- ture, and how likely to create the strong apprehension which the Queen felt at seeing their chief jailor at such a moment ! ' At last, after waiting a long hour, I observed a woman loitering about the carriage. I was afraid that we should be discovered ; but I was made easy by seeing our coachman open the carriage- door, and that the woman was my aunt; she had escaped alone with one of her attendants. In stepping into the carriage, she trod on my brother, who was lying in the bottom of it, and he had the courage not to cry out. ' My aunt told us that all was quiet, and that my father and mother would be with us presently. My father, indeed, arrived very soon after, and then my mother, with one of the gardcs-du-corps, who was to accompany us.' — pp. 9-13. All this statement is perfectly exact, and it is the only one that is so. The discrepancies between all the others, though of little or no importance as to the result, are so curiously inexpli- cable as to be worth notice. The Archbishop says that Madame Elizabeth, accompanied by one of the gardes-du- corps, went out firsts with the children ; and he relates a conversation between her and Madame Royale as they were crossing the courts to- gether. It is, however, all erroneous, and we have evidence aliunde * If there is any colour for this the Queen had provided herself with a strange anecdote it must have been that parasol. ; ESCAPE FROM THE TUILEEIES. 123 that Madame Royale was right on every point. M. de Valory also misstates the order and circumstances of the exits — thus — first, the children, with no garde-du- corps ; next, the Queen, with M. de Moustier; then Madame Elizabeth, with M. de Maiden.; and last, the King, closely followed by de Valory himself. He also places the rendezvous on the Great instead of the Little Carrousel, at the corner of the Rue St. Nicaise, instead of the Rue de VEclielle. Now all this, though related by an eye-witness, and one who, as he tells us, brought up the rear of the march, is wrong in every particular except, perhaps, the last. We say perliaps, because it seems impossible that he could be mistaken as to his own attendance on the King, and especially as he states that in crossing the Cour Royale he picked up his Majesty's shoebuckle which he had dropped. Yet this, as well as all the other particulars, is contra- dicted by M. de Moustier, whose statement (which several small circumstances seem to corroborate) is, first, that he did not con- duct the Queen, nor M. de Valory the King ; next, that M. de Maiden performed that duty for all, crossing the courts twice or thrice for that purpose ; and lastly, that neither de Moustier nor de Valory could have had any share in the actual exit, as they did not even see it, both having left the palace before any of the royal family. When the hour of departure approached, ' M. de Mous- tier ' (his narrative is in the third person) ' left the royal apartments by going, by order, down the great stairs of the palace, and was directed to meet M. de Valory [who was to go out by another way] under the arch that opened from the Car- rousel on the quay near the Pont Royal. These two gardes- du- corps were furnished with a pass word to make themselves known to M. de Fersen, whom they found waiting for them leaning on the parapet of the quay next the bridge. As soon as they had effected their junction, they [all three] threw themselves into a hackney coach, and were driven to Count Fersen's hotel, where M. de Valory mounted a horse that was ready to take him to Bondy.' — Relation ^ pp. 6, 7. How is it possible to reconcile this with M. de Valory 's state- ment ? and which is to be believed ? We incline to adopt M. de Moustier's, because it is more consistent with Madame's, as well as with the probabilities of the case ; for M. de Valory 's does not explain how he and M. de Moustier were to get from the Car- rousel to the Porte St. Martin, nor where they found their 124 JOURNEY TO VAEENKES. saddle-horses. M. de Moustier's statements explain all these and some other details, which would else be very puzzling : — ' At M. de Ferseh's hotise, M. dfe Moiistier found also a JDostilion and four horses, with which he went to another hotel, where the horses were put to the travelling carriage, with which they then proceeded to the Porte St. Martin — M. de Fersen hastening back to the Carrousel with a job carriage which he had ready, driving it himself, and in which he received and united the whole ro^al family. M. de. Maiden had been retained in the palace to conduct the King, Queeii, the Dauphin, the two Princesses, and Madaine de Tourzel, which he did in three turns. He then got up behind the job- coach, which M. de Fersen drove to the Porte St. Martin.' — Ihi But now comes the most incredible circumstance of the whole story. The Archbishop states, ' that all went well as far as the great gate of the Cour Royale, but at that spot the Queen met the carriage of M. de Lafayette with his usual accompaniments of gij^ards and torches. After escaping this danger, she told the garde- du-corps, on wdiom she was leaning, to conduct her to the Little Carrousel, corner of the Rue de I'Echelle, that is about two hundred paces from where she stood ; her guide knew, it seems, less of the topography of Paris than she herself did, and it was too dangerous to ask their way in that neighbourhood ; they turned to the right instead of the left as they should have done, and, passing under the arcade of the gallery, crossed the Pont Royal, and finding themselves bewildered along the quays and streets at the other side of the water, they were obliged at last to ask their way. A sentinel on the bridge directed them, and they were obliged to return the way they came, and pass along the front of the Tuileries to the Rue de I'Echelle.' Such is the account supposed to be derived from the Queen herself, but it seems incredible that she, and still more that the garde-du-corps, should not have known the Little Carrousel, which was close under the window^s of the palace, and not above two hundred yards from the Great Carrousel, on which they were standing. It is still less probable that they should have turned to the right by mistake, for they had just come froTYi that side. But it seems nearly impossible that under any delusion they should pass through the wicket and under the arcade of the Gallery of the Louvre, and across the quay, and over the bridge, and finally lose their way on the other side of the river ! But we need not DISCREPANCIES. 125 waste time in reasoning this point, when we have it in evidence that the garde-du-corps who accompanied the Queen — M. de Maiden — had ah-eady conducted two parties to the carriage. He has not, that we know of, published any account of the affair ; but there cannot be any doubt that it was he who had, after having attended the children as Madame Royale states, returned to escort probably the King and certainly the Queen. We therefore cannot but conclude that the Archbishopis statement, if not a total mistake, must be a violent exaggeration both as to the distance and the delay of this aberration, and that the Queen, in fact, as Madame Royale implies, and as M. de Choiseul asserts, was but a few minutes after the King. Her maternal affection had led her to run the risk of the first exit to see her children safe. Her duty to her husband and her doubts of his active resolution may, perhaps, have induced her to remain to the last, and, as it were, not leave the ship till every one else had escaped. * We then proceeded' (writes Madame), ' and reached the barrier without any event : there a travelling-carriage had been prepared for us ; but M. de Fersen did not know where it was, so that vs^e were obliged to wait a long while, and my father even got out to look for it, which alarmed us very much : at last M. de Fersen found the other carriage, and we got into it. M, de Fersen took leave of my father, and made his escape.' — pp, 27-8, This additional cause of delay is not mentioned in any other account ; but it is stated in sonie that M. de Fersen himself was so ignorant of the streets of Paris as not to know the direct way from the Tuileries to the Porte St. Martin ; and that he lost half an hour by taking the circuitous route of the Rue St. Honore and the Boulevard de la Madeleine, a detour and loss of time that gave the King some uneasiness. It may be true that the King did not understand why M. de Fersen did not drive straight to the Porte St. Martin ; but we now know that the Count made no mistake ; he showed here, as he did all along, equal activity and prudence. The berUne had been placed, as mentioned by M. de Moustier, at a friend's house * in the Rue de Clichy, and M. de Fersen * The house was that of Mr. Qmntin Mrs. Craufurd, with whom M. de Fersen Craufurd, an English p-entleman well was very intimate, And who assisted known in the fashionable and literary him in some of the details preparatory world, and was inhabited by a lady at to the journey. She also thought it this time called Madame Sullivan, but prudent to escapeto Brussels, afterwards acknowledged and known as 126 JOURNEY TO VAEENNES. had arranged, as we have seen, that M. de Moustier and his own coachman should take the horses to bring it away at eleven o'clock to an appointed rendezvous outside the Porte St. Martin ; but, as he was not able to see this transport effected, he thought it safest to assure himself that the carriage had gone to its des- tination, and he therefore resolved to pass that way to satisfy himself of a fact on which all depended ; he therefore proceeded from the Rue^ de I'Echelle — not, as some accounts say, by going all round by the Boulevard de la Madeleine, but — by the Rue Sainte Anne, the direct line to the Rue de Clichy, and, having there satisfied himself that the travelling carriage was gone forward, he followed it to the rendezvous. Having, after some short delay, found and placed the royal family in the travelling coach, he had to get rid of the job-coach, of which he had been the driver ; he drove it a little way off, and overturned it and the horses into a ditch, where he left them. In following all these transactions the reader must bear in mind that M. de Fersen was man- aging all this variety of affairs single-handed and without help or assistance — that he did not venture to employ even any of his own servants, but the one, (a Swede who could speak no French,) who was necessarily employed to bring the coach to the Porte St. Martin, and to be postilion from that to the first relay, to which M. de Fersen himself was still to be coachman. Madame Royale says that M. de Fersen took leave of the King at the Porte St. Martin ; other accounts say there was an affecting scene between them at Bondy. Again, we rather believe Madame, as we think that M. de Fersen would prefer taking leave of the King at the Porte St. Martin, where there were no wit- nesses, rather than have to do so at the public post-house, where any familiarity might have occasioned suspicion. However that may have been, as soon as he had disposed of the job-coach, he mounted the seat of the berline, and proceeded ''grand train^ to Bondy, the first post stage of the great road. Having seen the royal family off, he got into a carriage which he had waiting for him, and crossed over to the great high road to Brussels, by which he escaped out of France the same day.* * There are several unaccountable Archbishop's account and those of discrepancies and even contradictions, MM, de Bouilld, Choiseul, and de as to this first stage of the journey and Valory, One says he returned to Paris M. de Fersen' s departure, between the in his own carriage and four horses, and THE FIRST STAGE. 127 • We cannot take leave of Count de Fersen without adding a few words of admiration for his character and compassion for his fate. His connexion with France was, as we have said, his having the command of the regiment of Royal-Suedois in the French service, which led him into the King's and Queen's society and confidence, which latter he justified by his prudence, courage, and gratitude in their adversity, though it served as a pretext for the use of his name in the absurd and detestable calumny exposed in the last Essay (p. 93). The Due de Levis, in his ' Souvenirs,' expresses a generous envy that a foreigner was employed on this interesting occasion ; and a foreigner, too, ' who had more judgment than wit ; who was cautious with men, reserved towards women ; serious, but not sad : whose air and figure were those of a hero of romance, but not of a French romance, for he was not sufficiently light and brilliant.' With submission to M. de Levis, it seems to us that M. de Fersen's character, and particularly for such an occasion as this, did not require and would not have been improved by those lighter qua- lities which M. de Levis desiderates. M. de Fersen's fate was most extraordinary : having escaped the vengeance of the French Revo- lutionists, he was murdered in Stockholm, in 1810, at the funeral of the Prince Royal, Charles Augustus, with circumstances of fero- city and cruelty on the part of the mob, and of apathy or cowardice on the part of the magistrates, quite worthy of the capital of France. The pretence of this murder was, that Fersen (who as grand mar- shal of the kingdom was leading the funeral) had been accessary to the death of the Prince, whose death was probably natural, and with which M. de Fersen, at least, could have had nothing to do. He was dragged from a guard-house, where he had taken refuge at the beginning of the tumult, and before the eyes of the troops and magistrates, who did not make the slightest effort to save him, beaten to death with umbrellas ; and this happened on the 20th of June, the very anniversary of his rescue of the King of France ! The body was afterwards most indecently maltreated, a la mode de Paris. blames it as an indiscretion; another which he escaped that evening out of states that he made his retreat in a France. Two or three of the accounts cabriolet with two horses ; and a third say that he drove -the berhne to the that he mounted a bidet de poste and second poste at Claye. These are curi- galloped across the country to the first ous as instances of the fallibility of stage on the great Brussels road, where evidence, but of no importance as to he had a travelling carriage waiting, in the result. 123 JOURNEY TO VARENNES. After receiving at Bondy the additional incumbrance of another carriage with two women attached to the royal children, who had been for four or five hours waiting there (most perilously for the success of the expedition), the party proceeded ; the three gardes-du-eorps now accompanying them as travelling-servants — M. de Valory as avant-courier to order the relays of horses, de Maiden on horseback behind, and de Moustier seated on the front of the carriage. No difficulties occurred as far as Chalons-sur-Marne (about 100 miles), where the arrangements of the Queen and M. de Fersen ended, and where the responsibility of MM. de Bouille and Choiseul and their troops began ; and thenceforward everything went wrong. The travellers passed through Chalons at 4 p.m. ; but on their arrival about 6 at the next stage, Pont de Somme-Velle, where they expected to meet their first escort, with MM. de Choiseul and Goguelat as protectors and guides, they found nobody. This disappointment alarmed the King, as if with a pre- sentiment of all the misfortunes that followed it ; and we gather from Madame Royale that, though there was no difficulty about the relay, some time was lost in waiting for the expected arrival of M. de Choiseul, who had in fact but just departed, despairing so entirely of the King's coming as not even to have left a vidette behind to account for his absence. At first the failure at Somme-Velle attracted little notice, as the King had passed that stage, if not without delay, at least without interruption ; but when the whole train of circumstances came to be considered, it was found to be of the deepest importance, and a sharp controversy as to the degree in which it influenced the catastrophe arose between MM. de Bouille, father and son, who were responsible for the general arrangement, and the Duke de Choiseul, who had the particular command and charge of the post of Somme-Velle. This controversy, which commenced in 1800, in a private correspondence between the Marquis de Bouille and the Duke, blazed out after the Restoration into the publications of the dozen narratives which we mentioned at the outset, and which — confused and inconsistent, and often erroneous, as their evidence is — lead we think to a clear and indisputable conclusion that M. de Choiseul's conduct was in the highest degree indiscreet and unfortunate, and that his defence of it is not merely insuffi- cient, but liable to still graver criticism. H CONTRCWERSY. 129 It would be too much to say that this failure at Somme-Velle was the sole (though no doubt the most immediate) cause of the final catastrophe, because the King got safely through that and two further stages, and was at last arrested under circumstances with which the failure at Somme-Velle had no direct connexion ; and it must also be admitted that there were several other circum- stances which might have produced the same result even if that failure had not occurred. These circumstances were the same which had driven the King to make this attempt at escape — the contempt and odium into which the old monarchy had fallen — the jealous and tumultuous excitement of the population of all the towns and of a great portion of the country, and the busy and bad spirit of the new authorities which had suddenly sprung up all over the kingdom in the shape of mayors, municipalities, clubs, and national guards ; and which had spread so generally into the army itself, that when the King proposed that his relays should be guarded by detachments of troops, M. de Bouille (who had had recent and deplorable, though to him honourable, experience in the insurrection of Nancy, Metz, &c., of the temper of both the troops and the people of the towns) had represented its dangers ; but the King persisting, and M. de Bouille, having a few cavalry regiments which he thought he could rely on, submitted — unfor- tunately ! — for if no military precautions had been taken, it seems almost certain that the last stages of the journey might have been as quietly accomplished as the first had been. But the results of the military intervention fully realised M. de Bouille's apprehension. Wherever the detachments of troops appeared — small as was their number, inoffensive as was their deportment, short as was their stay, and plausible as was their professed object — that of escorting money for the pay of the army — they everywhere, by one untoward accident or another, and in some cases, without any apparent cause, became objects of distrust to the people and the municipalities, before there was or could be the least suspicion that these movements had any relation whatiever to the King ; and a few hours sufficed to debauch the troops themselves into mutiny. There was a small garrison of about a hundred hussars in barracks at Varennes, where, in consequence of the general arrangements, M. de Goguelat arrived early in the morning of the 20th, and selected forty men whom, with their com- K 130 JOURNEY TO VARENNES. manding officer, Lieut. Boudet, he was to conduct to Somme- Velle, leaving the remaining sixty hussars under the command of a very young and inexperienced sub-lieutenant, M. Rohrig.* He (Goguelat) proceeded that afternoon to Ste. Menehoud, where, however, he had the indiscretion to give offence, by not, as was the usual etiquette, sounding his trumpet on entering the town, and by omitting also the necessary form of reporting his arrival to the magistrates. He also had the ill luck to get into a violent squabble with the postmaster, the too celebrated Drouet, by sending back to Varennes his own carriage by horses hired at a cheaper rate from an individual instead of those of the public poste. This made a violent scene — almost a riot, and the whole temper of the place was so disturbed that the national guard was called out, and, for the first time, armed to resist the fancied aggression of the troops ; and though the affair was quieted that evening, it was not without difficulty that M. de Goguelat and his party were allowed next morning to continue their march, and they reached Somme-Velle about noon of the 21st ; M. de Choiseul having arrived from Paris about an hour before. The scenes at Ste. Menehoud had no connexion whatever with the King or his journey, for they occurred several hours before he had quitted the Tuileries. This unlucky detachment, however, was doomed to find itself equally unpopular at Somme-Velle. M. de Choiseul states that, ' by accident and fatality,' it happened that the tenants of a large estate in the neighbourhood had lately refused to pay certain rates, and had been threatened with a military enforcement of them, and seeing the hussars arrive at this small village without any visible object, they fancied that they must be come to enforce the payment of the rates. This created a growing excitement which extended, as M. de Choiseul asserts, even to Chalons, the municipality of which affected, he says, to take umbrage at the position of the hussars as if they were about to attack the town, and sent out their own gendarmerie to reconnoitre the hussars and force them to remove. This state of things lasted, according to M. de Choiseul, ' till half- past five o'clock — the King's arrival had been calculated for three so that there was already incurred a delay of two hours and a half.' M. de Goguelat calls him Rodwell. See note, ante, -p. 120, DISTURBANCE AT SOMME-VELLE. 131 He further tells us that, finding the crowd at Somme-Velle increas- ing in number and violence, and hearing that matters were equally- bad at Chalons, he now thought that even if the King were to arrive, such a state of things would prevent his getting past Somme- Vellc, and probably even occasion his arrest in Chalons ; and as the presence of the hussars was the sole cause of the disturbance, he thought that he would best secure the great object— namely, the safe passage of the King — by retreating, which he did at, as he says, a quarter to six^ on the pretence, thrown out as if acciden- tally, in the hearing of the mob, that he supposed that the treasure he was watching for must have passed before his arrival. This excuse, and the retreat of the troops, quieted, he says, all agitation both in the neighbourhood and at Chalons. We need not stop to inquire whether there must not have been some exaggeration in M. de Choiseul's apprehensions from this mob, of which the royal travellers, who it is admitted were not more than half a hour behind the date that M. de Choiseul assigns to his own departure, saw no vestiges, as we can show from his own evidence that his date is indisputably erroneous, and that he had abandoned his post at a much earlier hour, and under circumstances essentially different from the foregoing statement. In the first place, Madame Royale, always the safest guide, states that they passed through Chalons at four p.m., which, as Somme-Velle is but two and a quarter postes, or about eleven English miles, would bring them thither at half-past five, which is the hour stated by M. de Bouille, and confirmed by a comparison of the collateral dates and dis- tances ; and neither at Chalons at four, nor at Somme-Velle at half-past five, were any disturbances observed. How then could M. de Choiseul pretend that he was still at Somme-Velle at a quarter to six, and pressed upon by a crowd, the increasing num- bers and violence of which determined his retreat ? It is further to be observed, that in his private correspondence with the Marquis de Bouille, in 1800, he did not allege this disturbance at Somme-Velle as a justification — nay, hedidnotso muchas mention it. If he had, M. de Bouille would no doubt have answered him, that it was in the contemplation of some such danger that he was brought there at all — that his instructions expressly provided for some com- motion at Chalons ; and that, above all, in proportion as the dan- ger of maintaining his post grew more serious, it was the more his duty to have taken some steps to communicate with the King, or K 2 132 JOUKNEY TO VARENNES. at least with the detachments behind him, and eventually with the General himself — not one of which precautions was attempted. J In short, it seems to us impossible to reconcile M. de Choiseul's I character for courage and fidelity with the details of his retreat on any other supposition than that he had given up all expectation that the King was on the road. That this was his chief and pro- bably only reason — certainly the only reason that he assigned at the time or for twenty years later — we shall establish by and by from his own evidence ; but we shall first show that the grounds on which it rested were altogether inadequate. The only grounds were the delay of his Majesty's appearance at Somme- Velle. Now we must say that the delay was by no means such as to justify the desperate resolution of M. de Choiseul to throw up the game. Somme-Velle is 23^ postes from Paris ; and the King, in spite of accidents (which moreover should have been allowed for), arrived there within seventeen hours — by no means bad travelling. M. de Choiseul himself had that very morning taken seven hours, 3 a.m. to 10 (Mel., p. 73) to come ten postes — Montmirail to Somme-Velle, in his own very light (' tres leger ') cabriolet. But apart from calculation and conjecture, M. de Choiseul had a measure to go by, provided by himself, and which, if adhered to, would have prevented so hasty a departure. * It v^as,' he says, ' settled between me and M. de Fersen, that if the King should not have arrived at Bondy by half past three in the morning, it would prove that the scheme was interrupted, and in that case the said first courier should proceed forward to Somme-Velle to apprise me, and that I should then retreat, and cany back with me all the detachments.' — Relation, p. 52. Now as this courier had not arrived, M. de Choiseul, according to his own showing, ought to have concluded that the scheme was not interrupted, and that he should therefore not have withdrawn the detachments, which he was to have done only if it had been. But this was not all : not content with abandoning his own post, he, at four o'clock, despatched his cabriolet with post-horses down the road with the following laconic but significant note to the com- manders of the stations at Ste. Menehoud, with verbal messages of the same purport to Clermont and Varennes. * There is no likelihood that tlie treasure will arrive to-day. I go (je RETREAT FROM SOMME-VELLE. 133 pars) to rejoin M. de Bouille. You tvill receive fresh orders to-morrow.^ — L. cfe B. p. 96. i- This note, we see, is a decisive contradiction of both the date and the motive which M. de Choiseul afterwards thought fit to assign to his retreat from Somme-Velle, and it is also very different from the colour which he afterwards gave to it in his * Relation ' when he knew that the fact of some such communication was known to M. de Bouille, though he seems not to have been aware that the original paper was in existence, and may have doubted if it could be produced. ' Four o'clock was striking [at Somme-Velle] but no courier — no news of the King, and the crowd about us was becoming still more impatient ; but I still persisted in remaining. I only resolved to send forward my own cabriolet to Stenay — charging Leonard [one of the Queen's servants who was travelling in it] to tell en passant MM. de Damas [at Clermont], Jules de Bouille [at Varennes], and the General [at Stenay], of my position, and attente ;* I also gave him a note of four lines for M. d'Andoins f at Ste. Menehoud, in which I spoke of mj fears at so extraordinary a delay, and of the necessity in which I might perhaps be of removing my detachment, the presence of which was disturbing the public tranquillity.'' — Relation, 82. It will be seen that this is a very incorrect, and we must say disingenuous version of the note, which talks of neither ' attente,^ nor ' craintes,'' nor ' peut-etres,' nor future movements to restore ^public tranquilliti/,^ but categorically that he had given the King up, and was already — at four o clock — on the march backwards to rejoin head-quarters. How he could subsequently assert, that he did not commence his retreat till a quarter before six, it is not for us to explain ! * In a point affecting personal cha- Ste. Menehoud ; but we know from racter, precision is so desirable that I M. Ch. de Damas that the note, or at leave the original word, observing that least one to the same effect, was sent it is somewhat ambiguous, and might to himself at Clermont, mean either an apprehension that he M. L. de Bouille also states, on the might be obliged to go, or an expecta- authority of M. de Moustier, that the ti4. shice she was deprived of her aunt, that she might be restored t5» her mother, she was told ' they would consider it.' Of the visit of Robespierre just mentioned, Madame Roy ale's account (in the later editions) is, as might be expected, short and dry — a just expression of what her pride and her piety would suffer in such an interview : — ' One day there came a man who I believe was Robespierre. The officers showed him great respect. His visit was a secret even to the people in the Tower, who did not know who he was ; or, at least, would not tell me : he stared insolently at me, cast his eyes on my books, and, after joining the municipal officers in a search, retired.' —Ih. M. de Beauchesne gives the exact and important date, and adds a remarkable circumstance : — * The day after the execution of Madame Elizabeth — that is, 11th May • — Madame Royale was visited by Robespierre. She did not speak one word to him. She only gave him a paper, in which she had written — " My brotjier is ill. I have written to the Convention to be alloued to go to take care of him. The Convention has not yet answered me. I repeat my demand.'' ' — ii. 219. This is all very probable ; and the cold and dignified style of the note is such as we may believe Madame would have used : but * There were executed at the same de Cercy, and de Serilly, and an old time Madame de Senozan, the venerable Madlle. de Buard. Among the men sister of M. de Malesherbes, aged were four gentlemen of the Lomenie seventy rsix,. and . Mesdames de Crussol, family, and George Fallope, the apo- de I'Aigle, de Montmorin, de Canizy, thecary. 280 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. M. de Beauchesne does not cite his authority either for the date or the note, which surely, considering the silence of Madame Koyale herself, he was bound to do. Both the royal children were now in separate and solitary con- finement : and here again we prefer the simple narrative of the elder sujfFerer to the amplifications of M. de Beauchesne : — * The guards were often drunk ; but they generally left my brother and me quiet in our respective apartments until the 9th Thermidor. My brother still pined in solitude and filth. His keepers never went near him but to give him his meals ; they had no compassion for this unhappy child. There was one of the guards whose gentle manners encouraged me to recommend my brother to his attention ; this man ventured to complain of the severity with which the boy was treated, but he was dismissed next day. For myself I asked nothing but what was indispensable, and even this was often harshly refused ; but I, at least, could keep myself clean. I had soap and water, and carefully swept out my room every day. I had no light ; but in the long days [from May to August] I did not feel much this privation. They would not give me any more books ; but I had some religious works and some travels, which I had read over and over.' — Roy. Mem. The fall of Robespierre (28th July, 1794), which opened the prison doors of so many other innocent victims, did not liberate the two children in the Temple, though it alleviated in some respects their personal sufibrings. On the 10th Thermidor, Barras, who had played a chief part in the success of the preceding day as commander-in-chief of the troops employed against Robespierre, visited the Temple, and the result of his inspection was the ap- pointment of a single guardian in lieu of the Commissaries of the Commune (most of whom, indeed, were that day and the next sent to the scaffold), and to this office he named one Laurent, a private acquaintance of his own. Laurent was a Creole., a native of St. Domingo.* How he first obtained the confidence of Barras is not stated ; he was, indeed, noted in his district for his patriotism, but this was at the moment no great nor even very favourable distinction. Laurent, by whatever interest ap- pointed, did not disgrace his patrons. M. de Beauchesne tells * Could it have arisen from the in- both Tallien and Barras, the heroes of fluence of Josephine Beauhamais, her- the day, and always ready to do a good- self a Creole, already intimate with natured act ? EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCE'S CONDITION. 281 us he was a man of some degree of education, good manners, and humanity, and the very first circumstances of his introduction struck him with astonishment. He arrived at the Temple on the evening of his appointment ; he was received by some municipals who were still in authority ; they closely scrutinised his appoint- ment, and detained him so long, that it was not till two o'clock in the morning that he was conducted to the room of the ' little Capet' They had explained in general terms the way in which the child was treated, but it was far from giving him any idea of the reality. When he entered the anteroom he was met by a sickening smell which escaped through the grated door of the inner room. One of the municipals, approaching the grating, called in a loud voice, ' Capet ! Capet ! ' , Capet did not answer. After much calling, a faint sound announced that it was heard, but no movement followed, and neither calls nor even threats could induce the victim to get up and show himself ; and it was only by the light of a candle held inside the bars, and which fell on, the bed in the opposite corner, that Laurent saw the body that was thus delivered to his charge. With this he contented himself that night, for it seems that neither he nor the municipals had either the authority or the mechanical means to open that door. Another visit next morning had the same results ; the child would neither speak nor show himself, though Laurent had addressed him in terms of kindness and persuasion. Alarmed and shocked at this state of things, Laurent made a peremptory appeal to the govern- ment for an immediate examination into the condition of the child. The request was granted, and accordingly next day, the 31st of July, several members of the Committee de Surete Generale came to conduct it : — * They called to him through the grating — no answer. They then ordered the door to be opened : it seems there were no means of doing it. A workman was called, who forced away the bars of the trap so as to get in his head, and, having thus got sight of the child, asked him why he did not answer? Still no reply. In a few minutes the whole door was broken down (enlevee'), and the visitors entered. Then appeared a spectacle more horrible than can be con- ceived — a spectacle which xii^er again can be seen in the annals of a nation calling itself civilised, and which even the murderers of Louis XVI. could not witness without mingled pity and fright. In a dark room, exhaling a smell of death and corniption, on a crazy 282 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. and dirty bed, a child of nine years old was lying prostrate, motion- less, and bent up, bis face livid and fuiTowed by want and snffeiing, and bis limbs half covered with a filthy cloth and trowsers in rags. His features, once so delicate, and his countenance, once so lively, denoted now the gloomiest apathy — almost insensibility; and his blue eyes, looking larger from the meagreness of the rest of his face, had lost all spirit, and taken, in their dull immovability, a tinge of grey and green. His head and neck were eaten up (roiigez) with purulent sores ; his legs, arms, and neck, thin and angular, were unnaturally lengthened at the expense of his chest and body. His hands and feet were not human. A thick paste of dirt stuck like pitch over his temples ; and his once beautiful curls were full of vermin, which also covered his whole body, and which, as well as bugs, swarmed in every fold of the rotten bedding, over which black spiders were running. ... At the noise of forcing the door the child gave a nervous shudder, but barely moved, hardly noticing the strangers. A hundred questions were addressed to him ; he answered none of them : he cast a vague, wandei'ing, and unmeaning look at his visitors, and at this moment one would have taken him for an idiot. The food they had given him was still untouched ; one of the commissioners asked him why he had not eaten it ? Still no answer. At last, the oldest of the visitors, whose grey hairs and paternal tone seemed to make an impression upon him, repeated the question, and he answered, in a calm but resolute tone, '* Because 1 leant to die ! " These were the only words that this cniel and memo- rable inquisition extracted from him.' For these details, M. de Beauchesne, more suo, gives us no warrant, but they are confirmed en gros by the Journal of Madame Royale, cited in a former page. And there is another — in this respect unexceptionable — witness to the main points, of whom M. de Beauchesne does not seem to have been aware. In the Me- moires de Lombard we find Barras's own account of his visit. He confesses that he saw the boy, and found him in a deplorable state of filth, disease, and debility ; it was stated to him that he neither ate nor drank — he would not speak, could not stand, and lay bent up in a kind of cradle, from which it was torture to move him. His knees were so swelled that his trowsers had become painfully tight. Barras had them cut open at the sides, and found the joints ' prodigiously swollen and livid.' Barras concludes this picture by relating, in a tone of self-satisfaction, that he immedi- ately ordered the attendance of a medical man, and, ' after having scolded the commissary and the gargon de service for the filth in PAETIAL AMELIORATION. 283 winch the child was left, he retired ! ' He adds, indeed, that he returned next day, and saw the doctor (whose name he had for- gotten) offer the little patient a draught which he had ordered, but which the child— though still without speaking — refused to take : the doctor whispered Barras that he might possibly have heard of the fate of his father, mother, and aunt, and suspect that they now wanted to get rid of Jam (se defaire de lui) ; so, ' to encourage him, the doctor poured out the draught into a glass, and was about to taste it, when the poor child, guessing his thoughts, hastened to seize it, and drank it off.' The doctor told Barras that the boy had not long to live ; and this, said Barras, ' was the last I saw of him.' M. de Beauchesne's authorities (whatever they are) make, we see, no mention of Barras's having seen the boy, nor of his personal interference, which, indeed, is hardly reconcilable with some of the details we have just given ; but Barras's own confes- sion corroborates all the more important facts of the case, and the subsequent indifference of the new government to the state of the child, who lingered for near a year later in a condition almost equally deplorable. We now resume M. de Beauchesne's narrative. By the remon- strances of Laurent, a little air and light were admitted into the room ; a woman was permitted, though after much hesitation, to wash and comb the boy. One of the municipals, who happened to be a surgeon, was allowed to clean and dress the sores on the head and neck — an operation which, as well as that of the comb, was, from long neglect, become extremely painful. The vermin were expelled, an iron bed and clean bedding were supplied, a suit of decent clothes granted ; and the grated door was replaced by the original one. These were but ameliorations to which the most odious convicted criminal would have been entitled ; but all the other rigours of the prison were still maintained. The child was kept in the solitary confinement of his one cell. The chief autho- rity in the Temple remained in the municipal body, who seemed afraid that, if they deviated from the severity of their predecessors, they were likely to incur their fate. Laurent himself was not allowed to see the boy except at his meal-times, and always then in presence of the municipals ; and when at last he wearied them into permission to take him occasionally to the leads of the tower to breathe the fresh air, it was only under their watch-dog super- inteudence. Even in these short breaks in liis solitude he never 284 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. spoke, and seemed to take little notice of what was passing. There was one exception : on his way to the leads he had to go by the wicket that conducted to what had been his mother's apart- ment ; he had passed the first time without observing it, but on returning he saw it, started, pressed the arm of Laurent, and made a sign of recognition, and ever after paused at the place, and once showed a wish to enter the room, which the municipal in attend- ance prevented by telling him that he had mistaken the door. He knew, of course, the death of his father, but he was in ignorance of that of his mother, whom, as well as his aunt, he still believed, as we shall see, to be alive in the Tower. During this period Laurent had also the custody of Madame Royale, who bears, in her Memoires, testimony to the decency of his manners, and kindness of his treatment of her, and to his well- meant but less successful endeavours to alleviate the sufferings of her brother. At last, however, the quasi solitary confinement to which Laurent found himself condemned was more than he could endure, and he solicited to be allowed an assistant and companion in his duties. This was granted ; and, by some secret influence of the friends of the royal family, the son of an upholsterer of the name of Gomin was associated en second to Laurent in the care of the children, Gomin was a person of mild and timid character, who had great difficulty in reconciling the severe orders of his employers with his secret sympathy with the prisoners. Little change, however, was made in the regulations, except that cleanliness and civil language were substituted for filth and insult. The child was still locked up alone, except at meals, which were always served in presence of the two guardians and a municipal, and frequently embittered by the cynical insults of the latter. These Commissaries were elected in turn by each of the forty-eight sections of Paris, and were relieved every twenty-four hours ; so that the regime was subject to a great variety of tempers and caprices, of which good- nature was the rarest. The breakfast, at nine, was a cup of milk or some fruit : the dinner, at two, a plate of soup, with a ' small hit ' of its bouilli, and some drt/ vegetables (generally beans) : a supper at eight, the same as the dinner, but without the houilli. He was then put to bed and locked up alone, as in all other inter- vals between the meals, till nine the next morning. When the commissary of the day happened to look good-humoured, the , AN ECCENTRIC COMMISSARY. 285^ guardians would endeavour to obtain some little adoueissement in the treatment of the child — such as his being taken to the leads, or getting some pots of flowers, which delighted him with the memory of happier days,. and in which he took more interest than in anything else. One day (the 14th November, 1794) there came, with a stern air, loud voice, and brutal manners, a person by name Delboy — he threw open all the doors, pried everywhere, gave his orders in a rough imperious tone, that at first frightened both guardians and prisoner, but by and by surprised them by the frank and rational, and even kind, spirit of his directions. When he saw the dinner he exclaimed, — ' " Why this wretched food? If they were still at the Tuileries I would assist to famish them out ; but here they are our prisoners, and it is unworthy of the nation to starve them. Why these window- blinds ? Under the reign of Equality the sun at least should shine for all. Why is he separated from his sister ? Under the reign of Fraternity why should they not see each other ? " Then addressing the child in a somewhat gentler tone, " Should you not like, my boy, to play wdth your sister ? If you forget your origin, I don't see why the nation should remember it." Then turning to the guardians, " 'Tis not his fault if he is his father's son — he is now nothing else than an unfortunate child ; the unfortunate have a claim to our humanity, and the country should be the mother of all her chih dren. So don't be harsh to him." ' x\ll he said was in the same blustering sententious style, ' com- bining,' says M. de Beauchesne in his own rhetorical way, ' the manners of Diogenes with the charity of Fenelon.' Another of Delboy's phrases is worth repeating. In discoursing (as we pre- sume) of the character of his colleagues, he declaimed against * those crafty hypocrites who do harm to others without mahing a noise — these are the kind of fellows who invented the air-gun,* Such a voice had never before been heard in the Temple, and occasioned a serious sensation, and something like consternation ; but it at last encouraged Gomin to ask his permission that the lamp in the anteroom, from which the only light of the child's dungeon was derived, should be lighted at dark. This was imme- diately granted ; and Diogenes-Fenelon departed, saying to the astounded guardians as he took his leave, — * *' Shall we ever meet again ? I think not ; our roads are not likely 28a THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. to meet. No matter — good patriots will recognise each other ; men of sense may vary their opinions — men of honour never change their feelings aiid principles. We are no Septembriseurs. Health and fraternity." ' The reign of this ' hourru hienfaisant ' lasted but a few hours, and (except as to lighting the lamp) left no traces. Laurent and Gomin were afraid to make any change on such ephemeral au- thority. About the same time sentiments like those which Delboy had blurted out in the prison were heard timidly insinuated in society, and even in more than one newspaper. This only exaspe- rated the fears and malignity of the Convention, and its speeches and decrees seemed, as to the treatment of the child, to reveal as strongly as before the resolution ' de s'en defaire.^ The daily change of Commissioners produced an alternation of gross vexations and slight indulgences not uninteresting, but which our space does not allow us to follow. One or two instances will suffice for the rest On the 23rd February, 1795, the Commissary was one Leroux — a ' terroriste arriere ' — terrorist out of date — who adored the memory of Robespierre, and hoped for the revival of his party. He insisted on visiting all the apartments, and was par- ticularly anxious to see how those * plucked roitelets looked without their feathers.' When he entered Madame Royale's room she was sitting at work, and went on without taking any notice of him. ' What ! ' he cried, ' is it the fashion here not to rise before the people?^ The Princess still took no notice. The brute revenged himself by rummaging the whole apartment, and retired, saying, sulkily, ' Mle est fiere comme V AutrichienneJ When he visited the boy it was only to insult him. He called him nothing but the son of the Tyrant, ridiculed his alleged illness, and, when Laurent and Gomin timidly ventured to produce Delboy's charitable maxim ' that he could not help being the son of his father,' they were silenced by doubts as to their own patriotism. * Ah, the children of tyrants are not to be sick like other people ! It is not, forsooth, his fault that he was born to devour the sweat and blood of the people ! It is not the less certain that such monsters should be strangled in their cradle ! ' (ii. 294.) He then established himself for the evening in the anteroom — called for cards and wine — the wine to drink toasts ' to the death of all tyrants,' and the cards to play picquet with Laurent. His nomenclature of the figure cards at picquet was not kings but tyrants — *• Three tyrants'' — 'Fourteen KAPID INCREASE OF ILLNESS. 287 tyrants.^ The queens were ' citoyennes,^ and the knaves * courtiers.^ The royal boy seemed not to understand, at least not to notice, these terms, but was much interested in overlooking the game, and hearing for the first time for some years people speaking to one another of something else than his own sufferings. The evening, however, ended ill. Leroux's Jacobinical fury was inflamed by drinking, and he made an uproar that terrified the child. He was at last got out of the room, and conducted to his bed on the lower story. But this accident had a favourable result. Leroux had called for cards, and thereby authorised their introduction ; and the child's pleasure in seeing them induced Gomin, between Le- roux's departure and the coming of his successor, to introduce two packs, with which the little prisoner amused himself /or the rest of Ms life ! The next Commissary happened to be a toyman ; he took pity on the boy, and, at Gomin's suggestion, sent him, three days after, two or three toys. But these were trifling indulgences ; and the continued interdiction of air and exercise, and the fre- quent insults and severities of the capricious Commissaries, were gradually aggravating the illness that had for some time past seri- ously alarmed the guardians, though the Commissaries in general only laughed at it. About January and February, 1795, his malady assumed a more rapid and threatening character. He grew more melancholy and apathetic ; he became very reluctant to "move, and, indeed, was hardly able to do so ; and Laurent and Gomin were forced to carry him in their arms. The district surgeon was called in, and in consequence of his opinion a delega- tion from the Commune examined the case, and reported that * the little Capet had tumours at all his joints, and especially at his knees — that it was impossible to extract a word from him — that he never would rise off his chair or his bed, and refused to take any- kind of exercise.' On this report a sub-committee of the Committee de SuretS- GMrale was delegated to visit the child: it consisted of one Harmand (of the Meuse), who on the king's trial voted for banish- ment, and MatJiieu and Reverchon^ who voted for death. These men found such a state of things that they thought (as Harmand himself afterwards confessed, appealing also to his colleagues who were still living) — * that, for the honour of the Nation, who knew nothing of these horrorp u 288 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. — for tliat of the Convention, whicli was, in trutli, also ignorant of them — and for that of the guilty Municipality of Paris itself, who knew all and was the cause of all these cruelties — we should make no public report, but only state the result in a secret meeting of the committee.' — ii. 309. So strange a confession — that public functionaries suppressed the facts they had been appointed to inquire into for the honour of those who had committed and sanctioned the crimes — is sufRciently revolting, but it is much more so that no measures whatsoever Were taken to correct or even alleviate the cruelties that they had reported. Harmand's account of the affair was not published till after the Restoration (as M. de Beauchesne notices with something of suspicion as to its accuracy), and there can be little doubt that he then modelled it so as to excuse, as far as he could, his own inhumanity or pusillanimity, in having made no effectual attempt to remedy the mischief that he had discovered. The only apology that can be made for him is, that he was sent, in a few days after, on a mission to the armies ; and it is possible, and even likely, that he was thus sent out of the way to prevent his taking any Bteps in the matter. The substance, however, of his statement is fully confirmed by the evidence of Gomin, though the latter dis- puted some small and really insignificant details. The most striking circumstance was the fixed and resolute silence of the child, from whom they, no more than the former Commissaries of the Commune, were able to extract a single word. This silence Harmand dates from the day on which he was forced to sign the monstrous deposition against his mother — a statement which Gomin denies, and, on this denial of a fact which either party could have only from the report of others, M. de Beauchesne distrusts Harmand's general veracity. We think unjustly. For, though Gomin might contradict the unqualified statement of his never having spoken from that very day, he himself bears testimony that the exceptions were so rare and so secret as to be utterly unknown, except to the two or three persons whose unexpected kindness obtained a whisper of acknowledgment from the surprised though grateful boy. Nay, when Gomin first entered on his duties, * Laurent foretold that he would not obtain a word from him,' which implies that he had not opened his lips to Laurent. The report of the Commune which preceded Harmand's visit also States, as we have seen, that he would not speak : Harmand and CAUSES OF THE PRINCE'S SILENCE. 289 his colleagues found the same obstinate silence ; and we, therefore, do not see that Harmand's accuracy is in any degree impugned by Gomin's secret knowledge that the child, though mute to all the rest of his visitors, had spoken to him and to one or two others, who were afraid to let it transpire. It may be too much to assert that this ' mutisme ' began immediately on the signature of the deposition of the 6 th October, because there seems good reason to deny that he had any share in that deposition except signing it ; he probably could not have understood its meaning, and unquestionably could know nothing of the use that was made of it — indeed, it is certain that he never knew of his mother's death. But it is equally certain that, from some unspecified date soon after that event, and for some secret reason which we can only conjecture, he condemned himself to what may be fairly called absolute silence. If he had any idea of the import of the depositions which had been fabricated for him, he may have re- solved not to give another opportunity of perverting what he might happen to say ; and the constant and cruel insults which he had to undergo as the * son of the tyrant^ the * roiteletl the ' Mng of La Vendee,^ and the like, may have awakened in his mind some sense of his dignity, and suggested the refuge of silence. Such considerations we can imagine to have dawned even on that young intellect ; but in addition to, or even exclusive of, any metaphysical motives — the murder of his father, which he knew — the thoughts of his mother, which, as we shall see, troubled and tormented him — his separation from his sister and aunt — a vague consciousness that he had done something injurious to them — and, above all, the pain, prison, privations, and punishment — in short, the terror and torture which he himself endured — suflSciently ac- count for the atrophy both of mind and body into which he had fallen, and for the silence of the dungeon, so soon to become the silence of the grave. And it is certain that, even in this extremity, he had more memory and sensibility than he chose to show. Gomin's timidity, not to say terror, of compromising himself, ren- dered his general deportment reserved and even severe ; but, one evening — Thursday, 12th March, 1795 — when he was alone with the child (Laurent and the Municipal of the day being absent at their cluh), he showed him some unusual marks of sympathy, and proposed something to gratify him. The boy looked up suddenly U 2 290 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. at Gomin's countenance, and, seeing in it an expression of tender- ness, he rose and timidly advanced to the door, his eyes still fixed on Gorain's face with a gaze of suppliant inquiry. * No, no,' said Gomin, * you know that that cannot be.' * I must see Her ! ' said the child. ' Oh, fray, fray, let me see Her once again before I die 1 ' Gomin led him gently away from the door to his bed, on which the child fell motionless and senseless ; and Gomin, terribly alarmed — and, as he confessed, as much for himself as his prisoner — thought for a time that he was no more. The poor boy had long been, Gomin suspected, meditating on an opportunity for seeing his mother — he thought he had found it, and his disappoint- ment overwhelmed him. This incident softened still more the heart of Gomin. A few days after there was another sad scene. On the 23rd of March, the Commissary of the day, one Collot, looking stedfastly at the child, exclaimed, in a loud doctoral tone, ' That child has not six weeks to live ! ' Laurent and Gomin, shocked at the effect that such a prophecy might have on the child, made some miti- gating observations, to which Collot replied, with evident malig- nity, and in coarser terms than we can translate, ' I tell you, citizens, that within six weeks he will be an idiot, if he be not dead I ' The child only showed that he heard it, by a mournful smile, as if he thought it no bad news ; but, when Collot was gone, a tear or two fell, and he murmured, ' Yet I never did any harm to anybody.^ On the 29th of March came another affliction. Laurent's tastes and feelings were very repugnant to his duties in the Temple, though he was afraid of resigning, lest he should be suspected of incivisme ; but he had now, by the death of his mother, an excuse for soliciting a successor. It was granted, and he left the Temple with the regret of everybody. The innocence and gentle manners of the child had softened his republicanism, and reconciled him to the * son of the tyrant' The Prince at parting squeezed his hand affectionately, and saw his departure with evident sorrow, but does not seem to have spoken. One Lasne succeeded him — his nomination and instalment were characteristic of the times. He received a written notice of his appointment and a summons to attend at the Commune to receive his credentials. Not coming at once, two gendarmes, armed police, were sent, who took him from his residence, and conducted A NEW GUARDIAN APPOINTED. 291 him straight and suddenly to his new post. Lasne had served in the old Gardes Frangaises, and this caused his election as captain of grenadiers in the St. Antoine battalion of the National Guards. He was now ly trade a master house-painter — an honest man, of the moderate republican party, with the air and somewhat of the rough manner of the old soldier. It was on the 16th February, 1837, that M. de Beauchesne, as he tells us, * first saw Lasne, in whose arms Louis XVII. had died ;' but the public had an earlier acquaintance with Lasne, which we wonder that M. de Beauchesne has not noticed. He was a principal witness on the trial of the Faux Dauphin, Richemont, in October, 1830, and then gave in substance the same account of his mission in the Temple and of the death of the young king that he again repeated without any material addition or variation to M. de Beauchesne. For three weeks the child was as mute to Lasne as he had been, to the others. At last an accident broke his silence. Lasne, having been one day on guard at the Tuileries, had happened to see the Dauphin reviewing a regiment of boys, which had been formed for his amusement and instruction ; and in one of his allo- cutions (we cannot call them conversations) to the silent child he happened to mention the circumstance, and repeated something that had occurred on that day ; the boy's face suddenly brightened up, and showed evident signs of interest and pleasure, and at last, in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, he asked, ' And did you see me with my sword V * Though the guardians were equally responsible for both the prisoners, Lasne was especially attached to the boy, and Gomin to Madame Royale, whom at last he accompanied on her release, and on the Restoration became an officer of her household. Lasne, a busier and bolder man than Gomin, soon discovered that the boy, whom he could barely recognise for the healthy and handsome child whom he had seen, with his sword, at the Tuileries, was in a very dangerous state, and he induced his colleague to join him in inscribing on the register of the proceedings of the Temple, ' The little Capet is indisposed.^ No notice being taken of the entry, they repeated it in a day or two, in more positive terms, ' The little Capet is dangerously ilV Still no notice. * We * That sword, of which M. de (or did lately) in the Musee de I'Artil- Beauchesne gives a drawing, still exists lerie at Paris, 292 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. must strike harder,' said the guardians ; and now wrote that ' his life was in danger.^ This produced an order (6th May, 1795) for the attendance of M. Desault, one of the most eminent phy- sicians of Paris. Desault examined the patient, but could not obtain a word from him. He pronounced, however, that he was called in too late — that the case was become scrofulous, probably from a constitutional taint of the same disease of which the elder Dauphin had died in 1789, aggravated by the hard treatment and confinement of so many years ; and he had the courage to propose that the patient should be immediately removed to the country, where change of air, exercise, and constant attention, afforded the only chance of prolonging his life. The Government, who desired no such result, paid no attention to the advice, and Desault had nothing left but to order friction of the tumours at the joints, ard some trivial potions which it was found for a long time impossible to persuade the child to swallow : whether he wished to die, or was, on the contrary, afraid of poison, did not appear ; but to remove the latter idea, if it existed, both Gomin and Lasne tasted the medicine ; and at last, at Lasne's earnest entreaties, and as if it were to oblige 1dm, the medicine was taken, and, as M. Desault himself expected, produced no change in the disease ; but there was an improvement in his moral condition — the care and kindness of the benevolent doctor opened his lips — he answered his ques- tions, and received his attentions with evident satisfaction ; but, aware that his words were watched (the doctor was never left alone with him), the little patient did not venture to ask him to prolong his civilities, though he would silently lay hold of the skirt of his coat to delay his departure. This lasted three weeks. On the 31st May, at nine o'clock, the Commissary of the day, M. Bellenger, an artist, who had been, before the Revolution, painter and designer to Monsieur, and who still retained sentiments of respect and affection for the royal family — ^went up into the patient's room to wait for the Doctor. As he did not appear, M. Bellenger produced a portfolio of drawings which he thought might amuse the boy, who, still silent, only turned them over heedlessly ; but, at last, the Doctor still not appearing, Bellenger said, ' Sir, I should have much wished to have carried away with me another sketch, but I would not venture to do so if it was disagreeable to you.* Struck with the unusual appellation of * Sir,' and Bellenger's SUDDEN DEATH OF THE MEDICAL ATTENDANT. 293 deferential manner, his reserve thawed, and he answered, ' What sketch V * Of your features ; if it were not disagreeable to you, it would give me the greatest 'pleasure.* ' It would please you ? ' said the child, and a gracious smile authorised the artist to proceed. M. Desault did not come that day — nor at the usual hour the next. Surprised at his absence, the Commissary on duty suggested the sending for him. The guardians hesitated to take even so innocent a step beyond their instructions ; but a new Commissary arrived, and terminated their doubts by announcing that ' it was needless — M. JDesault died yesterday.^ A death so sudden, and at such a critical moment, gave rise to a thousand conjectures ; the most general was that M. Desault, having given his patient poison, ^vas himself poisoned by his employers to conceal the crime. The character of the times and the strange circumstances * of the case gave a colour to such a suspicion, but there was really no ground for it. Desault was a worthy man, and, as Madame Royale has simply and pathetically said, * the only poison that shortened her brother's days was filth, made more fatal by horrible treatment, by harshness, and by cruelty, of which there is no example.' The child now remained for five days without any medical attendance ; but, on the 5th June, M. Pelletan, surgeon-in-chief of one of the great hospitals, was named to that duty. This doctor — * sent,' says M. de Beauchesne, ' for form's sake, like a counsel assigned to a malefactor'— had, however, the courage to remonstrate loudly with the Commissaries on the closeness and darkneifs of the sick room, and the violent crash of bolts and bars with wMch the doors were opened and shut, to the manifest dis- turbance and agitation of the patient. ' If you have not authority,' he said, * to open the windows, and remove these irons, at least you cannot object to remove him to another room.' The boy heard him, and, contrary to his invariable habit, beckoning this new friend to come near him, he whispered, * D(yrCt speak so loud, for THEY might hear you overhead, and I should be sorry they * An additional circumstance of This was, no doubt, an accidental mis- suspicion was, the different dates take, but it was a strange one in so officially given to Desault's death. He formal a document — the more so be- certainly died on the 1st of June ; yet cause it shortened the surprisingly the Report of the Comite de SureU short interval between the deaths of Generale to the Convention on the sub- the doctor and his patient from six ject states that Desault died on the 4th, days to three. 294 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. hnew I was ill, it would alarm them.'' ' They^ were his mother and aunt, who he thought were still living. The Commissary of the day — one Thory (a baker) — whose natural sympathy was thus fortified by the decided requisition of the surgeon, consented ; and a room in the small tower, which had been the drawing-room of the archivist of the Order, was instantly prepared for the recep- tion of the patient. The kind-hearted Gomin hastened to carry him in his arms — as he was no longer able to move himself — the movement caused him great torture ; and his eyes, so long unac- customed to the full light of day, were painfully dazzled : the sight, however, of the sun and the freshness of the air through a large open window soon revived and delighted him, and in a few minutes he turned on Gomin a look of inefikble gratitude and affection ; but evening came, and from eight o'clock till eight next morning he was again locked up alone. On the morning of the 6th June Lasne rubbed his knees, and gave him a spoonful of tisan, and, thinking him really better, dressed him, and laid him on the bed. Pelletan arrived soon after. He felt the pulse, and asked him whether he liked his new room. * Oh, yes T he an- swered, with a faint, desponding smile, that went to all their "hearts. At dinner-time, just as the child had swallowed a ^oonful of broth, and was slowly eating a few cherries from a plate that lay on his bed, a new Commissary, of the terrible name ofHebert, and worthy of it, arrived. ' Eh ! how is this ? ' said he to the guardians ; ' where is your authority for thus moving tHs wolf- cub ? ' * We had no special directions,' replied Gomin, 'but the doctor ordered it' * How long,' retorted the other, ' have barbers {carabins) been the Government of the Republic ? You mist have the leave of the Committee — do you hear ? ' At these words the child dropped a cherry from his fingers, fell back on the led, and hid his face on the pillow. Then night came, and agair. he was locked up alone, abandoned to his bodily suff'erings and to the new terrors which Hebert's threat had evidently excited. Pelletan had found him so much worse, that he solicited the Committee of Surete GenSrale for an additional medical opinion ; and M. Dumangin, first physician of another great hospital, was next day (Sunday, 7th June) sent to assist him. Before they arrived the patient had had a fainting fit, which seemed to portend immediate death ; but he recovered a little. The doctors, after a consultation, decided that there were no longer any hopes— that art THE PEINCE'S LAST MOMENTS. 295 could do nothing — and that all that remained was to mitigate the agonies of this lingering death. They expressed the highest asto- nishment and disapprobation of the solitude and neglect to which the boy was subjected during the whole of every night and the greater part of every day, and insisted on the immediate necessity of giving him a sick-nurse. The Committee, by a decree of the next day (8th June), consented — as they now safely might, with- out any danger of the escape of their victim ; but on the night of the 7th the old rule was still followed, and he was locked up alone. He felt it more than usual — the change of apartment had evidently revived his hopes — he took leave of Gomin with big tears running down his cheeks, and said, ' Still alone, and my mother in the other tower ! ' But it was the last night of suffering. When Lasne came in the morning of the 8th, as usual, he thought him better ; the doctors, who arrived soon after, thought otherwise ; and their bulletin, despatched from the Temple at 11 A.M., announced the danger to be imminent. Gomin now re- lieved Lasne at the bedside ; but remained for a long time silent, for fear of agitating him, and the child never spoke first ; at last Gomin expressed his sorrow at seeing him so weak. * Be con- soled,' he replied, ' / shall not suffer long.' Overcome by these words, Gomin kneeled down by the bedside. The child took his hand and pressed it to his lips while Gomin prayed. * And now,' says M. de Beauchesne, ' having heard the last words uttered by the father, the mother, and the aunt — admirable and Christian words — you will be anxious to gather up the last words of the royal child — clearly recollected and related by the two witnesses to whom they were addressed, and by me faithfully transcribed from their own lips.' After the scene just described, Gomin, seeing him stretched out quite motionless and silent, said, * I hope you are not in pain.' ' Oh yes' he replied, ' still in pain^ hut less — tJie music is so fine J There was no music — no sound of any kind reached the room. * Where do you hear the music ? ' — ' Up there.' * How long ? ' — ' Since you were mi your knees. Don't you hear it 9 Listen ! listen ! ' And he raised his hand and opened his great eyes in a kind of ecstacy. Gomin continued silent, and, after a few mo- ments, the boy gave another start of convulsive joy, and cried, ' I hear my mothers voice amm^gst them ! ' and directed his eyes to 296 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. the window with anxiety. Gomin asked once, twice, what he was looking for — he did not seem to hear, and made no answer. It was now Lasne's hour to relieve Gomin, who left the room, and Lasne sat down by the bedside. The child lay for a while still and silent, at last he moved, and Lasne asked if he wanted anything ? He replied, ' JDo you think my sister could hear the music f — Sow she would like it I ' He then turned again to the window with a look of sharp curiosity, and uttered a sound that indicated pleasure; he then — it was just fifteen minutes after two P.M. — said to Lasne, * / have something to tell you ; Lasne took his hand and bent over to hear. There was no more to be heard — the child was dead ! A 'post-mortem examination, by Pelletan and Dumangin, assisted by MM. Jeanroy and Lassus, eminent practitioners, and of royalist opinions and connexions, attested not only the absence of any signs of poison, but the general healthy condition of the intestines and viscera, as well as of the brain ; their report attributed the death simply to marasmus (atrophy, decay), the result of a scrofulous disease of long standing — such as the swelling of the joints, exter- nally visible, indicated ; but they gave no hint of the causes that might have produced, and did, beyond question, fatally aggravate, the disease. The poor child was fated to be the victim of persecution and profanation even after death. The surgeon, M. Pelletan, who was intrusted with the special duty of arranging the body after the examination, had, on the Restoratimi, the astonishing impudence of confessing that, while his colleagues were conversing in a dis- tant part of the room, he had secretly stolen the heart, and con- veyed it in a napkin into his pocket ; that he kept it for some time in spirits of wine, but that it afterwards dried up^ and that he threw it into a drawer, whence again it was stolen by one of his pupils, who, on his death-bed (about the date of the Restora- tion) confessed it, and directed his father-in-law and his widow to restore the theft ; which Pelletan, in consequence, received from them in a purse, and which, * having handled it a thousand times, he easily recognised,' and placed it in a crystal vase, on which were engraved seventeen stars. A disgusting controversy arose on the authenticity of Pelletan's relique ; in consequence of which Louis XVHL, who had at first intended to place it in the royal THE PEINCE'S GEAVE. 297 tombs at St. Denis, retracted that design, chiefly, it is said, on the evidence of Lasne, who strenuously declared that, however inatten- tive the other doctors might have been, he had never taken his eyes off the body or Pelletan during the whole operation ; that no such theft could have been accomplished without his having seen it ; that he saw nothing like it ; and that Pelletan' s whole story was a scandalous imposture. Besides this powerful and direct objection, others arose — from the neglect with which Pelletan con- fessed that he had treated a deposit which, since he had taken it, he ought to have considered so sacred — from the vague story of the second theft — and, finally, from the doubt of the identity of the object returned by the widow in a purse with that which the pupil confessed to have stolen. The apocryphal object, therefore, remains with the representatives of Pelletan ; but the disgrace of his story, whether true or false, is fixed indelibly on his memory. But this was not all. The very grave of the poor boy became matter of controversy. There is no doubt that the body was buried openly, and with decent solemnity— accompanied by several muni- cipal authorities and his last friend Lasne — in the churchyard of the parish of St. Margaret, in the Faubourg St. Antoine ; but when Louis XVIII. directed an inquiry into the exact spot, with a view of transferring the body to St. Denis, the evidence was so various, inconclusive, and contradictory, that— as in the case of the heart — it seemed prudent to abandon the original design, and the remains of Louis XVII. repose undisturbed and undistinguished in a small grassy inclosure adjoining the church, and so surrounded by houses that it is not marked on the ordinary maps of Paris. It has been for more than fifty years abandoned as a cemetery — forgotten and unknown by the two last generations of men even in its own neigh- bourhood, till the pious enthusiasm of M. de Beauchesne revealed it to us, but now, we suppose, never to be again forgotten, though the place seems altogether desecrated. We cannot understand — whatever good reasons there might be for abandoning a search after the individual grave — why the monarchs and ministers of the Restoration did not, in this narrow, secluded, and most appropriate spot, raise some kind of memorial to not only so innocent but so inoffensive and so interesting a victim. M. de Beauchesne hints that such was the frustrated desire of the Duchess d'Angouleme. Why a request so pious and so modest should have been rejected by those ministers we are at a loss to 298 THE CAPTIVITY IN THE TEMPLE. conceive. He announces that he himself designs to place some humble memorial within the inclosure. We doubt whether he will be permitted to do so ; but he will at least have the consolation of having in this work dedicated to the object of his reverence and affection a monument which neither the rancour of revolutionists, the neglect of soi-disant royalists, nor the terrors of the new despotism can ever obliterate. ESSAY VI. . [Quarterly Eeview, September, 1835.] ROBESPIERRE. 1. Merrmres authentiques de Maocimilien Robespierre. 2 tomes. Paris, 1830. 2. Memoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux Freres. Paris, 1835. The most prominent, yet the most mysterious, figure in the phan- tasmagoria of the French Revolution is Maximilian Robespierre. Of no one of whom so much has been said is so little known. He was at first too much despised, and at last too much feared, to be closely examined or justly appreciated. The blood-red mist by which his last years were enveloped magnified his form, but obscured his features. Like the Genius of the Arabian tale, he emerged suddenly from a petty space into enormous power and gigantic size, and as suddenly vanished, leaving behind him no trace but terror. We therefore received with curiosity the two publications whose titles are prefixed to this ai-ticle, in the hope that they might afibrd some insight into the personal, and perhaps some explanation of the public, conduct of this mysterious man, who, in the guilty whirl of his revolutionary career, amidst the blaze of the most enthusiastic popularity, in the supreme and despotic omnipotence of a dictator, contrived to bury his private life in a deep and appa- rently modest obscurity. We have been entirely disappointed. The first, which afi'ects to be an autobiography of Robespierre down to the close of the Constituant Assembly, is a manifest fabri- cation. It contains a few small particulars of his early life, which might have been gleaned from persons who knew him, but the bulk is compiled from the files of the Moniteur. We therefore did not consider it worthy a separate notice, and are now only reminded of it by the still more impudent fabrication of the Memoirs of Char- 300 EOBESPIERRE. lotte Robespierre, of which the following is, we believe, a true account. A young republican of the name of Laponneraye, one of the heroes, it seems, of the Great Days of July, 1830, being grievously mortified at the result of that very untoward victory, betook him- self to the task of enlightening the lower classes of the Parisians by certain lectures on the history of the French Revolution, which he delivered gratuitously on the Sunday evenings in a style that procured for their author we know not how many prosecutions and penal inflictions. In the course of these lectures he undertook the defence of Robespierre, whom he considers as the purest of patriots and the best of men. It happened that in an obscure quarter of Paris there still existed — on a pension originally granted by Buonaparte, but continued by those cruel and bigoted Bourbons, who never forgot and never forgave — the sister of the Robespierres ! This poor old woman — ^buried alive under the weight of 74 years, of complicated ill health,* and of her intolerable name — must have been surprised, to the whole extent of her remaining faculties, at hearing that name again publicly pronounced, not only without horror, but with the extravagant admiration of the palmy days of the Jacobins. Laponneraye gives a vague and pompous account of the sympathy that soon united their hearts ; of the tender friend- ship to which their common affection for the ' humane and virtuous ' Maximilian gave sudden birth. He solicited the honour of being allowed to call himself her son, and she, it seems, complied with the rational request. On her death, in August, J 834, the hook- seller states, that ' she left these Memoirs to M. Laponneraye, qui nous a cSde* — not gratuitously, we suppose — 'the right of pub- lication.' In England the assertion of any man of letters, and of any respectable publisher, that a work was printed from the MS. of a person lately deceased would never be questioned ; we regret to repeat that it is quite the reverse in France, and that the assurances given us of the authenticity of the Memoirs of Mile. Robes- pierre, not only create no confidence, but would have excited our suspicions even had there been no other evidence. In the first place, the publisher, in an anonymous advertisement * Cette fille estimable a vendu sa au point de la rendre incapable d'un portion de patrimoine pour soutenir long travail. — Lettre de Guffroy a la sesfreres. Des chagrins nes anterieure- Convention 1794, p. 181. ment a leur punition ont alterc sa sant^ AUTHENTICITY OF THE MEMOIRS DOUBTFUL, 301 prefixed to the editor s—LdnpormerRye's — preface, says that Mile. Rohespierre left the MS. to Laponneraye. Why does not Lapon- neraye say so himself ? The truth is, he could not ; for Mile. Robespierre's will is preserved, and it bequeaths everything she leaves behind in the world to Mile. Mathon, a person whose family had received and protected, and who herself had attended, the poor old woman to her last hour. Again : the publisher talks of Memoirs — but the editor himself pretends to nothing but some few scattered Notes, which he admits that he has put together according to his own discretion. But even this very small degree of authority we must question ; a few scattered notes arranged at the discretion of such a person as Laponneraye would not be worth much ; but we are satisfied that not a line of the work could have been written by the pen of Mile. Robespierre. The style, in our judgment, is evidently that of Laponneraye ; at all events, it is that of a journalist of this day, and not of a poor old recluse. The modern slang — the neology, the thoughts and phrases all smelling of the Three Great Days — are no more like what old Charlotte Robespierre would have ham- mered out than they are to Marot or Rabelais. But there are other circumstances still more conclusive. Mile. Robespierre is made to say, that her brother belonged to ^ two legislative assem- blies successively' This is a slip of M. Laponneraye's youthful memory, which could not have happened to the contemporary and sister. Robespierre was indeed member of two legislative assem- blies, but not successively — he belonged only to the first and the last ; and to that intermediate one, which is called for distinction ' the Legislative Assembly,^ and to which reference is made, it happens that Robespierre did not belong. And again. Mile. Robespierre complains — and Laponneraye, in his own character, repeats and presses the complaint — that Le Vasseur, in his Me- moirs recently published, should have been guilty of the indiscretion of printing a letter from Mile. Robespierre to her brother, which was found after his death, and which, she says, has been mali- ciously garbled and altered, so as to give a very false idea of the said brother's character, and of their fraternal relations. Le Vasseur's Memoirs were a fabrication (proved to be so in a court of justice), made by one Roche, and published from 1829 to 1832.* But Laponneraye, this last historian of the Revolution, seems so -\ ♦ See Quarterly RevieW; vol. xlix. p. 29. 302 EOBESPIERRE. stupendously ignorant of the subject he was writing about, as not to be aware that this letter, and with it another * from the younger Robespierre to the elder, concerning their sister, appears in the celebrated ' Rapport sur les Pa-piers trouves cliez Robespierre^ par Courtois — read in the Convention soon after Robespierre's death, printed both in quarto and octavo, and distributed all over Europe, six-and-thirty years before Le Vasseur's pretended Memoirs appeared. We, therefore, repeat our entire disbelief that Mile. Robes- pierre wrote one line of these Memoirs ; though it is possible that Laponneraye may have obtained from her, in conversation, a few trivial circumstances and meagre anecdotes, which he has expanded into an hundred pages ; it is evident, however, that even this com- munication could have existed but to a very small extent ; for we cannot understand how any man could have talked even for two hours with the sister of Robespierre without having learned some- thing more interesting, and above all something more individual and characteristic, than the trash which is here given. The only evidence of its approach to truth is its unimportance. If Lapon- neraye had been altogether fabricating, he would certainly have invented something more suitable to the double purpose of pane- gyrizing the Jacobins and selling his book. We therefore con- clude that some few facts he may have had from Mile. Robespierre ; while the ridiculous eloquence with which he embroiders these trivial matters is entirely his own. In looking over — as the examination of these worthless publica- tions obliged us to do — the more respectable works on the French * As this letter is short, and not so lumnies — ^widely spread — have no other generally known as the other, we in- object. sert it : — 'I wish you would see La Citoyenne 'No. XLii. K.— Robespierre the younger to Lasaudraie; she could give you full in- his Brother. formation concerning all the impostors ' My sister has not a drop of our blood by whom we are surrounded, and whom in her veins. I have heard and seen it is inost important to detect. A cer- enough of her to satisfy me that she is tain St. Felix seems to be of the clique. onr greatest enemy. She turns our spot- ' — Rapport de Courtois, p. 177. less reputation to her own account, in Mile. Robespierre had been once sent order to rule us, and to threaten us with back to Arras. Darth^ (Pajners, i. 149) some scandalous proceedings on her part writes to Lebas, 19 May, 1794, that which may compromise ms. ' Lebon had returned to Arras the night 'We must take some decided steps before last, and brought with him /a C^Yoy- against her. She must be sent back to e7ine Iiohesp>ierre.' Guffroy con'oborates Arras [their native town], that we may this, but adds that she soon went to Lille be relieved from the presence of a (having been denounced at Arras), and woman who is become our common thence returned to Paris. Her letter plague. She tries to give us the cha- to Maximilian is dated the 6th July, racter of being bad brothers j her ca- only three weeks before the fall. OBSCUEITY OF HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER. 303 -f Ke volution, we could not but observe how vague, unsatisfactory, and even inconsistent, are all the accounts of Robespierre. His name, indeed, occurs in every page — his speeches fill the Moniteur — his ambition and his crimes are commonplaces of the historian and the moralist ; but the real objects and extent of that ambition — his motives and actual share in those crimes, are still involved in contradiction and obscurity. To this obscurity four circumstances have mainly contributed: — 1. the natural reserve and mystery of his own personal character ; 2. the humble position of his family and connexions ; 3. the simultaneous death of all those who were interested in giving any explanation of his motives ; and, lastly, his being made the scapegoat of all the surviving villains, who loaded his memory with their crimes as well as his own, and were careful to stifle any inquiries which might lead to the separation of his real from his imputed off^ences. From all these causes it is probable that we shall never obtain a full insight into Robespierre's character, the individual motives of his actions, and the exact scope and aim of his ulterior desio-ns. But something may yet be done — some of his contemporaries are still alive. There exists an immense mass of ephemeral publica- tions which have been but imperfectly examined ; and the public archives of France do, or at least did lately, contain a great deal of curious and unpublished matter ; all of which, we think, if duly examined, sifted, and arranged, would throw very important lights on this most interesting, and, we must say, still unwritten, history. We have not the pretension of being able to contribute anything to such a work ; but in the following hasty and, we are well aware, very imperfect sketch of the events of Robespierre's life, we shall indicate some of the doubts and difficulties which have struck our minds, in the hope of directing, to their elucidation, the attention of those who may have more leisure and better opportunities of investigation.* Francis Maximilian Joseph Isidore de Robespierre "j* was born * The July Government of France f I* is strange how long his name showed a disposition to conceal what- was miscalled or misspelled. We find ever it could of evidence concerning as late as 1792 his name given as Eohert- the Revolution. Very natural — the pierre. So late as 179B in an account King and almost all those in authority of the insurrection of 13th Vendemiaire under him are the children of the Re- he is called Roherspierre. volution, who dislike very much to When Robespierre first appeared in hear of regicides— Septembriseurs and the world he prefixed the feudal par- Terrorists, tide de to his name. He was entered at X 304: ■ EOBESPIERRE. on the 6th of April, 1759.* His father was an advocate at Arras ; he lost his mother (Mary Carreau,t a brewer's daughter) when he, the eldest of four children, was seven years old ; and his father, soon after his wife's death, fled his own country for debt — kept for a short time a French school at Cologne — thence passed over, it is said, to England — and, finally, to America, and there disappeared. Laponneraye (for it would be idle to keep up the farce of attribut- ing these Memoirs to Charlotte Robespierre) tells us that the father had acquired great consideration by his integrity and his virtues, and was at once honoured and beloved by the whole city of Arras ; and suggests, that having been advised to travel for a short time to alleviate his grief for the loss of his wife, he did so, and died a victim to his uxorious sensibility — though nobody ever knew when, where, or how. But Laponneraye does not inform us why his sensibility did not take the more obvious course of devot- ing himself to the care of his infant family, instead of abandoning them in utter destitution to the charity of their neighbours. These Memoirs are very indignant at some biographies which state (improbably enough) that Robespierre's diabolical disposition exhibited itself almost in infancy by his beheading pigeons and sparrows. The Memoirs do not deny, and do not regret, that Maximilian sent thousands of men and women to the guillotine ; but that he should kill pigeons and sparrows — what an atrocious calumny ! Not content with a mere refutation of this slander, the Memoirs undertake to establish the very reverse : they confess that he did keep sparrows and pigeons, but so far from beheading them, he would weep at the even accidental death of his little College as de Robespierre — he practised proscription even than the Vieux Corde- at the bar as de Robespierre— he was Her itself. At the moment that Camille elected to the States-General as cZe Robes- revived this unlucky proof of the aris- pierre ; after the abolition of all feudal tocracy of M. de Bobespierre, it was an distinctions he rejected the de, and imputation that would have sent a called himself Bobespierre. It is exceed- less popular man to the guillotine ; and mgly curious that the decree of the Robespierre might well have remem- National Association, 19th June, 1790, bered it with mortal resentment, abolishing all titles, has the signature * This is the date in the Srst gene- de Bobespierre, he being one of the secre- ral list of the members of the States- taries of the Assembly that day. Small General ; and it seems as if that state- as this matter seems, it had serious ment was made by himself: all the late consequences : Camille Desmoulins, in biographies give the year 1760. one of his publications, recalled this f A first cousin of Robespierre's of disagreeable fact to Robespierre's me- this name (also a brewer) distinguished mory in an aigre-doiix tone — ^half sneer, himself as a Terrorist at Arras. — Mem. half flattery — which we suspect was dcs Prisons. more likely to have conti'ibvited to his ERRONEOUS ESTIMATES OF HIM. 305 favourites. We shall give one passage as a perfect specimen of the absurd style in which these Memoirs have been fabricated : — ' A poor pigeon, forgotten one night by ns,' [the sisters,] ' in a garden, perished in a storm. On hearing of this death Maximilian burst into tears; he overwhelmed us with reproaches, which our carelessness but too well deserved, and swore never again to trust us with any of his dear pigeons. It is now sixty years since, by a childish negligence, I thus excited the grief and tears of my elder brother, and even to this hour my heart bleeds for it. I seem not to have grown a day older since the tragical end of the poor pigeon so tenderly affected Maximilian and so deeply afflicted mj^self.' — p. 41. A pigeon, dying— as if it were a hot-house plant — of being left out a night ! and the heart that still bleeds for it at the end of sixty years ! — sixty years, too, of such events as might, we think, have afforded even the sister of Robespierre some better excuse for a perennial bleeding of the heart ! After this we shall spare our readers any further specimen of the style in which Laponneraye inculcates the chief, we might almost say the sole, topic of his work, namely, the extreme tender- ness and humanity of Robespierre's nature, and his constitutional and almost morbid horror of blood. It is very true that Robes- pierre, and many other of the bloodiest villains of the revolution, (Marat himself, for instance), began by declaiming against the punishment of death — as indeed they did against all existing laws and punishments, and for very obvious reasons. We will even admit that men, not naturally worse than others, may, by faction, frenzy, or fear, be carried away into excesses which in their earlier days they would have contemplated with horror ; but it is nauseous to find a scribbler like this Laponneraye stupidly and shamelessly declaiming on the peculiar benignity of the most wholesale mur- derer that, we believe, the world ever produced. We shall, there- fore, trouble our readers no further with this point. A different and more considerable class of writers have been carried, by various motives, into an opposite, yet almost equally false estimate of his character. They represent him as a ^plat coquin ' — a * niais,' a low fellow of no abilities, raised to eminence by mere accident, bloodthirsty without object or measure, and instigated to enormous wickedness by a blind and gratuitous ma- levolence against the human race. This is, a priori, incredible, and is indeed contradicted by the facts of the case. Robespierre X 2 306 ROBESPIERKE. must have been a man of considerable abilities, well educated, a tolerable writer, an effective speaker, and, at least, a clever party tactician. That he was a respectable scholar may be inferred from an anecdote recorded by Vilatte, a juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who chose to call himself Sempronius Gracchus : hap- pening to be in Barrere's room one day, Robespierre came in, and seeing a new face, asked ' Who is that young man ? ' ' Oh,' said Barrere, * ' Tis Sempronius Gracchus, one of ours.^ * Semjyronius Gracchus, one of ours ! ' exclaimed Robespierre. ' No, no ; I see you have forgotten your Cicero's Offices : that aristocrat only praises Sempronius Gracchus as a contrast to his sons, and to make them appear to be seditious agitators.' In a season of general brutality, profligacy, and corruption, his manners and con- duct were decent, and his personal integrity unimpeached.* He had neither the eloquence of Vergniaud nor the vigour of Danton, but he had a combination of qualities which enabled him to sub- due them, as well as all other rivals, and to raise himself to the supreme authority on the ruins both of the kingdom and the republic. He (we know n'ot who it was j ) took no unfair view either of Maximilian's character or of that of his successor, who called Buonaparte Robespierre a cheval, — a military Robespierre, — and it is probable that if Robespierre, in the crisis of his fate, had possessed or employed military talents, the Ninth Thermidor might have been an Eighteenth Brumaire. % It is a curious circumstance that both the Robespierres owed their education, their maintenance, and even their profession as advocates, to those charitable institutions which they were so active in destroying, and in an especial degree to that clergy which they persecuted with such incredible cruelty. Maximilian and Augustin began their education at the college (or public school) at Arras,§ * ' Les Girondins se dechainaient im- followed by the same multitude which pitoyablement contre Robespierre par- next day covered him with maledic- ceque le succfes de ee qu'on appelait sa tions.' — Mercier, N. T., 248. vertu et son eloquence les irritait.' — § His * condisciples' here were Caniille Thiers, ii. 99. ^ Desmoulins, Lebrun, Sulleau, Dupoi-t t As the ancient mythologists appro- du Tertre. Freron, who gives the priated all legendary wonders to Her- account, alone died in his bed. (See eules, the moderns attribute all political Freron's note, Pap. i., 154.) We do n >t hons mots to M. de Talleyrand, and this venture to say that Freron died a nuUi- amongst the rest,— but we suspect un- ral death, for he was appointed Sous deservedly. Prefet of St. Domingo, and, accompany- X ' Robespierre was arrested for want ing Leclerc's army to that pestilential of courage. Had he mounted on horse- island, died of the fever soon after hia back he would probably have been arrival. HIS OBLIGATIONS TO THE CLERGY. 307 where Maximilian showed, at the age of ten or eleven, such dis- positions as, coupled with his destitute state, attracted the notice and charity of the neighbouring clergy, and, amongst them, of M. de Conzie, bishop of Arras, who obtained, from the great Abbaye de St Waast, one of its exhibitions to the college of Louis le Grand, at Paris, for the promising and interesting orphan. On his arrival in Paris another benevolent ecclesiastic, M. de la Roche, a canon of Notre Dame, took him under his protection, and during eight years Robespierre prosecuted his studies with so much success, and so much to the satisfaction of his patrons, that when his own period of education had been — at the age of nineteen — accom- plished, the vacant exhibition was transferred to the younger brother Augustin. M. de la Roche, we are told, died in the earlier years of Robespierre's residence in Paris, but we do not know the name nor \\\Qfate of the benevolent ecclesiastics who recommended him to the patronage of the bishop. Did they die in the course of nature, before the Revolution, or did they perish in the massa- cres of September, or were they reserved for the lingering tortures of what was ironically called deportation^ We trust that these good men, like M. de la Roche, were spared the agonies of the Revolution and the guiltless remorse of having contributed to the elevation of Robespierre. Still more consolatory would it be if we had any reason to believe that even one of his benefactors survived, and had been saved in the general persecution by the gratitude of his pupil. It has been said, indeed, that he always exhibited a certain degree of respect and protection to the persecuted clergy, and it has been surmised that he never wholly forgot either his personal obligations to them, or the religious impressions which they had given him. This seems to be admitted by writers the least favourable to his general character ; but we confess that we discover no facts indicative of such feehng.* * Michelet, after indulging his re- ses, 11 dcrivit a Robespierre, son ancien publican tastes in an elaborate and coll^ue, qu'il ^tait cach^ dans tel lieu, apologetical protrait of Robespierre, et le priait de le sauver. Robespierre, ])alances his eulogy by the following a I'instant, envoya la lettre k Tautorite, anecdote : — ■' Un fait temoigne du pro- qui le fit preMre, juger, guillotiner, Le digieux endurcissement oil parvmt Ro- fait est attest KOBESPIERRE. the young literati despised the beaten track of received opinions, and ' sought for eminence in the heresies of paradox.' Robespierre was one of these neophytes. In 1784 the Society of Arts and Sciences at Metz proposed a prize for the best essay on the question, Whence arises the opinion which extends tU a whole family a portion of the disgrace inflicted on a criminal by a degrading punishment ? — and is that opinion beneficial or otherwise ? For this prize Robespierre became a can- didate, and of course took the liberal side of the question ; and, in allusion to this circumstance, Laponneraye puts into Charlotte's mouth this significant remark, that Maximilian little thought that he was pleading by anticipation the cause of his own family ; but she assures— in a sentimental apostrophe — ^his ^ ombre cherie^ that she is ' all-glorious of belonging to his blood ' — to his blood ? — yes, that is the very word ! Some time after, the Academy of Amiens offered a prize for an ' Eloge de Gresset.' Robespierre again entered the lists, but ob- tained only an honourable mention, for none of the essays were thought worthy of the prize. One Dubois de Fosseaux* (a pro- fessor, who afterwards became mayor of Arras, and who, Lapon- neraye states, as if it were something very surprising, from being an admirer, became an enemy of Robespierre) addressed to him some consolatory verses on the bad taste of the judges; which, poor as they are, show that Robespierre had already some ad- mirers. Fosseaux entreats him not to allow — ' Cette modestie, La compagne fidele et le sceau du gt?nie,' to obscure his merit — ' Ne vas pas, cependant, vouloir priver ta tete Pes lauriers immortels que la gloire t'apprete.' And proceeding to prophesy his young friend's ' destins glorieux^ he concludes with a triple compliment to his professional, his moral, and his social character : — * A]3pui des malheureux — ^vengeur de rinnocence, Tu vis pour la vertii — pour la douce amitie ! ' But Arras itself was not without one of these Societies, the members of which wore and conferred crowns of roses, and called themselves Les Rosatis : and in this foolery, we are told, magis- * Dubois de Fosseaux was Senateur Belles Lettres at Arraa. — Esprit des Terpetuel of the Royal Academy of Jour., Sept. 19, p. 323. SPECIMENS OF HIS EAELY LITERATURE. 311 trates, lawyers, judges, priests, and in short all the gravest person- ages of the town were not ashamed to partake — a small but not unimportant indication of the growing disorder of the public mind. Into this literary union Robespierre was of course admitted ; and Charlotte it seems preserved an extempore song with which her brother regaled the society on the occasion of his admission. It is really so curious to see the terrible Maximilian of the Conven- tion, under his softer name of Isidore, crowned with roses, and singing ' des couplets galans et spirituels ' to Messieurs les Hosatis, that we thank Laponneraye for having preserved the anecdote and a copy of the song ; with the first verse of which, rather as a moral than a literary curiosity, we present our readers : * Remercimens d Messieurs de la Societe des Rosatis, * Air — Resiste moi, belle Aspasie. * Je vols I'epine avec la rose Dans les bouquets que vous m'offrez ; Et lorsque vous me celebrez, Vos vers decouragent ma prose. Tout qu'on me dit de channant, Messieurs, a droit de me confondre — La rose est voire compliment ; L'epine est la loi d'y repondre! ' — p. 136. Pas SI bete, for a convivial improvisation ! We have another but inferior specimen of his versification in the following stanza, addressed to a Lady at Arras : — ' Crois moi, jeune et belle Ophelie, Quoiqu'en dise le monde et malgre ton miroir, Contente d'etre belle et de n'en rien savoir, Garde toujours ta modestie. Sur le pouvoir de tes appas, • Demeure toujours alarmce : Tu n'en seras que mieux aimt^e, Si tu Grains de ne I'etre pas.' But the time was now approaching when all these follies were to bear their disastrous fruits. The public mind of France had be- come so excited and perverted by a variety of causes great and small, and of grievances real and imaginary, that at the procla- mation for assembling the States-General the whole nation went mad, and to this hour has never recovered from its insanity, except in the intervals when the strait-waistcoat of a despot repressed, though it was unable to cure them. Amongst the most remarkable 312 ROBESPIERRE. symptoms of the frenzy, was the choice of its representatives ; and the prophetic eye of Mr. Burke saw, in the very selection of the National Assembly, a pledge of all the misrule and misfortune which followed. Robespierre, like most of the young provincial lawyers, embraced the revolutionary cause with ardour, and by his opposition to what he called the aristocratical usurpations of the preliminary arrangements for assembling the States,* rendered himself so troublesome to the existing authorities, and so acceptable to the lower classes of electors (for it was almost universal suffrage), that, with little other reputation than that of paradox and turbu- lence, or any other property on the face of the earth but his garland of roses, he was elected member for one of the great pro- vinces of the empire. His colleagues were still more obscure, and so notoriously incapable, that in the first personal account we have ever seen of the members of the Assembly, ' De Robespierre, amcat^ stands last indeed on the list, but with this note, * ce dernier se charge de parler pour tout le rested In the biographies it is stated that Robespierre was for a con- siderable time a silent member, and when at last he ventured to say a few words was little attended to. The aidobiographical Memoirs state (and this is one of a hundred proofs of their falsity) that ' he first ventured a few words on the 20th July^ M. Thiers, in his History of the Revolution, tells us that his speaking was heavy and pedantic ; and that it was not till after long practice he attained, in the times of the Convention, some facility of extempo- rizing. In this Thiers copies Madame Roland. * Robespierre seemed to me then to be an honest man. I forgave, in favour of his principles, his bad style and his tedious delivery. His talent as an orator was below mediocrity — his triviale voice, his awkward expressions, his vicious pronunciation, rendered his delivery very tedious,' &c. &c. — Mem. i. 350. I have not adopted this opinion, written in the prison into which Robespierre had thrown his critic, particularly as I find her in more impartial times expressing great admiration of Robespierre. Dumont, a most competent, and certainly not a partial witness, * Dumont, afterwards so well known bespierre was so little au niveau of and liked in London society, knew Dumont and liis friends that 'tittering Robespierre well. He (Dumont) was and sneering [ricanant] as was his cus- the chief projector of a journal called torn, and biting his nails, he asked, the Republican, in which he was assisted What was a republic ? ' — M^m. de Roland, by Duchatelet, Brissot, Condorcet, &c., i. 351. &c. It was on this occasion that Ro- HIS FIRST SPEECH IN THE ASSEMBLY. 313 describes livelily a scene which occurred in the very first days of the Assembly, in his own presence : ' The clergy, for the purpose of surprising the Tiers Etat into a union of the orders, sent a deputation to invite the Tiers to a con- ference on the distresses of the poor. The Tiers saw through the design, and not wishing to acknowledge the clergy as a separate body, yet afraid to reject so charitable and popular a proposition, knew not what answer to make, when one of the deputies, after concumng in the description of the miseries of the people, rose and addressed the ecclesiastical deputation : — " Go tell your colleagues, that if they are so anxious to relieve the people, they should hasten to unite themselves in this hall with the friends of the people. Tell them no longer to retard our proceedings and the public good, by contumacious delays, or to try to cany their point by such stratagems as this. Rather let them, as ministers of religion, as worthy servants of their Master, renounce the splendour which surrounds them — the luxury which insults the poor. Dismiss those insolent lackeys who attend you — sell your gaudy equipages — and convert these odious superfluities into food for the poor." — At this speech, which expressed so well the passions of the moment, there arose not applause, — that would have appeared like a bravado, — but a confused murmur of approbation much more flattering. Every one asked who was the speaker ? — he was not known, but in a few minutes his name passed from mouth to mouth : it was one which afterwards made all France tremble — it was Kobespierre.' — -Dumont, Souv. de Mir., 61. This sally, assuredly, however unjust and ungrateful to his old benefactors, was as ready, as artful, and as eloquent as anything the annals of that Assembly can produce ; and although Robespierre cannot be said to have sustained the vigour of this first flight, or to have placed himself on the line of the Mirabeaus, Maurys, Cazales, or Barnaves, yet he certainly very soon distinguished himself from the common herd, both by the frequency and the comparative merits of his discourses.* It is very remarkable how few orators the revolution has produced, first and last. It might have been a priori expected that a lively, loquacious people, not remarkable for diffidence, familiar with every species of histrionic exhibition, and electrified through all ranks and classes by the most sudden and violent excitement which ever conflagrated a nation — it might, * In the Actes dcs Ajyotres, the liveliest no one else is quoted more than once. and cleverest of the anti -revolutionary This proves frequency, and implies journals, there is an attack on several some power of speaking. And in a list of the opposition members, with ex- (No. 119, May, 1790) of the persons of tracts from their speeches. * M. de most distinction in the revolutionary Robespierre* is (Quoted /owr times, though party, ' M. Robespierre ' stands first. -t 314 . ROBESPIERRE. we say, have been expected that such circumstances would have produced a crowd of orators in the highest sense of the word, and it hardly produced one. Mirabeau, the nearest to that cha- racter, made a few extemporaneous sorties, the vigour, audacity, and singularity of which raised him to a stupendous eminence ; but all his orations were written, and the best of them, as we are told, not written by himself. The practice of the pulpit (which under the old regime was very rhetorical) and the habits of the bar gave facility to a few priests and lawyers ; but on the whole, considering that the Assembly consisted of near 1200 members, the disproportion of oratorical ability developed is at first sight unaccountable. We are inclined to suspect that this result is in a great degree attributable to a cause from which a contrary effect might have been expected : we mean the influence of the tribunes, or what we call the strangers' gallery. The direct and summary authority which these vociferous critics exercised over the members operated in several ways to repress the development of oratorical talent. Few men have in their first essays such nerve, coolness, and self-possession as enable them to face an assembly even of indulgent colleagues, much less a still more numerous and less ceremonious audience in the galleries. Many who might have become hy practice and cultivation considerable speakers were pro- bably awed into silence by these ferocious critics ; and those were most liable to be thus awed who, from the delicacy of their taste, the precision of their logic, the elegance of their language, and the moderation of their views, might otherwise have been likely to rank as the greatest ornaments of the Assembly. And not only did the galleries subdue diffidence and delicacy into silence, but they operated by the intimidation of physical force. Members who happened to take the less popular side of a question were outrageously assaulted, their houses were plundered and burned, and in not a few instances they narrowly escaped massacre. That must have been but a bad school of oratory where one side was nearly silenced, and even of the others those only were listened to who pandered to the appetite of the mob by every extreme of exaggeration, brutality, and violence. These causes appear to us to account for the gradual diminution and final suppression of good speaking in the successive National Assemblies, and the immolation (under various pretences) of every man of any orato- rical abilities the moment that he evinced the slightest opposition PUBLICITY OF THE ASSEMBLY. 315 to the ferocious frenzy of the galleries; and we think that it is a confirmation of our hypothesis, that since the French Chambers have acquired by the Restoration something like independence of the galleries, there has been more good speaking, and a greater number of good speakers, than the republican assemblies (not- withstanding all their boasted abilities and energies) were able to exhibit. We find, in one of Robespierre's own speeches in the Jacobins, evidence of the enormous number of this auxiliary audience in the first Assembly at Versailles, accompanied with a shrewd hint as to their influence over the intimidated representatives. The passage, besides its historical value, will have some additional interest for those who remember the anxiety that has been shown for an in- crease of accommodation for the public in our House of Com- mons. ' A still more interesting object is the publicity of the proceedings of the National Assembly ; I mean such a publicity as the interests of the nation require, and I am far from thinking that the limited space reserved for the public in the small and inconvenient place of your present sittings (the Manege) is sufficient for this essential object, at least in the opinion of those who have calculated the causes of the revolution. The animated and imposing spectacle of the six thousand * spectators who surrounded us at Versailles contributed not a little to the courage and energy which were necessary to our success. If to the Constituent Assembly has been ascribed the glory of having prostrated despotism, it must be admitted that the representatives only shared it with the galleries' — Discours aux Jacobins, 10 Feb. 1792. It is a fact which we do not remember to have seen anywhere sufficiently stated and developed, that throughout the whole revo- * It seems hard to believe that the benches, and shutting up the lateral galleries of the Hall des Menus Plaisirs, arcades [travees] which surrounded the where the Assembly sat at Versailles, hall, and where crowds of the lower though very extensive, could have held classes of people used to come.' — Mem. anything like this number; but we p. 19. And again—' The Assembly copy from the original speech before heaped decrees on decrees — ruin on us ; and we find in Rivoerol a general ruin — to satisfy the people which corroboration of Robespierre's state- swarmed [fourmillait] in the travees of men t, though not to the precise extent. the hall.' — lb. p. 131. So that the The celebrjited closing of the Hall of ' sublime scene of the Jeu de Paume ' the States-General, 20th June, which was after all, only acted in order to caused the adjournment to the Jeu de preserve these enormous galleries— a Paume, was, he says, ' partly owing to vital object with the Revolutionists, a project that they had had for some but one which they could not well avow time of removing the amphitheatrical as the cause of that ' sublime scene." SIQ ROBESPIERRE. lution the galleries entirely directed the assemblies ; and although all the historians have noticed the insolence of the spectators on particular occasions, no one has considered it as what it really was — a regular, systematic, organized power, never concealed, never intermitted, rarely resisted, and always predominant — the vultus instantis Tyrannic before which the several assemblies all quailed, but most of all that cowardly and imbecile Convention which such historians as Thiers eulogise for its grandeur and energy, while it was in fact the trembling slave of its own brutal galleries. These are important considerations ; and although our long-established parliamentary habits and traditions may save us from any imme- diate danger on this score, we cannot but see many indications that it is not altogether so visionary, or even so remote, as it may at this moment appear to many of our readers. The ablest and most popular members of the National Assembly lost themselves successively by an attempt to arrest the demo- cratic current, and to guide as statesmen the revolution which they had excited as demagogues. So fell Lafayette, Bailly, Mirabeau, Talleyrand, Dupont, Clermont Tonnerre, the Lameths, Barnave, Brissot, Roland, Vergniaud, Danton, and every prominent man in the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies. Robespierre had the instinct, whether of prudence or of cowardice, to repudiate all personal advancement, all desire to take any direct share in the official administration of affairs : thence he obtained the reputation and name of the Incorruptible : and by restricting himself to the mere duties of a deputy, and by avoiding all the odium and responsibility of government, this provincial lawyer, whom every one affected to despise, but whom we believe they envied and feared, obtained such an ascendancy in the Jacobin Club, and eventually in the Convention and in its committees, as was in practice equivalent to a dictatorship ; and he fell at last, when the necessities of his position forced him to take indi- vidually a prominent part, and to appear personally as the chief citizen of the republic ; — but we anticipate. During the progress of the National Assembly, Robespierre maintained and increased his popularity by many speeches and motions, chiefly on legal and constitutional points, not inferior in either logic, rhetoric, or practical effect, to those of his rivals, and generally surpassing them in popular favour. Two or three of them are remarkable. On the 3rd of April, 1791, he adopted HIS PROPOSITIONS IN THE ASSEMBLY. 317 and converted into a decree a proposition made by the Directory of Paris on the death of Mirabeau, to dedicate the church of St. Genevieve to the reception of the ashes of illustrious men, with the inscription AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE. And Mirabeau was accordingly enshrined in that temple of glory. But on the 26th of November, 1793, the National Convention unanimously decreed that his ashes should be removed and re- placed by those of Marat.* On the 30th of May he advocated at great length the total abolition of the punishment of death — a pro- logue, alas ! to the utmost extension of capital punishments — nay, of judicial murder — that the world ever saw. Two others of his propositions, made about the same time, had more success and wider consequences. On the 7th of April, 1791, he proposed and carried a decree to prohibit the members of the Assembly from accepting Ministerial office within four years from the termination of their mission ; and on the 14th of May he pro- posed, and on the 16th advocated in a long speech, the more im- portant decree, which declared the members of the existing Assembly ineligible to the next. Whether this was the selfish proposition of a man who doubted of his own re-election, or the mere impulse of a popularity-hunter, or whether it was the result of a deeper calculation of its consequences, we have no sufficient means of judging. Nor do we think that it had so fatal, or even so great an influence on the progress of the Revolution as the historians generally attribute to it. They allege indeed, plausibly enough, that the new Assembly was thereby deprived of those men who, having had so much experience and worn off the sharp edge of their first excitement, were generally inclined to carry the Revolution no farther ; and the king and the royalists are there- fore severely censured for having countenanced, as they were said to have done, Robespierre's proposition. Now this reasoning would be very just if it could be shown that there existed any pro- bability that it would have been the moderate and constitutional members of the old Assembly who would have been re-elected to the new. But, on the contrary, it is morally certain that none but the more violent demagogues would have had the slightest chance * It seems that though the vote was passed the body was never taken to the Pantheon. 318 ROBESPIERRE. of re-election. As it was, not one person who had belonged to the privileged orders was chosen, nor more than half-a-dozen constitu- tionalists of any note ; the rest were selected from amongst those who in the different districts had exhibited the greatest revolu- tionary zeal— factious lawyers — infidel sophists — club orators — newspaper-writers, — and unprincipled adventurers of all disreput- able classes and characters. In times of such popular excitement every new election must always make matters worse : moderate men either retire or are displaced— only the most violent of the former body are re-chosen — and the new men, eager for distinction, seek it in exaggeration. The non-election of the Constituents was, therefore, in our opinion, not so direct a cause of the anarchy and horrors which ensued, as is generally supposed. All the men of rank, property, and experience would have equally been swept into oblivion, and replaced not only by the more violent Jacobins of the Constituant, but also by the Brissots, Lou vets, Rolands, Gorsas, Carras, Guadets, Garats, and hundreds of^ other names till then wholly obscure — but soon to have such a momentary im- portance, and such eternal infamy. Prior, however, to this period an event occurred in which Robespierre bore a considerable, but still undefined share, and which had some important consequences,— we mean the meeting of petitioners against royalty in the Champ de Mars, on Sunday the 1.7th July, 1791, which terminated so bloodily. We have already mentioned the deprecatory, and certainly prejudicial testimony left by Madame Roland of Robespierre. It is now necessary to ex- plain some circumstances of their friendship and their enmity. We begin by observing that about the period we are now treat- ing of — the spring and summer of 1791 — Robespierre was at the height of his reputation, — sullied by no crime, liable to no moral reproach — accused generally of no political excess except ambition — and one of the most distinguished orators of the National As- sembly. The Rolands, on the other hand, were nobody ; wholly unknown except in their own circle, and accidentally called to Paris by some local business of the town of Lyons, where he had lately been employed in the small office of Inspector of Manufactures. His wife accompanied him. They arrived in February, 1791. Roland had already had some previous correspondence with Brissot on economical and statistical subjects, and on this occa- MADAME EOLAND. 319^ sion made his personal acquaintance ; and Brissot introduced him to Petion, Robespierre, Brissot, and his political circle, where the liberal principles and practical knowledge of the husband, and still more, no doubt, the personal accomplishments, extraordinary- talents, vehement patriotism of the wife, made so great an impres- sion, that they seem to have been very early admittted into the most secret counsels of that party, of which a cabinet — a ^ petit comitS ' she calls it — used to assemble four evenings in the week at her apartments, to discuss and arrange their political movements. The tone of Mad. Roland's account of her relations with Robes- pierre would lead us to suspect that she mistook his position and forgot her own, and was surprised at finding him not so docile as the rest of her coterie. She accuses him of reserve, jealousy, obsti- nacy, and disregard for the decisions of his friends, and, above all, she reproaches him with not being sufficiently assiduous au petit comitL Now in all this, if minutely true, we should see no more than the reserve, independence, and perhaps impatience, that a man in Robespierre's high political position might naturally feel and show towards a lady of, then at least, such slender claims and high pretensions to govern a party. But we do not believe that the style of familiarity, bordering on contempt, with which she treats Robespierre in her prison lucubrations, existed in their real intercourse ; on the contrary, we have a letter of hers to him from Burgundy, after her return from Paris, in a tone of panegyric, y and even deference, much more suitable to their relative positions.* At all events, they at first went on very well together, and seem to have agreed thoroughly in their desire to get rid of the two illus- trious heads ; which they eventually did, though at the expense of their own. It was during this visit of the Rolands to Paris that the flight to Varennes occurred, and the great question in discussion was whether the king's late flight to Varennes was not an abdication, and whether royalty should not be abolished. Lafayette, who held * Lamartine, by one of his rhetori- he had had any obligation to her, and cal figures, misrepresents the main facts had not raised himself to the highest of the case. He talks of Robespieri'e political eminence before he could have as if he had been nothing but an un- known that there were such people in grateful protege of Madame Roland, existence. * qui Vavait rechauffe dans, son sein ;' as if 320 EOBESPIEERE. the King close prisoner in the Tuileries, and who had filled all ministerial and military offices with his own partisans, and hoped to continue Viceroy over the deserted and powerless monarch, of course was for maintaining the puppet-sovereignty. On the other hand, the Orleanists, the Brissotins, and the Jacobins were, as yet, a coalesced opposition, acting together but with different ulterior objects. Such of the Jacobins as were not Orleanists would get rid of the king altogether ; the Orleanists, who were the majority of the Jacobins and all the Cordeliers, would have another king ; the Brissotins would have been satisfied with either king or no king, if only they were to fill the ministerial, judicial, and administrative offices. This state of parties and their objects are the real clues to all the intricacies of this period of the Revolution. On Friday the 15th July, the coalesced factions decided that the people should be invited to sign a petition de- manding the abolition. The preparation of the petition was con- fided to Brissot and La Clos ; but the latter, the avowed creature of the Duke of Orleans, having failed to persuade his colleagues to insert a paragraph favourable to the Duke's pretensions to the vacant throne, left it altogether in the hands of Brissot. Mad. Boland, however, confesses that the Orleanist clause was afterwards inserted. Robespierre, already jealous of Brissot, was probably not pleased with the prominence thus given him, and afterwards declared that he disapproved of the whole proceeding, from a presentiment that it would be made an occasion and excuse for an attack on the People. On that same day, however, the question was decided by the Assembly in the king's favour ; and there is no doubt that Robespierre distinguished himself by his violence on this occasion, and was the first to give the signal of the disorder that ensued. M. Hue, a most trustworthy witness, tells us, that on the evening of the 15th, when the Assembly had passed the decree in favour of the king, Robespierre, on leaving the hall, gave the signal for an insurrection, by exclaiming, ' My friends, all is lost — the hiny is saved.^ The 16th was passed in an agitation throughout the city, so violent that the Assembly called the muni- cipal authorities before it, and charged them to maintain the peace of the capital. Upon this the Jacobin club, whose policy it was never to get into direct collision with the Assembly, ' ordered the petition to be withdrawn — the question having been decided.' MEETING IN THE CHAMP DE MAES. 321 But though the club as a body wished to keep up appearances with the Assembly, no such reserve was necessary on the part of those who called themselves the People. Another petition was there- fore prepared, for the signature of which all citizens were invited to attend next day, Sunday, the 17th of July, at the Autel de la Patrie in the Champ de Mars. This meeting was undoubtedly intended to displace the Lafay- ette ministry, to overawe and perhaps even to attack and dissolve the Assembly, and, at all events, dethrone the king. But it was defeated by an incident which was most probably intended to ensure its success. Very early on the Sunday morning, when the people began to assemble in the Champ de Mars, two men, who for some unaccountable purpose had hidden themselves under the altar, were detected and muj^dered— hanged a la lanterne. No rational explanation has ever been given of the object of the two men, against whom no fact was alleged but that they had brought provisions for the day, and had bored holes in the steps of the altar — as some writers have absurdly conjectured, for the .indul- gence of indecent curiosity. M. Thiers says that they were two Invalides (military pensioners). Some contemporary writers say one was an invalid with one leg, the other was a hairdresser. But still no hint is given of any reasonable or plausible motive for the murder. M. Bertrand de Moleville thought that they were per- sons seized accidentally, and put to death for refusing to sign the petition ; but they were certainly dead some hours before the petition was produced. The excuse current with the mob was, that they were incendiaries who intended to blow up the altar, and all that should be on it or round it, by gunpowder ; but for this there was no colour whatsoever. Still more improbable — indeed we may say, impossible — is the allegation of Robespierre, Mad. Roland, and all the revolutionary orators and writers of the day, that the murders were committed by the orders of Lafayette and the Government as an excuse for the massacre on which they had already resolved. Such a design could not have entered the head or heart of either Bailly or Lafayette ; and in truth the dispersion of so formidable a sedition required no excuse. On the whole, our best conjecture is, that it was either an accidental and spon- taneous outbreak of a mob familiar with murder, or one of those calculating atrocities which the Jacobin leaders so frequently em- Y 2 .322 EOBESPIEERE. ployed to intimidate their opponents. But whether accident or design, or by whomsoever perpetrated, the murder assuredly em- boldened Lafayette and the Government to take the vigorous resolution of forcibly dispersing the meeting. Martial law was proclaimed ; its ensign, the red flag, was displayed ; Bailly, as mayor of Paris, and Lafayette, at the head of the troops, marched to the Champ de Mars. Some hundreds of the populace were killed, and the sedition suppressed. The Assembly ordered vigorous prosecutions against its authors. Robespierre is not named, but we have an address which he published on this occa- sion in defence of himself and the People, which shows that he was charged with being a chief cause of all these calamities. In this address he gives little insight into his personal share in the transaction, but he states one point of importance. M Thiers, who thinks it necessary to apologise for the only act of Lafay- ette's revolutionary life that seems to us to need no apology, attempts to do so by a gross misstatement of the facts. In the first place, he anachronises the whole affair by confounding into tv'O days the transactions of three ; and, secondly, he states that on the morning of the conflict, Lafayette had appeared on i\\Q Champ de Mars, and with the assistance of the police persuaded the mob to disperse ; that after this, and when it was hoped that all was quiet, the two men were found and murdered ; and that then, under the express orders of the Assembly, Bailly proceeded with the red flag to the Champ de Mars, and the attack ensued. Robespierre, on the contrary, states (and we cannot disbelieve a statement so publicly made and not questioned at the time) that the affair of the two men had occurred at seven in the morning, and was all over some hours before the meeting of the petitioners, which had been fixed for and was not held before noon. He is confirmed by several other authorities, and especially by Madame Roland, who, however, it must be admitted, was not an impartial witness, for she was not only deep in the original intrigue, but she even appeared in the Champ de Mars to countenance and encou- rage the movement. She relates — ' It was on Sunday morning that two men were hung when there were no more than thirty persons assembled. I heard it then attributed, with some sem- blance of truth, to the coalition of the Lameths and others (La- fayette), to have an opportunity of displaying strength, and to CRISIS OF THE MONARCHY. 323 strike terror into them all. Thus this morning^ assassination com- mitted almost privately served as a pretence for shooting the people assembled there after dinner.' — Mad. Roland, ii. 273. See also vol. i. 355, where the treachery is charged upon Lafayette by name as an instrument of the Court. Lafayette an instrument of the Court! This being the first time — since the affair of Re- veillon, in April, 1789 {ante, p. 50) — that force was employed to disperse a revolutionary meeting, it made a great sensation, and put a finishing stroke to the unpopularity of Lafayette ; Robes- pierre and all the demagogues were as loud and virulent against * this wanton assault on peaceable citizens met to exercise their constitutional rights of petitioning,' as our demagogues were at ih^ suppression of the Manchester meeting in 1820. This topic was so successfully laboured by the democrats, and the exertion of this authority was made so odious, that Bailly was displaced,* Lafayette forced to exchange his command at Paris for one on the frontiers, and the agitators, though baffled for the moment, obtained a con- viction — which emboldened all their subsequent attempts — that no man would again dare to employ the military force in the repres- sion of sedition. Though Robespierre professed after its failure to have disap- proved of this attempt, and may probably have been jealous of the intervention of the Rolands, and of the selection of Brissot and La Clos as redacteurs of the address, the truth is, that the original moveinent was Orleanist. It was the crisis of the monarchy. La Clos certainly, as Madame Roland tells us — and as, indeed, is notorious — wished to turn it in favour of the Duke of Orleans, and we suspect that Brissot was at that time in the same interest ; but it seems pretty certain that the Rolands, and perfectly so that Robespierre, associated themselves to the projected movement with the purpose of getting rid of Louis, with little or no predilection for Philippe. But whatever may have been Robespierre's secret motives or objects, there is no doubt that he was, not merely deep in the plot, but in some personal danger from its defeat ; and it ♦ * Alas ! not only displaced, but in of contumely and cruelty. This is per- November, 1793, put to death on the haps the most remarkable and exem- very spot of his interference on this plary scene of the whole revolution, occasion, with every possible addition 324 ROBESPIERRE. made, in fact, an epoch in his life. Madame Roland tells us, in the somewhat contemptuous tone already noticed — * I never saw anything like the terror of Robespierre in those cir- cumstances. There was, in fact, some talk of prosecuting him — probably to intimidate him. Roland and I were really uneasy about him, and we drove to his lodgings,* au fond du Marais, at eleven o'clock at night to offer him an asylum.' — Appel, 43. She then proceeds to state how they endeavoured to engage Buzot to make an effort pour saucer ce malheureux jeune homme. There can be no doubt that the anxiety of the Rolands was sincere ; for we gather from several passages of Madame Roland's Memoirs that she took an active and even personal interest in this insurrectionary movement. She was present at the Jacobin Club so late as ten at night, on Friday the 15th July, at the tumultuous discussion of the petition which was to be next morning taken to the Champ de Mars. At noon the next day, Saturday the 16th, we again find her on the Champ de Mars in company with not more, she says, than two or three hundred persons (in another place she says three or four hundred) assembled round the Altar, on which several deputations from the Club of the Cordeliers (which was especially Orleanist), and other fraternal societies, carrying pikes with incendiary in- scriptions, were haranguing the audience, and exciting their indig- nation against Louis XVI. On the same Friday evening, however, on which the Jacobin Club had voted the insurrectionary petition, the National Assembly had come to its decision in the king's favour, and the Club, whose policy it was never to come to an open rupture with the Assembly, resolved to abandon the petition, and sent directions to that effect to the Champ de Mars. But the agitators were not to be so dis- appointed ; and accordingly notice was given that there would be * Robespierre, on his arrival in Paris possess a eulogistic pamphlet of this as a member of the Constituant, took, period by Lacroix, of which it is the in common with a young friend (one chief topic. Freron says that he was Humbert), a cheap lodging at No. 8, Humbert's guest in the Rue Saintonge, Rue Saintonge, au fond du Mai-ais, as and never made him any return. This Madame Roland, even though ' writing house, and two or three at each side of in the Conciergerie,' haughtily calls it. it, were destroyed many years since, Robespierre's poverty was rather bla* and larger and better houses erected on zoned than veiled by his friends. We the site. THE FEUILLANTS. 325 a meeting of the People next day, Sunday, the 17th, to sign a petition of their own. It seems that she followed the matter up so zealously that she was again in the Champ de Mars on the Sunday, for she describes, in the tone of an eye-witness, that there was a considerable assemblage, and that Robert^ a noted Jacobin and private friend of her own and of Robespierre, there wrote a new petition, and was in the act of getting it signed, when the military force appeared. And it further appears in another of her scattered memoranda, that when she came home that night, of the 18th, after eleven o'clock, from her unavailing visit to the Rue Saintonge, she found that same Robert^ the penman of the petition, in her lodgings, where he had come to seek concealment and an asylum. She says that she went to the Champ de Mars from a motive of curiosity, but can it be doubted that it was a patriotic curiosity to watch and to countenance the insurrectionary movement ? There is something very curious in her application to Buzot, even as she relates it. The Club of the Feuillants was a rival, set up by La- fayette and his party (at this moment the ministry) against the Jacobins ; and Madame Roland's apprehension was, that the Feuillants would come to some violent resolutions to force the government to prosecute Robespierre and his associates. Buzot (who was a special favourite) * was a hot Jacobin (as, indeed, the * In spite of some indelicate and M. Thiers says, ** Elle respectait et even coarse expressions in Madame chdrissait son epoux comme un pere ; Roland's Memoirs, there runs through elle avait pour I'un des Girondins pro- them such a strain of dignity and ele- scrits une passion profonde qu'elle avait vation that we have been surprised at toujours contenue." — Thiers, IlisL, v. reading such passages as the following 312. in the writers the most disposed to ad- We know not whether this means mire her. M. Lamartine says, 'Buzot Buzot; but no authority is cited for dont la beaiite pensive, I'intrdpidite et either the ' passion ' or the ' conti- I'eloquence devait plus tard agiter le nence.' Perhaps M. Thiers means coeur et attend rir I'admiration de Ma- Barberoux, who, as Ve have before dame Roland.' — Lamartine's Qirondins, stated, was more generally reputed the vii. 15. favoured lover; but for that imputa- He gives no authority for this state- tion I know no other ground than her ment, which is certainly not compli- calling him Antinous; and, again, I mentary to the moral feelings of a should rather construe this public married woman ; and the less so, be- mention of his beauty as a proof that cause Buzot was himself married, and her admiration was innocent. The like his wife was one of Madame Roland's insinuation about Dulaure had pro- few female friends; but the prominent bably no ground but the brutality of preference which she so frankly gives the infamous He'bert; but Dumouriez, in her ' Appel a la Fosterite' to Buzot, a nearer observer and better authority, above all her other friends, inclines me produces another candidate for her to doubt that there was anything in favour, in his and Roland's college- their friendship to blush at. servant, who was, he says, ' li^ depuis 326 EOBESPIEREE. whole coterie was), but she thought the danger so pressing that she urged her friend — not indeed to give up the Jacobins, but — to join the Feuillants,* or, in her own words, ' dUentrer aux Feuillants pour jiiger de ce qui s'y passait et sy trouver pret a defendre ceux qiion voulait persecuter.'' Buzot, naturally enough, declined a * role qui lui donnerait deux visages ;' and we cannot believe that anything short of an interest personal to themselves could have induced the Rolands to make such a proposition, which after all must have been as useless to them and to Robespierre as it would have been dangerous and discreditable to Buzot. We cannot here refrain from observing as another of the strange vicissitudes of this terrible drama, that the malheureux jeune homme, as they haughtily called him, sent Madame Roland to the scaffold, and Roland and Buzot to more lingering and more deplorable deaths. Both fugitives from Robespierre's triumph over the Girondins, Roland was found dead from suicide in a ditch by the road side,! and Buzot in a forest, where his body, and that of Pdtion were found half-devoured by wild beasts ; but whether they had died from hardships, starvation, or poison, is not known.J Whether Robespierre was himself in the Champ de Mars that day Madame Roland does not say. We suppose not. He seems not to have had, or at least never to have shown, much personal courage ; and it was his general policy to avoid all active partici- pation even in the measures he prepared ; but we find him in the evening, before the affair was over and while the red flag was yet flying, hurrying (in great consternation, it is said, though under the protection of a mob of sans culottes) through the Rue St. Honore, near the Jacobin Club, where a carpenter of the long terns avec la celebre Madame a conviction that he would not survive Roland, et jouait aupr^s d'elle le role her loss), he left his asylum, not to ex- d'un amant, soit que cela fut ou non.' pose his friend to danger, and resolutely Mem., 1. iv. c. 5. stabbed himself with a small sword * The Feuillants consisted, in De- which he earned in a cane, by the side cember, 1791, of 264 deputies, and of the high road to Rouen. In his about 880 other membei's. — CEuv. de pocket was found a note saying who he Pal. iv. 32. ^ was, and that not fear but indignation had •)• Roland's suicide was as venial — made him leave his retreat trhen he heard we might say as honourable — in all that they had nmrdcred his wife, and that its circumstances as such an act can be. he would not live in a country covered with He had found for several months a crimes. secret refuge in a friend's house in X See the letter of Desforgues, Pap. Normandy; but when he heard of his ii. 190. wife's death (who herself died_ with THE DUPLAYS. 327 name of Duplay,* who lived at No. 366 of that street, exactly opposite the Rue St. Florentin, and who happened to be a zealous Jacobin and a great admirer of Robespierre, invited him to take refuge in his house. Robespierre readily accepted the offer, and as his person was not considered safe, he was persuaded not to return home that night. Duplay had a wife and three daughters, who were all flattered by the presence of the great popular leader, and were prodigal of attentions towards him, and at length Duplay proposed that Robespierre should give up his distant lodgings in the Marais, and become his inmate and his guest. Domiciled in this family, Robespierre sought no other society, and dividing his public time between the Convention and the Jacobins (which were both in Duplay's immediate neighbour- hood), he gave all his private hours to this humble circle. Duplay himself received his reward in being appointed, by Robespierre's influence, one of the Jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal, a place of power and emolument — as was also, we believe, his son. Madame Duplay f became conspicuous as one of the leaders of those ferocious women who sat daily at their needlework round the scaffbld, and were called by the indulgent, Tricoteuses de la Guillotine^ but more properly by the rest of the world Furies de la Guillotine ! The eldest daughter, Eleonore — who now assumed the classic name of Cor/ze/m — aspired, it seems, to be in fact, as well as name, the ^ mother of the Gracchi,' by captivating Robes- pierre ; she endeavoured to become his wife, and ended by passing, in the opinion of the neighbours, as his mistress. Laponneraye, on the authority of Mdlle. Robespierre, denies, though faintly, this last imputation : J be that as it may, Robespierre was cautious * This name is sometimes spelled one wlio examines the locality will see Dupliex, but he is called Duplay in the that there were few spots in Paris records of the Revolutionai-y Tribunal, where a new street was less wanting, of which he was a juror, and he and his unless indeed to accomplish Danton's son are so named in their act of accu- dying prophecy — * On rasera la maison sation as accomplices of Babceuf. de Eohespierre, on y semera du sel' In 1790, Duplay's number was f Madame Duplay was, M. Lamartine 362. Buonaparte, who was anxious to tells us, sent to prison on Kobespierre's erase every trace of the revt)lution, fall, and there either hanged herself or thought it worth while to pull down was hanged by the other female pri- the residence of his old acquaintance, soners from the curtain-rods of her bed. and the street called llichepanse, after | This is asserted by Louvet and nil one of his generals who died in 1807, contemporary writers, but denied by exactly opposite the Rue St. Florentine, M. Lamartine, on the authority, as I passes over the site — the space between conjecture, of the surviving sister, the numbers 404 and 408 (which would Madame Lebas, with whom, I am told, be 406) of the Kue St. Houorc. Any he had made acquaintance. To this 328 ROBESPIEREE. to excite no scandal, and seems to have aimed at a reputation for moral decency as well as political integrity ; * but the general character of the Duplay family does not give us any great confi- dence in the virtue of Cornelia — who seems to have had much of her mother's ferocity, for she, wdth her sisters and other compa- nions, used to sit at their windows to see the amusing sight of the batches of victims who passed every day to the scaffold. -f- The second sister married Lebas, a member of the Convention, and one of Robespierre's most infamous satellites, who, as Guffroy states, persecuted him for having informed him of the ante -nuptial irregularities of his wife's conduct. The third married another member of the Convention, whose name has not reached us. His private society was composed of persons of the same class — Nicholas, a printer — Arthur, a paper-maker — and such men, whom their patron employed as Jurors of the Tribunal, or in similar small offices, and most of whom perished on the same scaffold with him. Among the numerous attempts which we know were made to obtain the support, or at least to mitigate the opposition, of leading members of the Constituant Assembly, we find nothing to dero- gate from the title of incorruptible that was very early bestowed on Robespierre. Harmand, a deputy to the Convention from the Department de la Meuse, after the Restoration published a small volume of memoirs, of which, as we have already said, some portions are no doubt substantially true, while others are very very suspicious source I suppose may states, that he found on him a pocket- be attributed some anecdotes favour- book containing bank-notes and bills to able both to Robespien^e and the the amount of 10,000 francs, which was Duplays, for which M. Lamartine gives laid on the bar of the Convention, but no authority, and which seem, to me was never after heard of — but even this, very apocryphal. even if the story be true, was but a * Montjoye denies the disinterested- small sum, 400/. — Mem, de Meda. The ness of Robespierre, and asks how, out Moniteur attests the delivery of the of his allowance as deputy — ^ftnd he had pocket-book to the Convention; but nothing else — he could, besides pur- there is no mention but Meda's (and chasing a printing-office and paying a that is very vagtie) of its contents. In corps of body-guards, have dressed Courtois' report there is a letter fx'om expensively, and given expensive din- a correspondent, alluding to sums ners at Conflans and St. Cloud ? But placed in the English funds — but we when this is all that hostility can allege, believe this to have been a forgery, we may conclude that the common Mercier says he was avaricious and sold opinion is just. It is generally said himself to D'Orleans; but he invali- that at his death but fifty francs were dates his own evidence by absurdly found in his lodgings; but Meda, the adding, 'and to Pitt.' — c, 248. gendarme who arrested Robespierre, f See note, p. 249. and who afterwards became a colonel. HIS NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE COUET. 329 apocryphal. He relates that there was at one time a negotiation between Robespierre and the Court, the object of which was his nomination as governor of the Dauphin. This, says Harmand, was conducted by the Princess de Lamballe without the Queen's knowledge, who, when she heard of it, broke it off indignantly. AVe should have very little reliance on the uncorroborated assertion of Harmand, and are still less inclined to believe that the Princess de Lamballe could have been engaged in any negotiation without the knowledge and consent of the Queen, and above all one so peculiarly and personally interesting to her ; and we should have therefore thought the story unworthy of notice if we had not found in Robespierre's speech of the 24th of September, in the first great debate between the Jacobins and Girondins before the Convention was a week old, the following passage : — * It was I who for three years in the Constituant Assembly was the antagonist of all factions — it was I who opposed the Court and disdained its presents.'' — Moniteur, 25th September, 1792. This certainly implies that offers had been made to him and re- jected ; and a subsequent passage shows that they had become a subject of reproach against him — ' It was at the moment that I was denouncing the guilty — it was when before the war I moved for the dismissal of Lafayette, that they {on) dared to say that I had conferences with the Queen and with the Lamballe.^ — lb. This, we see, does not directly deny the imputed coriferencesj and not at all the more probable fact of negotiations, and we there- fore cannot but conclude that there was some foundation for Har- mand's report, though he may have been mistaken as to the pre- cise object. Nor will even that object appear so surprising, when we carry ourselves back, as we ought to do at every step of revolutionary history, to the precise time and circumstances, and recollect that Robespierre then enjoyed a reputation not only brilliant but pure— his education had been regular — his talents were unquestionable — his manners decorous and reserved — and his morals irreproachable. How strange, how fabulous, must at first sight seem the imagination of Robespierre, governor of the Dauphin ! and yet it may have been thought of. This receives some additional colour from the fact that the appointment of a governor for the Dauphin was at this moment a subject of much 330 " ROBESPIEREE. political feeling, and that the King felt a great anxiety, and, strange to say, thought it necessary to spend large sums of money in brib- ing some party leaders in the Assembly to facilitate the appoint- ment of M. de Fleurineau, which, on the 18th of April, the King communicated to the Assembly ; but the Assembly, on the motion of Lasource, a Girondin, only sent the message to its committees, and nothing came of it. This speech of the 25th of September has brought to our notice an additional instance of M. Thiers' bad faith which ought not to be left unexposed ; for, giving an account of this remarkable debate, he affects to give a literal extract from this portion of Robespierre's speech, and distinguishes it by the usual marks of quotation, con- cluding with the words above cited as to * opposing the Court, mid disdaining its presents' But we find in the original report in the *Moniteur' (26th Sept. 1792), that he added, that he \\aidi desjnsed the caresses of the more seductive party (parti plus seduisant), which, under the mask of patriotism, had arisen to destroy Liberty — mean- ing, of course, the Orleanists, whom by thus garbling the quotation, M. Thiers endeavours, as he does throughout his whole history, to throw into the shade. The close of the Constituant Assembly on the 1st of October, 1791, was an additional triumph to Robespierre and Petion, who, on leaving the hall, were surrounded by an admiring and applaud- ing multitude, who crowned them with oak-leaves, and drew them in their carriages to their residences. These Tribunes of the People were now returned to private life, for the tribunal to which they were elected was not yet installed, and they had time to meditate and appreciate the consequences of their exclusion from the new Assembly. The motives of Robes- pierre for this apparent self-sacrifice have been much doubted and debated, and have been at last, by most historians, considered as inexplicable on any other hypothesis than the innate envy and rancour of his character. We do not see how hatred or envy of his former colleagues was to be gratified by a measure that applied to himself The most powerful and brilliant of those colleagues had already disappeared from the scene. He was without a rival in his own party except his friend Petion, or even in the Assembly except Barnave. Why, then, should he have voluntarily abdicated so distinguished a position — when had he any prospect of a better — nay, of any position at all? To solve this enigma we must MOTIVES OF HIS APPAEENT SELF-SACRIFICE. 331 ao-aln carry ourselves back to the exact time and circumstances, and recollect that the Robespierre of the Constitutional Monarchy of April, 1791, was not the Robespierre of the Republic of Sep- tember, 1792, and still less of the dictatorship of 1794. Now, let us see how this matter stood at the first of these dates. No one was yet dreaming of a republic ; and though there was a small but active faction that would have changed the person of the sovereign — Louis XVI. for Philippe of Orleans — neither the actions nor the speeches, nor, as far as we know, the thoughts of any one, except Madame Roland, went further than a constitutional and limited monarchy. The Revolution was said, and even thought, to' be closed. The prohibitory decrees were passed on the 3rd and 16th April, 1791; but we have been startled at finding, and we think our readers will be surprised to hear, that on the 19th June, only Uco months later ^ the very three names most prominent in this sup- posed self-sacrifice — Robespierre, Petion, and Buzot — were nomi- nated by the electoral body of Paris to the three highest judicial offices in the state : Petion to be President ; Buzot, Vice-President ; and Robespierre, to ' the safe and lucrative and most desirable office^ as he himself subsequently described it,* of Accusateur Public, or Attorney-General, of the Supreme Criminal Tribunal created by the new Constitution. What higher, more lucrative, or more honourable result and reward of their two years' political ser- vice in the Assembly could these three provincial lawyers have expected or even imagined ? And might they not have rationally congratulated themselves at having escaped from the risks and chances of the new Legislature into stations the highest that even by any prolonged parliamentary service they could hope to attain ? Thus stood the case on Saturday, the IWi of June ; and thus Is the supposed self-sacrifice sufficiently explained. But within forty- eight hours a new, unforeseen, and most unexpected turn of the revolutionary wheel changed the whole aspect of affairs, and with it the individual prospects of the newly-elected magistrates. On the evening of the day that followed their nomination, Monday, the 20th June, there occurred the flight to Varennes ! The whole career of the revolution seemed re-opened, and Petion, Buzot, and Robespierre were resuscitated, as it were, to pohtical life, with all their former principles and prospects, and with the additional * * Place lucrative et nullement peril- nouvelle magistrature.' — Expenses a Louvety leuse, et la plus interessante peut-etre de la et a Brissot et Gimlet, pp. 8, 34. 332 ROBESPIEREE. chances which this new state of affairs might open to their ambi- tion or cupidity. This revival of their hopes sufficiently accounts for the violence with which Robespierre and his friends urged the decheance of the king in the Jacobins, in the Assembly, and even on the Champ de Mars ? But the victory of that day defeated their efforts ; the Monarchy was rescued ; the revision and con- firmation of the Constitution seemed to have restored matters to the same state as before the crisis, and Petion, Buzot, and Robes- pierre — les pauvres liommes — had only to remain magistrates. On the 1st of October, 1791, the Constituant Assembly closed, and the Legislative commenced their functions, and soon showed that instead of being — as the spirit of the Constitution promised, and as Robespierre, when he excluded himself from it, may have supposed — a mere deliberative council, it was as ambitious, aggressive, and unmanageable as the Constituant had been, and equally the real qfficina of business, the chief mart of popularity, and the widest arena for political struggle. It cannot be doubted that Robespierre had, from the moment that the king's flight had opened the prospects of a republic, discovered that he and his friends had made a great mistake in his choice of non- election, and had placed himself in a subordinate and humiliating position. He could not see without envy Brissot, hitherto so much his inferior in popular estimation, and Vergniaud, and Guadet — men utterly unknown — succeed to and eclipse the reputation that he had acquired in the Tribune of the Assembly. Nor could it be gratifying to his amour propre to see his friend and ally Petion advanced, on the removal of Bailly, 17th Nov. 1791, to the office of mayor of Paris— at that time really the most prominent and important in the state — while not only was no notice taken of him, but Treilhard was appointed to succeed Petion as President of the Tribunal, of which Robespierre was left still Public Accuser. It may be also worth observing, that, simultaneously with this nomination of Petion, which attests the growing weight and influence of the Brissotins, we find the Rolands, who had retired to Burgundy on the nominal restoration of the King, returning to Paris in the middle of December, elate no doubt at the election of their friend Brissot into the new Assembly —anxious to support and not unwilling to profit by his growing influence. From this period we may safely date that internecinal hostility between Robespierre and the whole Brissotin party (afterwards SPEECH TO THE JACOBIN CLUB. 333 called the Girondins) in the course of which more hlood was shed and more atrocities committed, than even in the greater contest (of which it was an episode) between the Monarchy and the Republic. From the spring of 1792 till the summer of 1793 the great Revolution was reduced to, not a struggle between despotism and liberty, nor even between Louis XVI. and Egalite, but into a miserable squabble between Brissot and Robespierre. In the interval of that remarkable period there is really nothing but a wrestling-match between these two men and their cliques. Robespierre evidently thought, and, as far as we can judge, with some justice, that he was neglected, perhaps proscribed, by his old associates, who probably, with equal justice on their parts, thought him selfish, obstinate, and arrogant. These enemies were now in possession of the Tribune of the Assembly — a commanding position, whence Robespierre would have been soon overpowered if he had not found, or indeed created, a power less elevated but more formidable in the Jacobin Club, which, situated within a musket shot of the Legislative Chamber, had erected itself into an auxiliary legislature, where the same questions were discussed, and frequently with more weight on public opinion than in the Assembly itself. On the 5th of February, 1792 — the day that the Criminal Tribunal was installed, and that Robespierre entered on his office of Public Accuser — he pronounced before the Club a speech con- taining his reasons for having accepted the office, the principles by which he meant to be guided, and his resolution to hold it no longer than he could reconcile it to the other and higher duties which he owed to the cause of liberty ; meaning, obviously, as a writer and as a Jacobin. There is, however, in this speech one passage, which, though it would seem a mere commonplace in another man's mouth, is remarkable in that of the creator, purveyor, and dictator of the Revolutionary Tribunal: — ' The safety and welfare of society is infinitely more compromised by the judicial murder of one innocent person than by the impunity of the worst criminal. Such shall be the first rule of my con- duct.' — Discours aux Jac, 5 Feb. 1792. This address from a magistrate to a club is itself a proof that the club had already usurped the powers of the government ; and 834 EOBESPIERRE. that a public officer, professing his devotion to the Constitution, should have adopted a course so utterly unconstitutional, shows the extent to which anarchy had already proceeded. We believe, however, that this speech had really no other object than a general homage to the Club, and a pledge of his future attachment ; for we are satisfied that he had already abandoned the intention of retaining that inferior place. He saw that popularity and place, and, above all, a place which obliged him to execute the laws, were totally incompatible, and he hastened within three months to resign a post in which he did, and in fact, could have done, nothing; for though the Tribunal was constituted in February, it did not hold a sitting till April, after Robespierre's resignation. Treil- hard, who succeeded Petion as president, tells us in a note {Pap. iii. 277) that the interval being employed by the members of the Tribunal in preparing the business for the public session, Robes- pierre attended so irregularly that Treilhard reprimanded him. Robespierre smiled, retired, and came no more. We suspect that Treilhard must have exaggerated when he talked of reprimanding Robespierre — the most jealous and implacable of men, and at that time as powerful in the Jacobin Club and with the mob of Paris as he became soon after in the Convention and throughout France. If Treilhard had reprimanded, or in any degree ofifended Robes- pierre, we do not believe that he would have survived to boast of it. But though now only a private citizen, his influence through the Jacobin Club was so great and so formidable to the Legislative Assembly, that on the 25th of April Brissot and Guadet — the two most influential members of the National Assembly — did not dis- dain to come to the Jacobin Club with a denunciation against Robespierre, who replied on the 27th in a set speech of consider- able power, which was not merely crowned with the approbation of the society, but printed and distributed over the whole face of France. In this speech he states, more particularly than we have scan elsewhere, the services at the first electoral assemblies of Artois, which had procured his election to the States-General. He also, in answer to a sneering interrogatory of what he had done in the Constituant iVssembly, replied, that this was, from such a quarter, a most ungrateful question, for that, at least, he had, ' by the decree of non-reelection, made Brissot and Condorcet legislators.^ ' But why,' he says, ' are these insulting questions asked me ? SPEECH TO THE JACOBIN CLUB. 335 — even in this society whose very existence is a monument of what I have done. I defended it in times of difficulty and danger, when those who now come hither to insult me had abandoned it ; and the very tribune from which they attack me is the evidence of my public service.' He then complains that, after charging him with doing nothing^ they shift to a contradictory accusation of having done too much, and have invented the word agitator, which they contumeliously apply to him for having endeavoured to excite public opinion against the intrigue and treason that im- peded the revolution ! — {Reponse de M. Robespierre a MM. Brissot et Guadet, le 21 Avril, 1792). Of the style and effect of these exhibitions we have on this occasion a remarkable instance, which we copy from the journal of the Club : — ' M. Eobespierre ended his speech, which was very much applauded throughout, by this reflection upon himself: — "Perhaps in addressing you in this open way I shall draw upon myself the hatred of all factions. They vrill all feel that they can never accom- plish their designs as long as there is among them one brave and honest man, who will be continually on the watch to defeat their designs, and who, despising life, dreads neither poison nor steel, and would be but too happy if his death could be useful to the liberty of his country." At these words the holy enthusiasm of virtue seized the whole Assembly, and each member swore, in the sacred name of liberty, to defend M. Eobespierre even to the peril of his own life.'— Mem. de Weber, ii. 322. We have dwelt a little on this speech, because it gives a fairer account of the main points of Robespierre's political life up to that period than we have found elsewhere ; it proves that he could be no ordinary man who, in a private station, was an object of alarm to the supreme authority, and was powerful enough to meet and to defeat, single-handed, the most eloquent and influential of the rulers of the state. In one passage we have the first indication of the dreadful secret which Robespierre's present influence and future power indicated. Blood and Terror were the talismanic words of his new necromancy. He aficcts to invite the Brissotins to a reconciliation — he conjures them, if they are really the friends of the revolution, to bury in oblivion these internal disputes, and to unite against the common enemy. ' Hasten,' he says in quaint but terrible phraseology, ' to cause the sword of the executioner to move horizontally, so as to strike off the heads of all the conspirators 336 ROBESPIERRE. against liberty.' The guillotine soon changed the direction of the exterminating axe from the horizontal to the perpendicular, but the spirit of the apostrophe was the same, and reveals, as we shall soon more fully see, the mainspring of Robespierre's policy. But he did not think it safe to depend solely on the effect of his oratory in the Jacobins ; he saw that many of the most leading men of the new Assembly — such as Brissot, Condorcet, Louvet, Gorsas, Carra — had attained that eminence by publishing incen- diary journals, and he too resolved to be a journalist. In the annals of audacity and dupery we know not a more remarkable instance than that Robespierre, the avowed enemy of the con- stitution, should call a journal devoted to the overthrow of that constitution by the title of ' TTie Defender of the Constitution^ * Such flagrant impudence would appear miraculous if we had not recent examples in our own day and country that those who are endeavouring to overthrow all our institutions, profess, like Robes- pierre, to be the real friends of the Constitution. He himself was aware of this inconsistency, and endeavours in his first number to excuse it, by alleging that, though he had opposed and still dis- approves many provisions of the Constitution, he was, now that it was the law, prepared to defend it against those whose Machiavel- lian policy had made it so defective only to afford a readier pre- text for getting rid of it and the revolution together. Every line of the work shows that this was a flimsy pretence, and indeed a calumny against the Constitutionalists. But he had probably a deeper motive ; his sagacity anticipated the policy that was afterwards employed so successfully against Charles X. f He saw that this paper Constitution was inexecutable in practice, and that neither the Brissotins nor any other ministry could confine itself between four comers, as the lawyers express it, of such an inconsistent formula. If the country was to be governed — if property and public order were to be maintained — in short, if any shadow of royal authority was to be preserved, the anarchical principles of the * The proper title of the Club, popu- its nature, but the Club retained its larly called the Jacobins, from its sitting name, and it was probably to attest his in the church of that monastery, was devotion to, and help his identification the ' Societji of the Friends of the Consti- with, the Friends of the Constitution, tution.' This name it assumed in the that Robespierre adopted this most early days when the Revolution affected inappropriate title. to ask no more than a constitution, and f See M. Thiers' system of attack that the Royalists were supposed to on the Bourbons under cover of their resist one. The struggle had changed own charter, p. 20. RUPTURE WITH THE BRISSOTINS. 337 Constitution must be evaded or violated : and he saw that it was a barrier strong enough to defeat assailants, but when they were routed, to be easily overleaped or destroyed by its former de- fenders. We have no direct evidence of the precise date or immediate cause of the rupture between Robespierre and his Brissotin friends, nor as to when his friendship with the Rolands began to cool, but the acquaintance altogether was but short ; it commenced, we have seen, in the spring of 1791, and we strongly suspect did not con- tinue long after, if so long as, the appointment of Roland to the ministry in March, 1702. This extraordinary announcement of a subordinate functionary just relieved from a small office in a pro- vincial town to the Ministry of the Interior of the kingdom of France, could hardly have happened, even in such a chaotic revo- lution, but for Robespierre's self-denying ordinances, which, by excluding from the Ministry both the existing and the late As- semblies, enabled, perhaps obliged, Brissot and the Girondins (themselves incapacitated) to nominate Roland, whom they knew to be a man of good character, respectable abilities, some know- ledge of commercial and statistical subjects, of their own politics, and above, as we suspect, all other merit, as the husband of his wife.* Men of a more amiable temper than Robespierre might have been equally surprised and mortified at the results of the kind of political suicide that he had committed, and at seeing himself not only deserted as it were by his associate Petion, but eclipsed by Brissot in the Assembly, and overtopped by the elevation of Roland to the Ministry, while he, a veteran as it were of the Re- volution, was left to the barren, and by no means consolatory, reflexion of * Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes.* * Dr. Moore gives us the following drab-coloured suit lined with green sketch of the personal appearance of silk, his grey hair hanging loose. Dan- Roland and Danton ; — ' These two men/ ton is not so tall, but much broader. His he says, ' were often in opposition to form is coarse, and uncommonly robust, each other, even when joined [after the Roland's manner is unassuming and 10th August] in the same administra- modest ; that of Danton fierce and tion, and differed in external appear- boisterous. He speaks with the voice ance and manners as in all the rest. of a stentor, declaims on the blessings Roland is about sixty years of age, tall, of freedom with the arrogance of a giant, thin, of a mild countenance and pale and invites to union and friendship with complexion. His dress every time I the frown of an enemy.' — ii. 252. have seen him has been the same — a z 2 338 EOBESPIEERE. He certainly, of all men then on the scene, had contributed most to the development of the Revolution, and he alone, as far as we know, had not profited by it ; and we do not doubt that the acrimonious hostility with which he pursued Dumouriez (then in effect First Minister) was owing to his having, in March, 1792, at the suggestion of Brissot, persuaded the King to the acceptance of Roland and his two friends, Servan and Claviere, into the Ministry. Nor, if he had condescended to complain of his own excluded position, he would not have been much pleased with being re- minded that it was his own act. ' Voits Vavez voulu, Georges DandinJ is the very bitterest form of condolence. Tliere was also a minor point of these ministerial arrangements that was likely to have been very offensive to Robespierre, and of which the consequences appear to have been very important. Louvet tells us that he was named by Dumouriez and his new colleagues, and accepted by the King as Minister of Justice. He was, he says, for eight-and-forty hours in the enjoyment of this happy vision ; but Robespierre had heard of the intention, inter- posed his veto, and picked a quarrel with Louvet at the Jacobins : the new ministry were afraid to persist in their nomination, and Louvet was excluded. Such is Louvet's statement ; but we con- fess that if we wonder at Roland's nomination per saltum into so great an office, for which, however, he had some acknowledged qualifications, we cannot help entertaining some doubts that Louvet could have been proposed and accepted for the still higher and graver office of Minister of Justice. He was but thirty-two years old, and it seems doubtful whether he was even admitted Advocate. Certain it is that he never practised ; and that he was only known to the public as the author of the licentious novel of Faublas. That he should have been for a moment thought of, and above all accepted by the King for the first legal office in the state, the head of the law, seems to us incredible ; but he certainly was brought forward, and probably for some considerable office, by the Rolands ; but whatever may have been the details of the affair, there can be no doubt that it was the cause of the personal ani- mosity that Louvet exhibited against Robespierre, and that Robes- pierre retahated on Louvet and the Girondins, whose instrument he was. The Defen.seur, which was in the shape of a pamphlet of thirty or forty pages, professed to be published weekly, but it seems to THE DEFENSEUR. 339 have appeared irregularly. It has no dates, and Is written In a style so diffuse and declamatory, and so void of facts, that there is little internal evidence as to the exact date of the several numbers. We know, however, that it commenced in May and closed at the 12th Number by the Tenth of August. Several passages, and the whole spirit of the publication, reveal the feelings of personal grievance and mortification with which he regarded his late asso- ciates. He accuses Brissot by name of the scandalous ostentation with which he distributes public offices amongst his creatures ; and he especially designates, without however naming Roland, the department of the Interior (No. 3, i. 37) : ' Is it not,' he asks, ' a manifest violation of the prohibitory decrees, that Brissot should fill by his private friends the places that he cannot hold himself? And where is the merit of resisting the King's Civil List when one has the purses of the Ministerial departments in your own hands ? ' And, again, in No. 4, ' They accuse us of ambition ; — but compare their public life and ours : we have rejected fortune and power ; we have shut against ourselves the door of those offices where our antagonists have placed their friends, which they themselves aspire to enjoy. We have denied ourselves seats in that Assembly where theg traffic with the rights of the people ; we have abandoned that tribune whence they calumniate us. They possess all — they aspire to all. We have renounced all — but the right of dying for our country.' Y These extracts, and indeed every line of the ' Defenseur,' con- firms us in our opinion, that nothing was farther from Robespierre's intention in the prohibitory decrees than any self-sacrifice ; and that the neglect, which, on the sudden change of circumstances, he seems to have experienced from his former associates, exasperated his jealous and irritable temper into that sanguinary frenzy which immolated both foes and friends, and thousands on thousands that were neither ; and finally, his faction and himself. The Defenseur, though it rises now and then into powerful sarcasm, is, upon the whole, in comparison with the tone of the times, so moderate and didactic, we may almost say so dull, that we should doubt that it attained much popularity. We hear very little about it from his contemporaries ; but it must have had some success, and at least fulfilled Robespierre's own expectations and objects, for we find that he resumed it after his election to the Convention, in September, 1792, under the title oi Letters to 340 ROBESPIERRE. his Constituents, and continued it for nearly six months more, in which it was a little, and but a little, enlivened — in the first quarter by invectives against the King and clamours for his execu- tion — and in the second, by similar denunciations against the Brissotins, the Queen, and citizen Egalite. It terminated at the 10th Number of the third quarter, about the end of March, 1793, when Robespierre became too deeply engaged in his mortal strife with the Girondins in the Convention to have leisure to continue this flat and unprofitable paper hostility. Robespierre's conduct in relation to the attacks on the Tuileries on the 20th of June and the 10th August, 1792, are passed over slightly or in silence by the historians ; and of the 20th of June at least, the little that we have been told is certainly erroneous. M. Thiers repeats, and seems inclined to adopt a statement that the latter movement was concerted at a meeting of Petion, Robes- pierre^ and Sillery at Santerre's house. It is certain that Petion and Santerre, and very probable that the avowed Orleanist Sillery, were in that plot. It is true also that Danton, Camille Desmoulins (also Orleanists), and several Jacobins who were, perhaps even then, and certainly soon after, mortal enemies of the Girondins, were parties to this insurrection, in a hope either of crowning the Duke of Orleans, or at least of dethroning Louis. It is even probable that in the latter view Robespierre would not have been displeased at its success ; but to imagine that he was an original designer, or even an accomplice, shows a strange ignorance not only of his personal position and feelings but of his public opinions spoken at the Jacobins and recorded in his own journal. There is indeed no point of his history more clear than that in the outrage of the 20th of June he could have had no share, for it was essentially a Brissotin movement, and for the object of forcing back into power Roland and the Brissotin ministry, with whom the King had lately been forced to break on the subject of the two decrees about the nonjuring clergy, and the formation of the army of 20,000 men. We might a priori have been pretty sure that Robespierre would have felt no anxiety about them, but we find in the 5th Number of the Defenseiir that he not only opposed the proposition for the 20,000 men, but had in the Jacobin Club, on the 15th of June, on the dismissal of Roland, Servan, and Claviere, spoken of them by name with something more than indifference; and with a strong protestation against the attempts that were making HATRED OF LAFAYETTE. 341 to instigate the people to insurrection, only for the selfish objects of individuals — ' hypocrites of liberty ;' nay, he points out the criminality and the danger of endeavouring ' to seduce the ardent but ill-informed multitude by the bait of a freer government and hy the name of a Republic, which would be not merely the over- throw of the Constitution, but must at that juncture lead to a civil war, to anarchy, and to despotism.' This sortie against popular insurrection from Robespierre would have been curious at any time, but is particularly so when we recollect how few weeks it was before the 10th of August, in which he strongly encouraged, if he did not originate, an insurrection exactly similar to that he now deprecated, and for the express object of overthrowing the Constitution, of which he was the Defenseu?', and establishing that Republic, which, as he truly fore- told, could lead only to anarchy and despotism. The clue to all these political variations is the consistency of his personal resent- ment against what he, no doubt, thought the ingratitude and treachery of his former accomplices. But at the 10th of August the case was different. The 20th of June, though it had failed in its Brissotin object, succeeded in the more important one of reviving the example of the 5th and 6th of October, of familiarizing the people to the assault of the royal residence ; and the indiscreet proceedings of Lafayette had united all the various revolutionary factions in violent and unanimous hostility against him and against the unfortunate Monarch who was now to suffer more from Lafayette's rash and impotent pro- tection than he had formerly done from his triumphant vanity, ambition, and arrogance. Robespierre's hatred of Lafayette would, if he had had no other motive, have changed his opinion of the late insurrection ; but he must also have seen in the state of the public mind the certainty of a new and more decisive commo- tion, and that it would avail neither his former principles nor his future interest, nor perhaps his present safety, to separate himself from the real sources of his power, the populace and the Jacobins. It was evident, too, that he could not expect to retain that power in the anomalous and isolated position in which he stood, and that it had become necessary to release himself from the prohibitory decrees and restore him to a seat in the National Assembly, or, at least, to the capability of political office. He, therefore, suddenly changed his tone about insurrections and a Republic, and joined, if 342 ROBESPIERRE. he did not originate, a new conspiracy for renewing the attempt of the 20th of June on a large scale, and for Jacobin instead of Brissotin objects. He was afterwards reproached with not having appeared to take a personal share in the danger of the conflict of the 10th of August, but he seems to have served the cause in the way most suitable to his character and his talents, by evoking, installing, and directing a rebel municipality at the Hotel de Ville, which usurped the sovereign authority in the night of the 9th of August, for the purpose of insuring the success of the insurrection of the 10th August, which it effectually did. By this daring step Robespierre acquired a kind of locus standi. No one could foresee the exact course or shape that the revolution might take, and he prudently provided himself with a recognized position — a kind of magistracy. Whatever might be the ulterior course of events, the municipality of Paris was a power in the state with which he identified himself, and which he might be sure would carry him to whatever National Assembly should arise from the confusion. For in endeavouring to unravel Robespierre's policy we should never forget that, as it is very probable he had proposed the non-elec- tion of the Constituents, because he himself had no certainty, and perhaps indeed no chance, of re-election ; so, now, he is likely to have calculated that his best chance of election to any future Assembly was by his influence over the populace of Paris. This difficulty about re-election is nowhere, that we have seen, noticed by the historians ; but practically it was a most serious one, and had, as we shall see presently, tremendous results. When the Tenth of August occurred, the Brissotins and Mode- rates were disposed in the first moments to abjure and reprobate it ; when it had become, beyond all expectation, successful, and the fate of the monarchy was sealed, they hastened to adopt it, and it became, and to this hour remains, a matter of dispute between the two parties — which had the honour of founding the Republic by the events of that day. That some of the conspirators of the 10th of August, such as Pe'tion, Barbaroux, Carra, &c., subsequently adhered to the Bris- sotins is very true ; but the chief hands in the affair were the Cordeliers or Orleanists, Danton and Desmoulins, and the most influential head, we have no doubt, was Robespierre. But there is abundant evidence that the Girondins as a party had little or no share in it, though by happening to have at the moment the ma- THE CONVENTION. 343 jorlty in the Assembly, they reaped the immediate advantages ; for on the suspension of the King, their ' creatures,' as Robes- pierre had a month before called Roland, Servan, and Claviere, were recalled to office, and, with the addition of two insignificant names, Monge and Lebrun, and the formidable superfetation of Danton, the real representative of the popular victory, formed the Provisional Government. Danton appointed as his under- secre- taries Desmoulins and Fabre. Robespierre, still under the ban of his own prohibitory decree, was incapacitated from political office, and must have seen that this was now the crisis of his own fate as well as that of the monarchy. A Convention was to be elected to decide on the form of the future Government, and if Robespierre should not be elected into that Convention he would be completely and irretrievably ostracised, and probably as much forgotten as the thousand of his colleagues in the Constituant who sank into obscurity and oblivion after the dissolution of that first Assembly. Robespierre's personal difficulties on this vital point must have been very great, but he met them with corresponding resolution. In the closing number of the ' Defenseur,' — undated, but published within a few days after the 10th of August — after an inflamed account of the crimes of the Court and the magnanimity and grandeur of the people, he proceeds to advise them by what means on their parts ' the success of the Convention is to be prepared and ensured.' Subsequent events make the terms of this warning important. * You must prepare the success of this Convention by the regeneration of the spirit of the people. Let all awake — all, all arise — all arm ; and the enemies of liberty will hide themselves in darkness. Let the tocsin of Paris be re-echoed in all the departments. Let the people learn at once to reason and to fight. You are now at war with all your oppressors, and you will have no peace till you have punished them. Far be from you that pusillanimous weakness or that cowardly indulgence which the tyrants so long satiated with the blood of the people now invoke when their own hour is come ! Impunity has produced all their crimes and your sufferings. Let them fall imder the sword of the laws. Clemency towards them would be real barbarity — an outrage on injured humanity.' — JJe^. Ko. 12, p. 583. Before we reach the practical explanation of these ill-omened words, we must observe, that about this time some communication 344 ROBESPIEREE. was opened between Robespierre and the Girondins : we know no more of it than we gather from a single letter addressed to Robes- pierre by Madame Roland, dated the 25th August, from which we conjecture that she must have written a preceding letter, ex- pressing a wish to see and converse with her old friend, of whose patriotism and devotion to the good of the public she was fully satisfied. Robespierre seems to have declined the interview, and to have hinted something as if she had encouraged certain * intrigans^ the mortal enemies of Robespierre. Madame Roland replies, that she did not know whom Robespierre could mean by enemies and intrigans, but that her object in wishing for the inter- view was, that * persons of honest intentions, pure character, and zeal for the public good, apart from all personal vIoWkS and from all hidden ambition, should come to a good understanding on the best means of serving the public' — Pap. Rob. i. 305. It is evident that the Girondins had now become aware of and alarmed at Robespierre's power, and had opened this negotiation for a reconciliation and coalition. It may have been suggested to them by the power that Robespierre had acquired in the Com- mune, and the influence which the Commune had begun to exercise over the Assembly ; or it may have been specially prompted by the popular triumph which Robespierre received on the 17th August, when, on the same day that the Extraordinary — commonly called the Revolutionary — Tribunal, was created, he was nominated by the Electoral body of Paris to be its First President. This office he declined, to the dissatisfaction, as it seems, of some of his friends, for he thought it necessary to publish his reasons for doing so. — {Mo7dteur, 28th Aug. 1792.) The first was, that he had been for three years the antagonist and accuser, and even the personal enemy, of those for whose trial the tribunal was specially instituted, and that therefore he could not with decency be their judge. This was obviously a mere pretext ; but it seems, as well as the menacing terms of the Defenseur just quoted, to confirm the suspicion that we have always entertained,* that this tribunal was originally clamoured for, and finally adopted, with a view to the trial of the King and Queen. We at least cannot conjecture to whom else could be alluded as Conspirators of the 10th of August ♦ See Essay on the Revolutionary Tribunals. ELECTION FOE THE CONVENTION. 345 with whom he had been at enmity and in conflict ever since the beginning of the Revolution. His second reason had more of truth, that * the Presidency of the Tribunal was incompatible with the character of Representative of the Commune of Paris, and that he chose rather to abide by the latter duty. But this was not the whole truth. The Presidency was equally incompatible with a seat in the Convention — the real object of his ambition, and he clung to the representation of the Commune of Paris because it was the most effective instrument for securing the election of him- self and his followers ; and (which was probably of hardly less importance, for he was sure of his own individual return for his old department) the exclusion from the metropolitan deputation of Brissot and his friends who there accompanied it. This was a bold attempt ; for even in Paris he had no chance of success but through the more violent section of the Jacobins and the Commune ; while he had against him the Royalists, the Constitutionalists, the Moderates, the richer classes, the great majority of the National Guards, and the whole weight of the Girondin party now in possession of the Government and of all the civil and military authority, save only the usurping Commune. We think it even very likely that a compromise of this contest for the representation of Paris may have been the first motive of Madame Roland's overtures. But there were other prominent revolutionists in somewhat similar circumstances — Danton, Desmoulins, Marat, Fabre, Billaud, Collot, &c. : none of these men had belonged to either of the former Assemblies, nor had the slightest prospect of getting into the new one but for Paris, nor for Paris without some terrible exertion of popular violence. They were chiefly Orleanists. How far Robespierre may have been implicated with Orleans him- self we have no indication beyond the common object of all the revolutionists — the dethroning Louis XVI. ; but with Danton, the ostensibleheadof that faction, he had coalesced at least to bring about the 10th August, but probably from a much earlier stage of the Re- volution. Their common interests in this great crisis of the Conven- tional Election brought them into still closer alliance, and they resolved to apply to this election the same potent engine of Terror which had been found so effective in the case of Reveillon,* and had decided the Paris elections to the first Assembly. ♦ See observations od both these elections, ant5, pp. 51-4. S46 ROBESPIEKRE. ' Je t'ai accuse,* says Louvet to him, ' d avoir tyrannise I'Assem- blee Electorale par I'effroi— le premier depute ne pent etre que le 3 ou 4 Septembre, c'est a dire, sous les auspices de vos massacres deja commences.' — Lettre, p. 22. This was the true motive of the massacres of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of September, which filled Paris with consternation and the world with horror, and the succeeding days saw elected, without opposi- Hon and at the dictation of Robespierre, the Deputation of Paris. We have not room to develop all the details which corroborate this explanation of the first cause of these massacres, which none of the historians seem to have thought of any more than they did in the Revelllon case, though they might have found several contemporary indications of the terrible truth. ' If it is asked,' says the author of the curious ' Histoire de I'Espionnage,' ' what was the motive of this orgie of human blood ? It was that the Convention might not have for members men whose probity and talents were feared, and to force Paris a fournir les coqiiins dont on avait hesoinJ And Madame Roland too says, ' In the Deputation of Paris were seen the members of that famous Cornite de la Commune which had directed the massacres of September,^ This contest in the Club and in the press became still more di- rect and important after the 10th of August, when the usurpation of the Municipal Government of Paris by Robespierre and his commune, and the accession of the Girondins to the ministerial government of the country, brought them into a conflict of authority. Gercy-Dupre, the editor of Brissot's journal, attacked the Munici- pality — the Municipality summoned him before them to answer for his libel. He refused, denied their authority, and petitioned the Convention against them. The Girondins supported Gercy-Dupre, and Guadet proposed and carried a decree which, after thanking the Commune for its services in the late revolution, dismissed it, and directed that a new municipality should, within twenty-four hours, be elected in its stead ; and a further article ordered the executive government to see to its execution and to take care that the direction of the military force of Paris should be lodged in the Mayor alone. This would have been a coup de grace not only to Robespierre's present power in the commune but probably to the hopes that he was building on it, of his election to the Convention. How was he to meet this pressing difficulty ? The law, such as it ELECTION FOE THE CONVENTION. 347 was, was against him, the armed force was taken out of the hands of the Commune — a new body chosen under the sudden and adverse influence of the general Government was to be, icithin twenty-four hours, installed. The case seemed desperate — but Robespierre was equal to the emergency and met it with a desperate remedy. The decree was passed on the morning of the 30th August ; on the 31st an insolent and menacing deputation from the Commune protest against it at the bar of the Assembly and plainly intimate that they should appeal to the people — the Assembly, evidently intimidated, admit the deputation to the honour of the sitting, as it does also a second deputation, headed by the President and Secretary of the municipality, who attend to explain and justify their proceedings against Gercy-Dupr^ : and we hear no more of this new election which was to take place icithin the tifenty-four hours. Early on the next day, 1st September, the commune published an official procla- mation to the people of Paris, signed by their president and secre- tary, but avowedly from the pen of Robespierre : though it does not venture to set the decree at positive defiance, it renews the protest made at the bar the day before, and again appeals to the people, into whose hands they willingly resign their power, and who alone have a right to decide this question. On the morning of the 2nd, this same commune, which, under the decree, should have ceased to exist forty-eight hours before, under the signatures of the same pre- sident and secretary, issues its celebrated proclamation, calling the people ' Aux armes — Aux armes,' and ordering the instant closing of the barriers, with a series of other exaggerated and exaspe- rating signals of a danger created by themselves. At 5 o'clock that same evening, the 2nd, began the massacres. They lasted till the 6th ; and on the 7th Robespierre and Danton were returned for Paris. Our information as to the proceedings of this electoral body is very scanty, but we have before us two very rare pamphlets by Petion, and two replies by Robespierre (the last in Nos. 9 and 10 of the Lettres a mes Commettans), from which it appears that Petion, then still mayor, was a candidate apparently in the same interest with Robespierre and Danton. There can be little doubt that the friendship between the two former had been on the wane since Petion's promotion to the mairie and his increasing intimacy with the Brissotins, with whom Robespierre was at open war. But 348 EOBESPIEREE. tliey were on this occasion on civil terms, and on the first day of the election they were to have dined together at the house of a common friend, but it appears that, on the first ballot {tour de scrutin) that morning, the name of Robespierre was alone returned. Robespierre in his letter to Petion says,* * Every one saw the changes of your countenance when, in the progress of the ballot, another name seemed to have the advantage of yours. You were aware that it was the unanimous intention to have named you next day, but you left the Assembly abi-uptly, and never re-appeared. You would not even keep your dinner engage- ments; and you have at last confessed the true motive of your vexation, by saying (p. 22), " Well then, to he candid with you, I did think that, if I was named at all, I was entitled to he first." ' Potion's pretensions were by no means ill-founded ; he was at that time not merely the first man in Paris by his oflSce, but to all appearance, and beyond all comparison, the most popular. The walls of Paris were still covered with the inscription, ' Petion^ ou la Mort' The paint was hardly dry with which his name and public services and the affection of the people were written in gigantic letters on the face of the Palace of the Tuileries. But this contest was not so much a competition of the two men, though it took that shape, as a struggle between two great parties. Robespierre was pretty sure of his election in Artois, and Petion was perfectly so of his for Chartres — the real struggle was between the Jacobins and the Brissotins : the massacres had driven all other candidates from the field ; and even of the Brissotins none perhaps could have ventured to offer himself but the popular Petion ; at all events he was their best man, and the choice of Robespierre before him determined the character of the whole election. We know that the Brissotins had put forward as their * This letter to Petion, in reply to some passages were by an abler hand.] Petion's attack on him at the time of Thiers gives Petion's speech as ' a most Lou vet's accusation, is a very important admirable and important document/ document as to the causes of the schism but does not even allude to Kobes- between Robespierre and the Girondins. pierre's much more able and interesting It is moreover written with so much reply. It is to be found in the Appen- j n. spirit, that we suspect Camille Des- dix to Mr. Adolphus's ' History of the l.«^N^ moulins may have had a hand in Revolution/ the best English work — 1 ^ V^ it. [Since I made this guess I have indeed we may say the best work— on ■ found in Lou vet a suggestion that the subject. \ ELECTION FOR THE CONVENTION. 349 second man Dr. Priestley,* and that by Robespierre's active in- terference he was rejected for Marat. Two other circumstances about this election are now also known — the one is, that there was a violent dispute between Robespierre and a young fellow who had just started into notice as the secretary of the usurping Commune, but whose name soon became celebrated — Tallien. The cause of the dispute we are not told, but it is possible that the adventurous secretary wished to be one of the representatives of Paris, which Robespierre may not have been dis- posed to concede to the neophyte. Tallien was returned for the adjoining department of Seine and Oise ; but here were probably sown the seeds of that deadly enmity which on the 9th Thermidor, just two years later, stimulated Tallien to the resistance that over- threw Robespierre. Out of these intrigues, struggles, and mas- sacres, was produced that celebrated Deputation of Paris, * damned to everlasting fame,' which, as it derived its power from blood and terror, perpetuated it by deluges of blood and a succession of ter- rors, of which the world has had no other example. It is worth while to preserve their names in the order of their election : Robespierre. Robert. Danton. Dessaulx. CoUot D'Herbois. Freron. Manuel. Beauvais. Billaud-Yarennes. Fabre d'Eglantine. Camille Desmoulins. Osselin. Marat. Robespierre, jun. Lecointre. David. Legendre. Boucher. Raffron. Laignelot. Panis. Thomas. Serjeant. Philippe Egalite. Egalite was the last elected, and on the last day, and not without some internal opposition, which was propitiated by a pecuniary contribution on his part. It is but justice to this unhappy man to state what we have not seen noticed elsewhere, that this change of name was not so spontaneous, nor therefore so absurd and degrad- ing, as it has been hitherto thought. It was forced on him by his * Priestley was a favourite Brisso- return for the department de TOme tin candidate ; besides being proposed and for that of Rhone and Loire, for PariS; he had actually a double 350 EOBESPIEREE. position (itself a great crime), and perhaps by the instinct of selt- preservation. We know not under what circumstances of hope or of fear he allowed himself to be proposed for the representation of Paris in the Convention — whether from some lingering delusion of ambition, or from the more natural suggestion that the Assembly would be the safest asylum from personal danger. — or, most pro- bably, from a combination of these motives. A candidate, however, he was — but under what name could he be elected? Titles were abolished — the nickname of Capet given to his family (and which was not theirs) was a mark of proscription. He was of necessity obliged to look out for another, and we really know not that, in the then state of affairs, he could have selected one more appropriate and inoffensive than Egalite. The case was urgent. The decree authorizing the change was passed the 15th September, and he was elected hy that name one or two days after. Let us not be supposed to say, in the case either of Reveillon or of the September massacres, that the actual executioners were aware of the object for which they were employed ; by no means : such a disclosure, or even a suspicion of it, would have defeated the scheme ; but in both cases advantage was taken of extraneous accidents ; and while the chief directors of the seditions had the result of the elections alone or chiefly in view, the populace was excited and maddened by every stimulating falsehood for which the circumstances of the times afforded any pretence. It is very probable, too, that the events exceeded in extent and enormity the calculations of some of their planners ; but it is also probable that, though they may have exceeded the intention of their insti- gators in one direction, they fell short of it in another. There is strong reason to believe that in September it was intended to sacrifice some of the Girondin leaders. Brissot was certainly in danger ; Roland, the minister of the interior, was saved only by his absence from home from a detachment sent to arrest — probably to murder — him ; and his death would no doubt have been the signal for the massacre of the whole party. Happier would it have been for him and them, both in their persons and reputation, if they had then died, instead of basely living, as they did, to palliate and ex- cuse these atrocities, and to fall within a few months, by a variety of lingering deaths, the dishonoured victims of the same assassins whom they had at first flattered and screened. . It is the fashion of late to extol the Girondin party, and parti- THE GIRONDINS. 35I cularly Roland, and his maitresse femme ; but any one who will read impartially, and with a careful reference to dates, their oicii accounts of these transactions, must see that, during the lorig pre- paration for the massacre, and the height and fury of its execution, the minister and his colleagues exhibited the basest apathy, and that it was not till they found themselves in danger that they showed the slightest disapprobation of the atrocities which had been for several days in notorious preparation ; nor was it till the second and third days, that they took those measures — not of re- pression, but of complaint — on the evidence of which their eulo- gists now deny their participation in this tremendous guilt. We find this fact concisely stated and proved in the Histoire Par- lementaire de la Revolution, a liberal publication :— ' On the third of September, the police, by order of the Commune, proceeded to Brissot's residence, and seized and examined his papers. [Here follow copies of the original documents.] It was even said that eight orders of arrest had been issued against the Girondins ; but no proof of this appears beyond the affair of Brissot. Be this, however, as it may, this bold attempt awoke the ministers of his (Bris- sot's) parti/ ; and Roland (who on the evening of the 3rd had written to the Convention) wrote on the 4th a pressing letter to Santerre,^ &c. — Hist, Pari., vol. xvii. p. 430. The massacres, then, had been going on for twenty-four hours before Roland so much as complained ; and it was not till the 4th that he applied to the commander of the military force — which never came. We are satisfied that the Gironde had little active share in the Tenth of August,* and none at all in the massacres of September ; but it cannot be denied that they were guilty of exciting the frenzy which rendered these crimes possible. How can Vergniaud — a statesman, a lawyer, a man of sense and shrewdness — be acquitted * 'Who/ asks a member on the diates September ; so also does Brissot. 26th of December, 1792, ' who is it Mem. iv. 387. The truth is that they that complains of being called one of did not make the tenth of August, the conspirators of the holy tenth of though they countenanced and ap- August ? I am a conspirator !' Guadet proved and adopted, when they began said, on the 12th of April, 1793, 'the to profit by the insurrection. It was measures that overthrew the throne — made by the Jacobins distinctively so the tenth of August — are our work.' called. On the 25th of July Brissot See also Roland's proclamation, * Hist. had denounced death against any one de I'Espion.' ii. 69 ; see also Madame who should attempt to establish a Roland, ii. 270, who claims for her party Republic, ib. 387. the tenth of August, though she repu- 2 A 352 ROBESPIERRE. of having encouraged — nay, of having suggested — the massacres, when on the Sunday morning, a few hours before the massacres had commenced^ and two days after it was universally known that they were intended, he addressed a deputation of the bloodthirsty Commune in these words — ' Parisians ! it is to-day that you must display a great energy ! ' Within four hours this very Commune, thus instigated to energy, began the massacres. The Indian savage believes that he inherits the virtues of all the enemies he slays : Robespierre, on the same principle is loaded with all the crimes of the monsters whom he survived ; and accordingly, M. Thiers and that class of historians not only palliate, but applaud the conduct of Roland and Petion — while we confess that we look upon them as only meaner and more hypo- critical villains — quite as guilty, quite as bloody, but only more contemptible — than the Marats, the Dantons^ and the Robes- pierres. Indeed, of all the actors in the whole tragedy of the revolution, there are none whom we regard with so much scorn as the selfish, cruel, cowardly, and imbecile faction of the Gironde, who, if they had had anything like honour, consistency, and courage, might and would have saved their country and themselves from the massacres of September, the murder of the king, and their own subsequent proscription of the 31st of May. They never exhibited any energy but against the vanquished — nor any touch of humanity till they themselves were in danger. Against such a timid flock of praters and intriguers, weathercocks and trimmers, who were base enough to arrogate the merit of crimes which they had not committed, and who skulked and cowered under the storm they had raised, it is not surprising that the insane audacity of Marat, the ferocious energy of Danton, and the cold-blooded cal- culation and inflexible consistency of Robespierre, should have prevailed. These last have earned the abhorrence of mankind ; as to the former, an almost equal abhorrence is only mitigated by contempt. If any reader thinks we deal too severely by this cele- brated Gironde, we would ask them only to read, even in the mos partial history, the account of their miserable manoeuvres on the trial of the king, and their dastardly indecision in the crisis of their own fate on the 31st of May and the 2nd of June, 1793. We must add one trait, which is eulogised by all their admirers — which M. Thiers calls ' sublime, — but which, in our judgment, exhibits EXECUTION OF GIRONDINS. 353 nothing but childish bravado and disgusting levity. Twenty-one of them, after an imprisonment of four or five months, were sent (on the 31st October, 1793) to the scaffold, and they spent the night preceding their death — how ? — in the festivities of a supper, enlivened with patriotic and bacchanal songs ; and they solaced their passage next morning to the place of execution — by singing the Marseillaise in chorus. Imagine one-and-twenty senators — the conscript fathers of the republic — condemned by a most iniquitous sentence (for such it was as regarded the offences with which they were charged), and leaving their families, their friends, and their country in a bloody anarchy which they had helped to create — imagine, we say, such men going to execution — not penitent for their individual errors, nor for the public mischiefs to which they had contributed — not even grave at the dismal prospects of their country, nor impressed with any sense of that future world on the verge of which they stood, but — singing — singing in the condemned cell — singing in the executioner's cart! When we read, in flowery declamations, of ' the majestic wisdom and the exalted eloquence ' of Vergniaud and his colleagues, we are involuntarily reminded of this their last hoarse and hollow song^ broken by the rattle of the wretched tumbril which jolted them to execution. Oh bloody farce ! — Oh impious buffoonery ! Oh what a contrast to the last hours of the Son of St. Louis — of the heroic Queen — of the angelic Elizabeth, and of the host of Christian martyrs immolated on the same scaffold ! * I^ not to be doubted that Robespierre, though not the most prominent accuser of the Girondins — that task was deferred to Danton, Marat, and Chabot — was their most effective enemy. Brissot in his defence more th&n once alludes to Robespierre as the individual prosecutor. — {Mem. iv. 391.) The feud between them and Robespierre had long been deadly, and was envenomed by their having once been close allies ; and even one of his accusers (Barbaroux) expatiated on how much they had ' all loved him.^ We have already stated our conjecture of the causes of the change. The cold and repulsive manners of Robespierre, his haughty reserve and isolated ambition, gave umbrage to the gay, * Mercier relates, with indignant sor- Corday went to death smiling, but she row, that two young women, executed did not smj' (N. T,, 251.) He had for murder, went to death singing forgotten his friends the Girondins. libertine songs. He adds : ' Charlotte 2 A 2 364 ROBESPIETIRE. familiar, and gregarious, though not less ambitious Girondins ; while their accession to fame and power must have inflamed his characteristic jealousy and envy. Brissot himself says — ' Eobespierre, ardent, jealous, thirsting for popularity, envious of the successes of others, inclined to rule by disposition and by pre- judice in his favour, became chief of the Opposition at the declara- tion of war. Eobespierre never forgave Brissot that triumph,' &c. &c. — J/e'm., p. 275. But whatever may have been the secret course of this enmity, it must be admitted that in public, at least, the Girondins were the aggressors. Their attacks on Robespierre have — since the general odium with which his subsequent atrocities have covered his very name — ^been highly eulogised, but at the time they were made he was no more guilty than themselves — their enmity was provoked by no better motive than personal rivalry ; and, in pursuing cJtro- nologically the course of causes and effects, it seems probable that the hostilities of the Girondins drove Robespierre in his own defence into the extreme measures by which he outbid them in the auction of popularity and power. We have already seen that Brissot and Guadet formally attacked him in the Jacobins. They accused him of monopolizing popularity, of aiming at the exclusive reputation of patriotism, and finally and ridiculously proposed that this dangerous citizen should by some kind of ostracism* be sent into exile. On the other hand, the Commune of Paris was filled by Robespierre's adherents, and it may be suspected that it was not without his connivance at least that they ventured to take measures against the liberty of Brissot and the life of Roland. Under this exasperation of mutual injuries, the parties met in a new field of battle — the National Convention — and on its very first assembly, the 21st of September, 1792, arrayed themselves in avowed hostility — Brissot and the Girondins replacing the Cote Droits while Robespierre with the deputation of Paris, and all the ultra- Jacobins, clustered on the highest back benches to the President's left, then first called the Mountain. A mortal strife now began ; and the fate of the King was the first great object of solicitude with both parties — not for his sake, but their own. The Girondins had suspended him — the Mountain, * Discours de M. Guadet aux Jacobins, 25 Avril, 1792 ; and Rdponse de M. Robespierre le 27, p. 12. CONTEST OF GIRONDINS AND THE MOUNTAIN. 355 according to the inevitable laws of faction (as certain as those of nature — indeed they are the same), outbid them by urging his immediate deposition ; and when the Girondins acquiesced in the dechSance, the Mountain again outran them by proposing his execution. The Girondins foresaw that, if their adversaries ob- tained this victory, they themselves were lost ; and their great anxiety now was how to play their selfish and unprincipled game in the mode least dangerous to their popularity and power. Acquit him they dare not ; and, on the other hand, they were averse to his death — partly, we hope, from some lingering sense of humanity and justice, but partly also as the triumph of their own mortal antagonists ; they halted between two opinions, and fell into a course of half measures which, as usual, ruined their projectors. They seem to have hoped to anticipate and elude this difficulty by an early attack on the Mountaia If they should be able to depopularise and defeat it, on other grounds, before the King's trial — they might, they hoped, be relieved from the embarrass- ments in which that proceeding could not fail to involve them. The Roman history had been employed by the Republican writers as the text-book of the Revolution. All kings were Tarquins and Neros— every patriot a Brutus, Cato, and Cicero — and the leader of each defeated faction became in turn Sylla, Clodius, and Catiline. The Girondins now endeavoured to avail themselves of these pedantic and inapplicable precedents. Nothing in Roman history was so odious as the Triumvirate, — nothing more dangerous to liberty than a Dictator, — and accordingly they accused Danton, Marat, and Robespierre of intending to establish a Triumvirate, and, with no great consistency, Robespierre, individually, of aim- ing at the Dictatorship ; on no other grounds, as is admitted,* than some vague phrases, in which Marat and other supposed friends of Robespierre expressed the opinion — which more sober- minded men must have entertained — that out of the anarchy in * Thiers, a stanch advocate for the p. 157-98. ''Only a jalotix." What! Gironde, admits of Robespierre's defence can an historian who has or ought to against Louvet's charge, that ' tout ce have read the history of the Commune qui lui etait personnel etait juste. II y of Paris from the 10th of August to the avait de I'impudence de la part des election of the Convention, talk so Girondins k signaler un projet d'usurpa- lightly of Robespierre's share in the tio7i Ih ou il n'y avait encore qu'une am- measures of the Commune and of the bition d' influence — Robespierre n' etait electoral body ? encore qu'un jaloux.' — Thiers, tom. ii. 356 - ROBESPIEERE. which they were involved there could be no escape but by a con- centration of power in fewer hands. As early as the 25th of September, 1792, these charges were publicly made by Vergniaud and others in eloquent declamations, and by Barbaroux and Rebecqui with the allegation of particular facts. Robespierre — whether from caution or want of readiness — ■ never seems to have been very forward or very explicit in his own defence ; but Danton rushed to the tribune and exculpated him- self and his friend with his usual audacity and effect. Robespierre then made a long and inconclusive protesta-tion of his patriotism, which was not much to the purpose, and certainly appeared rather to evade than deny the imputation. Then, for the first time, Marat rose to address the assembly. The majority — for such the Girondins and moderates incontestably were in the first months of the Convocation — affected surprise and horror at seeing this libeller, this avowed advocate of blood and anarchy, in the new character of a legislative orator, and attempted to hoot him down. ' I perceive,' said he, ' that I have enemies here.' — ' All, all, all are your enemies ! ' vociferated the almost unanimous assembly — that self-same assembly which, three months after, erected his image in their hall, and inscribed his name in their Pantheon, with nothing short of divine honours. They attempted, we say, to hoot down the future god of their idolatry — but he boldly per- sisted : — * They talk of triumvirates and dictatorships, and attribute these designs to the metropolitan members. Well, I owe it to justice to declare that my colleagues, and especially Danton and RobespieiTe, have always opposed the opinions which I avow on this point ; I, first and alone, of all public writers in France, have thought of a Dictatorship as the only means to crush (ecraser) the anti-revolution- ary traitors. If this be punishable, punish me, and me alone — but ■first hear me.' — Momteur, 27th Sept. 1792. And they were obliged to hear him repeat in that place, not merely the doctrine of the Dictatorship, but those extravagant instigations to wholesale murder, for which his journal was so infamously notorious. Vergniaud made an eloquent and indignant reply, in which he cited a phrase of Marat's journal of that very day, which (though not exactly within our present scope) we too shall quote as a striking proof of Marat's boldness, sagacity, and foresight : — I HIS ACCUSATION BY LOUVET. 857 ' Seeing the temper of tlie majority of this Convention, I own that I despair of the public safety, — if in our first eight sittings we shall not be able to lay the foundation of our constitution, there is nothing to be hoped from us. Fifty years of anarchy await you, and you will emerge from it only by the power of some dictator who will arise— a true statesman and patriot. prating people, if you did hut know Jiow to act!' — Ibid. After a long and furious debate, the Convention, on the motion of Robespierre's friends, passed to the ' order of the day,' which, under the circumstances, was equivalent to a victory. On the 29th October, however, another scene of the same kind, but more solemn and important, was acted ; Roland made a report against the agitators in general, — Robespierre, always sufficiently ready to reply to general accusations, answered him with boldness, but happening to say. Who dares accuse me? Louvet (the licentious novelist) electrified the assembly by answering, / do — and pro- ceeded to develope his accusation. The majority loudly encouraged Louvet — Danton urged Robespierre to reply instanter, and on his hesitating he again took the lead. The same topics were renewed by nearly the same speakers, and the affair was suspended by Robespierre's obtaining an adjournment of a week to prepare his answer. We cannot, from any information we possess, determine whether this habitual reluctance of Robespierre to answer on the moment — which was obvious on all these important occasions, as well as on his last final struggle — arose from incapacity or from prudence. On many minor occasions he seems to have been super- abundantly ready and fluent, and it is admitted that he had at last attained a considerable ease of improvisation. We suspect that both these causes operated — that he was personally timid as well as cautious, and that he was never able ' to screw his courage to the sticking place ' till he had maturely considered and prepared the course which it might be expedient to adopt. The Ijeads of Louvet's accusation are remarkable, as showing what were at this time the criipes imputable to Robespierre : — ' I accuse you, Robespierre,' says Louvet, * of having long calum- niated the purest patriots, and particularly in the days of September, when such calumnies were really proscriptions. I accuse you of having produced yourself as an object of popular idolatry, and of having caused it to be rumoured that you are the only man capable of saving the country. I accuse you of having degraded, insulted, 35S EOBESPIEERE. and persecuted the National Eepresentation, — of having tyrannized by intrigue and fear over the Electoral Assembly of Paris, and of having aimed at supreme power by calumny, violence, and ten*or; and 1 demand that a Committee be appointed to examine your conduct.' — Moniteur, Oct. 31.* Here we see is no allegation of facts (unless the vague hint about the elections may be so called), and but a very loose imputa- tion of bad motives and ulterior designs ; and it must always be recollected that this accusation was directed against a private citizen who held no office, who had no part in the administration of affairs, who did not even belong to any of the executive councils or committees, and to whom his ' popularity' and the foolish ' idolatry of the public ' are objected as crimes against the state. Such accusations would have been topics fit enough for an in- vective harangue ; but as grounds for a formal criminal charge they were ridiculous ; and accordingly, when Robespierre made his defence on the 5th of November, he obtained a triumph similar to, but much more important in i*s consequences, than that of the 25 th of September. It is but justice, — for even the devil should have his due, — to observe, that if the Girondins had been successful, Robespierre must have been sent to the scaffold ; and if Robespierre afterwards contributed to send them thither, it is clear that he only served them as, if he had not done so, they would have served him : — it was a fight for life between a wolf and a tiger. The Girondins all along affected to confound Marat with Robespierre, — at this copartnership Robespierre's pride and pru- dence were equally offended. In his defence he repudiated all responsibility or share in Marat's election, -[- or any concurrence in his opinions, and he even asserted that he had never seen him hut once (in private, of course, he must have meant), when, ' in a visit which Marat paid him, he took occasion to remonstrate with him on the violence of his writings, which many goo(J patriots regretted.' But this disclaimer did not satisfy his jealousy. The Jacobin Club was instigated to complain of the affectation with * See the same Monitetir for Roland's The Cordeliers proposed Marat, and he attack on Robespierre, was elected — assuredly not without f This assertion, which was in some Robespierre's consent, but without his degree true, is not inconsistent with open interference, as he was more espe- Robespierre's general influence in the cially Danton's man. choice of the metropolitan members. CONDEMNATION OF THE KING, 359 which some persons identified Marat and Robespierre^ and came to a formal resolution (23rd Dec. 1792), promulgated to all their affiliated societies, in 'which they warned all true patriots not to confound these two names ; they acknowledged Marat's services in his own peculiar line, but they recorded a higher degree of confidence and respect for the more prudent patriotism, the more statesmanlike views, and the higher abilities of Robespierre. The attempt of the Girondins to defeat the Mountain in this preliminary fight having thus failed, they were obliged to meet the crisis of the King's trial on its own ground. Their difficulties were, in themselves, great — their dishonesty and indecision rendered them fatal. They did not choose to risk their popularity by the plain and conscientious course of acquitting the King, either on the broad ground of his innocence (of which not one of them had or could have any doubt), or even on the more technical plea of his constitutional inviolability ; but resolved on the base, and foolish, and — to them as to hun— fatal expedient of voting him guilty, which was done without one dissentient voice, and of com- pounding with their honour and consciences by inflicting a punish- ment short of death. But even this miserable device they had not courage nor con- sistency to execute : some of those most notoriously desirous of saving the King cowered under the menaces of the Mountain and the galleries in the most abject terror, and voted for death. Mercier, who was almost a Girondin, tells us, * the Girondins wished to save the King, but they did not wish to lose their popularity ; and the despotism of the mob being then omni- potent, it was who should caress it most.' M. Thiers, too, whose evidence when it makes against the Girondins has almost the weight of a confession^ says, that ' many of the deputies who had come dowoi with an intention of voting for the King were frightened at the fury of the people ; and, though much touched at the fate of Louis XVI., they v^^ere terrified at the consequences of an acquittal. This fear was greatly increased at the sight of the Assembly, and of the scene it presented. That scene, dark and terrible, had shaken the hearts of all, and changed the resolution of Lecointre de Versailles, whose personal bravery cannot be doubted, and who had not ceased to return to the galleries the menacing gestures with which they were intimidating the Assem- bly — even he, when it came to the point, hesitated, and dropped from 360 ROBESPIEEEE. his mouth the terrible and unexpected word ^^ death .'^ Vergniaud, who had appeared most deeply touched at the fate of the King, and who had declared that " nothing could ever induce him to condemn that unhappy prince — Vergniaud, at the sight of that tumultuous scene, pronounced the sentence of death." ' We do not doubt that the Assembly did exhibit a most strange and awful appearance towards the close of that long and dis- TJfd^erly sitting, that the galleries were audacious and the deputies pusillanimous to a disgraceful degree ; but personal danger, still more imminent, would have been but an abject excuse for such conduct as that of the regicide section of the Girondins. There are not wanting in the history of the Revolution instances of men less distinguished and in less responsible positions than Vergniaud, who preferred death to dishonour. But without pushing the argu- ment to that extremity, we must observe that about 288 deputies were not afraid to take the honest course, which the Girondins so shamefully abandoned. But, moreover, it seems that M. Thiers has somewhat exag- gerated the degree of intimidation that the aspect of the assembly might reasonably create : at least Mercier, an eye-witness and actor, describes a scene less formidable but more shocking. Mercier was a light-headed man, and a good deal of a caricaturist, on whose judgment or inferences we place little reliance ; but we cannot discredit his statement of facts, in which he bore a personal share, published while three-fourths of his fellow actors were still living, and the events were still glowing in the memory and the feelings of the public. The picture is so curious a one, that our sketches of Revolutionary History would be additionally imperfect without it. After stating how much of exaggeration and deception there is in the narratives of the events of the Revolution, he instances * the famous sitting, which decided the fate of Louis XVI., and lasted for seventy-two hours. One would naturally suppose that the Assembly was a scene of meditation, silence, and a sort of religious terror. Not at all : the end of the hall was transformed into a kind of opera-box, where ladies in charming negliges were eating ices and oranges, drinking liqueurs, and receiving the compliments and salutations of goers and comers. The huissiers on the side of the Mourdaiii acted the part of the openers of the opera-boxes ; they were employed every inststnt in turning the key in the doors of the side CONDEMNATION OF THE KING. 361 galleries, and gallantly escorting tlie mistresses of the Duke of Orleans, caparisoned with three-coloured ribbons. ' Although every mark of applause or disapprobation was for- bidden, nevertheless, on the side of the Mountain, the Duchess Dowager,* the Amazon of the Jacobin bands, made long " Ha-ha's ! " when she heard the word " death " strongly twang -in her ears. ' The lofty galleries, destined for the people during the days which preceded this famous trial, were never empty of strangers and people of every class, who drank wine and brandy as if it had been a tavern. Bets were open at all the neighbouring coffee-houses. ' Listlessness, impatience, and fatigue were marked on almost every countenance ; each deputy mounted the tribune in his turn, and every one was asking when his turn came. Some deputy came, I know not who, sick, and in his morning-gown and night-cap. This phantom caused a good deal of diversion in the Assembly. The countenances of those who went to the tribune, rendered more funereal from the pale gleams of the lights, and who in a slow and sepulchral voice pronounced only the word "Death!" — all these physiognomies which succeeded one another, their tones, their different keys : D'Orleans hissed and groaned when he voted the death of his relation ; some calculating if they should have time to dine before they gave their vote ; whilst women with pins were pricking cards in order to count the voices ; deputies who fell asleep, and whom they were forced to awaken in order to vote ; Manuel the secretary sliding away a few votes in order to save the unhappy King, and on the point of being put to death in the corridors as a punishment for his infidelity. These scenes can never be described as they passed ; it is impossible to figure what they were, nor will history be able to reach them.' — Merckrs New Picture of Fans, pp. 230-31. But there was another class of voters, including many of the minor Girondins, who accompanied their votes of death with conditions by which they meant no doubt to avert that extremity ; but even in this they acted with a clumsy inconsistency and want of concert, which defeated their object : they voted for death with a variety of limitations and conditions which complicated the transaction, perplexed and intimidated the moderate members, and enabled (as it was said and is believed) the scrutineers to falsify the ballot, so as to carry the vote for death by a majority of one. * Madame de Montasson, the second is one of those petty enigmas of the wife by a left-hand marriage of the last Revolutionary epoch which we cannot duke, the father of Egalite'. Her ap- explain, pearance in this place, on this occasion. 362 ROBESPIERRE. It was in allusion to these absurd and puzzling conditions that Sieyes is reported to have given his vote in the emphatic form of * La mort— sans phrase /' The varieties of opinion and general confusion of the Con- vention during that tumultuous and terrible night rendered it very difficult to ascertain the exact number of the votes and pro- portionably easy to the dominant party, in whose hands the scrutiny was, to give — as they were accused of doing — a fraudulent turn to a balance so nearly equal. At the close of the scrutiny, in the night of the 17th of January, Vergniaud, the President, who, with the whole Gironde, and nearly all the Girondins, had voted for death, announced that the number of voters had been 721, of which the majority would of course be 361, and that 365 had voted for death absolutely. But next day another president, Barrere, announced that a revision of the scrutiny had reduced the number of absolute votes for death to 361, being the bare majority necessary. Even this result has been questioned. Some writers on re-examination of the appel nominal find a majority for the King, others a majority of 3 or 4 against him. On the whole, we incline to believe that there was a real majority of 1 for death unconditionally, 64 for death conditionally : 288 voted for prison or banishment, while not one dared to acquit him,* the best and the boldest venturing only to decline to vote. ' It is impossible,' says Mercier (§ 220) apologetically, 'to describe the agitation, even to madness, of that long and convulsive sitting.' But it is not with their pusillanimous conduct in these last ter- rible sittings that we reproach the unhappy Girondins, so much as the preceding intrigues and cowardice which placed them in so dreadful an alternative that perhaps they could not, in that fatal struggle, have saved the King's life but at the expense of their own. Moralists, and even politicians, sitting in their quiet closets, may feel, or at least say, that one should die rather than be guilty of the death of the innocent ; and some of these men, no doubt, would individually have done so, who yet suffered themselves to be carried away by the torrent of numbers and of terror. A body of men may be led to do what no single villain would dare,: — defendit numerus^ — each hoped that the courage of others might compensate his own weakness, and the Convention exhibited on ♦ See Summary of the Proems Verbal, Proems des Bourbons, vol. ii. p. 126. HIS SPEECHES. 363 that night such a frightful mixture of enthusiasm on one side and desperation on the other,— such a moral earthquake, that, con- sidering the base infirmities of human nature, we are not so much surprised that many men (otherwise respectable and just) lost their balance and fell in the general prostration and ruin.* We say this not to extenuate villany and cowardice, but to warn our own country against the enormities of which a mere popular Assembly may be guilty, and against the incalculable danger of committing supreme power to any one body of men, who, how- ever individually respectable, honest, or honourable, are liable to become, in combination, the most shameless and the most bloody of tyrants. In the whole of this awful struggle, the dark and cautious Robespierre seemed to rise with the circumstances — forward, zealous, and consistent — and, it must be admitted, no more guilty than the enlightened and good-natured Vergniaud — in conscience, much less so — for Robespierre may have been sincere, and Vergniaud certainly was not, when they concurred in voting the death of the King. But, be that as it may, verily they had each their ultimate reward — measured and proportioned, as it almost seems, to the degrees of their guilt. The speeches of Robespierre on this melancholy occasion were considered his best oratorical exhibitions ; and it must be con- fessed that he alone seems to have taken anything like an intelli- gible view of the proceeding. While others were giving the pro- cess the hypocritical forms of a trial, and affecting to debate legal questions as before an ordinary tribunal, Robespierre had the sense to see that such pretexts were idle, and that the innocent King could never be condemned even by the perversion of law : he, therefore, took the broader and less dishonest ground of con- fessing that ' the death of the King was not a question of law, but of state policy, which, without quibbling about his guilt or innocence, required his death; — the life of one man — if ever so innocent — must be sacrificed to preserve those of millions.' This detestable doctrine — less detestable, however, than the hypocrisy * ' Nous votons,' said Lanjuinais, the escaped, and survived to exhibit the bravest and honestest man that the independent moderation of his charac- lievolution produced, ^ sous lepoignardet ter through all the phases of the Kevo- les canons des factieux.' Lanjuinais was lution, even down to the Kestoration. proscribed with the Girondins, but 364 ROBESPIERRE. which pretended to legality — was announced in more naked atrocity, and even put into the form of a substantive motion by his brother, Augustine, who, after complaining of the undue and scandalous scruples which the Convention seemed to entertain about doing justice on the most guilty — du plus scelerat — of men, proposed to decree at once — ' The National Convention, considering that Lonis, late King of the French, has been condemned (juge) by the Nation, that the re- presentatives of the People would betray their own duty and invade the rights of the People if they were to attempt to question its sove- reignty, decrees ' That Louis Capet shall he brought to the bar to declare his original accom- plices ; to hear sentence of death pronounced upon him, and to he forthwith conducted to execution.^ * A considerable tumult occurred at this stage of the debate, but it does not appear whether this extravagant proposition was actually put, or whether, as is most likely, it was smothered in the general confusion. We think it worth notice, as containing the essence of the elder Robespierre's argument and the true exposi- tion of the motives of the whole Jacobin party, who had avowed their intention of executing the King long before he was tried, aiid who had all along boldly employed the words trial and con- demnation as synonymous and identical. That crime was hardly consummated when the murderers resumed their intemecinal hostilities. Indeed, on the very night of the King's condemnation the Girondins made an attempt to turn it to profit against the Jacobins. ' We have but half done our duty,' cried Gensonne, one of the most sober of his party, ' in punishing the tyrant, if we do not punish the authors of the massacres.' Gensonne may perhaps have made this proposition in the hopes of saving Louis ; but such an expedient — a comparison between the King and the massacreurs — so false — so odious — revolted common sense and common honesty ; and the attempt, however intended, failed miserably, as attempted compromises between fear and falsehood on one side, and consistency and audacity on the other, never fail to do. The King expiated his * Neither the speech nor motion are Moniteur states that several members, in the Moniteur, but they were printed and Robespierre junior amongst them, separately by order of the Convention. opposed the allowing counsel to the The date is not given, but it must have King, been on the 10th December, when the REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL ESTABLISHED. 365 virtues on the scaffold, and when he was removed, the Girondins found that there was no longer any screen between them and Robespierre— that is, between them and the scaffold. The death of the King had at once blooded the hell-hounds of democracy and deprived them of their prey — they were easily harked-on upon the Gironde. A series of tumults succeeded, all directed against this party, which had still the majority — but an intimidated and time-serving majority — of the Convention. On all these occasions Robespierre took care to appear not as an instigator, and still less as an actor, but in the prudent character of the senatorial advocate of his more active associates. On the 10th of March, 1793, the Mountain, backed by mobs, obtained a considerable advantage over their opponents, and carried the establishment of the accursed Revolutionary Tribunal* Early in April, the defection of General Dumouriez, who was, in the eye of the public, a Girondin, accelerated a fall which was already certain. On the 10th of April, Robespierre, in a speech of considerable ability, connected this event with the political movements of the Girondins. Vergniaud and Guadet replied with so much force, and retorted the charge so powerfully on the Jacobins, that taking advantage of an indiscretion of Marat's in the debate, they carried a decree of accusation and arrest against him-f- — a great folly and fatal success. The Sections of Paris, with the mayor at their head, retaliated on the Convention by petitioning it to expel twenty- two of the leading Girondins from their body. On the presen- tation of this petition (15th April), another incident occurred, eminently characteristic of popular assemblies. Boyer-Fonfrede, a young Girondin, who happened not to have been comprised in the Twenty-two^ hastened to the tribune, and desired to be included in the accusation against his friends. The great majority of the Assembly, excited by this magnanimity, started up and exclaimed — 'Include us all — all — allV and grouped themselves about the Twenty-two^ with every demonstration of attachment and devotion ; and yet this very same Assembly a few weeks after adopted the prayer of this very petition, and sent the Twenty-two to prison — and eventually to death ! * See the Essay on the Revolutionary occasion : of 367 members, 220 voted Tribunals. against Marat, 92 for him— 7 voted + i)ii/2swns soon became so rare in the for an adjournment, and 48 refused to subservient Convention, that it is worth vote, while to preserve the numbers on this 366 ROBESPIERRE. The disorders became now more complicated — the Tribunal acquitted Marat— the Sections of Paris impeached the majority of the Convention. It was to one of these factious deputations, 11th May, 1793, that Isnard, the Girondin president of the Con- vention, made the celebrated but foolish and braggadocio reply : — ' If ever the Convention were insulted (irderruptioii) — if ever by one of those insurrections which since the 10th March have been so unceasingly repeated (violent interruption) — if by these incessant in- surrections — any attack should be made on the national representa- tives, I tell you, in the name of all France Qoud negatives) — I tell you, I repeat, in the name of all France, that Paris would be annihilated (^general tumult) — ^the traveller will seek along tlie shores of the Seine whe- ther Paris had ever eocisted.'' — J/ow., loco* This rhodomontade — -so characteristic of the Girondins — was, as to the purpose for which it was uttered, a mere Irntum fulmen — but not so in its effect on those to whom it was addressed — it ignited the train — the insurrection of the 31st March followed, and the impotent Girondins were scattered far and wide by the explosion. On that day a great body of petitioners who required the expulsion of the Girondins, not only invaded, but possessed themselves of the Convention — Isnard,t notwithstanding his ap- parent courage, basely abdicated his seat at the mandate of the mob, and escaped into concealment — Vergniaud attempted a secession and failed ridiculously. At this moment Robespierre presented himself in the tribune, and supported with great zeal the demand of the petitioners. Vergniaud (who had returned to his seat much mortified at the failure of his attempt at secession) * M. Thiers, with even more than of approbation. It appears by the his usual bad faith, attenuates the Moniteur that one voice only called for violence of this speech into — ' I declare the printing, and the affair ended in in the name of the liepuhlic that Paris a feeling the very contrary of what would undergo the vengeance of France, and M. Thiers in his Girondism chooses to would he blotted out {ray^)from the list of represent, and without, as far as we can cities.' He suppresses all the traces of see, the slightest authority, the tumult which the Moniteur gives 4 He survived the Reign of Terror, with more force and detail than we have and w^as to be seen in the days of room to copy; and he winds up by the Directory in the good — that is, saying that this reponse solennelle et the least bad — society of the day, grande produced a deep impression on where he was remarkable for being the Assembly — meaning a favourable very noisy and a hurd drinker. We see and sedative one, while it seems to have he preserved ad irnnm the same fan- done the very contrary; and he winds faron chai-acter. One might almost up the general misrepresentation by suspect that he was drunk when he saying that ' a crowd of voices demand- made this celebrated sortie on the ed the printing of the speech ' as a mark Jacobins. ATTACKS THE GIEONDINS. 367 interrupted the speaker, by exclaiming — * Come to the point.^ ^ I will,' replied Robespierre, — excited and emboldened by the pre- sence of the petitioners, who filled the very benches of the Assembly, — * I will — and it shall be against you — against you, who, after the revolution of the Tenth of August, endeavoured to bring to the scaffold the patriots who had accomplished it — against you, who have me- naced Paris with being razed from the face of the earth — against you, who would have saved the tyrant had you dared — against you, the accomplice of Dumouriez ! Yes, / come to the point, and I require a decree of accusation against all the accomplices of that traitor, as well as against all the others impeached by the petitioners.' — Moniteur. This vigorous sortie was vehemently applauded, and after two days of tumult — terrible almost to sublimity — it was (June 2nd) substantially embodied in a decree, and the Gironde was no more ! — literally no more, for not only were its deputies expelled and subsequently guillotined, but the very name of the guilty department was abolished, and it was called, till the 9 th Ther- midor, Le Bee (T Amies. From this period may be said to commence Robespierre's per- sonal responsibility in the revolutionary administration : hitherto he was but an individual incendiary, the leader of a party which, though all-powerful out of doors, were still in the minority of the Assembly, and he himself exposed to daily insult and danger. The case was now changed — the former majority were expelled, exiled, imprisoned, silenced — ^the Mountain became predominant, and Robespierre, in effect, all-powerful. The precise date of Robespierre's accession to responsible autho- rity is stated by different writers with a looseness and mutual con- tradiction, which prove how carelessly the history of these times has been hitherto written.* It will, we believe, sm-prise most readers to be told that any chronological doubt should exist in the history of events so recent — so notorious — written and published from day to day and from year to year, by such an infinite number of pens ; but the fact is, * The life of Robespierre in Mr. and the mystery which hangs over Adolphus's very able work — ' Biographi- Robespierre's conduct and policy. Sub- cul Memoirs of the French Revolution,' sequent writers, instead of endeavouring published in 1799, which we have al- to clear up the obscurities indicated by ready noticed, is the best we have seen, Mr. Adolphus, have taken the easier and indeed the only one which notices course of finding nothing to doubt adequately the difficulty of the subject about. 2 B 368" BOBESPIERRE. that nothing is more remarkable or embarrassing than the neglect of dates in all those works which are called Histories of the French Revolution^ the writers of which really seem as if they thought that an historian might disdain the humbler merit of chronology. Ev^n in such a loose and desultory sketch as we are writing, we find this difficulty meeting us at every turn. Let us cite as an instance the question we have just mentioned — a very important one — namely, the precise date from which Robespierre, by his entrance into the Committee of Public Safety* may be reckoned to have taken a responsible share in the government — a date which ouo*ht to be as well ascertained as the 10th of Auo^ust or the 9th Thermidor ; but upon which no two writers seem to agree. Montjoye, a contemporary witness, who began his poor and prejudiced history of Robespierre while he was still alive, and pub- lished it soon after his fall, gives us to understand that Robespierre was a member of the Committee of Public Safety, as early as its first formation, soon after the death of the king. Papon in his history states, that Robespierre was an original member of the Committee of Public Safety^ and he too seems to place its creation shortly after the death of the king, and at latest before the 21st March, 1793. Mignet says that he was elected to it on its first ' renouvellement * after the 31st May, 1793. Messrs. Beaulieu and Michaud, in their article in the ' Biographie Universelle,' state, that he was a member of the Committee of General Defence before the fall of the Girondins (31st May, 1793), and that immediately after that event he assiduously attended the Committee of Public Safety. M. Thiers, on the contrary, states, that it was not till the resignation of Gasparin, in August, 1793, that the Convention, which had hitherto declined to elect Robespierre on any committee, was now reluctantly subdued into naming him on the Committee of Public Safety. * We employ this usual title, though with the higher political functions — it is not an adequate translation of the the extraordinaries, we may call them French ' Salut Public,' axid confounds — of the Revolution, while the Com- the attributes of the two great commit- mittee de Surety Ge'nerule — general seen-' tees of government, which were not rity or safety, conducted the more merely distinct, but sometimes almost ordinary details of administration and rivals. The Committee de Salut PubliG police. — literally pvbliG salvation, was charged f COMMITTEE OF GENEEAL DEFENCE. 369 Durand de Maillane, a member of the Convention, and a party to all these proceedings, says, that the Committee of General De- fence was organized on the 25th of March, 1793, with great powers, which however he adds were restricted by the subsequent appoint- ment of * a Committee of Public Safety, into lohich Robespierre did not obtain early admission, but where he was dreaded before he was admitted ;' but he does not state the date of that admission. And, finally, the Moniteur, the dernier resort in all such cases, states the appointment of a new Committee of Defense Generale, ou du Salut Public, on the 25th March, 1793, and gives a list of its members, including all the leading men of both sides of the Convention — Vergniaud Sind Robespierre^ — Sieyes and Danton, &c., to the number of twenty-five ; but it is probable that this mixed committee never met — for ten days later, on the 6th of April, the formation of a Committee of Public Safety, of nine members, was decreed on the motion of Isnard, but he was only the reporter of a committee, and probaby not himself in favour of the measure, which was opposed by his Girondin friends, and carried and the members named by the Jacobins; and to this committee — the celebrated Committee of Public Safety — Robespierre did not belong till the 26th July, when he was elected in the room of Gasparin, resigned. The statements of the Moniteur, though imperfect, must be, as far as they go, correct ; and they contradict, in one point or another, every one of the former statements except that of Durand, who does not give any date. With the Moniteur open before them, we cannot imagine why all these writers should have stated, so vaguely and discordantly, a fact which, when Robespierre is tried at the bar of posterity, be- comes important, not perhaps as to his private character, but as to his public responsibility. It is one thing to preach sedition and anarchy as a leader of Opposition, and another to order and enforce, as a member of a Government, the most atrocious violations of law, justice, humanity, and social order : the heart was equally bad in * The Index to the Moniteur says ing the administration, and especially * re-elu ;' but this may refer to his hav- as to the ministry of war, in the tone of ing belonged to the former Committee a member of the government ; and in of General Defence; but it seems that one of Mehee's attacks on the Thermi- prior to this election, or re-election, dorians it is stated repeatedly that he Robespierre proposed measures concern- entered the Committee in June. 2 B 2 370 EOBESPIEREE. both cases — but in the former he can only be charged as one of many instigators of crimes, of which, in the latter case, he was the chief and most guilty perpetrator. There is another point of chronology still more important to Robespierre's history, which seems to us to have been mistaken. There was found in Robespierre's papers an undated Note, called by Courtois, in his report, ' Note essentielle^ which commences with a remarkable expression — ' II faut une volonte une.' This is quoted by Courtois, and by all subsequent writers, as written in the last palmy days of Robespierre's triumph, and as a proof that he was then preparing to usurp the sole sovereign authority ; but this is certainly an error. On a closer examination of the Note, it will be found, from an incidental allusion to Custine, that it must have been written previous to that General's recall from the army, early in July, 1793, and therefore before Robespierre had influence enough in the Convention to be elected into the committees of government. It is clear, also, that it was only the heads of a speech prepared during one of the popular insurrections — probably either that of 10th March, or 31st May, 1793, when assuredly Robespierre was as yet in no condition to dream of establishing a volonte une in his own person ; and moreover it appears, from the context, that volontS une meant — not the will of one, but one will; for it states that the volonte une was to be ' republican, and to be carried into eflPect by republican ministers, republican journals, republican deputies, and a republican government' — ^in short a unity of principle, not a unity of power. So that, in fact, this celebrated paper proves nothing as to the design which Robespierre is supposed to have formed above a year after it was really written. A more minute attention to dates would explain many points of Robespierre's policy.* For instance, from the moment (2nd June, 1793) that his party became the majority, Robespierre's course of proceedings was essentially changed. He now began to defend, even against his own over-zealous partisans, the Convention, the Government, and even the Committee of Pubhc Safety, though the members of this Committee were moderates, and had not been displaced by the late revolution. This change, unnoticed by most * An able pamphlet, with the quaint title of * La Tete a la Queue,' says that Robespierre entered the Committee in June. PEESIDENT OF THE CONVENTION. 371 historians, is, by those who mention it, attributed to a new light broken in upon his mind, an incipient conversion to a principle of moderation. It was no such thing— it was the mere result of his \ change of position, from being one of the minority to being one of the majority. He now saw that he should be soon called to the chief direction of affairs, and, like all other Oppositionists who be- came Ministerialists — was disposed to repress the disorganization which he had hitherto provoked. But he was still but a private man ; and in the course of July he seems to have exhibited sym- ptoms of opposition to the measures of the Government. Whether this awoke the Committee to the expediency of securing his co- operation we know not, but we find that on the 27th July, 1793, it announced to the Convention the resignation from ill health of one of its members, Gasparin, and proposed Robespierre as his successor. This admission to power was followed by another mark of distinction from which the jealousy of the Girondins had hitherto excluded him. It was not till the 23rd August, 1793, that he obtained the honour of being named President * of the Convention. The Girondins had monopolised that honour till their fall, then we find the Jacobin names of CoUot, Danton, Herault, and then Robes- pierre. It is evident that, even after the expulsion of above a hundred of his avowed enemies he was still unpopular with the majority of the Convention. But he cannot even yet be considered as a dictator — that fatal pinnacle he attained only on the death of Hebert, near a year later ; and from the 31st May, 1793, to April, 1794, Robespierre and his Jacobins must be considered rather as the colleagues of Danton and the Cordeliers t than the * It is observed by Richer-Lecocq, called Jacobins, because their first loca- in his ' Accusateur Public ' — there tion in Paris was La Rue St. Jacques, could be no better antidote to ambition The Cordeliers were Franciscans, so than to examine the list of the 76 presi- called from the cord which they woi-e dents of the Convention, whose melan- as a girdle. Their convent near the choly fates are thus recorded — Luxembourg gave its name to the Dan- Guillotined 18 ionist Club. The Feuillants were of Suicides to avoid the scaffold' .... 3 the order of St. Bernard, and so called Transported 8 from their principal convent at Feuil- Ouulwed^** ••;;;;••;; 22 l^nt in Languedoc. Their convent was Went mad '. *. '. '. *. *. *.'.'.!! 4 nearly opposite that of the Jacobins in — the Rue St. Honore, and still nearer ^^ the Hall of the Assembly (the Manage). f All these clubs took their names It was here that a moderate club of from the convents, whose halls, left Constitutionalists, seceders from the unappropriated by the expulsion of the Jacobins, endeavoured to establish monks, were seized upon by the clubs. themselves, and so utterly failed, that The Jacobins took possession of a club the very title ' Feuillant' became a sen- of the Dominicans, who were popularly tence of death. 872 EOBESPIERRE. supreme authority. We may however date from Robespierre's election into the Committee, what is distinctively called the Reign of Terror, It is true that the whole revolution was a system of Terror, to which Robespierre had, as we have seen, contributed no small share, but we are now speaking only of that period in which it began to assume that character of systematic and organised cruelty which is commonly, and justly we believe, attributed to his individual temper and influence. It was only by gradual steps that such a tyranny could be carried to the tremendous height it finally attained ; but immediately after Robespierre's election we see in the increased activity and thirst of blood exhibited by the Committee indications of his presence — a decree to give the Committee a larger power of arrest — a decree for the trial of General Custine, another for the transfer of the queen to the Con- ciergerie. On the 23rd August, 1793, was passed the decree of the LevSe en masse, which would not only secure the frontiers from external enemies, but would remove from the interior all those who were likely to impede the course of domestic despotism. Next came a Forced Loan, which plundered and intimidated all the affluent classes. On the 17th September followed the celebrated Loi des Suspects, which enacted a series of definitions of those who might — even on the denunciation of an individual — be arrested as suspected persons, definitions which included, in one or other of their categories, all man and woman kind. These three laws rendered the government uncontrolled masters of the property and persons of the whole population of France ; and lest there should be found in them any latent restriction — any possibility of evasion — a fourth decree, of the 10th October, declared the government revolutionary, or, in other words, invested it with an absolute despotism for any object whatsoever which the government should choose to think or call revolutionary* Such was the early legislation of Terror. Before we proceed to show how it was executed, we must pause a moment to consider the personal influence which Robespierre had in that system. From the 31st May, when Robespierre began to take a part in the direction of afikirs, we find him gradually investing himself in deeper and deeper mystery ; and as his public authority and its d^cesses grew more and more notorious, his private conduct and * See as to the technical import and ' Essay on the Revolutionary Tribu- efifect of the word 'reYolutionary,' nals,' p. 433. A HIS MOTIVES AND INTENTIONS. 373 objects become more and more obscure. It would be most inte- resting to pierce that obscurity, to know how he thought, and felt, and what he did in the leisure moments of his unparalleled des- potism, but the truth we suppose is, that he had little private life and no moments of leisure. The Committee, the Convention, and the Jacobins, by the day, and latterly the judges and public accusers of the Tribunal by night, must have left him no private moments. Some authorities, and amongst others, Buonaparte (who had some early connexion with the Robespierres), affect to believe that Maximilian was not the founder of the system of Terror, and that he was for a time inclined to moderate it, and at last fell in an endeavour to arrest and overthrow it. The motives of any man, and particularly of one so insulated and reserved as Robespierre, are inscrutable — they are what Thiers emphatically calls the secret of mens souls — and convinced as we are that Robespierre possessed an acute, logical, and calculating mind, it would seem, a priori^ highly probable — and that moral probability is strengthened by many practical indications — that Robespierre entertained some such laudable intentions ; but, on the other hand, the great facts of the case chronologically considered, form, as it seems to us, a body of almost irresistible evidence, that the reigns of Robespierre and of Terror cannot be distinguished in fact, or separated in reason. The four great measures of organized despotism which we have just mentioned, were proposed and adopted after Robes- pierre had been added to the Committee of Public Safety, and he had been the only important addition. We shall see presently, in considering the execution of those measures, that the Terror grew in frightful intensity in a gradual and exact proportion to the in- crease of Robespierre's personal authority. We are aware of the fallacy in ordinary affairs of the argument propter, quia post — but in this case the steps of Robespierre* were followed so exactly and ♦ The letters of Collot leave no doubt Affranchie, 15 Frim., An 11. ', that ia, of his active participation in all that Lyons, December, 1793 ; and, after villain's atrocities at Lyons; and there some congratulations on Robespierre's is one letter even more decisive than death, and his own active measures for those addressed to Robespierre himself. giving effect to the revolutionary spirit. It is one addressed to Robespierre's he proceeds: — ' We have awakened the host, Duplay, but meant evidently for prompt and terrible justice of the the Dictator himself, in whose papers people, which strides like a thunder- it was found. It is dated, ' Commune bolt, and leaves nothing but ruins after 374 , EOBESPIEERE. so invariably by the stream of blood, that we cannot relieve our minds from the conclusion that they must have been cause and consequence. We now return to the executive measures of this deplorable tyranny. Popular massacres were out of fashion. Indeed they were no longer applicable to the projects of Robespierre and his party, who had ceased to be anarchists and were now desirous of consolidating a Government, and who therefore required a perma- nent instrument capable of control — and, instead of such un- manageable conflagrations, they erected, like Nebuchadnezzar, a furnace, whose intensity they might guide, and the number and quality of whose victims they could select. Immediately after the Tenth of August, 1792, a special tribunal was established for the trial of political offences. In the height of the struggle between the Jacobins and Girondins, on the 16th March, 1793, the Convention was terrified into giving it, on the proposition of Danton, a new constitution and more extensive powers. It was even proposed by the Jacobins to change its name to the Revolutionary Tribunal : the Convention, still under some degree of Girondin influence, saw in the word revolutionary a contradiction to all legality, and named it only Tribunal Extra- ordinaire. We shall see presently how it regained its original designation, and how well it deserved it. This tribunal was the furnace required — it was permanent, manageable, servile — and, under the forms of what had replaced law and justice in France, was capable and willing to exercise any degree of oppression, and to commit any extent of murder. For some months, this tribunal sent to the scaffold but a few, and these inconsiderable victims. It was now to be brought into greater activity, but its progress was regulated with art. The first considerable victim (17th August, 1793) was General Custine* — it. By destroying an infamous and re- terday; 230 will fall to-day. I shall bellious town, all others are brought to take care to have Robespierre's last obedience. We employ, as far as pos- speech copied into our journals. Pre- sible, in its destruction, cannon and sent the assurance of my sincere and explosions; but you must feel that with unalterable friendship to your repub- a population of 150,000 we find many lican family. Shake Robespierre's hand difficulties. The popular axe disposed heartily for me.' — Pap. Rob. 186. of 20 heads a-day, without frightening * Of the thousands who died on the them: the prisons were still full. We scaffold in France, this General and have created a Commission, for the Madame du Barri appear to have been more rapid judgment of these traitors: the only tvfo who showed any pusillani- 64- of these conspirators were shot yes- moua weakness. Poor Madame du EXECUTION OF TWENTY-ONE GIRONDINS. 375 his execution intimidated the generals. There was a certain in- cendiary journalist, named Gorsas,* whose brutal violence had procured his election to the Convention, where he had joined the Girondins. On their proscription he had escaped and was out- lawed ; he was taken, and being identified was sent by the Revo- lution to the scaffold on the 7th October. This was the first instance of the immolation of a deputy — it was well chosen — Gorsas, besides being a personal enemy of Robespierre, was odious and contemptible, and, having been outlawed, a trial was not neces- sary — but it sufficiently announced what was intended for the rest of the Girondins, who languished in prison till the public mind should be sufficiently blooded to enable the Jacobins to proceed to their condemnation. With this object, we incline to believe, rather than any other,t the Queen was next immolated (16th October). The detestable calumny which llebert ventured against this injured — and not merely innocejit but — admirable woman is notorious ; but it is not *o well known that Robespierre, who was certainly the immediate mover of her execution, expressed great indignation at the charge — ^not at its falsehood and atrocity, but at its impolicy — ' That fool Hebert,' he exclaimed, ' will make her an object of pity ! ' Between the 16th and 30th of October, sixteen other victims, two, three, and four at a time, prepared the Parisians for the execution, on the 31st, of the Twenty-one Girondins. These men were so clearly innocent of the crimes of which they were charged, and were so clearly guilty of what was then called ' patriotism,' and defended themselves so well by that eloquence which had been so long the tocsin of the Revolution, that the tribunal hesitated to con- demn them. The danger to the cause of the Jacobins was great ; but their audacity, or, we should rather say, that of Robespierre, was Barri had probably little resource in her cowardly weakness. — Diurnal, ii. 85. own mind, thovigh innocent of the * Gorsas had been a schoolmaster. — crimes for which she suffered; the Hist, de rEspion., ii. 69. He had been retrospect of her former life could ^ journalist early in the Kevolution, and afford her little. consolation or courage; set up, after the 10th of August, as a but it seems doubtful whether the printer. He showed a good deal of alleged pusillanimity of Custine was courage, and ended his life with reli- not really the contrition of religion. gious sentiments. He was accompanied to the last moments f Mercier confesses that he cannot by a priest whose exhortations he ap- guess why the Queen, and still less peared to listen to with feelings of why Madame Elizabeth, were executed, piety and compmiction, which the Jaco- — Nouv. Tah.%%1. bins would no doubt characterise as a 876 EOBESPIEERE. greater. It was no doubt under his impulse, that on the 28th October, the fourth day of the trial, the Jacobins, on the motion of Hebert, expressed their indignation at such a delay of justice, and voted an address to be presented to the Convention, by the Club en masse, accompanied by its galleries, ve(\mrmg judgment on the accused within twenty-four hours. This address, presented on the 29th, was moulded by Robespierre into a decree, that ^Whenever any trial should have lasted three days, the tribunal might declare itself satisfied of the guilt of prisoners — might stop the defence — close the discussions — and send the accused to death T And lest any possible chance of a prisoner's acquittal should remain, Billaud- Varennes proposed, and the Convention decreed, that the title of Tribunal Extraordinaire should be changed into that of Tribunal R^volutionnaire — by this change of a single word, giving the judges a revolutionary discretion — in other words — arbitrary power! These decrees — passed at the Tuileries whilst the trial was pending at the Palais — were that evening sent to the Tribunal, read, and inscribed on its register at its sitting next morning. In the course of the day the bloody suggestion was adopted, the jury declared itself satisfied, and at midnight on the 30th of October, condemned the Twenty-one to death, who were next morning executed * as already stated, in the Place de la Revolution, under the windows of the Hall of the Convention, the scene of their crimes, their triumphs, and their fall. Here Robespierre was avowedly the chief director ; but he acted with the advice and concurrence of Danton ; and for his vengeance there may be, as we before observed, this palliative, that the Giron- dins had been the assailants, and that, if he had not sent them to the scaffold, they would undoubtedly have sent him. Up to this point, therefore, the advocates of Robespierre might have some colour for doubting that he was instigated by an innate cruelty and gratuitous love of blood. Heretofore, the intoxication of faction, the frenzy "of revenge, and the necessity of self-defence, might be alleged in excuse for his proceedings ; but henceforth these palliations, miserable as they are, cannot be adduced. We must look for other motives. * Twenty only were executed: one, be carried in tlie same cart with his Dufriche-Valaze', on hearing the sen- living friends to the place of execution tence, had stabbed himself, but the —an unheard-of barbarity, tribunal ordered that his corpse should HIS DREAD OF ASSASSINATION. 377 This blow, struck at the heart of the national representation itself, in the persons of its most distinguished members, was ren- dered still more formidable by the poor and frequently ignoble defence made by these terror-stricken men, and paralysed every soul. The Convention became from this hour a silent and servile accomplice in the atrocities of its Committees and their obedient Tribunal ; and, except Robespierre's own, there was not a head which did not tremble at the fall of Vergniaud's. But was even he himself at ease ? Far from it. His anxieties and tortures were greater than those of the most tortured of his victims — ' Nee hos Evasisse putes, quos diri conscia facti Mens babet attonitos, et surdo verbere casdit, Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum ! ' * He had committed an enormous faulty as well as an atrocious crime, in violating the persons of the national representatives : he found, too late, that he had made his position so slippery with blood, that every movement menaced him with an inevitable fall ; and * assassination,^ and the ' approaching sacrifice of his life,' be- came the first objects of his thoughts and the prominent topics in all his harangues, even when he seemed at an inaccessible pinnacle of elevation. Danton, hitherto his associate and champion, the audacious Danton, began to hesitate. The motives usually assigned for this change were indolence and self-indulgence. He had accumulated a considerable fortune by his corrupt dealings with d' Orleans, by peculations in a mission to Belgium, and by other dishonest means ; he had also about this time made a decent marriage with a young and handsome wife, and was certainly, with all his political ferocity, of a social, sybarite disposition. These circumstances would account naturally enough for his wishing to make a safe retreat, but there were two other considerations which may have tended to wean him from political life. His first object had been the elevation of d' Orleans to the throne ; all expectations of that na- * ' Robespierre grew more and more was afraid that his own shadow would gloomy ; his repulsive looks frightened assassinate him. The last time I saw every one. He could talk of nothing him his looks were equally alarmed and but assassination, and again assassina- alarming.' — Vilaite. tion, and always assassination. He 378 ROBESPIEEEE. ture had been gradually fading, and were at last extinguished by his execution, 6th November, 1793, a few days after that of the Girondins. The fall of this great accomplice, which dissipated any remaining fumes of his early ambition, must also have excited, bold as he was, some apprehensions for his personal safety, and might very reasonably explain the cooling of his revolutionary zeal. But, secondly, Danton's specialty was his power of raising and directing popular insurrections — mobs against authorities ; but when after the victory over the Girondins the mob itself became the sovereign — the pique the sceptre, the bonnet rouge the crown — and Danton himself one of the chief ministers of the Reign of Terror — there was no longer any antagonistic power to intimidate, no rival authority to pull down, and Danton's occupation was gone ! Whether he now meditated a real retirement into private life as soon as he could safely accomplish it, or was waiting till the domi- nation of Robespierre should offer the occasion of a popular insur- rection against his usurpation, can never perhaps be known. We rather incline to the latter conjecture ; but it is certain that he acted as if he had at last taken fright — he declined to be of the Committee of Public Safety — obtained leave of absence from the sittings of the Convention, and endeavoured to escape notice and drown his apprehensions in the enjoyment of social and domestic life. But the rest of Robespierre's pack of bloodhounds grew only more and more ravenous for a continuation of their daily prey, and Maximilian began to see the risk of being devoured by his own dogs. He endeavoured to appease them by accumulated carcasses. But all would not do — the bloodhounds were insatiable, and there were many and not obscure indic^ons that Robespierre himself was in imminent danger. The leader of this new faction — which Camille Desmoulins designated by the new coined term of ultra- revolutionists — was Hebert, the editor of a blasphemous, indecent, bloody, and every way infamous journal, called Le Pere Duchesne ; Vincent, a clerk in the War Office ; Momoro, a printer ; Gram- mont, a player ; Ronsin, who had been a playwriter, and was now a general ; Clootz, a crazy Prussian ; and Chaumette,* an attorney's * His real name was Peter Gaspard but. he was still in all public acts, in the Chaumet, but on his election to be Almanack National, and in the Moniteur, Procureur de la Commune, he changed called Chaumet, till about May, 1793, ' the name of two Saints, in whom,' he when we find him called Chaumette, and said, ' he had no faith, into Anaxagoras' — this became the general orthography. FESTIVAL OF THE GODDESS OF EEASON. 379 clerk, now the procureur-general of the Commune of Paris. The first hostility of these men against their late idol took a singular turn. Robespierre had always professed some respect for moral ideas, and was supposed to be not unfavourable — on political grounds at least — to religious worship. A certain priest of the name of Gobel, who had embraced the Revolution with a blind and impotent zeal, had been elected Archbishop of Paris. The Hebertists persuaded this poor wretch to go in procession, in all his archiepiscopal state, and with his clerical attendants, to the bar of the Convention, where he delivered up the insignia, and abjured the obligation, of his sacred character — while his followers explicitly avowed atheism, and demanded the extermination of all superstition. Several bishops and priests, members of the Convention, followed this im- pious example ; Christianity was publicly abolished in France, and the worship of Reason substituted in its stead. But that was not all. Chaumette, who was the chief legal magistrate of Paris, pro- cured a decree of the municipality for the celebration in the ci-devant churches of the worship of the new divinity ; * the Cathedral of Notre Dame was designated as the Temple of Reason, and on the 10th of November was celebrated the feast of the God- dess — represented by Momoro's wife — who, in an indecent attire, was seated on the high altar, and received and returned the devo- tion of her votaries by a kiss. In this shocking farce Robespierre saw not only a dissolution of all morals and of the bonds of human society, but an insult to his known sentiments, and, perhaps, an anticipated attack on his own intentions of returning to some system of moral and religious govern- ment. He boldly assailed Hebert in the Jacobin Club — ^ridiculed and denounced his new religion, and inculcated the advantage and necessity of a moral and religious constitution of society in a sensible and vigorous speech, in which he repeated Voltaire's cele- brated phrase — ' If the Divinity did not exist, a wise legislator would have invented it.' This annihilated the worship of Reason, but only further exas- perated the Hebertists. Danton by this time had discovered that retirement would afford him no security ; and, suspecting that he was equally obnoxious to Hebert and Robespierre, returned to his * A sketch of some of these profanations is given in Mercier's Nouv. Tab. § 151, 152. 380 EOBESPIERRE. duties in the Convention. His re-appearance was the signal for his impeachment by Hebert ; but Robespierre, exasperated and alarmed by the audacity of that villain, defended Danton with singular boldness and ability — we should have added, with gene- rosity, did not the sequel prove that he could have no such feeling. The Hebertists thus doubly defeated had recourse to Danton and J Robespierre's own system of raising the Sections and their mobs against the Convention, under the pretence of stimulating public justice against the counter revolutionists. They belonged to Danton's old club of the Cordeliers, and affected to maintain the principles from which they accused him of being an apostate. It was now that, in opposition to these new Cordeliers, Camille Desmoulins began a journal called The Old Cordelier. Des- moulins had been one of the first firebrands of the Revolution, and had assumed the atrocious title of Attorney- General of the Lanterne, in those days when the Lanterne was the instrument of popular murder ; but, like Danton, he had lately married a young and rich wife, and like him, he began to feel some emotions of humanity when he found his oiun property and person in danger. The ' Old Cordelier ' was the first publication which since the Revolution had dared to talk of clemency and of closing the bleeding wounds of the country ; and coming from so unex- pected a quarter, it was received with prodigious applause, and is to this day quoted as a model of wit, pleasantry, argument, and eloquence all combined in the cause of humanity. To us it appears that its literary merits are much over-rated, though no doubt, to a public so long trembling under the fear of death, its effect must have been very great. Nor did its publication require much cou- rage — of which, indeed, Desmoulins' share was but small — for he was supported and prompted by the powerful Danton, and even by the still more powerful Robespierre.* But he overshot his mark : Robespierre saw with pleasure the attack on the Hebertists, but it did not require his jealousy to see in the Old Cordelier (the very title of which was offensive to the leader of the rival club of the Jacobins) many bitter and ominous sarcasms against his own system ; and he could not but resent that reproduction of his old aristocratic signature of De Robespierre, ♦ Robespierre read and con-ected the 'Old Cordelier.' This we know from proof sheets of the first numbers of the both him and Desmoulins. DANTON AND DESMOULINS. 381 which we before noticed. The public success, however, of this journal, and the co-operation of Danton, assured Robespierre that he might venture to proceed to extremities with Hebert and his followers. They were arrested on the night of the 13th of March, 1794. Their trial began on the 20th, and having lasted three days, the jury, under the decree made on Hebert's own motion against the Girondins, declared themselves satisfied ; and on the 24th, Hebert and his followers were condemned — arte perire sua — and executed the same evening, to the number of nineteen persons, perishing within one hour on one scaffold. Universal joy and hope pervaded France at this act of retribu- tive justice. It was received as the dawn of a new era. Robes- pierre, Danton, and Desmoulins were supposed to be united in a system of mercy and moderation ; and at this moment it seems as if Robespierre had had it in his power to close the horrors of the Revolution. Why he did not do so appears to us very difficult, on any of the principles of human action, to understand — but entirely inexplicable on the supposition adopted — with more or less con- fidence — by most historians and biographers, — by Buonaparte, — by the Abbe Guillen in his History of the 'Martyrs, and by a large portion of the literary world, — that Robespierre entertained, towards the end of his life, what were called moderate principles. Here was a most remarkable crisis ; he had avenged at once morality, religion, and social order by the punishment of Hebert ; he had lately added to his fame and his popularity by his generous defence of Danton : Camille Desmoulins had, still more recently, advocated clemency with, as was supposed, his concurrence ; his reunion with these old friends appeared now complete, and cemented by the strongest interests and on the best of all grounds ; yet, in an interval of ten days, the whole scene was changed in the most unexpected and terrible manner. He had overthrown and sent to the scaffold — with Danton' s, at least, tacit consent— their common enemies on the 24th of March * and on the 4th of April, Danton and Desmoulins, his old friends and allies, were— will posterity believe it ? — arrested, and sent on the 5th to the scaffold, still wet with the blood of their antagonists and victims ! What could have occurred in that short interval? The sarcasms of Desmou- lins may have offended Robespierre ; but they were sarcasms principally directed against the common enemy, and which had 1 382 ROBESPIERRE. - ' contributed to the common success. Besides, after all, in such grave and vital matters, gay and even bitter pleasantries can hardly account for such desperate extremities. But what had Danton done ? Why was he so generously defended in November — so suddenly sacrificed in April ? He was certainly not eager in the prosecution of Hebert, as is shown by — amongst graver proofs — a slight circumstance which is nevertheless worth preserving. On the 16th of March a deputation appeared at the bar to con- gratulate the Convention on the fall of Hebert, and one of the deputation sang a song made for the occasion. Danton was offended at this ; and the great Danton' s last act was the obtaining a decree of the National Assembly that henceforward no one should be allowed to sing songs at its bar. {Moniteur, 17 th March, 1794.) But though no doubt alarmed at Hebert's fate, he had concurred in it, and had certainly shown — in a meeting which a common friend had negotiated between him and Robes- pierre — no disposition to play an independent part. The lion appeared to have been completely tamed, and appeared to desire no better than to live in domestic tranquillity. Nor has any reason been ever assigned why Robespierre did not accept the overtures then made to him for an entire and cordial reconci- liation. Robespierre himself, in one of his speeches, gives us his own bill of indictment against Danton : — * I must add to this that a particular duty is imposed upon me to defend the purity of principles against the efforts of intrigue. For tmto me also have they tried to inspire fears. They tried to make me believe that the danger which threatens Danton would also reach me. They represented him to me as a man to whom I ought to attach myself — that he would be to me a shield and rampart, which, once knocked down, would leave me exposed to all the darts of my enemies. I have been written to — Danton' s friends have sent me letters, have persecuted me with their discourses ; they believed that the remembrance of an old friendship (liaison) — a former faith in false virtues — would induce me to slacken my zeal and my passion for liberty. Well, I declare that not one of those motives has made the slightest impression on me. I declare that, were it true that Danton' s dangers were to become my owoi, that if they were to cause the aristocracy another step to seize me, I should not look upon that circumstance as a public calamity. What are dangers to me ? My life belongs to my country, my heart is free from fears ; EXECUTION OF DANTON. 383 and, if I died, it would be without reproach, and without igno- miny.' (Applause.) ' Danton, the most dangerous of the enemies of the country if he had not been the most cowardly* — Danton, temporizing with every crime, connected with every plot, j)romising to the criminals pro- tection, and to the patriots fidelity — artful in giving his treasons the pretext of public good — in justifying his vices by his pretended faults — he contrived through his friends to have the conspirators who were on the point of effecting the ruin of the republic, accused in an insignificant or favourable manner, in order that he might himself have an opportunity of defending them— he intrigued with Brissot, corresponded with Eonsin, encouraged Hebert, and pre- pared for every event, so as to be sure that he should gain whether thsy failed or succeeded, and be the better able to rally all the ene- mies of libei-ty against the republican government.' — Rapport du 18 Flor., p. 9. These vague and, in some points, very obscure charges, throw little light on the question, and upon the whole, we can bring our minds to rest upon two only explanations : either Danton and his friends saw in Robespierre an implacable enemy to mercy, and had therefore formed some intrigue to bring him to the scaffold ; or, as has been surmised, St Just, Couthon, Collot, and the violent Jacobins, menaced Robespierre himself, if he did not consent to the sacrifice of Danton. Either of these explanations is full of difficulty, and we must leave the question as obscure as we have found it, with this difference only, that other writers have evaded it, and that our doubts may perhaps have the effect of suggesting some deeper researches into this enigmatical point of the history of the Revolution.! Robespierre now stood alone, more dreaded and less powerful than ever. The death of Danton, so long his friend and so often * The original epithet is lache, which his boldness in life, and even on the may mean something more than mere scafiFold, was inflamed with wine. * The personal cowardice — the effect of mean- savage Danton, all tvhose decrees smell of ness as well as fear. Danton himself wine^ died intoxicated.' — Nouv. Tab. 102. boasted that his main characteristic It is remarkable that in Robespierre's was audacity ; but audacity is not catalogue of Danton's crimes, he does always courage. Danton certainly did not include the topic which others have not expose himself any more than so copiously handled — his connection liobespierre on the 10th August, and with d' Orleans. Had Robespierre him- finally lost himself for want of decision, self some secret sin of that kind ? if not of resolution. Mercier says that f See p. 472. 2 c . -( 384 ROBESPIERRE. his defender, alienated, and we may say, revolted — by its inex- plicable motives and its obvious ingratitude and impolicy — his stanchest adherents. When Danton fell, there was no man who could think his own life worth half-an-hour's purchase, and in every heart there was excited a double feeling of subservience and suspicion ; they became cautious not to provoke, and yet anxious to relieve themselves from such an unintelligible tyranny. And now again, if Robespierre had any moderate designs, he was the uncontrolled and indisputable master of his own policy, and might, and must have shown some tendency to moderation ; but, instead of any such symptom, the march of legal massacre became more rapid and bloody. The executions, which since the death of the Girondins had seldom exceeded ei^ht or ten per diem, and in one case — that of Hebert — only reached nineteen, now became frequently thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty I We have ex- amined, as originally published from the prochs verhaux of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the ' Liste Generale des Condamnes,^ and we have extracted the following table of the results, which we think will astonish our readers, and prove that the execu- tions grew gradually with the personal influence of Robespierre, and became enormous in proportion as he successively extinguished his rivals. Numbers condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris in each Month, from its first institution (11th August, 1792) to the fall of Robespierre {27th July, 1794). 1792. August 3 victims, September 4 October 16 \_Tnbunal re-modelled in March, 1793.] 1793. April 9 May 9 June 14 July 13 \^Eobespierre elected into the Committee of Public Safety."] August 5 September 15 October 60 including Brissot, &o. November 53 December 73 HIS INFLUENCE IN THE KEVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL. 385 1794. January 83 February 75 March 123 including Hebert, &c. April 263 including Danton, &c. May 324 June 672 July .* 835 eo^cZwszw of Eobespierre and his accomplices. Here then we see that before Robespierre came into the go- vernment the numbers were comparatively small — those of 14 and 13, in June and July, 1793, were swelled by some prisoners from La Vendee and Orleans, for which the government in Paris was not so immediately responsible — but soon after Robespierre was elected into the Committee the numbers suddenly rose from 15 to 50, 60, 70, 80. In the month in which he had dispatched the ferocious Hebert, they rose to 123 ; in April, when he had gotten rid of Danton, to 263 ; and in the subsequent three months of his un- controlled and autocratical administration, to 324, 672, and 835. What can be opposed to these figures, extracted from the official returns of the Tribunal ? It is true that Robespierre had ceased about the end of June to attend the Committee* but his instruments, St. Just and Couthon, were there ; and, moreover, it is known that Fouquier Tinville, the public accuser, received every day his personal directions on the lists of victims. To the foregoing astonishing account of the monthly executions, we think it worth while to add the daily detail of the two last months : — June, Day. 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 , 7 . 8 . 9 . 10 . Victims. Day. Victims. Day. . . 13 11 ... 22 21 . . . . 13 12 ... 17 22 . . . . 32 13 ... 23 23 . . . . 16 14 ... 38 24 . . . . 6 15 ... 19 25 . . . . 20 16 ... 42 26 . . . . 21 17 ... 61 27 . . Decadi,^ 18 . Decadi. 28 . L . . 22 19 ... 15 29 . . . . 13 20 ... 37 30 . . Victims. . 25 . 15 . 19 . 25 . 44 . 47 . 30 Decadi. 20 14 * During the 45 days that preceded the retirement of Robespierre from the Committee the number of victims was 577; for the 45 days following up to the 9th Thennidor the number was 1 286.— Rapport de Saladin, p. 100. t The Z>. cadi, which had been substi- tuted for Sunday, was a public holiday. 2 c 2 3S6 EOBESPIERRE. J-dy. Day. 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . Victims. . . 23 . . 30 . . 19 . . 27 . . 28 . . 29 . . 67 Decadi. . . 60 Day. 10 . 11 . 12 . 13 . 14 . 15 . 16 . 17 . Victims. Day. . 44 19 . . . 6 20 . . . 28 21 . . . 37 22 . . . — 23 . . . 29 24 . . . 30 . 25 . . . 40 26 . . cadi. 27 . . Victims. . 28 . 14 . 28 . 46 . 55 . 36 . 38 . 54 . 42 These things happened in our own time — thousands are still living who saw them, yet it seems almost incredible that batches {fournSes — such was the familiar phrase) — of sixty victims should be condemned in one morning by the same tribunal, and executed the same afternoon on the same scaffold. These hatches com- prised all ranks, ages, sexes : the most different and even contra- dictory crimes were combined in the same accusation ; persons were executed for conspiring together, who never saw one another till they met on the scaffold ; the majority of charges were vague and visionary, some unintelligible, and many even ridiculous. In the confusion of that continuous massacre, we find all that was interesting for youth and beauty, — venerable for age and virtues, — respectable for loyalty to the old constitution, — notorious for services to the republic, — or distinguished for literature or talents. Nor was poverty, obscurity, or even turpitude a protection : the indigent died with the rich — the artizan with the magistrate — the peasant with the prince— and shameless prostitutes, ^furies of the guillotiney with the amiable and heroic models of every female virtue. If the energies of the Revolutionary Tribunal had been solely directed against the rich and great, whose hostility the government might have dreaded, we could have understood some motive for this incessant slaughter, but the examination of the jjroces ver- haux proves that the great majority of the victims were of the middle and inferior classes, and consisted of persons who would probably have had no desire, and certainly had no power, to oppose the government. There was, no doubt, much private revenge and much pecuniary rapacity gratified in the course of those executions : but that could not have gone to any great extent, and would only have profited the underlings ; for Robespierre had few personal CASE OF CECILE RENAUD. 38? enemies because he had few personal acquaintance, and he certainly was not sullied by any pecuniary corruption. The only rational explanation we can discover for the continuation of this frightful system is, that in the dark intrigues with which he was surrounded he was unable to pause, and still less to retreat ; and the best we can believe of him is that he continued the slaughter in the prospect of finding opportunities of including in it (as he had already done Hebert and Danton) the rest of the tigers, — the Talliens, Collots, Bourdons, Barreres, Fouches, — by whom he was surrounded. This conjecture is corroborated by the well-known fact, that his fall was caused by the certainty which these men obtained that he entertained designs for their immediate extermination. Some details of these extravagant butcheries, for which hecatombs is too feeble a name, will be found in the succeeding Essays on the Revolutionary Tribunals and the Guillotine ; but there is one case which, from its connexion with Robespierre personally, as well as for its peculiar and complicated atrocity, deserves to be particularly noticed in this place. On the 22nd May, 1794, a man of the name of Lamiral formed, it is said, the resolution to assassinate Robespierre, but, not being able to reach him, con- tented himself with discharging a pistol at Collot d'Herbois, who now occupied a place in the public eye next to Robespierre. The day following, the 23rd, a young girl named Cecile Renaud, with a bundle under her arm, came to Duplay's, Robespierre's residence, to inquire for Robespierre ; Robespierre had a volunteer body guard of sans-culottes who accompanied him, armed with pikes, whenever he went abroad, and who, at other times, were to be seen lounging about the porch of Duplay's house ;* the attempt of Lamiral made these people suspicious, — they examined the girl and her bundle, in which they found some clothes and a knife : some accounts do not mention the knife, and some say two knives ; — when asked what she wanted with Robespierre, and why she carried these things, she replied, ' She wanted to see Robespierre, because she was curious to see a tyrant, — that she had no intention to use the knife, — and that she had brought a change of linen because she expected to be sent to prison, and from prison to the scaffold.' * Nicholas, Calandini, and Daillet: Nicholas and Calandini, accompanied 'Daillet slept on the floor in Robes- him everywhere.' — Guffroy, 417. pierre's antechamber, and, as well as S88 ROBESPIERRE. She added, that * she was a royalist, because she preferred one king toffty thousand tyrants ' — and concluded by boldly demand- ing to be led at once to the guillotine. A day or two after, a young man of the name of Saintonax (Thiers and Laponneraye, following the Moniteiir, call him by the then odious title of an ex- monk,— the Liste Generale designates him a surgical student), on hearing at Choisy sur Seine the attempt of Lamiral, regretted that it had failed. And one Cardinal, a schoolmaster in Paris, had said, when elevated with wine, to a friend who betrayed him, that the French were base cowards to submit to such tyranny. Some writers doubt whether there was any real design against Robespierre, and imagine that, jealous * of Collot's being selected as a worthier object of assassination, he falsely represented himself as having been the first object of Lamiral, and got up the scene of Cecile Renaud to counterbalance the popularity which the former event was likely to confer on Collot. There is something to coun- tenance this opinion. The possibility of an intention to assassinate turns altogether on the fact of the knife or knives. Now, in all the earlier and immediately contemporaneous accounts, there is no men- tion of any knife. It is remarkable, too, that while the attack on Collot was blazoned by the Government in the Convention, no mention was made of Cecile's attempt till a question was asked about it, and then Barrere, on the 26th, made a report, in which the facts are stated as above, with, however, the important omission of the knife. The fact we believe to be, that she had a knife, but it was such a one as all the middle and lower classes in France were then in the habit of carrying to cut their victuals, and which there was no reason for suspecting to be an instrument of assassi- nation, and this accounts for the general statement that she had no weapon. The earlier writers — Miss AVilliams, Pages, Adolphus, as well as Lacretelle and others, state distinctly that she had no weapon whatsoever. We have not, at present, the means of exa- mining this matter more deeply, but we think it probable that Cecile Renaud had some vague intention of imitating Charlotte Corday ; she, however, seems to have been a weak-minded, ignorant girl, who had not thought very distinctly of her object, and not at all of its means. This opinion is corroborated by the * ' Robespierre, envying Collot the and publishes that a girl of sixteen had honour of an attempt oil Atslife, dreams attempted his days.' — Nouv. Tab. ^39. • ♦ LES CHEMISES EOUGES/ 889 fact that the trials were not hurried on with the usual velocity — time, it seems, was taken for a full investigation. The attempts were made on the 21st and 22nd May, and it appears by the Liste Geiierale that the execution did not take place till three weeks after. Saintonax and Cardinal were certainly not parties to either attempt, but all were sent to the scaffold together, as might be ex- pected, even from a soberer tribunal than that which had con- demned a sempstress for saying * a fig for the nation," and a tinman for selling sour wine. But there appears no pretence for involving in the same fate the father, the brother, and the aunt of Cecile* and a multitude of other persons, who could certainly have had no concern in it ; — the venerable Sombreuil, whose life had been saved, in the massacres of September, by the heroism of his daughter, who had the astonishing firmness to drink a cup of human hlood as the price of her father's pardon — Madame de Sainte Amaranthe-I* and her daughter and son, aged nineteen and seventeen — Michonis, a member of the Municipality, obscurely implicated in a rash and hopeless scheme for the escape of the queen from the Conciergerie — Madame Buret, an actress of the Opera, with a girl of eighteen, her servant — and about Jlfty other persons of the most different classes — who all accompanied Cecile Renaud and Lamiral to the scaffold, clothed like them, as a greater mark of ignominy, * in red shirts, the costume of the mur- derers.^ And, as a climax to all this atrocity, Barrere, in his report on the affair, called Cecile * an agent of England ; ' and on the strength of that imputation, induced the Convention to pass the celebrated decree, that no quarter should be given by the armies in the field to British or Hanoverians. About this time must be dated, if indeed it ever existed, the idea that Robespierre is said to have formed ofa marriage with Madame Royale, then a prisoner in the Temple.J This was frequently alleged in several publications after his fall — the earliest we * Mr. Alison says her two brothers. Pap. i. 191. The other was m the Lux- soldiers, were guillotined; Thiers says embourg, and both were on the 1st they did not arrive in Paris from the Fructidor, 18th August (ilfm. p. 1363), army till after Eobespierre's fall: both on the motion of Bourdon, set at liberty, wrong. One brother, a quarter-master f See p. 496. in the army, was in St. Pelagie on the % See Essay on the ' Captivity in the 4th July, and wrote to request Robes- Temple.' pierrv to be his advocate on his trial. — 390 • ROBESPIERRE. find is in a little pamphlet of eight pages, entitled Nouveaux et interessans Details de V horrible Conspiration de Robespierre et de ses Complices. It is without name or date, but was probably pub- lished about the third or fourth day after Robespierre's fall. Though it professed to quote the reports of Barrere and Barras, it is obviously, both from its form and style, a mere hawker's penny- worth, and of no authority whatever except as evidence of the rumours of the streets. Towards the conclusion we find this paragraph : — * On the 8th [Thermidor] a municipal officer said to some citizens who were rejoicing at the success of the arms of the Eepublic, ** Should you be sui-prised, if to-morrow we were to have anew king proclaimed?" On the morning of the 10th the daughter of the tyrant Capet, contrary to her custom, rose at the point of day and dressed herself in her best attire ; on the 12th she put on mourning.^ These statements as to the princess are mere nonsense. She was never out of mourning since her father's death — ^her mother was but eight months dead — her aunt but two. But even as to the vision imputed to Robespierre, there is every reason for disbelieving that it could have entered his cool calculating head, but at that time nothing was too extravagant to be imputed to him, and this con- jecture may have arisen from some vague rumour of a fact, which long after came to light, that Robespierre had paid a visit to the young Princess in the Temple, on the 11th May, 1794 — the very day after the execution of Madame Elizabeth. Anterior, however, to this massacre, commonly called Les Chemises JRouqes, which was executed on the 17th June, 1794, Robespierre exhibited what he thought the master-stroke of his policy, and what, if ever he meditated a dictatorial power, he meant to be its basis. He addressed to the Convention on the 7th May, a long report on * the relation of religious and moral ideas with republican principles,' and concluded by proposing that the Republic should formally acknowledge the Supreme Being,* and should on the 8th June celebrate in His honour a national festival. In ordinary circumstances such a proposition would have been equally impious and absurd ; but we must recollect that * Any phrase to avoid the acknow- him after this /e^e— 'there is uo longer ledgment of God! Mercier's errand- a God, only Robespierre's Supreme boy, about fourteen years old, told Being.''— Nouv. Tab. 237. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A SUPREME BEING. 391 the existence of a Supreme Being had been formally denied in France — that the altars had been polluted by the adoration of prostitutes — that the cemeteries bore the inscription prescribed by law, Death is an eternal sleep"^ — in short, that atheism was part and parcel of the existing constitution, and, what was worse, of the general habits of the people. So amalgamated had this notion become with all revolutionary feelings, that no individuals, nor even the committees of government, either dared to attempt, or, had they dared, could have hoped, to overthrow this miserable doctrine. Nothing short of the sovereign authority of the Con- vention could at that moment have risked so anti-revolutionary a proceeding, and the absurdity of the decree is therefore fairly attributable, not so much to its movers, as to the public opinion which required so strange a corrective. The report, or rather speech, in which Robespierre proposed this decree, is far from evidencing any return to a sound system of either morals or politics. As to religion^ he says not a word, but loses himself in the vaguest and flimsiest deism ; while, as to ' superstition and priests,' he is as severe and sanguinary as Hebert could have desired. The report was of course adopted ; the festival was de- creed, but so inveterate was the contrary prejudice, that it utterly failed ; and although we will not say that this alone caused the ruin of its author, it certainly enabled those who hated and feared him on other grounds to accelerate that ruin. The public and part of the secret historyj of that festival is well known. We shall not repeat it. Robespierre was for the second time chosen President of the Convention ad hoc, and the day — 8th June, 1794 — a re- markably fine one — opened with a general exhilaration which seems to have thawed even his reserve ; he played his part with spirit, eloquence, and considerable effect, and may have been for a few hours satisfied that he had now attained the summit of unrivalled power. But before the day was over, he had received ♦ See the apostate priest Fouche's of Robespierre's subordinate partisans, * Ordonuance for Funerals and Ceme- which, though liable to suspicion and teries.' even to contradiction in some of their f It is clear from the letters and details, give many interesting facts of notes of Payen (Papiers, ii. 363-394), this the Jirst and last scene in which who was one of Robespierre's confidants, Robespierre, contrary to the cautious that they were as rancorous against reserve of his whole life, exhibited him- Cliristianity as Hebert. self as the solitary depositary of the I See the * Memoirea ' of Vilatte, one public authority. 392 ROBESPIERRE. from the expressions and manners of the colleagues who surrounded ^„ \ him, and particularly of some members of the committee, strong ^ intimations that personal animosities existed, and that the perils and difficulties of his position were — not terminated, but — increased. There was found in his papers the following note in his own hand : * The day of the fete of the Etre Supreme^ in presence of the people, Bourdon de Loise ventured on this subject the coarsest sarcasms and the most indecent declamations. He pointed out mischievously to the members of the Convention the marques d^interet the public gave the President, from which he drew atrocious conclusions dans le sens des ennemis de la Bepublique.' — Papiers, ii. 19. r This paper contained also hostile observations on Leonard Bourdon, Dubois-Crance, Delmas, and Thurial, who would no doubt have been all included in a new proscription, if the dictator had not been anticipated and himself proscribed. From this moment must be dated his declension : he found himself involved in petty squabbles, not merely with individual members of the Convention, but with those committees who, from having been so long his slaves, now presumed to become (without yet daring open opposition) the suspicious critics, and even censors of his propositions. He soon saw that a new struggle was inevitable, and prepared himself to deal with his old friends and new enemies, as he had so successfully done in nearly similar circumstances with Hebert and Danton — of whose party, indeed, his present antagonists might be called the tail. But the present case was even more serious — first, because the fate of Hebert and Danton was itself a warning to their successors in Robespierre's hatred; and secondly, because he had now to overcome, not individual deputies, but his colleagues, aye, and the majority of his colleagues, invested with an equal share with himself in the power of government. He seems to have resolved, therefore, to begin by strengthening the hands of his faithful and devoted adherents, the Revolutionary Tribunal, to whom he intended to deliver over his antagonists ; and accordingly Couthon, on the 9th June, 1794, proposed a law (drawn up by Robespierre himself) to give the Tribunal additional powers — the most extensive and expeditious. It was to divide itself into four sections for quadruple dispatch — the crimes which ADDITIONAL POWERS GIVEN TO THE TRIBUNAL. 393 it was to try were multiplied in the vague and expansive definition of enmity to the People — the power of sending persons to trial was given to the Convention, to the two committees, to the individual representatives detached on missions, and to the Public Accuser, Fouquier Tinville. If the Tribunal should possess either material or moral proofs of guilt, it was relieved from the necessity of hearing witnesses — and finally, this monstrous law enacted that no advocates should be employed, because, forsooth, calumniated patriots would find sufficient defenders in the patriot jurors, and conspirators did not deserve to be indulged with advocates. Assuredly, of all the iniquitous prostitutions of the name of law which the world has ever seen, this was the greatest. His col- leagues of the committees were at once exasperated and alarmed - — ^but they did not venture on an open resistance. The debates on this occasion are extremely curious as indicative of the state of parties. On the 22nd Prair., the day of its introduction, some objections were made which Robespierre put down with a high hand — next day Bourdon (de L'Oise) and Merlin (de Douai) car- ried an explanation of the law * that the Committees had no right to send members of the Convention to the Revolutionary Tribunal without a previous decree.' On the 24th this explanation was re- peated in spite of Ch. De la Croix, Bourdon, and Tallien, who attempted excuses, and Merlin retracted. Billaud-Varenne at- tacked Tallien in a remarkable way, and concluded, ' Mais nous nous tiendrons unis ; les conspirateurs periront, et la patrie sera sauvee.^ All explanations and amendments were rejected, amidst the liveliest applause. (Moniteur, lAtJt June.) Yet on the 9th Therm., we find Billaud lommg with Tallien and Bourdon against Robespierre. On the 24th the Convention sends to the Revolu- tionary Tribunal as accomplices of Lamiral and Cecile Renaud, the persons mentioned in a former page (p. 389). About this time also (23rd Prairial) Robespierre made a sortie against Fouch^ at the Jacobins, and, in spite of an humble palinode from Fouche, Robespierre attacked him again on 14th July. The law commonly designated as the Loi du 22 Prairial, was passed on the 10th June ; and soon after, when their dread of Robespierre was removed, his successors in the Government found it a very convenient accession to their own authority, and resisted an attempt to repeal it. But what Robespierre's distinct object was 394 ROBESPIEREE. in proposing it we are nowhere told, nor do we see. He had, on the 25th of December, 1793, announced the necessity of giving additional powers to the Tribunal, and had carried a decree that the Committee of Public Safety should, with the shortest possible delay, propose a plan for its more active organization ; but at that time Hebert and Danton were alive and formidable — while at the present juncture it seems to us that any facility which his projects might derive from the acceleration of the proceedings and the extended power of the Public Accuser (both already great enough, one w^ould have thought), was dearly purchased by the new power given to the Committees, which had shown such symptoms of opposition, and, above all, by the danger of raising so momentous a question at such a crisis. Surely it would have been more pru- dent to have attacked Collot and Tallien by the same machinery that had overthrown Desmoulins and Danton, than to have risked a preliminary battle on such odious grounds. Either Robespierre must have been the blindest and rashest of men, or this law must have had some special object and intended operation which has not been explained — any more than another important, and, as it seems to us, very imprudent step which followed. It was about this time that he began to absent himself from the committees. The historians attribute this secession to the opposi- tion he met in these bodies ; but this, surely, after proposing a law which had given them collectively new powers of life and death, seems a very irrational motive. His absence left in the hands of his adversaries the weapon he had forged to exterminate them. Yet we confess we have no other reason to suggest. The Committee of Public Safety — the real sovereign power — continued sullenly subservient, though he was represented in it only by Couthon (St. Just was on a mission)— but the Committee of General Security attempted to involve him in a strange and almost ludicrous danger. This committee — which had the depart- ment of internal police — happened to discover that there lived in an obscure quarter of Paris an old woman of the name of (Catherine Theot, who had the same mania as our Johanna Southcott, of be- lieving that, at the age of eighty, she was to become the mother of the Saviour, who was now to be born again, and to commence his final reign ; she called herself the ' Mother of God,' and, like Johanna, she found many votaries. CATHERINE THEOT. 395 The mania of this poor creature was of so old standing and such extravagant blasphemy as to have attracted the notice of the police as early as 1779, when she was arrested and subjected to an inter- rogatory in the Bastille, on the 21st of April of that year. This interrogatory, still extant, proves her complete insanity — which had already existed some years, and that she had even then a sect of believers. After a few weeks' treatment in the infirmary of the Bastille, she was removed to a lunatic hospital, whence she was re- leased in 1782 ; from which time till 1794 nothing is known of her but that she and her little sect still continued to exist in great poverty and profound obscurity. The anarchy of the revolution seems to have encouraged them to more publicity. Her followers increased, and amongst them was an old Carthusian monk, named Dom Gerle, who had been a member of the Constituant Assembly, where he had been remarked as a harmless visionary. It seems that Robespierre had been somehow induced to give this old col- league a certificate of civism ; and it also happened that when Catherine was arrested, there was found between the mattresses of her bed a crazy address to Robespierre, whose recent appearance as the apostle of a cloudy deism would naturally enough mingle him with the visions of maniacs of this description. The Committee of General Security which had been for some time jealous of the Committee of Public Safety and especially of Robespierre, heard of these bedlamites — which probably Robes- pierre himself had never done — and they seized the favourable opportunity of throwing on him all the ridicule and discredit of a crazy fanaticism to which they reckoned that the certificate of Dom Gerle and the address of the ' Mother of God^ and his recent exhibition in the festival of the Supreme Being would render him obnoxious.* A report was accordingly prepared on this subject, nominally by one Vadier, but really by the lively and sarcastic pen of the celebrated fabricator of reports, Barrere, in which Robespierre was sneeringly alluded to, though not named. And to give more consistency and point to the fable, poor Catherine's name of Tlteot was adroitly changed into Theos, the Greek for * See Payen's Letter to Robespierre, e'te fimeste.'' The object of this letter Pap. ii. 360. He calls the report ' une is to excite Robespierre to his last con- farce qui serait ridicule si elle n'avait flict with Bourdon and Co. 396 ROBESPIEREE. God. So at least says Vilatte {Mysteres de la Mere de Dieu)^ who seems to have been well acquainted with the whole affair — but we think that her name was Grecized before Barrere's report. The whole of this affair was prepared and the report read in the Con- vention (27 Prairial, 15th June, 1793), without the knowledge of Robespierre. There was no proof whatsoever that he knew any- thing of his fanatic admirers : the injury therefore to his reputation was not great — but the insult was. His power was at once too fearful and too fragile to tolerate levity. Its essence was terror and silence ; and he wished to be spoken of neither e?! Men ni en mal. He had lately made a vigorous complaint of the fulsome adulation with which the Moniteur and some other journals affected to treat him, which he said was offensive to his taste as well as his patriotism, and injurious to his character ; he would of course be as little tolerant of sarcasm and calumny. At this crisis, as at all the former, his prudence seems to have made him desirous of withdrawing from his recent prominence, and of escaping back into the safer individuality under the shade of which he had already accomplished such wonderful successes. On the 1st July he made a long speech in the Jacobins, reca- pitulating all the calumnies against him about the Dictatorship, &c., and concludes, * if they forced him to renounce some of the *' functions" he discharged, the right of i^ejorese/ito/i? would still be his, and that he would declare guerre a mort to all tyrants and conspirators.'* — Moniteur, 5th July. But he must soon have seen that it was too late for him to re- turn to a private station. He stood on an eminence so narrow that he could not turn, and so high that he could not descend. He probably thought (and we believe justly) that he had no alter- native but to pursue his perilous path, and he seems to have done so in a spirit of despair, rather than ambition. This would be scarcely credible as the madness of an individual maniac, but that he should have found colleagues and co-operators seems still more astonishing. On the 4th July Barrere warned the Convention of the danger of premature clemency (' clemence pr^coce ') and repeated his * Elie Lacoste states (Moniteur, 29th defer the whole power to the Commit- March, 1795) that Robespierre had a tee of Public Safety, design to suspend the Convention, and REPAS FRATERNELS. 397 celebrated phrase, ' il rCy a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas.'' * — Moniteur, 5th July. At this time, and indeed up to the explosion, Barrere seems to have been the ready tool of Robespierre, if he was not rather his rival in cruelty. On the 10th of July he made his celebrated report on the crimes of Lebon at Arras, which he palliated by the famous phrase of ^formes un peu acerhesJ About this time occurred a strange intrigue, as yet quite unex- plained. After the 14th July, 1794, the streets of Paris were obstructed by what were called ' repas fraternels,' -j- which, say Barrere in the Convention and Payen in the Jacobins, * are multi- plying and propagating with a rapidity which does not seem natural. It is a new intrigue of the followers of Hebert and Chaumette.' No doubt this was an intrigue against Robespierre, but its precise object has never been explained. It may have been a device for bringing together a formidable crowd of people, whom the Government could have no legal excuse for dispersing, but which might be suddenly turned against them. All, however, we know about these banquets is, that they alarmed the friends of Robespierre. And now Fouquier Tinville began to give effect to the law of the 22 Prairial; and a conspiracy was invented J the most ridi- culous in its pretexts, the bloodiest in its consequences, and the most incomprehensible in its objects, of all that had been hitherto hatched. The miserable prisoners accumulated in the several jails, and particularly in the Luxembourg, were accused of con- spiring to organize a body of men to make war on the Convention. Fouquier, on this occasion, caused the dock of the tribunal to be enlarged so as to contain sixty culprits at once. He even brought the guillotine into the great hall of the Palais — in the side chambers of which the tribunal held its sittings, like our courts in * The finesse of this atrocious plea- for having been one of the promoters santry (for such it is) has not been of these banquets. 'Judge,' he says, generally understood. The French call imploringly — 'judge what I must suf- un revenant what we call a ghost ; one fer at the thought of having invo- that returns from the dead ; 'but on the luntarily contributed to place those contrary,' said Barrere, 'it is the dead instruments of mischief in the hands of only that do not return.' our enemies.' t There is in the Fap. Bob. (i. 333) a + It was not quite a new invention; most abject letter from Gamier Launay, the same absurd fable had been told as one of the judges of the Revolutionary an apology for the September mas- Tribunal, begging Robespierre's pardon sacre. 398 ROBESPIERRE. Westminster Hall. This, by the reiterated order of the govern- ment, he reluctantly removed ; but the work of blood was not in- terrupted. In three days — the 7th, 9th, and 10th of July, 1794 — one hundred and seventy-one prisoners were immolated for the imjjossible crime of making war on the republic from the depths of their dungeons. Looking at the state of parties at this moment, and knowing that both sides were, in mutual jealousy and alarm, preparing to devour each other, we know not how to account for this redoubled activity of the tribunal Fouquier Tinville alleged, and we think proved, at his trial, that though he might have acted too zealously, he never did so spontaneously. The Committees, trembling for their own heads, could hardly have ventured on such gratuitous slaughter. We can discover no direct interest that Robespierre could have had in the death of this obscure crowd of innocuous victims. We really have been sometimes tempted to satisfy ourselves with M. Thiers' flippant explanation, that * they went on murdering, not with any motive or object, but -par V habitude funeste quon en avait contractSe.^ But is it not possible that Robespierre, having seceded from the committees, might have hoped to depopularize the remaining members by secretly instigating Fouquier Tinville to mark their administration with a violence more odious than his oiun? — and did he mean one day to reproach Collot d'Herbois, Barrere, and Billaud-Varennes, his rival triumvirate, with the ELEVEN HUNDKED* victims who perished subsequently to his secession ? — nearly half the number of all (2635) that had*fallen since the first institution of the tribunal We know not that it has been before remarked how great a proportion of the whole slaughter was perpetrated after Robespierre had abdicated his ostensible responsibility ; yet it is an important fact. This leads us to a few general observations on the degree of Robespierre's guilt, as compai:ed with that of his colleagues and of the nation at large. * The exact number guillotined be- dreadful and extensive massacres were tween the 20th of June, about which going on simultaneously all over time Robespierre seceded, to the 27th France. The crimes committed in of July, the day of his final fall, was Arras alone rival those of Paris; of deten hundred and eight I Our readers these Guflfroy has given a summary, must observe, that all these numbers which occupies an octavo volume : those relate to the single Revolutionary Tri- of Lyons and Nantes would fill several, bunal of Paris. Similar and even more THE SCAPEGOAT OF THE EEVOLUTION. 399 It is very natural that the French nation — when it in some degree recovered its senses — should have been anxious to exculpate itself from all these enormous and unparalleled crimes. The shame and remorse of his colleagues — the party rancour of his adversaries — and the national vanity of all, readily combined to load the memory of Eobespierre with the accumulated and un- divided guilt, and concurred in representing him as the head of a small faction which by some deplorable accidents had been enabled to dictate their code of blood to a reluctant and indignant people ; in short, as we noticed in the outset, he is made the scapegoat of the Revolution. Every Frenchman has an interest in adopting this exculpatory hypothesis ; and even the more recent English writers have been too apt, instead of going back to the original and contemporaneous sources of information, to content themselves with compiling from the compilations of the French — all of them prejudiced on this subject, and some of them— M. Thiers, for instance — of no individual authority whatsoever. But is it not evident that, as to the French people, such excuses would be as inadequate in reason as they are false in fact ? Would the national character be much mended, if we were to admit that they were such dastards as to allow, from sheer cowardice, a handful of villains to commit such crimes, and to send to one execution, in one day, a greater number of persons than — if we believe these apologetical historians — Robespierre's whole faction contained? Robespierre was neither a Cromwell nor a Buonaparte. His power was not founded on an irresistible military force. His force icas the People itself He was really their child and champion, the incarnate type of Public Opinio?i*— which, in revolutionary times, only means the opinion of the most violent of the Public. That the predisposition of Robespierre's personal character may have coincided with the bloody extravagances of the times we do not deny ; but we are satisfied that the bloody extravagances of the times outran his predisposition. No doubt there were in the French people millions of poor persecuted Royalists and Christians, who deplored and detested — even independently of their own per- sonal sufferings — this frightful system : perhaps even it might be truly said that a numerical majority of the nation, including * La Revolution incarnee c'est Ro- sa naivetd de sang, et sa conscience^wre bespierre ; avec son horrible bonne foi, et cruelle. — Nodier. 2 D 400 EOBESPIEREE. women and children, was entirely innocent ; but, that the great and predominant mass — which the republican constitution desig- nated as active citizens, and which, politically and practically, constituted the nation — concurred zealously — furiously — in all the worst revolutionary extremities, cannot be denied — and France can no more divest herself of a part in the guilt of Robespierre than in the glories of Napoleon : in truth she had a more immediate and direct share in the guilt than in the glory. The truth of this view of the case is strongly confirmed, indeed we may say placed beyond question, by the circumstances that produced and accompanied his fall. It was not as a man of blood that the parties most immediately active in his overthrow — the Collots, Billauds, Barreres, Talliens, Fouch^s, &c. — attacked him. They were all as deep and each personally deeper in blood than Robespierre, and when they took his head to save their own, they neither professed nor intended any change in the system of slaughter in which they had been not merely associates but insti- gators, and meant to be his successors and imitators. In the long and tumultuous struggle of the 8th and 9th Thermidor, he was not once reproached with those more atrocious crimes, the whole- sale massacres, the thousands of murders which render his name execrable to all posterity ! On the contrary, he was accused of the very opposite offence of having countenanced the clemency of Camille Desmoulins and of having deserted the energetic prin- ciples of Marat.* One of the most violent of his assailants, Vadier, in the height of the storm, accused him ' of having endeavoured to save from the scaffold the enemies of the people, and of having officiously inter- fered with Fouquier Tinville to suspend the execution of con- spirators ! ' * When in the stormy debate of the usual omits the date, but which we 8th Therm. Freron moved that thence- know occurred on the 9th July, that it forward the committee should not have was evident that the whole committee the power of arresting members of the wished to maintain the reign of terror. Convention, Billaud, who was willing Robespierre, Couthon, Billaud, Collot that Robespierre should be put to death, d'Herbois, Vadier, Vaumar, however but not that the surviving committee divided as to their own prerogative, should lose the power of putting their or as to the number and names of other antagonists to death, opposed and the colleagues to be sacrificed, were stifled the proposition. — Montjoye, p. agreed on the principle of extermi- 192. See also Fouquier's defence of nating all those who were an obstacle himself in the Essay on the Revolu- to the revolution. — Vol. vi., p. 300, tiouary Tribunals. Thiers says under ed. 1828. the bead of an affair, df^ which he as CONSriEACY AGAINST HIM. 40l But a more important, because more solemn and deliberate, announcement of the views of the new Government is given in the report made in its name by Barrere after Robespierre's execution, in which he repudiated (as he had done less emphati- cally a few days before) ' une cUmence iprecoce^ — a premature clemency : ' Aristocrats,' says the Eeport, ' in disguise began to talk of in- dulgence, as if the revolutionary action of the Government had not received fresh, force — had not increased an hundredfold by the new spirit and energy which this appeal to the people has given to the Convention and the Committees. ' Indulgence, forsooth.! We might have some for involuntary errors — but the manoeuvres of the aristocrats are felonies, and their errors crimes. ' The Convention will illustrate its victory by a more vigorous war against every kind of prejudice — against every individual ambi- tion.'— ifo?^^YeMr, 12 Therm. (30 July), 1794. But the Thermidorian reign belongs to another page of history. It cannot be doubted that, though the Thermidorians had con- curred in the sacrifice of Danton, on or immediately after that event, began the conspiracy against Robespierre's personal authority. It happened on the 5th April. By the beginning of June the opposition to him in the Committees must have attained a formidable consistency, for it exhibited itself, as he tells us, at the great fete of the 8th June, and so offensively in the Com- mittee about the 13th or 14th, that he never again appeared there. The latter scene occurred, it seems, in the discussion of the proposed prosecution against Catherine Theos. * Robespierre,' says Thiers, ' strongly opposed it — the discussion became extremely warm ; he was personally insulted and over -voted, and retired shedding tears of vexation ' {pleurant de rage).* Now their * We know not where M. Thiers dence." " Evidence or no," replied has found this scene Im-mojjante, but La- Robespierre, " if you do so I shall attack martine copies it, with a little addi- you." " You are a tyrant," exclaimed tional embroidery. ' The day before Vadier. " Oh, I am a tyrant !" cried Elie Lacoste was to make his report Robespierre, scarcehj able to restrain his on the affair of C^cile Renaud, Vadier tears of indignation that swelled his came to the committee and told Robes- eyes ; " well, I shall release you from pierre that he would next day make my tyranny. I shall come here no his report also on an affair connected more." And with, these words he re- with this, in which he should propose tired and never reappeared.' I do not the indictment of the St. Amaranthe think it worth while to observe on the family. " You will do no such thing," various discrepancies of these two said Robespierre, imperiously. "I will," stories, as I do not see what authority says Vadier; " I have abundance of evi- there is for the details of either. ■♦ 2 D 2 402 EOBESPIEREE. report against Catherine Theos was made in the Convention on the 15th June, and therefore this scene must have been a day or two earlier. The important point, however, is certain that for six weeks prior to his fall Robespierre had not in person appeared at the Committee, and that he was represented there by Couthon alone, St. Just being on a mission to the army of the North, from which he was recalled by a hasty summons from Robespierre, when he saw that the crisis was at hand, and he arrived in Paris only on the evening of the 7th Thermidor, in time only to be in at the death. Yet there are some curious indications that Robespierre did not choose to promulgate his resentment or retirement — he felt, we suppose, as he very naturally might, that the publication of any such difference would lessen his authority and perhaps endanger his person ; and certainly, to the public eye, he maintained the whole height of his dictatorial position. He was, indeed, at open war with Bourdon, Dubois-Crance, Tallien, and Fouche, and we suspect that it was rather about them than about Catherine Theos or Madame Ste. Amaranthe, that the real contention arose. But those men were not members of the Committees, and Robes- pierre still spoke and ruled with all the authority of the leading member of the Government. The law of the 22 Prairial, the very strongest instance of his dictatorial power, was passed on the 10th June. The attempt made on the 11th and 12th by Bourdon and Martin to modify it proved at once the alarm it excited in the Convention and the intimidation exercised by the Committee of Public Safety. On the latter day, Robespierre, In the name of the Committee, menaced the opponents, and especially Bourdon, with public vengeance ; and, on this occasion, he exclaimed, ' The Committee and the Mountain are one and the same,' and went on to designate Bourdon as a scelerat, whose consciousness of guilt had betrayed itself in this opposition to the decree. This was the first open breach with that party, and affords no trace of any quarrel with the Committee. On the 11th he attacked Fouche and Dubois-Crance in the Jacobins, and on the 12th Bourdon and Tallien in the Convention, and still in the name of the Committee. On the 21st June he makes one of his most cele- brated speeches to the Jacobins, in reply to the Duke of York's protest against the order of no quarter; and in this he again speaks as belonging to the Committee, and notices as a calumny of the enemy, that there are any differences between its members. THE THREE GREAT DAYS. 403 On the 24th, he repels an attack on Lebon, as an attack on the Government. On the 1st of July he exhorts the Jacobins to have confidence in the patriotism and virtues of the members of the Committee. On the 9th July he makes a long speech against divisions in the Convention, and exposes the artifice that would make individual members believe that they were proscribed by the Committee of Public Safety. Besides these evidences from the debates of the Club and the Convention, we find from some decrees on indifferent subjects that have happened to be preserved, that Robespierre acted in the Committee and signed its arretes on the 15th and 28th June, and on the 1st July. These latter dates are certainly irreconcilable with the date that he and his friends as well as his accusers assign to his quitting the Committee, and can only be explained by supposing either that he may have given two or three accidental attendances, or, which is more probable, that the decrees had been prepared, while he was still attending, with blank dates, which were afterwards filled up with the date of promulgation. Irregularities of this sort, even on more important subjects, were very frequent. But the stupendous tragedy is arrived at its last act— the three GREAT DAYS of 1794, called in the annals of the Revolution, the eighth, NINTH, and tenth Thermidor, but in our Calendar the 26th, 27th, and 28th of July, a curious coincidence with the later THREE GREAT DAYS of the July Revolution ; and when we recollect another 28th July again, so murderously marked in the calendar of crime by the Fieschi attempt, we cannot refrain from exclaim- ing. What a bloody anniversary that has been, that same 28th July — all, at long intervals, but by indisputable connexion derived from the original massacres of July, 1789 ! The final conflict may be said to have commenced on the 3rd July by a small circumstance heretofore entirely overlooked, but which, we have no doubt, hastened the catastrophe. Vilatte, a juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, a creature of Robespierre and Barr^re, tells us in his Memoirs, that he had made from Barrere's dictation a list of those whom Robespierre intended to sacrifice. He adds, that a day or two after he had made this list, he was arrested by order of the Committee of General Security in the Palace of the Tuileries, where Barrere had given him a charm- ing apartment in the Pavillion de Flore, overlooking the garden, 404 EOBESPIEKKE. and where Robespierre had breakfasted with him on the import- ant morning of the Fete de I'Etre Supreme. On his arrest this fatal Ust was, he says, found on his desk. While this fellow was in prison, and under the hatchet of the contending parties, he wrote, and subsequently published under the title of Causes secretes de la Revolution du 9 Thermidor, an apology for his conduct and a plea for his own neck, which all subsequent writers have adopted, as if, in all its parts, a tract worthy of acceptation. It has undoubtedly some truths, but so handled and discoloured for his own special objects, that we have no confidence in any, and would easily disprove many of its details, but it still affords some glimpses of truth. The Memoirs do not tell us either the motive or the date of his arrest, but we gather from his hints that he was looked upon as a confidant of Robespierre's, and we find in the Proces Fouquier, that the precise date of his arrest was the 3rd Thermidor, and it is most probable that this list thus falling into the hands of the Committee of General Security, some of whose members it in- cluded, may have awakened both parties to the urgency of the crisis and precipitated the catastrophe. The momentous six weeks that elapsed between the Fete de VEtre Sujireme and the fall of Robespierre was a period of such obscure intrigue, such fearful apprehension, and such general ter- ror, that men were afraid to speak or even to whisper, much more to write. Nothing was published. In the enormous collections of revolutionary pamphlets, we find this interval almost a blank. After the fall of Robespierre, three of his subaltern instruments, Vilatte, Senart, and Taschereau, who had all been arrested in one way or another as his accomplices, wrote, while in prison, and in terror of the Thermidorians, accounts of their share in the crisis, which give some details as to the greater personages ; but they are, as might be expected, scanty, obscure, equivocating, and in- consistent. We have little faith in any of the details given by men confessedly of infamous character, and who were only endeavour- ing to excuse themselves and to escape from the general odium and imminent danger in which they were involved. But from the real parties— the more influential leaders, the actual personages of this terrible drama — we have nothing more than what the Moniteur tells us of their appearance on the public scene of the HIS SPEECH TO THE CONVENTION. 405 Convention ; and as the victorious party got immediate possession of the Moniteur, even its reports of the proceedings are evidently discoloured by exaggerated violence against the defeated party, and by an equally partial and prejudiced representation of their own motives and conduct. The conflict began on the morning of the 8th Thermidor (26th July, 1794), by a long and elaborate speech from Robespierre, of which, as it does not appear in the Moniteur, and as it contains his own defence, and his accusations against his antagonists, we think our readers will approve of our extracting some of the more important passages. He began by representing himself as a man ' persecuted by a system of terror and calumny,' and he describes his opponents as ' tyrants, men of blood, oppressors of patriots,' in exactly the same voca})ulary of reproach that they afterwards employed against him. He then, speaking in the plural number, proceeds to defend the earlier proceedings of both the Committees, but especially of that of Public Safety, and repels the charge of severity by reminding Convention that ' We only charged, but it was the Convention that condemned. The guilty complain of our rigour — the country more justly com- plains of our weakness. And who are the men that we are blamed for having denounced? Who but the Heberts, the Dantons, the Cliabots, the Lacroix? Is it the memory of these conspirators that our accusers venture to defend ? Is it the death of those con- spirators that they will attempt to avenge ? If we are accused of having denounced some traitors — then, let rather the Convention be accused that indicted them — let rather the law be accused that con- victed them— let rather the nation at large be accused that has applauded and sanctioned their punishment.' This was conclusive ad homines ; but he then proceeds to com- plain that not only those acts of justice but other imaginary measures of severity should be attributed to him personally. ' Such, however, is the ground of those projects of dictatorship and those designs against the national representation, imputed at first to the Committee of Public Safety in general, and now all of a sudden, by I know not what fatality, transferred to one member of it. Strange project of an individual man to persuade the National Convention to cut its own throat wdth its own hands, in order to open to that individual the road to absolute power ! Others will see the ridicule of such a charge. I must be permitted to feel only its atrocity. The monsters who charge me with such insanity are the 406 PtOBESPIEREE. real cut-throats wlio meditate tlie sacrifice of all the friends of their country : let these monsters justify, if they can, their own conduct at the bar of public opinion, but they will not succeed in depriving me * of the esteem and confidence of the National Convention, the most glorious prize that can reward the labours of a public man, which I have obtained neither by surprise nor usui-pation, but which my services have deserved and won. To become an object of terror in the eyes of those that one revered, of those that one loves, would be to a man of honour and of feeling the deepest afiliction ; to endeavour to inflict it is the greatest of crimes, and I invoke all your indignation against the atrocious manoeuvres that are employed to continue these extravagant calumnies.' He then proceeds to exculpate the recent proceedings of both the Committees. He mentions two or three subaltern names, such as Cambon, Malarme, Ramol ; to others, such as Barrere, Vadier, Billaud, he alludes in a way that neither the parties accused nor the evidence could be misunderstood, and enumerates the various crimes of his enemies, committed with the pernicious object of making them pass for his — acts of general oppression— the em- ployment of spies to find excuses for the most unjust arrests — a system of finance — taxes and confiscations which threatened the fortunes of innumerable families of limited means — suspending the dividends of the public debt and the payments of public salaries — motions calculated to terrify all that had been either nobles or clergy. They accused him, he adds, of the most opposite ofiences, of being an ultra -revolutionist and an ultra-moderate ; on the one hand of immolating the Mountain, and on the other, of persecuting the sixty-two deputies under detention, which he was so far irom doing that he had risked his popularity to protect them. * They call me Tyrant, If I were one, they would grovel at my feet. I would gorge them with gold and they would be grateful. When the victims of their perfidy complain — they excuse themselves by saying, Robespkrre -wiU have it so. To the nobles they say, 'Tis he alom that prosecutes you. To the higher patriots they say, ' Tis because Robespierre protects the nobles. To the clergy they say, 'Tis he that p7v- secutes you. To the fanatics they say, 'Tis he that' has destroyed religion. All the grievances which I have in vain endeavoured to redress are still imputed to me— 'Tis he that has done it all — or 'tis he that mil not prevent it — your fate is in his hands alone. Spies are hired and distri- * There is some obscurity here from the imperfect state of the MS., but we .have given the meaning of the context. HIS SPEECH TO THE CONVENTION. 407 buted in our public places to propagate these calumnies. You see them at the sittings of the Eevolutionary Tribunal. You find them round the scaffold when the enemies of the coimtry expiate their crimes — you hear them saying, These are the unhappy victims of Robes- pierre. They, above all, strive to prove that the Eevolutionary Tribunal is a tribunal of blood, created and guided by me alone, not merely for the sacrifice of the innocent — but, in order to enlist against me enemies of all classes, they make the very punishment of the guilty my personal act. When a deputy is released in a mission to a department, they tell him that it is I that recall him. Obliging persons were found to attribute to me more good than I have done in order to impute to me mischiefs in which I had no hand. They kindly repeated to my colleagues everything that I happened to say, and, above all, everything that I did not say. If any measure of the Government was likely to displease any one, it was I who did all — exacted all — commanded all ! 'Twas never to be forgotten that I was the dictator. ' You will ask who are the authors of this system of calumny — I answer, in the first place — the Duke of York — Mr. Pitt, and all the tyrants who are in arms against us. But who next ? Ah, I dare not name them at this moment and in this place — I cannot bring myself to a resolution to tear away altogether the veil that covers this profound mystery of iniquity.' The repeated introduction of the Duke of York, Mr. Pitt, and King George, as active parties in the struggle between these tigers, seems at first sight too absurd for serious notice ; but it has a latent value — it proves that they had but scanty grounds for their charges against each other when they were reduced to the jns- aller of arraigning one another, not for their own proceedings, but as the hired accomplices of the English Government. At the acts of his assailant Robespierre stops short because we are satisfied that he had nothing to tell but what everybody knew, though he least of any was willing to tell — that they were bidding at a popular auction for each other's heads. Indeed, in the whole of this vital debate nothing is more remarkable than the copious reci- procity of reproaches, and absence of anything like facts to support them. Robespierre's speech might almost have been spoken by Bourdon, and Bourdon's by Robespierre. However different the men, the words were the same. They rang the changes on calumny, corruption, crime, terror — coivards, traitors, tyrants^' despots — Si/Ua, Vei^res, Clodius, ^nd Catiline — with mutual ran- cour and indisputable truth. It is no wonder that they evaded 408 EOBESPIEREE. the production of facts, any one of which, by whomsoever pro- duced, would have been met by a terrible tu quoque. In Robespierre's speech, however, there are several passages which, though vague and desultory, afford, collectively, his views of the origin and object of the struggle. He charges the Com- mittee of General Security with an invidious antagonism to the Committee of Public Safety, and with endeavouring to depopu- larize revolutionary institutions, and especially the Revolutionary Tribunal, by driving it to excessive severities : — * They abuse it to destroy it. There are, no doubt, in that Com- mittee men whose civic virtues it is impossible not to appreciate ; but that is an additional reason for repressing abuses committed without their knowledge by subaltern agents— royalists, ex-nobles, emigrants perhaps, whom we see all of a sudden transformed into revolutionists and instruments of the Committee of General Secm'ity, to wreak their own private vengeances on the friends of the people and the founders of the republic. Inoffensive and inconsiderable individuals are tormented, and patriots are every day cast into dun- geons. Have they not secretly handed about odious lists in which certain members of the Convention were designated as victims? Has not this imposture been propagated with such combined artifice and audacity that a gi^eat number of members have not ventured to sleep in their own residences ? ' Here are, we have little doubt, allusions to the arrest of the ' inoffensive and inconsiderable ' Vilatte, and to the seizure and exposure of his list of victims. On the prosecution against Dom Gerle and Catherine Theos he expatiates as a branch of the grand conspiracy, in which calumny, anarchy, and atheism had combined against him ever since the speech in which he had pro- posed the decree of the 18 Floreal (7th May), recognizing an Eire Supreme ; ' from that epoch he dates the assassinations attempted against him, and the calumnies more criminal than assassinations.' We are tempted to give our readers an idea of the religion of which Robespierre professed himself the apostle and the martyr, and a specimen of what he no doubt thought the highest style of his eloquence in an apostrophe to his audience concerning that decree and the fHe that followed it : — ' Immortal thanks to the Convention for that decree ! which is itself a revolution, and has saved the country. You have stricken with the same blow atheism and priestly despotism! You have I HIS SPEECH TO THE CONVENTION. 409 advanced by half a century the last hour of all tyrants ! Yon have won over to the Revolution every pure and generous heart ! You have exhibited it in all the splendour of a celestial beauty ! day for ever fortunate ! When the French people rose altogether to offer to the Author of Nature the only homage worthy of him, what a touching assemblage was there of all the objects that can fascinate the eyes or attract the hearts of men ! honoured old age ! ge- nerous and ardent youth ! pure and playful joy of childhood ! delicious tears of maternal fondness ! divine influences of inno- cence and beauty ! the majesty of a great people, happy in the contemplation and enjoyment of its own strength and glory and virtue ! Being of Beings, was the day on which the universe came forth from your creative and almighty hands brighter or more acceptable to your eyes than that recent day when the first People of the world, bursting the bonds of crime and of error, appeared before you, worthy of thy favour and of its own destinies ? ' This tirade was not a mere rhetorical declamation, whatever we may think of its good taste ; it was artfully calculated as a contrast to the ignoble and ridiculous farce which had been got up by his opponents : — ' Will it be believed,' he exclaimed, * than even in that auspi- cious moment of public joy there were men to be found who replied to the acclamations of a grateful people by looks of rage and ex- pressions of contempt ? W'ill it be believed that the President of the Assembly, addressing the assembled Nation, was insulted by these men, and that these men should be representatives of the People ? ' That single fact is the clue to all that has followed — the first step towards degrading the great principle you had inaugurated, and blotting out the tranquillizing memory of that national solemnity. Such was the character and the motive of the ridiculous importance given to the mystical and puerile farce that is called the afiair of Catherine Theos.' He then, still more artfully, and in a better style, endeavours to connect his present antagonists, the Fouches, &c. (who had in- scribed over the cemeteries that ' Death was an eternal sleep '), with Chaumette, &c., the atheist faction, executed in the preceding April : — * No Chaumette — no Fouche ! " Death is not an eternal sleep ^ The French people will not submit to a desperate and desolating doctrine that covers nature itself with a funereal shroud — that deprives virtue of hope, and misfortune of consolation, and insults . even death itself. No ; we will efface from our tombs your sacrilegious epitaph, and 410 ROBESPIERRE. replace it with the consolatory truth, Death is the beginning of Immortality.' On the subject of the imputed dictatorship he brings promi- nently forward his own secession : — ' In answer to the attempt to make me responsible for all the recent operations of the Committee of General Security, all the errors of the constituted authorities — nay, of all the crimes of my enemies — I need only say, that for six weeks past the violence of calumny, the want of power alike to do good or to prevent evil, forced me to abandon altogether the functions of member of the Com- mittee of Public Safety. In doing so, I had no other motives than my duty to myself and my country. I prefer the character of a representative of the people to that of member of the Committee ; and I place above all other titles those of a free man and a French citizen. ' But, after all, and whatever may be said of my dictatorship, there are at least six weeks that it has expired, and that I have had no kind of share or influence in the government. ^Yell, are the "pa- triots better protected ? Is faction less audacious ? Is the country happier ? But it is not enough that they have forced me to deliver them from an inconvenient observer — my veiy existence is a subject of alarm, and they had meditated in darkness, and without the knowledge of the colleagues, a design of depriving me of the power of defending the people — that is, of my life. Oh, I shall resign it to them without a regret ! Why should I wish to live under a system where intrigue triumphs for ever over truth, where justice is a lie, where the basest passions and the most ridiculous terrors supersede in men's hearts the most sacred duties ? Why should I regret to escape from the eternal torture of seeing this horrible succession of traitors, who, concealing the turpitude of their souls under the veil of virtue, and even of fnendship, will leave posterity in doubt which vras the greater, their cowardice or theu' crimes ? ' Montjoye, with his usual blind prejudice, treats this speech with the utmost contempt, as a wretched declamation, mortally tedious, and so empty and insignificant that he cannot, as he says, find even a phrase worthy of notice.* Diffuse, it certainly is, and in- consistent in argument, but these defects were partly designed and * Lamartine, on the other hand, pro- private and domestic life in the first nounces it to be a gi-and oi-ation, and week of Thermidor, which would be profoundly studied — comprehensive, interesting if they were authenticated, philosophical— impassioned, and writ- but he gives no authority. I suspect ten with the pen of Tacitus ! This he can only have found them in some seems nearly as much exaggerated as such factitious Memoirs as I have alluded Montjoye's contemjit. Lamartine adds to in former pages. — 1855. several circumstances of Robespierre's EFFECT OF HIS SPEECH. 411 partly inevitable — he was afraid of speaking too plain as to his ulterior objects, and was embarrassed to distinguish what he pre- sented as his own merits from what he called crimes in his oppo- nents. He seems deficient in movement and energy because he was forced to conceal his dagger under his cloak ; but it was not on that account less formidable — the vagueness and obscurity deepened perhaps the awful impression on an auditory in whose minds the greatest as well as the meanest motives were at work — ambition and corruption, hope and hatred, fanaticism and cowardice. But the question at issue could not be misunderstood. No one, at least of the leaders, could have doubted that the speech was a capital indictment, and that the vote they were to give was an inevitable sentence of death on one party or the other. The omission of it in the Moniteur leaves us in doubt as to its visible eff*ect on the Assembly. Thiers says that it was received with a sullen and ominous silence : as usual, he gives no authority, and we suspect that he is mistaken — led astray by the report of it subsequently published in a separate shape, in which, as was the practice in all similar reports, the expressions of feeling, so fre- quently noted in the current publications of the debates, are wholly omitted. So that when Thiers turned from the Moniteur's ani- mated description of the rest of the debate to the dry pamphlet report, he was struck with the absence of all marks of approbation, and concluded too hastily that it had received none.* We shall see presently that this is very unlikely. As soon as Robespierre had concluded, Lecointre proposed that it should be printed— a mark of approbation which the Convention usually bestowed on all important occasions. Thiers says that Lecointre was one of Robespierre's *most energetic enemies,' but he gives no authority, t nor does he attempt to explain (though it * Lamartine, deceived as I think, by the 8th Thermidor, had occasioned that the circumstance mentioned in the text, fall, and we find that Barr^re retaliated also states that it was received in silence Lecoiutre's attacks by an enumera- — but he, more consistently with the tion of his panegyrics on Robespierre, known facts, supposes it was the silence But he was a strange, violent man, and of respect and assent. — 1855. supposed to be ' crazy — proposing one t I find no evidence of any such * day the contrary of what he had advo- enmity— on the contrary, he seems to * cated the day before, defending those have been an early and constant friend * he had attacked, attacking those he of Robespierre (see Defenseur, Nos. 2, 3, ' had defended.' — Biog. Conventionnelle. and 5), and after his fall distinguished So that it is possible that he may have himself by his inveterate hostility to occasionally opposed Robespierre, but Barr^re, Billaud, Collot, &c. — the men there seems no kind of evidence that he who, by opposing this very motion of acted in concert with his enemies ou 412 ROBESPIERRE. is clear he saw the difficulty) why an ' energetic enemy ' should make a motion notoriously complimentary, and which in this case was far more important than an ordinary compliment, for it implied, prima facie at least, the acquiescence of the Convention at large in Robespierre's views. Lecointre's motion had passed, or was about to pass, unanimously (there is some confusion in the report, as there probably was in the actual debate), when Bourdon, one of the denounced, seeing its full consequences, but not venturing on an open negative, proposed that the speech should be referred to the previous examination of the two Committees of Government. The temper in which the Convention received this proposition is not specified, but it induced Couthon to take a bold step in advance of Lecointre's, by moving, by way of rider, that the speech should be not only printed, but officially distributed to the 40,000 com- munes of the republic. This also was decreed, and still with apparent unanimity. But the Thermidorians, as the anti-Robes- pierrians are historically called, saw that this would enlist not merely the Convention but the whole population of France against them ; and that bolder measures were necessary even to a chance of escape. Vadier and Cambon, who had been denounced by name, claimed from the justice of the Assembly to be heard in reply to the charges against them ; which they did with temper and moderation, till, at the conclusion of his explanation, Cambon's warm temper led him to add, ' It is time to tell the whole truth — there is one man who paralyses the Convention ; it is the very man who has made this speech— Robespierre.' This sortie, defensively and temperately introduced, but con- cluding with a direct and menacing denouncement of the one formidable name of which all France, and, above all, the Conven- tion, had so long stood in silent awe, and followed by that applause which Robespierre himself had hitherto engrossed, was a strong symptom that the spell was already broken. The cautious Moni- teur only says, on applaudit, but it seems to have disconcerted Robespierre to a degree that leads us to conclude that the aspect of the Assembly must have been more formidable than it appears in the report. He replied to Cambon feebly, apologetically, and, the Sth Thermidor. Lamartine is of linendraper at Versailles, and was, like my opinion, for he says that Lecointre's Robespierre, particularly ac^arwe' against motion meant the adoption of Robes- the queen, pierre's speech, Lecoiutre had been a . EFFECT OF BOURDON'S MOTION. 413 what was worse, meanly. He protested that he had not incul- pated Cambon, but had only suggested that the result of his measures had not answered his iyitentions, which he had not im- pugned. This was an obvious untruth, for he had called him by name a 'fripon connu.' Such scandalous tergiversation seems to have had the natural effect of shaming his friends and inspiriting his enemies. In the ensuing debate not one voice was raised in his behalf ; even Couthon himself only spoke to excuse, in a tone equally feeble, his own motion ; while Bourdon, Panis, Charlier, Bentabolle, Amar, Thereon, and Breard — men who had all been hitherto Robespierre's intimate partners in guilt, his tools in the Committees, his organs and advocates in the Assembly, now rose against him with increasing boldness and effect. The decree for the printing was revoked, and that for referring the speech to the Committees was carried ; but this last affront Robespierre had in his own hands the power of defeating. ' What ! ' he exclaimed, ' I have had the courage to lay before the Convention at large the truths that I thought necessary to the safety of my country, and it is proposed to refer my speech to the examination of the very Committees that I have accused I ' And he refused to give a copy. This looks spirited, but it wanted the essential merit of consistency, for he had but just before protested that he had not meant to attack the Committees. This bravado, therefore, addi- tionally indisposed his hearers ; and the conflict would probably have been brought to a decisive issue that day, but that Barrere, who was certainly deeply and justly offended with Robespierre,* but was still endeavouring to keep well with both parties, interrupted the angry debate with one of his fanfaron reports of the victories of the armies and the bright destinies of the republic, which he said would gloriously triumph over ' every class of intriguers^ dis- umonists, alarmists, exaggerators, traitors, and counter-revolu- tionists ' — terras that he might safely use, for they were those with * He had alluded in his speech to thropic farces, that the success of the Barr^re's reports to the Convention, republic can be insured. * * * Truth called in contempt of their levity, inac- is better than epigrams' Before Robes- curacy, and extravagance, carmagnoles. pierre ventured on this bitter criticism ' They talk to you of our victories with he must have been convinced that Bar- an academic levity, as if they cost our rfere had joined his enemies, and yet it heroes neither toil nor blood — an- was only three days before (on the 5th) nounced with less pomp, they would that Barrere had pronounced, in one of have appeared truer and greater; — it is his carmagnoles, a most elaborate and not by rhetorical phrases, by philan- glowing panegyric on Robespierre. 414 KOBESPIEREE. which the contending parties mutually characterised each other. This closed that day's debate to the advantage of the Thermi- dorians, while Robespierre hastened to the Jacobins, and there read his speech amidst the enthusiastic applause of the club and its galleries ; but there is reason to suppose little of confidence and spirit on his own part. Meanwhile, in the course of the 8th, St. Just, whom Robespierre had summoned to the rescue, arrived post-haste from the army. He attended the evening sitting of the Committee, and, as he told the Convention, which was prolonged through the night till five o'clock in the following morning, in attempts, on his part, to accommodate differences, towards which he met no en- couragement. It was, however, agreed that he should draw up a report to be read next day to the Convention, but to be previously communicated to the Committees. It is not stated, and probably was not settled, what the tone or even the subject of the report was to be. The Thermidorians had perhaps not lost all hope of winning over St. Just, and would have been glad if a report by him could have countenanced their proceedings. St. Just had promised to submit his report to his colleagues before 11 A.M., but did not keep his promise of communicating it — nor, indeed, was it possible to do so, for he left them at half-past five, and the Convention met at nine, so that he had not even time to finish it, and the manuscript with which he ascended the tribune next morning was a confused, ill-digested, and inconclusive tirade, chiefly directed against Collot d'Herbois and Billaud de Varennes, whom he accused of having conspired to depreciate, insult, and even sacrifice Robespierre. In proof of this the speech stated that in a short visit which he had some weeks before made from the army to Paris, he had brought the Committee together to endeavour to reconcile the differences which even then existed. He found it impossible. Billaud was at once audacious and irresolute, violent and treacherous : — * Billaud announced his design in broken sentences. Now he would talk of a new " Pisistratus'' — then of " dangers.'' Occasionally he seemed to grow bolder when he was listened to ; but, again, his final resolution would expire on his lips. One [Robespierre] whom in his absence he called Pisistratus, he would next day call his friend. His features, though he strove to compose them, betrayed his sinister feelings. A member of the Committee [Vadier, no SPEECH OF ST. JUST. 415 doubt] was put forward to insult Eobespierre, and drive liim to some indiscretion of which his enemies might take advantage and turn to his ruin.' In these tracasseries St. Just endeavoured to act as a mediator, and David seconded him, and Billaud, seeming to be convinced and reconciled, said to Robespierre, ' We are all your friends. We have always acted together.' * This hypocrisy,' says St. Just, * made my blood boil — for I knew that the day before he had de- signated him as Fisistratus, and had actually drawn up an act of accusation against him.' He then proceeded to a mere personal defence of Robespierre, who was driven from the Committee by the bitter insults of the two or three members who, from the accidental absence of their colleagues, had, in fact, become masters of the Committee. ' In the speech which Robespierre pronounced yes- terday,' says his advocate, * I admit that he did explain his case as clearly as might be — but, in truth, he did not know it. He is even now not aware of the full extent of the prosecution directed against him ; he knows only his misfortune, and if there be anything in his speech to require excuse, his late absence from the Committees of Government, and the bitterness of his soul at the treatment he has received, will sufficiently afford it.' St. Just meant to con- clude with a motion which is remarkable only for its vague and, as we think, incomprehensible inanity — ' The Convention decrees that the institutions which vnll be forth- with drawn up shall present the means by which the Government, while losing nothing of its revolutionary action, shall not tend to arbitrary power, nor to favour individual ambition, nor to oppress or usurp the national representation.' It is difficult to guess what practical advantage in that extreme crisis either St. Just or his prompter could have expected from a speech which was weak without being conciliatory, which admitted Robespierre to stand in need of apology — charged their most formid- able antagonist with little more than ill manners and ill humour, and perorated with such a lame and impotent conclusion. Our be- lief is that from the moment that Cambon had pronounced his name in a tone of censure, confirmed by the applause of the audience, Robespierre's spirit had quailed — that St. Just's arrival brought neither strength nor courage to his councils of the night or the movements of the morning, and that the whole party was paralysed 2 E 416 ROBESPIEEEE. at finding their projects of proscription anticipated and retaliated. We think we trace in St. Just's speech some advances towards a parley and a truce, but whatever was its design it was not destined to be even heard. On the morning of the 9th Thermidor — Sun- day, the 27th July, 1794— St. Just appeared in the tribune of the Convention, and began his speech, but had hardly got through the first paragraph of his manuscript when he was irregularly in- terrupted by Tallien and Billaud ; and when Robespierre endea- voured to be heard to order, even he was silenced with cries of ' A has le tyran.' That cry was itself the victory ! In vain did Robespierre make the most strenuous efforts to be heard in reply : he was overpowered by the tumult. His enemies still dreaded his eloquence and his influence, and hurried on with great violence to a vote for his immediate arrest. We need not pursue the de- tails of that long and tumultuous sitting, which are given in the Moniteur with more accuracy and fairness than might be expected, and have been followed by all subsequent writers. One observa- tion, however, we think worth adding — as we do not remember to have seen it made before — that so suddenly and so completely was Robespierre isolated and abandoned in that assembly in which twenty-four hours before he was almost worshipped, and so terror- stricken was his still numerous party in the debate of the 8th Thermidor, no voice, save that of his first accomplice, Couthon, was raised in his behalf, and in that of the 9th — not one ! The proposition for arresting him was made by two obscure regicides, never heard of, we may almost say, before or since — Loseau and Louchet * — and voted, as it seemed, with enthusiastic unanimity. It can hardly be thought an exception to this general dereliction, that, after his arrest was voted, his brother demanded * as he had shared his virtues, to share his fate,' and that Lebas, who had married one of Duplay's daughters, and who had been himself already denounced, should have anticipated the coming decree by a similar offer. But besides the report in the Moniteur there was another of 140 closely printed pages, prepared by a committee named by the * The sanguinary spirit of the party declared that the only salvation for the that rose on this occasion against Robes- republic was to maintain Terror as the pierre is strikingly exemplified by the order of the day! The disapprobation fact, that just three weeks after his fall of the Assembly, however, forced him on the 19th August this same Louchet to retract it. — Mon. SITTING OF THE 9th THERMIDOR. 417 Convention ad hoc, and presented by its chairman, Charles Duval. It was, however, as Courtois informs us, rejected for its inaccu- racy, but he adds that it nevertheless contains ' des details extreme- ment precieux,'' Its bias against Robespierre is evident, and the author's personal character inspires little confidence. He was a furious Jacobin, and author of a Journal des Hommes Libres, but so ferocious as to be commonly called the Journal des Tigres, and 'after having been' (says the Biographie Conventionnelle) * an idolatrous worshipper of Robespierre, turned round after his fall and trampled on his carcass.' * Without agreeing with Courtois that its details are extremely precious, we think that those which relate to Robespierre personally are curious, and, valeant quantum, so connected with our biography as to justify our making copious extracts from the rare pamphlet, in which only they are to be found. The contemporaneous evidence of an eye- witness is always valuable, whatever allowance we may have to make for his prejudice and partiality. ' Sitting of the ^th Thermidor. ' The reading of the correspondence was hardly finished when St. Just ascended the tribune with a paper in his hand and asked leave to speak. Everybody's mind was still nnder the impression of Robespierre's speech at the sitting of yesterday — a speech that tended to subvert the Government, to divide, accuse, and murder the national representation, and establish his own power and des- potism over the French people. Every one recollected the discus- sion which had followed this speech, and which had enlightened all the representatives of the people to a sense of their danger. Several members had reproached Robespierre personally with having sub- stituted his own views for the public interest, and for having para- lysed of his own authority the decrees of the National Convention, taking upon himself the suspension of the execution of these decrees ; and denouncing his pride and unbounded ambition, which had left no doubt on many minds that he had aspired to a consolidated and uncontrolled tyranny. It was also recollected what a weak defence, if, indeed, it could be called a defence, he had made to these grave accusations, and that, for the first time, the voice of a guilty con- science had. not allowed him to take that imperious and imposing tone which had served him so often so well, to persuade and impose * It is another of the curious retri- for his opposition to all taxation, ended butive coincidences so frequent in the his days in a small employment in the revolutionary annals that this Duval, Tax-office, who in the Convention was remarkable 2 E 2 418 EOBESPIERRE. upon the eyes of the multitude. They rememhered also his inex- cusable absence for four decades, avowed by himself, from the func- tions in the Committee of Public Safety that the National Conven- tion had confided to him — the impressions which he endeavoured to make on public opinion during that time — his various attempts to direct them against the operations of the Government — they remem- bered especially his wayward, his ambiguous conduct, for nearly a year. They had seen him when he could no longer hope to bring back the people to the fanaticism of the Catholic religion, which was, in fact, his own, substitute for it a new religion, and so force a great political assembly, a free and republican Government, to give up all those sacred principles which forbid a good government to interfere with religious matters otherwise than to prevent its abuses or punish the crimes which might arise from it. They had seen him per- verting and abusing an institution [the Eevolutionar}'- Tribunal], severe it is true, but just, and, above all, salutary — substituting for it a law, vague in its expressions, insidious in its provisions, hypo- critical in its pretences, but odious and atrocious in its executions and results. They had seen him setting himself against those who had found out his intentions and proposed the adjournment to a future discussion of that law, proscribing them by his eye, his ges- ture, and his voice, as guilty of a crime, and actually asking their heads, or getting it done by his agents. ' It was in these dispositions that St. Just foimd the minds of the people when he came to the tribune. His dark, ferocious, and sinister look, his hesitating and embarrassed tone, the hour at which he presented himseK (twelve had just struck), his intimacy with Robespierre, the unusual presence of the latter in the Conven- tion, the recollection of the preceding day, — all seem to announce a crisis, an important discussion, which was to be the forerunner of great events.' The report then proceeds to give the various speeches pretty much as they appear in the Moniteur, but interposing here and there such observations as the following : — * When Bourdon apostrophised Robespierre, every eye was turned on him with an expression of the horror which he inspired, whilst a general shudder is felt through the Assembly.' . . . And as Billaud proceeded — * One unanimous cry burst from the Assembly, — Death to all tyrants! This republican demonstration is prolonged. All the members are on their legs, and the attitude of each announces to the traitors that their last hour is come.' SITTING OF THE 9th THERMIDOK. 419 When IBillaud had concluded — * Kobespierre, whose rage it is easy to conceive, advances to tlie tribune, and believes that be can still be imposing by affecting tbe imperious tone which has always succeeded with him. But the charm is broken, conviction is entered in all their minds, and from all places he hears, Down with the tyrant ! This terrible word stu- pefies him. He puts down his head, and comes down a few steps. The discussion of his crimes continues, and his execution (supplice) may be said to begin.' AVhen the arrest of his military partisans, Henriot, Boulanger, Lavalette, &c., was decreed — * Robespierre again presented himself at the tribune, but was re- ceived by a unanimous cry of indignation. He persists, however, with a furious air, and in violent agitation. He is repelled on all sides with cries of Down with the tyrant ! He turns round to St. Just [who all this time stood at the back of the tribune ready to avail himself of any opportunity of continuing his speech], but his atti- tude and looks are those of despair, and little calculated to encou- rage his accomplice. He still, however, persists in his efforts to be heard, but is again met by a universal cry of Down mth the tyrant I and forced at last to silence.' When Tallien renewed his attack on another topic, and Robes- pierre again attempted to make himself heard, the Rapport of Duval proceeds : — * Robespierre, agitated and overpowered by a guilty coftscience, desires to be sent to death at once. A member exclaims, " You deserve it a thousand times over ! " The yoimger Robespierre ap- proaches and takes the arm of his brother, and desires that he may share his fate. Their eyes are burning with rage — they have now abandoned all hope of imposing on the people by an affected calm and composure, and exhibit the real ferocity of their hearts. They abuse, they insult, they menace the National Convention. From all quarters the greatest indignation explodes, and drowns the cries of these madmen (forcenes). The disorder increases every minute. The president is forced to put on his hat to obtain order ; and Robes- pierre senior, seizing on the momentary silence which this act always produces, addresses both the president and the members of the Assembly in the most injurious terms. Violent murmurs inter- rupt him. The whole National Convention rises in a body by an unanimous impulse. Several members propose that a man who so dares attack the majesty of the people in the persons of its repre- sentatives be taken into custody. " Both the brothers into custody," 420 EOBESPIERRE. exclaims another. It is in vain that Eobespierre continues in great agitation to menace the Assembly — in vain does he cross the floor and traverse several portions of the hall — in vain does he ascend and descend, without obtaining a hearing, the steps of that tribune where for so long he had spoken as a despot. An overpowering hatred of tyranny exhales from every soul, and forms around him an atmosphere in which he cannot breathe ; he falls panting in a seat, where the republican indignation holds him, as it were, enchained. His arrest, as well as that of his brother, is then called for from all quarters, and is at last voted in the midst of numerous and enthusi- astic applause/ The brothers, however, seem to have recovered their composure, and resumed their places, when there arose * a cry from all sides that the accused should appear at the bar, which is voted. Eobespierre persists in refusing to submit to this order, though signified to him by one of the ushers. He strives again to speak, and utters some additional insults, which are again choked by the voice of the people, which forces him at last to come down to the bar and to submit to the law. His brother, Couthon, St. Just, and Lebas follow him, and are almost immedi- ately carried away by the gendarmerie amidst the acclamations of all the citizens present, and with unanimous shouts of Vive la Liberte! Vive la Hepublique ! ' After reading these extracts we cannot be surprised that the Convention should, on subsequent consideration, have refused its sanction to a record of such violence and injustice — for whatever might be their crimes, the parties had a right to be heard. Against St. Just and Augustine Robespierre there was no charge but their friendship for Maximihan, and in that, as well as in the real crimes of Maximilian and Lebas — those for which their memories are execrated by posterity — their assailants were as deep, or rather deeper, than they ; and obscure and un- accountable as the whole of Robespierre's latter conduct was, we repeat our inclination to believe that the chief cause of his fall was his being suspected of an intention of returning to some sys- tem of decency, mercy, and religion. One passage of this debate is wholly unnoticed either by the Moniteur or by Duval, and is an additional proof of the partiality of both reports to the victrix causa : — * In the height of the terrible conflict, and at a moment when Robespierre seemed deprived by rage and agitation of the power of articulation, a voice cried, *♦ It is Baritones blood that is choking yon ! " IMPRISONMENT OF THE FIVE DEPUTIES. 421 Robespierre, indignant, recovered his voice and his courage to ex- claim, — "DantonI Is it, then, Danton you regret? Cowards! — • laches — Why did you not defend him ? " ' There was spirit, truth, and even dignity in this bitter retort — the last words that Robespierre ever spoke in public : and even these have been suppressed. The two Robespierres, St. Just, Couthon, and Lebas, were, in the first instance, removed to the Committee of General Security, which sat in the Hotel de Brionne, close to the hall of the Convention. To them was soon after added Hanriot, the commander of their military force, who had been arrested while about to make an attack on the Conven- tion. We are told that about five o'clock dinner was served to the five deputies in the secretaries' room. It is singular that in such circumstances their dinner should have been thought of — but, in truth, dinner seems to have been a serious question with all parties, and was near being a most important and deci- sive one, for at the very critical moment when the Convention had declared open war on the Commune and the Commune on the Convention, both the hostile bodies, instead of following up their respective measures, adjourned for refreshment : * It is easy,' says Duval's Report, * to feel that, after a sitting so long [it had lasted barely five hours and a half] and so fatiguing, an interval of repose was necessary. It was half-past five, and the sitting is adjourned till seven.' The Commune, it is said, made a similar pause and for the same purpose — but this seems doubtful. Its agents certainly lost no time and showed considerable activity and energy. If they had been aware that the Convention had adjourned, they might per^ haps have seized and shut up the empty hall, and would probably have obtained a complete victory, — as it was they recovered for some hours the ascendancy. After the five deputies had dined, they were removed to separate prisons — Robespierre to the Luxembourg ; his brother to St. Lazare ; Couthon to Port Royal, now turned into a prison, and ridiculously called Port Libre ; Lebas to La Force ; and St. Just aux Ecossais ; Hanriot remaining, pinioned and gagged, in the apartment of the Committee.* But his detention was not long, for * From all these various prisons the an additional proof of the power of deputies were released within a few Robespierre's party in the city, hoxirs, and almost without resistance — 42^ ROBESPIERRE. Coffinhall, a judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Payen, the agent general, both leaders of the Commune, rallied the forces (chiefly the city artillery), which had been discouraged and dis- persed by the capture of Hanriot, and, proceeding to the Carrousel, stormed the Hotel de Brionne, released Hanriot, and placed him again at the head of his troops. The jailer of the Luxembourg had refused to receive Robespierre, and the gendarmes who had him in custody were forced to convey him to the Mairie^ where he arrived about eight o'clock, and was received, not as a prisoner, but as the * Father of the People,' and delivered from the parri- cidal hands of his captors. Other detachments proceeding to the several prisons released the four other prisoners, and by twelve at night they were all assembled at the Hotel de Ville, surrounded by deputies from most of the sections of Paris, protected by Hanriot's army, and in a condition, had they had a man of military talent and energy amongst them, to have marched upon and probably utterly defeated the Convention. But now, indeed, they lost their opportunity, and the Convention having appointed Barras commander-in-chief, and, at his request, twelve members as his assistants, one of the latter, Leonard Bourdon (not Bourdon de rOise), advanced boldly on the Hotel de Ville at the head of the gendarmerie and some of the artillery who remained faithful, and with slight resistance penetrated into the building and made pri- soners of Robespierre and all his party, whose previous hesitation and inaction were now expiated by desperate efforts at self-destruction. We shall dispose first and shortly of the minor personages by extracts from the original proces verbaux and depositions concern- ing them. The younger Robespierre threw himself out of a window of the first floor of the Hotel de Ville, and was taken up alive, but with several fractures and wounds. He was immediately attended by four medical men of the neighbourhood, who found him so muti- lated that they could neither examine his injuries nor pronounce on his state. On being brought in a chair before certain local magistrates he had only strength * to declare that his name was Eobespierre — that he had voluntarily thrown himself out of the window to escape inevitable death from the conspirators who had come to seize him — that neither he nor his brother had ever ceased to do their duty in the Convention, and that no one could reproach him with anything.' RE-CAPTURE OF THE FIVE DEPUTIES. 423 An eye-witness of his fall deposed that — * being on the place in front of the Hotel de Ville, he saw the wounded man here present get out of one of the windows and let himself down on the cornice that runs along the front of the building, and that he walked along the said cornice for some minutes, having his shoes in his hand — that, while there, a member of the Convention came on the plaxie and read a proclamation for the arrest of the whole commune — that the wounded man was near enough to hear the proclamation, which was hardly finished when he threw himself forward and fell on the steps of the entrance of the building almost at the feet of the representative who gave him into custody of the deponent, who further observed that the body had fallen on a sabre and a bayonet, and knocked down the two citizens who carried them/ The magistrates add, that, having * received an order from three representatives of the people to remove the wounded man to the Committee of General Security, they had replied to the said representatives that the wounded man was not in a condition to be moved : the order was repeated for sending him to the Committee in whatever condition he might be.' How or in what state he was so moved, and afterward removed to the Conciergerie, and thence to the Tribunal Revolutionnaire, and finally to the scaffbld in the Place Louis XV., we are not told — it is only stated that he was executed with his brother. If he was still alive his sufi'ering must have been terrible. Lebas was more fortunate — he shot himself dead just before the gendarmes had burst into the room where he, Robespierre, sen., St. Just, Couthon, and Dumas, the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, were assembled. St. Just had a knife in his hand, which he sur- rendered quietly — and Dumas gave up a bottle of scents, which was taken fi*om him, supposing it to be poison. Hanriot either threw himself, or was, as he stated, thrown by Cofiinhall, out of a third-story window of the Hotel de Ville into a small internal court of the building, where he was, some hours later, found in a sewer more than half dead, and solicited his captors to be put out of pain. Couthon, who was purblind and had long lost the use of his limbs, submitted quietly, and was removed by some of the people on a handbarrow, who seeing him, as they thought, half dead already, were going to throw the * carrion^ as they called it, into the river, but they were prevented, and they left the hand- 424 ROBESPIERRE. barrow and him on the parapet of the quay, whence he was re- moved by the gendarmes. Coffinhall escaped for the moment, but, after passing three days and three nights of terrible suffering from hunger and cold in the mud and bullrushes of the He des Cygnes (since united to the shore where the Pont de Jena now stands), he gave himself up to justice. It is generally supposed that Robespierre attempted to shoot himself by discharging a pistol into his mouth, which however only fractured the lower left jaw, and left it hanging down by the flesh and ligaments ; but a field-officer in the French army, of the name of Meda, subsequently claimed the honour of having fired this shot ; and he supported his assertion by some plausible facts. Meda — who afterwards rose to be a colonel, and was killed in that rank at the battle of Moskwa — was at this period of the age of 18 or 19, and a private gendarme : as such he accompanied Leonard Bourdon in his attack on the Robespierrians in the Maison de Ville, and showed so much firmness and courage, that when Bour- don returned to the Convention, to give an account of his success, he brought Meda with him, placed him by his side in the Tribune, stated that he had with his own hand killed {tud) as the report first has it, or struck^ frappe, as is subsequently stated, two of the conspirators, and obtained for him the honours of the sitting, honourable mention in the Proces verhal^ and a promise of military promotion. The next day there appears an order of the Conven- tion to deliver to Meda a pistol which had been placed on the bar the day before. All this the Proces verbal of the sittings and the report in the Moniteur record. But, on the other hand, it is not stated that one of the two struck by Meda was Robespierre. On the contrary. Bourdon says, that Meda disarmed him of a knife, but does not say that he either struck or sJiot him — a circumstance so transcendently important, that Bourdon could have hardly omitted to state it had it been so. Nor is it said that the pistol delivered to Meda was his own, nor that it was the pistol by which Robespierre was wounded ; nor is any reason given why he should have shot Robespierre, whom, if his own account be correct, he might have taken alive. Meda, there can be no doubt, accom- panied Bourdon (Bourdon says that he never quitted him), and distinguished himself generally ; but neither in the Proces verbal, nor in the Moniteur, is there any evidence of his having shot Robes- pierre ; and his own statement is somewhat at variance with Bour- NAKRATIVE OF MEDA. 425 don's, and not very intelligible as to the position in which the alleged shot was fired. This would of itself excite some doubts, but these doubts are much strengthened by the following facts. 1. Barrere, in the official report (made, not like Bourdon's, ver- bally in the hurry and agitation of the moment, but on the third day, and after the collection and examination of all the facts) states distinctly that Robespierre clumsily wounded himself; 2. That the surgeon who dressed the wound made a technical and official report that it must have been inflicted by the patient himself, and was too small to have been made by the ball of an ordinary pistol, such as a gendarme would have carried ; and, 3. It is stated that, as the poor wretch lay mangled on a table at the Hotel de Ville, he supported his broken jaw and endeavoured to absorb the blood with a pistol-hag, which he had in his left hand. This trifling circumstance, which could hardly have been invented, strongly corroborates the reports of Barrere and the surgeon, and all the authenticated facts, as well as all the statements, except only the tardy assertions attributed to Meda himself.* We say attributed, for on a careful examination of the whole evi- dence we have not the slightest doubt that the narrative published as Meda's is false in the main facts, which, as well as several minor errors, contradictions, and neologisms which it contains, induce us to hope that it was not written by Colonel Meda. It is probably one of those fabrications so common after the restoration, —but whoever be the writer, we think it in no respect entitled to credit. * M. Lamartine says that there were This would be decisive, if we could found on Robespierre two pocket-pistols give full credit to Dulac, but we think still loaded and in their cases, which there is abundant internal evidence that proves, he says, that he did not shoot his story was made up to suit his own himself. I know not where M. Lamar- purposes, to give himself importance, tine can have borrowed any such state- and to conceal, what we suspect was the ment; — it is at variance with all the fact, that he was a spy and traitor to evidence, both direct and circumstan- both parties; we therefore do not avail tial. I do not believe it. — 1 855. ourselves of his evidence, and the case t We find in the Appendix to Cour- seems quite strong enough without it. tois' second Report a narrative by one We think it right to record more than Dulac, a clerk in the bureau of the our doubts of Dulac's veracity, because Committee of Public Safety, ' ayant tout Thiers seems to rely on him in some vu et presque tout touchy pour ainsi dire,* more important points. who was, he says, the first who fouUvi The editor or fabricator of Meda's Robespierre lying wounded. * II nest memoirs says he was not able to get a pas done vrai que le gendarme present'! a sight of Courtois' second Report. It la Convention par Leonard Bourdon lui ait may be very rare, as he says the 'Biblio- hrule la cervelle, comme il est venu s'en theque Natiouale ' has no copy, but as vanter.' — pp. 207, 213. we have seen two and possess one copy 426 EOBESPIERRE. The concluding scenes of the tragedy are given in a paper of ' Notes ' appended to Courtois' second Report, perhaps drawn up by Courtois himself, which appear worthy of credit. They have at least a greater air of authenticity and probability than any other account that we have met, and we therefore venture to adopt them into our text. * Eobespierre was brought on a plank to the Committee of Public Safety, between one and two o'clock in the morning, by several artillerymen and armed citizens. He was placed on the table of the antechamber which adjoins that where the Committee holds its sittings. A deal box, which contained some samples of the ammunition bread sent to the Armee du Nord, was put under his head by way of pillow. He was for nearly an hour in a state of insensibility, which made us think that he was no more ; but after an hour he opened his eyes. Blood was running in abundance from the woimd he had in the left lower-jaw ; the jaw was broken, and a ball had gone through the cheek. His shirt w^as bloody. He was without hat or neckcloth. He had on a sky-blue coat, nankeen breeches, white cotton stockings hanging down on his heels. * At about three or four in the morning they perceived that he had in his hand a small white leather * bag, on which was written : — " Au Grand Monarque : Lecourt, gun-maker to the king and to the army^ Rue St. Honor e, near the Rue des Poidies, Paris;" and on the other side of the bag, — " To Mr. Archier." He nsed this bag to remove the coagulated blood which filled his mouth. The citizens who surrounded him watched all his movements : some of them even gave him some white paper (there was no linen at hand), which he employed in the same way, using only his right hand, and leaning on his left elbow. * Robespierre two or three different times was very rudely and unceremoniously reproached by some of the bystanders, and parti- cularly by a gunner, a countryman of his own, who abused him in the coarse language of a soldier with his treachery and crimes. At six o'clock, a surgeon, who happened to be in the court-yard of the Tuileries, was called in to dress his wound. By way of precau- tion he first put a key in his mouth. He found that he had the left of it, we cannot but suspect that he materials are in common use as cases might also have seen it, but was not for pocket-pistols, but whatever was over anxious to find so direct a contra- the material of the bag, the circum- diction of the fable that he was endea- stance of its being found in Robes- votiring to accredit. pierre's hand seems, as we have said, * Another account states that the decisive against Meda's story, bag was a woollen one j both these REMOVAL TO THE CONCIERGERIE. 427 jaw broken. He pulled out two or tliree teeth, bandaged up tlie wound, and got a basin of water wbicli lie placed by bis side. Eobespierre used it now and then, and to remove the blood which filled his mouth he used pieces of paper, which he folded for that purpose with his right hand only. ' At one moment he unexpectedly sat himseK upright, drew up his stockings, and, sliding off the table, ran to seat himself in an arm-chair, and soon after asked for some water and clean linen. ' All the time he was lying on the table, after he had recovered his senses, he looked steadily at all the people about him, especially the messengers and attendants of the Committee of Public Safety, whom he recognised. He often looked up to the ceiling ; but, ex- cept in a few convulsive movements now and then, he exhibited a remarkable apathy, even while his wound was dressing, which must have caused him great agony. His complexion, naturally bilious, had now the livid appearance of death. * At nine o'clock Couthon, and Gobault,* one of the conspirators of the Commune, were brought each on a stretcher to the foot of the great staircase of the Committee [in the Tuileries], where they were deposited. The citizens in whose custody they were remained with them while a commissary of police and an officer of the National Guard reported the success of their mission to Billaud Varennes, Barrere, and Collot d'Herbois, then sitting in the committee-room. These then immediately took upon themselves to order that Eobes- pierre, Couthon, and Gobault should be transferred without loss of time to the Conciergerie. ' This decree was immediately put into execution by the good citizens, to whom the custody of these three conspirators had been confided. ' It is said that Eobespierre, as he was carried to the Conciergerie in an arm-chair dovni the gi'and staircase of the Committee, struck one of the men that were carrying him. St. Just and Dumas were brought to the committee as far as the anteroom, and taken the next moment to the Conciergerie by those who had brought them. St. Just looked attentively at the great framed copy of the Droits de V Homme which hangs in that room, and said, pointing to it, *' and yet it was I who did that." ' — Second Rapport de Courtois, Appendix No. 41. The rest is shortly told. After the lingering agony just de- scribed — four and twenty hours of bodily and mental torture, insult, fever, and unquenched thirst — he and his four colleagues ♦ Substitute of the public accuser, guillotined with Eobespierre next day. 428 ' EOBESPIERRE. of the Convention, with seventeen of his minor adherents, were brought before their own bloody Tribunal for identification, and thence conveyed by the same guards on the same carts, with the same executioner, and along the same tedious transit from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Revolution, as the thousands of victims that they had doomed to the same fate. The dead body of Lebas accompanied Robespierre, as that of Valase did Brissot. There was, however, some variance from what had recently been the routine of executions. The streets and windows were exces- sively crowded, and with what is represented as a better class of persons. There was a great curiosity to distinguish Robespierre, and when the gendarmes of the escort pointed him out, sometimes shouts of joy and sometimes execrations burst from the crowd — the latter particularly were directed against him by some per- sons who reproached him with the murder of friends and relations. He was not insensible — but he showed no emotion; — his eyes were closed, the bandages of his wound nearly covered his face, and his hand supported the bandages. Couthon and the younger Robespierre, both mutilated and covered with blood, were scarcely distinguishable. St. Just alone preserved something of his usual appearance and demeanour. Hanriot was without hat or coat, his hands, sleeves, and shirt all bloody : a voice in the crowd ex- claimed, * Ah, there he is, just as he was when he was massacring the priests at St. Firmin.^ The procession halted in front of Duplay's* house — the scene of whatever quiet moments Robespierre could have passed since his ( * The whole family Duplay — father, of revolutionary history supplies, no mother, son, daughters — were all ar- authority. Of the inaccuracies, and, in rested the evening of the 9th Therm. fact the falsehood of many of these Lamartine says, ' that same evening anecdotes we have abundant and indis- these furies of vengeance invaded the putable evidence — for instance, in the prison in which the mother Duplay had very next page he tells an interest- been thrown, strangled her and hanged ing story about one of the daughters of her to her curtain rods.' I know not this Duplay family, whom he describes ■where M. Lamartine has found this as mourning the loss of her father who anecdote— nor do I understand how had suffered with Rohespierre. A mere these women could have invaded the fable — the truth being, the Duplays, Conciergerie, the strongest prison, and father and son, were by wonderful luck hung Madame Duplay to her curtain rods. excepted from the general fate of Robes- All through his history M. Lamartine pierre's adherents, and lived to be im- embroiders his narrative with numerous plicated in Baboeuf's conspiracy in 1797, anecdotes for which he gives, and for when they were again acquitted. Fifty which my tolerably extensive reading such instances oblige me to say that I EXECUTION OF EOBESPIERRE. 429 first appearance in the political world — these windows were now closed * whence his female society were used to gratify their cruel patriotism by watching the daily fournees of victims ; but their places were terribly supplied in the crowd below. A band of women — probably the same furies of the Guillotine, whose idol Robespierre had so long been — executed a fiendish dance of joy round the cart on which he was ; and it seems that this brutal exultation was repeated round the guillotine while the execution was going on. The first cart contained the two Robespierres, Couthon, and Hanriot, all so wounded and mutilated that Maximilian alone was able to ascend the scaffbld without help. He had neither hat nor neckcloth, and still wore, though stained and torn, that same fantastical coat of sky-blue silk in which only six weeks before he had figured at the opposite end of the Tuileries Gardens in a power surpassing that of monarchs, and for a purpose to which it was impious in a mortal to aspire. But, beyond even this, there was a cruel acme of degradation and suffering — the brutal execu- tioner tore away the bandage from his shattered head, and when the broken jaw fell, he twisted it round, that it might not inter- fere with the action of the machine — a sharp cry of pain followed this cruelty — but it was the last pang — and in a moment after, Robespierre was no more ! We are not of those who look presumptuously for special provi- attacli very little credit to any of M. La- believe tlie fact, though he admits a mai'tine's anecdotes for which I do not doubt as to the sincerity of Robes- find some other authority. pierre's grief. We suspect that he * Lamartine,in his account of the exe- may have had the story from one of cution of Camille Desmoulins, says, — the Duplays who survived, and who * As the cart passed the windows of would be induced to give this kind of the house where Robespierre lodged, contradiction, that the women of the the populace, in homage to him, re- family used to sit at their windows, to doubled their cries of execration against enjoy the sight of these processions; Camille. The shutters of Duplaifs house and particularly to a statement of Lou- were habitually shut at the hour that these vet, who says expressly, that as a batch processions usually passed; but on this of Girondins were going to execution occasion Robespierre retired to the back they saw at the windows of Robespierre's part of the house, to avoid hearing these apartments his mistress, Cornelia, her clamours, and there indulged in senti- sisters, and some of his accomplices, mental grief for his unhappy friend. which excited Gercy-Dupm, one of the "Ah! that poor Camille," said he; sufferers, to accost them with cries of ''why could 1 not save him? but he Down with the tyrants! Down with the would ruin himself! (il avoulu seperdre)." ' dictators I and to continue these exclama- Lamartine does not tell us where he tions as long as they were in sight.— found this fable ; and he affects to Louvet, Mcit. 289. 430 EOBESPIEREE. dences * in human misfortunes, but it is impossible to divest the mind of the awful impression which this last scene must excite in such close approximation of ^ time, place, and even garb, with that gaudy day in which the infatuated and audacious vanity of this unhappy man dared to announce — in the face of the awful evidences of nature — that a decree of the National Convention recognized a Supreme Being. * This was so much the public feel- * J'ai jou^ les Francais et la Divinite", ingjthat immediately after his execution Je meurs sur I'^cnafaud: je I'ai bien a print of the wounded head was pub- merite.* lished with this epigraph ; — ESSAY VII. [Quarterly Review, March, 1844.] THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS, 1. Souvenirs (fun DemiSiede ; Vie Publique— Vie Intime — Mouvement Litti^ raire — Portraits, 1787-1836. Publies par G. Toucliard-Lafosse, Auteur des Ch.roniques de (Eil-de-Boeuf, de THistoire de Paris, &c. &c. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1836. 2. Souvenirs de la Terreurde 1788 a 1793. Par M. G. Duval, precedes d'une Introduction Historique, par M. Charles Nodier, de I'Aca- demie Fran9aise. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1841. 3. Souvenirs Thermidoriens. Par Georges Duval. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1844. The most stupendous phenomenon, and yet the most inexplicable enigma of the whole French Revolution, is the Revolutionary Tribunal. With a distant and general view of its wholesale atrocities the public memory is but too familiar; but the real motives of its creation — the interior springs by which it was worked — the object, the interest which any man or party could have had, or fancied they had, in such a protracted and diurnal system of indiscriminate murder, and, above all, the wanton, the impudent, the insane absurdity of thousands of its individual judg- ments, are mysteries which, the more closely they are examined, seem to us only the more difficult to be explained or even guessed at. Nothing, therefore, would be more valuable or interesting than any hond-fide testimony of the actors in, or even the near spec- tators of, those events — anything that should convey to us the contemporaneous feelings and impressions of men's minds, and in any degree explain how such a state of national insanity could 2 F 432 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. have lasted a week, and how social and domestic life was carried on amidst those scenes of anarchy and death. With this feeling we opened the works whose titles we have placed at the head of this article, but we have been altogether disappointed. Their compilers appear to have speculated on the interest which the public has shown for some authentic details of that wonderful period, and fabricated these works to meet that demand. We know that there have been, and may be yet living, two small lit- terateurs^ of the names of Touchard-Lafosse and Georges Duval ; and it is possible that they, or more probably some one in their names, may have concocted these volumes from old pamphlets, files of newspapers, published memoirs, and so forth ; but we will take upon us to assert most unhesitatingly that, as what they profess to be — Souvenirs, or actual personal recollections of the alleged authors, they are contemptible impostures. We have for the last twenty years seen and exposed so many fabrications of the same kind, that there is, in this repetition of the fraud, nothing that surprises us — no, not even that M. Charles Nodier, a member of the French Academy, should have written a prefatory essay to Duval's book to guarantee its authenticity. And we confidently place all these more recent speculations on the credulity of the public on the same shelf with the Memoires of Robespierre, fabri- cated by the same M. Nodier — of Louis XVIII. — of the AbhS Lenfant — of Le Vasseur— of Madame de Crequi — all of which have been, since our detection, proved (some in courts of justice) to be forgeries* So far, then, from relying on these ' Souvenirs ' for information, we confess that it is these gross impostures which, in addition to the negligence of some recent historians, have prompted us to endeavour to collect from more authentic sources some rational account of that great mystery — the Revolutionary Tribunal. We begin by observing that its very name and date have been generally misunderstood. We hear and read of the Revolutionary Tribunal, but, in fact, there were four of them usually comprised under that generic name, and characterised by the same spirit of * We are tempted to give one in- he met Fouquier and Paris the chief stance of the impudent falsehood with clerk of the Tribunal, and heard their which these things are fabricated. Du- conversation. The fabricator did not val is made to say (vol. i. p. 215) that, know that Paris had been in prison, on the 'dth Thermidot^ (21th Jnly, 1794), and au secret, ever since the 9th April! MEANING OF THE TEEM * EEVOLUTIONAEY.' 433 injustice and cruelty, but established at different periods, by dif- ferent factions, for different purposes, and with different powers. The first was instituted on the 17th August, 1792, which, after having condemned and executed twenty-eight persons (of whom but half-a-dozen were on political charges), was suddenly and con- temptuously dismissed on the 30th November. The second was that damned to everlasting fame as the Revolutimary Tribunal^ and which has extended its terrible name to the others. This tri- bunal was created on the 10th March, 1793, and, after executing above 2700 persons, was abolished, and the majority of its mem- bers sent to the scaffold, on the fall of Robespierre. The third may be considered as a renewal of the last, but with restricted powers and different persons ; it was reorganised on the 9th August, 1794, but, after an existence of about four months, was abrogated on the 24th December, 1794, on which day it was replaced by the fourth of these tribunals, which, after trying and condemning Fouquier Tinville, the Accusateur-Public of the second tribunal, and those of his colleagues who still survived, was finally dissolved on the 2nd June, 1795. The name, too, has been generally misunderstood. To the first two tribunals the name ' Revolutionary ' was at their creation formally and purposely denied, because that title was proposed with the intention of re- lieving them from the ordinary principles or restraints of law, customs, or constitution, with licence to pursue by every kind of means— j?er /as et nefas — the ultimate object of assuring what the rulers of the hour should be pleased to denominate the salut public. It was in this sense of the word that the Convention suspended the Constitution it had itself just created (10th October, 1793), and declared itself a revolutionary power, and its government a revolu- tionary government — that the deputy Dupin, in defence of his share in the proceedings before the second Tribunal against the Fermiers-GSnSraux, says that the government ' voulaient que cette affaire fiit jugee sans examen et rholutionnairement * — and that Fouquier Tinville complained [Proees Fouquier, xxx.) that his prosecutors confounded the justice of an ordinary with that of a Revolutionary Tribunal. There are many passages in the his- tory of the Revolution, and especially in that of the Convention, particularly in the proceedings of the Conventional Proconsuls, as they were called, in the provinces, in which this peculiar use of 2 F 2 434 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. the word revolutionary becomes important, and we therefore notice the distinction. We know of but three contemporaneous works which afford any direct evidence as to the proceedings of the Revolutionary Tri- bunal. The first is one that we have often mentioned, and which, if we are to believe some modern French writers, is become very rare, — ' Liste Generate et tres-exacte des JSfoms, Ages, Qualites, et ' Demeures de tous les Conspirateurs qui ont Ste condamnes a Paris par le Tribunal HSvolutionnaire, ^tabli a Paris par la lot du 17 Aout, 1792 ; et par le second Tribunal, etabli a Paris par la hi du 10 Mars, pour juger tous les Ennemis de la Patrie? This List, which affects to give the judgments from day to day, is printed with a slovenly negligence, which shows how very indif- ferent the public had already become to accuracy in such matters, and the cases judged in the first courts were evidently not reported till after the establishment of the second. It contains the names and ages of the victims, with a running number affixed, and a summary of the charges on which they were condemned, but no details whatsoever of the proceedings.* The second is the * Bulletin du Tribunal OrimineV This was published in quarto numbers of four pages each. It professed to be under the sanction of the Tribunal, and was meant to be regular and contemporaneous. It began by giving, with a slight degree of decency, some details of the proceedings, and occa- sionally of the executions ; but the Tribunal soon became so rapid in its movements, that the Bulletin — though it abridged ordinary cases to a mere statement of the charges, and omitted both the evidence and the defence — soon fell into arrear. Then it was forced to leave intervals, to be subsequently supplied, which never was done ; and, finally, it was run out of breath long before the Tribunal had attained its greatest velocity. The result is, that, of 2730 victims of this Tribunal, the Bulletin— ai least as much ♦ The 'Moniteur' also gave, from and even piracies of the works men- time to time, lists of the condemned of tioned in the text; but the variances the same general character as the Liste are of no importance. It appears from des Condamnes. These are, however, the Proces Fauquier, that printed lists of not only incomplete, but as inaccurate the sufferers used to be placarded on as the Liste. ^ There was also a list, the walls of the city. There was also under the title of Le Glaive Vengeur, a Gazette des Trihunaux, that gave a re- which contains a few slight notices of port of some of the more remarkable the victims, but it went but a short trials. way. There were also different editions I t LISTS OF THEIR PROCEEDINGS. 455 of it as we have been able to collect — reports only 690, or about one-fourth, and of these there are not above a dozen cases in which the evidence is given. The third, and, though limited to one trial, the most curious of all, is an account of the ^ Froces^ against Fouquier Tinville, the Accusateur Public, and several of his accomplices, judges and jurors of the second Revolutionary Tribunal. This, in the copy be- fore us, forms the seventh volume of the Bulletin collection. This report — most valuable, because it aifords the best, and indeed almost the only, insight that we have into the interior of the Tri- bunal — though tolerably full during the earlier days of that tedious trial, fell at length into arrear, and was forced to crowd into its last number the proceedings of the concluding fortnight — giving no details whatsoever of the defences of Fouquier and his col- leagues. This is much to be regretted, as we axe told that Fou- quier made a most able and artful defence, four hours long ; but, as some compensation, we have two printed apologies published by him before the trial ; and as it was the practice of the Tribunal, as it is of all French courts, to not only allow but invite the accused to make his reply to each piece of evidence as it arises, we possess the substantial answers of the parties to the most pro- minent charges, though we have not their general replies. We do not know — indeed, we do not believe — that the collec- tions that we have endeavoured to make of the numbers (for so they were published) of the Liste and the Bulletin are complete. Some towards the end appear to be wanting, but, such as they are, they give us a view of these four tribunals, less imperfect, and therefore more astonishing, than anything we have been able to find elsewhere. The first Tribunal consisted of two sections, or, as we should say, of two courts ; and these two courts had double judges and juries to relieve each other, and enable them to proceed without intermission. The second was originally a single court ; but, in July, 1793, on pretence that it did not work fast enough, it was divided into two sections ; and, finally, by a decree of the 5th Sep- tember, 1793, into four. I find, however, no traces of this division having come into actual eifect. Indeed, the variety and apparent inconsistency of the decrees made from time to time for the regu- lation of the Tribunal render it very difficult to ascertain the details of its organisation or proceedings at different dates. When- 436 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. ever any legal impediment to the march of murder was raised, the Tribunal applied to the Government, and the Government and the Convention immediately interfered, by ex post facto legislation, to remove the obstacle ; ' so that there were passed, in little more than a year, about forty separate decrees, forming a code which might be entitled murder made easy ' {Hist, du Trib. HSv., i. 130). The presidents, judges, foremen of the juries, and public accusers, should by law have been elected by the sections of Paris, but they seem to have been in the first instance chosen by the Commune, and were afterwards named, from time to time, by the Committees of Government. Each court was to consist of a pre- sident, and at least two assistant judges, and of twelve jurymen, who should have been chosen by lot for each case from a general list furnished in proportions by all the Departments of the Ke- public; and the, judges and the jurymen were assigned the same pay as the members of the Assembly, viz., eighteen francs per diem ; the presidents and Accusateur Public were, we believe, allowed double that sum. The slight provisions for the independ- ence of the juries were disregarded from the very beginning. On the allegation that there was not time to make the departmental elections, a number of well-known Jacobins of Paris were ap- pointed, of whom we find, in the indictment against Fouquier and his accomplices, the following character : — * Many of those who thus undertook the duties of jurors could not read nor write, and some of them executed their office in an habitual state of drunkenness.^ — Proces Fouquier , &c., p. 62. The jury list, thus garbled, could afibrd but ten jurors, and some- times only nine ; latterly a decree was passed to legalise juries of seven ; and, instead of being chosen with any semblance of impar- tiality, they were appointed by the Committees, and selected for each trial by the public prosecutor : those who dared to show any- thing like hesitation were immediately excluded ; and those whose zeal, or rather ferocity, was most flagrant, were put forward in the cases of the greatest interest or emergency. All these courts sat in the Palais de Justice — the first in what had been the Grande Chambre of the old Parliament, and is now the Cour de Cassation — this was called the Salle de la LibertS. The second court was held, we believe, in the Chambre de la Tournelle of the old Parle- ment, then called the Salle d' EgalitSi and now, we believe, tlie THE FIRST TRIBUNAL. 437 Chamhre des Requetes. We have no means of ascertaining whether the division of labour between these courts was made on any principle : for the first ten months, indeed, the Bulletin (which affects to give details) never makes any distinction as to the see- tiwis of the court ; nor does it give, except accidentally, the name of the president or of the jurymen. The same may be said of the Lists des Cmidamnes, except that, about the 10th of February, 1794, at the 369th victim, it begins to distinguish the two courts ; and they seem soon after that time to have been worked with daily and about equal activity. At first, while persons were tried indi- vidually, there was a single seat for the prisoner ; but when they began to try several together, graduated rows of benches were raised against the wall, which were extended from time to time so as to hold thirty, forty, sixty, and at last scaffolding was about to be erected to seat two hundred prisoners at once. When many were tried together, the person whom the Public Accuser chose to designate as the chief of the conspiracy, such as Brissot, Hebert, Fabre, &c., was placed in a chair more prominent than the benches. This court communicated, by a small winding staircase, with the dungeons of the Conciergerie, situated under all this portion of the Palais de Justice. Into the Conciergerie prisoners intended for trial were generally brought on the previous evening, and through this staircase they ascended to and descended from the Tribunal : on some occasions, in which it was necessary to carry prisoners unable to walk, these stairs were found too narrow, and they then went round by the prison door, and so up the great steps of the Palais. We shall now endeavour to give a view, that we know must be very imperfect, of the operations of those wonderful tribunals. The first Tribunal, of the 17th August, 1792, short-lived and com- paratively insignificant as were its own proceedings, was, in the circumstances and principles of its creation, of more immediate importance and of more permanent influence than any other events of the Revolution, except the taking the Bastille — the 6th October — and the 10th of August. The two great parties — the Girondins and the Jacol)ins — had already begun to take opposite views in the Legislative Assembly. The Girondins had a decided prepon- derance both in numbers and talents. Their ^rs^ object was minis- terial place and power, under the Constitution of 1791 ; and it was to force themselves on the King that they had made the ineffec- 458 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. tual insurrection of the 20th June. The Jacobins bid higher for the favour of the populace : their object was the deposition of the King — perhaps his death — at least a change of dynasty, and some of them probably dreamed of a republic. For these purposes th£y prepared and executed the revolution of the 10th August. This violence was, for a few hours, deplored and repudiated by the Girondins ; but it was so evident an imitation of their own attempt of the 20th June, and was followed by such an overwhelming burst of popular enthusiasm, that they hastened to adopt it, and, having the majority of the Assembly with them, turned it to their own account, and installed themselves as the Executive Government, in lieu of the suspended and imprisoned monarch, giving to their Jacobin allies, who had really won the victory, but a scanty and subordinate share of the spoil. Of the six ministers who consti- tuted the Executive Council, one only — Danton — was of this party. The name of Robespierre, who did not belong to the Assembly, does not seem to have been mentioned. But, in the night between the 9th and 10th, there had arisen a new power. Some of the more violent Jacobins had usurped the municipal government of Paris, under the title of the Commune. Of this body Robespierre was the instigator and director, and he lost no time in proving to the Assembly and the Girondin Ministry that he and his party were not to be neglected with impunity. They claimed, as in truth they might, the exclusive merit of this new revolution ; and for the purpose, as they urged, of giving it its full effect, and carrying out the intentions of the victorious patriots, raised a cry for the creation of a Revolutionarj^ Tribunal, for the more complete extirpation of the monarchy, by the punishment — summarily, and without forms of appeal — of all the enemies of the People, and especially of the conspirators and traitors of the 10th August. The new Government and the Assembly were alarmed at the proposition of such a tribunal, with powers so extensive, and for objects so vague and indefinite ; and reasonable men wondered how parties who loudly proclaimed that they had concerted, con- ducted, and happily executed so glorious a revolution, could pre- tend that it was the work of conspirators and traitors. But, with the same cowardice and inconsistency which marked the whole course of the Girondin faction, the Assembly attempted a compro- mise, by decreeing that the crimes of the 10th August should be tried before the ordinary criminal tribunals. This concession encouraged THE ASSEMBLY INTIMIDATED. 439 instead of appeasing the Jacobins. The Commune took measures approaching to open revolt — a deputation, headed by Robespierre in person^ told the Assembly in terms, the insolence of which was aggravated by the menacing tone and gestures of the spokes- man, that their decree was good for nothing ; that what were called the * crimes of the 10th August ' were but a small part of those of which the people had to complain ; and that, to satisfy their just impatience and ensure their tranquillity, it was necessary to create this Tribunal to investigate all counter-revolutionary affairs, and to punish the guilty summarily and without appeal The Assembly, though it exhibited its weakness by inviting Robespierre to the honours of the sitting, still made a show of resistance. But, in the meanwhile, the populace was roused into actual insurrection. They surrounded the Assembly, and threatened the Manage with the fate of the Chateau ; and a fresh deputation told it, in still more peremptory language, that, if it did not instantly sanc- tion the proposed tribunal, the tocsin should be rung and the drums should beat to arms that very night, and, if justice was an hour longer delayed, the people would take it by its own avenging hands. This was decisive ; the Assembly submitted to all that was required — with one verbal exception — it had been proposed that the new court should be called a Revolutionary Tribunal^ the decree entitled it only an Extraordinary Tribunal. The personal organization of the Tribunal was conceded to the municipal admi- nistration of Paris, and Robespierre was deservedly complimented with the offer of being its first President — a subaltern honour, which — looking, no doubt, to higher objects — he declined; and one of his creatures, afterwards one of his victims — Osselin — was appointed. On Osselin's election to the Convention, about the middle of September, he was succeeded by one Pepin Desgrouettes. The violence with which its creation was urged and visited is a sufficient proof that it was intended for purposes far higher than those on which it was ultimately employed. Our own conjecture is that, besides the immediate triumph which its creation afforded to Robespierre's personal vanity and political ambition, it was aimed against the King" and Queen, and was prepared as a kind of judicial engine which should in due season dispose of them and the monarchy. The resolution, however, to decide these great interests by the more solemn voice of a National Convention superseded those secret and embryo objects of The Tribunal, 440 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. which, after it had condemned one officer of the Swiss Guards who had defended the Chateau and acquitted another, no more inquired into any of the ' crimes of the 10th of August ' than into those of the St. Barthelemi, and soon fell, as we shall see, into the investigation of cases fitter for the cognizance of a police office. Its proceedings opened with the arraignment of three persons, thus designated in the Liste : — * 1. Louis David Collenot, (dit) D'Angremont, accused of crimping [emiauchage], executed 26tli August, 1792. ' 2. La Porte, superintendent of the civil list, convicted of com- plicity in counter-re volutionaiy conspiracies, executed 28th August. ' 3. Durosoi, editor of the Gazette de Paris, and of another journal called Le Moyalisme, convicted of conspiracy, executed 291^1 August.' As these were the first steps of the new Tribunal, it may be worth while to observe ht)w early a sample they affi)rd of the illegality, injustice, and cruelty of the proceedings of all these courts, and of the strange inaccuracy with which they are recorded. The facts alleged against those persons were such as, even if proved, no other jurisdiction that ever existed would have treated as capital, and hardly as penal ; and certainly all that we can discover to have been proved were, while the constitutional monarchy still existed, absolutely innocent They had, moreover, no relation to anything like ' crimes of the 10th of August;' and the published reports of the proceedings exhibit errors of dates and names. Dangremont was a clerk in a public office, of no weight or character, and the ofifence absurdly denominated emhau^chage, on pretence of which he was executed, was the alleged employ- ment of persons who were to distribute Royalist publications, and take the Royalist side in groups and cofi'ee-houses, and so forth. He was executed by torchlight, and amidst the hootings of the populace, not, as the Liste states, on the 26th August, but on the night of the 21st. In the account of his trial, in the Moniteur of the 30th, he is miscalled * Banglemont! and a second time doubly misnamed ' Connet Danglemont ;' and Lacretelle, in his Prhis Chronologique de la Rholution, makes the same mistakes. M. La Porte was the Minister of the Civil List, and the chief allegation against him was that he had paid, out of the privy purse, for the printing and distribution of certain Royalist placards and pamphlets —a practice which Roland — whom the Assembly had forced upon the King as Minister of the Interior — had been employing against THE MM. DE MONTMOWN. 441 his master at the same time and to an infinitely greater extent ; but the real motive of M. La Porte's condemnation was to appease and gratify the populace by the execution of one who was officially so near the King's person, and so much in his confidence, and whose condemnation was therefore a promise and a pledge that his royal master should undergo the same fate. His execution is also misdated in the Liste — the 28th instead of the 25th. The real name of the third victim was Be Rosay, but he was condemned and executed as Durosoy^ and under that name has passed into all the biographies and such of the histories as deign to notice such details. He was a man of letters, and one of the few Royalist journalists — a class which his fate was intended to extinguish, and did so. His death, too, is misdated the 29th for the 25th, which is the more remarkable, because, when going to execution on the latter evening, his last words were, ' I glory as a Royalist in dying on the day of St. Louis ! ' We are aware that, amidst the gigantic horrors of those scenes, such small circumstantial mistakes - some of them, no doubt, mere clerical errors— may seem hardly worth notice ; but they appear to us worthy of this passing remark as indicative of the laxity and indift'erence of both the Tribunal and the Public about even a decent hypocrisy of justice. The Tribunal, having gratified the populace with these execu- tions, ventured to acquit two or three persons. But, by a strange fatality, one of these acts of justice produced, or, at least, was made the occasion, of the most surprising and deplorable conse- quences. One of the King's last ministers had been the Count de Mantmorin, and, of course, his very name might be expected to ensure a sentence of death. But he happened to have a cousin, a Marquis de Montmorin, who was governor of Fontainebleau. Whether it was by mistake for his cousin that the Marquis * was originally arrested does not appear, but on the trial nothing could be found to justify even his detention, and he was, after a long dehberation, acquitted accordingly, on the morning of the 1st September. This verdict was heard with indignation by the popu- lace, who assailed the court with such violence that it was forced, for the prisoner's safety and their own, to recommit him to prison, ^ So he is called by most writers, but and we find that he was sometimes his father the Marquis was still living, addressed M. le Cointe. — IVib., p. 27. 442 THE EEVOLUTIOXARY TRIBUNALS. in order to a new trial * at the requisition of the people,^ The ex- asperation was so great, that the President himself (Osselin) was obliged to conduct the Marquis back to prison, and, in doing so, narrowly escaped death from the sabre of one of the National Guard, who either mistook him for his prisoner, or, as the Bulletin states, wished to revenge on the judge the verdict of the jury. It was just at this time that the elections for the Convention were about to take place, and it was determined by the Jacobin candi- dates — Danton, Robespierre, and Co. — to strike a blow of such terror as should put all opposition to flight, and ensure the return of their own list for the city and neighbourhood of Paris, and, indeed, for the rest of France ; but Paris was the first object. For this purpose they resolved on the celebrated domiciliary visits of 29 th and 30th August to fill the prisons, and the massacres to empty them. There can be no doubt that all this had been already arranged when the supposed acquittal of M. de Montmorin, * one of the last ministers of the Tyrant,' * was adroitly seized on by Danton (if, indeed, he had not already pre-arranged it) to raise and justify the exasperation of the people. Other inflammatory circumstances were artfully superadded, the massacres commenced, and both the MM. de Montmorin perished — the Marquis at the Conciergerie, and the Count at the Abbaye — with many hundred others as innocent as they ; and Danton, Robespierre, Marat, UgalitS, Osselin the President of the Tribunal^ and their atrocious associates, were elected, without a dissentient voice, representatives of the city of Paris — all to be massacred in their turns, by tlieir mutual animosities and the retributive justice of Heaven. On the very days of the massacres, the Tribunal, terrified like the rest of Paris, or affecting to be so, condemned two persons who would probably have been also acquitted a day or two before. One— on the 2nd September — was a poor carter, by name Jean Julien, who, having been sentenced to exposition (a kind of pillory) for some minor off'ence, had exclaimed, ' Vive le Roil — Vive 31. Lafayette!— a fig for the nation! * The other was — on the 3rd September — the Baron de Bachman, Major-General of the Swits Guards. Why he was singled out for trial, or on what pretence of a crime, we cannot discover ; for even if the charge against him, of having ordered the Swiss to fire, were true, he woulcP have been only * M. Thiers, in his History (v. ii. p. 39), makes the same blunder. BARON DE BACHMAN. 443 performing his military duty in pursuance of the treaties between France and Switzerland, and in this special case under the written orders of Petion, the mayor of Paris. But even this charge fell to the ground, for it turned out that Bachman had taken no part in the actual conflict, having left the Palace in company with the King before the firing began. It was clear that, even before that Tribunal, he must be acquitted. But, while the trial was going on above, the massacre of the other prisoners was going on in the courtyard of the Conciergerie below, and then followed a scene which we transcribe from the Bulletin itself : — * Here the court was invaded by a great body of armed men, v^ho, addressing themselves to the judges, required Bachman to be deli- vered up to them, saying, that it was the day of vengeance of the People, and that the prisoner must be given up to them. These words spread consternation over a number of Swiss soldiers who had been brought up as witnesses in the cause, who threw them- selves under the tables and benches to hide themselves from the armed mob. Bachman alone — he who had now been thirty-six hours that the trial had already lasted without sleep — maintained the greatest tranquillity. His countenance was unmoved ; he arose from the chair in which he had been placed, and advanced to the bar, and presented himself to the people, as if to say. Sacrifice me. The President harangued the people, and invoked them to respect the law, under whose sword the culprit already was. This quieted them, and they returned down to the Conciergerie to finish the work they had commenced there, of which twenty-two prisoners had been already the victims.' — Bulletin, i. 39. Our readers will hardly wonder that, after such a visit, the judges and juries made haste to excuse themselves from another'; and Bachman was found guilty — of what the record does not say ; but it thus closes its account of this trial, which had lasted two days and nights : — ' The President addressed the prisoner in a superb discourse, who heard it and his sentence without a word ; and at seven o'clock in the morning, all being ready for the execution, he ascended the cart with resignation, and, when arrived at the scaffold, lent himself with the best grace to that cruel operation.'' — Ih., 40. The only other political execution we find is that of old Gazette, the poet, who, at the age of seventy -four years, had been arrested on account of some private letters of his to La Porte, his old and 444 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. intimate friend, found in the possession of the latter. He had been thrown into prison, and was about to perish in the massacres of September, when he was saved by the courage and piety of his daughter, who exposed her own person to the pikes of the assassins, and actually awed and melted them into mercy ; but three weeks later he was again arrested, and brought before the Tribunal, which was more inexorable than even the mob of murderers, and on the 25th of September the guillotine left the heroic Elizabeth Cazotte fatherless. These five persons, and a poor clerk some way connected with Dangremont, were the only political victims of the first Tribunal. The massacres had probably done most of the work that this had been intended to do, and had, in truth, superseded it by their hardly more expeditious murders ; but, as the fate of the royal family was still undecided, it was, we suppose, thought expedient to keep the Tribunal alive to be applied if necessary ; and, therefore, in order that it might have something to occupy its time, the ordi- nary criminal business of the metropolis was, by a decree of the 11th of September, 1792, transferred to it ; and in consequence of this decree it tried and sent to the guillotine the robbers of the Garde-Meuble, and was busy with the trial of some minor offences, when — the resolution for the trial of the King by the Convention having been finally taken — on the morning of the 1st of December (misdated, with the usual inaccuracy of the bulletins of these revolutionary courts, 31st of November), the Tribunal found itself suddenly, without notice or reason given, dissolved by a decree of the preceding day. It ventured to remonstrate against this sudden suppression, but the Convention treated the appeal with contempt, and the Extraordinary Tribunal was extinguished — but only to reappear, as we shall see, more formidable than ever. For three months the trial and the death of the King — in which the Girondins had as weakly as wickedly concurred with the Jacobins — had suspended the struggle between them; but, when that common object was disposed of, the two parties of regicides renewed their internecine struggle, and a Revolutionary Tribunal became once more the question which was to decide their fate. The circumstances were very similar to those which had led to the creation of the first, but exaggerated in violence and extent ; COWAEDICE OF THE GIKONDINS. 445 and it was clear that the Girondins, who hitherto had heen con- tending for power, were now fighting for life. Accordingly, this struggle was longer and more violent on both sides ; the Girondins had the impotent majority of the Assembly, the Jacobins the auda- cious tumults of the capital ; in the former case insolent menaces had sufficed — now an actual insurrection besieged the Convention. Vergniaud, in the height of the debate, prophetically exclaimed that * the proposed Tribunal was an inquisition a thousand times more formidable than that of Venice, and that they would die rather than submit to it.' The Girondins put forth all their strength, and had nearly succeeded in obtaining an adjournment. ' The sitting,' says the Momteur, ' was over, and the members were moving away, when Danton rushed to the tribune, recalled them to their seats and to a sense of their duty, in a tone that at once quelled the Assembly into silent attention, and presently into terror, when he proceeded to warn them that they had no alterna- tive between this proposed Tribunal and that supreme and more summary one — the tribunal of popular vengeance ! ' {soyons ter- ribles pour dispenser le Peuple de Vetre). The Assembly recog- nised the spirit of the Septembrisers, and submitted. La Revel- liere feebly made, and Vergniaud feebly seconded, a proposition for the appel nominal^ or division. But even that the Girondins had not nerve to carry out. Their cowardice had sacrificed the King, it now sacrificed themselves. They thought, perhaps not without reason, that they were reduced to the alternative of instant massacre, or of submitting to the creation of a tribunal which they knew was meant to murder them in detail. The instant overcame the prospective danger, and the fatal Tribunal was decreed with little variation, either in its composition or attributes, from the former, but with a wider jurisdiction, ' to try and condemn without appeal all traitors, conspirators, and counter-revolutionists.'' On this decisive occasion, a man, whose name has become, even amongst the Jacobins, pre-eminently infamous — Carrier — the scourge of Nantes — and who died at last by this, his own weapon — proposed to call it ' the Revolutionary Tribunal.^ This, for the reasons we before mentioned, was strenuously resisted, but was supported by one whose cold and hypocritical cruelty, contrasted with his subsequent servility to a despot, is really more infamous than even the frank and headlong ferocity of Carrier— CamhacSres — the Prince Arch- Chancellor of the Empire — Camhac4rh would U6 THE EEVOLUTIONAKY TEIBUNALS. not allow the delay even of one night in passing this code of blood, and exclaimed, * I oppose any adjournment until we shall have decreed and organised a Rewlutionary Tribunal.* — Moniteur^ 13 Mars, 1793. But even for the then state of the Convention the proposition of the future Highness was too strong, and the tribunal was, after a hard struggle, only entitled Tribunal Extraordinaire^ and was subjected to certain forms, from which, loose as they were, it was soon freed, when the expulsion of the Girondins left Cambaceres and his party masters of the Aceldama— the field of blood. The second Tribunal was decreed on the 10th March, 1793, and commenced its operations about the 7th April ; and we think it will be more convenient, before we enter into any details, that we sho ud lay before our readers a kind of chronological and nume- rical table of the whole operations of the Tribunal. We shall follow a sort of classification which we find in the contempora- neous publications, and which the Tribunal itself seems to have adopted. Where any batch was distinguished by a special title, we shall preserve it; the other and intermediate cases we shall give under the head of various : and various, indeed, they were — not as to the alleged crime, which was generally con- spiracy — nor as to the result, which was invariably death — but various beyond belief in the pretexts under which the several victims were brought to this common butchery ; — 1793. Various Apr. 7 to June 14 . 20 Conspirators of -Sreto^we .... June 18 13 A.^2iYr oi Bourdon Jnly 16 9 Various „ 17 to Aug. 28 . 9 Affair of Rouen , Sept. 6 .... . 9 Various „ 7 to Oct. 30 . 35 The Queen Oct. 16 1 Brissotins ,,31 21 Various Nov. 1 to Nov. 30 . 53 First Affair of Coulommiers .... ,,30 10 1794. Various Dec. 2 to Jan, 31 . 138 Second Affair of Coulommiers . . . Jan. 31 8 Various Feb. 1 to Mar. 1 . 77 EXECUTIONS. 447 Class. Date. 1794. Numbers executed. Third Affair of Coulwnmiers . . . Mar. 2 10 Various 2 to Mar. 25 . 32 Affair of Clamecy 15 15 Various 16 to Mar. 23 . 22 Hehertists . , 24 19 Various 25 to Apr. 2 . 29 Dantonists . Apr. 5 14 Various 5 to Apr. 12 . 15 Chaurmtte 13 18 Vaiious 14 to Apr. 17 . 18. , . . . 31 Affair Laborde 17 Parlementaires 20 25 Various 20 to Apr. 21 . 12 U Espremenil, &c 21 .... . 13 Various 23 9 Affair de Verdun 23 33 Various 24 to May 1 . 65 Affair de Pommeau . May 1 6 Various 2 3 Grenadiers des Filles St. Thomas . . 3. . . . . 19 Various 3 to May 7 . 57 Fermiers Generaux 8 28 Madame FJlizabeth, &g 10 25 Various 11 to May 31 . 200 From this time forward the executions are so numerous, that we think it worth while, at the expense of a little space, to distinguish each day. The blank days were Decadis, the Sabbath of the Atheists. 1794. Various June 1 13 Various ,, 2 13 Affair of /SeJen 27, and various 5 . . ,, 3 32 Various ,, 4 16 Various ?> 5 6 Various ,, 6 19 Affair des Ardennes 18, and various 2 ,, 7 20 Decadij June 8. Various „ 9 22 Various „ 10 13 Various „ 11 22 Various ,,12 17 2 G 448 THE llEVOLUTIONARY TEIBUXALS. Class. Various Paiiement de Toulouse 26, and varf 12 . Various First aifair of Bicetre 37, and var? 5 . Affair des Chemises Rouges 54, & vai* 7 Decadi, Various Various Affair de Caussade 18, and various 7 . Various Various . Various Affair of La Vendee 36, and various 9 2nd affair of Bicetre 35, and varf 12 . Various Decadi, Various Various Various Various Various Various Various . * Affair of Toulouse , 25, and various 10 1st Consp^ des Prisons 58, and varf 9 2nd ConspT des Prisons 48, and vaif 1 2 3rd Conspf des Prisons 38, and varf 6 Various Various Various Various Various Affair of Carmelite Nuns 30, & varf 10 Various Date. Numbers executed. 1794. June 13. . . . . 23 5J 14. . . . . 38 5» 15. . . . . 19 5» 16. . . . . 42 ?J 17. . . . . 61* June 18. J) 19. . . . . 16 )» 20. . . . . 36 5» 21. . . . . 25 J5 22. . . . . 15 ?5 23. . . . . 19 J> 24. . . . . 25 »J 25. . . . . 45 > J 26. . . . . 47 >» 27. . . . . 29 June 28. jj 29. . . . . 20 ») 30. . . . . 14 July 1. . . . . 24 >) 2. . . . . 30 >j 3. . . . . 19 »» 4. . . . . 27 »? 5. . . . . 28 5> 6. . . . . 30 ?J 7. . . . . 67 J' 9. . . . . 60 )» 10. . . . . 44 J5 11 . . . . . 6 J J 12. . . . . 28 J) 13. . . . . 38 ?> 15. . . . . 30 ») 16. . . . . 30 »5 17. . . . . 40 »> 19. . . . . 28 * Mr. Alison says, C^cile's ' whole relations, to the number of sixty, were involved in her fate, among whom were a number of young men bravely com- bating on the frontier in defence of their country!* (ii. 321.) Thus making the Montmorencies, St. Maurices, and St. Amaranthes cousins of poor Cecile — confounding with her case the persons who were tried the same day in the other court, and magnifying her two imprisoned brothers into a number of young men who were, at one and the same time, bravely combating on the fron- tier and dying on the scaffold in Paris ! In fact only three of the fifty-four were relations of hers. EXECUTIONS. 449 Class. Date. Numbers executed. 1794. Various July 20 14 Various ,,21 27 Coiis^pX du Luxembourg 24, and YSLi^. 22 ,,22 46 Consprofthe Carmes, 46, and var* 9 ,, 23 55 1st Conspiracy aS'^. ia^are 25, AJQfair* ^,4 La Muette 11 f " "^^ "^^ 2nd Conspiracy St. Lazare 25, and) op- oq various 12 f " ^^ "^^ Princesse de Monaco, &c. ^l,ih\rd GonA r>p f-, spiracy St. Lazare 23 j " Various „ 27 (9^/i Thmnidor) 42 Total 2625 Robespierre, &c Jiily 28 22 Robespierre's accomplices .... ,,29 70 Ditto „ 30. . . . . 13 Total victims of the Revolutionary Tribunal of 1 q^qa the lOtb of March | ^7dU It is observable of this second, or, as we shall henceforth call it, the Revolutionary, Tribunal, as it was of the first, that, notwith- standing the pretended urgency of the numerous and important cases that were said to be pressing for trial, there was a delay of three weeks in bringing it into operation, and then, as we shall see, the business which it had to do was at first comparatively trifling. It is clear, therefore, that this Tribunal, like the former, was established for some secret and prospective object, of which the supposed urgency of the cases and imputed violence of ihQ people were mere colourable pretences. That object, we are satisfied, could be no other than to place in the hands of the Jacobins an instrument for the intimidation, and, if necessary, for the destruction of their political antagonists in the Convention itself. The Tribunal at first preserved some of the usual forms of cri- minal justice — there was a jury of accusation (answering to our grand jury) ; the prisoners were interrogated, and had notice of the charges, and some interval was allowed to prepare a defence — they were also allowed counsel — but these wholesome forms were, from the outset, very loosely followed ; they soon became mere fictions, and were by degrees altogether suppressed. 2 G 2 450 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. The first and most effective abuse of the forms of law was this. The Convention had decreed that ' all conspiracies and plots {con- spirations et complots) tending to disturb the state by a civil war, by arming citizens against each other or against the exercise of any lawful authority,' should be punished with death. Under the vague and comprehensive terms of ' coyispiracy ' and * plots' and * tending ' — words, writings, and even thoughts might be included ; and the first question, therefore, generally submitted to the jury was, whether there had existed a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. This question was seldom accompanied by any evidence of the fact — it was taken for granted that no one could doubt the exist- ence of a very extensive disapprobation of some one or other of the events or doctrines of the Revolution, which, of course, was termed a general conspiracy ; and therefore the reply of the jury, in the vast majority of cases, was, ' II est constant ' — It is undeniable * ' that a conspiracy or plot has existed tending ' — ' to excite civil war ' — or * to re-establish royalty,' or * to vilify the Convention,' or ' to insult the representatives of the people, or the national cockade,' or such like. The fact of the grand crime — which gave the Tribunal jurisdic- tion — being thus settled, the next step was to include the accused person in the guilt of these undeniable conspiracies ; and that was done — not by proving the party to have any connexion with, or even knowledge of, the alleged conspiracy, but — by alleging against him or her some isolated facts or incidental expressions of a counter-revolutionary tendency, which being stated to the jury— with, in the earlier cases, more or less of what was called evidence, but latterly with little more than the assertion of the Public Accu&er — the jury seldom failed to answer, * Yes ; A. B. is convicted of having been the author or accomplice of the said conspiracy ;' and, by this simple process and this single formula, nearly 2700 persons, of all ranks, ages, and conditions, were sent, on the most opposite charges, and under an innumerable variety of circumstances, to the same scaffold. Fouquier said on his trial that near 900 were acquitted in the same period. We cannot trace anything like this number of acquittals, but we know that some that we do find were collusive and preconcerted — sometimes * The word * constant ' has no exact the Latin phrase constat, and means synonyme in English—it is derived from certain, undeniable, evident. JOAN LECLERC— MINGOT. 451 to shelter spies, sometimes to save appearances, sometimes, there is reason to beUeve, by favour or corruption. An acquittal, where Fouquier wished to convict, was, as we shall see, a very extraor- dinary case. The following is an early instance of the kind of cases on which this extraordinary Tribunal was at first chiefly employed : — On the 18th of April, 1793, Joan Leclerc, a cook-maid, aged fifty-six, was taken up for being drunk and noisy in the street and for having cried ' Vive le Roi ' and talked of news from Lyons, and of her two sons in Custine's army. She answered, that she remembered nothing about ' Vive le Roi ' — that any news she talked of she must have read in the newspaper — and that she could not have mentioned her two sons in Custine's army, because she never had a child. Her master, and many other witnesses, deposed in her favour, and that she never had been suspected of being * a counter-revolutionist ' (!) — but the jury found unani- mously that, — '1°. // est constant — that language tending to provoke the massacre of the National Convention, the dissolution of the Eepublic, and the re-establishment of royalty in France, has been held at different times in certain coffee-homes, and particularly on the 7th of March, in the guard-house of St. Firmin ; 2°, and that Joan Leclerc is convicted of having used this language.' — Bull. ii. 43. Here it will be observed that poor Joan is made responsible for language alleged, not proved, to have been held on several occa- sions, where she was not present — by nameless persons, of whom she had never heard, in certain coffee-houses, where she had never been, because, when shut up one night in a guard-house, she had talked some tipsy nonsense ; and on this wonderful conviction she was next morning guillotined in the Place du Carrousel, as * con- vaiiicue de conspiration ;' and the sentence scrupulously adds that the property of poor Joan was confiscated to the benefit of the Republic ! Ten days later (27th of April), one Charles Mingot, a hackney- coachman of Paris, was tried for having resisted the city-watch, who, at midnight on the 2nd of April, had ordered him to quit a public-house where he was making a noise, and for using, when taken to the lock-up house for the night, indecent and seditious language. The witnesses admitted that he was drunk — so drunk that the guard was forced to put him into a place of confinement, 452 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. where in his rage he had used the offensive language. He was condemned and executed the same evening ! Such were the im- portant personages, and such the menacing conspiracies, which occupied the first month of that Tribunal whose instant creation had been extorted from the Convention by the insurrection of the 9th and 10th of March ! While the Tribunal was thus employed on trivial and obscure cases, which gave the lie to the pretences on which it was created, and looked rather like the pastime of the Tribunal — pelotant en attendant partie — its real cause, the struggle between the Glron- dins and Jacobins, continued to rage with awful and hourly- increasing violence ; and, before the Tribunal was three weeks old, the Girondins made the false move of sending Marat to be tried before it for some incendiary passages in his journal. The natural result was that not only was Marat acquitted, but the Tri- bunal accompanied its verdict with triumphal honours ; and Marat, crowned — literally — with civic garlands, was brought back on the shoulders of his sanguinary mob to the tribune of the Convention, to renew with increased audacity and effect his denunciations against the intimidated majority. After this affair, which cemented the alliance between the Mountain and the Tribunal, the latter became visibly bolder, and was supplied with a few cases of greater importance, though it still continued to receive many of the most trivial character. In- deed, during the first six months of the Tribunal, there were but four trials of any political note — those of the Generals Miacsinski and Davaux, in May, 1793, as accomplices of Dumouriez — of Charlotte Corday, in July, for the assassination of Marat — and of General Custine, in August, for the loss of Mentz. The evi- dence against all the Generals seems vague and insufficient, and Custine's case, beings a question of military opinion, should have been tried by court-martial ; but, as the forms of justice were not grossly violated, and as the alleged crimes would, if proved, have been capital, however tried, we have no observation to make on those cases. Nor need we repeat the details of that personal and mental torture inflicted for three days and nights on the Queen, to the well-known horrors of which we are glad to have nothing to add. We shall only observe that the more we consider her case the more satisfied we are that she was sent to the Tribunal, not from any feeling of either revenge or alarm that she could then TKIAL OF THE TWENTY-ONE GIRONDINS. 453 have personally excited, but because, in the dark and mysterious ' councils of Robespierre, it was calculated that her fate would '^ some way implicate and facilitate the real object for which this Tribunal had been erected — the immolation of his Girondist anta- gonists and rivals. It was on the 2nd of June, 1793, that the great struggle in the Convention ended in favour of the Jacobins, by a decree of pro- visional arrest against all the Girondin leaders ; but it was not till' late in October that the victory was consummated by their trial and execution. Robespierre had preluded his attack on the Gi- rondins in April, 1793, by a proposal to send Marie Antoinette for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. This was then nega- tived, the Girondins having still the majority in the Assembly. But the Jacobins had now the majority, and Robespierre, evi- dently with the same idea, again prefaces the execution of the Girondins, by sending the Queen to the scaffold. We do not pretend to explain the secret connexion that Robespierre's jealous and sanguinary mind may have seen between these events, we only notice the fact The Queen was executed on the 19th, and the Brissotins on the 31st of October, 1793. Of about fifty deputies originally proscribed twenty-nii :e had escaped into the departments, where some of them perished by the guillotine, and others, more miserably, by suicide or starvation : some, like Louvet, Lanjuinais, and Isnard, were so fortunate as to conceal themselves till the tyranny was overpast. All had been outlawed as flying from justice, and when two of them, Gorsas and Rabaud St. Etienne, were taken and brought before the Tribunal of Paris, they were, on a mere identification of their persons, handed over (livrSs) to the executioner, without further formality — Gorsas on the 7th of October, three weeks before, and Rabaud on the 5th of December, a month after, the death of the main body of their friends. Twenty-one remained in the prisons of Paris, and were now brought to trial. These were — Brissot Vergniaud Gensonne Duperret Carra Gardien Valaze Duprat Sillery (Genlis) Fauchet Duces Fonfrede Lasource Duchatel Beauvais Mainvielle Lacaze Lehardy Boileau Antiboul Vige. 454 THE REVOLUTIONAEY TEIBUNALS. Into all the details of this long and important trial we cannot enter, hut some must not he omitted. The first and most pro- minent fact is, that of the intentions and designs with which they were charged the prisoners were wholly innocent — the indictment, the work of the Convention itself, w^as a tissue of the most ex- travagant perversions. Of political errors and of worse than political crimes the whole public career of the Girondin party was but too fruitful ; but the charges brought against them by their Jacobin conquerors were not merely untrue, but the very opposite of what impartial justice might have alleged against them. ' If they had, during the whole revolution, taken the extreme popular side, it was,' says this extraordinary specimen of revolutionary logic, ' only the better to conceal their aristocracy — if they pro- moted the declaration of war, it was only because they were the hired agents and tools of Fitt—\i they drew up and proposed the famous petition of the Champ deMars, it was only to aiford Lafayette an excuse for firing on those who should sign it — if they made a murderous assault on the King in his palace on the 20th of June, it w^as only to create a public sympathy in his favour- when they proposed his suspension, it was to preserve his authority — and when they voted his death, it was only a hypocritical device to save his life.' This is an unexaggerated summary of some of the principal charges of the act of accusation, and the evidence in support of them was of a corresponding character. The witnesses were all members of the Convention or of the Commune (or Common Council of Paris) — and did not conceal but rather indeed boasted of their personal hostility to the parties. The very names of the witnesses would suffice with posterity for the acquittal of the accused. These were : — Pache, Chaumet,* Hebert, Chabot, Montaut, Deffieux, Leonard Bourdon, Duhem, and Fabre d^ Eglantine. There were one or two other persons called to explain minor points, but they hardly deserve the name of witnesses, and indeed would not be worth noticing, but for a circumstance relating to one of them which is strongly characteristic of the times. This was the Minister of Finance of the day, one Destournelles. When asked, as usual, his name — he hesitated : — " ' Is it indispensably necessary that I should give the pre-name that I received at my birth ? " ' More frequently but erroneously called Chaumette. TRIAL OF THE TWENTY-ONE GIRONDINS. 455 He was afraid to say Christian or baptismal name. 'President: "Yes." ' Witness : " I do so with regret — but — that pre-name is — Louis.'' ^ — Bulletin, iii. 171. And then the poor wretch goes on to apologise for his family name of Destournelles, ' which might seem to fall under the decree against feudal names, but which,' he protests, ' is perfectly un- tainted by feudality J How completely must terror have filled up every chink in social life when we find one of the Miyiisters of the Republic thus hesitating to answer to his own name ! • The style in which the nine principal witnesses — nine as con- summate villains as the Revolution produced— gave their evidence, as well as the evidence itself, was consistent with all the rest. They stated no facts, they produced no documents, but addressed the jury successively in long, vague, and inflammatory harangues, such as no hostile advocate would have been so shameless as to employ. But in spite of all their zeal, they had no facts to produce, and the accused — though their defence was curtailed and embarrassed by many difficulties —had the best of the argument— for it really was a debate, and not a trial. The Tribunal — quite ready to convict — would have cared little about proofs, but the public began to show some interest in behalf of the oppressed : and then followed a series of proceedings that exceed all the rest in im- pudent injustice. On the 29th, the sixth day of the trial, the Jacobin Club sent a deputation to the Convention, complaining of these delays, and proposing that it should ' 1st. Free the Revolutionary Tribunal from those forms which stifled the conscience of the jurors, and ' 2nd. Pass a law authorizing jurors to declare when they are satisfied. ' Then, and then only, adds the petition, traitors will be baffled and terror will he the order of the day.' — Moniteur, 30th Oct. 1793. The Convention, on the motion of Osselin, a furious Jacobin, who had been president of the first Tribunal, concurred, and ordered him to prepare immediately a decree for the latter object. Osselin hastened to do so, but his draft Robespierre thought too vague and discretionary ; and on his amendment the decree was passed, after a slight resistance from the amour propre of Osselin, in the more precise and decisive form, that 456 THE EEVOLUTIONARY TEIBUXALS. ' when any trial should have lasted three days, the judge should ask the jury whether their conscience were satisfied, and if they replied in the negative, the trial was to proceed until they should declare themselves satisfied.' — Moniteur, 30th Oct. While these proceedings were going on — something still more extravagant occurred — a letter from the Tribunal to the Conven- tion ! Of this letter no mention is made in the Bulletin — nor in any other account of the trial that we have seen. Thiers does not notice it, nor of course Mr. Alison ; but we find it in the debates of the Convention, and it so forcibly characterises the zeal of the Tribunal that we cannot omit it. ' The slowness of the proceedings of our Tribunal obliges us to submit to you some observations. ' Five days have already been consumed, and nine witnesses only have been examined; each, in making his deposition, thinks it necessary to give a history of the whole Kevolution [this was true enough] ; then the accused answer the witnesses, and the witnesses reply in their turn, and so they get up discussions which the hquaciti/ of the accused renders very long ; and then, in addition to these individual debates, shall we not have each of the prisoners insisting on making a general defence ? This trial, therefore, will never be finished. But moreover, we ask, why any witnesses at all '^ The Convention — the whole Eepublic are the accusers in this case — the proofs of the ciimes of the accused are evident. Ecery one has already in his conscience a conviction of their guilt. But the Tribunal can do nothing of itself — it is obliged to follow the law. It is for the Convention itself to sweep away all the formalities which trammel our proceedings. ' — lb. Upon this, Billaud-Varenne reminds the Convention of the original discussion on the title of the Tribunal, and proposes now to confer on it the title of Eevolutioxary Tribunal ; and so it was decreed ; and certainly the peculiar merit and effect of the title ' revolutionary ' cannot be better explained than by the fore- going representation of the Tribunal itself. This shocking picture would be incomplete if we did not ex- hibit the finishing touch of mean and cowardly hypocrisy with which the trial ended. We have just read the extraordinary letter of the Tribunal. We have seen that their consciences were not merely satisfied but saturated and fatigued with conviction — their verdict was ready, and waiting only permission to burst from their lips ; and yet when on the morning of the 30th, the law they had thus secretly TEIAL OF THE TWENTY-ONE GIEONDINS. 457 solicited was read to them in Court and they were invited to declare ' whether their conscience was sufficiently satisfied ' — they modestly answered ' No ' — and proceeded with the phantom of a trial. But at two o'clock in the afternoon the Court adjourned for three hours, and at its reassembling, the jury, having over- come its squeamishness, declared itself satisfied, and condemned the whole of the prisoners ! At this moment a groan was heard, and one of the prisoners was observed to fall — it was Valaze, who had stabbed himself ; and Fouquier, that the guillotine should not be defrauded of its prey, proposed that the corpse should be guillotined with the rest — but that shocked even the chief and hitherto unflinching minister of death — President Herman — who, however, consented to the compromise of directing the body to be dragged to the place of execution in company with, and under the eyes of, Valaze's dying friends. With whatever offences the Girondins may be chargeable — and of many and grave ones they were unquestionably guilty — it is impossible to read the history of their persecution without something akin to pity for them, and unmixed indignation against their accusers and their judges. Nor do we wonder that the partizans of the Revolution,* anxious to find some of its founders entitled to anything like commiseration, should have been ready to exalt these weak and presumptuous, but unfortunate intriguers into heroes and martyrs. It may seem almost superfluous to say anything of the con- demnation of Madame Roland, now universally admitted to have been a wanton murder ; but it will give a livelier and a more accurate idea of this horrible injustice if we quote from the Bulletin the exact charges and evidence on which she was condemned. The indictment begins, in the usual way, with reciting Brissot's * coiwpiracy^ and then proceeds : — ' Roland, having fled, left his w^ife in Paris, who, although in prism, corresponded with the conspirators who had retired to Caen, by the medium of one of them, Duperret, who had remained at Paris. . . . The proofs of this correspondence are : — 1st. A letter of Barbaronx to Duperret, dated from Lisieux, the 13th of June last, in w^hich we read, " Dont forget our estimable friend the Citoyenne Roland , and try to give her some comfort in her prison ly sending her any good news you can. * This was written before M. Lamar- to his desperate and deplorable at- tine published his History of the Giron- tempt to revive in 1848 the republic of dins, obviously designed as a precursor 1793. 458 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. 2nd. Another letter from tlie same to the same, dated from Caen, in which we read, " You will, J hope, have executed my commission in endea- vouriiig to convey some consolation to Madame Roland. Pray, pray, endeavour to see her — tell her that not only her twenty-two jjroscribed friends [the Gi- rondins], but every honest man feels for her misfortune. I enclose a letter for that amiable woman. J need not tell you that you only can execute this important commission ; and you must endeavour by all means to get her out of prison and into some place of safety. ^^ ' — Bull. iii. 300. A third letter in the same style followed, but it is not worth extracting ; then came a note written hy Madame Roland to Du- perret, on the 24th of June, to tell him ' that after having been released from the Abbaye she had been again arrested and sent to Ste. Pelagic ;' and two or three other notes or letters, of which but one is given : — ' News of my friends is the only happiness I can now enjoy. I am indebted to you for it. Tell them that my knowledge of their courage, and of what they are capable of doing in the cause of liberty, satisfies and consoles me for everything. Tell them that my esteem, my attachment, and my best wishes, still follow them.' —76. 300. This was the whole documentary evidence ; the verbal testimony is summed up as follows : — * Several witnesses deposed to have seen, at the table of the accused, Brissot and his accomplices ridiculing the opinions of the • most enlightened members of the Mountain — that she had about Paris confidential agents who reported to Poland what passed in public places — and that she kept up a correspondence and under- standing with the principal conspirators, of whom she was the life and soul.' — lb: And of these last vague words the only proof was the innocent notes that we have quoted ; and on this evidence this high-spirited and — spite of her revolutionary delusions — interesting woman was launched, on the 9th of November, 1793, mio— immortality 1 We do not pretend, and, indeed, it would require, not an essay, but many volumes, to exhibit, in all their absurd and all their odious details, the incredible meanness to which the cruelty of the Tribunal sometimes descended, and the audacity of crime to which it more frequently rose. We must content ourselves with pro- ducing enough to place beyond all doubt the true character of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and of the Revolution itself, of which it ! was a natural emanation^ TRUE CHAEACTER OF THE TRIBUNAL. 459 For some time the majority of graver affairs were questions arising out of the laws against emigration : these laws were in themselves vexatious, inquisitorial, and sanguinary ; but the ex- tension which they received from the zeal, corruption, or folly of the Tribunal, was enormous. The following instance is by no means the strongest, but the first that occurs. A gentleman of the name of Mauny had, through the usual means of a broker — oneBeaulieu — bought a large sum of gold coin, and it was alleged that he had done so tvith the intention of sending it to his emigrant relations. There seems no reason to doubt the fact ; but, sup- posing the whole charge to be proved, the doctrines held by the Court were still very extraordinary. In his zeal for his clients, the official defender (for they were then allowed) had the courage to say to the jury : — ' I confess to you that if I had a son who had emigrated — nay, who was in arms against his country — I confess, I say, that, while de- ploring and detesting his conduct, I could not, if I heard that he was in want and misery, leave him without help.' In reply to this, the judge, Dufriche — the least inhuman of the whole bench, and who for that reason was soon after dismissed — reprimanded the advocate for raising ' weak, idle, and unseasonable discussions ;' adding, as the apt and seasonable precedent that should guide the jury in this case : — ' Brutus also was a father ; — the son of Brutus erred for a mo- ment; — Brutus condemned and executed his son.' — Bull. ii. 113. This silly pedantry had not even the merit of creating surprise, for Egalite had used it in the Convention a few days before with reference to his son — afterwards King Louis Philippe — who had emigrated with Dumouriez. Several of the jury chose to make set speeches on this occasion. One of them lays down the doctrine — on which, we suppose, the broker was convicted — * Any man who in times of revolution prefers his own interest to the general advantage, and who speculates in the public funds vnth a view to his own profit, must be considered as a bad citizen, and treated as a counter-revolutionist.' — lb. 116. The result was that Mauny, as succouring an emigrant, and Beaulieu, who furnished the bills of exchange, were so treated, and, on the 10th of May, 1793, sent to the scaffold. We were 460 THE REVOLUTIONAKY TRIBUNALS. at first somewhat surprised at all these extraneous speeches from the judge and the jurors, in one of the few cases in which they appeared to have something like an excuse for a conviction. But we have since found a clue to the enigma. Madame Ro- land, now herself in prison, and sincerely, though rather tardily, indignant at the abuses practised in the name of liberty, gives us some insight into the case : — ' Fouquier-Tinville, Accusateur-puhlic of the Eevolutionary Tri- bunal, notorious for his immorality and for his impudence, is in the habit of taking bribes from the parties he has to deal with. Madame Rochechouart paid him 80,000 francs (3200/.) for Mony [Mauny] the emigrant ; Fouquier touched the money, but Mony v^as executed ; and Madame Rochechouart was warned that if she opened her mouth she should never see daylight again.' * — 3Iem. de M. Roland^ vol. ii. p. 222. If this was true, it is probable that all this speechifying was a parade, got up by Fouquier, to account to Mauny's friends for his failure to earn his bribe. It is on this trial that we first meet a juror who soon became a very prominent figure in the Tribunal, and whom we must intro- duce to the special notice of our readers — the citizen Le Roy. He, too, before delivering his verdict against Mauny and Beau- lieu, thought it necessary to address the audience in the following harangue : — ' Citizens, — Of twenty-four jurors named to foiin the Revolu- tionary Tribunal, eleven only have had the courage to save their country, and to expose themselves to the clamour of calumny, and even to poison and the knife of the assassin. I am come here with a heart pure and burning with the holy love of liberty ; and, what- ever be the lot that the foes of the Revolution may prepare for me, I shall never deceive the national confidence.' — Bull. ii. p. 114. This Le Roy, who about this time exchanged his obnoxious sur- name for that of Dix-Aout, was upwards of fifty years old, very deaf and very dirty, wearing a greasy red cap and the meanest apparel, and altogether so remarkable, even among the Sa7is- * We shall see presently that the cannot discover how she should have Duchess du Chatelet — here called (titles been interested for Maunj^, or been in being abolished) by her maiden name of anyway concerned in that affair: — all Eochechouart — was herself executed soon that seems certain isy that there was — after (21st April, '94), for some alleged thus eai'ly in the career of the Tribunal correspondence with emigrants, but we — corruption, fraud, and murder J ' LE MAEQUIS DE MONTFLABERT.' 461 culottes, for squalidity of appearance and grossness of language, that, in the ' Portraits de Personnages Celehres de la Revolution Frangaise' (4 vols. 4to., Paris, 1796), he was selected as the most perfect type of a Revolutionary juror I Well : this man, before the Revolution, was, or pretended to be, a noble, and called himself Le Marquis de Montfiahert. He certainly was a man of fortune, and was suspected of having adopted this extreme sans culotterie for the purpose of saving his head and his property. He miscalculated, indeed, and eventually lost both ; but for fifteen months he exercised a fearful influence over the lives and fortunes of thousands — not merely as a juror, but occasionally as something even worse. He was, it seems, a landed proprietor in and near the little town of Coulommiers, about five-and-twenty miles eastward of Paris ; and had, like many others of the resident gentlemen, been elected maire where he had formerly been seigneur. Now, we find in the Liste des Condamnes about the end of De- cember, 1793, and the beginning of 1794, the condemnation and execution of thirty inhabitants of Coulommiers — a large contribu- tion from so small a place, in a country so undisturbed and so con- tiguous to the capital. When we came, however, to read Fouquier's trial, we obtained a glimpse into this afikir. Wolf, one of the clerks of the court, accuses Dix-Aout of ' having put to death more than thirty persons belonging to Coulom- miers^ of which he was mayor ; he acting in this affair the parts both of prosecutor (denonciateur) and witmss.' — Proces Fouquier, No. xxiv. On this point Dix-Aout made at that time no answer ; but when subsequently Paris, the chief clerk of the court, repeated the same accusation, he ' denied that he had denounced the inhabitants of Coulommiers; forty witnesses, he said, were heard in that affair, and that he had declared himself the official defender of some of the parties.' — Proces Fouquier, No. xxvi. In the absence of any details of the proceedings in these cases, and wanting so large a portion of the evidence on Fouquier's trial, we cannot venture to pronounce decidedly on the extent of Dix- Aouf^ guilt in this particular affair ; but several incidental circum- stances, scattered through the Moniteur, the Proces, and other publications (but which we have not room to bring together), 462 THE REYOLUTIONAEY TRIBUNALS. strongly corroborate the evidence of Wolf and Paris. One cir- cumstance, however, deserves notice. The President, in summing up the case, told the jury that it was specially recommended by the Committee of Public Safety {Mem. of Lenart^ p. 250). It may seem extravagant to suppose that in any possible state of national insanity a town could be thus delivered up to the pro- scription of an individual ; but we have, unfortunately, more than one clear and indisputable instance of that character. The case of Orleans is well known, in which that city was de- clared in a state of siege, and nine of her most respectable citizens were transferred to the Tribunal at Paris, and were there sacri- ficed on the 16th July, 1793, to the vengeance of Leonard Bourdon, one of the Conventional Proconsuls, who, passing through Orleans on a more distant mission, had been wounded in a night squabble, which he himself had provoked, by some of the town's people, who neither knew his name, his person, nor his dignity. To this affair, and of the frightful state of Paris, even in that early day of the proceedings of the Tribunal, we have the indis- putable testimony of Madame Roland : — ' Paris, like another Babylon, sees its brutalised population either running after ridiculous public fetes, or surfeiting themselves wdth the blood of crowds of unhappy creatures sacrificed to its ferocious jealousy, while selfish idlers still fill all the theatres,* and the trembling tradesman shuts himself up, not sure of ever again sleep- ing in his own bed, if it should please any of his neighbours to de- nounce him as having used unpatriotic expressions, or blamed the affair of the 2nd of June [the fall of the Girondins], or lamented the Victims of Orleans, sent to death without proof of the imputed intention of an assassination, which itself never was committed, on the execrable Bourdon. my country ! into what hands are you fallen ! '—Mem., ii. 147. Alas ! no hands or head had been more busy than her own in preparing these atrocities. But a still worse case, because there was in it no fact to build upon, as there had been in the squabble at Orleans, was that of Pamiers — eleven altogether innocent citizens were sent up from that remote town to the Parisian butchery, and there sacrificed on the 11th of July, 1794, by a most infamous and complicated con- * At this time, and indeed all through theatres advertised daily in the ' Moni- the Terror, we find thirteen or fourteen teur.' CLAMECY— DIJON— POMMEUSE. 463 spiracy between Fouquier and Vadier, a member of the Committee de Surete Grenerale, who belonged to Pamiers, and was at private enmity with the accused parties. On this case there is no doubt, for Vadier' s instigatory letters to Fouquier were produced on his trial. {Proc. Fonq.^ No. xliv., xlv.) We find several other of what we may call local cases, which we have little doubt, if we could obtain a glimpse of the evidence against them, would turn out to be of the same class as this of Pamiers. We shall give the heads of some of them, with the sen- tences, which only make us regret the more that we have not some traces of the evidence on which they could be founded. Conspirateurs de Clamecy — Fifteen condemned and executed, 15 th March, 1794 — convicted, amongst the usual charges, of * having practised manoeuvres tending to assassinate the people, and especially on the 10th of August, 1792.' — Liste des Condamnh, No. 460 to 482. The poor people of Clamecy accomplices, in March, 1794, of the Swiss Guards at Paris on the 10th August, 1792 ! 'Affaire de Bijon' — 20th April, 1794, Six condemned * for having, in the prison of Dijon, where they were confined as *' suspected," practised manoeuvres and uttered language against the Eepublic,* &c.— X. d. C, No. 672 to 677. The * Affaire de Pommeuse ' — notwithstanding its comprehen- sive title, seems to have been the affair of a single family of six persons condemned for * having entertained correspondence and intelligence with the enemy, and for having, in the impossibility of sending them money (nu- meraire), buried or hidden it (enfoui), together with quantities of assignats and jewels.' — L. d. (7., No. 804 to 809. Here the impossibility of sending money, notes, or jewels to a party was alleged as a proof of communications with them, and an old gentleman and lady, an accidental visitor, a chaplain, and two domestic servants were put to death because the master and mistress had in troublesome times chosen to hide some of their own money and jewels. There are several other suspicious local * affaires,^ but we shall conclude this head with the case of an alleged riot at Rouen during the King's trial. It will be recollected that there were great 2 H 464 THE KEVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. debates in the Convention as to whether the sentence should or should not be submitted to the ratification of the People. A peti- tion to the Convention in favour of the appeal was proposed at Rouen, and a merchant and a printer of that city were forward in obtaining signatures. Several persons — or, as the indictment calls it, an attroupement — assembled on the Place de la Rougemare, in Rouen, to sign this petition ; and for this offence nine of them were sent to Paris, and there tried and executed, nine months after the alleged riot ; and these nine political victims were the merchant and the bookseller, a miller, two tailors, two servants, a sempstress, and a chimney -siveep I {L. d. C. No. 74 to 82.) Amongst the female champions of the Revolution was a certain Olympe de Gouges,* wife or widow of one Aubry, whose name she would not take, though their son did ; she was what is called a femme de lettres, and wrote some dramatic pieces. Early in the Revolution she threw herself headlong into politics, devoted herself to Mirabeau and Egalite, was a prominent figure in the galleries of the Assembly and the Jacobins, a great writer of placards, and the foundress of Female Clubs. As the Revolution got out of the management of her party, her zeal, like that of the other Orleanists, began to cool, and the ' affiches ' which she was in the habit of issuing assumed a tone of moderation which, under this new reign of Liberty, could not be tolerated ; and, accordingly, she was on the 3rd of November accused of having printed one called Les Trois TJrnes, ou le Salut de la Patrie, and written others 'in opposition to the wishes expressed by the whole nation.' To this she answered that all her works were of the purest republicanism, and that this one of Les Trois Times had 7iot been ' affiche.* To which it was replied, that this was only because the printer refused to ' afficher ' it, but that she had published it by sending a copy to her son, the adjutant- general of one of the armies— and thereupon she was condemned and executed. We should have hardly thought it worth while to single out this case from thousands of even greater injustice, but for its still more shocking epilogue. We have before * Many years before the Revolution lier temper. She is now rather on the she had already made a noise. We decline, but still handsome; she has, read, in the ' Memoires de Bachaumont/ however, given up gallantry for litera- 19th January, 1786, after an account of ture, and resigns the triumphs of Cy- a quarrel between her and the players therea for the more permanent honours — ' Madame de Gouges is a very fine, of Parnassus.' woman — but quick, and even violent in STATEMENT OF M. BUCKET. 465 us an 'Address to the Public' from that son — Adjutant- General Auhry — dated Chalons, 8th of November, 1793, the fifth day after his mother's death— to explain his ' rapports avec cette femme^ and to disclaim all sympathy with her or her writings — nay more, to applaud her execution ! Our readers would almost doubt such cowardly and unnatural depravity, if we did not quote them a few lines of this matricidal manifesto : — ' Je jare done ici, mes concitoyens, que je desavoue hautement les ecrits seditieux et contre-revolutionnaires de Olimpe Gouges ; que je ne la reconnois plus pour avoir ete(J.) ma mere, et que fapprouve le jugement da Tribunal Eemlutixmnaire. — EUe est morte comme contre- revolutionnaire — Eh bien ! Vive la Republique ! ' * It has been said that in those dreadful days honour and humanity took refuge in the armies ; but this circumstance proves that the terror had power to extinguish in the armies the sentiments not only of honour and humanity, but even of nature. On Fouquier's trial M. Ducret, one of the clerks of the court, attested that there were four classes of persons who, whatever might be the facts of the case, never could hope to escape — the rich, ci-devant nobles, priests, and members of the Constituant Assembly. Any one falling under any of these categories was certain of death ; and he cites the following cases, on which we have not been satisfied with M. Ducret's summary statement, but have traced them through the original reports. Madame de Nonac was convicted and executed (5th of June, 1794) ' for being author, or accomplice, of a conspiracy against the sove- reignty of the people, by employing manoeuvres to create a famine and alarm the public on the want of food.' — L. d. C. 1210. The proof — sole proof— against her was, that some rotten eggs and rotten onions were thrown into the dung-pit of her farm -yard as unfit for use ! Madame de Marboeuf, widow of the Marquis de Marboeuf, was convicted and executed * for being the author or accomplice of a conspiracy against the safety of the French people, in denaturalising the product of many acres of * He addressed a similar statement to the Convention. — Moniteur, 16th Nov.^ 1793. 2 H 2 466 - THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. land in the district of Champs, by causing it to be sown with lucerne instead of corn — in making troubles in the district, and in wishing for (desirant) the arrival of the Prussians and Austrians, for whom she kept up considerable provisions in her house.' — Glaive Vengeur^ 192 ; Moniteur, 7th Feb. 1794. The nefarious but intelligible object of this proceeding was to confiscate the very large fortune, several thousands a-year, of Madame de Marboeuf; but what shall we say to the next case? * John Joseph Payen, farmer — confidant and accomplice of the said widow Marboeuf — is also convicted of the said conspiracy in order- ing and superintending the sowing of the said lucerne, and in vexing the patriots of the said district, and is sentenced to death accord- ingly.'— /6. That is for sowing one kind of seeds rather than another ! M. Ducret relates an anecdote of himself which, as it bears hard either on his prudence or his integrity, may, we suppose, be entitled to credit, though Fouquier disputed it. lie says that to dissipate the sad feelings that his attendance at the Tribunal gave him, he sometimes indulged in a walk into the country. One evening in July he walked out towards Issy, and there strolled into the beautiful park of the Princess de Chimay. Next day, in the Chambre du Conseil of the Tribunal, he happened to mention this charming villa to some of the judges ; who observed, that ' she had emigrated.' * Oh no,' said M. Ducret, ' she has not emigrated.' Fouquier, who was standing unseen in a corner, exclaimed — ' I have been looking for her these three months.' He had now found her, and the Princess de Chimay was executed on the 26th of July, only the day before his master's fall and his own. If Ducret was not a spy and an accomplice, one cannot even after this long interval but feel a regret that M. Ducret* s suburban stroll had not been postponed for a couple of days. ^^ Another case, of which we have all the details in the * Bulletin,' is, if possible, worse. M. de Laverdy, aged seventy — who had been Controller- General of the Finances thirty years before, under Louis XV., but was now living in Paris in the most profound retirement — had a country-house at Gambais, about five-and-twenty miles from Paris, in front of which was a small circular basin of orna- mental water, 25 feet in diameter, and, if it were full, 2 feet 3 M. DE LAVERDY. 467 inches deep — in which — but now the indictment must speak for itself— ' the municipal officers of the district of Monfort I'Amaury having visited the place on the 9th of October last, old style, ascertained in the most authentic manner that, in a basin situated over the parterre of the said house, they found a quantity of mud caused by rotted wheat, and they even remarked that, in this mud, there were visible several grains of wheat still sound and whole. That the said muni- cipal officers, anxious to give to this frightful statement an unde- niable character of truth, caused some of the wheat gathered out of the said basin to be baked, and that it produced a species of bread • — incapable of being eaten (/). ' The said municipal officers, penetrated with indignation at this crime of high treason (leze-nation), which could tend to nothing else than exciting the minds of the public to the rage of despair, and thus bringing about a counter-revolution,' &c. — Bulletin, No. iii. p. 396. In any other circumstances, since the institution of civil society, would such a charge have required any answer ? — but M. Laverdy did answer it, and proved, by a cloud of uncontradicted witnesses, that he had not resided at Gambals for some years ; that the house being empty, the parterre and basin were neglected ; that it was very likely to happen that some grains of corn may have been blown into the basin and may have vegetated in the mud ; that no one ever saw or heard of any corn being thrown there, either by accident or design ; that his, or anyone else's, thinking of destroying grain by throwing it to rot there, was the most extreme absurdity, because this basin was by the side of the high road and open to all passengers ; and that finally, he had not had that year a grain of tvheat in the world, for the wJiole farm had happened to be laid down in oats. And all this was unanswerably proved — for the Tribunal still kept up some forms of justice - and yet the verdict was — ' 1st. Quil est constant that a plot existed tending to deliver over the republic to the horrors of famine, in throwing into ponds or pieces of water, and causing there to rot, grain necessary to the existence of the people, and by this means to ojjerate a counter-revo- lution and civil war, by arming the citizens against each other and against all the legitimate authorities. ' 2nd. That Clement Charles Laverdy is the author or accomplice of the said facts, and condemns him to death,' &c. — lb. The good old man was executed the same day, and a fortune of from 8000/. to 10,000/. a-year was confiscated to the republic. 46S THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. Here is an instance from another of those proscribed classes. Freteau had been a member of the Parliament, a leader in the Constituant Assembly, and a zealous reformer ; but when he saw whither the Revolution was going, his zeal slackened, and was soon sent to expiate his visions of liberty in the dungeons of the Con- vention. He was brought to trial on the 16th of May, 1794, and, wonderful to say, acquitted by the casting voice of one juror ; but was ordered to be removed to his own department, and there detained as suspected. His counsel, M. Sezille, anxious to get Freteau out of Paris — not only on account of the obvious danger to himself, but because his wife was far advanced in pregnancy — pressed Fouquier in the strongest manner for the certificate of the acquittal and an order for transferring Freteau to the country according to the sentence. This was not only refused, but Sezille was menaced— if he should persist in being troublesome — with the fate of Jourdeuil, the juror, whose casting vote had saved Freteau, and who was in consequence dismissed from that office and sent to jail. ' No, no,' said Fouquier to Sezille, ' you shan't have your Freteau,' and on the 14th of June Freteau was again brought to trial, and, without an attempt at evidence of any kind — without even a pretext that we can discover — condemned and executed. A few days after his wife was delivered of twins. The 9th Thermidor saved Jourdeuil to give the world a glimpse into a revolutionary jury-room. ' The discussion on Freteau's case,' said he, in his evidence on Fouquier's trial, ' was very violent [not on the alleged facts of the case, but] on his general reputation for patriotism. * Some contended that he was a conspirator — a counter-revolu- tionist — that during the Constituant Assembly he had never been of Robespierre s opinion! On this we sent for the Moniteur, and we found that Freteau had behaved well on the question of Ihe accept- ance of the Constitution. Gerard, my fellow-juror, one of the pre- sent prisoners, told me that I was hard to convince. " You don't know" he added, *' that Freteau has 60,000 Uvres (2400/.) a-year.'" Didier, another of the jurors, threatened me with the vengeance oi Robespierre , when he should hear that I had acquitted Freteau, and accordingly next day at ten o'clock, I was arrested by a warrant signed Eobes- pierre and Barrere. I was kept for three months in solitary confine- ment, and only escaped by the 9th Thermidor.'— /owrtfew^Ts Evidence, Proces Fouq., No. xli. From the execution of the Brissotins, in Oct. 1793, to March 1 i HEBEET AND THE CORDELIERS. 469 1794, about three hundred and fifty individual cases, all, as far as we can trace their details, were murders, but at the latter date the Parisian public, and, above all, the violent revolutionists, must have been astonished at the sudden arrest and trial of a number of the bloodiest demagogues of the Commune of Paris — • these were, Hebert, the infamous Pere Duchesne^ and still more infamous for his share in the Queen's trial — Vincent, a crazy and impudent commis, whom M. Thiers, by a bitter though uninten- tional sarcasm on the French nation, calls the terrible, when horrible is really the fittest epithet for his furious brutalities — Ronsin (a garreteer author, * exceedingly astonished,' says Prud- homme, ' to find himself one morning General of the revolutionary army '), against whom it is made a capital charge that ' he meant to be a Cromweir — Anacharsis Cloots, a mad Prussian baron — Momoro, a printer, the husband of the Goddess of Reason ; and fourteen still more subordinate Cordeliers, who appeared before the Tribunal on the 21st of March, when their real crimes, so congenial with the sentiments of their judges, could not avail them against the imaginary guilt of being ' the accomplices of the British Government, and of the coalesced powers ;' and even in the midst of such horrors, one can hardly help smiling at seeing the spirit and almost the very words of the evidence with which Hebert had denounced the Girondins, now retaliated on his own head. This affair was spun out over the three days ; and then, as in the former case, the jury declared itself satisfied, and the president summed up — as the Bulletin, with incomparable naivete, states — ' with a most energetic speech against conspirators in general, and — without entering into the merits of any of the fa^ts connected with the present case — put an end to the discussion, and referred the question, in the usual form, to the jury.' — Bull. iv. 25. And they were all executed the same evening — 24th March, 1794. All these people had been the friends and followers of Danton, who now co-operated with Robespierre in their destruction. By what fatality, folly, or fascination, Danton was reduced — not merely to cower under Robespierre's dictation — that may be per- haps accounted for by the innate baseness of the man— but to encourage and assist him in sending his own creatures to the 470 THE REYOLUTIONAEY TEIBUNALS. scaffold, we have never seen any satisfactory conjecture ; but one is affected by a surprise more sudden than any dramatic vicissi- tude could produce, at seeing, on the 4th of April, within a fort- night after the execution of the Hehertists — while all France was indulging in transports of joy and hope that the execution of this demoralized and sanguinary faction was the seal of friendship between Robespierre and Danton, and the conclusion of the Reign of Terror — at seeing, we say, Danton, and the elite of his friends — Lacroix, Camille Desmoulins, H^rault de Sechelles — arrested, and sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal. The suddenness of this mysterious proceeding — as mysterious then as, at the end of fifty years, it still is — astonished the nation, and struck all parties and all classes dumb with aggravated disappointment and accumu- lated terror. For the purpose of further discrediting Danton, whose morals and integrity were already in very bad repute, there were joined in the indictment with him Fabre de I'Eglantine, Delaunay, Bazire, and Chabot, all accused of a bold pecuniary fraud, in altering, for a large bribe, a decree of the Convention relative to the East India Company : Chabot, an apostate Capuchin friar — the same fellow who had given ' eloquent and energetic ' evidence against the Girondins — base in every way, had taken the bribe and betrayed his associates ! As an additional degradation to the great Danton, the poetaster and swindler Fabre was placed in the fauteuil usually destined to the chief criminal ; and Danton — the Danton of the 10th of August — of the 2nd of September — of the 10th of March — the Stentor of that famous watchword and password of the Revolution — ' Vaudace, encore de Vaudace, toujours de Vaudace^ was confounded, on the lower seats oihis own Tribunal, with a gang of the meanest scoundrels. But Danton, though evidently cowed — quantum mutatus ah illo Hectore ! — had still a mien, a voice, and a name that intimidated the Tribunal ; and the president and Fouquier were, or affected to be, so alarmed at the aspect of the prisoners and the audience, that they wrote a most urgent letter to the Convention to relieve them from their diffi- culties by the same remedy that they had proposed to the Girondin case — a special decree. The decree — proposed by St. Just, the organ of the Committee of Public Safety, that is, of Robespierre — was passed without demur. It enacted that whenever prisoners I DANTON AND DESMOULINS. 471 snould rebel against the Tribunal, as these had done, the trial might be closed at once by the summary condemnation of the mutinous parties. Whether Fouquier's alarms on this occasion were real, or, for some unexplained purpose, assumed, it is certain that this trial exhibited some symptoms of unusual anxiety ; for, besides this decree of the Convention, Fouquier produced, in the height of the excitement, a denunciation of one Laflotte, a prisoner in the Luxembourg prison, stating that there was within the prison itself a conspiracy, headed by the wife of Camille Desmoulins then under trial, Simon, an ex-deputy of the Convention, and General Arthur Dillon, to break out, rescue the culprits at the bar, assas- sinate the Convention, and so forth. It would be difficult to imagine how so gross a fable could be gravely produced, if we did not know that the whole Revolution was fed, even from its cradle, with that species of food ; but it is still more remarkable, that neither Laflotte's* denunciation nor St. Just's decree were brought into actual operation. They were read just before the close of the sittings on the third evening; but on the fourth morning, the law, which Danton and Desmoulins themselves had contributed to make, for curtailing trials, came into operation — the jurors declared their consciences satisfied, and all was over. So that in every step of this whole affair — the first creation of the Tribunal, the law for abridging the proceedings, the persecu- tion of the Girondists, and the sacrifice of the Hebertists — Danton was nothing better than a dupe and a suicide. The verdict and sentence were not only prepared, but actually printed, before they were pronounced. — (P. F. xxix.) M. Thiers, who has adopted Danton as a kind of hero, endeavours to divest his behaviour before the Tribunal of some of its verbiage, vanity, and coarseness ; but he cannot conceal that every word of Danton's defence of himself against Fouquier and Robespierre, is a confession of his offences against the rest of mankind. We need not repeat ih^ well-known circumstances of his execution, but his last political words were remarkable, and have not, that we know of, been * This infamous fellow had been, baseness mentioned in the text. The early in the Revolution, employed in ' Biographie des Contemporains ' states diplomacy at Florence. He escaped that he was, in 1834, practising as an the Revolutionary Tribunal by the advocate at Douai. 4:72 THE EEVOLUTIONAEY TRIBUNALS. noticed in any account of the creation of the Revolutionary Tri- bunal : ' Just a year ago I myself created the Revolutionary Tribunal, for which I now beg pardon of God and man ; but I did it to prevent a repetition of the massacres of September.' This excuse, however, is but a falsehood, or, at best, an equivoca- tion—the real motive was, that Danton, having determined on the destruction of the Girondins, thought the Revolutionary Tribunal would be a safer, and at all events a less odious instrument than a massacre ; but by one or the other he meant to exterminate his antagonists, and there can be no doubt that the insurrections of the 9th and 10th of March — like those of the 5th and 6th of October, 20th of June, and 10th of August, and every other popular movement of the Revolution — not even excepting that which took the Bastille — was the premeditated work of that faction of which Danton was the chief agitator. In this affair Herman the President not only played the open part of a passionate and partial jndge, but secretly trafficked with the jury ; and his zeal was rewarded by his being appointed within a day or two Minister of the Home Department : and when the ministries were soon after put into commission, he was ap- pointed to the new office, in which he continued to be as active and almost as deadly an agent of the judicial massacres as he had been in the Tribunal — where, however, his place was amply sup- plied by the still more ferocious Dumas. A few days after this (April 8th), Dillon, Madame Desmoulins, and Simon, the persons denounced by Laflotte, were brought before the Tribunal; but to them were adjoined Hebert's widow and several of his party whom Laflotte had not mentioned — Chaumet, the famous Procureur de la Commune, Gobel the apostate arch- bishop, Grammont the actor and his son, transformed into officers of the Revolutionary army and aides-de-camp to ' Ronsin- Cromwell,^ so designated in the indictment. Sixteen in all. There are two or three notable circumstances in this affair. It is the first type of those famous Conspiracies of the Prisons which became soon after- wards the excuse for such extensive massacres ; and it is at the same time a remarkable (though not the first) instance of that system technically called by the murderers * amalgamation ' — by which different persons were for different crimes included in the same indictment. Laflotte's evidence (which at most affected only two I SYSTEM OF ' amalgamation; 473 or three of the prisoners, and of which all that was ci'cdihle goes to prove that he himself was an infamous spy) was evidently disre- garded. And it would be hard to say on what distinct fact, or com- bination or even pretence of facts, any one of the sixteen persons was condemned. Some of the pretexts were absolutely trivial. Against the two poor widows there was positively nothing but that they were the widows of Hebert and Desmoulins, fellow-sufferers indeed, but deadly enemies, and who in truth had contributed to bring each other to the block. Against one Barras there was no graver fact than that Momoro, beheaded with Hebert, had said that he was ' a good citizen,' and that ' Madame Hebert had no later than yesterday inquired after him ' — demandait hier de ses nouvelles. Against Chaumet, Gobel, Grammont, and all the rest, there were numerous facts of their political life which, up to the fall of Hebert and" Danton, had been accounted meritorious acts of patriotism, but were now discovered to be counter-revolu- tionary, and ' payh par Vor de Pitt ' to atheise and degrade the Revolution. This execution, though much interest was felt for Lucile Des- moulins, was rendered exceedingly popular by the fall of Chaumet and Gobel. The hope, which the fate of Hebert and Co. had raised and disappointed, of a return to something like order and justice, now revived with greater confidence. This last affair seemed to close all Robespierre's accounts with all his opponents ; he was now sole master of the Committees, of Paris and of France — envied rivals, wearied accomplices, and troublesome tools, had been all swept away. Even those who feared him most and trusted him least might have naturally expected that the march of death would have been, if not closed, at least slackened. But quite the reverse — it was now that it seemed to acquire new vigour and velocity : and yet, among the two thousand forthcoming victims, we cannot distinguish above half a dozen against whom ^\ Robespierre could possibly have had any personal or political / enmity ; as to all the rest, we repeat, we cannot discover nor con- jecture the motive of their accumulated murders. The process of individual accusation was now become too slow for the impatience of the despots. Single cases are, henceforward, rarely found, and the Tribunal worked by a system of hatches : — we are reluctant to apply this trivial term to so frightful an abuse ; 474 THE EEVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. but it is a literal version of the French fournee* and has become technical in this sad sense. In these batches were confounded all ages, both sexes, promiscuous ranks ; and the operation of the Tribunal became as mechanical and certain as that of its hand- maid, the Guillotine. The two presidents received every morning Robespierre's instructions for their day's work, and Fouquier every midnight skulked to the Committees to receive their mysterious instructions for the morrow. It was proved on his trial that he had confessed to a friend that in some of these nightly walks through the streets of this city of death he had been terrified by visions of victims who seemed to crowd around him, claiming ven- geance on their murderer. The first remarkable case of this system of amalgamation seems to be that called by the general name of ' Affaire-Laborde,' in which M. Laborde, a banker, and his partner, M. Genest, and fifteen other persons — of different ranks, ages, and sexes — were included in one indictment. Before we enter on the details of this case we must again notice a circumstance which is common to all the records we possess of the proceedings of the Tribunal — namely, the extreme negligence and inaccuracy with which the persons are designated. How many of these errors might be traced to the Tribunal itself, from the extreme haste and confusion in which the business was for the last six months evidently done — how many are those of the various copyists from the original docu- ments, we cannot say — but certain it is that the discrepancies are very surprising. In this affair of Laborde we have examined the lists of their names in the Bulletins du Tribunal^ in the Liste des Condamnes, and finally in the Momteur, and there is not one single item on which these lists do not disagree from each other in . some point of orthography or description more or less important. Names are disfigured — ages differ by twenty years — and ranks, and even sexes, are confounded. It may be said that these clerical errors are of no importance, \as they create no doubt as to the identity of the parties. That may be generally true ; but there certainly were some cases in which misnomers led to the unintended execution of one person for * ' Fournee : — nom donne aux char- supplice de la guillotine.'— Djcf. de retires d'individus condanin^s par le VAcademie, Supplement. Tribunal Revolutionnaire a subir le LABOEDE AND GENEST. 475 another — as, for instance, Maille for Maillet — Morin for Maurin. But supposing no actual mistake of identity to have occurred, what shall we say of the state of the government and of the public mind which could tolerate such scandalous negligence in the authorised reports of the highest judicial proceedings ? Even in the great index to the Moniteur such mistakes are frequent. Who, for instance, would look for the Countess de Montmorin under the name of Taneffe ? Her maiden name had been Canisy : by this name, titles being abolished, she was indicted ; but in some subse- quent stage of the proceedings, perhaps in the warrant for exe- cution, it was miscopied as Taneffe, and under this name her execution is recorded in the pages of the Moniteur, and repeated in its index, as well as in the Liste and in Prudhomme's Diction- naire des Oondamnes. This was a great lady of well-known family and political celebrity. Judge, then, what blunders were made with obscurer names ! Laborde and his partner Genest were opulent bankers, and the high-treason charged against them was, that * the Convention had passed a decree which prohibited all trade with those nations which menaced the liberty of France ; but Laborde and Genest, it seems \_sic\, looked upon themselves as privileged beings, to whom the decree could not apply, since they continued to pay and receive on account of foreigners as heretofore.' — Bull. ii. 163. That was the guilt of the firm : they had continued to do the business of their bank on pain of being bankrupts. But the part- ners were also individually accused — Laborde, an old man of seventy-two, ' of having buried in the earth statues of granite, and other precious effects ;' and Genest, a young man of twenty- seven, * of having corresponded with his wife, an emigrant, and sent her ingots of silver, with the design of drawing away the whole current coin of the state [ajin d'epuiser tout le numeraire de Vetaf], and of discredit- ing assignats ! ' They were found guilty de conspiration, and executed. Then come several members of a family, of which M. Hariague de Guibeville, formerly President of the Parliament of Paris, was the head, and whose chief crime seems to have been that they 476 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. were intimately acquainted with some ladies who had been guil- lotined three months before. The President (aged seventy-two) was charged individually * with being informed of all the designs of the enemy. He knew, in 1792, that England was equipping , in the greatest secrecy^ a jleet against France:— Bull. ii. 163. We need hardly say that the poor President could not have known of an armament that never existed. La Femme Bonnaire — as the daughter of the President and widow of M. de Bonnaire, a member of the Parliament, is called— was convicted of * sevtdng up with thread certain little cases of card, in which Gnibe- ville afterwards sent money to his emigrant sons.' — Ih. Two servants, Robin and Paymal, were executed for * being penetrated with the same sentiments that characterised their masters, since they had boldly declared that they would rather see fire at the four comers of Paris than that the Eepublic should last.* Mademoiselle Charras de la Laurencie was accused of crimes — one of which we must repeat in the original language of these revolutionary lawgivers — ^English refuses to render it. ' La fiUe Charras etait de I'aristocratie la plus puante — she had vx)m mourning for Capet, thereby manifesting her desire to see that just punishment avenged by our enemies.' — Ih. On this guess at the desire which might be inferred from her wearing mourning, she also was executed. We beg leave, how- ever, to suggest an answer (which the poor lady was not allowed to make for herself) to the only fact alleged against her — the mourning for Louis XVI. Our examination of the proceedings of the Tribunal has led us to discover that, towards the end of January, 1794 — just the anniversary period of the king's murder — Madame de Charras de la Laurencie was arrested at her country-house near Paris (where also Mademoiselle de Charras resided) and dragged to the Tribunal — and thence, on the 30th of January, to the guillotine. Is it not probable that the mourn- ing which poor Mademoiselle de Charras put on at this time was mourning for her sister^ whose death happened thus accidentally to coincide with the anniversary of the king's ? FEEQUENT MISNOMERS. 477 Then came two gentlemen, MM. Mesnard de ChoussI, as the Moniteur and Bulletin call them, or Menard de Choury, as the Liste announces them : the father, says the Moniteur^ was aged 46 — the son, the Bulletin states at 35, and the Moniteur at 37. The father is stated to have resided in the Rue de Clichy — of the son it is said that he lived with his father in the Hue St. Lazare. The son was accused of being a ' chevalier du foignard ' — an imaginary crime, or rather in truth a mere nickname for any one who visited the Tuileries before the 10th of August, and for being * the only one of his brothers who had not emigrated ' (' 8eul de ses freres rest 4 en France parceque son pere avait fait emigrer les autres '). Emigration being a capital offence, no other reason is given for young Mesnard's execution than his not having emi- grated ; but against either the father or the son we find not only no evidence, but absolutely not a tittle of charge except what we have quoted, and a statement that they had formerly held offices in the King's household. This designation of course implied that they must be Royalists, and they were both executed. Then comes a widow lady, called in one list M. Adrienne Cronnet, and in another M, Grabrielle Gonnel, and in the third M. A. Gontel — but whether christened Adrienne, or Gabrielle, or surnamed Gonnet, or Gonnel, or Gontel — we cannot discover that she was accused of anything whatsoever, for none of these names occur in any part of the charges or evidence — yet she too perished with the rest. Next we have a gentleman of the name of Gougenot, of whose indentity some doubt might be allowed, as one list describes him as thirty-six, and another as fifty-six years old — his crime is, that when at Easter, 1791, the king had wished to spend the holidays at St. Cloud, and, after having got into his coach at the Tuileries, was stopped by the mob — M. Gougenot, ' being maitre d'hotel to Capet at the time of his pretended excursion to St. Cloud, had continued to stand at the door of the tyrant's coach, and endeavoured to facilitate his escape.' — Bull. ii. 163. We must not stop at such minor errors as S. Roltat of Frugeat being executed as S. Rollat of Brunget, when we find that a gentleman, called in one list M. Destade Bellecour, and in another M. Bestat, and described as an ' officer late in the service of Russia, and of the age of fifty-three ' — is by the third list meta- morphosed into a lady, by the name of ' Angelique-Michelle- 478 THE KEYOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. Destalle, of the age of thirty-three.' It appears that this person was really a male, and the sole fact alleged against him was his Russian half-pay. But the mistake as to his sex occasioned another — for having once stated him to be a lady, and finding lower down in the bloody hst a woman described as the * femme de Destalle,' the careful redaeteur for once exercised some de- gree of judgment in correcting these unseemly blunders, and accordingly * /. M. Nogue^ widow of thz late M, Rolin cflvry, and '■^ femme'''' of A. M. Destade ' is transformed into * /. M. N'oguer, widow of one Eohin, andfemjne de chambre to Angelique Michelle Destalle.' The husband is thus made to die in the name of his lady, and the lady in that of an imaginary femme de chambre the imaginary widow of M. Rolin d^Ivry, who turns out to be her own servant Jean Robin, who was executed on the same scaffold at the same time. And all these seventeen persons — so misnamed — so misdescribed — some without any charge — the rest on charges so vague, so various, so absurd — were tried all together on the morning of the 18th of April, 1794, and sent all together in the evening of the same day to shed their blood ' for the dogs to lick in the Place de la Revolution.' This system of trying in batches afforded Fouquier the facility of looking out for classes rather than crimes. It would be diffi- cult and -tedious to fabricate evidence of individual crimes against five-and-twenty innocent gentlemen ; but there was no difficulty in culling from all the prisons twenty-five gentlemen who had belonged to the old Parliaments — their very designation would be crime enough; and although they belonged to different Parlia- ments, as wide as Paris and Toulouse, and although nothing was or could be alleged against any one of them but their ofticial pro- tests against the abolition of their order, duly and regularly made, in 1790 — before the new constitution — before the general amnesty, which in 1791 afiected to close all the animosities of the Revo- lution — twenty-five of these venerable magistrates — whose ages amounted on an average to near three-score each — were tried in an hour on the morning of the 21st of April, 1794, and executed HENRY SALLIER GUILLOTINED FOR HIS SON. 479 in an hour the same evening — without even an allegation — a sus- picion — that they had done anything, or even said anything, questionable since the dissolution of the Parliaments prior to the first Constitution. Nor were there wanting, amidst this general injustice, individual instances of the grossest irregularity and fraud. ' In the affair of the Parliamentarians [the ex-President] Ormesson was brought into court on a liand-barrou\ so wrapped up from head to foot that no one could se6 him. He was called upon two or three times, but no one could perceive whether he had heard— he himself uttered some sounds that no one could make out, and — he was sent to execution I ' — Pivc. Fouq., Xo. xxii. The following case is even worse: — The Committee of Public Safety had ordered that all the members of the Parliament of Paris, who had signed early in the Revolution the protest just mentioned, should be brought to trial : amongst them had been one gentleman, Guy Sallier, who fortunately was not forthcoming ; the number therefore was incomplete : but there was found in one of the prisons his aged father, Henry Sallier — and though he had not signed the protest, nor could have signed it, not having been a member of the Parliament, he, Henry Sallier, the father, was taken and guillotined in place of Guy Sallier, the absent son. And it is not a little remarkable that, as if to cover this atrocity, the Liste des Condamnes registers the victim as * 670. Henry Sallier, aged 38, ci-devant President of the ci-devant Parlia- ment of Paris ' — — Henry Sallier being above 60, and not having, as we have said, belonged to the Parliament at all. M. Guy Sallier survived the Revolution, and published in 1813, under the title of * Annales Fran^aises,' the best account that we have of the share that the Parliaments had in bringing about the Revolution. M. Guy Sallier was, down to the July Revolution, a councillor of state. On the very next day, the 21st of April, came on what is called the * Affaire d' Espremenil,' in which that early agitator and reformer, and two other Constituants, Chapelier and Thourct, became the victims of the storm which they had contributed to raise. Thouret a counter-revolutionist ! — he that first advocated the abstract proposition of the Plights of Man— he that suggested the confiscation of the property of the Church— -/«c that proposed 2 I ^80 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. the abolition of the pa7'llaments — the creation of a new criminal jurisdiction, and the introduction of juries — and now, like so many others, to perish by the abuse of his own reforms ! On the same scaffold, and under the same generic description of ' agents of Pitt,' appeared the venerable and illustrious Lamoig- non de Malesherbes, with his daughter, Madame d(j Rosambo, and his grand-daughter, Madame de Chateaubriand, and her husband • — three generations at one fell swoop ! M. de Rosambo had been executed the 'preceding day as a Parliamentarian. M. de Chateau- briand was the uncle of the great ornament of that name whose genius illustrates France, and whose fidelity to honour and mis- fortune shames her. Our readers will not call this a harsh judg- ment on Young Trance when they read the following fact. During the Restoration a monument was erected in the great hall of the Palais^ to the memory of M. de Malesherbes, with a bas-relief representing Louis XVI. dictating his defence to his venerable friend. The generous Revolution of July, so proud of ' all the glories of France^' has obliterated, with its worse than Vandal hands, the bas-relief, and otherwise mutilated the monument : but this outrage only makes what remains doiihly monumental — of the atrocity of the first Revolution, and the meanness of the second. By the same sentence died the Duchess of Grammont (the sister of the celebrated Duke de Choiseul"), the Duchess du Chatelet and her sister, under their maiden names of Roche- chouart, and the Polish Princess Lubomirska ; and for what crime ? — * for eutertaining correspondences with their emigrant relations, proved by letters found in their possession.' The letters are not given, and of what facts they might prove no statement is made, except in one case — one precious case — by which we may judge of all the rest Against M. de Malesherbes it was charged that-«^ ' his correspondence proves that he ordy proposed himself, and was only accepted, as the defender of Capet, by an intrigue hatched by Pitt with some relations of Malesherbes in London ; and that in the part [i^ole'] that he acted on that occasion he was nothing but the agent of all the counter-revolutionists hired and bribed by the despot of Eng- land.— ^w//. iv. 184. By this specimen we may be satisfied of the value of the other evidence. Madame du Chatelet, whom we have already men- tioned (p. 460, note), was accused of having corresponded with and PRINCESS LUBOMIRSKA— MAD. DE GRAMMONT. 481 sent money to her son. This we have no doubt she would have done, if she had had a son, which fortunately she had not I * and the only letter recited in the proceedings proves not the sending but the receiving of some money. To make up, however, what might be deficient in the evidence on this part of Madame du Chatelet's case, it was worked up and completed by the following charge : — ' Moreover, the said woman, Eochechouart, had devised and planned the removal of certain documents and the titles of feudality in tra- velling trunks, which were stated, at the office of the coach by which they were to be sent, to contain dresses and clothes for her own use — manoeuvres which prove the hopes entertained by the w^oman of the success of the projects of the counter-revolutionists, with whom, she was associated,' — lb., 186. With them also was executed, though visibly advanced in pregnancy, the Polish Princess Lubomirska, at the age of twenty- three. The Bulletin affords no other charge against her than that * she had written to Madame Dubarri saying, the Queen is still in the Conciergerie, and there is no idea of her being sent back to the Temple ; I am, however, easy as to her fate [tranquille sur son sort] : proof positive that she reckoned on the success of the plot which the said Archduchess of Austria [Marie Antoinette] was then carrying on to escape from justice.' — Bull, iv. 185. This sentiment of commiseration she would not condescend to disclaim, as we learn from the speech of her official defender, which is fortunately preserved as a specimen of the use and value of an advocate before the Revolutionary Tribunal : — ' The Tribunal must have observed,' said the defender of the ^femme ' Lubomirski, ' the frankness and candour of her whom I am employed to defend. She has professed her invariable adherence to truth, and has told you that she would scorn to defend her life by a falsehood ; and that is the most favourable observation which I can offer on her behalf.' — lb. 187. Madame de Grammont, a woman of considerable talents and high spirit, would not waste words on her own defence — her name and the figure she had made in the world were, she well knew, * Monstrous as the proceedings of such an extravagant falsehood should the Tribunal were, we cannot but sus- not have been at once I'efuted ; but we pect some error or confusion in the copy the statement of the Etilletiu. , reports. It seems impossible to imagine 2 I '2 482 THE EEVOLUTIONAKY TEIBUNALS. inexpiable crimes : but she addressed the Court on behalf of Madame du Chatelet, whose softer manners shrunk from a conflict with her brutal accusers. * " I am aware," said this noble-minded woman, " that it would be useless to speak about mj^self; but" [raising her arm over Madame du Chatelet, who sat wdth clasped hands and downcast eyes beside her] " what has this angel done? — she who never took any share in public affairs — never belonged to any party — never mixed in any intrigue — whose whole life has been spent in unostentatious bene- volence ? The7^e are others as innocent as she — but there is no one whose personal character and habits of life render her so little liable to accusation or even suspicion "' — Fort, et Caract. de Meilhan, p. 43. This is very fine : we remember nothing in professed oratory more eloquent or more ingenious. While declining to speak of herself she really says all that could be said — ' there are others as innocent^ — and then the hastening to apply this gleam of self- defence to her main object — ' but no one so little liable to accusa- tion or suspicion as she ! ' As they were passing to death, Madame de Rosambo saw Mile, de Sombreuil, in one of the corridors of the prison, and said to her — ' You had the happiness of saving your father — I have that of dying with mine.' AVe can picture to ourselves nothing more striking, more touching — more full of all the highest elements of wonder, pity, terror, indignation and admiration, than the whole of that di- versified yet awful scene. D'Espremenil and Chapeller, so lately rival idols of a mob now clamouring for their blood — the tardy remorse of Thouret — the quiet conscience beaming through the placid countenance of the aged Malesherbes, a convict where he had once been a magistrate — his daughter, a widow of yesterday — the young Chateaubriands happy to die together — the lofty person and commanding air of Madame de Grammont demanding justice for her gentler friend — and the sublime elevation of that beautiful young stranger scorning to prolong by a subterfuge her double life. Fill up the background with the tigers of the Tribunal and the furies of the Guillotine, and we have a picture whose dreadful, glorious reality throws into contempt and disgust all the tawdry impostures of Versailles. The next remarkable '^ four nee' was that of the Fermiers Creneraux — a case that deserves peculiar attention. The THE FERMIERS G^NERAUX. 483 Farmers General were, as our readers know, an associated body who, prior to the Revolution, ftirmed certain of the revenues of the state. This system ceased early in the Revolution, and their very complicated accounts had been nearly if not altogether wound up, when, in the autumn of 1793, it occurred to a Jacobin deputy, one Dupin — a fellow whose fortune, such as it was, had been made by the protection of one of them — that, as the Farmers General were very rich, something might be wrung out of them by a revision of their accounts. Forthwith, a board of inquiry was constituted, under the direction of Dupin. As was the fashion of the day, the Farmers General were, provisionally, put into a state of arrest ; and the Hotel des Fermes, their old house of business, was assigned as their place of confinement. This revision, how- ever, dragged on and produced nothing till the spring of 1794, when — in pursuance of Barrere's celebrated axiom (quoted by Dupin himself in this case), that * coiamg — hattre monnaie — was one of the legitimate uses of the Guillotine ;' — it was suggested that the sending the Farmers General to the Tribunal of death and confiscation would be the shortest and most profitable mode of settling their accounts. Accordingly, on the 5th of May, 1794, Dupin read to the Convention a very long report, in which, going back ten, twenty, and even thirty years, he raised various questions on the conduct of the collective body of Farmers General, and con- cluded that all that were still living — to the number of thirty-ttvo — should be sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. This decree passed, as everything that smelt of blood and plunder now did, without opposition. This was on Monday the 5th of May : but it was not issued by the Bureau of the Convention till next day, the 6th — nor was it officially communicated to the Tribunal till Wednesday the 7th— on which day the Farmers General were transferred to the Conciergerie to the number of thirty-one— Robespierre, whose slightest word was law, having personally directed that one of the original number should be spared. On the next morning, Thursday the 8th, thirty-one were brought before the Tribunal, and — not tried^ for the only evidence pro- duced was Dupin's report to the Convention — nor convicted^ for even that form was, in the hurry of the Tribunal, omitted, but — suddenly sentenced and sent away to the guillotine, * and their pro- perties were confiscated to the benefit of the republic' The first question naturally is, for what counter-revolutionary crime ? None 484 THE EEYOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. at all — not even a pretence of one, for their vocation had ceased vrith the Revolution. Then for what other crime ? — For usurious interests and extraordinary profits on their capital, and above all — the only fact stated— for ^having mixed water with the tobacco that was sold hy their sxib-agents^ that it might weigh the heavier.^ And on looking into Dupin's report, we find that this damping of the tobacco by subordinate retailers dated so far back as 1776. Our readers will forgive our producing the exact words of this wonderful sentence— in which they will observe that all dates are carefully avoided, or rather confounded. ' // est constant [the eternal foiiiiula] that there has existed a plot tending to favour by all possible means the success of the enemies of France, and expressly by exercising all manner of exaction and fraud on the French people, in mixing with tobacco water and other ingredients injurious to their health — in receiving 6 or 10 per cent, interest on money lent,' &c. &c. Just as these thirty-one gentlemen were going to execution, it was fortunately discovered that three subordinate officers found in the Hotel des Fermes had been by mistake included in the death- warrant ; so that tiventy-eight only were executed on that day. We shall see presently that the three missing Farmers General were afterwards found, and that the sanguinary Tribunal was not baulked of its allotted number. In the course of the ensuing year, when the bloody frenzy had subsided, the massacre of these eminently innocent gentlemen attracted great attention, and their widows and children preferred public complaints of the conduct of Dupin ; and from this discus- sion we gather some more important facts. Dupin, being charged with having been the chief mover in the massacre, endeavoured to show that he had acted only as the instrument of the Govern- ment, then so despotic that no one dared disobey it— that he had done no more than read to the Convention the report of the Com- mission, which contained nothing like a capital charge — (this was true enough — hut twenty-eight gentlemen were executed on it !) — and that it was the Committee of Public Safety which had really premeditated and arranged the whole proceeding. ' What proves that the real assassins of the Farmers General did not care abont or act under either my report, or even the decree of the Convention, is that the indictment against them had been already prepared hy Fouquier Tinville, before the report was made — before the THE FEPvMIERS GENfiRAUX. 485 decree was passed — and that their death had been already settled by the Committee of Fublio Safety' — Rejjonse de Diipin, p. 2. This again was all perfectly true — their death was settled before they were accused — even their sentence had been signed m hlanlc, and the judicial murderers, in their haste, had forgotten to fill it up. All this Fouquier was forced to admit on his trial, when the original sentence signed by the judge was produced, but found to contain neither names of parties nor verdict of the jury ! but what Dupin does not state, though equally certain, is, that instead of being an unconscious instrument, he was the active accomplice, if not the prime mover of the whole transaction — and something worse : for before the trial, he — an irresponsible and unauthorised individual — proceeded to seize and confiscate all the property of the accused, which even the legal officers had no right to do till after conviction. We will not waste time on the meaner crimes of robbery and thieving of which this representative of the people was guilty — for we have more serious matters to discuss. Dupin, a few days after the murder of the twenty-eight, dis- covered that three of the thirty-one Farmers General who had, probably on account of their great age, been confined in a separate maison d^ arret, had not been guillotined with their colleagues. He lost no time in correcting the mistake, and accordingly on the 14th of May, Charles Adrien d'Arlincourt, aged 76, Louis Mercier, aged 78, and John Claude Douet, aged 73, were brought before the Tribunal charged with the crimes for which their fellows had suffered, and were in consequence condemned to death with five other persons with whom they had no kind of relation, but who happened to be tried that day. Deep as this catastrophe already appears, it goes still deeper. While these three last-mentioned gentlemen were at the bar, there was produced a paper (found probably by Dupin amongst those of his victims) signed Douet. It turned out not to be signed by the person under trial, and Fouquier Tinville sent off immediately to have his wife, Madame Douet, produced as a wityiess, to ex- plain the paper. On inspecting it, she seems to have acknow- ledged it as her own writing, and, from being a witness, this lady, sixty years of age, was at once placed in the dock — within a few minutes sentenced — and executed that same afternoon with her husband and the rest ! But what was this fatal paper ? The sentence 486 THE EEYOLUTIONAPtY TRIBUXALS. of the three septuagenarian Farmers-General and five other men wholly unconnected with them had heen already drawn up hefore Madame Douet was associated to their fate — perhaps hefore they had heen tried — hut it was now made to fit the whole hatch by a marginal addition : — * that they Ai^D Mary Frances, the wife of the said Donet, are guilty of having, as appears hy letters found at their reside7ice, had an under- standing and maintained correspondence with the internal and external enemies of the republic, and especially with Dietricht and Duchdtelet, who have already suffered the penalties of the law.'' — Proc. Fouq. Xo. 46. ' Dietricht^' a gentleman of literary and scientific tastes, was a moderate reformer, and first constitutional mayor of Strasbourg, in which office he became, by his firm and honourable conduct, obnoxious to the Jacobins, and v.as sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and thence to the guillotine on the 28th of December, 1793. ' Buchdtelet^ was the amiable Diichesse du Chdtelet, who had been guillotined, as we have just seen, a fortnight before. With these two friends Madame Douet was found guilty of having corresponded by letters — the crime would not have been great, if true, but it was not proved — no letters were produced — but the paper to which the charge alluded was fortunately preserved, at- tached to the sentence in the archives of the Tribunal. It was a WILL, made by Madame Douet on the 22nd of January, 1793, of which we cannot resist extracting the passages on which she was so suddenly sent to death : — * * The friendship w^hich from our childhood has attached me to ■Madame du Chdtelet authorises me to request her acceptance, as a small testimony of my regard, of the satin chairs w^orked by my own hand. ' I request my dear son * Dietricht to accept as a token of the tender affection I bear him^-a ling in which is the portrait of his own mother — my dearest friend. ' I leave my dear good daughter, Madame Dietricht, whom I ten- derly love, my emerald ring set round with diamonds. * I have nothing left which I could offer to M. de Malesherles as worthy of him, hut I beg him to believe that all the marks of his friendship which I have received and the proofs of esteem which he has shown me are deeply engraved in my heart, and that the most * Madame Douet, it seems, having affectionate title the son of a dear friend. no children of her own, called by this Perhaps she had been his godmother. MADAME ELIZABETH. 487 sincere attacliment is combined with the veneration his character inspires. (Then followed some small beqnests to her servants.) (Signed) M. F. B. DouET.'—ib. Such, then, was the evidence (the sole evidence, as is expressly stated) of * the cory^espondence with the internal and external enemies of the repubhc,' on which Madame Douet— a lady eminent, as even the proces states, for great and extensive cha- rities — and eight other persons, in whose sentence she seems to have been involved and they in hers, closed the tragic episode of the Fermiers Generaux.* Of the angelic life and heroic death of Madame EHzabeth nothing new can be told. Our former observations (p. 278) have sufficiently exposed the brutality, the falsehood, and the impossi- bility of the charges made against her. As to the twenty-four persons condemned and executed, under the same indictment and sentence, as her ' accomplices,^ let it be remembered that Madame Elizabeth had been in close custody for eighteen months ; and, in fact, no attempt was made to connect her accomplices either with her or with one another — the charges, where charges were made, were all distinct ; but against many there was not even the idle formality of an accusation. Each of these cases would, if we had space, afford an interesting detail. Of one, that of Madame de Serilly, we shall have to speak under another head ; but we are tempted to give the fatal charge against the Countess de Montmorin. * La femme Montmorin — widow of the villain who betrayed France throughout the Eevolution, and who has undergone the terrible ven- geance of the people [in the September massacres] — was the accom- plice of all the crimes of her infamous husband. She seems also to have corresponded with the traitor La Luzerne. Her guilt is proved by her active and regular correspondence with her husband. This correspondence exists, and the accused acknowledges it.' — Bull iv. 328. Exists — acknowledged — but not produced ; and a widow is * Dupin was a fellow whose jovial the Jacobin Directory and their testa- manners and habits contrasted strangely mentary executor, Buonaparte, some with the steady and bloody ferocity of small ofl&ce in the collection of the his conduct. He was saved from his revenue. We have not heard of him deserved punishment by the amnesty since the Restoration, of 1795, and aftei'wards obtained from 488 THE EEVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. executed because she had corresponded with a husband who was murdered before the Republic was founded. We now arrive at another great and fearful mystery of which no historian attempts to give any rational explanation. Every pamphlet on the Revolution is full of invectives against the mon- strous law of the 22nd Prairial (10th June, 1794) — but no one condescends to inquire with what possible object that law was passed. It was indeed a monstrous law — but the practice before the law had been equally monstrous — or at least so nearly so that we do not understand why even such a government as that of Robespierre should have wantonly encountered the odium of putting into literas seriptas the habitual atrocities of the Tribunal. This law — adopted on the report of Couthon, and therefore, as we know, the dictate of Robespierre — appeared at a most ex- traordinary and unexpected period. On the 8th of June (20th Prairial) Robespierre had attained the acme of his glory ; lie had that day, as President of the Convention, announced to the half-pleased and half-astonished multitude the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being. The expectations that were successively raised and disappointed by the execution of Hebert and Danton were now revived. Everybody hoped — rationally hoped — that having triumphed over every adverse faction — he was about also to moderate the effusion of blood and to bridle the anarchy. Nothing like it — only two days after this his apotheosis, he issues forth this infernal edict, which even Fouquier, who had anticipated most of it in practice, was shocked to see reduced into writing. This law consists of eighteen articles, of which we need only mention a few of the principal. It divided the Tribunal into four sections instead of two. This had been, our readers recollect, decreed in the preceding September ; but not, we suppose, carried into practice ; nor do we believe that it now was. They doubled the victims without doubling the Tribunals. It extended the jurisdic- tion over ' all the enemies of the people ' — and gave such detailed definitions of what was an ' enemy of the people^ that there was no word nor action of any man's life by which he might not be brought within its categories. It established for all offences &ne sole punishment, Death. The proofs on which the Tribunal might proceed were to be any kind of evidence, material or moral, that might ' satisfy the jury, whose conscience is to be their only rule, and their only object the triumph of the Republic and the ruin PRISON CONSPIEACIES. 489 of its enemies.' If the juries could acquire a moral conviction • without evidence^ none need be produced. As to official de- fenders, counsel, the law abolished the practice — * calumniated patriots will find a counsel in the jury — tlie law refuses any to conspirators I ' We look back with a kind of incredulous wonder — not merely that half-a-dozen madmen should have thought of promulgating such atrocities under the name of a law, but that a Natimal Assembly should pass it, and a Nation not only obey but appear to applaud it — and this at a moment that seemed not merely the dawn of peace and good order, but when there was no political opponent to crush, and the Tribunal was without hesitation or hitch sending every day to the scaffold as many as the Govern- ment chose to send to its bar. Our conjecture is that this law was passed with a view, on the part of Robespierre, to an early sacrifice of the majority of his colleagues in the Committees, who had begun to show some symptoms of opposition ; and that he and they were now vying with each other in giving to the Tribunal an increase of activity and power, which each party hoped, by and by, to turn against its adversaries. But, whatever may have been the motive, both Robespierre and the Committees had now evidently resolved on enlarging the daily number of executions ; and, for this purpose, the incident which had been produced on Danton's trial and had been a little further developed in Dillon's case, that of a conspiracy in the prisons, was now reverted to. It might be reasonably predicated of any and all prisoners that they were anxious for their release, and of most of them that, with a favourable opportunity, -they would not hesitate to escape. A disposition so obvious and natural would need no proof, and every individual prisoner was therefore, ipso facto, a ready-made conspirator — quod erat inveniendum I It was, no doubt, a species of insanity that would imagine such an opera- tion — but they had a kind of method in their madness — * Insanire parant certa ratione modoqne.' They made their first experiment of a prison conspiracy at the Bicetre — a great house of correction or penal prison, occupied (almost exclusively) by persons already condemned to imprison- ment or irons for offences just short of capital. With such wretches it was supposed that the public would feel no sympathy, 49 THE EEVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. and accordingly the Bicetre was the first experimental scene of the Conspiracy of Prisons. From Bicetre the pretended conspiracy produced, on the 16th and 26th of June, two batches of thirty-seven and thirty-five respectively. And so entirely was it a device of Fouquier or the Committee's, that the governor of the prison deposed that the first he had heard of any conspiracy was by reading of it in a news- paper ; for which evidence he and two turnkeys who concurred in it were dismissed from their posts and sent to jail. Fouquier went to the prison in person and selected the first batch. The sentence passed upon them is worth notice. These wretched men, most of them in irons, and all in the strongest prison of France, were * convicted of being declared enemies of the people in forming, pro- posing, or joining a plot, of which the object was to seize upon the guard of the Bicetre, to force the gates of the said prison, and then to proceed to stab with poniards the representatives of the people — ■ members of the Committee of Public Safety and General Surety — to TEAR out their HEARTS — TO BROIL AND EAT THEM — and to put the most patriotic of the representatives to death in a barrel lined with iron nails.^ — Moniteur, 22nd June, 1794; Liste des Con,, No. vii. Nor was this an accidental paroxysm of insanity, for the same sentence was repeated on the trial of the second batch, ten days later, with the perfectly consistent addition that the intended actors in these counter-revolutionary plans were * the agents of Pitt ! ' * Amongst these ' conspirators of the Bicetre,' a few of whom were persons of a better class, confined for trifling revolutionary off*ences, there occurs one man whom we have met already in this article in far different circumstance — Osselin — formerly an ad- vocate at the Parisian bar, afterwards the first president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and at last deputy for Paris to the National Convention — in which character he distinguished himself by voting for the death of the King — by seconding strongly H * While the name of Mr. Pitt was is—' Theatre du Vaudeville — Gilles I thus introduced in these tragedies of George et Arlequin Pitt.' What an idea real life to deceive the populace, we find of the state of the public mind is given that it was also introduced into farces by the simultaneous use of the name of to amuse them. The theatrical an- Pitt at the Tribunal Rt'volutionnaire and nouncement nearest the above-quoted the Theatre du Vaudeville J sentence, that we find in the * Moniteur,' PRISON CONSPIRACIES. 491 Robespierre's murderous proposition for abridging the defence of prisoners — and by proposing violent penalties against holding any communication with emigrants. But, O retribution ! he some- how* fell under the displeasure of his old friends ; and it was discovered that his kept-mistress had been an emigrant, so he was sentenced to be imprisoned at Bicetre under his own law — thence again, under pretence of this conspiracy, he was brought before the judgment-seat where he had once presided, and sent unheard to death under the law he himself had advocated — and, finally, his head fell under the hatchet to which he had condemned his innocent sovereign. But this is not all — when the wretch was called upon to appear at the Tribunal — we need not say that he was entirely innocent of a conspiracy which never existed ; but — well aware of what justice awaited him there, he attempted suicide by driving a nail drawn from the walls of his cell, up to the head into his own breast. Though he had failed to reach the heart, he was nevertheless dying ; yet the jailors would not suffer the nail to be withdrawn, lest immediate death should follow its removal ; and in this condition he was thrown violently into a cart, jolted to the Tribunal, and thence to the Place de la Revolution, where we know not whether he was yet alive, but the body was guillo- tined, with the nail still sticking in it. We shall conclude this head by an extract of the evidence of Dr. Brunet, first surgeon of Bicetre : — * I declare that the alleged conspiracy was a falsehood, a calumny ! How coidd these men have conspired ? They were kept apart — they did not know each other — the greater part had never seen each other till they met for the first time on the carts that were to convey them to a Tribunal of blood, and thence to the scaffold. In all times and in every prison there have been and will be projects of escape ; but it was reserved for our day to confound such projects with a conspiracy. But these bloodthirsty men wanted victims, and they tried their hand at Bicetre, and that first step having been successful, they hesitated at nothing, and invented conspiracjies at the Luxembourg — the Carmes — St. Lazare — La Force, &c. The two witnesses, on whose evidence the seventy-two prisoners of Bicetre suffered, were fellows already condemned to twenty years' irons for perjury. But after they had done this " public service," as it was called, the government ordered them to be released from their * Probably by a slight resistance of of the decree against the Brissotins. amour propre to Robespierre's redaction See ante, p. 455. 492 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. irons — to have separate rooms — -to be delicately fed — and, most monstrous absurdity and folly, there was inscribed in large letters over the doors of these two infamous wretches, " The Friends of THEIR COUXTRY." ' Pwces Fouq., No. X. Our readers will naturally ask what advantage any man or party could possibly derive from the murders of these poor jail- birds — none of whose names, except only Osselin's, had ever been heard of? Was it some secret pique of Robespierre's against Osselin ? but even then how could it be necessary to make such a general massacre to get rid of so contemptible a fellow as Osselin ? We cannot answer, and must leave it as one of the Mysteres de Paris of that mysterious time. Just at this moment, when the Committees of Government and Fouquier Tinville appeared to be at a loss for pretexts of accu- sation, two events almost simultaneous opened an opportunity of which they largely availed themselves, and produced the affair known by the name of the ' Chemises Rouges ' — which deserves particular notice, as well for the political purposes to which it was perverted as for the diversified interest of its circumstances and the gigantic guilt of its conclusion. About one o'clock on the night between the 22nd and 23rd of May, 1794, a man of the name of Henry Lamiral, about fifty . years of age, formerly messenger in the Lottery Office, who resided in the same house with Collot d'Herbois (No. 4, Rue Favart), waited for him on their common staircase, and fired two pistols at him without effect. And on the next day, 24th of May, a young girl of the age of •^ twenty, named Amy Cecile Renaud, who presented herself at Robespierre's lodging, and desired earnestly to see him, was arrested and charged with an intention to assassinate him. We refer for the details of these cases to our Essay on Robespierre. We are now considering them only in reference to the Tribunal, which might think itself happy in thus obtaining — for the first time, with the exception of Charlotte Corday — a legitimate victim. But that would have been too poor a harvest. On the next day, the 25th of May, the Society of Jacobins voted an address to congratulate the Convention on the safety of the two faithful representatives of the people, and to invoke * such a terrible vengeance on the guilty as should arrest these frightful attempts.' And who will our readers believe was the DECREE OF NO QUARTER TO THE ENGLISH. 493 spokesman of this deputation of the Jacobin Club, demanding a terrible vengeance on parties not yet tried? No other than Dumas himself, the president of the Tribunal, which was there- after to try those whom its president had thus already condemned. This seems monstrous — it is nothing to what follows. On the 26th of May Barrere ascends the Tribune of the Con- vention with a report in the same tone as one that he had made two days before against England, but much longer, more elaborate, and more malignant, — and even amongst Barrere's Carmagnoles this one is, we think, pre-eminent for his usual qualities of absurdity and atrocity. Through ten columns of the ' Moniteur ' (29th of May, 1794), all the crimes of England — from the original sin of being a ' Carthaginian colony ' down to Cecile Renaud's pocket-knife — are developed as the preface of a decree ^forbidding the soldiers of the EepuUic to give quarter to the British or Hanoverians.'' This decree was passed with loud and general acclamation, and directed to be translated into all languages and sent to all the armies with orders for its being carried into execution. It was in this report that, to encourage the French troops to butcher their prisoners, Barrere used the celebrated phrase, * il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas.' (^Moniteur, ib.) All our readers have heard of this celebrated decree, but many may not be aware of the circumstances in which it was passed. M. Thiers does not notice them ; and indeed only alludes to the decree itself in a distant passage and on another subject. Mr. Alison, also, led astray by his faithless guides, mentions the decree seventy-th^ee pages after his account of Cecile' s affair, and then with a wrong date and not the slightest reference to, or apparent suspicion of, the circumstances with which it was connected. And this is history ! Revolutionary vengeance, generally so active, now, in spite of all these provocations, grew rather slow ; and, though the Tribunal was very busy with ordinary cases and prison conspiracies, the trial of Lamiral and Renaud was delayed for above three weeks. The fact was, that the Committees and their agents were busy in selecting other victims to be hooked on to these cases. There had been in the Constituant Assembly a Baron de Batz, who took a lead in financial questions, and was much connectecj 494 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. with financiers. This gentleman had been arrested in the pre- ceding year, but contrived to escape ; and his absence afforded the opportunity of setting him up as * the agent of Pitt and the foreign powers,' and the mainspring of an imaginary conspiracy, to which the Committees gave the captivating name of the Foreign Conspiracy^ or ' Conspiration de VEtranger ;' and this was at- tached to Lamiral's case by no other Hnk than that Lamiral was acquainted with, and used to meet at a billiard- table, one Roussel, who had been intimate wdth Batz : but how Cecile Renaud could be connected with these was never attempted to be shown. At length on the 14th of June the Committees, by the organ of Elie Lacoste, produced a report which reiterated all Barrere's denunciations of Batz as the accomplice of Danton, Hebert, and Chaumet, and of him and of all as the * agents of Pitt ; and con- cluded with a decree, sending Lamiral, Cecile Renaud, and sixty- two other persons, * oiil accomplices of Batz,' before the Revolu- tionary Tribunal. We are tempted to give one specimen of the truth and logic of this official paper. Citizen Lacoste states that Batz and his accomplices were sup- plied by Pitt, not only with assignats, but with * heaps of guineas ' {guinees amoncelees\ with which * ils achetaient de Tor a un prix enorme pour en diminuer la quantite en le faisant passer a nos ennemis ou en I'enfouissant.'- — Moniteur, 15 June, 1794. This charge against Mr. Pitt, of sending gold to buy gold and thus making gold scarce, seems somewhat wild, but it is common sense compared with the arguments by which Lacoste connects Batz with Lamiral —and Cecile and sixty-two others with them. Against the great majority of these poor people there is not even a charge — many of them had been in prison six months before Lamiral's affair ; and in four cases, and four only, is there any attempt to connect them with it. And these four cases are : — 1. When the news of the attack on Collot d'Herbois reached the little town of Choisy-sur-Seine, one Saintanax, a medical student, who had been drinking and quarrelling in a coffee-house, had said that he was sorry that such a scoundrel had escaped, but that neither he nor Robespierre would escape long. 2. A poor schoolmaster of the name of Cardinal was denounced THE CHEMISES EOUGES. 495 as having spoken disrespectfully of Robespierre, particularly with reference to Robespierre's presumption in the part he had played in the fete de VMre Supreme — but this was eighteen days after the attempted assassination. 3. A woman of the name of Lamartiniere was acquainted with Lamiral, and had bought his furniture when he changed his lodgings ; she probably was more intimate with him than she was willing to allow, but nothing was stated to give any idea that she had any share in, or knowledge of his crime. 4. A lady of the name of Lemoine-Crecy had two servants — Porteboeuf and his wife ; the wife, coming home from the market the morning after Collot's attack, reported the news with this addition, that 'the malheureux who had made the attempt had been taken." The word malheureux might be construed either as hlaming or as pitying Lamiral ; the latter was the sense assumed by Lacoste. Her husband, too, was charged, when he heard the news, with having said * ceist Men malheureux^'' which was also construed in a bad sense — and their mistress, Madame Lemoine- Crecy, was asked whether Porteboeuf did not tell her the news, and add ' c^est Men malheureux.^ She answered ' No ;' that she had first seen it in the morning newspaper. Will it be believed that on this charge, and this ambiguous meaning of the word * malheureux,* Porteboeuf was executed as an accomplice of Lamiral, whom he had never seen, nor, before that morning, heard of? — but, still more dreadful, Madame Lemoine herself was executed because it was alleged that her servant had used these words in her presence ! These are the nearest approach to anything like a charge in the whole sixty-two cases. The young Laval Montmorency — the Prince of Rohan-Roche- fort, the Prince of St Maurice —and the Marquises de Pons and de Marsan, were guilty of their — names. The venerable Sombreuil, saved in the massacres of September by the heroism of his daughter, now died, accompanied by his son. The daughter again exerted her filial piety, and implored the mercy of the Convention and the Tribunal ; but the Convention and Tribunal, more cruel than the Massacreurs, sent both father and son to death — and the indictment does not even affect to assign a reason. In those days no great sympathy was felt for these pure and noble persons, but considerable public interest was felt for a lady 2 K '^ 496 THE KEVOLUTIONAEY TRIBUNALS. of celebrated beauty, though of somewhat equivocal character, called Madame de Sainte Araaranthe. Many stories are told as to the cause of her fate. One was, that at a dinner at her house, Robespierre, warmed with wine, had divulged some of his projects; and being apprised of this indiscretion next day by the actor Trial, one of the guests, he ensured the silence of the whole company by sending them to the scaffold. It would be easy to disprove this story, but it cost Trial his livelihood and his life ; for, after the 9th Thermidor, the public hissed him off the stage, which, it seems, broke his heart. The interest, however, was not so much for Madame de Sainte Amaranthe, as for her young, and still more beautiful daughter, just married to the son of the celebrated minister Sartines. They all, with the young Louis de Sainte Amaranthe, aged only 17, perished on the same scaffold. The young woman exhibited at the bar so much loveliness, and such admirable spirit, that even Fouquier was startled ; and showed— after his own fashion — if not his admiration, at least his wonder, by exclaiming that 'he had a mind to follow the cart, to see whether the would brazen it out to the last.' There has been even up to this day no rational conjecture as to the secret causes of the murder of this family. Of public crime or even judicial charge there is not a trace. There are twenty others of these cases on which we should have something to say, but we must pass on to facts if possible more striking than those we have related. There were four superior officers (Administrateurs) of the police at Paris, named Marino, Froidure, Soules, and Dange. These men were energetic patriots / — we need not add, execrable villains; but had, it seems, now fallen into disgrace with the Committees. After the sixty-four were ranged on the fatal benches, the Public Accuser called for the four Administrators, who came bowing and smiling, and re- questing * to know in what way their services were required.' O terrible surprise ! Fouquier's answer was to order the gen- darmes to lay hold of them, and place them with the criminals. He had received supplementary orders from the Committee to include these fellows in the pending condemnation, but on what grounds he did not condescend to state, and the wretches them- selves had probably no distinct idea ! THE CHEMISES EOUGES. 497 But there came still another victim, and well worthy was he to appear as an epilogue to this tragedy. Just as the trial was about to begin, Dumas, the president, being in his private room, a note was brought to him, apostrophising him as a ' man of blood — murderer — monster — that had put to death the family and friends of the writer — who desired to share the fate of those that were to die that day, as he shared their opinions and sentiments.' This note — evidently that of a man driven to madness by grief and despair — was signed ' Comte de Fleury! At the moment that Dumas had read the note, Fouquier came into the room. * Here,' said Dumas, handing him the note, * is a little hillet-doux.^ * Ah ! ' replied P'ouquier, ' the gentleman is in a hurry ! but I will indulge him.' The sixty-four prisoners were already in court — * soon after,' said the witness, ' five others were added : the four Administrators, and a fifth, who, being asked his name, answered — the Count de Fleury ! ' To this terrible charge, when brought against him at his trial, Fouquier could only reply that he remembered nothing of it, and that the witness must be mistaken ; but the witness's account was corroborated by other evidence, and is confirmed by a slight but decisive circumstance — in the Liste des Oondamnes the names of the original indictment are complete in numerical order, and then are added, in a kind of note and without the usual running number, the four Administrators — and the Comte de Fleury. The trial had begun before this last incident ; but where are the documents ? — the witnesses ? There are none ! The sole and simple formality is, that Dumas requires each individual to answer directly * Yes' or ' No ' to ' Was he (or she) an accomplice in the design against CoUot or Robespierre ? ' Lamiral answered boldly, * Yes,' Cecile said that she had not meant to hurt anybody. All the rest answered ^iVb' — several endeavoured to speak, but the President silenced them. The young Prince de St. Maurice was heard to say, ' You brought me here on a charge of emigration — I have here proofs .' Dumas cut him short, and sentenced the whole sixty-nine * to death. * Mr. Alison's imperfect account of a number of young men bravely combating this affair concludes with the following on the frontier in defence of their country.^ statement : — * Her [Cecile Renaud's] (Hist. v. ii, p. 321.) We say nothing whole relations, to the number of sixty, of the style of this passage, but its were involved inker fate f among whom were statement of facts is absolutely un- 2 K 2 498 THE EEVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. To flatter the vanity and vengeance of Robespierre and Collot, it occurred to Fouquier to consider this attack on those fathers of the country as a parricide ; and he had red shirts prepared in which— to mark the enormity of their guilt— the whole were sent to the scaffold that same day ; and Fouquier, who looked out to enjoy so extraordinary a procession, exclaimed jocosely that it looked like a fourn^e of cardinals ! Whether seven other persons, condemned on the same day in the other section of the court, were included in this melancholy masquerade we are not informed. This is the case known by the name of the ' Chemises Rouges ; and we think it will puzzle the most inordinate admirer of the Revolution to discover how these, and many thousand similar atrocities, could have contributed in any way, immediate or remote, to the regeneration of the French people. Will our readers credit that we have got through but little more than half this catalogue of crimes, though we have arrived within six weeks of the 9th Thermidor? In these six weeks 1200 more victims are to die. The principal engine was that most absurd, but, as we have shown, most convenient of all pretexts — the Conspiracy of Prisons. About the 4th or 5th of July it was resolved to bring 159 prisoners from the Luxembourg to trial at once ; and Fouquier actually had the court of the Salle de la Liberte altered and a scaffolding * raised, capable of containing 200 persons at once ; and, as if this were likely not to suffice, pre- paration was made for adding more seats if necessary. Fouquier and the surviving members of the Committees threw upon each other the blame of this project, and claimed the merit (!) of having true. Instead of sixty relatives of and we made the same statement in C^cile, there were but three — her father, our essay on Robespierre. We suspect, her aunt, and a young brother. None however, that this was a mistake occa- of the others were in any way connected sioned by an ambiguous use of the word either with her or her crime. As to echafaud, and we now incline to believe the * number of young men bravely com- that the echafaud — scaffold — which Fou- bating on the frontier, there was not one quier was said to have erected was what to whom this description could apply. would be better expressed by * echaf- Cdcile had indeed two other brothers faudage,' scaffolding; indeed, we find it who were brought up from the army to called echaffaudage in a note to the Paris, but they were not executed nor Froces, No. 20. The Gidllotine is no- even tried. where mentioned ; and the context * M. Thiers says that Fouquier had everywhere seems to imply that the erected a guillotine in the great hall of scaffolding, raised for the trial of 200 the Palais, and that it was only by the prisoners, was meant. — See Proces Fou~ reiterated orders of Committees that quier, Beponse des Membres des Comites, he was forced reluctantly to remove itj p. 58; and Moniteur, Slat August, 1794. SENTENCES SIGNED IN BLANK. 499 divided the massacre into three batches. But what Fouquier could not deny — for the document was there — was, that one sen- tence. of death against the whole number had been drawn up and sigrted hy the judges the day before any of them were tried, and it was on this premature sentence that the first batch was executed ! These three batches, with some tried in the other court, were sent to the scaffold — 67 on the 7th July, 60 on the 9th, and 44 on the 10th of July; total in three days 171. And then followed the prisoners of the Carmes and La Force, and St. Lazare, thirty, forty, fifty a day. By this time Fouquier and the Tribunal had lost all sense of shame, and seem to have become literally drunk with blood ; and every frightful anecdote that we have related in our former pages would find a hundred echoes in the accumulated horrors of this last fortnight. Narrow as our space grows, we must find room for a few out of many hundred interesting cases. Several instances appeared in which the judges had signed sentences in hlank^ which were never filled up, though the prisoners had been executed. In explaining one such case. Wolf, one of the clerks of the court, gave the following singular evidence : — ' This was caused by the extreme rapidit}'' of the operations — no criminal could be executed without a certificate of the sentence from the officiating clerk, and the clerk, for his own safety, would not give the certificate till he had obtained the signature of the judges to the sentence ; but the time being too short for copying these judg- ments out fair for signature -the same day, and as it would have been an act of inhumanity to have kept the wretched prisoners in an agony of twenty-four hours, waiting for death — the clerks obtained the judges' signature to a form, which he could fill in next day at his leisure, and in the meanwhile was safe in giving the certificate for execu- tion. The reason that the sentence now produced is still in blank is, that Legris, the officiating clerk on that occasion, and who was to have filled them up, was himself arrested at five o'clock one morning ^ and guillotined at four o'cloch the same afternoon.'' — Proc. Fouq. No, xxii. This, we think, exceeds anything we ever heard or read of. A tender-hearted clerk sends a crowd of prisoners to death twenty- four hours before their time, merely to spare their feelings, and is himself within the same day arrested, tried, and guillotined by the same sort of summary humanity ! 500 THE EEYOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. Several women, when suddenly sentenced to death, endeavoured to delay the execution by a declaration of pregnancy. In the earlier days a decent respite was allowed to ascertain the fact, and some women were saved ; others, and amongst them Osselin's mistress, were, after a delay of five months, executed : but latterly such questions were decided with the most indecent rapidity. In the very last week of the existence of the Tribunal an extraordinary number of ladies were condemned. ' I saw,' said Wolf, the clerk before quoted, * at least ten or twelve women executed the same day that they had declared themselves pregnant. The cases were indeed referred to the examination of the medical men, but upon their cowardly refusal to speak decisively they were all guillotined.' Another clerk, Tavernier, tells the story in more detail. He was summoned to a meeting of judges to draw up the order for the execution of the unhappy women, who, as Fouquier and CofRnhall, one of the vice-presidents, told him, *had been examined, and as the medical men would not say they were pregnant, and as they had been all shut up in the Maison Lazare apart from men, their plea must be rejected.' On this Tavernier had the courage to observe, ' first, that some of them — the Duchess de St. Aignan, for instance, who was four months gone — had been in the same prison with her husband ; but, secondly, that they were all con- demned for a conspiracy with men — that the indictment alleged that they had secret interviews with their male accomplices — and that therefore their plea could not possibly be rejected on the ground stated.' Upon which Coffinhall, the next in rank and ferocity to Dumas, who was dictating the warrant of execution, told him that ' he had no voice in the affair, and was to write what he was ordered.' The other judges were silent. Tavernier wrote the order according to Coffinhall's* dictation, and the un- happy ladies were all executed. One victim seemed, on Fouquier's trial, to rise from the grave to confront her assassins. M, and Madame de Serilly had afforded an asylum to the Countess de Montmorin ; this was a mortal crime, and they, with the Countess, had been brought before the Tribunal * We cannot now comprehend how vanced in pregnancy could have been the Princess Lubomirska, Madame de executed— but so stands the evidence. St. Aignan, and others visibly far ad- MADAME DE SERILLY. 501 as accomplices of Madame Elizabeth, and all condemned, as we have seen. Madame de Serilly, on hearing the sentence, fainted away ; but Madame de Montmorin, seeing her friend speechless at her feet, had the presence of mind to declare to the Tribunal that 'Madame de Serilly was pregnant.' M. de Serilly and Madame de Montmorin were led to death ; and Madame de Serilly was removed to some hospital, where she was so utterly forgotten that it was supposed she had been executed with her husband, and her death was recorded in the official registers of Paris. On Fouquier's trial, however, she reappeared, and holding her certificate of death in her hand, gave the following evidence : — * On the 10th of May, my husband and I, and twenty-three other persons, were condemned to death on this spot, ' We were charged, my husband and I, as accomplices of the 28th of February, 20th of June, and 10th of August. All our tria^ was to ask us our names, our ages, and our qualities. Dumas silenced us — not one was heard. * My life was saved by a declaration of pregnancy, which the sur- geons confirmed. ' I saw my husband there — there — where I now see his murderers. ' Here is the certificate of my death, which has been delivered to me by the proper authorities! ' — Proc. Fouq., Ko. xxxviii. We know not that there is anything in the imaginary drama finer than the appearance of this widowed lady, still young, stand- ing in that awful place, and exclaiming, with outstretched hand, * J^ai vu LA mon mart — J'y vois aujourd'hui ses hourreaux.^ * A similar case, but of more complicated enormity, was pro- duced two days after, of which we have the authentic details, not only in Fouquier's trial, but in a report made to the Con- vention itself in 1795. There appeared at Fouquier's trial a young lady — her maiden name had been St. Pern — she was the widow of the Marquis de Comuilliere. She related that she, aged 21, her husband, 22, her brother, under 17, her mother, an uncle, a grand-uncle, aged 80, and her grandfather, aged 81 — seven of one family, and three generations — were all brought before the Tribunal on the 9th of July, and condemned as having been * An interesting letter of Madame de Prisons, iv. 251; but by extraordinary Serilly's, giving a detailed account of ignorance he confounds Madame de this trial (too long for insertion here), Serilly with Madame de Sillery-QQiAiB. is printed in Nougaret's Histoire des A stranger blunder we never met with. 502 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. accomplices of the tenth of August^ though they could have shown that they were at that time residents of St. Malo, in Brittany : but the Tribunal would not hear them — nay, they would not look at them ; for the boy under 17 was condemned as his own father — as the father of his sister four years older than he — as the husband of his own mother — as the grandfather of five or six nephews and nieces. It had happened, by some accident, that the father, M. St Pern, was left in the prison, and the son, who was not even alluded to in the indictment, was brought in his stead. As his name had not been mentioned, it was concluded that he was safe ; and the young mother, certain that she and her husband were about to die, recommended her infant children to the care of this brother ; but, to their astonishment, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty against him, by his father's name, age, and title, and he perished accordingly with the rest of his family, except Madame de Cornuilliere, who was seven months gone with child, and was saved. She further charged three of the persons then under trial with Fouquier — Renaudin, Chatelet, and Prieur — wdth having been jurors on her unhappy case. They strenuously denied the fact : * Alas ! * said the young widow, ' I have a sad record of these men's names. When my husband was leaving me to go to execution he cut off his hair for me, folding it up in the list of the jury which had been delivered to us on our coming to the Tribunal.* —Proc. Fouq., No. xl. And she produced the packet: the names were there, and a cry of pity and indignation burst from the whole court and auditory. There is a terrible and complicated case revealed by the evidence of Heal — Buonaparte's celebrated Count Real — who is mixed up in all these affairs as public prosecutor of the first Tribunal, and successively counsel, prisoner, and almost victim, of the second. He states that a yoiith under sixteen, of the name of Mellet, a prisoner with him in \hQ Luxembourg, and who was a general favourite for his graceful appearance and lively and obliging man- ners, had one evening, by mistake, answered the call of the jailers for one Maille.* The boy took an affectionate leave of Real, * Either by an error of the press or Real's evidence as Bellay : it seems cer- of his own ear, this name is given in tain that it should be Maille. EXECUTIONS BY MISTAKE. ' 503 hoping that he was about to rejoin his father andnnother, who were in another prison, but was taken to the Tribunal on the 21st of July, where, of course, there was no charge against him, as he was not the person intended : no matter ! he was sent to the guillotine to complete the number, and the unhappy mother only learned from Real's lips, after the 9th Thermidor, the fate of her boy. The sequel of this story is still more shocking. There was a lady, widow of the Vicomte de MailU^ her maiden name Leroux^ con- fined in St. Lazare, whither her son, another boy of sixteen, had voluntarily accompanied her ; and he was no doubt the person for whom the jailers were inquiring at the Luxembourg on the 21st of July, and for whom the other boy, Mellet, suffered on the next day. But this poor Maille did not escape ; for on the 23rd of July he was removed from St. Lazare to the Conciergerie, and thence next morning to the Tribunal and the scaffold — his crime being that he had thrown a rotten herring at the turnkey who had brought it to Mm. {Proces, No. 39.) On his condemnation he stated that he was not sixteen years old (an age protected by the law). The president brutally answered * May be so, but you are fourscore for crimeJ {lb.) His mother, who appeared on Fouquier's trial, stated these circumstances, which excited the liveliest horror and astonishment in the audience, and also revealed another, if possible, more hideous scene of the same protracted tragedy, that on the 25th of July it was intended that she herself should have been brought before the Tribunal, but there was found another lady with the almost synonymous name of Maillet (nee Simon), and she was brought forward and tried as the Vieomtesse de Maille (nee Leroux). This mistake was immediately discavered by Madame Simmi Maillet's not being able to understand the questions of name and age intended for Madame Leroux Maille ; and the officer of the court told the former, with cool and cruel audacity, * You were not the person intended, but his as well to-day as to- morrow,'* and she was executed. But Madame Leroux Maille was still to be disposed of; and in the night between the 26th and 27th of July this latter lady was removed from St. Lazare to the Conciergerie, and next day (the 9th Thermidor) brought before the Tribunal. When she saw those who had murdered her son three days before she fell into convulsions, and the people interfered to prevent her being tried in that state. Robespierre was over- 504 THE EEVOLUTIONARY TRIBUKALS. thrown that evening, and she thus escaped from this embroglio of misnomer and murder.* Fouquier having ordered a Duchess Dowager de Biron to he brought up for judgment, the usher of the court came back and said there were two widow Birons — one F. P. Roye, widow of the old Marshal de Biron, aged seventy- one ; the other Amelie Boufflers, widow of the Due de Biron lately executed, aged forty- eight He replied sharply, ' Bring them both.' They were both brought next day (27th June, 1794), tried, and executed. And to this and several other similar cases Fouquier made the same audacious answer, that both the parties were on his lists, and were both intended to be executed, though he had at first happened to send only for one. {P voces Fouquier, Nos. vi. xviii. xxii.) We must here mention an episode in this tragic drama which has been little noticed, and never explained. On the 12th of March, 1794, on a long and enigmatical report of St. Just, six Revolutionary Tribunals, to be called Popular Commissions,- were created for the purpose of judging rapidly the persons accumulated in the various prisons. These were evidently intended for some purpose to which they were not afterwards applied, for only two were appointed, and that not till the middle of May, and with no larger powers than to report for the decision of the Committees of Government what patriots might be liberated — what minor offenders transported — what conspirators sent to the Tribunal. One or two reports were made, of which the Committees took no notice for several weeks, but at last were induced to ratify them. By these decrees above five hundred persons were to be turned over to the Tribunal. We know not whether any were proposed to be liberated : some were to be deported, and we believe that there was not a prisoner in Paris who would not have gladly accepted deportation as mercy. But in no case can we discover that any merciful result followed these decrees, and the blasted hope was, in every instance that we are able to trace, the prelude to deeper misery. This very obscure affair allies itself to our present subject in an extraordinary and melancholy way. There was in the * If the difference of the dates and was another Madame de Maille in the places were not so distinct, we could not prison of the Rue de Sevres, who had a have credited such complicated con- very narrow escape of being executed fusion of names and persons as this affair for her sister-in-law, Madame Lcroux presents, and which was really worse . Maille. — Histoire des Prisons, ii. 149. than it appears in the text; for there M. DE LOIZEKOLLES. 505 Luxembourg prison an old general officer of the name of Tardieu- Malesey, with his wife and two daughters — one the wife of M. du Bois-Berenger, the other unmarried. Of the beauty, talents, spirit, and amiability of ' la jeune Bois-Berenger ' we read the most rapturous accounts, and the fate of the whole family created a general interest. Into this case one of these Popular Commissions inquired, and, on the 26th of June, found them all to be ' extremely fanatical — having daily communications with priests, and keeping up a continued intercourse with them — which might bring about a counter-revolution ' (^Courtois Rep., App. xxxix.) — ■ and sentenced them, in consequence, to deportation. This would have been, at any other time, a hard sentence for the revolutionary crime of daily prayer, but it was now a deliverance. This decision of the Commission, though dated on the 26th of June, was not ratified by the Committees of Government until the 21st of July, but it was then ratified, stamped, and ordered to be carried into effect. Alas ! M. and Madame de Malesey and their two daugh- ters had been, a fortnight before (9th of July) executed in one of the batches of the Luxembourg prisoners ! In one of the last of the prison batches occurred the celebrated case of M. de Loizerolles, executed under a warrant prepared for his son. Amidst such and so many horrors, we are not surprised that good feeling, to say nothing of national vanity, should seize on an incident that might diversify with any amiable traits the mean and monotonous butchery of these scenes. Everybody has read, therefore, with sympathy the accounts of M. Loizerolles being awakened in the middle of the night by the jailer's calling for his son, and having the heroic presence of mind to answer to the call without disturbing the sleeping youth. This touching scene is represented in one of the ' Tableaux Historiques de la Bevolu- tion,' and has been repeated in memoirs and histories till it seems paradoxical to question any of the circumstances. And yet truth requires us to say that the circumstances have been essentially misstated, or, as the narrators and artists no- doubt thought, improved. For our own parts we are satisfied that the real value of all such anecdotes lies in their strict truth. The facts — never, we believe, before collected, and only to be found scattered through Fouquier's trial — are these : The original warrant was neither for Loizerolles the father nor for Loizerolles the son, but for Loizerolles, 506 THE REVOLUTIONABY TRIBUNALS. a daughter ! {Proces, No. xlx.) There was no such person ; and how this first mistake occurred is not explained. No douht it was a clerical error for fils, which was afterwards substituted for it in the indictment: but the warrant was for L,oizeTo\\es fiUe. With this warrant against Loizerolles Jille the officers proceeded to the maison d' arret de St. Lazare, and, about four o'clock on the evening of the 25th of July, and therefore in full daylight^ carried off * Loizerolles pereJ Thus vanishes the interesting night-scene of the ' Tableaux Historiques ;' and what really passed was this, for which we have the evidence of young Loizerolles jils himself : * On the 7th Thermidor (25 July), about fuur o'clock in the even- ing, I heard the name Loizerolles called in the corridors. I, not doubting that this call of death was meant for me, ran to my father's room to take my last leave of him : but what did I see ? — a turnkey about to cany off my father ! I hastened to apprise my mother that my father was about to be taken from us for ever — she came instantly and embraced him with a cry of despair — my father was carried off. I followed him to where my mother could not see our last pangs at parting. When we were at the last wicket, he said to me, "My boy, console your mother — live for her —they may murder, but they cannot degrade me." My tears, my grief, prevented any answer; but I was about to embrace him for the last time, when the turnkey brutally thrust me back, and shut the door insolently in my face, with these cruel words, " You cry like a child, but your own turn will come to-morrow." ' When my father reached the Conciergerie, they furnished him with a copy of his indictment ; but what w^as his surprise, in looking at it, to find it was meant for me, and not for him ! It was then that he formed the generous resolution of sacrificing himself for me ; and communicated his design to Boucher, a friend and fellow- sufferer. Boucher admired his heroism, but dissuaded him, saying, *' You will destroy yourself, and not save him." ' On the 8th Thermidor (26th July) my fatlier and thirty fellow- sufferers appeared before the court. The indictment is read — Loize- rolles the younger is arraigned ; but, instead of a youth, it is a venerable old man with long white hairs who answers the call. What can be said for the judge or the jury who could thus condemn an old man of sixty-two for a youth of twenty-two ? That same afternoon my father died — died for his son — and his son did not know it for three months ! My mother and I were still detained. At last, on the 6th Brumaire (26th October) we were restored to liberty— liberty dearly bought — but how welcome if my father had lived to share it ! It was a few days after my release that Mi Prauville, a fellow-prisoner M. DE LOIZEROLLES. 507 of my fatlier, who had escaped death by the 9th Thermidor, informed me of the particulars which I have related. I met M. Prauville casually in the street; he recognised me — congratulated me on having also escaped the storm, and then told me what I have re- peated. I hardly knew how to believe it ; but I next day acquired a full certainty of its truth; for, passing over the bridge of the Hotel Dieu, and looking at the posting-bills with which it was co- vered, I saw the affiche of my own death. With the permission of the patrol, I tore it off and carried it to Berlier, a member of the Convention, by whom a strict inquiry was made into the whole case ; and my mother and I had our property restored to us.' — Proces Fouquier, No. xliii. But the truth is, that although the elder Loizerolles was, like all the rest, murdered, it was not by mistake for either son or daughter. He was all along the intended victim, having been denounced by a * personal enemy,' one Gagnant, the administrator of the prison {Tabl, Hist, de St. Lazare^ 1.) It does not appear whether the clerical error which substitutes the name of the son existed in the original warrant for the transfer from St. Lazare to the Conciergerie — probably not ; but it certainly got into the indictment. The younger Loizerolles, however, is certainly mistaken in saying that at the trial the Tribunal condemned the father for the son, for it was proved {Proces, xxi.) that the judge, Coffinhall, corrected with his own pen the name, age, and descrip- tion, from ' Frangois,'' 'fils,^ ' 22 ans,' to ' Jean," ^ pere,' ' 61 ans ;' so that there is better evidence than appears in most cases that they knew whom they were executing, and ' the victory of Gagnant over his enemy Loizerolles pere ' was announced as a triumph by the prison authorities. {Ih.) We can well believe that M. de Loizerolles would have died to save his son, had the fatal alterna- tive really arisen ; but, in fact, all that his paternal devotion could do consisted in this, that when, in the evening of the 6th, at the Conciergerie (the son having remained at St. Lazare), the father received notice of trial for the morrow in his son's name, he had the presence and strength of mind to repress all notice of the mistake, well aware, no doubt, that he was himself the intended victim, but that, if he had raised any question of identity, the son would have been sent for, and both would have perished. It adds to the painful interest which, even when reduced to its real circum- stances, this case excites, to think that it occurred the very day before the fall of Robespierre. 508 THE EEYOLUTIONAEY TKIBUNALS. The evidence of the younger LoizeroUes acquaints us with two facts important to the general subject — one that the list of the victims used to be placarded, to gratify, we suppose, the popular greediness for blood ; and the other, still more monstrous, that the sentences were so printed and placarded before they were pro- nounced — even before the trials had commenced ; for the younger LoizeroUes found his own name on the placard, though the mistake had certainly been corrected, if not before the trial began, at least before the sentence was pronounced. But another and still more shocking affair happened next day ; and we shall conclude our notice of individual cases with this, the very last of the whole series, which actually took place after Robespierre's fall : it is almost worthy of being the finishing stroke of this protracted massacre. A gentleman of the name of Puy- Deverine, aged sixty-nine, and his wife, aged fifty-five, were sentenced (we cannot make out on what charge) with forty other persons, and executed in the evening of the 9th Thermidor by the special order of Fouquier ; though the executioner himself, having heard of the fall of Robespierre, had suggested the delay of the execution. It was proved on Fouquier's trial that M. Puy-Deverine had been for upwards of three years deaf and dumb, and in such a woeful paralysis of all his vital functions as to be in a state worse than death. His excellent wife had devoted herself to the care of this breathing corpse. The pair had been examined by one of the Popular Commissions before mentioned ; they were acquitted of all crime, and promised their immediate liberation. And they were liberated — they were guillotined ! It was a mercy to both ; but as it was the last, so it was perhaps the most abominable, the most wanton, cruel, and impious sacrifice of all that the Tribunal had made ! The substantial wickedness of this murder throws into the shade the minor crime, that this unhappy couple were actually arraigned, condemned, and executed under the husband's baptismal name oi Bur and — so little did Fouquier or the Tribunal know or care who it was that completed their predestined number of victims. The day that followed this last exhibition of the tyranny of Robespierre saw Robespierre himself and twenty-one of his asso- ciates brought to the same scaffold ; and on the next day seventy, and a few days after thirteen others. Amongst these there were, of the Tribunal, the president, Dumas ; the senior judge, Coifin- THE THIKD TKIBUNAL. 509 hall ; Fleuriot-l'Escot, formerly Fouquier's deputy ; and five or six of the jurors. But Fouquier and all the other members took their usual places at the Tribunal as if nothing had happened, and sent to the scaffold without trial, but on a decree of outlawry,* these their patrons and colleagues with the same callous zeal that they had shown against their former victims — nay, they presented themselves on the morning of the 10th Thermidor to congratulate the Convention on its victory over the tyrants ; and Fouquier in person solicited a decree to facilitate and accelerate the sending his outlawed friends to the scaffold. The first movement of the Convention on the day of Robes- pierre's execution was to dissolve the Tribunal, and a decree to that effect passed ; but in an hour or two Billaud Varennes hurried down to the sitting, and complained of this unpatriotic decree, and we may almost say commanded the Convention to repeal it. The Convention obeyed ; and so little was either the principle or prac- tice of the Tribunal discredited either in that assembly or public opinion, that the Tribunal itself was on the 9th August, 1794, replenished and re-established in all its monstrous power (except only that the law of the 22nd Prairial was repealed), and five of the former judges — all the officers and several of the jurors — were re-appointed to it. Even Fouquier himself was at first maintained in his office ; though he was in a day or two after dismissed, and with some of the most notorious of the surviving judges and jury arrested and ordered to be tried by thei renovated Tribunal. The proceedings of this new court — the Third Revolutionary Tribunal — seem to have been almost as irregular and arbitrary as those of the old. The victims were for the greater part of the lower classes, and the imputed crime was in general no other than that he or she had made use of some anti-revolutionary expression — propos contre-revolutionnaires. A young hairdresser is executed because he was reputed to be a dangerous lunatic and a zealous partisan of tyranny. A poor friar, who had apostatised from his order by taking the civic oath and enlisting in a battalion of Mar- * We cannot resist the temptation of yesterday at the general execution of an instance of the abuse of words, or the conspirators; but it is now for the what we should call an Irish bull, in laio to reach him, and I propose that he Barferre's great report to the Convention be put out of the law [mis hors la hi.']' — of the transactions of the 9th Thermi- Moniteur, 14th Thermidor. We admit dor: — ' The villain [sce/t?raf, Lerebours, that the difference between /aw and no a Robespierrian] has made his escape law was not great at that time, but the for the moment. He was wanting verbal contrast is almost ludicrous. 510 THE REVOLXJTIONAEY TRIBUNALS. seillais, but not from his religion^ was executed for fanaticism and federalism. The fanaticism was proved by his own confession that he still adhered to his religious belief, and by the fact of his having dated a letter from the Incarnation of our Saviour instead of the year of the Republic ; and as to the federalism, we know that it was a crime that never existed, and that the name was invented as a password by which the Girondins were to be sent to the scaffold : but even if we could admit this federalism, what could this poor friar have had to do with them, who had been immolated and extirpated above a year before ? A notary-public of Dun was executed for having in his posses- sion a copy of the ' Oraison Funehre ds Louis XVI, prononcSe par Vinfame Conde.^ Another notary was tried and executed for some royalist demonstrations he was said to have made in the department de la Meuse in September, 1792. They could not have been very remarkable, or they would not have escaped notice in the two terrible years that had elapsed. But whatever the notary may have said or done, we are at a loss to conceive on what pretence a female farm-servant of his — * domestique vigne- ronne ' — was sent to the same scaffold : as were a commissary's clerk, Jean Paumier, for having embezzled portions of hay and oats of which he was in charge ; and one Davesne, a distinguished patriot of the 10th of August, but now put to death for having made a profit of some halfpence in a contract of 50,000 pike handles, for which, under pretence of the urgency with which they were required, he charged three sous (halfpence) each more than they were worth. Amongst the 44 obscure persons executed by this third Tribunal in the three months that followed the fall of Robespierre, we have no doubt that the vast majority of the cases were as bad as those of the former tribunal, and that there are many amongst them which -^if known would excite a special sympathy. One such we have accidentally found, and think worth preserving. Our readers may recollect that on the 20th June, when the mob had surrounded and were pressing upon the Queen and the Dauphin, one of them took pity on the mother and child, who were fainting under the crowd, pressure, and heat, and took the boy into his arms. The name of this goodnatured intruder never was known ; but strange and lamentable it is to find in the scanty records of this third Tribunal, that John Joseph Bousquet, a butcher by trade, and a ci-devant TRIAL OF CARRIER. 511 Juryman of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was condemned and executed as a Royalist for having on the 20th of June taken the little Capet into his arms and afterwards boasted that he had been allowed to kiss the Queen's hand in reward for his having done so. It was further alleged that, converted by this mark of favour, he had shown an interest in the Royal family, and had followed the King to the Assembly on the 10th of August with marks of sympathy and respect. Poor Bousquet admitted the facts, but re- minded the Court that they had occurred while the monarchy still existed, and that, far from committing a crime, he had only done his duty. All in vain, and he expiated on the scaffold the real crime of having been on that day one of Santerre's satellites, and the more obnoxious one of being less brutal than his associates. It seems incredible, yet all the proceedings of this third Tri- bunal prove beyond doubt that, although the terrible abuses of its predecessor had been the most prominent cause of the over- throw of the Robespierrian party, their successors should have pur- sued the same course, if not to the same numerical extent, yet with the same atrocious spirit of injustice and cruelty. Terror was still the order of the day, and the Tribunal vacillated between the terror it excited and the terror that it felt. From the 27th of October till the 16th of December it was employed in the trial of Carrier and his associates for the un- paralleled massacres of Nantes, and he and two associates were condemned and executed on the latter day : but twenty-six of his accomplices, though found guilty of the facts of murder, pillage, &c., were acquitted, as not having perpetrated them with counter-revolutionary intentions; and as it was a revolutimiary tribunal, it inferred that it was not authorised to punish any but counter-revolutionary offences. This view of the duties of the Tribunal, which would have equally required the acquittal of Carrier himself, excited general surprise, and produced conse- quences which, to our ideas of law, seem even more extraordinary. On the 18th December Lecointre of Versailles denounced this iniquitous verdict to the Convention, which, upon his motion, with very little objection, ordered the acquitted persons to be re-arrested, and directed the Committee of Legislation to propose measures for having them tried again— which was done at Angers, some months later. This completed the discredit of the Tribunal. It was evident that it was not to be trusted with the trial of Fouquier, 2 L 512 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. and it was, as its two predecessors had been, ignominiously dis- solved, and another, the fourth. Revolutionary Tribunal created (28th of December) with an entirely new and less arbitrary or- ganization, by which, as might be expected, and as no doubt the Convention intended, it lost all its revolutionary value ; and after trying Fouquier and his associates from the 29th of March to the 6th of May, it was finally abolished on the 2nd of June, 1795. The reports of these two trials of Carrier and Fouquier are, as we believe, the most extraordinary records of human depravity that the world has ever seen. We know of nothing that at all approaches to them in the variety and extent of corruption and atrocity which they reveal. Fouquier and fifteen accomplices — judges, jurors, and witnesses — were executed on the 7th of May, 1795 ; and it was observed that they were followed to the scafibld by a class of persons more respectable than had ever been seen on such occasions, reproaching the culprits with the murder of a wife, a husband, a parent, or a child. AVe will add but a few lines to complete our account of Antony- QuENTiN Fouquier Tinvtlle. He began life as an attorney, but soon closed his professional career by a fraudulent bankruptcy ; his next appearance was as one of the mob-heroes of the Bastille, and he became successively, a commissary of police — foreman of the jury in the first Revolutionary Tribunal — public accuser before the second — was indicted under the third — and tried and executed, at the age of 38, under the fourth, ''for having, under colour of legal judgments, put to death an innumerable crowd of French citizens of every sex and every age.' {Proces, No. Ix.) His coun- tenance was hideous —a perfect type of his character ; and that character seems so entirely beyond the pale of ordinary humanity, that one reads with a kind of surprise, as if it was unnatural, that he left a widow and several young children. The defence of Fouquier and his fellow-culprits was, that they were only instruments of the Government in the execution of laws duly enacted ; but this apology, even if we could admit the prin- ciple, cannot be allowed in their case— for it would not excuse the gross violation of all the forms of their own laws "and the utter confusion and disregard of times, places, offences, and persons, shown in all their proceedings ; nor was it true as a mere matter of fact, for it was proved that, in hundreds of instances, they outran OTHER TRIBUNALS. 513 the cruelty of their ferocious government and the rigour of their iniquitous decrees. There are in Fouquier's own written defence some passages which are very remarkable, not only as to the character of the man, but historically as to the temper of the times even after the fall of Robespierre. At the interval of several months after that event, which is usually represented as closing in general indignation and reprobation the Reign of Terror, Fou- quier still thinks that he will conciliate the favour of his judges and of the public at large, by pleading as his first merit, that ' during seventeen months that he fulfilled the rigorous duties of public accuser he procured (provoqua) the condemnation of above two thousand counter-revolutionists, and none of the solicitations to which I was subjected were capable of stopping me.* And further on, when noticing a charge of having prosecuted patriots, he expresses his astonishment that he should be called upon to answer such a charge, he who never brought to trial any but the most malignant and desperate (forcene) conspirators ! — he, more- over, who had brought to judgment the Marie Antoinettes, the Elizabeths, the Orleanses, the Blanchlandes — the traitor generals the Federalists— the conspirators of Brittany — the Parliamentarians — the Farmers General — the Bankers — all enemies of liberty and equality ! ' {Memoire pour A. Q. Fovquier, p. 5.) This looks like insanity, for these, as our readers know, are the very cases which common sense, justice, and humanity have, without one dissentient voice, placed amongst the most extravagant atrocities of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Let it not be forgotten, that while all this was going on in Paris there were Revolutionary Tribunals at work in most of the great cities of France — in Lyons, Bordeaux, Nismes, Arras, and several others —which, though not so regular and continuous in their operations as the Parisian Tribunal, equalled them in the atrocity, and frequently exceeded them in the extent, of their massacres. We have not room, nor, indeed, adequate material, for the review of those innumerable and stupendous crimes, but a general recollection that death was at least as busy all over France as at Nantes and in Paris, is necessary to a due appreciation of the transactions we have been describing. But for what ultimate object could this complicated system of murder have been pursued ? We have seen that its origin was 2 L 2 514 THE KEVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. obscure and its advance gradual, but none of the actors in it seem ever to have thought of whither it was going or how it was to end. We, strangers to the country, and not quite contemporary with the events, though we have a youthful recollection of the astonish- ment they created— wanting the opportunities of information, and unversed in the traditional details of domestic history and manners, which none but a native can ever perfectly possess — we cannot pre- tend to have always traced with accuracy, or developed with clear- ness, these ancient ' Mysteres de Faris^ more horrible than the morbid imagination of the modern romancer can invent, and which are probably the secret source from which that morbid imagination has been unconsciously supplied. We have confessed that we are not able to form any clear idea of the motives of these enormous massacres ; and the more closely we look at the details, the more embarrassed we are to find any solution of our difficulty. The deaths of the Queen, and even of Madame Elizabeth, of Charlotte Corday, of the Brissotins, the Hebertists, the Dantonists, and a few scattered individuals such as Egalite, Bailly, Barnave, Manuel, Miaczinski, and Custine, we can account for — not, indeed, on any rational principle, but as an exercise of party ven- geance and political fanaticism ; but we can trace no motive of this kind (at least to any extent) later than the death of the Dantonists on the 5th of April, 1794 ; and when we add, that of the whole number of victims of this' Tribunal — 2730 — Danton was only the 561st, our readers will see that in the short space between the 7th of April and the 27th of July (9th Thermidor), there were crowded 2169 executions, for the great majority of which we are not only unable to give any reason, but we have never seen or heard of any attempt to assign one. We do not say that we cannot here and there trace individual motives and personal enmities, but they were only accessories which took the avourable opportunity of indulging themselves : they certainly were not the original cause. That which comes nearest to a kind of general motive was Barrere's principle to ' lattre monnaie ; but even this fails as a primum mobile^ for by an examination of the lists it appears that, of the whole number of 2730, the rich may be taken at rather less than 650, and the middle and lower classes somewhat above EQUALITY IN THE LISTS OF VICTIMS. 515 1000 each. We can account for batches of the rich — such as the 31 farmers-general, and 25 parliamentarians —but what are they among so many? And it must be admitted that nowhere was the doctrine of equality more scrupulously exemplified than in the Lists of the Revolutionary Tribunals, where we find princes and porters— duchesses and kitchen-maids— counts and carters — magistrates, priests, soldiers, shopkeepers, artizans, day-labourers, and even felons, all confounded — but still with a due proportion of rich and poor — in one common slaughter. What could have been its motive ? It was not that the Government had any exist- ing charge against, or real apprehensions of, these alleged counter- revolutionists, nor could it have any personal object in getting rid of them ; with the exception of about a hundred political adversaries, there was not one of the victims of whom the Go- vernment could have been in any way afraid or even jealous. On the contrary, the Committees seem to have been very much puzzled to discover pretexts for bringing them before the Tribunal ; and they had so little choice as to who should be brought, pro- vided sufficiently large batches were found, that it is proved they latterly committed so largely to the meanest of their agents — jailers, turnkeys, and convicts — the power of life and death in making up the list of victims, that makers of lists became a recog- nized class in the prisons, and grew to be persons of importance, to whom, base as they were, the other prisoners were constrained to pay a certain kind of court {Real Proces, No. xiv.) ; and bribes as large as 400 louis and as small as a bottle of brandy were given for the precarious protection of these wretches. (^Tableau Historique de Lazare, p. 53.) In short, the only object we can dis- cover seems to have been a maniacal propulsion to keep the guillotine going — to produce the daily profusion of victims. On one occasion Fouquier, in his nightly visit to the Committee de Surete Generale, stated that he had a list of thirty-five for the next day, and hoped to have sixty for the day after : the announce- ment was received by an exclamation of ' Bravo ! ' {Proces, No. xii.) from the whole committee, as if there were some difficulty in completing the numbers. And all this becomes still more surprising when we look at the official return, given in the Moniteur, of the total number of pri- .soners in Paris during the greater portion of this period : — 516 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. Prisoners. 1st December, 1793 4133 4tli January, 1794 4697 23rd February, „ 5829 14tli April, „ ...... 7241 20tliMay, „ 7080 1st June, ,, 7084 SthJuly, „ 7502 27tbJuly, „ 7913 And we have the evidence of the chief clerk in the police-office {Proces, XV.) and of Lecointre in his charge against the members of the Committees, that these numbers were latterly short of the reality by at least ICOO. It is obvious that, compared with such a number of prisoners as 8900, the daily drafts of the Tribunal, enormous as they seem in themselves, were of little importance : 882 victims perished between the 1st of June and the 8th of July, and yet the number of prisoners increased by 418 ; and 606 perished between the 8th and 27th of July, with, still, an increase of 411. By what hypothesis can we account for so great and so constant an influx of prisoners, that even these prodigious executions could not diminish the total number ? Personal animosity must have been long since satiated, yet the cruelty was more vehement than ever : — ' Du sang — il faut du sang !— quoiqu'on n'ait plus de haine.' Why, if the Committees were no longer actuated by enmity against individuals, did they murder so many ; why, if they wanted to get rid of these prisoners, did they murder so few? How did the leaders suppose that it was to end ? Where were they to find the solution of a difficulty growing every hour more inextricable? — or were they all mad? No! not mad in the ordinary sense of the word, for they undoubtedly were acting on some system of what they thought policy. It is impossible to dis- connect the facts of the increased number of executions and the growth of Robespierre's influence ; nor, on the other hand, can it be denied that he had absented himself personally from the Com- mittees for six weeks before his fall, and that in these six weeks the executions had doubled, tripled, quadrupled. We have here- tofore noticed the opinion that Robespierre was inclined to arrest TASTE OF THE PEOPLE FOR BLOOD. 517 this march of death, but we always doubted it. A reperusal of his original speeches in the Jacobin Club and in the Convention confirms our earlier impression, that, during the time that he, from some personal pique, absented himself from the Committees, he was still urging and stimulating the sanguinary zeal of his col- leagues ; and that, if indeed he contemplated a return to mercy and justice, his scheme must have been to produce a revulsion by satiety and surfeit of blood. But there is a fact closely connected with this part of our sub- ject, which we have never yet seen noticed in reference to it, and which we think important and remarkable. While Fouquier and the Committees, and their agents and list-makers, were so hard run to find food for the Tribunals as to guillotine peasants for * pricking themselves with pins,' and sempstresses for * scolding,' there were somewhere in the prisons of Paris seventy-three members of the Convention, the important and influential remains of the great Girondin party, any connexion with which was the most fatal charge that Fouquier could introduce into one of his acts of accusation. How then did it happen that none of these ready- made victims were ever brought to the sacrifice ? How and why were they— and they only, of any class of prisoners, so mercifully forgotten, or rather so carefully spared ? — and why, after the 9th Thermidor, was not their innocence immediately and with acclama- tion proclaimed, and themselves recalled to their duties in the Senate? Why were they— and they, again we say, alone of any class of prisoners — kept for months in the same illegal durance in which they had lain for above a year ? We can oifer but one solution — that Robespierre was reserving them to liberate and bring forward — when his plan should be ripe — to turn the scale against his opponents, and confirm his majority in the Convention and his popularity in the country ; — and that after his fall his suc- cessors were afraid of the return of these their old antagonists. In fine the result seems to be — as Fouquier in his defence indicated— that ' the people wanted blood, and would have blood ;' that the appetite grew with the indulgence ; that although the bourgeoisie had become sick of the butchery, it was still, with the classes that had long given the law to Paris and now constituted the strength of the revolutionary government, the daily bread, the indispensable aliment of their political existence ; and that both Robespierre and his adversaries were equally afraid that if they 518 THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNALS. paused for a moment in the career of blood, the good sense and courage of the country would have time to recover their influence, and would rise in indignant vengeance on the whole system of tyranny and terror. Here we conclude a paper too long for our limits — yet infinitely too short for our subject — of which, involved as it is in the con- fusion and obscurity of that long night of terror, we are well aware that we have given but a slight and imperfect sketch. Our object will have been attained if we shall induce those who wish to study the French Revolution, to trace its history to its original sources ; and if we can awaken the attention of the general reader to the great truth with which the whole Revolution is pregnant— that the direct intervention of what is called the people— which, in Revolu- tionary language means nothing but the demagogues and the populace — in the actual government of a country, can produce nothing but a miserable anarchy, of which blood and plunder are the first fruits, and despotism the ultimate and not unwelcome result and remedy. ESSAY VIII. [Quarterly Review, December, 1843.] THE GUILLOTINE, 1 . Notice Historiqm et Physiologique sur le Supplice de la Guillotine. Par G. D. F. [i.e. Guyot de Fere.] pp. 16. Paris. 1830. 2. Becherches Historiques et Physiologiques sur la Guillotine ; et details sur Sanson, ouvrage redige sur pieces officielles. Par M. Louis du Bois, Ancien Bibliothecaire de I'Ecole centrale de TOrne. pp. 35. Paris. 1843. The whole French Revolution, from the taking of the Bastille to the overthrow of the Empire.^ was in fact one long Reign of Terror. The summary vengeance of the lanterne in the earlier years — the systematised murders of the guillotine under the Convention — the arbitrary exile to pestilential climates under the Directory — and the tortures of the dungeon and the military executions under Buonaparte — all tended, in their way and for their time, to the creation and maintenance of that grand imposture — of which, although the events and their consequences were but too real, all the motives and pretences were the falsest and most delusive that ever audacity forged, credulity believed, or cowardice obeyed. Nor have the effects of this protracted system of terror yet passed away ; it poisoned in its passage the very sources of history, and has left posterity, in many respects, under the same delusions that it imposed on its contemporaries. The subserviency of the press to the dominant tyranny of the day was so general and so complete as to be now nearly incredible ; those who look to the files of newspapers for information will find nothing but what, under the overwhelming terror of the moment, 520 THE GUILLOTINE. the ruling faction might choose to dictate to the trembling journalists :* and it is additionally important to observe, that, as it is the nature and instinct of fear to disguise and conceal itself, so, during the whole of this diversified yet unbroken reign of terror, there is nothing which all parties, both the terrorists and terrified, were so anxious to hide as the omnipotent influence under which they all acted. When we, in a former essay, noticed this memor- able fact (and we have good reason to say that it cannot be too often repeated), we gave a striking example of that palsy of the press. It is the fashion to call the Moniteur the best history of the Revolution, and its pages are universally appealed to as indis- putable authority — and justly, as far as it goes ; but the Moniteur itself is a very imperfect chronicle, and, even before it became the official paper, never ventured to say a syllable not actually dictated, or at least sanctioned, by the predominant factions. For instance, on the 22nd of January, 1793, the day after the king's murder — a somewhat remarkable event, not unworthy, we should have supposed, a paragraph in a newspaper— the Moniteur does not so much as allude to it ; and ekes out its meagre column of Parisian intelligence by a poor critique on ' Amhoise— opera comique ! ' And again : the assassination of Marat, which took place on the 13th July, 1793, is not mentioned till the 15th, and then only incidentally, in the report of the debates of the Con- vention ; and the trial of Charlotte Corday, which took place on the 17th, was not reported in any of the journals till the 23rd, nor in the Moniteur till the 29th, and then only half was given ; it was not concluded till the 30th, though the execution had taken place on the evening of the trial, almost a fortnight before. We could produce hundreds of similar instances ; and, in fact, the Moniteur is, during the days of the National Assemblies and the Convention, of very little value, except as a convenient summary of the debates, and even as to them it is not always trustworthy,! — witness the following passage of a letter addressed by the editor * The press had a certain degree of more liberty of the press in Paris than freedom during the earlier days of the in Constantinople — as little indeed as Directory, but on the 1 8th Fnictidor under the new Empire. (4th Sept. 1797) forty-two joui-nals were f It is but justice to add, that the ^ violently suppressed, their proprietors Moniteur, though thus trammelled by and editors were all transpotHed, and temporary influences, always preserved, their properties confiscated. From that in what it was allowed to say, a credit- time till the Restoration there was no able degree of moderation and tact. OBSCURITY OF ITS EARLY HISTORY. 521 of the day to Robespierre, soliciting a share of the secret service fund, and found amongst his papers : — * You must have remarked that the Moniteur reports the speeches of the Mountain at greater length than the rest. J gave but a very slight sketch of Louvet's first accusation against you, while I gave your answer at full length. I reported the speeches for the king's death almost entire ; and I only gav^ some extracts of those on the other side — -just as much as was abso- lutely necessary to show sotne appearance of impartiality, Sfc. — Grandville.' — ii. Papiers de Robespierre, p. 131. And, to give the finishing touch to this remarkable instance of fraud and deception, we have to add that the Committee of the Convention, to whom the examination of Robespierre's papers was referred, suppressed in their report these venal passages, which were only revealed when, after the Restoration, the original paper was brought to light. These considerations have been recalled to our minds by the strange obscurity in which, when we happened to look into the matter, we found the early history of the Guillotine involved. We had long searched through the Moniteur and the other leading journals of the time — through the reports of the proceedings of the legislative assemblies — through the Bulletin des Tribunaux — the Bulletin des Loix, and in short wherever we thought the informa- tion most likely to be found, as to when and where this formidable engine made its first appearance, by what law it was sanctioned, and who were the earliest of that innumerable series of victims that perished by it. Little or nothing was to be found. It is only of late years that any one seems to have ventured to produce any details on the subject. In 1830 a paper, rather surgical than historical, in the ' Archives Curieuses,'* and in 1835 the publication in the ' Revue Retrospective ' of some documents preserved in the Hotel de Ville, threw some scanty light on this subject. A recent pamphlet of M. Du Boist gives a more general sketch of the history of the machine itself and of its introduction into modern Revolutionary practice. All these accounts are very imperfect and unsatisfactory, but they afford us an opportunity of bringing into one view all that we have been able to collect on a subject so * Afterwards published in a separate f No. 2, at head of this Essay, pamphlet — No. l,at head of this Essay. 522 THE GUILLOTINE. neglected, and yet so worthy, we think, of being accurately known and deeply considered. It seems unaccountable that the introduction of so very remark- able a change in the mode of execution should not have been a subject of general curiosity and discussion, but is it not still more strange that persons caUing themselves historians — whose attention might have been excited, not merely by the novelty of the machine, but by the moral and legal questions which led to the invention, and by the terrible, the gigantic consequences which followed its adoption — take httle or no notice of it ? M. Thiers, for instance, mentions cursorily the death of the first and second political victims of the Revolutionary Tribunal. — Lacretelle, in a little more detail, names the second and third ; — Mignet merely says, * some persons were condemned ; ' — and they all, in the course of their narrations, report the death of the King ; but in none of the cases do they allude to any machine, nor employ any phrase that would not apply to an ordinaiy decapitation by the stroke of the headsman. It may be said, in explanation of their silence, that the French writers have been naturally reluctant to enter into details so dis- graceful to the national character, and have therefore abstained, through patriotism — as the Romans used to do through supersti- tion — from uttering the ill-omened word. But we regret to say that Mr.Alison, who, indeed, is too apt on all occasions to copy implicitly his French models, has fallen into their error, without their patriotic excuse. Of the first victims of the Tribunal and the Guillotine he only says, in the very words of Mignet, ' several persons were condemned; ' he does not even say executed — still less does he give any idea that they died in an unusual way ; and even the King's execution is described by the words, ' the descending axe terminated his existence ; ' which — there having been no preceding allusion to any machine — would have equally described that of Charles I.* In short, those who are hereafter to learn the French Revolution from what are called Historiesf will see it very * It was said that the attempt of the himself, executioners to bind the king to the f Nor is this neglect to be objected balance-plank (6((scM/e) was the occasion to the historians alone. In Dr. Jlees', of a kind of struggle between him and great EncyclopcBdia (ed. 1819), neither! them, and the cause that the execution the man Guillotin, nor the instrument was performed with more than usual guillotine, is to be found. The Penny mutilation, but this was altogether a Cyclopadia gives a very good account of misrepresentation : see (ante, p. 257) the instrument, the curious evidence of the executioner PRIVILEGE IN PUNISHMENT. 523 much curtailed of many of its more terrible, yet most interesting features, and especially of the most prominent of them all — the Guillotine. We shall endeavour, as far as our limited space and inadequate means will allow, to do something — however little it may be — to supply this general deficiency. The Guillotine was not originally designed with any view to what turned out to be its most important characteristic —the great numbers of victims that it could dispose of in a short space of time : it is curious, and ought to be to theorists an instructive lesson, that this bloody implement was at first proposed on a combined principle of justice and mercy. It seems almost too ludicrous for belief, but it is strictly true, that, amongst the privileges of the old Noblesse of France which the ' Philosophes ' taught the people to complain of, was the mode of being put to death — why should a noble be only beheaded when a commoner would be hanged ? Shakspeare, who penetrated every crevice of human feeling, makes the gravedigger in Hamlet open a grievance on which the French philosophers improved — * the more pity that great folks should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves more than their even Christian.^ Why, the Philosophes asked, should the Noblesse ' have countenance ' to die otherwise than the Tiers Etat? There was also another liberal opinion then afloat on the public mind — that the prejudice which visited on the innocent family of a criminal some posthumous portion of his disgrace was highly unjust and contrary to the rights of man.* Now there happened to be at this time in Paris a physician, one Dr. Guillotin, who professed, probably sincerely, but somewhat ostentatiously, what it was the fashion to call philanthropy ; and just before the election of the States-General he published one or two pamphlets in favour of the Tiers Etat — liberal and philosophic as he no doubt considered them, but seditious in the eyes of the Parliament of Paris, which made some show of prosecuting the author : this was enough in those days to establish any man's popularity, and Guillotin, though a person, as it turned out, of very moderate ability, was so recommended by his popular * As early as 1784 this question was as a competitor for this prize that we proposed by the Society of Arts at Metz first hear of Robespierre. as the subject of a Prize Essay, and it is 524: THE GUILLOTINE. pamphlets and by the censure of the Parliament, that he was elected as one of the representatives of Paris to the National Assembly. We abstract from a work published in the height of republican enthusiasm (1796), and certainly with no bias against the Revolu- tion or its founders, the following account of Dr. Guillotin : — * By what accident has a man vdthout either talents or reputation obtained for his name a frightful immortality ? He fathered a work really written by a lawyer — Hardouin — who had too much character to produce it in his own name ; and this work having been censured by the Parliament, Guillotin, who assumed the responsibility of it, became the man of the dxiy, and owed to it that gleam of reputation which ensured his election to the States-General. He was in truth a nobody, who made himself a busybody — and by meddling with every- thing, a tort et a travers, was at once mischievous and ridiculous.' — Portraits des Personnes CeUbres, 1796. He made several small attempts at senatorial notoriety by pro- posing reforms in matters of health and morals, on which he might be supposed to have some kind of professional authority, and amongst others he took up the question of capital punishment — first, with the moral but visionary object of putting down by law the popular prejudice against the families of criminals ; secondly, on the political ground that punishments should be equalized ; and thirdly, he contended that hanging was a lingering and therefore cruel punishment, while death by decapitation must be immediate. Small circumstances mix themselves with great results; On the 9th of October, 1789, the National Assembly, in consequence of the tragic exodus of the Court from Versailles, resolved to transfer itself to Paris, and Dr. Guillotin, being one of the representatives of that city, thought it expedient to prepare for himself a good reception from his constituents, and on that very day he gave notice of, and on the next — the 10th— produced, the following series of propositions ; — ' I. Crimes of the same kind shall be punished by the same kind of punishment, whatever be the rank of the criminal. * II. In all cases (whatever be the crime) of capital punishment, it shall be of the same kind— that is, beheading — and it shall be executed by means of a machine [I'effet d'un simple me'canisme']. ' III. Crime being personal, the punishment, whatever it may be, of a criminal shall inflict no disgrace on his family. ' IV. No one shall be allowed to reproach any citizen with the GUILLOTIN'S PROPOSITIONS. 525 punishment of one of his relations. He that shall dare to do so shall he reprimanded hy the Judge, and this reprimand shall be posted up at the door of the delinquent ; and moreover shall be posted against the pillory for three months. ' V. The property of a convict shall never nor in any case be con- fiscated. ' VI. The bodies of executed criminals shall be delivered to their families if they demand it. In all cases the body shall be buried in the usual manner, and the registry shall contain no mention of the nature of the death.' These propositions — embodying the philosophe theories, and at best unseasonable — were adjourned, somewhat contemptuously as it seems, without a debate ; but on the 1st of December the Doctor brought them forward again — preceding his motion by reading a long and detailed report in their favour, to which — unluckily for the history of the guillotine — the Assembly did not pay the usual compliment of printing it, and no copy was found amongst Guillotin's papers. The account of the debate in the journals is peculiarly meagre, but we gather from them and other quarters some curious circumstances. The first proposition was voted with little or no opposition. On the second a discussion arose, and the Abbe Maury, with prophetic sagacity, objected to the adoption of decapitation as a general punishment, 'because it might tend to deprave the people by ^familiarizing them with the sight of blood ; ' but Maury's objection seems to have made no great impression at a time when no one — not even the sagacious and eloquent Abbe himself — could have foreseen such a prodigality of legal murders — such a deluge of blood as afterwards afibrded so practical and so frightful a corrobo- ration of his theoretical suggestion. But the debate was brought to a sudden conclusion on that day by an unlucky inadvertence of Guillotin himself; who, answering some objections to the 2nd Article, and having represented hanging as evidently a tedious and torturing process, exclaimed in a tone of triumph, ^ Now, with my machine, I strike you off your head \je vousfais sauter la iete~\ in the twinkling of an eye, and you never feel it.'' ' Solvuntur risu tabulae ' — a general laugh terminated th# debate— and amongst the laughers there were scores who were destined to be early victims of the yet unborn cause of their merriment. Though Dr. Guillotin had talked so peremptorily and indiscreetly 526 THE GUILLOTINE. about ' his machine,' it does not appear that he had as yet prepared even a model, and it is nearly certain that he had no concern in the actual construction of the instrument that was eventually — three years later— adopted ; but to which, wliile yet in embryo, this unlucky burst of surgical enthusiasm was the occasion of affixing his name. It happened thus : — The celebrated Royalist Journal, Les Actes des Apotres^ conducted with great zeal and considerable wit by Peltier (afterwards so well known in London), assisted by Rivarol and others, seized on this phrase of Guillotin's as the subject of a song — which, as being the real baptism of the future instrument, is worth quoting : — * Sar VinimitaUe Machine du Medecin Guillotix, propre a couper les teteSf et dite de son nom Guillotine. Guillotin, Le Eomain Medecin, Guillotin, Politique, Qui s'appr^te, Imagine, un bean matin, Consulte gens du metier — Que pendre est inhumain Barnave et Chapelkr^ Et peu patriotique ; Meme Coupe-tete ; — Aussitot Et sa main II lui fait Fait soudain Un supplice La machine, Qui sans corde ni i^oteau, Qui * simplement ' nous tuera, Supprime du bourreau Et que Ton nommera L'ofiSce. Guillotine ! ' It is singular enough that this song should have given its immortal name to the instrument three years before it actually existed ; but it is also remarkable in another way — * Barnave and Chapelier ' were two of the most violent democratic members of the National Assembly, and had been guilty of some indiscreet (to say the least of it) encouragement to the early massacres ; Coupe-tete was one Jourdain (afterwards more widely celebrated for his share in the massacres of Avignon), who derived his title of Coupe-tete from having cut off the heads of the two Gardes du Corps, Messrs. Des Huttes and Varicourt, who were murdered in the palace of Versailles on the 6th of October. But — O, di^ane Justice !— these very patrons of ma&^SiCVQ— Barnave, and Chapelier, and Coupe-tete — were themselves all massacred by the Guillotine : Barnave, a deep and interesting penitent, on the 29th of November, 1793; Chapelier, 17th of April, 1794; and Jourdain, covered with the blood of human hetacombs, 27th May, 1794. ORIGIN OF THE NAME. ^ 527 The name, however, of Guillotine, thus given in derision and by anticipation, stack, as the phrase is, in spite of a momentary attempt to call it the Louison, after M. Louis, the secretary of tlie College of Surgeons, who did actually preside over the con- struction of the machine which Guillotin had only indicated. But it was at first chiefly used as a term of reproach and ridicule ; and we read in the Moniteur of the 18th of December, 1789, some ' Observations on the motion of Dr. Guillotin for the adoption of a machine which should behead animals in the twinkling of an eye^ censuring the * levity with which some periodical papers have made trivial and indecent remarks,' &c., alluding, no doubt, to the song of the Actes des Apotres, which had a great vogue ; but still these * Observations' afford no details as to any machine* The subsequent proceedings on Guillotin's propositions are in- volved in some obscurity. In the reports of the debates it is stated that the discussion, interrupted on the 1st of December, was adjourned to the following day ; but on that day we find no men- tion of it, and it is stated by Guyot that the debate was resumed on the 27th of December; but we find no report of any such debate on that day, and we believe that all that Guyot says of this debate of the 27th of December is a confusion of three debates : the one of the 1st of December, which we have just mentioned ; another on the 23rd, on the right of citizenship, which touched incidentally the 3rd and 4th articles of Guillotin's proposi- tion; and a third on the 21st January, 1790, at which we shall soon arrive. A remarkable circumstance in the debate of the 23rd December was, that the Count de Clermont Tonnerre, one of the ablest and most amiable members of the Assembly, but who, like so many other well-meaning persons, was at the outset a dupe to that giddy mania of innovation and that wild pursuit of abstract plausibilities which blasted the first fair promises of the 'young Revolution — M. de Clermont Tonnerre, we say, took occasion, on the topic of the injustice of the prejudices which attached to the * Some even of the most violent fait b, ce sujet une chanson sur I'air du revolutionists disapproved Guillotin's 'Menuet d'Exaudet.' (Test une douce motion and attest the effect of the correction que le public lui inflige; song : — Cette motion (que les coudam- I'honoi-able membre a donne des preuvea nes fussent decapites pax' I'effet d'un assez fortes de son patriotisme pour que simple mecanisme) a ete faite par le Doc- Ton doive oublier sa motion et la chan- teur Guillotin. La machine qu'il a son. — Fruxlhomme, Rev. de Faris^JiQ De- proposee a etd appel^e Guillotine. On a cemhre, 1789. 2 M 528 THE GUILLOTINE. families of criminals, to invoke the sympathy of the Assembly for two other classes of persons who were still injuriously affected by the same kind of prejudice — he meant Actors and Executioners ! If satire had been devising how to ridicule these philosophical legislators, it could scarcely have hit on anything better than an attempt to class Actors and Executioners in the same category, and to extirpate such prejudices by statute law. It is but justice to M. de Clermont Tonnerre to say that he saw very soon, though still too late, the danger of the many liberal and silly impulses to which he had at first given way, and endea- voured, but in vain, to stay the plague which he unintentionally had helped to propagate ; by the recovery of his good sense he lost his popularity, and was massacred on the evening of the 10th of August in a garret where he had taken refuge, by the people whose idol he had been as long as he advocated the dignity of players and the sensibilities of the hangman. The National Assembly seems to have been reluctant to renew the discussion on Guillotin's propositions, but a case which arose about the middle of January, 1790, proves that, although Guillotin and his machine found little favour in the Assembly, the proposi- tion which he and M. de Clermont had advocated, of removing from a criminal's family any share in his disgrace — false in prin- ciple, and impossible in fact — had made, as such plausibilities generally do when the public mind is excited, a great popular impression. The case, very characteristic in all its circumstances, was this. There were three brothers of a respectable family in Paris of the name of Agasse, the two eldest of whom, printers and pro- prietors of the Moniteur^ were convicted for forgery of bank-notes, and sentenced to be hanged. This condemnation excited — from the youth and antecedent respectability of the parties — great public interest. It might be naturally expected that this sympathy would have exerted itself in trying to procure a pardon, or at least some commutation of punishment, for these young men, whose crime was really nothing compared with those of which Paris was the daily and hourly scene ; but no ! There seems, on the con- trary, to have been a pretty general desire that they should suffer the full sentence of the law, in order that the National Assembly and the good people of Paris might have a practical opportunity of carrying out the new principle that ' the crime does not disgrace THE BROTHERS AGASSE. 529 the family^ In the evening sitting of the 21st January (a date soon to become still more remarkable in the history of the Guillo- tine) an Abbe Pepin mounted hastily the tribune of the National Assembly, recalled to its attention Guillotin's propositions, which had been, he said, too long neglected, and stated that a case had now occurred which required the instant passing of the three articles which related to the abolition of the prejudice and of con- fiscation of property, and to the restoring the body to the family. That most foolish of the National Assemblies loved to act by im- pulses, and the three articles were enthusiastically passed for the avowed purpose of being applied to the individual case — as they, in fact, were in the following extraordinary manner : — Three days after the passing of the decree the battalion of National Guards of the district of St. Ilonore, where the Agasses resided, assembled in grand parade ; they voted an address to M. Agasse, the uncle of the criminals, first, to condole with his affliction, and, secondly, to announce their adoption of the whole surviving family as friends and brothers ; and, as a first step, they elected the young brother and younger cousin of the culprits to be lieutenants of the Grenadier company of the battalion, and then, the battalion being drawn up in front of the Louvre, these young men were marched forth, and complimented on their new rank by M. de Lafayette, the Com- mander-in-Chief, accompanied by a numerous staff". Nor was this all : a deputation of the battalion were formally introduced into the National Assembly, and were harangued and complimented by the President on this touching occasion. They were after- wards entertained at a banquet, at which Lafayette — then in more than royal power and glory — placed them at his sides, and ''fre- quently embraced them.^ They were also led in procession to St. Eustache and other churches, and paraded, with every kind of ostentation, to the pubhc gaze. A public dinner of six hundred National Guards was got up in their honour ; numerous patriotic and philanthropic toasts were drunk, and then, in an * ivresse,^ not altogether of wine, the newspapers say, but of patriotism and joy, the two youths were marched back through half Paris, preceded by a band of music, to the house of the uncle, where the rest of the Agasse family, old and young, male and female, came forth into the street to receive the congratulations of the tipsy crowd. Can we imagine any greater cruelty than the making a show of the grief of these unhappy people, and thus forcing them to cele- 2 M 2 530 THE GUILLOTINE. brate, as it were, — In the incongruous novelties of gold lace and military promotion, and public exhibitions, — the violent death of their nearest and dearest relations ? While these tragical farces were playing, the poor culprits, who did not at all partake of the kind of enthusiasm their case excited, Mere endeavouring to escape from the painful honour of having this great moral experiment made in their persons : but in vain ; their appeals were rejected, and at length they were, on the 8th of February, led forth to execution in a kind of triumph — of which it was remarked that they felt nothing but the aggravation of their own personal misery, — and were hanged with as much tenderness as old Izaak Walton hooked his worm ; and, that preliminary process being over, the bodies were delivered with a vast parade of reverence and delicacy to the family. The surviving brother was confirmed in the lucrative property of the ' Moniteur^ which he enjoyed throughout the Revolution, as his widow did after him, under the title of ' Madame Veum Agasse,' and as we believe her representative does to this hour ; and in the great work of Aubert, printed by Didot, called ' Tableaux Historiques de la Revolution,' there is a plate of the two Agasses going to be hanged, as if it had been a matter of the same historical importance as the Serment du Jeu de Paume, or the execution of the King. We hardly know a stronger instance of the characteristic perversity with which the Revolution, in all its transactions, contrived to transmute the abstract feelings of mercy and benevolence into practical absurdity, mischief, and cruelty. But all this cruel foolery made no difference in the mode of execution ; and indeed it was not yet decided that the punishment of death, in any shape, should be maintained in the new constitu- tion. That great question was debated on the 30th of May, 1791 — the committee on the Constitution, to whom the question had been referred, proposed the abolition, which, however, after a warm discussion, was negatived, and capital punishment retained. This discussion was remarkable in several ways. Those who thought the maintenance of capital punishments necessary to the safety of society were the first and greatest sufferers by it ; while by those who opposed it on pretended principles of humanity it was very soon perverted to the purposes of the most monstrous and bloody tyranny that tlie world has yet seen. The chairman of the com- mittee, who warmly advocated their views and his own for the MODE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 53l abolition, was Le Pelletier de St Fargeau, an ex-president of the Parliament of Paris, where he had been a l^S-dim^ frondeur : at the outset of the States-General he seemed inclined to the Royalist party, but, either from terror or a desire of popularity, soon became a Jacobin.* This strenuous advocate for the abolition of the punishment of death in any case voted for the murder of the King, and was himself on the same day assassinated by one Paris, an ex-Garde du Corps, in a cafe of the Palais Royal ;t but a still more remarkable circumstance was, that the member who distin- guished himself by the most zealous, argumentative, and feeling protest against the shedding of human blood, in any possible case or under any pretext whatsoever, was, as the reports call him, ' Monsieur de Robespierre ! ' The fundamental question being thus decided for the retention of capital punishment, the mode of execution came next into dis- cussion, and on the 3rd of June, 1791, the following article was proposed : — * Every criminal condemned to death shall be beheaded [aura la tete tranchee].'' In the debate on this question there were also some noticeable circumstances. M. La Cheze reproduced, rather more diffusely, the Abbe Maury's original objection to familiarising the people to the sight of blood ; and it seemed now to produce more impression than it had formerly done. Two years of bloody anarchy had, we presume, a little sobered all minds capable of sobriety ; but the Duke de Liancourt, a distinguished professor of philanthropy, em- ployed the recent murders a la lanterne as an argument in favour of the new proposition : — * There was one consideration,' he said, ' which ought to incline the Assembly to adopt the proposal for beheading — the necessity of * * Homme faible et riche, qui s'etait 'Ci-glt Le Pelletier, donne k la Montmjne par peur ! * — Assassine en Janvier Memoires de Madame Roland, vol. ii. Chez Fevrier, p. 296. A Paris, f The name of the coffee-house Par Paris.* keeper was Fevrier, and it shows the Madame Roland suspected, and we temper of the times that at this moment incline to believe, that he was not mur- of complicated horrors the public was dered by Paris, but by his own party, to amused with the following burlesque increase the exasperation of the public epitaph on Le Pelletier : — mind, and ensure the execution of the King. — Memoires de Madame Roland, ubi supra. 532 THE GUILLOTINE. effacing from fhe social sj'-stem all traces of a punislinient [hanging'] which has lately been so irregularly applied, and which has, during the course of the Revolution, so unfortunately lent itself to popular vengeance.^ Irregularly applied ! What a designation of a series of most atrocious murders ! But the ultra-liberal Duke had soon to learn that these irregular applications of popular vengeance were not to be controlled by fine-spun theories. He, too, was pursued, after the 10th of August, by the fury of a bloodthirsty populace ; but, more fortunate than M. de Clermont Tonnerre, he escaped from their hands, and passed over into England.* The article, however, notwithstanduig M. de Liancourt's humane argument in its favour, was not passed without some difficulty, and only after two doubtful trials. Still, however, this was a mere vote without any immediate legal effect till the whole constitution should be ratified : nor, be it observed, was anything said— either in the discussions or in the decrees — about a machine; and indeed it seems certain, from documents which we shall quote presently, that it was not yet decided that a machine should be employed at all, and that, on the contrary, the use of the sword (not even the axe and block) was still uppermost in men's minds. At length, however, on the 21st of September, 1791, the new penal code was adopted ; and on the 6th of October became, and still continues to be, the law of France. Its 2nd and 3rd articles, tit. 1, are as follow ; — ' II. The punishment of death shall consist in the mere privation of life, and no kind of torture shall be ever inflicted on the con- demned. ' III. Every person condemned [to a capital punishment] shall be beheaded.' During all these legislative discussions the old practice of hang- ing seems to have been going on — sometimes, as M. de Liancourt said, ' irregularly applied,' under the popular cry of ' Lcs aristo- crates a la lanterne !' — sometimes also in the regular coui*se of * He afterwards went to America, of the first who hurried over to Dover where he remained several years, and to kiss the hands of Louis XVIII., who, published his Travels in the United however, had not forgotten, and never States. He obtained permission from forgave, his early countenance of the Buonapai-te to return to France ; whence, Revolution. on the fall of the Empire, he was one DIFFICULTY AS TO MODE OF BEHEADING. 533 justice ; but this last decree now put an end to the judicial practice, without having substituted any other. At length, however, on the 24th of January, 1792, a person of the name of Nicholas Jacques Pelletier was condemned to death by the criminal tribunal of Paris, for robbery and murder. This event (decapitation being now the only legal punishment) brought the question of the precise mode of death to a practical crisis. The magistrates inquired of the Minister how the sentence was to be executed ; and, after the delay of a month, the Minister himself and the Directory of the Department of Paris were obliged to have recourse to the Legislative Assembly for instructions. The letter of the Minister — Duport du Tertre — is remarkable for the reluctance with which he enters on the subject, and the deep and almost prophetic horror he expresses at having had to examine its odious details. * It was,' he said, ' a kind of execution [espece de suppHce] to which he had felt himself condemned.' This, alas ! was but an anticipation of a fatal reality. On the 28th of November, 1793, he himself was condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and suffered on the 29th, by the machine first used under his involuntary auspices, and in company with that same Barnave^ the first and most prominent patron of revolutionary bloodshedding ! * The concluding part of Duport's letter will show that at this date there was not only no adoption of, but only a very slight allusion to, a machine — the idea of which seems to have made its way very slowly ; and all parties appear to have understood that the decapitation intended by the law was that which had been the usage in the case of noble criminals — by the sword. Duport states ; — '3rd March, 1792. * It appears from the communications made to me by the execu- tioners themselves, that, without some precautions of the naturae of those which attracted for a moment the attention oftlie Constituant Assembly, the act of decollation will be horrible to the spectators. It will either prove the spectators to be monsters if they are able to bear such a spectacle ; or the executioner, terrified himself, will be exposed to the fury of the people, whose very humanity may exasperate them, however cruelly and unjustly, against the executioner. ' I must solicit from the National Assembly an immediate deci- sion; for a case at the moment presses for execution, which, * It was he, who, in extenuation of famous exclamation, ' Ce sanj etait-il the earlier massacres, had made the doncsijjurf 534 THE GUILLOTINE. however, is suspended by the humanity of the judges and the fright [Veffroi'] of the executioner,' The representation of the Departement is to the same effect, and, making no allusion whatever to mechanism, im.plies that death was to be by the sword : — ' 3/rZ March, 1792. '■ The executioner represents to us that he fears he cannot fulfil {he intentions of the law, which is, that the criminal shall suffer nothing beyond the simple privation of life. The executioner fears that from want of experience he may make decollation a frightful torture, and we entertain the same apprehensions." These letters, we see, refer to the opinion of the Executioner himself ; and as that opinion has been preserved, our readers will not, we think, be sorry to see, as a literary curiosity, an essay by such a hand on such a subject. ' Memorandum of Observations on the Execution of Ciiminals by Beheading; with the nature of the various objections which it presents, and to which it is really liable — * That is to say : — * In order that the execution may be performed according to the intention of law \siinple privation of ?^/e], it is necessary that, even without any obstacle on the part of the criminal, the executioner himself should be very expert, and the criminal very firm, without which one could never get through an execution by the sword with- out the certainty of dangerous accidents. * After one execution, thp sword will be no longer in a condition to perform another : being liable to get notched, it is absolutely necessary, if there are many persons to execute at the same time, that it should be ground and sharpened anew. It would be neces- sary then to have a sufficient number of swords all ready. That would lead to great and almost insurmountable difficulties. * It is also to be remarked that swords have been yary often broken in executions of this kind. * The executioner of Paris possesses only two, which were given him by the ci-devant Parliament of Paris. They cost 600 livres [24/.] apiece. * It is to be considered that, when there shall be several criminals to execute at the same time, the terror that such an execution pre- sents, by the immensity of blood which it produces and which is scattered all about, will carry fright and weakness into the most intrepid hearts of those whose turn is to come. Such weaknesses would present an invincible obstacle to the execution. The patient SANSON'S 'OBSERVATIONS.' 535 being no longer able to support himself, tlie execution, if persisted in, will become a struggle and a massacre. ' Even in executions of another class [hanging], which do not need anything like the precision that this kind requires, we have seen criminals grow sick at the sight of the execution of their companions — at least they are liable to that weakness : all that is against beheading with the sword. In fact, who could bear the sight of so bloody an execution without feeling and showing some such weakness ? ' In the other kind of execution it is easy to conceal those weak- nesses from the public, because, in order to complete the operation, there is no necessity that the patient should continue firm and without fear ; but in this, if the criminal falters, the execution must fail also. * How can the executioner have the necessary power over a man who will not or cannot keep himself in a convenient posture ? ' It seems, however, that the National Assembly only devised this species of execution for the purpose of preventing the length to which executions in the old way were protracted. ' It is in furtherance of their humane views that I have the honour of giving this forewarning of the many accidents that these execu- tions may produce if attempted by the sword. * It is therefore indispensable that, in order to fulfil the humane intentions of the National Assembly, some means should be found to avoid delays and assure certainty, by fixing the patient so that the success of the operation shall not be doubtful. * By this the intention of the legislature will be fulfilled, and the executioner himself protected from any accidental effervescence of the public. ' Charles Henry Sanson.' We think our readers will be surprised at the good sense and decency of M. Sanson's * observations on a very delicate subject, and they will have noticed the gentle hint that he gives that the National Assembly had legislated on a matter they did not under- stand, and passed a law that would have defeated its own object ; but what is most strange is that here is — not only no mention of the machine which had made so much noise three years before, but — decisive evidence that it was understood by the executioner him- self, as it at first sight seems to have been by everybody else, that the law contemplated execution by the sivord. But the truth, w^e believe, was that Guillotines proposition had been smothered by ridicule and by the detected insignificance of the proposer, and no * ^Ses note relative to Sanson at end of this Essay. 536 THE GUILLOTINE. one was desirous of openly associating himself to this odious inven- tion ; but that it was all along intended to adopt it seems evident from the care with which all allusion to the more obvious use of the block and axe was omitted. The appeal, however, of the Minister of Justice obliged the Legislative Assembly to solve the question, and they referred it to a committee, who themselves consulted M. Louis, the Secretary of the Academy of Surgery, and, on the 20th of March, Carlier (of the same name as the executioner of 1684, who preceded the Sanson family in the office), brought up the report of the Committee, and on the same day the Assembly decreed — * That the mode of execution proposed by M. Louis, the Secretary of the Academy of Surgeons (which proposal is annexed to the pre- sent decree), shall be adopted throughout the kingdom.' The following is M. Louis's report, which, notwithstanding its length, we think worth reproducing — it is in truth the main feature in the history of the Guillotine, and its conclusions are still the existing law of France on the subject : — ' Report on the Mode of Decollation. * The Committee of Legislation having done me the honour to consult me on two letters addressed to the National Assembly con- cerning the execution of the 3rd Art. of the 1st Title of the Penal Code, which directs that every criminal capitally convicted shall be decapitated (aura la tete tranchee) ; by these letters the Minister of Justice and the Directory of the Department of Paris, in conse- quence of representations made to them, are of opinion that it is instantly necessaiy to determine the precise mode of proceeding in the execution of this law, lest, by the defect of the means, or inex- perience or awkwardness, the execution should become cruel to the patient and offensive to the spectators, in which case it might be feared that the people, out of mere humanity, might be led to take vengeance on the executioner himself — a result which it is important to prevent. I believe that these representations and fears are well founded. Experience and reason alike prove that the mode of beheading hitherto practised exposes the patient to a more frightful punishment than the mere deprivation of life, which is all the law directs. To obey strictly the law, the execution should be performed in a single moment and at one blow. All experience proves how difficult it is to accomplish this. * We should recollect what passed at the execution of M. de Lally. He was on his knees— his eyes covered— the executioner struck him M. LOUIS'S EEPOET. 537 on the back of tlie neck — tho blow did not sever the head, and could not have done so. The body, which had nothing to uphold it, fell on the face, and it was by three or four cuts of a sabre that the head was at length severed from the body. This hackery [hacherie]^ if I may be allowed to invent the word, excited the horror of the spectators. ' In Germany the executioners are more expert from the frequency of this class of execution, principally because females of whatever rank undergo no other. But even there the execution is frequently imperfect, though they take the precaution of tying the patient in a chair. ' In Denmark there are two positions and two instruments for decapitation. The mode of execution which may be supposed to be the more honourable is by the sword, the patient kneeling with his eyes covered and his [hands free. In the other, which is supposed to attach additional infamy, the patient is bound, and, lying on his face, tho head is severed by the hatchet. ' Everybody knows that cutting instruments have little effect when they strike perpendicularly. If examined with a microscope it will be seen that the edges are nothing but a saw, more or less fine, which act only by sliding, as it were, over the body that they are to divide. It would be impossible to decapitate at one blow with a straight-edged axe ; but with a convex edge, like the ancient battle- axes, the blow acts perpendicularly only at the very centre of the segment of the circle, but the sides have an oblique and sliding action which succeeds in separating the parts. In considering the structure of the human neck, of which the centre is the vertebral column, composed of several bones, the connexion of which forms a series of sockets, so that there can be no hitting of 2k joint, it is not possible to ensure a quick and perfect separation by any means which shall be liable to moral or physical variations in strength or dexterity. For such a result there is no certainty but in an in- variable mechanism, of which the force and effect can be regulated and directed. This is the mode adopted in England. The body of the criminal is laid on its stomach between two posts connected at top by a cross beam, whence a convex hatchet is made to fall suddenly on the patient by the removal of a peg. The back of the hatchet should be strong and heavy enough to perform the object like the weight with which piles are driven. The force, of course, will be in pro- portion to the height from which it may fall. ' It is easy to construct such an instrument, of which the effect would be certain, and the decapitation will be performed in an instant according to the letter and the spirit of the new law. It will be easy to make experiments on dead bodies, or even on a living sheep. We should then see whether it might not be necessary to 538 THE GUILLOTINE. fix the neck of the patient in a semicircle, which should confine the neck just where it joins the hinder bone of the skull ; the extremities of this semicircle might be fastened by bolts to the solid parts of the scaffold. This addition, if it shall appear necessary, would create no observation, and would be scarcelj^ perceivable. ' Given in consultation at Paris, this 7th of March, 1792. * Louis.' Here is no mention of nor allusion to Guillotin or any previous machine, except one supposed to be in use in England ; and how- ever strong might be the desire of keeping Guillotin out of sight, it seems hardly possible to imagine that, if he had made any model or given any distinct description of a machine, M. Louis could have treated the matter as he did. We find, however, that while it was thus pending, Roederer, then Procureur-General (chief legal autho- rity) of the Departement, wrote the following private note to Dr. Guillotin ; — * Dear Sir and Ex-Colleague, — I should be very much obliged if you w^ould be so good as to come to the office of the Department, No. 4, Place Vendome, at your earliest convenience. The Directory [of the Department of Paris] is unfoi-tunately about to be called upon to determine the mode of decapitation which will be henceforward employed for the execution of the 3rd article of the Penal Code. I am instructed to invite you to communicate to me the important ideas which you have collected and compared with a view of mitigat- ing a punishment which the law does not intend to be cruel. ' 1 0th March, 1792.' ' Ecederer. ■ — Revue Retrospective, p. 14. It does not appear whether Guillotin waited on the Procureur- General : at all events, the interview produced nothing, for we see that Louis's report had been made three days earlier, and was finally adopted without variation by the Convention 20th March. Here then concludes all that we have been able to find of the connexion of Guillotin with the terrible instrument to which he unfortunately became godfather. We shall add a few words on his subsequent life. Our readers have seen that Roederer addresses him as ' Ex-Colleague.' The Constituant Assembly had been dissolved in the preceding autumn ; and Guillotin's last labours in that assembly were of a nature that exposed him to an additional degree of ridicule and contempt ; and he who had been so lately RETIREMENT AND DEATH OF GUILLOTIN. 539 cried up as a patriate philosophe was now by the very same voices denounced as an aristocrat. ' Guillotin le medecin aristocrate a depense 1,200,000 livres a remuer les platres, k placer et deplacer des ventouses et des latrines.' — (^Prudhomme, Rev. de Paris, 10. 543.) Certain it is that he was not thought of for any of the subsequent assemblies. His ephemeral and accidental popularity had vanished, and the instrument which has ' damned him to everlasting fame' had not yet appeared — so he seems to have sunk back into more than his original obscurity, to which was soon superadded the in- creasing.horror of the times. His retreat, indeed, was so profound, that it was said, and readily believed, that he too had fallen a victim to his own invention.* But it was not so ; he was indeed imprisoned during the Jacobin reign of terror — his crime being, it is said {Guyot^ p. 8), that he testified an indiscreet indignation at a proposition made to him hy Danton to superintend the construc- tion of a triple guillotine. There is no doubt that a double and perhaps a triple instrument was thought of, and it is said that such a machine was made and intended to be erected in the great hall of the Palais de Justice, but it was certainly never used.f The general gaol delivery of the 9th Thermidor released Guil- lotin, and he afterwards lived in a decent mediocrity of fortune at Paris, esteemed, it is said, by a small circle of friends, but over- whelmed by a deep sensibility to the great, though we cannot say wholly undeserved, misfortune which had rendered his name ignominious and his very existence a subject of fearful curiosity. He just lived to see the Restoration, and died in his bed, in Paris, on the 26th of May, 1814, at the age of seventy-six. Poor Guillotin paid dearly for the foolish vanity of affecting to be an inventor, when he was only a plagiary ; and it seems very strange how so general an opinion should have prevailed as to the novelty of the invention, when we find M. Louis, in the very first distinct description of the machine, representing it as one already hnoion in England — indeed, his expressions seem to imply that it * This was so generally believed, the decode (nine days), the Committee that Mr. Todd, in introducing the word of Public Safety complained that it was Guillotine into his edition of Johnson's too slow, and it was intended that four Dictionary, states it as a fact. ambulatory criminal tribunals should t Fouquier-Tinville himself stated, be created, each to be accompanied by at his trial, that, though he frequently a locomotive guillotine ! — Proces de tried and condemned above 250 within Foiiquier, No. 29. 540 THE GUILLOTINE. A was then actually and habitually in use amongst us. We know not whence M. Louis could have taken up this notion. The Evglish mode of decapitation had always been by the block and the axe — with one ancient local exception — that of what was called the Halifax Gibbet, which was indeed a perfect guillotine, and had been, of old, employed in certain peculiar cases arising in the adjoin- ing district. If M. Louis had inquired a little farther, he would have found not only that the implement was not in general use in England, but had not been used for near 150 years in the small district to which it belonged. He would also have easily discovered such descrip- tions and portraits of the like machines as would have saved him a great deal of trouble in the actual construction of that on which he was employed. We have before us an old print of the Halifax gibbet, with a legend, ''John Hoi/le, delK, 1650,' which had been often reproduced long before Guillotin was born — as in a little book called ' Halifax ; and Bishop Gibson's edition of The following is a copy of Hoyle's and its Gibbet Law,* 1708 Camden's 'Britannia,' 1722. print :* — ■ John Jloyle del. 1650. Halifax Gibbet. The accuracy of Hoyle's repre- sentation is additionally attested by the recent discovery of the pedestal or stone scaffold, which had been concealed under a long accumulation of rubbish and soil which had formed a grassy mound, commonly supposed to be a na- tural hill, on which the temporary scaffold for the gibbet was frdVn time to time erected ; but the town trustees having, a few years since, purchased the Gibbet Hill, and having determined to reduce it to the level of the surrounding fields, this curious relic of anti- quity was brought to light, and * It is also to be found in the margin of an old map of Yorkshire (which we ourselves have seen), and which is copied into Hone's Every-day Book, vol. i. p. 147, where also will be found several of the particulars mentix)ned in the text. THE EDINBURGH 'MAIDEN.' 541 has been since carefully developed ; and except some dilapidation of the upper surface and of one of the steps, it presents a perfect corroboration of the evidence of the prints. The ancient axe is still in the possession of the lord of the manor of Wakefield, to which this extraordinary jurisdiction belonged. Mr. Pennant had so re- cently as 1774 pubhshed an account of the Halifax gibbet, as we have described it, and adds, — * This machine of death is now destroyed ; but I saw one of the same kind in a room under the Parliament House at Edinburgh, where it was introduced by the Regent Morton, who took a model of it as he passed through Halifax, and at length suffered by it him- self. It is in the form of a painter's easel, and about ten feet high ; The ' Maideu,' still preserved at Edinburgh. 542 THE GUILLOTINE. at four feet from the bottom is a crossbar, on wliicb the felon places his head, which is kept down by another placed above. In the inner edges of the frame are grooves ; in these are placed a sharp axe, with a vast weight of lead, supported at the very summit by a peg ; to that peg is fastened a cord, which the executioner cutting, the axe falls, and does the affair effectually.' — Pennant's Tour, vol. iii. p. 365. This instrument, strangely called the Maiden, is still in existence in Edinburgh, and as it has never, that we know of, been engraved, we think the accompanying representation will not be unacceptable to our readers. It will be observed that, in this model, the cord, instead of being cut, as stated by Pennant, was released by a kind of latch. Near thirty years prior to Pennant's publication, the execution of the Scotch lords for the Rebellion of 1 745 by the axe and block seems to have recalled the obso- lete Maiden to notice, for we find in the ' London Magazine^ for April, 1747, the annexed repre- sentation of it : — ■ Neither Guillotin nor Louis seems to have seen any of these drawings ; nor, as we have said, can we guess on what authority the latter supposes that this mode of decapitation was in actual use in England ; for there had been no execution by the Halifax gib- bet since 1650, and the last of the very few by the Scottish maiden were the Marquis of Argyle, in 1661,* and his son the Earl, in 1685, — the latter declaring, as he pressed his lips on the block, that it was the sweetest maiden Scottish ' Maiden.' ]^q ]^^^ gygr kisscd.f ^An anonymous friend of Dr. Guillotin's, quoted by Guyot, states that his ideas were formed, not from these English prece- * ' His head was separated from his body by the descent of the maiden.'' — 4 Laing, p. 11. t Scott's Prose Works, vol. xxiv., p. 280. ANCIENT EEPEESENTATIONS OP THE GUILLOTINE. 543 dents — about which he probably knew nothing, though recalled to public attention in the then so recent work of Pennant — but from a passage in an anonymous work called ' Voyage Historique et Po- litique de Suisse, d'ltalie, et d'Allemagne,' printed from 1736 to 1743, in which is found the following account of the execution at Milan, in 1702, of a Count Bozelli :— ' A large scaffold was prepared in the great square, and covered with black. In the middle of it was placed a great block, of the height to allow the criminal, when kneeling, to lay his neck on it between a kind of gibbet which supported a hatchet one foot deep and one and a half wide, which was confined by a groove. The hatchet was loaded with an hundred pounds weight of lead, and was suspended by a rope made fast to the gibbet. After the criminal had confessed himself, the penitents, who are for the most part of noble families, led him up on the scaffold, and, making him kneel before the block, one of the penitents held the head under the hatchet ; the priest then reading the prayers usual on such occasions, the execu- tioner had nothing to do but cut the cord that held up the hatchet, which, descending with violence, severed the head, which the peni- tent still held in his hands, so that the executioner never touched it. This mode of executing is so sure that the hatchet entered the block above two inches.' — Guyot, p. 5. This was the same machine which, under the name of * mannaia^ was common in Italy, and is described very minutely and technically by Le Pere Labat in his ' Voyage en Italie^ 1730, as the more honorific mode of capital punishment. But the most curious, though not the most exact, of all the prece- dents for the guillotine is that which is found in Handle Holme's * Academy of Armoury,' 1678, in which he describes a family (whose name is not given) as hearing heraldically, — ' Gules, a heading-block fixed between two supporters, and an axe placed therein ; on the sinister side a maule : all proper.^ And this strange coat-of-arms is thus figured ; Holme adds, — * That this was the Jews' and Romans' way of behead- ing offenders, as some write, though others say that they used to cut off the heads of such with a sharj^ two-handed sword. However, this way of decolla- tion was by laying the neck of the malefactor on the block, and 2 N 3 4 ? 544 THE GUILLOTINE. then setting the axe upon it, which lay in a rigget [groove] on the two sideposts or supporters. The execntioner, with the violence of a blow on the head of the axe with his heavy maule [mallet], forced it throngh the man's neck into the block. I have seen a draught of the like heading instrument, where the weighty axe (made heavy for that pni-pose) was raised up, and fell down in such a riggeted frame, which being suddenly let to fall, the weight of it was sufficient to cut off a man's head at one blow.'— p. 312. We know not where it is written by any contemporaneous authority that this was a mode of execution among the Jews and Romans, but there are engravings and woodcuts of the sixteenth century which carry back guillotines of great elaboration to the Death of Titus Manlius.— (Aldegraver, 1553.) ANCIENT REPEESENTATIONS OF THE GUILLOTINE. 545 times of antiquity. We have now before us two copperplate en- gravings of the German school, the one by George Pencz (who died in 1550), and the other by Henry Aldegraver, of which the pre- ceding cut is a copy, which bears the date of 1553, both repre- senting the death of the son of Titus Manlius, by an instrument identical in principle with the guillotine, though somewhat more decorated. Execution of a Spartan.— (A. Bocchi, 1555.) We have also in our possession * SymhoUcce Questiones de uni- verso Genere^ by Achilles Bocchi, quarto, 1555, of which the eighteenth symbol represents a Spartan about to die by a kind of guillotine. 2 N 2 546 THE GUILLOTINE. The metrical legend of the symbol runs : — ♦ DamDatus ab Ephoris, Lacon Cum duceretur ad necem, et voltu admodum Hilari esset ac laeto, &c. &c.' In Lucas Cranach's woodcuts of the ' Martyrdom of the Apostles/ printed at Wittenberg in 1539, and reprinted in 1549, there is the following representation of the death of St. Matthew by the guillo- tine, with a legend to this effect — 'It is said that his head was ANCIENT KEPEESENTATIONS OF THE GUILLOTINE. 547 chopped off by a falling-axe {faUMel), after the manner of the Romans.^ We find in a journal of the late Mr. J. G. Children, F.R.S., dated in 1840, that he found ' on one of the walls of the Rathhaus of Nuremberg, a painting of a man being beheaded by a guillotine — the painting is 319 years old.' Mr. Children unluckily does not mention the subject of the fresco, but, as the Rathhaus was painted by Albert Durer, it may have been that of the German prints of Titus Manlius, which are much in his style. The representation of the martyrdom of St. Matthew may have been Randle Holme's authority for saying that it was a ' Jewish and Roman practice, though the usual symbol of that Evangelist is a hatchet or halberd^ such as the attendants carry in the preceding cut, with one of which it is generally said he was beheaded. But it has surprised us still more to find that Ireland is represented as having had her guillotine as early as 1307. The following cut is an illustration of a passage in HoUinshed's ^Chronicles of Ireland,' (Edition 1577) : — * In the yeere 1307, the first of April, Murcod Bdllagh was beheaded near to Merton by Sir David Caunton, Knight.^ Death of Murcod Ballagh.-(Hollin6hed'6 Chron , isn.) 543 THE GUILLOTINE. The following cut, representing the Martyrdom of St. Pan- cratius, is from the ' Catalogus Sanctorum ' of Pet. de Natabus, printed 1519 : — Martyrdom of St. Pancratius.— (Peter de Natabus, 1519.) The foregoing prints or cuts are, of course, no evidence that such a mode of execution was practised at the assigned dates. They only prove that it was known to the illustrators of the works where they appear. It is sufficiently curious that none of the French literati or legisla- tors who originally busied themselves with this subject should have happened to meet with any of these representations of the machine, which are, as we see, by no means rare ; but it is still more strange that they should not have recollected its existence in their own com- paratively modern history. We read, in the ' Memoires de Puysegur,' that the great Marshal de Montmorenci was beheaded at Toulouse in 1632 by such an instrument : — * In that province they make use [for capital executions] of a kind of hatchet, which runs between two pieces of wood ; and when the head is placed on the block below, the cord is let go, and the hatchet descends and severs the head from the body. When he [M. de M.] had put his head on the block, his wound [received in the fight in which he was taken] hurt him, and he moved his head, but said, '* I don't do so from fear, but from the soreness of my wound." Father Anioul was close to him when they let go the cord of the hatchet : the head was separated clean from the body, and they fell one on one side and the other on the other.' — Mem. de Fuys., vol i. p. 137. We conclude from all this that this mode of execution was common M. LOUIS'S MACHINE. 549 on the Continent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and yet had passed into such entire desuetude and oblivion as to have appeared as a perfect novelty when proposed by Dr. Guillotin ; and this is still more surprising, because it seems that an execution by a similar instrument had been a year or two before the Revolution ex- hibited in Paris, at one of the minor theatres of the Boulevard, in a harlequin farce called ' Les Quatre Fils AymonJ^ This is certainly a striking illustration of the proverb that there is nothing new under the sun ; and we are at a loss to account, for the negligence of both Guillotin and Louis, who, being aware that such an instrument had been in use in Italy and England, seem to have made no inquiry after plans or drawings ; though we have little doubt that all we have mentioned, and perhaps many more, were to be found in the Bibliotheque of the Rue de Richelieu. But, after all, it was neither Guillotin nor Louis who constructed (invention is out of the question) the instrument which was actually adopted : for while all these proceedings were going on in Paris, the same difficulties as to the execution of malefactors had occurred in the departmental tribunals, and an officer of the criminal court at Strasburg, named Laquiante, had made a design of a machine, a decapiter, and employed one Schmidt a forte-piano maker, to ex- ecute it. Dubois gives a copy of this design, which was very ill-con- trived, being more like Randle Holme's armorial bearings than the perfect guillotine. As soon as the Legislative Assembly had decided to adopt M. Louis's proposition, we presume that he set about preparing a model (his report distinctly negatives the idea that he had as yet done so), and Rcederer, having obtained the sanction of the Minis- ter of Finance for the expense, called upon a person of the name of Guidon, who had, it seems, the office or contract^ pour la fourniture des bois de justice' to give an estimate for the construction of Louis's machine. Guidon (5th April, 1792) estimated the work at 5660 francs (about 226/.), and, when remonstrated with on the exorbi- tancy of the charge, he replied 'that the high charges arose from his workmen demanding enormous icages,from a prejudice against the object in vieio.'' On which Rcederer remarks, 'The prejudice,^ indeed, exists ; but I have had offers from other persons to under- * Dictionnaire "National (1790), p. 80, Guillotin. — But M. Guyot doubts the AvHch quotes Camille Desmoiilins. — fact, p. 6. Portraits des Hommes Celebres, voce 550 THE GUILLOTINE. take the work, provided they should not be asked to sign contracts, or in any other way have their names exposed as connected with this ohjectJ This is very remarkable, and affords a practical confirma- tion of Maury's apprehension, for we see that the artificers of Paris, even so far forward in the Revolution as April, 1792, shrank from any avowed connexion with the instrument which, after a few months' exercise, became the delight of the Parisian mob, and not of the mob alone, and was absolutely canonised in the philosophical rubric as La Sainte Guillotine — ^nay, it became the model of ornaments for women, and of toys for children. These were sold by permission of the police in the streets, and the toymen furnished living sparrows to be decapitated by the instruments. Just before the trial of the Queen, one of these toj/s was presented to her son, then a prisoner in the Temple, by the notorious Chaumette, who, within a few months, died by the object of his predilection. In the mean time it seems that Schmidt, who had been employed by the officer at Strasburg, offered to make a machine for 960 francs (38/.) ; this offbr was accepted, and he was put in communi- cation with M. Louis ; and Schmidt became, in fact, the inventor and constructor of the instrument that was finally adopted. This is proved incontestably, because, Schmidt's price of 960 francs having been found to be also exorbitant, * the real value not being above 305 livres, exclusive of the leather bag which was to receive the head, or 329 livres including the bag,' it was resolved, in con- sideration that there were eighty-three instruments to be furnished, one to each department, that 500 francs (20/.) would be a liberal recompense : but it was thought fair to give M. Schmidt, * as the inventor,^ the preference of the new contract. And again ; when Schmidt refused the contract at so low a rate, he was recommended to favour as being * Vinventeur de la machine a decapiter ;' and when at last the order for the Departments was about to be transferred to the other contractor, Schmidt took out, or at least threatened to take out, an exclusive patent as the inventor of the machine^ to the exclusion of both the Government and the contractor. {Lettre de Roederer a Claviere, Rev. Ret., p. 29.) We know not how this by-battle ended— the last letter on the subject is dated the 6th of August, 1792— but then came the 10th of August, and in the anarchy which ensued all questions of right or property — even those connected with the triumphant Guillotine herself— were confounded ITS FIRST USE IN PARIS. 551 and lost. In all these transactions there is no mention of, nor allu- sion to, Guillotin ; and as we have before said, the instrument was, at its first actual appearance, called the Louison — but this name had no success ; indeed M. Louis made no pretence to the in- vention, and he was soon forgotten ; for, by another strange fatality attending the ominous machine, M. Louis himself died within a month of the day that it was first brought into actual operation. While all this was going on, convicts for various crimes were accumulating in the different prisons of the kingdom, and the local authorities in the Departments pressed to have their respective machines with a savage eagerness of which many of themselves had soon to repent in tears and blood. At last, on the 17th of April, 1792, after a great many delays and postponements, an actual experiment was made of Schmidt's instrument, under the inspection of Sanson, in the great hospital of Bicetre, on several dead bodies, which was so entirely successful that the order was issued for the execution, on Monday the 23rd, of the wretched Pelletier, whose case had led to all these proceedings, and who had been lingering under his sentence for near three months. It seems, however, that he was not executed till the 25th, as Roederer writes a letter dated that day to Lafayette, to say thaT, as the execution by the mode of beheading will no doubt occasion a great crowd in the Place de Greve, he begs the General will direct the gendarmes who are to attend the execution not to leave the place till the scaffbld, &c., shall be removed ; and we find, in a Revolutionary journal called the ' Courier Extraordinaire, par M. Dwplain^ of the date of the 27th April, 1792, the following paragraph : — ' Faris. — They made yesterday the first trial of the little Louison, and cut ofi" a head. One Pelletier —not him* of the Actes des Apdtres — was the subject of the melancholy experiment. I never in my life could bear to see a man hanged ; but I own I feel a still greater aver- sion to this species of execution. The preparations make one shudder, and increase the moral suffering ; as to the physical pain, I caused a person to attend, who repeats to me that it was the matter of the * M. Peltier (whose name was fre- suredly have very soon gratified M. quently mis-spelled Felletier) luckily Duplain^s evident wish that he had been escaped to England soon after the 10th the sufferer. Diiplain himself was guillo- of August, or his execution would as- tined 9th July, 1794. 552 THE GUILLOTINE. twinkle of an eye. The people seemed to wish that M. Sanson had his old gallows^ and were inclined to say, — Rendez-moi ma potence de hois, Rendez-moi ma potence.' * The date of articles In a paper published the 27th would be the 26th, and of course the 'yesterday^ of this extract would be the 25th ; and we have found passages to the same effect in one or two other journals ; and yet it is not absolutely certain that Pelletier was the first living body that the guillotine struck ; for though he was certainly the first who suffered at Paris, there seems some doubt whether the Procureur- General of Versailles did not antici- pate Roederer by a day. We have evidence in the papers pub- lished by the 'Revue Retrospective ' that one Challan, the Procureur- General of Versailles, was exceedingly anxious for the machine, and had used every means to obtain an early specimen ; and we find in the ' Journal of Perlet,' 25th April, 1792, p. 198, the follow- ing passage : — ' It is supposed that the punishment of death was yesterday [either the 2Srd or 24^A] inflicted at Versailles on two criminals by the new mode of decollation, and that it will be immediately employed in this capital on a journeyman butcher convicted of murder (assassinat).' This seems almost decisive ; but we still suspect that Perlet's anticipation that the two men had been executed the day before, meaning either the 23rd or 24th, was erroneous, and that the execution at Paris was the first ; for on the 1 9th of April Roederer acquaints his impatient colleague of Versailles that, although he had bespoken him an instrument, it could not be ready for some days, and directs him not to fix the day for the first execution. It is, therefore, hardly possible that the zeal of M. Challan could have outrun Roederer by two days. However that may be, it is clear that in the execution of Pelletier, on the 25th of April at Paris, and in several others which soon followed, the new machine performed its terrible duty with complete success, and amidst, as far as appears from the press, an almost * Aparody of the burden of a popular Gorsas, who had said that the very- song — shifts of the King's aunts — which had Rendez-moi mem ecuelle de hois, been seized from them in a popular Rendez-moi mon ecuelle — riot — belonged to the people — which had lately been rendered still Be,ulez.moi les chemises de Gorsas.. ~ more popular by a witty parody of it Jiemiez-rmi les chemises. by Peltier against the Jacobin journalist ITS NAME FIXED. 553 incredible degree of public indifference. Our surprise, however, at the general silence as to so portentous an exhibition is in a slight degree modified when we recollect that at this time the instrument was not, as it afterwards became, a permanent spectacle ; it was kept in store, and brought forth and fitted together for each special occasion ; it was erected very early in the morning, and removed immediately after the execution, so that in fact few saw it but those who were greedy of such sights ; and it challenged little more notice than th^ ordinary gibbets of M. Guidon ^fournisseur des hois de justice J We know, however, that on the 27th of July there was an im- perfect execution, which created some public disapprobation ; the swelling of the wooden grooves having prevented the proper fall of the axe. After this accident the grooves were made of metal ; and we believe there never after occurred any instance of failure — we, at least,^ have heard of none. And now we find the machine taking officially, universally, and irrevocably, the name of Guillotine ; and a few days after the execu- tion of Pelletier we meet it in Prudhomme' s * Journal of Les Revo- lutiojis de Paris (28th April, 1792), in a way that would remove all doubt, if any indeed could still exist, that long before the 10th August the Jacobins avowed their intentions of bringing the King to that species of death ; two lines of Malherbe's beautiful ode on the death of Rose Duperier, descriptive of the mortality of all man- kind, being applied (alas ! too prophetically) to threaten the Ki?i^ with his impending fate from the new machine : — ' Inscnption proposh pour la Guillotine. * Et la garde qui veille anx barrieres du Louvre N'en defend pas nos Eois.' — Eev. de Par., No. 146. And now, just as the machine had attained its mechanical per- fection, occurred that event which was to call it into full activity as a political engine, and to develop in it that aptitude for wholesale murder which was, we are satisfied, one of the main causes of the maniacal cruelty with which it was employed ; facility begat use, * We must say, however, for Prud- prison, for some slight phrase in one of homme the second, that he repented his numbers at which some of his fellow- and made some amends, but not until Jacobins took offence. Prudhomme, after the Revolution had pillaged his like the rest, grew reasonable when he house, broken his presses, suppressed found the general madness dangei'ous his famous journal, turned his family to himself, into the street, and put himself into -[ 554 THE GUILLOTINE. and multitudes were sent to the other world merely because it had become so very easy to send them ! Voltaire had already charac- terised his countrymen as a mixture of the monkey and the tiger ; that the tiger predominated was sufficiently proved even before the guillotine came into operation ; but without this massacre-made-easy invention the tiger would have much sooner become, if not satiated at least wearied, with slaughter. The Tenth of August came. We shall say no more about that fatal day than to observe, in reference to our present subject, that it affords a characteristic instance of the effrontery and false- hood by which the whole Revolution was conducted, and the most revolting exemplification of that peculiarly French proverb — les vaincus out totijours tort. For while the two hostile parties — Girond- ists and Jacobins — that divided the Assembly were each claiming to themselves the exclusive merit of having concerted and conducted that glorious day, they for a moment suspended their mutual enmi- ties and recriminations to create a special Tribunal to punish the Royalists as being, > forsooth, the instigators and perpetrators of those very events which they zealously claimed as the result of their own patriotic counsels and exertions. The Legislative Assembly, indeed, at first showed some prudent apprehension of this Extraordinary Tribunal, and seemed inclined to limit its powers to the single question of what it called the * Crimes of the lOth of Aur/ust ' — but this hesitation was not to the taste of the victorious populace, and produced a supplementary insurrection, which menaced the Manege * with the fate of the Chateau. Robes- pierre (who was not of this Assembly) headed a deputation of the Commune of Paris, and threatened the legislators in plain terms with the vengeance of the people if they did not institute a tribunal with, what he called, adequate powers: the inconsistent, and intimidated Assembly submitted ; and Vergniaud and Brissot, already cowering under the superior art and audacity of Robespierre and Danton, consented to the creation of a power that, with an impartiality worthy of its origin, sent successively to the guillotine not Royalists only, but Brissot and Vergniaud, and, in due time, Danton and Robespierre themselves. * The Constituant and Legislative Chateau des Tuileries. This manege Assemblies (as well as the Convention, stood in the centre of what is now the for a few months) sat in what had been Eue de Rivoli, nearly in front of the the manege or riding-house of the site of the well-known Hotel Meurice. ITS VICTIMS. 555 The logic on this occasion, as well as the force, was on the side of Robespierre; for, the '10th of August^ having been now adopted and canonised as a patriotic conception and triumph, the treating any of the circumstances that had brought it about as crimes would have been preposterous ; and it turned out, in point of fact, that the tribunal, after it had convicted one Swiss officer, and acquitted another, no more inquired into the 10th of August than it did into the St. Barthelemi, and became eventually nothing more or less than — as the Conventional Dupin energetically called it — ' the first step to the scaffold.^ From this moment the Guillotine became, not an instrument of justice, but the murderous weapon of political factions, of private enmities — nay, when factions and enmi- ties had been killed off, of the wanton spontaneities of blood- drunken insanity.* We find in the ' Souvenirs de Soixante-treize Ans^' by M. Verneuil, a member of the Assembly, the following passage rela- tive to these executions, which, we think, in so great a dearth of contemporaneous information, worth quoting, particularly as the book, which seems to have been only printed in a country town (Limoges), is little known : — ' After the 10th August they had organised an extraordinary tri- bunal for judging the pretended conspirators of that day. The firstf victim was a literary man, editor of a Royalist journal: he was executed in my neighbourhood — Place du Carrousel. I was invited to go into a house hard by, whence I should see the play of the new instrument of death. I excused myself; but from the window of my own entresol I was curious to observe, as the spectators were return- ing, the impression that it made upon the public. It appeared to me that in general they said, ' Mais ce n'est rien' ['Tis nothing at a//], in allusion, no doubt, to the quickness of the execution. M. Guillotin does not deserve the sad honour of giving his name to this new in- strument, but rather M. Louis, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Surgeons.' — Souvenirs de Soixante-treize Ans (Limoges, 1836), pp. 168, 169. We have here to observe that Sanson, the chief executioner, * An account of the principal politi- decided the adoption of the guillotine — cal victims of the guillotine will be resident close to the place of execution, found at p. 440, et seq., in the Essay on who thought that Durosoi was the first The Revolutionary Tribunals. victim of the tribunal, though Dangre- t Here was a member of the Assem- mont had been executed four days pre- bly — and of the Committee which had vious. 556 THE GUILLOTINE. and his two brothers, had been themselves sent to prison after the 10th of August, on the monstrous hypothesis that, ' if the Court had succeeded on that day, the Sansons were to have hanged the patriots.' Their real offence was that they had somehow offended the patriot Gorsas, the newspaper editor before-mentioned, whose Jacobinical violence, in a few days after, procured his election into the Convention — a woful elevation, as we shall see presently ! The assistance, however, of the Sansons was necessary to the executions ; and the three brothers were brought in a hackney-coach, and in custody, from the Conciergerie to the Carrousel, for the execution of Dangremont, and taken back again. They were again brought forth for the execution of La Porte, and again taken back ; after the execution of Durosoi they were released, but they were again arrested within a few^ days, and were only removed from the Ahhaye just before the massacre began ; and then the absurdity of the pretence for which they had been sent to prison, and the neces- sary value of their services, becoming more apparent, they were set at liberty, and in the course of the ensuing year were called upon to exercise their ministry upon their old antagonist, Gorsas, who was the first member of the Convention sent to the scaffold. AYe have scanty records of the ordinary execution of justice during the revolutionary paroxysm. We suspect that there were comparatively few punishments but those of a political nature. We find that on the 14th July, an Abb^ Geoffroi, ci-devant Vicaire- General, was executed on the Place de Greve for forgery of assig- nats; and again, on the 27th of August, 1792, three persons, who seem to have been of a superior rank in life, and are designated in the Moniteur as * Messieurs Vimal, VAhhe Sauvade, and Guillot,^ were executed as accomplices in the same or a similar forgery. These parties had been tried in the ordinary courts, before the new tribunal was created, but they had appealed, and the appeal had been decided against them, though their guilt is very doubtful ; they were now executed, and it was in exhibiting one of these heads to the people that the younger Sanson fell off the scaffold and was killed. Some other executions of the same class seem also to have given employment to the Guillotine, but we have no details. From the time of the installation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, it seems that the Guillotine was not removed, as it at first used to THE REVOLUTIONAEY TRIBUNALS. 55T be, after each execution, but was for some time kept stationary in the Carrousel ;* about the middle of October it appears to have been removed for one day to the Place de Greve for the execution of nine emigrants condemned by a military commission; but it was again removed on the 30th of October to the Place Louis XV., now called de la Revolution^ for the execution of two of the robbers of the Garde-Meuhle^ which our readers know was situated on the north side of that square. It is quite clear that the Massacres had done what the Tribunal had been intended to do, and had in truth superseded it — those whom it was meant to try had been more expeditiously murdered • — and, therefore, in order that it might have something to occupy its time, the ordinary criminal business of the metropolis was, by a decree of the 11th of September, 1792, transferred to it; and it was in consequence of this decree that it tried and sent to the guil- - lotine the robbers of the Garde-Meuhle^ and was busy with the trial of many minor offences, when suddenly, without notice or reason given, on the morning of the 1st of December (misdated, with the usual inaccuracy of the bulletins of these revolutionary courts, 31st of November), the tribunal found itself dissolved by a decree of the preceding day. The sudden suppression of this formidable tri- bunal, the creation of which had occasioned such violent discussions, seems to have taken place without debate, and almost without no- tice. It is scarcely alluded to in any of the histories, not even in that especially calling itself a 'History of the Revolutionary Tri- bunal,^ published in 1815, in two volumes ; nay, not in the periodical publications of the day; and, in fact, this tribunal of the 17th of August, 1792, has been always treated as if it and the still more celebrated Revolutionary Tribunal created 10th of March, 1793, were the same, — only that at the latter date larger powers were conferred on it. No doubt the spirit that created the two tribunals, and many of the members that composed them, were the same, but in point of fact they were wholly distinct. The suppression of the first took place in the height of the agitation preliminary to the trial of the Kinff, and we are satisfied that it must have had some urgent and most important motive, and one probably connected with * So it would seem from the evidence during this earlier period, removed and of Peltier and others, but we rather be- put up again on each occasion. See lieve that it was in general, if not always, Dulaure's Mem., Eev. Ret. ill. 3, 6, 12. 558 THE GUILLOTINE. the court, though we have never seen any assigned, nor indeed in- quired after — for the fact itself was, as we have said, scarcely men- tioned. We have no means of solving this historical mystery, but we cannot avoid noticing it to account for the total inaction of the Guillotine for near four months. Our own conjecture is twofold — first, that it was abolished lest some attempt should be made to employ it, instead of the Convention itself, for the trial of the King ; or, secondly, that, during the deadly struggle then carrying on between the Girondins and Jacobins, each party, doubtful of the result, was afraid of leaving in the hands of its triumphant antagonists so terrible an engine as this ready-constituted and well- organized tribunal, and both therefore concurred in its abolition, almo'st sub silejitio, while on every other subject their contention was maintained with increasing animosity. The first advantage in this struggle was to the Jacobins — when the Girondins were terrified into voting the death of the King, con- trary to their pledges, their principles, their honour, and their con- sciences : that base and cruel cowardice was their own death-warrant. The next advantage was still more immediately decisive in favour of the Jacobins — it was the revival of the first Tribunal, by a decree of the 10th March, 1793, extorted from the Convention under the instant terror of wholesale assassination, and on which subsequently, under the more comprehensive title of Revolutionary Tribunal, unlimited jurisdiction and extravagant powers were conferred. Though the Girondins struggled on for a few weeks more, this blow was decisive and prophetic of their ultimate fate. Let us add that this iniquitous proceeding was carried on the motion and under the sanguinary menaces of Ddnton — the same Dan ton who a year after was led to execution, exclaiming, ' This time twelvemonth I proposed that infamous tribunal by which we die, and for which I beg pardon of God and men.' In the midst of these contentions came the execution of the King. In the centre of the Place Louis Quinze* — then called Place de la Revolution, and since Place de la Concorde — and on the spot where * We have again to wonder that Mr. King might not have been executed at Alison does not make any mention of Versailles or St. Denis — not a word; the guillotine on this occasion, nor does and, when he comes to speak of the he even say where the execution took Queen's death, he merely tells us that place. He tells us the procession lasted ' she was executed where the King had two hours, but whether it went north, been ' — which is true as to the great east, west, or south — or whether the Place itself, but not as to the exact spot. SITE OF THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XYI. 559 now stands the Luxor obelisk, there had stood a statue of Louis XV.; this statue was overthrown on the 11th of August, but the magnificent pedestal, though a little dilapidated about the summit, remained. There has been some doubt as to the exact spot where the scaffold for the execution of the King was erected. Historians never descend to such minutiae, and painters and engravers are some- times lax in their perspective, but we think we may say, chiefly on the authority of a fine print, ' presented to the Convention' by its publisher, Helman, that the exact site of the scaffold was a few yards west of this pedestal, that is, towards the Champs Elysees, and the steps were from the westward, so that the King when he mounted the scaffold looked over the pedestal of his grandfather's statue to the centre pavilion of his own devastated palace. When he endeavoured to address the people, he turned to the left towards the Rue Royale, and, Mercier tells us {Nouveau Tableau de Paris, ch. 82), that he was, at a signal from Santerre — who commanded the troops and directed the execution — seized from behind by two executioners, and, in spite of his desire to be allowed to finish what he had to say, he was bound to the bascule, or balanced plank, with his face towards the Tuileries ; and that, either from the hurry of this struggle, or from the bascule being fitted for a taller person, the axe fell closer to the head than was usual, and there was more mutilation than ordinary. But Mercier is very loose authority on any subject : the print, and the letter of Sanson at p. 255, afford decisive evidence against Mercier's assertion. We transcribe from Prudhomme, a trustworthy witness on this point, the following account of the scene that immediately fol- lowed : — ' Some individuals steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood. A number of armed volunteers crowded also to dip in the blood of the despot their pikes, their bayonets, or their sabres. Several officers of the Marseillese battalion, and others, dipped the covers of letters in this impure blood, and carried them on the points of their swords at the head of their companies, exclaiming " This is the blood of a tyrant !" One citizen got up to the guillotine itself, and, plunging his whole arm into the blood of Capet, of which a great quantity re- mained, he took up handfuls of the clotted gore, and sprinkled it over the crowd below, which pressed round the scaffold, each anxious to receive a drop on his forehead. " Friends," said this citizen, in sprinkling them, '* we were threatened that the blood of Louis should be 2 m6 THE GUILLOTINE, 071 our heads ; and so you see it is ! !" — Eevolutions de Paris ^ No. 185, p. 205.* After this execution the Guillotine is no more heard of, at least as a political engine, until the 7th of April, 1793, when, under the auspices of the new Tribunal, it made its re-appearance in the Place du Carrousel, and began that series of murders which has no parallel in the annals of mankind. It seems that from this time forward it remained in permanent readiness and exposed from one execution to another ; but we find that, the Convention having resolved to transfer its sittings from the Manege to the palace of the Tuileries, a decree was passed (8th May, 1793) * that, in consideration of the proximity of the Carrousel to the Hall of the Convention, the guillotine should be removed to some other place.' According to the * Liste des Con- damnes,' twelve persons were executed on the Carrousel between the 7th of April and 8 th of May, on or about which day the machine was removed to the Place de la Revolution, not to the spot where the King's scaffold had stood, but a few yards on the eastern side of the pedestal, towards the Tuileries ; and there it appears to have permanently remained to the 8th of June, 1794, one year and one month, during which time it had executed 1256 ■persons, as the * Liste des Condamnes ' expressly says ; but from this should be deducted the eleven executed in the Carrousel, and the nine at the Greve — so that the number really executed in the Place Louis XV. was 1235. Of this vast number there is scarcely one of whom some pathetic anecdote might not be told. We shall at present only notice four illustrious women, whose story involves, in addition to the individual interest that each excites, some reference to the mode of execution. Mademoiselle Marie Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armans (com- monly called Charlotte Corday, though she herself signed her Christian name Marie) was executed on the 17th of July, 1793 : she had (what was now become) the distinction of being executed alone. After the execution, one of the executionersf held up her * An atrocious though ridiculous which he hastened to convey to England, instance of the malignant credulity of where it was hoisted as a flag on the Tower the French of that day, and indeed of of London!' — (Declaration duCit.Jourdan, all revolutionary days, about England, is Memoires sur Septemhre, p, 155.) the assertion that * an Englishman dipped f This was not Sanson, M. du Bois his handkerchief in the King's blood, tells us, but one of his helps^ whose ig- EXECUTION OF CHARLOTTE COEDAY. 561 lovely head by its beautiful hair, and in a fit of Maratist delirium slapped the cheeks — which, it was said, showed symptoms of sen- sibility, and blushed. We should hardly have thought it worth while to repeat so incre- dible a story, but that, having been made a prominent argument in a physiological question that was raised about 1796, whether death by the guillotine was or was not instantaneous, it became matter of inquiry, and the balance of evidence seemed to be that some unu- sual appearance described as a blush was distinctly visible. Here is the account given by Dr. Sue, a physician of the first eminence and authority in Paris, in whose family medical skill had been hereditary : — * The countenance of Charlotte Corday expressed the most unequi- vocal marks of indignation. Let us look back to the facts : — the executioner held the head suspended in one hand ; the face was then pale, but had no sooner received the slap which the sanguinary wretch gave it than both cheeks visibly reddened. Every spectator was struck by the change of colour, and with loud murmurs cried out for vengeance on this cowardly and atrocious barbarity. It cannot be said that the redness was caused by the blow — for we all know that no blows will recall anything like colour to the cheeks of a corpse ; besides, this blow was given on one cheek, and the other equally reddened. — Saej Opinion sur le SuppUce de la Guillotine, p. 9. Dr. Sue, and some German physicians and surgeons after him, held that there does indubitably remain in the brain of a decollated head some degree {un reste) of thought, and in the nerves something of sensibility ; and the case of Mademoiselle de Corday was alleged as proving that doctrine. We do not believe the fact of any dis- coloration, nor, if it were true, would it prove that the blush arose from continuous sensibility ; and certainly the other opinion, that the extinction of life is instantaneous, is the more rational, and it has .finally prevailed;* and all that we infer from the anecdote is, that nomiuious name — F7'angois Le Gros — is executioners exhibited the Jieart of Sir as well entitled to be preserved in the Everard Digby, executed for the Gun- indignation of mankind as Marat, Ega- powder Plot, to the people, exclaiming, lite, or Robespierre. M. du Bois adds, * This is the heart of a traitor! ' the head that even the cannibal government of articulated ' Thou liest ! ' and Lord the day were forced, by the outcry of Bacon believed that after evisceration the public, to punish the fellow * as fie the tongue could pronounce a few words. deserved/ but he does not state what * Mag is certa {traditio) de homine qui de that punishment was. We suppose a suppUcii genere (quod diximus) evisccratits, reprimand. postquam cor avulsum penitus esset et in * There is a story that, when the camificis manu, tria aut quatuor verba 2 2 562 THE GUILLOTINE. public opinion was willing to colour with its own indignation the cheeks of Mademoiselle de Corday. Here also, on the 16th of October, 1793, fell a once beauteous head — now whitened by sorrow, not by age — and venerable for the angelic purity and patience, the royal courage and Christian sub- mission, with which it had exchanged the most brilliant crown of the world for a crown of thorns : and that again for the crown of martyrdom. Here died the Queen^ — one of the noblest and the purest, and yet, if human judgments be alone weighed, the most unfortunate of women — tried in almost every possible agony of affliction — except a guilty conscience — and in that exception finding the consolation for all. She arrived at this scene of her last and greatest triumph, jolted in a common cart,* and ascended the. scaffold amidst the vociferations of a crowd of furies, whom we hesitate to acknowledge as of her own sex. Never in that gorgeous palace, on which she now cast a last calm look, did she appear more glorious — never w^as she so really admirable as she was at that supreme moment of her earthly release. We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies ; we have read, certainly not «//, but hundreds of the libels written against her ; and we have, in short, examined her life with — if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves — something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined ; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the Queen was a gross calumny — that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings. The grandeur of her mind — the courageous wisdom of her counsels (seldom adopted) — the minute and laborious yet wide and lofty, fulfilment of all her duties, and particularly as wife and mother — and, finally, the unequalled magnanimity and precum, auditus est proferre,' &c. Hist, the Pere Duchesne the horrid phrase of Vit. et Mort. But this was a case of * etei-nuer dans le sac.' evisceration, and not o^ decapitation, which * Mr. Alison for once departs from makes the whole difference as to the his hackneyed French authorities, and credibility of the story. We suppose says she was drawn on a hurdle. There that the sudden rush of air into the is no pretence for this statement; and, head through the severed neck produces on the contrary, there is abundant evi- that kind of sound which suggested to dence that she came in a cart. MADAME ELIZABETH. 563 patience — the greatest of magnanimities — with which she bore such misfortunes as never woman before suffered, are matters of history — the opprobrium of which, thank God ! brands the French Revo- lution, and never can be effaced. Here also died, on the 10th of May, 1794, Madame Elizabeth, a saint, if it be allowed to any mortal to be a saint. Not only inno- cent but inoffensive, she lived, in spite of her high birth, in a modest obscurity ; she was a personification of piety, of domestic love, of charity, of humility, of self-devotion. One word of her own, often repeated, but never too often, shows her character, in all its grand and yet soft and mellowed lustre. When the mob broke into the Tuileries, on the 20th of June, 1792, the royal family were mo- mentarily dispersed by the sudden irruption. The Queen and the Dauphin were in one part of the apartments, the King alone in another, where his heroic sister hastened to join him. The mob, who had been trained to particular hostihty to the Queen, mistook Madame Elizabeth for her, and maltreated her with great gross- ness of language and serious menaces of violence. One of the terrified attendants was about to endeavour to save the princess by apprizing the assassins that she was not the Queen, when, with equal magnanimity and presence of mind, Madame Elizabeth, — desiring that if any one should be sacrificed it might be herself, — stopped him by icliispering^ * Oli no, dojit U7ideceive them J Neither Greek nor Roman story has any superior instance of self-devotion. This noble creature had been in close confinement in the Temple from the 13th of August, 1792, down to the day of her trial, seeing no one but her little niece, and watched day and night by her perse- cutors ; yet she was doomed to die — the devil only knows why — for some imaginary and impossible conspiracy. During the long transit to the scaffold, she was seen to encourage with pious gestures her fellow- sufferers, and when, on the scaffold, one of the execu- tioners (we hope not Sanson) rudely tore off the covering of her neck, she turned — her own hands being tied— to another, and said, softly and sublimely, ' I implore you,^br tlte love of your mother, to cover my neck !' Here too, on the 9th November, 1793, between the deaths of the Queen and Madame Elizabeth, was sent to the scaffold, by her own former friends and favourites,* Marie Phlipon, Madame Roland, * Robespierre had been a peculiar favoiu'ite and protcjc of lier3> 564 THE GUILLOTINE. a woman of humble birth with great ambition, narrow education, with a great love of literature, strong passions with a cold temper, and possessing above all that dangerous species of talent which decides summarily and plausibly on the events of the moment, with- out having either the patience or the power to inquire whence they spring and whither they are tending. Her Memoirs, written in prison, in the subdued and conciliatory tone of adversity, and with the great charm of an easy yet forcible style, have recommended her to general sympathy, and to the enthusiastic admiration of all who partake her revolutionary opinions. Those who wish to think with unmixed admiration of Madame Roland must take her up where she left the world — at the guicliet of the Coiiciergerie. Her former political life — full of animosity, faction, intolerance, bad faith, and even cruelty — will engage little favour ; and, as happens in so many other cases in the history of the Revolution, we should cease to pity Madame Roland if we remembered that she suffered only what she had been during her reign — for she too had reigned — not reluctant to inflict on others. She died with great resolution, in company with a M. La Marche, who did not show so much firm- ness. It was a favour to be allowed to die first, in order to be spared the terrible spectacle of the death of others, and this favour — denied to Madame Elizabeth — was offered to Madame Roland, but she thought her companion needed it more than herself, and begged him to precede her ; and when the executioner objected, she said with a smile, ' You won't refuse the last request of a lady ?' and La Marche was executed first. It was some time, though we do not know exactly the day, between the executions of Charlotte Corday and the Queen, that a huge plaster statue of Liberty — grotesque by its disproportion and hideous from its distortion — was erected on the pedestal of the overthrown statue of Louis XV., in front of which the new scaffold stood. In a print of the execution of Mdlle. de Corday there is no statue on the pedestal ; but it was there, if we may credit Helman's print, when the Queen was immolated, and to it Madame Roland, with something of characteristic pedantry, is said to have addressed her celebrated apostrophe, ' O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name !' Crimes enoughs- crimes enormous — have been committed in the name of liberty ever since the 14th of July, 1789, and many abominable ones during the ministry and with, at least, the connivance of Madame MADAME KOLAND. 565 Roland and her husband, but it was not till she was herself sent to prison and brought to the scaffold that they struck her so forcibly. When we find Danton ' begging pardon' — on the scaffold — ' of God and man for the institution of the Revolutionary Tribunal,' and Madame Roland — also on the scaffold — lamenting ' the crimes committed in the name of liberty^ we acknowledge the sincerity, but cannot but feel a kind of revulsion and indignation at the self- ishness, of their tardy and unavailing repentance. W^ abstain from any details of the thousands of murders com- mitted by the Guillotine at that time, but one fact will enable our readers to understand something of its horrors. It was proved on the trial of Fouquier-Tinville that 160 persons, of all ages, sexes, and ranks, were tried and executed on a charge of conspiracy^ not merely false, but absurd, visionary, and impossible : — forty-five of these persons, who were utterly unknown to each other, were tried and condemned within twenty minutes^ and executed in the same evening in almost as short a space. These executions were for many months the amusement — the spectacle of the people, we wish we could safely say the populace, of Paris ; but, as we before stated, chairs were stationed round the instrument, where women, in a station of life to be able to pay for that amusement, used to hire seats, and sit, and chat, and work (whence they were called les tricoteuses de la Guillotine), while waiting for the tragedy which they looked at as a farce. We find in the Revue Retrospective a curious letter incidentally descriptive of this elegant scene of Parisian amusement : — ' The Procureur Geniral Hoederer to Citizen Guidon. ' 13th May, 1793. ' I enclose, Citizen, the copy of a letter from Citizen Chanmette, solicitor to the Commune of Paris, by which yon will perceive that complaints are made that, after these public executions, the blood of the criminals remains in pools upon the Place, that dogs come to drink it, and that crowds of men feed their eyes with this spectacle, which naturally instigates their hearts to ferocity and blood. ' I request you, therefore, to take the earliest and most convenient measures to remove from the eyes of men a sight so affiicting to Immanity.' Our readers will observe the tender regret — not that all this blood was shed, but — that it was not wiped up ; and they will be startled when they recollect that at the date of this letter not 566 THE GUILLOTINE. above a dozen persons had been yet executed here, but that within one year the blood of a thousand victims had saturated the small spot of ground. In one of the foolish modern-antique processions of the Convention, the whole cortege was delayed and thrown into confusion because the cattle that were drawing some of their the- atrical machines could neither be induced nor forced to traverse this blood-tainted place. This Chaumette was one of the most impious and sanguinary of the whole tribe, and we could almost believe that he envied the dogs the blood they drank. He it was that bullied the wretched idiot Gobel, revolutionary Archbishop of Paris, to come to the bar of the Convention to abjure Christianity, and proclaim himself an impostor, at the head of a procession in which asses were insultingly decorated with the sacred emblems of religion. Chaumette himself it was who introduced to the Conven- tion a prostitute in the character of the Goddess of Reason. Robes- pierre sent this whole clique to the Guillotine, and on the 13th of April, 1794, Chaumette's own blood flowed to increase the horrors of which he had complained. The Guillotine remained in permanence in the Place de la Re- volution till the 8th of June, 1794, when the inhabitants of the streets through which these hatches (fournces), as they were called, of suff*erers used to pass, became at last tired of that agreeable sight, and solicited its removal. This would probably have been not much regarded ; but there was a more potent motive, Robes- pierre seems at this time to have adopted a new policy, and to have formed some design of founding a dictatorial authority in his own person on the basis of religion and morals. On the 7th June he made his famous report acknowledging ' VEtre Supreme^' and ap- pointing the 20th June for the great fete in the garden of i\\Q Tuileries, which was to celebrate this recognition. Of this fete Robespierre was to be the Pontifex Maximus, and it can hardly be doubted that it was to remove the odious machine from the imme- diate scene of his glorification that it was — the day after the decree and ten days before the /t'/e— removed to the Place St. Antoine in front of the ruins of the Bastille ; but that a day might not be lost, it was removed on a Decadi, the republican Sabbath. It stood, however, but five days in the Place St. Antoine, for the shopkeepers even of that patriotic quarter did not like their new neighbour; and so, after having in i\\Q?>Q five days Q^QCuiQA ninety - six persons, it was removed still further to the Barrier c dii Trone^ STATIONS OF THE GUILLOTINE. 567 or, as it was called in the absurd nomenclature of the day, Barriere Renversee. There it stood from the 9th of June to the fall of Robespierre, 9th Thermidor (27th July, 1794). So say all the authorities; but an incident in the trial of Fouquier-Tinville seems to prove that, in the early part of July at least, the scaffold stood in the Place de la Revolution^ and that the instrument was dismounted every evening. A lady, the Marquise de Feuquieres, was to be tried on the 1st of July : the whole evidence against her was a document which had been placed under the seals of the law at her country-house, near Versailles, and Fouquier sent off the night before a special messenger to bring it up ; the messenger was delayed by the local authorities, and could not get back to Paris till half-past four on the evening of the 1 st, when, ' on arriving at the Place de la Revolution^ he found the executioner dismounting the engine, and was informed that the Marquise de Feuquieres had been guillotined an hour before, — having been tried and condemned without a tittle of any kind of evidence ; and this fact, attested by his own mes- senger, Fouquier could not deny — though we cannot reconcile it with the other evidence as to the locality of the guillotine at that particular period. In all the Listes des Condamnes Madame de Feuquieres and twenty-three other persons are stated to have suf- fered on the 1st of July at the Barriere du Trone. In the forty-nine days in which it is said to have stood at the Barriere du Trone it despatched 1270 persons of both sexes, and of all ages and ranks, and it became necessary to build a kind of sanguiduct, to carry off the streams of blood ; and on the very last day, when the tyrant had already fallen, and that the smallest in- terruption would have sufficed to have stopped the fatal procession, forty-nine persons passed almost unguarded through the stupefied streets to the place of execution. And here we have the last occa- sion to mention Sanson : and it is to his credit, as indeed all the personal details related of him seem to be. On the 9th Thermidor there was, about half-past three in the afternoon, just as this last batch of victims was about to leave the Conciergerie, a considerable commotion in the town, caused by the revolt against Robespierre. At that moment Fouquier, on his way to dine with a neighbour, passed through the court where the prisoners were ascending the fatal carts. Sanson, whose duty it was to conduct the prisoners to execution, ventured to stop the Accusatcur Public, to represent to 568 THE GUILLOTINE. him that there were some rumours of a commotion, and to suggest whether it would not be prudent to postpone the execution till at least the next morning. Fouquier roughly replied that the law must take its course. He went to dinner, and the forty -nine victims went to the scaffold, whither in due time he followed them ! The next day the Guillotine was removed back to the scene of its longest triumphs — the Place de la Revolution — where on the 28th of July it avenged humanity on Robespien-e and twenty-one of his followers ; on the next day sixty-nine, and on the day after thirteen more of his associates fell, amongst whom were most of the judges, juries, and officers of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and a majority of the Commune of Paris — greater monsters, if possible, than the members of the Tribunal. Here indeed the trite quota- tion — ' Neque enim lex sequior ulla Qnam necis artifices arte perire sua,' — may be apphed with incomparable propriety. Of the operations of the Guillotine in the Departments during the Parisian Reign of Terror we have very scanty information. We only know that in most of the great towns it was in permanent activity, and that in some remarkable instances, as at Avignon, Nantes, and Lyons, its operations were found too slow for ' the vengeance of the people,' and were assisted by the wholesale mas- sacres oi fusillades and noyades. At Nantes, and some other places, the Conventional Proconsuls carried M. de Clermont Ton- nerre's principle to the extreme extent of ostentatiously inviting the executioner to dinner. For some months after the fall of Robespierre the Parisian Guil- lotine was, though not pennanently, yet actively, employed against his immediate followers ; and subsequently, against the tail (as it was called) of his faction, who attempted to revive the Reign of Terror ; but we have no distinct details of these proceedings ; the numbers, though great, were insignificant in comparison with the former massacres, and no one, we believe, suffered who did not amply deserve it — Fouquier-Tinville himself and the remainder of his colleagues, the judges and jury of the tribunal, included. His and their trial is the most extraordinary document that the whole Revolution has produced, and develops a series of turpitudes and horrors such as no imagination could conceive. But that does not belong to our present subject, and we must hasten to conclude. ITS USE AFTER ROBESPIERRE'S FALL. 569 Under the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire, we do not find that any immoderate use was made of the Guillotine ;* — the very name had become intolerably odious, and the ruling powers were reluctant to use it even on legitimate occasions. During the Restoration it was rarely employed, and never, as far as we recol- lect for any political crime. When occasion for its use occurred it was brought forth and erected in the Place de Greve, and removed immediately after the execution ; and we ourselves can bear witness — though we could not bring ourselves to see it — that one of these tragedies, which occurred while we happened to be in Paris, appeared to throw a kind of gloom and uneasiness over the whole city, that contrasted very strongly and very favourably with our recollection of the events of twenty years before. After the accession of Louis Philippe, for whom the Guillotine must have been an object of the most painful contemplation, sen- tences of death were also very rare, and certainly never executed where there was any possible room for mercy. The executions, too, ^ when forced upon him, took place at early hours and in remote and uncertain places ; and every humane art was used to cover the ope- rations of the fatal instrument with a modest veil, not only from motives of general decency and humanity, but also, no doubt, from national pride and personal sensibility. What Frenchman would not wish that the name and memory of the Guillotine could be blotted from the history of mankind ? ' The word Guillotine,^ says the author of ' Les Pastes de VAnarchie,' * should be efikced from the language.' But the revolutionary horrors which France is naturally so anxious to forget, it the more behoves us and the rest of Europe to remember and meditate. Such massacres as we have been describing will probably never be repeated ; they will, no doubt, stand unparalleled in the future, as they do in the former annals of the world ; but they should never be forgotten as an ex- ample of the incalculable excesses of popular insanity. * We should, perhaps, except Buona- and a batch of thirteen Vendeans in parte's execution of George Cadoudal 1804. KoTE 570 THE GUILLOTINE. Note ox Sanson the Executioner, and his Family. Our readers will be the less surprised at the style and spirit of the observations made by M. Sanson, aide, p. 534, when they learn the following particulars of him and his family. It appears that, when the Revolution had swept away every other trace of feudality, M. Sanson was a gentleman of respectable genealogy, exercising a heredi- tary office derived from the ancestors of the monarch whose head fell by his (we believe) reluctant hand. 1. Charles Sanson, a native of Abbeville, and a relation of the great geographer of that name, being in 1675 lieutenant in a regiment garrisoned at Dieppe, married the daughter of the Executioner of Normandy. In 1684, Carlier, the Executioner of Paris, being dis- missed, Charles Sanson was appointed in his room. He died in 1695, and was succeeded by his son — 2. Charles Sanson, who died 12th September, 1726, having only the month previous resigned in favour of his son — 3. Charles John Baptiste Sanson, who was appointed by letters patent, dated the 12th September, ' Executeur des arrets et sentences criminelles de la ville, prev6te\ et vicomte de Paris,'' but, being very young, he was authorised to exercise his office by deputy ; the Parliament of Paris appointed one Prudhomme the Deputy, and fixed the majority of the principal at the early age of sixteen, when he came into office and filled it to his death, on the 4th August, 1778. His son, 4. Charles Henry Sanson (the author of the Observations, and the executioner of the King), the eldest of ten children, was born the 15th of February, 1739, and, having supplied his father's place since 1758, was, on his death, in 1778, admitted to the office in his own right on the 26th December. In consequence of the discussions raised by Guillotin and Clermont Tonnerre, he petitioned the National As- sembly to be considered on the footing of any other French citizen. In 1790 he wished to resign in favour of his son, but this was not arranged till the 1st September, 1795, when he retired on a pension. He had two sons, but the eldest was killed on the 27th August, 1792, by falling from the scaffold as he was exhibiting the head of a man executed for the forgery of assignats. In consequence of this the other and now only son, 5. Henry Sanson, born the 24th December, 1767, and at the time of his father's resignation, in 1795, a captain of artillery, was called to the hereditary office, and in consequence gave up his military rank. He died at Paris on the 18th August, 1840. He was an elector, and had, we are told, a taste for music and literature. He was succeeded by his son, SANSON AND HIS FAMILY. 571 6. Henry Clement Sanson, born tlie 27tli May, 1799, and admitted to his office the 1st December, 1840 ; and is, we suppose, the onli/ man in France who holds any station by anything like hereditary descent. — (Dii Bois, p. 27.) We find from several accounts that two of Charles Henry Sanson's brothers assisted him in his operations, and especially at the death of the king ; and we learn from Peltier that they had a narrow escape of being themselves sacrificed after the 10th of August. M. Du Bois assures us that the celebrated Sanson ' was, like his ancestoi^s^ a very worthy man (fort honnetes gens) , and that the present dignitary is in person a fine figure, with an elegant and noble countenance, and a very sweet and agreeable expression!' — p. 25. THE EIsTD. London : Printed by William Clowes and Son, Stamford Street, and Charing Cross. M . 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. ■ 29M«^B4Nr 1 BR Rb,C D L-U 9| ^AR S '64 -6 PM J T^B 24 1980 m 3-^f H RECCIR-MWaO^ D ■ ■ R P Kb ffli m lC ^ ■ Jl %llfr£^4%B Uni^rKyt^-Califomia 1 ^ M- m JM ^ 2 mj,. . r N • i \^i i:m*f 678603 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY «:<£ m m