sketch of the french revolution of 1789, as connected with the history of persecution.

the design of those who were the primary agents in originating the causes of the french revolution, was the utter subversion of the christian religion. voltaire, the leader in this crusade against religion,[490] boasted that "with one hand he would pull down, what took twelve apostles to build up." the motto on the seal of his letters was, "crush the wretch," having reference to jesus christ, and the system of religion, which he promulgated. to effect his object he wrote and published a great variety of infidel tracts, containing the most licentious sentiments and the most blasphemous attacks upon the religion of the bible. innumerable copies of these tracts were printed, and gratuitously circulated in france and other countries. as they were adapted to the capacity of all classes of persons, they were eagerly sought after, and read with avidity. the doctrines inculcated in them were subversive of every principle of morality and religion. the everlasting distinctions between virtue and vice, were completely broken down. marriage was ridiculed—obedience to parents treated as the most abject slavery—subordination to civil government, the most odious despotism—and the acknowledgement of a god, the height of folly and absurdity. deeply tinged with such sentiments, the revolution of 1789, found the popular mind in france prepared for all the atrocities which followed. the public conscience had become so perverted, that scenes of treachery, cruelty and blood were regarded with indifference, and sometimes excited the most unbounded applause in the spectators. such a change had been effected in the french character, by the propagation of infidel and atheistical opinions, "that from being one of the most light hearted and kind tempered of nations," says scott, "the french seemed upon the revolution to have been animated, not merely with the courage, but with the rabid fury of wild beasts." when the bastile was stormed "fouton and berthier, two individuals whom they considered as enemies of the people, were put to death, with circumstances of cruelty and insult fitting only at the death stake of an indian encampment; and in imitation of literal cannibals, there were men, or rather monsters found, not only to tear asunder, the limbs of their victims, but to eat their hearts, and drink their blood."

croly, in his new interpretation of the apocalypse, holds the following language.

the primary cause of the french revolution was the exile of protestantism.

its decency of manners had largely restrained the licentious tendencies of the higher orders; its learning had compelled the romish ecclesiastics to similar labours; and while christianity could appeal to such a church in france, the progress of the infidel writers was checked by the living evidence of the purity, peacefulness and wisdom of the gospel. it is not even without sanction of scripture and history to conceive that, the presence of such a body of the servants of god was a divine protection to their country.

but the fall of the church was followed by the most palpable, immediate, and ominous change. the great names of the romish priesthood, the vigorous literature of bossnett, the majestic oratory of massillon,[491] the pathetic and classic elegance of fenelon, the mildest of all enthusiasts; a race of men who towered above the genius of their country and of their religion; passed away without a successor. in the beginning of the 18th century, the most profligate man in france was an ecclesiastic, the cardinal dubois, prime minister to the most profligate prince in europe, the regent orleans. the country was convulsed with bitter personal disputes between jesuit and jansenist, fighting even to mutual persecution upon points either beyond or beneath the human intellect. a third party stood by, unseen, occasionally stimulating each, but equally despising both, a potential fiend, sneering at the blind zealotry and miserable rage that were doing its unsuspected will. rome, that boasts of her freedom from schism should blot the 18th century from her page.

the french mind, subtle, satirical, and delighting to turn even matters of seriousness into ridicule, was immeasurably captivated by the true burlesque of those disputes, the childish virulence, the extravagant pretensions, and the still more extravagant impostures fabricated in support of the rival pre-eminence in absurdity; the visions of half-mad nuns and friars; the convulsionaries; the miracles at the tomb of the abbe paris, trespasses on the common sense of man, scarcely conceivable by us if they had not been renewed under our eyes by popery. all france was in a burst of laughter.

in the midst of this tempest of scorn an extraordinary man arose, to guide and deepen it into public ruin, voltaire; a personal profligate; possessing a vast variety of that superficial knowledge which gives importance to folly; frantic for popularity, which he solicited at all hazards; and sufficiently opulent to relieve him from the necessity of any labours but those of national undoing. holding but an inferior and struggling rank in all the manlier provinces of the mind, in science, poetry, and philosophy; he was the prince of scorners. the splenetic pleasantry which stimulates the wearied tastes of high life; the grossness which half concealed captivates the loose, without offence to their feeble decorum; and the easy brilliancy which throws what colours it will on the darker features of its purpose; made voltaire, the very genius of france. but under this smooth and sparkling surface, reflecting like ice all the lights flung upon it, there was a dark fathomless depth of malignity. he hated government; he hated morals; he hated man, he hated religion. he sometimes bursts out into exclamations of rage and insane fury against all that we honour as best and holiest, that sound less the voice of human lips than the echoes of the final place of agony and despair.

a tribe worthy of his succession, showy, ambitious, and malignant, followed; each with some vivid literary contribution, some powerful and popular work, a new despotic of combustion in that mighty mine on which stood in thin and fatal security the throne of france. rousseau, the most impassioned of all romancers, the great corrupter of the female mind. buffon, a lofty and splendid speculator, who dazzled the whole multitude of the minor philosophers, and fixed the creed[492] of materialism. moutesquieu, eminent for knowledge and sagacity in his "spirit of laws" striking all the establishments of his country into contempt; and in his "persian letters," levelling the same blow at her morals. d'alembert, the first mathematician of his day, an eloquent writer, the declared pupil of voltaire, and, by his secretary-ship of the french academy, furnished with all the facilities for propagating his master's opinions. and diderot, the projector and chief conductor of the encyclopedia, a work justly exciting the admiration of europe, by the novelty and magnificence of its design, and by the comprehensive and solid extent of its knowledge; but in its principles utterly evil, a condensation of all the treasons of the school of anarchy, the lex scripta of the revolution.

all those men were open infidels; and their attacks on religion, such as they saw it before them, roused the gallican church. but the warfare was totally unequal. the priesthood came armed with the antiquated and unwieldy weapons of old controversy, forgotten traditions and exhausted legends. they could have conquered them only by the bible; they fought them only with the breviary. the histories of the saints, and the wonders of images were but fresh food for the most overwhelming scorn. the bible itself, which popery has always laboured to close, was brought into the contest, and used resistlessly against the priesthood. they were contemptuously asked, in what part of the sacred volume had they found the worship of the virgin, of the saints, or of the host? where was the privilege that conferred saintship at the hands of the pope? where was the prohibition of the general use of scripture by every man who had a soul to be saved? where was the revelation of that purgatory, from which a monk and a mass could extract a sinner? where was the command to imprison, torture, and slay men for their difference of opinion with an italian priest and the college of cardinals? to those formidable questions the clerics answered by fragments from the fathers, angry harangues, and more legends of more miracles. they tried to enlist the nobles and the court in a crusade. but the nobles were already among the most zealous, though secret, converts to the encyclopedia; and the gentle spirit of the monarch was not to be urged into a civil war. the threat of force only inflamed contempt into vengeance. the populace of paris, like all mobs, licentious, restless, and fickle; but beyond all, taking an interest in public matters, had not been neglected by the deep designers who saw in the quarrel of the pen the growing quarrel of the sword. the fronde was not yet out of their minds; the barrier days of paris; the municipal council which in 1648, had levied war against the government; the mob-army which had fought, and terrified that government into forgiveness; were the strong memorials on which the anarchists of 1793 founded their seduction. the perpetual ridicule of the national belief was kept alive among them. the populace of the provinces, whose religion was in their rosary, were prepared for rebellion by similar means and the terrible and fated visitation of france began.[493]

after passing through many scenes from the recital of which the mind turns away with loathing and disgust, the reign of terror commenced. previous to this, however, there had been dreadful riots, and disorders in paris. the swiss guards had been cut to pieces, and the king and royal family imprisoned. the priests had nearly all perished or been banished from france. the national assembly was divided into desperate factions, which often turned their arms against one another. when one party triumphed, proscription followed, and the guillotine was put in requisition, and blood flowed in torrents. the grossest irreligion likewise prevailed. leaders of the atheistical mob would extend their arms to heaven and dare a god, if he existed, to vindicate his insulted majesty, and crush them with his thunderbolts. over the entrance of their grave yards was placed this inscription, "death an eternal sleep." men who dared to think differently from the dominant faction, were immediately executed, in mockery, often, of all the forms of justice. the most ferocious of the bloody factions, were the jacobins, so called from their place of meeting. the leaders of this party were danton, robespierre, and marat. they are thus described by scott in his life of napoleon.

three men of terror, whose names will long remain, we trust, unmatched in history by those of any similar miscreants, had now the unrivalled leading of the jacobins, and were called the triumvirate.

danton deserves to be named first, as unrivalled by his colleagues in talent and audacity. he was a man of gigantic size, and possessed a voice of thunder. his countenance was that of an ogre on the shoulders of a hercules. he was as fond of the pleasures of vice as of the practice of cruelty; and it was said there were times when he became humanized amidst his debauchery, laughed at the terror which his furious declamation excited, and might be approached with safety like the maelstrom at the turn of tide. his profusion was indulged to an extent hazardous to his popularity, for the populace are jealous of a lavish expenditure, as raising their favourites too much above their own degree; and the charge of peculation finds always ready credit with them, when brought against public men.

robespierre possessed this advantage over danton, that he did not seem to seek for wealth, either for hoarding or expending, but lived in strict and economical retirement, to justify the name of the incorruptible, with which he was honoured by his partisans. he appears to have possessed little talent, saving a deep fund of hypocrisy, considerable powers of sophistry, and a cold exaggerated strain of oratory, as foreign to good taste, as the measures he recommended were to ordinary humanity. it seemed wonderful, that even the seething and boiling of the revolutionary cauldron should have sent up from the bottom, and long supported on the surface, a thing so miserably void of claims to public distinction; but robespierre had to impose on the minds of the vulgar, and he knew how to beguile them, by accommodating his flattery to their passions and scale of understanding, and by acts of cunning and hypocrisy, which weigh more with the multitude[494] than the words of eloquence, or the arguments of wisdom. the people listened as to their cicero, when he twanged out his apostrophes of pauvre peuple, peuple verteueux! and hastened to execute whatever came recommended by such honied phrases, though devised by the worst of men for the worst and most inhuman of purposes.

vanity was robespierre's ruling passion, and though his countenance was the image of his mind, he was vain even of his personal appearance, and never adopted the external habits of a sans culotte. amongst his fellow jacobins he was distinguished by the nicety with which his hair was arranged and powdered; and the neatness of his dress was carefully attended to, so as to counterbalance, if possible, the vulgarity of his person. his apartments, though small, were elegant, and vanity had filled them with representations of the occupant. robespierre's picture at length hung in one place, his miniature in another, his bust occupied a niche, and on the table were disposed a few medallions exhibiting his head in profile. the vanity which all this indicated was of the coldest and most selfish character, being such as considers neglect as insult, and receives homage merely as a tribute; so that, while praise is received without gratitude, it is withheld at the risk of mortal hate. self-love of this dangerous character is closely allied with envy, and robespierre was one of the most envious and vindictive men that ever lived. he never was known to pardon any opposition, affront, or even rivalry; and to be marked in his tablets on such an account was a sure, though perhaps not an immediate sentence of death. danton was a hero, compared with this cold, calculating, creeping miscreant; for his passions, though exaggerated, had at least some touch of humanity, and his brutal ferocity was supported by brutal courage. robespierre was a coward, who signed death-warrants with a hand that shook, though his heart was relentless. he possessed no passions on which to charge his crimes; they were perpetrated in cold blood, and upon mature deliberation.

marat, the third of this infernal triumvirate, had attracted the attention of the lower orders, by the violence of his sentiments in the journal which he conducted from the commencement of the revolution, upon such principles that it took the lead in forwarding its successive changes. his political exhortations began and ended like the howl of a blood-hound for murder; or, if a wolf could have written a journal, the gaunt and famished wretch could not have ravined more eagerly for slaughter. it was blood which was marat's constant demand, not in drops from the breast of an individual, not in puny streams from the slaughter of families, but blood in the profusion of an ocean. his usual calculation of the heads which he demanded amounted to two hundred and sixty thousand; and though he sometimes raised it as high as three hundred thousand, it never fell beneath the smaller number. it may be hoped, and, for the honour of human nature, we are inclined to believe, there was a touch of insanity in this unnatural strain of ferocity; and the wild and squalid features of the wretch appear to have intimated a degree of alienation of mind.[495] marat was, like robespierre, a coward. repeatedly denounced in the assembly, he skulked instead of defending himself, and lay concealed in some obscure garret or cellar, among his cut-throats, until a storm appeared, when, like a bird of ill omen, his death-screech was again heard. such was the strange and fatal triumvirate, in which the same degree of cannibal cruelty existed under different aspects. danton murdered to glut his rage; robespierre to avenge his injured vanity, or to remove a rival whom he envied! marat, from the same instinctive love of blood, which induces a wolf to continue his ravage of the flocks long after his hunger is appeased.

these monsters ruled france for a time with the most despotic sway. the most sanguinary laws were enacted—and the most vigilant system of police maintained. spies and informers were employed—and every murmur, and every expression unfavourable to the ruling powers was followed with the sentence of death and its immediate execution.

"men," says scott, "read livy for the sake of discovering what degree of private crime might be committed under the mask of public virtue. the deed of the younger brutus, served any man as an apology to betray to ruin and to death, a friend or a patron, whose patriotism might not be of the pitch which suited the time. under the example of the elder brutus, the nearest ties of blood were repeatedly made to give way before the ferocity of party zeal—a zeal too often assumed for the most infamous and selfish purposes. as some fanatics of yore studied the old testament for the purpose of finding examples of bad actions to vindicate those which themselves were tempted to commit, so the republicans of france, we mean the desperate and outrageous bigots of the revolution, read history to justify, by classical instances, their public and private crimes. informers, those scourges of a state, were encouraged to a degree scarce known in ancient rome in the time of the emperors, though tacitus has hurled his thunders against them, as the poison and pest of his time. the duty of lodging such informations was unblushingly urged as indispensable. the safety of the republic being the supreme charge of every citizen, he was on no account to hesitate in denouncing, as it was termed, any one whomsoever, or howsoever connected with him,—the friend of his counsels, or the wife of his bosom,—providing he had reason to suspect the devoted individual of the crime of incivism,—a crime the more mysteriously dreadful, as no one knew exactly its nature."

in this place we shall give an account of some of the scenes to which france was subject during this awful period. in order to render the triumph complete, the leaders of the jacobins determined upon a general massacre of all the friends of the unfortunate louis and the constitution in the kingdom. for this purpose, suspected persons of all ranks were collected in the prisons and jails, and on the 2d of september, 1792, the work of death commenced.[496]

massacre of prisoners.

the number of individuals accumulated in the various prisons of paris had increased by the arrests and domiciliary visits subsequent to the 10th of august, to about eight thousand persons. it was the object of this infernal scheme to destroy the greater part of these under one general system of murder, not to be executed by the sudden and furious impulse of an armed multitude, but with a certain degree of cold blood and deliberate investigation. a force of armed banditti, marsellois partly, and partly chosen ruffians of the fauxbourgs, proceeded to the several prisons, into which they either forced their passage, or were admitted by the jailers, most of whom had been apprised of what was to take place, though some even of these steeled officials exerted themselves to save those under their charge. a revolutionary tribunal was formed from among the armed ruffians themselves, who examined the registers of the prison, and summoned the captives individually to undergo the form of a trial. if the judges, as was almost always the case, declared for death, their doom, to prevent the efforts of men in despair, was expressed in the words "give the prisoner freedom." the victim was then thrust out into the street, or yard; he was despatched by men and women, who, with sleeves tucked up, arms dyed elbow-deep in blood, hands holding axes, pikes, and sabres, were executioners of the sentence; and, by the manner in which they did their office on the living, and mangled the bodies of the dead, showed that they occupied the post as much from pleasure as from love of hire. they often exchanged places; the judges going out to take the executioners' duty, the executioners, with reeking hands, sitting as judges in their turn. mailard, a ruffian alleged to have distinguished himself at the siege of the bastile, but better known by his exploits on the march to versailles, presided during these brief and sanguinary investigations. his companions on the bench were persons of the same stamp. yet there were occasions when they showed some transient gleams of humanity, and it is not unimportant to remark, that boldness had more influence on them than any appeal to mercy or compassion. an avowed royalist was occasionally dismissed uninjured, while the constitutionalists were sure to be massacred. another trait of a singular nature is, that two of the ruffians who were appointed to guard one of these intended victims home in safety, as if they were acquitted, insisted on seeing his meeting with his family, seemed to share in the transports of the moment, and on taking leave, shook the hand of their late prisoner, while their own were clotted with the gore of his friends, and had been just raised to shed his own. few, indeed, and brief, were these symptoms of relenting. in general, the doom of the prisoner was death, and that doom was instantly accomplished.

in the meanwhile, the captives were penned up in their dungeons like cattle in a shambles, and in many instances might, from windows which looked outwards, mark the fate of their comrades, hear[497] their cries, and behold their struggles, and learn from the horrible scene, how they might best meet their own approaching fate. they observed, according to st. meard, who, in his well-named agony of thirty-six hours, has given the account of this fearful scene, that those who intercepted the blows of the executioners, by holding up their hands, suffered protracted torment, while those who offered no show of struggle were more easily despatched; and they encouraged each other to submit to their fate, in the manner least likely to prolong their sufferings.

many ladies, especially those belonging to the court, were thus murdered. the princess de lamballe, whose only crime seems to have been her friendship for marie antoinette, was literally hewn to pieces, and her head, and that of others, paraded on pikes through the metropolis. it was carried to the temple on that accursed weapon, the features yet beautiful in death, and the long fair curls of the hair floating around the spear. the murderers insisted that the king and queen should be compelled to come to the window to view this dreadful trophy. the municipal officers who were upon duty over the royal prisoners, had difficulty, not merely in saving them from this horrible inhumanity, but also in preventing their prison from being forced. three-coloured ribbons were extended across the street, and this frail barrier was found sufficient to intimate that the temple was under the safeguard of the nation. we do not read that the efficiency of the three-coloured ribbons was tried for the protection of any of the other prisoners. no doubt the executioners had their instructions where and when they should be respected.

the clergy, who had declined the constitutional oath from pious scruples, were, during the massacre, the peculiar objects of insult and cruelty, and their conduct was such as corresponded with their religious and conscientious professions. they were seen confessing themselves to each other, or receiving the confessions of their lay companions in misfortune, and encouraging them to undergo the evil hour, with as much calmness as if they had not been to share its bitterness. as protestants, we cannot abstractedly approve of the doctrines which render the established clergy of one country dependant upon the sovereign pontiff, the prince of an alien state. but these priests did not make the laws for which they suffered; they only obeyed them; and as men and christians we must regard them as martyrs, who preferred death to what they considered as apostacy.

in the brief intervals of this dreadful butchery, which lasted four days, the judges and executioners ate, drank, and slept: and awoke from slumber, or arose from their meal, with fresh appetite for murder. there were places arranged for the male, and for the female murderers, for the work had been incomplete without the intervention of the latter. prison after prison was invested, entered, and under the same form of proceeding made the scene of the same inhuman butchery. the jacobins had reckoned on making the massacre universal over france. but the example was not generally followed.[498] it required, as in the case of st. bartholomew, the only massacre which can be compared to this in atrocity, the excitation of a large capital, in a violent crisis, to render such horrors possible.

the community of paris were not in fault for this. they did all they could to extend the sphere of murder. their warrant brought from orleans near sixty persons, including the duke de cosse-brissac, de lesart the late minister, and other royalists of distinction, who were to have been tried before the high court of that department. a band of assassins met them, by appointment of the community, at versailles, who, uniting with their escort, murdered almost the whole of the unhappy men.

from the 2d to the 6th of september, these infernal crimes proceeded uninterrupted, protracted by the actors for the sake of the daily pay of a louis to each, openly distributed amongst them, by order of the commune. it was either from a desire to continue as long as possible a labour so well requited, or because these beings had acquired an insatiable lust of murder, that, when the jails were emptied of state criminals, the assassins attacked the bicetre, a prison where ordinary delinquents were confined. these unhappy wretches offered a degree of resistance which cost the assailants more dear than any they had experienced from their proper victims. they were obliged to fire on them with cannon, and many hundreds of the miserable creatures were in thus way exterminated, by wretches worse than themselves.

no exact account was ever made of the number of persons murdered during this dreadful period; but not above two or three hundred of the prisoners arrested for state offences were known to escape, or be discharged, and the most moderate computation raises the number of those who fell to two or three thousand, though some carry it to twice the extent. truchod announced to the legislative assembly, that four thousand had perished. some exertion was made to save the lives of those imprisoned for debt, whose numbers, with those of common felons, may make up the balance betwixt the number slain and eight thousand who were prisoners when the massacre began. the bodies were interred in heaps, in immense trenches, prepared beforehand by order of the community of paris; but their bones have since been transferred to the subterranean catacombs, which form the general charnel-house of the city. in those melancholy regions, while other relics of mortality lie exposed all around, the remains of those who perished in the massacres of september, are alone secluded from the eye. the vault in which they repose is closed with a screen of freestone, as if relating to crimes unfit to be thought of even in the proper abode of death; and which france would willingly hide in oblivion.

after this dreadful massacre, the jacobins eagerly demanded the life of louis xvi. he was accordingly tried by the convention and condemned to be beheaded.[499]

death of louis xvi. and other members of the royal family.

on the 21st of january, 1793, louis xvi. was publicly beheaded in the midst of his own metropolis, in the place louis quinze, erected to the memory of his grandfather. it is possible, for the critical eye of the historian, to discover much weakness in the conduct of this unhappy monarch; for he had neither the determination to fight for his rights, nor the power of submitting with apparent indifference to circumstances where resistance inferred danger. he submitted, indeed, but with so bad a grace, that he only made himself suspected of cowardice, without getting credit for voluntary concession. but yet his behaviour on many trying occasions effectually vindicate him from the charge of timidity, and showed that the unwillingness to shed blood, by which he was peculiarly distinguished, arose from benevolence, not from pusillanimity.

upon the scaffold, he behaved with the firmness which became a noble spirit, and the patience beseeming one who was reconciled to heaven. as one of the few marks of sympathy with which his sufferings were softened, the attendance of a confessor, who had not taken the constitutional oath, was permitted to the dethroned monarch. he who undertook the honourable but dangerous office, was a gentleman of gifted family of edgeworth of edgeworthstown; and the devoted zeal with which he rendered the last duties to louis, had like in the issue to have proved fatal to himself. as the instrument of death descended, the confessor pronounced the impressive words,—"son of saint louis, ascend to heaven!"

there was a last will of louis xvi. circulated upon good authority, bearing this remarkable passage:—"i recommend to my son, should you have the misfortune to become king, to recollect that his whole faculties are due to the service of the public; that he ought to consult the happiness of his people, by governing according to the laws, forgetting all injuries and misfortunes, and in particular those which i may have sustained. but while i exhort him to govern under the authority of the laws, i cannot but add, that this will be only in his power, in so far as he shall be endowed with authority to cause right to be respected, and wrong punished; and that without such authority, his situation in the government must be more hurtful than advantageous to the state."

not to mingle the fate of the illustrious victim of the royal family with the general tale of the sufferers under the reign of terror, we must here mention the deaths of the rest of that illustrious house, which closed for a time a monarchy, that existing through three dynasties, had given sixty-six kings to france.

it was not to be supposed, that the queen was to be long permitted to survive her husband. she had been even more than he the object of revolutionary detestation; nay, many were disposed to throw on marie antoinette, almost exclusively, the blame of those measures which they considered as counter-revolutionary.[500]

the terms of her accusation were too basely depraved to be even hinted at here. she scorned to reply to it, but appealed to all who had been mothers, against the very possibility of the horrors which were stated against her. the widow of a king, the sister of an emperor, was condemned to death, dragged in an open tumbril to the place of execution, and beheaded on the 16th october, 1793. she suffered death in her 39th year.

the princess elizabeth, sister of louis, of whom it might he said, in the words of lord clarendon, that she resembled a chapel in a king's palace, into which nothing but piety and morality enter, while all around is filled with sin, idleness, and folly, did not, by the most harmless demeanour and inoffensive character, escape the miserable fate in which the jacobins had determined to involve the whole family of louis xvi. part of the accusation redounded to the honour of her character. she was accused of having admitted to the apartments of the tuilleries some of the national guards, of the section of filles de saint thomas, and causing the wounds to be looked to which they had received in a skirmish with the marsellois, immediately before the 10th of august. the princess admitted her having done so, and it was exactly in consistence with her whole conduct. another charge stated the ridiculous accusation, that she had distributed bullets chewed by herself and her attendants, to render then more fatal, to the defenders of the castle of the tuilleries; a ridiculous fable, of which there was no proof whatever. she was beheaded in may, 1794, and met her death as became the manner in which her life had been spent.

we are weary of recounting these atrocities, as others must be of reading them. yet it is not useless that men should see how far human nature can be carried, in contradiction to every feeling the most sacred, to every pleading, whether of justice or of humanity. the dauphin we have already described as a promising child of seven years old, an age at which no offence could have been given, and from which no danger could have been apprehended. nevertheless, it was resolved to destroy the innocent child, and by means to which ordinary murders seem deeds of mercy.

the unhappy boy was put in charge of the most hard-hearted villain whom the community of paris, well acquainted where such agents were to be found, were able to select from their band of jacobins. this wretch, a shoemaker called simon, asked his employers, "what was to be done with the young wolf-whelp; was he to be slain?"—"no?"—"poisoned?"—"no."—"starved to death?"—"no." "what then?"—"he was to be got rid of." accordingly, by a continuance of the most severe treatment—by beating, cold, vigils, fasts, and ill usage of every kind, so frail a blossom was soon blighted. he died on the 8th june, 1795.

after this last horrible crime, there was a relaxation in favour of the daughter, and now the sole child of this unhappy house. the princess royal, whose qualities have honoured even her birth and blood, experienced[501] from this period a mitigated captivity. finally, on the 19th december, 1795, this last remaining relic of the family of louis, was permitted to leave her prison and her country, in exchange for la fayette and others, whom, on that condition, austria delivered from captivity. she became afterwards the wife of her cousin, the duke d'angouleme, eldest son of the reigning monarch of france, and obtained, by the manner in which she conducted herself at bourdeaux in 1815, the highest praise for gallantry and spirit.

dreadful scenes in la vendée.

in la vendée, one of the departments of france, an insurrection broke out against the jacobinical government, in 1793.

upwards of two hundred battles and skirmishes were fought in this devoted country. the revolutionary fever was in its access; the shedding of blood seemed to have become positive pleasure to the perpetrators of slaughter, and was varied by each invention which cruelty could invent to give it new zest. the habitations of the vendeans were destroyed, their families subjected to violation and massacre, their cattle houghed and slaughtered, and their crops burnt and wasted. one republican column assumed and merited the name of the infernal, by the horrid atrocities which they committed. at pilau, they roasted the women and children in a heated oven. many similar horrors could be added, did not the heart and hand recoil from the task. without quoting any more special instances of horror, we use the words of a republican eye witness, to express the general spectacle presented by the theatre of public conflict.

"i did not see a single male being at the towns of st. hermand, chantonnay, or herbiers. a few women alone had escaped the sword. country-seats, cottages, habitations of whichever kind, were burnt. the herds and flocks were wandering in terror around their usual places of shelter, now smoking in ruins. i was surprised by night, but the wavering and dismal blaze of conflagration afforded light over the country. to the bleating of the terrified flocks, and bellowing of the terrified cattle, was joined the deep hoarse notes of carrion crows, and the yells of wild animals coming from the recesses of the woods to prey upon the carcasses of the slain. at length a distant colume of fire, widening and increasing as i approached, served me as a beacon. it was the town of mortagne in flames. when i arrived there, no living creatures were to be seen, save a few wretched women who were striving to save some remnants of their property from the general conflagration."—les memoires d'un ancien administrateur des armees republicaines.

scenes at marseilles and lyons.

marseilles, toulon, and lyons, had declared themselves against the jacobin supremacy. rich from commerce and their maratime situation,[502] and, in the case of lyons, from their command of internal navigation, the wealthy merchants and manufacturers of those cities foresaw the total insecurity of property, and in consequence of their own ruin, in the system of arbitrary spoliation and murder upon which the government of the jacobins was founded. but property, for which they were solicitous, though, if its natural force is used in time, the most powerful barrier to withstand revolution, becomes, after a certain period of delay, its helpless victim. if the rich are in due season liberal of their means, they have the power of enlisting in their cause, and as adherents, those among the lower orders, who, if they see their superiors dejected and despairing, will be tempted to consider them as objects of plunder. but this must be done early, or those who might be made the most active defenders of property, will join with such as are prepared to make a prey of it.

marseilles showed at once her good will and her impotency of means. the utmost exertions of that wealthy city, whose revolutionary band had contributed so much to the downfall of the monarchy in the attack on the tuilleries, were able to equip only a small and doubtful army of about 3000 men, who were despatched to the relief of lyons. this inconsiderable army threw themselves into avignon, and were defeated with the utmost ease, by the republican general cartaux, despicable as a military officer, and whose forces would not have stood a single engaillement of vendean sharp-shooters. marseilles received the victors, and bowed her head to the subsequent horrors which it pleased cartaux, with two formidable jacobins, barras and ferron, to inflict on that flourishing city. the place underwent the usual terrors of jacobin purifaction, and was for a time affectedly called "nameless commune."

lyons made a more honourable stand. that noble city had been subjected for some time to the domination of chalier, one of the most ferocious, and at the same time one of the most extravagantly absurd, of the jacobins. he was at the head of a formidable club, which was worthy of being affiliated with the mother society, and ambitious of treading in its footsteps; and he was supported by a garrison of two revolutionary regiments, besides a numerous artillery, and a large addition of volunteers, amounting in all to about ten thousand men, forming what was called a revolutionary army. this chalier, was an apostate priest, an atheist, and a thorough-paced pupil in the school of terror. he had been procureur of the community, and had imposed on the wealthy citizens a tax, which was raised from six to thirty millions of livres. but blood as well as gold was his object. the massacre of a few priests and aristocrats confined in the fortress of pierre-scixe, was a pitiful sacrifice; and chalier, ambitious of deeds more decisive, caused a general arrest of an hundred principal citizens, whom he destined as a hecatomb more worthy of the demon whom he served.

this sacrifice was prevented by the courage of the lyonnois; a courage which, if assumed by the parisians, might have prevented[503] most of the horrors which disgraced the revolution. the meditated slaughter was already announced by chalier to the jacobin club. "three hundred heads," he said, "are marked for slaughter. let us lose no time in seizing the members of the departmental office-bearers, the presidents and secretaries of the sections, all the local authorities who obstruct our revolutionary measures. let us make one fagot of the whole, and deliver them at once to the guillotine."

but ere he could execute his threat, terror was awakened into the courage of despair. the citizens rose in arms and besieged the hotel de ville, in which chalier, with his revolutionary troops, made a desperate, and for some time a successful, yet ultimately a vain defence. but the lyonnois unhappily knew not how to avail themselves of their triumph. they were not sufficiently aware of the nature of the vengeance which they had provoked, or of the necessity of supporting the bold step which they had taken, by measures which precluded a compromise. their resistance to the violence and atrocity of the jacobins had no political character, any more than that offered by the traveller against robbers who threaten him with plunder and murder. they were not sufficiently aware, that, having done so much, they must necessarily do more. they ought, by declaring themselves royalists, to have endeavoured to prevail on the troops of savoy, if not on the swiss, (who had embraced a species of neutrality, which, after the 10th of august, was dishonourable to their ancient reputation,) to send in all haste, soldiery to the assistance of a city which had no fortifications or regular troops to defend it; but which possessed, nevertheless, treasures to pay their auxiliaries, and strong hands and able officers to avail themselves of the localities of their situation, which, when well defended, are sometimes as formidable as the regular protection erected by scientific engineers.

the people of lyons vainly endeavoured to establish a revolutionary character for themselves upon the system of gironde; two of whose proscribed deputies tried to draw them over to their unpopular and hopeless cause: and they inconsistently sought protection by affecting a republican zeal, even while resisting the decrees, and defeating the troops of the jacobins. there were undoubtedly many of royalist principles among the insurgents, and some of their leaders were decidedly such; but these were not numerous or influential enough to establish the true principle of open resistance, and the ultimate chance of rescue, by a bold proclamation of the king's interest. they still appealed to the convention as their legitimate sovereign, in whose eyes they endeavoured to vindicate themselves, and at the same time tried to secure the interest of two jacobin deputies, who had countenanced every violation attempted by chalier, that they might prevail upon them to represent their conduct favourably. of course they had enough of promises to this effect, while messrs. guathier and nioche, the deputies in question, remained in their power; promises, doubtless the more readily given, that the lyonnois, though desirous to conciliate the favour of the convention, did not hesitate in proceeding to the punishment of the jacobin[504] chalier. he was condemned and executed, along with one of his principal associates, termed reard.

to defend these vigourous proceedings, the unhappy insurgents placed themselves under the interim government of a council, who, still desirous to temporize and maintain the revolutionary character, termed themselves "the popular and republican commission of public safety of the department of the rhine and loire;" a title which, while it excited no popular enthusiasm, and attracted no foreign aid, no ways soothed, but rather exasperated, the resentment of the convention, now under the absolute domination of the jacobins, by whom every thing short of complete fraternization was accounted presumptuous defiance. those who were not with them, it was their policy to hold as their most decided enemies.

the lyonnois had indeed letters of encouragement, and promised concurrence, from several departments; but no effectual support was ever directed to their city, excepting the petty reinforcement from marseilles, which we have seen was intercepted and dispersed with little trouble by the jacobin general, cartaux.

lyons had expected to become the patroness and focus of an anti-jacobin league, formed by the great commercial towns, against paris and the predominant part of the convention. she found herself isolated and unsupported, and left to oppose her own proper forces and means of defence, to an army of sixty thousand men, and to the numerous jacobins contained within her own walls. about the end of july, after a lapse of an interval of two months, a regular blockade was formed around the city, and in the first week of august, hostilities took place. the besieging army was directed in its military character by general kellerman, who, with other distinguished soldiers, had now began to hold an eminent rank in the republican armies. but for the purpose of executing the vengeance for which they thirsted, the jacobins relied chiefly on the exertions of the deputies they had sent along with the commander, and especially of the representative, dubois crance, a man whose sole merit appears to have been his frantic jacobinism. general percy, formerly an officer in the royal service, undertook the almost hopeless task of defence, and by forming redoubts on the most commanding situations around the town, commenced a resistance against the immensely superior force of the besiegers, which was honourable if it could have been useful. the lyonnois, at the same time, still endeavoured to make fair weather with the besieging army, by representing themselves as firm republicans. they celebrated as a public festival the anniversary of the 10th of august, while dubois crance, to show the credit he gave them for their republican zeal, fixed the same day for commencing his fire on the place, and caused the first gun to be discharged by his own concubine, a female born in lyons. bombs and red-hot bullets were next resorted to, against the second city of the french empire; while the besieged sustained the attack with a constancy, and on many parts repelled it with a courage highly honourable to their character.[505] but their fate was determined. the deputies announced to the convention their purpose of pouring their instruments of havoc on every quarter of the town at once, and when it was on fire in several places, to attempt a general storm. "the city," they said, "must surrender, or there shall not remain one stone upon another, and this we hope to accomplish in spite of the suggestions of false compassion. do not then be surprised when you hear that lyons exists no longer." the fury of the attack threatened to make good these promises.

the sufferings of the citizens became intolerable. several quarters of the city were on fire at the same time, immense magazines were burnt to the ground, and a loss incurred, during two night's bombardment, which was calculated at two hundred millions of livres. a black flag was hoisted by the besieged on the great hospital, as a sign that the fire of the assailants should not be directed on that asylum of hopeless misery. the signal seemed only to draw the republican bombs to the spot where they could create the most frightful distresses, and outrage in the highest degree the feelings of humanity. the devastations of famine were soon added to those of slaughter; and after two months of such horrors had been sustained, it became obvious that farther resistance was impossible.

the parylitic couthon, with collot d'herbois, and other deputies were sent to lyons by the committee of public safety, to execute the vengeance which the jacobins demanded; while dubois crance was recalled, for having put, it was thought, less energy to his proceedings than the prosecution of the siege required. collot d'herbois had a personal motive of a singular nature for delighting in the task intrusted to him and his colleagues. in his capacity of a play-actor, he had been hissed from the stage at lyons, and the door to revenge was now open. the instructions of this committee enjoined them to take the most satisfactory revenge for the death of chalier and the insurrection of lyons, not merely on the citizens, but on the town itself. the principal streets and buildings were to be levelled with the ground, and a monument erected where they stood, was to record the cause:—"lyons rebelled against the republic—lyons is no more." such fragments of the town as might be permitted to remain, were to bear the name of ville affranchie. it will scarce be believed that a doom like that which might have passed the lips of some eastern despot, in all the frantic madness of arbitrary power and utter ignorance, could have been seriously pronounced, and as seriously enforced, in one of the most civilized nations in europe; and that to the present enlightened age, men who pretended to wisdom and philosophy, should have considered the labours of the architect as a proper subject of punishment. so it was, however; and to give the demolition more effect, the impotent couthon was carried from house to house, devoting each to ruin, by striking the door with a silver hammer, and pronouncing these words—"house of a rebel. i condemn thee in the name of the law." workmen followed in[506] great multitudes, who executed the sentence by pulling the house down to the foundations. this wanton demolition continued for six months, and is said to have been carried on at an expense equal to that which the superb military hospital, the hotel des invalides, cost its founder, louis xiv. but republican vengeance did not waste itself exclusively upon senseless lime and stone—it sought out sentient victims.

the deserved death of chalier had been atoned by an apotheosis executed after lyons had surrendered; but collot d'herbois declared that every drop of that patriotic blood fell as if scalding his own heart, and that the murder demanded atonement. all ordinary process, and every usual mode of execution, was thought too tardy to avenge the death of a jacobin proconsul. the judges of the revolutionary commission were worn out with fatigue—the arm of the executioner was weary—the very steel of the guillotine was blunted. collot d'herbois devised a more summary mode of slaughter. a number of from two to three hundred victims at once were dragged from prison to the place de baotteaux, one of the largest squares in lyons, and there subjected to a fire of grape-shot. efficacious as this mode of execution may seem, it was neither speedy nor merciful. the sufferers fell to the ground like singed flies, mutilated but not slain, and imploring their executioners to despatch them speedily. this was done with sabres and bayonets, and with such haste and zeal, that some of the jailers and assistants were slain along with those whom they had assisted in dragging to death; and the mistake was not discerned, until, upon counting the dead bodies, the military murderers found them to amount to more than the destined tale. the bodies of the dead were thrown into the rhone, to carry news of the republican vengeance, as collot d'herbois expressed himself, to toulon, then also in a state of revolt. but the sullen stream rejected the office imposed on it, and headed back the dead in heaps upon the banks; and the committee of representatives was compelled at length to allow the relics of their cruelty to be interred, to prevent the risk of contagion.

the installation of the goddess of reason.

at length the zeal of the infuriated atheists in france hurried them to the perpetration of one of the most ridiculous, and at the same time impious transactions which ever disgraced the annals of any nation. it was no less than a formal renunciation of the existence of a supreme being, and the installation of the goddess of reason, in 1793.

"there is," says scott, "a fanaticism of atheism, as well as of superstitious belief; and a philosopher can harbour and express as much malice against those who persevere in believing what he is pleased to denounce as unworthy of credence, as an ignorant and bigoted priest can bear against a man who cannot yield faith to dogmata which he thinks insufficiently proved." accordingly, the throne being[507] totally annihilated, it appeared to the philosophers of the school of hebert, (who was author of the most gross and beastly periodical paper of the time, called the pere du chene) that in totally destroying such vestiges of religion and public worship as were still retained by the people of france, there was room for a splendid triumph of liberal opinions. it was not enough, they said, for a regenerate nation to have dethroned earthly kings, unless she stretched out the arm of defiance towards those powers which superstition had represented as reigning over boundless space.

an unhappy man, named gobet, constitutional bishop of paris, was brought forward to play the principal part in the most impudent and scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national representation.

it is said that the leaders of the scene had some difficulty in inducing the bishop to comply with the task assigned him, which, after all, he executed, not without present tears and subsequent remorse. but he did play the part prescribed. he was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the convention, that the religion which he had taught so many years, was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred truth. he disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of the deity to whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. he then laid on the table his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the president of the convention. several apostate priests followed the example of this prelate.

the gold and silver plate of the churches was seized upon and desecrated, processions entered the convention, travestied in priestly garments, and singing the most profane hymns; while many of the chalices and sacred vessels were applied by chaumette and hebert to the celebration of their own impious orgies. the world for the first time, heard an assembly of men, born and educated in civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the european nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man's soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of a deity. for a short time the same mad profanity continued to be acted upon.

one of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivalled for absurdity, combined with impiety. the doors of the convention were thrown open to a band of musicians; preceded by whom, the members of the municipal body entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future worship, a veiled female, whom they termed the goddess of reason. being brought within the bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed on the right hand of the president; when she was generally recognized as a dancing-girl of the opera, with whose charms most of the persons present were acquainted from her appearance on the stage, while the experience of individuals was farther extended. to this person, as the[508] fittest representative of that reason whom they worshipped the national convention of france rendered public homage.

this impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fashion; and the installation of the goddess of reason was renewed and imitated throughout the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to show themselves equal to all the heights of the revolution. the churches were, in most districts of france, closed against priests and worshippers—the bells were broken and cast into cannon—the whole ecclesiastical establishment destroyed—and the republican inscription over the cemeteries, declaring death to be perpetual sleep, announced to those who lived under that dominion, that they were to hope no redress even in the next world.

intimately connected with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of marriage, the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society, to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might engage in, and cast loose at pleasure, when their taste was changed, or their appetite gratified. if fiends had set themselves to work, to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the degradation of marriage into a state of mere occasional co-habitation, or licensed concubinage. sophie arnoult, an actress famous for the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as the sacrament of adultery.

fall of danton, robespierre, marat and other jacobins.

these monsters fell victims by the same means they had used for the destruction of others. marat was poignarded in 1793, by charlotte corday, a young female, who had cherished in a feeling between lunacy and heroism, the ambition of ridding the world of a tyrant. danton was guillotined in 1794. robespierre followed soon after. his fall is thus described by scott in his life of napoleon.

at length his fate urged him on to the encounter. robespierre descended to the convention, where he had of late but rarely appeared, like the far nobler dictator of rome; and in his case also, a band of senators was ready to poignard the tyrant on the spot, had they not been afraid of the popularity he was supposed to enjoy, and which they feared might render them instant victims to the revenge of the jacobins. the speech which robespierre addressed to the convention was as menacing as the first distant rustle of the hurricane, and dark and lurid as the eclipse which announces its approach. anxious murmurs had been heard among the populace who filled the tribunes, or crowded the entrances of the hall of the convention, indicating that a second 31st of may (being the day on which the jacobins[509] proscribed the girondists) was about to witness a similar operation.

the first theme of the gloomy orator was the display of his own virtues and his services as a patriot, distinguishing as enemies to their country all whose opinions were contrary to his own. he then reviewed successively the various departments of the government, and loaded them in turn with censure and contempt. he declaimed against the supineness of the committees of public safety and public security, as if the guillotine had never been in exercise; and he accused the committee of finance of having counter-revolutionized the revenues of the republic. he enlarged with no less bitterness on withdrawing the artillery-men (always violent jacobins) from paris, and on the mode of management adopted in the conquered countries of belgium. it seemed as if he wished to collect within the same lists all the functionaries of the state, and in the same breath to utter defiance to them all.

the usual honorary motion was made to print the discourse; but then the storm of opposition broke forth, and many speakers vociferously demanded, that before so far adopting the grave inculpations which it contained, the discourse should be referred to the two committees. robespierre in his turn, exclaimed, that this was subjecting his speech to the partial criticism and revision of the very parties whom he had accused. exculpations and defences were heard on all sides against the charges which had been thus sweepingly brought forward; and there were many deputies who complained in no obscure terms of individual tyranny, and of a conspiracy on foot to outlaw and murder such part of the convention as might be disposed to offer resistance. robespierre was but feebly supported, save by saint just, couthon, and by his own brother. after a stormy debate, in which the convention were alternately swayed by their fear and their hatred of robespierre, the discourse was finally referred to the committees, instead of being printed; and the haughty and sullen dictator saw in the open slight, thus put on his measures and opinions, the sure mark of his approaching fall.

he carried his complaints to the jacobin club, to repose, as he expressed it, his patriotic sorrows in their virtuous bosoms, where alone he hoped to find succour and sympathy. to this partial audience he renewed, in a tone of yet greater audacity, the complaints with which he had loaded every branch of the government, and the representative body itself. he reminded those around him of various heroic eras, when their presence and their pikes had decided the votes of the trembling deputies. he reminded them of their pristine actions of revolutionary vigour—asked them if they had forgot the road to the convention, and concluded by pathetically assuring them, that if they forsook him, "he stood resigned to his fate; and they should behold with what courage he would drink the fatal hemlock." the artist david, caught him by the hand as he closed, exclaiming, in rapture at his elocution, "i will drink it with thee."

the distinguished painter has been reproached, as having, on the subsequent day, declined the pledge which he seemed so eagerly to embrace.[510] but there were many of his original opinion, at the time he expressed it so boldly; and had robespierre possessed either military talents, or even decided courage, there was nothing to have prevented him from placing himself that very night at the head of a desperate insurrection of the jacobins and their followers.

payan, the successor of hebert, actually proposed that the jacobins should instantly march against the two committees, which robespierre charged with being the focus of the anti-revolutionary machinations, surprise their handful of guards, and stifle the evil with which the state was menaced, even in the very cradle. this plan was deemed too hazardous to be adopted, although it was one of those sudden and master strokes of policy which machiavel would have recommended. the fire of the jacobins spent itself in tumult, and threatening, and in expelling from the bosom of their society collot d'herbois, tallien, and about thirty other deputies of the mountain party, whom they considered as specially leagued to effect the downfall of robespierre, and whom they drove from their society with execration and even blows.

collot d'herbois, thus outraged, went straight from the meeting of the jacobins to the place where the committee of public safety was still sitting, in consultation on the report which they had to make to the convention the next day upon the speech of robespierre. saint just, one of their number, though warmly attached to the dictator, had been intrusted by the committee with the delicate task of drawing up that report. it was a step towards reconciliation; but the entrance of collot d'herbois, frantic with the insults he had received, broke off all hope of accommodation betwixt the friends of danton and those of robespierre. d'herbois exhausted himself in threats against saint just, couthon, and their master, robespierre, and they parted on terms of mortal and avowed enmity. every exertion now was used by the associated conspirators against the power of robespierre, to collect and combine against him the whole forces of the convention, to alarm the deputies of the plain with fears for themselves, and to awaken the rage of the mountaineers, against whose throat the dictator now waved the sword, which their short sighted policy had placed in his hands. lists of proscribed deputies were handed around, said to have been copied from the tablets of the dictator; genuine or false, they obtained universal credit and currency; and these whose names stood on the fatal scrolls, engaged themselves for protection in the league against their enemy. the opinion that his fall could not be delayed now became general.

this sentiment was so commonly entertained in paris on the 9th thermidor, or 27th july, that a herd of about eighty victims, who were in the act of being dragged to the guillotine, were nearly saved by means of it. the people, in a generous burst of compassion, began to gather in crowds, and interrupted the melancholy procession, as if the power which presided over these hideous exhibitions had already been deprived of energy. but the hour was not come. the vile henriot, commandant of the national guards, came up with fresh forces[511] also on the day destined to be the last of his own life, proved the means of carrying to execution this crowd of unhappy and doubtless innocent persons.

on this eventful day, robespierre arrived in the convention, and beheld the mountain in close array and completely manned, while, as in the case of catiline, the bench on which he himself was accustomed to sit, seemed purposely deserted. saint just, couthon, le bas (his brother-in-law,) and the younger robespierre, were the only deputies of name who stood prepared to support him. but could he make an effectual struggle, he might depend upon the aid of the servile barrere, a sort of belial in the convention, the meanest, yet not the least able, amongst those fallen spirits, who, with great adroitness and ingenuity, as well as wit and eloquence, caught opportunities as they arose, and was eminently dexterous in being always strong upon the strongest, and safe upon the safest side. there was a tolerably numerous party ready, in times so dangerous, to attach themselves to barrere, as a leader who professed to guide them to safety if not to honour; and it was the existence of this vacillating and uncertain body, whose ultimate motions could never be calculated upon, which rendered it impossible to presage with assurance the event of any debate in the convention during this dangerous period.

saint just arose, in the name of the committee of public safety, to make, after his own manner, not theirs, a report on the discourse of robespierre on the previous evening. he had begun a harangue in the tone of his patron, declaring that, were the tribune which he occupied the tarpeian rock itself, he would not the less, placed as he stood there, discharge the duties of a patriot. "i am about," he said, "to lift the veil."—"i tear it asunder," said tallien, interrupting him. "the public interest is sacrificed by individuals, who come hither exclusively in their own name, and conduct themselves as superior to the whole convention." he forced saint just from the tribune, and a violent debate ensued.

billaud varennes called the attention of the assembly to the sitting of the jacobin club on the preceding evening. he declared the military force of paris was placed under the command of henriot, a traitor and a parricide, who was ready to march the soldiers whom he commanded, against the convention. he denounced robespierre himself as a second catiline, artful as well as ambitious, whose system it had been to nurse jealousies and inflame dissentions in the convention, so as to disunite parties, and even individuals from each other, attack them in detail, and thus destroy those antagonists separately, upon whose combined and united strength he dared not have looked.

the convention echoed with applause every violent expression of the orator, and when robespierre sprung to the tribune, his voice was drowned by a general shout of "down with the tyrant!" tallien moved the denunciation of robespierre, with the arrest of henriot, his staff-officers, and of others connected with the meditated violence on the convention. he had undertaken to lead the attack upon the tyrant[512] he said, and to poignard him in the convention itself, if the members did not show courage enough to enforce the law against him. with these words he brandished an unsheathed poignard, as if about to make his purpose good. robespierre still struggled hard to obtain audience, but the tribune was adjudged to barrere; and the part taken against the fallen dictator by that versatile and self-interested statesman, was the most absolute sign that his overthrow was irrecoverable. torrents of invective were now uttered from every quarter of the hall, against him whose single word was wont to hush it into silence.

this scene was dreadful; yet not without its use to those who may be disposed to look at it as an extraordinary crisis, in which human passions were brought so singularly into collision. while the vaults of the hall echoed with exclamations from those who had hitherto been the accomplices, the flatterers, the followers, at least the timid and overawed assentors to the dethroned demagogue—he himself, breathless, foaming, exhausted, like the hunter of classical antiquity when on the point of being overpowered and torn to pieces by his own hounds, tried in vain to raise those screech-owl notes, by which the convention had formerly been terrified and put to silence. he appealed for a hearing from the president of the assembly, to the various parties of which it was composed. rejected by the mountaineers, his former associates, who now headed the clamour against him, he applied to the girondists, few and feeble as they were, and to the more numerous but equally helpless deputies of the plain, with whom they sheltered. the former shook him from them with disgust, the last with horror. it was in vain he reminded individuals that he had spared their lives, while at his mercy. this might have been applied to every member in the house; to every man in france; for who was it during two years that had lived on other terms than under robespierre's permission? and deeply must he internally have regretted the clemency, as he might term it, which had left so many with ungashed throats to bay at him. but his agitated and repeated appeals were repulsed by some with indignation, by others with sullen, or embarrassed and timid silence.

a british historian might say, that even robespierre ought to have been heard in his defence; and that such calmness would have done honour to the convention, and dignified their final sentence of condemnation. as it was, they no doubt treated the guilty individual according to his deserts: but they fell short of that regularity and manly staidness of conduct which was due to themselves and to the law, and which would have given to the punishment of the demagogue the effect and weight of a solemn and deliberate sentence, in place of its seeming the result of the hasty and precipitate seizure of a temporary advantage.

haste was, however, necessary, and must have appeared more so at such a crisis, than perhaps it really was. much must be pardoned to the terrors of the moment, the horrid character of the culprit, and the necessity of hurrying to a decisive conclusion. we have been told that his last audible words, contending against the exclamations of hundreds, and the bell which the president was ringing incessantly,[513] had uttered in the highest tones which despair could give to a voice naturally shrill and discordant, dwelt long on the memory, and haunted the dreams of many who heard him:—"president of assassins," he screamed, "for the last time i demand privilege of speech!" after this exertion, his breath became short and faint; and while he still uttered broken murmurs and hoarse ejaculations, the members of the mountain called out, that the blood of danton choked his voice.

the tumult was closed by a decree of arrest against robespierre, his brother, couthon, and saint just; le bas was included on his own motion, and indeed could scarce have escaped the fate of his brother-in-law, though his conduct then, and subsequently, showed more energy than that of the others. couthon hugging in his bosom the spaniel upon which he was wont to exhaust the overflowing of his affected sensibility, appealed to his decrepitude, and asked whether, maimed of proportion and activity as he was, he could be suspected of nourishing plans of violence or ambition. "wretch," said legendre, "thou hast the strength of hercules for the perpetration of crime." dumas, president of the revolutionary tribunal, with henriot, commandant of the national guards, and other satellites of robespierre, were included in the doom of arrest.

the convention had declared their sitting permanent, and had taken all precautions for appealing for protection to the large mass of citizens, who, wearied out by the reign of terror, were desirous to close it at all hazards. they quickly had deputations from several of the neighbouring sections, declaring their adherence to the national representatives, in whose defence they were arming, and (many undoubtedly prepared beforehand) were marching in all haste to the protection of the convention. but they heard also the less pleasing tidings, that henriot, having effected the dispersion of those citizens who had obstructed, as elsewhere mentioned, the execution of the eighty condemned persons, and consummated that final act of murder, was approaching the tuilleries, where they had held their sitting, with a numerous staff, and such of the jacobinical forces as could hastily be collected.

happily for the convention, this commandant of the national guards, on whose presence of mind and courage the fate of france perhaps for the moment depended, was as stupid and cowardly as he was brutally ferocious. he suffered himself without resistance, to be arrested by a few gens d'armes, the immediate guards of the convention, headed by two of its members, who behaved in the emergency with equal prudence and spirit.

but fortune, or the demon whom he had served, afforded robespierre another chance for safety, perhaps even for empire; for moments which a man of self-possession might have employed for escape, one of desperate courage might have used for victory, which, considering the divided and extremely unsettled state of the capital, was likely to be gained by the boldest competitor.

the arrested deputies had been carried from one prison to another, all the jailers refusing to receive under their official charge robespierre,[514] and those who had aided him in supplying their dark habitations with such a tide of successive inhabitants. at length the prisoners were secured in the office of the committee of public safety. but by this time all was in alarm amongst the commune of paris, where fleuriot the mayor, and payan the successor of hebert, convoked the civic body, despatched municipal officers to raise the city and the fauxbourgs in their name, and caused the tocsin to be rung. payan speedily assembled a force sufficient to liberate henriot, robespierre, and the other arrested deputies, and to carry them to the hotel de ville, where about two thousand men were congregated, consisting chiefly of artillerymen, and of insurgents from the suburb of saint antoine, who already expressed their resolution of marching against the convention. but the selfish and cowardly character of robespierre was unfit for such a crisis. he appeared altogether confounded and overwhelmed with what had passed and was passing around him; and not one of all the victims of the reign of terror felt its disabling influence so completely as he, the despot who had so long directed its sway. he had not, even though the means must have been in his power, the presence of mind to disperse money in considerable sums, which of itself would not have failed to insure the support of the revolutionary rabble.

meantime the convention continued to maintain the bold and commanding front which they had so suddenly and critically assumed. upon learning the escape of the arrested deputies, and hearing of the insurrection at the hotel de ville, they instantly passed a decree outlawing robespierre and his associates, inflicting a similar doom upon the mayor of paris, the procureur, and other members of the commune, and charging twelve of their members, the boldest that could be selected, to proceed with the armed force to the execution of the sentence. the drums of the national guards now beat to arms in all the sections under authority of the convention, while the tocsin continued to summon assistance with its iron voice to robespierre and the civic magistrates. every thing appeared to threaten a violent catastrophe, until it was seen clearly that the public voice, and especially amongst the national guards, was declaring itself generally against the terrorists.

the hotel de ville was surrounded by about fifteen hundred men, and cannon turned upon the doors. the force of the assailants was weakest in point of number, but their leaders were men of spirit, and night concealed their inferiority of force.

the deputies commissioned for the purpose read the decree of the assembly to those whom they found assembled in front of the city hall, and they shrunk from the attempt of defending it, some joining the assailants, others laying down their arms and dispersing. meantime the deserted group of terrorists within conducted themselves like scorpions, which, when surrounded by a circle of fire, are said to turn their stings on each other, and on themselves. mutual and ferocious upbraiding took place among these miserable men. "wretch, were these the means you promised to furnish?" said payan to henriot, whom he found[515] intoxicated and incapable of resolution or exertion; and seizing on him as he spoke, he precipitated the revolutionary general from a window. henriot survived the fall only to drag himself into a drain, in which he was afterwards discovered and brought out to execution. the younger robespierre threw himself from the window, but had not the good fortune to perish on the spot. it seemed as if even the melancholy fate of suicide, the last refuge of guilt and despair, was denied to men who had so long refused every species of mercy to their fellow-creatures. le bas alone had calmness enough to despatch himself with a pistol shot. saint just, after imploring his comrades to kill him, attempted his own life with an irresolute hand, and failed. couthon lay beneath the table brandishing a knife, with which he repeatedly wounded his bosom, without daring to add force enough to reach his heart. their chief, robespierre, in an unsuccessful attempt to shoot himself, had only inflicted a horrible fracture on his under-jaw.

in this situation they were found like wolves in their lair, foul with blood, mutilated, despairing, and yet not able to die. robespierre lay on a table in an anti-room, his head supported by a deal box, and his hideous countenance half hidden by a bloody and dirty cloth bound round the shattered chin.

the captives were carried in triumph to the convention, who, without admitting them to the bar, ordered them, as outlaws, for instant execution. as the fatal cars passed to the guillotine, those who filled them, but especially robespierre, were overwhelmed with execrations from the friends and relatives of victims whom he had sent on the same melancholy road. the nature of his previous wound, from which the cloth had never been removed till the executioner tore it off, added to the torture of the sufferer. the shattered jaw dropped, and the wretch yelled aloud to the horror of the spectators. a masque taken from that dreadful head was long exhibited in different nations of europe, and appalled the spectator by its ugliness, and the mixture of fiendish expression with that of bodily agony.

thus fell maximilian robespierre, after having been the first person in the french republic for nearly two years, during which time he governed it upon the principles of nero or caligula. his elevation to the situation which he held, involved more contradictions than perhaps attach to any similar event in history. a low-born and low-minded tyrant was permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful despotism a people, whose anxiety for liberty had shortly before rendered them unable to endure the rule of a humane and lawful sovereign. a dastardly coward arose to the command of one of the bravest nations in the world; and it was under the auspices of a man who dared scarce fire a pistol, that the greatest generals in france began their careers of conquest. he had neither eloquence nor imagination; but substituted in their stead a miserable, affected, bombastic style, which, until other circumstances gave him consequence, drew on him general ridicule. yet against so poor an orator, all the eloquence of the philosophical girondists, all the terrible powers of his associate danton, employed[516] in a popular assembly, could not enable them to make an effectual resistance. it may seem trifling to mention, that in a nation where a good deal of prepossession is excited by amiable manners and beauty of external appearance, the person who ascended to the highest power was not only ill-looking, but singularly mean in person, awkward and constrained in his address, ignorant how to set about pleasing even when he most desired to give pleasure, and as tiresome nearly as he was odious and heartless.

to compensate all these deficiencies, robespierre had but an insatiable ambition, founded on a vanity which made him think himself capable of filling the highest situation; and therefore gave him daring, when to dare is frequently to achieve. he mixed a false and overstrained, but rather fluent species of bombastic composition, with the grossest flattery to the lowest classes of the people; in consideration of which, they could not but receive as genuine the praises which he always bestowed on himself. his prudent resolution to be satisfied with possessing the essence of power, without seeming to desire its rank and trappings, formed another art of cajoling the multitude. his watchful envy, his long-protracted but sure revenge, his craft, which to vulgar minds supplies the place of wisdom, were his only means of competing with his distinguished antagonists. and it seems to have been a merited punishment of the extravagances and abuses of the french revolution, that it engaged the country in a state of anarchy which permitted a wretch such as we have described, to be for a long period master of her destiny. blood was his element, like that of the other terrorists and he never fastened with so much pleasure on a new victim; as when he was at the same time an ancient associate. in an epitaph, of which the following couplet may serve as a translation, his life was represented as incompatible with the existence of the human race:—

"here lies robespierre—let no tear be shed:

reader, if he had lived, thou hadst been dead."

the fall of robespierre ended the "reign of terror." most of the leaders who had acted a conspicuous part in these horrid scenes, met a doom similar to that of their leaders. it is impossible to convey to the reader any adequate conception of the atrocities committed in france during this gloomy period, in the name of liberty. men, women, and children were involved in the massacres which took place at the instigation of the jacobin chiefs. hundreds of both sexes were thrown into the loire, and this was called republican marriage and republican baptism. and it should never be forgotten, that it was not till france as a nation, had denied the existence of a deity, and the validity of his institutions, that she was visited by such terrible calamities. let it be "burnt in on the memory" of every generation, that such is the legitimate tendency of infidel opinions. they first destroy the conscience—blunt the moral sense—harden the heart, and wither up all the social and kindly affections, and then their votaries are ripe for any deed of wickedness within the possibility of accomplishment by human agency.[517]

says an eloquent writer—"when the sabbath was abolished in france, the mighty god whose being they had denied, and whose worship they abolished, stood aloof and gave them up,—and a scene of proscription, and assassination, and desolation, ensued, unparalleled in the annals of the civilized world. in the city of paris, there were in 1803, eight hundred and seven suicides and murders. among the criminals executed, there were seven fathers who had poisoned their children, ten husbands who had murdered their wives, six wives who had poisoned their husbands, and fifteen children who had destroyed their parents."

it may be profitable here to record the end of several other jacobin leaders who had been conspicuous during these scenes of atrocity and bloodshed. public opinion demanded that some of the most obnoxious members should be condemned. after hesitating for some time, at length the convention, pressed by shame on the one side and fear on the other, saw the necessity of some active measure, and appointed a commission to consider and report upon the conduct of the four most obnoxious jacobin chiefs, collot d'herbois, billaud varennes, vadier, and barrere. the report was of course unfavourable; yet upon the case being considered, the convention were satisfied to condemn them to transportation to cayenne. some resistance was offered to this sentence, so mild in proportion to what those who underwent it had been in the habit of inflicting; but it was borne down, and the sentence was carried into execution. collot d'herbois, the demolisher and depopulator of lyons, is said to have died in the common hospital, in consequence of drinking off at once a whole bottle of ardent spirits. billaud varennes spent his time in teaching the innocent parrots of guiana the frightful jargon of the revolutionary committee; and finally perished in misery.

these men both belonged to that class of atheists, who, looking up towards heaven, loudly and literally defied the deity to make his existence known by launching his thunderbolts. miracles are not wrought on the challenge of a blasphemer more than on the demand of a sceptic; but both these unhappy men had probably before their death reason to confess, that in abandoning the wicked to their own free will, a greater penalty results even in this life, than if providence had been pleased to inflict the immediate doom which they had impiously defied.

encouraged by the success of this decisive measure, the government proceeded against some of the terrorists whom they had hitherto spared, but whose fate was now determined, in order to strike dismay into their party. six jacobins, accounted among the most ferocious of the class, were arrested and delivered up to be tried by a military commission. they were all deputies of the mountain gang. certain of their doom, they adopted a desperate resolution. among the whole party, they possessed but one knife, but they resolved it should serve them all for the purpose of suicide. the instant their sentence was pronounced, one stabbed himself with this weapon; another snatched the knife from his companion's dying hand, plunged it in his own bosom,[518] and handed it to the third, who imitated the dreadful example. such was the consternation of the attendants, that no one arrested the fatal progress of the weapon—all fell either dead or desperately wounded—the last were despatched by the guillotine.

after this decisive victory, and last dreadful catastrophe, jacobinism, considered as a pure and unmixed party, can scarce be said to have again raised its head in france, although its leaven has gone to qualify and characterize, in some degree, more than one of the different parties which have succeeded them. as a political sect, the jacobins can be compared to none that ever existed, for none but themselves ever thought of an organized, regular, and continued system of murdering and plundering the rich, that they might debauch the poor by the distribution of their spoils. they bear, however, some resemblance to the frantic followers of john of leyden and knipperdoling, who occupied munster in the seventeenth century, and committed, in the name of religion, the same frantic horrors which the french jacobins did in that of freedom. in both cases, the courses adopted by these parties were most foreign to, and inconsistent with, the alleged motives of their conduct. the anabaptists practised every species of vice and cruelty, by the dictates, they said, of inspiration—the jacobins imprisoned three hundred thousand of their countrymen in the name of liberty, and put to death more than half the number, under the sanction of fraternity.

the end