a bird's-eye view

nearly two years have elapsed since the events recorded in our first volume. in order that our readers may clearly understand those which are to follow we must take a rapid bird's-eye view of the two terrible though inevitable years of 1794 and 1795.

as vergniaud, and after him pichegru, had prophesied, the revolution had devoured her own children. let us watch the terrible harpy at her work.

on the 5th of april, 1795, the cordeliers were executed. danton, camille desmoulins, bazire, chabot, lacroix, hérault de sechelles, and the poet-martyr fabre d'eglantine, author of the most popular of our popular songs, "il pleut, il pleut, bergère," died together on the same scaffold whither robespierre, saint-just, merlin (of douai), couthon, collot d'herbois, fouché (of nantes) and vadier sent them.

then came the jacobins turn. vadier, tallien, billaud and fréron accused robespierre of having usurped the dictatorship; and robespierre, his jaw shattered by a pistol-ball, saint-just, with lofty countenance, couthon, both of whose legs had been crushed, lebas—in short their friends to the number of twenty-two—were executed on the day following the tumultuous one which is known in history as the fatal day of the 9th thermidor.

on the 10th thermidor the revolution was still alive, because the revolution was immortal, and no rise or fall[pg 231] of parties could kill it. the revolution still lived, though the republic was dead. with robespierre and saint-just the republic was beheaded. on the evening of their execution, the boys were shouting at the doors of the theatres, "carriages? who wants a carriage? want a carriage, bourgeois?" on the next day and the day after that eighty-two jacobins followed robespierre, saint-just and their friends to the place de la revolution.

pichegru, who was then commander-in-chief of the army of the north, learned of this bloody reaction. he saw that the hour for blood had passed and the time for filth had come, with vadier, tallien, billaud and fréron. he sent privately to mulheim, and fauche-borel, the prince's messenger, hastened to him.

pichegru divined correctly that the ascending period of the revolution was past. the reactionary or descending period had arrived; blood was still to be shed, but it was the blood of reprisals.

on the 17th of may the hall of the jacobins—the cradle of the revolution, the strength of the republic—was finally closed by a decree. fouquier-tinville, the public prosecutor, the colleague of the executioner's knife, who was no more guilty than it, since he simply obeyed the orders of the revolutionary tribunal as the knife obeyed his own—fouquier-tinville was executed, together with fifteen judges of the revolutionary tribunal. in order to make the reaction complete the execution took place on the place de grève. m. guillotin's ingenious invention resumed its former place, but the gallows had disappeared—equality in death was decreed.

on the 1st prairial, paris discovered that it was starving. famine drove the inhabitants of the faubourgs to the convention. haggard, in tatters, and famished, they invaded the chamber, and the deputy féraud was killed in trying to defend the president, boissy d'anglas. seeing the confusion which this event brought about in the convention, boissy d'anglas put on his hat. then they[pg 232] showed him féraud's head on the end of a pike, whereupon he took off his hat, bowed reverently, and put it on again. but during that performance, boissy d'anglas, who had sympathized largely with the revolution, almost became converted to royalism.

on the 16th of the same month, louis charles of france, duc de normandie, pretender to the throne under the name of louis xvii., he of whom the duc d'orléans said at a supper: "the son of the duc de coigny shall never be my king!" died of scrofula at the temple, at the age of ten years two months and twelve days. but even in the times of the republic the old axiom of the french monarchy survived: "the king is dead, long live the king!" and at once louis de provence proclaimed himself, on his own private authority, king of france and navarre, under the title of louis xviii.

then came the terrible day of quiberon, during which, according to pitt, "english blood did not flow," and, according to sheridan, "english honor streamed from every pore."

meantime the victories of hoche and pichegru had borne fruit. in consequence of the recovery of the lines of weissembourg, at which our readers were present, when the tri-color flag was seen triumphantly waving in the hands of saint-just as he crossed the frontier, and floated victoriously over bavaria, frederick william, who had been the first to invade french territory, recognized the french republic and made peace with it. having captured no territory from each other, the two powers had nothing to restore. but eighty thousand slept on the plains of alsace and champagne, and the terrible strife had begun which neither jena nor leipsic was to terminate.

meantime the army of the eastern pyrenees had invaded biscay, vittoria, and bilbao. already master of that part of the frontier to which access was most difficult, the french, whom their last victories had brought to the neighborhood, of pampeluna, were in a position to capture[pg 233] the capital of navarre, and open an easy road to the two kingdoms of castile and that of aragon. whereupon the king of spain made proposals of peace.

this was the second crowned head which had recognized the existence of the french republic; and in recognizing it, the king tacitly condoned what he no doubt regarded as the murder of louis xvi. and marie-antoinette.

the peace was signed. before the necessities of war, family ties ceased to be considered. france abandoned her conquests beyond the pyrenees, and spain ceded to france her possessions on the island of saint-domingo. but, as we have just said, it is not from the standpoint of material accessions that the question of peace with spain must be considered. no! the question was a moral one.

this the reader will already have understood. this defection of charles iv. from the royal cause was an immense step, and one that was far more important than that taken by frederick william. frederick william was not bound in any way to the bourbons of france, while, in signing the peace with the republic, the spanish king ratified all the decrees of the convention.

meantime the army of the north, which was engaged with the austrians, took ypres and charleroi, won the battle of fleurus, recaptured landrecies, occupied namur and treves, reconquered valenciennes, and took crève-c?ur, ulrich, gorcomm, amsterdam, dordrecht, rotterdam, and the hague. at last an unheard-of thing happened—something which had never been seen before, and which until then had been absent from the picturesque annals of french warfare; the dutch men-of-war, frozen in the ice, were captured by a regiment of hussars. this strange feat of arms, which seemed to be a caprice of providence in behalf of the french, led to the capitulation of zealand.