Germaine de Staël

THE MAID OF FRANCE

NARBONNE had just returned from conducting the King’s aunts, his own half-sisters, into Italy, a task of some difficulty, seeing that they had all been arrested on the way.  Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, “daughters of France,” were convinced that all the troubles which had befallen them could be traced back to a single cause, their father’s infatuation for Madame de Pompadour and the alliance with Austria which had sprung from it.  Was it not this alliance which had bestowed Marie Antoinette on their unlucky nephew ?  Long ago Madame Adelaide had nicknamed that frivolous little spendthrift “L’Austrichienne.”  It was the Austrian, she and nobody else, the old women kept repeating, who had driven them all forth into an inhospitable world.

So thought Narbonne.  This son of Louis XV had many bones to pick with the Queen who, as he conceived, had proved herself the enemy of his father’s house.  His memory of slights at the hands of Gabrielle de Polignac and others of Marie Antoinette’s favourites had been refreshed during his journey, and he had come back to Paris determined to settle accounts.  Germaine and he concocted a plan which promised glory as well as satisfaction.

This was nothing less than an alliance with Prussia and a war with Austria.¹  Scarcely was Narbonne’s portfolio of War in his hands, when he demanded of the Assembly a vote of £2,000,000 for the strengthening of the national defences and sent Segur to Berlin, to King Frederick William, and Custine to the Duke of Brunswick.

The effect exceeded expectations.  From the rue du Bac a wave of militarism spread to all parts of France.  The Queen’s brother, it was rumoured, was about to invade the country.  In vain that peace-loving man protested his good intentions and dissociated himself from the emigrant French nobles of “Condé’s army.”  The assurances which he addressed to the Assembly were hailed as additional proof of his wish to interfere in the affairs of France.  The mob, tired of oratory, got its drums and whistles out and began to eat fire, and the clubs dwindled.  Germaine, in transports, girded a sword to her side and went forth, with her lover, to the armies, to the scandal of the Queen and the affliction of Eric Magnus.  Hand in hand, she and Narbonne made inventory of France’s resources, wedding pleasure to duty on many memorable days.  The lack of discipline, of equipment, of clothing even, which other eyes were able to see, remained invisible to their eyes.  Narbonne presented batons to Rochambeau and Luckner and appointed these new marshals, with Lafayette, to command the French forces.  Then he and Germaine returned to Paris and testified, amid scenes of enthusiasm, that the army was ready to execute the nation’s will.

That was now declared.  The drums and whistles of Paris had wrought such intimidation, that Girondists as well as Feuillants were speaking thunders.  Woe to objectors in a world of patriots !  The Assembly, bellicose but uneasy, looked everywhere for opponents of the war and found none except the King, the Queen and Robespierre.  The new Maid of France unsheathed her sword.  With splendid gesture she surrendered Narbonne to the Fatherland, a leader and a saviour.  She was pregnant by him ;  her faith in him burning, ecstatic, boundless.  As for him, kings’ bastards always wish to be kings.

It had been decided, if Prussia became France’s ally, to offer the post of Commander-in-Chief to the Duke of Brunswick.  Hints, too, had been sent to Brunswick that a greater prize, the throne of France, might conceivably reward a signal service.  This last was Germaine’s contribution.  A cooler head than Narbonne’s must have reflected that his Swiss was a German.  Meanwhile complaints about the uses to which his Embassy in Paris was being put by Germaine poured in on the King of Sweden.  Gustavus III was deeply concerned about the safety of the French Royal Family, with whom he was in touch through Count Axel Fersen.  Was the rue du Bac to be turned into a rallying-place of the Queen’s enemies ?  A vantage-ground for Narbonne and his mistress ?  Eric Magnus was ordered to return immediately to Stockholm.  It looked as though the little man was ruined.  What guarantees could he offer, supposing that Gustavus was willing to allow him to return to Paris, that Germaine would behave herself better in the future ?  Her unruly passion for Narbonne would not be cooled by anything her husband might say.  Everybody knew that de Staël was a gambler, who endured his wife and gave his name to her bastards only because her father made it worth his while.

On January 14, 1792, at the instance of its Diplomatic Committee, the Assembly sent an ultimatum to Vienna.  The Emperor Leopold was ordered to furnish proof of his goodwill before March 1.  He died, as it happened, on that day, leaving behind him a defensive alliance with Prussia which was a knife in Narbonne’s heart.  Nine days later, King Louis, plucking courage from adversity, dismissed his Minister of War.  But the mischief was done.  Little as it liked him, the Assembly had to fall on Narbonne’s neck because Paris, and France too, believed that his dismissal was due to the hatred of the Queen.  Marie Antoinette, so rumour ran, was at work secretly to destroy the Revolution with Austrian bayonets.  A surge of popular fury compelled the King to seek new ministers among the Liberals of the Left, Manon Roland’s friends.  Germaine saw her hopes wither and perish.  Not so, however, the seed of hate and panic which she and Narbonne had sown.  That came up, in vigorous growth, so that the new ministers, for all their timidity and love of peace, were obliged by the populace to force the King into battle.  On April 20, Louis came to the Assembly and proposed that war should be declared against Austria.

“ I was present,” wrote Germaine,² “at the sitting at which Louis XVI took, under compulsion, the step that was fated to lead him to so many troubles.  His face was expressionless, not from any desire to convey a false idea about his feelings, but because resignation and dignity so informed his bearing that there was no room for any other expression.  As he entered the Chamber he glanced to right and left with the vague curiosity which people who are so short-sighted as to be unable to see anything often display.  He proposed that war be declared in the tone of voice he might have used about some trifling order.  The President answered him in the arrogant, off hand manner which the Assembly had now adopted, as if it was necessary to the self-esteem of a free people to ill-use the King whom it had chosen as its constitutional head.  When Louis XVI and his Ministers had gone, the Assembly voted the war with acclamation.  A few of the members refrained from taking part in the discussion, but the people in the galleries were in ecstasies.  Members flung their hats in the air.”

Germaine had triumphed over the Queen ;  moreover, the assassination of the King of Sweden by, among other plotters, the Comte de Ribbing a month before had removed the fear that Eric Magnus would lose his post.  She took some satisfaction, which dwindled, however, when Narbonne joined the army.  Though six months pregnant, she went to Arras³ to be near him.  Paris, when she returned home, seemed empty and uninteresting.  The Feuillants were badly under the weather and the rue du Bac had lost its glory.  Talleyrand and Mathieu de Montmorency came to see her, but the Bishop was uneasy, restless, anxious to be off out of France, while Mathieu had begun to repent both his liaison with Liberty and his liaison with her.  They were anything but cheerful companions, these two, and she fell into gloom.

Dumouriez became Foreign Minister.  He invited Talleyrand to go on a mission to London and another familiar face disappeared overnight.  The war began.  The rabble of French troops which had marched into the Netherlands was flung back by the Austrians, and Mons and Lille fell into the enemy’s hands.  Narbonne’s new marshals were got rid of as quickly as possible while Lafayette, who commanded the Army of the centre, had to fall back.  Paris, fear-stricken, demanded if this was the perfectly equipped and disciplined force about which Narbonne had boasted.  Then darker thoughts gathered.  Had the Queen betrayed France to her nephew ?⁴  The new Government passed from triumph to terror, for Danton, Marat and Robespierre had begun to accuse it of being hand-in-glove with Royalty.  New decrees, sops to the mob as well as attempts to fasten the odium of defeat on the King, were proposed—namely, that the non-juring priests should be exiled, the King’s Bodyguard suppressed, and a corps of fédérés established near Paris.  Louis surrendered his Guard, but, as had been expected, vetoed the other two proposals.  Roland, Manon’s husband, who was Minister of the Interior, urged the King, in insolent terms, which his wife had concocted for him, to sign the decrees.  Louis dismissed him and made Dumouriez Minister of War.  But that soldier could no more escape from the fury of the extremists than could Roland.  He, too, was compelled to urge the King to sign.  When Louis refused once more on June 15, he resigned.

The Girondists flattered themselves anew that nobody could accuse them of being King’s men.  They were quickly undeceived.  The accusations grew in violence and were accompanied by threats.  Suddenly these Republicans felt again their need of the man they had baited and insulted.  Only the King’s popularity and prestige in the provinces of France could, they realised, save them from destruction.  But how to recede from the position they had taken up ?  Unless the King signed the decrees, they were lost.  Brissot at this juncture conceived the idea of out-Heroding Herod by organising a demonstration.  Danton’s mob, he decided, should be pressed into service against Danton in order to frighten the King.  The plot succeeded.  On June 20,⁵ five days after Dumouriez’s resignation, a huge crowd surrounded the Tuileries, demanding to see its Sovereign ;  contrary to plan, however, it quickly got out of hand, broke into the palace and threatened the Royal Family with violence.  Only Louis’ courage saved the lives of himself and his wife and children.  He gave the leaders wine and talked to them during several hours ;  he appeared, too, at a window, wearing the red cap.  But he promised nothing.

The news of this outburst horrified every decent man and woman in France, and made martyrs, in many eyes, of the sovereigns who had been its victims.  Addresses poured into the palace congratulating the King on his escape and denouncing the ruffians who had threatened him.  Twenty thousand citizens of Paris joined their hands to this protest.  Germaine, true to the instinct which impelled her, at all times, to associate herself, either as friend or enemy, with the most prominent actor on the stage, experienced a sudden, overwhelming pity for King and Queen, which was to remain alive in her heart for ever.

“ The King,”⁷ she wrote, “showed that day all the virtues of a saint. ... The bonnet rouge, horrible symbol of massacre, was thrust on his devoted head.  But nothing could humiliate him because his whole life was one long, continuous self-sacrifice.”

The world was about to weep for this man ;  already she coveted its tears.  She took occasion to be present at the celebration of the 14th of July, the third anniversary of her father’s triumph.

“ A few feeble voices,” she wrote,⁷ “cried Vive le roi !, like a last good­bye, a final prayer.  I will never forget the look on the Queen’s face.  Her eyes were hidden by tears.  The magnificence of her toilet, the dignity of her bearing, made sad contrast with the crowd by whom she was surrounded.  A few National Guards only separated her from the populace.  The armed men gathered in the Champs de Mars looked as if they had come to take part in a riot rather than a fête.  The King walked from the tent which had been erected for his use to the altar . . . where he swore again to support that Constitution under the ruins of which his throne was soon to be buried.  A few children, seeing him, raised a cheer. . . .

“ Only a man of Louis XVI’s character—that of a martyr—could have endured such a position.  Both his gait and his expression were characteristic ;  in other circumstances one might have wished for a little more majesty.  But now, he had only to be himself to be sublime.  I saw, from far away, his powdered head among those heads of black hair ;  his coat, embroidered as of yore, among the coats of the common people who jostled him.  When he ascended the altar’s steps, one felt that one was looking at a holy victim offering himself in willing sacrifice.

“ He descended, and passing back through the ranks of disorder, sat down beside the Queen and his children.  His people saw him no more till he stood on the scaffold.”

The Prussians joined the Austrians, and Brunswick was made Commander-in-Chief of the enemies of France.  Mindful, no doubt, of the overtures which had been made to him, he addressed, on July 25, a warning to the people of Paris.  It declared :

“ The Allies (Prussians and Austrians) will enter France to restore the royal authority, and will visit the Assembly and the City of Paris with military execution if any further outrage is offered to the King.”

Louis was lost.  With the pistol at its head, Paris displayed the courage which was to justify usurpation of leadership.  The mob, to whom Danton had been nursing-mother, took possession of the Hotel de Ville and set up, there, a new Commune, the Revolutionary.  This body proclaimed its sovereignty and received, at once, the submission of the Assembly which did not dare to challenge it.  It turned, in fierce hate, against its rival, the Throne, determined to make an end.

“ The Constitutionals” (i.e. the Feuillants), Germaine wrote,⁸ “had in vain asked leave to enter the King’s palace in order to defend it.  The invincible prejudice of the courtiers refused them admittance.  Unable, meanwhile, in spite of this refusal, to join the opposition, they wandered round the Tuileries, taking the chance of being massacred since they were not allowed to fight.  Among them were MM. de Lally, Narbonne, La Tour-de-Pin, Gouvernet, Castellane, Montmorency and several others whose names have since been honoured.”

Germaine herself had sent an offer of help, only to be told that the King and Queen could accept nothing from Madame Staël.

“ Before midnight on the 9th of August,” she wrote,⁹ “the forty-eight alarm bells of the sections of Paris began to ring, and all through the night this sound, monotonous, mournful and quick, did not cease for a moment.  I was at my window with a few of my friends, and every quarter of an hour the voluntary patrol of the Constitutionals sent us news.  We were told that the faubourgs (sections) were on the march, under the leadership of Santerre, the brewer, and Westermann, a soldier. . . . Nobody could guess what was likely to happen next day, and nobody counted on living more than another day.  There were some moments of hope, during this dreadful night ;  we took heart, I don’t know why, perhaps only because we had exhausted our fears.

“ Suddenly, at 7 o’clock, we heard the terrifying sound of the guns of the faubourgs.  The Swiss Guards won the first round, and the mob fled through the streets as frightened as, earlier, it had been wrathful.  I must say that I think the King ought to have put himself at the head of the troops and driven back his enemies.  The Queen was of that opinion, and the brave advice which, in these circumstances, she gave her husband, does her honour and should commend her to posterity.”

The King, anxious to avoid bloodshed, ordered his troops to cease firing.  His Swiss Guards were all massacred.  Before noon he and his wife and children walked across to the Assembly and placed themselves in its hands.  They were lodged in a reporter’s box while the few members who were present decided upon their fate.  It was finally decreed that the King was suspended in the exercise of his office, that the Assembly should be dissolved, and that a National Convention should be summoned to make a new Constitution.  In the meanwhile, government was confided to an executive council of which, among others, Roland and Danton were made members.  The inclusion of Danton in the Provisional Government was a gesture of the Assembly towards Paris, a gesture of weakness.  Louis and his family were removed to prison in the Temple through crowds which included Captain Napoleon Bonaparte of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, an officer, twenty-three years old, who had just been acquitted of the charge of overstepping his powers during a riot in his native Corsica.

“ The French,” this young officer observed in a letter to his brother Joseph, “are an ancient people who are out of control.”

Germaine, as night fell, grew sick with fear.  Where were Narbonne, Mathieu, all her friends ?

“ I was told,” she wrote,¹⁰ “that all my friends who had tried to guard the palace from outside had been seized and massacred.  I rushed out, instantly, to learn the truth.  My cab-driver was stopped on the bridge. ... After two hours uselessly spent in trying to pass, I learned that all those who interested me were still alive, but that most of them had been compelled to go into hiding, to avoid the proscriptions with which they were threatened.  When I went, on foot, that night to see them in the humble dwellings where they had succeeded in finding shelter, I passed armed men, lying in drunken slumber on the ground in front of doorways.  These only stirred to utter horrible oaths.  I saw several workwomen in the same state, and their cursings were more ghastly than the men’s.  The moment one of the patrols, which had been constituted to keep order, was sighted, all honest men fled out of its way ;  for what was called ‘keeping order’ was in fact assassinating and helping assassins.”

She was shaken but not demoralised.  Her object, now, was to get her Constitutional kindergarten out of Paris to some safe place where she might restore and confirm its faith.  Instincts of the nursing-mother, of the teacher, of the shepherd jostled one another ;  and along with these her love of Narbonne which dominated them all.

The Prussians and Austrians, hurrying, as they proclaimed, to restore the King to his throne, were but a few days’ march from Paris.  Longwy had surrendered to them on August 22 ;  Verdun was invested.  The French armies, a rabble, staggered along every highway towards the Capital.  Faint hearts forgave the King in anticipation of favours to come.  But the Commune, with nothing to hope for, dared everything.  The King and Queen were deprived of their handful of followers (August 19), and every man and woman who might be supposed to wish the invaders well, was arrested and flung into prison.  It was made known that, if the enemy continued to approach, all these illustrious prisoners would be massacred.

“ Several of my friends,” wrote Germaine,¹¹ “MM. de Narbonne, Montmorency, Baunets, were threatened personally ;  each had gone into hiding in some middle-class household.  But the refuge had to be changed daily because the hosts soon became terrified.  We decided at first against the use of my house for this purpose because we were afraid that it was being watched ;  but, on the other hand, as I pointed out, my house was likely to be respected as that of an Ambassador and as bearing on its door the name L’hôtel du Suède.  This, although M. de Staël was absent from Paris.  Very soon hesitation gave way to necessity ;  nobody was found bold enough to offer shelter to the proscribed men.  Two of these came to me ;  I told none of my people, except the few whom I could trust absolutely.  I shut them up in the most remote room in the house and spent the night myself in the rooms overlooking the street, expecting every instant that a domiciliary visit, as it was called, would be paid me.

“ One morning, one of my servants, whom I distrusted, told me that a placard describing and denouncing M. de Narbonne had been pasted up at the corner of my street.  M. de Narbonne was one of the people hidden in the house.  I had the impression that my servant was trying to frighten me into betraying myself. . . . Shortly afterwards, the dreaded domiciliary visit took place.  M. de Narbonne had been outlawed ;  he would therefore be put to death the same day on which he was taken.  In spite of my precautions, I knew very well that if a careful search was made he was bound to be discovered.  It was essential, therefore, to prevent such a search.  I collected my forces (and I discovered then that one can always control one’s feelings, however violent they may be, when lack of control is likely to endanger somebody else’s life).  The commissaires told off to search all the houses of Paris for proscribed persons were men of the lowest class.  While they were making their visits, soldiers stood on guard at each end of the street to prevent escapes.  I began by frightening them as much as I could about the outrage against the rights of men they were committing in entering an ambassador’s house, and as they didn’t know their geography too well, I managed to convince them that Sweden was a power able to attack them immediately, seeing that her frontier and that of France were the same ! . . .

“ Either you get common men at once or you never get them at all.  Ideas and feelings with them are not awakened gradually.  Seeing that my arguments had made an impression, I dared, with death in my heart, to chaff them on the unjust character of their suspicions.  Nothing pleases fellows of this class more than chaff, because they love to be treated as equals by the nobles against whom their wrath burns so fiercely.  l kept up my banter until I had fetched them to the front door, and I bless God for the wonderful strength he gave me during that time.  Meanwhile it was obvious that this state of affairs could not continue.  The smallest accident must bring death to a proscribed man who had so recently been a Minister and who was therefore very well known.”

Happily a worthy Hanoverian, Dr. Bollmann, who had heard of Narbonne’s plight, came forward with an offer to conduct him to England by means of a passport belonging to one of his friends, an act of the highest courage.  Four days later Narbonne was in London.  Germaine received passports for herself and her servants, but felt reluctant to leave Paris so long as any of her intimate friends remained there.¹²

“ I was told on the 31st of August,” she wrote,¹³ “that M. de Jaucourt ... and M. de Lally-Tollendal had both been taken to the Abbaye.  I had information that only those whose assassination had been determined on were being sent to that prison.  The quick-wittedness of M. de Lally saved him in a most curious way.  He made himself defendant of one of his fellow-prisoners who was brought to the Tribunal before the massacre began.  This prisoner was acquitted, as everybody realised, because of Lally’s eloquence.  M. de Condorcet admired his ability and exerted himself to save him, while at the same time M. de Lally found a capable protector in the English Ambassador, who was still in Paris.  M. de Jaucourt lacked their help.  I got a list of the members of the Commune of Paris, now the masters of the town.  I knew none of them except by their horrible reputations and trusted to chance to give me a cue.  Suddenly I remembered that Manuel, one of them, had dabbled in literature, having published some of Mirabeau’s letters with a preface—a bad preface truly, but showing some signs of a desire on its author’s part to pass for a wit.  I felt that if the man was greedy of applause he was probably accessible to flattery.  I wrote to him and asked for an appointment.  He gave me one, for the next day, at his house, at seven o’clock in the morning, rather a democratic hour, perhaps, but I was punctual.  He was not yet out of bed when I reached his house, and I had to wait for him in his study.  There I saw his portrait standing on his desk and felt really hopeful that his vanity would come to my help.  He entered . . . I drew a picture of the distressing changes of popular feeling of which examples were being furnished every day.  ‘Six months from now, perhaps,’ I said to him, ‘you yourself may have lost your power.’  (Before that time had elapsed he had perished on the scaffold.)  ‘Save M. de Lally and M. de Jaucourt ;  lay up a sweet and consoling memory against the day when, perhaps, you will be proscribed in your turn.’  Manuel was an emotional man, easily carried away by his passions, but capable of honest behaviour ;  it was for defending the King that he was condemned to death.  He wrote to me on September 1 that M. de Condorcet had obtained M. de Lally’s liberty and that, at my request, he was about to set M. de Jaucourt free.

“ Thankful to have saved the life of so splendid a man, I made up my mind to leave the next day ;  I had promised to pick up the Abbé Montesquieu, another proscript, outside the barrier and take him with me, in the disguise of a servant, to Switzerland. . . The news of the fall of Longwy and of Verdun reached Paris on the morning of September 2.  Again one heard, everywhere, those terrible alarm bells. . . My passports were in perfect order, and I conceived the idea that the best way of travelling would be in my berline, with six horses and postillions in full livery.  I thought that this equipage would impress people with the idea that I had a right to travel and that, in consequence, they would not try to impede me. . . . Scarcely had my carriage moved four paces when, hearing the postillions’ whips, a posse of old women, who looked as if they had sprung out of hell, flung themselves on my horses, shrieking for my arrest, and declaring that I was making off with the nation’s gold and was going to join the enemy. . . . These women attracted a crowd in an instant, and gutter-boys with ferocious faces jumped up beside my postillions and compelled them to take me to the headquarters of the Section in which I lived (the Faubourg Saint-Germain).

“ I entered this place and saw in progress what looked like a permanent insurrection.  The man who called himself President (of the Section) informed me that I had been denounced as likely to try to take proscribed persons out of the country, and that they were going to examine my servants. . . He ordered that I should be taken to the Hôtel de Ville.  Nothing could have been more terrifying ;  I should have to cross Paris and get out (of my carriage) at the Hôtel de Ville ;  I knew that several people had been massacred on the staircase of that building on the 10th of August.  No woman, it is true, had so far been killed, but, in fact, on the following day the Princesse de Lamballe was murdered by a populace whose rage was already of so dreadful a character that everyone seemed to thirst for blood.

“ It took me three hours to go from the Faubourg Saint-Germain to the Hôtel de Ville.  A man, on foot, led my carriage through an enormous crowd which howled for my death.  It wasn’t me they were troubling about ;  very few of them knew me ;  it was my fine carriage and smart liveries which had become, in the mob’s eyes, challenges to massacre.  Not yet fully aware of the brutalising effects of revolutions on men’s hearts, I asked help on several occasions of gendarmes who passed near my carriage windows ;  they answered me with gestures of contempt and menace.  I was pregnant, but that fact didn’t disarm their wrath.  Quite the contrary ;  the more ashamed of themselves they felt, the more exasperated they became.  Meanwhile the gendarme who had been posted in my carriage, being removed from contact with his fellows, took pity on me and promised to defend me with his life. . . .

“ I descended from my carriage in the middle of an armed mob and walked under an arch of pikes.  As I mounted the stair, which bristled with spears, a man thrust at me.  My gendarme protected me with his sword.  But if I had stumbled at that moment my life would have been lost, for it is of the nature of the common people to treat with respect anybody who still remains standing but to kill anybody who has been struck down.

“ At last I reached the Commune, over which Robespierre presided, and breathed again at my escape from the populace.  What a protector to have found !  Robespierre !  Collot d’Herbois and Billaud-Varenne were acting as his secretaries.  The latter hadn’t shaved for fifteen days to avoid the least suspicion of being an aristocrat.  The room was full of common people—women, children, men, yelling ‘Long live the Nation ! ’ at the pitch of their voices. . .

“ I pointed out the right which I had, as Swedish Ambassadress, to leave the country, and displayed the passports given me because of this right.  At that moment Manuel arrived.  He was very much astonished to see me in such a melancholy position, and, having answered for me until the Commune should have decided on my fate, he took me away from this terrible place and shut me in his own room with my maid.

“ We had to wait there six hours, hungry, worried and afraid.  The window looked on the Place de Grève and we saw the assassins coming back from the prisons with bare and bloody arms.  They uttered horrible yells.¹⁴

“ My carriage, with its luggage, remained in the middle of the place.  The crowd was making ready to pillage it, when I saw a big man, in the uniform of the National Guard, jump onto the driver’s seat and forbid anybody to touch anything.  He spent two hours defending my luggage ;  and I confess I found it difficult to understand how so trifling a matter could be attended to in the middle of events of so horrifying a nature.  Towards evening this man came to my room with Manuel.  He was the brewer Santerre, so hideously famous since.  He had seen and distributed in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he lived, the wheat sent there by my father during the famine, and he remembered these occasions.  He had had no wish to go to the help of the prisoners (who were being massacred) as was his duty as a commandant, and had found in my carriage the excuse he wanted for not doing so.  He wished to boast about it, but I couldn’t refrain from telling him what I thought he should have done.  As soon as Manuel saw me, he exclaimed with much feeling :

“ ‘ Ah, how thankful I am that I was able to set your two friends free yesterday.’ . . .

During the night Manuel drove me back to my home in his own carriage ;  he had been afraid to do it in daylight and so, perhaps, lose his popularity.  The street lamps hadn’t been lit, but we passed many men carrying torches.  The light of these torches was more terrifying even than the darkness.  Again and again Manuel was stopped and asked who he was.  When he answered :  ‘The procureur of the Commune,’ this worthy revolutionary was saluted with respect.

“ When we reached my house Manuel told me that a new passport was being given me but that I would not be allowed to take anybody with me except my maid.  A gendarme had been told off to accompany me to the frontier.  The next day Tallien . . . came to my house under orders from the Commune to escort me out of the city.  Every moment was bringing us news of fresh massacres.  There were several people, some of them very much compromised, in my room.  I begged Tallien not to mention that he had seen them ;  he promised and kept his word.  I got into my carriage with him ;  we, my friends and I, took leave of each other without being able to speak, for our words were frozen on our lips.”

The “September Massacres” which continued on this day proclaimed the sovereignty of the Commune.  They had begun the day before (September 2) at noon, on receipt of the bad news from the front.  At that hour the alarm gun at the Pont-Neuf was fired and a black flag was hoisted on the Hôtel de Ville.  Thereupon a gang of assassins, 150 strong, many of whom were butchers and most of whom were small tradesmen, hurried off to the prisons—La Force, L’Abbaye, the Carmelites, the Conciergerie and others—and after, in certain instances, a rough-and-ready trial, massacred upwards of 1,600 men and women in the presence of howling mobs.  Those of the prisoners who were found guilty of wishing success to the invaders of France were bludgeoned or cut down with swords as they stepped from the tribunals ;  those who were acquitted were embraced hysterically by the weeping, laughing, ravening spectators—a sufficient indication of the mental state of the populace.  That the massacres were organised by the Commune is certain.  The object was two-fold—namely, to compromise every member of the new Convention so fatally that no hope of salvation, if the enemy reached Paris, could be entertained, and to strike terror into the heart of anyone disposed to dispute the power of the Hôtel de Ville.  Danton was accused of preparing the massacres, so was Marat, so was Tallien.  All denied the charge ;  all remain under suspicion.

The Convention met for the first time in this atmosphere.  It abolished the monarchy and declared France a republic.

¹ Considerations, Part III, p. 40.

² Considerations, Part III, p. 40.

³ This is attested by Fersen who kept a close watch on her.

⁴ Afterwards the Emperor Francis.

⁵ It is often incorrectly stated that the rising of June 20 was the work of Danton.  He had nothing to do with it.  The Girondists on this occasion stole his thunder.

⁶ Considerations, Part III, p. 49.

⁷ Considerations, Part III, p. 53.

⁸ Considerations, Part III, p. 60.

⁹ Considerations, Part III, p. 60.

¹⁰ Considerations, Part III, p. 62.

¹¹ Considerations, Part III, p. 66. et seq.

¹² The other proscribed person in her house was Mathieu de Montmorency.  He too escaped to England.

¹³ Considerations, Part III, p. 69. et seq.

¹⁴ For a full account of the September Massacres, see the monumental work of Lenôtre, The September Massacres.