WITH the deposition of Louis XVI. and the rise to power of the Commune, the revolutionary movement entered on a new phase. The royal authority had been overthrown, but the “ counter-revolutionaries ” yet remained to be dealt with ; thus it is now less against the unhappy prisoners in the Temple than against the “ gangrened portion of the nation ” that the invectives of the revolutionary leaders are henceforth directed. What is the truth about this gangrene ? Did it exist ? In a sense, yes. But to understand how it came into being we must cast our eyes back over the history of the last twenty years.
When Louis XV., looking around him at the end of his reign, said, “ Things will last my time, but after me the deluge ! ” he diagnosed with remarkable accuracy the disease that afflicted the State. France, as she existed at this date, could not last, because no state in which one class is oppressed can maintain its vigour. Under Louis XV. the peasants, if less wretched than is popularly supposed—for feudal benevolence did more than history tells us to counteract the oppression of the Old Régime—were, nevertheless, cyphers in the state ; their wishes did not count, their voice was not heard, their needs were not officially recognized, and thus, by constriction, they became like a mortifying limb spreading germs of death throughout the body.
Louis XVI., as we have seen, from the first moment of his accession, resolved to remedy this state of affairs, to loose the bonds that bound the people down, to give the constricted limb free play. It was not too late to do this, as certain writers would have us believe ; the limb responded admirably to the treatment ; never had the people of France displayed greater vigour than on the eve of the Revolution. The body of the State, as M. Dauban points out, was at this moment “ anything but inert and passive. Everywhere thought, passion, and blood circulate. The almost unanimous wish of the cahiers testifies to the force of cohesion in opinion and the power of the public mind. . . . Paris has no greater share in the spirit that animates it than Marseilles, Bordeaux, and the other parts of France. In the three years that follow what enthusiasm, what ardour, what vitality in the provinces ! ”[1]
But, at the very moment that the people were released from bondage, the Revolution intervened and reversed the process by seizing on two other limbs of the State, the nobility and clergy, and binding them down relentlessly. It was not even as if the revolutionaries had said to the “ privileged orders ”: “ You have enjoyed too long exclusively the good things of life, now you shall share them with your fellow-men. Come, give up your châteaux and your rolling acres, and till the ground with the rest.” Nothing of this kind was suggested, not the faintest glimmer of Socialist ideals seems to have illumined the minds of the earlier revolutionary extremists ; their only idea was to subject the hitherto privileged orders to a far worse oppression than that from which the people had been delivered. For if under the Old Régime the people had been neglected, ignored, crushed by taxation, under the revolutionary regime the nobles and clergy were actively ill-treated—insulted, spat upon, assaulted, robbed of all their goods, driven from the country, or massacred. The people had been left to struggle for existence ; the nobles and clergy were denied the very right to live.
They were also, as a class, denied any virtues. No distinction was drawn between the Liberal nobles who had marched in the vanguard of reform and the reactionaries who mustered around the Comte d’Artois, between the courtiers who for purely selfish reasons clung to the Old Régime and the provincial seigneurs who devoted themselves to the welfare of the peasants on their estates.[2] The generous enthusiasm with which, on the 4th of August, the nobles in a body had voluntarily relinquished their privileges was rewarded by the revolutionary leaders only with insults and abuse. “ All Royalists,” said Camille Desmoulins at the Jacobin Club, “ live on the sweat of the people ; they have neither wits nor virtue but for intrigue and villainy.”[3]
Under these circumstances what wonder that the nobles became irreconcilable, and that many who had sympathized with the Revolution turned against the whole movement, reviled the Constitution, and used all their efforts to restore the Old Order in its entirety ? “ Damn liberty, I abhor its very name !” an indignant Frenchman exclaimed to Dr. Moore, and the sentiment was doubtless echoed by thousands of his fellow-countrymen who, embittered by persecution, now desired a return to prerevolutionary conditions. Nor was this resentment confined only to the nobles and clergy, for since, as I have shown, the Revolution had resulted in the ruin and misery of great numbers of the bourgeois and the people, discontent prevailed in all classes. Thus, by a process precisely identical with that employed by Louis XV., but applied to a different portion of the nation, a fresh centre of mortification was set up, and the new order became as moribund as the old. Each revolutionary faction had worked only for momentary popularity, each demagogue in turn had proceeded on the principle, “ Things will last my term of power, but after me the deluge,” and, in order to prolong that spell of power, had striven not for the welfare of the nation as a whole, but to obtain the favour of one portion only—the mob of Paris.
MARAT
This, then, was the situation that, after the cataclysm of August 10, confronted the Commune, which now held the reins of power. On one side was a raging populace, intoxicated with the joy of new-found liberty to burn and to destroy, and, on the other, a great silent nation, amongst whom, as the protests following on the 20th of June had shown, a bitter hatred of the Revolution had arisen. For the silence that followed on the 10th of August was not, as the leaders well knew, the silence of assent but of momentary stupefaction, from which those of the nobles and clergy who remained in the country would make every effort to arouse the nation.
It was this that, in the opinion of the Commune, made the third Revolution necessary—the influence of the anti-revolutionaries could never be counteracted, therefore the anti-revolutionaries themselves must be destroyed.
Marat had all along understood this. Like Louis XV. he shrewdly diagnosed the disease from which the State was suffering. The other revolutionaries recognized the existence of the “ gangrene,” but overlooked the fact that it was of their own making. Marat alone traced it to its real cause. “ If,” he once said to Camille Desmoulins, “ the faults of the Constituent Assembly had not created for us irreconcilable enemies in the old nobles, I persist in believing that this great movement might have advanced in the world by pacific methods ; but after the absurd edict which keeps these enemies by force amongst us (i.e. the decrees against emigration), after the clumsy blows struck at their pride by the abolition of titles, after violently extorting the goods of the clergy, I maintain there is now no way of rallying them to the Revolution . . . we must give up the Revolution or do away with these men. What I propose to you is not a vain rigour supported by laws. I want an armed expedition against foreigners, who have voluntarily placed themselves outside our government. We are in a state of war with intractable enemies ; we must destroy them.” [4]
In a word, the only remedy for the disease was amputation. Isnard, the Girondin, in one terrible phrase, had ten months earlier proposed the operation : “ Let us cut off the gangrened part, so as to save the rest of the body ! ” [5] But it was never the way of the Girondins to carry their sanguinary theories into practice ; they only suggested, and then recoiled in horror when their words were interpreted by bolder men into action. Isnard, who had condensed in his proposal the whole system of the Terror, was later on to devote all his eloquence to denouncing that same system, when it had passed from the region of ideas into a frightful reality. The scheme of the philosopher Isnard was left to the surgeon Marat to execute.
Jean Paul Marat, son of Jean Mara, a Spaniard, who had settled first in Sardinia, then in Switzerland, was born at Boudry, near Neuchâtel, and had spent many years in England, where he studied medicine, and practised for a time in Church Street, Soho. In 1777 Marat went to France, where he became brevet-surgeon to the Comte d’Artois’ bodyguard, but the office appears to have proved unremunerative, for he was obliged to supplement his income by compounding quack medicines for a few confiding aristocratic patients.[6] During his stay in London he had, however, already embarked on his revolutionary career by the publication of a pamphlet entitled The Chains of Slavery, in which, posing as an Englishman, he endeavoured to stir up the nation against the Government.[7] Britain failed entirely to respond to this appeal and the pamphlet was a complete failure, but on the outbreak of the Revolution in France Danton, realizing Marat’s value as an agitator, took him into his employment.[8] Before long Marat’s seditious writings attracted the attention of Lafayette, who marched a regiment against the wretched dwarf, and so terrified him that he was obliged to retire below ground into hiding. During the weeks that Marat spent in the cellars of Paris, he had leisure to evolve further political schemes, in which it would be impossible to discover any consistent plan of government. He certainly did not advocate a republic, but either a monarchy under Louis XVI. or the Duc d’Orléans, or a dictatorship under a man of the people or himself. The only continuous theme we can find running through all his writings is the abolition of all class distinctions, for which purpose every resisting element in the community must be destroyed. The petty persecutions of the Orléanistes and the Girondins had only served to irritate the “ privileged classes ”; attacks on property had alienated the bourgeoisie, and nothing but wholesale massacre could now relieve the situation. This idea became an obsession ; by the end of his sojourn in the cellars Marat undoubtedly was mad. “ Marat,” said his admirer Panis, “ remained six weeks on one buttock in a dungeon ”; hence Panis regarded Marat as a prophet—a second St. Simeon Stylites.[9] It would be nearer the truth to describe him as a “ fakir.” The banks of the Ganges teem with prophets of this variety, victims of an idée fixe, who have spent long years in precisely this attitude, gazing at the tips of their noses or repeating the sacred incantation, “ Ram Sita Ram ! ” Like the monotonous chant of the fakir, Marat’s cry for “ heads ” was also a confession of faith, but it was none the less a symptom of insanity—the result of homicidal mania. The fact that at moments he could reason logically does not disprove this assertion ; lunatics are frequently sane to dulness on every point except their own particular mania.
In appearance Marat was not unlike the malignant dwarfs one encounters in the villages of his native Switzerland. Under five feet high, with a monstrous head, the broken nose of the degenerate, a skin of yellowed parchment, the aspect of “ the Friend of the People ” was more than hideous, it was supernatural. His portrait in the Carnavalet Museum is not the portrait of a human being but of an “ elemental,” a materialization of pure evil emanating from the realms of outer darkness. “ Physically,” says one who knew him, “ Marat had a burning and haggard eye like a hyena ; like a hyena his glance was always anxious and in motion ; his movements were short, rapid, and jerky ; a continual mobility gave to his muscles and his features a convulsive contraction, which even affected his way of walking—he did not walk, he hopped. Such was the individual called Marat.”[10] When to this outward appearance are added such mental peculiarities as “furious exaltation, perpetual overexcitement, chronic insomnia, folie des grandeurs, the mania that one is the victim of persecution,”[11] it is impossible to regard Marat as a responsible human being. “ People feared to speak before Marat,” says his panegyrist Esquiros ; “ at the slightest contradiction he showed signs of fury, and if one persisted in one’s opinion he flew into a rage and foamed at the mouth.”
But, apart from all other evidence, Marat’s writings are clear enough proof of his insanity ; we have only to turn over the pages of L’Ami du Peuple or the Journal de la République Française to realize that we are listening to the ravings of a mind in delirium. For example :
“ Never go to the Assembly without having your pockets full of stones destined to throw at the rascals who have the impudence to preach maxims. . . .” [12] “ Citizens, erect 800 gibbets in the gardens of the Tuileries, and hang there all the traitors to the country . . . at the same time that you construct a vast pile in the middle of the basin of the fountain to roast the ministers and their agents.” [13] “ Citizens, let the fire of patriotism be rekindled in your bosoms and your triumph is assured ; rush to arms ; you know to-day which are the real victims that must be immolated for your salvation ; let your first blows fall on the infamous general (Lafayette) ; immolate the whole staff . . . immolate the corrupt members of the National Assembly . . . cut the thumbs off the hands of the former nobles who have conspired against you ; split the tongues of all the priests who have preached servitude. . . .”[14] “ It is not the retirement of the ministers, it is their heads we need. . . .” etc.
The number of heads demanded by Marat increased steadily as the Revolution proceeded ; in July of 1790 he asked only for 600 ; five months later no less than 10,000 would suffice him ; later the figures grew to 20,000, to 40,000, until by the summer of 1792 he explained to Barbaroux that it would be a really “ humane expedient ” to massacre 260,000 men in a day. “ Undoubtedly,” adds Barbaroux, “ he had a predilection for this number, for since then he has always asked for exactly 260,000 heads ; only rarely he went to 300,000.”[15]
It would be unnecessary to enlarge on the theories of so obviously disordered a mind, were it not for the immensely important part played by Marat during the last year of his life. As Laclos had been “ the soul of the Orléaniste conspiracy,” and therefore of the first Revolution ; as Madame Roland was “ the soul of the Gironde,” and therefore of the second Revolution ; Marat was, as Bougeart truly says, “ the soul of the Commune,” and therefore of the third Revolution— of the Massacres of September and the Reign of Terror. For although Marat died before “ the Great Terror ” began, it was he who had inspired the system that produced it ; it was he who became the evil genius of Robespierre and of Danton, who stimulated the destructive fury of the Hebertistes, and let loose the horde of wild beasts that at the end of 1793 devastated the provinces of France.
MARAT PLANS THE MASSACRES
Directly after the 10th of August Marat began to incite the populace to massacre the Royalists and Swiss, who had been imprisoned after the siege of the Château. “ What folly,” he wrote, “ to bring them to trial ! ” And again he launched into the history of imaginary persecutions :
“ How much longer will you slumber, friends of the country, whilst your ruin is being planned with more fury than ever ? Shudder at the fate that awaits you ! Thirty-seven amongst you, in which number the ‘ Friend of the People’ (Marat himself) had the honour to be included, were destined to be fried in boiling oil if the monsters of the Tuileries had been the victors, as certain valets of Antoinette have admitted, and 30,000 citizens would have been barbarously massacred. Let us hope for no other fate if we allow the victory to be taken from us. . . . Up, Frenchmen, you who wish to live freely ; up, up, and may the blood of traitors begin to flow. It is the only way to save the country ! ”[16]
But already Marat had realized that the people were not to be depended on to carry out these schemes, and had consulted with Danton on the best method for “ clearing out the prisons.” Two days after Danton was made Minister of justice, that is to say on the 14th of August, Prudhomme relates, Marat said to Danton, “ Foutre ! Would you like to have all the rascals who are in the prisons judicially punished ? ”
“ Why ?” Danton asked him.
“ Because if you do not despatch them as in the Glacière d’Avignon, those ruffians will succeed in butchering us all ; there is a heap of nobles we must get rid of as well as priests.”
Danton answered him, “ I know quite well that a St. Barthélemy is necessary, but the means for carrying it out seem to be difficult.” Marat replied, “ Leave it to me ; on your account prepare the deputies with whom you are acquainted : we have hairy ruffians (bougres à poil) in Paris who will give us a hand.”
The next day they circulated the rumour of a great conspiracy on the part of the prisoners to massacre the patriots. Camille Desmoulins was in the secret, as also Fabre d’Églantine and Robert, all three secretaries of Danton.[17]
Danton was then deputed to confide the plan to Robespierre. But Robespierre, still at this period opposed to violent measures, demurred. “ You must not trust absolutely to Marat,” he said, “ he is too hot-headed (c’est une mauvaise tête).” It was not the first time Robespierre had objected to the bloodthirsty schemes of Marat. Already a year earlier he had reproached Marat with having destroyed the immense influence of his journal by “ dipping his pen in the blood of the enemies of liberty, in talking of ropes and daggers.” To these remonstrances Marat replied by reiterating his demand for wholesale massacres.
“ Robespierre,” wrote Marat in his account of the incident, “ listened to me with consternation ; he grew pale and was silent for some time. This interview confirmed me in the opinion I had always entertained of him, namely, that he combined the enlightened views of a wise senator with the integrity of a virtuous man and the zeal of a true patriot, but he lacked equally the views and the audacity of a statesman.”[18]
To Robespierre the massacre in the prisons proposed by Marat seemed then too audacious, yet it is impossible to concur with his panegyrists in absolving him from all complicity. Robespierre knew of the projected crime, and never offered any serious opposition ; according to Prudhomme and Proussinalle he was even present at two meetings of the leaders ; afterwards he justified all that had taken place ; Robespierre must therefore be regarded as an accomplice, if not actually an author, of the massacres.[19]
ORGANIZATION OF THE MASSACRES
The manner in which the massacres in the prisons were organized differed entirely from that employed in the former revolutionary outbreaks. In these, as we have seen, the plan had consisted in stirring up the people to rise en masse and fall upon the victims designated by the leaders. This plan had failed, and the Commune, led by Marat, realized the futility of depending on Balaam’s ass as a mode of progression ; on the 20th of June it had refused to go forward, on the 10th of August it had gone mad and terrified its riders. The murder of cooks and common soldiers, the hideous scenes of cannibalism and drunken fury that had taken place at the Tuileries, though applauded by the revolutionary leaders, served no real purpose, and if repeated might become dangerous to the leaders themselves. Marat, who had never trusted the people, voiced this fear later on when, in reply to the accusation of his enemies that he aspired to the supreme power, he declared that “ if the whole nation at once were to place the crown on my head I should shake it off, for such is the levity, the frivolity, the changeableness of the people that I should not be sure that, after crowning me in the morning, they would not hang me in the evening.”[20] The people of Paris—those “ pitiable revolutionaries ”—must therefore not be invited indiscriminately to co-operate, so on this occasion no army of pikes and rags was summoned from the Faubourgs, no mob leaders were called out, no conciliabules took place in the taverns of the Soleil d’Or or the Cadran Bleu. In a word, the old revolutionary machine was “ scrapped ”; it had served its purpose, and must be superseded by a more effectual system.
According to Prudhomme the secret councils that preceded the massacres of September took place at the “ Comité de Surveillance ” of the Commune,[21] and were attended by Marat, Danton, Manuel, Billaud- Varenne, Collot d’Herbois, Panis, Sergent, Tallien, and, on the aforesaid two occasions, Maximilien Robespierre.[22] Here the whole scheme was mapped out with diabolical ingenuity. First of all a number of fresh prisoners were to be incarcerated, principally wealthy people, for the massacres were to be not merely a method of extermination, but a highway robbery on a large scale. The Commune wanted money—for what purpose we shall see later—and the systematic pillage it had inaugurated after the 10th of August, when not only the Tuileries and other royal châteaux but the houses of many private people had been looted by their agents,[23] had not yet brought in sufficient sums.
But, besides the men whose death was to be effected merely as the means of acquiring their possessions, a number of victims were designated for other reasons by different members of the Commune, and over this question heated discussions arose. Robespierre at one of these meetings, fearing indiscriminate slaughter, had said, “ We must bring only the priests and nobles to justice.”[24] But when Marat proposed to add certain members of the rival faction—Brissot and Roland[25]—to the list, it seems that Robespierre’s scruples vanished, and from after events it is evident that the hope of finally ridding himself of the hated Brissotins did more than anything else to reconcile Robespierre to the idea of the massacres.
Danton, however, showed himself magnanimous. He, too, would gladly have seen Roland removed from his path, for the Minister of the Interior had an inconvenient habit of asking the Minister of justice to tender his accounts to the Assembly,[26] and Danton had recently drawn the sum of 100,000 écus from the public treasury for purposes he declined to reveal, contenting himself with the vague statement that he had given “ 20,000 francs to such an one, 10,000 to another, and so on,” “ for the sake of the Revolution,” “ on account of their patriotism,” etc.[27] Roland, who shrewdly suspected that it was his own patriotism Danton had seen fit to reward, persisted in his demands for the names of the persons to whom these sums had been paid, thereby profoundly irritating Danton. But whether he retained some sense of gratitude for Madame Roland’s soup, of which he had recently partaken, or whether, through their common intrigue with the English Jacobins, he had some secret understanding with the Brissotins, Danton did not wish to have them murdered. So to the proposal that they should be included in the massacres he answered firmly, “ You know that I do not hesitate at crime when it is necessary, but I disdain it when it is useless.”[28] Not content with this remonstrance, Danton went to Robespierre and interceded for Brissot and Roland. Robespierre said coldly, “ Are not these two individuals counter-revolutionaries ? ”
Danton answered, “ That is not yet proved ; besides, we can always find a good moment to judge them.”
But Robespierre already had his plans for bringing them to justice, which he executed two days later.
Danton then hurried to Marat at the Commune.
“ You are a blackguard,” he said in the language habitual to them both, “ you will spoil everything.”
Marat replied, “ I answer for success on my head ; if you were all ruffians (des bougres) like me there would be 10,000 butchered.”[29]
The difficulty of achieving a massacre on a large scale became the subject of discussion at several meetings of the leaders. Even if only 2000 prisoners were incarcerated, how was so vast a number of human beings to be disposed of ? “ Marat,” says Prudhomme, “ proposed to set fire to the prisons, but it was pointed out to him that the neighbouring houses would be endangered ; some one else advised flooding them. Billaud-Varenne proposed to kill the prisoners. . . . Another said, ‘You propose to kill, but you will not find enough killers.’ Billaud-Varenne replied with warmth, ‘ They will be found.’ Tallien, who refused to take part in the discussion, showed disgust, but had not the courage to oppose the project.”[30]
Billaud, who, according to most contemporaries, showed himself the most ferocious of all the men who organized the massacres, finally undertook to provide the necessary instruments, and in co-operation with Maillard—he who had led the women to Versailles on the 5th of October—succeeded in forming a band of assassins amongst the Marseillais and the revolutionary elements of Paris, but, contrary to his expectations, this contingent proved insufficient, and it was found necessary to swell its numbers by liberating a quantity of thieves and murderers now in the prisons.[31] Yet even to this criminal horde the leaders dared not avow their true intentions, and a lurid tale of conspiracies was invented by way of inducement to them to carry out the dreadful work. They described to the assassins, says Maton de la Varenne, “ Paris given over to the enemy by rascals whose leaders were in the prisons, where they were still conspiring ; gibbets planted in all the streets on which to hang the friends of the Revolution, their wives and children massacred beneath their eyes ; Capet insolently re-ascending the throne and carrying out the most horrible vengeances. Wine flowed in torrents throughout and after this infernal and slanderous harangue, and the lives of those whom they called the traitors were placed at thirty livres independently of the spoils.”[32]
The same fabulous story of conspiracies, the same false alarms, were now spread abroad amongst the people in order to prepare their minds for the massacres and ensure their assent. For, though the people were not to be invited this time to co-operate, the whole movement was none the less to be attributed to them. In each prison a mock tribunal was to be set up at which judges provided by the Commune, and assassins hired by them, armed with lists of proscription drawn up at the secret councils of the leaders, were to carry out so-called “ justice ”—and this was to be described by the high-sounding title, “ The Tribunal of the Sovereign People.”[33] The massacres were then to be represented as simply the result of “ irrepressible popular effervescence,” produced by sudden panic at the approach of Brunswick and the discovery of collusion between the invading armies and the “ conspirators ” in the prisons. For this purpose a phrase was invented, which was afterwards to be said to have passed from mouth to mouth amongst the terrified Parisians, namely, that before marching on the enemy they must put all these conspirators to death.[34]
The pretext was palpably absurd. Paris has never been wont to give way to panic in the face of danger from the outside, and it awaited the advancing legions of Brunswick with its habitual sang-froid.
“ Whilst the Prussians were in Champagne,” says Mercier, “ who would not have thought that profound alarm existed in all minds ? Not at all ; the theatres, the restaurants, both full, displayed only peaceful newsmongers. All the vainglorious threats of our enemies—we did not hear ; of all their murderous expectations we were far from having the least idea. The capital, whether by its size or by the feeling of its strength, always believed itself unassailable, sheltered from all reverses in battle, and calculated to overawe its enemies. The plans of defence, regarded as absolutely unnecessary, were laughed at, since no one would ever dare to attack the great city. This stoicism was one of the greatest ramparts of liberty . . . never were the people seriously intimidated, either by the banquets of the bodyguard, at which Antoinette was described under the name of tigress of Germany, holding the Dauphin in her arms and inciting the most bloodthirsty hostilities, or by the flight of the King, which seemed to dissolve all government, or by the taking of Verdun, or by the Manifestos of all the Kings of Europe. It was impossible to make them feel terror of the enemy. . . .”[35]
And these were the people who were to be represented as so craven-hearted that, in a fit of blind panic, they fell upon their fellow-countrymen and put them indiscriminately to death !
As to the fear of a “ conspiracy ” in the prisons, no such idea ever entered into the heads of the Parisians. How could people, shut up behind bolts and bars, cut off from all communication with the outside world, conspire ? How could the priests, against whom the movement was principally directed, form an effectual reinforcement to the trained legions of Brunswick ? How could unarmed men, women, and children take part in a massacre ? The idea was preposterous, and originated in the minds not of the people but of the members of the Commune, who circulated it through Paris by means of agents placed in the crowd for the purpose. That a certain number of citizens believed it is undeniable, but to attribute to the intelligent Parisians the authorship of such a fable, or the cowardice of acting on it by falling on the prisoners, is a gross and hideous calumny which should be finally refuted.
DOMICILIARY VISITS
On the 29th of August the incarceration of wealthy prisoners began. At one o’clock in the night commissioners from the Commune were sent all over the city to carry out the inquisition known as “ domiciliary visits,” which consisted in arresting all citizens the Commune chose to regard as “ suspect.”
Peltier has vividly described the horror of this beautiful summer night, whilst the silence of death reigned over the once brilliant city. “ All the shops are shut ; every one withdraws into his home and trembles for his life and property. . . . Everywhere people and possessions are being hidden, everywhere is heard the intermittent sound of the padded hammer striking slow muffled blows to complete a hiding-place. Roofs, attics, sewers, chimneys—all are the same to fear that takes no risks into calculation. This man withdrawn behind the panelling that has been nailed over him seems to be part of the wall, and is almost deprived of breath and life ; that one stretched along a strong wide beam in a closet covers himself with all the dust the place contains . . . another suffocates with fear and heat between two mattresses, another rolled up in a barrel loses all sensation of life by the tension of his nerves. Fear is greater than pain ; they tremble but they do not weep, their hearts are withered up, their eyes are dull, their breasts contracted. Women surpassed themselves on this occasion ; it was intrepid women who hid the greater number of the men.” [36]
During the three nights of August 29 to 31 that the domiciliary visits lasted an enormous number of people were arrested—according to some accounts 3000, according to others 8000. A certain proportion were released, the rest were collected at the Hôtel de Ville to await incarceration in the different prisons.
Pillage on a large scale took place during these visits, and, in order to make sure of sufficient booty, the priests—whose houses no doubt offered small opportunity for looting—were told that they would shortly he sent on a long journey, and must, therefore, provide themselves with money ; they were advised, in fact, to carry all their valuables on their persons.[37] By this means the victims of the massacres were found in possession of all the gold watches, snuff-boxes, money and jewels that afterwards found their way into the hands of the Commune.[38]
The greater number of priests thus arrested were accused of no crime but that of refusing to violate their consciences by taking the oath of fidelity to the civil constitution of the clergy. Some, however, seem to have been the objects of private vengeance on the part of members of the Commune. Amongst these was a certain Abbé Sicard, who had devoted his life to the teaching of deaf-mutes.[39] On the 26th of August the Abbé was accordingly arrested. A few days later a deputation of his pupils presented themselves at the Assembly with a touching petition for his release ; the Assembly harshly replied that no exception could be made in favour of the Abbé, and the deaf-mutes were sent away with the empty consolation that “ they had been accorded the honours of the sitting.”[40]
The members of the Commune, however, were well able to make exceptions in the case of people in whom they were interested ; thus Danton secured the release of a friend of his who was a thief, Camille Desmoulins that of a priest to whom he was attached, and Fabre d’Églantine that of his cook, whom he had had arrested for stealing from him.[41] At the same time money played its part, and many aristocrats obtained their liberty by means of largesse judiciously distributed amongst the demagogues.
ALARM IN PARIS
All was now ready ; it only remained to give a popular air to the movement by starting the proposed panic on the subject of the “ conspiracy in the prisons.”
On the 1st of September a wretched wagoner named Jean Jullien, who had been condemned to ten years’ hard labour, was, according to the barbarous custom still preserved under the Reign of Liberty, publicly exhibited on a pillory in the Place de Grève. Thus exposed to the jeers of the mob the man grew frantic, and broke out into furious cries of “ Vive le Roi ! Vive la Reine ! Down with the nation ! ” By the order of the Commune he was thereupon removed to the Conciergerie to await further trial, and the people were then informed that during his detention he had confessed his complicity in an immense Royalist plot which had ramifications in all the prisons.[42] As a matter of fact Jullien stated nothing of the kind, as the register of the Criminal Tribunal afterwards revealed,[43] but he was condemned to death as a conspirator, and guillotined on the Place du Carrousel.
“ It is not possible,” wrote Dr. Moore indignantly, “ that the Court could have believed that this wagoner intended to excite any sedition ; what he said was a mere rash retort on the mob, who insulted him in his misery. If their cry had been ‘ Vive le Roi et la Reine ! ’ his would have been ‘ Vive la nation ! ’ It is plain, therefore, that he was condemned to die to please the people.” [44]
Dr. Moore, unacquainted with the undercurrent of events, misinterpreted the incident ; the unfortunate Jean Jullien was sacrificed not to please the people, but to whet their appetite for blood in preparation for the events of the morrow, and also to give colour to the story of the conspiracy in the prisons.
The same day pamphlets were distributed announcing—“ Great treachery of Louis Capet. Plot discovered for assassinating all good citizens during the night of the 2nd and 3rd of this month.” [45]
Meanwhile the lying rumour of the fall of Verdun was purposely circulated throughout Paris, and “ nothing,” remarks Madame Roland, “ was forgotten that could inflame the imagination, magnify facts, and make the dangers seem greater.” [46]
But it was not until twelve o’clock on the following day—Sunday, the 2nd of September—that the imminent arrival of the Prussians was officially proclaimed. “ The enemy is at the gates of Paris ; Verdun, which arrests his march, can only hold out for a week. . . . Citizens, this very day, immediately, let all friends of liberty rally around its banner, let an army of 60,000 men be found without delay, let us march on the enemy. . . .”[47]
At the same time the tocsin rang, cannons were fired, the générale was sounded, and from all sides citizens flew to arms. Dr. Moore, coming out of church, “ found people hurrying up and down with anxious faces ; groups . . . formed at every corner one told that a courier had arrived with very bad news ; another asserted that Verdun had been betrayed like Longwy, and that the enemy were advancing ; others shook their heads and said it was the traitors within Paris and not the declared enemies on the frontiers that were to be feared.” [48]
But it was not amongst the people this last alarm arose ; the panic-mongers were emissaries of the Commune sent out to circulate the parrot phrase composed by the leaders.[49] “ Directly after the proclamation had been issued,” says Beaulieu, “ the men who have the orders to begin the massacres cry out that, whilst the friends of liberty are grappling with the soldiers of despots, their wives and children will be at the mercy of the aristocrats, and that before starting they must exterminate these scoundrels more eager for the blood of the patriots than the Prussians and Austrians themselves.”[50]
A great number of citizens listened with astonishment to these suggestions, asking themselves “ why at the least danger people should find pleasure in throwing Paris into a state of alarm, in striking all its inhabitants with terror, instead of maintaining in their hearts that masculine energy which befits warriors and ensures victory in battle. Was this not, indeed, an effectual method for undermining their courage ? But those who did not know the secrets of the conspirators were soon enlightened by their own experience.” [51]
Meanwhile at the Assembly Danton was delivering his famous speech. “ It is very gratifying, Messieurs, for the Minister of justice of a free people to have the task of announcing to it that the country will be saved. . . . You know that Verdun is not yet in the power of our enemies. One part of the people will march to the frontiers ; another will dig trenches, and the third will defend the interior of our towns with pikes. . . . The tocsin, which is about to sound, is not a signal of alarm, it is the charge against the enemies of the country. In order to overcome them, Messieurs, we need audacity, more audacity, always audacity, and France is saved ! ”
These words, which have sounded down the years as the trumpet-call of patriotism, must be studied in their context in order to understand their true significance. Posterity that at a moment of national danger sighs, “ Oh for a Danton ! ” takes it for granted that the audacity to which the great demagogue referred was to be displayed towards the advancing Austrians and Prussians. In this case, why employ the word audacity ? In referring to soldiers marching against their country’s enemies, we may speak of them as bold or courageous, we may describe them as “ daring ” for undertaking some novel or hazardous method of attack, but we do not call them “ audacious.” Audacity does not merely signify bravery, it implies a certain degree of effrontery, of insolent contempt for public opinion, the mental resolution to bring off a coup and brazen out the consequences. It was precisely in this sense that it was applied by Danton, for the tocsin to which he referred was not a summons to Frenchmen to march against Prussians, but the call to Frenchmen to fall upon Frenchmen ; it was a signal for the massacres of September.[52]
Danton, having uttered his famous apostrophe, returned home, and said to his colleagues who awaited him, “ Foutre ! I electrified them ! Now we can go forward !” which, says Proussinalle, meant “ we can begin the massacres.” “ It was then twelve o’clock. The men of blood who were waiting this signal went out hurriedly from the ministers ; soon the tocsin and the cannon of alarm were heard, the assassins started for the prisons, and the massacres began.” [53]
A certain lawyer named Grandpré, relates Madame Roland, was employed by Roland at this time to visit the prisons, and, finding that great alarm prevailed there concerning the rumour of a projected massacre, waylaid Danton the same morning as he came out of a meeting of council at the Ministry of the Interior, and begged him to ensure the safety of the prisoners. “ He was interrupted by an exclamation from Danton, shouting in his bull’s voice, with his eyes starting out of his head, and with a furious gesture : ‘ What do I care about the prisoners ! Let them take care of themselves ! ’ (Je me f. . . . bien des Prisonniers ! qu’ils deviennent ce qu’ils pourront !) ” [54]
Grandpré was not the only man to approach Danton on this fatal morning. Prudhomme the journalist, seated in his office, hearing the sound of the tocsin and the cannon, hurried to the Ministry of justice, where he found Danton, and said to him, “ What means this cannon of alarm, this tocsin, and the rumour of the arrival of the Prussians in Paris ? ”
“ Keep calm, old friend of liberty,” answered Danton, “ it is the tocsin of victory.”
“ But,” persisted Prudhomme, “ they speak of massacring——”
“ Yes,” said Danton, “ we were all to have been massacred to-night, beginning with the purest patriots. These rascals of aristocrats who are in the prisons had procured firearms and daggers. At a certain hour indicated to-night the doors were to be opened to them. They would have scattered into all the different quarters to butcher the wives and children of patriots who march against the Prussians.” Prudhomme, bewildered by this monstrous fable, inquired what means had been taken to prevent the execution of the plot. “ What means ? ” cried Danton ; “ the irritated people, who were told in time, mean to administer justice themselves to all the scoundrels who are in the prisons.”
At this Prudhomme declares he was stupefied with horror ; we may question whether he ventured, however, to remonstrate at the time with quite the courage he afterwards attributed to himself. When, a moment later, Camille Desmoulins entered, Prudhomme goes on to relate, Danton turned to him with the words, “ Prudhomme has come to ask what is going to be done.”
“ Yes,” said Prudhomme, “ my heart is rent by what I have just heard.”
“ Then you have not told him,” Camille said, turning to Danton, “ that the innocent will not be confounded with the guilty ? ” Prudhomme continued to remonstrate, but Danton answered firmly, “ Every kind of moderate measure is useless ; the anger of the people is at its height, it would be actually dangerous to arrest it. When their first anger is assuaged we shall be able to make them listen to reason.”
“ But if,” Prudhomme suggested, “ the legislative body and the constituted authorities were to go all over Paris and harangue the people ? ”
“ No, no,” answered Camille, “ that would be too dangerous, for the people in their first anger might find victims in the persons of their dearest friends.” [55]
Prudhomme went out sadly, and on his way through the dining-room perceived a pleasant dinner-party in progress—Madame Desmoulins, Madame Danton, and Fabre d’Églantine were amongst the guests.[56] Word being brought at this moment to Danton that “ all was going well,” the Minister of justice complacently took his seat at the table.[571]
So at the very moment that the assassins started forth on their terrible work, the authors of the crime sat down to feast.
THE FIRST MASSACRE AT THE ABBAYE [58]
Punctually at twelve o’clock a troop of Marseillais and Avignonnais confederates—amongst whom were a number of men who had taken part in the Glacière d’Avignon [59]—arrived, obedient to orders and singing the “ Marseillaise,” at the Hôtel de Ville, to transfer the first batch of prisoners to the Abbaye. Twenty-four priests, among which, in spite of the appeal of the deaf-mutes, the Abbé Sicard was included, were thrust into several cabs, and the drivers received the order to proceed slowly through the streets under pain of being massacred on their seats if they disobeyed. The confederates, who formed the escort, loudly informed the prisoners that they would never reach the Abbaye, as “ the people ” to whom they were to be delivered intended to massacre them on the way. In order to facilitate this operation the doors of the cabs were left open, and all efforts on the part of the priests to close them were overcome by the soldiers, who, pointing at the prisoners with their sabres, cried out to the disorderly crowd following in the wake of the procession, “ These are your enemies, the accomplices of those who delivered up Verdun, those who only awaited your departure to murder your wives and children. Here are our pikes and sabres ; put these monsters to death ! ”
But if the leaders had hoped to give a popular air to the proceedings by inducing the mob to begin the massacres, they were disappointed, for the people around the cabs contented themselves with shouting insults, and the Marseillais were obliged to make use of their weapons themselves. After cutting at the defenceless priests with their sabres, one of the soldiers finally mounted on the steps of a carriage and plunged his sabre into the heart of the first victim.[60] His comrades quickly followed his example, thrusting at the prisoners through the open doorways, but the blows being ill-directed only a few were mortally wounded, and it was not until the procession stopped at the doors of the Abbaye, where Maillard and his hired assassins were waiting, that the massacres began in earnest. Out of the twenty-four prisoners, twenty-one perished ; two, including the Abbé Sicard, succeeded in escaping to the neighbouring “ Committee of the Section,” and, throwing themselves into the arms of the commissioners there assembled, cried out, “ Save us ! Save us ! ” Several of these men, terrified for their own lives, roughly repulsed the unhappy priests, answering, “ Go away ! would you have us massacred ? ” but one, recognizing the Abbé Sicard, led them into the inner hall, and closed the door on the mob. Here they might have remained in safety had not a “ fury ” in the crowd, who happened to be an accomplice of the Abbé Sicard’s enemies, rushed to inform them of his escape. The next moment heavy blows sounded on the doors and voices called aloud for the two prisoners.
The Abbé Sicard felt that his last hour had come. Handing his watch to one of the commissioners he said, “ Give this to the first deaf-mute who asks for news of me.”
The blows on the door redoubled. The Abbé Sicard fell on his knees, offered his last prayer, then, rising, embraced his comrade and said, “ Let us hold each other close and die together ; the door is about to open, the murderers are there, we have not five minutes to live.”
The next moment the assassins burst into the room and rushed upon the prisoners. The Abbé Sicard’s companion fell dead at his side ; Sicard himself saw a pike levelled at his breast, when suddenly one of the commissioners of the section, a clockmaker named Monnot, thrust his way through the crowd, and, throwing himself between the assassins and their victim, bared his breast to their blows, crying out, “ Here is the breast through which you must pass to reach that one. He is the Abbé Sicard, one of the men who have rendered the greatest service to his country, the father of the deaf-mutes. You must cross my body to get to him ! ”
At these words the murderous pike was lowered, and for a moment it seemed that the brave clockmaker had succeeded in disarming the assassins. But outside the hall the rest of the ferocious band waited, howling like wolves for their prey. Then the good Abbé, showing himself at the window, obtained a moment of silence, and spoke in these words to the raving herd :
“ My friends, here is an innocent man, would you have him die without giving him a hearing ? ”
Voices answered, “ You were with the others we have just killed. You are guilty as they were ! ”
“ Listen to me a moment, and if after hearing me you decree my death I shall not complain. My life is in your hands. Learn, then, what I do, who I am, and then you will decide my fate. I am the Abbé Sicard.”
A murmur went round, “ He is the Abbé Sicard, the father of the deaf-mutes, we must listen to him.”
The Abbé continued : “ I teach the deaf-mutes from their birth, and, as the number of these unfortunate ones is greater amongst the poor than amongst the rich, I belong more to you than to the rich.” Then a voice cried, “ The Abbé Sicard must be saved. He is too valuable a man to perish. His whole life is employed in doing a great work ; no, he has not time to be a conspirator.”
Immediately a chorus took up the last words, adding, “ We must save him ! We must save him ! ”
Whereupon the assassins, standing behind the Abbé at the window, seized him in their arms, and led him out through the ranks of their blood-stained comrades, who fell on his neck, embraced him, and begged to be allowed to lead him home in triumph.
Nothing is stranger in all the strange history of the Revolution than the evidence of latent idealism that seems to have lingered in many ferocious hearts : how did it come to pass that, amongst this fearful horde, men could be found to applaud a noble life and perceive its value to the world, whilst themselves employed only in crime and destruction ?
But, although the Abbé Sicard had succeeded in disarming his terrible assassins by a direct appeal to their better feelings, he was quite unable to touch the hearts of the men who had ordained the crime, for, having refused to leave the prison until legally released by the Commune, he waited in vain for this order to arrive ; two days later we find him still writing plaintive appeals to the Assembly to rescue him from the place of horror in which he is confined, and where he is perpetually threatened with a hideous death. The Assembly contented itself with passing on the letter to the Commune. But since it was there his death had been decreed, the unfortunate Abbé was left to his fate, and it was not until seven o’clock in the evening of the 4th of September, by the intercession of the deputy Pastoret with Hérault de Sechelles, that the Abbé Sicard obtained his release.[61]
At five o’clock in the evening of the 2nd, when the carnage was temporarily suspended, Billaud-Varenne arrived in his puce-coloured coat and black wig, wearing his municipal scarf as delegate of the Commune.[62] Stepping over the bodies of the dead priests, he thus addressed the assassins : “ Respectable citizens, you have killed scoundrels ; you have done your duty, and you will each have twenty-four livres.” [63]
This discourse aroused afresh the fury of the assassins, and they began to call aloud for further victims. Then Maillard, known as Tape-Dur, answered loudly, “ There is nothing more to be done here ; let us go to the Carmes ! ” [64]
THE MASSACRE AT THE CARMES [65]
At the Couvent des Carmes, in the Rue de Vaugirard, between 150 and 200 priests had been incarcerated after the 10th of August. For a time they had believed themselves to be threatened merely with deportation, but during the two days preceding the massacres a number of sinister indications showed them that they had only a little while to live. The patriarch of this band, the venerable Archbishop of Arles, who, in spite of his age and infirmities, insisted on sharing every hardship and privation with his companions, succeeded in inspiring them all with his own heroic spirit, and it was thus that in perfect calm and resignation they awaited their end. When on this terrible Sunday afternoon, the 2nd of September, Joachim Ceyrat, the principal organizer of this massacre, whose inveterate hatred of religion filled him with unrelenting fury towards its ministers, ordered them all to leave the church which served as their prison and assemble in the garden, they well knew that their last moment had come. Yet it was still with undisturbed serenity that for half-an-hour they paced the shady alleys, whilst the terrible band of Maillard came steadily nearer.
Then suddenly, at the entrance to the convent, cries of rage were heard ; through the bars was seen the flash of sabres, and at this the priests, retreating into a small oratory at the far end of the garden, fell on their knees and gave each other the last blessing.
The Abbé de Pannonie, standing in the doorway of this chapel with the Archbishop of Arles, said, “ Monseigneur, I think they have come to assassinate us.”
“ Then,” said the Archbishop, “ this is the moment of our sacrifice ; let us resign ourselves and thank God we can offer Him our blood in so splendid a cause.” And with these words he entered the oratory, and knelt in prayer before the altar.
Even as he spoke the garden gates were broken down, and a drunken band of assassins, armed with pistols and sabres, threw themselves with savage howls upon their victims. The first to perish was Père Gérault, who, absorbed in his breviary, walked up and down beside the fountain in the middle of the garden ; the second was the Abbé Salins, who had hurried to the side of his fallen comrade.
Meanwhile another group of murderers made their way towards the oratory, calling out furiously, “ Where is the Archbishop of Arles ? Where is the Archbishop of Arles ? ” The Archbishop, hearing his name, rose from his knees and came towards the doorway. In vain his companions attempted to hold him back. “ Let me pass,” he said ; “ may my blood appease them ! ”
Then, standing on the steps of the chapel, he fearlessly confronted his assassins.
“ It is you, old scoundrel, who are the Archbishop of Arles ? ” cried the leader of the band.
“ Yes, messieurs, it is I.”
“ It was you who had the blood of patriots shed at Arles ? ”
“ Messieurs, I have never had the blood of any one shed ; nor have I ever injured any one in my life.”
“ Well, then, I will injure you ! ” answered the murderer, striking the Archbishop across the forehead with a sabre. A second assassin dealt him a fearful blow with a scimitar, cleaving his face almost in two.
The heroic old man uttered never a murmur, but, still erect on the steps of the chapel, raised his hands to the streaming wound, then, at a third blow, fell forward at the feet of his murderers, and a pike was thrust through his heart.
At this sight a savage howl of triumph rose from all the assassins, and, levelling their pistols at the kneeling priests inside the chapel, they began a murderous fusillade ; in a few moments the floor was strewn with the dead and dying.
Amongst the priests who had not taken refuge in the oratory were a certain number of young men less resigned than their superiors, and these, seeing the massacre in progress, attempted to elude their murderers.
Then in the old garden a terrible man-hunt began ; around the trunks of trees, in and out amongst the bushes, the raging horde pursued their victims, uttering foul blasphemies against religion and singing the bloodthirsty refrain :
Dansons la Carmagnole,
Vive le son ! vive le son !
Dansons la Carmagnole,
Vive le son du canon !
A few of the young priests, with extraordinary agility, succeeded in scaling the ten-foot wall of the garden into the neighbouring Rue Cassette, helping themselves upward by means of the stone figure of a monk that stood close against it ; but some of these, after reaching safety, were stricken with remorse lest their escape should make the fate of those they had left behind more terrible, and with sublime courage they climbed back again into the garden and met their death.
Suddenly in the midst of the butchery a voice cried, “ Halt ! This is not the way to go to work ! ”
It was Maillard who, interposing between the assassins and their victims, ordered those of the priests who still survived to be driven into the church, whilst a tribunal was set up for their judgement.
At the Carmes this so-called “ Tribunal of the Sovereign People ” was even more a mockery than at the other prisons, for here none of the populace were even admitted to watch the massacre ;[66] indeed, the “ ladies of the quarter,” that is to say, the poor women from the surrounding streets, who had collected outside the gate where they could catch a glimpse of the scene taking place in the garden, loudly protested against the shooting of the priests,[67] and it seems to have been mainly for this reason that it was decided to finish the massacre in a more orderly manner out of view of the street, whilst at the same time a cordon of Gendarmes Nationaux, stationed at the gates, prevented the people from breaking in and interfering with the assassins.[68] A table was then arranged in a gloomy cloister of the convent, and here either Maillard or a commissioner named Violette [69] seated himself with the list of the prisoners, drawn up by Joachim Ceyrat, spread out before him. Needless to say, no trial of any kind took place, for Ceyrat that morning had pronounced the verdict, “ All who are in the Carmes are guilty ! ” [70] A few managed to find hiding-places and survived the massacre ; a few others succeeded in melting the hearts of the assassins ; the rest, summoned two by two from the church to appear before the tribunal, rose from their knees blessing God for the privilege of shedding their blood in His cause, and clasping the Scriptures in their hands, with eyes raised to Heaven, went out into the corridor to meet their death. In less than two hours one hundred and nineteen victims had perished.
THE SECOND MASSACRE AT THE ABBAYE [71]
At seven o’clock in the evening, after the massacre at the Carmes, Maillard and his band returned to the Abbaye, where a number of prisoners still remained incarcerated, for the murder of the contingent in cabs at the entrance had been only the prelude to a general massacre.
The Abbé de Salamon, a young papal nuncio, whose account of these September days is perhaps the most thrilling of all existing records, has described, with frightful minuteness, the agony of mind in which he and a company of fellow-priests passed that interminable Sunday afternoon. At half-past two, when they had just finished dining in the long dark hall assigned them as a prison, the gaoler noisily drew the bolts, and threw open the door with the words, “ Be quick, the people are marching on the prisons, and have already begun to massacre all the prisoners.” It was, in fact, at this very moment that the procession of cabs arrived at the Abbaye and the carnage began.
At this news, says the Abbé Salamon, “ there was great agitation amongst us. Some cried, ‘ What will happen to us ? ’ Others, ‘ Then we must die I ’ Many went to the door to look through the key-hole—a hole that did not exist, for prison locks only open from outside and show no opening on the interior. Others sprang up on their heels as if to look out of the windows, which were fourteen feet high ; finally, others walking up and down without knowing where they were going knocked their legs violently against the seats and tables. . . . We began to hear the cries of the people ; it was like a great distant murmur.”
Standing apart were two young Minim brothers—“ the youngest one had an angelic face.” The Abbé Salamon, going up to them, spoke words of comfort. “ Ah, mon Dieu, monsieur,” answered the younger, “ I do not regard it as a disgrace to die for religion ; on the contrary, I am afraid they may not kill me because I am only a sub-deacon.” The Abbé Salamon, none too devout himself, admits that he blushed at these words, “ worthy of the earliest martyrs of the Church.”
But the hour for martyrdom had not yet arrived ; the band of assassins, after murdering the priests at the entrance of the convent, had gone on to the Carmes, and for some hours all was quiet. The priests spent the rest of the afternoon in prayer and confession. Then suddenly the door was thrown open again, and the voice of the gaoler called out roughly, “ The people are more and more irritated ; there are perhaps 2000 men in the Abbaye.” And, indeed, the tumult and the howling of the mob could now be heard distinctly by the prisoners. The gaoler added brutally, “ It is just announced that all the priests in the Carmes have been massacred.” At these words the assembled company threw themselves with one accord at the feet of the Cure de St. Jean en Grève—a saintly old man of eighty, “ who retained all the serenity of a noble soul ”—and begged him to give them absolution in articulo mortis.
After this had been given all remained kneeling, whilst the old cure said, “ We may regard ourselves as sick men about to die. . . . I will recite the prayers of the dying ; join with me that God may have pity on us.”
But at the opening words, uttered with so great dignity by the aged priest, “ Depart, Christian souls, from this world in the name of God the Father Almighty . . .,” almost all burst into tears. “ Some lay brothers loudly lamented at dying so young, and gave way to imprecations against their assassins. The good cure interrupted them, representing to them with great gentleness that they must generously pardon, and that perhaps if God were pleased with their resignation He might create means to save them.”
Such were the men who were represented as planning to massacre the wives and children of the citizens !
Meanwhile, outside the gate of the prison in the Rue Sainte-Marguerite, the massacre of the prisoners had begun. A band of assassins, preceding that of Maillard, which was still occupied at the Carmes, had besieged the gate clamouring for victims, and the concierge, fearing to resist them, had handed out several prisoners committed to his care. It was thus that, when Maillard and his band returned from the Carmes, they found the hideous work already begun. This “ band of massacrers,” says Felhémési, “ comes back covered with blood and dust ; these monsters are tired of carnage but not sated with blood. They are out of breath, they ask for wine, for wine, or death. What reply can be made to this irresistible desire ? The civil committee of the section gives them orders for 24 pints to be drawn at a neighbouring wine-merchant. Soon they have drunk, they are intoxicated, and contemplate with satisfaction the corpses strewn in the courtyard of the Abbaye.”
It was then decided, in order to give an air of justice to their proceedings, that again a so-called “ popular tribunal,” under Maillard, should be set up.
Maillard, who was himself a thief,[72] had brought with him twelve swindlers to act as his accomplices, and these men, mingling in the crowd “ as if by accident,” came forward “ in the name of the Sovereign People ” and seized the registers of the prison. At this “ the turnkeys tremble, the gaoler and the gaoler’s wife faint, the prison is surrounded by furious men, cries and tumult increase.” [73] Suddenly one of the commissioners of the section appeared on the scene, and standing on a footstool attempted to soothe the mob, whom he took to be the cause of the uproar : “ My comrades, my friends, you are good patriots . . . but you must love justice. There is not one of you who does not shudder at the frightful idea of soaking his hands in innocent blood ! ” Even this vile mob, collected by the leaders to abet them in their crimes, showed itself amenable to sentiments of humanity and justice, and cried out loudly, “ Yes ! Yes ! ”
But those who had ordained the massacres had prepared against any eventualities of this kind, and a man in the crowd was ready with the prescribed phrase. Springing forward, with blazing eyes and brandishing a blood-stained sword, he interrupted the orator in these words : “ Say, then, monsieur le citoyen, . . . do you wish to lull us to sleep ? . . . I am not an orator, I delude no one, and I tell you that I am the father of a family, that I have a wife and five children whom I am willing to leave here under the protection of my section in order to go and fight the enemy, but meanwhile I do not mean that the rascals who are in this prison, or the others who will open the doors to them, shall go and murder my wife and children . . . so by me, or by others, the prison shall be purged of all these cursed scoundrels ! ”
Instantly the mob, rallying to the word of command, shouted, “ He is right ; no mercy ! ” and Maillard’s accomplices called out for a tribunal to be formed by their leader : “ Monsieur Maillard ! Citizen Maillard as president ! He is a good man, Citizen Maillard ! ” [74]
In a hall opening on the garden of the convent the terrible tribunal was then set up. At a table covered with a green cloth, on which ink, pens, and paper were arranged, Maillard, in his black coat and powdered hair, took his place, with the register of the prison spread before him. This register, preserved by the “ Prefecture of Police,” long remained one of the ghastliest relics of the revolutionary era ; on the greasy pages great marks of wine and blood might be seen, and all down the list of names blood-stained finger-prints left by the assassins, as they indicated the prisoner concerning whom they asked for orders.[75]
Needless to say, the verdicts had been arranged beforehand, and it was then agreed that instead of pronouncing sentence of death the words “ To La Force ! ” should be employed. By this means the victims, imagining themselves to be acquitted and about to be transferred to this other prison, would go forward without a struggle into the arms of their assassins. The ruse, no doubt, served a double purpose, for in cases where no evidence was forthcoming against the prisoner the so-called “ judges ” could absolve themselves of the injustice of condemning him, and attribute his death to the uncontrollable passions of “ the people.”
The first victims of this mock tribunal were the Swiss, who had been imprisoned after the siege of the Tuileries on the 10th of August. These, to the number of forty-three, were all common soldiers, for their officers, with the exception of M. de Reding, who lay wounded in the chapel of the Abbaye, had been taken to the Conciergerie. A voice, speaking through the window of the hall occupied by the “ tribunal,” and declaring itself to be “ entrusted with the wish of the people,” now exclaimed loudly, “ There are Swiss in the prison, lose no time in examining them ; they are all guilty, not one must escape ! ” And the rabble obediently echoed, “ That is just, that is just, let us begin with them ! ” The tribunal thereupon pronounced the words, “ To La Force ! ”
Maillard then went to the Swiss and ordered them to come forth. “ You assassinated the people on the 10th of August ; to-day they demand justice, you must go to La Force.” The unhappy Swiss, instantly understanding the significance of these words, for the howls of the mob had reached them in their prison, fell on their knees, crying out, “ Mercy ! Mercy ! ” But Maillard was inexorable. Two of the assassins followed, saying harshly to the prisoners, “ Come, come, make up your minds ! Let us go ! ” Then “ lamentations and horrible groans ” arose ; the unhappy Swiss, all huddling together at the back of the room, clung to each other, embraced, gave way to pitiful despair at the sight of so hideous a death. A few white-haired old men, “ whose looks resembled those of Coligny,” almost succeeded in disarming their murderers. But a relentless voice cried, “ Well, which of you is to go out the first ? ” At this a tall young man in a blue overcoat, with a noble countenance and martial air, came forward fearlessly : “ I pass the first ! ” he cried, “ I Will give the example ! ” Throwing off his hat he advanced proudly, “ with the apparent calm of concentrated fury,” and faced the raging crowd. For a moment the horde, stupefied by his intrepidity, fell back ; a circle formed around him ; with folded arms he stood defiant, then, realizing that death was inevitable, suddenly rushed forward upon the pikes and bayonets, and the next moment fell pierced with a hundred wounds.
All but one of his unhappy comrades shared the same fate ; this sole survivor, a boy “ of ingenuous countenance,” succeeded in enlisting the sympathy of a Marseillais, who bore him forth triumphantly amidst the applause of the crowd.
Four other victims followed, accused of forging assignats ; then Montmorin, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, and arch-enemy of Brissot and the pro-Prussian party. Montmorin had been summoned before the bar of the Assembly on the 22nd of August and accused by the Girondins of having opposed an alliance between France and Prussia, and of wishing to maintain the Franco-Austrian alliance, but the Assembly, not entirely dominated by this faction, had acquitted Montmorin, and so his death by violent means was decreed. Can we doubt that Peltier was right in saying that this foul crime lay at the door of Brissot,[76] and may not the hand of Prussia also be detected here ? Yet this too was attributed to the fury of “ the people ” ! The register of Maillard bears these words, beside the name of Montmorin : “ On the 4th of September [77] 1792, the Sieur Montmorin has been judged by the people and executed on the spot.”
Other victims followed quickly—Thierry de Ville d’Avray, valet de chambre to the King, and guardian of the Garde Meuble where the Crown jewels were kept, was condemned with the words, “ Like master, like man ! ” Two magistrates, Buob and Bosquillon, who had started an inquiry on the events of the 20th of June, the Comte de St. Marc, the Comte de Wittgenstein, the solicitor Séron—accused of calumniating the nation because he had complained of being rudely awakened from his sleep on the night of his arrest—were all put to death with indescribable barbarity.
Jourgniac de St. Méard has vividly described the agony of mind in which he and his fellow-prisoners passed this terrible night and the no less terrible day that followed, for the piercing screams of the victims penetrated to them in their prison, and none doubted that before long their own turn must come.
“ The principal thing with which we occupied ourselves,” says St. Méard, “ was to know what position we should assume in order to receive death the least painfully when we entered the place of massacre. From time to time we sent one of our comrades to the window of the tower, to tell us what position those unfortunate people took up who were then being immolated, so as to calculate from their report that which it would be best for us to assume. They reported that those who held out their hands suffered much longer, because the sabre-cuts were stopped before reaching their heads—there were even some whose hands and arms fell before their bodies—and that those who held them behind their backs seemed to suffer much the least. . . . Well, it was on these horrible details we deliberated. . . . We calculated the advantages of this last position, and we advised each other to assume it when our turn came to be massacred ! . . .”
It was not until nearly midnight that the company of priests, which included the Abbé Salamon, was led before the terrible tribunal.
“ We walked,” says the nuncio, who certainly had not acquired the resignation of his more devout companions, “ escorted by a crowd in arms, in the midst of a great number of torches, and under the rays of a beautiful moon that lit up all those vile scoundrels.” Arraigned before the green-covered table they awaited their sentence, whilst a quarrel took place amongst the judges. At last Maillard, by loudly ringing his bell, obtained silence, and one of his assistants addressed the crowd : “ Here are a lot of rascals who are waiting for the just punishment of their crimes. All these people are priests ; they are the sworn enemies of the nation, who would not take the oath . . .; they are all aristocrats, we must begin with them, certainly they are the most guilty.”
The form of interrogatory was confined to the one question, “ Have you taken the oath ? ” The first to answer it was the old Curé de St. Jean en Grève, who, owning courageously that he had not taken it because he regarded it as contrary to the principles of his religion, asked only to be spared a lingering death in consideration of his great age and infirmity. Instantly a storm of blows descended on the venerable head, and a moment later the lifeless body was dragged out to the cries of “ Vive la nation ! ” Nearly all his companions shared the same fate ; amongst the last to fall were the two Minim brothers, over whom a furious struggle took place, some of the assassins wishing to take them out and kill them, others to detain them in the hall. “ I noticed,” says Salamon, “ that the under-deacon who so desired to die opposed less resistance to those who wished to drag him out than to those who wished to save him. In the end the scoundrels triumphed, and they were massacred.”
Such was the nature of the “ gangrene ” which the regenerators of France held it necessary to destroy ! Of such stuff was made the clergy of the Old Régime, described to us as “ vicious ” and “ effete,” whose fate was but the just retribution of their deeds ! Amongst the priests who perished on these September days was not a single one who had been distinguished for profligacy or extravagance ; the great majority were humble, saintly men, many white-haired and venerable, whose lives had been passed in doing good, and who in death displayed a heroic resignation never surpassed in the earliest days of Christendom. No, the Old Order was not effete that produced such men as these ! The lay prisoners, however, were not all of the stuff of which martyrs are made. Some defended themselves vigorously. Two quite young men, who had been recognized as members of the King’s new bodyguard, were dragged forward and denounced to the mob as chevaliers du poignard, who must be punished on the spot, whereat the mob replied with savage howls of “ Death ! death ! ”
“ They were,” says the Abbé Salamon, “ two young men of superb figures and handsome countenances . . .”; the crowd “ began to overwhelm them with insults ; then one man, more cowardly than the rest, gave the tallest one a violent blow with a sabre, to which he replied only with a shrug of the shoulders. Then began a horrible struggle between these vile drinkers of blood and these two young men, who, although unarmed, defended themselves like lions. They threw many (of their assailants) to the ground, and I think if only they had had a knife they would have been victorious. At last they fell on the floor of the hall all pierced with blows. They seemed in despair at dying, and I heard one crying out, ‘ Must one die at this age, and in this manner ? ’ ”
All through this dreadful night the massacres continued in the courtyards of the prison. The Abbé Sicard, still detained in the hall of the section, could hear the cries of the victims, the howls of the murderers, the savage songs and dances taking place around the bodies of the dead. At intervals an assassin, with sleeves rolled up, clutching a blood-stained sabre, would come to the section clamouring for more drink : “ Our good brothers have been long at work in the courtyard ; they are tired, their lips are dry ; I come to ask for wine for them ! ” And finally the committee tremblingly ordered them four more flagons. Then, crazed with the fumes of alcohol, the massacrers returned to their hideous task. “ One,” says the Abbé Sicard, “ complained that these aristocrats died too quickly, that only the first ones had the pleasure of striking, and it was decided to hit them only with the flat of the sword, and then make them run between two rows of massacrers, as was formerly the practice with soldiers condemned to be scourged. It was also arranged that there should be seats around this place for the ‘ ladies’ and ‘ gentlemen.’ . . . One can imagine,” Sicard adds significantly, “ what ladies these were ! ”
The council of the Commune had taken care to provide not only the actors but the audience. The women of the district, trained at the Société Fraternelle, were reinforced during the massacres of September by a terrible brigade of female malefactors released from the prisons, whose rôle was to applaud the assassinations and incite the murderers to further violence. It was this legion that afterwards peopled the tribunes of the Terror, and became known as the tricoteuses or “ furies ” of the guillotine.[78]
Nothing had been left to chance by the organizers of the massacres. In the middle of the night members of the Commune, alarmed lest under the influence of fiery drinks and excitement some of the spoils they counted on might elude them, deputed Billaud-Varenne again to harangue the massacrers.
“ My friends, my good friends,” cried Billaud, standing on a platform in their midst, “ the Commune sends me to you to represent to you that you are dishonouring this beautiful day. They have been told that you are robbing these rascals of aristocrats after executing justice on them. Leave, leave all the jewels, all the money and goods they have on them for the expenses of the great act of justice you are exercising. They will have a care to pay you as was arranged with you. Be noble, great, and generous like the profession you follow. May everything in this great day be worthy of the people whose sovereignty is entrusted to you ! ” [79]
And these were the massacres that the Commune afterwards declared itself powerless to prevent !
Even to the most ingenuous observer it was evident that the atrocities taking place were not a matter of misdirected popular fury, but the result of a deep-laid scheme. Honest Dr. John Moore, a stranger to all intrigues, had been told earlier in the day that “ the people ” had broken into the Abbaye and were massacring the prisoners. But at midnight, as he sits writing in his hotel, close by the prison, a sudden flash of revelation comes to him : all at once he understands, and with a thrill of realization writes these illuminating words : “ Is this the work of a furious and deluded mob ? How come the citizens of this populous metropolis to remain passive spectators of so dreadful an outrage ? Is it possible that this is the accomplishment of a plan concerted two or three weeks ago ; that those arbitrary arrests were ordered with this view ; that false rumours of treasons and intended insurrections and massacres were spread to exasperate the people ; and that, taking advantage of the rumours of bad news from the frontiers, orders have been issued for firing the cannon and sounding the tocsin, to increase the alarm, and terrify the public into acquiescence ; while a band of chosen ruffians were hired to massacre those whom hatred, revenge, or fear had destined to destruction, but whom law and justice could not destroy ?
“ It is now past twelve at midnight, and the bloody work still goes on ! Almighty God ! ”
MASSACRE AT LA FORCE [80]
Not only at the Abbaye was the bloody work in progress ; during the same night the Châtelet and the Conciergerie had been invaded by other bands of massacrers. At one o’clock in the morning, the 3rd of September, the massacre began at La Force. It was here that a number of aristocrats had been incarcerated after the 10th of August ; these included M. de Rulhières, ex-commander of the mounted guard of Paris ; MM. de Baudin and de la Chesnaye, who had remained in command at the Tuileries after the murder of Mandat ; several of the Queen’s ladies, Madame and Mademoiselle de Tourzel, Madame de Sainte-Brice, the Princesse de Lamballe, Madame de Mackau, Madame Bazire, and Madame de Navarre ; also a foster-brother of the Queen’s named Weber, and Maton de la Varenne, the author of the memoirs already quoted. There were also ten or twelve priests ; the rest of the prisoners were common malefactors. Very few of the aristocrats perished, only about six in all ; these included De Rulhières and De la Chesnaye. Weber and Maton de la Varenne, though both ardent Royalists, were acquitted, amidst the frantic applause of the populace.[81] All the Queen’s ladies, with one tragic exception, were likewise set at liberty by the Commune through the influence of Manuel. But there was one victim whom even Manuel was powerless to save. This was the Queen’s friend, the ill-fated Princesse de Lamballe.
“ The condemnation of the Princesse de Lamballe,” MM. Buchez et Roux have the infamy to write, “ is it not quite simply explained by the particular hatred the people bore her ? ” [82] No blacker calumny was ever uttered against either the princess or the people. “ Amidst all our agitations,” even the revolutionary Mercier admits, “ she had played no rôle ; nothing could render her suspect in the eyes of the people, by whom she was only known for innumerable acts of benevolence.” [83] On the estates of her father-in-law, the Duc de Penthièvre, with whom she had lived since the early death of her husband, she was known as “ the good angel ”; in the whole world she had but one implacable enemy, her husband’s brother-in-law, Philippe d’Orléans. It has been said that the princess’s dowry had excited the cupidity of the duke, and that by her death he hoped to add it to his waning fortune ; whether this was so or not the duke had a further reason for resentment, namely, that the princess, recognizing his complicity in the march on Versailles on the 5th of October 1789, had refused from that time onward to associate with him.[84] This was enough to arouse all the bitter hatred of which Philippe showed himself peculiarly capable, and under the influence of wounded vanity he planned a terrible revenge.
Manuel, who had hitherto been a partisan of the Duc d’Orléans, had, however, been paid the sum of 50,000 écus to save the princess, and, unlike Danton, Manuel displayed a certain degree of integrity with regard to compacts of this kind. Accordingly he carried out his promise to rescue Madame and Mademoiselle de Tourzel, for whom he had received a large ransom, and also gave orders that the Princesse de Lamballe should be set at liberty.[85] But the accomplices of the duke were too strong for him. Once again the services of the bloodthirsty Rotondo had been enlisted—Rotondo who, after the disbanding of the “ Compagnie du Sabbat,” still remained in the pay of the Orléaniste conspiracy, and now placed himself at the head of a band of ferocious assassins specially hired to carry out the vengeance of the duke. The men that composed this gang were Gonor, a wheelwright, Renier, known as “ le grand Nicolas,” an agitator of the Palais Royal called Petit Mamain, Grison, and Charlat.[86]
At eight o’clock in the morning of September 3 the Princesse de Lamballe was brought before the so-called “ tribunal ” presided over by Hébert,[87] hereafter to become for ever infamous as the author of the atrocious accusation against the Queen at her trial. The verdict was, of course, a foregone conclusion.
“ When the princess had arrived before this frightful tribunal,” says Peltier, “ the sight of the blood-stained weapons, of the murderers, whose faces and clothing were marked with blood, caused her so great a shock that she fell into one fainting fit after another.” Then, as soon as she had sufficiently recovered consciousness, her cross-examination began.
“ Who are you ? ”
“ Marie Louise, Princess of Savoy.”
“ Your position ? ”
“ Superintendent of the Queen’s household.”
“ Have you any knowledge of the plots on the 10th of August ? ”
“ I do not know whether there were any plots on the 10th of August, but I know that I had no knowledge of them.”
“ Take the oath of liberty, of equality, of hatred for the King, the Queen, and royalty.”
“ I will willingly swear to the first, but not to the last. It is not in my heart.”
Some one whispered to her, “ Swear—if you do not, you are dead.”
But this heroic woman, whose excessive nervousness had excited even the kindly derision of her friends, now that the supreme moment had come, never faltered in her resolution ; over the quivering flesh the indomitable spirit rose triumphantly. Without a word she walked towards the wicket, well knowing the fate that there awaited her.
The judge then said, “ Set Madame free.”
These words were the signal of death.[88]
Instantly the hired band of assassins closed around her. The gate was opened. It is said that at the sight of the corpses piled around her she cried out faintly, “ Fi ! l’horreur ! ” and that two of her murderers, of whom one was Gonor, holding her beneath the arms, forced her to walk forward, fainting at each footstep, over the bodies of the dead.
But the hideous story of her end is already known to every one, and need not be related here. For the purpose of this book it is necessary only to follow the intrigue that ordained the crime, and to prove the non-complicity of the people.
The chief murderer of the Princesse de Lamballe was thus an Italian—Rotondo. Of this there can be no doubt whatever, for, besides the assertions of Montjoie, we have the evidence of Maton de la Varenne, who was in the prison of La Force at the time,[89] and of Peltier, who was in London when Rotondo at a tavern in that city openly boasted of his share in the crime.[90] Moreover, when Rotondo later fled to Switzerland he was arrested by the Government as “ one of the assassins of the Princesse de Lamballe,” and imprisoned by the King of Sardinia.[91]
A further light is thrown upon the incident by a curious document that has been preserved amongst the Chatham papers at the Record Office in London. Apparently Pitt was in the habit of employing secret agents to give him information concerning the revolutionary intrigues, and from one of these he inquired about Rotondo, whose boast in the tavern had possibly reached his ears. To this inquiry his correspondent makes the astonishing reply that Rotondo was the husband of one of the Princesse de Lamballe’s kitchen-maids, who helped to dismember the body of her mistress.[92]
Now it was said in Paris that several of the princess’s footmen, disguised as massacrers, had attempted to save her,[93] but they were recognized amongst the crowd and overpowered. Who so likely to recognize them as their fellow-servant ? And since Rotondo had been for more than two years in the pay of the Duc d’Orléans, is it not possible that his wife—also perhaps an Italian—had been introduced to the Hôtel de Penthièvre as an accomplice of the Orléaniste conspiracy ?
It is evident, moreover, that the gang had been hired for this crime alone, since none of them were paid by the Commune,[94] nor do they appear to have taken any further part in the massacres, but as soon as they had carried out their sanguinary mission they marched off with their trophy, the head of the princess, to show to their employer. By a refinement of brutality they halted first at a hairdresser’s for the long fair curls to be washed of blood-stains and freshly powdered, then, led by Charlat carrying the head on a pike, they went on to display it to the two best friends of the dead princess—Gabrielle de Beauvau, Abbess of the Abbaye de Saint-Antoine, and Marie Antoinette at the Temple. After this the procession marched on amidst the roll of drums and the sound of “ Ça ira ! ” to the Palais Royal. The Duc d’Orléans was just sitting down to dinner with his mistress, Madame Buffon, and several Englishmen, when the savage howls of triumph that heralded this arrival attracted his attention. Walking to the window he looked out calmly on the scene, contemplated with a perfectly unmoved countenance the dead, white face, the fair curls fluttering round the pike-head, and without a word returned to his place at the table. One of the Englishmen present, overcome with horror, rose and left the room ; the others remained to feast with the murderer.[95] Who these men were we shall see later.
But once again Philippe d’Orléans had overreached himself ; the effect of this atrocious crime was to alienate the sympathies of at least two of his supporters. “ Manuel,” says Montjoie, “ outraged by the assassination of the Princesse de Lamballe, from this moment declared war to the death against D’Orléans. Impulsive in his passions, knowing moderation neither in good nor evil, he was no longer either a Republican, or a Royalist, or a Constitutional, or a Monarchist ; he was nothing but anti-Orléaniste. . . . It was not hatred, it was rage. The Abbé Fauchet was taken with the same fury. . . . He began to compose a newspaper which was nothing but a long tissue of insults and imprecations against the party he had finally abandoned. Often when re-reading his pages he would say, ‘ Ah but my God ! what must one do to have the honour of being butchered by these people ? ’ ”
Several members of the Convention later on ranged themselves on the side of Manuel and Fauchet.
Most of the assassins of the Princesse de Lamballe ended as miserably as their chief ; after the 9th of Thermidor an inquiry was made into the massacres of September, and Renier, le grand Nicolas, was condemned to twenty years in irons, Petit Mamain to deportation, Charlat, bearer of the princess’s head, and guilty of further outrages that cannot be described, was put to death by the soldiers of the regiment in which he enlisted, to whom he had boasted of his crime, whilst Rotondo, leader of the gang, lived a hunted life execrated by all his fellow-men, and died either in prison or on the gallows.[96]
THE VICTIMS OF THE MASSACRES
It is mercifully unnecessary to the purpose of this book to describe the rest of the massacres, which lasted for five days and nights in succession ;[97] enough has already been told to give some faint idea of the horrors that took place throughout that week of infamous memory—the whole truth would be unbearable to read, still more to write. It only now remains to show who were the principal victims.
The number of aristocrats who perished was, as we have seen, comparatively infinitesimal ; several of the most ardent Royalists succeeded in disarming their assassins. At the Abbaye, where the massacre continued for two days and nights almost without intermission, the heroic Princesse de Tarente, having refused, in almost the same words as the Princesse de Lamballe, to betray the Queen, was carried home in triumph by the crowd.[98] Mademoiselle de Cazotte, with her arms around her white-haired father, touched the hearts of the spectators, and the old man was set at liberty by the populace,[99] only to fall a victim to the revolutionary tribunal three weeks later. Mademoiselle de Sombreuil, who really did drink the glass of blood to save her father’s life, also secured for him a temporary reprieve.[100] Jourgniac de St. Méard was acquitted after boldly admitting himself to be “ a frank Royalist.” The Abbé de Salamon was saved by his housekeeper, Madame Blanchet, a heroic old peasant woman who had followed him weeping to the door of the Abbaye, and waited about there patiently for five days without touching solid food. Hearing at one moment that her master had been massacred, Blanchet and a friend, a woman of the people as robust and courageous as herself, made their way into the courtyard of the Abbaye, resolved to know the worst. Then, weeping bitterly the while, the two poor women turned over the naked corpses one by one, fearing each time to find the face they sought. When they had thus examined about a hundred of the dead, Madame Blanchet cried out with tears of joy, “ He is not there ! ” and from that moment she importuned every one she met to obtain his release. These efforts meeting with no success, Madame Blanchet at last seized a deputy of the Assembly by the collar of his coat as he made his way through the Tuileries garden, and forced him to intercede for the Abbé de Salamon. By this means the faithful Blanchet achieved her purpose, and her master was given back to her alive.
Whilst a number of aristocrats were thus saved from the massacres, to “ the people,” as on the 10th of August, the revolutionaries showed no mercy. For although the object of the massacres was, as we have seen, to rid the State of that gangrened limb, the nobility and clergy, the operation was very imperfectly carried out, whilst on the other hand drastic amputation was exercised on “ the people.”
Thus at the Conciergerie, where the massacre began on the night of September 2-3, the prisoners were, with the exception of M. de Montmorin, governor of Fontainebleau, and seven or eight Swiss officers, all ordinary criminals of the poorer classes,[101] and of these at least 320 were massacred without even the formality of a trial.[102] Thirty-six who survived were set at liberty on the condition they should join themselves to the assassins, and seventy-five women, mostly thieves, were enrolled with the rest of the liberated female delinquents to swell the ranks of the future tricoteuses.[103] Only one woman—a flower-seller of the Palais Royal—perished here after the most inhuman tortures.[104]
The Châtelet, attacked on the same night, contained nothing but men of the people—all were thieves ; 223 perished also without a trial.[105]
Of these poor victims of the cause of “ liberty ” we have no record ; in the great whirlpool of the Revolution they went down in one indistinguishable mass ; no chronicler was there to describe their last moments, no survivor wrote his memoirs ; of several hundred, indeed, it is unrecorded whether they lived or died—they simply disappeared.[106] One trait of heroism stands out from the darkness of oblivion : a poor criminal, who had been offered his life on condition he should enrol himself amongst the massacrers, set himself to the ghastly work, struck one or two ill-aimed blows, then, overcome with horror at himself, flung down the hatchet, crying out, “ No, no, I cannot ! Better be a victim than a murderer ! I would rather be given my death by scoundrels like you than give it to disarmed innocents. Strike me ! ” And instantly he fell beneath the blows of his assassins.
On the following day, the 3rd of September, the Tour Saint-Bernard was attacked ; here seventy-five men condemned to the galleys were put to death, and their bodies robbed of their poor savings.[107] But of all the brutalities that took place on these September days, the massacre at Bicêtre was the most atrocious. Bicêtre had always been the prison of “ the people,” and, as we have seen earlier in this book, far more dreaded by them than the Bastille. We might then have expected the breaking open of this stronghold of despotism to end, as did the “ taking ” of the Bastille, with the triumphant liberation of its victims. If the Revolution had been made by the people this no doubt is what would have happened, but it was by the revolutionary sections of Paris, under the control of the Commune, that the attack on Bicêtre was organized, and by them cannons were provided for the purpose.[108] “ They went to Bicêtre with seven cannons,” says the lying report of the Assembly ; “ the people in exercising their vengeance thus showed their justice.” [109] What form did this justice take ? The massacre of 170 poor people, amongst whom were a number of young boys of twelve years old and upwards—unfortunate little “ street urchins ” detained, in many cases, at the request of their relations, as a punishment for minor offences.[110] In all the annals of the Revolution there is no passage more heart-rending than the account of this foul deed given more than forty years later by one of the gaolers :
“ They killed thirty-three of them, the unhappy ones ! The assassins said to us—and indeed we could see it for ourselves—that these poor children were far more difficult to finish off than grown-up men. You understand at that age life holds hard. They killed thirty-three of them ! They made a mountain of them, over there in the corner . . . at your right. . . . The next day, when we had to bury them, it was a sight to rend one’s soul ! There was one who looked as if he were asleep, like an angel of the good God ; but the others were horribly mutilated.”[111]
At the Salpetrière, a house of correction for women, as Bicêtre was for men, unspeakable barbarities took place ; thirty-five victims in all perished, and these were not the most unfortunate. The abominations committed towards little girls of ten to fifteen years cannot be described.[112]
“ If you knew the frightful details ! ” Madame Roland wrote later of the massacre at the Salpetriere, “ women brutally violated before being torn to pieces by these tigers ! . . . You know my enthusiasm for the Revolution ; well, I am ashamed of it ; it is dishonoured by villains, it has become hideous ! ” [113]
That the “ people ” were therefore the principal sufferers in the massacres of September is not a matter of opinion but of fact. The following table gives the precise statistics concerning the class of victims sacrificed :—
If, therefore, we except the sixty-nine soldiers who perished as the last defenders of Royalty, we arrive at the enormous total of 1011 victims from amongst “ the people ” who had no connection whatever with the political situation. Yet it was this senseless and wholesale butchery that the revolutionary leaders described as “ just ” and “ necessary,” but that, when they realized the universal horror it inspired, they basely attributed to the people.
“ It was a popular movement,” Robespierre afterwards declared, “ and not, as has been ridiculously supposed, the partial sedition of a few scoundrels paid to assassinate their fellows.” And with revolting hypocrisy he added, “ We are assured that one innocent perished—they have been pleased to exaggerate the number—but even one is far too many without doubt. Citizens, weep for the cruel error, we have long wept for it . . . but let your grief have its term like all human things ! Let us keep a few tears for more touching calamities ! ” [115]
Marat likewise heaped all the blame on to the people : “ The disastrous events of the 2nd and 3rd of September were entirely provoked by the indignation of the people at seeing themselves the slaves of all the traitors who had caused their disasters and misfortunes.” It was a “ perfidious insinuation to attribute these popular executions ” to the Commune—executions that, in the same breath, Marat, with his usual wild inconsequence, describes as “ unfortunately too necessary.”[116] If necessary, why was it perfidious to attribute them to the Commune ?
The historians who have made it their business to whitewash Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, effect their purpose by the same process of blackening the people.
“ We believe that the massacre at the prison of the Abbaye,” writes Bougeart, the adorer of Marat, “ was executed by the people, by the true people. . . . Marat cannot be accused of it, for he did everything before and during the event to prevent such horrible atrocities.” [117] Of all calumnies on the people uttered by the men who called themselves their friends, this accusation of having committed the massacres of September is the most infamous and the most unfounded. Apart from the revelations of Prudhomme, to whom the authors of the massacres confided their designs in the dialogues already quoted,[118] apart from the evidence of eye-witnesses who saw the assassins being paid by the emissaries of the Commune, we have documentary proof of these facts—the registers of the Commune recording the sums paid were preserved ;[119] a number of receipts signed by the murderers were still in existence until 1871.[120] The immense researches of M. Granier de Cassagnac and M. Mortimer Ternaux long ago laid bare the whole plot, and no revolutionary writer has ever succeeded in disproving their assertions. Yet, in spite of all this overwhelming evidence, we still read in English books—not merely the books of fanatics, but dry histories and manuals for schools—that the people of Paris, overcome by panic, marched on the prisons and massacred the prisoners !
THE ASSASSINS
Who were the men that the leaders succeeded in enlisting for the hideous task ? Very great pains have been taken, Dr. John Moore wrote on the 10th of September, to urge the notion “ that the assassins were no other than a promiscuous crowd of the citizens of Paris.”[121] This was absolutely untrue. The assassins formed an organized band of not more than 300 men—a point on which all contemporaries not in collusion with the leaders agree.[122] Nor is there any mystery concerning their identity, for the names and professions of the greater number are known, and have been published by M. Granier de Cassagnac.[123] There were then, in addition to the Marseillais and released convicts who formed the nucleus of the gang, a certain number of men who might be described as citizens of Paris, and, strangely enough, these were not mostly rough brutes from the barges on the Seine or the hovels of Saint-Marceau, but boutiquiers or small tradesmen, bootmakers, jewellers, tailors—two of these were Germans—some, indeed, appear to have been men of education.[124] It is this latter class that seems to have lent itself most willingly to the hideous work ; the rest were persuaded by various methods to co-operate. The greater number undoubtedly yielded merely to the lust for gold, to the promise of wine and booty in addition to their salary ; others, the more ignorant no doubt, believed the story told them of the plot hatched by the prisoners to massacre their wives and children, and went forth in all good faith to destroy the supposed enemies of their country. As to the ferocity they displayed once they had set themselves to the task, it is to be explained in the same way as the outrages committed at the Tuileries on the 10th of August, by the effect of fiery liquor working on overwrought brains. Moreover, this time it was not merely alcohol that had been given to them, but something more insidious that had been purposely introduced into the drink with which they were plied incessantly. Maton de la Varenne says that Manuel had ordered gunpowder to be mixed with their brandy, so as to keep them in a state of frenzy ; but the Two Friends of Liberty declare that they were drugged :
“ It is incontestable that the drink that had been distributed to the assassins was mingled with a particular drug that inspired terrible fury, and left to those who took it no possibility of a return to reason. We knew a porter who for twenty years had carried out errands . . . in the Rue des Noyers. He had always enjoyed the highest reputation, and every inhabitant of the district blindly confided the most valuable parcels to him. . . . He was dragged off on the 3rd of September to the Convent of Saint-Firmin, where he was forced to do the work of executioner. We saw him six days later when we were ourselves proscribed, and, needing a man who could be trusted to help us move secretly, we addressed ourselves to him. He had returned to his post ; he was trembling in every limb, foaming at the mouth, asking incessantly for wine, without ever slaking his thirst and without falling a victim to ordinary drunkenness. ‘ They gave me plenty to drink,’ he said, ‘ but I worked well ; I killed more than twenty priests on my own account.’ A thousand other speeches of this kind escaped him, and each sentence was interrupted by these words, ‘ I am thirsty.’ In order that he might not feel inclined to slake his thirst with our blood, we gave him as much wine as he wished. He died a month later without ever having slept in the interval.”[125]
This circumstance explains the fact that at moments the assassins showed themselves capable of humanity—evidently, when the first effects of the drug had begun to wear off, they returned more or less to a normal frame of mind. Thus the two cut-throats, who conducted the Chevalier de Bertrand safely home, insisted on going upstairs with him to contemplate the joy of his family. The rescuers of Jourgniac de St. Meard—a Marseillais, a mason, and a wig-maker—refused the reward offered them with the words, “ We do not do this for money.” [126] Later on Beaulieu met these men at the house of St. Méard. “ What struck me,” he says, “ was that through all their ferocious remarks I perceived generous sentiments, men determined to undertake anything to protect those whose cause they had embraced. The greater number of these maniacs, dupes of the Machiavellian beings who set them in motion, are dead or dying in misery.” [127]
THE RÔLE OF THE PEOPLE
From the point of view of the leaders, the populace proved disappointing during the massacres of September, for although it had not been thought advisable to march the Faubourgs en masse on the prisons, it was hoped that when the moment came a certain proportion of the Paris mob would join in the killing as they had done at the massacre of St. Barthélemy. “ In spite of all the activity displayed,” says Prudhomme, “ the 30,000 victims, designated by Danton himself, did not find enough executioners. They (the leaders) counted on the people ; they accredited them with more ferocity. They hoped that they would not remain idle spectators of five to six thousand [128] massacres executed before their eyes ; they supposed that they would themselves strike en masse, and that, after having emptied the prisons, they would go into the houses and repeat the same scenes, but they could never succeed in exasperating the multitude to this extent.” [129]
On the contrary, even by the mob assembled around the prisons, every single acquittal recorded was hailed with acclamations, often with rapturous applause—a prisoner who made a dash for liberty was certain to find the crowd opening out to let him through. The Royalist, Weber, could hardly extricate himself from the embraces of the bystanders, amongst whom savage-looking harridans, concerned for his white silk stockings, cried out reprovingly to the guards who led him, “ Take care there ! You are making Monsieur walk in the gutter! ” Yet that the mob, obedient to the suggestions of the leaders, excited with drink and attacked by that strange insanity familiar to all who have studied “ crowd psychology,” did at other moments allow itself to be carried away into applauding the massacres, did indeed throughout stand idly by and utter only occasional words of protest, is undeniable. But were these “ the people ” ? A thousand times no ! We have already seen whence they were recruited ; the true men and women of the people remained far from such scenes as these.
“ I will testify to Europe,” cries Bigot de Sainte-Croix, “ that the People of my country, that those of the capital, did not ordain, did not desire these massacres, that the People did not even see them committed. The People closed their windows, their workrooms, their shops ; they took refuge in the furthest corners of their dwellings so as to shut their ears and eyes to the uproar, and to the sight of those beings, strangers to the People and to human nature, who, armed with knives, sabres, and clubs, their faces and their arms stained with blood, carried through the streets heads and fragments of mutilated bodies, and deafened themselves with the ferocious hymn (the ‘Carmagnole’?) that had been dictated to them. Ah ! Why should the People again be calumniated ? . . .”[130]
And Mortimer Ternaux adds : “ Yes, it is lying to history, it is betraying the sacred cause of humanity, it is deserting the most obvious interests of democracy, to calumniate the people, to take for them a few hundred wretches . . . going basely to seek their victims one by one in the cells of the Abbaye or of La Force. . . . The people, the true people, composed of honest and industrious workmen, warm-hearted and patriotic, of young bourgeois with generous aspirations and indomitable courage, did not mingle for a moment with the scoundrels recruited by Maillard ... the people, the true people, were all at the Champ de Mars or in front of the recruiting platforms, offering their best blood for the defence of the country ; they would have been ashamed to shed that of defenceless victims.” [131]
But, it will be urged, why did the people of Paris not interfere ? Why, instead of retiring into their houses and shutting their ears and eyes, did they not rush out into the streets and arrest the murderers ? instead of mustering at the Champ de Mars, march on the prisons and deliver the victims ?
“ All Paris let it happen (laissa faire),” Madame Roland writes indignantly ; “ all Paris is accursed in my eyes, and I hope no longer that liberty may be established amongst cowards insensible to the worst outrages that could be committed against Nature and humanity, cold spectators of crimes that the courage of fifty armed men could easily have prevented.” [132]
Madame Roland well knew the true explanation of the people’s conduct—her own behaviour during the massacres we shall refer to later ; she was perfectly aware that it was the cowardice of the authorities, of her friend Pétion, of “ the virtuous Roland ” himself that made it possible for the Commune to carry out its designs unhindered, that prevented the people from interfering.
“ If the people,” says Prudhomme, “ did not put a stop to the murders committed in their presence, it was that, on seeing that their representatives, their magistrates, and the staff of their armed force made no attempt to prevent this butchery, they could only believe that these were acts of justice of a new kind.” [133]
Here, then, is the explanation. In the first place, the people of Paris were told—and in some cases made to believe—that the massacres were a necessary act of precaution in view of the conspiracy amongst the prisoners to massacre the citizens ; secondly, the massacres were carried out officially under the eyes of the authorities, presided over by officials wearing their municipal scarves,[134] and executed in some instances by assassins masquerading in the uniform of the National Guards ; [135] and thirdly, the people were prevented by armed force from interfering. We know from the researches of M. Mortimer Temaux and M. Granier de Cassagnac that Santerre, the commander-general, was authorized to surround the prisons with troops during the massacres, “ in order to prevent accidents,” [136] and the nature of these accidents is elsewhere very clearly revealed. Thus, as we have already seen at the Carmes, a cordon of police was provided to protect the assassins from the crowd, and Sénart relates that the same precaution was demanded at La Force : “ The butcher Legendre went to find one of the commanders of the Arsenal, and asked him for two hundred armed men to go to La Force in order to second the murderers and protect them, because the number of prisoners was very great and there were not enough massacrers ”—a request with which the honest commander indignantly refused to comply.[137] But the fact that the massacrers were given armed protection during their hideous task received additional confirmation just a hundred years later. In the Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux for April 20, 1892, M. Alfred Bégis related that he had recently acquired a copy of a pamphlet, by Garat, that had belonged to Sergent, who, with Panis, the brother-in-law of Santerre, had been entrusted with the police and the prisons as members of the Comité de Surveillance of the Commune. Now in this pamphlet, which was annotated throughout by the hand of Sergent, Garat asked the question why the people allowed the massacres of September “ How is it that so much blood flowed under other blades than that of justice without the legislators, without the magistrates of the people, without the whole people themselves summoning all the public forces to the place of these sanguinary scenes ? ”
To this question Sergent made reply in the margin : “ The massacrers of the Abbaye asked to be protected during their dreadful work by a guard which was granted to them.” The mob of Paris collected round the prisons had then attempted to interfere, since the murderers were obliged to ask for protection, and this was the kind of “ accident ” the armed forces were sent out to prevent !
Undoubtedly we must blame the soldiers for obeying this monstrous order, but it should be remembered that all the normal elements in the army were collected on the frontier, and that the only forces remaining in Paris were those of which the revolutionary leaders had made sure—the confederates from Marseilles, or Brest, or the camp at Soissons. The call to arms had thus admirably served their purpose by ridding them of all those loyal and patriotic citizens who might have been expected to prevent bloodshed.
THE AUTHORS OF THE MASSACRES
The truth is, then, that the only men who attributed the massacres of September to the people of Paris were the men who themselves had devised and ordered them. With consummate hypocrisy the Commune declared that it had sent emissaries to the prisons to oppose disorders, but that they could not succeed in calming the people. Apart, however, from the evidence of eye-witnesses, who unanimously asserted that the emissaries of the Commune incited the assassins to greater violence, we have further documentary proof of the Commune’s guilt in the atrocious proclamation publicly sent out by it on the 3rd of September to the provinces, urging them to carry out the same butchery all over France, and passing on to them the same word of command that had served in Paris as a pretext for the massacres.
“ The Commune of Paris hastens to inform its brothers in all the departments that a portion of the ferocious conspirators detained in the prisons have been put to death by the people acts of justice which seemed to it indispensable in order to restrain by terror the legions of traitors concealed within its walls at the moment when it was about to march on the enemy ; and without doubt the whole nation, after the long series of treacheries which have led it to the edge of the abyss, will hasten to adopt this measure so necessary to public safety, and all the French will cry like the Parisians, ‘ We will march on the enemy, but we will not leave behind us brigands to murder our wives and children.’
“ Signed—DUPLAIN, PANIS, SERGENT, LENFANT,
JOURDEUIL, MARAT, l’ami du peuple, DEFORGUES, DUFFORT, CALLY.”
That Marat was the principal author of the proclamation cannot be doubted, but it was sent forth under the countersign of Danton, the Minister of Justice. To Danton, then, attaches the greater blame, for Marat cannot be regarded as a responsible human being, whilst Danton throughout the Revolution retained full possession of his faculties. “ That Marat,” says Mortimer Ternaux, “ the most shameless liar and the most daring forger who ever existed (we make use of the exact expressions that MM. Michelet and Louis Blanc employ with regard to this man), that Marat, we say, should have drawn up this frightful circular, and on his own authority should have appended to it the signatures of his colleagues, is strictly possible. But the two men who can never clear themselves of having co-operated in the propagation of this bloody work are Danton and Fabre d’Églantine, the Minister of justice and his secretary.”[138]
It is doubtful, indeed, whether Danton wished to clear himself of the responsibility of the massacres of September, or of the proposal to repeat them in the provinces. Now that the monarchy was overthrown, Danton knew that he had nothing to fear in avowing his share in the crimes of the Revolution ; securely encamped on the strongest side he was able to win that reputation for audacity which has aureoled him in the eyes of posterity.[139]
The massacres of September were, therefore, primarily the work of the Anarchists, but they were condoned, if not actually assisted, by the other intrigues, as we shall now see.
RÔLE OF THE ORLÉANISTES
On this point little remains to be said, for by September of 1792 the Orléanistes had ceased to be a distinct party, and had become indistinguishable from the Anarchists. According to many contemporaries, Danton and Marat, in promoting anarchy, were working solely in the interests of the Duc d’Orléans ; Montjoie believes that it was in order to effect the change of dynasty the massacres were devised.
But apart from these vague charges, there can be no doubt that the Duc d’Orléans had some secret connection with the leaders ; of this the murder of the Princesse de Lamballe by his agents is sufficient proof. Moreover, it was precisely at this moment—on the 2nd of September—that Marat publicly demanded 15,000 francs from the duke for the printing of several of his pamphlets,[140] and apparently obtained it, for henceforth we shall find him always favourably disposed to “ the citizen Égalité ” [141]—the name the Duc d’Orléans soon after assumed when seeking election as deputy to the Convention.
But whatever were the ultimate intentions of these men who devised the massacres—and on this point no one can speak with certainty—their immediate purpose can be expressed in one word only—anarchy.
RÔLE OF THE GIRONDINS
The part played by the Girondins in the massacres of September was merely one of criminal connivance. With the exception of Pétion, whose sympathies were undoubtedly Orléaniste, no member of this faction seems to have taken an active part in the movement. Vergniaud, indeed, loudly denounced the arbitrary arrests that preceded the massacres, but since by this time the walls of Paris were already placarded by Marat with invectives against the deputies of the Gironde,[142] this was perhaps less an act of courage than a measure of self-defence. At any rate, from the moment the massacres began, not one member of this faction attempted to interfere.
On the 5th of September, whilst the third day of the massacre at La Force was in progress, Duhem afterwards related, he dined at Pétion’s house with Brissot, Gensonné, and several other deputies. “ Towards the end of dinner the folding doors opened, and I was surprised to see two cut-throats enter, their hands dripping with blood. They came to ask the orders of the mayor concerning the eighty prisoners who still remained to be massacred at La Force ; Pétion gave them drinks and sent them away, telling them to do everything for the best.” [143]
As to Madame Roland, who afterwards cursed the people of Paris for their non-intervention, how was she employed ? On the evening of September 2, she relates, when the butchery had begun, “ a crowd of about 200 men, violently agitated,” came to the Ministry of the Interior to ask for arms ; we know from other sources that they were the massacrers,[144] who, imagining Roland to be one of their employers, asked also for the payment of their salary, and, according to Felhémési, they received it. But Felhémési as a Dantoniste need not be believed. At any rate, after this frightful scene, whilst the massacres were in full swing next day at La Force, the Abbaye, and the Tour Saint-Bernard, Madame Roland saw fit to give a luncheon-party—or, as the two o’clock meal in those days was called, a “ dinner ”—to a number of her friends and acquaintances, amongst whom “ the events of the day formed the topic of conversation.” One of the guests (afterwards disowned by Madame Roland) was the Prussian Baron Clootz, whom we shall meet later on as the apostle of “ universal brotherhood,” and who distinguished himself during the massacres of September by inventing the word “ to septemberize ”—it was a matter of regret, he afterwards declared, that they had not “ septemberized ” enough.[145]
The same day, however, the virtuous Roland ventured to utter a feeble protest against the continuance of the massacres. Beginning with a lengthy dissertation on the necessity for controlling the irrepressible indignation of the people—who, according to Madame Roland’s later writings, he well knew were not the authors of these crimes,—amidst redundant eulogies of his own courage and disinterestedness, Roland thus described the massacres of September 2 : “ Yesterday was a day over the events of which we should perhaps draw a veil ; I know that the people, terrible in their vengeance, yet bring to it a sort of justice,” but now the moment had come for “ the legislators to speak, for the people to listen, and for the reign of law to be re-established.” [146]
The fact is that something had happened the evening before which made it highly desirable, from the Girondins’ point of view, that the activities of the Commune should be restrained. Robespierre had been thwarted by Danton in his plan of including Roland and Brissot in the lists of proscriptions made out for the massacrers, but he had not abandoned all hope of his prey. Under cover of the general confusion that reigned in Paris on the 2nd of September the tiger-cat had seized the opportunity to spring. Supported by his ally Billaud-Varenne, Robespierre presented himself at the evening meeting held by the Council-General of the Commune, and openly accused Brissot and a powerful party of conspiring to place the Duke of Brunswick on the throne of France.[147] This accusation has been represented by the antagonists of Robespierre as a mere fable invented by him to bring about the downfall of Brissot, but, as we have already seen, the intrigue in favour of Brunswick was by no means fabulous—on the contrary, it was a matter of common knowledge. Had not Carra publicly proclaimed it six weeks earlier in his journal ? And was not Carra still the trusted confidant of Brissot and the Rolands ? Robespierre, then, was perfectly just in accusing Brissot ; two days later, in private conversation with Pétion—whose own intrigues he was apparently far from suspecting—he repeated his conviction that Brissot was on the side of Brunswick.[148] That by his timely denunciation he hoped to envelop the Brissotins in the massacres we cannot doubt, yet we must admit that in this he showed himself more logical than the other members of the Commune. For if any people were to be put to death on the suspicion of collusion with the Prussians, should they not be the members of the party still at liberty who had definitely proposed to hand the country over to the head of the invading armies, rather than a defenceless crowd of priests, unarmed men, women, and children safely imprisoned behind bolts and bars ?
Brissot’s reply to this accusation of Robespierre was characteristic of the ostrich policy displayed by the Girondins.
“ Yesterday, Sunday,” he wrote to his fellow-citizens, “ I was denounced at the Commune of Paris, as also a part of the deputies of the Gironde, and other men equally virtuous. We were accused of wishing to give France over to the Duke of Brunswick, and to have received millions from him, and to have planned to escape to England. I, the eternal enemy of kings, who did not wait till 1789 to manifest my hatred towards them ; I the partisan of a duke ! Better perish a thousand times than acknowledge such a despot ! ” etc.[149]
But considering that before 1789 Brissot had violently denounced in print “ the abominable crime of attacking monarchy,” that he had described Ravaillac and Damiens as “ monsters vomited by hell,” [150] and that only six weeks before the massacres of September—on July 25, 1792—he had declared that the blade of the law should strike any one who attempted to establish a Republic ; considering, moreover, that he had never disassociated himself from Carra, the avowed partisan of Brunswick, Brissot’s defence was far from convincing.
The Brissotins, then, constituted a very real danger to the country at the moment when it was threatened by foreign invasion, but we should admire Robespierre’s courage and patriotism in attacking them more if he had not waited so long to shoot his bolt. The intrigue with Prussia had been going on for at least eighteen months—why had he not exposed it earlier ? Why on the publication of Carra’s preposterous plea for Brunswick, did not Robespierre arise and denounce him as a traitor, or at least demand his expulsion from the ranks of “ patriots ” at the Jacobin Club ? But no, Robespierre had hitherto maintained complete silence with regard to all three intrigues—the Orléanistes, English Jacobins, and Prussians—and had even, as we have seen, joined in ridiculing Ribes for denouncing them. The explanation lies undoubtedly in Robespierre’s natural timidity ; it was never his way to fight his opponents, but always to remain quiescent until an opportunity offered for killing them outright—the tigercat knew better than to show his claws before the moment came to spring. The massacres of September had appeared to be the propitious moment, but Danton barred the way ; next time he was to say with tears, “ I cannot save them ! ”
The Girondins well realized the danger that had threatened them, and therefore, after condoning the massacres, ended by denouncing them. But if they now deprecated the reign of anarchy, it was principally because they saw the movement they had helped to produce turning against themselves, and the abyss into which they had precipitated the monarchy yawning beneath their own feet.
THE ENGLISH JACOBINS
The news of the massacres of September filled the sane portion of the English people with indignation, and alienated even those who, misled by the propaganda of the Whigs and the revolutionary societies in England, still retained a lingering sympathy with the supposed “ struggle for liberty ” taking place across the Channel. “ The late horrors in France,” Mr. Burges writes to Lord Auckland on the list of September, “ have at least been attended with one good consequence, for they have turned the tide of general opinion here very suddenly. French principles, and even Frenchmen, are daily becoming more unpopular, and I think it not impossible that in a short time the impudence of some of these levellers will work so much on the tempers of our people as to make England neither a pleasant nor a secure residence for them.”
A messenger from Paris reported to Lord Auckland on the 10th of September that the details passed all conception. “ It is impossible for me to express the horror that I still feel ; I could not have believed till now that human nature was capable of such abominations.” Lord Auckland himself is “ so affected ” that he “ can hardly write of it ”—all Gibbon’s history, though the bloodiest book he ever read, “ does not contain a story of such unprovoked and wanton cruelty.”
Lord Stanhope, however, had nothing but pitying contempt for squeamishness that could recoil at such scenes as these. “ The French Revolution,” he wrote on September 18, “ has frightened some weak minds, Mr. Paine’s works others. And the late events in France have intimidated many. However despicable such feelings may be, abstractly considered, when they are pretty general, they must be treated with some respect.” [151]
Amongst weak minds we must certainly include those of almost the entire population, for these “ despicable feelings ” were more than “ pretty general ”; they were shared by all classes of the community. The sympathies of the nation were with the victims, not with the authors of the Revolution, and the unhappy émigrés, flying from the horrors of Paris to the shores of England, met with an enthusiastic welcome. One must have lived through three years of revolution, says one of these émigrés, amidst Girondins, Jacobins, and others, to understand what the first glimpse of the English conveyed, the ecstasy of arriving in this “ isle of serenity ” from the regions of terror : “ it was the gentle awakening of the soul that, long tormented by the vision of monsters and furies, comes out of this frightful dream.” [152] Once again humanity and compassion became a reality. Every boatload of priests was awaited by a sympathetic crowd ; even the sailors, seeing in these men the martyrs of religion, fell on their knees before them on the beach to ask their blessing.[153] “ I was a witness,” says Peltier, “ of the zeal and eagerness with which all classes of society welcomed these unhappy pastors. From the throne to the simplest cabin, everywhere was their asylum, everywhere was consolation.” In London a subscription raised by Burke, Wilmot, Stanley, and others met with an immense response ; the poor like the rich brought their contributions, and those who could not give money gave the work of their hands ; potato-sellers insisted on providing the priests with their wares for no remuneration, seamstresses offered their services for nothing, artisans worked overtime to earn money for them ; a day labourer, touched to tears by their appearance, cried out, “ I am very poor but I can work for two ; give me one of these priests and I will feed him ! ”[154] It was, then, only amongst an infinitesimal minority, composed of such men as Lord Stanhope and the middle-class malcontents who formed the revolutionary societies of London and of the manufacturing towns of the north, that the Revolution found sympathizers. By these associations the massacres of September were greeted with frenzied approbation. On the 27th of September a long address of congratulation was forwarded to the Jacobin Club of Paris by the members of the Constitutional Society and the Reformation Society of Manchester, the Revolution Society of Norwich, the “ Constitutional Whigs,” the “ Independents and Friends of the People.” A few passages of this precious effusion must be quoted : [155]
“ Frenchmen, our numbers may seem small compared to the rest of the nation, but know that they are steadily increasing . . . we can tell you with certainty, free men and friends, that education is making rapid progress amongst us . . . that men ask to-day, ‘ What is liberty ? What are our rights ? ’ Frenchmen, you are free already, but Britons are preparing to become so ! Divested at last of these cruel prejudices industriously inculcated in our hearts by vile courtiers, instead of our natural enemies, we see in the French our fellow-citizens of the world, the children of that universal Father who created us to love and help each other, not to hate and murder one another at the command of feeble or ambitious kings or corrupt ministers. In seeking our real enemies we find them in the partisans of that aristocracy which rends our bosoms, aristocracy hitherto the poison of all countries on earth ; you acted wisely in banishing it from France. . . . Dear friends, you are fighting for the happiness of all humanity. Can there be any loss to you, however bitter, compared to the glorious and unprecedented privilege of being able to say, ‘ The universe is free ; tyrants and tyrannies are no more, peace reigns on earth, and it is to the French we owe it.’ ”
To these advocates of universal brotherhood it was a matter of poignant regret and bitter shame that the British Government refused to throw in its lot with the organizers of the late massacres in the prisons by taking up arms in defence of the French Revolution. To their profuse apologies on this subject the French Jacobins, under Herault de Séchelles, replied : “ Believe, generous Englishmen, that in preserving this demeanour (of neutrality) you are none the less joining with us in the work of universal liberty. Leave us to make a few more steps along the course where you were our precursors, and let us rejoice beforehand in a common hope for the epoch, not far distant, when the interests of Europe and of the human race will invite both nations to hold out the hand of friendship to each other.”[156] The hope was echoed by the Society for Constitutional Reform of London, which now wrote expressing the belief that, after the example given by the French, “ revolutions would become easy,” and that “ before long the French would be writing to congratulate the National Convention of England.” [157]
The Jacobins of Paris were ready to promise more than this ; they intended, they declared, “ to seal an eternal alliance ” with their English brothers, who had only to let them know that their liberty was being attacked for the “ victorious phalanxes ” of their French allies to “ cross the Straits of Dover and fly to their defence.” [158]
Thus was the suggestion calmly entertained by our exponents of universal brotherhood in 1792, that the revolutionary horde of cut-throats and assassins, who had just carried out the massacres of September, should land on our shores and produce the same horrors in England as had taken place in France.
The anti-patriotism of a section of so-called “ democracy ” in England has never been better exemplified. To men of this mentality it matters not whether it is with democracy or autocracy abroad that they strike a league of friendship ; the enemies of their country can always make sure of their support. Until the Germans of to-day England never had bitterer enemies than the Jacobins of France. Hatred of England, of the English character, of English ideas of liberty, was one of the first tenets of their political creed. In this they differed fundamentally from the earlier revolutionaries, the men who had framed the Constitution of 1791, and also from the Girondins, who no doubt entertained a sincere admiration for England ; the Jacobins, into whose hands the power was now passing, were, with the exception of Danton, the sworn foes not only of the English Government but of English “ democracy ”; they repeatedly declared that they despised Mr. Fox as much as they hated Mr. Pitt.[159]
The leading spirit of the anti-English campaign was undoubtedly Robespierre ; always the opponent of Internationalism—hence his ground of accusation later on against the Prussian Clootz—he never concealed his distrust of foreign sympathizers with the French Revolution ; four months earlier, supported by Collot d’Herbois, he had deprecated the correspondence of the Jacobins with their brothers in Manchester,[160] and again in September it was he who opposed the election of Dr. Priestly to the Convention.[161]
For the present, however, the French Jacobins were quite ready to make use of their English allies ; hypocritical professions of friendship cost nothing, and met with very substantial rewards. Already in April, as we have seen, a subscription had been raised in aid of the French Revolution, and it seems probable that further sums were forthcoming during the course of the summer. In August Dr. Moore heard with incredulity of “ the great number of English guineas now in circulation in Paris,” which, as usual, were attributed to “ the Court of Great Britain,” whose object was to excite sedition in France.[162] If these mysterious guineas were not, as Dr. Moore believed, mythical, they were obviously those of Orléans or of the English Jacobins. At any rate, it is to the latter source that the “ English gold ” which arrived in Paris three weeks later can, with certainty, be traced, for the address of congratulation on the massacres of September, forwarded by Lord Sempill and three other members in the name of the London Constitutional Society, was accompanied by a present of 1000 pairs of shoes for the army and £1000 in money.[163] Besides this an immense quantity of arms was provided by the English Jacobins from the manufactories of Birmingham and Sheffield, for which a further public subscription was raised by means of an appeal in the newspapers to “ all those who favoured the cause of liberty in France against the infamous conspiracy of crowned brigands.” [164]
It is, moreover, in the late summer of 1792 that, for the first time, we find Englishmen personally co-operating in the revolutionary movement in Paris. Amongst these was Thomas Paine, who left the shores of England amidst the jeers and hisses of the crowd : “ I believe had we remained much longer,” a fellow-traveller remarks, “ they would have pelted him with stones from the beach.” [165] In spite of the fact that his face reminded Madame Roland of “ a blackberry powdered with flour ”—for Paine was constantly inebriated—the exponent of “ The Rights of Man ” was received with enthusiasm by the Girondins, and through their influence succeeded in becoming a member of the Convention.
Besides Paine a band of English Jacobins arrived in Paris at the same time. “ Dr. Priestley,” Mr. Burges writes to Lord Auckland on September 4, “ is also there, and is looked upon as the great adviser of the present ministers, being consulted by them on all occasions. There are also eight or ten other English and Scotch who work with the Jacobins, and in great measure conduct their present manoeuvres. I understand these gentlemen at present are employed in writing a justification of democracy and an invective against monarchy in the abstract, which is to be printed at Paris, and distributed through England and Ireland. The names of some of them are Watts and Wilson of Manchester, Oswald a Scotsman, Stone an Englishman, and Mackintosh who wrote against Burke.”[166]
All these men, then, were in Paris during the massacres of September, and not one uttered a word of protest. Oswald, indeed, in his tirades to the Jacobins, with whom he sought to ingratiate himself by insulting his king and country, showed himself more violent than them all, vied with Marat in his invectives against “ royal tigers,” and rivalled Hébert in his foul accusations against the imprisoned Queen of France.[167]
This being so, are we to regard it as impossible that Englishmen were present at the massacres in the prisons ? One would willingly remove this stain from our national character, but if we are to know the exact truth about the intrigues of the French Revolution, one cannot pass over the accusation in silence. The evidence on which it rests is, firstly, that of Jourdan, president of the Section des Quatre Nations, who was sent to the Abbaye during the massacre and stated that he saw two Englishmen plying the assassins with drink ;[168] and secondly, Prudhomme, who says that Englishmen were seen at La Force amongst the commanders of the butchery, and that “ these Englishmen were the guests of the Duc d’Orléans ; they dined with him immediately after the death of the Princesse de Lamballe.” [169]
These, then, were the Englishmen dining at the Palais Royal when the princess’s head was carried under the windows. The only one of the number whose name is known was a certain Mr. Lindsay, who described the scene with horror to Mr. Burges after his return to England two days later, and whom it is impossible to suspect of collusion with such atrocities. But the contemporary Playfair distinctly states that the guests of the Duc d’Orléans at this particular dinner were “ English democrats.” [170] This supplies the key to the whole mystery. Since we know that the English democrats then in Paris were ardently in sympathy with all the excesses of the Revolution, that their colleagues in England wrote letters of congratulation, and that Lord Stanhope, one of their most influential members, applauded the massacres, why should they not have personally encouraged the assassins ? From applauding at a distance to assisting on the spot is surely but a step.
Moreover, their presence at the Duc d’Orléans’ dinner coincides exactly with Montjoie’s assertion that certain English revolutionaries, notably Lord Stanhope, were in league with the Orléanistes. We know that precisely at this moment Lord Stanhope was in correspondence with Richard Sayre, or Sayer, the English agent in Paris, who had been deputed by the revolutionary societies of England to supply arms to the Jacobins of France ;[171] and the exceedingly compromising letters addressed by Sayre to Lord Stanhope—ingenuously published by the latter’s admiring biographers [172]—show clearly that the English revolutionaries in Paris, of whom Lord Stanhope was the leading spirit, were engaged in some guilty intrigue with the enemies of their country.
The massacres of September cannot, therefore, be regarded as solely the work of the French ; they were devised and organized by the Spaniard, Marat, in co-operation with Frenchmen, executed by Frenchmen, Italians, and Germans, applauded by the Prussian Clootz, applauded and actively assisted by Englishmen. Again, as on the 10th of August, it is therefore to the doctrines that inspired them, not to the temperament of the nation amongst which they occurred, that the horrors which took place must be attributed.
PRUSSIA
Whilst Anarchists, Orléanistes, Girondins, and English Jacobins were fighting for the mastery in Paris, Prussia played her part in the final ruin of the French monarchy. The cannonade of Valmy—it cannot be described as a battle—that on the 20th of September checked the advance of the allied armies on the capital, is one of the enigmas of history which will never perhaps be entirely solved. Pro-revolutionary historians have endeavoured to explain the retreat of the best-trained troops of Europe before the undisciplined revolutionary army by the state of the weather, the muddy condition of the ground, by the fact that dysentery had broken out amongst the Prussians, or merely by the irresistible valour inspired by democratic doctrines. These legends have now been almost universally accepted as fact, but in the minds of well-informed contemporaries no doubt exists that some further explanation must be sought for the check to the allied armies at Valmy and their subsequent retreat.
Thus Lord Auckland, writing to Sir Morton Eden from the Hague on October 19, 1792, hazards the opinion that “ a complete victory (for the allies) might have been on the 20th (at Valmy), if the royal personage who was present had not prevented the engagement for unknown reasons.” A note adds that this royal personage was the King of Prussia, but Fersen declares that the King of Prussia wished to attack, and that it was only the cowardice and indecision of the Duke of Brunswick that prevented the engagement. Thiébault, then with the army on the frontier, takes the same view. Matilda Hawkins, whose Memoirs were published in 1824, relates that her friend, the Comte de Jarnac, who “ was with the army at the time of the Duke of Brunswick’s unaccountable retreat from Paris,” told her that the Duke himself said, “ Why I retreated will never be known to my death.”
According to prevailing opinion at the time the retreat after Valmy was effected by negotiation, and three different theories were advanced as to the authors of these negotiations. Firstly, then, Beaulieu and Pagès assert that Louis XVI., assured by Manuel, Petion, and Kersaint that the presence of the allied armies was the main cause of irritation against him, allowed himself to be persuaded to write and ask the King of Prussia to withdraw, in return for which the three deputies promised him his life.[173] Secondly, the Mountain, represented by Camille Desmoulins, declared that the retreat was brought about by an understanding between the Girondins and the Prussians, and when we remember the eulogies lavished by Carra on the Duke of Brunswick in July, and find that Carra was the man chosen by Pétion to go with Sillery on the 24th of September to Dumouriez’s camp at La Lune and confer with Manstein, the representative of the King of Prussia, this seems not improbable.[174] Thirdly, D’Allonville, the author of the Mémoires secrets, states that it was Danton who negotiated the “ defeat ” of the Prussians at Valmy and their subsequent retreat by the simple method of bribery. This was effected through the agency of Dumouriez, at this moment Danton’s ally, to whom he wrote immediately after Valmy, instructing him to drive back the Prussians without attempting to destroy them, since the Prussians “ were not the natural enemies of France.”[175] The manner in which Danton procured the necessary sums is thus described by D’Allonville “ Billaud-Varenne, who left Paris after the massacres of September, had reached the army on the 11th and had opened negotiations, of which the sums promised, but not yet paid, alone delayed the conclusion. Two or three millions, the fruit of the pillage of the 10th of August, were all that the Commune of Paris possessed, and it was not enough. ‘ Why do you not rob the Garde-Meuble (i.e. the depository where the Crown jewels were kept) ? ’ cries Panis, and this thing was done on the 16th of September by the orders of Tallien and Danton, which produced, in different species, a sum of thirty millions. The first overtures had facilitated the escape of Dumouriez from the position in which he would have been irrevocably lost, others prevented him from being driven from his position during the cannonade of Valmy, and from the 22nd to the 23rd negotiations were, as we have said, actively carried out.” [176]
This evidence is exactly confirmed by General Michaud, who was with the armies at the time. The deputies of the Gironde, Michaud declares, were not in the secret of the negotiations with the Prussians, and it is to the Orléaniste schemes of Danton that these are to be attributed. “ It is only with audacity and yet more audacity that we can save ourselves,” said the Minister of Justice. “ Danton was, no doubt, a very audacious man, but when he pronounced these words it is certain that he knew of the secret negotiation, since he himself was directing it with his colleague Lebrun. . . . Already he was assured that the Prussians would not get to Paris, he knew that it was only a matter of satisfying them, and fulfilling the engagements entered into by Dumouriez. . . . Hence this resolution to remain in the capital, to pillage the Garde-Meuble, to massacre the prisoners and plunder the victims. . . . So it might be said, without exaggeration, that the horrible system of blood and terror . . . was a consequence of what had taken place in Champagne between the Prussians and the leaders of the Revolution, who were no other than the leaders of the Orléaniste faction.” [177]
The theft of the Crown jewels was not attributed to Danton by Royalists alone. When on the night of the 16th to the 17th of September the Garde-Meuble was broken into and the Crown jewels were removed, no one seriously believed that the coup could be attributed to ordinary burglars, and by Girondins as well as Royalists it was declared to be the work of the Commune. Why, indeed, should it not be so ? The Commune, as every one knew, had ordered the pillage that took place after the 10th of August, and it was again the Commune that had taken possession of the greater part of the spoils wrested from the victims of the massacres. When several large burglaries have been effected by the same gang in the same district, it is only reasonable to attribute a further one to the same agency. Madame Roland had no hesitation in designating Danton as the chief burglar of the Crown jewels and Fabre d’Églantine as his assistant, although, as usual in the case of crimes ordained by the revolutionary leaders, the obscure instruments who carried out the deed were arrested and put to death.[178]
At any rate, whatever were the means employed, it is clear that some pressure was brought to bear upon the Prussians in order to ensure their retreat. The unaccountable part of the affair lies not so much in the fact that their triumphant advance was checked by a reverse at Valmy, but that this one reverse should have turned the tide of the whole war, yet should not have resulted in the rout of the allied armies. For if the revolutionary troops were strong enough to arrest finally the enemy’s advance, why did they not follow up their victory at Valmy with greater vigour ? This problem was so apparent to every one at the time that it was admitted even by Desmoulins, the ally of Danton, though, at the instigation of Robespierre, he cleverly turned it into an accusation against the Girondins.
“ Is it not inconceivable to every one and unheard of in history,” wrote Camille Desmoulins in his Histoire des Brissotins, “ as I said to Dumouriez himself when he appeared at the Convention, that a general who with 17,000 men had held back an army of 92,000 men—after Dumouriez, Ajax Beurnonville, and Kellermann had announced that the plains of Champagne would be the tomb of the King of Prussia’s army, like that of Attila, and that not one man would escape—should not have cut off the retreat of this army when it was reduced to nearly half by dysentery, when its march was impeded by nearly 20,000 sick, and that, on the other hand, the victorious army had increased to more than 100,000 men ! All the soldiers of the vanguard of our army will tell you that when the rearguard of the Prussians called a halt, we called a halt ; when they went to the right, we marched to the left ; in a word, Dumouriez led back the King of Prussia rather than he pursued him, and there was not a soldier in the army who was not convinced that there had been an arrangement between the Prussians and the Convention by the medium of Dumouriez.”
Such, then, in the words of the revolutionary leaders themselves, was the “ irresistible élan of the victorious revolutionary army ” ! Whether, therefore, the retreat of the Prussians was due to the Girondins or Orléanistes, whether Carra was acting in the interests of the Duke of Brunswick or the Duc d’Orléans, whether Danton had an understanding with the Girondins and afterwards disowned them, or whether he was carrying on an intrigue with Dumouriez as the agent of the Commune and later on betrayed him, representing him through Desmoulins as the accomplice of the Gironde, it is evident that something happened at Valmy which has never been explained to this day. Valmy and its sequel remain an insoluble mystery. Only, in the light of our present knowledge of Prussian diplomacy, it seems not impossible that some profounder policy may have underlain the action of both Frederick William and the Duke of Brunswick than has yet been attributed to them. At any rate, whether they realized it at the time or not, the “ defeat ” of Valmy was a superb victory for Prussia. For to march on to Paris at this crisis must have been to re-establish the Bourbons on the throne, and to leave the way open to a renewal of the Franco-Austrian alliance ; by leaving France to tear herself to pieces Frederick William worthily carried out the traditions of the great Frederick, and assured the future supremacy of Prussia. Valmy had but paved the way for Sadowa and Sedan.
Goethe, looking on at the famous fusillade, is said to have uttered these prophetic words : “ From this place and from this day forth begins a new era in the world’s history, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.”
A new era in truth, an era wherein the civilization of old France should be utterly destroyed and the great barbaric German Empire should rise upon the ruins. The Golden Age had ended ; the Age of Blood and Iron was to begin.
1. La Demagogie en 1793, by A. Dauban, p. ix.
2. I have shown elsewhere how numerous these philanthropic nobles were. See The Chevalier de Boufflers, p. 256 and following.
3. Séances des Jacobins, date of June 17, 1792.
4. Histoire des Montagnards, by Esquiros, p. 206.
5. Isnard to the Legislative Assembly, November 14, 1791.
6. Histoire secrète de la Révolution, by François Pagès (1797), ii. 19 ; Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, ii. 154 ; Mémoires de Monseigneur de Salamon, p. 15.
7. Marat en Angleterre, by H.S. Ashbee.
8. Biographie Michaud, article on Danton by Beaulieu.
9. Révolutions de Paris, by Prudhomme, xiii. 522.
10. Anecdotes, by Harmand de la Meuse, member of the Convention. On the subject of Marat’s appearance contemporaries are curiously in accord ; he seems to have inspired the same horror in all beholders. Thus, for example, Garat describes him as “ a man whose face, covered with a bronzed yellow, gave him the appearance of having come out of the bloody cavern of cannibals or from the red-hot soil of hell ; that by his convulsive, brusque, and jerky walk one recognized as an assassin who had escaped from the executioner but not from the furies, and who wished to annihilate the human race.” Dr. Moore exactly corroborates Garat : “ Marat is a little man of a cadaverous complexion, and a countenance exceedingly expressive of his disposition ; to a painter of massacres Marat’s head would be invaluable. Such heads are rare in this country (England), yet they are sometimes to be met with at the Old Bailey ” (Journal of a Residence in France, i. 455).
11. Taine, La Révolulion, vii. 198.
12. L’Ami du Peuple, No. 258.
13. Ibid. No. 198.
14. Ibid. No. 305.
15. Mémoires de Barbaroux, p. 57 ; confirmed by Marat himself at Convention. See Moniteur for October 26, 1792.
16. L’Ami du Peuple, No. 680, pp. 7 and 8, date of August 19, 1792.
17. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 155. This conversation is entirely ignored by the historians who have attempted to prove that Marat was not the author of the massacres of September. But Prudhomme as the intime of the Montagnards could have had no possible object in inventing it, he merely, like many other of their accomplices, ended by giving them away. Moreover, all Prudhomme’s evidence on this period is exactly confirmed by other authorities. The dialogue is given in the same words by Proussinalle (Histoire secrète du Tribunal révolutionnaire, p. 39, published in 1815).
18. Article by Marat, Buchez et Roux, xiv. 188.
19. This is admitted even by M. Louis Blanc, Révolution, vii. 193 : “ Between Danton concurring in the massacres because he approves them, and Robespierre not preventing them although he deplores them, I do not hesitate to declare that the most culpable is Robespierre.”
20. Journal de la République, No. 221.
21. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 156.
22. Ibid.; Maton de la Varenne, Histoire particulière, p. 285 ; Histoire secrète, by Proussinalle, pp. 40, 41.
23. Granier de Cassagnac, Histoire des Girondins, ii. 9 ; Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 112.
24. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 156.
25. Ibid. iv. 158 ; Proussinalle, p. 43 ; Mémoires de Hua, p. 167.
26. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 161.
27. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, ii. 94.
28. Mémoires de Hua, p. 167.
29. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 159.
30. Ibid. iv. 156 ; Histoire particulière, etc., by Maton de la Varenne, p. 285.
31. Histoire secrète du Tribunal réolutionnaire, by Proussinalle, p. 42. (Proussinalle is the pseudonym of P.J.A. Roussel.)
32. Histoire particulière, etc., by Maton de la Varenne, p. 285. The rate of salary was fixed by Billaud-Varenne (see Histoire des Girondins, by Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 48, 49).
33. Histoire secrète du Tribunal révolutionnaire, by Proussinalle, p. 41.
34. “ The Comité de Surveillance had undertaken to prepare the minds (of the people) for this frightful idea (the massacres of September) ; it circulated everywhere this word of command that it counted on exploiting later : ‘ Before flying to the frontiers we must make sure of leaving behind us no traitors, no conspirators ’ ” (Histoire de la Terreur, by Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 194 ; cf. Journal du Club des Jacobins, No. CCLV.).
35. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, i. 154. The English doctor, John Moore, noticed exactly the same thing. On the 19th of August, after driving through the Champs Élysées, he writes : “ All those extensive fields were crowded with company of one sort or another ; an immense number of small booths was erected, where refreshments were sold, and which resounded with music and singing. Pantomimes and puppet-shows of various kinds are here exhibited, and in some parts they were dancing in the open fields. ‘ Are these people as happy as they seem ? ’ said I to a Frenchman who was with me. ‘ Ils sont heureux comme des dieux, Monsieur,’ replied he. ‘ Do you think the Duke of Brunswick never enters their thoughts ? ’ said I. ‘ Soyez sûr, Monsieur,’ resumed he, ‘ que Brunswick est précisément l’homme du monde auquel ils pensent le moins’ ” (Journal of a Residence in France, i. 122).
36. Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 219.
37. Histoire particulière, by Maton de la Varenne, p. 287 ; Histoire secrète du Tribunal révolutionnaire, by Proussinalle, i. 45 ; Mémoires de Monseigneur de Salamon, p. 33 ; Récit de l’Abbé Berthelet, quoted by M. de Granier de Cassagnac, Histoire des Girondins, ii. 285.
38. La Demagogie à Paris, by C.A. Dauban, p. 64.
39. “ Procés verbaux de la Commune,” in Mémoires sur les Journées de Septembre, p. 272, note.
40. Moniteur, xiii. 587.
41. Le véritable Ami du Peuple, by Roch Marcandier (secretary of Camille Desmoulins) ; Histoire secrète du Tribunal révolutionsnaire, by Proussinalle, p. 43.
42. Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 200.
43. Ibid. iii. 472.
44. Journal of a Residence in France, i. 294.
45. Madelin, p. 255.
46. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 100.
47. Procés verbaux de la Commune, Séance du 2 Septembre 1792.
48. Journal of a Residence in France, i. 300.
49. Fantin Désodoards, ii. 240.
50. Beaulieu, iv. 96.
51. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, i. 98 ; Histoire des Hommes de Proie, by Roch Marcandier.
52. “ Every one knows to-day that the cannon of alarm was on that day of blood to be the signal of the massacre ” (“ Relation de l’Abbé Sicard,” Mémoires sur les Journées de Septembre, p. 100).
53. Histoire secrète du Tribunal révolutionnaire, by Proussinalle, i. 48 ; Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 141.
54. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 31.
55. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 91. Prudhomme, now convinced by the reasoning of Danton that the massacres were really a case of irrepressible popular fury at the discovery of a gigantic plot against the lives of the citizens, published a justification of the movement in his Révolutions de Paris, No. 165. It was not till much later that he realized he had been duped. “ When in the Révolutions de Paris,” he wrote afterwards, “ we described this day (the 2nd of September) as ‘ The justice of the People,’ we were not only authorized by the ideas we then entertained but also by the criminal silence of the legislative body and of the ministers. It is, above all, the crafty and atrocious behaviour of the Commune of Paris which caused us to commit many involuntary errors ” (Crimes de la Révolution, iv. 87). Revolutionary historians freely quote the former work, but are of course perfectly silent about the latter.
56. Ibid.; also Histoire secrète du Tribunal révolutionnaire, by Proussinalle, i. 48.
57. Ibid.
58. Authorities consulted on the first massacre at the Abbaye : Mémoires de l’Abbé Sicard ; La Verité toute entièe sur les vrais Acteurs de la Journée du 2 Septembre 1792, by Felhémési. Felhémési is an anagram of Méhée fils. The author of this pamphlet, a bystander, not a prisoner, was the son of the recorder Méhée and a friend of Danton and Desmoulins ; his object, therefore, is not to tell the truth on the real authors of the massacres, for he attributes all the blame to Billaud-Varenne, but as an eye-witness his account of events is valuable.
59. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 96.
60. Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 225.
61. “ Relation de l’Abbé Sicard,” also “ Procés verbaux de la Commune de Paris,” in Mémoires sur les Journées de Septembre, p. 272.
62. Felhémési ; Beaulieu, iv. 119.
63. Les Crimes de Marat, by Maton de la Varenne.
64. Felhémési.
65. Authorities consulted on the massacre at the Carmes : Le Couvent des Carmes. by Alexandre Sorel ; Histoire du Clergé, by the Abbé Barruel (1794) ; La Révolution du 10 Août, vol. ii., by Peltier ; also Granier de Cassagnac and Mortimer Ternaux, op. cit.; article on “ Les Carmes ” in Paris révolutionnaire, by G. Lenôtre.
66. “ The principal door of the church opening into the Rue de Vaugirard remained closed during the whole execution. The people did not take the least part in it ” (Peltier, La Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 245).
67. Granier de Cassagnac, Histoire des Girondins, ii. 292.
68. Histoire du Clergé, by l’Abbé Barruel, p. 251.
69. Granier de Cassagnac says it was Violette ; Sorel (Le Couvent des Carmes, p. 132) says it was more probably Maillard.
70. Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 231.
71. Authorities consulted on the massacres at the Abbaye (accounts of prisoners) : Mon Agonie de trente-huit Heures, by Jourgniac de St. Méard ; Mémoires de l’Abbé Sicard ; Mémories inédits de l’Internonce à Paris pendant la Révolution, Monseigneur de Salamon (Plon Nourrit, 1890) ; Felhémési, op. cit.
72. Mémoires de Sénart (edition de Lescure), p. 28.
73. Felhémési.
74. Felhémési, op. cit.
75. Histoire des Girondins, by Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 165. M. de Cassagnac made use of these documents for his work, but they were destroyed later by the Commune in 1871.
76. Peltier, La Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 193, 194. 389.
77. This was an error. Montmorin was massacred on the 2nd of September.
78. Histoire secrète du Tribunal révolutionnaire, by Proussinalle, p. 42 ; Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iii. 272, 273.
79. Mémoires de l’Abbé Sicard ; Felhémési, op. cit. It seems, however, that Billaud did not pay them as arranged, for Felhémési relates that a terrible uproar arose next day when he reappeared at the prison, and he was surrounded by a horde of the assassins clamouring for higher salaries. “ Do you think I have earned only 24 francs ? ” a butcher’s apprentice, armed with a club, said loudly. “ I have killed more than forty on my own account.” This seems to confirm the statement of Maton de la Varenne that on engagement they were promised 30 livres, but some were only paid 24 livres, as the registers of the Commune reveal. The Abbé de Salamon, who saw them being paid on the Wednesday morning, September 5, by a member of the Commune wearing his municipal scarf, says : “ The salary given to those who had, as they said, ‘ worked well ’—that is to say, massacred well—was from 30 to 35 francs. A certain number obtained less. I even saw one who only obtained 6 francs. His work was not considered sufficient ” (Mémoires de Monseigneur de Salamon, p. 122).
80. Authorities consulted on massacre at La Force : Mémoires de Weber, ii. 265 ; Ma Résurrection, by Maton de la Varenne ; Les Crimes de Marat, by Maton de la Varenne.
81. Moniteur, xiii. 603.
82. Buchez et Roux, xvii. 418.
83. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, i. 110.
84. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 210 ; Histoire particulière, by Maton de la Varenne, p. 395 ; Peltier, Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 313.
85. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 210 ; Histoire particulière, by Maton de la Varenne, p. 395.
86. Ibid.; also Beaulieu, iv. 110 ; Histoire des Girondins, by Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 510, 515 ; Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 498.
87. Histoire particulière, by Maton de la Varenne ; Révolution du 10 Août, by Peltier, ii. 305.
88. Peltier, Histoire de la Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 3o6.
89. Maton de la Varenne, Histoire particulière, etc., p. 395.
90. Peltier, Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 313.
91. Vieilles Maisons vieux Papiers, by G. Lenôtre, ii. 153.
92. See Appendix, p. 504.
93. La Révolution du 10 Août, by Peltier, ii. 380.
94. See list of assassins published by Granier de Cassagnac, Histoire des Girondins, ii. 502.
95. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 211 ; Beaulieu, iv. 114 ; Peltier, ii. 312.
96. Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 498 ; article on Rotondo in Vieilles Maisons vieux Papiers, by G. Lenôtre.
97. That is to say, from Sunday the 2nd until Thursday the 6th, or possibly till Friday the 7th. Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 419 ; Beaulieu, iv. 115 ; Mémoires de Monseigneur de Salamon, p. 121 ; see also Pétion’s Letter to the Assembly on September 7, Moniteur, xiii. 644
98. Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 285, by Peltier.
99. “ The people, touched by this spectacle, asked mercy for him and obtained it ” (Mon Agonie de Trente-huit Heures, by Jourgniac de St. Méard).
100. This story has been declared to be a legend, but Granier de Cassagnac confirms it by documentary evidence ; see Histoire des Girondins, ii. 223, 226.
101. Granier de Cassagnac, Histoire des Girondins, ii. 343.
102. Ibid. pp. 351-367.
103. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 112.
104. Ibid. iv. 113.
105. Granier de Cassagnac, op, cit. pp. 372, 377-389.
106. Ibid. p. 352.
107. Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 272 ; Granier de Cassagnac, op. cit. ii. 83, 468.
108. Granier de Cassagnac, op. cit. ii. 432.
109. Procés verbaux de l’Assemblée Nationale, xiv. 219.
110. Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 294 ; Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 434.
111. Barthélemy Maurice, Histoire politique et anecdotique des Prisons de la Seine, p. 329.
112. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudbomme, iv. 118, 119.
113. Madame Roland, Lettres à Bancal des Issarts, pp. 348, 349.
114. The totals of these lists are taken from M. Mortimer Ternaux (Histoire de la Terreur, iii. 548) ; the details from M. Granier de Cassagnac (Histoire des Girondins, vol. ii.). The numbers given are the lowest possible ; according to M. Granier de Cassagnac, 370 of the people perished at the Conciergerie ; according to Prudhomme, 380. See Crimes de la Révolution, iv. 86.
115. Robespierre, Lettres à ses Commettants, No. 4, pp. 170, 172, 173. This “ one innocent ” was not, needless to say, the guiltless Princesse de Lamballe, nor was he to be found amongst the martyred priests or the poor little boys at Bicêtre. The victim in question was simply a good citizen, named an elector the day before by his section (Granier de Cassagnac, Histoire des Girondins, ii. 66).
116. Journal de la République, No. 12.
117. Jean Paul Marat, by Alfred Bougeart, ii. 93. Hamel, the panegyrist of Robespierre, also heaps all the blame on the people (Vie de Robespierre, i. 410).
118. See also Prudhomme’s definite statement : “ The people did not kill ; the massacrers were men paid to do it ” (Crimes de la Révolution, iv. 107).
119. “ Procés verbaux de la Commune de Paris,” published in Memoires sur les Journées de Septembre, pp. 286, 314 ; Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 525-528 ; Beaulieu, iv. 120-123.
120. A bundle of twenty-four of these receipts was preserved at the Prefecture de Police in Paris (Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 525, 527). M. Granier de Cassagnac has reproduced two in facsimile (Histoire des Girondins, ii. 514). These also were destroyed by the Commune of 1871.
121. Journal of a Residence in France, i. 374.
122. “ The number of assassins did not exceed 300 ” (Roch Marcandier (an eye-witness), Histoire des Hommes de Proie) ; Louvet said about 200 (Accusation contre Maximilien Robespierre, Séance de la Convention du 29 Octobre 1792) ; “ 300,” says Mercier (Le Nouveau Paris, i. 94) ; M. Granier de Cassagnac gives 235 as the approximate number (Histoire des Girondins ii. 30).
123. Histoire des Girondins, ii. 502-516.
124. “ They were not all of the dregs of the people,” the Abbé Barruel says of the massacrers at the Carmes ; “ their accent, their speeches betrayed amongst them adepts whom the philosophy of the Clubs and the schools of the day, far more than boorish ignorance, had inflamed against the priests ” (Histoire du Clergé, p. 248).
125. Deux Amis, viii. 296.
126. Mon Agonie de trente-huit Heures, by Jourgniac de St. Méard.
127. Beaulieu, iv. 109.
128. Prudhomme, like Peltier, over-estimated the number of victims.
129. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 107.
130. Histoire de la Conspiration du 10 Août, by Bigot de Sainte-Croix, p. 104.
131. Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 185.
132. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 110.
133. Crimes de la Révolution, by Prudhomme, iv. 130.
134. Beaulieu, iv. 119 ; Deux Amis, viii. 308.
135. Evidence of eye-witness, M. de la Roserie, who was present at the massacre at the Carmes, and stated that “ half the assassins employed there were, by an infamous prostitution, in the uniform of the National Guards ” (Mémoires de Thiébault, i. 319).
136. Extract from the registers of the sections of Paris published by M. Mortimer Ternaux, Histoire de la Terreur, iii. 480.
137. Mémoires de Sénart (edition de Lescure), p. 29.
138. Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 309.
139. According to Louis Philippe, Danton frankly admitted his responsibility for the September days. The future King, then the Duc de Chartres, related that when on a visit to Paris from the frontier he met Danton and ventured to blame the authors of the massacres. To this remonstrance Danton replied : “ It was I who did it. All the Parisians are jean foutres. It was necessary to put a river of blood between them and the émigrés ” (Récit du Duc d’Aumale, quoted by Taine, La Révolution, vi. 30).
140. Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris, x111. 522.
141. Beaulieu, iv. 145.
142. Dr. Moore, Journal of a Residence in France, i. 256.
143. Procés des Vingt-Deux, evidence of Duhem. According to the Deux Amis de la Liberté, viii. 304, the assassins entered with heads in their hands.
144. Mémoires de Sénart (edition de Lescure), p. 34.
145. J.P. Brissot à ses Commettants, p. 52 ; Beaulieu, v. 247.
146. Buchez et Roux, xvii. 382.
147. Procés verbaux de la Commune de Paris, date of September 2. The precise words employed by Robespierre are not given in this report, but are recorded in part by Peltier (Révolution du 10 Août, ii. 234) ; it is Hamel (Vie de Robespierre, i. 415) who states that Robespierre used the expression “ a powerful party.” On this accusation see also Beaulieu, iv. 147 ; Moniteur, xiii. 617, 62o-622 ; Mortimer Ternaux, iii. 205.
148. Discours de Pétion sur l’Accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre, p. 16.
149. Moniteur, xiii. 623.
150. Les Moyens d’adoucir la Rigueur des Lois pénales en France, 1781.
151. Life of Charles, third Earl of Stanhope, by Ghita Stanhope and G.P. Gooch, p. 120.
152. Histoire du Clergé, by L’Abbé Barruel, p. 349.
153. Histoire de la Révolution du 10 Août, by Peltier, ii. 391.
154. Barruel, op. cit. pp. 353, 354.
155. I have been unable to find this correspondence in English. These passages are taken from the Histoire Socialiste de la Révolution, volume La Convention, by Jean Jaurés, p. 196 and following, and from Danton Émigré, by Dr. Robinet.
156. Date of November 7, 1792.
157. Date of November 10, 1792.
158. Date of November 28, 1792.
159. Playfair’s History of Jacobinism, p. 384.
160. Séances des Jacobins, date of June 4, 1792.
161. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, ii. 300.
162. Journal of a Residence in France, i. 134.
163. Arthur Young, The Example of France, Appendix, p. 3.
164. Oswald’s Speech at the Jacobin Club, September 30, 1792.
165. J. Mason to J.B. Burges, letter dated September 13, 1792 (Fortescue Historical MSS. ii. 316).
166. Correspondence of Lord Auckland, ii. 438.
167. Oswald’s Speech to the Jacobins on September 30, 1792 (Aulard’s Séances des Jacobins, iv. 346).
168. “ Déclaration d’Antoine Gabriel Aimé Jourdan,” in Mémoires sur les Journées de Septembre, p. 154.
169. Crimes de la Révolution, iv. 123.
170. Playfair’s History of Jacobinism, p. 501.
171. The arms referred to by Oswald in his speech (Aulard’s Séances des Jacobins, iv. 346).
172. Life of Charles, third Earl of Stanhope, by Ghita Stanhope and G.P. Gooch, p. 120.
173. Beaulieu, iv. 169 ; Pagès, ii. 45.
174. Carra had also been sent by Servan and Danton to “ harangue the soldiers at the camp of ‘ La Maulde ’ in August ” (see Prècis de la Défense de Carra, p. 29).
175. D’Allonville, Mémoires d’un Homme d’État, i. 401.
176. D’Allonville, Mémoires secrets, iii. 95.
177. Biographie de Louis Philippe d’Orléans, by L.G. Michaud, Appendix, PP. 16, 17.
178. Mémoires de Mme. Roland, i. 113.