Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men Part 20

Bailly brought back these minds, erring for the moment from the path of duty, by repeating to them maxims which both in form and substance would not disparage the collections of the most celebrated moralists:

"It is false, very false, that a crime can ever be useful. The trade of an honest man is the safest, even in times of revolution. Enlightened egotism suffices to put any intelligent individual into the path of justice and truth. Whenever innocence can be sacrificed with impunity, crime is not sure of succeeding. There is so great a difference between the death of a good man and that of a wicked man, that the mult.i.tude is incapable of estimating it."

Cannibals devouring their vanquished enemies seem to me less hideous, less contrary to nature, than those wretches, the refuse of the population of large towns, who, too often alas! have carried their ferocity so far, as to disturb by their clamorous and infamous raillery the last moments of the unhappy victims about to be struck by the sword of the law. The more humiliating this picture of the degradation of the human species may be, the more we should beware of overcharging the colouring. With few exceptions, the historians of Bailly's last agony appear to me to have forgotten this duty. Was the truth, the strict truth, not sufficiently distressing? Was it requisite, without any sort of proof, to impute to the ma.s.s of the people the infernal cynicism of cannibals? Should they lightly make just sentiments of disgust and indignation rest upon an immense cla.s.s of citizens? I think not, Gentlemen, and I will therefore avoid the cruelty and poignancy of chaining the thoughts for a long time on such scenes; I will prove that by rendering the drama a little less atrocious, I have only sacrificed imaginary details, which are the envenomed fruits of the spirit of the party.

I will not shut my ears to the questions that already hum around me.

People will say to me, What are your claims for daring to modify a page of our revolutionary history, on which every one seemed agreed? What right have you to weaken contemporary testimonies, you, who at the time of Bailly's death, were scarcely born; you, who lived in an obscure valley of the Pyrenees, two hundred and twenty leagues from the capital?

These questions do not embarra.s.s me at all. In short, I do not ask that the relation of what seems to me to be the expression of the truth, should be adopted upon my word. I enumerate my proofs, I express my doubts. Within these limits there is no one but has claims to bring forward; the discussion is open to all the world, the public will p.r.o.nounce its definitive judgment.

As a general thesis, I will add that by concentrating our researches on one circ.u.mscribed and special object, we have a better chance of seeing it correctly and knowing it well, all other things being equal, than by scattering our attention in all directions.

As to the merit of contemporaneous narratives, it seems to me very dubious. Political pa.s.sions do not allow us to see objects in their real dimensions, nor in their true forms, nor in their natural colours.

Moreover, have not unpublished and very valuable doc.u.ments come to shed bright colours, just where the spirit of party had spread a thick veil?

The account that Riouffe gave of the death of Bailly has almost blindly led all the historians of our revolution. What does it consist of "at bottom." The prisoner of la Conciergerie said it himself; of tales related by executioners' valets, repeated by turnkeys.

I would willingly allow this account to be set against me, notwithstanding the horrid sewer from which Riouffe had been obliged to draw, if it were not evident that this clever writer saw all the revolutionary events through the just anger that an ardent and active young man must feel after an iniquitous imprisonment; if this current of sentiments and ideas had not led him into some manifest errors.

Who has not, for example, read with tears in their eyes, in the _Memoires sur les Prisons_, what the author relates of the fourteen girls of Verdun? "Of those girls," he said, "of unparalleled fairness, and who appeared like young virgins dressed for a public fete. They disappeared," added Riouffe, "all at once, and were mowed down in the spring of life. The court occupied by the women the day after their death, had the appearance of a garden that had been despoiled of its flowers by a storm. I have never seen amongst us a despair equal to that excited by this barbarity."

Far be from me the intention to weaken the painful feelings which the catastrophe related by Riouffe must naturally inspire; but every one has remarked that the report of this writer is very circ.u.mstantial; the author appears to have seen all with his own eyes. Yet he has been guilty of the gravest inaccuracy.

Out of the fourteen unfortunate women who were sentenced after Verdun was retaken from the Prussians, two girls of seventeen years of age were not condemned to death on account of their youth.

This first circ.u.mstance was well worth recording. Let us go farther. A historian having lately consulted the official journals of that epoch, and the bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal, discovered with some surprise that among the twelve _young girls_ who were condemned, there were seven either married or widows, whose ages varied from forty-one to sixty-nine!

Contemporary accounts then, even those of Riouffe, may be submitted without irreverence to earnest discussion. When a tenth part of the funds annually devoted to researches in and examination of old chronicles, is applied to making extracts from the registers relative to the French Revolution, we shall certainly see many other hideous circ.u.mstances that revolt the soul, disappear from our contemporary history. Look at the ma.s.sacres of September! The historians most in vogue report the number of victims that fell in that butchery to have been from six to twelve thousand; whilst a writer who has lately taken the trouble to a.n.a.lyze the prison registers in the gaoler's books, cannot make the whole amount to one thousand. Even this number is very large; but, for my part, I thank the author of this recent publication for having reduced the number of a.s.sa.s.sinations in September to less than a tenth part of what had been generally admitted.

When the discussion which I have here undertaken becomes known to the public, it will be seen how many and how important are the retrenchments to be made from that lugubrious page of our history. Another important circ.u.mstance may be appreciated, which appears to me to arise from all these facts. After having weighed my proofs, every one I hope will join me in seeing that the wretches around the scaffold of Bailly were but the refuse of the population, fulfilling for pay the part that had been a.s.signed them by three or four wealthy cannibals.

The sentence p.r.o.nounced against Bailly by the Revolutionary Tribunal was to be executed on the 12th of November, 1793. The reminiscences recently published by a fellow-prisoner of our colleague, the reminiscences of M.

Beugnot, will enable us to penetrate into the Conciergerie, on the morning of that inauspicious day.

Bailly had risen early, after having slept as usual, the sleep of the just. He took some chocolate, and conversed a long time with his nephew. The young man was a prey to despair, but the ill.u.s.trious prisoner preserved all his serenity. The previous evening in returning from the Tribunal, he remarked, with admirable coolness, though springing from a certain disquietude, "that the spectators of his trial had been strongly excited against him. I fear," he added, "that the mere execution of the sentence will no longer satisfy them, which might be dangerous in its consequences. Perhaps the police will provide against it." These reflections having recurred to Bailly's mind on the 12th, he asked for, and drank hastily, two cups of coffee without milk. These precautions were a sinister omen. To his friends who surrounded him at this awful moment, and were sobbing aloud, he said, "Be calm; I have rather a difficult journey to perform, and I distrust my const.i.tution.

Coffee excites and reanimates; I hope, however, to reach the end properly."

Noon had just struck. Bailly addressed a last and tender adieu to his companions in captivity, wished them a better fate, followed the executioner without weakness as well as without bravado, mounted the fatal cart, his hands tied behind his back. Our colleague was accustomed to say: "We must entertain a bad opinion of those who, in their dying moments, have not a look to cast behind them." Bailly's last look was towards his wife. A gendarme of the escort feelingly listened to his last words, and faithfully repeated them to his widow. The procession reached the entrance to the Champ de Mars, on the side towards the river, at a quarter past one o'clock. This was the place where, according to the words of the sentence, the scaffold had been raised.

The blinded crowd collected there, furiously exclaimed that the sacred ground of the Champ de la Federation should not be soiled by the presence and by the blood of him whom they called a great criminal. Upon their demand (I had almost said their orders), the scaffold was taken down again, and carried piecemeal into one of the fosses, where it was put up afresh. Bailly remained the stern witness of these frightful preparations, and of these infernal clamours. Not one complaint escaped from his lips. Rain had been falling all the morning; it was cold; it drenched the body, and especially the bare head, of the venerable man. A wretch saw that he was s.h.i.+vering, and cried out to him, _"Thou tremblest, Bailly."_--"_I am cold, my friend_," mildly answered the victim. These were his last words.

Bailly descended into the moat, where the executioner burnt before him the red flag of the 17th July; he then with a firm step mounted the scaffold. Let us have the courage to say it, when the head of our venerable colleague fell, the paid witnesses whom this horrid execution had a.s.sembled on the Champ de Mars burst into infamous acclamations.

I had announced a faithful recital of the martyrdom of Bailly; I have kept my word. I said that I should banish many circ.u.mstances without reality, and that the drama would thus become less atrocious. If I am to trust your aspect, I have not accomplished the second part of my promise. The imagination perhaps cannot reach beyond the cruel facts on which I have been obliged to dilate. You ask what I can have retrenched from former relations, whilst what remains is so deplorable.

The order for execution addressed by Fouquier Tinville to the executioner has been seen by several persons now living. They all declare that if it differs from the numerous orders of a similar nature that the wretch sent off daily, it was only by the subst.i.tution of the following words: "Esplanade du Champ de Mars," for the usual designation of "Place de la Revolution." Now, the Revolutionary Tribunal has deserved many anathemas, but I never remarked its being reproached with not having known how to enforce obedience.

I felt myself relieved from an immense weight, Gentlemen, when I could dispel from my thoughts the image of a melancholy march on foot of two hours, because with it there disappeared two hours of corporeal ill-usage, which, according to those same accounts, our virtuous colleague must have endured from the Conciergerie to the Champ de Mars.

An ill.u.s.trious writer a.s.serts that they conducted Bailly to the Place de la Revolution, that the scaffold there was taken to pieces on the mult.i.tude demanding it, and that the victim was then led to the Champ de Mars. This relation is not correct. The sentence expressed in positive terms, that, as an exception, the Square of the Revolution was not to be the scene of Bailly's execution. The procession went direct to the place designated.

The historian already quoted affirms that the scaffold on being put up again on the bank of the Seine was erected on a heap of rubbish; that this operation lasted some hours, and that Bailly meanwhile was drawn round the Champ de Mars several times.

These promenades are imaginary. Those men who on the arrival of the lugubrious procession vociferated that the presence of the old Mayor of Paris would soil the Champ de la Federation, could not the next minute force him to make the circuit of it. In fact, the ill.u.s.trious victim remained in the road. The cruel idea, so knowingly attributed to the actors of those hideous scenes, to raise the fatal instrument on a heap of rubbish on the river bank, so that Bailly might in his last moments see the house at Chaillot where he had composed his works, was so far from occurring to the mind of the mult.i.tude, that the sentence was executed in the moat between two walls.

I have not thought it my duty, Gentlemen, to represent the condemned man forced to carry some parts of the scaffold himself, because he had his hands tied behind his back. In my recital n.o.body waves the burning red flag over Bailly's head, because this barbarity is not mentioned in the narratives, otherwise so shocking, drawn up by some friends of our colleague shortly after the event; nor have I consented, with the author of _The History of the French Revolution_, to represent one of the soldiers forming the escort asking the question that led the victim to make, we must say so, the theatrical answer: "Yes, I tremble, but it is with cold;" but the more touching answer, so characteristic of Bailly; "Yes, my friend, I am cold."

Far be it from me, Gentlemen, to suppose that no soldier in the world would be capable of a despicable and culpable act. I do not ask, a.s.suredly, the suppression of all courts-martial; but to be induced to attribute to a man dressed in a military uniform, a personal part in this frightful drama, proofs or contemporary testimonies would be required, of which I have found no trace.

If the fact had occurred, its results would certainly have become known to the public. I take to witness an event which is found related in Bailly's Memoirs.

On the 22d of July, 1789, on the square of the Hotel de Ville, a dragoon with his sabre mutilated the corpse of Berthier. His comrades, feeling outraged by this barbarity, all showed themselves instantly resolved to fight him in succession, and so wash out in his blood the disgrace he had thrown on the whole corps. The dragoon fought that same evening and was killed.

In his _History of Prisons_, Riouffe says that "Bailly exhausted the ferocity of the populace, of whom he had been the idol, and was basely abandoned by the people, though they had never ceased to esteem him."

Nearly the same idea is found expressed in _The History of the Revolution_, and in several other works.

What is called the populace rarely read and did not write. To attack it and calumniate it therefore was a convenient thing, since no refutation need to be feared. I am far from supposing that the historians whose works I have quoted, ever gave way to such considerations; but I affirm, with entire certainty, that they have deceived themselves. In the sanguinary drama that has been unrolled before your eyes, the atrocities had a quite different source from the sentiments common to the barbarians that were swarming in the dregs of society and always ready to soil it with every crime; in plainer words, it is not to the unfortunate people who have neither property, nor capital, living by the work of their hands, to the _proletaires_, that we are to impute the deplorable incidents which marked Bailly's last moments. To put forward an opinion so remote from received opinions, is imposing on one's self the duty of proving its truth.

After his condemnation, our colleague exclaimed, says La Fayette: "I die for the sitting of the Jeu de Paume, and not for the fatal day at the Champ de Mars." I do not here intend to expound these mysterious words in the glimpses they give us by a half-light; but, whatever meaning we may attribute to them, it is evident that the sentiments and pa.s.sions of the lower cla.s.s have no share in them; it is a point beyond discussion.

On reentering the Conciergerie, the evening before his death, Bailly spoke of the efforts that must have been made to excite the pa.s.sions of the auditors, who followed the various phases of his trial. Fact.i.tious excitement is always the produce of corruption. The working cla.s.ses are without money;, they then cannot have been the corruptors or direct promoters of the distressing scenes of which Bailly complained.

The implacable enemies of the former President of the National a.s.sembly had procured for pay some auxiliaries among the turnkeys of the Conciergerie. M. Beugnot informs us that when the venerable magistrate was consigned to the gendarmes who were to conduct him to the Tribunal, "these wretches pushed him violently, sending him from one to the other like a drunken man, calling out: _Hold there, Bailly! Catch, Bailly, there!_ and that they laughed and shouted at the grave demeanour the philosopher maintained amidst the insults of those cannibals."

To confirm my statement that these violences (in comparison with which, in truth, those of the Champ de Mars lose their virulence,) were fomented by pay, I have more than the formal declaration of our colleague's fellow prisoner. For in fact I find that no other prisoner or convict underwent such treatment; not even the man called the Admiral, when he was taken to the Conciergerie for having attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate Collot-d'Herbois.

Besides, it is not only on indirect considerations that my decided opinion is founded relative to the intervention of rich and influential people in those scenes of indescribable barbarity on the Champ de Mars.

Merard St. Just, the intimate friend of Bailly, has alluded by his initials to a wretch who, the very day of our colleague's death, publicly boasted of having electrified the few acolytes who, together with him, insisted on the removal of the scaffold; the day after the execution, the meeting of the Jacobins reechoed with the name of another individual of the Gros Caillou, who also claimed his share of influence in the crime.

I have progressively unrolled before you the series of events in our revolution, in which Bailly took an active part; I have scrupulously searched out the smallest circ.u.mstances of the deplorable affair on the Champ de Mars; I have followed our colleague in his proscription to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to the foot of the scaffold. We had seen him before, surrounded by esteem, by respect, and by glory, in the bosom of our princ.i.p.al academies. Yet the work is not complete; several essential traits are still wanting.

I will therefore claim a few more minutes of your kind attention. The moral life of Bailly is like those masterpieces of ancient sculpture, that deserve to be studied in every point of view, and in which new beauties are continually discovered, in proportion as the contemplation is prolonged.

PORTRAIT OF BAILLY.--HIS WIFE.

Nature did not endow Bailly generously with those exterior advantages that please us at first sight. He was tall and thin. His visage compressed, his eyes small and sunk, his nose regular, but of unusual length, and a very brown complexion, const.i.tuted an imposing whole, severe and almost glacial. Fortunately, it was easy to perceive through this rough bark, the inexhaustible benevolence of the good man; the kindness that always accompanies a serene mind, and even some rudiments of gayety.

Bailly early endeavoured to model his conduct on that of the Abbe de Lacaille, who directed his first steps in the career of astronomy. And therefore it will be found that in transcribing five or six lines of the very feeling eulogy that the pupil dedicated to the memory of his revered master, I shall have made known at the same time many of the characteristic traits of the panegyrist:

"He was cold and reserved towards those of whom he knew little; but gentle, simple, equable, and familiar in the intercourse of friends.h.i.+p.

It is there that, throwing off the grave exterior which he wore in public, he gave himself up to a peaceful and amiable gayety."

The resemblance between Bailly and Lacaille goes no farther. Bailly informs us that the great astronomer proclaimed truth on all occasions, without disquieting himself as to whom it might wound. He would not consent to put vice at its ease, saying:

"If good men thus showed their indignation, bad men being known, and vice unmasked, could no longer do harm, and virtue would be more respected." This Spartan morality could not accord with Bailly's character; he admired but did not adopt it.