Fox's Book of Martyrs Part 64

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

It was not to be supposed, that the queen was to be long permitted to survive her husband. She had been even more than he the object of revolutionary detestation; nay, many were disposed to throw on Marie Antoinette, almost exclusively, the blame of those measures which they considered as counter-revolutionary.

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

The princess Elizabeth, sister of Louis, of whom it might he said, in the words of lord Clarendon, that she resembled a chapel in a king's palace, into which nothing but piety and morality enter, while all around is filled with sin, idleness, and folly, did not, by the most harmless demeanour and inoffensive character, escape the miserable fate in which the Jacobins had determined to involve the whole family of Louis XVI. Part of the accusation redounded to the honour of her character. She was accused of having admitted to the apartments of the Tuilleries some of the national guards, of the section of Filles de Saint Thomas, and causing the wounds to be looked to which they had received in a skirmish with the Ma.r.s.ellois, immediately before the 10th of August. The princess admitted her having done so, and it was exactly in consistence with her whole conduct. Another charge stated the ridiculous accusation, that she had distributed bullets chewed by herself and her attendants, to render then more fatal, to the defenders of the castle of the Tuilleries; a ridiculous fable, of which there was no proof whatever. She was beheaded in May, 1794, and met her death as became the manner in which her life had been spent.

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

The unhappy boy was put in charge of the most hard-hearted villain whom the community of Paris, well acquainted where such agents were to be found, were able to select from their band of Jacobins. This wretch, a shoemaker called Simon, asked his employers, "what was to be done with the young wolf-whelp; Was he to be slain?"--"No?"--"Poisoned?"--"No."--"Starved to death?"--"No."

"What then?"--"He was to be got rid of." Accordingly, by a continuance of the most severe treatment--by beating, cold, vigils, fasts, and ill usage of every kind, so frail a blossom was soon blighted. He died on the 8th June, 1795.

After this last horrible crime, there was a relaxation in favour of the daughter, and now the sole child of this unhappy house. The princess royal, whose qualities have honoured even her birth and blood, experienced from this period a mitigated captivity. Finally, on the 19th December, 1795, this last remaining relic of the family of Louis, was permitted to leave her prison and her country, in exchange for La Fayette and others, whom, on that condition, Austria delivered from captivity. She became afterwards the wife of her cousin, the duke d'Angouleme, eldest son of the reigning monarch of France, and obtained, by the manner in which she conducted herself at Bourdeaux in 1815, the highest praise for gallantry and spirit.

_Dreadful scenes in La Vendee._

In La Vendee, one of the departments of France, an insurrection broke out against the Jacobinical government, in 1793.

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

"I did not see a single male being at the towns of St. Hermand, Chantonnay, or Herbiers. A few women alone had escaped the sword.

Country-seats, cottages, habitations of whichever kind, were burnt. The herds and flocks were wandering in terror around their usual places of shelter, now smoking in ruins. I was surprised by night, but the wavering and dismal blaze of conflagration afforded light over the country. To the bleating of the terrified flocks, and bellowing of the terrified cattle, was joined the deep hoa.r.s.e notes of carrion crows, and the yells of wild animals coming from the recesses of the woods to prey upon the carca.s.ses of the slain. At length a distant colume of fire, widening and increasing as I approached, served me as a beacon. It was the town of Mortagne in flames. When I arrived there, no living creatures were to be seen, save a few wretched women who were striving to save some remnants of their property from the general conflagration."--_Les Memoires d'un Ancien Administrateur des Armees Republicaines._

_Scenes at Ma.r.s.eilles and Lyons._

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

Ma.r.s.eilles showed at once her good will and her impotency of means. The utmost exertions of that wealthy city, whose revolutionary band had contributed so much to the downfall of the monarchy in the attack on the Tuilleries, were able to equip only a small and doubtful army of about 3000 men, who were despatched to the relief of Lyons. This inconsiderable army threw themselves into Avignon, and were defeated with the utmost ease, by the republican general Cartaux, despicable as a military officer, and whose forces would not have stood a single _engaillement_ of Vendean sharp-shooters. Ma.r.s.eilles received the victors, and bowed her head to the subsequent horrors which it pleased Cartaux, with two formidable Jacobins, Barras and Ferron, to inflict on that flouris.h.i.+ng city. The place underwent the usual terrors of Jacobin purifaction, and was for a time affectedly called "nameless commune."

Lyons made a more honourable stand. That n.o.ble city had been subjected for some time to the domination of Chalier, one of the most ferocious, and at the same time one of the most extravagantly absurd, of the Jacobins. He was at the head of a formidable club, which was worthy of being affiliated with the mother society, and ambitious of treading in its footsteps; and he was supported by a garrison of two revolutionary regiments, besides a numerous artillery, and a large addition of volunteers, amounting in all to about ten thousand men, forming what was called a revolutionary army. This Chalier, was an apostate priest, an atheist, and a thorough-paced pupil in the school of terror. He had been procureur of the community, and had imposed on the wealthy citizens a tax, which was raised from six to thirty millions of livres. But blood as well as gold was his object. The ma.s.sacre of a few priests and aristocrats confined in the fortress of Pierre-Scixe, was a pitiful sacrifice; and Chalier, ambitious of deeds more decisive, caused a general arrest of an hundred princ.i.p.al citizens, whom he destined as a hecatomb more worthy of the demon whom he served.

This sacrifice was prevented by the courage of the Lyonnois; a courage which, if a.s.sumed by the Parisians, might have prevented most of the horrors which disgraced the revolution. The meditated slaughter was already announced by Chalier to the Jacobin club. "Three hundred heads,"

he said, "are marked for slaughter. Let us lose no time in seizing the members of the departmental office-bearers, the presidents and secretaries of the sections, all the local authorities who obstruct our revolutionary measures. Let us make one f.a.got of the whole, and deliver them at once to the guillotine."

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

The people of Lyons vainly endeavoured to establish a revolutionary character for themselves upon the system of Gironde; two of whose proscribed deputies tried to draw them over to their unpopular and hopeless cause: and they inconsistently sought protection by affecting a republican zeal, even while resisting the decrees, and defeating the troops of the Jacobins. There were undoubtedly many of royalist principles among the insurgents, and some of their leaders were decidedly such; but these were not numerous or influential enough to establish the true principle of open resistance, and the ultimate chance of rescue, by a bold proclamation of the king's interest. They still appealed to the convention as their legitimate sovereign, in whose eyes they endeavoured to vindicate themselves, and at the same time tried to secure the interest of two Jacobin deputies, who had countenanced every violation attempted by Chalier, that they might prevail upon them to represent their conduct favourably. Of course they had enough of promises to this effect, while Messrs. Guathier and Nioche, the deputies in question, remained in their power; promises, doubtless the more readily given, that the Lyonnois, though desirous to conciliate the favour of the convention, did not hesitate in proceeding to the punishment of the Jacobin Chalier. He was condemned and executed, along with one of his princ.i.p.al a.s.sociates, termed Reard.

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

The Lyonnois had indeed letters of encouragement, and promised concurrence, from several departments; but no effectual support was ever directed to their city, excepting the petty reinforcement from Ma.r.s.eilles, which we have seen was intercepted and dispersed with little trouble by the Jacobin general, Cartaux.

Lyons had expected to become the patroness and focus of an Anti-Jacobin league, formed by the great commercial towns, against Paris and the predominant part of the convention. She found herself isolated and unsupported, and left to oppose her own proper forces and means of defence, to an army of sixty thousand men, and to the numerous Jacobins contained within her own walls. About the end of July, after a lapse of an interval of two months, a regular blockade was formed around the city, and in the first week of August, hostilities took place. The besieging army was directed in its military character by general Kellerman, who, with other distinguished soldiers, had now began to hold an eminent rank in the republican armies. But for the purpose of executing the vengeance for which they thirsted, the Jacobins relied chiefly on the exertions of the deputies they had sent along with the commander, and especially of the representative, Dubois Crance, a man whose sole merit appears to have been his frantic Jacobinism. General Percy, formerly an officer in the royal service, undertook the almost hopeless task of defence, and by forming redoubts on the most commanding situations around the town, commenced a resistance against the immensely superior force of the besiegers, which was honourable if it could have been useful. The Lyonnois, at the same time, still endeavoured to make fair weather with the besieging army, by representing themselves as firm republicans. They celebrated as a public festival the anniversary of the 10th of August, while Dubois Crance, to show the credit he gave them for their republican zeal, fixed the same day for commencing his fire on the place, and caused the first gun to be discharged by his own concubine, a female born in Lyons. Bombs and red-hot bullets were next resorted to, against the second city of the French empire; while the besieged sustained the attack with a constancy, and on many parts repelled it with a courage highly honourable to their character. But their fate was determined. The deputies announced to the convention their purpose of pouring their instruments of havoc on every quarter of the town at once, and when it was on fire in several places, to attempt a general storm.

"The city," they said, "must surrender, or there shall not remain one stone upon another, and this we hope to accomplish in spite of the suggestions of false compa.s.sion. Do not then be surprised when you hear that Lyons exists no longer." The fury of the attack threatened to make good these promises.

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

The parylitic Couthon, with Collot D'Herbois, and other deputies were sent to Lyons by the committee of public safety, to execute the vengeance which the Jacobins demanded; while Dubois Crance was recalled, for having put, it was thought, less energy to his proceedings than the prosecution of the siege required. Collot D'Herbois had a personal motive of a singular nature for delighting in the task intrusted to him and his colleagues. In his capacity of a play-actor, he had been hissed from the stage at Lyons, and the door to revenge was now open. The instructions of this committee enjoined them to take the most satisfactory revenge for the death of Chalier and the insurrection of Lyons, not merely on the citizens, but on the town itself. The princ.i.p.al streets and buildings were to be levelled with the ground, and a monument erected where they stood, was to record the cause:--"_Lyons rebelled against the Republic--Lyons is no more._" Such fragments of the town as might be permitted to remain, were to bear the name of Ville Affranchie. It will scarce be believed that a doom like that which might have pa.s.sed the lips of some eastern despot, in all the frantic madness of arbitrary power and utter ignorance, could have been seriously p.r.o.nounced, and as seriously enforced, in one of the most civilized nations in Europe; and that to the present enlightened age, men who pretended to wisdom and philosophy, should have considered the labours of the architect as a proper subject of punishment. So it was, however; and to give the demolition more effect, the impotent Couthon was carried from house to house, devoting each to ruin, by striking the door with a silver hammer, and p.r.o.nouncing these words--"House of a rebel. I condemn thee in the name of the law." Workmen followed in great mult.i.tudes, who executed the sentence by pulling the house down to the foundations. This wanton demolition continued for six months, and is said to have been carried on at an expense equal to that which the superb military hospital, the Hotel des Invalides, cost its founder, Louis XIV. But republican vengeance did not waste itself exclusively upon senseless lime and stone--it sought out sentient victims.

The deserved death of Chalier had been atoned by an apotheosis executed after Lyons had surrendered; but Collot D'Herbois declared that every drop of that patriotic blood fell as if scalding his own heart, and that the murder demanded atonement. All ordinary process, and every usual mode of execution, was thought too tardy to avenge the death of a Jacobin proconsul. The judges of the revolutionary commission were worn out with fatigue--the arm of the executioner was weary--the very steel of the guillotine was blunted. Collot D'Herbois devised a more summary mode of slaughter. A number of from two to three hundred victims at once were dragged from prison to the place de Baotteaux, one of the largest squares in Lyons, and there subjected to a fire of grape-shot.

Efficacious as this mode of execution may seem, it was neither speedy nor merciful. The sufferers fell to the ground like singed flies, mutilated but not slain, and imploring their executioners to despatch them speedily. This was done with sabres and bayonets, and with such haste and zeal, that some of the jailers and a.s.sistants were slain along with those whom they had a.s.sisted in dragging to death; and the mistake was not discerned, until, upon counting the dead bodies, the military murderers found them to amount to more than the destined tale. The bodies of the dead were thrown into the Rhone, to carry news of the republican vengeance, as Collot D'Herbois expressed himself, to Toulon, then also in a state of revolt. But the sullen stream rejected the office imposed on it, and headed back the dead in heaps upon the banks; and the committee of Representatives was compelled at length to allow the relics of their cruelty to be interred, to prevent the risk of contagion.

_The Installation of the G.o.ddess of Reason._

At length the zeal of the infuriated Atheists in France hurried them to the perpetration of one of the most ridiculous, and at the same time impious transactions which ever disgraced the annals of any nation. It was no less than a formal renunciation of the existence of a Supreme Being, and the installation of the _G.o.ddess of Reason_, in 1793.

"There is," says Scott, "a fanaticism of atheism, as well as of superst.i.tious belief; and a philosopher can harbour and express as much malice against those who persevere in believing what he is pleased to denounce as unworthy of credence, as an ignorant and bigoted priest can bear against a man who cannot yield faith to dogmata which he thinks insufficiently proved." Accordingly, the throne being totally annihilated, it appeared to the philosophers of the school of Hebert, (who was author of the most gross and beastly periodical paper of the time, called the _Pere du Chene_) that in totally destroying such vestiges of religion and public wors.h.i.+p as were still retained by the people of France, there was room for a splendid triumph of liberal opinions. It was not enough, they said, for a regenerate nation to have dethroned earthly kings, unless she stretched out the arm of defiance towards those powers which superst.i.tion had represented as reigning over boundless s.p.a.ce.

An unhappy man, named Gobet, const.i.tutional bishop of Paris, was brought forward to play the princ.i.p.al part in the most impudent and scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national representation.

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

The gold and silver plate of the churches was seized upon and desecrated, processions entered the convention, travestied in priestly garments, and singing the most profane hymns; while many of the chalices and sacred vessels were applied by Chaumette and Hebert to the celebration of their own impious orgies. The world for the first time, heard an a.s.sembly of men, born and educated in civilization, and a.s.suming the right to govern one of the finest of the European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man's soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and wors.h.i.+p of a Deity.

For a short time the same mad profanity continued to be acted upon.

One of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivalled for absurdity, combined with impiety. The doors of the convention were thrown open to a band of musicians; preceded by whom, the members of the munic.i.p.al body entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future wors.h.i.+p, a veiled female, whom they termed the G.o.ddess of Reason. Being brought within the bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed on the right hand of the president; when she was generally recognized as a dancing-girl of the opera, with whose charms most of the persons present were acquainted from her appearance on the stage, while the experience of individuals was farther extended. To this person, as the fittest representative of that reason whom they wors.h.i.+pped the national convention of France rendered public homage.

This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fas.h.i.+on; and the installation of the G.o.ddess of reason was renewed and imitated throughout the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to show themselves equal to all the heights of the revolution. The churches were, in most districts of France, closed against priests and wors.h.i.+ppers--the bells were broken and cast into cannon--the whole ecclesiastical establishment destroyed--and the republican inscription over the cemeteries, declaring death to be perpetual sleep, announced to those who lived under that dominion, that they were to hope no redress even in the next world.

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

_Fall of Danton, Robespierre, Marat and other Jacobins._

These monsters fell victims by the same means they had used for the destruction of others. Marat was poignarded in 1793, by Charlotte Corday, a young female, who had cherished in a feeling between lunacy and heroism, the ambition of ridding the world of a tyrant. Danton was guillotined in 1794. Robespierre followed soon after. His fall is thus described by Scott in his life of Napoleon.

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

The first theme of the gloomy orator was the display of his own virtues and his services as a patriot, distinguis.h.i.+ng as enemies to their country all whose opinions were contrary to his own. He then reviewed successively the various departments of the government, and loaded them in turn with censure and contempt. He declaimed against the supineness of the committees of public safety and public security, as if the guillotine had never been in exercise; and he accused the committee of finance of having _counter-revolutionized_ the revenues of the republic.

He enlarged with no less bitterness on withdrawing the artillery-men (always violent Jacobins) from Paris, and on the mode of management adopted in the conquered countries of Belgium. It seemed as if he wished to collect within the same lists all the functionaries of the state, and in the same breath to utter defiance to them all.

The usual honorary motion was made to print the discourse; but then the storm of opposition broke forth, and many speakers vociferously demanded, that before so far adopting the grave inculpations which it contained, the discourse should be referred to the two committees.

Robespierre in his turn, exclaimed, that this was subjecting his speech to the partial criticism and revision of the very parties whom he had accused. Exculpations and defences were heard on all sides against the charges which had been thus sweepingly brought forward; and there were many deputies who complained in no obscure terms of individual tyranny, and of a conspiracy on foot to outlaw and murder such part of the convention as might be disposed to offer resistance. Robespierre was but feebly supported, save by Saint Just, Couthon, and by his own brother.

After a stormy debate, in which the convention were alternately swayed by their fear and their hatred of Robespierre, the discourse was finally referred to the committees, instead of being printed; and the haughty and sullen dictator saw in the open slight, thus put on his measures and opinions, the sure mark of his approaching fall.

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

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

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

Collot d'Herbois, thus outraged, went straight from the meeting of the Jacobins to the place where the committee of public safety was still sitting, in consultation on the report which they had to make to the convention the next day upon the speech of Robespierre. Saint Just, one of their number, though warmly attached to the dictator, had been intrusted by the committee with the delicate task of drawing up that report. It was a step towards reconciliation; but the entrance of Collot d'Herbois, frantic with the insults he had received, broke off all hope of accommodation betwixt the friends of Danton and those of Robespierre.

D'Herbois exhausted himself in threats against Saint Just, Couthon, and their master, Robespierre, and they parted on terms of mortal and avowed enmity. Every exertion now was used by the a.s.sociated conspirators against the power of Robespierre, to collect and combine against him the whole forces of the convention, to alarm the deputies of the plain with fears for themselves, and to awaken the rage of the mountaineers, against whose throat the dictator now waved the sword, which their short sighted policy had placed in his hands. Lists of proscribed deputies were handed around, said to have been copied from the tablets of the dictator; genuine or false, they obtained universal credit and currency; and these whose names stood on the fatal scrolls, engaged themselves for protection in the league against their enemy. The opinion that his fall could not be delayed now became general.

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