A.D. 197.
Albinus, a Roman general, revolted against the emperor Severus, and encamped his rebel troops near Lyons. The emperor marched against him, and the battle commenced the instant the armies came in sight of each other. The conflict was terrible, but Albinus was conquered, and forced to take refuge in Lyons. The conquerors followed him thither, and plundered and ravaged the city. Albinus, finding all was lost, plunged his sword into his own body; but as he was not dead when the adverse party took Lyons, they enjoyed the savage satisfaction of cutting off the head of a man who could not have lived an hour.
SECOND SIEGE, A.D. 1793.
The majority of the Lyonnais had witnessed the revolution of the 10th of August with great regret. Devoted to commerce and the arts, Lyons must necessarily have preferred a stable and tranquil government to the storms of a revolution. Political agitations, the emigration of the nobles, the proscriptions of the rich, were at every instant drying up the springs of its commerce, paralyzing its industry, and deteriorating the products of its manufactures. When private interests were thus injured, it could not be expected that the Lyonnais should feel much revolutionary ardour; they were certain to follow the ideas of the most moderate party. The Convention was recognised, the Republic proclaimed; but the rich trembled at the opening of the clubs; they were terrified at seeing municipal powers pass into the hands of proletaires; their minds revolted at hearing propositions for murder and carnage, the reward of their generosity in paying a loan of many millions. Their horror for the men who oppressed them was soon displaced by a desire for vengeance. Two parties declared themselves in Lyons: that of the Municipals, supported by the Montagne; and that of the Sections, composed of pure republicans and disguised royalists. Both sides assembled, and both spoke of preparations for defence and of measures for attack. Each party designated its enemies, watched its partisans, exaggerated its injuries and causes of alarm; minds were heated, and hearts divided. People became accustomed to consider as irreconcilable enemies all who did not embrace the opinions of the party they had espoused. The storm, which had been growling for a length of time, burst forth on the 29th of May, 1793. Two commissioners from the Convention were sitting with ChÂlier at the municipality; they had made a place of arms of it. On their side, the Sectionaries had gathered together all their columns. There were three attempts at accommodation, but they all failed through the perfidy of ChÂlier. A battalion of the Lyonnais approached the municipality, sent for under the pretence of conciliation. The signal for carnage was given; ChÂlier ordered a discharge of artillery and musketry. The unfortunate Lyonnais were obliged to abandon the bodies of their friends; the whole city was in arms. Two columns left the Place de Bellecourt, and besieged the HÔtel de Ville, defended by eighteen hundred men and two pieces of cannon; the besiegers did not amount to two thousand. The combat lasted two hours; the HÔtel de Ville was carried. The Lyonnais had in their power the men who appeared to have meditated their ruin. There was still more carnage after the victory; the soldiers were obliged to defend their prisoners against the fury of the people. Among them were the two commissioners from the Convention; but liberty was soon restored to them, on condition of their giving an honest account of the provocations which had brought on the combat. These representatives, four days after, notwithstanding a favourable account had been given, described the Lyonnais to the Convention as rebels, and demanded vengeance for the national representation having been unacknowledged, degraded, and insulted in their persons. In the mean time, the Lyonnais had chosen fresh magistrates, and these had created a commission to try the prisoners made in the contest on the 29th of May. ChÂlier was condemned to death; the rest were spared, and kept as hostages. The Lyonnais endeavoured at this moment to prove their love for their country, by concurring with all their power for the defence of the frontiers. Kellermann, the general of the army of the Alps, demanded of this city some pieces of artillery and articles of provisions. Although threatened with a siege, the Lyonnais were moved by the wants of the very soldiers who were soon to be employed against them. Kellermann was so affected by such kindness, that he became their constant intercessor, but one that was never listened to. Two untoward events then happened which accelerated the misfortunes of the Lyonnais. The moderate party had been crushed in the Convention by the 31st of May. Marseilles sent an army to the succour of Lyons, on the very day when treachery, conducted with great art, had given Toulon up to the English. It was feared, for a moment, that the whole south of France would detach itself from the north, and that Lyons would make common cause with Marseilles and Toulon, and all give themselves up to foreigners. Kellermann despatched Carteau against the Marseillais, with a body of troops very inferior in numbers to theirs, but which was to be recruited en route, with the national guards and the volunteers of the country. Carteau followed the left bank of the RhÔne, secured the bridge of St. Esprit and Avignon, met the Marseillais army at Salon, and afterwards at SeptÊmes, where he entirely defeated them. The succours expected from the south by the Lyonnais were thus annihilated. Lyons made some efforts at conciliation; a deputy replied to them in these words: “Rebels, confess your crime, open your gates, show yourselves obedient, be disarmed, and prove yourselves, by your repentance, worthy of the clemency of the Convention.” The Lyonnais had no faith in this clemency, and could not avert the storm: the siege was resolved upon. Kellermann, then called from the army of the Alps, brought, with much regret, the greater part of it to act against the second city of France. The rivalry and jealousy of the neighbouring cities, with the obedience of the country to the orders of the Convention, soon augmented this army; sixty thousand men surrounded Lyons, of which fifteen thousand were disciplined troops. The besiegers received a hundred pieces of cannon, which were served by skilful gunners. Kellermann, according to the system of the time, had with him two commissioners from the Convention, Dubois-CrancÉ and Gauthier. During civil troubles, party animosities are more ardent in councils than in camps; the rigour of political principles there yields more easily to the generous sentiments which a military life establishes reciprocally between soldier and soldier. Kellermann endeavoured for a long time to bend the inflexibility of the commissioners; he could not succeed. In the mean time, the Lyonnais never ceased to express their devotion to the National Convention; they accepted the constitution of 1793 in primary assemblies, they celebrated the anniversary of the 10th of August, burnt all feudal titles, and invited Kellermann to be present at that fÊte. They kept up with him a regular correspondence, although they refused to hold any with the Conventional commissioners; they sought to reunite themselves with the neighbouring departments; but terror had combined all the inhabitants against them. At length, on receiving the last propositions of the Conventional deputies, which were equivalent to surrendering themselves at discretion, they replied: “Citizens, representatives of the people, your propositions are still more atrocious than your conduct; we await you; you will not reach us but over heaps of slain, or the cause of liberty and the republic will triumph.” From that time all hope of accommodation vanished; the parties prepared for attack and defence. Warlike enthusiasm fired every heart in Lyons; the young man who would not have devoted himself to all the dangers of the good cause, would have been expelled from his family as well as from the city. Women appeared upon the breach; a public military chest was formed. The insufficiency of the current coin was covered by the notes of the principal merchants; a considerable quantity of provisions of all kinds was brought in, at great expense, but by no means abundant enough for so immense a population. Lyons, situated at the confluence of the SaÔne and the RhÔne, is dominated on the north by the heights which cover a part of its faubourgs; an engineer named Chennelette traced a plan for redoubts over all this front: they were erected with astonishing celerity. The houses were embattlemented, batteries were built, artillery was cast, powder was manufactured; everything denoted a determination for a vigorous resistance. All who held in Lyons either administrative or military posts, knew that there existed no capitulation for them; and they prepared for defence to the death.
The part of the city situated on the south was occupied by the rich commercial houses; the RhÔne covered all this front; but, on the opposite side, the bank is uncovered; the buildings, badly protected by the batteries erected on the quay of the RhÔne, were left exposed to the destructive fire which the besiegers would soon direct against them. The corps d’armÉe of the Centre, commanded by Kellermann, formed the principal attack to the east of the isthmus, between the union of the RhÔne and the SaÔne, at the faubourg of La Croix-Rousse. On the north, the quarter of FouviÈres, comprised in the great creek formed by the course of the waters of the SaÔne, was attacked by the faubourg of Vaise. Another attack at the confluence of the two rivers confined the besieged within the lands newly recovered from the waters by the engineer Purache. The besieging troops were established in the villages of Oullins and Sainte-Foi. In the latter days of the siege, the approaches came up to the point of the isthmus, and the batteries of the besiegers cut off all that part of the city from the inhabitants. On the south, upon the left bank of the RhÔne, which defended that front, batteries for bombs and firing red-hot shot were placed. Lyons had armed about twenty-five thousand men, commanded by PrËcy, an old soldier, Virieu, an ex-constituent, and Nervo. The civil and administrative authorities, who necessarily took a great part in the resolutions formed, and even in the operations, were not admitted entirely into the secrets of the military leaders, and the threads of the correspondences which were maintained out of the city were not in their hands: there the insurrection was combined with the movements of the enemies’ armies in Savoy. It was proposed that the Prussians and Austrians should drive the French from the lines of Weissemberg, whilst a corps d’armÉe, commanded by the prince de CondÉ, should surprise Huninguen, cross Franche-ComtÉ without stopping for sieges, and should advance towards Lyons. But the ill-success of the preceding year had made these powers circumspect upon such bold questions. This movement failed, as did another, which was to originate in an auxiliary gathering of emigrants, got together in Switzerland. The Helvetic body persisted in its neutrality, and refused to allow the passage of these troops. The Lyonnais had taken up important military positions; their posts advanced considerably beyond the extent of the city, so as to favour their communications with Montbrison and Saint-Etienne, whence they drew their provisions. They occupied the bridge of Oullins, at a league from Lyons, with the heights of Sainte-Foi and those of La Croix-Rousse.
It was with great reluctance that the national battalions gathered around Lyons and turned their arms against their fellow-citizens. In the first council of war assembled at the commencement of the siege, all voices inclined towards conciliation, and were against force and violence. The representative commissioners, armed with the decree of the National Convention, were obliged to exert all the preponderance of their terrible authority. General Kellermann told them in writing, that, whilst deferring to their requisition, he charged himself with no responsibility. The siege was rather a surrounding attack, than a system carried through according to the rules of art. The Lyonnais, to protect their houses from the fire of the besiegers, had carried their exterior works very far out; they had taken advantage of every building for placing posts and cannon. All these posts were daily attacked, defended, taken, disputed, and retaken. In these combats in detail, the losses were equal, the success balanced, and the results nothing. The persistency of the Lyonnais leaders was supported by the hope and expectation of a powerful diversion, to be effected by the Piedmontese army. This army, by a general movement upon its whole front, had descended from the mountains which separate Savoy from Piedmont, and had effected an invasion in Faussigny, Tarantasia, and Mauritta. The army of the Alps being weakened, had retired. Lyons might hope to be some day relieved by the approach of a foreign army. The situation of the French army in Savoy became so embarrassing, that Kellermann was obliged to leave the conducting of the siege to General Du Muy. A few days sufficed for repulsing the Piedmontese. The Convention at this time ordered that Lyons should be set fire to. During several days and nights, the batteries of the three attacks, east, north, and south, poured upon the city a deluge of fire; bombs and red-hot balls carried fire and destruction into all quarters; the public establishments and the beautiful houses of Bellecourt were either battered down by balls or consumed by fire; the quarter of Saint-Clair was the first exposed to the conflagration. Every one was on the watch; all were united in Lyons to endeavour to stop the progress of it. A general cry of horror and indignation arose when the arsenal was seen to be on fire. More than a hundred houses were consumed; magazines of munitions and forage became the prey of the flames. This disaster appeared to be not the effect of the bombs, but the crime of some base incendiary. During the bombardment, traitors gave signals to point out the best places at which to aim. We tremble to relate an instance of a new species of crime. A man bearing the title of a representative of the people, caused bombs to be showered upon the HÔtel-Dieu,—of all the hospitals in France, the one which was perhaps the best conducted. In this asylum, the wounded belonging to the city, and those who were taken prisoners, received equal attention,—a touching lesson of humanity for the Conventional commissioners, who never failed to have all the rebels shot who fell into their hands. The Lyonnais could not believe that there was premeditation in this fire. They hoisted a black flag over the hospital; but instead of averting the bombs, this signal seemed only to attract them. At this period, the besieged began to be sensible of the horrors of famine, their connection with Le Forez being then cut off. The mills having been destroyed by the bombardment, the women proposed that all the barley or wheaten bread should be reserved for the combatants, whilst they should be satisfied with half a pound of oaten bread delivered to them daily. Very soon everything eatable was exhausted. Reduced to this cruel extremity, the besieged thought to gain relief by sending from their walls all the persons useless for the defence of the city. A colleague of Dubois-CranÉe committed an act of inhumanity scarcely credible: his own sister, an inhabitant of Lyons, came to the camp of the besiegers, exhausted by hunger and followed by her family. “Let her go back,” cried the Conventional commissioner,—“let her go back and ask the rebels for bread!”
The reiterated efforts of the besiegers rendered them masters of La Croix-Rousse, which dominates over the city very closely. Fresh requisitions had collected new battalions of national guards in the department of the SaÔne. An army was formed of these, which pressed the works at the point of the isthmus towards Oullins and Sainte-Foi. These reinforcements placed the army in a condition to attempt a general attack in open day upon the two fronts of the west and the south. The besiegers gained possession of the two quarters of the Point Perrache and the Brotteaux, and set fire to them before they retired. At this period also, the Lyonnais lost all hopes of receiving succours from the Piedmontese; General Kellermann had succeeded, by skilful manoeuvres, in driving them back over Mont-Cenis. This advantage decided the fate of Lyons; the Conventional commissioners conveyed the news into the city with a proclamation. The public misfortunes, the sufferings from famine, the fatigues of the service, the carelessness of the people in a quarrel in which the leaders were the only persons threatened, together with lassitude, had changed the minds of the multitude. The sections of Lyons assembled; they insisted upon hearing the reading of the proclamation; and named commissioners to enter into negotiations. The leaders of the enterprise felt that it was time to yield. PrËcy and Virieu, accompanied by three thousand men, whom necessity or the just fear for the future attached to them, marched out by the gate of Vaise. Their purpose was, to keep along the banks of the SaÔne for a time, to cross it at Riottier, and to advance towards the frontiers of Switzerland through the department of L’Ain. But the Conventionalists were aware of this project. The weak remains of the Lyonnais army at first met with but few obstacles; but they were soon pursued by large bodies of cavalry: their retreat became a disorderly flight; they threw themselves into the thickest woods; instead of rejoicing in their silence, the sound of the tocsin came upon their ears from all parts, and that was for them the tocsin of death. Countrymen, armed with forks and scythes, surrounded every issue of the forests, waited for, and massacred men already conquered by hunger and despair. The column led by M. de Virieu was entirely destroyed, and not more than fifty or sixty escaped of that of PrËcy. The next day, the 9th of October, the republican army took possession of all the abandoned posts of Lyons, which city it entered without opposition. The Convention decreed that the walls and public buildings should be destroyed, and the name of the city changed to Ville Affranchie. Of three thousand five hundred and twenty-eight of the insurgents, as they were called, who were brought to trial on account of this siege, one thousand six hundred and eighty-two were either shot or beheaded. In 1794, however, on the destruction of the faction of the Jacobins, the Convention decreed that the city should resume its ancient name, and that measures should be taken to restore its manufactures and commerce. In 1795, the friends of those who were so wantonly put to death in 1793, revenged their fate by a general massacre of the judges of the revolutionary tribunal, and of all the Jacobins who were then confined in the prisons of Lyons.
