Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume I.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Retrospective View of the External Relations of France—Her great Military Successes—Whence they arose—Effect of the Compulsory Levies—Military Genius and Character of the French—French Generals—New Mode of Training the Troops—Light Troops—Successive Attacks in Column—Attachment of the Soldiers to the Revolution—Also of the Generals—Carnot—Effect of the French principles preached to the Countries invaded by their Arms—Close of the Revolution with the fall of Robespierre—Reflections upon what was to succeed.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS.

It may be said of victory, as the English satirist has said of wealth, that it cannot be of much importance in the eye of Heaven, considering in what unworthy association it is sometimes found.[541] While the rulers of France were disowning the very existence of a Deity, her armies appeared to move almost as if protected by the especial favour of Providence. Our former recapitulation presented a slight sketch of the perilous state of France in 1793, surrounded by foes on almost every frontier, and with difficulty maintaining her ground on any point; yet the lapse of two years found her victorious, nay, triumphantly victorious, on all.

On the north-eastern frontier, the English, after a series of hard-fighting, had lost not only Flanders, on which we left them advancing, but Holland itself, and had been finally driven with great loss to abandon the Continent. The King of Prussia had set out on his first campaign as the chief hero of the coalition, and had engaged that the Duke of Brunswick, his general, should put down the revolution in France as easily as he had done that of Holland. But finding the enterprise which he had undertaken was above his strength; that his accumulated treasures were exhausted in an unsuccessful war; and that Austria, not Prussia, was regarded as the head of the coalition, he drew off his forces, after they had been weakened by more than one defeat, and made a separate peace with France, in which he renounced to the new Republic the sovereignty of all those portions of the Prussian territory which lay on the east side of the Rhine. The King, to make up for these losses, sought a more profitable, though less honourable field of warfare, and concurred with Russia and Austria in effecting by conquest a final partition and appropriation of Poland, on the same unprincipled plan on which the first had been conducted.

Spain, victorious at the beginning of the conquest, had been of late so unsuccessful in opposing the French armies, that it was the opinion of many that her character for valour and patriotism was lost for ever. Catalonia was over-run by the Republicans, Rosas taken, and no army intervening betwixt the victors and Madrid, the King of Spain was obliged to clasp hands with the murderers of his kinsman, Louis XVI., acknowledge the French Republic, and withdraw from the coalition.

Austria had well sustained her ancient renown, both by the valour of her troops, the resolution of her cabinet, and the talents of one or two of her generals,—the Archduke Charles in particular, and the veteran Wurmser. Yet she too had succumbed under the Republican superiority. Belgium, as the French called Flanders, was, as already stated, totally lost; and war along the Rhine was continued by Austria, more for defence than with a hope of conquest.

So much and so generally had the fortune of war declared in favour of France upon all points, even while she was herself sustaining the worst of evils from the worst of tyrannies. There must have been unquestionably several reasons for such success as seemed to attend universally on the arms of the Republic, instead of being limited to one peculiarly efficient army, or to one distinguished general.

The first and most powerful cause must be looked for in the extraordinary energy of the Republican government, which, from its very commencement, threw all subordinate considerations aside, and devoted the whole resources of the country to its military defence. It was then that France fully learned the import of the word "Requisition," as meaning that which government needs, and which must at all hazards be supplied. Compulsory levies were universally resorted to; and the undoubted right which a state has to call upon each of its subjects to arise in defence of the community, was extended into the power of sending them upon expeditions of foreign conquest.

In the month of March, 1793, a levy of two hundred thousand men was appointed, and took place; but by a subsequent decree of the 21st August in the same year, a more gigantic mode of recruiting was resorted to.

Every man in France able to bear arms was placed at the orders of the state, and being divided into classes, the youngest, to the amount of five hundred thousand, afterwards augmented to a million, were commanded to march for immediate action. The rest of society were to be so disposed of as might best second the efforts of the actual combatants. The married men were to prepare arms and forward convoys,—the women to make uniforms,—the children to scrape lint,—and the old men to preach Republicanism. All property was in like manner devoted to maintaining the war—all buildings were put to military purposes—all arms appropriated to the public service—and all horses, excepting those which might be necessary for agriculture, seized on for the cavalry, and other military services. Representatives of the people were named to march with the various levies,—those terrible commissioners, who punished no fault with a slighter penalty than death. No excuse was sustained for want of personal compliance with the requisition for personal service—no delay permitted—no substitution allowed—actual and literal compliance was demanded from every one, and of what rank soever. Conscripts who failed to appear, resisted, or fled, were subjected to the penalties which attached to emigration.[542]

By successive decrees of this peremptory nature, enforced with the full energy of revolutionary violence, the Government succeeded in bringing into the field, and maintaining, forces to an amount more than double those of their powerful enemies; and the same means of supply—arbitrary requisition, namely—which brought them out, supported and maintained them during the campaign; so that, while there remained food and clothing of any kind in the country, the soldier was sure to be fed, paid, and equipped.

There are countries, however, in which the great numerical superiority thus attained is of little consequence, when a confused levy en masse of raw, inexperienced, and disorderly boys, are opposed against the ranks of a much smaller, but a regular and well-disciplined army, such as in every respect is that of Austria. On such occasions the taunting speech of Alaric recurs to recollection,—"The thicker the hay the more easily it is mowed." But this was not found to be the case with the youth of France, who adopted the habits most necessary for a soldier with singular facility and readiness. Military service has been popular amongst them in all ages; and the stories of the grandsire in a French cottage have always tended to excite in his descendants ideas familiar with a military condition. They do not come to it as a violent change of life, which they had never previously contemplated, and where all is new and terrible; but as to a duty which every Frenchman is liable to discharge, and which is as natural to him as to his father or grandfather before him.

MILITARY GENIUS OF THE FRENCH.

Besides this propensity, and undoubtedly connected with it, a young Frenchman is possessed of the natural character most desirable in the soldier. He is accustomed to fare hard, to take much exercise, to make many shifts, and to support with patience occasional deprivations. His happy gaiety renders him indifferent to danger, his good-humour patient under hardship. His ingenuity seems to amuse as well as to assist him in the contingencies of a roving life. He can be with ease a cook or an artificer, or what else the occasion may require. His talents for actual war are not less decided. Either in advancing with spirit, or in retreating with order, the Frenchman is one of the finest soldiers in the world; and when requisite, the privates in their army often exhibit a degree of intelligence and knowledge of the profession, which might become individuals of a higher rank in other services. If not absolute water-drinkers, they are less addicted to intoxication than the English soldier, who, perhaps, only brings, to counterbalance the numerous advantages on the part of his opponent, that mastiff-like perseverance and determination in combat, which induces him to repeat, maintain, and prolong his efforts, under every disadvantage of numbers and circumstances.

The spirits of the Frenchman, such as we have described, did not suffer much from the violent summons which tore him from his home. We have unhappily, in our own navy, an example, how little men's courage is broken by their being forced into a dangerous service. But comfortless as the state of France then was, and painful as the sights must have been by which the eyes were daily oppressed—closed up too as were the avenues to every civil walk of life, and cheap as they were held in a nation which had become all one vast camp, a youth of spirit was glad to escape from witnessing the desolation at home, and to take with gaiety the chance of death or promotion, in the only line which might now be accounted comparatively safe, and indubitably honourable. The armies with whom these new levies were incorporated were by degrees admirably supplied with officers. The breaking down the old distinctions of ranks had opened a free career to those desirous of promotion; and in times of hard fighting, men of merit are distinguished and get preferment. The voice of the soldier had often its influence upon the officer's preferment; and that is a vote seldom bestowed, but from ocular proof that it is deserved. The revolutionary rulers, though bloody in their resentment, were liberal, almost extravagant, in their rewards, and spared neither gold nor steel, honours nor denunciations, to incite their generals to victory, or warn them against the consequences of defeat.

Under that stern rule which knew no excuse for ill success, and stimulated by opportunities which seemed to offer every prize to honourable ambition, arose a race of generals whom the world scarce ever saw equalled, and of whom there certainly never at any other period flourished so many, in the same service. Such was Napoleon Buonaparte himself; such were Pichegru and Moreau, doomed to suffer a gloomy fate under his ascendency. Such were those Marshals and Generals who were to share his better fortunes, and cluster around his future throne, as the Paladins around that of Charlemagne, or as the British and Armorican champions begirt the Round Table of Uther's fabled son. In those early wars, and summoned out by the stern conscription, were trained Murat, whose eminence and fall seemed a corollary to that of his brother-in-law—Ney, the bravest of the brave—the calm, sagacious Macdonald—Joubert, who had almost anticipated the part reserved for Buonaparte—Massena, the spoiled Child of Fortune—Augereau—Berthier, Lannes, and many others, whose names began already to stir the French soldier as with the sound of a trumpet.

These adventurers in the race of fame belonged some of them, as Macdonald, to the old military school; some, like Moreau, came from the civil class of society; many arose from origins that were positively mean, and were therefore still more decidedly children of the Revolution. But that great earthquake, by throwing down distinctions of birth and rank, had removed obstacles which would otherwise have impeded the progress of almost all these distinguished men; and they were, therefore, for the greater part, attached to that new order of affairs which afforded full scope to their talents.

NEW MILITARY SYSTEM.

The French armies, thus recruited, and thus commanded, were disciplined in a manner suitable to the materials of which they were composed. There was neither leisure nor opportunity to subject the new levies to all that minuteness of training, which was required by the somewhat pedantic formality of the old school of war. Dumouriez, setting the example, began to show that the principle of revolution might be introduced with advantage into the art of war itself; and that the difference betwixt these new conscripts and the veteran troops to whom they were opposed, might be much diminished by resorting to the original and more simple rules of stratagie, and neglecting many formalities which had been once considered as essential to playing the great game of war with success.[543] It is the constant error of ordinary minds to consider matters of mere routine as equally important with those which are essential, and to entertain as much horror at a disordered uniform as at a confused manoeuvre. It was to the honour of the French generals, as men of genius, that in the hour of danger they were able to surmount all the prejudices of a profession which has its pedantry as well as others, and to suit the discipline which they retained to the character of their recruits and the urgency of the time.

The foppery of the manual exercise was laid aside, and it was restricted to the few motions necessary for effectual use of the musket and bayonet. Easier and more simple manoeuvres were substituted for such as were involved and difficult to execute; and providing the line or column could be formed with activity, and that order was preserved on the march, the mere etiquette of military movements was much relaxed. The quantity of light troops was increased greatly beyond the number which had of late been used by European nations. The Austrians, who used to draw from the Tyrol, and from their wild Croatian frontier, the best light troops in the world, had at this time formed many of them into regiments of the line, and thus limited and diminished their own superiority in a species of force which was becoming of greater importance daily. The French, on the contrary, disciplined immense bodies of their conscripts as irregulars and sharpshooters. Their numbers and galling fire frequently prevented their more systematic and formal adversaries from being able to push forward reconnoitring parties, by which to obtain any exact information as to the numbers and disposition of the French, while the Republican troops of the line, protected by this swarm of wasps, chose their time, place, and manner, of advancing to the attack, or retreating, as the case demanded. It is true, that this service cost an immense number of lives; but the French generals were sensible that human life was the commodity which the Republic set the least value upon; and that when death was served with so wide a feast from one end of France to the other, he was not to be stinted in his own proper banqueting-hall, the field of battle.

The same circumstances dictated another variety or innovation in French tactics, which greatly increased the extent of slaughter. The armies with whom they engaged, disconcerted by the great superiority of numbers which were opposed to them, and baffled in obtaining intelligence by the teazing activity of the French light troops, most frequently assumed the defensive, and taking a strong position, improved perhaps by field-works, waited until the fiery youth of France should come to throw themselves by thousands upon their batteries. It was then that the French generals began first to employ those successive attacks in column, in which one brigade of troops is brought up after another, without interruption, and without regard to the loss of lives, until the arms of the defenders are weary with slaying, and their line being in some point or other carried, through the impossibility of every where resisting an assault so continued and desperate, the battle is lost, and the army is compelled to give way; while the conquerors can, by the multitudes they have brought into action, afford to pay the dreadful price which they have given for the victory.

In this manner the French generals employed whole columns of the young conscripts, termed from that circumstance, "food for the cannon" (chair À canon,) before disease had deprived them of bodily activity, or experience had taught them the dangers of the profession on which they entered with the thoughtless vivacity of schoolboys. It also frequently happened, even when the French possessed no numerical superiority upon the whole, that by the celerity of their movements, and the skill with which they at once combined and executed them, they were able suddenly to concentrate such a superiority upon the point which they meant to attack, as ensured them the same advantage.

In enumerating the causes of the general success of the Republican arms, we must not forget the moral motive—the interest which the troops took in the cause of the war. The army, in fact, derived an instant and most flattering advantage from the Revolution, which could scarce be said of any other class of men in France, excepting the peasant. Their pay was improved, their importance increased. There was not a private soldier against whom the highest ranks of the profession was shut, and many attained to them. Massena was originally a drummer, Ney a common hussar, and there were many others who arose to the command of armies from the lowest condition. Now this was a government for a soldier to live and flourish under, and seemed still more advantageous when contrasted with the old monarchical system, in which the prejudices of birth interfered at every turn with the pretensions of merit, where a roturier could not rise above a subaltern rank, and where all offices of distinction were, as matters of inheritance, reserved for the grande noblesse alone.

But besides the rewards which it held out to its soldiers, the service of the Republic had this irresistible charm for the soldiery—it was victorious. The conquests which they obtained, and the plunder which attended those conquests, attached the victors to their standards, and drew around them fresh hosts of their countrymen. "Vive la Republique!" became a war-cry, as dear to their army as in former times the shout of Dennis Mountjoie, and the Tricoloured flag supplied the place of the Oriflamme. By the confusion, the oppression, the bloodshed of the Revolution, the soldiers were but little affected. They heard of friends imprisoned or guillotined, indeed;[544] but a military man, like a monk, leaves the concerns of the civil world behind him, and while he plays the bloody game for his own life or death with the enemy who faces him, has little time to think of what is happening in the native country which he has abandoned. For any other acquaintance with the politics of the Republic, they were indebted to flowery speeches in the Convention, resounding with the praises of the troops, and to harangues of the representatives accompanying the armies, who never failed by flattery and largesses to retain possession of the affection of the soldiers, whose attachment was so essential to their safety. So well did they accomplish this, that while the Republic flourished, the armies were so much attached to that order of things, as to desert successively some of their most favourite leaders, when they became objects of suspicion to the fierce democracy.

The generals, indeed, had frequent and practical experience, that the Republic could be as severe with her military as with her civil subjects, and even more so, judging by the ruthlessness with which they were arrested and executed, with scarce the shadow of a pretext. Yet this did not diminish the zeal of the survivors. If the revolutionary government beheaded, they also paid, promised, and promoted; and amid the various risks of a soldier's life, the hazard of the guillotine was only a slight addition to those of the sword and the musket,[545] which, in the sanguine eye of courage and ambition, joined to each individual's confidence in his own good luck, did not seem to render his chance much worse. When such punishment arrived, the generals submitted to it as one of the casualties of war; nor was the Republic worse or more reluctantly served by those who were left.

Such being the admirable quality and talents, the mode of thinking and acting, which the Republican, or rather Revolutionary, armies possessed, it required only the ruling genius of the celebrated Carnot, who, bred in the department of engineers, was probably one of the very best tacticians in the world, to bring them into effectual use. He was a member of the frightful Committee of Public Safety; but it has been said in his defence, that he did not meddle with its atrocities, limiting himself entirely to the war department, for which he showed so much talent, that his colleagues left it to his exclusive management.[546] In his own individual person he constituted the whole bureau militaire, or war-office of the Committee of Public Safety, corresponded with and directed the movements of the armies, as if inspired by the Goddess of Victory herself. He first daringly claimed for France her natural boundaries—that is, the boundaries most convenient for her. The Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, he assigned as the limits of her dominions; and asserted that all within these belonging to other powers, must have been usurpations on France, and were unhesitatingly to be resumed as such. And he conquered by his genius the countries which his ambition claimed. Belgium became an integral part of the French Republic—Holland was erected into a little dependent democracy, as an outwork for defending the great nation—the Austrians were foiled on the Rhine—the King of Sardinia driven from Savoy—and schemes realized which Louis XIV. never dared to dream of. In return for the complaisance exhibited by the Committee towards himself, he did not express any scruples, if he entertained such, concerning the mode in which they governed the interior of their unhappy country. Yet, notwithstanding his skill and his caution, the blighting eye of Robespierre was fixed on him, as that of the snake which watches its victim. He could not dispense with the talents of Carnot in the career of victory; but it is well known, that if his plans on any occasion had miscarried, the security of his head would have become very precarious.[547]

It must also be allowed, that although the French armies were attached to the Republic, and moved usually under direction of a member of the Committee of Public Security, they did not adopt, in their brutal extent, the orders for exterminating warfare which were transmitted to them by their masters. At one time a decree was passed, refusing quarter to such of the allied troops as might be made prisoners; but the French soldiers could not be prevailed on to take a step which must have aggravated so dreadfully the necessary horrors of war. When we consider how the civil government of France were employed, when the soldiers refused their sanction to this decree, it seems as if Humanity had fled from cities and the peaceful dwellings of men, to seek a home in camps and combats.

One important part of the subject can be here treated but slightly. We allude to the great advantages derived by the French arms from the reception of their political doctrines at this period among the people whom they invaded. They proclaimed aloud that they made war on castles and palaces, but were at peace with cottages; and as on some occasions besieging generals are said to have bribed the governor of a place to surrender it, by promising they would leave in his unchallenged possession the military chest of the garrison, so the French in all cases held out to the populace the plunder of their own nobles, as an inducement for them to favour, at least not to oppose, the invasion of their country. Thus their armies were always preceded by their principles. A party favourable to France, and listening with delight to the doctrines of liberty and equality, was formed in the bosom of each neighbouring state, so that the power of the invaded nation was crushed, and its spirit quenched, under a sense of internal discontent and discord. The French were often received at once as conquerors and deliverers by the countries they invaded; and in almost all cases, the governments on which they made war were obliged to trust exclusively to such regular forces as they could bring into the field, being deprived of the inappreciable advantage of general zeal among their subjects in their behalf. It was not long ere the inhabitants of those deceived countries found that the fruits of the misnamed tree of liberty resembled those said to grow by the Dead Sea—fair and goodly to the eye, but to the taste all filth and bitterness.

RETROSPECT.

We are now to close our review of the French Revolution, the fall of Robespierre being the era at which its terrors began to ebb and recede, nor did they ever again rise to the same height. If we look back at the whole progress of the change, from the convocation of the States-General to the 9th Thermidor, as the era of that man's overthrow was called, the eye in vain seeks for any point at which even a probability existed of establishing a solid or permanent government. The three successive constitutions of 1791, 1792, and 1795, the successive work of Constitutionalists, Girondists, and Jacobins, possessed no more power to limit or arrest the force of the revolutionary impulse, than a bramble or brier to stop the progress of a rock rushing down from a precipice. Though ratified and sworn to, with every circumstance which could add solemnity to the obligation, each remained, in succession, a dead letter. France, in 1795 and 1796, was therefore a nation without either a regular constitution, or a regular administration; governed by the remnant of an Assembly called a Convention, who continued sitting, merely because the crisis found them in possession of their seats, and who administered the government through the medium of Provisional Committees, with whose dictates they complied implicitly, and who really directed all things, though in the Convention's name.

In the meantime, and since those strange scenes had commenced, France had lost her King and nobles, her church and clergy, her judges, courts, and magistrates, her colonies and commerce. The greater part of her statesmen and men of note had perished by proscription, and her orators' eloquence had been cut short by the guillotine. She had no finances—the bonds of civil society seem to have retained their influence from habit only. The nation possessed only one powerful engine, which France called her own, and one impulsive power to guide it—These were her army and her ambition. She resembled a person in the delirium of a fever, who has stripped himself in his frenzy of all decent and necessary clothing, and retains in his hand only a bloody sword; while those who have endeavoured to check his fury, lie subdued around him. Never had so many great events successively taken place in a nation, without affording something like a fixed or determined result, either already attained, or soon to be expected.

Again and again did reflecting men say to each other,—This unheard-of state of things, in which all seems to be temporary and revolutionary, will not, cannot last;—and especially after the fall of Robespierre, it seemed that some change was approaching. Those who had achieved that work, did not hold on any terms of security the temporary power which it had procured them. They rather retained their influence by means of the jealousy of two extreme parties, than from any confidence reposed in themselves. Those who had suffered so deeply under the rule of the revolutionary government, must have looked with suspicion on the Thermidoriens as regular Jacobins, who had shared all the excesses of the period of Terror, and now employed their power in protecting the perpetrators. On the other hand, those of the Revolutionists who yet continued in the bond of Jacobin fraternity, could not forgive Tallien and Barras the silencing the Jacobin Clubs, the exiling Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes, putting to death many other patriots, and totally crushing the system of revolutionary government. In fact, if the thoroughbred Revolutionists still endured the domination of Tallien and Barras, it was only because it shielded them from the reaction, or retributive measures threatened by the moderate party. Matters, it was thought, could not remain in this uncertain state, nor was the present temporary pageant of government likely to linger long on the scene. But, by whom was that scene next to be opened? Would a late returning to ancient opinions induce a people, who had suffered so much through innovation, to recall either absolutely, or upon conditions, the banished race of her ancient princes? Or would a new band of Revolutionists be permitted by Heaven, in its continued vengeance, to rush upon the stage? Would the supreme power become the prize of some soldier as daring as CÆsar, or some intriguing statesman as artful as Octavius? Would France succumb beneath a Cromwell or a Monk, or again be ruled by a cabal of hackneyed statesmen, or an Institute of Theoretical Philosophy, or an anarchical Club of Jacobins? These were reflections which occupied almost all bosoms. But the hand of Fate was on the curtain, and about to bring the scene to light.

END OF VOLUME FIRST.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Southey's Life of Nelson, 2 vols. fcap. 8vo. 1813.

[2] Barras, in his official account of the affair of the 13th VendÉmiaire, (Oct. 5, 1795,) calls him General Buonaparte; and in the contract of marriage between Napoleon and Josephine, still existing in the registry of the second arrondissement of Paris, dated March 9, 1796, his signature is so written. No document has ever been produced, in which the word appears as Bonaparte, prior to Napoleon's appointment to the command of the Army of Italy.

[3] [Sir Walter Scott's Notes have the letter S affixed to them, all of the others having been collected by the Editor of the 1843 Edition.]

[4]

"But CÆsar's greatness, and his strength, was more
Than past renown and antiquated power;
'Twas not the fame of what he once had been,
Or tales in old records and annals seen;
But 'twas a valour restless, unconfined,
Which no success could sate, nor limits bind;
'Twas shame, a soldier's shame, untaught to yield,
That blush'd for nothing but an ill-fought field;
Fierce in his hopes he was, nor knew to stay
Where vengeance or ambition led the way;
Still prodigal of war whene'er withstood,
Nor spared to stain the guilty sword with blood;
Urging advantage, he improved all odds,
And made the most of fortune and the gods;
Pleased to o'erturn whate'er withheld his prize,
And saw the ruin with rejoicing eyes."—Rowe.

[5] In consequence of the censure passed on the Peace by the House of Commons, the Shelburne ministry was dissolved on the 26th of February, 1783.

[6] "During nearly twenty years, ever since the termination of the war with France in 1763, the British flag had scarcely been any where triumphant; while the navies of the House of Bourbon, throughout the progress of the American contest, annually insulted us in the Channel, intercepted our mercantile convoys, blocked our harbours, and threatened our coasts."—Wraxall, 1782.

[7] "The deepest wounds were inflicted on the empire during the minorities of the sons and grandsons of Theodosius; and after those incapable princes seemed to attain the age of manhood, they abandoned the church to the bishops, the state to the eunuchs, and the provinces to the barbarians. Europe is now divided into twelve powerful, though unequal kingdoms, three respectable commonwealths, and a variety of smaller, though independent states: the chances of royal and ministerial talents are multiplied, at least with the number of its rulers; and a Julian, or Semiramis, may reign in the north, while Arcadius and Honorius again slumber on the thrones of the south."—Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. iii., p. 636.

"It may not be generally known that Louis the Sixteenth is a great reader, and a great reader of English books. On perusing a passage in my History, which seems to compare him to Arcadius or Honorius, he expressed his resentment to the Prince of B*****, from whom the intelligence was conveyed to me. I shall neither disclaim the allusion, nor examine the likeness; but the situation of the late King of France excludes all suspicion of flattery; and I am ready to declare, that the concluding observations of my third volume were written before his accession to the throne."—Gibbon's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 126.

[8] On the occasion of the first audience of Mr. Adams, in June, 1785.—See Wraxall's Own Time, vol. i., p. 381.

[9] "The sum, after long debates, was fixed by the Emperor at ten million guilders."—Coxe's House of Austria, vol. ii., p. 583.

[10] "Joseph the Second borrowed the language of philosophy, when he wished to suppress the monks of Belgium, and to seize their revenues: but there was seen on him a mask only of philosophy, covering the hideous countenance of a greedy despot: and the people ran to arms. Nothing better than another kind of despotism has been seen in the revolutionary powers."—Brissot, Letter to his Constituents, 1794.

[11] "In 1780, there were 2024 convents in the Austrian dominions: These were diminished to 700, and 36,000 monks and nuns to 2700. Joseph might have applied to his own reforms the remark he afterwards made to General D'Alten, on the reforms of the French:—'The new constitution of France has not been very polite to the high clergy and nobility; and I still doubt much if all these fine things can be carried into execution!'"—Coxe, vol. ii., p. 578.

[12] "The Pope reached Vienna in February, 1782. He was received with every mark of exterior homage and veneration; but his exhortations and remonstrances were treated with coldness and reserve, and he was so narrowly watched, that the back-door of his apartments was blocked up to prevent him from receiving private visitors. Chagrined with the inflexibility of the Emperor, and mortified by an unmeaning ceremonial, and an affected display of veneration for the Holy See, while it was robbed of its richest possessions, and its most valuable privileges, Pius quitted Vienna at the expiration of a month, equally disgusted and humiliated, after having exhibited himself as a disappointed suppliant at the foot of that throne which had been so often shaken by the thunder of the Vatican."—Ibid., p. 632.

[13] The charter by which the privileges of the Flemings were settled, had been promulgated on the entry of Philip the Good into Brussels. Hence this name.—See Coxe.

[14] "Joseph expired at Vienna, in February, 1790, at the age of forty-nine, extenuated by diseases, caused or accelerated in their progress by his own irritability of temper, agitation of mind, and the embarrassment of his affairs."—Wraxall, vol. i., p. 277.

[15] See Macbeth, act iv., sc. i.

[16] The old French proverb bore,—

"Le roi d'Angleterre,
Est le roi d'Enfer."—S.

[17] See the Memoirs of the Marchioness De La Rochejaquelein, p. 48.

[18] SÉgur's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 76.

[19] For a curious picture of the life of the French nobles of fifty years since, see the first volume of Madame Genlis's Memoirs. Had there been any more solid pursuits in society than the gay trifles she so pleasantly describes, they could not have escaped so intelligent an observer.—S.

[20] "A person of mean extraction, remarkable only for his vices, had been employed in correcting the Regent's tasks, and, by a servile complacence for all his inclinations, had acquired an ascendency over his pupil, which he abused, for the purpose of corrupting his morals, debasing his character, and ultimately rendering his administration an object of universal indignation. Soon after his patron's accession to power, Dubois was admitted into the council of state. He asked for the Archbishopric of Cambray. Unaccustomed as he was to delicate scruples, the Regent was startled at the idea of encountering the scandal to which such a prostitution of honours must expose him. He, however, ultimately yielded. This man, one of the most profligate that ever existed, was actually married at the time he received Catholic orders, but he suborned the witnesses, and contrived to have the parish registers, which might have deposed against him, destroyed."—See Lacretelle, tom. i., p. 348.

[21] Thiers, Histoire de la RÉv. FranÇ., tom. i., p. 34.

[22] MÉmoires de BouillÉ, p. 289.

[23] Plaidoyer pour Louis Seize, 1793.

[24] Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.

[25] See his Maximes et PensÉes, &c. &c. He died by his own hand in 1794.

[26] Revolution of America, 1781, pp. 44, 58. When, however, Raynal beheld the abuse of liberty in the progress of the French Revolution, he attempted to retrieve his errors. In May, 1791, he addressed to the Constituent Assembly a most eloquent letter, in which he says, "I am, I own to you, deeply afflicted at the crimes which plunge this empire into mourning. It is true that I am to look back with horror at myself for being one of those who, by feeling a noble indignation against ambitious power, may have furnished arms to licentiousness." Raynal was deprived of all his property during the Revolution, and died in poverty in 1796.

[27] SÉgur's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 39.

[28] Diderot, &c., the conductors of the celebrated EncyclopÉdie.

[29] Lacretelle Hist. de France, tom. i., p. 105; MÉmoires de Mad. Du Barry, tom. ii., p. 3.

[30] The particulars we allude to, though suppressed in the second edition of Madame Roland's MÉmoires, are restored in the "Collection des MÉmoires rÉlatifs À la RÉvolution FranÇaise," published at Paris, [56 vols. 8vo.] This is fair play; for if the details be disgusting, the light which they cast upon the character of the author is too valuable to be lost.—S.

[31]

"Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost."

Par. Lost, b. ii.

[32] The battle was fought May 1, 1745, between the French, under Marshal Saxe, and the allies, under William Duke of Cumberland.

[33] Private letters or mandates, issued under the royal signet, for the apprehension of individuals who were obnoxious to the court.

[34] SÉgur, tom. i., p. 268; ii., p. 24.

[35] One striking feature of this Anglomania was the general institution of Clubs, and the consequent desertion of female society. "If our happy inconstancy," wrote Baron de Grimm, in 1790, "did not give room to hope that the fashion will not be everlasting, it might certainly be apprehended that the taste for clubs would lead insensibly to a very marked revolution both in the spirit and morals of the nation; but that disposition, which we possess by nature, of growing tired of every thing, affords some satisfaction in all our follies."—Correspondence.

[36] An instance is given, ludicrous in itself, but almost prophetic, when connected with subsequent events. A courtier, deeply infected with the fashion of the time, was riding beside the king's carriage at a full trot, without observing that his horse's heels threw the mud into the royal vehicle. "Vous me crottez, monsieur," said the king. The horseman, considering the words were "Vous trottez," and that the prince complimented his equestrian performance, answered, "Oui, sire, À l'Angloise." The good-humoured monarch drew up the glass, and only said to the gentleman in the carriage, "VoilÀ une Anglomanie bien forte!" Alas! the unhappy prince lived to see the example of England, in her most dismal period, followed to a much more formidable extent.—S.

[37] See SÉgur, tom. i., p. 101.

[38] By some young enthusiasts, the assumption of republican habits was carried to all the heights of revolutionary affectation and extravagance. SÉgur mentions a young coxcomb, named Mauduit, who already distinguished himself by renouncing the ordinary courtesies of life, and insisting on being called by his Christian and surname, without the usual addition of Monsieur.—S.—"Mauduit's career was short, and his end an unhappy one; for being employed at St. Domingo, he threw himself among a party of revolters, and was assassinated by the negroes."—SÉgur.

[39] "The passion for republican institutions infected even the courtiers of the palace. Thunders of applause shook the theatre of Versailles at the celebrated lines of Voltaire—

"Je suis fils de Brutus, et je porte en mon coeur
La libertÉ gravÉe et les rois en horreur."

SÉgur, tom. i., p. 253.

[40] Plebeians formerly got into the army by obtaining the subscription of four men of noble birth, attesting their patrician descent; and such certificates, however false, could always be obtained for a small sum. But by a regulation of the Count SÉgur, after the American war, candidates for the military profession were obliged to produce a certificate of noble birth from the king's genealogist, in addition to the attestations which were formerly held sufficient.—S.

[41] Lacretelle, tom. v., p. 341.

[42] When Buonaparte expressed much regret and anxiety on account of the assassination of the Emperor Paul, he was comforted by FouchÉ with words to the following effect:—"Que voulez vous enfin? C'est une mode de destitution propre À ce pais-lÀ!"—S.

[43] Louis XV. had the arts if not the virtues of a monarch. He asked one of his ministers what he supposed might be the price of the carriage in which they were sitting. The minister, making a great allowance for the monarch's paying en prince, yet guessed within two-thirds less than the real sum. When the king named the actual price, the statesman exclaimed, but the monarch cut him short. "Do not attempt," he said, "to reform the expenses of my household. There are too many, and too great men, who have their share in that extortion, and to make a reformation would give too much discontent. No minister can attempt it with success or with safety." This is the picture of the waste attending a despotic government: the cup which is filled to the very brim cannot be lifted to the lips without wasting the contents.—S.

[44] Turgot was born at Paris in 1727. Called to the head of the Finances in 1774, he excited the jealousy of the courtiers by his reforms, and of the parliaments by the abolition of the corvÉes. Beset on all sides, Louis, in 1776, dismissed him, observing at the same time, that "Turgot, and he alone, loved the people." Malesherbes said of him, that "he had the head of Bacon, and the heart of L'Hopital." He died in 1781.

[45] Malesherbes, the descendant of an illustrious family, was born at Paris in 1721. When Louis the Sixteenth ascended the throne, he was appointed minister of the interior, which he resigned on the retirement of his friend Turgot. He was called back into public life, at the crisis of the Revolution, to be the legal defender of his sovereign; but his pleadings only procured for himself the honour of perishing on the same scaffold in 1794, together with his daughter and grand-daughter.

[46] Necker was born at Geneva in 1732; he married, in 1764, Mademoiselle Curchod, the early object of Gibbon's affection, and by her had the daughter so celebrated as the Baroness de StaËl Holstein. M. Necker settled in Paris, rose into high reputation as a banker, and was first called to office under the government in 1776. He died in 1804.

[47] The corvÉes, or burdens imposed for the maintenance of the public roads, were bitterly complained of by the farmers. This iniquitous part of the financial system was abolished in 1774, by Turgot.

[48] Maurepas was born in 1701. "At the age of eighty, he presented to the world the ridiculous spectacle of caducity affecting the frivolity of youth, and employed that time in penning a sonnet which would more properly have been devoted to correcting a despatch, or preparing an armament." He died in 1781.—See Lacretelle, tom. v., p. 8.

[49] The Count de Vergennes was born at Dijon in 1717. He died in 1787, greatly regretted by Louis, who was impressed by the conviction that, had his life been prolonged, the Revolution would not have taken place.

[50] Calonne was born at Douay in 1734. After being an exile in England, and other parts of Europe, he died at Paris in 1802.

[51] They were summoned on 29th December, 1786, and met on 22d February of the subsequent year.—S.

[52] M. LomÉnie de Brienne was born at Paris in 1727. On being appointed Prime Minister, he was made Archbishop of Sens, and on retiring from office, in 1788, he obtained a cardinal's hat. He died in prison in 1794.

[53]

Such Convocations all our ills descry,
And promise much, but no true cure apply.

[54] Viz., One on timber, and one on territorial possessions.—See Thiers, vol. i., p. 14.

[55] "Lit de Justice"—the throne upon which the King was seated when he went to the Parliament.

[56] Mignet, Hist. de la Rev. FranÇaise, tom. i., p. 21.

[57] Freteau and Sabatier. They were banished to the HiÈres. In 1794, Freteau was sent to the guillotine by Robespierre.

[58] Mignet, tom. i., p. 22; Thiers, tom. i., p. 19.

[59] De StaËl, tom. i., p. 169.

[60] Thiers, tom. i., p. 37.

[61] 25th August, 1788. The archbishop fled to Italy with great expedition, after he had given in his resignation to his unfortunate sovereign.—See ante, p. 50.—S.

[62] When Necker received the intimation of his recall, his first words were, "Ah! why did they not give me those fifteen months of the Archbishop of Sens? Now it is too late."—De StaËl, vol. i., p. 157.

[63] De BouillÉ was a native of Auvergne, and a relative of La Fayette. He died in London, in 1800.

[64] See MÉmoires de BouillÉ. Madame de StaËl herself admits this deficiency in the character of a father, of whom she was justly proud.—"Se fiant trop il faut l'avouer, À l'empire de la raison."—S.—("Confiding, it must be admitted, too much in the power of reason.")—Rev. FranÇ., tom. i., p. 171.

[65] "The concessions of Necker were the work of a man ignorant of the first principles of the government of mankind. It was he who overturned the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold. Marat, Danton, Robespierre himself, did less mischief to France: he brought on the Revolution, which they consummated."—Napoleon, as reported by Bourrienne, tom. viii., p. 108.

[66] A calembourg of the period presaged a different result.—"So numerous a concourse of state-physicians assembled to consult for the weal of the nation, argued," it was said, "the imminent danger and approaching death of the patient."—S.

[67] The Baron de Senneci, when the estates of the kingdom were compared to three brethren, of which the Tiers Etat was youngest, declared that the Commons of France had no title to arrogate such a relationship with the nobles, to whom they were so far inferior in blood, and in estimation.

[68] Madame de StaËl, and Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, beheld from a gallery the spectacle. The former exulted in the boundless prospect of national felicity which seemed to be opening under the auspices of her father. "You are wrong to rejoice," said Madame de Montmorin; "this event forebodes much misery to France and to ourselves." Her presentiment was but too well founded. She herself perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; her husband was murdered on September 2d; her eldest daughter died in the hospital of a prison, and her youngest died of a broken heart.—See M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 187.

[69] Lacretelle, tom. i., p. 32; Rivarol, p. 37.

[70] It was, for example, gravely stated, that a seigneur of a certain province possessed a feudal right to put two of his vassals to death upon his return from hunting, and to rip their bellies open, and plunge his feet into their entrails to warm them.—S.

[71] See Don Quixote, part ii., chap. lxi., (vol. v., p. 296. Lond., 1822.)

[72] "By a majority of 491 to 90."—Lacretelle.

[73] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 39.

[74] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 41.

[75] The government monopoly of salt, under the name of the gabelle, was maintained over about two-thirds of the kingdom.

[76] Mignet, tom. i., p. 43.

[77] "The evening before, he had tendered his resignation, which was not accepted, as the measures adopted by the court were not such as he thoroughly approved."—Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 47.

[78] Mounier was born at Grenoble in 1758. He quitted France in 1790, but returned in 1802. He afterwards became one of Napoleon's counsellors of state in 1806.

[79] Malouet was born at Riom in 1740. To escape the massacres of September, 1790, he fled to England; but returned to France in 1801, and, in 1810, was appointed one of Napoleon's counsellors of state. He died in 1814.

[80] "Abstract science will not enable a man to become a ship-wright. The French are perhaps the worst ship-wrights in all Europe, but they are confessedly among the first and best theorists in naval architecture, and it is one of those unaccountable phenomena in the history of man, that they never attempted to combine the two. Happily the English have hit upon that expedient."—Barrow.

[81] A singular instance of this overstrained and dangerous enthusiasm is given by Madame Roland. [Memoirs, part i., p. 144.] It being the purpose to rouse the fears and spirit of the people, and direct their animosity against the court party, Grangeneuve agreed that he himself should be murdered, by persons chosen for the purpose, in such a manner that the suspicion of the crime should attach itself to the aristocrats. He went to the place appointed, but Chabot, who was to have shared his fate, neither appeared himself, nor had made the necessary preparations for the assassination of his friend, for which Madame Roland, that high-spirited republican, dilates upon his poltroonery. Yet, what was this patriotic devotion, save a plan to support a false accusation against the innocent, by an act of murder and suicide, which, if the scheme succeeded, was to lead to massacre and proscription? The same false, exaggerated, and distorted views of the public good centering, as it seemed to them, in the establishment of a pure republic, led Barnave and others to palliate the massacres of September. Most of them might have said of the Liberty which they had worshipped, that at their death they found it an empty name.—S.

[82] So called, because the first sittings of the Club were held in the ancient convent of the Jacobins.

[83] July 11. "The formal command to quit the kingdom was accompanied by a note from the King, in which he prayed him to depart in a private manner, for fear of exciting disturbances. Necker received this intimation just as he was dressing for dinner: he dined quietly, without divulging it to any one, and set out in the evening with Madame Necker for Brussels."—Mignet, tom. i., p. 47.

[84] The Marshal was born in 1718, and died, at the age of eighty-six, in 1804.

[85] Cockneys.

[86] "M. Foulon, an old man of seventy, member of the former Administration, was seized near his own seat, and with his hands tied behind his back, a crown of thistles on his head, and his mouth stuffed with hay, conducted to Paris, where he was murdered with circumstances of unheard-of cruelty. His son-in-law, Berthier, compelled to kiss his father's head, which was thrust into his carriage on a pike, shortly after shared his fate; and the heart of the latter was torn out of his palpitating body."—Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 117.

[87] M. de Flesselles. It was alleged that a letter had been found on the Governor of the Bastile, which implicated him in treachery to the public cause.—See Mignet, tom. i., p. 62.

[88] For an account of Lord George Gordon's riots in 1780, see Annual Register, vol. xxiii., p. 254; and Wraxall's Own Time, vol. i., p. 319.

[89] "If the gardes FranÇaises, in 1789, had behaved like our regular troops in 1780, the French Revolution might have been suppressed in its birth; but, the difference of character between the two sovereigns of Great Britain and of France, constituted one great cause of the different fate that attended the two monarchies. George the Third, when attacked, prepared to defend his throne, his family, his country, and the constitution intrusted to his care; they were in fact saved by his decision. Louis the Sixteenth tamely abandoned all to a ferocious Jacobin populace, who sent him to the scaffold. No man of courage or of principle could have quitted the former prince. It was impossible to save, or to rescue, the latter ill-fated, yielding, and passive monarch."—Wraxall, vol. i., p. 334.

[90]

"Que voulez-vous qu'il fit contre trois? Qu'il mourÛt,
Ou qu'un beau dÉsespoir alors le secourÛt."

Corneille—Les Horaces, Act iii., Sc. 6.

[91] We have heard from a spectator who could be trusted, that during the course of the attack on the Bastile, a cry arose among the crowd that the regiment of Royales Allemandes were coming upon them. There was at that moment such a disposition to fly, as plainly showed what would have been the effect had a body of troops appeared in reality. The Baron de Besenval had commanded a body of the guards, when, some weeks previously, they subdued an insurrection in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine. On that occasion many of the mob were killed; and he observes in his Memoirs, that, while the citizens of Paris termed him their preserver, he was very coldly received at court. He might be, therefore, unwilling to commit himself, by acting decidedly on the 14th July.—S.

[92] Charles the Tenth.

[93] "Is there nothing else we can renounce?" said the old Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, in the time of the Commonwealth, after he had joined in renouncing Church and King, Crown and Law. "Can no one think of any thing else? I love RENOUNCING." The hasty renunciations of the French nobles and churchmen were brought about in the manner practised of yore in convivial parties, when he who gave a toast burned his wig, had a loose tooth drawn, or made some other sacrifice, which, according to the laws of compotation, was an example necessary to be imitated by all the rest of the company, with whatever prejudice to their wardrobes or their persons.—S.

[94] "Next day SiÊyes gave vent to his spleen to Mirabeau, who answered, 'My dear abbÉ, you have unloosed the bull do you expect he is not to make use of his horns?'"—Dumont, p. 147.

[95] Mignet, tom. i., p. 89; Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 185.

[96] Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 236; Thiers, tom. i., p. 135.

[97] In the beginning of the Revolution, when the mob executed their pleasure on the individuals against whom their suspicions were directed, the lamp-irons served for gibbets, and the lines by which the lamps, or lanterns, were disposed across the street, were ready halters. Hence the cry of "Les Aristocrates À la lanterne." The answer of the AbbÉ Maury is well known. "Eh! mes amis, et quand vous m'auriez mis À la lanterne, est ce que vous verriez plus clair?"—Biog. Univ.—S.

[98] Mounier must be supposed to speak ironically, and in allusion, not to his own opinions, but to Mirabeau's revolutionary tenets. Another account of this singular conversation states his answer to have been, "All the better. If the mob kill all of us—remark, I say all of us, it will be the better for the country."—S.—Thiers, tom. i., p. 138.

[99] Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 257.

[100] "In the gallery a crowd of fish women were assembled under the guidance of one virago with stentorian lungs, who called to the deputies familiarly by name, and insisted that their favourite Mirabeau should speak."—Dumont, p. 181.

[101] Mignet, tom. i., p. 92.

[102] This was proposed by that Marquis de Favras, whose death upon the gallows, [Feb. 19, 1790,] for a Royalist plot, gave afterwards such exquisite delight to the citizens of Paris. Being the first man of quality whom they had seen hanged, (that punishment having been hitherto reserved for plebeians,) they encored the performance, and would fain have hung him up a second time. The same unfortunate gentleman had previously proposed to secure the bridge at Sevres with a body of cavalry, which would have prevented the women from advancing to Versailles. The Queen signed an order for the horses with this remarkable clause:—"To be used if the King's safety is endangered, but in no danger which affects me only."—S.—"The secret of this intrigue never was known; but I have no doubt Favras was one of those men who, when employed as instruments, are led by vanity much further than their principals intend."—Dumont, p. 174.

[103] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 217.

[104] Rivarol, p. 300; Mignet, tom. i., p. 93.

[105] One of the most accredited calumnies against the unfortunate Marie Antoinette pretends, that she was on this occasion surprised in the arms of a paramour. Buonaparte is said to have mentioned this as a fact, upon the authority of Madame Campan. [O'Meara's Napoleon in Exile, vol. ii., p. 172.] We have now Madame Campan's own account, [Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 78.] describing the conduct of the Queen on this dreadful occasion as that of a heroine, and totally excluding the possibility of the pretended anecdote. But let it be farther considered, under what circumstances the Queen was placed—at two in the morning, retired to a privacy liable to be interrupted (as it was) not only by the irruption of the furious banditti who surrounded the palace, demanding her life, but by the entrance of the King, or of others, in whom circumstances might have rendered the intrusion duty; and let it then be judged, whether the dangers of the moment, and the risk of discovery, would not have prevented Messalina herself from choosing such a time for an assignation.—S.

[106] The miscreant's real name was Jourdan, afterwards called Coupe-TÊte, distinguished in the massacres of Avignon. He gained his bread by sitting as an academy-model to painters, and for that reason cultivated his long beard. In the depositions before the Chatelet, he is called L'Homme À la barbe—an epithet which might distinguish the ogre or goblin of some ancient legend.—S.

[107] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 238.

[108] Thiers, tom. i., p. 182; Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 241.

[109] Rivarol, p. 312; Campan, vol. ii., p. 81.

[110] MÉmoires de Weber, vol. ii., p. 457.—S.

[111] "The Queen, on returning from the balcony, approached my mother, and said to her, with stifled sobs, 'They are going to force the King and me to Paris, with the heads of our body-guards carried before us, on the point of their pikes.' Her prediction was accomplished."—M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 344.

[112] It has been said that they were borne immediately before the royal carriage; but this is an exaggeration where exaggeration is unnecessary. These bloody trophies preceded the royal family a great way on the march to Paris.—S.

[113] "Nous ne manquerons plus de pain; nous amenons le boulanger, la boulangÈre, et le petit mitron!"—Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 244.

[114] Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 243.

[115] "The King said to the mayor, 'I come with pleasure to my good city of Paris;' the Queen added, 'and with confidence.' The expression was happy, but the event, alas! did not justify it."—M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 344.

[116] The Mayor of Paris, although such language must have sounded like the most bitter irony, had no choice of words on the 6th October, 1789. But if he seriously termed that "a glorious day," what could Bailli complain of the studied insults and cruelties which he himself sustained, when, in Oct. 1792, the same banditti of Paris, who forced the King from Versailles, dragged himself to death, with every circumstance of refined cruelty and protracted insult?—S.—It was not on the 6th October, but the 17th July, three days after the capture of the Bastile, that Bailli, on presenting Louis with the keys of Paris, made use of this expression.—See Prudhomme, tom. i., p. 203.

[117] "As the arrival of the royal family was unexpected, very few apartments were in a habitable state, and the Queen had been obliged to get tent-beds put up for her children in the very room where she received us; she apologized for it, and added, 'You know that I did not expect to come here.' Her physiognomy was beautiful, but irritated; it was not to be forgotten after having been seen."—M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 345.

[118] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 265.

[119] "On being informed of the King's determination to quit Versailles for Paris, the Assembly hastily passed a resolution, that it was inseparable from the King, and would accompany him to the capital."—Thiers, tom. i., p. 182.

[120] See Richard the Third, act v., sc. iii.

[121] Barnave, as well as Mirabeau, the Republican as well as the Orleanist, was heard to exclaim, "Courage, brave Parisians—liberty for ever—fear nothing—we are for you!"—See MÉmoires de Ferrieres, li., iv.—S.

[122] See the proceedings before the Chatelet.—S.—See also Thiers, tom. i., p. 184; Lacretelle, tom. vii.; and M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 350.

[123] Thiers, tom. i., p. 192; Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 262.

[124] "The indignant populace murmured at the severity. 'What!' they exclaimed, 'is this our liberty? We can no longer hang whom we please!'"—Toulongeon, tom. i., p. 168.

[125] "A simple decree, proposed, June 20th, by Lameth, that the titles of duke, count, marquis, viscount, baron, and chevalier, should be suppressed, was carried by an overwhelming majority."—Mignet, tom. ii., p. 114.

[126] Richard the Second, act iii., sc. i.

[127] "One of the most singular propositions of this day was, that of renouncing the names of estates, which many families had borne for ages, and obliging them to resume their patronymic appellations. In this way the Montmorencies would have been called Bouchard; La Fayette, MottiÉ; Mirabeau, Riquetti. This would have been stripping France of her history; and no man, how democratic soever, either would or ought to renounce in this manner the memory of his ancestors."—M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 364.

[128] The Comte de Mirabeau was furious at being called Riquetti l'ainÉ, and said, with great bitterness, when his speeches were promulgated under that name, "Avec votre Riquetti, vous avez dÉsorientÉ l'Europe pour trois jours." Mirabeau was at heart an aristocrat. But what shall we say of Citoyenne Roland, who piques herself on the plebeian sound of her name, Manon Philipon, yet inconsequentially upbraids Citoyen Pache with his father's having been a porter!—S.—Memoirs, part i., p. 140.

[129] This proposition was made by Talleyrand, then Bishop of Autun. In support of it he argued, that "the clergy were not proprietors, but depositories of their estates; that no individual could maintain any right of property, or inheritance in them; that they were bestowed originally by the munificence of kings or nobles, and might now be resumed by the nation, which had succeeded to their rights." To this Maury and SiÊyes replied, "that it was an unfounded assertion that the property of the Church was at the disposal of the state; that it flowed from the munificence or piety of individuals in former ages, and was destined to a peculiar purpose, totally different from secular concerns; that, if the purposes originally intended could not be carried into effect it should revert to the heirs of the donors, but certainly not accrue to the legislature."—Thiers, tom. i., p. 193.

[130] M. de Chateaubriand says, "The funds thus acquired were enormous, the church-lands were nearly one-half of the whole landed property of the kingdom."

[131] See Sir Henry Spelman's treatise on the "History of Sacrilege."

[132] See M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 384. "The retreat of Necker produced a total change in the ministry. Of those who now came into office two were destined to perish on the scaffold, and a third by the sword of the revolutionary assassins."—Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 92.

[133] Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 38.

[134] Mignet, tom. i., pp. 107, 121; Thiers, tom. i., pp. 240, 266.

[135] Mignet says, "The Constitutional Church establishment was not the work of the modern philosophers, but was devised by the Jansenists, or rigid party." No doubt, the Jansenists, dupes of the philosophers, fancied themselves guides instead of blind instruments.

[136] It was their custom to sit on the highest rows of benches in the hall.

[137] MÉmoires du Marquis des Ferrieres, l. iii.

[138] MÉmoires de Bailli, 16 AoÛt.

[139] Prudhomme, tom. ii., p. 297.

[140] See Mignet, tom. i., p. 126; Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 128.

"I have had in my hands a letter of Mirabeau, written for the purpose of being shown to the King. He there made offer of all his means to restore to France an efficient and respected, but a limited monarchy; he made use, among others, of this remarkable expression: 'I should lament to have laboured at nothing but a vast destruction.'"—M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 401.

"He (Mirabeau) received for a short time a pension of 20,000 francs, or £800 a-month, first from the Comte D'Artois, and afterwards the King; but he considered himself an agent intrusted with their affairs, and he accepted those pensions not to be governed by, but to govern, those who granted them."—Dumont, p. 230.

[141] Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 126.

[142] Mirabeau bore much of his character imprinted on his person and features. He was short, bull-necked, and very strongly made. A quantity of thick matted hair hung round features of a coarse and exaggerated character, strongly scarred and seamed. "Figure to your mind," he said, describing his own countenance to a lady who knew him not, "a tiger who has had the small-pox." When he talked of confronting his opponents in the Assembly, his favourite phrase was, "I will show them La Hure," that is, the boar's head, meaning his own tusked and shaggy countenance.—S.

[143] "Mirabeau knew that his end was approaching. 'After my death,' said he, 'the factions will share among themselves the shreds of the monarchy.' He suffered cruelly in the last days of his life; and, when no longer able to speak, wrote to his physician for a dose of opium, in these words of Hamlet, 'to die—to sleep.' He received no consolation from religion."—M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 402.

[144] "His funeral obsequies were celebrated with extraordinary pomp by torchlight; 20,000 national guards, and delegates from all the sections of Paris, accompanied the corpse to the Pantheon, where it was placed by the remains of Des Cartes."—Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 135.

[145] Toulongeon, tom. i., p. 242; Mignet, tom. i., p. 132.

[146] Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 220.

[147] Mignet, tom. i., p. 132; Thiers, tom. i., p. 287.

[148] See Annual Register, vol. xxxiii., p. 131.

[149] "To deceive any one that might follow, we drove about several streets: at last we returned to the Little Carousel. My brother was fast asleep at the bottom of the carriage. We saw M. de la Fayette go by, who had been at my father's coucher. There we remained, waiting a full hour, ignorant of what was going on. Never did time appear so tedious."—Duchess of AngoulÊme's Narrative, p. 9.

[150] BouillÉ's Memoirs, pp. 275-290; Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 258.

[151] The following anecdote will serve to show by what means this conclusion was insinuated into the public mind. A group in the Palais Royal were discussing in great alarm the consequences of the King's flight, when a man, dressed in a thread-bare great-coat, leaped upon a chair and addressed them thus:—"Citizens, listen to a tale, which shall not be a long one. A certain well-meaning Neapolitan was once on a time startled in his evening walk, by the astounding intelligence that the Pope was dead. He had not recovered his astonishment, when behold he is informed of a new disaster,—the King of Naples was also no more. 'Surely,' said the worthy Neapolitan, 'the sun must vanish from heaven at such a combination of fatalities.' But they did not cease here. The Archbishop of Palermo, he is informed, has also died suddenly. Overcome by this last shock he retired to bed, but not to sleep. In the morning he was disturbed in his melancholy reverie by a rumbling noise, which he recognised at once to be the motion of the wooden instrument which makes macaroni. 'Aha!' says the good man, starting up, 'can I trust my ears?—The Pope is dead—the King of Naples is dead—the Bishop of Palermo is dead—yet my neighbour the baker makes macaroni! Come! The lives of these great folk are not then so indispensable to the world after all.'" The man in the great-coat jumped down and disappeared. "I have caught his meaning," said a woman amongst the listeners. "He has told us a tale, and it begins like all tales—There was ONCE a King and a Queen."—S.

[152] Three commissioners, Petion, La Tour Maubourg, and Barnave, were sent to reconduct the fugitives to Paris. They met them at Epernay, and travelled with them to the Tuileries. During the journey, Barnave, though a stern Republican, was so melted by the graceful dignity of the Queen, and impressed with the good sense and benevolence of the King, that he became inclined to the royal cause, and ever after supported their fortunes. His attentions to the Queen were so delicate, and his conduct so gentle, that she assured Madame Campan, that she forgave him all the injuries he had inflicted on her family.—Thiers, tom. i., p. 299.

[153] "Count de Dampierre, a nobleman inhabiting a chateau near the road, approaching to kiss the hand of the King, was instantly pierced by several balls from the escort; his blood sprinkled the royal carriage, and his remains were torn to pieces by the savages."—Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 271; M. de Campan, tom. ii., p. 154.

[154] Drawn up by Brissot, author of the Patriot FranÇaise.

[155] Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 311.

[156] MÉmoires de Mad. Roland, art. "Robert,"—S.—[part i., p. 157.]

[157] Thiers, tom. i., p. 312.

[158] "Mr. Fox told me in England, in 1793, that at the time of the King's departure to Varennes, he should have wished that he had been allowed to quit the kingdom in peace."—M. de StaËl, vol. i., p. 408.

Napoleon said at St. Helena:—"The National Assembly never committed so great an error as in bringing back the King from Varennes. A fugitive and powerless, he was hastening to the frontier, and in a few hours would have been out of the French territory. What should they have done in these circumstances? Clearly facilitated his escape, and declared the throne vacant by his desertion. They would thus have avoided the infamy of a regicide government, and attained their great object of republican institutions."

[159] Mignet, tom. i., p. 141; Dumont, p. 244.

[160] "One evening M. de Narbonne made use of this expression: 'I appeal to the most distinguished members of this Assembly.' At that moment the whole party of the Mountain rose up in a fury, and Merlin, Bazire, and Chabot, declared, that 'all the deputies were equally distinguished.'"—M. de StaËl, tom. ii., p. 39.

[161] CazalÈs, one of the most brilliant orators of the Assembly, was born at Grenade-sur-la-Garonne in 1752. He died in 1805. In 1821, Les Discours et Opinions de CazalÈs were published at Paris, in an octavo volume.

[162] Shortly after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Maury retired to Italy, where he became a cardinal. In 1806, he returned to France, and in 1810 was made, by Napoleon, Archbishop of Paris. He died at Rome in 1817.

[163] After the 10th of August, 1792, Duport fled to Switzerland, where he died in 1798.

[164] King John, act ii., sc. i.

[165] Dumont, p. 272; Mignet, tom. i., p. 151.

[166] Hudibras, part iii., c. 2.

[167] Chabot was the principal editor of a paper entitled Journal Populaire, ou le CatÉchisme des Sans Culottes. He was guillotined in April, 1794.

[168] Thiers, tom. ii., p. 12; Mignet, tom. i., p. 152.

[169] MÉmoires de Barbaroux, p. 47; Mignet, tom. i., p. 220.

[170] See Annual Register, vol. xxxiv., pp. 70-72, 73.

[171] This work made its appearance in November, 1790; about 30,000 copies were sold; and a French translation, by M. Dupont, quickly spread its reputation throughout Europe. "The publication of Burke towards the close of the year 1790," says Lacretelle, "was one of the most remarkable events of the eighteenth century. It is a history, by anticipation, of the first fifteen years of the French Revolution."—Tom. viii., p. 182. "However the arguments of Burke may seem to have been justified by posterior events, it yet remains to be shown, that the war-cry then raised against France did not greatly contribute to the violence which characterised that period. It is possible that had he merely roused the attention of the governments and wealthy classes to the dangers of this new political creed, he might have proved the saviour of Europe; but he made such exaggerated statements, and used arguments so alarming to freedom, that on many points he was not only plausibly, but victoriously refuted."—Dumont, p. 137.

[172] "Guerre aux chÂteaux, paix aux hamaux."

[173] Clootz was born at Cleves in 1755. Being suspected by Robespierre, he was, in May, 1794, sent to the guillotine.

[174] Menou was born at Boussay de Loches in 1750. After Buonaparte's flight from Egypt, he turned Mahometan, submitted to the peculiar rites of Islamism, and called himself Abdallah James Menou. He died at Venice in 1810; of which place he had been appointed Governor by Napoleon.

[175] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 52.

[176] See Burke's Works, vol. viii., p. 272.

[177] Their number was at this time, with their families, nearly a hundred thousand.—See Burke, vol. viii., p. 72, and Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 117.

[178] See Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 117.

[179] Jomini, tom. i., p. 265; Lacretelle, tom. viii., pp. 334, 439; De BouillÉ, p. 422.

[180] See two articles on the pretended treaties of Pavia and Pilnitz, signed Detector, in the Anti-jacobin Newspaper, July 2, 1798. They were, we believe, written by the late Mr. Pitt. [Since this work was published it seems to have become certain that the letters there referred to were the productions of Lord Grenville, at that time Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.]—"As far as we have been able to trace," said Mr. Pitt, in 1800, "the declaration signed at Pilnitz referred to the imprisonment of Louis: its immediate view was to effect his deliverance, if a concert sufficiently extensive could be formed for that purpose. I left the internal state of France to be decided by the King restored to his liberty, with the free consent of the states of the kingdom, and it did not contain one word relative to the dismemberment of the country."—Parliamentary History, vol. xxxiv., p. 1316.—S.

[181] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 61; Thiers, tom. ii., p. 48.

[182] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 48.

[183] "The adoption of this oppressive decree was signalized by the first open expression of atheistical sentiments in the Assembly. 'My God is the Law; I acknowledge no other,' was the expression of Isnard. The remonstrance of the constitutional bishops had no effect. The decree was carried amidst tumult and acclamation."—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 46.

[184] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 46.

[185] Mignet, tom. i., p. 164; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 74. "The war department was intrusted, in December, 1791, to M. de Narbonne. He employed himself with unfeigned zeal in all the preparations necessary for the defence of the kingdom. Possessing rank and talents, the manners of a court, and the views of a philosopher, that which was predominant in his soul was military honour and French valour. To oppose the interference of foreigners under whatever circumstances, always seemed to him the duty of a citizen and a gentleman. His colleagues combined against him, and succeeded in obtaining his removal. He lost his life at the siege of Torgau, in 1813."—M. de StaËl, vol. ii., p. 39.

[186] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 77.

[187] This strange argument reminds us of an Essay read before a literary society in dispraise of the east wind, which the author supported by quotations from every poem or popular work, in which Eurus is the subject of invective. The learned auditors sustained the first part of this infliction with becoming fortitude, but declined submitting to the second, understanding that the accomplished author had there fortified himself by the numerous testimonies of almost all poets in favour of the west, and which, with logic similar to that of M. Brissot in the text, he regarded as indirect testimony against the east wind.—S.

[188] "On Sunday, the 30th October, 1791, the gates were closed, the walls guarded so as to render escape impossible, and a band of assassins, commanded by the barbarous Jourdan, sought out in their own houses the individuals destined for death. Sixty unhappy wretches were speedily thrust into prison, where, during the obscurity of night, the murderers wreaked their vengeance with impunity. One young man put fourteen to death with his own hand, and only desisted from excess of fatigue. Twelve women perished, after having undergone tortures which my pen cannot describe. When vengeance had done its worst, the remains of the victims were torn and mutilated, and heaped up in a ditch, or thrown into the Rhone."—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 54.

[189] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 75.

[190] "After a long exposition by Dumouriez, the King, with a tremulous voice, pronounced these words:—'You have heard, gentlemen, the result of my negotiations with the Court of Vienna: they are conformable to the sentiments more than once expressed to me by the National Assembly, and confirmed by the great majority of the kingdom. All prefer a war to the continuance of outrages to the national honour, or menaces to the national safety. I have exhausted all the means of pacification in my power; I now come, in terms of the Constitution, to propose to the Assembly, that we should declare war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia.'"—Mignet, tom. i., p. 168; Annual Register, vol. xxxiv., p. 201; Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 272.

[191] "I was present at the sitting in which Louis was forced to a measure which was necessarily painful to him in so many ways. His features were not expressive of his thoughts, but it was not from dissimulation that he concealed them; a mixture of resignation and dignity repressed in him every outward sign of his sentiments. On entering the Assembly, he looked to the right and left, with that kind of vacant curiosity which is usual to persons who are so shortsighted that their eyes seem to be of no use to them. He proposed war in the same tone of voice as he might have used in requiring the most indifferent decree possible."—M. de StaËl, vol. ii., p. 40.

[192] The site of the old convent of the Feuillans.

[193] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 76.

[194] Servan was born at Romans in 1741, and died at Paris in 1808. "He was," says Madame Roland, "an honest man in the fullest signification of the term; an enlightened patriot, a brave soldier, and an active minister; he stood in need of nothing but a more sober imagination, and a more flexible mind."—Memoirs, part i., p. 72.

[195] ClaviÈre was born at Geneva in 1735, "where," says M. Dumont, "he became one of the popular leaders: shrewd and penetrating, he obtained the credit of being also cunning and artful: he was a man of superior intellect: deaf from his youth, and, deprived by this infirmity of the pleasures of society, he had sought a compensation in study, and formed his education by associating politics and moral philosophy with trade."—Being denounced by Robespierre, to avoid the guillotine, he stabbed himself in his prison, June 9, 1793. His wife poisoned herself on the following day.

[196] Duranthon was born at Massedon in 1736. In December, 1793, he was dragged before the revolutionary tribunal, and guillotined. "He was an honest man, but very indolent: his manner indicated vanity, and his timid disposition and pompous prattle made him always appear to me no better than an old woman."—Mad. Roland, part i., p. 71.

[197] "A true jack-in-office of the old order of things, of which he had the insignificant and awkward look, cold manner, and dogmatic tone. He was deficient both in the extensive views and activity necessary for a minister."—Mad. Roland, p. 70. He died in 1803.

[198] Thiers, tom. ii., p. 59; Mignet, tom. i., p. 64; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 89.

[199] So says Des Ferrieres, and pretends that Madame Roland's pretensions to be presented at the ministerial parties being rejected, was the first breach to the amicable understanding of the ministers. But nothing of this sort is to be found in her Memoirs, and we are confident she would have recorded it, had the fact been accurate.—S.

[200] The court nicknamed the new ministry, "Le MinistÈre sans culottes."

[201] When Roland, whose dress was somewhat like that of a Quaker, appeared at court in shoestrings, the usher approached him with a severe look, and addressed him, "How, sir, no buckles?"—"Ah," said Dumouriez, who laughed at all and every thing, "all is lost."—S.—Roland, part ii., p. 8; Mignet, tom. i., p. 166.

[202] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 109.

[203] Prudhomme, tom. ii., p. 271.

[204] BouillÉ's Memoirs, p. 215.

[205] Mignet, tom. i., p. 172; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 114; Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 350.

[206] Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 353.

[207] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 116; Mignet, tom. i., p. 173; Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 360.

[208] "Je sais que le langage austÈre de la vÉritÉ est rarement accueillÉ prÈs du trone."—See the Letter in Prudhomme, tom. iii., p. 82.

[209] Prudhomme, tom. iii., p. 92.

[210] Dumouriez, tom. ii., p. 392; Mignet, tom. i., p. 173; Lacretelle, tom. i., p. 240.

[211] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 136.

[212] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 131.

[213] The passage of the procession lasted three hours.—See Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 135; Thiers, tom. ii., p. 133

[214] It may be alleged in excuse, that the Assembly had no resource but submission. Yet, brave men in similar circumstances have, by a timely exertion of spirit, averted similar insolencies. When the furious Anti-Catholic mob was in possession of the avenues to, and even the lobbies of, the House of Commons, in 1780, General Cosmo Gordon, a member of the House, went up to the unfortunate nobleman under whose guidance they were supposed to act, and addressed him thus: "My lord, is it your purpose to bring your rascally adherents into the House of Commons? for if so, I apprise you, that the instant one of them enters, I pass my sword, not through his body, but your lordship's." The hint was sufficient, and the mob was directed to another quarter. Undoubtedly there were, in the French Legislative Assembly, men capable of conjuring down the storm they had raised, and who might have been moved to do so, had any man of courage made them directly and personally responsible for the consequences.—See Wraxall, vol. i., p. 247, for the story of Lord George Gordon and General Gordon; but the Editor is informed, that the person who really threatened Lord George in the manner described, was Colonel Holroyd, now Lord Sheffield.

[215] Dryden has expanded these magnificent lines, without expressing entirely either their literal meaning or their spirit. But he has added, as usual, beautiful ideas of his own, equally applicable to the scene described in the text:—

"A mighty breach is made; the rooms conceal'd
Appear, and all the palace is reveal'd;
The halls of audience, and of public state—
And where the lovely Queen in secret sate,
Arm'd soldiers now by trembling maids are seen
With not a door, and scarce a space between."

Æneid, book ii.—S.

[216] Prudhomme, tom. iii., p. 117; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 139; Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 212.

[217] Prudhomme, tom. iii., p. 117; Mignet, tom. i., p. 178; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 142; Campan, vol. ii., p. 212.

[218] Napoleon was a witness of this scene from the gardens of the Tuileries. "While we were leading," says De Bourrienne, "a somewhat idle life, the 20th June arrived. We met that morning, as usual, in a coffee-room, Rue St. HonorÉ. On going out we saw approaching a mob, which Buonaparte computed at five or six thousand men, all in rags, and armed with every sort of weapon, vociferating the grossest abuse, and proceeding with rapid pace towards the Tuileries. 'Let us follow that rabble,' said Buonaparte to me. We got before them, and went to walk in the gardens, on the terrace overlooking the water. From this station he beheld the disgraceful occurrences that ensued. I should fail in attempting to depict the surprise and indignation aroused within him. He could not comprehend such weakness and forbearance. But when the King showed himself at one of the windows fronting the garden, with the red cap which one of the mob had just placed upon his head, Buonaparte could no longer restrain his indignation. 'What madness!' exclaimed he; 'how could they allow these scoundrels to enter? They ought to have blown four or five hundred of them into the air with cannon; the rest would then have taken to their heels.'"—De Bourrienne, tom. i., p. 49.

[219] "By eight o'clock in the evening they had all departed, and silence and astonishment reigned in the palace."—Mignet, tom. i., p. 178.

[220] Jomini, Hist. des Guerres de la RÉvolution, tom. ii., p. 53; Dumont, p. 343.

[221] For the letter itself, see Annual Register, vol. xxxiv., p. 206.

[222] Thiers, tom. ii., p. 154; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 153.

[223] Madame Campan, tom. ii., p. 224.

[224] "He was burnt in effigy by the Jacobins, in the garden of the Palais Royal."—Prudhomme, tom. iii., p. 131.

[225] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 161. After the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, L'Amourette returned to Lyons, and continued there during the siege. He was afterwards conducted to Paris, condemned to death, and decapitated in January, 1794. The abbÉ was the author of several works, among others, "Les DÉlices de la Religion, ou Le Pouvoir de l'Evangile de nous rendre heureux."

[226] "The expression of the Queen's countenance on this day will never be effaced from my remembrance; her eyes were swollen with tears; the splendour of her dress, the dignity of her deportment, formed a contrast with the train that surrounded her. It required the character of Louis XVI., that character of martyr which he ever upheld, to support, as he did, such a situation. When he mounted the steps of the altar, he seemed a sacred victim, offering himself as a voluntary sacrifice. He descended; and, crossing anew the disordered ranks, returned to take his place beside the Queen and his children."—M. De StaËl, vol. ii., p. 53.

[227] "To the astonishment of both parties, the accusation against La Fayette was thrown out by a majority of 446 to 224,"—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 190.

[228] Le Fanatisme.

[229] Madame Roland describes him as one "whose features no painter would disdain to copy for the head of an Antinous."—Memoirs, part i., p. 146.

[230] "I never," says Madame de la Rochejaquelein, "heard any thing more impressive and terrible than their songs."

[231] Espremenil suffered by the guillotine in June, 1793; but PÉtion, becoming at that time an object of suspicion to Robespierre, took refuge in the department of the Calvados, where he is supposed to have perished with hunger; his body being found in a field half devoured by wolves.

[232] See Annual Register, vol. xxxiv., p. 229.

[233] Thiers, tom. ii., p. 145.

[234] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 172.

[235] "The question of abdication was discussed with a degree of frenzy. Such of the deputies as opposed the motion were abused, ill-treated, and surrounded by assassins. They had a battle to fight at every step they took; and at length they did not dare to sleep in their houses."—Montjoie.

[236] Thus imitated by the dramatist Lee, from the historian Davila:—

"Have you not heard—the King, preventing day,
Received the guards within the city gates;
The jolly Swisses marching to their pipes,
The crowd stood gaping heedless and amazed,
Shrunk to their shops, and left the passage free."—S.

[237] M. de StaËl, tom. ii., p. 59.

[238] When they were, in similar circumstances, maltreated by the national guard.—See ante, p. 119.—S.

[239] "M. de St. Souplet, one of the King's equerries, and a page, instead of muskets, carried upon their shoulders the tongs belonging to the King's ante-chamber, which they had broken and divided between them."—Mad. Campan. vol. ii., p. 246.

[240] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 201.

[241] Dernier Tableau de Paris, tom. i., p. 176.

[242] "The King ought then to have put himself at the head of his troops, and opposed his enemies. The Queen was of this opinion, and the courageous counsel she gave on this occasion does honour to her memory."—M. de StaËl, tom. ii., p. 60.

"This invasion of the 10th of August, was another of those striking occasions on which the King, by suddenly changing his character, and assuming firmness, might have recovered his throne. The mass of the French people were weary of the excesses of the Jacobins, and the outrage of the 20th of June roused the general indignation. Had he ordered the clubs of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, to be shut up, dissolved the Assembly, and seized upon the factions, that day had restored his authority: but this weak prince, unmindful that the safety of his kingdom depended upon the preservation of his own authority, chose rather to expose himself to certain death, than give orders for his defence."—Dumont, p. 362.

[243] Mignet, tom. i., p. 190; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 208.

[244] "The muscular expansion of his tall person, the sonorous hoarseness of his voice, his rough manners, and his easy and vulgar eloquence, made him, of course, a hero among the rabble. In truth, he had gained a despotic empire over the dregs of the Fauxbourgs. He could excite them at will; but that was the extent of his skill and capacity."—Montjoie, Hist. de Marie Antoinette, p. 295.

[245] "I was at a window looking on the garden. I saw some of the gunners quit their posts, go up to the King, and thrust their fists in his face, insulting him by the most brutal language. He was as pale as a corpse. When the royal family came in again, the Queen told me that all was lost; that the King had shown no energy, and that this sort of review had done more harm than good."—Mad. Campan, vol. ii., p. 245.

[246] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 214.

[247] MÉmoires de Barbaroux, p. 69.

[248] "And I," exclaimed the King, "I, too, say 'Vive la Nation!'—its happiness has ever been the dearest object of my heart."—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 214.

[249] Prudhomme, tom. iii., p. 198; Mad. Campan, vol. ii., p. 247.

[250] "'Oui,' disait-elle À MM. de Briges et de Saint Priest, 'j'aimerais mieux me faire clouer aux murs du chÂteau que de choisir cet indigne refuge.'"—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 216.

[251] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 219; Mad. Campan, vol. ii., p. 247.

[252] Mad. Campan, vol. ii., p. 429; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 220.

[253] "The Queen told me, that the King had just refused to put on the under-waistcoat of mail which she had prepared for him; that he had consented to wear it on the 14th of July, because it was merely going to a ceremony, where the blade of an assassin was to be apprehended; but that, on a day in which his party might have to fight against the revolutionists, he thought there was something cowardly in preserving his life by such means."—Mad. Campan, vol. ii., p. 243.

[254] Chabot.

[255] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 223.

[256] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 227.

[257] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 231; Mignet, tom. i., p. 195; Thiers, tom. ii., p. 263.

[258] "S'il y avait eu trois cents cavaliers fidÈles pour marcher À la poursuite des rebelles, Paris Était soumis au roi, et l'AssemblÉe tombait aux pieds de son captif."—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 230.

[259] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 233; Toulongeon, tom. ii., p. 253.

[260] "L'histoire ne peut dire les obscÈnes et atroces mutilations que d'impudiques furies firent subir aux cadavres des Suisses."—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 240.

[261] Prudhomme, tom. iii., p. 202; but see Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 241.

[262] MÉmoires de Barbaroux. "L'anecdote," says Lacretelle, "est fausse; mais quelle fiction atroce!" tom. ix., p. 243.

[263] Mignet, tom. i., p. 195; Thiers, tom. i., p. 263; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 244.

[264] "For fifteen hours the royal family were shut up in the short-hand writer's box. At length, at one in the morning, they were transferred to the Feuillans. When left alone, Louis prostrated himself in prayer. 'Thy trials, O God! are dreadful; give us courage to bear them. We bless thee in our afflictions, as we did in the day of prosperity: receive into thy mercy all those who have died fighting in our defence.'"—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 250.

"The royal family remained three days at the Feuillans. They occupied a small suite of apartments, consisting of four cells. In the first were the gentlemen who had accompanied the King. In the second we found the King: he was having his hair dressed; he took two locks of it, and gave one to my sister and one to me. In the third was the Queen, in bed, and in an indescribable state of affliction. We found her attended only by a bulky woman, who appeared tolerably civil; she waited upon the Queen, who, as yet, had none of her own people about her. I asked her Majesty what the ambassadors from foreign powers had done under existing circumstances? She told me that they could do nothing, but that the lady of the English ambassador had just given her a proof of the private interest she took in her welfare by sending her linen for her son."—Mad. Campan, vol. ii., p. 259.

"At this frightful period, Lady Sutherland," [the present Duchess and Countess of Sutherland,] "then English ambassadress at Paris, showed the most devoted attentions to the royal family."—Mad. de StaËl, tom. ii., p. 69.

[265] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 265; Mignet, tom. i., p. 197.

[266] Bursau de Pucy, Latour Maubourg, and Alexander Lameth. Their intention was to proceed to the United States of America.

[267] "I never saw any countenance that so strongly expressed the violence of brutal passions, and the most astonishing audacity, half-disguised by a jovial air, an affectation of frankness, and a sort of simplicity."—Mad. Roland, part i., p. 88.

[268] "In 1789, he was a miserable lawyer, more burdened with debts than causes. He went to Belgium to augment his resources, and now had the hardihood to avow a fortune of 1,400,000 livres, (£58,333,) and to wallow in luxury, whilst preaching sans-culottism, and sleeping on heaps of slaughtered men. O, Danton! cruel as Marius, and more terrible than Cataline, you surpass their misdeeds, without possessing their good qualities."—Mad. Roland, part ii., p. 59.

[269] "Il avait une maniÈre de prononcer pauvre peuple et peuple vertueux, qui ne manqua jamais son effet sur de feroces spectateurs."—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 15.

[270] MÉmoires de Barbaroux, p. 63.

[271] "I once conversed with Robespierre at my father's house, in 1789. His features were mean, his complexion pale, his veins of a greenish hue."—Mad. de StaËl, vol. ii., p. 140.

"I had twice occasion to converse with Robespierre. He had a sinister expression of countenance, never looked you in the face, and had a continual and unpleasant winking of the eyes."—Dumont, p. 202.

[272] MÉmoires de Barbaroux, p. 57.

[273] Mignet, tom. i., p. 220; Garat, p. 174.

[274] Lacretelle, tom. ix., pp. 292, 316.

[275] "Un emploi si rigoureux rÉpugnerait trop À mes principes philanthropiques."—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 274.

[276] "The carriage which conveyed the royal family to the Temple, was stopped on the Place VendÔme, in order that the King might see the fragments of the statue of Louis the Great."—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 262.

[277] "Nuit de terreur! prelude affreux de plusieurs jours de sang! nuit oÙ une capitale perdue dans la mollesse, infectÉe des maximes de l'ÉgoÏsme philosophique, expia le sort honteux de s'Être laissÉ asservir par tout ce que sa population offrait de plus abjÈct et de plus criminel!"—Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 288.

[278] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 296.

[279] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 298.

[280] Mignet, tom. i., p. 204; Thiers, tom. ii., p. 61; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 293.

[281] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 314.

[282] See ante, p. 92.

[283] Mon Agonie de Trente-six Heures, p. 30.

[284] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 8; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 325.

[285] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 64.

[286] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 127; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 348.

[287] The books of the HÔtel de Ville preserve evidence of this fact. Billaud-Varennes appeared publicly among the assassins, and distributed the price of blood.—S.—"I am authorised," he said, "to offer to each of you twenty-four francs, which shall be instantly paid. Respectable citizens, continue your good work, and acquire new titles to the homage of your country! Let every thing on this great day be fitting the sovereignty of the people, who have committed their vengeance to your hands."—Sicard, p. 135; Thiers, tom. iii., p. 74.

[288] Louvet's Memoirs, p. 73; Barbaroux, p. 57; Thiers, tom. iii., p. 77.

[289] "The abbÉ would have been instantly murdered, had not a courageous watchmaker, of the name of Monnot, rushed between them, and staid the lance already raised to be plunged in his bosom."—Thiers, tom. iii., p. 71.

[290] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 317

[291] MÉmoires de Buzot, p. 82.

[292] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 359.

[293] Among others of the same party thus elected were David, the painter, Camille Desmoulins, Collot d'Herbois, and the Duke of Orleans, who had abdicated his titles, and was now called Philip EgalitÉ.—See Thiers, tom. iii., p. 133.

[294] "The first measure of the Convention was to abolish Monarchy and proclaim a Republic. The calendar was changed; it was no longer the fourth year of Liberty, but the first of the French Republic."—Mignet, tom. i., p. 212.

[295] Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 387.

[296] Jomini, tom. ii., p. 133.

[297] Dumouriez, vol. iii., p. 63; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 138.

[298] "All the villages were filled with dead and the dying; without any considerable fighting, the allies had lost, by dysentery and fevers, more than a fourth of their numbers."—Toulongeon, tom. ii., p. 357.

[299] King John, act iii., sc. i.

[300] Botta, tom. i., p. 88; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 190.

[301] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 182; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 151.

[302] Dumouriez, vol. iii., p. 169; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 47; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 217.

[303] Annual Register, vol xxxiv., pp. 230, 236.

[304] BouillÉ's Memoirs, p. 250.

[305] Manuel was born at Montargis in 1751. On the trial of the King he voted for imprisonment and banishment in the event of peace. When the Queen's trial came on, he was summoned as a witness against her; but only expressed admiration of her fortitude, and regret for her misfortunes. In November, 1793, he was condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and executed. Among other works, Manuel published "Coup d'oeil Philosophique sur le RÈgne de St. Louis," "Voyages de l'Opinion dans les Quatres Parties du Monde," and "Lettres sur la RÉvolution."

[306] Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 12; Mignet, tom. iii., p. 150.

[307] Born at Bourdeaux in 1765. He voted for the death of the King—and was guillotined, Oct., 1793.

[308] Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 16.

[309] Esprit des Lois, liv. iii., c. 9.

[310] "One night the jewel-office, in the Tuileries, was pillaged, and all the splendid ornaments of the crown disappeared. The seals affixed on the locks were removed, but no marks of violence appeared on them, which showed that the abstraction was by order of the authorities, and not by popular violence."—Thiers, tom. iii., p. 103.

[311] Dumouriez, vol. iii., p. 262; Journal des Jacobins, 14th Oct., 1792.

[312] Emile, liv. i.

[313] "The first vault opened was that of Turenne. The body was found dry like a mummy, the features perfectly resembling the portrait of this distinguished general. Relics were sought after with eagerness, and Camille Desmoullins cut off one of the little fingers. The body, at the intercession of M. Desfontaines, was removed to the Jardin des Plantes. The features of Henry the Fourth were also perfect. A soldier cut off a lock of the beard with his sabre, and putting it upon his upper lip, exclaimed, 'Et moi aussi, je suis soldat FranÇais! dÉsormais je n'aurai pas d'autre moustache!' The body was placed upright upon a stone for the rabble to divert themselves with it; and a woman, reproaching the dead Henry with the crime of having been a king, knocked down the corpse, by giving it a blow in the face. Two large pits had been dug in front of the north entrance of the church, and quick lime laid in them; into those pits the bodies were thrown promiscuously; the leaden coffins were then carried to a furnace, which had been erected in the cemetery, and cast into balls, destined to punish the enemies of the republic."—See Promenade aux SÉpultures Royales de Saint Denis, par M. P. St. A. G., and Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 264.

[314] "To a very beautiful person, Madame Roland united great powers of intellect; her reputation stood very high, and her friends never spoke of her but with the most profound respect. In character she was a Cornelia; and had she been blessed with sons, would have educated them like the Gracchi. The simplicity of her dress did not detract from her natural grace and elegance, and though her pursuits were more adapted to the other sex, she adorned them with all the charms of her own. Her personal memoirs are admirable. They are an imitation of Rousseau's Confessions, and often not unworthy of the original."—Dumont, p. 326.

[315] At the bar of the National Convention, Dec. 7, 1792.

[316] "I used to meet BarrÈre at a table d'hÒte. I considered him of a mild and amiable temper. He was very well-bred, and seemed to love the Revolution from a sentiment of benevolence. His association with Robespierre, and the court which he paid to the different parties he successively joined and afterwards deserted, were less the effect of an evil disposition, than of a timid and versatile character, and a conceit, which made it incumbent upon him to appear as a public man. His talents as an orator were by no means of the first order. He was afterwards surnamed the Anacreon of the guillotine; but when I knew him he was only the Anacreon of the Revolution, upon which, in his 'Point du Jour,' he wrote some very amorous strains."—Dumont, p. 199.

[317] Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 41.

[318] "O! peuple babillard, si tu savais agir!"

[319] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 170; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 23.

[320] Mignet, tom. i., p. 224; Thiers, tom. iii., p. 213; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 54.

[321] "Point de procÈs au roi! Épargnons le pauvre tyran!"—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 47.

[322] Dumouriez, vol. iii., p. 273.

[323] Mignet, tom. i., p. 228.

[324] M. de Septueil, in particular, quoted as being the agent by whom Louis XVI. was said to have transmitted money to his brothers when in exile, positively denied the fact, and made affidavit accordingly.—S.

[325] Mignet, tom. i., p. 229; Montgaillard, tom. iii., p. 265; Thiers, tom. iii., p. 259; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 164; Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 222.

[326]

"Unhappy Stuart! harshly though that name
Grates on my ear, I should have died with shame,
To see my King before his subjects stand,
And at their bar hold up his royal hand;
At their command to hear the monarch plead,
By their decrees to see that monarch bleed.
What though thy faults were many, and were great—
What though they shook the fabric of the state?
In royalty secure thy person stood,
And sacred was the fountain of thy blood.
Vile ministers, who dared abuse their trust,
Who dared seduce a king to be unjust,
Vengeance, with justice leagued, with power made strong,
Had nobly crush'd—The King can do no wrong."

Gotham.—S.

[327] This club used to meet on the 30th January, at a tavern near Charing Cross, to celebrate the anniversary of the death of Charles I. Their toasts were, "The glorious year, 1648." "D——n to the race of the Stuarts." "The pious memory of Oliver Cromwell," &c.—See Gent.'s Mag., vol. v., p. 105; and "History of the Calves-Head Club."

[328] "No one act of tyranny can be laid to Louis's charge: and, far from restraining the liberty of the press, it was the Archbishop of Sens, the King's prime minister, who, in the name of his Majesty, invited all writers to make known their opinions upon the form and manner of assembling the States-General."—De StaËl, vol. ii., p. 94.

[329] Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 145.

[330] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 257.

[331] The reader may compare the account which Marmontel gives of his residence in the Bastile, with the faithful ClÉry's narrative of Louis's captivity in the Temple.—S.

[332] ClÉry, p. 55; Thiers, tom. iii., p. 223; Mignet, tom. i., p. 234; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 141.

[333] "The 3d of September, at three o'clock, just after dinner, the most horrid shouts were heard. The officer on guard in the room behaved well: he shut the door and the window, and even drew the curtains, to prevent their seeing any thing. Several officers of the guard and of the municipality now arrived: the former insisted that the King should show himself at the windows; fortunately, the latter opposed it; but, on his Majesty's asking what was the matter, a young officer of the guard replied, 'Well! since you will know, it is the head of Madame de Lamballe that they want to show you.' At these words the Queen was overcome with horror: it was the only occasion in which her firmness abandoned her."—Duchesse d'AngoulÊme, Private Memoirs, p. 18.

[334] ClÉry, pp. 60, 142.

[335] See MÉmoires de Buzot, par Guadet, p. 87

[336] ClÉry, p. 153.

[337] "Before the King entered, BarrÈre recommended tranquillity to the Assembly, 'in order that the guilty man might be awed by the silence of the tomb.'"—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 174.

[338] "When the president said to his King, 'Louis, asseyez vous!' we feel more indignation even than when he is accused of crimes which he had never committed. One must have sprung from the very dust not to respect past obligations, particularly when misfortune has rendered them sacred; and vulgarity joined to crime inspires us with as much contempt as horror."—De StaËl, vol. ii., p. 84.

[339] Duhem was born at Lille in 1760. He afterwards practised physic at Quesnoi. After the amnesty of Oct., 1795, he returned to his profession, and died in 1807, at Mentz.

[340] Mignet, tom. i., p. 235; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 179.

[341] One of Napoleon's first acts on becoming first consul, was to place Tronchet at the head of the Court of Cassation. "Tronchet," he said, "was the soul of the civil code, as I was its demonstrator. He was gifted with a singularly profound and correct understanding, but he could not descend to developements."-Las Cases, vol. ii., p. 234. Tronchet died in 1806, and was buried in the Pantheon.

[342] "CambacÉrÈs declared, that Target's example endangered public morality. Target attempted in vain to repair the disgrace, by publishing a short defence of the King."—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 182.

[343] "Tronson du Coudrai, who perished in the deserts of Sinamari; Guillaume, the courageous author of the petition of the twenty thousand; Huet de Guerville; Sourdat de Troyes; and Madame Olympe de Gouges.—Lalli de Tolendal, Malouet, and Necker published admirable pleadings for Louis, but the Convention would not allow them to be read."—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 185.

[344] See ante, p. 42.

[345] "Je lui dois le mÊme service, lorsque c'est une fonction que bien des gens trouvent dangereuse."—See his letter to the President of the Convention in Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 182.

[346] "The first time M. Malesherbes entered the Temple, the King clasped him in his arms, and exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, 'Ah! is it you, my friend! you see to what the excess of my love for the people has brought me, and the self-denial which induced me to consent to the removal of the troops intended to protect my throne and person, against the designs of a factious assembly: you fear not to endanger your own life to save mine; but all will be useless: they will bring me to the scaffold: no matter; I shall gain my cause, if I leave an unspotted memory behind me."—Hue, DerniÈres AnnÉes de la Vie de Louis XVI., p. 42.

[347] DesÉze was born at Bourdeaux in 1750. He accepted no office under Napoleon; but on the restoration of the Bourbons he was appointed First President of the Court of Cassation, and afterwards created a peer of France. He died at Paris in 1828.

[348] ClÉry we have seen and known, and the form and manners of that model of pristine faith and loyalty can never be forgotten. Gentlemanlike and complaisant in his manners, his deep gravity and melancholy features announced that the sad scenes in which he had acted a part so honourable, were never for a moment out of his memory.—S.—ClÉry died at Hitzing, near Vienna, in 1809. In 1817, Louis XVIII. gave letters of nobility to his daughter.

[349] ClÉry, p. 187.

[350] "When the pathetic peroration of M. DesÉze was read to the King, the evening before it was to be delivered to the Assembly, 'I have to request of you,' he said, 'to make a painful sacrifice; strike out of your pleading the peroration. It is enough for me to appear before such judges, and show my entire innocence; I will not move their feelings.'"—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 197.

[351] "The King was conveyed in the mayor's carriage. He evinced, on the way, as much coolness as on former occasions; spoke of Seneca, Livy, and the public hospitals; and addressed himself, in a delicate vein of pleasantry, to one of the municipality, who sat in his carriage with his hat on."—Thiers, tom. iii., p. 277.

[352] Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 199.

[353] "You have heard my defence; I will not recapitulate it; when addressing you, probably for the last time, I declare that my conscience has nothing to reproach itself with, and that my defenders have said nothing but the truth. I have no fears for the public examination of my conduct; but my heart bleeds at the accusation brought against me, of having been the cause of the misfortunes of my people; and, most of all, of having shed their blood on the 10th of August. The multiplied proofs I have given, in every period of my reign, of my love for my people, and the manner in which I have conducted myself towards them, might, I had hoped, have saved me from so cruel an imputation."—Thiers. tom. iii., p. 281.

"The King withdrew with his defenders. He embraced M. DesÉze, and exclaimed, 'This is indeed true eloquence! I am tranquil.—I shall at least have an honoured memory.—The French will regret my death.'"—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 210.

[354] "St. Just, after having searched in vain for authentic facts against the King, finished by declaring, that 'no one could reign innocently: and nothing could better prove the necessity of the inviolability of kings than this maxim; for there is no king who might not be accused in some way or another, if there were no constitutional barrier placed around him.'"—De StaËl, vol. ii., p. 86.

[355] "Il est des principes indestructibles, supÉrieurs aux rubriques consacrÉes par l'habitude et les prÉjugÉs."

[356] "Vergniaud was an indolent man, and required to be stimulated; but when excited, his eloquence was true, forcible, penetrating, and sincere."—Dumont, p. 321.

[357] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 290; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 213; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 187.

[358] His own death, by the guillotine, in the same year, was hardly sufficient retribution for his fiendlike conduct on this afflicting occasion.—S.

[359] "When, on the 17th January, M. de Malesherbes went to the Temple to announce the result of the vote, he found Louis with his forehead resting on his hands, and absorbed in a deep reverie. Without inquiring concerning his fate, he said, 'For two hours I have been considering whether, during my whole reign, I have voluntarily given any cause of complaint to my subjects; with perfect sincerity I declare, that I deserve no reproach at their hands, and that I have never formed a wish but for their happiness.'"—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 244.

"On the 18th, the King desired me to look in the library for the volume of Hume's History which contained the death of Charles I., which he read the following days. I found, on this occasion, that, since his coming to the Temple, his Majesty had perused two hundred and fifty volumes."—ClÉry, p. 216.—"On the 20th, Santerre appeared with the Executive Council. The sentence of death was read by Carat. No alteration took place in the King's countenance; I observed only, at the word 'conspiracy,' a smile of indignation appear upon his lips; but at the words, 'shall suffer the punishment of death,' the heavenly expression of his face, when he looked on those around him, showed them that death had no terrors for innocence."—ClÉry, p. 222.

[360] "At the representation of the comedy called 'L'Ami des Lois' at the FranÇais, every allusion to the King's trial was caught and received with unbounded applause. At the Vaudeville, on one of the characters in 'La Chaste Susanne' saying to the two Elders, 'You cannot be accusers and judges at the same time,' the audience obliged the actor to repeat the passage several times."—ClÉry, p. 204.

[361] Dumouriez, vol. iii., p. 278; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 265.

[362] "The peculation, or the profuse expenditure, at least, that took place in the war department during Pache's administration, was horrible. In the twenty-four hours that preceded his dismission, he filled up sixty different places with all the persons he knew of who were base enough to pay their court to him, down to his very hair-dresser, a blackguard boy of nineteen, whom he made a muster-master."—Mad. Roland, part i., p. 140.

[363] Born at Bourdeaux in 1758—he was involved in the fall of the Girondists, and guillotined 31st Oct., 1793.

[364] "At seven, the King said to me, 'You will give this seal to my son, this ring to the Queen, and assure her that it is with pain I part with it;—this little packet contains the hair of all my family, you will give her that too. Tell the Queen, my dear children, and my sister, that although I promised to see them again this morning, I have resolved to spare them the pangs of so cruel a separation; tell them how much it costs me to go without receiving their embraces once more!' He wiped away some tears; then added, in the most mournful accents, 'I charge you to bear them my last farewell.'"—ClÉry, p. 249.

"On the morning of this terrible day, the princesses rose at six. The night before, the Queen had scarcely strength enough to put her son to bed. She threw herself, dressed as she was, upon her own bed, where she was heard shivering with cold and grief all night long. At a quarter-past six, the door opened; the princesses believed that they were sent for to see the King, but it was only the officers looking for a prayer-book for the King's mass; they did not, however, abandon the hope of seeing him, till the shouts of joy of the unprincipled populace came to tell them that all was over."—Duchesse d'AngoulÊme, p. 52.

[365] "The procession from the Temple to the place of execution lasted nearly two hours. As soon as the carriage stopped, the King whispered to me, 'We are at the end of our journey, if I mistake not.' My silence answered that we were. One of the guards came to open the door, and the gens-d'armes would have jumped out, but the King stopped them, and leaning his arm on my knee, 'Gentlemen,' said he, with the tone of majesty, 'I recommend to you this good man; take care that after my death no insult be offered to him—I charge you to prevent it.' As soon as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him, and would have taken off his clothes, but he repulsed them with dignity; he undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged it himself. The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough, and from the slowness with which the King proceeded, I feared for a moment that his courage might be failing; but what was my astonishment, when, arrived at the last step, I felt him suddenly let go my arm, and saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; he silenced, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums; and I heard him, in a loud voice, pronounce distinctly these memorable words, 'I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.' He was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, (Santerre,) waved his sword, and ordered the drums to beat. Upon which, the executioners, seizing the King with violence, dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which, with one stroke, severed his head from his body."—AbbÉ Edgeworth, Last Hours of Louis XVI., p. 84.

[366] "The day after the execution, the municipality published the will, as a proof of the fanaticism and crimes of the King."—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 254.

[367] "Si je n'ai pas rÉpondu, c'est que la nature se refuse À rÉpondre a une pareille inculpation faite À une mÈre." (Ici l'accusÉe paroit vivement Émue,) "J'en appelle À toutes celles qui peuvent se trouver ici."—ProcÈs de Marie Antoinette, p. 29.

[368] "Sorrow had blanched her once beautiful hair; but her features and air still commanded the admiration of all who beheld her. Her cheeks, pale and emaciated, were occasionally tinged with a vivid colour at the mention of those she had lost. When led out to execution, she was dressed in white; she had cut off her hair with her own hands. Placed in a tumbril, with her arms tied behind her, she was taken by a circuitous route to the Place de la RÉvolution, and she ascended the scaffold with a firm and dignified step, as if she had been about to take her place on a throne, by the side of her husband."—Lacretelle, tom. xi, p. 261.

[369] "Madame Elizabeth was condemned, with many other individuals of rank. When on the tumbril, she declared that Madame de Serilli, one of the victims, had disclosed to her that she was pregnant, and was thus the means of saving her life."—Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 424.

"The assassination of the Queen and of Madame Elizabeth excited perhaps still more astonishment and horror than the crime which had been perpetrated against the person of the King; for no other object could be assigned for these horrible enormities, than the very terror which they were fitted to inspire."—De StaËl, vol. ii., p. 125.

[370] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 233.

[371] "Simon had had the cruelty to leave the poor child, absolutely alone. Unexampled barbarity! to leave an unhappy and sickly infant of eight years old, in a great room, locked and bolted in, with no other resource than a broken bell, which he never rang, so greatly did he dread the people whom its sound would have brought to him; he preferred wanting any thing and every thing to the sight of his persecutors. His bed had not been touched for six months, and he had not strength to make it himself; it was alive with bugs, and vermin still more disgusting. His linen and his person were covered with them. For more than a year he had had no change of shirt or stockings; every kind of filth was allowed to accumulate about him, and in his room; and during all that period, nothing of that kind had been removed. His window, which was locked as well as grated, was never opened; and the infectious smell of this horrid room was so dreadful, that no one could bear it for a moment. He passed his days without any kind of occupation. They did not even allow him light in the evening. This situation affected his mind as well as his body; and it is not surprising that he should have fallen into a frightful atrophy."—Duchesse d'AngoulÊme, p. 109.

[372] Louis-Philippe, of Orleans, chosen King of the French at the Revolution of July, 1830.

[373] Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 287; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 293; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 284.

[374] Carmagnole was the name applied in the early period of the Revolution to a certain dance, and the song connected with it. It was afterwards given to the French soldiers who first engaged in the cause of Republicanism, and who wore a dress of a peculiar cut.

[375] Camus, Quinette, Bancal, and Lamarque.

[376] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 118; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 316; Mignet, tom. i., p. 258. Shortly after the flight of Dumouriez, the French army was placed by the Convention under the command of General Dampierre.

[377] Dumouriez was a man of pleasing manners and lively conversation. He lived in retirement latterly at Turville Park, near Henley upon Thames, and died, March 14, 1823, in his eighty-fifth year.—S.

[378] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 66; Mignet, tom. i., p. 248; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 311.

[379] L'Ami du Peuple.

[380] Mignet, tom. i., p. 259; Thiers, tom. iv., p. 145; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 9; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 332.

[381] Mignet, tom. i., p. 261; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 346.

[382] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 151; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 343.

[383] HÉbert was also editor of an obscene and revolting revolutionary journal, entitled the "PÈre DuchÊsne" which had obtained an immense circulation.

[384] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 251; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 414; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 356.

[385] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 270; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 375; Mignet, tom. i., p. 272.

[386] "The Girondists felt without doubt, at the bottom of their hearts, a keen remorse for the means which they had employed to overturn the throne; and when those very means were directed against themselves, when they recognised their own weapons in the wounds which they received, they must have reflected without doubt on that rapid justice of revolutions, which concentrates on a few instants the events of several ages."—De StaËl, vol. ii., p. 122.

[387] Witness the following entry in the minutes of the Commune, on a day, be it remarked, betwixt the 29th May and the 2d June: "Antoinette fait demander pour son fils le roman de Gil Blas de Santillane—AccordÉ."—S.

[388] Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 114; Thiers, tom. iv., p. 389.

[389] "The court immediately ordered that his dead body should be borne on a car to the place of execution, and beheaded with the other prisoners."—Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 269.

[390]

"Allons, enfans de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivÉ;
Contre nous, de la tyrannie
Le couteau sanglant est levÉ."

Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 270.

[391] MÉmoires de Buzot, p. 98.

[392] "He had stabbed himself with a knife, concealed in his walking stick. In his pocket was found a paper, containing these words: 'Whoever you are, oh passenger! who discover my body, respect the remains of the unfortunate. They are those of a man who devoted his whole life to the service of his country. Not fear, but indignation, made me quit my retreat when I heard of the murder of my wife. I loathed a world stained with so many crimes.'"—Roland, tom. i., p. 46.

[393] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 277.

[394] Afterwards Marquis of Stafford, and created Duke of Sutherland. He died in 1833.

[395] Annual Register, vol. xxxv., p. 128.

[396] In 1789, Maret published the proceedings of the States-General, under the title of "Bulletin de l'AssemblÉe," taking Woodfall's Parliamentary Register for his model. The success of the experiment was so great, that when Pankouke, the bookseller, projected the plan of the "Moniteur," he prevailed on Maret to transfer his labours to the new journal. Such was the origin of Napoleon's well-known Duke of Bassano.

[397] Annual Register, vol. xxxv., p. 153.

[398] See the Declaration, Annual Register, vol. xxxv., p. 139.

[399] Annual Register, vol. xxxv., p. 250.—S.

[400] Jomini, tom. iii., pp. 163-181; Toulongeon, tom. iv., pp. 6-43.

[401] On the loss of Mentz, the Convention ordered Custine to Paris to answer for his conduct, and delivered him over to the revolutionary tribunal, by whom, in August, 1793, he was condemned and executed.

[402] Accused of not having followed up the advantages at Hondscoote, by an immediate attack upon the British force. Houchard was brought before the revolutionary tribunal, condemned, and executed, 17th Nov., 1793.

[403] Alexander, Viscount de Beauharnais, first husband of Josephine. Denounced as an aristocrat by his own troops, he was, in July, 1794, dragged before the revolutionary tribunal, which instantly condemned him to death.

[404] Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 142; Jomini, tom. iv., pp. 86-165.

[405] Condemned to death, Nov. 6, 1793, by the revolutionary tribunal.

[406] Jomini, tom. iv., p. 273.

[407] La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 35; Guerres des VendÉans et des Chouans, tom. i., p. 31.

[408] See ante, p. 110.

[409] Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 144.

[410] Guerres des VendÉans, tom. i., p. 65; La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 38.

[411] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 175.

[412] Madame La Roche-Jacquelein mentions an interesting anecdote of a young plebeian, a distinguished officer, whose habits of respect would scarce permit him to sit down in her presence. This cannot be termed servility. It is the noble pride of a generous mind, faithful to its original impressions, and disclaiming the merits which others are ready to heap on it.—S.

[413] The adoption of this wild costume, which procured them the name of brigands, from its fantastic singularity, originated in the whim of Henri La Roche-Jacquelein, who first used the attire. But as this peculiarity, joined to the venturous exposure of his person, occasioned a general cry among the Republicans, of "Aim at the red handkerchief," other officers assumed the fashion to diminish the danger of the chief whom they valued so highly, until at length it became a kind of uniform.—S.

[414] La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 90.

[415] The Memoirs of Madame Bonchamp, and still more those of Madame La Roche-Jacquelein, are remarkable for the virtues of the heart, as well as the talents which are displayed by their authors. Without affectation, without vanity, without violence or impotent repining, these ladies have described the sanguinary and irregular warfare, in which they and those who were dearest to them were engaged for so long and stormy a period; and we arise from the perusal sadder and wiser, by having learned what the brave can dare, and what the gentle can endure with patience.—S.

[416] MÉmoires d'un Ancien Administrateur des ArmÉes Republicaines.—S.

[417] Haxo died at Roche-sur-yon, April 26, 1794.

[418] See Jomini, tom. vi., p 400.

[419] A picture by Vernet, representing the attack on Nantes, estimable as a work of art, but extremely curious in an historical point of view, used to be in the Luxembourg palace, and is probably now removed to the Louvre. The VendÉans are presented there in all their simplicity of attire, and devoted valour; the priests who attended them displaying their crosses, and encouraging the assault, which is, on the other hand, repelled by the regular steadiness of the Republican forces.—S.—[This picture is still in the Luxembourg. The paintings of living artists are never admitted to the Louvre.]

[420] La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 69; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 143.

[421] King Charles the Tenth.

[422] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 145.

[423] See Southey's Thalaba, b. 12.

[424] They punned on the word Mayence (Mentz,) and said, the newly arrived Republicans were soldiers of fayence (potter' ware,) which could not endure the fire.—S.

[425] Beauchamp, Hist. de la Guerre de la VendÉe, tom. ii., p. 99; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 318; La Roche-Jacquelein, p. 239; Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 151.

[426] MÉmoires, p. 240.

[427] Jomini, tom. iv., p. 319. Beauchamp, tom. ii., p. 102.

[428] Some derived it from Chat-huant, as if the insurgents, like owls, appeared chiefly at night; others traced it to Chouin, the name of two brothers, sons of a blacksmith, said to have been the earliest leaders of the Breton insurgents.—S.

[429] Canclaux was born at Paris in 1740. After the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, Napoleon gave him the command of the 14th military division, and made him a senator. At the restoration he was created a peer. He died in 1817.

[430] We can and ought to make great allowances for national feeling; yet it is a little hard to find a well-informed historian, like M. Lacretelle, [tom. xi., p. 146,] gravely insinuate, that England threw the unfortunate Royalists on the coast of Quiberon to escape the future burden of maintaining them. Her liberality towards the emigrants, honourable and meritorious to the country, was entirely gratuitous. She might have withdrawn when she pleased a bounty conferred by her benevolence; and it is rather too hard to be supposed capable of meditating their murder, merely to save the expense of supporting them. The expedition was a blunder; but one in which the unfortunate sufferers contributed to mislead the British Government.—S.

[431] "This man, originally a painter, had become an adjutant in the Parisian corps; he was afterwards employed in the army; and, having been successful against the Marseillois, the deputies of the Mountain had, in the same day, obtained him the appointments of brigadier-general and general of division. He was extremely ignorant, and had nothing military about him, otherwise he was not ill-disposed."—Napoleon, Memoirs, vol. i., p. 19.

[432] Stanislaus FrÉron was son of the well-known victim of Voltaire, and godson of the unfortunate King of Poland. He accompanied the French expedition to St. Domingo in 1802, and being appointed sub-prefect at the Cayes, soon sunk under the influence of the climate. His portfolio falling into the hands of the black government, some of its contents were published by the authority of Dessaline, and subjoined to a work entitled "MÉmoires pour servir À l'Histoire de Hayti." Among them are several amatory epistles from Napoleon's second sister Pauline, by which it appears that FrÉron was the earliest object of her choice, but that Napoleon and Josephine would not hear of an alliance with the friend of Robespierre, and ready instrument of his atrocities.

[433] Jomini, tom. iv., p. 208; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 63.

[434] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 98; Thiers, tom. iv., p. 161.

[435] Before the arrival of Collot d'Herbois, FouchÉ (afterwards Duke of Otranto) issued a decree, directing that all religious emblems should be destroyed, and that the words "Death is an eternal sleep!" should be placed over the entrance of every burial ground.—See Moniteur, Nos. 57, 64.

[436] An ass formed a conspicuous part of the procession, having a mitre fastened between his ears, and dragging in the dirt a Bible tied to its tail; which Bible was afterwards burnt, and its ashes scattered to the winds. FouchÉ wrote to the Convention—"The shade of ChÂlier is satisfied. Yes, we swear that the people shall be avenged. Our severe courage shall keep pace with their just impatience."—Moniteur; Montgaillard, tom. iv., pp. 113, 138.

[437] FouchÉ, on the 19th December, wrote to Collot d'Herbois—"Let us show ourselves terrible: let us annihilate in our wrath, and at one blow, every conspirator, every traitor, that we may not feel the pain, the long torture, of punishing them as kings would do. We this evening send two hundred and thirteen rebels before the thunder of our cannon. Farewell, my friend! tears of joy stream from my eyes, and overflow my heart.—(Signed) FouchÉ."—Moniteur, No. 85.

[438] Guillon de MontlÉon, MÉmoires pour servir À l'Hist. de la Ville de Lyon, tom. ii., p. 405; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 68; Jomini, tom. iv., p. 186; Thiers, tom. v., p. 310; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 109.

[439] The Convention having, by a decree of the 17th March, 1792, come to the determination to substitute decapitation for hanging, this instrument was adopted, on the proposition of Dr. Guillotin, an eminent physician of Paris; who regretted to the hour of his death, in 1814, that his name should have been thus associated with the instrument of so many horrors. He had devised it with a view to humanity.

[440] The fate of Custine illustrates this,—a general who had done much for the Republic, and who, when his fortune began to fail him, excused himself by saying, "Fortune was a woman, and his hairs were growing grey."—S.—He was guillotined in August, 1793.

[441] Witness Houchard, who performed the distinguished service of raising the siege of Dunkirk, and who, during his trial, could be hardly made to understand that he was to suffer for not carrying his victory still farther.—S.—Guillotined, Nov., 1793.

[442] Several generals of reputation sustained capital punishment, from no other reason than the jealousy of the committees of their influence with the army.—S.

[443] Luckner, an old German thick-headed soldier, who was of no party, and scrupulously obeyed the command of whichever was uppermost at Paris, had no better fate than others.—S.—He was guillotined in Nov., 1793.

[444] David is generally allowed to have possessed great merit as a draughtsman. Foreigners do not admire his composition and colouring, so much as his countrymen.—S.

[445] Thiers, tom. iv., p. 6; Mignet, tom. i., p. 248.

[446] Moniteur, No. 995, 25th December, 1793.—S.

[447] Carrier was born at Yolay, near Aurillac, in 1756, and, previous to the Revolution, was an attorney. During his mission to Nantes, not less than thirty-two thousand human beings were destroyed by noyades and fusillades, and by the horrors of crowded and infected prisons. Being accused by Merlin de Thionville, Carnot, and others, he declared to the Convention, 23d November, 1794, that by trying him it would ruin itself, and that if all the crimes committed in its name were to be punished, "not even the little bell of the president was free from guilt." He was convicted of having had children of thirteen and fourteen years old shot, and of having ordered drownings, and this with counter-revolutionary intentions. He ascended the scaffold with firmness and said, "I die a victim and innocent: I only executed the orders of the committees."

[448] See Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 42; Toulongeon, tom. v., p. 120; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 373; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 165; Vie et Crimes de Carrier, par Gracchus Baboeuf; DÉnonciation des Crimes de Carrier, par Philippes Tronjolly; ProcÈs de Carrier; Bulletin du Tribunal RÉvolutionnaire de Nantes.

[449] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 309. "In 1793, a bookseller, (a pure Royalist in 1814,) had this inscription painted over his shop door, 'A Notre Dame de la Guillotine.'"—Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 189.

[450] Ronsin was born at Soissons in 1752. He figured in the early scenes of the Revolution, and in 1789, brought out, at one of the minor Paris theatres, a tragedy called "La Ligue des Fanatiques et des Tyrans," which, though despicable in point of style, had a considerable run. Being denounced by Robespierre, he was guillotined, March 24, 1794. His dramatic pieces have been published under the title of "ThÉÂtre de Ronsin."

[451] Strangers are forcibly affected by the trifling incidents which sometimes recall the memory of those fearful times. A venerable French ecclesiastic being on a visit at a gentleman's house in North Britain, it was remarked by the family, that a favourite cat, rather wild and capricious in its habits, paid particular attention to their guest. It was explained, by the priest giving an account of his lurking in the waste garret, or lumber-room, of an artisan's house, for several weeks. In this condition, he had no better amusement than to study the manners and habits of the cats which frequented his place of retreat, and acquire the mode of conciliating their favour. The difficulty of supplying him with food, without attracting suspicion, was extreme, and it could only be placed near his place of concealment, in small quantities, and at uncertain times. Men, women, and children knew of his being in that place; there were rewards to be gained by discovery, life to be lost by persevering in concealing him; yet he was faithfully preserved, to try upon a Scottish cat, after the restoration of the Monarchy, the arts which he had learned in his miserable place of shelter during the Reign of Terror. The history of the time abounds with similar instances.

[452] Charlotte Corday was born, in 1768, near SÉez, in Normandy. She was twenty-five years of age, and resided at Caen, when she conceived and executed the design of ridding the world of this monster. She reached Paris on the 11th July, and on the 12th wrote a note to Marat, soliciting an interview, and purchased in the Palais Royal a knife to plunge into the bosom of the tyrant. On the 13th, she obtained admission to Marat, whom she found in his bath-room. He enquired after the proscribed deputies at Caen. Being told their names—"They shall soon," he said, "meet with the punishment they deserve."—"Thine is at hand!" exclaimed she, and stabbed him to the heart. She was immediately brought to trial, and executed on the 17th.—Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 47; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 55.—Charlotte Corday was descended, in a direct line, from the great Corneille. See the genealogical table of the Corneille family, prefixed to Lepan's Chefs d'Œuvres de Corneille, tom. v., 8vo, 1816.

[453] Marat was born at Neuchatel in 1744. He was not five feet high. His countenance was equally ferocious and hideous, and his head monstrous in size. "He wore," says Madame Roland, "boots, but no stockings, a pair of old leather breeches, and a white silk waistcoat. His dirty shirt, open at the bosom, exhibited his skin of yellow hue; while his long and dirty nails displayed themselves at his fingers' ends, and his horrid face accorded perfectly with his whimsical dress."—MÉmoires, part i., p. 176.

"After Marat's death, honours, almost divine, were decreed to him. In all the public places in Paris triumphal arches and mausoleums were erected to him: in the Place du Carousel a sort of pyramid was raised in celebration of him, within which were placed his bust, his bathing-tub, his writing desk, and his lamp. The honours of the Pantheon were decreed him, and the poets celebrated him on the stage and in their works. But at last France indignantly broke the busts which his partisans had placed in all the theatres, his filthy remains were torn from the Pantheon, trampled under foot, and dragged through the mud, by the same populace who had deified him."—Biog. Mod., tom. ii., p. 355; Mignet, tom. ii., p. 279.

"In 1774, Marat resided at Edinburgh, where he taught the French language, and published, in English, a volume entitled 'The Chains of Slavery;' a work wherein the clandestine and villanous attempts of princes to ruin liberty are pointed out, and the dreadful scenes of despotism disclosed; to which is prefixed an address to the electors of Great Britain.'"—Biog. Univ.

[454] See Note, ante, p. 264.

[455] "Pache, HÉbert, and Chaumette, the leaders of the municipality, publicly expressed their determination to dethrone the King of Heaven, as well as the kings of the earth!"—Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 300.

[456] Gobel was born at Thann, in Upper Alsace, in 1727. In January, 1791, he took the oath of fidelity to the new constitution, and in March following was installed Bishop of Paris, by the Bishop of Autun, M. de Talleyrand. In April, 1794, he was dragged before the revolutionary tribunal, accused (with Chaumette, and the actor Grammont,) of conspiracy and atheism, and executed. See, in the Annales Catholiques, tom. iii., p. 466, a letter from the AbbÉ Lothringer, one of his vicars, showing that Gobel died penitent.

[457] "On prÉsente le bonnet rouge À Gobel; il le met sur la tÊte. Un grand nombre de membres—'L'accolade À l'ÉvÊque de Paris.'—Le PrÉsident. 'D'aprÈs l'abjuration qui vient d'Être faite, l'ÉvÊque de Paris est un Être de raison: mais je vais embrasser Gobel.'—Le prÉsident donne l'accolade À Gobel."—Moniteur, No. 49, 2d dÉcade de Brumaire, 9th November.

[458] Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 124; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 157. "Gaivernon, one of the constitutional bishops, exclaimed, 'I want no other god, and no other king, but the will of the people.'"—Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 302.

[459] A Mademoiselle Maillard, at that time the mistress of Mormoro.

[460] "The goddess, after receiving the fraternal hug of the president, was mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted, amidst an immense crowd, to the church of Notre-Dame, to take the place of the Holy of Holies. Thenceforward that ancient and imposing cathedral was called 'the Temple of Reason.'"—Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 306; Thiers, tom. v., p. 342; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 124.

[461] "C'est ici l'asile du sommeil eternel."

[462] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 333.

[463] Sophie Arnould, born at Paris in 1740, was not less celebrated for her native wit than her talents on the stage. Shortly after her death, in 1803, appeared "Arnouldiana, ou Sophie Arnould et ses contemporaires."

[464] This miserable visionary passed herself off at one time as the mother of God, and at another as a second Eve, destined to regenerate mankind. In 1794, she was arrested and sent to the Conciergerie, where she died, at the age of seventy.—See Les MystÈres de la MÈre de Dieu devoilÉs, in the Collection des MÉmoires relatifs À la Rev. FranÇ., tom. xx., p. 271.

[465] This aged lunatic, who fancied herself to be with child of a new Messiah, died in 1815.

[466] See ante, p. 109.

[467] Gerle was imprisoned in the Conciergerie, but liberated through the interference of Robespierre. He was employed, during the reign of Napoleon, in the office of the home department.

[468] Chaumette was born at Nevers in 1763. For some time he was employed as a transcriber by the journalist Prudhomme, who describes him as a very ignorant man. In 1792, he was appointed attorney of the Commune of Paris, upon which occasion he changed his patronymic of Pierre-Gaspard for that of Anaxagoras—"a saint," he said, "who had been hanged for his republicanism." He it was who prepared the charges and arranged the evidence against Marie Antoinette. On being committed to the prison of the Luxembourg, "he appeared," says the author of the Tableau des Prisons de Paris, "oppressed with shame, like a fox taken in a net: he hung his head, his eye was mournful and cast down, his countenance sad, his voice soft and supplicating. He was no longer the terrible attorney of the Commune." He was guillotined, 13th April, 1794, with the apostate bishop, Gobel, and the actor Grammont.

[469] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 363.

[470] "Such was the public avidity to witness the execution of HÉbert and his companions, that considerable sums were realized by the sale of seats. HÉbert wept from weakness, and made no attempt to conceal his terrors. He sunk down at every step; while the populace, who had so recently endeavoured to deliver him from the fangs of the Convention, loaded him with execrations, mimicking the cry of the newsmen who hawked his journal about the streets."—Thiers, tom. vi., p. 142.

[471] Of the pamphlet, entitled "Le Vieux Cordelier," one hundred thousand copies, Lacretelle says, were sold in a few days. It was reprinted, in 1825, in the Collection des MÉmoires sur la RÉvolution.

[472] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 308; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 189.

[473] "Sneak into exile!" said he, "can a man carry his country at the sole of his shoe?"—Thiers, tom. vi., p. 148.

[474] Riouffe, a fellow captive, states, that when Danton entered his prison, he exclaimed, "At last I perceive, that in revolutions the supreme power rests with the most abandoned."—MÉmoires, p. 67.

"Seeing Thomas Payne, he said to him, 'What you have accomplished for the happiness and freedom of your country, I have in vain endeavoured to effect for mine. I have been less successful, but am not more culpable.' At another time he exclaimed, 'It is just about a year since I was the means of instituting the revolutionary tribunal. I ask pardon of God and man for what I did: my object was to prevent a new September, and not to let loose a scourge of humanity.' ... 'My treacherous brethren (mes frÈres CaÏn) understand nothing of government: I leave every thing in frightful confusion.' ... 'It were better to be a poor fisherman than a ruler of men.'"—Thiers, tom. vi., p. 155; Mignet, tom. ii., p. 312.

[475] La Croix was born, in 1754, at Pont-Audemer. His destruction being resolved on by Robespierre, he was arrested with Danton, 31st March, and executed 5th April, 1794. When the act of accusation was brought, Danton asked him what he said to it. "That I am going to cut off my hair," said he, "that Samson [the executioner] may not touch it."

[476] Boyer FonfrÈde was born at Bordeaux. Being appointed deputy from the Gironde to the Convention, he vigorously opposed Marat and the Mountain. He escaped the first proscription of the Girondists, but perished on the scaffold in 1793.

[477] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 380.

[478] Camille Desmoulins was born at Guise in 1762, and educated with Robespierre, at the College of Louis-le-Grand. He it was who, in 1789, began the practice of collecting groups of people to harangue them in the streets, and who advised the revolutionists to distinguish themselves by a badge. Hence the tricolor cockade. After the taking of the Bastile, he published, under the name of "Attorney-General of the Lantern," a periodical paper, called "RÉvolutions de France et de Brabant." "It must not, however," says M. Dumont, "be imagined, that he excited the people to use the lantern-posts instead of the gallows, an abomination attributed to him by Bertrand de Moleville—quite the reverse: he pointed out the danger and injustice of such summary executions, but in a tone of lightness and badinage, by no means in keeping with so serious a subject. Camille appeared to me what is called a good fellow; of rather exaggerated feelings, devoid of reflection or judgment, as ignorant as he was unthinking, not deficient in wit, but in politics possessing not even the first elements of reason."—P. 135. On his trial, being interrogated as to his age, he answered, "I am thirty-three, the same age as the Sans-Culotte Jesus Christ when he died." On the day of execution he made the most violent efforts to avoid getting into the fatal cart. His shirt was in tatters, and his shoulders bare; his eyes glared, his mouth foamed at the moment when he was bound, and on seeing the scaffold, he exclaimed, "This, then, is the reward reserved for the first apostle of liberty!" His wife, a beautiful creature, by whom he was tenderly beloved, was arrested a few days after his death, and sent to the scaffold.—Thiers, tom. vi., p. 169; Biog. Mod., tom. i., p. 364; Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 380.

[479] HÉrault SÉchelles was born at Paris in 1760. He began his career at the bar, by holding the office of King's advocate at the ChÂtelet; and afterwards, by the patronage of the Queen, was appointed advocate-general. Shortly before his arrest he was offered a retreat in Switzerland, and a passport, in a fictitious name, from the agent of BÂle, but his answer was, "I would gladly accept the offer, if I could carry my native country with me." He published "Visite À Buffon," "ThÉorie de l'Ambition," and "Rapports sur la Constitution," &c., 1793.

[480] Fabre d'Eglantine, born at Carcassonne in 1755, was in early life an actor, and performed at Versailles, Brussels, and Lyons, but with moderate success. As an author he discovered considerable talent; the latter part of his name being assumed, in memory of a prize which he had won in his youth. His most successful production was a comedy, entitled, "Le Philinte de MoliÈre, ou La Suite du Misanthrope," in which he has traced the beau idÉal of an honest man. His "[OE]uvres MÊlÉes et Posthumes," were published, in two volumes, in 1802. One of the things that seemed most to trouble him after his arrest was, that he had left among his papers an unpublished comedy called "L'Orange de Malte," which he considered better than his "Philinte," and which he feared Billaud-Varennes would get hold of, and publish as his own. Mercier, his colleague, says of him, "I do not know whether Fabre's hands were stained by the lavishing of money not his own, but I know that he was a promoter of assassinations; poor before the 2d of September, 1792, he had afterwards an hotel, and carriages, and servants, and women." "As to Fabre," says Madame Roland, "muffled in a cowl, armed with a poniard, and employed in forging plots to defame the innocent, or to ruin the rich, whose wealth he covets, he is so perfectly in character, that whoever would paint the most abandoned hypocrite, need only draw his portrait in that dress."

[481] Westermann was born in 1764, at Molsheim, in Alsace. In December, 1792, he was denounced to the Convention, upon proof, as having, in 1786, stolen some silver plate from a coffee-house. "In La VendÉe," says Prudhomme, "he ran from massacre to massacre, sparing neither adversaries taken in arms, nor the peaceful inhabitants." M. Beauchamp says that "he delighted in carnage, and would throw off his coat, tuck up his sleeves, and then, with his sabre, rush into the crowd, and hew about him to the right and left. But from the moment that he apprehended death, his dreams were of the horrors which he had perpetrated."

[482] "On the way to execution, Danton cast a calm and contemptuous look around him. Arrived at the steps of the scaffold, he advanced to embrace HÉrault SÉchelles, who held out his arms to receive him; the executioner interposing, 'What!' said he, with a smile of scorn, 'are you, then, more cruel than death? Begone! you cannot prevent our heads from soon uniting in that basket.' For a moment he was softened, and said, 'Oh! my beloved! oh, my wife, I shall never see thee more!' but instantly checking himself, exclaimed, 'Danton, no weakness!' and ascended the scaffold."—Thiers, tom. vi., p. 169; Biog. Mod., tom. i., p. 332.

[483] It has been said, that when Danton observed Fabre d'Eglantine beginning to look gloomy, he cheered him with a play on words: "Courage, my friend, we are all about to take up your trade—Nous allons faire des vers."

[484] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 382.

[485] When we read such miserable stuff, and consider the crimes which such oratory occasioned, it reminds us of the opinion of a Mahomedan doctor, who assured Bruce that the Degial, or Antichrist, was to appear in the form of an ass, and that multitudes were to follow him to hell, attracted by the music of his braying.—S.

[486] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 291.

[487] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 197.

[488] Poor Anacharsis Clootz! He had been expelled from the Jacobin Club as a Prussian, an ex-noble, and, what perhaps was not previously suspected, a person of fortune enough to be judged an aristocrat. His real offence was being a HÉbertist, and he suffered accordingly with the leaders of that party.—This note was rather unnecessary; but Anacharsis Clootz was, in point of absurdity, one of the most inimitable personages in the Revolution.—S.—See ante, p. 139.

[489] "The most indecent irreligion served as a lever for the subversion of the social order. There was a kind of consistency in founding crime upon impiety; it is an homage paid to the intimate union of religious opinions with morality. Robespierre conceived the idea of celebrating a festival in honour of the Supreme Being, flattering himself, doubtless, with being able to rest his political ascendency on a religion arranged according to his own notions; as those have frequently done who have wished to seize the supreme power. But, in the procession of this impious festival, he bethought himself of walking the first, in order to mark his pre-eminence; and from that time he was lost."—Mad. de StaËl, vol. ii., p. 142.

[490] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 268; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 15; Mignet, tom. ii., p. 322; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 207.

[491] "Lecointre de Versailles, stepping up to him, said, 'I like your festival, Robespierre, but you I detest mortally.' Bourdon de l'Oise reminded him of Mirabeau's famous saying, 'the Capitol is near the Tarpeian rock;' many among the crowd muttered the word 'Tyrant' adding, 'there are still Brutuses;' and when, in the course of his speech, he said, 'It is the Great Eternal who has placed in the bosom of the oppressor the sensation of remorse and terror;' a powerful voice exclaimed, 'True! Robespierre, very true!'"—Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 18.

[492] This unheard-of iniquity is stated in the report of the committee appointed to examine Robespierre's papers, of which Courtois was the reporter. It is rather a curious circumstance that, about the time of CÉcile Regnault's adventure, there appeared, at a masked ball at London, a character dressed like the spectre of Charlotte Corday, come, as she said, to seek Robespierre, and inflict on him the doom of Marat.—S.

[493] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 322; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 10; Biog. Mod., tom. iii., p. 149.

[494] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 291; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 53.

[495] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 22.

[496] See it in Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 23.

[497] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 30; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 273.

[498] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 307.

[499] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 61.

[500] "Robespierre was a fanatic, a monster, but he was incorruptible, and incapable of robbing, or of causing the deaths of others, from a desire of enriching himself. He was an enthusiast, but one who believed that he was acting right, and died not worth a sous."—Napoleon, Voice from St. Helena, vol. ii., p. 170.

[501] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 328; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 71.

[502] "I know," said Henriot, "the road to the Convention."—"Go," said Robespierre, "separate the wicked from the weak; deliver the Assembly from the wretches who enthral it. March! you may yet save liberty!"—Thiers, tom. vi., p. 337.

[503] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 85.

[504] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 86.

[505] Thuriot, whom Robespierre had repeatedly threatened with death.

[506] Garnier de l'Aube.

[507] Thiers, tom. vi., p. 344; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 94; Mignet, tom. ii., p. 339; Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 382; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 249.

[508] "Young Robespierre had but recently returned from the army of Italy, whither he had been sent by the Convention on a mission. He earnestly pressed Buonaparte to accompany him to Paris. 'Had I followed young Robespierre,' said Napoleon, 'how different might have been my career. On what trivial circumstances does human fate depend!'"—Las Cases, vol. i., p. 348.

[509] Baron MÉda, then a simple gendarme, states, in his "PrÉcis Historique," that it was the discharge of his pistol that broke Robespierre's jaw.—See Collection des MÉmoires RÉv., tom. xlii., p. 384.

[510] Toulongeon, tom. iv., p. 390; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 257; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 360; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 117.

[511] It did not escape the minute observers of this scene, that he still held in his hand the bag which had contained the fatal pistol, and which was inscribed with the words Au grand Monarque, alluding to the sign, doubtless, of the gunsmith who sold the weapon, but singularly applicable to the high pretensions of the purchaser.—S.—See Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 257.

[512] The horsemen who escorted him showed him to the spectators with the point of their sabres. The mob stopped him before the house in which he lived; some women danced before the cart, and one of them cried out to him, "Murderer of all my kindred, thy agony fills me with joy; descend to hell, with the curses of all wives, mothers, and children!"—Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 119; Biog. Mod., vol. i., p. 179.

[513] The fate of no tyrant in story was so hideous at the conclusion, excepting perhaps that of Jugurtha.—S.

[514] "Couthon was born at Orsay in 1756. Before the Revolution he had been distinguished for the gentleness, as well as the integrity of his character. Owing to the malformation of his lower limbs, it was difficult to fasten him to the moving plank of the guillotine; and the executioner was at last obliged to lay him on his side to receive the blow."—Biog. Mod., vol. i., p. 309.

[515] "Coffinhal was born at Aurillac in 1746. He it was who, when Lavoisier requested that his death might be delayed a fortnight, in order that he might finish some important experiments, made answer that the Republic had no need of scholars and chemists."—Biog. Univ.

[516] On the very day of his arrest he had signed the warrant for putting sixty persons to death. In the confusion, no person thought of arresting the guillotine. They all suffered.

[517] The following is M. Dumont's report of Robespierre's maiden speech in the National Assembly:—

"I cannot forget the occasion on which a man, who afterwards acquired a fatal celebrity, first brought himself into notice. The clergy were endeavouring, by a subterfuge, to obtain a conference of the orders; and for this purpose deputed the Archbishop of Aix to the Tiers Etat. This prelate expatiated very pathetically upon the distresses of the people, and the poverty of the country parishes. He produced a piece of black bread, which a dog would have rejected, but which the poor were obliged to eat or starve. He besought the Assembly to appoint some members to confer with those deputed by the nobility and clergy, upon the means of bettering the condition of the indigent classes. The Tiers Etat perceived the snare, but dared not openly reject the proposal, as it would render them unpopular with the lower classes. Then a deputy rose, and after professing sentiments in favour of the poor still stronger than those of the prelate, adroitly threw doubts upon the sincerity of the intentions avowed by the clergy. 'Go,' said he to the archbishop, 'and tell your colleagues, that if they are so impatient to assist the suffering poor, they had better come hither and join the friends of the people. Tell them no longer to embarrass our proceedings with affected delays; tell them no longer to endeavour, by unworthy means, to make us swerve from the resolutions we have taken; but as ministers of religion—as worthy imitators of their master—let them forego that luxury which surrounds them, and that splendour which puts indigence to the blush;—let them resume the modesty of their origin, discharge the proud lackeys by whom they are attended, sell their superb equipages, and convert all their superfluous wealth into food for the indigent.'

"This speech, which coincided so well with the passions of the time, did not elicit loud applause, which would have been a bravado and out of place, but was succeeded by a murmur much more flattering: 'Who is he?' was the general question; but he was unknown; and it was not until some time had elapsed that a name was circulated which, three years later, made France tremble. The speaker was Robespierre. Reybas, who was seated next to me, observed, 'This young man is as yet unpractised; he does not know when to stop, but he has a store of eloquence which will not leave him in the crowd."—Souvenirs de Mirabeau, p. 49.

[518] "Robespierre had been a studious youth and a respectable man, and his character contributed not a little to the ascendency which he obtained over rivals, some of whom were corrupt, others impudently profligate, and of whom there were few who had any pretensions to morality. He became bloody, because a revolutionist soon learns to consider human lives as the counters with which he plays his perilous game; and he perished after he had cut off every man who was capable of directing the republic, because they who had committed the greatest abominations of the Revolution united against him, that they might secure themselves, and wash their hands in his blood."—Quarterly Review, vol. vii., p. 432.

Robespierre wrote, in 1785, an Essay against the Punishment of Death, which gained the prize awarded by the Royal Society of Metz.

[519]

Passant! ne pleure point son sort:
Car s'il vivait, tu serais mort.

[520] Mercier, in his Nouveau Tableau de Paris, has devoted a chapter to this personage. "What a man," he says, "is that Samson! Insensible to suffering, he was always identified with the axe of execution. He has beheaded the most powerful monarch in Europe, his Queen, Couthon, Brissot, Robespierre—and all this with a composed countenance. He cuts off the head that is brought to him, no matter whose. What does he say? What does he think? I should like to know what passes in his head, and whether he has considered his terrible functions only as a trade. The more I meditate on this man, the president of the great massacre of the human species, overthrowing crowned heads like that of the purest republican, without moving a muscle, the more my ideas are confounded. How did he sleep, after receiving the last words, the last looks of all these severed heads? I really would give a trifle to be in the soul of this man for a few hours. He sleeps, it is said, and, very likely, his conscience may be at perfect rest. He is sometimes present at the Vaudeville: he laughs, looks at me; my head has escaped him, he knows nothing about it; and as that is very indifferent to him, I never grow weary of contemplating in him the indifference with which he has sent that crowd of men to the other world."

[521] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 204; Chateaubriand, Etud. Hist., tom. i., p. 102; Prudhomme, Victimes de la RÉv., tom. ii., p. 274. On the scaffold, when the red shirt was thrown over him, he exclaimed, "It is not I who should put it on: it should be sent to the Convention, for I have only executed their orders."—Biog. Mod., vol. ii., p. 267.

[522] She was the daughter of Count Cabarus. During her imprisonment, she had formed a close intimacy with Josephine Beauharnais, afterwards the wife of Napoleon. These ladies were the first to proscribe the revolutionary manners, and seized every opportunity of saving those whom the existing government wished to immolate. The marriage of Madame Fontenai with Tallien was not a happy one. On his return from Egypt, a separation took place, and in 1805 she married M. de Caraman, prince of Chemai.

[523] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 131.

[524] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 138.

[525] "In the space of eight or ten days, out of ten thousand suspected persons, not one remained in the prisons of Paris."—Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 145.

[526] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 147.

[527] Toulongeon, tom. v., p. 119; Thiers, tom. vii., p. 117; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 162; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 301.

[528] "Briser leurs membres, et boire leur sang."—Thiers, tom. vii., p. 121. "Nager dans leur sang."—Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 157.

[529] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 154.

[530] Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 177.

[531] Fouquier-Tainville made an able defence, which he concluded with saying, "I was but the axe of the Convention, and would you punish an axe?" Mercier says, "while standing before the Tribunal, from which he had condemned so many victims, he kept constantly writing; but, like Argus, all eyes and ears, he lost nothing that was said or done. He affected to sleep during the public accuser's recapitulation, as if to feign tranquillity, while he had hell in his heart. When led to execution, he answered the hisses of the populace by sinister predictions. At the foot of the scaffold he seemed, for the first time, to feel remorse, and trembled as he ascended it." In early life, Fouquier scribbled poetry for the journals. Some verses of his, in praise of Louis XVI., will be found in the notes to Delille's "La PitiÉ."

[532] Vadier contrived to conceal himself in Paris, and thereby avoided his sentence. He continued to reside in the capital up to the law of the 12th January, 1816, when he was compelled to quit France. He died at Brussels, in 1828, at the age of ninety-three.

[533] BarrÈre contrived to be left behind, at the isle of OlÈron, when his colleagues sailed for Cayenne; upon which Boursault observed, that "it was the first time he had ever failed to sail with the wind." He also remained in France, till the law of January, 1816, compelled him to leave it.

[534] M. Piton, who, in 1797, was himself transported to Cayenne by the Directory gives, in his "Voyage À Cayenne," the following account of the death of Collot d'Herbois:—"He was lying upon the ground, his face exposed to a burning sun, in a raging fever—the negroes, who were appointed to bear him from Kouron to Cayenne, having thrown him down to perish; a surgeon, who found him in this situation, asked him what ailed him, he replied, 'J'ai la fiÈvre, et une sueur brulante!'—'Je le crois bien, vous suez le crime,' was the bitter rejoinder. He expired, vomiting froth and blood, calling upon that God whom he had so often renounced!" M. Piton describes Collot as not naturally wicked,—"Il avait d'excellentes qualitÉs du cotÉ du coeur, beaucoup de clinquant du cotÉ de l'esprit; un caractÈre faible et irascible À l'excÈs; gÉnÉreux sans bornes, bon ami, et ennemi implacable. La RÉvolution a fait sa perte."

[535] "After Billaud-Varennes reached Cayenne, his life was a continued scene of romantic adventures. He escaped to Mexico, and entered, under the name of Polycarpus Varennes, the Dominican convent at Porto Ricco. Obliged to flee the continent for the part he took in the disputes between the Spanish colonies and the mother country, Pethion, then president of Hayti, not only afforded him an asylum, but made him his secretary. After Pethion's death, Boyer refusing to employ him, he went to the United States, and died at Philadelphia in 1819."—Biog. Univ.

[536] "They held up to him the bloody head of Ferraud; he turned aside with horror: they again presented it, and he bowed before the remains of the martyr; nor would he quit the chair till compelled by the efforts of his friends; and the insurgents, awed with respect, allowed him to retire unmolested."—Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 221.

[537] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 370; Thiers, tom. vii., p. 371; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 220.

[538] Romme, Bourbotte, Duquesnoy, Duroi, Soubrani, and Goujon. Five out of the six had voted for the death of the King.—See Mignet, tom. ii., p. 373; Montgaillard, tom. iv., p. 335; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 230.

[539] At the theatres the favourite air "Le Reveil du Peuple," was called for several times in the course of an evening. The law of the maximum, and the prohibitions against Christian worship were repealed; and this was followed by an act restoring to the families of those executed during the Revolution such part of their property as had not been disposed of.—Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 182.

[540] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 356; Lacretelle, tom. xii., p. 174.

[541]

"Riches, in effect,
No grace of Heav'n or token of th' Elect;
Giv'n to the fool, the mad, the vain, the evil,
To Ward, to Waters, Chartres, and the Devil."

Pope.

[542] Jomini, tom. iv., p. 22; Mignet, tom. ii., p. 287.

[543] Dumouriez, vol. i., p. 398.

[544] Such was the fate of Moreau, who, on the eve of one of his most distinguished victories, had to receive the news that his father had been beheaded.—S.

[545] The risk was considered as a matter of course. Madame La Roche-Jacquelein informs us that General Quentineau, a Republican officer who had behaved with great humanity in La VendÉe, having fallen into the hands of the insurgents, was pressed by L'Escure, who commanded them, not to return to Paris. "I know the difference of our political opinions," said the Royalist, "but why should you deliver up your life to those men with whom want of success will be a sufficient reason for abridging it?"—"You say truly," replied Quentineau; "but as a man of honour, I must present myself in defence of my conduct wherever it may be impeached." He went, and perished by the guillotine accordingly.—S.—MÉmoires, p. 130.

[546] Carnot's MÉmoires, p. 230.

[547] Carnot, p. 255; Thibaudeau, tom. i., p. 37.

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