Chapter 3: 4.V

Sword of Sharpness.

In fact it is something quite other than paper theorems, it is
iron and audacity that France now needs.

Is not La Vendée still blazing;—alas too literally; rogue
Rossignol burning the very corn-mills? General Santerre could do
nothing there; General Rossignol, in blind fury, often in liquor,
can do less than nothing. Rebellion spreads, grows ever madder.
Happily those lean Quixote-figures, whom we saw retreating out of
Mentz, “bound not to serve against the Coalition for a year,”
have got to Paris. National Convention packs them into
post-vehicles and conveyances; sends them swiftly, by post, into
La Vendée! There valiantly struggling, in obscure battle and
skirmish, under rogue Rossignol, let them, unlaurelled, save the
Republic, and “be cut down gradually to the last man.”[674]

Does not the Coalition, like a fire-tide, pour in; Prussia
through the opened North-East; Austria, England through the
North-West? General Houchard prospers no better there than
General Custine did: let him look to it! Through the Eastern and
the Western Pyrenees Spain has deployed itself; spreads, rustling
with Bourbon banners, over the face of the South. Ashes and
embers of confused Girondin civil war covered that region
already. Marseilles is damped down, not quenched; to be quenched
in blood. Toulon, terrorstruck, too far gone for turning, has
flung itself, ye righteous Powers,—into the hands of the English!
On Toulon Arsenal there flies a Flag,—nay not even the
Fleur-de-lys of a Louis Pretender; there flies that accursed St.
George’s Cross of the English and Admiral Hood! What remnants of
sea-craft, arsenals, roperies, war-navy France had, has given
itself to these enemies of human nature, “_ennemis du genre
humain_.” Beleaguer it, bombard it, ye Commissioners Barras,
Fréron, Robespierre Junior; thou General Cartaux, General
Dugommier; above all, thou remarkable Artillery-Major, Napoleon
Buonaparte! Hood is fortifying himself, victualling himself;
means, apparently, to make a new Gibraltar of it.

But lo, in the Autumn night, late night, among the last of
August, what sudden red sunblaze is this that has risen over
Lyons City; with a noise to deafen the world? It is the
Powder-tower of Lyons, nay the Arsenal with four Powder-towers,
which has caught fire in the Bombardment; and sprung into the
air, carrying “a hundred and seventeen houses” after it. With a
light, one fancies, as of the noon sun; with a roar second only
to the Last Trumpet! All living sleepers far and wide it has
awakened. What a sight was that, which the eye of History saw, in
the sudden nocturnal sunblaze! The roofs of hapless Lyons, and
all its domes and steeples made momentarily clear; Rhone and
Saone streams flashing suddenly visible; and height and hollow,
hamlet and smooth stubblefield, and all the region
round;—heights, alas, all scarped and counterscarped, into
trenches, curtains, redouts; blue Artillery-men, little
Powder-devilkins, plying their hell-trade there, through the
_not_ ambrosial night! Let the darkness cover it again; for it
pains the eye. Of a truth, Chalier’s death is costing this City
dear. Convention Commissioners, Lyons Congresses have come and
gone; and action there was and reaction; bad ever growing worse;
till it has come to this: Commissioner Dubois-Crancé, “with
seventy thousand men, and all the Artillery of several
Provinces,” bombarding Lyons day and night.

Worse things still are in store. Famine is in Lyons, and ruin,
and fire. Desperate are the sallies of the besieged; brave Précy,
their National Colonel and Commandant, doing what is in man:
desperate but ineffectual. Provisions cut off; nothing entering
our city but shot and shells! The Arsenal has roared aloft; the
very Hospital will be battered down, and the sick buried alive. A
Black Flag hung on this latter noble Edifice, appealing to the
pity of the beseigers; for though maddened, were they not still
our brethren? In their blind wrath, they took it for a flag of
defiance, and aimed thitherward the more. Bad is growing ever
worse here: and how will the worse stop, till it have grown worst
of all? Commissioner Dubois will listen to no pleading, to no
speech, save this only, “We surrender at discretion.” Lyons
contains in it subdued Jacobins; dominant Girondins; secret
Royalists. And now, mere deaf madness and cannon-shot enveloping
them, will not the desperate Municipality fly, at last, into the
arms of Royalism itself? Majesty of Sardinia was to bring help,
but it failed. Emigrant Autichamp, in name of the Two Pretender
Royal Highnesses, is coming through Switzerland with help;
coming, not yet come: Précy hoists the Fleur-de-lys!

At sight of which, all true Girondins sorrowfully fling down
their arms:—Let our Tricolor brethren storm us, then, and slay us
in their wrath: with _you_ we conquer not. The famishing women
and children are sent forth: deaf Dubois sends them back;—rains
in mere fire and madness. Our “redouts of cotton-bags” are taken,
retaken; Précy under his Fleur-de-lys is valiant as Despair. What
will become of Lyons? It is a siege of seventy days.[675]

Or see, in these same weeks, far in the Western waters: breasting
through the Bay of Biscay, a greasy dingy little Merchantship,
with Scotch skipper; under hatches whereof sit, disconsolate,—the
last forlorn nucleus of Girondism, the Deputies from Quimper!
Several have dissipated themselves, whithersoever they could.
Poor Riouffe fell into the talons of Revolutionary Committee, and
Paris Prison. The rest sit here under hatches; reverend Pétion
with his grey hair, angry Buzot, suspicious Louvet, brave young
Barbaroux, and others. They have escaped from Quimper, in this
sad craft; are now tacking and struggling; in danger from the
waves, in danger from the English, in still worse danger from the
French;—banished by Heaven and Earth to the greasy belly of this
Scotch skipper’s Merchant-vessel, unfruitful Atlantic raving
round. They are for Bourdeaux, if peradventure hope yet linger
there. Enter not Bourdeaux, O Friends! Bloody Convention
Representatives, Tallien and such like, with their Edicts, with
their Guillotine, have arrived there; Respectability is driven
under ground; Jacobinism lords it on high. From that Réole
landingplace, or _Beak of Ambès_, as it were, Pale Death, waving
his Revolutionary Sword of sharpness, waves you elsewhither!

On one side or the other of that Bec d’Ambès, the Scotch Skipper
with difficulty moors, a dexterous greasy man; with difficulty
lands his Girondins;—who, after reconnoitring, must rapidly
burrow in the Earth; and so, in subterranean ways, in friends’
back-closets, in cellars, barn-lofts, in Caves of Saint-Emilion
and Libourne, stave off cruel Death.[676] Unhappiest of all
Senators!