Chapter XXXIV: The Jacobins Triumphant

Views of the Girondists.--Anecdote of Vergniaud.--The
Girondists brought to Trial.--Suicide of Valaze.--Anguish
of Desmoulins.--Fonfrede and Ducos.--Last Supper of the
Girondists.--Their Execution.--The Duke of Orleans;
his Execution.--Activity of the Guillotine.--Humane
Legislation.--Testimony of Desodoards.--Anacharsis Cloots.--The New
Era.

The Jacobins now resolved to free themselves from all internal foes, that they might more vigorously cope with all Europe in arms against them. Marie Antoinette was executed the 16th of October. On the 22d, the Girondists, twenty-two in number, were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. They were the most illustrious men of the most noble party to which the Revolution had given birth. They had demolished a despotic throne that they might establish a constitutional monarchy upon the model of that of England.[402] With great generosity they had placed Louis XVI. on that throne, and he had feigned to accept the Constitution. But with hypocrisy which even his subsequent woes can not obliterate, he secretly rallied his nobles around him, or rather allowed them to use him as their leader, and appealed to the armies of foreign despotisms to overthrow the free Constitution and re-establish the old feudal tyranny.

"The question thenceforth was, whether their sons should, as in times past (as in Mr. Burke's splendid Age of Chivalry), be sent to manure Europe with their bodies, in wars undertaken at the nod of a courtesan--whether their wives and daughters, cursed with beauty enough to excite a transient emotion of sensuality, should be lured and torn from them and debauched--whether every man who dared to utter a manly political thought or to assert his rights against rank should be imprisoned at pleasure without a hearing--whether the toiling masses, for the purpose of supporting lascivious splendor, of building _Parcs aux Cerfs_, of pensioning discarded mistresses, of swiftly enriching corrupt favorites and minions of every stamp, should be so taxed that the light and air of heaven hardly came to them untaxed, and that they should be so sunk by exactions of every kind in the dregs of indigence that a short crop compelled them to live on food that the hounds, if not the swine, of their task-masters would reject; and, finally, whether, when, in the bloody sweat of their agony, they asked some mitigation of their hard fate, they should be answered by the bayonets of foreign mercenaries; and a people--stout manhood, gentle womanhood, gray-haired age, and tender infancy, turned their pale faces upward and shrieked for food, fierce, licentious nobles should scornfully bid them eat grass."[403]

In this terrible dilemma, the Girondists felt compelled to abandon the newly-established Constitutional monarchy, which had proved treacherous to its trust, and to fall back upon a republic, as their only asylum from destruction, and as the only possible refuge for French liberty. But the populace of France, ignorant and irreligious, were unfitted for a republic. Universal suffrage threw the power into the hands of millions of newly-emancipated slaves. Violence and blood commenced their reign. The Girondists in vain endeavored to stem the flood. They were overwhelmed. Such is their brief history.

The Girondists had been for some time confined in the dungeons of the Conciergerie. They were in a state of extreme misery. Vergniaud, one of the most noble and eloquent of men, was their recognized leader. His brother-in-law, M. Alluaud, came to the prison to bring him some money. A child of M. Alluaud, ten years of age, accompanied his father. Seeing his uncle with sunken eyes and haggard cheeks and disordered hair, and with his garments falling in tatters around him, the child was terrified, and, bursting into tears, clung to his father's knees.

"My child," said Vergniaud, taking him in his lap, "look well at me. When you are a man you can say that you saw Vergniaud, the founder of the Republic, at the most glorious period, and in the most splendid costume he ever wore--that in which he suffered the persecution of wretches, and in which he prepared to die for liberty."

The child remembered these words, and repeated them fifty years after to Lamartine. At ten o'clock in the morning of the 26th of October the accused were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Two files of _gens d'armes_ conducted them into the hall of audience and placed them on the prisoners' bench.[404] The _act of accusation_, drawn up by Robespierre and St. Just,[405] from an exceedingly envenomed pamphlet written by Camille Desmoulins, entitled _History of the Faction of the Gironde_, was long and bitter. The trial lasted several days.

On the 30th of October, at eight o'clock in the evening, the debate was closed. At midnight they were summoned to the bar to hear the verdict of the jury. It declared them all guilty of treason, and condemned them to die in the morning. One of the condemned, Valaze, immediately plunged a concealed poniard into his heart, and fell dead upon the floor. Camille Desmoulins, on hearing the verdict, was overwhelmed with remorse, and cried out,

"It is my pamphlet which has killed them. Wretch that I am, I can not bear the sight of my work. I feel their blood fall on the hand that has denounced them."

There were two brothers, Fonfrede and Ducos, among the condemned, sitting side by side, both under twenty-eight years of age. Fonfrede threw his arms around the neck of Ducos, and bursting into tears said,

"My dear brother, I cause your death; but we shall die together."

Vergniaud sat in silence, with an expression of proud defiance and contempt. Lasource repeated the sententious saying of one of the ancients, "I die on the day when the people have lost their reason. You will die when they have recovered it." As they left the court to return to their cells, there to prepare for the guillotine, they spontaneously struck up together the hymn of the Marseillais:

"Allons, enfans de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrive;
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'etendard sanglant est leve."[406]

As they passed along the corridors of the prison, their sublime requiem echoed along the gloomy vaults, and awoke the sleepers in the deepest dungeons. They were all placed in one large room opening into several cells. The lifeless body of Valaze was deposited in one of the corners; for, by a decree of the Tribunal, his remains were to be taken in the cart of the condemned to be beheaded with the rest. A sumptuous banquet was sent in to them by their friends as their last repast. The table was richly spread, decorated with flowers, and supplied with all the delicacies which Paris could furnish. A Constitutional priest, the Abbe Lambert, a friend of the Girondists, had obtained admission to the prison, to administer to them the last supports of religion and to accompany them to the guillotine. To him we are indebted for the record of these last scenes.

Vergniaud, thirty-five years of age, presided. He had but little to bind him to life, having neither father nor mother, wife nor child. In quietness and with subdued tones they partook of their repast. When the cloth was removed, and the flowers and the wine alone remained, the conversation became more animated. The young men attempted with songs and affected gayety to disarm death of its terror; but Vergniaud, rallying to his aid his marvelous eloquence, endeavored to recall them to more worthy thoughts.

"My friends," said he, sorrowing more over the misfortunes of the Republic than over his own, "we have killed the tree by pruning it. It was too aged. The soil is too weak to nourish the roots of civic, liberty. This people is too childish to wield its laws without hurting itself. It will return to its kings as babes return to their toys. We were deceived as to the age in which we were born and in which we die for the freedom of the world."

"What shall we be doing to-morrow at this time?" asked Ducos. Each answered according to his skepticism or his faith. Vergniaud again spake. "Never," says the Abbe Lambert, "had his look, his gesture, his language, and his voice more profoundly affected his hearers." His discourse was of the immortality of the soul, to which all listened deeply moved, and many wept.

A few rays of morning light now began to struggle in at their dungeon windows. The executioners soon entered to cut off their hair and robe them for the scaffold. At ten o'clock they were marched in a column to the gate of the prison, where carts, surrounded by an immense crowd, awaited them. As they entered the carts they all commenced singing in chorus the Marseilles Hymn, and continued the impassioned strains until they reached the scaffold. One after another they ascended the scaffold. Sillery was the first who ascended. He was bound to the plank, but continued in a full, strong voice to join in the song, till the glittering axe glided down the groove and his head dropped into the basket. Each one followed his example. The song grew fainter as head after head fell, till at last one voice only remained. It was that of Vergniaud. As he was bound to the plank he commenced anew the strain,

"Allons, enfans de la patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive."

The axe fell, and the lips of Vergniaud were silent in death. In thirty-one minutes the executioner had beheaded them all. Their bodies were thrown into one cart, and were cast into a grave by the side of that of Louis XVI.[407]

On the 6th of November the Duke of Orleans was taken from prison and led before the Tribunal. As there was no serious charge to be brought against him, he had not apprehended condemnation. But he was promptly doomed to die. As he was conducted back to his cell to prepare for immediate death, he exclaimed, in the utmost excitement of indignation,

"The wretches! I have given them all--rank, fortune, ambition, honor, the future reputation of my house--and this is the recompense they reserve for me!"

At three o'clock he was placed in the cart with three other condemned prisoners. The prince was elegantly attired and all eyes were riveted upon him. With an air of indifference he gazed upon the crowd, saying nothing which could reveal the character of his thoughts. On mounting the scaffold the executioner wished to draw off his boots.

"No, no," said the duke, "you will do it more easily afterward."

He looked intently for a moment at the keen-edged axe, and, without a word, submitted to his fate. Madame Roland and others of the most illustrious of the friends of freedom and of France soon followed to the scaffold. And now every day the guillotine was active as the efficient agent of government, extinguishing all opposition and silencing every murmur. The prisons were full, new arrests were every day made, and dismay paralyzed all hearts. Four thousand six hundred in the prisons of Paris alone were awaiting that trial which almost surely led to condemnation.

The Jacobin leaders, trembling before Europe in arms, felt that there was no safety for France but in the annihilation of all internal foes. Danton, Marat, Robespierre, were not men who loved blood and cruelty; they were resolute fanatics who believed it to be well to cut off the heads of many thousand reputed aristocrats, that a nation of thirty millions might enjoy popular liberty. While the Revolutionary Tribunal was thus mercilessly plying the axe of the executioner, the National Convention, where these Jacobins reigned supreme, were enacting many laws which breathed the spirit of liberty and humanity. The taxes were equally distributed in proportion to property. Provision was made for the poor and infirm. All orphans were adopted by the Republic. Liberty of conscience was proclaimed. Slavery and the slave-trade were indignantly abolished. Measures were adopted for a general system of popular instruction, and decisive efforts were made to unite the rich and the poor in bonds of sympathy and alliance.[408]

We can not give a better account of the state of Paris at this time than in the words of Desodoards, a calm philosophic writer, who had ardently espoused the cause of the Revolution, and who consequently will not be suspected of exaggeration.

"What then," says he, "was this Revolutionary government? Every right, civil and political, was destroyed. Liberty of the press and of thought was at an end. The whole people were divided into two classes, the privileged and the proscribed. Property was wantonly violated, _lettres de cachet_ re-established, the asylum of dwellings exposed to the most tyrannical inquisition, and justice stripped of every appearance of humanity and honor. France was covered with prisons; all the excesses of anarchy and despotism struggling amid a confused multitude of committees; terror in every heart; the scaffold devouring a hundred every day, and threatening to devour a still greater number; in every house melancholy and mourning, and in every street the silence of the tomb.

"War was waged against the tenderest emotions of nature. Was a tear shed over the tomb of father, wife, or friend, it was, according to these Jacobins, a robbery of the Republic. Not to rejoice when the Jacobins rejoiced was treason to freedom. All the mob of low officers of justice, some of whom could scarcely read, sported with the lives of men without the slightest shame or remorse. Often an act of accusation was served upon one person which was intended for another. The officer only _changed the name_ on perceiving his error, and often did _not_ change it. Mistakes of the most inconceivable nature were made with impunity. The Duchess of Biron was judged by an act drawn up against her agent. A young man of _twenty_ was guillotined for having, as it was alleged, a _son_ bearing arms against France. A lad of sixteen, by the name of Mallet, was arrested under an indictment for a man of forty, named Bellay.

"'What is your age?' inquired the president, looking at him with some surprise.

"'Sixteen,' replied the youth.

"'Well, you are quite forty in crime,' said the magistrate; 'take him to the guillotine.'

"From every corner of France victims were brought in carts to the Conciergerie. This prison was emptied every day by the guillotine, and refilled from other prisons. These removals were made in the dark, lest public sympathy should be excited. Fifty or sixty poor creatures, strait bound, conducted by men of ferocious aspect, a drawn sabre in one hand and a lighted torch in the other, passed in this manner through the silence of night. The passenger who chanced to meet them had to smother his pity. A sigh would have united him to the funeral train.

"The prisons were the abode of every species of suffering. The despair which reigned in these sepulchres was terrific: one finished his existence by poison; another dispatched himself by a nail; another dashed his head against the walls of his cell; some lost their reason. Those who had sufficient fortitude waited patiently for the executioner. Every house of arrest was required to furnish a certain number of victims. The turnkeys went with these mandates of accusation from chamber to chamber in the dead of night. The prisoners, starting from their sleep at the voice of their Cerberuses, supposed their end had arrived. Thus warrants of death for thirty threw hundreds into consternation.[409]

"At first the sheriffs ranged fifteen at a time in their carts, then thirty, and about the time of the fall of Robespierre preparations had been made for the execution of one hundred and fifty at a time. An aqueduct had been contrived to carry off the blood. In these batches, as they were called, were often united people of the most opposite systems and habits. Sometimes whole generations were destroyed in a day. Malesherbes, at the age of eighty, perished with his sister, his daughter, his son-in-law, his grandson, and his granddaughter. Forty young women were brought to the guillotine for having danced at a ball given by the King of Prussia at Verdun. Twenty-two peasant women, whose husbands had been executed in La Vendee, were beheaded."

Such was the thraldom from which, at last, the empire of Napoleon rescued France. Nothing less than the strength of his powerful arm could have wrought out the achievement.

In the midst of such scenes it is not strange that all respect should have been renounced for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Jacobins of Paris crowded the Convention, demanding the abjuration of all forms of religion and all modes of worship. They governed the Convention with despotic sway. The Commune of Paris, invested with the local police of the city, passed laws prohibiting the clergy from exercising religious worship outside the churches. None but friends and relatives were to be allowed to follow the remains of the dead to the grave. All religious symbols were ordered to be effaced from the cemeteries, and to be replaced by a statue of Sleep. The following ravings of Anacharsis Cloots, a wealthy Prussian baron, who styled himself the orator of the human race, and who was one of the most conspicuous of the Jacobin agitators, forcibly exhibits the spirit of the times:[410]

"Paris, the metropolis of the globe, is the proper post for the orator of the human race. I have not left Paris since 1789. It was then that I redoubled my zeal against the pretended sovereigns of earth and heaven. I boldly preached that there is no other god but Nature, no other sovereign but the human race--the people-god. The people is sufficient for itself. Nature kneels not before herself. Religion is the only obstacle to universal happiness. It is high time to destroy it."

The popular current in Paris now set very strongly against all religion. Infidel and atheistic principles were loudly proclaimed. The unlettered populace, whose faith was but superstition, were easily swept along by the current. The Convention made a feeble resistance, but soon yielded to the general impulse. In the different sections of Paris, gatherings of the populace abjured all religion. The fanaticism spread like wild-fire to the distant departments. The churches were stripped of their baptismal plate and other treasures, and the plunder was sent to the Convention. Processions paraded the streets, singing, derisively, Hallelujahs, and profaning with sacrilegious caricature all the ceremonies of religion. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was administered to an ass.

The Convention had appointed a committee of twelve men, called the Committee of Public Safety, and invested them with dictatorial power. The whole revolutionary power was now lodged in their hands. They appointed such sub-committees as they pleased, and governed France with terrific energy. The Revolutionary Tribunal was but one of their committees. In all the departments they established their agencies. The Convention itself became powerless before this appalling despotism. This dictatorship was energetically supported by the mob of Paris; and the city government of Paris was composed of the most violent Jacobins, who were in perfect fraternity with the Committee of Public Safety. St. Just, who proposed in the Convention the establishment of this dictatorship, said,

"You must no longer show any lenity to the enemies of the new order of things. Liberty must triumph at any cost. In the present circumstances of the Republic the Constitution can not be established; it would guarantee impunity to attacks on our liberty, because it would be deficient in the violence necessary to restrain them."

This Committee, overawing the Convention, constrained the establishment of a new era. To obliterate the Sabbath, they divided the year into twelve months of thirty days each, each month to consist of three weeks of ten days each. The tenth day was devoted to festivals. The five surplus days were placed at the end of the year, and were consecrated to games and rejoicing. Thus energetically were measures adopted to obliterate entirely all traces of the Sabbath. There were thousands in France who looked upon these measures with unutterable disgust, but they were overwhelmed by the powers of anarchy. Anxiously they waited for a deliverer. In Napoleon they found one, who was alike the foe of the despotism of the Bourbons and the despotism of the mob.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 402: La Fayette was an illustrious member of this party. Even Jefferson advised to make the English Constitution the model for France. He was present at the opening of the Assembly of Notables, and soon after wrote to La Fayette, "Keeping the good model of your neighboring country before your eyes, you may get on step by step toward a good Constitution. Though that model is not perfect, yet, as it would unite more suffrages than any new one which could be proposed, it is better to make that the object."--_Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry S. Randall_, vol. i., p. 406.]

[Footnote 403: Henry S. Randall, Life of Jefferson, vol. i., p. 529.]

[Footnote 404: "Never since the Knights Templar had a party appeared more numerous, more illustrious, or more eloquent. The renown of the accused, their long possession of power, their present danger, and that love of vengeance which arises in men's hearts at the spectacle of mighty reverses of fortune, had collected a crowd in the precincts of the Revolutionary Tribunal. A strong armed force surrounded the gates of the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice. The cannon, the uniforms, the sentinels, the _gens d'armes_, the naked sabres, all announced one of those political crises in which a trial is a battle and justice an execution."--_Hist. Gir., Lamartine_, vol. ii., p. 169.]

[Footnote 405: Such is the statement of Lamartine. Thiers, however, says that the act was drawn up by Amar, a barrister of Grenoble.]

[Footnote 406:

"Come, children of your country, come,
The day of glory dawns on high,
And tyranny has wide unfurl'd
Her blood-stained banner in the sky."]

[Footnote 407: Edmund Burke has most unpardonably calumniated these noble men. Even Prof. Smyth, who espouses his opinions, says, "Burke was a man who, from the ardor of his temperament and the vehemence of his eloquence, might be almost said to have ruined every cause and every party that he espoused. No mind, however great, that will not bow to the superiority of his genius; yet no mind, however inferior, that will not occasionally feel itself entitled to look down upon him, from the total want which he sometimes shows of all calmness and candor, and even, at particular moments, of all reasonableness and propriety of thought."--_Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth_, vol. iii., p. 4.]

[Footnote 408: History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. iii., p. 291.]

[Footnote 409: "There were in the prisons of Paris on the 1st of September, 1793, 597; October 1, 2400; November 1, 3203; December 1, 4130; and in six months after, 11,400."--_Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards._]

[Footnote 410: Cloots declared himself "the personal enemy of Jesus Christ." France adopted the atheistic principles of Cloots, and sent him to the guillotine. See article Cloots, Enc. Am.]