Chapter XIV: Part 14

Under all these discouragements Mr. Miller was constantly writing the most urgent letters from Georgia, to press forward the manufacture of machines. "Do not let a deficiency of money, do not let anything," says Mr. Miller, "hinder the speedy construction of the gins. The people of the country are almost running mad for them, and much can be said to justify their importunity. When the present crop is harvested, there will be a real property of at least $50,000, yes, of $100,000, lying useless, unless we can enable the holders to bring it to market. Pray remember that we must have from fifty to one hundred gins between this and another fall, if there are any workmen in New England or in the Middle States to make them. In two years we will begin to take long steps up-hill, in the business of patent ginning, fortune favoring."

The general resort of the planters to the cultivation of cotton, and its consequent production in vast quantities, the value of which depended entirely upon the chance of getting it cleaned by the gin, created great uneasiness, which first displayed itself in this pressure upon Miller & Whitney, and afterward afforded great encouragement to the marauders upon the patent-right, who were now becoming numerous and audacious.

The _roller-gin_ was at first the most formidable competitor with Whitney's machine. It extricated the seeds by means of rollers, crushing them between revolving cylinders, instead of disengaging them by means of teeth. The fragments of seeds which remained in the cotton rendered its execution much inferior in this respect to Whitney's gin, and it was also much slower in its operation. Great efforts were made, however, to create an impression in favor of its superiority in other respects.

But a still more formidable rival appeared early in the year 1795, under the name of the _saw-gin_. It was Whitney's gin, except that the teeth were cut in circular rims of iron, instead of being made of wires, as was the case in the earlier forms of the patent gin. The idea of such teeth had early occurred to Mr. Whitney, as he afterward established by legal proof. But they would have been of no use except in connection with the other parts of his machine, and, therefore, this was a palpable attempt to evade the patent-right, and it was principally in reference to this that the lawsuits were afterward held.

It would be difficult to estimate the full value of Mr. Whitney's labors, without going into a minuteness of detail inconsistent with our limits. Every cotton garment bears the impress of his genius, and the ships that transported it across the waters were the heralds of his fame, and the cities that have risen to opulence by the cotton trade must attribute no small share of their prosperity to the inventor of the cotton-gin. We have before us the declaration of the late Mr. Fulton, that Arkwright, Watt, and Whitney--we would add Fulton to the number--were the three men who did most for mankind, of any of their contemporaries; and in the sense in which he intended it, the remark is probably true.

EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI

MURDER OF MARAT: CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE

A.D. 1793

THOMAS CARLYLE

In the early days of the French Revolution many moderates
who favored reform of the monarchy, but not its abolition,
were wholly alienated by the condemnation and execution of
Louis XVI, after what has been regarded as a mock trial by
the National Convention. It was a still graver effect of
this tragedy that it impelled the leading European powers to
join in the great coalition against France contemplated in
the Convention of Pillnitz (August, 1791).

Scarcely less was the influence upon the internal affairs of
France from the murder of Marat by Charlotte Corday.

Jean Paul Marat, sometimes called, from the name of a paper
which he published, the "Friend of the People," was one of
the most ultra-revolutionary of the Jacobin leaders in the
National Convention. By his murder the "Red
Republicans"--the extreme radical party in the Convention,
called the "Mountain" because they occupied the higher seats
in the hall--were confirmed in their determination to
destroy their opponents, the moderate republicans, called
Girondists or Girondins. Many of the Girondist leaders,
among them some of the most distinguished men in France,
were soon sent to the guillotine, and the Reign of Terror
was fully inaugurated. Carlyle calls Marat "atrocious," and
so most writers regard him, but there are not wanting some
to vindicate his character and purposes.

These tragic scenes, and the opening of the civil war which
followed, known as the War of La Vendee, are depicted by
Carlyle in that manner, all his own, which invests his
history of the French Revolution at once with the element of
realism and an air of romance.

Louis XVI was first deposed by the National Convention, and
then brought to trial for conspiring with foreign enemies of
France, for aiming to subvert French liberties, and for
being the cause of the massacre of the Swiss Guards who
defended the Tuileries (August 10, 1792) against a mob
seeking the King's life. Louis was found "guilty," and,
after a long wrangle in the Convention over the question of
punishment, a small majority was given (January 20, 1793)
for the decree of death. It was voted that there should be
no delay of the execution.

To this conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis! The Son of Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form of Law. Under Sixty Kings this same form of Law, form of Society, has been fashioning itself together these thousand years; and has become, one way and other, a most strange Machine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful, this Machine; dead, blind; not what it should be; which, with swift stroke, or by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable men. And behold now a King himself, or say rather Kinghood in his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures; like a Phalaris shut in the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It is ever so; and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man: injustice breeds injustice; curses and falsehoods do verily return "always home," wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears the sins of many generations: he too experiences that man's tribunal is not in this Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were not well with him.

A King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the imagination; as the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not the King dying, but the man! Kingship is a coat: the grand loss is of the skin. The man from whom you take his Life, to him can the whole combined world do more? Lally went on his hurdle; his mouth filled with a gag. Miserablest mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act Tragedy in them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows, unregarded; they consume the cup of trembling down to the lees. For Kings and for Beggars, for the justly doomed and the unjustly, it is a hard thing to die. Pity them all: thy utmost pity, with all aids and appliances and throne-and-scaffold contrasts, how far short is it of the thing pitied!

A Confessor has come; Abbe Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom the King knew by good report, has come promptly on this solemn mission. Leave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King; it with its malice will go its way, thou also canst go thine. A hard scene yet remains: the parting with our loved ones. Kind hearts environed in the same grim peril with us; to be left _here_! Let the Reader look with the eyes of Valet Clery through these glass doors, where also the Municipality watches, and see the cruelest of scenes:

"At half-past eight, the door of the anteroom opened: the Queen appeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the arms of the King. Silence reigned for some minutes; interrupted only by sobs. The Queen made a movement to lead his Majesty towards the inner room where M. Edgeworth was waiting unknown to them: 'No,' said the King, 'let us go into the dining-room; it is there only that I can see you.' They entered there; I shut the door of it, which was of glass. The King sat down, the Queen on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right, Madame Royale almost in front; the young Prince remained standing between his Father's legs. They all leaned toward him, and often held him embraced. This scene of woe lasted an hour and three-quarters; during which we could hear nothing; we could see only that always when the King spoke, the sobbings of the Princesses redoubled, continued for some minutes; and that then the King began again to speak."

And so our meetings and our partings do now end! The sorrows we gave each other; the poor joys we faithfully shared, and all our lovings and our sufferings, and confused toilings under the earthly Sun, are over. Thou good soul, I shall never, never through all ages of Time, see thee any more!

Never! O Reader, knowest thou that hard word?

For nearly two hours this agony lasts; then they tear themselves asunder. "Promise that you will see us on the morrow." He promises: Ah yes, yes; yet once; and go now, ye loved ones; cry to God for yourselves and me! It was a hard scene, but it is over. He will not see them on the morrow. The Queen, in passing through the anteroom, glanced at the Cerberus Municipals; and, with woman's vehemence, said through her tears, "_Vous etes tous des scelerats!_" ("You are all scoundrels!")

King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Clery, as he had been ordered, awoke him. Clery dressed his hair. While this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his finger: it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At half-past six, he took the Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and conference with Abbe Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it were too hard to bear.

At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will, and messages and effects; which they, at first, brutally refuse to take charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred and twenty-five louis; these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come. "Stamping on the ground with his right foot, Louis answers: '_Partons_' ('Let us go')." How the rolling of those drums comes in through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a widow! He is gone then, and has not seen us? A Queen weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these Four does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one; she, as Duchesse d'Angouleme, will live--not happily.

At the Temple Gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women: "_Grace! Grace!_" Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there: the armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed by all his neighbors. All windows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in these streets but one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning, but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying: clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear, in the great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and forget the Earth.

As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Revolution, once Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear; D'Orleans Egalite there in cabriolet. Swift messengers, _hoquetons_, speed to the Town-hall every three minutes: near by is the Convention sitting--vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then the Carriage opens. What temper he is in? Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of Death: in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned. "Take care of M. Edgeworth," he straitly charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two descend.

The drums are beating: "_Taisez-vous!_" ("Silence!") he cries "in a terrible voice" (_d'une voix terrible_). He mounts the scaffold, not without delay; he is in _puce_ coat, breeches of gray, white stockings. He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he spurns, resists; Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, "his face very red," and says: "Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the Scaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies; I desire that France----" A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: "_Tambours!_" The drums drown the voice. "Executioners, do your duty!" The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven." The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday, January 21, 1793. He was aged thirty-eight years four months and twenty-eight days.

Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of "_Vive la Republique_" rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving: students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais; fling it over Paris. D'Orleans drives off in his cabriolet: the Town-hall Councillors rub their hands, saying, "It is done, It is done." There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterward denied it, sells locks of the hair: fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings.--And so, in some half-hour it is done and the multitude has all departed. Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian cries: the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after, according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was.

In the leafy months of June and July, several French Departments germinate a set of rebellious _paper_-leaves, named Proclamations, Resolutions, Journals, or Diurnals, "of the Union for Resistance to Oppression." In particular, the Town of Caen, in Calvados, sees its paper-leaf of _Bulletin de Caen_ suddenly bud, suddenly establish itself as Newspaper there; under the Editorship of Girondin National Representatives!

For among the proscribed Girondins are certain of a more desperate humor. Some, as Vergniaud, Valaze, Gensonne, "arrested in their own houses," will await with stoical resignation what the issue may be. Some, as Brissot, Rabaut, will take to flight, to concealment; which, as the Paris Barriers are opened again in a day or two, is not yet difficult. But others there are who will rush, with Buzot, to Calvados; or far over France, to Lyons, Toulon, Nantes and elsewhither, and then rendezvous at Caen: to awaken as with war-trumpet the respectable Departments; and strike down an anarchic "Mountain" Faction; at least not yield without a stroke at it. Of this latter temper we count some score or more, of the Arrested, and of the Not-yet-arrested: a Buzot, a Barbaroux, Louvet, Guadet, Petion, who have escaped from Arrestment in their own homes; a Salles, a Pythagorean Valady, a Duchatel, the Duchatel that came in blanket and nightcap to vote for the life of Louis, who have escaped from danger and likelihood of Arrestment. These, to the number at one time of Twenty-seven, do accordingly lodge here, at the "_Intendance_, or Departmental Mansion," of the town of Caen in Calvados; welcomed by Persons in Authority; welcomed and defrayed, having no money of their own. And the _Bulletin de Caen_ comes forth, with the most animating paragraphs: How the Bordeaux Department, the Lyons Department, this Department after the other is declaring itself; sixty, or say sixty-nine, or seventy-two respectable Departments either declaring, or ready to declare. Nay Marseilles, it seems, will march on Paris by itself, if need be. So has Marseilles Town said, That she will march. But on the other hand, that Montelimart Town has said, No thoroughfare; and means even to "bury herself" under her own stone and mortar first--of this be no mention in _Bulletin de Caen_.

Such animating paragraphs we read in this new Newspaper; and fervors and eloquent sarcasm: tirades against the "Mountain," from the pen of Deputy Salles; which resemble, say friends, Pascal's _Provincials_. What is more to the purpose, these Girondins have got a General-in-chief, one Wimpfen, formerly under Dumouriez; also a secondary questionable General Puisaye, and others; and are doing their best to raise a force for war. National Volunteers, whosoever is of right heart: gather in, ye national Volunteers, friends of Liberty; from our Calvados Townships, from the Eure, from Brittany, from far and near: forward to Paris, and extinguish Anarchy! Thus at Caen, in the early July days, there is a drumming and parading, a perorating and consulting: Staff and Army; Council; Club of _Carabots_, Anti-Jacobin friends of Freedom, to denounce atrocious Marat. With all which, and the editing of _Bulletins_, a National Representative has his hands full.

At Caen it is most animated; and, as one hopes, more or less animated in the "Seventy-two Departments that adhere to us." And in a France begirt with Cimmerian invading Coalitions, and torn with an internal La Vendee, _this_ is the conclusion we have arrived at: to put down Anarchy by Civil War! _Durum et durum_, the Proverb says, _non faciunt murum_. La Vendee burns: Santerre can do nothing there; he may return home and brew beer. Cimmerian bombshells fly all along the North. That Siege of Mainz is become famed; lovers of the Picturesque (as Goethe will testify), washed country-people of both sexes, stroll thither on Sundays, to see the artillery work and counterwork; "you only duck a little while the shot whizzes past." Conde is capitulating to the Austrians; Royal Highness of York, these several weeks, fiercely batters Valenciennes. For, alas, our fortified Camp of Famars was stormed; General Dampierre was killed; General Custine was blamed--and indeed is now come to Paris to give "explanations."

Against all which the Mountain and atrocious Marat must even make head as they can. They, anarchic Convention as they are, publish Decrees, expostulatory, explanatory, yet not without severity; they ray forth Commissioners, singly or in pairs, the olive-branch in one hand, yet the sword in the other. Commissioners come even to Caen; but without effect. Mathematical Romme, and Prieur named of the _Cote d'Or_, venturing thither, with their olive and sword, are packed into prison: there may Romme lie, under lock and key, "for fifty days"; and meditate his New Calendar, if he please. Cimmeria, La Vendee, and Civil War! Never was Republic One and Indivisible at a lower ebb.

Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the World, History specially notices one thing: in the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance, where busy Deputies are coming and going, a young Lady with an aged valet, taking grave, graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman figure; in her twenty-fifth year; of beautiful still countenance: her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans, while Nobility still was. Barbaroux has given her a Note to Deputy Duperret--he who once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently she will to Paris on some errand? "She was a Republican before the Revolution, and never wanted energy."

A completeness, a decision is in this fair female Figure: "by energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country." What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her secluded stillness, suddenly like a Star; cruel-lovely, with half-angelic, half-daemonic splendor; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment be extinguished: to be held in memory, so bright complete was she, through long centuries! Quitting Cimmerian Coalitions without, and the dim-simmering Twenty-five Millions within, History will look fixedly at this one fair Apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the little Life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes swallowed of the Night.

With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday, July 9th, seated in the Caen Diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her Good-journey: her Father will find a line left, signifying that she has gone to England, that he must pardon her, and forget her. The drowsy Diligence lumbers along; amid drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of the Mountain; in which she mingles not: all night, all day, and again all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly; here is Paris with her thousand black domes, the goal and purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room; hastens to bed; sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.

On the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret. It relates to certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's hand; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent-friend of Charlotte's, has need of; which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this then was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this, in the course of Friday--yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see; he is sick at present, and confined to home.

About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large sheath-knife in the Palais Royal; then straightway, in the Place des Victoires, takes a hackney-coach. "To the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine, Number 44." It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat! The Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen; which seems to disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hapless beautiful Charlotte; hapless squalid Marat! From Caen in the utmost West, from Neuchatel in the utmost East, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely, business together. Charlotte, returning to her Inn, despatches a short Note to Marat; signifying that she is from Caen, the seat of rebellion; that she desires earnestly to see him, and "will put it in his power to do France a great service." No answer. Charlotte writes another Note, still more pressing; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself. Tired day-laborers have again finished their Week; huge Paris is circling and simmering, manifold, according to its vague wont: this one fair Figure has decision in it; drives straight--toward a purpose.

It is a yellow July evening, we say, the thirteenth of the month; eve of the Bastille day, when "M. Marat," four years ago, in the crowd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly required of that Besenval Hussar-party, which had such friendly dispositions, "to dismount, and give up their arms, then"; and became notable among Patriot men. Four years: what a road he has travelled; and sits now, about half-past seven o'clock, stewing in slipper-bath; sore-afflicted; ill of Revolution Fever--of what other malady this History had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man; with precisely eleven-pence-halfpenny of ready-money, in paper; with slipper-bath; strong three-footed stool for writing on, the while; and a squalid--Washerwoman, one may call her: that is his civic establishment in Medical-School Street; thither and not elsewhither has his road led him. Not to the reign of Brotherhood and Perfect Felicity; yet surely on the way toward that?

Hark, a rap again! A musical woman's voice, refusing to be rejected: it is the Citoyenne who would do France a service. Marat, recognizing from within, cries, "Admit her!" Charlotte Corday is admitted: "Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, and wished to speak with you." "Be seated, _mon enfant_. Now what are the Traitors doing at Caen? What Deputies are at Caen?"

Charlotte names some Deputies.

"Their heads shall fall within a fortnight," croaks the eager "People's Friend" clutching his tablets to write.

"_Barbaroux, Petion_" writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath: _Petion_, and _Louvet_, and--Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart.

"_A moi, chere amie!_" ("Help, dear!") No more could the Death-choked say or shriek. The helpful Washerwoman running in, there is no Friend of the People, or Friend of the Washerwoman left; but his life with a groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below.

And so Marat, "People's Friend" is ended: the lone Stylites has been hurled down suddenly from his Pillar--whitherward? He that made him knows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole and wail; reechoed by Patriot France; and the Convention, "Chabot pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated," may decree him Pantheon Honors, Public Funeral, Mirabeau's dust making way for him; and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to One, whom they think it honor to call "the good Sansculotte"--whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made, for the urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and new-born children be named Marat; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake mountains of stucco into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his Picture, or Death-Scene; and such other Apotheosis take place as the human genius, in these circumstances, can devise: but Marat returns no more to the light of this Sun. One sole circumstance we have read with clear sympathy, in the old _Moniteur_ Newspaper: how Marat's Brother comes from Neuchatel to ask of the Convention, "that the deceased Jean Paul Marat's musket be given him." For Marat, too, had a brother and natural affections; and was wrapt once in swaddling clothes, and slept safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of men! A sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris.[40]

As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished; the recompense of it is near and sure. The _chere amie_, and neighbors of the house, flying at her, she "overturns some movables," entrenches herself till the gendarmes arrive; then quietly surrenders; goes quietly to the Abbaye Prison: she alone quiet, all Paris sounding, in wonder, in rage or admiration, round her. Duperret is put in arrest, on account of her; his Papers sealed--which may lead to consequences. Fauchet, in like manner; though Fauchet had not so much as heard of her. Charlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, praises the grave firmness of Duperret, censures the dejection of Fauchet.

On Wednesday morning, the thronged Palais de Justice and Revolutionary Tribunal can see her face; beautiful and calm: she dates it "Fourth day of the Preparation of Peace." A strange murmur ran through the Hall, at sight of her, you could not say of what character. Tinville has his indictments and tape papers; the cutler of the Palais Royal will testify that he sold her the sheath-knife; "All these details are needless," interrupted Charlotte; "it is I that killed Marat."

"By whose instigation?"

"By no one's."

"What tempted you, then?"

"His crimes!"

"I killed one man," added she, raising her voice extremely (_extremement_), as they went on with their questions, "I killed one man to save a hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a savage wild beast to give repose to my country. I was a Republican before the Revolution; I never wanted energy."

There is therefore nothing to be said. The public gazes astonished: the hasty limners sketch her features, Charlotte not disapproving: the men of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is Death as a murderess. To her Advocate she gives thanks; in gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To the Priest they send her she gives thanks; but needs not any shriving, any ghostly or other aid from him.

On this same evening, therefore, about half past seven o'clock, from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tip-toe, the fatal Cart issues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of Murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying toward death--alone amid the World. Many take off their hats, saluting reverently; for what heart but must be touched? Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mainz, declares that she is greater than Brutus; that it were beautiful to die with her: the head of this young man seems turned. At the Place de la Revolution, the countenance of Charlotte wears the same still smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck; a blush of maidenly shame overspreads that fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," says Forster, "that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes: the Police imprisoned him for it."

But during these same hours, another guillotine is at work on another; Charlotte, for the Girondins, dies at Paris to-day; Chalier, by the Girondins, dies at Lyons to-morrow.

From rumbling of cannon along the streets of that City, it has come to firing of them, to rabid fighting: Nievre Chol and the Girondins triumph; behind whom there is, as everywhere, a Royalist Faction waiting to strike in. Trouble enough at Lyons; and the dominant party carrying it with a high hand! For, indeed, the whole South is astir; incarcerating Jacobins; arming for Girondins: wherefore we have got a "Congress of Lyons"; also a "Revolutionary Tribunal of Lyons," and Anarchists shall tremble. So Chalier was soon found guilty, of Jacobinism, of murderous Plot, "address with drawn dagger on the sixth of February last"; and, on the morrow, he also travels his final road, along the streets of Lyons, "by the side of an ecclesiastic, with whom he seems to speak earnestly"--the axe now glittering nigh. He could weep, in old years, this man, and "fall on his knees on the pavement," blessing Heaven at sight of Federation Programmes or the like; then he pilgrimed to Paris to worship Marat and the Mountain: now Marat and he are both gone--we said he could not end well. Jacobinism groans inwardly, at Lyons, but dare not outwardly. Chalier, when the Tribunal sentenced him, made answer: "My death will cost this City dear."

Montelimart Town is not buried under its ruins; yet Marseilles is actually marching, under order of a "Lyons Congress"; is incarcerating Patriots; the very Royalists now showing face. Against which a General Cartaux fights, though in small force, and with him an Artillery Major, of the name of--Napoleon Bonaparte. This Napoleon, to prove that the Marseillese have no chance ultimately, not only fights but writes; publishes his _Supper of Beaucaire_, a Dialogue which has become curious. Unfortunate Cities, with their actions and their reactions! Violence to be paid with violence in geometrical ratio; Royalism and Anarchism both striking in--the final net-amount of which geometrical series, what man shall sum?

Is not La Vendee 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 Mainz, "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 Vendee. 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."

Does not the Coalition, like a fire-tide, pour in; Prussia through the opened Northeast; Austria, England through the Northwest? 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, terror-struck, 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-lis of a Louis Pretender; there flies that accursed St. George's Cross of the English and Admiral Hood! What remnant 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, Freron, Robespierre Junior; thou General Cartaux, General Dugommier; above all, thou remarkable Artillery-Major, Napoleon Bonaparte! 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 sun-blaze 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 sun-blaze!

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 stubble-field, and all the region round; heights, alas, all scarped and counterscarped, into trenches, curtains, redoubts; 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 the 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-Crance, "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 Precy, their National Colonel and Commandant, doing what is in man: desperate but ineffectual. Provisions cut off; nothing entering our city but shot and shell! 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 besiegers; 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 D'Autichamp, in name of the Two Pretender-Royal-Highnesses, is coming through Switzerland with help; coming, not yet come: Precy hoists the Fleur-de-lis!

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 more fire and madness. Our "redoubts of cotton-bags" are taken, retaken; Precy under his Fleur-de-lis is valiant as Despair. What will become of Lyons? It is a siege of seventy days.

Or see, in these same weeks, far in the Western waters: breasting through the Bay of Biscay, a greasy dingy little Merchant ship, 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 Petion with his gray 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 Bordeaux, if peradventure hope yet linger there. Enter not Bordeaux, 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 Reole landing-place, or "Beak of Ambes," as it were, pale Death, waving his Revolutionary Sword of Sharpness, waves you elsewhither!

On one side or the other of that Bec d'Ambes, 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. Unhappiest of all Senators!

FOOTNOTES:

[40] Written in 1836-1837.--ED.

THE REIGN OF TERROR

A.D. 1794

FRANCOIS P. G. GUIZOT

By the Reign of Terror, or the "Terror," is meant that
period of the first revolution in France during which the
ruling faction caused thousands of obnoxious persons to be
sent to the guillotine. The Terror is usually considered as
beginning in March, 1793, when the Revolutionary Tribunal
was established by the National Convention. This tribunal
was an extraordinary court empowered to deal with all acts
or persons hostile to the Revolution.

In July, 1793, Robespierre became a member of the Committee
of Public Safety, and, with Saint-Just, was most prominently
connected with the Terror. He secured a decree, known as the
decree of the 22d Prairial, "to accelerate the movements of
the Committee, and open for them a shorter route to the
guillotine," whereby persons marked for death might be
executed as soon as recognized. Against this bloody decree
it is said that even the "Mountain"--the Red Republican
party in the Convention--recoiled. It was nevertheless
remorselessly carried out, and "caused torrents of blood to
flow."

The climax of the Terror was reached in 1794, and its end
came in July of that year, when Robespierre and his
associates were overthrown. It was followed by a reaction
against the excesses of the revolutionists, the closing of
the radical clubs of the Jacobins and others, and the
release of those whom the Revolutionary Tribunal had
imprisoned on suspicion. The tribunal itself, together with
the Committee of Public Safety, who had executed the fierce
will of the Convention, was speedily swept away.

It is a hideous spectacle to contemplate the enthusiasm of crime, and see men madly intoxicating themselves with their own atrocities. The Revolutionary Tribunal was in operation from March, 1793; the registry of condemnations had reached the number of five hundred seventy-seven. From 22 Prairial to 9 Thermidor (June 10, to July 27, 1794), two thousand two hundred eighty-five unfortunates perished on the scaffold. Fouquier-Tinville[41] comprehended the thought of Robespierre. For the dock he had substituted benches, upon which he huddled together at one time the crowd of the accused. One day he erected the guillotine in the very hall of the tribunal.

The Committee of Public Safety had a moment of fright. "Thou art wishing then to demoralize punishment!" cried Collot d'Herbois. A hundred sixty accused persons had been brought from the Luxembourg under pretence of a conspiracy in prison. The lower class of prisoners were encouraged to act as spies, thus furnishing pretexts for punishment. The judges sat with pistols ready to hand; the President cast his eyes over the lists for the day and called upon the accused. "Dorival, do you know anything of the conspiracy?" "No!"

"I expected that you would make that reply; but it won't succeed. Bring another."

"Champigny, are you not an ex-noble?"

"Yes."

"Bring another."

"Guidreville, are you a priest?"

"Yes, but I have taken the oath."

"You have no right to say any more. Another."

"Menil, were you not a domestic of the ex-constitutional Menou?"

"Yes."

"Another."

"Vely, were you not architect for Madame?"

"Yes, but I was disgraced in 1789."

"Another."

"Gondrecourt, is not your father-in-law at the Luxembourg?"

"Yes."

"Another."

"Durfort, were you not in the bodyguard?"

"Yes, but I was dismissed in 1789."

"Another."

So the examination went on. The questions, the answers, the judgment, the condemnation, were all simultaneous. The juries did not leave the hall; they gave their opinions with a word or a look. Sometimes errors were evident in the lists. "I am not accused," exclaimed a prisoner one day.

"No matter; what is thy name? See, it is written now. Another."

M. de Loizerolles perished under the name of his father. Jokes were mingled with the sentences. The Marechale de Mouchy was old, and did not reply to the questions of President Dumas. "The _citoyenne_ is deaf" (_sourde_), said the registrar; "Put down that she has conspired secretly" (_sourdement_), replied Dumas.

It became necessary to forbid Fouquier-Tinville to send more than sixty victims a day to the scaffold. "Things go well, and see the heads fall like slates with my file-firing; the next decade we shall do better still; I shall want at least four hundred fifty." The lists were prepared in the prison itself, by the class of informers known as _moutons_.[42] The public accuser, like the judges and the jailers, was often ignorant of the names of the human flock crowded in the dungeons. Death recalled them to recollection. In the evening, under the windows of each prison, the list of the victims of the day was shouted out. "These are they who have gained prizes in the lottery of Saint Guillotine." The unfortunates who crowded to the windows thus learned the tidings of the execution of those they loved. The horrors of the unforeseen and unknown were added to the agonies of death and separation. Under the windows of the Conciergerie the names of the Marechale de Noailles, the Duchesse d'Ayen and the Vicomtesse de Noailles, who died together on the scaffold, were proclaimed. Among the prisoners was Madame la Fayette, herself awaiting death; happily she did not recognize in the coarse accents of the criers the cherished names of her grandmother, mother, and sister. The peasants of the Vendee[43] came to die at Paris, like the Carmelites of Compiegne or the magistrates of Toulouse. It was astonishing that there still remained in the dungeons great lords and noble ladies, bearing the most illustrious names in the history of France; on the 8th and 9th Thermidor the poets Roucher and Andre Chenier; Baron Trenck, famous for his numerous escapes; the Marechale d'Armentieres, the Princesse de Chimay, the Comtesse de Narbonne, the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, the Marquis de Crussol, and the Messieurs de Trudaine, counsellors of the Parliament of Paris, perished upon the scaffold.

Insulters always surrounded the scaffold, but their number had decreased; the Committee of Public Safety no longer had recourse to the popular manoeuvres of its early days. Terror was now sufficient to insure the silence and submission of the victims. Paris grew weary of the horrors of which it was witness; the odor of blood had driven away the residents from the houses adjacent to the Place de la Revolution; a new guillotine had been erected upon the Place du Trone. Upon the route along which ran the fatal carts shops were closed, and passers-by endeavored to avoid meeting the procession. A few rare loungers of the lowest class alone walked in the gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs-Elysees. All was silent, but pity was growing in the minds of men. The distant sound of the horrors that were general throughout France redoubled the terror of Paris.

The provincial sufferings were not uniform, and the fury of the representative commissioners was unequally distributed. Either by a happy chance, or it might be by an instinctive knowledge of the character of the population, the revolutionary scaffold was never set up in Lower Normandy; the Vendee, on the contrary, expiated its long resistance in its blood, and Carrier filled with terror the city of Nantes, always favorable to revolution. He had tried guillotine and grape-shot, but both were too tardy in their action to suit his zeal. He conceived the idea of crowding the condemned into ships with valves, launched upon the Loire: the beautiful river saw these unfortunates struggling in its waters. Henceforth the executioners tied the prisoners together by one hand and one foot; these "Republican Marriages," as they were called, insured the speedy death of the victims. The waters of the Loire became infected; its shores were covered with corpses; the fishes themselves could no longer serve as nourishment for human beings; fever decimated the inhabitants of Nantes. The fury of Carrier bordered on madness: he caused the little Vendean infants, collected by Breton charity, to be cast into the water. "It is necessary," said he, "to slay the wolves' cubs."

The same terror also, and the same atrocities which desolated the West, reigned in the North and the South. In the Department of Vaucluse, Maignet, in the Pas-de-Calais, Joseph Lebon, had obtained the erection of local revolutionary tribunals. "The arrests which I have ordered in the Departments of Vaucluse and the Bouches-du-Rhone amount to twelve or fifteen thousand," wrote Maignet to his friend Couthon. "It would require an army to conduct them to Paris; besides, it is necessary to appal, and the blow is only terrifying when struck in the sight of those who have lived with the guilty." They had felled the tree of liberty in the little town of Bedouin; sixty-three of the inhabitants were executed; the rest fled. "I have wished to give the national vengeance a grand character," wrote Maignet to the Committee of Public Safety, "and I have ordered that the town should be given to the flames. If you think this new measure too rigorous, let me know your wishes, and do not read my letter to the Convention." To the complaints of Rovere, representative of Vaucluse, Robespierre replied, "We are content with Maignet; he knows well how to guillotine." Joseph Lebon established an orchestra close by the guillotine; he caused the _Ca ira_[44] to be sung during the executions, which he witnessed from his balcony. Formerly a priest and well esteemed, he was moderate at the outburst of the Revolution, but his reason had yielded to the dizziness of despotic power; it was of a veritable madman that Barere said: "Lebon has completely beaten the aristocrats, and he has protected Cambrai against the approaches of the enemy; besides, what is there that is not permitted to the hatred of a republican against the aristocracy? The Revolution and revolutionary measures must only be spoken of with respect. Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is culpable to raise."

For some time Robespierre had appeared but rarely at the Committee of Public Safety; he reserved himself for the department of general police, that is to say, the direction of the "Terror" throughout France. Underhand dissensions and jealousies began to creep in among these criminals, secretly disquieted by projects of which they were reciprocally suspicious. Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois dreaded Robespierre and began to conspire against him. Robespierre established himself with the Jacobins, as in an impregnable fortress. The President and Vice-President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the commandant of the armed forces, Henriot, awaited his orders. They pressed him to take action against the enemies whom he had himself denounced to the Jacobins. "Formerly," said he, "on the 13th Messidor [July 1st], the underhand faction that has sprung from the remnant of the followers of Danton and Camille Desmoulins attacked the committees _en masse_; now they prefer to attack a few members in particular; in order to succeed in breaking the bundle, they attribute to a single individual that which appertains to the whole Government. They dare not say that the Revolutionary Tribunal has been instituted in order to swallow up the National Convention; they have spoken of a dictator, and named him; it is I who have been thus designated, and you would tremble if I told you in what place."

A dictatorship had, in fact, been spoken of, but it was Saint-Just, on returning from the army, who had uttered this terrible word, in a conference of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security expressly convoked by Robespierre. The latter had proposed the institution of four great revolutionary tribunals, in order to forge new weapons for himself; but the conference refused. Robespierre went out irritated and gloomy. "Misfortune has reached a climax," cried Saint-Just. "You are in a state of anarchy. The Convention is inundating France with laws inoperative and often impracticable. The representatives accompanying the armies dispose at their will of the public fortune and our military destinies; the representatives sent as Commissioners to the Provinces usurp all power and amass gold for which they substitute assignats. How can such political and legislative disorder be regulated? I declare upon my honor and my conscience, I see only one means of safety; and that is the concentration of power in the hands of one man who has enough genius, force, patriotism, and generosity to become the embodiment of public authority. It is necessary, above all, to have a man endowed with long practical knowledge of the Revolution, its principles, its phases, its modes of action, and its agents. Finally, he must be a man who has the general good-will and confidence of the people in his favor, and who is at once a virtuous and inflexible as well as an incorruptible citizen. That man is Robespierre; it is he only who can save the State. I ask that he be invested with the dictatorship, and that the committees make a proposition to this effect at the Convention to-morrow."

The imprudence of the speech equalled the audacity of the act. The members of the two councils looked at each other, hesitating to accept the declaration of war. A few of them contended for their lives against the vengeance of Robespierre and his friends. "This Robespierre is insatiable," said Barere, with anger. "Let him ask for Tallien, Bourdon de l'Oise, Thuriot, Guffroy, Rovere, Lecointre, Panis, Barras, Freron, Legendre, Monestier, Dubois Crance, Fouche, Cambon, and all the Dantonist remnant, well and good; but to Duval, Audouin, Leonard Bourdon, Vadier, Vauland, it is impossible to consent."

The two parties waited face to face, shrinking from the blows they were about to exchange, counting on the impatience or temerity of their adversaries. The boldest among the opposition ventured on a circuitous attack by denouncing the sect of mystic dreamers led by a demented woman, Catherine Theot, styled by her followers, Mother of God. Her principal disciple was Gerle, formerly prior of the Chartreuse, and a member of the Constituent Assembly. When the papers of this handful of maniacs were seized, the copy of a letter to Robespierre was found; he was to have been the Messiah of the sect. Vadier denounced at the Convention this elementary school of fanaticism, discovered on a third floor in the Rue Contrescarpe, and who were connected, he said, with the machinations of Pitt; but he dared not speak of the letter to Robespierre. The latter undoubtedly took some interest in Catherine Theot, for he did not allow the affair to be followed up; the prophetess died in prison soon after.