\e.^ DC Snqlidh Collection THE GIFT OF 3ames Morgan Mart '\^,n-oD'^^^ t\X \M DATE DUE mJ^ ■S^*^' ^ ■R PRINTED IN-U.S.A. Cornell University Library DC 161.C28 1910 V.2 ^''^iifiiSiiSiiiii'?''"'''*'''"*^ hislorv. With i 3 1924 024 315 834 M Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024315834 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION MARIE ANTOINETTE. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A HISTORY BY THOMAS CARLYLE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDMUND J. SULLIVAN, A.R.W.S. « M^7as 6 dyiiv IffTi, Stiov yap (pyoV VTrip jSoffi- \elas, uTrep i\ev$eplas, iirep eipolai, virip arapa^las. ABRIANOS L&yiia yap airuiv Hs /lerapdWei ; x^P's ^^ ^^V" Hdrav /leTOjSoX^s, ri SWo fj Sov\ela arevSyTUV Kal irelBeffOat irpoairotmiUvwv ; ANTONINUS IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL LIMITED 1910 t\ h'l^SQLGS CONTENTS OF VOLUME II 11. THE CO^STITUTIQ-N— continued BOOK IV. VARENNES I. Easter at Saint-Cloud II. Easter at Paris III. Count Fersen . IV. Attitude V. The New Berline VI. Old-Dragoon Drouet VII. The Night of Spurs VIII. The Return IX. Sharp Shot PAGE 1 14 18 22 25 33 37 BOOK V. PARLIAMENT FIRST I. Grande Acceptation . 42 II. The Book of the Law 49 III. Avignon .... 59 IV. No Sugar .... 66 V. Kings and Emigrants . . 69 VI. Brigands and Jales . 79 VII. Constitution will not March 82 VIII. The Jacobins 87 IX. Minister Roland 92 X. Petion-National-Pique . . 96 a2 V vi THE FRENCH REVOLUTION XI. The Hereditary Representative XII. Procession of the Black Breeches . 98 102 BOOK VI. THE MARSEILLESE I. Executive that does not Act II. Let us March . III. Some Consolation to Mankind IV. Subterranean V. At Dinner VI. The Steeples at Midnight VII. The Svyiss .... VIII. Constitution Burst in Pieces 109 115 118 122 124 128 137 143 III. THE GUILLOTINE BOOK I. SEPTEMBER I. The Improvised Commune 151 II. Danton 162 III. DUMOURIEZ 166 IV. September in Paris . 170 V. A Trilogy 178 VI. The Circular 185 VII. September in Argonne 193 ^III. Exeunt 203 BOOK II. REGICIDE I. The Deliberative . . . . . II. The Executive ...... 212 221 CONTENTS Vll CHAP. III. Discrowned IV. The Loser Pays V. Stretching of Formulas VI. At the Bar VII. The Three Votings . VIII. Place de la Revolution PAGE 224. 227 230 235 243 24,9 BOOK III. THE GIRONDINS I. Cause and Effect 256 II. Culottic and Sansculottic 262 III. Growing Shrill 267 IV. Fatherland in Danger 270 V. Sansculottism Accoutred 278 VI. The Traitor 282 VII. In Fight .... 285 VIII. In Death-Grips 288 IX. Extinct .... 293 BOOK IV. TERROR I. Charlotte Corday . 299 II. In Civil War . 307 III. Retreat of the Eleven . . 311 IV. O Nature . 315 V. Sword of Sharpness . 320 VI. Risen against Tyrants .... . 324, VII. Marie-Antoinette . 328 an. The Twenty-Two . 331 viii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BOOK V. TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY CHAP. * PAGE I. Rushing Down . 336 II. Death . 340 III. Destruction ..... . 347 IV. Carmagnole Complete . 356 V. Like a Thunder-Cloud . 363 VI. Do Thy Duty . 366 VII. Flame- Picture ..... . 375 BOOK VI. THERMIDOR I. The Gods are Athirst . 380 II. Danton, No Weakness . 385 III. The Tumbrils ..... . 391 IV. MUMBO-JUMBO . 398 V. The Prisons ..... . 402 VI. To Finish the Terror . 405 VII. Go Down To . 410 BOOK VII. VENDEMIAIRE I. Decadent . II. La Cabarus III. Quiberon . IV. Lion not Dead V. Lion Sprawling its Last VI. Grilled Herrings VII. The Whiff of Grapeshot VIII. Finis .... Chronological Summary Index .... 419 423 429 433 437 443 447 453 457 469 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FULL PAGE Marie Antoinette The Demonstration of Women . The Advancing Terror The Twenty- Five Millions of France Democracy Enthroned The Reign of Terror .... The Gods are Athirst Danton ...... The Evil Eye and the Apes op Death Love Looks through the Little Window Robespierre's List The Keystone of the Arch Latest Portraits of Celebrities Phoenix Death-Birth . The Whiff of Grapeshot Napoleon ..... ' La Mort est Morte — Vive la Vie ! ' Frontispiece FACING PAGE 12 44 68 92 124 154 176 204 228 258 286 316 342 380 406 438 IN TEXT Princesse de Lamballe .... Marie Ther^se Charlotte .... Death Mask of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Vergniaud ....... 19 36 46 52 X THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Elie Guadet Georges Couthon . Camus .... Jean Lambert Tallien Marquis de Condorcet Andre Chenier Marie Joseph Chenier Barnave Duke Charles of Brunswick Rcederer Jerome Petion Santerre Charette DuMOUHIEZ . BUZOT .... Paul Barras Kellermann General Custine . Talma .... ROMAIN DEstzE Lamoignon de Malesherbes Garat .... Charlotte Cordav Death Mask of Marat General Cartaux General Houchard La Veuve Capet . Brissot de Warville . J. Paul Rabaut Saint-Etienne FoUCHE Joseph Lebon 53 55 57 78 86 90 91 94 99 104 130 135 161 l67 194 196 202 208 210 237 239 248 302 304 309 321 330 333 345 349 355 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi Gregoire JOURDAN PiCHEGRU Barr^re Camille Desmoulins LuciLE Desmoulins Princess Elizabeth Lavoisier COLLOT D'HeRBOIS David . Saint-Just . Simon the Cordwainer Death Mask of Robespierre Mme. Cabarus Josephine De la Rochejaquelein Cadoudal J. B Carrier GOUJON ROMME . Napoleon Grachus Baboeuf . 358 370 372 374, 383 390 394 395 397 409 412 417 420 424 426 430 432 437 442 444 452 454 THE CONSTITUTION— Co;^^/;?^^^^ BOOK FOURTH VARENNES CHAPTER I EASTER AT SAINT-CLOUD The French Monarchy may now therefore be considered as, in all human probability, lost ; as struggling henceforth in blind- ness as well as weakness, the last light of reasonable guidance having gone out. What remains of resources their poor Majesties will waste still further, in uncertain loitering and wavering. Mirabeau himself had to complain that they only gave him half confidence, and always had some plan within his plan. Had they fled frankly with him to Rouen or any- whither, long ago ! They may fly now with chance immeasur- ably lessened ; which will go on lessening towards absolute zero. Decide, O Queen ; poor Louis can decide nothing : execute this Flight-project, or at least abandon it. Corre- spondence with Bouille there has been enough ; what profits consulting and hypothesis, while all around is in fierce activity of practice ? The Rustic sits waiting till the river run dry : alas, with you it is not a common river, but a Nile Inundation ; snows melting in the unseen mountains ; till all, and you where you sit, be submerged. Many things invite to flight. The voice of Journals invites ; Royalist Journals proudly hinting it as a threat. Patriot Journals rabidly denouncing it as a terror. Mother Society, waxing more and more emphatic, invites ; — so emphatic that, as was prophesied, Lafayette and your limited Patriots have ere long to branch off from her, and form themselves into Feuillans ; with infinite public controversy ; the victory in which, doubt- ful though it look, will remain with the unlimited Mother. VOL. 11. A Moreover, 2 VARENNES BOOK IV Moreover, ever since the Day of Poniards, we have seen unlimited April 1791 Patriotism openly equipping itself with arms. Citizens denied ' activity,' which is facetiously made to signify a certain weight of purse, cannot buy blue uniforms, and be Guardsmen ; but man is greater than blue cloth ; man can fight, if need be, in multiform cloth, or even almost without cloth, — as Sansculotte. So pikes continue to be hammered, whether those Dirks of improved structure with barbs be ' meant for the West-India market,' or not meant. Men beat, the wrong way, their plough- shares into swords. Is there not what we may call an ' Austrian Committee,' Comite Autrichien, sitting daily and nightly in the Tuileries ? Patriotism, by vision and suspicion, knows it too well ! If the King fly, will there not be Aristocrat-Austrian invasion ; butchery ; replacement of Feudalism ; wars more than civil ? The hearts of men are saddened and maddened. Dissident Priests likewise give trouble enough. Expelled from their Parish Churches, where Constitutional Priests, elected by the Public, have replaced them, these unhappy persons resort to Convents of Nuns, or other such receptacles ; and there, on Sabbath, collecting assemblages of Anti-Consti- tutional individuals, who have grown devout all on a sudden,^ they worship or pretend to worship in their strait-laced con- tumacious manner ; to the scandal of Patriotism. Dissident Priests, passing along with their sacred wafer for the dying, seem wishful to be massacred in the streets ; wherein Patriotism will not gratify them. Slighter palm of martyrdom, however, shall not be denied : martyrdom not of massacre, yet of fusti- gation. At the refractory places of worship. Patriot men appear ; Patriot women with strong hazel wands, which they apply. Shut thy eyes, O Reader ; see not this misery, peculiar to these later times, — of martyrdom without sincerity, with only cant and contumacy ! A dead Catholic Church is not allowed to lie dead ; no, it is galvanised into the detestablest death-life ; whereat Humanity, we say, shuts its eyes. For the Patriot women take their hazel wands, and fustigate, amid laughter of bystanders, with alacrity : broad bottom of Priests ; alas. Nuns too, reversed and cotillons retrousses ! The National Guard does what it can : Municipality ' invokes the Principles of Toleration ' ; grants Dissident worshippers the Church of the Theatins : promising protection. But it is to ^ Toulongeon, i. 262. no EASTER AT SAINT-CLOUD 3 I' no purpose : at the door of that Theatins Church appears a CHAP. I Placard, and suspended atop, like Plebeian Consular fasces — a April 1791 Bundle of Rods ! The Principles of Toleration must do the best they may : but no Dissident man shall worship contuma- ciously ; there is a Plebiscitum to that effect ; which, though unspoken, is like the laws of the Medes and Persians. Dissident contumacious Priests ought not to be harboured, even in private, by any man : the Club of the Cordeliers openly de- nounces Majesty himself as doing it.^ Many things invite to flight : but probably this thing above all others, that it has become impossible ! On the 15th of April, notice is given that his Majesty, who has suffered much from catarrh lately, will enjoy the Spring weather, for a few days, at Saint-Cloud. Out at Saint-Cloud ? Wishing to celebrate his Easter, his Pdques or Pasch, there ; with refractory Anti-Constitutional Dissidents ? — Wishing rather to make off for Compiegne, and thence to the Frontiers ? As were, in good sooth, perhaps feasible, or would once have been ; nothing but some two chasseurs attending you ; chasseurs easily cor- rupted ! It is a pleasant possibility, execute it or not. Men say there are thirty thousand Chevaliers of the Poniard lurking in the woods there : lurking in the woods, and thirty thousand, — for the human Imagination is not fettered. But now, how easily might these, dashing out on Lafayette, snatch off the Hereditary Representative ; and roll away with him, after the manner of a whirl-blast, whither they listed ! — ^Enough, it were well the King did not go. Lafayette is forewarned and forearmed : but, indeed, is the risk his only ; or his and all France's ? Monday the eighteenth of April is come ; the Easter Journey to Saint-Cloud shall take effect. National Guard has got its orders ; a First Division, as Advanced Guard, has even marched, and probably arrived. His Majesty's Maison-bouche, they say, is all busy stewing and frying at Saint-Cloud; the King's dinner not far from ready there. About one o'clock, the Royal Carriage, with its eight royal blacks, shoots stately into the Place du Carrousel ; draws up to receive its royal burden. But hark ! from the neighbouring Church of Saint-Roch, the tocsin begins ding-dong-ing. Is the King stolen, then ; is he going ; gone ? Multitudes of persons crowd the Carrousel : 1 Newspapers of April and June 1791 (in Hist. Pari. ix. 449; x. 217). the 4 VARENNES BOOK IV the Royal Carriage still stands there,— and, by Heaven's April 1791 strength, shall stand ! Lafayette comes up, with aides-de-camp and oratory ; per- vading the groups : ' Taisez-vous,'' answer the groups ; ' the King shall not go.' Monsieur appears, at an upper window : ten thousand voices bray and shriek, ' Nous ne voulons pas que le Boi parte.^ Their Majesties have mounted. Crack go the whips ; but twenty Patriot arms have seized each of the eight bridles : there is rearing, rocking, vociferation ; not the smallest headway. In vain does Lafayette fret, indignant ; and pero- rate and strive : Patriots in the passion of terror bellow round the Royal Carriage ; it is one bellowing sea of Patriot terror run frantic. Will Royalty fly off towards Austria ; like a lit rocket, towards endless Conflagration of Civil War ? Stop it, ye Patriots, in the name of Heaven ! Rude voices passionately apostrophise Royalty itself. Usher Campan, and other the like official persons, pressing forward with help or advice, are clutched by the sashes, and hurled and whirled, in a confused perilous manner ; so that her Majesty has to plead passionately from the carriage-window. Order cannot be heard, cannot be followed ; National Guards know not how to act. Centre Grenadiers, of the Observatoire Battalion, are there ; not on duty ; alas, in quasi-mutiny ; speaking rude disobedient words ; threatening the mounted Guards with sharp shot if they hurt the people. Lafayette mounts and dismounts ; runs haranguing, panting ; on the verge of despair. For an hour and three-quarters ; ' seven quarters of an hour,' by the Tuileries Clock ! Desperate Lafayette will open a passage, were it by the cannon's mouth, if his Majesty wUl order. Their Majesties, counselled to it by Royalist friends, by Patriot foes, dismount ; and retire in, with heavy indignant heart ; giving up the enterprise. Maison-bouche may eat that cooked dinner themselves : his Majesty shall not see Saint-Cloud this day, — nor any day.^ The pathetic fable of imprisonment in one's own Palace has become a sad fact, then ? Majesty complains to Assembly ; Municipality deliberates, proposes to petition or address ; Sections respond with sullen brevity of negation. Lafayette flings down his Commission ; appears in civic pepper-and-salt frock ; and cannot be flattered back again ; not in less than 1 Deux Amis, vi. c. 1. ; Hist. Pari. ix. 407-14. three EASTER AT PARIS three days ; and by unheard-of entreaty ; National Guards CHAP. I kneehng to him, and declaring that it is not sycophancy, that April 1791 they are free men kneeling here to the Statue of Liberty. For the rest, those Centre Grenadiers of the Observatoire are dis- banded, — yet indeed are reinlisted, all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new quarters. The King must keep his Easter in Paris ; meditating much on this singular posture of things ; but as good as determined now to fly from it, desire being whetted by difficulty. CHAPTER II EASTER AT PARIS For above a year, ever since March 1790, it would seem, there has hovered a project of Flight before the royal mind ; and ever and anon has been condensing itself into something like a purpose ; but this or the other difficulty always vaporised it again. It seems so full of risks, perhaps of civil war itself ; above all, it cannot be done without effort. Somnolent lazi- ness will not serve : to fly, if not in a leather vache, one must verily stir oneself. Better to adopt that Constitution of theirs ; execute it so as to show all men that it is mexecutable ? Better or not so good : surely it is easier. To all difficulties you need only say. There is a lion in the path, behold your Constitution will not act ! For a somnolent person it requires no effort to counterfeit death, — as Dame de Stael and Friends of Liberty can see the King's Government long doing, faisant la mort. Nay now, when desire whetted by difficulty has brought the matter to a head, and the royal mind no longer halts between two, what can come of it ? Grant that poor Louis were safe with Bouille, what, on the whole, could he look for there ? Exasperated Tickets of Entry answer : Much, all. But cold Reason answers : Little, almost nothing. Is not loyalty a law of Nature ? ask the Tickets of Entry. Is not love of your King, and even death for him, the glory of all Frenchmen, — except these few Democrats ? Let Democrat Constitution- builders see what they will do without their Keystone ; and France rend its hair, having lost the Hereditary Representative ! Thus 6 VARENNES BOOK IV Thus will King Louis fly ; one sees not reasonably towards May 4, 1791 what. As a maltreated Boy, shall we say, who, having a Stepmother, rushes sulky into the wide world ; and will wring the paternal heart ? — Poor Louis escapes from known un- supportable evils, to an unknown mixture of good and evil, coloured by Hope. He goes, as Rabelais did when dying, to seek a great May-be : je vais chercher un grand Peut-itre ! As not only the sulky Boy but the wise grown Man is obliged to do, so often, in emergencies. For the rest, there is still no lack of stimulants, and step- dame maltreatments, to keep one's resolution at the due pitch. Factious disturbances cease not : as indeed how can they, unless authoritatively conjured, in a Revolt which is by nature bottomless ? — If the ceasing of faction be the price of the King's somnolence, he may awake when he will and take wing. Remark, in any case, what somersets and contortions a dead Catholicism is making, — skilfully galvanised : hideous, and even piteous, to behold ! Jurant and Dissident, with their shaved crowns, argue frothing everywhere ; or are ceasing to argue, and stripping for battle. In Paris was scourging while need continued : contrariwise, in the Morbihan of Brittany, without scourging, armed Peasants are up, roused by pulpit- drum, they know not why. General Dumouriez, who has got missioned thitherward, finds all in sour heat of darkness ; finds also that explanation and conciliation will still do much.^ But again, consider this : that his Hohness, Pius Sixth, has seen good to excommunicate Bishop Talleyrand ! Surely, we will say then, considering it, there is no living or dead Church in the Earth that has not the indubitablest right to excom- municate Talleyrand. Pope Pius has right and might, in his way. But truly so likewise has Father Adam, ci-devant Marquis Saint-Huruge, in his way. Behold, therefore, on the Fourth of May, in the Palais Royal, a mixed loud-sounding multitude ; in the middle of whom. Father Adam, bull-voiced Saint-Huruge, in white hat, towers visible and audible. With him, it is said, walks Journalist Gorsas, walk many others of the washed sort ; for no authority will interfere. Pius Sixth, with his plush and tiara, and power of the Keys, they bear aloft : of natural size, — made of lath and combustible gum. ■ Deux Amis, v. 410-21 ; Dumouriez, ii. c. 5. Royou, EASTER AT PARIS Royou, the King's Friend, is borne too in effigy ; with a pile CHAP. II of Newspaper King's-Friends, condemned Numbers of the Ami- ^^V ^j 1791 du-Roi ; fit fuel of the sacrifice. Speeches are spoken ; a judgment is held, a doom proclaimed, audible in bull-voice, towards the four winds. And thus, amid great shouting, the holocaust is consummated, under the summer sky ; and our lath-and-gum Holiness, with the attendant victims, mounts up in flame, and sinks down in ashes ; a decomposed Pope : and right or might, among all the parties, has better or worse accom- plished itself, as it could.^ But, on the whole, reckoning from Martin Luther in the Market-place of Wittenberg to Marquis Saint-Huruge in this Palais Royal of Paris, what a journey have we gone ; into what strange territories has it carried us ! No Authority can now interfere. Nay Religion herself, mourn- ing for such things, may after all ask. What have / to do with them? In such extraordinary manner does dead Catholicism somer- set and caper, skilfully galvanised. For, does the reader inquire into the subject-matter of controversy in this case ; what the difference between Orthodoxy or My-doxy and Heterodoxy or Thy-doxy might here be ? My-doxy is, that an august National Assembly can equalise the extent of Bishop- ricks ; that an equalised Bishop, his Creed and Formularies being left quite as they were, can swear Fidelity to King, Law and Nation, and so become a Constitutional Bishop. Thy- doxy, if thou be Dissident, is that he cannot ; but that he must become an accursed thing. Himian ill-nature needs but some Homoiousian iota, or even the pretence of one ; and will flow copiously through the eye of a needle : thus always must mortals go jargoning and fuming. And, like the ancient Stoics in their porches. With fierce dispute maintain their churches. This Auto-da-fi of Saint-Huruge's was on the Fourth of May 1791. Royalty sees it ; but says nothing. ' Hist. Pari. x. 99-102. Chapter III VARENNES BOOK IV May-June, 1791 CHAPTER III COUNT FERSEN Royalty, in fact, should, by this time, be far on with its preparations. Unhappily much preparation is needful. Could a Hereditary Representative be carried in leather vache, how easy were it ! But it is not so. New Clothes are needed ; as usual, in all Epic transactions, were it in the grimmest iron ages ; consider ' Queen Chrimhilde, with her sixty sempstresses,' in that iron Nibelungen Song ! No Queen can stir without new clothes. Therefore, now. Dame Campan whisks assiduous to this mantua-maker and to that : and there is clipping of frocks and gowns, upper clothes and under, great and small ; such a clipping and sewing as — might have been dispensed with. Moreover, her Majesty cannot go a step anywhither without her NScessaire ; dear NScessaire, of inlaid ivory and rosewood ; cunningly devised ; which holds perfumes, toilette-implements, infinite small queen- like furnitures : necessary to terrestrial life. Not without a cost of some five hundred louis, of much precious time, and diffi- cult hoodwinking which does not blind, can this same Neces- sary of life be forwarded by the Flanders Carriers, — never to get to hand.^ All which, you would say, augurs ill for the prospering of the enterprise. But the whims of women and queens must be humoured. Bouille, on his side, is making a fortified Camp at Mont- m^di ; gathering Royal-AUemand, and all manner of other German and true French Troops thither, ' to watch the Austrians.' His Majesty will not cross the frontiers, unless on compulsion. Neither shall the Emigrants be much em- ployed, hateful as they are to all people.^ Nor shall old war- god Broglie have any hand in the business ; but solely our brave Bouill6 ; to whom, on the day of meeting, a Marshal's Baton shall be delivered, by a rescued King, amid the shouting of all the troops. In the meanwhile, Paris being so suspicious, were it not perhaps good to write your Foreign Ambassadors an ostensible Constitutional Letter ; desiring all Kings and 1 Campan, ii. c. l8. ^ Bouill^, M^moires, ii. c. lo. men COUNT FERSEN 9 men to take heed that King Louis loves the Constitution, that CHAP. Ill he has voluntarily sworn, and does again swear, to maintain May-June, the same, and will reckon those his enemies who affect to say ^^^^ otherwise ? Such a Constitutional Circular is despatched by Couriers, is communicated confidentially to the Assembly, and printed in all Newspapers ; with the finest effect.^ Simulation and dissimulation mingle extensively in human affairs. We observe, however, that Count Fersen is often using his Ticket of Entry ; which surely he has clear right to do. A gallant Soldier and Swede, devoted to this fair Queen ; — as indeed the Highest Swede now is. Has not King Gustav, famed fiery Chevalier du Nord, sworn himself, by the old laws of chivalry, her Knight ? He will descend on fire-wings, of Swedish musketry, and deliver her from these foul dragons, — if, alas, the assassin's pistol intervene not ! But, in fact. Count Fersen does seem a likely young soldier, of alert decisive ways : he circulates widely, seen, unseen ; and has business on hand. Also Colonel the Duke de Choiseul, nephew of Choiseul the great, of Choiseul the now deceased ; he and Engineer Goguelat are passing and repassing between Metz and the Tuileries : and Letters go in cipher, — one of them, a most important one, hard to decipher ; Fersen having ciphered it in haste.^ As for Duke de Villequier, he is gone ever since the Day of Poniards ; but his Apartment is useful for her Majesty. On the other side, poor Commandant Gouvion, watching at the Tuileries, second in National command, sees several things hard to interpret. It is the same Gouvion who sat, long months ago, at the Townhall, gazing helpless into that Insurrec- tion of Women ; motionless, as the brave stabled steed when conflagration rises, till Usher Maillard snatched his drum. Sincerer Patriot there is not ; but many a shiftier. He, if Dame Campan gossip credibly, is paying some similitude of love-court to a certain false Chambermaid of the Palace, who betrays much to him : the Ndcessaire, the clothes, the packing of jewels,^ — could he understand it when betrayed. Helpless Gouvion gazes with sincere glassy eyes into it ; stirs up his ' Moniteur, Stance du 23 Avril 1791. = Choiseul, Relation du Dipart de Louis XVI (Paris, 1822), p. 39. ^ Campan, i. 141. sentries 10 VARENNES BOOK IV sentries to vigilance ; walks restless to and fro ; and hopes June 20-21, the best. ^'^^ But, on the whole, one finds that, in the second week of June, Colonel de Choiseul is privately in Paris ; having come ' to see his children.' Also that Fersen has got a stupendous new Coach built, of the kind named Berime ; done by the first artists ; according to a model : they bring it home to him, in Choiseul's presence ; the two friends take a proof- drive in it, along the streets ; in meditative mood ; then send it up to ' Madame Sullivan's, in the Rue de Clichy,' far North, to wait there till wanted. Apparently a certain Russian Baroness de Korff, with Waiting-woman, Valet, and two Children, will travel homewards with some state : in whom these young military gentlemen take interest ? A Passport has been pro- cured for her ; and much assistance shown, with Coachbuilders and suchlike ; — so helpful-polite are young military men. Fersen has likewise purchased a Chaise fit for two, at least for two waiting-maids ; further, certain necessary horses : one would say, he is himself quitting France, not without outlay ? We observe finally that their Majesties, Heaven willing, will assist at Corpus-Christi Day this blessed Summer Solstice, in Assumption Church, here at Paris, to the joy of all the world. For which same day, moreover, brave Bouille, at Metz, as we find, has invited a party of friends to dinner ; but indeed is gone from home, in the interim over to Montmedi. These are of the Phenomena, or visual Appearances, of this wide-working terrestrial world : which truly is all phenomenal, what they call spectral ; and never rests at any moment ; one never at any moment can know why. On Monday night, the Twentieth of June 1791, about eleven o'clock, there is many a hackney-coach, and glass-coach (carrosse de remise), still rumbling, or at rest, on the streets of Paris. But of all glass-coaches, we recommend this to thee, O reader, which stands drawn up in the Rue de I'Echelle, hard by the Carrousel and outgate of the Tuileries ; in the Rue de I'Echelle that then was ; ' opposite Ronsin the saddler's door,' as if waiting for a fare there ! Not long does it wait : a hooded Dame, with two hooded children has issued from Villequier's door, where no sentry walks, into the Tuileries Court-of-Princes ; into the Carrousel ; into the Rue de I'Echelle : COUNT FERSEN 11 rEchelle ; where the Glass-coachman readily admits them ; CHAP. Ill and again waits. Not long ; another Dame, likewise hooded J^ne 20-21, or shrouded, leaning on a servant, issues in the same manner ; ^^^^ bids the servant good-night ; and is, in the same manner, by the Glass-coachman, cheerfully admitted. Whither go so many Dames ? 'Tis his Majesty's CoucMe, Majesty just gone to bed, and all the Palace-world is retiring home. But the Glass-coachman still waits ; his fare seemingly incomplete. By and by, we note a thickset Individual, in round hat and peruke, arm-in-arm with some servant, seemingly of the Runner or Courier sort ; he also issues through Villequier's door ; starts a shoebuckle as he passes one of the sentries, stoops down to clasp it again ; is however, by the Glass-coachman, still more cheerfully admitted. And now, is his fare complete ? Not yet ; the Glass-coachman still waits. — Alas ! and the false Chambermaid has warned Gouvion that she thinks the Royal Family will fly this very night ; and Gouvion, distrusting his own glazed eyes, has sent express for Lafayette : and Lafayette's Carriage, flaring with lights, rolls this moment through the inner Arch of the Carrousel, — where a Lady shaded in broad gypsy- hat, and leaning on the arm of a servant, also of the Runner or Courier sort, stands aside to let it pass, and has even the whim to touch a spoke of it with her badine, — light little magic rod which she calls badine, such as the Beautiful then wore. The flare of Lafayette's Carriage rolls past : all is found quiet in the Court-of-Princes ; sentries at their post ; Majesties' Apart- ments closed in smooth rest. Your false Chambermaid must have been mistaken ? Watch thou, Gouvion, with Argus' vigilance ; for, of a truth, treachery is within these walls. But where is the Lady that stood aside in gypsy-hat, and touched the wheel-spoke with her badine ? O Reader, that Lady that touched the wheel-spoke was the Queen of France ! She has issued safe through that inner Arch, into the Carrousel itself ; but not into the Rue de TEchelle. Flurried by the rattle and rencounter, she took the right hand not the left ; neither she nor her Courier knows Paris ; he indeed is no Courier, but a loyal stupid ci-devant Bodyguard disguised as one. They are off, quite wrong, over the Pont Royal and River ; roaming disconsolate in the Rue du Bac ; far from the Glass-coachman, who still waits. Waits, with flutter of heart ; with thoughts — which he must button close up, under his jarvie-surtout ! Midnight 12 VARENNES BOOK IV Midnight clangs from all the City-steeples ; one precious June 20-21, hour has been spent so ; most mortals are asleep. The Glass- ' coachman waits ; and in what mood ! A brother jarvie drives up, enters into conversation ; is answered cheerfully in jarvie- dialect : the brothers of the whip exchange a pinch of snuff ; ^ decline drinking together ; and part with good-night. Be the Heavens blest ! here at length is the Queen-lady, in gypsy- hat ; safe after perils ; who has had to inquire her way. She too is admitted ; her Courier jumps aloft, as the other, who is also a disguised Bodyguard, has done : and now, O Glass- coachman of a thousand, — Count Fersen, for the Reader sees it is thou, — drive ! Dust shall not stick to the hoofs of Fersen : crack ! crack ! the Glass-coach rattles, and every soul breathes lighter. But is Fersen on the right road ? North-eastward, to the Barrier of Saint-Martin and Metz Highway, thither were we bound : and lo, he drives right Northward ! The royal Individual, in round hat and peruke, sits astonished ; but right or wrong, there is no remedy. Crack, crack, we go incessant, through the slumbering City. Seldom, since Paris rose out of mud, or the Longhaired Kings went in Bullock-carts, was there such a drive. Mortals on each hand of you, close by, stretched out horizontal, dormant ; and we alive and quaking ! Crack, crack, through the Rue de Grammont ; across the Boulevard ; up the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, — these windows, all silent, of Number 42, were Mirabeau's. Towards the Barrier not of Saint-Martin, but of Clichy on the utmost North ! Patience, ye royal Individuals ; Fersen understands what he is about. Passing up the Rue de Clichy, he alights for one moment at Madame Sullivan's : ' Did Count Fersen's Coachman get the Baroness de Korff' s new Berline ? ' — ' Gone with it an hour- and-half ago,' grumbles responsive the drowsy Porter — ' Cest Men: Yes, it is well ;— though had not such hour-and-half been lost, it were still better. Forth therefore, O Fersen, fast, by the Barrier de Clichy; then Eastward along the Outer Boulevard, what horses and whipcord can do ! Thus Fersen drives, through the ambrosial night. Sleeping Paris is now all on the right-hand of him ; silent except for some snoring hum : and now he is Eastward as far as the Barrier de Saint-Martin ; looking earnestly for Baroness de ' Weber ii. 340-2 ; Choiseul, pp. 44-56. Korff' s THE DEMONSTRATION OF WOMEN. COUNT FERSEN 13 Korff's Berline. This Heaven's Berline he at length does CHAP. Ill descry, drawn up with its six horses, his own German Coach- June 20-21, man waiting on the box. Right, thou good German : now ^^^^ haste, whither thou knowest ! — And as for us of the Glass- coach, haste too, O haste ; much time is already lost ! The august Glass-coach fare, six Insides, hastily packs itself into the new Berline ; two Bodyguard Couriers behind. The Glass-coach itself is turned adrift, its head towards the City ; to wander whither it lists, — and be found next morning tumbled in a ditch. But Fersen is on the new box, with its brave new hammer-cloths ; flourishing his whip ; he bolts forward towards Bondy. There a third and final Bodyguard Courier of ours ought surely to be, with post-horses ready ordered. There likewise ought that purchased Chaise, with the two Waiting- maids and their bandboxes, to be ; whom also her Majesty could not travel without. Swift, thou deft Fersen, and may the Heavens turn it well ! Once more, by Heaven's blessing, it is all well. Here is the sleeping Hamlet of Bondy ; Chaise with Waiting-women ; horses all ready, and postilions with their churn-boots, impa- tient in the dewy dawn. Brief harnessing done, the postilions with their churn-boots vault into the saddles ; brandish circu- larly their little noisy whips. Fersen, under his jarvie-surtout, bends in lowly silent reverence of adieu ; royal hands wave speechless inexpressible response ; Baroness de Korff's Berline, with the Royalty of France, bounds off : for ever, as it proved. Deft Fersen dashes obliquely Northward, through the country, towards Bougret ; gains Bougret, finds his German Coachman and chariot waiting there ; cracks off, and drives undiscovered into unknown space. A deft active man, we say ; what he undertook to do is nimbly and successfully done. And so the Royalty of France is actually fled ? This precious night, the shortest of the year, it flies, and drives ! Baroness de Korff is, at bottom. Dame de Tourzel, Governess of the Royal Children : she who came hooded with the two hooded little ones ; little Dauphin ; little Madame Royale, known long afterwards as Duchesse d'Angoulgme. Baroness de Korff's Waiting-maid is the Queen in gjrpsy-hat. The royal Individual in round hat and peruke, he is Valet for the time being. That other hooded Dame, styled Travelling-companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth ; 14 VARENNES BOOK IV Elizabeth ; she had sworn, long since, when the Insurrection June 20-21, of Women was, that only death should part her and them. ^^^^ And so they rush there, not too impetuously, through the Wood of Bondy : — over a Rubicon in their own and France's History. Great ; though the future is all vague ! If we reach Bouille ? If we do not reach him ? O Louis ! and this all round thee is the great slumbering Earth (and overhead, the great watchful Heaven) ; the slumbering Wood of Bondy, — where Longhaired Childeric Donothing was struck through with iron ; ^ not un- reasonably, in a world like ours. These peaked stone-towers are Raincy ; towers of wicked D'Orleans. All slumbers save the multiplex rustle of our new Berline. Loose-skirted scare- crow of an Herb-merchant, with his ass and early greens, toil- somely plodding, seems the only creature we meet. But right ahead the great Northeast sends up evermore his gray brindled dawn : from dewy branch, birds here and there, with short deep warble, salute the coming Sun. Stars fade out, and Galaxies ; Street-lamps of the City of God. The Universe, O my brothers, is flinging wide its portals for the Levee of the Great High King. Thou, poor King Louis, farest neverthe- less, as mortals do, towards Orient lands of Hope ; and the Tuileries, with its Levees, and France and the Earth itself, is but a larger kind of doghutch, — occasionally going rabid. CHAPTER IV ATTITUDE But in Paris, at six in the morning ; when some Patriot Deputy, warned by a billet, awoke Lafayette, and they went to the Tuileries ? — Imagination may paint, but words cannot, the surprise of Lafayette ; or with what bewilderment helpless Gouvion rolled glassy Argus' eyes, discerning now that his false Chambermaid had told true ! However, it is to be recorded that Paris, thanks to an august National Assembly, did, on this seeming doomsday, surpass itself. Never, according to Historian eye-witnesses, was there ' H^nault, Abrig^ Chronologique, p. 36. seen ATTITUDE 15 seen such an ' imposing attitude.' ^ Sections ' all in perman- CHAP. IV ence ' ; our Townhall too, having first, about ten o'clock, fired June 21, three solemn alarm-cannons : above all, our National Assembly ! ^'^^ National Assembly, likewise permanent, decides what is needful ; with unanimous consent, for the CoU Droit sits dumb, afraid of the Lanterne. Decides with a calm promptitude, which rises towards the sublime. One must needs vote, for the thing is self-evident, that his Majesty has been abducted, or spirited away, ' enlevi,' by some person or persons unknown : in which case, what will the Constitution have us do ? Let us return to first principles, as we always say : ' revenons aux principes.' By first or by second principles, much is promptly decided : Ministers are sent for, instructed how to continue their func- tions ; Lafayette is examined ; and Gouvion, who gives a most helpless account, the best he can. Letters are found written : one Letter, of immense magnitude ; all in his Majesty's hand, and evidently of his Majesty's own composition ; addressed to the National Assembly. It details with earnestness, with a child-like simplicity, what woes his Majesty has suffered. Woes great and small : A Necker seen applauded, a Majesty not ; then insurrection ; want of due furniture in Tuileries Palace ; want of due cash in Civil List ; general want of cash, of furniture and order ; anarchy everywhere : Deficit never yet, in the smallest, ' choked or comhU ' : — wherefore, in brief, his Majesty has retired towards a place of Liberty ; and, leaving Sanctions, Federation, and what Oaths there may be, to shift for themselves, does now refer — ^to what, thinks an august Assembly ? To that ' Declaration of the Twenty-third of June,' with its ' Seul il fera. He alone will make his People happy.' As if that were not buried, deep enough, under two irrevocable Twelvemonths, and the wreck and rubbish of a whole Feudal World ! This strange autograph Letter the National Assembly decides on printing ; on transmitting to the Eighty-three Departments, with exegetic commentary, short but pithy. Commissioners also shall go forth on all sides ; the People be exhorted ; the Armies be increased ; care taken that the Com- monweal suffer no damage. — And now, with a sublime air of calmness, nay of indifference, we ' pass to the order of the day ' ! By such sublime calmness, the terror of the People is calmed. 1 Deux Amis, vi. 67-178; Toulongeon, ii. 1-38; Camille, Prudhomme and Editors (in Hist. Pari. x. 240-4). These 16 VARENNES BOOK IV These gleaming Pike-forests, which bristled fateful in the early June 21, sun, disappear again ; the far-sounding Street-orators cease, '^^ or spout milder. We are to have a civil war ; let us have it then. The King is gone ; but National Assembly, but France and we remain. The People also takes a great attitude ; the People also is calm ; motionless as a couchant lion. With but a few broolings, some waggings of the tail ; to show what it will do ! Cazales, for instance, was beset by street-groups, and cries of Lanterne ; but National Patrols easily delivered him. Likewise all King's effigies and statues, at least stucco ones, get abolished. Even King's names ; the word Boi fades suddenly out of all shop-signs ; the Royal Bengal Tiger itself, on the Boulevards, becomes the National Bengal one, Tigre National} How great is a calm couchant People ! On the morrow, men will say to one another : ' We have no King, yet we slept sound enough.' On the morrow, fervent Achille de Chatelet, and Thomas Paine the rebellious Needleman, shall have the walls of Paris profusely plastered with their Placard ; announc- ing that there must be a Republic.^ — ^Need we add, that Lafay- ette too, though at first menaced by Pikes, has taken a great attitude, or indeed the greatest of all ? Scouts and Aides-de- camp fly forth, vague, in quest and pursuit ; young Romoeuf towards Valenciennes, though with small hope. Thus Paris ; sublimely calmed, in its bereavement. But from the Messageries Boyales, in all Mail-bags, radiates forth far- darting the electric news : Our Hereditary Representative is flown. Laugh, black Royalists : yet be it in your sleeve only ; lest Patriotism notice, and waxing frantic, lower the Lanterne ! In Paris alone is a sublime National Assembly with its calm- ness ; truly, other places must take it as they can : with open mouth and eyes ; with panic cackling, with wrath, with con- jecture. How each one of those dull leathern Diligences, with its leathern bag and ' The King is fled,' furrows up smooth France as it goes ; through town and hamlet, ruffles the smooth public mind into quivering agitation of death-terror; then lumbers on, as if nothing had happened ! Along all highways ; towards the utmost borders ; till all France is ruffled, — rough- ened up (metaphorically speaking) into one enormous, desperate- minded, red guggling Turkey Cock ! ' Walpoliana. a Dumont, c. 16. For ATTITUDE 17 For example, it is under cloud of night that the leathern CHAP. IV Monster reaches Nantes ; deep sunk in sleep. The word Ji^e 21, spoken rouses all Patriot men : General Dumouriez, enveloped ^'^^ in roquelaures, has to descend from his bedroom ; finds the street covered with ' four or five thousand citizens in their shirts.' ^ Here and there a faint farthing rushlight, hastily kindled ; and so many swart-featured haggard faces with nightcaps pushed back ; and the more or less flowing drapery of nightshirts : open-mouthed till the General say his word ! And overhead, as always, the Great Bear is turning so quiet round Bootes ; steady, indifferent as the leathern Diligence itself. Take comfort, ye men of Nantes ; Bootes and the steady Bear are turning ; ancient Atlantic still sends his brine, loud-billowing, up your Loire stream ; brandy shall be hot in the stomach : this is not the Last of the Days, but one before the Last. — The fools ! If they knew what was doing, in these very instants, also by candle-light, in the far Northeast ! Perhaps, we may say, the most terrified man in Paris or France is — who thinks the reader ? — seagreen Robespierre. Double paleness, with the shadow of gibbets and halters, over- casts the seagreen features : it is too clear to him that there is to be ' a Saint-Bartholomew of Patriots,' that in four-and- twenty hours he will not be in life. These horrid anticipations of the soul he is heard uttering at Petion's : by a notable witness. By Madame Roland, namely ; her whom we saw, last year, radiant at the Lyons Federation. These four months, the Rolands have been in Paris ; arranging with Assembly Committees the Municipal affairs of Lyons, affairs all sunk in debt ; — communing, the while, as was most natural, with the best Patriots to be found here, with our Brissots, Petions, Buzots, Robespierres : who were wont to come to us, says the fair Hostess, four evenings in the week. They, running about, busier than ever this day, would fain have comforted the sea- green man ; spake of Achille de Chatelet's Placard ; of a Journal to be called The Republican ; of preparing men's minds for a Republic. ' A Republic ? ' said the Seagreen, with one of his dry husky ttwsportful laughs, ' What is that ? ' ^ O seagreen Incorruptible, thou shalt see ! ' Dumouriez, Mimoires, ii. 109. ^ Madame Roland, ii. 70. VOL. II. B Chapter V 18 VARENNES BOOK IV June 21, 1791 CHAPTER V THE NEW BERLINE But scouts, all this while, and aides-de-camp, have flown forth faster than the leathern Diligences. Young Romceuf, as we said, was off early towards Valenciennes : distracted Villagers seize him, as a traitor with a finger of his own in the plot ; drag him back to the Townhall ; to the National Assembly, which speedily grants a new passport. Nay now, that same scarecrow of an Herb-merchant with his ass has bethought him of the grand new Berline seen in the Wood of Bondy ; and delivered evidence of it : ^ Romoeuf, furnished with new passport, is sent forth with double speed on a hopefuler track ; by Bondy, Claye and Chalons, towards Metz, to track the new Berline ; and gallops d, franc Hrier. Miserable new Berline ! Why could not Royalty go in some old Berline similar to that of other men ? Flying for life, one does not stickle about his vehicle. Monsieur, in a common- place travelUng-carriage is off Northwards ; Madame, his Princess, in another, with variation of route : they cross one another while changing horses, without look of recognition ; and reach Flanders, no man questioning them. Precisely in the same manner, beautiful Princess de Lamballe set off, about the same hour ; and will reach England safe : — would she had continued there ! The beautiful, the good, but the un- fortunate ; reserved for a frightful end ! All runs along, unmolested, speedy, except only the new Berline. Huge leathern vehicle : — ^huge Argosy, let us say, or Acapulco ship ; with its heavy stern-boat of Chaise-and- pair ; with its three yellow Pilot-boats of mounted Bodyguard Couriers, rocking aimless round it and ahead of it, to bewilder, not to guide ! It lumbers along, lurchingly with stress, at a snail's pace ; noted of all the world. The Bodyguard Couriers, in their yellow liveries, go prancing and clattering ; loyal but stupid ; unacquainted with all things. Stoppages occur ; and breakages, to be repaired at Etoges. King Louis too will dismount, will walk up hills, and enjoy the blessed sun- ^ Moniteur, etc. (in Hist. Pari. x. 244-53). shine :— THE NEW BERLINE 19 shine : — ^with eleven horses and double drink-money, and all CHAP. V furtherances of Nature and Art, it will be found that Royalty, J"ne 21, flying for life, accomplishes Sixty-nine miles in Twenty-two ^^^^ incessant hours. Slow Royalty ! And yet not a minute of PRINCESSE DE LAMEALLE. these hours but is precious : on minutes hang the destinies of Royalty now. Readers, therefore, can judge in what humour Duke de Choiseul might stand waiting, in the village of Pont-de-Somme- velle, some leagues beyond Chalons, hour after hour, now when the day bends visibly westward. Choiseul drove out of Paris, in all privity, ten hours before their Majesties' fixed time ; his Hussars, 20 VARENNES BOOK IV Hussars, led by Engineer Goguelat, are here duly, come ' to June 21, escort a Treasure that is expected ' : but, hour after hour, is ^'^^ no Baroness de Korff' s Berline. Indeed, over all that North- east Region, on the skirts of Champagne and of Lorraine, where the great Road runs, the agitation is considerable. For all along, from this Pont-de-Sommevelle Northeastward as far as Montmedi, at Post-villages and Towns, escorts of Hussars and Dragoons do lounge waiting ; a train or chain of Military Escorts ; at the Montmedi end of it our brave Bouille : an electric thunder-chain ; which the invisible Bouille, like a Father Jove, holds in his hand — for wise purposes ! Brave Bouille has done what man could ; has spread out his electric thunder-chain of Military Escorts, onwards to the threshold of Chalons : it waits but for the new Korff Berline ; to receive it, escort it, and, if need be, bear it off in whirlwind of military fire. They lie and lounge there, we say, these fierce Troopers ; from Montmedi and Stenai, through Clermont, Sainte-Mene- hould to utmost Pont-de-Sommevelle, in all Post-villages ; for the route shall avoid Verdun and great Towns : they loiter impatient, ' till the Treasure arrive.' Judge what a day this is for brave Bouille : perhaps the first day of a new glorious life ; surely the last day of the old ! Also, and indeed still more, what a day, beautiful and terrible, for your young full-blooded Captains : your Dandoins, Comte de Damas, Duke de Choiseul, Engineer Goguelat, and the like ; intrusted with the secret ! — Alas, the day bends ever more westward ; and no Korff Berline comes to sight. It is four hours beyond the time, and still no Berline. In all Village- streets, Royalist Captains go lounging, looking often Paris- ward ; with face of unconcern, with heart full of black care : rigorous Quartermasters can hardly keep the private dragoons from cafes and dramshops.^ Dawn on our bewilderment, thou new Berline; dawn on us, thou Sun- Chariot of a new Berline, with the destinies of France ! It was of his Majesty's ordering, this military array of Escorts : a thing solacing the Royal imagination with a look of security and rescue; yet, in reality, creating only alarm, and, where there was otherwise no danger, danger without end. For each Patriot, in these Post-villages, asks naturally : This clatter ' Declaration du Situr La Cache du Rigimmt Roy al- Dragons (in Choiseul, pp. 125- 39)- of THE NEW BER LINE 21 of cavalry, and marching and lounging of troops, what means it ? CHAP. V To escort a Treasure ? Why escort, when no Patriot will steal June 21, from the Nation ; or where is your Treasure ? — There has been ^^^^ such marching and counter-marching : for it is another fatality, that certain of these Military Escorts came out so early as yesterday ; the Nineteenth not the Twentieth of the month being the day iirst appointed ; which her Majesty, for some necessity or other, saw good to alter. And now consider the suspicious nature of Patriotism ; suspicious, above all, of Bouille the Aristocrat ; and how the sour doubting humour has had leave to accumulate and exacerbate for four-and-twenty hours ! At Pont-de-Sommevelle, these Forty foreign Hussars of Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are becoming an unspeakable mystery to all men. They lounged long enough, already, at Sainte-Menehould ; lounged and loitered till our National Volunteers there, all risen into hot wrath of doubt, ' demanded three hundred fusils of their Townhall,' and got them. At which same moment too, as it chanced, our Captain Dandoins was just coming in, from Clermont with his troop, at the other end of the Village. A fresh troop ; alarming enough ; though happily they are only Dragoons and French ! So that Goguelat with his Hussars had to ride, and even to do it fast ; till here at Pont-de-Sommevelle, where Choiseul lay waiting, he found resting-place. Resting-place as on burning marie. For the rumour of him flies abroad ; and men run to and fro in fright and anger : Chalons sends forth explanatory pickets of National Volunteers towards this hand ; which meet exploratory pickets, coming from Sainte-Menehould, on that. What is it, ye whisk- ered Hussars, men of foreign guttural speech ; in the name of Heaven, what is it that brings you ? A Treasure ? — exploratory pickets shake their heads. The hungry Peasants, however, know too well what Treasure it is ; Military seizure for rents, feudalities ; which no Bailiff could make us pay ! This they know ; — and set to jingling their Parish-beU by way of tocsin ; with rapid effect ! Choiseul and Goguelat, if the whole country is not to take fire, must needs, be there Berline, be there no Berline, saddle and ride. They mount ; and this parish tocsin happily ceases. They ride slowly Eastward ; towards Sainte-Menehould ; still hoping the Sun-Chariot of a Berline may overtake them. Ah me, no 22 VARENNES 1791 BOOK IV no Berline ! And near now is that Sainte-Menehould ; which •^"°^2l, expelled us in the morning, with its ' three hundred National fusils ' ; which looks, belike, not too lovingly on Captain Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons, though only French ; — which, in a word, one dare not enter the second time, under pain of explosion ! With rather heavy heart, our Hussar Party strikes off, to the left ; through by-ways, through path- less hills and woods, they, avoiding Sainte-Menehould and all places which have seen them heretofore, will make direct for the distant Village of Varennes. It is probable they will have a rough evening ride. This first military post, therefore, in the long thunder-chain, has gone off with no effect ; or with worse, and your chain threatens to entangle itself ! — The Great Road, however, is got hushed again into a kind of quietude, though one of the wakefulest. Indolent Dragoons cannot, by any Quartermaster, be kept altogether from the dramshop ; where Patriots drink, and will even treat, eager enough for news. Captains, in a state near distraction, beat the dusty highway, with a face of indifference ; and no Sun- Chariot appears. Why lingers it ? Incredible, that with eleven horses, and such yellow Couriers and furtherances, its rate should be under the weightiest dray- rate, some three miles an hour ! Alas, one knows not whether it ever even got out of Paris ; — and yet also one knows not whether, this very moment, it is not at the Village-end ! One's heart flutters on the verge of unutterabilities. CHAPTER VI OLD-DRAGOON DROUET In this manner, however, has the Day bent downwards. Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field-labour ; the village-artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village-street for a sweet mouthful of air and human news. Still summer-eventide ever5rivhere ! The great Sun hangs flaming on the utmost Northwest ; for it is his longest day this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will ere long be at their ruddiest, and blush Good-night. The thrush, in OLD-DRAGOON DROUET 23 in green dells, on long-shadowed leafy spray, pours gushing CHAP. VI his glad serenade, to the babble of brooks grown audibler ; Jw°e 21, silence is stealing over the Earth. Your dusty Mill of Valmy, ^'^^ as all other mills and drudgeries, may furl its canvas, and cease swashing and circling. The swenkt grinders in this Treadmill of an Earth have ground out another Day ; and lounge there, as we say, in village-groups ; movable, or ranked on social stone-seats ; ^ their children, mischievous imps, sporting about their feet. Unnotable hum of sweet human gossip rises from this Village of Sainte-Menehould, as from all other villages. Gossip mostly sweet, unnotable ; for the very Dragoons are French and gallant ; nor as yet has the Paris- and- Verdun Diligence, with its leathern bag, rumbled in, to terrify the minds of men. One figure nevertheless we do note at the last door of the Village : that figure in loose-flowing nightgown, of Jean Baptiste Drouet, Master of the Post here. An acrid choleric man, rather dangerous-looking ; still in the prime of life, though he has served, in his time, as a Conde Dragoon. This day, from an early hour Drouet got his choler stirred, and has been kept fretting. Hussar Goguelat in the morning saw good, by way of thrift, to bargain with his own Innkeeper, not with Drouet regular Mattre de Poste, about some gig-horse for the sending back of his gig ; which thing Drouet perceiv- ing came over in red ire, menacing the Innkeeper, and would not be appeased. Wholly an unsatisfactory day. For Drouet is an acrid Patriot too, was at the Paris Feast of Pikes : and what do these Bouille soldiers mean ? Hussars, — ^with their gig, and a vengeance to it ! — have hardly been thrust out, when Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons arrive from Clermont, and stroll. For what purpose ? Choleric Drouet steps out and steps in, with long-flowing nightgown ; looking abroad, with that sharpness of faculty which stirred choler gives to man. On the other hand, mark Captain Dandoins on the street of that same Village ; sauntering with a face of indifference, a heart eaten of black care ! For no Korff Berline makes its appearance. The great Sun flames broader towards setting : one's heart flutters on the verge of dread unutterabilities. By Heaven ! here is the yellow Bodyguard Courier ; spur- 1 Rapport de M. Remy (in Choiseul, p. 143). ring 24 VARENNES BOOK IV ring fast, in the ruddy evening light ! Steady, O Dandoins, June 21, stand with inscrutable indifferent face ; though the yellow blockhead spurs past the Post-house ; inquires to find it ; and stirs the Village, all delighted with his fine livery. — Lumber- ing along with its mountains of bandboxes, and Chaise behind, the Korff Berline rolls in ; huge Acapulco ship with its Cock- boat, having got thus far. The eyes of the Villagers look enlightened, as such eyes do when a coach-transit, which is an event, occurs for them. Strolling Dragoons respectfully, so fine are the yellow liveries, bring hand to helmet ; and a Lady in gypsy-hat responds with a grace peculiar to her.^ Dandoins stands with folded arms, and what look of indifference and disdainful garrison-air a man can, while the heart is like leaping out of him. Curled disdainful mustachio ; careless glance, — which however surveys the Village-groups, and does not like them. With his eye he bespeaks the yellow Courier, Be quick, be quick ! Thick-headed Yellow cannot understand the eye ; comes up mumbling, to ask in words : seen of the Village ! Nor is Post-master Drouet unobservant all this whUe : but steps out and steps in, with his long-flowing nightgown, in the level sunlight ; prying into several things. When a man's faculties, at the right time, are sharpened by choler, it may lead to much. That Lady in slouched gypsy-hat, though sitting back in the Carriage, does she not resemble some one we have seen, some time ; — at the Feast of Pikes, or else- where ? And this Grosse-THe in round hat and peruke, which, looking rearward, pokes itself out from time to time, methinks there are features in it ? Quick, Sieur Guillaume, Clerk of the Directoire, bring me a new Assignat ! Drouet scans the new Assignat ; compares the Paper-money Picture with the Gross Head in round hat there : by Day and Night ! you might say the one was an attempted Engraving of the other. And this march of Troops ; this sauntering and whispering, — I see it ! Drouet Post-master of this Village, hot Patriot, Old-Dragoon of Conde, consider, therefore, what thou wilt do. And fast, for behold the new Berline, expeditiously yoked, cracks whip- cord, and rolls away ! — Drouet dare not, on the spur of the instant, clutch the bridles in his own two hands ; Dandoins, with broadsword, might hew you off. Our poor Nationals, ' Declaration de La Cache (in Choiseul, ubi stiprh). not THE NIGHT OF SPURS 25 not one of them here, have three hundred fusils, but then no CHAP. VI powder ; besides one is not sure, only morally-certain. Drouet, -^""^ ^i, as an adroit Old-Dragoon of Conde, does what is advisablest ; ^' privily bespeaks Clerk Guillaume, Old-Dragoon of Conde he too ; privily, while Clerk Guillaume is saddling two of the fleetest horses, slips over to the Townhall to whisper a word ; then mounts with Clerk Guillaume ; and the two bound east- ward in pursuit, to see what can be done. They bound eastward, in sharp trot : their moral-certainty permeating the Village, from the Townhall outwards, in busy whispers. Alas ! Captain Dandoins orders his Dragoons to mount ; but they, complaining of long fast, demand bread-and- cheese first ; — ^before which brief repast can be eaten, the whole Village is permeated ; not whispering now, but bluster- ing and shrieking ! National Volunteers, in hurried muster, shriek for gunpowder ; Dragoons halt between Patriotism and Rule of the Service, between bread-and-cheese and fixed bayonets : Dandoins hands secretly his Pocket-book, with its secret despatches, to the rigorous Quartermaster : the very Ostlers have stable-forks and flails. The rigorous Quarter- master, half-saddled, cuts out his way with the sword's-edge, amid levelled bayonets, amid Patriot vociferations, adjura- tions, flail-strokes ; and rides frantic ; ^ — few or even none following him ; the rest, so sweetly constrained, consenting to stay there. And thus the new Berline rolls ; and Drouet and Guillaume gallop after it, and Dandoins' Troopers or Trooper gallops after them ; and Sainte-Menehould, with some leagues of the King's Highway, is in explosion ; — and your Military thunder- chain has gone off in a self-destructive manner ; one may fear, with the frightfulest issues. CHAPTER VII THE NIGHT OF SPURS This comes of myterious Escorts, and a new Berline with eleven horses : ' he that has a secret should not only hide it, 1 Declaration de La Cache (in Choiseul, p. 134). but 26 VARENNES BOOK IV but hide that he has it to hide.' Your first MiUtary Escort June 21, has exploded self-destructive ; and all Military Escorts, and a ^^^^ suspicious Country will now be up, explosive ; comparable not to victorious thunder. Comparable, say rather, to the first stirring of an Alpine Avalanche ; which, once stir it, as here at Sainte-Menehould, will spread, — all round, and on and on, as far as Stenai ; thundering with wild ruin, till Patriot Villagers, Peasantry, Military Escorts, new Berline and Royalty are down, — jumbling in the Abyss ! The thick shades of Night are falling. Postilions crack and whip : the Royal Berline is through Clermont, where Colonel Comte de Damas got a word whispered to it ; is safe through, towards Varennes ; rushing at the rate of double- drink-money : an Unknown, ' Inconnu on horseback,' shrieks earnestly some hoarse whisper, not audible, into the rushing Carriage-window, and vanishes, left in the night.^ August Travellers palpitate ; nevertheless overwearied Nature sinks every one of them into a kind of sleep. Alas, and Drouet and Clerk Guillaume spur ; taking side-roads, for shortness, for safety ; scattering abroad that moral-certainty of theirs ; which flies, a bird of the air carrying it ! And your rigorous Quartermaster spurs ; awakening hoarse trumpet-tone, — as here at Clermont, calling out Dragoons gone to bed. Brave Colonel de Damas has them mounted, in part, these Clermont men ; young Cornet Remy dashes off with a few. But the Patriot Magistracy is out here at Cler- mont too ; National Guards shrieking for ball-cartridges ; and the Village ' illuminates itself ' ; — deft Patriots springing out of bed ; alertly, in shirt or shift, striking a light ; sticking up each his farthing candle, or penurious oil-cruse, tiU all glitters and glimmers ; so deft are they ! A camisado, or shirt-tumult, everywhere : storm-bell set a-ringing ; village- drum beating furious genirale, as here at Clermont, under illumination ; distracted Patriots pleading and menacing ! Brave young Colonel de Damas, in that uproar of distracted Patriotism, speaks some fire-sentences to what Troopers he has : ' Comrades insulted at Sainte-Menehould : King and Country calling on the brave ' ; then gives the fire-word. Draw swords. Whereupon, alas, the Troopers only smite their sword-handles, driving them farther home ! ' To me, whoever is for the King ! ' cries ' Campan, ii. 159. Damas THE NIGHT OF SPURS 27 Damas in despair ; and gallops, he with some poor loyal Two, CHAP. VII of the Subaltern sort, into the bosom of the Night.^ June 21, Night unexampled in the Clermontais ; shortest of the year ; ^^^^ f emarkablest of the century : Night deserving to be named of Spurs ! Cornet Remy, and those Few he dashed oft with, has missed his road ; is galloping for hours towards Verdun ; then, for hours, across hedged country, through roused hamlets, towards Varennes. Unlucky Cornet Remy ; unluckier Colonel Daxnas, with whom there ride desperate only some loyal Two ! More ride not of that Clermont Escort : of other Escorts, in other Villages, not even Two may ride ; but only all curvet and prance, — impeded by storm -bell and your Village illuminat- ing itself. And Drouet rides and Clerk Guillaume ; and the Country runs. — Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are plunging through morasses, over cliffs, over stock and stone, in the shaggy woods of the Clermontais ; by tracks ; or trackless, with guides ; Hussars tumbling into pitfalls, and lying ' swooned three quarters of an hour,' the rest refusing to march without them. What an evening ride from Pont-de-Sommevelle ; what a thirty hours, since Choiseul quitted Paris, with Queen's-valet Leonard in the chaise by him ! Black Care sits behind the rider. Thus go they plunging ; rustle the owlet from his branchy nest ; champ the sweet-scented forest-herb, queen-of- the-meadows spilling her spikenard ; and frighten the ear of Night. But hark ! towards twelve o'clock, as one guesses, for the very stars are gone out : sound of the tocsin from Varen- nes ? Checking bridle, the Hussar Officer listens : ' Some fire un- doubtedly ! ' — yet rides on, with double breathlessness, to verify. Yes, gallant friends that do your utmost, it is a certain sort of fire : difficult to quench. — The Korff Berline, fairly ahead of all this riding Avalanche, reached the little paltry Village of Varennes about eleven o'clock ; hopeful, in spite of that hoarse-whispering Unknown. Do not all Towns now lie behind us ; Verdun avoided, on our right ? Within wind of Bouill6 himself, in a manner ; and the darkest of mid- summer nights favouring us ! And so we halt on the hill-top at the South end of the Village ; expecting our relay ; which young Bouille, BouiUe's own son, with his Escort of Hussars, was to have ready ; for in this Village is no Post. Distracting ' Proch-verbal du Dircdoire de Clermont (in Choiseul, pp. 189-95). to 28 VARENNES BOOK IV to think of : neither horse nor Hussar is here ! Ah, and June 21, stout horses, a proper relay belonging to Duke Choiseul, do ^^^^ stand at hay, but in the Upper Village over the Bridge ; and we know not of them. Hussars likewise do wait, but drinking in the taverns. For indeed it is six hours beyond the time ; young Bouille, silly stripling, thinking the matter over for this night, has retired to bed. And so our yellow Couriers, in- experienced, must rove, groping, bungling, through a village mostly asleep : Postilions will not, for any money, go on with the tired horses ; not at least without refreshment ; not they, let the Valet in round hat argue as he likes. Miserable ! ' For five-and-thirty minutes ' by the King's watch, the Berline is at a dead stand : Round-hat arguing with Churn-boots ; tired horses slobbering their meal-and- water ; yellow Couriers groping, bungling ; — young Bouille asleep, all the while, in the Upper Village, and Choiseul's fine team standing there at hay. No help for it ; not with a King's ransom ; the horses deliberately slobber, Round-hat argues, Bouill6 sleeps. And mark now, in the thick night, do not two Horsemen, with jaded trot, come clank-clanking ; and start with half-pause, if one noticed them, at sight of this dim mass of a Berline, and its dull slobbering and arguing ; then prick off faster, into the Village ? It is Drouet, he and Clerk Guillaume ! Still ahead, they two, of the whole riding hurly- burly ; unshot, though some brag of having chased them. Perilous is Drouet's errand also ; but he is an Old-Dragoon, with his wits shaken thoroughly awake. The Village of Varennes lies dark and slumberous ; a most unlevel Village, of inverse saddle-shape, as men write. It sleeps ; the rushing of the River Aire singing lullaby to it. Nevertheless from the Golden Arm, Bras d'Or Tavern, across that sloping Marketplace, there still comes shine of social light ; comes voice of rude drovers, or the like, who have not yet taken the stirrup-cup ; Boniface Le Blanc, in white apron, serving them : cheerful to behold. To this Bras d'Or Drouet enters, alacrity looking through his eyes ; he nudges Boniface, in all privacy, ' Camarade, es-tu bon Patriate, Art thou a good Patriot ? ' — ' Si je suis ! ' answers Boniface. — ' In that case,' eagerly whispers Drouet — what whisper is needful, heard of Boniface alone.^ ' Deux Amis, vi. 139-78. And THE NIGHT OF SPURS 29 And now see Boniface Le Blanc bustling, as he never did CHAP. Vll for the j oiliest toper. See Drouet and Guillaume, dexterous June 21, Old-Dragoons, instantly down blocking the Bridge, with a l^^i ' furniture wagon they find there,' with whatever wagons, tumbrils, barrels, barrows their hands can lay hold of ; — till no carriage can pass. Then swiftly, the Bridge once blocked, see them take station hard by, under Varennes Archway ; joined by Le Blanc, Le Blanc's Brother, and one or two alert Patriots he has roused. Some half-dozen in all, with National muskets, they stand close, waiting under the Archway, till that same Korff Berline rumble up. It rumbles up : Alte Id ! lanterns flash out from under coat- skirts, bridles chuck in strong fists, two National muskets level themselves fore and aft through the two Coach-doors : ' Mesdames, your Passports ? ' — Alas, alas ! Sieur Sausse, Procureur of the Township, Tallow-chandler also and Grocer, is there, with official grocer-politeness ; Drouet with fierce logic and ready wit : — ^The respected Travelling Party, be it Baroness de Korff's, or persons of still higher consequence, will perhaps please to rest itself in M. Sausse's till the dawn strike up ! O Louis ; O hapless Marie-Antoinette, fated to pass thy life with such men ! Phlegmatic Louis, art thou but lazy semi- animate phlegm, then, to the centre of thee ? King, Captain- General, Sovereign Frank ! if thy heart ever formed, since it began beating under the name of heart, any resolution at all, be it now then, or never in this world : — ' Violent nocturnal individuals, and if it were persons of high consequence ? And if it were the King himself ? Has the King not the power, which all beggars have, of travelling unmolested on his own Highway ? Yes : it is the King ; and tremble ye to know it ! The King has said, in this one small matter ; and in France, or under God's Throne, is no power that shall gainsay. Not the King shall ye stop here under this your miserable Archway ; but his dead body only, and answer it to Heaven and Earth. To me. Bodyguards ; Postilions, en avant ! ' — One fancies in that case the pale paralysis of these two Le Blanc musketeers ; the drooping of Drouet's underjaw ; and how Procureur Sausse had melted like tallow in furnace-heat : Louis faring on ; in some few steps awakening Young Bouill^, awakening relays and Hussars : triumphant entry, with cavalcading high-brandishing Escort, 30 VARENNES BOOK IV Escort, and Escorts, into Montmedi ; and the whole course of June 22, French History different ! 1791 Alas, it was not in the poor phlegmatic man. Had it been in him, French History had never come under this Varennes Archway to decide itself. — He steps out ; all step out. Pro- cureur Sausse gives his grocer-arms to the Queen and Sister Elizabeth ; Majesty taking the two children by the hand. And thus they walk, coolly back, over the Marketplace to Procureur Sausse's ; mount into his small upper story ; where straightway his Majesty ' demands refreshments.' Demands refreshments, as is written ; gets bread-and-cheese with a bottle of Burgundy ; and remarks, that it is the best Burgundy he ever drank ! Meanwhile the Varennes Notables, and all men, official and non-official, are hastily drawing-on their breeches ; getting their fighting gear. Mortals half-dressed tumble out barrels, lay felled trees ; scouts dart off to all the four winds, — ^the tocsin begins clanging, ' the Village illuminates itself.' Very singular : how these little Villages do manage, so adroit are they, when startled in midnight alarm of war. Like little adroit municipal rattle-snakes suddenly awakened : for their storm-beU rattles and rings ; their eyes glisten luminous (with tallow-light), as in rattle-snake ire ; and the Village will sting. Old-Dragoon Drouet is our engineer and generalissimo ; valiant as a Ruy Diaz : — Now or never, ye Patriots, for the soldiery is coming ; m.assacre by Austrians, by Aristocrats, wars more than civil, it all depends on you and the hour ! — National Guards rank themselves, half-buttoned : mortals, we say, still only in breeches, in under-petticoat, tumble out barrels and lumber, lay felled trees for barricades : the Village will sting. Rabid Democracy, it would seem, is not confined to Paris, then ? Ah no, whatsoever Courtiers might talk ; too clearly no. This of dying for one's King is grown into a dying for one's self, against the King, if need be. And so our riding and running Avalanche and Hurlyburly has reached the Abyss, Korff Berline foremost ; and may pour itself thither, and jumble : endless ! For the next six hours, need we ask if there was a clattering far and wide ? Clatter- ing and tocsining and hot tumult, over all the Clermontais, spreading through the Three-Bishopricks : Dragoon and Hussar Troops galloping on roads and no-roads ; National Guards arming THE NIGHT OF SPURS 31 arming and starting in the dead of night ; tocsin after tocsin CHAP. VII transmitting the alarm. In some forty minutes, Goguelat June 22, and Choiseul, with their wearied Hussars, reach Varennes. ^'^^ Ah, it is no fire, then ; or a fire difficult to quench ! They leap the tree barricades, in spite of National sergeant ; they enter the village, Choiseul instructing his troopers how the matter really is ; who respond interjectionally, in their guttural dialect, ' Der Konig ; die Kdniginn ! ' and seem stanch. These now, in their stanch humour, will, for one thing, beset Procureur Sausse's house. Most beneficial : had not Drouet stormfuUy ordered otherwise ; and even bellowed, in his extremity, ' Cannoneers, to your guns ! ' — two old honeycombed Field- pieces, empty of all but cobwebs ; the rattle whereof, as the Cannoneers with assured countenance trundled them up, did nevertheless abate the Hussar ardour, and produce a respect- fuler ranking farther back. Jugs of wine, handed over the ranks, — for the German throat too has sensibility, — will com- plete the business. When Engineer Goguelat, some hour or so afterwards, steps forth, the response to him is — a hiccuping Vive la Nation ! What boots it ? Goguelat, Choiseul, now also Count Damas, and aU the Varennes Officiality are with the King ; and the King can give no order, form no opinion ; but sits there, as he has ever done, like clay on potter's wheel ; perhaps the absurd- est of all pitiable and pardonable clay-figures that now circle under the Moon. He will go on, next morning, and take the National Guard with him ; Sausse permitting ! Hapless Queen : with her two children laid there on the mean bed, old Mother Sausse kneeling to Heaven, with tears and an audible prayer, to bless them ; imperial Marie- Antoinette near kneeling to Son Sausse and Wife Sausse, amid candle-boxes and treacle- barrels, — ^in vain ! There are three Thousand National Guards got in ; before long they will count Ten thousand : tocsins spreading like fire on dry heath, or far faster. Young Bouille, roused by this Varennes tocsin, has taken horse, and — fled towards his Father. Thitherward also rides, in an almost hysterically desperate manner, a certain Sieur Aubriot, Choisetd's Orderly ; swimming dark rivers, our Bridge being blocked ; spurring as if the Hell-hunt were at his heels.^ Through the village of Dim, he galloping still on, scatters the ' Rapport de M. Aubriot (in Choiseul, pp. 150-7). alarm ; 32 VARENNES BOOK IV alarm ; at Dun, brave Captain Deslons and Ms Escort of a June 22, Hundred saddle and ride. Deslons too gets into Varennes ; ■^^^^ leaving his Hundred outside, at the tree-barricade ; offers to cut King Louis out, if he will order it : but unfortunately ' the work will prove hot ' : whereupon King Louis has ' no orders to give.' ^ And so the tocsin clangs, and Dragoons gallop, and can do nothing, having galloped : National Guards stream in like the gathering of ravens : your exploding Thunder-chain, falling Avalanche, or what else we liken it to, does play, with a vengeance, — up now as far as Stenai and Bouille himself.^ Brave Bouille, son of the whirlwind, he saddles Royal- AUemand ; speaks fire-words, kindling heart and eyes ; distributes twenty- five gold-louis a company : — Ride, Royal- AUemand, long- famed : no Tuileries Charge and Necker-Orleans Bust-Pro- cession ; a very King made captive, and world all to win !^ Such is the Night deserving to be named of Spurs. At six o'clock two things have happened. Lafayette's Aide-de-camp, Romoeuf, riding a franc etrier, on that old Herb- merchant's route, quickened during the last stages, has got to Varennes ; where the Ten thousand now furiously demand, with fury of panic terror, that Royalty shall forthwith return Paris-ward, that there be not infinite bloodshed. Also, on the other side, ' English Tom,' Choiseul's jokei, flying with that Choiseul relay, has met Bouille on the heights of Dun ; the adamantine brow flushed with dark thunder ; thunderous rattle of Royal-AUemand at his heels. English Tom answers as he can the brief question. How it is at Varennes ? — then asks in turn, What he, Enghsh Tom, with M. de Choiseul's horses, is to do, and whither to ride ? — To the Bottomless Pool ! answers a thunder-voice ; then again speaking and spurring, orders Royal- AUemand to the gallop ; and vanishes, swearing (en jurant)? 'Tis the last of our brave Bouille. Within sight of Varennes, he having drawn bridle, calls a council of officers ; finds that it is in vain. King Louis has departed, consenting : amid the clangour of universal stormbell ; amid the tramp of Ten thousand armed men, already arrived ; and say, of Sixty ' £:xtrait d'un Rapport de M. Deslons (in Choiseul, pp. 164-7). 2 Bouilli, ii. 74-6. ' Diclaration du Sieur Thomas (in Choiseul, p. 188). thousand THE RETURN 33 thousand flocking thither. Brave Deslons, even without CHAP. VII ' orders,' darted at the River Aire with his Hundred ; ^ swam June 22, one branch of it, could not the other ; and stood there, dripping and panting, with inflated nostril ; The Ten thousand answering him with a shout of mockery, the new Berline lumbering Paris- ward its weary inevitable way. No help, then, in Earth ; nor, in an age not of miracles, in Heaven ! That night, ' Marquis de Bouille and twenty-one more of us rode over the Frontiers : the Bernardine monks at Orval in Luxemburg gave us supper and lodging.' ^ With little of speech, Bouill6 rides ; with thoughts that do not brook speech. Northward, towards uncertainty, and the Cimmerian Night : towards West-Indian Isles, for with thin Emigrant delirium the son of the whirlwind cannot act ; towards England, towards premature Stoical death ; not towards France any more. Honour to the Brave ; who, be it in this quarrel or in that, is a substance and articulate-speaking piece of human Valour, not a fanfaronading hoUow Spectrum and squeaking and gibbering Shadow ! One of the few Royalist Chief-actors this Bouille, of whom so much can be said. The brave BouiUe too, then, vanishes from the tissue of our Story. Story and tissue, faint ineffectual Emblem of that grand Miraculous Tissue, and Living Tapestry named French Revolution, which did weave itself then in very fact, ' on the loud-sounding Loom of Time ' ! The old Brave drop out f ram it, with their strivings ; and new acrid Drouets, of new strivings and colour, come in : — as is the manner of that weaving. CHAPTER VIII THE RETUEN So, then, our grand Royalist Plot, of Flight to Metz, has executed itself. Long hovering in the background, as a dread royal ultimatum, it has rushed forward in its terrors : verily to some purpose. How many Royalist Plots and Projects, one after another, cunningly-devised, that were to explode like 1 Weber, ii. 386. ^ Aubriot, ut suprk, p. 158. VOL. II. c powder-mines 34 VARENNES BOOK IV powder-mines and thunder-claps ; not one solitary Plot of which June 25, has issued otherwise ! Powder-mine of a Seance Royale on ^'^^^ the Twenty-third of June 1789, which exploded as we then said, ' through the touchhole ' ; which next, your wargod Broglie having reloaded it, brought a Bastille about your ears. Then came fervent Opera-Repast, with flourishing of sabres, and Richard, O my King ; which, aided by Hunger, pro- duces Insurrection of Women, and Pallas Athene in the shape of Demoiselle Theroigne. Valour profits not ; neither has fortune smiled on fanfaronade. The Bouille Armament ends as the Broglie one had done. Man after man spends him- self in this cause, only to work it quicker ruin ; it seems a cause doomed, forsaken of Earth and Heaven. On the Sixth of October gone a year, King Louis, escorted by Demoiselle Theroigne and some two hundred thousand, made a Royal Progress and Entrance into Paris, such as man had never witnessed ; we prophesied him Two more such ; and accordingly another of them, after this Flight to Metz, is now coming to pass. Theroigne will not escort here ; neither does Mirabeau now ' sit in one of the accompanjdng carriages.' Mirabeau lies dead, in the Pantheon of Great Men. Theroigne lies living, in dark Austrian Prison ; having gone to Liege, professionally, and been seized there. Bemurmured now by the hoarse-flowing Danube : the light of her Patriot Supper- parties gone quite out ; so lies Theroigne : she shall speak with the Kaiser face to face, and return. And France lies — how ! Fleeting Time shears down the great and the little ; and in two years alters many things. But at all events, here, we say, is a second Ignominious Royal Procession, though much altered ; to be witnessed also by its hundreds of thousands. Patience, ye Paris Patriots ; the Royal Berhne is returning. Not till Saturday : for the Royal Berline travels by slow stages ; amid such loud-voiced confluent sea of National Guards, sixty thousand as they count ; amid such tumult of all people. Three National- Assembly Commissioners, famed Barnave, famed Petion, gene- rally-respectable Latour-Maubourg, have gone to meet it ; of whom the two former ride in the Berline itself beside Majesty, day after day. Latour, as a mere respectability, and man of whom all men speak well, can ride in the rear, with Dame de Tourzel and the Soubrettes. So THE RETURN 35 So on Saturday evening, about seven o'clock, Paris by hun- CHAP. VIII dreds of thousands is again drawn up : not now dancing the J^iie 26, tricolor joy-dance of hope ; nor as yet dancing the fury-dance of ^'^^ hate and revenge : but in silence, with vague look of conjecture, and curiosity mostly scientific. A Saint-Antoine Placard has given notice this morning that ' whosoever insults Louis shall be caned, whosoever applauds him shall be hanged.' Behold then, at last, that wonderful New BerKne ; encircled by blue National sea of fixed bayonets, which flows slowly, floating it on, through the silent assembled hundreds of thousands. Three yellow Couriers sit atop bound with ropes ; Petion, Barnave, their Majesties, with Sister Elizabeth, and the Children of France, are within. Smile of embarrassment, or cloud of dull sourness, is on the broad phlegmatic face of his Majesty ; who keeps declaring to the successive Official persons, what is evident, ' Eh Men, me voild, Well, here you have me ' ; and what is not evident, ' I do assure you I did not mean to pass the frontiers ' ; and so forth : speeches natural for that poor Royal Man ; which Decency would veil. Silent is her Majesty, with a look of grief and scorn ; natural for that Royal Woman. Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious Royal Procession, through many streets, amid a silent-gazing people : comparable, Mer- cier thinks,^ to some Procession du Roi de Basoche ; or say. Procession of King Crispin, with his Dukes of Sutormania and royal blazonry of Cordwainery. Except indeed that this is not comic ; ah no, it is comico-tragic ; with bound Couriers, and a Doom hanging over it ; most fantastic, yet most miser- ably real. Miserablest -flehile ludibrium of a Pickleherring Tragedy ! It sweeps along there, in most wngorgeous pall, through many streets in the dusty summer evening ; gets itself at length wriggled out of sight ; vanishing in the Tuileries Palace, — ^towards its doom, of slow torture, peine forte et dure. Populace, it is true, seizes the three rope-bound yellow Couriers ; wiU at least massacre them. But our august Assem- bly, which is sitting at this great moment, sends out Deputation of rescue ; and the whole is got huddled up. Barnave, ' all dusty,' is already there, in the National Hall ; making brief discreet address and report. As indeed, through the whole journey, this Barnave has been most discreet, sympathetic ; ^ Nouveau Paris, iii. 22. and 36 VARENNES BOOK IV June 25, 1791 and has gained the Queen's trust, whose noble instinct teaches her always who is to be trusted. Very different from heavy Petion ; who, if Campan speak truth, ate his luncheon, com- fortably filled his wine-glass, in the Royal Berline ; flung out MARIE THERESE CHARLOTTE. his chicken-bones past the nose of Royalty itself ; and, on the King's saying, ' France cannot be a Republic,' answered, ' No, it is not ripe yet.' Barnave is henceforth a Queen's adviser, if advice could profit : and her Majesty astonishes Dame Campan by signifying almost a regard for Barnave ; and that, in SHARP SHOT 37 in a day of retribution and Royal triumph, Barnave shall not CHAP. VIII be executed.^ "^une 25, 1791 On Monday night Royalty went ; on Saturday evening it returns : so much, within one short week, has Royalty accom- plished for itself. The Pickleherring Tragedy has vanished in the Tuileries Palace, towards ' pain strong and hard.' Watched, fettered and humbled, as Royalty never was. Watched even in its sleeping-apartments and inmost recesses : for it has to sleep with door set ajar, blue National Argus watching, his eye fixed on the Queen's curtains ; nay, on one occasion, as the Queen cannot sleep, he offers to sit by her pillow, and converse a little 1 2 CHAPTER IX SHABP SHOT In regard to all which, this most pressing question arises : What is to be done with it ? Depose it ! resolutely answer Robespierre and the thoroughgoing few. For, tnoly, with a King who runs away, and needs to be watched in his very bedroom that he may stay and govern you, what other reason- able thing can be done ? Had Philippe d'Orleans not been a caput mortuum ! But of him, known as one defunct, no man now dreams. Depose it not ; say that it is inviolable, that it was spirited away, was enleve ; at any cost of sophistry and solecism, re-establish it ! so answer with loud vehemence all manner of Constitutional Royalists ; as all your pure Royalists do naturally likewise, with low vehemence, and rage com- pressed by fear, still more passionately answer. Nay Barnave and the two Lameths, and what will follow them, do likewise answer so. Answer, with their whole might : terrorstruck at the unknown Abysses on the verge of which, driven thither by themselves mainly, all now reels, ready to plunge. By mighty effort and combination, this latter course is the course fixed on ; and it shall by the strong arm, if not by the clearest logic, be made good. With the sacrifice of all their hard-earned popularity, this notable Triumvirate, says Tou- 1 Campan, ii. c. i8. " fiid. ". I49- longeon, 38 VARENNES BOOK IV longeon, ' set the Throne up again, which they had so toiled July 1791 to overturn : as one might set up an overturned pyramid, on its vertex ' ; to stand so long as it is held. Unhappy France ; unhappy in King, Queen, and Constitu- tion ; one knows not in which unhappiest ! Was the mean- ing of our so glorious French Revolution this, and no other. That when Shams and Delusions, long soul-killing, had become body-killing, and got the length of Bankruptcy and Inanition, a great People rose and, with one voice, said, in the Name of the Highest : Shams shall be no more ? So many sorrows and bloody horrors, endured, and to be yet endured, through dismal coming centuries, were they not the heavy price paid and payable for this same: Total Destruction of Shams from among men ? And now, O Barnave Triumvirate ! is it in such doM&Ze-distilled Delusion, and Sham even of a Sham, that an effort of this kind will rest acquiescent ? Messieurs of the popular Triumvirate, never ! — But, after all, what can poor popular Triumvirates, and fallible august Senators, do ? They can, when the Truth is ail-too horrible, stick their heads ostrich-like into what sheltering Fallacy is nearest ; and wait there, a posteriori. Readers who saw the Clermontais and Three-Bishopricks gallop in the Night of Spurs ; Diligences ruffling up all France into one terrific terrified Cock of India; and the Town of Nantes in its shirt,— may fancy what an affair to settle this was. Robespierre, on the extreme Left, with perhaps Petion and lean old Goupil, for the very Triumvirate has defalcated, are shrieking hoarse; drowned in Constitutional clamour. But the debate and arguing of a whole Nation ; the bellowings through all Journals, for and against; the reverberant voice of Danton; the Hyperion shafts of Camille, the porcupine- quills of implacable Marat : — conceive all this. Constitutionalists in a body, as we often predicted, do now recede from the Mother Society, and h&comeFeuillans ; threaten- ing her with inanition, the rank and respectability being mostly gone. Petition after Petition, forwarded by Post, or borne in Deputation, comes praying for Judgment and Decheance, which is our name for Deposition ; praying, at lowest, for Reference to the Eighty-three Departments of France. Hot Marseillese Deputation comes declaring, among other things : ' Our Phocean Ancestors flung a Bar of Iron into the Bay at their first SHARP SHOT 39 first landing ; this Bar will float again on the Mediterranean CHAP. IX brine before we consent to be slaves.' All this for four weeks J«ly 1791 or more, while the matter still hangs doubtful ; Emigration streaming with double violence over the frontiers ; ^ France seething in fierce agitation of this question and prize-question. What is to be done with the fugitive Hereditary Representative ? Finally, on Friday the 15th of Jtily 1791, the National Assembly decides ; in what negatory manner we know. Where- upon the Theatres all close, the JBoMrne-stones and Portable- chairs begin spouting. Municipal Placards flaming on the walls, and Proclamations published by sound of trumpet, ' invite to repose ' ; with small effect. And so, on Sunday the 17th, there shall be a thing seen, worthy of remembering. Scroll of a Petition, drawn up by Brissots, Dantons, by Cordeliers, Jacobins ; for the thing was infinitely shaken and manipulated, and many had a hand in it : such Scroll lies now visible, on the wooden framework of the Fatherland's Altar, for signature. Unworking Paris, male and female, is crowding thither, all day, to sign or to see. Our fair Roland herself the eye of History can discern there ' in the morning ' ; ^ not without interest. In few weeks the fair Patriot will quit Paris ; yet perhaps only to return. But, what with sorrow of balked Patriotism, what with closed theatres, and Proclamations still publishing themselves by sound of trumpet, the fervour of men's minds, this day, is great. Nay, over and above, there has fallen out an incident, of the nature of Farce-Tragedy and Riddle ; enough to stimu- late all creatures. Early in the day, a Patriot (or some say, it was a Patriotess, and indeed the truth is undiscoverable), while standing on the firm deal-board of Fatherland's Altar, feels suddenly, with indescribable torpedo-shock of amazement, his bootsole pricked through from below ; clutches up suddenly this electrified bootsole and foot ; discerns next instant— the point of a gimlet or bradawl playing up, through the firm deal-board, and now hastily drawing itself back ! Mystery, perhaps Treason ? The wooden framework is impetuously broken up ; and behold, verily a mystery ; never explicable fully to the end of the world ! Two human individuals, of mean aspect, one of them with a wooden leg, lie ensconced there, gimlet in hand : they must have come in overnight ; ^ Bouill^, ii. loi. '^ Madame Roland, ii. 74. they 40 VARENNES BOOK IV they have a supply of provisions,— no ' barrel of gunpowder ' July I7j that one can see ; they affect to be asleep ; look blank enough, ^'^^ and give the lamest account of themselves. ' Mere curiosity ; they were boring up, to get an eye-hole ; to see, perhaps " with lubricity," whatsoever, from that new point of vision, could be seen ' : — little that was edifying, one would think ! But indeed what stupidest thing may not hiunan Dulness, Pruriency, Lubricity, Chance and the Devil, choosing Two out of Haif- a-million idle hiunan heads, tempt them to ? ^ Sure enough, the two hiunan individuals with their gimlet are there. lU-starred pair of individuals ! For the result of it all is, that Patriotism, fretting itself, in this state of nervous excitability, with hypotheses, suspicions and reports, keeps questioning these two distracted human individuals, and again questioning them ; claps them into the nearest Guardhouse, clutches them out again ; one hypothetic group snatching them from another : till finally, in such extreme state of nervous excitabiUty, Patriotism hangs them as spies of Sieur Motier ; and the life and secret is choked out of them for evermore. For evermore, alas ! Or is a day to be looked for when these two evidently mean individuals, who are hirnian nevertheless, will become Historical Riddles ; and, like him of the Iron Mask (also a human individual, and evidently nothing more), — have their Dissertations ? To us this only is certain, that they had a gimlet, provisions, and a wooden leg ; and have died there in the Lanterne, as the unluckiest fools might die. And so the signature goes on, in a stUl more excited manner. And Chaumette, for Antiquarians possess the very Paper to this hour, ^— has signed himself ' in a flowing saucy hand slightly leaned ' ; and Hebert, detestable Pere Duchesne, as if ' an inked spider had dropped on the paper ' ; Usher Maillard also has signed, and many Crosses, which cannot write. And Paris, through its thousand avenues, is weUing to the Champ-de-Mars and from it, in the utmost excitability of humour ; central Fatherland's Altar quite heaped with signing Patriots and Patriotesses ; the Thirty benches and whole internal Space crowded with onlookers, with comers and goers; one regurgi- tating whirlpool of men and women in their Sunday clothes. All which a Constitutional Sieur Motier sees ; and Bailly, looking into it with his long visage made still longer. Auguring ' Hist. Pari. xi. 104-7. ^ Ibid. xi. 113, etc. no SHARP SHOT 41 no good ; perhaps DScMance and Deposition after all ! Stop CHAP. IX it, ye Constitutional Patriots ; fire itself is quenchable, — yet J"ly 17, only quenchable at first. ^'^^ Slop it, tnily : but how stop it ? Have not the first free People of the Universe a right to petition ? — ^Happily, if also unhappily, there is one proof of riot : these two human indi- viduals hanged at the Lanterne. Proof, O treacherous Sieur Motier ? Were they not two hiunan individuals sent thither by thee to be hanged ; to be a pretext for thy bloody Drapeau Rouge ? This question shall many a Patriot, one day, ask ; and answer affirmatively, strong in Preternatural Suspicion. Enough, towards half-past seven in the evening, the mere natural eye can behold this thing : Sieur Motier, with Muni- cipals in scarf, with blue National PatroUotism, rank after rank, to the clang of drums ; wending resolutely to the Champ- de-Mars ; Mayor Bailly, with elongated visage, bearing, as in sad duty bound, the Drapeau Rouge. Howl of angry derision rises in treble and bass from a hundred thousand throats, at the sight of Martial Law ; which nevertheless, waving its Red sanguinary Flag, advances there, from the Gros-Caillou Entrance ; advances, drumming and waving, towards Altar of Fatherland. Amid still wilder howls, with objurgation, obtestation ; with flights of pebbles and mud, saxa et fceces ; with crackle of -a pistol-shot ; — finally with volley-fire of PatroUotism ; — ^levelled muskets ; roll of volley on volley ! Precisely after one year and three days, our sublime Federation Field is wetted, in this manner, with French blood. Some ' Twelve unfortunately shot,' reports Bailly, counting by units ; but Patriotism counts by tens and even by hundreds. Not to be forgotten, nor forgiven ! Patriotism flies, shriek- ing, execrating. Camille ceases journalising, this day ; great Danton with Camille and Fr^ron have taken wing, for their life ; Marat burrows deep in the Earth, and is silent. Once more PatroUotism has triumphed; one other time; but it is the last. This was the Royal Flight to Varennes. Thus was the Throne overtiuned thereby ; but thus also was it victoriously set up again — on its vertex ; and wiU stand while it can be held. Book Fifth BOOK FIFTH PARLIAMENT FIRST CHAPTER I GRANDE ACCEPTATION In the last nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is past, and gray September fades into brown October, why are the Champs Elysees illuminated ; why is Paris dancing, and flinging fireworks ? They are gala-nights, these last of September ; Paris may well dance, and the Universe : the Edifice of the Constitution is completed ! Completed ; nay revised, to see that there was nothing insufficient in it ; solemnly proffered to his Majesty ; solemnly accepted by him, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, on the fourteenth of the month. And now by such illumination, jubilee, dancing and fire-working, do we joyously handsel the new Social Edifice, and first raise heat and reek there, in the name of Hope. The Revision, especially with a throne standing on its vertex, has been a work of difliculty, of delicacy. In the way of propping and buttressing, so indispensable now, something could be done ; and yet, as is feared, not enough. A repentant Barnave Trium- virate, our Rabauts, Duports, Thourets, and indeed all Con- stitutional Deputies did strain every nerve : but the Extreme Left was so noisy ; the People were so suspicious, clamorous to have the work ended: and then the loyal Right Side sat feeble-petulant all the while, and as it were pouting and petting ; unable to help, had they even been willing. The Two Hundred and Ninety had solemnly made scission, before that, and departed, shaking the dust off their feet. To such transcendency of fret, and desperate hope that worsening of the bad might the sooner end it and bring back the good, had our unfortunate loyal Right Side now come ! ^ ^ Toulongeon, ii. 56, 59. However, GRANDE ACCEPTATION 43 However, one finds that this and the other Uttle prop has CHAP. I been added, where possibiUty allowed. Civil-list and Privy- Sept. 14-18, purse were from of old well cared for. King's Constitutional ^^^^ Guatd, Eighteen hundred loyal men from the Eighty-three Departments, under a loyal Duke de Brissac ; this, with trust- worthy Swiss besides, is of itself something. The old loyal Bodyguards are indeed dissolved, in name as well as in fact ; and gone mostly towards Coblentz. But now also those Sans- culottic violent Gardes Fran9aises, or Centre Grenadiers, shall have their mittimus : they do ere long, in the Journals, not without a hoarse pathos, publish their farewell ; ' wishing all Aristocrats the graves in Paris which to us are denied.' ^ They depart, these first Soldiers of the Revolution ; they hover very dimly in the distance for about another year ; till they can be remodelled, new-named, and sent to fight the Austrians ; and then History beholds them no more. A most notable Corps of men ; which has its place in World-History ; — though to us, so is History written, they remain mere rubrics of men ; nameless ; a shaggy Grenadier Mass, crossed with buff-belts. And yet might we not ask : What Argonauts, what Leonidas' Spartans had done such a work ? Think of their destiny : since that May morning, some three years ago, when they, unparticipating, trundled off D'Espremenil to the Calypso Isles ; since that July evening, some two years ago, when they, participating and sacreing with knit brows, poured a volley into Besenval's Prince de Lambesc ! History waves them her mute adieu. So that the Sovereign Power, these Sansculottic Watch- dogs, more like wolves, being leashed and led away from his Tuileries, breathes freer. The Sovereign Power is guarded henceforth by a loyal Eighteen Hundred, — ^whom Contrivance, under various pretexts, may gradually swell to Six Thousand ; who will hinder no journey to Saint-Cloud. The sad Varennes business has been soldered up ; cemented, even in the blood of the Champ-de-Mars, these two months and more ; and indeed, ever since, as formerly. Majesty has had its privileges, its ' choice of residence,' though, for good reasons, the royal mind ' prefers continuing in Paris.' Poor royal mind, poor Paris ; that have to go mumming ; enveloped in speciosities, in falsehood which knows itself false ; and to enact mutually ' Jlisi. Pari. xiii. 73. your 44 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V your sorrowful farce-tragedy, being bound to it ; and on the Sept. 14-18, whole, to hope always, in spite of hope ! ^^^^ Nay, now that his Majesty has accepted the Constitution, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, who would not hope ? Our good King was misguided, but he meant well. Lafayette has moved for an Amnesty, for universal forgiving and forgetting of Revolutionary faults ; and now surely the glorious Revolu- tion, cleared of its rubbish, is complete ! Strange enough, and touching in several ways, the old cry of Vive le Roi once more rises round King Louis the Hereditary Representative. Their Majesties went to the Opera ; gave money to the Poor : the Queen herself, now when the Constitution is accepted, hears voice of cheering. Bygone shall be bygone ; the New Era shall begin ! To and fro, amid those lamp-galaxies of the Elysian Fields, the Royal Carriage slowly wends and rolls ; everywhere with vivats, from a multitude striving to be glad. Louis looks out, mainly on the variegated lamps and gay human groups, with satisfaction enough for the hour. In her Majesty's face, ' under that kind graceful smile a deep sadness is legible.' ^ Brilliancies, of valour and of wit, stroll here observant : a Dame de Stael, leaning most probably on the arm of her Narbonne. She meets Deputies ; who have built this Constitution ; who saunter here with vague communings — not without thoughts whether it will stand. But as yet melodious fiddle-strings twang and warble everywhere, with rhythm of light fantastic feet ; long lamp-galaxies fling their coloured radiance ; and brass-lunged Hawkers elbow and bawl, ' Grande Acceptation, Constitution Monarchique ' : it behoves the Son of Adam to hope. Have not Lafayette, Barnave, and all Constitutionalists set their shoulders handsomely to the inverted pyramid of a throne ? Feuillans, including almost the whole Constitutional Respectability of France, perorate nightly from their tribune ; correspond through all Post-offices ; denouncing unquiet Jacobinism ; trusting well that its time is nigh done. Much is uncertain, questionable ; but if the Hereditary Representative be wise and lucky, may one not, with a sanguine Gaelic temper, hope that he will get in motion better or worse ; that what is wanting to him will gradually be gained and added ? For the rest, as we must repeat, in this building of the Con- ' De Stael, Consid&ations, i. c. 23. stitutional THE ADVANCING TERROR. GRANDE ACCEPTATION 45 stitutional Fabric, especially in this Revision of it, nothing CHAP. I that one could think of to give it new strength, especially to Sept. 14-18, steady it, to give it permanence, and even eternity, has been 1791 forgotten. Biennial Parliament, to be called Legislative, AssemhUe Legislative ; with Seven Hundred and Forty-five Members, chosen in a judicious manner by the ' active citizens ' alone, and even by electing of electors still more active : this, with privileges of Parliament, shall meet, self-authorised if need be, and self-dissolved ; shall grant money-supplies and talk ; watch over the administration and authorities ; dis- charge for ever the functions of a Constitutional Great Council, Collective Wisdom and National Palaver — as the Heavens will enable. Our First biennial Parliament, which indeed has been a-choosing since early in August, is now as good as chosen. Nay it has mostly got to Paris : it arrived gradually ; — ^not without pathetic greeting to its venerable Parent, the now moribund Constituent ; and sat there in the Galleries, reverently listening ; ready to begin, the instant the ground were clear. Then as to changes in the Constitution itself ? This, impos- sible for anj' Legislative, or common biennial Parliament, and possible solely for some resuscitated Constituent or National Convention, is evidently one of the most ticklish points. The august moribund Assembly debated it for four entire days. Some thought a change, or at least a reviewal and new approval, might be admissible in thirty years, some even went lower, down to twenty, nay to fifteen. The august Assembly had once decided for thirty years ; but it revoked that, on better thoughts ; and did not fix any date of time, but merely some vague outline of a posture of circumstances, and, on the whole, left the matter hanging.^ Doubtless a National Convention can be assembled even within the thirty years : yet one may hope, not ; but that Legislatives, biennial Parliaments of the common kind, with their limited faculty, and perhaps quiet successive additions thereto, may suffice for generations, or indeed while computed Time runs. Furthermore, be it noted that no member of this Constituent has been, or could be, elected to the new Legislative. So noble-minded were these Law-makers ! cry some : and Solon- like wotdd banish themselves. So splenetic ! cry more : each grudging the other, none daring to be outdone in self-denial ' Choix de Rapports, etc. (Paris, 1825), vi. 239-317. by 46 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V by the other. So unwise in either case ! answer all practical Sept. 14-18, men. But consider this other self-denying ordinance. That ' none of us can be King's Minister, or accept the smallest Court Appointment, for the space of four, or at lowest (and on long debate and Revision) for the space of two years ! So moves the incorruptible seagreen Robespierre ; with cheap magnanimity he ; and none dare be outdone by him. It was such a law, not superfluous then, that sent Mirabeau to the gardens of Saint-Cloud, under cloak of darkness, to that colloquy of the gods ; and thwarted many things. Happily and unhappily there is no Mirabeau now to thwart. Welcomer mean- while, welcome surely to all right hearts, is Lafayette's chivalrous Amnesty. Welcome too is that hard-wrung Union of Avignon ; which has cost us, first and last, ' thirty sessions of debate,' and so much else : may it at length prove lucky ! Rousseau's statue is decreed : virtuous Jean - Jacques, Evan- gelist of the Contrat Social. Not Drouet of Varennes ; not worthy Lataille, master of the old world-famous Tennis- Court in Versailles, is forgotten; but each has his honour- able mention, and due reward in money.^ Whereupon, things being all so neatly winded up, and the Deputations, and Messages, and royal and other ceremonials having rustled by ; and the King having now affectionately perorated about peace and tranquillisation, and members having answered ' Oui ! Ouir with effusion, even with tears,— President Thouret, he of the Law Reforms, rises, and, with a strong voice, utters these memorable last-words: 'The National Constituent ^ Moniteur (in Hist. Pari. xi. 473). Assembly DEATH MASK OF JEAN- JACQUES ROUSSEAU. GRANDE ACCEPTATION 47 Assembly declares that it has finished its mission ; and that ^ ^jn its sittings are all ended.' Incorruptible Robespierre, virtuous ^^gj ' Petion are borne home on the shoulders of the people ; with vivats heaven-high. The rest glide quietly to their respective places of abode. It is the last afternoon of September 1791 ; on the morrow morning the new Legislative will begin. So, amid glitter of illuminated streets and Champs Elysees, and crackle of fireworks and glad deray, has the first National Assembly vanished ; dissolving, as they well say, into blank Time ; and is no more. National Assembly is gone, its work remaining ; as all Bodies of men go, and as man himself goes : it had its beginning, and must likewise have its end. A Phan- tasm-Reahty bom of Time, as the rest of us are ; flitting ever backwards now on the tide of Time ; to be long remembered of men. Very strange Assemblages, Sanhedrims, Amphic- tyonics, Trades-Unions, Eciunenic Councils, Parliaments and Congresses, have met together on this Planet, and dispersed again ; but a stranger Assemblage than this august Constituent, or with a stranger mission, perhaps never met there. Seen from the distance, this also wiU be a miracle. Twelve Hundred human individuals, with the Gospel of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in their pocket, congregating in the name of Twenty-five Millions, with full assurance of faith, to ' make the Constitution ' : such sight, the acme and main product of the Eighteenth Century, our World can witness once only. For Time is rich in wonders, in monstrosities most rich ; and is observed never to repeat himself, or any of his Gospels : — surely least of all, this Gospel according to Jean- Jacques. Once it was right and indispensable, since such had become the Belief of men ; but once also is enough. They have made the Constitution, these Twelve Hundred Jean-Jacques Evangehsts ; not without result. Near twenty- nine months they sat, with various fortune ; in various capacity ; — always, we may say, in that capacity of car-borne Carroccio, and miraculous Standard of the Revolt of Men, as a Thing high and lifted up ; whereon whosoever looked might hope healing. They have seen much, cannons levelled on them ; then suddenly, by interposition of the Powers, the cannons drawn back ; and a wargod Broglie vanishing, in thunder not his own, amid the dust and downrushing of a Bastille and Old 48 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V Old Feudal France. They have suffered somewhat : Royal Sept. 30, Session, with rain and Oath of the Tennis-Court ; Nights of 1791 Pentecost ; Insurrections of Women. Also have they not done somewhat ? Made the Constitution, and managed all things the while ; passed, in these twenty-nine months, ' twenty- five hundred Decrees,' which on the average is some three for each day, including Sundays ! Brevity, one finds, is possible, at times : had not Moreau de St. M6ry to give three thousand orders before rising from his seat ? — There was valour (or value) in these men ; and a kind of faith, were it only faith in this, That cobwebs are not cloth ; that a Constitution could be made. Cobwebs and chimeras ought verily to disappear ; for a Reality there is. Let formulas, soul-killing, and now grown body-killing, insupportable, begone, in the name of Heaven and Earth ! — Time, as we say, brought forth these Twelve Hundred ; Eternity was before them. Eternity behind : they worked, as we all do, in the confluence of Two Eternities ; what work was given them. Say not that it was nothing they did. Consciously they did somewhat ; unconsciously how much ! They had their giants and their dwarfs, they accom- plished their good and their evil ; they are gone, and return no more. Shall they not go with our blessing, in these circum- stances ; with our mild farewell ? By post, by diligence, on saddle or sole ; they are gone : towards the four winds. Not a few over the marches, to rank at Coblentz. Thither wended Maury, among others ; but in the end towards Rome, — to be clothed there in red Cardinal plush ; in falsehood as in a garment ; pet son (her last bom ?) of the Scarlet Woman. Talleyrand-Perigord, excommunicated Constitutional Bishop, will make his way to London : to be Ambassador, spite of the Self-denying Law ; brisk young Marquis Chauvelin acting as Ambassador's-Cloak. In London too, one finds Potion the virtuous ; harangued and haranguing, pledging the winecup with Constitutional Reform-Clubs, in solemn tavern-dinner. Incorruptible Robespierre retires for a little to native Arras : seven short weeks of quiet ; the last appointed him in this world. Public Accuser in the Paris Department, acknowledged highpriest of the Jacobins ; the glass of incorruptible thin Patriotism, for his narrow emphasis is loved of all the narrow, — ^this man seems to be rising, some- whither ? He sells his small heritage at Arras ; accompanied by THE BOOK OF THE LAW 49 by a Brother and a Sister, he returns, scheming out with resolute CHAP. I timidity a small sure destiny for himself and them, to his old Sept. 30, lodging, at the Cabinet-maker's, in the Rue St Honore : O ^''^^ resolute-tremulous incorruptible sea-green man, towards what a destiny ! Lafayette, for his part, will lay down the command. He retires Cincinnatus-like to his hearth and farm ; but soon leaves them again. Our National Guard, however, shall henceforth have no one Commandant ; but all Colonels shall command in succession, month about. Other Deputies we have met, or Dame de Stael has met, ' sauntering in a thoughtful manner ' ; perhaps uncertain what to do. Some, as Bamave, the Lameths, and their Duport, will continue here in Paris ; watching the new biennial Legislative, Parliament the First ; teaching it to walk, if so might be ; and the Court to lead it. Thus these : sauntering in a thoughtful manner ; travel- ling by post or diligence, — ^whither Fate beckons. Giant Mirabeau slumbers in the Pantheon of Great Men : and France ? and Europe ? — the brass-lunged Hawkers sing ' Grand Accepta- tion, Monarchic Constitution ' through these gay crowds : the Morrow, grandson of Yesterday, must be what it can, as Today its father is. Our new biennial Legislative begins to constitute itself on the first of October 1791. CHAPTER II THE BOOK OF THE LAW If the august Constituent Assembly itself, fixing the regards of the Universe, could, at the present distance of time and place, gain comparatively small attention from us, how much less can this poor Legislative ! It has its Right Side and its Left ; the less Patriotic and the more, for Aristocrats exist not here or now : it spouts and speaks ; listens to Reports, reads BUls and Laws ; works in its vocation, for a season : but the History of France, one finds, is seldom or never there. Unhappy Legislative, what can History do with it ; if not drop a tear over it, almost in silence ? First of the two-year Parliaments of France, which, if Paper Constitution and oft- VOL. II. B repeated 50 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V repeated National Oath could avail aught, were to follow in Oct. 1791 softly-strong indissoluble sequence while Time ran, — it had to vanish dolefully within one year ; and there came no second like it. Alas ! your biennial Parliaments in endless indissoluble sequence ; they, and all that Constitutional Fabric, built with such explosive Federation Oaths, and its top-stone brought out with dancing and variegated radiance, went to pieces, like frail crockery, in the crash of things ; and already, in eleven short months, were in that Limbo near the Moon, with the ghosts of other Chimeras. There, except for rare specific purposes, let them rest, in melancholy peace. On the whole, how unknown is a man to himself ; or a public Body of men to itself ! ..Esop's fly sat on the chariot-wheel exclaiming, What a dust I do raise ! Great Governors, clad in purple with fasces and insignia, are governed by their valets, by the pouting of their women and children ; or, in Constitu- tional countries, by the paragraphs of their Able Editors. Say not, I am this or that ; I ana doing this or that ! For thou knowest it not, thou knowest only the name it as yet goes by. A purple Nebuchadnezzar rejoices to feel himself now verily Emperor of this great Babylon which he has builded ; and is a nondescript biped-quadruped, on the eve of a seven-years course of grazing ! These Seven Hundred and Forty-five elected individuals doubt not but they are the first biennial Parliament, come to govern France by parliamentary elo- quence : and they are what ? And they have come to do what ? Things foolish and not wise ! It is much lamented by many that this First Biennial had no members of the old Constituent in it, with their experience of parties and parliamentary tactics ; that such was their foolish Self-denying Law. Most surely, old members of the Constituent had been welcome to us here. But, on the other hand, what old or what new members of any Constituent under the Sun could have effectually profited ? There are first biennial Parliaments so postured as to be, in a sense, beyond wisdom ; where wisdom and folly differ only in degree, and wreckage and dissolution are the appointed issue for both. Old-Constituents, your Barnaves, Lameths, and the like, for whom a special Gallery has been set apart, where they may sit in honour and listen, are in the habit of sneering at these THE BOOK OF THE LAW 51 these new Legislators ; ^ but let not us ! The poor Seven CHAP. II Hundred and Forty-five, sent together by the active citizens Oct. 1701 of France, are what they could be ; do what is fated them. That' they are of Patriot temper we can well understand. Aristocrat Noblesse had fled over the marches, or sat brooding silent in their unburnt Chateaus ; small prospect had they in Primary Electoral Assemblies. What with Flights to Varennes, what with Days of Poniards, with plot after plot, the People are left to themselves ; the People must needs choose Defenders of the People, such as can be had. Choosing, as they also will ever do, ' if not the ablest man, yet the man ablest to be chosen ' ! Fervour of character, decided Patriot- Constitutional feeUng ; these are qualities : but free utter- ance, mastership in tongue-fence ; this is the quality of qualities. Accordingly one finds, with little astonishment, in this First Biennial, that as many as Four hundred Members are of the Advocate or Attorney species. Men who can speak, if there be aught to speak : nay here are men also who can think, and even act. Candour will say of this ill-fated First French Parliament, that it wanted not its modicum of talent, its modi- cum of honesty ; that it, neither in the one respect nor in the other, sank below the average of Parliaments, but rose above the average. Let average Parliaments, whom the world does not guillotine, and cast forth to long infamy, be thankful not to themselves but to their stars ! France, as we say, has once more done what it could : fervid men have come together from wide separation ; for strange issues. Fiery Max Isnard is come, from the utmost Southeast ; fiery Claude Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet Bishop of Calvados, from the utmost Northwest. No Mirabeau now sits here, who had swallowed formulas : our only Mirabeau now is Danton, working as yet out of doors ; whom some call ' Mirabeau of the Sansculottes.' Nevertheless we have our gifts, — especially of speech and logic. An eloquent Vergniaud we have ; most mellifluous yet most impetuous of public speakers ; from the region named Gironde, of the Garonne : a man unfortunately of indolent habits ; who will sit playing with your children, when he ought to be scheming and perorating. Sharp-bustling Guadet ; considerate grave Gensonne ; kind-sparkling mirthful young ' Dumouriez, ii. 150, etc. Ducos ; 52 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V Ducos ; Valaze doomed to a sad end : all these likewise are of Oct. 1791 that Gironde or Bordeaux region : men of fervid Constitu- tional principles ; of quick talent, irrefragable logic, clear respectability ; who will have the Reign of Liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods. Round whom others of like temper will gather ; known by and by as Girondins, to the sorrowing wonder of the world. Of which sort note Con- VERGNIAUD. dorcet. Marquis and Philosopher ; who has worked at much, at Paris Municipal Constitution, Differential Calculus, News- paper Chronique de Paris, Biography, Philosophy ; and now sits here as two-years Senator : a notable Condorcet, with stoical Roman face and fiery heart ; ' volcano hid under snow ' ; styled likewise, in irreverent language, ' mouton enrag^,' peace- ablest of creatures bitten rabid 1 Or note, lastly, Jean-Pierre Brissot; whom Destiny, long working noisily with him, has hurled hither, say, to have done with him. A biennial Senator he THE BOOK OF THE LAW 53 he too ; nay, for the present, the king of such. Restless, scheming, scribbling Brissot ; who took to himself the style de Warville, heralds know not in the least why ; — unless it were that the father of him did, in an unexceptionable manner, perform Cookery and Vintnery in the Village of Oitarville ? A man of the windmill species, that grinds always, turning towards all winds ; not in the steadiest manner. In all these men there is talent, faculty to work ; and they will do it : working and shaping, not with- out effect, though alas not in marble, only in quicksand ! — But the highest faculty of them all remains yet to be mentioned ; or indeed has yet to unfold itself for mention : Captain Hippolyte Camot, sent hither from the Pas de Calais ; with his cold mathematical head, and silent stub- bornness of will : iron Carnot, far - planning, imperturbable, uncon- querable ; who, in the hour of need, shall not be found wanting. His hair is yet black ; and it shall grow gray, under many kinds of fortune, bright and troublous ; and with iron aspect, this man shall face them all. Nor is Coti Droit, and band of King's friends, wanting : Vaublanc, Diunas, Jaucourt the honoured Chevalier ; who love Liberty, yet with Monarchy over it ; and speak fearlessly according to that faith ; — whom the thick-coming hurricanes will sweep away. With them let a new military Theodore Lameth be named ; — were it only for his two Brothers' sake, who look down on him, approvingly there, from the Old-Con- stituents' Gallery. Frothy professing Pastorets, honey-mouthed conciliatory CHAP. II Oct. 1791 ELIE GUADET. 5^ PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOKV conciliatory Lamourettes, and speechless nameless individuals Oct. 1791 sit plentiful, as Moderates, in the middle. Still less is a CSte Gauche wanting : extreme Left ; sitting on the topmost benches, as if aloft on its speculatory Height or Mountain, which will become a practical fulminatory Height, and make the name of Mountain famous-infamous to all times and lands. Honour waits not on this mountain ; nor as yet even loud dishonour. Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking ; solely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and the Heavens. Foremost here are the Cor- delier trio : hot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazaire, Attorneys both ; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio. Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon, little dreaming what he is ; — ^whom a sad chance has paralysed in the lower extremities. For, it seems, he sat once a whole night, not warm in his true-love's bower (who indeed was by law another's), but sunken to the middle in a cold peat-bog, being hunted out from her ; quaking for his life, in the cold quaking morass ; ^ and goes now on crutches to the end. Cambon likewise, in whom slumbers undeveloped such a finance-talent for printing of Assignats ; Father of Paper-money ; who, in the hour of menace, shall utter this stern sentence, ' War to the Manor-house, peace to the Hut, Guerre aux Chateaux, paix aux Chaumieres ! ' ^ Lecointre, the intrepid draper of Ver- sailles, is welcome here ; known since the Opera-Repast and Insurrection of Women. Thuriot too ; Elector Thuriot, who stood in the embrasures of the Bastille, and saw Saint-Antoine rising in mass ; who has many other things to see. Last and grimmest of all, note old Ruhl, with his brown dusky face and long white hair ; of Alsatian Lutheran breed ; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught ; who, haranguing the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred Ampulla (Heaven- sent, wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere worthless oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pave- ment there ; who, alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own wild head by pistol-shot, and so end it. Such lava welters redhot in the bowels of this Mountain ; unknown to the world and to itself ! A mere commonplace Mountain hitherto ; distinguished from the Plain chiefly by ' Dumouriez, ii. 370. 2 Choix dc Rapports, xi. 25. its THE BOOK OF THE LAW 55 its superior barrenness, its baldness of look : at the utmost it may, to the most observant, perceptibly smoke. For as yet all lies so solid, peaceable ; and doubts not, as was said, that it win endure while Time runs. Do not all love Liberty and the Constitution ? All heartily ; — and yet with degrees. CHAP. II Oct. 1791 GEORGES COUTHON. Some, as Chevalier Jaucourt and his Right Side, may love Liberty less than Royalty, were the trial made ; others, as Brissot and his Left Side, may love it more than Royalty. Nay again, of these latter some may love Liberty more than Law itself ; others not more. Parties will unfold themselves ; no mortal as yet knows how. Forces work within these men and 56 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOKV and without: dissidence grows opposition; ever widening; 1701 waxing into incompatibility and internecine feud ; till the strong is abolished by a stronger ; himself in his turn by a strongest ! Who can help it ? Jaucourt and his Monarch- ists, Feuillans, or Moderates ; Brissot and his Brissotins, Jacobins, or Girondins ; these, with the Cordelier Trio, and all men, must work what is appointed them, and in the way appointed them. And to think what fate these poor Seven Hundred and Forty-five are assembled, most unwittingly, to meet ! Let no heart be so hard as not to pity them. Their soul's wish was to live and work as the First of the French Parliaments ; and make the Constitution march. Did they not, at their very instalment, go through the most affecting Constitutional cere- mony, almost with tears ? The Twelve eldest are sent solemnly to fetch the Constitution itself, the printed Book of the Law. Archivist Camus, an Old-Constituent appointed Archivist, he and the Ancient Twelve, amid blare of military pomp and clangour, enter, bearing the divine Book : and President and all Legislative Senators, laying their hand on the same, suc- cessively take the Oath, with cheers and heart-effusion, universal three-times-three.^ In this manner they begin their Session. Unhappy mortals ! For, that same day, his Majesty having received their Deputation of welcome, as seemed, rather drily, the Deputation cannot but feel slighted, cannot but lament such slight : and thereupon our cheering swearing First Parlia- ment sees itself, on the morrow, obliged to explode into fierce retaliatory sputter of anti-royal Enactment as to how they, for their part, will receive Majesty ; and how Majesty shall not be called Sire any more, except they please : and then, on the following day, to recall this Enactment of theirs, as too hasty, and a mere sputter, though not unprovoked. An effervescent well-intentioned set of Senators ; too com- bustible, where continual sparks are flying ! Their History is a series of sputters and quarrels ; true desire to do their function, fatal impossibility to do it. Denunciations, repri- mandings of King's Ministers, of traitors supposed and real ; hot rage and fulmination against fulminating Emigrants ; terror of Austrian Kaiser, of ' Austrian Committee ' in the Tuileries itself ; rage and haunting terror, haste and doubt ^ Moniteur, Stance du 4 Octobre 1791. and THE BOOK OF THE LAW 57 and dim bewilderment ! — ^Haste, we say ; and yet the Consti- tution had provided against haste. No Bill can be passed till it have been printed, till it have been thrice read, with intervals of eight days ; — ' unless the Assembly shall beforehand decree that there is urgency.' Which, accordingly the Assembly, scrupulous of the Constitution, never omits to do : Considering this, and also considering that, and then that other, the Assembly decrees always ' quHl y a urgence ' ; and there- upon ' the Assembly, having decreed that there is urgence,' is free to decree — ^what indispensable distracted thing seems best to it. Two thousand and odd decrees, as men reckon, within Eleven months !^ The haste of the Con- stituent seemed great ; but this is treble-quick. For the time itself is rushing treble - quick ; and they have to keep pace with that. Un- happy Seven Hundred and Forty-five : true- patriotic, but so com- bustible ; being fired, they must needs fling fire : Senate of touch- wood and rockets, in a world of smoke- storm, with sparks wind - driven continu- ally flying ! Or think, on the other hand, looking forward some months, of that scene they call Baiser de Lamourette ! The dangers of the country are now grown imminent, immeasurable ; National Assembly, hope of France, is divided against itself. In such extreme circumstances, honey-mouthed Abbe Lamou- rette, new Bishop of Lyons, rises, whose name, Vamourette, signifies the sweetheart, or Delilah doxy,— he rises, and, with pathetic honeyed eloquence, calls on all august Senators to forget mutual griefs and grudges, to swear a new oath, and unite as brothers. Whereupon they all, with vivats, embrace 1 Montgaillard, iii. i, 237. and CHAP. II 1789-91 CAMUS. 58 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V and swear ; Left Side confounding itself with Right ; barren 1789-91 Mountain rushing down to fruitful Plain, Pastoret into the arms of Condorcet, injured to the breast of injurer, with tears : and all swearing that whosoever wishes either Feuillant Two- Chamber Monarchy or Extreme-Jacobin Republic, or any thing but the Constitution and that only, shall be anathema maranatha.^ Touching to behold ! For, literally on the morrow morning, they must again quarrel, driven by Fate ; and their sublime reconcilement is called derisively the Baiser de Lamourette, or Delilah Kiss. Like fated Eteocles-Polynices Brothers, embracing, though in vain ; weeping that they must not love, that they must hate only, and die by each other's hands ! Or say, like doomed Familiar Spirits ; ordered, by Art Magic under penalties, to do a harder than twist ropes of sand : ' to make the Constitution march.' If the Constitution would but march ! Alas, the Constitution will not stir. It falls on its face ; they tremblingly lift it on end again : march, thou gold Constitution ! The Constitution will not march. — ' He shall march, by ! ' said kind Uncle Toby, and even swore. The Corporal answered mournfully : ' He will never march in this world.' A Constitution, as we often say, will march when it images, if not the old Habits and Beliefs of the Constituted, then accurately their Rights, or better indeed their Mights ;— for these two, well understood, are they not one and the same ? The old Habits of France are gone : her new Rights and Mights are not yet ascertained, except in Paper-theorem ; nor can be, in any sort, till she have tried. Till she have measured herself, in fell death-grip, and were it in utmost preternatural spasm of madness, with Principalities and Powers, with the upper and the under, internal and external ; with the Earth and Tophet and the very Heaven ! Then will she know. — Three things bode ill for the. marching of this French Consti- tution : the French People ; the French King ; thirdly, the French Noblesse, and an assembled European World. ^ Moniteur, Seance du 6 Juillet 1792. Chapter III AVIGNON 59 CHAP. Ill 1789-91 CHAPTER III AVIGNON But quitting generalities, what strange Fact is this, in the far Southwest, towards which the eyes of all men do now, in the end of October, bend themselves ? A tragical combus- tion, long smoking and smouldering unluminous, has now burst into flame there. Hot is that Southern Proven§al blood : alas, collisions, as was once said, must occur in a career of Freedom ; different directions will produce such ; nay different velocities in the same direction wiU ! To much that went on there. History, busied elsewhere, would not specially give heed : to troubles of Uzez, troubles of Nismes, Protestant and Catholic, Patriot and Aristocrat ; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpellier, Aries ; to Aristocrat Camp of Jal^s, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity, now fading pale-dim, then always again glowing forth deep-hued (in the imagination mainly) ; — ominous magical, ' an Aristocrat picture of war done naturally ' ! All this was a tragical deadly combustion, with plot and riot, tumult by night and by day ; but a dark combustion not luminous, not noticed ; which now, however, one cannot help noticing. Above all places, the unluminous combustion in Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin was fierce. Papal Avignon, with its Castle rising sheer over the Rhone-stream ; beautifulest Town, with its purple vines and gold-orange groves ; why must foolish old rhyming Rene, the last Sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and Gold Tiara, not rather to Louis Eleventh with the Leaden Virgin in his hatband ? For good and for evil ! Popes, Antipopes, with their pomp, have dwelt in that Castle of Avignon rising sheer over the Rhone-stream : there Laura de Sade went to hear mass ; her Petrarch twanging and singing by the Fountain of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner. This was in the old days. And now in these new days such issues do come from a squirt of the pen by some foolish rhyming Ren6, after centuries, — this is what we have : Jourdan Coupe-tite, leading to siege and warfare 60 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V warfare an Army, from three to fifteen thousand strong, called 1789-91 the Brigands of Avignon ; which title they themselves accept, with the addition of an epithet, ' The hrave Brigands of Avignon ! ' It is even so. Jourdan the Headsman fled hither from that Chatelet Inquest, from that Insurrection of Women ; and began dealing in madder : but the scene was rife in other than dye-stuffs ; so Jourdan shut his madder-shop, and has risen, for he was the man to do it. The tile-beard of Jourdan is shaven off ; his fat visage has got coppered and studded with black carbuncles ; the Silenus trunk is swollen with drink and high living : he wears blue National uniform with epaulettes, ' an enormous sabre, two horse-pistols crossed in his belt, and other two smaller sticking from his pockets ' ; styles himself General, and is the tyrant of men.^ Consider this one fact, O Reader ; and what sort of facts must have preceded it, must accompany it ! Such things come of old Rene ; and of the question which has risen. Whether Avignon cannot now cease wholly to be Papal, and become French and free ? For some twenty-five months the confusion has lasted. Say three months of arguing ; then seven of raging ; then finally some fifteen months now of fighting, and even of hanging. For already in February 1790, the Papal Aristocrats had set up four gibbets, for a sign ; but the People rose in June, in retributive frenzy ; and, forcing the public Hangman to act,* hanged four Aristocrats, on each Papal gibbet a Papal Haman. Then were Avignon Emigrations, Papal Aristocrats emigrating over the Rhone River ; demission of Papal Consul, flight, victory : re-entrance of Papal Legate, truce, and new onslaught ; and the various turns of war. Petitions there were to National Assembly ; Congresses of Townships ; threescore and odd Townships voting for French Reunion and the blessings of Liberty ; while some twelve of the smaller, manipulated by Aristocrats, gave vote the other way : with shrieks and discord ! Township against Township, Town against Town : Carpentras, long jealous of Avignon, is now turned out in open war with it ;— and Jourdan Cowpe-tite, your first General being killed in mutiny, closes his dye-shop ; and does there visibly, with siege-artillery, above all with bluster and tumult, with the ' brave Brigands of Avignon,' beleaguer the rival Town, for two months, in the face of the world. * Dampmartin, Evinemens, i. 267. Feats AVIGNON 61 Feats were done, doubt it not, far-famed in Parish History ; CHAP. Ill but to Universal History unknown. Gibbets we see rise, on 1789-91 the one side and on the other ; and wretched carcasses swing- ing there, a dozen in the row ; wretched Mayor of Vaison buried before dead.^ The fruitful seedfields lie unreaped, the vineyards trampled down ; there is red cruelty, madness of universal choler and gall. Havoc and anarchy everywhere ; a combustion most fierce, but wnlucent, not to be noticed here ! — Finally, as we saw, on the 14th of September last, the National Constituent Assembly, — having sent Commissioners and heard them ; ^ having heard Petitions, held Debates, month after month ever since August 1789 ; and on the whole ' spent thirty sittings ' on this matter, — did solemnly decree that Avignon and the Comtat were incorporated with France, and his Holiness the Pope should have what indemnity was reasonable. And so hereby all is amnestied and finished ? Alas, when madness of choler has gone through the blood of men, and gibbets have swung on this side and on that, what will a parch- ment Decree and Lafayette Amnesty do ? Oblivious Lethe flows not above ground ! Papal Aristocrats and Patriot Brigands are stUl an eye-sorrow to each other ; suspected, suspicious, in what they do and forbear. The august Constituent Assembly is gone but a fortnight, when, on Sunday the Sixteenth morning of October 1791, the unquenched combustion suddenly becomes luminous. For Anti-constitutional Placards are up, and the Statue of the Virgin is said to have shed tears, and grown red.'* Wherefore, on that morning, Patriot I'Escuyer, one of our ' six leading Patriots,' having taken counsel with his brethren and General Jourdan, determines on going to Church, in company with a friend or two : not to hear mass, which he values little ; but to meet all the Papalists there in a body, nay to meet that same weeping Virgin, for it is the Cordeliers Church ; and give them a word of admonition. Adventurous errand ; which has the fatalest issue ! What L'Escuyer's word of admonition might be, no History records ; but the answer to it was a 1 Barbaroux, Mimoires, p. 26. ^ Lescene Desmaisons, Compte rtndu cL I'AssembUc Nationah 10 Scpiembre 1791 (Choix des Rapports, vii. 273-93). ' Proch-vtrbal de la Commune d' Avignon, etc. (in Hist. Pari. xii. 419-23). shrieking 62 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V shrieking howl from the Aristocrat Papal worshippers, many Nov. 1791 of them women. A thousand- voiced shriek and menace ; which, as L'Escuyer did not fly, became a thousand-handed hustle and jostle ; a thousand-footed kick, with tumblings and tramp- lings, with the pricking of sempstress stilettoes, scissors and female pointed instruments. Horrible to behold ; the ancient Dead, and Petrarchan Laura, sleeping round it there : ^ high Altar and burning tapers looking down on it ; the Virgin quite tearless, and of the natural stone-colour ! — L'Escuyer's friend or two rush off, like Job's Messengers, for Jourdan and the National Force. But heavy Jourdan will seize the Town- Gates first ; does not run treble-fast, as he might : on arriving at the Cordeliers Church, the Church is silent, vacant ; L'Escuyer, all alone, lies there, swimming in his blood, at the foot of the high Altar ; pricked with scissors, trodden, massacred ; — ogives one dumb sob, and gasps out his miserable life for evermore. Sight to stir the heart of any man ; much more of many men, self-styled Brigands of Avignon ! The corpse of L'Escuyer, stretched on a bier, the ghastly head girt with laurel, is borne through the streets ; with many -voiced unmelodious Nenia ; funeral-wail still deeper than it is loud ! The copper-face of Jourdan, of bereft Patriotism, has grown black. Patriot Municipality despatches official Narrative and tidings to Paris ; orders numerous and innumerable arrestments for inquest and perquisition. Aristocrats male and female are haled to the Castle ; lie crowded in subterranean dungeons there, bemoaned by the hoarse rushing of the Rhone ; cut out from help. So lie they ; waiting inquest and perquisition. Alas, with a Jourdan Headsman for Generalissimo, with his copper-face grown black, and armed Brigand Patriots chanting their Nenia, the inquest is likely to be brief. On the next day and the next, let Municipality consent or not, a Brigand Court-Martial estab- lishes itself in the subterranean stories of the Castle of Avignon ; Brigand Executioners, with naked sabre, waiting at the door for a Brigand verdict. Short judgment, no appeal ! There is Brigand wrath and vengeance ; not unrefreshed by brandy. Close by is the Dungeon of the Glaciere, or Ice-Tower : there may be deeds done — ? For which language has no name ! — Darkness and the shadow of horrid cruelty envelops these Castle Dungeons, that Glaciere Tower : clear only that many ' Ugo Foscolo, Essay on Petrarch, p. 35. have AVIGNON 63 have entered, that few have returned. Jourdan and the CHAP. Ill Brigands, supreme now over Municipals, over all authorities Nov. 1791 Patriot or Papal, reign in Avignon, waited on by Terror and Silence. The result of all which is, that, on the 15th of November 1791, we behold friend Dampmartin, and subalterns beneath him, and General Choisi above him, with Infantry and Cavalry, and proper cannon-carriages rattling in front, with spread banners, to the sound of fife and drum, wend, in a deliberate formidable manner, towards that sheer Castle Rock, towards those broad Gates of Avignon ; three new National- Assembly Commissioners following at safe distance in the rear.^ Avignon, summoned in the name of Assembly and Law, flings its Gates wide open ; Choisi with the rest, Dampmartin and the ' Bons Enfans, Good Boys, of Baufremont,' — so they name these brave Constitutional Dragoons, known to them of old,— do enter, amid shouts and scattered flowers. To the joy of all honest persons ; to the terror only of Jourdan Headsman and the Brigands. Nay next we behold carbuncled swollen Jourdan himself show copper-face, with sabre and four pistols ; affecting to talk high ; engaging, meanwhile, to surrender the Castle that instant. So the Choisi Grenadiers enter with him there. They start and stop, passing that Glaciere, snuffing its horrible breath ; with wild yell, with cries of ' Cut the Butcher down ! ' — and Jourdan has to whisk himself through secret passages, and instantaneously vanish. Be the mystery of iniquity laid bare, then ! A Hundred and Thirty Corpses, of men, nay of women and even children (for the trembling mother, hastily seized, could not leave her infant), lie heaped in that Glaciere ; putrid, under putridities : the horror of the world. For three days there is mournful lifting out, and recognition ; amid the cries and movements of a passionate Southern people, now kneeUng in prayer, now storming in wild pity and rage : lastly there is solemn sepul- ture, with muffled drums, religious requiem, and all the people's wail and tears. Their Massacred rest now in holy ground ; buried in one grave. And Jourdan Coupe-tSte ? Him also we behold again, after a day or two : in flight, through the most romantic Petrarchan hill-country ; vehemently spurring his nag ; young Ligonnet, a ^ Dampmartin, i. 251-94. brisk 64 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOKV brisk youth of Avignon, with Choisi Dragoons, close in his 1791-92 rear ! With such swollen mass of a rider no nag can run to advantage. The tired nag, spur-driven, does take the River Sorgue ; but sticks in the middle of it ; firm on that chiaro fondo di Sorga ; and will proceed no further for spurring ! Young Ligonnet dashes up ; the Copper-face menaces and bellows, draws pistol, perhaps even snaps it ; is nevertheless seized by the collar ; is tied firm, ankles under horse's belly, and ridden back to Avignon, hardly to be saved from massacre on the streets there.^ Such is the combustion of Avignon and the Southwest, when it becomes luminous. Long loud debate is in the august Legislative, in the Mother Society, as to what now shall be done with it. Amnesty, cry eloquent Vergniaud and all Patriots : let there be mutual pardon and repentance, restoration, pacifi- cation, and, if so might anyhow be, an end ! Which vote ultimately prevails. So the Southwest smoulders and welters again in an ' Amnesty,' or Non-remembrance, which alas cannot but remember, no Lethe flowing above ground ! Jourdan himself remains unhanged ; gets loose again, as one not yet gallows-ripe ; nay, as we transiently discern from the distance, is ' carried in triumph through the cities of the South.' ^ What things men carry ! With which transient glimpse, of a Copper-faced Portent faring in this manner through the cities of the South, we must quit these regions ; — and let them smoulder. They want not their Aristocrats ; proud old Nobles, not yet emigrated. Aries has its ' Chiffonne,' so, in symbolical cant, they name that Aristocrat Secret- Association ; Aries has its pavements piled up, by and by, into Aristocrat barricades. Against which Rebecqui, the hot-clear Patriot, must lead Marseillese with cannon. The Bar of Iron has not yet risen to the top in the Bay of Marseilles ; neither have these hot Sons of the Phoceans submitted to be slaves. By clear management and hot instance, Rebecqui dissipates that Chiffonne, without bloodshed ; restores the pavement of Aries. He sails in Coast-barks, this Rebecqui, scrutinising suspicious Martello-towers, with the keen eye of Patriotism ; marches overland with despatch, singly, or in ^ Dampmartin, ubi supra. ^ Deux Apiis (Patis, 1797), vii. pp. 59-71. force ; AVIGNON 65 force ; to City after City ; dim scouring far and wide ; ^ — CHAP. Ill argues, and if it must be, fights. For there is much to do ; 1791-92 Jales itself is looking suspicious. So that Legislator Fauchet, after debate on it, has to propose Commissioners and a Camp on the Plain of Beaucaire ; with or without result. Of all which, and much else, let us note only this small con- sequence, that young Barbaroux, Advocatie, Town-Clerk of Marseilles, being charged to have these things remedied, arrives at Paris in the month of February 1792. The beautiful and brave : young Spartan, ripe in energy, not ripe in wisdom ; over whose black doom there shall flit nevertheless a certain ruddy fervour, streaks of bright Southern tint, not wholly swallowed of Death ! Note also that the Rolands of Lyons are again in Paris ; for the second and final time. King's Inspectorship is abrogated at Lyons, as elsewhere : Roland has his retiring-pension to claim, if attainable ; has Patriot friends to commune with ; at lowest, has a Book to publish. That young Barbaroux and the Rolands came together ; that elderly Spartan Roland liked, or even loved the young Spartan, and was loved by him, one can fancy : and Madame ? Breathe not, thou poison-breath. Evil-speech ! That soul is taintless, clear as the mirror-sea. And yet if they two did look into each other's eyes, and each, in silence, in tragical renuneiance, did find that the other was ail-too lovely ? Honi soit ! She calls him ' beautiful as Antinous ' : he ' will speak elsewhere of that astonishing woman.' — A Madame d'Udon (or some such name, for Dumont does not recollect quite clearly) gives copious Breakfast to the Brissotin Deputies and us Friends of Freedom, at her House in the Place Vendome ; with tempo- rary celebrity, with graces and wreathed smiles ; not without cost. There, amid wide babble and jingle, our plan of Legisla- tive Debate is settled for the day, and much counselling held. Strict Roland is seen there, but does not go often.^ ' Barbaroux, p. 21 ; Hist. Pari. xiii. 421-4. ^ Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 374. VOL. II. E Chapter IV BOOKV 1791-92 66 PARLIAMENT FIRST CHAPTER IV NO SUGAK Such are our inward troubles ; seen in the Cities of the South ; extant, seen or unseen, in all cities and districts. North as well as South. For in all are Aristocrats, more or less malig- nant ; watched by Patriotism ; which again, being of various shades, from light Fayettist-Feuillant down to deep-sombre Jacobin, has to watch even itself. Directories of Departments, what we call County Magis- tracies, being chosen by Citizens of a too ' active ' class, are found to pull one way ; Municipalities, Town Magistracies, to puU the other way. In all places too are Dissident Priests ; whom the Legislative will have to deal with : contumacious individuals, working on that angriest of passions ; plotting, enlisting for Coblentz ; or suspected of plotting : fuel of a universal unconstitutional heat. What to do with them ? They may be conscientious as well as contumacious : gently they should be dealt with, and yet it must be speedily. In unilluminated La Vendee the simple are like to be seduced by them ; many a simple peasant, a Cathelineau the wooldealer wayfaring meditative with his woolpacks, in these hamlets, dubiously shakes his head ! Two Assembly Commissioners went thither last Autumn ; considerate Gensonne, not yet called to be a senator ; Gallois, an editorial man. These Two, consulting with General Dumouriez, spake arid worked, softly, with judgment ; they have hushed down the irritation, and produced a soft Report, — for the time. The General himself doubts not in the least but he can keep peace there ; being an able man. He passes these frosty months among the pleasant people of Niort, occupies ' tolerably hand- some apartments in the Castle of Niort,' and tempers the minds of men.^ Why is there but one Dimiouriez ? Elsewhere you find. South or North, nothing but untempered obscure jarring ; which breaks forth ever and anon into open clangour of riot. Southern Perpignan has its tocsin, by torchlight; with rushing and onslaught : Northern Caen, not less, by day- ^ Dumouriez, ii. 129. light; NO SUGAR 67 light ; with Aristocrats ranged in arms at Places of Worship ; CHAP. IV Departmental compromise proving impossible ; breaking into 1791-92 musketry and a Plot discovered ! ^ Add Hunger too : for bread, always dear, is getting dearer : not so much as Sugar can be had ; for good reasons. Poor Simoneau, Mayor of Etampes, in this Northern region, hanging out his Red Flag in some riot of grains, is trampled to death by a hungry exasper- ated People. What a trade this of Mayor, in these times ! Mayor of Saint-Denis hung at the Lanterne, by Suspicion and Dyspepsia, as we saw long since ; Mayor of Vaison, as we saw lately, buried before dead; and now this poor Simoneau the Tanner, of Etampes, — whom legal Constitutionalism will not forget. With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily what they call dechirS, torn asunder, this poor country : France and all that is French. For, over seas too come bad news. In black Saint-Domingo, before that variegated Glitter in the Champs Elysees was lit for an Accepted Constitution, there had risen, and was burning contemporary with it, quite another variegated Glitter and nocturnal Fulgor, had we known it : of molasses and ardent-spirits ; of sugar-boUeries, plantations, furniture, cattle and men : sky-high ; the Plain of Cap Frangais one huge whirl of smoke and flame ! What a change here, in these two years ; since that first ' Box of Tricolor Cockades ' got through the Custom-house and atrabiliar Creoles too rejoiced that there was a levelling of Bastilles ! Levelling is comfortable, as we often say : levelling, yet only down to oneself. Your pale-white Creoles have their grievances : — and your yellow Quarteroons ? And your dark-yellow Mulattoes ? And your Slaves soot-black ? Quarteroon Og^, Friend of our Parisian-Brissotin Friends of the Blacks, felt, for his share too, that Insurrection was the most sacred of duties. So the tricolor Cockades had fluttered and swashed only some three months on the Creole hat, when Oge's signal conflagrations went aloft ; with the voice of rage and terror. Repressed, doomed to die, he took black powder or seedgrains in the hollow of his hand, this Oge ; sprinkled a fihn of white ones on the top, and said to his Judges, ' Behold, they are white ' ; then shook his hand, and said, ' Where are the whites, Oii sont les blancs ? ' ' Hist. Pari. xii. 131, 141 ; xiii. 114, 417. So 68 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V So now, in the Autumn of 1791, looking from the sky-windows 1791-92 of Cap Frangais, thick clouds of smoke girdle our horizon, smoke in the day, in the night fire ; preceded by fugitive shrieking white women, by Terror and Rumour. Black demonised squadrons are massacring and harrying, with name- less cruelty. They fight and fire 'from behind thickets and coverts,' for the Black man loves the Bush ; they rush to the attack, thousands strong, with brandished cutlasses and fusils, with caperings, shoutings and vociferation, — which, if the White Volunteer Company stands firm, dwindle into staggerings, into quick gabblement, into panic flight at the first volley, perhaps before it.^ Poor Oge could be broken on the wheel ; this fire-whirlwind too can be abated, driven up into the Moun- tains : but Saint-Domingo is shaken, as Oge's seedgrains were ; shaking, writhing in long horrid death-throes, it is Black without remedy ; and remains, as African Haiti, a monition to the world. O my Parisian Friends, is not this, as well as Regraters and Feuillant Plotters, one cause of the astonishing dearth of Sugar ! The Grocer, palpitant, with drooping lip, sees his Sugar taxi ; weighed out by female Patriotism, in instant retail, at the inadequate rate of twenty-five sous, or thirteen pence a pound. ' Abstain from it ? ' Yes, ye Patriot Sections, all ye Jacobins, abstain ! Louvet and Collot-d'Herbois so advise ; resolute to make the sacrifice ; though ' how shall literary men do without coffee ? ' Abstain, with an oath ; that is the surest ! ^ Also, for like reason, must not Brest and the Shipping Interest languish ? Poor Brest languishes, sorrowing, not without spleen ; denounces an Aristocrat Bertrand-Moleville, traitorous Aristocrat Marine-Minister. Do not her Ships and King's Ships lie rotting piecemeal in harbour ; Naval Officers mostly fled, and on furlough too, with pay ? Little stirring there ; if it be not the Brest Galleys, whip-driven, with their Galley- Slaves, — alas, with some Forty of our hapless Swiss Soldiers of Chateau- Vieux, among others ! These Forty Swiss, too mindful of Nanci, do now, in their red wool caps, tug sorrow- fully at the oar ; looking into the Atlantic brine, which reflects only their own sorrowful shaggy faces ; and seem forgotten of Hope. ' Deux Amis, x. 157. '^ Dibats dts Jacobins, etc. {Hist. Pari. xiii. 171, 92-8). But, THE TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS OF FRANCE, KINGS AND EMIGRANTS 69 But, on the whole, may we not say, in figurative language, CHAP. IV that the French Constitution which shall march is very rheu- 1791-92 matic, full of shooting internal pains, in joint and muscle ; and will not march without difficulty ? CHAPTER V KINGS AND EMIGRANTS Extremely rheumatic Constitutions have been known to march, and keep on their feet, though in a staggering sprawl- ing manner, for long periods, in virtue of one thing only : that the Head were healthy. But this Head of the French Constitution ! What King Louis is and cannot help being. Readers already know. A King who cannot take the Consti- tution, nor reject the Constitution : nor do anything at all, but miserably ask. What shall I do ? A King environed with endless confusions ; in whose own mind is no germ of order. Haughty implacable remnants of Noblesse struggling with humiliated repentant Barnave-Lameths ; struggling in that obscure element of fetchers and carriers, of Half-pay braggarts from the Cafe Valois, of Chambermaids, whisperers, and sub- altern officious persons ; fierce Patriotism looking on all the while, more and more suspicious, from without : what, in such struggle, can they do ? At best, cancel one another, and produce zero. Poor King ! Barnave and your Senatorial Jaucourts speak earnestly into this ear ; Bertrand-Moleville, and Messengers from Coblentz, speak earnestly into that : the poor Royal head turns to the one side and to the other side ; can turn itself fixedly to no side. Let Decency drop a veil over it : sorrier misery was seldom enacted in the world. This one small fact, does it not throw the saddest light on much ? The Queen is lamenting to Madame Campan : ' What am I to do ? When they, these Bamaves, get us advised to any step which the Noblesse do not like, then I am pouted at ; nobody comes to my card-table ; the King's Couchee is solitary.' ^ In such a case of dubiety, what is one to do ? Go inevitably to the ground ! ' Campan, ii. 177) Z02. The 70 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V The King has accepted this Constitution, knowing before- ] 791-92 hand that it will not serve : he studies it, and executes it in the hope mainly that it will be found inexecutable. King's Ships lie rotting in harbour, their officers gone ; the Armies disorganised ; robbers scour the Highways, which wear down unrepaired ; all Public Service lies slack and waste : the Execu- tive makes no effort, or an effort only to throw the blame on the Constitution. Shamming death, ' faisant la mart ! ' What Constitution, use it in this manner, can march ? ' Grow to disgust the Nation,' it will truly,^ unless you first grow to disgust the Nation ! It is Bertrand de Moleville's plan, and his Majesty's ; the best they can form. Or if, after all, this best-plan proved too slow ; proved a failure ? Provident of that too, the Queen, shrouded in deepest mystery, ' writes all day, in cipher, day after day, to Coblentz ' ; Engineer Goguelat, he of the Night of Spurs, whom the Lafayette Amnesty has delivered from Prison, rides and runs. Now and then, on fit occasion, a Royal familiar visit can be paid to that Salle de Manege, an affecting encouraging Royal Speech (sincere, doubt it not, for the moment) can be delivered there, and the Senators all cheer and almost weep ; — at the same time Mallet du Pan has visibly ceased editing, and invisibly bears abroad a King's Autograph, soliciting help from the Foreign Potentates.^ Unhappy Louis, do this thing or else that other, — if thou couldst ! The thing which the King's Government did do was to stagger distractedly from contradiction to contradiction ; and wedding Fire to Water, envelope itself in hissing and ashy steam. Danton and needy corruptible Patriots are sopped with presents of cash : they accept the sop ; they rise refreshed by it, and — ^travel their own way.^ Nay, the King's Govern- ment did likewise hire Hand-clappers, or claqueurs, persons to applaud. Subterranean Rivarol has Fifteen Hundred Men in King's pay, at the rate of some 10,000^. sterling per month ; what he calls ' a staff of genius ' : Paragraph-writers, Placard Journalists ; ' two hundred and eighty Applauders, at three shillings a day ' : one of the strangest Staffs ever commanded by man, — the muster-rolls and account-books of which still exist.^ Bertrand-Moleville himself, in a way he thinks very ' Bertrand-Moleville, i. c. 4. ^ Hid. i. 370. 3 Hid. i. c. 17, * Montgaillard, iii. 41. dexterous, KINGS AND EMIGRANTS 71 dexterous, contrives to pack the Galleries of the Legislative ; CHAP. V gets Sansculottes hired to go thither, and applaud at a signal 1791-92 given, they fancying it was Petion that bade them : a device which was not detected for almost a week. Dexterous enough ; as if a man, finding the Day fast decline, should determine on altering the Clock-hands : that is a thing possible for him. Here too let us note an unexpected apparition of Philippe d' Orleans at Court : his last at the Levee of any King. D'Orleans, some time in the winter months seemingly, has been appointed to that old first-coveted rank of Admiral, — though only over ships rotting in port. The wished-for comes too late ! However, he waits on Bertrand-Moleville to give thanks : nay to state that he would willingly thank his Majesty in person: that, in spite of all the horrible things men have said and sung, he is far from being his Majesty's enemy ; at bottom, how far ! Bertrand delivers the message, brings about the royal Interview, which does pass to the satis- faction of his Majesty ; D'Orleans seeming clearly repentant, determined to turn over a new leaf. And yet, next Sunday, what do we see ? ' Next Sunday,' says Bertrand, ' he came to the King's Levee ; but the Courtiers ignorant of what had passed, the Crowd of Royalists who were accustomed to resort thither on that day specially to pay their court, gave him the most humiliating reception. They came pressing round him ; managing, as if by mistake, to tread on his toes, to elbow him towards the door, and not let him enter again. He went down- stairs to her Majesty's Apartments, where cover was laid ; so soon as he showed face, sounds rose on all sides, " Messieurs, take care of the dishes," as if he had carried poison in his pockets. The insults, which his presence everywhere excited, forced him to retire without having seen the Royal Family : the crowd followed him to the Queen's staircase ; in descending, he received a spitting (crachat) on the head, and some others on bis clothes. Rage and spite were seen visibly painted on his face ' : ^ as indeed how could they miss to be ? He imputes it all to the King and Queen, who know nothing of it, who are even much grieved at it ; and so descends to his Chaos again. Bertrand was there at the Chateau that day himself, and an eye-witness to these things. For the rest, Non-jurant Priests, and the repression of them, 1 Bertrand-Moleville, i. 177. will 72 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V will distract the King's conscience ; Emigrant Princes and 1791-92 Noblesse will force him to double-dealing : there must be v^o on veto ; amid the ever-waxing indignation of men. For Patriotism, as we said, looks on from without, more and more suspicious. Waxing tempest, blast after blast, of Patriotic indignation, from without ; dim inorganic whirl of Intrigues, Fatuities, within ! Inorganic, fatuous ; from which the eye tiirns away. De Stael intrigues for her so gallant Narbonne, to get him made War-Minister ; and ceases not, having got him made. The King shall fly to Rouen ; shall there, with the gallant Narbonne, properly ' modify the Constitution.' This is the same brisk Narbonne, who, last year, cut out from their entanglement, by force of dragoons, those. poor fugitive Royal Aunts : men say he is at bottom their Brother, or even more, so scandalous is scandal. He drives now, with his De Stael, rapidly to the Armies, to the Frontier Towns ; pro- duces rose-coloured Reports, not too credible ; perorates, ges- ticulates ; wavers poising himself on the top, for a moment, seen of men ; then tumbles, dismissed, washed away by the Time-flood. Also the fair Princess de LambaUe intrigues, bosom-friend of her Majesty : to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate, why did she ever return from England ? Her small silver-voice, what can it profit in that piping of the black World-tornado ? which will whirl her, poor fragile Bird of Paradise, against grim rocks. Lamballe and De Stael intrigue visibly, apart or together : but who shall reckon how many others, and in what infinite ways, invisibly ! Is there not what one may call an ' Austrian Committee,' sitting invisible in the Tuileries ; centre of an invisible Anti-National Spiderweb, which, for we sleep among mysteries, stretches its threads to the ends of the Earth ? Journalist Carra has now the clearest certainty of it : to Brissotin Patriotism, and France generally, it is growing more and more probable. O Reader, hast thou no pity for this Constitution ? Rheu- matic shooting pains in its members ; pressure of hydrocephale and hysteric vapours on its Brain : a Constitution divided against itself ; which will never march, hardly even stagger ! Why were not Drouet and Procureur Sausse in their beds, that unblessed Varennes Night ? Why did they not, in the name of Heaven, let the Korff Berhne go whither it listed ? Name- less KINGS AND EMIGRANTS 73 less incoherency, incompatibility, perhaps prodigies at which CHAP. V the world still shudders, had been spared. 1791-92 But now comes the third thing that bodes ill for the march- ing of this French Constitution : besides the French People, and the French King, there is thirdly — the assembled European World. It has become necessary now to look at that also. Fair France is so luminous : and round and round it, is troublous Cimmerian Night. Calonnes, Breteuils hover dim, far-flown ; overnetting Europe with intrigues. From Turin to Vienna ; to Berlin, and utmost Petersburg in the frozen North ! Great Burke has raised his great voice long ago ; eloquently demon- strating that the end of an Epoch is come, to all appearance the end of Civilised Time. Him many answer : Camille Des- moulins, Clootz Speaker of Mankind, Paine the rebellious Needleman, and honourable Gaelic Vindicators in that country and in this : but the great Burke remains unanswerable ; ' the Age of Chivalry is gone,' and could not but go, having now produced the still more indomitable Age of Hunger. Altars enough, of the Dubois-Rohan sort, changing to the Gobel-and- Tallejrrand sort, are faring by rapid transmutations to — shall we say, the right Proprietor of them ? French Game and French Game-Preservers did alight on the Cliffs of Dover, with cries of distress. Who wiU say that the end of much is not come ? A set of mortals has risen, who believe that Truth is not a printed Speculation, but a practical Fact ; that Freedom and Brotherhood are possible in this Earth, supposed always to be Belial's, which ' the Supreme Quack ' was to inherit ! Who will say that Church, State, Throne, Altar are not in danger ; that the sacred Strongbox itself, last Palladium of effete Humanity, may not be blasphemously blown upon, and its padlocks undone ? The poor Constituent Assembly might act with what delicacy and diplomacy it would ; declare that it abjured meddling with its neighbours, foreign conquest, and so forth ; but from the first this thing was to be predicted : that old Europe and new France could not subsist together. A Glorious Revolution, oversetting State-Prisons and Feudalism ; pubhshing, with outburst of Federative Cannon, in face of all the earth, that Appearance is not Reality, how shall it subsist amid Govern- ments which, if Appearance is not Reality, are — one knows not 74 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V not what ? In death-feud, and internecine wrestle and battle, 1791-92 it shall subsist with them ; not otherwise. Rights of Man, printed on Cotton Handkerchiefs, in various dialects of human speech, pass over to the Frankfort Fair.'^ What say we, Frankfort Fair ? They have crossed Euphrates, and the fabulous Hydaspes ; wafted themselves beyond the Ural, Altai, Himalayah ; struck oft from wood stereotypes, in angular Picture-writing, they are jabbered and jingled of in China and Japan. Where will it stop ? Kien-Lung smells mischief ; not the remotest Dalai-Lama shall now knead his dough-pills in peace. — Hateful to us, as is the Night ! Bestir yourselves, ye Defenders of Order ! They do bestir them- selves : all Kings and Kinglets, with their spiritual temporal array, are astir ; their brows clouded with menace. Diplo- matic emissaries fly swift ; Conventions, privy Conclaves assemble ; and wise wigs wag, taking what counsel they can. Also, as we said, the Pamphleteer draws pen, on this side and that : zealous fists beat the Pulpit-drum. Not without issue ! Did not iron Birmingham, shouting ' Church and King,' itself knew not why, burst out, last July, into rage, drunkenness and fire ; and your Priestleys, and the like, dining there on that Bastille day, get the maddest singeing ; scandalous to consider ! In which same days, as we can remark. High Potentates, Austrian and Prussian, with Emigrants, were faring towards Pilnitz in Saxony ; there, on the 27th of August, they, keeping to themselves what further ' secret Treaty ' there might or might not be, did publish their hopes and their threatenings, their Declaration that it was ' the common cause of Kings.' Where a will to quarrel is, there is a way. Our readers remember that Pentecost-Night, Fourth of August 1789, when Feudalism fell in a few hours ? The National Assembly, in abolishing Feudalism, promised that ' compensation ' should be given ; and did endeavour to give it. Nevertheless the Austrian Kaiser answers that his German Princes, for their part, cannot be unfeudalised ; that they have Possessions in French Alsace, and Feudal Rights secured to them, for which no conceivable compensation will sufiBce. So this of the Possessioned Princes, ' Princes possessionnis,' is bandied from Court to Court ; covers acres of diplomatic paper at this ' Toulongeon, i. 256. day: KINGS AND EMIGRANTS 75 day : a weariness to the world. Kaunitz argues from Vienna ; cHAP. V Delessarts responds from Paris, though perhaps not sharply 1791-92 enough. The Kaiser and his Possessioned Princes will too evidently come and take compensation, — so much as they can get. Nay might one not 'partition France, as we have done Poland, and are doing ; and so pacify it with a vengeance ? From South to North ! For actually it is ' the common cause of Kings.' Swedish Gustav, sworn Knight of the Queen of France, will lead Coalised Armies ; — had not Ankarstrom treasonously shot him ; for, indeed, there were griefs nearer home.^ Austria and Prussia speak at Pilnitz ; all men in- tensely listening. Imperial Rescripts have gone out from Turin ; there wUl be secret Convention at Vienna. Catherine of Russia beckons approvingly ; will help, were she ready. Spanish Bourbon stirs amid his pillows ; from him too, even from him, shall there come help. Lean Pitt, ' the Minister of Preparatives,' looks out from his watch-tower in Saint James's in a suspicious manner. Councillors plotting, Calonnes dim-hovering ; — alas. Sergeants rub-a-dubbing openly through all manner of German market-towns, collecting ragged valour ! ^ Look where you will, immeasurable Obscurantism is girdling this fair France ; which, again, will not be girdled by it. Europe is in travail ; pang after pang ; what a shriek was that of Pilnitz ! The birth will be : War. Nay, the worst feature of the business is this last, stiU to be named ; the Emigrants at Coblentz. So many thousands ranking there, in bitter hate and menace : King's Brothers, all Princes of the Blood except wicked D' Orleans ; your duelling De Castries, your eloquent Cazal^s ; bull-headed Malseigne, a wargod Broglie ; Distaff Seigneurs, insulted Officers, aU that have ridden across the Rhine-stream ; — D'Artois welcoming Abbe Maury with a kiss, and clasping him publicly to his own royal heart ! Emigration, flowing over the Frontiers, now in drops, now in streams, in various humours of fear, of petulance, rage and hope, ever since those first Bastille days when D'Artois went, ' to shame the citizens of Paris,' — has swollen to the size of a Phenomenon for the world. Coblentz is become a small ' 30th March 1792 (Annual Register, p. 11). " Toulongeon, ii. 100-17. extra- 76 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V extra-national Versailles ; a Versailles in partibus : briguing, 1791-92 intriguing, favouritism, strumpetocracy itself, they say, goes on there ; all the old activities, on a small scale, quickened by hungry Revenge. Enthusiasm, of loyalty, of hatred and hope, has risen to a high pitch ; as, in any Coblentz tavern you may hear, in speech and in singing. Maury assists in the interior Council ; much is decided on : for one thing, they keep lists of the dates of your emigrating ; a month sooner, or a month later, determines your greater or your less right to the coming Division of the Spoil. Cazales himself, because he had occasionally spoken with a Constitutional tone, was looked on coldly at first : so pure are our principles.^ And arms are a-hammering at Liege ; ' three thousand horses ' ambling hitherward from the Fairs of Germany : Cavalry enrolling ; likewise Foot-soldiers, ' in blue coat, red waistcoat and nankeen trousers.' ^ They have their secret domestic correspondences, as their open foreign : with disaffected Crypto-Aristocrats, with contumacious Priests, with Austrian Committee in the Tuileries. Deserters are spirited over by assiduous crimps ; Royal- AUemand is gone almost wholly. Their route of march, towards France and the Division of the Spoil, is marked out, were the Kaiser once ready. ' It is said, they mean to poison the sources ; biit,' adds Patriotism making report of it,' they will not poison the source of Liberty ' ; whereat on applaudit, we cannot but applaud. Also they have manufactories of False Assignats ; and men that circulate in the interior, distributing and dis- bursing the same ; one of these we denounce now to Legis- lative Patriotism : ' a man Lebrun by name ; about thirty years of age, with blonde hair and in quantity ; has,' only for the time being surely, ' a black-eye, ceil poche ; goes in a wiski with a black horse,' ^ always keeping his Gig ! Unhappy Emigrants, it was their lot, and the lot of France ! They are ignorant of much that they should know : of them- selves, of what is around them. A Political Party that knows not when it is beaten, may become one of the fatalest of things, to itself, and to all. Nothing will convince these men that they cannot scatter the French Revolution at the first blast of their 1 Montgaillard, iii. S-IJ; Toulongeon, ubi supra. " See ffist. Pari. xiii. ir-38, 41-61, 358, etc. ^ Moniteur, Stance du 2 Novembre 1791 (Hist. Pari. xii. 212). war- KINGS AND EMIGRANTS 77 war-trtunpet ; that the French Revolution is other than a CHAP. V blustering Effervescence, of brawlers and spouters, which, at 1791-92 the flash of chivalrous broadswords, at the rustle of gallows- ropes; wUl burrow itself, in dens the deeper the welcomer. But, alas, what man does know and measure himself, and the things that are round him ; — else where were the need of physical fighting at all ? Never, till they are cleft asunder, can these heads believe that a Sansculottic arm has any vigour in it : cleft asunder, it will be too late to believe. One may say, without spleen against his poor erring brothers of any side, that above all other mischiefs, this of the Emigrant Nobles acted fatally on France. Could they have known, could they have understood ! In the beginning of 1789, a splendour and a terror still surrounded them : the Conflagration of their Chateaus, kindled by months of obstinacy, went out after the Fourth of August ; and might have continued out, had they at all known what to defend, what to relinquish as indefen- sible. They were still a graduated Hierarchy of Authorities, or the accredited similitude of such : they sat there, uniting King with Commonalty ; transmitting and translating gradu- ally, from degree to degree, the command of the one into the obedience of the other ; rendering command and obedience still possible. Had they understood their place, and what to do in it, this French Revolution, which went forth explosively in years and in months, might have spread itself over genera- tions : and not a torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been provided for many things. But they were proud and high, these men ; they were not wise to consider. They spumed all from them in disdainful hate, they drew the sword and flung away the scabbard. France has not only no Hierarchy of Authorities, to translate command into obedience ; its Hierarchy of Authorities has fled to the enemies of France ; calls loudly on the enemies of France to interfere armed, who want but a pretext to do that. Jealous Kings and Kaisers might have looked on long, medi- tating interference, yet afraid and ashamed to interfere : but now do not the King's Brothers, and all French Nobles, Dignitaries and Authorities that are free to speak, which the King himself is not, — passionately invite us, in the name of Right and of Might ? Ranked at Coblentz, from Fifteen to Twenty thousand stand now brandishing their weapons, 78 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V weapons, with the cry : On, on ! Yes, Messieurs, you 1791-92 shall on ; — and divide the spoil according to your dates of emigrating. Of all which things a poor Legislative Assembly, and Patriot France, is informed : by denunciant friend, by triiunphant foe. Sulleau's Pamphlets, of the Rivarol Staff of Genius, circulate ; heralding supreme hope. Duro- soy's Placards tapestry the walls ; Chant du Coq crows day, pecked at by Tallien's Ami des Citoyens. King's- Friend Royou, Ami du Roi, can name, in exact arithmetical ciphers, the contin- gents of the various Invading Potentates ; in all, Four hundred and nineteen thousand Foreign fighting men, with Fifteen thousand Emigrants. Not to reckon these your daily and hourly desertions, which an Editor must daily record, of whole Companies, and even Regiments, crjdng Vive le Roi, Vive la Reine, and marching over with banners spread : ^ — Hes all, and wind ; yet to Patriotism not wind ; nor, alas, one day, to Royou ! Patriotism, therefore, may brawl and babble yet a little while: but its hours are numbered: Europe is coming with Four himdred and nineteen thousand and the Chivalry of France : the gallows, one may hope, will get its own. JEAN LAMBERT TAIXIEN. ' Amidu J?oiNev/spiLper (in ffist. Pari. xiii. 175). Chapter VI BRIGANDS AND JALfeS 79 CHAPTER VI BRIGANDS AND JALES We shall have War, then ; and on what terms ! With an Executive ' pretending,' really with less and less deceptiveness now, ' to be dead ' ; casting even a wishful eye towards the enemy : on such terms we shall have War. Public Functionary in vigorous action there is none ; if it be not Rivarol with his Staff of Genius and Two hundred and eighty Applauders. The Public Service lies waste ; the very Taxgatherer has forgotten his cunning : in this and the other Provincial Board of Management , [Birectoire de Dipartement) it is found advisable to retain what Taxes you can gather, to pay your own inevitable expenditures. Our Revenue is Assignats ; emission on emission of Paper-money. And the Army ; our Three grand Armies, of Rochambeau, of Liickner, of Lafayette ? Lean, disconsolate hover these Three grand Armies, watching the Frontiers there ; three Flights of long- necked Cranes in moulting-time ; — ^wrecked, disobedient, dis- organised ; who never saw fire ; the old Generals and Officers gone across the Rhine. War-Minister Narbonne, he of the rose-coloured Reports, solicits recruitments, equipments, money, always money ; threatens, since he can get none, to ' take his sword,' which belongs to himself, and go serve his country with that.-^ The question of questions is : What shall be done ? Shall we, with a desperate defiance which Fortune sometimes favours, draw the sword at once, in the face of this inrushing world of Emigration and Obscurantism ; or wait, and temporise and diplomatise, tUl, if possible, owe resources mature themselves a little ? And yet again, are our resources growing towards maturity ; or growing the other way ? Dubious : the ablest Patriots are divided ; Brissot and his Brissotins, or Girondins, in the Legislative, cry aloud for the former defiant plan ; Robespierre, in the Jacobins, pleads as loud for the latter dilatory one : with responses, even with mutual reprimands ; distracting the Mother of Patriotism. Consider also what 1 Moniteur, Seance du 23 Janvier 1792 ; Biographic des Ministres, § Narbonne. agitated CHAP. VI 1792 80 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V agitated Breakfasts there may be at Madame d'Udon's in the 1792 Place Vendome ! The alarm of all men is great. Help, ye Patriots ; and O at least agree ; for the hour presses. Frost was not yet gone, when in that ' tolerably handsome apart- ment of the Castle of Niort,' there arrived a Letter : General Dumouriez must to Paris. It is War-Minister Narbonne that writes ; the General shall give counsel about many things.^ In the month of February 1792, Brissotin friends welcome their Dumouriez Polymetis, — comparable really to an antique Ulysses in modern costume ; quick, elastic, shifty, insuppres- sible, a ' many-counselled man.' Let the Reader fancy this fair France with a whole Cim- merian Europe girdling her, rolling it on her, black, to burst in red thunder of War ; fair France herself hand-shackled and foot-shackled in the weltering complexities of this Social Clothing, or Constitution, which they have made for her ; a France that, in such Constitution, cannot march ! And Hunger too ; and plotting Aristocrats, and excommunicating Dissident Priests : ' the man Lebrun by name ' urging his black wiski, visible to the eye ; and, still more terrible in his invisibility. Engineer Goguelat, with Queen's cipher, riding and running ! The excommunicatory Priests give new trouble to the Maine and Loire ; La Vendee, nor Cathelineau the wool-dealer, has not ceased grumbling and rumbling. Nay behold Jal^s itself once more : how often does that real-imaginary Camp of the Fiend require to be extinguished ! For near two years now, it has waned faint and again waxed bright, in the bewildered soul of Patriotism : actually, if Patriotism knew it, one of the most surprising products of Nature working with Art. Royalist Seigneurs, under this or the other pretext, assemble the simple people of these Cevennes Mountains ; men not unused to revolt, and with heart for fighting, could their poor heads be got persuaded. The Royalist Seigneur harangues ; harping mainly on the religious string : ' True Priests mal- treated, false Priests intruded, Protestants (once dragooned) now triumphing, things sacred given to the dogs'; and so produces, from the pious Mountaineer throat, rough growl- ings : — ' Shall we not testify, then, ye brave hearts of the ' Dumouriez, ii. c. 6. C6vennes ; BRIGANDS AND JALfeS 81 Cevennes ; march to the rescue ? Holy Religion ; duty to CHAP. VI God and the King ? ' — ' Si fait, si fait, Just so, just so,' answer 1792 the brave hearts always : ' Mais il y a de Men bonnes choses dans' la Revolution, But there are main good things in the Revolution too ! ' — And so the matter, cajole as we may, will only turn on its axis, not stir from the spot, and remains theatrical merely.^ Nevertheless deepen your cajolery, harp quick and quicker, ye Royalist Seigneurs ; with a dead-lift effort you may bring it to that. In the month of June next, this Camp of Jales will step forth as a theatricaUty suddenly become real ; Two thousand strong, and with the boast that it is Seventy thou- sand : most strange to see ; with flags flying, bayonets fixed ; with Proclamation, and D'Artois Commission of civil war ! Let some Rebecqui, or other the like hot-clear Patriot ; let some ' Lieutenant-Colonel Aubry,' if Rebecqui is busy else- where, raise instantaneous National Guards, and disperse and dissolve it ; and blow the Old Castle asunder,^ that so, if possible, we hear of it no more ! In the Months of February and March, it is recorded, the terror, especially of rural France, had risen even to the tran- scendental pitch : not far from madness. In Town and Hamlet is rumour, of war, massacre : that Austrians, Aristocrats, above all, that The Brigands are close by. Men quit their houses and huts ; rush fugitive, shrieking, with wife and child, they know not whither. Such a terror, the eye-witnesses say, never fell on a Nation ; nor shall again fall, even in Reigns of Terror expressly so called. The Countries of the Loire, all the Central and Southeast regions, start up distracted, ' simultaneously as by an electric shock ' ; — for indeed grain too gets scarcer and scarcer. ' The people barricade the entrances of Towns, pile stones in the upper stories, the women prepare boiling water ; from moment to moment, expecting the attack. In the Country, the alarm-bell rings incessant ; troops of peasants, gathered by it, scour the highways, seeking an imaginary enemy. They are armed mostly with scythes stuck in wood ; and, arriving in wild troops at the barricaded Towns, are themselves some- times taken for Brigands.' ^ ^ Dampmaitin, i. 201. 2 Moniteur, Stance du 15 Juillet 1792. ' Newspapers, etc. (in Hist. Pari. xiii. 325). VOL. II. F So 82 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V So rushes old France : old France is rushing down. What 1791-92 the end will be is known to no mortal ; that the end is near all mortals may know. CHAPTER VII CONSTITUTION WILL NOT MARCH To all which our poor Legislative, tied up by an unmarch- ing Constitution, can oppose nothing, by way of remedy, but mere bursts of parliamentary eloquence ! They go on, debating, denouncing, objurgating : loud weltering Chaos, which devours itself. But their two thousand and odd Decrees ? Reader, these happily concern not thee, nor me. Mere Occasional-Decrees, foolish and not foolish ; sufficient for that day was its own evil ! Of the whole two thousand there are not now half a score, and these mostly blighted in the bud by royal Veto, that will profit or disprofit us. On the 17th January, the Legislative, for one thing, got its High Court, its Haute Cour, set up at Orleans. The theory had been given by the Con- stituent, in May last, but this is the reality : a Court for the trial of Political Offences ; a Court which cannot want work. To this it was decreed that there needed no royal Acceptance, therefore that there could be no Veto. Also Priests can now be married ; ever since last October. A patriotic adventurous Priest had made bold to marry himself then ; and not thinking this enough, came to the bar with his new spouse ; that the whole world might hold honeymoon with him, and a Law be obtained. Less joyful are the Laws against Refractory Priests ; and yet not less needful ! Decrees on Priests and Decrees on Emigrants : these are the two brief Series of Decrees, worked out with endless debate, and then cancelled by Veto, which mainly concern us here. For an august National Assembly must needs conquer these Refractories, Clerical or Laic, and thumbscrew them into obedience : yet, behold, always as you turn your legislative thumbscrew, and will press and even crush till Refractories give way, — King's Veto steps in with magical CONSTITUTION WILL NOT MARCH 83 magical paralysis ; and your thumbscrew, hardly squeezing, CHAP. Vll much less crushing, does not act ! 1791-92 Truly a melancholy Set of Decrees, a pair of Sets ; paralysed by Veto ! First, under date the 28th of October 1791, we have Legislative Proclamation, issued by herald and biU-sticker ; inviting Monsieur, the King's Brother, to return within two months, under penalties. To which invitation Monsieur replies nothing ; or indeed replies by Newspaper Parody, inviting the august Legislative ' to return to common sense within two months,' under penalties. Whereupon the Legislative must take stronger measures. So, on the 9th of November, we declare all Emigrants to be ' suspect of conspiracy ' ; and, in brief, to be ' outlawed,' if they have not returned at Newyear's-day : — Will the King say Veto ? That ' triple impost ' shall be levied on these men's Properties, or even their Properties be ' put in sequestration,' one can understand. But further, on New- year's-day itself, not an individual having ' returned,' we declare, and with fresh emphasis some fortnight later again declare. That Monsieur is dSchu, forfeited of his eventful Heir- ship to the Crown ; nay more, that Conde, Calonne, and a con- siderable List of others are accused of high treason ; and shall be judged by our High Court of Orleans : Veto ! — Then again as to Non-jiu-ant Priests : it was decreed, in November last, that they should forfeit what Pensions they had ; be ' put under inspection, under surveillance,'' and, if need were, be banished : Veto I A still sharper turn is coming ; but to this also the answer will be. Veto. Veto after Veto ; your thumbscrew paralysed ! Gods and men may see that the Legislative is in a false position. As, alas, who is in a true one ? Voices already murmur for a ' National Convention.' ^ This poor Legislative, spurred and stung into action by a whole France and a whole Europe, cannot act ; can only objurgate and perorate ; with stormy ' motions,' and motion in which is no way ; with effervescence, with noise and fuliginous fury ! What scenes in that National HaU ! President jingling his inaudible bell ; or, as utmost signal of distress, clapping on his hat ; ' the tumult subsiding in twenty minutes,' and this or the other indiscreet Member sent to the Abbaye Prison for three days ! Suspected Persons must be summoned and ^ December 1791 {Hist. Pari. xii. 257). questioned ; 84 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V questioned ; old M. de Sombreuil of the Invalides has to give 1791-92 account of himself, and why he leaves his Gates open. Unusual smoke rose from the Sevres Pottery, indicating conspiracy ; the Potters explained that it was Necklace-Lamotte's Mdmoires, bought up by her Majesty, which they were endeavouring to suppress by fire,^ which nevertheless he that runs may stiU read. Again, it would seem, Duke de Brissac and the King's Con- stitutional-Guard are ' making cartridges secretly in the cellars ' : a set of Royalists, pure and impure ; black cut-throats many of them, picked out of gaming-houses and sinks ; in all Six thousand instead of Eighteen hundred ; who evidently gloom on us every time we enter the Chateau.^ Wherefore, with infinite debate, let Brissac and King's Guard, be disbanded. Disbanded accordingly they are ; after only two months of existence, for they did not get on foot till March of this same year. So ends briefly the King's new Constitutional Maison Militaire ; he must now be guarded by mere Swiss and blue Nationals again. It seems the lot of Constitutional things. New Constitutional Maison Civile he would never even establish, much as Barnave urged it ; old resident Duchesses sniffed at it, and held aloof ; on the whole her Majesty thought it not worth while, the Noblesse would so soon be back triumphant.^ Or, looking stiU into this National Hall and its scenes, behold Bishop Torne, a Constitutional Prelate, not of severe morals, demanding that ' religious costumes and such caricatures ' be abolished. Bishop Torne warms, catches fire ; finishes by imtying, and indignantly flinging on the table, as if for gage or bet, his own pontifical cross. Which cross, at any rate, is instantly covered by the cross of Te-Deum Fauchet, then by other crosses and insignia, till all are stripped ; this clerical Senator clutching off his skull-cap, that other his frill-collar, — lest Fanaticism return on us.* Quick is the movement here ! And then so confused, un- substantial, you might call it almost spectral: pallid, dim, inane, like the Kingdoms of Dis ! Unruly Linguet, shrunk to a kind of spectre for us, pleads here some cause that he has ; amid rumour and interruption, which excel human patience : ' Moniteur, Seance du 28 Mai 1792 ; Campan, ii. 196. = Dumouriez, ii. 168. » Campan, ii. c. 19. * Monitiur, du 7 Avril 1792; Deux Amis, vii. iii. he CONSTITUTION WILL NOT MARCH 85 he ' tears his papers, and withdraws,' the irascible adust httle CHAP. VII man. Nay honourable Members wiU tear their papers, being 1792 effervescent : Merlin of Thionville tears his papers, crying : ' So, the People cannot be saved by you ! ' Nor are Deputa- tions wanting : Deputations of Sections ; generally with com- plaint and denouncement, always with Patriot fervour of sentiment : Deputation of Women, pleading that they also may be allowed to take Pikes, and exercise in the Champ- de-Mars. Why not, ye Amazons, if it be in you ? Then occasionally, having done our message and got answer, we ' defile through the Hall singing ga-ira ' ; or rather roll and whirl through it, ' dancing ovx ronde patriotique the while,' — our new Carmagnole, or Pyrrhic war-dance and liberty- dance. Patriot Huguenin, Ex-Advocate, Ex-Carbineer, Ex- Clerk of the Barriers, comes deputed, with Saint-Antoine at his heels ; denouncing Anti-patriotism, Famine, Forestalment and Man-eaters ; asks an august Legislative : ' Is there not a tocsin in your hearts against these mangeurs d^hommes ! ' ^ But above all things, for this is a continual business, the Legislative has to reprimand the King's Ministers. Of his Majesty's Ministers we have said hitherto, and say, next to nothing. Still more spectral these ! Sorrowful ; of no permanency any of them, none at least since Montmorin vanished : the ' eldest of the King's Council ' is occasionally not ten days old.^ Feuillant-Constitutional, as your respect- able Cahier de Gerville, as your respectable unfortunate Deles- sarts ; or Royalist-Constitutional, as Montmorin last Friend of Necker ; or Aristocrat, as Bertrand-MoleviQe : they fiit there phantom-like, in the huge sunmering confusion ; poor shadows, dashed in the racking winds ; powerless, without meaning ; — ^whom the human memory need not charge itself with. But how often, we say, are these poor Majesty's Ministers summoned over ; to be questioned, tutored ; nay threatened, almost buUied ! They answer what, with adroitest simulation and casuistry, they can : of which a poor Legislative knows not what to make. One thing only is clear. That Cimimerian Europe is girdling us in ; that France (not actually dead, surely ?) cannot march. Have a care, ye Ministers ! Sharp Guadet transfixes you with cross-questions, with sudden ^ See Moniteur, Stances (in Hist. Pari. xiii. xiv.), "^ Dumouriez, ii. 137. Advocate- 86 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V Advocate-conclusions ; the sleeping tempest that is in Ver- 1792 gniaud can be awakened. Restless Brissot brings up Reports, Accusations, endless thin Logic ; it is the man's highday even now. Condorcet redacts, with his firm pen, our ' Address of the Legislative Assembly to the French Nation.' ^ Fiery Max Isnard, who, for the rest, will ' carry not Fire and Sword ' on those Cimmerian Enemies, ' but Liberty,' — Is for declaring MAllQUIS DE CONDORCET. ' that we hold Ministers responsible ; and that by responsi- bihty we mean death, nous entendons la mart.' For verily it grows serious : the time presses, and traitors there are. Bertrand-Moleville has a smooth tongue, the known Aristocrat ; gall in his heart. How his answers and explanations flow ready ; Jesuitic, plausible to the ear ! But perhaps the notablest is this, which befell once when Bertrand had done answering and was withdrawn. Scarcely had the august Assembly begun considering what was to be done with him, when the Hall fills with smoke. Thick sour smoke : no ' i6th February 1792 {Choix dts Rapports, viii. 375-92). oratory, THE JACOBINS 87 oratory, only wheezing and barking ; — irremediable ; so that CHAP. Vll the august Assembly has to adjourn ! ^ A miracle ? Typical 1*^92 miracle ? One knows not : only this one seems to know, that ' the Keeper of the Stoves was appointed by Bertrand ' or by some underling of his ! — O fuliginous confused Kingdom of Dis, with thy Tantalus-Ixion toils, with thy angry Fire- floods, and Streams named of Lamentation, why hast thou not thy Lethe too, that so one might finish ? CHAPTER VIII THE JACOBINS Nevertheless let not Patriotism despair. Have we not in Paris at least, a virtuous Petion, a wholly Patriotic Muni- cipality ? Virtuous Petion, ever since November, is Mayor of Paris : in our Municipality, the Public, for the Public is now admitted too, may behold an energetic Danton ; further an epigrammatic slow-sure Manuel ; a resolute unrepentant Billaud-Varennes, of Jesuit breeding ; Tallien able-editor ; and nothing but Patriots, better or worse. So ran the November Elections : to the joy of most citizens ; nay the very Court supported Petion rather than Lafayette. And so Bailly and his Feuillants, long waning like the Moon, had to withdraw then, making some sorrowful obeisance,^ into extinction : — or indeed into worse, into lurid half-light, grimmed by the shadow of that Red Flag of theirs, and bitter memory of the Champ-de-Mars. How swift is the progress of things and men ! Not now does Lafayette, as on that Federation-day, when his noon was, ' press his sword firmly on the Fatherland's Altar,' and swear in sight of France : ah, no ; he, waning and setting ever since that hour, hangs now, disastrous, on the edge of the horizon ; commanding one of those Three moulting Crane-flights of Armies, in a most suspected, unfruitful, un- comfortable manner. But, at worst, cannot Patriotism, so many thousands strong in this Metropolis of the Universe, help itself ? Has it not ' Courrier de Paris, 14 Janvier 1792 (Gorsas's Newspaper), in Hist. Pari. xiii. 83. ^ Discours de Bailly, Riponse de Pition {Moniteur du 20 Novembre 1791). right- 88 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V right-hands, pikes ? Hammering of Pikes, which was not to 1792 be prohibited by Mayor Bailly, has been sanctioned by Mayor Petion ; sanctioned by Legislative Assembly. How not, when the King's so-caUed Constitutional Guard ' was making cart- ridges in secret ' ? Changes are necessary for the National Guard itself ; this whole Feuillant-Aristocrat Staff of the Guard must be disbanded. Likewise, citizens without uniform may surely rank in the Guard, the pike beside the musket, in such a time : the ' active ' citizen and the passive who can fight for us, are they not both welcome ? — Oh my Patriot friends, indubitably Yes ! Nay the truth is. Patriotism throughout, were it never so white-frilled, logical, respectable, must either lean itself heartily on Sansculottism, the black, bottomless ; or else vanish, in the frightfulest way, to Limbo ! Thus some, with upturned nose, will altogether sniff and disdain Sansculottism ; others will lean heartily on it ; nay others again will lean what we call heartlessly on it : three sorts ; each sort with a destiny corresponding. In such point of view, however, have we not for the present a Volunteer Ally, stronger than aU the rest ; namely. Hunger ? Hunger ; and what rushing of Panic Terror this and the sum- total of our other miseries may bring ! For Sansculottism grows by what all other things die of. Stupid Peter Bailie almost made an epigram, though unconsciously, and with the Patriot world laughing not at it but at him, when he wrote : ' Tout va Men id, le fain manque, AU goes well here, food is not to be had.' ^ Neither, if you knew it, is Patriotism without her Constitu- tion that can march ; her not impotent Parliament ; or call it. Ecumenic Council, and General-Assembly of the Jean-Jacques Churches : the Mother Society, namely ! Mother Society with her three hundred full-grown Daughters ; with what we can call little Grand-daughters trying to walk, in every village of France, numerable, as Burke thinks, by the hundred thousand. This is the true Constitution ; made not by Twelve hundred august Senators, but by Nature herself; and has grown, unconsciously, out of the wants and the efforts of these Twenty-five MiUions of men. They are ' Lords of the Articles,' our Jacobins ; they originate debates for the Legislative ; discuss Peace and War ; settle beforehand what the Legislative ' Barbaroux, p. 94. is THE JACOBINS 89 is to do. Greatly to the scandal of philosophical men, and of CHAP. VIII most Historians ; — ^who do in that judge naturally, and yet 1792 not wisely. A Governing power must exist : your other powers here are simulacra ; this power is it. Great is the Mother Society ; she has had the honour to be denounced by Austrian Kaunitz ; ^ and is all the dearer to Patriotism. By fortune and valour she has extinguistied Feuillantism itself, at least the Feuillant Club. This latter, high as it once carried its head, she, on the 18th of February, has the satisfaction to see shut, extinct ; Patriots having gone thither, with tumult, to hiss it out of pain. The Mother Society has enlarged her locality, stretches now over the whole nave of the Church. Let us glance in, with the worthy Toulongeon, our old Ex-Constituent Friend, who happily has eyes to see. ' The nave of the Jacobins Church,' says he, ' is changed into a vast Circus, the seats of which mount up circu- larly, like an amphitheatre to the very groin of the domed roof. A high Pjo-amid of black marble, built against one of the walls, which was formerly a funeral monimient, has alone been left standing : it serves now as back to the Office-bearers' Bureau. Here on an elevated Platform sit President and Secretaries, behind and above them the white Busts of Mira- beau, of Franklin, and various others, nay finally of Marat. Facing this is the Tribune, raised tiU it is midway between floor and groin of the dome, so that the speaker's voice may be in the centre. From that point thunder the voices which shake all Europe : down below, in silence, are forging the thunderbolts and the fire-brands. Penetrating into this huge circuit, where all is out of measure, gigantic, the mind cannot repress some movement of terror and wonder ; the imagination recalls those dread temples which Poetry, of old, had conse- crated to the Avenging Deities.' ^ Scenes too are in this Jacobin Amphitheatre, — had History time for them. Flags of the ' Three Free Peoples of the Universe,' trinal brotherly flags of England, America, France, have been waved here in concert ; by London Deputation, of Whigs or Wighs and their Club, on this hand, and by young French Citoyennes on that ; beautiful sweet-tongued Female Citizens, who solemnly send over salutation and brotherhood, also Tricolor stitched by their own needle, and finally Ears of ' Moniteur, Stance du 29 Mars 1792. ^ Toulongeon, ii. 124. Wheat ; 90 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V Wheat ; while the dome rebellows with Vivent les trois peuples 1792 libres ! from all throats : — a most dramatic scene. Demoiselle Theroigne recites, from that Tribune in mid air, her persecu- tions in Austria ; comes leaning on the arm of Joseph Chenier, Poet Chenier, to demand Liberty for the hapless Swiss of ANDRE CHENIEK. Chateau-Vieux.^ Be of hope, ye forty Swiss ; tugging there, in the Brest waters ; no^ forgotten ! Deputy Brissot perorates from that Tribune; Desmoulins, our wicked Camille, interjecting audibly from below, ' Coquin ! ' Here, though oftener in the Cordeliers, reverberates the lion- voice of Danton; grim Billaud-Varennes is here; Collot 1 Dibats des Jacobins (Hist. Pari. xiii. 259, etc. ). d'Herbois, THE JACOBINS 91 d'Herbois, pleading for the forty Swiss, tearing a passion to CHAP. VIII rags. Apophthegmatic Manuel winds up in this pithy way : 1702 ' A Minister must perish ! ' — to which the Amphitheatre responds : ' Tons, Tons, All, All ! ' But the Chief Priest and Speaker of this place, as we said, is Robespierre, the long- winded incorruptible man. What spirit of Patriotism dwelt MARIE JOSEPH CHENIER. in men in those times, this one fact, it seems to us, will evince : that fifteen hundred human creatures, not bound to it, sat quiet under the oratory of Robespierre ; nay listened nightly, hour after hour, applausive ; and gaped as for the word of life. More insupportable individual, one would say, seldom opened his mouth in any Tribune. Acrid, implacable-impotent ; dull-drawling, barren as the Harmattan wind. He pleads, in endless earnest-shallow speech, against immediate War, against Woollen 92 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V Woollen Caps or Bonnets Rouges, against many things ; and is March 1792 ^j^g Trismegistus and Dalai-Lama of Patriot men. Whom nevertheless a shrill- voiced little man, yet with fine eyes and a broad beautifully sloping brow, rises respectfully to controvert ; he is, say the Newspaper Reporters, ' M. Louvet, Author of the charming Romance of Faublas.^ Steady, ye Patriots ! Pull not yet two ways ; with a France rushing panic-stricken in the rural districts, and a Cinmierian Europe storming in on you ! CHArTER IX MINISTER ROLAND About the vernal equinox, however, one unexpected gleam of hope does burst forth on Patriotism : the appointment of a thoroughly Patriot Ministry. This also his Majesty, among his innumerable experiments of wedding fire to water, will try. Quod bonum sit. Madame d'Udon's Breakfasts have jingled with a new significance ; not even Genevese Dumont but had a word in it. Finally, on the 15th and onwards to the 23d day of March 1792, when all is negotiated, — ^this is the blessed issue ; this Patriot Ministry that we see. General Dumouriez, with the Foreign Portfolio, shall ply Kaunitz and the Kaiser, in another style than did poor Deles- sarts ; whom indeed we have sent to our High Court of Orleans for his sluggishness. War-Minister Narbonne is washed away by the Time-flood ; poor Chevalier de Grave, chosen by the Court, is fast washing away : then shall austere Servan, able Engineer-Ofiicer, mount suddenly to the War Department. Genevese Clavi^re sees an omen realised ; passing the Finance H6tel, long years ago, as a poor Genevese exile, it was borne wondrously on his mind that he was to be Finance-Minister ; and now he is it ; — and his poor Wife, given up by the Doctors, rises and walks, not the victim of nerves but their vanquisher.^ And above all, our Minister of the Interior ? Roland de la Platri^re, he of Lyons ! So have the Brissotins, pubhc or private Opinion, and Breakfasts in the Place VendSme, decided it. Strict Roland, compared to a Quaker endimancM, or Sunday ^ Dumont, c. 20, 21. Quaker, MINISTER ROLAND 93 Quaker, goes to kiss hands at the Tuileries, in round hat and CHAP. IX sleek hair, his shoes tied with mere riband or ferrat. The March 1792 Supreme Usher twitches Dumouriez aside : ' Quoi, Monsieur ! No buckles to his shoes ? ' — ' Ah, Monsieur,' answers Dumouriez, glancing towards the ferrat : ' All is lost, Tout est perdu.'' ^ And so our fair Roland removes from her upper floor in the Rue Saint-Jacques, to the sumptuous saloons once occu- pied by Madame Necker. Nay still earlier, it was Calonne that did all this gilding ; it was he who ground these lustres, Venetian mirrors ; who polished this inlaying, this veneering and or-moulu ; and made it, by rubbing of the proper lamp, an Aladdin's Palace : — and now behold, he wanders dim-flitting over Europe ; half-drowned in the Rhine-stream, scarcely saving his Papers ! Vos non vohis. — The fair Roland, equal to either fortune, has her public Dinner on Fridays, the Ministers all there in a body : she withdraws to her desk (the cloth once removed), and seems busy writing ; nevertheless loses no word : if, for example. Deputy Brissot and Minister Claviere get too hot in argument, she, not without timidity, yet with a cunning gracefulness, will interpose. Deputy Brissot's head, they say, is getting giddy, in this sudden height ; as feeble heads do. Envious men insinuate that the Wife Roland is Minister, and not the Husband : it is happily the worst they have to charge her with. For the rest, let whose head soever be getting giddy, it is not this brave woman's. Serene and queenly here, as she was of old in her own hired garret of the Ursulines Convent ! She who has quietly sheUed French - beans for her dinner ; being led to that, as a young maiden, by quiet insight and computation ; and knowing what that was, and what she was : such a one will also look quietly on or-moulu and veneering, not ignorant of these either. Calonne did the veneering : he gave dinners here, old Besenval diplo- matically whispering to him ; and was great : yet Calonne we saw at last ' walk with long strides.' Necker next ; and where now is Necker ? Us also a swift change has brought hither ; a swift change will send us hence. Not a Palace but a Caravansera ! So wags and wavers this unrestful World, day after day, month after month. The streets of Paris, and all Cities, roll 1 Madame Roland, ii. 80-115. daily 94 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V daily their oscillatory flood of men ; which flood does nightly March 1792 disappear, and lie hidden horizontal in beds and truckle-beds ; and awakes on the morrow to new perpendicularity and move- ment. Men go their roads, foolish or wise ; — Engineer Goguelat to and fro, bearing Queen's cipher. A Madame de Stael is busy ; cannot clutch her Narbonne from the Time- flood : a Princess de Lamballe is busy ; cannot help her Queen. Barnave, seeing the Feuillants dispersed, and Coblentz so brisk, begs by way of final recompense to kiss her Majesty's hand ; ' augurs not well of her new course ' ; and retires home to Gren- oble, to wed an heiress there. The Cafe Valois and Meot the Restau- rateur's hear daily gasconade; loud babble of Half-pay Royalists, with or without poni- ards. Remnants of Aristocrat saloons call the new Ministry Min- istere - Sansculotte. A Louvet,of the Romance Fauhlas, is busy in the Jacobins. A Cazotte, of the Romance Diable Amoureux, is busy else- where : better wert thou quiet, old Cazotte ; it is a world, this, of magic become real ! All men are busy ; doing they only half guess what : —flinging seeds, of tares mostly, into the ' Seed-field of Time ' : this, by and by, will declare wholly what. But Social Explosions have in them something dread, and as it were mad and magical ; which indeed Life always secretly has : thus the dumb Earth (says Fable), if you pull her man- drake-roots, will give a demonic mad-making moan. These Explosions and Revolts ripen, break forth like dumb dread Forces of Nature ; and yet they are Men's forces ; and yet we are part of them : the Demonic that is in man's fife has burst out on us, will sweep us too away ! — One day here is like BAUNAVE. MINISTER ROLAND 95 like another, and yet it is not like but different. How much CHAP. IX is growing, silently resistless, at all moments ! Thoughts are March-April growing ; forms of Speech are growing, and Customs and even ^'^^^ Costum'es ; still more visibly are actions and transactions grow- ing, and that doomed Strife of France with herself and with the whole world. The word Liberty is never named now except in conjunction with another ; Liberty and Equality. In like manner, what, in a reign of Liberty and Equality, can these words, ' Sir,' ' Obedient Servant,' ' Honour to be,' and suchlike, signify ? Tatters and fibres of old Feudality ; which, were it only in the Grammatical province, ought to be rooted out ! The Mother Society has long since had proposals to that effect : these she could not entertain ; not, at the moment. Note too how the Jacobin Brethren are mounting new Symbolical head-gear : the Woollen Cap or Nightcap, bonnet de laine, better known as bonnet rouge, the colour being red. A thing one wears not only by way of Phrygian Cap-of-Liberty, but also for convenience' -sake, and then also in compliment to the Lower-class Patriots and Bastille Heroes ; for the Red Nightcap combines all the three properties. Nay cockades themselves begin to be made of wool, of tricolor yam : the riband-cockade, as a symptom of FeuiUant Upper-class temper, is becoming suspicious. Signs of the times. Still more, note the travail-throes of Europe : or rather, note the birth she brings : for the successive throes and shrieks, of Austrian and Prussian alliance, of Kaunitz Anti-Jacobin Despatch, of French Ambassadors cast out, and so forth, were long to note. Dumouriez corresponds with Kaunitz, Metternich, or Cobentzel, in another style than Delessarts did. Strict becomes stricter ; categorical answer, as to this Coble ntz work and much else, shall be given. Failing which ? Failing which, on the 20th day of April 1792, King and Ministers step over to the Salle de Manege ; promulgate how the matter stands ; and poor Louis, ' with tears in his eyes,' proposes that the Assembly do now decree War. After due eloquence. War is decreed that night. War, indeed ! Paris came all crowding, full of expectancy, to the morning, and still more to the evening, session. D' Orleans with his two sons is there ; looks on, wide-eyed, from 96 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V from the opposite gallery.^ Thou canst look, O Philippe : it March-April is a War big with issues, for thee and for all men. Cimmerian ^^^^ Obscurantism and this thrice-glorious Revolution shall wrestle for it, then : some Four-and-Twenty years ; in immeasurable Briareus wrestle ; trampling and tearing ; before they can come to any, not agreement, but compromise, and approximate ascertainment each of what is in the other. Let our Three Generals on the Frontier look to it, there- fore ; and poor Chevalier de Grave, the War-Minister, con- sider what he will do. What is in the three Generals and Armies we may guess. As for poor Chevalier de Grave, he, in this whirl of things all coming to a press and pinch upon him, loses head, and merely whirls with them, in a totally dis- tracted manner ; signing himself at last, ' De Grave, Mayor of Paris ' ; whereupon he demits, returns over the Channel, to walk in Kensington Gardens ; ^ and austere Servan, the able Engineer-Officer, is elevated in his stead. To the post of Honour ? To that of Difficulty, at least. CHAPTER X PETION-NATIONAI.-PIQUE And yet, how, on dark bottomless Cataracts there plays the fooHshest fantastic-coloured spray and shadow ; hiding the Abyss under vapoury rainbows ! Alongside of this discussion as to Austrian-Prussian War, there goes on not less but more vehemently a discussion. Whether the Forty or Two-and- Forty Swiss of Chateau- Vieux shall be liberated from the Brest Galleys ? And then. Whether, being liberated, they shall have a public Festival, or only private ones ? Theroigne, as we saw, spoke ; and CoUot took up the tale. Has not Bouille's final display of himself, in that final Night of Spurs, stamped your so-caUed ' Revolt of Nanci ' into a ' Massacre of Nanci,' for all Patriot judgments ? Hateful is that massacre ; hateful the Lafayette-FeuJIlant ' public thanks ' given for it ! For indeed. Jacobin Patriotism and dispersed Feuillantism are now at death-grips ; and do fight with all weapons, even with scenic shows. The walls of Paris, accord- 1 Deux Amis, vii. 146-66. - Dumont, c. 19, 21. ingly, 1792 PETION-NATIONAL-PIQUE 97 ingly, are covered with Placard and Counter-Placard, on the CHAP. X subject of Forty Swiss blockheads. Journal responds to ^^"^^' Journal ; Player CoUot to Poetaster Roucher ; Joseph Chenier the Jacobin, squire of Theroigne, to his Brother Andre the FeuiUant ; Mayor Petion to Dupont de Nemours : and for the space of two months, there is nowhere peace for the thought of man, — ^till this thing be settled. Gloria in excelsis ! The Forty Swiss are at last got ' amnestied.' Rejoice, ye Forty ; doff your greasy wool Bonnets, which shall become Caps of Liberty. The Brest Daughter Society welcomes you from on board, with kisses on each cheek : your iron Handcuffs are disputed as Relics of Saints ; the Brest Society indeed can have one portion, which it wiU beat into Pikes, a sort of sacred Pikes ; but the other portion must belong to Paris, and be suspended from the dome there, along with the Flags of the Three Free Peoples ! Such a goose is man ; and cackles over plush-velvet Grand Monarques and wooUen Galley-slaves ; over everything and over nothing, — and will cackle with his whole soul, merely if others cackle ! On the ninth morning of April, these Forty Swiss block- heads arrive. From Versailles ; with vivats heaven-high ; with the affluence of men and women. To the Townhall we conduct them ; nay to the Legislative itself, though not without diffi- culty. They are harangued, bedinnered, begifted,— the very Court, not for conscience-sake, contributing something ; and their Public Festival shall be next Sunday. Next Sunday ac- cordingly it is.^ They are moimted into a ' triumphal Car resembling a ship ' ; are carted over Paris, with the clang of cymbals and drums, all mortals assisting applausive ; carted to the Champ-de-Mars and Fatherland's Altar; and finally carted, for Time always brings deliverance, — into invisibility for evermore. Whereupon dispersed Feuillantism, or that Party which loves Liberty yet not more than Monarchy, will likewise have its Festival : Festival of Simoneau, unfortunate Mayor of Etampes, who died for the Law ; most surely for the Law, though Jacobinism disputes ; being trampled down with his Red Flag in the riot about grains. At which Festival the Public again assists, M«applausive : not we. 1 Newspapers of February, March, April 1792 ; lambe d'Andr^ Chenier sur la FHe des Suisses ; etc. etc. (in Hist. Pari. xiii. xiv.). VOL. II. 6 On 98\ PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V On the whole. Festivals are not wanting ; beautiful rainbow- April 9, spray when all is now rushing treble-quick towards its Niagara ^^^^ Fall. National Repasts there are ; countenanced by Mayor Petion ; Saint-Antoine, and the Strong Ones of the Halles defiling through Jacobin Club, ' their felicity,' according to Santerre, ' not perfect otherwise ' ; singing many- voiced their ga-ira, dancing their ronde patriotique. Among whom one is glad to discern Saint-Huruge, expressly ' in white hat,' the Saint-Christopher of the Carmagnole. Nay a certain Tambour, or National Drummer, having just been presented with a little daughter, determines to have the new Frenchwoman christened, on Fatherland's Altar, then and there. Repast once over, he accordingly has her christened ; Fauchet the Te-Deum Bishop acting in chief, Thuriot and honourable persons standing gossips : by the name, Petion-National-Pique ! ^ Does this remarkable Citizeness, now past the meridian of life, still walk the Earth ? Or did she die perhaps of teething ? Universal History is not indifferent. CHAPTER XI THE HEREDITARY REPRESENTATIVE And yet it is not by carmagnole-dances, and singing of ga-ira, that the work can be done. Duke Brunswick is not dancing carmagnoles, but has his drill-sergeants busy. On the Frontiers, our Armies, be it treason or not, behave in the worst way. Troops badly commanded, shall we say? Or troops intrinsically bad ? Unappointed, undisciplined, mutinous ; that, in a thirty-years peace, have never seen fire ? In any case, Lafayette's and Rochambeau's little clutch, which they made at Austrian Flanders, has prospered as badly as clutch need do : soldiers starting at their own shadow ; suddenly shrieking, ' On nous trahit,' and flying off in wild panic, at or before the first shot ; — managing only to hang some two or three prisoners they had picked up, and massacre their own Commander, poor Theobald Dillon, driven into a granary by them in the Town of LUle. ^ Patriate- Franfais (Brissot's Newspaper), in Hist. Pari. xiii. 451. And HEREDITARY REPRESENTATIVE 99 And poor Gouvion : he who sat shiftless in that Insurrection of Women ! Gouvion quitted the Legislative Hall and Parliamentary duties, in disgust and despair, when those Galley-slaves of Chateau- Vieux were admitted there. He said, ' Between the Austrians and the Jacobins there is nothing but CHAP. XI June 10, 1792 DUKE CHARLES OF BRUNSWICK. a soldier's death for it ' ; '^ and so, ' in the dark stormy night,' he has flung himself into the throat of the Austrian cannon, and perished in the skirmish at Maubeuge on the ninth of June, Whom Legislative Patriotism shall mourn, with black mort-cloths and melody in the Champ-de-Mars : many a Patriot shiftier, truer none. Lafayette himself is looking ' Toulongeon, ii. 149. altogether 100 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V altogether dubious ; in place of beating the Austrians, is June 10, about writing to denounce the Jacobins. Rochambeau, all ^'^^ disconsolate, quits the service : there remains only Liickner, the babbling old Prussian Grenadier. Without Armies, without Generals ! And the Cimmerian Night has gathered itself ; Brunswick preparing his proclama- tion ; just about to march ! Let a Patriot Ministry and Legis- lative say, what in these circumstances it will do ? Suppress internal enemies, for one thing, answers the Patriot Legislative ; and proposes, on the 24th of May, its Decree for the Banishment of Priests. Collect also some nucleus of determined internal friends, adds War-Minister Servan ; and proposes, on the 7th of June, his Camp of Twenty-thousand. Twenty-thousand National Volunteers ; Five out of each Canton, picked Patriots, for Roland has charge of the Interior : they shall assemble here in Paris ; and be for a defence, cunningly devised, against foreign Austrians and domestic Austrian Committee alike. So much can a Patriot Ministry and Legislative do. Reasonable and cunningly devised as such Camp may, to Servan and Patriotism, appear, it appears not so to Feuil- lantism ; to that Feuillant- Aristocrat Staff of the Paris Guard ; a Staff, one would say again, which will need to be dissolved. These men see, in this proposed Camp of Servan's, an offence ; and even, as they pretend to say, an insult. Petitions there come, in consequence, from blue Feuillants in epaulettes ; iU received. Nay, in the end, there comes one Petition, called ' of the Eight-thousand National Guards ' : so many names are on it, including women and children. Which famed Petition of the Eight-thousand is indeed received : and the Petitioners, all under arms, are admitted to the honours of the sitting, — if honours or even if sitting there be ; for the instant their bayonets appear at the one door, the Assembly ' adjourns,' and begins to flow out at the other.^ Also, in these same days, it is lamentable to see how National Guards, escorting FSte-Dieu or Corpus-Christi ceremonial, do collar and smite down any Patriot that does not uncover as the Hostie passes. They clap their bayonets to the breast of Cattle-butcher Legendre, a known Patriot ever since the Bastille days ; and threaten to butcher him ; though he sat quite respectfully, he says, in his Gig, at a distance of fifty paces, ' Moniteur, Stance du lo Juin 1792. waiting HEREDITARY REPRESENTATIVE 101 waiting till the thing were by. Nay orthodox females were CHAP. XI shrieking to have down the Lanterne on him.^ ^^^^ 1792 To such height has Feuillantism gone in this Corps. For indeed, are not their Officers creatures of the chief Feuillant, Lafayette ? The Court too has, very naturally, been tamper- ing with them ; caressing them, ever since that dissolution of the so-called Constitutional Guard. Some Battalions are altogether ' petris, kneaded full ' of Feuillantism, mere Aristo- crats at bottom : for instance, the Battalion of the Filles- Saint-Thomas, made up of your Bankers, Stockbrokers, and other Full-purses of the Rue Vivienne. Our worthy old Friend Weber, Queen's Foster-brother Weber, carries a musket in that Battalion, — one may judge with what degree of Patriotic intention. Heedless of all which, or rather heedftil of all which, the Legis- lative, backed by Patriot France and the feeling of Necessity, decrees this Camp of Twenty-thousand. Decisive though con- ditional Banishment of malign Priests it has already decreed. It will now be seen therefore. Whether the Hereditary Repre- sentative is for us or against us ? Whether or not, to all our other woes, this intolerablest one is to be added ; which renders us not a menaced Nation in extreme jeopardy and need, but a paralytic Solecism of a Nation ; sitting wrapped as in dead cerements, of a Constitutional-Vesture that were no other than a winding-sheet ; our right hand glued to our left : to wait there, writhing and wriggling, unable to stir from the spot, till in Prussian rope we mount to the gallows ? Let the Heredi- tary Representative consider it well : The Decree of Priests ? The Camp of Twenty-thousand ? — By Heaven, he answers. Veto ! Veto ! — Strict Roland hands-in his Letter to the King ; or rather it was Madame's Letter, who wrote it all at a sitting ; one of the plainest-spoken Letters ever handed-in to any King. This plain-spoken Letter King Louis has the benefit of reading overnight. He reads, inwardly digests ; and next morning, the whole Patriot Ministry finds itself turned out. It is the 13th of June 1792.^ Dumouriez the many-counselled, he, with one Duranthon called Minister of Justice, does indeed linger for a day or two ; in rather suspicious circumstances ; speaks with the Queen, ' Dibats des /acobins (in Hist. Pari. xiv. 429). ' Madame Roland, ii. 115. almost 102 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V almost weeps with her : but in the end, he too sets off for the June 1792 Army ; leaving what Un-Patriot or Semi-Patriot Ministry and Ministries can now accept the helm, to accept it. Name them not ; new quick-changing Phantasms, which shift like magic- lantern figures ; more spectral than ever ! Unhappy Queen, unhappy Louis ! The two Vetos were so natural : are not the Priests martyrs ; also friends ? This Camp of Twenty-thousand, could it be other than of storm- fulest Sansculottes ? Natural ; and yet, to France, unendur- able. Priests that co-operate with Coblentz must go elsewhither with their martyrdom : stormful Sansculottes, these and no other kind of creatures will drive back the Austrians. If thou prefer the Austrians, then, for the love of Heaven, go join them. If not, join frankly with what will oppose them to the death. Middle course is none. Or, alas, what extreme course was there left now for a man like Louis ? Underhand Royalists, Ex-Minister Bertrand- Moleville, Ex-Constituent Malouet, and all manner of un- helpful individuals, advise and advise. With face of hope turned now on the Legislative Assembly, and now on Austria and Coblentz, and round generally on the Chapter of Chances, an ancient Kingship is reeling and spinning, one knows not whitherward, on the flood of things. CHAPTER XII PROCESSION OF THE BLACK BREECHES But is there a thinking man in France who, in these circum- stances, can persuade himself that the Constitution will march ? Brunswick is stirring; he, in few days now, will march. Shall France sit still, wrapped in dead cerements and grave- clothes, its right hand glued to its left, till the Brunswick Saint-Bartholomew arrive ; till France be as Poland, and its Rights of Man become a Prussian Gibbet ? Verily it is a moment frightful for all men. National Death ; or else some preternatural convulsive outburst of National Life ; — that same demonic outburst ! Patriots whose audacity has limits had, in truth, better retire like Barnave ; court private felicity THE BLACK BREECHES 103 felicity at Grenoble. Patriots whose audacity has no limits must CHAP. XII sink down into the obscure ; and, daring and defying all things, June 20, seek salvation in stratagem, in Plot of Insurrection. Roland ^'^^^ and young Barbaroux have spread out the Map of France before them, Barbaroux says ' with tears ' : they consider what Rivers, what Mountain-ranges are in it : they will retire behind this Loire-stream, defend these Auvergne stone-labyrinths ; save some little sacred Territory of the Free ; die at least in their last ditch. Lafayette indites his emphatic Letter to the Legis- lative against Jacobinism ; ^ which emphatic Letter will not heal the unhealable. Forward, ye Patriots whose audacity has no limits ; it is you now that must either do or die ! The Sections of Paris sit in deep counsel ; send out Deputation after Deputation to the Salle de Manege, to petition and denounce. Great is their ire against tyrannous Veto, Austrian Committee, and the combined Cimmerian Kings. What boots it ? Legislative listens to the ' tocsin in our hearts ' ; grants us honours of the sitting, sees us defile with jingle and fanfaronade ; but the Camp of Twenty-thousand, the Priest-Decree, be-vetoed by Majesty, are become impossible for Legislative. Fiery Isnard says, ' We will have Equality, should we descend for it to the tomb.' Vergniaud utters, hypotheticaUy, his stem Ezekiel- visions of the fate of Anti-national Kings. But the question is : Will hypothetic prophecies, will jingle and fanfaronade demohsh the Veto ; or will the Veto, secure in its Tuileries Chateau, remain undemolishable by these ? Barbaroux, dash- ing away his tears, writes to the Marseilles Municipality, that they must send him ' Six hundred men who know how to die, qui savent mourir.' ^ No wet-eyed message this, but a fire- eyed one ; — ^which will be obeyed ! Meanwhile the Twentieth of June is nigh, anniversary of that world-famous Oath of the Tennis-Court : on which day, it is said, certain citizens have in view to plant a Mai or Tree of Liberty in the Tuileries Terrace of the Feuillants ; perhaps also to petition the Legislative and Hereditary Representative about these Vetos ; — ^with such demonstration, jingle and evolution, as may seem profitable and practicable. Sections have gone singly, and jingled and evolved : but if they all went, or great part of them, and there, planting their Mai in ' Monitear, Seance du l8 Juin 1792. ^ Barbaroux, p. 40. these 104 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOKV June 20, 1792 these alarming circumstances, sounded the tocsin in their hearts ? Among King's Friends there can be but one opinion as to such a step : among Nation's Friends there may be two. On the one hand, might it not by possibiUty scare away these unblessed Vetos ? Private Patriots and even Legislative Deputies may have each his own opinion, or own no-opinion : but the hardest task falls evidently on Mayor Petion and the Municipals, at once Patriots and Guardians of the public Tranquillity. Hushing the matter down with the one hand'; tickling it up with the other ! Mayor Petion and Municipality may lean this way ; Depart- ment-Directory with Procureur - Syndic Rcederer, having a Feuillant tendency, may lean that. On the whole, each man must act according to his one opinion or to his two opinions, and all manner of in- fluences, official repre- sentations cross one another in the fool- ishest way. Perhaps after all, the Project, desirable and yet not desirable, will dissipate itself, being run athwart by so many complexities ; and come to nothing ? Not so ; on the Twentieth morning of June, a large Tree of Liberty, Lombardy Poplar by kind, hes visibly tied on its car, in the Suburb Saint-Antoine. Suburb Saint-Marceau too, in the uttermost Southeast, and all that remote Oriental region, Pikemen and Pikewomen, National Guards, and the unarmed curious are gathering, — with the peaceablest inten- tions in the world. A tricolor Municipal arrives ; speaks. Tush, it is all peaceable, we tell thee, in the way of Law : are not Petitions allowable, and the Patriotism of Mais ? The tricolor Municipal returns without effect : your Sansculottic rills RCEDEKER. THE BLACK BREECHES 105 rills continue flowing, combining into brooks ; towards noontide, CHAP. XII led by tall Santerre in blue uniform, by tall Saint-Huruge in J"n« ^o, white hat, it moves westward, a respectable river, or complica- ^' tion of still-swelling rivers. What Processions have we not seen : Corpus-Christi and Legendre waiting in his Gig ; Bones of Voltaire with bullock chariots, and goadsmen in Roman Costume ; Feasts of Chateau- Vieux and Simoneau ; Gouvion Funerals, Rousseau Sham funeral, and the Baptism of Petion-National-Pike ! Never- theless this Procession has a character of its own. Tricolor ribands streaming aloft from Pike-heads ; ironshod batons ; and emblems not a few ; among which see specially these two, of the tragic and the untragic sort : a BuU's Heart transfixed with iron, bearing this epigraph, ' Cceur d^Aristocrate, Aristo- crat's heart ' ; and, more striking still, properly the standard of the host, a pair of old Black Breeches (silk, they say), ex- tended on cross-staff, high overhead, with these memorable words : ' Tremblez, tyrans ; voild les Sansculottes, Tremble, tyrants ; here are the Sans-indispensables ! ' Also, the Pro- cession trails two cannons. Scarfed tricolor Municipals do now again meet it, in the Quai Saint-Bernard, and plead earnestly, having called halt. Peaceable, ye virtuous tricolor Municipals, peaceable are we as the sucking dove. Behold our Tennis-Court Mai. Petition is legal ; and as for arms, did not an august Legislative receive the so-called Eight-thousand in arms, Feuillants though they were ? Our Pikes, are they not of National iron ? Law is our father and mother, whom we will not dishonour ; but Patriotism is our own soul. Peaceable, ye virtuous Muni- cipals ; — and on the whole, limited as to time ! Stop we cannot ; march ye with us. — The Black Breeches agitate themselves, impatient ; the cannon-wheels grumble : the many-footed Host tramps on. How it reached the SaUe de Manege, like an ever-waxing river ; got admittance after debate ; read its Address ; and defiled, dancing and Qa-ira-ing, led by tall sonorous Santerre and tall sonorous Saint-Huruge : how it flowed, not now a waxing river but a shut Caspian lake, round all Precincts of the Tuileries ; the front Patriot squeezed by the rearward against barred iron Grates, like to have the life squeezed out of him, and looking too into the dread throat of cannon, for National 106 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOK V National Battalions stand ranked within : how tricolor Muni- June 20, cipals ran assiduous, and Royalists with Tickets of Entry ; ^ and both Majesties sat in the interior surrounded by men in black : aU this the human mind shall fancy for itself, or read in old Newspapers, and Syndic Roederer's Chronicle of Fifty Days} Our Mai is planted ; if not in the Feuillants Terrace, whither is no ingate, then in the Garden of the Capuchins, as near as we cotdd get. National Assembly has adjourned till the Evening Session : perhaps this shut lake, finding no ingate, wiU retire to its sources again ; and disappear in peace ? Alas, not yet : rearward still presses on ; rearward knows little what pressure is in the front. One would wish, at all events, were it possible, to have a word with his Majesty first ! The shadows fall longer, eastward ; it is four o'clock : will his Majesty not come out ? Hardly he ! In that case. Com- mandant Santerre, Cattle-butcher Legendre, Patriot Huguenin with the tocsin in his heart ; they, and others of authority, will enter in. Petition and request to wearied uncertain National Guard ; louder and louder petition ; backed by the rattle of our two cannons ! The reluctant Grate opens : endless Sansculottic multitudes flood the stairs ; knock at the wooden guardian of your privacy. Knocks, in such case, grow strokes, grow smashings : the wooden guardian flies in shivers. And now ensues a Scene over which the world has long wailed ; and not unjustly ; for a sorrier spectacle, of Incongruity fronting Incongruity, and as it were recognising themselves incongruous, and staring stupidly in each other's face, the world seldom saw. King Louis, his door being beaten on, opens it ; stands with free bosom ; asking, ' What do you want ? ' The Sans- culottic flood recoils awestruck ; returns however, the rear pressing on the front, with cries of ' Veto ! Patriot Ministers ! Remove Veto ! ' — ^which things, Louis valiantly answers, this is not the time to do, nor this the way to ask him to do. Honour what virtue is in a man. Louis does not want courage ; he has even the higher kind called moral courage ; though only the passive-half of that. His few National Grenadiers shuffle back with him, into the embrasure of a window : there he stands with unimpeachable passivity, amid the shouldering ' Rcederer, etc. etc. (in ffist. Pari. xv. 98-194). and THE BLACK BREECHES 107 and the braying ; a spectacle to men. They hand him a red CHAP. XII Cap of Liberty ; he sets it quietly on his head, forgets it there. June 20, He complains of thirst ; half-drunk Rascality offers him a bottle, ^^^^ he drinks of it. ' Sire, do not fear,' says one of his Grenadiers. ' Fear ? ' answers Louis : ' feel then,' putting the man's hand on his heart. So stands Majesty in Red wooUen Cap ; black Sansculottism weltering round him, far and wide, aimless, with inarticulate dissonance, with cries of ' Veto ! Patriot Ministers ! ' For the space of three hours or more ! The National Assembly is adjourned ; tricolor Municipals avail almost nothing : Mayor Petion tarries absent ; Authority is none. The Queen with her Children and Sister Ehzabeth, in tears and terror not for them- selves only, are sitting behind barricaded tables and Grenadiers in an inner room. The Men in black have all wisely disappeared. Blind lake of Sansculottism welters stagnant through the King's Chateau, for the space of three hours. Nevertheless aU things do end. Vergniaud arrives with Legislative Deputation, the Evening Session having now opened. Mayor Petion has arrived ; is haranguing, ' lifted on the shoulders of two Grenadiers.' In this uneasy attitude and in others, at various places without and within. Mayor Petion harangues ; many men harangue ; finally Commandant Santerre defiles ; passes out, with his Sansculottism, by the opposite side of the Chateau. Passing through the room where the Queen, with an air of dignity and sorrowful resigna- tion, sat among the tables and Grenadiers, a woman offers her too a Red Cap ; she holds it in her hand, even puts it on the little Prince Royal. ' Madame,' said Santerre, ' this People loves you more than you think.' ^ — ^About eight o'clock the Royal Family fall into each other's arms amid ' torrents of tears.' Unhappy Family ! Who would not weep for it, were there not a whole world to be wept for ? Thus has the Age of Chivalry gone, and that of Hunger come. Thus does all-needing Sansculottism look in the face of its Roi, Regulator, King or Able-man ; and find that he has nothing to give it. Thus do the two Parties, brought face to face after long centuries, stare stupidly at one another. This verily, am I ; but, good Heaven, is that Thou ? — and depart, not knowing what to make of it. And yet. Incongruities ' Toulongeon, ii. 173; Campan, ii. c. 20. having 108 PARLIAMENT FIRST BOOKV having recognised themselves to be incongruous, something June 20, must be made of it. The Fates know what. 1792 ijij^jg jg ^Yie world-famous Twentieth of June, more worthy to be called the Procession of the Black Breeches. With which, what we had to say of this First French biennial Parliament, and its products and activities, may perhaps fitly enough terminate. Book Sixth BOOK SIXTH THE MARSEILLESE CHAPTER I EXECUTIVE THAT DOES NOT ACT How could your paralytic National Executive be put ' in action,' in any measure, by such a Twentieth of June as this ? Quite contrariwise : a large sympathy for Majesty so insulted arises everywhere ; expresses itself in Addresses, Petitions, ' Petition of the Twenty-thousand inhabitants of Paris,' and suchlike, among all Constitutional persons ; a decided rallying round the throne. Of which rallying it was thought King Louis might have made something. However, he does make nothing of it, or attempt to make ; for indeed his views are lifted beyond domestic sympathy and rallying, over to Coblentz mainly. Neither in itself is this same sympathy worth much. It is sympathy of men who believe still that the Constitution can march. Wherefore the old discord and ferment, of Feuillant sympathy for Royalty, and Jacobin sympathy for Fatherland, acting against each other from within ; with terror of Coblentz and Brunswick acting from without : — this discord and ferment must hold on its course, till a catastrophe do ripen and come. One would think, especially as Brunswick is near marching, such catastrophe cannot now be distant. Busy, ye Twenty-five French Millions : ye foreign Potentates, minatory Emigrants, German drill-sergeants ; each do what his hand findeth ! Thou, O Reader, at such safe distance, wilt see what they make of it among them. Consider, therefore, this pitiable Twentieth of June as a futility ; no catastrophe, rather a catastasis, or heightening. Do 110 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI Do not its Black Breeches wave there, in the Historical Imagina- June 20, tion, like a melancholy flag of distress ; soliciting help, which ^^^^ no mortal can give ? Soliciting pity, which thou wert hard- hearted not to give freely, to one and all ! Other such flags, or what are called Occurrences, and black or bright symbolic Phenomena will flit through the Historical Imagination ; these, one after one, let us note, with extreme brevity. The first phenomenon is that of Lafayette at the Bar of the Assembly ; after a week and day. Promptly, on hearing of this scandalous Twentieth of June, Lafayette has quitted his Command on the North Frontier, in better or worse order ; and got hither, on the 28th, to repress the Jacobins : not by letter now ; but by oral Petition, and weight of character, face to face. The august Assembly finds the step questionable ; invites him meanwhile to the honours of the sitting.^ Other honour, or advantage, there unhappily came almost none ; the Galleries all growling ; fiery Isnard glooming ; sharp Guadet not wanting in sarcasms. And out of doors, when the sitting is over, Sieur Resson, keeper of the Patriot Caje in these regions, hears in the street a hurlyburly ; steps forth to look, he and his Patriot cus- tomers : it is Lafayette's carriage, with a tumultuous escort of blue Grenadiers, Cannoneers, even Officers of the Line, hurrah- ing and capering round it. They make a pause opposite Sieur Resson's door ; wag their plumes at him ; nay shake their fists, bellowing A has les Jacobins ! but happily pass on with- out onslaught. They pass on, to plant a Mai before the General's door, and bully considerably. All which the Sieur Resson cannot but report with sorrow, that night, in the Mother Society.^ But what no Sieur Resson nor Mother Society can do more than guess is this. That a council of rank FeuiUants, your unabolished Staff of the Guard and who else has status and weight, is in these very moments privily deliberating at the General's : Can we not put down the Jacobins by force ? Next day, a Review shall be held, in the Tuileries Gardens, of such as will turn out, and try. Alas, says Toulongeon, hardly a hundred turned out. Put it off till tomorrow, then, to give better warning. On the morrow, which is Saturday, there turn ^ Moniteur, Stance du 28 Juin 1792. ^ Dibats des /acobins (Hist. Pari. xv. 235). out EXECUTIVE THAT DOES NOT ACT 111 out ' some thirty ' ; and depart shrugging their shoulders ! ^ CHAP, l Lafayette promptly takes carriage again ; returns musing on July 6, 1792 many things. The'dust of Paris is hardly oft his wheels, the summer Sunday is still young, when Cordehers in deputation pluck up that Mai of his : before sunset. Patriots have burnt him in effigy. Louder doubt and louder rises, in Section, in National Assembly, as to the legality of such unbidden Anti- jacobin visit on the part of a General : doubt swelling and spreading all over France, for six weeks or so ; with endless talk about usurping soldiers, about English Monk, nay about Cromwell : O thou poor Grandison-CTomwell ! — What boots it ? King Louis him- self looked coldly on the enterprise : colossal Hero of two Worlds, having weighed himself in the balance, finds that he is become a gossamer Colossus, only some thirty turning out. In a like sense, and with a like issue, works our Department- Directory here at Paris ; who, on the 6th of July, take upon them to suspend Mayor Petion and Procureur Manuel from all civic functions, for their conduct, replete, as is alleged, with omissions and commissions, on that delicate Twentieth of June. Virtuous Petion sees himself a kind of martyr, or pseudo- martyr, threatened with several things ; drawls out due heroical lamentation ; to which Patriot Paris and Patriot Legislative duly respond. King Louis and Mayor Petion have already had an interview on that business of the Twentieth ; an inter- view and dialogue, distinguished by frankness on both sides ; ending on King Louis's side Avith the words ' Taisez-vous, Hold your peace.' For the rest, this of suspending our Mayor does seem a mis- timed measure. By ill chance, it came out precisely on the day of that famous Baiser de V amourette, or miraculous reconciliatory Delilah-Kiss, which we spoke of long ago. Which Delilah- Kiss was thereby quite hindered of effect. For now his Majesty has to write, almost that same night, asking a reconciled Assembly for advice ! The reconciled Assembly will not advise ; will not interfere. The King confirms the suspension ; then perhaps, but not till then, will the Assembly interfere, the noise of Patriot Paris getting loud. Whereby your Delilah- ' Toulongeon, ii. i8o. See also Dampmartin, ii. i6l. Kiss, 112 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI Kiss, such was the destiny of ParUament First, becomes a July 6, 1792 Philistine Battle ! Nay there goes a word that as many as thirty of our chief Patriot Senators are to be clapped in prison, by mittimus and indictment of Feuillant Justices, Juges de Paicc ; who here in Paris were well capable of such a thing. It was but in May last that Juge-de-Paix Lariviere, on complaint of Bertrand- Moleville touching that Austrian Committee, made bold to launch his mittimus against three heads of the Mountain, Deputies Bazire, Chabot, Merlin, the Cordelier Trio ; sum- moning them to appear before Mm,, and show where that Austrian Committee was, or else suffer the consequences. Which mittimus the Trio, on their side, made bold to fling in the fire : and valiantly pleaded privilege of Parliament. So that, for his zeal without knowledge, poor Justice Lariviere now sits in the prison of Orleans, waiting trial from the Haute Cour there. Whose example, may it not deter other rash Justices ; and so this word of the Thirty arrestments continue a word merely ? But on the whole, though Lafayette weighed so light, and has had his Mai plucked up. Official Feuillantism falters not a whit ; but carries its head high, strong in the letter of the Law. Feuillants all of these men ; a Feuillant Directory ; founding on high character, and suchlike ; with Duke de la Rochefoucault for President, — a thing which may prove danger- ous for him ! Dim now is the once bright Anglomania of these admired Noblemen. Duke de Liancourt offers, out of Nor- mandy where he is Lord-Lieutenant, not only to receive his Majesty, thinking of flight thither, but to lend him money to enormous amounts. Sire, it is not a Revolt, it is a Revolu- tion ; and truly no rose-water one ! Worthier Noblemen were not in France nor in Europe than those two : but the Time is crooked, quick-shifting, perverse ; what straightest course will lead to any goal, in it ? Another phasis which we note, in these early July days, is that of certain thin streaks of Federate National Volunteers wending from various points towards Paris, to hold a new Federation-Festival, or Feast of Pikes, on the Fourteenth there. So has the National Assembly wished it, so has the Nation willed it. In this way, perhaps, may we still have our EXECUTIVE THAT DOES NOT ACT 113 our Patriot Camp in spite of Veto. For cannot these Federes, CHAP. I having celebrated their Feast of Pikes, march on to Soissons ; J"ly 6, 1792 and, there being drilled and regimented, rush to the Frontiers, or whither we like ! Thus were the one Veto cunningly eluded ! As indeed the other Veto, about Priests, is also like to be eluded ; and without much cunning. For Provincial Assem- blies, in Calvados as one instance, are proceeding, on their own strength, to judge and banish Antinational Priests. Or stiU worse, without Provincial Assembly, a desperate People, as at Bordeaux, can ' hang two of them on the Lanteme,' on the way towards judgment.^ Pity for the spoken Veto, when it cannot become an acted one ! It is true, some ghost of a War-minister, or Home-minister, for the time being, ghost whom we do not name, does write to Municipalities and King's Commanders, that they shall, by all conceivable methods, obstruct this Federation, and even turn back the Federes by force of arms : a message which scatters mere doubt, paralysis and confusion ; irritates the poor Legislative; reduces the r '.Federes, as we see, to thin streaks. But being questioned, this ghost and the other ghosts, AVhat it is then that they propose to do for saving the country ? — They answer. That they cannot tell ; that indeed they, for their part, have, this morning, resigned in a body ; and do now merely respectfully take leave of the helm altogether. With which words they rapidly walk out of the Hall, sortent brusquement de la salle, the ' Galleries cheering loudly,' the poor Legislative sitting ' for a good while in silence ' ! ^ Thus do Cabinet-ministers themselves, in extreme cases, strike work ; one of the strangest omens. Other com- plete Cabinet-ministry there will not be ; only fragments, and these changeful, which never get completed ; spectral Appari- tions that cannot so much as appear ! King Louis writes that he now views this Federation Feast with approval ; and will himself have the pleasure to take part in the same. And so these thin streaks of Federes wend Paris-ward through a paral3rtic France. Thin grim streaks ; not thick joyful ranks, as of old to the first Feast of Pikes ! No : these poor Federates march now towards Austria and Austrian Committee, towards jeopardy and forlorn hope ; men of hard fortune and temper, not rich in the world's goods. Municipalities, paralysed ^ Hist. Pari. xvi. 259. ^ Monittur, Stance du Juillet 1792. VOL. II. H by 114 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI by War-minister, are shy of affording cash ; it may be, your July 10, poor Federates cannot arm themselves, cannot march, till the ^' Daughter Society of the place open her pocket and subscribe. There will not have arrived, at the set day. Three-thousand of them in all. And yet, thin and feeble as these streaks of Feder- ates seem, they are the only thing one discerns moving with any clearness of aim in this strange scene. Angry buzz and simmer ; uneasy tossing and moaning of a huge France, all enchanted, spellbound by unmarching Constitution, into fright- ful conscious and unconscious Magnetic-sleep ; which frightful Magnetic-sleep must now issue soon in one of two things : Death or Madness ! The Federes carry mostly in their pocket some earnest cry and Petition, to have the ' National Executive put in action ' ; or as a step towards that, to have the King's Decheance, King's Forfeiture, or at least his Suspension, pro- nounced. They shall be welcome to the Legislative, to the Mother of Patriotism ; and Paris will provide for their lodging. Decheance, indeed : and what next ? A France spell-free, a Revolution saved ; and anything, and all things next ! so answer grimly Danton and the unlimited Patriots, down deep in their subterranean region of Plot, whither they have now dived. Dicheance, answers Brissot with the limited : and if next the little Prince Royal were crowned, and some Regency of Girondins and recalled Patriot Ministry set over him ? Alas, poor Brissot ; looking, as indeed poor man does always, on the nearest morrow as his peaceable promised land ; deciding what must reach to the world's end, yet with an insight that reaches not beyond his own nose ! Wiser are the unhmited subterranean Patriots, who with light for the hour itself, leave the rest to the gods. Or were it not, as we now stand, the probablest issue of all, that Brunswick, in Coblentz, just gathering his huge limbs towards him to rise, might arrive first ; and stop both Dechiance, and theorising on it ? Brunswick is on the eve of marching ; with Eighty-thousand, they say; fell Prussians, Hessians, feller Emigrants : a General of the Great Frederick, with such an Army. And our Armies ? And our Generals ? As for Lafayette, on whose late visit a Committee is sitting and all France is jarring and censuring, he seems readier to fight us than fight Brunswick. Liickner and Lafayette pretend to be inter- changing corps, and are making movements, which Patriotism cannot LET US MARCH 115 cannot understand. This only is very clear, that their corps CHAP. I go marching and shuttling, in the interior of the country ; J^ly ^'^' much nearer Paris than formerly ! Liickner has ordered ^^^^ Dumouriez down to him ; down from Maulde, and the Fortified Camp there. Which order the many-counselled Dumouriez, with the Austrians hanging close on him, he busy meanwhile training a few thousands to stand fire and be soldiers, declares that, come of it what will, he cannot obey.^ Will a poor Legis- lative, therefore, sanction Dumouriez ; who applies to it, ' not knowing whether there is any War-ministry ' ? Or sanction Liickner and these Lafayette movements ? The poor Legislative knows not what to do. It decrees, however, that the Staff of the Paris Guard, and indeed all such Staffs, for they are Feuillants mostly, shall be broken and replaced. It decrees earnestly, in what manner one can declare, that the Country is in Danger. And finally, on the 11th of July, the morrow of that day when the Ministry struck work, it decrees that the Country be, with all despatch, declared in Danger. Whereupon let the King sanction ; let the Munici- pality take measures : if such Declaration will do service, it need not fail. In Danger truly, if ever Country was ! Arise, O Country ; or be trodden down to ignominious ruin ! Nay, are not the chances a hundred to one that no rising of the Country will save it ; Brunswick, the Emigrants, and Feudal Europe drawing nigh ? CHAPTER II LET US MARCH But, to our minds, the notablest of all these moving pheno- mena is that of Barbaroux's ' Six-hundred Marseillese who know how to die.' Prompt to the request of Barbaroux, the Marseilles Munici- pality has got these men together : on the fifth morning of July, the TownhaU says, ' Marchez, abattez le Tyran, March, strike down the Tyrant ' ; ^ and they, with grim appropriate 'Marchons,^ are marching. Long journey, doubtful errand ; 1 Dumouriez, ii. I, 5. ^ Dampmartin, ii. 183. Enfans 116 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI Enfans de la Patrie, may a good genius guide you ! Their July 5, 1792 own wild heart and what faith it has will guide them : and is not that the monition of some genius, better or worse ? Five-hundred and Seventeen able men, with Captains of fifties and tens ; well armed all, musket on shoulder, sabre on thigh : nay they drive three pieces of cannon ; for who knows what obstacles may occur ? Mimicipalities there are, paralysed by War-minister ; Commandants with orders to stop even Federa- tion Volunteers : good, when sound arguments wiU not open a Towngate, if you have a petard to shiver it ! They have left their sunny Phocean City and Seahaven, with its bustle and its bloom : the thronging Course, with high-frondent Avenues, pitchy dockyards, almond and olive groves, orange- trees on house-tops, and white glittering bastides that crown the hills, are all behind them. They wend on their wild way, from the extremity of French land, through unknown cities, toward an unknown destiny ; with a purpose that they know. Much wondering at this phenomenon, and how, in a peace- able trading City, so many householders and hearthholders do severally fling down their crafts and industrial tools ; gird themselves with weapons of war, and set out on a journey of six hundred miles, to ' strike down the tyrant,' — you search in all Historical Books, Pamphlets and Newspapers, for some light on it : unhappily without effect. Rumour and Terror precede this march ; which still echo on you ; the march itself an unknown thing. Weber, in the back-stairs of the Tuileries, has understood that they were Formats, Galley-slaves and mere scoimdrels, these MarseiUese ; that, as they marched through Lyons, the people shut their shops ;— also that the number of them was some Four Thousand. Equally vague is Blanc GiUi, who likewise murmurs about Forgats and danger of plunder.^ Forgats they were not ; neither was there plunder or danger of it. Men of regular life, or of the best-filled purse, they could hardly be ; the one thing needful in them was that they ' knew how to die.' Friend Dampmartin saw them, with his own eyes, march ' gradually ' through his quarters at Villefranche in the Beaujolais : but saw in the vaguest manner ; being indeed preoccupied, and himself minded for marching just then — across the Rhine. Deep was his astonish- ment to think of such a march, without appointment or arrange- ' See Barbaroux, Mimoires (Note in pp. 40, 41). ment, LET US MARCH 117 ment, station or ration ; for the rest, it was ' the same men he CHAP, II had seen formerly ' in the troubles of the South ; ' perfectly J"ly 5^ 1792 civil ' ; though his soldiers could not be kept from talking a little with them.^ So vague are all these ; Moniteur, Histoire Parlementaire are as good as silent : garrulous History, as is too usual, will say nothing where you most wish her to speak ! If enlightened Curiosity ever get sight of the Marseilles Council-Books, will it not perhaps explore this strangest of Mimicipal procedures ; and feel called to fish-up what of the Biographies, creditable or discreditable, of these Five-hundred and Seventeen, the stream of Time has not yet irrevocably swallowed ? As it is, these Marseillese remain inarticulate, undistinguish- able in feature ; a blackbrowed Mass, fuU of grim fire, who wend there, in the hot sultry weather : very singular to con- template. They wend ; amid the infinitude of doubt and dim peril ; they not doubtful : Fate and Feudal Europe, having decided, come girdling in from without ; they, having also decided, to march within. Dusty of face, with frugal refresh- ment, they plod onwards ; unweariable, not to be turned aside. Such march will become famous. The Thought, which works voiceless in this blackbrowed mass, an inspired Tyrtaean Colonel, Rouget de Lille, whom the Earth still holds,^ has translated into grim melody and rhythm ; into his Hymn or March of the Marseillese : luckiest musical-composition ever promulgated. The sound of which will make the blood tingle in men's veins ; and whole Armies and Assemblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of Death, Despot and Devil. One sees well, these Marseillese will be too late for the Federa- tion Feast. In fact, it is not Champ-de-Mars Oaths that they have in view. They have quite another feat to do : a paralytic National Executive to set in action. They must ' strike down ' whatsoever ' Tyrant,' or Martyr-Faineant, there may be who paralyses it ; strike and be struck ; and on the whole prosper, and know how to die. ' Dampmartin, ubi supra. — As to Dampmartin himself and what became of him further, see Mimoires de la Comtesse de Lichtenmi, Merits par elle-meme ; traduits de TAUemand (a Londres 1809), i. 200-7 ; "• 78-91- 2 A.D. 1836. Chapter III BOOK VI July 1792 118 THE MARSEILLESE CHAPTER III SOME CONSOLATION TO MANKIND Of the Federation Feast itself we shall say almost nothing. There are Tents pitched in the Champ-de-Mars ; tent for National Assembly ; tent for Hereditary Representative, — who indeed is there too early, and has to wait long in it. There are Eighty-three symbolic Departmental Trees-of-Liberty ; trees and mais enough : beautifulest of all, there is one huge mai, hung round with effete Scutcheons, Emblazonries and Genealogy-books, nay better still, with Lawyers'-bags, ' sacs de procedure ' ; which shall be burnt. The Thirty seat-rows of that famed Slope are again full ; we have a bright Sun ; and all is marching, streamering and blaring : but what avaUs it ? Virtuous Mayor Petion, whom Feuillantism had sus- pended, was reinstated only last night, by Decree of the Assem- bly. Men's humour is of the sourest. Men's hats have on them, written in chalk, ' Vive PHion ' ; and even, ' P6tion or Death, Petion ou la Mori.'' Poor Louis, who has waited till five o'clock before the Assembly would arrive, swears the National Oath this time, with a quilted cuirass under his waistcoat which will turn pistol-bullets.^ Madame de Stael, from that Royal Tent, stretches out the neck in a kind of agony, lest the waving multitude which received him may not render him back alive. No cry of Vive le Roi salutes the ear ; cries only of Vive Petion ; PMion ou la Mort. The National Solemnity is as it were huddled by ; each cowering off almost before the evolutions are gone through. The very Mai with its Scutcheons and Lawyers'-bags is forgotten, stands unburnt ; till ' certain Patriot Deputies,' called by the people, set a torch to it, by way of voluntary after-piece. Sadder Feast of Pikes no man ever saw. Mayor Petion, named on hats, is at his zenith in this Federa- tion : Lafayette again is close upon his nadir. Why does the storm-bell of Saint-Roch speak out, next Saturday ; why do ' Campan, ii. c. 20 ; De Stael, ii. c. 7. the CONSOLATION TO MANKIND 119 the citizens shut their shops ? ^ It is Sections defiHng, it is fear CHAP. Ill of effervescence. Legislative Committee, long deliberating on ^"^7 1792 Lafayette and that Anti-Jacobin visit of his, reports, this day, that there is ' not ground for Accusation ' ! Peace, ye Patriots, nevertheless ; and let that tocsin cease : the Debate is not finished, nor the Report accepted ; but Brissot, Isnard and the Mountain will sift it, and resift it, perhaps for some three weeks longer. So many bells, storm-bells and noises do ring ;— ^scarcely audible ; one drowning the other. For example : in this same Lafayette tocsin, of Saturday, was there not withal some faint bob-minor, and Deputation of Legislative, ringing the Chevalier Paul Jones to his long rest ; tocsin or dirge now all one to him ! Not ten days hence Patriot Brissot, beshouted this day by the Patriot Galleries, shall find himself begroaned by them, on account of his limited Patriotism ; nay pelted at while perorating, and ' hit with two prunes.' ^ It is a dis- tracted empty-sounding world ; of bob-minors and bob-majors, of triumph and terror, of rise and fall ! The more touching is this other Solemnity, which happens on the morrow of the Lafayette tocsin : Proclamation that the Country is in Danger. Not till the present Sunday could such Solemnity be. The Legislative decreed it almost a fortnight ago ; but Royalty and the ghost of a Ministry held back as they could. Now however, on this Sunday, 22d day of July 1792, it will hold back no longer ; and the Solemnity in very deed is. Touching to behold ! Municipality and Mayor have on their scarfs ; cannon-salvo booms alarm from the Pont-Neuf, and single-gun at intervals all day. Guards are mounted, scarfed Notabilities, Halberdiers, and a Cavalcade ; with streamers, emblematic flags ; especially with one huge Flag, flapping mournfully : Citoyens, la Patrie est en Danger. They roll through the streets, with stern-sounding music, and slow rattle of hoofs ; pausing at set stations, and with doleful blast of trumpet singing out through Herald's throat, what the Flag says to the eye : ' Citizens, our Country is in Danger ! ' Is there a man's heart that hears it without a thrill ? The many-voiced responsive hum or bellow of these multitudes is not of trimnph ; and yet it is a sound deeper than triumph. But when the long Cavalcade and Proclamation ended ; and 1 Moniteur, Seance du 21 Juillet 1792. ''■ Hist. Pari. xvi. 185. our 120 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI our huge Flag was fixed on the Pont-Neuf, another Uke it on July 22, the H6tel-de-Ville, to wave there till better days ; and each 1792 Municipal sat in the centre of his Section, in a Tent raised in some open square. Tents surmounted with flags of Patrie en Danger, and topmost of all a Pike and Bonnet Rouge ; and, on two drtuns in front of him, there lay a plank-table, and on this an open Book, and a Clerk sat, like recording-angel, ready to write the lists, or as we say to enlist ! O, then, it seems, the very gods might have looked down on it. Young Patriotism, Culottic and Sansculottic, rushes forward emulous : That is my name ; name, blood and life is all my country's ; why have I nothing more ! Youths of short stature weep that they are below size. Old men come forward, a son in each hand. Mothers themselves will grant the son of their travail ; send him, though with tears. And the multitude bellows Vive la Patrie, far reverberating. And fire flashes in the eyes of men ; — and at eventide, your Municipal returns to the Townhall followed by his long train of Volunteer valour ; hands-in his List ; says proudly, looking round, This is my day's harvest.-^ They will march, on the morrow, to Soissons ; small bundle holding all their chattels. So, with Vive la Patrie, Vive la Liberte, stone Paris rever- berates like Ocean in his caves ; day after day. Municipals enlisting in tricolor Tent ; the Flag flapping on Pont-Neuf and Townhall, Citoyens, la Patrie est en Danger. Some Ten- thousand fighters, without discipline but full of heart, are on march in few days. The like is doing in every Town of France. — Consider, therefore, whether the Country will want defenders, had we but a National Executive ? Let the Sections and Pri- mary Assemblies, at any rate, become Permanent ! They do become Permanent, and sit continually in Paris, and over France, by Legislative Decree, dated Wednesday the 25th.^ Mark contrariwise how, in these very hours, dated the 25th, Brunswick ' shakes himself, s'Sbranle,' in Coblentz ; and takes the road ! Shakes himself indeed ; one spoken word becomes such a shaking. Successive, simultaneous dirl of thirty- thousand muskets shouldered ; prance and jingle of ten- thousand horsemen, fanfaronading Emigrants in the van ; drum, kettle-drum ; noise of weeping, swearing ; and the ^ Tableaii de la RSvolution, § Patrie en Danger. ^ Moniteur, Stance du 25 Juillet 1792. immeasurable CONSOLATION TO MANKIND 121 immeasurable lumbering clank of baggage-wagons and camp- CHAP. Ill kettles that groan into motion : all this is Brunswick shaking J"ly 22, himself ; not without all this does the one man march, ' cover- ^^^^ ing a 'space of forty miles.' Still less without his Manifesto, dated, as we say, the 25th ; a State-Paper worthy of attention ! By this Document, it would seem great things are in store for France. The universal French People shall now have per- mission to rally round Brunswick and his Emigrant Seigneurs ; tyranny of a Jacobin Faction shall oppress them no more ; but they shall return, and find favour with their own good King ; who, by Royal Declaration (three years ago) of the Twenty-third of June, said that he would himself make them happy. As for National Assembly, and other Bodies of Men invested with some temporary shadow of authority, they are charged to maintain the King's Cities and Strong Places intact, till Brunswick arrive to take delivery of them. Indeed, quick submission may extenuate many things ; but to this end it must be quick. Any National Guard or other unmilitary person found resisting in arms shall be ' treated as a traitor ' ; that is to say, hanged with promptitude. For the rest, if Paris, before Brunswick gets thither, offer any insult to the King ; or, for example, suffer a Faction to carry the King away elsewhither ; in that case, Paris shall be blasted asunder with cannon-shot and ' military execution.' Likewise all other Cities, which may witness, and not resist to the uttermost, such forced-march of his Majesty, shall be blasted asunder ; and Paris and every City of them, starting-place, course and goal of said sacrilegious forced-march, shall, as rubbish and smoking ruin, lie there for a sign. Such vengeance were indeed signal, ' an insigne ven- geance ' : — O Brunswick, what words thou writest and blusterest ! In this Paris, as in old Nineveh, are so many score thousands that know not the right hand from the left, and also much cattle. Shall the very milk-cows, hard-living cadgers'-asses, and poor little canary-birds die ? Nor is Royal and Imperial Prussian-Austrian Declaration wanting : setting forth, in the amplest manner, their Sans- souci-Schonbrunn version of this whole French Revolution, since the first beginning of it ; and with what grief these high heads have seen such things done under the Sun. However, ' as some small consolation to mankind,' ^ they do now despatch ' Annual Se^sier {I'jgz), p. 236. Brunswick ; 122 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI Brunswick ; regardless of expense, as one might say, or of July 25, sacrifices on their own part ; for is it not the first duty to ^'^^^ console men ? Serene Highnesses, who sit there protocoUing and mani- festoing, and consoling mankind ! how were it if, for once in the thousand years, your parchments, formularies and reasons of state were blown to the four winds ; and Reality Sans- indispensables stared you, even you, in the face ; and Man- kind said for itself what the thing was that would console it?— CHAPTER IV SUBTERRANEAN But judge if there was comfort in this to the Sections all sitting permanent ; deliberating how a National Executive could be put in action ! High rises the response, not of cackling terror but of crow- ing counter-defiance, and Vive la Nation ; young Valour stream- ing towards the Frontiers ; Patrie en Danger mutely beckoning on the Pont-Neuf. Sections are busy, in their permanent Deep ; and down, lower still, works unlimited Patriotism, seeking salvation in plot. Insurrection, you would say, becomes once more the sacredest of duties ? Committee, self-chosen, is sitting at the Sign of the Golden Sun ; Journalist Carra, Camille Desmoulins, Alsatian Westermann friend of Danton, American Fournier of Martinique ; — a Committee not unknown to Mayor Petion, who, as an official person, must sleep with one eye open. Not unknown to Procureur Manuel ; least of all to Procureur-Substitute Danton ! He, wrapped in darkness, being also official, bears it on his giant shoulders ; cloudy invisible Atlas of the whole. Much is invisible ; the very Jacobins have their reticences. Insurrection is to be : but when ? This only can we discern, that such Fed^res as are not yet gone to Soissons, as indeed are not inclined to go yet, ' for reasons,' says the Jacobin President, ' which it may be interesting not to state,' have got a Central Committee sitting close by, under the roof of the Mother SUBTERRANEAN 123 Mother Society herself. Also, what in such ferment and danger CHAP. IV of effervescence is surely proper, the Forty-eight Sections have July 25, got their Central Committee ; intended ' for prompt communica- ^^^^ tion.' ' To which Central Committee the Municipality, anxious to have it at hand, could not refuse an Apartment in the Hotel- de-VUle. Singular City ! For overhead of all this, there is the customary baking and brewing ; Labour hammers and grinds. Frilled promenaders saunter under the trees ; white-muslin promenaderess, in green parasol, leaning on your arm. Dogs dance, and shoeblacks polish, on that Pont-Neuf itself, where Fatherland is in danger. So much goes its course ; and yet the course of all things is nigh altering and ending. Look at that Tuileries and Tuileries Garden. Silent all as Sahara ; none entering save by ticket ! They shut their Gates, after the day of the Black Breeches ; a thing they had the liberty to do. However the National Assembly grumbled something about Terrace of the Feuillants, how said Terrace lay contiguous to the back-entrance to their Salle, and was partly National Property ; and so now National Justice has stretched a Tricolor Riband athwart it, by way of boundary- line ; respected with splenetic strictness by all Patriots. It hangs there, that Tricolor boundary-line ; carries ' satirical inscriptions on cards,' generally in verse ; and all beyond this is called Coblentz and remains vacant ; silent as a fateful Golgotha ; sunshine and umbrage alternating on it in vain. Fateful Circuit : what hope can dwell in it ? Mysterious Tickets of Entry introduce themselves ; speak of Insurrection very imminent. Rivarol's staff of Genius had better purchase blunderbusses ; Grenadier bonnets, red Swiss uniforms may be useful. Insurrection will come ; but likewise will it not be met ? Staved off, one may hope, till Brunswick arrive ? But consider withal if the Bourne-stones and Portable-chairs remain silent ; if the Herald's CoUege of Bill-Stickers sleep ! Louvet's Sentinel warns gratis on all walls ; Sulleau is busy ; People's- Friend Marat and King's-Friend Royou croak and counter-croak. For the man Marat, though long hidden since that Champ-de-Mars Massacre, is still alive. He has lain, who knows in what cellars ; perhaps in Legendre's ; fed by a steak of Legendre's killing : but, since April, the bull-frog voice of him sounds again ; hoarsest of earthly cries. For the present, black 124 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI black terror haunts him : O brave Barbaroux, wilt thou not July 1792 smuggle me to Marseilles, ' disguised as a jockey ' ? ^ In Palais Royal and all public places, as we read, there is sharp activity ; private individuals haranguing that Valour may enlist; haranguing that the JExecutive may be put in action. Royalist Journals ought to be solemnly burnt : argument thereupon ; debates, which generally end in single-stick, cowps de Cannes.^ Or think of this ; the hour midnight ; place Salle de Manege ; august Assembly just adjourning ; ' Citizens of both sexes enter in a rush, exclaiming. Vengeance ; they are poisoning our Brothers ' ; — ^baking brayed-glass among their bread at Soissons ! Vergniaud has to speak soothing words. How Commissioners are already sent to investigate this brayed- glass, and do what is needful therein ; — ^till the rush of Citizens ' makes profound silence ' ; and goes home to its bed. Such is Paris ; the heart of a France like to it. Preter- natural suspicion, doubt, disquietude, nameless anticipation, from shore to shore : — and those blackbrowed MarseUlese marching, dusty, unwearied, through the midst of it ; not doubtful they. Marching to the grim music of their hearts, they consume continually the long road, these three weeks and more ; heralded by Terror and Rumour. The Brest Federes arrive on the 26th ; through hurrahing streets. Determined men are these also, bearing or not bearing the Sacred Pikes of Chateau-Vieux ; and on the whole decidedly disinclined for Soissons as yet. Surely the Marseillese Brethren do draw nigher all days. CHAPTER V AT DINNER It was a bright day for Charenton, that 29th of the month, when the Marseillese Brethren actually came in sight, Barbaroux, Santerre and Patriots have gone out to meet the grim Wayfarers. Patriot clasps dusty Patriot to his bosom ; there is footwashing and refection : ' dinner of twelve-hundred covers at the Blue Dial, Cadran Bleu ' ; and deep interior 1 Barbaroux, p. 60, Newspapers, Narratives and Documents (Hist. Pari. xv. 240 ; xvi. 399). consultation, THE KEIGN OF TERROR. AT DINNER 125 consultation, that one wots not of .^ Consultation indeed which CHAP. IV comes to little ; for Santerre, with an open purse, with a loud July 29, voice, has almost no head. Here, however, we repose this ^^^^ night : on the morrow is public entry into Paris. Of which pubUc entry the Day-Historians, Diurnalists, or Journalists as they call themselves, have preserved record enough. How Saint- Antoine male and female, and Paris gene- rally, gave brotherly welcome, with bravo and hand-clapping, in crowded streets ; and all passed in the peacablest manner ; — except it might be our Marseillese pointed out here and there a riband-cockade, and beckoned that it should be snatched away, and exchanged for a wool one ; which was done. How the Mother Society in a body has come as far as the Bastille- ground, to embrace you. How you then wend onwards, triumphant, to the Townhall, to be embraced by Mayor Petion ; to put down your muskets in the Barracks of NouveUe France, not far off ; — ^then towards the appointed Tavern in the Champs Elysees, to enjoy a frugal Patriot repast.^ Of aU which the indignant Tuileries may, by its Tickets of Entry, have warning. Red Swiss look doubly sharp to their Chateau-Grates ; — ^though surely there is no danger ? Blue Grenadiers of the FiUes-Saint-Thomas Section are on duty there this day : men of Agio, as we have seen ; with stuffed purses, riband-cockades ; among whom serves Weber. A party of these latter, with Captains, with sundry Feuillant Notabilities, Moreau de Saint-Mery of the three-thousand orders, and others, have been dining, much more respectably, in a Tavern hard by. They have dined, and are now drink- ing Loyal-Patriotic toasts ; whUe the Marseillese, National- Patriotic merely, are about sitting down to their frugal covers of delf. How it happened remains to this day undemon- strable ; but the external fact is, certain of these FiUes-Saint- Thomas Grenadiers do issue from their Tavern ; perhaps touched, surely not yet muddled with any liquor they have had ; — tissue in the professed intention of testifying to the MarseiUese, or to the multitude of Paris Patriots who stroll in these spaces. That they, the Filles-Saint-Thomas men, if well seen into, are not a whit less Patriotic than any other class of men whatever. ' Deux Atnis, viii. 90-101. * Hist. Pari. xvi. 196. See Barbaroux, pp. 51-5. It 126 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI It was a rash errand ! For how can the stroUing multitude July 29, credit such a thing ; or do other indeed than hoot at it, pro- 1792 yoking and provoked ? — till Grenadier sabres stir in the scabbard, and thereupon a sharp shriek rises : ' A nous, Mar- seillais, Help, Marseillese ! ' Quick as lightning, for the frugal repast is not yet served, that Marseillese Tavern flings itself open : by door, by window ; running, bounding, vault forth the Five-hundred and Seventeen undined Patriots ; and, sabre flashing from thigh, are on the scene of controversy. Will ye parley, ye Grenadier Captains and Official Persons ; ' with faces grown suddenly pale,' the Deponents say ? ^ Ad- visabler were instant moderately swift retreat ! The Filles- Saint-Thomas men retreat, back foremost ; then, alas, face foremost, at treble-quick time ; the Marseillese, according to a Deponent, ' clearing the fences and ditches after them, like lions : Messieurs, it was an imposing spectacle.' Thus they retreat, the Marseillese following. Swift and swifter, towards the Tuileries : where the Drawbridge receives the bulk of the fugitives ; and, then suddenly drawn up, saves them ; or else the green mud of the Ditch does it. The bulk of them ; not all : ah, no ! Moreau de Saint-Mery, for example, being too fat, could not fly fast; he got a stroke, ^a<-stroke only, over the shoulder-blades, and fell prone ; — and disappears there from the History of the Revolution. Cuts also there were, pricks in the posterior fleshy parts ; much rending of skirts, and other discrepant waste. But poor Sub- lieutenant Duhamel, innocent Change-broker, what a lot for him ! He turned on his pursuer, or pursuers, with a pistol ; he fired and missed ; drew a second pistol, and again fired and missed ; then ran : unhappily in vain. In the Rue Saint- Florentin, they clutched him ; thrust him through, in red rage : that was the end of the New Era, and of all Eras, to poor Duhamel. Pacific readers can fancy what sort of grace-before-meat this was to frugal Patriotism. Also how the Battalion of the Filles-Saint-Thomas ' drew out in arms,' luckily without further result ; how there was an accusation at the Bar of the Assembly, and counter-accusation and defence ; Marseillese challenging the sentence of a free jury-court, — which never got empanneled. We ask rather. What the upshot of all these distracted wildly- ^ Moniteur, Stances du 30, du 31 Juillet 1792 (Hist. Pari. xvi. 197-210). accumulating AT DINNER 127 accumulating things may, by probability, be ? Some upshot ; CHAP. V and the time draws nigh ! Busy are Central Committees, of Aug. 3-5 Federes at the Jacobins -Church, of Sections at the Townhall ; ^^^^ Reunion of Carra, CamiUe and Company at the Golden Sun. Busy ; like submarine deities, or call them mud-gods, working there in deep murk of waters ; till the thing be ready. And how your National Assembly like a ship water-logged, helmless, lies tumbling ; the Galleries, of shrill Women, of Federes with sabres, bellowing down on it, not unfrightful ; — and waits where the waves of chance may please to strand it ; suspicious, nay on the Left-side, conscious, what submarine Explosion is meanwhile a-charging ! Petition for King's For- feiture rises often there : Petition from Paris Section, from Provincial Patriot Towns ; ' from Alen9on, Briangon, and the Traders at the Fair of Beaucaire.' Or what of these ? On the 3d of August, Mayor Petion and the Municipality come petitioning for Forfeiture : they openly, in their tricolor Muni- cipal scarfs. Forfeiture is what all Patriots now want and expect. All Brissotins want Forfeiture ; with the little Prince Royal for King, and us for Protector over him. Emphatic Federes ask the Legislative : ' Can you save us, or not ? ' Forty-seven Sections have agreed to Forfeiture ; only that of the Filles-Saint-Thomas pretending to disagree. Nay Section Mauconseil declares Forfeiture to be, properly speaking, come ; Mauconseil, for one, ' does from this day,' the last of July, ' cease allegiance to Louis,' and take minute of the same before all men. A thing blamed aloud ; but which will be praised aloud ; and the name Mauconseil, of Ill-counsel, be thenceforth changed to Bonconseil, of Good-counsel. President Danton, in the Cordehers Section, does another thing : invites all passive Citizens to take place among the Active in Section-business, one peril threatening all. Thus he, though an official person ; cloudy Atlas of the whole. Likewise he manages to have that blackbrowed Battalion of Marseillese shifted to new Barracks, in his own region of the remote Southeast. Sleek Chaumette, cruel BiUaud, Deputy Chabot the Disfrocked, Huguenin with the tocsin in his heart, will welcome them there. Wherefore again and again, ' O Legislators, can you save us or not ? ' Poor Legislators ; with their Legislature water-logged, volcanic Explosion charg- ing under it ! Forfeiture shall be debated on the ninth of August ; 128 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI August ; that miserable business of Lafayette may be expected Aug. 3-5, to terminate on the eighth. 1792 Or will the humane Reader glance into the Levee-day of Sunday the fifth ? The last Levee ! Not for a long time, ' never,' says Bertrand-Moleville, had a Levee been so brilhant, at least so crowded. A sad presaging interest sat on every face ; Bertrand's own eyes were filled with tears. For indeed, outside of that Tricolor Riband on the Feuillants Terrace, Legislative is debating, Sections are defiling, all Paris is astir this very Sunday, demanding Decheance} Here, however, within the riband, a grand proposal is on foot, for the hundredth time, of carrying his Majesty to Rouen and the Castle of Gaillon. Swiss at Courbevoye are in readiness ; much is ready ; Majesty himself seems almost ready. Nevertheless, for the hundredth time. Majesty, when near the point of action, draws back ; writes, after one has waited, palpitating, an endless summer day, that ' he has reason to believe the Insurrection is not so ripe as you suppose.' Whereat Bertrand-Moleville breaks forth ' into extremity at once of spleen and despair, d'humeur et de dSsespoir.' ^ CHAPTER VI THE STEEPLES AT MIDNIGHT For, in truth, the Insurrection is just about ripe. Thurs- day is the ninth of the month August : if Forfeiture be not pronounced by the Legislative that day, we must pronounce it ourselves. Legislative ? A poor water-logged Legislative can pro- nounce nothing. On Wednesday the eighth, after endless oratory once again, they cannot even pronounce Accusation against Lafayette ; but absolve him, — hear it. Patriotism ! — by a majority of two to one. Patriotism hears it ; Patriot- ism, hounded- on by Prussian terror, by Preternatural Suspi- cion, roars tumultuous round the Salle de Manege, all day ; insults many leading Deputies, of the absolvent Right-side ; nay chases them, collars them with loud menace : Deputy Vaublanc, and others of the like, are glad to take refuge in ' Ifisi. Pari. xvi. 337-9. '•' Bertrand-Moleville, Mimoires, ii. 129. Guardhouses, THE STEEPLES AT MIDNIGHT 129 Guardhouses, and escape by the back window. And so, next CHAP. VI day, there is infinite complaint ; Letter after Letter from Aug. 9, 1792 insulted Deputy ; mere complaint, debate and self-cancelling jargon :' the sun of Thursday sets like the others, and no Forfeiture pronounced. Wherefore in fine. To your tents, O Israel ! The Mother Society ceases speaking ; groups cease har- anguing ; Patriots, with closed lips now, ' take one another's arm ' ; walk off, in rows, two and two, at a brisk business-pace ; and vanish afar in the obscure places of the East.^ Santerre is ready ; or we wiU make him ready. Forty-seven of the Forty-eight Sections are ready ; nay, Filles-Saint-Thomas itself turns up the Jacobin side of it, turns down the FeuiUant side of it, and is ready too. Let the unlimited Patriot look to his weapon, be it pike, be it firelock ; and the Brest brethren, — above all, the black-browed Marseillese, prepare themselves for the extreme hour ! Syndic Roederer knows, and laments or not as the issue may turn, that ' five-thousand baU-cartridges, within these few days, have been distributed to Federes, at the Hotel-de-ViUe.' ' And ye likewise, gallant gentlemen, defenders of Royalty, crowd ye on your side to the Tuileries. Not to a Levee : no, to a Couchee ; where much will be put to bed. Your Tickets of Entry are needful ; needfuler your blunderbusses ! — They come and crowd, like gallant men who also know how to die : old MaiUe the Camp-Marshal has come, his eyes gleaming once again, though dimmed by the rhemn of almost fourscore years. Courage, Brothers ! We have a thousand red Swiss ; men stanch of heart, stedfast as the granite of their Alps. National Grenadiers are at least friends of Order ; Commandant Mandat breathes loyal ardour, will ' answer for it on his head.' Mandat will, and his Staff ; for the Staff, though there stands a doom and Decree to that effect, is happily never yet dissolved. Commandant Mandat has corresponded with Mayor Petion ; carries a written Order from him these three days, to repel force by force. A squadron on the Pont-Neuf with cannon shall turn back these Marseillese coming across the River : a squadron at the Townhall shall cut Saint-Antoine in two, ' as it issues from the Arcade Saint- Jean ' ; drive one-half back to ^ Deux Amis, viii. 129-88. ^ Roederer a la Barre (Stance du 9 Aout, in Hist. Pari. xvi. 393). VOL. II. I the 130 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI the obscure East, drive the other half forward ' through the Aug. 9, 1792 Wickets of the Louvre.' Squadrons not a few, and mounted squadrons ; squadrons in the Palais Royal, in the Place Ven- d6me : aU these shall charge, at the right moment ; sweep this street, and then sweep that. Some new Twentieth of June we shall have ; only stiU more ineffectual ? Or probably the Insurrection will not dare to rise at all ? Mandat's JEROME PETION. Squadrons, Horse-gendarmerie and blue Guards march, clatter- ing, tramping ; Mandat's Cannoneers rumble. Under cloud of night ; to the sound of his ginerale, which begins drunmiing when men should go to bed. It is the 9th night of August 1792. On the other hand, the Forty-eight Sections correspond by swift messengers ; are choosing each their ' three Delegates with full powers.' Syndic Roederer, Mayor Petion are sent for to the Tuileries : courageous Legislators, when the drum beats danger, should repair to their Salle. Demoiselle Theroigne has THE STEEPLES AT MIDNIGHT 131 has on her grenadier-bonnet, short-skirted riding-habit ; two CHAP. VI pistols garnish her small waist, and sabre hangs in baldric by Aug. 9, 1792 her side. * Such a game is playing in this Paris Pandemonium, or City of All the Devils ! — And yet the Night, as Mayor Petion walks here in the Tuileries Garden, ' is beautiful and calm ' ; Orion and the Pleiades glitter down quite serene. Petion has come forth, the ' heat ' inside was so oppressive.^ Indeed, his Majesty's reception of him was of the roughest ; as it well might be. And now there is no outgate ; Mandat's blue Squadrons turn you back at every Grate ; nay the Filles- Saint-Thomas Grenadiers give themselves liberties of tongue. How a virtuous Mayor ' shall pay for it, if there be mischief,' and the like ; though others again are full of civility. Surely if any man in France is in straits this night, it is Mayor P6tion : bound, under pain of death, one may say, to smile dexterously with the one side of his face, and weep with the other ; — death if he do it not dexterously enough ! Not till four in the morning does a National Assembly, hearing of his plight, summon him over ' to give account of Paris ' ; of which he knows nothing : whereby, however, he shall get home to bed, and only his gilt coach be left. Scarcely less delicate is Syndic Roederer's task ; who must wait, whether he will lament or not, till he see the issue. Janus Bifrons, or Mr. Facing-both-ways, as vernacular Bunyan has it ! They walk there, in the meanwhile, these two Januses, with others of the like double conformation; and ' talk of indifferent matters.' Roederer, from time to time, steps in ; to listen, to speak ; to send for the Department-Directory itself, he their Procureur Syndic not seeing how to act. The Apartments are all crowded ; some seven-hundred gentlemen in black elbowing, bustling ; red Swiss standing like rocks ; ghost, or partial-ghost of a Ministry, with Rcfiderer and advisers, hovering round their Majesties ; old Marshal Maill6 kneeling at the King's feet to say, He and these gallant gentlemen are come to die for him. List ! through the placid midnight ; clang of the distant storm- bell ! So, in very sooth : steeple after steeple takes up the wondrous tale. Black Courtiers listen at the windows, opened ' Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante Jours ; Ricit de Pttion, Townhall Records, etc. (in Hist. Pari. xvi. 399-466). for 132 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI for air ; discriminate the steeple-bells : ^ this is the tocsin of Aug. 9, 1792 Saint-Roch ; that again, is it not Saint-Jacques, named de la Boucherie ? Yes, Messieurs ! Or even Saint-Germain I'Auxer- rois, hear ye it not ? The same metal that rang storm, two hundred and twenty years ago ; but by a Majesty's order then ; on Saint-Bartholomew's Eve ! ^ — So go the steeple-bells ; which Courtiers can discriminate. Nay, meseems, there is the Townhall itself ; we know it by its sound ! Yes, Friends, that is the Townhall ; discoursing so, to the Night. Miracu- lously ; by miraculous metal-tongue and man's-arm : Marat himself, if you knew it, is piilling at the rope there ! Marat is pulling ; Robespierre lies deep, invisible for the next forty hours ; and some men have heart, and some have as good as none, and not even frenzy will give them any. What struggling confusion, as the issue slowly draws on ; and the doubtful Horn*, with pain and blind struggle, brings forth its Certainty, never to be abolished ! — ^The Full-power Delegates, three from each Section, a Hundred and forty-four in all, got gathered at the Townhall, about midnight. Mandat's Squadron, stationed there, did not hinder their entering : are they not the ' Central Committee of the Sections ' who sit here usually ; though in greater number tonight ? They are there : presided by Confusion, Irresolution, and the Clack of Tongues. Swift scouts fly ; Rumour buzzes, of black Courtiers, red Swiss, of Mandat and his Squadrons that shall charge. Better put off the Insurrection ? Yes, put it off. Ha, hark ! Saint- Antoine booming out eloquent tocsin, of its own accord ! — Friends, no : ye cannot put off the Insurrection ; but must put it on, and live with it, or die with it. Swift now, therefore : let these actual Old Municipals, on sight of the Full-powers, and mandate of the Sovereign elective People, lay down their functions ; and this New Hundred and Forty-four take them up ! Will ye nill ye, worthy Old Muni- cipals, go ye must. Nay is it not a happiness for many a Municipal that he can wash his hands of such a business ; and sit there paralysed, unaccountable, till the hour do bring forth ; or even go home to his night's rest ? ^ Two only of the old, or at most three, we retain : Mayor Petion, for the present walking in the Tuileries ; Procureur Manuel ; Procureur- ^ Roederer, ubi supra. 2 24th August 1572. 2 Section Documents, Townhall Documents {msi. Pari, ubi suprk). Substitute- THE STEEPLES AT MIDNIGHT 133 Substitute-Danton, invisible Atlas of the whole. And so, CHAP. VI with our Hundred and Forty-four, among whom are a Tocsin- Aug. 9, 1792 Huguenin, a Billaud, a Chaumette ; and Editor-TalUens, and Fabre d'Eglantines, Sergents, Panises ; and in brief, either emergent or else emerged and full-blown, the entire Flower of unlimited Patriotism : have we not, as by magic, made a New Municipality ; ready to act in the unlimited manner ; and declare itself roundly, ' in a state of Insurrection ' ! — First of all, then, be Commandant Mandat sent for, with that Mayor's- Order of his ; also let the New Municipals visit those Squadrons that were to charge ; and let the stormbell ring its loudest ; — and, on the whole, Forward, ye Hundred and Forty-four ; retreat is now none for you ! Reader, fancy not, in thy languid way, that Insurrection is easy. Insurrection is difficult : each individual uncertain even of his next neighbour ; totally uncertain of his distant neigh- bours, what strength is with him, what strength is against him ; certain only that, in case of failure, his individual portion is the gallows ! Eight hundred thousand heads, and in each of them a separate estimate of these uncertainties, a separate theorem of action conformable to that : out of so many uncer- tainties, does the certainty, and inevitable net-result never to be abolished, go on, at all moments, bodjdng itself forth ; — leading thee also towards civic crowns or an ignominious noose. Could the Reader take an Asmodeus' Flight, and waving open all roofs and privacies, look down from the Tower of Notre-Dame, what a Paris were it ! Of treble-voice whimper- ings or vehemence, of bass-voice growlings, dubitations ; Courage screwing itself to desperate defiance ; Cowardice trembling silent within barred doors ; — and all round, Dulness calmly snoring ; for much Dulness, flung on its mattresses, always sleeps. O, between the clangour of these high-storming tocsins and that snore of Dulness, what a gamut : of trepida- tion, excitation, desperation ; and above it mere Doubt, Danger, Atropos, and Nox ! Fighters of this Section draw out ; hear that the next Section does not ; and thereupon draw in. Saint- Antoine, on this side the River, is uncertain of Saint-Marceau on that. Steady only is the snore of Dulness, are the Six-hundred Marseillese that know how to die. Mandat, twice simimoned to the Townhall, has not come. Scouts fly incessant, in distracted haste ; and the 134 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI the many-whispering voices of Rumour. Theroigne and un- Aug. 9, 1792 official Patriots flit, dim- visible, exploratory, far and wide ; like Night-birds on the wing. Of Nationals some Three- thousand have followed Mandat and his generale ; the rest follow each his own theorem of the uncertainties : theorem, that one should march rather with Saint- Antoine : innumerable theorems, that in such a case the wholesomest were sleep. And so the drums beat, in mad fits, and the stormbells peal. Saint- Antoine itself does but draw out and draw in : Commandant Santerre, over there, cannot believe that the Marseillese and Saint-Marceau will march. Thou laggard sonorous Beervat, with the loud voice and timber-head, is it time now to palter ? Alsatian Westermann clutches him by the throat with drawn sabre : whereupon the Timber-headed believes. In this manner wanes the slow night ; amid fret, uncertainty and tocsin ; all men's humour rising to the hysterical pitch ; and nothing done. However, Mandat, on the third summons, does come ; — come, unguarded ; astonished to find the Municipality new. They question him straitly on that Mayor's-Order to resist force by force ; on that strategic scheme of cutting Saint- Antoine in two halves : he answers what he can : they think it were right to send this strategic National Commandant to the Abbaye Prison, and let a Court of Law decide on him. Alas, a Court of Law, not Book-Law but primeval Club-Law, crowds and jostles out of doors ; all fretted to the hysterical pitch ; cruel as Fear, blind as the Night : such Court of Law, and no other, clutches poor Mandat from his constables ; beats him down, massacres him, on the steps of the Townhall. Look to it, ye new Municipals ; ye People, in a state of Insur- rection ! Blood is shed, blood must be answered for ; — alas, in such hysterical humour, more blood will flow : for it is as with the Tiger in that ; he has only to begin. Seventeen Individuals have been seized in the Champs Elysees, by exploratory Patriotism ; they flitting dim-visible, by it flitting dim-visible. Ye have pistols, rapiers, ye Seven- teen ? One of those accursed ' false Patrols ' ; that go mar- auding, with Anti-National intent ; seeking what they can spy, what they can spiU ! The Seventeen are carried to the nearest Guardhouse ; eleven of them escape by back passages. ' How is this ? ' Demoiselle Theroigne appears at the front entrance, with THE STEEPLES AT MIDNIGHT 135 with sabre, pistols, and a train ; denounces treasonous con- CHAP. VI nivance ; demands, seizes, the remaining six, that the justice Aug. 10, of the People be not trifled with. Of which six two more ^"^^^ escape in the whirl and debate of the Club-Law Court ; the last unhappy Four are massacred, as Mandat was : Two Ex- Bodyguards ; one dissipated Abbe ; one Royalist Pamph- leteer, Sulleau, known to us by name. Able Editor and wit of SANTEKRE. all work. Poor Sulleau : his Acts of the Apostles, and brisk Placard-Journals (for he was an able man) come to Finis, in this manner ; and questionable jesting issues suddenly in horrid earnest ! Such doings usher-in the dawn of the Tenth of August 1792, Or think what a night the poor National Assembly has had : sitting there, ' in great paucity,' attempting to debate ; — quivering and shivering ; pointing towards all the thirty- two azimuths at once, as the magnet-needle does when thunder- storm 186 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI storm is in the air ! If the Insurrection come ? If it come, Aug. 10, and fail ? Alas, in that case, may not black Courtiers with 1792 blunderbusses, red Swiss with bayonets rush over, flushed with victory, and ask us : Thou undefinable, water-logged, self- distractive, self-destructive Legislative, what dost thou here unsunk ? — Or figure the poor National Guards, bivouacking in ' temporary tents ' there ; or standing ranked, shifting from leg to leg, all through the weary night ; New tricolor Muni- cipals ordering one thing, old Mandat Captains ordering another. Procureur Manuel has ordered the cannons to be withdrawn from the Pont-Neuf ; none ventured to disobey him. It seems certain, then, the old Staff, so long doomed, has finally been dissolved, in these hours ; and Mandat is not our Com- mandant now, but Santerre ? Yes, friends : Santerre hence- forth, — surely Mandat no more ! The Squadrons that were to charge see nothing certain, except that they are cold, hungry, worn down with watching ; that it were sad to slay French brothers ; sadder to be slain by them. Without the Tuileries Circuit, and within it, sour uncertain humour sways these men : only the red Swiss stand steadfast. Them their officers refresh now with a slight wetting of brandy ; wherein the Nationals, too far gone for brandy, refuse to participate. King Louis meanwhile had laid hina down for a little sleep ; his wig when he reappeared had lost the powder on one side.^ Old Marshal MaiUe and the gentlemen in black rise always in spirits, as the Insurrection does not rise : there goes a witty saying now, ' Le tocsin ne rend pas,'' The tocsin, like a dry milk- cow, does not yield. For the rest, could not one proclaim Martial Law ? Not easily ; for now, it seems. Mayor Petion is gone. On the other hand, our Interim Commandant, poor Mandat being off ' to the H6tel-de-Ville,' complains that so many Courtiers in black encumber the service, are an eyesorrow to the National Guards. To which her Majesty answers with emphasis. That they will obey all, will suffer all, that they are sure men these. And so the yellow lamplight dies out in the gray of morning, in the King's Palace, over such a scene. Scene of jostling, elbowing, of confusion, and indeed conclusion, for the thing is about to end. Roederer and spectral Ministers jostle in the ^ Roederer, ubi supri. press ; THE SWISS 137 press ; consvilt, in side-cabinets, with one or with both Majesties. CHAP. VI Sister EUzabeth takes the Queen to the window : ' Sister, see Aug. 10, what a beautiful sunrise,' right over the Jacobins Church and ^^^^ that quarter ! How happy if the tocsin did not yield ! But Mandat returns not ; Petion is gone : much hangs wavering in the invisible Balance. About five o'clock, there rises from the Garden a kind of sound ; as of a shout which had become a howl, and instead of Vive le Roi were ending in Vive la Nation. ' Mon Dieu ! ' ejaculates a spectral Minister, ' what is he doing down there ? ' For it is his Majesty, gone down with old Marshal Maille to review the troops ; and the nearest companies of them answer so. Her Majesty bursts into a stream of tears. Yet on stepping from the cabinet, her eyes are dry and calm, her look is even cheerful. ' The Austrian lip, and the aquiline nose, fuller than usual, gave to her countenance,' says Peltier,^ ' something of majesty, which they that did not see her in these moments cannot weU have an idea of.' O thou Theresa's Daughter ! King Louis enters, much blown with the fatigue ; but for the rest with his old air of indifference. Of all hopes now, surely the joyfulest were, that the tocsin did not yield. CHAPTER VII THE SWISS Unhappy Friends, the tocsin does yield, has yielded ! Lo ye, how with the first sunrays its Ocean-tide, of pikes and fusils, flows ghttering from the far East ; — immeasurable ; bom of the Night ! They march there, the grim host ; Saint- Antoine on this side the River ; Saint-Marceau on that, the blackbrowed Marseillese in the van. With hum, and grim murmur, far-heard ; like the Ocean-tide, as we say : drawn up, as if by Luna and Influences, from the great Deep of Waters, they roll gleaming on ; no King, Canute or Louis, can bid them roll back. Wide-eddying side-currents, of onlookers, roll hither and thither, unarmed, not voiceless ; they, the steel host, roll on. New-Commandant Santerre, indeed, has taken ^ In Toulongeon, ii. 241. seat 138 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI seat at the Townhall ; rests there, in his halfway-house. Al- Aug. 10, satian Westermann, with flashing sabre, does not rest ; nor the ^^^^ Sections, nor the Marseillese, nor Demoiselle Theroigne ; but roll continually on. And now, where are Mandat's Squadrons that were to charge ? Not a Squadron of them stirs : or they stir in the wrong direction, out of the way ; their officers glad that they will do even that. It is to this hour uncertain whether the Squadron on the Pont- Neuf made the shadow of resistance, or did not make the shadow : enough, the blackbrowed Marseillese, and Saint- Marceau following them, do cross without let ; do cross, in sure hope now of Saint- Antoine and the rest ; do billow on, towards the Tuileries, where their errand is. The Tuileries, at sound of them, rustles responsive : the red Swiss look to their priming ; Courtiers in black draw their blunderbusses, rapiers, poniards, some have even fire-shovels ; every man his weapon of war. Judge if, in these circumstances. Syndic Roederer felt easy ! Will the kind Heavens open no middle-course of refuge for a poor Syndic who halts between two ? If indeed his Majesty would consent to go over to the Assembly ! His Majesty, above all her Majesty, cannot agree to that. Did her Majesty answer the proposal with a ' Fi done ' ; did she say even, she would be nailed to the walls sooner ? Apparently not. It is written also that she offered the King a pistol ; saying. Now or else never was the time to show himself. Close eye-witnesses did not see it, nor do we. They saw only that she was queen-like, quiet ; that she argued not, upbraided not, with the Inexorable ; but, like Csesar in the Capitol, wrapped her mantle, as it beseems Queens and Sons of Adam to do. But thou, O Louis ! of what stuff art thou at all ? Is there no stroke in thee, then, for Life and Crown ? The silliest hunted deer dies not so. Art thou the languidest of all mortals ; or the mildest-minded ? Thou art the worst-starred. The tide advances ; Syndic Rcederer's and all men's straits grow straiter and straiter. Fremescent clangour comes from the armed Nationals in the Court ; far and wide is the infinite hubbub of tongues. What counsel ? And the tide is now nigh! Messengers, forerunners speak hastily through the outer Grates ; hold parley sitting astride the walls. Syndic Roederer goes out and comes in. Cannoneers ask him : Are we THE SWISS 139 we to fire against the people ? King's Ministers ask him : CHAP. Vll Shall the King's House be forced ? Syndic Rcederer has a Aug. lo, hard game to play. He speaks to the Cannoneers with elo- ^'^^^ quence, with fervour ; such fervour as a man can, who has to blow hot and cold in one breath. Hot and cold, O Rcederer ? We, for our part, cannot live and die ! The Cannoneers, by way of answer, fling down their linstocks. — Think of this answer, O King Louis, and King's Ministers ; and take a poor Syndic's safe middle-course, towards the Salle-de-Manege. King Louis sits, his hands leant on his knees, body bent forward ; gazes for a space fixedly on Syndic Rcederer ; then answers, looking over his shoulder to the Queen : Marchons ! They march ; King Louis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth, the two royal children and governess : these, with Syndic Rcederer, and Officials of the Department ; amid a double rank of National Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully ; but hear only these words from Syndic Rcederer : ' The King is going to the Assembly ; make way.' It has struck eight, on all clocks, some minutes ago : the King has left the Tuileries — for ever. O ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, for what a cause are ye to spend and be spent ! Look out from the western windows, ye may see King Louis placidly hold on his way ; the poor little Prince Royal ' sportfully kicking the fallen leaves.' Fremescent multitude on the Terrace of the Feuillants whirls parallel to him ; one man in it, very noisy, with a long pole : will they not obstruct the outer Staircase, and back-entrance of the Salle, when it comes to that ? King's Guards can go no farther than the bottom step there. Lo, Deputation of Legislators come out ; he of the long pole is stUled by oratory ; Assembly's Guards join themselves to King's Guards, and all may mount in this case of necessity ; the outer Staircase is free, or passable. See, Royalty ascends ; a blue Grenadier lifts the poor little Prince Royal from the press ; Royalty has entered in. Royalty has vanished for ever from your eyes. — ^And ye ? Left standing there, amid the yawning abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection ; without course ; without command : if ye perish, it must be as more than martyrs, as martyrs who are now without a cause I The black Courtiers disappear mostly ; through such issues as they can. The poor Swiss know not how to act : one duty only is 140 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI is clear to them, that of standing by their post ; and they Aug. 10, will perform that. ^'^^ But the glittering steel tide has arrived ; it beats now against the Chateau barriers and eastern Courts ; irresistible, loud- surging far and wide ; — breaks in, fills the Court of the Carrousel, blackbrowed MarseiUese in the van. King Louis gone, say you ; over to the Assembly ! Well and good : but till the Assembly pronounce Forfeiture of him, what boots it ? Our post is in that Chateau or stronghold of his ; there till then must we continue. Think, ye stanch Swiss, whether it were good that grim murder began, and brothers blasted one another in pieces for a stone edifice ? — Poor Swiss ! they know not how to act : from the southern windows, some fling cartridges, in sign of brotherhood ; on the eastern outer staircase, and within through long stairs and corridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable and yet refusing to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German ; MarseiUese plead, in hot Provengal speech and pantomime; stunning hubbub pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss stand fast, peaceable and yet immovable ; red granite pier in that waste-flashing sea of steel. Who can help the inevitable issue ; MarseiUese and aU France on this side ; granite Swiss on that ? The pantomime grows hotter and hotter ; MarseiUese sabres flourishing by way of action ; the Swiss brow also clouding itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its firelock to the cock. And hark ! high thundering above all the din, three MarseiUese cannon from the Carrousel, pointed by a gunner of bad aim, come rattling over the roofs ! Ye Swiss, therefore : Fire ! The Swiss fire ; by volley, by platoon, in roUing-fire : MarseiUese men not a few, and ' a tall man that was louder than any,' lie silent, smashed upon the pavement ; — not a few MarseUlese, after the long dusty march, have made halt here. The Carrousel is void ; the black tide recoiling ; ' fugitives rushing as far as Saint- Antoine before they stop.' The Cannoneers without linstock have squatted invisible, and left their cannon ; which the Swiss seize. Think what a volley : reverberating doomful to the four corners of Paris, and through aU hearts ; like the clang of BeUona's thongs ! The blackbrowed MarseiUese, raUying on the instant, have become black Demons that know how to die. Nor is Brest behindhand ; nor Alsatian Westermann ; Demoiselle THE SWISS 141 Demoiselle Th^roigne is Sibyl Theroigne : Vengeance, Victoire CHAP. VII ou la mort ! From all Patriot artillery, great and small ; Aug. lO, from Feuillants Terrace, and all terraces and places of the ^^^^ wide-spread Insurrectionary sea, there roars responsive a red blazing whirlwind. Blue Nationals, ranked in the Garden, cannot help their muskets going off, against Foreign murderers. For there is a sympathy in muskets, in heaped masses of men : nay, are not Mankind, in whole, like tuned strings, and a cun- ning infinite concordance and unity ; you smite one string, and all strings will begin sounding, — in soft sphere-melody, in deafening screech of madness ! Mounted Gendarmerie gallop distracted ; are fired on merely as a thing running ; galloping over the Pont Royal, or one knows not whither. The brain of Paris, brain-fevered in the centre of it here, has gone mad ; what you call, taken fire. Behold, the fire slackens not ; nor does the Swiss rolling- fire slacken from within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw ; and now, from the other side, they clutch three pieces more ; alas, cannon without linstock ; nor will the steel-and- flint answer, though they try it.^ Had it chanced to answer ! Patriot onlookers have their misgivings ; one strangest Patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat. He is a man not unqualified to judge ; the name of him Napoleon Buonaparte.^ And onlookers, and women, stand gazing, and the witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow among them, on the other side of the River : cannon rush rumbling past them ; pause on the Pont Royal ; belch out their iron entrails there, against the Tuileries ; and at every new belch, the women and onlookers ' shout and clap hands.' ^ City of all the Devils ! In remote streets, men are drinking break- fast-coffee ; following their affairs ; with a start now and then, as some dull echo reverberates a note louder. And here ? Marseillese fall wounded ; but Barbaroux has surgeons ; Barbaroux is close by, managing, though underhand and under cover. Marseillese fall death-struck ; bequeath their firelock, specify in which pocket are the cartridges ; and die murmur- ing, ' Revenge me. Revenge thy country ! ' Brest F^d^re Officers, galloping in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo you, ^ Deux Amis, viii. 179-88. 2 See Hist. Pari. xvii. 56 ; Las Cases, etc. ' Moors, Journal during a Residence in France (Dublin, I793)i >• 26. the 142 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI the Carrousel has burst into flame ! — Paris Pandemonium ! Aug. 10, Nay the poor City, as we said, is in fever-fit and convulsion : ^'^^^ such crisis has lasted for the space of some half hour. But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, ventures through the hubbub and death-hail, from the back-entrance of the Manege ? Towards the Tuileries and Swiss : written Order from his Majesty to cease firing ! O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no order not to begin it ? Gladly would the Swiss cease firing : but who will bid mad Insurrection cease firing ? To Insurrection you cannot speak ; neither can it, hydra- headed, hear. The dead and dying, by the hundred, lie all around ; are borne bleeding through the streets, towards help ; the sight of them, like a torch of the Furies, kindling Mad- ness, Patriot Paris roars ; as the bear bereaved of her whelps. On, ye Patriots : Vengeance ! Victory or death ! There are men seen, who rush on, armed only with walking-sticks.^ Terror and Fury rule the hour. The Swiss, pressed on from without, paralysed from within, have ceased to shoot ; but not to be shot. What shall they do ? Desperate is the moment. Shelter or instant death : yet How, Where ? One party flies out by the Rue de I'Echelle ; is destroyed utterly, ' en entier.' A second, by the other side, throws itself into the Garden ; ' hurrying across a keen fusillade ' ; rushes suppliant into the National Assembly ; finds pity and refuge in the back benches there. The third, and largest, darts out in column, three hundred strong, towards the Champs jElysees : ' Ah, could we but reach Courbevoye, where other Swiss are ! ' Wo ! see, in such fusillade the column ' soon breaks itself by diversity of opinion,' into distracted segments, this way and that ; — ^to escape in holes, to die fighting from street to street. The firing and murdering wiU not cease ; not yet for long. The red Porters of H6tels are shot at, be they Suisse by nature, or Suisse only in name. The very Firemen, who pump and labour on that smoking Carrousel, are shot at : why should the Carrousel not burn ? Some Swiss take refuge in private houses ; find that mercy too does still dwell in the heart of man. The brave Marseillese are merciful, late so wroth ; and labour to save. Journalist Gorsas pleads hard with infuriated groups. Clemence the Wine-merchant stumbles ' ffisi. Pari, ubi suprk. Rapport du Capitaine des Canonniers, Rapport du Com- mandant, etc. (Ibid. xvii. 300-18). forward CONSTITUTION BURST IN PIECES 143 forward to the Bar of the Assembly, a rescued Swiss in his CHAP. Vll hand ; tells passionately how he rescued him with pain and Aug. lo, peril, how he will henceforth support him, being childless himself ; 1^92 and falls a-swoon round the poor Swiss's neck : amid plaudits. But the most are butchered, and even mangled. Fifty (some say Fourscore) were marched as prisoners, by National Guards, to the H6tel-de-Ville : the ferocious people bursts through on them, in the Place-de-Greve ; massacres them to the last man. ' O Peuple, envy of the universe ! ' Peuple, in mad Gaelic effervescence ! Surely few things in the history of carnage are painfuler. What ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad in the memory, is that, of this poor column of red Swiss ' breaking itself in the confusion of opinions ' ; dispersing, into blackness and death ! Honour to you, brave men ; honourable pity, through long times ! Not martyrs were ye ; and yet almost more. He was no King of yours, this Louis ; and he forsook you like a King of shreds and patches : ye were but sold to him for some poor sixpence a-day ; yet would ye work for your wages, keep your plighted word. The work now was to die ; and ye did it. Honour to you, O Kinsmen ; and may the old Deutsch Biederkeit and Tapferkeit, and Valour which is Worth , and Truth, be they Swiss, be they Saxon, fail in no age ! Not bastards ; true-born were these men : sons of the men of Sem- pach, of Murten, who knelt, but not to thee, O Burgundy ! — Let the traveller, as he passes through Lucerne, turn aside to look a little at their monumental Lion ; not for Thorwald- sen's sake alone ; Hewn out of living rock, the Figure rests there, by the still Lake-waters, in lullaby of distant-tinkling rance-des-vaches, the granite Mountains dumbly keeping watch all round ; and, though inanimate, speaks. CHAPTER VIII CONSTITUTION BURST IN PIECES Thus is the Tenth of August won and lost. Patriotism reckons its slain by the thousand on thousand, so deadly was the Swiss fire from these windows ; but will finally reduce them 144 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI them to some Twelve-hundred. No child's-play was it ; — ^nor Aug. lOj is it ! Till two in the afternoon the massacring, the breaking ^^^^ and the burning has not ended ; nor the loose Bedlam shut itself again. How deluges of frantic Sansculottism roared through all passages of this Tuileries, ruthless in vengeance ; how the Valets were butchered, hewn down ; and Dame Campan saw the Marseillese sabre flash over her head, but the Blackbrowed said, ' Va-fen, Get thee gone,' and flung her from him unstruck ; ^ how in the cellars wine-bottles were broken, wine-butts were staved-in and drunk ; and, upwards to the very garrets, all windows tiunbled out their precious royal furnitures : and, with gold mirrors, velvet curtains, down of ript feather-beds, and dead bodies of men, the Tuileries was like no Garden of the Earth : — all this let him who has a taste for it see amply in Mercier, in acrid Montgaillard, or Beaulieu of the Deux Amis. A hundred and eighty bodies of Swiss lie piled there ; naked, unremoved tiU the second day. Patriotism has torn their red coats into snips ; and marches with them at the Pike's point : the ghastly bare corpses lie there, under the sun and under the stars ; the curious of both sexes crowding to look. Which let not us do. Above a hundred carts, heaped with Dead, fare towards the Cemetery of Sainte-Madeleine ; bewailed, bewept ; for all had kindred, all had mothers, if not here, then there. It is one of those Carnage-fields, such as you read of by the name ' Glorious Victory,' brought home in this case to one's own door. But the blackbrowed Marseillese have struck down the tjrrant of the Chateau. He is struck down ; low, and hardly again to rise. What a moment for an august Legislative was that when the Hereditary Representative entered, under such cir- cumstances ; and the Grenadier, carrying the little Prince Royal out of the Press, set him down on the Assembly-table ! A moment, — ^which one had to smooth-off with oratory ; wait- ing what the next would bring ! Louis said few words : ' He was come hither to prevent a great crime ; he believed himself safer nowhere than here.' President Vergniaud answered briefly, in vague oratory as we say, about ' defence of Con- stituted Authorities,' about dying at our post.^ And so King ^ Campan, ii. c. 21. " Moniteur, Stance du 10 Aout 1792. Louis CONSTITUTION BURST IN PIECES 145 Louis sat him down ; first here, then there ; for a difficulty CHAP. VIII arose, the Constitution not permitting us to debate while the ^^S- lo, King is present : finally he settles himself with his Family ^'^^^ in the' 'Loge of the Logographe,' in the Reporter's-Box of a Journalist ; which is beyond the enchanted Constitutional Circuit, separated from it by a rail. To such Lodge of the Logographe, measuring some ten feet square, with a small closet at the entrance of it behind, is the King of brOad France now limited : here can he and his sit pent, under the eyes of the world, or retire into their closet at intervals ; for the space of sixteen hours. Such quite peculiar moment has the Legis- lative lived to see. But also what a moment was that other, few minutes later, when the three Marseillese cannon went off, and the Swiss roll- ing-fire and universal thunder, like the crack of Doom, began to rattle ! Honourable Members start to their feet ; stray bullets singing epicedium even here, sbivering-in with window- glass and jingle. ' No, this is our post ; let us die here ! ' They sit therefore, like stone Legislators. But may not the Loge of the Logographe be forced from behind ? Tear down the railing that divides it from the enchanted Constitutional Circuit ! Ushers tear and tug ; his Majesty himself aiding from within : the railing gives way ; Majesty and Legislative are united in place, unknown Destiny hovering over both. Rattle, and again rattle, went the thunder ; one breathless wide-eyed messenger rushing in after another : King's order to the Swiss went out. It was a fearful thunder ; but, as we know, it ended. Breathless messengers, fugitive Swiss, denun- ciatory Patriots, trepidation ; finally tripudiation ! — Before four o'clock much has come and gone. The New Municipals have come and gone ; with Three Flags, Liberie, Egalite, Patrie, and the clang of vivats. Vergniaud, he who as President few hours ago talked of dying for Con- stituted Authorities, has moved, as Committee-Reporter, that the Hereditary Representative he suspended ; that a National Convention do forthwith assemble to say what further ! An able Report ; which the President must have had ready in his pocket ? A President, in such cases, must have much ready, and yet not ready ; and Janus-like look before and after. King Louis listens to all ; retires about midnight ' to three little rooms on the upper floor ' ; till the Luxembourg be pre- VOL. II. K pared 146 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI pared for him, and ' the safeguard of the Nation.' Safer if Aug. 13, Brunswick were once here ! Or, alas, not so safe ? Ye hap- ■^^^^ less discrowned heads ! Crowds came, next morning, to catch a glimpse of them, in their three upper rooms. Montgaillard says the august Captives wore an air of cheerfulness, even of gaiety ; that the Queen and Princess Lamballe, who had joined her overnight, looked out of the opened window, ' shook powder from their hair on the people below, and laughed.' ^ He is an acrid distorted man. For the rest, one may guess that the Legislative, above all that the New Municipality continues busy. Messengers, Muni- cipal or Legislative, and swift despatches rush off to all corners of France ; full of triumph, blended with indignant wail, for Twelve-hundred have fallen. France sends up its blended shout responsive ; the Tenth of August shall be as the Four- teenth of July, only bloodier and greater. The Court has con- spired ? Poor Court : the Court has been vanquished ; and will have both the scath to bear and the scorn. How the statues of Kings do now all fall ! Bronze Henri himself, though he wore a cockade once, jingles down from the Pont-Neuf, where Patrie floats in Danger. Much more does Louis Four- teenth, from the Place Vendome, jingle down ; and even breaks in falling. The curious can remark, written on his horse's shoe : ' 12 Aout 1692 ' ; a Century and a day. The tenth of August was Friday. The week is not done, when our old Patriot Ministry is recalled, what of it can be got : strict Roland, Genevese Claviere ; add heavy Monge the Mathematician, once a stone-hewer ; and, for Minister of Justice, — ^Danton, ' led hither,' as himself says, in one of his gigantic figures, ' through the breach of Patriot cannon ! ' These, under Legislative Committees, must rule the wreck as they can : confusedly enough ; with an old Legislative water-logged, with a new Municipality so brisk. But National Convention will get itself together ; and then ! Without delay, however, let a new Jury-Court and Criminal Tribunal be set up in Paris, to try the crimes and conspiracies of the Tenth. High Court of Orleans is distant, slow : the blood of the Twelve- hundred Patriots, whatever become of other blood, shall be inquired after. Tremble, ye Criminals and Conspirators ; the ^ Montgaillard, ii. 135-67. Minister CONSTITUTION BURST IN PIECES 147 Minister of Justice is Danton ! Robespierre too, after the CHAP. Vlll victory, sits in the New MunicipaUty ; insurrectionary ' im- Aug. 13, provised Municipality,' which calls itself Council General of the ^'^^^ Commune. For three days now, Louis and his Family have heard the Legislative Debates in the Lodge of the Logographe ; and retired nightly to their small upper rooms. The Luxembourg and safeguard of the Nation could not be got ready : nay, it seems the Luxembourg has too many cellars and issues ; no Municipality can undertake to watch it. The compact Prison of the Temple, not so elegant indeed, was much safer. To the Temple, therefore ! On Monday 13th day of August 1792, in Mayor Potion's carriage, Louis and his sad suspended Household fare thither ; all Paris out to look at them. As they pass through the Place Vendome, Louis Fourteenth's Statue lies broken on the ground. Petion is afraid the Queen's looks may be thought scornful, and produce provocation ; she casts down her eyes, and does not look at all. The ' press is prodigious,' but quiet : here and there, it shouts Vive la Nation ; but for most part gazes in silence. French Royalty vanishes within the gates of the Temple : these old peaked Towers, like peaked Extinguisher or Bonsoir, do cover it up ; — from which same Towers, poor Jacques Molay and his Templars were burnt out, by French Royalty, five centuries since. Such are the turns of Fate below. Foreign Ambassadors, English Lord Gower have all demanded passports; are driving indig- nantly towards their respective homes. So, then, the Constitution is over ? For ever and a day ! Gone is that wonder of the Universe ; First biennial Parlia- ment, water-logged, waits only till the Convention come ; and wiU then sink to endless depths. One can guess the silent rage of Old-Constituents, Constitution-builders, extinct Feuillants, men who thought the Constitution would march ! Lafayette rises to the altitude of the situation ; at the head of his Army. Legislative Commissioners are posting towards him and it, on the Northern Frontier, to congratulate and perorate ; he orders the Municipality of Sedan to arrest these Commissioners, and keep them strictly in ward as Rebels, till he say further. The Sedan Municipals obey. The 148 THE MARSEILLESE BOOK VI The Sedan Municipals obey; but the Soldiers of the Aug. I3j Lafayette Army ? The Soldiers of the Lafayette Army have, as all Soldiers have, a kind of dim feeling that they themselves are Sansculottes in buff belts ; that the victory of the Tenth of August is also a victory for them. They will not rise and follow Lafayette, to Paris ; they will rise and send him thither ! On the 18th, which is but next Saturday, Lafayette with some- two or three indignant Staff-officers, one of whom is Old Con- stituent Alexandre de Lameth, having first put his Lines in what order he could, — rides swiftly over the marches towards Holland. Rides, alas, swiftly into the claws of Austrians ! He, long wavering, trembling on the verge of the Horizon, has set, in Olmiitz Dungeons ; this History knows him no more. Adieu, thou Hero of two Worlds ; thinnest, but compact honour-worthy man ! Through long rough night of captivity, through other tumults, triumphs and changes, thou wilt swing well, ' fast-anchored to the Washington Formula ' ; and be the Hero and Perfect-character, were it only of one idea. The Sedan Municipals repent and protest ; the Soldiers shout Vive la Nation. Dumouriez Polymetis, from bis camp at Maulde, sees himself made Commander-in-Chief. And, O Brunswick ! what sort of ' military execution ' will Paris merit now ? Forward, ye well-drilled exterminatory men ; with your artillery-wagons, and camp-kettles jingling. Forward, tall chivalrous King of Prussia ; fanfaronading Emigrants and wargod Broglie, ' for some consolation to man- kind,' which verily is not without need of some. Ill THE GUILLOTINE Wit iyrei^ett8=3l))i!j}el, fie tuaren mir immer juwikec : iSaJillfui: fudjte ioi^ mtr 3eket am ffinbe fur fti^. Sffitttfl ku aSiele Seftein, fo mag t8 aStttm ju itenen. SBte gefft^r(i(:!) ka8 fe^, Wiafi Hi e8 toiffen ? a5«fu(^'8 THE GUILLOTINE BOOK FIRST SEPTEMBER CHAPTER I THE IMPROVISED COMMUNE Ye have roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world ; France is roused. Long have ye been lecturing and tutoring this poor Nation, like cruel uncalled-for pedagogues, shaking over her your ferulas of fire and steel : it is long that ye have pricked and fiUiped and affrighted her, there as she sat helpless in her dead cerements of a Constitution, you gathering in on her from all lands, with your armaments and plots, your invadings and truculent bullyings ; — and lo now, ye have pricked her to the quick, and she is up, and her blood is up. The dead cerements are rent into cobwebs, and she fronts you in that terrible strength of Nature, which no man has measured, which goes down to Madness and Tophet : see now how ye will deal with her. This month of September 1792, which has become one of the memorable months of History, presents itself under two most diverse aspects ; all of black on the one side, all of bright on the other. Whatsoever is cruel in the panic frenzy of Twenty-five mUlion men, whatsoever is great in the simul- taneous death-defiance of Twenty-five million men, stand here in abrupt contrast, near by one another. As indeed is usual when a man, how much more when a Nation of men, is hurled suddenly beyond the limits. For Nature, as green as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations, were we farther down; 152 SEPTEMBER BOOK I down ; and Pan, to whose music the Nymphs dance, has a cry Aug.-Sept. in him that can drive all men distracted. 1792 Very frightful it is when a Nation, rending asunder its Con- stitutions and Regulations which were grown dead cerements for it, becomes ifranscendental ; and must now seek its wild way through the New, Chaotic, — where Force is not yet dis- tinguished into Bidden and Forbidden, but Crime and Virtue welter unseparated, — in that domain of what is called the Passions ; of what we caU the Miracles and the Portents ! It is thus that, for some three years to come, we are to contem- plate France, in this final Third Part of our History. Sans- culottism reigning in all its grandeur and in all its hideousness : the Gospel (God's-message) of Man's Rights, Man's mights or strengths, once more preached irrefragably abroad ; along with this, and still louder for the time, the fearfulest Devil's-Message of Man's weaknesses and sins ; — and all on such a scale, and under such aspect : cloudy ' death-birth of a world ' : huge smoke-cloud, streaked with rays as of heaven on one side ; girt on the other as with hell-fire ! History tells us many things : but for the last thousand years and more, what thing has she told us of a sort like this ? Which therefore let us two, O Reader, dwell on willingly, for a little ; and from its endless significance endeavour to extract what may, in present circumstances, be adapted for us. It is unfortunate, though very natural, that the history of this Period has so generally been written in hysterics. Exaggera- tion abounds, execration, wailing ; and, on the whole, darkness. But thus too, when foul old Rome had to be swept from the Earth, and those Northmen, and other horrid sons of Nature, came in, ' swallowing formulas,' as the French now do, foul old Rome screamed execratively her loudest ; so that the true shape of many things is lost for us. Attila's Huns had arms of such length that they could lift a stone without stooping. Into the body of the poor Tatars execrative Roman History intercalated an alphabetic letter ; and so they continue Tartars, of fell Tartarean nature, to this day. Here, in like manner, search as we will in these multiform innumerable French Records, darkness too frequently covers, or sheer distraction bewilders. One finds it difficult to imagine that the Sun shone in this September month, as he does in others. Never- theless it is an indisputable fact that the Sun did shine ; and there THE IMPROVISED COMMUNE 153 there was weather and work, — nay as to that, very bad weather CHAP. I for harvest-work ! An unlucky Editor may do his utmost ; Aug. -Sept. and after all, require allowances. ^^^^ He had been a wise Frenchman, who, looking close at hand on this waste aspect of France all stirring and whirling, in ways new, untried, had been able to discern where the cardinal movement lay ; which tendency it was that had the rule and primary direction of it then ! But at forty-four years' distance, it is different. To all men now, two cardinal movements or grand tendencies, in the September whirl, have become dis- cernible enough : that stormful effluence towards the Frontiers ; that frantic crowding towards Town-houses and Council-halls in the interior. Wild France dashes, in desperate death- defiance, towards the Frontiers, to defend itself from foreign Despots ; crowds towards Townhalls and Election Committee- rooms, to defend itself from domestic Aristocrats. Let the Reader conceive well these two cardinal movements ; and what side-currents and endless vortexes might depend on these. He shall judge too, whether, in such sudden wreckage of all old Authorities, such a pair of cardinal movements, half-frantic in themselves, could be of soft nature ? As in dry Sahara, when the winds waken, and lift and winnow the immensity of sand ! The air itself (Travellers say) is a dim sand-air ; and dim looming through it, the wonderfulest un- certain colonnades of Sand-Pillars rush whirling from this side and from that, like so many mad Spinning-Dervishes, of a hundred feet in stature ; and dance their huge Desert-waltz there ! — Nevertheless, in all human movements, were they but a day old, there is order, or the beginning of order. Consider two things in this Sahara-waltz of the French Twenty-five millions ; or rather one thing, and one hope of a thing ; the Commune (Municipality) of Paris, which is already here ; the National Convention, which shall in a few weeks be here. The Insur- rectionary Commune, which, improvising itself on the eve of the Tenth of August, worked this ever-memorable Deliverance by explosion, must needs rule over it, — till the Convention meet. This Commune, which they may well call a spontaneous or ' improvised ' Commune, is, for the present, sovereign of France. The Legislative, deriving its authority from the Old, 154 SEPTEMBER BOOK I Old, how can it now have authority when the Old is exploded Aug. -Sept. by insurrection ? As a floating piece of wreck, certain things, 1792 persons, and interests may still cleave to it : volunteer de- fenders, riflemen or pikemen in green uniform, or red night- cap (of bonnet rouge), defile before it daily, just on the wing towards Brunswick ; with the brandishing of arms ; always with some touch of Leonidas-eloquence, often with a fire of daring that threatens to outherod Herod, — ^the Galleries, ' especially the Ladies, never done with applauding.' ^ Ad- dresses of this or the like sort can be received and answered, in the hearing of all France ; the Salle de Manege is stiU useful as a place of proclamation. For which use, indeed, it now chiefly serves. Vergniaud delivers spirit-stirring orations ; but always with a prophetic sense only, looking towards the coming Convention. ' Let our memory perish,' cries Vergniaud ; ' but let France be free ! ' — ^whereupon they all start to their feet, shouting responsive : ' Yes, yes, perisse notre mSmoire, pourvu que la France soit lihre I ' ^ Disfrocked Chabot adjures Heaven that at least we may ' have done with Kings ' ; and fast as powder under spark, we all blaze-up once more, and with waved hats shout and swear : ' Yes, nous le jurons ; plus de rois ! ' ^ All which, as a method of proclamation, is very convenient. For the rest, that our busy Brissots, rigorous Rolands, men who once had authority, and now have less and less ; men who love law, and wiU have even an Explosion explode itself as far as possible according to rule, do find this state of matters most unofficial-unsatisfactory, — is not to be denied. Com- plaints are made ; attempts are made : but without effect. The attempts even recoil ; and must be desisted from, for fear of worse : the sceptre has departed from this Legislative once and always. A poor Legislative, so hard was fate, had let itself be hand-gyved, nailed to the rock like an Andromeda, and could only wail there to the Earth and Heavens ; miracu- lously a winged Perseus (or Improvised Commune) has dawned out of the vjoid Blue, and cut her loose : but whether now is it she, with her softness and musical speech, or is it he, with his hardness and sharp falchion and asgis, that shall have casting-vote ? Melodious agreement of vote ; this were the rule ! But if otherwise, and votes diverge, then surely ' Moore's journal, i. 85. 2 ff^^f^ p^^i^ ^vii. 467. ' Ibid. xvii. 437. Andromeda's THE GODS ARE ATHIRST. 1792 THE IMPROVISED COMMUNE 155 Andromeda's part is to weep, — if possible, tears of gratitude CHAP. I alone. Aug. -Sept. Be content, O France, with this Improvised Commune, such as it is ! It has the implements, and has the hands : the time is not long. On Sunday the twenty-sixth of August, our Primary Assemblies shall meet, begin electing of Electors ; on Sunday the second of September (may the day prove lucky !) the Electors shall begin electing Deputies ; and so an all- healing National Convention will come together. No marc d'argent, or distinction of Active and Passive, now insults the French Patriot : but there is universal suffrage, unlimited liberty to choose. Old-Constituents, Present-Legislators, all France is eUgible. Nay it may be said, the flower of all the Universe {de VVnivers) is eligible ; for in these very days we, by act of Assembly, ' naturalise ' the chief Foreign Friends of Humanity : Priestley, burnt out for us in Birmingham ; Klop- stock, a genius of all countries ; Jeremy Bentham, useful Jurisconsult ; distinguished Paine, the rebellious Needleman ; — some of whom may be chosen. As is most fit ; for a Con- vention of this kind. In a word, Seven-hundred and Forty- five unshackled sovereigns, admired of the universe, shall replace this hapless impotency of a Legislative, — out of which, it is hkely, the best Members, and, the Mountain in mass, may be re-elected. Roland is getting ready the Salle des Cent Suisses, as preliminary rendezvous for them ; in that void Palace of the Tuileries, now void and National, and not a Palace, but a Caravansera. As for the Spontaneous Commune, one may say that there never was on Earth a stranger Town-Council. Administration, not of a great City, but of a great Kingdom in a state of revolt and frenzy, this is the task that has fallen to it. Enrolling, provisioning, judging ; devising, deciding, doing, endeavouring to do : one wonders the human brain did not give way under all this, and reel. But happily human brains have such a talent of taking up simply what they can carry, and ignoring aU the rest ; leaving all the rest, as if it were not there ! Whereby somewhat is verily shifted for ; and much shifts for itself. This Improvised Commune walks along, nothing doubting ; promptly making front, without fear or flurry, at what moment soever, to the wants of the moment. Were the world on fire, one improvised tricolor Municipal has but one 156 SEPTEMBER BOOK I one life to lose. They are the elixir and chosen-men of Sans- Aug.-Sept. culottic Patriotism ; promoted to the forlorn-hope ; un- ^'^^ speakable victory or a high gallows, this is their meed. They sit there, in the Townhall, these astonishing tricolor Municipals ; in Council General ; in Committee of Watchfulness {de Sur- veillance, which will even become de Salut Public, of Public Salvation), or what other Committees and Sub-committees are needful ; — ^managing infinite Correspondence ; passing infinite Decrees : one hears of a Decree being ' the ninety- eighth of the day.' Ready ! is the word. They carry loaded pistols in their pocket ; also some improvised luncheon by way of meal. Or indeed, by and by, traiteurs contract for the supply of repasts, to be eaten on the spot, — too lavishly, as it was afterwards grumbled. Thus they : girt in their tricolor sashes ; Municipal note-paper in the one hand, fire-arms in the other. They have their Agents out all over France ; speaking in townhouses, market-places, highways and bjrways ; agitating, urging to arm ; all hearts tingling to hear. Great is the fire of Anti-aristocrat eloquence : nay some, as Bibliopolic Momoro, seem to hint afar off at something which smells of Agrarian Law, and a surgery of the over-swoln dropsical strongbox itself ; — whereat indeed the bold Bookseller runs risk of being hanged, and Ex-Constituent Buzot has to smuggle him off.^ Governing Persons, were they never so insignificant intrinsi- cally, have for most part plenty of Memoir-writers ; and the curious, in after-times, can learn minutely their goings out and comings in : which, as men always love to know their fellow-men in singular situations, is a comfort, of its kind. Not so with these Governing Persons, now in the Townhall ! And yet what most original fellow-man, of the Governing sort, high-chancellor, king, kaiser, secretary of the home or the foreign department, ever showed such a phasis as Clerk Tallien, Procureur Manuel, future Procureur Chaumette, here in this Sand-waltz of the Twenty-five millions now do ? O brother mortals, — thou Advocate Panis, friend of Danton, kinsman of Santerre ; Engraver Sergent, since called Agate Sergent ; thou Huguenin, with the tocsin in thy heart ! But, as Horace says, they wanted the sacred memoir-writer (sacro vote) ; and we know them not. Men bragged of August and its doings, pubhshing them in high places ; but of this Sep- 1 Mimoires dt Buzot (Pads, 1823), p. 88. tember THE IMPROVISED COMMUNE 157 tember none now or afterwards would brag. The September CHAP. I world remains dark, fuliginous, as Lapland witch-midnight ; — Aug. -Sept. from which, indeed, very strange shapes will evolve them- ^'^^ selves. Understand this, however : that incorruptible Robespierre is not wanting, now when the brunt of battle is past ; in a stealthy way the seagreen man sits there, his feline eyes excel- lent in the twilight. Also understand this other, a single fact worth many : that Marat is not only there, but has a seat of honour assigned him, a tribune particuliere. How changed for Marat ; lifted from his dark cellar into this lumin- ous ' peculiar tribune ' ! All dogs have their day ; even rabid dogs. Sorrowful, incurable Philoctetes Marat ; without whom Troy cannot be taken ! Hither, as a main element of the Governing Power, has Marat been raised. Royalist types, for we have ' suppressed ' innumerable Durosoys, Royous, and even clapt them in prison, — Royalist types replace the worn types often snatched from a People's-Friend in old ill days. In our ' peculiar tribune ' we write and redact : Placards, of due monitory terror ; Amis-du-Pewple (now under the name of Journal de la Ripublique) ; and sit obeyed of men. ' Marat,' says one, ' is the conscience of the Hotel-de-ViUe.' Keeper, as some call it, of the Sovereign's Conscience ; which surely in such hands will not lie hid in a napkin ! Two great movements, as we said, agitate this distracted National mind : a rushing against domestic Traitors, a rush- ing against foreign Despots. Mad movements both, restrain- able by no known rule ; strongest passions of human nature driving them on : love, hatred, vengeful sorrow, braggart Nationality also vengeful, — and pale Panic over all ! Twelve- hundred slain Patriots, do they not, from their dark catacombs there, in Death's dumb-show, plead (O ye Legislators) for vengeance ? Such was the destructive rage of these Aristocrats on the ever-memorable Tenth. Nay, apart from vengeance, and with an eye to Public Salvation only, are fhere not still, in this Paris (in round numbers) ' Thirty-thousand Aristocrats,' of the most malignant humour ; driven now to their last trump-card ? — Be patient, ye Patriots : our new High Court, ' Tribimal of the Seventeenth,' sits ; each Section has sent Four Jurymen ; and Danton, extinguishing improper judges, improper 158 SEPTEMBER BOOK I improper practices wheresoever found, is ' the same man you Aug. 25, have known at the Cordehers.' With such a Minister of 1782 Justice, shall not Justice be done ? — Let it be swift, then, answers universal Patriotism ; swift and sure ! — - One would hope, this Tribunal of the Seventeenth is swifter than most. Already on the 21st, while our Court is but four days old, Collenot d'Angremont, ' the Royalist enlister ' (crimp, embaucheur), dies by torchlight. For, lo, the great Guillotine, wondrous to behold, now stands there ; the Doctor's Idea has become Oak and Iron ; the huge cyclopean axe ' falls in its grooves like the ram of the Pile-engine,' swiftly snuffing- out the light of men ! 'Mais vous, Gualches, what have you invented ? ' This ? — Poor old Laporte, Intendant of the Civil List, follows next ; quietly, the mild old man. Then Durosoy, Royalist Placarder, ' cashier of all the Anti-revolutionists of the interior ' : he went rejoicing ; said that a Royalist like him ought to die, of all days, on this day, the 25th or St. Louis's Day. All these have been tried, cast, — ^the Galleries shouting approval ; and handed over to the Realised Idea, within a week. Besides those whom we have acquitted, the Galleries murmur- ing, and have dismissed ; or even have personally guarded back to Prison, as the Galleries took to howling, and even to menac- ing and elbowing.^ Languid this Tribunal is not. Nor does the other movement slacken ; the rushing against foreign Despots. Strong forces shall meet in death-grip ; drilled Europe against mad undriUed France ; and singular conclusions will be tried. — Conceive therefore, in some faint degree, the tumult that whirls in this France, in this Paris ! Placards from Section, from Commune, from Legislative, from the individual Patriot, flame monitory on all walls. Flags of Danger to Fatherland wave at the H6tel-de-Ville ; on the Pont-Neuf — over the prostrate Statues of Kings. There is universal enlisting, urging to enlist ; there is tearful-boastful leave-taking ; irregular marching on the Great Northeastern Road. Marseillese sing their wild To arms, in chorus ; which now all men, all women and children have learnt, and sing chorally, in Theatres, Boulevards, Streets ; and the heart burns in every bosom : Aux armes ! Marchons ! — Or think how your Aristocrats are skulking into covert ; how Bertrand- Moleville lies hidden in some garret ' in Aubry-le-boucher ^ Moore's journal, i. 159-68. Street, THE IMPROVISED COMMUNE 159 Street, with a poor surgeon who had known me.' Dame de CHAP. I Stael has secreted her Narbonne, not knowing what in the Aug. 25, world to make of him. The Barriers are sometimes open, ^'^^ oftenest shut ; no passports to be had ; Townhall Emissaries, with the eyes and claws of falcons, flitting watchful on all points of your horizon ! In two words : Tribunal of the Seventeenth, busy under howling Galleries ; Prussian Bruns- wick, ' over a space of forty miles,' with his war-tumbrils, and sleeping thunders, and Briarean ' sixty-six thousand ' ^ right hands, — coming, coming ! O Heavens, in these latter days of August, he is come ! Durosoy was not yet guillotined when news had come that the Prussians were harrying and ravaging about Metz ; in some four days more, one hears that Longwi, our first strong- place on the borders, is fallen ' in fifteen hours.' Quick there- fore, O ye improvised Municipals ; quick, and ever quicker ! — The improvised Municipals make front to this also. En- rolment urges itself ; and clothing, and arming. Our very officers have now ' wool epaulettes ' ; for it is the reign of Equality, and also of Necessity. Neither do men now monsieur and sir one another ; citoyen (citizen) were suitabler ; we even say thou, as ' the free peoples of Antiquity did ' : so have Journals and the Improvised Commune suggested ; which shall be well. Infinitely better, meantime, could we suggest, where arms are to be found. For the present, our Citoyens chant chorally To arms ; and have no arms ! Arms are searched for ; passionately ; there is joy over any musket. Moreover, entrenchments shall be made round Paris : on the slopes of Montmartre men dig and shovel ; though even the simple suspect this to be desperate. They dig ; Tricolor sashes speak encouragement and well-speed-ye. Nay finally ' twelve Members of the Legislative go daily,' not to encourage only, but to bear a hand, and delve : it was decreed with acclama- tion. Arms shall either be provided ; or else the ingenuity of man crack itself, and become fatuity. Lean Beaumarchais, thinking to serve the Fatherland, and do a stroke of trade in the old way, has commissioned sixty-thousand stand of good arms out of Holland : would to Heaven, for Fatherland's sake and his, they were come I Meanwhile railings are torn up ; 1 See Toulongeon, Jlist. de France, ii. c. 5. hammered 160 SEPTEMBER BOOK I hammered into pikes ; chains themselves shall be welded Aug. 29, together into pikes. The very coffins of the dead are raised ; 1792 Iqp melting into balls. All Church-bells must down into the furnace to make cannon ; all Church-plate into the mint to make money. Also, behold the fair swan-bevies of Citoyennes that have alighted in Churches, and sit there with swan-neck, — sewing tents and regimentals ! Nor are Patriotic Gifts wanting, from those that have aught left ; not stingily given : the fair Villaumes, mother and daughter, Milliners in the Rue St.-Martin, give a ' silver thimble, and a coin of fifteen sous (sevenpence halfpenny),' with other similar effects ; and offer, at least the mother does, to mount guard. Men who have not even a thimble, give a thimbleful, — were it but of inven- tion. One Citoyen has wrought out the scheme of a wooden cannon ; which France shall exclusively profit by, in the first instance. It is to be made of staves, by the coopers ; — of almost boundless calibre, but uncertain as to strength ! Thus they : hammering, scheming, stitching, founding, with all their heart and with aU their soul. Two bells only are to remain in each Parish, — for tocsin and other purposes. But mark also, precisely while the Prussian batteries were playing their briskest at Longwi in the Northeast, and our dastardly Lavergne saw nothing for it but surrender, — south- westward, in remote, patriarchal La Vendee, that sour ferment about Nonjuring Priests, after long working, is ripe, and ex- plodes : at the wrong moment for us ! And so we have ' eight- thousand Peasants at Chatillon-sur-Sevre ' who wUl not be balloted for soldiers ; will not have their Curates molested. To whom Bonchamps, Larochejaqueleins, and Seigneurs enough of a Royalist turn, will join themselves ; with Stofflets and Charettes ; with Heroes and Chouan Smugglers ; and the loyal warmth of a simple people, blown into flame and fury by theological and seignorial bellows ! So that there shall be fighting from behind ditches, death-volleys bursting out of thickets and ravines of rivers ; huts burning, feet of the pitiful women hurrying to refuge with their children on their back ; seed-fields fallow, whitened with human bones ; — ' eighty- thousand, of all ages, ranks, sexes, flying at once across the Loire,' with wail borne far on the winds : and in brief, for years coming, such a suite of scenes as glorious war has not, offered in these late ages, not since our Albigenses and Crusad- ings THE IMPROVISED COMMUNE 161 ings were over, — save indeed some chance Palatinate, or so, we might have to ' burn,' by way of exception. The ' eight- thousand at Chatillon ' will be got dispelled for the moment ; the fire* scattered, not extinguished. To the dints and bruises of outward battle there is to be added henceforth a deadlier internal gangrene. This rising in La Vendee reports itself at Paris on Wednesday CHAP. I Aug. 29, 1792 CHARETTE. the 29th of August ; — ^just as we had got our Electors elected ; and, in spite of Brunswick and Longwi, were hoping still to have a National Convention, if it pleased Heaven. But indeed otherwise this Wednesday is to be regarded as one of the nota- blest Paris had yet seen : gloomy tidings come successively, like Job's messengers ; are met by gloomy answers. Of Sar- dinia rising to invade the Southeast, and Spain threatening the South, we do not speak. But are not the Prussians masters of Longwi (treacherously yielded, one would say) ; and preparing VOL. II. L to 162 SEPTEMBER BOOK I to besiege Verdun ? Clairfait and his Austrians are encom- Aug. 29, passing Thionville ; darkening the North. Not Metzland now, but the Clermontais is getting harried ; flying hulans and hussars have been seen on the Chalons road, almost as far as Sainte- Menehould. Heart, ye Patriots ; if ye lose heart, ye lose all ! It is not without a dramatic emotion that one reads in the Parliamentary Debates of this Wednesday evening ' past seven o'clock,' the scene with the military fugitives from Longwi. Wayworn, dusty, disheartened, these poor men enter the Legislative, about sunset or after ; give the most pathetic detail of the frightful pass they were in : Prussians billowing round by the myriad, volcanically spouting fire for fifteen hours : we, scattered sparse on the ramparts, hardly a cannoneer to two guns ; our dastard Commandant Lavergne nowhere show- ing face ; the priming would not catch ; there was no powder in the bombs, — ^what could we do ? ' Mourir, Die ! ' answer prompt voices ; ^ and the dusty fugitives must shrink else- whither for comfort. — ^Yes, Mourir, that is now the word. Be Longwi a proverb and a hissing among French strong- places : let it (says the Legislative) be obliterated rather, from the shamed face of the Earth ; — and so there has gone forth Decree, that Longwi shall, were the Prussians once out of it, ' be rased,' and exist only as ploughed ground. Nor are the Jacobins milder ; as how could they, the flower of Patriotism ? Poor Dame Lavergne, wife of the poor Com- mandant, took her parasol one evening, and escorted by her Father came over to the Hall of the mighty Mother ; and ' reads a memoir tending to justify the Commandant of Longwi.' Lafarge, President, makes answer ; ' Citoyenne, the Nation will judge Lavergne ; the Jacobins are bound to tell him the truth. He would have ended his course there {termini sa carriere), if he had loved the honour of his country.' ^ CHAPTER II DANTON But better than rasing of Longwi, or rebuking poor dusty soldiers or soldiers' wives, Danton had come over, last night, ' ffist. Pari. xvii. 148. ^ Ibid. xix. 300. and DANTON 163 and demanded a Decree to search for arms, since they were CHAP. II not yielded voluntarily. Let ' Domiciliary visits,' with rigour Aug. 2Q, of authority, be made to this end. To search for arms ; for -^^^^ horses,— Aristocratism rolls in its carriage, while Patriotism cannot trail its cannon. To search generally for munitions of war, ' in the houses of persons suspect,' — and even, if it seem proper, to seize and imprison the suspect persons themselves ! In the Prisons their Plots wiU be harmless ; in the Prisons they will be as hostages for us, and not without use. This Decree the energetic Minister of Justice demanded last night, and got ; and this same night it is to be executed ; it is being executed at the moment when these dusty soldiers get saluted with Mourir. Two-thousand stand of arms, as they count, are foraged in this way ; and some four-hundred head of new Prisoners ; and, on the whole, such a terror and damp is struck through the Aristocrat heart, as all but Patriotism, and even Patriotism were it out of this agony, might pity. Yes, Mes- sieurs ! if Brunswick blast Paris to ashes, he probably will blast the Prisons of Paris too : pale Terror, if we have got it, we win also give it, and the depth of horrors that lie in it ; the same leaky bottom, in these wild waters, bears us all. One can judge what stir there was now among the ' thirty- thousand Royalists ' : how the Plotters, or the accused of Plotting, shrank each closer into his lurking-place, — like Bertrand-Moleville, looking eager towards Longwi, hoping the weather would keep fair. Or how they dressed themselves in valet's clothes, like Narbonne, and ' got to England as Dr. Bollman's famulus ' : how Dame de Stael bestirred herself, pleading with Manuel as a Sister in Literature, pleading even with Clerk Talhen ; a prey to nameless chagrins ! ^ Royalist Peltier, the Pamphleteer, gives a touching Narrative (not deficient in height of colouring) of the terrors of that night. From five in the afternoon, a great city is struck suddenly silent ; except for the beating of drums, for the tramp of marching feet ; and ever and anon the dread thunder of the knocker at some door, a Tricolor Commissioner with his blue Guards {black-gaards !) arriving. All Streets are vacant, says Peltier ; beset by Guards at each end : all Citizens are ordered to be within doors. On the River float sentinel barges, lest we ' De Stael, Considerations sur la Rivolution, ii. 67-81. escape 164 SEPTEMBER BOOK I escape by water : the Barriers hermetically closed. Frightful ! Aug. 29, The Sun shines ; serenely westering, in smokeless mackerel- ^^^^ sky ; Paris is as if sleeping, as if dead : — Paris is holding its breath, to see what stroke will fall on it. Poor Peltier ! Ads of Apostles, and all jocundity of Leading-Articles, are gone out, and it is become bitter earnest instead ; polished satire changed now into coarse pike-points (hammered out of railing) ; all logic reduced to this one primitive thesis. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ! — Peltier, dolefully aware of it, ducks low ; escapes unscathed to England ; to urge there the inky war anew ; — to have Trial by Jury, in due season, and deliverance by young Whig eloquence, world-celebrated for a day. Of ' thirty -thousand ' naturally great multitudes were left unmolested ; but, as we said, some four-hundred, designated as ' persons suspect,' were seized ; and an unspeakable terror fell on all. Wo to him who is guilty of plotting, of Anti-civism, Royalism, Feuillantism ; who, guilty or not guilty, has an enemy in his Section to call him guilty ! Poor old M. de Cazotte is seized ; his young loved Daughter with him, refusing to quit him. Why, O Cazotte, wouldst thou quit romancing and Diable Amoureux, for such reality as this ? Poor old M. de Sombreuil, he of the Invalides, is seized ; a man seen askance by Patriotism ever since the Bastille days ; whom also a fond Daughter will not quit. With young tears hardly suppressed, and old wavering weakness rousing itself once more, — O my brothers, O my sisters ! The famed and named go ; the nameless, if they have an accuser. Necklace Lamotte's Husband is in these Prisons {she long since squelched on the London Pavements) ; but gets delivered. Gross de Morande, of the Courrier de VEurope, hobbles distractedly to and fro there : but they let him hobble out ; on right nimble crutches ; — ^his hour not being yet come. Advocate Maton de la Varenne, very weak in health, is snatched off from mother and kin ; Tricolor Rossignol (journeyman gold- smith and scoundrel lately, a risen man now) remembers an old Pleading of Maton's ! Jourgniac de Saint-M^ard goes ; the brisk frank soldier : he was in the mutiny of Nanci, in that ' effervescent Regiment du Roi,' — on the wrong side. Saddest of all : Abbe Sicard goes ; a Priest who could not take the Oath, but who could teach the Deaf and Dumb : in his Section one man, he says, had a grudge at him ; one man, at the fit hour, DANTON 165 hour, launches an arrest against him ; which hits. In the CHAP. II Arsenal quarter, there are dumb hearts making wail, with signs, Au^. 29, with wild gestures ; he their miraculous healer and speech- ^'^^ bringer'is rapt away. What with the arrestments on this night of the Twenty- ninth, what with those that have gone on more or less, day and night, ever since the Tenth, one may fancy what the Prisons now were. Crowding and confusion ; jostle, hurry, vehemence and terror ! Of the poor Queen's Friends, who had followed her to the Temple, and been committed elsewhither to Prison, some, as Governess de Tourzelle, are to be let go : one, the poor Princess de Lamballe, is not let go ; but waits in the strong- rooms of La Force there, what will betide further. Among so many hundreds whom the launched arrest hits, who are rolled off to Townhall or Sectionhall, to preliminary Houses of Detention, and hurled in thither as into cattle-pens, we must mention one other : Caron de Beaumarchais, Author of Figaro ; vanquisher of Maupeou Parlements and Goezman helldogs ; once numbered among the demigods ; and now — ? We left him in his culminant state ; what dreadful decline is this, when we again catch a glimpse of him ! ' At naidnight ' (it was but the 12th of August yet), ' the servant, in his shirt,' with wide-staring eyes, enters your room : — Monsieur, rise, all the people are come to seek you ; they are knocking, like to break-in the door ! ' And they were in fact knocking in a terrible manner {d'une fagon terrible). I fling on my coat, forgetting even the waistcoat, nothing on my feet but slippers ; and say to him ' — And he, alas, answers mere negatory inco- herences, panic interjections. And through the shutters and crevices, in front or rearward, the dull street-lamps disclose only streetfuls of haggard countenances ; clamorous, bristling with pikes : and you rush distracted for an outlet, finding none ; — and have to take refuge in the crockery -press, down stairs ; and stand there, palpitating in that imperfect costume, lights dancing past your key-hole, tramp of feet overhead, and the tumult of Satan, ' for four hours and more ' ! And old ladies, of the quarter, started up (as we hear next morn- ing) ; rang for their bonnes and cordial-drops, with shrill in- terjections : and old gentlemen, in their shirts, ' leapt garden- walls ' ; flying while none pursued ; one of whom unfortunately broke 1792 166 SEPTEMBER BOOK I broke his leg.^ Those sixty -thousand stand of Dutch Arms Aug. 29, (which never arrive), and the bold stroke of trade, have turned out so ill ! — Beaumarchais escaped for this time ; but not for the next time, ten days after. On the evening of the Twenty-ninth he is still in that chaos of the Prisons, in saddest wresthng condition ; unable to get justice, even to get audience ; ' Panis scratching his head ' when you speak to him, and making off. Nevertheless let the lover of Figaro know that Procureur Manuel, a Brother in Literature, found him, and delivered him once more. But how the lean demigod, now shorn of his splendour, had to lurk in barns, to roam over harrowed fields, panting for life ; and to wait under eavesdrops, and sit in darkness ' on the Boulevarde amid paving-stones and boulders,' longing for one word of any Minister, or Minister's Clerk, about those accursed Dutch muskets, and getting none, — with heart fuming in spleen, and terror, and suppressed canine-madness ; alas, how the swift sharp hound, once fit to be Diana's, breaks his old teeth now, gnawing mere whin- stones ; and must ' fly to England ' ; and, returning from England, must creep into the corner, and lie quiet, toothless (moneyless), — all this let the lover of Figaro fancy, and weep for. We here, without weeping, not without sadness, wave the withered tough fellow-mortal our farewell. His Figaro has returned to the French stage ; nay is, at this day, some- times named the best piece there. And indeed, so long as Man's Life can ground itself only on artificiality and aridity ; each new Revolt and Change of Dynasty turning up only a new stratum of dry-rubbish, and no soil yet coming to view, — may it not be good to protest against such a Life, in many ways, and even in the Figaro way ? CHAPTER III DUMOUEIEZ Such are the last days of August 1792 ; days gloomy, disas- trous, and of evil omen. What will become of this poor France ? ^ Bes.uma.icha.is' Naiiaiive, Mfyioires sur /es Prisons CPsLiis, 1823),!. 179-90. Dumouriez DUMOURIEZ 167 Diiinouriez rode from the Camp of Maulde, eastward to Sedan, CHAP. HI on Tuesday last, the 28th of the month ; reviewed that so- Sept. 2, 1792 called Army left forlorn there by Lafayette : the forlorn soldiers gloomed on him ; were heard growling on him, ' This is one of them, ce b — e Id, that made War be declared.' ^ Unpromising Army ! Recruits flow in, filtering through Depot after Depot ; but recruits merely : in want of all ; happy if they have so DUMOURIEZ. much as arms. And Longwi has fallen basely ; and Brunswick, and the Prussian King, with his sixty-thousand, will beleaguer Verdun ; and Clairfait and Austrians press deeper in, over the Northern marches : ' a hundred and fifty thousand ' as fear counts, ' eighty-thousand ' as the returns show, do hem us in ; Cimmerian Europe behind them. There is Castries-and-Broglie chivalry ; Royalist foot ' in red facing and nankeen trousers ' ; breathing death and the gallows. And lo, finally, at Verdun on Sunday the 2d of September 1 Dumouriez, Mimoires, ii. 383. 1792, 168 SEPTEMBER BOOK I 1792, Brunswick is here. With his King and sixty-thousand, Sept. 2, 1792 guttering over the heights, from beyond the winding Meuse River, he looks down on us, on our ' high citadel ' and all our confectionery ovens (for we are celebrated for confectionery) ; has sent courteous summons, in order to spare the effusion of blood ! — Resist him to the death ? Every day of retardation precious ? How, O General Beaurepaire (asks the amazed Municipality), shall we resist him ? We, the Verdun Muni- cipals, see no resistance possible. Has he not sixty-thousand, and artillery without end ? Retardation, Patriotism is good ; but so likewise is peaceable baking of pastry, and sleeping in whole skin. — Hapless Beaurepaire stretches out his hands, and pleads passionately, in the name of country, honour, of Heaven and of Earth : to no purpose. The Municipals have, by law, the power of ordering it ; — ^with an Army officered by Royalism or Crypto-Royalism, such a Law seemed needful : and they order it, as pacific Pastry-cooks, not as heroic Patriots would, — To surrender ! Beaurepaire strides home, with long steps : his valet, entering the room, sees him ' writing eagerly,' and withdraws. His valet hears then, in few minutes, the report of a pistol : Beaurepaire is lying dead ; his eager writing had been a brief suicidal farewell. In this manner died Beau- repaire, wept of France ; buried in the Pantheon, with honour- able Pension to his Widow, and for Epitaph these words, He chose Death rather than yield to Despots. The Prussians, descending from the heights, are peaceable masters of Verdun. And so Brunswick advances, from stage to stage : who shall now stay him, — covering forty miles of country ? Foragers fly far ; the villages of the Northeast are harried ; your Hessian forager has only ' three sous a-day ' : the very Emigrants, it is said, will take silver-plate, — by way of revenge. Clermont, Sainte-Menehould, Varennes especially, ye Towns of the Night of Spurs, tremble ye ! Procureur Sausse and the Magistracy of Varennes have fled ; brave Boniface Le Blanc of the Bras d'Or is to the woods : Mrs. Le Blanc, a young woman fair to look upon, with her young infant, has to live in greenwood, like a beautiful Bessy Bell of Song, her bower thatched with rushes ; catching premature rheumatism.^ Clermont may ring the tocsin now, and illuminate itself ! Clermont lies at the foot of its Cow (or Vache, so they name that Mountain), a ' Helen Maria Williams, Letters from France (London, 1791-93), iii. 96. prey DUMOURIEZ 169 prey to the Hessian spoiler : its fair women, fairer than most, CHAP. Ill are robbed ; not of hfe, or what is dearer, yet of all that is Sept. 2, 1792 cheaper and portable ; for Necessity, on three half -pence a-day, has no law. At Sainte-Menehould the enemy has been ex- pected more than once, — our Nationals all turning out in arms ; but was not yet seen. Postmaster Drouet, he is not in the woods, but minding his Election ; and will sit in the Con- vention, notable King-taker, and bold Old-Dragoon as he is. Thus on the Northeast all roams and runs ; and on a set day, the date of which is irrecoverable by History, Brunswick ' has engaged to dine in Paris,' — ^the Powers willing. And at Paris, in the centre, it is as we saw ; and in La Vendee Southwest, it is as we saw ; and Sardinia is in the Southeast, and Spain in the South, and Clairfait with Austria and sieged Thionville is in the North ; — and all France leaps distracted like the winnowed Sahara waltzing in sand colonnades ! More desperate posture no country ever stood in. A country, one would say, which the Majesty of Prussia (if it so pleased him) might partition and clip in pieces, like a Poland ; flinging the remainder to poor Brother Louis, — with directions to keep it quiet, or else we will keep it for him ! Or perhaps the Upper Powers, minded that a new Chapter in Universal History shall begin here and not further on, may have ordered it all otherwise ? In that case, Brunswick will not dine in Paris on the set day ; nor, indeed, one knows not when ! — ^Verily, amid this wreckage, where poor France seems grinding itself down to dust and bottomless ruin, who knows what miraculous salient -point of Deliverance and New-life may have already come into existence there ; and be already working there, though as yet human eye discern it not ! On the night of that same twenty-eighth of August, the impromis- ing Review-day in Sedan, Dumouriez assembles a Council of War at his lodgings there. He spreads out the map of this forlorn war-district ; Prussians here, Austrians there ; triumphant both, with broad highway, and little hinderance, all the way to Paris : we scattered, helpless, here and here : what to advise ? The Generals, strangers to Dumouriez, look blank enough ; know not well what to advise, — it if be not retreating, and retreating till our recruits accumulate ; till perhaps the chapter of chances turn up some leaf for us ; or Paris, at all events, be sacked at the latest day possible. The Many- 170 SEPTEMBER BOOK I Many-counselled, who ' has not closed an eye for three nights,' Sept. 2, 1792 listens with little speech to these long cheerless speeches ; merely watching the speaker, that he may know him ; then wishes them all good-night ; — ^but beckons a certain young Thouvenot, the fire of whose looks had pleased him, to wait a moment. Thouvenot waits : Voila, says Polymetis, pointing to the map ! That is the Forest of Argonne, that long strip of rocky Mountain and wild Wood ; forty miles long ; with but five, or say even three practicable Passes through it : this, for they have forgotten it, might one not still seize, though Clairfait sits so nigh ? Once seized ; — ^the Champagne called the Hungry (or worse, Campagne Pouilleuse) on their side of it ; the fat Three Bishopricks, and willing France, on ours ; and the Equinox rains not far : — this Argonne ' might be the Thermopylae of France ' ! ^ O brisk Dumouriez Polymetis with thy teeming head, may the gods grant it ! — Polymetis, at any rate, folds his map together, and flings himself on bed ; resolved to try, on the morrow morning. With astucity, with swiftness, with audacity ! One had need to be a lion-fox, and have luck on one's side. CHAPTER IV SEPTEMBER IN PARIS At Paris, by lying Rmnour which proved prophetic and veridical, the fall of Verdun was known some hours before it happened. It is Sunday the second of September ; handiwork hinders not the speculations of the mind. Verdun gone (though some still deny it) ; the Prussians in full march, with gallows-ropes, with fire and fagot ! Thirty-thousand Aristo- crats within our own walls ; and but the merest quarter-tithe of them yet put in Prison ! Nay there goes a word that even these will revolt. Sieur Jean Julien, wagoner of Vaugirard,^ being set in the Pillory last Friday, took all at once to crying, That he would be well revenged ere long ; that the King's Friends in Prison would burst out, force the Temple, set the King on horseback, and, joined by the unimprisoned, ride 1 Dumouriez, ii. 391. 2 Moore, i. 178. roughshod IN PARIS 171 roughshod over us all. This the unfortunate wagoner of CHAP. IV Vaugirard did bawl, at the top of his lungs : when snatched Sept. 2, 1792 off to the Townhall, he persisted in it, still bawling; yester- night, "when they guillotined him, he died with the froth of it on his lips.^ For a man's mind, padlocked to the Pillory, may go mad ; and aU men's minds may go mad, and ' believe him,' as the frenetic will do, ' because it is impossible.' So that apparently the knot of the crisis and last agony of France is come ? Make front to this, thou Improvised Com- mune, strong Danton, whatsoever man is strong ! Readers can judge whether the Flag of Country in Danger flapped soothingly or distractively on the souls of men that day. But the Improvised Commune, but strong Danton is not wanting, each after his kind. Huge Placards are getting plastered to the walls ; at two o'clock the stormbell shall be soimded, the alarm-cannon fired ; all Paris shall rush to the Champ-de-Mars, and have itself enrolled. Unarmed, truly, and undrilled ; but desperate, in the strength of frenzy. Haste, ye men ; ye very women, offer to mount guard and shoulder the brown musket : weak clucking-hens, in a state of despera- tion, will fly at the muzzle of the mastiff ; and even conquer him, — by vehemence of character ! Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage ; as frost sufficiently intense, according to Poet Milton, will burn. — Danton, the other night, in the Legislative Committee of General Defence, when the other Ministers and Legislators had all opined, said. It would not do to quit Paris, and fly to Saumur ; that they must abide by Paris ; and take such attitude as would put their enemies in fear, — jaire peur ; a word of his which has been often repeated, and reprinted — in italics.^ At two of the clock, Beaurepaire, as we saw, has shot him- self at Verdun ; and, over Europe, mortals are going in for afternoon sermon. But at Paris, all steeples are clangouring not for sermon ; the alarm-gun booming from minute to minute ; Champ-de-Mars and Fatherland's Altar boiling with desperate terror-courage : what a miserere going up to Heaven from this once Capital of the Most Christian King ! The Legislative sits in alternate awe and effervescence ; Vergniaud ' J^is/. Pari. xvii. 409. ^ Biographte des Ministres (Bruxelles, 1826), p. 96. proposing 172 SEPTEMBER BOOK I proposing that Twelve shall go and dig personally on Mont- Sept. 2, 1792 martre ; which is decreed by acclaim. But better than digging personally with acclaim, see Danton enter ; — ^the black brows clouded, the colossus figure tramping heavy ; grim energy looking from aU features of the rugged man ! Strong is that grim Son of France and Son of Earth ; a Reality and not a Formula he too : and surely now if ever, being hurled low enough, it is on the Earth and on Realities that he rests. ' Legislators ! ' so speaks the stentor-voice, as the Newspapers yet preserve it for us, ' it is not the alarm- cannon that you hear : it is the pas-de-charge against our enemies. To conquer them, to hurl them back, what do we require ? II nous faut de Vaudace, et encore de I'audace, et toujours de Vaudace, To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare ! ' ^ — Right so, thou brawny Titan ; there is nothing left for thee but that. Old men, who heard it, will still tell you how the reverberating voice made aU hearts swell, in that moment ; and braced them to the sticking-place ; and thrilled abroad over France, like electric virtue, as a word spoken in season. But the Commune, enrolling in the Champ-de-Mars ? But the Committee of Watchfulness, become now Committee of Public Salvation ; whose conscience is Marat ? The Commune enrolling enrolls many ; provides tents for them in that Mars- Field, that they may march with dawn on the morrow : praise to this part of the Commune ! To Marat and the Committee of Watchfulness not praise ; — not even blame, such as could be meted out in these insufficient dialects of ours ; expressive silence rather ! Lone Marat, the man forbid, meditating long in his Cellars of refuge, on his Stylites Pillar, could see salvation in one thing only : in the fall of ' two-hundred and sixty thousand Aristocrat heads.' With so many score of Naples Bravoes, each a dirk in his right-hand, a muff on his left, he would traverse France, and do it. But the world laughed, mocking the severe-benevolence of a People's-Friend ; and his idea could not become an action, but only a fixed-idea. Lo now, however, he has come down from his Stylites Pillar to a Tribune particuliere ; here now, without the dirks, without the muffs at least, were it not grown possible, — now in the knot of the crisis, when salvation or destruction hangs in the hour ! 1 Moniteur (in Hist. Pari. xvii. 347). The IN PARIS 1T3 The Ice-Tower of Avignon was noised of sufficiently, and CHAP. IV lives in all memories ; but the authors were not punished : nay Sept. 2, 1792 we saw Jourdan Coupe-tete, borne on men's shoulders, like a copper Portent, ' traversing the cities of the South.' — ^What phantasms, squalid-horrid, shaking their dirk and muff, may dance through the brain of a Marat, in this dizzy pealing of tocsin-miserere and universal frenzy, seek not to guess, O Reader ! Nor what the cruel Billaud ' in his short brown coat ' was thinking ; nor Sergent, not yet Agate-Sevgent ; Nor Panis the confidant of Danton ; — nor, in a word, how gloomy Orcus does breed in her gloomy womb, and fashion her monsters and prodigies of Events, which thou seest her visibly bear ! Terror is on these streets of Paris ; terror and rage, tears and frenzy : tocsin-miserere pealing through the air ; fierce desperation rushing to battle ; mothers, with streaming eyes and wild hearts, sending forth their sons to die. ' Carriage-horses are seized by the bridle,' that they may draw cannon ; ' the traces cut, the carriages left standing.' In such tocsin-miserere, and murky bewilderment of Frenzy, are not Murder, Ate and all Furies near at hand ? On slight hint — who knows on how slight ? — ^may not Murder come ; and, with her snaky-sparkling head, illuminate this murk ! How it was and went, what part might be premeditated, what was improvised and accidental, man will never know, till the great Day of Judgment make it known. But with a Marat for keeper of the Sovereign's Conscience — ^And we know what the ultima ratio of Sovereigns, when they are driven to it, is ! In this Paris there are as wicked men, say a hundred or more, as exist in all the Earth : to be hired, and set on ; to set on, of their own accord, unhired. — And yet we will remark that premeditation itself is not performance, is not surety of performance ; that it is perhaps, at most, surety of letting whosoever wills perform. From the purpose of crime to the act of crime there is an abyss ; wonderful to think of. The finger lies on the pistol ; but the man is not yet a mur- derer : nay his whole nature staggering at such consummation, is there not a confused pause rather, — one last instant of possi- bility for him ? Not yet a murderer ; it is at the mercy of light trifles whether the most fixed idea may not yet become unfixed. One slight twitch of k muscle, the death-flash bursts ; and he is it, and will for Eternity be it ; and Earth has become a penal 174 SEPTEMBER BOOK I penal Tartarus for him ; his horizon girdled now not with Sept. 2, 1792 golden hope, but with red flames of remorse ; voices from the depths of Nature sounding. Wo, wo on him ! Of such stuff are we all made ; on such powder-mines of bottomless guilt and criminality, — ' if God restrained not,' as is well said, — does the purest of us walk. There are depths in man that go the length of lowest Hell, as there are heights that reach highest Heaven ; — for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, made by him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery as he is ? — But looking on this Champ-de-Mars, with its tent-buildings and frantic enrolments ; on this murky- simmering Paris, with its crammed Prisons (supposed about to burst), with its tocsin-miserere, its mothers' tears, and soldiers' farewell shoutings, — the pious soul might have prayed, that day, that God's grace would restrain, and greatly restrain ; lest on slight hest or hint. Madness, Horror and Murder rose, and this Sabbathday of September became a Day black in the Annals of men. The tocsin is pealing its loudest, the clocks inaudibly striking Three, when poor Abbe Sicard, with some thirty other Non- jurant Priests, in six carriages, fare along the streets, from their preliminary House of Detention at the Townhall, westward towards the Prison of the Abbaye. Carriages enough stand deserted on the streets ; these six move on, — ^through angry multitudes, cursing as they move. Accursed Aristocrat Tar- tuffes, this is the pass ye have brought us to ! And now ye will break the Prisons, and set Capet Veto on horseback to ride over us ? Out upon you. Priests of Beelzebub and Moloch ; of Tartuffery, Mammon and the Prussian Gallows, — which ye name Mother-Church and God ! — Such reproaches have the poor Nonjurants to endure, and worse ; spoken-in on them by frantic Patriots, who mount even on the carriage-steps ; the very Guards hardly refraining. Pull up your carriage-blinds ? No ! answers Patriotism, clapping its homy paw on the carriage- blind, and crushing it down again. Patience in oppression has limits : we are close on the Abbaye, it has lasted long : a poor Nonjurant, of quicker temper, smites the horny paw with his cane ; nay, finding solacement in it, smites the un- kempt head, sharply and again more sharply, twice over, — seen clearly of us and of the world. It is the last that we see clearly. Alas, next moment the carriages are locked and blocked IN PARIS 175 blocked in endless raging tumults ; in yells deaf to the cry for CHAP. IV mercy, which answer the cry for mercy with sabre-thrusts Sept. 2-6, through the heart.^ The thirty Priests are torn out, are mas- ^792 sacred* about the Prison-Gate, one after one, — only the poor Abbe Sicard, whom one Moton a watchmaker, knowing him, heroically tried to save and secrete in the prison, escapes to tell ; — and it is Night and Orcus ; and Murder's snaky-sparkling head has risen in the murk ! — From Sunday afternoon (exclusive of intervals and pauses not final) till Thursday evening, there follow consecutively a Hundred Hours. Which hundred hours are to be reckoned with the hours of the Bartholomew Butchery, of the Armagnac Massacres, Sicilian Vespers, or whatsoever is savagest in the annals of this world. Horrible the hour when man's soul, in its paroxysm, spurns asunder the barriers and rules ; and shows what dens and depths are in it ! For Night and Orcus, as we say, as was long prophesied, have burst forth, here in this Paris, from their subterranean imprisonment : hideous, dim-confused ; which it is painful to look on ; and yet which cannot, and indeed which should not, be forgotten. The Reader, who looks earnestly through this dim Phan- tasmagory of the Pit, wUl discern few fixed certain objects ; and yet still a few. He will observe in this Abbaye Prison, the sudden massacre of the Priests being once over, a strange Court of Justice, or call it Court of Revenge and Wild-Justice, swiftly fashion itself, and take seat round a table, with the Prison-Registers spread before it ; — Stanislas Maillard, Bastille hero, famed Leader of the Menads, presiding. O Stanislas, one hoped to meet thee elsewhere than here ; thou shifty Riding-Usher, with an inkling of Law ! This work also thou hadst to do ; and then — to depart for ever from our eyes. At La Force, at the Chdtelet, the Conciergerie, the like Court forms itself, with the like accompaniments : the thing that one man does, other men can do. There are some Seven Prisons in Paris, full of Aristocrats with conspiracies ; — nay not even BicHre and SalpMriere shall escape, with their Forgers of Assignats : and there are seventy times seven hundred Patriot hearts in a state of frenzy. Scoundrel hearts also there are ; as perfect, say, as the Earth holds, — if such are needed. To whom, in ' F^l^mhesi (anagram for Mihie Fils), La V&iU tout entUre sur les vrais autturs de lajournie du 2 Septembre 1792 (reprinted in Hist. Pari, xviii. 156-81), p. 167. this 176 SEPTEMBER BOOK I this mood, law is as no-law ; and killing, by what name soever Sept. 2-6, called, is but work to be done. ■'^^^ So sit these sudden Courts of Wild-Justice, with the Prison- Registers before them ; unwonted wild tumult howling all round ; the Prisoners in dread expectancy within. Swift : a name is called ; bolts jingle, a Prisoner is there. A few questions are put ; swiftly this sudden Jury decides : Royalist Plotter or not ? Clearly not ; in that case, let the Prisoner be enlarged with Vive la Nation. Probably yea ; then still. Let the Prisoner be enlarged, but without Vive la Nation ; or else it may run. Let the Prisoner be conducted to La Force. At La Force again their formula is. Let the Prisoner be con- ducted to the Abbaye — ' To La Force, then ! ' Volunteer bailiffs seize the doomed man ; he is at the outer gate ; ' en- larged,' or ' conducted,' not into La Force, but into a howling sea ; forth, under an arch of wild sabres, axes and pikes ; and sinks, hewn asunder. And another sinks, and another ; and there forms itself a piled heap of corpses, and the kennels begin to run red. Fancy the yells of these men, their faces of sweat and blood ; the crueller shrieks of these women, for there are women too ; and a fellow-mortal hurled naked into it all ! Jourgniac de Saint-Meard has seen battle, has seen an effervescent Regiment du Roi in mutiny ; but the bravest heart may quail at this. The Swiss Prisoners, remnants of the Tenth of August, ' clasped each other spasmodically, and hung back ; gray veterans crying : " Mercy, Messieurs ; ah, mercy ! " But there was no mercy. Suddenly, however, one of these men steps forward. He had on a blue frockcoat ; he seemed about thirty, his stature was above common, his look noble and martial. " I go first," said he, " since it must be so : adieu ! " Then dashing his hat sharply behind him : " Which way ? " cried he to the Brigands : " Show it me, then." They open the folding gate ; he is announced to the multitude. He stands a moment motionless ; then plunges forth among the pikes, and dies of a thousand wounds.' ^ Man after man is cut down ; the sabres need sharpening, the killers refresh themselves from wine-jugs. Onward and onward goes the butchery ; the loud yells wearying down into bass growls. A sombre-faced shifting multitude looks on ; in dull approval, or dull disapproval ; in dull recognition that ' F^limhesi, £a V&iU tout enti^re (ut supra), p. 173. it DANTON. IN PARIS 177 it is Necessity. 'An Anglais in drab greatcoat ' was seen, or CHAP. IV seemed to be seen, serving liquor from his own dram-bottle ; Sept. 2-6, — for what purpose, ' if not set on by Pitt,' Satan and himself ^''^^ know best ! Witty Dr. Moore grew sick on approaching, and turned into another street.^ — Quick enough goes this Jury-Court ; and rigorous. The brave are not spared, nor the beautiful, nor the weak. Old M. de Montmorin, the Minister's Brother, was acquitted by the Tribunal of the Seventeenth ; and conducted back, elbowed by howling gal- leries ; but is not acquitted here. Princess de Lamballe has lain down on bed : ' Madame, you are to be removed to the Abbaye.' ' I do not wish to remove ; I am well enough here.' There is a need-be for removing. She wiU arrange her dress a little, then ; rude voices answer, ' You have not far to go.' She too is led to the hell-gate ; a manifest Queen's-Friend. She shivers back, at the sight of bloody sabres ; but there is no return : Onwards ! That fair hind head is cleft with the axe ; the neck is severed. That fair body is cut in fragments ; with indignities, and obscene horrors of mustachio grands- levres, which human nature would fain find incredible, — ^which shall be read in the original language only. She was beautiful, she was good, she had known no happiness. Young hearts, generation after generation, will think with themselves : O worthy of worship, thou king-descended, god-descended, and poor sister-woman ! why was not I there ; and some Sword Balmung or Thor's Hammer in my hand ? Her head is fixed on a pike ; paraded under the windows of the Temple ; that a still more hated, a Marie Antoinette, may see. One Muni- cipal, in the Temple with the Royal Prisoners at the moment, said, ' Look out.' Another eagerly whispered, ' Do not look.' The circuit of the Temple is guarded, in these hours, by a long stretched tricolor riband : terror enters, and the clangour of infinite tumult ; hitherto not regicide, though that too may come. But it is more edifying to note what thrillings of affection, what fragments of wild virtues turn up in this shaking asunder of man's existence ; for of these too there is a proportion. Note old Marquis Cazotte : he is doomed to die ; but his young Daughter clasps him in her arms, with an inspiration of eloquence, with a love which is stronger than very death : ^ Moore'.s [ournal, i. 185-95. VOL. II. M the 178 SEPTEMBER BOOK I the heart of the killers themselves is touched by it ; the old Sept. 2, 1792 man is spared. Yet he was guilty, if plotting for his King is guilt : in ten days more, a Court of Law condemned him, and he had to die elsewhere ; bequeathing his Daughter a lock of his old gray hair. Or note old M. de Sombreuil, who also had a Daughter : — My Father is not an Aristocrat : O good gentle- men, I will swear it, and testify it, and in all ways prove it ; we are not ; we hate Aristocrats ! ' Wilt thou drink Aristocrats' blood ? ' The man lifts blood (if universal Rumour can be credited) ; ^ the poor maiden does drink. ' This Sombreuil is innocent, then ! ' Yes, indeed, — and now note, most of all, how the bloody pikes, at this news, do rattle to the ground ; and the tiger-yells become bursts of jubilee over a brother saved ; and the old man and his daughter are clasped to bloody bosoms, with hot tears ; and borne home in triimiph of Vive la Nation, the killers refusing even money ! Does it seem strange, this temper of theirs ? It seems very certain, well proved by Royalist testimony in other instances ; ^ and very significant. CHAPTER V A TRILOGY As all Delineation, in these ages, were it never so Epic, ' speaking itself and not singing itself,' must either found on Belief and provable Fact, or have no foundation at all (nor, except as floating cobweb, any existence at all), — ^the Reader will perhaps prefer to take a glance with the very eyes of eye- witnesses ; and see, in that way, for himself, how it was. Brave Jourgniac, innocent Abbe Sicard, judicious Advocate Maton, these, greatly compressing themselves, shall speak, each an instant. Jourgniac's Agony of Thirty-eight Hours went through ' above a hundred editions,' though intrinsically a poor work. Some portion of it may here go through above the hundred- and-first, for want of a better. ' Towards seven o'clock ' (Sunday night at the Abbaye ; for ^ Dulaure, Esquisses historiques dcs principaux ivinemens de la Rivolution, ii. 2o6 (cited in Montgaillard, iii. 205). ^ Bertrand-Moleville {Mim. particuliers^ ii. 213), etc. etc. Jourgnaic A TRILOGY 179 Jourgnaic goes by dates) : ' We saw two men enter, their CHAP. V hands bloody and armed with sabres ; a turnkey, with a torch, Sept. 2, 1792 hgbted them ; he pointed to the bed of the unfortunate Swiss, Reding. ' Reding spoke with a dying voice. One of them paused ; but the other cried, Allans done ; hfted the imfor- tunate man ; carried him out on his back to the street. He was massacred there. 'We all looked at one another in silence, we clasped each other's hands. Motionless, with fixed eyes, we gazed on the pavement of our prison ; on which lay the moonlight, chequered with the triple stancheons of our windows.' ' Three in the morning : They were breaking-in one of the prison-doors. We at first thought they were coming to kill us in our room ; but heard, by voices on the staircase, that it was a room where some Prisoners had barricaded themselves. They were all butchered there, as we shortly gathered.' ' Ten o'clock : The Abbe Lenfant and the Abbe de Chapt- Rastignac appeared in the pulpit of the Chapel, which was our prison ; they had entered by a door from the stairs. They said to us that our end was at hand ; that we must compose ourselves, and receive their last blessing. An electric move- ment, not to be defined, threw us aU on our knees, and we received it. These two white-haired old men, blessing us from their place above ; death hovering over our heads, on all hands environing us ; the moment is never to be forgotten. Half an hour after, they were both massacred, and we heard their cries.' ^ — Thus Jourgniac in his Agony in the Abbaye : how it ended with Jourgniac, we shall see anon. But now let the good Maton speak, what he, over in La Force, in the same hours, is suffering and witnessing. This Resurrection by him is greatly the best, the least theatrical of these Pamphlets ; and stands testing by documents*: ' Towards seven o'clock,' on Sunday night, ' prisoners were called frequently, and they did not reappear. Each of us reasoned, in his own way, on this singularity : but our ideas became calm, as we persuaded ourselves that the Memorial I had drawn up for the National Assembly was producing effect.' ' At one in the morning, the grate which led to our quarter opened anew. Four men in uniform, each with a drawn sabre ^ Jourgniac Saint-Meard, Man Agonie de IrenU-huit heures (reprinted in Hist, Pari. xviii. 103-35). and 180 SEPTEMBER BOOK I and blazing torch, came up to our corridor, preceded by a Sept. 2, 1792 turnkey ; and entered an apartment close to ours, to investigate a box there, which we heard them break up. This done, they stept into the gallery, and questioned the man Cuissa, to know where Lamotte ' (Necklace's Widower) ' was. Lamotte, they said, had some months ago, under pretext of a treasure he knew of, swindled a sum of three-hundred livres from one of them, inviting him to dinner for that purpose. The wretched Cuissa, now in their hands, who indeed lost his life this night, answered trembling. That he remembered the fact well, but could not tell what was become of Lamotte. Deter- mined to find Lamotte and confront him with Cuissa, they rummaged, along with this latter, through various other apart- ments ; but without effect, for we heard them say : " Come search among the corpses, then ; for, nom de Dieu ! we must find where he is." ' At this same time, I heard Louis Bardy, the Abbe Bardy's name called : he was brought out ; and directly massacred, as I learnt. He had been accused, along with his concubine, five or six years before, of having murdered and cut in pieces his own Brother, Auditor of the Chawbre des Comptes of Mont- pelier ; but had by his subtlety, his dexterity, nay his eloquence, outwitted the judges, and escaped. ' One may fancy what terror these words, " Come search among the corpses, then," had thrown me into. I saw nothing for it now but resigning myself to die. I wrote my last-will ; concluding it by a petition and adjuration, that the paper should be sent to its address. Scarcely had I quitted the pen, when there came two other men in uniform ; one of them, whose arm and sleeve up to the very shoulder, as well as his sabre, were covered with blood, said. He was as weary as a hod- man that had been beating plaster.' ' Baudin de la Chenaye was called ; sixty years of virtues could not save him. They said, A VAbhaye : he passed the fatal outer-gate ; gave a cry of terror, at sight of the heaped corpses ; covered his eyes with his hands, and died of innumer- able wounds. At every new opening of the grate, I thought I should hear my own name called, and see Rossignol enter.' ' I flung off my nightgown and cap ; I put on a coarse un- washed shirt, a worn frock without waistcoat, an old round hat; A TRILOGY 181 hat ; these things I had sent for, some days ago, in the fear CHAP. V of what might happen. Sept. 4, 1792 ' The rooms of this corridor had been all emptied but ours. We were four together ; whom they seemed to have forgotten : we addressed our prayers in common to the Eternal to be delivered from this peril.' ' Baptiste the turnkey came up by himself, to see us. I took him by the hands ; I conjured him to save us ; promised him a hundred louis, if he would conduct me home. A noise coming from the grates made him hastily withdraw. ' It was the noise of some dozen or fifteen men, armed to the teeth ; as we, lying flat to escape being seen, could see from our windows. " Up-stairs ! " said they : " Let not one remain." I took out my penknife ; I considered where I should strike myself,' — but reflected ' that the blade was too short,' and also ' on religion.' Finally, however, between seven and eight o'clock in the morning, enter four men with bludgeons and sabres ! — ' To one of whom Gerard my comrade whispered, earnestly, apart. During their colloquy I searched everywhere for shoes, that I might lay off the Advocate pumps {pantoufles de Palais) I had on,' but could find none. — ' Constant, called le Sauvage, Gerard, and a third whose name escapes me, they let clear off : as for me, four sabres were crossed over my breast, and they led me down. I was brought to their bar ; to the Personage with the scarf, who sat as judge there. He was a lame man, of tall lank stature. He recognised me on the streets and spoke to me, seven months after. I have been assured that he was son of a retired attorney, and named Chepy. Crossing the Court called Des Nourrices, I saw Manuel haranguing in tricolor scarf.' The trial, as we see, ends in acquittal and resurrection} Poor Sicard, from the violon of the Abbaye, shall say but a few words ; true-looking, though tremulous. Towards three in the morning, the killers bethink them of this little violon ; and knock from the court. ' I tapped gently, trembling lest the murderers might hear, on the opposite door, where the Section Committee was sitting : they answered gruffly, that they had no key. There were three of us in this violon ; my companions thought they perceived a kind of loft overhead. ' Maton de la Varenne, Ma Resurrection (in Hist. Pari, xviii. 135-56). But 182 SEPTEMBER BOOK I But it was very high ; only one of us could reach it by mounting Sept. i, 1792 on the shoulders of both the others. One of them said to me, that my life was usefuller than theirs : I resisted, they insisted : no denial ! I fling myself on the neck of these two deliverers ; never was scene more touching. I mount on the shoulders of the first, then on those of the second', finally on the loft ; and address to my two comrades the expression of a soul over- whelmed with natural emotions.' ^ The two generous companions, we rejoice to find, did not perish. But it is time that Jourgniac de Saint-Meard should speak his last words, and end this singular trilogy. The night had become day ; and the day has again become night. Jourgniac, worn down with uttermost agitation, was fallen asleep, and had a cheering dream : he has also contrived to make acquaintance with one of the volunteer bailiffs, and spoken in native Provengal with him. On Tuesday, about one in the morning, his Agony is reaching its crisis. ' By the glare of two torches, I now descried the terrible tribunal, where lay my life or my death. The President, in gray coat, with a sabre at his side, stood leaning with his hands against a table, on which were papers, an inkstand, tobacco- pipes and bottles. Some ten persons were around, seated or standing ; two of whom had jackets and aprons : others were sleeping stretched on benches. Two men, in bloody shirts, guarded the door of the place ; an old turnkey had his hand on the lock. In front of the President three men held a Prisoner, who might be about sixty ' (or seventy : he was old Marshal Maille, of the Tuileries and August Tenth). ' They stationed me in a corner ; my guards crossed their sabres on my breast. I looked on all sides for my Provengal : two National Guards, one of them drunk, presented some appeal from the Section of Croix Rouge in favour of the Prisoner ; the Man in Gray answered : " They are useless, these appeals for traitors." Then the Prisoner exclaimed : " It is frightful ; your judgment is a murder." The President answered : " My hands are washed of it ; take M. Maill^ away." They drove him into the street ; where, through the opening of the door, I saw him massacred. ' The President sat down to write ; registering, I suppose, ^ Abb6 Sicard, Relation aclress4e d. un de ses amis (in Hist. Pari, xviii. 98-103). thie A TRILOGY 183 the name of this one whom they had finished ; then I heard CHAP. V him say : " Another, A un autre ! " Sept. 4, 1792 ' Behold me then haled before this swift and bloody judgment- bar, where the best protection was to have no protection, and all resources of ingenuity became null if they were not founded on truth. Two of my guards held me each by a hand, the third by the collar of my coat. " Your name, your profes- sion ? " said the President. " The smallest lie ruins you," added one of the Judges. — " My name is Jourgniac Saint- Meard ; I have served, as an officer, twenty years : and I appear at your tribunal with the assurance of an innocent man, who therefore will not lie." — " We shall see that," said the President : " Do you know why you are arrested ? " — " Yes, Monsieur le President ; I am accused of editing the Journal Be la Cow et de la Ville. But I hope to prove the falsity." ' — But no ; Jourgniac's proof of the falsity, and defence generally, though of excellent result as a defence, is not interest- ing to read. It is longwinded ; there is a loose theatricality in the reporting of it, which does not amount to unveracity, yet which tends that way. We shall suppose him successful, beyond hope, in proving and disproving ; and skip largely, — to the catastrophe, almost at two steps. ' " But after all," said one of the Judges, " there is no smoke without kindling ; tell us why they accuse you of that." — " I was about to do so " ' — Jourgniac does so ; with more and more success. ' " Nay," continued I, " they accuse me even of recruiting for the Emigrants ! " At these words there arose a general murmur. " O Messieurs, Messieurs," I exclaimed, raising my voice, " it is my turn to speak ; I beg M. le President to have the kindness to maintain it for me ; I never needed it more." — " True enough, true enough," said almost all the Judges with a laugh : " Silence ! " ' While they were examining the testimonials I had pro- duced, a new Prisoner was brought in, and placed before the President. " It was one Priest more," they ^id, " whom they had ferreted out of the Chapelle." After very few questions : " A la Force ! " He flung his breviary on the table ; was hurled forth, and massacred. I reappeared before the tribunal. ' " You tell us always," cried one of the Judges, with a tone of impatience, ' that you are not this, that you are not that; 184 SEPTEMBER BOOK I that ; what are you, then ? " — " I was an open Royalist." Sept. 4, 1792 — There arose a general murmur ; which was miraculously appeased by another of the men, who had seemed to take an interest in me : " We are not here to judge opinions," said he, " but to judge the results of them." Could Rousseau and Voltaire both in one, pleading for me, have said better ? — " Yes, Messieurs," cried I, " always till the Tenth of August I was an open Royalist. Ever since the Tenth of August that cause has been finished. I am a Frenchman, true to my country. I was always a man of honour." ' ' " My soldiers never distrusted me. Nay, two days before that business of Nanci, when their suspicion of their officers was at its height, they chose me for commander, to lead them to Luneville, to get back the prisoners of the Regiment Mestre- de-Camp, and seize General Malseigne." ' Which fact there is, most luckily, an individual present who by a certain token can confirm. ' The President, this cross-questioning being over, took off his hat and said : " I see nothing to suspect in this man : I am for granting him his liberty. Is that your vote ? " To which all the Judges answered : " Oui, Oui ; it is just ! " ' And there arose vivats within doors and without ; ' escort of three,' amid shoutings and embracings : thus Jourgniac escaped from jury-trial and the jaws of death.^ Maton and Sicard did, either by trial and no bill found, lank President Chepy finding ' absolutely nothing,' or else by evasion, and new favour of Moton the brave watchmaker, likewise escape ; and were embraced and wept over ; weeping in return, as they well might. Thus they three, in wondrous trilogy, or triple soliloquy : uttering simultaneously, through the dread night-watches, their Night-thoughts, — grown audible to us ! They Three are become audible : but the other ' Thousand and Eighty- nine, of whom Two-hundred and two were Priests,' who also had Night-thoughts, remain inaudible ; choked for ever in black Death. Heard only of President Chepy and the Man in Gray ! — ' Mon Agonie (ut supra, in Hist. Pari, xviii. 128). Chapter VI THE CIRCULAR 185 CHAPTER VI THE CIRCULAR But the Constituted Authorities, all this while ? The Legislative Assembly ; the Six Ministers ; the Townhall ; Santerre with the National Guard ? — It is very curious to think what a City is. Theatres, to the nximber of some twenty- three, were open every night during these prodigies ; while right-arms here grew weary with slaying, right-arms there were twiddledeeing on melodious catgut : at the very instant when Abbe Sicard was clambering up his second pair of shoulders three-men high, five hundred thousand human individuals were lying horizontal, as if nothing were amiss. As for the poor Legislative, the sceptre had departed from it. The Legislative did send Deputation to the Prisons, to these Street-Courts ; and poor M. Dusaulx did harangue there ; but produced no conviction whatsoever : nay at last, as he continued haranguing, the Street-Court interposed, not without threats ; and he had to cease, and withdraw. This is the same poor worthy old M. Dusaulx who told, or indeed almost sang (though with cracked voice), the Taking of the Bastille, to our satisfaction, long since. He was wont to announce himself, on such and on all occasions, as the Trans- lator of Juvenal. ' Good Citizens, you see before you a man who loves his country, who is the Translator of Juvenal,' said he once. — ' Juvenal ? ' interrupts Sansculottism : ' Who the devil is Juvenal ? One of your sacris Aristocrates ? To the Lanterne ! ' From an orator of this kind, conviction was not to be expected. The Legislative had much ado to save one of its own Members, or ex-Members, Deputy Jounneau, who chanced to be lying in arrest for mere Parliamentary delin- quencies, in these Prisons. As for poor old Dusaulx and Company, they returned to the Salle de Manege, saying, ' It was dark ; and they could not see well what was going on.' ^ Roland writes indignant messages, in the name of Order, Humanity and the Law ; but there is no Force at his disposal. Santerre's National Force seems lazy to rise : though he made ' Moniteur, Debate of 2d September 1792. requisitions. CHAP. VI Sept. 2-6, 1792 186 SEPTEMBER BOOK 1 requisitions, he says, — ^which always dispersed again. Nay Sept. 2-6, did not we, with Advocate Maton's eyes, see ' men in uniform ' ^^^2 too, with their ' sleeves bloody to the shoulder ' ? Petion goes in tricolor scarf ; speaks ' the austere language of the law ' : the killers give up, while he is there ; when his back is turned, recommence. Manuel too in scarf we, with Maton's eyes, transiently saw haranguing, in the Court called of Nurses, Cour des Nourrices. On the other hand, cruel Billaud, like- wise in scarf, ' with that small puce coat and black wig we are used to on him,' ^ audibly delivers, ' standing among corpses,' at the Abbaye, a short but ever-memorable harangue, reported in various phraseology, but always to this purpose : ' Brave Citizens, you are extirpating the Enemies of Liberty : you are at your duty. A grateful Commune and Country would wish to recompense you adequately ; but cannot, for you know its want of funds. Whoever shall have worked (travailU) in a Prison shall receive a draft of one louis, payable by our cashier. Continue your work.' ^ The Constituted Authorities are of yesterday : all pulling different ways : there is properly no Constituted Authority, but every man is his own King ; and all are kinglets, belligerent, allied, or armed-neutral, without king over them. ' O everlasting infamy,' exclaims Montgaillard, ' that Paris stood looking on in stupor for four days, and did not interfere ! ' Very desirable indeed that Paris had interfered ; yet not unnatural that it stood even so, looking on in stupor. Paris is in death-panic, the enemy and gibbets at its door : whoso- ever in Paris has the heart to front death, finds it more pressing to do it fighting the Prussians, than fighting the killers of Aristocrats. Indignant abhorrence, as in Roland, may be here ; gloomy sanction, premeditation or not, as in Marat and Committee of Salvation, may be there ; dull disapproval, dull approval, and acquiescence in Necessity and Destiny, is the general temper. The Sons of Darkness, ' two-hundred or so,' risen from their lurking-places, have scope to do their work. Urged on by fever-frenzy of Patriotism, and the mad- ness of Terror ; — urged on by lucre, and the gold louis of wages ? Nay, not lucre ; for the gold watches, rings, money of the Massacred, are punctually brought to the Townhall, by Killers sans-indispensables, who higgle afterwards for their twenty ' Mih6e Fils (ut supri, in ffisf. Pari, xviii. p. 189). - Montgaillard, iii. 191. shillings THE CIRCULAR 187 shillings of wages ; and Sergent sticking an uncommonly CHAP. VI fine agate on his finger (fully ' meaning to account for it ') Sept. 2-6, becomes -4gaie-Sergent. But the temper, as we say, is dull ^'^^ acquiescence. Not till the Patriotic or Frenetic part of the work is finished for want of material ; and Sons of Darkness, bent clearly on lucre alone, begin wrenching watches and purses, brooches from ladies' necks, ' to equip volunteers,' in daylight, on the streets, — does the temper from dull grow vehement ; does the Constable raise his truncheon, and striking heartily (like a cattle-driver in earnest) beat the ' course of things ' back into its old regulated drove-roads. The Garde- Meuble itself was surreptitiously plundered, on the 17th of the month, to Roland's new horror ; who anew bestirs himself, and is, as Siey^s says, ' the veto of scoundrels,' Roland veto des coquins} — This is the September Massacre, otherwise called ' Severe Justice of the People.' These are the Septemberers {Septem- briseurs) ; a name of some note and lucency, — but lucency of the Nether-fire sort ; very different from that of our Bastille Heroes, who shone, disputable by no Friend of Freedom, as in Heavenly light-radiance : to such phasis of the business have we advanced since then ! The numbers massacred are in the Historical fantasy, ' between two and three thousand ' ; ' or indeed they are ' upwards of six thousand,' for Peltier (in vision) saw them massacring the very patients of the Bicetre Madhouse ' with grape-shot ' ; nay finally they are ' twelve thousand ' and odd hundreds, — ^not more than that.^ In Arithmetical ciphers, and Lists drawn up by accurate Advocate Maton, the number, including two-hundred and two priests, three ' persons unknown,' and ' one thief killed at the Ber- nardins,' is, as above hinted, a Thousand and Eighty-nine, — not less than that. A Thousand and eighty-nine lie dead, ' two-hundred and sixty heaped carcasses on the Pont au Change ' itself ; — among which, Robespierre pleading afterwards will ' nearly weep ' to reflect that there was said to be one slain innocent.^ One ; not two, O thou seagreen Incorruptible ? If so, Themis Sansculotte must be lucky ; for she was brief ! — In the dim Registers of the Townhall, which are preserved to this day, 1 Helen Maria Williams, iii. 27. * See Hist. Pari. xvii. 421, 422. ' Moniteur of 6th November (Debate of Sth November 1793). men 188 SEPTEMBER BOOK I men read, with a certain sickness of heart, items and entries Sept. 3, 1792 not usual in Town Books : ' To workers employed in preserv- ing the salubrity of the air in the Prisons, and persons who presided over these dangerous operations,' so much, — in various items, nearly seven hundred pounds sterling. To carters employed to ' the Burying-grounds of Clamart, Montrouge, and Vaugirard,' at so much a journey, per cart ; this also is an entry. Then so many francs and odd sous ' for the necessary quantity of quick-lime ' ! ^ Carts go along the streets ; full of stript human corpses, thrown pell-mell ; limbs sticking up : — seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold rigour ; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de profundis, Take pity on the Sons of Men ! — Mercier saw it, as he walked down ' the Rue Saint-Jacques from Montrouge, on the morrow of the Massacres ' : but not a Hand ; it was a Foot, — ^which he reckons still more significant, one understands not well why. Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven ? Rushing, like a wild diver, in disgust and despair, towards the depths of Annihilation ? Even there shall His hand find thee, and His right-hand hold thee,— surely for right not for wrong, for good not evil ! ' I saw that Foot,' says Mercier ; ' I shall know it again at the great Day of Judgment, when the Eternal, throned on his thunders, shall judge both Kings and Septemberers.' ^ That a shriek of inarticulate horror rose over this thing, not only from French Aristocrats and Moderates, but from all Europe, and has prolonged itself to the present day, was most natural and right. The thing lay done, irrevocable ; a thing to be counted beside some other things, which lie very black in our Earth's Annals, yet which will not erase there- from. For man, as was remarked, has transcendentalisms in him ; standing, as he does, poor creature, every way ' in the confluence of Infinitudes ' ; a mystery to himself and others : in the centre of two Eternities, of three Immensities, — in the intersection of primeval Light with the everlasting Dark ! — Thus have there been, especially by vehement tempers reduced to a state of desperation, very miserable things done. Sicilian ' £/at des sommes payies par la Commune de Paris (in Hist. Pari, xviii. 231). ^ Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 21. Vespers, THE CIRCULAR 189 Vespers, and ' eight thousand slaughtered in two hours,' are a CHAP. VI known thing. Kings themselves, not in desperation, but only ^®P*' ^' ^^^^ in difficulty, have sat hatching, for year and day (nay De Thou says for seven years), their Bartholomew Business ; and then, at the right moment, also on an Autumn Sunday, this very Bell (they say it is the identical metal) of Saint-Germain I'Auxerrois was set a-pealing — with effect.^ Nay the same black boulder-stones of these Paris Prisons have seen Prison- massacres before now ; men massacring countrymen. Burgun- dies massacring Armagnacs, whom they had suddenly im- prisoned, till, as now, there were piled heaps of carcasses, and the streets ran red ; — the Mayor Petion of the time speaking the austere language of the law, and answered by the Killers, in old French (it is some four hundred years old) : ' Maugri hieu, Sire, — Sir, God's malison on your "justice," your "pity," your " right reason." Cursed be of God whoso shall have pity on these false traitorous Armagnacs, English ; dogs they are ; they have destroyed us, wasted this realm of France, and sold it to the English.' ^ And so they slay, and fling aside the slain, to the extent of ' fifteen hundred and eighteen, among whom are found four Bishops of false and damnable counsel, and two Presidents of Parlement.' For though it is not Satan's world this that we live in, Satan always has his place in it (underground properly) ; and from time to time bursts up. Well may mankind shriek, inarticulately anathematising as they can. There are actions of such emphasis that no shrieking can be too emphatic for them. Shriek ye ; acted have they. Shriek who might in this France, in this Paris Legislative or Paris Townhall, there are Ten Men who do not shriek. A Circular goes out from the Committee of Salut Public, dated 3d of September 1792 ; directed to all Townhalls : a State- paper too remarkable to be overlooked. ' A part of the ferocious conspirators detained in the Prisons,' it says, ' have been put to death by the People ; and we cannot doubt but the whole Nation, driven to the edge of ruin by such endless series of treasons, will make haste to adopt this means of public salvation : and all Frenchmen wiU cry as the men of Paris : We go to fight the enemy ; but we will not leave robbers behind us, to butcher our wives and children.' To which are legibly appended these ' 9th to 13th September 1572 (Dulaure, His/, de Paris, iv. 289). * Dulaure, iii. 494. signatures : 190 SEPTEMBER BOOK I signatures : Panis ; Sergent ; Marat, Friend of the People ; ^ Sept. 9, 1792 with Seven others ; — carried down thereby, in a strange way, to the late remembrance of Antiquarians. We remark, how- ever, that their Circular rather recoiled on themselves. The Townhalls made no use of it ; even the distracted Sansculottes made little ; they only howled and bellowed, but did not bite. At Rheims ' about eight persons ' were killed ; and two after- wards were hanged for doing it. At Lyons, and a few other places, some attempt was made ; but with hardly any effect, being quickly put down. Less fortunate were the Prisoners of Orleans ; was the good Duke de La Rochefoucaidt. He journeying, by quick stages, with his Mother and Wife, towards the Waters of Forges, or some quieter country, was arrested at Gisors ; conducted along the streets, amid effervescing multitudes, and killed dead ' by the stroke of a paving-stone hurled through the coach-window.' Killed as a once Liberal now Aristocrat ; Protector of Priests, Suspender of virtuous Petions, and most unfortunate Hot- grown-cold, detestable to Patriotism. He dies lamented of Europe ; his blood spattering the cheeks of his old Mother, ninety-three years old. As for the Orleans Prisoners, they are State Criminals : Royalist Ministers, Delessarts, Montmorins ; who have been accumulating on the High Court of Orleans, ever since that Tribunal was set up. Whom now it seems good that we should get transferred to our new Paris Court of the Seven- teenth ; which proceeds far quicker. Accordingly hot Fournier from Martinique, Fournier I'Americain, is off, missioned by Constituted Authority ; with stanch National Guards, with Lazouski the Pole ; sparingly provided with road-money. These, through bad quarters, through difficulties, perils, for Authorities cross each other in this time,— do triumphantly bring off the Fifty or Fifty-three Orleans Prisoners, towards Paris ; where a swifter Court of the Seventeenth will do justice on them.^ But lo, at Paris, in the interim, a still swifter and swiftest Court of the Second, and of September, has instituted itself : enter not Paris, or that will judge you ! — ^What shall hot Fournier do ? It was his duty, as volunteer Constable, had he been a perfect character, to guard those men's lives never so Aristocratic, at the expense of his own valuable life ' ffist. Pari. xvii. 433. ^ Ibid, xvii, 434. never THE CIRCULAR 191 never so Sansculottic, till some constituted Court had disposed CHAP. VI of them. But he was an imperfect character and Constable ; S^Pt- ^> 1792 perhaps one of the more imperfect. Hot Foumier, ordered to turn hither by one Authority, to turn thither by another Authority, is in a perplexing multi- plicity of orders ; but finally he strikes off for Versailles. His Prisoners fare in tumbrils, or open carts, himself and Guards riding and marching around : and at the last village, the worthy Mayor of Versailles comes to meet him, anxious that the arrival and locking-up were well over. It is Sunday, the ninth day of the month. Lo, on entering the Avenue of Versailles, what multitudes, stirring, swarming in the Sep- tember sun, under the dull-green September foliage ; the Four-rowed Avenue all humming and swarming, as if the Town had emptied itself ! Our tumbrils roll heavily through the living sea ; the Guards and Fournier making way with ever more difficulty ; the Mayor speaking and gesturing his per- suasivest ; amid the inarticulate growling hum, which growls ever the deeper even by hearing itself growl, not without sharp yelpings here and there : — ^Would to God we were out of this strait place, and wind and separation had cooled the heat, which seems about igniting here ! And yet if the wide Avenue is too strait, what will the Street de Surintendance be, at leaving of the same ? At the corner of Surintendance Street, the compressed yelpings become a continuous yell : savage figures spring on the tumbril-shafts ; first spray of an endless coming tide ! The Mayor pleads, pushes, half-desperate ; is pushed, carried off in men's arms : the savage tide has entrance, has mastery. Amid horrid noise, and tumult as of fierce wolves, the Prisoners sink massacred, — all but some eleven, who escaped into houses, and found mercy. The Prisons, and what other Prisoners they held, were with difficulty saved. The stript clothes are burnt in bonfire ; the corpses lie heaped in the ditch on the morrow morning.^ All France, except it be the Ten Men of the Circular and their people, moans and rages, inarticulately shrieking ; all Europe rings. But neither did Danton shriek ; though, as Minister of Justice, it was more his part to do so. Brawny Danton is in ' Pikes officielles relatives au massacre des Prisonniers a Versailles (in Hist. Pari. xviii. 236-49). the 192 SEPTEMBER BOOK I the breach, as of stormed Cities and Nations ; amid the sweep Sept. 9, 1792 of Tenth-of- August cannon, the rustle of Prussian gallows- ropes, the smiting of September sabres ; destruction all round him, and the rushing-down of worlds : Minister of Justice is his name ; but Titan of the Forlorn Hope, and Enfant Perdu of the Revolution, is his quality, — and the man acts according to that. ' We must put our enemies in fear ! ' Deep fear, is it not, as of its own accord, falling on our enemies ? The Titan of the Forlorn Hope, he is not the man that would swiftest of all prevent its so falling. Forward, thou lost Titan of an Enfant Perdu ; thou must dare, and again dare, and without end dare ; there is nothing left for thee but that ! ' Que mon nom soit fiitri, Let my name be blighted ' : what am I ? The Cause alone is great ; and shaU live, and not perish. — So, on the whole, here too is a Swallower of Formulas ; of still wider gulp than Mirabeau : this Danton, Mirabeau of the Sansculottes. In the September days, this Minister was not heard of as co-operating with strict Roland ; his business might lie elsewhere, — with Brunswick and the H6tel-de-Ville. When applied to by an official person, about the Orleans Prisoners, and the risks they ran, he answered gloomily, twice over, ' Are not these men guilty ? ' — ^When pressed, he ' answered in a terrible voice,' and turned his back.^ A thousand slain in the Prisons ; horrible if you will ; but Brunswick is within a day's journey of us ; and there are Five-and-twenty Millions yet, to slay or to save. Some men have tasks, — frightfuUer than ours ! It seems strange, but is not strange, that this Minister of Moloch-Justice, when any suppliant for a friend's life got access to him, was found to have human compassion ; and yielded and granted ' always ' ; ' neither did one personal enemy of Danton perish in these days.' ^ To shriek, we say, when certain things are acted, is proper and unavoidable. Nevertheless, articulate speech, not shriek- ing, is the faculty of man : when speech is not yet possible, let there be, with the shortest delay, at least — silence. Silence, accordingly, in this forty-fourth year of the business, and eighteen hundred and thirty-sixth of an ' Era called Christian as lucus a non,' is the thing we recommend and practise. Nay, instead of shrieking more, it were perhaps edifying to remark, ' Biographic des Ministres, p. 97. ^ Ibid. p. 103. on IN ARGONNE 193 on the other side, what a singular thing Customs (in Latin, CHAP. VI (Mores) are ; and how fitly the Virtue, Vir-tus, Manhood or Sept. 9, 1792 Worth, that is in a man, is called his Morality or Customari- ness. Fell Slaughter, one of the most authentic products of the Pit you would say, once give it Customs, becomes War, with Laws of War ; and is Customary and Moral enough ; and red individuals carry the tools of it girt round their haunches, not without an air of pride, — ^which do thou nowise blame. WMle, see ! so long as it is but dressed in hodden or russet ; and Revolution, less frequent than War, has not yet got its Laws of Revolution, but the hodden or russet individuals are Uncustomary — O shrieking beloved brother blockheads of Man- kind, let us close those wide mouths of ours ; let us cease shrieking, and begin considering ! CHAPTER VII SEPTEMBER IN AUGONNE Plain, at any rate, is one thing : that the fear, whatever of fear those Aristocrat enemies might need, has been brought about. The matter is getting serious, then ! Sansculottism too has become a Fact, and seems minded to assert itself as such ? This huge mooncalf of Sansculottism, staggering about, as young calves do, is not mockable only, and soft like another calf ; but terrible too, if you prick it ; and, through its hideous nostrUs, blows fire ! — Aristocrats, with pale panic in their hearts, fly towards covert ; and a light rises to them over several things ; or rather a confused transition towards light, whereby for the moment darkness is only darker than ever. But what will become of this France ? Here is a question ! France is dancing its desert- waltz, as Sahara does when the winds waken ; in whirl-blasts twenty-five millions in number ; waltz- ing towards Townhalls, Aristocrat Prisons, and Election Com- mittee-rooms ; towards Brunswick and the frontiers ; towards a New Chapter of Universal History ; if indeed it be not the Finis, and winding-up of that ! In Election Committee-rooms there is now no dubiety ; but VOL. II. N the 194 SEPTEMBER BOOK I the work goes bravely along. The Convention is getting chosen, Sept. 1792 — really in a decisive spirit ; in the Townhall we already date First year of the Republic. Some Two-hundred of our best Legislators may be re-elected, the Mountain bodily: Robespierre, with Mayor Petion, Buzot, Curate Gregoire, Rabaut, some three-score Old-Constituents ; though we had once only ' thirty voices.' All these ; and along with them, friends long known to Revolutionary fame : Camille Desmoulins, though he stutters in speech : Manuel, Tallien and Company ; Journalists Gorsas, Carra, Mercier, Louvet of Fauhlas ; Clootz Speaker of Mankind ; CoUot d'Herbois, tear- ing a passion to rags ; Fabre d'Eglantine, speculative Pamphle- teer ; Legendre, the solid butcher ; nay Marat, though rural France can hardly believe it, or even believe that there is a Marat, except in print. Of Minister Danton, who will lay down his ministry for a Membership, we need not speak. Paris is fervent ; nor is the Country wanting to itself. Barbaroux, Rebecqui, and fervid Patriots are coming from Marseilles. Seven-hundred and forty-five men (or indeed forty-nine, for Avignon now sends four) are gathering : so many are to meet ; not so many are to part ! Attorney Carrier from Aurillac, Ex-Priest Lebon from Arras, these shall both gain a name. Mountainous Auvergne re-elects her Romme ; hardy tiller of the soil, once Mathematical Pro- fessor ; who, unconscious, carries in petto a remarkable New Calendar, with Messidors, Pluvioses, and such-like ; — and having given it well forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman. Sieyes Old-Constituent comes ; to make New Constitutions as BUZOT. IN ARGONNE 195 as many as wanted : for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious CHAP. VII eyes, he will cower low in many an emergency, and find silence ^^pt. 1792 safest. Young Saint-Just is coming, deputed by Aisne in the North ; more like a Student than a Senator ; not four-and- twenty yet ; who has written Books ; a youth of slight stature, with mild mellow voice, enthusiast olive-complexion and long black hair. Feraud, from the far valley D'Aure in the folds of the Pyrenees, is coming ; an ardent Republican ; doomed to fame, at least in death. All manner of Patriot men are coming : Teachers, Husband- men, Priests and Ex-Priests, Traders, Doctors ; above all. Talkers, or the Attorney species. Man-midwives, as Levas- seur of the Sarthe, are not wanting. Nor Artists : gross David, with the swoln cheek, has long painted, with genius in a state of convulsion ; and will now legislate. The swoln cheek, choking his words in the birth, totally disqualifies him as an orator ; but his pencil, his head, his gross hot heart, with genius in a state of convulsion, will be there. A man bodily and mentally swoln-cheeked, disproportionate ; flabby- large, instead of great ; weak withal as in a state of convul- sion, not strong in a state of composure : so let him play his part. Nor are naturalised Benefactors of the Species for- gotten : Priestley, elected by the Orne Department, but de- clining ; Paine the rebellious Needleman, by the Pas de Calais, who accepts. Few Nobles come, and yet not none. Paul-Frangois Barras, ' noble as the Barrases, old as the rocks of Provence ' ; he is one. The reckless, shipwrecked man : flung ashore on the coast of the Maldives long ago, while sailing and soldiering as Indian Fighter : flung ashore since then, as hungry Parisian pleasure-hunter and half-pay, on many a Circe. Island, with temporary enchantment, temporary conversion into beasthood and hoghood ;— the remote Var Department has now sent him hither. A man of heat and haste ; defective in utter- ance ; defective indeed in anything to utter ; yet not without a certain rapidity of glance, a certain swift transient courage ; who in these times. Fortune favouring, may go far. He is tall, handsome to the eye, ' only the complexion a little yellow ' ; but ' with a robe of purple, with a scarlet cloak and plume of tricolor, on occasions of solemnity,' the man will look well.^ ' DicHonnaire dcs Homines Marquans, § Barras. Lepelletier 196 SEPTEMBER BOOK I Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, Old-Constituent, is a kind of noble, Sept. 1792 an(j of enormous wealth ; he too has come hither : — to have the Pain of Death abolished ? Hapless Ex-Parlementeer ! Nay among our Sixty Old-Constituents, see Philippe d'Orleans, a Prince of the Blood ! Not now D^Orleans : for. Feudalism being swept from the world, he demands of his worthy friends the Electors of Paris, to have a new name of their choosing ; whereupon Procureur Manuel, like an antithetic literary man. PAUL BARRAS. recommends Equality, Egalite. A Philippe Egalite therefore will sit ; seen of the Earth and Heaven. Such a Convention is gathering itself together. Mere angry poultry in moulting season ; whom Brunswick's grenadiers and cannoneers will give short account of. Would the weather as Bertrand is always praying, only mend a little ! ^ In vain, O Bertrand ! The weather will not mend a whit : nay even if it did ? Dumouriez Polymetis, though Bertrand ' Bertrand-Moleville, Mimoires, ii. 225. knows IN ARGONNE 197 knows it not, started from brief slumber at Sedan, on that CHAP. VII morning of the 29th of August ; with stealthiness, with Sept. 1792 promptitude, audacity. Some three mornings after that, Brunswick, opening wide eyes, perceives the Passes of the Argonne all seized ; blocked with felled trees, fortified with camps ; and that it is a most shifty swift Dumouriez this, who has outwitted him ! The manoeuvre may cost Brunswick ' a loss of three weeks,' very fatal in these circumstances. A Mountain-wall of forty miles lying between him and Paris : which he should have preoccupied ; — which how now to get possession of ? Alsp the rain it raineth every day ; and we are in a hungry Cham- pagne Pouilleuse, a land flowing only with ditch-water. How to cross this Mountain-wall of the Argonne ; or what in the world to do with it ? — There are marchings and wet splashings by steep paths, with sackerments and guttural interjections ; forcings of Argonne Passes,— which unhappily will not force. Through the woods, volleying War reverberates, like huge gong-music, or Moloch's kettledrum, borne by the echoes ; swoln torrents boil angrily round the foot of rocks, floating pale carcasses of men. In vain ! Islettes Village, with its church-steeple, rises intact in the Mountain-pass, between the embosoming heights ; your forced marches and climbings have become forced slidings and tumblings back. From the hill- tops thou seest nothing but dumb crags, and endless wet moaning woods ; the Clermont Vache (huge cow that she is) disclosing herself ^ at intervals ; flinging-off her cloud-blanket, and soon taking it on again, drowned in the pouring Heaven. The Argonne Passes will not force : you must skirt the Argonne : go round by the end of it. But fancy whether the Emigrant Seigneurs have not got their brilliancy dulled a little ; whether that ' Foot Regiment in red-facings with nankeen trousers ' could be in field-day order ! In place of gasconading, a sort of desperation, and hydrophobia from excess of water, is threatening to supervene. Young Prince de Ligne, son of that brave literary De Ligne the Thundergod of Dandies, fell backwards ; shot dead in Grand-Pre, the Northmost of the Passes : Brunswick is skirt- ing and rounding, laboriously, by the extremity of the South. Four days ; days of a rain as of Noah, — without fire, without ^ See Helen Maria Williams, Letters, iii. 79-8i. food! 198 SEPTEMBER BOOK I food ! For fire you cut down green trees, and produce smoke ; Sept. 1792 for food you eat green grapes, and produce colic, pestilential dysentery, oXeKovTo Be XaoL And the Peasants assassinate us, they do not join us ; shrill women cry shame on us, threaten to draw their very scissors on us ! O ye hapless dulled-bright Seigneurs, and hydrophobic splashed Nankeens ; — but O, ten times more, ye poor sackermenting ghastly-visaged Hessians and Hulans, fallen on your backs ; who had no call to die there, except compulsion and three-halfpence a-day ! Nor has Mrs. Le Blanc of the Golden Arm a good time of it, in her bower of dripping rushes. Assassinating Peasants are hanged ; Old- Constituent Honourable Members, though of venerable age, ride in carts with their hands tied : these are the woes of war. Thus they ; sprawling and wriggling, far and wide, on the slopes and passes of the Argonne ; — a loss to Brunswick of five-and-twenty disastrous days. There is wriggling and struggling ; facing, backing and right-about facing ; as the positions shift, and the Argonne gets partly rounded, partly forced : — but still Diunouriez, force him, round him as you will, sticks like a rooted fixture on the ground ; fixture with many hinges ; wheeling now this way, now that ; showing always new front, in the most unexpected manner: nowise consenting to take himself away. Recruits stream up on him : full of heart ; yet rather difficult to deal with. Behind Grand- Pre, for example, Grand-Pre which is on the wrong-side of the Argonne, for we are now forced and rounded, — the full heart, in one of those wheelings and showings of new front, did as it were overset itself, as full hearts are liable to do ; and there rose a shriek of sauve qui pent, and a death-panic which had nigh ruined all ! So that the General had to come galloping ; and, with thunder-words, with gesture, stroke of drawn sword even, check and rally, and bring back the sense of shame ; ^ — nay to seize the first shriekers and ringleaders ; ' shave their heads and eyebrows,' and pack them forth into the world as a sign. Thus too (for really the rations are short, and wet camping with hungry stomach brings bad humour) there is like to be mutiny. Whereupon again Dumouriez ' arrives at the head of their line, with his staff, and an escort of a hundred hussars. He had placed some squadrons behind them, the artillery in front ; he said to them : "As for you, for I will ■* Dumouriez, Minioins, iii. 29. neither IN ARGONNE 199 neither call you citizens, nor soldiers, nor my men {ni mes CHAP. VII enfans), you see before you this artillery, behind you this Sept. 1792 cavalry. You have dishonoured yourselves by crimes. If you aftiend, and grow to behave like this brave Army which you have the honour of belonging to, you will find in me a good father. But plunderers and assassins I do not suffer here. At the smallest mutiny I will have you shivered in pieces {hacker en pieces). Seek out the Scoundrels that are among you, and dismiss them yourselves ; I hold you responsible for them." ' 1 Patience, O Dumouriez ! This uncertain heap of shriekers, mutineers, were they once drilled and inured, will become a phalanxed mass of Fighters ; and wheel and whirl, to order, swiftly like the wind or the whirlwind : tanned mustachio- figures ; often bare-foot, even bare-backed ; with sinews of iron ; who require only bread and gunpowder : very Sons of Fire, the adroitest, hastiest, hottest ever seen perhaps since Attila's time. They may conquer and overrun amazingly, much as that same AttUa did ; — whose Attila's-Camp and Battlefield thou now seest, on this very ground ; ^ who, after sweeping bare the world, was, with difficulty, and days of tough fighting, checked here by Roman ^tius and Fortune ; and his dust-cloud made to vanish in the East again ! — Strangely enough, in this shrieking Confusion of a Soldiery, which we saw long since fallen all suicidally out of square, in suicidal collision, — at Nanci, or on the streets of Metz, where brave Bouille stood with drawn sword ; and which has collided and ground itself to pieces worse and worse ever since, down now to such a state : in this shrieking Confusion, and not elsewhere, lies the first germ of returning Order for France ! Round which, we say, poor France nearly all ground down STiicidaUy likewise into rubbish and Chaos, wUl be glad to rally ; to begin growing, and new-shaping her inorganic dust ; very slowly, through centuries, through Napoleons, Louis- Philippes, and other the like media and phases, — into a new, infinitely preferable France, we can hope ! — These wheelings and movements in the region of the Argonne, which are all faithfully described by Dimiouriez himself, and more interesting to us than Hoyle's or Pbilidor's best Game ^ Dumouriez, Mimoirts, iii. 55. ^ Helen Maria Williams, iii. 32. of 200 SEPTEMBER BOOK I of Chess, let us nevertheless, O Reader, entirely omit ; — and Sept. 20, hasten to remark two things : the first a minute private, the second a large public thing. Our minute private thing is : the presence, in the Prussian host, of a certain Man, belonging to the sort called Immortal ; who, in days since then, is becoming visible more and more in that character, as the Transitory more and more vanishes : for from of old it was remarked that when the Gods appear among men, it is seldom in recognisable shape ; thus Admetus's neatherds give Apollo a draught of their goatskin whey-bottle (well if they do not give him strokes with their oxrungs), not dreaming that he is the Sungod ! This man's name is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He is Herzog Weimar's Minister, come with the small contingent of Weimar ; to do insignificant unmilitary duty here ; very irrecognisable to nearly all ! He stands at present, with drawn bridle, on the height near Sainte-Menehould, making an experiment on the ' cannon-fever ' ; having ridden thither against persuasion, into the dance and firing of the cannon- balls, with a scientific desire to understand what that same cannon-fever may be : ' The sound of them,' says he, ' is curious enough ; as if it were compounded of the humming of tops, the gurgling of water and the whistle of birds. By degrees you get a very uncommon sensation ; which can only be described by similitude. It seems as if you were in some place extremely hot, and at the same time were completely penetrated by the heat of it ; so that you feel as if you and this element you are in were perfectly on a par. The eye- sight loses nothing of its strength or distinctness ; and yet it is as if all things had got a kind of brown-red colour, which makes the situation and the objects still more impressive on you.' 1 This is the cannon-fever, as a World-Poet feels it. — A man entirely irrecognisable ! In whose irrecognisable head, mean- while, there verily is the spiritual counterpart (and call it complement) of this same huge Death- Birth of the World ; which now effectuates itself, outwardly in the Argonne, in such cannon-thunder ; inwardly, in the irrecognisable head, quite otherwise than by thunder ! Mark that man, O Reader, as the memorablest of all the memorable in this Argonne Campaign. What we say of him is not dream, nor flourish ' Goethe, Campagne in Frankreich ( IVerke, xxx. 73). of IN ARGONNE 201 of rhetoric, but scientific historic fact ; as many men, now at CHAP. Vll this distance, see or begin to see. ^'^P*- ^^' But the large public thing we had to remark is this : That ^' the T^tentieth of September 1792 was a raw morning covered with mist ; that from three in the morning, Sainte-Menehould, and those Villages and homesteads we know of old, were stirred by the rumble of artillery-wagons, by the clatter of hoofs and many-footed tramp of men : all manner of military. Patriot and Prussian, taking up positions, on the heights of La Lune and other Heights ; shifting and shoving, — seemingly in some dread chess-game ; which may the Heavens turn to good ! The MiUer of Valmy has fled dusty under ground ; his Mill, were it never so windy, will have rest today. At seven in the morning the mist clears oft : see Kellermann, Dumouriez' second in command, with ' eighteen pieces of cannon,' and deep-serried ranks, drawn up round that same silent Windmill, on his knoll of strength ; Brunswick, .also with serried ranks and cannon, glooming over to him from the Height of La Lune : only the little brook and its little dell now parting them. So that the much-longed-for has come at last ! Instead of hunger and dysentery, we shall have sharp shot ; and then ! — Dumouriez, with force and firm front, looks on from a neigh- bouring height ; can help only with his wishes, in silence. Lo, the eighteen pieces do bluster and bark, responsive to the bluster of La Lune ; and thunder-clouds mount into the air ; and echoes roar through all dells, far into the depths of Argonne Wood (deserted now) ; and limbs and lives of men fly dissipated, this way and that. Can Brunswick make an impression on them ? The dulled-bright Seigneurs stand bi'ting their thumbs ; these Sansculottes seem not to fly like poultry ! Towards noon- tide a cannon-shot blows Kellermann's horse from under him ; there bursts a powder-cart high into the air, with knell heard over all : some swagging and swaying observable ; — Brunswick will try ! ' Camarades,' cries Kellermann, ' Vive la Patrie I Allans vainer e pour elle, Come let us conquer for her.' ' Live the Fatherland ! ' rings responsive to the welkin, like rolling- fire from side to side : our ranks are as firm as rocks ; and Brunswick may recross the dell, ineffectual ; regain his old position on La Lune ; not unbattered by the way. And so, for the length of a September day, — with bluster and bark ; with bellow far-echoing ! The cannonade lasts till sunset ; and 202 SEPTEMBER BOOK I Sept, 20, 1792 and no impression made. Till an hour after sunset, the few remaining Clocks of the District striking Seven ; at this late time of day Brunswick tries again. With not a whit better fortune ! He is met by rock-ranks, by shout of Vive la Patrie ; and driven back, not unbattered. Whereupon he ceases ; retires ' to the Tavern of La Lune ' ; and sets to raising a redoute lest he be attacked ! Verily so, ye dulled-bright Seigneurs, make of it what ye may. Ah, and France does not rise round us in mass ; and the Peasants do not join KELLERMANN. hung from him, and this Inscription us, but assassinate us ; neither hanging nor any persuasion will induce them ! They have lost their old distinguishing love of King and King's- cloak, — -I fear, altogether; and will even fight to be rid of it : that seems now their humour. Nor does Austria prosper, nor the siege of Thionville. The Thionvillers, carry- ing their insolence to the epigrammatic pitch, have put a Wooden Horse on their walls, with a bundle of Hay ' When I finish my hay, you will take Thionville.' ^ To such height has the frenzy of mankind risen. The trenches of Thionville may shut; and what though those of Lille open ? The Earth smiles not on us, nor the Heaven ; but weeps and blears itself, in sour rain, and worse. Our very friends insult us ; we are wounded in the house of our friends : ' His Majesty of Prussia had a greatcoat, when the rain came ; and (contrary to all known laws) he put it on, though our two French Princes, the hope of their country, had none ' ! To which indeed, as Goethe admits, what answer could be made ? ^— Cold and Hunger and Affront, Colic and ' Jlist. Pari. xix. 177. ^ Goethe, xxx. 49. Dysentery EXEUNT 203 Dysentery and Death; and we here, cowering redouted, most CHAP. VII unredoubtable, amid the ' tattered cornshocks and deformed Sept. 20, stubble,' on the splashy Height of La Lune, round the mean ^'^^^ Tavern de la Lune ! — This is the Cannonade of Valmy ; wherein the World-Poet experimented on the cannon-fever ; wherein the French Sans- culottes did not fly like poultry. Precious to France ! Every soldier did his duty, and Alsatian Kellermann (how preferable to old Luckner the dismissed !) began to become greater ; and tlgaliti Fils, Equality Junior, a light gallant Field-Ofiicer, distinguished himself by intrepidity : — it is the same intrepid individual who now, as Louis-Philippe, without the Equality, struggles, under sad circumstances, to be -called King of the French for a season. CHAPTER VIII EXEUNT But this Twentieth of September is otherwise a great day. For, observe, while Kellermann's horse was flying blown from under him at the Mill of Valmy, our new National Deputies, that shall be a National Convention, are hovering and gathering about the Hall of the Hundred Swiss : with intent to constitute themselves ! On the morrow, about noontide, Camus the Archivist is busy ' verifying their powers ' ; several hundreds of them already here. Whereupon the Old Legislative comes solemnly over, to merge its old ashes phcenix-like in the body of the new ; — and so forthwith, returning all solemnly back to the Salle de Manege, there sits a National Convention, Seven- hundred and Forty-nine complete, or complete enough ; pre- sided by Petion ; — ^which proceeds directly to do business. Read that reported afternoon's-debate, O Reader ; there are few debates like it : dull reporting Moniteur itself becomes more dramatic than a very Shakespeare. For epigrammatic Manuel rises, speaks strange things ; how the President shall have a guard of honour, and lodge in the Tuileries : — rejected. And Danton rises and speaks ; and CoUot d'Herbois rises, and Curate Gregoire, and lame Couthon of the Mountain rises ; and 204 SEPTEMBER BOOK I and in rapid Melibcean stanzas, only a few lines each, they Sept. 29, propose motions not a few : That the corner-stone of our ^' new Constitution is. Sovereignty of the People ; that our Constitution shall be accepted by the People or be null ; further that the People ought to be avenged, and have right Judges ; that the Imposts must continue till new order; that Landed and other Property be sacred for ever ; finally that ' Royalty from this day is abolished in France ' : — Decreed all, before four o'clock strike, with acclamation of the world ! ^ The tree was all so ripe ; only shake it, and there fall such yellow cart- loads. And so over in the Valmy Region, as soon as the news come, what stir is this, audible, visible from our muddy Heights of La Lune ? ^ Universal shouting of the French on their opposite hill-side ; caps raised on bayonets : and a sound as of Republique : Vive la Republique borne dubious on the winds ! — On the morrow morning, so to speak, Brunswick slings his knapsacks before day, lights any fires he has ; and marches without tap of drum. Dumouriez finds ghastly symptoms in that camp ; ' latrines full of blood ' ! ^ The chivalrous King of Prussia, — for he, as we saw, is here in person, — ^may long rue the day ; may look colder than ever on these dulled- bright Seigneurs, and French Princes their Country's hope ; — and, on the whole, put on his greatcoat without ceremony, happy that he has one. They retire, all retire with convenient despatch, through a Champagne trodden into a quagmire, the wild weather pouring on them : Dumouriez, through his Keller- manns and Dillons, pricking them a little in the hinder parts. A little, not much ; now pricking, now negotiating : for Bruns- wick has his eyes opened; and the Majesty of Prussia is a repentant Majesty. Nor has Austria prospered ; nor the Wooden Horse of Thion- ville bitten his hay ; nor Lille City surrendered itself. The Lille trenches opened on the 29th of the month ; with balls and shells, and redhot balls ; as if not trenches but Vesuvius and the Pit had opened. It was frightful, say all eye-witnesses ; but it is ineffectual. The Lillers have risen to such temper ; especially after these news from Argonne and the East. Not a 1 ms/. Pari. xix. 19. ' = Williams, iii. 71. ' 1st October 1792; Dumouriez, iii. 73, Sans- THE EVIL EYE AND THE APES OF DEATH. {T^he laiu of the suspect.') EXEUNT 205 Sans-indispensables in Lille that would surrender for a King's CHAP. VIII ransom. Redhot balls rain, day and night; ' six thousand,' Oct. 11,1792 or so, and bombs ' filled internally with oil of turpentine which splashes up in flame ' ; — mainly on the dwellings of the Sans- culottes and Poor ; the streets of the Rich being spared. But the Sansculottes get water-pails ; form quenching-regulations : ' The ball is in Peter's house ! ' ' The ball is in John's ! ' They divide their lodging and substance with each other ; shout Vive la Bepublique ; and faint not in heart. A ball thunders through the main chamber of the H6tel-de-Ville while the Commune is there assembled : ' We are in permanence,' says one coldly, proceeding with his business ; and the ball remains permanent too, sticking in the wall, probably to this day.^ The Austrian Archduchess (Queen's Sister) will herself see red artillery fired : in their over-haste to satisfy an Arch- duchess, ' two mortars explode and kill thirty persons.' It is in vain ; Lille, often burning, is always quenched again ; Lille will not yield. The very boys deftly wrench the matches out of fallen bombs : ' a man clutches a rolling ball with his hat, which takes fire ; when cool, they crown it with a bonnet rouge.'' Memorable also be that nimble Barber, who when the bomb burst beside him, snatched up a sherd of it, introduced soap and lather into it, crpng, ' Voild mon plat a barbe. My new shaving-dish ! ' and shaved ' fourteen people ' on the spot. Bravo, thou nimble Shaver ; worthy to shave old spectral Redcloak, and find treasures ! — On the eighth day of this desperate siege, the sixth day of October, Austria, finding it fruitless, draws off, with no pleasurable consciousness ; rapidly, Dmnouriez tending thitherward ; and Lille too, black with ashes and smoulder, but jubilant skyhigh, flings its gates open. The Plat a barbe became fashionable ; ' no Patriot of an elegant turn,' says Mercier several years afterwards, ' but shaves himself out of the splinter of a Lille bomb.' Quid multa, Why many words ? The Invaders are in flight ; Brunswick's Host, the third part of it gone to death, staggers disastrous along the deep highways of Champagne ; spreading out also into ' the fields of a tough spongy red-coloured clay ' : — ' like Pharaoh through a Red Sea of mud,' says Goethe ; ' for here also lay broken chariots, and riders and foot seemed ' Bombardement de Lille (in Hist. Pari. xx. 63-71). sinking 206 SEPTEMBER BOOK I sinking around.' ^ On the eleventh morning of October, the Oct. 11, 1792 World-Poet, struggling Northwards out of Verdun, which he had entered Southwards, some five weeks ago, in quite other order, discerned the following Phenomenon and formed part of it : ' Towards three in the morning, without having had any sleep, we were about mounting our carriage, drawn up at the door ; when an insuperable obstacle disclosed itself : for there rolled on already, between the pavement-stones which were crushed up into a ridge on each side, an uninterrupted column of sick-wagons through the Town, and all was trodden as into a morass. While we stood waiting what could be made of it, our Landlord the Knight of Saint-Louis pressed past us, with- out salutation.' He had been a Calonne's Notable in 1787, an Emigrant since ; had returned to his home, jubilant, with the Prussians ; but must now go forth again into the wide world, ' followed by a servant carrying a little bundle on his stick.' ' The activity of our alert Lisieux shone eminent, and on this occasion too brought us on : for he struck into a small gap of the wagon-row ; and held the advancing team back till we, with our six and our four horses, got intercalated ; after which, in my light little coachlet, I could breathe freer. We were now under way ; at a funeral pace, but stiU under way. The day broke ; we found ourselves at the outlet of the Town, in a tumult and turmoil without measure. All sorts of vehicles, few horsemen, innmnerable foot-people, were crossing each other on the great esplanade before the Gate. We turned to the right, with our Column, towards Estain, on a limited highway, with ditches at each side. Self-preservation, in so monstrous a press, knew now no pity, no respect of aught. Not far before us there fell down a horse of an ammunition- wagon ; they cut the traces, and let it lie. And now as the three others could not bring their load along, they cut them also loose, tumbled the heavy-packed vehicle into the ditch ; and with the smallest retardation, we had to drive on right over the horse, which was just about to rise ; and I saw too clearly how its legs, under the wheels, went crashing and quivering. ' Horse and foot endeavoured to escape from the narrow laborious highway into the meadows : but these too were ^ Canipagne in Frankreich, p. 103, rained EXEUNT 207 rained to min ; overflowed by full ditches, the connexion of CHAP. VIII the footpaths everywhere interrupted. Four gentleman-like, Oct. li, 1792 handsome, well-dressed French soldiers waded for a time beside our carriage ; wonderfully clean and neat : and had such art of picking their steps, that their foot-gear testified no higher than the ankle to the muddy pilgrimage these good people found themselves engaged in. ' That tmder such circumstances one saw, in ditches, in meadows, in fields and crofts, dead horses enough, was natural to the case : by and by, however, you found them also flayed, the fleshy parts even cut away ; sad token of the universal distress. ' Thus we fared on ; every moment in danger, at the smallest stoppage on our own part, of being ourselves tumbled over- board ; under which circumstances, truly, the careful dexterity of our Lisieux could not be sufficiently praised. The same talent showed itself at Estain ; where we arrived towards noon : and descried, over the beautiful weU-built little Town, through streets and on squares, around and beside us, one sense-con- fusing tumult : the mass rolled this way and that ; and, all struggling forward, each hindered the other. Unexpectedly our carriage drew up before a stately house in the market- place ; master and mistress of the mansion saluted us in reverent distance.' Dexterous Lisieux, though we knew it not, had said we were the King of Prussia's Brother ! ' But now, from the ground-floor windows, looking over the whole marketplace, we had the endless tumult lying, as it were, palpable. All sorts of walkers, soldiers in uniform, marauders, stout but sorrowing citizens and peasants, women and children, crushed and jostled each other, amid vehicles of all forms : ammunition-wagons, baggage-wagons ; carriages, single, double and multiplex ; such hundredfold miscellany of teams, requisi- tioned or lawfully owned, making way, hitting together, hinder- ing each other, rolled here to right and to left. Horned-cattle too were struggUng on ; probably herds that had been put in requisition. Riders you saw few ; but the elegant carriages of the Emigrants, many-coloured, lackered, gilt and silvered, evidently by the best builders, caught your eye.^ ' The crisis of the strait, however, arose farther on a little ; where the crowded marketplace had to introduce itself into a ^ See Hermann und Dorothea (also by Goethe), Buch Kalliope. street, — 208 SEPTEMBER BOOK I street, — straight indeed and good, but proportionably far too Oct. 11, 1792 narrow. I have, in my life, seen nothing like it: the aspect of it might perhaps be compared to that of a swoln river which has been raging over meadows and fields, and is now again obliged to press itself through a narrow bridge, and flow on in its bounded channel. Down the long street, all visible from our windows, there swelled continually the strangest GENERAL CUSTINE. tide : a high double-seated travelling coach towered visible over the flood of things. We thought of the fair French- women we had seen in the morning. It was not they, how- ever ; it was Count Haugwitz ; him you could look at, with a kind of sardonic malice, rocking onwards, step by step, there.' ^ In such untriumphant Procession has the Brunswick Mani- festo issued ! Nay in worse, ' in Negotiation with these mis- creants,' — ^the first news of which produced such a revulsion 1 Campagne in Frankreich, Goethe's J^«?-/4e (Stuttgart, 1829), xxx. 133. in EXEUNT 209 in the Emigrant nature, as put our scientific World-Poet ' in CHAP. VIII fear for the wits of several.' ^ There is no help : they must Oct. 11, 1792 fare on, these poor Emigrants, angry with all persons and things,' and making all persons angry in the hapless course they struck into. Landlord and landlady testify to you, at tables-d'hote, how insupportable these Frenchmen are : how, in spite of such humiliation, of poverty and probable beggary, there is ever the same struggle for precedence, the same forward- ness and want of discretion. High in honour, at the head of the table, you with your own eyes observe not a Seigneur, but the automaton of a Seigneur fallen into dotage ; still worshipped, reverently waited on and fed. In miscellaneous seats is a miscellany of soldiers, commissaries, adventurers ; consuming silently their barbarian victuals. ' On all brows is to be read a hard destiny ; all are silent, for each has his own sufferings to bear, and looks forth into misery without bounds.' One hasty wanderer, coming in, and eating without ungraciousness what is set before him, the landlord lets off almost scot-free. ' He is,' whispered the landlord to me, ' the first of these cursed people I have seen condescend to taste our German black bread.' ^ And Dumouriez is in Paris ; lauded and feasted ; paraded in glittering saloons, floods of beautifulest blonde-dresses and broadcloth-coats flowing past him, endless, in admiring joy. One night, nevertheless, in the splendour of one such scene, he sees himself suddenly apostrophised by a squalid unjoyful Figure, who has come in uninvited, nay despite of all lackeys ; an unjoyful Figure ! The Figure is come ' in express mission from the Jacobins,' to inquire sharply, better then than later, touching certain things : ' Shaven eyebrows of Volunteer Patriots, for instance ? ' Also, ' your threats of shivering in pieces ? ' Also, ' why you have not chased Brunswick hotly enough ? ' Thus, with sharp croak, inquires the Figure. — ' Ah, c'est vous qu'on appelle Marat, You are he they call Marat ! ' answers the General, and turns coldly on his heel.^ — ' Marat ! " The blonde-gowns quiver like aspens ; the dress-coats gather ^ Campagne in Frankreich, Goethe's Werke, xxx. 152. '^ Ihid. pp. 210-12. " Dumouriez, iii. 115. — Marat's account, in the Dibats des Jacobins ani Journal de la Ripuhliqiie (Hist. Pari. xix. 317-21), agrees to the turning on the heel, but strives to interpret it differently. VOL. 11. o round; 210 SEPTEMBER BOOK I round ; Actor Talma (for it is his house). Actor Talma, and Oct. 11, 1792 almost the very chandelier-lights, are blue : till this obscene Spectrum, swart unearthly Visual-Appearance, vanish, back into its native Night. General Diunouriez, in few brief days, is gone again, towards TALMA. the Netherlands ; will attack the Netherlands, winter though it be. And General Montesquiou, on the Southeast, has driven in the Sardinian Majesty ; nay, ahnost without a shot fired, has taken Savoy from him, which longs to become a piece of the Republic. And General Custine, on the Northeast, has dashed EXEUNT 211 dashed forth on Spires and its Arsenal ; and then on Electoral CHAP. VIII Mentz, not uninvited, wherein are German Democrats and Oct. li, 1792 no shadow of an Elector now : so that in the last days of October, Frau Forster, a daughter of Heyne's, somewhat democratic, walking out of the Gate of Mentz with her Husband, finds French soldiers playing at bowls with cannon-balls there. Forster trips cheerfully over one iron bomb, with ' Live the Republic ! ' A black-bearded National Guard answers : ' Elle vivra bien sans vous, It will probably live independently of you.' ^ ' Johann Georg Forster's Briefwechsel (Leipzig, 1829), i. \ Book Second BOOK SECOND REGICIDE CHAPTER I THE DELIBERATIVE France therefore has done two things very completely : she has hurled back her Cimmerian Invaders far over the marches ; and likewise she has shattered her own internal Social Consti- tution, even to the minutest fibre of it, into wreck and dis- solution. Utterly it is all altered : from King down to Parish Constable, all Authorities, Magistrates, Judges, persons that bore rule, have had, on the sudden, to alter themselves, so far as needful ; or else, on the sudden, and not without violence, to be altered ; a Patriot ' Executive Council of Ministers,' with a Patriot Danton in it, and then a whole Nation and National Convention, have taken care of that. Not a Parish Constable, in the farthest hamlet, who has said De par le Roi, and shown loyalty, but must retire, making way for a new improved Parish Constable who can say De par la Bipublique. It is a change such as History must beg her readers to imagine, MJidescribed. An instantaneous change of the whole body- poUtic, the soul-politic being all changed ; such a change as few bodies, poUtic or other, can experience in this world. Say, perhaps, such as poor Nymph Semele's body did experi- ence, when she would needs, with woman's humour, see her OljTupian Jove as very Jove ; — and so stood, poor Nymph, this moment Semele, next moment not Semele, but Flame and a Statue of red-hot Ashes ! France has looked upon Demo- cracy ; seen it face to face. — ^The Cimmerian Invaders will rally, in humbler temper, with better or worse luck : the wreck and dissolution must reshape itself into a social Arrangement 9S it can and may. But as for this National Convention, which THE DELIBERATIVE 213 which is to settle everything, if it do, as Deputy Paine and CHAP. I France generally expects, get all finished ' in a few months,' Sept. 21, we shall call it a most deft Convention. ^^^^ In trtith, it is very singular to see how this mercurial French People plunged suddenly from Vive le Roi to Vive la Bipublique ; and goes simmering and dancing, shaking off daily (so to speak), and trampling into the dust, its old social garnitures, ways of thinking, rules of existing ; and cheerfully dances towards the Ruleless, Unknown, with such hope in its heart, and nothing but Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood in its mouth. Is it two centuries, or is it only two years, since all France roared simultaneously to the welkin, bursting forth into sound and smoke at its Feast of Pikes, ' Live the Restorer of French Liberty ' ? Three short years ago there was still Versailles and an (EU-de-Boeuf : now there is that watched Circuit of the Temple, girt with dragon-eyed Municipals, where, as in its final limbo. Royalty lies extinct. In the year 1789, Con- stituent Deputy Barrere ' wept,' in his Break-of-Daif News- paper, at sight of a reconciled King Louis ; and now in 1792, Convention Deputy Barrdre, perfectly tearless, may be consider- ing, whether the reconciled King Louis shall be guillotined or not ! Old garnitures and social vestures drop off (we say) so fast, being indeed quite decayed, and are trodden under the National dance. And the new vestures, where are they ; the new modes and rules ? Liberty, Equality, Fraternity : not vestures, but the wish for vestures ! The Nation is for the present, figura- tively speaking, naked ; it has no rule or vesture ; but is naked, — a Sansculottic Nation. So far therefore, and in such manner, have our Patriot Brissots, Guadets trixunphed. Vergniaud's Ezekiel-visions of the fall of thrones and crowns, which he spake hypothetically and prophetically in the Spring of the year, have suddenly come to fulfilment in the Autumn. Our eloquent Patriots of the Legislative, like strong Conjurors, by the word of their mouth, have swept Royalism with its old modes and formulas to the winds ; and shall now govern a France free of formulas. Free of formulas ! And yet man lives not except with formulas ; with customs, ways of doing and living : no text truer than this ; which will hold true from the Tea-table and Tailor's shopboard up to the High Senate-houses, Solemn Temples ; nay through all 214 REGICIDE BOOK II all provinces of Mind and Imagination, onwards to the outmost Sept. 21, confines of articulate Being, — Ubi homines sunt modi sunt. 1792 There are modes wherever there are men. It is the deepest law of man's nature ; whereby man is a craftsman and ' tool- using animal ' ; not the slave of Impulse, Chance, and brute Nature, but in some measure their lord. Twenty-five millions of men, suddenly stript bare of their modi, and dancing them down in that manner, are a terrible thing to govern ! Eloquent Patriots of the Legislative, meanwhile, have pre- cisely this problem to solve. Under the name and nickname of ' statesmen, hommes d'&tat,'' of ' moderate men, modirantins,' of Brissotins, Rolandins, finally of Girondins, they shall become world-famous in solving it. For the Twenty-five millions are Gallic effervescent too ; — filled both with hope of the unutter- able, of universal Fraternity and Golden Age ; and with terror of the unutterable, Cimmerian Europe all rallying on us. It is a problem like few. Truly, if man, as the Philosophers brag, did to any extent look before and after, what, one may ask, in many cases would become of him ? What, in this case, would become of these Seven-hundred and Forty-nine men ? The Convention, seeing clearly before and after, were a paralysed Convention. Seeing clearly to the length of its own nose, it is not paralysed. To the Convention itself neither the work nor the method of doing it is doubtful ! To make the Constitution ; to defend the Republic till that be made. Speedily enough, accordingly, there has been a ' Committee of the Constitution ' got together. Sieyfes, Old-Constituent, Constitution-builder by trade ; Con- dorcet, fit for better things ; Deputy Paine, foreign Benefactor of the Species, with that ' red carbuncled face and the black beaming eyes ' ; Herault de Sechelles, Ex-Parlementeer, one of the handsomest men in France ; these, .with inferior guild- brethren, are girt cheerfully to the work ; will once more ' make the Constitution ' ; let us hope, more effectually than last time. For that the Constitution can be made, who doubts, — unless the Gospel of Jean- Jacques came into the world in vain ? True, our last Constitution did tumble within the year, so lamentably. But what then; except sort the rubbish and boulders, and build them up again better ? ' Widen your basis,' for one thing,— to Universal Suffrage, if need be ; exclude rotten materials, Royalism and suchlike, for another thing. And THE DELIBERATIVE 215 And in brief, build, O unspeakable Siey^s and Company, un- CHAP. I wearied ! Frequent perilous downrushing of scaffolding and Sept. 21, rubblework, be that an irritation, no discouragement. Start ^''^^ ye always again, clearing aside the wreck ; if with broken limbs, yet with whole hearts ; and build, we say, in the name of Heaven, — till either the work do stand ; or else mankind abandon it, and the Constitution-builders be paid off, with laughter and tears ! One good time, in the course of Eternity, it was appointed that this of Social Contract too should try itself out. And so the Committee of Constitution shall toil : with hope and faith ; — ^with no disturbance from any reader of these pages. To make the Constitution, then, and return home joyfully in a few months ; this is the prophecy our National Convention gives of itself ; by this scientific program shall its operations and events go on. But from the best scientific program, in such a case, to the actual fulfilment, what a difference ! Every reunion of men, is it not, as we often say, a reunion of incalcul- able Influences ; every unit of it a microcosm of Influences ; — of which how shall Science calculate or prophesy ? Science, which cannot, with all its calculuses, differential, integral, and of variations, calculate the Problem of Three gravitating Bodies, ought to hold her peace here, and say only : In this National Convention there are Seven-hundred and Forty-nine very singular Bodies, that gravitate and do much else ; — who, probably in an amazing manner, will work the appointment of Heaven. Of National Assemblages, Parliaments, Congresses, which have long sat ; which are of saturnine temperament ; above all, which are not ' dreadfully in earnest,' something may be computed or conjectured : yet even these are a kind of Mystery in progress, — whereby accordingly we see the Journalist Reporter find livelihood : even these jolt madly out of the ruts, from time to time. How much more a poor National Convention, of French vehemence ; urged on at such velocity ; without routine, without rut, track or landmark ; and dread- fully in earnest every man of them ! It is a Parliament literally such as there was never elsewhere in the world. Themselves are new, unarranged ; they are the Heart and presiding centre of a France fallen wholly into maddest disarrangement. From all cities, hamlets, from the utmost ends of this France with its Twenty-five million vehement souls, thick-streaming influences storm-in 216 REGICIDE BOOK II storm-in on that same Heart, in the Salle de Manege, and Sept. 21, storm-out again : such fiery venous-arterial circulation is the ^^'^^ function of that Heart. Seven-hundred and Forty-nine himian individuals, we say, never sat together on our Earth under more original circumstances. Common individuals most of them, or not far from common : yet in virtue of the position they occupied, so notable. How, in this wild piping of the whirl- wind of human passions, with death, victory, terror, valour, and all height and all depth pealing and piping, these men, left to their own guidance, will speak and act ? Readers know well that this French National Convention (quite contrary to its own Program) became the astonishment and horror of mankind ; a kind of Apocalyptic Convention, or black Dream become real ; concerning which History seldom speaks except in the way of interjection : how it covered France with wo, delusion, and delirium ; and from its bosom there went forth Death on the pale Horse. To hate this poor National Convention is easy ; to praise and love it has not been found impossible. It is, as we say, a Parliament in the most original circumstances. To us, in these pages, be it as a fuli- ginous fiery mystery, where Upper has met Nether, and in such alternate glare and blackness of darkness poor bedazzled mortals know not which is Upper, which is Nether ; but rage and plunge distractedly, as mortals in that case will do. A Convention which has to consume itself, suicidally ; and become dead ashes — with its World ! Behoves us, not to enter exploratively its dim embroiled deeps ; yet to stand with unwavering eyes, looking how it welters ; what notable phases and occurrences it will successively throw up. One general superficial circumstance we remark with praise : the force of Politeness. To such depth has the sense of civilisa- tion penetrated man's life ; no Drouet, no Legendre, in the maddest tug of war, can altogether shake it off. Debates of Senates dreadfully in earnest are seldom given frankly to the world ; else perhaps they would surprise it. Did not the Grand Monarque himself once chase his Louvois with a pair of brandished tongs ? But reading long volumes of these Convention Debates, all in a foam with furious earnestness, earnest many times to the extent of Ufe and death, one is struck rather with the degree of continence they manifest in speech ; THE DELIBERATIVE 217 speech ; and how in such wild ebullition, there is still a kind CHAP. 1 of polite rule struggling for mastery, and the forms of social Sept. 21, life never altogether disappear. These men, though they ^^^^ menace with clenched right-hands, do not clutch one another by the collar ; they draw no daggers, except for oratorical purposes, and this not often : profane swearing is almost uii- known, though the Reports are frank enough ; we find only one or two oaths, oaths by Marat, reported in all. For the rest, that there is ' effervescence ' who doubts ? Effervescence enough ; Decrees passed by acclamation today, repealed by vociferation tomorrow ; temper fitful, most rota- tory-changeful, always headlong ! The ' voice of the orator is covered with rumours ' ; a hundred ' honourable Members rush with menaces towards the Left side of the Hall ' ; President has ' broken three bells in succession,' — claps on his hat, as signal that the country is near ruined. A fiercely effervescent Old- Gallic Assemblage ! — Ah, how the loud sick sounds of Debate, and of Life, which is a debate, sink silent one after another : so loud now, and in a little while so low ! Brennus, and those antique Gael Captains, in their way to Rome, to Galatia and such places, whither they were in the habit of marching in the most fiery manner, had Debates as effervescent, doubt it not ; though no Moniteur has reported them. They scolded in Celtic Welsh, those Brennuses ; neither were they Sans- culotte ; nay rather breeches [braccce, say of felt or rough- leather) were the only thing they had ; being, as Livy testifies, naked down to the haunches : — and, see, it is the same sort of work and of men still, now when they have got coats, and speak nasally a kind of broken Latin ! But, on the whole, does not Time envelope this present National Convention ; as it did those Brennuses, and ancient august Senates in felt breeches ? Time surely : and also Eternity. Dim dusk of Time, — or noon, which will be dusk ; and then there is night, and silence ; and Time with all its sick noises is swallowed in the still sea. Pity thy brother, O son of Adam ! The angriest frothy jargon that he utters, is it not properly the whimpering of an infant which cannot speak what ails it, but is in distress clearly, in the inwards of it ; and so must squall and whimper continually, till its Mother take it, and it get — to sleep ! This Convention is not four days old, and the melodious Meliboean 218 REGICIDE BOOK II Meliboean stanzas that shook down Royalty are still fresh in Sept. 21, our ear, when there bursts out a new diapason, — unhappily, ^' of Discord, this time. For speech has been made of a thing difficult to speak of well : the September Massacres. How deal with these September Massacres ; with the Paris Com- mune that presided over them ? A Paris Commune hateful- terrible ; before which the poor effete Legislative had to quail, and sit quiet. And now if a young omnipotent Convention will not so quail and sit, what steps shall it take ? Have a Departmental Guard in its pay, answer the Girondins and Friends of Order ! A Guard of National Volunteers, missioned from all the Eighty-three or Eighty-five Departments, for that express end ; these will keep Septemberers, tumultuous Com- munes in a due state of submissiveness, the Convention in a due state of sovereignty. So have the Friends of Order answered, sitting in Committee, and reporting ; and even a Decree has been passed of the required tenour. Nay certain Departments, as the Var or Marseilles, in mere expectation and assurance of a Decree, have their contingent of Volunteers already on march ; brave Marseillese, foremost on the Tenth of August, will not be hindmost here : ' fathers gave their sons a musket and twenty-five louis,' says Barbaroux, ' and bade them march.' Can anything be properer ? A Republic that will found itself on justice must needs investigate September Massacres ; a Convention calling itself National, ought it not to be guarded by a National force ? — Alas, Reader, it seems so to the eye : and yet there is much to be said and argued. Thou beholdest here the small beginning of a Controversy, which mere logic will not settle. Two small well-springs, September, Departmental Guard, or rather at bottom they are but one and the same small well-spring ; which will swell and widen into waters of bitterness ; all manner of subsidiary streams and brooks of bitterness flowing in, from this side and that ; till it become a wide river of bitterness, of rage and separation, — which can subside only into the Catacombs. This Departmental Guard, decreed by overwhelming majorities, and then repealed for peace's sake, and not to insult Paris, is again decreed more than once ; nay it is partially executed, and the very men that are to be of it are seen visibly parading the Paris streets, — shouting once, being overtaken with liquor : ' A has Marat, Down 1792 THE DELIBERATIVE 219 Down with Marat ! ' ^ Nevertheless, decreed never so often, it CHAP. I is repealed just as often ; and continues, for some seven months ^^P*;f -^^ an angry noisy Hypothesis only : a fair Possibility struggling to become a Reality, but which shall never be one ; which, after endless struggling, shall, in February next, sink into sad rest, — dragging much along with it. So singular are the ways of men and honourable Members. But on this fourth day of the Convention's existence, as we said, which is the 25th of September 1792, there comes Com- mittee Report on that Decree of the Departmental Guard, and speech of repealing it ; there come denunciations of Anarchy, of a Dictatorship, — which let the incorruptible Robespierre consider : there come denunciations of a certain Journal de la RSpublique, once called Ami du Peuple ; and so thereupon there comes, visibly stepping up, visibly standing aloft on the Tribune, ready to speak, — ^the Bodily Spectrum of People's- Friend Marat ! Shriek, ye Seven-hundred and Forty-nine ; it is verily Marat, he and not another. Marat is no phantasm of the brain, or mere lying impress of Printer's Types ; but a thing material, of joint and sinew, and a certain small stature ; ye behold him there, in his blackness, in his dingy squalor, a living fraction of Chaos and Old Night ; visibly incarnate, desirous to speak. ' It appears,' says Marat to the shrieking Assembly, ' that a great many persons here are enemies of mine.' — ' All ! all ! ' shriek hundreds of voices : enough to drown any People's-Friend. But Marat will not drown : he speaks and croaks explanation ; croaks with such reasonableness, air of sincerity, that repentant pity smothers anger, and the shrieks subside, or even become applauses. For this Con- vention is unfortunately the crankest of machines : it shall be pointing eastward with stiff violence this moment ; and then do but touch some spring dexterously, the whole machine, clattering and jerking seven-hundredfold, will whirl with huge crash, and, next moment, is pointing westward ! Thus Marat, absolved and applauded, victorious in this turn of fence, is, as the Debate goes on, prickt at again by some dex- terous Girondin ; and then the shrieks rise anew, and Decree of Accusation is on the point of passing ; till the dingy People's- Friend bobs aloft once more ; croaks once more persuasive stillness, and the Decree of Accusation sinks. Whereupon 1 fftst. Pari. XX. 184. he 220 REGICIDE BOOK II he draws forth — a Pistol ; and setting it to his Head, the Sept. 21, seat of such thought and prophecy, says : ' If they had passed 17^2 their Accusation Decree, he, the People's-Friend, would have blown his brains out.' A People's-Friend has that faculty in him. For the rest, as to this of the two-hundred and sixty- thousand Aristocrat Heads, Marat candidly says, ' Cest la mon avis, Such is my opinion.' Also is it not indisputable : ' No power on Earth can prevent me from seeing into traitors, and unmasking them,' — ^by my superior originality of mind ? ^ An honourable member like this Friend of the People few terrestrial Parliaments have had. We observe, however, that this first onslaught by the Friends of Order, as sharp and prompt as it was, has failed. For neither can Robespierre, summoned out by talk of Dictator- ship, and greeted with the like rumour on showing himself, be thrown into Prison, into Accusation ; not though Bar- baroux openly bear testimony against him, and sign it on paper. With such sanctified meekness does the Incorruptible lift his seagreen cheek to the smiter ; lift his thin voice, and with Jesuitic dexterity plead, and prosper ; asking at last, in a prosperous manner : ' But what witnesses has the Citoyen Bar- baroux to support his testimony ? ' ' Moi ! ' cries hot Rebecqui, standing up, striking his breast with both hands, and answer- ing ' Me ! ' ^ Nevertheless the Seagreen pleads again, and makes it good : the long hurly-burly, ' personal merely,' while so much public matter lies fallow, has ended in the order of the day. O Friends of the Gironde, why will you occupy our august sessions with mere paltry Personalities, while the grand Nationality lies in such a state ? — The Gironde has touched, this day, on the foul black-spot of its fair Convention Domain ; has trodden on it, and yet not trodden it down. Alas, it is a well-spring, as we said, this black-spot ; and will not tread down ! ^ Moniteur Newspaper, Nos. 271, 280, 294, Ann^e premiere: Moore's /u«r«a/, ii. 21, 157, etc. (which, however, may perhaps, as in similar cases, be only a copy of the Newspaper). "^ Moniteur, ut supri : Stance du 25 Septembre. Chapter II THE EXECUTIVE 221 CHAPTER II THE EXECUTIVE May we not conjecture therefore that round this grand enterprise of Making the Constitution, there will, as hereto- fore, very strange embroihnents gather, and questions and interests complicate themselves ; so that after a few or even several months, the Convention will not have settled every- thing ? Alas, a whole tide of questions comes rolling, boiling ; growing ever wider, without end ! Among which, apart from this question of September and Anarchy, let us notice three which emerge oftener than the others, and promise to become Leading Questions : Of the Armies ; of the Subsistences ; thirdly, of the Dethroned King. As to the Armies, Public Defence must evidently be put on a proper footing ; for Europe seems coalising itself again ; one is apprehensive even England will join it. Happily Dumouriez prospers in the North ;— nay, what if he should prove too prosperous, and become Liberticide, Murderer of Freedom ! — ^Dumouriez prospers, through this winter season ; yet not without lamentable complaints. Sleek Pache, the Swiss Schoolmaster, he that sat frugal in his Alley, the wonder of neighbours, has got lately — whither thinks the Reader ? To be Minister of War ! Madame Roland, struck with his sleek ways, recommended him to her husband as Clerk ; the sleek Clerk had no need of salary, being of true Patriotic temper ; he would come with a bit of bread in his pocket, to save dinner and time ; and munching incidentally, do three men's work in a day ; punctual, silent, frugal, — the sleek Tartuffe that he was. Wherefore Roland, in the late Overturn, recom- mended him to be War-Minister. And now, it would seem, he is secretly undermining Roland ; playing into the hands of your hotter Jacobins and September Commune ; and cannot, like strict Roland, be the Veto des Coquins ! ^ How the sleek Pache might mine and undermine, one knows not well ; this however one does know : that his War-Office has become a den of thieves and confusion, such as all men ' Madame Roland, M4moires, ii. 237, etc. shudder CHAP. II Sept. 1792 222 REGICIDE BOOK II shudder to behold. That the Citizen Hassenfratz, as Head- Sept. -Oct. Clerk, sits there in bonnet rouge, in rapine, in violence, and ■^^^^ some Mathematical calculation ; a most insolent, red-night- capped man. That Pache munches his pocket-loaf, amid head- clerks and sub-clerks, and has spent all the War-Estimates. That Furnishers scour in gigs, over all districts of France, and drive bargains. And lastly that the Army gets next to no furniture : no shoes, though it is winter ; no clothes ; some have not even arms ; ' in the Army of the South,' complains an honourable Member, ' there are thirty -thousand pairs of breeches wanting,' — a most scandalous want. Roland's strict soul is sick to see the course things take : but what can he do ? Keep his own Department strict ; rebuke, and repress wheresoever possible ; at lowest, complain. He can complain in Letter after Letter, to a National Con- vention, to France, to Posterity, the Universe ; grow ever more querulous-indignant ; — ^till at last, may he not grow weari- some ? For is not this continual text of his, at bottom, a rather barren one : How astonishing that in a time of Revolt and abrogation of all Law but Cannon Law, there should be such Unlawfulness ? Intrepid Veto-of-Scoundrels, narrow- faithful, respectable, methodic man, work thou in that manner, since happily it is thy manner, and wear thyself away ; though ineffectual, not profitless in it — ^then nor now ! — The brave Dame Roland, bravest of all French women, begins to have misgivings : The figure of Danton has too much of the ' Sardanapalus character,' at a Republican Rolandin Dinner- table : Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, proses sad stuff about a Universal Republic, or union of all Peoples and Kindreds in one and the same Fraternal Bond ; of which Bond, how it is to be tied, one unhappily sees not. It is also an indisputable, unaccountable or accountable fact, that Grains are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Riots for grain, tumultuous Assemblages demanding to have the price of grain fixed, abound far and near. The Mayor of Paris and other poor Mayors are like to have their difficulties. Petion was re-elected Mayor of Paris ; but has declined ; being now a Convention Legislator. Wise surely to decline : for, besides this of Grains and all the rest, there is in these times an Improvised Insurrectionary Commune passing into an Elected legal one ; getting their accounts settled, — not with- out THE EXECUTIVE 223 out irritancy ! Petion has declined : nevertheless many do CHAP. 11 covet and canvass. After months of scrutinising, balloting, Sept.-Oct. arguing and jargoning, one Doctor Chambon gets the post of honouy : who will not long keep it ; but be, as we shall see, literally crushed out of it.^ Think also if the private Sansculotte has not his difficulties, in a time of dearth ! Bread, according to the People' s- Friend, may be some ' six sous per pound, a day's wages some fifteen ' ; and grim winter here. How the Poor Man con- tinues living, and so seldom starves ; by miracle ! Happily, in these days, he can enlist, and have himself shot by the Austrians, in an unusually satisfactory manner : for the Rights of Man. — But Commandant Santerre, in this so straitened condition of the flour-market, and state of Equality and Liberty, proposes, through the Newspapers, two remedies, or at least palliatives : First, that all classes of men should live two days of the week on potatoes ; then, second, that every man should hang his dog. Hereby, as the Commandant thinks, the saving, which indeed he computes to so many sacks, would be very considerable. Cheerfuler form of inventive- stupidity than Commandant Santerre's dwells in no human soul. Inventive -stupidity, imbedded in health, courage, and good-nature : much to be commended. ' My whole strength,' he tells the Convention once, ' is, day and night, at the service of my fellow-citizens : if they find me worthless, they will dismiss me ; I will return and brew beer.' ^ Or figure what correspondences a poor Roland, Minister of the Interior, must have, on this of Grains alone ! Free-trade in Grain, impossibility to fix the prices of Grain ; on the other hand, clamour and necessity to fix them : Political Economy lecturing from the Home Office, with demonstration clear as Scripture ; — ineffectual for the empty National Stomach. The Mayor of Chartres, like to be eaten himself, cries to the Con- vention ; the Convention sends honourable Members in Deputa- tion ; who endeavour to feed the multitude by miraculous spiritual methods ; but cannot. The multitude, in spite of all Eloquence, come bellowing round ; will have the Grain- Prices fixed, and at a moderate elevation ; or else — the honourable Deputies hanged on the spot ! The honourable ' Dictionnaire des Homines Marquans, § Chambon. ^ Monileur (in Hist, Pari, xx, 412). Deputies, 224 REGICIDE BOOK II Deputies, reporting this business, admit that, on the edge of Sept. -Oct. horrid death, they did fix, or affect to fix the Price of Grain : ^^^^ for which, be it also noted, the Convention, a Convention that will not be trifled with, sees good to reprimand them.^ But as to the origin of these Grain-Riots, is it not most probably your secret Royalists again ? Glimpses of Priests were discernible in this of Chartres, — to the eye of Patriotism. Or indeed may not ' the root of it all lie in the Temple Prison, in the heart of a perjured King,' well as we guard him ? ^ Unhappy perjured King !— And so there shall be Baker's Queues by and by, more sharp-tempered than ever : on every Baker's door-rabbet an iron ring, and coil of rope ; whereon, with firm grip, on this side and that, we form our Queue : but mischievous deceitful persons cut the rope, and our Queue becomes a ravehnent ; wherefore the coil must be made of iron chain.^ Also there shall be Prices of Grain well fixed ; but then no grain purchasable by them : bread not to be had except by Ticket from the Mayor, few ounces per mouth daily ; after long swaying, with firm grip, on the chain of the Queue. And Hunger shall stalk direful ; and Wrath and Suspicion, whetted to the Preternatural pitch, shall stalk ; as those other preternatural ' shapes of Gods in their wrathfulness ' were discerned stalking, in ' glare and gloom of that fire-ocean,' when Troy Town fell ! — CHAFTER III DISCROWNED But the question more pressing than all on the Legislator, as yet, is this third : What shall be done with King Louis ? King Louis, now King and Majesty to his own family alone, in their own Prison Apartment alone, has, for months past, been mere Louis Capet and the Traitor Veto with the rest of France. Shut in his Circuit of the Temple, he has heard and seen the loud whirl of things ; yells of September Massacres, Brunswick war-thunders djdng off in disaster and discomfiture, he passive, a spectator merely ; waiting whither it would ' Bisi. Pari. xx. 431-440. ^ Ibid. xx. 409. ^ Mercier, Nouveau Paris. please DISCROWNED 225 please to whirl with him. From the neighbouring windows, CHAP. Ill the curious, not without pity, might see him walk daily, at a Sept. -Oct. certain hour, in the Temple Garden, with his Queen, Sister ^' and two Children, all that now belongs to him in this Earth.^ Quietly he walks and waits ; for he is not of lively feelings, and is of a devout heart. The wearied Irresolute has, at least, no need of resolving now. His daily meals, lessons to his Son, daily walk in the Garden, daily game at ombre or draughts, fiU up the day : the morrow will provide for itself. The morrow indeed ; and yet How ? Louis asks, How ? France, with perhaps still more solicitude, asks. How ! A King dethroned by insurrection is verily not easy to dispose of. Keep him prisoner, he is a secret centre for the Dis- affected, for endless plots, attempts and hopes of theirs. Banish him, he is an open centre for them ; his royal war- standard, with what of divinity it has, unrolls itself, summon- ing the world. Put him to death ? A cruel questionable extremity that too : and yet the likeliest in these extreme circumstances, of insurrectionary men, whose own life and death lies staked : accordingly it is said, from the last step of the throne to the first of the scaffold there is short distance. But, on the whole, we wUl remark here that this business of Louis looks altogether different now, as seen over Seas and at the distance of forty-four years, from what it looked then, in France, and struggling confused all round one. For indeed it is a most Ijdng thing that same Past Tense always : so beautiful, sad, almost Elysian-sacred, ' in the moonlight of Memory,' it seems ; and seems only. For observe, always one most important element is surreptitiously (we not noticing it) withdrawn from the Past Time : the haggard element of Fear ! Not there does Fear dwell, nor Uncertainty, nor Anxiety ; but it dwells here ; haunting us, tracking us ; running like an accursed ground-discord through all the music-tones of our Existence ; — ^making the Tense a mere Present one ! Just so is it with this of Louis. Why smite the fallen ? asks Magna- nimity, out of danger now. He is fallen so low this once-high man ; no criminal nor traitor, how far from it ; but the un- happiest of Human Solecisms : whom if abstract Justice had to pronounce upon, she might well become concrete Pity, ar^d pronounce only sobs and dismissal ! ^ Moore, i. 123 ; ii. 224, etc. VOL. II. P So 226 REGICIDE BOOK II So argues retrospective Magnanimity : but Pusillanimity, Sept. -Oct. present, prospective ? Reader, thou hast never lived, for 1792 months, under the rustle of Prussian gallows-ropes ; never wert thou portion of a National Sahara-waltz, Twenty-five milUons running distracted to fight Brunswick ! Knights Errant themselves, when they conquered Giants, usually slew the Giants : quarter was only for other Knights Errant, who knew courtesy and the laws of battle. The French Nation, in simultaneous, desperate dead-pull, and as if by miracle of madness, has puUed down the most dread Goliath, huge with the growth of ten centuries ; and cannot believe, though his giant bulk, covering acres, lies prostrate, bound with peg and packthread, that he wUl not rise again, man-devouring ; that the victory is not partly a dream. Terror has its scepticism ; miraculous victory its rage of vengeance. Then as to crimin- ality, is the prostrated Giant, who wUl devour us if he rise, an innocent Giant ? Curate Gregoire, who indeed is now Constitutional Bishop Gregoire, asserts, in the heat of elo- quence, that Kingship by the very nature of it is a crime capital ; that Kings' Houses are as wild-beasts' dens.^ Lastly consider this : that there is on record a Trial of Charles First ! This printed Trial of Charles First is sold and read every- where at present : ^ — Quel spectacle ! Thus did the English People judge their Tyrant, and become the first of Free Peoples : which feat, by the grace of Destiny, may not France now rival ? Scepticism of terror, rage of miraculous victory, sub- lime spectacle to the universe, — all things point one fatal way. Such leading questions, and their endless incidental ones, — of September Anarchists and Departmental Guard ; of Grain- Riots, plaintive Interior Ministers ; of Armies, Hassenfratz dilapidations ; and what is to be done with Louis, — ^beleaguer and embroil this Convention ; which would so gladly make the Constitution rather. AH which questions, too, as we often urge of such things, are in growth ; they grow in every French head ; and can be seen growing also, very curiously, in this mighty welter of Parliamentary Debate, of Public Business which the Convention has to do. A question emerges, so small at first ; is put off, submerged ; but always reemerges 1 Moniieur, Stance du 21 Septembre, An. l^^ (1792)- ^ Moott's Journal, ii. 165. bigger 1792 THE LOSER PAYS 227 bigger than before. It is a curious, indeed an indescribable CHAP. Ill sort of growth which such things have. ^^^ h^?''*' We perceive, however, both by its frequent reeraergence and by its rapid enlargement of bulk, that this Question of King Louis wUl take the lead of all the rest. And truly, in that case, it will take the lead in a much deeper sense. For as Aaron's Rod swallowed all the other serpents ; so will the Foremost Question, whichever may get foremost, absorb all other questions and interests ; and from it and the decision of it wUl they all, so to speak, be born, or new-born, and have shape, physiognomy and destiny corresponding. It was appointed of Fate that, in this wide-weltering, strangely growing, monstrous stupendous imbroglio of Convention Busi- ness, the grand First-Parent of all the questions, controversies, measures and enterprises which were to be evolved there to the world's astonishment, should be this Question of King Louis. CHAPTER IV THE LOSER PAYS The Sixth of November 1792 was a great day for the Re- public : outwardly, over the Frontiers ; inwardly, in the Salle de ManSge. Outwardly : for Dumouriez, overrunning the Netherlands, did, on that day, come in contact with Saxe-Teschen and the Austrians ; Dumouriez wide-winged, they wide-winged ; at and around the village of Jemappes, near Mons. And fire- hail is whistling far and wide there, the great guns playing, and the small ; so many green Heights getting fringed and maned with red Fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing, and swept back on that, and is like to be swept back utterly ; when he rushes up in person, the prompt Polymetis ; speaks a prompt word or two ; and then, with clear tenor- pipe, ' uplifts the Hjonn of the Marseillese, entonna la Mar- seillaise,' ^ ten- thousand tenor or bass pipes joining ; or say, some Forty-thousand in all ; for every heart leaps at the ' Dumouriez, Mimoires, iii. 174. sound ; 228 REGICIDE BOOK II sound ; and so with rhythmic march-melody, waxing ever Nov. 6, 1792 quicker, to double and to treble quick, they rally, they ad- vance, they rush, death-defying, man-devouring ; carry batteries, redoutes, whatsoever is to be carried ; and, like the fire-whirlwind, sweep all manner of Austrians from the scene of action. Thus, through the hands of Dumouriez, may Rouget de Lille, in figurative speech, be said to have gained, miracu- lously, like another Orpheus, by his Marseillese fiddle-strings {fidibus canoris), a Victory of Jemappes ; and conquered the Low Countries. Young General Egalit6, it would seem, shone brave among the bravest on this occasion. Doubtless a brave Egalite ; — whom however does not Dumouriez rather talk of oftener than need were ? The Mother Society has her own thoughts. As for the elder Egalite, he flies low at this time ; appears in the Convention for some half-hour daily, with rubicund, preoccupied or impassive quasi-contemptuous countenance ; and then takes himself away.^ The Netherlands are conquered, at least overrun. Jacobin missionaries, your Prolys, Pereiras, follow in the train of the Armies ; also Convention Commis- sioners, melting church-plate, revolutionising and remodeling, — among whom Danton, in brief space, does immensities of business ; not neglecting his own wages and trade-profits, it is thought. Hassenfratz dilapidates at home ; Diunouriez grumbles and they dilapidate abroad : within the walls there is sinning, and without the walls there is sinning. But in the Hall of the Convention, at the same hour with this victory of Jemappes, there went another thing forward : Report, of great length, from the proper appointed Com- mittee, on the Crimes of Louis. The Galleries listen breath- less ; take comfort, ye Galleries : Deputy Valaze, Reporter on this occasion, thinks Louis very criminal ; and that, if convenient, he should be tried ; — poor Girondin Valaz^, who may be tried himself, one day ! Comfortable so far. Nay here comes a second Committee-reporter, Deputy Maiihe, with a Legal Argument, very prosy to read now, very refreshing to hear then, That, by the Law of the Country, Louis Capet was only called Inviolable by a figure of rhetoric ; but at bottom was perfectly violable, triable ; that he can, and even should be tried. This Question of Louis, emerging so often ' Moore, ii. 148. as LOVE LOOKS THROUGH THE LITTLE WINDOW. THE LOSER PAYS 229 as an angry confused possibility, and submerging again, has CHAP. IV emerged now in an articulate shape. Nov. 6, 1792 Patriotism growls indignant joy. The so-called reign of Equality is not to be a mere name, then, but a thing ! Try Louis Capet ? scornfully ejaculates Patriotism. Mean criminals go to the gallows for a purse cut ; and this chief criminal, guilty of a France cut ; of a France slashed asunder with Clotho-scissors and Civil war ; with his victims ' twelve- hundred on the Tenth of August alone ' lying low in the Cata- combs, fattening the passes of Argonne Wood, of Valmy and far Fields ; he, such chief criminal, shall not even come to the bar ? — For, alas, O Patriotism ! add we, it was from of old said. The loser fays ! It is he who has to pay all scores, run up by whomsoever ; on him must all breakages and charges fall ; and the twelve-hundred on the Tenth of August are not rebel traitors, but victims and martyrs : such is the law of quarrel. Patriotism, nothing doubting, watches over this Question of the trial, now happily emerged in an articulate shape ; and will see it to maturity, if the gods permit. With a keen solici- tude Patriotism watches ; getting ever keener, at every new difficulty, as Girondins and false brothers interpose delays ; till it get a keenness as of fixed-idea, and will have this Trial and no earthly thing instead of it, — if Equality be not a name. Love of EquaUty ; then scepticism of terror, rage of victory, sublime spectacle to the universe : all these things are strong. But indeed this Question of the Trial, is it not to all persons a most grave one ; filling with dubiety many a Legislative head ! Regicide ? asks the Gironde Respectability. To kill a king, and become the horror of respectable nations and persons ? But then also, to save a king ; to lose one's footing with the decided Patriot ; the undecided Patriot, though never so respectable, being mere hypothetic froth and no footing ? — The dilemma presses sore ; and between the horns of it you wriggle round and round. Decision is nowhere, save in the Mother Society and her Sons. These have decided, and go forward : the others wriggle round uneasily within their dilemma-horns, and make way nowhither. Chapter V 230 REGICIDE BOOK II Oct. 29-Nov. 8, 1792 CHAPTER V STRETCHING OF FORMULAS But how this Question of the Trial grew laboriously, through the weeks of gestation, now that it has been articulated or conceived, were superfluous to trace here. It emerged and submerged among the infinite of questions and embroilments. The Veto of Scoundrels writes plaintive Letters as to Anarchy ; ' concealed Royalists,' aided by Hunger, produce Riots about Grain. Alas, it is but a week ago, these Girondins made a new fierce onslaught on the September Massacres ! I For, one day, among the last of October, Robespierre, being summoned to the tribune by some new hint of that old calumny of the Dictatorship, was speaking and pleading there, with more and more comfort to himself ; till rising high in heart, he cried out valiantly : Is there any mail here that dare speci- fically accuse me ? ' Moi ! ' exclaimed one. Pause of deep silence : a lean angry little Figure, with broad bald brow, strode swiftly towards the tribune, taking papers from its pocket : ' I accuse thee, Robespierre,' — I, Jean Baptiste Louvet ! The Seagreen became tallowgreen ; shrinking to a comer of the tribune : Danton cried, ' Speak, Robespierre ; there are many good citizens that listen ' ; but the tongue refused its office. And so Louvet, with a shrill tone, read and recited crime after crime : dictatorial temper, exclusive popularity, bullying at elections, mob-retinue, September Massacres ; — till all the Convention shrieked again, and had almost indicted the Incorruptible there on the spot. Never did the Incorruptible run such a risk. Louvet, to his dying day, will regret that the Gironde did not take a bolder attitude, and extinguish him there and then. Not so, however : the Incorruptible, about to be indicted in this sudden manner, could not be refused a week of delay. That week he is not idle ; nor is the Mother Society idle, — fierce-tremulous for her chosen son. He is ready at the day with his written Speech ; smooth as a Jesuit Doctor's ; and convinces some. And now ? Why now lazy Vergniaud does not rise with Demosthenic thunder ; poor Louvet, unprepared, can STRETCHING OF FORMULAS 231 can do little or nothing : Barr^re proposes that these com- CHAP. V paratively despicable ' personalities ' be dismissed by order of Oct- 29-Nov. the day ! Order of the day it accordingly is. Barbaroux ^> ^'^"^ cannot even get a hearing ; not though he rush down to the Bar, and demand to be heard there as a petitioner.' The Convention, eager for public business (with that first articulate emergence of the Trial just coming on), dismisses these com- parative miseres and despicabilities : splenetic Louvet must digest his spleen, regretfully for ever : Robespierre, dear to Patriotism, is dearer for the dangers he has run. This is the second grand attempt by our Girondin Friends of Order to extinguish that black-spot in their domain ; and we see they have made it far blacker and wider than before ! Anarchy, September Massacre : it is a thing that lies hideous in the general imagination ; very detestable to the undecided Patriot, of Respectability : a thing to be harped on as often as need is. Harp on it, denounce it, trample it, ye Girondin Patriots : — and yet behold, the black-spot will not trample down ; it will only, as we say, trample blacker and wider : fools, it is no black-spot of the surface, but a well-spring of the deep ! Consider rightly, it is the Apex of the everlasting Abyss, this black-spot, looking up as water through thin ice ; — say, as the region of Nether Darkness through your thin film of Gironde Regulation and Respectability : trample it not, lest the film break, and then — ! The truth is, if our Gironde Friends had an understanding of it, where were French Patriotism, with all its eloquence, at this moment, had not that same great Nether Deep, of Bedlam, Fanaticism and Popular wrath and madness, risen unfathom- able on the Tenth of August ? French Patriotism were an eloquent Reminiscence ; swinging on Prussian gibbets. Nay, where, in few months, were it still, should the same great Nether Deep subside ?— Nay, as readers of Newspapers pretend to recollect, this hatefulness of the September Massacre is itself partly an after-thought : readers of Newspapers can quote Gorsas and various Brissotins approving of the September Massacre, at the time it happened ; and calling it a salutary vengeance.^ So that the real grief, after all, were it not so 1 Louvet, Mimoires (Paris, 1823), p. 52 ; Moniteur (Seances, du 29 Octobre, 5 Novembre, 1792) ; Moore, ii. 178, etc. ^ See Hist. Pari, xvii. 401 ; Newspapers by Gorsas and others (cited Md. 428). much 232 REGICIDE BOOK II much righteous horror, as grief that one's own power was Nov. 20, departing ? Unhappy Girondins ! 1792 jj^ ^Yie Jacobin Society, therefore, the decided Patriot com- plains that here are men who with their private ambitions and animosities will ruin Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood, all three : they check the spirit of Patriotism ; throw stumbling- blocks in its way ; and instead of pushing on, all shoulders at the wheel, will stand idle there, spitefully clamouring what foul ruts there are, what rude jolts we give ! To which the Jacobin Society answers with angry roar ; — ^with angry shriek, for there are Citoyennes too, thick crowded in the galleries here. Citoyennes who bring their seam with them, or their knitting-needles ; and shriek or knit as the case needs ; famed Tricoteuses, Patriot Knitters ; Mere Duchesse, or the like Deborah and Mother of the Faubourgs, giving the key-note. It is a changed Jacobin Society ; and a still changing. Where Mother Duchess now sits, authentic Duchesses have sat. High- rouged dames went once in jewels and spangles ; now, instead of jewels, you may take the knitting-needles and leave the rouge : the rouge will gradually give place to natural brown, clean washed or even unwashed : and Demoiselle Theroigne herself get scandalously fustigated. Strange enough ; it is the same tribune raised in mid-air, where a high Mirabeau, a high Bamave and Aristocrat Lameths once thundered ; whom gradually your Brissots, Guadets, Vergniauds, a hotter style of Patriots in bonnet rouge, did displace ; red heat, as one may say, superseding light. And now your Brissots in turn, and Brissotins, Rolandins, Girondins, are becoming super- numerary ; must desert the sittings, or be expelled : the light of the Mighty Mother is burning not red but blue ! — Pro- vincial Daughter Societies loudly disapprove these things ; loudly demand the swift reinstatement of such eloquent Giron- dins, the swift ' erasure of Marat, radiation de Marat.' The Mother Society, so far as natural reason can predict, seems ruining herself. Nevertheless she has at all crises seemed so ; she has a preternatural life in her, and will not ruin. But, in a fortnight more, this great Question of the Trial, while the fit Committee is assiduously but silently working on it, receives an unexpected stimulus. Our readers remember poor Louis's turn for smith-work : how, in old happier days, a certain STRETCHING OF FORMULAS 233 certain Sieur Gamain of Versailles was wont to come over CHAP. V and instruct him in lock-making ; — often scolding him, they Nov. 20, say, for his numbness. By whom, nevertheless, the royal ' Apprentice had learned something of that craft. Hapless Apprentice ; perfidious Master-Smith ! For now, on this 20th of November 1792, dingy Smith Gamain comes over to the Paris Municipality, over to Minister Roland, with hints that he. Smith Gamain, knows a thing ; that, in May last, when traitorous Correspondence was so brisk, he and the royal Apprentice fabricated an ' Iron Press, Armoire de Fer,^ cunningly inserting the same in a wall of the royal chamber in the Tuileries ; invisible under the wainscot ; where doubtless it still sticks ! Perfidious Gamain, attended by the proper Authorities, finds the wainscot panel which none else can find ; wrenches it up ; discloses the Iron Press, — full of Letters and Papers ! Roland clutches them out ; conveys them over in towels to the fit assiduous Committee, which sits hard by. In towels, we say, and without notarial inventory ; an oversight on the part of Roland. Here, however, are Letters enough : which disclose to a demonstration the Correspondence of a traitorous self-preserv- ing Court ; and this not with Traitors only, but even with Patriots so-called ! Barnave's treason, of Correspondence with the Queen, and friendly advice to her, ever since that Varennes Business, is hereby manifest : how happy that we have him, this Barnave, Ijdng safe in the Prison of Grenoble, since Sep- tember last, for he had long been suspect ! Talleyrand's treason, many a man's treason, if not manifest hereby, is next to it. Mirabeau's treason : wherefore his Bust in the Hall of the Convention ' is veiled with gauze,' till we ascertain. Alas, it is too ascertainable ! His Bust in the Hall of the Jacobins, denounced by Robespierre from the tribune in mid-air, is not veiled, it is instantly broken to sherds ; a Patriot mounting swiftly with a ladder, and shivering it down on the floor ; — it and others : amid shouts.^ Such is their recompense and amount of wages, at this date : on the principle of supply and demand. Smith Gamain, inadequately recompensed for the present, comes, some fifteen months after, with a humble Petition ; setting forth that no sooner was that important Iron Press finished off by him, than (as he now bethinks him- 1 Jotirnal des Dibats des Jacobins (in Hist. Pari. xxii. 296). self) 234 REGICIDE BOOK II self) Louis gave him a large glass of wine. Which large glass Nov. 20j of wine did produce in the stomach of Sieur Gamain the terriblest 1792 effects, evidently tending towards death, and was then brought up by an emetic ; but has, notwithstanding, entirely ruined the constitution of Sieur Gamain ; so that he cannot work for his family (as he now bethinks himself). The recompense of which is ' Pension of Twelve-hundred Francs,' and ' honour- able mention.' So different is the ratio of demand and supply at different times. Thus, amid obstructions and stimulating furtherances, has the Question of the Trial to grow ; emerging and submerging ; fostered by solicitous Patriotism. Of the Orations that were spoken on it, of the painfully devised Forms of Process for managing it, the Law Arguments to prove it lawful, and all the infinite floods of Juridical and other ingenuity and oratory, be no syllable reported in this History. Lawyer ingenuity is good : but what can it profit here ? If the truth must be spoken, O august Senators, the only Law in this case is : Vce victis, The loser pays ! Seldom did Robespierre say a wiser word than the hint he gave to that effect, in his oration, That it was needless to speak of Law ; that here, if never elsewhere, our Right was Might. An oration admired almost to ecstasy by the Jacobin Patriot : who shall say that Robespierre is not a thorough-going man ; bold in Logic at least ? To the like effect, or still more plainly, spake young Saint-Just, the black- haired, mild-toned youth. Danton is on mission, in the Netherlands, during this preliminary work. The rest, far as one reads, welter amid Law of Nations, Social Contract, Juristics, SyUogistics ; to us barren as the East wind. In fact, what can be more unprofitable than the sight of Seven- hundred and Forty-nine ingenious men struggling with their whole force and industry, for a long course of weeks, to do at bottom this : To stretch out the old Formula and Law Phrase- ology, so that it may cover the new, contradictory, entirely tfncoverable Thing ? Whereby the poor Formula does but crack, and one's honesty along with it ! The thing that is palpably hot, burning, wilt thou prove it, by syllogism, to be a freezing-mixture ? This of stretching out Formulas till they crack, is, especially in times of swift change, one of the sorrow- fulest tasks poor Humanity has. Chapter VI AT THE BAR 235 CHAP. VI Dec. 11, 1792 CHAPTER VI AT THE BAR Meanwhile, in a space of some five weeks, we have got to another emerging of the Trial, and a more practical one than ever. On Tuesday eleventh of December, the King's Trial has emerged, very decidedly : into the streets of Paris ; in the shape of that green Carriage of Mayor Chambon, within which sits the King himself, with attendants, on his way to the Con- vention Hall ! Attended, in that green carriage, by Mayors Chambon, Procureurs Chaumette ; and outside of it by Com- mandants Santerre, with cannon, cavalry and double row of infantry ; all Sections under arms, strong Patrols scouring all streets ; so fares he, slowly through the dull drizzling weather : and about two o'clock we behold him, ' in walnut-coloured greatcoat, redingote noisette,' descending through the Place Vendome, towards that Salle de Manege ; to be indicted, and judicially interrogated. The mysterious Temple Circuit has given up its secret ; which now, in this walnut-coloured coat, men behold with eyes. The same bodily Louis who was once Louis the Desired, fares there : hapless King, he is getting now towards port ; his deplorable farings and voyagings draw to a close. What duty remains to him henceforth, that of placidly enduring, he is fit to do. The singular Procession fares on ; in silence, says Prud- homme, or amid growlings of the Marseillese Hymn ; in silence, ushers itself into the Hall of the Convention, Santerre holding Louis's arm with his hand. Louis looks round him, with composed air, to see what kind of Convention and Parliament it is. Much changed indeed : — since February gone two years, when our Constituent, then busy, spread fleur-de-lys velvet for us ; and we came over to say a kind word here, and they all started up swearing Fidelity ; and all France started up swearing, and made it a Feast of Pikes ; which has ended in this ! Barr^re, who once ' wept ' looking up from his Editor's- Desk, looks down now from his President's-Chair, with a list of Fifty-seven Questions ; and says, dry-eyed : ' Louis, you may 236 REGICIDE BOOK II may sit down.' Louis sits down : it is the very seat, they Dec. 11, say, same timber and stuffing, from which he accepted the ^'^^2 Constitution, amid dancing and illumination, autumn gone a year. So much woodwork remains identical ; so much else is not identical. Louis sits and listens, with a composed look and mind. Of the Fifty-seven Questions we shall not give so much as one. They are questions captiously embracing all the main Documents seized on the Tenth of August, or found lately in the Iron Press ; embracing all the main incidents of the Revolu- tion History ; and they ask, in substance, this : Louis, who wert King, art thou not guilty to a certain extent, by act and written document, of trying to continue King ? Neither in the Answers is there much notable. Mere quiet negations, for most part ; an accused man standing on the simple basis of No : I do not recognise that document ; I did not do that act ; or did it according to the law that then was. Whereupon the Fifty-seven Questions, and Documents to the number of a Hundred and Sixty-two, being exhausted in this manner, Barr^re finishes, after some three hours, with his : ' Louis, I invite you to withdraw.' Louis withdraws, under Municipal escort, into a neigh- bouring Committee-room ; having first, in leaving the bar, demanded to have Legal Counsel. He declines refreshment, in this Committee-room ; then, seeing Chaumette busy with a small loaf which a grenadier had divided with him, says, he will take a bit of bread. It is five o'clock ; and he had break- fasted but slightly, in a morning of such dnmiming and alarm. Chaumette breaks his halfjloaf : the King eats of the crust ; mounts the green Carriage, eating ; asks now. What he shall do with the crumb ? Chaumette's clerk takes it from him ; flings it out into the street. Louis says, It is pity to fling out bread, in a time of dearth. ' My grandmother,' remarks Chaumette, ' used to say to me. Little boy, never waste a crumb of bread ; you cannot make one.' ' Monsieur Chaumette,' answers Louis, ' your grandmother seems to have been a sensible woman.' ^ Poor innocent mortal ; so quietly he waits the drawing of the lot ; — ^fit to do this at least well ; Passivity alone, without Activity, sufficing for it ! He talks once of travelling over France by and by, to have a geographical and ' Prudhomme's Newspaper (in /:fisi. Pari. xxi. 314). topographical AT THE BAR 237 topographical view of it ; being from of old fond of geography. CHAP. VI — The Temple Circuit again receives him, closes on him ; gazing Dec. il, Paris may retire to its hearths amd coffee-houses, to its clubs '^^^ ROMAIN DESEZE. and theatres : the damp Darkness has sunk, and with it the drumming and patrolling of this strange Day. Louis is now separated fron his Queen and Family ; given up to his simple reflections and resources. Dull lie these stone walls round him ; of his loved ones none with him. ' In this state of uncertainty,' providing for the worst, he writes his 238 REGICIDE 1792 BOOK II jj^ig -^iu . a, Paper which can still be read ; full of placidity, V7^' simplicity, pious sweetness. The Convention, after Debate, has granted him Legal Counsel, of his own choosing. Advocate Target feels himself ' too old,' being turned of fifty-four ; and declines. He had gained great honour once, defending Rohan the Necklace-Cardinal ; but will gain none here. Advocate Tronchet, some ten years older, does not decline. Nay behold, good old Malesherbes steps forward voluntarily ; to the last of his fields, the good old hero ! He is grey with seventy years : he says, ' I was twice called to the Council of him who was my Master, when aU the world coveted that honour ; and I owe him the same service now, when it has become one which many reckon dangerous.' These two, with a younger Des^ze whom they wiU select for pleading, are busy over that Fifty- and-sevenfold Indictment, over the Hundred and Sixty-two Documents ; Louis aiding them as he can. A great Thing is now therefore in open progress ; all men, in all lands, watching it. By what Forms and Methods shall the Convention acquit itself, in such manner that there rest not on it even the suspicion of blame ? Difficult that will be ! The Convention, really much at a loss, discusses and deliberates. All day from morning to night, day after day, the Tribune drones with oratory on this matter ; one must stretch the old Formula to cover the new Thing. The Patriots of the Mountain, whetted ever keener, clamour for despatch above all ; the only good Form will be a swift one. Neverthe- less the Convention deliberates ; the Tribune drones, — drowned indeed in tenor, and even in treble, from time to time ; the whole Hall shrilling up round it into pretty frequent wrath and provocation. It has droned and shrilled wellnigh a fort- night, before we can decide, this shrillness getting ever shriller, That on Wednesday 26th of December, Louis shall appear and plead. His Advocates complain that it is fatally soon ; which they well might as Advocates : but without remedy ; to Patriotism it seems endlessly late. On Wednesday therefore, at the cold dark hour of eight in the morning, all Senators are at their post. Indeed they warm the cold hour, as we find, by a violent effervescence, such as is too common now ; some Louvet or Buzot attacking some Tallien, Chabot ; and so the whole Mountain effervesc- ing against the whole Gironde. Scarcely is this done, at nine, when AT THE BAR 239 when Louis and his three Advocates, escorted by the clang of arms and Santerre's National force, enter the Hall. Des^ze unfolds his papers ; honourably fulfilling his perilous office, pleads for the space of three hours. An honourable Pleading, ' composed almost overnight ' ; courageous yet discreet ; not without ingenuity, and soft pathetic eloquence : Louis fell on his neck, when they had withdrawn, and said with tears, ' Mon pauvre Deseze ! ' Louis himself, before with- drawing, had added a few words, ' perhaps the last he would utter to them ' : how it pained his heart, above all things, to be held guilty of that bloodshed on the Tenth of August ; or of ever shedding or wishing to shed French blood. So saying, he withdrew from that Hall ; — having indeed finished his work there. Many are the strange errands he has had thither ; but this strange one is the last. And now, why will the Convention loiter ? Here is the Indictment and Evidence ; here is the Pleading : does not the rest follow of itself ? The Mountain, and Patriotism in general, clamours still louder for despatch ; for Permanent-session, till the task be done. Nevertheless a doubting, apprehensive Convention decides that it will still deliberate first ; that all Members, who desire it, shall have leave to speak. — To your desks, therefore, ye eloquent Members ! Down with your thoughts, your echoes and hearsays of thoughts ; now is the time to show oneself ; France and the Universe listens ! Members are not wanting : Oration, spoken Pamphlet follows spoken Pamphlet, with what eloquence it can : President's List swells ever higher with names claiming to speak ; from day to day, all days and all hours, the constant Tribune drones ; — shrill CHAP. VI Dec. 26, 1792 LAMOIGNON DE MALESHERBES. 240 REGICIDE BOOK II — shrill Galleries supplying, very variably, the tenor and treble, Dec. 1792 It were a dull tone otherwise. The Patriots, in Mountain and Galleries, or taking counsel nightly in Section-house, in Mother Society, amid their shrill Tricoteuses, have to watch lynx-eyed ; to give voice when needful ; occasionally very loud. Deputy Thuriot, he who was Advocate Thuriot, who was Elector Thuriot, and from the top of the Bastille saw Saint- Antoine rising like the ocean ; this Thuriot can stretch a Formtda as heartily as most men. Cruel Billaud is not silent, if you incite him. Nor is cruel Jean-Bon silent ; a kind of Jesuit he too ; — ^write him not, as the Dictionaries too often do, Jambon, which signifies mere Ham I But, on the whole, let no man conceive it possible that Louis is not guilty. The only question for a reasonable man is or was : Can the Convention judge Louis ? Or must it be the whole People ; in Primary Assembly, and with delay ? Always delay, ye Girondins, false hommes d'itat ! so bellows Patriotism, its patience almost failing. — But indeed, if we consider it, what shall these poor Girondins do ? Speak their conviction that Louis is a Prisoner of War ; and cannot be put to death without injustice, solecism, peril ? Speak such conviction ; and lose utterly your footing with the decided Patriot ! Nay properly it is not even a conviction, but a conjecture and dim puzzle. How many poor Girondins are sure of but one thing : That a man and Girondin ought to have footing some- where, and to stand firmly on it ; keeping well with the Re- spectable Classes ! This is what conviction and assurance of faith they have. They must wriggle painfully between their dilemma-horns } Nor is France idle, nor Europe. It is a Heart this Con- vention, as we said, which sends out influences, and receives them. A King's Execution, call it Martyrdom, call it Punish- ment, were an influence ! — Two notable influences this Con- vention has already sent forth over all Nations ; much to its own detriment. On the 19th of November, it emitted a Decree, and has since confirmed and unfolded the details of it. That any Nation which might see good to shake off the fetters of Despotism was thereby, so to speak, the Sister of France, ' See Extracts from their Newspapers, in I/ist. Pari. xxi. 1-38, etc. and __^ AT THE BAR 241 and should have help and countenance. A Decree much CHAP. VI noised of by Diplomatists, Editors, International Lawyers ; Dec 1792 such a Decree as no living Fetter of Despotism, nor Person in Authority anywhere, can approve of ! It was Deputy Chambon the Girondin who propounded this Decree ; — at bottom perhaps as a flourish of rhetoric. The second influence we speak of had a still poorer origin : in the restless loud-rattling slightly-furnished head of one Jacob Dupont from the Loire country. The Convention is speculating on a plan of National Education : Deputy Dupont in his speech says, ' I am free to avow, M. le President, that I for my part am an Atheist,' ^ — ^thinking the world might like to know that. The French world received it without com- mentary ; or with no audible commentary, so loud was France otherwise. The Foreign world received it with confutation, with horror and astonishment ; ^ a most miserable influence this ! And now if to these two were added a third influence and sent pulsing abroad over all the Earth : that of Regicide ? Foreign Courts interfere in this Trial of Louis ; Spain, England : not to be listened to ; though they come, as it were, at least Spain comes, with the olive-branch in one hand, and the sword without scabbard in the other. But at home too, from out of this circumambient Paris and France, what influences come thick-pulsing ! Petitions flow in ; pleading for equal justice, in a reign of so-called Equality. The living Patriot pleads ; — O ye National Deputies, do not the dead Patriots plead ? The Twelve-hundred that lie in cold obstruc- tion, do not they plead ; and petition, in Death's diunb-show, from their narrow house there, more eloquently than speech ? Crippled Patriots hop on crutches round the Salle de Manege, demanding justice. The Wounded of the Tenth of August, the Widows and Orphans of the Killed petition in a body ; and hop and defile, eloquently mute, through the Hall : one wounded Patriot, unable to hop, is borne on his bed thither, and passes shoulder-high, in the horizontal posture.^ The Con- vention Tribune, which has paused at such sight, commences again, — droning mere Juristic Oratory. But out of doors Paris is piping ever higher. Bull-voiced Saint-Huruge is heard ; ^ Monitettr, S&nce du 14 Decembre 1792. 2 Mrs. Hannah More, Letter to Jacob Dupont (London, 1793) ; etc. etc. ^ Hist. Pari. xxii. 131 ; Moore, etc. VOL. II. Q and 242 REGICIDE BOOK II and the hysteric eloquence of Mother Duchess ; ' Varlet, Dec. 1792 Apostle of Liberty,' with pike and red cap, flies hastily, carry- ing his oratorical folding-stool. Justice on the Traitor ! cries aU the Patriot world. Consider also this other cry, heard loud on the streets : ' Give us Bread, or else kill us ! ' Bread and Equality ; Justice on the Traitor, that we may have Bread ! The Limited or undecided Patriot is set against the Decided. Mayor Chambon heard of dreadful rioting at the Theatre de la Nation : it had come to rioting, and even to fist-work, between the Decided and the Undecided, touching a new Drama called Ami des Lois (Friend of the Laws). One of the poorest Dramas ever written ; but which had didactic applications in it ; wherefore powdered wigs of Friends of Order and black hair of Jacobin heads are flying there; and Mayor Chambon hastens with Santerre, in hopes to quell it. Far from quelling it, our poor Mayor gets so ' squeezed,' says the Report, and likewise so blamed and bullied, say we, — that he, with regret, quits the brief Mayoralty altogether, ' his lungs being affected.' This miserable Ami des Lois is debated of in the Convention itself ; so violent, mutually- enraged, are the Limited Patriots and the Unlimited.^ Between which two classes, are not Aristocrats enough, and Crypto-Aristocrats, busy ? Spies running over from London with important Packets ; spies pretending to run ! One of these latter, Viard was the name of him, pretended to accuse Roland, and even the Wife of Roland : to the joy of Chabot and the Mountain. But the Wife of Roland came, being summoned, on the instant, to the Convention Hall ; came, in her high clearness ; and, with few clear words, dissipated this Viard into despicability and air ; all Friends of Order applaud- ing.^ So, with Theatre-riots, and ' Bread, or else kill us ' ; with Rage, Hunger, preternatural Suspicion, does this wild Paris pipe. Roland grows ever more querulous, in his Messages and Letters ; rising almost to the hysterical pitch. Marat, whom no power on Earth can prevent seeing into Traitors and Rolands, takes to bed for three days, almost dead, the invalu- able People's-Friend, with heart-break, with fever and headache : ' Peuple babillard, si tu savais agir. People of Babblers, if thou couldst but act ! ' To crown all, victorious Dumouriez, in these New-year's 1 Hist. Pari, xxiii. 31, 48, etc. » Moniteur, Seance du 7 Decembre 1792. days, THE THREE VOTINGS 243 days, is arrived in Paris ; — one fears for no good. He pretends CHAP. VI to be complaining of Minister Pache, and Hassenfratz dilapi- Dec. 1792 dations ; to be concerting measures for the spring Campaign : one finds him much in the company of the Girondins. Plotting with them against Jacobinism, against Equality, and the Punish- ment of Louis ? We have letters of his to the Convention itself. Will he act the old Lafayette part, this new victori- ous General ? Let him withdraw again ; not undenounced.^ And still in the Convention Tribune, it drones continually, mere Juristic Eloquence, and Hjrpothesis without Action ; and there are stUl fifties on the President's List. Nay these Gironde Presidents give their own party preference : we suspect they play foul with the List ; men of the Mountain cannot be heard. And still it drones, all through December into January and a New year ; and there is no end ! Paris pipes round it ; multi- tudinous ; ever higher, to the note of the whirlwind. Paris will ' bring cannon from Saint-Denis ' ; there is talk of ' shutting the Barriers,' — to Roland's horror. Whereupon, behold, the Convention Tribune suddenly ceases droning : we cut short, be on the List who likes ; and make end. On Tuesday next, the Fifteenth of January 1793, it shall go to the Vote, name by name ; and one way or other, this great game play itself out ! CHAPTER VII THE THREE VOTINGS Is Louis Capet guilty of conspiring against Liberty ? Shall our Sentence be itself final, or need ratifying by Appeal to the People ? If guilty, what Punishment ? This is the form agreed to, after uproar and ' several hours of tumultuous indecision ' : these are the Three successive Questions, whereon the Convention shall now pronounce. Paris floods round their Hall ; multitudinous, many-sounding. Europe and all Nations listen for their answer. Deputy after Deputy shall answer to his name : Guilty or Not guilty ? As to the Guilt, there is, as above hinted, no doubt in the ' Dumouriez, Mimoires, iii. c. 4. mind 244 REGICIDE BOOK II mind of Patriot men. Overwhelming majority pronounces Jan. 16-19, Guilt ; the unanimous Convention votes for GuUt, only some ^'^^ feeble twenty-eight voting not Innocence, but refusing to vote at all. Neither does the Second Question prove doubtful, whatever the Girondins might calculate. Would not Appeal to the People be another name for civil war ? Majority of two to one answers that there shall be no Appeal : this also is settled. Loud Patriotism, now at ten o'clock, may hush itself for the night ; and retire to its bed not without hope. Tuesday has gone well. On the morrow comes. What Punish- ment ? On the morrow is the tug of war. Consider therefore if, on this Wednesday morning, there is an affluence of Patriotism ; if Paris stands a-tiptoe, and all Deputies are at their post ! Seven-hundred and Forty-nine honourable Deputies ; only some twenty absent on mission, Duchatel and some seven others absent by sickness. Mean- while expectant Patriotism and Paris standing a-tiptoe have need of patience. For this Wednesday again passes in debate and effervescence ; Girondins proposing that a ' majority of three-fourths ' shall be required ; Patriots fiercely resisting them. Danton, who has just got back from mission in the Netherlands, does obtain ' order of the day ' on this Girondin proposal ; nay he obtains further that we decide sans desem- parer, in Permanent- session, till we have done. And so, finally, at eight in the evening this Third stupendous Voting, by roU-caU or appel nominal, does begin. What Punishment ? Girondins undecided. Patriots decided, men afraid of Royalty, men afraid of Anarchy, must answer here and now. Infinite Patriotism, dusky in the lamp-light, floods all corridors, crowds all galleries ; sternly waiting to hear. Shrill-sounding Ushers summon you by Name and Depart- ment ; you must rise to the Tribune, and say. Eye-witnesses have represented this scene of the Third Voting, and of the votings that grew out of it, — a scene pro- tracted, like to be endless, lasting, with few brief intervals, from Wednesday till Sunday morning, — as one of the strangest seen in the Revolution. Long night wears itself into day, morning's paleness is spread over all faces ; and again the wintry shadows sink, and the dim lamps are lit : but through day and night and the vicissitudes of hours. Member after Member THE THREE VOTINGS 245 Member is mounting continually those Tribune-steps ; pausing CHAP. VII aloft there, in the clearer upper light, to speak his Fate-word ; "^a"- 16-19, then diving down into the dusk and throng again. Like ' Phantoms in the hour of midnight ; most spectral, pande- monial ! Never did President Vergniaud, or any terrestrial President, superintend the like. A King's Life, and so much else that depends thereon, hangs trembling in the balance. Man after man mounts ; the buzz hushes itself till he have spoken : Death ; Banishment ; Lnprisonment till the Peace. Many say. Death ; with what cautious well-studied phrases and paragraphs they could devise, of explanation, of enforce- ment, of faint recommendation to mercy. Many too say. Banishment ; something short of Death. The balance trembles, none can yet guess whitherward. Whereat anxious Patriotism bellows ; irrepressible by Ushers. The poor Girondins, many of them, under such fierce bellow- ing of Patriotism, say Death ; justifying, motivant, that most miserable word of theirs by some brief casuistry and Jesuitry. Vergniaud himself says. Death ; justifying by Jesuitry. Rich Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau had been of the Noblesse, and then of the Patriot Left Side, in the Constituent ; and had argued and reported, there and elsewhere, not a little, against Capital Punishment : nevertheless he now says. Death ; a word which may cost him dear. Manuel did surely rank with the Decided in August last ; but he has been sinking and backsliding ever since September and the scenes of September. In this Con- vention, above all, no word he could speak would find favour ; he says now. Banishment ; and in mute wrath quits the place for ever, — ^much hustled in the corridors. Philippe Egalite votes, in his soul and conscience, Death : at the sound of which and of whom, even Patriotism shakes its head ; and there runs a groan and shudder through this Hall of Doom. Robes- pierre's vote cannot be doubtful ; his speech is long. Men see the figure of shrill Sieyes ascend ; hardly pausing, passing merely, this figure says, ' La Mori sans 'phrase, Death without phrases ' ; and fares onward and downward. Most spectral, pandemonial ! And yet if the Reader fancy it of a funereal, sorrowful or even grave character, he is far mistaken : ' the Ushers in the Mountain quarter,' says Mercier, ' had become as Box-keepers at the Opera ' ; opening and shutting of Galleries for privileged persons, 246 REGICIDE BOOK II persons, for ' D'Orleans Egalite's mistresses,' or other high- Jan. 2'Oj dizened women of condition, rustling with laces and tricolor. ^"^^"^ Gallant Deputies pass and repass thitherward, treating them with ices, refreshments and small-talk ; the high-dizened heads beck responsive ; some have their card and pin, pricking down the Ayes and Noes, as at a game of Rouge-et-Noir. Farther aloft reigns Mere Duchesse with her unrouged Amazons ; she cannot be prevented making long Hahas, when the vote is not La Mart. In these Galleries there is refection, drinking of wine and brandy ' as in open tavern, en pleine tabagie.' Betting goes on in all coffeehouses of the neighbourhood. But within- doors, fatigue, impatience, uttermost weariness sits now on all visages ; lighted up only from time to time by turns of the game. Members have fallen asleep ; Ushers come and awaken them to vote : other Members calculate whether they shall not have time to run and dine. Figures rise, like phantoms, pale in the dusky lamp-light ; utter from this Tribune, only one word : Death. ' Tout est optique,' says Mercier, ' The world is all an optical shadow.' ^ Deep in the Thursday night, when the voting is done, and Secretaries are summing it up, sick Duchatel, more spectral than another, comes borne on a chair, wrapped in blankets, in ' nightgown and nightcap,' to vote for Mercy : one vote it is thought may turn the scale. Ah no ! In profoundest silence. President Vergniaud, with a voice full of sorrow, has to say : ' I declare, in the name of the Convention, that the punishment it pronounces on Louis Capet is that of Death.' Death by a small majority of Fifty- three. Nay, if we deduct from the one side, and add to the other, a certain Twenty-six, who said Death but coupled some faintest ineffectual surmise of mercy with it, the majority will be but One. Death is the sentence : but its execution ? It is not executed yet ! Scarcely is the vote declared when Louis's Three Advo- cates enter ; with Protest in his name, with demand for Delay, for Appeal to the People. For this do Deseze and Tronchet plead, with brief eloquence : brave old Malesherbes pleads for it with eloquent want of eloquence, in broken sentences, in embarrassment and sobs ; that brave time-honoured face, with its gray strength, its broad sagacity and honesty, is 1 Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 156-59; Montgaillard, iii. 348-87 ; Moore, etc. mastered THE THREE VOTINGS 247 mastered with emotion, melts into dumb tears.^ — They reject CHAP. VII the Appeal to the People ; that having been already settled. Jan. 20, But as to the Delay, what they call Sursis, it shall be considered ; ^^^"^ shall be voted for tomorrow : at present we adjourn. Where- upon Patriotism ' hisses ' from the Mountain : but a ' tyrannical majority ' has so decided, and adjourns. There is still this fourth Vote, then, growls indignant Pat- riotism : — this vote, and who knows what other votes, and adjournments of voting ; and the whole matter still hovering hypothetical ! And at every new vote those Jesuit Girondins, even they who voted for Death, would so fain find a loophole ! Patriotism must watch and rage. Tyrannical adjournments there have been ; one, and now another at midnight on plea of fatigue, — all Friday wasted in hesitation and higgling ; in re-counting of the votes, which are found correct as they stood ! Patriotism bays fiercer than ever ; Patriotism, by long watching, has become red-eyed, almost rabid. ' Delay : yes or no ? ' men do vote it finally, all Saturday, aU day and night. Men's nerves are worn out, men's hearts are desperate ; now it shall end. Vergniaud, spite of the baying, ventures to say Yes, Delay ; though he had voted Death. Philippe Egalite says, in his soul and conscience. No. The next Member mounting : ' Since Philippe says No, I for my part say Yes, moi je dis Oui.' The balance still trembles. Till finally, at three o'clock on Sunday morning, we have : No Delay, by a majority of Seventy ; Death within four-and- twenty hours ! Garat, Minister of Justice, has to go to the Temple with this stem message : he ejaculates repeatedly, ' Quelle commission affreuse, What a frightful function ! ' ^ Louis begs for a Con- fessor ; for yet three days of life, to prepare himself to die. The Confessor is granted, the three days and all respite are refused. There is no deliverance, then ? Thick stone walls answer, None. Has King Louis no friends ? Men of action, of courage grown desperate, in this his extreme need ? King Louis's friends are feeble and far. Not even a voice in the coffee- ^ Moniteur(m Hist. Pari, xxiii. 210). See Boissy d'Anglas, Vie de Malesherbes, ii. 139- ^ Biographic des Ministre's, p. 157. houses 248 REGICIDE BOOK II Jan. 20j 1793 houses rises for him. At Meot the Restaurateur's no Captain Dampmartin now dines ; or sees death-doing whiskerandoes on furlough exhibit daggers of improved structure. Moot's gallant Royalists on furlough are far across the marches ; they are wandering distracted over the world : or their bones lie whitening Argonne Wood. Only some weak Priests ' leave Pamphlets on all the bourne-stones,' this night, calling for a rescue : calling for the pious women to rise ; or are taken distributing Pamphlets, and sent to Prison.^ Nay there is one death-doer, of the ancient Meot sort, who, with effort, has done even less and worse : slain a Deputy, and set all the Patriotism of Paris on edge ! It was five on Saturday even- ing when Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, having given his vote. No Delay, ran over to Fevrier's in the Palais Royal to snatch a morsel of dinner. He had dined, and was paying. A thickset man ' with black hair and blue beard,' in a loose kind of frock, stept up to him ; it was, as Fevrier and the bystanders bethought them, one Paris of the old King's-Guard. ' Are you Lepelletier ? ' asks he. — ' Yes.' — ' You voted in the King's Business — ? ' — ' I voted Death.' — ' ScSlerat, take that ! ' cries Paris, flashing out a sabre from under his frock, and plunging it deep in Lepel- letier's side. Fevrier clutches him : but he breaks off ; is gone. The voter Lepelletier Ues dead ; he has expired in great pain, at one in the morning ; — two hours before that Vote of No Delay was fully summed up. Guardsman Paris is flying over France ; cannot be taken ; will be found some months ' See Prudhomme's Newspaper, Rivolutions de Paris (in Hist. Pari, xxiii. 318). after, GARAT. PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION 249 after, self-shot in a remote inn.^ Robespierre sees reason to CHAP. VII think that Prince d'Artois himself is privately in Town ; that Jan. 20, the Convention will be butchered in the Itimp. Patriotism ^^^"^ soimds mere wail and vengeance : Santerre doubles and trebles all his patrols. Pity is lost in rage and fear ; the Convention has refused the three days of life and all respite. CHAPTER VIII PLACE DE LA RlfivOLUTION 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 another, 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 in- numerable 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 false- hoods 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 ! King- ship 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 ^ Hist. Pari, xxiii. 275, 318; F^lix Lepelletier, Vie de Michel Lepelletier son Frire, p.' 61, etc. Felix, with due love of the miraculous, will have it that the Suicide in the inn was not Paris, but some doable-ganger of his. go 250 REGICIDE BOOK 11 go to the gallows, unregarded ; they consume the cup of Jan. 21, 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 it is of the thing pitied ! A Confessor has come ; Abbe Edgeworth, of Irish extrac- tion, 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 crudest of scenes : ' At half -past eight, the door of the ante-room opened : the Queen appeared first, leading her Son by the hand ; then Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth : they all flung them- selves 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 towards him, and often held him embraced. This scene of wo 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 ? ' Clery's Narrativi (London, 1798), cited in Weber, iii. 312. For PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION 251 For nearly two hours this agony lasts ; then they tear them- CHAP. VIII selves asunder. ' Promise that you will see us on the morrow.' Jan. 21, 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 ante-room, glanced at the Cer- berus Municipals ; and, with woman's vehemence, said through her tears, ' Vous ites tous des scdUrats.' 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 WUl, 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 neighbours. 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 252 REGICIDE BOOK II it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone : one carriage Jan. 21, 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 faUs 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 : spec- tators 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 aU tempers ; arrived now at the black Mahlstrom and descent of Death : in sorrow, in indignation, in resigna- tion 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 grey, 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 teU 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 PLACE DE LA R EVOLUTION 253 bespeaks him : ' Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven.' The CHAP. VIII Axe clanks down ; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday Jan. 21, the 21st of January 1793. He was aged Thirty-eight years ^^^^ four months and twenty-eight days.^ Executioner Samson shows the Head : fierce shout of Vive la Ripublique 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 Townhall 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 afterwards 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 coffeehouses 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. A grave thing it indisputably is ; and will have consequences. On the morrow morning, Roland, so long steeped to the lips in disgust and chagrin, sends in his demission. His accounts lie all ready, correct in black-on-white to the uttermost farthing : these he wants but to have audited, that he might retire to remote obscurity, to the country and his books. They will never be audited, those accounts ; he will never get retired thither. It was on Tuesday that Roland demitted. On Thursday comes Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau's Funeral, and passage, to the Pantheon of Great Men. Notable as the wild pageant of a winter day. The Body is borne aloft, half-bare ; the winding- sheet disclosing the death-wound : sabre and bloody clothes parade themselves ; a ' lugubrious music ' wailing harsh ncenice. Oak-crowns shower down from windows ; President Vergniaud walks there, with Convention, with Jacobin Society, and all Patriots of every colour, all mourning brotherlike. ' Newspapers, Municipal Records, etc. etc. (in Hist. Pari, xxiii. 298-349) ; Deux Amis, ix. 369-373 ; Mercier, Nouveau Paris, iii. 3-8. ' His Letter in the Newspapers {Hist. Pari, ubi supra). » Forster's Briefwechsel, i. 473. Notable 254 REGICIDE BOOK II Notable also for another thing this Burial of Lepelletier : Jan.-March n -yyas the last act these men ever did with concert ! All ■^'^'^ Parties and figures of Opinion, that agitate this distracted France and its Convention, now stand, as it were, face to face, and dagger to dagger ; the King's Life, round which they all struck and battled, being hurled down. Dumouriez, conquer- ing Holland, growls ominous discontent, at the head of Armies. Men say Dumouriez will have a King ; that young D 'Orleans Egalite shall be his King. Deputy Fauchet, in the Journal des Amis, curses his day, more bitterly than Job did ; invokes the poniards of regicides, of ' Arras Vipers ' or Robespierres, of Pluto Dantons, of horrid Butchers Legendre and Simulacra d'Herbois, to send him swiftly to another world than theirs} This is Te-Deum Fauchet, of the Bastille Victory, of the Cercle Social. Sharp was the death-hail rattling round one's Flag of-truce, on that Bastille day : but it was soft to such wreckage of high Hope as this ; one's New Golden Era going down to leaden dross, and sulphurous black of the Everlasting Darkness ! At home this Killing of a King has divided all friends ; and abroad it has united all enemies. Fraternity of Peoples, Revolutionary Propagandism ; Atheism, Regicide ; total de- struction of social order in this world ! All Kings, and lovers of Kings, and haters of Anarchy, rank in coalition ; as in a war for life. England signifies to Citizen Chauvelin, the Ambassador or rather Ambassador's-Cloak, that he must quit the country in eight days. Ambassador's-cloak and Ambassa- dor, Chauvelin and Talleyrand, depart accordingly.^ Talley- rand, implicated in that Iron Press of the Tuileries, thinks it safest to make for America. England has cast out the Embassy : England declares war, — being shocked principally, it would seem, at the condition of the river Scheldt. Spain declares war ; being shocked principally at some other thing ; which doubtless the Mani- festo indicates.^ Nay we find it was not England that declared war first, or Spain first ; but that France herself declared war first on both of them ; * — a point of immense Parliamentary ' Mist. Pari, ubi suprk. ' Annual Register oi \^()T„ pp. 114-28. * 23d March (Annual Register, p. 161). * 1st February; yth March (i)/ff«zVe«r of these dates). and PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION 255 and Journalistic interest in those days, but which has become CHAP. VIII of no interest whatever in these. They all declare war. The Jan. -March . 1793 sword is drawn, the scabbard thrown away. It is even as Danton'said, in one of his ail-too gigantic figures : ' The coalised Kings threaten us ; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the Head of a King.' Book Third BOOK THIRD THE GIRONDINS CHAPTER I CAUSE AND EFFECT This huge Insurrectionary Movement, which we liken to a breaking-out of Tophet and the Abyss, has swept away Royalty, Aristocracy, and a King's life. The question is. What will it next do ; how will it henceforth shape itself ? Settle down into a reign of Law and Liberty ; according as the habits, persuasions and endeavours of the educated, moneyed, respect- able class prescribe ? That is to say : the volcanic lava-flood, bursting up in the manner described, will explode and flow according to Girondin Formula and pre-established rule of Philosophy ? If so, for our Girondin friends it wlU be well. Meanwhile were not the prophecy rather, that as no external force. Royal or other, now remains which could control this Movement, the Movement will follow a course of its own ; probably a very original one ? Further, that whatsoever man or men can best interpret the inward tendencies it has, and give them voice and activity, will obtain the lead of it ? For the rest, that as a thing without order, a thing proceeding from beyond and beneath the region of order, it must work and welter, not as a Regularity but as a Chaos ; destructive and self-destructive ; always till something that has order arise, strong enough to bind it into subjection again ? Which some- thing, we may further conjecture, will not be a Formula, with philosophical propositions and forensic eloquence ; but a Reality, probably with a sword in its hand ! As for the Girondin Formula, of a respectable Republic for the Middle Classes, all manner of Aristocracies being now sufficiently demolished, there seems little reason to expect that the ROBESPIERRE S LIST. CAUSE AND EFFECT 257 the business will stop there. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, CHAP. I these are the words ; enunciative and prophetic. Republic Feb. 26, for the respectable washed Middle Classes, how can that be ^793 the fulfilment thereof ? Hunger and nakedness, and night- mare oppression lying heavy on Twenty-five million hearts ; this, not the wounded vanities or contradicted philosophies of philosophical Advocates, rich Shopkeepers, rural Noblesse, was the prime mover in the French Revolution ; as the like will be in all such Revolutions, in all countries. Feudal Fleur-de- lys had become an insupportably bad marching-banner, and needed to be torn and trampled : but Moneybag of Mammon (for that, in these times, is what the respectable Republic for the Middle Classes will signify) is a still worse, while it lasts. Properly, indeed, it is the worst and basest of all banners and sjTnbols of dominion among men ; and indeed is possible only in a time of general Atheism, and Unbelief in anything save in brute Force and Sensualism ; pride of birth, pride of office, any known kind of pride being a degree better than purse- pride. Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood : not in the Money- bag, but far elsewhere, will Sansculottism seek these things. We say therefore that an Insurrectionary France, loose of control from without, destitute of supreme order from within, will form one of the most tumultuous Activities ever seen on this Earth ; such as no Girondin Formula can regulate. An immeasurable force, made up of forces manifold, heterogeneous, compatible and incompatible. In plainer words, this France must needs split into Parties ; each of which seeking to make itself good, contradiction, exasperation will arise ; and Parties on Parties find that they cannot work together, cannot exist together. As for the number of Parties, there will, strictly counting, be as many Parties as there are opinions. According to which rule, in this National Convention itself, to say nothing of France generally, the number of Parties ought to be Seven-hundred and Forty-nine ; for every unit entertains his opinion. But now, as every unit has at once an individual nature or necessity to follow his own road, and a gregarious nature or necessity to see himself travelling by the side of others, — what can there be but dissolutions, precipitations, endless turbulence of attracting and repelling ; till once the master-element get evolved, and this wild alchemy arrange itself again ? VOL. II. R To 258 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III To the length of Seven-hundred and Forty-nine Parties, Feb. 25, however, no Nation was ever yet seen to go. Nor indeed 1793 much beyond the length of Two Parties ; two at a time ; — so invincible is man's tendency to unite, with all the invincible divisiveness he has ! Two Parties, we say, are the usual number at one time : let these two fight it out, all minor shades of party rallying under the shade likest them ; when the one has fought down the other, then it, in its turn, may divide, self-destructive ; and so the process continue, as far as needful. This is the way of Revolutions, which spring up as the French one has done ; when the so-called Bonds of Society snap asunder ; and all Laws that are not Laws of Nature become naught and Formulas merely. But, quitting these somewhat abstract considerations, let History note this concrete reality which the streets of Paris exhibit, on Monday the 25th of February 1793. Long before daylight that morning, these streets are noisy and angry. Petitioning enough there has been ; a Convention often solicited. It was but yesterday there came a Deputation of Washer- women with Petition ; complaining that not so much as soap could be had ; to say nothing of bread, and condiments of bread. The cry of women, round the Salle de Manege, was heard plaintive : ' Du pain et du savon, Bread and soap.' ^ And now from six o'clock, this Monday morning, one per- ceives the Bakers' Queues unusually expanded, angrily agitating themselves. Not the Baker alone, but two Section Commis- sioners to help him, manage with difficulty the daily distribu- tion of loaves. Soft-spoken assiduous, in the early candle- light, are Baker and Commissioners : and yet the pale chill February sunrise discloses an unpromising scene. Indignant Female Patriots, partly supplied with bread, rush now to the shops, declaring that they will have groceries. Groceries enough : sugar-barrels rolled forth into the street, Patriot Citoyennes weighing it out at a just rate of elevenpence a pound ; likewise coffee-chests, soap-chests, nay cinnamon and cloves-chests, with aquavitce and other forms of alcohol,- — at a just rate, which some do not pay ; the pale-faced Grocer silently wringing his hands ! What help ? The distributive ^ Moniteur, etc. (Hist. Pari. xxiv. 332-48). Citoyennes CAUSE AND EFFECT 259 Citoyennes are of violent speech and gesture, their long cHAP. I Eumenides-hair hanging out of curl ; nay in their girdles Feb. 26, pistols are seen sticking : some, it is even said, have beards, ^793 — malg Patriots in petticoats and mob-cap. Thus, in the street of Lombards, in the street of Five-Diamonds, street of Pulleys, in most streets of Paris does it effervesce, the live- long day ; no Municipality, no Mayor Pache, though he was War-Minister lately, sends military against it, or aught against it but persuasive-eloquence, till seven at night, or later. On Monday gone five weeks, which was the twenty-first of January, we saw Paris, beheading its King, stand silent, like a petrified City of Enchantment : and now on this Monday it is so noisy, selling sugar ! Cities, especially Cities in Revolu- tion, are subject to these alternations ; the secret courses of civic business and existence effervescing and efflorescing, in this manner, as a concrete Phenomenon to the eye. Of which Phenomenon, when secret existence becoming public effloresces on the street, the philosophical cause and effect is not so easy to find. What, for example, may be the accurate philosophical meaning, and meanings, of this sale of sugar ? These things that have become visible in the street of Pulleys and over Paris, whence are they, we say ; and whither ? — That Pitt has a hand in it, the gold of Pitt : so much, to all reasonable Patriot men, may seem clear. But then, through what agents of Pitt ? Varlet, Apostle of Liberty, was dis- cerned again of late, with his pike and red nightcap. Deputy Marat published in his Journal, this very day, complaining of the bitter scarcity, and sufferings of the people, till he seemed to get wroth : ' If your Rights of Man were anything but a piece of written paper, the plunder of a few shops, and a fore- staller or two hung up at the door-lintels, would put an end to such things.' ^ Are not these, say the Girondins, pregnant indications ? Pitt has bribed the Anarchists ; Marat is the agent of Pitt : hence this sale of sugar. To the Mother Society, again, it is clear that the scarcity is factitious ; is the work of Girondins, and suchlike ; a set of men sold partly to Pitt ; sold wholly to their own ambitions and hard-hearted pedantries ; who will not fix the grain-prices, but prate pedantically of free-trade ; wishing to starve Paris into violence, and embroil it with the Departments : hence this sale of sugar. 1 Hist. Pari. xxiv. 353-56. And, 260 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III And, alas, if to these two notabilities, of a Phenomenon Feb. 1793 and such Theories of a Phenomenon, we add this third notability, That the French Nation has believed, for several years now, in the possibility, nay certainty and near advent, of a universal Millennium, or reign of Freedom, Equality, Fraternity, wherein man should be the brother of man, and sorrow and sin flee away ? Not bread to eat, nor soap to wash with ; and the reign of Perfect Felicity ready to arrive, due always since the Bastille fell ! How did our hearts burn within us, at that Feast of Pikes, when brother flung himself on brother's bosom ; and in sunny jubilee. Twenty-five millions burst forth into sound and cannon-smoke ! Bright was our Hope then, as sunlight ; red-angry is our Hope grown now, as consuming fire. But, O Heavens, what enchantment is it, or devilish legerdemain, of such effect, that Perfect Felicity, always within arm's length, could never be laid hold of, but only in her stead Controversy and Scarcity ? This set of traitors after that set ! Tremble, ye traitors ; dread a People which calls itself patient, long-suffering ; but which cannot always submit to have its pocket picked, in this way, — of a Millennium ! Yes, Reader, here is the miracle. Out of that putrescent rubbish of Scepticism, Sensualism, Sentimentalism, hollow Machiavelism, such a Faith has verily risen ; flaming in the heart of a People. A whole People, awakening as it were to consciousness in deep misery, believes that it is within reach of a Fraternal Heaven-on-Earth. With longing arms, it struggles to embrace the Unspeakable ; cannot embrace it, owing to certain causes. — Seldom do we find that a whole People can be said to have any Faith at all ; except in things which it can eat and handle. Whensoever it gets any Faith, its history becomes spirit-stirring, noteworthy. But since the time when steel Europe shook itself simultaneously at the word of Hermit Peter, and rushed towards the Sepulchre where God had lain, there was no universal impulse of Faith that one could note. Since Protestantism went silent, no Luther's voice, no Zisca's drum any longer proclaiming that God's Truth was not the Devil's Lie ; and the Last of the Cameronians (Renwick was the name of bim ; honour to the name of the brave !) sank, shot, on the Castle-hill of Edin- burgh, there was no partial impulse of Faith among Nations. Till now, behold, once more, this French Nation believes ! Herein, CAUSE AND EFFECT 261 Herein, we say, in that astonishing Faith of theirs, lies the CHAP. I miracle. It is a Faith undoubtedly of the more prodigious Feb. 1793 sort, even among Faiths ; and wiU embody itself in prodigies. It is the soul of that world-prodigy named French Revolution ; whereat the world still gazes and shudders. But, for the rest, let no man ask History to explain by cause and effect how the business proceeded henceforth. This battle of Mountain and Gironde, and what follows, is the battle of Fanaticisms and Miracles ; unsuitable for cause and effect. The sound of it, to the mind, is as a hubbub of voices in dis- traction ; little of articulate is to be gathered by long listening and studying ; only battle tumult, shouts of triumph, shrieks of despair. The Mountain has left no Memoirs ; the Girondins have left Memoirs, which are too often little other than long- drawn Interjections, of Woe is me, and Cursed be ye. So soon as History can philosophically delineate the conflagration of a kindled Fireship, she may try this other task. Here lay the bitumen-stratum, there the brimstone one ; so ran the vein of gimpowder, of nitre, terebinth and foul grease : this, were she inquisitive enough. History might partly know. But how they acted and reacted below decks, one fire-stratum playing into the other, by its nature and the art of man, now when all hands ran raging, and the flames lashed high over shrouds and topmast : this let not History attempt. The Fireship is old France, the old French Form of Life ; her crew a Generation of men. Wild are their cries and their ragings there, like spirits tormented in that flame. But, on the whole, are they not gone, O Reader ? Their Fireship and they, frightening the world, have sailed away ; its flames and its thunders quite away, into the Deep of Time. One thing therefore History will do : pity them all ; for it went hard with them all. Not even the seagreen Incorruptible but shall have some pity, some human love, though it takes an effort. And now, so much once thoroughly attained, the rest will become easier. To the eye of equal brotherly pity, in- numerable perversions dissipate themselves ; exaggerations and execrations fall off, of their own accord. Standing wist- fully on the safe shore, we will look, and see, what is of interest to us, what is adapted to us. Chapter II BOOK III Feb. 1793 262 THE GIRONDINS CHAPTER II CULOTTIC AND SANSCULOTTIC GiEONDE and Mountain are now in full quarrel ; their mutual rage, says Toulongeon, is growing a ' pale ' rage. Curious, lamentable : all these men have the word Republic on their lips ; in the heart of every one of them is a passionate wish for something which he calls Republic : yet see their death- quarrel ! So, however, are men made. Creatures who live in confusion ; who, once thrown together, can readily fall into that confusion of confusions which quarrel is, simply because their confusions differ from one another ; still more because they seem to differ ! Men's words are a poor exponent of their thought ; nay their thought itself is a poor exponent of the inward unnamed Mystery, wherefrom both thought and action have their birth. No man can explain himself, can get himself explained ; men see not one another, but distorted phantasms which they call one another ; which they hate and go to battle with : for all battle is well said to be misunder- standing. But indeed that similitude of the Fireship ; of our poor French brethren, so fiery themselves, working also in an element of fire, was not insignificant. Consider it well, there is a shade of the truth in it. For a man, once committed head- long to republican or any other Transcendentalism, and fight- ing and fanaticising amid a Nation of his like, becomes as it were enveloped in an ambient atmosphere of Transcendentalism and Delirium : his individual self is lost in something that is not himself, but foreign though inseparable from him. Strange to think of, the man's cloak still seems to hold the same man : and yet the man is not there, his volition is not there ; nor the source of what he will do and devise ; instead of the man and his volition there is a piece of Fanaticism and Fatalism incarnated in the shape of him. He, the hapless incarnated Fanaticism, goes his road ; no man can help him, he himself least of aU. It is a wonderful, tragical predicament ; — such as human language, unused to deal with these things, being contrived for the uses of common life, struggles to shadow out CULOTTIC AND SANSCULOTTIC 263 out in figures. The ambient element of material fire is not CHAP. II wilder than this of Fanaticism ; nor, though visible to the Feb. 1793 eye, is it more real. Volition bursts forth involuntary-volun- tary ; rapt along ; the movement of free human minds becomes a raging tornado of fatalism, blind as the winds ; and Moun- tain and Gironde, when they recover themselves, are alike astounded to see where it has flung and dropt them. To such height of miracle can men work on men ; the Conscious and the Unconscious blended inscrutably in this our inscrut- able Life ; endless Necessity environing Freewill ! The weapons of the Girondins are Political Philosophy, Respectability, and Eloquence. Eloquence, or call it rhetoric, really of a superior order ; Vergniaud, for instance, turns a period as sweetly as any man of that generation. The weapons of the Mountain are those of mere Nature : Audacity and Impetuosity which may become Ferocity, as of men complete in their determination, in their conviction ; nay of men, in some cases, who as Septemberers must either prevail or perish. The ground to be fought for is Popularity : further, you may either seek Popularity with the friends of Freedom and Order, or with the friends of Freedom Simple ; to seek it with both has unhappily become impossible. With the former sort, and generally with the Authorities of the Departments, and such as read Parliamentary Debates, and are of Respectability, and of a peace-loving moneyed nature, the Girondins carry it. With the extreme Patriot again, with the indigent Millions, especially with the Population of Paris who do not read so much as hear and see, the Girondins altogether lose it, and the Mountain carries it. Egoism, nor meanness of mind, is not wanting on either side. Surely not on the Girondin side ; where in fact the instinct of self-preservation, too prominently unfolded by circumstances, cuts almost a sorry figure ; where also a certain finesse, to the length even of shuffling and shamming, now and then shows itself. They are men skilful in Advocate-fence. They have been called the Jesuits of the Revolution ; ^ but that is too hard a name. It must be owned likewise that this rude blustering Mountain has a sense in it of what the Revolu- tion means ; which these eloquent Girondins are totally void of. Was the Revolution made, and fought for, against the •^ Dumouriez, Mimoires, iii. 314. world, 264 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III world, these four weary years, that a Formula might be sub- Feb. 1793 stantiated ; that Society might become methodic, demonstrable by logic ; and the old Noblesse with their pretensions vanish ? Or ought it not withal to bring some glimmering of light and alleviation to the Twenty-five Millions, who sat in darkness, heavy-laden, till they rose with pikes in their hands ? At least and lowest, one would think, it should bring them a pro- portion of bread to live on ? There is in the Mountain here and there ; in Marat People's-friend ; in the incorruptible Seagreen himself, though otherwise so lean and formulary, a heartfelt knowledge of this latter fact ; — without which knowledge all other knowledge here is naught, and the choicest forensic eloquence is as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Most cold, on the other hand, most patronising, unsubstantial is the tone of the Girondins towards ' our poorer brethren ' ; — those brethren whom one often hears of under the collective name of ' the masses,' as if they were not persons at all, but mounds of combustible explosive material, for blowing down Bastilles with ! In very truth, a Revolutionist of this kind, is he not a Solecism ? Disowned by Nature and Art ; deserving only to be erased, and disappear ! Surely, to our poorer brethren of Paris, all this Girondin patronage sounds deadening and killing : if fine-spoken and incontrovertible in logic, then all the falser, all the hatefuler in fact. Nay doubtless, pleading for Popularity, here among our poorer brethren of Paris, the Girondin has a hard game to play. If he gain the ear of the Respectable at a distance, it is by insisting on September and suchlike ; it is at the expense of this Paris where he dwells and perorates. Hard to per- orate in such an auditory ! Wherefore the question arises : Could we not get ourselves out of this Paris ? Twice or oftener such an attempt is made. If not we ourselves, thinks Guadet, then at least our Suppleans might do it. For every Deputy has his Suppliant, or Substitute, who will take his place if need be : might not these assemble, say at Bourges, which is a quiet episcopal Town, in quiet Berri, forty good leagues off ? In that case, what profit were it for the Paris Sansculottery to insult us ; our SuppUans sitting quiet in Bourges, to whom we could run ? Nay, even the Primary electoral Assemblies, thinks Guadet, might be reconvoked, and a New Convention got, with new orders from the Sovereign People ; and right glad CULOTTIC AND SANSCULLOTIC 265 glad were Lyons, were Bordeaux, Rouen, Marseilles, as yet CHAP. II Provincial Towns, to welcome us in their turn, and become a Feb. 1793 sort of Capital Towns ; and teach these Parisians reason. Fond schemes ; which all misgo ! If decreed, in heat of eloquent logic, today, they are repealed, by clamour and pas- sionate wider considerations, on the morrow.^ Will you, O Girondins, parcel us into separate Republics, then ; like the Swiss, like your Americans ; so that there be no Metropolis or indivisible French Nation any more ? Your Departmental Guard seemed to point that way ! Federal Republic ? Fede- ralist ? Men and Knitting-women repeat Federaliste, with or without much Dictionary-meaning ; but go on repeating it, as is usual in such cases, till the meaning of it becomes almost magical, fit to designate all mystery of Iniquity ; and Federa- liste has grown a word of Exorcism and Apage-Satanas. But furthermore, consider what ' poisoning of public opinion ' in the Departments, by these Brissot, Gorsas, Caritat-Condorcet Newspapers ! And then also what counter-poisoning, still feller in quality, by a Pere Duchesne of Hebert, brutalest News- paper yet published on Earth ; by a Bougiff of Guffroy ; by the ' incendiary leaves of Marat ' ! More than once, on com- plaint given and effervescence rising, it is decreed that a man cannot both be Legislator and Editor ; that he shall choose between the one function and the other.^ But this too, which indeed could help little, is revoked or eluded ; remains a pious wish mainly. Meanwhile, as the sad fruit of such strife, behold, O ye National Representatives, how, between the friends of Law and the friends of Freedom everywhere, mere heats and jealousies have arisen ; fevering the whole Republic ! Depart- ment, Provincial Town is set against Metropolis, Rich against Poor, Culottic against Sansculottic, man against man. From the Southern Cities come Addresses of an almost inculpatory character ; for Paris has long suffered Newspaper calumny. Bordeaux demands a reign of Law and Respectability, mean- ing Girondism, with emphasis. With emphasis Marseilles demands the like. Nay, from Marseilles there come two Addresses : one Girondin ; one Jacobin Sansculottic. Hot Rebecqui, sick of this Convention-work, has given place to his 1 Moniteur, 1793, No. 140, etc. ^ Hist. Pari. xxv. 25, etc. Substitute, 266 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III Substitute, and gone home ; where also, with such jarrings, Feb. 1793 there is work to be sick of. Lyons, a place of Capitalists and Aristocrats, is in still worse state ; almost in revolt. Chalier the Jacobin Town-CounciUor has got, too literally, to daggers-drawn with Nievre-Chol the Moderantin Mayor ; one of yopr Moderate, perhaps Aristocrat, Royalist or Federalist Mayors ! Chalier, who pilgrimed to Paris ' to behold Marat and the Mountain,' has verily kindled himself at their sacred urn : for on the 6th of February last. History or Rumour has seen him haranguing his Lyons Jacobins in a quite transcendental manner, with a drawn dagger in his hand ; recommending (they say) sheer September methods, patience being worn out ; and that the Jacobin Brethren should, impromptu, work the Guillotine themselves ! One sees him still, in Engravings : mounted on a table ; foot ad- vanced, body contorted ; a bald, rude, slope-browed, infuriated visage of the canine-species, the eyes starting from their sockets ; in his puissant right-hand the brandished dagger, or horse- pistol, as some give it ; other dog-visages kindling under him : — a man not likely to end well ! However, the Guillotine was not got together impromptu, that day, ' on the Pont Saint- Clair,' or elsewhere ; but indeed continued lying rusty in its loft : ^ Ni^vre-Chol with military went about, rumbling cannon, in the most confused manner ; and the ' nine hundred prisoners ' received no hurt. So distracted is Lyons grown, with its can- nons rumbling. Convention Commissioners must be sent thither forthwith : if even they can appease it, and keep the Guillotine in its loft ? Consider finally if, on all these mad jarrings of the Southern Cities, and of France generally, a traitorous Crypto-Royalist class is not looking and watching ; ready to strike in, at the right season ! Neither is there bread ; neither is there soap : see the Patriot women selling out sugar, at a just rate of twenty- two sous per pound ! Citizen Representatives, it were verily well that your quarrels finished, and the reign of Perfect Felicity began. 1 ITisf. Pari. xxiv. 385-93 ; xxvi. 229, etc. Chapter III GE^OWING SHRILL 267 CHAPTER III GROWING SHRILL On the whole, one cannot say that the Girondins are wanting to themselves, so far as good-will might go. They prick assidu- ously into the sore-places ol the Mountain ; from principle, and also from Jesuitism. Besides September, of which there is now little to be made except effervescence, we discern two sore-places, where the Mountain often suffers : Marat, and Orleans Egalite. Squalid Marat, for his own sake and for the Mountain's, is assaulted ever and anon ; held up to France, as a squalid blood-thirsty Portent, inciting to the pillage of shops ; of whom let the Mountain have the credit ! The Mountain murmurs, ill at ease : this ' Maximum of Patriotism,' how shall they either own him or disown him ? As for Marat personally, he, with his fixed-idea, remains invulnerable to such things ; nay the People's-friend is very evidently rising in importance, as his befriended People rises. No shrieks now, when he goes to speak ; occasional applauses rather, furtherance which breeds confidence. The day when the Girondins proposed to ' decree him accused ' {decriter d' accusation, as they phrase it) for that February Paragraph, of ' hanging up a ForestaUer or two at the door-lintels,' Marat proposes to have them ' decreed insane ' ; and, descending the Tribune steps, is heard to articulate these most unsenatorial ejaculations : ' Les cochons, les imbeciles, Pigs, idiots ! ' Oftentimes he croaks harsh sarcasm, having really a rough rasping tongue, and a very deep fund of contempt for fine outsides ; and once or twice, he even laughs, nay ' explodes into laughter, rit aux eclats,^ at the gentilities and superfine airs of these Girondin ' men of statesmanship,' with their pedantries, plausibilities, pusillanimities : ' these two years,' says he, ' you have been whining about attacks, and plots, and danger from Paris ; and you have not a scratch to show for yourselves.' ^ — ^Danton gruffly rebukes him, from time to time : a Maximum of Patriotism whom one can neither own nor disown ! ^ Moniteur, S&nce du 20 Mai 1793. But CHAP. Ill March 1793 268 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III But the second sore-place of the Mountain is this anom- Maich 1793 alous Monseigneur Equality Prince d'Orleans. Behold these men, says the Gironde ; with a whilom Bourbon Prince among them : they are creatures of the D'Orleans Faction ; they will have Philippe made King ; one King no sooner guillotined than another made in his stead ! Girondins have moved, Buzot moved long ago, from principle and also from Jesuitism, that the whole race of Bourbons should be marched forth from the soil of France ; this Prince Egalite to bring up the rear. Motions which might produce some effect on the public ; — which the Mountain, ill at ease, knows not what to do with. And poor Orleans Egalite himself, for one begins to pity even him, what does he do with them ? The disowned of all parties, the rejected and foolishly bedrifted hither and thither, to what corner of Nature can he now drift with advantage ? Feasible hope remains not for him : unfeasible hope, in pallid doubtful glimmers, there may still come, bewildering, not cheering or illuminating, — from the Dumouriez quarter ; and how if not the time-wasted Orleans Egalite, then perhaps the young unworn Chartres Egalite might rise to be a kind of King ? Sheltered, if shelter it be, in the clefts of the Moun- tain, poor Egalite will wait : one refuge in Jacobinism, one in Dumouriez and Counter-Revolution, are there not two chances ? However, the look of him, Dame Genlis says, is grown gloomy ; sad to see. Sillery also, the Genlis's Husband, who hovers about the Mountain, not on it, is in a bad way. Dame Genlis is come to Raincy, out of England and Bury St. Edmunds, in these days ; being summoned by Egalite, with her young charge. Mademoiselle Egalite, — that so Mademoiselle might not be counted among Emigrants and hardly dealt with. But it proves a ravelled business : Genlis and charge find that they must return to the Netherlands ; must wait on the Frontiers, for a week or two ; till Monseigneur, by Jacobin help, get it wound up. ' Next morning,' says Dame Genlis, ' Monseigneur, gloomier than ever, gave me his arm, to lead me to the carriage. I was greatly troubled ; Mademoiselle burst into tears ; her Father was pale and trembling. After I bad got seated, he stood immovable at the carriage-door, with his eyes fixed on me ; his mournful and painful look seemed to implore pity ; — "Adieu, Madame!" said he. The altered sound of his voice completely overcame me ; unable to utter a word, I held out my GROWING SHRILL 269 my hand ; he grasped it close ; then turning, and advancing CHAP. Ill sharply towards the postilions, he gave them a sign, and we March 1793 roUed away.' ^ Nor are Peace-makers wanting ; of whom likewise we mention two ; one fast on the crown of the Mountain, the other not yet alighted anywhere : Danton and Barr^re. Ingenious Barrere, Old-Constituent and Editor, from the slopes of the Pyrenees, is one of the usefulest men of this Convention, in his way. Truth may lie on both sides, on either side, or on neither side ; my friends, ye must give and take : for the rest, success to the winning side ! This is the motto of Barrere. Ingenious, almost genial ; quick-sighted, supple, graceful ; a man that will prosper. Scarcely Behal in the assembled Pandemonium was plausibler to ear and eye. An indispensable man : in the great Art of Varnish he may be said to seek his fellow. Has there an explosion arisen, as many do arise, a confusion, unsightliness, which no tongue can speak of, nor eye look on ; give it to Barrere ; Barrere shall be Committee-Reporter of it ; you shall see it transmute itself into a regularity, into the very beauty and improvement that was needed. Without one such man, we say, how were this Convention bestead ! Call him not, as exaggerative Mercier does, ' the greatest liar in France ' : nay it may be argued there is not truth enough in him to make a real lie of. Call him, with Burke, Anacreon of the Guillotine, and a man serviceable to this Convention. The other Peace-maker whom we name is Danton. Peace, O peace with one another ! cries Danton often enough : Are we not alone against the world ; a little band of brothers ? Broad Danton is loved by all the Mountain ; but they think him too easy-tempered, deficient in suspicion : he has stood between Dumouriez and much censure, anxious not to ex- asperate our only General : in the shrill tumult Danton's strong voice reverberates, for union and pacification. Meetings there are ; dinings with the Girondins : it is so pressingly essential that there be union. But the Girondins are haughty and respectable : this Titan Danton is not a man of Formulas, and there rests on him a shadow of September. ' Your Girondins have no confidence in me ' : this is the answer a ^ Genlis, Mimoires (Lxmdon, 1825), iv. 118. conciliatory 270 THE GIRONDINS BOOK in conciliatory Meillan gets from him ; to all the argmnents and March 1793 pleadings this conciliatory Meillan can bring, the repeated answer is, ' lis n'ont point de confiance.' ^ — The tumult will get ever shriller ; rage is growing pale. In fact, what a pang is it to the heart of a Girondin, this first withering probability that the despicable unphilosophic anarchic Mountain, after all, may triumph ! Brutal Septem- berers, a fifth-floor Tallien, ' a Robespierre without an idea in his head,' as Condorcet says, ' or a feeling in his heart ' : and yet we, the flower of France, cannot stand against them ; be- hold, the sceptre departs from us ; from us and goes to them ! Eloquence, Philosophism, Respectability avail not : ' against Stupidity the very gods fight to no purpose, ' Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gutter selbst vergebens ! ' ShriU are the plaints of Louvet ; his thin existence all acidified into rage and preternatural insight of suspicion. Wroth is young Barbaroux ; wroth and scornftd. Silent, like a Queen with the aspic on her bosom, sits the wife of Roland ; Roland's Accounts never yet got audited, his name become a byword. Such is the fortune of war, especially of revolution. The great gulf of Tophet and Tenth of August opened itself at the magic of your eloquent voice ; and lo now, it will not close at your voice ! It is a dangerous thing such magic. The Magician's Famulus got hold of the forbidden Book, and summoned a goblin : Plait-il, What is your wiU ? said the goblin. The Famulus, somewhat struck, bade him fetch water : the swift goblin fetched it, pail in each hand ; but lo, would not cease fetching it ! Desperate, the Famulus shrieks at him, smites at him, cuts him in two ; lo, two goblin water-carriers ply ; and the house wiU be swum away in Deucalion Deluges. CHAPTER IV FATHERLAND IN DANGER Ok rather we wUl say, this Senatorial war might have lasted long ; and Party tugging and throtthng with Party might have suppressed and smothered one another, in the ordinary blood- ' Mimoires de Meillan, Reprisentant du Peuple (Paris, 1823), p. 51. less FATHERLAND IN DANGER 271 less Parliamentary way ; on one condition : that France had CHAP. IV been at least able to exist, all the while. But this Sovereign March 1793 People has a digestive faculty, and cannot do without bread. Also we are at war, and must have victory ; at war with Europe, with Fate and Famine : and behold, in the spring of the year, all victory deserts us. Dumouriez had his outposts stretched as far as Aix-la- Chapelle, and the beautifulest plan for pouncing on Holland, by stratagem, flat-bottomed boats and rapid intrepidity ; wherein too he had prospered so far ; but unhappily could prosper no further. Aix-la-Chapelle is lost ; Maestricht will not surrender to mere smoke and noise : the flat-bottomed boats have to launch themselves again, and return the way they came. Steady now, ye rapidly intrepid men ; retreat with firmness, Parthian-like ! Alas, were it General Miranda's fault ; were it the War-minister's fault ; or were it Dumouriez's own fault and that of Fortune : enough, there is nothing for it but retreat, — well if it be not even flight ; for already terror- stricken cohorts and stragglers pour off, not waiting for order ; flow disastrous, as many as ten thousand of them, without halt tiU they see France again.^ Nay worse : Dumouriez himself is perhaps secretly turning traitor ? Very sharp is the tone in which he writes to our Committees. Commissioners and Jacobin PUlagers have done such incalculable mischief ; Hassenfratz sends neither cartridges nor clothing ; shoes we have, deceptively ' soled with wood and pasteboard.' Nothing in short is right. Danton and Lacroix, when it was they that were Commissioners, would needs join Belgium to France ; — of which Dimaouriez might have made the prettiest little Duchy for his own secret behoof ! With all these things the General is wroth ; and writes to us in a sharp tone. Who knows what this hot little General is meditating ? Dumouriez Duke of Belgium or Brabant ; and say, Egalite the Younger King of France : there were an end for our Revolution ! — Committee of Defence gazes, and shakes its head : who except Danton, defective in suspicion, could stiU struggle to be of hope ? And General Custine is rolling back from the Rhine Country ; conquered Mentz will be reconquered, the Prussians gathering round to bombard it with shot and shell. Mentz may resist, ' Dumouriez, iv. 16-73. Commissioner 272 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III Commissioner Merlin, the Thionviller, ' making sallies, at the March 8, head of the besieged ' ;— resist to the death ; but not longer ^'^"^ than that. How sad a reverse for Mentz ! Brave Forster, brave Lux planted Liberty-trees, amid pa-*Va-ing music, in the snow-slush of last winter, there ; and made Jacobin Societies ; and got the Territory incorporated with France ; they came hither to Paris, as Deputies or Delegates, and have their eighteen francs a-day : but see, before once the Liberty-tree is got rightly in leaf, Mentz is changing into an explosive crater ; vomiting fire, bevomited with fire ! Neither of these men shall again see Mentz ; they have come hither only to die. Forster has been round the Globe ; he saw Cook perish under Owyhee clubs ; but like this Paris he has yet seen or suffered nothing. Poverty escorts him : from home there can nothing come, except Job's-news ; the eighteen daily francs, which we here as Deputy or Delegate with difficulty ' touch,' are in paper assignats, and sink fast in value. Poverty, disappointment, inaction, obloquy ; the brave heart slowly breaking ! Such is Forster's lot. For the rest. Demoiselle Theroigne smiles on you in the Soirees ; ' a beautiful brownlocked face,' of an exalted temper ; and con- trives to keep her carriage. Prussian Trenck, the poor subter- ranean Baron, jargons and jangles in an unmelodious manner. Thomas Paine's face is red-pustuled, ' but the eyes uncommonly bright.' Convention Deputies ask you to dinner : very cour- teous ; and ' we all play at plwmpsack.' ^ ' It is the Explosion and New-creation of a World,' says Forster ; ' and the actors in it, such small mean objects, buzzing round one like a handful of flies.'— Likewise there is war with Spain. Spain will advance through the gorges of the Pyrenees ; rustling with Bourbon banners, jingling with artUlery and menace. And England has donned the red coat ; and marches, with Royal Highness of York, — whom some once spake of inviting to be our King. Changed that humour now : and ever more changing ; till no hatefuler thing walk this Earth than a denizen of that tyrannous Island ; and Pitt be declared and decreed, with effervescence, ' L'ennemi du genre humain, The enemy of mankind ' ; and, very singular to say, you make order that no Soldier of Liberty give quarter to an Englishman. Which order, however, the ' Forster's Briefwechsel, ii. 514, 460, 631. Soldier FATHERLAND IN DANGER 273 Soldier of Liberty does but partially obey. We will take no CHAP. IV Prisoners then, say the Soldiers of Liberty ; they shall all be March 8, ' Deserters ' that we take.^ It is a frantic order ; and attended ^'^^^ with iaconvenience. For surely, if you give no quarter, the plain issue is that you will get none ; and so the business become as broad as it was long. — Our recruitment ' of Three-hundred Thousand men,' which was the decreed force for this year, is like to have work enough laid to its hand. So many enemies come wending on ; penetrating through throats of mountains, steering over the salt sea ; towards all points of our territory ; rattling chains at us. Nay, worst of all : there is an enemy within our own territory itself. In the early days of March, the Nantes Postbags do not arrive ; there arrive only instead of them Conjecture, Apprehension, bodeful wind of Rumour. The bodefulest proves true. Those fanatic Peoples of La Vendee wiU no longer keep under : their fire of insurrection, heretofore dissipated with difficulty, blazes out anew, after the King's Death, as a wide conflagration ; not riot but civil war. Your Cathelineaus, your Stofflets, Charettes, are other men than was thought : behold how their Peasants, in mere russet and hodden, with their rude arms, rude array, with their fanatic Gaehc frenzy and wild-yelling battle-cry of God and the King, dash at us like a dark whirlwind ; and blow the best-disciplined Nationals we can get into panic and sauve- qui-peut ! Field after field is theirs ; one sees not where it will end. Commandant Santerre may be sent there ; but with non-effect ; he might as well have returned and brewed beer. It has become peremptorily necessary that a National Con- vention cease arguing, and begin acting. Yield one party of you to the other, and do it swiftly. No theoretic outlook is here, but the close certainty of ruin ; the very day that is passing over us must be provided for. It was Friday the Eighth of March when this Job's-post from Dumouriez, thickly preceded and escorted by so many other Job's-posts, reached the National Convention. Blank enough are most faces. Little will it avail whether our Septem- berers be punished or go unpunished ; if Pitt and Cobourg ' See Dampmartin, Ev^neinens, ii. 213-30. VOL. II. s are 274 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III are coming in, with one punishment for us all ; nothing now March 10, between Paris itself and the Tyrants but a doubtful Dumouriez, ^ and hosts in loose-flowing loud retreat ! — Danton the Titan rises in this hour as always in the hour of need. Great is his voice, reverberating from the domes : — Citizen-Representatives, shall we not, in such crisis of Fate, lay aside discords ? Reputa- tion : O what is the reputation of this man or of that ? ' Que mon nom soit fletri ; que la France soil libre : Let my name be blighted ; Let France be free ! ' It is necessary now again that France rise, in swift vengeance, with her million right- hands, with her heart as of one man. Instantaneous recruit- ment in Paris ; let every Section of Paris furnish its thousands ; every Section of France ! Ninety-six Commissioners of us, two for each Section of the Forty-eight, they must go forth- with, and tell Paris what the Country needs of her. Let Eighty more of us be sent, post-haste, over France ; to spread the fire- cross, to call forth the might of men. Let the Eighty also be on the road, before this sitting rise. Let them go, and think what their errand is. Speedy camp of Fifty-thousand between Paris and the North Frontier ; for Paris will pour forth her volunteers ! Shoulder to shoulder ; one strong universal death- defiant rising and rushing ; we shall hurl back these Sons of Night yet again ; and France, in spite of the world, be free ! ^ — So sounds the Titan's voice : into all Section-houses ; into all French hearts. Sections sit in Permanence, for recruit- ment, enrolment, that very night. Convention Commissioners, on swift wheels, are carrying the fire-cross from Town to Town, till all France blaze. And so there is Flag of Fatherland in Danger waving from the Townhall, Black Flag from the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral; there is Proclamation, hot eloquence ; Paris rushing out once again to strike its enemies down. That, in such circumstances, Paris was in no mild humour, can be conjectured. Agitated streets ; still more agitated round the SaUe de Manege ! FeuiUans-Terrace crowds itself with angry Citizens, angrier Citizenesses ; Varlet perambulates with portable chair : ejacu- lations of no measured kind, as to perfidious fine-spoken Homines d'Stat, friends of Dumouriez, secret-friends of Pitt and Cobourg, burst from the hearts and lips of men. To fight the enemy ? Yes, and even to ' freeze him with terror, ^ MoniUiir (in Hist. Farl. xxv. 6). FATHERLAND IN DANGER 275 glacer d'effroi ' : but first to have domestic Traitors punished ! CHAP. IV Who are they that, carping and quarrelling, in their Jesuitic March lO, most moderate way, seek to shackle the Patriotic movement ? ^'^^^ That divide France against Paris, and poison public opinion in the Departments ? That when we ask for bread, and a Maximum fixed-price, treat us with lectures on Free-trade in grains ? Can the human stomach satisfy itself with lectures on Free-trade ; and are we to fight the Austrians in a moderate manner, or in an immoderate ? This Convention must be purged. ' Set up a swift Tribunal for Traitors, a Maximum for Grains ' : thus speak with energy the Patriot Volunteers, as they defile through the Convention Hall, just on the wing to the Frontiers ; — perorating in that heroical Cambyses-vein of theirs : beshouted by the Galleries and Mountain ; bemur- mured by the Right-side and Plain. Nor are prodigies want- ing : lo, while a Captain of the Section Poissonniere perorates with vehemence about Dumouriez, Maximum and Crypto- Royahst Traitors, and his troop beat chorus with him, waving their Banner overhead, the eye of a Deputy discerns, in this same Banner, that the cravates or streamers of it have Royal fleurs-de-lys ! The Section-Captain shrieks ; his troop shriek, horror-struck, and ' trample the Banner under foot ' : seemingly the work of some Crypto-Royalist Plotter ? Most probable : ^ — or perhaps at bottom, only the old Banner of the Section, manufactured prior to the Tenth of August, when such streamers were according to rule ! ^ History, looking over the Girondin Memoirs, anxious to disentangle the truth of them from the hysterics, finds these days of March, especially this Sunday the Tenth of March, play a great part. Plots, plots ; a plot for murdering the Girondin Deputies ; Anarchists and Secret-Royalists plotting, in hellish concert, for that end ! The far greater part of which is hysterics. What we do find indisputable is, that Louvet and certain Girondins were apprehensive they might be murdered on Saturday, and did not go to the evening sitting ; but held council with one another, each inciting his fellow to do some- thing resolute, and end these Anarchists : to which, however, Petion, opening the window, and finding the night very wet, answered only, ' lis ne feront rien,^ and ' composedly resumed ' Ckoix des Rapports, xi. 277. ' Hist. Pari. xxv. 72. his 276 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III his violin,' says Louvet ; ^ thereby, with soft Lydian tweedle- Mai-ch 10, deeing, to wrap himself against eating cares. Also that Louvet ^'^^ felt especially liable to being killed ; that several Girondins went abroad to seek beds : liable to being killed ; but were not. Further that, in very truth. Journalist Deputy Gorsas, poisoner of the Departments, he and his Printer had their houses broken into (by a tmnult of Patriots, among whom redcapped Varlet, American Fournier loom forth, in the darkness of the rain and riot) ; had their wives put in fear ; their presses, types, and circumjacent equipments beaten to ruin ; no Mayor interfering in time ; Gorsas himself escaping, pistol in hand, ' along the coping of the back wall.' Further, that Sunday, the morrow, was not a workday ; and the streets were more agitated than ever : Is it a new September, then, that those Anarchists intend ? Finally, that no September came ; — and also that hysterics, not unnaturally, had reached almost their acme.^ Vergniaud denounces and deplores ; in sweetly turned periods. Section Bonconseil, Good-counsel so-named, not Mauconseil or Ill-counsel as it once was, — does a far notabler thing : demands that Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, and other denunciatory, fine-spoken Girondins, to the number of Twenty- two, be put under arrest ! Section Good-counsel, so named ever since the Tenth of August, is sharply rebuked, like a Section of Ill-counsel : ^ but its word is spoken, and will not faU to the ground. In fact, one thing strikes us in these poor Girondins : their fatal shortness of vision ; nay fatal poorness of character, for that is the root of it. They are as strangers to the People they would govern ; to the thing they have come to work in. Formulas, Philosophies, Respectabilities, what has been written in Books, and admitted by the Cultivated Classes : this in- adequate Scheme of Nature's working is all that Nature, let her work as she will, can reveal to these men. So they per- orate and speculate ; and call on the Friends of Law, when the question is not Law or No-Law, but Life or No-Life. Pedants of the Revolution, if not Jesuits of it ! Their Formalism is great ; great also is their Egoism. France rising to fight Austria has been raised only by plot of the Tenth of March, ' Louvet, Mimoires, p. 72. ^ Meillan, pp. 23, 24; Louvet, pp. 71-80. ' Moniteur (Seance du 12 Mars), 15 Mars. to FATHERLAND IN DANGER 277 to kill Twenty-two of them ! This Revolution Prodigy, un- CHAP. IV folding itself into terrific stature and articulation, by its own March lo, laws and Nature's, not by the laws of Formula, has become ^'^^^ unintdligible, incredible as an impossibility, the ' waste chaos of a Dream.' A Republic founded on what they call the Virtues ; on what we call the Decencies and Respectabilities : this they will have, and nothing but this. Whatsoever other Republic Nature and Reality sent, shall be considered as not sent ; as a kind of Nightmare Vision, and thing non-extant ; disowned by the Laws of Nature and of Formula. Alas, dim for the best eyes is this Reality ; and as for these men, they will not look at it with eyes at all, but only through ' facetted spectacles ' of Pedantry, wounded Vanity ; which yield the most portentous fallacious spectrum. Carping and complaining for ever of Plots and Anarchy, they will do one thing ; prove, to demonstration, that the Reality will not translate into their Formula ; that they and their Formula are incompatible with the Reality : and, in its dark wrath, the Reality will extinguish it and them ! What a man kens he cans. But the beginning of a man's doom is, that vision be withdrawn from him ; that he see not the reality, but a false spectrum of the reality ; and following that, step darkly, with more or less velocity, downwards to the utter Dark ; to Ruin, which is the great Sea of Darkness, whither all falsehoods, winding or direct, continually flow ! This Tenth of March we may mark as an epoch in the Girondin destinies ; the rage so exasperated itself, the miscon- ception so darkened itself. Many desert the sittings ; many come to them armed.^ An honourable Deputy, setting out after breakfast, must now, besides taking his Notes, see whether his Priming is in order. Meanwhile with Dumouriez in Belgium it fares ever worse. Were it again General Miranda's fault, or some other's fault, there is no doubt whatever but the ' Battle of Nerwinden,' on the 18th of March, is lost ; and our rapid retreat has become a far too rapid one. Victorious Cobourg, with his Austrian prickers, hangs like a dark cloud on the rear of us : Dumouriez never off horseback night or day ; engagement every three hours ; our whole discomfited Host rolling rapidly inwards, full 1 Meillan, Mimoirts, pp. 85, 24. of 278 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III of rage, suspicion, and sauve-qui-peut ! And then Dumouriez March 1793 himself, what his intents may be ? Wicked seemingly and not charitable ! His despatches to Committee openly denounce a factious Convention, for the woes it has brought on France and him. And his speeches — for the General has no reticence ! The execution of the Tyrant this Dumouriez calls the Murder of the King. Danton and Lacroix, flying thither as Commis- sioners once more, return very doubtful ; even Danton now doubts. Three Jacobin Missionaries, Proly, Dubuisson, Pereyra, have flown forth ; sped by a wakeful Mother Society : they are struck dumb to hear the General speak. The Convention, according to this General, consists of three-hundred scoundrels and four-hundred imbeciles : France cannot do without a King. ' But we have executed our King.' ' And what is it to me,' hastily cries Dumouriez, a General of no reticence, ' whether the King's name be Ludovicus or Jacobus ? ' 'Or Philippus ! ' rejoins Proly ; — and hastens to report progress. Over the Frontiers such hope is there. CHAPTER V SANSCULOTTISM ACCOUTUED Let us look, however, at the grand internal Sansculottism and Revolution Prodigy, whether it stirs and waxes : there and not elsewhere may hope still be for France. The Revolu- tion Prodigy, as Decree after Decree issues from the Mountain, Hke creative fiats, accordant with the nature of the Thing, — is shaping itself rapidly in these days, into terrific stature and articulation, limb after limb. Last March 1792, we saw all France flowing in blind terror ; shutting town-barriers, boiling pitch for Brigands : happier, this March, that it is a seeing terror ; that a creative Mountain exists, which can say fiat ! Recruitment proceeds with fierce celerity : nevertheless our Volunteers hesitate to set out, till Treason be punished at home ; they do not fly to the frontiers ; but only fly hither and thither, demanding and denouncing. The Mountain must speak new fiat and new fiats. And SANSCULOTTISM ACCOUTRED 279 And does it not speak such ? Take, as first example, those CHAP. V Comites BSvolutionnaires for the arrestment of Persons Suspect. March 1793 Revolutionary Committee, of Twelve chosen Patriots, sits in every* Township of France ; examining the Suspect, seeking arms, making domiciliary visits and arrestments ; — caring, generally, that the Republic suffer no detriment. Chosen by universal suffrage, each in its Section, they are a kind of elixir of Jacobinism ; some Forty-four Thousand of them awake and alive over France ! In Paris and all Towns, every house-door must have the names of the inmates legibly printed on it, ' at a height not exceeding five feet from the ground ' ; every Citizen must produce his certificatory Carte de Civisme, signed by Section-President ; every man be ready to give account of the faith that is in him. Persons Suspect had as well depart this soil of Liberty ! And yet departure too is bad : all Emi- grants are declared Traitors, their property become National ; they are ' dead in Law,' — save, indeed, that for our behoof they shall ' live yet fifty years in Law,' and what heritages may fall to them in that time become National too ! A mad vitality of Jacobinism, with Forty-four Thousand centres of activity, circulates through all fibres of France. Very notable also is the Tribunal Extraordinaire : ^ decreed by the Mountain ; some Girondins dissenting, for surely such a Court contradicts every formula ; — other Girondins assenting, nay co-operating, for do not we all hate Traitors, O ye people of Paris ? — Tribunal of the Seventeenth, in August last, was swift ; but this shall be swifter. Five Judges ; a standing Jury, which is named from Paris and the Neighbourhood, that there be not delay in naming it : they are subject to no Appeal ; to hardly any Law-forms, but must ' get themselves convinced ' in all readiest ways ; and for security are bound ' to vote audibly ' ; audibly, in the hearing of a Paris Public. This is the Tribunal Extraordinaire ; which, in few months, getting into most lively action, shall be entitled Tribunal Rh}olutionnaire ; as indeed it from the very first has entitled itself : with a Herman or a Dumas for Judge-President, with a Fouquier-Tinville for Attorney-General, and a Jury of such as Citizen Leroi, who has surnamed himself Dix-AoUt, ' Leroi August-Tenth,' it will become the wonder of the world. Herein has Sansculottism fashioned for itself a Sword of Sharpness : a 1 Moniteur, No. 70 (du 1 1 Mars), No. 76, etc. weapon 280 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III weapon magical ; tempered in the Stygian hell-waters ; to March 1793 the edge of it all armour, and defence of strength or of cunning shall be soft ; it shall mow down Lives and Brazen-gates ; and the waving of it shed terror through the souls of men. But speaking of an amorphous Sansculottism taking form, ought we not, above all things, to specify how the Amorphous gets itself a Head ? Without metaphor, this Revolution Government continues hitherto in a very anarchic state. Executive Council of Ministers, Six in number, there is : but they, especially since Roland's retreat, have hardly known whether they were Ministers or not. Convention Committees sit supreme over them ; but then each Committee as supreme as the others : Committee of Twenty-one, of Defence, of General Surety ; simultaneous or successive, for specific purposes. The Convention alone is all-powerful, — especially if the Com- mune go with it ; but is too numerous for an administrative body. Wherefore, in this perilous quick-whirling condition of the Republic, before the end of March we obtain our small Comite de Salut Public ; ^ as it were, for miscellaneous accidental purposes requiring despatch ; — as it proves, for a sort of universal supervision, and universal subjection. They are to report weekly, these new Committee-men ; but to deliberate in secret. Their number is Nine, firm Patriots all, Danton one of them ; renewable every month ; — yet why not re-elect them if they turn out well ? The flower of the matter is, that they are but nine ; that they sit in secret. An insignificant-looking thing at first, this Committee, but with a principle of growth in it ! Forwarded by fortune, by internal Jacobin energy, it will reduce all Committees and the Convention itself to mute obedience, the Six Ministers to Six assiduous Clerks ; and work its will on the Earth and under Heaven for a season. A ' Com- mittee of Public Salvation ' whereat the world still shrieks and shudders. If we call that Revolutionary Tribunal a Sword, which Sans- culottism has provided for itself, then let us call the ' Law of the Maximum ' a Provender-scrip, or Haversack, wherein, better or worse, some ration of bread may be found. It is true. Political Economy, Girondin free-trade, and all law of supply and demand, are hereby hurled topsyturvy : but what help ? Patriotism must live ; the ' cupidity of farmers ' seems ' Moniteur, No. 83 (du 24 Mars 1793), Nos. 86, 98, 99, 100. to SANSCULOT TISM ACCOUTRED 281 to have no bowels. Wherefore this Law of the Maximum, CHAP. V fixing the highest price of grains, is, with infinite effort, not March 1703 passed ; ^ and shall gradually extend itself into a Maximum for all manner of comestibles and commodities : with such scrambling and topsyturvying as may be fancied ! For now if, for example, the farmer will not sell ? The farmer shall be forced to sell. An accurate Account of what grain he has shall be delivered in to the Constituted Authorities : let him see that he say not too much ; for in that case, his rents, taxes and contributions will rise proportionally : let him see that he say not too little ; for, on or before a set day, we shall suppose in April, less than one-third of this declared quantity must remain in his barns, more than two-thirds of it must have been thrashed and sold. One can denounce him, and raise penalties. By such inextricable overturning of all Commercial relations will Sansculottism keep life in ; since not otherwise. On the whole, as Camille Desmoulins says once, ' while the Sanscu- lottes fight, the Monsieurs must pay.' So there come Impots Progressifs, Ascending Taxes ; which consume, with fast- increasing voracity, the ' superfluous-revenue ' of men : beyond fifty-pounds a-year, you are not exempt ; rising into the hundreds, you bleed freely ; into the thousands and tens of thousands, you bleed gushing. Also there come Requisitions ; there comes ' Forced-Loan of a Milliard,' some Fifty-Millions Sterling, which of course they that have must lend. Unex- ampled enough ; it has grown to be no country for the Rich, this ; but a country for the Poor ! And then if one fly, what steads it ? Dead in Law ; nay kept alive fifty years yet, for their accursed behoof ! In this manner therefore it goes ; topsyturvying, Qa-ira-ing ; — and withal there is endless sale of Emigrant National-Property, there is Cambon with endless cornucopia of Assignats. The Trade and Finance of Sanscu- lottism ; and how, with Maximum and Bakers' queues, with Cupidity, Hunger, Denunciation, and Paper-money, it led its galvanic-life, and began and ended, — remains the most interest- ing of all Chapters in Political Economy : still to be written. All which things, are they not clean against Formula ? O Girondin Friends, it is not a Republic of the Virtues we are getting ; but only a Republic of the Strengths, virtuous and other ! Moniteur (6m 20 Avril, etc. to 20 Mai, 1793). Chapter VI 282 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III April 1793 CHAPTER VI THE TRAITOR But Dumouriez, with his fugitive Host, with his King Ludo- vicus or King Philippus ? There lies the crisis ; there hangs the question : Revolution Prodigy, or Counter-Revolution ? — One wide shriek covers that North-east region. Soldiers, full of rage, suspicion and terror, flock hither and thither ; Dumouriez, the many-counselled, never off horseback, knows now no counsel that were not worse than none : the counsel, namely, of joining himself with Cobourg ; marching to Paris, extinguishing Jacobinism, and, with some new King Ludovicus or King Philippus, restoring the Constitution of 1791 ! ^ Is wisdom quitting Dumouriez ; the herald of Fortune quitting him ? Principle, faith political or other, beyond a certain faith of mess-rooms, and honour of an officer, had him not to quit. At any rate his quarters in the Burgh of Saint- Amand ; his head-quarters in the Village of Saint-Amand des Boues, a short way off, — have become a Bedlam. National Representatives, Jacobin Missionaries are riding and running ; of the ' three Towns,' Lille, Valenciennes, or even Conde, which Dumouriez wanted to snatch for himself, not one can be snatched ; your Captain is admitted, but the Town-gate is closed on him, and then alas the Prison-gate, and ' his men wander about the ramparts.' Couriers gallop breathless ; men wait, or seem waiting, to assassinate, to be assassinated ; ]3attalions nigh frantic with such suspicion and uncertainty, with Vive-la-Republique and Sauve-qui-peut, rush this way and that ; — Ruin and Desperation in the shape of Cobourg Ipng eatrenched close by. Dame Genlis and her fair Princess d'Orleans find this Burgh of Saint-Amand no fit place for them ; Dumouriez's protection is grown worse than none. Tough Genlis, one of the toughest women ; a woman, as it were, with nine lives in her ; whom nothing will beat ! she packs her bandboxes ; clear for flight in a private manner. Her beloved Princess she will — ^leave here, with the Prince Chartres Egalite her Brother. In the 1 Dumouriez, M^moires, iv. c. 7-10. cold THE TRAITOR 283 cold gray of the April morning, we find her accordingly estab- CHAP. VI lished in her hired vehicle, on the street of Saint-Amand ; April 1793 postilions just cracking their whips to go, — when behold the young Princely Brother, struggling hitherward, hastily calling ; bearing the Princess in his arms ! Hastily he has clutched the poor young lady up, in her very night-gown, nothing saved of her goods except the watch from the pillow : with brotherly despair he flings her in, among the bandboxes, into Genlis's chaise, into Genlis's arms : leave her not, in the name of Mercy and Heaven ! A shrill scene, but a brief one : — the postilions crack and go. Ah, whither ? Through by-roads and broken hill-passes ; seeking their way with lanterns after nightfall ; through perils, and Cobourg Austrians, and suspicious French Nationals : finally, into Switzerland ; safe though nigh money- less.^ The brave young Egalit6 has a most wild Morrow to look for ; but now only himself to carry through it. For indeed over at that Village named oj the Mudbaths, Saint-Amand des Boues, matters are still worse^ About four o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, the 2d of April 1793, two Couriers come galloping as if for life ; Mon General ! Four National Representatives, War-Minister at their head, are posting hither- ward from Valenciennes ; are close at hand, — with what intents one may guess ! While the Couriers are yet speaking, War-Minister and National Representatives, old Camus the Archivist for chief speaker of them, arrive. Hardly has Mon General had time to order out the Hussar Regiment de Berchigny; that it take rank and wait near by, in case of accident. And so, enter War-Minister Beurnonville, with an embrace of friend- ship, for he is an old friend ; enter Archivist Camus and the other three following him. They produce Papers, invite the General to the bar of the Convention : merely to give an explanation or two. The General finds it unsuitable, not to say impossible, and that ' the service will suffer.' Then comes reasoning ; the voice of the old Archivist getting loud. Vain to reason loud with this Dumouriez ; he answers mere angry irreverences. And so, amid plumed staff-officers, very gloomy-looking; in jeopardy and uncertainty, these poor National messengers debate and consult, retire and re-enter, for the space of some two hours : without ' Genlis, iv. 139. effect. 284 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III effect. Whereupon Archivist Camus, getting quite loud, April 2, proclaims, in the name of the National Convention, for he ^^^"^ has the power to do it. That General Dumouriez is arrested : ' Will you obey the National mandate. General ? ' — ' Pas dans ce moment-ci, Not at this particular moment,' answers the General also aloud ; then glancing the other way, utters certain unknown vocables, in a mandatory manner ; seemingly a German word-of-command.^ Hussars clutch the Four National Representatives, and Beurnonville the War-Minister ; pack them out of the apartment ; out of the Village, over the lines to Cobourg, in two chaises that very night, — as hostages, prisoners ; to lie long in the Maestricht and Austrian strong- holds ! ^ Jacta est alea. This night Dumouriez prints his ' Proclamation ' ; this night and the morrow the Diamouriez Army, in such darkness visible, and rage of semi-desperation as there is, shall meditate what the General is doing, what they themselves will do in it. Judge whether, this Wednesday was of halcyon nature, for any one ! But on the Thursday morning, we discern Dumouriez with small escort, with Chartres Egalite and a few staff-officers, ambling along the Conde Highway : perhaps they are for Conde, and trying to persuade the Garrison there ; at all events, they are for an interview with Cobourg, who waits in the woods by appointment, in that quarter. Nigh the ViUage of Doumet, three National Battalions, a set of men always full of Jacobinism, sweep past us ; marching rather swiftly, — seemingly in mistake, by a way w'e had not ordered. The General dismounts, steps into a cottage, a little from the way- side ; wiU give them right order in writing. Hark ! what strange growling is heard ; what barkings are heard, loud yells of ' Traitors,' of ' Arrest ' : the National Battalions have wheeled round, are emitting shot ! Mount, Dmnouriez, and spring for life ! Dumouriez and Staff strike the spurs in, deep ; vault over ditches, into the fields, which prove to be morasses ; sprawl and plunge for life ; bewhistled with curses and lead. Sunk to the middle, with or without horses, several servants killed, they escape out of shot-range, to General Mack the Austrian's quarters. Nay they return on the morrow, to Saint- Amand and faithful foreign Berchigny ; but what ' Dumouriez, iv. 159, etc, ^ Their Narrative, written by Camus (in Toulongeon, iii, app. 60^87). boots IN FIGHT 285 boots it ? The Artillery has all revolted, is jingling off to CHAP. VI Valenciennes ; all have revolted, are revolting ; except only April 2, foreign Berchigny, to the extent of some poor fifteen hundred, none wiU follow Dumouriez against France and Indivisible Republic : Diunouriez's occupation 's gone.^ Such an instinct of Frenchhood and Sansculottism dwells in these men : they will follow no Dumouriez nor Lafayette, nor any mortal on such errand. Shriek may be of Sauve-qui- peut, but will also be of Vive-la-Bepublique. New National Representatives arrive ; new General Dampierre, soon killed in battle ; new General Custine : the agitated Hosts draw back to some Camp of Famars ; make head against Cobourg as they can. And so Dumouriez is in the Austrian quarters ; his drama ended, in this rather sorry manner. A most shifty, wiry man ; one of Heaven's Swiss ; that wanted only work. Fifty years of unnoticed toil and valour ; one year of toil and valour, not unnoticed, but seen of all countries and centuries ; then thirty other years again unnoticed, of Memoir-writing, English Pension, scheming and projecting to no purpose : Adieu, thou Swiss of Heaven, worthy to have been something else ! His Staff go different ways. Brave young Egalite reaches Switzerland and the Genlis Cottage ; with a strong crabstick in his hand, a strong heart in his body : his Princedom is now reduced to that. EgaKte the Father sat playing whist, in his Palais Egalite, at Paris, on the 6th day of this same month of April, when a catchpole entered : Citoyen Egalite is wanted at the Convention Committee ! ^ Examination, requiring Arrestment ; finally requiring Imprisonment, trans- ference to Marseilles and the Castle of If ! Orleansdom has sunk in the black waters ; Palais Egalite, which was Palais Royal, is like to become Palais National. CHAPTER VII IN FIGHT Our Republic, by paper Decree, may be ' One and Indi- visible ' ; but what profits it while these things are ? Federalists 1 MimoireSf iv. 162-80. '^ See Montgaillard, iv. 144. in 286 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III in the Senate, renegadoes in the Army, traitors everywhere ! April 2, France, all in desperate recruitment since the Tenth of March, ■^^^•^ does not fly to the frontier, but only flies hither and thither. This defection of contemptuous diplomatic Dumouriez falls heavy on the fine-spoken high-snifling Hommes d'etat whom he consorted with ; forms a second epoch in their destinies. Or perhaps more strictly we might say, the second Girondin epoch, though little noticed then, began on the day when, in reference to this defection, the Girondins broke with Danton. It was the first day of April ; Dumouriez had not yet plunged across the morasses to Cobourg, but was evidently meaning to do it, and our Commissioners were off to arrest him ; when what does the Girondin Lasource see good to do, but rise, and jesuitically question and insinuate at great length, whether a main accomplice of Dumouriez had not probably been — - Danton ! Gironde grins sardonic assent ; Mountain holds its breath. The figure of Danton, Levasseur says, while this speech went on, was noteworthy. He sat erect with a kind of internal convulsion struggling to keep itself motionless ; his eye from time to time flashing wilder, his lip curling in Titanic scorn. ^ Lasource, in a fine-spoken attorney manner, proceeds : there is this probability to his mind, and there is that ; probabilities which press painfully on him, which cast the Patriotism of Danton under a painful shade ; — which painful shade, he, Lasource, will hope that Danton may find it not impossible to dispel. ' Les Scderats ! ' cries Danton, starting up, with clenched right-hand, Lasource having done ; and descends from the Mountain, like a lava -flood : his answer not unready. La- source's probabilities fly like idle dust ; but leave a result behind them. ' Ye were right, friends of the Mountain,' begins Danton, ' and I was wrong : there is no peace possible with these men. Let it be war, then ! They will not save the Republic with us : it shall be saved without them ; saved in spite of them.' Really a burst of rude Parliamentary eloquence this ; which is still worth reading in the old Moniteur. With fire-words the exasperated rude Titan rives and smites these Girondins ; at every hit the glad Mountain utter chorus ; Marat, like a musical bis, repeating the last phrase." Lasource's ^ Mimoins de /ien^ Zevasseur {BinxeUes, 1830),!. 164. '^ Stance du i Avril 1793 (in JIis£. Pari. xxv. 24-35). probabilities THE KEYSTONE OF THE ARCH. {"The fall of Robespierre.) IN FIGHT 287 probabilities are gone ; but Danton's pledge of battle remains CHAP. VII lying. April 11, 1793 A tjiird epoch, or scene in the Girondin Drama, or rather it is but the completion of this second epoch, we reckon from the day when the patience of virtuous Petion finally boiled over ; and the Girondins, so to speak, took up this battle- pledge of Danton's, and decreed Marat accused. It was the eleventh of the same month of April, on. some effervescence rising, such as often rose ; and President had covered himself, mere Bedlam now ruling ; and Mountain and Gironde were rushing on one another with clenched right-hands, and even with pistols in them ; when, behold, the Girondin Duperret drew a sword ! Shriek of horror rose, instantly quenching all other effervescence, at sight of the clear murderous steel ; whereupon Duperret returned it to the leather again ; — con- fessing that he did indeed dtaw it, being instigated by a kind of sacred madness, ' sainte fureur,' and pistols held at him ; but that if he parricidally had chanced to scratch the outmost skin of National Representation with it, he too carried pistols, and would have blown his brains out on the spot.^ But now in such posture of affairs, virtuous Potion rose, next morning, to lament these effervescences, this endless Anarchy invading the Legislative Sanctuary itself ; and here, being growled at and howled at by the Mountain, his patience, long tried, did, as we say, boil over ; and he spake vehemently, in high key, with foam on his lips ; ' whence,' says Marat, ' I concluded he had got la rage,' the rabidity, or dog-madness. Rabidity smites others rabid : so there rises new foam-lipped demand to have Anarchists extinguished ; and specially to have Marat put under accusation. Send a representative to the Revolutionary Tribunal ? Violate the inviolability of a Representative ? Have a care, O Friends ! This poor Marat has faults enough ; but against Liberty or Equality, what fault ? That he has loved and fought for it, not wisely but too well. In dungeons and cellars, in pinching poverty, under anathema of men ; even so, in such fight, has he grown so dingy, bleared ; even so has his head become a Stylites one ! Him you will fling to your Sword of Sharpness : while Cobourg and Pitt advance on us, fire-spitting ? ' Hist. Pari. xv. 397. The 288 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III The Mountain is loud, the Gironde is loud and deaf ; all April-May jjpg ^pg foamy. With ' Permanent-Session of twenty-four ^ hours,' with vote by roll-call, and a deadlift effort, the Gironde carries it : Marat is ordered to the Revolutionary Tribunal, to answer for that February Paragraph of Forestallers at the door-lintel, with other offences ; and, after a little hesitation, he obeys.^ Thus is Danton's battle-pledge taken up ; there is, as he said there would be, ' war without truce or treaty, ni treve ni composition.' Wherefore, close now with one another, Formula . and Reality, in death-grips, and wrestle it out ; both of you cannot live, but only one ! CHAPTER VIII IN DEATH-GRIPS It proves what strength, were it only of inertia, there is in established Formulas, what weakness in nascent Realities, and illustrates several things, that this death- wrestle should still have lasted some weeks or more. National business, discus- sion of the Constitutional Act, for our Constitution should decidedly be got ready, proceeds along with it. We even change our Locality ; we shift, on the Tenth of May, from the old Salle de Manege into our new Hall, in the Palace, once a King's but now the Republic's, of the Tuileries. Hope and ruth, flickering against despair and rage, still struggle in the minds of men. It is a most dark confused death-wrestle, this of the six weeks. Formalist frenzy against Realist frenzy ; Patriotism, Egoism, Pride, Anger, Vanity, Hope and Despair, all raised to the frenetic pitch : Frenzy meets Frenzy, like dark clashing whirlwinds ; neither understands the other ; the weaker, one day, will understand that it is verily swept down ! Girondism is strong as established Formula and Respectability : do not as many as Seventy-two of the Departments, or say respect- able Heads of Departments, declare for us ? Calvados, which loves its Buzot, will even rise in revolt, so hint the Addresses ; Marseilles, cradle of Patriotism, will rise ; Bordeaux will rise, ' Moniteur (du l6 Avril 1793, et seqq.). and IN DEATH-GRIPS 289 and the Gironde Department, as one man ; in a word, who CHAP. VIII will not rise, were our Representation Nationale to be insulted, April-May or one hair of a Deputy's head harmed ! The Mountain, ^'^^^ again', is strong as Reality and Audacity. To the Reality of the Mountain are not all furthersome things possible ? A new Tenth of August, if needful ; nay a new Second of Septem- ber ! — But, on Wednesday afternoon. Twenty-fourth day of April, year 1793, what tumult as of fierce jubilee is this ? It is Marat returning from the Revolutionary Tribunal ! A week or more of death-peril ; and now there is triumphant acquittal ; Revolu- tionary Tribunal can find no accusation against this man. And so the eye of History beholds Patriotism, which had gloomed unutterable things all week, break into loud jubilee, embrace its Marat ; lift him into a chair of triumph, bear him shoulder-high through the streets. Shoulder-high is the injured People's-friend, crowned with an oak-garland ; amid the wavy sea of red night-caps, carmagnole jackets, grenadier bonnets and female mob-caps ; far-sounding like a sea ! The injured People's-friend has here reached his culminating point ; he too strikes the stars with his sublime head. But the Reader can judge with what face President Lasource, he of the ' painful probabilities,' who presides in this Con- vention Hall, might welcome such jubilee-tide, when it got thither, and the Decreed of Accusation floating on the top of it ! A National Sapper, spokesman on the occasion, says, the People know their Friend, and love his life as their own ; ' who- soever wants Marat's head must get the Sapper's first.' ^ Lasource answered with some vague painful mumblement, — which, says Levasseur, one could not help tittering at.^ Patriot Sections, Volunteers not yet gone to the Frontiers, come demanding the ' purgation of traitors from your own bosom ' ; the expulsion, or even the trial and sentence, of a factious Twenty-two. Nevertheless the Gironde has got its Commission of Twelve ; a Commission specially appointed for investigating these troubles of the Legislative Sanctuary : let Sansculottism say what it will. Law shall triumph. Old-Constituent Rabaut ' Seance du 26 Avril, An i^"" (in Moniteur, No. 116). ^ Levasseur, M^moires, i. c. 6. VOL. II. T Saint- 290 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III Saint-Etienne presides over this Commission : ' it is the last April-May plank whereon a wrecked Republic may perhaps stiU save ^^^^ herself.' Rabaut and they therefore sit, intent ; examining witnesses ; launching arrestments ; looking out into a waste dim sea of troubles,— the womb of Formula, or perhaps her grave ! Enter not that sea, O Reader ! There are dim desolation and confusion ; raging women and raging men. Sections come demanding Twenty-two ; for the number first given by Section Bonconseil still holds, though the names should even vary. Other Sections, of the wealthier kind, come denouncing such demand ; nay the same Section will demand today, and denounce the demand tomorrow, according as the wealthier sit, or the poorer. Wherefore, indeed, the Girondins decree that all Sections shall close ' at ten in the evening ' ; before the working people come : which Decree remains without effect. And nightly the Mother of Patriot- ism wails doleful ; doleful, but her eye kindling ! And Foumier I'Americain is busy, and the two banker Freys, and Varlet Apostle of Liberty ; the bull-voice of Marquis Saint- Huruge is heard. And shrill women vociferate from all Galleries, the Convention ones and downwards. Nay a ' Central Com- mittee ' of all the Forty-eight Sections looms forth huge and dubious ; sitting dim in the Archeveche, sending Resolutions, receiving them : a Centre of the Sections ; in dread delibera- tion as to a New Tenth of August ! One thing we will specify, to throw light on many : the aspect under which, seen through the eyes of these Girondin Twelve, or even seen through one's own eyes, the Patriotism of the softer sex presents itself. There are female Patriots, whom the Girondins call Megasras, and count to the extent of eight thousand ; with serpent-hair, all out of curl ; who have changed the distaff for the dagger. They are of ' the Society called Brotherly,' Fraternelle, say Sisterly, which meets under the roof of the Jacobins. ' Two thousand daggers,' or so, have been ordered, — doubtless for them. They rush to Versailles, to raise more women ; but the Versailles women will not rise.^ Nay behold, in National Garden of Tuileries, — ^Demoiselle Theroigne herself is become as a brown-locked Diana (were that possible) attacked by her own dogs, or she-dogs ! The ' Buzot, Miiiioirts, pp. 69, 84; Meillan, Minioires:, pp. 192, 195, 196. See Commis- sion des Dome (in Choix des Rapports, xii. 69-131). Demoiselle, IN DEATH-GRIPS 291 Demoiselle, keeping her carriage, is for Liberty indeed, as she CHAP. VIII has full well shown ; but then for Liberty with Respectability : April-May whereupon these serpent-haired Extreme She Patriots do now ^''^^ fasten on her, tatter her, shamefully fustigate her, in their shameful way; almost fling her into the Garden-ponds, had not help intervened. Help, alas, to small purpose. The poor Demoiselle's head and nervous-system, none of the soundest, is so tattered and fluttered that it will never recover ; but flutter worse and worse, till it crack ; and within year and day we hear of her in madhouse and strait-waistcoat, which proves permanent ! — Such brown-locked Figure did flutter, and inarti- culately jabber and gesticulate, little able to speak the obscure meaning it had, through some segment of the Eighteenth Century of Time. She disappears here from the Revolution and Public History for evermore.^ Another thing we will not again specify, yet again beseech the Reader to imagine : the reign of Fraternity and Perfection. Imagine, we say, O Reader, that the Millennium were struggling on the threshold, and yet not so much as groceries could be had, — owing to traitors. With what impetus would a man strike traitors, in that case ! Ah, thou canst not imagine it ; thou hast thy groceries safe in the shops, and little or no hope of a Millennium ever coming ! — But indeed, as to the temper there was in men and women, does not this one fact say enough : the height Suspicion had risen to ? Preternatural we often called it ; seemingly in the language of exaggeration : but listen to the cold deposition of witnesses. Not a musical Patriot can blow himself a snatch of melody from the French Horn, sitting mildly pensive on the housetop, but Mercier will recognise it to be a signal which one Plotting Committee is making to another. Distraction has possessed Harmony her- self ; lurks in the sound of Marseillese and (^a-ira^^ Louvet, who can see as deep into a millstone as the most, discerns that we shall be invited back to our old Hall of the Manege, by a Deputation ; and then the Anarchists will massacre Twenty- two of us, as we walk over. It is Pitt and Cobourg ; the gold of Pitt. — Poor Pitt ! They little know what work he has 1 Deux Amis, vii. 77-80; Forster, i. 514; Moore, i. 70. She did not die till 1817 ; in the Salpetriere, in the most abject state of insanity ; see Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales (Paris, 1838), i. 445-50. '■^ Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 63. with 292 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III with his own Friends of the People ; getting them bespied. May 26-30, beheaded, their habeasi-corpuses suspended, and his own Social Order and strong-boxes kept tight, — to fancy him raising mobs among his neighbours ! But the strangest fact connected with French or indeed with human Suspicion, is perhaps this of Camille Desmoulins. Camille's head, one of the clearest in France, has got itself so saturated through every fibre with Preternaturalism of Sus- picion, that looking back on that Twelfth of July 1789, when the thousands rose round him, yelling responsive at his word in the Palais-Royal Garden, and took cockades, he finds it explicable only on this hypothesis. That they were all hired to do it, and set on by the Foreign and other Plotters. ' It was not for nothing,' says Camille with insight, 'that this multi- tude burst up round me when I spoke ! ' No, not for nothing. Behind, around, before, it is one huge Preternatural Puppet- play of Plots ; Pitt puUing the wires.^ Almost I conjecture that I, Camille myself, am a Plot, and wooden with wires. — The force of insight could no further go. Be this as it will. History remarks that the Commission of Twelve, now clear enough as to the Plots ; and luckily having ' got the threads of them all by the end,' as they say, — are launching Mandates of Arrest rapidly in these May days ; and carrying matters with a high hand ; resolute that the sea of troubles shall be restrained. What chief Patriot, Section-Pre- sident even, is safe ? They can arrest him ; tear him from his warm bed, because he has made irregular Section Arrest- ments ! They arrest Varlet Apostle of Liberty. They arrest Procureur-Substitute Hebert, Pere Duchesne ; a Magistrate of the People, sitting in Townhall ; who, with high solemnity of martyrdom, takes leave of his colleagues ; prompt he, to obey the Law ; and solemnly acquiescent, disappears into prison. The swifter fly the Sections, energetically demanding him back ; demanding not arrestment of Popular Magistrates, but of a traitorous Twenty-two. Section comes flying after Section ; — defiling energetic, with their Cambyses-vein of oratory : nay the Commune itself comes, with Mayor Pache at its head ; and with question not of Hubert and the Twenty- 1 See Histoire des Brissotins, par Camille Desmoulins (a Pamphlet of Camille's, Paris, 1793). two EXTINCT 293 two alone, but with this ominous old question made new, CHAP. Vlll ' Can you save the Republic, or must we do it ? ' To whom May 26-30, President Max Isnard makes fiery answer : If by fatal chance, in any of those tumults which since the Tenth of March are ever returning, Paris were to lift a sacrilegious finger against the National Representation, France would rise as one man, in never-imagined vengeance, and shortly ' the traveller would ask, on which side of the Seine Paris had stood ' ! ^ Whereat the Mountain bellows only louder, and every Gallery ; Patriot Paris boiling round. And Girondin Valaz6 has nightly conclaves at his house ; sends billets, ' Come punctually, and well armed, for there is to be business.' And Megsera women perambulate the streets, with flags, with lamentable alleleu.^ And the Convention-doors are obstructed by roaring multitudes : fine-spoken Hommes d'etat are hustled, maltreated, as they pass ; Marat wiU apo- strophise you, in such death-peril, and say. Thou too art of them. If Roland ask leave to quit Paris, there is order of the day. What help ? Substitute Hebert, Apostle Varlet, must be given back ; to be crowned with oak-garlands. The Commission of Twelve, in a Convention overwhelmed with roaring Sections, is broken ; then on the morrow, in a Con- vention of rallied Girondins, is reinstated. Dim Chaos, or the sea of troubles, is struggling through all its elements ; writhing and chafing towards some Creation. CHAPTER IX EXTINCT AccoKDiNGLY, ou Friday the Thirty-first of May 1793, there comes forth into the summer sunlight one of the strangest scenes. Mayor Pache with Municipality arrives at the Tuileries Hall of Convention ; sent for, Paris being in visible ferment ; and gives the strangest news. How, in the gray of this morning, while we sat permanent in Townhall, watchful for the commonweal, there entered. ' Moniteur, Seance du 25 Mai 1793. 2 Meillan, Mimoires, p. 195 ; Buzot, pp. 69, 84. precisely 294 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III precisely as on a Tenth of August, some Ninety-six extraneous May 31j persons ; who declared themselves to be in a state of Insurrec- ^'^^^ tion ; to be plenipotentiary Commissioners from the Forty- eight Sections, sections or members of the Sovereign People, all in a state of Insurrection ; and further, that we, in the name of said Sovereign in Insurrection, were dismissed from office. How we thereupon laid oft our sashes, and withdrew into the adjacent Saloon of Liberty. How, in a moment or two, we were called back ; and reinstated ; the Sovereign pleasing to think us still worthy of confidence. Whereby, having taken new oath of office, we on a sudden find ourselves Insurrectionary Magistrates, with extraneous Committee of Ninety-six sitting by us ; and a Citoyen Henriot, one whom some accuse of Septemberism, is made Generalissimo of the National Guard ; and, since six o'clock, the tocsins ring, and the drums beat : — Under such peculiar circumstances, what would an august National Convention please to direct us to do ? ^ Yes, there is the question ! ' Break the Insurrectionary Authorities,' answer some with vehemence. Vergniaud at least will have ' the National Representatives all die at their post ' ; this is sworn to, with ready loud acclaim. But as to breaking the Insurrectionary Authorities, — alas, while we yet debate, what sound is that ? Sound of the Alarm-Cannon on the Pont-Neuf ; which it is death by the Law to fire without order from us ! It does boom off there nevertheless ; sending a stound through aU hearts. And the tocsins discourse stern music ; and Henriot with his Armed Force has enveloped us ! And Section succeeds Section, the livelong day ; demanding with Cambyses-oratory, with the rattle of muskets. That traitors. Twenty-two or more, be punished ; that the Commission of Twelve be irrecoverably broken. The heart of the Gironde dies within it ; distant are the Seventy-two respectable Depart- ments, this fiery Municipality is near ! Barrere is for a middle course ; granting something. The Commission of Twelve declares that, not waiting to be broken, it hereby breaks itself, and is no more. Fain would Reporter Rabaut speak his and its last words ; but he is bellowed off. Too happy that the Twenty-two are still left unviolated ! — Vergniaud, carrying the laws of refinement to a great length, moves, to the amaze- 1 Dibats de la Convention (Paris, 1828), iv. 187-223 ; Moniteur, Nos. 152-4, An l^^ ment EXTINCT 295 ment of some, that ' the Sections of Paris have deserved well CHAP. IX of their country.' Whereupon, at a late hour of the evening, J"ne 2, 1793 the deserving Sections retire to their respective places of abode. Barr^re shall report on it. With busy quill and brain he sits, secluded ; for him no sleep tonight. Friday the last of May has ended in this manner. The Sections have deserved well : but ought they not to deserve better ? Faction and Girondism is struck down for the moment, and consents to be a nullity ; but will it not, at another favourabler moment rise, still feller ; and the Republic have to be saved in spite of it ? So reasons Patriotism, still Permanent ; so reasons the Figure of Marat, visible in the dim Section-world, on the morrow. To the conviction of men ! — And so at eventide of Saturday, when Barrere had just got the thing all varnished by the labour of a night and day, and his Report was setting off in the evening mail-bags, tocsin peals out again. GeniraU is beating ; armed men taking station in the Place Vend6me and elsewhere, for the night ; supplied with provisions and liquor. There, under the summer stars, will tYvef wait, this night, what is to be seen and to be done, Henriot and Townhall giving due signal. The Convention, at sound of genirale, hastens back to its Hall ; but to the number only of a Hundred ; and does little business, puts off business till the morrow. The Girondins do not stir out thither, the Girondins are abroad seeking beds. — Poor Rabaut, on the morrow morning, returning to his post, with Louvet and some others, through streets all in ferment, wrings his hands, ejaculating, ' Ilia suprema dies ! ' ^ It has become Sunday the 2d day of June, year 1793, by the old style ; by the new style, year One of Liberty, Equality, Frater- nity. We have got to the last scene of all, that ends this history of the Girondin Senatorship. It seems doubtful whether any terrestrial Convention had ever met in such circumstances as this National one now does. Tocsin is pealing ; Barriers shut ; all Paris is on the gaze, or under arms. As many as a Hundred Thousand under arms they count : National Force ; and the Armed Volunteers, who should have flown to the frontiers and La Vendee ; but would not, treason being unpunished ; and only flew hither and ' Louvet, Miinoires, p. 89. thither! 296 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III thither ! So many, steady under arms, environ the National June 2, 1793 Tuileries and Garden. There are horse, foot, artillery, sappers with beards : the artillery one can see with their camp-furnaces in this National Garden, heating bullets red, and their match is lighted. Henriot in plumes rides, amid a plumed Staff : all posts and issues are safe ; reserves lie out, as far as the Wood of Boulogne ; the choicest Patriots nearest the scene. One other circumstance we will note : that a careful Municipality, liberal of camp-furnaces, has not forgotten provision-carts. No member of the Sovereign need now go home to dinner ; but can keep rank — plentiful victual circulating unsought. Does not this People understand Insurrection ? Ye, not uninventive, Gualches ! — Therefore let a National Representation, ' mandatories of the Sovereign,' take thought of it. Expulsion of your Twenty- two, and your Commission of Twelve : we stand here till it be done ! Deputation after Deputation, in ever stronger language, comes with that message. Barrere proposes a middle course : — Will not perhaps the inculpated Deputies consent to withdraw voluntarily ; to make a generous demis- sion and self-sacrifice for the sake of one's country ? Isnard, repentant of that search on which river-bank Paris stood, declares himself ready to demit. Ready also is Te-Deum Fauchet ; old Dusaulx of the BastiUe, ' vieusc radoteur, old dotard,' as Marat calls him, is still readier. On the contrary, Lanjuinais the Breton declares that there is one man who never will demit voluntarily ; but will protest to the utter- most, while a voice is left him. And he accordingly goes on protesting ; amid rage and clangour ; Legendre crying at last : ' Lanjuinais, come down from the Tribune, or I will fling thee down, ou je te jette en has ! ' For matters are come to extremity. Nay they do clutch hold of Lanjuinais, certain zealous Mountain- men ; but cannot fling him down, for he ' cramps himself on the railing ' ; and ' his clothes get torn.' Brave Senator, worthy of pity ! Neither will Barbaroux demit ; he ' has sworn to die at his post, and will keep that oath.' Where- upon the Galleries all rise with explosion ; brandishing weapons, some of them ; and rush out, saying : ' Allans, then ; we must save our country ! ' Such a Session is this of Sunday the second of June. Churches fill, over Christian Europe, and then empty them- selves ; EXTINCT 297 selves ; but this Convention empties not, the while : a day CHAP. IX of shrieking contention, of agony, humiliation, and tearing J""" 2, 1793 of coat-skirts ; ilia suprema dies ! Round stand Henriot and his Hundred Thousand, copiously refreshed from tray and basket : nay he is ' distributing five francs a-piece,' we Girondins saw it with our eyes ; five francs to keep them in heart ! And distraction of armed riot encumbers our borders, jangles at our Bar ; we are prisoners in our own Hall : Bishop Gregoire could not get out for a besoin actuel without four gendarmes to wait on him ! What is the character of a National Representative become ? And now the sunlight falls yellower on western windows, and the chimney-tops are flinging longer shadows ; the refreshed Hundred Thousand, nor their shadows, stir not ! What to resolve on ? Motion rises, super- fluous one would think. That the Convention go forth in a body ; ascertain with its own eyes whether it is free or not. Lo, therefore, from the Eastern Gate of the Tuileries, a distressed Convention issuing ; handsome Herault Sechelles at their head ; he with hat on, in sign of public calamity, the rest bareheaded, — towards the Gate of the Carrousel ; wondrous to see : towards Henriot and his plumed Staff. ' In the name of the National Convention, make way ! ' Not an inch of way does Henriot make : ' I receive no orders, till the Sovereign, yours and mine, have been obeyed.' The Convention presses on ; Henriot prances back, with his Staff, some fifteen paces, ' To arms ! Cannoneers, to your guns ! ' — flashes out his puissant sword, as the Staff all do, and the Hussars all do. Cannoneers brandish the lit match ; Infantry present arms, — alas, in the level way, as if for firing ! Hatted Herault leads his distressed flock, through their pinfold of a Tuileries again ; across the Garden, to the Gate on the opposite side. Here is Feuillans-Terrace, alas, there is our old Salle de Manege ; but neither at this Gate of the Pont Toiimant is there egress. Try the other ; and the other : no egress ! We wander disconsolate through armed ranks ; who indeed salute with Live the Republic, but also with Die the Gironde. Other such sight, in the year One of Liberty, the westering sun never saw. And now behold Marat meets us ; for he lagged in this Suppliant Procession of ours : he has got some hundred elect Patriots at his heels ; he orders us, in the Sovereign's name, to return to our place, and do as we are bidden and bound. The 298 THE GIRONDINS BOOK III The Convention returns. ' Does not the Convention,' says June %, 1793 Couthon with a singular power of face, ' see that it is free,' — none but friends round it ? The Convention, overflowing with friends and armed Sectioners, proceeds to vote as bidden. Many will not vote, but remain silent ; some one or two pro- test, in words, the Mountain has a clear unanimity. Commis- sion of Twelve, and the denounced Twenty-two, to whom we add Ex-Ministers Claviere and Lebrun : these, with some slight extempore alterations (this or that orator proposing, but Marat disposing), are voted to be under ' Arrestment in their own houses.' Brissot, Buzot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Louvet, Gensonne, Barbaroux, Lasource, Lanjuinais, Rabaut, — Thirty- two, by the tale ; all that we have known as Girondins, and more than we have known. They, ' under the safeguard of the French People ' ; by and by, under the safeguard of two Gendarmes each, shall dwell peaceably in their own houses ; as Non-Senators ; till further order. Herewith ends Stance of Sunday the second of June 1793. At ten o'clock, under mild stars, the Hundred Thousand, their work well finished, turn homewards. Already yesterday. Central Insurrection Committee had arrested Madame Roland ; imprisoned her in the Abbaye. Roland has fled, no man knows whither. Thus fell the Girondins, by Insurrection ; and became extinct as a Party : not without a sigh from most Historians. The men were men of parts, of Philosophic culture, decent behaviour ; not condemnable in that they were but Pedants, and had not better parts ; not condemnable, but most unfor- tunate. They wanted a Republic of the Virtues, wherein themselves should be head ; and they could only get a Republic of the Strengths, wherein others than they were head. For the rest, Barr^re shall make Report of it. The night concludes with a ' civic promenade by torchlight ' : ^ surely the true reign of Fraternity is now not far ? ' Buzot, Miinoires, p. 310. See Pikes Jusiificatives, of Narratives, Commentaries, etc. in Buzot, Louvet, Meillan ; Documens CompUnientaires, in Hist, Pari, xxviii. 1-78. Book Fourth BOOK FOURTH TERROR CHAPTER I CHARLOTTE CORDAY In the leafy months of June and July, several French Depart- ments germinate a set of rebellious paper-leaves, named Pro- clamations, 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 sud- denly 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 humour. Some, as Vergniaud, Valaze, Gensonne, ' arrested in their own houses,' will await with stoical resigna- tion 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 wiU 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 Du- chatel, 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 300 TERROR BOOK IV welcomed by Persons in Authority ; welcomed and defrayed, July 1793 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 Depart- ment 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, wiU 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 fervours and eloquent sarcasm : tirades against the Moun- tain, 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 Cinmierian invading Coali- tions, and torn with an internal La Vendue, this is the conclu- sion 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 Mentz 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 ^ Meillan, pp. 72, 73; Louvet, p. 129. whizzes CHARLOTTE CORDAY 301 whizzes past.' ^ Cond6 is capitulating to the Austrians ; CHAP. I Royal Highness of York, these several weeks, fiercely batters July 1793 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 ' explana- tions.' 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. Mathe- matical 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 Indi- visible 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 V 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, — ^him who once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently she wiU 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-dsemonic splendour ; 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 ' Belagerung von yl/amz (Goethe's Werke, xxx. 278-334). ^ Meillan, p 75; Louvet, p. 114. Charlotte 302 TERROR BOOK IV Charlotte Corday ; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the July 1793 little Life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes swallowed of the Night. CHARLOTTE CORDAY. With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday the 9th of July seated in the Caen Diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her Good- journey : her Father will find CHARLOTTE CORDAY 303 find a line left, signifying that she is gone to England, that CHAP. I he must pardon her, and forget her. The drowsy Diligence July 13, lumbers along ; amid drowsy talk of Polities, andi 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 after- noon 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 hands ; 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 I'Ecole de Medecine, No. 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 ; tjiey 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-labourers 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, — towards a purpose. It 304 TERROR BOOK IV July 17, 1793 It is 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 dis- positions, ' 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 of the clock, stewing in slipper-bath ; sore afflicted ; ill of Revolu- tion Fever, — of Avhat other Malady this History had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man : with pre- cisely elevenpence-half- penny of ready-money, in paper ; with slipper- bath ; strong three- footed stool for writing on, the while ; and a squalid — Washer- woman, one may call her : that is his civic establishment in Medi- cal-School Street; thither and not else- whither has his road led him. Not to the reign of Brotherhood and Perfect Felicity ; yet surely on the way towards 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, recognising 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, PHion, writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath ; Pition, and Louvet, and — Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath ; plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart. ' A moi, DEATH MASK OF MARAT. CHARLOTTE CORDAY 305 moi, chere amie. Help, dear ! ' no more could the Death-choked CHAP. I say or shriek. The helpful Washerwoman running in, there July 17, 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 got hurled down suddenly from his Pillar, — whitherward He that made him knows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole and wail ; re-echoed by Patriot France ; and the Convention, ' Chabot pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated,' may decree him Pantheon Honours, Public Funeral, Mirabeau's dust making way for him ; and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, sununing up his character, parallel him to One, whom they think it honour to caU ' the good Sanscidotte,' — 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-bom children be named Marat ; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake moimtains 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 circum- stance 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 wrapped 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. As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished ; the recompense of it is near and sure. The chere amie, and neigh- bours 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 1 Moniteur, Nos. 197, 198, 199; Hist. Pari, xxviii. 301-5; Deux Amis, x. 368-74. ^ See Eloge funibre de Jean-Paul Marat, prononce a Strasbourg (in Barbaroux, pp, 125-31) ; Mercier, etc. * Seance du 16 Septembre 1793. VOL. II. u Papers 306 TERROR BOOK IV Papers sealed, — which may lead to consequences. Fauehet, July 17, in like manner, though Fauehet had not so much as heard of her. Charlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, praises the grave firmness of Duperret, censures the dejection of Fauehet. 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 need- less,' 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 (extrSmement), as they went on with their questions, ' I killed one man to save a hundred thousand ; a viUain 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 tiptoe, the fatal Cart issues ; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of Murderess ; so beautiful, serene, so fuU of life ; journeying towards death, — alone amid the World. Many take oft their hats, saluting reverently ; for what heart but must be touched ? ^ Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mentz, 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 1 Frocks de Charlotte Corday, etc. (Hist. Pari, xxviii. 311-38). ^ Deux Amis, x. 374-84. apology. IN CIVIL WAR 307 apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the CHAP. I neckerchief from her neck ; a blush of maidenly shame over- J"ly 17, spreads 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.' ^ In this manner have the Beautifulest and the Squalidest come in collision, and extinguished one another. Jean-Paul Marat and Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday both, suddenly, are no more. ' Day of the Preparation of Peace ' ? Alas, how were peace possible or preparable, while, for example, the hearts of lovely Maidens, in their convent-stillness, are dream- ing not of Love-paradises and the light of Life, but of Codrus' sacrifices and Death well-earned ? That Twenty-five million hearts have got to such temper, this is the Anarchy ; the soul of it lies in this : whereof not peace can be the embodiment ! The death of Marat, whetting old animosities tenfold, will be worse than any life. O ye hapless Two, mutually extinctive, the Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well, — in the Mother's bosom that bore you both ! This is the History of Charlotte Corday ; most definite, most complete ; angelic-daemonic : like a Star ! Adam Lux goes home, half-delirious ; to pour forth his Apotheosis of her, in paper and print ; to propose that she have a statue with this inscription. Greater than Brutus. Friends represent his danger ; Lux is reckless ; thinks it were beautiful to die with her. CHAPTER II IN CIVIL WAR But during these same hours, another guillotine is at work, on another : Charlotte, for the Girondins, dies at Paris today ; Chalier, by the Girondins, dies at Lyons tomorrow. From rumbling of cannon along the streets of that City, it has come to firing of them, to rabid fighting : Nievre Choi and the Girondins triumph ; — ^behind whom there is, as every- ^ Briefwechsel, i. 508. where, 308 TERROR BOOK IV where, a Royalist Faction waiting to strike in. Trouble July 15, enough at Lyons ; and the dominant party carrying it with a ^^^"^ high hand ! For, indeed, the whole South is astir ; incar- cerating 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 Programs 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 Mar- seilles 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 Buonaparte. This Napoleon, to prove that the Marseillese have no chance ultimately, not only fights but writes ; pub- lishes 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 ? The Bar of Iron has never yet floated in Marseilles Harbour ; but the body of Rebecqui was found floating, self-drowned there. Hot Rebecqui, seeing how confusion deepened, and Respectability grew poisoned with Royalism, felt that there was no refuge for a Republican but death. Rebecqui dis- appeared : no one knew whither ; till, one morning, they found the empty case or body of him risen to the top, tumbling on the salt waves ; ^ and perceived that Rebecqui had with- drawn for ever. — Toulon likewise is incarcerating Patriots ; ^ See Hazlitt, ii. 529-41. ■^ Barbaroux, p. 29. sendmg IN CIVIL WAR 309 sending delegates to Congress ; intriguing, in case of necessity, with the Royalists and English. MontpeUier, Bordeaux, Nantes : all France, that is not under the swoop of Austria and«Cimmeria, seems rushing into madness and suicidal ruin. The Mountain labours ; like a volcano in a burning volcanic Land. Convention Committees, of Surety, of Salvation, are busy night and day : Convention Commissioners whirl on all CHAP. II July 16, 1793 GENERAL CARTAUX. highways ; bearing olive-branch and sword, or now perhaps sword only. Chaumette and Municipals come daily to the Tuileries demanding a Constitution : it is some weeks now since he resolved, in TownhaU, that a Deputation ' should go every day,' and demand a Constitution, till one were got ; ^ whereby suicidal France might rally and pacify itself ; a thing inexpressibly desirable. This then is the fruit your Antianarchic Girondins have got from that Levying of War in Calvados ? This fruit, we ' Deux Amis, x. 345. may 310 TERROR BOOK IV may say ; and no other whatsoever. For indeed, before either July 16, Charlotte's or ChaHer's head had fallen, the Calvados War ^^^"^ itself had, as it were, vanished, dreamlike, in a shriek ! With ' seventy-two Departments ' on our side, one might have hoped better things. But it turns out that Respectabilities, though they will vote, will not fight. Possession always is nine points in Law ; but in Lawsuits of this kind, one may say, it is ninety- and-nine points. Men do what they were wont to do ; and have immense irresolution and inertia : they obey him who has the s}mabols that claim obedience. Consider what, in modern society, this one fact means : the Metropolis is with our enemies ! Metropolis, Mother-city ; rightly so named : all the rest are but as her children, her nurselings. Why, there is not a leathern Diligence, with its post-bags and luggage-boots, that lumbers out from her, but is as a huge life-pulse ; she is the heart of all. Cut short that one leathern Diligence, how much is cut short ! — General Wimpfen, looking practically into the matter, can see nothing for it but that one should fall back on Royalism ; get into Communication with Pitt ! Dark innuendos he flings out, to that effect : whereat we Girondins start, horrorstruck. He produces as his Second in command a certain ' Ci-devant,'' one Comte Puisaye ; entirely unknown to Louvet ; greatly suspected by him. Few wars, accordingly, were ever levied of a more insufficient character than this of Calvados. He that is curious in such things may read the details of it in the Memoirs of that same Ci-devant Puisaye, the much-enduring man and Royalist : How our Girondin National forces, marching off with plenty of wind-music, were drawn out about the old Chateau of Brecourt, in the wood-country near Vernon, to meet the Mountain National forces advancing from Paris. How on the fifteenth afternoon of July, they did meet ;— and, as it were, shrieked mutually, and took mutually to flight, without loss. How Puisaye thereafter, — for the Mountain Nationals fled first, and we thought ourselves the victors, — was roused from his warm bed in the Castle of Brecourt ; and had to gallop without boots ; our Nationals, in the night-watches, having fallen unexpectedly into sauve-qui-peut :— and in brief the Calvados War had burnt priming; and the only question now was. Whitherward to vanish, in what hole to hide oneself ! ^ ' Mimoirts d( Puisaye (London, 1803), ii. 142-67. The RETREAT OF THE ELEVEN 311 The National Volunteers rush homewards, faster than CHAP. II they came. The Seventy -two Respectable Departments, says July 16, Meillan, ' all turned round and forsook us, in the space of ^'^^ four-and-twenty hours.' Unhappy those who, as at Lyons for instance, have gone too far for turning ! ' One morning,' we find placarded on our Intendance Mansion, the Decree of Convention which casts us Hors la hi, into Outlawry ; placarded by our Caen Magistrates ; — clear hint that we also are to vanish. Vanish indeed : but whitherward ? Gorsas has friends in Rennes ; he will hide there, — unhappily wiU not lie hid. Guadet, Lanjuinais are on cross roads ; making for Bordeaux. To Bordeaux ! cries the general voice, of Valour alike and of Despair. Some flag of Respectability still floats there, or is thought to float. Thitherward therefore ; each as he can ! Eleven of these ill-fated Deputies, among whom we may count as twelfth. Friend Riouffe the Man of Letters, do an original thing : Take the uniform of National Volunteers, and retreat southward with the Breton Battalion, as private soldiers of that corps. These brave Bretons had stood truer by us than any other. Nevertheless, at the end of a day or two, they also do now get dubious, self-divided ; we must part from them ; and, with some half-dozen as convoy or guide, retreat by ourselves,^ — a solitary marching detachment, through waste regions of the West.^ CHAPTER III RETREAT OF THE ELEVEN It is one of the notablest Retreats, this of the Eleven, that History presents : The handful of forlorn Legislators retreating there, continually, with shouldered firelock and well-filled cartridge-box, in the yellow autumn ; long hundreds of miles between them and Bordeaux ; the country all getting hostile, suspicious of the truth ; simmering and buzzing on all sides, more and more. Louvet has preserved the Itinerary of it ; a piece worth all the rest he ever wrote. O virtuous Petion, with thy early-white head, O brave ' Louvet, pp. 101-37 ; Meillan, pp. 8l, 241-70. young 312 TERROR BOOK IV young Barbaroux, has it come to this ? Weary ways, worn July 1793 shoes, light purse ; — encompassed with perils as with a sea ! Revolutionary Committees are in every Township ; of Jacobin temper ; our friends all cowed, our cause the losing one. In the Borough of Moncontour, by ill chance, it is market-day : to the gaping public such transit of a solitary Marching Detach- ment is suspicious ; we have need of energy, of promptitude and luck, to be allowed to march through. Hasten, ye weary pilgrims ! The country is getting up ; noise of you is bruited day after day, a solitary Twelve retreating in this mysterious manner : with every new day, a wider wave of inquisitive pursuing tumult is stirred up, tiQ the whole West will be in motion. ' Cussy is tormented with gout, Buzot is too fat for marching.' Riouffe, blistered, bleeding, marches only on tip- toe ; Barbaroux limps with sprained ankle, yet ever cheery, full of hope and valour. Light Louvet glances hare-eyed, not hare-hearted : only virtuous Petion's serenity ' was but once seen ruffled.' ^ They lie in straw-lofts, in woody brakes ; rudest paUlasse on the floor of a secret friend is luxury. They are seized in the dead of night by Jacobin mayors and tap of drum ; get off by firm countenance, rattle of muskets and ready wit. Of Bordeaux, through fiery La Vendee and the long geo- graphical spaces that remain, it were madness to think : well if you can get to Quimper on the sea-coast, and take shipping there. Faster, ever faster ! Before the end of the march, so hot has the country grown, it is found advisable to march all night. They do it ; under the still night-canopy they plod along ; — and yet behold. Rumour has outplodded them. In the paltry Village of Carhaix (be its thatched huts and bottom- less peat-bogs long notable to the TraveUer), one is astonished to find light still glimmering : citizens are awake, with rush- lights burning, in that nook of the terrestrial planet ; as we traverse swiftly the one poor street, a voice is heard saying, ' There they are, Les voila qui passent ! ' ^ Swifter, ye doomed lame Twelve : speed ere they can arm ; gain the Woods of Quimper before day, and lie squatted there ! The doomed Twelve do it ; though with difficulty, with loss of road, with peril and the mistakes of a night. In Quimper are Girondin friends, who perhaps will harbour the homeless, ' Meillan, pp. 119-37. - Louvet, pp. 138-64. till RETREAT OF THE ELEVEN 313 till a Bordeaux ship weigh. Wayworn, heartworn, in agony CHAP. Ill of suspense, till Quimper friendship get warning, they lie there, July 1793 squatted under the thick wet boscage ; suspicious of the face of man. Some pity to the brave ; to the unhappy ! Un- happiest of all Legislators, O when ye packed your luggage, some score or two-score months ago, and mounted this or the other leathern vehicle, to be Conscript Fathers of a regener- ated France, and reap deathless laurels, — did you think your journey was to lead hither ? The Quimper Samaritans find them squatted ; lift them up to help and comfort ; will hide them in sure places. Thence let them dissipate gradually ; or there they can lie quiet, and write Memoirs, till a Bordeaux ship sail. And thus, in Calvados all is dissipated ; Romme is out of prison, meditating his Calendar ; ringleaders are locked in his room. At Caen the Corday family mourns in silence : Buzot's House is a heap of dust and demolition ; and amid the rubbish sticks a Gallows, with this inscription. Here dwelt the Traitor Buzot, who conspired against the Republic. Buzot and the other vanished Deputies are hors la hi, as we saw ; their lives free to take where they can be found. The worse fares it with the poor Arrested visible Deputies at Paris. ' Arrestment at home ' threatens to become ' Confinement in the Luxem- bourg ' ; to end : where ? For example, what pale-visaged thin man is this, journeying towards Switzerland as a Merchant of Neuchatel, whom they arrest in the town of Moulins ? To Revolutionary Committee he is suspect. To Revolutionary Committee, on probing the matter, he is evidently : Deputy Brissot ! Back to thy Arrestment, poor Brissot ; or indeed to strait confinement, — whither others are fated to follow. Rabaut has built himself a false-partition, in a friend's house ; lives, in invisible darkness, between two walls. It will end, this same Arrestment business, in Prison, and the Revolutionary Tribunal. Nor must we forget Duperret, and the seal put on his papers by reason of Charlotte. One Paper is there, fit to breed wo enough : A secret solemn Protest against that suprema dies of the Second of June ! This Secret Protest our poor Duperret had drawn up, the same week, in all plainness of speech; waiting the time for publishing it : to which Secret Protest his signature, and 314 TERROR BOOK IV and that of other honourable Deputies not a few, stands legibly July 1793 appended. And now, if the seals were once broken, the Moun- tain still victorious ? Such Protesters, your Merciers, Bail- leuls. Seventy-three by the tale, what yet remains of Respect- able Girondism in the Convention, may tremble to think ! — These are the fruits of levying civil war. Also we find, that in these last days of July, the famed Siege of Mentz is finished : the Garrison to march out with honours of war ; not to serve against the Coalition for a year. Lovers of the Picturesque, and Goethe standing on the Chaussee of Mentz, saw, with due interest, the Procession issuing forth, in all solemnity : ' Escorted by Prussian horse came first the French Garrison. Nothing could look stranger than this latter ; a column of Marseillese, slight, swarthy, parti-coloured, in patched clothes, came tripping on ; — as if King Edwin had opened the Dwarf Hill, and sent out his nimble Host of Dwarfs. Next followed regular troops ; serious, sullen ; not as if downcast or ashamed. But the remarkablest appearance, which struck every one, was that of the Chasers (Chasseurs) coming out mounted : they had advanced quite silent to where we stood, when their Band struck up the Marseillaise. This revolutionary Te-Deum has in itself something mournful and bodeful, however briskly played ; but at present they gave it in altogether slow time, proportionate to the creeping step they rode at. It was piercing and fearful, and a most serious-looking thing, as these cavaliers, long, lean men, of a certain age, with mien suitable to the music, came pacing on : singly you might have likened them to Don Quixote ; in mass, they were highly dignified. ' But now a single troop became notable : that of the Com- missioners or Representans. Merlin of Thionville, in hussar uniform, distinguishing himself by wild beard and look, had another person in similar costume on his left ; the crowd shouted out, with rage, at sight of this latter, the name of a Jacobin Townsman and Clubbist ; and shook itself to seize him. Merlin drew bridle ; referred to his dignity as French Representative, to the vengeance that should follow any injury done ; he would advise every one to compose himself, for this was not the last time they would see him here.' ^ Thus rode Merlin ; threatening in defeat. But what now shall stem ^ Bdagerimg von Mainz (Goethe's Works, xxx. 315). that O NATURE 315 that tide of Prussians setting-in through the opened North- CHAP. Ill east ? Lucky if fortified Lines of Weissembourg, and im- -f^ly 1793 passabilities of Vosges Mountains confine it to French Alsace, keep it from submerging the very heart of the country ! Furthermore, precisely in the same days, Valenciennes Siege is finished, in the Northwest : — fallen, under the red hail of York ! Conde fell some fortnight since. Cimmerian Coali- tion presses on. What seems very notable too, on all these captured French Towns there flies not the Royalist fleur-de- lys, in the name of a new Louis the Pretender ; but the Austrian flag flies ; as if Austria meant to keep them for herself ! Per- haps General Custine, still in Paris, can give some explanation of the fall of these strong-places ? Mother Society, from tribune and gallery, growls loud that he ought to do it ; — remarks, however, in a splenetic manner that ' the Monsieurs of the Palais Royal ' are calling Long-life to this General. The Mother Society, purged now, by successive ' scrutinies or Spurations,' from all taint of Girondism, has become a great Authority : what we can call shield-bearer or bottle-holder, nay call it fugleman, to the purged National Convention itself. The Jacobins Debates are reported in the Moniteur, like Parlia- mentary ones. CHAPTER IV O NATURE But looking more specially into Paris City, what is this that History, on the 10th of August, Year One of Liberty, ' by old-style, year 1793,' discerns there ? Praised be the Heavens, a new Feast of Pikes ! For Chaumette's ' Deputation every day ' has worked out its result : a Constitution. It was one of the rapidest Constitu- tions ever put together ; made, some say in eight days, by Herault Sechelles and others ; probably a workmanlike, road- worthy Constitution enough ; — on which point, however, we are, for some reasons, little called to form a judgment. Work- manlike or not, the Forty-four Thousand Communes of France, by overwhelming majorities, did hasten to accept it ; glad of any Constitution whatsoever. Nay Departmental Deputies have 316 TERROR BOOK IV have come, the venerablest Repubhcans of each Department, Aug. 10, with solemn message of Acceptance ; and now what remains ^''^'^ but that our new Final Constitution be proclaimed, and sworn to, in Feast of Pikes ? The Departmental Deputies, we say, are come some time ago ; Chatmiette very anxious about them, lest Girondin Monsieur s, Agio- jobbers, or were it even Filles de joie of a Girondin temper, corrupt their morals.-^ Tenth of August, immortal Anniversary, greater almost than Bastille July, is the Day. Painter David has not been idle. Thanks to David and the French genius, there steps forth into the sunlight, this day, a Scenic Phantasmagory unexampled : — whereof History, so occupied with real Phantasmagories, will say but little. For one thing, History can notice with satisfaction, on the ruins of the Bastille, a Statue of Nature ; gigantic, spouting water from her two mammelles. Not a Dream this ; but a fact, palpable visible. There she spouts, great Nature ; dim, before daybreak. But as the coming Sun ruddies the East, come countless Multitudes, regulated and unregulated ; come Departmental Deputies, come Mother Society and Daughters ; comes National Convention, led on by handsome Herault ; soft wind-music breathing note of expectation. Lo, as great Sol scatters his first fire-handful, tipping the hills and chimney- heads with gold, Herault is at great Nature's feet (she is plaster- of-paris merely) ; Herault lifts, in an iron saucer, water spouted from the sacred breasts ; drinks of it, with an eloquent Pagan Prayer, beginning, ' O Nature ! ' and all the Departmental Deputies drink, each with what best suitable ejaculation or prophetic-utterance is in him ; — amid breathings, which become blasts, of wind-music ; and the roar of artillery and human throats : finishing well the first act of this solemnity. Next are processionings along the Boulevards : Deputies or Officials bound together by long indivisible tricolor riband ; general ' members of the Sovereign ' walking pell-mell, with pikes, with hammers, with the tools and emblems of their crafts ; among which we notice a Plough, and ancient Baucis and Philemon seated on it, drawn by their children. Many- voiced harmony and dissonance filling the air. Through Triumphal Arches enough : at the basis of the first of which, we descry — whom thinkest thou ? — ^the Heroines of the Insur- ^ Deux Amis, xi. 73. rection LATEST PORTRAITS OF CELEBRITIES. {fThe heads of Foulon and de Launaji, and the head and heart of Berthier are from sketches made by Girodet as they luere carried in the streets of Paris.) O NATURE 317 rection of Women. Strong Dames of the Market, they sit there CHAP. IV (Theroigne too ill to attend, one fears), with oak-branches, Aug. 10, tricolor bedizenment ; firm seated on their Cannons. To ^^^"^ whojn handsome Herault, making pause of admiration, addresses soothing eloquence ; whereupon they rise and fall into the march. And now mark, in the Place de la Revolution, what other august Statue may this be ; veiled in canvas, — ^which swiftly we shear off, by pulley and cord ? The Statue of Liberty ! She too is of plaster, hoping to become of metal ; stands where a Tyrant Louis Quinze once stood. ' Three thousand birds ' are let loose, into the whole world, with labels round their neck. We are free ; imitate us. Holocaust of Royalist and ci-devant trmnpery, such as one could still gather, is burnt ; pontifical eloquence must be uttered, by handsome Herault, and Pagan orisons offered up. And then forward across the River ; where is new enor- mous Statuary ; enormous plaster Mountain ; HeTcules-Peuple, with uplifted all-conquering club ; ' many-headed Dragon of Girondin Federalism rising from fetid marsh ' : — needing new eloquence from H6rault. To say nothing of Champ-de-Mars, and Fatherland's Altar there ; with urn of slain Defenders, Carpenter's-level of the Law ; and such exploding, gesticulat- ing and perorating, that Herault's lips must be growing white, and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth.^ Towards six o'clock let the wearied President, let Paris Patriotism generally sit down to what repast, and social repasts, can be had ; and with fiowing tankard or light-mantling glass, usher in this New and Newest Era. In fact, is not Romme's New Calendar getting ready ? On all housetops flicker little tricolor Flags, their flagstaff a Pike and Liberty-Cap. On all house-walls, — for no Patriot not suspect will be behind another, — there stand printed these words : Republic one and indivisible ; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death. As to the New Calendar, we may say here rather than else- where that speculative men have long been struck with the inequalities and incongruities of the Old Calendar ; that a New one has long been as good as determined on. Marechal the Atheist, almost ten years ago, proposed a New Calendar, ' Choix des Rapports, xii. 432-42, free 318 TERROR BOOK IV free at least from superstition : this the Paris MunicipaUty Oct. 5, 1793 would now adopt, in defect of a better ; at all events, let us have either this of Marechal's or a better, — the New Era being come. Petitions, more than once, have been sent to that effect ; and indeed, for a year past, all Public Bodies, Journal- ists, and Patriots in general, have dated First Year of the Republic. It is a subject not without difficulties. But the Convention has taken it up ; and Romme, as we say, has been meditating it ; not Marechal's New Calendar, but a better New one of Romme's and our own. Romme, aided by a Monge, a Lagrange and others, furnishes mathematics ; Fabre d'Eglantine furnishes poetic nomenclature : and so, on the 5th of October 1793, after trouble enough, they bring forth this New Republican Calendar of theirs, in a complete state ; and by Law get it put in action. Four equal Seasons, Twelve equal Months of Thirty days each ; this makes three hundred and sixty days ; and five odd days remain to be disposed of. The five odd days we will make Festivals, and name the five Sansculottides, or Days without Breeches. Festival of Genius ; Festival of Labour ; of Actions ; of Rewards ; of Opinion : these are the five Sans- culottides. Whereby the great Circle, or Year, is made com- plete : solely every fourth year, whilom called Leap-year, we introduce a sixth Sansculottide : and name it Festival of the Revolution. Now as to the day of conmiencement, which offers difficulties, is it not one of the luckiest coincidences that the Republic herself commenced on the 21st of September ; close on the Autumnal Equinox ? Autumnal Equinox, at mid- night for the meridian of Paris, in the year whilom Christian 1792, from that moment shall the New Era reckon itself to begin. Vendemiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire ; or as one might say, in mixed English, Vintagearious, Fogarious, Frostarious : these are our three Autumn months. Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, or say, Snowous, Bainous, Windous, make our Winter season. Germinal, Floreal, Prairial, or Buddal, Floweral, Meadowal, are our Spring season. Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor, that is to say (dor being Greek for gift), Beapidor, Heatidor, Fruitidor, are Republican Summer. These Twelve, in a singular manner, divide the Republican Year. Then as to minuter subdivisions, let us venture at once on a bold stroke : adopt your decimal subdivision ; and instead of the world-old Week, or Se'ennight, make O NATURE 319 make it a Tennight, or DScade ; — not without results. There CHAP. IV are three Decades, then, in each of the months, which is very Oct. 6, 1793 regular ; and the Ddcadi, or Tenth-day, shall always be the ' Day of Rest.' And the Christian Sabbath, in that case ? Shall shift for itself ! This, in brief, is the New Calendar of Romme and the Con- vention ; calculated for the meridian of Paris, and Gospel of Jean- Jacques : not one of the least afflicting occurrences for the actual British reader of French History ; — confusing the soul with Messidors, Meadowals ; till at last, in self-defence, one is forced to construct some ground-scheme, or rule of Commutation from New-style to Old-style, and have it lying by him. Such ground-scheme, almost worn out in our service, but stiU legible and printable, we shall now in a Note, present to the reader. For the Romme Calendar, in so many News- papers, Memoirs, Public Acts, has stamped itself deep into that section of Time : a New Era that lasts some Twelve years and odd is not to be despised.^ Let the reader, therefore, with such ground-scheme, help himself, where needful, out of New-style into Old-style, called also ' slave-style, stile-esclave ' ; — ^whereof we, in these pages, shall as much as possible use the latter only. ' September 22d of 1792 is Vendemiaire 1st of Year One, and the new months are all of 30 days each ; therefore : ADD DAYS Vendemiaire . 21 c September . 30 o Brumaire 21 >, October 31 >. Frimaire 20 ■a November 30 Nivose . 20 1 December 31 OJ e Pluviose Ventose Germinal 19 18 20 e a January February March . 31 28 31 a normal . 19 J3 April . 30 in the same manner as an ordinary criminal ; bound, on a Cart ; accompanied by a Constitutional Priest in Lay dress ; escorted by numerous detachments of infantry and cavalry. These, and the double row of troops all along her road, she appeared to regard with indifference. On her countenance there was visible neither abashment nor pride. To the cries of Vive la Ripvblique and Down with Tyranny, which attended her all the way, she seemed to pay no heed. She spoke little to her Confessor. The tricolor streamers on the housetops occupied her attention, in the Streets du Roule and Saint-Honor^ ; she also noticed the Inscriptions on the house-fronts. On reaching the Place de la Revolution, her looks turned towards the Jardin National, whilom Tuileries ; her face at that moment gave signs of lively emotion. She mounted the Scaffold with courage enough ; at a quarter past Twelve, her head fell ; the Execu- tioner showed it to the people, amid universal long-continued cries of Vive la Bdpublique.' ^ CHAPTER VIII THE TWENTY- TWO Whom next, O Tinville ! The next are of a different colour : our poor Arrested Girondin Deputies. What of them could still be laid hold of ; our Vergniaud, Brissot, Fauchet, Valaze, Gensonne ; the once flower of French Patriotism, Twenty-two by the tale : hither, at Tinville's Bar, onward from ' safeguard of the French People,' from confinement in the Luxembourg, imprisonment in the Conciergerie, have they now, by the course of things, arrived. Fouquier-Tinville must give what account of them he can. Undoubtedly this Trial of the Girondins is the greatest that Fouquier has yet had to do. Twenty-two, all chief Republicans, ranged in a line there ; the most eloquent in France ; Lawyers too ; not without friends in the auditory. ' Z>eux Amis, xi. 301. How 332 TERROR BOOK IV How will Tinville prove these men guilty of Royalism, Federal- Oct. 30, 1793 ism, Conspiracy against the Republic ? Vergniaud's eloquence ears, rum. g ^^g^jj^gg Q^gg niorc ; ' draws tears,' they say. And Journalists report, and the Trial lengthens itself out day after day ; ' threatens to become eternal,' murmur many. Jacobinism and Municipality rise to the aid of Fouquier. On the 28th of the month, H6bert and others come in deputation to inform a Patriot Convention that the Revolutionary Tribunal is quite ' shackled by Forms of Law ' ; that a Patriot Jury ought to have ' the power of cutting short, of terminer les debats, when they feel themselves convinced.' Which pregnant suggestion of cutting short, passes itself, with all despatch, into a Decree. Accordingly, at ten o'clock on the night of the 30th of October, .the Twenty-two, summoned back once more, receive this information. That the Jury feeling themselves convinced have cut short, have brought in their verdict ; that the Accused are found guilty, and the Sentence on one and all of them is. Death with confiscation of goods. Loud natural clamour rises among the poor Girondins ; tumult ; which can only be repressed by the gendarmes. Valaze stabs himself ; falls down dead on the spot. The rest, amid loud clamour and confusion, are driven back to their Conciergerie ; Lasource exclaiming, ' I die on the day when the People have lost their reason ; ye will die when they recover it.' ^ No help ! Yielding to violence, the Doomed uplift the Hymn of the Marseillese ; return singing to their dungeon. Riouffe, who was their Prison-mate in these last days, has lovingly recorded what death they made. To our notions, it is not an edifying death. Gay satirical Pot-pourri by Ducos ; rhymed Scenes of Tragedy, wherein Barrere and Robespierre discourse with Sartan ; death's eve spent in ' singing ' and ' sallies of gaiety,' with ' discourses on the happiness of peoples ' : these things, and the like of these, we have to accept for what they are worth. It is the manner in which the Girondins make their Last Supper. Valaze, with bloody breast, sleeps cold in death ; hears not the singing. Vergniaud has his dose of poison ; but it is not enough for his friends, it is enough only for himself ; wherefore he flings it from him ; presides at this ^ ^tjHoaBivovi dirbvTos, 'AiroKrevovm ae 'AdTjvaioi, ^'oikIoiv' Av ixavSinv, elTrc, cri S", iav auKppovuci, — Plut. 0pp. t. iv. p. 310, ed. Reiske, 1776. Last THE TWENTY-TWO 833 Last Supper of the Girondins, with wild coruscations of elo- CHAP. VIII quence, with song and mirth. Poor human Will struggles to Oct. 30^ 1793 assert itself ; if not in this way, then in that.^ °"°' '"""' ' But on the morrow morning all Paris is out ; such a crowd as no man had seen. The Death-carts, Valaze's cold corpse stretched among the yet living Twenty-one, roll along. Bare- headed, hands bound ; in their shirt-sleeves, coat flung loosely BRISSOT DE WARVILLE. round the neck : so fare the eloquent of France ; bemurmured, beshouted. To the shouts of Vive la Ripublique, some of them keep answering with counter-shouts of Vive la RSpublique, Others, as Brissot, sit sunk in silence. At the foot of the scaffold they again strike up, with appropriate variations, the Hymn of the Marseillese. Such an act of music ; conceive it well ! The yet Living chant there ; the chorus so rapidly 1 Mimoires de Riouffe (in Mimoires sur les Prisons, Paris, 1823), pp. 48-55. wearing 884 TERROR BOOK IV wearing weak 1 Samson's axe is rapid ; one head per minute, July 1794 or little less. The chorus is wearing weak ; the chorus is (Year 2, Therm.) ^Qj.j^ OM^ ; — farcwcll for cvermorc, ye Girondins. Te-Deum Fauchet has become silent ; Valaze's dead head is lopped : the sickle of the Guillotine has reaped the Girondins all away. ' The eloquent, the young, the beautiful and brave ! ' exclaims Riouffe. O Death, what feast is toward in thy ghastly Halls ! Nor, alas, in the far Bordeatix region will Girondism fare better. In caves of Saint-Emilion, in loft and cellar, the weariest months roll on ; apparel worn, purse empty ; wintry November come ; under Tallien and his Guillotine, all hope now gone. Danger drawing ever nigher, difficulty pressing ever straiter, they determine to separate. Not unpathetic the farewell ; tall Barbaroux, cheeriest of brave men, stoops to clasp his Louvet : ' In what place soever thou findest my Mother,' cries he, ' try to be instead of a son to her : no resource of mine but I wUl share with thy Wife, should chance ever lead me where she is.' ^ Louvet went with Guadet, with Salles and Valadi ; Bar- baroux with Buzot and Petion. Valadi soon went southward, on a way of his own. The two friends and Louvet had a miserable day and night ; the 14th of the November month, 1793. Sunk in wet, weariness, and hunger, they knock, on the morrow, for help, at a friend's country-house ; the faint- hearted friend refuses to admit them. They stood therefore under trees, in the pouring rain. Flying desperate, Louvet thereupon will to Paris. He sets forth, there and then, splash- ing the mud on each side of him, with a fresh strength gathered from fury or frenzy. He passes villages, finding ' the sentry asleep in his box in the thick rain ' ; he is gone, before the man can call after him. He bilks Revolutionary Committees ; rides in carriers' carts, covered carts and open ; lies hidden in one, under knapsacks and cloaks of soldiers' wives on the Street of Orleans, while men search for him ; has hairbreadth escapes that would fill three romances : finally he gets to Paris to his fair Helpmate ; gets to Switzerland, and waits better days. Poor Guadet and Salles were both taken, ere long ; they died by the Guillotine in Bordeaux ; drums beating to drown their voice. Valadi also is caught, and guillotined. Barbaroux and his two comrades weathered it longer, into the summer ' Louvet, p. 213. of THE TWENTY-TWO 835 of 1794 ; but not long enough. One July morning, changing CHAP. Vlll their hiding-place, as they have often to do, ' about a league July 1794 from Saint-Emilion, they observe a great crowd of country- '■^'" "' '^^'™'> people ' : doubtless Jacobins come to take them ? Bar- baroux draws a pistol, shoots himself dead. Alas, and it was not Jacobins ; it was harmless villagers going to a village wake. Two days afterwards, Buzot and Petion were found in a Corn- field, their bodies half-eaten by dogs.^ Such was the end of Girondism. They arose to regenerate France, these men ; and have accomplished this. Alas, what- ever quarrel we had with them, has not their cruel fate abolished it ? Pity only survives. So many excellent souls of heroes sent down to Hades ; they themselves given as a prey of dogs and all manner of birds ! But, here too, the will of the Supreme Power was accomplished. As Vergniaud said : ' the Revolution, like Saturn, is devouring its own children.' ^ Recherches Historiques sur les Girondins (in Mimoires de Buzot), p. 107, Book Fifth BOOK FIFTH TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY CHAPTER I RUSHING DOWN We are now, therefore, got to that black precipitous Abyss ; whither all things have long been tending ; where, having now arrived on the giddy verge, they hurl down, in confused ruin ; headlong, pell-mell, down, down ; — till Sansculottism have con- summated itself ; and in this wondrous French Revolution, as in a Doomsday, a World have been rapidly, if not born again, yet destroyed and engulfed. Terror has long been terrible : but to the actors themselves it has now become manifest that their appointed course is one of Terror ; and they say. Be it so. ' Que la Terreur soit a Vordre du jour.' So many centuries, say only from Hugh Capet downwards, had been adding together, century transmitting it with increase to century, the sum of Wickedness, of Falsehood, Oppression of man by man. Kings were sinners, and Priests were, and People. Open Scoundrels rode triumphant, bediademed, be- coronetted, bemitred ; or the still fataler species of Secret- Scoundrels, in their fair-sounding formulas, speciosities, respec- tabilities, hollow within : the race of Quacks was grown many as the sands of the sea. Till at length such a sum of Quackery had accumulated itself as, in brief, the Earth and the Heavens were weary of. Slow seemed the Day of Settlement ; coming on, all imperceptible, across the bluster and fanfaronade of Courtierisms, Conquering-Heroisms, Most Christian Grand Mon- arque-isras, Well-beloved Pompadourisms : yet behold it was always coming ; behold it has come, suddenly, unlooked for by any man ! The harvest of long centuries was ripening and whitening so rapidly of late ; and now it is grown white, and (Year 2) RUSHING DOWN 337 and is reaped rapidly, as it were, in one day. Reaped, in this CHAP. I Reign of Terror ; and carried home, to Hades and the Pit ! — }}^^, Unhappy Sons of Adam : it is ever so ; and never do they know it, nor will they know it. With cheerfully smoothed countenances, day after day, and generation after generation, they, calling cheerfully to one another, Well-speed-ye, are at work, sowing the wind. And yet, as God lives, they shall reap the whirlwind : no other thing, we say, is possible, — since God is a Truth, and His World is a Truth. History, however, in dealing with the Reign of Terror, has had her own difficulties. While the Phenomenon continued in its primary state, as mere ' Horrors of the French Revolu- tion,' there was abundance to be said and shrieked. With and also without profit. Heaven knows, there were terrors and horrors enough : yet that was not all the Phenomenon ; nay, more properly, that was not the Phenomenon at all, but rather was the shadow of it, the negative part of it. And now, in a new stage of the business, when History, ceasing to shriek, woiild try rather to include under her old Forms of speech or speculation this new amazing Thing ; that so some accredited scientific Law of Nature might suffice for the unex- pected Product of Nature, and History might get to speak of it articulately, and draw inferences and profit from it ; in this new stage, History, we must say, babbles and flounders perhaps in a stiU painfuler manner. Take, for example, the latest Form of speech we have seen propounded on the subject as adequate to it, almost in these months, by our worthy M. Roux, in his Histoire Parlementaire. The latest and the strangest : that the French Revolution was a dead-lift effort, after eighteen hundred years of preparation, to realise — the Christian Religion ! ^ Unity, Indivisibility, Brotherhood or Death, did indeed stand printed on all Houses of the Living ; also on Cemeteries, or Houses of the Dead, stood printed, by order of Procureur Chaumette, Here is Eternal Sleep : ^ but a Christian Religion realised by the Guillotine and Death-Eternal ' is suspect to me,' as Robespierre was wont to say, ' m'est suspecte.^ Alas, no, M. Roux ! A Gospel of Brotherhood, not accord- ing to any of the Four old Evangelists, and calling on men ^ J/isi. Pari. (Introd.) i. i et seqq. * Deux Amis, xii. 78. VOL. II. Y to (Year 2) 338 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOKV to repent, and amend each his own wicked existence, that ^1793^ they might be saved ; but a Gospel rather, as we often hint, according to a new Fifth Evangehst Jean- Jacques, calHng on men to amend each the whole world's wicked existence, and be saved by making the Constitution. A thing different and distant toto coelo, as they say : the whole breadth of the sky, and farther if possible ! — It is thus, however, that History, and indeed all human Speech and Reason does yet, what Father Adam began life by doing : strive to name the new Things it sees of Nature's producing, — often helplessly enough. But what if History were to admit, for once, that all the Names and Theorems yet known to her fall short ? That this grand Product of Nature was even grand, and new, in that it came not to range itself under old recorded Laws of Nature at all, but to disclose new ones ? In that case. History, renouncing the pretension to name it at present, will look honestly at it, and name what she can of it ! Any approxima- tion to the right Name has value : were the right Name itself once here, the Thing is known henceforth ; the Thing is then ours, and can be dealt with. Now surely not realisation, of Christianity or of aught earthly, do we discern in this reign of Terror, in this French Revolution of which it is the consummating. Destruction rather we discern, — of all that was destructible. It is as if Twenty-five millions, risen at length into the Pythian mood, had stood up simultaneously to say, with a sound which goes through far lands and times, that this Untruth of an Existence had become insupportable. O ye Hypocrisies and Speciosities, Royal mantles. Cardinal plush-cloaks, ye Credos, Formulas, Respecta- bilities, fair-painted Sepulchres full of dead men's bones, — behold, ye appear to us to be altogether a Lie. Yet our Life is not a Lie ; yet our Hunger and Misery is not a Lie ! Behold we lift up, one and all, our Twenty-five million right-hands ; and take the Heavens, and the Earth and also the Pit of Tophet to witness, that either ye shall be abolished, or else we shall be abolished ! No inconsiderable Oath, truly; forming, as has been often said, the most remarkable transaction in these last thousand years. Wherefrom likewise there follow, and will follow, results. The fulfilment of this Oath ; that is to say, the black desperate battle of Men against their whole Condition and Environment,— RUSHIN G DOWN 339 Environment, — a battle, alas, withal, against the Sin and CHAP. 1 Darkness that was in themselves as in others : this is the Reign 1793 of .Terror. Transcendental despair was the purport of it, though not consciously so. False hopes, of Fraternity, Political Millennium, and what not, we have always seen : but the unseen heart of the whole, the transcendental despair, was not false ; neither has it been of no effect. Despair, pushed far enough, completes the circle, so to speak ; and becomes a kind of genuine productive hope again. Doctrine of Fraternity, out of old Catholicism, does, it is true, very strangely in the vehicle of a Jean-Jacques Evangel, suddenly plump down out of its cloud-firmament ; and from a theorem determine to make itself a practice. But just so do all creeds, intentions, customs, knowledges, thoughts, and things, which the French have, suddenly plump down ; Catholicism, Classicism, Sentimentalism, Cannibalism ; all isms that make up Man in France are rushing and roaring in that gulf; and the theorem has become a practice, and whatsoever cannot swim sinks. Not Evangelist Jean- Jacques alone ; there is not a Village Schoolmaster but has contributed his quota : do we not thou one another, according to the Free Peoples of Antiquity ? The French Patriot, in red Phrygian nightcap of Liberty, christens his poor little red infant Cato, — Censor, or else of Utica. Gracchus has become Baboeuf, and edites Newspapers ; Mutius Scsevola, Cordwainer of that ilk, presides in the Section Mutius-Scaevola : and in brief, there is a world wholly jumbling itself, to try what will swim. Wherefore we will, at all events, call this Reign of Terror a very strange one. Dominant Sansculottism makes, as it were, free arena ; one of the strangest temporary states Humanity was ever seen in. A nation of men, full of wants and void of habits ! The old habits are gone to wreck because they were old : men, driven forward by Necessity and fierce Pythian Madness, have, on the spur of the instant, to devise for the want the way of satisfying it. The Wonted tumbles down ; by imitation, by invention, the Unwonted hastily builds itself up. What the French National head has in it comes out : if not a great result, surely one of the strangest. Neither shall the Reader fancy that it was all black, this Reign of Terror : far from it. How many hammermen and squaremen, bakers and brewers, washers and wringers, over this (Year 2) S40 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V this France, must ply their old daily work, let the Govern- 1793 ment be one of Terror or one of Joy ! In this Paris there are Twenty -three Theatres nightly ; some count as many as Sixty Places of Dancing.^ The Playwright manufactures, — pieces of a strictly Republican character. Ever fresh Novel-garbage, as of old, fodders the Circulating Libraries.^ The ' Cesspool of Agio,' now in a time of Paper Money, works with a vivacity unexampled, unimagined ; exhales from itself ' sudden fortunes,' like Aladdin-Palaces : really a kind of miraculous Fata- Morganas, since you can live in them, for a time. Terror is as a sable ground, on which the most variegated of scenes paints itself. In startling transitions, in colours all intensated, the sublime, the ludicrous, the horrible succeed one another ; or rather, in crowding tumult, accompany one another. Here, accordingly, if anywhere, the 'hundred tongues,' which the old Poets often clamour for, were of supreme service ! In defect of any such organ on our part, let the Reader stir up his own imaginative organ : let us snatch for him this or the other significant glimpse of things, in the fittest sequence we can. CHAPTER II DEATH In the early days of November there is one transient glimpse of things that is to be noted : the last transit to his long home of Philippe d'Orleans Egalite. Philippe was ' decreed accused,' along with the Girondins, much to his and their surprise ; but not tried along with them. They are doomed and dead, some three days, when Philippe, after his long half-year of durance at Marseilles, arrives in Paris. It is, as we calculate, the third of November 1793. On which same day, two notable Female Prisoners are also put in ward there : Dame Dubarry and Josephine Beauhamais. Dame whilom Countess Dubarry, Unfortunate-female, had returned from London ; they snatched her, not only as Ex- harlot of a whilom Majesty, and therefore Suspect; but as having ' furnished the Emigrants with money.' Contem- ^ Mercier, ii, 124. ^ Moniieur of these months, passim. poraneously DEATH 841 poraneously with whom there comes the wife Beauhamais, CHAP. II soon to be the widow : she that is Josephine Tascher Beau- Nov. 6, 1793 harnais ; that shall be Josephine Empress Buonaparte, — for a^^""'^"""'^> black Divineress of the Tropics prophesied long since that she should be a Queen and more. Likewise, in the same hours, poor Adam Lux, nigh turned in the head, who, according to Forster, ' has taken no food these three weeks,' marches to the Guillotine for his Pamphlet on Charlotte Corday : he ' sprang to the scaffold ' ; said ' he died for her with great joy.' Amid such fellow-travellers does Philippe arrive. For, be the month named Brumaire year 2 of Liberty, or November year 1793 of Slavery, the Guillotine goes always, Guillotine va toujours. Enough, Philippe's indictment is soon drawn, his jury soon convinced. He finds himself made guilty of Royalism, Con- spiracy and much else ; nay, it is a guilt in him that he voted Louis's Death, though he answers, ' I voted in my soul and conscience.' The doom he finds is death forthwith ; this present 6th dim day of November is the last day that Philippe is to see. Philippe, says Montgaillard, thereupon called for breakfast : sufficiency of ' oysters, two cutlets, best part of an excellent bottle of claret ' ; and consumed the same with appa- rent relish. A Revolutionary Judge, or some official Conven- tion Emissary, then arrived, to signify that he might still do the State some service by revealing the truth about a plot or two. Philippe answered that, on him, in the pass things had come to, the State had, he thought, small claim ; that never- theless, in the interest of Liberty, he, having still some leisure on his hands, was willing, were a reasonable question asked him, to give a reasonable answer. And so, says Montgaillard, he leant his elbow on the mantel-piece, and conversed in an undertone, with great seeming composure ; till the leisure was done, or the Emissary went his ways. At the door of the Conciergerie, Philippe's attitude was erect and easy, almost commanding. It is five years, all but a few days, since Philippe, within these same stone walls, stood up with an air of graciosity, and asked King Louis, ' Whether it was a Royal Session, then, or a Bed of Justice ? ' O Heaven ! — Three poor blackguards were to ride and die with him : some say, they objected to such company, and had to be flung in neck and heels ; ^ but it seems not true. Objecting or not ' Forster, ii, 628 ; Montgaillard, iv. I4I-S7. objecting, 342 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V objecting, the gallows-vehicle gets under way. Philippe's dress Nov. 6, 1793 is remarked for its elegance ; green frock, waistcoat of white earz, rum.i6) ^^g^^^ yellow buckskins, boots clear as Warren : his air, as before, entirely composed, impassive, not to say easy and Brummellean-polite. Through street after street ; slowly, amid execrations ;— past the Palais Egalite, whilom Palais Royal ! The cruel Populace stopped him there, some minutes : Dame de Buffon, it is said, looked out on him, in Jezebel head- tire ; along the ashlar Wall there ran these words in huge tri- color print. Republic one and indivisible; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death : National Property. Philippe's eyes flashed hellfire, one instant ; but the next instant it was gone, and he sat impassive, Brummellean-polite, On the scaffold, Samson was for drawing off his boots : ' Tush,' said Philippe, ' they will come better off after ; let us have done, depSchons- nous ! ' So Philippe was not without virtue, then ? God forbid that there should be any living man without it ! He had the virtue to keep living for five-and-forty years ; — other virtues perhaps more than we know of. But probably no mortal ever had such things recorded of him : such facts, and also such lies. For he was a Jacobin Prince of the Blood ; consider what a combination ! Also, unlike any Nero, any Borgia, he lived in the Age of Pamphlets. Enough for us : Chaos has re- absorbed him ; may it late or never bear his like again ! — Brave young Orleans Egalite, deprived of all, only not deprived of himself, is gone to Coire in the Grisons, under the name of Corby, to teach Mathematics. The Egalite Family is at the darkest depths of the Nadir. A far nobler Victim follows ; one who will claim remem- brance from several centuries : Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the Wife of Roland. Queenly, sublime in her uncomplaining sorrow, seemed she to Riouffe in her Prison. ' Something more than is usually found in the looks of women painted itself,' says Riouffe,^ ' in those large black eyes of hers, full of expression and sweetness. She spoke to me often, at the Grate : we were all attentive round her, in a sort of admira- tion and astonishment ; she expressed herself with a purity, with a harmony and prosody that made her language like music, of which the ear could never have enough. Her conversation ' Mimoires {sur Us Prisons, i.), pp. 55-7, was PHCENIX DEATH-BIRTH. (jThe "French army, as Bellma, is consumed, and Napoleon arises from the ashes.) DEATH 343 was serious, not cold ; coining from the mouth of a beautiful CHAP. II woman, it was frank and courageous as that of a great man.' Nov. 8, 1793 ' And yet her maid said : " Before you, she collects her strength ; ^^"' but in her own room, she will sit three hours sometimes leaning on the window, and weeping." ' She has been in Prison, liberated once, but recaptured the same hour, ever since the first of June : in agitation and uncertainty ; which has gradu- ally settled down into the last stern certainty, that of death. In the Abbaye Prison, she occupied Charlotte Corday's apart- ment. Here in the Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe, with Ex-Minister Claviere ; calls the beheaded Twenty-two ' Nos amis, our Friends,' — whom we are soon to follow. During these five months, those Memoirs of hers were written, which all the world still reads. But now, on the 8th of November, ' clad in white,' says Riouffe, ' with her long black hair hanging down to her girdle,' she is gone to the Judgment-bar. She returned with a quick step ; lifted her finger, to signify to us that she was doomed : her eyes seemed to have been wet. Fouquier-TinviUe's ques- tions had been ' brutal ' ; offended female honour flung them back on him, with scorn, not without tears. And now, short preparation soon done, she too shall go her last road. There went with her a certain Lamarche, ' Director of Assignat- printing ' ; whose dejection she endeavoured to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, ' to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her ' : ^ a remarkable request ; which was refused. Looking at the Statue of Liberty which stands there, she says bitterly : ' O Liberty, what things are done in thy name ! ' For Lamarche's sake, she will die first ; show him how easy it is to die : ' Contrary to the order,' said Samson. — ' Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a Lady ' ; and Samson yielded. Noble white Vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes, long black hair flowing down to the girdle ; and as brave a heart as ever beat in woman's bosom ! Like a white Grecian Statue, serenely complete, she shines in that black wreck of things ; — long memorable. Honour to great Nature who, in Paris City, in the Era of Noble-Sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her to clear perennial Womanhood, though but on Logics, Encyclopidies, and the ' Memoires de Madavie yP<;/a»(f (Introd.), i. 68. Gospel 344 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V Gospel according to Jean- Jacques ! Biography will long Nov. 1793 remember that trait of asking for a pen ' to write the strange ear2, rum.) .f;jj^Q^gjj^|.g ii^q;^ werc rfsing in her.' It is as a little light-beam, shedding softness, and a kind of sacredness, over all that pre- ceded : so in her too there was an Unnameable ; she too was a Daughter of the Infinite ; there were mysteries which Philoso- phism had not dreamt of ! — She left long written counsels to her little Girl ; she said her Husband would not survive her. StiU cruder was the fate of poor BaiUy, First National President, First Mayor of Paris : doomed now for Royalism, Fayettism ; for that Red-Flag Business of the Champ-de-Mars ; — one may say in general, for leaving his Astronomy to meddle with Revolution. It is the 10th of November 1793, a cold bitter drizzling rain, as poor Bailly is led through the streets ; howling Populace covering him with curses, with mud ; waving over his face a burning or smoking mockery of a Red Flag. Silent, unpitied, sits the innocent old man. Slow faring through the sleety drizzle, they have got to the Champ-de-Mars : Not there ! vociferates the cursing Populace ; such Blood ought not to stain an Altar of the Fatherland : not there ; but on that dung-heap by the River-side ! So vociferates the cursing Populace ; Officiality gives ear to them. The Guillotine is taken down, though with hands numbed by the sleety drizzle ; is carried to the River- side ; is there set up again, with slow numbness ; pulse after pulse still counting itself out in the old man's weary heart. For hours long ; amid curses and bitter frost-rain ! ' Bailly, thou tremblest,' said one. 'Mon ami, it is for cold,' said Bailly, ' c'est de froid.' Cruder end had no mortal,^ Some days afterwards, Roland, hearing the news of what happened on the 8th, embraces his kind Friends at Rouen, leaves their kind house which had given him refuge ; goes forth, with farewell too sad for tears. On the morrow morning, 16th of the month, ' some four leagues from Rouen,' Paris- ward, near Bourg-Baudoin, in M. Normand's Avenue,' there is seen sitting leant against a tree the figure of a rigorous wrinkled man ; stiff now in the rigour of death ; a cane-sword run through his heart ; and at his feet this writing : ' Who- ever thou art that findest me lying, respect my remains : they are those of a man who consecrated all his life to being useful ; ^ Vie de Bailly (in Minioires, i. ), p. 29. and DEATH 845 (Year2, Brum.) and who has died as he lived, virtuous and honest.' ' Not CHAP. JI fear, but indignation, made me quit my retreat, on learning Nov. 1793^ that my Wife had been murdered. I wished not to remain loiiger on an Earth polluted with crimes.' ^ Barnave's appearance at the Revolutionary Tribunal was of the bravest ; but it could not stead him. They have sent for him from Grenoble ; to pay the common smart. Vain is eloquence, forensic or other, against the dumb Clotho-shears of Tinville. He is still but two-and-thirty, this Bamave, and has known such changes. Short while ago, we saw him at the top of Fortune's wheel, his word a law to all Patriots : and now surely he is at the bottom of the wheel ; in stormful altercation with a Tinville Tribu- nal, which is dooming him to die ! ^ And Petion, once also of the Extreme Left, and named Petion Virtue, where is he ? Civilly dead ; in the Caves of Saint-Emilion ; to be devoured of dogs. And Robespierre, who rode along with him on the shoulders of the people, is in Committee of Salut ; civilly alive : not to live always. So giddy-swift whirls and spins this immeasurable tormentum of a Revolution ; wild-booming ; not to be followed by the eye. Barnave, on the Scaffold, stamped with his foot ; and looking upwards was heard to ejaculate, ' This, then, is my reward ! ' Deputy Ex-Procureur Manuel is already gone ; and Deputy Ossehn, famed also in August and September, is about to go : and Rabaut, discovered treacherously between his two walls, J. PAUI, RABAUT SAINT-ETIENNE. Mimoires de Madame Roland ^■aixoA.), i. 88. Forster, ii. 629. and 346 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V and the Brother of Rabaut. National Deputies not a few ! Nov. 1793 And Generals : the memory of General Custine cannot be (Year ..Brum.) (jgfgj^^g^ ]^y ^is Son ; hls Son is already guillotined. Custine the Ex-Noble was replaced by Houchard the Plebeian : he too could not prosper in the North ; for him too there was no mercy ; he has perished in the Place de la Revolution, after attempting suicide in Prison. And Generals Biron, Beauharnais, Brunet, whatsoever General prospers not ; tough old Liickner, with his eyes grown rheumy ; Alsatian Wester- mann, valiant and diligent in La Vendee : none of them can, as the Psalmist sings, his soul from death deliver. How busy are the Revolutionary Committees ; Sections with their Forty Halfpence a-day ! Arrestment on arrestment falls quick, continual ; followed by death. Ex-Minister Claviere has killed himself in Prison. Ex-Minister Lebrun, seized in a hay-loft, under the disguise of a working man, is instantly conducted to death.^ Nay, withal, is it not what Barr^re calls ' coining money on the Place de la Revolution ' ? For always the ' property of the guilty, if property he have,' is confiscated. To avoid accidents, we even make a Law that suicide shall not defraud us ; that a criminal who kills himself does not the less incur forfeiture of goods. Let the guilty tremble, therefore, and the suspect, and the rich, and in a word all manner of Culottic men ! Luxembourg Palace, once Mon- sieur's, has become a huge loathsome Prison ; Chantilly Palace too, once Conde's : — And their landlords are at Blankenberg, on the wrong side of the Rhine. In Paris are now some Twelve Prisons ; in France some Forty- four Thousand : thitherward, thick as brown leaves in Autumn, rustle and travel the suspect ; shaken down by Revolutionary Committees, they are swept thitherward, as into their storehouse, — to be consumed by Samson and Tinville. ' The Guillotine goes not ill. La Guillotine ne va pas maV ^ Monitetir, ii, 30 Decembre 1793 ; Louvet, p. 2S7. Chapter III DESTRUCTION 347 CHAP. Ill Oct. -Dec. 1793 CHAPTER III (y^ar.Bru,. Frim.) DESTRUCTION The suspect may well tremble ; but how much more the open rebels ; — the Girondin Cities of the South ! Revolu- tionary Army is gone forth, under Ronsin the Plajrwright ; six thousand strong ; ' in red nightcap, in tricolor waistcoat, in black-shag trousers, black-shag spencer, with enormous mustachioes, enormous sabre, — in carmagnole complete ' ; ^ and has portable guillotines. Representative Carrier has got to Nantes, by the edge of blazing La Vendee, which Rossignol has literally set on fire : Carrier will try what captives you make ; what accomplices they have. Royalist or Girondin : his guillo- tine goes always, va toujours ; and his Wool-capped ' Company of Marat.' Little children are guillotined, and aged men. Swift as the machine is, it will not serve ; the Headsman and all his valets sink, worn down with work; declare that the human muscles can no more.^ Whereupon you must try fusillading ; to which perhaps still frightfuler methods may succeed. In Brest, to like purpose, rules Jean-Bon Saint-Andre ; with an Army of Red Nightcaps. In Bordeaux rules Tallien, with his Isabeau and henchmen ; Guadets, Cussys, Salleses, many fall ; the bloody Pike and Nightcap bearing supreme sway ; the Guillotine coining money. Bristly fox-haired Tallien, once Able Editor, still young in years, is now become most gloomy, potent ; a Pluto on Earth, and has the keys of Tartarus. One remarks, however, that a certain Senhorina Cabarus, or call her rather Senhora and wedded not yet widowed Dame de Fontenai, brown beautiful woman, daughter of Cabarus the Spanish Merchant, — has softened the red bristly counten- ance ; pleading for herself and friends ; and prevailing. The keys of Tartarus, or any kind of power, are something to a woman ; gloomy Pluto himself is not insensible to love. Like a new Proserpine, she, by this red gloomy Dis, is gathered ; and, they say, softens his stone heart a little. Maignet, at Orange in the South ; Lebon, at Arras in the North, become world's wonders. Jacobin Popular Tribunal, ' See Louvet, p. 301. ^ Deux Amis, xii. 249-51. with 348 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOKV with its National Representative, perhaps where Girondin Nov. 1793 Popular Tribunal had lately been, rises here and rises there ; ear 2, rum. ^jj^gj-gg^g^gj. needed. Fouches, Maignets, Barrases, Frerons scour the Southern Departments ; like reapers, with their guillotine-sickle. Many are the labourers, great is the harvest. By the hundred and the thousand, men's lives are cropt ; cast like brands into the burning. Marseilles is taken, and put under martial law : lo, at Mar- seilles, what one besmutted red-bearded, corn-ear is this which they cut ; — one gross Man, we mean, with copper-studded face ; plenteous beard, or beard- stubble, of a tile-colour ? By Nemesis and the Fatal Sisters, it is Jourdan Coupe-t6te ! Him they have clutched, in these martial-law districts ; him too, with their ' national razor,' their rasoir national, they sternly shave away. Low now is Jourdan the Headsman's own head ;— low as Deshuttes's and Varigny's, which he sent on pikes, in the Insurrection of Women ! No more shaU he, as a copper Portent, be seen gyrating through the Cities of the South ; no more sit judging, with pipes and brandy, in the Ice-tower of Avignon. The all-hiding Earth has received him, the bloated Tilebeard : may we never look upon his like again ! — Jourdan one names ; the other Hundreds are not named. Alas, they, like confused fagots, lie massed together for us ; counted by the cart-load : and yet not an individual fagot-twig of them but had a Life and History ; and was cut, not without pangs as when a Kaiser dies ! Least of all cities can Lyons escape. Lyons, which we saw in dread sunblaze, that Autumn night when the Powder- tower sprang aloft, was clearly verging towards a sad end. Inevitable : what could desperate valour and Precy do ; Dubois-Crance, deaf as Destiny, stern as Doom, capturing their ' redoubts of cotton-bags ' : hemming them in, ever closer, with his Artillery-lava ? Never would that ci-devant D'Auti- champ arrive ; never any help from Blankenberg. The Lyons Jacobins were hidden in cellars ; the Girondin Municipality waxed pale, in famine, treason, and red fire. Precy drew his sword, and some Fifteen Hundred with him ; sprang to saddle, to cut their way to Switzerland. They cut fiercely ; and were fiercely cut, and cut down ; not hundreds, hardly units of them ever saw Switzerland.^ Lyons, on the 9th of October, sur- ' £>(ux Amis, xi. 145. renders DESTRUCTION 349 renders at discretion ; it is become a devoted Town. Abb6 cHAP. ill Lamourette, now Bishop Lamourette, whilom Legislator, he Nov. 1793 of the old Baiser-V Amourette or Delilah-Kiss, is seized here ; *^°^' ''' ^"""'^ is §ent to Paris to be guillotined : ' he made the sign of the cross,' they say, when Tinville intimated his death-sentence to rOUCHE. him ; and died as an eloquent Constitutional Bishop. But wo now to all Bishops, Priests, Aristocrats, and Federalists that are in Lyons ! The manes of Chalier are to be appeased ; the Republic, maddened to the Sibylline pitch, has bared her right arm. Behold ! Representative Fouche, it is Fouche of Nantes, a name to become well known ; he with a Patriot company goes duly, in wondrous Procession, to raise the corpse 350 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOKV corpse of Chalier. An Ass housed in Priest's cloak, with a Nov. 1793 mitre on his head, and trailing the Mass-Books, some say the ear 2, Brum.) y^j.y. ^[]j,\q^ ^t its tail, paccs thtough the Lyons streets : escorted by multitudinous Patriotism, by clangour as of the Pit ; towards the grave of Martyr Chalier. The body is dug up, and burnt : the ashes are collected in an Urn ; to be worshipped of Paris ■ Patriotism. The Holy Books were part of the funeral pile; their ashes are scattered to the wind. Amid cries of ' Vengeance ! ' Vengeance ! ' — ^which, writes Fouch^, shall be satisfied.^ Lyons in fact is a Town to be abolished ; not Lyons hence- forth, but ' Commune Affranchie, Township Freed ' : the very name of it shall perish. It is to be razed, this once great City, if Jacobinism prophesy right ; and a Pillar to be erected on the ruins, with this Inscription, Lyons rebelled against the Republic ; Lyons is no more. Fouche, Couthon, Collot, Con- vention Representatives succeed one another : there is work for the hangman ; work for the hammerman, not in building. The very Houses of Aristocrats, we say, are doomed. Paralytic Couthon, borne in a chair, taps on the wall, with emblematic mallet, saying, ' La Loi te frappe. The Law strikes thee ' ; masons, with wedge and crowbar, begin demolition. Crash of downfal, dim ruin and dust-clouds fly in the winter wind. Had Lyons been of soft stuff, it had all vanished in those weeks, and the Jacobin prophecy had been fulfilled. But Towns are not built of soap-froth ; Lyons Town is built of stone. Lyons, though it rebelled against the Republic, is to this day. Neither have the Lyons Girondins all one neck, that you could despatch it at one swoop. Revolutionary Tribunal here, and Military Commission, guillotining, fusillading, do what they can : the kennels of the Place des Terreaux run red ; mangled corpses roll down the Rhone. Collot d'Herbois, they say, was once hissed on the Lyons stage : but with what sibilation, of world-catcall or hoarse Tartarean Trumpet, will ye hiss him now, in this his new character, of Convention Representative, — not to be repeated ! Two-hundred and nine men are marched forth over the River, to be shot in mass, by musket and cannon, in the Promenade of the Brotteaux. It is the second of such scenes ; the first was of some Seventy. The corpses of the first were flung into the Rhone, but the Rhone stranded some ; so these now, of the second lot, are to ' Momieur{d\i 17 Novembre 1793), ^tc. be DESTRUCTION 351 be buried on land. Their one long grave is dug ; they stand CHAP. Ill ranked, by the loose mould-ridge ; the younger of them sing- Nov. 1793 ing the Marseillaise. Jacobin National Guards give fire ; but ^' have again to give fire, and again ; and to take the bayonet and the spade, for though the doomed all fall, they do not all die ; — and it becomes a butchery too horrible for speech. So that the very Nationals, as they fire, turn away their faces. CoUot, snatching the musket from one such National, and levelling it with unmoved countenance, says, ' It is thus a Republican ought to fire.' This is the second Fusillade, and happily the last : it is found too hideous ; even inconvenient. There were Two- hundred and nine marched out ; one escaped at the end of the Bridge : yet behold, when you count the corpses, they are Two-hundred and ten. Rede us this riddle, O Collot ? After long guessing, it is called to mind that two individuals, here in the Brotteaux ground, did attempt to leave the rank, protesting with agony that they were not condemned men, that they were Police Commissaries : which two we repulsed, and disbelieved, and shot with the rest ! ^ Such is the vengeance of an enraged Republic. Surely this, according to Barrere's phrase, is Justice ' under rough forms, sous des formes acerbes.'' But the Republic, as Fouche says, must 'march to Liberty over corpses.' Or again, as Barrere has it : ' None but the dead do not come back, II n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas.'' Terror hovers far and wide : ' the Guillotine goes not ill.' But before quitting those Southern regions, over which History can cast only glances from aloft, she will alight for a moment, and look fixedly at one point : the Siege of Toulon. Much battering and bombarding, heating of baUs in furnaces or farm-houses, serving of artillery well and ill, attacking of Ollioules Passes, Forts Malbosquet, there has been : as yet to small purpose. We have had General Cartaux here, a whilom Painter elevated in the troubles of Marseilles ; General Doppet, a whilom Medical man elevated in the troubles of Piemont, who, under Crance, took Lyons, but cannot take Toulon. Finally we have General Dugommier, a pupil of Washington. Convention Reprdsentans also we have had ; Barrases, Salicettis, Robespierre the Younger : — also an Artillery Chef de brigade, of extreme diligence, who often takes his nap of sleep among ' Deux Amis, xii. 251-62. the 352 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V the guns ; a short, taciturn, oKve-complexioned young man, Dec. 1793 not unknown to us, by name Buonaparte ; one of the best (Year 2, Frim.) Artillery- officers yet met with. And still Toulon is not taken. It is the fourth month now ; December, in slave-style ; Frost- arious or Frimaire, in new-style : and still their cursed Red- Blue Flag flies there. They are provisioned from the Sea ; they have seized all heights, felling wood, and fortifying themselves ; like the cony, they have built their nest in the rocks. Meanwhile Frostarious is not yet become Snowous or Nivosg, when a Council of War is called ; Instructions have just arrived from Government and Salut Public. Carnot, in Salut Public, has sent us a plan of siege : on which plan General Dugommier has this criticism to make, Conunissioner Salicetti has that ; and criticisms and plans are very various ; when that young Artillery-Officer ventures to speak ; the same whom we saw snatching sleep among the guns, who has emerged several times in this History, — the name of him Napoleon Buonaparte. It is his humble opinion, for he has been gliding about with spy-glasses, with thoughts. That a certain Fort I'Eguillette can be clutched, as with lion-spring, on the sudden ; wherefrom, were it once ours, the very heart of Toulon might be battered ; the English Lines were, so to speak, turned inside out, and Hood and our Natural Enemies must next day either put to sea, or be burnt to ashes. Commissioners arch their eyebrows, with negatory sniff : who is this young gentleman with more wit than we all ? Brave veteran Dugommier, however, thinks the idea worth a word ; questions the young gentleman ; be- comes convinced ; and there is for issue. Try it. On the taciturn bronze-countenance therefore, things being now all ready, there sits a grimmer gravity than ever, com- pressing a hotter central-fire than ever. Yonder, thou seest, is Fort I'Eguillette ; a desperate lion-spring, yet a possible one ; this day to be tried ! — Tried it is ; and found good. By stratagem and valour, stealing through ravines, plunging fiery through the fire-tempest. Fort .I'Eguillette is clutched at, is carried ; the smoke having cleared, we see the Tricolor fly on it ; the bronze-complexioned young man was right. Next morning. Hood, finding the interior of his lines exposed, his defences turned inside out, makes for his shipping. Taking such Royalists as wished it on board with him, he weighs anchor ; (Year z, Frim.) DESTRUCTION 353 anchor ; on this 19th of December 1793, Toulon is once more CHAP. Ill the Republic's ! Dec. 1793 Cannonading has ceased at Toulon ; and now the guillotin- ing ^nd fusillading may begin. Civil horrors, truly : but at least that infamy of an English domination is purged away. Let there be Civic Feast universally over France : so reports Barrere, or Painter David ; and the Convention assist in a body.^ Nay, it is said, these infamous English (with an attention rather to their own interests than to ours) set fire to our store-houses, arsenals, war-ships in Toulon Harbour, before weighing ; some score of brave war-ships, the only ones we now had ! However, it did not prosper, though the flame spread far and high ; some two ships were burned, not more ; the very galley-slaves ran with buckets to quench. These same proud ships. Ship V Orient and the rest, have to carry this same young man to Egypt first : not yet can they be changed to ashes, or to Sea-Nymphs ; not yet to sky-rockets, O ship VOrient ; nor become the prey of England, — before their time ! And so, over France universally, there is Civic Feast and high-tide : and Toulon sees fusillading, grapeshotting in mass, as Lyons saw ; and ' death is poured out in great floods, vomie a grands flots ' ; and Twelve-thousand masons are requisi- tioned from the neighbouring country, to raze Toulon from the face of the Earth. For it is to be razed, so reports Barrere ; all but the National Shipping Establishments ; and to be called henceforth not Toulon, but Port of the Mountain. There in black death-cloud we must leave it ; — hoping only that Toulon too is built of stone ; that perhaps even Twelve-thousand Masons cannot pull it down, till the fit pass. One begins to be sick of ' death vomited in great floods.' Nevertheless, hearest thou not, O Reader (for the sound reaches through centuries), in the dead December and January nights, over Nantes Town, — confused noises, as of musketry and tumult, as of rage and lamentation ; mingling with the ever- lasting moan of the Loire waters there ? Nantes Town is sunk in sleep ; but ReprSsentant Carrier is not sleeping, the wool-capped Company of Marat is not sleeping. Why unmoors that flatbottomed craft, that gabarre ; about eleven at night ; 1 Moniteur, 1793, Nos. 101 (31 Dtembre), 95, 96, 98, etc. VOL. II. z with 354 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V with Ninety Priests under hatches ? They are going to Belle Dec. 1793 Isle ? j^ the middle of the Loire stream, on signal given, the ear 2, rim. gg^g^j^^ jg scuttled ; shc sinks with aU her cargo. ' Sentence of Deportation,' writes Carrier, ' was executed vertically.^ The Ninety Priests, with their gabarre-coffin, lie deep ! It is the first of the Noyades, what we may call Drownages, of Carrier ; which have become famous for ever. Guillotining there was at Nantes, till the Headsman sank worn out : then fusillading ' in the Plain of Saint-Mauve ' ; little children fusilladed, and women with children at the breast ; children and women, by the hundred and twenty ; and by the five hundred, so hot is La Vendee : tiU the very Jacobins grew sick, and aU but the company of Marat cried. Hold ! Wherefore now we have got Noyading ; and on the 24th night of Frostarious year 2, which i& 14th of December 1793, we have a second Noyade ; consisting of ' a Hundred and Thirty-eight persons.^ Or why waste a gabarre, sinking it with them ? Fling them out ; fling them out, with their hands tied : pour a continual hail of lead over all the space, tiU the last straggler of them be sunk ! Unsound sleepers of Nantes, and the Sea-Villages thereabouts, hear the musketry amid the night-winds ; wonder what the meaning of it is. And women were in that gabarre ; whom the Red Nightcaps were stripping naked ; who begged, in their agony, that their smocks might not be stript from them. And young children were thrown in, their mothers vainly pleading : ' Wolflitigs,' answered the Company of Marat, ' who would grow to be wolves.' By degrees, daylight itself witnesses Noyades : women and men are tied together, feet and feet, hands and hands ; and flung in : this they call Manage Beptiblicain, Repubhcan Mar- riage. Cruel is the panther of the woods, the she-bear bereaved of her whelps : but there is in man a hatred cruder than that. Dumb, out of suffering now, as pale swoln corpses, the victims tumble confusedly seaward along the Loire stream ; the tide rolling them back : clouds of ravens darken the River ; wolves prowl on the shoal-places : Carrier writes, ' Quel torrent rivolu- tionnaire, What a torrent of Revolution ! ' For the man is rabid ; and the Time is rabid. These are the Noyades of Carrier ; twenty-five by the tale, for what is done in darkness ' De^^x Amis, xii. 266-72 ; Moniteur, du 2 Janvier 1794. comes DESTRUCTION 355 comes to be investigated in sunlight : ^ not to be forgotten for CHAP. Ill centuries. — ^We will turn to another aspect of the Consuimnation Dec. 1793 of Sansculottism ; leaving this as the blackest. But indeed men are all rabid ; as the Time is. Repre- JOSEPH LEBON. sentative Lebon, at Arras, dashes his sword into the blood flowing from the Guillotine ; exclaims, ' How I like it ! ' Mothers, they say, by his orders, have to stand by while the Guillotine devours their children : a band of music is stationed near ; and, at the fall of every head, strikes up its i^a-ira} ' Prods de Carrier (4 tomes, Paris, 1795). ^ Les Horreurs des Prisons d' Arras (Paris, 1823). In 356 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOKV In the Burgh of Bedouin, in the Orange region, the Liberty- Dec. 1793 tree has been cut down overnight. Representative Maignet, (Year 2, Frim.) ^^ Qrange, heaTs of it ; burns Bedouin Burgh to the last dog- hutch ; guillotines the inhabitants, or drives them into the caves and hills.^ Republic One and Indivisible ! She is the newest Birth of Nature's waste inorganic Deep, which men name Orcus, Chaos, primeval Night ; and knows one law, that of self-preservation. Tigresse Nationale : raeddle not with a whisker of her ! Swift-rending is her stroke ; look what a paw she spreads ; — pity has not entered into her heart. Prudhomme, the dull-blustering Printer and able Editor, as yet a Jacobin Editor, will become a renegade one, and publish large volumes, on these matters, Crimes of the Revolu- tion ; adding innumerable lies withal, as if the truth were not sufficient. We, for our part, find it more edifying to know, one good time, that this Republic and National Tigress is a New-Birth ; a Fact of Nature among Formulas, in an Age of Formulas ; and to look, oftenest in silence, how the so genuine Nature-Fact will demean itself among these. For the Formulas are partly genuine, partly delusive, supposititious : we call them, in the language of metaphor, regulated modelled shapes ; some of which have bodies and life still in them ; most of which, according to a German Writer, have only emptiness, ' glass- eyes glaring on you with a ghastly affectation of life, and in their interior unclean accumulation of beetles and spiders ! ' But the Fact, let all men observe, is a genuine and sincere one ; the sincerest of Facts ; terrible in its sincerity, as very Death. Whatsoever is equally sincere may front it, and beard it ; but whatsoever is not ? — CHAPTER IV CARMAGNOLE COMPLETE Simultaneously with this Tophet-black aspect, there un- folds itself another aspect, which one may call a Tophet-red aspect, the Destruction of the Catholic Religion ; and indeed, for the time being, of Religion itself. We saw Romme's New Calendar establish its Tenth Day of Rest ; and asked, what ' Montgaillard, iv. 200. would CARMAGNOLE CO MPLETE 357 would become of the Christian Sabbath ? The Calendar is CHAP. IV hardly a month old, till all this is set at rest. Very singular, Nov. lo, as Mercier observes : last Corpus-Christi Day 1792, the whole ,„ ^^f "^ , - '^ ,. . , (Year 2, Brum. zo) wo;-ld, and Sovereign Authority itself, walked m religious gala, with a quite devout air ;^Butcher Legendre, supposed to be irreverent, was like to be massacred in his ,Gig, as the thing went by. A Galilean Hierarchy, and Church, and Church Formulas seemed to flourish, a little brown-leaved or so, but not browner than of late years or decades ; to flourish far and wide, in the sympathies of an unsophisticated People ; def jdng Philosophism, Legislature and the Encyclopedic. Far and wide, alas, like a brown-leaved Vallombrosa : which waits but one whirl-blast of the November wind, and in an hour stands bare ! Since that Corpus-Christi Day, Brunswick has come, and the Emigrants, and La Vendee, and eighteen months of Time : to all flourishing, especially to brown-leaved flourishing, there comes, were it never so slowly, an end. On the 7th of November, a certain Citoyen Parens, Curate of Boissise-le-Bertrand, writes to the Convention that he has all his life been preaching a lie, and is grown weary of doing it ; wherefore he will now lay down his Curacy and stipend, and begs that an august Convention would give him some- thing else to live upon. ' Mention honorable,'' shall we give him ? Or ' reference to Committee of Finances ' ? Hardly is this got decided, when goose Gobel, Constitutional Bishop of Paris, with his Chapter, with Municipal and Departmental escort in red nightcaps, makes his appearance, to do as Parens has done. Goose Gobel will now acknowledge ' no Religion but Liberty ' ; therefore he doffs his Priest-gear, and receives the Fraternal embrace. To the joy of Departmental Momoro, of Municipal Chaumettes and Heberts, of Vincent and the Revolutionary Army ! Chaumette asks. Ought there not, in these circumstances, to be among our intercalary Days Sans- breeches, a Feast of Reason ? ^ Proper surely ! Let Atheist Mar^chal, Lalande, and little Atheist Naigeon rejoice ; let Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, present to the Convention his Evidences of the Mahometan Religion, ' a work evincing the nullity of all Religions,' — with thanks. There shall be Uni- versal Republic now, thinks Clootz ; and ' one God only, Le Peuple.' ' Moniteur, Stance du 17 Brumaire (7th November), 1793. The 358 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V The French nation is of gregarious imitative nature ; it Nov. lOj needed but a fugle-motion in this matter ; and goose Gobel, (Y«r2 Brum 20) '^^^^^ ^^^ MunicipaHty and force of circumstances, has given one. What Cure will be behind him of Boissise ; what Bishop behind him of Paris ? Bishop Gregoire, indeed, courageously declines ; to the sound of ' We force no one ; let Gregoire consult his conscience ' ; but Protestant and Romish by the hundred volunteer and assent. From far and near, all through November into December, tiU the work is accomplished, come Letters of renegation, come Curates who ' are learning to be Carpenters,' Curates with their new-wedded Nuns : has not the day of Reason dawned, very swiftly, and be- come noon ? From sequestered Townships come Addresses, stat- ing plainly, though in Patois dialect. That ' they will have no more to do with the black animal called Curay, animal noir appelS Curay. ^ ^ Above all things, there come Patriotic Gifts, of Church-furni- ture. The remnant of bells, except for tocsin, descend from their belfries, into the National meltingpot to make cannon. Censers and all sacred vessels are beaten broad; of silver, they are fit for the poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become buUets, to shoot the 'enemies du genre humain: Dalmatics of plush make breeches for him who had none; Imen albs will clip into shirts for the Defenders of the Country • old-clothesmen, Jew or Heathen, drive the briskest trade. Chaher's Ass-Procession, at Lyons, was but a type of what went on, m those same days, in all Towns. In all Towns and Townships as quick as the guiUotine may go, so quick ' Analyse du Moniteur (Paris, i8oi), ii. 280. goes GREGOIRE. CARMAGNOLE COMPLETE 359 goes the axe and the wrench : sacristies, lutrins, altar-raUs CHAP. IV are pulled down ; the Mass-Books torn into cartridge-papers : Nov. 10, men dance the Carmagnole all night about the bonfire. All 1793 highways jingle with metallic Priest-tackle, beaten broad ; sent to the Convention, to the poverty-stricken Mint. Good Sainte-Genevieve's Chasse is let down : alas, to be burst open, this time, and burnt on the Place de Greve. Saint Louis's Shirt is burnt ; — might not a Defender of the Country have had it ? At Saint-Denis Town, no longer Saint-Denis but Franciade, Patriotism has been down among the Tombs, rum- maging ; the Revolutionary Army has taken spoil. This, accordingly, is what the streets of Paris saw : ' Most of these persons were still drunk, with the brandy they had swallowed out of chalices ; — eating mackerel on the patenas ! Mounted on Asses, which were housed with Priests' cloaks, they reined them with Priests' stoles ; they held clutched with the same hand communion-cup and sacred wafer. They stopped at the doors of Dramshops ; held out ciboriums : and the landlord, stoup in hand, had to fill them thrice. Next came Mules high-laden with crosses, chandeliers, censers, holy- water vessels, hyssops ; — recalling to mind the Priests of Cybele, whose panniers, filled with the instruments of their worship, served at once as storehouse, sacristy, and temple. In such equipage did these profaners advance towards the Convention. They enter there, in an immense train, ranged in two rows ; all masked like mmnmers in fantastic sacerdotal vestments ; bearing on hand-barrows their heaped plunder, — ciborimns, suns, candelabras, plates of gold and silver.' ^ The Address we do not give ; for indeed it was in strophes, sung viva voce, with all the parts ; — ^Danton glooming con- siderably, in his place ; and demanding that there be prose and decency in future.^ Nevertheless the captors of such spolia opima crave, not untouched with liquor, permission to dance the Carmagnole also on the spot : whereto an ex- hilarated Convention cannot but accede. Nay ' several Mem- bers,' continues the exaggerative Mercier, who was not there to witness, being in Limbo now, as one of Duperret's Seventy- three, ' several Members, quitting their curule chairs, took the hand of girls flaunting in Priests' vestures, and danced the ^ Mercier, iv. 134. See Monitear, Stance du 10 Novembre. ^ See also MoniUur, Stance du 26 Novembre. Carmagnole 360 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOKV Carmagnole along with them.' Such Old-Hallowtide have Nov. 10, they, in this year once named of Grace 1793. 1793 (Year2, Brum.so) p t • i iini>-n i it Out ot which strange tall ot formulas, tumblmg there m confused welter, betrampled by the Patriotic dance, is it not passing strange to see a new Formula arise ? For the human tongue is not adequate to speak what ' triviality run distracted ' there is in human nature. Black Mumbo-Jumbo of the woods, and most Indian Wau-waus, one can understand : but this of Procureur Anaxagoras, whilom John-Peter, Chaumette ? We will say only : Man is a born idol-worshipper, sigfei-worshipper, so sensuous-imaginative is he ; and also partakes much of the nature of the ape. For the same day, while this brave Carmagnole-dance has hardly jigged itself out, there arrive Procureur Chaumette and Municipals and Departmentals, and with them the strangest freightage : a New Religion ! Demoiselle Candeille, of the Opera ; a woman fair to look upon, when well rouged ; she, borne on palanquin shoulderhigh ; with red woollen nightcap ; in azure mantle ; garlanded with oak ; holding in her hand the Pike of the Jupitev-Peuple, sails in : heralded by white young women girt in tricolor. Let the world consider it ! This, O National Convention wonder of the universe, is our New Divinity ; Goddess of Reason, worthy, and alone worthy of revering. Her henceforth we adore. Nay were it too much to ask of an august National Representation that it also went with us to the ci-devant Cathedral called of Notre-Dame, and executed a few strophes in worship of her ? President and Secretaries give Goddess Candeille, borne at due height round their platform, successively the Fraternal kiss ; whereupon she, by decree, sails to the right-hand of the President and there alights. And now, after due pause and flourishes of oratory, the Convention, gathering its limbs, does get under way in the required procession towards Notre-Dame ; — Reason, again in her litter, sitting in the van of them, borne, as one judges, by men in the Roman costume ; escorted by wind-music, red nightcaps, and the madness of the world. And so, straightway. Reason taking seat on the high-altar of Notre-Dame, the requisite worship or quasi-worship is, say the Newspapers, executed ; National Convention chanting, ' the Hymn to Liberty, words by Ch6nier, music by Gossec' It is the CARMAGNOLE COMPLETE 361 the first of the Feasts of Reason ; first communion-service of CHAP. IV the New Religion of Chaumette. Nov. lo, ' The corresponding Festival in the Church of Saint-Eustache,' ,„ ^'^^^ , ■-ir (Year 2, Brum. 20) says Mercier, offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables overloaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pastries and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors : whosoever presented himself took part of the good things : children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in sign of Liberty ; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft, in a serene manner ; Cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors,' continues the ex- aggerative man, ' were mad multitudes dancing round bhe bonfire of Chapel-balustrades, of Priests' and Canons' stalls ; and the dancers, — I exaggerate nothing, — the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, fore- runners of Tempest and Destruction.' ^ At Saint-Gervais Church, again, there was a terrible ' smell of herrings ' ; Section or Municipality having provided no food, no con- diment, but left it to chance. Other mysteries, seemingly of a Cabiric or even Paphian character, we leave under the Veil, which appropriately stretches itself ' along the pillars of the aisles,' — not to be lifted aside by the hand of history. But there is one thing we should like almost better to under- stand than any other : what Reason herself thought of it, all the while. What articulate words poor Mrs. Momoro, for example, uttered ; when she had become ungoddessed again, and the Bibliopolist and she sat quiet at home, at supper ? For he was an earnest man. Bookseller Momoro ; and had notions of Agrarian Law. Mrs. Momoro, it is admitted, made one of the best Goddesses of Reason ; though her teeth were a little defective. — And now if the Reader will represent to himself that such visible Adoration of Reason went on ' all over the Republic,' through these November and December weeks, till the Church woodwork was burnt out, and the busi- ness otherwise completed, he will perhaps feel sufficiently what ' Mercier, iv. 127-46. an 362 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOKV an adoring Republic it was, and without reluctance quit this Nov. 10, part of the subject. 1793 ' (Year2, Brum.ao) Such gifts of Church-spoil are chiefly the work of the Armie RSvolutionnaire ; raised, as we said, some time ago. It is an army with portable guillotine : commanded by Playwright Ronsin in terrible mustachioes ; and even by some uncertain shadow of Usher MaiUard, the old Bastille Hero, Leader of the Menads, September Man in Gray ! Clerk Vincent of the War-Office, one of Pache's old Clerks, ' with a head heated by the ancient orators,' had a main hand in the appointments, at least in the staff -appointments. But of the marchings and retreatings of these Six-thousand no Xenophon exists. Nothing, but an inarticulate hum, of cursing and sooty frenzy, surviving dubious in the memory of ages ! They scour the country round Paris ; seeking Prisoners ; raising Requisitions ; seeing that Edicts are executed, that the Farmers have thrashed sufficiently ; lowering Church-bells or metallic Virgins. Detachments shoot forth dim, towards remote parts of France ; nay new Provincial Revolutionary Armies rise dim, here and there, as Carrier's Company of Marat, as Tallien's Bordeaux Troop ; like sympathetic clouds in an atmosphere all electric. Ronsin, they say, admitted, in candid moments, that his troops were the elixir of the Rascality of the Earth. One sees them drawn up in market-places ; travel-splashed, rough-bearded, in carmagnole complete : the first exploit is to prostrate what Royal or Ecclesiastical monu- ment, crucifix or the like, there may be : to plant a cannon at the steeple ; fetch down the bell without climbing for it, bell and belfry together. This, however, it is said, depends somewhat on the size of the town : if the town contains much population, and these perhaps of a dubious choleric aspect, the Revolutionary Army will do its work gently, by ladder and wrench ; nay perhaps wiU take its billet without work at all ; and, refreshing itself with a little liquor and sleep, pass on to the next stage.^ Pipe in cheek, sabre on thigh ; in Carmagnole complete ! Such things have been ; and may again be. Charles Second sent out his Highland Host over the Western Scotch Whigs : Jamaica Planters got Dogs from the Spanish Main to hunt ^ Deiix Amis, xii. 62-5. their LIKE A THUNDER CLOUD 363 their Maroons with : France too is bescoured with a Devil's cHAP. IV Pack, the baying of which, at this distance of half a century, Nov. 1793 stiU sounds in the mind's ear. '"""^ '' ^"""'^ CHAPTER V LIKE A THUNBER-CLOUD But the grand and indeed substantially primary and generic aspect of the Constimmation of Terror remains still to be looked at ; nay blinkard History has for most part all but overlooked this aspect, the soul of the whole ; that which makes it terrible to the enemies of France. Let Despotism and Cimmerian Coahtions consider. All French men and French things are in a State of Requisition ; Fourteen Armies are got on foot ; Patriotism, with all that it has of faculty in heart or in head, in soul or body or breeches-pocket, is rushing to the Frontiers, to prevail or die ! Busy sits Camot, in Salut Public ; busy, for his share, in ' organising victory.' Not swifter pulses that GuUlotine, in dread systole-diastole in the Place de la Revolution, than smites the Sword of Patriotism, smiting Cimmeria back to its own borders, from the sacred soil. In fact, the Government is what we can call Revolutionary ; and some men are ' a la hauteur,'' on a level with the circum- stances ; and others are not a la hauteur, — so much the worse for them. But the Anarchy, we may say, has organised itself : Society is literally overset ; its old forces working with mad activity, but in the inverse order ; destructive and self-destruc- tive. Curious to see how all still refers itself to some head and fountain ; not even an Anarchy but must have a centre to revolve round. It is now some six months since the Com- mittee of Salut Public came into existence ; some three months since Danton proposed that all power should be given it, and ' a sum of fifty millions,' and the ' Government be declared Revolutionary.' He himself, since that day, would take no hand in it, though again and again solicited ; but sits private in his place on the Mountain. Since that day, the Nine, or if they should even rise to Twelve, have become permanent, always re-elected when their term runs out ; Salut Public, Surety 364 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOKV SuretS Generate have assumed their ulterior form and mode Nov. 1793 of operating. (Year 2, Brum.) Committee of Public Salvation, as supreme ; of General Surety, as subaltern : these, like a Lesser and Greater Council, most harmonious hitherto, have become the centre of all things. They ride this Whirlwind; they, raised by force of circumstances, insensibly, very strangely, thither to that dread height ; — and guide it, and seem to guide it. Stranger set of Cloud- Compellers the Earth never saw. A Robespierre, a Billaud, a CoUot, Couthon, Saint-Just ; not to mention still meaner Amars, Vadiers, in Surete Generate : these are your Cloud- Compellers. Small intellectual talent is necessary : indeed where among them, except in the head of Carnot, busied organis- ing victory, would you find any ? The talent is one of instinct rather. It is that of divining aright what this great dumb Whirlwind wishes and wills ; that of willing, with more frenzy than any one, what all the world wills. To stand at no obstacles ; to heed no considerations, human or divine ; to know well that, of divine or human, there is one thing needful. Triumph of the Republic, Destruction of the Enemies of the Republic ! With this one spiritual endowment, and so few others, it is strange to see how a dumb inarticulately storming Whirlwind of things puts, as it were, its reins into your hand, and invites and compels you to be leader of it. Hard by sits a Municipality of Paris ; all in red nightcaps since the fourth of November last : a set of men fully ' on a level with circumstances,' or even beyond it. Sleek Mayor Pache, studious to be safe in the middle ; Chaumettes, Heberts, Varlets, and Henriot their great Commandant ; not to speak of Vincent the War-clerk, of Momoros, Dobsents and suchlike : all intent to have Churches plundered, to have Reason adored. Suspects cut down, and the Revolution triumph. Perhaps carry- ing the matter too far ? Danton was heard to grumble at the civic strophes ; and to recommend prose and decency. Robes- pierre also grumbles that, in overturning Superstition, we did not mean to make a religion of Atheism. In fact, your Chau- mette and Company constitute a kind of Hyper-Jacobinism, or rabid ' Faction des EnragSs ' ; which has given orthodox Patriotism some vunbrage, of late months. To ' know a Sus- pect on the streets ' ; what is this but bringing the Law of the Suspect itself into ill odour ? Men half-frantic, men zealous over- LIKE A THUNDER-CLOUD 365 {Year 2, Brum.) over-much, — they toil there, in their red nightcaps, restlessly, CHAP. V rapidly, accomplishing what of Life is allotted them. Nov. 1793 And the Forty-four Thousand other Townships, each with Revrfutionary Committee, based on Jacobin Daughter Society ; enlightened by the spirit of Jacobinism ; quickened by the Forty Sous a-day ! — The French Constitution spurned always at anything like Two Chambers ; and yet, behold, has it not verily got Two Chambers ? National Convention, elected, for one ; Mother of Patriotism, self -elected, for another ! Mother of Patriotism has her Debates reported in the Moniteur, as important state-procedures ; which indisputably they are. A Second Chamber of Legislature we call this Mother Society ; — if perhaps it were not rather comparable to that old Scotch Body named Lords of the Articles, without whose origination, and signal given, the so-called Parliament could introduce no bUl, could do no work ? Robespierre himself, whose words are a law, opens his incorruptible lips copiously in the Jacobins Hall. Smaller Council of Salut Public, Greater Council of Surete Genirale, all active Parties, come here to plead ; to shape beforehand what decision they must arrive at, what destiny they have to expect. Now if a question arose. Which of those Two Chambers, Convention, or Lords of the Articles, was the stronger ? Happily they as yet go hand in hand. As for the National Convention, truly it has become a most composed Body. Quenched now the old effervescence ; the Seventy-three locked in ward ; once noisy Friends of the Girondins sunk all into silent men of the Plain, called even ' Frogs of the Marsh,' Crapauds du Marais ! Addresses come. Revolutionary Church-plunder comes ; Deputations, with prose or strophes : these the Convention receives. But beyond this, the Convention has one thing mainly to do : to listen what Salut Public proposes, and say, Yea. Bazire followed by Chabot, with some impetuosity, declared, one morning, that this was not the way of a Free Assembly. ' There ought to be an Opposition side, a C6tS Droit,' cried Chabot : ' if none else will form it, I will. People say to me. You will all get guillotined in your turn, first you and Bazire, then Danton, then Robespierre himself.' ^ So spake the Dis- frocked, with a l6ud voice : next week, Bazire and he lie in the Abbaye ; wending, one may fear, towards Tinville and the ' DSats, du lo Novembre 1793. Axe; 366 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V Axe ; and ' people say to me ' — ^what seems to be proving Nov. 1793 true ! Bazire's blood was all inflamed with Revolution Fever ; ear 2, rum. .^j^]^ coffee and spasmodic dreams.^ Chabot, again, how happy with his rich Jew-Austrian wife, late Fraulein Frey ! But he lies in Prison ; and his two Jew-Austrian Brothers-in- Law, the Bankers Frey, lie with him ; waiting the urn of doom. Let a National Convention, therefore, take warning, and know its function. Let the Convention, all as one man, set its shoulder to the work ; not with bursts of Parliamentary eloquence, but in quite other and serviceabler ways ! Convention Commissioners, what we ought to call Repre- sentatives, ' Re'prSsentans on mission,' fly, like the Herald Mercury, to all points of the Territory ; carrying your behests far and wide. In their ' round hat, plumed with tricolor feathers, girt with flowing tricolor taffeta ; in close frock, tricolor sash, sword and jack-boots,' these men are powerfuler than King or Kaiser. They say to whomso they meet. Do ; and he must do it : all men's goods are at their disposal ; for France is as one huge City in Siege. They smite with Requisi- tions and Forced-loan ; they have the power of life and death. Saint- Just and Lebas order the rich classes of Strasburg to ' strip-off their shoes,' and send them to the Armies, where as many as ' ten-thousand pairs ' are needed. Also, that within four-and-twenty hours, ' a thousand beds ' be got ready ; ^ wrapt in matting and sent under way. For the time presses ! — Like swift bolts, issuing from the fuliginous Olympus of Salut Public, rush these men, oftenest in pairs ; scatter your thunder- orders over France ; make France one enormous Revolutionary thunder-cloud. CHAPTER VI DO THY DUTY Accordingly, alongside of these bonfires of Church-balus- trades, and sounds of fusillading and noyading, there rise quite another sort of fires and sounds : Smithy-fires and Proof- volleys for the manufacture of arms. ^ Dictionnaire des Honwies Marquans, i. 115. ^ Moniteur, du 27 Novembre 1793. Cut DO THY DUTY 367 Cut off from Sweden and the world, the Republic must CHAP. VI learn to make steel for itself ; and, by aid of Chemists, she 1793-4 has learnt it. Towns that knew only iron, now know steel : ^^'^' "^ from their new dungeons at Chantilly, Aristocrats may hear the rustle of our new steel furnace there. Do not bells trans- mute themselves into cannon ; iron stanchions into the white- weapon {arme blanche), by sword-cutlery ? The wheels of Langres scream, amid their sputtering fire-halo ; grinding mere swords. The stithies of Charleville ring with gun-making. What say we, Charleville ? Two-hundred and fifty-eight Forges stand in the open spaces of Paris itself ; a hundred and forty of them in the Esplanade of the Invalides, fifty-four in the Luxembourg Garden : so many Forges stand ; grim Smiths beating and forging at lock and barrel there. The Clock- makers have come, requisitioned, to do the touch-holes, the hard-solder and file-work. Five great Barges swing at anchor on the Seine Stream, loud with boring ; the great press-drills grating harsh thunder to the general ear and heart. And deft Stock-makers do gouge and rasp ; and all men bestir themselves, according to their cunning : — in the language of hope, it is reckoned that ' a thousand finished muskets can be delivered daily.' ^ Chemists of the Republic have taught us miracles of swift tanning : ^ the cordwainer bores and stitches ; — not of ' wood and pasteboard,' or he shall answer it to Tin- ville ! The women sew tents and coats, the children scrape surgeon's lint, the old men sit in the market-places ; able men are on march ; all men in requisition : from Town to Town flutters, on the Heaven's winds, this Banner, The French People risen against Tyrants. All which is well. But now arises the question : What is to be done for saltpetre ? Interrupted Commerce and the English Navy shut us out from saltpetre ; and without salt- petre there is no gunpowder. Republican Science again sits meditative ; discovers that saltpetre exists here and there, though in attenuated quantity ; that old plaster of walls holds a sprinkhng of it ; — that the earth of the Paris Cellars holds a sprinkling of it, diffused through the common rubbish ; that were these dug up and washed, saltpetre might be had. Whereupon, swiftly, see ! the Citoyens, with up-shoved bonnet rouge, or with doffed bonnet, and hair toil-wetted ; digging ^ Choix des Rapports, xiii. i8g. ^ Ibid. xv. 360. fiercely, (Year 2) 368 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOKV fiercely, each in his own cellar, for saltpetre. The Earth-heap 1793-4 rises at every door ; the Citoyennes with hod and bucket carrying it up ; the Ci toy ens, pith in every muscle, shovelling and digging : for life and saltpetre. Dig, my braves ; and right well speed ye ! What of saltpetre is essential the Repubhc shall not want. Consummation of Sansculottism has many aspects and tints : but the brightest tint, really of a solar or stellar brightness, is this which the Armies give it. That same fervour of Jacobinism, which internally fills France with hatreds, sus- picions, scaffolds and Reason-worship, does, on the Frontiers, show itself as a glorious Pro patria mori. Ever since Du- mouriez's defection, three Convention Representatives attend every General. Committee of Salut has sent them ; often with this Laconic order only : ' Do thy duty, Fais ton devoir.' It is strange, under what impediments the fire of Jacobinism, like other such fires, will burn. These Soldiers have shoes of wood and pasteboard, or go booted in hay-ropes, in dead of winter ; they skewer a bast mat round their shoulders, and are destitute of most things. What then ? It is for Rights of Frenchhood, of Manhood, that they fight : the unquench- able spirit, here as elsewhere, works miracles. ' With steel and bread,' says the Convention Representative, ' one may get to China.' The Generals go fast to the guillotine ; justly and unjustly. From which what inference ? This, among others : That ill-success is death ; that in victory alone is life ! To conquer or die is no theatrical palabra, in these circumstances, but a practical truth and necessity. All Girondism, Halfness, Compromise is swept away. Forward, ye Soldiers of the Republic, captain and man ! Dash, with your Gaelic im- petuosity, on Austria, England, Prussia, Spain, Sardinia ; Pitt, Cobourg, York, and the Devil and the World ! Behind us is but the Guillotine ; before us is Victory, Apotheosis and Millennium without end ! See, accordingly, on all Frontiers, how the Sons of Night, astonished after short triumph, do recoil ; — ^the Sons of the Repubhc flying at them, with wild Qa-ira or Marseillese Aux armes, with the temper of cat-o'-mountain, or demon incarnate ; which no Son of Night can stand ! Spain, which came burst- ing through the Pyrenees, rustling with Bourbon banners, and went DO THY DUTY 369 went conquering here and there for a season, falters at such CHAP. VI cat-o'-mountain welcome ; draws itself in again ; too happy 1793-4 now were the Pyrenees iifipassable. Not only does Dugom- mieK, conqueror of Toulon, drive Spain back ; he invades Spain. General Dugommier invades it by the Eastern Pyrenees ; General MuUer shall invade it by the Western. Shall, that is the word : Committee of Salut Public has said it ; Repre- sentative Cavaignac, on mission there, must see it done. Im- possible ! cries MuUer. — InfaUible ! answers Cavaignac. Diffi- culty, impossibility, is to no purpose. ' The Committee is deaf on that side of its head,' answers Cavaignac, n'entend pas de cette oreille Id. How many wantest thou of men, of horses, cannons ? Thou shalt have them. Conquerors, conquered or hanged, forward we must.' ^ Which things also, even as the Representatives spake them, were done. The Spring of the new Year sees Spain invaded : and redoubts are carried, and Passes and Heights of the most scarped description ; Spanish Field-officerism struck mute at such cat-o'-mountain spirit, the cannon forgetting to fire.^ Swept are the Pyrenees ; Town after Town flies open, burst by terror or the petard. In the course of another year, Spain will crave Peace ; acknowledge its sins and the Republic ; nay, in Madrid, there will be joy as for a victory, that even Peace is got. Few things, we repeat, can be notabler than these Conven- tion Representatives, with their power more than kingly. Nay at bottom are they not Kings, Able-men, of a sort ; chosen from the Seven-hundred and Forty -nine French Kings ; with this order, Do thy duty ? Representative Levasseur, of small stature, by trade a mere pacific Surgeon-Accoucheur, has mutinies to quell ; mad hosts (mad at the Doom of Custine) bellowing far and wide ; he alone amid them, the one small Representative, — small, but as hard as flint, which also carries fire in it ! So too, at Hondschooten, far in the afternoon, he declares that the Battle is not lost ; that it must be gained ; and fights, himself with his own obstetric hand ; — ^horse shot under him, or say on foot, ' up to the haunches in tide-water ' ; 1 There is, in Prudhomme, an atrocity d. la Captain-Kirk reported of this Cavaignac ; which has been copied into Dictionaries of Hommes Marquans, of Biographic Univer- selle, etc. ; which not only has no truth in it, but, much more singular, is still capable of being proved to have none. ^ De-ux Amis, xiii. 205-30 ; Toulongeon, etc. VOL. II. 2 A cutting BOOK V 1793-4 (Year 2) 370 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY cutting stoccado and passado there, in defiance of Water, Earth, Air and Fire, the choleric httle Representative that he was ! Whereby, as natural. Royal Highness of York had to with- draw, — occasionally at full gallop ; like to be swallowed by the tide : and his Siege of Dunkirk became a dream, realising only nauch loss of beautiful siege-artillery and of brave lives.^ JOUUDAN. General Houchard, it would appear, stood behind a hedge on this Hondschooten occasion ; wherefore they have since guillotined him. A new General Jourdan, late Sergeant Jour- dan, commands in his stead : he, in long-winded Battles of Watigny, 'murderous artillery-fire mingUng itself with sound of Revolutionary battle-hymns,' forces Austria behind the ^ Levasseur, Miinoires, ii. c. 2-7. Sambre DO THY DUTY 371 Sambre again ; has hopes of purging the soil of Liberty. With CHAP. VI hard wresthng, with artillerying and ga-ira-ing, it shall be done. 1793-4 In the course of a new Summer, Valenciennes will see itself beleaguered ; Conde beleaguered ; whatsoever is yet in the hands of Austria beleaguered and bombarded : nay, by Con- vention Decree, we even summon them all ' either to surrender in twenty-four hours, or else be put to the sword ' ; — a high saying, which, though it remains unfulfilled, may show what spirit one is of. Representative Drouet, as an Old-dragoon, could fight by a kind of second nature : but he was unlucky. Him, in a night-foray at Maubeuge, the Austrians took alive, in October last. They stript him almost naked, he says ; making a show of him, as King-taker of Varennes. They flung him into carts ; sent him far into the interior of Cimmeria, to ' a Fortress called Spitzberg ' on the Danube River ; and left him there, at an elevation of perhaps a hundred and forty feet, to his own bitter reflections. Reflections ; and also devices ! For the indomitable Old-dragoon constructs wing-machinery, of Paperkite ; saws window-bars ; determines to fly down. He will seize a boat, will follow the River's course ; land somewhere in Crim Tartary, in the Black-Sea or Constantinople region : a la Sindbad ! Authentic History, accordingly, looking far into Cimmeria, discerns dimly a phenomenon. In the dead night-watches, the Spitzberg sentry is near fainting with terror :— Is it a huge vague Portent descending through the night-air ? It is a huge National Representative Old-dragoon, descending by Paperkite ; too rapidly, alas ! For Drouet had taken with him ' a small provision-store, twenty pounds weight or thereby ' ; which proved accelerative : so he fell, fracturing his leg ; and lay there, moaning, till day dawned, till you could discern clearly that he was not a Portent but a Representative.^ Or see Saint-Just, in the hues of Weissembourg, though physically of a timid apprehensive nature, how he charges with his ' Alsatian Peasants armed hastily ' for the nonce ; the solemn face of him blazing into flame ; his black hair and tricolor hat-taffeta flowing in the breeze ! These our Lines of Weissembourg were indeed forced, and Prussia and the Emigrants rolled through : but we re-force the Lines of 1 His Narrative (in £>eux Amis, xiv. 177-86). Weissembourg ; 372 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V Weissembourg ; and Prussia and the Emigrants roll back again June 1, 1794 still faster, — hurled with bayonet-charges and fiery Qa-ira-ing. (Year2,Prair.i3) Ci-dcvant Scrgcant Pichegru, ci-devant Sergeant Hoche, risen now to be Generals, have done wonders here. Tall Pichegru was meant for the Church ; was Teacher of Mathematics once, PICHEGRU. in Brienne School, — his remarkablest pupil there was the Boy Napoleon Buonaparte. He then, not in the sweetest humour, enlisted, exchanging ferula for musket ; and had got the length of the halberd, beyond which nothing could be hoped ; when the Bastille barriers falling made passage for him, and he is here. Hoche bore a hand at the hteral overturn of the Bastille ; he was, as we saw, a Sergeant of the Gardes Frangaises, spending his DO THY DUTY 373 his pay in rushlights and cheap editions of books. How the CHAP. VI Mountains are burst, and many an Enceladus is disimprisoned ; June l, 1794 and Captains founding on Four parchments of Nobihty are^^'""'^"'"'^^ blown with their parchments across the Rhine, into Lunar Limbo ! What high feats of arms, therefore, were done in these Fourteen Armies ; and how, for love of Liberty and hope of Promotion, lowborn valour cut its desperate way to General- ship ; and, from the central Carnot in Salut Public to the outmost drummer on the Frontiers, men strove for their Republic, let Readers fancy. The snows of Winter, the flowers of Summer continue to be stained with warlike blood. Gaelic impetuosity mounts ever higher with victory ; spirit of Jacobinism weds itself to national vanity : the Soldiers of the Republic are becoming, as we prophesied, very Sons of Fire. Barefooted, barebacked : but with bread and iron you can get to China ! It is one Nation against the whole world ; but the Nation has that within her which the whole world will not conquer. Cimmeria, astonished, recoils faster or slower ; all round the Republic there rises fiery, as it were, a magic ring of musket- volleying and ca-ira-ing. Majesty of Prussia, as Majesty of Spain, will by and by acknowledge his sins and the Republic ; and make a Peace of Bale. Foreign Commerce, Colonies, Factories in the East and in the West, are fallen or falling into the hands of sea-ruling Pitt, enemy of human nature. Nevertheless what sound is this that we hear, on the first of June 1794 ; sound as of war- thunder borne from the Ocean too, of tone most piercing ? War-thunder from off the Brest waters : Villaret-Joyeuse and English Howe, after long manoeuvring, have ranked them- selves there ; and are belching fire. The enemies of human nature are on their own element ; cannot be conquered ; cannot be kept from conquering. Twelve hours of raging cannonade ; sun now sinking westward through the battle- smoke : six French Ships taken, the Battle lost ; what Ship soever can still sail, making off ! But how is it, then, with that Vengeur Ship, she neither strikes nor makes off ? She is lamed, she cannot make off ; strike she will not. Fire rakes her fore and aft from victorious enemies ; the Vengeur is sink- ing. Strong are ye. Tyrants of the sea; yet we also, are we weak? 374 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V weak ? Lo ! all flags, streamers, jacks, every rag of tricolor June 1, 1794 that will yet run on rope, fly rustling aloft : the whole crew (Year2,Prair.i3)^^^^^g to the uppcr dcck ; and with universal soul-maddening yell, shouts Vive la RSpublique, — sinking, sinking. She staggers, she lurches, her last drunk whirl ; Ocean yawns abysmal : down rushes the Vengeur, carrying Vive la B^publique along BARRERE. with her, unconquerable, into Eternity.^ Let foreign Despots think of that. There is an Unconquerable in man, when he stands on his Rights of Man : let Despots and Slaves and all people know this, and only them that stand on the Wrongs of Man tremble to know it. — So has History written, nothing doubting, of the sunk Vengeur. Reader ! Mendez Pinto, Miinchhausen, Cagliostro, Psal- ' Compare Barrere {CAoix des Rapports, xvi. 416-21) ; Lord Howe (Annual Register of 1794, p. 86), etc. manazar FLAME-PICTURE 375 manazar have been great ; but they are not the greatest. O CHAP. VI ' Barr^re, Barrfere, Anacreon of the Guillotine ! must inquisi- June l, 1794 tive pictorial History, in a new edition, ask again, 'How is j^ (^^^"^'^'"'•'s) wi^ the Vengeur,' in this its glorious suicidal sinking ; and, with resentful brush, dash a bend-sinister of contumelious lamp-black through thee and it ? Alas, alas ! The Vengeur, after fighting bravely, did sink altogether as other ships do, her captain and above two-hundred of her crew escaping gladly in British boats ; and this same enormous inspiring Feat, and rumour ' of sound most piercing,' turns out to be an enor- mous inspiring Non-entity, extant nowhere save, as falsehood, in the brain of Barrere ! Actually so.^ Founded, like the World itself, on Nothing ; proved by Convention Report, by solemn Convention Decree and Decrees, and wooden ' Model of the Vengeur ' ; believed, bewept, besung by the whole French People to this hour, it may be regarded as Barrere' s master- piece ; the largest, most inspiring piece of blague manufactured, for some centuries, by any man or nation. As such, and not otherwise, be it henceforth memorable. CHAPTER VII FLAME-PICTURE In this manner, mad-blazing with flame of all imaginable tints, from the red of Tophet to the stellar-bright, blazes off this Consummation of Sansculottism. But the hundredth part of the things that were done, and the thousandth part of the things that were projected and decreed to be done, would tire the tongue of History, Statue of the Pewple Souverain, high as Strasburg Steeple ; which shall fling its shadow from the Pont-Neuf over Jardin National and Convention Hall ; — enormous, in Painter David's Head ! With other the like enormous Statues not a few : realised in paper Decree. For, indeed, the Statue of Liberty herself is still but Plaster, in the Place de la Revolution. Then Equal- isation of Weights and Measures, with decimal division ; Institu- tions, of Music and of much else ; Institute in general ; School ' Carlyle's Miscellanies, % Sinking of the Vengeur. of 376 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V of Arts, School of Mars, Sieves de la Patrie, Normal Schools : June26,i794 amid such Gun-boring, Altar-burning, Saltpetre-digging, and (Year 2, Mess. 3) jj^jj-aculous improvcments in Tannery ! What, for example, is this that Engineer Chappe is doing, in the Park of Vincennes ? In the Park of Vincennes ; and onwards, they say, in the Park of Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau the assassinated Deputy ; and still onwards to the Heights of Ecouen and farther, he has scaffolding set up, has posts driven in ; wooden arms with elbow- joints are jerking and fugling in the air, in the most rapid mysterious manner ! Citoyens ran up, suspicious. Yes, O Citoyens, we are signalling : it is a device this, worthy of the Republic ; a thing for what we will call Far-writing without the aid of post-bags ; in Greek it shall be named Telegraph. TiUgraphe sacrS ! answers Citoyenism : For writing to Traitors, to Austria ? — and tears it down. Chappe had to escape, and get a new Legislative Decree. Nevertheless he has accomplished it, the indefatigable Chappe : this his Far-writer, with its wooden arms and elbow-joints, can intelUgibly signal ; and hues of them are set up, to the North Frontiers and elsewhither. On an Autumn evening of the Year Two, Far-writer having just written that Conde Town has surrendered to us, we send from the Tuileries Convention- Hall this response in the shape of Decree : ' The name of Conde is changed to Nord-Libre, North-Free. The Army of the North ceases not to merit well of the country.'— To the admiration of men ! For lo, in some half hour, while the Convention yet debates, there arrives this new answer : ' I inform thee, je t'annonce, Citizen President, that the Decree of Convention, ordering change of the name Conde into North- Free; and the other, declaring that the Army of the North ceases not to merit well of the country ; are transmitted and acknowledged by Telegraph. I have instructed my Officer at Lille to forward them to North-Free by express. Signed, Chappe.' ^ Or see, over Fleurus in the Netherlands, where General Jourdan, having now swept the soil of Liberty, and advanced thus far, is just about to fight, and sweep or be swept, hangs there not in the Heaven's Vault some Prodigy, seen by Austrian eyes and spy-glasses : in the similitude of an enormous Wind- bag, with netting and enormous Saucer depending from it ? A ^ CAoix des Rapports, xv. 378, 384. Jove's FLAME-PICTURE 377 Jove's Balance, O ye Austrian spy-glasses ? One saucer- CHAP. VII scale of a Jove's Balance ; your poor Austrian scale having 1794 kicked itself quite aloft, out of sight ? By Heaven, answer (^=="^' the spy-glasses, it is a Montgolfier, a Balloon, and they are making signals ! Austrian cannon-battery barks at this Mont- golfier ; harmless as dog at the Moon : the Montgolfier makes its signals ; detects what Austrian ambuscade there may be, and descends at its ease.^ — ^What will not these devils incarnate contrive ? On the whole, is it not, O Reader, one of the strangest Flame- Pictures that ever painted itself ; flaming off there, on its ground of Guillotine-black ? And the nightly Theatres are Twenty-three ; and the Salons de danse are Sixty ; full of mere EgalitS, Fraterniti and Carmagnole. And Section Committee- rooms are Forty-eight ; redolent of tobacco and brandy : vigorous with twenty-pence a-day, coercing the Suspect. And the Houses of Arrest are Twelve, for Paris alone ; crowded and even crammed. And at all turns, you need your ' Certifi- cate of Civism ' ; be it for going out, or for coming in ; nay without it you cannot, for money, get your daily ounces of bread. Dusky red-capped Bakers' -queues ; wagging them- selves ; not in silence ! For we still live by Maximum, in all things ; waited on by these two. Scarcity and Confusion. The faces of men are darkened with suspicion ; with suspecting, or being suspect. The streets he unswept ; the ways un- mended. Law has shut her Books ; speaks little, save im- promptu, through the throat of Tinville. Crimes go unpunished ; not crimes against the Revolution.^ ' The number of foundhng children,' as some compute, ' is doubled.' How silent now sits Royahsm ; sits all Aristocratism ; Respectability that kept its Gig ! The honour now, and the safety, is to Poverty, not to Wealth. Your Citizen, who would be fashionable, walks abroad, with his Wife on his arm, in red-wool nightcap, black-shag spencer, and carmagnole complete. Aristocratism crouches low, in what shelter is still left ; submitting to all requisitions, vexations ; too happy to escape with life. Ghastly chateaus stare on you by the wayside ; disroofed, diswindowed ; which the National House- ' 26th June 1794 (see Rapport de Guyton-Morveau sur les Aerostats, in Monitnir &ix 6 Vend^miaire, An 2). ^ Mercier, v. 25 ; Deux Amis, xii. 142-99. broker 378 TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY BOOK V broker is peeling for the lead and ashlar. The old tenants 1794 hover disconsolate, over the Rhine with Cond6 ; a spectacle to men. Ci-devant Seigneur, exquisite in palate, will become an exquisite Restaurateur Cook in Hamburg ; Ci-devant Madame, exquisite in dress, a successful Marchande des Modes in London. In Newgate-Street, you meet M. le Marquis, with a rough deal on his shoulder, adze and jack-plane under arm ; he has taken to the joiner trade ; it being necessary to live {faut vivre)? — Higher than all Frenchmen the domestic Stock-jobber flourishes, — in a day of Paper-money. The Farmer also flourishes : ' Farmers' houses,' says Mercier, ' have become like Pawnbrokers' shops ' ; all manner of furniture, apparel, vessels of gold and silver accumulate themselves there : bread is precious. The Farmer's rent is Paper-money, and he alone of men has bread : Farmer is better than Landlord, and will himself become Landlord. And daily, we say, like a black Spectre, silently through that Life-tumult, passes the Revolution Cart ; writing on the walls its Mene, Mene, Thou art weighed, and found wanting ! A Spectre with which one has grown familiar. Men have adjusted themselves : complaint issues not from that Death- tumbril. Weak women and ci-devants, their plumage and finery all tarnished, sit there ; with a silent gaze, as if looking into the Infinite Black. The once light lip wears a curl of irony, uttering no word ; and the Tumbril fares along. They may be guilty before Heaven, or not ; they are guilty, we suppose, before the Revolution. Then, does not the Republic ' coin money ' of them, with its great axe ? Red Night- caps howl dire approval : the rest of Paris looks on ; if with a sigh, that is much : Fellow-creatures whom sighing cannot help ; whom black Necessity and Tinville have clutched. One other thing, or rather two other things, we will still mention ; and no more ; The Blond Perukes ; the Tannery at Meudon. Great talk is of these Perruques blondes : O Reader, they are made from the Heads of Guillotined women ! The locks of a Duchess, in this way, may come to cover the scalp of a Cordwainer ; her blonde German Frankisni his black GaeUc poll, if it be bald. Or they may be worn affec- ' See Z>(ux Amis, xv. 1 89-92-; Mimoires de Genlis ; Founders of the French Republic, etc. etc. tionately. (Year 2) FLAME-PICTURE 379 tionately, as relics ; rendering one suspect ? ^ Citizens use CHAP. VII them, not without mockery ; of a rather cannibal sort. ,3^^*, Still deeper into one's heart goes that Tannery at Meudon ; noj mentioned among the other miracles of tanning ! ' At Meudon,' says Montgaillard with considerable calmness, ' there was a Tannery of Human Skins ; such of the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying : of which perfectly good wash-leather was made ' ; for breeches, and other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in toughness (consistance) and quality to shamoy ; that of the women was good for almost nothing, being so soft in texture ! ^ — History looking back over Cannibalism, through Purchas's Pilgrims and all early and late Records, will perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort, on the whole, so detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeUng, quietly elegant sort ; a sort perfide ! Alas, then, is man's civilisation only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever ? Nature still makes him : and has an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial. 1 Mercier, ii. 134. ^ Montgaillard, iv. 200. Book Sixth BOOK SIXTH THERMIDOR CHAPTER I THE GODS ARE ATHIRST What, then, is this Thing called La Revolution, which, hke an Angel of Death, hangs over France, noyading, fusillading, fighting, gun-boring, tanning human skins ? La Revolution is but so many Alphabetic Letters ; a thing nowhere to be laid hands on, to be clapt under lock and key : where is it ? what is it ? It is the Madness that dwells in the hearts of men. In this man it is, and in that man ; as a rage or as a terror, it is in all men. Invisible, impalpable ; and yet no black Azrael, with wings spread over half a continent, with sword sweeping from sea to sea, could be a truer Reality. To explain, what is called explaining, the march of this Revolutionary Government, be no task of ours. Men cannot explain it. A paralytic Couthon, asking in the Jacobins, ' What hast thou done to be hanged if Counter-Revolution should arrive ? ' a sombre Saint-Just, not yet six-and-twenty, declaring that ' for Revolutionists there is no rest but in the tomb ' ; a seagreen Robespierre converted into vinegar and gall ; much more an Amar and Vadier, a CoUot and Billaud : to inquire what thoughts, predetermination or prevision, might be in the head of these men ! Record of their thought remains not ; Death and Darkness have swept it out utterly. Nay, if we even had their thought, all that they could have articu- lately spoken to us, how insignificant a fraction were that of the Thing which realised itself, which decreed itself, on signal given by them ! As has been said more than once, this Revolutionary Government is not a self-conscious but a blind fatal one. Each man, enveloped in his ambient-atmo- sphere THE WHIFF OF GEAPESHOT. THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 381 sphere of revolutionary fanatic Madness, rushes on, impelled CHAP. I and impelling ; and has become a blind brute Force ; no March 1794 rest for him but in the grave ! Darkness and the mystery ^^"' ^' ^'"''^ of horrid cruelty cover it for us, in History ; as they did in Nature. The chaotic Thunder-cloud, with its pitchy black, and its tumult of dazzling jagged fire, in a world all electric : thou wilt not undertake to show how that comported itself, — what the secrets of its dark womb were ; from what sources, with what specialties, the lightning it held did, in confused brightness of terror, strike forth, destructive and self-destructive, till it ended ? Like a Blackness naturally of Erebus, which by will of Providence had for once mounted itself into dominion and the Azure : is not this properly the nature of Sansculottism consummating itself ? Of which Erebus Blackness be it enough to discern that this and the other dazzling fire-bolt, dazzling fire-torrent, does by small Volition and great Necessity, verily issue, — in such and such succession ; destructive so and so, self-destructive so and so : till it end. Royalism is extinct ; ' sunk,' as they say, ' in the mud of the Loire ' ; Republicanism dominates without and within : what, therefore, on the 15th day of March 1794, is this ? Arrestment, sudden really aS a bolt out of the Blue, has hit strange victims : Hebert Pere Duchesne, Bibliopolist Momoro, Clerk Vincent, General Ronsin ; high Cordelier Patriots, red- capped Magistrates of Paris, Worshippers of Reason, Com- manders of Revolutionary Army ! Eight short days ago, their Cordelier Club was loud, and louder than ever, with Patriot denunciations. Hebert Pere Duchesne had ' held his tongue and his heart these two months, at sight of Moderates, Crypto- Aristocrats, Camilles, Sc6Urats in the Convention itself : but could not do it any longer ; would, if other remedy were not, invoke the sacred right of Insurrection.' So spake Hebert in Cordelier Session ; with vivats, till the roofs rang again.^ Eight short days ago ; and now already ! They rub their eyes : it is no dream ; they find themselves in the Luxembourg. Goose Gobel too ; and they that burnt Churches ! Chaumette himself, potent Procto-eur, Agent National as they now call it, who could ' recognise the Suspect by the very face of them,' he lingers but three days ; on the third day he too is hurled ' Moniteur, du 17 Ventose (7th March 1794). in. 382 THERMIDOR BOOK VI in. Most chopfallen, blue, enters the National Agent this March 1794 Limbo whither he has sent so many. Prisoners crowd round, car e, Vent.) gjjjjj^g a,nd jecring ; ' Sublime National Agent,' says one, ' in virtue of thy immortal Proclamation, lo there ! I am suspect, thou art suspect, he is suspect, we are suspect, ye are suspect, they are suspect ' ! The meaning of these things ? Meaning ! It is a Plot ; Plot of the most extensive ramifications ; which, however, Barr^re holds the threads of. Such Church-burning and scandalous masquerades of Atheism, fit to make the Revolu- tion odious : where indeed could they originate but in the gold of Pitt ? Pitt indubitably, as Preternatural Insight will teach one, did hire this Faction of Enrages, to play their fan- tastic tricks ; to roar in their Cordeliers Club about Moderatism ; to print their Pere Duchesne ; worship skyblue Reason in red nightcap ; rob Altars, — and bring the spoil to us ! Still more indubitable, visible to the mere bodily sight, is this : that the Cordeliers Club sits pale, with anger and terror ; and has ' veiled the Rights of Man,' — without effect. Like- wise that the Jacobins are in considerable confusion ; busy ' purging themselves, s' Spur ant,' as in times of Plot and public Calamity they have repeatedly had to do. Not even Camille Desmoulins but has given offence : nay there have risen mur- murs against Danton himseM ; though he bellowed them down, and Robespierre finished the matter by ' embracing him in the Tribune.' Whom shall the Republic and a jealous Mother Society trust ? In these times of temptation, of Preternatural Insight ! For there are Factions of the Stranger, ' de Vetranger,' Factions of Moderates, of Enraged ; all manner of Factions : we walk in a world of Plots ; strings universally spread, of deadly gins and falltraps, baited by the gold of Pitt ! Clootz, Speaker of Mankind so-called, with his Evidences of Mahometan Religion, and babble of Universal Republic, him an incorruptible Robes- pierre has purged away. Baron Clootz, and Paine rebeUious Needleman lie, these two months, in the Luxembourg ; limbs of the Faction de Vetranger. Representative Ph^lippeaux is purged out : he came back from La Vendee with an ill report in his mouth against rogue Rossignol, and our method of war- fare there. Recant it, O Ph^lippeaux, we entreat thee ! Phehppeaux will not recant ; and is purged out. Representa- tive THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 383 (Year 2, Vent.) tive Fabre d'Eglantine, famed Nomenclator of Romme's CHAP. I Calendar, is purged out ; nay, is cast into the Luxembourg : March 1794 accused of Legislative Swindling ' in regard to moneys of the India Company.' There with his Chabots, Bazires, guilty of the like, let Fabre wait his destiny. And Westermann friend of Danton, he who led the Marseillese on the Tenth of August, and fought well in La Vendee, but spoke not well of rogue Rossignol, is purged out. Lucky, if he too go not to the Luxem- bourg. And your Prolys, Guzmans, of the Faction of the Stranger, they have gone ; Pereyra, though he fled, is gone, ' taken in the disguise of a Tavern Cook.' I am suspect, thou art suspect, he is sus- pect ! — The great heart of Danton is weary of it. Danton is gone to native Arcis, for a little breathing-time of peace : Away, black Arachne - webs, thou world of Fury, Terror, and Suspicion ; wel- come, thou everlasting Mother, with thy spring greenness, thy kind household loves and memories ; true art thou, were all else untrue ! CAMILLE DESMOULINS. The great Titan walks silent, by the banks of the murmuring Aube, in young native haunts that knew him when a boy ; wonders what the end of these things may be. But strangest of all, Camille Desmoulins is purged out. Coutfaon gave as a test in regard to Jacobin purgation the question, ' What hast thou done to be hanged if Counter- Revolution should arrive ? ' Yet Camille, who could so well answer this question, is purged out ! The truth is, Camille, early in December last, began pubhshing a new Journal, or Series of Pamphlets, entitled the Vieux Cordelier, Old Cordelier. Camille, not afraid at one time to ' embrace Liberty on a heap of 384 THERMIDOR BOOK VI of dead bodies,' begins to ask now. Whether among so many- March 24, arresting and punishing Committees, there ought not to be a 1794 ' Committee of Mercy ' ? Saint-Just, he observes, is an ex- tremely solemn young Republican, who ' carries his head as if it were a Saint- Sacrement,' adorable Hostie or divine Real- Presence ! Sharply enough, this old Cordelier, — Danton and he were of the earliest primary Cordeliers, — shoots his glitter- ing war-shafts into your new Cordeliers, your Heberts, Momoros, with their brawling brutalities and despicabilities ; say, as the Sun-god (for poor Camille is a Poet) shot into that Python Serpent sprung of mud. Whereat, as was natural, the Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe amazingly ; and threaten ' sacred right of Insurrection ' ; — and, as we saw, get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit, dexterity and light graceful poignancy, Camille, trans- lating ' out of Tacitus, from the Reign of Tiberius,' pricks into the Law of the Suspect itself ; making it odious ! Twice, in the Decade, his wild Leaves issue ; full of wit, nay of humour, of harmonious ingenuity and insight, — one of the strangest phenomena of that dark time ; and smite, in their wild-sparkling way, at various monstrosities, Saint-Sacrament heads, and Juggernaut idols, in a rather reckless manner. To the great joy of Josephine Beauharnais, and the other Five-thousand and odd Suspect, who fill the Twelve Houses of Arrest ; on whom a ray of hope dawns ! Robespierre, at first appro- batory, knew not at last what to think ; then thought, with his Jacobins, that Camille must be expelled. A man of true Revolutionary spirit, this Camille ; but with the unwisest sallies ; whom Aristocrats and Moderates have the art to corrupt ! Jacobinism is in uttermost crisis and struggle ; enmeshed wholly in plots, corruptibilities, neck-gins and baited falltraps of Pitt ennemi du genre humain. Camille' s First Number begins with ' O Pitt ! ' — his last is dated 15 Pluviose, Year 2, 3d February 1794 ; and ends with these words of Montezuma's, ' Les dieux out soif, The gods are athirst.' Be this as it may, the Hebertists he in Prison only some nine days. On the 24th of March, therefore, the Revolution Tumbrils carry through that Life-tumult a new cargo : Hebert, Vincent, Momoro, Ronsin, Nineteen of them in all ; with whom, curious enough, sits Clootz Speaker of Mankind. They have DANTON, NO WEAKNESS 385 have been massed swiftly into a lump, this miscellany of Non- CHAP. I descripts ; and travel now their last road. No help. They March 24, too must ' look through the little window ' ; they too ' must ,„ ^^^* ° , , (Vear 2. Germ. 4) sneeze into the sack, eternuer dans le sac ; as they have done to- others, so is it done to them. Sainte-Guillotine, meseems, • is worse than the old Saints of Superstition ; a man-devouring Saint ? Clootz, still with an air of polished sarcasm, endeavours to jest, to offer cheering ' arguments of Materialism ' ; he requested to be executed last, ' in order to establish certain principles,' — which hitherto, I think, Philosophy has got no good of. General Ronsin too, he still looks forth with some air of defiance, eye of command : the rest are sunk in a stony paleness of despair. Momoro, poor Bibliopolist, no Agrarian Law yet realised, — they might as well have hanged thee at Evreux, twenty months ago, when Girondin Buzot hindered them. Hebert Pere Duchesne shall never in this world rise in sacred right of insurrection ; he sits there low enough, head sunk on breast ; Red Nightcaps shouting round him, in frightful parody of his Newspaper Articles, ' Grand choler of the P^re Duchesne ! ' Thus perish they ; the sack receives all their heads. Through some section of History, Nineteen spectre-chimeras shall ilit, squeaking and gibbering ; till Oblivion swallow them. In the course of a week, the Revolutionary Army itself is disbanded ; the General having become spectral. This Faction of Rabids, therefore, is also purged from the Republican soil ; here also the baited falltraps of that Pitt have been wrenched up harmless ; and anew there is joy over a plot Discovered. The Revolution, then, is verily devouring its own children ? All Anarchy, by the nature of it, is not only destructive but self -destructive. CHAPTER II DANTON, NO WEAKNESS Danton meanwhile has been pressingly sent for from Arcis : he must return instantly, cried Camille, cried Phelippeaux and Friends, who scented danger in the wind. Danger enough ! A Danton, a Robespierre, chief-products of a victorious Revolu- VOL. II. 2 B tion, 386 THERMIDOR BOOK VI tion, are now arrived in immediate front of one another ; must March 31, ascertain how they will live together, rule together. One (Year G conccives easily the deep mutual incompatibility that divided these two : with what terror of feminine hatred the poor sea- green Formula looked at the monstrous colossal Reality, and grew greener to behold him ; — the Reality, again, struggling to think no ill of a chief -product of the Revolution ; yet feeling at bottom that such chief-product was little other than a chief windbag, blown large by Popular air ; not a man, with the heart of a man, but a poor spasmodic incorruptible pedant, with a logic-formula instead of heart ; of Jesuit or Methodist- Parson nature ; full of sincere-cant, incorruptibility, of viru- lence, poltroonery ; barren as the eastwind ! Two such chief- products are too much for one Revolution. Friends, trembling at the results of a quarrel on their part, brought them to meet, ' It is right,' said Danton, swallowing much indignation, ' to repress the Royalists : but we should not strike except where it is useful to the Republic ; we should not confound the innocent and the guilty.' — ' And who told you,' replied Robespierre with a poisonous look, ' that one innocent person had perished ? ' — ' Quoi,' said Danton, turning round to Friend Paris self-named Fabricius, Juryman in the Revolutionary Tribunal : ' Quoi, not one innocent ? What sayest thou of it, Fabricius ? ' ^—Friends, Westermann, this Paris and others urged him to show himself, to ascend the Tribune and act. The man Danton was not prone to show himself ; to act, or uproar for his own safety. A man of care- less, large, hoping nature ; a large nature that could rest : he would sit whole hours, they say, hearing Camille talk, and hked nothing so well. Friends urged him to fly ; his Wife urged him : ' Whither fly ? ' answered he : 'If freed France cast me out, there are only dungeons for me elsewhere. One carries not his country with him at the sole of his shoe ! ' The man Danton sat still. Not even the arrestment of Friend Herault, a member of Salut, yet arrested by Salut, can rouse Danton.— On the night of the 30th of March Juryman Paris came rushing in ; haste looking through his eyes : A clerk of the Salut Conunittee had told him Danton' s warrant was made out, he is to be arrested this very night ! Entreaties there are and trepidation, of poor Wife, of Paris and Friends : ^ Biographie d(s Ministres, § Danton. Danton DANTON, NO WEAKNESS 387 Danton sat silent for a while ; then answered, ' lis n'oseraient, CHAP. II They dare not ' ; and would take no measures. Murmuring March 31, ' They dare not,' he goes to sleep as usual. CYearz cetm ni Ajid yet, on the morrow morning, strange rumour spreads over Paris City : Danton, Camille, Phelippeaux, Lacroix have been arrested overnight ! It is verily so : the corridors of the Luxembourg were all crowded, Prisoners crowding forth to see this giant of the Revolution enter among them. ' Messieurs,' said Danton politely, ' I hoped soon to have got you all out of this : but here I am myself ; and one sees not where it will end,' — Rumour may spread over Paris : the Convention clusters itself into groups ; wide-eyed, whispering ' Danton arrested ! ' Who then is safe ? Legendre, mounting the Tribune, utters, at his own peril, a feeble word for him ; moving that he be heard at that Bar before indictment ; but Robespierre frowns him down : ' Did you hear Chabot or Bazire ? Would you have two weights and measures ? ' Legendre cowers low : Danton, like the others, must take his doom. Danton' s Prison-thoughts were curious to have ; but are not given in any quantity : indeed few such remarkable men have been left so obscure to us as this Titan of the Revolution. He was heard to ejaculate : ' This time twelvemonth, I was moving the creation of that same Revolutionary Tribunal. I crave pardon for it of God and man. They are all Brothers Cain ; Brissot would have had me guillotined as Robespierre now will. I leave the whole business in a frightful welter (gdchis epouvantable) : not one of them understands anything of government. Robespierre will follow me ; I drag down Robespierre. O, it were better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with governing of men.' — Camille' s young beautiful Wife, who had made him rich not in money alone, hovers round the Luxembourg, like a disembodied spirit, day and night. Camille' s stolen letters to her still exist ; stained with the marks of his tears.^ ' I carry my head like a Saint-Sacra- ment ? ' so Saint-Just was heard to mutter : ' perhaps he will carry his like a Saint-Denis.' Unhappy Danton, thou still unhappier light Camille, once light Procureur de la Lanterne, ye also have arrived, then, at ' Aper^us sur Camille Desmoulins (in Vieux Cordelier, Paris, 1825), pp. 1-29. the 388 THERMIDOR BOOK VI the Bourne of Creation, where, hke Ulysses Polytlas at the April 2, 1794 limit and utmost Gades of his voyage, gazing into that dim (Year2,Germ.i3) ^g^g^g beyoud Crcation, a man does see the Shade of his Mother, pale, ineffectual ; — and days when his Mother nursed and wrapped him are ail-too sternly contrasted with this day ! Danton, Camille, Herault, Westermann, and the others, very strangely massed up with Bazires, Swindler Chabots, Fabre d'Eglantines, Banker Freys, a most motley Batch, ' Fournee,' as such things will be called, stand ranked at the Bar of Tinville. It is the 2nd of April 1794. Danton has had but three days to lie in Prison ; for the time presses. What is your name ? place of abode ? and the like, Fou- quier asks ; according to formality. ' My name is Danton,' answers he ; 'a name tolerably known in the Revolution : my abode will soon be Annihilation {dans le N^ant) ; but I shall live in the Pantheon of History.' A man will endeavour to say something forcible, be it by nature or not ! Herault mentions epigrammatically that he ' sat in this Hall, and was detested of Parlementeers.' Camille makes answer, ' My age is that of the bon Sansculotte Jesus ; an age fatal to Revolu- tionists.' O Camille, Camille ! And yet in that Divine Trans- action, let us say, there did lie, among other things, the fatalest Reproof ever uttered here below to Worldly Right-honourable- ness ; ' the highest fact,' so devout Novalis calls it, ' in the Rights of Man.' Camille's real age, it would seem, is thirty- four. Danton is one year older. Some five months ago, the Trial of the Twenty-two Girondins was the greatest that Fouquier had then done. But here is a still greater to do ; a thing which tasks the whole faculty of Fouquier ; which makes the very heart of him waver. For it is the voice of Danton that reverberates now from these domes ; in passionate words, piercing with their wild sincerity, winged with wrath. Your best Witnesses he shivers into ruin at one stroke. He demands that the Committee-men them- selves come as Witnesses, as Accusers ; he ' will cover them with ignominy.' He raises his huge stature, he shakes his huge black head, fire flashes from the eyes of him, — piercing to all Republican hearts : so that the very Galleries, though we filled them by ticket, murmur sympathy ; and are like to burst down and raise the People, and deliver him ! He com- plains loudly that he is classed with Chabots, with swindling Stockjobbers ; DANTON, NO WEAKNESS 389 Stockjobbers ; that his Indictment is a Ust of platitudes and CHAP. II horrors. ' Danton hidden on the 10th of August ? ' reverberates April 2, 1794 he, with the roar of a Hon in the toils : 'where are the men^^""''^°™'^^ that had to press Danton to show himself, that day ? Where are these high-gifted souls of whom he borrowed energy ? Let them appear, these Accusers of mine : I have all the clearness of my self-possession when I demand them. I will unmask the three shallow scoundrels,' les trois plats coquins, Saint-Just, Couthon, Lebas, ' who fawn on Robespierre, and lead him towards his destruction. Let them produce themselves here ; I will plunge them into Nothingness, out of which they ought never to have risen.' The agitated President agitates his bell ; enjoins calmness, in a vehement manner : ' What is it to thee how I defend myself ? ' cries the other : ' the right of dooming me is thine always. The voice of a man speaking for his honour and his life may well drown the jingling of thy bell ! ' Thus Danton, higher and higher ; till the lion-voice of him ' dies away in his throat ' : speech will not utter what is in that man. The Galleries murmur ominously ; the first day's Session is over. O Tinville, President Herman, what will ye do ? They have two days more of it, by strictest Revolutionary Law. The Galleries already murmur. If this Danton were to burst your mesh-work ! — Very curious indeed to consider. It turns on a hair : and what a hoitytoity were there, Justice and Culprit changing places ; and the whole History of France running changed ! For in France there is this Danton only that could still try to govern France. He only, the wild amorphous Titan ; — and perhaps that other olive-complexioned individual, the Artillery-officer at Toulon, whom we left pushing his fortune in the South ? On the evening of the second day, matters looking not better but worse and worse, Fouquier and Herman, distraction in their aspect, rush over to Salut Public. What is to be done ? Salut Public rapidly concocts a new Decree ; whereby if men ' insult Justice,' they may be ' thrown out of the Debates.' For indeed, withal, is there not ' a Plot in the Luxembourg Prison ' ? Ci-devant General Dillon, and others of the Suspect, plotting with Camille's Wife to distribute assignats ; to force the Prisons, overset the Republic ? Citizen Lafiotte, himself Suspect but desiring enfranchisement, has reported said Plot for 390 THERMIDOR BOOK VI for us : — a report that may bear fruit ! Enough, on the morrow April 5, 1794 morning, an obedient Convention passes this Decree, Salut (Year2,Germ.z6)j,^gj^gg off with it to the aid of TinviUc, reduced now almost to extremities. And so, Hors de Debats, Out of the Debates, ye insolents ! Policemen, do your duty ! In such manner, with a dead-lift effort Salut, Tinville, Herman, Leroi Dix-Aout, LUCILE DESMOULINS. and all stanch jurymen setting heart and shoulder to it, the Jury becomes ' sufficiently instructed ' ; Sentence is passed, is sent by an Official, and torn and trampled on : Death this day. It is the 5th of April 1794. Camille's poor Wife may cease hovering about this Prison. Nay let her kiss her. poor children ; and prepare to enter it, and to follow ! — Danton carried a high look in the Death-cart. Not so Camille : THE TUMBRILS 391 Camille : it is but one week, and all is so topsyturvied ; angel CHAP. II Wife left weeping ; love, riches, revolutionary fame, left all at April 10, the Prison-gate ; carnivorous Rabble now howling round. ,„ ^^^'^ Pajpable, and yet incredible ; like a madman's dream ! Camille struggles and writhes ; his shoulders shuffle the loose coat off them, which hangs knotted, the hands tied : ' Calm, my friend,' said Danton ; ' heed not that vile canaille (laissez Id cette vile canaille).' At the foot of the Scaffold, Danton was heard to ejaculate : ' O my Wife, my well-beloved, I shall never see thee more, then ! ' — but, interrupting himself : ' Danton, no weakness ! ' He said to Herault-Sechelles stepping forward to embrace him : ' Our heads will meet there,' in the Headsman's sack. His last words were to Samson the Headsman himself : ' Thou wilt show my head to the people ; it is worth showing.' So passes, like a gigantic mass of valour, ostentation, fury, affection and wild revolutionary force and manhood, this Danton, to his unknown home. He was of Arcis-sur-Aube ; born of ' good farmer-people ' there. He had many sins ; but one worst sin he had not, that of Cant. No hollow Formalist, deceptive and self-deceptive, ghastly to the natural sense, was this ; but a very Man : with all his dross he was a Man ; fiery- real, from the great fire-bosom of Nature herself. He saved France from Brunswick ; he walked straight his own wild road, whither it led him. He may live for some generations in the memory of men. CHAPTER III THE TUMBRILS Next week, it is still but the 10th of April, there comes a new Nineteen ; Chaumette, Gobel, Hebert's Widow, the Widow of Camille : these also roll their fated journey ; black Death devours them. Mean Hubert's Widow was weeping, Camille's Widow tried to speak comfort to her. O ye kind Heavens, azure, beautiful, eternal behind your tempests and Time-clouds, is there not pity in store for all ! Gobel, it seems, was repentant ; he begged absolution of a Priest ; died as a Gobel best could. For Anaxagoras Chaumette, the sleek head now stripped of its bonnet rouge, what hope is there ? Unless Death (Year 2, Flor. 3) 392 THERMIDOR BOOK VI Death were ' an eternal sleep ' ? Wretched Anaxagoras, God April 22, shall judge thee, not I. ^'^^^ ^ Hebert, therefore, is gone, and the Hebertists ; they that robbed Churches, and adored blue Reason in red nightcap. Great Danton, and the Dantonists ; they also are gone. Down to the catacombs ; they are become silent men ! Let no Paris Municipahty, no Sect or Party of this hue or that, resist the will of Robespierre and Salut. Mayor Pache, not prompt enough in denouncing these Pitt Plots, may congratulate about them now. Never so heartily ; it skills not ! His course likewise is to the Luxembourg. We appoint one Fleuriot- Lescot Interim-Mayor in his stead : an ' architect from Belgium,' they say, this Fleuriot ; he is a man one can depend on. Our new Agent-National is Payan, lately Juryman ; whose cynosure also is Robespierre. Thus then, we perceive, this confusedly electric Erebus-cloud of Revolutionary Government has altered its shape somewhat. Two masses, or wings, belonging to it ; an over-electric mass of Cordelier Rabids, and an under-electric of Dantonist Moderates and Clemency-men, — these two masses, shooting bolts at one another, so to speak, have annihilated one another. For the Erebus-cloud, as we often remark, is of suicidal nature ; and, in jagged irregularity, darts its lightning withal into itself. But now these two discrepant masses being mutually anni- hilated, it is as if the Erebus-cloud had got to internal com- posure ; and did only pour its hellfire lightning on the World that lay under it. In plain words. Terror of the Guillotine was never terrible till now. Systole, diastole, swift and ever swifter goes the Axe of Samson. Indictments cease by degrees to have so much as plausibility : Fouquier chooses from the Twelve Houses of Arrest what he calls Batches, ' Fournies,' a score or more at a time ; his Jurymen are charged to make feu de file, file-firing till the ground be clear. Citizen Laflotte's report of Plot in the Luxembourg is verily bearing fruit ! If no speakable charge exist against a man, or Batch of men, Fouquier has always this : a Plot in the Prison. Swift and ever swifter goes Samson ; up, finally to threescore and more at a Batch. It is the highday of Death : none but the Dead return not. O dusky D'Espremenil, what a day is this the 22d of April, thy last day ! The Palais Hall here is the same stone Hall, where THE TUMBRILS 393 where thou, five years ago, stoodest perorating, amid endless CHAP. Ill pathos of rebellious Parlement, in the gray of the morning ; April 22, bound to march with D'Agoust to the Isles of Hieres. The ^„ ^''^^ , o . (Year 2, Flor. 3) stones are the same stones : but the rest. Men, Rebellion, Pathos, Peroration, see, it has all fled, like a gibbering troop of ghosts, like the phantasms of a dying brain. With D'Espre- menil, in the same hne of Tumbrils, goes the mournfulest medley, Chapelier goes, ci-devant popular President of the Constituent ; whom the Menads and Maillard met in his carriage, on the Versailles Road. Thouret likewise, ci-devant President, father of the Constitutional Law-acts ; he whom we heard saying, long since, with a loud voice, ' The Constituent Assembly has fulfilled its mission ! ' And the noble old Malesherbes, who defended Louis and could not speak, like a gray old rock dissolving into sudden water : he journeys here now, with his kindred, daughters, sons, and grandsons, his Lamoignons, Chateaubriands ; silent, towards Death. — One young Chateaubriand alone is wandering amid the Natchez, by the roar of Niagara Falls, the moan of endless forests : Welcome thou great Nature, savage, but not false, not un- kind, unmotherly ; no Formula thou, or rabid jangle of Hypo- thesis, Parliamentary Eloquence, Constitution-building and the Guillotine ; speak thou to me, O Mother, and sing my sick heart thy mystic everlasting lullaby-song, and let all the rest be far ! — Another row of Tumbrils we must notice : that which holds Elizabeth, the Sister of Louis. Her Trial was like the rest ; for Plots, for Plots. She was among the kindliest, most innocent of women. There sat with her, amid four-and-twenty others, a once timorous Marchioness de Crussol ; courageous now ; expressing towards her the liveliest loyalty. At the foot of the Scaffold, Elizabeth with tears in her eyes thanked this Marchioness ; said she was grieved she could not reward her. ' Ah, Madame, would your Royal Highness deign to embrace me, my wishes were complete ! ' — ' Right willingly. Marquise de Crussol, and with my whole heart.' ^ Thus they : at the foot of the Scaffold. The Royal Family is now reduced to two : a girl and a little boy. The boy, once named Dauphin, was taken from his Mother while she yet lived ; and given to one Simon, by trade a Cordwainer, on service then about the ' Montgaillard, iv. 200. Temple- 394 THERMIDOR BOOK VI Temple-Prison, to bring him up in principles of Sansctilottism. April 22, Simon taught him to drink, to swear, to sing the carmagnole. ^^^^ Simon is now gone to the Municipality : and the poor boy, hidden in a tower of the Temple, from which in his fright and PRINCESS ELIZABETH. bewilderment and early decrepitude he wishes not to stir out, lies perishing, ' his shirt not changed for six months ' ; amid squalor and darkness, lamentably,^ — so as none but poor Factory Children and the like are wont to perish, and not be lamented ! The Spring sends its green leaves and bright weather, bright 1 Duchesse d'Angouleme, Caftiviti a la Tour du Temple, pp, 37-71. May, THE TUMBRILS 395 May, brighter than ever : Death pauses not. Lavoisier, famed CHAP. Ill Chemist, shall die and not live : Chemist Lavoisier was Farmer- April 22, General Lavoisier too, and now ' all the Farmers-General are ,„ ^'^^^ ^ (Year z, Flor. 3) arrested ' ; all, and shall give an account of their moneys and incomings ; and die for ' putting water in the tobacco ' they sold.^ Lavoisier begged a fortnight more of life, to finish LAVOISIER. some experiments : but ' the Republic does not need such ' ; the axe naust do its work. Cynic Chamfort, reading these inscriptions of Brotherhood or Death, says, ' it is a Brother- hood of Cain ' : arrested, then liberated ; then about to be arrested again, this Chamfort cuts and slashes himself with frantic uncertain hand ; gains, not without difficulty, the refuge of death. Condorcet has lurked deep, these many months ; Argus-eyes watching and searching for him. His ' Tribunal Rivolutionnairt du 8 Mai 1794 {Moniitur, No. 231). concealment 396 THERMIDOR BOOK VI concealment is become dangerous to others and himself ; he May 1794 has to fly again, to skulk, round Paris, in thickets and stone- (Yeari, Fior.) qya,rries. And so at the Village of Clamars, one bleared May morning, there enters a Figure ragged, rough-bearded, hunger- stricken ; asks breakfast in the tavern there. Suspect, by the look of him ! ' Servant out of place, sayest thou ? ' Com- mittee-President of Forty-Sous finds a Latin Horace on him : ' Art not thou one of those Ci-devants that were wont to keep servants ? Suspect ! ' He is haled forthwith, breakfast un- finished, towards Bourg-la-Reine, on foot : he faints with exhaustion ; is set on a peasant's horse ; is flung into his damp prison-cell : on the morrow, recollecting him, you enter ; Con- dorcet lies dead on the floor. They die fast, and disappear : the Notabihties of France disappear, one after one, like lights in a Theatre, which you are snuffing out. Under which circumstances, is it not singular, and almost touching, to see Paris City drawn out, in the meek May nights, in civic ceremony, which they call ' Souper Fraternel,' Brotherly Supper ? Spontaneous, or partially spontaneous, in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth nights of this May month, it is seen. Along the Rue Saint-Honore, and main Streets and Spaces, each Citoyen brings forth what of supper the stingy Maximum has yielded him, to the open air ; joins it to his neighbour's supper ; and with common table, cheerful light burning fre- quent, and what due modicum of cut-glass and other garnish and relish is convenient, they eat frugally together, under the kind stars.^ See it, O Night ! With cheerfully pledged wine-cup, hobnobbing to the Reign of Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood, with their wives in best ribands, with their little ones romping round, the Citoyens, in frugal Love-feast, sit there. Night in her wide empire sees nothing similar. O my brothers, why is the reign of Brotherhood not come ! It is come, it shall have come, say the Citoyens frugally hob- nobbing. — Ah me ! these everlasting stars, do they not look down ' like glistening eyes, bright with immortal pity, over the lot of man ' ! — One lamentable thing, however, is, that individuals will attempt assassination — of Representatives of the People. ' Tableaux de la Revolution, § Soupers Fraternels ; Mercier, ii. 150. Representative I^HE TUMBRILS 397 Representative CoUot, Member even of Salut, returning home, ' about one in the morning,' probably touched with hquor, as he is apt to be, meets on the stairs the cry ' ScMrat ! ' and also the snap of a pistol : which latter flashes in the pan ; disclosing to him, momentarily, a pair of truculent saucer-eyes, swart grim-clenched countenance ; recognisable as that of our CHAP. Ill May 1794 (Year 2, Flor.) COLLOT DHEKBOIS. little fellow-lodger, Citoyen Amiral, formerly ' a clerk in the Lotteries.' Collot shouts Murder, with lungs fit to awaken all the Rue Favart ; Amiral snaps a second time ; a second time flashes in the pan ; then darts up into his apartment ; and, after there firing, still with inadequate effect, one musket at himself and another at his captor, is clutched and locked in Prison.^ An indignant little man this Amiral, of Southern ' Riouffe, p. 73 ; Deux Amis, xii. 298-302. temper (Year 2, Flor.) 398 THERMIDOR BOOK VI temper and complexion, of ' considerable muscular force.' He May 1794 denies not that he meant to ' purge France of a Tyrant ' ; nay avows that he had an eye to the Incorruptible himself, but took Collot as more convenient ! Rumour enough hereupon ; heaven-high congratulation of Collot, fraternal embracing, at the Jacobins and elsewhere. And yet, it would seem, the assassin mood proves catching. Two days more, it is still but the 23d of May, and towards nine in the evening, Cecile Renault, Paper-dealer's daughter, a young woman of soft blooming look, presents herself at the Cabinet-maker's in the Rue Saint-Honore ; desires to see Robespierre. Robespierre cannot be seen ; she grumbles irreverently. They lay hold of her. She has left a basket in a shop hard by : in the basket are female change of raiment and two knives ! Poor Cecile, examined by Committee, de- clares she ' wanted to see what a tyrant was like ' ; the change of raiment was ' for my own use in the place I am surely going to.' — ' What place ? ' — ' Prison ; and then the Guillotine,' answered she. — Such things come of Charlotte Corday ; in a people prone to imitation, and monomania ! Swart choleric men try Charlotte's feat, and their pistols miss fire ; soft bloom- ing young women try it, and, only half-resolute, leave their knives in a shop. O Pitt, and ye Faction of the Stranger, Shall the Republic never have rest ; but be torn continually by baited springes, by wires of explosive spring-guns ? Swart Amiral, fair young Cecile, and all that knew them, and many that did not know them, lie locked, waiting the scrutiny of Tinville. CHAPTER IV MUMBO-JUMBO But on the day they call Dicadi, New-Sabbath, 20 Prairial, 8th June by old style, what thing is this going forward in the Jardin National, whilom Tuileries Garden ? All the world is there, in hohday clothes : ^ foul linen went out with the Hebertists ; nay Robespierre, for one, would never once countenance that ; but went always elegant and ' Vilate, Causes SecrHes de la Rivolution dii 9 Thermidor. frizzled, MUMBQ-JUMBO 399 frizzled, not without vanity even, — and had his room hung CHAP. IV round with seagreen Portraits and Busts. In holiday clothes, June 8, 1794 we say, are the innumerable Citoyens and Citoyennes : t^e '^'^"' ^'"'' "°' weather is of the brightest ; cheerful expectation lights all countenances. Juryman Vilate gives breakfast to many a Deputy, in his official Apartment, in the Pavilion ci-devant of Flora ; rejoices in the bright-looking multitudes, in the brightness of leafy June, in the auspicious DScadi, or New- Sabbath. This day, if it please Heaven, we are to have, on improved Anti-Chaumette principles : a New Religion. Catholicism being burned out, and Reason-worship guillo- tined, was there not need of one ? Incorruptible Robespierre, not unlike the Ancients, as Legislator of a free people, will now also be Priest and Prophet. He has donned his sky-blue coat, made for the occasion ; white silk waistcoat broidered with silver, black silk breeches, white stockings, shoe-buckles of gold. He is President of the Convention ; he has made the Convention decree, so they name it, dicriter the ' Existence of the Supreme Being,' and likewise ' ce principe consolateur of the Immortality of the Soul.' These consolatory principles, the basis of rational Republican Religion, are getting decreed ; and here, on this blessed BScadi, by help of Heaven and Painter DaA/id, is to be our first act of worship. See, accordingly, how after Decree passed, and what has been called ' the scraggiest Prophetic Discourse ever uttered by man,' — Mahomet Robespierre, in sky-blue coat and black breeches, frizzled and powdered to periection, bearing in his hand a bouquet of flowers and wheat-ears, issues proudly from the Convention Hall ; Convention following him, yet, as is remarked, with an interval. Amphitheatre has been raised, or at least Monticule or Elevation ; hideous Statues of Atheism, Anarchy and suchlike, thanks to Heaven and Painter David, strike abhorrence into the heart. Unluckily, however, our Monticule is too small. On the top of it not half of us can stand ; wherefore there arises indecent shoving, nay treasonous irreverent growling. Peace, thou Bourdon de I'Oise ; peace, or it may be worse for thee ! The seagreen Pontiff takes a torch. Painter David handing it ; mouths some other froth-rant of vocables, which happily one cannot hear ; strides resolutely forward, in sight of expectant France ; 400 THERMIDOR BOOK VI France ; sets his torch to Atheism and Company, which are June 1794 bui; made of pasteboard steeped in turpentine. They burn up rapidly; and, from within, there rises 'by machinery,' an incombustible Statue of Wisdom, which, by ill hap, gets besmoked a little ; but does stand there visible in as serene attitude as it can. And then ? Why, then, there is other Processioning, scraggy Discoursing, and — this is our Feast of the Eire Sup- reme ; our new Religion, better or worse, is come ! — Look at it one moment, O Reader, not two. The shabbiest page of Human Annals : or is there, that thou wottest of, one shabbier ? Mumbo-Jumbo of the African woods to me seems venerable beside this new Deity of Robespierre ; for this is a conscious Mumbo-Jumbo, and knows that he is machinery. O seagreen Prophet, unhappiest of windbags blown nigh to bursting, what distracted Chimera among realities art thou growing to ! This then, this common pitch-link for artificial fireworks of turpentine and pasteboard ; this is the miraculous Aaron's Rod thou wilt stretch over a hag-ridden hell-ridden France, and bid her plagues cease ? Vanish, thou and it ! — ' Avec ton Etre SuprSme,' said Billaud, ' tu commences m'embiter : With thy Etre Supreme thou beginnest to be a bore to me.' ^ Catherine Theot, on the other hand, ' an ancient serving-maid seventy-nine years of age,' inured to Prophecy and the Bastille from of old, sits in an upper room in the Rue de Contrescarpe, poring over the Book of Revelation, with an eye to Robes- pierre ; finds that this astonishing thrice-potent Maximilien really is the Man spoken of by Prophets, who is to make the Earth young again. With her sit devout old Marchionesses, ci-devant honourable women ; among whom Old-Constituent Dom Gerle, with his addle head, cannot be wanting. They sit there, in the Rue de Contrescarpe ; in mysterious adora- tion : Mumbo is Mumbo, and Robespierre is his Prophet. A conspicuous man this Robespierre. He has his volunteer Body- guard of Tappe-durs, let us say Strike-sharps, fierce Patriots with feruled sticks ; and Jacobins kissing the hem of his gar- ment. He enjoys the admiration of many, the worship of some ; and is well worth the wonder of one and all. ^ See Vilate, Causes Secrkes. (Vilate's Narrative is very curious ; but is not to be taken as true, without sifting ; being, at bottom, in spite of its title, not a Narrative but a Pleading.) The MUMBO-JUMBO 401 The grand question and hope, however, is : Will not this CHAP. IV Feast of the Tuileries Mumbo- Jumbo be a sign perhaps that June 1794 the Guillotine is to abate ? Far enough from that ! Precisely ^^'^"' ^'"'■'> on the second day after it, Couthon, one of the ' three shallow scoundrels,' gets himself lifted into the Tribune ; produces a bundle of papers. Couthon proposes that, as Plots still abound, the Law of the Suspect shall have extension, and Arrestment new vigour and facility. Further, that as in such case business is like to be heavy, our Revolutionary Tribunal too shall have extension ; be divided, say, into Four Tribunals, each with its President, each with its Fouquier or Substitute of Fouquier, all labouring at once, any remnant of shackle or dilatory formality be struck oft : in this way it may perhaps still overtake the work. Such is Couthon' s Decree of the Twenty-second Prairial, famed in those times. At hearing of which Decree, the very Mountain gasped, awestruck ; and one Ruamps ventured to say that if it passed without adjourn- ment and discussion, he, as one Representative, ' would blow his brains out,' Vain saying ! The Incorruptible knit his brows ; spoke a prophetic fateful word or two ; the Law of Prairial is Law ; Ruamps glad to leave his rash brains where they are. Death then, and always Death ! Even so. Fou- quier is enlarging his borders ; making room for Batches of a Hundred and fifty at once ; — getting a Guillotine set up of improved velocity, and to work under cover, in the apart- ment close by. So that Salut itself has to intervene, and forbid him : ' Wilt thou demoralise the Guillotine,' asks Collot reproachfully, ' demoraliser le supplice ' ! There is indeed danger of that ; were not the Republican faith great, it were already done. See, for example, on the 17th of June, what a Batch, Fifty-four at once ! Swart Amiral is here, he of the pistol that missed fire ; young Cecile Renault, with her father, family, entire kith and kin ; the Widow of D'Espremenil ; old M. de Sombreuil of the Invalides, with his Son, — poor old Sombreuil, seventy-three years old, his Daughter saved him in September, and it was but for this. Faction of the Stranger, fifty-four of them ! In red shirts and smocks as Assassins and Faction of the Stranger, they iiit along there ; red baleful Phantasmagory, towards the land of Phantoms. Meanwhile will not the people of the Place de la Revolu- VOL. II. 2 c tion, 402 THERMIDOR BOOK VI tion, the inhabitants along the Rue Saint-Honore, as these June 1794 continual Tumbrils pass, begin to look gloomy ? Republicans car 2, rair. ^^^ havc bowels. Thc Guillotinc is shifted, then again shifted ; finally set up at the remote extremity of the South-east : ^ Suburbs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, it is to be hoped, if they have bowels, have very tough ones. CHAPTER V THE PRISONS It is time now, however, to cast a glance into the Prisons. When Desmoulins moved for his Committee of Mercy, these Twelve Houses of Arrest held five-thousand persons. Continu- ally arriving since then, there have now accumulated twelve- thousand. They are Ci-devants, Royalists ; in far greater part, they are Republicans, of various Girondin, Fayettish, Un-Jacobin colour. Perhaps no Human habitation or Prison ever equalled in squalor, in noisome horror, these Twelve Houses of Arrest. There exist records of personal experience in them. Memoires sur les Prisons; one of the strangest Chapters in the Biography of Man. Very singular to look into it : how a kind of order rises up in all conditions of human existence ; and wherever two or three are gathered together, there are formed modes of exist- ing together, habitudes, observances, nay gracefulnesses, joys ! Citoyen Coittant will explain fully how our lean dinner, of herbs and carrion, was consumed not without politeness and place-aux-dames : how Seigneur and Shoeblack, Duchess and DoU-Tearsheet, flung pell-mell into a heap, ranked themselves according to method : at what hour ' the Citoyennes took to their needlework ' ; and we, yielding the chairs to them, en- deavoured to talk gallantly in a standing posture, or even to sing and harp more or less. Jealousies, enmities, are not wanting ; nor flirtations, of an effective character. Alas, by degrees, even needlework must cease : Plot in the Prison rises, by Citoyen Laflotte and Preternatural Suspicion. Suspicious Municipality snatches from us all implements ; all money and possession, of means or metal, is ruthlessly searched ' Montgaillard, iv. 237. for. (Year z, Prair. THE PRISONS 403 for, in pocket, in pillow and paillasse, and snatched away : CHAP. V red-capped Commissaries entering every cell. Indignation, ^""^ 1^94 temporary desperation, at robbery of its very thimble, fills the gentle heart. Old Nuns shriek shrill discord ; demand to be killed forthwith. No help from shrieking ! Better was that of the two shifty male Citizens, who, eager to preserve an implement or two, were it but a pipe-picker, or needle to darn hose with, determined to defend themselves : by tobacco. Swift then, as your fell Red Caps are heard in the Corridor rummaging and slamming, the two Citoyens light their pipes, and begin smoking. Thick darkness envelops them. The Red Nightcaps, opening the cell, breathe but one mouthful ; burst forth into chorus of barking and coughing. ' Quoi, Messieurs,' cry the two Citoyens, ' you don't smoke ? Is the pipe disagreeable ? Est-ce que vous ne jumez pas ? ' But the Red Nightcaps have fled, with slight search : ' Vous n'aimez pas la pipe ? ' cry the Citoyens, as their door slams-to again.^ My poor brother Citoyens, O surely, in a reign of Brotherhood, you are not the two I would guillotine ! Rigour grows, stiffens into horrid tyranny ; Plot in the Prison getting ever rifer. This Plot in the Prison, as we said, is now the stereotype formula of Tinville : against whom- soever he knows no crime, this is a ready-made crime. His Judgment-bar has become unspeakable ; a recognised mockery ; known only as the wicket one passes through, towards Death. His Indictments are drawn out in blank ; you insert the Names after. He has his moutons, detestable traitor jackals, who report and bear witness ; that they themselves may be allowed to live, — for a time. His Fourn6es, says the reproachful CoUot, ' shall in no case exceed three-score ' ; that is his maximum. Nightly come his Timabrils to the Luxembourg, with the fatal Roll-call ; list of the Fournee of tomorrow. Men rush towards the Grate ; listen, if their name be in it ? One deep-drawn breath, when the name is not in ; we live still one day ! And yet some score or scores of names were in. Quick these, they clasp their loved ones to their heart, one last time ; with brief adieu, wet-eyed or dry-eyed, they mount, and are away. This night to the Conciergerie ; through the Palais misnamed of Justice, to the Guillotine tomorrow. Recklessness, defiant levity, the Stoicism if not of strength ' Maison (VArrH de Port-Libre, par Coittant, etc. (Mimoires sur Its Prisons, ii.) yet 404 THERMIDOR BOOK VI yet of weakness, has possessed all hearts. Weak women and June 1794 Ci-devants, their locks not yet made into blond perukes, their (Year 2, Prair.) gj^j j^g ^^^ yg^. tanned into breeches, are accustomed to ' act the Guillotine ' by way of pastime. In fantastic mummery, with towel-turbans, blanket-ermine, a mock Sanhedrim of Judges sits, a mock Tinville pleads ; a culprit is doomed, is guillo- tined by the oversetting of two chairs. Sometimes we carry it further : Tinville himself, in his turn, is doomed, and not to the Guillotine alone. With blackened face, hirsute, horned, a shaggy Satan snatches him not unshrieking ; shows him, with outstretched arm and voice, the fire that is not quenched, the worm that dies not ; the monotony of Hell-pain, and the What hour ? answered by. It is Eternity^ And still the Prisons fill fuller, and still the Guillotine goes faster. On all high roads march flights of Prisoners, wending towards Paris. Not Ci-devants now ; they, the noisy of them, are mown down ; it is Republicans now. Chained two and two they march ; in exasperated moments singing their Mar- seillaise. A hundred and thirty-two men of Nantes, for instance, march towards Paris, in these same days : Republicans, or say even Jacobins to the marrow of the bone ; but Jacobins who had not approved Noyading.^ Vive la Bipublique rises from them in all streets of towns : they rest by night in un- utterable noisome dens, crowded to choking ; one or two dead on the morrow. They are wayworn, weary of heart ; can only shout : Live the Republic ; we, as under horrid enchantment, dying in this way for it ! Some Four-hundred Priests, of whom also there is record, ride at anchor ' in the roads of the Isle of Aix,' long months ; looking out on misery, vacuity, waste Sands of Oleron and the ever-moaning brine. Ragged, sordid, hungry ; wasted to shadows : eating their unclean ration on deck, circularly, in parties of a dozen, with finger and thumb ; beating their scandalous clothes between two stones ; choked in horrible miasmata, closed under hatches, seventy of them in a berth, through night ; so that the ' aged Priest is found lying dead in the morning, in the attitude of prayer ' ! ^ — How long, O Lord ! ^ Montgaillard, iv. 2i8; Riouffe, p. 273. ^ Voyage de Cent Trente-deux Nantais (Prisons, ii. 288-335). ' Relation de ce qa'ont souffert four la Religion les Prttres diportis en 1 79+, dans la rode de Vile d'Jix (lb. ii. 387-485). Not TO FINISH THE TERROR 405 Not for ever ; no. All Anarchy, all Evil, Injustice, is, CHAP. V by the nature of it, dragon' s-teeth ; suicidal, and cannot J"°e J,794 '' ? o ' ' (Year z, Prair.) endure. CHAPTER VI TO FINISH THE TERROR It is very remarkable, indeed, that since the Etre-Suprime Feast, and the sublime continued harangues on it, which Billaud feared would become a bore to him, Robespierre has gone httle to Committee ; but held himself apart, as if in a kind of pet. Nay they have made a Report on that old Catherine Theot, and her Regenerative Man spoken of by the Prophets ; not in the best spirit. This Theot mystery they affect to regard as a Plot ; but have evidently introduced a vein of satire, of irreverent banter, not against the Spinster alone, but obliquely against her Regenerative Man ! Barr^re's light pen was perhaps at the bottom of it : read through the solenm snuffling organs of old Vadier of the Sureti Generate, the Theot Report had its effect ; wrinkling the general Re- publican visage into an iron grin. Ought these things to be ? We note further, that among the Prisoners in the Twelve Houses of Arrest, there is one whom we have seen before. Senhora Fontenai, born Cabarus, the fair Proserpine whom Representative Tallien Pluto-like did gather at Bordeaux, not without effect on himself ! Tallien is home, by recall, long since, from Bordeaux ; and in the most alarming position. Vain that he sounded, louder even than ever, the note of Jacobinism, to hide past shortcomings : the Jacobins purged him out ; two times has Robespierre growled at him words of omen from the Convention Tribune. And now his fair Cabarus, hit by denunciation, lies Arrested, Suspect, in spite of all he could do ! — Shut in horrid pinfold of death, the Senhora smuggles out to her red-gloomy Tallien the most pressing entreaties and conjurings : Save me ; save thyself. Seest thou not that thy own head is doomed ; thou with a too fiery audacity ; a Danton- ist withal ; against whom lie grudges ? Are ye not all doomed, as in the Polyphemus Cavern : the fawningest slave of you will be but eaten last ! — TaUien feels with a shudder that it is true. 406 THERMIDOR BOOK VI true. Tallien has had words of omen, Bourdon has had words, July 1794 Freron is hated and Barras : each man ' feels his head if it (Year ..Mess.) y^^. ^^.j^j^ ^^ j^jg shoulderS.' Meanwhile Robespierre, we still observe, goes little to Con- vention, not at all to Committee ; speaks nothing except to his Jacobin House of Lords, amid his bodyguard of Tappe- durs. These ' forty-days,' for we are now far in July, he has not showed face in Committee ; could only work there by his three shallow scoundrels, and the terror there was of him. The Incorruptible himself sits apart ; or is seen stalking in solitary places in the fields, with an intensely meditative air ; some say, ' with eyes red-spotted,' ^ fruit of extreme bile : the lamentablest seagreen Chimera that walks the Earth that July ! O hapless Chimera, — for thou too hadst a life, and heart of flesh, — what is this that the stern gods, seeming to smile all the way, have led and let thee to ! Art not thou he, who, few years ago, was a young Advocate of promise ; and gave up the Arras Judgeship rather than sentence one man to die?— What his thoughts might be ? His plans for finishing the Terror ? One knows not. Dim vestiges there flit of Agrarian Law ; a victorious Sansculottism become Landed Proprietor ; old Soldiers sitting in National Mansions, in Hospital Palaces of Chambord and Chantilly ; peace bought by victory ; breaches healed by Feast of Eire Suprime ; — and so, through seas of blood, to Equality, Frugality, worksome Blessedness, Fraternity, and Republic of the virtues. Blessed shore, of such a sea of Aristocrat blood : but how to land on it ? Through one last wave : blood of corrupt Sansculottists ; traitorous or semi- traitorous Conventionals, rebellious Talliens, Billauds, to whom with my Eire Supreme I have become a bore ; with my Apoca- lyptic Old Woman a laughing-stock ! — So stalks he, this poor Robespierre, like a seagreen ghost, through the blooming July. Vestiges of schemes flit dim. But what his schemes or his thoughts were will never be known to man. New Catacombs, some say, are digging for a huge simul- taneous butchery. Convention to be butchered, down to the right pitch, by General Henriot and Company : Jacobin House of Lords made dominant ; and Robespierre Dictator.^ There is actually, or else there is not actually, a List made 1 Deux Amis, xii. 347-73. ' Jbid. xii. 350-8. out; NAPOLEON. (jThe triple crmun, and the bubble bait.) TO FINISH THE TERROR 407 out ; which the Hairdresser has got eye on, as he frizzled the CHAP. VI Incorruptible locks. Each man asks himself. Is it I ? J^ly 26, Nay, as Tradition and rumour of Anecdote still convey^ ^'^^^ „, «i 111111, -■■ 11 (Years, Therm.8) it, there was a remarkable bachelor s dinner, one hot day, at Barrere's. For doubt not, O Reader, this Barr^re and others of them gave dinners ; had ' country-house at CUchy,' with elegant enough sumptuosities, and pleasures high-rouged.^ But at this dinner we speak of, the day being so hot, it is said, the guests all stript their coats, and left them in the drawing- room : from the dinner-table Carnot glided out, driven by a necessity, needing of all things paper ; groped in Robespierre's pocket ; found a list of Forty, his own name among them ; — and tarried not at the wine-cup that day ! — Ye must bestir yourselves, O Friends ; ye dull Frogs of the Marsh, mute ever since Girondism sank under, even you now must croak or die ! Councils are held, with word and beck ; nocturnal, mysterious as death. Does not a feline Maximilien stalk there ; voiceless as yet ; his green eyes red-spotted ; back bent, and hair up ? Rash Tallien, with his rash temper and audacity of tongue ; he shall bell the cat. Fix a day ; and be it soon, lest never ! Lo, before the fixed day, on the day which they call Eighth of Thermidor, 26th July 1794, Robespierre himself reappears in Convention ; mounts to the Tribune ! The biliary face seems clouded with new gloom : judge whether your Talliens, Bourdons, listened with interest. It is a voice bodeful of death or of life. Longwinded, unmelodious as the screech- owl's, sounds that prophetic voice : Degenerate condition of Republican spirit ; corrupt Moderatism ; Surete, Salut Com- mittees themselves infected ; backsliding on this hand and on that ; I, Maximilien, alone left incorruptible, ready to die at a moment's warning. For all which what remedy is there ? The Guillotine ; new vigour to the all-healing Guillotine ; death to traitors of every hue ! So sings the prophetic voice ; into its Convention sounding-board. The old song this : but today, O Heavens, has the sounding-board ceased to act ? There is not resonance in this Convention ; there is, so to speak, a gasp of silence ; nay a certain grating of one knows not what ! — Lecointre, our old Draper of Versailles, in these questionable circumstances, sees nothing he can do so safe as rise, ' insidiously ' or not insidiously, and move, according '■ Ste Vilate. to 408 THERMIDOR BOOK VI to established wont, that the Robespierre Speech be ' printed July 26, and sent to the Departments.' Hark : gratings, even of ^'^^ , dissonance ! Honourable Members hint dissonance ; Com- (Ycar2,Therin.8) , • i t ' i c^ i t mittee-Members, inculpated in the Speech, utter dissonance, demand ' delay in printing.' Ever higher rises the note of dissonance ; inquiry is even made by Editor Freron : ' What has become of the Liberty of Opinions in this Convention ? ' The Order to print and transmit, which had got passed, is rescinded. Robespierre, greener than ever before, has to retire, foiled ; discerning that it is mutiny, that evil is nigh ! Mutiny is a thing of the fatalest nature in all enterprises whatsoever ; a thing so incalculable, swift-frightful : not to be dealt with in fright. But mutiny in a Robespierre Conven- tion, above all, — it is like fire seen sputtering in the ship's powder-room ! One death-defiant plunge at it, this moment, and you may still tread it out : hesitate till next moment, — ship and ship's captain, crew and cargo are shivered far ; the ship's voyage has suddenly ended between sea and sky. If Robespierre can, tonight, produce his Henriot and Company, and get his work done by them, he and Sansculottism may still subsist some time ; if not, probably not. Oliver Cromwell, when that Agitator Sergeant stept forth from the ranks, with plea of grievances, and began gesticulating and demonstrating, as the mouthpiece of Thousands expectant there, — discerned, with those truculent eyes of his, how the matter lay ; plucked a pistol from his holsters ; blew Agitator and Agitation instantly out. Noll was a man fit for such things. Robespierre, for his part, gKdes over at evening to his Jacobin House of Lords ; unfolds there, instead of some ade- quate resolution, his woes, his uncommon virtues, incorrupti- bilities ; then, secondly, his rejected screech-owl Oration ; — reads this latter over again ; and declares that he is ready to die at a moment's warning. Thou shalt not die ! shouts Jacobinism from its thousand throats. ' Robespierre, I will drink the hemlock with thee,' cries Painter David, ' Je boirai la cigue avec toi ' ; — a thing not essential to do, but which, in the fire of the moment, can be said. Our Jacobin sounding-board, therefore, does act ! Applauses heaven-high cover the rejected Oration ; fire-eyed fury fights all Jacobin features : Insurrection a sacred duty ; the Con- vention TO FINISH THE TERROR 409 vention to be purged ; Sovereign. People under Henriot and CHAP. VI Municipality ; we will make a new June-Second of it : To J"ly 26, your tents, O Israel ! In this key pipes Jacobinism ; in sheer (Year! xiferm-s) tunliult of revolt. Let Tallien and all Opposition men make off. CoUot d'Herbois, though of the supreme Salut, and so lately DAVID. near shot, is elbowed, bullied ; is glad to escape alive. Enter- ing Committee-room of Salut, all dishevelled, he finds sleek sombre Saint-Just there, among the rest ; who in his sleek way asks, ' What is passing at the Jacobins ? ' — ' What is passing ? ' repeats CoUot, in the unhistrionic Cambyses-vein : ' What is passing ? Nothing but revolt and horrors are passing 410 THERMIDOR BOOK VI passing. Ye want our lives ; ye shall not have them.' Saint- July 26, Just stutters at such Cambyses oratory ; takes his hat to ^^^* withdraw. That Report he had been speaking of, Report on (Years, Therm.8) . ^ , i-i-.i i Repubhean Things m General we may say, which is to be read in Convention on the morrow, he cannot show it them, at this moment : a friend has it ; he, Saint-Just, will get it, and send it, were he once home. Once home, he sends not it, but an answer that he will not send it ; that they will hear it from the Tribune tomorrow. Let every man, therefore, according to a well-known good- advice, ' pray to Heaven, and keep his powder dry ! ' Paris on the morrow, will see a thing. Swift scouts fly dim or invisible, all night, from Suretd and Salut ; from conclave to conclave ; from Mother Society to Townhall. Sleep, can it fall on the eyes of Talliens, Frerons, Collots ? Puissant Henriot, Mayor Fleuriot, Judge Coffinhal, Procureur Payan, Robespierre and all the Jacobins are getting ready. CHAPTER VII GO DOWN TO Tallien's eyes beamed bright, on the morrow, Ninth of Thermidor, ' about nine o'clock,' to see that the Convention had actually met. Paris is in rumour : but at least we are met, in Legal Convention here ; we have not been snatched seriatim ; treated with a Pride's Purge at the door. ' Allans, brave men of the Plain,' late Frogs of the Marsh ! cried Tallien with a squeeze of the hand, as he passed in ; Saint- Just's sonorous voice being now audible from the Tribune, and the game of games begun. Saint- Just is verily reading that Report of his ; green Vengeance, in the shape of Robespierre, watching nigh. Behold, however, Saint- Just has read but few sentences, when inter- ruption rises, rapid crescendo ; when Tallien starts to his feet, and Billaud, and this man starts and that, — Tallien, a second time, with his : ' Citoyens, at the Jacobins last night, I trembled for the Repubhc. I said to myself, if the Convention dare not strike the Tjn-ant, then I myself dare ; and with this I will do it, if need be,' said he, whisking out a clear-gleaming Dagger, and GO DOWN TO 411 and brandishing it there : the Steel of Brutus, as we call it. CHAP. VII Whereat we all bellow, and brandish, impetuous acclaim. J"ly 27, ' Tyranny ! Dictatorship ! Triumvirate ! ' And the Salut .y^JJ^^„^ ,, Cfommittee-men accuse, and all men accuse, and uproar, and impetuously acclaim. And Saint-Just is standing motionless, pale of face ; Couthon ejaculating ' Triumvir ? ' with a look at his paralytic legs. And Robespierre is struggling to speak, but President Thuriot is jingling the bell against him, but the Hall is sounding against hinx like an ^Eolus-Hall : and Robes- pierre is mounting the Tribune-steps and descending again ; going and coming, like to choke with rage, terror, desperation : — and mutiny is the order of the day ! ^ O President Thuriot, thou that wert Elector Thuriot, and from the Bastille battlements sawest Saint-Antoine rising like the Ocean-tide, and hast seen much since, sawest thou ever the like of this ? Jingle of bell, which thou jinglest against Robespierre, is hardly audible amid the Bedlam storm ; and men rage for life. ' President of Assassins,' shrieks Robespierre, ' I demand speech of thee for the last time ! ' It cannot be had. ' To you, O virtuous men of the Plain,' cries he, finding audience one moment, ' I appeal to you ! ' The virtuous men of the Plain sit silent as stones. And Thuriot's bell jingles, and the Hall sounds like bolus's Hall. Robespierre's frothing lips are grown ' blue ' ; his tongue dry, cleaving to the roof of his mouth. ' The blood of Danton chokes him,' cry they. ' Accusation ! Decree of Accusation ! ' Thuriot swiftly puts that question. Accusation passes ; the incorruptible Maxi- milien is decreed Accused. ' I demand to share my Brother's fate, as I have striven to share his virtues,' cries Augustin, the Younger Robespierre : Augustin also is decreed. And Couthon, and Saint-Just, and Lebas, they are all decreed ; and packed forth, — not without difficulty, the Ushers almost trembling to obey. Triumvirate and Company are packed forth, into Salut Committee-room ; their tongue cleaving to the roof of their mouth. You have but to sunmion the Municipality ; to cashier Commandant Henriot, and launch Arrest at him ; to regulate formalities ; hand Tinville his victims. It is noon : the ^olus-Hall has delivered itself ; blows now victorious, harmonious, as one irresistible wind. ' Moniteur, Nos. 311, 312 ; Dibats, iv. 421-42 ; Deux Amis, xii. 390-411. And 412 THERMIDOR BOOK VI And so the work is finished ? One thinks so : and yet it is July 27, not so. Alas, there is yet but the first-act finished ; three or ,v ^ i?,* X four other acts still to come ; and an uncertain catastrophe ! (Years, Therm, 9) '^ A huge City holds m it so many confusions : seven hundred thousand human heads ; not one of which knows what its SAINT-JUST. neighbour is doing, nay not what itself is doing. — See, accord- ingly, about three in the afternoon. Commandant Henriot, how instead of sitting cashiered, arrested, he gallops along the Quais, followed by Municipal Gendarmes, ' trampling down several persons ' ! For the Townhall sits deliberating, openly insurgent : Barriers to be shut ; no Gaoler to admit any Prisoner this day ; — and Henriot is galloping towards the Tuileries, GO DOWN TO 413 Tuileries, to deliver Robespierre. On the Quai de la Fer- CHAP. VII raillerie, a young Citoyen, walking with his wife, says aloud : July 28, ' Gendarmes, that man is not your Commandant ; he is under ^794 asrest.' The Gendarmes strike down the young Citoyen with Therm. I'o) the flat of their swords.^ Representatives themselves (as Merlin the Thionviller), who accost him, this puissant Henriot flings into guard-houses. He bursts towards the Tuileries Committee-room, ' to speak with Robespierre ' : with difficulty, the Ushers and Tuileries Gendarmes, earnestly pleading and drawing sabre, seize this Henriot ; get the Henriot Gendarmes persuaded not to fight ; get Robespierre and Company packed into hackney-coaches, sent off under escort, to the Luxembourg and other Prisons. This, then, is the end ? May not an exhausted Convention adjourn now, for a little repose and sustenance, ' at five o'clock' ? An exhausted Convention did it ; and repented it. The end was not come ; only the end of the second-act. Hark, while exhausted Representatives sit at victuals, — tocsin burst- ing from all steeples, drums rolling, in the summer evening : Judge Coflfinhal is galloping with new Gendarmes, to deliver Henriot from Tuileries Committee-room ; and does deliver him ! Puissant Henriot vaults on horseback ; sets to haranguing the Tuileries Gendarmes ; corrupts the Tuileries Gendarmes too ; trots off with them to Townhall. Alas, and Robespierre is not in Prison : the Gaoler showed his Municipal order, durst not, on pain of his life, admit any Prisoner ; the Robes- pierre Hackney-coaches, in this confused jangle and whirl of uncertain Gendarmes, have floated safe — into the Townhall ! There sit Robespierre and Company, embraced by Municipals and Jacobins in sacred right of Insiu-rection ; redacting Pro- clamations ; sounding tocsins ; corresponding with Sections and Mother Society. Is not here a pretty enough third-act of a natural Greek Drama ; catastrophe more uncertain than ever ? The hasty Convention rushes together again, in the ominous nightfall : President Collot, for the chair is his, enters with long strides, paleness on his face ; claps-on his hat ; says with solemn tone : ' Citoyens, armed Villains have beset the Com- mittee-rooms, and got possession of them. The hour is come, ' Pricis des Ev^nemens du Neuf Thermidor, par C. A. Meda, ancien Gendarme (Paris, 1825). to 414 THERMIDOR BOOK VI July 28j 1794 (Year 2, Therm. 10) to die at our post ! ' ' Oui,' answer one and all : ' We swear it ! ' It is no rodomontade, this time, but a sad fact and necessity ; unless we do at our posts, we must verily die. Swift therefore, Robespierre, Henriot, the Municipality, are declared Rebels ; put Hors la Loi, Out of Law. Better still, we appoint Barras Commandant of what Armed-force is to be had ; send Missionary Representatives to all Sections and quarters, to preach, and raise force ; will die at least with harness on our back. What a distracted City ; men riding and running, report- ing and hearsaying ; the Hour clearly in travail, — child not to be named till born ! The poor Prisoners in the Luxem- bourg hear the rumour ; tremble for a new September. They see men making signals to them, on skylights and roofs, appar- ently signals of hope ; cannot in the least make out what it is.^ We observe, however, in the eventide, as usual, the Death-tumbrils faring Southeastward, through Saint-Antoine, towards their Barrier du Trone. Saint-Antoine' s tough bowels melt ; Saint-Antoine surrounds the Tumbrils ; says. It shall not be. O Heavens, why should it ! Henriot and Gendarmes, scouring the streets that way, bellow, with waved sabres, that it must. Quit hope, ye poor Doomed ! The Tumbrils move on. But in this set of Tumbrils there are two other things notable : one notable person ; and one want of a notable person. The notable person is Lieutenant-General LoiseroUes, a nobleman by birth and by nature ; laying down his life here for his son. In the Prison of Saint-Lazare, the night before last, hurrying to the Grate to hear the Death-List read, he caught the name of his son. The son was asleep at the moment. ' I am Loise- roUes,' cried the old man : at Tinville's bar, an error in the Christian name is little ; small objection was made. — The want of the notable person, again, is that of Deputy Paine ! Paine has sat in the Luxembourg since January ; and seemed forgotten ; but Fouquier had pricked him at last. The Turn- key, List in hand, is marking with chalk the outer doors of tomorrow's Fourn^e. Paine' s outer door happened to be open, turned back on the wall ; the Turnkey marked it on the side next him, and hurried on : another Turnkey came, and shut it ; no chalk-mark now visible, the Fourn6e went without Paine. Paine's life lay not there. — ' Mimoires sur Us Prisons, ii. 277. Our GO DOWN TO 415 Our fifth-act, of this natural Greek Drama, with its natural CHAP. Vll unities, can only be painted in gross ; somewhat as that antique July 28, Painter, driven desperate, did the foam. For through this ^^^* blessed July night, there is clangour, confusion very great, The™. lo) of marching troops ; of Sections going this way. Sections going that ; of Missionary Representatives reading Proclamations by torchlight ; Missionary Legendre, who has raised force somewhere, emptying out the Jacobins, and flinging their key on the Convention table : ' I have locked their door ; it shall be Virtue that reopens it.' Paris, we say, is set against itself, rushing confused, as Ocean-currents do ; a huge Mahlstrom, sounding there, under cloud of night. Convention sits per- manent on this hand ; Municipality most permanent on that. The poor prisoners hear tocsin and rumour ; strive to bethink them of the signals apparently of hope. Meek continual Twilight streaming up, which will be Dawn and a Tomorrow, silvers the Northern hem of Night ; it wends and wends there, that meek brightness, like a silent prophecy, along the great ring-dial of the Heaven. So still, eternal ! and on Earth all is confused shadow and conflict ; dissidence, tumultuous gloom and glare ; and ' Destiny as yet sits wavering, and shakes her doubtful urn.' About three in the morning the dissident Armed-forces have met. Henriot's Armed -force stood ranked in the Place de Greve ; and now Barras's, which he has recruited, arrives there ; and they front each other, cannon bristling against cannon. Citoyens ! cries the voice of Discretion loudly enough, Before coming to bloodshed, to endless civil-war, hear the Convention Decree read : ' Robespierre and all rebels Out of Law ! ' — Out of Law ? There is terror in the sound. Unarmed Citoyens disperse rapidly home. Municipal Cannoneers, in sudden whirl, anxiously unanimous, range themselves on the Convention side, with shouting. At which shout, Henriot de- scends from his upper room, far gone in drink as some say ; finds his Place de Gr^ve empty ; the cannons' mouth turned towards him ; and on the whole, — that it is now the catas- trophe ! Stumbling in again, the wretched drunk-sobered Henriot announces : ' All is lost ! ' ' Miserable, it is thou that hast lost it ! ' cry they ; and fling him, or else he flings himself, out of window : far enough down ; into masonwork and horror of cesspool ; 416 THERMIDOR BOOK VI cesspool ; not into death but worse. Augustin Robespierre July 27, follows him ; with the like fate. Saint- Just, they say, called 1^9^ on Lebas to kill him ; who would not. Couthon crept under ear2, crm.g ^ ^g^^^jg . attempting to kill Mmself ; not doing it. — On enter- ing that Sanhedrim of Insurrection, we find all as good as extinct ; undone, ready for seizure. Robespierre was sitting on a chair, with pistol-shot blown through not his head but his under-jaw ; the suicidal hand had failed.^ With prompt zeal, not without trouble, we gather these wrecked Conspira- tors ; fish up even Henriot and Augustin, bleeding and foul ; pack them all, rudely enough, into carts ; and shall, before sunrise, have them safe under lock and key. Amid shoutings and embracings. r , i i Robespierre lay in an anteroom of the Convention Hall, while his Prison-escort was getting ready ; the mangled jaw bound up rudely with bloody linen : a spectacle to men. He lies stretched on a table, a deal-box his pillow ; the sheath of the pistol is still clenched convulsively in his hand. Men bully him, insult him : his eyes still indicate intelligence ; he speaks no word. ' He had on the sky-blue coat he had got made for the Feast of the Eire Supreme ' — O Reader, can thy hard heart hold out against that ? His trousers were nankeen ; the stockings had fallen down over the ankles. He spake no word more in this world. And so, at six in the morning, a victorious Convention adjourns. Report flies over Paris as on golden wings ; pene- trates the Prisons ; irradiates the faces of those that were ready to perish : turnkeys and moutons, fallen from their high estate, look mute and blue. It is the 28th day of July, called 10th of Thermidor, year 1794. Fouquier had but to identify ; his Prisoners being already Out of Law. At four in the afternoon, never before were the streets of Paris seen so crowded. From the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Revolution, for thither again go the Tum- brils this time, it is one dense stirring mass ; all windows crammed ; the very roofs and ridge-tiles budding forth human Curiosity, in strange gladness. The Death-tumbrils, with 1 Meda, p. 384. (Meda asserts that it was he who, with infinite courage though in a lefthanded manner, shot Robespierre. Meda got promoted for his services of this night ; and died General and Baron. Few credited Meda in what was otherwise incredible. ) their GO DOWN TO 417 their motley Batch of Outlaws, some Twenty-three or so, from CHAP. VII MaximiUen to Mayor Fleuriot and Simon the Cordwainer, roll July 27, on. All eyes are on Robespierre's Tumbril, where he, his jaw beund in dirty linen, with his half-dead Brother and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered ; their ' seventeen hours ' of agony about to end. The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which is he. A woman springs on the Tumbril ; clutching the side of it with one hand, waving the other Sibyl- like ; and exclaims : ' The death of thee gladdens my very heart, m'enivre de joie ' ; Robespierre opened his eyes ; ''Scelerat, go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers ! ' — At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened ; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him ; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw : the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry ; — hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be too quick ! Samson's work done, there bursts forth shout on shout of applause. Shout, which prolongs itself not only over Paris, but over France, but over Europe, and down to this generation. Deservedly, and also undeservedly. O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert thou worse than other Advocates ? Stricter man, according to his Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of pro- bities, benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and suchlike, lived not in that age. A man fitted, in some luckier settled age, to have become one of those incorruptible barren Pattern-Figures and have had marble-tablets and funeral-sermons. His poor VOL. II. 2 D landlord. 1794 (Year 2, Therm. 9) SIMON THE CORDWAINEK. 418 THERMIDOR BOOK VI landlord, the Cabinet-maker in the Rue Saint-Honore, loved July 27, him ; his Brother died for him. May God be merciful to him, ,v ^ Tif ^ and to us ! (Year 2, Therm, g) This is the end of the Reign of Terror ; new glorious Revolu- tion named of Thermidor ; of Thermidor 9th, year 2 ; which being interpreted into old slave-style means 27th of July 1794. Terror is ended ; and death in the Place de la Revolution, were the ' Tail of Robespierre ' once executed ; which service Fouquier, in large Batches, is swiftly managing. Book Seventh BOOK SEVENTH vend]£miaire CHAPTER I DECADENT How little did any one suppose that here was the end not of Robespierre only, but of the Revolution System itself ! Least of all did the mutinying Committee-men suppose it ; who had mutinied with no view whatever except to continue the National Regeneration with their own heads on their shoulders. And yet so it verily was. The insignificant stone they had struck out, so insignificant anywhere else, proved to be the Keystone ; the whole arch-work and edifice of Sansculottism began to loosen, to crack, to yawn ; and tumbled piecemeal, with con- siderable rapidity, plunge after plunge ; till the Abyss had swallowed it all, and in this upper world Sansculottism was no more. For despicable as Robespierre himself might be, the death of Robespierre was a signal at which great multitudes of men, struck dumb with terror heretofore, rose out of their hiding- places ; and, as it were, saw one another, how multitudinous they were ; and began speaking and complaining. They are countable by the thousand and the million ; who have suffered cruel wrong. Ever louder rises the plaint of such a multitude ; into a universal sound, into a universal continuous peal, of what they call Public Opinion. Camille had demanded a ' Com- mittee of Mercy,' and could not get it ; but now the whole Nation resolves itself into a Committee of Mercy : the Nation has tried Sansculottism, and is weary of it. Fprce of Public Opinion ! What King or Convention can withstand it ? You in vain struggle : the thing that is rejected as ' calumnious ' today must pass as veracious with triumph another day : gods and 420 VENDEMIAIRE 1794 Year 2, Fruct, BOOK VII and men have declared that Sansculottism cannot be. Sans- Aug.-Sept. culottism, on that Ninth night of Thermidor suicidally ' frac- tured its under- jaw ' ; and lies writhing, never to rise more. Through the next fifteen months, it is what we may call the death-agony of Sansculottism. Sansculottism, Anarchy of the Jean-Jacques Evangel, having now got deep enough, is to perish in a new singular system of Culottism and Arrange- ment. For Arrange- ment is indispensable to man ; Arrange- ment, were it grounded only on that old primary Evangel of Force, with Sceptre in the shape of Harmner ! Be there method, be there order, cry all men ; were it that of the Drill-sergeant ! More tolerable is the drilled Bayonet-rank, than that undrilled Guillotine, incalcul- able as the wind. — How Sansculottism, writhing in death- throes, strove some twice, or even three times, to get on its feet again ; but fell always, and was flung resupine the next EoA^ j»jp- "<;<'8 DEATH MASK OF ROBESPIERRE. instant ; and finally breathed out the life of it, and stirred no more : this we are now, from a due distance, with due brevity, to glance at ; and then — O Reader ! — Courage, I see land ! Two of the first acts of the Convention, very natural for it after this Thermidor, are to be specified here : the first is, renewal of the Governing Committees. Both SureU GSnerale and Salut Public, thinned by the Guillotine, need filling up : we DECADENT 421 we naturally fill them up with Talliens, Frerons, victorious CHAP. I Thermidorian men. Still more to the purpose, we appoint Aug. -Sept. that they shall, as Law directs, not in name only but in deed, ■''^^^ be* renewed and changed from period to period ; a fourth part of them going out monthly. The Convention will no more lie under bondage of Committees, under terror of death ; but be a free Convention ; free to follow its own judgment, and the Force of Public Opinion. Not less natural is it to enact that Prisoners and Persons under Accusation shall have right to demand some ' Writ of Accusation,' and see clearly what they are accused of. Very natural acts : the harbingers of hundreds not less so. For now Fouquier's trade, shackled by Writ of Accusation, and legal proof, is as good as gone ; effectual only against Robespierre's Tail. The Prisons give up their Suspect ; emit them faster and faster. The Committees see themselves besieged with Prisoners' friends ; complain that they are hindered in their work : it is as with men rushing out of a crowded place ; and obstructing one another. Turned are the tables : Prisoners pouring out in floods ; Jailors, Moutons and the Tail of Robespierre going now whither they were wont to send ! — The Hundred and thirty-two Nantese Re- publicans, whom we saw marching in irons, have arrived ; shrunk to Ninety-four, the fifth man of them choked by the road. They arrive : and suddenly find themselves not pleaders for life, but denouncers to death. Their Trial is for acquittal, and more. As the voice of a trumpet, their testimony sounds far and wide, mere atrocities of a Reign of Terror. For a space of nineteen days ; with all solemnity and publicity. Representative Carrier, Company of Marat ; Noyadings, Loire Marriages, things done in darkness, come forth into light : clear is^the voice of these poor resuscitated Nantese ; and Journals, and Speech, and universal Committee of Mercy reverberate it loud enough, into all ears and hearts. Deputation arrives from Arras ; denouncing the atrocities of Representative Lebon. A tamed Convention loves its own life : yet what help ? Representative Lebon, Representative Carrier must wend towards the Revolutionary Tribunal ; struggle and delay as we will, the cry of a Nation pursues them louder and louder. Them also Tinville must abolish ; — if indeed Tinville himself be not abolished. / We (Year 2) 422 VENDEMIAIRE BOOK VII We must note, moreover, the decrepit condition into which 1794 a once omnipotent Mother Society has fallen. Legendre flung her keys on the Convention table, that Thermidor night ; her President was guillotined with Robespierre. The once mighty Mother came, some time after, with a subdued coun- tenance, begging back her keys : the keys were restored her ; but the strength could not be restored her; the strength had departed for ever. Alas, one's day is done. Vain that the Tribune in mid-air sounds as of old : to the general ear it has become a horror, and even a weariness. By and by, Affiliation is prohibited : the mighty Mother sees herself suddenly child- less ; mourns as so hoarse a Rachel may. The Revolutionary Committees, without Suspects to prey upon, perish fast ; as it were, of famine. In Paris the old Forty-eight of them are reduced to Twelve ; their Forty sous are abolished : yet a little while, and Revolutionary Committees are no more. Maccimum will be abolished ; let Sansculottism find food where it can.^ Neither is there now any Munici- pahty, any centre at the Townhall. Mayor Fleuriot and Company perished ; whom we shall not be in haste to replace. The Townhall remains in a broken submissive state ; knows not well what it is growing to ; knows only that it is grown weak, and must obey. What if we should split Paris into, say, a Dozen separate Municipalities ; incapable of concert ! The Sections were thus rendered safe to act with : — or indeed might not the Sections themselves be abolished ? You had then merely your Twelve manageable pacific Townships, with- out centre or subdivision : ^ and sacred right of Insurrection fell into abeyance ! So much is getting abohshed ; fleeting swiftly into the Inane. For the Press speaks, and the human tongue ; Jour- nals, heavy and light, in PhiKppic and Burlesque : a renegade Fr^ron, a renegade Prudhomme, loud they as ever, only the contrary way. And Ci-devants show themselves, almost parade themselves ; resuscitated as from death-sleep ; pubhsh what death-pains they have had. The very Frogs of the Marsh croak with emphasis. Your protesting Seventy-three shall, with a struggle, be emitted out of Prison, back to their seats ; your Louvets, Isnards, Lanjuinais, and wrecks of Girondism, ^ 24th December 1794 (MoniUur, No. 97). ^ October 1795 (Dulaure, viii. 4S4-6). recalled LA CABARUS 423 recalled from their haylofts, and caves in Switzerland, will CHAP. I resume their place in the Convention : ^ natural foes of Terror ! 1794 Thermidorian Talliens, and mere foes of Terror, rule in this CtMivention, and out of it. The compressed Mountain shrinks silent more and more. Moderatism rises louder and louder : not as a tempest, with threatenings ; say rather, as the rushing of a mighty organ-blast, and melodious deafening Force of Public Opinion, from the Twenty-five million windpipes of a Nation all in Committee of Mercy : which how shall any detached body of individuals withstand ? CHAPTER II LA CABARUS How, above all, shall a poor National Convention with- stand it ? In this poor National Convention, broken, be- wildered by long terror, perturbations and guillotinement, there is no Pilot, there is not now even a Danton, who could undertake to steer you anywhither, in such press of weather. The utmost a bewildered Convention can do, is to veer, and trim, and try to keep itself steady ; and rush, undrowned, before the wind. Needless to struggle ; to fling helm a-lee, and make 'bout ship ! A bewildered Convention sails not in the teeth of the wind ; but is rapidly blown round again. So strong is the wind, we say ; and so changed ; blowing fresher and fresher, as from the sweet Southwest ; your devastating Northeasters, and wild Tornado-gusts of Terror, blown utterly out ! All Sansculottic things are passing away ; all things are becoming Culottic. Do but look at the cut of clothes ; that light visible Result, significant of a thousand things which are not so visible. In winter 1793, men went in red nightcap ; Municipals them- selves in sabots ; the very Citoyennes had to petition against such headgear. But now in this winter 1794, where is the red nightcap ? With the things beyond the Flood. Your moneyed Citoyen ponders in what most elegant style he shall dress himself ; whether he shall not even dress himself as the Free Peoples of Antiquity. The more adventurous Citoyenne ' Deux Amis, xiii. 3-39. has 424 VENDEMIAIRE- BOOK VII has already done it. Behold her, that beautiful adventurous 1794-5 Citoyenne : in costume of the ancient Greeks, such Greek (Year 2-3) ^^ Paintcp David could teach ; her sweeping tresses snooded MME. CABAKUS. by guttering antique fillet ; bright-dyed tunic of the Greek women ; her little feet naked, as in Antique Statues, with mere sandals, and winding-strings of riband, — defying the frost ! There (Year 2-3) LA CABARUS 425 There is such an effervescence of Luxury. For your Emi- CHAP. II grant Ci-devants carried not their mansions and furnitures 1794-5 out of the country with them ; but left them standing here : anfl in the swift changes of property, what with money coined on the Place de la Revolution, what with Army-furnishings, sales of Emigrant Domains and Church Lands and King's Lands, and then with the Aladdin' s-lamp of Agio in a time of Paper-money, such mansions haye found new occupants. Old wine, drawn from Ci-devant bottles, descends new throats. Paris has swept herself, relighted herself ; Salons, Soupers not Fraternal, beam once more with suitable effulgence, very singular in colour. The fair Cabarus has come out of Prison ; wedded to her red-gloomy Dis, whom they say she treats too loftily : fair Cabarus gives the most brilliant soirees. Round her is gathered a new Republican Army, of Citoyennes in sandals ; Ci-devants or other : what remnants soever of the old grace survive are rallied there. At her right-hand, in this cause, labours fair Josephine the Widow of Beauharnais, though in straitened circumstances : intent, both of them, to blandish-down the grimness of Republican austerity, and recivilise mankind. Recivilise, even as of old they were civilised : by witchery of the Orphic fiddle-bow, and Euterpean rhythm ; by the Graces, by the Smiles ! Thermidorian Deputies are there in those soirees : Editor Freron, Orateur du Pewple ; Barras, who has known other dances than the Carmagnole. Grim Generals of the Republic are there ; in enormous horse-collar neckcloth, good against sabre-cuts ; their hair gathered all into one knot, ' flowing down behind, fixed with a comb.' Among which latter do we not recognise, once more, that little bronze- complexioned Artillery-Officer of Toulon, home from the Itahan Wars ! Grim enough ; of lean, almost cruel aspect : for he has been in trouble, in ill health ; also in ill favour, as a man promoted, deservingly or not, by the Terrorists and Robespierre Junior. But does not Barras know him ? Will not Barras speak a word for him ? Yes, — if at any time it will serve Barras so to do. Somewhat forlorn of fortune, for the present, stands that Artillery-Officer ; looks, with those deep earnest eyes of his, into a future as waste as the most. Taciturn ; yet with the strangest utterances in him, if you awaken him, which smite home, like light or lightning ; — on the 426 VENDEMIAIRE BOOK VII the whole, rather dangerous ? A ' dissocial ' man ? Dissocial 1794-5 enough ; a natural terror and horror to all Phantasms, being himself of the genus Reality ! He stands here, without work (Year 2-3) JOSEPHINE. or outlook, in this forsaken manner ;— glances nevertheless, it would seem, at the kind glance of Josephine Beauharnais ; and, for the rest, with severe countenance, with open eyes, and closed lips, waits what will betide. That LA CABARUS 427 That the Balls, therefore, have a new figure this winter, we CHAP. II can see. Not Carmagnoles, rude ' whirlblasts of rags,' as 1794-6 Mercier called them, ' precursors of storm and destruction ' ; coal ; difficult to kindle, but then which no known thing will put out. The ready Gaelic fire, we can remark further, — and remark not in Pichegrus only, but in innumerable Voltaires, Racines, Laplaces, no less ; for a man, whether he fight, or sing, or think, will remain the same unity of a man, — is ad- mirable for roasting eggs, in every conceivable sense. The Teutonic anthracite again, as we see in Luthers, Leibnitzes, Shakespeares, is preferable for smelting metals. How happy is our Europe that has both kinds ! — But be this as it may, the Republic is clearly triumphing. In the spring of the year, Mentz Town again sees itself besieged ; will again change master : did not Merlin the Thionviller, ' with wild beard and look,' say it was not for the last time they saw him there ? The Elector of Mentz circulates among his brother Potentates this pertinent query. Were it not advisable to treat of Peace ? Yes ! answers many an Elector from the bottom of his heart. But, on the other hand, Austria hesitates ; finally refuses, being subsidied by Pitt. As to Pitt, whoever hesitate, he, suspending his Habeas-corpus, suspending his Cash-payments, stands inflexible, — spite of foreign reverses ; spite of domestic obstacles, of Scotch National Conventions and English Friends of the People, whom he is obliged to arraign, to hang, or even to see acquitted with jubilee : a lean inflexible man. The Majesty of Spain, as we predicted, makes Peace ; also the Majesty of Prussia : and there is a Treaty of Bale.^ Treaty with black Anarchists and Regicides ! Alas, what help ? You cannot hang this Anarchy ; it is like to hang you : you must needs treat with it. Likewise, General Hoche has even succeeded in pacificating La Vendee. Rogue Rossignol and his ' Infernal Columns ' have vanished : by firmness and justice, by sagacity and industry. General Hoche has done it. Taking ' Movable Columns,' not infernal ; girdling-in the Country ; pardoning the submissive, cutting down the resistive, limb after limb of the Revolt is brought under. La Rochejacquelin, last of our Nobles, fell in battle ; Stofflet himself makes terms ; Georges- Cadoudal is back to Brittany, among his Chouans : the frightful ^ Sth April 1795 (Montgaillard, iv. 319). gangrene 432 VENDEMIAIRE BOOK VII gangrene of La Vendee seems veritably extirpated. It has 1794-5 cost, as they reckon in round numbers, the lives of a Hundred- (Year2-3) thousaud fcllow-mortals ; with noyadings, conflagratings by infernal column, which defy arithmetic. This is the La Vendee War.^ Nay in few months, it does burst-up once more, but once only ; — blown upon by Pitt, by our Ci-devant Puisaye of CADOUDAL. Calvados, and others. In the month of July 1795, lEngUsh Ships will ride in Quiberon roads. There will be debarkation of chivalrous Ci-devants, of volunteer Prisoners-of-war — eager to desert ; of fire-arms. Proclamations, clothes-chests. Royalists and specie. Whereupon also, on the Republican side, there will be rapid stand-to-arms ; with ambuscade marchings by Quiberon beach, at midnight ; storming of Fort Penthifevre ; • Histoire dt la Guerre de la Vendue, par M. le Comte de Vauban ; M^moires de Madame de la Kochejaquelein, etc. war- (Year 2-3) LION NOT DEAD 433 war-thunder mingling with the roar of the nightly main ; and CHAP. Ill sfuch a morning hght as has seldom dawned : debarkation }p^^_ hurled back into its boats, or into the devouring billows, with wreck and wail ; — in one word, a Ci-devant Puisaye as totally ineffectual here as he was in Calvados, when he rode from Vernon Castle without boots.^ Again, therefore, it has cost the lives of many a brave man. Among whom the whole world laments the brave Son of Som- breuil. Ill-fated family ! The father and younger son went to the guillotine ; the heroic daughter languishes, reduced to want, hides her woes from History : the elder son perishes here ; shot by military tribunal as an Emigrant ; Hoche himself cannot save him. If all wars, civil and other, are misunderstandings, what a thing must right-understand- ing be ! CHAPTER IV LION NOT DEAD The Convention, borne on the tide of Fortune towards foreign Victory, and driven by the strong wind of Public Opinion towards Clemency and Luxury, is rushing fast ; all skill of pilotage is needed, and more than all, in such a velocity. Curious to see, how we veer and whirl, yet must ever whirl round again, and scud before the wind. If, on the one hand, we re-admit the Protesting Seventy-three, we, on the other hand, agree to consummate the Apotheosis of Marat ; lift his body from the Cordeliers Church, and transport it to the Pan- theon of Great Men, — flinging out Mirabeau to make room for him. To no purpose : so strong blows Public Opinion ! A Gilt Youthhood, in plaited hair-tresses, tears down his Busts from the Theatre Feydeau ; tramples them under foot ; scatters them, with vociferation, into the Cesspool of Mont- martre.^ Swept is his Chapel from the Place du Carrousel ; the Cesspool of Montmartre will receive his very dust. Shorter godhood had no divine man. Some four months in this Pan- theon, Temple of All the Immortals ; then to the Cesspool, ' Deux Amis, xiv. 94-106; Puisaye, Mdmoires, iii.-vii. " Moniteur, du 25 Septembre 1794, du 4 Fevrier 1795. VOL. II. 2 E grand 434 VENDEMIAIRE BOOK VII grand Cloaca of Paris and the World ! ' His Busts at one time April 1, 1795 amounted to four thousand.' Between Temple of All the ^^°"^''^'™'"^ Immortals and Cloaca of the World, how are poor human creatures whirled ! Furthermore the question arises, When will the Constitu- tion of Ninety-three, of 1793, come into action ? Considerate heads surmise, in all privacy, that the Constitution of Ninety- three will never come into action. Let them busy themselves to get ready a better. Or, again, where now are the Jacobins ? Childless, most decrepit, as we saw, sat the mighty Mother ; gnashing not teeth, but empty gums, against a traitorous Thermidorian Convention and the current of things. Twice were Billaud, CoUot and Company accused in Convention, by a Lecointre, by a Legendre ; and the second time, it was not voted calum- nious. Billaud from the Jacobin tribune says, ' The lion is not dead ; he is only sleeping.' They ask him in Conven- tion, What he means by the awakening of the lion ? And bickerings, of an extensive sort, arose in the Palais-Egalite between Tappe-durs and the Gilt Youthhood ; cries of ' Down with the Jacobins, the Jacoquins,' coquin meaning scoundrel ! The Tribune in mid-air gave battle-sound ; answered only by silence and uncertain gasps. Talk was, in Government Com- mittees, of ' suspending ' the Jacobin Sessions. Hark, there ! — it is in AUhallow-time, or on the Hallow-eve itself, month ci-devant November, year once named of Grace 1794, sad eve for Jacobinism, — volley of stones dashing through our windows, with jingle and execration ! The female Jacobins, famed Tricoteuses with knitting-needles, take flight ; are met at the doors by a Gilt Youthhood and ' mob of four thousand persons ' ; are hooted, flouted, hustled ; fustigated in a scandalous manner, cotillons retrousses ; — and vanish in mere hysterics* Sally out, ye male Jacobins ! The male Jacobins sally out ; but only to battle, disaster and confusion. So that armed Authority has to intervene : and again on the morrow to intervene ; and suspend the Jacobin Session for ever and a day.^ — Gone are the Jacobins ; into invisibility ; in a storm of laughter and howls. Their Place is made a Normal School, the first of the kind seen ; it then vanishes into a ' Market of Thermidor Ninth ' ; into a Market of Saint-Honor^, where is now peaceable chaffering ' Moniteur, Seances du io-i2 Novembre 1794 ; Deux Amis, xiii. 43-9. for LION NOT DEAD 435 for poultry and greens. The solemn temples, the great globe CflAP. IV itself; the baseless fabric! Are not we such stuff, we and April l, 1796 this world of ours, as Dreams are made of ? '"'' 'Maximum being abrogated. Trade was to take its own free course. Alas, Trade, shackled, topsyturvied in the way we saw, and now suddenly let-go again, can for the present take no course at all ; but only reel and stagger. There is, so to speak, no Trade whatever, for the time being. Assignats, long sinking, emitted in such quantities, sink now with an alacrity beyond parallel. ' Combien ? ' said one, to a Hackney- coachman, ' What fare ? ' ' Six thousand livres,' answered he : some three hundred pounds sterling, in Paper-money.^ Pressure of Maximum withdrawn, the things it compressed likewise withdraw. ' Two ounces of bread per day ' is the modicum allotted : wide-waving, doleful are the Bakers' Queues ; Farmers' houses are become pawnbrokers' shops. One can imagine, in these circumstances, with what humour Sansculottism growled in its throat ' La Cabarus ' ; beheld Ci- devants return dancing, the Thermidor effulgence of recivilisa- tion, and Balls in flesh-coloured drawers. Greek tunics and sandals ; hosts of Muscadins parading, with their clubs loaded with lead ; — and we here, cast out, abhorred, ' picking offals from the street ' ; ^ agitating in Baker's Queue for our two ounces of bread ! Will the Jacobin lion, which they say is meeting secretly ' at the Archeveche, in bonnet rouge with loaded pistols,' not awaken ? Seemingly, not. Our Collot, our Billaud, Barr^re, Vadier, in these last days of March 1795, are found worthy of Deportation, of Banishment beyond seas ; and shall, for the present, be trundled oft to the Castle of Ham. The lion is dead ;— or writhing in death-throes ! Behold, accordingly, on the day they call Twelfth of Ger- minal (which is also called First of April, not a lucky day), how lively are these streets of Paris once more ! Floods of hungry women, of squalid hungry men ; ejaculating, ' Bread, bread, and the Constitution of Ninety-three ! ' Paris has risen, once again, like the Ocean-tide ; is flowing towards the Tuileries, for Bread and a Constitution. Tuileries Sentries do their best ; ' Mercier, ii. 94. ('ist February 1796: at the Bourse of Paris, the gold louis,' of 20 francs in silver, 'costs 5,300 francs in assignats.' Montgaillard, iv. 419.) ^ Fantin Desodoards, Histoire de la Revolution, vii. c. 4. but 436 VENDEMIAIRE BOOK VII but it serves not : the Ocean-tide sweeps them away ; inundates April 1, 1795 the Convention Hall itself ; howling, ' Bread and the Con- (Years, Germ, 12) ,., ,- , , stitution ! Unhappy Senators, unhappy People, there is yet, after all toils and broils, no Bread, no Constitution. ' Du pain, pas tant de longs discours, Bread, not bursts of Parliamentary eloquence ! ' so wailed the Menads of Maillard, five years ago and more ; so wail ye to this hour. The Convention, with unalterable countenance, with what thought one knows not, keeps its seat in this waste howling chaos ; rings its storm-bell from the Pavilion of Unity. Section Lepelletier, old Filles Saint-Thomas, who are of the money-changing species ; these and Gilt Youthhood fly to the rescue : sweep chaos forth again, with levelled bayonets. Paris is declared ' in a state of siege.' Pichegru, Conqueror of Holland, who happens to be here, is named Commandant, till the disturbance end. He, in one day so to speak, ends it. Accomplishes the transfer of Billaud, Collot and Company ; dissipating all opposition ' by two cannon-shots,' blank cannon-shots, and the terror of his name ; and thereupon, announcing, with a Laconicism which should be imitated,- ' Representatives, your decrees are executed,' ^ lays down his Commandantship. This Revolt of Germinal, therefore, has passed, like a vain cry. The Prisoners rest safe in Ham, waiting for ships ; some nine-hundred ' chief Terrorists of Paris ' are disarmed. Sans- culottism, swept forth with bayonets, has vanished, with its misery, to the bottom of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau. — Time was when Usher Maillard with Menads could alter the course of Legislation ; but that time is not. Legislation seems to have got bayonets ; Section Lepelletier takes its fire- lock, not for us ! We retire to our dark dens ; our cry of hunger is called a Plot of Pitt ; the Saloons ghtter, the flesh- coloured Drawers gyrate as before. It was for ' The Cabarus,' then, and her Muscadins and Money-changers that we fought ? It was for Balls in flesh-coloured drawers that we took Feudal- ism by the beard, and did and dared, shedding our blood like water ? Expressive Silence, muse thou their praise ! — ^ Moniteur, Stance du 13 Germinal (2d April), 1795. Chapter V LION SPRAWLING ITS LAST 437 CHAP. V 1795 CHAPTER V ^^'"'^ LION SPRAWLING ITS LAST Representative Carrier went to the Guillotine, in December last ; protesting that he acted by orders. The Revolutionary Tribunal, after all it has devoured, has now only, as Anarchic J. B. CARRIER. things do, to devour itself. In the early days of May, men see a remarkable thing : Fouquier-Tinville pleading at the Bar once his own. He and his chief Jurymen, Leroi August- Tenth, Juryman Vilate, a Batch of Sixteen ; pleading hard, protesting that they acted by orders : but pleading in vain. Thus men break the axe with which they have done hateful things ; the axe itself ^having grown hateful. For the rest, Fouquier died hard enough : ' Where are thy Batches ? ' howled 438 VENDEMIAIRE BOOK VII howled the people. — 'Hungry canaille,' asked Fouquier, 'is 1795 thy Bread cheaper, wanting them ? ' °"' Remarkable Fouquier ; once but as other Attorneys and Law-beagles, which hunt ravenous on this Earth, a well-known phasis of human nature ; and now thou art and remainest the most remarkable Attorney that ever lived and hunted in the Upper Air ! For, in this terrestrial Course of Time, there was to be an Avatar of Attorneyism ; the Heavens had said. Let there be an Incarnation, not divine, of the venatbry Attorney-spirit which keeps its eye on the bond only ; — and lo, this was it ; and they have attorneyed it in its turn. Vanish, then, thou rat-eyed Incarnation of Attorneyism ; who at bottom wert but as other Attorneys, and too hungry sons of Adam ! Juryman Vilate had striven hard for life, and published, from his Prison, an ingenious Book, not unknown to us ; but it would not stead : he also had to vanish ; and this his Book of the Secret Causes of Thermidor, full of lies, with particles of truth in it undis cover able otherwise, is all that remains of him. Revolutionary Tribunal has done ; but vengeance has not done. Representative Lebon, after long struggling, is handed over to the ordinary Law Courts, and by them guillotined. Nay at Lyons and elsewhere, resuscitated Moderatism, in its vengeance, will not wait the slow process of Law ; but bursts into the Prisons, sets fire to the Prisons ; burns some three- score imprisoned Jacobins to dire death, or chokes them ' with the smoke of straw.' There go vengeful truculent ' Companies of Jesus,' ' Companies of the Sun ' ; slaying Jacobinism wher- ever they meet with it ; flinging it into the Rhone-stream ; which once more bears seaward a horrid cargo.^ Whereupon, at Toulon, Jacobinism rises in revolt ; and is like to hang the National Representatives. — With such action and reaction, is not a poor National Convention hard bestead ? It is like the settlement of winds and waters, of seas long tornado-beaten ; and goes on with jumble and with jangle. Now flung aloft, now sunk in trough of the sea, your Vessel of the Republic has need of all pilotage and more. What Parliament that ever sat under the Moon had such a series of destinies as this National Convention of France ? It came together to make the Constitution ; and instead of that, 1 Moniteur, du 27 Juin, du 31 Aout, 1795 ; Deux Amis, xiii. 121-9. it 'LA MORT EST MQRTE— VIVE LA VIe!' (Year 3) LION SPRAWLING ITS LAST 439 it has had to make nothing but destruction and confusion : to CHAP. V burn-up CathoUcisms, Aristocratisms ; to worship Reason and }}^^^ dig Saltpetre ; to fight Titanically with itself and with the whole world. A Convention decimated by the guillotine ; above the tenth man has bowed his neck to the axe. Which has seen Carmagnoles danced before it, and patriotic strophes sung amid Church-spoils ; the wounded of the Tenth of August defile in handbarrows ; and, in the Pandemonial Midnight, Egalite's dames in tricolor drink lemonade, and spectrum of Sieyes mount, saying. Death sans phrase. A Convention which has effervesced, and which has congealed ; which has been red with rage, and also pale with rage ; sitting with pistols in its pocket, drawing sword (in a moment of effervescence) : now storming to the four winds, through a Danton-voice, Awake, O France, and smite the tyrants ; now frozen mute under its Robespierre, and answering his dirge-voice by a dubious gasp. Assassinated, decimated ; stabbed at, shot at, in baths, on streets and staircases ; which has been the nucleus of Chaos. Has it not heard the chimes at midnight ? It has deliberated, beset by a Hundred-thousand armed men with artillery-furnaces and provision-carts. It has been betocsined, bestormed ; over- flooded by black deluges of Sansculottism ; and has heard the shrill cry. Bread and Soap. For, as we say, it was the nucleus of Chaos : it sat as the centre of Sansculottism ; and had spread its pavilion on the waste Deep, where is neither path nor landmark, neither bottom nor shore. In intrinsic valour, ingenuity, fidelity, and general force and manhood, it has perhaps not far surpassed the average of Parliaments ; but in frankness of purpose, in singularity of position, it seeks its fellow. One other Sansculottic submersion, or at most two, and this wearied vessel of a Convention reaches land. Revolt of Germinal Twelfth ended as a vain cry ; moribund Sansculottism was swept back into invisibility. There it has lain moaning, these six weeks : moaning, and also scheming. Jacobins disarmed, flung forth from their Tribune in mid-air, must needs try to help themselves, in secret conclave under ground. Lo therefore, on the First day of the month Prairial, 20th of May 1795, sound of the ginirale once more ; beating sharp ran-tan. To arms. To arms ! Sansculottism has risen, yet again, from its death-lair ; waste, 440 VENDEMIAIRE BOOK VIl waste, wild-flowing, as the unfruitful Sea. Saint- Antoine is May 20, 1795 afoot : ' Bread and the Constitution of Ninety-three,' so sounds ear 3, rair. i) ^^ _ ^^ stauds it Written with chalk on the hats of men. They have their pikes, their firelocks ; Paper of Grievances ; stan- dards ; printed Proclamation, drawn-up in quite official manner, — considering this, and also considering that, .they, a much-enduring Sovereign People, are in Insurrection ; will have Bread and the Constitution of Ninety-three. And so the Barriers are seized, and the gSnSrale beats, and tocsins discourse discord. Black deluges overflow the Tuileries ; spite of sentries, the Sanctuary itself is invaded : enter, to our Order of the Day, a torrent of dishevelled women, wailing, ' Bread ! Bread ! ' President may well cover himself ; and have his own tocsin rung in ' the Pavilion of Unity ' ; the ship of the State again labours and leaks ; overwashed, near to swamping, with un- fruitful brine. What a day, once more ! Women are driven out : men storm irresistibly in ; choke all corridors, thunder at all gates. Deputies, putting forth head, obtest, conjure ; Saint-Antoine rages, ' Bread and Constitution.' Report has risen that the ' Convention is assassinating the women ' : crushing and rushing, clangor and furor ! The oak doors have become as oak tambourines, sounding under the axe of Saint-Antoine ; plaster- work crackles, wood-work booms and jingles ; door starts up ; — bursts-in Saint-Antoine with frenzy and vocifera- tion, with Rag-standards, printed Proclamation, drum-music : astonishment to eye and ear. Gendarmes, loyal Sectioners charge through the other door ; they are re-charged ; musketry exploding : Saint-Antoine cannot be expelled. Obtesting Deputies obtest vainly : Respect the President ; approach not the President ! Deputy Feraud, stretching out his hands, baring his bosom scarred in the Spanish wars, obtests vainly ; threatens and resists vainly. Rebellious Deputy of the Sovereign, if thou have fought, have not we too ? We have no Bread, no Constitution ! They wrench poor Feraud ; they tumble him, trample him, wrath waxing to see itself work : they drag him into the corridor, dead or near it; sever his head, and fix it on a pike. Ah, did an unexampled Conven- tion want this variety of destiny, too, then ? Feraud' s bloody head goes on a pike. Such a game has begun ; Paris and the Earth may wait how it will end. And LION SPRAWLING ITS LAST 441 And so it billows free through all Corridors ; within and CHAP. V without, far as the eye reaches, nothing but Bedlam, and the ^^^^y 20j 1796 great Deep broken loose ! President Boissy d'Anglas sits like '^' '' a cock : the rest of the Convention is floated ' to the upper benches ' ; Sectioners and Gendarmes still ranking there to form a kind of wall for them. And Insurrection rages ; rolls its drums ; will read its Paper of Grievances, will have this decreed, will have that. Covered sits President Boissy ; unyielding ; like a rock in the beating of seas. They menace him, level muskets at him, he yields not ; they hold up Feraud's bloody head to him, with grave stern air he bows to it, and yields not. And the Paper of Grievances cannot get itself read for up- roar : and the drums roll, and the throats bawl ; and In- surrection, like sphere-music, is inaudible for very noise : Decree us this. Decree us that. One man we discern bawling ' for the space of an hour at all intervals,' ' Je demande Varresta- tion des coquins et des laches.' Really one of the most com- prehensive Petitions ever put up ; which indeed, to this hoiu-, includes all that you can reasonably ask Constitution of the Year One, Rotten-Borough, Ballot-Box, or other miraculous Political Ark of the Covenant to do for you to the end of the world ! I also demand arrestment of the Knaves and Dastards, and nothing more whatever. — National Representation, deluged with black Sansculottism, glides out ; for help elsewhere, for safety elsewhere ; here is no help. About four in the afternoon, there remain hardly more than some Sixty Members : mere friends, or even secret leaders ; a remnant of the Mountain-crest, held in silence by Thermi- dorian thraldom. Now is the time for them ; now or never let them descend, and speak ! They descend, these Sixty, invited by Sansculottism : Romme of the New Calendar, Ruhl of the Sacred Phial, Goujon, Duquesnoy, Soubrany, and the rest. Glad Sansculottism forms a ring for them ; Romme takes the President's chair ; they begin resolving and decreeing. Fast enough now comes Decree after Decree, in alternate brief strains, or strophe and antistrophe, — what will cheapen bread, what will awaken the dormant Hon. And at every new decree, Sansculottism shouts ' Decreed, decreed ! ' and rolls its drums. Fast enough ; the work of months in hours, — when see, a Figure enters, whom in the lamp-hght we recognise to be Legendre ; 442 VENDEMIAIRE (Year 3) BOOK VII Legendre ; and utters words : fit to be hissed out ! And then 1796 see, Section Lepelletier or other Muscadin Section enters, and Gilt Youth, with levelled bayonets, countenances screwed to the sticking-place ! Tramp, tramp, with bayonets gleaming in the lamp-light : what can one do, worn down with long riot, grown heartless, dark, hungry, but roll back, but rush back, and escape who can ? The very windows need to be thrown up, that Sansculottism may escape fast enough. Money- changer Sections and Gilt Youth sweep them forth, with steel besom, far into the depths of Saint -Antoine. Triumph once more ! The Decrees of that Sixty are not so much as rescinded ; they are declared null and non- extant. Romme, Ruhl, Goujon and the ring- leaders, some thirteen in all, are decreed Accused. Permanent-session ends at three in the morning.^ Sansculottism once more flung resupine, lies sprawling ; sprawling its last. Such was the First of the Prairial, 20th of May 1795. Second and Third of Prairial, during which Sansculottism still sprawled, and unexpectedly rang its tocsin, and assembled in arms, availed Sansculottism nothing. What though with our Rommes and Ruhls, accused but not yet arrested, we make a new ' True National Convention ' of our own, over in the East ; and put the others Out of Law ? What though we rank in arms and march ? Armed Force and Muscadin Sections, some thirty-thousand men, environ that old False Con- vention : we can but bully one another ; bandying nick- names, ' Muscadins,' against ' Blood-drinkers, Buveurs de Sang.' ^ Deux Amis, xiii. 129-46. Feraud's GOUJON. (Year 3) GRILLED HERRINGS 443 Feraud's Assassin, taken with the red hand, and sentenced, CHAP. V and now near to Guillotine and Place de Greve, is retaken ; }P^, is carried back into Saint-Antoine : — to no purpose. Con- vention Sectionaries and Gilt Youth come, according to De- cree, to seek him ; nay to disarm Saint-Antoine ! And they do disarm it : by rolling of cannon, by springing upon enemy's cannon ; by military audacity, and terror of the Law. Saint- Antoine surrenders its arms ; Santerre even advising it, anxious for hfe and brewhouse. Feraud's Assassin flings himself from a high roof : and all is lost.^ Discerning which things, old Ruhl shot a pistol through his old white head ; dashed his life in pieces, as he had done the Sacred Phial of Rheims. Romme, Goujon and the others stand ranked before a swiftly-appointed, swift Military Tri- bunal. Hearing the sentence, Goujon drew a knife, struck it into his breast, passed it to his neighbour Romme ; and fell dead. Romme did the like ; and another ail-but did it ; Roman-death rushing on there, as in electric-chain, before your Bailiffs could intervene ! The Guillotine had the rest. They were the Ultimi Romanorum. Billaud, CoUot and Company are now ordered to be tried for life ; but are found to be already off, shipped for Sinamarri, and the hot mud of Surinam. There let Billaud surround himself with flocks of tame parrots ; Collot take the yellow fever, and drinking a whole bottle of brandy, burn up his entrails.^ Sansculottism sprawls no more. The dormant lion has become a dead one ; and now, as we see, any hoof may smite him. CHAPTER VI GRILLED HERRINGS So dies Sansculottism, the body of Sansculottism ; or is changed. Its ragged Pythian Carmagnole-dance has - trans- formed itself into a Pyrrhic, into a dance of Cabarus Balls. Sansculottism is dead ; extinguished by new isms of that kind, which were its own natural progeny ; and is buried, we may 1 Toulongeon, v. 297 ; Moniteur, Nos. 244-46. ^ Didionnaire des Hommes Marquans, §§ Billaud, Collot. say, 444 VENDEMIAIRE (Year 3) BOOK VII say, with such deafening jubilation and disharmony of funeral- 1796 knell on their part, that only after some half -century or so does one begin to learn clearly why it ever was alive. And yet a meaning lay in it : Sansculottism verily was alive, a New-Birth of Time ; nay it still lives, and is not dead but changed. The soul of it still lives ; still works far and ROMME. wide, through one bodily shape into another less amorphous, as is the way of cunning Time with his New-Births : — till, in some perfected shape, it embrace the whole circuit of the world ! For the wise man may now everywhere discern that he must found on his manhood, not on the garnitures of his manhood. He who, in these Epochs of our Europe, founds on garniture^, formulas, culottisms of what sort soever, is founding on old cloth and sheepskin, and cannot endure. But GRILLED HERRINGS 445 But as for the body of Sansculottism, that is dead and buried, CHAP. VI — and, one hopes, need not reappear, in primary amorphous 1795 shape, for another thousand years. ^^^'' ^ Jt was the frightfulest thing ever born of Time ? One of the frightfulest. This Convention, now grown Anti-jacobin, did, with an eye to justify and fortify itself, publish Lists of what the Reign of Terror had perpetrated : Lists of Persons Guillotined. The Lists, cries splenetic Abbe Montgaillard, were not complete. They contain the names of. How many persons thinks the Reader ? Two-thousand, all but a few. There were above Four-thousand, cries Montgaillard : so many were guillotined, fusilladed, noyaded, done to dire death ; of whom Nine-hundred were women.^ It is a horrible sum of himian lives, M. I'Abbe : — some ten times as many shot rightly on a field of battle, and one might have had his Glorious- Victory with Te-Deum. It is not far from the two-hundredth part of what perished in the entire Seven- Years War. By which Seven- Years War, did not the great Fritz wrench Silesia from the great Theresa ; and a Pompadour, stung by epi- grams, satisfy herself that she could not be an Agnes Sorel ? The head of man is a strange vacant sounding-shell, M. I'Abbe ; and studies Cocker to small purpose. But what if History somewhere on this Planet were to hear of a Nation, the third soul of whom had not, for thirty weeks each year, as many third-rate potatoes as would sustain him ? ^ History, in that case, feels bound to consider that starvation is starvation ; that starvation from age to age presupposes much ; History ventures to assert that the French Sanscu- lotte of Ninety-three, who, roused from long death-sleep, could rush at once to the frontiers, and die fighting for an immortal Hope and Faith of Deliverance for him and his, was but the 5econd-miserablest of men ! The Irish Sans-potato, had he not senses, then, nay a soul ? In his frozen darkness, it was bitter for him to die famishing ; bitter to see his children famish. It was bitter for him to be a beggar, a liar and a knave. Nay, if that dreary Greenland-wind of benighted Want, perennial from sire to son, had frozen him into a kind of torpor and numb callosity, so that he saw not, felt not, — was this, for a creature with a soul in it, some assuagement ; or the crudest wretchedness of all ? ' Montgaillard, iv. 241. ^ Report of the Irish Poor-Law Commission, 1836. Such 446 VENDEMIAIRE BOOK VII Such things were ; such things are ; and they go on in 1795 silence peaceably : — and Sansculottisms follow them. History, (Years) looking back over this France through long times, back to Turgot's time for instance, when dumb Drudgery staggered up to its King's Palace, and in wide expanse of sallow faces, squalor and winged raggedness, presented hieroglyphically its Petition of Grievances ; and for answer got hanged on a ' new gallows forty feet high,' — confesses mournfully that there is no period to be met with, in which the general Twenty-five Millions of France suffered less than in this period which they name Reign of Terror ! But it was not the dumb Millions that suffered here ; it was the Speaking Thousands, and Hundreds, and Units ; who shrieked and published, and made the world ring with their wail, as they could and should : that is the grand peculiarity. The frightfulest Births of Time are never the loud-speaking ones, for these soon die ; they are the silent ones, which can live from century to cen- tury ! Anarchy, hateful as Death, is abhorrent to the whole nature of man ; and so must itself soon die. Wherefore let all men know what of depth and of height is still revealed in man ; and with fear and wonder, with just sympathy and just antipathy, with clear eye and open heart, contemplate it and appropriate it ; and draw innumerable inferences from it. This inference, for example, among the first : That ' if the gods of this lower world will sit on their glittering thrones, indolent as Epicurus' gods, with the living Chaos of Ignorance and Hunger weltering uncared-for at their feet, and smooth Parasites preaching. Peace, peace, when there is no peace,' then the dark Chaos, it would seem, will rise ; — has risen, and, O Heavens, has it not tanned their skins into breeches for itself ? That there be no second Sans- culottism in our Earth for a thousand years, let us understand well what t?ie first was ; and let Rich and Poor of us go and do otherwise. — But to our tale. The Mtjscadin Sections greatly rejoice ; Cabarus Balls gyrate : the well-nigh insoluble problem, Republic without Anarchy, have not we solved it ? — ^Law of Fraternity or Death is gone : chimerical Obtain-who-need has become practical Hold-who-have. To anarchic Repubhc of the Poverties there has succeeded orderly Republic of the Luxuries ; which will continue as long as it can. On THE WHIFF OF GRAPESHOT 447 On the Pont au Change, on the Place de Greve, in long CHAP. VI sheds, Mercier, in these summer evenings, saw working men at 1796 their repast. One's allotment of daily bread has sunk to an